Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell.. Free Download, PDF

Literature Book Review, shared with thanks

…”They [Catalans] had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society. Of course there was no perfect equality, but there was a nearer approach to it than I had ever seen or than I would have thought conceivable in time of war.”…

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Homage to Catalonia (1938) is what it says, George Orwell’s homage to the people of Catalonia who attempted an anarchist/socialist revolution in response to the army’s attack on their fledgling democracy, and more broadly in response to centuries of harsh rule by feudal landowners supported by the Catholic church and the monarchy. A revolution that was brought down not by the civil war but by the backsliding of right-wing socialists in the Republican government and by the treachery of the Communists.

In this it resembles (or presages) another account of anarchist ‘revolution’ undone by Communists, Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative(1968) about the Paris uprisings of that year and which I have owned almost since it was written. In fact, a great deal of Orwell’s book, particularly about the lies invented and propagated by the news media, serves to show plus ca change etc.

Homage to Catalonia has two parts – Orwell’s memoir of his time as a volunteer soldier, and an analysis of the failure of the Revolution – written in the immediate aftermath of his service, “five months ago” as he says, and before the end of the Spanish war (1936-1939). The book contains a third part, Looking Back on the Spanish War, written in 1943. But that deals in particular with the partisan, dishonest role played by the press and deserves a separate review. Continue reading “Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell.. Free Download, PDF”

Who are these Anarchists? and What the Hell do they Want?

WHO ARE THE ANARCHISTS AND WHAT IS ANARCHISM?

By Thomas Giovanni at Black Rose Anarchist Federation: ………….. In the wake of the use of militant street tactics at the Trump inauguration protests, the controversial shut down of two prominent right-wing speakers at the University of California, Berkeley, and a variety of high profile actions against the far right, anarchists have received increased media attention in the USA and sparked widespread debate, particularly around anti-fascist struggles.see also> Murray Bookchin: anarchist heretic who Inspired spreading Revolution in Middle East

But many people are still confused about anarchism, associating it with indiscriminate violence, chaos, and disorder. This distorted image runs counter to more than a century of anarchist activity in and outside the United States.

So if not chaos or disorder, what does anarchism stand for? What do anarchists believe in?

Core Anarchist Values

At the most basic level, anarchists believe in the equal value of all human beings. Anarchists also believe that hierarchical power relations are not only unjust, but corrupt those who have power and dehumanize those who don’t. Continue reading “Who are these Anarchists? and What the Hell do they Want?”

Anarchist Lighthouse shines for 30 years in Barcelona’s Raval

summarized translation en catalá abaix. “Those who have known and lived with El Lokal, see it as a beacon for social movements in the city, a center of constant social and political unrest; a space for training, debate, organization and coordination of local and international struggles. Always ready, always on the ball.

see also…New Mutual Aid Hotline Blocks dozens of Evictions, Threats and Toxic Capitalism

Last Sunday we celebrated its 30th birthday at the adjacent ‘Agora Juan Andrés Benítez’ occupied space, which is named in memory of a neighbor killed by the Mossos local police in 2013- with a debate that brought together some of the anarchist and autonomous struggles of today. Continue reading “Anarchist Lighthouse shines for 30 years in Barcelona’s Raval”

Anarchism or Vanguardism? Critique of Guerrilla Ideology of the IRPGF

main text from nothingiseverlost.. shared with thanks

Guerrilla ideology reduces all revolutionary questions to quantitative problems of military force. Nothing could be more disastrous. – James Carr,

Power does not come any more from the barrel of a gun than it comes from a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but its “military” dimension is never central. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to break into the armouries, but whether they unleash what they are: commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes capitalist logic. Barricades and machine guns flow from this “weapon”.

The greater the change in social life, the less guns will be needed, and the less casualties there will be. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any nonviolent principle, but because revolution subverts more (soldiers included) than it actually destroys.

To imagine a proletarian front facing off a bourgeois front is to conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms, on the model of a political revolution or a war (seizing someone’s power, occupying their territory). In so doing, one reintroduces everything that the insurrectionary movement had overwhelmed: hierarchy, a respect for specialists, for knowledge that Knows, and for techniques to solve problems — in short for everything that plays down the role of the common man. – Gilles Dauve, When Insurrections Die

“Revolutionary” acts are no longer appraised in terms of the situation in which they are embedded, the possibilities they open up or close. What happens instead is that a form is extracted from each one of them. A particular sabotage, occurring at a particular moment, for a particular reason, becomes simply a sabotage. And the sabotage quietly takes its place among certified revolutionary practices on a scale where throwing a Molotov ranks higher than throwing rocks, but lower than kneecapping, which itself is not worth as much as a bomb. The problem is that no form of action is revolutionary in itself: sabotage has also been practiced by reformists and by Nazis. A movement’s degree of “violence” is not indicative of its revolutionary determination. – The Invisible Committee, To Our Friends

The whole gun thing, it just makes me really hot. – Charlie Kelly, Gun Fever Too: Still Hot

Over the past few months, the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF), a new anarchist group fighting in Rojava, have published a fair few interviews and texts setting out their positions. On a purely defensive level, I certainly appreciate anyone fighting against ISIS in the name of international antifascist solidarity, but the IRPGF go way beyond this and repeatedly present themselves as the representatives of anarchism in the area, carrying out a project that will be “valuable to the entire anarchist community worldwide”.

With that in mind, I think it’s legitimate for others in that “worldwide community” to raise a few questions about the IRPGF’s ideology, and how it relates to the cause they claim to be advancing. Continue reading “Anarchism or Vanguardism? Critique of Guerrilla Ideology of the IRPGF”

Rojava-inspired Women’s Councils Spread across Europe

RAHILA GUPTA shared with thanks Could this little-known system provide a way forward for real democracy – from the bottom up – in our failing neoliberal political systems?

Every time I speak at public meetings in Britain about the gender equality and direct democracy experiment being carried out in Rojava, Northern Syria, I am invariably asked by an inspired audience what we can learn from there – and how can we implement it here.Yekîneyên Jinên in Azad Star (Star-YJA) has communicated the death of the commanders of their militia Nalin Dipo and Helin Murat, from the Free Womens Unit -Ishtar killed by Turkish bombing of Kurdistan in Iraq between 26 and 28 April 2017

Given the growing consensus in the west about the importance of equal pay and equal representation of the sexes at all levels of employment, one of the basic tenets of the Rojava revolution, co-presidentship – where every institution is headed up by a man and a woman – should not be too much of a hard sell.

: Rojava Revolution Plan: Organising and Funding Projects and Volunteers

Yet even co-presidentship cannot be easily replicated within a system like ours which, driven by profit rather that values, might simply discard the idea as untenable on the grounds of cost and over-staffing. After all, the state is being rolled back everywhere; NGOs are scrabbling for cash; and jobshares are simply not the same thing. Continue reading “Rojava-inspired Women’s Councils Spread across Europe”

‘Week of Solidarity Against Repression’ Across the World

By It’s Going Down The idea for the Week of Solidarity Against Repression started as networks of friends began talking, thinking, and writing about the build up of repressive forces following the inauguration of Trump. This reality manifested itself in the felony charges leveled at over 200 people arrested in the mass kettle in Washington DC on January 20th, over 800 water protectors targeted by grand juries, and over 100 antifascists in Sacramento who await the ruling of the local DA.

During the week, we saw a wide variety of actions, from people vandalizing one of Trump’s golf courses, wheat pastes and banner drops in small towns, to large fundraising events throughout the country, a mass educational event in DC, rallies organized by the General Defense Committee (GDC) in Minneapolis and Seattle, and much more. We also saw inspiring solidarity from across the world: in Greece, at the ZAD in France, and in Germany. Continue reading “‘Week of Solidarity Against Repression’ Across the World”