Workers Solidarity Movement

Here I am going to look at four myths, widly accepted by the left and right alike on the October revolution and its aftermath. In 1922 Emma Goldman complained Soviet Russia, had become "the modern socialist Lourdes, to which the blind and the lame, the deaf and the dumb were flocking for miraculous cures". And like most religious events that claim a historical valadity many of the myths of the October revolution rather then being historical accounts are written instead to create a blind faith in the leadership of the party.

It was originally my intention to give a history lesson on the modern revolutions, with the aim of extracting what they had in common. Actually this is too big of a project, these events can not be dealt with adequately on their own in the space of 20 minutes, lump them together and you would lose everything.

What are these modern revolutions? Well in the 80's it became popular on a large part of the left to proclaim the death of the working class. Not so much from the obviously flawed position of saying nobody worked anymore, or even that modern society was no longer based around the division between wage labour and capital. No rather on the basis that the working class no longer existed as a class, ie a group of people with common interests.

Although many classical anarchist theorists and figures came from Russia, the advent of the Soviet State effectively crushed the movement. Now anarchism is reborn in Russia. Laure Akai and Mikhail Tsovma write from Moscow to tell us a little about the trials and tribulations of the new Russian anarchist movement.

Articles from the Irish anarchist magazine Red & Black Revolution, issue 2, published in 1996.  Includes a long interview with Noam Chomsky about Anarchism & Marxism.

In August 1995 an international gathering of libertarian communists took place in Ruesta, Spain. We present here the agreed declaration issued at the end of that gathering

The WSM signed the Reusta declaration, this was the letter that accompanied our decision to sign. 

A look at how the Barcelonia rent strike of 1931 prepared the ground for the revolution of 1936. The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931 not only served to reduce rent costs for working class families but was also an education in self-organisation for thousands of workers. It, along with other stuggles in those years, created an organised working class that in 1936 made the most succesful attempt yet to overthrow capitalism and create libertarian communism.

Awareness League

The Awareness League in Nigeria is to become the first African section of the IWA. Readers of Workers Solidarity will remember the League from the reports of the jailing of four of its members by the state for opposing the military coup there. The international appeal launched on this occasion raised nearly $2000 dollars, saw pickets and demonstrations in many countries including Ireland and resulted in the publication of over 54 articles in languages including Japanese and Hindi. The four comrades were released.

The women who founded Mujeres Libres were all active within the anarchist movement, in the CNT or in the FIJL, however as women they were in a minority and found it difficult to incorporate more women into the activist core, either because of the sexism of the men, or because of the reluctance of the women or a combination of both.

Competition or con

Ireland is the 19th most competitive country in the world

IRELAND IS THE 19th most competitive country in the world. This was the finding released in September by the Geneva based World Economic Forum. Yet workers in TEAM, Irish Steel, the ESB, and a lot more jobs are told that they must accept lower pay and/or worse conditions in order to "become competitive".

The ten most competitive countries were listed as