textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp000417.txt

            WORKERS SOLIDARITY
     Paper of the Irish anarchist group,
         Workers Solidarity Movement
   No 43 Autumn 1994 (electronic addition)

Part 1  (Intro & Shorts) 19K

    Socialism & freedom
    10 years of the WSM
    Thats Capitalism
    World Unemployment
    Revolutionaries
    letter from Serbia

           *******************

SOCIALISM _AND_ FREEDOM

WHAT IS IT that most ordinary people want in 
life?  Is it something unreal or utopian?  
No.  The goals which most people have are 
quite modest.  A good standard of living and 
freedom to live our lives the way we want 
to.

Instead we have to put with unemployment, 
low pay, insecure employment, drudgery.  We 
are pushed around, bullied or dominated by 
bosses and faceless bureaucrats.  All of 
this to make a small group of people, the 
ruling class, wealthy beyond most peoples' 
wildest dreams.

Most of us want equality with our fellows in 
the decision making and control that affects 
our lives, and those of our families.  We 
want the security of knowing that the 
necessities of life will always be there for 
ourselves and our loved ones, and that we 
will not have our world pulled from under us 
by being thrown on the dole.

We want to enjoy the good things that go 
make life both human and pleasant.  We do 
not want to denied this type of life because 
lack of money makes it available only to the 
wealthy.  The working class creates all 
wealth, we should be able to enjoy its 
benefits.

In a world which can put people onto the 
moon, cure most diseases, speak to people 
thousands of miles away, and the thousands 
of other scientific achievements this 
century has produced, our goal is no fantasy 
or utopia.  It is achievable but only if we 
are clear about what we are against and what 
we are in favour of.

The "communist" world was not communist.  It 
was state capitalist and dictatorial.  A 
small elite controlled everything.  The 
"free" world is not free.  In their lust for 
power and profit the ruling class have given 
us a planet where millionaires can have 
whatever they want while the rest of us have 
to make do with what's left over.  

Whilst poverty, hunger, oppression and wars 
continue to plague the people of this planet 
there will always be people seeking an 
alternative way to run society.  Whilst the 
division of people into bosses and workers, 
rulers and ruled, continues there will be no 
meaningful change.  Anarchists want to 
abolish, once and for all, the root cause of 
such human suffering.  

The alternative we work for is a world where 
production is to satisfy human needs and 
desires, not to make profits for a small 
parasitic minority.  A world where we can 
all have a direct say in the decisions that 
will affect us, where participatory 
democracy is found everywhere.  A world 
where freedom is the rule and not the 
exception.

            ***************

            For Starters
         TEN YEARS OF THE WSM

IN LATE September 1984 five anarchists, 
three from Dublin and two from Cork decided 
to launch the Workers Solidarity Movement.  
This was certainly a major undertaking for 
such a small number of people.  Workers 
Solidarity began publication five weeks 
later.  The first editorial introduced the 
new organisation: "Are there not enough 
organisations trying to change society?  
What makes the Workers Solidarity Society so 
different?

"We are different, very different.  Unlike 
so many others we do not believe the end 
justifies the means.  We say the means you 
use will shape the society you create.  We 
want a free and socialist society, and we 
have to organise in a like manner.

"We are anarchists.  We are socialists.  You 
can't have one without the other because 
they are one and the same thing.  Socialism 
is not a collection of reforms and minor 
changes.  It means a lot more than that.  It 
means building something completely new.  
And you build everything from the bottom up 
- socialism is no exception.

"We won't be trying to take over the state 
structures.  Government, the existing civil 
service, police, army and so on are there to 
meet the needs of a capitalist society.  
They cannot be turned round to serve 
socialism, they were not designed for that.  
The state is only necessary when a minority 
wants to rule.

"Workers will create their own structures to 
bring a new society into being.  Structures 
that are efficient and geared towards mass 
involvement and democratic decision making.  
All of this is not just around the corner.  
But unless we know what we want and how to 
get it we will be stuck with the chaos and 
inequality of the present system with its 
continual series of crises."

Over the last decade the WSM has grown and 
developed policies based on its anti-
authoritarian and socialist views.  A lot of 
time went into discussing and debating the 
sort of society we want and how to achieve 
it.   We certainly did not want to copy the 
"shepherd & sheep" model used by so many 
Leninist groups.  We were determined that 
there would be no reliance of one or two 
leaders for ideas, that every member would 
be genuinely able to influence the course of 
the WSM.  Our goal was to to popularise 
anarchism and fight for the creation of a 
society based on its principles: individual 
freedom, collective management of society by 
its workers, participatory democracy.  

Those aims remains the same.  Producing 
Workers Solidarity, publishing pamphlets and 
hosting public meetings is part of our 
activity.  But we are not mere advocates of 
a better world, we are involved in the 
struggles to make things better right now.  
That is why WSM members have supported 
strikers at Pat the Baker, UCD, Dunnes 
Stores, the ESB and many others.  That is 
why we helped to form the Dublin Abortion 
Information Campaign which brought enough 
people onto the streets in 1992 to defeat 
the government's injunction against "X" and 
led to the successful referenda against 
restrictions on abortion information and 
womens right to travel.  We have been 
involved in many struggles, many more than 
there is_space to list here.

Anarchism is the only realistic alternative 
to capitalism.  What passed for alternatives 
in the past have lost most of their appeal.  
Stalinism is terminally ill, only hanging on 
by its finger nails in North Korea and Cuba.  
It is finished as a movement.  Leninism and 
Trotskyism are being swept along with it 
into the dustbin of history.  Social 
democracy and its Labour Parties are 
disgraced throughout much of the world.  
Within Ireland republicanism has retreated 
from the verbal 'socialism' it adopted in 
the 1980s.

While opposing the presence of the British 
Army and the continuing partition of the 
country, we have always said that the 
politics and methods of nationalism are 
wrong.  We have to oppose imperialism and, 
at the same time, oppose the clerical 
nationalist laws in the South which ban 
divorce and abortion.  We have to oppose 
Orange bigotry while at the same time 
campaigning for the complete separation of 
Church and State.  

We do not fight for a united capitalist 
Ireland, neither as a 'step in the right 
direction' or as an end in itself.  Joining 
the six to the twenty six counties offers 
nothing to working class people in either 
state.  We have no interest in re-dividing 
poverty on a more 'equitable' basis.  The 
only Ireland worth fighting for is a Workers 
Republic where every working class person 
stands to gain. The way towards such a new 
Ireland is the way of class struggle and 
mass action, taking control of our own 
struggles and doing it in our own class 
interests.  This is the road to freedom.  
Liberty, workers control, anti-
authoritarianism... if these are the sort of 
aims you have, then you should find out more 
about anarchism and the Workers Solidarity 
Movement.


          *****************

           THATS CAPITALISM

In 1977 part-time women workers in Britain 
earned 83% of the full-time hourly rate for 
women. By 1992 they earned only 73% of the 
hourly rate.

*****

In the Indonesian archipelago only 7% of 
land has a clear owner. Most is communally 
owned and administered by villages and 
families.  That's no good for capitalism 
says the World Bank.  they are working with 
the Indonesian Government to change things 
by compiling a register of land owners. In 
the next 25 years they hope to register 54 
million parcels of land.

*****

If you are 17 or under in the U.S.A. you 
cannot go out at night alter 11pm. (midnight 
at the weekends). Those are the curfew 
regulations being adopted by a growing 
number of American cities in order to 
"fight" crime. So far Baltimore, Santa 
Monica, Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta have 
adopted the idea. New Orleans and Washington 
are considering.

*****

When Mary Robinson went to India last year 
she hailed the economic changes there.  
Speaking on our behalf she praised the move 
"to liberalise and globalise its economy" 
declaring it to be one of the "most 
auspicious development of recent years." The 
changes she said would release "the energies 
and skills of its people". What these new 
economic changes are all about was 
underlined by India's budget in February. 
The Corporate tax rate was cut from 58% to 
44% and the top individual tax band was also 
from 45% to 40%. The IMF applauded the 
budget.

*****

A survey of earnings in Los Angles in 1993 
showed that the average wage for an actor 
was just $12,500. A far cry from money 
commanded by the likes of Julia Roberts or 
Robert DeNiro. But there was an even bigger 
difference. The head of Disney, Michael 
Eisner, earned $203,950,000 in the same 
year. That's 16,316 times the wage of the 
average actor.

*****

Costa Rican plantation workers have filed 
suits in the USA against Shell Oil, Dow 
Chemicals, Standard Fruit and the owners of 
Chiquita brand bananas on foot of sterility 
problems encountered by workers picking 
bananas sprayed with a pesticide banned in 
the US in 1979. Over 16,000 workers are 
affected not just in Costa Rica but also 
Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and the 
Philippines. The workers have proof that the 
chemicals in question, marketed as Nemagon 
or Fumazone, were shipped for use outside 
the US after the ban there in 1979. No 
health hazard warnings were ever included 
with the shipments despite the ban in the 
US. The workers were never warned of the 
dangers.

*****

The Drug Enforcement Agency in the USA 
netted a ring of cocaine money launders in 
Florida earlier this year. Among those 
arrested were the vice-president of Merril 
Lynch in Panama and another senior executive 
from the same company.

*****

Russian bosses are catching on fast. The 
independent miners union in Vorkuta, on the 
Arctic circle, recently highlighted some 
novel ways of doing business. The coal being 
mined by the workers was sold to a local 
company, owned by the mine director, for 
just $3 a tonne.  The mine director sold it 
abroad for $30 a tonne. All legal and above 
board.

*****

The number of empty homes in Britain has 
risen by 30% in ten years, reports the Empty 
Homes Agency, a charity.  The number of 
homeless families has more than doubled over 
the same period.

*****

According to the Roman Catholic development 
agency, Trocaire, 16,442 Brazilian workers 
were actually in slavery in 1992.

***************************

   If you think the system is working 
    ...ask someone who isn't


NEARLY ONE out of three workers in the 
world's labour force either has no job or is 
earning too little to live decently, the 
International Labour Organisation reports.  
The United Nations organisation calls the 
situation "the worst global employment 
criosis since the Great Depression of the 
1930s".  The ILO said 120 million people are 
registered as unemployed around the world 
and millions more are either tired of 
looking for work or never bothered to 
register.

"Practically half of the 35 million 
unemployed workers in Western Europe have 
been off the employment rolls for a year or 
more", said ILO Director General, Michael 
Hansenne.  His report estimates another 700 
million are underemployed, earning less than 
needed to support a minimum standard of 
living.

According to UN figures, the average income 
of the world's 5.5 billion people may have 
fallen slightly in 1993  - for the fourth 
year in a row. 

Source: Industrial Worker

        *********************

      Thinking about anarchism
          REVOLUTIONARIES

I may not have any chains around my feet, 
but still, I am not free.  In modern society 
- capitalism - our bosses and leaders have 
invented new methods to chain us.  According 
to the propaganda we are supposed to live in 
a free, democratic society, yet all of us 
experience limitations in our  lives.  
Everyday more of us are being flung on the 
dole, families are being thrown out on the 
streets, our pay packets are shrinking and 
prices keep going up.  Politicians care 
about little else except their popularity.  
In truth, we all know that this free, 
democratic society doesn't exist on the 
streets where we live.

We must change the system which forces 
us to live under it's heel.  The only way to 
take the power back from the bosses and 
place it in the hands of the people is via 
Revolution.  Capitalism now operates 
globally.  If you are serious about fighting 
them then there is a glaring need to 
organise and co-ordinate.  It is in answer 
to this need that revolutionary 
organisations spring.

To be led is to be DEAD.

Anarchists have an acknowledged respect for 
individual freedom.  We believe that 
anarchist ideas and principles are those 
which will bring about a successful 
revolution.

We are not interested in changing our 
leaders.  We wish to change the system so 
that there is no leaders just real 
democracy.  We therefore believe in the need 
to develop individually.  Socialism doesn't 
exist without freedom.  What we want is a 
society where we are free to exercise 
control over our own lives.  

Ideas are our lifeblood

Just as there are major differences between 
Marxists and Anarchists in politics so there 
is in the way we organise.  We do not have 
leaders and led.  Anarchists believe that 
ideas are the lifeblood of a revolutionary 
movement.  We wish to be the educators and 
instigators of our class but not the 
leaders.  The working class has been led 
down enough 'cul de sacs' to not be bothered 
with the journey.

The WSM

The WSM, as our organisation, must reflect 
the type of society we wish to create.  All 
our members are active in the work and 
decision making of the organisation.  Each 
member carries out the tasks of writing, 
paper selling, and preparing educational 
talks.  We are all involved in campaign work 
and in our trade unions.  Here we address 
the issues and try and win people to our 
politics in both heat and mind.    

 Party Versus You

There are no power positions within the WSM.  
Any position held within the organisation is 
electable, recallable and entails 
administrative work.  The Leninists 
demonstrated that power when wielded in the 
name of the working class means the 
precedence of the party over the people.  
There will always come a time when there is 
a clash between the party and the people.  
This is because it is the party making the 
decisions on behalf of the people and not 
the people making and exercising their own 
decisions..  We say that Anarchism has no 
place for power unless it is in the hands of 
the workers themselves.

The need for efficient co-ordination 
and decision making in a post revolutionary 
period shall be dealt with by the workers' 
own organisations.  The history of struggle 
is also the history of self-organisation.  
>From the Paris Commune through the original 
Russian Soviets to the workers' self-
management in 1930's Spain, people have 
automatically sought to organise themselves 
and create their own decision-making organs.  
Democracy either involves decisions being 
taken by the people being effected or it is 
not democracy.  Such self-organisation will 
provide the structure for our future free 
society to be built on.  

"Only the Truth is Revolutionary"

The WSM are not players in a game called 
politics.  For us politics is the fight 
forward for a better future.  Anarchism will 
either be the creation of a free and 
politically aware working class.....or it 
will not be anarchism. 

It is the role of a revolutionary 
organisation is to get our class to a stage 
where we take on the might of the state, 
destroy it and replace it with workers' 
councils.  There is no room for leaders or 
parties doing it on our behalf.  There is 
only room for the working class being in 
control and in power.  When the working 
class are in charge of society then it will 
only be run in our interests.  

Dermot Sreenan

           ****************

                LETTERS

Dear comrades,

We have received your magazine Workers 
Solidarity so we've decided to write to you 
and inform you about the growth of anarchism 
in new Yugoslavia [ed. Serbia, Kosovo etc.].

The Anarchist movement started to grow at 
the end of 1993.  Before that there were 
only anarchist zines and groups of people 
who did not function as anarchist/political 
groups but only carried out direct actions 
against war, fascism and government.  Now 
there are three organising groups and some 
sections in several towns all over Serbia.  
Unfortunately, we could not do much until 
now because of the very bad economic 
situation but hopefully we are starting some 
good work.  In February this year, together 
with comrades from Croatia and with 
financial support of comrades from the 
anarchist group 'Germinal' from Trieste, 
Italy we've published a bulletin called 
"Over the walls of nationalism and war".  
8,000 copies were printed.  It was a big 
success in our anti-war and anti-nationalism 
projects and it was reviewed in some big 
official newspapers and even on TV.

Name & address with editor 

* the letter has been edited to reduce its 
length and clarify the language.

         ************************

Part 2  (Ireland & Imperialism)

    It was always time to go..Troops out now!
    When British army chiefs refused to obey orders
    Nationalism...No Thanks
    When the Falls & the Shankill fought together

Part 3  (Drugs)

In this section

    Legalise it
    The heroin menace

Part 4 (Campaigns & Struggle in Ireland)

   TEAM workers told not to expect a decent job
   Lets get together
   Anti-Water charges campaign gets off ground
   Reasons to bin the bill

Part 5 (A rotten world)

    Interview with Italian anarchist
    Ireland..The land of a 1000 welcomes?
    Hicksons chemical spill
    37% illegally underpaid
    

            ***********************

Workers Solidarity currently comes out four
times a year.  For subscription details write
to WSM, PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland.  
Also appearing in the near future will be a 
theoretical magazine called Red and Black 
Revolution.

             *****************

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Workers Solidarity Movement can be contacted at 
     PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland

or by anonymous e-mail to an64739@anon.penet.fi

Some of our material is available via the Spunk press electronic archive

             by FTP to etext.archive.umich.edu or 141.211.164.18
              or by gopher ("gopher etext.archive.umich.edu")
or WWW at http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/Spunk_Home.html

in the directory /pub/Politics/Spunk/texts/groups/WSM