International Libertarian Solidarity

Well it seems to do some useful work... parts of the IWA and IAF are a bit paranoid about it. It's not supposed to be some coherent international, it's a network to get useful things done.

Some platformist organisations aren't really that far away from the CGT and SAC in their compromised leftist ways, I sometimes suspect...

Sorry, I'm really pissed and feeling sarcastic

Never been called a puritan before.

Organisations that take state money, take part in corporate state institutions and organise cops and screws are reformist in my book. Btw I've heard that the CGT are finally going to come clean and drop their commitment to libertarian communism at their next congress.

Yeah JDMF I'm a bit of a fan of ILS-SIL, and I do think it's a bit sad when everyone just slags everything off.

Especially as the CGT doesn't organise screws - as shown on here before it was people like plumbers/cleaners - nor any violent arm of the state-type person. There were 2 cops in the SAC who've now left.

It would be interesting if they drop the libertarian communism - that would mean explusion from SIL right?

And the SAC getting money from the state is unavoidable, but a numer of people have told me about the CGT being given state funding - what's the truth of this one?

They get state money by standing in the workplace councils.

SAC money from the state is not confined to the union contribution to unemployment benefits. Back in the Summer of 1996 Organise! in an earlier incarnation, and before its short affiliation to the IWA, interviewed the then International Secretary of the SAC Kieran Casey.

The information may have been got 8 years ago but there have been no changes here as far as I am aware. A problem for some of the anarcho-syndicalist 'purists' may be the fact that the central committee members are paid, but more importantly state funds are got and used for international charity work by the SAC. According to Kieran at the time getting money for this was okay becasue it was an added bonus, "a luxury", which didn't impact on the normal budget of the SAC. After defending this Kieran admitted "that the effect is like a creeping shadow".

While the SAC are certainly not the typical TU as we know them here they are still quite a long way from their anarcho-syndicalist roots. The union also employs full-time employees leaving it open to the inenviable position of being both representative and employer. We have seen what this leads to with TU's having workers taking industrial action against them, also if they suffered a decline in membership there would be inevitable payoffs.

My major criticism of the SIL/ILS is one which explains exactly why the WSM with their criticisms of anarcho-syndicalism (largely strawman criticisms at that) can comforatbly join this international. The SIL/ILS had at its meetings split along economic and political lines to conduct much of its business. This reinforces the WSM idea that all unions will drift towards reformism and that the role of the platformist organisation is to provide the 'leadership of ideas' to the workers who drawn towards reformism and compromise at every turn.

I think the current Organise! have plans to put this interview on their website.

btw one cop in a revolutionary union is one too many. And surely a cop in an 'anarcho-syndicalist' union is a contrabiction in terms no matter what way it is dressed up or put in terms of oh but Swedens different. SO different that their cops did indeed shoot and injure anti-capitalist protestors a few years back - and members of the SAC actually condemned the protestors.

I think you'll find they only condemned anarchist protesters for complaining like hippy liberals about being beaten up by cops.

Now I know who you are! I was at that plenary as well and seem to have different recollections. I was wondering why you included the FAU in with the CNT & USI and dismissed the rest of us. You seemed to be big mates with the FAU delegates. Anyway the stuff about the FAU is more than just them inviting people to a conference, you should have listened more closely.

Except Tony? He's older than all of us!

Maybe it was the person you were with who was specially fond of the FAU. :wink: nudge nudge say no more!

I was with Tony meeting people at the airport and driving them to his place and then into town. I drove you to his place. I think we all had a take away curry and were asked if we wanted to score something outside the off-licence by a scally.

The usual disappointing 'analysis' of the SAC/CGT thing from the IWA fan club coupled with some surprizing sectaranism from Organise members. A rather good illustration of the problems with what pass for 'internationalism' amongst anarchists these days. The same silly pissing contests that the more obscure trot sects indulge in about whose 'international' is bigger and whose has 'sold out'. Blah!

It is simply a lie that the CGT had cops who were members, this has been explained many times in many places and Steve shames himself by repeating this lie. (For those who are genuinly ignorant it stems from some Catalonian traffic cops who applied to join the CGT years back, they were turned down and then set up their own union with a logo that looked like the CGT's). Likewise with the 'screws' who were in fact plumbers and cleaners who worked in a prison and were admitted to the union by the Grenada section of the CGT. This caused a huge internal row and Grenada was told this was not on at the next conference. But again expect to see the lie about screws being repeated year after year by those who know better. [The SAC story is true, there were 2 or maybe 3 cops in the SAC in one of the small northern towns, they have left but even so the SAC voted down a motion which would have stopped cops joining in the future].

My problem with these lies is that they stand in the way of any real analysis and critique of the CGT. Which is a real pity as the CGT seems to be about the only major 'success' story of syndicalism in recent decades. (The CNT, USI and SAC have all had a decline in membership, the CNT-F is worth considering but it is still really more or a propaganda group than a union, just a very big propaganda group with a couple of small unions sections.) Getting beyond being a historical nostalgia society means being able to critically analyise what has worked, even if you end up rejecting 99% of it. Hiding behind cop legends is not critical analysis.

As to the original question. The SIL-ILS project (which was never an international) has run out of steam after completing the initial solidarity projects it took on. Precisely because it is a rather loose network of libertarian groups rather than an international it lacks any sort of internal co-ordination. It's network form is the reason a rather wide range of the less sectarian anarchist groups and unions got involved in it, it was built around providing concrete solidarity rather then peddling a particular version of anarchism. But the network form and the obvious political and tactical differences that exist between the member organisations makes further development rather difficult.

I think any honest apprasal of the organised anarchist movement would conclude that it is mostly pretty fucked despite (or maybe because of) the huge rise in the interest in anarchism. A lot of it looks a lot like the worst of trotskyism, tiny groups whose main activity is slagging off other tiny groups or acting as self appointed watch dogs of anarchist purity. What a waste of time.

Revol I was actually referring to the line

Most anarchists consider being called trots as nothing more than an insullt, similar to the way teenagers having a row with their parents often call them fascists. I'm sure you'd be insulted if someone called you a trot. BTW this is a good illustration of why arguments based on analogy often don't convince anyone as both sides are unlikely to accept the analogy.

Seeing as 'Boulcolonialboy' makes the argument without the nasty analogy I presume this is a standard Organise thing? If so its a little odd as exactly the same criticism can be made of ANY anarchist organisation that is active in unions and argues for ideas. IE if its true of the WSM its also true of Organise. I don't think its much of an argument anyway as its rather obvious that all our fellow workers are not anarchists (and more than few vote Fianna Fail or DUP). So we do need to convince them of the validity of anarchist ideas and tactics. Presumably that is part of the purpose of the Education Workers Network proposal? But maybe that is for another thread or a face to face discussion?

One thing I'm a little puzzeled about is the reference to a seperation in SIL of the economic and political. I don't get this unless its a reference to some of the inter-union co-operation that is happening around stuff like Education outside of the SIL structures? As this only involves some of the European groups (the unions for the most part) its a mistake to read it as any sort of SIL decision.

sorry george but it's not shit, the SIL had seperate politcal and economic networks!!

as for nefac well they aren't dye in the wool platfromists!!!

The WSM's present position of "reforming the unions" and its idea that an anarcho syndicalist union is just one that has democratic structures is deeply inbued with the idea that a mass revoultionary anarcho syndicalist/council communist/ autonomous working class organistations are an impossibility and instead the role of anarchists is to push the existing unions to the point of no return whereby the working class will seek a more revolutionary leadership (in the idea's sphere) and be drawn to the revolutionaries of the platform who will offer the correct analysis and capitalism will be wiped into the dustbin of history!

Tell me how this isn't just a liberatarian leninist concept of "trade union conciosness" and rehashes the same separation of the political from the economic!

It also seems to offer a rationale as to why the various platformists groups get such a fucking hard on for essentially reformist unions such as the SAC and CGT, fitting as they do with their analysis that mass working class movements wil always lead to reformism if not provided with the correct political leadership.

BTW Joe this is just my personal view and not an organisational position, and certainly not something all members of organise would share with me (but thats cos they just aren't as clever !)

sorry one last thing, the trot comment wasn't meant as an insult, it was meant in a very serious political manner, i do seriously feel that the WSM's present position on democratising the unions is very similar to a trotskyist position (this in itself doesn't discredit it, nor make the WSM trotskyists) and shares some of the same assumptions regarding eonomic and political issues.

As I've already pointed out I don't think this is the case. What is your evidence that it is? Apart from anything else it gives SIL the credit for about 10 times the organisation that it has.

We don't say that it is an impossibility but something that is only possible in revolutionary times. At times like the moment when most workers vote FF, DUP or maybe Labour than the unions will be reformist for these reasons as well as structural reasons. Ideological reasons (ie what they claim to stand for) would be least important in my opinion, after all most British unions had clause 4 type statements for decades after they seriously supported such positions. Oddly some modern syndicalists seem to reverse this and place ideology first (as can be seen on this thread) a position I don't get at all.

There is an interesting contradiction in our position here in that CGT is something that approachs a mass union (but 50,000 is still quite small) and maintains something of revolutionary libertarian position. But it is also very obviously under pressure from sections of its membership to ditch such positions. As already stated the SAC has gone further done the road of giving in to such pressures. But in comparison with Irish unions it is still a good counter example.

Your not seriously putting that as a summary of the WSM position are you? If so I can see why you might call it trotskyist as its a transitional program approach. But it is not at all our position - go read our position paper on the unions at http://struggle.ws/wsm/positions/tradeunions.html you won't find anything you can quote here which says anything like the above.

For the record in so far as we think anything of the transitional program approach we reject it as being dishonest and trying to trick workers into doing something (making a revolution) that they don't intend to. I for one don't see how you could have a libertarian version of such a theory as it requires an all knowing leadership manipulating a pretty dumb workering class.

I also think it would be stupid of any revolutionary group of a couple of dozen to imagine that it would one day become 'the' revolutionary organisation. That is not the way it has ever worked in terms of any of the mass anarchist organisations which have generally arisen through mergers of many existing groups at times when huge numbers of workers were looking for radical alternatives. The CNT is one example amongst many. Save the 'we are the revolution' stuff for the Sparts.

Our interest in CGT, CNT, Cobas etc is that they are a living example that there are ways to organise a union that don't have all the problems of what workers in Ireland are familar with. It's not that they are perfect and certainly not that we expect to lead them some day (that one is really weird, better brush up on my Castillian I guess).

Well I think we'd agree with this 100%. The whole point of the 'leadership of ideas' concept is that the idea of some sort of fixed vanguard that always has it right is not only laughable but dangerous. In terms of the current tiny organisations being 'a leadership of ideas' is something that you aim at becoming in the areas you are active, not something that you are or if you at one moment succeed that you will retain.

Anyway I hope this clarifies things a bit.[/i]

firstly the myth that anarcho syndicalism is just about structure is nonsense the structure will be informed by the content and if the membership is overtly reformist then the union will not be anarcho syndicalist. ur point about some syndicalists takig the ideological too far is to my mind too true of the current IWA.

As for the democratisation of the unions, yes anarchists must struggle within the confines of the present unions but at a certain point they must break and attempt to form autonomous structures otheriwse the militancy will evaporate under the pressure of the leadership, the trade unions are not reformable and the leadership will certainly not stand idly by whilst their power is stripped off them.

there is no doubting that the CGT is reformist and the CNT weak because of the general lack of militancy within the spanish proletariat, but to my mind the CGT are aiding reformism in so much as they dress it up in revlutionary clothes, the CNT maybe smaller but it stands its ground rather than chasing the the centre by playing along with government backed social partnership. A change in working class militancy could change all that with the CNT growing and being a militant force whilst the CGT would be trapped within the layers of bureacracy it tangled itself in, and unable to act as a revolutionary pole. The CNT could have a smaller base but be in a position to be more effective in encouraging working class self organisation.

essentially what im arguing is that in the absence of a sizable revolutionary proletariat anarcho syndicalists should not abandon their positions in order to get numbers, rather they should remain resolute and hope to act as pole of attraction when the tide inevitably turns, tho they shouldn't pretend to be the voice of the working class and shouldn't be sectarian towards rank file members of other unions, indeed surely some anarcho syndicalists would be dual members.

anyway all this is hypothectical nonsense on my behalf.

however the point remains that the unions can not be democratised and that the working class will enivatbly seek to go beyond them and create their own structures.

as for the political (actually i think it might have said ideological) networks im almost 100% positive i read the the minutes of the Sil conference and it had listsof which groups had signed up to which, i believe the AF france and alternative libertaire where amongst the sigantures in the ideological network. I tried googling for this document but can't find it. I shall search my international files when i get home.