Several South African anarchist projects -- Bikisha Media
Collective (BMC), Zabalaza Books (ZB) and the Zabalaza
Action Group (ZAG, formerly the Anarchist Union) -- have
signed up as members of the new anarchist network
International Libertarian Solidarity (ILS) of which the
following organisations are also a part: Al Abdil al Taharouri
(AAT, Lebanon), Alternative Libertaire (AL, France &
Belgium), Confederacion General del Trabajo (CGT, Spain),
Organisasion Communiste Libertaire (OCL, France), RÈseau
No Pasaran (France), Consejo IndÌgena Popular de Oaxaca --
"Ricardo Flores Magon" (CIP-RFM, Mexico), Confederation
Nationale du Travail -- "Vignoles" (CNT-V, France), Federacio
Anarquista Ga?cha (FAG, Brazil), Federacion Anarquista
Uruguaya (FAU, Uruguay), Marmitag (Greece), Organizace
RevolucnÌch Anarchistu-Solidarita (ORA-S, Czech Republic),
Organizacion Socialista Libertaria (OSL, Argentina),
Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (OSL, Switzerland), Sveriges
Arbetares Centralorganisation (SAC, Sweden), and the
Workers' Solidarity Movement (WSM, Ireland).
Other groups that support the ISL are the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW, international), Anacho-Sindico (India), the
North-Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC,
Canada & the USA), Sibirskaya Konfederatsia Truda (SKT,
Russia) and Unione Sindacale Italiana -- "Roma" (USI-R, Italy).This makes the ISL one of the most important players on the
international anarchist stage today, alongside the International
Workers Association (IWA) -- established in Berlin in 1922 as
the anarchist unionist alternative to the communist Red
International of Trade Unions -- and the International of
Anarchist Federations (IFA), founded in Italy in 1968, to unite
anarchist political organisations. But the ISL is not another
international. It is rather an international anarchist network,
other anarchist international networks include the Anarchist
Black Cross Federation, started in London in 1967 to assist
anarchist and class war prisoners, and the Insurrectional
Anarchist International (IAI), founded in Italy in 2000, to
co-ordinate anarchist resistance in the Mediteranean.
Our participation in the ISL dates back to the BMC delegation
sent to Paris for the "Other Future" international anarchist
congress organised in 2000 by the CNT-V which saw 6,000
anarchists take to the streets with a forest of red-and-black flags
for May Day. There, delegates of 15 participating organisations
agreed to form a new network to: a) connect the growing
anarchist unions, anarcho-communist, platformist and
anarcho-synthesist groups that fell outside the IWA; b)
co-ordinate international anarchist engagement with the
emerging anti-capitalist movement; and c) for established
Northern organisations to assist emergent anarchist
organisations in the global South. Last year, at "LibWeek" in
Madrid, the decision was realised when the international
movement set up the ISL, which has expanded significantly
since then. Bikisha Media and Zabalaza Books sent a message
of support to Madrid to endorse the establishment of the
network of which we are now a part.
The ISL is by no means a paper tiger: so far, the network has
helped the FAG-Brazil with finances in setting up a printing
works and a community centre. There are also ISL-sponsored
projects under way in Uruguay and another planned in Siberia.
We should take this opportunity to thank ISL member
organisation the SAC-Sweden for their kind donation of funds --
under an agreement separate to the ISL -- to our anarchist
printing project.
Our original message to the founding congress of the ISL read:
We as South African anarchists are encouraged by this
important initiative -- the establishment of an international
co-ordinating network to aid anarchist organisations in their
engagement with the anti-globalisation movement. Such a
network is vital if we are to survive the attacks on our
organisations and our class -- and if we are to succeed in our
fight against neo-liberalism. We would also like to add the
names of our two organisations to those endorsing the
"Anarchist Declaration for the 21st Century".
Since the 1970s, our enemies, capital and its siamese twin, the
state, have been suffering from one of their inevitable periods
of crisis as markets hit natural consumption ceilings and the
rate of profit continues to fall. Even the opening of the former
Soviet and East Bloc workforce to foreign exploitation, with
robber barons breaking down vital industries to steal handfuls
of cash, has been unable to stop the slide.
But like hungry bears, our enemies are even more dangerous
despite their weaknesses. On the one hand, their claws are
sharper: they have developed warfare, terrorism and
propaganda to technological and psychological levels never
achieved before. On the other hand, we, their prey, are weak:
the international working class revolutionary movement, both
anarchist and otherwise, has been dispersed and destroyed by
decades of fascism. After the Berlin Wall fell, our enemies
announced the end of history, claiming that they had achieved
the perfect social balance, a balance built historically on
millions of dead, and today maintained by millions of lives
cheapened by poor working conditions, corrupted by a fouled
environment, marginalised by casualisation, raped by
patriarchy, excluded by so-called democracy and, if necessary,
eliminated by death-squads.
But the bears miscalculated. History is not over. The
anti-globalisation movement is the most significant
international social movement since the 1960s. There are
dangers: professional networks of paid middle-class activists
have attempted to turn it into their own club, a collection of
narrow sectarian interests. Also, totalitarian and right-wing
organisations, whether fascist, religious fundamentalist or
authoritarian socialist, are trying to control grassroots actions
against the IMF/World Bank, the "free" trade agreements and
the multinational corporations. But this is a global movement
of the oppressed. Its instinctive nature is anti-authoritarian,
workerist and militant. This is the true home of all anarchist
revolutionaries today and we fully support all efforts by
anarchists to position themselves at the forefront of the
struggle and to put their ideas at the centre of the global debates
on how to beat the ravages of turbo capitalism.
The anti-globalisation movement must be dominated by
anarchist forces and arguments. We as anarchist
revolutionaries must throw ourselves wholeheartedly into this
struggle. But we must remember our key strategic strength: the
united forces of the proletariat, whether industrial or
commercial. This means that while community struggles are
essential, they can be no substitute for revolutionary
organisation in the workplace, at the point of extraction of
profit. The traditional working class may have changed, but
workers' status as wage-slaves has not, regardless of how the
capitalists have tried to divide their common interests. And it is
only the workers who have the technical power and class
incentive to stop the engines of capitalism. Only a revolution in
the relations of production by organised labour and a seizure of
the means of production by the producers can end the terrorism
of capital and the state. Assisted by the peasantry and the poor,
the workers can and will defeat neo-liberalism, however it
disguises itself: racism, housing evictions, neo-colonialism,
electricity cut-offs, sweatshops, criminalisation of protest, or
other masks.
FOR WORKERS' SELF-MANAGEMENT,
DIRECT ACTION
AND INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTION!
NO PASARAN!
-- Bikisha Media Collective & Zabalaza
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