Machete 408 is back serving you up with a new series of postings after a summer hiatus. A continuing state of joblessness and downgrading to a slower internet connection both put a bit of a damper on the political juices that went into the blog. But despite these, there’s a nice backlog of recently published pieces that I hope Machete 408 readers will check out. Below is a collage of recommended and recently published articles and commentaries.

Did anyone notice a coup happening somewhere? Writing on the recent coup in Honduras, Jose Antonio Gutierrez of Ireland’s Worker Solidarity Movement (WSM) as well as the Frente de estudiantes Libertarios (FeL) in Chile, provides analysis with “Coup in Honduras: The Return of Guerillas or the Tactics of Attrition?.” Also is a piece on the potential of the recent popular uprising in Iran in response to stolen elections. “The Iranian Election, A ‘Legacy of Martyred Flowers’” is by Farah, an Iranian whom is also a member of the WSM. Both pieces appear on the Anarkismo international anarchist news and publishing site and Farah’s is followed by a lively debate in the comments section.

Looking at a global trend is “Workers Creating Hope: Factory Occupations and Self-Management” by Shawn Hattingh from Monthly Review Zine, which gives a brief overview of the growing factory and workplace occupations around the globe. The piece concludes, “The actions of these workers [involved in occupations] are inspirational. It seems likely that more and more workers will begin adopting and adapting the idea of factory occupations as a viable way to save jobs and reclaim the dignity that bosses have tried to take away from them. Perhaps what we are also seeing through the occupations, takeovers, and self-management is a glimpse of what a post-capitalist world, created by the workers and the poor themselves, would look like.”

On the movement and political analysis tip is the Advance the Struggle blog, founded earlier this year and written by Bay Area writers influenced by various strains of Marxism. Of interest are several pieces debating the movement that surrounded the killing of Black, 22 year old Oakland resident, Oscar Grant at a BART station on New Years Day 2009. Included is three pieces. “Unfinished Acts” is an insurrectionary anarchist piece created in the format of a composite narrative play; “Justice for Oscar Grant: A Missed Opportunity?” is a solid piece with excellent critical analysis of both the role of the RCP and the non-profit dominated CAPE coalition that led much of the community response; and “Bring the Struggle, Advance the Ruckus” a response to “Missed Opportunity” by Oakland members of the revolutionary group Bring The Ruckus is also worthwhile as well. I won’t link the pieces individually, instead you should go to their blog and find them.

For all those in the labor movement disillusioned with the lack of passage of EFCA (suprise, suprise) is the article “Introducing the Employee Liberation Act” by Daniel Gross of the IWW. There is much to be critical about of the EFCA (See the Machete 408 piece on EFCA here), but what Gross provides us with is a total rethinking of what ails the labor movement and what changes in the legal arena might actually allow for advances by workers instead of card check recognition. Its a bit of a wish list, but what he proposes is a three pronged bill that would: 1) Make discrimination against organizing in the workplace on par with federal civil rights protections around race and gender discrimination. This would make worker rights a recognized civil right as it should; 2) End the second class, modern Jim Crow status of undocumented immigrants in workplace across the US; and 3) Eliminate legal barriers and restrictions on strikes, which would unleash worker’s most powerful weapons against the power of bosses: that of solidarity and the ability to bring profits to a halt.

On an uplifting note is an AK Press blog picture report on the 2nd Annual LA Southern California Anarchist Conference, with nice shots of the jewlery, cultural and publishing vendors, as well as some of the performers and presenters for the event.

Finally, on the anarchist political organization theory front we have the long awaited English translation of “Huerta Grande” by a good comrade at The Left Winger blog. The 1972 piece is considered a seminal theoretical text of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), which played a leading role in spawning the especifist current within the South American anarchist movement. Also be sure to read this “quick and dirty rought history piece” on the FAU for background and context.

As well, we have a recent translation of South American Anarchist philosopher Angel Cappelletti (1927-1995) posted on the AK Press Blog “Revolution by the Book.” Cappelletti was born in Argentina and spent the later half of his life in Venezuela, becoming a key intellectual figure in the libertarian left, authoring several works on philosophy, anarchism and Latin America. Supporters have recently created a Spanish language archive site of his work. And last but not least is another piece from Jose Antonio Gutierrez, who again offers us some worthwhile thoughts, but this time on strategy and the role of anarchist organization with his Considerations About the Anarchist Program. Here’s an excerpt:

The essence of the Platform is how to build an organisation that unites like-minded anarchists based on concrete proposals and tactics – that is, a “political organisation” as opposed to what is a purely ideological group. In this tradition, it is perfectly fair that we ask ourselves how many of our organisations, leaving aside any pretensions, have actually managed to reach the level of development of a political organisation. At present, the majority of these groupings are only propaganda groups. The principle difference between a political organisation and a propaganda group is not its number of militants nor its level of militancy, nor even the political insertion of its members. The principle difference is the simple answer to the question: what can we offer the people? While propaganda groups can not offer more than a political and ideological vision and, in the best cases, a few slogans, the revolutionary political organisation can offer a course of action; a programme; a tactical line; a strategy; short-, medium- and long-term objectives.

Over the Labor Day weekend Van Jones resigned his position as an special adviser on green jobs to the Obama administration amid a flurry of controversy around attacks by the usual suspects on the right raising a fit over his past associations with the left. Its hard to speculate whether it was his own decision to resign and leave the attacks behind or whether this brought from above by an administration hoping to polish its image (as well as engage in some political capitulation) while under attack from an aggressive right.

Either way, Jones seems to have been thrown under the political bus by the White House. As Rosa Celemente, former Green Party Vice President candidate, put it in a commentary piece, Jones was a “high-profile casualty of an administration that started at the center and continues to move to the right.”

Previously, Machete 408 had written about Jones in a commentary piece “Revolutionaries in High Places- Van Jones, “ which right wing blogs picked up as a source for the pieces discussion of his membership in STORM (Standing Together to Organize Revolutionary Movements). Interestingly, shortly before his resignation, Eva Paterson, who first hired Jones as a legal intern in the early 1990’s, wrote a piece defending Jones from the right-winger attacks. Here she characterizes his recent book, The Green Collar Economy, as “a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind” and as someone who had left behind his flirtations with radical politics to move on to “more effective and attainable solutions [ie mainstream politics and questions of policy for the capitalist state].”

There are two points that I think are worth drawing from this situation. The first goes back to my original commentary on Jones and the analogy I was attempting to draw with the labor movement in “Revolutionaries in High Places- Van Jones,” which is pointing out that the top ranks of the mainstream unions in the AFL-CIO are full of those who think of themselves as opposing capitalism and supporting some form of a socialist economy, or at least at one point did. Even Samuel Gompers himself was once a socialist (see Fletcher and Gasapin, Solidarity Divided, page 14). But the question remains, what has been the practical effect of former or current anti-capitalists in positions of power with either the state or in large, reformist and top-down business unions?

Lastly, is the issue of whether of Jones’ advocacy around green jobs is a strategy to help capitalism, which Clemente raised, or a strategic approach  the larger political landscape that the left should take up? I think as “a business-based solution to attack poverty” relying on capital to promote job creation and make up for the decline of the manufacturing sector, I think it clearly rests in the first camp. But what’s striking is that this approach is exactly in line with a popular analysis on the state centered socialist left, that advocated by Carl Davidson, ex-SDS member and founder of Progressives for Obama, in his November 2008 piece “The Bumpy Road Ahead: Obama and the Left.” Interestingly it continues the idea that we can divide capitalism into worse and a better (read “progressive”) half, rather than a rotten system as a whole with contradictory aspects and players. Here’s an excerpt from Davidson’s piece:

Obama is carving out a new niche for himself, a work in progress still within the bounds of capitalism, but a ‘high road’ industrial policy capitalism that is less state-centric and more market-based in its approach, more Green, more high tech, more third wave and participatory, less politics-as-consumerism and more ‘public citizen’ and education focused. In short, it’s capitalism for a multipolar world and the 21st century. The unreconstructed neoliberalism and old corporate liberalism, however, are still very much in play. The former is in disarray, largely due to the financial crisis, but the latter is working overtime to join the Obama team and secure its institutional positions of power, from White House staff positions to the behind-the-scenes efforts on Wall Street to direct the huge cash flows of the Bail-Out in their favor … there will be a major tension and competition for funds between two rival sectors–a new green industrial-education policy sector and an old hydrocarbon-military-industrial sector. It’s a key task of the left and progressive movements to add their forces to uniting with and building up the former, while opposing and weakening the grip of the latter. This is the ‘High Road’ vs. ‘Low Road’ strategy widely discussed in progressive think tanks and policy circles.

"The Green Collar Economy" by Van Jones

  The labor movement and criticism are certainly two things that are not usually found together. On the level of day-today functioning the internal culture of many leading US mainstream unions perhaps share a fair amount in common with the military or a centralized political party– where participants are expected to “toe the line” on key issues, and most forms of criticism are frowned upon, if not looked at as close to treason– instead of an open culture of debate and critical discussion. On the broader level, around issues such as strategy, organizing models and structure, any debate to be had is largely conducted in closed door meetings by top officials. In fact, authors Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin in their recent book Solidarity Divided, The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice speak of a ”toxic culture within the overall union movement that denies the importance of debate.” (124) 

  The recent conflict between the UNITE and HERE sides of the formerly merged HERE-UNITE, with SEIU teaming up on the side of UNITE, is a perfect example. Each party has cooked up more or less smokescreen issues to justify their power plays for control over members and organizing resources. In their attacks on each other members and staff have been bombarded with letters, flyers, mailings and even pre-recorded phone calls and some with ominous messages which take a page from the play book of union busting efforts. While I believe more more is yet to be revealed, we can gain insight into how some of this has playd out by looking at the PR battle of anonymous websites each side has used, such as HERE’s “One UNITE-HERE” and UNITE/SEIU’s project “Workers United,” which is threatening to raid HERE’s hotel and hospitality membership (who on their website reveal their affiliation with SEIU, but previously did not).

  As each side rallies its troops, demanding the loyalty of staff and members, it becomes harder to separate fact from fiction, though in the bigger picture a more true portrait of each player emerges. But amidst the intrigue, how can we develop a critical understanding of the problems the labor movement faces? And how can the labor movement develop a culture of criticism?

  I believe these two pieces are helpful starting points and examples. The following articles were published in Monthly Review’s webzine, which is a project of the same foundation that publishes the influential independent left/socialist magazine. Also see their listing of labor related articles here. The first piece, “When the Union is the Boss” by Kevin Funk and published in early 2006, is the story of a young left/radical-leaning college graduate who goes to work for SEIU as a staff organizer– which is the likely demographic of SEIU organizers. Here he tells his story of a backfired electoral campaign, which is not entirely untypical in my view of their approach to organizing, along with the fierce opposition he encounters to any suggestion that SEIU staff might form their own union.

   In “A Union is Not a ‘Movement’” by Monthly Review Editor Michael D. Yates, is a 1977 reprint from their magazine of a very early criticism of the UFW under Cesar Chavez. While I’m not quite sure if I would agree with the authors characterizations of the UFW and its needs, it does take up the question of the autocratic leadership of Chavez. Also a useful read, perhaps more so than Yates piece from the late 1970s, are a links to more recent articles in a similar vein, including a 2006 seven part investigative series by an LA Times reporter that deals with Chavez’s legacy and the subsequent decline of the union.

 A street mural by a Chilean anarchist cultural/muralist group (Read an interview with them in Spanish here).

  There’s a rich history and tradition of anarchism in Latin America that is still largely waiting to be translated and brought to the attention of the left and others who focus on the region. Below is a review by Chuck Morse of negations.net (also staff with AK Press) of three Spanish language works on the history of Latin American Anarchism by authors from the region. While none of the books reviewed are comprehensive treatments by any means, each work has a strong focus on the heavy role that anarchists played in the labor movement of Latin American countries as well as the tranformative cultural impact that anarchists had as well. You can also check out the Latin American Archives of negations.net, with .PDF of over 50 issues of several anarchist publications from 1917 to 1940 including Alborada, Hombre de America, La Humanidad, Nervio, Prometeo, and Suplemento Quincenal La Protesta.

Latin American Anarchism

(From The New Formulation, February, 2003)

Review by Chuck Morse (original link)

Cronica Anarquista de la Subversion Olvidada by Oscar Ortiz
and Contribución a una Historia del Anarquismo en América Latina by Luis Vitale
Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Espíritu Libertario, 2002

Anarquismo y Anarcosindicalismo en América Latina
By Alfredo Gómez
Paris: Ruedo ibérico, 1980

Anarquistas en América Latina
By David Viñas
Mexico City: Editorial Katun, 1983

- – -

  There are important reasons for anarchists in English-speaking parts of North America to study the history of Latin American anarchism.

  One reason is political. We need to form principled, collaborative relationships with our Latin American comrades to fight global capitalism globally and, to do so, we obviously need be able to identify our real comrades among the countless groups in the region that make claims upon our solidarity. Should we “defend the Cuban Revolution” or toast Lula’s social democratic victory in Brazil? Should we adopt the Zapatista ski-mask as our emblem or devoutly align ourselves with small anarchist groups? A genuine confrontation with these questions requires a deep appreciation of the history of Latin American opposition and certainly the anarchist movement has played a significant role in this history.

  Another reason is more theoretical: it is necessary to develop a vision of a worldwide anarchist movement that takes into account the very different conditions that exist in “underdeveloped” parts of the world (such as Latin America) as opposed to Europe or the United States. It is necessary to understand how these conditions affect the form and content of anarchist activity. For example, clearly Belgian and Bolivian anarchist movements will have different characteristics, but exactly what type of differences and why? Certainly a good way to begin exploring these questions is by looking at the actual experience of anarchist movements in Asia, Africa, or, in the case of this review, Latin America.

  Finally, the Latino identity is central to economic and cultural contradictions in the United States. Of course it is a positive source of community, tradition, and sense of self for millions of Latinos within U.S. borders and it is also used as a negative signifier to justify exploitation and racism. The constantly changing meaning of the Latino identity is highly dependent upon ideas about the history of Latin America and radicals can encourage the most expansive, utopian elements of this identity by making sure that liberatory historical experiences in the Americas are not forgotten.

  Unfortunately those who try to research the Latin American anarchist tradition will immediately discover that the historical literature on the movement is remarkably poor. There are no books on the topic in English or Portuguese and only five in Spanish, of which one is an anthology and another is a very brief overview.(1) The paucity of studies does not reflect the significance or dynamism of the movement but rather that social democrats and Marxists, who have produced the richest literature on social movements in the Americas, are hostile to the anarchist tradition and have attempted to erase or diminish its presence in this historical record.(2) Both groups need to construct the revolutionary Left as fundamentally statist to justify their social projects: the Marxists to defend their authoritarian regimes and the social democrats to present their free-market policies as the only socially conscious alternative to Marxist authoritarianism. Of course the existence of the anarchist tradition—a revolutionary, anti-authoritarian alternative—complicates their assertions.

  Thus contemporary anarchists are obliged to undertake a major reconstructive effort to restore anarchism to its proper place in the history of the Americas and the three books reviewed here are among the best on the subject. Their authors defiantly and unanimously assert that the anarchist movement was a vital actor in early twentieth century social history. Louis Vitale, in a sentiment echoed by the other authors, observes that “anarcho-syndicalism was the dominant current in the Latin American workers’ movement during the first two decades of the twentieth century.”(3) They also all assert that anarchists were leaders in the creation of early labor unions, cultivated a strong working class militancy, and achieved many concrete gains for the working class. Indeed, between the revolutionary unions, schools, daily newspapers, and other projects, these authors paint a picture of a profoundly dynamic anarchist movement, especially in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay.

Anarchism and the Labor Movement
  Alfredo Gómez’s Anarquismo y Anarcosindicalismo en América Latina (Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in Latin America) treats anarchism in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Gómez focuses on anarchists’ role within the revolutionary labor movement and attempts to draw conclusions about the classical anarchist project based on the comparative study of the anarchist movement in these countries. Gómez, who is an anarchist, wants to both document the history of the movement and defend it in theoretical terms.

  For Gómez, anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism (he does not distinguish between the two) is linked fundamentally to the labor movement. He regards anarchism as a theoretical expression of workers’ capacity to organize themselves and potentially run society without the interference of capitalists or statists. In other words, anarchism allows workers to become conscious of their power as workers, defend their immediate interests, and fight to revolutionize society as a whole.

  In each country he treats, Gómez charts the emergence of a combative working class and the influence of anarchist groups on this class. His study of Colombian anarchism, which makes up nearly half of the book, is a welcome contribution given that Colombia has received scant attention in existing studies of Latin American anarchism. Here he documents major strikes, such as the anarchist led banana workers’ strike of 1928, and also the activities of anarchist groups such as Bogotá’s Grupo Sindicalista “Antorcha Libertaria,” the Via Libre group, and others.(4) However, his emphasis lays upon the working class and its capacity to fight directly for its own interests rather than specifically anarchist activities per se. This is partially because the anarchist movement was less developed in Colombia than in other countries, but also because Gómez regards a direct action based workers’ movement and anarchism as essentially two sides of the same phenomenon (practice and theory, respectively). In Brazil, Gómez shows us how anarchists led a massive and nearly revolutionary wave of strikes from 1917 to 1920. In Argentina, which had one of the most mature anarchist movements in the Americas (and the world), Gómez focuses on the relationship between the anarchist Federación Obrera Regional de Argentina and working class struggles. In Mexico, Gómez examines the anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón’s intervention in the 1910 Mexican Revolution and also treats the Mexico City based Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of the World Worker), which was a center of anarchist organizing and labor radicalism.

Members of the FARJ (Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) at a recent conference.

The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism
  The double book released by Chile’s Ediciones Espíritu Libertario contains Cronica Anarquista de la Subversion Olvidada (Anarchist Chronicle of Forgotten Subversion) by Oscar Ortiz and Luis Vitale’s Contribución a una Historia del Anarquismo en América Latina (Contribution to a History of Anarchism in Latin America). These books document the history of anarchism in Latin America but have a special focus on the movement in Chile.

  Vitale is a renowned Trotskyist author of Chilean citizenship who participated in the anarchist movement in his native Argentina as a young man. He states in the prologue that his book is an attempt to repay a debt he incurred to the anarchists, who presumably introduced him to revolutionary politics, and who gave him the élan necessary to survive the nine concentration camps in which he was interned during Pinochet’s dictatorship.(5) His short (47 pages) and overwhelmingly laudatory work is divided into four sections. The first treats the origins or pre-history of anarchism in Latin America (i.e., utopian socialism) and the second discusses the influence of anarchism on the workers and students’ movements and culture of Latin American between 1900 and 1930. This section, which is the longest part of the book, contains brief commentary (sometimes no more than three or four paragraphs) on anarchism in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Colombia. The final section analyzes the history of the anarchist movement in Chile from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s.

  Although Vitale also places anarchism squarely within the labor movement, his focus is slightly different: he understands anarchism less as an expression of class interests and more as a utopian movement that seeks to reconstruct society along radically democratic, communitarian lines. Accordingly, he locates anarchism at both the beginning and end of industrial capitalism. He sees it as an articulation of the communitarian elements present in capitalism’s early artisanal phase, when small workshops and many pre-capitalist practices were the norm, as well as the utopian sensibilities that emerged with the decline of industrial capitalism around the period of the New Left (expressed by thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse). In this sense, Vitale’s concern lay on the anarchist movement’s capacity to advance democratic sentiments against capitalism as opposed to its role within the development of class contradictions in the capitalism system.

  Vitale shows how anarchists not only fought for the immediate interests of the working class but also created a broad culture of resistance that challenged the fundaments of the social order with a deeply democratic politics. For example, in addition to their contributions to the labor movement, Vitale emphasizes anarchist support for women’s liberation. He writes that “not only were [the anarchists] the most consequent fighters for the equal rights of women in the workplace, but dared to frankly pose [the issue of] free love, questioning the patriarchical servitude of marriage, advocating the egalitarian relation among the sexes in all aspects of the daily life.”(6) He highlights the important role played by anarchist women in the movement and specifically mentions anarcha-feminist activities (such as the first anarcha-feminist periodical in the world, La Voz de La Mujer, which was published in Buenos Aires from 1898 to 1899). Vitale also notes that anarchists were leaders in anti-militarist campaigns, the first to oppose compulsory military service, and among the first on the Left to collaborate with militant neighborhood organizations. In the realm of culture, Vitale emphasizes anarchist’s literary contributions, as well as struggles to democratize the university. He not only notes leading anarchist thinkers such Manuel Gonzalez Prada of Peru (who was one of the first on the Left to take up the “indigenous question”) and Mexico’s Ricardo Flores Magón but also lesser known writers who radicalized the broader cultural environment of their countries, such as Alejandro Escobar y Carvallo, the author of the first essays in sociological history in Chile, Argentina’s tango lyricist Enrique Santos Discépolo, and others. As for university struggles, Vitale notes that the movement for university reform was led by anarchists in Chile and in Argentina and that anarchists were also leaders of the first (1918) process of university reform in Latin America. As a whole, he paints an image of a movement engaged in the broadest possible opposition to the status quo and one that struggled to democratize all aspects of social life, from the economic to the cultural realms, from the private to the political arenas.

Anarchism as Radical Culture
  Oscar Ortiz’s Cronica Anarquista de la Subversion Olvidada, which makes up the greatest part of Ediciones Espiritu Libertario’s double book, is a collection of seventeen short, historical essays chronicling various important events and personages in the history of Chilean anarchism from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s. Ortiz combines a narrative flare with an academic rigor, and thus his essays are both a pleasure to read and rich in a scholarly sense (although the book is an anthology of his essays and, hence, not particularly systematic).

  David Viñas’s Anarquistas en América Latina is also an anthology of sorts. It consists of short excerpts from texts written by and about anarchists during the period of anarchism’s heyday and contains no sustained analysis except for a 30 page introductory essay. The excerpts, which are organized by country, cover Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Although Viñas provides some editorial comments, there is no attempt to offer a history of the movement or additional resources for interested researchers. The book is really a montage of quotes and seems more like the preparation for a book than a finished book per se.

  Although Ortiz and Viñas do not advance strong theories of anarchism, claims about the nature of anarchism are present nonetheless. They also locate anarchism within the labor movement, but they are concerned primarily with its cultural elements, particularly its ability to provide the cornerstone of a productive counter-culture around which revolutionaries and dissents could gather.

  Ortiz’s study of key moments in the history of Chilean anarchism allows him to illustrate a revolutionary counter-culture made up of militant workers and idealistic bourgeoisie who were unified by a common anarchist axiom and the vicious persecution visited upon them by the ruling class as a result. Ortiz focuses on anarchists who transformed Chilean culture in various ways and, more often than not, anarchists who transformed the culture not through their explicitly anarchist activities but through activities that were somehow linked to their political convictions. For example, he devotes a chapter to the working class anarcho-Tolstoyian painter, Benito Rebolledo. Rebolledo, a committed anarchist who was immersed in the working class culture of the time, transformed Chilean painting by bringing poor people into his art. This accomplishment was of course innately connected to his anarchism, and he was celebrated and loved by the poor for his contributions. Likewise, Ortiz has a chapter treating Juan Gandulfo, who was both a militant anarchist and pioneer of socialized medical care in Chile. Gandulfo’s medical contributions were also directly wedded to his anarchist commitment to improving the health of the working class. Ortiz’s approach allows one to see anarchism as a broader social project: one that was not only embedded in working class struggle but also one that had the capacity to transform multiple areas of life.

  Viñas’s clearest statements about anarchism are present in his introductory essay. Here he describes anarchism primarily as a romantic protest against modernity waged by men and women who refused to accept the brutality of contemporary life. He refers to the “anarchist drama” that unfolded upon the stage that he describes as the social Darwinist city of the early twentieth century. Viñas’s work offers a less consistent picture of the nature of anarchism—given that his book is really just a compilation of quotes—but one can surmise that the very form of the book indicates his conviction that anarchism is an essentially fragmentary project that rallied against the status quo.

The Decline of Anarchism in Latin America
  All of these authors agree that anarchism disappeared as a mass movement in Latin America around 1930 and all agree that vicious state repression was a significant cause of its decline. For example, Gómez notes that the Argentine government declared a state of siege against the workers’ movement for the first time in 1902 and another four times in the following eight years, with a total duration of 18 months.(7) Also, citing Abad de Santillán, Gómez notes that the Argentine anarchist movement suffered around 500 deaths and accumulated more than a half million years of prison sentences in three decades of activity.(8) Likewise, Ortiz details brutal tortures and imprisonment suffered by Chilean anarchists. And Viñas reproduces letters that Flores Magón wrote while in prison in the United States, as a victim of repression directed by both American and Mexican authorities. Clearly, the anarchist movement was a threat.

  But why did the anarchist movement fail to overcome the vicious state repression and regain its footing as a mass movement.(9) What was it about anarchism that prevented it, as a project, from adapting to the new challenges and flourishing?

  These authors’ different emphases allow them to highlight different internal problems that precipitated the decline of the anarchist movement. Of the four authors considered here, Gómez offers the most sustained critique of anarchism and devotes an entire chapter to “Reflections on the Decline of Anarcho-Syndicalism” (as an anarchist, he expects the most of the doctrine and, accordingly, is the most critical). Gómez argues that the anarcho-syndicalist project was essentially unable to articulate a coherent alternative to the social order it confronted. He sites “rationalist messianism” as one problem, wherein the anarchist faith in progress doomed anarchists to overestimate the potentials to educate humanity into a rational society and also discouraged them from acting in solidarity with other oppositional groups whom they deemed immersed in “metaphysics” (such as Zapata’s army in Mexico, which anarchists disparaged for their Christianity). He also sites the tendency of anarchist organizations to become ends in themselves (as opposed to the means for creating a revolution) and thus to ossify into stilted and basically conservative bureaucracies. For example, Gómez points to the tendency towards bureaucratic dogmatism in Argentina’s Federación Obrera Regional de Argentina. He cites the 1907 attempt to institute the doctrine of anarcho-communism as the basis for unified action with other unions, the ideological purges of 1924 (in which organizational support was withdrawn from those not considered properly anarcho-communist), and a gradual decline in organizational democracy (reflected in the diminishing frequency of congresses and a general language of organizational control). Gómez believes that these events indicate the growth of a regressive, dogmatic sentiment within the organization. He also shows how the tendency toward bureaucracy in anarchist unions dovetailed with the rigidly, para-statist organizations advanced by the Marxist-Leninists, both of which drew workers away from self-organization and a commitment to direct action.

  Viñas and Ortiz offer less material about the decline of the movement. However, Viñas intersperses his book with citations from Marxists-Leninists who argue that anarchists failed to develop a coherent approach to the issue of political power. Presumably this is his view. Ortiz gives the impression that the militant working class counter-culture developed by the anarchists was simply unable to contend with changing cultural and economic circumstances and thus faded into history (becoming “the good old days”).

  Vitale is the least critical of anarchists and, by detailing the history of the movement up to the 1960s, implies that it may not have declined as radically as is normally supposed. But of course he does note a decline, and advances two reasons to explain this. First, he asserts that anarchists were unable to respond to changing economic circumstances in which old quasi-artisanal structures were superceded by the concentration of workers in enormous factories and, second, he argues that the emergence of populist governments inclined to negotiate with workers undermined the appeal of anarchist’s strident, oppositional stance.

  Of the four authors, Gómez offers the most cogent critique of the anarchist movement in Latin America, whereas Vitale and Ortiz offer the most compelling arguments for the continuity of anarchism.

Critical Points
  These books all present different aspects of the rich history of Latin American anarchism, whether as a tendency in the labor movement, a force for democratization, or a counter-culture. They belie the political motives at work in the exclusion of anarchism from the historical record. As in Asia, Europe, and the US, the Latin American anarchist movement was a mass revolutionary movement that mounted a radical challenge to the existing order. Its significance can only be ignored at the cost of fabricating history.

  But these works also have significant limitations when evaluated as potential resources for contemporary anarchists.

  First, these books share a limited focus which makes it difficult to analyze the course of the anarchist movement in the context of the broader history of Latin American opposition. There is the implicit assumption that economic contradictions are at the center of history and hence an excessive focus on the labor movement to the exclusion of other forms of radicalism. This is expressed most clearly in Gómez’s book, but it is evident in the other works as well (which always prioritize the labor movement, even if they construct anarchism in different ways). Thus, the authors hardly relate the anarchist movement to the other forms of resistance that took place during anarchism’s heyday. For example, the authors fail to connect the anarchist movement to communitarian movements among indigenous people in any significant way (Gómez touches upon this in his commentary on the relationship between the Mexican anarchists and the original Zapatistas, but does not develop the point). Likewise, Vitale notes the link between anarchists and the feminist movement but, again, the point remains undeveloped.

  Second, they are also limited when evaluated as possible resources for understanding the development of anarchism in “underdeveloped” parts of the world. For example, none of the authors make a comparison between the Latin American anarchist movement and anarchist movements in Europe or the US. And, furthermore, these books imply that the anarchist movement was not particularly conditioned by circumstances of underdevelopment. Gómez’s book, for example, was initially conceived as a study of anarchism in Colombia alone, but he expanded the work to include Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico precisely because he believes the anarchist movement followed a similar trajectory in these countries, despite their very different economic and political conditions.

  In addition, there is a striking absence of a truly Latin American perspective. Indeed, while all of the books treat anarchism in Latin America (except for Ortiz’s, which focuses exclusively on Chile), it would be more accurate to say that they analyze anarchism in several Latin American countries, rather than Latin American anarchism per se. Although differences between individual countries make a country-by-country analysis important, it is unfortunate that the authors fail to situate anarchism within broader social and political trends in Latin America as a whole.

  And there is also no attempt to explore the relationship between anarchism and the Latino identity. Is there a distinctly Latino anarchism? It is tempting to argue that there is not, given the pivotal role played by European immigrants in the Latin American anarchist movement and the early labor movement generally. For example, Gómez mentions that five and a half million European workers arrived in Argentina in the half century prior to 1924 (whereas the country’s total population was 6 million in 1890).(10) Among these immigrants was Diego Abad de Santillán, a Spanish born anarchist who became a leading participant in the Argentine anarchist movement and later returned to Spain to become a major figure among anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Was he a Latin American anarchist or a European anarchist in Latin America? The possible meaning of a distinctly Latin anarchism remains unexplored.

  These books all make important contributions to fleshing out a history that has been suppressed and must be reclaimed if the anarchist movement is to flourish once again in the Americas and in relation to the Americas. Their failings indicate the relatively low level of scholarship on the movement, although their strengths suggest points of departure for more thorough and critical studies that must come in the future.

Notes:

1. In addition to those reviewed here, the other two books on the subject are: El Anarquismo en America Latina, ed Angel J. Cappelletti and Carlos M. Rama (Caracas, Venezuela: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1990) and Angel Capelleti, Hechos y Figuras del Anarquismo Hispanoamericano (Madrid: Ediciones Madre Tierra, 1990).

2. For a good example of the social democratic omission of anarchism, see Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). Castañeda, Mexico’s former Foreign Relations Secretary, excludes anarchism entirely from his sweeping study of the Latin America Left. The Marxist hostility to anarchism is noted in nearly every study of anarchism in Latin America.

3. Luis Vitale, Contribución a una Historia del Anarquismo en América Latina (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Espiritu Libertario, 2002), 155. All translations are mine.

4. The banana strike was immemorialized in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).

5. Luis Vital, Contribución a una Historia del Anarquismo en América Latina, 148.

6. Ibid., 157.

7. Alfredo Gómez, Anarquismo y Anarcosindicalismo en América Latina (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1980), 152.

8. This figure comes from Diego Abad de Santillán, La FORA: Ideología y Trayectoria (Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1971), 23; cited in Gomez, Anarquismo y Anarcosindicalismo, 155.

9. South Africa’s ANC is an example of a movement that was able to withstand terrible repression.

10. Gómez, Anarquismo y Anarcosindicalismo en América Latina, 146.

  A new edition of the “Especifismo Reader: Anarchist Organization and Praxis” has been made publically available. Topping 120 pages, the updated reader includes several newly translated pieces such as the short political statement “Who We Are, What We Want, The Path We Follow” by Coletivo Comunista Anarquismo in Brazil, the article “Anarchist Advances in Uruguay and Brazil” and the “Interview with the Rio de Janeiro Federation” not included in the first edition of the reader,  as well as several excellent though yet to be translated pieces in Spanish. The next steps for this reader are the inclusion of several more pieces by Latin American anarchists and a organization in Mexico, as well as a section of articles called “Towards a North American Especifismo,” with pieces written by North American anarchists influences by the Especifismo Latin American Anarchist tradition. 

  One of the key concepts of the Latin American Anarchist tradition of especifismo is ”social insertion.” I admit there is a bit of a funny sound to it, but this is the concept they use to define the relation to mass struggles and movements. To them anarchist involvement in the social struggles must be firmly rooted, argues for anarchist values rather the conversion of movements to ”anarchism itself” or a specific political line, and which aims to build popular power (horizontal power and “of the base” I think are similar concepts from Latin American traditions that readers might also be familar with).  

  My friend Nate of What the hell…?  blog takes up the topic with a response/reflection piece after reading several pieces by written by especifist groups as well as my own piece included in the reader above,  ”Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization in Latin America.” With heaps of comradely respect I feel Nate is missing some of the arguements and the context for the discussion on especifismo and in some part I think he is perhaps pointing out sections of the writings that are unclear and can lend themselves to misinterpretation. Check out his thoughts and my response and I encourage folks to leave comments on his page with their own.

  In fact, Nate is on a bit of a roll as of late. Here’s another discussion posting on contemporary anarchist politics with Nate’s review and comments on the mission statements and points of unity of current anarchist organizations in North America. Even better is that it includes links if you would like to read more. Next, is his piece discussing the importance of mass organizing work, along with a draft an article where he hopes to better lay out his perspectives on this. Finally, he writes reviews/quick responses  to several of the Furious Five Revolutionary Collective, a 2003-2005 Anarchist-Communist collective based out of San Jose, CA that was influenced by the ideas and writings of the Latin American Especifist anarchists. Their writings are archived on this blog

  Whether on TV or that one time you went to church and paid attention, we’ve all heard the Lord’s Prayer at least once. But could there be a prayer for those us who rather than ascending from heaven to earth, seek instead to ascend from earth to heaven in our analysis as St. Marx says? Or in other words seek to make the world  the amazing place that it could be in the here and now?

  Certainly being being a revolutionary or a embracing the “wobbly spirit” of the IWW is hard enough that one would need all the support they could get, god or otherwise. Things to keep in mind are that a little bit of humor and generosity can help our comrades when they are feeling down and help the movement by keeping our spirits bright. Feel free to pass this along, but please credit this blog.  -AW 

The Revolutionary Prayer

Hail Durutti, full of solidarity,

hallowed be thy cause.

The Revolution will come,

the People’s will will be done.

On earth as it is in social relations.

Let us make today our daily bread.

And forgive us when our comrades let us down,

as they support us when we do likewise.

Save us from endless meetings,

and deliever us from the evils of poor analysis and sectarianism.

For our future society is being built in the ashes of the old,

We struggle on, now and forever.

Amen!

The Wobbly Prayer

Hail the spirit of Joe Hill, Lucy Parsons and Big Bill too,

Hallowed be the cause of labor.

The General Strike will come,

the will of the workers will be done.

Across the earth as it is on our jobs.

Let us together make our daily bread.

And forgive us when our fellow workers let us down,

as they support us when we do likewise.

Save us from not knowing our A-E-I-U-Os,

and deliver us from being fired by the evil boss.

For our future society is being built in the ashes of the old,

We struggle for worker freedom the world over,

now and forever.

Amen!

  This is an amazing review which captures what many folks that I know have been saying since the early 2000’s. The writer, long time labor activist Steve Early, contrasts the perspectives between two recent authors and their analysis of the labor movement in LA Stories: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement by UCLA professor Ruth Milkman and US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above the Promise of Revival from Below by Labor Notes co-founder Kim Moody. It articulates well the critique of the professional staff driven “change from above” unions (such as SEIU and the unions associated with the Change to Win Coalition) which often brand themselves as progressive or social movement unions, or are characterized as such by their supporters on the left and academia. What the review unfortunately doesn’t do well is delve into the concrete of  Moody’s potentially alternative vision for “revival from below.” Early roundly criticizes Milkman’s support for SEIU and the “change from above” approaches in the labor movement:

Milkman “never addresses the serious concern … that SEIU growth has been achieved, in some sectors, at the expense of contract standards, community allies, workers’ rights, membership participation, and leadership accountability.” Milkman’s infatuation with the vanguard role of the union’s “innovators”—college educated organizers, researchers, strategic campaign coordinators, local officers and trustees—also leaves little room for examining more incisively how SEIU operatives actually interact with the working members who nominally employ—and, more rarely, elect—them.

  Unfortunately the boosterism and cheerleading on behalf of the “change from above” self-styled reformers that comes from academics like Ruth Milkman as well as other authors such as UC Berkeley professor Kim Voss (with her Hard Work, Remaking the American Labor Movement with Rick Fantasia), was parroted or perhaps reluctantly swallowed by many on the left so disappointed with the conservatavism of mainstream labor that any promise of change seemed better than nothing. Only with the recent moves by SEIU and the division between HERE-UNITE has the thin curtain been pulled away to reveal the situation that has been at hand for many years. Sadly I feel many radicals, myself included of course, missed the boat in not putting forward these criticisms sooner when they became apparent in the early 2000’s, perhaps even the late 1990’s. Let it be a word to the wise.

Remaking Labor–From the Top-Down? Bottom-Up? or Both?

By Steve Early (original link to this review online here)  

Review of: Milkman, Ruth. L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006. 244 pp.$24.95 (paper).

Moody, Kim. U.S. Labor In Trouble And Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above and the Promise of Revival from Below. New York, NY: Verso, 2007. 289 pp.$29.95 (paper).

From Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, March, 2008 Vol 11. Issue #1

The veterans of Sixties radicalism who became union activists in the 1970s belonged to a variety of left-wing groups. Regardless of other political differences, most of them shared one common belief—namely, that union transformation and working class radicalization was a bottom up process. As Stanley Aronowitz observed in Socialist Review (nee Socialist Revolution) in 1979—when Ruth Milkman, author of L.A. Story, belonged to its “Bay Area Collective”—young radicals usually became “organizers of rank-and-file movements” and builders of opposition caucuses. They immersed themselves in “day-to-day union struggles on the shop floor” and the politics of local unions, often displaying in the latter arena “almost total antipathy toward the union officialdom.” Because “union revitalization” also required organizing the unorganized, rather than just proselytizing among existing union members, Aronowitz approved, “under some circumstances,” leftists becoming “”professional paid organizers.” But he encouraged those who took this path to “see their task as building the active rank and file, even where not connected to caucus movements.”

Three decades later, the shrinkage of organized labor—and the left within it—has produced more than a few deviations from the shining path of “revival from below.” Kim Moody, author of U.S. Labor In Trouble and Transition, remains a true believer in the transformative potential of rank-and-file movements. A founder of Labor Notes and author of several previous books on contemporary trade unionism, Moody was a leading theoretician of the International Socialists when it sent college educated cadres into the auto, steel, telecom, and trucking industries during the 1970s. What Moody and his comrades contributed to the workplace organizing debates of that era (and more recent decades as well) is “the rank and file strategy”—the idea, simply put, that radicals should orient themselves toward the strata of worker activists, at the base of unions, who are most engaged in shop-floor militancy and resistance to management, rather than “attempt to gain influence by sidling up to the incumbent bureaucracy or its alleged progressive wing.” Moody’s newest volume is a wide-ranging account of the economic forces, domestic and international, which have eroded American unions, since their last, turbulent period of grassroots insurgency from 1966-78. As in the past, he agues that “rank and file rebellion”—despite its many setbacks and defeats in recent years—is the only proven method of projecting a genuine “alternative view of unionism, to force changes on reluctant labor leaders, and challenge the top-down culture of business unionism…[which] provides little or no education and leadership training for rank-and-file workers.”

Both Moody and Milkman, in L.A. Story, see great potential in the immigrant worker organizing and strike activity of the last several years. Based on her case studies of Latinos in construction, building services, garment manufacturing, and port trucking, Milkman believes that these newcomers can “take the lead in rebuilding the nation’s labor movement.” Moody even discerns “the beginnings of an upsurge in direct action in workplaces and communities by a variety of groups”—both unions and allied “workers centers”— that could lay “the basis for a new class politics” in America. Unlike Moody, however, the author of L.A. Story downplays rank-and-file initiatives as a catalyst for institutional change.

Now a professor of sociology at UCLA and director of its Institute of Industrial Relations, Milkman has watched how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), and Hotel and Restaurant Employees (HERE) have revitalized themselves and/or the L.A. County Labor Federation. In her view, looking to union members to rebel against corrupt, ineffective, or undemocratic unions and refashion them into something better is an exercise in wishful thinking and existential frustration—”Waiting For Lefty” reborn as “Waiting For Godot.” According to Milkman, proponents of the rank and file approach long championed by Moody naively assume “that if only the legions of top union brass would step aside and allow the rank and file’s natural leaders to take command, labor would no longer be so impotent.” In reality, she writes, “this approach glosses over the complex and multi-layered character of union leadership and various political configurations that are possible across those layers.”

Milkman believes “that, when International leadership is progressive, it can be a powerful force for promoting innovation at the local union level” and rooting out “business unionism.” “As is now well documented, many of the most successful initiatives of the SEIU [and other Change to Win affiliates] have actually been ‘top down’ efforts, engineered not by the rank and file but by paid staff in the upper reaches of the union bureaucracy…The recent ascension of leaders with both extensive formal education and activist experience in other movements to high-level positions in key unions has injected dynamism into the labor movement….The most vibrant and innovative unions are those that combine social movement-style mobilization, with carefully calibrated strategies that leverage the expertise of creative, professional leaders.” Moody is far less impressed by what Milkman characterizes as the “daring, intrepid character” of Change To Win (CTW). Nor is he similarly inclined to drape the new labor federation with the mantle of “social movement unionism.” Moody makes a more nuanced three-way distinction between “business unionism” (which everyone on the left agrees is bad),”democratic social movement unionism”—born of real “struggle with the employers” here and abroad– and what he calls “the new corporate unionism.” He argues that the on-going internal reorganization of SEIU and the Carpenters into “huge administrative units” represents “a step beyond business unionism in its centralization and shift of power upward in their structure away from the members, locals, and workplace.” Providing a detailed analysis and critique of the undemocratic “corporate side of SEIU’s culture,” Moody concludes that the union’s much-envied gains in “market share” are too often the product of “shallow power” or partnership deals. According to Moody, SEIU has achieved “a density suspended from above by a layer of ‘talent’ recruited mainly from outside the union rather than upheld from below by deep roots in the workplace and local unions.” In contrast, Milkman regards SEIU’s Justice for Janitors (JfJ) campaigns to be an unqualified success and model for union-builders everywhere. “Justice For Janitors originated as part of a strategic union rebuilding effort,” she explains.” It was conceived by SEIU’s national leadership and relied heavily on research and other staff-intensive means of exerting pressure on employers.”

To their credit, JfJ organizers helped pioneer comprehensive, community-based campaigns that by-passed the NLRB to win union recognition via card check and neutrality—by targeting building owners who were the real power behind cleaning service contractors. SEIU employed direct action tactics, including civil disobedience, built strong ties with immigrant communities, and presented the workers’ cause in a way that elicited sympathy and support from that part of the broader public concerned about social justice and better treatment of oppressed minorities.

According to Milkman, in the original JfJ struggle in Los Angeles in 1988-90–plus subsequent efforts in many other cities–”rank-and-file mobilization played a critical role in its success.” Nevertheless, as Moody notes, this “mobilization” has rarely translated into a leading role for immigrant janitors in managing the affairs of their own SEIU locals. By the mid-1990s, JfJ activists in Los Angeles were complaining about Local 399’s out-of-touch leadership, its neglect of day-to-day workplace issues, and the lack of rank-and-file participation in union decision-making. Many supported a successful electoral insurgency, led by the “Multiracial Alliance Slate.” But, in 1995, the SEIU national leadership quickly nullified the Alliance’s election victory by throwing the local into trusteeship and later moving L.A. janitors into a much larger, regional building services local. In L.A. Story, Milkman barely acknowledges that there was “widespread criticism” of SEIU over this pivotal development. She dismisses “Multiracial Alliance” organizing activity as an unfortunate “outbreak of factionalism” that, only “on the surface, appeared to involve rank and file rebellion against the local SEIU officialdom.”

Moody, on the other hand, takes the 399 matter very seriously. He believes the trusteeship and transfer of LA janitors into a “mega-local” beyond their effective control had a negative impact on subsequent collective bargaining, which produced wage gains of 12.3 per cent between 1990 and 1995 and only another 6 per cent between 1995 and 2000 for downtown LA janitors. Thus, in the decade after their 1990 victory: “

LA janitors with the best conditions saw their real wages fall 10%. In this same period, 1990 through 2000, average real hourly wages in the U.S. rose by 4.8%. It is just possible that had the LA janitors been in their own local instead of statewide Local 1877, with its low wages, minimal benefits, and long contracts, they could have pressured the industry for more and set a better pattern for others.”

Where Moody sees troubling continuity with conservative union practices of the past, Milkman waxes enthusiastic about “AFL organizational legacies” that she finds uniquely empowering. A major thesis of her book is that Change To Win unions have paradoxically proven more “adept at crafting new survival strategies for labor in the post-industrial economy” because of their past experience taking “wages out of competition in unregulated, highly competitive labors markets” and winning union recognition in pre-New Deal fashion, without utilizing the National Labor Relations Board. In L.A. Story, the allegedly superior “strategic and tactical repertoire” of CTW affiliates–and resulting “organizing successes”—are attributed to their roots as “old AFL craft and occupational unions.” According to Milkman:

“As the L.A. janitors campaign and other recent organizing successes illustrate, this repertoire is highly adaptable to contemporary economic conditions, which in many ways resemble those of the pre-New Deal era. By contrast, many of the CIO’s strategies and tactics were tailored to the historical conditions of the 1930s and 1940s—conditions that have been largely swept aside over the past three decades by deindustrialization, deregulation, and deunionization…..That unions –once seen as bastions of conservatism and corruption—have emerged in the vanguard of current labor revitalization efforts is a powerful testimony to the renewed relevance of the AFL’s historical legacy.”

Unfortunately for the credibility of her book, there is little evidence to support Milkman’s sweeping claim that CTW unions—with the exception of SEIU and perhaps HERE—have responded better to damaging “political and economic transformations” than any other battered labor survivors of the last thirty years. As Moody shows, in the five-year period prior to the AFL-CIO’S 2005 split, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and Laborers International Union (LIUNA) all lost members (while the Carpenters registered only 1.4% growth)—a record inferior to that of CWA, AFSCME, AFT, and the independent NEA. Only SEIU had membership gains of twenty percent or more—but, percentage-wise, the AFT’s growth during the same period was nearly as great. The smallest of CTW’s seven affiliates—the still struggling United Farm Workers—remains only a fifth of its peak size twenty-five years ago.

Far from just decimating former CIO unions, “deindustrialization” has also been a major cause of membership shrinkage within Change to Win (particularly in affiliates with a mixed craft and industrial union heritage). The three unions—Textile Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and Ladies’ Garment Workers—which merged over time to form UNITE lost hundreds of thousands of dues payers in plant shut-downs prior to UNITE’s 2004 marriage with HERE. These factory job losses were so devastating that, even today, the combined membership of UNITE and HERE—a claimed 450,000–is less than ACTWU’s alone in 1976!

The notion that the Teamsters somehow dodged the bullet of “deregulation” is even more far fetched. The IBT today is one third smaller than it was before the Carter Administration introduced trucking deregulation in the late 1970s. As Moody notes, “by 1985, the number of workers covered by the Teamsters’ National Master Freight Agreement had dropped from over 300,000 in 1970 to as low as 160,000″—and it’s now half that number. Non-union competition, including the growth of a huge owner-operator sector, undermined national bargaining and led to what Moody calls “a long string of concessionary contracts.”

Likewise, CTW’s third largest affiliate—the United Food and Commercial Workers—has hardly been in “the vanguard” of thwarting “deunionization.” While its on-going campaign for organizing rights at Smithfield Foods is well deserving of praise, UFCW’s record generally in meatpacking is one of failing to maintain wage standards and unionization levels. Meanwhile, non-union “big box” chains like Wal-Mart have grabbed a huge share of total retail sales in recent decades; their much lower labor costs have led to similar management pressure for union give-backs in the shrinking organized sector of the industry. The UFCW’s disastrous 2003 walkout by 60,000 Southern California grocery workers was a case study in un-successful resistance to this trend. As Moody observes, “the UFCW’s record of lost strikes and failed organizing drives is too consistent and too visible to make this union the likely David to Wal-Mart’s Goliath.”

Finally, “conservatism and corruption” also remain very much a part of the negative “AFL organizational legacies” of CTW that Milkman glosses over or ignores entirely. For example, the IBT and UFCW are both guilty of wasting membership dues money in a manner quite inconsistent with being a “mean, lean organizing machine” or part of a “new union reform movement.” Thanks to Teamster President James Hoffa’s undoing of real reforms dating from the Ron Carey era, the IBT now squanders more than $8.5 million a year on extra pay-checks for 175 of the Teamster officials throughout the country who get multiple salaries.

As The Detroit News reported last August (2007), UFCW local officials “are among the highest paid in the United States with 33 making more than $200,000 in base salary in 2006 and many earning thousands more by drawing additional paychecks from the union’s international headquarters. Meanwhile, the average UFCW member earns between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, with many at Michigan grocery stores earning less.” In a not atypical profile of an individual UFCW regional leader—Local 588 president Jack Loveall—The Sacramento (California) Bee reported that Loveall’s total compensation for 2003 was more than $565,000 (in a 23,000- member local that has two of his sons on the payroll, plus a twin-engine jet for the officers’ use.).

Nevertheless, when the AFL-CIO split was still brewing in 2005, Milkman insisted that the IBT, UFCW, et al had embraced the “reform agenda” of SEIU President Andy Stern, including the latter’s call “for a one-union-per-industry model” that would curb inter-union competition for unorganized workers. Meanwhile, Hoffa declared that his multi-jurisdictional amalgamated union had no intention—then or now—of concentrating only on certain “core industries” and ceding workers in any other field to labor organizations, CTW or AFL-CIO, with more relevant experience! In L.A. Story, Milkman likewise depicts CTW unions as advocates of “extensive structural changes in the labor movement,” including “a strengthened central body that would have the power to enforce its policies with the affiliates…” The new federation’s actual practice over the last two years has been quite different, of course.

Even with only seven affiliates (as opposed to fifty-five in the AFL-CIO), CTW has found policy unanimity to be elusive—and certainly doesn’t have any “strengthened central body” with the power to impose it. As promised, CTW has launched some laudable joint organizing projects. Yet CTW unions have been unable to agree on the war in Iraq, trade or immigration issues, which Democratic primary candidate to endorse for president (even SEIU was split internally on that one), or the appropriateness of working with Wal-Mart for “health care reform.” A disagreement between Stern and UFCW President Joe Hansen over this last issue led to a public spat in 2007, followed by UFCW picketing of a joint appearance by Stern and Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott. In another display of disunity, Doug McCarron’s Carpenters didn’t even bother to show up for the CTW’s second anniversary convention last November. As was the case before the UBC’s defection from the AFL-CIO, the Carpenters have apparently stopped paying dues to CTW; according to In These Times, “rumors persist that the union will soon leave the group” as well.

None of this messy organizational reality—most of it well known or quite predictable, prior to publication—intrudes on Milkman’s upbeat narrative in L.A. Story. On some subjects covered in the book—for example, SEIU’s doubling of its membership to 1.9 million in the last ten years —the author’s boosterism is certainly more warranted. But, unlike Moody, she never addresses the serious concern—now being raised by union insiders like Sal Rosselli—that SEIU growth has been achieved, in some sectors, at the expense of contract standards, community allies, workers’ rights, membership participation, and leadership accountability. Milkman’s infatuation with the vanguard role of the union’s “innovators”—college educated organizers, researchers, strategic campaign coordinators, local officers and trustees—also leaves little room for examining more incisively how SEIU operatives actually interact with the working members who nominally employ—and, more rarely, elect—them.

To Moody falls the task of imagining how the rank-and-file can rise again, in SEIU or any other union in need of a different, more democratic form of organizational “dynamism.” This challenge is particularly daunting in light of developments like home-based workers becoming the largest source of union membership growth. Brokering deals with labor-friendly public officials around the country, SEIU (and now other unions as well) have created collective bargaining units comprised of 500,000 or more home-based workers previously regarded as “independent contractors.” When SEIU was certified as the representative of one such unit—74,000 home health aides in Southern California—it described this 1999 victory as the biggest for labor since the Flint sit-down strike. In reality, many home-based workers are imprisoned in the post-Clinton system of “workfare,” that replaced welfare. Largely female, non-white and/or foreign born, this workforce cares for the young, old, sick, and disabled, while struggling to survive on poverty-level incomes, even when union-represented. One of the usual quid pro quos for union recognition is continued exclusion of these workers from standard public employee health care or retirement coverage.

Unlike the Teamsters, Transit Workers, or other more traditional union members (whose past assertions of “rank-and-file” power are lionized by Moody), these workers have atomized, high-turn-over, part-time jobs—in a setting quite unlike the large industrial workplaces of the past. The fact that their “non-traditional workplace” is their own or someone else’s home increases the likelihood that unions won’t help them build real organizations or a functioning steward system. Already, many such workers remain “agency fee payers” or members with little consciousness of or connection to their union. (According to Moody’s research, SEIU nationally has more agency fee payers—over 200,000—than CWA, AFSCME, and AFT combined.) Home-based workers’ experience of collective action–if any-—comes from initial community-based mobilizations for bargaining rights and better pay. The poor and/or immigrant neighborhood—not the “shop floor”–is the only possible nexus for solidarity among “co-workers.”

If one of the continuing shortcomings of organized labor today—as noted by both Moody and Milkman—is that it’s still too pale, male, and stale, what better way to achieve greater diversity than by developing the leadership potential of this vast “new rank-and-file”? Can such workers—or the immigrant janitors and hotel workers who’ve also been a big part of other Change To Win recruitment drives—ever succeed in becoming leading actors in their own organizations, rather than bit-players in union-orchestrated street pageantry or political campaigns? It won’t be easy in a staff-run “mega-local” like SEIU’s 190,000-member United Long Term Care Workers Union in California—for all the reasons identified by Moody.

But, as he concludes hopefully, the initiatives of rank-and-file oriented radicals and reformers “can help lay the basis for better things to come, just as inaction, timidity, bureaucracy, or ‘more of the same’ can stifle them.”

(Steve Early spent 27 years as an organizer and international representative for the Communications Workers of America. He writes frequently for Labor Notes and many other publications. He is currently working on a book for Cornell ILR Press on the role of Sixties radicals in American unions. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.)

  With “Contours of the Crisis” in the latest issue of Upping the Anti #8 (see two posts previous), Aidan Conway interviews three leading thinkers on contemporary capitalism who also each happen to be professors of political economy at York University in Toronto as well. They are David McNally, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch. Below are three highlights that raise worthwhile points to think about around the financial crisis and building “the other world that is possible” as we might say.

  Here on the relationship between class struggle at home and imperialism abroad, which are intracately interwoven.

  Sam Gindin: If and when, during the next decades, the foundations of American empire were to really crumble, class struggles within the imperial heartland itself would likely play a major role in bringing this on – precisely because of the way in which the external and internal dimensions of American empire are intertwined. At the same time, the ability to pacify the citizens of the empire is critically dependant on the ability to maintain wider structures of global exploitation and integration. (emphasis added)

 Why has there yet to be widespread resistance to the effects of the downturns by workers, the unemployed and displaced homeowners? Is America too conservative? This excerpt points to the last episode of major financial crisis, the 1930s, and that the signifigant points of resistance did not begin until several years into the crisis and after a brief upturn in the economic situation. This connects with the wisdom that rebellion happens less when folks are at their lowest and more so when raised expectations have been unfulfilled (think where folks will be at with Obama in 2012). As they say “You can’t fight a revolution on an empty stomache.” And further, when the economy begins to take an upturn, workers rightly feel that they have better leverage to press their demands. Now is the time to start thinking, preparing and laying the groundwork to organize.

  Sam Gindin: We’ve been thinking about this by looking at when people began to rebel in the 1930s. You don’t really see much resistance until about 1932. So it was a good three years before the big marches of the unemployed in Detroit, for example. And it’s not until 1933 or 1934 that the sustained efforts at organizing got going. People were really shocked and numbed. What’s interesting is that around 1934 there was a real economic upturn. … It was only really when the economy started to improve that the people had the confidence to begin to fight back. After the second collapse in 1937, the United Auto Workers union was almost completely destroyed at General Motors. In Canada, the union survived by setting up bowling leagues and rod and gun clubs. They had almost no base in the plants then, and that didn’t really change until the war. (emphasis added)

  What type of reforms should left social movements and radicals put forward? Some are calling for increased regulation as well as nationalization, such as with the banking sector and auto industry. But will these build our power from below and allow us to further our demands? or will they empower a bureacratic state to intervene in the economy with the goal of perserving the long term interests of capitalism as a system? I tend to think demands of nationalization, while not harmful, fall into the the later catagory.

  Leo Panitch: Most people on the left think that state intervention and re-regulation is where we ought to go. This is limited and naive. If you look at what happened in the 1930s, what happened is that the state stepped in and saved financial capital as a fraction of the capitalist class, and then nurtured it back to health for thirty years. It would be a tragedy if the outcome of the crisis were a re-regulation that merely saved capitalism again. It’s misleading to think that the state as it is presently constructed is going to intervene in ways that serve left objectives. What are needed are the kinds of reforms that could be built on as part of a process of more fundamental change. Socialists didn’t think enough about this in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of those reforms were good and necessary, but they involved a bureaucratic capitalist state, distant from the working class, introducing reforms of a kind that didn’t lay any basis for moving forward in a more radical way. Now, you’re not going to get anywhere as a socialist without offering and fighting for immediate reforms (you can’t say “wait for the revolution”), but the danger is that in the process you promote, as in some ways was done in the wake of the Great Depression, reforms that will meet certain needs but won’t help lay the basis for moving beyond the system.

 Workers and popular organizations connected to the anarchist movement rally on May Day 2009 in a public square in Argentina.

  What would an anarchist politics look like that spoke to the needs of today’s realities and to today’s movements? How can revolutionaries apply the values of anarchism to an understanding of building mass movements from below, an understanding of power, a vision of a future society with the understanding of the organization needed to reach it, coupled with a strong analysis of race, patriarchy, gender and issues of queer liberation?

  Miami Autonomy & Solidarity (MAS, pronounced like the word “más” in Spanish) is a small organization of revolutionaries based out of the fourth largest metropolitan areas in the US. While Miami is a hub of international trade and finance, it’s also the third poorest city in the US and with a majority immigrant and people of color population (nearly 60% were born outside the US). Much like the US/Mexico border, Miami is a city where the third and first world grate against each other. Interestingly, similar to the rest of the US South, the city lacks much of an established left as would other large metropolitan areas such as New York, Boston, Chicago and the Bay Area.

  The organization has been in a process of formation, study and debate for over a year prior to announcing themselves publicly in mid-May 2009. While there are certainly a number of well spoken and excellent individual thinkers in the anarchist milieu, MAS’s Points of Unity below represents one of the best collectively written organizational statements of anarchist politics in North America to this date in my opinion. A recommended read.

Miami Autonomy & Solidarity Points of Unity

  Miami Autonomy & Solidarity is an organization of people whom have come together for the purpose of developing a revolutionary organization that works within social movements, as well as on the revolutionary level with the ultimate goal of contributing to an autonomous popular class movement of the oppressed that will overthrow capitalism and the state, as well as ending all forms of oppression.    

Role of the Specific Revolutionary Organization 

  Our specific revolutionary organization is a group founded on and working towards theoretical and strategic unity, as well as tactical coordination amongst its members. These organizational principles serve to strengthen our efficiency and effectiveness in developing our ideas and strategies within the broader working class movement. It must be stated that the need for such a group arises out of the practical struggles of the working class to transform itself into a revolutionary class capable of overthrowing capitalism and the state; as well as building society along egalitarian, self-managed, and directly democratic lines.  

  Through our specific revolutionary organization we seek to contribute to the theoretical development of revolutionary social struggles. We engage in the creation of media that communicates the views and political line of the organization, and we directly participate in struggles based on a common strategic program and coordinated activity. The political organization helps keep a historical memory of struggle and ongoing organizational strategic assessments of struggle in mass movements . We strive to retain experiences of success and failures in order to strengthen the social struggle.

  However, unlike some political parties that try to use social movements as a tool to develop their own power, our organization’s relation to the social movement’s is reversed: our organization is a tool of our members and sympathizers within the social movement used to contribute towards the power of the social movements through the development of the autonomous consciousness, capacity, and solidarity of these movements.   We never seek to dominate, impose upon, manipulate, command or control the movements we’re a part of.  Rather we seek to participate as equals within the struggle, offering our ideas and methods as short and long term proposals for the movements towards liberation. 

Against Racism  

  Racism is more than just a set of attitudes and behaviors, but a systemic phenomenon that is built into and executed by numerous institutions throughout society.  Historically, white supremacy in the US has used the notion of whiteness to oppress people of color, while simultaneously rewarding groups and individuals who embrace and promote white supremacist rule.  

  From a working class perspective, racism serves to keep the oppressed classes divided and disorganized to the detriment of the all within the oppressed classes. Thus, we must fight racism and prejudice of all kinds, for the unity and liberation of the oppressed classes depends on it.   

  We believe that race and class in the United States are intrinsically connected, though they may affect certain groups of people differently.  As such, we respect and support the need of certain groups of people to struggle autonomously.  As class struggle militants we seek to actively build rapport with these movements, so as to help connect such struggles, and give them expression as part of a larger working class movement.  We feel that more experimentation is needed to develop tools and practices which will aid in the development of a genuine multi-racial, working class movement in the US.  We believe that building such a movement is the task of all serious anti-racist, anti-statist, anti-capitalist revolutionaries.   

Against Patriarchy 

  Such mechanisms allow for the participation of women in the system, but in such a way that men as a group still end up with a greater degree of power in relation to women as a group.

  We see women’s liberation as a movement in itself, but also see the need to have it linked with other struggles against domination.  The end of patriarchy is liberatory for both men and women.  It means the end of imposed gender roles, practices, behaviors, social relationships etc. and the end of domination of women by men, the state, and capitalism.  We aim to practice this in our personal relationships and groups as well as work collectively against these oppressive power relations.   

Queer liberation    

  Queer liberation is the struggle against queer oppression that manifests itself through homophobia, heterosexism, trans-phobia, and other forms of domination. It intersects with other forms of oppression, as well as manifesting its own forms of systemic, cultural and personal oppression. We support the struggles of working class queers in their fight for free sexuality between consenting adults; free gender expression; equal and appropriate access to health care and other social institutions and other struggles for respect.  We also support working class queers’ opposition to “queer assimilation” – the struggle for an autonomous movement that is not co-opted by the state, capitalism and privileged classes that try to dominate the queer movement.     

Ending Capitalism and Constructing a Classless Society 

  Capitalism is an economic system of organized class oppression. Capitalism is primarily a social relationship between classes that must work, and the classes that direct and employ. It is a relationship that is reproduced at every level of society by workers, managers, and bosses, within the workplace and everywhere else.   

  A small class of capitalists own the companies, production equipment, apartment buildings, and other economic assets. The dictatorship of the capitalists derives from their direct control over all of the property of society, and locks out the oppressed classes. Within the working class we are forced to sell our time, our bodies, and minds in order to survive. Our lives and time are used up reluctantly in the ebb and flow of capital’s cycles. Capitalism can only be sustained by increasing profit through increasing production and draining more wealth from the oppressed classes and the Earth. This relentless drive for profits has caused capital to overlook human and environmental devastation in the pursuit of short term gains.   

  The capitalists’ efforts to increase control over work and extract greater wealth, led to the creation of a distinct section of the economy— the managers and elite professionals who staff the hierarchies of the corporations and the state. Management is a tool of repression in the workplace, speeding up our work, policing the workplace, and keeping the interests of the owners as the driving force on the job. The subordination of the working class to the capitalist and bureaucratic classes is a system of oppression because it denies us control over our lives and subordinates life to the meaningless drive for profit. 

  In the process of building a class that can only survive through selling its time and labor, capitalism locked some people out of the workforce. Some are held in near permanent unemployment, others like housewives help contribute to society’s wealth but aren’t paid for it.

  Not everyone who is in a class knows they’re in a class. In fact the opposite is true. There is a difference between the class you are in objectively, and how you perceive yourself and the way you behave. In practice, we see a world of infinite divisions, continuously blurred and reorganized by capitalists and the state, and oppressed classes divided for innumerable reasons.

  We organize to build class unity through struggle, and build a united working class movement for the abolition of classes altogether. We recognize that only through the unity of the oppressed against capital and the state will the abolition of oppression for all be possible, it is only through building common struggle and class organization that we will succeed.   

  The ability of the elite classes to exploit our labor and dominate us has been limited throughout the history of capitalism by revolts and mass struggles of ordinary people. The oppressed classes can liberate themselves through the development of self-managed mass organizations, which are developed through class struggle. Ultimately, we can only be rid of class dictatorships when we destroy the basis for economic classes all together, and live in a society where we control our own neighborhoods and jobs through collective democracy. We advocate a strategy for social change “from below” based on mass participation, direct democracy, collective direct action, and self-managed mass organizations, aimed towards the end of class rule and oppression. 

Abolition of the State    

  The state is an institution of minority class rule held through a monopoly of violence and centralized decision-making, which is reproduced as a social relationship throughout society. The modern state as we know it co-developed with capitalism in Western Europe and has spread to nearly everywhere across the globe, and in almost all instances sided with economic power against the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.  Today, the position of the state, both in terms of power and its participation in the market, creates divisions amongst the ruling class in competing for control. The ruling class and the state are therefore not identical. 

 The level of centralization both of power and wealth in the hands of the state makes any hope of change through working within the state only an illusion. History has been clear in showing that the state transforms rebels into masters or destroys those who try to defend the oppressed classes. Revolutionary change won’t come by changing who’s in power, only the eradication of hierarchy will achieve this. 

 

 

WWDD: What Would Durutti Do?

  We seek a social revolution that will overthrow the state and capitalism. Yet a society-wide transformation can’t happen overnight, since we have seen that the state is inside us too. Without an internal transformation, we will continue to reproduce the dominating and exploitative relations of the state and capital daily. It is only through the process of collective struggle that we can both draw out the potential for change and see the kernel of its realization. 

  To organize a revolutionary society, we must have popular institutions that replace the necessary functions which the state and capital distorted and monopolized. After defending ourselves in revolution and achieving greater stability, the re-organization of society for human needs rather than the profit-driven production of capitalism will increasingly become our task.

 Against Imperialism

  Imperialism is a system where the state and elite classes of some countries use their superior economic and military power to dominate and exploit the people and resources of other countries. The imperialist powers drain wealth from less powerful countries through debt, corporate investment, unequal power in trade, and military intervention. 

  As countries compete for greater dominance and market control, a global power struggle and military race rises and falls again and again, while the oppressed classes are the bodies, minds, and hearts that are used up and discarded. We support popular progressive struggles against both military and economic expressions of imperialism.  

  Today, modern warfare, combined with modern science, is used to pursue ever increasing means of torment for humanity. War is increasingly waged, not merely on bodies, but on the minds, hearts, and land of dominated countries. Torture, rape, genocide, poisoning and destroying of land are the mark of our time. Only through eradicating the root cause which drives countries to imperialist aggression, will we see an end to limitless war.  

  Our fight is both internal and external. Internally we fight the foundations of the imperialist economy and state which provides the basis for imperialism. Externally we seek to build concrete unity, through action and solidarity with movements that struggle to end imperialism and capitalism. In countries resisting invasion or domination by the major capitalist powers, we support movements of the oppressed classes in these countries, not their local states or local elites. We don’t support the national bourgeoisie and bureaucracies in their bid for power in these struggles. The history of the completed revolutions throughout Latin America, Africa and throughout the globe demonstrate the peril and vital mistake in supporting these forces.  

  In situations where a “national liberation movement” aims to oust a pro-imperialist leadership in a country or fight an occupation, we support mass movements of workers, peasants, and others of the oppressed classes in their struggle against imperialism, but not the state-building project of a “national liberation” political party. Self-determination requires the autonomy of the popular organizations from the ruling classes and party bureaucracies. 

  Imperialism can only be brought to an end by a social and economic transformation throughout the planet, which eliminates the system of competing states and exploitative class systems. The human species needs to evolve a new form of world association that respects the autonomy and differences of all communities or ethnic groups while allowing for democratic decision-making, rooted in grassroots institutions such as delegate congresses, to resolve global problems.  

The Necessity of Social Revolution

  Capitalism, the State and other systems of oppression cannot be voted or convinced out of existence.  The oppressed classes must lead a revolutionary struggle against the systems of domination of the elite classes and their defenders.  This struggle will involve the destruction of the state; the expropriation of all land, capital, social institutions and wealth from capital;the ending of class-based economic systems; and the elimination of all forms of oppression.

  The old oppressive political, economic and social orders must be replaced by directly-democratic , egalitarian, and self-managed decision-making institutions. These popular institutions must be federally linked from the local level to the global level, in order to organize for common needs and around common issues.  We seek an economic system that will be controlled socially through these directly-democratic, self-managed, egalitarian and cooperative structures that bases economic contribution according to individuals’ abilities and economic distribution according to individuals’ needs.

  However, the elite classes will not give up their privileges without a fight and will use violence, lies, withholding of resources and whatever other means of maintaining the state, capitalism and other forms of privilege and oppression as they can.  There will also likely be various parties and organizations that may try to co-opt the broad struggle of the oppressed classes by trying to centralize power in their hands supposedly “on behalf of” the revolutionary struggle.  The popular revolutionary struggle of the oppressed classes must defend its autonomy against both these elite classes and against any political groups trying to take the revolution under their control.  

  The revolutionary struggle must be organized to defend itself. Popular militias should be formed accountable to and ultimately controlled directly democratically by the popular revolutionary movment communes. We’re against isolated acts of violence or terrorism in the name of popular struggle. While defense of our struggle will likely necessitate violence; all violence must be liberatory violence that seeks to end systems and manifestations of oppression, not violence that seeks to reintroduce or recreate systems of oppression with different oppressors.  

  The role of members of our revolutionary organization in this struggle is one of equals making arguments and seeking influence through persuasion within the popular revolutionary struggle; as active militants on behalf of the directly democratic revolutionary struggles; and trying to defend against those who would seek to dominate within these popular revolutionary struggles through coercion or by seeking to institute systems of control, domination or exploitation.

 Environment  

  To achieve a sustainable and healthy relationship between humanity and the natural world, we must create a society which is based on the satisfaction of social needs such as food, shelter, water, and community. Modern environmental destruction is largely a result of capitalism’s need to commodify the natural world and continually expand production for the wealth of a small minority. While production expands and contracts, the vast majority of the world and our environments suffer the decimation of the senseless drive to profit. We recognize that social transformation is the first step towards ecological balance, not individual lifestyle changes or technological innovations.

 

  Upping the Anti out of Toronto, Canada is perhaps the hottest and best radical left theory/movement journal since it first began publication in late 2005. Releasing its eighth issue as of May 2009, the journal has provided a steady content of articles, interviews, reviews and topic based roundtables by and with movement activists and organizers on the radical left.

  With the tag line “a journal of theory and action” the journal leans towards the more academic side. But unlike some of the more dense and long running left journals (Monthly Review comes to mind), the editorial collective and contributors are nearly all folks engaged in struggle and much of the theory and discussion comes directly out of movement organizing work. It’s not another left journal for radical college professors, but for folks in the movement trying to grapple with many of the difficult issues and conversations that those seeking to create revolutionary change should be. Perspective wise they maintain a pluralistic and non-party stance combined with anti-capitalism, anti-imperialist and anti-oppression politics (the three antis as they call them). Read reviews of issues #3 here and issues #2 and #3 here.

  With this issue UTA brings us an interview “Contour of the Crisis” with three political economy instructors at York University in Toronto on the realities and opportunities for the left in the current financial meltdown (discussed above);  “Movements Where People Can Grow” is an interview/discussuion with Helen Hudson (who among other groups is a board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, see their new spiffy website here) with her thoughts on building long-term and sustainable movements; a roundtable with former activists of SLAM (Student Liberation Action Movement, audio archive here) active in opposing tuition increases in the New York public university system in the 1990’s and discussing their strong leadership from women of color; and another roundtable with members of various study groups/circles taken up by radicals in a number of cities.

 Also, here’s a quote from the back cover of this issue that warms my heart from Helen Kellar, the advocate for the blind. Often left out of history is her radical politics as an anarchist and member of the IWW.

  Capitalism will inevitably find itself face to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers demanding food or destruction of the social order that has starved them and robbed them of their jobs. in such a crisis the capitalism class cannot save itself… Its police and armies will be powerless to put down the revolt. (1918)

  Here is also a quote on how she first moved towards radical politics from her Wikipedia entry…

   I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame [referring to prostitution and syphilis] that ended in blindness.