Dear Organize!
I wish to take issue with the two items concerning anarcho-primitivism in the Summer 1996 edition, namely the review of Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism and the essay entitled Green Politics. I’m afraid to say that if these two pieces are representative of the ACF’s understanding of anarcho-primitivism, then they show either willful ignorance or a desire to distort.
To address points made in Green Politics first. I take great exception to the assertion that anarcho-primitivism is a “green current claiming to be anarchist” (16). Would you agree, then, that anarcho-communism is a libertarian current claiming to be anarchist? The prefix ‘anarcho-’ is not just an aft... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Dear Organize!
The tragedy of Dunblane raises two basic yet connected questions. Handling guns and the role of adults in attending to the needs of children. Both these functions fell into the hands of an unstable man. Bearing arms and herding children are basic functions of the state under capitalism, totalitarian socialism and fascism. Thomas Hamilton sought to emulate those whose kow-towing to the system gives them the right to carry arms and train children.
Both these functions are abusive in themselves and the typical consequence of the need of power structures to produce factory, office and cannon fodder. The fact that institutions that care for the young and old are frequently found to be inadequate should not surprise us. Indiffe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Dear Organize!
Mayday was extra special in Sheffield this year, because it also marked the opening of the brand new “Red and Black Center” here.
It was only a couple of months ago that we decided to look for premises to set up a place for meetings, bookstall and infoshop, creche, cafe etc. Things moved fast. We all made monthly pledges of what we felt we each could afford. We found a space that we could afford to rent, and moved in just after Easter. Since that time, various members of the Sheffield Anarchist Group, Sheffield Solidarity Federation and others, have been working hard to get the place ready for a 1st May opening (the place was a bit of a tip to start with). Well, we did it, and the center had it’s grand ope... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) PUBLIC LIBRARIES MAY not sound like a site of class struggle, nor a model of anarchist communism. But in the conflict of values which they embody, and with the changing shape of the world (and more especially Western) economy, they are certainly significant.
They began in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, paid for by a penny on the local rates and gradually spreading throughout the country. Though the educational side of libraries was one reason for their promotion by the middle class, another was their role in providing a literally sobering influence on the working class, by way of being an alternative to the gin palace and through their provision of “improving” literature.
Yet through the years a certain outlook, albeit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Whatever the long-term effects of BSE, whether or not a mass epidemic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) does break out, some things are clear.
Regulations for the production of animal feed were changed, with no safety regulations and above all to cut costs.
Professor Richard Lacey- who was ignored and portrayed as eccentric- has for years been warning that between 5,000 and 500,000 people may die of the infection over the next 20–30 years. Similarly Dr. Harash Narang who devised a test to detect BSE in live cows was castigated by the government as a crank. Public health experts were kept off the government committee set up to look into the crisis. Scientists who were investigating BSE, who began by talking about the dangers of eati... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) By the Anarchist Federation of Central America and the Caribbean
From Where and Whom We Support
For us, as anarchists who live in lands adjacent to Venezuela, what is going on in that country doesn’t seem distant or is indifferent to us. Our dependent economies have received for almost two decades the generous fuel subsidies from PetroCaribe agreements with Venezuela. That is why almost all States and a large portion of the civil society actors of the Caribbean region now offer a complicit silence regarding the neo-liberal, authoritarian, repressive, and militaristic apotheosis resulting from the government of Nicolás Maduro.
We will not deny the value of such agreements for our societies, but we will not turn ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1968 was marked by numerous events- the huge demonstrations throughout Europe and America against the American intervention in Vietnam, unrest in Czechoslovakia, riots in the black ghettos of the USA and student occupations in Britain. What surged to the fore in that fateful year was the events of May-June 1968 in France.
Today, in a period which seems the opposite of 1968, it seems hard to realize that a vast movement of struggle, with youth at its forefront, shook the world. But 1968 was prepared for on a number of fronts- counter-cultural as well as political. Beatniks, hippies, drop-outs of all sorts refused the restraints of bourgeois life, and emphasized mutual aid, community life, and sexual liberty. This large counter-cultural move... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) It is a fairly common belief that mental disorders are a medical problem, a disease like any other. This, however, is not necessarily the case and is often completely false. The history of psychiatric care is plagued with falsifications and the effect of politics. We need only think back to the attempts to save money that led to the last government’s ‘care in the community’ policy to see that this is the case.
Until the last century the care of the mentally ‘ill’ was not left in the hands of doctors at all.
The majority of asylums were run by charities and the church. Doctors fought desperately for what they considered their exclusive right to treat the sick. This lead to the creation of ‘psychiatry&rsq... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Organize! investigates this extremely important and much-misunderstood event.
Mexico in 1910 was a land where an emerging working class was adopting radical forms of organization and struggle, where the indigenous peoples were still continuing their resistance against three hundred years of rule initiated by Spain, and where the bourgeoisie itself was attempting to develop and consolidate its power against the establishment institutions of the old regimes and the Catholic Church.
The regime directed by Porfirio Diaz represented the interests of the small group of rich owners of vast agricultural estates, and in addition served the interests of foreign capital, in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As various governments leap into action, or not, over the reality of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s evident that the different approaches to containment and delay have a heavy ideological component.
The mass surveillance approach of China has seen blocking of criticism of the state on the widespread social media platform WeChat and citizen reporters being taken off the streets, whilst the e-commerce app Alipay (like Paypal in UK) platform has been commandeered to build and track individual movements. It is doing this by assigning a ‘Alipay Health Code’ status of Red, Yellow or Green which is then being used to control access to work, public facilities and movement in general.
In the UK, the central government... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The food shortages in Bolshevik-controlled Moscow in 1921, including staples like bread, ignited a whole set of demands among the working class. From January this discontent was voiced through mass meetings in plants and factories. Bolshevik repression was denounced and the call for free labor as opposed to militarized labor was raised. When Bolsheviks at meetings suggested that the discontent was just about “stomachs” they were shouted down.
The Bolsheviks responded with increased repression, unleashing the Cheka, the secret police. But it was the Moscow Cheka who had been one of the causes of the discontent. Between December 1918 and November 1920 they had shot 578 people, and arrested 40,000, 6 percent of the adult cit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) An important part of the boss class’s attacks on the mass of the population has been on the ideological level, hand in glove with privatization, casualization, unemployment, cuts in services, welfare and housing, and increasing authoritarianism and surveillance. So we were treated to claptrap about the “end of history”, with the idea that now “communism” was dead, liberal democracy — read unfettered market capitalism — would rule triumphant with an end to class struggle. Another part of this ideological assault was to point to the conditions in the “under-developed” countries and in Eastern Europe to highlight how well off we were in the West and how grateful we should be.
Yet another p... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Organize! is starting a new series, Myths and Legends, which will take a look at various ‘Sacred Cows’, diagnose BSE and recommend culling.
Gandhi
We kick off with a look at the ‘saint’ of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi is often cited by pacifists as the shining example of how nonviolent civil disobedience works successfully. Unfortunately, these peans of praise leave out a close study of Gandhi’s role in the Indian struggle for ‘independence’, and just as importantly, who were his class allies in that struggle.
By 1919 the Indian capitalist class had decided they wanted independence from the British rulers. However, as can be imagined, the British were reluctant to agree to this ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The landslide Labor victory had the backing of large sections of the ruling class via the media, with the notable support of the Sun and the London Evening Standard. Indeed, the proprietor of that last newspaper, Lord Rothermere, whose two national dailies the Mail and the Telegraph continued support for the Tories signaled his approval by moving over to the Labor benches in the House of Lords. Explaining his move, Rothermere volunteered the information that Labor “were carrying out many of the policies I believe in”. What he means is that Labor supports a pro-Europe line, as well as being favorable towards supporting small businesses, giving independence to the Bank of England and creating a regulatory body for financial servic... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Labor’s massive electoral victory points not to coming militancy in the workplace and on the streets in the immediate future, but to a period of quiet in which the new Labor government will be able to carry out attacks on the working class more easily than the Tories had done. They still have the backing of large sections of the boss class, are seen as “having a clear mandate”, are still supported by large sections of the media and are establishing an increasingly authoritarian rule, both through government and inside their own party.
They are most likely, in the near or middle future, to meet opposition from three main groups: the anti-roads movement as Labor appears to be continuing with some of the Conservative road-bu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) October 7th, imaginatively named ‘A-day’ by the employment services, has now passed and the Job Seekers Allowance has replaced Income Support and Unemployment Benefit. Unlike previous benefit changes, it is clear that the new JSA is less to do with cuts and much more about an direct attack on conditions, pay and security for workers and unemployed as a whole. While it is true that many people (especially those under 25 years of age) will lose money now unemployment benefit has become ‘contributory JSA’ and in forth-coming changes to housing benefit rules, the JSA is predominantly a means to force us into low-paid work by the threat of having no money to live on.
Perhaps the nastiest effect of the JSA is due to the c... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Ito Noe
Born 1895 — Kyushu, Japan, died 1923 — Tokyo, Japan
Ito was born in 1895, to a family of landed aristocracy, on the southern island of Kyushu. After graduating from Ueno Girls High School, she was forced against her will into an arranged marriage in her native village. She soon ran away to Tokyo.
In Tokyo, women had been developing progressive ideas since the 1870s. Hiratsuka Raicho founded the Seitosha (Blue Stocking Society) and brought out its magazine Seito (Blue Stocking) which gave space to women to develop their literary, esthetic and political capabilities. Ito joined this group in 1913, at the age of 18, and became one of its editors from 1915 to 1916. Skilled in several languages, including En... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As we go to press, it looks as though a negotiated “peace” has been obtained by the United Nations with Iraq, ruling out the likelihood of bombing raids by the US-British alliance. But the sanctions continue, and it is these sanctions which have caused more deaths than the 1991 Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm, through starvation and disease. Many parts of the Iraqi civilian infrastructure are still in ruins, medical supplies are scarce, and there are many water-borne diseases circulating. The end of the 1991 Gulf War did not mean peace, just as the negotiated settlement does not mean peace. The suffering continues for the mass of the Iraqi people, whilst the ruling elite continues to lead a life of luxury. The sanctions rema... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Albert Meltzer who died on 7th May this year aged 76, had been a class struggle anarchist from the age of 16. He took part in work around the Spanish Revolution and was a member of the editorial board of War Commentary, (which changed its name to Freedom at the end of the war). This anarchist fortnightly maintained a consistent revolutionary anti-war stand, and an outstanding quality and level of writing. During the fifties Meltzer retired from the movement, returning to edit a number of pamphlets produced by his Coptic Press and to work with the group producing Cuddon’s Cosmopolitan Review which addressed itself to cultural as well as directly political issues. Together with Stuart Christie he began producing the monthly Bulletin of ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the years, the name Andre Senez could be read at the foot of the back page of many French anarchist and libertarian papers as “Director” of the publication- a paper cannot by law be published in France unless it has this State requirement and risks instant confiscation. Many veterans of the French libertarian movement have warm memories of Andre Senez, with his unflinching convictions and his solidarity. He died on the evening of 20th February after reaching his 80th birthday last October. Old worker in the shoe industry in Paris, an expert in his work, he had retired to the Touraine region to be close to his family. At the age of 15, he joined the youth section of the Communist Party, which he left very quickly after the s... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Cornelius Castoriadis was born Kornelios Kastoriades in Istanbul to a Greek family. Growing up in Athens he joined the Young Communists in 1937 and the Communist Party in 1941. During the war he read “several books that had miraculously escaped the auto da fes of the dictatorship: Souvarine, Ciliga, Serge, Barmine”. He joined a group on the extreme left of Trotskyism, and was involved in the resistance to the German occupiers. At the end of the war he was physically threatened by both fascists and Stalinists, forcing him to leave for France. Here he joined the French section of the Trotskyist Fourth International, but broke with it in 1948. Along with Lefort and Lyotard, he helped set up the Socialisme ou Barbarie group,( S ou B... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The vetern Bulgarian anarchist Georgi Grigoriev has died at the age of 90 in Sofia. He began to call himself an anarchist from the age of 14, and a year later joined the Anarchist Communist Federation of Bulgaria (FACB) which had been founded in 1919. Emerging from semi-clandestinity, the anarchist movement began to develop among both urban and rural workers and among both youth and intellectuals..
Georgi himself narrowly escaped a murder bid by a Royalist gang in 1925, and was forced to take refuge in Czechoslovakia. He then became an agronomics student in France. Here he joined a large number of Bulgarian anarchists, who had fled viaYugoslavia and Austria. Most of the group settled in Toulouse and this 35-strong group, of which Georgi, u... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This French comrade of Arab origin has died on 21 February 1997. Born on 10 August 1950 he went to the schools organized by Michelin for their workers. Because of his North African background, school life was difficult for him and he remained forever marked by the humiliations he received there. He started work at Michelin among the ‘sans grades’ (the unskilled and lowest grade of worker). He became an anarchist in May 1968 when he actively participated in the worker-student liaison. His concern for effective organization led him to join the Organization Revolutionnaire Anarchiste (ORA). He served several prison terms for his active solidarity with Spanish and Portuguese Anarchists in struggle against Franco and Salazar. His unc... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Life long activist and council communist Gerrard Van De Berg died February this year after a long illness. Gerrard was active in the workers struggles in his native Netherlands and across Europe. A member of the communist tendency influenced by Anton Pannekoek, he was a strong opponent of authoritarianism. Lenin’s polemic “Left Wing Communism- An Infantile Disorder” was directly aimed against him and his comrades. Gerrard was a carpenter by trade and was active in the workers movement and greatly respected for his integrity and fierce intelligence. He used whatever medium he could to get his message across: broadcasting on the airwaves or talking face to face he gained the respect of those who listened. He was in Paris in ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The post-modern French philosopher who died on April 21 is of little interest to us as revolutionaries. We wish to recall his time as a revolutionary before the pressures of a career and the ebbing of post 1968 hopes turned him into a darling of the sociologists.
Born in Versailles, educated at the Sorbonne, he spent 10 years as a philosophy teacher in secondary schools. A stay in French-occupied Algeria radicalized him, when he took sides against the French state and for Algerian “independence”. Returning to France in 1956, he joined the Socialisme ou Barbarie group, alongside Castoriadis (see his obituary in Organize! 48) and Lefort. He contributed many important articles to its magazine. He joined Lefort in breaking away fro... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Maximilien Rubel died in Paris at the age of 82 in late February. He had originally arrived in Paris in 1931 to finish his studies in philosophy, sociology and law that he had started in his home town of Czerlowitz, which had been first ruled by the Austro-Hungarians, then by the Romanians, and is now in the Ukraine. He began to frequent radical circles and to express solidarity with the struggle for social emancipation., particularly from 1936 when he gave support to the efforts of the Spanish Anarchists. This activity put him in contact with unorthodox Marxists, Anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists. His militant activity began in earnest during the Second World War when he wrote a number of leaflets in German (his mother tongue) dist... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Ono Tozaburo was born in 1903 in the Japanese town of Osaka which was experiencing transformation into one of the great industrial centers. This, of course, was accompanied by great industrial and economic unrest. He attended Tokyo University in 1920, dropping out after 8 months because of his objections to the authoritarian forms of education there. He then came in contact with the growing anarchist movement. He started contributing to the new paper Aka to Kuro (Red and Black) in 1923 writing anarchist poetry for it, which was suppressed in 1924. He founded his own paper Dam-Dam, a Dadaist-anarchist publication, which he was only able to produce for one issue. No publisher would print his collection of poems Hanbun Hiraita Mado (A Half-Ope... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The noted historian Pier Carlo Masini has died at the age of 75 in Florence.
Born at Cerbaia in the province of Florence, in 1923, Masini’s youth was spent in the antifascist student circles which sprang up in Florence at the end of the 30s. He joined the liberal-socialist movement of Tristano Codignola, and was a driving force in its youth group around the magazine Argomenti.
He was arrested for “conspiratorial” activity on 21 June 1942 and condemned to 3 years confinement at Guardia Sanframondi in the Matese mountains in southern Italy. Released on 19th May 1943 he returned to Tuscany and there grew close to the Communist Party.
During the last phase of the war and the immediate post-liberation period, Masini moved to... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Glasgow anarchist Bobby Lynn has died aged 74. As a engineering apprentice in the shipyards, he came in contact with the anarchists who were organizing open-air public meetings and factory gate meetings many of which attracted audiences of up to a thousand. The anti-war stance of the anarchists and their support of workers struggles at a time when the Communist Party dominated the Glasgow workplaces through the unions and the shop stewards’ committees and actively sabotaged strike action in line with their support for the war effort, attracted Bobby to libertarian ideas. Just after the war, his agitation in the workplace attracted the attention of both bosses and Communist union officials. As a result he was blacklisted and took a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Roland Biard, active militant in the French anarchist movement and then historian of the movement, has died at the age of 56, 3 weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. He co-founded the Groupe d’Etudes et Action Anarchiste with Alexandre Skirda (who is also a noted historian of anarchism) when they were both 19. The son of high-up officials in the Stalinist apparatus of the French Communist Party, he broke with his parents’ ideas at a very young age.
His placid and benign appearance belied his great physical courage. He was at all the anarchist demonstrations against the Algerian war in 1961–2, including the Charonne demo, which ended in the mass lynching of Algerians by the police. He was also present at the famous nigh... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)