Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

There is some serious strike action going on in the Netherlands in regional public transport. This is like a breath of fresh air in a country where the Right is on the rampage and workers' struggles have been quite subdued for much too long.

Something of a reply to the essay by Michael Parenti, "Left Anti-Communism: The Unkindest Cut" and a retort to the tenancy of modern Stalinists to attack their left opponents by calling them "anti-communist". This article argues that state socialism as a project and ideology was/is effectively anti-communist.

On April 5-6, 2018 Railroad Workers United held their biennial convention, just prior and in coordination with the Labor Notes Conference, in Chicago. Supply Chain Study/Research Group facilitated a workshop entitled "Struggles Along Supply Chains: Rail & Cross-Sectoral Solidarity" that modeled possible solidarity actions during a hypothetical strike at an Amazon warehouse. Warehouse worker organizers from SI Cobas in Italy, Angry Workers of the World in the U.K., and Workers Initiative from Poland participated, along with Chicago warehouse workers, Seattle Amazon tech workers, longshore workers from the Pacific Northwest, and a room full of rank-and-file railroaders.

Why isn't consent a solution to gendered and sexual violence? What can we make of the legacy of 70s feminism? How does feminism force us to rethink power and politics? All this and more in Part 2 of our 2-part Living The Dream #metoo special from The Word From Struggle Street .

They no longer hit the headlines but the Palestinian “Great Return Marches” along the Gaza border with Israel continue. Since March 22 the world has been witnessing yet more horrific scenes in the long conflict between the Israeli state and the dispossessed Palestinians on whose land that state was built. By June 2 the continual shooting of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza by an Israeli Defence Force (IDF), safely bunkered inside its own border, had produced 124 dead and at least 13,000 wounded. In all that time only one Israeli soldier has been injured.

The following article was originally published as draft for discussion by the CWO in Revolutionary Perspectives 11. After further discussions and revisions the version published here has now been adopted by the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) as a whole. As originally stated it is intended to be part of a longer document or pamphlet of the ICT.

Has “globalisation”, the freedom for capital and goods to move from one end of the planet to the other, with no barriers to limit trade and its miraculous effects, come to an end? Looking at what has happened recently, it seems that an ideology, and, even more so, one of capital’s ways of being has reached the end. It seems like the bourgeoisie, or at least a part of it, has taken a suit from its wardrobe which it has not worn for a long time, one which was needed for a tougher climate and the storms that come with it.

The Mutu Network have developed a successful new model for French radical media, with 15 websites across the country embedded in their communities, reporting on local struggles and fighting back against the monopolisation of activist news by social media corporations.

Not only is “human nature” not unchangeable, it is also not the default nature of human beings to be greedy and selfish. We can now see that fundamental to human nature, more fundamental than the debaucheries thrown up by capitalism in its imperialist phase, is in fact, the tendency towards communism.

The rulers of all the major capitalist states have no solution to a world economic crisis which in various forms has now dragged on for decades. In the last few years chronic insoluble economic crisis has increasingly translated into political crisis. This has produced not just changes in government but questions about the institutions of these supposedly democratic regimes.

#metoo has brought issues of sexual violence and gender to the forefront of public debate. But what's it all about? What's the relationship of #metoo to older feminist ideas and struggles over gendered violence and how has feminism engaged with questions of violence, crime and the state? Part 1 of a 2 part special from Living the Dream at The Word From Struggle Street

在热秋运动中，不仅有争取工资的工人运动，还有妇女们在消费环节的斗争相配合。

A quick blog in which I’m very optimistic about the Edinburgh Anarchist Feminist Bookfair, and a new class struggle self-education project in Edinburgh

It should be common sense that workers can only use their collective strength if united in some body which includes them all. But that assumes that the unions today are representative of the workers. Under modern capitalist conditions the union exists to mediate wage labour on behalf of the state. The unions’ existence as permanent bodies means they have to comply with the rules of the capitalist game. They have become another layer of management within the system.

A harshly critical look at the current fragmentation of the global anarchist movement and some potential ideas to help rectify the issues.

Some critical commentary on "The Tower", Andrew O'Hagan's essay on the Grenfell disaster.

Capitalist class rule sits atop a mountain of corpses. Syria continues to be a battleground for imperialist interests scrambling to gain a foothold in the region, as well as a potential site for the start of a Third World War. In response to this deepening crisis, June will see a series of meetings to launch a revolutionary alternative to the bosses’ war drive. The meetings will mark the re-emergence of a platform for struggle under the slogan of “No War But The Class War” (NWBCW).

We wrote down some thoughts for a discussion meeting with comrades of wildcat (Germany) about the global uprising of 1968, looking at the wider historical background of 1968 in India.

‘Kill All Normies’ (KAN) is a bestselling book, recently translated into Spanish, and is having a continuing influence on public discussion of topics from the alt-right to ‘incel’ misogynists to the purported failings of the left.