For a militant response to the G8-2005

by Eamonn Casey Thu Jun 16, 2005 21:03 ecn76 at yahoo dot com

"With an absolute rejection of the State socialist left, of hierarchical organisation and reformism, we call for a pro-active militant response to the July G8 meeting in Scotland, UK 2005."

Reject reformism - yeah ok.... but reject the state socialist left and hierarchical organization...ah come on now lads.

Look at the objective lessons of history.

Anarchists can't create - they can only destroy.

Remember that the anarchist were as much a threat to the survival of the Spanish Republic as Franco and his fascists were. That is why, in the end, they had to be put on the spot.

Anarchists are just Libertarians with student loans.

Anarchist theory and anarchist practice are incapable of the neccessary movement building required to move beyond and above capitalism.

It was the lack of the acceptance of the gift of leadership offered by the " state socialist left" in the US that caused the energy created by Seattle in 1999 to melt away.

Remember in Ireland Jack White was only able to achieve what he did in the context of an organization structure supportive of the "state socialsit left".

Give up on the oul blather and organize to win not just for a bit of feel good psychodrama.

The "war stories" might help you get a bit of leg-over with some innocent fresher in the bar in Belfield when you go back to college but it won't create political outcome.

by Jon Glackin Thu Jun 16, 2005 23:20

hey GBD...you couldnt start talking in a language in the language of the class you claim to represent speaks. I would so love to bring you to Tallaght or the Antrim Road to watch you build the revolution.
If I were you, I would concentrate on building that 'controversial' website, stop emailing me and posting shite here you muppet

by Akrasia Fri Jun 17, 2005 00:40

"Remember that the anarchist were as much a threat to the survival of the Spanish Republic as Franco and his fascists were. That is why, in the end, they had to be put on the spot."

Of course the anarchists were a threat to the spanish republic, they wanted to create an anarchist society, The communists were also a threat to the Spanish republic, they wanted to create a western soviet union. I would far prefer to have lived in a collectivised anarchist society as proposed by the Anarchists then in Franco's fascist spain or in the Soviet spain that would have been had the POUM got their way

by Eamonn Casey Fri Jun 17, 2005 01:09 ecn76 at yahoo dot com

" I would far prefer to have lived in a collectivised anarchist society as proposed by the Anarchists then in Franco's fascist spain or in the Soviet spain that would have been had the POUM got their way"

Ahem...the POUM was a party in the tradition of Leon Trotsky .

They may have been Leninists but they were not in communion with the Comintern.

The POUM had nothing to do with the USSR.

The anarchists sold out the Spanish Republic to Franco and Hitler.

The Spanish anarchists stabbed the Spanish working class in the back.

The only real assistance the Spanish working class ever got was from supporters of the concept of the Leninist party.

by bobcat Fri Jun 17, 2005 02:23

I believe the refusal of the Soviet elements in Spain at the time to allow the anarchists to use their badly needed weapons in their quest to control the future of Spain form Moscow was the root of the downfall of Republican Spain. Besisdes that, and more to do with the post, I think the poster has very solid ideas, it is increasingly clear that the hierarchical 'socialist' parties, even the radical SWP, leave no room for individual creativity which is the most effective weapon against a system built on conformism and mediocraty

by Joe Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:59

I had no idea that there were still people out there who believed the CP version of the Spanish civil war! Still I suppose its the same as you get idiots who deny the holocaust (given the number killed in the gulags not that far fetched a comparison even if the two are not identical).

The role of the Communist Parties in liquidating the revolutionary workers movement in Spain (anarchists and POUM) in order to cuddle up to the western democracies is mainstream stuff now lads. Your torture camps and secret executions are well documented. So go peddle your lies elsewhere - they are not worth answering here.

by Terry Fri Jun 17, 2005 13:25

Eamon, you call for organisational forms that have leaders or at least controlling groups at the top, basically a hierarchical power structure.

What you seem to neglect that all these forms of strutures are simple for the State to deal with, because all one has to do is either arrest, jail, execute or control the relatively few at the top. And this has happened and does happen all the time.

If we want to move society to a new system of organisation that is both sustainable and equitable, then we have to take on board that obviously the current system is going to resist, but that it will (and does) use all means from overt to covert.

We also must look outside mere politics and recognise the biolgical nature of the system in terms of it's dynamics. The nature and structure of the State is in many ways parasitic. Like any parasite it sucks as much resources as possible from the plant / animal for the benefit not of the host planet or animal but for itself. In the case of the State, it is of course appropriating much of the worlds resources for the few -which are the elite and in the process killing the host.

But the analogy or rather the features of its dynamics go further in that, like say a fungus or a mould, say like black mould that once gets into a wall it cannot be got rid of; the State, using the apparatus of it's agents such as the security forces / secret police, infect the whole body of society. They run their tentacles of influence everywhere into every niche in society and every organisation in it. Like many but not all parasites they control the behaviour of the host and in the case of a fungus, the are able to deal with any resistance that arises anywhere.

Thus any oppositional form to the State that consists of a group with a leader or a few leaders is completely wide open to this 'infection' and thus control and or destruction. Any organisation with a few basically leading it or running it, automatically means to breach it or control it, you need far fewer resources to defeat it. This is true throughout the whole biological world and is true in the political one too.

So now to some examples. The Black Panthers were inflitrated with informants, arrested, executed and all sorts of attacks and largely destroyed because on balance they were more centric than distributed in their organisation form and so it was easier to do.

Practically all unions which have long been co-opted by the state in practically all countries are now part of the state system or establishment and are more effective at controlling and limiting dissent than anything else. And of course all unions, except maybe for the CNT in Spain, are leadership centric type of power structures -i.e. wide open to 'infection' and control.

Same with most non-anarchist revolutionary groups and if not wiped out early, else when they do get into power, the relatively few are controlled, bribed, influenced in one form another and usually proceed to limit their initial aims and go along with the elites behind the scenes

Did you ever wonder why there are so many political parties throughout the world in places like Europe and South America particularly, that have worlds like revolutionary, or socialist and democratic somewhere in their political party names, but on closer examination one nearly always discovers they are anything but revolutionary and have been going along with the status quo for years.

And finally you may say that well, we don't want to get rid of the State and so my whole argument is mute. Well isn't that what the so-called communists or socialist (pick your label) did in places like Russia, China, North Korea (with all the Gulags) They kept the State, it was just going to be a workers State.

The argument about the State is of course central to Anarchism and the whole issue of running society in a form that consists of hierarchical power structures. That is anarchists reject these forms, because they clearly recognise that as a power structure the State is an inherently violent, undemocratic structure no matter who is running it.

Now one could take the biological analogy further here and then basically claim it is part of human nature to go for power and control, but if thats the case, you are basically saying we are like Ants, which have a power structure, where they remain clueless and in their case, the power resides in their evolved genes, instinct and scents that control Ants and Terminates too. The thing is we are supposed to be human and above all that.

And for Anarchism to work, everyone has to be involved and clued in. If we accept leadership forms of organisation, then lots of people can just sit back and relax and wait to be told what to do and as I already amply indicated above, that usually means you will be controlled. -i.e society will end up being run not too dissimiliar in form from Ant or Terminate colonies.

I will concede one point. It is very difficult to make changes and no matter what form of organisation you use, it takes a lot of hard work to get it going and growing. I will also concede that in certain stages or situations, leadership type organisations can be effective. However I think what is being traded off is relatively easier advancement at a particular point to the detriment later. And as I said history is full of examples of defeat or co-option of leadership forms of resistance.

by Dara Fri Jun 17, 2005 17:50

...eamonn must be. he talks of putting anarchists "on the spot", to preserve the Spanish republic that the Leninists were somehow the true saviours of. If we look at the well documented examples of Stalinist interference in the revolution, (cheka prisons, executions, non-cooperation etc.) the idea of the anarchists sabotaging the republic becomes absurd.
Then he proudly talks of a party in the Trotskyist tradition. One word on the trots ...Kronstadt.

any system of organisation based on coercion is anathema to human interaction, we are autonomous beings, not cogs in some sort of Stalinist machine. contrary to the comment that anarchists cannot create, we can only destroy; i ask for all to investigate what direct action is. Anarchism is about taking responsibilty and control of your life into your own hands and creating structures for organisation that are not based upon hierarchy and thus coercion. Back to the Spanish revolution and Civil War, we could use the examples of workers-controlled factories in Barcelona, collectivised farmland in Andalusia and so on as quite clear examples of the new society that was created, albeit only briefly.

perhaps eamonn is joking, maybe he's just assuming the stalinist stereotype, maybe his ridiculous and ill-informed post is merely a joke. anyway, thanks to Dead Debord for original post, its always important to focus on what non-hierarchical activists can create together. This here website might be posited as an example of the creativity of libertarian practice.

by Ois - WSM-Workers' Solidarity Movement Fri Jun 17, 2005 19:46

Mr. Casey writes.
"the POUM was a party in the tradition of Leon Trotsky ."

Bullsh....ugar.

The POUM weren't Trotskyites. They were a Marxist party. This doesn't mean that they were Bolsheviks. There were no Trots of any significance in Spain. You're history is bunkum.

Despite Trots' endlessly protestations that their politics matter: they don't and (bar a few years when they gloriously built 'war communism' or what ever you want to call that perversion of thought and tragedy of humanity) they never have. (Having one or two members of parliament before splitting - again, doesn't, in the scheme of things, matter).

Don't believe me? Read St. Aquinas, I mean Trotsky. In his most important work on Spain he says...

"Politically the POUM remained throughout far closer to the Popular Front, for whose left wing it provided the cover, than to Bolshevism...Contrary to its own intentions, the POUM proved to be, in the final analysis, the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary party." –Trotsky - The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning

Hmmm, I wonder those this reckless dismissing of rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-revolutionary groups such as the POUM make Trotsky an ultra-leftist? Maybe he too is part of an infantile disorder? Christ maybe he's no better than us anarchists. Shudder! I already regret saying that.



As for GDD's article ... granted it sounds like Pat Rabbitte's national conference speech, if Mr. Rabbitte was a revolutionary. That is, it offers no analyses, no argument, just a lot of vitriol and insurrectional platitudes. But I don’t like people’s objections to it.

Jon Glackin writes:
"you couldnt start talking in a language in the language of the class you claim to represent speaks"

I'm presuming that what you are trying to say here is that the language used in this article wouldn't fly on people's doorsteps or in the pub. People would think you're crazy.

And you're right, but by the same token the language of Marx wouldn't fly either. Go on, try to explain the significance of the how the use-value of labour-power is the creation of value to someone on his or her doorstep. People would think you’re crazy. Does invalidate the entirety of Marx's critique of capitalism? No obviously not. Just because something is explained in difficult language doesn't mean it's not true or valid or useful.

Mr. Casey again...
"Anarchist theory and anarchist practice are incapable of the necessary movement building required to move beyond and above capitalism."

Ah yes that great Leninist cliché. I mean it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be explained or justified. All you need to do is say look at Spain, the anarchists were wrong and we were right. But wait what did I say already….

The truth is, Trot, that your histories are full of lies. Your analyses are superficial, idealist and substitutionist. Your electioneering is self-defeating. Your organisations are un-democratic. Your quest for hegemony is destructive. Your politics are political, not social. Your economics are economic, not social. Your class analysis is positivistic, not dialectical.

Your practice is dangerous and your theory is bankrupt. Castoriadas knew it, Lefort knew it, Dunayevskaya knew it, James knew it, Guerin knew it. I know it and so those every one else whose politics is based on the material conditions in which they find themselves instead of on debates about a reified conceptions of class, party, politics and socialism.

by Eamonn Casey Fri Jun 17, 2005 21:24

The anachists stabbed the Spanish working class in the back. Just as the Irish anarchists are shafting the Irish working class.

Let us look at the case of Spain.

From May 3rd to May 8th of 1937 all over free Spain, anarchists , who had claimed to be on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, attacked the Repubican workers militia .

In Barelona this resulted in violent street battles.

It began when anarchists attempted to take over the main telephone exchange in Barcelona so as to disrupt the communications of the Republican forces which contained formations they wished to destroy.

The plan was to dirupt the communications so that the Fascists would be able to outflank and then overwhelm progressive military forces fighting to defend the Republic,

The telephone workers fought back, setting up barricades. The anarchists responed by attacking the and surrounding the workers militia "Lenin Barracks."

Five days of street fighting ensued. In the end the anarchists were defeated but not until they had executed many of their socialist prisoners and had handed over others to be tortured to death by their Nazi backed Nationalist allies.

by himself Sat Jun 18, 2005 02:39

posting on indymedia is a waste of time..........all the folk posting at the moment seem to be bitter twisted individuals with an axe to grind ......the original post is a very positive call to action .......i bet none of the people posting this tripe will be in scoltand.............

the urge to destroy is also a creative one

rahhhhhhhh

by Dan Sat Jun 18, 2005 17:24

Eamon, perhaps you can now explain to us why the Moscow show trials were necessary to root out Nazi agents in the USSR, led by Trotsky, Bukharin and Kamenev ... then finish off with a ringing defence of the Hitler-Stalin pact. It really is astonishing to hear anyone spouting this kind of drivel in this day and age...

by Mark P Sat Jun 18, 2005 19:51

The original article is hilariously pompous but Eamonn's contributions almost make it look measured and reasoned.

I'm not sure if I'm more amused or horrified to see somebody spout the Stalinist line on Spain all these years later. Like Joe I really didn't think that there was anyone left in this country with those views. I would be interested to see Eamonn deal with the question about the Moscow Trials for similar reasons.

Certainly the claim that anarchists in Barcelona wanted to disrupt "the communications so that the Fascists would be able to outflank and then overwhelm progressive military forces fighting to defend the Republic" is of a piece with arguments that Bukharin and Trotsky were involved in a Nazi conspiracy to blow up railways in the USSR. I mean just think about that for a second. What Eamonn is saying isn't just that anarchists and the POUM had a poor or counterproductive strategy but that they actually wanted Franco to win. A victory they would then be able to celebrate by triumphantly throwing themselves into fascist mass-graves we can only presume.

by John Horan Sat Jun 18, 2005 20:14

It should be obvious that "Eamonn" is not a socialist or communist of any sort. He is a troll posing as a stalinist solely for the purpose of getting a reaction from the anarchists and keeping the left at each others throats.

by Ois - WSM Sat Jun 18, 2005 20:38

The Maydays of 1937 is a very big deal in anarchist history but not because of the reasons Eammon says.

A pretty simple historical fact is that it was the Spanish CP that took control of the telephone exchange in Barcelona, with the aim of taking it off the anarchist workers that ran it. This is the first time I've ever heard this denied (although can you deny what you are just to plain mis-informed to know?).

The reason this is significant is because the leadership of the FAI and CNT advocated a united front with the communist party. Then the CP stabbed the Anarchists and the Spanish working class in the back, to use Eammon's phrase.

After the seizure of the telephone exchanges there was something like a second working class uprising in Barcelona. Still the FAI and CNT leadership oppossed any threat to the united front. Involved in the Maydays were the POUM and the platformist Friends of Durruti group.

Trots like to claim the POUM as their own. As I've shown above it wasn't.

There are two standard responses to the failings of the FAI-CNT:

1. The purer than pure anarcho-syndicalist response: It was all the FAI's fault, this is what happens when political groups get involved in 'pure' class struggle. They lead it up blind alleys.

2. The Platformist response. This is the response that the WSM would agree with and is explained in the FoD's pamphlet 'Towards a Fresh Revolution'. The significance of which is explained is George Fontenis's

For 'Towards a fresh revolution' see: http://www.zabalaza.net/texts/txt_towards_fod.htm

For Fontenis' text see:
http://anarchism.ws/pdf/booklets/messFOD.html

So Eammon, regardless of whether your a stalinist or a trot (what's the differnece anyway!!). You're wrong, very wrong.

himself: I'll be in scotland, And I'm not bitter. I just hate bolsheviks. As one of the few good Marxists, Otto Ruhle, once said: 'The Struggle Against Facism begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism'. After all Totalitarian Party Dictatorship = Totalitarian Party Dictatoship.

Anarchism = Communism = Stateless Capital-less Socialism = The abosolute opposite of a totalitarian party dictatorship based on the accumulation of value.

So don't talk to me about a united left.

by real british citizen Wed Jul 06, 2005 20:39

I was just reading your artical on this site and i would have to say i was amazed by the fantasy world you idiots live in, you claim to be peaceful but to achieve your aim you use violence to get your message across, you however condem war by using violence to condem it, which even you brain dead idiots must agree how contradicting that is. your not intrested in solving the world debt problem infact half your members probably dont even know where africa is. You smash police cars up and cause property damage costing the country thousands of pounds and then go back to your house in a free country with security provided by the men and women who serve this country, so the next time you smash a police car up or stick your fingers up at the armed forces just remember which person you want to be there if your wife is about to be raped or your house is about to be broke into and the people who lay there lives on the line for you idiots every day so you can lead a normal life, what you people are doing up in scotland is disgusting so dont hide behind issues that people wish to change as all you idiots are about is the thrill of trouble nothing more and nothing less so do the country a favour go home and grow up.

by Phuq Hedd Wed Jul 06, 2005 21:07

QUOTE: "you claim to be peaceful but to achieve your aim you use violence to get your message across, "

RESPONSE: Who do you think you're talking to? It's highly unlikely that the people that wrote this are reading this site. It's a cut and paste from a British website. You are reading it on an Irish website because someone that's a fan of it pasted it here because they were too unoriginal to publish their own thoughts or news. If you read the original article you'd see a link at the bottom of it. Go talk to them there.

QUOTE: "you however condem war by using violence to condem it, which even you brain dead idiots must agree how contradicting that is. "

RESPONSE: And so do you completely condemn violence? Later in your response you make positive references to the police (who use violence to protect property, violence to supress peaceful demonstrations and violence to stop the "rape of my wife" (I don't have one because I'm a heterosexual woman) ) and that positive reference to violence on your part is contradictory.

More interestingly you're constructing a strawman: namely that this statement is from people that are pacficists. If you get off your high-horse and stop assuming that everyone else is as dumb as you then you'll see there's no reference to pacificism in this statement. In fact it's a provocative counter-point to pacifism. Just because the authors condemn the wars run for the benefit of the rich and the violent suppression (by the police and judiciary) of the poor for the benefit of the rich doesn't mean that they're against all violence. It means they're against the specific use of violence to achieve the interests of the rich.

QUOTE: "You smash police cars up and cause property damage costing the country thousands of pounds and then go back to your house in a free country with security provided by the men and women who serve this country,"

RESPONSE: It's more a case of the police smashing up people who are trying to march to physically blockade the scum that are mismanaging the world. As for the people "serving the country": 1) they're getting paid to do a job; 2) they're serving the rich not us. If, as the article points out, more money were spent on social projects instead of pigs (those noble servers of the rich people) and prisons and soldiers (the for-hire-killers that are illegally occupying Iraq, illegally occupying the north and are always willing to come out and scab whenever there's a strike on) then I'd have less burglaries and rape to worry about.

You know fuck all about what you're attempting to talk about and given that you claim to have read the article I have no hope that if you go and do some reading that you'll gain one. Your comment is rich in insult, invective and faulty thinking and short on genuine thought.

by irish citizen Thu Jul 07, 2005 06:19

So let us get this right Mr(s) "Phug Hedd", will you, by answering Yes/No to the following questions:

a) Do you support and endorse the deliberate hurting of human beings who are in the service of the public to acheive your aims?

b) The destruction of privately-owned property that we saw on TV - for example, the family car being smashed up by anarchists in Scotland yesterday - do you support and endorse that?

c) Do you support and endorse the violence against the police that we saw in Scotland (don't say there was none)?

We're dying to hear...

by Joe Thu Jul 07, 2005 11:04

One car gets a window broken by one guy who can't even swing a bar straight (he actually misses the first time!). Meanwhile very 3 seconds a child dies of poverty.

Now which one did you want me to be outraged by again?

A couple of cops get injured by missiles. Meanwhile some 300 people are arrested and dozens are batoned and pepper sprayed by thugs on overtime equipped with body armour, shields, helicopters, horses, dogs, vans, extendable batons and of course pepper spray.

Now which did you want me to be outraged by again?

Capitalism isn't nice - it is killing people every few seconds. It's paying thugs in uniform to protect the guys who make the decision to keep doing this. And your worried about an idiot breaking a car window - shame on you.

by irish citizen Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:06

... and you Joe, in your contrived outrage and disgust, can answer the question - do you support and endorse what happened in London today?

by Joe Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:07

.

by Citizen Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:24

Do you agree with the murdering of iraqi citizens by foreign soldiers in their homes ?

by irish citizen - irish citizen Fri Jul 08, 2005 03:00

No. I don't - and I mean that for all foreign fighters in Iraq

Joe had the balls to answer. Good.