iranian regime goes on the offensive against activists

On Tuesday 24th hundreds of Iranian students at the Polytechnic University (Amirkabir) rallied for the second day in a row in protest at the burial on the campus of the remains of five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) left from the 1980-88 war with Iraq. At the demonstration students chanted anti-government slogans as they were attacked by the plain-clothes agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and members of the paramilitary Bassij students group dispatched from other Tehran school to help quell the protests, with slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and “We don’t want a fascist regime”.

Twenty-five students were arrested and transferred in police vans to unknown locations despite attempts by their classmates to get them released. This followed ten arrests of student activists in the last two weeks at the orders of the regime’s Ministry of Information. Four of the ten students, all of whom have been denied contact with lawyers or their families, are rumoured to be subject to psychological and physical torture. As this website reports in grim detail, these arrests are just the tip of the iceberg: already in 2009 many dozens of people have been hanged, stoned, lashed or jailed for standing up for the rights of workers, students and national minorities.

But at the same time as repression there are signs of hope, for example the powerful independent workers’ union which arose from last year’s 5000-strong strike at Haft Tapeh sugar and whose leading members are today being persecuted by the regime’s courts. For more information on how we can build solidarity with such movements, see the Hands Off the People of Iran site at www.hopoi.org.

protest by bmw/mini workers at cowley

report and photos by David Broder

A picket of the BMW-owned Mini factory in Cowley, near Oxford, was called for six o’clock this morning in response to last week’s sudden laying-off of 850 agency staff. The workers were informed that they had lost their jobs just one hour before the end of their last shift – provoking outrage at both management and the UNITE union, who colluded in keeping the affair a secret for the last three weeks. This sleight of hand was a blatant effort to stop workers effectively reacting to their redundancy, for example by occupying the plant as some workers suggested.

Today’s protest received a small degree of media coverage, after the widespread circulation last week of a video of workers confronting the union officials who had sold them down the river, such as site convenor Bernard Moss who told the Oxford Mail : “The problem we had was that we were under clear instruction we could not give out any information until the company said so. That caused a lot of concern from the workforce over the last couple of weeks. Although we are a trade union, we are employed by the company. If they give out an instruction, it would be a brave person to defy that. These days not many people would support a shop steward if he was sacked.” Clearly Moss has none too great an idea of the word ‘solidarity’ or the actual purpose of a trade union.

philosophy and revolution

intro by Chris Kane

One of the most common forms of sectarian socialism today is the myriad of Trotskyist organisations based on the model of undemocratic centralism.   They claim the origin of their ideas not so much in Marx but Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.  Trotsky came to be identified as one of the foremost opponents of Stalinism, but as opposed to bringing about a recomposition of the communist movement, Trotskyism compounded the crisis of Marxism. The legacy of Trotsky today is one of constant fragmentation and sectarian vanguardism, whose adherents often cut themselves off from practical service to the labour movement by their antics. How did this come about?  The following critical analysis of Trotsky is by Raya Dunayevskaya, the American Marxist who originated in Ukraine.   In 1937 she moved to Mexico to work with Trotsky, serving as his Russian language secretary.  Her closeness to Trotsky did not prevent her questioning his ideas – she later wrote: “Out of the Spanish Civil War there emerged a new kind of revolutionary who posed questions, not against Stalinism, but against Trotskyism, indeed against all established Marxists”.   After the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact she broke from Trotsky over his continued belief Stalin’s USSR was a ‘workers state’ and developed a theory of state-capitalism.  Later she developed a Marxist Humanist current in the USA, supported by Harry McShane in Scotland.  One of her most important books was Philosophy and Revolution, published in 1973 which contains a powerful critique of Leon Trotsky as a theoretician – this is republished below.

the nouveau parti anticapitaliste’s take on the crisis

On the weekend of 7th-8th February a new far-left party was formed in France, as 700 delegates representing 9,100 members held the first congress of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste. It was created at the instigation of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and its semi-autonomous youth wing Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires; the ex-Lutte Ouvrière minority faction l’Étincelle; a few other small groups, and thousands of previously unaffiliated individuals, many of them partisans of the anti-capitalist movements of the last decade. The moves coincide with the 29th January national strike day, and ongoing general strikes in the French-owned islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

The new party initiative, coming off the back of the LCR’s 1.5 million votes in the 2007 presidential race, has roused significant interest in the French media, and its election candidate Olivier Besancenot has become somewhat of a celebrity. It might be said that the NPA is the revolutionary group in Europe with the strongest hearing, repeatedly winning double-digit support in the polls, and its increased size, relative internal democracy and ‘openness’ as well as its radicalism and uncompromising hostility towards the idea of coalition government with the Parti Socialiste are to be welcomed.

But this rapid growth and the thrusting of one leading figure into the media spotlight creates significant political concerns as well as the positives of increased publicity. The LCR and its sister organisations around the world only a few years ago advocated ‘broad parties’ refusing to dilineate between reform and revolution, in a few cases disastrously supporting social-democrat governments who sold out their supporters. With Besancenot’s rhetoric about his heroes – from Che Guevara to Leon Trotsky – the mix of state-interventionist ideas and talk of workers’ self-management, and a largely politically ‘new’ membership,  the precise character of the NPA is all to play for, and here we publish the translation of an interesting NPA article responding to critiques by the right-wing weekly Challenges, which highlights some of these contradictions.

defend joseph stalin!

Frequent readers of The Commune may be surprised to read the above headline.  In fact, we have not decided to abandon reappraising the communist project for a merger with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).   But we do support workers victimised for organising at work, an increasingly common phenomenon nowadays.

Joseph Stalin Bermudez, branch chair of SOAS Unison is battling to keep his job. Stalin a key activist in the justice for cleaners campaign (see more information, including videos of Joseph speaking here) has been suspended and has his disciplinary hearing is on Tuesday.

A mass meeting of SOAS Unison has called for a lobby of the hearing and is calling on trade unionists to offer support. We want to get as many trade union banners and delegations as possible to this event.

Don’t let SOAS management victimise key activists!

9.30am, Tuesday 24 February, SOAS main building, Thornhaugh St, Russel Square

texts for 2nd march reading group

The next of our reading groups on ‘communism from below’ takes place from 6:30pm on Monday 2nd March. The subject of the discussion is ‘the roots of left fragmentation and the sectarianisation of history’ and we will be focussing on the questions:

– How can we overcome some groups’ ideas that they represent the “authentic” historical continuity of the communist movement?
– Why is the left so divided by the legacy of the Russian revolution?
– To what extent should we drop the ‘baggage of history’ in deciding our politics today? Is it true that old differences and old disputes don’t matter any more?

The recommended reading is
– False historical paradigms: a short piece by Chris Ford looking at how many left groups perceive themselves as part of an ‘order of succession’ going back to the 1916-21 revolutionary wave and failing to see contradictions in their heroes’ thought.
– Michael S Fox’s Ante Ciliga, Trotsky and State Capitalism, looking at the Croatian communist Ciliga’s critique of the Trotskyist movement in terms of its unwillingness to tackle the question of bureaucratisation head on and sectarianism towards other anti-Stalinist forces.
– Maurice Brinton’s The Malaise on the Left looks at the culture of leftist circles and their narrow focus on only certain areas of human experience and repression in society.

All are welcome to come and take part in the discussion – we aim to have open and undogmatic debates rather than training anyone in some ‘party line’. For details of the central London venue, printed copies of the texts or more information, don’t hesitate to email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com

communists and elections

The following article appeared in The Socialist, official organ of the Socialist Labour Party, No.18,  May 6, 1920. The SLP was founded by Scots/Irish revolutionary James Connolly, and was influenced by the American Marxist Daniel De Leon. The SLP however was never as doctrinaire as the American SLP and they developed pioneering ideas of ‘communism from below’ and a strong critique of state-socialism that anticipated many of the problems of the 20th century and today. The following article is a contribution to the discussion on communist attitudes to elections and participation in institutions such as local authorities. The issues addressed in this revolutionary period are very much alive today, not least of all the familiar picture of rotten Labour councillors. This article also helps inform our own discussions on these issues in the 21st century.

Chris Kane

workplace organising conference 22nd march

The London Shop Stewards Network invites all workers, reps and activists to what we believe will be an interesting, relevant and useful event co-run with members of the Campaign Against Immigration Controls (CAIC), N&E London Solidarity Federation (SolFed) and the RMT Metronet workplace strike committee.

The conference will be made up of 3 sessions:

Rank & file organising ~ from workplace organising, setting up strike committees and running a successful dispute – Metronet RMT Reps

Migrant workers in struggle ~ resisting NI checks in the workplace – CAIC

Developing class consciousness & resistance in the workplace – SolFed

Sunday 22nd March – 10am to 3pm

Somerstown Community Centre

150 Ossulston Street London NW1 1EE

(5mins walk from the British Library Euston/Kings X)

like a winter with a thousand decembers

A piece by the Athens-based TPTG/Blaumachen taking a detailed look at the worker and youth protests which swept across Greece in December 2008.

Reflections on the recent unrest in Greece: “The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements”…

riots in greece – the “swan song” of autonomism?

This discussion article by Dan Jakopovich puts forward a controversial take on the riots in Greece

On the wings of Seattle, the Zapatista rebellion in the Mexican state of Chiapas and other heights of the so-called “anti-globalisation” (or, more precisely, “alter-globalisation”) movement, by virtue of the failure of the bureaucratic path to socialism, the end of the last century and the beginning of the 21st century witnessed a growth in the popularity of “autonomism”, a more or less crystallised ideology according to which the successful struggle against capitalism presupposes turning one’s back on existing political institutions – the state, parties and elections, as if they will disappear if we ignore them.

Although many of those who participated in the Greek protests and occupations would not identify with this autonomist or anarchist strategy, in the Greek events it is nonetheless possible to clearly observe the autonomist assumptions in the power of “direct action”, independently from the existing balance of political and class forces, independently from the strength of the left-wing parties and independently from their election results.

In other words, many in Greece and the world nurtured the hope that it was possible not only to overthrow the Greek centre-right government, but also to tear down capitalism, although the anti-capitalist Greek parties – the semi-Stalinist Communist Party of Greece and the socialist coalition SYRIZA, despite very significant recent electoral advances – are far too weak to assume governmental power. But the autonomists do not want that since – despite the historical experience – they believe that there is a possibility of circumventing the existing political institutions and electoral strategy in developed multi-party systems. These are well-intentioned illusions. Even on Iceland, where the financial crisis and protests recently led to the downfall of the neo-con government, the power was taken over by the Social Democratic Party and the eco-socialist Left-Green Movement party.

new pamphlet on chávez’s venezuela

We are pleased to announce the publication of our seventh pamphlet, “The revolution delayed: a decade of Hugo Chávez”.

The pamphlet features the translation of an interview conducted with El Libertario in Caracas by the French anarchist ‘Charles Reeve’, alongside an interview with Loren Goldner, author of Ubu saved from drowning: worker insurgency and statist containment in Spain and Portugal. These documents are prefaced by a chronology of recent developments in Venezuela. Click the image below to read it online.

You can order the pamphlet for £1 + postage by writing to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com or The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.

report on oil refinery strikes meeting

by David Broder

On the evening of 13th February the Socialist Party and Respect Renewal held a joint meeting in London on the recent wildcat strikes by construction workers across Britain. Apparently the only significant meeting on the strikes taking place in the capital, the meeting was led off by Lindsey Oil Refinery strike committee member Keith Gibson (SP) and the left candidate for general secretary of the Amicus section of Unite, Jerry Hicks (RR). The meeting was a mix of interesting and informed commentary and sectarian jibes.

Speaking to a sixty-strong audience, Keith Gibson gave an interesting talk on the background to the dispute and how workers had argued that the strike was not a national or race issue, but one of class. The employer had sought to divide the workforce by keeping the Italian migrant workers on barges away from their local counterparts, and the media had played up the significance of nationalist elements, but he had been able to appeal to internationalist sentiment. When some people went to intimidate the Italian workers in the barges, strikers had broken up their demonstrations, while the BNP were chased off picket lines upon their arrival.

demo in the city against unfair dismissal of cleaners

On Thursday 12th twenty people demonstrated outside the Willis insurance broker’s building in the City of London. Cleaners employed by Mitie, unfairly dismissed after protesting against being forced to work full time hours at night, were supported by cleaners from Schroders bank at the ‘unofficial’ demonstration.

Mitie cleaners, including Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Portuguese workers, were sacked from various workplaces when they objected to this change in their conditions, which happened with no consultation. At the protest a manager claimed that the cleaners “ought to have gone through the proper channels and spoken with human resources” – and yet one office worker, expressing his sympathy, told us that “Willis don’t allow us unions either”.

In a lively protest we chanted “Reinstate the cleaners” and “Queremos justicia ahora!”. Five City of London police briefly came to the protest, without incident. When they asked Roberto who was in charge of the demo, he replied “everyone!”. Unfortunately, “everyone” did not include the Unite union, who failed to organise the slightest support for their members in dispute.

The fight against victimisation continues – contact Edwin Pazmino on 07931464890, Juan Carlos Piedra on 07908099375, or williscleaners4justice@live.co.uk

video on cleaners’ dispute at npl/amey

In December 2006 the government’s National Physical Laboratory, contracted out its cleaning to Amey, a multimillion pound services provider. When they took over the contract there were 36, unionised Latin American cleaners earning £7 an hour. After an immigration raid and multiple sackings there are now 15, many of whom are on temporary contracts and only earning the minimum wage.

Julio and Pedro were sacked for trying to tell the other staff what was going on.

Contact: contact@caic.org.uk for more information and to get involved with the campaign for reinstatement.