red anarchism

I guess I could be called a red anarchist, but strangely found myself quite busy round here a few years ago fighting the M66.

Sorry, beanis. A false division - or at least it ought to be.

Beanis, your rejection of class politics is your choice, but some 'reds' do follow green issues so I reject the green/red divide people keep throwing up. However Im startled by some of the things I read in Green Anarchy.

The point however is those who try to engineer change through class struggle are more bound to the tides of political change linked to wide social political factors that are currently more than the sum of our own forces. We are and will continue to be in the low ebb unless we can muster our forces,

Hopefully see you at the SHAC demo on Sat 17th April

"red anarchists", or to use the real term "anarcho-syndicalists" do actually do things, shockingly enough. It just happens that the activities of green anarchists are often more visible. Look at any website for an anarcho-syndicalist union and there are loads of little struggles, for better pay or breaks or shorter hours, stopping lay-offs etc. I got these examples from the CNT Spain website (you can tell theyre genuine by the poor translation;

Demonstrate against the ascent of pay of los/as políticos/as. Popular initiative against the Mangoneo

CNT of Sherry (Cadiz) (03-02-04)

The CNT demands an agreement for the administrators of urban property

www.eldiariomontanes.es (01-02-04)

Resolution of theKrug-Naval conflict. Against the great power of the patronos

CNT of Vigo (12-03-04)

Were all doing our part.

Because he would get, very very hungry, very, very quickly!

Well, yeah ok then, i can accept that, my bad. I just interpreted the attack as being against anarcho-syndicalists becuase a Green Anarchist could also be a communist. Besides, the original point that anarcho-syndicalists are achieveing little things all the time still stands.

Oh come on, be fair, Green Anarchism has played a really, really successful role in alienating anarchism from 99% of society.

um, well maybe not revolutions, but preventing new roads from being build directly attacks the flow of capital and capitalism's attempts at expansion. and just cos only the mud monkeys got on the news doesn't mean that they didn't have support in the working class communities near some of the planned routes, with the locals doing plenty of monkeywrenching etc.

and i think that it is a fair question to ask what anarchists who aren't completely focused on 'green' issues do, even if only to suddenly discover that there's some effective activity going on somewhere in this country (pointing to what the cnt or whoever is doing outside of the uk doesn't count in this, seeing as the activities of the greens that is being focused on is in this country...). personally i think the main reason that people know about the environmental type protesters is that they are effective in what they set out to do, and most people don't care if you have a good position on argentina or if you think trade unions are good or bad or whatever, they will only be interested in something if it is visibly achieving something in the here and now.

the anti-roads protests effectively destroyed the road building programme in britain. what projects, activities, campaigns etc. focused on more traditional arenas of class struggle started by or with a visible anarchist presence have actually been successful in the last ten years, locally or nationally? there must be some, but right now i can't think of any off the top of my head. if we stopped whining about the green focused types not going after what we consider the real targets and actually tried to do something effective instead, then we might actually be some way towards being a worthwhile movement... if your going to whine about someone at least whine about fucking marxists and other lefty parasites rather than people who have very similar politics to us just with a different focus.

fuck i hate sectarianism... fight the real enemy: trots!

But as much as i'm all for anarcho-syndicalism, you do have to admit theyre pretty naff in Britain. The continent and South America are the blueprint.

You don't know what you're talking about. Britain has a long and proud direct action unionist tradition. I've spoken to spaniards who talk glowingly about British class warfare.

Everything important is always somewhere over there and anything mucky and complicated is unimportant because it doesn't conform to some soap dodger's fantasy. Zapatistas, Guantanamo Bay, Palastine, Argentina all those places are relying on *us* to overthrow our ruling class *here*.

I support the building of even bigger wider faster roads so the dog-on-a-string brigade will fuck off to Hampshire or somewhere & annoy someone else.

what GenerationTerrorist says, innit?

If we look back over the past 10-15 years in the uk what other prodominantly anarchist movement has had that level of success? The anti-roads movement took on the state and capital and to a large extent won- 500 out of 600 of the road building plans in the mid 90's cancelled. In economic terms that's £12.5 billion pounds of public expendature. It mobilsed 1000's of people and cpature the public imagination in the way that no other recent movment i'm aware of has?

Also shows how rediculous this red/green division is. Don't think i've ever met anyone at anti-roads camps that didn't see capitalism as one of the core issues. Or see this as a forms of protest amongst wider movement for social change that would encompass work place organisation. It's also had examplery acts of community building. I've spent nights in the SW australian rainforests with local construction workers who'd brought along there tools and machinary, spending all night dig up logging roads getting pissed on moonshine. A bunch of working class people getting together to defend there common interest against capitalism. Was down at blackwood in wales the other week- where a bunch of locals have spent the past month camping there to defend the local wood land. Also had ex-miners down there giving advice on how to shore up tunnles. All this is a really good oppotunity to share skills on community self manangement and get people to think reflexively about anarchy.

But instead of actually looking at what was successful about the anti roads movement or any other examples of coomunity building or direct action, intstead lets reify ourselves into two opposing camps and never talk to each. The crap that's been going on enrager lately is pathetic- why is acceptable for anarchist to call for the murder(if even in a joking manner) of other anarchist cos they don't agree with the specifics of there politics? Why are we spending all are time building up boggie men- evil anarcho-primivitists who'd eat working class babies whilst wiping there arse on a copy of conquest of the bread. Or some 'anarcho-trot' that would ensalve us all to selling papers and analysising the grundrisse for all eternity. I'm mean for fucks sake whos' actually meet a primivitist? I'm mean a really one? Someone who commited to the return to hunter-gather existence to the extent there not involved in positive radical projects as opposed to someone who reckons elements of the primitivist critique are worth taking seriously or adopts it as a kind of joking identity?

Anyway instead of some crap platitude about red and green joining together and dancing merily to the revolution, instead i'll post a piture of a prarie dog with amchine gun

Now all fight it out whether he's red or green

And both the anti-greens and anti-reds here are being utterly crushed by the "united front" people. We dont want to end up fighting amongst ourselves when ourselves could probably be counted on two hands, so im with the united front.

Best post today - definitely.

And that picture has to be on an enrager sticker when we get round to making them

Also in reply to beanis's question, apart from the fact that as people have pointed out the red/green divide is a false one, and it's kind of a silly question as people with particular politics don't work alone on any campaigns, AFA pretty comprehensively smashed the BNP and NF off the streets over the past 20-odd years. AFA outside London and Manchester was mostly run by class struggle anarchists.

Excellent post

Class struggle doesn't only take place in workplaces or on estates. It happens wherever the interests of capital are confronted. Roadbuilding was, and is, a crucial part of capital's programme for globalisation and expansion. We temporarily stopped it in the 90s. Wait for the rerun!