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mashriq / arabia / iraq / miscellaneous / debate Saturday December 03, 2016 08:21 by Can Cemgil and Clemens Hoffmann   image 1 image
As the civil war in Syria continues, in the territory of Rojava – in Kurdish, 'the West' – the northern Syrian Kurdish political movement is attempting to implement 'libertarian municipalism', based on the thoughts of United States (US) anarchist Murray Bookchin. Since the withdrawal of Syrian regime forces in 2012, the movement has consolidated significant territorial gains as a US ally in the anti-Islamic State (IS) struggle, while simultaneously securing Russian support. Viewed with suspicion by Turkey, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, the geopolitical conditions of Rojava's emergence are its greatest impediment. This article analyses Rojava's model of rule and socioeconomic development, and its theory and practice in the context of the civil war, and regional Middle Eastern and wider global geopolitics. It reflects on Rojava's place and meaning for contemporary geopolitics in the Middle East, and considers the territory's prospects, discussing its transformative potential for an otherwise troubled region. read full story / add a comment
brazil/guyana/suriname/fguiana / movimento anarquista / debate Saturday September 10, 2016 13:40 by Rafael V. da Silva
Historicamente temos formas de análise conjuntural anarquista a problemas complexos que envolvem as movimentações dos de cima. Mas se todos os governos são iguais, para que faz análise de conjuntura? Substitui-se assim, a análise de conjuntura por meia dúzia de jargões e se tem o problema, como falsamente resolvido. O resultado é pobre, do ponto de vista analítico e pior, convence muito mal read full story / add a comment
italia / svizzera / cultura / dibattito Wednesday July 20, 2016 07:02 by Alternativa Libertaria/FdCA
Che cosa imparano i bambini guardando Peppa Pig? Ma, soprattutto, che cosa vogliono insegnare gli adulti ai bambini che guardano Peppa Pig? Quale modello di animalità, di umanità, di famiglia, di società vogliono rappresentare? read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / history of anarchism / debate Thursday May 12, 2016 00:12 by René Berthier
On February 2016, the Weekly Worker, website of the Communist Party of Great-Britain, published a (hostile) review of René Berthier’s book: « Social-Democracy & Anarchism » (Merlin Press). (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1094/bakuninist-hatche...-job/)
This review, titled « Bakuninist hatchet job », was written by Mike Macnair and was an answer to Berthier’s book as well as to Dave Douglass’ (friendly) review (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1086/when-marx-was-a-r...mist/).
This is Berthier’s reply to Mike Macnair. read full story / add a comment
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venezuela / colombia / imperialismo / guerra / debate Thursday December 10, 2015 12:03 by Colectivo ContraInformativo Sub*Versión   image 1 image
Vive y no esconde el bárbaro sus tenazas de hierro
y el verdugo y la silla, y el g-man y el encierro.
Monstruo de dos cabezas bien norteamericano,
una mitad demócrata, otra republicano;
monstruo de dos cabezas, mas ninguna con seso
no importa que nos hable de alianza y de progreso
[1] read full story / add a comment
Murray Bookchin in 1989
north america / mexico / anarchist movement / debate Thursday December 03, 2015 14:40 by Wayne Price   text 4 comments (last - sunday november 28, 2021 14:21)   image 1 image
Murray Bookchin was an influential and prolific writer and thinker on anarchism. Recently his work has been in the news. While he made significant contributions, he made a major error in rejecting the working class as important for an anarchist revolution. This article reviews why he believed this and why, on the contrary, the working class must be a major force for a successful anarchist revolution. read full story / add a comment
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frança / bélgica / luxemburgo / história do anarquismo / debate Wednesday November 04, 2015 02:55 by René   image 1 image
Anarquismo e sindicalismo :
Os debates sobre a herança de Bakunin antes da Grande Guerra

René Berthier

Após a morte de Bakunin, produziu-se uma ruptura com os princípios que o revolucionário russo tinha elaborado. Segundo ele, a Internacional devia conservar o seu caráter de organização de massa : os trabalhadores não deviam aderir a partir de uma ideia, um programa, mas com base a solidariedade recíproca e a defesa dos seus interesses materiais. Bakunin considerava que o movimento operário internacional não tinha atingido um nivel de desenvolvimento homogéneo e que seria necessário longos anos de debates internos para atingir à esta homogeneidade. Entretanto, era necessário encorajar estes debates, mas impedir a todo custo a imposição de um programa único para a Internacional – projeto que Bakunin atribuia à Marx.

read full story / add a comment
north america / mexico / anarchist movement / debate Thursday July 23, 2015 20:45 by Wayne Price   text 15 comments (last - tuesday august 18, 2015 05:32)
A response to Crimethinc's statement, "Why We Don't Make Demands." Wayne argues that revolutionary anarchists should propose to movements which they are part of to raise militant, radical, demands. Done in dialogue with the people, it moves the struggle forward and challenges the state and the capitalist class. read full story / add a comment
machrek / arabie / irak / impérialisme / guerre / débat Tuesday November 25, 2014 11:58 by CATS
Voici deux textes traduits de l’anglais sur la situation au Rojava, le Kurdistan autonome syrien, et sur l’attitude que les anarchistes devraient avoir envers le mouvement populaire (pas uniquement kurde d’ailleurs) dans cette région.
Ces deux textes sont symptomatiques du débat parfois agité qui traverse le mouvement anarchiste sur la question de la révolution en cours au Rojava, et plus globalement sur les luttes de libération nationale.
Ils sont révélateurs des méfiances, des réticences, des distances récurrentes (et parfois des renoncements honteux) ou, au contraire, des rapprochements, des solidarités, des espoirs non moins récurrents (et parfois des vaines illusions) que ce type de lutte en général et cette révolution en particulier peut susciter dans nos milieux. read full story / add a comment
mashriq / arabia / iraq / imperialism / war / debate Sunday October 19, 2014 06:30 by KB   text 2 comments (last - wednesday november 05, 2014 05:06)
Anarcho-syndicalists should should hold no illusions about the Rojava Revolution. Since the turn of the millenium there have been reports of a libertarian municipalist turn in the Kurdish national liberation struggle inspired by Murray Bookchin. This change in politics has been lead by jailed founder and ideological leader Abdullah Öcalan of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) who discovered Bookchin while in prison. The PKK a former Maoist/Stalinist organization had turned to ethnic nationalism after the fall of the Soviet Union and discreditation of “really existing socialism” and so such a turn has been welcomed by many on the revolutionary left. However such processes of political transformation do not automatically translate to full adoption within a populace nevermind their official representation in leading parties. Please note that a reply to this article has been published by the Anarkismo.net Editorial Group: An Anarchist Communist Reply to ‘Rojava: An Anarcho-Syndicalist Perspective’ read full story / add a comment
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bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile / represión / presos / debate Monday September 29, 2014 08:54 by Espartaco Gatti   image 1 image
Tras la nefasta, injustificable y repudiable explosión en el subcentro de Escuela Militar afirmamos que nada volvería ser igual. El bloque en el poder ya está comenzando a mover sus fichas para refundar la Ley Antiterrorista, aumentar las atribuciones de las policías y en particular de la Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia. El bombazo generó una oportunidad única para legitimar ante la “opinión pública” dichas medidas de control social, prácticamente sin ninguna oposición, o cuestionamiento (salvo el tema de los “agentes encubiertos”). read full story / add a comment
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southern africa / the left / debate Wednesday August 06, 2014 21:58 by Red and Black Action   image 1 image
OVERVIEW: There is a healthy skepticism among many activists about simple grand plans, arising partly from disastrous Marxist experiments like the Soviet Union. But the opposite — faith that struggles spontaneously reach the best outcomes if freed of theory and plans — has serious problems. Many struggles falter or are captured as old mistakes are made again. Capitalism and the state cannot be defeated by a growing wave of loosely linked alternative “spaces” and experiments. These systems are based on coercion and exploitation; their defeat requires large-scale confrontation by a coordinated bottom-up working class counter-power with clear politics. The point of resistance is to change the world: it is not an aim in itself, just a response; a politics fetishising perpetual resistance must rely on a world of oppression. Closing discussion by labeling views “dogmatic” is a recipe for imposing other positions and elites through the backdoor. There is no need to repeat the tragic errors of the past. Other revolutionary theories from working class struggles – like anarchism and syndicalism — share no blame for the failures of vanguardism and reformism, and have valuable insights on building a participatory, transformative, project of “people’s power,” and on moving from resistance to reconstruction.It is important to speak openly about theory, strategy and vision, and to engage openly with the revolutionary traditions of the popular classes, like anarchism and syndicalism, born of our past struggles, and distilled from those struggles. read full story / add a comment
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international / history of anarchism / debate Sunday May 25, 2014 07:19 by Wayne Price   text 1 comment (last - friday may 30, 2014 14:41)   image 1 image
The Marxist journal, "Platypus Review", published an article by Herb Gamberg which attacked anarchism by focusing on Bakunin. Wayne Price wrote a response and Gamberg replied, in PR. The following is Wayne's original response plus his new reply to Gamberg's latest comments. read full story / add a comment
internacional / movimento anarquista / debate Thursday April 03, 2014 23:15 by Érrico Malatesta
"Entre os anarquistas existem os revolucionários que acreditam que é necessário abater, pela força, a força que mantém a ordem atual, para criar um ambiente no qual seja possível a evolução livre dos indivíduos e das coletividades. E existem os educacionistas que pensam que só se pode chegar à transformação social, transformando antes os indivíduos, por meio da educação e da propaganda. Existem partidários da não-violência ou da resistência passiva, que evitam a violência ainda que seja para combater a violência. E existem aqueles que admitem a necessidade da violência, os quais se dividem, por sua vez, no que diz respeito à natureza, alcance e limites da violência licita." read full story / add a comment
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southern africa / workplace struggles / debate Friday March 07, 2014 06:44 by Lucien van der Walt   image 1 image
Lightly edited transcript from Lucien van der Walt’s discussion at 1st National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) Political School, September 2013. From his debate with Solly Mapaila, 2nd deputy GS of the South African Communist Party (SACP) on anarcho-syndicalist versus Leninist views of the revolutionary potential of unions. A version was printed in ASR #61 2014, pp. 11-20

Captures van der Walt’s main points: the debate on the anarcho-syndicalist view that revolutionary trade unions, allied to other movements, creating a self-managed worker-controlled socialism through mass education, counter-power and workplace occupations; anarcho-syndicalism as a working class tradition; the anarcho-syndicalist view that unions can potentially be more revolutionary than political parties including Communist Parties, & be revolutionary without leadership by parties; the view that electioneering can be replaced with direct action campaigns; that the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939) shows unions taking power and making a bottom-up worker-controlled revolution; and how NUMSA’s current actions refute Marxist-Leninist theory; other problems with that theory’s traditional approach to unions; and the implications of all of this for current debates over the form of a new socialist movement in South Africa and elsewhere; and the nature of the South African ruling class and the primary social contradictions.

Lucien van der Walt is co-author of “Black Flame: The revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism” (w.Michael Schmidt, 2009, AK Press) and co-editor of “Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940” (w. Steve Hirsch and Benedict Anderson, 2010, Brill). He has a long history of involvement in the working class movements. read full story / add a comment
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international / miscellaneous / debate Thursday February 27, 2014 07:51 by Nosotros Los Pobres   image 1 image
Two weeks ago, Nosotros los Pobres had the good fortune to host a presentation by two members of the Federacion de Estudiantes Libertarias of Chile, with whom we had a very productive exchange of ideas. Soon after that, I saw a statement published by the FEL, commenting on the situation in Venezuela, in which they expressed sympathy for the “Venezuelan people” in their resistance against a coup d’etat. As a member of Nosotros los Pobres, I wanted to share some thoughts about Venezuela and what’s going on there, both now and for the last 15 years, and I hope they will be useful for especifista comrades as well as for concerned and informed people generally. read full story / add a comment
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north america / mexico / the left / debate Monday February 24, 2014 04:06 by Wayne Price   text 1 comment (last - thursday march 06, 2014 10:35)   image 1 image
The Platypus Society is having a panel on "Marxism and Anarchism," 3/17, in Chicago. It prepared a list of questions on the topic. These are my responses to the questions, in preparation for the discussion. read full story / add a comment
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international / anarchist movement / debate Friday December 13, 2013 17:12 by Lucien van der Walt   text 1 comment (last - saturday december 21, 2013 06:24)   image 1 image
Examining the theory and practice of ‘mass’ anarchism and syndicalism, this paper argues against Daryl Glaser’s views that workers’ council democracy fails basic democratic benchmarks and that, envisaged as a simple instrument of a revolution imagined in utopian ‘year zero’ terms, it will probably collapse or end in ‘Stalinist’ authoritarianism—Glaser also argues instead for parliaments, supplemented by participatory experiments. While agreeing with Glaser on the necessity of a ‘democratic minimum’ of pluralism, rights, and open-ended outcomes, I demonstrate, in contrast, that this ‘minimum’ is perfectly compatible with bottom-up council democracy and self- management, as envisaged in anarchist/syndicalist theory, and as implemented by anarchist revolutions in Manchuria, Spain and Ukraine. This approach seeks to maximise individual freedom through an egalitarian, democratic, participatory order, developed as both means and outcome of revolution; it consistently insists that attempts to ‘save’ revolutions by suspending freedoms, instead destroy both. Parliament, again in contrast to Glaser, from this perspective, meets no ‘democratic minimum’, being part of the state, a centralized, unaccountable institutional nexus essential to domination and exploitation by a ruling class of state managers and capitalists. Rather than participate in parliaments, ‘mass’ anarchism argues for popular class autonomy from, and struggle against, the existing order as a means of winning economic and political reforms while—avoiding ‘year zero’ thinking—also building the new society, within and against, the old, through a prefigurative project of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture. Revolution here means the complete expansion of a bottom-up democracy, built through a class struggle for economic and social equality, and requiring the defeat of the ruling class, which is itself the outcome of widespread, free acceptance of anarchism, and of a pluralistic council democracy and self-management system. read full story / add a comment
international / anarchist movement / debate Thursday December 12, 2013 20:18 by Lucien van der Walt
Examining the theory and practice of ‘mass’ anarchism and syndicalism, this paper argues against Daryl Glaser’s views that workers’ council democracy fails basic democratic benchmarks and that, envisaged as a simple instrument of a revolution imagined in utopian ‘year zero’ terms, it will probably collapse or end in ‘Stalinist’ authoritarianism—Glaser also argues instead for parliaments, supplemented by participatory experiments. While agreeing with Glaser on the necessity of a ‘democratic minimum’ of pluralism, rights, and open-ended outcomes, I demonstrate, in contrast, that this ‘minimum’ is perfectly compatible with bottom-up council democracy and self-management, as envisaged in anarchist/syndicalist theory, and as implemented by anarchist revolutions in Manchuria, Spain and Ukraine. This approach seeks to maximise individual freedom through an egalitarian, democratic, participatory order, developed as both means and outcome of revolution; it consistently insists that attempts to ‘save’ revolutions by suspending freedoms, instead destroy both. Parliament, again in contrast to Glaser, from this perspective, meets no ‘democratic minimum’, being part of the state, a centralized, unaccountable institutional nexus essential to domination and exploitation by a ruling class of state managers and capitalists. Rather than participate in parliaments, ‘mass’ anarchism argues for popular class autonomy from, and struggle against, the existing order as a means of winning economic and political reforms while—avoiding ‘year zero’ thinking—also building the new society, within and against, the old, through a prefigurative project of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture. Revolution here means the complete expansion of a bottom-up democracy, built through a class struggle for economic and social equality, and requiring the defeat of the ruling class, which is itself the outcome of widespread, free acceptance of anarchism, and of a pluralistic council democracy and self-management system. read full story / add a comment
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bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile / anarchist movement / debate Thursday October 17, 2013 21:42 by C.A.L.   image 1 image
Until a few months ago we had a libertarian movement in which different ideological expressions of the popular movement came together, but with certain shared elements such as recognition of the need to build organizations from the bottom, outside the State, promoting at all times internal democracy and the leading role of those directly involved, with the clarity on a strategic level that the task was to build popular power with class autonomy and encourage direct action as the main political tool for social transformation. However, the appearance of the Red Libertaria as part of the Todxs a La Moneda movement which supports the presidential candidacy of Marcel Claude and the recent sign from the Frente de Estudiantes Libertarios rejecting this initiative have only served to initiate a split within the libertarians, where it seems that reformist and authoritarian positions have achieved hegemony over part of the militants, and to which anarchists have only stood on as passive spectators. [Castellano] read full story / add a comment
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