DJP
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I don’t follow developments in the anarchist milieu but what, DJP, is the split in the Spanish CNT? Looks as if the UK IWW will have joined the less dogmatically anarchist faction? But why join either?
I know that there has been two CNT’s in Spain for a few years, but hadn’t previously really known the ins and outs of it. (The last major split was around the time of the demise of Francoism and that led to the formation of the Spanish CGT). The present split seems to be about the unilateral reforming of the IWA (or IAT in Spanish). So there’s now a CNT and a CNT-IAT.
I starting reading this interview with a CNT general secretary but haven’t got to the bottom of it yet:
https://libcom.org/blog/beyond-iwa-interview-cnt%E2%80%99s-international-secretary-04012017Surely our policy is to join the union that is best likely to support our working “rights”, support other members of the working class in their on going struggles and which increases our pay.
And in some cases (though perhaps Spain is the only country where this could actually be the case) this could involve joining an explicitly anarcho-syndicalist union. I don’t think you have to be a fully committed anarchist to join the CNT or Spanish CGT, they don’t filter membership like that, just a wage worker.
The outcome of Pieter Lawrence’s campaign was this compromise resolution carried by Conference in 1991:
“That this Conference recognises that rules and regulations, and democratic procedures for making and changing them and for deciding if they have been infringed, will exist in socialist society. Whereas a ruling class depends on the maintenance of laws to ensure control of class society, a classless society obtains social cohesion through its socialisation process without resorting to a coercive machinery. However, in view of the fact that in socialist theory the word “law” means a social rule made and enforced by the state, and in view of the fact that the coercive machinery that is the state will be abolished in socialist society, this Conference decides that it is inappropriate to talk about laws, law courts, a police force and prisons existing in a socialist society.”
Are any of the documents relating to this conference available online? I’d be particularly interested in reading Peiter’s motion and any responces to it.
It’s in process, all five volumes are written, but as Sutherland was the most important of the clearances we decided to put this one out first.
Even those manufacturing and retail capitalists who backed Brexit are turning on Johnson for blaming business for relying on low wage immigrant labour and telling them to pay their workers more instead.
I wonder how much of a switch around we will see, with Labour becoming the “party of business”
The financiers who funded the Brexit referendum campaign are not saying anything.
But are they getting what they wanted?
On the question of wages and migration I think this article by Critisticuffs is always a good one to share:
https://critisticuffs.org/texts/immigrants-take-our-jobsPossibly of interest:
Episode 24: Combating Tankie Denialism: Specialist in Soviet History Rebuts Grover Furr
Everything else aside, you do know the UK government is not going to do vaccine passports after all?
There was a lengthy article featuring interviews with founding figures of Occupy in this weekend’s FT. Worth a look.
https://www.ft.com/content/761f5219-f35e-43e6-88a2-4634f25fd1a9
From the article:
Micah White left Adbusters in 2013 and declared Occupy a “constructive failure”. In his book, he argues that mass protests are no longer an effective tool for bringing about change. Speaking to me via video call, White now believes that Occupy should have made a plan to leave and come back, rather than trying to endure both New York’s winter and its police. “The occupiers were delusional,” he says. “They were just like living in a fantasy land. The encampment model doesn’t actually manifest sovereignty over the government, even if it does manifest a better form of democracy temporarily. It was a good experiment, but it was a dead end.”
A more accurate article about what CRT is and is not.
https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752good article.
No, I don’t think it is. It’s just carelessly recycling right-wing tropes about the Frankfurt school (what they used to attack as “cultural Marxism). And if they make a hash of that I’m presuming they’re making a has of the rest.
A better article on why race essentialism is no good for socialism is the recent Anarchist Communist Group pamphlet on “identity politics”, or Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book The Lies that Bind. A version of the book as a series of audio lectures is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds
This Youtube channel has some interesting stuff about identity and activist morality:
Critical Race Theory doesn’t really have much to do with Adorno and Horkheimer either, or even Habermas. I guess the name sounds similar to “Critical Theory”, but CRT is its own thing, coming from the academic field of law.
Critical Theory isn’t “postmodernism” either, Habermas was critical of Foucault and Derrida.
Adorno’s writings on culture and music are worth reading if you like that kind of thing, but I agree his style isn’t the easiest to read.
Get an account on Twitter then write something, then end it with #BBCTricky
The programme was interesting thanks for sharing
In case you don’t know, sometimes content that has disappeared from the web can be found by typing the URL into the Waybackmachine at Archive.org
The Conservatives got a 23% increase this year. The UKIP / Brexit party vote has completely disappeared and probably gone to them. Quite a few factors playing in their favour I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartlepool_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s
