for workers' power from below
We have produced a leaflet on the need for workers’ management and explaining some of our basic political positions.
A pdf file of the 4-page A5 leaflet is below – since it’s landscape you’ll have to print it off, or failing that tilt your head side-on.
why we need workers’ management
We have also produced a pdf file of a leaflet we had earlier produced, the cost of living: it’s time to act
by Jack Staunton
A demonstration has been called for 4pm on Friday 10th October at the Bank of England (Threadneedle St, London EC2, Bank tube) with the slogan “We won’t bail out the bankers”.
Chris Bambery writes in Socialist Worker that “we need to take to the streets to demand, “No bail out for the bankers – we will not pay for their crisis!” From small acts of resistance we can craft a political force that can knock back those running this destructive system.”
Of course, working-class action amidst the financial crisis should not be some instrument for building a party, but rather action which actually helps us weather the storm of the economic situation. While demonstrations mocking bankers like Friday’s may seem attractive, the most pressing matter is not to make shallow propaganda arguing ‘look: capitalism is crumbling’ as if power is about to fall into our lap, but rather for the workers’ movement to organise to defend ourselves from the worst concrete effects of the current economic climate (which is not limited to side-effects of the financial slump). Unemployment and underemployment, casual work with no stability (as experienced by many of the UK’s 750,000 call centre workers) and huge increases in utilities bills are all set to become even more aggravated.
We have produced a leaflet ‘the cost of living: it’s time to act’ about reshaping the workers’ movement for modern realities – the text is below. Continue reading “‘march on the city’”
The Commune has published many reports from Bolivia, mostly translations of articles by the trade union news website Econoticias. We have also established contact with Socialismo o Barbarie, a group who have comrades in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Paraguay as well as Bolivia, and so are pleased to publish this translation of a recent SoB report on the social crisis there.
Bolivia on the brink of partition
By José Luis Rojo and Martín Camacho
From Socialismo o Barbarie in La Paz, 17th September
“The fascists shall not pass: the people will crush them”.
La Paz – Once again, events are moving rapidly in Bolivia. After two years of relative “calm” in the class struggle (2006-2007) in recent months the social and political convulsions traversing the country have again become red-hot.
Continue reading “between secession, revolution and suicidal deals”
We have added a new section to the website – videos– in order to advertise films portraying working-class struggles and other videos which may be of interest to our readers.
Currently the ‘videos’ section features links to three films relevant to our discussion series on class struggle in the 1970s, as well as the press conference held by Iranian socialist student activists on September 29th 2008; footage of the massacre of Bolivian peasants in Pando; and a debate with the Communist Party of Great Britain on the lessons of France’s May-June 1968 general strike.
Tom D has written this report of our ‘uncaptive minds‘ forum on ‘the debates on workers’ control’ held on Monday 29th September.
What does it mean for workers to control the institutions that determine the content of their lives? What does it mean for us to control organisations of struggle, factories, workplaces, production, consumption – and, ultimately, all society? This question matters, because it is posed ever more intensely, the higher the pitch of the class struggle, until it becomes the final question of politics. The answer is the difference between victory and defeat, communism and bureaucracy. Continue reading “tom d’s report of workers’ control meeting”
We have added some new articles to the ‘ideas‘ section of the website. Foreword by Chris Kane
The national question remains of particular concern to communists and socialists in the 21st century. One of the principle sources on the national question remains the writings of the Russian communist Lenin. Here is a critical examination of Lenin’s theory of the national question by the Ukrainian Marxist Andrij Karpenko, from the Ukrainian socialist journal META. We have also reproduced a pamphlet by the theorist of the then newly formed and at that time genuine Communist Party of Great Britain, William Paul, on the Irish question and its relationship to the world revolution.
Indeed, since the launching of The Commune many on the traditional left have been searching for ways to categorise us: we have been branded ‘anti-Bolsheviks’ by the Trotskyists and ‘Leninists’ by the anarchists. We recognise Lenin, with other communists of his generation, as an vitally important revolutionary of the 20th century. As critical Marxists, we neither demonise Lenin nor raise him to the figure of a Pope. On The Commune we have published a number of writers who have critically engaged with Lenin’s ideas such as Paul Cardan (Castoriadis). Here we reproduce a defence of Lenin against Cardan by Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the USA. Dunayevskaya was critical of Lenin, in particular his views on the leading role of the vanguard Party, but she was equally critical of anti-Leninists. The Scottish Marxist-Humanist edited by Harry McShane first published this article.
The next of our ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums on class struggle in the 1970s takes place from 6:30pm on Monday 13th October.
Anton Moctonian will be leading off a discussion on ‘new methods of organising: a critical comparison of the unions’.
The venue is in central London: email uncaptiveminds@googlemail.com for further details.
Anton has suggested that people attending the meeting may be interested in reading this document on shop steward organisation during the era.
For a report on the meeting on the ‘upsurge 1968-74’ click here; click here for a report on the meeting on the 1970 leeds clothing workers’ strike; and click here for Andrew Fisher’s report on the meeting on workers’ control and management.
A meeting to look back over the work and ideas of Cyril Smith, who died on 8 May this year, will be held on THURSDAY 13 NOVEMBER at 7.0 pm, at THE CALTHORPE ARMS, GRAYS INN ROAD, LONDON. (Five minutes’ walk from Holborn, Kings Cross or Chancery Lane underground stations.)
The meeting will be a discussion about “WILLIAM BLAKE, KARL MARX AND CYRIL SMITH”, introduced by David Gorman, and held in the open style of the Individuals and Society seminar at Birkbeck college that Cyril helped to establish.
People may wish to read in preparation: Karl Marx and the Future of the Human, by Cyril Smith, chapters 10 (Marx and Human Self Creation) and 11 (Marx and the Fourfold Vision of William Blake). Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law, by E.P. Thompson, is also relevant.
All who are interested are welcome. Please forward to others.
We have booked the function room at the Calthorpe Arms, so that after the discussion we can together raise a glass to Cyril’s memory in comfortable surroundings. Questions re arrangements or whatever to Simon on smpirani@hotmail.com or 020 8333 2152.
On Monday 29th September there was a press conference at the University of London Union with Iranian activists Behrooz Karimizadeh and Kaveh Abbasian. The pair were among the founding members of Freedom and Equality Seeking Students, an organisation which is opposed to war and sanctions as well as the Islamist régime and which last autumn played a central role in student protests against President Ahmedinejad. Following these demonstrations the régime cracked down on the student movement, arresting dozens of activists – Behrooz Karimizadeh was subjected to torture. Ted Crawford has kindly given us permission to reproduce his report on Monday’s press conference: Continue reading “press conference with behrooz karimizadeh and kaveh abbasian”
Andrew Fisher from the Left Economics Advisory Panel spoke at our ‘uncaptive minds’ forum on ‘The Debates on Workers’ Control’ last night, and has posted the following report on the LEAP website:
Last night, I spoke at a discussion forum organised by the Commune entitled ‘The Debates on Workers’ Control’. The debate is part of a series of discussion forums on class struggles in the 1970s.
The debate was wide-ranging, considering different models of workers’ control – from participation on boards to co-operative control under nationalisation, the role and limitations of trade unions, and the old chestnut of reformism vs. revolution. Around 20 people attended the debate.
You can download a copy of the presentation I gave, and please give any feedback in the comments section. It is a much extended version of the preface to the new LEAP pamphlet, Building the new Common Sense – social ownership for the 21st century.
You can buy Building the new common sense online for just £3 or by sending a cheque payable to ‘Another World is Possible’ to LEAP, PO Box 2378, London, E5 9QU.
We publish below extracts from the Manifesto of the Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). This current of opposition in the RKP (b) was led by Gavril Ilyich Myasnikov, a Russian metalworker from the Urals, who was a veteran Bolshevik activist who participated in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. Myasnikov was a Left Communist in 1918, opposed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He was dissatisfied with elements of Russian ommunist Party policy and increasing bureaucratisation but had disagreed with the Workers Opposition in 1920-21 in their call for unions to manage the economy. Instead, in a 1921 manifesto, Myasnikov called for “producers’ soviets” to administer industry and for freedom of the press for all workers. Leaders of the Workers’ Opposition Alexander Shlyapnikov and Sergei Medvedev feared that Myasnikov’s proposals would give too much power to peasants. Despite their disagreements, however, they supported Myasnikov’s right to voice criticisms of Party policy. Along with former members of the Workers’ Opposition, Myasnikov signed the “Letter of the Twenty-Two” to the Comintern in 1922, protesting the Russian Communist Party leaders’ suppression of dissent. Continue reading “manifesto of the workers’ group of the russian communist party”
Metronet management is currently pursuing a vicious disciplinary process against RMT Health & Safety/Union Rep Andy Littlechild. Continue reading “stitch-up of rmt rep on metronet”
by David Broder
Sunday 28th September saw the “Al Quds day demo”, an Islamist demonstration against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem. The protests have taken place annually since a 1979 decree by Iranian Islamist cleric Ayatollah Khomeini during that country’s counter-revolution.
Counter demonstrations were organised not only by leftist critics of the Iranian regime (most prominently the Worker Communist Party of Iran) but also a separate protest which included Iranian monarchists and right-wing liberals; supporters of the Israeli government; and British fascists attacking the Al Quds demo not for its participants’ politics but out of racism. Continue reading “photo-report of al quds day demonstration”
We have produced a pamphlet on the subject of workers’ control and management, counterposing working-class power exercised from below to nationalisations by the bourgeois state.
The pamphlet, costing £1, includes the following articles:
Review of the LEAP pamphlet on social ownership for the 21st century
The struggle for self-management (by Solidarity)
An exchange between Solidarity and the Institute for Workers’ Control
The ambiguities of workers’ control (by Solidarity)
The Harrogate debates: the 1977 debate between the then secretary of state for energy Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield from the NUM on workers’ control. Includes summaries of contributions from the floor.
As indicated above, we have posted some of the contents on this website already, but we have not yet uploaded the Harrogate debates piece, which represents about half the pamphlet’s length.
If you would like a copy of the 26 page pamphlet, email uncaptiveminds@googlemail.com or write to us at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.
