Workers Solidarity Movement

On this page you'll find links to texts of talks given to WSM meetings dealing primarily with revolutionary periods in France, Russia, Spain and Ireland, but also more general histories, as well as accounts of some important anarchist figures of the past.

Please bear in mind that all opinions are those of the respective authors.

deadline!

Anarchism has been growing in support over recent years. Old organisations have grown, new ones have been formed in countries as far apart as South Africa and Argentina, Turkey and Mexico.

Figures published in September by the Revenue Commissioners in the 26 Counties show that the top 50 earners in the state each paid less than 5% tax.

The book is about the circulation of revolutionary ideas around the Atlantic. The authors don't set out to prove their thesis of circulation and improvement of revolutionary ideas systematically with tables of figures and statistics. Instead the book is a series of case studies, interesting in themselves, but each showing common features.

En 1871 Francia fue a la guerra con Prusia y fue derrotada. La cabeza del gobierno nacional era Adolphe Thiers, él tuvo que negociar los detalles de la paz con Prusia. Después de hacer esto tuvo que afrontar el problema de volver a controlar Paris, de convencer a la ciudad de que la guerra con Prusia había terminado y del desarme de la Guardia Nacional. A Thiers sólo se le permitían 12.000 soldados después de la tregua, y con ellos tuvo que hacer frente a varios cientos de miles de guardias nacionales.

In English: http://www.wsm.ie/content/paris-commune

Turkey has been under the spotlight this year, due to the threats of the Army against the possibility of an Islamist party taking the presidency. This move came to pose a number of questions to the European establishment, as Turkey has been negotiating its entry to the EU. The apparently uneasy two alternatives of government in Turkey are political Islam or the old fashioned authoritarian Kemalist secularism, which has the army as its vigilante sector of the ruling block. The European bourgeoisie has been quite keen to support the ruling AKP Islamist party, instead of the military, sending a clear message that they won’t favour a dictatorship in the vein of that of 1980. Actually, they have compared the authoritarian tradition of Turkey to Greece, saying that entry to the EU would eventually help to democratise it.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation reports that Mansour Osanloo, President of the Tehran Bus Workers’ Union continues to be incarcerated in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and is being denied essential medical treatment to save his eyesight, despite the Iranian regime refusing to allow the General Secretary of an Indonesian transport workers’ union to visit him this week under the pretext that he was receiving medical treatment.

CopWatch was formed to combat police brutality against oppressed groups. By documenting and exposing incidences of police misconduct and brutality they hope to foster a culture of resistance to state justice among working class people. This interview with a member of Berkeley CopWatch looks at some of their current activities as well as the broader political context for their work.

On September 29th in Toronto a new Ontario anarchist-communist organization, Common Cause, held our founding conference. Preparation for this founding conference had taken place over several months culminating in a speaking tour of six Ontario cities under the title 'Building a Popular Anarchism'.