Declaration of Internationalists against the war in Ukraine

WAR ON WAR!

NOT A SINGLE DROP A BLOOD FOR THE “NATION”!

The power struggle between oligarchic clans in Ukraine threatens to escalate into an international armed conflict. Russian capitalism intends to use redistribution of Ukrainian state power in order to implement their long-standing imperial and expansionist aspirations in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine where it has strong economic, financial and political interests.

On the background of the next round of the impending economic crisis in Russia, the regime is trying to stoking Russian nationalism to divert attention from the growing workers' socio-economic problems: poverty wages and pensions, dismantling of available health care, education and other social services. In the thunder of the nationalist and militant rhetoric it is easier to complete the formation of a corporate, authoritarian state based on reactionary conservative values and repressive policies.

In Ukraine, the acute economic and political crisis has led to increased confrontation between "old" and "new" oligarchic clans, and the first used including ultra-rightist and ultra-nationalist formations for making a state coup in Kiev. The political elite of Crimea and eastern Ukraine does not intend to share their power and property with the next in turn Kiev rulers and trying to rely on help from the Russian government. Both sides resorted to rampant nationalist hysteria: respectively, Ukrainian and Russian. There are armed clashes, bloodshed. The Western powers have their own interests and aspirations, and their intervention in the conflict could lead to World War III.

Warring cliques of bosses force, as usual, force to fight for their interests us, ordinary people: wage workers, unemployed, students, pensioners... Making us drunkards of nationalist drug, they set us against each other, causing us forget about our real needs and interests: we don`t and can`t care about their "nations" where we are now concerned more vital and pressing problems – how to make ends meet in the system which they found to enslave and oppress us.

We will not succumb to nationalist intoxication. To hell with their state and “nations”, their flags and offices! This is not our war, and we should not go on it, paying with our blood their palaces, bank accounts and the pleasure to sit in soft chairs of authorities. And if the bosses in Moscow, Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Simferopol start this war, our duty is to resist it by all available means!

NO WAR BETWEEN “NATIONS” – NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES!

The statement is open for signature

http://www.aitrus.info/node/3608

The Declaration of KRAS-IWA about the power struggle in Ukraine

http://www.aitrus.info/node/3540

In Ukraine, the spreading struggle for power between rival factions of the bourgeois oligarchy, unfortunately, involved significant sections of the population. Confrontation acquired brutal character and is accompanied by loss of human life. Anarcho -syndicalists can not support any of the warring sides in the conflict. They are equally hostile to Yanukovych regime with its neo-liberal economic policies and repressive laws that criminalize any protest (including workers picketing of enterprises and independent Internet activity) - and to the "opposition", in which the tone is set by Liberal, Nationalists and by openly Nazi group.

Both camps are equally conservative and nationalist, and any significant difference between them is not visible: neither in social-economic area, nor in domestic or foreign policy. Neither submission to the European Union, nor the submission of the Russian oligarchy does not solve the problems of the working people of Ukraine. Moreover, the victory of one or another group of the bourgeoisie, aiming to seize power or tending to hold it, may turn to workers in the country to social disaster.

We consider just the resistance of workers against Yanukovych`s neoliberal policies and dictatorial government. But we consider unacceptable any participation in joint mobilizations alongside the bourgeois nationalist and openly fascist "opposition".

We encourage libertarian groups and activists of Ukraine to act independently, to put forward their own social-economic slogans and demands and to defend them through the working resistance and social-revolutionary struggle.

KRAS, the Section of International Workers Association in the Russian Region

The Brown Masquerade

In the Kingdom of Masks 

Increasingly often there appear political groups that declare themselves to be anti-Stalinist and call themselves «anarchists» or «left communists» but closely resemble the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in one respect: their phraseology is completely at variance with their real politics. 

On the whole, the programmatic declarations and manifestos of these groups are consistent with what they call themselves. Their activists mouth the correct internationalist phrases. However, these groups cooperate – on a consistent basis – with open Nazis. And when you read on the internet or listen to the propaganda and polemics of activists of these groups, you see with astonishment that the correct internationalist phrases unexpectedly acquire some quite opposite meaning, just as in Orwell's Newspeak. In some miraculous fashion it suddenly turns out that real internationalism is national socialism, that the best way to resist national oppression is to fight for the even more complete domination of already dominant nations, and that a proletarian revolutionary line is fully compatible with the justification of ethnic purges and support for homophobia. 

The informer Boris Ikhlov at work

A collection of articles and letters that appeared in 2002 and is freely accessible on the internet contains a note about Boris Ikhlov,* who passes himself off as a left- wing activist but feels no shame in writing for Limonka, the periodical of the fascist National-Bolshevik Party. 

Ikhlov still calls himself a leftist and – among other things – tries to maintain his old contacts with left-wing organizations abroad and also form new contacts. In order to understand what this entails for left-wing organizations – and, above all, for activists in the former Soviet Union who work with them and have the misfortune to encounter Ikhlov – it is worth taking a look at issues 4 and 5 (July 2002, pp. 3- 5; September 2002, pp. 5-6) of the Perm rag Svobodny vybor [Free Choice]. There you will find a long article by Ikhlov entitled On the Liberalism of Trotskyists and Stalinists, or the Stalinist-Trotskyist Essence of Liberalism.

Vladislav Bugera. Obituary for Stanislav Markelov

Stanislav Markelov

I knew Stanislav Markelov since 1994. At that time he was still a law student, but despite his youth a well-formed personality with definite left-wing views. Even then he was a socialist and an internationalist, and so he remained right to the end. At my request he offered legal aid to a small independent trade union called “Workers Resistance” with which I myself was then involved. This was one of his first human rights cases.

Later fate threw us far apart over the expanses of our enormous country. I had only occasional contact with him, but from time to time I heard or read of his work for human rights. As an attorney he was always coming to the defense of ordinary people against bureaucrats, businessmen, the military, and the police. He defended the oppressed against the oppressors. He always acted within the framework of the law established by the bourgeois state, but at the same time he always fought against the bourgeois state.

Vladislav Bugera: portrait of a post-marxist thinker

Source:
http://www.cdi.org

1 of obsolete references to websites was replaced by the current one.

The Research and Analytical Supplement (RAS) to Johnson's Russia List is produced and edited by Stephen D. Shenfield. He is the author of all parts of the content that are not attributed to any other author.


CONTENTS
---------

FEATURE

VLADISLAV BUGERA: PORTRAIT OF A POST-MARXIST THINKER

1. Introduction

2. My interview with Bugera

3. Interview: The Rarity of Love

4. Interview: The Great Bluff

Caution: platformist party and psychosect in one bottle!

In recent years, we can observe a significant growth of the activities of the so-called "Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-syndicalists, Nestor Makhno" (RKAS) led by a teacher of Eastern martial arts, S.Sh, aka “Samurai”, from Donetsk (Ukraine). It was established in 1994 in the Ukraine as a group of young people interested in anarcho-syndicalism, but they refused to join the IWA. The RKAS changed its structure several times almost completely. Unchanged was only the leader himself, who became interested in martial arts and in the mid-2000s decided to rebuild their group on that basis. Several years ago, he expanded the RKAS activity at the international level, recruiting groups or individuals from some countries, who were instructed to create a new international organization with the same name "RKAS". But a little later, this project exploded (as it was expected): the foreign participants retired with scandal after confrontation with dictatorial manners inside.

Social revolution and revolutionary organization

This article is published for the purpose of discussion. The editorial board of the journal Heretic does not agree with certain views of the author. In particular, we consider that it was not Bolshevism but Stalinism — a complete break with Bolshevism — that distorted the meaning of the word “communism.” In addition, Bolshevism itself fell victim to the Stalinist regime. At the same time, we see in this article many valuable ideas. We fully support the critique of trade unionism; we also support the author’s conclusion regarding the necessity of a revolutionary organization for the class struggle. But the author correctly observes that this organization cannot and must not replace the self-organization of the working class. We hope that this publication will give our readers food for thought.

SOCIAL REVOLUTION AND REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION

The organization isn`t an objective in itself

but only a means for achievement of setting objective

An old anarchist true

The FORIST alternative

We are communists. But not in this vulgarized and deformed sense which appears us always from pages of papers, from TV channels and broadcasting waves (“communist regime”, “Communist State”, “Communist Party” etc.). The true communism is anarchist, stateless and without authority, free, libertarian. Only hundred years ago, by the meaning of Communists, one can be almost for 100 per cent sure that the matter concerns Anarchists. Just in 1917, this word was stolen by Bolsheviks and it was later crippled by them and made a laughing-stock of entire World…

We are Communists in this old sense which wasn`t stolen yet: in the sense of free Commune and Association. When concerned people together and jointly (in general assemblies) take decisions about how they live and what is to make aiding mutually. When they use the present and produced goods of Earth in common – like people use the shine of Sun which shines for all, as Sylvain Marechal, anarchist poet of 18 century spoke. 

Hurricanes and inequality

It’s now a week since Hurricane Sandy hit large coastal areas of the northeastern United States. At least a million homes were still without heat and power when a snowstorm followed a few days later. Relief has yet to reach some of the areas affected, such as the Far Rockaways, where survivors are fending for themselves as best they can.

Workers held captive

True, some manage to fend much better than others. Holed up for the duration in a first-class hotel on the island of Manhattan, the business and cultural centre of New York City, David Rohde in The Atlantic(October 2012) dramatically contrasts the position of wealthy guests staying at the hotel with the plight of the hotel workers.

Vadim Damier. Anarchism and Syndicalism: the «CNT model» and it dilemma

Preface from the journal "Heretic": 

Despite a couple of brickbats thrown at Marxists by Comrade Vadim Damier (unjustifiably, from our point of view), and also despite a number of other fundamental disagreements with his position, we feel sincere respect for his call on his comrades in IWA-AIT to break firmly with reformism and consistently uphold the revolutionary line of proletarian anarchism.

One philosopher has once told that the one, who doesn't study history, is doomed to repeat its errors. The problem consists just in looking for what was made may be not correctly or not very well in the past. This can give a possibility to avoid some mistakes in the present and in the future.

Of course, it would be unreasonably and conceitedly to give advices to comrades living in a country removed in thousands of kilometers, with quite other situation and with differing conditions of social and workers struggle. But when I turn around back on history of anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain, I see not only brilliant victories and the Great Revolution, but also certain internal problems. And these problems remain the same throughout all history of heroic CNT.

Declaration for revolutionary organization, Belgrade (2011)

ICC introduction

Throughout the 1990s, the territory of the former state of Yugoslavia was the scene of a series of horrifying massacres justified by the ideology of ethnic chauvinism. The war in the Balkans brought imperialist slaughter closer to the heartlands of capitalism than at any time since 1945. The local bourgeoisies did all they could to whip their populations into a frenzy of ethnic and nationalist hatred, the precondition for supporting or participating in the bloody slaughter of the Yugoslav wars.

These hatreds have not been eliminated by the uneasy peace which now reigns in the region, so it is all the more heartening to see signs that there are those in the region who look for a way forward in the social movement against capitalism and not in any dreams of national aggrandisement. We have seen, for example, a number of struggles by students in Serbia and Croatia, which should be seen as another expression of the same international tendency which we have seen in Western Europe and in the USA with the indignados and Occupy movements. And we are now witnessing the development of a genuinely internationalist politicised minority in both countries, a which openly rejects national divisions and seeks cooperation among all internationalist revolutionaries.

Read more >>>

Flooded New Orleans: who are the looters?

From the editorial board of the journal Heretic:

The following article is about the tragic events in New Orleans in 2005. Although several years have passed since this tragedy, we considered it necessary to recall these events because nothing has changed since then. Throughout the world people remain defenseless in the face of natural disasters solely because on the one hand the state impedes self-organization from below, while on the other hand it does not want to spend money to provide effective security for the population. Modern technologies and scientific achievements make it possible if not to make people completely safe from natural disasters then at least to minimize their harmful consequences. This shows that the chief problem facing mankind is capitalism and the state that guards it. This fact is clearly highlighted by the author of the article, Stephen Shenfield. 

Football Wars

In 1969 rioting by fans during a World Cup match between Honduras and El Salvador appeared to trigger a four-day military conflict –the so-called football war. In fact, the Salvadoran generals merely used the rioting as a convenient occasion for launching a planned attack on Honduras. The main cause of tension was land disputes between Salvadoran migrants in Honduras and local farmers.

Camp of the “Radical” Opposition: First Conclusions

Russian Anarcho-Syndicalists Assess the Anti-Putin Protests

Note. The following statement appeared on May 18, 2012 on the website of the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists — the Russian section of the International Workers’ Association (KRAS-MAT) (http://aitrus.info/node/2171)

Russian nationalists are actively involed
in the protest rallies

Camp of the “Radical” Opposition: First Conclusions

Now that the authorities have broken up the protest camp of the radical anti-Putin opposition at Chistye Prudy (Pure Ponds) in Moscow, the time has come to sum up the first provisional results of the new wave of political protests in Russia. The opposition intends to continue the protests, but it is now quite possible to draw certain conclusions and extract lessons of some sort.

First of all, it is quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of the population have observed the latest round in the struggle for political power with complete indifference. Some by habit will complain about the passivity and servility of Russian citizens, but this time such indifference was an absolutely healthy reaction of the working people: it is no business of theirs who will make up the ruling bourgeois grouping, considering that no change in social policy is at stake. As always, of course, it was possible to find both paid or volunteer supporters of “order” and a rag-tag crowd of politicians with grudges, glamorous personalities (who, by the way, were only yesterday on Putin’s side), “brains of the nation” and marginal toughs, but on neither side even in the enormous capital could they be counted in the advertized “millions.” The demonstrations of the authorities and the opposition were attended at most by a few tens of thousands. In the provinces they are of interest to hardly anyone; there only hundreds or at most a very few thousand cared about the political standoff. The majority of people have quite different problems: low wages, rising prices, less access to education and healthcare, lack of money to pay for residential and municipal services, and so on.

Computerisation as a premise of the collectivist (socialist) revolution

To answer the question: "Why already now, 80 years after the October revolution, capital dominates above the world?" - a successive follower of the historical materialism will try, first of all, to clear: was the level of the development of productive forces of mankind (first of all in the most-highly-developed countries) in the 19th - first half of 20th centuries sufficient to make proletarians capable to organise the ruling over production, distribution & exchange by all the society as a whole (and so, to cease to be proletarians)?

Karl Marx wrote about the grounds of the coming proletarian revolution:

"Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."

28 March strike: Why are we not united?

http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4765/28-march-strike

http://en.internationalism.org/files/en/28_march.leaflet.pdf 

Thousands of teachers are striking in London on 28 March against the governments pension ‘reforms’

But is it just teachers who have a reason to protest?

No. It’s the whole public sector. All pensions are under attack, and the latest budget, with its ‘granny tax’, has made it worse. Last November the civil servants, local government employees and others were out alongside those who work in education. Why have the unions decided not to bring them out today?

It’s the whole private sector, where growing numbers of workers can’t look forward to any kind of pension at all.

Is it just pensions?

No. More and more workers face long term pay freezes, worsening conditions at work – if they have a job at all. Over 20 percent of young people between 16 and 25 are out of work.

Is it just London?

No. These conditions are faced by workers up and down the country

Is it just Britain?

No. the brutal austerity measures being imposed on the working class and the entire population in Greece, Portugal and Spain, where wages and pensions are already being directly cut and hundreds of thousands of jobs wiped out, are what lie in store for all us, because the crisis of this system is world wide and terminal

Why then are we being divided, if we all face the same attack, and need to fight back together?

There are many reasons. The widespread feeling that there is no alternative, the hope that it will all go away, the lack of confidence about taking things into our own hands.

But this lack of perspective and lack of confidence means that those who falsely claim to represent our interests – above all our ‘official’ trade union representatives – can keep us divided into countless little sectors, trades, and categories, call us out on separate days, cancel strikes when the courts give the order, and imprison us in trade union legislation which makes us fight with one hand tied behind our backs.

Despite all this, can we unite?

Yes, if we cut across professional and trade union divisions and come together in assemblies open to all workers.

If we ignore laws about ballots and use these assemblies to make actual decisions about how to struggle.

If we ignore trade union laws about ‘secondary picketing’ and use massive delegations to call on other workers to join our struggle.

If we open out to casual workers, students, the unemployed, pensioners.

If we use demonstrations, occupations and street meetings not to listen passively to speeches by the experts but to exchange experiences of struggle and discuss how to go forward.

If we rediscover our identity as a class – a class which everywhere, in all countries, has the same interests and the same goal: the replacement of this rotten system with a real human community.

International Communist Current 

23/3/12

www.internationalism.org

The economic crisis is not a never-ending story

Since 2008, not a week has gone by without a new draconian austerity plan. Reductions in pensions, tax increases, wage freezes... nothing and nobody can escape. The whole of the world working class is sinking into poverty and insecurity. Capitalism is being hit by the most acute economic crisis in its entire history. The current process, left to its own logic, can only lead to the collapse of capitalist society.

Read more >>>

Reading notes on science and marxism

We are publishing below an article originally written as part of the ICC's own discussions on the relationship between marxism and science. It aims to bring together some of Marx and Engels thoughts on the subject, with modern scientific and historical analysis of science, and concludes with a brief critical examination of the ideas of Karl Popper.

The text was originally written in the summer of 2009.

Read more >>>

Democratise capitalism or destroy it?

Original article: 

en.internationalism.org

The slogan ‘democratise capitalism’ appeared on the side of the Tent City University at the St Paul’s occupation, provoking sharp debates which eventually led to the banner being taken down.

This outcome shows that the occupations at St Paul’s, UBS and elsewhere have provided a very fruitful space for discussion among all those who are dissatisfied with the present social system and are looking for an alternative. ‘Democratising capitalism’ is not a real option, but it does reflect the views of many people participating in the occupations and the meetings they have generated. Again and again, the idea is put forward that capitalism could be made more human if the rich were made to pay more taxes, if the bankers lost their bonuses, if the financial markets were better controlled, or if the state took a more direct hand in running the economy.

Vladislav Bugera. An excerpt from the Notes about sense of responsibility

The political writer signing his articles with pseudonym Marlen Insarov proved to be a shallow man. Once we had viewed each other as comrades and friends, we published our articles in the magazine "Proletarian revolution" and in the collections of articles published by the Group of proletarian revolutionary collectivists (GPRK). When Insarov wrote an article "On the history of Marxism in Russia (1918-2002)" I persuaded him to mention as little as possible names of living left-wing activists for no disclose them. He readily agreed - and then I thank that he has some sense of responsibility. So I did not understand, and I wonder again and again all 6 years after our break how it was possible: why he considers as his friend and aggressively seeks to cooperate with a weirdo (who love to use Satanist nicknames, for example three sixes; and we going to call him on Triple Six), who once told a confidential information about me to a notorious provocateur-woman, and subsequently he did not even think to acknowledge his mistake. It is clear that the people are in the view of this weirdo only things and he is too lazy for feel any responsibility or fault to them. But why Insarov, seems to be capable of a sense of responsibility, misses to understand my story about how Triple Six disclosed me?...

The further, the more I was struck by the fact that Insarov attracted to co-operate with the GPRK all possible trash without paying attention not only to the fact that it is trash, but also to the fact that they are morally depraved persons sawing of him as the great militants. And once he pulled the whole ugly organization “Lotta comunista” for cooperation. I was immediately alerted during the first meeting them by complete lack of inner-Party democracy: the leaders are not elected by fellow party members, but they co-opt into its ranks those lower-level party members who they are pleasing. Insarov turned his back on this problem, citing the example of Russian populists (“Narodniki”), who were in the same situation, as he said. It turned out that my suspicion was justified: the members of Lotta were completely shameful, they hated each other. They explained very clearly why they didn`t care a button about each other, but Insarov closed his eyes and ears, persistently trying to keep all possible mixture in a single team. And he did it more and more - just as how a psychotic process began to develop in him around 2002-03. (...)