A New Word in Our Hearts
After the shootings at the anti-EU demonstrations in Gothenburg, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) decided to give its two pence's worth of "advice" to the anti-globalisation movement ("After Gothenburg: Where now for anti-capitalism?" by Mark Fischer, Weekly Worker 389 Thursday June 21 2001). This advice can be summarised up as follows.

Will the real Bakunin please stand up?
The SWP are at it again. Obviously trying to recruit from the anti-globalisation movement, they yet again try to rubbish anarchism. Since libertarian ideas are perceived to be dominant in that movement, what better why to try and gain a foothold than attacking those ideas? Sadly for the SWP, they cannot do that accuracy or honesty. Nor can they do so with showing the bankruptcy of their own ideology.

ISO: THE JOY OF SECTS by John Lacny
A wit once remarked that of all the Jesuits, the worst are the Protestant ones. I have come to the conclusion that this cogent observation has a counterpart when it comes to the world of the sectarian left: of all the Stalinists, the worst are the Trotskyites.

ISO and SWP Split! Major Trotskyist Divorce
As some comrades will have already heard, the SWP Central Committee has severed all ties with the ISO and is encouraging other groups in the International Socialist Tendency (IST) to do likewise. On Monday, March 5, the ISO received a letter (attached) signed by Alex Callinicos and Panos Garganas (of SEK in Greece) announcing that they no longer considered us part of the IST.

What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?
The Kronstadt rebellion took place in the first weeks of March, 1921. Kronstadt was (and is) a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Traditionally, it has served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet and to guard the approaches to the city of St. Petersburg (which during the first world war was re-named Petrograd, then later Leningrad, and is now St. Petersburg again) thirty-five miles away.

Beware Authoritarian Left Parasites!
Occasionally somebody asks us why we bother to speak out against authoritarian Left groups like the ISO and SWP. They often point out that these groups are rather small and that we are wasting our time exposing these movement opportunists. As anarchists, we know from recent history and 20th century history that disciples of the authoritarian Left will smile at you one minute and stab you in the back the next. We feel it is important to expose these groups to the wider community of activists, because they lie and misrepresent themselves in order to further their agendas. Currently, they are undertaking an effort to rewrite the recent history of the anti-globalization movement. They want activists to believe that centralist, hierarchical Left parties were the ones that made the various anti-globalization protest successful. The fact is, these groups are latecomers to the "globalization from below" resistance network. The reason why J18 and N30 and A16 were successful was because they relied on democratic, anarchist methods, not "protest from above" activist management that is promoted by these obsolete Left parties.

Dear Socialist Review
I must admit to being bemused by Howard Miles reply to my letter (Socialist Review no. 249). He states that the "nub of the issue in this debate seems to consist of disagreement over two fundamental notions," namely that "democratic centralist revolutionary party is necessary for a successful socialist revolution" and, secondly, "the necessity of a workers' state arising from a socialist revolution." Nothing could be further from the truth. While these are two fundamental disagreements between anarchism and Marxism, they had absolutely nothing to do with my letter, which indicated how Pat Stack had misrepresented anarchist thought in his article. That Mr. Miles fails to acknowledge this is sad, if not unsurprising. It seems that Stack is not the only SWP member who considers accuracy as an irrelevance when discussing other points of view.

Stalinism's Loyal Opposition: The Counter-Revolutionary Politics of Trotsky
This article was originally written to refute lies about the history of 20th century revolutionary movements peddled by the comically obnoxious Trotskyoids of the Spartacus League, in their newspaper Workers Vanguard (sic). Fearing that they may be losing ground to an admittedly incoherent contemporary anarchism, and hungry for fresh cannon fodder, the Sparts ran an occasionally informative series of articles by Joseph Seymour, titled "Marxism vs. Anarchism", tracing the historic differences between anarchism and the Sparts' version of "Marxism".

Reply to Socialist Review on Anarchism

Marxism and "Anarchism": A reply to the SWP
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once wrote that "to tell the truth is a communist and revolutionary act." Sadly, when it comes to anarchism, Marxists rarely tell the truth. Instead, they usually produce a series of slanders and lies.

In issue no. 1714 of Socialist Worker (dated 16th September 2000) the British SWP decided to “expose” anarchism in an article entitled “Marxism and Anarchism.” However, their article is little more than a series of errors and distortions. We shall indicate how the SWP lies about anarchist ideas and discuss the real differences between anarchism and Marxism.

The Anarchist FAQ: Anarchism and Marxism

The Anarchist FAQ: Reply to errors and distortions in David McNally's pamphlet Socialism from Below

Authoritarian Leftists: KILL THE COP IN YOUR HEAD!

Anarchist vs. Marxist-Leninist Thought on the Organization of Society
Historically, there have been three major forms of socialism -- Libertarian Socialism (Anarchism), Authoritarian Socialism (Marxist Communism), and Democratic Socialism (electoral social democracy). The non-Anarchist Left has echoed the bourgeoisie's portrayal of Anarchism as an ideology of chaos and lunacy. But Anarchism, and especially Anarchist-Communism, has nothing in common with this image. It is false and made up by it's ideological opponents, the Marxist-Leninists.

Personal account of being a member of Resistance (Australia)
Resistance and the Democratic socialist party are very similar to the Socialist Workers Party of the USA. These groups are very uncritical of castro's regime and like all trotskyist groups, they assert that their brand of marxist-leninist theory is right. Resistance and the DSP claim to have large memberships, though when I was a member, it didn't seem so large. They assert that the Bolsheviks wanted free speech. And that Karl Marx really intended that dictatorship of the proletariat to be democracy. Like the ISO they don't look outwardly objectionable like the spartacists and others.

Open Letter to the Seattle Chapter of the ISO from a Wobbly
To the Seattle ISO;
Recently, your organization held a public forum (May 24th) about the union of which I am a member, entitled "Who Were the Wobblies". After attending this forum, many things became clear to me about the nature of your organization, and reaffirmed everything I have seen in the years I've been active in Seattle, as well as accounts from fellow activists in Seattle; that your organization does nothing but to further deface the term "socialism" and alienate working people from learning about the class struggle. Your forum has also exposed your agenda of misinformation, as it is obvious to many people that the IWW is in fact alive and well; in other words, you are lying.

What is Socialism from Below: an anarchist perspective
It may seem dead obvious but it is impossible to go anywhere without first knowing where you are headed for. Without a clear view of the objective and the forces impeding or aiding your advance towards it one can become "all movement and no direction." One question which a socialist must always have on the tip of her tongue is where am I going and how can I get there? If you are heading for socialism then you must have a clear idea of what, exactly, it is.

The S.W.P. and Socialism from Below
Anarchism stands for 'Socialism from below'. This means a future society where ordinary working men and women control all aspects of that society. It also means that struggle for that society must be conducted with that goal in mind. That is, that our organisations must have an internal structure that puts all of the members in direct control of all decisions taken.

Ongoing Dispute Between ISO (U.S.) and SWP (U.K.)
The most interesting document here is their March 2000 Internal Discussion Bulletin, which discusses their entryism into various student movements, like the students against sweatshops movement. Recruitment, recruitment, recruitment!

ISO Nightmares
I just finished reading your informational page on the International Socialist Organization and I must tell you that it made my day. I agree completely with the writer's analysis of their goals and tactics--they are a completely self-serving, insulated clique, with many "leaders" who border on tyrannical.

The Marxist Theory of the State
Although Marx and Engels never put forward a unified presentation of the theory of the state, their conception of the state is a fundamental aspect of their outlook, and of what has since come to be called Marxism. In fact, theories of the state constitute critical facets of all totalitarian credos, not just the Marxian. After all, a given ideology may be overwhelmingly totalitarian in underlying logic, but if it lacks a focus on using the state as the means of transforming society—that is, of imposing its ideas—its totalitarianism will remain implicit. It is the same with Marxism. While Marxism contains many propositions that imply totalitarianism, it is Marx and Engels' view of the state that renders their theory totalitarian in practice. This is most evident in their argument that the state, in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the chief weapon in the struggle to establish communism.

Vampire Alert!
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is once again sniffing around what could loosly be called the direct action movement - the lively culture of resistance that has grown out of the anti-roads protests, reclaim the streets parties and so on. Seeing the growing awareness in this scene of capitalism as our enemy, and gutted that an event of the scale and militancy of June 18th could pass with not an SWP paper seller in sight, the party leadership has obviously decided that we're a prime target for recruitment.

'International Socialist' betrayal of Prague protest
We've just had a suspicion confirmed by the 'Weekly Worker' about the behaviour of the International Socialists in Prague. From talking to individual members it has seemed that for some reason instead of ending up in the Pink sector (for which they had put themselves down) they somehow ended up behind 'Ya Basta' in the yellow sector. As they were at the front of the march this should have been impossible. It turns out they deliberately entered the wrong sector because they refused to accept the agreed plan to split the march in three. The article revealing this (from a rival Leninist group that agreed with their decision) is at http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/353/pragues26.html

If you are an ex-member of the ISO, SWP or other authoritarian Left organizations, we'd like to hear your story!

Are There Any Cool Marxists?

Yes! There are a wide variety of Marxist groups and individuals who are anti-capitalist AND anti-authoritarian. These folks calls themselves left-libertarians, council communists, and sometimes they prefer no label. If giving yourself the anarchist label doesn't suit you, then check out one of these groups, individuals or tendencies:

AUT-OP-SY

The Bad Days WIll End

Break Their Haughty Power

commie zero zero

Council Communism

Harry M. Cleaver, Jr.

Collective Action Notes

Midnight Notes

Radical Chains

Subversion

Texas Archives of Autonomist Marxism