Discussion Document - Residents Associations: Latter day Parisian Sections or a distraction from the struggle for socialism
May 12 2007 06:37
Quote:
Do residents have any role to play in the development of a mass revolutionary movement? As socialists we aim to establish workers control of the means of production. This must be carried out by a mass movement of the working class if it is to be achieved. That requires a mass movement based in our workplaces and communities, so it is worthwhile addressing the question – do residents associations have any role to play in the development of such a movement? If they do what then should be our involvement in these bodies and at what points do these bodies intersect with class struggles, and based on their history what potentialities do they present to us as socialist militants, and what factors are shaping the future direction of residents associations today?
A short essay arguing that residents associations are important for building working class power, although there are many contradictions. The examples given are drawn from Scotland, but are there as generalisable examples. There is also a companion piece by comrade afraser.
May 12 2007 13:10
#2
It looks interesting, what are you plannig to do with it?
There were a couple of proofing errors but I didn't not them I'm afraid 'waive' instead of 'wave' was one of them.
May 12 2007 16:14
#3
This could be a useful discussion if it gets off the ground - so some points to keep it going?
Workers obviously(?) will not be able to overthrow the state and corporate institutional power and begin the revolutionary transformation of society, without organising both teritorially and 'industrially'. Given the increasingly dispersed nature of employment in the most advanced capitalist areas of the world, the distinction between the two may become anyway increasingly blurred. I am sure most modern day anarcho-communists, left communists and anarcho-syndicalists would recognise that.
Differences of approach are presumably going to emmerge in relation to how pro revolutionary minorities relate now to existing struggles outside the workplace and to the various organisations that seek to 'represent' or 'facilitate' those struggles.
To some extent my view on relating to existing 'Residents and Tenants associations' is not disimilar to my attitude to the existing Unions, which in a nutshell is that for the most part these organisations are either useless or even a barrier to effective struggle.Any struggles which do start off within their confines need to rapidly move outside or lose.
Most such Resident and tenant organisations either started out as the creatures of anti working class political Party's, or lost any vestiges of independence to various poilitical groupings or directly to the local state a long time ago, something this article seems to at least partially recognise.
Certainly in Manchester the process of sqeezing out semi-independent TA's and incorporating and nuetralising the rest happened a long time ago. (See for instance my article 'The City,Social Control and the Local State' Second Best of Subversion on the AF-North Web Site).
Having said that there are differences with the Trade Unions which reflect the fact that they are still somewhat less important to our rulers than the TU's as agents of control in our class, but which in turn might potentially allow some room for independence. This is that they are not generally in practice 'mass organisations' but rather active minorities who in some circumstances (in rare cases where they have stayed independent or when newly created) act as a means of agitation and focus for struggle when particular threats arise that 'the masses' are prepared to fight over. So depending on local circumstances pro revolutionaries should either be joining these active minorities where they are independent or exposing and opposing them where they are not.
In the course of particular struggles building links with local workplaces is also important but as you might expect from the above, the idea of trying to link directly with the existing Unions or the ossified shells of the local trades councils would not be my choice. Direct and preferably mass appeals to workers themselves makes more sense.
Whilst agreeing with some of the general points made in the article the overal 'strategy' presented here of apparently seeking to rebuild the 'fighting' trade union and tenants movement of yesteryear, fails to take account of the profound changes that have taken place, especially since the second world war in the organisation of modern capitalism. (See the Web site of 'Internationalist -Perspective' for some insights into this). I have some sympathy with a modern 'platformist' approach but I suspect this platform is far from modern.
As to what the current threats are in relation to working class housing there are a lot of myths peddaled by the left on this, some at least of which seem to be shared by the author of this article. Firstly a large % of workers now live in mortgaged homes of course and not in Council or other social rented homes.
Secondly, whilst the current government strategy of 'privatising' Council Housing is a threat, in so far as it is intended, once implented, to partially de-politicise housing and to, at least temporarily, disorientate worker opposition by materially spliting up both workforces and tenants into many different organisations, the form of delivery of working class housing in capitalism, is at best secondary to the material attack on our social wages and conditions, (see the thread on Defending the NHS for instance). The strategy is also able to be succesfull (though I would argue only temporarily) precisely because our class in Britain is already prey to severe sectionalism. It is not the job of pro revolutionaries to defend the local states old form of this provision against the new. In addition it has to be said that some of the supposed dire results of this privatision predicted by the left have not materialised (if compared with the actual benefits of Council Housing as opposed to some ideal version of the same).
That will do for now.
May 12 2007 21:34
#4
It seems to me that tenant organizations can play a role as an organization of struggle. depending on how democratic and participatory they are, they can prefigure the sort of society we want. I wouldn't expect, however, a really massive level of participation without some high level of struggle going on.
Gentrification is a problem in cities around the world. The name is somewhat misleading, because it can lead to the idea that it is middle strata -- the people with higher incomes who drive up rents and housing prices when they move into areas -- who are the cause of the problem. The problem reflects flows of capital, and the middle strata are the "customers" for the various agents of the process -- speculators, capitalist developers, landlords, banks, etc.
Gentrification is one side of the capitalist building cycle in cities. Decline and abandonment is the other extreme, the area is being disinvested, capital is not flowing into it.
In California the struggle has manifested itself in changes to laws driven either by tenant groups, on the one hand, or landlord/developer groups, on the other.
For example, tenant groups in the L.A. area and San Francisco were able to get local laws passed such as rent control ordinances or limits on condo conversions. This began in the late '70s when there was a period of high inflation in the USA, and the beginnings of gentrification in S.F.
Then in the mid-'90s the landlord interests mounted a counter-attack at the state level -- harder for ordinary people to influence than local government. The Eliis Act allows a landlord to "go out of business", meaning he can evict all the tenants. This was used in San Francisco to get around the local condo conversion limits. The buildings would be sold to professional/
managerial class households as "tenancies in common" (a single shared mortgage on a multi-unit building).
The problem of condo conversions hit the Bay Area first but has lately spread to L.A., where gentrification really didn't get massively underway til the late '90s boom. And tenant groups have fought back, winning recently a local law for higher move out payments to tenants, but weren't strong enough to get outright bans.
The thing about the condo conversions is that it greatly increase the market value of the building as a real estate commodity. That's because, if a building is just a rental, it's market value is limited by the rent income. And with rent control, that is limited, especially in a poor neighborhood where the landlord's ability to raise rents is limited by what people willing to live there can pay. The only profit is what you can make on the rent...and landlords in working class neighborhoods typically do this thru poor maintenance. Every dime they save on not maintaining the property they can invest in buying more properties.
So there is an actual class struggle going on here. in the USA there can also be a racial dimension due to the segregation patterns. a neighborhood under gentrification pressure can be the long-time stronghold of a particular racial minority. An example is the gentfification of Harlem in New York or of the Mission District in San Francisco.
tenant groups come in a variety of forms. here in S.F. there are two large membership groups -- S.F. Tenants Union (with a largely white working class leadership) and Community Tenants Association (the Chinese tenants union, with about 600 members). CTA has an annual tenants convention in Chinatown. The one this year had about 300 people present.
There are also other activist groups, organized as non-profits of some sort, that do tenant organizing, such as St. Peters Housing Committee and the Housing Rights Committee. St. Peters is structured as a membership organization with an elected board of directors (exec committee) and a staff collective. Their focus is organizing tenant unions in buildings with large numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrant tenants.
So in addition to the large tenant membership groups and the organizing non-profits, there are the tenant unions or associations in actual apartment complexes, which vary in size depending on how big the complex is.
the article by A. Fraser mentions the difficulty of securing stable victories amid these various struggles. what we're doing with the S.F. Community Land Trust is trying to socialize the property independently of the state. The community land trust is itself a membership organization, which allows individuals and democratic membership-controlled organizations to belong (such as a local union branch, workers center, or tenant membership group).
What we do is to organize the tenants, or work with existing tenant associations in buildings, to convert the building to a self-managed housing cooperative where there are permanent limits on the resale prices of shares. Under California law, housing cooperatives are organized on a one share per household, and thus one household one vote, principle.
Thus the price of the housing to the resident is no longer determined by market speculation. This is enforced through the community land trust's ownership of the land under the buildings. The ground lease contains a "first right of refusal" that allows the community land trust to buy back an apartment if someone is leaving, at a very restricted price. Basically they only get back what they paid originally. In a cooperative in California this is merely your downpayment (your share price). In the case of the building we're converting now, this is $10,000 per apartment.
This community land trust idea in the USA can probably be traced back to Ebenezer Howard's 1890s proposal for working class suburbs around London self-owned by a community cooperative, although I think the idea in England goes all the way back to the Diggers, I believe, who advocated common ownership of all land in a community.
In any case, we're using the community land trust as a tactic or tool in the overall anti-gentrification struggle. the main membership of the community land trust right now are housing activists, on the one hand -- an activist minority -- plus residents in buildings we've organized. in addition to the building that we acquired (through a 7-year anti-eviction struggle by the tenants), we've got another five or six properties where we're working with the tenants to possibly go in the same route. but it depends upon being able to get the properties out of the hands of the private capitalist owners. one of the properties is a massive city-owned complex where the tenants association wants to get out from under the city.
the article mentions the $1 million that the local city council unanimously gave us last year. this year the city council voted 8 to 3 to give us another $2.5 milliion. this only happened because of the support of a lot of community groups.
May 13 2007 11:55
#5
Thanks comrade for your detailed response.
May 14 2007 00:15
#6
Gat: $3.5m is a lot of money, well done.
SpikyMike wrote:
It is not the job of pro revolutionaries to defend the local states old form [Council Housing] of this provision against the new [Quangos].
Well said. Being sucked in to 'transfer=privatisation' (whish is exaggerated) and a 'defend council housing' mantra was a mistake, when there were more attractive community land trust and housing co-op models to be proposed instead. But that was maybe inevitable given the miniscule organisational influence of the anarchist/non-Leninist socialist left in Britain during those campaigns. Voting 'No' to transfer was still worthwhile as the lesser of two evils, but a bigger and better campaign would have had positive proposals also.
May 14 2007 00:41
#7
Quote:
Well said. Being sucked in to 'transfer=privatisation' (whish is exaggerated) and a 'defend council housing' mantra was a mistake, when there were more attractive community land trust and housing co-op models to be proposed instead. But that was maybe inevitable given the miniscule organisational influence of the anarchist/non-Leninist socialist left in Britain during those campaigns. Voting 'No' to transfer was still worthwhile as the lesser of two evils, but a bigger and better campaign would have had positive proposals also.
Hmm. I'll respond in more detail shortly. I'm crossposting this to a few sites so hopefully this could spark some worthwhile discussion.
I personally feel public housing was a major gain for the class and it gave us opportunities to advance things much further than the left have ever dreamed possible which was not advanced. I'll back that up shortly when I have the time.
However I feel the commenter is pretty dismissive of the relevance of public housing to the class and I think that's very misguided and ideologically driven. The state does not want to provide housing, and never has. The fact that it was forced to by popular forces, and in many places to do so to a standard that had never been seen before for housing numerous poor people, and the fact that when the rot set in on the movement, even as the state continued to build public housing it did so to shittier and shittier standards and now is handing over what's left of this housing to massive housing companies, bringing us hurtling forward into the 1890s is frankly something that will and is having a massive effect on the working class, in a way that affects all of us, not just those that live in 'social' housing. I'd say that was more than just a leftist misconception. Indeed most sephologists attribute the rise in the support for fascist parties as coming out of a protest by many people about their frustrations with their housing situation, combining with pressures on living standards caused by the migration of workers from Eastern Europe.
May 15 2007 13:41
#8
A Fraser wrote:
'transfer=privatisation' (whish is exaggerated)
I agree with Spikey's comments up to a point. There is nothing intrinsically radical about residents/tenants groups - depends on their content, as always; some are outright reactionary. But would say that the attempted privatisation of social housing project is no way completed. The aim is to hand over all council housing to Housing Associations, Almo's etc and for these bodies to be state-financed and encouraged to turn increasingly into property speculators, as they are already doing. 70% of new build HA projects are for rent or sale at market prices, HA's are empire building/merging fast - who will bail them out if/when their speculation comes unstuck in a property crash? Obviously tenants, via rent & service charge rises and sell offs. It was recently announced that the govt wants to open up HA's to ownership/investment by private equity groups, who often asset strip and downsize businesses, then sell on at a profit. For tenants, that's a scary prospect - a form of restructuring that is delivering a real attack on the 'social wage' and working class conditions.
But it was last week announced that Gordon Brown may fund a big new programme of council house building, so maybe there's a change of strategy coming. But then New Labour promised a similar programme in their 1997 pre-election manifesto and that was bullshit. But if it goes ahead it will prob. incorporate an element of social engineering; the buzzword(s) of housing bureaucrats and planners has long been 'mixed communities', i.e . a mix of class, income and tenure (2 class believers stop reading here). For the state this is a means of increasing social cohesion, breaking up concentrations of troublesome proles is the ideal. 'Spatial deconcentration' was a similar tactic proposed in the US after the 60s ghetto riots, relocating the poor as minorities in majority white middle class suburbs.
Some boroughs are also suggesting building on the green leisure space surrounding existing estates as a means of utilising land already in their ownership; thereby taking away kids' play areas and garden facilities - so increasing housing density while reducing amenities for tenants.
But co-op options in the UK are likely to be v. rare and will usually be just as bound by larger economic forces as other forms of property ownership. They'll also only be an option for a minority. For those most in need of housing, and for most of those who're already tenants, entering into any form of ownership is beyond their means. All the official talk of 'providing affordable homes' - which always means for sale - is just another way of stating the disinterest in providing affordable social housing for rent for those most in need.
May 15 2007 19:13
#9
What is a Parisian Section?
May 16 2007 08:27
#10
Quote:
What is a Parisian Section?
Sections were a form of local government which, it has been argued, contributed significantly to social foment in the run up to the revolution in France in 1789. They were designed to allow the propertied class to meet and elect representatives to the national parliament, and then cease to exist. Many however continued to meet and discuss issues after this inital purpose had been fulfilled and were allowed to do so by the state. As time went on they started to arrogate powers to themselves, and the more radical bodies, particularly in Paris, were even allowing commoners to join. One of the major immediate causes of the revolution was when these radical local organisations (which were effectively running their local areas at this point) started to take control of the army.
May 16 2007 18:17
#11
The states strategy does not involve its abandonement of the housing sector rather its reorganisation at arms length along more openly market orientated lines.. It is not a return to the 1890's.
'Mixed Communities' ideology is, as Red Marut says, a form of social engineering aimed at dispersing concentrations of the poorest so as to control them better. So they are mixing by breaking up some inner city Council estates here in Manchester and elsewhere, but they are not of course mixing it by buying up the leafy more affluent areas to house Council or even Housing Association tenants! (of course such concentrations can be a problem for workers too but we have a different agenda to the state)
The state is also still desperatlely trying to encourage more socalled owner occupation by reducing still further the % actually owned or rather mortgaged but I think this scheme is likely to fail anyway.
There is a need for organised resistance to all this but not by exagerating either the benefits of staying with the Council or the harm of renting from the new Social Landlords.
The likely expansion of the RSL Sector through take overs and mergers in due course will effectively reunite workers under larger employers ( a bit like the Councils now but less locally based), which will shift worker responses again. Workers sectionalism is being preyed upon in these maneovers but not created by them.
Sad to say that in Manchester Council most worker and tenant resistance has disapeared into symbolic official union and lefty blather, which leaves us housing workers either working on the dreaded 'privatisation' measures and/or TUPE'd over already. We are currently left doing little more than hanging on to a few reargurd actions.
It will be interesting to see if there is any basis for united action across the sector in the future.
This is a bit of a jumbled response but you get my drift I hope.
May 16 2007 20:54
#12
Spikey wrote:
The states strategy does not involve its abandonement of the housing sector rather its reorganisation at arms length along more openly market orientated lines.. It is not a return to the 1890's.
Well you may well know more than me about that - but if social housing is to be made an attractive investment to private equity groups its state relationship could be terminated in some cases at least, no? (Though so far the role of private equity has apparently only been mentioned in relation to maintenance services.)
Do you not think the state would be happy for HA's to become progressively more autonomous and self-financing? Or perhaps to offload social housing using transfer via private equity groups to gradually distance the state-tenants relationship? (I'm speculating, obviously.) What benefits does the state see in retaining control of this housing?
I agree it's not a choice just to be for Council over HA tenure, that's a nostalgic Old Labour bandwagon, but the resistance to transfer was pleasing insofar as it pissed off some housing policy planners and govt. bureaucrats.
May 17 2007 01:14
#13
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
What is a Parisian Section?Sections were a form of local government which, it has been argued, contributed significantly to social foment in the run up to the revolution in France in 1789. They were designed to allow the propertied class to meet and elect representatives to the national parliament, and then cease to exist. Many however continued to meet and discuss issues after this inital purpose had been fulfilled and were allowed to do so by the state. As time went on they started to arrogate powers to themselves, and the more radical bodies, particularly in Paris, were even allowing commoners to join. One of the major immediate causes of the revolution was when these radical local organisations (which were effectively running their local areas at this point) started to take control of the army.
Interesting, thanks. I need to read up more fully on the French Revolution.
May 17 2007 22:32
#14
Article on spatial deconcentration;
http://libcom.org/library/spatial-deconcentration-d-c
"The story of a covert US Government housing policy - conceived in the aftermath of the 1960s ghetto riots - to remove concentrations of potentially rebellious Blacks and other poor people from the inner city and disperse them in small groups to the suburbs."
May 18 2007 12:37
#15
Prefigurement : This is one of my major reasons for putting time and energy into tenants/residents organising. I think that there needs to be organisations on the ground, in the communities that naturally take on more and more roles and make decision during upturns in struggle. Yes, these orgs need to be democratic and federated with others. That is why it is important for us as anarchists/libcomists etc to be involved.
Gentrification/mixed communities social engineering : was interesting to read about clearances as a form of diluting anger. I'd seen it primarily in Glasgow as clearing working classes out of newly desirable land close to the city centre. However there are advantages for us too. I find it realy frustrating at times to be organising in areas full of casualties of capitalism - too many of them have great instincts/politics but rot their brains with drugs (inc alcohol), are running hard just to survive and have no experience or confidence in struggle. Most that have enough about themselves to sort their own lives out move away to better housing. I think that it will be more to our advantage, in Glasgow at least, for the communities to become more mixed, as well as just being healthier to have different sorts of housing in an area from a human point of view. I think the advantages will outweigh any disadvantages in terms of anger dilution. That is if we're not just totally wholescaled cleared out of areas, but in general that hasn't happened and land is cherry picked to be cleared for development.
Struggle : Yes, the organisations need to be based around real issues. That keeps the orgs genuine, fighting and authentic. Often the issues that we are fightin on are not perceived as sexy. Personally I do get excited about campaigning for water pressure to be adequate to run washing machines, and I see it as a winnable struggle that affects thousands of people, primarily women who have a lot to both give and gain from such a struggle. On a side note I think the women in the communities I'm involved with are /often/ less drink-drug addled and do a lot of the sort of powerful social networking and spreading news/ideas through our communities that really makes a difference.
I disagree with Dundee about the scale of importance/strength of community orgs. (I like the "community unions" name) They are riddled with problems, contradictions and frustrations. I think they are a part of a larger strategy but I think tactically they are a good place to focus right now as they are relatively easy to set up and have relatively high rewards as a revolutionary at this time/place in the class struggle.
May 20 2007 12:01
#16
On a side note I think the women in the communities I'm involved with are /often/ less drink-drug addled and do a lot of the sort of powerful social networking and spreading news/ideas through our communities that really makes a difference.
I disagree with Dundee about the scale of importance/strength of community orgs. (I like the "community unions" name) They are riddled with problems, contradictions and frustrations. I think they are a part of a larger strategy but I think tactically they are a good place to focus right now as they are relatively easy to set up and have relatively high rewards as a revolutionary at this time/place in the class struggle.
- Question: Which of these groups would play the most important role in coutering the employer offensive via helping launch strike/direct action waves - 10 train drivers won over to syndicalism or 10 of the women in the communities you mentioned above?
mark
May 20 2007 12:25
#17
Quote:
- Question: Which of these groups would play the most important role in coutering the employer offensive via helping launch strike/direct action waves - 10 train drivers won over to syndicalism or 10 of the women in the communities you mentioned above?
mark
Counter question - which do you think would play more of a role in countering the ruling class offensive - ten women active in residents associations or five men on the dole three men working as temps and two men working in a call centre?
Also apart from being just plain dumb (traIn drivers, who earn 30k a year or thereby, live in bought houses for a start) your question appears heavily sexist, like somehow women can't be train drivers (which of course there aren't many of anyway - RMT and ASLEF membership combined is under 100,000), so should therefore be discounted as irrelevant to the class struggle. That's wrong on so many levels.
May 20 2007 15:16
#18
Re Red Maruts point.
It is isn't clear how far the state would go in allowing its currently semi-autonomous arms in the existing and new housing associations to become fully autonmous and integrated into self financing market institutions.
Personally I think it unlikely. The current strategy is to retain influence whilst providing some distance and political cover.
The merger of the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships may however start a new phase, I dont know really.
Resistance so far to the Council house 'privatisation' has been patchy but won some useful victories in a few places.
The point will be how and when organised resistance within, and in response to the activities of, the new organisations takes place, or whether the divide and rule tactics will have a very long lasting results, allowing further inroads into the housing element of our social wage.
May 21 2007 11:54
#19
Also apart from being just plain dumb (traIn drivers, who earn 30k a year or thereby, live in bought houses for a start) your question appears heavily sexist, like somehow women can't be train drivers (which of course there aren't many of anyway - RMT and ASLEF membership combined is under 100,000), so should therefore be discounted as irrelevant to the class struggle. That's wrong on so many levels.
- you are getting all silly - you are seeing my question through your "left subcultural" prisim which precludes approaching issues raised rationally -obscuring the strategic issue I was trying to raise - where to focus limited personnel and resources of contemporary syndicalist groups - in a local community - or a very important strategic industrial group- in sydney train drivers are also very highly paid - but many of them are keen readers of the syndicalist paper sparks and in early 2004 carried out a very important campaign of direct action conducted by their group "drivers for affirmative action" a sparks network activist played a very important role in this historic action (this action must also be seen in the context of long range precision syndicalist work in this sector, see "anarcho-syndicalism:cataylst for workers selforganisation" archived in our web site www.rebelworker.org
- also in regard to the rail/public sector strike wave of late 1986/early 1987 - in france - one train driver initiated it - via launching a petition amongst his colleagues on the job illustrating again the great importance of this group.
mark
May 21 2007 12:33
#20
Quote:
you are getting all silly - you are seeing my question through your "left subcultural" prisim which precludes approaching issues raised rationally
Erm... No I'm not. From your question you assume all train drivers are men, and you assume all struggle is in the workplace. I'm not querying that transport workers are the most powerful section of the working class. I agree it would be great to have transport workers won over to the cause of socialism and syndicalist ways of organising, and indeed I note that following the Liverpool dockers strike, dock work has become a semi-militarised profession due to the concern the state obviously feels about that sector's power. It's also notable that despite the RMT being relatively tiny in size (just over 74,000 workers) it is the UK's most powerful union precisely because of these factors.
However despite the obvious saliency to a political strategy of organising workers in key industries that alone doesn't make for a strategic approach to the struggle - unless you can rationalise having a highly organised syndicalist minority concentrated in key industries whose demands are generally opposed by the majority of the population at large who have no culture of organising or background in social struggles, a position which, while not exactly what things are like (ASLEF and the RMT are far from syndicalist unions), is at least analogous to the situation we're facing at the moment, where the better part of the working class have little recent background in social struggles and are unfamiliar with collective organisation, and so are lacking in confidence, in solidarity, and in the belief that things can be changed. As a result we are seeing the gains of the class throughout the 19th and 20th century eroded.
Now if your programme to deal with this is to organise transport workers alone, as you lived in a vacuum, then you're a fool, because what is needed is much more far reaching than anything your crude mechanistic view of class struggle could ever imagine. I live a city where most people are long-term unemployed, or employed in temporary work with highly casualised hours. There are whole areas of Glasgow where 65% unemployment or greater is the norm. Male life expectancy is under 60 in very many neighbourhoods, and frankly the skilled working class who are still employed make up next to fuckall of the population. Clearly for radicals in Glasgow no matter how cushty the lives of train drivers, how militant they are, which union they are members of, will effect fuckall change for the vast majority of Glaswegians. If you can't see that you're driving at a programme for complete political irrelevance.
May 21 2007 15:44
#21
asn wrote:
- you are getting all silly - you are seeing my question through your "left subcultural" prisim which precludes approaching issues raised rationally -obscuring the strategic issue I was trying to raise - where to focus limited personnel and resources of contemporary syndicalist groups - in a local community - or a very important strategic industrial group- in sydney train drivers are also very highly paid - but many of them are keen readers of the syndicalist paper sparks and in early 2004 carried out a very important campaign of direct action conducted by their group "drivers for affirmative action" a sparks network activist played a very important role in this historic action (this action must also be seen in the context of long range precision syndicalist work in this sector, see "anarcho-syndicalism:cataylst for workers selforganisation" archived in our web site www.rebelworker.org
- also in regard to the rail/public sector strike wave of late 1986/early 1987 - in france - one train driver initiated it - via launching a petition amongst his colleagues on the job illustrating again the great importance of this group.
mark
But that is precisely the issue - where to focus the limited personnel and resources of contemporary radicals (not just syndicalists). I think the strategic nature of it is vital. I think its very necessary to have this discussion. (cheers to dundee for bringing it up) And its good to get different perspectives on it.
However I disagree that the best strategic thing to do right now is to focus our/my attention on train drivers. I just don't think that will have much payoff compared to the time/energy required. Whereas organising within communities can have good payoffs in terms of spreading our ideas.
As dundee pointed out, women are workers too! ;P And they have friends, partners, families who are also workers. Any of them could be train drivers. Any of them could be receptive to ideas that are spread by a group with proven success in organising and campaigning on real world issues and a track record of not selling out those same groups.
Haven't had time to read this draft properly, but on the basis of an earlier one, I'd reccomend that others do take a look.