About
From Self-managed Solidarity Unionism to a
Self-managed Society (from ZNet, June 15, 2009)
Social Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism,
the State and Leninism: A Libertarian Critique of
Capitalism
Workers Power
and the Spanish Revolution (in HTML) Aug. 2006
Anti-displacement Victory in San Francisco (in PDF)
Workers' Liberation and Institutions of
Self-management in The Northeastern Anarchist #11, March 2006
San Francisco Transit
Fight
What is Gentrification? (revised 2004)
Slaughterhouse Fight: A Look at the
Hormel Strike (from ideas &
action 1986) (with Jake Edwards and Steve Boyce)
Workers Power and the Russian Revolution Revolution and Syndicalism (Part 1)
The Capitalist City or the Self-managed City? 2004
States of Affairs The Hidden Cost of the New Economy: A Study of the Northeast Mission
Industrial Zone
[In HTML]
[[In PDF]
Origins of the Union Shop (1989)
Life at the Bay Guardian (1987)
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Why Revolutionary Syndicalism?1. A Strategy to Achieve Workers Liberation Capitalism is at its heart an oppressive and exploitative economic system. The core is the class structure, in which the majority are dispossessed of the means of production of goods and services, and must submit to bureaucratic production regimes, which control our labor so as to pump out wealth privately accumulated by the plutocrats at the top of the heap (and paying high salaries to the bureaucratic class of managers and high-end professionals), and backed up by the coercive force of the state. Working people are thus an oppressed class, although it is also internally quite heterogeneous and various sub-groups are oppressed in various diverse ways. The working class can't be free and can't ultimately ensure well-being for itself unless it can take over the control of the process of production, and the land and all the means of production, becoming masters of production, in control of our own work of and technological development. To do this means obliterating the institutional power of the bureaucratic/managerial and capitalist classes, so that we are not subordinate to any dominating class. As Ralph Chaplin put it in "Solidarity Forever":
All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone. Day of Mass Action in Oakland Shuts Fourth Largest U.S. PortVenezuela from BelowReview: Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle by Rafael Uzcategui (See Sharp Press, 2010) In her essay Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism (published as an issue of Monthly Review last year), Marta Harnecker presents a description of “some features” of a decentralized, self-managed socialism based on direct democracy in workplaces and neighborhoods — a picture congenial to libertarian socialists. She also provides an interpretation of the Bolivarian Movement — the movement led by Hugo Chavez — that suggests it is embarked on a transition to this kind of socialism in Venezuela. Rafael Uzcategui's book marshalls a lot of evidence to challenge that interpretation. Uzcategui argues that a continuation of capitalism is a more likely outcome of the Chavez government than a transition to socialism. Uzcategui also rejects the right-wing fantasy of "Castro-style Communism" being set up in Venezuela. Organizing Around Public Transit: At the Intersection of Environmental Justice and Class StruggleFrom Northeastern Anarchist #15 For the older big cities in North America, public transit is critical to their daily functioning. Organizing among workers and riders on public transit has a strategic importance. Buses, light rail cars and subway trains attract a diverse working class ridership. Workers in small factories, department stores, hospitals, and restaurants are thrown together on the bus. We encounter retirees going to a doctor's appointment, the unemployed, working class students going to classes at a community college, people of all colors and nationalities, immigrants and native-born. Organizing among transit riders allows the organizers to interact with a broad spectrum of the working class population. Transportation is how people glue together the various fragments of their lives spent in different locations. If transit workers were to strike, it could bring a large city to a halt. This gives the large workforce of a transit system a strategic position in the local economy. Debate with the International Socialist OrganizationMy piece linked below is part of a debate prompted by Eric Kerl's article "Contemporary anarchism" in the July-August issue of International Socialist Review: http://www.isreview.org/issues/72/feat-anarchism.shtml I wrote a review of that article which was published on the webzine of the Workers Solidarity Alliance: http://ideasandaction.info/2010/07/review-international-socialist-review-on-contemporary-anarchism/ In the September-October issue of the ISO's journal the debate was continued with three short pieces, by myself, Sebastian Lamb of the New Socialist Group in Canada, and Eric Kerl. Read my rejoinder to Eric Kerl's response in that issue of ISR...
Challenges in a Time of Austerity: American capitalism faces multiple worsening crises. Vast unemployment, huge numbers of home foreclosures, and cuts to public services are symptoms of an economic system in crisis. The role of the USA as world cop to protect corporate exploitation of labor and resources throughout the world creates human casualties — as in the endless war in Afghanistan — and also shifts resources away from social services that would benefit the working class population. Capitalism profits off the domination and exploitation of labor but also from plunder of the earth’s resources and shifting costs onto others through pollution. The threat posed by climate change is a clear and present danger and evidence that capitalism is not ecologically sustainable. Radical economists usually distinguish two kinds of economic downturns. First, there are the recessions that are part of the normal business cycle. And then there are less frequent "structural" crises that reflect more deep-seated problems. The present epic recession seems to be a severe structural crisis. Vacant Hotel OccupiedOn July 19th members of Direct Action to Stop the Cuts occupied a vacant 41-room hotel in San Francisco's Mission District. The action was intended to demonstrate the city's inaction on housing. While thousands of people sleep on the streets or live in very crowded living conditions in small apartments, potential housing units sit vacant. Victory in Fight for Union Freedom in GermanyThe FAU has won its appeal on the right to call itself a "union". The appeals court based on its decision on freedom of speech, that people have a right to express their opinion of what a "union" is. The FAU points out, however, that they are still up against the German laws that make it illegal to engage in any direct action if you can't prove you have the power to negotiate contracts with employers. Members of the FAU in Berlin previously were fined and jailed for their boycott campaign against Babylon Cinema. Fight for Union Freedom in GermanyA struggle by the workers at the New Babylon Cinema in Berlin — a relatively small firm — has now blown up into a fight with much larger legal consequences for German workers. A December 11, 2009 court edict in Berlin now poses some serious questions: Will German workers have the legal right to a union of their own choosing? Will they have the legal right to form grassroots alternative unions? Chinatown land trust helps low-income housingBy Cory Paul (San Francisco Chronicle) Just a few years ago, floor boards popped up as Ji Jian-guang walked across his cramped Chinatown apartment. His wife, Ru Mei Peng, washed vegetables in a sink the size of a shoe box. Their two adult sons — along with a daughter-in-law and grandbaby — shared a bedroom split by a bookcase. Though cramped, 53 Columbus, Room 108, was home. For nearly a decade, the Jis feared they would lose it to encroaching developers. Tenants Celebrate Conversion of Building to CooperativeMore than 200 people attended a victory celebration June 16th in San Francisco for a group of tenacious tenants who successfully fought their eviction and now are in control of their building through their coop, the Columbus United Cooperative, at 53 Columbus Avenue. This struggle goes back more than a decade ago when the San Francisco Community College District bought a 3-story brick apartment building with the aim of knocking it down to build a new community college campus. The Shared Equity Solution: A Working Class Program for Housing
Since the 1980s efforts to increase homeownership among working class people with lower incomes have included government downpayment assistance programs and attacks on "redlining" practices of banks in communities of color. As banks sought to expand their mortgage business, they increasingly pushed lower income residents into risky adjustable rate mortgages and mortgages with baloon payments. Studies have shown that many people who were directed towards risky loans would in fact have qualified for less risky mortgages. This did lead to a small increase in the rate of homeownership — from 64 percent in 1985 to 69 percent in 2004 (58 percent in California). Homeownership has been promoted as providing more security than renting since you own and control your own dwelling. But the security becomes illusory when high debt and risky loans drive households into foreclosure. And an epidemic of foreclosures de-stabilizes working class neighborhoods as large numbers of families lose their home. |
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