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.

Read more

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.

Read more

The anarchist origins of May Day

Posted on December 29, 2008, filed Under Rebel Legacies. Comments Off

TODAY IT IS just another bank holiday in the UK and is not even recognized in the United States. Not many people know why May Day became International Workers Day and why we should still celebrate it. One more piece of our history which has been hidden from us. Read more

ITALY 1920

Posted on December 29, 2008, filed Under Rebel Legacies. Comments Off

When 600,000 workers seized control of their workplaces

The following article was originally presented as a talk at the Conference on Workers’ Self-Organization in St. Louis in 1988. © Tom Wetzel

During the month of September, 1920, a widespread occupation of Italian factories by their workforces took place, which originated in the auto factories, steel mills and machine tool plants of the metal sector but spread out into many other industries — cotton mills and hosiery firms, lignite mines, tire factories, breweries and distilleries, and steamships and warehouses in the port towns.

But this was not a sit-down strike; the workers continued production with their own in-plant organization. And railway workers, in open defiance of the management of the state-owned railways, shunted freight cars between the factories to enable production to continue. At its height about 600,000 workers were involved.

This movement blew up out of a conventional trade union struggle over wages. But the wage demands were only the official occasion for the fight; the real aspirations and desires that motivated the workers involved in this struggle go much deeper.(1) Read more