Blogs

We are publishing here our translation of a further document on the Cuban protests in July, entitled Análisis de la actual crisis y revuelta en Cuba desde la perspectiva comunista radical, by a group in Ecuador which goes under the name of Proletarios Cabreados (Pissed off Proletarians). You can find them at proletariosrevolucionarios.blogspot.com

52 days have gone by since the start of the strike, which began when thousands of Iranian oil workers downed tools on 19 June and walked off oilfields across Iran. The Council for Organising Protests by Oil Contract Workers has issued 11 statements so far. In our previous article we published parts of their first 6 statements (see leftcom.org) as well as giving a short explanation of their full context.

Capitalism finds itself in a tricky situation. Since the end of the post-war boom in the 70s, despite the restructuring of production, and the attacks on the daily working conditions of millions upon millions of proletarians, it has become more difficult than ever to find profitable reinvestments for capital. This crisis of valorisation of capital is only one of the many symptoms of the more profound crisis of capitalism: the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This fall in the rate of profit is accompanied by attempts of the capitalists to postpone the crisis, to look elsewhere for short-term methods of making profit, or to save their own skins by any means necessary.

Since Saturday, 19 June, thousands of workers at oil and gas projects and petrochemical plants have been on strike across the country in several provinces. They are coordinating their action under the title of Strike Campaign 1400, which refers to the current year in the Iranian calendar. The number of industrial centres that have participated in this strike is reported to have reached more than 100 units in 10 provinces and the number of workers on strike has passed 105,000. Significantly, there has been very little news coverage of these massive strikes, both in the domestic and foreign media but the strikes are still going on as we write.

Duterte isn't incompetent, he knows exactly what he is doing and that makes it worse.

Written by Simoun Magsalin. First published by Young Progressives Hub.

Cuba is the latest illustration of the failure of the Stalinist recipe of party dictatorship behind national borders, which palms off socialism as the development of the productive forces within a money based economy whilst every capitalist category, from wage labour to commodity production, from surplus value extraction to the concentration of privilege at one pole, is retained.

In Part I we examined the Free Territory, or Makhnovshchina, the revolutionary movement in Southern Ukraine 1918-21. It was neither a peasant counter-revolution as portrayed in Trotskyist and Stalinist propaganda, nor an anarchist utopia. Rather it was part and parcel of the bloody process of the rise and fall of the Russian Revolution, itself a part of the post-war revolutionary wave. In Part II we finally look at The Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists or simply the Platform, and the Platformist tendency that it later inspired.

Many over the years have pointed out the apparent similarities between Platformism and the Communist Left, and indeed some comrades whom today we count among our ranks first came to the politics of the Communist Left through Platformism. But while the need for revolutionaries to come together, in an organisation united around a common platform, is something both tendencies acknowledge, the differences go a bit further than whether one stands beneath a red or black banner. We often get asked what is our attitude towards Platformism and the following is a two-part attempt to grapple with the question.

An Anarchist response to “A Heritage of Smallness” by Nick Joaquin by Carolus Plebejus. You can read the original article here.

Bản dịch bức thư từ một người vô trị Cuba chia sẻ góc nhìn về tình hình chính trị hiện nay ở Cuba.
Originally published by Polemica Cubana. English translation at Bentley.noblogs.org.

A translation of our piece “The Broken Promises of Vietnam” into Bahasa Indonesia. Translated by Ameyuri Ringo.

Leaflet distributed by the CWO at recent strikes and protests happening around the UK.

Originally published in Intransigence, Issue 2 (July 2018)

Eine Kritik vietnamesischer Anarchist*innen am sogenannten „Sozialismus“ in Vietnam.
A translation of our piece “The Broken Promises of Vietnam” into German. Translated by die plattform.

Entrevistamos a Xuân Rayne, una anarquista vietnamita y trabajadora sexual no binaria afincada en Estados Unidos, para que nos explique la intersección de sus identidades, los caminos de la solidaridad internacional entre los trabajadores del sexo y cómo los trabajadores en general pueden estar con los trabajadores del sexo.
Xuân utiliza cualquier/todos los pronombres.
A translation of our interview with Xuân Rayne into Spanish. Translated by Grupo Anarquista Aurora.

Người vô trị Việt Nam phê phán cái được gọi là “chủ nghĩa xã hội” ở Việt Nam. Xem bản video từ veritas et caritas tại đây.
Also available in Spanish, French, Greek and English.

Nhân ngày Quốc tế Người Lao động Tình dục 2/6, Mèo Mun đã phỏng vấn Xuân Rayne — một người vô trị và lao động tình dục phi nhị nguyên giới (non-binary) gốc Việt hiện đang sống tại Mỹ. Qua bài phỏng vấn này, chúng mình muốn tìm hiểu góc nhìn của Xuân về sự giao thoa của những danh tính này, về con đường cho tình đoàn kết giữa những người lao động tình dục trên toàn thế giới, và cách người lao động trong các ngành nghề khác có thể đấu tranh cùng người lao động tình dục. Xuân dùng mọi đại từ nhân xưng (anh ấy/cô ấy/bạn ấy). (English original).

Whatever the electoral outcome, even if the predictions are for a victory of the "left", Castillo will only enter the "Hall of Fame" of socialist impostors, like Lula in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia, or Chávez, and his anointed successor Maduro, in Venezuela.