Archive for category: BLACK ROSE ANARCHIST FEDERATION

In response to the industrial, capitalist model of food production that has decimated rural lifeways and our mother earth, social movements around the world have identified agroecology as their alternative proposal for rural development. Grounded in peasant and indigenous knowledges, struggles for food sovereignty and agrarian reform, agroecology is understood by social movements as “a tool for the social, economic, cultural, political and ecological transformation of communities and territories.” 

This interview that Black Rose conducted in the Summer of 2020 with a militant from The Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro’s (FARJ) Peasant Struggle Front, explores their work with some of Brazil’s social movements struggling for agroecology and food sovereignty. Coming from a context with highly developed peasant social movements, FARJ shares important insights for anarchist militants to learn from. 

BRRN: Can you first give an overview of the kind of social work that the militants of FARJ’s Peasant Struggle Front are involved in?  What are the movements and organizations the FARJ’s militants participate in/collaborate with?  Who are the protagonists of these movements & organizations?

FARJ: Initially the Front was called “Anarchism and Nature”. Some of the members were students from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Starting from a university agroecology group, the GAE (Ecological Agriculture Group), they sought to do social work in Agrarian Reform settlements in the state of Rio de Janeiro and with families of small farmers. And the space that articulated these activities was the Rio de Janeiro Agroecology Articulation.

Starting from this process and frequent contact in the settlements, the MST (The Landless Rural Workers Movement) got to know the working style of our militants, until one of them was invited to join the movement, contributing mainly to the processes of organizing cooperative work in the Baixada Fluminense region. One of the results of this work was the contribution to the organization of a sales and distribution  cooperative for an MST settlement in the metropolitan region of the state of Rio, around 2008. As time went on, more militants joined the Front; some from rural areas, from the MST, or students in the field of agronomy.

Around 2012 the MPA (Small Farmers Movement) arrived in Rio, and we have militants from our front contributing also to the movement and its development in the state. We also have a comrade who works in the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).

Our work in rural movements and spaces is related to themes such as rural education, political training [formação1], communication, production, sales and distribution, and human rights. We always seek to maintain a link with the bases of the movements, even those militants who live in the state capital or in the city. We seek to contribute to the accumulated knowledge of FARJ and the historical experiences of organized anarchism in peasant struggles, with our concept of social work and militant style, pursuing the development of popular power. We stimulate the political participation and the protagonism of the grassroots in the processes of movements’ daily struggle. We also seek to encourage alliances and joint actions between rural and urban movements where we also operate or which we support, such as solidarity actions, actions for exchanging experiences between the movements’ bases, visits, and campaigns, among others that enable contacts between the bases.

Today we have militants in the MST, MPA and CPT. The protagonists are landless workers, small farmers, and quilombola [maroon descendant] communities. Many in the settlements, for example, come from the sugar cane industry, from work analogous to slavery, from slums, or were precarious workers. A good part of the movements’ bases are black folks, youth, and women.

BRRN: Can you talk about how you personally came to be involved in peasant movements and movements for food sovereignty & agroecology?  Why do you think it is important for anarchists to be engaged in these struggles? What is the importance of these struggles in this moment of the global Covid-19 pandemic in particular?

FARJ: My militancy was in the Community Front, in the Base Organization Movement (MOB), which currently works in the Center of Social Culture and in the Morro dos Macacos community. Since 2013 I supported the MST with graphic design for the Cícero Guedes Agrarian Reform State Fair, a 3-day annual fair in the center of the city of Rio de Janeiro with the produce from the state, the southeastern region, and partners in the city and other movements. Around 2014, MPA and MST started a biweekly farmers market on the Praia Vermelha campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which I also support with communication and other activities. So from these relationships and contacts presented the possibilities of contributing from the capital, either with the tasks of communication and propaganda, or contributing to the organization of spaces for the sales and distribution of products of the movements in the city and always trying to maintain the connection with their bases.

MST members sell their products at a farmers market.

Historically, anarchism has been, and still is, present in peasant struggles: China, Ukraine, Spain, Perú and other examples. Anarchism must be a part of struggles from below, and wherever we have space to contribute with our proposals and build popular power. The agrarian, land (access to land  and land concentration), peasant, indigenous, black, and quilombola questions are central in Latin america, in spite of the demographic concentration in big cities. In large part we are agricultural export countries, where natural resources are tremendously exploited by capital, who have a very strong base of people of indigenous, black, and peasant origin, with an extreme concentration of land in the hands of capitalists, latifundiários [large landowners], and foreigners. There are many conflicts in the rural areas, with assassinations of community leaders and militants, land grabs and evictions. Not to mention the issue of food sovereignty, of the production of food for the people in opposition to the agribusiness model that produces commodities for export. So the issue of land is very important in Brazil and throughout the continent, and from there we see the importance of us being inserted in those struggles as well. Understanding that while we have our own goals, the rural and urban struggles should be connected. 

We also learn a lot in these mass movements, contributing to our political training as militants, particularly in base-building work. Be it in courses, materials and spaces for political training in movements, or in the day-to-day of grassroots work. 

Currently, in the context of COVID-19, rural movements have a great importance for producing healthy foods for the population, and for leading on issues of environment, energy, and food sovereignty. There are analyses that point out a “pandemic” of a lack of food for the population. Many favelas already have people who are experiencing hunger. In response, there are many campaigns of solidarity and of distributing food boxes to residents of favelas and packed lunches for people living in the street. Unions and people are making donations for the purchase of these foods from rural movements and urban agriculture movements in the city of Rio. That is, the acts of solidarity have multiplied and are organized by the population and by social movements. 

BRRN: What has been your experience as an anarchist participating in/collaborating with these movements? How do you push within these movements for more anti-authoritarian/anarchistic practices?

FARJ: We believe that the experience, here in Rio de Janeiro, provides an opportunity for us to have an influence. One aspect of the practical political training too, through participating in mass movements like these, is contributing to the organization of collective processes. There is contact with the people, with concrete realities and problems, and the need to think of ways to solve problems through organizing and base-building. There are also formal political training processes, such as national and local courses, visits to experiences in other states, and state and national encounters. Specific political trainings on certain issues or just in daily life, in contact with other militants and comrades.

A FARJ flag tied together with the flag of MST.

For example, because of the tasks and trainings of the social movements, I was able to learn about communication, and agroecological management and cooperatives, in addition to the debates around agrarian and food issues. We also bring these accumulated skills and knowledge to the political organization, in the sense that they characterize and contribute to the accumulation of political training that we have for our entire militancy. In other words, it is a two-way street, a dialectical process, adapting to the formation and interest of our organization. So it is important that it is not just an individual accumulation, but that it helps in some way in the formation of the entire militancy of the specific [anarchist] organization.

Here in the state of Rio, I believe that most of the common challenges to social movements, both in the rural areas and in the city, are due to the difficulty of base-building, often the need for more militants, the difficulty in obtaining resources and structure–organizational difficulties. There are also difficulties in achieving a more consolidated articulation between the various social movements, which end up being more sporadic or a part of campaigns. In the face of a reality of advancing ultraliberalism and the systematic extinction of social rights and policies, it is a permanent challenge to build processes that are able to self-manage and mobilize the people in communities and base-building locations. But in general, we seek to help organize what is disorganized, acting as yeast in mass struggles.

Members of FARJ and MOB in a mass demonstration.

BRRN: In the interview that FARJ did with Zabalaza, the Association of Autonomous Producers of the Countryside and the City (APAC) was mentioned. I’m very curious to know more about that organization, what they do, and how that association builds urban and rural solidarity around questions for food sovereignty and land?

FARJ: APAC played an important role in producing agricultural implements for small producers. Its origin came from CADTS, the Center for Learning and Technical and Social Development, a group linked to Social Pastorals who worked with the education of urban workers, politically training electricians, seamstresses, machinists, printers and other professions. This work strengthened their performance in the union and community fields. In order to strengthen solidarity between rural and urban workers, CADTS initiated a project to develop agricultural implements with technology built together with “tillers of the land”, an expression used at the time. In their visits to rural workers to gather information and design the implements, the CADTS students decided to structure this work to meet this demand that they had already met for several groups of farmers all over Brazil. Thus, APAC was born on the 1st of May, bringing together not only “metallurgists”, but also farmers, homemakers, unemployed people, popular educators, etc. with the organicity, inspired by self-management, of an association composed of several autonomous work groups that articulate themselves collectively in a general assembly. Over more than 30 years since its foundation, APAC has welcomed many groups of workers. We will mention just a few to illustrate its  diversity:

  • Multimetal: The manufacture of metal parts and equipment, from which various tools for the field were made. After a few years it was replaced by OPMAC, which refers to the word “field” [“campo”], these metal design services continued and over they time began to develop projects for urban workers such as wagons adapted for waste pickers for recycling, the manufacture of recycled brooms, etc.
  • Arte Fuxico: Gathering artisans who reused leftover fabrics from the clothing industry and made customized pieces such as bags, rugs and tools in general.
  • Community Pré-Vestibular prep courses: Popular education initiative that sought space at APAC to assemble a preparatory course for admission to universities. The nucleus of the APAC course lasted a few years and was part of a network of community courses from different regions.
  • Auto Mechanics: Auto repair shop that brought together a master mechanic and their assistants. The group provided internal and external services to APAC and had a very important role in teaching the trade of mechanics and attendance at the association’s assemblies.
  • Printer: A print shop that brought together workers mostly from CADTS backgrounds who developed graphic design projects and editions of numerous publications for social movements and various external services.

Our arrival at APAC was parallel to the founding of FARJ, and we have some militants who’ve had and have closer relations with them, either through collaborating on projects or some being part of the management of APAC. We’ve come to do a screen printing workshop there, political meetings, community work groups, political training lectures and popular language courses. We will highlight one of the most structured initiatives of our militancy, which was to organize the Floreal Cooperative of Workers in Agroecology, where we had great interaction with the internal groups of APAC, bringing agendas discussed with our work with the Forum of Popular Cooperativism, the Articulation of Agroecology of Rio de Janeiro and the Technical Assistance and Extension sectors. It was a period that encouraged APAC to contribute to issues of agrarian conjuncture, agroecology, urban agriculture, school gardens, popular herbalism groups, social ecology, rural/urban solidarity and food sovereignty and agrarian reform. This factor strengthened the relationship of our militants with the social movements in the countryside, such as the MST, CPT, and MPA, as well as for the use of space as a warehouse or for the manufacture of agricultural implements. But our experience with popular cooperatives opened doors for us to contribute to the construction of cooperatives and associations in the movements.

BRRN: Are you involved with the Territorial Solidarity Committees, organized by the MPA as a response to the current social crisis? Can you share a bit about this project?

FARJ: In this context of COVID-19, rural movements, such as MPA and MST, the CPT and urban agriculture groups such as the Carioca Urban Agriculture Network, and the Agroecology Articulation, have developed solidarity actions in the countryside and in the city.

MPA is with the Territorial Solidarity Committees. With the distribution of agroecological foods, creating spaces for dialogue and political debates, strengthening the organizational processes between the social and territorial movements of the countryside and the city. The actions can happen in different ways depending on the local reality and demands. The movement has continued providing material support in the city with weekly deliveries of peasant food boxes, and the donation of meals for homeless people.

The logo of MPA.

The MST has Marmita Solidária, which receives donations from unions and supporters to buy food to prepare meals for the homeless. And the Nós por Nós (“Us for Us”) Campaign, which is part of the Periferia Viva (“Alive Periphery”) Campaign, and which MPA and other movements also participate in. The campaign raises funds to buy agroecological produce from settlements and small farmers to donate to favelas, and together do support work, such as legal aid for those who do not have identity documents, or other actions in addition to just donating food.

For CAB (Brazilian Anarchist Coordination) we are organizing the Vida Digna (“Dignified Life”) national campaign, against the increase in the cost of living. There are state and local committees, and we managed to arrange a food donation from the MST for two occupations of the Internationalist Front of the Homeless. CPT also articulated a possibility of resourcing landless settlements and quilombola communities, among others, in the northern region of the state of Rio, together with MPA.

But across the country, several similar actions are taking place with our CAB militants involved, seeking to articulate solidarity actions between the countryside and the city, between small farmers and indigenous communities. Actions that bring supporters of the city that want to help. We hope that all this helps to bring the movements of the countryside and the city closer, in a more organic way, between the bases of these movements as well. Actions that make movements think together forms of everyday solidarity, without needing projects, politicians or public policies.

This pandemic meant that movements and collectives had to create other forms of distribution, other forms of logistics to continue with production and distribution of their products. And all of this may be important in the future, if the movements manage to define the right strategic policies, as we will have less and less public policies for the countryside by the State. On the contrary, attacks on indigenous people, peasants and land grabbing are only increasing.

BRRN: The MST is probably the most well-known of Brazil’s social movements globally; the organization and its impressive accomplishments in terms of seizing and redistributing land to thousands of families, promoting agroecology and food sovereignty, and its contribution to global peasant movements, has been a source of inspiration for revolutionaries around the world, including many anarchists. From afar, it seems like there are many aspects of the organization’s practices and tactics that align with anarchist principles. At the same time, there are characteristics of the MST, such as their Marxism-Leninism, and relationship to the PT, which might present challenges for anarchists who wish to support/participate/collaborate with the MST. I’d love to know what FARJ’s assessment is of the MST, the positive aspects of the movement, any critiques you have, and how you navigate working with the MST. 

FARJ: In Brazil, the land issue, the concentration of land, is central. Today, we are a country that is still a peripheral agrarian-exporter of commodities, despite being seen by other world powers as a contender, a world player, due to the size and natural assets it has, such as water, oil, mineral resources, etc. Which is why we have attacks and coups, which are present throughout the history of Latin American countries. So Brazil has always had strong agrarian and land conflicts, several historical revolts, not to mention the quilombos, the rural workers, the indigenous people.

MST members on demonstration.

The MST, like other movements in the countryside, comes from this accumulation of struggles, conflicts and revolts. Before, one of the main movements was the Peasant Leagues (1954-1964). Over time, unions in the countryside that worked on these labor issues and for wage workers, employed on farms, etc., also appeared. With the coup and the business-military dictatorship (1964) the militants of the countryside also suffered a lot of repression, with more than a thousand dead and disappeared, and persecuting and repressing the Peasant Leagues.

Then there was the opening and conciliatory transition from dictatorship to democracy. Unlike countries like Argentina, the military in Brazil was not punished for the crimes of the dictatorship. At that time, several armed leftist resistance groups sought to resist the dictatorship. So the process that followed, in the 70-80s, also has the development and involvement of labor organizations, culminating in CUT (Unified Workers Central) (1983), progressive sectors of the church (CEBs (Eclesiastical Base Communities), Pastoral Land Commission and Liberation Theology), rural movements and the PT (Worker’s Party).

In the CUT there was the Rural Department, which brought together rural workers, with an agenda more related to labor rights. And the MST (and later MPA) also appeared to deal with agendas of rural demands from the countryside that were not only about labor conditions, but access to land, credit and public policies to produce and to continue reproducing their rural livelihoods. In other words, the CUT and the unions in the countryside did not cover all the peasant agendas.

The clergy and Liberation Theology had an important role together with the movements of the countryside, doing groundwork in the communities, mobilizing the people and contributing to the social movements that came to occupy the land.

This was the big political “broth” with a social base, which we address here in a very general way. And all this broth and struggles were being accumulated in the so-called Popular Democratic Project, with the PT as its political party expression. In other words, some of these major mass movements in Brazil have a very strong historical relationship with the PT. With the arrival of the PT in the government, the movements were also incorporating a political culture of being part of the state, of bureaucratizing themselves as well. This had as a consequence a great weakening of the movements, mainly today, with difficulties to mobilize the masses and to face the attacks of the fascist-oriented Bolsonaro government.

In addition, the main organizational reference of these movements is Marxism-Leninism and democratic centralism, even though sometimes the movements themselves recognize the need to seek other elements that better deal with the reality of the peasantry and the subjects of the countryside. So if the mechanisms of political participation are worked on, there are risks of falling into distant relations between the bases and the leadership of these movements. That is, the need for spaces that enable qualitative political participation from the grassroots, reflecting on the work in which they are inserted, forming themselves, leading the processes and contributing, from their reality, with the direction of the movement. It also avoids the risks of falling into pragmatism, or the so-called “putting out fires” daily, which accumulates little politically and socially, even if a lot is being done.

In our anarchist conception, we believe that the subject of social transformation is not given, but is formed in everyday work and struggle, and popular power is built with the subjects’ political participation, assuming responsibilities and protagonism in the struggles. Therefore, the organizational form needs to be aligned with a transformative ideological concept, so that it allows the advance of non-alienating organizational forms.

MST Farmers.

Therefore, we also seek to bring and project other historical experiences of struggle and organization of the working class, of the peasantry, of the originary communities. We have examples like the Mexican Revolution (1910), and the later Zapatista movement in Mexico. The struggle of the Makhnovist army in Ukraine, in the process of the Russian Revolution, processes with indigenous and peasant protagonism in the expropriation of land and social organization. The collectivization and organization of production and social processes in the Spanish Civil War, in the countryside and in the city, with the example of the CNT. Like Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan, with the organization, self-defense, territorial and labor and production management in a collective and direct way. Current community experiences in Colombia with the concept of land as a common good, and demanding the permanence and reproduction of forms of community life in the territories. In short, there are various experiences, some known to the movements, in addition to other references that they also seek, and that we examine to study and identify elements that can contribute to our processes here.

Therefore, anarchism also needs to develop concrete tools for intervention in reality, for mobilizing and managing life in its different aspects, social, cultural, productive, economic. In other words, we also need to develop proposals to organize the countryside and to address these issues.

BRRN: Struggles for food sovereignty, agroecology, and agrarian reform raise some really critical questions for anarchists, particularly because many of the movements and academics that dominate the discourse don’t share our critiques of the state, electoralism, etc., and often see nation-state as the vehicle for achieving food sovereignty, agrarian reform, etc. I haven’t come across many contemporary anarchist perspectives on food sovereignty, agroecology, and agrarian reform, and I’m very curious to know about your reflections as an anarchist participating in these movements in Brazil, and how yourself and other FARJ militants in the Frente de Luta Camponesa think about food sovereignty and agrarian reform from an anarchist perspective—can we articulate a particular anarchist perspective on how to achieve and sustain food sovereignty and agrarian reform that is distinct from the perspectives of Marxist-Leninist, social democratic and liberal currents within social movements?

FARJ: We are starting to have this debate currently at CAB, in the Agrarian Working Group, among militants who work with rural movements, with indigenous, non-urban communities. With other movements like the MAM (Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining) and it has a little to do with the previous question. In other words, what are the concrete proposals of anarchism for reality? What is our anarchist program of struggle?

So we are beginning to discuss which concepts are important and central to us. Such as Food Sovereignty, agrarian reform or revolution, natural and energy resources. Bem viver (“living well”), as opposed to the logic of development, among others.

For us, these issues need to be related to popular demands, to popular reality. For us, agroecology must be a tool and principle to strengthen the struggle and organization of rural peoples and communities. In other words, we will also seek to apply these concepts and questions as references, within our anarchist conception, based on popular reality, to strengthen our work of base-building and building popular power.

Some of these concepts are also worked on by the rural social movements such as food sovereignty, agroecology, feminism. But it is clear that we need to develop our conceptions about them as well. But we can say, in general, that the left often has a reading of reality that is very urban, valuing questions around trade unions and urban issues more, reproducing this centrality in the urban. And anarchism is not free from reproducing some of that, too.

BRRN: Needless to say, the historical processes of colonialism and capitalist development around the world have left a mess of contradictions for different oppressed classes and communities to navigate when it comes to the questions of land. Here in the US, because social movements are so weak, the discourse and struggles around land and land reform don’t seem to be as advanced when compared to the Brazilian context.  One critical question here in the US & Canada—two european settler colonial projects situated on stolen indigenous territories—is how different oppressed populations in struggle around questions of land—indigenous peoples, people of African descent, small farmers, migrant farm workers, etc. can be in solidarity with one another as opposed to being pitted against one another by the contradictions created by the systems of settler colonialism and capitalism. I’m very curious to know where the discourse around these complicated questions are among the social movements you work with, and what your perspectives are on them, as anarchists? In Rio de Janeiro, are there promising signs of solidarity between indigenous people, quilombola communities, peasant farmers and farm workers? Can you recommend some good sources for folks who would like to learn more about these questions and struggles?

FARJ: Similar territorial issues also occur here, I believe also to be the consequences of the historical processes of colonialism, structural slavery and patriarchy and the other oppressions enhanced by capitalism.

Brazil, being a country of continental dimensions, poses several challenges. For example, there is a reality, a relationship with the land and culture of settlers in the south of the country, and there is another one of the indigenous communities and other subjects in the north of the country. This already poses several questions for the fight and the movements as well. For example, the issue of working with the idea of ​​the peasant subject, in the face of these diversities. It also involves knowing and knowing how to understand other organizational forms, which may be different from the organizational forms that the traditional left reproduces.

On the other hand, Brazil has this great potential for struggle and for people and subjects in the countryside. Almost 40% of the land in the country is land reform settlements, indigenous lands (recognized or not), quilombos, peasant communities. The powerful know of this potential and are afraid. That is why they invest in repression and the dismantling of social rights, land grabbing, paramilitary violence, etc.

It is a social diversity that is a reality in Latin America. The strength of the indigenous people in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia. The Mapuche in Argentina and Chile. Colombia is also a very rich and interesting country, with Afro-Colombian communities, various indigenous ethnicities, peasants. There is the CNA (National Agrarian Coordinator), a significant peasant movement in the country, there is a very interesting debate on “agri-food territory”, for example.

In Rio the MPA has been making contacts and working with some quilombola communities, and now indigenous communities. In the capital there is the struggle of Aldeia Maracanã, which mobilized enough supporters against the speculation and gentrification that the Olympics mega-event blew open. There are many possibilities for dialogue between quilombos, indigenous villages, favelas, rural and city movements and we can go further. Actions such as community gardens, urban agriculture, are also interesting possibilities for the food sovereignty of favela dwellers, and possibilities for dialogue with rural movements. The organization of consumer collectives in cities, organizing themselves for access to and distribution of  healthy food in the countryside. Collective investment groups of supporters, enabling rural production. Supportive relationships between different sectors of the working class, deliverers, education workers, students. The possibilities of organizing from below are many.

A few websites for reference and more information:

Virtual Library of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) – www.reformaagrariaemdados.org.br/biblioteca

Movement of Small Farmers (MPA) – www.mpabrasil.org.br

Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM) – http://mamnacional.org.br/

National Agrarian Coordinator (Colombia) – www.cna-colombia.org

Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) – cptnacional.org.br

Rio Grande do Sul Quilombola Front – www.facebook.com/FrenteQuilombolaRs

Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon – www.facebook.com/coiabamazoniaoficial

Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) – www.facebook.com/apiboficial

Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of the Southern Region – www.facebook.com/ARPINSULBRASIL

Mídia India – www.facebook.com/VozDosPovos

Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) – www.facebook.com/conselhoindigena.cir

Articulation of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo (APOINME) – www.facebook.com/apoinme.brasil

People’s Web (Teia dos Povos) – www.facebook.com/TeiadosPovosoficial

BRRN: Anything else you’d like to share? 

FARJ: We would like to thank the space and the opportunity to share the experiences and work here. There are other comrades organized at CAB who can also contribute with their experiences from their states and our work also has contributions from them. We hope to have contributed to Black Rose, and to help more people know a little more about the struggles in Brazil and on our continent. We also hope to have more opportunities for exchanges like this one with our comrades from BR, who also inspire us. Spaces like this are essential. Arriba lxs que luchan!!!

1. There is no direct translation of the term formação, as it is used by the social movements, in English. In this interview I’ve translated it as “political training”, though it can be more accurately understood as the collective processes within social movements that include “consciousness-raising work, political education, and leadership development.”  For more discussion of the concept and practice of formação, see “Leadership development and Formação in Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST)” by Dawn Plummer

This interview was conducted by a member of Black Rose Anarchist Federation’s New York City Local.

The post Agroecology and Organized Anarchism: An Interview With the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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In 1919, the example of the Bolshevik revolution spread all over the world. There were insurrections in Germany, Austria, Hungary, China, and Finland. Hundreds of strikes broke out in England. In Turin, the powerful Biennio Rosso (“Two Red Years”) posed workers’ power in every workplace, led by factory councils. The entire world was turning to the left, and the United States could not help but be a part of it. It was in Seattle that the revolutionary spirit struck hardest.

A coastal city in the state of Washington, in what is known as the country’s Pacific Northwest, Seattle at the beginning of the 20th century was already an important port. Its boom was fueled by shipbuilding and the timber industry. In addition, its geographical location made it the main port for trading with northern Asia and with Alaska.

The city’s economic prosperity drew a lot of local and immigrant workers, who found jobs mainly in the shipyards and sawmills. These industries underwent tremendous growth with the U.S. entry into World War I, with more ships for the Navy built in Seattle than anywhere else.

The great General Strike in “Queen City,”1 which many historians consider to be the most important strike in U.S. history, did not happen in a vacuum. The American working class entered 1919 having flexed its muscles in hundreds of strikes in the three prior years from 1916 to 1918, involving more than 1 million workers. During that period, union membership grew by 400 percent. Despite brutal repression, American workers won the 8-hour workday and a long list of improvements in their working conditions. But above all, they gained both a more radical class-consciousness and greater confidence in their own strength.

The state of Washington was the epicenter of this radicalism. Once the United States entered the war, militant unionism intensified in Seattle. The rising class-consciousness of the workers clashed with the imperialist pretensions of the Woodrow Wilson administration, which was not about to permit any “anti-national” behavior in the midst of a world war.

President Wilson had won reelection in 1916 on a promise not to participate in the war. However, he quickly dropped that, and by 1917 the United States was dispatching its first troop ships.

The new war economy demanded wage freezes and military discipline in all the country’s factories and workplaces — to ensure a steady supply of arms, ships, and food for the front lines. This was done with the complicity of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) union bureaucrats, who helped the authorities control wages and block and suppress strikes.

For the U.S. government, Seattle was a Germanophile and pro-Bolshevik center. The Bureau of Investigation2 in Washington, D.C. referred to Seattle workers as “the scum of the earth.”3 In those years, the city boasted of a long leftist tradition, with the port owned by the city and women guaranteed the right to vote.

Historian Cal Winslow writes that the Seattle workers “created a culture of their own: unions that were ‘clean,’ not run by gangsters; a mass-circulation labor-owned newspaper, the Union Record, which became a daily in 1918, the only one of its kind; with socialist schools where classes were held both in their classrooms and outdoors; there were IWW choirs, community dances, and picnics. Utopian land-settlement schemes in Seattle’s vicinity drew in idealists and free-thinkers.”4

The main nucleus of the Socialist Party of Washington was in Seattle, with about 4,000 militant workers who paid party dues. They represented the left wing of the Socialist Party nationally, clashing with its mostly conservative national leadership on several occasions. Mostly, they criticized its leadership for supporting Samuel Gompers, the corrupt president of the AFL. The far left had won the party leadership in Seattle back in 1912.

Seattle was also the center of West Coast activity for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), created by socialists, anarchists, and revolutionary trade unionists to challenge the bureaucratic and pro-employer AFL from the left. By 1917, the IWW’s  membership was 150,000. The IWW had succeeded in organizing Washington lumberjacks and sawmill workers, winning wage and labor improvements for the union members.

The state of Washington responded to the uptick in class struggle, in the context of a world war, with increased repression. All the IWW leaders were prosecuted and imprisoned. In Chicago, 101 members were tried for sedition and conspiracy against the U.S. government; the state secretary of the Socialist Party in Washington, Emil Herman, was imprisoned on McNeil Island.5

The combined situation of the influence of the October revolution, on the one hand, and the accumulated experience of the workers, on the other, was explosive. As early as 1917, on the eve of the Christmas holidays, the convergence between the revolution and the Seattle proletariat was sealed with the arrival in port of the Russian cargo ship Shilka, which had been “wounded” while sailing in the Pacific. Thousands of longshoremen, metalworkers, waitresses, sawyers, and workers from other trades came to the dock to give a big, warm welcome, with speeches and songs.

Seattle General Strike Is Transformed into Workers’ Power

The workers’ press in Seattle published Lenin’s letters. City delegates to the national AFL conventions were pressing their leaders to give official recognition to the new workers’ state in Russia. Dockworkers intercepted cargo containing rifles and ammunition bound for the counterrevolutionary White army in Siberia. The spark that ignited the gunpowder was the January 1919 strike, in which the 35,000 shipyard workers demanded the wage increase they had been promised for their war-related sacrifices.

Right off the bat, the shipyards sent their representatives to the Seattle Central Labor Council (SCLC) to demand it call a citywide General Strike in solidarity. Pressured by the rank-and-file, the Council agreed and immediately issued the General Strike call to the city’s 110 unions so the rank-and-file could decide.

The Central Labor Council was a coordinating committee of all the city’s trades unions created in previous years so each collective bargaining effort in a given industry would achieve a unitary agreement with the bosses. Both AFL and IWW delegates participated. The very existence of this committee revealed the class-consciousness that existed in unruly Seattle.

The working class voted overwhelmingly in favor of the strike. The Central Labor Council established a General Strike Committee in which rank-and-file delegates from all the trade unions participated. It was a genuine body of semi-soviet workers’ power. While it lasted, the General Strike Committee ran all of Seattle and its essential services — without the employers, without the political parties of the bourgeoisie, and without the police.

Because of the strike, more than 100,000 workers — a third of the city’s entire population — were suddenly unemployed. For years, the AFL had maintained racist divisions within the working class, keeping non-white workers out of its unions. That became impossible. Japanese barbers and restaurant workers were also joining the General Strike from their own unions. The very small Black population was doing the same.

Howard Zinn, in his classic book A People’s History of the United States, brings to life those six glorious days, when the working class made tremendous revolutionary progress:

The city now stopped functioning, except for activities organized by the strikers to provide essential needs. Firemen agreed to stay on the job. Laundry workers handled only hospital laundry. Vehicles authorized to move carried signs “Exempted by the General Strike Committee.” Thirty-five neighborhood milk stations were set up.

Every day thirty thousand meals were prepared in large kitchens, then transported to halls all over the city and served cafeteria style, with strikers paying twenty-five cents a meal, the general public thirty-five cents. People were allowed to eat as much as they wanted of the beef stew, spaghetti, bread, and coffee.

A Labor War Veteran’s Guard was organized to keep the peace. On the blackboard at one of its headquarters was written: “The purpose of this organization is to preserve law and order without the use of force. No volunteer will have any police power or be allowed to carry weapons of any sort, but to use persuasion only.” During the strike, crime in the city decreased.6 

The working class’s potential to lead society was demonstrated. But with conservative leaderships at the head of their national unions and with the leadership of the Socialist Party still bound by social democratic prejudices, the example could not last. The Seattle Soviet could not, over its six days, withstand the pressure on the leaderships of the AFL and the hesitant IWW, as well as on the workers, and the experiment with workers’ power in the United States was put to an end.

To understand what happened, one must consider that alongside the General Strike Committee, a parallel steering committee known as “the Committee of Fifteen” was established, composed of the main representatives of the trade union aristocracy. This body was charged with undermining any challenge to the authority and anti-democratic measures of the labor leadership, so the insurrection posed by the General Strike Committee would not spread, either in length or breadth. In the end, the bureaucratic leaders secured that objective and kept the strike from extending throughout the vast region. Given an opportunity to turn the Seattle Soviet into a bastion for revolution in the United States, the union bureaucracy capitulated.

In the end, the workers returned to work with the realization that they had won none of their demands. Nevertheless, the experiment of the General Strike Council controlling the entire city for several days became a historical marker.

Today, that old experience of struggle should be an inescapable point of reference for a new generation of young people and workers in the United States who are engaged in a deep wave of mobilizations, a true rebellion against structural racism, driven by the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” This movement must be imbued with the lessons of the Seattle Soviet, which are more relevant today than ever before. Each new advance in the struggle of the masses presents “new old” challenges.

You may be interested in: Police Abolition, Self Defense, and Self Organization

One task for the current movement in the United States that cannot be postponed is to promote the emergence of union rank-and-files to lead an alliance with the hundreds of thousands of young people who are mobilizing throughout the country. In Seattle, they should be leading to create a police-free autonomous zone not just for a few blocks, but in the entire city — as was the case a hundred years ago. This is not an impossible task that must be postponed until the situation has “ripened.” Already, sectors of the working class are beginning to emerge that have mobilized despite the policies of the bureaucratic leaderships, as in Minnesota and elsewhere, and the debate is opening about the need for the police to be expelled from union federations under the slogan “cops are not workers.” Meanwhile, a number of Microsoft employees are demanding that the company cancel contracts with the Seattle Police Department and other state agencies.

Both the history of the Seattle Soviet and the experience of the last few weeks remind us that, in explosive situations, the consciousness of the masses can advance rapidly. The condemnation of the murder of George Floyd quickly escalated into a challenge against the entire police system, and from there to the widespread demand to abolish the police. All 50 U.S. states have mobilized and defied curfews.

We must also remember that the labor movement would not be starting from nothing. It has some important recent experiences: the teachers’ struggles of 2018–19 and, more recently, the historic strike of workers at General Motors, which was the longest auto strike in 50 years. Now, with the Covid-19 crisis in the United States, workers at different companies have led hard fights against the economic consequences being put on their shoulders.

Without a doubt, it is paramount that the youth leading the rebellion and the labor movement converge. To advance along this road, it is necessary to promote self-organization and political independence from the Democratic Party, with a socialist and revolutionary perspective.

First published in Spanish on June 21 in Ideas de Izquierda.

Translation by Scott Cooper

Notes   [ + ]

1. ↑ Translator’s note: In 1869, a real estate firm in Portland, Oregon that was selling property in Seattle issued a sales prospectus titled “The Future Queen City of the Pacific.” The name stuck, and Queen City became Seattle’s nickname. In 1982, the local tourism bureau adopted “Emerald City” as a new name.
2. ↑ Translator’s note: Established in 1908, this agency’s name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935.
3. ↑ Translator’s note: Cited in William Preston, Jr., Aliens & Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995).
4. ↑ Cal Winslow, “Company Town? : Ghosts of Seattle’s Rebel Past,” New Left Review 112, July–August 2018.
5. ↑ Translator’s note: McNeil Island is in Puget Sound, off the Seattle coast.
6. ↑ Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chap. 15, “Self-Help in Hard Times” (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
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Image by c.a.

Out of the national uprising in protest of the racist police murder of George Floyd in Milwaukee emerged a movement occupied space of 8-10 blocks in the Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill. The space began “as an accident” when on the evening of June 7 a man drove drove into the protests and shot a demonstrator. Quickly the crowds set up barricades at several intersections and an occupy style encampment emerged as the the mayor ordered the evacuation of the East Precinct police statement encompassed within the zone. Originally deemed the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) the space was soon renamed Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) and remained in place until July 1 when Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan ordered police to clear out the space after a series of late night shootings. Written in late July 2020, this critical analysis piece was based on discussions and experiences of our Seattle Black Rose/Rosa Negra comrades. 

By Black Rose/Rosa Negra – Seattle

The Black Lives Matter movement that erupted in May of 2020 has transformed the American political landscape like no other social movement in decades. Since the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police department, in what may be the largest demonstrations in American history, the country has exploded in riots, demonstrations, mobilizations, petitions, corporate campaigns, occupations, social media activism, and other movement activities. More than 4,700 physical actions have taken place in the last month that included more people — between 15 to 23 million according to data analytic firms — than any other social movement in US history. Further, the passive support for movement is overwhelming, with large majorities expressing favorable views of the movement, including even majority support for the burning of the Minneapolis police precinct, something that has maintained a broader degree of support than either presidential candidate. Again, all without precedent in American history. 

Although the scale, scope, and popular support of the movement is unprecedented, the pattern the movement is taking is a familiar one in American history. The Black liberation movement has been at the forefront of a broad variety of movements for liberation in the US. For example, in the 19th century the abolitionist movement gave rise to the movement for women’s suffrage, or in the 1960s the civil rights movement planted the seeds for second wave feminism, anti-war, and LGBTQ movements. The current BLM movement marks a continuation of this trend, with the potential to further radicalize and empower other oppressed peoples in the United States. We believe this is especially true as the country faces as series of related but distinct crises from its collapsing empire – on immigration, gender and patriarchy, medical care and health, jobs and unemployment, the pandemic, policing, poverty, drug addiction, homelessness, housing, climate, higher education, public schooling, mass shootings, institutional corruption, loss of legitimacy, militarism and foreign wars — the list goes on. 

Along with CLR James, we see Black movements in the United States as an important, if not leading form of revolutionary struggle in the US. James argues that even modest movements for reform from African Americans contain revolutionary potential because of the social position of Black workers and the nature of their confrontation with concentrated power. Because of their “proletarian composition,” James says that “the struggle for democratic rights brings the Negroes almost immediately face to face with capital and the state,” and that because of this it is “a direct part of the struggle for socialism.” This is especially true when a direct aim of the movement is for the diminished capacity for state policing, criminalization, incarceration, and militarism. 

Importantly, the current manifestation of BLM has picked up where the last one dropped off, and this has contributed to the radicalism of the moment, the impatience and intransigence of the activists, and the level of popular support for it aims, including defunding the police, and the widespread discussion of police abolition – itself initiated as a revolutionary demand. The peak of the last interaction of the BLM movement came in 2015 and 2016 when the movement articulated various demands. One set of demands coming from the nonprofit sector looked to specific legislative change on a broad set of intersectional issues, like reparations, health care, education, and others. Another, coming from the streets, argued to “Defund, Disarm, and Disband” the police. Unfortunately, with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, movements were set on a defensive footing and the energy for BLM and other social movements dissipated. However, it was these set of later demands that the movement picked up almost instantaneously in the 2020 manifestations. 

Visitors walk near a sign that reads “Welcome to CHOP,” Sunday, June 14, 2020.

The Movement in Seattle 

With the current iteration of BLM, we are not in a revolutionary moment, but this moment has the seedlings of revolutionary struggle.

We see this potential playing out and developing in Seattle. Echoing the 2015 demands, on June 6th activists with Decriminalize Seattle initiated the calls to defund by 50% the Seattle police department. These became a central demand for the movement in Seattle and much of the rest of the country. This was a strategic leap forward for the movement here, giving clear demands that could be fought for and potentially won. It gave the movement political direction and enhanced the efficacy of the previous amorphous expressions of anger and grief. And in the aftermath of CHOP these demands now have majority support on the city council. 

Although only a part of a much larger movement, the CHOP – the occupied protest zone of the Capitol Hill neighborhood – was the most significant advance in the city.  Say what we will about its failures, as we will discuss, the CHOP represents the peak of the early revolutionary potential in Seattle. 

For more detailed accounting and analysis, we recommend Arun Gupta’s “Seattle’s CHOP went out with both a bang and a whimper” and Micheal Reagan’s “In Defense of Autonomy: Seattle’s CHOP Advanced the Movement for Black Lives.” Here though we aim to present in broad strokes the political significance of CHOP and break down it’s shortcomings. 

In short, through force of combat in the streets, after a week and half of nightly demonstrations with increasing violence from the police and anti-protest actors, the city government was forced to abandon their police station, one of only five for the whole city.  

This is a clear movement win with hints of revolutionary possibility. The state was forced to vacate key infrastructure and lost its capacity to exercise power in one section of the city. This was not marginal either, but in the core governmental institution of policing and a central neighborhood. As like what happened in Minneapolis when city and government officials admitted that they “lost control” of the city that led to the destruction of the third precinct, the loss of the east precinct by the SPD represents significant movement power. This kind of withdrawal of government control and the surge of popular power in the autonomous zone is the definition of a revolutionary breakthrough. That power, however, was not capitalized on, and where it had potential was lost when the city retook the station in early July.  

Participation by the Seattle local of Black Rose/Rosa Negra in CHOP was individual by our small group but spanned a range of roles such as medics, night watch, with APOC formations in the zone, monitoring comms, and as participants in mobilizations, GAs, and other activities happening in the space. From the first morning to some of the last days, our coverage gave us a thorough picture of what the movement looked like and informs our analysis below. 

Line of CHOP supporters with linked arms in front of the boarded up Seattle police department building within the zone.Demonstrators link arms in front of the abandoned East Precinct police statement within the CHOP zone.

CHOP: Limits and Failures

The movement power came from mobilizations in the streets and direct confrontations with the police, rather than any specific organized constituency such as tenant or labor unions or neighborhood based assemblies.  Instead there was a diverse collection of activists who nonetheless demonstrated real popular power. And the CHOP helped feed power into movements that made other victories possible. For example, the vote to remove the Seattle police union from the labor council was broadcast from a rally at the chop, with literally hundreds of people Zooming into the meeting to pressure the reactionary labor council to do the right thing. Out of this momentum Seattle schools voted to remove the SPD from their facilities. There were nightly marches from the CHOP zone in the east to the west precinct downtown, which led to that station being put on lockdown every single night for a roughly 40% reduction of policing capacity in the city. This is a real source of popular power developing in the streets of Seattle (and elsewhere).

As we said, the movement could not capitalize on the power of the CHOP, however. There are several internal and external reasons for this. Among the biggest failures we saw were the lack of organization, decision making structure, the substitution of tactics for strategy, the limitations of horizontal and white ally politics when it came to the political necessities of the space, the need for improved movement self-defense forces and external propaganda, and inherent limitations of sustainability of this type of mass popular upsurge and occupation.  

No Decision Making Process

The first significant problem was the failure of decision making practice and infrastructure in the zone.  Although this improved toward the end of the occupation, we witnessed very poor meeting facilitation and decision making practice. In the first general assembly and for weeks of subsequent meetings, the GA became a space for anyone to talk about any topic they wished. There was no agenda set, no time frame for discussion, no way to follow up in a meaningful way on items from other speakers. For most of the occupation, it was an assembly only in name, functioning in practice more as an ”open mic” or “speak out”,  not a functioning space to carry on political work. As a result, the GA’s were prime space for police infiltrators and right-wing disruptors to run textbook counterintelligence disruption operations. (You can see one of these, the person who introduces herself as “MamaBird” in the video linked in this paragraph).

We personally witnessed many of these instances. In one, on the night that the mayor announced intentions to retake the precinct, an impromptu meeting was held to make decisions on what to do. A young Black woman organized the meeting and was attempting to get people to decide whether to hold the space and if so, how to do it. Repeatedly, an older Black man with a sidearm disrupted and derailed the meeting. He would take the bullhorn multiple times, talk about his experience of racism in the US and the need for peace, and prevent the meeting from moving forward with making a decision. This was when it was believed that a police raid was imminent and there were still hundreds of supporters in the CHOP. It was later revealed that this man was a private investigator with photographs of himself with Seattle PD officers. Clearly, this lack of structure and experience in large group facilitation not only allowed this type of disruption to take place, but also enabled a practice of patriarchy where a talented Black woman pushing for political clarity was sidelined. There were many similar moments. 

Strengths and Limitations of Horizontalism and Individual Action

This overall lack of decision making also meant that there could be no politics in the space. This we call the problem of horizontalism. Everyone worked on individual projects, with little to no ability to coordinate between one another, to develop a political agenda for the occupation, or to even agree on demands or purpose of the occupation. Numerous small formations issued varied sets of demands. Many questions could not get answered. Was the point to seize and reclaim the precinct or not? Questions as obvious and simple as this could not even be explored. The result was that hundreds of individual projects emerged contributing to the flowering of movement activity and was part of the reason we characterize this moment as having revolutionary characteristics. This facilitated the mass participation in that any one and everyone could bring whatever their passion and interest was into the space. Therefore community gardens, art projects, nightly marches, music concerts, film screenings, nightly attempts to seize the building, attempts to protect the building from seizure, meetings, discussion groups, and more were all happening simultaneously. This is not a bad thing. It contributed to movement power. But we argue we need this diversity, but also that we need a way to cohere these activities in a clear political direction. Not only was a meeting facilitation practice for the general assembly needed for this, but also we needed the discipline to shut down and remove people who were disrupting. 

Failure of White Ally Politics

The next major problem in the space was the limitations of white ally politics that contributed to this confusion. White activists in the space literally looked for whatever any Black person would tell them to do, which could mean many things, including everything from random personal favors, to wearing shirts that read “when the shooting starts, get behind me.” This dynamic also led to much tokenization of Black individuals, as well as inaction by white activists in times of urgency. The vacuum of Black leadership meant that a whole variety of political traditions and Black perspectives pulled people in different directions. Did deferring to black leadership mean listening to the liberal Black voices who were making alliances with the police and directing people away from the occupied space? Did it mean following Black voices who called for developing Black capitalism and buying Black (many of these claims made by local Black business owners)? Did it mean following the Black voices who rejected the “autonomy” of the cop free zone, or those who supported it? This meant that when Black people got up, some of them police infiltrators, white activists could not counter harmful narratives and return meetings to more principled Black leadership and facilitation. This exacerbated the logistic and infrastructural problems in the space. But it is also a clear failure of white ally politics and highlights that it is the politics that are important to articulate and discuss in that space. 

For example, one BRRN member participated in an Autonomous BIPOC grouping within CHOP whose activities were also hindered in this way. Even with Black members, the group was reluctant to take decisive collective action in the CHOP for want of waiting for Black leadership. This is not to say that the question of how non-Black radicals should participate in a movement for Black liberation is a simple one. Surely, like most organizing, it requires not only solidarity, but humility, nuance, respect, and trust. But we have clearly observed the failure (and weaponization) of “white-ally politics” in practice. As militants, we need to clearly articulate a theory and practice of revolutionary anti-racist solidarity as an alternative.

Tactics in Place of Strategy

In this political morass, the occupation itself became the point of the struggle. We see this as a clear substitution of movement tactics for strategy and a continuation of the movement failures before the CHOP to work on questions of political strategy. With no demands, clear political objectives, or ability to navigate political differences, the CHOP was reduced to its lowest common denominator, and that was merely holding the space. This was happening elsewhere in the movement in Seattle as well. Nightly marches to occupy the freeway were a demonstration of movement power, but not part of a larger strategic framework and without a clear goal, target, escalating campaign, etc. The tactic of the occupation had become a substitution for the hard work of developing a collective political strategy. 

Need for Collective Self-Defense and Effective Propaganda 

One of the most disturbing and important lessons from the CHOP is the need to develop well-organized and effective collective self-defense. On the night of Juneteenth, there were literally thousands of people in the space, many of them tourists and party goers. In the early morning hours, a verbal fight escalated and led to the shooting death of a young man. Later that night, another young Black man leaving the zone was attacked and shot by a mob of white men yelling racial slurs, and survived. The first shooting was not the result of vigilante anti-protest political violence but violence that sprang from sources internal to the CHOP zone. In the days that followed, several more shootings took place in and around the zone. Though the shooters and motives are largely still unknown, it appears likely that a majority of the shootings were the result of interpersonal violence and gang retaliation. As our comrades in Decriminalize Seattle wrote at the time, when we live in a profoundly violent and heavily armed society, it was likely that this type of violence would emerge in the CHOP. The last major incident involved a vehicle which attacked the zone and shot into a crowd. After running a barricade, the driver and passenger were shot, killing the driver. 

There was an informal security team formed at the CHOP, mainly in response to right wing threats, which coordinated volunteers for night watch, bike brigade lookouts and barricade defense teams. Members of the John Brown Gun Club were a regular presence. From day one there were constant threats from rightwing militias and racist groups, as well as acts of provocation by the Proud Boys and others. As Trump threatened to intervene, thousands of “patriots” signed up for a July 4th Facebook event to evict CHOP by force and return the precinct to the police. 

The lack of overall organization in CHOP also led to a separation of this self defense work from the broader political project. This left CHOP particularly vulnerable to internal conflict, and street brawls which did not always involve a clearly defined threat. This coupled with a lack of clear parameters for acceptable behavior in the space, led to much confusion and chaos, some of which could have been avoided if the project had better organization and more political cohesion. While the efforts of the security teams were significant, this experience (and the string of attacks around the country) has exposed the serious need for our movements to be prepared for effective, responsible, and accountable self-defense.

In many ways, the shootings spelled the final knell for the CHOP. Firstly, it drove supporters out of the space as few were willing to risk fatal violence in the support of an occupation with unclear aims. But the violence was also used by the enemies of the movement to discredit the CHOP and BLM. The violence became a justification for police reoccupation and the role of the police in society in general. It is possible this could have been countered with better outward facing propaganda and internal inoculation. Decriminalize Seattle tried some effort in this direction, but the continued violence night after night, the growing chorus in right wing media making use of the violence, and the political machinations of the mayor to use the violence to reclaim the space were too much to overcome. 

Inherent Limitations of Occupations

Another shortcoming of the CHOP was the inherent limitations of the occupation tactic. Street occupations of this type typically have one of three potential outcomes. The first is to become arevolutionary movement. Like the Tahrir Square occupation, this requires moving the disruption out of the streets and into workplaces and other institutions to force further crises on the structures of power. The  second option is that they become institutionalized, given over to non-profit management that can tame and redirect the disruptive power of the movement. The third is that they are crushed with the resurgence of the violence of the state. 

Remaining community garden in Cal Anderson Park which was encompassed by CHOP. Taken August 24, 2020.

Buildling Power: A Conclusion

It is important to note that the way to transition a moment with revolutionary potential like we saw in CHOP into a revolution is to take the power of the movement into the institutions of civil society. Spreading from the CHOP into workplaces, schools, hospitals, and other sites of governance and administration could have spread the disruptive power of the CHOP and built social power outside of the state. Although there were moments when organizers tried this (kicking the police union out of the labor council is one, removing SPD from public schools was another), these were limited and fractured. They largely were coming from activism outside of the space, and indeed, the majority of the BLM movement in Seattle was engaged in work outside of the CHOP. Its downfall is by no means the end of BLM in Seattle. 

Nonetheless the CHOP and other moments like the burning of the Minneapolis police precinct demonstrate high water marks for the BLM movement in the last month. Our task as anarchist revolutionaries is to build on that power, mostly by providing better meeting facilitation, better movement infrastructure, and better processes for movement strategy, politics, and decision making, and to spread that movement into the institutions that govern our lives.

If you enjoyed this piece we recommend this background article “In Defense of Autonomy: Seattle’s CHOP Advanced the Movement for Black Lives” or this theory piece “Going on the Offensive: Movements, Multisectorality, and Political Strategy.”

The post CHOP Analysis: Glimmers of Hope, Failures of the Left appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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A little over four years ago we introduced The Black Anarchism Reader — an expansive collection of texts that span more than 150 years of black anarchist thought.

The reader was initially introduced following the popular black rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore. In the wake of the uprising in Minneapolis, one that has spawned a nationwide popular movement against racialized state violence, we once again wish to call attention to this critical collection of works.

As we noted when it was first introduced, the reader can and should be expanded to include an expanding range of black anarchist contributions. We hope to update this reader in the near future to do just that.

For now, we offer the reader as it originally appeared in 2016. Follow the link below to the original post, which includes a full PDF of the collection.

The Black Anarchism Reader

The post Re-Introducing the Black Anarchism Reader appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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Reordering the global hierarchy of wealth, power, and resources are critical questions that any internationalist revolution will face. Often ignored or obscured, South African author Lucien van der Walt provides a well needed overview of the relationship between anarchism and anti-colonial struggles.

By Lucien van der Walt

“In this struggle, only the workers and peasants will go all the way to the end“

The anarchist movement has a long tradition of fighting imperialism. This reaches back into the 1860s, and continues to the present day. From Cuba, to Egypt, to Ireland, to Macedonia, to Korea, to Algeria and Morocco, the anarchist movement has paid in blood for its opposition to imperial domination and control. However, whilst anarchists have actively participated in national liberation struggles, they have argued that the destruction of national oppression and imperialism can only be truly achieved through the destruction of both capitalism and the state system, and the creation of an international anarcho-communist society.

This is not to argue that anarchists absent themselves from national liberation struggles that do not have such goals. Instead, anarchists stand in solidarity with struggles against imperialism on principle, but seek to reshape national liberation movements into social liberation movements.

Such movements would be both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, would be based on internationalism rather than narrow chauvinism, would link struggles in the imperial centers directly to struggles in the oppressed regions, and would be controlled by, and reflect the interests of, the working class and peasantry.

In other words, we stand in solidarity with anti-imperialist movements, but condemn those who use such movements to advance reactionary cultural agendas (for example, those who oppose women’s rights in the name of culture) and fight against attempts by local capitalists and the middle class to hijack these movements. We oppose state repression of anti-imperialist movements, as we reject the right of the state to decide what is, and what is not, legitimate protest. However, it is no liberation if all that changes is the colour or the language of the capitalist class.

Against Nationalism

This is where we differ from the political current that has dominated national liberation movements since the 1940s: the ideology of nationalism.

Nationalism is a political strategy that argues that the key task of the anti-imperialist struggle is to establish an independent nation-state. It is through these independent states, nationalists argue, that the nation as a whole will exercise its general will. In the words of Kwame Nkrumah, who spearheaded the formation of the independent nation-state of Ghana, the task was to “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall be given unto you.”

In order to achieve this goal, nationalists argue that it is necessary to unite all classes within the oppressed nation against the imperialist oppressor. Nationalists tend to deny the importance of class differences within the oppressed nation, arguing that the common experience of national oppression makes class divisions unimportant, or that class is a “foreign” concept that is irrelevant.

Thus nationalists seek to hide class differences in a quest to found an independent nation-state.

The class interests that hide behind nationalism are obvious. Nationalism has, historically, been an ideology developed and championed by the bourgeoisie and middle class in the oppressed nation. It is a form of anti-imperialism that wishes to remove imperialism but retain capitalism, a bourgeois anti-imperialism that wishes, in short, to create for the local bourgeoisie more space, more opportunities, more avenues to exploit the local working class and develop local capitalism.

Our role as anarchists in relation to nationalists is thus clear: we may fight alongside nationalists for limited reforms and victories against imperialism but we fight against the statism and capitalism of the nationalists.

Our role is to win mass support for the anarchist approach to imperial domination, to win workers and peasants away from nationalism and to an internationalist working class programme: anarchism. This requires active participation in national liberation struggles but political independence from the nationalists. National liberation must be differentiated from nationalism, which is the class programme of the bourgeoisie: we are against imperialism, but also, against nationalism.

Bakunin and the First International

Support for national liberation follows directly from anarchism’s opposition to hierarchical political structures and economic inequality, and advocacy of a freely constituted international confederation of self-administrating communes and workers’ associations. At the same time, however, anarchism’s commitment to a general social and economic emancipation means that anarchism rejects statist solutions to national oppression that leave capitalism and government in place.

If anyone can be named the founder of revolutionary anarchism, it is Mikhail Bakunin (1918-1876). Bakunin’s political roots lay within the national liberation movements of Eastern Europe, and he retained a commitment to what would nowadays be called ‘decolonization’ throughout his life. When Bakunin moved from pan-Slavic nationalism towards anarchism in the 1860s, following the disastrous 1863 Polish insurrection, he still argued in support of struggles for national self-determination.

He doubted whether “imperialist Europe” could keep the colonial countries in bondage: “Two-thirds of humanity, 800 million Asiatics asleep in their servitude will necessarily awaken and begin to move.” [1] Bakunin went on to declare his “strong sympathy for any national uprising against any form of oppression,” stating that every people “has the right to be itself …. no one is entitled to impose its costume, its customs, its languages and its laws.” [2]

East Europe

The crucial issue, however, “in what direction and to what end” will the national liberation movement move? For Bakunin, national liberation must be achieved “as much in the economic as in the political interests of the masses”: if the anti- colonial struggle is carried out with “ambitious intent to set up a powerful State” or if “it is carried out without the people” and “must therefore depend for success on a privileged class,” it will become a “retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary movement.” [3]

“Every exclusively political revolution – be it in defence of national independence or for internal change…. – that does not aim at the immediate and real political and economic emancipation of people will be a false revolution. Its objectives will be unattainable and its consequences reactionary.” [4]

So, if national liberation is to achieve more than simply the replacement of foreign oppressors by local oppressors, the national liberation movement must thus be merged with the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasantry against both capitalism and the State. Without social revolutionary goals, national liberation will simply be a bourgeois revolution.

The national liberation struggle of the working class and peasantry must be resolutely anti-statist, for the State was necessarily the preserve of a privileged class, and the state system would continually recreate the problem of national oppression: “to exist, a state must become an invader of other states …. it must be ready to occupy a foreign country and hold millions of people in subjection.”

The national liberation struggle of oppressed nationalities must be internationalist in character as it must supplant obsessions with cultural difference with universal ideals of human freedom, it must align itself with the international class struggle for “political and economic emancipation from the yoke of the State” and the classes it represents, and it must take place, ultimately, as part of an international revolution: “a social revolution …. is by its very nature international in scope” and the oppressed nationalities “must therefore link their aspirations and forces with the aspirations and forces of all other countries.” [5] The “statist path involving the establishment of separate …. States” is “entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people” because it did not abolish class power but simply changed the nationality of the ruling class. [6] Instead, the state system must be abolished and replaced with a coalition of workplace and community structures “directed from the bottom up …. according to the principles of free federation.” [7]

These ideas were applied in East Europe from the 1870s onwards, as anarchists played an active role in the in 1873 uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina against Austro-Hungarian imperialism. Anarchists also took an active part in the “National Revolutionary Movement” in Macedonia against the Ottoman Empire. At least 60 gave their lives in this struggle, particularly in the great 1903 revolt.

This tradition of anarchist anti-imperialism was continued 15 years later in the Ukraine as the Makhnovist movement organized a titanic peasant revolt that not only smashed the German occupation of the Ukraine, and held off the invading Red and White armies until 1921, but redistributed land, established worker- peasant self-management in many areas, and created a Revolutionary Insurgent Army under worker-peasant control.

Egypt and Algeria

In the 1870s, too, the anarchists began to organize Egypt, notably in Alexandria, where a local anarchist journal appeared in 1877, [8] and anarchist group from Egypt was represented at the September 1877 Congress of the “Saint Imier International” (the anarchist faction of the post-1872 First International). [9] An “Egyptian Federation” was represented at the 1881 International Social Revolutionary Congress by well-known Errico Malatesta, this time including “bodies from Constantinople and Alexandria.” [10] Malatesta, who lived in Egypt as a political refugee Egypt in 1878 and 1882, [11] became involved in the 1882 “Pasha Revolt” that followed the 1876 take-over of Egyptian finances by an Anglo-French commission representing international creditors. He arrived specifically to pursue “a revolutionary purpose connected to the natives’ revolt in the days of Arabi Pasha,” [12] and “fought with the Egyptians against the British colonialists.” [13]

In Algeria, the anarchist movement emerged in the nineteenth century. The Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labor (CGT-SR) had a section in Algeria. Like other anarchist organizations, the CGT-SR opposed French colonialism, and in a joint statement by the Anarchist Union, the CGT-SR, and the Association of Anarchist Federations on the centenary of the French occupation of Algeria in 1930, argued: “Civilization? Progress? We say: murder!” [14]

A prominent militant in the CGT-SR’s Algerian section, as well as in the Anarchist Union and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians, was Sail Mohamed (1894-1953), an Algerian anarchist active in the anarchist movement from the 1910s until his death in 1953. Sail Mohamed was a founder of organizations such as the Association for the Rights of the Indigenous Algerians and the Anarchist Group of the Indigenous Algerians. In 1929 he was secretary of the “Committee for the Defense of the Algerians against the Provocations of the Centenary.” Sail Mohamed was also editor of the North African edition of the anarchist periodical Terre Libre, and a regular contributor to anarchist journals on the Algerian question. [15]

Europe and Morocco

Opposition to imperialism was a crucial part of anarchist anti-militarist campaigns in the imperialist centers, which stressed that colonial wars did not serve the interests of workers but rather the purposes of capitalism.

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in France, for example, devoted a considerable part of its press to exposing the role of French capitalists in North Africa. The first issue of La Bataille Syndicaliste, which appeared on the April 27, 1911, exposed the “Moroccan syndicate”: the “veiled men” who dictated to the ministers and diplomats and sought a war that would boost demand for arms, lands, and rail and lead to the imposition of tax on the indigenous people. [16]

In Spain, the “Tragic Week” began on Monday, July 26, 1909 when the union, Solidarad Obrero, which was led by a committee of anarchists and socialists, called a general strike against the call-up of the mainly working class army reservists for the colonial war in Morocco. [17] By Tuesday, workers were in control of Barcelona, the “fiery rose of anarchism,” troop trains had been halted, trams overturned, communications cut and barricades erected. By Thursday, fighting broke out with government forces, and over 150 workers were killed in the street fighting.

The reservists were embittered by disastrous previous colonial campaigns in Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, [18] but the Tragic Week must be understood as an anti-imperialist uprising situated within a long tradition of anarchist anti-imperialism in Spain. The “refusal of the Catalonian reservists to serve in the war against the Riff mountaineers of Morocco,” “one of the most significant” events of modern times, [19] reflected the common perception that the war was fought purely in the interests of the Riff mine-owners, [20] and that conscription was “a deliberate act of class warfare and exploitation from the center.” [21]

In 1911, the newly founded, anarcho-syndicalist, National Confederation of Labor (CNT), successor to Solidarad Obrero, marked its birth with a general strike on the September 16 in support of two demands: defense of the strikers at Bilbao and opposition to the war in Morocco. [22] Again, in 1922, following a disastrous battle against the forces of Abd el-Krim in Morocco in August, a battle in which at least 10,000 Spanish troops died, “the Spanish people were full of indignation and demanded not only an end to the war but also that those responsible for the massacre and the politicians who favored the operation in Africa be brought to trial,” expressing their anger in riots, and in strikes in the industrial regions. [23]

Cuba

In the Cuban colonial war (1895-1904), the Cuban anarchists and their unions joined the separatist armed forces, and made propaganda amongst the Spanish troops. The Spanish anarchists, likewise, campaigned against the Cuban war amongst peasants, workers, and soldiers in their own country. [24] “All Spanish anarchists disapproved of the war and called on workers to disobey military authority and refuse to fight in Cuba,” leading to several mutinies amongst draftees. [25] Opposing bourgeois nationalism and statism, the anarchists sought to give the colonial revolt a social revolutionary character. At its 1892 congress in Cuba, the anarchist Workers’ Alliance recommended that the Cuban working class join the ranks of “revolutionary socialism” and take the path of independence, noting that,

“… it would be absurd for one who aspires to individual freedom to oppose the collective freedom of the people. …” [26]

When the anarchist Michele Angiolillo assassinated the Spanish President Canovas in 1897 he declared that his act both in revenge for the repression of anarchists in Spain and retribution for Spain’s atrocities in its colonial wars. [27]

In addition to its role in the anti-colonial struggle, the anarchist-led Cuban labor movement played a central role in overcoming divisions between black, white Cuban, and Spanish-born workers. The Cuban anarchists “successfully incorporated many nonwhites into the labor movement, and mixed Cubans and Spaniards in it,” “fostering class consciousness and helping to eradicate the cleavages of race and ethnicity among workers.”[28]

The Workers Alliance “eroded racial barriers as no union had done before in Cuba” in its efforts to mobilize the “whole popular sector to sustain strikes and demonstrations.” [29] Not only did blacks join the union in “significant numbers,” but the union also undertook a fight against racial discrimination in the workplace. The first strike of 1889, for example, included the demand that “individuals of the colored race able to work there.” [30] This demand reappeared in subsequent years, as did the demand that blacks and whites have the right to “sit in the same cafes,” raised at the 1890 May Day rally in Havana. [31]

The anarchist periodical El Producter, founded in 1887, denounced “discrimination against Afro-Cubans by employers, shop owners and the administration specifically.” And through campaigns and strikes involving the “mass mobilization of people of diverse race and ethnicity,” anarchist labor in Cuba was able to eliminate “most of the residual methods of disciplining labor from the slavery era” such as “racial discrimination against non-whites and the physical punishment of apprentices and dependientes.” [32]

Mexico, Nicaragua and Augustino Sandino

In Mexico, anarchists led Indian peasant risings such as the revolts of Chavez Lopez in 1869 and Francisco Zalacosta in the 1870s. Later manifestations of Mexican anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, such as the Mexican Liberal Party, the revolutionary syndicalist “House of the Workers of the World” (COM) and the Mexican section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Mexican anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism continually challenged the political and economic dominance of the United States, and opposed racial discrimination against Mexican workers in foreign-owned enterprises, as well as within the United States. [33]

In the 1910s, the local IWW’s focus on “‘bread and butter’ issues combined with the promise of future workers’ control struck a responsive chord among workers caught up in a nationalist revolution that sought to regain control from foreigners the nation’s natural resources, productive systems and economic infrastructure.” [34]

In Nicaragua, Augustino Cesar Sandino (1895-1934), the leader of the Nicaraguan guerrilla war against the United States’ occupation between 1927-33, remains a national icon. Sandino’s army’s “red and black flag had an anarcho-syndicalist origin, having been introduced into Mexico by Spanish immigrants.” [35]

Sandino’s eclectic politics were framed by a “peculiar brand of anarcho-communism,” [36] a “radical anarchist communism” [37] “assimilated …. in Mexico during the Mexican revolution” where he received “a political education in syndicalist ideology, also known as anarchosyndicalism, libertarian socialism, or rational communism.” [38]

Despite political weaknesses, Sandino’s movement, the EDSNN, moved steadily leftwards as Sandino realized that “only the workers and the peasants will go all the way to the end” in the struggle. There was thus increasing emphasis on organizing peasant co-operatives in the liberated territories. The US forces were withdrawn in 1933 and the EDSNN largely demobilized. In 1934 Sandino was murdered and the collectives smashed on the orders of General Somoza, the new, pro-US ruler.

Libya and Eritrea

In Italy in the 1880s and 1890s “anarchists and former anarchists” “were some of the most outspoken opponents of Italian military adventures in Eritrea and Abyssinia.” [39] The Italian anarchist movement followed these struggles with a significant anti-militarist campaign in the early twentieth century, which soon focussed on the Italian invasion of Libya on September 19, 1911.

Augusto Masetti, an anarchist soldier who shot a colonel addressing troops departing for Libya whilst shouting “Down with the War! Long Live Anarchy!” became a popular symbol of the campaign; a special issue of the anarchist journal L’Agitatore supporting his action, and proclaiming, “Anarchist revolt shines through the violence of war,” led to a roundup of anarchists. Whilst the majority of Socialist Party deputies voted for annexation, [40] the anarchists helped organize demonstrations against the war and a partial general strike and “tried to prevent troop trains leaving the Marches and Liguria for their embarkation points.” [41]

The campaign was immensely popular amongst the peasantry and working class [42] and by 1914, the anarchist-dominated front of anti-militarist groups – open to all revolutionaries – had 20,000 members, and worked closely with the Socialist Youth. [43]

When Prime Minister Antonio Salandra sent troops against anarchist-led demonstrations against militarism, against special punishment battalions in the army, and for the release of Masetti on the June 7, 1914, [44] he sparked off the “Red Week” of June 1914, [45] a mass uprising ushered in by a general strike led by anarchists and the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI). Ancona was held by rebels for ten days, barricades went up in all the big cities, small towns in the Marches declared themselves self-governing communes, and everywhere the revolt took place “red flags were raised, churches attacked, railways torn up, villas sacked, taxes abolished and prices reduced.” [46] The movement collapsed after the Italian Socialist Party’s union wing called off the strike, but it took ten thousand troops to regain control of Ancona. [47] After Italy entered the First World War in May 1915, the USI and the anarchists maintained a consistently anti-war, anti-imperialist position, continuing into 1920, when they launched a mass campaign against the Italian invasion of Albania and against imperialist intervention against the Russian Revolution. [48]

Ireland and James Connolly

In Ireland, to cite another case, the revolutionary syndicalists James Connolly and Jim Larkin sought to unite workers across sectarian religious divides in the 1910s, aiming at transforming the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, which they led, into a revolutionary “One Big Union.” [49] Socialism was to be brought about through a revolutionary general strike: “they who are building up industrial organizations for the practical purposes of to-day are at the same time preparing the framework of the society of the future …. the principle of democratic control will operate through the workers correctly organized in …. Industrial Unions, and the …. the political, territorial state of capitalist society will have no place or function….” [50]

A firm anti-imperialist, Connolly opposed the nationalist dictum that “labor must wait,” and that independent Ireland must be capitalist: what would be the difference in practice, he wrote, if the unemployed were rounded up for the “to the tune of ‘St. Patrick’s Day’” whilst the bailiffs wore wear “green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the road will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic”? [51] In the end, he insisted, “the Irish question is a social question, the whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself, in the final analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland.” [52]

Connolly was skeptical of the very ability of the national bourgeoisie to consistently fight against imperialism, writing it off as a sentimental, cowardly, and anti-labor bloc, and he opposed any alliance with this layer: the once-radical middle class have “bowed the knee to Baal, and have a thousand economic strings …. binding them to English capitalism as against every sentimental or historic attachment drawing them toward Irish patriotism,” and so, “only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.” [53] Connolly was executed in 1916 following his involvement in the Easter Rising, which helped spark the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1922, one of the first successful secessions from the British Empire.

A Review of Anarchism in Korea

Anarchist Revolution in Korea

A final example bears mentioning. The anarchist movement emerged in East Asia in the early twentieth century, where it exerted a significant influence in China, Japan and Korea. With the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, opposition to the occupation developed in both Japan and in Korea, and spilled over into China. In Japan, the prominent anarchist Kotoku Shusui was framed and executed in July 1910, in part because his Commoner’s Newspaper campaigned against Japanese expansionism. [54]

For the Korean anarchists, the struggle for decolonization assumed center-stage in their political activity: they played a prominent part in the 1919 rising against Japanese occupation, and in 1924 formed the Korean Anarchist Federation on the basis of the “Korean Revolution Manifesto” which stated that,

“we declare that the burglar politics of Japan is the enemy for our nation’s existence and that it is our proper right to overthrow the imperialist Japan by a revolutionary means.” [55]

The Manifesto made it clear that the solution to this national question was not the creation of a “sovereign national State” but in a social revolution by the peasants and the poor against both the colonial government and the local bourgeoisie.

Further, the struggle was seen in internationalist terms by the Korean Anarchist Federation, which went on to found an Eastern Anarchist Federation in 1928, spanning China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries, and which called upon “the proletariat of the world, especially the eastern colonies” to unite against “international capitalistic imperialism.” Within Korea itself, the anarchists organized an underground network, the Korean Anarcho-Communist Federation, to engage in guerrilla activity, propaganda work and trade union organizing. [56]

In 1929, the Korean anarchists founded an armed liberated zone, the Korean People’s Association in Manchuria, which brought together two million guerrillas and Korean peasants on the basis of voluntary farming co-operatives. The Korean People’s Association in Manchuria was able to withstand several years of attacks by Japanese forces and Korean Stalinists backed by the Soviet Union before being forced underground. [57] Resistance continued throughout the 1930s despite intense repression, and a number of joint Sino-Korean operations were organized after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. [58]

In Conclusion: Towards the Destruction of Imperialism

Anarchists cannot be ‘neutral’ in any fight against imperialism. Whether it is the struggle against the third world debt, the struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or opposition to US military attacks on the Middle East, we are not neutral, we can never be neutral. We are against imperialism.

But we are not nationalists. We recognize that imperialism is itself rooted in capitalism, and we recognize that simply replacing foreign elites with local elites will not solve the problem in a way that is fundamentally beneficial for the working class and peasantry.

Establishing new nation-states means, in effect, establishing new capitalist states that, in turn, serve the interests of the local elite at the expense of the working class and peasantry. Thus, most nationalist movements that have achieved their goals have turned on the working class once in power, crushing leftists and trade unionists with vigour. In other words, internal oppression continues in new forms.

At the same time, imperialism cannot be destroyed by the formation of new nation-states. Even independent nation-states are part of the international state system, and the international capitalist system, a system in which the power of imperialist states continues to set the rules of the game. In other words, external repression continues in new forms.

This means that the new states – and the local capitalists that control them- soon find themselves unable to fundamentally challenge imperialist control and instead set about trying to advance their interests within the overall framework of imperialism. This means that they maintain close economic ties with the western centers, whilst using their own state power to build up their own strength, hoping, eventually, to graduate to imperialist status themselves. In practice, the most effective way for the local ruling classes to develop local capitalism is to crush labor and small farmers in order to be able to sell cheap raw materials and manufactured goods on the world market.

This is no solution. We need to abolish imperialism, so creating conditions for the self-government of all people around the world. But this requires the destruction of capitalism and the state system. At the same time, our struggle is a struggle against the ruling classes within the third world: local oppression is no solution. The local elites are an enemy both within national liberation movements and even more so after the formation of new nation-states. It is only the working class and peasantry who can destroy imperialism and capitalism, replacing domination by both local and foreign elites with self-management and social and economic equality.

Hence, we are for working class autonomy and unity and solidarity across countries, across continents, and for the establishment of an international anarcho-communist system through the self-activity of the global working class and peasantry. As Sandino said, “In this struggle, only the workers and peasants will go all the way to the end.”

Lucien Van der Walt is a professor of sociology at Rhodes University in Cape Town, South Africa and the author of numerous works relating to working class history and anarchism. 

If you enjoyed this piece we highly recommend “Oppressor and Oppressed Nations: Sketching a Taxonomy of Imperialism.”

Footnotes

1. Cited in D. Geurin, 1970, Anarchism, Monthly Review, p. 68
2. ibid.
3. Geurin, 1970, op cit., p. 68.
4. M. Bakunin, [1866] “National Catechism,” in S. Dolgoff (editor), 1971, Bakunin on Anarchy, George Allen and Unwin, London, p. 99.
5. Bakunin, [1873], “Statism and Anarchy,” in S. Dolgoff (editor), 1971, op cit., pp. 341-3.
6. ibid.
7. Cited in S. Cipko, 1990, “Mikhail Bakunin and the National Question,” in The Raven, 9, (1990), p. 3 p. 11.
8. http://members.tripod.com/~stiobhard/east.html
9. G. Woodcock, 1975, Anarchism: a History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Penguin, pp. 236-8.
10. H. Oliver, 1983, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London, Croom Helm, London/ Rowman and Littlefield, New Jersey, p. 15.
11. V. Richards, 1993, Malatesta: Life and Ideas, Freedom Press, London, p. 229.
12. Ibid.; P. Marshall, 1994, Demanding the Impossible: a history of anarchism, Fontana, p. 347.
13. D. Poole, 1981, “Appendix: About Malatesta”, in E. Malatesta, Fra Contadini: a Dialogue on Anarchy, Bratach Dubh Editions, Anarchist Pamphlets no. 6, London, p. 42.
14. From Sail Mahomed, 1994, Appels Aux Travailleurs Algeriens, Volonte Anarchiste/ Edition Du Groupe Fresnes Antony, Paris (Edited by Sylvain Boulouque).
15. From Sylvain Boulouque, 1994, “Sail Mohamed: ou la vie et la revolte d’un anarchiste Algerien” in Mahomed, 1994, op cit.
16. F.D., 27 April 1911, “Le Syndicait Marocain,” in Le Bataille Syndicaliste, number 1.
17. R. Kedward, 1972, The Anarchists: the men who shocked an era, Library of the Twentieth Century, p. 67.
18. Kedward 1971, op cit., p. 67.
19. Nevinson was an English critic of imperialism; the quote is from 1909. Cited in P. Trewhela, 1988, “George Padmore: a critique, “in Searchlight South Africa, volume 1, number 1, p. 50.
20. B, Tuchman, cited in Trewhela, 1988, op cit., p. 50.
21. Kedward 1971, op cit., p. 67.
22. M. Bookchin, 1977, The Spanish Anarchists: the heroic years 1868-1936 (Harper Colophon Books: New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1977, p. 163.
23. A. Paz, 1987, Durruti: the People Armed, Black Rose, Montreal, p.39.
24. J. Casanovas, 1994, Labor and Colonialism in Cuba in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. thesis, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
25. ibid., p. 436.
26. F. Fernandez, 1989, Cuba: the anarchists and liberty, ASP, London, p. 2.
27. Casanovas, 1994, op cit., p. 436
28. Casanovas, 1994, op cit., p. 8
29. ibid., p. 366.
30. ibid., p. 367.
31. ibid., pp. 381, 393-4.
32. J. Casanovas, 1995, “Slavery, the Labor Movement and Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, 1850-1890”, International Review of Social History, number 40, pp. 381-2. These struggles are detailed in Casanovas, 1994, op cit., chapters 8 and 9.
33. See, inter alia, N. Caulfield, 1995, “Wobblies and Mexican Workers in Petroleum, 1905-1924”, International Review of Social History, number 40, p. 52, and N. Caulfield, “Syndicalism and the Trade Union Culture of Mexico” (paper presented at Syndicalism: Swedish and International Historical Experiences, Stockholm University: Sweden, March 13-4, 1998); J. Hart, 1978, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931, Texas University Press.
34. Caulfield, 1995, op cit.; Caulfield, 1998, op cit.
35. D.C. Hodges, The Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution, cited in Appendix, “The Symbols of Anarchy”, The Anarchist FAQ, http://flag.blackened.net/intanark/faq/.
36. ibid.
37. See Navarro-Genie, Sin Sandino No Hay Sandinismo: lo que Bendana pretende (unpublished mimeo: n.d.).
38. A. Bendana, 1995, A Sandinista Commemoration of the Sandino Centennial (speech given on the 61 anniversary of the death of General Sandino, held in Managua’s Olaf Palme Convention Centre, distributed by Centre for International Studies, Managua)
39 C. Levy, 1989, “Italian Anarchism, 1870-1926”, in D. Goodway (editor), For Anarchism: history, theory and practice, Routledge, London/ New York, p. 56.
40. G. Williams, 1975, A Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, factory councils and the origins of Italian communism 1911-21, Pluto Press, pp. 36-7.
41. Levy, 1989, op cit., p. 56; Williams, 1975, op cit., p. 37.
42. ibid. p. 35.
43. Levy, 1989, op cit., p. 56.
44. Levy, 1989, op cit., pp. 56-7.
45. ibid., pp. 56-7.
46. ibid., pp. 56-7; Williams, 1975, op cit., pp. 51-2. The quote is from Williams.
47. ibid., p. 36.
48. See, inter alia, Levy, 1989, op cit., pp. 64, 71; Williams, 1975, op cit.
49. On Connolly and Larkin, see E. O’Connor, 1988, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-23, Cork University Press, Ireland. I do not intend to enter into a detailed debate over Connolly in this paper, except to state that the recurrent attempts to appropriate Connolly for Stalinism, Trotskyism and/ or the Marxist tradition, more generally – not to mention Irish nationalism and/or Catholicism – are confounded by Connolly’s own unambiguous views on revolutionary unionism after 1904: see the materials in collections such as O. B. Edwards and B. Ransom (editors), 1973, James Connolly: selected political writings, Jonathan Cape: London.
50. J. Connolly, 1909, “Socialism Made Easy,” Edwards and Ransom (editors), op cit., pp. 271, 274.
51. Connolly, [1909], op cit., p. 262.
52. J. Connolly, Labour in Irish History (Corpus of Electronic Texts: University College, Cork, Ireland [1903-1910]), p. 183.
53. Connolly, [1903-1910], op cit., p. 25.
54. Ha Ki-Rak, 1986, A History of Korean Anarchist Movement, Anarchist Publishing Committee: Korea, pp. 27-9.
55. Ha, 1986, op cit., pp. 19-28.
56. Ha, 1986, op cit., pp. 35-69.
57. Ha, 1986, op cit., pp. 71-93.
58. Ha, 1986, op cit., pp. 96-113.

The post Towards a History of Anarchist Anti-Imperialism: Only the Workers and Peasants Will Go All the Way appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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