Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, No.8 now available

We are happy to finally announce the long-overdue publication of the eighth issue of "Zabalaza - A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism". Our organisation having recently undergone some changes, we hope to get back on track and to meet our goals of publishing Zabalaza twice a year.

In this long-awaited issue:

* Asgisa: A Working Class Critique
* S.A. Public Sector Strikes
* The 2010 World Cup
* Protests Against University Privatisation
* Introduction to the ABC
* Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps
* Swaziland: The Assassination of Our Dear Comrade
* Europe, Africa and the Neo-Liberal Strategy of Co- Optation
* Fallacies of the Darfur War
* The Congo's Dilemma
* A New Guantanamo in Africa?
* Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean
* Some Thoughts on Theoretical Unity & Collective Responsibility
* Clarity on What Anarcho-Syndicalism Is
* Towards an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Africa

Download the PDF here:
http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/sapams/zab08.pdf

Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Africa: Mining Industry Council

South Africa
South Africa is particularly rich in mineral resources and is one of the leading raw material exporters in the world. Rightly so, South Africa can produce all the minerals necessary for her economic independence. Gold, diamonds, platinum, chromium, manganese, uranium, ire ore and coal make up 60 % of it's main exports. The country is also number one globally in exporting platinum, chromium, vandium and manganese. Africa is also the world's largest gold producer. It has enormous gold ore reserves representing 40% of global reserves.

However, 95% of South Africa's gold mines are underground operations. Declining grades of the mines and the increased depth of mining and a shift in the gold price, costs for these operations had begun to rise and as a result production has been steadily falling. The gold mining industry is the largest sector of mining industry. It constitutes around 60% of South Africa's mining labor for.

As of 2007, the South African mining industry employs 493,000 workers


In 2005 the total gold production was 294,671 kg
the total iron ore production was 39.5 Mt
the total chromium production was 7.59 Mt
the total manganese production was 4.61 Mt
the total platinum production was 302, 000 kg
the total coal production was 245 Mt
the total diamond production was 15.8 million karats

Working conditions
Mine workers are under-paid and over-worked. Declining grades of mines and increased depth of mining as lead to an increase in workplace injuries and deaths. Issues of mine safety received increased scrutiny during 2007, in large part due to multiple worker deaths. During 2006, 199 workers were killed during workplace accidents, and 191 have been killed during 2007. Around 200 workers die yearly in South African mines. One incident on October 4 2007 resulted in 3,200 workers being trapped for several hours.

Class
Ultimately, class, racism and capitalism are at the root of most of the problems in South Africa. Capitalism is a society that is divided by class and is dominated by the corporate community and upper class. The working class thus consists of all the people in society who do not own property and therefore have to sell their labor power - the ability to do work- to a boss in order to earn a living.

The interests of the working class are fundamentally opposed to the ruling elite - the corporate community and upper class. The companies must seek ways to make profits, even at the detriment of their employees, the very people who are responsible for creating their wealth.

Disregard for safety precautions aids capital by continually accumulating profit, yet it hurts the working class, specifically miners, who suffer fatal injuries in high numbers. Cuts in wages and refusal to accommodate union demands for wage increases, further harms the working class by lowering their standard of living at the expense of increased revenue for mining companies.

The working class therefore has a direct interest in improving all aspects of the mining industry, whereas capital does not. The solutions lie within the working class since it's success is in its best interest.

Is There an Alternative?
Anarchist-Syndicalist and libertarian communist theory holds that the best people to run an industry are the workers and users of that service. Worker safety is held hostage to profitability and bureaucracy. Rather than private ownership and a monopolization of decision making roles by owners and managers, public ownership of the means of production through a decentralized system of federated workers and neighborhood councils would prove far superior. These councils would act as channels to allow participants to exercise direct democracy and gives ordinary citizens the ability to control their own lives.

Strategy to Get Us There
There are many different tactics that can be utilized to the bring increasing power into the hands of South African miners. Fighting for an increase in wages, shorter working hours and improved working conditions ensure a more efficient and happier workforce, while at the same time, increasing class consciousness and working class militancy. Miners must self-organize to demand these rights and be prepared to take direct action to hit the corporations where it hurts the most, their bank accounts.

Direct actions such as mass rallies and protests with the support of the community and strikes would be ways to achieving these ends. The key is strengthening rank and file organizations of miners and creating mass organizations in neighboring communities that will struggle alongside these worker controlled groups. This is as anarcho-syndicalist theorist Rudolph Rocker notes, as creating "not only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself"; that these self-managed organizations embody the structure of a future society.

Sala kahle(Stay well in isiZulu)
-blackstone

ZACF on empowerment and the increase in the price of bread

People must empower themselves, not wait for government

"We call on government to empower our people, especially through community cooperatives with the necessary inputs for bread production, namely land, tractors and seeds to plough wheat." - this was the demand made by the Young Communist League (YCL) in their recent Statement on the Unjustifiable Increase of Bread.


The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) agrees with the YCL that "This increase will have negative consequences on the majority of our people, especially the working class and the poor youth who rely on bread as a source of living." We support the YCL and Cosatu in defying this price increase. We regard the vast and repeated increases in the bread price – and in the prices of maize meal, other grains and food in general – as a direct attack by capitalist profiteers on the very survival of workers and the poor. An attack against which workers and the poor need to defend themselves.

But the YCL does not seem to recognise the inherent contradiction in its statement.

The YCL stated its concern "that government is not protecting our people and allows the capitalist market to undermine our struggle of building sustainable livelihoods as a results of excessive prices of bread and other basic commodities", but they are missing the point. If government did anything other than protect market interests, the YCL would have reason for concern. But that is not the case; the government is protecting the interests of the market at the expense of the people it is supposed to serve. This is what us anarchist communists have been saying all along, and this is where we differ with the state socialists. Government cannot, and will not protect the people from the capitalist market, as the very purpose for government is to protect the capitalists, or capitalism, from the people.

Government, by its very nature, disempowers people by controlling and regulating their lives, limiting their freedom to move and live as they please and by making decisions that affect people's lives without first consulting them. By acting on our behalf, and denying us the opportunity to act for ourselves, governements - of all colours and ideological leanings - undermine our ability for individual and collective empowerment.

Meaningful and lasting empowerment cannot come from anywhere other than through the self-organised and self-managed activity and mobilisation of the people themselves, of a people in search and in struggle of a better life for all.


Whatever workers and the poor have won from the bosses or the government – higher wages, shorter hours, electricity, water, houses, lower rent, the defeat of the apartheid regime – they have won in struggle, not because the government decided out of a sense of responsibility or the goodness of its heart to give us these things. If we want bread, we must fight for bread.

As a result of our struggles or otherwise, the government might back a community cooperative, as the YCL suggests, by providing it with the "necessary inputs for bread production, namely land, tractors and seeds to plough wheat". But if we just rely on the government and do not continue the struggle, what is likely to happen is that those people will be expected to operate their cooperative according to market values, and sell their produce on the market instead of feeding themselves and their community. Government might subsidise a few small cooperatives, the participants in which might have access to a better life, but the government will never socialise all the "necessary inputs for bread production", and so the vast majority of the people, those in urban areas for example, will not benefit from these symbolic acts of empowerment.

If we do win support for co-operatives, or cheaper bread, or even free bread, we must carry on the fight. As long as the government and capitalists are in place, whatever we force them to give us, they can still try to take back.

For anarchist communists the only way to empowerment, and the only way for people to protect themselves from the capitalist market is to organise collectively to rid the world of that market; a market that tramples on the needs and rights of the many to satisfy the profits of the few.

We hold that people must collectively organise themselves, across all the industries of the land - both urban and rural - in every school and in every township, to take control of the "necessary inputs of bread production" and the necessary inputs to satisfy all our needs, and place them under the collective ownership and control of the people. No government, whether socialist or not, can ever do this as the sole reason for existence of government is to protect the rich from the poor, and so it is up to the people themselves to create a better life for all. To create a free socialism, without bosses or politicians.

Let us wait no longer for government to act, let us act ourselves. The anarchist revolutionary Emma Goldman once said "If they don't give you bread, take bread." Today we take bread; tomorrow we take the farms, the factories, the railways, the roads, the ships, everything that we ourselves built, that was taken from us, that we need to run our own lives. Onward to the collective appropriation of all the necessary inputs for a better life for all.

You cannot empower people, people must empower themselves.

Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy For Africa: Health Councils

Senegal

Senegal is a country located in western Africa. It's population numbers over 11 million, with 70% living in rural areas. Approximately 54% of all Senegalese households live below the poverty line. Thus, similar to most Sub-Saharan countries in Africa, Senegal suffers from numerous health problems typically associated with severe poverty.

Poverty, and various health problems, follow the same geographical distribution and reach high points in rural areas. This is due to the fact that the poorest live in the poorest sanitary conditions. Only 48% of Senegal have access to improved sanitation conditions. In Kolda, the poorest area, only 27% has access to piped water and 7% to toilets.

The Under Five Mortality Rate is 139 per 1000 live births in the year 2000 and estimates of maternal mortality rates(MMR) have are estimated to be around 690. The correlation between poverty and health can also be seen in accordance to Infant, Under Five and maternal mortality rates. From statistical samples, it is clearly evident that these rates increase in the poorest areas as well.

Malaria is Senegal's most serious concern and is the leading cause of death for children under five years old. The Global Fund reports that a total of 800,000 people have been diagnosed with malaria as of July 2003, meaning that approximately 8.9 percent of Senegal’s total population is infected with malaria (Global Fund 2004). According to the United States Pharmacopeia, the problem impinges on every region of the country and is exacerbated by the free flow of poor quality antimalarial drugs and increasing parasite resistance to traditional first-line drug treatment.

Tuberculosis is another concern of Senegal. Close to 9000 cases were reported in 2000 and 5832 were considered contagious. According to the UNAIDS 2002 update Senegal had an HIV/AIDS prevalence of 1.43 percent, with an estimated 27,000 adults and children living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2001, 24,000 being adults (aged between 15-49) (UNAIDS Country Profile 2004).

These startling figures are due to many medical and social failings, including, but not limited to, inadequate nutrition and healthcare, poor access to improved water supply and sanitation and of course, poverty. Only 40 percent of the population of Senegal has access to health services. However, healthcare personnel are concentrated in the two largest cities of Senegal, Dakar and Thiès, leaving the majority of the rural population poorly or uncovered. Not only that, but Senegal suffers from "Brain Drain", an epidemic where skilled and qualified people(including doctors, nurses, dentists) leave Senegal in search of a more stable life in France or another Western country.

Is There No Alternative?
A revolution in which society is reorganized where the people are in control must remedy this situation. It can do so by providing an alternative economy. One where there is equal distribution of health services and resources being made to the whole population of Senegal. It will also provide a stable society to prevent "Brain Drain", as well as increasing and perfecting medical services to provide the best possible service to the population. This equitable allocation alone can cut cases of malaria and tuberculosis, as well as the infant, under five and maternal mortality rates.

Diego Abad de Santillan, in his work After the Revolution, notes, "There will be no private doctors, since the entire profession will be at the service of all. They will be incorporated, however, along with dentists, pharmacists, etc., in respective Councils and form similar organizations as in other branches. The Council of Sanitation will create schools and research institutions, and will also take care of public health in the cities and in the country." What specific role or function, a "Council of Sanitation" is to play, is to be determined in the future by the Senegalese. Yet, from this passage we can gather that an anarcho-syndicalist strategy upholds the anarchistic values of self-management and anti-authoritarianism. An alternative economy will need to incorporate these and other anarchistic values into new institutions to provide equitable circumstances and services to the Senegalese.


An anarcho-syndicalist strategy holds that self-managed workers organizations and mass organizations will form the basis of a self-managed society. These new values and institutions, which vary greatly from the ones of capitalism, allowing for advances to be made and services to be exchanged not for profit, but for the benefit of all Senegalese. Thereby reducing hunger, poverty, child mortality and achieving universal primary education, improved access to water, sanitation, and healthcare services.

Ba suba ak jam(Goodbye in Wolof)

Centrally Planned vs Participatory Planned Economies

Participatory planning allows participants to exercise direct democracy and allows ordinary citizens to control their own lives. Citizens of a post-revolutionary society will be organized into federations of workers and consumer councils. Workers in worker councils need to articulate proposals on what and how much they want to produce, as well as the resources needed for production. Consumers, on the other hand, will need to express through proposals what and how much they intend to consume. Both production and consumption proposals will be sent to the facilitation board where through a system of proposals, amendments, and rejections, a social plan articulated to cover the entire economy is hashed out.

Let's be like Frank Lucas in American Gangster and cut out all the middle men.

The institutions of a participatory economy embody the values of efficiency and effectiveness that we seek. The institutions of a centrally planned economy however, no matter how valiant our efforts, no matter how beautiful are rhetoric, negate and hamper the realization of these values to take form.

Let's take a look at how central planning can be inefficient and ineffective. All which can be viewed in the history of China and Russia's usage of it.

But, first we must realize that a nation's(or regions') economy is an integrated affair. Therefore, any decisions about production in one industry will have ripple effects elsewhere. This is due to the simple fact that the output of one industry can serve as an input towards another , and thereby makes one industry dependent on another. This integration of industries can be represented through the usage of an input-output matrix.

Input Output Table

Industry	Metal	Coal
Metal	0	.4 tons
Coal	2 tons	0

Suppose through a democratic and participatory process of proposals, requests, rejections, and amendments, a social plan articulated to cover the entire economy is hashed out. One in which it articulates the need for the Coal industry to produce a net output of 200,000 tons of coal and the Metal industry to produce a net output of 50,000 tons. Suppose, coal is required to produce metal and some amount of metal in the form of tools is required to produce coal. To produce 50,000 tons of Metal requires 2(50,000)=100,000 tons of coal. Likewise the production of 200,000 tons of coal requires (0.4)(200,000)=80,000 tons of metal.

Your factory makes cars. There is a demand nationally for the cars you produce. This is known due to the fact of people putting in requests for cars through participatory consumption planning. Yet, we know that the requests and the production of cars has ripple effects. There is a finite amount of resources available to us to produce cars, as well as other products that rely on the same resources. However many cars we make, we can't use the steel and other material for other products. This also extends to human resources as well. The people assembling the cars won't be available to do other work.


There's a finite amount of resources, that goes for labor, time, natural resources, etc. What we had in Russia and China was resources being over committed. Central planners were committing more resources than were available, so there were persistent shortages. And these shortages weren't prone to one industry, but because an economy is integrated it affected other production units.

But that can be avoided with participatory planning and the elimination of the roles of central planners. People express their priorities through the usage of workers and consumer councils, and federations of these. This prevents overproduction and potentially useful products being wasted. Participatory planning is the more efficient in gauging the priorities and needs of the people, than central planning could.

Moreover, the government(centrally planned) established fixed prices for all inputs and outputs based on the role of the product in the plan and on other noneconomic criteria. The prices did not reflect the supply and demand or relative scarcity of the product. Shortages occurred and prices were established too low which resulted in allocation inefficiency and ineffectiveness. So, what we had was some outputs being cheaper than the inputs used to produce it! For example, bread was cheaper than the wheat needed for its production!

Yet, that can be avoided with participatory planning and the elimination of the roles of central planners. People express their priorities through the usage of workers and consumer councils, and federations of these. This prevents inefficient allocation and goods being over or undervalued which can cause scarcity or overproduction. Participatory planning is the more efficient in gauging the priorities and needs of the people, than central planning could.

In central planned economies, managers were rewarded for meeting assigned goals. Can you see the problem here? In Russia and China, managers manipulated and lied about reaching production goals in order not to be reprimanded and to live the good petite-bourgeois lifestyle. But, remember, economies are integrated. Looking at the input output table i have above, if managers in the coal industry are lying about reaching their output goals or manipulating data, this effects the steel industry, who uses that input to produce steel. This decreases the steel intended target, which affects bike makers, car makers and all other industries that use steel as an input.

Not very efficient or effective, huh?

But that can be avoided with participatory planning and the elimination of the roles of central planners. People express their priorities through the usage of workers and consumer councils, and federations of these. Worker's self-manage these work units, information is democratized the decision making process is democratized with each actor influencing decisions in proportion in which they are affected by them.This prevents inefficient allocation and goods being over or undervalued which can cause scarcity or overproduction by managers manipulating data. It would be more beneficial to the workers of the work unit and society as a whole to report accurate data. Again, participatory planning is the more efficient in gauging the priorities and needs of the people, than central planning ever could.

Cheers
blackstone

How to Start A Neighborhood Association

Neighborhood Associations bring the community together in order to improve the quality of life for all its residents. If you're looking at this article, there must already be something about your neighborhood that you want to change or you're concerned about, or you may just want to maintain and protect all that is good about it. To accomplish these goals, and build a sense of unity in your community, starting a neighborhood association is a positive step in the right direction.
The goal of a neighborhood association is to help enhance the quality of life in a neighborhood , and help make it a safer and more enriching place to live. If your neighborhood is already in great shape, an active neighborhood group can help it to stay that way, raising the residents' feleing of partnership with those living around them, and giving the community an effective communications link and a voice to speak to government officials, staff , developers and other influential groups.

Getting Your Neighbors Together

A well-organized group of neighbors can be a powerful and influential force coming together to address common problems in their community. Convince them that in unity there is strength! Survey the residents in your neighborhood, then with the solicited data, develop a draft of the platform and take it back out to the community to solicit feedback. The draft platform will take into account the needs, demands and concerns expressed by your neighbors through the survey and molds the association into a vehicle to address those concerns.

Business Plan / Neighborhood Plan

Once you've gotten your neighbors interested in forming a neighborhood association, decide when you will hold your first meeting. The first order of business for individuals attending the meeting should be to ratify the "Neighborhood Plan". The plan should be reviewed from time to time to assess what goals have been accomplished and what needs to be re-evaluated or removed from the plan. New goals can be included as they arise.

The following elements should be included in your "Neighborhood Plan":

• Mission Statement
• Goals
• By-Laws
• Road Map for the First Year
• Gathering Neighbors and Business Owners
• Support Committees
• Fund-raising
• Effective Communication Methods
• Place a Public Notice in the newspaper indicating time and place of your first community meeting
  

Tips to Remember

• Attract, Maintain, Recruit new members
• Involve all residents regardless of race, religion, age and socio-economic status
• Provide Success and status reports to your community
• Identity and form partnerships with schools, businesses, centers of worship, local government, hospital, realty companies, libraries, and communiaty centers
• Constantly reassess the neighborhood plan to insure that it is still working for the neighborhood!

Cheers.

Book Review: “The Abolition of the State”

(Wayne Price, Author House, 2007)

The regular contributor of Anarkismo.net, Wayne Price, comes back with a book that details the anarchist-communist criticism of the State both from a theoretical as well as historical point of view. Because of the magnitude of such a task, it is impossible for such a book to examine in length the various aspects of this. But the book is full of ideas and notions that can be developed further. The whole of the book is free of heavy academic jargon, quite easy reading and thought provoking.

The biggest merit of the book is to put forward the anarchist case against the State in a very commonsensical fashion, free of any deliberately hard to follow rhetoric. Anarchism is desirable and easy enough to grasp, and when properly explained –as this book does- it is hard for anyone not to share the basic anarchist outlook of a cooperative and truly democratic society.

Although a number of leftists and anarchist, including the famous Platform of the Dielo Trouda group, to which the author subscribes, reject the very concept of “democracy” for considering it too intertwined with capitalism, this, as proved in the book, is really a discussion of form but not of content. What really matter are the core ideas more than the words employed. Wayne uses the term democracy in its original and literal sense and not in the distorted and opportunistic way in which western politicians tend to manipulate it. In capitalism, as proved by the experience of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Spain, Greece, etc., “democracy” (limited, bourgeois, invigilated) and dictatorship are nothing but two facades of capitalist rule which often go hand in hand. This fact only demonstrates how quick the capitalist clique is willing to abandon its “lofty” democratic principles when they see their economic privilege challenged.

Anarchism, as Wayne says, is nothing but democracy without the State, a genuine form of democracy, since capitalist democracy is nothing but the illusion of majority rule while actual power is held by a tiny minority of rich men who control the economy, the bureaucracy and the military, thus controlling the lives of the powerless millions. On the contrary, anarchism is an organic form of democracy, emanating from below, from each and all of those who are part of a society which is built by everyone. For this democratic society to exist, not only the State, but also the unequal distribution of wealth and the reign of private property need to be challenged.

But anarchism, as emphasised by the author from the very beginning, is not merely an economic and political programme, but it also challenges the network of daily oppressions we experience at all levels of our lives. It therefore advances a new ethic that sticks strongly together its political and economic alternative with a new way of relating between diverse equals.

The main case of the book is that ordinary people, on a number of revolutionary situations throughout history (of which Wayne goes to review only the Spanish and Russian revolutions, as well as the Paris Commune, although he mentions many others, from Chile to Germany), have, again and again, replaced State for other forms of direct democracy to run their own affairs. So therefore, the whole argument of “how would society be without the State” is answered just by a simple exercise: look at the history of working class revolutions and many answers will be provided there. Of course historical experiences cannot be replicated; still, they provide insights in the future possibilities and more importantly, they prove the anarchist case for a Stateless society as viable and desirable.

Wayne does not pretend for a second that anarchism has all of the solutions to magically create a new society, but has a number of powerful criticisms, outlooks and proposals. This is why he resorts to dialogue with other political currents in the social movement: mainly Marxists, but also radical liberals, as well as market socialists. He proves in various cases the existence of common perspectives in many of these political currents and the existence of a libertarian and an authoritarian trend in every single one among them. Anarchists, therefore, do not come from the moon: it is only the articulate and coherent political elaboration of tendencies to be found widespread among the working class and ordinary people. Because of this, revolution after revolution, we see the same elements emerging in proposals for social construction: the egalitarian character common to all of the communist tendencies and an emphasis on direct democracy that has developed better in anarchism than in any other current.

I’m particularly fond of Wayne’s approach in engaging in respectful dialogue with other currents of the left. This, because for most of the left, the main, long-term goals are the same; the problem, as Wayne poses it, is the transition period. Most Marxist currents have argued that during the transition period, in a transitory fashion, the State would remain necessary: some form of State would be required mainly for the necessary coercion against the class enemies. Therefore, there’s an emphasis in centralisation in the revolutionary endeavours to build a new society, drive which has turned good intentions into nightmarish totalitarianisms. Though we can sit back and say the road to hell is full of good intentions, we ought to acknowledge the need of engaging in that dialogue –because different to a Hitler who knew what he was doing (and who talked the language of authority and supremacy), the development of socialist totalitarianism was an ugly result, unavoidable because of the tactics employed, of a programme which genuinely tried to change society for the better. Then bureaucratism and the development of the totalitarian State ended up burying any good intentions left –often, burying with them those very revolutionaries which helped build the new regime.

While acknowledging that some of those tasks currently undertaken by the State will be necessary in a post-revolutionary society –even coercion-, Wayne convincingly argues that democratic, grassroots organisations can carry them perfectly, without the burden of a bureaucracy, of an elite placed above the rest of society making politics instead of the people –and without the risk of restoration of a new class society inherent to any State. Of course this type of grassroots political organisms will vary greatly from place to place, according to the needs of particular peoples, or their history and traditions. It is certainly impossible and not desirable to come up with a mould to apply everywhere at any time. It would not be libertarian to proceed in such a way either. It is the popular genius which has proven wise enough to come up with the best solutions for specific contexts in history and we know that this same genius will be always looking for its way forward in history through its own experience. Because of this, Wayne thinks it is much better to talk of an “experimental” rather than a “transitional society”. The sole guideline we need, as Wayne brilliantly sums it up avoiding any false dichotomy, is that there is as little centralisation and hierarchy as possible, and as much decentralisation, autonomy and grassroots decision making as possible. And here lies another merit of his work: he refuses to see federalism as an absolute opposite to centralism. Federalism, at least in the anarchist sense of the word, means nothing but the right balance between the minimum reasonable and necessary level of centralisation and the maximum viable level of autonomy.

This respectful dialogue with other political currents is much required, not only to build “bridges” with those sections of the people who hold ideas different to us –although their intentions may be equivalent- but also to reach a proper understanding of why revolutionary experiences have failed and often have gone internally rotten by authoritarianism. A political understanding of, for instance, the Russian failure needs to acknowledge the problem of means and ends, instead of the moralistic muddle-headed platitudes of goodies and baddies which, unfortunately, plague anarchist literature. This means also to start getting rid of ill-definitions which add up nothing to our understanding of reality, but actually obscure it. Terms like “red fascist”, to refer Leninism, only clarify that those who use it whether don’t know anything about fascism or they don’t properly understand Leninism. Interestingly, Wayne analyses the failure to stop the rise of Nazism in the ‘30s Germany and deals with the ill-definitions of the German Communist Party, borrowed from the maniac sectarianism of Third Period international Communism. They labelled basically anyone out of its ranks as a fascist: thus, the social-democrats being social-fascists and anarchists being anarcho-fascists, they were unable to tell the real danger of fascism coming. This sectarianism did actually open the doors for fascism to get in without many problems. It is not too difficult to draw parallels between the sectarianism of Stalinism with the sectarianism often prevalent amongst some anarchists. The elitist attitude is the same and so is generally speaking the frame of mind of both extremes.

Another important aspect of Wayne’s work is to challenge the belief, still prevalent among the old-fashioned left, that centralisation in the economic arena is more efficient or even as necessary as usually assumed. Therefore, anarchist federalism is dismissed as unsound to deal with the complexities of modern production and life. The actual evidence, though, contradicts this simplistic view: recent economic transformations show that actually capitalism in its drive to increase productivity has moved from centralism to increased levels of decentralisation. Most modern and post-Fayol theoreticians of management, stress the need to tear down strict hierarchies in the workplace, rotate workers in chain production, get rid of unnecessary repetition and routine, introduce limited levels of participation of workers in some decision-making and planning, what they even disguise in theory as forms of “self-management”, etc. with an overall view at de-centralisation. I’m referring to authors such as Tom Peters (“Liberation Management”)[1]. This, they have proved, leads to an increase productivity and motivation of the workforce.

This tendency, however, pose its own problems for workers as a class: often, these privileges are reserved to the most specialised and well-off segments of the working force (such as professionals, technicians or specialists with a high degree of training) and, generally speaking, the main idea of this is to make workers accomplices of their own exploitation. In as much as property is not touched and the upper hand remains in the hands of the bourgeois few, the bosses can allow no problem some levels of “democracy” inside of the workplace.

Also, we have to bear in mind that decentralisation and outsourcing, are all terms frequently used by the capitalist class, sometimes aiming at dismantling the mammoth State corporations and facilitating capitalist intervention; other times (as in Chile after the Piñera labour laws of 1980) to make it easier to divide workers and weakening their unions. What I want to stress, is that decentralisation per se is not inherently revolutionary. It can be used by the capitalist class to the achievement of its own purposes as long as property is untouched. While Wayne spends a significant amount of effort demonstrating how centralism has been used by capitalism for financial and political purposes, he fails to spend a similar amount of time proving the same case about decentralisation. It is relevant to insist on this point, particularly in the IT era where we are standing when centralisation has been made, in just a decade, altogether redundant.

Whatever the case, the development of modern capitalism demonstrates that even some limited amounts of self-management and human resource management techniques aimed at motivating workers, prove the case of anarchists: workers control is not only best for workers, but also for productivity. This was already proved in revolutionary terms by the Barcelona commune during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Over half a century later, it wouldn’t be such an exaggeration to say that it is the very capitalist system, through the IT and management developments of the last decade, which has done more for the advancement of the communist cause than all of the left together. However, we know that none of these transformations, while developing and expanding the “objective” conditions for an emancipated society, will lead mechanically to a new society. In fact, they are only serving to increase levels of alienation of the working class and increase the gap between the classes by maximizing profits in a way never seen before in history. Without a conscious organised anarchist and revolutionary political force, we can wait forever more. And this force has to challenge the sources of power of the bourgeoisie –this is what Wayne refers as “taking power”, a term that may be problematic to some anarchists but which any honest reader will not fail to understand in context as free of any authoritarian connotation.

Only challenging those sources of power –what can only be done through revolutionary means as proven by experience- can we aim at building a truly democratic and humane society. Because, we can’t forget that capitalism not only is undemocratic and alienating, but also is a system plagued of atrocities. Although we often insist on the abominations of both Nazism and Stalinism, it is not too often that we focus on the evils of Capitalism. And I’m not even thinking on the evils of colonialism, closely linked to the development of the capitalist system. We actually could go on forever on the atrocities practised by the Belgian in Congo, by the French in Algeria, or the famines caused by the British authorities in India. I won’t even focus on the murderous slaughters caused by imperialist aggression in the XXth Century. We could talk forever on the US invasions of the Philippines, their atrocities in Central America, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam or the carnival of mayhem taking place currently in Iraq. We could talk forever of the English in Kenya or Dresden.

But I won’t refer to any of this. I am just thinking on the silent massacre of 25,000 people a day out of starvation, not to talk of those who die for lack of safe access to water and preventable diseases -all this in a world of abundance. This figure alone should be enough condemnation of the capitalist regime –if we lived in a sane society. This is not just an “unwanted” result of otherwise good politics that over time can be ameliorated. This is the direct and well known result of the application of deliberate economic policies and structural adjustment programmes designed in the capitalist centres of the world, unconcerned of the tragedies that they unfold, and reinforced by a myriad on international financial institutions. Even the UN report on Human Development (2006) states that “Like hunger, deprivation in access to water is a silent crisis experienced by the poor and tolerated by those with the resources, the technology and the political power to end it”[2]. We have to state clearly that this crisis is not only “tolerated” by those with the wealth and power: it is they who have actually created it. It is the direct result of capitalism at a global scale. And these nasty “side-effects” of capitalism have not been ameliorated with time –they’re getting worse and worse each passing day. Added to the ecological crisis, caused also by the senseless waste of capitalist society, it is capitalism the main responsible of periodical famines in many parts of the Third World. So much has been written about the “black book” of communism or fascism, but capitalism has as many skeletons in its closet and its black book is jet black as anything.

As Wayne correctly states, the State, even the most democratic of them is not properly democratic. But not only is it undemocratic. It is murderous too. For those reasons it should be abolished. All of the conditions are there for us to start with this task. And Wayne’s book is definitely a contribution to explore the possibilities of a genuinely free society.

José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton
November 4th, 2007


http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6798

African Anarchists Reorganize for Revolution

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation was replaced by a new, unitary organisation, the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front. On December 2, the members of the new ZACF held talks with Swazi comrades with a view to establishing a new unitary organisation in Swaziland. The new Front's constitution follows.

As adopted at Johannesburg, 1 December 2007

The ZACF defines Anarchism as:

“…society organised without authority, meaning by authority the power to impose one’s own will ... authority not only is not necessary for social organisation but, far from benefiting it, lives on it parasitically, hampers its development, and uses its advantages for the special benefit of a particular class which exploits and oppresses the others”.

Errico Malatestal , Agitazione June 4, 1897

And Communism as:

“Common possession of the necessaries for production imply[ing] the common enjoyment of the fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organisation of society can only arise when every wage-system is abandoned, and when everybody, contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of [their] capacities, shall enjoy also from the common stock of society to the fullest possible extent of [their] needs.”

Piotr Kropotkin , Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles,1887

PREAMBLE

We, the working class, produce the world’s wealth. We ought to enjoy the benefits.

We want to abolish the system of capitalism that places wealth and power in the hands of a few, and replace it with workers self-management and socialism.

We do not mean the lie called ‘socialism’ practised in Russia, China, and other police states - the system in those countries was/is no more than another form of capitalism - state capitalism.

We stand for a new society where there will be no bosses or bureaucrats. A society that will be run in a truly democratic way by working people, through federations of community and workplace committees.

We want to abolish authoritarian relationships and replace them with control from the bottom up - not the top down. All the industries, all the means of production and distribution will be commonly owned, and placed under the management of those working in them. Production will be co-ordinated, organised and planned by the federation of elected and recallable workplace and community committees, not for profit but to meet our needs. The guiding principle will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need”.

We are opposed to all coercive authority; we believe that the only limit on the freedom of the individual is that their freedom does not interfere with the freedom of others.

We do not ask to be made rulers nor do we intend to seize power “on behalf of the working class”. Instead, we hold that socialism can only be created by the mass of ordinary people. Anything less is bound to lead to no more than replacing one set of bosses with another.

We are opposed to the state because it is not neutral, it cannot be made to serve our interests. The structures of the state are only necessary when a minority seeks to rule over the majority.

We can create our own structures, which will be open and democratic, to ensure the efficient running of everyday life.

We are proud to be part of the tradition of libertarian socialism, of anarchism. The anarchist movement has taken root in the working class of many countries because it serves our interests - not the interests of the power seekers and professional politicians.

In short we fight for the immediate needs and interests of our class under the existing set up, while seeking to encourage the necessary understanding and activity to overthrow capitalism and its state, and lead to the birth of a free and equal (anarchist) society.

Full constitution of ZACF found here

“zabalaza” being the indigenous word meaning “struggle” in Zulu and Xhosa

Meeting the Demands of the People

In the late 1960s a group of black militants burst onto the scene to capture the hearts and minds of inner city youth with fiery rhetoric and words as slick as their black leather jackets. Through armed police brutality patrols and calls for "power to the people", the Black Panther Party embodied the radicalization of the Black Struggle and inspired a generation of young people to become politically active. The Party however, was not just a Self-Defense organization. Early on, founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, articulated their immediate demands and political positions into a ten point program. In the autobiography of Bobby Seale, Seize the Time, explains the importance of the ten point program.


Huey said, "We need a program. We have to have a program for the people. A program that relates to the people. A program that the people can understand. A program that the people can read and see, and which expresses their desires and needs at the same time. It's got to relate to the philosophical meaning of where in the world we are going, but the philosophical meaning will also have to relate to something specific."

Point 10 on the Panther's ten point program proclaimed, "We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace." However, as Marxists, the Panthers recognized that their interests conflicted with the interests of the bourgeoisie. Newton states, "The Black Panther Party is a revolutionary Nationalist group and we see a major contradiction between capitalism and our interests". So, just how would these demands be met? Newton goes on by saying, "We realize this country became very rich upon slavery and that capitalism is slavery in the extreme. We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism.We must destroy racism and capitalism." Their interests therefore, could only be realized through the destruction of capitalism through a socialist revolution.

Participatory Planning

In a post-revolutionary society the means of production are owned by everyone in equal share and not by one particular production group. The bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie will no longer have a monopoly on the decision making process. Each actor in society would influence decisions in proportion in which they are affected by them. Society will thus be participatory and egalitarian.

Participatory planning allows participants to exercise direct democracy and allows ordinary citizens to control their own lives. Citizens of a post-revolutionary society will be organized into federations of workers and consumer councils. Workers in worker councils need to articulate proposals on what and how much they want to produce, as well as the resources needed for production. Consumers, on the other hand, will need to express through proposals what and how much they intend to consume. Both production and consumption proposals will be sent to the facilitation board where through a system of proposals, amendments, and rejections, a social plan articulated to cover the entire economy is hashed out.

Personal Consumption Proposals

How can demands for "land, bread, housing, education, clothing,justice and peace" be achieved in a socialist society? The answer to this question lies in participatory planning.

For example, Omar, an African-American living with his girlfriend in a co-housing community in Detroit, Michigan, is working on his personal consumption proposal. His neighborhood already negotiated it's collective proposals, which have consequently, been summed up with county, state, regional and national collective consumption proposals.

Omar, like most able bodied individuals, works at a roughly average job complex and requests a roughly average consumption bundle. He knows that everyone has a finite share of the total social product. So all citizens can request things up to the limit of their budget allocated to them. Logging on to his computer, he begins to draft a consumption proposal based on combinations of different goods he desires and their indicative prices.

Omar is unfortunately a very picky eater, so his choice of foods are very limited. He bases his food consumption proposal on his old grocery store lists in pre-revolutionary and capitalist days. His computer program manipulates the input to articulate it for the whole year. Of course, he may change his mind, so fortunately for him, the iteration processes of participatory economics introduces "slack" in the social plan to allow for spontaneous "purchases". Omar is really a simple man and doesn't need a roomful of clothes, so he is modest when it comes to his clothing requests. A dozen or so new shirts and pants, a trench coat, boots for the winter, more socks( they continue to disappear in drying machine post-revolution too!), and other items will do him fine.

Even though, Omar enjoys living in the co-housing community, he and is girlfriend decided they wanted a bit more privacy and want to relocate into a household in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Housing Facilitation Board is a group of workers that assists people wishing to change their residence. Likewise, the Employment Facilitation Board is a group of workers whom assists people who wish to change their workplace. These two boards help Omar and his girlfriend relocate to an available household in Kalamazoo, as well, as get him quickly situated in a new workplace.

One of the other main reasons, why Omar wanted to move to Kalamazoo, was because it houses a brand new college specifically centered on African And African American Studies. Before the revolution, such places didn't exist and it was senseless to major in African studies at a college because that degree was useless on the job market . Now, part of his job complex is teaching Egyptian History in a local community Center, as well as smelter in a local steel plant.

In capitalism, Omar was subject to police brutality and racial profiling. Being born in a poor neighborhood in Detroit, he had little chance to pursue higher education or escape the vicious circle of poverty. His mother lived off of paycheck to paycheck and some nights all he had to eat was his hatred for being born black and poor.

However, after the socialist revolution, Omar has more opportunities and more freedoms than ever before. All basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, medical care, etc are easily met now. There is no more police brutality, black on black crime has gone down from the Crips and Gangster Disciples having been disbanded, he has enrolled in college which is provided free to all citizens and he goes to bed each night with his hunger satisfied.

In conclusion, post-revolutionary society will be participatory and egalitarian. The social plan for society will be reached upon by a series of proposals from workers' and consumers' (neighborhood) councils and meetings of regional delegates. This makes sure that every citizen's demand for "land, bread, housing, education, clothing,justice and peace" is met and that the Panther legacy continues to live on.


Cheers
-blackstone

Anarchism in South Africa

Anarchism in South Africa
An interview with Michael Schmidt of the ZACF
by Alternative Libertaire

The ZACF is one of the most active libertarian formations in the southern part of the African continent. In order to better understand its history, its intervention in southern African society and the fights which it impels and supports, we interviewed one of its militants, Michael Schmidt.

Alternative Libertaire: Could you tell briefly in which conditions/context and how Zabalaza, and then the ZACF, were built?

Michael Schmidt: The roots of what became the ZACF are to be found in the anti-apartheid struggle of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the formation of two semi-clandestine anarchist federations, one in Johannesburg and another in Durban, within the anarcho-punk movement. So the initial conditions were one of low-intensity civil war between the white and black nationalist organisations, and the organised anarchists took a strong stand against neo-fascism, nationalism and military conscription. From this came the Workers' Solidarity Federation in 1995 (a year after the first democratic elections). The WSF was the first national anarchist organisation and developed a more comprehensive platform of positions on race, class, gender, imperialism etc, most of which remain the ideological foundation of the movement today. The WSF had a significant number of trade union & shop-steward members and was 50/50 black and white. It was dissolved for tactical reasons in 1999 as the ANC began to move rightwards and trade unions became difficult to operate in. In the interim before the ZACF was founded in 2003, we ran the independent Workers' Library & Museum (working-class meeting-place) in Johannesburg and the Zabalaza Books propaganda unit. The rise of the radical new social movements from about 2000 saw us help found the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and later form the ZACF to participate directly in social movement activism. So in practice, we have moved from semi-clandestinity to syndicalism to social activism, depending on objective conditions within the working class.

Alternative Libertaire: What are nowaday the main struggles/actions they are involved in?

Michael Schmidt: Today, our main private activity is internal political education and strategy sessions, while our main public activity is what we call "Red & Black Forums". These are public workshops which give an anarchist-communist analysis of events. Previously, they used to be small affairs attended by a handful of anarchists and some friends. Today we sometimes get as many as 70 working-class people to a meeting, in poor areas as far away as Sebokeng, south of Soweto. The other big difference is that now instead of us inviting people to a meeting, we are often invited ourselves to give two-day Red & Black Forums in townships and squatter camps such as Orange Farm. Other than that, we participate in demonstrations relating to Iraq, Palestine and South African labour struggles - and have mounted campaigns against repression in Oaxaca and prisoners in Spain or Germany. We also have members living under the dictatorship in Swaziland and we give them regular practical and ideological support. The same goes for our anarchist comrades living under dictatorship in Zimbabwe: the ZACF helped run a public solidarity campaign for the youth of Zimbabwe in Johannesburg last December.

Alternative Libertaire: What are in your point of view the political/social emergencies now in South Africa?

Michael Schmidt: The two biggest political/social emergencies in South Africa (and southern Africa more broadly) are no doubt a) gender violence, and b) HIV/Aids. The slowness of the government in coming around to admitting that HIV causes Aids has strengthened grassroots activist organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign, which uses a combination of lawsuits and street demonstrations to force the government's hand. The ZACF has no specific HIV/Aids policy (a failing of ours), but has been very pro-active in interrogating its own male members' behaviour towards women. We do, however, have too few women in our organisation. Violent crime, especially against women and children, has reached epidemic proportions especially in poor areas, and is often falsely blamed on Africans from other countries. Millions of refugees, from Somalia, the Great Lakes, DRC, Zimbabwe etc now live in South Africa, which means that xenophobia is increasingly used by the populists to divert anger from the indigenous comprador ruling class. But at base, these social distortions of crime are the result of extreme poverty in our region - which capitalism will refuse to solve because it relies on a cheap labour pool to feather its nest.

Alternative Libertaire: What are ZACF links with social movement (even if the last one is in the state you described)?

Michael Schmidt: The nature of our links has changed significantly over the years. In the WSF days, most of us were unionised and several like myself were shop-stewards. Today the climate has changed (my own union has collapsed and I'm not unionised, but am considering joining a Trotskyist-run union). So our first links to communities were through organised workers, but now our contact is directly with communities. But the social movements have proved more fruitful. We have done a little work with, for example, supporting sweat-shop workers in Soweto, but most of our work has been more within poor communities. We tried to set up community food gardens in Motsoaledi (a squatter-camp in Soweto), in Dlamini (a formal housing area in Soweto) and in Sebokeng. The one in Motsoaledi still continues - and has a popular community library and creche attached - whereas the one in Dlamini was destroyed by ANC Youth League thugs and the one in Sebokeng never took off. These projects are about teaching working-class autonomy: that the poor have enough skills, if they use them collectively, to solve their own problems outside of the state which cares so little for them. We have direct links into the prisons (and a network of jailed guerrillas) through our Anarchist Black Cross / Anti-Repression Network and have done significant prison-support work. In a wider context, through the Anti-Privatisation Forum, we became well-known to various struggling urban communities, and also to the 100,000-strong Landless People's Movement (LPM). Although the social movements have achieved much, they are currently in a state of retreat - often because of the bad politics (sexism, opportunism, vanguardism etc) of the Trotskyists and left populists who dominate the leadership of many organisations. But we believe the anarchists, plus the autonomists and some Stalinists have been honest, decent activists and so are recognised by the social movements as trustworthy (we rate militants by what they do, not so much by what they say).

Alternative Libertaire: What about Cosatu?

Michael Schmidt: Cosatu remains important to us because it is the country's largest working-class formation, with about 1,8-million members. It is about to embark on a massive (@1-million public sector unionists) general strike (May 30) over wage increases. They will strike alongside Fedusa, Nactu and independent unions, which is an important show of unity for union federations previously divided by ideology, now united as workers. Cosatu's ideologues believe that starting in 2002, they managed to reverse the rightward, neoliberal drift of the ANC, but this has yet to be seen in terms of ANC policy. However, Cosatu has from about a year ago, started making overtures to the social movements saying we must work together. This is both because union membership is changing because of creeping casualisation, and because of the great layer of unemployed (40% of the working population by union estimates) that can also be mobilised if we work together. The ZACF is in favour of a convergence of these forces - so long as it remains along class lines and the social movements are not compromised by working with a union federation allied to the ruling party (there are many factions within Cosatu that are deeply critical of the ANC). The ZACF has been discussing the possibility of establishing syndicalist cells within existing trade unions in at least two areas: the University of the Witwatersrand and at Independent Newspapers.

Alternative Libertaire: What are the main problems the anarcho-communist stream is confronted with in South Africa?

Michael Schmidt: Our biggest ideological challenge is the dominance among the popular classes of the ANC's black nationalist ideology which peddles the myth of the "National Democratic Revolution". Fortunately, over time, segments of the popular classes (especially the unemployed and the farm-labour tenants) have come to see that this "Revolution" was about the ANC enabling the survival of white capital's exploitation in exchange for a few seats at the feast for black leaders. Also, we have deliberately called ourselves the Zabalaza (Struggle) Anarchist Communist Federation to try to establish a true grassroots communism - and to distinguish it from the SACP's weak social-democratic version. But still, the SACP has huge numbers and resources compared to us. Which takes us to our biggest practical challenge: extreme poverty. Even many of our own members face hunger on a daily basis and the organisation is not wealthy enough to feed them (hence the food-garden idea, but it has been plagued with problems like community members wanting to turn it into a small business). We are not a charity, but a political organisation. Still, it is hard to operate in such conditions. The working class, so impoverished, becomes prey to fly-by-night religious sects, labour brokers, loan-sharks, and political demagogues who promise them "a better life" (the ANC slogan).

Alternative Libertaire: You say the anarchist message is starting to spead: how do you notice this process?

Michael Schmidt: We notice this whenever we run into a black person in a township who describes themselves as anarchist despite having never met us. We notice it by the great interest that our Red & Black Forums generate, and by the invitations we have been receiving to hold such Forums in poor areas (we have even had an invitation to speak to a radical miners'union in the far northern Limpopo province of South Africa). We also notice it by the presence of actual anarchists in Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Kenya and Morocco - and by the people who get in contact with us from Sudan, or Uganda, or the Democratic Republic of Congo or Nigeria wanting anarchist materials. Lastly, we notice it by the noticeable presence of so many African trade unions (nomatter how mainstream) at the I07 syndicalist congress in Paris. Clearly, African workers are looking for a socio-political model that is not corrupt like the "African socialism" they know too well.

Alternative Libertaire: What are the connections with other anarcho-communist or anarchist organizations in Africa and "in the world"?

Michael Schmidt: Historically, the Workers’ Solidarity Movement (WSM, Ireland) has been our most consistent supporter, and their solidarity has been considerably added to over the years by practical and ideological support from the likes of the SAC (Sweden), CGT (Spain), CNT (France), FA (France), WSA (USA) and ART (New Zealand). We have also established close ties in recent years with NEFAC (USA/Canada), FdCA (Italy), CIPO-RFM (Mexico), OCL (Chile), FAG & FARJ (Brazil), FAU (Uruguay), AKI (Turkey), OAE (Greece), ACT (Lebanon) and others. Practically, we have oriented ourselves towards the "social insertion" practice of the Latin American "especifista" organisations. We are proud to count as our comrades anarchist activists from the MLCE (Cuban exile), Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and other places that are very tough to organise in. In Africa, we have lost touch with the Awareness League (Nigeria), though we hear that it is still operating in the north, but still have contacts with Brahim Filali (Morocco) and the Wiyathi Collective (Kenya). The situation in better in the south with a ZACF presence in Swaziland and with good relations with anarchists among the Uhuru Network in Zimbabwe. As for Alternative Libertaire, we work alongside you in the anarkismo.net project (and met your militants at Autre Futur in Paris in 2000)! We also hope to establish closer relations so that AL can keep us informed on developments in Francophone Africa, while we tell you what is going on in Anglophone Africa.

New Housing in a Post-Revolutionary Society

In this blog post, I want to discuss a possible solution on how a community can request new housing for it's citizens. This discussion include ideas of private property, socialized means of production and participatory planning. In a post-revolutionary society the means of production are owned by everyone and not by one particular production group. Therefore, each actor should influence decisions in proportion in which they are affected by them.

QUOTE (spartan @ October 02, 2007 06:42 pm)

blackstone: QUOTE I don't see a 50-50 split happening in your situation. The factory can either have the abundance to supply the wood to the commune or not. (And who are willing to give some of there Yes but what if C2 does not want to supply C1 with wood which is needed by C2? A solution to this problem could be for C1 to look elsewhere to another commune for wood away) but what if the next nearest commune is too far away too suit C1's demand for the wood?This could create a supply problem! Especially if C1 needs the wood desperately and gets impatient for the wood.This could lead to C1 getting violent!

Well, in that case the wood factory of commune 2(from here on out referred to as Che Commune) has a workers council which is part of a larger federation of wood factory workers' council, which could be regional, national or international. If someone can supply it, it wouldn't take long for the commune to receive it.

Again, i think we have to think about rules of order.

In an post-revolutionary society there will be stages of planning before voting takes place.

If your part of a group, do you vote you all go to Egypt without first checking the traveling expenses and seeing whether it's in your budget?

Wouldn't be too clever. And you'll be in for a surprise..


Say the Eastside neighborhood council makes part of Che Commune, a commune which is made up of various neighborhood councils and workers councils. The neighborhood council received requests to build more houses and raised the issue in the next commune meeting and submitted the idea of new housing as a collective consumption project. The commune then submits this proposal to a facilitation board which calculates how much wood and other supplies would be needed for the project.


Workers also make proposals for what they intend to produce and the inputs needed for production. These production proposals would have also been sent to the facilation board where through a system of proposals, amendments, and rejections, a social plan articulated to cover the entire economy is hashed out.

The worker organizations that would do the work of construction and provide the materials, including the wood workers organization that provides the lumber, etc. would need to also indicate what they require in order to meet these requests. The facilitation board will relay this new information to Che commune and the Eastside neighborhood council. Where if needed they can make the proper "adjustments" to their proposals. The households of Eastside commune given back 4 different revised proposals which they rank in order of preference. After each round, a proposal is dropped until the neighborhood has settled on it's collective consumption proposal(which includes new housing requests).

This is all part of the process of negotiating of a plan on how scarce resources will be allocated. Che commune, ore more precisely, the Eastside neighborhood council can either re-adjust their collective consumption plans or put the project on hold. If through this process of adjustments, they can reach an "agreement", the community votes to settle the collective consumption proposals in order to begin prouduction on the new houses.

As always emphasized, this is just one particular way to pursue a collective consumption decision making process.

Cheers

Train Services in a Decentralised Economy

I'd like to discuss a bit on how train services would work in a socialist society with a decentralized and participatory economics and social planning. I hope to show just how it is possible to generate train schedules and other functions without central planning or a central authority. It begins with a question made by a advocate of central planning..

If you don't believe in a centally planned economy, how would train timetables be drawn up? I mean, you can't have decentralised train services can you? Someone has to have the authority to plan the way that a nation's train service operates.

I think you have a misconception of what it means to be decentralized and the absence of authority.

Here's what Bakunin had to say,

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer.

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.

-God and the State (1876)

The train federation, which consists of delegates from various train stations will adjust to each other through a system of requests and proposals. These proposals not only have to be ratified by the train federation, but also by the communities that it directly effects. This is obviously because any changes in the timetables may have a ripple effect. If you want to change the schedule for the train heading from Newark to Irvington, this will effect the schedule for the train heading from Orange to Cherry Hill and so on. Which may cause an inconvenience to workers.

So what would need to happen is community councils and regional meetings of the delegates of the communities, need to develop their plans for transportation (as well as other consumptions), and likewise, train station councils and federation would need to put forward their initial proposals terms of what they propose to do. Again, through a democratic and participatory process of proposals, requests, rejections, amendments, a time table that benefits the majority of people will be developed.

Through these proposals and by analyzing the data, facilitators note how there is a increase in the percentage of people who need to travel to Cherry Hill to Newark at a specific time range and a decrease of a need to travel to Cherry Hill to Passaic. Once the effects are examined and ratified by all parties, the new timetables are updated to adjust to these changes.

Again, this is just my conception of how decentralized planning of timetables will take place. Others may have other options and that's fine. This is just an abstract framework.

Cheers

Vanguard Party?

I'd like to discuss the structure of Leninist form of organization and how it can lead to either a restoration of capitalism or exerts itself as a dictatorship over the proletariat and how that can be avoided.

But here's the rub. There are forces in high positions of leadership in the party and state that push and fight for a bourgeois line. By bourgeois line, I mean an outlook and policies that seek to expand the kinds of inequalities that characterize capitalism. I mean an outlook and policies that seek to restrict the initiative of the masses. And these forces in high leadership who push a bourgeois line will be strategically positioned to implement their program: to institute policies and to restructure economic and social relations in a capitalist direction.

There should be no reason whatsoever, that any one person or groups of people, should be "strategically positioned" to implement their programs to restructure economic and social relations in a capitalist direction!

If the structure of the organization is of the Leninist form , then that structure in of itself, due to its hierarchy and non-participatory nature, will thwart a true proletariat revolutionary movement, due to it's exclusion of the working class!

In fact, this very structure, is the reason why forces can become "strategically positioned" in high positions of leadership to wield a larger influence in the direction of society and the revolutionary movement.


Because Leninist forms of organizations do no incorporate a democratic process in which workers and consumers jointly plan their endeavors, this obviously excludes ordinary workers and consumers from participating in any economic decision making process.

As a result, a Leninist party usually ends up implementing a centrally planned economy. This is in essence bureaucratic management of the the economy and other spheres of society.

This leads to a monopoly on decision making, as well as other tasks (and former bourgeois perks).

However, this whole threat of forces carrying a bourgeois line can be completely avoided.

How so?

Throw the whole Leninist vanguard party model out the window.

It's a just a breeding ground for the restoration of capitalism.

The Revolutionary Betrayed: The Sequel


Instead, we need a form of organization where the working class are in direct control of the movement. By implementing Participatory Allocation, and participatory or decentralized economics in general, we can avoid any threat of "forces in high leadership".

Joe Smoe wants to institute zones for capitalist investment in a participatory society? Good luck getting that one passed buddy. Something like that isn't a neighborhood, ward, city, state or region decision. So good luck with having the majority of society voting to restore capitalism.

There is little to no chance to consolidate power for the eventual development of or re-development of Capitalism.

Society will be egalitarian and participatory.