INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-GREECE:

GREECE STILLS SIMMERS:

The following longish article originally comes from a left communist group Blaumachen, based since June 2005 in Thessaloniki Greece. The English translation below is from the LibCom site. While I do not agree with the general politics of "left communism" I find the following narrative remarkably free of its prejudices and a very interesting perspective on the recent events in Greece. So...

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Greece unrest: Like a winter with a thousand Decembers - TPTG/Blaumachen
Reflections on the recent unrest in Greece; "The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements"...
‘VIOLENCE means working for 40 years, getting miserable wages and wondering if you ever get retired…

VIOLENCE means state bonds, robbed pension funds and the stock-market fraud…

VIOLENCE means being forced to get housing loans which finally you pay back as if they were gold…

VIOLENCE means the management’s right to fire you any time they want…

VIOLENCE means unemployment, temporary employment, 400 Euros wage with or without social security…

VIOLENCE means work ‘accidents’, as bosses diminish their workers’ safety costs…

VIOLENCE means being driven sick because of hard work …

VIOLENCE means consuming psycho-drugs and vitamins in order to cope with exhausting working hours…

VIOLENCE means working for money to buy medicines in order to fix your labour power commodity…

VIOLENCE means dying on ready-made beds in horrible hospitals, when you can’t afford bribing.
Proletarians from occupied GSEE, Athens, December 2008

Last December, the wind of insurrection blew over the cities in Greece. The joyful and festive atmosphere of Christmas was set on fire together with the Christmas tree on Syntagma square. The assassination of the 15-year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos by a special police guard on the 6th ignited the spark.

In general, the social unrest of December can be characterized as a violent proletarian rebellion which had a sudden, mass and wild burst that gradually gave way to less violent, more imaginative and more political acts but with fewer people involved.

As far as the class composition of the rebellion is concerned, it ranged from high school students and university students to young workers and unemployed. Some of the students and the workers were second-generation immigrants (mostly Albanians, although there were also some immigrants of other nationalities) and there were also some older workers with more or less stable jobs.

As for numbers, gradually more and more people participated in actions that took the form of an insurrection. On the first day there were just a few hundreds of antiauthoritarians around Exarchia -the place of the murder- that started the violent confrontations with the cops. Later in the night, a spontaneous demo took place after an initiative of students and leftists – around 2,000 people participated and started riots in Patission and Akadimias Avenues, while one hundred people smashed Ermou st, the most commercial street of Athens. Riots also broke out in the streets of Thessaloniki where a spontaneous demo headed for and attacked the city’s central police station.

On the second day more than 10,000 appeared in the streets (mostly students, antiauthoritarians again and people from left parties and organizations); on the third day more than 20,000 in Athens, 7,000 in Thessaloniki and many thousands all over Greece joined demos that were soon turned into riots. Those involved in street fighting with the police were a lot; 10,000 seems to be a rather moderate calculation. There were a lot more all over the country, particularly on Monday, the third day of the riots. On this day, banks, public buildings and mostly big stores were either smashed, looted or burned down. Those involved in the violent acts of this day were not a homogeneous mass: they were a multitude of young people -high school and university students, waged workers, unemployed, immigrants, football hooligans, drug addicts- with only a portion of them having connections with the antiauthoritarian milieu. Precisely because of the motley composition of the multitude and its violence, a lot of politicos (even some organized anarchists) found it too ‘uncontrollable’ and refrained themselves from what happened. From Monday morning and during the next days there were attacks against the police stations all over the country that were mainly made by high school students. Some of those attacks were very violent with police cars being overturned and use of Molotov cocktails (mostly in the west suburbs of Athens and the port of Pireaus) but demonstrating outside the police stations became quite generalized all over Greece, even in some posh areas or small towns, with milder forms of protest. It was actually through the spontaneous violent protests of high school students that the riots spread and thus took nationwide dimensions. When we talk about clashes with cops, we are mostly talking about barricades, throwing stones and molotov cocktails and not physical combats. Generally, not only the rioters, but also the police preferred not to engage in “close-combat” making excessive use of tear gas instead.

As for immigrants, second generation young Albanians who took part in the riots are so well integrated into society that only when they started talking Albanian to each other you could tell that they were immigrants. Most of them have grown up here and that is the reason why they could take part so extensively in confrontations with cops, in attacks against state buildings and banks and lootings as well alongside Greek young proletarians. They felt more ‘comfortable’ doing such acts than other immigrants, mostly Asians and Africans who still live on the fringe, isolated in their ethnic communities. It was mostly fear that prevented other immigrant communities from joining the violent confrontations outside their neighborhoods and not ‘lack of conscience’. It was easier for them to participate in the riots through looting or frequenting the open National Technical University occupation in the centre of Athens where big communities of them live; when the riots erupted near ‘their’ neighborhoods, that was their ‘contribution’ to them. On the other hand, they received the most violent onslaught from both the police and the media propaganda. They were presented as ‘plunderers’ and ‘thieves’ and in some cases there were pogrom style attacks against them by fascists and undercover cops in civilian outfits.
In general, you could say that, apart from high school and university students, those who had a more active role in the revolt were generally young workers, most of them having precarious or ‘flexible’ jobs. In the streets there were young (or not so young) workers from various sectors like schools, construction, tourist and entertainment services, transportation, even media. As far as factory workers are concerned, there are not any accurate estimations about their individual participation in the riots, since no reports from such workplaces became known. During the GSEE occupation, there were some ideas about distributing leaflets to factories and calling workers from specific workplaces to come to the occupation, however the splits among the participants (mentioned briefly in our chronology of the events) made any further action -apart from intervening in nearby call centres- difficult and thus several opportunities were missed. Shortly after the immigrant cleaner Kuneva, one of the workers that had visited the occupied GSEE to meet the squatters, was attacked with sulphuric acid, the ‘insurgent workers’ alongside other people organised the first solidarity activities. They even managed to get some unions into solidarity activities in January. The riot, in general, was not felt in any significant way in the workplaces, in the sense that no strikes were called to support it. The only exceptions were the teachers’ strike on the day of the funeral of young Alexis and the big participation in the strike demo against the state budget on the 10th of December. Apart from these, the rebellion left workplaces untouched.

Judging from the slogans and the attacks against the police, an overwhelmingly anti-cop sentiment was dominant during the days of the rebellion. The cop stood for power and particularly the brutality and arrogance of power. However, it was as symbols of a certain power - the power of money, the power to impose the exploitation of labour and deepen the class lines separating Greek society- that big stores, banks as well as state buildings (town halls, prefecture buildings, ministries) were attacked, burnt down or occupied. So, we could speak of a dominant and widespread anti-cop, anti-state, anti-capitalist feeling. Even the intellectuals of the left acknowledged the class element of the rebellion and some mainstream newspapers admitted that ‘young people’s rage’ was not expressed only because of police violence. The cops were rather the most visible and crudest tip of an iceberg made of government corruption scandals, a security-surveillance state - armoured after the 2004 Olympics - that does not even hesitate to shoot in cold blood, a continuous attack on wages, an increase of working class reproduction costs through the gradual demolition of the previous pension and health system, a deterioration of work conditions and an increase of precarious jobs and unemployment, a load of overwork imposed on high school and university students, a tremendous destruction of nature, a glamorous facade consisting of abstract objects of desire in malls and on TV ads, obtainable only if you endure a huge amount of exploitation and anxiety. In the first days of the revolt you could almost smell all these reasons in the air and then a lot of texts, articles, leaflets followed, written both by insurgents or sympathizers and ‘commentators’ to acknowledge that there was ‘something deeper’. This ‘deeper thing’ that everybody was talking about was the need to overcome the individual isolation from real, communal life [gemeinwesen], an isolation that all the above historical reasons have created. The spontaneity and uncontrollable nature of this insurrection was proven by the absence of political proposals, thus by an explicit rejection of politics. It was mostly leftists that insisted in particular demands like the resignation of the government, the repeal of the anti-terrorist act, the disarmament of cops and the disbandment of special police forces. However, the feeling that there lay ‘something deeper’ in all that was so dominant that it alone explains the helplessness of some parties of the opposition, leftist organizations, even some anarchists as mentioned before. There were no specific political demands and this, combined with their ferocity, made the riots all too threatening for the usual forces of recuperation and manipulation.

From the very first days of the revolt three universities got also occupied in the centre of Athens: the National Technical University of Athens, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics. Each one of them was occupied by a different tendency in the movement. The National Technical University, which is the nearest one to Exarchia square was the main place for organising clashes with the police. Its occupants were almost a cross-section of the rebels in Athens: young workers (immigrant or Greek), students and marginalised elements –and many of them anarchists. The occupants of the Faculty of Law, mainly leftists and some anti-authoritarians, organized demos and discussions. In one of them, leftist unionists gathered in order to organize and ‘spread the rebellion’ to workplaces, without actually doing anything apart from putting out some flyers. The Faculty of Economics was occupied mostly by anarchist groups and antiauthoritarians who wanted to use the building for counter-information purposes. A lot of emphasis was put on the organization of everyday activities. They took over the restaurant of the university and workshops were formed in order to run the occupation and to organize actions outside. The expropriated resources of the university were also used in other activities, serving as an infrastructure. Many comrades took part in actions organized from there, even if they did not take part in the occupation itself. All occupations served as ‘red bases’ of the movement from which subversive actions were organized and where rebels could seek refuge, if necessary. In Thessaloniki, there were two such occupations in the city center: the School of Drama was occupied by anarchist militants and drama students, while the offices of Thessaloniki’s Bar Association were occupied until the fourth day of the rebellion by students, mainly leftists.

We should also mention here the dozens of occupations of university departments voted for by students’ general assemblies and the hundreds of occupations of high schools all over the country.

Gradually, the violence of the first days proved to be creative in the sense that it was the necessary presupposition for more imaginative and organized actions that followed. After the first five days of rioting, there was an occupation at the Town Hall of Ag. Dimitrios (a southern suburb of Athens) organized by local anarchist groups and some of the workers working there (predominantly blue collar ones). The occupants organized meetings with local people, called ‘popular assemblies’, trying to broaden the revolt organizing local actions, always connected to the revolt. They even tried to let certain services run in the building without the mediation of the municipal authorities. The next day, an information desk of the Ministry of Interior at Chalandri, a northern suburb of Athens, was occupied and demonstrations and actions always connected with the revolt were organized.

In Thessaloniki, in Sykies, a working-class suburb of the city, the Town Hall was partly occupied for a few days, and some days later there followed the occupation of a municipal library in the Ano Poli district of the city of Thessaloniki which served as a place where ‘popular assemblies’ and demonstrations were organized. In all these activities, the common new characteristic was an attempt to ‘open up’ the rebellion towards the neighbourhoods. These assemblies were understood as ‘neighbourhood assemblies of struggle’ or ‘people’s assemblies’, as they were called. In most cases, there appeared distinct tendencies inside this social ‘opening’, particularly as the rebellion was simmering down. One tendency wanted to organize a community of struggle broadening the issues of the rebellion, another one preferred a kind of activity more orientated towards dealing with local matters on a steady basis. In the beginning, the assemblies looked pretty innovative and lively. There was not a formal procedure of decision making or majority rule and initiatives were encouraged. However, by the end of January, the occupations of buildings - whether public, union or municipal ones - did not flourish anymore and it is not clear if there is going to be a new movement coming out of this short-lived practice.
Among the ‘population’, or better say the working class as a whole, there was sympathy towards the rioters not only because it was their children fighting and demonstrating out there, but also because they felt that it was a just fight. Particularly the burning of banks was very popular since thousands of people are deep in debt. Looting was not accepted, at last not overtly, because of the strong respect for private property – or, in the case of leftists and some anarchists, for morality reasons. Generally speaking, there was a lot of sympathy and interest for the insurgents but very little active involvement from the part of the ‘population’.

From the very first moment after the killing on December 6, state and media mechanisms were activated to confront the explosion of the proletarian rage. Initially, they attempted to put possible reactions under control exploiting the spectacular submission of the resignations by Pavlopoulos and Chinofotis (the Minister and ex-Deputy Minister of the Interior, correspondingly), the Prime Minister’s promise that anybody responsible for the death of the 15-year-old kid will be ‘exemplary punished’, all oppositional parties’ and many journalists’ disapproval of the government and the ‘discreet stance’ of cops against demonstrators. However, very quickly, they unleashed every form of repression: threats of declaring the country in a state of emergency, mobilization of fascists and para-governmental organizations of ‘indignant citizens’, dozens of arrests and beating of demonstrators, more shootings by cops in Athens. All bosses’ parties in a body (with the Communist Party [KKE] being the most vulgar amongst them) and the TV scamps attempted to spread fear. Similarly, the two major union confederations, GSEE and ADEDY, cancelled the routine strike demonstrations against new year’s state budget when they suspected the danger of those demos being transformed into riots. However, against union bureaucrats’ jabber about government’s failing to ensure social order and peace, demos did take place during the general strike day and were indeed wild. Thus, reality was different: bosses were those who were afraid. When the foreign minister of France stated from the very first days of the insurgency ‘I would like to express our concern, everyone’s concern about the progress of conflicts in Greece’, he would express bosses’ fear for the possibility of this social explosion to be circulated, since solidarity demos to insurgents in Greece were taking place in many cities all over the world. Particularly in France, the Ministry of Education withdrew the impeding reform in secondary schools, thus giving an end to an emerging movement of high school kids applauding the flames of insurgency in Greek cities and towns.

On the side of state and media propaganda, the dominant strategy was that of separation of the subjects of the insurrection. They were either presenting the insurgency as an adventure of teenagers, whose inherent sensitivity due to their age gives them a right to rebel against their parents’ world (as if proletarian parents wouldn’t rightfully desire this world’s destruction) or they were mobilizing racist reflexes using the fake separation ‘Greek demonstrators - immigrant looters’. They were mainly attempting to separate demonstrators between good-peaceful ones and bad-rioters. The right of demonstrating was affirmed by bosses and their lackeys only to suppress the insurrection. Because they wanted to avoid any further socialization of violent behaviours in the streets, they sought by all means to present them as actions of ‘antiauthoritarians’ or ‘hooligans’ who intruded into demonstrations of otherwise peace-loving civilians. Smashing as a proletarian action declared the everyday existence of police departments, banks or chain stores as moments of a silent war. It also manifested the rupture with the democratic management of social conflict, which tolerates demos against this or that matter, provided that they are deprived of any autonomous class action. Invoking the ultimate political rampart of capital’s dominance, that is democracy, the prime minister declared that ‘social struggles or the death of a teenager cannot be confused with actions against democracy’. Democracy of course approves devastating cities and the countryside, polluting atmosphere and contaminating water, bombing, selling weapons, creating dumps of human beings, forcing us to stop being humans in order to become objects-that-work (or look for work, since more and more people are or will be unemployed because of the crisis). He thus implicated that some people can destroy anything they want as long as new chances for profit are created and development is promoted. However, doing this against private property constitutes the ultimate scandal for a society which has established this essential right from its early birth. Burning and smashing constitute wounds to this society’s legitimacy. The ‘hooded rioters’ is an empty notion, intended for police use exclusively. Police monopolize the shaping of the threat’s profile. We should add here that since the shooting of a riot-cop in Exarchia on 4 January police repression against demonstrators has escalated. Locals who defend a park in the city of Athens, farmers who intend to drive their tractors to the parliament and demonstrators against the imprisonment of those who have been arrested up till now have been attacked not only with tear gas but with grenades as well.

For the image-producing machine, the very opposite of the ‘hooded rioter’ (that is, the image constructed to separate proletarians) was the ‘peaceful civilian whose property was destroyed’. Who was this celebrated ‘peaceful civilian’, enraged by smashing? In this occasion, ‘peaceful civilians’ were the small businessmen, the owners of ‘small’ stores, the petit bourgeoisie. The state has been fooling even them, since many of them are being destroyed by the capitalist crisis. During last December, turnover was half of that of December 2007, not only for streets with expensive stores, but also for open-air markets; yet no such market was attacked during the riots… Bosses claimed that smashing stores had made many people lose their jobs, while at the same time one hundred thousand layoffs are to be announced soon in Greece because of the crisis. However, whatever smashes of ‘small’ stores were not carried out by hooded state servants were commented by workers in such stores in a leaflet written by the ‘Autonomous Initiative of Shop-assistants of Larisa’: ‘We denounce whoever attempts to terrorize and convince us that defending some properties stands above human life and dignity; besides, these properties have been created by precarious workers’ unpaid, black and surplus labour; no small properties have been damaged during symbolic attacks against banks and public buildings [indeed, this is true for Larissa and other provincial cities]. If they really care about shop-assistants, they should increase the miserable wages they give them, they should learn what social security is and they should create human working hours and conditions’.

The parties of the left were taken aback by the riots and had a varied attitude towards them. SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left), a coalition of Synaspismos and other minor leftist organizations, kept a balanced attitude towards the rebellion. The top leaders of the party machine did not hesitate to keep their distances from the violence of the rioters, even to denounce them, however, in a moderate way compared to the frenzy of the KKE. On the tremendous night of the 8th of December demonstrators of Syriza abused violent demonstrators without however trying to prevent them. Ordinary members or voters of Syriza were very sympathetic in most cases towards the rebellion although presenting it as a ‘youth explosion’ and consequently as something external to them. Students of Syriza took part in the demos against the police and they had a milder attitude towards them, in most of the cases. KKE, understanding perfectly that it was their very political power as a part of the political system which was at stake, chose to adopt a cop-like attitude resembling more the far-Right, condemning rioters as a whole as ‘provocateurs’, manipulated by domestic and foreign ‘dark centres’. As for leftist parties and organizations and KOE in particular (a member of the SYRIZA coalition), they were in favour of the rebellion as an explosion ‘expected’ by them, but one without ‘positive’ demands. That’s why they were eager to present a list of demands asking the government to resign so that they could exploit politically the change of the political personnel. From the various trotskyist groups some were more active than others and participated in the Faculty of Law occupation and KKE M-L had a rather positive attitude towards the rebellion, abstaining of course from the clashes with the police. In general, leftists, except for few groups, had a rather superficial relation to the rebellion taking mostly part in demos but not in other activities.

The strength of fascists in Greece cannot be compared to that of the fascists in Italy during the 70’s. The main neo-nazi organisation (Chrisi Avgi –i.e. Golden Dawn) can count on a few hundred militants all over Greece. There’s also LAOS, a far right populist party which is the fifth party of the Greek parliament with 3,8% of the vote, but it’s hard to calculate its militant basis. Although right-wing militants took part in the repression of the revolt in the cities of Patra (mostly) and Larissa (to a lesser degree), it’s impossible to make a comparison between the situation in Italy and the situation in Greece because fascists in Greece are less organized. It was one of the state’s resort when media propaganda and cop repression were not sufficient but only in Patra they have an organisational basis (one with a long tradition, indeed –Temponeras, a high-school teacher was murdered in one occupied school in Patra in 1991 by the then secretary of the Youth branch of the right wing party, which is now in government).

The riots were connected with a particular political subculture, that of anarchists and anti-authoritarians in Greece, who played a very important role during the first two days of the riots and especially the first one. Their immediate violent reaction to the murder triggered off a social explosion that surpassed them and spread all over Greece. Because of the activities of students and other parts of the proletariat who left their own marks on it, the rebellion of December cannot be reduced to the rituals of street-fighting this sub-culture seemed traditionally so keen on and trapped in, as well. (Molly Note- the authors of this piece are being unfair to the Greek anarchist movement by this characterization. There is indeed a section of the Greek movement, the Autonomists, who have reduced anarchism to nothing more than "street fighting" and petty vandalism. The majority of the movement, however, has a much more intelligent idea of "what is to be done.)

Although the rebellion has ended, there are still visible traces of it. Some occupations remain, solidarity to those arrested and the spirit of the rebellion still unites various elements who took part in the insurrection (although certain sectarian and ideological signs appear), new struggles emerge with more radical characteristics and violence against the state seems to be a lot more legitimized.

The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements. Politically, those left parties and organisations that were taken by surprise and stood in awe of the rebellion will not offer much. They are just hoping for new members and seem rather untouched by the rebellion. The unions, both as a form and content of struggle, small or big, remained untouched by the insurrection or even hostile to it. The mainstream parties cannot hide their fear confronted with such powerful gestures of disobedience and attack on all institutions. There are certain signs of a return to the normality of both everyday life and politics as usual but also traces of new alliances and practices which will need time to get a clearer form and content.
TPTG, BLAUMACHEN

4 February 2009

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The fight on the part of the state and the political parties to recover "lost ground" after the rebellion goes on today. The following, also from the LibCom site, tells one tale of resistance to this project.

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Lawyers General Union against anti-anarchist legislation in Greece:
The Lawyers General Union of Greece has condemned and is threatening to mobilise against the police-state measures proposed by the Ministry of Justice.

The general council of Lawyer Unions of Greece has expressed its opposition to the criminalisation of masking and hooding and the return of the fascist law regarding "insulting authorities". The emergency assembly of the council headed by the president of Greek Union of Criminologists published its decision on Tuesday 24/3 after new totalitarian proclamations by the Minister of Justice who claimed that protesters arrested with 'distorted features' will have no right to monetary exchange of their penalty nor will the universal right for probation be applied to their cases, even after appeal court procedures. The Lawyer's General Council, the highest organ of solicitors in the country with powers ranging to striping individual lawyers of their soliciting permits, has announced that it is ready to mobilize against the police-state legislation.

It is widely beleived that the proposed legislation is designed to target and criminalise the ideological scene of anarchism, effectively returning to the 1930s "Idionimo", a law that criminalised communism and led to the displacement of thousands to concentration camps in the greek islands. It is telling that Nea Dimokratia, the ruling party, had in 1979 proposed a law for the displacement of homosexuals in concentration camps. The law collapsed under international pressure and social mobilisation at the time.

The General Council of Lawyers condemned the 'anti-hood' law as "deeply undemocratic" and as purely an instrument of propaganda. Regarding the 'insult of authority' law, the rep of the Athens Lawyers Union has expressed bewilderment before "an anachronistic mindset that amidst the crisis is trying to resurrect such laws, which have been condemned in the people's conscience"

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MOLLY NOTE:

The successes of the Greek rebellion were important and inspiring. The failures, however, were at least as glaring. The authors of the above piece allude to them, especially as to the refusal of the general population to join the rebellion. Some of the reasons for this refusal are obviously out of the control of the rebels. Others, however, are not. As left communists the authors of the above would undoubtedly condemn any preliminary organization as "bureaucratic". Be that as it may the events in Greece plainly show the need for preliminary organization to act as beacon for the rebels. NOT to direct it but to give ideas in a coherant form that can be acted upon with the maximun possible speed. Perhaps most importantly rebellion without a positive program will remain only...rebellion. By its very nature it cannot ask the majority of the population to join in unless there is some viable ideal that can be pointed too, an ideal expressed with more than vague genralizations. This is intimatedly connected to the question of organization. The Greek movement has performed admirably, but it cannot expect to do the work of decades in a few short weeks. It is important that these lessons be learned and acted upon.

VENEZUELA:

CHAVEZISMO VERSUS THE WORKERS ONCE MORE:

The following essay is reprinted from the News section of the Libcom site. It was translated from the Spanish language Internacionismo, affiliated with the 'International Communist Current'. Molly has blogged briefly on the subject of "left-communism" before, and there is little doubt that I do not consider them as realistic in their tactics or accurate in their theory. If I wanted to sum them up I would say that they are the last real Marxists on Earth. Well over a century after all of Marx's theories were disproven (or , more often,contradicted by those who wished to call themselves "Marxists) they hold to the theories of Das Kapital in all their baroque and antique "glory". Yet, such fundamentalism has its virtues as well as its vices. These people put themselves into a position where they can have zero chance of ever affecting the world, but, just because they are in such a position they are thoroughly immune to the ill-disguised power worship of too much of the left. They may not recognize that the economic system mis-named as "socialism" is the tool whereby a new managerial ruling class claws its way to power, but they have the unfailing instinct to reject this lie, even if they give it the wrong name. Their instincts are true in that they recognize immediately that such leftist demagogues as Chavez are representatives of a ruling class rather than "liberators".But anyways, here is the article.

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Steel workers' strike in Venezuela attacked by Chavez' state
tags:

Steel workers in Venezuela have been attacked by the Chavez government following a series of strikes.
The following is a translation from Internacionalismo.
The Chávez government - with the support of the opposition and unions - has unleashed repression against the workers of the Steel Zone of Venezuela who are struggling for their most basic necessities. Here we see the real Senor Chávez and his "socialism of the 21st century".

After more than 13 months of discussion of their collective contract, the steel workers at Ternium-SIDOR have had enough. Indignant about the starvation wages they receive (near to the minimum salary, in one of the regions of Venezuela with the highest cost of living) and the deplorable working conditions that have lead to the deaths of 18 workers and left dozens ill from industrial illness over less than a decade, they have carried out several strikes against the firm's refusal to meet their demands about wages and working conditions.

Various parts of the media have echoed the firm's campaign of victimisation, claiming that their demands amount to more than the firm's annual sales. These lies form part of a "black out" of information, both from the opposition media and the official media, about the true causes of the metal workers' struggles. Since the 1990's these workers have been subjected to a policy of cuts in pay and working conditions, introduced through the programme of restructuring, that has led to their benefits being lower than other workers in the region. The metalworkers' struggle is about a decent level of living. They know that if they accept the company's terms and conditions [1] they will suffer more than two years of miserable increases in their wages and benefits, whilst the price of food and the cost of living increases by more than 30% annually, according to the none too reliable figures of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Another important demand of the movement is to make the contracted workers (who make up 75% of the workforce of 1,600) permanent, since this will give them better benefits. Thus, the struggle of the SIDOR workers is expressing the discontent and uncertainty that dominates the workers in the region and the whole country, faced with the endless increase in the price of food and cost of living generally, along with precarious working conditions.

Likewise, the metalworkers have had enough of the bickering between representatives of the company, government and unions. The latter in particular have progressively undermined the initial demands of the movement (the unions are now "demanding" 50 Bolivars a day, whereas at the beginning of negotiations it was 80). Having fulfilled all of the requirements for going on strike, they took part in the high level commission formed by the nefarious triumvirate. Whilst these gentlemen discussed behind the workers' backs, the workers themselves assembled at the steel work's doors and decided to carry out several stoppages, the most important of these being that of the 12th March for 80 hours which expressed the radicalisation of the movement. They did not have to wait long for the firm and the state to respond: on the 14th March the National Guard and police unleashed a furious repression, leaving more than 15 workers injured and 53 arrested. With this repressive action the Chávez government has unmasked itself in front of the workers: it cast aside its "workers" uniform and put on its true uniform, that of the defence of the interests of the national capital. It is not the first time that the "workers and socialist" state has attacked workers' struggle for their own demands: we only need to mention for example, the terrible repression meted out to oil workers last year who were struggling to improve their working conditions.

The SUTISS union is also part of the repression of the workers (despite union leaders suffering repression), since its role is to act as a fireman in the movement. It tries to put itself at the head of the movement whilst negotiating a reduction in the wage demand.
Referendum and nationalisation: new traps for the movement

Faced with the workers' intransigence, they have pulled another trick from up their sleeve: the holding of a referendum in order to consult each worker about their agreement or not with the firm's proposals. Promoted by the Chavist minister of Labour (a Trotskyist or ex-Trotskyist), the proposal has already received the agreement of the SUTISS, though with certain "conditions". Class instinct has led several workers to reject this trap, which is aimed at undermining the sovereign assemblies (where the real strength of the working class is expressed) by turning each worker into a "citizen", who will have to define himself for or against the firm and state in isolation by means of the ballot box!! Faced with this the workers need to affirm themselves through their sovereign assemblies.

Another trap used against the movement is the proposition by the unions and various "revolutionary" sectors of Chavism to renationalise SIDOR, which is mainly owned by Argentine capital (the Venezuelan state owns 20% of the shares). This campaign could be a disaster for the struggle, since the workers have no choice but to confront the capitalists, be they Argentine or Venezuelan state bureaucrats. Nationalisation does not mean the disappearance of exploitation; the state-boss, even with a "worker's" face, has no other option than to permanently try to attack workers' wages and working conditions. The left of capital presents the concentration of companies in the hands of the state as a quick way to "socialism", hiding one of the fundamental lessons of Marxism: the state is the representative of the interests of each national bourgeoisie, and therefore the enemy of the proletariat. The Chavist bourgeoisie today is the head of the state which is seeking to increase the amount of surplus value it can gain, and in the name of "Bolivarian socialism" massively increases the level of precariousness of work through the missions and jointly managed companies (as happened with the workers of Invepal or Inveval).

These "Bolivarian revolutionaries" try to make the workers forget that for many years SIDOR was a state firm, and that they have had to struggle at various ties against the high rank bureaucrats of the state who administered it and their forces of repression, struggling for their own demands but also against the unions (the allies of capital in the factories). At the beginning of the 70's during the first Caldera government, this included burning down part of the installations of the CTV in Caracas in response to its anti-worker actions.

The state has been in the hands of the Chavists since 1999, but has not magically lost its capitalist character. All that has changed are its clothes, which now have a "socialist" colouring; but it is still a fundamental organ in the defence of the interests of capital against those of labour. The fact that Chávez presents himself as a "Sidorist" or a "worker" when it suits him should not confuse us about the class character of the Chavist government, which capital put in place in order to defend its system of exploitation as it sinks deeper and deeper into crisis. The workers are not so stupid as to believe these "revolutionaries" who put forwards the panacea of "re-nationalisation", but who live like bourgeois, earning salaries 30 times or more than the official minimum wage.
The only way to win: real workers' solidarity and solidarity with the population

The only way that this movement can succeed is through looking for solidarity. Initially with the contract workers, where the demand to make them permanent is one of the principle expressions of solidarity; but it is no less important to win the solidarity of workers in other branches of industry, at the regional or national level, since whether we work in the state sector or the private sector, we are all being hit by the blows of the economic crisis. It is also necessary to express solidarity with the population of Guayana, where the unemployed are affected by the high cost of living, and by the problems that the state cannot resolve, such as delinquency, housing, etc. However, this solidarity cannot be carried out through the unions, since they are the main organs for controlling the struggle, creating divisions between different industries and sectors, and in the last instance, complementing state repression; neither can solidarity with the local population be left in the hands of the social organisations created by the state, such as the communal councils. Solidarity must be "generated" by the workers themselves, through assemblies open to other workers.

The struggle of the metalworkers is our struggle, because they are fighting for a decent life, for the benefit of the whole of the proletariat. But the best benefit, apart for the momentary increase in the level of wages, resides in the development of consciousness of the strength that the proletariat has in its own hands, outside of the unions and the other institutions invented by the state in order to control social discontent.

The national bourgeoisie know that the situation in Guyana is intensely dangerous to its interests. The concentration of workers in this region and their experience of past struggles makes it very explosive, since at the same time there is a wider accumulation of labour and social discontent which has existed for some time due to the attacks on employment and workers' living conditions. In this sense, the so-called Metal Zone has a potential for transforming itself into a focal point for the workers' struggle in the country, as happened in the 60's and 70's.

The SIDOR workers have taken the only road possible for confronting the attacks of capital, that of the struggle. Spreading the fight to other branches of regional and national production, whilst looking for solidarity from the population as a whole: this is the road that will enable the Venezuelan proletariat to become part of an international movement for the overthrow capital and the creation of a real socialist society.
Note

[1] An increase of 44 Bolivars divided up as follows: 20 initially, 10 more in 2009 and another 10 in 2010, with another 1.5% based on performance.

ANARCHIST THEORY:

LEFT COMMUNISM AND ITS IDEOLOGY by OISIN MACGIOLLAMOIR:

An interesting essay, of the title above, has recently been circulating about the Internet. While it has appeared in various places, Molly chooses to refer the reader to its presentation at the LibCom site for the full text. What is this beast called "left-communism" ? It is indeed possible to spend years in the anarchist movement without even getting a glimmer of its existence. This is particularly true today because, as Oisin remarks, "anarchism is emerging out of its long held position as the 'conscience of the workers' movement', as the eternal critic of Leninism and state centred politics". It was somewhat different when Molly first became an anarchist, at a time when Leninist cults such as Maoism and Trotskyism were far more popular than any libertarian alternative. At that time "left-communism", at least in its more modern versions such as that presented by Cardan/Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton and others in France and Britain, was often the introduction to anarchism for many of us. The subtle difference between such presentations and anarchism per se usually escaped us. Even today such "difference" is slight, often to the point of non-existence, and all that can be said is that anarchism, with its broader history and tradition, offers a lot more to the curious.

When, however, modern anarchists new to the movement tire of eternal appeals to militancy versus/over mind, solipsistic nonsense from American cult leaders about the "end of civilization", laundry-lists of "anti-isms", juvenile posturing about subcultural superiority, etc. and when them come to confront the question of whether anarchism has a future as a real political movement, then the exploration of "what is to be done" will almost inevitably lead them sooner or later to the history and writings of the "left-communists". The author of the essay referenced above explores what might be termed the pre-history of left communism, and its origin the the German, Dutch and Italian workers' movements post WW1. This exploration is valuable, particularly as he contrasts the more purist position of the Germans and Dutch to the semi-Leninist position of the Italians around Bordiga. This contrast endures to this day, even if the author doesn't expand the horizons of his essay to cover more recent events.

The author contrasts the so-called "purism" of the Germans and Dutch , with its inevitable corollary of organizational sterility to the efforts of the Italians. He also, however, contrasts the open-ended "ideology" of the Germans and Dutch as opposed to the "programmatic fundamentalism" (Molly's term, not his) of the Italians, and his sympathies are clearly with the northern left-communists, to the extent that he sees little difference between their approach and that of the platformism that he favours.

All told a valuable contribution to the historical knowledge that must inform any discussion of anarchist organization and tactics today. What it lacks is an "update", not just in terms of the left-communism of the 60s and 70s, but of what this term might mean today. It also lacks a discussion of groups such as the POUM, the British ILP and others in what was called the 2nd and 1/2 International that were anti-Stalinist, non-Trotskyist but still "revolutionary socialist". Today left communist sects still exist, and it is a wide and varied sector of politic opinion, ranging from orthodox DeLeonists, through council communists, to Leninists who imagine that Lenin took a wrong turn and to God knows how many other permutations. Most of these groups give something of the appearance of animals preserved in formaldehyde, defending the one and only true doctrine against all comers. Some of them, the ICC is an example, may be the last real Marxists on Earth- using Marx's fantastical dialectical constructions to predict over and over the demise of capitalism due to its internal contradictions. Using some sort of "logic" that they think is superior to ordinary induction.

"Left-Communism" today, however, may have a much broader meaning. Let's call it "left-social democracy", a very prevalent idea that some sort of socialism can be built via the "grants" of a government in power with the "right ideas". Ordinary anarchists are often quite susceptible to this idea, witness the anarchist support for Chavez in Venezuela (not that such support is often more derived from "third-worldism", an emotional reaction of there ever was one, than from ideological conviction). To their credit "left-communists" are usually quite immune to this sort of illusion.

So read the essay cited; it's well worth the time. But do consider how it might be expanded.

ABOLISH RESTAURANTS:

The folks over at the LibCom website have added yet another interesting text to their online library, perhaps the best such collection on the internet. Titled 'Abolish Restaurants' it is a study by the Prole.Info group, an American left communist group. The essay is present at the Prole.Info site in either a comic book or text format(see the above link or Molly's 'Online Libraries' section under links). The LibCom site presents the text version only.

Abolish Restaurants is a thorough and penetrating study of the restaurant industry, its history, economics and internal structure. It is also a description of the ways that restaurant workers fight back against their exploitation and how these fight-backs are both partially successful and often derailed. True to its left communist perspective it ends with the call for the abolition of the whole "industry" of restaurants, of where meals and service are bought and sold and are produced by wage labour exploited outside of "real life".

This essay is truly comprehensive and enlightening, and is well worth the read. A long one...the LibCom printout runs to 24 pages, and the comic book format available at Prole.Info is 13.4Mb in a pdf format. I'm not touching that last one. This essay is at its best in its insider description of the nuts and bolts of what it is like to work in a restaurant, putting flesh on the bare bones of economic description and showing the workers as real human beings in the complexity of their situation. It is weakest in the "what is to be done" category. The author reject unions, self-management and other meliorist ways that people use to improve their situation collectively. The only sort of self-organization that meets with their full approval is the informal and, of necessity, highly temporary work group. There is, of course, an abiding faith that somehow, some way, some time, some sort of class organization will arise spontaneously to sweep away all the conditions of capital and its wage labour. The details of such organization are, however, more than slightly vague resembling an ecstatic religious vision shorn of concrete detail/superstition and beautiful because of its abstraction. But a political program or a plan of action...no and definitely no.
A MOLLY GUIDE TO LEFT COMMUNISM:

Here Molly has to digress. Non-anarchists and even the vast majority of younger anarchists can easily be confused by some of the labels assigned to a given group or individual's political theory. The whole subject of the "left communist" trend, very much a minority amongst the libertarian left is especially confusing. One reviewer of the Prole.Info group called them "insurrectionists", something they are most definitely not. Let me try to elucidate the matter, hopefully without adding to the confusion.

First of all one has to ditch the classical idea of politics as made up of parties sitting on a linear left right continuum where the only "fuzzy points" are where one spot on the line merges into another to either side. This vision is hardly realistic in mainstream politics, and it is particularly misleading in describing sectarian politics. The proper metaphor is more one of a moving blob of cells, each connected to many others and shading into them by multiple pseudopods. A rather messy picture, but one that more accurately describes reality than the linear model. This model is highly complex, but nowhere near as complex as the reality it attempts to describe.

Left communists are part of a political current that at one time included the situationists. They are pretty well Marxists by definition, holding to the sort of economics put forward in Marx's 'Capital' and not just giving it lip service but actually applying it over and over to describe practically everything else they pay attention to. Their devotion to Marxist "philosophy" is less obvious, but may still often be observed in what they write. At the very least they never deny it. One might say that people like this are the last Marxists left in the world as they hold to and utilize Marxist economics in a fully consistent and comprehensive way that no Marxist government ever did and that very few Marxists who claim the label do today. They differ from the conventional Marxist familiar to anybody unlucky enough to suffer through classes in the social sciences by actually using Marxist economics rather than giving it lip service and also in rejecting Marxist politics, not just the examples of it present in Marxist parties, ruling or otherwise, but the speculations and actions of Marx himself that set the tone for what Marxism was later to develop into. No doubt they would claim that their politics are as truly Marxist as their economics are, but they would be on rather shaky ground in this claim. The situationists were an example of this sort of left-communism, using Marxist economic categories to describe other aspects of life far from the factory gate. Sometimes using them as metaphors that were stretched rather thin from the perspective of an outside observer.

In their rejection of the politics of Marx left communists typically reject not just the concept of the 'Party' but pretty well anything else in the way of organization. that can exist for a period of time in non-revolutionary situations. The sterility of this point of view is pretty obvious. What exactly do you do then besides wait for the revolution- a revolution that most (but not all) of the left communists believe will be brought about by the impersonal actions of the economy described by Marx ? What is left ? You publish pamphlets and magazines (and now websites). That is actually pretty well all that left communists do as left communists. Many (most ?) are also active in many other aspects of social struggle, but they do this while checking their beliefs at the meeting hall door. No doubt that everybody in the whole world compromises, but in no other sane political tendency is the contrast between the ideology and the reality so dramatic. You really have to travel into insanity, such as primitivism, to get a greater contrast.

Left communists of course often (usually?) recognize that they have backed themselves into a corner with their descriptions of reality and criticisms of other methods of action in the here and now. Thus it is that they gradually shade into other political tendencies that are close to them in either ideology or tactics. 'Councilism" , also known as "council communism", goes a bit beyond the purest left communists is that they posit that there has been an alternative, the 'Workers' Councils' that have been thrown up in various revolutionary situations over the past century and a half. They see themselves as propagandists for this form of organization even though it cannot exist in the present except under an unstable condition of dual power. In Molly's opinion the councilists' idealize this form of organization. It has been at its best and purest in situations where it sprang by an almost virgin birth in societies in which everyday workers' organizations devoted to resistance have been reduced to practical nonexistence. Hungary 1956 and Poland 1980 spring to mind. Examples of this type show an invariable trend towards naivety and making the sort of ideological compromises that end up destroying the movement by co-option to the state- if the councils are not defeated militarily first. In other revolutionary situations where the ordinary people have long standing traditions of socialist resistance and organization, even maintaining their organizational coherence underground the councils become the theatre of factional struggle. The Russian Revolution is a prime example of this as was the post WW1 strike movement in Italy. In the Spanish Revolution the organizational tradition was so strong that the councilist phase was virtually bypassed entirely, except perhaps in the federations of rural communes, as the various factions signed deals with each other and avoided the whole idea of elected delegates. Council communists are also generally Marxist in economics, but they are nowhere near as focused on it as pure left communists. Some groups that evolved out of this tradition such as Socialisme ou Barbarie in France or Solidarity in Britain pretty well abandoned all of Marxism, becoming more libertarian socialist than left communist. But this is another long story.

Travelling in other directions left communism fades into the sort of libertarian socialism held by groups generally described as 'De-Leonist'. For the uninitiated (99.99999999% of the world's population) this is a form of anti-state socialism that believes in building a political party that will capture the state and then as its first and only act abolish the state, turning its administrative functions over to federations of industrial unions and local communities. This plan of action was set forward by the American socialist Daniel DeLeon in the late 19th and early 20th century and had an early, but temporary, vogue in the IWW after its foundation in 1909. Don't ask me how this would work. I'm merely describing it. The party that DeLeon founded, the Socialist labour party is pretty well much a a dead letter and has been for decades. For as long as Molly has been an anarchist (over 35 years now) anything that she has seen the SLP do is more in the line of trying to tear itself apart over the fine print of statements that have a negative chance of ever reaching more than 100 people, let alone influencing anybody. The general idea that DeLeon advocated was taken up with more success by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, though this also reduced itself to a tiny rump by a belly button lint picking obsession with having the "correct theory". Any Deleonist party worthy of the name also obsesses with the purity of its Marxism, but hardly to the extent that regular left communists do. Nor with anywhere near the same level of creativity that left communists, free as their small groups are from sectarian infighting, are able to apply.

While the movement with the name has become a tiny sect the general ideas advanced by DeLeon live on, divorced from the Marxist theology that they were embedded in. The general idea of "capturing the state by elections to abolish the state" is probably more popular today than it ever was. Actually more popular than a consistent anarchism Molly is sad to admit. The idea of "libertarian municipalism" as formulated by Murray Bookchin and his collaborators is a variation on this, though it is more libertarian because it restricts it efforts of capture to the local municipality. The whole social democratic trend, whether with or without revolutionary rhetoric-such as in Venezuela today, that borrows from the anarchist toolbox the ideas of popular assembly socialism and self management is merely a reformulation of DeLeonism without the moral consistency of the founder. The theory is that self-management, both by workers and by communities can be promoted by state actions while at the same time offering positions of control to the state and party functionaries that are the directors of this process of liberation (old buzz word) or empowerment (new buzz word). Molly is not a Marxist, but if she was she would say that this is the sort of thing that the rhetorical phrase "contradiction" really and truly applies to.

Another direction that left communists lean towards when they actually want to do something is vanguardism. These are people who believe that it is both necessary and desirable to build a vanguard sect to push the inevitable revolution a little bit forward. Sort of Leninism without the state or at least without the stated goal of building the sort of dictatorship that the Bolsheviks built. Once more I merely describe, not justify. The primary exponent of this sort of plan today in the International Communist Current, though there are others. At its best this sort of cadre building idea shades towards the more extreme section of the neo-platformist current in anarchism. At its worst...well I'll leave that to your imagination. These sort of people have perhaps an equal attachment to exegesis from Das Capital as regular left communists do- hence their attraction to many in this milieu when they look for something to actually do. But they are hardly anywhere as creative or attentive to the details of ordinary workers' lives.

Then, of course, there are the "insurrectionists". These are really a current within contemporary anarchism. If they are Marxist at all it is merely for the "show off" factor of false erudition. These people share the left communist distrust of organization that goes beyond the immediate and informal, hence the confusion that sometimes exists in describing left communism as "insurrectionist". Where they differ is in their elitism. Taking their cue from a certain brain dead section of anarchist history, a tendency that was always a minority and has been rejected over the years as the movement grew, they believe that only "exemplary actions" are needed to propel some sort of spontaneous explosion from the people. A people that they usually express endless contempt for. These people are vanguardists without the party. They usually express sympathy for acts of terrorism, petty or otherwise. Despite all their faults, left communists exude an aura of sympathy for the ordinary person and their struggles. They see the germs of action for a new society in the actions of ordinary workers, not in the masochistic posturing of some militant elite. Even at their most strident they hardly ever exude the sort of amoralism that "insurrectionists" do. No...they don't have the Stalin in the soul.

So, left communism is a particular philosophical trend on the margins of anarchism today. It actually has a lot to say that is of great value. As should be apparent from the above Molly's own sympathies lie with those left communists who travelled through councilism to a non-Marxist libertarian socialism. This, however, may be only of historical and philosophical interest, not a question that has any practical consequences today. As I said above left communists usually leave their more extreme ideology at the door, and tend to be much more reliable comrades in struggle than adherents of many other views. Someone who has watched the development of anarchism in the USA over the past few decades may form the opinion that left communism, particularly in its situationist version, is responsible for some of the kookier and less savoury aspects of anarchism in that country. I disagree. Sure you can trace a path from situationism to neo-situationism to primitivism and thence to "post-leftist anarchism" or "post-anarchism" or whatever these people may adopt as the flavour of the day. But this is the same as saying that everything in Stalinism is contained in Marx or that syndicalism and socialism lead inevitably to fascism ala Mussolini. No...history is not that linear. Much depends on specific historical contexts in specific countries. Chance also has a role to play. Without situationism, primitivism in the USA would have found its natural home as a religious cult. But this ideology was developed in the USA under particular conditions such as the absence of a viable socialist or anarchist movement that actually could do something. It also had the fortune to gain the adherence of a tiny number of people of not great but relative ability. The first was necessity. The second was chance.

Well, this screed has certainly expanded and strayed far from the original news report. Never let it be said that Molly doesn't put her own spin on the news. I recognize that the above, long as it is, is incomplete and contains errors. It is merely the effort of one person who has had enough experience to judge to put some rather confusing terms into a comprehensible framework. As I said these terms fade into each other. They are not simple either/or categories, but they represent political positions that are at least "intellectually convenient" to separate as "poles of attraction in a chaotic landscape". Without this sort of effort at categorization there is nothing left but a big mental mush---and a practice that is informed by nothing more than fashion and personal pressure. Clarity is a virtue.