letter to the commune – a view from the periphery

A comrade from York writes

I have read recent issues of The Commune with excitement, interest and a degree of scepticism. My comments reflect, on the one hand the continuing influence of ‘Solidarity for Workers’ Power‘ in the 60s on my political ideas and, on the other, my desire to see some vehicle in the here and now through which I might express a sense of class solidarity and purpose.

They also reflect the material position of class struggle in this locality – isolated, defensive, fragmentary and unsure of itself. They express an aspiration for something better, more energising, courageous and collective. They imagine something communist, in the best sense of that word, beyond the present sense of powerlessness and alienation. They represent a rejection of the fossilised remnants of the left and parallel much of what is contained in The Commune’s statement of aims and principles, especially the desire to renew the communist project – as Solidarity sought to do fifty years ago.

impressions from the sandwell bin strike – 8 september 2010

by two (wasted?) workers from The Commune

We went to Sandwell near Birmingham for the second of a series of one day strike at the local waste depot. The strike is officially called for by Unite and GMB. Like the bin strike in Leeds this year, it is about the single status policy. Due to loss of bonuses and down-grading a loader with 20 years seniority would have to face a significant wage loss: from £21,000 to £17,900. Looming in the background of the dispute is the fact that the council will outsource the waste collection to the private company Serco in November this year. The take-over in Sandwell – waste management for around 125,000 households – is Serco’s biggest single job in the UK: a £650 million contract, running for 25 years. The company and council officially guarantee 12 months terms and conditions to the council workers. The take-over and single status effects around 130 council bin men.

Since July this year workers had been on work-to-rule. In response the council hired 15 extra trucks and engaged around 100 extra temp workers for clearing up unfinished rounds – before the dispute started temp workers accounted for only 15 per cent of the work-force. Currently the new temp workers work from a different depot in nearby Cradley Heath, around 10 kilometers from Sandwell. In August the work-to-rule has been lifted and a series of one day strikes has been announced. Normally around 35 trucks do the rounds in Sandwell. After the first one-day-strike in the previous week some of the council permanent workers decided not to join the second strike. They and temp workers hired by the council-run temp agency manage to staff 15 trucks. Currently 15 trucks leave the depot in Sandwell and 15 more trucks are run from the depot in nearby Cradley.

“i am not a man or a woman, i am a transexual”

Transcript of a speech given at Hackney Pride 2010. Transman and anarchist communist Jamrat Mason discusses gender, sexuality and sexism and the wider relevance of transgender issues in society. One paragraph that was omitted from the actual speech for reasons of length is included below in italics.

My name is Jamrat Mason and I have a vagina. I’m involved in East London Community Activism but today I’m here to speak “as a trans person” about transgender issues. The term “transgender” is a broad term that refers to to a massive spectrum of people who in some way veer away from the gender written on their birth certificate. So, I cannot, in any way whatsoever, be representative of transgendered people. I can only talk about the world as I see it, from where I’m standing, as a transexual.

two years supporting undocumented workers in france – an assessment

Ahead of our assembly this weekend assessing the impact of the crisis and proletarian self-activity, Yves Coleman, who will be joining us from France, presents an assessment of two years of activity in a Network (Réseau Education sans Frontières, i.e. RESF) supporting undocumented workers and their families

This report has a very personal tone, but as I don’t belong to any political group, I thought it would be easier to write it this way.

1) Initial motives

Professionally I work at home as a translator and proofreader. So my professional milieu is rather restricted and the area I live in is not really politically interesting. As I had only a mainly editorial activity (publishing a magazine and books 3 times a year under the name of Ni patrie ni frontières, see the website and its texts in English), I thought it would be useful to belong to a group engaged in a “mass activity” at grass root level. I chose the 18th district of Paris because it is a working class district with an important proportion of foreign workers of all nationalities, legal or illegal, who have been living there for a long time and have many traditions of resistance. I also chose this district because I had 2 friends already working there in a local RESF group (RESF means Education without frontiers network: it was created 5 years ago by radical teachers and left wing trade unionists : it’s now a nationwide network including around 200 organisations and trade unions, and, what is more important, thousands of non politically organised people).

the wire faces inwards: ‘the security is to keep us in!’

Sharon Borthwick reviews Rivethead, a ‘book of tales from the assembly line’

Revealing a talent for writing poetry at school does not relieve Ben Hamper of his birthright.  Duplicating his father and his father’s father he awaits, ‘to be pronounced fit for active drudgery’ by the medics. It wasn’t the plan. As a child at factory open days, he bore witness to his father’s crappy lot at the General Motors plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. But failed stints at other ventures led him through GM’s grounds, past the barbed wire. Later a fellow “prisoner” becomes absorbed by the fact that the wire faces inwards, ‘the security is to keep us in!’

Other means to incarceration are the good wages, ‘that pay stub was like a pair of concrete loafers.’ Not that the security lasts, the men are regularly laid off due to economic downturns, though Jimmy Carter tops up their dole packets to the extent they can make light and even party right in the face of unemployment. Not so in the Reagan years, of course. Back at the plant amidst the noise,’very close to intolerable’ and the heat,’one complete bastard’, the men are ground down by still more humiliations. ‘Quality’ becomes the company’s new byword and a man donning a cat costume becomes quality’s personification.

support the tube strikes!

by Joe Thorne

See here for a full list of RMT picket times and locations – go down and visit from 22:00 Monday night or Tuesday morning!

Many of us will have been defending the tube strikes that begin on Monday evening, and continue – amongst different groups of workers – until the end of Tuesday to friends and fellow workers.  Many will be grumpy about their journey being disrupted; susceptible to TFL and government propaganda; and – perhaps without admitting it – somewhat jealous of the leverage, organisation, and (at least what they imagine to be) the superior terms and conditions of RMT members.  RMT General Secretary Bob Crow may be a figure of particular annoyance.

for communist workers’ inquiry

A working paper for our 11th September assembly examining communist potential within the crisis and challenges for revolutionaries.  All are welcome to the event – click here for more details.

The following notes are an individual contribution, they are not particularly sharp or structured, neither are they too funky in style. Nevertheless, they might help as a general ‘point of reference’ for the debate at the conference trying to phrase some thesis about how the ‘different class aspects’ (workplace, migration, university) are related both in terms of ‘class struggle’ and in terms of ‘crisis impact’. The social experience present at the conference will hopefully contribute to this open debate.

We start with looking at the ‘communist potential’ of this crisis and how the main problem for capital is to disguise the ‘abundant productive core’ of the crisis by segmenting the social cooperation of global labour. We then summarise some of the concrete crisis-induced changes in the different spheres of class. We end with a short polemic about the current stage of the left and challenges for working class revolutionaries.

the republican communist network’s ‘internationalism from below’ and the case of scotland: a critical view

by Joe Thorne

The Republican Communist Network (Scotland) has developed a distinctive view on the national question which they call ‘Internationalism from below‘.

The Scottish working class ignited the struggle against the poll tax - but is the demand for independence a positive one?

Although the theory represents a comprehensive attempt to deal with the national question, in this article I will solely discuss it through the prism of the question of Scottish independence. This provides the most obvious and relevant case study through which to draw out the real implications of the theory, an approach which is necessary since I will be unable here to develop a comprehensive alternative account of the national question.

the communist manifesto: an overview

A presentation given to a recent London meeting of The Commune.  The original Communist Manifesto can be read here.

by Sharon Borthwick

In 1847 Marx and Engels joined The League of The Just, a working men’s association made up initially of exclusively German workers, the majority membership being tailors and woodcutters. This was “unavoidably a secret society” according to the political conditions before 1848, as Engels tells us in his preface to the 1888 English edition. This edition was translated by Samuel Moore and approved by Engels. It continues to be the English translation most read to date and we’ll use it here for this overview. The first English translation of the Manifesto, by Helen Macfarlane, was published in the Chartist journal, The Red Republican in 1850.

another look at the organisation question – communist bulletin group

The following text was published in 1982, over the name “Cormack”.  It is an attempt to draw lessons from the Bolshevik experience, not only for the abstract “theory of the party”, but also for the concrete problems of communist organisation we face in the here and now, when any  emergence of anything you might call a revolutionary party is far, far over the horizon.

The article was written by a member of the Communist Bulletin Group, a group which had split with the British section of the International Communist Current.  The article is therefore framed in part as a critique of the ICC and, tangentially, the Communist Workers Organisation, another group in the “left communist” milieu.  We are not republishing this article, however, for what it says about intra-left debate (the criticisms may or may not have been valid for all we know).  However, the criticisms raised will be familiar to many who have adopted dissident positions within any of the major revolutionary left organisations.

theses on the 2010 general election and its aftermath – for discussion

Dave Spencer sets out some points for discussion at our December 12th aggregate meeting. In the spirit of openness we want to publish as much material from our internal debates as possible.

1. No matter who wins the 2010 General Election, the working class will be under attack to pay for the economic crisis. There will be more unemployment and more cuts in public services – possibly on an unprecedented scale since World War 2.

2. Over 12 years of New Labour government, “the Left” and the Trade Unions have failed to organise an effective working class opposition. This has to be a failure of historic proportions and needs some analysing.

strike solid at hackney community transport

by Joe Thorne

More than 40 pickets were stood at the gates of the Hackney Community Transport (HCT) bus depot this morning.  Playing football, waving flags and milling about on Ash Grove, off Mare St, the strikers are amongst the worst treated workers on London buses.

Union members try to persuade a fellow worker not to scab

Contrary to what some may assume, not all London bus drivers are on the same terms and conditions.  HCT drivers are on £11.52 an hour, lower than most bus drivers.  And they get no extra pay for overtime or unsociable hours.  The company is offering a derisory 2.25%, while union members want to see wages and conditions brought more into line with those of other bus drivers in the capital.

reply to the internationalist communist tendency

At their most recent congress, the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP), changed its name to Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT). The ICT is an international grouping which places itself in the tradition of elements in the post WW2 Italian communist left.  In the last issue of their periodical prior to adopting their new name, the group published a brief article on The Commune, and invited us to reply.  Joe Thorne responds, discussing our politics in several areas.

Comrades,

Thank you for taking the time to review the politics of The Commune in issue 50 of Revolutionary Perspectives, and thank you in particular for your positive comments.  You ask a good question: are we a radical new grouping, or the old left in a new form?

Perhaps the best method will be to consider some of the criticisms raised in your article, under six main headings.

constantina, you are not alone

What follows is the text of a paper presented to the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference in April this year.  The full title is “Constantina, you are not alone”: janitors/cleaners’ unionism in Greece and solidarity movements. Reproduced with permission.  Download here as a PDF

by Athaniosis Tsakiris, Maria Penderaki, Irene Savvaki, and Paraskevi Kaliva

1. INTRODUCTION

On the 22nd of December 2008, in Petralona, an old working class neighborhood of the city of Athens,  Bulgarian immigrant worker Costantina Kuneva, General Secretary of the Janitors Union (PEKOP-All Attica Union for Janitors and Home Service Personnel), was the victim of an attack using sulphuric acid while returning home from her workplace. She was seriously wounded, losing the use of one eye and of her vocal chords and she is still in a hospital intensive care unit. Almost three months after that scandalous attack, the Greek unions complained that the “investigations to locate the perpetrators are effectively at point zero, in stark contrast to the dazzling speed of the authorities in cases against workers and strike action!” Neither eye witness reports nor laboratory tests have been used in this case. The victim’s statement has not yet been recorded, despite the fact that she can now communicate in writing.[1]