-------- Original Message -------- Subject: US, Washington, A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc (update) Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 02:48:48 -0400 From: Mark Laskey <kronstadt at juno.com> Reply-To: a-infos-d at lists.tao.ca To: a-infos-en at lists.tao.ca, aac at lists.tao.ca
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A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
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I. 'A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc' Statement (updated, April 11, 2000) II. Czech Solidarity for A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc (statement of solidarity from Solidarita) III. "Increased Unity is One of the Signs of the Change in Tide" (council communist endorsement for the RACB)
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A16 REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-CAPITALIST BLOC STATEMENT (updated, April 11, 2000)
We are all active organizers and participants of the upcoming protests surrounding the IMF and World Bank on April 9 -17. For us, these institutions are beyond reform. In addition to simply being "undemocratic" in themselves, they play a key role within a global capitalist system that must be abolished outright. That is why we are working with all our energy to bring the most effective resistance possible against them to the streets of Washington, DC.
We are calling for an organized bloc of all stripes of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist revolutionaries at the upcoming demonstrations against the IMF/World Bank. We feel that it is important to present critique of these transnational financial institutions that is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonialist in perspective, and accompanied by a revolutionary vision which advocates a radical transformation of society that is based on mutual aid, direct democracy and free association.
We feel that the power of each group to organize autonomously based on their own ideas shows the strength of our movement. We would like to emphasize this, which is why we want to open our call to all those who share our struggle for the same revolutionary anti-capitalist goals: the abolition of capitalism, the state, and all forms of hierarchy and oppression. We invite all autonomists, anarchists, anti-state libertarian Marxists, wobblies, syndicalists, council communists, etc. to march along with us. We wish to support the larger anti-globalization movement by organizing autonomously within our own contingent. We do not intend to be divisive in any way but want to develop our actions and present our ideas. We would also like to address our concerns and criticisms that we have around the movement against globalization.
The World Bank, IMF, and WTO need to be seen within a larger framework of global capitalism. While we struggle to change the most destructive policies of these institutions we realize that they are inherently exploitive and imperialist towards workers and communities. That is why we need to connect our day to day organizing with the larger struggle against capitalism. Talk of 'fair trade,' 'pruning' and 'fixing', such as in Seattle, simply ignores the history of working class struggle against capitalism and class society, and defeats any revolutionary goals or consciousness. Instead of a message of reforming these institutions, which would not solve the fundamental problems, we want a message of abolishing these institutions and creating revolutionary alternatives. Instead of a call for 'fair trade' or 'reform' of the global economy, we call for the international working class and oppressed communities to organize for revolutionary change of the global economy.
The strength of the working class lies not only in its own community but most importantly in global solidarity with all workers and oppressed peoples around the globe. The movement against globalization is a fight in every country for dignity and justice and we are strongest in that fight working side by side. We feel that calls for national protectionism and national sovereignty pit the working class of each nation against each other. We feel especially that the stance taken by some of organized labor, and many left-reformists, is not a stance of international solidarity and that it is not the most effective stance for advancing the cause of the international working class. We believe in internationalism and the globalization of our struggle against all of capitalism, regardless of political borders, and we work towards a genuine international unity which will one day lay the basis for a global social revolution.
We believe that the most effective protest is each group autonomously taking action and using the tactics that they feel works best for their situation. We do not advocate one particular tactic but believe that the greatest diversity of tactics is the most effective use of tactics. We are critical of ideologically motivated arguments that oppose this. This is why we do not believe that it is organizationally principled for any one group to set the guidelines for the protests or claim ownership of the movement.
We also realize that if our protests and actions are effective in shutting down the meetings of the IMF/World Bank the police may use repression and violence against demonstrators. We do not necessarily advocate violence or encourage the destruction of property, but simply that the movement recognize the very real possibility for confrontation and be open to a diversity of tactics as a means of legitimate defense. We would like to recognize the larger globalization movement for addressing some of our concerns around tactics and the role of 'peacekeepers.'
This is a call for more active participation of anarchist and other like-minded revolutionaries within the anti-globalization movement to present our vision of an effective revolutionary anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian alternative. Help bring our vision of a free, classless and democratic society to the forefront. At A16 we envision an active and creative contingent of revolutionaries marching under black, red & black, and green & black flags, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian banners, and a hail of revolutionary drumbeats. We are mobilizing marching bands, radical cheerleaders, and planning a whole assortment of highly organized and creative actions! To all of our comrades who support this call, we encourage you to get in touch, endorse it, and take to the streets with your anti-capitalist imaginations and desires!
Organize, Educate, Create Resistance!
Do not let the blows against this capitalist system cease! From the streets of Seattle, to Washington, DC, may our resistance be as transnational as capital!
¡SOLIDARITY AND REVOLUTION!
Signed, Nosotros Group (Baltimore, MD), Group Anarchiste Emile-Henry (Quebec), Active Transformation (Detroit-East Lansing, MI), Global Action (Eugene, OR), Monongahela Anarchist Group (Morgantown, WV), We Dare Be Free (Boston, MA), Sabate Anarchist Group (Boston, MA), Lancaster Anarchist Black Cross (Lancaster, PA), Flint Jones - Northeast Regional Delegate of the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA-IWA), Prole Revolt (Morgantown, WV), Mid-Atlantic Infoshop (Washington, DC), Arsenal (Chicago, IL), Anarchist Action Collective (Eugene, OR), Antioch Anarchist Group (Yellow Springs, OH), Autonomous Zone (Chicago, IL), DC Earth First! (Washington, DC), Chicago Anti-Racist Action (Chicago, IL), New Brunswick Food Not Bombs (New Brunswick, NJ), Brian MacKenzie Center (Washington, DC), Collective Action Notes (Baltimore, MD), Bad Days Will End (Somerville, MA), Red & Black Notes (Toronto), Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists / Fédération des Communistes Libertaires du Nord-est (Northeastern United States / Eastern Canada), Kent Anarchist Black Cross (Kent, OH), Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarita (Brno, Czech Republic), Movement Against The Monarchy (London, England)
For general information about the protest see http://www.A16.org For information about anarchist activities at A16, see http://www.infoshop.org/octo/a16_a.html
'A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc' point of mobilization:
Sunday, April 16th, 2000 Washington, DC 6am @ Rock Creek Park 26th street between M st. and Penn. Ave.
For more information, contact:
Nosotros Group PO Box 65341 Baltimore, MD 21209 email: DURRUTI36 at aol.com
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Czech Solidarity for A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc
Dear comrades!
Revolutionary Anarchist greetings from the Czech Republic to all of the participants in the A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc. We are a small revolutionary anarchist (platformist) group of workers, the unemployed and students from the Czech Republic, called Solidarita. We are one of the left and environmentalist Czech organisations which are calling for an international mass mobilisation against IMF/WB conference in Prague for this year's September 26th.
The Czech Republic is one of the IMF/WB´s successes. In 1990 the first post-stalinist government accepted a US dollar 3.9 billion loan and promised to implement a SAP and make our country a part of global capitalism. Now there is 10% unemployment. 60.000 workers do not receive wages for their labour or receive them irregularly and only small parts of them. 63% of them get lower wages than is the average. Real incomes of working class families have dropped by 13%. A value of basic social benefits lowered by 44% and their ratio to GDP fell by 60%. This and similar IMF/WB successes benefit local and foreign capitalists, not workers and the poor of the Third and the First world and for their environment they mean a total disaster. The capitalist globalisation is just a continuation of neo-colonialism, where imperialist states and their trans-national corporations suck an enormous wealth out of the Third world (including post-stalinist Eastern and Central Europe) and force their own workers to compete with workers of developing countries - ie. anti-social neo-liberal policy, which is used over here on the periphery, is implemented also in metropolitan countries. In EU unemployment is rising up to 10%. There are 50 millions of people living in poverty and 5 million of the homeless in EU. There are 30 millions of people in USA suffering malnutrition. And in the same time the 200 richest people of the Earth have bigger properties than combined incomes of 41% of the world´s population.
This situation can not be changed by anything less than a global and internationalist revolutionary movement of workers and the poor, which will eliminate the capitalist system itself, because it is this system, what is responsible for social and environmental disasters of today. Nevertheless, it is worthy of organising protest to shut down IMF/WB and to cancel the Third world debt. For it is only through mass direct actions and practicing direct federalist democracy and autogestion of class struggles that such a revolutionary movement can be created. And an international mobilisation against flagships of the capitalist globalisation - IMF/WB - can be besides day-to-day class struggles on social and environmental fields can be an important means of growth of global proletariat´s global self-organisation and self-consciousness. And it is primarily in a struggle, where an Anarchist alternative of a global stateless federation of libertarian socialist regions can assert itself.
That is why we - the revolutionary anarchist workers, unemployed and students from a small Central European country - express our solidarity with A16 RACB and with the US working class people struggling to shut down IMF/WB meeting in Washington, DC. There will be a solidarity demo on April 17th in Prague. We are with you in your struggles, be with us on September 26th! Together we can build a global self-organised revolutionary movement that will change the world!
Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarita March 25th, Brno, Czech Republic.
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Increased Unity is One of the Signs of the Change in Tide -- Endorsing the Call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc
Recently a number of anarchist groups issued a call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc for the upcoming "A16" demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. Not restricting themselves to organizing an anarchist black bloc, these activists extended a hand to autonomists, "anti-state libertarian marxists," anarcho-syndicalists, and council communists to form a common front, organized separately but acting in concert as a revolutionary and anti-capitalist pole of attraction within the larger movement against "globalization." As adherents of council communist political perspectives, the publications Collective Action Notes, Red & Black Notes, and The Bad Days Will End endorse this call issued by our anarchist friends. We do so not as representatives of membership organizations, and still less as "leaders" of any kind, but rather as individuals who represent publications with modest circulations.
The "A16" actions are intended to build on the momentum from last years anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In the growing resistance to "globalization" and global financial institutions such as the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank, some are now heralding the emergence of a "new movement" and even a "new anti-capitalism." These protests certainly demonstrate that globalization is not the inevitable juggernaut that the capitalist bosses and bureaucrats say it is. But the "new anti-capitalism" that was on display in Seattle was a mixed bag, containing, it turned out, a lot of the old reformism, in the form of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, the Sierra Club, the National Lawyers Guild, Ralph Nader and his ilk, and assorted "NGOs." These elements see the movement against globalization simply as a way of putting pressure on the capitalist state to curtail or revamp international financial institutions or to replace "free trade" with "fair trade." This reformist perspective brings with it an ugly nationalist protectionism, where what is needed is thoroughgoing international solidarity. Tensions between some among the reformists and radicals surfaced in Seattle, where "peacekeepers" willingly acted as adjuncts for the state and its brutal cops in trying to keep radicals "in line." As the movement builds for A16 in Washington, so does the need for political clarification.
On a whole host of questions, the call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc takes the road of class struggle rather than reform. The call declares that the reformist message of "fair trade, not free trade" and of "pruning" and "fixing" global capitalist financial institutions is unacceptable. The call rejects the narrowness of "single-issue" organizing and opts instead for a total revolutionary critique of capitalism. The call repudiates the protectionism and nationalism that infect much of the anti-globalization movement, agitating instead for the abolition of nations. The call rejects the participation in the movement of so-called "peacekeepers" and insists on the right of groups and individuals to organize and act autonomously within the larger movement against globalization. All of these things are not only supportable, but are necessary.
The anarchists call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc is not a call to split the movement. It is a call to strengthen and concentrate a political pole of attraction within the anti-globalization movement which advances the understanding that, to be against globalization, you must be against capitalism, the state, and the nation. This opposition necessitates a proletarian perspective: To be for the working class and for the working class revolutionary self-organization through workers councils.
This idea is not the stale "old left" or Leninist dogma in which only the factory proletariat, organized in the trade unions, is allowed to be the "real" subject of history. Globalization itself has meant the de-industrialization of large segments of the U.S. workforce. At the same time, modern capitalism has made of society as a whole a "social factory" in which we are all workers. As the British journal Aufheben wrote in a recent editorial on the J18 demonstrations in London, "if we are fighting capital then we must constitute ourselves as the proletariat." Through this union of the working class and its essence, we forge the basis of a genuine international unity, which will one day lay the basis for the abolition of capitalism, wage slavery, and work itself. Its with this perspective in mind that we support the call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc.
Signed, Curtis Price / Collective Action Notes Neil Fettes / Red & Black Notes Ed Caldwell / The Bad Days Will End
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