Red and Black Revolution 11 - October 2006

Anarchism, insurrections and insurrectionalism

Insurrections - the armed rising of the people - has always been close to the heart of anarchism. The first programmatic documents of the anarchist movement were created by Bakunin and a group of European left-republican insurrectionists as they made the transition to anarchism in Italy in the 1860's. This was not a break with insurrectionism but with left-republicanism, shortly afterwards Bakunin was to take part in an insurrection in Lyon in 1870

The insurrection of Easter 1916

The Easter 1916 rising in Dublin is often portrayed simply as nationalist blood sacrifice but it can also be examined as an insurrection which was seriously planned to defeat the British army. It is credited with transforming political attitudes in Ireland, leading to the partially successful war of independence but nationalist histories tend to understate the other reasons why the situation was transformed and to completely ignore the wave of workers struggles that broke out during the war.

Privatisation – the rip-off of public resources

Throughout the world, public services have been under attack for the past twenty years. Forming a central plank of the capitalist globalisation agenda, ‘privatisation’ and ‘competition’ are the seemingly unchallenged dogma of modern capitalism. The levels of privatisation which have taken place worldwide are absolutely mindblowing. During the 1990s alone over $900 billion worth of public assets were transferred into private hands. Globally this agenda is pushed by the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The basic theory by which these bodies operate is that all decisions should be made on the basis of profitability alone.

Review: Caliban and the Witch - women, the body and primitive accumulation

Silvia Federici’s “Caliban and the Witch; Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation” does a fantastic job of taking the feminist analysis of the body and re-conceptualizing it within a class struggle understanding of history. She fills in the blanks that a traditional left analysis has missed, including the concepts of difference, women, race and the body. This work is very important, allowing feminists and socialists alike to realize that identity and class struggle are not polar opposite theoretical understandings

Focus on Precarity

Precarity: An introduction to a word

The term is used in particular to refer to the demise of the job-for-life and job security. In this sense it is closely linked to the process of casualisation

- Focus on precarity - Ireland

In Ireland, the WSM has so far been involved in two campaigns that can be linked to the issue; providing solidarity to a group of Polish temp workers in an attempt to highlight the exploitative use of agency staff by Tesco, and also in giving out information on workplace and union rights in the Get Up, Stand Up Campaign.

- Independent Workers Union

The Independent Workers Union (IWU) is a new small Irish trade union which stands outside the partnership consensus and is attempting to build a radical trade union.

- Focus on precarity - Change To Win (USA)

Last September saw a split in the USA’s Congress of Trade Unions, the AFL-CIO. The Change to Win Federation set out their plans: cut down on bureaucracy, devote a lot more resources to organising the unorganised, and start building industry-wide super-unions.

- Organising with the T&G, and beyond?

The Transport and General Workers Union (T & G), has sought to address falling union membership by adopting the model created by the American Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with its strategy of a national unit of professional ‘union organisers’ to target traditionally untouched areas of unionisation (precarious work in fragmented workplaces).