CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:

WORKERS WITHOUT BOSSES-WATERLOO EVENT:

The speaking tour of an Argentine comrade from Red Libertaria through Ontario and Québec continues apace. Here's a review from the Common Cause (the sponsors of the Ontario wing of this tour) website about the first stop on this tour in Waterloo Ontario. See the Common Cause website for details about further public meetings in this tour.

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Workers Without Bosses tour - A short review of the Waterloo stop:
On Saturday, January 23rd I attended the first stop in the Ontario-wing of the “Workers Without Bosses“ speaking tour, held in Kitchener-Waterloo. The stop was organized by a local Common Cause member with help from the good folks at Anti-War at Laurier (AWOL) and the KW Community Centre for Social Justice (KWCCSJ).

These are the same people who take much of the credit for building a vibrant activist community in the past few years. From Six Nations solidarity work to anti-Olympics organizing to the opening of the Centre for Social Justice, these hard-working people have made K-W a regional centre of anti-authoritarian, direct action based organizing.

Earlier in the day, I had the pleasure of spending some time with the speaker, Sebastian, a militant with the Argentina-based social anarchist group, Red Libertaria (Libertarian Network). Sebastian is a student of radical Argentinian history and we talked about the anarchist workers movement in early 20th century Argentina, an era where anarchist-socialism dominated the worker's movement.

Some of this material is covered in the recently published book, "Black Flame: the Revolutionary Class Politics of Mass Anarchism and Syndicalism"written by two members of the South African anarcho-communist organization, Zabalaza and a must read for all anarchists. It turns out Sebastian collaborated with the authors on the Latin American section of the two-volume work.

We also talked about the current situation in Argentina and what has happened to the social movements there since the 2001 economic crisis and social explosion. This was also the subject of Sebastian's talk later that night, in front of a packed house of 40 or so people.

I won't go over his talk in detail. For that you'll have to attend one of the remaining tour stops or tune in on here once we have an audio recording up. But to summarize, the presentation began with a brief history of neoliberal economic policies in Argentina, and the reasons behind the 2001 economic collapse. From here, most of the talk provided an overview of the three main social movements involved in the social uprising: the unemployed workers movement, the factory occupations movement, and the neighbourhood assemblies. If you've seen the documentary "The Take", you'll appreciate how Sebastian brings the story up to date as well as the details added that we don't hear in the film.

For example, the talk makes clear that the social uprising was not as spontaneous as is made to be seen in "The Take". The unemployed workers movement, known as the "piqueteros" for blockading major transportation routes, had been organizing before the uprising. Also, behind the most militant factory occupations, including the Zanon occupation, lay years of patient organizing and struggle, often involving the various radical left groups. In short, while there certainly was a lot of spontaneity to the 2001 uprising, especially among the neighbourhood assemblies, some of the groundwork had been laid in advance.

The picture that emerges 9 years after the uprising is decidedly mixed. With few exceptions, the neighbourhood assemblies have disappeared. But some of them morphed into social centres or neighbourhood cooperatives and many of the participants became radicalised and have swelled the numbers of the radical left, including the anarchist groups. Red Libertaria itself is a product of the uprising's aftermath.

The unemployed workers movement won employment insurance but in the process much of it has been captured by political parties, with a few still clinging to autonomy.

Hundreds of occupied factories remain in the hands of workers, successfully producing with drastic improvements in working conditions. Some factories double as cultural and social spaces: places of work by day, community centres in the evenings. But all struggle to survive in what remains a capitalist economy where competition can turn workers' control into self-managed exploitation. And some bosses have figured out a way to create "fake" cooperatives taking advantage of state subsidies and new legislation.

In short, the Argentinian ruling class and their allies have managed to recover control. They've done this with difficulty using a mixture of repression and cooptation, meeting some of the movements' demands in return for their moderation and bureaucratization. That they were able to stabilize the economy was also central to their ability to regain control.

According to Sebastian, this outcome is due in large part to a major weakness of the 2001 uprising. The movements that emerged knew what they were against: neoliberal capitalism. But they did not have an alternative nor an idea of how to go about building it. For example, Sebastian recounts how his neighbourhood assembly voted to nationalize the banks, without any idea of what this would look like or the power to make it happen.

As for the anarchists, like the rest of the radical left, they lacked the organizational and political unity to pursue a common strategy inside the movements. In one struggle, two groups of anarchists even found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict within the local unemployed workers movement. Division is even worse among other political tendencies.

It is hard not to see the similarities here with more recent uprisings such as the Greek revolt of 2008-2009. And we can see the same thing happening today in Ontario and North America. While there is more anger today towards capitalism and the ruling classes than there has been in decades, no alternative has even begun to capture the popular imagination. And the libertarian, anti-capitalist left is in no position to propose and start really building towards an alternative. I hope that, like last night, those who come to see Sebastian talk will use the time to reflect on the lessons offered by the struggle in Argentina, and will continue the discussion long after Sebastian has rejoined his fellow anarchists in Buenos Aires.

CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-ONTARIO:

FACTORIES WITHOUT BOSSES ONTARIO SPEAKING TOUR:

Since Molly last reported on the Québec speaking tour of an anarchist comrade from the Argentinian Red Libertaria group, speaking on how ordinary people responded to an earlier economic crisis in that country, plans have been put together for an Ontario section of the tour. Here are the details from the Ontario Common Cause website.

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Workers Without Bosses - Speaking Tour:
The popular response to the Argentine economic crisis of December 2001 and lessons for us in Canada - a Québec and Ontario speaking tour presented by the Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) and Common Cause.

We are going through one of the worst economic crises in the history of capitalism and the answers provided by the state and its lackeys are illusory. In addition, faced with this impasse, our leaders are trying to shift the entire burden of the crisis to workers and their communities.
How can we respond differently to this economic crisis ? Can we learn from the experiences of struggles that have happened elsewhere in the world ?

To consider these issues, the UCL and Common Cause are organizing a Québec and Ontario speaking tour this winter on the response of the Argentine popular classes in the face of a serious economic crisis that shook the country in the late 2001.

From 18 January to 12 February, a militant from the anarchist organization Red Libertaria (Argentina) will travel to different cities in Quebec and Ontario to talk about this subject. He will discuss different forms of resistance developed by the Argentine people to counter the effects of the crisis such as retaking factories and creating self-managed cooperatives. He will also discuss the involvement of anarchists in these different struggles.
In Ontario, the tour will stop in:
Waterloo

- January 23, 6:30pm - 8:00pm

KW Community Centre for Social Justice (KWCCSJ)

63 Courtland Ave East

Hosted by Peaceculture.org and KWCCSJ
London

- January 24, 7pm

Empowerment Infoshop

636 Queens Ave.

Hosted by Common Cause London
Hamilton

- January 25, 7pm

Skydragon Centre

27 King William Street

Hosted by Common Cause Hamilton

commoncausehamilton@gmail.com
Toronto - January 26 TBA
Ottawa - January 27 TBA

The tour will stop in several Quebec cities including Montreal, St-Jerome, Quebec, Saguenay, Saint-Félicien, Drummondville, Sherbrooke. The places and dates of each talk will be publicized soon.

For more information on the Ontario wing of the tour contact commoncauseontario@gmail.com or check here (The Common Cause website-Molly ) for regular updates.

MOUVEMENT ANARCHISTE DE CANADA/CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:
USINES SANS PATRONS/FACTORIES WITHOUT BOSSES:

Dans les premières années de la dernière décennie l'Argentine a connu le genre de crise économique que le monde entier souffre d'aujourd'hui. Plutôt que de dépendre de leurs dirigeants, les gens ordinaires ont agi de leur propre chef, avec des solutions créatives et libertaire. L'UCL Québec envisage de parrainer une tournée d'un participant à ces évents de donner une autre manière de sortir de la crise actuelle. Voici le communiqué de la blogue de l'UCL de Montréal.

In the early years of the last decade Argentina suffered the kind of economic crisis that the whole world is suffering from today. Rather than depend upon their rulers the ordinary people acted on their own, with creative and libertarian solutions. The Québec UCL plans to sponsor a tour of one participant in these events to give an alternative way out of the present crisis. Here's the notice from the Montréal UCL blog.
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Usines sans patrons (Prise 2):
Usines sans patron : la réponse des classes populaires argentines à la crise économique de décembre 2001 - Tournée panquébécoise de conférences (Prise 2)




Nous traversons l’une des pires crises économiques de l’histoire du capitalisme et les réponses fournies par l'État et ses laquais sont illusoires. En plus, face à cette impasse nos dirigeant-e-s tentent de faire porter tout le fardeau de la crise aux travailleurs et travailleuses.





Comment pouvons-nous répondre autrement à cette crise économique? Pouvons-nous s’inspirer des expériences de luttes qui se sont passées ailleurs dans le monde?





Pour réfléchir à ces questions, l'Union communiste libertaire (UCL) organise cet hiver une tournée panquébécoise de conférences sur la réponse des classes populaires argentines face à la grave crise économique qui secoua le pays au début des années 2000.





Du 18 janvier au 12 février prochain, un militant anarchiste de l’organisation Red Libertaria (Argentine) parcourra différentes villes du Québec et de l'Ontario (J'espére-Molly ) pour nous entretenir sur ce sujet. Il traitera des différentes formes de résistance développées par le peuple argentin pour contrer les effets de la crise: récupération d'usine, création de coopératives autogérées, etc. ainsi que de l'implication des anarchistes dans ces différentes luttes.





La tournée s'arrêtera dans plusieurs villes : Montréal, Saint-Jérôme, Québec, Saguenay, Saint-Félicien, Drummondville, Sherbrooke, etc. Soyez alerte! Les lieux et dates de chaque conférence seront publicisés très bientôt.
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Factories without bosses (Take 2):
Factories without bosses:the response of the popular classes to the Argentine economic crisis of December 2001 - PanQuébec Tour of meetings (Take 2)





We are going through one of the worst economic crises in the history of capitalism and the answers provided by the state and its lackeys are illusory. In addition, faced with this impasse, our leaders are trying to shift the entire burden of the crisis to the workers.





How can we respond differently to this economic crisis? Can we learn from the experiences of struggles that have happened elsewhere in the world?





To consider these issues, the Libertarian Communist Union (UCL) is organizing a panQuébec tour this winter of meetings on the response of Argentine popular classes in the face of a serious economic crisis that shook the country in the early 2000s.





From 18 January to 12 February, a militant from the anarchist organization Red Libertaria (Argentina) will travel to different cities of Quebec and Ontario (I hope-Molly ) to talk about this subject. He will discuss different forms of resistance developed by the Argentine people to counter the effects of the crisis retaking factories, creating self-managed cooperatives, etc.. and the involvement of anarchists in these different struggles.





The tour will stop in several cities: Montreal, St-Jerome, Quebec, Saguenay, Saint-Félicien, Drummondville, Sherbrooke, etc.. Be alert! The places and dates of each conference will be publicized soon.

ANARCHIST MOVEMENT AND THEORY-ARGENTINA:

RED LIBERTARIA OF BUENOS AIRES:

The following item recently appeared on the A-Infos website, but its original source is the website of the Red Libertaria group of Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is the website of an "especifismo" group, a common name for South American anarchists who believe in organizing both amongst the popular movement and in specific anarchist groups with a common theory and practice. This political current is very similar to the platformist groups active in other parts of the world. The term "Red Libertaria", by the way, translates as "Libertarian Network", as "red" means "network" in Spanish.. The following has been slightly edited for reasons of English grammar and clarity, so it is slightly different from the A-Infos version. As anarchism continues its worldwide growth it reappears in areas such as Argentina where it has traditionally been strong, and it also grows in maturity as well. The especifismo current is one example of growing maturity.

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Argentina, Red Libertaria de Buenos Aires - What is the Red Libertaria (Libertarian Network)?

Tthe 19th and 20th of December 2001 found us in the streets, in the neighbourhoods, organizing ourselves, discussing and resisting ; holding out with sticks and stones against the attacks of the police and infantry, who covered De La Rua´s back as he cowardly fled.

---- With this scene as background, we, comrades that shared their libertarian ideas, started to find each other in the struggles, all of us looking for the way to overcome the lack of libertarian spaces. And so, the last days of December 2002, the first formal meetings of Red Libertaria took place. Red Libertaria´s goal is anarchism´s resurgence; in the streets, in the factories and workshops, in the schools and universities, in the neighbourhoods and slums; so that anarchism can be a revolutionary force again, a force that combats and destroys capitalism everywhere, wielding the weapons of direct action, horizontality, federalism, solidarity, self-management, freedom and equality.

Anarchists although we are many, we are scattered; and because of our dispersion we see our capacity reduced, our influence decreased; due to this, we are unable to sustain any important project and we go back home hopeless and resigned.

Sometimes comrades choose to participate in projects of other tendencies, with which, although they agree in many issues, they also have important disagreements.

Seeing this, we decided to join strengths: to strengthen popular organizations and struggles, and drive them towards a libertarian tendency, to sustain a permanent presence on the streets and make activities so comrades with sympathy for the ideas can gather to talk, discuss, learn and join so that we all push in the same direction.

We militate in different spaces (cooperatives, unions and syndical groups, students' centres and students groups, neighbourhood work groups, social and cultural centres, etc.) to strengthen popular organizations and struggles, propelling libertarian ideas and trying to make people assimilate them and, over all, practice them as their own.

We carry on propaganda in the streets, also (wheat-pasting posters, painting slogans, distributing flyers, anarchist publications, presence in marches, etc.), and carrying out events (talks and conferences, cycles of debate-workshops, movie shows, parties, etc.) and also with the edition of publications (pamphlets, booklets, books and a periodical newspaper).

In Red Libertaria we discuss subjects of the day, we elaborate a common vision of the general situation and the different tendencies at play, and we agree on common plans and lines of action to move forward. We do the same with historical and theoretical subjects to learn from past experiences and recover memory, so we can be in better conditions to act today.

Through its 4 years of life, Red Libertaria has worked organized and awkwardly for the reinsertion of anarchism into the people, pushing ideas and practices in our work spaces, in which we study and live, explaining our positions in every meeting and assembly in which we participate, propagating from our press and flyers.

And something that's not minor: We've established contact and strengthen our relationship with comrades all over the country.

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Our Anarchism

Anarchism as a philosophic and political practice has developed a multitude of variants or tendencies throughout its century and a half of history. All of them criticize the present state of things, share rejection to the authority and have a common goal: a society of free and equal human beings. Several anarchist tendencies coexist nowadays and come together in the libertarian movement. Mainly, their differences rest up on the methods that they propose.

We have our own opinions regarding means and methods to achieve that goal. We place ourselves in an anarchist tendency: the especifismo; which holds that anarchists´ organization it's necessary in order to achieve the social change that anarchists themselves try to raise.

Our anarchism aspires to influence people – society's oppressed and exploited part - in order to promote its liberation, which is as well the liberation of all humankind. We see a strong contradiction (as well as opposed interests) in this society, since a few live in wealth at the cost of the majority's suffering. And as solution we propose a Social Revolution, that expropriates the possessors and destroys their tools of oppression - the States, the churches, the nationalism, the machismo, the family, the dogmatism, etc. -, and finishes off with the injustices, establishing Anarchist Communism.

1) Although our anarchism's objective is humanity's emancipation, it is not humanism. We take side with a sector of this society: those exploited, oppressed, dominated and governed classes ; we talk about the workers, the unemployed, the poor and the marginalized in this system, to the people in its power. With them we must construct organization, to the detriment of proprietors´ and governors´ power.

2) Our purpose is Anarchist Communism: a new social order where there will be no classes and therefore, neither the state nor the religious fraud will be necessary. Our objective is a society in which life - economy, science, art, etc. - will be organized based on the interests of society as a whole and not of a minority as happens at the present time. We call this self-management: in the future there will be no few privileged and idle ones as the laboring masses die in misery. Everyone will work - excepting children, patients, or aged people - and they all will decide democratically what to produce, how much to produce, and how to distribute it. In anarchist communist society there won't exist a single centre of power, the State will not exist, neither anything that resembles it. Even though the aim of such a State would not be to maintain exploitation or any centralized administration, the State as itself is tremendously inefficient and it generates a privileged bureaucracy, which in no time will constitute itself as an exploiter caste.

3) We understand that in order to reach Anarchist Communism it is necessary to expropriate social wealth from the bourgeoisie. For that Social Revolution will be necessary, driven by the people itself, who will destroy the bourgeoisie' s privileges, take the economy in their own hands and begins to produce looking forward to satisfy the necessities of all. We who integrate with Red Libertaria do not conceive the possibility of freedom and equality within Capitalism, and neither in its margins.

4) We are especifistas because we think that libertarians must be organized in order to be able to influence society. Isolated we would be unable to carry out any truly great action. The organization that we propose differences itself from the traditional political institutions in as much as hierarchies do not exist inside it: there is not a person or group who decides and another that executes.Anarchists' organization must be a truly democratic organization, in which the decisions are made through assemblies. Since there's a physical limit of persons that can constitute an assembly, the libertarians' organization would be a federation: the unit of the multiple and relatively small nuclei, each one carrying on a particular activity, but related to the whole through periodic general meetings. Each group would have relative autonomy within the framework of these basic agreements.

5) We are internationalists since we considered that borders between oppressed and exploited communities shouldn't exist. The entire world suffers capital's yoke and the state's oppression. An organization with international projection is necessary for the fight against this system that has been constituted on a planetary scale.Internationalism, that conceives the entire world as a battlefield and not only one country, comes with anti-imperialism. In Capitalism, as it was consolidated from mid XIX century, the bourgeoisies of the technologically developed countries extended their political and economic domination beyond the borders of their own territory, intervening militarily when it was necessary. We are anti-imperialist because we fight against the bourgeoisie that resides in our region and also those who reside in the United States and European countries, those from China and Japan, etc. We do not see the possibility of agreeing with the local dominant class to fight against a foreign bourgeoisie. With alliances of that nature, founded on the deceit of nationalism, the bourgeoisie of a country drags people into the fight so they can exploit them even more. Our interests are opposite to the dominant class' interests; therefore there an alliance is not conceivable.

6) Our anarchism also fights for the equality of the genders, for the destruction of the sexist stereotypes that relegates woman to a secondary place in society. We understand that all women bear a double oppression: as workers, unemployed people, poor women, etc. but also as women. We must eradicate the vices of sexism, machismo and violence based on the gender.

7) From Red Libertaria we want anarchism to grow and amass amongst the exploited and dominated people. That's why we sustain works in different spaces: cooperatives, unions and syndical groups, students' centres and students' groups, neighbourhood work groups, social and cultural centres, etc taking part in different areas where the inequalities of the system are pronounced, looking forward to promoting struggles that result in the organization of the oppressed . It is not necessary to clarify that our intervention does not proceed with a dirigist eagerness, left party style, but that we look forward to fomenting experiences of struggle and criticism of the system.

8) As previously mentioned, we uphold the specific organization of the anarchists, but we also maintain the fundamental importance of popular organizations. As anarchists, Red Libertaria, and the libertarian movement in general are places where we come together and discuss, plan and organize propaganda and participation in the struggles. Parallel to the libertarian movement, the popular movement develops, sometimes spontaneously, but almost always through union organizations, student groups or neighbourhood work groups in which we must participate. These organizations must be democratic internally and autonomous with respect the dominant class.

9) For the present time we think that the regrouping of the libertarians is urgent; in the libertarian movement, and according to the tendency of each one, forging ahead with energetic and coordinated militant action towards social change.

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Red Libertaria de Buenos Aires

Anarchism organises and struggles

redlibertaria@riseup.net - http://inventati.org/rlba

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Copied from http://www.inventati.org/rlba/idiomas/qsomos-e.htm

A tip of the hat to Larry Gambone (see his blog at http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com ) for posting news of a recent interview with the anarchist grandson of Che Guevara on the Any Time Now discussion group (see link to sign up). He posted a link that he originally found on the NEFAC website (http://nefac.net ) of an interview with Canek Guevara . The interview was originally published in the French anarchist newspaper 'Le Monde Libertaire' on the 29th of January, 2006. It can be seen at the website of the group of the Federation Anarchiste affiliate 'Ici et Maintenant' at www.avoixautre.be . The interview is in French.
There has been a previous interview with Canek Guevara in Spanish from the Spanish anarchist site Red Libertaria (http://red-libertaria.net ) . For the full text see http://red-libertaria.net/noticias/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1140 . An English summary of this earlier article can be accessed at the a-infos site (http://www.ainfos.ca ) at http://www.aifos.ca/ainfos336/ainfos16681.html .
As the Cuban dictator slowly dies the question of whether the dictatorship can outlast the dictator comes to mind, I presume even to the mindless minds of what is left of the Stalinist left. Should the dictatorship falls it is likely to be one more nail in their coffins. The fall of the Soviet system left very few countries for them to hang their displaced patriotism on. China, Vietnam, Laos are now frankly capitalist. North Korea is too bizarre and obvious for all but the most fanatic of fundamentalist Stalinists to have any sympathy towards- though I have seen occasional squeaks of this even amongst anarchists who should know much better. But mercifully only occasional squeaks. Cuba, however, never reached the heights of brutality that other Stalinist regimes did, even though it was just as bureaucratic as any, perhaps even more so than some. To say, however, that it is "socialist" is to deform the word beyond all recognition such that "socialism" is nothing more than the class rule of a managerial ruling class with a delusion self-justification that it rules "for the good of the people". Pretty well all ruling classes have the same ideological justification.
While researching this I came on a few items of Castro's family, though none of them appear to have become anarchists. But that will be left to a further post.