Today's Topics:
1. Statement of 'AIT to remember Ivana Hoffaman fighter
internationalist fall two years ago in Rojava (it, pt)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Trade, unionism, To
relocate the industry: Change hands (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Greece, Libertarian Thessaloniki Initiative: Gathering of
solidarity with the arrested anti-fascist concentration (gr)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #270 - social, Social
Movement Calls: Organizing to Rush the Campaign (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. black rose fed: MARXIST-ANARCHIST DIALOGUE: PARTIAL
TRANSCRIPT (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Ireland, derry anarchists: Derry calls for end to harassment
of PRO-CHOICE ACTIVISTS! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Ivana Hoffman was born in Germany September 1, 1995, was a German Communist Duisburg. Was
militant of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Turkey-Kurdistan (MLKP) and fought on
the side of the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Women's Protection Units (YPJ) in
Rojava. On 7 March 2015 it fell fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in the
Syrian city of Tell Tamir. ---- In Duisburg Ivana he had fought for years in the
organization "Young Struggle" (Youth Wrestling), and by the age of thirteen he was
strongly and stubbornly committed to the struggle against sexism and racism. In 2011
contacts the MLKP, and in 2014 joined the armed struggle for the liberation of Rojava.
---- His fight was for humanity, but also to build a bridge between the revolution in
Rojava and the class struggle in Europe. Let's talk about one of the first fighters among
the Internationalists, who could not tolerate the suffering of any person, and that he
wanted to fight fascism in all fronts. One of his responsibilities was the liberation of
women, always opposing the patriarchal oppression mechanisms and completing many times
macist men (including his teammates).
Ivana was also a cheerful person, who in his own way everywhere spread good mood. In his
letters he spoke of returning, which he did.
But what remains in us is not the pain of his loss, we've got left instead is his choice
and the will to fight: "When I return contagerò my surroundings, my companions and friends
with the fighting spirit and willpower, I will be like the most beautiful songs, and I'll
pull the wagon with all. I will be a guerrilla full of love and hope for the next. "
http://piemonte.indymedia.org/articolo/42945/comunicato-dell-a-i-t-per-ricordare-ivana-hoffaman-combattente-internazionalista-caduta-2-anni-fa-in-rojava
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Message: 2
By bringing together 1,200 activists, on 22 February, at the Assizes of Industry, the CGT
seized on a difficult subject, avoiding to lock itself in the false alternative
protectionism vs free trade. But has it nevertheless put the finger on the key question:
the private ownership of the means of production? For who owns decides. ----
Deindustrialization is a disaster for three reasons: ---- A social catastrophe: rising
unemployment, the loss of know-how, the pauperization of entire regions; ---- An
ecological catastrophe: the relocation of production leads to the excessive lengthening of
economic circuits and the multiplication of transport and pollution, with an impact on
global warming; ---- A democratic catastrophe: a region or a country deprived of a
productive apparatus loses its economic autonomy, and sees reduced its margin for maneuver
in political and social matters.
Yes, we must reverse the trend
Since 2012, 900 plants have closed in France, which now imports 60% of its industrial
products. The share of industry fell to 10% of GDP in France, whereas it is 16% on average
in Europe. We have just fallen below the 3 million jobs in the industrial sector.
"Help" employers to hire? But how, then? By lowering wages? By giving him tax gifts? €
28.7 billion in public money transferred to employers in 2013-2014 under the CICE would
have created 50,000 to 100,000 jobs (report of the CICE ministerial follow-up committee,
29 September 2016) At best, € 287,000 per job created!
Making France more "attractive"? But how? The country is already over-equipped with
infrastructure. By lowering wages? By creating tax free zones? Again, it's all about
giving gifts to the bosses.
Establish border tariffs? Once again it is a way of giving gifts to employers so that it
deigns to relocate production sites in France ... This same boss who is constantly
advocating for the opening of borders and the conquest of foreign markets!
Preparation of a crash test at ArcelorMittal, in Maizières-lès-Metz (Moselle) in 2012.
(C) ArcelorMittal
Trust Workers
Do not turn around the pot. Industry will not be relocated without questioning the
capitalist ownership of the means of production and exchange. That is what we must dare to
say. For this is exactly what all Keynesian politicians (Melenchon, Hamon), nationalists
(Le Pen) or ultra-liberals (Macron, Fillon) say. Their measures always amount to
"encouraging" employers to make profits in such and such a way.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pour-relocaliser-l-industrie-Qu
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Message: 3
Sunday 19/3 the fascist esmos city tried to roam rotten Sarkis in our city. The truth is
that we long to see them up close, once and either choose to congregate through closed
call in suburbs or gouged calls that not attending. The anarchist and antifascist movement
in Thessaloniki, as is obvious, you could leave them nor inch in this city. In the city of
35,000 Jews were exterminated at Auschwitz, the city that found shelter thousands of
refugees, the multinational racing Thessaloniki have not space the remnants of Nazi and
Gotzamani. ---- Once again the state safeguarded 30 sad bastards of 'Sacred Band', playing
the role of "protector of public order". But when the one side are the defenders of
liberty, equality and dignity and the other proponents of capital, power and inhumanity
becomes clear not only that the state takes place, but that the fascists are the long arm,
whether the government is the right or the left. So through a miserable provocation cops
were going to attack the anti-fascist gathering and arrest three people, one of whom is a
minor.
The anarchist and antifascist movement does not leave anyone alone in state hands. We call
on the world to fight in concentration Monday 20/3 at Venizelos statue, at 10:30 that lead
all and all together to court and demand their release and the lifting of persecution
against them.
SOLIDARITY SYLLIFTHENTES ANTIFASISTIKIS OF CONCENTRATION
NEITHER IN THESSALONIKI, OR ANYWHERE crimp FASCISTS THE IN CITIES AND VILLAGES
Libertarian Thessaloniki Initiative (member of the Anarchist Federation)
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Message: 4
Unions, associations and collectives gathered to launch the campaign "Our rights against
their privileges". Articulated around four axes, it aims not to give way to politicians
during the electoral period and to make the voice of the social movements heard. ----
Thirty-four. It is the number of organizations that are currently signatories of the call
"Our rights against their privileges" which was made public on Monday, February 13. This
number will surely have evolved when this paper is printed. The slogan is full of news.
---- Among the participating structures, unions (Solidarity, Confédération paysanne,
CNT-SO, FSU ...), associations (Attac, DAL or MNCP), but also collectives such as the
collective truth and justice for Ali Ziri. Some of these organizations know each other
well and have worked together for a long time, while others have not.
What brings them together? "Several associations and unions have said that we are about to
enter a period of bad winds with the presidential and legislative elections that are
coming. And in those times we put social movements under the carpet and we want to silence
the struggles, resistance and alternatives, " says Annick Coupé (Attac) at a meeting at
the Theater de la Belle-Étoile in Saint- Denis on 16 February. Add to this the anti-social
outbidding of certain programs and the racist remarks in chaos: no doubt, the months of
March and April promise!
Sunday, February 26, "the call" is launched in practice by an occupation to relocate
people and create a "HQ of the social movement".
War against the Truths
Far from resigning themselves, the organizations of the campaign "Our rights against their
privileges" intend to be heard around four axes:
The need to share wealth
The fight against racism and discrimination
The requirement of social rights
The struggle for freedoms - especially against the state of emergency.
They also want to carry out a work of "depollution" of the campaign by waging war against
the false truths which will undoubtedly be asserted. One candidate explains that the
government has created 80,000 jobs in five years? Another explains that the RSA is too
expensive? A refinement can be made during the day thanks to the social networks, which
the campaign will also invest, XXI century requires.
Everyone is aware that this campaign can not be confined to a national call and a campaign
on the Web to exist. The challenge is therefore to decline collectives in the departments
in order to anchor this campaign locally and to be able to carry out concrete actions.
First meeting on February 26th in Paris before a month of March, rich in mobilization
deadlines (March 6th, 7th, 8th and 19th at least) before a big demonstration on the
weekend of April 1st. The social movements have decided to make themselves heard!
Romain (AL Paris South)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Appels-des-mouvements-sociaux-S
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Message: 5
Please find below the partial transcript of the "Marxist-Anarchist Dialogue" that took
place on February 12, 2017, at the Sepulveda Peace Center in Los Angeles. This event
featured a Black Rose/Rosa Negra member presenting on anarchism in dialogue with a member
of the International Marxist Humanist Organization (IMHO) who preferred for his comments
not to be reproduced publicly. ---- I'd just like to begin with a quote from Bakunin in
Statism and Anarchy (1873): ---- "To contend successfully with a military force which now
respects nothing, is armed with the most terrible weapons of destruction, and is always
ready to use them to wipe out not just houses and streets but entire cities with all their
inhabitants-to contend with such a wild beast, one needs another beast, no less wild but
more just: an organized uprising of the people, a social revolution[...]which spares
nothing and stops at nothing."
As Ukrainian revolutionary Nester Mahkno and his comrades point out in their
"Organizational Platform for a General Union of Anarchists," written in exile in Paris in
1926, it was in the life of the toiling masses, particularly the Russian practices of mir,
obshchina, and artel, or the agrarian commune and cooperative labor, that Alexander Herzen
and Mikhail Bakunin discovered anarchism. Yet, as Paul McLaughlin (2002) observes,
Bakunin's anarchism is also one with his atheism and anti-theologism, or atheistic
materialism. Bakunin (1814-1876) extends Ludwig Feuerbach's exposé of the mystification
of religious authority by illuminating the reification of political and scientific
authority while summoning the negative Hegelian dialectic to sweep away feudalism,
capitalism, despotism, and the State. Bakunin famously expounds on this view in "The
Reaction in Germany" (1842), where he stipulates the existence of an "either-or" dialectic
demanding the victory of either the Negative (Revolution) or the Positive (the State or
the status quo). Yet instead of a battle between two opposing forces leading to a
synthesis, as Hegel imagined, Bakunin envisions a dyadic conflict leading to the full
victory of the Negative, yielding "democracy" in 1842, or "anarchy" 25 years later.
Bakunin views history as a gradual evolutionary progression that contains episodes of
revolutionary acceleration-hence his famous conclusion to "The Reaction," where he
professes his faith in the "eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it
is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is also a
creative passion."
For Bakunin, history progresses through the principle of revolt, which together with the
principles of human animality and reason for him express the human essence; reason is the
emancipatory force of history, as it illuminates freedom. Besides Herzen, the
anarcho-Populist "father of Russian socialism" with whom Bakunin worked closely in favor
of Polish independence from tsarism, developing the slogan "Zemlya i Volya" ("Land and
Freedom") as a summary of their visionary program that would resonate around the world
(perhaps most famously, indeed, as Tierra y Libertad in the Mexican Revolution), his
philosophical and political influences are many: there is Hegel; Feuerbach; Konstantin
Aksakov, a notable anti-Statist figure within the Stankevich Circle in Moscow; Johann
Fichte, from whom Bakunin took the emphasis on action and the vision of a conscious,
collective movement striving to institute reason, freedom, and equality in history; Bruno
Bauer, who sees in Hegel a radical critique of the State and religion; and Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, from whom Bakunin took anarchism and atheism. In stark contrast to Proudhon the
sexist, however, Bakunin is a militant feminist who was called "Hermaphrodite man" by Marx
in 1868 for demanding the "equalization of classes and individuals of both sexes" in the
Program of the International Alliance for Socialist Democracy, or "the Alliance." The
roots linking Bakunin's atheism or anti-theologism with anarchism were established by
1842, though Bakunin wasn't explicitly anarchist until 1866, when he declared the goal of
the International Brotherhood, forerunner of the Alliance, as being the "overthrow of all
States and at the same time all[...]official Churches, standing armies, centralized
ministries, bureaucracy, governments, unitary parliaments and State universities and
banks, as well as aristocratic and bourgeois monopolies."
Now I'd like to come to some of the differences between Bakunin's thought, or anarchism,
and Marx and Marxism, and illuminate this through a few issues. For one, there is the
matter of Prometheanism and productivism. Marxism has been accused for a very long time of
being both: that is to say, that Marx and Marxism are obsessed with progress and the
development of productive forces, equating human liberation with the domination of
nature-despite the considerable efforts that have been made in recent decades by
eco-Marxist to rescue Marx on these two grounds. So the question arises: is anarchism any
better?
Bakunin adheres to naturalism, a post-Enlightenment philosophical movement associated with
materialism and atheism, which lay the foundations for modern science while criticizing
its excesses and abuses. As such, Bakunin takes aim at René Descartes and Immanuel Kant
for their anthropocentrism. Therefore, Bakunin's naturalism can be said to be associated
with ecology. Indeed, it was through anarchism that Murray Bookchin developed the
philosophy of social ecology decades before John Bellamy Foster and others "discovered"
Marx's questionable environmentalism. Bakunin considers Cartesian anthropocentrism to be
anti-naturalist. For these reasons, naturalism arguably holds greater ecological
potential than historical materialism.
Now, coming to the question of history, racism and imperialism, anarchists disagree, as
McLaughlin notes, principally with Marxists over the usefulness of historical materialism
and the stages theory of history, whereby history inevitably progresses from primitive
communism to the slave societies of antiquity, feudalism, capitalism and then communism in
the end.
Instead of the determinism set forth by Marx as early as 1847 in The Poverty of
Philosophy, a volume that presents a devastating (if opportunistic) critique of Proudhon,
where Marx argues that socialism can only be achieved after the full development of the
productive forces, Bakunin and the anarchists believe in spontaneity. Plus, anarchists do
not consider the industrial proletariat necessarily to have more revolutionary potential
than the peasantry, as Marxism does; instead, anarchists seek to unite both proletariat
and peasantry against capitalism and the State.
To illustrate the difference between the two approaches, consider how Engels responded to
Bakunin's "Appeal to the Slavs," which sought to mobilize the concepts of justice and
humanity to unite the Slavs in a federated struggle against Russian and Austro-Hungarian
imperialism in the wake of the failed 1848 Revolutions. In "Democratic Pan-Slavism,"
Engels declares that, other than for the Poles and Russians, "no Slav people has a future"
outside of subordination to centralizing Prussian and Austrian imperialist "civilization."
In addition, reflecting on the recent Mexican-American War, which had just ended that
year, Engels trolls Bakunin, asking, "will[he]accuse the Americans of a ‘war of conquest,'
which[...]was[...]waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it
perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans,
who could not do anything with it?"
Bakunin was not dominated by the questionable reasoning that leads Marx and Engels to
express uncritical opinions about capitalism and colonialism (per the stages theory).
Instead, he espouses a decolonizing perspective that initially supported
national-liberation struggles but then came to understand the need for coordinated global
revolution-hence his popularity in the more agrarian Mediterranean and eastern European
countries (Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia) within the International, as well as
in India, Mexico, and much of the rest of Latin America after the First International.
This is not to overlook Marx's late revisions of his deterministic, callous reasoning,
especially after his study of the Russian mir, nor is it to ignore the fact-as Kevin
Anderson reminds us-that Marx was among the first Europeans to call for India's
independence from British domination!
There is also the issue of Marx's own anti-Semitic comments against Ferdinand Lasalle and
himself and his family, as in On the Jewish Question (1844), which nonetheless cannot
compare to Bakunin's far more wretched Jew-hatred, based on conspiracy and the
"anti-Semitism of fools."
Politically, Marxism and anarchism diverge principally on the questions of the State,
religion, tactics, and strategy.
Robert Graham, author of We Do Not Fear Anarchy; We Invoke It, has identified 6 principles
by which Bakunin distinguished anarchism from other approaches: anti-authoritarianism,
anti-Statism, anti-parliamentarianism, federalism, libertarianism (that is to say, the
consistency of means and ends), and social revolution as means to emancipation.
We see conflict with Marxism on all of these questions. But the primary contradiction is
really between statism and centralism, which is on the Marxist side, and the anti-state or
federalist position, which accords with anarchist principles.
So to illustrate the distinction, I just want to quote a couple of things by Marx and
Engels. In their 1850 address of the Communist League, they argue that the German
workers' movement must strive for the "most determined centralization of power in the
hands of the state authority. They must not allow themselves to be misguided by the
democratic talk of freedom for the communities, of self-government, etc." There's also a
letter that Engels sent to Carlo Cafiero, who was an Italian Alliance member, in 1872:
"Bismarck and Victor Emmanuel had both rendered enormous service to the revolution by
bringing about political centralization in their respective countries."
And so, as an alternative, the International Alliance for Socialist Democracy ("the
Alliance") was a specifically anarchist organization through which Bakunin sought to
deepen the revolutionary struggle of the International. The Alliance "stands for atheism,
the abolition of cults and the replacement of faith by science, and divine by human
justice." In addition, it sought to collectivize means of production via the
agricultural-industrial associations rather than through the State.
To conclude here, I want to illustrate this conflict very practically in a historical way
by analyzing the conflict between Marx, Bakunin, and their followers in the First
International, or the International Working Men's Association (IWMA), which was founded in
1864. Their conflict really happened between 1868 and 1872. This conflict really
revolves around the incompatibility of the anarchist and protosyndicalist emphasis on
direct action with the Marxist electoralist or statist strategy.
And just as a background to this conflict, it bears mentioning that Marx and Engels
slanderously accused Bakunin of being a tsarist agent, first in 1848. These charges were
resurrected by Marx's allies in Spain and Germany in the runs-up to the Basel (1869) and
Hague (1872) Congresses of the International. In fact, curiously, this echoes the World
Socialist's Web Site's denunciation of the Antifa protesters against Milo Yiannopoulos at
UC Berkeley, condemning them as agents provocateurs.
So, just to go briefly around some of the highlights of the International and its
Congresses: at the Brussels Congress of 1868, the Belgian federalists introduced a
principle whereby European workers would launch a general strike in order to either
prevent or respond to the declaration of war in Europe, whereas at the Basel Congress of
1869, the IWMA's "most representative congress" (Graham), the IWMA's majority voted in
favor of revolutionary syndicalism as the preferred strategy for the International. In
Basel, the Belgian internationalists argued for each local of IWMA to become a commune or
"society of resistance" (a union), whereas Bakunin and other federalists were hailing
collectivism in the form of cooperatives, mutual aid societies, credit unions, and the
tactic of the general strike.
Then, of course, the Paris Commune of 1871 showed the brutality of counter-insurgent
suppression and demonstrated Proudhon's error, in fact, in believing that the transition
to socialism or anarchism could come about peacefully. And during this time, Marx and
Bakunin more or less did converge for a short time in their analysis of the Commune. Karl
Marx believed that the experience of the Commune demonstrated that the workers cannot
"simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for their own purposes."
However, at the London Conference of 1871, Marx tried to reverse the Basel Conference
consensus by imposing an electoral strategy through the General Council, despite the fact
that the majority of the International did not agree. Marx was actually prepared to ally
with the Blanquists to do this. And thereafter, at the next Congress in the Hague (1872),
Bakunin and his Swiss assistant James Guillaume were expelled from the International so as
to uphold the London precedent on parliamentarianism, and the General Council was
transferred to New York-leading the Blanquists who in fact had allied with Marx to have
this done to resign from the International.
In this way, the First International was reduced from being a multi-tendency platform to
an exclusively statist one, and then reconstituted as the Second International in 1889.
From 1896 on, the Second International excluded anarchists altogether for not agreeing
with the same electoral strategy.
However, the anarchists did go off in 1872 right after the expulsion of Bakunin and
Guillaume and founded their own Congress in St. Imier, Switzerland, where they had a
series of different conferences that led to the creation of a rather significant
anti-authoritarian, anarchist international movement that reaffirmed syndicalism and the
social revolution. This gave way to the dominance of anarcho-syndicalism within the
international labor movement from the time of the Second International up to World War I.
And so I just want to conclude here, because we are talking about the time now being under
Trump, and I want to share some of the continuities between the history and theory that
I've been telling you about and what Black Rose/Rosa Negra tries to glean from that in the
current moment. While we haven't discussed this very profoundly, we can glean some points
from the statements that we have published:
We must actively shut down fascists as we saw happen at UC Berkeley with Milo and in
opposition to people like Richard Spencer and so on.
We should also be engaging with people who are becoming increasingly mobilized recently.
Rather than be dismissive of them, we should be building popular power, and we should be
coordinating with other revolutionary groups.
We also reaffirm Bakunin's idea of anti-electoralism. We believe that the struggle against
Trump and Trumpism should not bring us closer to the Democrats but rather to the social
revolution, and we think specifically that we should be organizing and participating in
revolutionary social movements, such as the asambleas populares or popular assemblies that
have been sprouting up around the city and around the country. In fact, some of our
comrades are involved in these asambleas, which are trying to bring together resistance to
the deportations with building popular power through the theory of libertarian
municipalism or communalism, which are more or less anarchist ideas.
Then there's also of course the Standing Rock struggle, which is a great challenge to
Indigenous autonomy and also ecology.
And we also have the question of feminism as our comrades have written recently in an
analysis of the current moment with regard to feminism: in fact, they are saying that the
Women's March represents an opening for revolutionary materialist class struggle feminism
to gain some ground.
There's also the antimilitarist and syndicalist struggle for workplace autonomy as well as
the general strike. There's a very recent piece by the Shutdown Collective published on
Truthout about the general strike which I recommend highly.
Furthermore and lastly, we are trying to expand our presence geographically and engage
with the white working class, which we understand as having been a very clear contributing
factor to the current situation we have with Donald Trump as our president. Thank you very
much for listening.
Internal Panel Discussion
Thank you,[anonymous Marxist]. I think you began by saying that anarchism is seen on the
streets but not on the home or workplace. And I mean, as I was mentioning in my
presentation, with regard to the Basel Conference and protosyndicalism, the entire
opposition between the Marxists and anarchists in the original break within the First
International is very much about that question-anarchism being in the workplace-and Marx
and Engels's centralist opposition to this due to their interest in presenting a statist
or electoral strategy.
Also, I don't think it's true that anarchism isn't found in the home, either. Bakunin had
a very militant feminist critique of the Russian Commune and of society in general; it
wasn't just his opposition to capitalism and the State. I push back on that.
I think I understand what you mean by the Marxist critique of anarchists-that they have an
abstract conception of liberty-but I don't think it's very abstract at all. I mean, if you
look again at the history I was just retelling about the struggles that anarchists have
been involved with, both at the individual and collective level, there's nothing abstract
about it. So I'm a little puzzled what you meant by that. I would just comment to say that
it did remind me a bit of Engels's critique of utopian socialism, saying that only
scientific socialism has the correct insight, and that all the other schools that are
revolutionary and socialist in fact are nothing.
And then your comments about Antifa are interesting. I completely disagree that Antifa
has "empty content"! I think that that was completely contradicted by what we saw at UC
Berkeley. This was a neo-Nazi agitator and a Trump agitator who was planning on publicly
outing trans* and undocumented students at UC Berkeley, and that was shut down by the
coordinated action of anarchists and Antifa. I don't think there is anything empty about
that at all.
Nor do I think that anarchists lack future vision. As I was saying of Bakunin, anarchism
is all about the liberation of humanity. There is nothing... It's not a present-oriented
type of thing; it's not lacking a future vision in any sense.
You know, there is a lot of debate among anarchists about what is the meaning of
anarchism, with regard to the variety or heterogeneity which you pointed to in terms of
the development within anarchism. You cited "anti-civilizational" anarchism as an example.
There is some debate regarding the question of whether that can even be considered a form
of anarchism. I personally would say that it's not a form of anarchism: it's actually not
interested in abolishing hierarchies, but more simply interested in abolishing technology,
agriculture, and things like that. That's not very much consistent with the anti-statist
and anti-hierarchical critique that anarchism brings about. In fact, I think it's very
important not to reduce the anarchist or green or eco-anarchist position to that; that's
very reductive. There is Murray Bookchin's philosophy of social ecology, which is a very
profound, rich, Hegelian tradition that develops the critique of the destruction and
domination of nature with the critique of social domination as well.
And the last thing: toward the end of your comments, you suggested that anarchists deny
that humans are dependent on each other, but that is completely false. If you look at
Peter Kropotkin, he theorized the idea of mutual aid being a major factor of evolution,
both within the animal world as well as in social evolution. His entire volume is
dedicated to that. He studied biology in Siberia for a great number of years.[...]
I think to some degree within the socialist tradition, with its anarchist, Marxist, and
other wings, there is a lot of miscommunication and so on. So I think that what you are
suggesting about the science of society being before the revolution is actually very
consistent with the naturalistic approach that I was mentioning to you about Bakunin and
the way you have to certainly analyze society first, and nature first-nature first, then
society-and from there you progress to critique and action.[...]
Actually, within the debate or the conflict between Marx and Bakunin or Marxism and
anarchism within the First International, there was a back-and-forth about this very same
question[Marxism as a statist form of capitalism]. And you know, I did mean to get to a
discussion of the Russian Revolution, but there was no time. There is certainly an
anarchist tradition from the time of the conflict in the First International as well as
during and after the Russian Revolution that did identify the Bolsheviks, even before
Stalin, as State capitalists, according to what Lenin was writing-advocating for the
creation of State capitalism as a transitional strategy in Russia. Bakunin very clearly
identified that even if you had a statist power that was proclaiming itself as
anti-capitalist, it would be composed of a small elite, as all States are, and would
necessarily be reproducing these systems of domination of hierarchical authority. Bakunin
was very visionary in this sense; he very much anticipated what happened in Russia.
http://blackrosefed.org/marxist-anarchist-dialogue-partial-transcript/
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Message: 6
Over the past few weeks the PSNI has engaged in a campaign of harassment against
pro-choice activists and the general public for allegedly obtaining the abortion pills
from Women Help Women/Women on Web websites. This is a continuation of previous
criminalisation attempts by the courts in order to inflict fear amongst people who have to
resort to the abortion pills as their only available means to have control over their
reproductive choices and life. ---- While the archaic laws in Ireland criminalise women or
sends them to England, abortion pills from womenonweb.org and womenhelp.org serve as a
lifeline for women accessing abortion across Ireland. The pills are on the World Health
Organisation's Essential Medicines list and are used all across the world for safe, early
medical abortions.While abortion remains illegal and the trip to England expensive, the
very safe abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, are a rescue from a nightmare for
many people who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy.
The use of these pills is well-known practice, with a few mainstream media outlets
covering the story and an open letter in June 2015 by 200 activists admitting to breaking
the law by providing or procuring an abortion through the use of these pills.
It had appeared that while the authorities were aware of this practice they were indeed
turning a blind eye to it with a few exceptions, namely the scapegoating of a 19-year-old
student and a mother who procured pills for her teenage daughter.
The State are scared of the pills because they make an absolute mockery and joke of our
laws. How much longer can they sit around pontificating about when women will be ready
when safe abortions with pills are happening so regularly?
While the majority in society think that abortion should be decriminalised, this is not
reflected by the politicians at Stormont who have allowed this intolerable situation to
happen by presiding over the draconian law.
As it stands, 67,000 women a year die from unsafe abortions throughout the world. If we
lose the choice, albeit the illegal choice, of the pills here we could see women returning
to unsafe methods. The state is creating fertile land for pregnancy related deaths.
Earlier today, Monday 20th March, pro-choice activists and supporters of Alliance for
Choice held several noisy protests outside PSNI headquaters in both Derry and Belfast in a
respond to this new wave of attacks against women's rights in the six counties.
Posted by Derry Anarchists at Monday, March 20, 2017
http://derryanarchists.blogspot.co.il/2017/03/derry-calls-for-end-to-harassment-of.html
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