libertarian joie de vivre at climate camp cymru

Steve Ryan attended the Merthyr Tydfil climate camp

Climate camps are a new and innovative way of protesting. Set up outside of environmental problems, in this case Ffos -y Fran open cast mine at Merthyr.

The camps are run on the basis of participatory democracy. This is of interest to those interested in self management. There are no “leaders”. The camp is divided into neighbourhoods which meet each morning and elect a facilitator and spokesperson . All issues are discussed and decided by consensus, and hese are reported to the plenary. This is an excellent way of running a society in principle. There are problems however in that decisions, sometimes on relatively simple issues , can take a VERY long time. This is OK at  local level but has the potential to make a wider economy grind to a halt. Unfortunately the alternative would be a command economy, not something those interested in self management and communism groom below would at all desire!

liberalism, citizenship and democracy

by Mark Ellingsen

A lot has been written recently about the corruption of politicians, the crisis of democracy and the legitimacy of Parliament. This is particularly apt as this year marks 200 years since the death of Tom Paine, the radical liberal who was an inspiration to movements fighting for the vote. On the Left the analysis of this crisis has revolved around the interconnected reasons of the failure of the Labour Party to deliver job security and prosperity to its ‘natural’ constituency of working class voters on the one hand, and on the other, the class nature of the capitalist state which ensures that the policies enacted by governments will ensure the profits of the capitalist class even to the detriment of the majority of voters. Quite rightly these arguments take centre place in any discussion of the problems now confronting both voters and the mainstream parties. However, there is a complementary argument that even on its own terms the ideas associated with liberal democracy are never going to provide a sufficient long-term basis on which the majority of people were going to be motivated to be engaged with what currently passes as the political process. But in order to understand the perceived crisis of liberal democracy we need first to understand the crisis of liberalism.

12th september, bristol: ‘the spirit of utopia today’

The Commune is holding a meeting on Saturday 12th September as part of the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair. The event takes place at The Island, Bridewell St, Bristol BS1 2PY, from 10.30am to 6pm, and our workshop is from 5pm in Room 2 (first floor).

The title of our session is ‘the spirit of utopia today’. With an environmental crisis, continuing poverty, recession & war, and the seeming collapse of alternatives to capitalism, we are living in dystopian times. This talk & discussion will explore the meaning of utopianism today and its importance for recovering our humanity in opposition to its systematic abuse for profit and power. What are ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ utopias; is there value in the utopian spirit, or is it just dreaming; and what critiques should we have of the idea of ‘scientific’ socialism?

report: latin american workers’ association conference

60 Latin American workers meet to elect a new committee for the Association.

The general assembly of the Latin American Workers’ Association began at 4:30pm on Saturday 15th August, at SOAS university.

Derek Wall, national representative of the Green Party, opened the event before the reading of messages of support from various parts of the trade union movement, such as the Unite hotels and restaurants branch and the RMT transport union. This was followed by a detailed presentation of the Association’s activities in terms of education, voluntary work and campaigns in defence of Latin American workers.

yes, chris ann, obama is punking us

Ernie Haberkern writes on the row over healthcare reform in the USA

In a sense, the right wing tub-thumpers organized by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies through media hysterics like Russ Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, have done Barack Obama a favor. They have drawn attention away from what the administration is really doing by making stupid charges and turning their demonstrations into clown shows. It is easy enough to poke fun at Sarah Palin’s charge that a provision allowing doctors to be paid for advising elderly, ill patients about the possibility of setting up living wills, making clear to their loved ones what they would like done in the event they become incapacitated, amounts to setting up “death panels”. As the Republican Senator from Georgia who introduced the legislation, Jacob Isakson, put it the statement is “nuts”. But, then, what would you expect from Sarah Palin.

Increasingly, however, the liberal center is beginning to voice concerns about where Obama is going. The headline of this article is based on an op-ed piece in The New York Times by Frank Rich titled “Is Obama Punking Us” in which he quotes a real estate broker from Virginia who voted for Obama, Chris Ann Cleland, as saying “I feel like I have been punked!”

resisting redundancy and recession: appraising the tactic of occupation

by Gregor Gall

In times of recession and restructuring, the occupation or sit-in tactic is potentially a powerful tool when workers are faced with redundancy because it provides leverage that strikes often cannot. Yet, since late 2007 when the global downturn began, we have witnessed very few examples of occupation – certainly far fewer than might have been expected given the depth and extent of recession.

So to date the numerical roll call of occupations has been: Australia (2), Britain (7), Canada (4), Eire (7), France (28) and the US (1). It is worth bearing in mind the relative context of the size of the labour forces of each of these countries. Respectively, these are 11m, 31m, 18m, 2m, 28m, and 153m.

free valentin urusov!

by Simon Pirani

An international campaign has been launched for the release of Valentin Urusov, a Russian miner framed up and imprisoned after recruiting workmates to a union.  

Urusov, an employee of Alrosa, the diamond mining company, is serving six years’ hard labour for an obviously fabricated offence (possession of drugs).  

the commune’s august aggregate meeting: taking stock of our first year

On Saturday 8th August members and supporters of The Commune from across the country met in London to discuss the development of our communist network, which is a year old this month. As well as discussing the modest successes we have achieved so far in terms of organisational growth, we looked towards further building and strengthening our voice in the workers’ movement.

Over the last year we have attracted a number of people to taking part in The Commune, as well as a broader milieu of people interested in our activities and who regularly attend our meetings. Alongside monthly forums in London we have organised a reading group on communism from below with meetings every three weeks. We have sustained a monthly paper over 2009, produced a series of pamphlets, and now a Spanish language publication La Comuna for Latin American migrant workers. The number of pages accessed on this website is typically above 400 a day.

immigration ‘points system’ plans to stifle migrants’ freedom of speech

by David Broder

On Monday 3rd August the government outlined its new proposals for a ‘points system’ through which immigrants to the United Kingdom can seek citizenship. The ‘points system’ will see migrants ‘earning’ their citizenship in a ‘probation’ period following a five-year stay, as opposed to the current set-up whereby five years of working in the country automatically entitles them to apply.

The system will reward those who can fill in gaps in skilled jobs and who are willing to move to areas with labour shortages – a blatant display of the business imperatives behind the use of immigration controls, shepherding the workforce – as well as extending the usual demands on immigrants to pass an exam on the UK’s history and constitution and the use of the English language (this despite the huge cuts in English for Speakers of Other Languages provision).

One particularly worrying new development, however, is that the new measures will see immigrants subject to state approval of their political activities, with bonus points for “playing a role in the democratic life of the country” via “membership of political parties and trade unions” and minus points for what the government deems “bad behaviour”, which may include even legal protests and activism.

testimony of a mitie worker in an immigration detention centre

Seven cleaners were detained after a raid by immigration police on 14th July, which took place with the complicity of Mitie and Willis. Among our detained sisters and brothers are Alejandro, Hermes Ayala, José Sorriso, Karina Cruz, Cintia, Sonia and Sebastián Desolsa. We are demanding that their salaries are paid and that they win 20 days holiday.

Her name is Lidia, and she said that at 4am there was going to be a meeting about chemicals in the Willis building, and that at 5 in the morning in the basement they would be given times for day-time and early morning shifts. She says that she had an ominous feeling about the timing of these meetings. When she arrived in this room, the manager Donna Sidley and another woman called Ivon were laughing their heads off. Everyone started coming in, with the illegal workers on one side and the legal immigrants on the other – the undocumented workers already separated out – and Donna took a chemical bottle and said for what purpose this or that bottle served.

all quiet on the vestas front

by Adam Ford

It was an oddly relaxed mid-afternoon on the seventh day of the Vestas wind turbine factory occupation yesterday [Tuesday 27th July], as demonstrators in the roundabout solidarity camp listened to a couple of musicians in the Isle of Wight sunshine.

With Vestas going to court on Wednesday in an attempt to get legal backing for an eviction, it was very much a case of the calm before the storm. In the meantime there was apparently little for people to do except lounge around in their tents, and occasionally shout their support to the occupiers when they came out on the balcony.

imperialism and populism in latin america: the case of peru 1968-75

by David Broder

For many mainstream commentators, the clashes following the coup against soft-left Honduran president Manuel Zelaya fit into the usual analysis of a continent-wide battle between pro-US conservative parties and a radical “pink tide”.  It is indeed striking how prominently supporters of the Honduran military coup allege interference in the country by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, a theme also particularly commonplace in the political discourse of the right in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia. The Times[1] this week approvingly quoted one observer to the effect that “Chávism versus anti-Chávism is a new version of Communism versus anti-Communism”.

However, while the Venezuelan president is evidently an influential and controversial figure and the focus of much attention, we must go beyond the typical media epithets about his personality – ‘firebrand’, ‘outspoken’, and so on – and ask: what dynamics and social forces do these conflicts represent? Why has Chávism and anti-Chávism generalized across Latin America, how irreconcilable are the divisions, and to what extent are these questions of anti-imperialism and class struggle?

To understand what is taking place, it is important to contextualize the supposed “pink tide” led by Chávez in the history of Latin America, and in particular the continent’s many examples of ‘populist’ governments with supposedly ‘anti-imperialist’ and statist agendas. This article looks in particular at the case of the ‘Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces’, which governed Peru from 1968 to 1975.

defend ukrainian community activists against repression!

from Liva Sprava comrades

On 27th July court hearings will take place on the case of Andriy Movchan and Sergiy Movchan, members of the independent student union “Pryama diya” (“Direct action”) and activists of the initiative “Save old Kiev”. They are accused of group hooliganism during a protest action.

More than one year ago, 6th June 2008 the “Save old Kiev” initiative (a social movement struggling against illegal building) were conducting an action against illegal building on the site of public park at Umanska street. Activists together with locals were protesting against the destruction of a green zone and the privatization of public space. During the action people took down the fence around the building site in order to attract public attention to the inactivity and negligence of the authorities. For a long time beforehand local people had repeatedly tried to appeal against Kiev council’s decision about the allocation of land. But bureaucrats gave us the run-around. Even when the city prosecutor ruled that it was illegal, the building work continued. That was the reason for the radical action.

beyond mousavi: the movement of the iranian masses

by David Broder

The explosion of popular defiance following the seemingly fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad marks a turning point in the evolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

While in the last two years there were strikes on the Tehran bus network and in isolated factories, as well as illegal student protests thousands strong, the post-election demonstrations were by far the greatest challenge to the authority of the Ayatollahs’ regime since it was established in 1979.