a response to jackie lucas

Stuart King of the Permanent Revolution group and a member of the new Anti-Capitalist Initiative has written a reply to a previous article.

The ACI and wary libertarians

Jackie Lucas’ article on the Anticapitalist Initiative (ACI) in the June issue of the Commune appears to take a positive, if wary, attitude towards the ACI. Perhaps I can tackle some of these suspicions.

Jackie quotes from an article in Permanent Revolution 22 on the launch of the ACI where we talk about why young anticapitalist activists are not joining the Trotskyists or organised far left but rather are attracted to a vague libertarian and even anarchist politics. Jackie quickly declares “This in itself should alert libertarian leftists to what they are letting themselves in for if they decide to join this project which has not renounced its political origins or traditions.”

new anti-capitalist initiative launched

A ‘comrades reunited’ front or something else? Libertarian communist Jackie Lucas poses the question, is this as home for libertarian leftists?

Comrades reunited?

The 28th April launch meeting in London of the ‘new’ anti-capitalist project was surreal. The meeting had been called by Simon Hardy, prior to his resignation from Workers Power, where he had been the editor of the group’s monthly paper, who with others had resigned from the Trotskyist group on 14th April, only to be back in the same room with them discussing the future.

which way forward for the revolutionary left?

Guest post by Chris Strafford on how communists should relate to mass movements, and his experience of the CPGB

The capitalist crisis has opened up a new period and instigated the intensification of class warfare on every continent. Movements such as Occupy, the uprisings in the Middle East, the student movement in Quebec and the popular protests in the Russian Federation represent an acceleration of the class struggle. After listening to two electricians speak in Manchester about their struggle against BESNA I was struck by how these movements have transcended national boundaries and how the language of Occupy and Los Indignados in Spain have embedded themselves in a layer of working class activists. This is also evident in the affinity many people have with the 99% slogans adopted by Occupy.