WSA History: WSA holds founding conference in NYC: The Return of the Anarcho-Syndicalists

Posted on August 20, 2011, filed Under WSA. Leave a Comment

“WSA holds founding conference in NYC: The Return of the Anarcho-Syndicalists”

Editors Note: The following article originally appeared in the February 1985 edition of the North American newspaper STRIKE!
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Historic WSA Founding Call Letter - 1984

Posted on August 12, 2011, filed Under WSA. Leave a Comment

Conference for a new national libertarian workers organization

Fellow workers:

During the past year or so, there has been talk about creating a new organization in the U.S. which would embrace and further anarcho-syndicalist activity. Read more

Social Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism, the State and Leninism

Posted on June 4, 2009, filed Under Rebel Legacies, WSA. Leave a Comment

A Reply to the International Socialist Organization
by Tom Wetzel (Mar 12, 2009) (from my ZNet blog)

I was prompted to write this by Paul D’Amato’s two recent articles in Socialist Worker criticizing anarchism
(http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/27/refusing-to-be-ruled-over), and
(http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/06/marxist-view-of-the-state) but this will also give me the
opportunity to provide an explanation of some basic social anarchist ideas. I take it that
social or Left-anarchism and libertarian socialism are the same thing. Thus I use the
phrases “social anarchism” and “libertarian socialism” interchangeably.

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and The Workers Organization

Posted on January 15, 2009, filed Under Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

(What Is Anarcho-Syndicalism?)

By George Woodcock. Ed. By Scott R.

Ed. Note: Anarcho-Syndicalism = Anarchism + Syndicalism [from greek an + archos (without+leader) + syn + dikale, (together+justice); the international Anarchist labor movement; an evolution of libertarian socialism].

Adapted from George Woodcock, Railroads & Society, 1943 (Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No. 18, April 1999).

Syndicalism is a method of social organization which goes away from all the traditional conceptions of authority and government, of Capitalism and the State. While Communism in abolishing individual capitalism, creates a worse monster in its place in the form of the economic state, Syndicalism leaves all the patterns of administration which have in the past resulted only in the oppression and exploitation of man by man, and sets out to build an organizational form based on the natural needs of man rather than on the interests of ruling classes, based not on the dictates of authority, but on the voluntary cooperation of free and equal individuals in satisfying the economic needs of the men who form society.

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and Medical Care

Posted on January 15, 2009, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues, Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

By Scott R.

Medicine today has become highly specialized and is permeated with interference from insurance corporations and drug manufacturers [some of the world’s biggest capitalists]. It is difficult and expensive to get basic medical care [public hospitals in working class communities are being closed by the government]. Timely diagnosis and treatments also seem to be myths of the medical industrialists as well. Ambulance services may only be available to those with money in the near future. Paramedics are attached to fire departments, many of which are voluntary. Dental, optical, prenatal, pediatric, and elderly care are even more neglected [less available to those who need them]. Governments have closed public mental hospitals until the primary sources of treatment/medication for mentally ill persons are the State and County prison systems. US military hospitals are overwhelmed with patients from the latest US-Iraq War to before the US-Viet Nam War.

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and A Living Wage

Posted on January 15, 2009, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues, Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

By Scott R.

“To each according to their needs.”

WHAT IS A “LIVING WAGE”? It is a minimum quality of life which is due to all people. LW = FOOD + CLOTHING + SHELTER + HEALTH + TRANSPORTATION. It is what you need to get to work/school and be productive. It is something you need for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The workers organizations fight for this as a basic “human right” for all people (workers, families, retirees, etc.). It is a measure of the humanity of a social system.

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and Housing

Posted on January 15, 2009, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues, Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

By Scott R.

In the future land use planning must be done by the community with the immediate and long term needs of the community in mind. Worker self-management will direct the functions of workplaces, but so-called “property rights” will no longer be transferrable. Community self-management will be by workers in the community who will have to balance the need for housing with the social economic needs of workplaces and residents in the community [production/distribution/exchange of resources and products for use/needs, not profit]. A volunteer workers housing committee in the workplace will gather housing need information from workers. In the community, a volunteer housing working group will survey housing needs and potential existing housing resources. Both will include persons with building safety expertise [structure safety (fire, vermin, quake), electricity, plumbing, etc.]. We want to enable workers and their families to safely live in the communities where they work. Slumlords should be identified and have their wealth and resources expropriated to help make their former residential properties more safe and habitable.

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Free Commune/Community

Posted on January 15, 2009, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues, Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

By Scott R.

“The emancipation of the working class must be the task of the workers themselves.”

Anarcho-Syndicalists do more than workplace organizing. We believe in creating counter-institutions which preconfigure the society we would like to live in; in advance of a Social Revolution which would completely transform our communities. We call this “building the New Society within the shell of the old.” In this way we educate ourselves and demonstrate to others that our ideas are practical. Our model community was inspired by the Paris Commune (1871) and Spanish Civil War (1936). Many of our collectives [affinity groups] are involved with projects that reflect aspects of the following:

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and Community Building

Posted on January 14, 2009, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues, Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

(Building the Free Commune)

By Scott R.

Whether you live in a City, town, or country, working people deserve fair compensation for their labor. Every person who looks for work should be able to find it. Every worker and student should be entitled to food, housing and good health. It is possible for no one to have to live in poverty, be exploited, or be discriminated against.

People prosper best in a society with political AND economic freedom. This means worker self-management in the workplace and direct democracy [self-management] in the community.

Working class communities today are a form of colonialism where abscentee capitalist landlords own everything and use the occupation forces of their cops [and sometimes the military], courts and jails to terrorize people into submission while they squeeze as much money out of people as possible through taxes, rents, redlining [discrimination, underserving, overpricing], etc..

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Anarcho-Syndicalism and Ecology

Posted on January 14, 2009, filed Under Worker Struggle. Leave a Comment

By Scott R.

Working class communities [especially, communities of color] have historically been used as industrial dumping grounds by capitalists [e.g., Love Canal, etc.]. WORKER SELF-MANAGEMENT enables us to stop using our children’s futures as open sewers [or using up our children’s futures]. We can question the goods we produce and the bi-products [pollution, global warming, extinction] from their production. We can also address proper worker safety in production. Unlike Capitalists, We will not prostitute our health, or the health of people in our community, for productivity [work speed-ups] or profit or a cost-benefit analysis [e.g., that told us it is cheaper to be sued than poison people]. We also don’t shutter manufacturing plants and move our business to another country [leaving polluted industrial sites].

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