starting all over from scratch? a plea for “radical reform” of our own movement

An essay by Sheila Cohen. It is offered as a response to the question set by the Daniel Singer Foundation: “Given the devastating effects of the present crisis on working people, what proposals for radical reform can be raised which are both practical to the vast majority while moving us towards the goal of socialism?”

when workers mobilise for 'reforms', these are often just the tip of the iceberg

The current global crisis of capitalism makes the task set by the Daniel Singer Millenium Prize Foundation look relatively straightforward. Immediate proposals for radical reform would clearly include the demand that Western governments everywhere take over the banks and use the resulting trillions to fund health care, re-establish humane and affordable housing, rebuild education at every level, provide humane child- and elder-care, not to mention ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rescuing the devastation to humanity represented in Haiti, Somalia, and other disasters of the “developing” world. Such proposals would certainly be radical, relevant to the vast majority of the human race and, if granted, enough of a blow to global capital to knock it off its pedestal more conclusively than Saddam Hussein.

where next for network x?

Daniel Harvey reports on the activist gathering in Manchester

Some members of The Commune joined a gathering of about 300 activists, anarchists and anti-capitalists at Manchester Metropolitan University to discuss ways forward in the struggle against austerity and cuts. Understandably, there was much enthusiasm for making connections with allied groups from around the country, finding ways of offering practical assistance, as well as moral support.

A large part of the gathering was taken up with discussions about what people thought Network X should be in terms of its organisation and aims. The facilitators gave an initial political basis in the form of the People’s Global Action hallmarks’. These rejected all forms of discrimination based on patriarchy and racism, but seemed to forget about class and disability (both of which became points of contention later on) as well as capitalism, imperialism and ‘feudalism’.

issue 20 of the commune

The January issue of The Commune is now available. Click the image below to see PDF or use the list of individual articles as they are posted online.

Contact us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you would like to buy a printed copy (£1 + 50p postage) or set up a subscription. (£12 a year UK/£16 EU/£20 international.

News

the truth about julian assange – Adam Ford writes on the WikiLeaks saga

tommy sheridan’s celebrity socialism – Allan Armstrong on the politics behind the perjury trial

Workplace

unite cans heinz strike – Alfred Stevens on the end of the Wigan Heinz dispute (updated/abridged in PDF)

PM: ‘striking never achieves anything’ – Sharon Borthwick didn’t think much of David Cameron’s advice to striking workers

‘no cuts?’ ‘no chance!’ – David Huckerby on Sheffield Homes’ cuts plans

an image of the big society? – ‘Lady Stardust’ looks at the cooperatively-run Woodberry Down Community Library

the global commune – 29th January Edinburgh meeting on trade unionism

Student movement

education: their vote isn’t the end of our struggle – editorial of The Commune

student occupations pamphlet: a call for contributions

can student struggles engage with campus staff? – students’ and workers’ struggles at Bristol university

build the movement or build the party? – Sinead Rylance saw sectarianism at play in the KCL occupation

LSE occupation: 1968 and all that – Jack Staunton saw more hope in the college students’ protests than the occupation at his uni

mobilisation versus representation – Joe Thorne looks at the conflicting dynamics of the November-December student movement and the role of the left

hope against hope: a necessary betrayal – Nic Beuret looks at the aspirations of the student movement beyond ‘freezing the fees’

Organising

where next for network x? – Daniel Harvey reports on the activist gathering in Manchester

feminism, organisation and class struggle – a day of discussion and mutual exchange, London, 20th February

issue two of the educator

our platform

our meetings

International

from celtic tiger to death by a thousand cuts – Ronan McAoidh on the economic and political crisis engulfing Ireland

a french thatcher? the rise of nicolas sarkozy – Noé le Blanc reports on the record of the new right in France

from palace coup to revolution – Camille Boudjak reports on the mass revolt in Tunisia

revolution in tunisia… just the beginning

Camille Boudjak reflects on the revolutionary movement in Tunisia

Ben Ali, the dictator who once terrorised the Tunisian population, was forced to flee the country on the evening of Friday 14^th January. Chief of state for 23 years, a kleptocrat and dictator, he spent six hours on a plane first trying to reach the France of his friend and supporter Sarkozy, then Malta and finally being welcomed by the reactionary Saudi monarchy.

At the time of writing the Tunisian population have still not won anything as regards their aspiration for freedom, nor the working-class demands against poverty and unemployment which in late December sparked the insurrection in the impoverished Sidi Bouzid region. The army patrols the streets and the cops of the Ben Ali regime continue to spread terror. No-one knows the future: the international history of our class is rich in betrayed and lost revolutions, but already the revolution in Tunisia represents a historic event.

leaflet for network x gathering: movement beyond ‘actions’

Some members of The Commune will be going to the Network X gathering on Saturday and Sunday.  We have produced this leaflet to distribute.  We are currently discussing a formal proposal for the gathering, along the lines suggested in our leaflet.  You can download it as a printable PDF here.

The cuts we're facing are slightly different... so a different approach is needed

Movement beyond ‘actions’: what we have been, what we can become

As the UK moves into times of potential mass unrest, how does our movement find a way of connecting with the people around us? What is the best use of our political time, energy and experience in this new, and maybe very exciting phase? We all know that deep social change is going to take a mass movement, not just a bunch of activists – but how can we best be part of and agitate for such a movement?

revolutionary syndicalism in interwar europe, monday 29th

Following our successful series of talks on political organisation over the summer, where we looked at series of communist political organisations (Kamunist Kranti in India, Potere Operario in Italy and finally at Big Flame in England), The Commune is hosting a series of discussion forums on revolutionary syndicalism.

The second meeting of this series is: Monday, November 29, 7pm: Revolutionary Syndicalism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, the Interwar European Experience. Like the other meetings in the syndicalism series, Monday’s will be held in The Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8ND.

rimbaud and the paris commune

Sean Bonney was not impressed by a talk on French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the 1871 revolution in Paris

Last month, the Marx Memorial Library hosted a talk called “Rimbaud and the Paris Commune”, given by the latter-day “decadent” poet Sebastian Hayes. Hayes – whose qualification to talk about the revolutionary aspects of the poetic imagination didn’t amount to much more than having apparently hung out in Paris in 1968 – seemed to know little about Rimbaud, nothing about the Paris Commune and even less about Marx.

The most memorable part of the evening was his suggestion that Marx’s definitive account of the Commune, The Civil War in France was ‘not worth reading’ because it contains ‘too much detail’. It was also surprising to hear his claim that there had been no uprisings in France since 1968: presumably the riots in 2005, or indeed last month’s strikes – still going on while he was speaking – were not ‘poetic’ enough for him.

why are we still protesting this crap?

Bahar Mustafa writes on debates among feminists in Oxford over a lap dancing club

Oxford Brookes University sells itself as a modern, business-orientated institution which boasts a hefty contribution of £1 million every single day of the year to the UK economy.

As impressive as that may be to many people, some friends and I thought it odd that such a reputable institution, with its myriad of student organised societies, should be fiercely lacking in a space where gender inequality is highlighted and challenged. So earlier this year, an enthusiastic group of us of varying backgrounds, genders and sexualities, founded the first Feminist Society at Brookes; aka: OMFG! Organised Multicultural Feminist Group.

a strike made in hollywood

‘Feel-good’ hit movie Made in Dagenham didn’t make Sheila Cohen feel very good…

A film about a strike that really happened, a strike that brought a huge multinational to a standstill, a strike that was waged and led by women… What’s not to like? Only that Made In Dagenham fails to tell the true, and far more significant, story of the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike – a story of class rebellion against exploitation rather than of softly gender-focused togetherness.

For its first half hour, Made In Dagenham looks good. Apart from the stripping-off scenes in the sweaty factory, unanimously repudiated by strike survivors, the film more or less tells it like it was – i.e. that the sewing machinists were involved in a grading dispute. The emphasis is necessary, because, along with almost every account of the dispute over the last 40-odd years, the next two-thirds of the film stubbornly present it as a “strike for equal pay”.

Council housing, and the changing needs of capitalism.

Barry Biddulph explains the historical restructuring of council housing

The state provision of Council Housing has always been  bureaucratic, and top-down, based on the needs of capital.  The nature and scope of council housing has changed with the changing needs of capitalism.

Its heyday was the long post-war economic boom. Since then the structural crisis of British capitalism has led to social engineering by Conservative and Labour governments making council housing mainly accommodation for those stigmatised as the “undeserving poor.”In other words, working-class people who will not or do not conform to the requirements of the market economy and can function as a reserve army of labour when necessary.

more work, no pay

editorial of The Commune

On 7th November the ConDem coalition announced its plan to force unemployed people to work a 30-hour week of manual labour to ‘earn’ the £65 Jobseekers’ Allowance.

Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the Work Activity scheme will “make work pay”. Quite the opposite. It will make people work for free, slaves to the state.

Government rhetoric claims that people in work are having to support the “work-shy”, and that this tax is unfair. Yet the whole coalition cuts project means that working-class people will get less services for the tax money they have to pay to the state, which is of course as high as ever.

bar humbug: the new shape of work

Pete Wright went through the mill of precarious bar work

How does one go about describing the experience working at the Clapham Grand? Well I suppose it depends on who you ask. If you asked management they would tell it’s like being part of a giant family or a rainbow or something; which is somewhat disturbing when you consider that the floor manager changed a total of four times in the three months I worked there. A model family for the broken society I suppose.

Management would probably cite how everyone knows each other’s names (they don’t) and how they enjoy each other’s company so much they spend a certain premeasured but non-compulsory segment of their free time outside of work together as well. If however you were to ask a worker I’m sure their answer would be pretty short and along the lines of ‘it’s like working at most bars in London’.

what’s wrong with kansas? russia iran disco suck

Sharon Borthwick writes on the meaning of the success of right-wing ‘Tea Party’ candidates in the United States midterm elections

Shocking as it may be, the Tea Party movement has been a great success. This ‘grass roots’ conservative activism is not a new phenomenon and it would be interesting to look at its recent history.

Thomas Frank’s 2003, What’s the Matter with Kansas? proves a useful tool in that regard. Frank himself, grew up in Kansas and was a deeply conservative adolescent who hero-worshipped Ronald Reagan. He learnt from older men an anger that was “endless, implacable, spectacular”.

issue 19 of the commune

The November issue of The Commune is now available. Click the image below to see PDF or use the list of individual articles as they are posted online.

Contact us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you would like to buy a printed copy (£1 + 50p postage) or set up a subscription. (£12 a year UK/£16 EU/£20 international.

Public services cuts

more work no pay – an editorial on new plans to make the unemployed work for free

PFI disasters and council hot air – Dave Spencer on Coventry’s failed incinerator plan

assetco fiddle as london burns – Joe Thorne on developments in the London firefighters’ strike

no cuts, better services – Bob Goupillot on the anti-cuts demos in Edinburgh

cuts in jobs and services at sheffield council – a bulletin produced by The Commune for housing staff

the crumbling walls of council housing – David Huckerby explains the restructuring of council housing

International

what’s wrong with kansas – Sharon Borthwick looks at the USA’s Tea Party right-wing revival

crisis and resistance in spain – Millie Wild reports from Seville on the recent general strike

state repression in france’s pensions struggle – Nicolas Dessaux on state attacks on the social movement to defend pensions

stop the stoning of sakineh – report on the fight for the release of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman condemned to death by stoning for ‘adultery’

Workplace

bar humbug: the new shape of work – Pete Wright went through the mill of precarious bar work

precarious work and solidarity – Tawanda Nyabango reports on the Cleaners’ Defence Committee

revitalising NSSN – Keir Snow writes on a new syndicalist initiative

Education and students

first issue of The Educator

what resistance to education cuts – Mark Harrison attended the Education Activist Network conference

why are we still protesting this crap? – Bahar Mustafa writes on the Oxford feminist scene’s debates over a lap-dancing club

Reviews

rimbaud and the paris commune – Sean Bonney was not impressed by the Marx Memorial Library’s talk on Arthur Rimbaud

badiou, the helmsman and communism from below – Sharon Borthwick reviews The Communist Hypothesis

permanent revolution in the andes? – David Broder reviews Bolivia’s Radical Tradition

a strike made in hollywood – Sheila Cohen reviews Made in Dagenham

Our network

platform of the commune

upcoming events

pamphlets