Anarchic update news all over the world - 27 April 2017

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #271 - Ceta: A new
      capitalist shock (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL - A libertarian communist
      in the YPG # 02: Getting to Rojava, child's play ? (fr, it, pt)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Antipatriarchy, Sexual
      assault by a French soldier in Burkina Faso: the leniency of
      justice (fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Turkey, anarsi inisiyatifi: Forever Alper with Anarchy ...
      (tr) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  anarkismo.net: Lessons of the Russian Revolution: Workers'
      Revolutions are Different from Capitalist Revolutions by Wayne
      Price (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1



With the ratification of Ceta (free trade agreement with Canada) on January 15, 2017, a 
step is taken. For the media and think tanks who still believed in it, it was the end of 
European democracy ; For the economy it is probably the beginning of a crisis of 
production ... unless a start. ---- Can Ceta be stopped yet ? This "  mixed  " treaty 
applies "  provisionally  " as soon as the European Parliament ratifies it, before the 
ratification of the national parliaments, therefore, for the areas that are within the 
competence of the European Union. That is to say, almost all its contents, in fact: the 98 
  % reduction in taxes at the borders, the application of import and export quotas, the 
competition of products, etc. Everything but the highly controversial ISDS (or ICS), the 
state / enterprise arbitration procedure by courts favorable to private interests. 
Wallonia, whose opposition will not have been useless,

The defeat of policies

At the same time, national parliaments (or even regional parliaments for federations like 
Belgium) will in turn ratify Ceta. Could their opposition change the situation ? This 
seems possible, even if these agreements are carried by the lobbies. But we have seen the 
dithering of MEPs on all sides [2]: the PS hypocritically poised an anti-Ceta motion not 
to vote it ; Marine Le Pen, so vehement, did not travel to the European Parliament for the 
crucial vote of the Tafta in 2015. On the right more sovereignty is sought without 
touching the bottom. We have everything to fear after 2017, even if the left-wing 
candidates, as far as Hamon, say they are against or respond by direct democracy 
(Mélenchon) as in the Netherlands, Where we are going to a referendum resulting from a 
citizen petition of 300,000 signatures. So far, citizen interpellations to political 
decision-makers, voluntarist though they have been (petition of 3.5 million signatures, 
harassment of deputy, information citizen), are carried only by a weak antiliberal camp. 
It prevents. Even the most liberal are concerned about popular reaction. So it must last, 
and better still, that the social movement takes hold of the question. Even the most 
liberal are concerned about popular reaction. So it must last, and better still, that the 
social movement takes hold of the question. Even the most liberal are concerned about 
popular reaction. So it must last, and better still, that the social movement takes hold 
of the question.

To be convinced, the most alarming studies have been published on the impacts on 
employment (study of the Tufts University of Boston), and numerous arguments are beginning 
to be available in French [3]on the consequences for agriculture , On the destruction of 
jobs in this sector and many others, on the future subversion of European legislation on 
the environment, labor law, health conditions, etc. Join the fight !

Mouchette (com ecology)

[1] Another concession is an "  interpretative tool  " of the AACC, a text intended
to reassure the safety of the treaty.

[2] Mediapart and Fakir have documented them well on www.fakirpresse.info , in "  The 
lesson of Ceta ? Too much democracy !  ".

[3] Read on www.collectifstoptafta.org , "  Understanding the Ceta  ".


http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Ceta-Un-nouveau-choc-capitaliste

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Message: 2




"For my part I had made myself a mountain of this enterprise. I was half persuaded, in my 
heart, that I would never succeed." ---- Alternative libertarian reproduces the blog posts 
Kurdistan-Autogestion-Revolution , travel diary of a fellow committed to the YPG. ---- 
Over the course of the weeks, he will testify to the life of the fighting militias, the 
debates that take place there and the experience of democratic confederalism in the 
liberated zones. ---- Academy of YPG Training for Foreign Volunteers, Canton of Cizérre, 
April 12, 2017 ---- Today a fairly succinct note ! On the one hand because I do not want 
to give too much detail on the itinerary and the crossing of borders by the foreign 
volunteers. On the other hand, because the experience has already been amply described by 
the comrade responding to the pseudo de Vicomte de Valnoir.

Some remarks, however, for those who would be tempted to make the great journey, but would 
have some hesitation as to the feasibility of the thing: with a little preparation, to 
reach the Rojava is anything but insurmountable. So a few tips: avoid direct flights to 
your destination ; Prefer a first flight to leave the Schengen area, then a second flight 
to your destination ; Travel light or, if not, like me you will be forced to give up gear 
; Prepare a good story in case you come across a somewhat zealous customs officer.

For my part I had made myself a mountain of this enterprise. I was half persuaded, in my 
heart, that I would never succeed. Then, finally, I must say that my last stop trip was 
much more laborious than this one !

Obviously, I do not want to deny the difficulties or the dangers on the road to Rojava. It 
is true that I myself have been very lucky. There are so many factors that come into play: 
the geopolitical situation in the world, the region, the local situation, the military 
situation, or even what the official in front of you ate in the morning. Final, the most 
important factor ... and therefore an imponderable.

In short, with a minimum of rigorous preparation you will be ready to join us if the envy 
tells you. Besides if you want some more precise advice, do not hesitate to contact me via 
this blog !
http://www.kurdistan-autogestion-revolution.com/ask

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Un-communiste-libertaire-dans-les-YPG-02-Arriver-au-Rojava-un-jeu-d-enfant

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Message: 3




Another demonstration that the scale of sentences is very mobile ! And that Burkinabe 
justice is only sovereign if the French state consents ... ---- In June 2015, a soldier of 
the French special forces deployed in Burkina Faso as part of an anti-terrorist operation 
engaged in touching two girls aged 3 and 5. To be sure of his right and to film and to 
forget the camera at the mother of one of the girls, he was denounced to the French 
embassy then to the Burkinabe authorities who let the French justice take care of it. ---- 
Imagine an African soldier who is guilty of such acts in France left to the care of the 
justice of his country ? ---- The armies are violent and it is not the first time, and 
certainly not the last time, that French soldiers are accused of sexual assault in Africa. 
And it is not the first time either that  virtually impunity " sanctions  " these behaviors.

The attacker was not detained in France and was tried on Tuesday (April 18th) for "sexual 
assaults on minors of 15 years" and "recordings of pornographic images of minors of 15 
years". For acts punishable by ten years' imprisonment, the prosecutor requested two 
years, of which eighteen months suspended. The verdict will be delivered in June.

Remember that in November 2016, a young man took three months to steal a cheese in a 
supermarket while he was hungry.

A violent African child = a stolen cheese ... This is what patriarchal, racist and class 
justice tells us.

Let us destroy the patriarchate and all its armies !

Alternative libertarian, April 22, 2017

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Agression-sexuelle-par-un-soldat-francais-au-Burkina-Faso-la-clemence-de-la

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Message: 4



No words to say together, no day, no text is harder than this. Everything that will be 
missing now is going to be missing. ---- On the shoulders of dreams of a struggle that 
extends to the freedom of man and the earth. Your freedom is against the justice in front 
of the black flag of the rebellion. If you are like a good seed that has fallen to good 
soil, anarchy, you've left yourself as one of the most beautiful flowers all over this 
geography. ---- It was a struggle for the roads without regard for the deaths and 
immortality. It is a path from Eskisehir to Istanbul, from Ankara to Mersin and from 
everywhere to Suruç for "an unlimited, classless, immovable world against all the powers 
that created artificial borders that sanctify death." ---- We have not seen the cruel 
persecution, the government's courage in rebellion, and the lack of faith in it.

While we raise our voices against the massacres of the state,

While we refuse to face the militarist mind,

While a woman is screaming,

Nor against the animal torture done in the bar.

It will not end, it will not be erased; Our courage is quite the dreams that will not end 
with the pressures and deaths. We will continue to shout: "Demand for power is the 
greatest curse of mankind."

Those who bear these fears in their bodies that will not detract our cries. The angels 
will be the voice of my fury, which is turned into a wailing.

We recognize you with laughter, cheerfully, with a cigarette in your mouth and with the 
time we share. You have left your beauty on the streets, your steps and your struggle.
https://anarsiinisiyatifi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1.jpg
Your life, how your lives have been cut off. There are those who can not be forgotten, our 
companionship and our dreams.

Forever Alper with Anarchy ...

https://anarsiinisiyatifi.org/kategorisiz/sonsuza-dek-anarsiyle-alper/

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Message: 5




The Danger of Substitutionism ---- The Russian Revolution of 1917 demonstrates the dangers 
of a revolutionary minority taking over, setting up its own state, and substituting itself 
for the working class and oppressed. ---- The following is based on my notes for a panel 
presentation. I was invited to give it at the April 8, 2017, convention of the Platypus 
Association, a rather academic Marxist organization. The panel topic was on the meaning of 
the 1917 Russian Revolution for today. This is a topic widely discussed on the Left this 
year, the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. I was to express the minority 
viewpoint of an anarchist (antiauthoritarian socialist). However, a rainstorm and a flight 
cancellation intervened and I did not give the presentation. This is more-or-less what I 
was going to say.

Revolutionaries study revolutions. Many lessons might be learned from looking at the 1917 
Russian Revolution and its aftermath. It began with such promise, bringing hope of a world 
without war, oppression, capitalism, imperialism, and states. How did it result in 
Stalinist mass murder and state capitalism, finally to collapse back into traditional 
capitalism?

Possibly the most important lesson of the Russian Revolution is the difference between 
capitalist revolutions and working class revolutions. By "capitalist revolutions," I mean 
the upheavals which replaced medieval-feudal societies with bourgeois-democratic 
societies, including the English Revolution of Cromwell, the American Revolution, the 
great French Revolution, and the mostly failed 1848 European Revolutions. By "working 
class revolutions", I mean mass rebellions in which the working class plays a major role, 
in alliance with other exploited and oppressed sections of society-to replace capitalism 
with the beginning of some sort of cooperative, non-profit, system.

Today many people on the Left, including Marxists and anarchists, have given up the goal 
of working class revolution. Yet working class revolution was the central concept of the 
Marxism of Marx and Engels, as it was of the historical mainstream of socialist-anarchism, 
from Bakunin to Kropotkin to the anarchist-communists and anarchist-syndicalists.

Depending on the definition we use, the working class (proletarians) is either a large 
minority or the big majority of the population of all industrialized countries. As such, 
they overlap with all other oppressed sectors of the people, including women, LGBT people, 
people of color, immigrants, youth, oppressed nations, people with disabilities, etc., not 
to mention those threatened by global warming. Because of their role in the process of 
capitalist production, workers have a special strategic power (potentially). As workers, 
they have their hands on the means of production, distribution, transportation, 
communication, consumption, and services. If they wanted to, they could stop society from 
working, shutting it down. And they could, if they would, restart the economy on a new, 
radically democratic, cooperative, and ecological, basis-antiauthoritarian socialism.

Both capitalist and workers' revolutions are uprisings of the mass of people against the 
old ruling class and its state. But what a capitalist revolution did was to replace the 
old masters with a new ruling class-the aristocracy with the bourgeoisie. The majority of 
people did get some benefits (it is better to live under a bourgeois democracy than a 
unlimited monarchy), but the main function of the capitalist revolution was to replace one 
set of rulers with another. This means that the ideology of the leaders of the revolution 
was always a falsehood. Bourgeois revolutionaries could not tell the peasants and artisans 
that they were only changing rulers. A minority would still be powerful and wealthy while 
all others would labor for them. Subjectively, the revolutionary leaders may or may not 
have believed that they were bringing "liberty, equality, fraternity" and the "rights of 
man" to the people, or "inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
What mattered is what they actually did.

In contrast, the workers' revolution must be based on the consciousness of the people, an 
awareness of what they are really doing. The big majority of the people-the workers, their 
families and dependents, peasants (still a big group around the world), and women, as well 
as people of oppressed races, nations, and religions, etc.-will rise up and make a 
revolution in their interests, under their control. Working class revolutionaries must 
tell the truth. Even at times when it is unpopular to do so, they must say what is.

Differences Between Capitalist and Workers' Revolutions

At the core of capitalism is the market. Commodities are produced in order to exchange for 
money and for each other on the market. This includes the commodity of human labor power, 
the ability of the workers to work for a period of time, which they sell for wages or 
salaries. (This is an unusual commodity since it produces more wealth than it costs the 
capitalist to buy[hire]it, which is to say it creates the basis of profit.) Despite the 
growth of semi-monopolies and government intervention, the market is not really controlled 
by anyone, including the capitalist class. In its essence, it runs on its own, ultimately 
obeying only the "laws" of supply and demand, of what Adam Smith called the "invisible 
hand" or what Marx called "the law of value."

The job of a capitalist revolution is to clear the way for the free play of the market. It 
is to get rid of feudal regulations, aristocratic limitations, slavery, serfdom, guild 
rules, and monarchial licenses. The revolution establishes a new state, which works to set 
up the basic conditions of capitalism: an accumulation of wealth, available to be capital, 
and a "free" population of propertyless workers (not serfs or urban artisans), needing to 
sell their labor to the capitalists in order to live. The state may intervene in the 
capitalist economy to a greater or lesser extent, but it does so in order to keep 
production for the market going.

So long as it does this, the exact nature of the capitalist state may vary enormously. It 
could be a relatively democratic republican state, with universal suffrage for all adults. 
It could be a military junta or a police state. It could be a totalitarian fascist regime. 
The capitalist class may have much direct influence (as in a capitalist democracy) or very 
little (as in various dictatorships). In general the capitalists prefer to run their own 
businesses and let someone else manage the state; even in a capitalist democracy, they 
mostly hire professional politicians to run the government. But as long as the state 
maintains capitalist production and the market, the system remains capitalist and the 
state is a capitalist state. A revolution which establishes such a state (in any of its 
possible forms) is a capitalist revolution.

In contrast, the modern working class is a collective, cooperative, force. Workers do not 
"own" three feet of factory assembly line, nor their own cubicle in an office, nor five 
square feet of an auto body shop. In this they are unlike stock-owning capitalists, 
slave-owning lords, or even land-owning peasants. The individual workers own nothing of 
the means of production. They must work together to produce (distribute, etc.) goods, not 
only with their immediate fellow workers but also with workers in other workplaces, who 
make the material which goes into their own products, and those who distribute the 
produced goods. Unless the workers collectively and democratically manage the economy 
together, they cannot be truly said to manage the economy (or any other part of society). 
If they do not run industry together, then they continue to be on the bottom, taking 
orders from someone else, some boss, still exploited, dispossessed, and oppressed.

This means that some other social force cannot manage society for the workers. This is 
unlike capitalism, where all sorts of groupings may manage the state and society for the 
capitalist class. No one else can substitute for the working class, if they are to be 
free. In particular, this means that no layer of state bureaucrats can stand in for the 
workers. Contrary to the Trotskyists, there can be no such thing as a bureaucratic-ruled 
"degenerated" or "deformed workers' state."

Anarchists and Marxists define the state as a bureaucratic-military socially-alienated 
machine, with layers of specialized armed people and professional politicians and 
bureaucrats, which stands above the rest of society and dominates it. It would be 
impossible for the mass of workers and formerly oppressed to self-govern through such a 
social mechanism. The existence of a state means the domination over the working class, 
which would still be at the bottom of society, taking orders. It would mean the rule of 
some minority class, whether or not this class claimed to substitute itself for the 
workers. In short, there can be no such thing as a "workers' state," period.

The lack of a state does not mean the absence of social coordination, planning, or 
self-defense. The people could organize themselves through federations of workplace 
councils, neighborhood assemblies, and militia units (the armed people, so long as 
necessary). This would not be a state above society; it would be the self-organization of 
the working people. When everyone (or at least all the formerly exploited) governs, then 
there is no government.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and After

 From an anarchist perspective, a great deal could be said about the Russian Revolution 
(for an overview, see the chapter on the "Russian Revolution" in Price 2007). For example: 
the "October Revolution" overthrew the unelected, pro-war, pro-capitalist Provisional 
Government (which had followed the overthrown Czarist monarchy). In its place, the October 
Revolution officially established the radically democratic power of the soviets. These 
were directly elected councils, created by the people, and rooted in factory committees, 
peasant assemblies, and military units.

The "October Revolution" is often mistakenly called the "Bolshevik Revolution." Actually 
it was organized by a united front of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, Left Social Revolutionaries 
(pro-peasant populists), and anarchists. When the new soviet power was established, it had 
a coalition government of Bolsheviks (re-named the Communist Party) and Left SRs (the 
Communists had almost no base among the peasants, the vast majority of the 
population)-with support in the soviets from the anarchists.

The history of the early Soviet Union is one of the Communists antagonizing the other left 
socialist parties and groups, driving them out of the government and the soviets, 
outlawing them, arresting and shooting their members. This began before the Civil War and 
foreign invasion and continued after it. Meanwhile, there had been opposition caucuses 
within the Communists, composed of revolutionaries who had believed in the 
democratic-libertarian promises of Lenin. Such groupings were driven out of the one legal 
party and banned. By 1921, the Russian state had become a one-party police state. This was 
under the rule of Lenin and Trotsky and after the Civil War had been won. (This summary is 
extremely condensed and controversial. Again, see Price 2007.)

It was not substitutionist for Lenin and his co-thinkers to form a political party or for 
other socialists to form a revolutionary organization with those who agree with them. Such 
an organization could serve to develop theory and program. It could fight to spread its 
ideas and strategies among the workers and others. (There is an historical trend of 
anarchists who have advocated such organizing, including Bakunin, Malatesta, Makhno, and 
the FAI-ists.) This is a revolutionary minority seeking to win over the majority. It is 
not counterposed to the self-organization of the working class and oppressed. It is a 
crucial part of that self-organization.

What was substitutionist was the idea that the revolutionary party could stand in for the 
working class, that it could run the state in the interests of the workers and peasants, 
even against the opposition of the people. From the beginning of the revolution, the 
Bolsheviks held that only they knew how to lead the revolution, and that the solution was 
for them to get state power. (Even though, for most of their history, the Bolsheviks, like 
the Mensheviks, had falsely held that the Russian Revolution would stay within the limits 
of a capitalist revolution.) Once the October Revolution had occurred, they set up a new 
government, uncontrolled by the soviets. They gerrymandered and did other things to keep 
themselves in power. They might have formed a united front with other parties which 
supported the soviets (Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, anarchists). Instead, they pushed the 
other left parties out of power and out of the soviets. They set up an uncontrolled secret 
police with the power to arrest and shoot opponents. They killed off the factory 
committees and stratified the unions, running industry through appointed managers. They 
set up a centralized state planning agency to manage the economy (which never worked well).

This was done under Lenin and Trotsky, setting the framework for Stalin's totalitarian 
rule. Of course, there were objective problems, including the aftermath of a world war, a 
revolution, and a civil war in a poor, peasant-majority country. But Lenin and Trotsky did 
not say that these were temporary measures due to exceptional unfavorable circumstances. 
Instead they declared that one-party rule was a principle of the "dictatorship of the 
proletariat." Even most of the oppositions developing within the Communist Party agreed 
with the principle of one-party dictatorship. This included Trotsky's Left Opposition, 
which continued to uphold the Communist Party dictatorship until the mid-thirties (by 
which time the Russian Trotskyists were smashed).

Substitutionism Creates State Capitalism

By the thirties, all remnants of workers' power had been eliminated from Soviet Russia. 
The state had a structure essentially the same as in Nazi Germany. The bureaucracy ruled 
uncontested. The economy was almost entirely nationalized. The working class and peasants 
were beaten down, oppressed and exploited-as were women, intellectuals, and non-Russian 
nationalities. What was this society?

Trotsky and most critical Communists continued to regard Stalin's Soviet Union as a 
"workers' state" of some sort. Many Marxists still see it that way, saying it was 
"socialist," "post-capitalist," or "progressive." And therefore a regime to be supported 
against Western capitalist states. What most matters to these Trotskyists and others is 
not whether the working class actually ruled but that property was collectively owned by 
the state.

There were dissident Trotskyists and other Marxists who rejected this argument, holding 
that the Soviet Union was an exploitative class society, either state capitalist or a new 
type ("bureaucratic collectivism"). This was good as far as it went. But even these almost 
all supported the police state of Lenin and Trotsky as a good (if imperfect) workers' 
state. And generally they regarded the post-Lenin Soviet Union as remaining a (distorted) 
workers' state during the early years of Stalin, even if one that should have been 
overthrown. They held that Stalinist Russia remained a workers' state until some turning 
point-such as 1929 (the big industrialization drive)
or 1934 (the great purges and mock trials). So even these unorthodox Trotskyists and 
others accepted substitutionism.

The nationalized, collectivized, and planned economy...never worked well. The central 
planners lacked feedback from below, due to the lack of workers' democracy or democratic 
consumers' cooperatives. The five-year plans were never "fulfilled." Although the ruling 
bureaucracy did not hold stocks like the traditional capitalists (the bourgeoisie), the 
economy inevitably adopted capitalist mechanisms and acted as a statified, distorted form 
of capitalism. The workers' sold their labor power to the bosses for money on a labor 
market. They produced goods which were sold as commodities on a market for money. The 
commodities they produced were worth more than the wages they received (that is, they 
produced surplus value, the basis of profit). State enterprises bought and sold machinery 
and supplies among each other, for money-so these were also commodities. Collective farms 
sold their food as commodities on the markets. The inefficiencies of the system were 
smoothed over through vast gray and black markets. Under the overall umbrella of the 
state, enterprises competed with each other. The enterprises, and the economy as a whole, 
was driven by a need for accumulation of capital. This was partly due to the whole 
system's competition on the world market as well as its military arms competition with 
other states.

Eventually this system collapsed. In both the former Soviet Union and the People's 
Republic of China, the statized economy was drastically modified. It became an openly 
market-based system, with stocks and bonds and billionaire oligarchs, even if still 
heavily intermixed with the national state. It transformed from one version of capitalism 
into another. The collective bureaucracy turned out to be a substitute not for the working 
class but for the traditional bourgeoisie.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves."

-First rule of the First International.

The main lesson of the Russian Revolution is that it is the workers and oppressed who must 
make and sustain the revolution. If they won't, then there won't be a revolution. A 
minority among the workers may advocate a revolutionary program and fight against various 
elitist trends, such as reformists, Stalinists, or fascists. But the revolutionary 
minority must not seek to take power for itself, to set up its own state, over and above 
the rest of the population-for their own good, which the revolutionaries think they know 
better than anyone else. Substitutions is tendency which goes back to Marx, in certain 
ways. The Bolsheviks did not understand its danger, before, during, or after the 
revolution. Instead of a new world of freedom, they founded a new authoritarianism.

In the developing radicalization of today, radicals must be aware of this danger.

References

Price, Wayne (2007). The Abolition of the State: Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives. 
Bloomington IN: AuthorHouse.

*written for www.Anarkismo.net

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30194

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