‘In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ Martin Luther King Jr. It is no secret that the history of Palestinian resistance is deeply intertwined with the socialist movement. As anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are basic principles, socialists have always opposed […]
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Juan Verala Luz reviews Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-1976. This review began as opening remarks at a recent book launch for Anarchist Popular Power. You can read excerpts from the original statement in this report, and listen to it alongside a discussion with historian Troy Araiza Kokinis […]
Every so often the question of co-operatives is raised in the revolutionary socialist movement. Optimistic positions suggest that co-ops can form the basis for replacing capitalism with a new economy based on solidarity and labour where workers have ‘control’ and even suggest they are a vital part of revolutionary strategy. […]
David Glanz, a member of the Trotskyist organisation Solidarity, recently gave a talk on the Spanish Revolution, offering it as evidence of the ‘failure of anarchism’. The talk is reasonably representative of the standard Leninist position, and therefore follows the same tendency to misrepresent both the events in Spain and […]
First published as ‘The Ukraine War’, in The Anvil Vol 12 No 3. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine became independent. The United States promised Russia that NATO would not expand eastwards, but it didn’t take long for Uncle Sam to renege. Without a global rival to […]
Originally published in The Anvil, vol. 12, no. 2. Iraq On the 20th of March 2003, the United States, at the head of a “coalition of the willing”, in which both Britain and Australia were prominent, invaded Iraq. The main justification offered was the need to destroy Saddam Hussein’s supposed […]
In the aftermath of anti-Trans bigotry and violence in Melbourne and Sydney some progressive activists have focused their wrath on socialists rather than the bigots, police or the state. Attacks on the right of socialists to openly organise and proclaim their politics only strengthens the powers that be and undermines […]
Steve Wright is the author of Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (Pluto Press 2017) and The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo (Haymarket Books 2023). [Note: a short addendum has been added at the end, in part to clarify an […]
How should anarchists, concerned with rebuilding a fighting movement of the working class, organise today? As anarchists, we recognise that our fight against the bosses isn’t made through elections, or in parliament, but at work. We have power when we organise with our co-workers, take action which disrupts the ability […]
This article first appeared in The Anvil, Vol 11 No 6, published 31 December 2022. What is the significance of the recent protests in China and what should we take from them here in Australia? The capitalist press have mostly stuck to a simplistic explanation based purely on opposition to […]
“The myth of Nin or Durruti is of no use to us at all, whereas their shortcomings and mistakes are useful, because they teach us something. The myths of yesterday are the chains of today; to reveal their errors allows us to advance beyond the point where they failed.” Agustin […]
First published as “Victorian Election 2022”, in The Anvil, Vol. 11, No. 5, September-October 2022. The Victorian State election will be held on 26 November. The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group is not participating, of course, but the occasion provides an opportunity to reflect on capitalist democracy, on how to build a […]