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Recent articles by Anarcho
Party of Which People? Aug 01 16 A Socialist On City Council: A Look At The Career Of Kshama Sawant May 19 16 A New Vision or a New Reformism? Apr 01 16 Vermont elects America's first socialist senator north america / mexico |
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 Thursday November 09, 2006 17:39 by Anarcho
 An anarchist analysis of Bernie Sanders victory Amidst the Democratic mid-term election victories on November 8th, an independent won the Senate race in Vermont. What is significant is that he is a self-proclaimed socialist and so the first socialist senator in US history. The previous best result in a Senate race by a socialist was in 1930 when Emil Seidel won 6% of the vote. Bernie Sanders is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it and has won eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives after being elected mayor of Burlington in 1981. However, do not get your hopes up too much as his vision of socialism is, well, simply reformed capitalism. According to Sanders, "Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania. Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism." |
 Front pageLa experiencia de Mujeres Libres: 80 años del surgimiento del feminismo anarquista organizado Con Lucha Y Organización Fortalecemos La Resistencia Algunas reflexiones en torno al poder y la institucionalidad a 80 años de la Revolución Española 80 aniversari de la insurrecció obrera i popular i de la revolució social 80 anni fa la rivoluzione comunista libertaria in Spagna De los comités de defensa al análisis de los órganos de poder The Coup in Turkey: Tyranny against tyranny does not make freedom Greve, Piquete, Marcha e Ocupação! Educadores e Estudantes unidos pela Educação! Making sense of the Brexit tide of reaction and the reality of the racist vote Coyuntura Política en Venezuela: Crisis, Tendencias y el Desafío de la Independencia de Clase Palestinian workers in Israel: between scylla and charybdis A Socialist On City Council: A Look At The Career Of Kshama Sawant Élargir la lutte et généraliser la grève pour gagner [Colombia] Documento de Formación: Análisis de Coyuntura 2015-2016 La NATO contro i Curdi: la Battaglia per A'zaz Feminists in Ireland Say No To Pegida Posició de Embat sobre el nou govern de la Generalitat i el procés constituent A 120 años de su natalicio: la pluma rebelde de Manuel Rojas Anarkismo.net wishes you all a 2016 of solidarity and resistance North America / Mexico | The Left | News Report | en Wed 10 Aug, 22:51
WASHINGTON — Democrats desperately need other Democrats – to vote. – Liz Sidoti, of the Huffington Post At least 600 arrests took place at the G20 summit in Toronto as police used considerable force to break up protests. Media reports& video (below) indicate that many of the beaten were journalists covering the protest. The G20 was meeting to co-ordinate further attacks on the global working class. This is what the coded statements from the G20 about 'austerity budgets' and 'cutting deficits' will mean in practice. This despite the "risk that synchronised fiscal adjustment across several major economies could adversely impact the recovery" acknowledged in the final G20 communique. [Italiano]
Well folks, this is it: the last article of Catamount Tavern News.
zapatistas open the other campaign
There is a new approach on the U.S. Left, which rejects both capitalism and state socialism. In several ways it resembles anarchism. It has been promoted by The Next System Project, and has been critiqued recently by Sam Gindin--who makes some insightful comments, but also demonstrates limitations.
In recent decades, there have been efforts to "rehabilitate" the U.S. Communist Party as an historical model for the Left. Anti-authoritarian socialists and anarchists find this troubling. Whle the CP did some good things it also did some very bad things. A brief summary of its history demonstrates that and explains why this is.
As we engage in larger social movements, it can be easy to lose sight of our endgame and essentially function as a type of "social democrat." Here are some key reasons and methods for avoiding this, as well as countering the progressive election logic during voting season.
Campaigns teach by more than what is in their written programs. Even if the campaign was more explicitly radical, functionally it is teaching people that social change comes about through electing better politicians. The campaign has all the features of a mainstream election effort – adoration of a single personality, exaggeration of his “leadership”, meaningless pledges to “get results for you”. This is an elitist approach that reinforces the passivity of people by making someone else the “leader” who gets things done, instead of arguing for all of us to take control over our own lives. The activists and community members who have dived into the Ty Moore campaign are not prioritizing organizing one-on-ones to plan direct actions at work, at school, or in their neighborhoods, or discussing and debating how to replace the racist police with community militias or how narrow gender-roles stifle our humanity or how to build rank & file power against the union bureaucracy. They are rallying around “our guy” and training people to fundraise and to get out the vote. This is the main lesson that participants in the campaign are gaining: How to participate in this unjust system.
This is a piece we’re sharing originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece is being released in conjunction with a forthcoming piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism. more >>
On May Day, 2012, march as a Popular Front in Montpelier, Vermont in support of:
The Montpelier based Catamount Tavern News, Vermont’s only union affiliated newspaper, has decided to shutdown the presses
The EZLN has announced the end of the Red Alert due to the end of the consulta and the announcement of the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. This set of communiques includes the re-opening of the Caracoles and details of the "Sixth Committee" which is to meet with people or organizations who do not participate in elections to form 'the other campaign'. Meetings will then be held in Chiapas of various sectors with the aim of issuing a common statement agreed by all on September 16.
Editoral statement of new Candian publication called 'Upping the Anti' published by the Autonomy & Solidarity website which "is an on-line network for anti-capitalists who believe that revolutionary transformation will come from workers and oppressed people self-organizing from below and not from the top down organizing of any state, party or union bureaucracy" |
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Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5The best way, imho, to attack capitalism is at its weakest point - God and the state.
Libertarian socialists or anarchists also provide much needed 'product differention' when they reframe the revolutionary subject this way as authoritarian socialists are generally the ones squealing loudest about the evils of capitalism - and at the same time doing the least about overthrowing it.
Of course there is a weakness in the death-star...it's the reliance of it on God and the state.
Follow in the tradition of Stirner, Bakunin and Proudhon and you won't go far wrong.
Trust Marx and you're lost.
( just my 2c worth )
"It is sad, though, that the best on offer is simply a reformed capitalism which, while better to survive in, is hardly the best we can hope for."
This seems particulary not solid from an anarchist perspective.
One- who's voting? Not very many people.
Two- Even if they vote, do they think their senator is going to be their savior?
Three- Does make a choice imply embrace of reformed capitalism? What role does the conscious selection between options have to do with the struggle against power?
You could make a similar arguement about unions, but we see again and again people act collectively against capitalism and the unions without consciously having that orientation. Likewise people's perspective towards the State will be complex, and their actions again may reflect a number of tendencies, some of which are anti-state. Nor is making compromises inherently suggestive of them embracing all the above.
""It is sad, though, that the best on offer is simply a reformed capitalism which, while better to survive in, is hardly the best we can hope for."
"This seems particulary not solid from an anarchist perspective."
I really have no idea what you mean. The article is explictly anti-parliamentarian and anti-electioneering. Do you not think that it is sad that the alternative most people are aware of these days is reformed capitalism? Surely it is our task as anarchists to show that real alternatives exist -- and how to achieve them?
I just meant that just because some people voted for a socialist doesn't mean that they even think that is a real alternative. For example in non-presidential elections only about a quarter of the population votes (not sure about this one). Amongst those who vote for a candidate the percentage that actually thinks the candidate is more the a lesser evil is probably quite slim.
The second point is just that what constitutes an alternative can be seen from a person's thoughts and actions as an individual and a group. None of these things line up though, they have their own logic. So workers in the auto factories in WWII voted to not strike during the war, but then struck more than before the war. At home, as an individual, they supported the war and war time production. As a factory worker, their consciousness in a social context was completely different. They resisted these things on every level.
So I'm just trying to drive a wedge between the inference that since a socialist (whose been in the house anyway for a long time) got elected people are seeing it as an alternative in the strong sense.
Accoring to what I read Saunders has had a long political career in both local Vermont politics and in the House of Representatives. He seems to be quite popular with his constituents.
The CBC perhaps had the best quote on this man when they said that "in Canada he would be considered slightly left of centre". To my mind his election to the Senate is a marginal event that hardly says anything about "socialism", anarchist or otherwise. In Canada he would be considered to be part of either the centre or the moderate right wing of the NDP.
His election is ONLY significant in the context of American politics, and I would hazard a guess that there are more "socialists" in Wisconsin, the Dakotas or Minnesota than there are in Vermont. His election builds on his own personal popularity and effective action more than it builds on his ideas.