![[Leaflet] Tearing Racism up from its Capitalist Roots - Bongani Maponyane cover](https://zabalazabooks.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/leaflet-tearing-racism-up-from-its-capitalist-roots-bongani-maponyane.gif?w=676)
Author: Bongani Maponyane (ZACF)
File Size: 126 KB
Racism has been a curse in South Africa, and remains embedded in the society. But how scientific are racist ideas? Where do they come from? And how can we fight racism and create a truly equal and fair society? What do we as revolutionary anarchists think?
Author: Dónal O’Driscoll | File size: 298 KB
Privilege and the theory around it is a significant topic of debate at the moment among those interested in radical social change. Touching on many issues dear to the hearts of anarchists, it is hard to avoid. Yet, the two are not fitting together as well as they should and there is a sense of unease about this. Much of this is because privilege theory has emerged from US academic circles rather than anarchist ones and, ironically, has been co-opted to protect middle- class privileges. This is a situation in need of repair if we are to maintain our links with feminist, anti- racist and other struggles against oppression. If we are to create a mass movement capable of social change then it has to be able to engage with everyone in the first place.
Author: Unknown | File size: 516 KB
I’ve been blissfully ignorant of these ideas of privilege and the concept of checking it until very recently. It came across my radar after the fall out of a twitter row. A set of ideas were put forward, and argument was made. The response to this argument boiled down to the person was writing it from a perspective of “white male privilege”. The issues were side stepped.
I assumed that this was an abuse of a theory that I didn’t understand, that privilege theory wasn’t simply a handy tool to dismiss an argument because you don’t like the person making it. I asked on twitter for some links so I could find out what this theory was really about. The most interesting and by interesting I mean the most infuriating was A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of Privilege Theory – from the Women’s Caucus.
Author: Timothy | File size: 200 KB
This talk is at a midpoint between being an original work, and being an exegesis of Selma’s James justly famous “Sex, Race and Class.” This astonishingly brilliant work contains within itself the clear foundations of a historical materialist, or Marxist, conception of the relationship between capitalism and oppression. Because I have mixed in many of my own original points, both intentionally and no doubt by accidental misinterpretation, I would strongly suggest everyone here goes and reads the original.
Author: Rudolf Rocker | File size: 575 KB
German anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker’s excellent critique of the concept of “race” used to justify the on-going exploitation and oppression of those races considered inferior. This pamphlet is an extract from his book Nationalism and Culture, first published in English in 1937. It was originally supposed to be published in Germany in 1933 but, with the Nazi’s coming to power, Rocker was forced to emigrate.
2nd Zabalaza Books Edition | November, 2014
Author: Common Cause | File Size: 347 KB
Over the course of the last several decades, anti-oppression politics have risen to a position of immense influence on activist discourse in North America. Anti-oppression workshops and reading groups, privilege and oppression checklists and guidelines, and countless books, online blogs and articles make regular appearances in anarchist organizing and discussion. Enjoying a relatively hegemonic position in Left conversation, anti-oppression politics have come to occupy the position of a sacred object—something that expresses and reinforces particular values, but does not easily lend itself to critical reflection. Indeed, it is common for those who question the operating and implications of anti-oppression politics to be accused of refusing to seriously address oppression in general. A political framework should be constantly reflected upon and evaluated—it is a tool that should serve our struggles and not vice versa….
This text is from Volume 2 of Mortar: Revolutionary Journal of
Common Cause Anarchist Organization | Linchpin.ca
Author: Workers Solidarity Federation | File size: 244 KB
It is falsely claimed by some that Anarchism, as currently constituted, is unable to attract Black people, and other specially oppressed minorities. It is therefore argued that we should thus endorse separate Black-only anarchist/community organisations that may in some (vague and unspecified) cases associate with “white” groups – “white” groups should “work among” “their own” people etc.)… but… “it was the ability of anarchism to provide alternatives and to pay special attention to the specific needs of … different sections of the working class in order to unite the whole class that made the success (of the Cuban anarchists and IWW) possible,” not “a revision of anarchism to accommodate nationalism”..
Originally published in Black Flag magazine, 1998
Text retrieved from LibCom.org
Online WSF archive
Author: Dónal O Driscoll | File size: 282 KB
While there is a tradition of grassroots campaigning against racism in Ireland, there is less discussion of what it means to be an anti-racist from an anarchist perspective. Most material focuses on obvious forms such as hate-speech or supporting Travellers & migrants in practical terms. The issue this article seeks to raise is that in order to get it right we also need to look at ourselves on a personal level, recognise privilege and develop a wider critique that is truer to our own politics.
From the Workers Solidarity Movement’s Irish Anarchist Review, #5 – Summer 2012
Author: Aidan Rowe | File size: 886 KB
As class-struggle anarchists dealing with the relations between gender, race and class, we must, in theory and practice, pick a path between two pitfalls. On one side is economic reductionism – the reduction of all political questions to the social relations of production – which erases the perspectives and struggles of women, queers and people of colour; submerges their voices within an overly generalised class narrative, in which the idealised Worker is implicitly white heterosexual and male; or consigns their struggles to a secondary importance compared to the “real struggle” of (economic) class against class. On the other is a stultifying and inward-looking liberal-idealist identity politics, concerned fetishistically with the identification of privilege and the self-regulation of individual oppressive behaviour to the (near) exclusion of organised struggle, which, while amplifying the voices of the marginalised, consigns them to an echo chamber where they can resonate harmlessly….
This article is from the Workers Solidarity Movement’s Irish Anarchist Review, No. 7 – Spring 2013
Author: Workers’ Solidarity Federation [South Africa] | PDF file size: 289 KB
Racial oppression remains a defining feature of the modern capitalist world. It is manifest most spectacularly in violent attacks on immigrants and minorities by fascist gangs. More important to the fate of these communities has been the systematic and increasing discrimination by capitalist states, manifest in attacks on the rights of immigrants, cuts in welfare services, and racist police and court systems.
This pamphlet shows how capitalism gave birth to racism; how racism is the enemy of all working and poor people; it describes how racism can and must be fought; and what the role of anarchists in that fight should be…
Author: Camillo Berneri | PDF file size: 305 KB
Fascism, the triumph of the irrational, has taken the most discredited myths of pre-scientific ethnology to its bosom. … “The age of ‘pure reason’, of ‘science for the sake of science’, of ‘disinterested science’, is over. Any science that has an active contribution to make towards a broad objective becomes political, and thus, like politics, has its principles and its accomplishments alike, imbued with racism, nationalism and National Socialism.” … It is absolutely plain from the racist delirium (an out-and-out collective psychosis) that Hitlerism represents a great eclipse of German intellect and culture. On 25 March 1933, Goering, the then Reich minister of the Interior, told foreign press representatives: “Plainly, anti-semitism is part of the official program of the National Socialist Party and the manner in which the latter has moulded its storm troops makes it plain that today every member of the storm troops looks at Professor Einstein with a feeling of racial superiority.”
by the ex-Workers’ Solidarity Federation of South Africa.Racial oppression remains a defining feature of the modern capitalist world. It is manifest most spectacularly in violent attacks on immigrants and minorities by fascist gangs. More important to the fate of these communities has been the systematic and increasing discrimination by capitalist states, manifest in attacks on the rights of immigrants, cuts in welfare services, and racist police and court systems.
Camillo BerneriFascism, the triumph of the irrational, has taken the most discredited myths of pre-scientific ethnology to its bosom. One of the theorists of Hitlerism (assuming that it can be regarded as a body of doctrine), Ernest Krieck, in his book National Political Education (page 17), proclaims the need to subject science to National Socialist politics, thereby giving science the kiss of death.
“The age of ‘pure reason’, of ‘science for the sake of science’, of ‘disinterested science’, is over. Any science that has an active contribution to make towards a broad objective becomes political, and thus, like politics, has its principles and its accomplishments alike, imbued with racism, nationalism and National Socialism.”
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