Library

Left dead-end street vs. destructive critique: China's counterinsurgency policies and how to respond

Gongchao on the attempts of the Chinese state to handle growing unrest and struggle.

In spring 2010, workers at a Honda plant in the industrial city of Foshan, Guangdong went on strike. They overcame the split between permanent employees and technical student interns and brought Honda's entire production in China to a halt. The transnational company was forced to increase workers' wages by more than 30 percent.

Prologue

Foreword

Romanian working class: sitting ducks in open fire of capitalism

An anarchist analysis of the working class in Romania.

There are about 5 million employees in Romania, currently. Some other 3 million people (a quarter of the local work force) work in other countries from the European Union, mostly Spain and Italy. The official unemployed people are said to represent 6.7%, but this is not accurate.

On working class fiction

Detail from the cover of Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

In this essay from 2011, novelist DD Johnston presents a communist analysis of the definition and purpose of working class fiction.

Last week, for the second time in my life, I found myself agreeing with Margaret Thatcher. The first time was many years ago, in the mid-1980s, when Thatcher was briefly my hero. I was a timid child, who suffered from a speech impediment, and it had never occurred to me that free school milk was in any way optional.

Legal activism: the spatial politics of squatting in the UK

SQUASH and Alex Vasudevan discuss the Government's plans to criminalize squatting and the legitimacy of engaging with the state over the proposed change in legislation.

By Victoria Blitz and Rueben Taylor, published online October 2011.

SQUASH

Welcome to the occupation

Published February 2012. Written for Shift's Precarity series, the Introduction to which can be read here.

What are the meanings of ‘occupation’ today? How might the word’s different uses relate to each other, specifically in the context of the UK’s current political situation?

Precarity and the workplace: an account of organising at an FE College

Published online in February 2012. Written by Siobhan as part of Shift's Precarity series, the introduction to which can be read here.

This is a personal account of an anti casualisation struggle where I work. Frustratingly, we are right in the middle of our struggle and bogged down in the bureaucratic mud at the moment, so I won’t be able to tell you if we won or not!

“Real Democracy”: an interview with Michael Hardt

Published online, October 2011.

On October 15th, hundreds of squares were occupied worldwide by activists united by the slogan ‘real democracy now’. Here, Shift Magazine editor Raphael Schlembach interviews Michael Hardt, author (with Toni Negri) of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

[b]In the latest print issue of Shift Magazine [issue 13], John Holloway argues that “real democracy is and must be a frontal assault on the power of money”. He implies that the demand ‘real democracy now’ is not enough in itself, but must be connected to a movement against the rule of money-capital-state-abstract labour.

Occupied London: revolt and crisis in Greece

Published online July 2011. Review of the book "Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come", edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou: an Occupied London Project (published by AK Press, 2011).

“We feel that what is being played out in Greece poses some enormous questions that reaches far beyond the place itself, or the people that live there.”