IWA congress greetings, Manchester 8-10th of December

Are you kidding? That's Jack's idea of birthday fun!

As far as I'm informed comrades of the outgoing Secretariat have made a statement regarding the Congress, statement which is being translated to Spanish and will be posted on the IWA website soon.

The problem here is that right now IWA Secretariat is in one kind of vacume: the old Secretariat has left, and ASI is delegated to do the next Secretariat. Now, some time has to pass so that our organization meets and elects local group, that will elect persons which will be working the work of the Secretariat. Since the student protest is still going on, I think this vacume will continue till the begining of January next year.

Salud, Anarquia y Colectivismo

Hi rata,

we'll see if you from ASI have the backbone, the norwegian Garcia Rua/FAI fans of the NSF never had. We read a lot from you in internal bulletins, now you have the chance to do it, as the new secretarys of the IWA. Eleminate the "enemys", try to eleminate the memory that the decisions of the XX IWA congress against the CNT-F Vignoles had been illegal by our statutes. Go on to kick the USI and FAU out, they will give you all you need by participating in the I07, maybe the SF, parts of the CNT-E and others will do the same? The good thing will be that the rent for an IWA plenary assembly in some years will be low, a telephone cell will be sufficient.

Take it easy, but let's finish this stupid story. Internaly we'll get only 40% to leave this theater freely, the other 58% want to be excluded. Give them a chance.

Are you all there???

???

If I understood the google "translation", yes. We have a lot of different opinions about a lot of things, but in two cases not one member voted against:
1. don't accept the expulsion of the CNT-F and to have ongoing contacts
2. to talk to everyone in the world we want to talk to, without to be allowed by anyone

We had a national membership election if we leave the IWA, but the question was "yes" or "no". We decided not to leave but we got no real result because the majority wanted to be kicked out or wanted to kick the "defenders of the IWA" out.
About half a dozend members from Hamburg would leave the FAU if we're no longer part of the IWA, because they want to be part of it, but they share our oppinion in all other cases.

I voted to leave, after 25 years of membership.

The FAU are right to hold th eposition they do, i dont think i understood your earlier post properly =S.

Why do you want to leave the IWA?

Will somebody ban this flaming idiot? There is no flaming on this board, as far as I know, and only things I can read from him are idiotic insults to IWA and members of it's sections.

The sad part of this story is that spanish FAI is still a closed and "secret" sect that controls part of CNT-E (Granada, for instance; and many tiny syndicates in small towns). They are an organised group that meets before the general assemblies, to have a position. They are genious at controlling (and manipulating) assemblies. However in Spain, the syndicalist part of CNT-E is growing quite fast (Seville, Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona...), and those FAI-fans are less important than before (maybe because they are too old; Garcia Rua himself is in his 80s).

Imagine the situation. 5 or 6 syndicates made by perhaps 3 or 4 ppl each, maybe 10, join against the syndicate of a big town (made by 50-70 members) because they consider this union is beign reformist. After a few attacks, they managed to expell this syndicate. In fact, this is how democracy looks like. All this process is legal according to CNT statutes. This just has happened in Valencia. Now Valencia city CNT union has just been expelled by the rest of the small syndicates (Sagunto, Castellon, Elda, Alcoi...) of Levant. Pathetic. However, the process is not complete yet. So, there is still a little margin for hope.

The same statutes, or quite alike, are being implemented at the IWA-AIT. Sections representing a country made by 10, 20 members, are able to have the same vote as sections of 3000 or 5000 members. Is this the organisation that is going to change the world?

Have you read maggid's opinions? This people prefer to see IWA as an ultra-revolutionary sect of pure anarchists, than the reflex of the revolutionary struggles in the world (at the workplace).

It was clear to me for a long time that the reformists are enemies of democracy.

So you wouldn't concede that uncontrollable cabals using a voting system weighted in their favour to manipulate end results undemocratic?

Few things.

I find the whole story about secret FAI "controlling" CNT a part of conspiracy theory used by the reformists to justify their fight against the "orthodox", "FAI", or, as I would call it, anarcho-syndicalist line of the CNT. What they are trying to say is that only people involved in a "secret sect - FAI" are the ones thinking that anarcho-syndicalist unions shouldn't have delegates which are not recallable (union elections) etc. That is just pure bollocks. Everybody with a grain of salt in their brain understands that that is the differentia specifica of anarcho-syndicalism - having their delegates recallable at every moment. It doesn't have anything to do with FAI, it has to do with anarcho-syndicalist practice.

Second, I do think that anarchists should coordinate their actions. I guess all libertarian communists shouldn't have a problem with that. In fact I find it necessary for anarchists, being part of this or that organization (anarcho-syndicalist union, mainstream union, popular organization etc.) to coordinating their actions, and vote in the manner they see fit. I don't see anything non-democratic in that. They are not trying to get elected to a place from where they are going to be untouchable by assembly - as the reformists are doing - what they are doing is to propagate their politics and vote in the organized fashion in a mass organization.

Third - the idea that union should have more votes because of the size, is by definition undemocratic. By that ideal small cities would always have smaller number of votes than the big ones, and China would always decide about everything for everybody on the International level. That idea is so crazy, and anti-libertarian in it's essence that I am speechless when I see somebody proposing it in the anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist community.

I'm curious what, if anything, was deceided concerning the Nigerian Awareness League. Having been the initial A/S contact with them, it is my snse they have fallen off the map. So I'd be very interested in hearing more if folks have any current news.

I don't want to hold the new IWA Secretariat to account on fear of eternal excommunication but isn't it a bit sexist to assume it's a "him"?

No, he is acting in a typical macho manner, so even if he is female by sex, his gender is definettly male =;>>

well if it's who i'm suspecting it is they make me look like Ballerina.

Revol ballerinas make you look like a ballerina .

Possibly, but I don't think an ability for tiny sects to expel major organisations at the drop of a hat is particularly useful either tbh, because it's so open to abuse. Even if the previous poster is talking mad conspiracy theories, the fact it's a possibility real enough to take seriously should be a warning to flaws in design no?

While I may not share the style, tone or approach of kc, kc raises some valid issues.

The result probably would have been the same, yet when Vignoles was expelled from the IWA, they were by 3 or 4 votes with a vast majority of the participants (6-10ish,including SF, the WSA and others) abstaining. So there's a problem in the voting method. Again, the ultimate outcome probably would've been the same.Even if there was a special conference to discuss the matter. But this instance, in my opinion, lead to a method and approach that did not serve the overall interests of the IWA well from that period forward.

Some of my comrades don't want to discuss it and most just want to sweep it under the rug. The way in which the WSA was dealt with smacks of many of kc's criticisms. It was dirty, it was done from above and no one (except for the FAU) had the cajonnes to put a stop to it. So, in my perosnal opinion, there's a lot of fence building and house cleaning that's gotta be done. And kc is right in this respect.

And here I'm being told by syndicalistcat that I'm living in the past for thinking this is the current arrangement of a lot of anarcho-syndicalist unions and organizations!

There clearly needs to be a better way to "weight" representation based on geography or the size of organizations.

or maybe you shouldn;t have different groups with different needs in the same organisation, maybe tiny little propaganda groups shouldn't be pretending to be the same as bigs groups who actually have functioning workplace organs?

The IWA should be for revolutionary labor unions. Period.

Would you include the SAC and CGT as revolutionary labour unions?

I'm tempted to agree -- certainly full "section" status, anyway. The smaller groups could all be "friends", as opposed to sections.

There used to be a rule that only groups with three locals or more could be sections, did there not, but this has fallen by the wayside also.

I imagine that'd be impossible to verify...

Maybe so. But no harder to verify than that a section with a single group actually exists at all in any meaningful sense. It's a tricky one.

I'm really happy to see so many opinions regarding what the IWA should be made by outsiders. I would propose to all of them to join their local IWA Section, or to create one if non exists in their country, and to try to put those ideas into praxis in the International.

Anyhow, I do agree that IWA should, and is, an International of revolutionary unions - be them anarchist workers unions of FORA type, anarcho-syndicalist unions like CNT, or revolutionary unions of "apolitical" type. And that is the case now.

What I also think is that the number of members is not determining if one organization is a union or not. It is the actions organization is taking - regardless of the fact if it has 50 or 50 000 members.

Some of our organization's (ASI) recent actions, such as defending of the rights of fired workers or student protest which is going on, are showing that we are a union organization, despite the fact we are quite small in comparison to, for example, yellow unions in Serbia who, despite their membership, don't do anything to fight for the workers rights, or main stream student unions which are trying to sabotage a protest that was initiated, and is coordinated by our education union.

Well you'd assume it'd be 3 times as hard, as the secretariat would have to check out (then keep in contact with + keep verifying) 3 times as many groups...

I'm not knowledgable enough about them to make that call. It seems they are probably not anarcho-syndicalist in orientation, which is also ok by me. From what I've heard FESAL and coordinating industrial organizing sounds like a better idea than strict adherence to any political or anti-political line.

That'd learn 'em.

Not much point arguing hypotheticals, but surely it'd be up to the section to demonstrate periodically to the secretariat that they were meeting the conditions of affiliation (i.e. they had 3 or more groups). And if they failed to do so....