Direct Action

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Direct Action by Emile PougetAuthor: Emile Pouget  |  File size: 850 KB

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“Direct Action is the symbol of revolutionary unionism in action. This formula is representative of the twofold battle against exploitation and oppression. It proclaims, with inherent clarity, the direction and orientation of the working class’s endeavours in its relentless attack upon capitalism.

Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action…”

First published by the Fresnes-Antony Group of the French Anarchist Federation, 1994

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Scott Rittenhouse, presente! 1959-2012

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Scott Rittenhouse, presente! 1959-2012ZB: we repost this obituary from the WSA’s Ideas and Action site to pay our respects to Scott Rittenhouse.

We first had contact with Scott a number of years back when he got into contact with us about republishing some of the texts he had written [See the pamphlet Why You Should Not Trust the Church and the ‘Fundamentals of Anarchism’ leaflets What is Free Association?, Anarchism and Immigration, What is Mutual Aid?, Anarchism and Freedom and What is Anti-Authoritarianism?]. We did not have contact again for a numbers of years until about a month ago when he wrote us an email about publishing some more works of his. Not having the time then, we were not able to do so and now it is with a heavy heart that we read this.

If any of Scott’s comrades have access to his texts that are as yet unpublished, please can they send them to us so that we may show our respects for our comrade by publishing them. You can contact us via the Contact page above.

We send our condolences to all the friends, family and comrades of Scott… his loss was a great loss to us all.

Mourn… and Organise!

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Specifism Explained: The Social and Political Level, Organisational Dualism and the Anarchist Organisation

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Specifism Explained - Collective ActionAuthor: Collective Action  |  File size: 275 KB

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In discussing the platform of Collective Action some individuals have expressed confusion at our use of the label “specifism” to describe the tradition of social anarchism we associate with. The following is a short introduction to what we consider to be the most essential concepts within the specifist model….

“The only way there can be a future for anarchist politics in the UK in the 21st Century is in making anarchist communist ideas and methods a practical and coherent tool for organising workplaces, intervening in social struggles and empowering working class communities.”

Collective Action

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[Leaflet] Solidarity against Sexism on the Shop Floor

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[Leaflet] Solidarity against Sexism on the Shop FloorAuthor: Angel Gardner  |  File size: 81.5 KB

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If there is anything that I have learned from working in the restaurant and retail industry for over 14 years, it is that sexual harassment and sexism in the workplace is an issue that has not gone away. Perhaps you have become more tolerant of being sexually objectified. Maybe you are afraid that being uncomfortable with sexual advances or comments means that you are a prude or hopelessly outdated. The reality is that sexual harassment and sexism are all about power. We feel uncomfortable about standing up for ourselves in these situations because to do so questions power relations; not only in the workplace, but in society in general….

This article originally appeared in the Industrial Worker, the paper of the IWW

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Anarchism and Divisions in our Class

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Anarchism and Divisions in our Class - Chekov FeeneyAuthor: Chekov Feeney  |  PDF file size: 692 KB

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There are many irrational beliefs held by sections of our class which act against our objective interests, that is to say that they hinder us from uniting against our common enemy, the bosses, our exploiters and oppressors. Sexism, racism, religious sectarianism and what the imperialists call ‘tribalism’ are prejudices which are held by significant numbers of our class throughout the world. To state that they exist is to state an obvious fact, like stating 2+2=4. Everybody knows they exist, save perhaps a tiny number of deranged individuals with a tenuous connection to reality. It is neither useful nor original to state their existance, what is useful is to ask why they exist…

Complex Everyday Realities: Women and Class

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Complex Everyday Realities: Women and ClassAuthor: Hana Plant  |  PDF file size: 255 KB

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“I write this story to build connections between class struggle and feminism, so that the lives of working class women are illuminated, part of the political framework. … To me, the famed feminist saying ‘the personal is political’ is not so much about changing our own lives to change the world, but a theoretical framework that affirms the value of our stories and uses the patterns between them as a basis for solidarity…”

Concentric Circles: The Especifsta Concept of Concentric Circles in Anarchist Organisation

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Concentric Circles - FARJAuthor: Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro – FARJ  |  English Translation: Jonathan Payn of the ZACF  |  PDF file size: 295 KB

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The specific anarchist organisation uses, both for its internal and external functioning, the logic of what we call “concentric circles” – strongly inspired by the Bakuninist organisational model. The main reason that we adopt this logic of functioning is because, for us, the anarchist organisation needs topreserve different instances of action. These different instances should strengthen its work while at the same time allowing it to bring together prepared militants with a high level of commitment and approximating people sympathetic to the theory or practice of the organisation – who could be more or less prepared and more or less committed. In short, the concentric circles seek to resolve an important paradox: the anarchist organisation needs to be closed enough to have prepared, committed and politically aligned militants, and open enough to draw in new militants. …

Weakening the Dam

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Weakening the Dam - Twin Cities IWWAuthor: Twin Cities IWW  |  PDF file size: 350 KB

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A pamphlet put out by the Twin Cities IWW branch for the purpose of promoting the development of workplace organisers, based on their experiences of organising at work. It offers the sort of practical advice we could all be implementing in our own workplaces.

[Leaflet] Statement on the Informal Anarchist Federation and terrorist tactics

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leaflet - AFed Statement on the Informal Anarchist Federation (May 2012)Author: Anarchist Federation  |  PDF file size: 42.1 KB

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On the 11th of May Roberto Adinolfi, CEO of an Italian state controlled nuclear engineering company, was shot and wounded. A cell of the insurrectionist Informal Anarchist Federation have claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying that it was an act of vengeance for deaths and environmental damage caused by the nuclear industry. Previous acts claimed by Informal Anarchist Federation cells include sending a letter bomb to the Italian tax collection office, almost blinding a worker at the office and risking the lives of the postal and clerical workers who unwittingly carried the bomb. …

The Workers’ Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure

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The Workers’ Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure by J.T. Murphy

Author:  J.T. Murphy

File size: 1.53 MB

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We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them. Being composed of delegates from every shop and untrammelled by obsolete law or rule, we claim to represent the true feeling of the workers. We can act immediately according to the merits of the case and the desire of the rank and file.

This pamphlet was written by J.T.Murphy and published by the Sheffield Workers’ Committee in 1917. It describes the structure of the rank and file workers’ committees that developed during the First World War.

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Social Anarchism and Organisation

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Author: Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro – FARJ

English Translation: Jonathan Payn of the ZACF

PDF file size: 849 KB

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English translation of “Anarquismo Social e Organização”, by the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro – FARJ), Brazil, approved at the 1st FARJ Congress, held on 30th and 31st of August 2008.

In what is perhaps one of the most comprehensive elaborations on the Latin American concept of especifista anarchism now available in English, Social Anarchism and Organisation traces and outlines the theoretical and practical influences on the FARJ’s conception of anarchist organisation and its strategy for social transformation.

The first Congress of the FARJ was held with the principal objective of deepening our reflections on the question of organisation and formalising them into a programme. This debate has been happening within our organisation since 2003. We have produced theoretical materials, established our thinking, learned from the successes and mistakes of our political practice it was becoming increasingly necessary to further the debate and to formalise it, spreading this knowledge both internally and externally. The document “Social Anarchism and Organisation” formalises our positions after all these reflections. More than a purely theoretical document, it reflects the conclusions realised after five years of practical application of anarchism in the social struggles of our people. The document is divided into 16 parts. It has already been published in Portuguese in a book co-published between Faísca and the FARJ.

This document, first published in Portuguese under the title Anarquismo Social e Organização and adopted at the first Congress of the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro in August 2008, seeks to map out the FARJ’s theoretical conception of an organised, class struggle anarchism and, “More than a purely theoretical document, […] reflects the conclusions realised after five years of practical application of anarchism in the social struggles of our people”.

Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

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Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy by Wayne PriceAuthor: Wayne Price  |  PDF file size: 491 KB

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The world is facing upsetting upheavals, with aspects which are political, military, ecological, cultural, and even spiritual. Clearly this includes a deep economic crisis, overlapping with all other problems. We need to understand the nature of the economic crisis if we are to deal with it.

Of the theories about the economy, the two main schools are bourgeois, in the sense that they advocate capitalism. Both the conservative, monetarist, unrestricted-free-market school and the liberal/social democratic Keynesian school exist to justify capitalism and to advise the government how to manage the capitalist economy….

“The transcripts of the 2006 meetings [of the governors of the Federal Reserve Board and the presidents of the 19 regional banks]… clearly show some of the nation’s pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with sheparding. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.”

NY Times (January 13, 2012); p. A3.

This essay can also be downloaded as a PDF with flowing text here

Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

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Witches, Midwives, & Nurses: A History of Women HealersAuthors: Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English  |  PDF file size: 817 KB

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Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbour to neighbour and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.

Today, however, health care is the property of male professionals. Ninety-three percent of the doctors in the US are men; and almost all the top directors and administrators of health institutions. Women are still in the overall majority — 70 percent of health workers are women — but we have been incorporated as workers into an industry where the bosses are men. We are no longer independent practitioners, known by our own names, for our own work. We are, for the most part, institutional fixtures, filling faceless job slots: clerk, dietary aide, technician, maid….

 “To know our history is to begin to see how
to take up the struggle again!”

An Anarchist Society

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An Anarchist Society by Pyotr KropotkinAuthor: Pyotr Kropotkin  |  PDF file size: 171 KB

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[A] variety of considerations, historical, ethnological, and economic, have brought the Anarchists to conceive a society very different from what is considered as its ideal by the authoritarian political parties. The Anarchists conceive a society in which all the mutual relations of its members are regulated, not by laws, not by authorities, whether self-imposed or elected, but by mutual agreements between the members of that society and by a sum of social customs and habits — not petrified by law, routine, or superstition, but continually developing and continually readjusted, in accordance with the ever-growing requirements of a free life, stimulated by the progress of science, invention, and the steady growth of higher ideals.

No ruling authorities, then. No government of man by man; no crystallisation and immobility, but a continual evolution — such as we see in Nature. Free play for the individual, for the full development of his individual gifts — for his individualisation. In other words, no actions are imposed upon the individual by a fear of punishment; none is required from him by society, but those which receive his free acceptance. In a society of equals this would be quite sufficient for preventing those unsociable actions that might be harmful to other individuals and to society itself, and for favouring the steady moral growth of that society…