new issue of the commune – now free!

The August 2011 issue of The Commune marks a substantial step forward for our paper. We will now be distributing the paper for free, and in much-increased volume.

This issue features  reports from the 30th June strike day, debate on the reasons behind the European crisis, and an extended essay on the war in Libya… and much more. See below for a list of articles.

You can download a PDF of issue 24 by clicking on the image above. If you enjoy the paper and would like to share these ideas with others, write to us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com and we can post you some hard copies to distribute.

Articles this month:

news

their media and ours – this month’s editorial looks at the meaning of the ‘Hackgate’ scandal

the criminalisation of dissent – on the imprisonment of anti-fees activist Charlie Gilmour

cleaners’ strike in city pays dividends – cleaner activist Alberto Durango reports on a strike at Guildhall which shows that direct action works.

J30

30th June (‘J30’) saw some 750,000 public sector workers take strike action over Tory attacks on pensions. This was the next step forward for the anti-cuts movement following the mass demonstration on 26th March. We discuss the significance of the day and its lessons.

less work for all! – Steve Ryan was on strike with PCS civil servants’ union colleagues

a movement taking its first steps – for Izzy Parrott, the J30 day of action was about more than pensions: but it didn’t have the feel of a wide, grassroots movement.

tense debates over camping plan – Activist solidarity initiatives for the day had rather mixed results. Daniel Harvey stresses the need to centre our activity around the workplace.

anti-cuts

‘something out of the ordinary’ – College worker Siobhan Evans reflects on a hard-fought struggle against redundancies in her workplace.

NHS: reform, or privatisation? – East London GP Jonathon Tomlinson continues our series on alternative ideas as to how public services should be run.

international

the crisis in europe: debating the role of finance – John Keeley argues that it’s more than just Europe’s periphery that’s in crisis; it’s the entire capitalist system. In reply Oisín Mac Giollamóir argues that financial crisis is every bit the ‘normal’ functioning of capitalism

management by abandonment – Nic Beuret writes on the economic and political pressures behind border controls and the EU’s ‘Fortress Europe’ anti-migrant measures.

what is NATO fighting for in libya? – Joe Thorne asks if the western powers have really taken a humanitarian turn

the left 

a weekend at ‘marxism’ – David Broder reflects on the Socialist Workers’ Party’s ‘Marxism’ event, arguing libertarians should do more to relate to the SWP

what is the commune?

their media and ours

The editorial of the August 2011 issue of The Commune looks at the meaning of the News International scandal.

July’s News International phone-hacking scandal focused attention on the links between big business, the media and government.

Millions were rightly angry at not only the hacking of mobile phones, but the clear signs of corruption cutting to the heart of the state. Police officers and journalists traded information for cash, all in the name of building the billionaire Murdoch family’s vast business empire. At the same time the media tycoons were wined and dined by the Prime Minister.

However, most left-wing analysis of the scandal stopped here: business and the Tories are in each others’ pockets. But this is not enough. Firstly, because the links between the corporate media and the state go far beyond ‘Hackgate’. The Murdochs are not just friends of Eton boys like David Cameron: they had a long incestuous relationship with the previous Labour government.

making a killing: suicide under capitalism

Tom Denning writes on the social meaning of suicide

Some years ago when the streets were filled with red flags, I saw two comrades die at home clutching a common gas tube.  Few of us cried then, and each of us knew that they were crying for themselves, for the irreducible substance of our imaginary fears, for all the questions the political struggle left unresolved . . . Nobody thinks of waving red flags round these silent deaths.  Why?  Because we can’t attribute any ideal meaning to them?  Because we can’t abstract from the complex and confused personal reasons which caused these deaths? [1]

                                                                                – Lea Melandri, 1977

Can we not?  After all, as Erwin Stengel put it,

Suicide appears to be the most personal action an individual can take, yet social relationships play an important part in its causation and it has a profound social impact.  While it seems to aim solely at destroying the self, it is also an act of aggression against others.  The study of suicide illustrates that human action, however personal, is also interaction with other people, and that the individual cannot be understood in isolation from his social matrix.[2]

national divisions and the eurozone in crisis

Oisín Mac Giollamóir explores the complexity of how the Eurozone crisis affects particular states

If the working class has no country it is for one reason: because capital has no country. But of course capital is often national. The emergence of the nation state and capitalism are contemporaneous. As capitalism emerged so did the nation state. As various historical class relations are dissolved into the capital/labour relation, the notion of the nation’s common interest emerges. But what happens when the nation becomes a constraint on capital accumulation? It expands.

Over the last 60ish years, through the emergence of the EU, Europe has seen the emergence of an integrated capitalist system. However, a major limit of this integration is that the national myth, the idea of a common interest between capital and labour, has not developed on a European level.

on the march… at work

A London public sector worker striking on 30th June wrote to The Commune about an action which gave confidence to her and her workmates.

I work in a big public sector workplace, where redundancies have just been announced. Not only are people going to lose their jobs, but some of the services will just be scrapped and very poor and vulnerable people will lose the services that we provide.

People knew the redundancies were coming and there was a lot of anxiety, over who, how many… When we recieved the results there was outrage as it was felt to be decided very unfairly. My department sent a message to management that we were not going to accept these staff being treated so badly and we rejected this list. In the end the process was delayed and then the list was drawn up again to include basically pretty much everybody.

The day to day atmosphere was complicated. On the one hand people were tired and upset. The department has had a few redundancies year on year so people have watched again and again as their colleagues lose their jobs, the department gets smaller, people lose their right to the service, fees go up. Everybody knows if they don’t lose their job this year they might lose it next year. We are a relatively active and traditionally left wing workplace and people had been on a lot of demos this year, there have been some good campaigns around defending the service but there was a tiredness and a bleakness in people’s faces.

On the other hand people were going from angry to furious. The name of a place where recently people had taken very strong strike action suddenly began to be heard again and again in the corridors. The year on year attacks seemed to be making people feel simultaneously ground down and wound up. In a meeting with management a co-worker stormed out. More and more often little meetings broke out, voices were raised.

the commune issue 23 out now!

Issue 23 of The Commune is now available. It features articles on the ongoing struggles in Egypt, the build up to the 30th June strikes, AC Grayling’s private university, and much more.

Click the picture above to see PDF, or see below for list of articles as they are uploaded. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing a printed copy, or in distributing The Commune.

Organising

slutwalk: because we’ve had enough – Bahar Mustafa reports on London SlutWalk

grayling’s atrocity: and what to do about it – Daniel Harvey looks at New College of the Humanities, AC Grayling’s private ‘university’

dear comrades – letters on June 30th; community organising; post workers’ strike

International

the revolution in egypt – Tali Janner-Klausner writes from Cairo on the military provisional government and efforts to deepen the struggle

nobody expects the spanish revolution – Reports from the town-square occupations movement in Seville and Barcelona

another UN presidential (s)election in haiti – José Antonio Gutiérrez D. writes on the new order in UN-occupied Haiti

Society

the councils of despair – Sheila Cohen explores the significance of last month’s elections

why us? possilpark youth speak out against dispersal zone – Dawn Hunter introduces an interview she conducted with youth in the Possilpark area of Glasgow, subject to a trial ‘dispersal zone’ order

the beautiful game in ireland: a story of neglect – Donal O’Falluin writes on Irish working-class football culture

Theory and history

national divisions and the eurozone in crisis – Oisín Mac Giollamóir explores the complexity of how the Eurozone crisis affects particular states

making a killing: suicide under capitalism – Tom Denning writes on the social meaning of suicide

the first working-class revolution – 140 years after its defeat, the legacy of the Paris Commune is still hotly contested. Clifford Biddulph explains its meaning

slutwalk: because we’ve had enough

Bahar Mustafa reports on London SlutWalk

Picture it. A beautifully warm day in June, sunshine spilling over central London, luscious greenery surrounding the pavements en route, vibrant cheers and chants resonating from the front of the march of about 5,000 energetic, lively and colourful people; a mishmash of corsets, garters, nipples, bare bottoms, fishnets and lipstick. But more noticeable than anything was the vivacious confidence of the crowds of passionate people pissed-off at the victim-blaming culture of sexual violence and rape against women that has gone unchallenged for far too long.

SlutWalk saw its first ever march in Toronto in January 2011. Around 1,000 women and dozens of men took to the streets in protest at Constable Michael Sanguinetti’s despicable comments warning young female university students that they ought to “avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.” The movement quickly spread to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Mexico City, Sydney and now London.

councils of despair

Sheila Cohen writes on the situation after last month’s elections

The May elections have left a smirk on Cameron’s face – or perhaps we should say deepened the one that was already there. But for the left the result was, once again, a mixture of predictability and despair. While the Tories got trounced in the Northern cities – and the LibDems , of course, everywhere –  any illusion of a return to sanity was flattened by the Tories’ overall performance.

ed miliband is fishing for conservative working-class support

The staunch battalions of the North, it seems, have never forgotten Thatcher and the wounds she inflicted – but in the supposedly affluent South-East, the dynasties that once fell to New Labour have once again reverted to at least the appearance of support for what our rulers love to refer to as “aspirational” policies.    

the workers’ inquiry: what’s the point?

Joe Thorne looks at the history of the “workers’ inquiry” idea: from Marx, to Italy in the 1960s, to the present day.  This fairly long article touches on debates amongst those influenced by operaismo about how we should relate to the modern workplace.

What can we learn from focussed investigations of contemporary working class reality?

The point of these notes is: to understand what the term ‘workers’ inquiry means; to argue that it has come to mean at least two different things; to characterise the political objective of these different projects; and to evaluate both the importance of those objectives and how well they are met by the methods in question.  The point is to articulate what place I believe the inquiry ought to have in the ideas and practice of revolutionaries.  It will also say something about research into class composition more generally.

organising for june 30th – open assembly – 7pm monday may 23rd

Please forward far and wide, join the Facebook event group and publicise!

Organising for June 30th // Open Assembly // 7pm Monday May 23rd // Marchmont Community Centre WC1

30th June 2011 may well turn out to be the most important step forward in a mass fight against public sector cuts. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be involved in strike action, from as many as four or five different unions including NUT, PCS, UCU and ATL.

Let's join community mobilisations to strikes: direct action against austerity

Often strike action can be ignored by those in power but also the vast majority of workers not in unions or directly effected by the issues. Therefore we, rank & file union members, students, precarious workers & unemployed are calling for a mass show of solidarity for those taking strike action and to generalise the strike on June 30th.

“our time is coming again”

Sheila Cohen reviews New Trade Union Activism: Class Consciousness or Social Identity? Sian Moore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Yet another pricey, “academic” book – but one with an interesting message. In New Trade Union Activism Sian Moore, who teaches trade unionists at London Metropolitan University’s Working Lives Research Institute, examines the increasing – and, to some of us, questionable – phenomenon of new forms of worker representation. By contrast to the staunch shop steward of the past, who simply took on whatever problems the daily toll of workplace exploitation threw up, the last ten years or so have seen the growth of specific “reps” for apparently every conceivable contingency – learning reps, equality reps, environmental reps, etc., etc.

quarterly aggregate meeting: saturday 11th june

On Saturday 11th June, The Commune will hold our next quarterly aggregate meeting.  The meeting is open to all members and friends of the group who’re interested in organising with us, so if you’re interested in attending, drop us a line at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com.  The aggregate will be held at a central London location between 12 noon and 5pm.

At our last aggregate, the discussion allowed us to share and clarify our views on anti-cuts work, its current shortcomings, and how we might be able to do better.  This time we will be focussing on improving our organisation and paper.  We will be discussing the purpose of the paper, and a proposal to vastly increase its print run and free distribution.  Our decision will be based on a general consideration of how we see our role as communists, and the function of The Commune as an organisation.

may 2011 issue of the commune

Issue 22 of The Commune is now available. It features articles on the aftermath of 26th March, the coming public sector strikes, the military intervention in Libya and much more.


Click the picture above to see PDF, or see below for list of articles as they are uploaded. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing a printed copy, or in distributing The Commune.

30th june: the next step – editorial of The Commune

‘no to tesco’: the first funky riot in bristol – Oleg Resin reports on the 21^st April ‘riot’ in Bristol

diverse, colourful, joyful, but angry! – Alice Robson writes on her experience teaching, and campaigning in defence of, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

long live the free hetherington! – Liam T. of Scottish Socialist Youth reports on a stunning success for occupiers at Glasgow Uni

how can we beat austerity? – strikes and other action must be controlled by workers themselves, argues Tom Denning

disempowerment in front of the black bloc – Ellie Schling was concerned by the behaviour of the Black Bloc at the 26^th March TUC demo

military intervention in libya: a debate – an online debate between Commune members about our attitude to the rebels and the ‘no-fly-zone’ in Libya, from late March

from social rebellion to tribal civil war- Mark Ellingsen analyses the composition and aims of the Libyan rebel movements

the NHS plays but a part in the health of the nation – East London GP Jonathon Tomlinson looks at the government’s attacks on the health care and the ever-increasing pressures on the NHS

from recession to (clinical) depression – Adam Ford writes on the social causes of depression

“our time is coming again” – Sheila Cohen reviews New Trade Union Activism: Class Consciousness or Social Identity? Sian Moore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

taking a step forward – David Broder explains our plans to increase our voice and the help we need from our supporters

disempowerment in front of the black bloc

Ellie Schling is a member of the Hackney Housing Group. Hackney residents self-organise in Hackney Housing Group to give and receive support on housing problems and campaign for better housing. The group is part of London Coalition Against Poverty, a coalition of groups which are based on the idea that through solidarity and direct action, ordinary people have the power to change our own lives.

I was marching with London Coalition Against Poverty (LCAP) on the March for the Alternative on Saturday 26^th March when the black bloc came down Piccadilly. I, along with the people I was marching with supported the actions taken against the banks and the Ritz. I wanted to write down my experiences to express what it was like to be on the other side of the block. I am not writing to condemn violence or property damage, but I hope that this could help those involved reflect on how the black bloc related to the other marchers that day.