nepalese maoist leader speaks in london

by David Broder

On Monday afternoon the unpretentious surroundings of Woolwich town hall played host to remarkable scenes as Nepalese Maoist leader Prachanda addressed a 400-strong meeting. Prachanda is chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which won a majority in April 2008’s parliamentary elections after a 13-year guerrilla campaign to overthrow the monarchy: he was himself the first Prime Minister of the new republic, before ceding power this May.

The rally was a fascinating spectacle, in particular insofar as it was marked by prolonged bouts of energetic shouting and interventions with a ‘revolutionist’ zeal rather at odds with the actions of Prachanda when in power. The music and speeches preceding Prachanda’s arrival and the fact that, following the apparently much-cherished tradition of the labour movement, the meeting began well over an hour late, only added to the sense of occasion.

‘uncaptive minds’ day school on the russian revolution

The historical experience of the Russian Revolution and revolutions in Eastern Europe – our tradition, dead-end or a perspective for today?

In 1917 the Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, soviets, took power proclaiming a workers’ and peasants’ republic in Russia.  In the aftermath of the First World War revolutions established Soviet republics in Ukraine, Hungary, Bavaria and Slovakia in 1919.  A new Communist International was founded to unite the international struggle to overthrow capitalism and establish a communist society.   By 1921 the revolution was in retreat, a process which culminated in the triumph of counter-revolution and Stalinist totalitarianism.

The legacy of the revolutions remain with us to this day, but what does it mean for communists seeking to create a new society in the 21st century? Is it our tradition;  were these revolutions a dead end never to be repeated; or does it assist us with a perspective for today?The Commune is holding a summer school to discuss these questions and others.

12-5pm, Saturday 29th August, at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, near Old Street, London.

the unions on new grounds: when the workmate becomes a client

The next of The Commune’s London reading group series is on the subject of “‘Schools for communism?’: workplace organising and theories of trade unionism”. We will be looking at different conceptions of how unions are formed, their role in the structures of capitalism and their limitations, and then studying  more concretely various aspects of organising in the 21st century. A full agenda will be published shortly. This piece from Prol Position is on the reading list, and takes an interesting view of the current brand of organising initiatives.

Militant Research, self-interviews, workers’ centres, campaigning and organizing: currently there is a part of the left that gets enthused by ‘undogmatic approaches’ which tackle the question of resistance within waged work. Study trips to the US, visits at workers’ centres and at organizing campaigns all give the impression that these new instruments of union struggle will shake up the rusty white-dominated union landscape in Germany because the target of these initiatives are principally young immigrant workers, women and employees in the service sector. Is a completely new and different union in the making? Or, to put the question differently: does the crisis of the institution “union” open up spaces for new forms of organising? Does the union apparatus provide help for opening new doors or do lefty activists let themselves be instrumentalised in order to provide the institution with a new and up-to-date outfit?

reprints of the commune’s pamphlets – buy online

We have printed more copies of our series of pamphlets, several of which (in particular the long-unavailable Venezuela pamphlet) were out of print. See below for a list of the seven pamphlets available. They cost £1 +50p postage per copy. To order online, work out the total of your purchases then ‘donate’ the money here, making sure to specify in the text box what you are ordering.

Alternatively, write to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to place your order. We take payment by cheque (addressed to ‘The Commune’, at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St. John Street, London EC1V 4PY) or by transfer to Co-op account S/C 089299, A/C 65317440.

over fifty people deported to iraqi kurdistan

Between fifty and fifty-five people were forcibly deported to Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday afternoon on a specially chartered mass deportation flight, operated by Alitalia airlines.

Four white coaches took deportees from Tinsley House, Brook House, Colnbrook and Dover immigration prisons, with others brought in G4S vans. The flight left Stanstead at 5pm and arrived in Erbil International Airport at 10 in the evening. Each person was given $100 then left at the airport.

fictitious capital and credit schemes

This talk given by Michael Egoavil at the Left Forum 2009 panel “Marx’s ‘Capital’ and the Economic Crisis” argues against the demand for state ownership of banks. Michael can be reached at michaelegoavil@gmail.com.

Today I’m going to be discussing Marx’s theory of fictitious capital and its relation to real capital accumulation. Along the way I’m going to focus on Marx’s seldom-read analysis of a French bank known as the Credit Mobilier, in which this theory played a fundamental role. I’ll conclude with some thoughts on how this relates to socialist politics today.

In the third volume of Capital, Marx discusses what he calls “fictitious capital” – what we know as “securities.” Essentially these are titles to streams of income, which are treated as commodities and bought and sold on financial markets. There are significant differences between types of securities. Some represent corporate debts, as with bonds, some represent consumer debts, as with mortgage backed securities, and others represent capital investments, as with shares of stock. But the common aspect of all these different securities is that they all give their owners a right to a stream of income, hopefully leaving them with more money than they started off with. The security owner therefore looks upon his security as capital.

first issue of ‘la comuna’

We have produced the first issue of a Spanish-language bulletin for Latin American migrant workers, La Comuna. The publication will be a space for discussion of activism and organising in workplaces and the trade union movement, as well as the fight against immigration controls. The objective is that La Comuna should mostly written by migrant workers themselves and appear at least semi-regularly.

The first issue features one woman’s testimony of an immigration police raid at the Willis building in the City of London, an article by Alberto Durango about Unite and its Justice for Cleaners campaign, and an article about the need for a communist movement today.

A website has been set up at www.lacomuna.co.uk. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info.

anti-deportations demo highlights repression of migrant worker organising

Today around forty people demonstrated outside the Willis Group building at Lime Street in the City of London in an emergency demo called to demand justice for Mitie cleaners snatched by immigration police in a raid on July 14th (the underhand nature of the vile operation is detailed here). As well as shouting slogans against border controls in English and Spanish, protesters demanded the payment of wages and the granting of holidays to the detained workers.

An advertisement for the protest explained “Cleaners’ campaign successes are being clawed back in a series of attacks on those who have fought for improved wages and conditions. The latest victims are a group of cleaners who work for the services company Mitie. They were asked to come to the site of Willis Insurance brokers for a chemicals training course but instead were met by immigration officers. Nine cleaners: Alejandro, Hermes Ayala, José Sorriso, Karina Cruz, Cintia, Sonia and  Sebastián Desolsa and two others were detained. This action is in the wake of months of weekly protests organised by a group of former Mitie cleaners and their supporters including shop steward Edwin Pazmino, who were sacked for refusing to work a longer night shift.

review of the left press july/august 2009

by Nathan Coombs

It is a well-worn cliché to decry the separation of theory and practice on the Left.

Firstly, you are meant to start by pointing to the specialised jargon and stuffy scholasticism of academic Marxism – a well-deserved reproach in my opinion; at least for anyone who has picked up a text by Theodor Adorno, or, god forbid, the yawn inducing post-Marxist procrastinations of Jurgen Habermas.

Secondly, you are then meant to imply that if only academic Leftists could remedy this state of affairs some sort of revolutionary synergy (praxis) would magically transform the situation – an attitude that could be surmised as “make your works ‘accessible’; take responsibility to lead the vanguard!”

The reality however is surely more mundane and ego deflationary. That is, more mundane in the sense that academic Leftism is a generally a closed circuit of thought in a professional debating chamber. And more deflationary, most people simply don’t have the time to keep up with it all – why should they?

Or perhaps worst of all there is the stinging sense in which we could take Louis Althusser’s idea of Marxist knowledge after Marx[i]: only a transformative movement that takes action and is thrown into a directly political situation can create knowledge which does not dissolve into idealist speculation. If we take Althusser seriously, then the best academic Marxists can seek to do is describe the situation, give class and production oriented historiographies, and provide critique. The separation of theory and practice is inevitable.

In any case, this unresolved apologia out of the way, what I want to do in this regular column for The Commune is to take a critical reading of the main (non-specialist) Left journals to at least help provide a short-cut to the best of the best and the best of the worst out there.

upcoming dates for activists

Friday 24th July, London: Willis picket

There will be the weekly picket at Willis tomorrow (Friday 24th) in support of the sacked cleaners and in protest at the immigration raid there last week. Meet 12.30 outside Liverpool Street station McDonalds or go straight there: 1pm, Willis Building, 51 Lime Street London EC3

Next week, Isle of Wight: Vestas occupation

Comrades are making regular visits to the occupied Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight. Some of us will be going down in the middle of next week: email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you’d be interested in joining us.

Tuesday 4th August, London: Solidarity with cleaners in struggle

Public meeting called by the LRC, 6:30pm, Tuesday 4th August, Somerstown Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, near London Euston, with speakers including RMT cleaner activist Clara Osagiede, victimised UNITE activist Alberto Durango, John McDonnell MP,  the NUJ’s Jeremy Dear, Gill George from the UNITE exec, and the SOAS Unison cleaners’ rep.

Saturday 8th August, London: The Commune’s aggregate meeting

National organising meeting to discuss our positions, activism, meetings and publications, open to members and supporters of our network.

We have an open culture and we would encourage people interested in The Commune to attend, since we want as much feedback as possible from our activities and for people to feel a sense of ‘ownership’ over our network. 12-4pm: email
uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to register your interest and find out the venue.

the “molly maguires” and the communist party of the usa: political repression in a free country

by Hal Smith

At the rise and decline of the American labor movement, the media and courts saw demons among the working people: “Molly Maguires” and Communists. Who were these radical “conspirators,” and what was their “crime?” Theirs is the transatlantic story of militant workers, and the law as their masters wield it.

The Molly Maguires began as a group of Irish Catholic peasants who resisted British landlords. Since Britain yoked Ireland in the 1600’s, the Irish served as peasants on semi-feudal British estates. In the 1840’s, the Great Hunger devastated Ireland, while Britain exported its food. Landlords evicted starving peasants, whose poverty forced them into the worst mines of America and England. Among the Irish immigrants were nationalist revolutionaries like Fenians and “Mollies.”

france’s cgt union: doing the immigration police’s dirty work

Winter 1980-81 in France saw the French Communist Party (PCF) use its municipal power to attack immigrants in Paris, with the Vitry-sur-Seine council organising bulldozers to stop the construction of a hostel for 300 workers from Mali (therefore leaving them homeless) and leading member Robert Hue, mayor of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, leading a march against immigrants he had labelled “drug traffickers”. Now again in 2009 the chauvinism of France’s institutional left has reared its ugly head.

At midday on 24th June, migrant workers without papers were dragged out of the Paris Bourse du Travail, where they had sought sanctuary for the previous 14 months, by fifty of the security guards of the Confédération Générale du Travail, France’s largest trade union federation. This operation by the union occurred on the same day as anti-immigration hardliner Brice Hortefeux became the new Interior Minister, as la Promethée report:

The Paris Bourse du Travail is co-managed by the left-wing mayoralty and the trade unions. With the exception of the Solidaires union, all this “happy family”, relieved by the CGT’s initiative, has chosen to remain silent so that people might forget their failure to act to defend workers without papers. These sans papiers were not occupying the Bourse du Travail in the manner of striking workers occupying their workplace, management offices or a public space. They had found refuge there. It would make sense for such union buildings to protect workers without rights being harassed by the capital’s police, given that the latter would even invade churches to get at them.

cricket for iranian workers: hopi vs. lrc

Fundraising cricket match: Hands off the People of Iran vs. Labour Representation Committee. From noon on Saturday August 1st at Low Halls sports ground, South Access Road, London E17, followed at 8pm by social at Dalston Social Centre, 2 Belgrade Road, N16.

The plans are slowly taking shape for what should be an excellent day with cricket, a barbecue, a bar, and some promising entertainment in the evening provided by our fans and supporters (click here to download leaflet).

jlg france ‘explosion threat’: putting the squeeze on management

Workers at platform-crane manufacturer JLG in south west France won a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 staff made redundant after three weeks of strike action. The tactics employed by the workers – including blocking a high-speed TGV train in a station and placing gas canisters around four cranes on site, threatening to blow them up – won wide attention in the French press and, as this Sud Ouest article demonstrates, showed the value of determined collective action.

“They had no other choice.” Christian Amadio, secretary of the comité d’entreprise at JLG France, is modest in success, despite the oviations by dozens of workers waiting outside the Tonneins mayor’s office until after 1am on Thursday-Friday night. The negotiations were long – more than 7 hours – and bitter. But they paid off in the end. “We won what we fought for. No more.” The agreement is based on a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 workers who will be laid off according to plans announced by the platform-crane manufacturer in April. The names of the laid off workers will be announced in mid-September.