Don't abandon the unions, or take sides in inter-union rivalries. Build a serious, organised, non-sectarian project of democratic reform and political discussion that spans the unions, including a rank-and-file movement that fosters debate, and opens the treasure-chest of union and left history and theory. Recover the politics of disconnecting from the state as raised by, for example, Occupy and the Rojava Revolution. Replace reliance on the state and parties with struggle, and destructive inter-union rivalry with a serious project of working class counter-power.
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Celebramos un nuevo 1ero de Mayo, día de las trabajadoras del mundo[1]. Lo hacemos movilizándonos desde el sur de la ciudad, en conjunto con las organizaciones que forman el Encuentro por la Autonomía y la Vida Digna. En esta efeméride de las de abajo, reflexionamos sobre la situación y las luchas actuales, y proponemos nuevos cursos de acción para el futuro de la organización popular. ... read full story / add a comment

This article is about the lack of working class’ support to the people’s movement. It analyses the current situation that surrounds working class and the factors that may contribute in weakening it almost everywhere. In the meantime the article considers the rule of working class as essential and crucial in prevailing any movement or any uprising. ... read full story / add a comment

Trade union renewal is essential but should not be reduced to democratising structures or new recruitment methods. Renewal should centre on a bottom-up movement based on rank-and-file reform movements, and the direct action of workers as a precondition for radical redistribution of power and wealth to workers, community assemblies and councils in a self-managed, egalitarian order based on participatory planning and distribution by need. It must be rooted in an anarcho-syndicalist understanding that unions can profoundly change society. ... read full story / add a comment

Δεν μπορούμε να καταπολεμήσουμε τον αγώνα ενάντια στον σεξισμό, τον ρατσισμό, την ομοφοβία, το θρησκευτικό φανατισμό, το μίσος κατά των τρανς ή οποιαδήποτε άλλη καταπίεση “μετά την Επανάσταση”. Κάτι τέτοιο θα εξασφάλιζε το ότι η Επανάσταση δεν θα έρθει ποτέ. Αντίθετα, πρέπει να επιστρέψουμε στη θεμελιώδη αρχή με βάση την οποία δημιουργήθηκε το συνδικαλιστικό κίνημα - Touch One, Touch All (Η επίθεση στον ένα είναι επίθεση σε όλους). Όλες οι μορφές καταπίεσης, εντός και εκτός χώρων εργασίας, αποτελούν επίθεση στην αλληλεγγύη μας και, επομένως, στην εργατική τάξη στο σύνολό της. ... read full story / add a comment

The struggle of the working class is linked to the revolution in three ways. First, the struggle is located where capital gets its power – in the workplace. Second, the struggle over wages and conditions shows that economic crises are inevitable within capitalism and the looming threat of an irresolvable crisis is ever growing. And third, it is only through struggle that the working class will learn the iron solidarity necessary for revolution. As it casts aside all reactionary prejudices (what Marx called “the muck of ages”), the working class will remake itself as a body of free and equal people fit for a libertarian communist society. ... read full story / add a comment

Auf der ganzen Welt versucht die herrschende Klasse aus Kapitalist*innen, Politiker*innen und staatliche Manager*innen ihre Gewinne zu sichern, indem sie die Arbeiter*klasse für die Wirtschaftskrise zahlen lassen. Einerseits betreiben sie Stellenabbau und zwingen damit die verbleibenden Arbeiter*innen zu noch größeren Leistungen, um die Produktionsziele zu erreichen. Andererseits führen sie einen breit angelegten Angriff auf Löhne, Arbeitsbedingungen und Sozialleistungen. ... read full story / add a comment

El día 3 de octubre en la noche, luego de una gran asamblea en la Universidad Nacional sede Bogotá, se dio una pequeña manifestación que bloqueó la Carrera 30. Sin mediar palabras y en ausencia de alguna acción ilegal que lo requiriera, el ESMAD procedió a aturdir y gasear la concentración en la vía, dando como resultado 4 heridos, frente a esta acción de los uniformados, los estudiantes de la Nacional respondieron levantando las manos, algunos arrodillándose, y todos gritando la consigna “sin violencia, sin violencia”. ... read full story / add a comment

Around the world the ruling class (capitalists, politicians and state managers) is trying to restore its profits by making the working class pay for the economic crisis. One way capitalists do this is by retrenching workers and making the remaining workers work harder to meet production targets, as well as by attacking wages, working conditions and benefits. States help capitalists do this, among other things, by increasing interest rates while giving corporations tax cuts, commercialising and privatising state owned enterprises and outsourcing the provision of basic services. States also help capitalists by undermining workers’ rights, such as the right to strike, in order to make it more difficult for workers to resist these attacks.

Unions have failed to defend workers from the immediate threat of these attacks (by preventing dismissals and defending jobs, wages and conditions), as well as to mount an effective resistance that can prevent further attacks and begin to roll back the devastating effects of neoliberalism. Moreover, union bureaucrats are often complicit in these attacks through deals they make with governments and bosses. A recent example in South Africa is the National Minimum Wage and amendments to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Labour Relations Amendment Bill – all of which represent an attack on workers yet were agreed to at Nedlac (the National Economic Development and Labour Council) by the leaders of the three main federations: Nactu, Fedusa and Cosatu.

Faced with this ruling class threat and with union bureaucracies that are either complicit or unwilling to fight, workers in Argentina have begun a process to build unity in struggle and a democratic worker-controlled alternative. ... read full story / add a comment

En los últimos días, se registra un incremento sustancial de las amenazas y asesinatos de líderes y lideresas sociales en todo el país. Desde la elección presidencial del pasado 17 de junio se han asesinado 22 líderes sociales, una persona cada día[1]. El panorama es bastante gris, pues mientras los grandes medios de comunicación se han dedicado a cubrir ampliamente el mundial de fútbol y el gobierno nacional continúa negando la sistematicidad de este fenómeno[2] en un intento por invisibilizar los patrones comunes de la masiva vulneración a los derechos humanos que se está produciendo en el país, tras bambalinas se encuentra la cruda realidad que está marcada por el asesinato, solo en lo corrido de 2018, de 123 líderes y lideresas sociales según las últimas cifras de Indepaz.[3] ... read full story / add a comment

El domingo 17 de junio de 2018 se realizó la segunda vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales de Colombia, en las que se alzó como nuevo jefe de Estado el neoconservador uribista Iván Duque. Para analizar, desde una perspectiva libertaria, los resultados y tendencias de esta coyuntura política, marcada por la escogencia del sexagésimo presidente de la República, apuntamos los siguientes elementos:

1 Participación alta con crecimiento menor de la abstención y el voto nulo
2 De nuevo, triunfo de Duque y retorno de un uribismo debilitado
3 Petro pierde, pero se profundiza el hito para la izquierda
4 Crece el voto en blanco centrista pero se mantiene su marginalidad política
5 Reunificación burguesa: retorno del uribismo y derrota del santismo
6 Perspectivas libertarias ... read full story / add a comment

But what will it take to win against this Death Star of a corporation? We need a direct action workers movement, directly controlled by its members, willing to spread the struggle beyond the shackles of labor law, and beyond the confines of the contract. ... read full story / add a comment

There has been a lot of talk about the promise of a National Minimum Wage (NMW) in South Africa. This means wages cannot go below a certain level. But capitalists and politicians continue to eat the food of the workers, the poor and unfortunate. Why? In some cases, the NMW is an improvement – but generally, the NMW is not a “living wage,” meaning a wage on which you can live a decent life. Prices keep going up. This society is based on the maximization of profit, this is its logic, and this means wages are not linked to what the workers and poor need, but to what bosses and politicians need. Wages are a system of exploitation. We live a capitalist society of stress and fear and jealousy, rooted in a system of cheap black labour, and power and profits for the bosses and politicians. We need to fight for something more, take back our unions, and lay the groundwork for an anarchists society, with equality based on workers and community councils. ... read full story / add a comment

The remarkable “recovered factories” (fábricas recuperadas) movement saw hundreds of closed factories reopened by the workers, run democratically, creating jobs and helping working class and poor communities. It showed that there is only so much protesting can accomplish – at some point you have to create something new. But it also shows it is essential that such alternative sites of production form alliances with, and become embedded, in other movements of the working class, poor and peasantry, including unions and unemployed movements. This assists them in building larger struggles, and provides them with some protection from the capitalist market and the state. It is meanwhile important for unions and social movements to start to systematically develop alternatives to capitalist- and state- run social services and media. However, it is simply impossible to escape capitalism by creating cooperatives, social centres or alternative spaces –almost all means of production remain in ruling class hands, secured by force and backed by huge bureaucracies. It is essential to build a mass revolutionary front of unions and other movements, embracing popularly-run social services, media and production, and aiming at complete socialisation of the economy and of decision-making through a revolutionary rupture. ... read full story / add a comment

On 17 November 2017, the Minister of Labour announced the state intends to carry out a new round of attacks on workers and their rights. The attacks come in the form of three Labour Bills currently being considered by parliament: the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill, the National Minimum Wage Bill and the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. If passed, the changes to the labour laws these bills propose will be a major attack on workers’ rights, won through decades of struggle, and will further deepen and entrench inequality and roll back important democratic gains.
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Ο εργάτης αισθάνεται ότι είναι ο εαυτός του έξω από την εργασία του, και όταν εργάζεται αισθάνεται έξω από τον εαυτό του. Νιώθει άνετα όταν δεν εργάζεται. Κι όταν εργάζεται δεν νιώθει άνετα. Κατά συνέπεια, η εργασία του δεν είναι εθελοντική, αλλά καταναγκαστική. Και η καταναγκαστική εργασία δεν είναι η ικανοποίηση μιας ανάγκης, αλλά μονάχα ένα μέσο για να ικανοποιήσει ανάγκες εκτός της εργασίας. Ο αλλότριος χαρακτήρας της φαίνεται καθαρά από το γεγονός ότι μόλις πάψει να υπάρχει σωματικός ή άλλος εξαναγκασμός η εργασία αποφεύγεται σαν πανούκλα.
Καρλ Μαρξ ... read full story / add a comment

Una de las grandes deficiencias que tienen los círculos libertarios en Colombia ha sido la falta de sistematicidad, de trazar objetivos y poder evaluar su cumplimiento en un futuro, así sea para hallar los puntos clave donde empiezan a generarse los errores o aciertos de nuestras posturas. Precisamente, la parte de balances es importante para ello, y no se le ha dado la importancia suficiente, por un lado, por guardar estos análisis en los círculos más íntimos militantes, o simplemente quedan en el aire y no logramos aterrizarlos, para su comunicación y debate, dejando morir en el olvido interesantes análisis que se quedan en una conversación informal. Aquí, un breve y humilde aporte a esa labor que parece que, desde diferentes ópticas y miradas, ya venimos dando en el país. Por supuesto, no se intenta hacer un trabajo personal de reflexión, sino de recoger muchos apuntes que se han construido colectivamente en esas informalidades, pero que a lo mejor con un poco de mayor difusión podemos conectar nodos para caminar con una paso más firme y ligero. ... read full story / add a comment

Mechanisation and automation have been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But these are not inevitable or neutral economic realities. They are political weapons of oppression under capitalism. It is a war against the working classes to increase profits. It is no an accident that bosses choose to mechanise and automate in the context of the massive crisis of capitalism. ... read full story / add a comment

Το παρακάτω άρθρο αποτελεί μια πολύ σύντομη άποψη για την εργατική τάξη, είτε ως μια επαναστατική τάξη συνολικά που μας οδηγεί σε μια αταξική και μη ιεραρχική κοινωνία είτε όχι. Εξηγεί ότι ο κόσμος έχει αλλάξει, το ίδιο και η εργατική τάξη, αναφέρεται στην πραγματικότητα και την πραγματική ζωή αντί να βασίζεται στα κείμενα των παλαιών και “ιερών” βιβλίων. ... read full story / add a comment

Το τέλος όπως θα έπρεπε να είναι: Ένα πρωί ο πύργος του Κάφκα κάηκε και τα εκατομμύρια έγγραφά του σκόρπιζαν στον αέρα τη μυρωδιά της στάχτης. Η κρεατομηχανή καταστράφηκε από εκατομμύρια χέρια καταπιεσμένων ενώ τα κεφάλια των καταπιεστών στόλιζαν τις πλατείες. Ο Λευτέρης, η Γιώτα, ο Τάσος, η Ελένη, ο Λεωνίδας, η Φωτεινή χαμογελούσαν ξανά. Είχαν κερδίσει την ελευθερία τους με θάνατο στον θάνατο από αγάπη για ζωή. ... read full story / add a comment