[Analysis in translation] Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Bill Andrews ed i Sindacalisti Rivoluzionari in Sud Africa”

July 6, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Bill Andrews ed i Sindacalisti Rivoluzionari in Sud Africa”
From: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29211#comment16268

Trans. of Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Bill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary Syndicalists,” Tokologo: Newsletter del Tokologo African Anarchist Collective, numbers 5/6, p. 24

Oggi, W. H. “Bill” Andrews (1870- 1950) viene solitamente ricordato come fondatore e dirigente del Partito Comunista del Sud Africa (PCSA, oggi SACP). In quel ruolo egli fu segretario del partito, membro dell’Esecutivo dell’Internazionale Comunista, dirigente sindacale sudafricano, visitò l’Unione Sovietica, imputato nel processo ai comunisti che seguì allo sciopero dei minatori neri nel 1946.

Tuttavia, agli inizi, Andrews era stato una figura dirigente nella Lega Socialista Internazionale (ISL) di ispirazione sindacalista rivoluzionaria. Nato nel Regno Unito, Andrews era un metalmeccanico qualificato e proveniva dagli ambienti sindacali. Dopo una breve esperienza parlamentare per il Partito Laburista sudafricano, Andrews aderì insieme ad altri radicali alla ISL rifondata nel 1915.

Nella letteratura del Partito Comunista sudafricano, l’ISL appare di solito come una sorta di esperienza propedeutica al partito, composta da solidi marxisti. In realtà la ISL faceva parte- al pari di molte altre esperienze di sinistra radicale in tutto il mondo- della grande tradizione anarchica: in questo caso del sindacalismo rivoluzionario. La ISL puntava all’unità dei lavoratori, neri e bianchi, in un solo grande sindacato per abbattere il capitalismo e lo Stato, l’oppressione razziale e nazionalista, per mettere i posti di lavoro sotto il controllo diretto dei lavoratori.

Andrews aveva lavorato Read more of this post

Filed under anarchism/ syndicalism, From 2010s, labour history, Non-English, race and national liberation struggles, union strategy

JOURNAL [+PDF]: van der Walt, 2016, “Global Anarchism and Syndicalism: Theory, History, Resistance,” ‘Anarchist Studies’

June 29, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Global Anarchism and Syndicalism: Theory, History, Resistance,” Anarchist Studies, volume 24, number 1,  pp. 85-106

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GLOBAL ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM: THEORY, HISTORY, RESISTANCE
Lucien van der Walt

ABSTRACT: The discussion below is a lightly edited transcription of a talk given by the author at the Ay Carmela, Rua das Carmelitas, in São Paulo, Brazil, on 2 November 2010. This article provides a global perspective on the history and theory of anarchism and syndicalism, arguing against views that treat anarchism as simple ‘anti-statism’ or a natural human ‘impulse’, in favour of the argument that the current is a socialist, working class tradition dating to the International Workingmen’s Association (the ‘First International’), 1864-1877. An international movement in intent, conception and membership from the start, it drew on a range of modernist, rationalist socialist ideas, and developed a powerful base in many regions of the world by the 1940s. Spanish anarchism was undoubtedly important, as was the anarchist Spanish Revolution of 1936–1939, but Spain provided but one of a series of mass-based, influential anarchist and syndicalist movements. Barcelona was only one in a chain of red-and-black anarchist and syndicalist strongholds, and the Spanish Revolution only one of a number   of major rebellions, revolutionary rehearsals and actual social revolutions in which anarchism/ syndicalism played a decisive role. Although public attention was drawn  by the spectacular actions of the movement’s marginal ‘insurrectionist’ wing, it was the ‘mass’ anarchist approach – based on patient mass organising and education – that predominated. The movement’s immersion in mass movements – especially through syndicalism, peasant and civil rights struggles, fights against racism and women’s oppression, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles – can also only be properly appreciated from a global perspective – one in which the movement’s rich history in the colonial and postcolonial world is placed centre-stage. The real history of the movement should not be confused with the mythological, propagandistic history of anarchism that sections of the movement subsequently promoted, centred on claims that ‘anarchism’ existed across all human history, was ‘natural’ etc.

KEYWORDS: anarchism, syndicalism, labour, anti-colonialism, Bakunin, Kropotkin, class struggle, radicalism, anti-globalisation, global labour history

p. 86
A preliminary note on terms
Please note that when I use the term ‘syndicalism’, here I am using it in the English sense of specifically meaning revolutionary syndicalism and/ or anarcho-syndicalism, not in the Romance language sense of meaning unions in general. And when I just say ‘anarchism’, I am usually including ‘syndicalism’ (both anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism) because it’s a variant of anarchism. Revolutionary and anarcho-syndicalism, are forms of anarchist trade unionism, rooted in the anarchist tradition, constituting strategies for anarchism, rather than a separate ideology or movement.

One of the key issues that must be addressed for a project like this – a project which looks at anarchism and seeks to do so in a truly global and planetary way, rather than through a narrow focus on parts of Europe (which is how the history of anarchism is often done) – is that you have to think very carefully how you define Read more of this post

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[ANALYSIS] + PDF: Lucien van der Walt, 2004, “Reflections on Race and Anarchism in South Africa, 1904-2004”, ‘Perspectives on Anarchist Theory’

February 1, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2004, “Reflections on Race and Anarchism in South Africa, 1904-2004”, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Institute for Anarchist Studies (United States), volume 8, number 1, pp. 1, 13-16.

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*The following article by lAS [Institute for Anarchist Studies] grant recipient Lucien van der Walt explores the encounter of South African anarchists with white supremacy.

p. 1
The South African anarchist tradition provides an interesting case study of anarchist approaches to the question of racial inequality and oppression under capitalism.  In modern South Africa, capitalist relations of exploitation were built upon colonial relations of domination. This complex articulation of race and class was a question that South African anarchists continually faced. This paper will examine how both the classical anarchist movement of the first two decades of the twentieth-century, and the contemporary movement of the 1990s, dealt with the racial question.

Racial Questions
From the start of industrialization in the 1880s – spurred by gold discoveries in the Witwatersrand region — until the reform period of the 1970s, South African capitalism was structured on racial lines. There were, in effect, two sharply differentiated sectors of the working class in South Africa.

African workers, roughly two thirds of the workforce, were concentrated in low-wage employment, were typically unskilled, and were employed on contracts that amounted to indenture and in which strikes were criminalized. The typical African mine and industrial worker was a male migrant Read more of this post

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[ANALYSIS] + PDF: Lucien van der Walt, 2005/2006, “The Influence of the IWW in Southern Africa,” in ‘Anarcho-Syndicalist Review (ASR)’

January 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2005/2006, “The Influence of the IWW in Southern Africa,” Anarcho-Syndicalist Review (ASR), numbers 42/3, pp. 31-38.

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Filed under Africa (other), anarchism/ syndicalism, From 2000s, labour history, race and national liberation struggles, South Africa, union strategy

ANALYSIS [+PDF]: Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “Bill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary Syndicalists”, in ‘Tokologo’

January 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “Bill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary Syndicalists”, Tokologo, numbers 5/6, p. 24.

pdflogosmallGet the PDF here. Text below.

 

“van der Walt - 2015 - Bill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary SyndicalistsBill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary Syndicalists”
by LUCIEN VAN DER WALT
Tokologo, 2015, numbers 5/6, p. 24

If W. H. “Bill” Andrews (1870- 1950) is remembered today, it is usually as a founder and leader of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA, today the SACP). In that role, he served as party chair, member of the executive of the Communist International, leading South African trade unionist, visitor to the Soviet Union, and defendant in the trial of communists that followed 1946 black miners’ strike.

However,  in  his  earlier  years, Andrews was a leading figure in the revolutionary syndicalist International Socialist League (ISL). Born in Britain, Andrews was a skilled metal worker and came from the unions. After a brief stint in parliament for the SA Labour Party, Andrews joined other radicals in the newly-founded ISL in 1915.

In CPSA/ SACP writings, the ISL usually appears as a sort of CPSA-in-the-making, made of solid Marxists. The reality is that the ISL was – like many on the radical left worldwide – part of the broad anarchist tradition: in this case, it championed revolutionary syndicalism. It stressed uniting all workers, black and white, in One Big Union to smash capitalism and the state, and national/ racial oppression, and put the workplaces under direct workers’ control.

Andrews worked inside the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) (absorbed many years later into the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, NUMSA), helped run the ISL paper, “The International,” and  was  sent   abroad   by the ISL to attend a (failed) socialist peace conference in Stockholm in 1917.  After his return, he was appointed paid ISL “industrial organiser” to promote revolutionary syndicalism through workers and shop stewards’ committees. His major aim then was to form a rebel Witwatersrand Shop Stewards’ Council. Although he stressed the importance of winning white workers, then the majority in unions, he actively supported efforts to organise Indian and black African workers and their strikes.

In 1921, like many of his comrades he helped found the CPSA, where he played a leading role despite being expelled from 1931-1938. He passed away in Cape Town in 1950, a grand old man of the Left, and remains an SACP icon.

Filed under anarchism/ syndicalism, From 2010s, labour history, race and national liberation struggles, South Africa, union strategy

REFERENCE [+PDF]: Lucien van der Walt, 2012, “Thibedi, T.W. (1888-1960)” in ‘Dictionary of African Biography’

January 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2012, “Thibedi, T.W. (1888-1960)”, Henry Louis Gates and Emmanuel Akyeampong (eds.), Dictionary of African Biography, Oxford University Press, pp. 13-14.

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ANALYSIS [+PDF]: Lucien van der Walt, 2000, “’Fight for Africa, Which you Deserve’: The Industrial Workers of Africa in South Africa, 1917-1921”, in ‘Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library’

January 20, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2000, “’Fight for Africa, Which you Deserve’: The Industrial Workers of Africa in South Africa, 1917-1921”, Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, number 24, pp. 2,5,6.

pdflogosmallGet the PDF here.

 

Filed under anarchism/ syndicalism, From 2000s, labour history, race and national liberation struggles, South Africa, union strategy

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