Today's Topics:
1. Britain, Media, BERMONDSEY STREET BUSINESSES FEAR
‘ANTI-GENTRIFICATION’ PROTEST AFTER GRAFFITI DAUBED ON WALL
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. anarkismo.net: Eco-Socialism and Decentralism by Wayne Price
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #256 (Dec) - Jewish and
Jewish revolutionary: "Antisemitism is a structural element of
French society" (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. awsm.nz: A Good Century So Far? (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #256 (Dec) - social,
Public service employment: employment center in tune with bosses
(fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Britain, Tear Down the Walls Workshop in Cardiff
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
_________________________
Message: 1
Class War: the stench of FEAR hangs over the Bermondsey St yuppie colony today
http://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/bermondsey-street-businesses-fear-anti-gentrification-protest-graffiti-daubed-wall/
#ClassWar #NoGentrification #YuppiesOut ---- ‘Class war and ‘yuppies out’ were sprayed
over a nearby block of flats ---- The graffiti in Lamb Walk, adjacent to Bermondsey Street
---- Bermondsey Street businesses fear that they are being targeted by anti-gentrification
campaigners, after protest stickers were posted on shop windows and graffiti daubed on a
wall. ---- Vandals sprayed “CLASS WAR” and “YUPPIES OUT” onto the exterior wall of a block
of luxury flats on December 30, with one business owner reporting that stickers supporting
‘F*ck Parade’ had also emerged in the days before.
The group had organised a protest against the Cereal Killer Café in Brick Lane this
autumn, which turned ugly when paint was thrown at the business and windows were broken
while terrified customers cowered inside.
A Bermondsey Street business owner, who wished to remain anonymous, told the News that it
was feared protestors were set to launch a similar assault on their street.
Before the graffiti appeared, the News contacted F*ck Parade about the stickers and the
concerns about a similar march in Bermondsey.
“That’s the first we’ve heard of it. Plus we don’t do marches, we do parties,” they
replied, before adding pointedly: “Bermondsey is long overdue a visit as is most of London.”
Since the graffiti emerged, an open letter purporting to be from campaign group Class War
to the owners of the Bermondsey Street-based White Cube gallery has been posted through
business letterboxes.
It reads: “We think the White Cube would be an ideal replacement for a winter refuge for
the homeless. The Cube is open only from 10-6 daily and not at all on Mondays. This would
give ample time to open for the homeless from 8-8 daily…
“If you were to grasp this opportunity to marry art with social responsibility no doubt it
would be welcomed worldwide.”
The News contacted the White Cube gallery for comment but did not receive a reply.
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Message: 2
The Re-Development of Anarchism in the Ecology/Climate Justice Movement ---- Theorists of
the climate-justice movement have been raising decentralist ideas as part of their
programs for an ecologically-balanced society. This ecological program means more local
democracy, workers’ management of industry, consumer coops, and federations of
radically-democratic institutions. Such ideas revive the decentralist ideas of anarchism.
---- From conservatives and liberals to Marxists, there is faith in big machines, big
industries, big corporations, big cities, big countries, big buildings, and big
government—a belief in the necessity of centralized, bureaucratic, top-down,
socially-alienated, institutions. This is not to say that most people like giant cities,
big business, or big government; but they do not see any alternative.
Instead, anarchists have advocated localism, face-to-face direct democracy, self-governing
agricultural-industrial communes, workers’ self-management of industry, consumer
cooperatives, appropriate technology, and federations and networks of such
radically-democratic institutions. Many people reject anarchism because they believe such
decentralism to be unrealistic.
However, in our time there is a new development: writers and theorists of the
ecology/environmental/climate-justice movement have been raising decentralist concepts as
part of their programs. They include moderate liberals, radical ecologists, and even
Marxists. Mostly they have no idea that they are redeveloping anarchism. I will examine
this phenomenon.
Anarchist Decentralism
Of a cooperative, socialist (or communist), society, the anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote
in 1905, “True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and
functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free
federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the
center to the periphery.” (Kropotkin 2002; 286)
Paul Goodman put it this way: “Decentralization is not lack of order or planning, but a
kind of coordination that relies on different motives from top-down direction….It is not
‘anarchy.’ [Meaning: it is not ‘chaos.’—WP]…Most anarchists, like the anarcho-syndicalists
or the community-anarchists, have not been ‘anarchists’ either, but decentralists.”
(Goodman 1965; 6)
Capitalism by its nature is centralized. A tiny minority of the population dominates the
whole society and all its institutions. The production system is one of exploitation; the
minority of owners, and their managers, make all decisions, while the workers follow
orders. The workers produce society’s wealth but receive only a fraction of it in payment,
because the capitalists own the means of production (capital).
Under the pressure of competition, capitalist enterprises grow ever larger. They are under
the imperative to grow or die. The economy becomes dominated by semi-monopolies, which now
span the world market. The giant corporations justify themselves by claiming to be more
efficient in producing and distributing commodities. Sometimes this is true, but often it
is not. Capitalism is motivated to produce greater profit (surplus value), not more useful
goods (use value). Often the corporations grow for financial reasons which have nothing to
do with productive efficiency. They may grow in order to better control the work force or
for increased access to markets. Both to serve them and to control them (in the overall
interests of the capitalist class), giant corporations require giant bureaucratic-military
states.
Revolutionary anarchist-socialists seek to abolish all rule by minorities, all
exploitation, and all forms of oppression. They want a classless, oppressionless, society
of participatory democracy. They want everyone to be involved in managing their own
society, politically, economically, and culturally, at every level and in every way. This
requires that institutions, at the daily, lived, level, be small enough for working people
to understand and control them. It requires that small groups meet face-to-face to discuss
and decide how they will deal with most issues—in the workplace or the neighborhood. It
requires directly-democratic assemblies, in the work shop and the community. There
ordinary people will decide on overall concerns, and—where necessary—elect people to do
specialized tasks or to go to meetings with elected people from other assemblies (elected
officials being subject to immediate recall, rotation in office, and the same standard of
living as everyone else). Radical democracy requires reorganizing our cities, our
industries, and our technology, to create a world without order-givers and order-takers.
Anarchists recognize the need for a certain amount of centralization and big institutions.
They believe that self-managing industries and communities should be embedded within
regional, national, and international federations—associations of associations. Such
bottom-up federations can coordinate exchanges of goods and can make decisions on
world-wide concerns. But no matter how large they grow, they are still rooted in the
face-to-face self-government of people’s daily lives. (This is different from today where
people vote every few years for someone to go far away to “be political” for them—and then
the voters return to their daily lives of taking orders from their bosses.)
When everyone participates in governing, then there is no “government” (no
bureaucratic-military state organization separate from and above the rest of society).
There is just the self-organization of the people—of the (formerly) working class and
oppressed people.
The anarchist rule is: As much decentralization as is practically possible; and only as
much centralization as is necessary. “We are in a period of excessive centralization….In
many functions this style is economically inefficient, technologically unnecessary, and
humanly damaging. Therefore we might adopt a political maxim: to decentralize where, how,
and how much [as] is expedient. But where, how, and how much are empirical questions.”
(Goodman 1965; 27)
Anarchists claim that productive technology could be used decentrally to create a society
with sufficient goods for everyone and plenty of leisure for all. There is a great deal of
evidence that technology can be modified and re-created to be consistent with a creative,
self-managing, and decentralized socialist economy.—which does not deny that there would
still be some large machines and factories, as well as networks of smaller devices—such as
the Internet. (For decentralizing technology, see Carson 2010; McRobie 1981; Sclove1995.)
Other Decentralists
There have also been non-anarchist and non-socialist decentralists, such as Catholic
distributivists, students of Ralph Borsodi, cooperators, New Age theorists,
“small-is-beautiful” technologists, and others. (See Loomis 1982.) Some were inspired by
the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Impressed by the New England town meetings, he wanted
to promote a federation of local community “wards.”
“Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic…and feels that he is a
participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year,
but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some
one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner
than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.” (Jefferson 1957; 54)
Unfortunately, the concept of decentralized democracy has been abandoned by modern day
liberals (John Dewey was one exception). Instead, the language of “state’s rights,”
“federalism,” and “small government” have been monopolized by the right. They use it to
justify oppression of People of Color, opposition to regulation of big business, and the
cutting of government support for the working class and the environment. Meanwhile these
supposed advocates of “small government” advocate expansion of the military, more power to
the police, and laws limiting women’s reproductive rights. It is difficult for modern
liberals to counter these false claims due to liberal statism and centralism.
In this period, there has been an explosion of advocacy of worker-managed enterprises
(producers’ cooperatives). This has been promoted by a range of theorists, from liberals
to revolutionary Marxists. It has been experimented with—largely successfully. (For the
discussions about worker-managed enterprises, see Price 2014.)
There were decentralist elements in Marxism (the Marxism of Marx and Engels, anyway).
Mostly these reflected the influence of pre-Marxist “utopian” socialists. These elements
included positive comments about worker-run cooperatives; discussion of the radical
democracy of the 1871 Paris Commune; prediction of the end, under communism, of the
division between town and country—industry and agriculture—due to the widespread
distribution of towns; and prediction of the end of the division between mental and manual
labor (order giving and order carrying out). (See Engels 1954; Marx & Engels 1971.)
However, such elements of decentralization were buried in other aspects of Marx’s program,
such as advocating a new state which would nationalize and centralize all industry.
Utopian, decentralist, aspects dropped out of post-Marx Marxism.
Decentralism in Current Ecological Politics
Bill McKibben has long been a leader of the climate justice movement. Politically he is a
left-liberal, an endorser of Sanders for President. One of his books (2007) is subtitled,
“The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.” He reviews the dangers of “nitrogen
runoff, mercury contamination, rainforest destruction, species extinction, water
shortage…[and] the overarching one: climate change.” (19) His main solution to these (and
other) ills is decentralization: “more local economies, shorter supply lines, and reduced
growth.” (180) “…Development…should look to the local far more than to the global. It
should concentrate on creating and sustaining strong communities….” (197) “…The increased
sense of community and heightened skill at democratic decision-making that a more local
economy implies will not simply increase our levels of satisfaction with our lives, but
will also increase our chances of survival….” (231)
A more extreme ecological perspective is raised by James H. Kunstler (2006)—although the
author describes.himself as “a registered Democrat.” (324) In “The Long Emergency,” he
advances evidence that our society will run out of fossil-fuel—although not necessarily in
time to avoid climate change. (He would regard the current oil glut as temporary.) “…There
will still be plenty of oil left in the ground…but it will be…deeper down, harder and
costlier to extract, sitting under harsh and remote parts of the world…[and] contested by
everyone.” (65) This will end globalized industrialism as we know it.
To cope with this change ”…. Life…will become increasingly and intensely local and smaller
in scale… All human enterprises will contract with the energy supply.” (238-9) “We will
have to reestablish those local webs of economic relations and occupations that existed
all over America until the last several decades of the both century, meaning local and
regional distribution networks….” (259)
One of the most influential texts on global warming is Naomi Klein’s “This Changes
Everything.” She declares, “There is a clear and essential role for national plans and
policies….But…the actual implementation of a great many of these plans [should] be as
decentralized as possible. Communities should be given new tools and powers….Worker-run
co-ops have the capacity to play a huge role in an industrial transformation….
Neighborhoods [should be] planned democratically by their residents….Farming…can also
become an expanded sector of decentralized self-sufficiency and poverty reduction.”
(Klein, 2014; 133-134)
To refer to another authority: Pope Francis, in his 2015 “Encyclical on Climate Change and
Inequality,” cites “the principle of subsidiarity.” (120) That is the principle that
social functions should be as decentralized and localized as much as is realistically
possible. “Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures in
support of small producers and differentiated production.” (79-80) “In some places,
cooperatives are being developed to exploit renewable sources of energy which ensure local
self-sufficiency….” (109) “New forms of cooperation and community organization can be
encouraged in order to defend the interests of small producers and preserve local
ecosystems from destruction.” (111)
Writers for the Marxist journal Monthly Review have argued that only an international
socialist revolution will make it possible to prevent climate catastrophe. This much
anarchists can agree with, but the Monthly Review’s trend has historically identified
“socialism” with centralized Stalinism. Over the years, its editors and writers have
supported Stalin’s Soviet Union, Maoist China, and (still) Castroite Cuba.
However, one of their main writers is Fred Magdoff (a professor of plant and soil
science). He wrote a visionary essay presenting “An Ecologically Sound and Socially Just
Economy.” “Each community and region should strive, within reason, to be as
self-sufficient as possible with respect to basic needs such as water, energy, food, and
housing. This is not a call for absolute self-sufficiency but rather for an attempt
to…lessen the need for long distance transport….Energy…[should be] used near where it was
produced….Ecologically sound and productive agriculture…will take more people working
smaller farms…to produce high yields per hectare….People will be encouraged to live near
where they work….” (Magdoff, 2014; 30—31) Also, “Workplaces (including farms) will be
controlled and managed by the workers and communities in which they are based.” (29)
Why Decentralism?
I could cite many more ecologically-minded activists and scholars. These theorists are not
anarchists and (except for Magdoff) not socialists or revolutionaries. They come out of
traditions of liberalism and/or Marxism which have historically been centralistic and
statist. In the past, a frequent response to environmental and ecological problems was to
advocate economic planning and state intervention. (Nor would anarchists deny the need for
some degree of federalized economic coordination—but not by these
bureaucratic-military-capitalist national states!) Yet here they are arguing for increased
decentralization, localism, direct democracy, and worker management of industry! Without
knowing it apparently, they are recreating anarchism (or aspects of anarchism) for
ecological reasons. (For more on ecology and anarchism see Bookchin, 1980; Purchase 1994.)
These are ecological-environmental reasons for decentralism. If we are to cut back on
energy consumption (and end carbon-based fuel use altogether), we need to decrease
transpiration and travel. That in itself speaks to the need for local industry,
consumption near production, and workplaces near housing—not necessarily in the immediate
community, but at least in the region. Renewable energy sources tend to come in small
packets, when using wind, solar power, geothermal, and water. Therefore small and local
production and consumption makes sense, as opposed to giant factories and mega-cities. The
same is true when using natural resources with the least side effects of destruction or
pollution, so these effects may be easily cleaned up. Democratic economic planning is also
easier to do on a local or regional level, if we want widespread participation. At the
same time, the Internet and other media make coordination-from-below among vast regions
easier than ever before.
However, there is another reason for the spread of decentralist ideas (that is,
essentially anarchism). The radical alternative to our capitalist society used to be
Marxism. But Marxism has been discredited in the eyes of many people, with the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the transformation of Maoist China. All of the quoted writers, except
Magdoff, reject “socialism.” They identify it with government-owned, centralized, and
top-down planned economies. (Historically, Magdoff’s co-thinkers have also identified
“socialism” in this way—except that they were for it.) Yet today, the idea that we could
solve fundamental problems by increased state action, centralization of industry, and
totalitarian politics, does not appeal. But capitalism is barreling down the highway to
its own destruction, and the destruction of humanity and the living world. So people are
looking for a different approach.
Eco-Socialism: Decentralism is Not Enough
But decentralization is not enough. All the theorists quoted above—with the exception of
the Marxist Magdoff—are still essentially for capitalism. They want worker-managed
enterprises and consumer cooperatives—to compete on a market with each other and with
capitalist corporations. These corporations would still exist, even if with more rights
for workers and consumers, smaller size, and more regulation by the government—but still
functioning on the competitive market.
In contrast, anarchist-socialists oppose profit-making firms and corporations and the
market. they are eco-socialists. They advocate that self-managed, cooperative, enterprises
network and federate with each other, to create a democratically planned economy from below.
The market is not a democratic people-managed economy. It runs according to its own
spontaneous laws, which it imposes on enterprises though competition. To repeat: it drives
the economy toward accumulation, increasing growth, greater profits, and continual
quantitative expansion. Its law is grow-or-die.
This has at least three important effects. For one, an economy built on continuous growth
must be in conflict with natural ecologies which require harmonious balance and dynamic
stability. Capitalism treats nature as an endless mine, with natural resources as
apparently free gifts. This is true whether the competitive enterprises are big or small.
A second effect is the inevitable tendency of smaller enterprises to grow into bigger
ones. The drive to accumulate more than its competitors pushes each firm to grow as big as
it can. So even if capitalism (or any other imagined competitive economy) were to
magically be returned to its original state of small firms, it would once again grow into
gigantic semi-monopolies.
Third, through its drive to accumulate, capitalism produces a work force which must be
exploited. If the working class got back all that it produced, then there would be no
capitalist accumulation. Market-driven accumulation contradicts any goal of worker
industrial democracy.
However, the existing system of global semi-monopoly capitalism has created a larger
international working class than ever before in history. (The relative
“de-industrialization” of the U.S. goes together with “outsourcing,” which creates more
industrial workers elsewhere.) Unfortunately, none of the authors cited above refer to the
importance and potential power of that international working class. With its hands on the
means of production and distribution and communication, the working class is a force which
could end capitalism’s drive to ecological disaster. (Even Magdoff and his co-thinkers at
Monthly Review are uncertain about the role of the working class.)
In short, capitalism should be replaced by a society which is decentralized but also
cooperative, producing for use rather than profit, democratically self-managed in the
workplace and the community, and federated together from the local level to national and
international levels. This is eco-socialism in the form of eco-anarchism.
References
Bookchin, Murray (1980). Toward an Ecological Society. Montreal-Buffalo: Black Rose Books.
Carson, Kevin A. (2010). The Homebrew Industrial Revolution; A Low-Overhead Manifesto.
Booksurge.
Engels, Federick (1954). Anti-Duhring: Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science. Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House.
(Pope) Francis (2015). Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality; On Care for Our Common
Home. Brooklyn/London: Melville House.
Goodman, Paul (1965). People or Personnel; Decentralizing and the Mixed System. NY: Random
House.
Jefferson, Thomas (1954). The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson (ed.: John Dewey). NY:
Fawcett/Premier Books.
Kropotkin, Peter (2002). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings (ed.: Roger
Baldwin). Mineola NY: Dover.
Kunstler, James H. (2006). The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change,
and Other Coverging Catastrophes of the 21st Century.
NY: Grove Press.
Loomis, Mildred (1982). Alternate Americas. NY: Universe Books/Free Life Editions.
McKibben, Bill (2007). Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. NY:
Henry Holt/Times Books.
McRobie, George (1981). Small is Possible. NY: Harper & Row.
Magdoff, Fred (Sept. 2014). “Building an Ecologically Sound and Socially Just Society.”
Monthly Review (v. 66; no. 4). Pp. 23—34.
Marx, Karl, & Engels, Frederick (1971). On the Paris Commune. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Price, Wayne (April 2014). “Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises.” Anarkismo.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/26931?search_text=wayn...price
Purchase, Graham (1994). Anarchism and Environmental Survival. Tucson AZ: See Sharp Press.
Sclove, Richard E., (1995). Democracy and Technology. NY/London: Guilford Press.
*written for www.Anarkismo.net
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http://www.anarkismo.net/article/28974
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Message: 3
In March of the dignity of October 31, 2015 (see also page suivvante), a few dozen people
marched behind a banner "Jewish revolutionaries and Jews." It was the first appearance in
the street Young eponymous collective. Meeting with Elijah, one of the activists and
founders of the Parisian collective. ---- What JJR? What are your goals ? ---- We are a
group of people of the Jewish national minority, we have two objectives. First, the
emergence of the revolutionary movement in the fight against anti-Semitism as an
anti-racist struggle and also within reach of the Jewish minority of people who want to
actively fight against anti-Semitism and who are faced with a political vacuum. We also
want to fight against reactionary ideas and reflexes within our own minority.
Your lyrics often include many historical references, why is it important to you?
We are not in a culturalist approach or with the ambition to live a righteous history to
folklore. We analyze the past to understand the present. We say that "the past is gone
nowhere." Those who think that anti-Semitism does not exist or is marginal and those who,
instead, theorize a "new antisemitism", tell us that there was a break in this case. On
the contrary, we believe that history repeats itself, with a current situation which may
be compared in many ways to the colonial era with a bourgeoisie that seems to favor the
Jewish minority with the effect of "disappearing" in the eyes of the oppressed -es, to
divert anti-capitalist feelings toward a fantasized Jewish community. Yesterday Drumont
today Soral, things do not change that much.
Sometimes you are criticized for using the term "Jewish national minority". What do you mean ?
I think the accusations come from misunderstanding of the term. We do not say that the
Jews and the Jewish form a minority nation. We say that French society is based on a
national novel itself based on a "national majority" fantasy, which would be white,
European and Christian. We believe that there is also the blow of national minorities, who
oppose this majority, which will never be "natural" members of the French nation, whose
allegiance will always be called into question and whose shares, including policies, will
be read in connection with this non-membership of the national majority. We wrote a more
comprehensive text on the subject.
In a few words, what is anti-Semitism for you today in 2015?
Anti-Semitism is a structural element of French society, the French national novel. This
is a structural oppression, as well as all forms of racism. It is an oppression that can
be violent and brutal as soft or "funny". This results in the dieudonniste vocabulary that
is quite present in all strata of society, this also results in discrimination in hiring
and housing and of course attacks or assassinations.
And for Zionism? Are you doing a particular analysis as Jews and Jewish?
We believe that Zionism is a headlong bourgeois front. We think this is a poor response to
anti-Semitism. The aim of Zionism is to protect Jews and Jewish, while in contrast the
ideology isolates them from the other oppressed and are therefore the game of the
bourgeoisie. Moreover, Zionism today is the desire to maintain the state of Israel as a
Jewish state and as "the Jewish State". It is considered that the place of Jews and Jewish
in Israel, this is our home, our second or first home. For us, instead of Jewish and Jews
is no more there than here, and each one has the right to live where they wish. Finally,
it is clear that Zionism in practice it is the oppression of the Palestinians and we are
opposed to colonialism whatsoever - in Palestine, as in Kurdistan, Western Sahara, Kanaky
or Tibet, for example - the name of our Jewish and universalist ethics.
How was your first appearance?
There were good and less good. We have three appearances for the moment under our belt: an
intervention in a conference against racism, our procession to march for dignity and a
public meeting in a Parisian militant place to introduce ourselves. The conference has
generally gone well despite some remarks rather limits the margins of it. The March of
dignity was more mixed in the sense that we have received a lot of encouragement but also
more openly antisemitic invective and a person making a scoop in front of our banner (we
made it clear the picture and have spree of the demo). Finally, our public meeting
received a lot of threats and insults from extreme right-wing Zionists, who also tried to
attack, but it was a great success, exceeding our expectations in terms of number of
people present and made contact.
You make the choice of single-sex organization. Why is this important?
In the same way that women organize themselves, we believe that if we do not carry this
fight, nobody will do it for us. We believe that the emancipation of the oppressed-es will
be the work of the oppressed themselves are, we accept support with great pleasure, but
believe that our experience of antisemitism allows us to better fight. We also think that
to talk to members of the Jewish minority, have a common experience helps us. Our voice on
the reactionary ideas that are typical to it (such as Zionism) is stronger and less
perceived as an assault by Jewish and Jews. Our commitment to JJR is not an end in itself
but a tool, a strategy for achieving equality. As we organize a social class basis to
abolish social classes, we organize a social race to abolish basic social races.
What is the role of the revolutionary left organizations in your fight? What do you expect
from them?
We have for the moment no group to group relationship with revolutionary organizations.
However, we have more personal contact with certain to be members or relatives. We belong
to the revolutionary movement, just as they, therefore we invite them to our initiatives
and support us, as the March of the dignity and our public meeting. Our role is also to
help the deconstruction reflexes and anti-Semitic tendencies present in the revolutionary
movements.
Interview by François Dalemer (AL Paris Sud)
For more information: https: // juivesetjuifsrevolutionnaires. wordpress.com
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Juives-et-juifs-revolutionnaires-L
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Message: 4
In an editorial at the beginning of the year, the New Zealand Herald announced that as we
enter the second half of the second decade of the 21st century, having enjoyed “a long
period of comparative economic and political stability,” it has been a good century so far
for New Zealand. ---- But has it been a good century so far for New Zealanders? I guess it
depends on who you are asking. The top 10 per cent’s wealth has increased massively, from
$258b to $436b, since the early 2000s, and that growth slows no sign of slowing down. The
National Business Review Rich List, released in July, revealed that the collective wealth
of New Zealand’s richest 184 individuals and families increased by $3.8 billion to an
estimated $55 billion, during the previous 12 months. This is the biggest proportional
increase since the Rich List first appeared in 1986. That’s a good century ok.
However, the recent book Wealth and New Zealand by journalist Max Rashbrooke demonstrated
how one person’s gain is an awful lot of other people’s losses. In a country where the
richest one percent of the country hold nearly a fifth of all the wealth while the poorest
half of the country, about 1.7 million adults, have just 3.8 percent, the average New
Zealand worker now earns $10,000 less today than if they had maintained the share of
national income from the early 1990s. Is it still a good century so far you have to ask?
For many in New Zealand the reality of the new century has not been one of stability but
poverty, and worrying about keeping a roof over their heads, about keeping warm, and
wondering if there’ll be enough money left over to eat properly.
The latest Child Poverty Monitor report, which was released on 14 December, paints a sorry
picture of New Zealand society, with 305,000 children (or 29 per cent) now living in
poverty. Previous measures have seen child poverty run consistently at 25 percent, with a
spike in 2010 to 30 percent. So much for the good century the Herald has been enjoying so far.
Furthermore a Unicef New Zealand press release on 9 December reported that 12 percent of
New Zealand’s children live in homes with serious cold, damp and mould problems. The
report concluded that, “every year there are 40,000 hospitalisations linked to
socio-economic status and much of this is due to poor quality housing and the inability to
heat homes”. Additionally, a growing number of people are unable to find any accommodation
at all. The Citizens Advice Bureau reported in November that it received more than 3,000
emergency housing enquiries nationwide in the year to June, double what it received five
years ago. The report noted that, “These are inquiries from families, pregnant women, and
children living in cars or garages.”
Of course, we are repeatedly told that the poverty people suffer is their own fault, with
irresponsible, drug-taking parents, simply refusing to knuckle down and get a job. But the
same Unicef report points out that of those children in poverty, 37 percent live in
households with at least one adult in paid employment. It seems simply getting a job is
not a way out of poverty.
Furthermore, the unemployment rate runs stubbornly high and is forecast to rise to 6.5 per
cent next year, and this from a treasury half-year economic and fiscal update, released on
15 December, which nearly always prove to be too optimistic. In this case its forecast
depends on a rosy scenario of stability in the global economy, especially China, and a
recovery in dairy prices, both seeming increasingly unlikely.
In September, Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler warned that a dramatic slowdown in
China or a serious drought resulting from the current El Niño weather pattern could push
New Zealand into recession. Here at least the New Zealand Herald’s editorial got something
right. They warned, “The only cloud in the sky this brilliant summer is the threat of
drought it brings to our rural industry still suffering from diminished dairy returns.”
It appears when the evidence is looked at, that the opposite is true to what the New
Zealand Herald wrote in fact, and it was most evident in the increasing numbers of people
this Christmas queuing at food banks and social welfare agencies for emergency support.
The Auckland City Mission reported the longest queues of people looking for help they had
ever seen, with people lining up outside the Mission building at dawn every day, to wait
for up to six hours for emergency food parcels and children’s gifts.
So what’s to be done? The opposition parties will insist that if you vote for them at the
next elections then everything will come right, but under the last Labour government, wage
rises barely kept up with inflation, while the richest saw their wealth increase by 75
percent in those same years. Figures for those in poverty remained high, especially child
poverty, and the number of people living in “extreme hardship” rose from 5 percent of the
population to 8 percent.
The only things on offer from all the political parties are reforms and tinkering with tax
systems. The reality is we need to forget putting our faith in politicians and organise
ourselves in our communities and workplaces, and make our demands heard for a just and
equitable system where all our needs are met. Maybe then we can really talk about the rest
of the century truly being a good one.
http://www.awsm.nz/2016/01/11/a-good-century-so-far/
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Message: 5
Employment center provides less its public service missions. Became the pharmacy employers
responsible for drawing up the unemployed, everything leads to believe that a large part
of its business will be privatized and never let a state trust devoted to core social
control of the unemployed judged less employable. ---- Employment center, like all public
services in France and Europe continues its slow degradation. Result of the merger of ANPE
and Assedic, the institution is gradually diverted from its original missions. This merger
is the result of a kind of reversal of its structures at the service of employers'
organizations with the complicity of some of the unions. ---- One of these organizations
is emblematic CFDT. Convinced from the 1980s that capitalism is the unsurpassable horizon
of humanity, it operates a rapprochement with the CNPF - the ancestor of MEDEF - and
accesses the joint chairmanship of Unédic in 1993 through its Secretary General Nicole Notat.
Unédic defines the conventions implemented by the Assedic. The reorganization of these
conventions this critical reversal that initiates increased the worker and the worker are
private-victim status of employment of the capitalist economic system than responsible for
his situation. This new design of the unemployed person's responsibility and the
unemployed will also be required at the ANPE. Public service originally assigned to
accompany job seekers in developing their career plans, it will gradually turn into a
state dispensary responsible for their control and their subordination to the demands of
the market.
A public service dévoyé
This change accompanies consistently mutations of employment policies. Since the turn of
the 2000s, public policies - European as French - incentives to encourage hiring by social
and tax exemptions. The analysis of public powers on the observation that the problem lies
not in labor demand - there are vacancies in sufficient quantity - but a problem of supply
- the assets are inadequate to the market - and hiring incentive: the work is too
expensive. Thus, from the 1990s and the 2000s, was gradually redesigned the place of the
public employment service (PES). It was within an outdated paradigm and should be reduced
to its simplest expression: social control of the unemployed, their subordination to
market requirements and justification of the structural policies of dismantling of labor law.
Generalization control
Above all, we must ensure that the SPE the lowest cost possible. And that was the primary
objective of creating employment center. The goal was to achieve operational savings. And
despite the economic crisis of 2008, the general reorganization of the work to the
employment center and revenues of new public management would actually do wonders. Indeed,
the crisis has led to higher unemployment 70% between 2009 and 2015. Faced with this
explosion of-using and users, senior management of employment center would not increase -
over the same period - the overall budget only 4% and only 15% effective. So of course,
they are public service missions and the quality of the service which took a big hit.
Thus, a major reorganization of the work is being implemented since 2008 to achieve
significant budgetary savings. All services are gradually being dematerialized. In 2016,
the user himself will liquidate its claim file, ensuring today entrusted to the employment
center agents work. Beware of users who have the misfortune of making mistakes in the
information of the requested information or simply have a little more complicated issues
than the average.
The training workshops on job search techniques are also replaced by virtual courses on
the Internet. Finally, we generalize the support for web. Anyway, workloads by employment
center counselor or advisor explode. So the general direction of the unemployed regularly
rearranges the monitoring arrangements to support the phasing out of support missions. It
is far personalized monthly monitoring which was introduced by Dominique de Villepin and
quickly abandoned for lack of resources.
But management of employment center compensates for this widespread disruption
accompanying assignments by widespread control procedures. Since November 2015,
transferred advisors - already understaffed - to dedicated teams of flicage seekers and
job-seekers. These monitoring teams, in addition to strengthening the criminalization of
the unemployed, always suspected of being responsible for their situation, allow hammering
the need to accept job offers ever more poorly paid and increasingly precarious, pulling
the same suddenly all employees working conditions down.
Privatization of services
The next stage in progress, it is that of the privatization of most of the activity. In
early 2015, the French Parliament has ratified Convention 181 of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO). This agreement allows the SPE tendering by private bodies. At the same
time, new labor organizations require employment center agents to transfer asylum and more
autonomous job seekers to private providers. Previously, private providers were
accompanying some of the asylum and job seekers in difficulty. Those judged autonomous
were left to themselves. What does this reorganization monitoring? Now that ILO Convention
181 is ratified, it takes the implementing decrees. Meanwhile, you get used to assign the
most appropriate wage earners in the market to private providers. Once past decrees, we
can officially privatize the SPE while keeping a core under the supervision of the State
who will control and training of the unemployed the less employable.
For Policy Alternatives
These developments - in tune with the times, in different public services in France and in
Europe - degrade working conditions of staff employment center. Proof of sick leave
doubled since the merger in 2008. However, alternative employment policies are possible
and shares drastic reduction of working hours, abolition of unemployment by maintaining
the employment contract in the event of dismissal, reorganization of the economy and job
creation through the energy transition and the drain on profits. And employment center
could become the major operator of these transformations within an SPE refounded...
pending the abolition of capitalism and wage labor!
François Molinier (AL Paris Northeast)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Service-public-de-l-emploi-Pole
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Message: 6
This is a chance to learn about struggles against prisons across England, Wales & Scotland
from The Empty Cages Collective http://www.prisonabolition.org and Community Action on
Prison Expansion http://www.cape-campaign.org
The two hour workshop explores the role of prison in our lives, how the Prison Industrial
Complex harms individuals and communities and alternatives to it. We introduce examples of
state violence, like the IPP sentences, and we focus on prison expansion, as well as the
role of prison labour.
We explore recent resistance & ongoing struggles and aim to support new groups to emerge
that can fight this racist, sexist, brutal system.
https://southwalesanarchists.wordpress.com/
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