Anarchistic update news all over the world - 20 september 2016 ~ CookingFood.Org

Today's Topics:

1. US, black rose fed: FEMINIST FREQUENCY FEATURES THE
REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF EMMA GOLDMAN By Tariq Khan, BRRN
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)

2. Indonesia, anarkis.org: Anarchist and electoralism by BIMA
SATRIA SON [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)

3. Australia, Melbourne, anarchist affinity: Means and Ends:
Anarchist vs Marxist praxis By Mitch (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)

4. zsp.net.pl: Workers Win against Citibank for Discrimination
and Mobbing (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)

5. Greece, Anarchist political organization - Fascism -
anti-state demonstrations in the murdered MEMORY BY NAZI II.
Fyssas (gr) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)

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Message: 1

This short video on Emma Goldman is useful as an introduction, is well produced, is
appealing, and will likely spark people's interest in learning more about Emma Goldman.
That last point alone makes it worthwhile. However, be aware that it waters Goldman down
to make her palatable to a liberal feminist audience. ---- Anti-capitalism was central to
Goldman's analysis of social institutions, but this film does not use the word capitalism
even once, instead saying Goldman rejected "business interests." She was also far more
antagonistic to the suffrage movement than this makes it seem. She saw the suffragists as
bourgeois individualists who had no connection to the kind of working-class immigrant
women and men that Goldman organized with. She saw that working-class men had the right to
vote, and were still oppressed and exploited, so what good would that same right do
working-class women?

Goldman called for a revolutionary people's movement organizing to destroy an unjust
system, rather than further assimilating middle and upper-class women into an unjust
system. This video frames it as though she agreed with suffrage but felt it was less
important than other kinds of organizing. In reality, she wrote that "suffrage is an evil"
which "has only helped to enslave people."

One correction: the video calls Goldman heterosexual, however this is not accurate. She
had women lovers, such as Almeda Sperry. The real Goldman was far more dangerous and
radical than what may appeal to mainstream liberal feminists. She was openly and proudly
anarchist. She defended revolutionary violence. She took part in an assassination plot to
kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick as revenge for the Homestead Massacre. She refused to
denounce Leon Czolgosz's assassination of U.S. President McKinley. She took part in
weapons smuggling operations, a bold prison break plot, support work for armed Mexican
anarchist insurgents and Russian insurgents, among several other serious revolutionary
endeavors that a middle-class liberal feminist might find off-putting.

While middle-class feminists performed "respectability politics," Goldman shamelessly
taunted US-American Christian values. She fought not simply for some ambiguous and
individualistic notion of "personal freedom," but for anarchism her entire adult life from
her humble origins as a Russian immigrant garment worker. To learn more about Emma
Goldman, start with her autobiography Living My Life. See also: 1) Anarchism and Other
Essays, 2) Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader, 3) all volumes of Emma Goldman: A
Documentary History of the American Years, and 4) Anarchy!: An Anthology of Emma Goldman's
Mother Earth. There are also several biographical and theoretical studies of Emma
Goldman's life and ideas by historians and political theorists such as Richard Drinnon,
Candace Falk, Paul Avrich, Kathy Ferguson, and Theresa Moritz, among many others.

http://www.blackrosefed.org/3851-2/

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Message: 2

In the late 1970s, in many European countries is growing Green movement (with "H" great)
politically aspire to pursue environmental sustainability. They have a network with a
variety of political ideologies ekosentris, including ekososialisme, ekoanarkisme and
ecofeminism and actively campaign on the issue of anti-nuclear, peace, environmental
conservation and civil liberties. The movement flourished after the emergence of Die
Grünen (The Greens), a Green Party formed in Germany and public attention. This movement
is already networked globally and sensitize on four pillars, namely ecological wisdom,
social justice, grassroots democracy and non-violence. ---- The influence of anarchism on
the movement of Green is very apparent in the third pillar, namely grassroots democracy,
which correspond to various thinkers eco-anarchists, such as Henry David Thoreau, Elise
Reclus and Leo Tolstoy, the dissolution of the political structure of centralized who
always try to unify a wide geographic area and supports local control. However, instead of
seeking direct democracy and decentralization, the Green Party in the end busy in
Parliament and working very spirit with parties other conventional, no matter how 'fare'
undermine their principles. Make a left-wing parties were known principled and radical
eventually upset and pulled away.

Initially, the Green Party wants to use positions that succeeded them snatched as public
education platforms. Also, the Green movement have emerged with a determination as a
counterculture (counter culture) to reconstruct society on track boundaries more
ecological. However, excessive optimism appears with the hope that MPs will be able to
pass laws which are ecologically progressive and enlightened, and that they should try to
fight it. Once the legislation achievement of legislation has been a goal, then the party
is no longer radical.

This case is a very valuable teaching materials for environment-oriented anarchists in
particular, on how to build a movement. But the case is also still not enough to prove
that, the ways electoral should be completely rejected for anarchist. Some things to
consider is that the Green movement emerged from various circles were very, very plural
with a very wide range of ideas. But underlining the struggle at the concentrations:
ecology. We can not see the Green movement as an antinomy, in which the individuals within
it have a single thing in common, for example, in the production of factors such as the
workers or farmers. Since departing from various circles, then perhaps the idea of
anti-electoralism by anarchists sink, or anarchists deliberately kept it to budge in order
to achieve ecological agendas together among others.

The above case is not pursued to answer complete my intention in this article, namely
whether anarchists need to use electoral means to achieve objectives such as the Green
movement? Do anarchists should forward its own candidate? Do anarchists need to vote?

Selecting Chief Warden Alone

State (states) clearly undemocratic. Anarchists understand that. But we need to separate
the clear demarcation between countries with elements that make it up. The state is
immaterial and social objects are non-physical. However, devices that run it, the
bureaucracy, the military, elections (general), the law and the constitution, as well as
elements that shape is a concrete material. This is the element that shapes the country
becomes as a whole entity. Electoralism (support the election) does not mean static.
Because the election is not a state, but the state-forming element.

Unlike the state, is something that democratic elections, because the people involved in
the decision to determine who the representation and authority. But still, he is not a
full democracy and a country that is run by the elected candidates are aristocratic form
of government in which power is in the hands of a small group, the privileged or the
ruling class. Republic and federal state therefore more democratic than the kingdom, but
he's still less democratic.

Forms of democracy as described above is that shapes the country, or so-called democratic
state (statist democracy). Democratic state is an integral part of the state in the
contemporary period, that is choosing its own authority. This is the main argument many
anarchists, who argue that followed the election means that legitimizes the state (see
Peacot: 1992 Ward: 1987). Whereas we recognize other forms of non-democratic countries,
namely direct democracy (direct democracy) in Ancient Greece or the Swiss Confederation to
the present. It can not be sued, because it is true. At the end of the selected candidates
will rule over their constituents and preserve the authority and hierarchy that had been
rejected anarchism. If the country is a prison, then you are asked to choose their own
chief jailer.

So what? All authority is bad, but the authorities could be diverted into crime. In the
sense that that authority is something that can be assessed, measured or levels. Very
nasty form of authority is tyranny, and he may manifest in the form of government that are
considered democratic even as a republic. The state is bad, but a country with evil ruler
is hell. As an anarchist who has authority over myself, I prefer to point worse than the
authorities who let evil win the election authority. It is also done by other anarchists
such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who expressed their support for progressive
candidates like Ralph Nader in the elections in the United States. An American
individualist anarchist, Lysander Spooner (1870) also found to follow the election is
legitimate self-defense against the state. He reminded that for the static (state
support), both voters and those who abstained from the elections are considered legitimate
the state.

City election

The failure of the Green movement received special attention Murray Bookchin,
socialist-libertarian America. He developed a political program Munisipalisme Libertarian
(hereinafter abbreviated ML) that focuses on the principles and practices of democracy. He
suggested the dissolution of the state tersentralistik and monopolistic, chopping into
pieces in the form of community to the size that can be set by the people themselves
through direct democracy. Communities adjacent then link up to form the municipal (city)
and municipalities are networked to form a confederation, without dissolving the autonomy
of the community. ML is the perfection of form networks of local democracy has actually
been implemented a long time ago in Ancient Greece. To realize ML, Bookchin suggests to
follow the election and then change the treaties of the city and create a citizen's
assembly, a forum where decisions are made directly by the people, not the government (see
Biehl, 2016).

The ML course will conflict with inseruksioner anarchists to anarchists lean mass as a
source of inspiration, such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon reap valuable lesson from
the Revolution of 1848 that the mass is a source of strength of the revolution. In
contrast to the Marxian revolution of thought, Proudhon believed that the revolution took
place under a form of spontaneous action of the people (see Sheehan, 2014: xvii-xviii).
These thoughts that cause an attitude of 'anti-platformist' among the social anarchist.

Bookchin seeks to make a clear demarcation between the municipal elections with the
election of city level, especially when I realized that the anarchist movement is directed
against the state. So, ML aims to dissolve the state's grip on the city, and Bookchin
suggests that the release is done through the municipal elections. You choose your own
warden, who will open your prison bars. The main fault Green movement is due to move alone
in the corridor of the country. The main trail their early departure from the socialist
parties of Europe, which is based on the ideals and principles-the-back several
generations who have a vision of a socialist society. Tragically, when the socialist
movement turned into a variety of conventional oriented parties state their vision marred
by pragmatism acquisition in the form of holding and extend his power in the form of state
positions.

Meanwhile, the ML does not move in the corridors of the country. ML is not oriented to
produce more elite members in local government but to recreate the political sphere which
allows the highest possibility for direct democracy in the city. In contrast to seize
state power, ML tried to wrest control of the city and when direct democracy is created,
public office will not mean anything other than as servants of the people.

Selection is politics, but politics is not a state. Anarchists during this shortage,
according to Bookchin is because they do not make the division of society into three
elements, namely the political, social and country. Anarchists considered to negate the
political field with membaurkannya state, to accept the conventional wisdom that politics
and the state can change each other-a chaos that runs directly to the static. Thus, the
anarchist struggle against the state often deny the existence of political affairs,
including the electoral methods.

Bookchin seeks to fill the void, when the core point in the trend of communalist politics
has not been sufficiently articulated in the writings of social anarchy. Bookchin see that
the anarchists like Kropotkin and Bakunin himself had a similar orientation to the ML.
Bakunin, for example, in his view that the municipal councils is fundamental to the
political life of the people. "People," he wrote, "have a healthy common sense and
practical when running a communal affair. They barely understand and know very well how to
choose the officials who enabled in their midst. Because of this municipal election is
always properly reflect the attitude and the will of the people, "(see Biehl, 2016). So,
even Bakunin also saw that the election is a good thing, on a local scale.

Although Bookchin criticism against the model of the anarchist movement is very sharp and
deep, especially to distinguish politics with the state, but actually ML does not really
conflict with other anarchists. Bookchin did not dismiss when ML ongoing movement, direct
action may be used to advance those demands and display it to grab public attention. ML
was also not try to bring the party to seize state power, but the association
(association) politics are voluntary actions (voluntary), exactly as suggested by the
German individualist anarchist Max Stirner. The association was formed as a study group
that campaigns for the formation of ML or extralegal assemblies that run counter to the
legislature community level.

To confirm that the ML is not a reformist movement, Bookchin emphasized that ML is not an
attempt to build a more progressive city government or environmentally friendly through
the selection of the candidates 'enlightened' to sit on the city council. Directions
reformers such as this will neutralize the efforts of the movement to create and expand
the assemblies of citizens, also neutralizes the larger goal of transforming society. But
that candidates should be reiterated as often as possible on the maximum goal of their
movement which wants to create direct democracy in their city and in the outer region.

Until now, the electoral method did not show satisfactory results. Burlington Green (Green
Burlington), environmental groups in Burlington where Bookchin berjuangan only succeeded
in forming a Regional Planning Assembly (NPA). ML city networks in Europe did not lead to
a progressive liberation, because of double strength born from the municipal network as
expected Bookchin, has not been able to defeat the networked regional countries through
the European Union, which strengthens the state. Federation of Northern Syria or Rojava
learning of ML-they call Konfederalisme Democratic-created through armed revolution, not
the election. Therefore hang themselves on the electoral method alone also can not be
justified.

Reference

Biehl, Janet. 2016. Politics of Social Ecology Munisipalisme Libertarian. Yogyakarta.
Leaves hours.
Peacot, Joe. 1992. 1992. Voting Anarchist: an Oxymoron or what?. Accessed from
http://www.bad-press.net/2016/06/24/voting-anarchists-an-oxymoron-or-what-2/
Sheehan, Seán M. 2014. Anarchism: A Journey Resistance. Tangerang. Left Margin.
Spooner, Lysander. 1870. No Treason: The Constitution of No Authorithy. Accessed from
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/works/
Ward, Collin. 1987. The Case Against Voting. Accessed from
http://www.takver.com/history/elections/ward_on_voting.htm

The author is the Editor in Chief of the Student Press Agency Lantern. Currently active as
well as a propaganda stunt coordinator and Grassroots, an organization working in the
field of environmental and agrarian reform.

http://anarkis.org/

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Message: 3

"The very revolutionaries who claim that they are against the state, and for eliminating
the state...see as their central task after a revolution to build up a state that is more
solid, more centralized and more all-embracing than the old one." - Ron Taber, 1988 (1).
---- The remarkably common attitude among revolutionaries of all stripes is that "the
means justify the ends". We're told it is acceptable to embrace authoritarian
organisational practices because these practices are necessary to achieve an
anti-capitalist revolution. As Anarchists we argue that the theory and organisational
practice of revolutionary groups must be consistent with the principles upon which we want
a future society to be based. We believe that the praxis of groups which seek communism
should point them toward communism, and not toward statism, authoritarianism, hierarchy,
and centralism. This is not mere idealism, the cold hard fact is that "ends" do not
justify "means", rather "means create ends". Revolutionaries that embrace "means" that are
in contradiction with the kind of society they wish to create will consistently fail to
create that society.

Amongst Marxist-Leninist political tendencies the contradiction between means and ends
starts with the idea of the vanguard party as the vehicle for social change. The vanguard
party is supposed to be comprised of the most enlightened and class-conscious members of
the working class. In practice, the vanguard party begins as a self-selecting minority. It
seeks to draw in the most militant elements of the working class, but its structure
remains centralised and authoritarian. This minority occupies centralised leadership
positions and directs the political activity, strategy and tactics of the party. Whether
or not there is real democratic accountability within the vanguard party on some
intermittent basis, the vanguard party is a command structure in which decisions are made
by a minority, and the majority is expected to put the plans and desires of the leadership
into action.

The end goal of the vanguard party is to prosecute a revolution and achieve control of a
‘workers' state'. During a transitional period between capitalism and communism called,
‘the dictatorship of the proletariat', the vanguard would utilise this authoritarian,
hierarchical, and centralised state, in order to coordinate the running of society.

The structure of the vanguard party prefigures the structure of the workers' state after
the revolution, but it does not achieve the directly democratic communist society it
claims to aspire toward. As a centralised minority, the party would have gained control
over all the working class in a society. The same working class that historically and
necessarily did the grunt-work to bring the revolution to that point.

Vladimir Lenin himself said, "a party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead
the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses" (2).

According to Leninists, the vanguard party is necessitated by the idea that the working
class is too burdened by ‘the muck of ages' to emancipate itself, for itself. This means
that the ruling ideas of capitalism plague people's ability to be satisfactorily class
conscious. These ruling ideas include sexism, racism, homophobia, and nationalism.

This is the historically-selective and pessimistic base on which the enlightened
vanguardists decide that their party is necessary.

Yet the vanguard, who set out on a convoluted road which is ‘diametrically opposed to
communism' are plagued by some muck of their own (3). The latent authoritarian and
hierarchical nature of the capitalist state remain as unchecked cornerstones of the
workers' state.

As Murray Bookchin argued in ‘Listen, Marxist', ‘...the deep-rooted conservatism of[so
called]"revolutionaries" is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and
hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement
replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political
obedience replaces the state; the credo of "proletarian morality" replaces the mores of
puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new
forms, draped in a red flag, etc...' (4).

Classical Marxist and Leninist analyses of the state fail to acknowledge the way that
assuming state power changes any ‘workers' who do so. Contrary to what Marx argued,
workers cease being workers when they take control of a state. They become self-appointed
managers of workers, and so they cement themselves as a new managerial class, entirely
distinct from the working class.

Mikhail Bakunin was correct when he argued that the ‘workers state', "will consist of
ex-workers. And from the heights of the State they begin to look down upon the whole
common world of the workers. From that time on they represent not the people but
themselves" (5).

It's a perversion and a contradiction of the politics that originate these theories that
workers should die in droves to overthrow thousands of bosses and replace them all with
one boss - the state. Especially when this boss conceals its class status; cloaks itself
in the guise of a fellow worker, of a comrade. It deviously calls itself a worker and not
a manager of workers to justify its authority.

Leon Trotsky was right when he complained of Stalinism that, "In a country where the sole
employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who
does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not
eat" (6). It is ironic that he saw no contradiction in this state of affairs when he was
so intimately involved in constructing Russia's one party state.

It seems the over-worked proletariat is destined to remain the over-worked proletariat but
a few enlightened workers graduate to a privileged position where they coordinate what
work will be done, by whom, and by when. The creativity, initiative, and the ideas the
emancipated working class have for the new society are apparently disposable in the eyes
of Marxists. At least, they're not worth as much as the ideas of the vanguardists who make
the familiar and misguided claim that they know what's right for people better than people
do themselves.

It is evident that the praxis of vanguardists doesn't prefigure anything beyond their own
ascent to power. After they have gained power, the so-called ‘withering away' of the
workers' state is a barely developed and meaningless sentiment based on the false idea
that no classes would exist after workers (read: ex-workers turned administrators of
workers) take power. This means that the fixed state institutions; its armies; its
centralised networks of production; its education and media facilities that fill the
society with the state's own ideas, would magically disappear with the abolition of class.

The workers' state won't and can't wither away. All ruling minorities have an interest in
maintaining their position as such. A newly installed ruling minority will use its power
and authority to further justify and entrench its own power and authority. It will have
under its thumb a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence in a society, which has
historically been used to give the workers' state the authority to eliminate the state's
non-reactionary dissenters. Instead of encouraging the expression of ideas for the
betterment of society from all who make up that society, the workers' state creates itself
with its own elitism and belief in the superiority of the ideas of the ruling vanguard.
This is a fundamental part of the praxis leading to it. In order to maintain its rule, the
so-called workers' state will actively combat any opposing ideas with propaganda through
the centralised control of media outlets and educational facilities, if not with direct force.

Fabbri notes that the state has ‘bureaucratic, military and economic foundations...' and
that ‘...in a short space of time what one would have would not be the state abolished,
but a state stronger and more energetic than its predecessor and which would come to
exercise those functions proper to it - the ones Marx recognised as being such - "keeping
the great majority of producers under the yoke of a numerically small exploiting
minority"' (3).

Anarchists argue that while a revolutionary force is being built to smash the capitalist
state, we must also be building the kinds of prefigurative institutions that will make
libertarian socialism possible. Our task is to argue for and build a practice of
neighbourhood, community, and workers councils. The alternative to a vanguard party is the
creation of federations of participatory democratic bodies, outside the control of this or
that political faction. To the greatest extent possible, before, during, but most
importantly, after a revolution, these directly democratic, horizontal, and decentralised
institutions must replace the centralised, state-run equivalents. In this way, anarchists
seek to build the embryo of communism within the capitalist system, with the aim of both
providing for the people where the state can't, and of building the new world in the shell
of the old.

When the capitalist state is smashed by the popular uprising, these decentralised
institutions and councils can continue functioning, and any remaining useful functions of
the state become coordinated by further federated councils of workers and regular people.
If we have built the practice of participatory democracy, a centralised workers' state is
never required.

Of course, there would be the need to defend the revolution, and to this end anarchists
argue for a people's militia ‘rooted in workplaces and communities... and directed overall
by the federation of councils[would]enforce its will against armed counterrevolution or
foreign invasion,' according to Wayne Price (7).

If we are opposed to the domination of a ruling class, clique or party, we must build a
libertarian socialism that involves the participation of the mass of society in the
process of decision making, economic coordination, and military defence.

The partisans of the ‘workers' state' and the vanguard party have a revolutionary program
committed to anything but communism. Given they propose a society where power and
initiative are both necessarily centralised features belonging only to the state and not
to every person equally, they are not creating the necessary basis for communism, but
rather totalitarianism.

Anarchists wish to create a society where no one person can exploit another for their own
gain, and so the stepladder to power that is the state must be knocked over so that it
can't be reassembled - Not left to stand, and certainly not used to govern with a
pessimistic fear that the people necessary to the revolution's success are incapable of
creating a new society through their own organising efforts.