NEFAC...

We really just do it once in a while to piss people like you off.

As I understand it the thing that NEFAC has been criticised most for is the stance of certain members on national liberation. I wonder what you think that this is relevant to in the North Eastern corner of America. Are there, unbeknown to the rest of us, hundreds of militant workers filled with nationalist ideology ready to resurrect an independent 'Commonwealth of Massachusetts'? If a group in a country that had a national liberation movement came up with this response to criticism, I would address it seriously. With NEFAC this type of line has nothing to do with 'relevant positions around which to organize'. It has everything to do with pretending that everyone who criticises NEFAC is 'irrelevant'. The following comment, 'raise your hand if you never went through even a brief phase of such righteousness’', seems to me to be a sort of 'infantile disorder' type line. It suggests that those criticising NEFAC are young, and have no experience.

Of course, none of this is surprising.

Devrim

Quebec?

I'm not aware of it being a massive issue to workers per se, but NEFAC includes eastern Canada as well as the States which is far more provincial and where independence is still popular in politics. That might have something to do with it, but as much to do with platformism elsewhere.

To get as sense of whether some people consider it an issue relevant to workers, the second and third largest provincial unions (CSN and CSQ), with half a million workers between them, are considered pro-sovereignty, while the largest (the FTQ) with half a million workers itself can currently be said to indirectly support sovereignty through its support of the PQ.

Waiting for a comrade from the North to interject and let me know how much of that I've got wrong!

Oh jolly good. Why isn't this always the case with other independence/national liberation movements?

-

Btw, I differ from them on a number of things but I like the fact that NEFAC's regional and working across national boundaries and in general they're one of the few N.American anarchist groups I've got some respect for.

Plus the whole French thing makes it look real sexy.

Well, that and their position on unions. And building specific organizations. And printing publications (commie newspaper sellers). And allowing meat eaters to join. (All depends on the critic in question.)

Again, I am not from the NE. Regionalism (very similiar to nationalism) is relevant, alive and well in Dixie (southeastern USA- See Sons of Confederate Veterans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Confederate_Veterans .) I'm not sure, but black nationalism might not be entirley dead. I have never really sorted out how best to apply this knowledge. But ignoring it, while chanting class is everything, I don't think is the way to go. (I am not saying that is your "infantile" position. That was my former position.) In the real world, our fellow class members contend with a plethora of loyalties, often conflicting. I am not opposing class struggle, when I simply acknowledge this reality.

It is not an irrelevant question, certainly. But taken alone, it leaves me frozen in place: with a quite defendable position, but one that relagates me to the fringes.

Certianly nationalism is "reactionary", in that it encourages cross class allainces. Certianly southern regionalism is worse, in that it is blatantly racist. But to make that pronouncement and leave it at that, leaves me feeling defeated. "Irrelevant". So I try to dissect southern regionalism, and challenge my fellow workers who insist that southern pride is about "heritage, not hate", to really take that position (instead of just hiding behind that blind), to dissect their love of "home and hearth" and extract the best parts (working class camaraderie, love of the countryside) and discard the worst (the racism, and respect for confederate history).

And oftentimes, the guy I'm talking too is right there with me, till i start talking about uniting across racial lines to fight the bosses. At which point he waves me off, and says, "You just a dreamer, man."

Sigh. But at least i am engaging workers, and making the effort. As I said already, I haven't got the thing all figurered. The social insertion strategy makes sense to me, but assumes the existence of workers organizations-- essentially non-existence in the rural environs of the southern usa.

Again, I can't speak for any nefacers, but any heritical positions i take are largely the result of trying to organize under difficult circumstances.

I wasn't working with them.

I guess I was in an organization with people who were (at one point) in a coalition with people who were in an organization with people who were (later) in coalition with fascists. Hmm. Within NEFAC there was mild but widespread disapproval of the Vermont collective's decision to work in a coalition that included SVR activists, even at a time when the SVR put forward a very "progressive" public face -- on the basis, essentially, that most of us felt "the whole idea" was probably rotten. (Ironically the main collaboration was in blocking the fascist/anti-immigrant Minuteman network from winning a foothold in the state.)

If your question "what on earth [were they] doing working with [those] people" is sincere... I'll see if I can summarize their position although it is not mine. Their state's economy is centered almost entirely around land ownership, administration, agricultural production for export, and service and retail sectors serving mostly tourists and retirees. Mining, durable-goods manufacturing, construction, warehousing and transport together make up only 17.6% of the gross state product, which is itself the smallest of the 50 US states. Tourism alone, in contrast, makes up 27%. Only 11% of workers in the state are unionized, and despite what you might view as an enviable freedom from these evil anti-working-class insitutions they are actually the least happy about their employment of any state.

These relatively exceptional conditions, unfortunately, lead to a political culture of exceptionalism with many different manifestations including among anarchists oriented toward class struggle. Here is a statement of the group's politics. I personally have strong disagreements with much of the document. Nevertheless it represents an attempt at building a path toward communism based on local conditions and not dependent on the leadership and direction of a developed, respectably atomized, etc industrial proletariat that doesn't even exist in their region in any large numbers.

As I understand it, when the SVR leadership's ties with fascist organizations elsewhere were exposed, much of the SVR membership were shocked and left the organization. It must have been a learning experience for many of them, about the limited usefulness of secessionism toward building "progressive" working class movements, the strong resonances between secessionist impulses and sinister political projects, and (I hope) the limits of Vermont exceptionalism itself.

The collective affiliated to our federation put out this statement as their public intervention during the scandal. It doesn't make a break from the possibility of using political secession as part of a larger struggle in their region, and as such I personally think it's mildly right-opportunist, but oh well.

Wow, scathing.

Hmm yeah I think I have some family heading over there soon, come to think of it.

I just realized Vermont has twice as many secessionists as union members (barely over half of the population are in the formal workforce, and 11% of them are union; 13% of the population is favorable to secession)

I have just looked over the Vermont doccument you posted a link to. The one that is calling for 'Self Determination For Vermont'.

The only thing that I can say is that it shows the complete chasm between our politics when you can even think of getting involved in something like this.

Devrim

baboon is in the proletarian camp, perhaps gibbons?

More to the point though, what kind of a program would you suggest for building a communist movement in a region where tourism dwarfs all other industries and so on? Or is this another case in which peripheral people (even when they're mostly rural proles) have to sit on their hands and wait for the workers of the metropolis to get their acts together? I'm not that into the group's program but I lived in Vermont when I was a kid (and again briefly a few years ago) and I can at least recognize this (and other projects they were involved in, such as the Montpelier Downtown Workers Union) as an attempt in good faith to respond to the economic and political conditions they actually face.