Hertford and Stortford Ware hustings General Election 2015-

As you may or may not know I’m not the biggest fan of elections. But this coming April the debating society I am a member of are hosting the local hustings for the coming general election. I am on the organising committee and am happy to help. As you may or may not know I’m in no political party at all and am increasingly turned off by all party’s whether they be soft left or hard left. I am struggling to mount any enthusiasm for any party to vote for. As an anarchist now I should not vote at all which I stand by I don’t think I will. But the local situation has obvious interests to me and I am happy to help out and organise a hustings if that is what people want. I feel it is fair and right that there is such an n event given the heightened awareness of politics in this current year. Whilst I can’t lend my support to any of the candidates standing I do wish them well as there is a financial cost and also a physical cost in terms of the work involved. In this hugely Tory Tory seat held by former housing minister MarkPrisk there is lots of hope from candidates hoping to make a dent in his 15 thousand odd majorities and I can’t see why not at present. I as people well know am no Tory supporter and detest all that they stand for but as it stands mark Prisk has not agreed to join in with the Ware general election hustings to be held in the Ware Drill Hall on the 24th of April starting at 7.30 pm all welcome and no entrance fee required. Standing for this seat will be the Labour party, Lib Dem's, UKIP, Greens and the sitting MP who is a tory as far as i know there is no one else at this stage . I have my views on the Tories and Mark Prisk as a person given the replies I have had from him and his office down the years in disagreement with many of his ideas and party policies but I would for democratic fairness like to see him turn up on the 24th of April. I would like to see him challenged and held to account as any MP or elected representative should be. We currently have no reason as to why Mark can’t attend but I do hope before the 24th he will reconsider and join the hustings with the other candidates who have been more than happy to get involved. As I said earlier I am part of a debating society called Cogers debating society which have continued the tradition of discussion and debate from a very very early time. We are proud to host such an event in Ware but we are aware how big this election could be on the whole. What happens in East Herts on the face of it may not matter too much but everyone in this area has a say and deserves to be heard. If they wish to turn up on the night they will be more than welcome and encouraged to join in and ask the candidates questions from the floor. As a libertarian socialist with roots in economic Marxism and the ideas of anarchism as a practise I am not against all elections as a rule just I am not sure we as a class, the working class can gain much from any bourgeois election. Even whilst I hold this view I still maintain a curiosity on how big elections go and who wins or forms the next government despite what we say will be a big thing and dictate how we react and take things forward as a militant class. Please attend the Ware General Election hustings if you can Venue: The drill Hall Ware, Hertfordshire, Amwell end Time: 7:30 pm start advice to get in early to gain seat Duration: roughly finishing at 10:00 pm with a scheduled interval at 9pm for an all to stretch legs or refresh yourself Hosted by: Ware society of Cogers http://cogers.org/ Entrance: free to members of the public Time: 7.30 pm to 10 pm --- roughly Open to: all members of the public who wish to question the candidates for the Hertford and Stortford seat in the coming general election

Angry Not Apathetic, What anarchists do instead of voting

The general election is here, and once again the parties are all over us like a rash, promising that they will fix things. But you don’t have to be an anarchist to know that nothing changes, whoever gets in. This is why politicians are keen on new methods such as postal voting. Labour, Tory, Liberal Democrat, nationalist (Plaid Cymru, SNP, Sinn Fein), ‘principled’ or ‘radical’ (Green Party, or leftists in some alliance), or nationalist-racist (UKIP etc), the fundamentals of the system are the same. Whether we have the present electoral system or proportional representation, or however many people vote or don’t vote in an election or referendum, as we have just seen in Scotland, capitalism is at the driving wheel globally. As working class people, we are exploited whether we can take part in ‘free’ elections or live under an authoritarian regime. Capitalists and property owners continue to control the wealth that we create, and they protect it through the police, legal system, and military. You can’t complain Non-voters are told that, “If you don't vote you can't complain”. But voting under these circumstances is just pretending that the system we have is basically alright. It lets the winning party off the hook. The fact is, we have next to no say in the decisions that get taken by the people we elect. This is called ‘representative democracy’. Anarchists organise by ‘direct democracy’, where we can have a say in every decision, if we want to. We don’t put our power in someone else’s hands, so no one can betray us and abuse it. This really could work globally! Ask us how... Campaigning against voting A “don't vote” campaign on its own is just as much a waste of time. The same goes for a protest vote for a leftist or novelty candidate. The time and money spent campaigning could be better used fixing some of the problems we face in our lives. Protesting, whether it is spoiling a ballot paper or marching in the street, fails to offer any real challenge. So, anarchists say, vote, or don’t vote. It won’t make any difference. What is more important, is to realise that elections prop up a corrupt system and divert us from winning real change. Don’t vote, organise! We should organise with our neighbours, workmates, other people we have shared interests with, and others who don’t have the privileges that some people have. We are the experts on what we need, and on the best way to run things for the common good. We need to use direct action to achieve this. Direct action is where we solve a problem without someone else representing us. By this we mean, not just protesting and asking for change, but things like occupying, sabotaging, working to rule, refusing to pay their prices or their rent, and striking (but not waiting for union leaders to tell us when we can and can’t!). For example, when workers aren’t paid the wages owed them, rather than asking the government to give us better legal protection, we take action to force employers to pay. The Department for Work & Pensions has even named the Anarchist Federation and the Solidarity Federation among groups that are a serious threat to workfare, because we have shut down programmes. This was achieved with only a few hundred people. Imagine what could be done with thousands! Taking it back In reality, people are understandably afraid of taking the state on. But direct action doesn’t have to mean an all-out fight to defeat capitalism in one go. Anarchists do think that ultimately, there has to be a full revolution. But by confronting the system directly at any point we can start to take control. In fact, all the good things we think of as having been created by the state – free health care, free education, health & safety laws to protect us at work, housing regulations, sick pay, unemployment benefits, pensions – came about historically to put an end to organised campaigns of collective direct action that threatened their power. And where we would fail as individuals, together we can win. --- Labour and the Unions The infatuation of the trade unions with the Labour party should be nothing other than mystifying for ordinary workers. Whether it is ‘Unions Together’ or TUC voter registration drives, trade union members amongst us should feel deeply insulted at being asked to prop-up the Labour party as the best available solution. The Labour Party was set up in the early twentieth century as a political wing of the trade union movement. Despite the rose-tinted view of history, it has continually regulated workers under capitalism. It is not a case of Labour having ‘lost its way’ and needing recapturing. To echo the anarchist Rudolf Rocker, political parties and elections haven’t brought workers “a hair’s breadth closer to socialism.” The ‘Special Relationship’ The TUC and parts of the left continually present us with a picture of Labour which has nothing in common with its actual actions. They tell us that we still have a ‘special relationship’, and that despite its failings, the Labour Party stands-up best for ordinary working people. So we should support it ‘without illusions’, because it is better than the Tories. Not that you would notice! All the major parties support austerity against the working class. This is irrefutable, and Labour even says as much. What remains of the dwindling trade union movement is essentially shackled by harsh restrictive anti-union laws and a totally compliant TUC leadership. These laws tell us how to manage our affairs, seriously restrict our ability to withdraw labour, and tell us who we can and can’t expel, which means that we have to accept scabbing in our own unions. They restrict free association in a way that no other organisation can under British law and are regularly condemned by the International Labour Organisation, which is hardly a hotbed of radicalism. The only time Labour repealed anti-union laws was when its hand was forced by a mass grassroots workers movement in the 1970s. Overturning these present laws and rebuilding a militant culture around the workplace is going to require not the politics of the ballot box, but sheer will and the determination to oppose so-called ‘representatives’ in both the Labour Party and the TUC. Their class interests under capitalism are intimately linked; our interests begin and end with us. --- Free Education and the Liberal Democrats: A Student’s Perspective Living in Sheffield at the time of the last election, I saw that there was massive voter turn-out and support for the Lib Dems amongst students. A tangible optimism and excitement existed in Nick Clegg’s constituency. Personally, I spoiled my ballot paper with, ‘If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal’. However, I did wonder whether a Lib-Dem rise could contest the New Labour/Conservative stalemate of neoliberal similarity. Clegg now sports a satisfaction rating of minus-40 (Mori survey). This is well deserved. Instead of capping tuition fees he has overseen them triple to £9,000. Young people among many others who voted Lib-Dem have been left disillusioned by this, becoming disengaged from politics. What has been proven is not that young people are not interested in politics, but that politicians are not interested in young people. Debt I was lucky and only had to pay £3,000/year in fees. But I now owe the Students Loan Company £23,000. This increases by at least £30 a month due to interest, which started whilst I was still at university! I am persistently being hassled by them checking if I’m earning enough yet to start paying it back. Neo-liberalisation When I finished university I wanted to continue studying. However, funding for a social science Master’s degree is rare and most students are self-funded. I couldn’t stand the thought of incurring more debt by taking out a loan, so I gave up on the idea. I moved home and worked in a café trying to get out of my overdraft. I found out that there are no tuition fees in Sweden for EU citizens. I applied to Stockholm University and got in, paying living costs with money I’d earned in the café. I then found out I could return to the UK on an Erasmus exchange, avoiding tuition fees and even getting an EU grant! This illustrates the lengths that you have to go to if you come from a background where higher education is unaffordable. Furthermore, it has taught me that a free education is feasible, but cannot be accomplished by relying on political parties and the establishment. The neo-liberalisation of higher education has proliferated under the Coalition. Education is becoming the preserve of the upper-middle-class. Research too must now be ‘competitive’, not expressing critical, independent thought. To contest this, to strive for free education, the only way is to self-organise! The demise of the Lib-Dems has shown we cannot rely on any political party to deliver this. This is why we argue ‘Don’t Vote – Organise!’ --- “Tories on bikes”: the Green Party in power “F***ing Tories on bikes” – that’s how one Brighton bin worker describes the Green Party. As the largest party on the local council, with 23 seats at the 2011 election, Brighton is the only place in the UK where the Greens have had so much as a sniff of power. And look what they’ve done with it. Despite trumpeting a commitment to the living wage (£7.85 an hour outside London, compared to a National Minimum Wage of £6.50), they tried to impose a “pay modernisation” scheme on low-paid council workers with the support of the Conservative group on the council. It meant that refuse and recycling staff at Hollingdean depot faced a paycut of up to £4,000 a year. Acting like the worst kind of union-busting boss, the council threatened the workers that if they refused to accept the new terms, they would sack them and re-employ them ‘on a worse contract, without compensation’. Binworkers responded with a wildcat occupation of their depot, and there have been numerous strikes and wildcat stoppages since. And the attacks on the binworkers’ terms and conditions of employment continue. Litter picking Green MP, Caroline Lucas claims to have made her opposition to the proposals clear, and even said that she would “join the picket line if the Council forces a pay cut on low paid staff.” Well, we haven’t seen her on any picket lines. We did see her picking up litter during the strike of June 2013, despite a statement from the bin-workers asking people not to, because as they say, “any attempts to lessen the impact of a strike [by picking up litter] completely undermines our action.” No doubt the Greens in Brighton have made “tough choices,” with their “hands tied” by central government. So is that all there is to politics – “tough choices” and a world of perpetual disappointment when your elected representatives betray you? As anarchists, we say that the problem is not with who is in power, and how they exercise that power. The problem is political power itself. As anarchist Noam Chomsky points out, “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” The Greens might be on the fringes of that spectrum, but they’re still part of the party political system, established to keep us quiet. --- with thanks to Anarchist federation and their pamphlett resistance which you can read more at http://www.afed.org.uk/publications/resistance-bulletin/437-resistance-bulletin-issue-158-angry-not-apathetic-general-election-special-issue-spring-2015.html

Why vote in elections ??

Today spamming my timeline on twitter is the Unite Union my former union who are cheerleading for the Labour Party victim blaming the disabled and the poor into voting. If you dont vote you dont have a voice they crow. I used to be involved in TUSC and various trotskyists activities to give the "working class" a political voice. I no longer think this is the way to go “Don’t vote? don’t complain” “A + B are both wrong” “Pick one or you’ll be ignored” *picks A* “This is awful” “You voted for it!" are all lines i hear so much. For a trade union to be pushing this sickening line is really taking the piss. lets be honest no one is against voting as and of itself its just its role it plays in watering down disent and diverting militant campaigns into dead ends. Also, what Unite are ignoring in the middle of blaming disabled people is that often polling stations are SIMPLY NOT ACCESSIBLE as many blind people like myself have found in the past. Only around 25% of polling stations at the last European Elections had accessible templates to enable the blind and partially sighted to vote. The RNIB and other blind charity's are campaigning for a online voting system which i wouldnt be against to be honest as enabling disabled people to vote easier if they so wish should be a right they hold. Even if like me they may choose not to participatea nd vote there still should be the chance for all no matter your disability to vote independently for yourself if you so wish. Even as anarchists we can agree with that. Alot of good stuff is written on the anarchist faq which i will quote below. "While anarchists reject electioneering and voting, it does not mean that we are politically apathetic. Indeed, part of the reason why anarchists reject voting is because we think that voting is not part of the solution, its part of the problem. This is because it endorses an unjust and unfree political system and makes us look to others to fight our battles for us. It blocks constructive self-activity and direct action. It stops the building of alternatives in our communities and workplaces. Voting breeds apathy and apathy is our worse enemy. Given that we have had universal suffrage for well over 50 years in many countries and we have seen the rise of Labour and Radical parties aiming to use that system to effect change in a socialistic manner, it seems strange that we are probably further away from socialism than when they started. The simple fact is that these parties have spent so much time trying to win elections that they have stopped even thinking about creating socialist alternatives in our communities and workplaces. That is in itself enough to prove that electioneering, far from eliminating apathy, in fact helps to create it. At its most basic, voting implies agreement with the status quo. It is worth quoting the Scottish libertarian socialist James Kelman at length on this: "State propaganda insists that the reason why at least 40 percent of the voting public don't vote at all is because they have no feelings one way or the other. They say the same thing in the USA, where some 85 percent of the population are apparently 'apolitical' since they don't bother registering a vote. Rejection of the political system is inadmissible as far as the state is concerned . . . Of course the one thing that does happen when you vote is that someone else has endorsed an unfair political system . . . A vote for any party or any individual is always a vote for the political system. You can interpret your vote in whichever way you like but it remains an endorsement of the apparatus . . . If there was any possibility that the apparatus could effect a change in the system then they would dismantle it immediately. In other words the political system is an integral state institution, designed and refined to perpetuate its own existence. Ruling authority fixes the agenda by which the public are allowed 'to enter the political arena' and that's the fix they've settled on." [Some Recent Attacks, p. 87] We are taught from an early age that voting in elections is right and a duty. In US schools, for example, children elect class presidents and other officers. Often mini-general elections are held to "educate" children in "democracy." Periodically, election coverage monopolises the media. We are made to feel guilty about shirking our "civic responsibility" if we do not vote. Countries that have no elections, or only rigged elections, are regarded as failures. As a result, elections have become a quasi-religious ritual. Yet, in reality, "elections in practice have served well to maintain dominant power structures such as private property, the military, male domination, and economic inequality. None of these has been seriously threatened through voting. It is from the point of view of radical critics that elections are most limiting." ["Democracy without Elections", pp. 123-36, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), p. 124] Elections serve the interests of state power in other ways. First, voting helps to legitimate government; hence suffrage has often been expanded at times when there was little popular demand for it but when mass support of government was crucial, as during a war or revolution. Second, it comes to be seen as the only legitimate form of political participation, thus making it likely that any revolts by oppressed or marginalised groups will be viewed by the general public as illegitimate. It helps focus attention away from direct action and building new social structures back into institutions which the ruling class can easily control. The general election during the May '68 revolt in France, for example, helped diffuse the revolutionary situation, as did the elections during the Argentine revolt against neo-liberalism in the early 2000s. So by turning political participation into the "safe" activities of campaigning and voting, elections have reduced the risk of more radical direct action as well as building a false sense of power and sovereignty among the general population. Voting disempowers the grassroots by diverting energy from grassroots action. After all, the goal of electoral politics is to elect a representative who will act for us. Therefore, instead of taking direct action to solve problems ourselves, action becomes indirect, though the government. This is an insidiously easy trap to fall into, as we have been conditioned in hierarchical society from day one into attitudes of passivity and obedience, which gives most of us a deep-seated tendency to leave important matters to the "experts" and "authorities." Kropotkin described well the net effect: "Vote! Greater men that you will tell you the moment when the self-annihilation of capital has been accomplished. They will then expropriate the few usurpers left . . . and you will be freed without having taken any more trouble than that of writing on a bit of paper the name of the man whom the heads of your faction of the party told you to vote for!" [quoted by Ruth Kinna, "Kropotkin's theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context", pp. 259-283, International Review of Social History, No. 40, pp. 265-6] Ironically, voting has legitimated the growth of state power to such an extent that the state is now beyond any real popular control by the form of participation that made that growth possible. Nevertheless, the idea that electoral participation means popular control of government is so deeply implanted in people's psyches that even the most overtly sceptical radical often cannot fully free themselves from it. Therefore, voting has the important political implication of encouraging people to identify with state power and to justify the status quo. In addition, it feeds the illusion that the state is neutral and that electing parties to office means that people have control over their own lives. Moreover, elections have a tendency to make people passive, to look for salvation from above and not from their own self-activity. As such it produces a division between leaders and led, with the voters turned into spectators of activity, not the participants within it. All this does not mean, obviously, that anarchists prefer dictatorship or an "enlightened" monarchy. Far from it, democratising state power can be an important step towards abolishing it. All anarchists agree with Bakunin when he argued that "the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better that even the most enlightened monarchy." [quoted by Daniel Guerin, Anarchism, p. 20] It simply means that anarchists refuse to join in with the farce of electioneering, particularly when there are more effective means available for changing things for the better. Anarchists reject the idea that our problems can be solved by the very institutions that cause them in the first place! If genuine social change needs mass participation then, by definition, using elections will undermine that. This applies to within the party as well, for working "within the system" disempowers grassroots activists, as can be seen by the Green party in Germany during the early eighties. The coalitions into which the Greens entered with Social Democrats in the German legislature often had the effect of strengthening the status quo by co-opting those whose energies might otherwise have gone into more radical and effective forms of activism. Principles were ignored in favour of having some influence, so producing watered-down legislation which tinkered with the system rather than transforming it. the state is more complicated than the simple organ of the economically dominant class pictured by Marxists. There are continual struggles both inside and outside the state bureaucracies, struggles that influence policies and empower different groups of people. This can produce clashes with the ruling elite, while the need of the state to defend the system as a whole causes conflict with the interests of sections of the capitalist class. Due to this, many radical parties believe that the state is neutral and so it makes sense to work within it -- for example, to obtain labour, consumer, and environmental protection laws. However, this reasoning ignores the fact that the organisational structure of the state is not neutral. To quote Brian Martin: "The basic anarchist insight is that the structure of the state, as a centralised administrative apparatus, is inherently flawed from the point of view of human freedom and equality. Even though the state can be used occasionally for valuable ends, as a means the state is flawed and impossible to reform. The non-reformable aspects of the state include, centrally, its monopoly over 'legitimate' violence and its consequent power to coerce for the purpose of war, internal control, taxation and the protection of property and bureaucratic privilege. To attempt to reform these is frankly utopian. At its most basic, anarchists support abstentionism because "participation in elections means the transfer of one's will and decisions to another, which is contrary to the fundamental principles of anarchism." [Emma Goldman, Vision on Fire, p. 89] For, as Proudhon stressed, in a statist democracy, the people "is limited to choosing, every three or four years, its chiefs and its imposters." [quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 152] If you reject hierarchy then participating in a system by which you elect those who will govern you is almost like adding insult to injury! For, as Luigi Galleani pointed out, "whoever has the political competence to choose his own rulers is, by implication, also competent to do without them." [The End of Anarchism?, p. 37] In other words, because anarchists reject the idea of authority, we reject the idea that picking the authority (be it bosses or politicians) makes us free. Therefore, anarchists reject governmental elections in the name of self-government and free association. We refuse to vote as voting is endorsing authoritarian social structures. We are (in effect) being asked to make obligations to the state, not our fellow citizens, and so anarchists reject the symbolic process by which our liberty is alienated from us." with extracts from the excellent anarchist faq http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionJ2#secj29

putting our ideals into practise

For many trying to change the world is something which may take many different forms to different people. I am of the belief that we should try to live as close to our ideals as we can. In today’s world long before some unspecified date when the revolution will come. For me this means living by our ideals on a daily basis including our attitudes towards sexism, racism and all forms of discrimination these are not issues we cannot put off until after the revolution. Solidarity is a concept talked about allots within those who wish to change society in a revolutionary socialist way but what do we mean by this? To quote from an anarchist FAQ. "To practice solidarity means that we recognise, as in the slogan of Industrial Workers of the World, that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Solidarity, therefore, is the means to protect individuality and liberty and so is an expression of self-interest. As Alfie Kohn points out: “When we think about co-operation... we tend to associate the concept with fuzzy-minded idealism... This may result from confusing co-operation with altruism... Structural co-operation defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy. It sets things up so that by helping you I am helping myself at the same time. Even if my motive initially may have been selfish, our fates now are linked. We sink or swim together. Co-operation is a shrewd and highly successful strategy — a pragmatic choice that gets things done at work and at school even more effectively than competition does... There is also good evidence that co-operation is more conductive to psychological health and to liking one another.” [No Contest: The Case against Competition, p. 7] And, within a hierarchical society, solidarity is important not only because of the satisfaction it gives us, but also because it is necessary to resist those in power. Malatesta’s words are relevant here: “the oppressed masses who have never completely resigned themselves to oppress and poverty, and who ... show themselves thirsting for justice, freedom and wellbeing, are beginning to understand that they will not be able to achieve their emancipation except by union and solidarity with all the oppressed, with the exploited everywhere in the world.” [Anarchy, p. 33] By standing together, we can increase our strength and get what we want. Eventually, by organising into groups, we can start to manage our own collective affairs together and so replace the boss once and for all. “Unions will... multiply the individual’s means and secure his assailed property.” [Max Stirner, the Ego and Its Own, p. 258] By acting in solidarity, we can also replace the current system with one more to our liking: “in union there is strength.” [Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism? p. 74] Solidarity is thus the means by which we can obtain and ensure our own freedom. We agree to work together so that we will not have to work for another. By agreeing to share with each other we increase our options so that we may enjoy more, not less. Mutual aid is in my self-interest — that is, I see that it is to my advantage to reach agreements with others based on mutual respect and social equality; for if I dominate someone, this means that the conditions exist which allow domination, and so in all probability I too will be dominated in turn. As Max Stirner saw, solidarity is the means by which we ensure that our liberty is strengthened and defended from those in power who want to rule us: “Do you yourself count for nothing then?” he asks. “Are you bound to let anyone do anything he wants to you? Defend yourself and no one will touch you. If millions of people are behind you, supporting you, then you are a formidable force and you will win without difficulty.” [Quoted in Luigi Galleani’s The End of Anarchism? p. 79 — different translation in The Ego and Its Own, p. 197] Solidarity, therefore, is important to anarchists because it is the means by which liberty can be created and defended against power. Solidarity is strength and a product of our nature as social beings. However, solidarity should not be confused with “herdism,” which implies passively following a leader. In order to be effective, solidarity must be created by free people, co-operating together as equals. The “big WE” is not solidarity, although the desire for “herdism” is a product of our need for solidarity and union. It is a “solidarity” corrupted by hierarchical society, in which people are conditioned to blindly obey leaders. " "Anarchists have long argued that people can only free themselves by their own actions. The various methods anarchists suggest to aid this process will be discussed in section J (“What Do Anarchists Do?”) and will not be discussed here. However, these methods all involve people organising themselves, setting their own agendas, and acting in ways that empower them and eliminate their dependence on leaders to do things for them. Anarchism is based on people “acting for themselves” (performing what anarchists call “direct action” — see section J.2 for details). Direct action has an empowering and liberating effect on those involved in it. Self-activity is the means by which the creativity, initiative, imagination and critical thought of those subjected to authority can be developed. It is the means by which society can be changed. Society, while shaping all individuals, is also created by them, through their actions, thoughts, and ideals. Challenging institutions that limit one’s freedom is mentally liberating, as it sets in motion the process of questioning authoritarian relationships in general. This process gives us insight into how society works, changing our ideas and creating new ideals. To quote Emma Goldman again: “True emancipation begins... in woman’s soul.” And in a man’s too, we might add. It is only here that we can “begin [our] inner regeneration, [cutting] loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions and customs.” [Op. Cit., p. 167] But this process must be self-directed, for as Max Stirner notes, “the man who is set free is nothing but a freed man... a dog dragging a piece of chain with him.” [The Ego and Its Own, p. 168] By changing the world, even in a small way, we change ourselves. In an interview during the Spanish Revolution, the Spanish anarchist militant Durutti said, “We have a new world in our hearts.” Only self-activity and self-liberation allows us to create such a vision and gives us the confidence to try to actualise it in the real world. Anarchists, however, do not think that self-liberation must wait for the future, after the “glorious revolution.” The personal is political, and given the nature of society, how we act in the here and now will influence the future of our society and our lives. Therefore, even in pre-anarchist society anarchists try to create, as Bakunin puts it, “not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself.” We can do so by creating alternative social relationships and organisations, acting as free people in a non-free society. Only by our actions in the here and now can we lay the foundation for a free society. Moreover, this process of self-liberation goes on all the time: “Subordinates of all kinds exercise their capacity for critical self-reflection every day — that is why masters are thwarted, frustrated and, sometimes, overthrown. But unless masters are overthrown, unless subordinates engage in political activity, no amount of critical reflection will end their subjection and bring them freedom.” [Carole Pateman, the Sexual Contract, p. 205] Anarchists aim to encourage these tendencies in everyday life to reject, resist and thwart authority and bring them to their logical conclusion — a society of free individuals, co-operating as equals in free, self-managed associations. Without this process of critical self-reflection, resistance and self-liberation a free society is impossible. Thus, for anarchists, anarchism comes from the natural resistance of subordinated people striving to act as free individuals within a hierarchical world. This process of resistance is called by many anarchists the “class struggle” (as it is working class people who are generally the most subordinated group within society) or, more generally, “social struggle.” It is this everyday resistance to authority (in all its forms) and the desire for freedom which is the key to the anarchist revolution. It is for this reason that “anarchists emphasise over and over that the class struggle provides the only means for the workers [and other oppressed groups] to achieve control over their destiny.” [Marie-Louise Berneri, Neither East Nor West, p. 32] Revolution is a process, not an event, and every “spontaneous revolutionary action” usually results from and is based upon the patient work of many years of organisation and education by people with “utopian” ideas. The process of “creating the new world in the shell of the old” (to use another I.W.W. expression), by building alternative institutions and relationships, is but one component of what must be a long tradition of revolutionary commitment and militancy. As Malatesta made clear, “to encourage popular organisations of all kinds is the logical consequence of our basic ideas, and should therefore be an integral part of our programme... anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves... , we want the new way of life to emerge from the body of the people and correspond to the state of their development and advance as they advance.” [Op. Cit., p. 90] "Unless a process of self-emancipation occurs, a free society is impossible. Only when individuals free themselves, both materially (by abolishing the state and capitalism) and intellectually (by freeing themselves of submissive attitudes towards authority), can a free society be possible. We should not forget that capitalist and state power, to a great extent, is power over the minds of those subject to them (backed up, of course, with sizeable force if the mental domination fails and people start rebelling and resisting). In effect, a spiritual power as the ideas of the ruling class dominates society and permeate the minds of the oppressed. As long as this holds, the working class will acquiesce to authority, oppression and exploitation as the normal condition of life. Minds submissive to the doctrines and positions of their masters cannot hope to win freedom, to revolt and fight. Thus the oppressed must overcome the mental domination of the existing system before they can throw off its yoke (and, anarchists argue, direct action is the means of doing both — see sections J.2 and J.4). Capitalism and statism must be beaten spiritually and theoretically before it is beaten materially (many anarchists call this mental liberation “class consciousness” — see section B.7.4). And self-liberation through struggle against oppression is the only way this can be done. Thus anarchists encourage (to use Kropotkin’s term) “the spirit of revolt.” Self-liberation is a product of struggle, of self-organisation, solidarity and direct action. Direct action is the means of creating anarchists, free people, and so “Anarchists have always advised taking an active part in those workers’ organisations which carry on the direct struggle of Labour against Capital and its protector, — the State.” This is because “[s]much a struggle ... better than any indirect means, permits the worker to obtain some temporary improvements in the present conditions of work, while it opens his [or her] eyes to the evil that is done by Capitalism and the State that supports it, and wakes up his [or her] thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption, production and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist and the state,” that is, see the possibility of a free society. Kropotkin, like many anarchists, pointed to the Syndicalist and Trade Union movements as a means of developing libertarian ideas within existing society (although he, like most anarchists, did not limit anarchist activity exclusively to them). Indeed, any movement which “permit[s] the working men [and women] to realise their solidarity and to feel the community of their interests ... prepare[s] the way for these conceptions” of communist-anarchism, i.e. the overcoming the spiritual domination of existing society within the minds of the oppressed. [Evolution and Environment, p. 83 and p. 85] For anarchists, in the words of a Scottish Anarchist militant, the “history of human progress [is] seen as the history of rebellion and disobedience, with the individual debased by subservience to authority in its many forms and able to retain his/her dignity only through rebellion and disobedience.” [Robert Lynn, Not a Life Story, Just a Leaf from It, p. 77] This is why anarchists stress self-liberation (and self-organisation, self-management and self-activity). Little wonder Bakunin considered “rebellion” as one of the “three fundamental principles [which] constitute the essential conditions of all human development, collective or individual, in history.” [God and the State, p. 12] This is simply because individuals and groups cannot be freed by others, only by themselves. Such rebellion (self-liberation) is the only means by which existing society becomes more libertarian and an anarchist society a possibility. " An excellent piece by Phil Dickens over at Propety is theft puts it really well too "If, in the end, we want a self-managed society, this has to come from a self-organised movement. You cannot get it from a heavily stage-managed, top-down “democratic centralism” wherein The Party becomes the vanguard or revolutionary leadership of the working class. To believe that “a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” will tend towards true communism, and that the state will “wither away” is nothing short of delusion. Rather, our means must reflect our aims. Just as building a top-down revolutionary movement sets the stage for tyranny, so a movement without hierarchy is the necessary starting point for a society without hierarchy. As the Solidarity Federation explain in the leaflet what is anarcho-syndicalism? (PDF); The role of anarcho-syndicalist networks and unions is not to try and recruit every worker, but to advocate and organise mass meetings of all workers involved in each struggle so that the workers involved retain control. Within these mass meetings anarcho-syndicalists argue for the principles of solidarity, direct action and self-organisation. In this way anarcho-syndicalism is completely different to trade unionism, which seeks to represent our economic interests and the so-called ‘workers parties’ which seek to represent our political interests. Instead, anarcho-syndicalism unites the political and the economic and opposes representation in favour of self-organisation. By organising this way, we learn to act for ourselves, exercising our power without being led by union officials or political vanguards. These calls into question the way society is organised and prefiguring the world we want to create, without bosses or rulers: libertarian communism. And it is not just our organisations which should reflect this horizontal structure, but the spaces we occupy as well. FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT; ALT=" Anarcho-syndicalists promote solidarity, direct action, and bottom-up organisation precisely because we believe that a free society can only be born of a libertarian revolutionary movement On the smallest scale, this would apply to radical social centers; Then and now social centre volunteers come from a range of backgrounds: community activism, animal rights, anti-war, climate-change, feminism, anarchism and more. We don’t agree about everything, nor do we need to, but what unites us is a shared desire for: ‘A fair, free and sustainable society – without hierarchy, discrimination or the exploitation of people, animals and the planet for profit.’ Creating the social centre as an autonomous, non-hierarchical, do-it-yourself space is part of trying to realise this. We don’t claim to or seek to represent anyone. Instead we look to provide resources for people to work for themselves, to increase their own self-confidence and to improve their own lives. More broadly, we can put the same principle to work in our actions. An occupied workplace can become an example of anarchism in action, the management structure replaced with cooperation, consensus decision-making, and solidarity and mutual aid both internally and with activists on the outside. This applies whether the aim is to take over the workplace for the workers, or simply to force concessions out of the bosses. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a community union, a squat, a social centre, an occupied workplace, or a national federation. What matters is that the way you have organised reflects the way you want to see society organised. And if you’re an anarcho-syndicalist, that means on the basis of “solidarity, direct action, and self-organisation.” There is no over-arching blueprint or formula for anarcho-syndicalism, either in the present or in a post-revolutionary world. Instead, we have a set of key principles, developed and strengthened through practice. We are not conducting an intellectual or philosophical exercise, and so practice is – ultimately – what counts. Just as our principles today are born of the practice of the past, so our practice today is what defines where we end up in the future. We truly are building the new world in the shell of the old one." With thanks to Phil Dickens over at Property is theft http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/building-the-new-world-within-the-shell-of-the-old/

The Real agenda of PCS union suspending elections for a year

SO the PCS union has alarmed many who care about union democracy and decency in the union movement w by suspending elections for a year all in the idea of "saving money". In a excellent article detailing the hows and why's PCS your voice a publication of the independent left in PCS who i believe have no party line as such wrote the following piece today i find it interesting reading given when i was a member of the socialist party it was talked for years there would be a situation like this happening. "The PCS National Executive Committee has taken the decision to suspend elections to the NEC and to Group Executive Committees for the coming year. Your Voice condemns this decision as a mistake and wholly unnecessary. The NEC made this and several other decisions at an emergency meeting on Thursday 18 December. The meeting also decided on staffing reductions and budget cuts, whilst confirming the sell off of the HQ building in Clapham. The rationale given for this was the scale of government attacks on PCS. A number of government departments are currently in the process of removing check-off, the facility to pay union subscriptions through payroll. This has left union reps rushing to sign members up to Direct Debit, with more and more other activity put on hold as the year has progressed, to combat a potentially massive loss of funds for the union. This threat, and in particular the fact that elections would take resources away from the Direct Debit campaign, has been used as justification for the suspension. The costs of elections were also brought up in favour of the decision. Whilst recognising dire threat that the removal of check off presents, alongside other measures such as union busting in HMRC, we nonetheless feel that suspending democracy was the wrong decision to take. On a practical level, we know that there is under-engagement in elections just as there is a shortfall of take up for Direct Debit. Could both issues not have been addressed together? An election campaign would surely present an ideal time to engage with members and promote the need to defend the union, while more simply Direct Debit forms and literature could have been included in the mail shots. In terms of cost cutting, there are no doubt any number of measures which could have made the ballots cheaper without doing away with them altogether. The savings may not have been as stark as the £600,000 quoted for this decision, but the loss wouldn’t be as great either. Democracy is not simply a cost to be reduced, but a necessary part of organising as workers. Your Voice believes in a union run by its members at a rank-and-file level, and that requires more democracy rather than less. This should be a fundamental tenet of what defines us, not a niceity to be discarded when inconvenient. There is much more that could be said on this issue. We are sure more will be in the run up to AGMs and Conference. In the meantime, we urge all those who oppose this decision to argue for their branch to adopt that same position and write to the NEC urging that they reverse it at their next meeting in January. Facing off the attacks on our union from this government mean not only standing our ground but advancing forward. If we take a single step backwards, in terms of democracy or organisation, then that is a concession too many to our foes. Further to this is the awkward situation or not so awkward if you are in favour of a lash up for the PCS with the unite union which for me has been the socialist partys aim for a long time to wrestle control of the biggest union in the country out of labours grasp. All this to aid in their dream of a new workers party i.e a labour party mark 2 but with the SP as its radical leadership of course. The independent left in PCS have wrote some good things on this issue and expose the sham for what it is. They continue. "The Independent Left believes that the NEC’s suspension of elections is related to the efforts of the central leadership to steer PCS into Unite (whatever NEC members were actually told regarding the suspension of elections – most of the 13 who voted for suspending democracy are voting sheep). The core leadership (the shepherds if you wish) need to submerge into Unite because: • Senior officers’ huge salaries and associated pensions would be protected. • They would be inside a financially secure trade union having handed over the proceeds from the sale of PCS HQ to Unite. • The ruling regime could look forward to running the Unite Public Sector Group and without having to ever accept its responsibility for the shockingly incompetent manner in which has led PCS (they would not willingly give up the leadership of an independent trade union to play second fiddle in Unite). • They would in fact preside over a wider and more securely based public sector membership. • The Socialist Party would have high hopes of dominating Unite’s own “left wing” grouping through the much bigger PCS Left Unity membership and indeed of linking up with those with an apparent desire to disaffiliate Unite from the Labour Party. • By effectively moving PCS elections to later in 2015 or indeed to 2016 (they are reserving the right not hold a vote for up to 12 months) the NEC move PCS more in line with the constitutional structures of Unite. • The suspension of elections and talk of bankruptcy might bring an otherwise recalcitrant PCS Conference into line on Unite merger and even if it doesn’t the self-elected NEC would be beyond Conference’s control if it steers PCS into Unite. The core leadership, Mark Serwotka and the Socialist Party, cannot risk an election as they might lose seats and so not be as dominant as presently they are, or worse still they might even lose the NEC. Rather than run that risk and therefore the chance to ‘save’ the union by destroying it by a lash up with Unite, they self-elect themselves into continuing power. If you can suspend elections you certainly ignore any conference decision regarding a (sub) merger with Unite. The core leadership is now going for broke; they are desperate to join up with that union. As their actions show they are sufficiently ruthless as to deny ordinary members a say in who runs the union; do you think they will allow delegates a greater say? Let members have a vote!! Further reasoning as to why the SP think this way and why they would set to benifit hugely from a potential PCS/Unite merger. Because they think they can take it over and break it from the Labour Party! Their analysis is that organised left grouping within Unite, the United Left is weak and they can take it over. As that grouping controls most of the Unite NEC they think they will take over the NEC. Once they have the NEC then they will break Unite from the Labour Party. Of course this is the sort of machine politics that the SP has successfully practiced in PCS (take over Left Unity, LU takes over the union etc). Therefore they believe that Unite will be just PCS writ large. Also they are pinning their hopes on all the public sector workers in Unite (council workers, NHS and former PCS) being put into one group. Such a hope is mentioned in a PCS bulletin and by their speakers. Of course they would hope to dominate this public sector group (PCS would be the biggest component of such a set up) and so be bigger fish in a bigger pond than at present in PCS. This group would be their power base within Unite and no doubt a source of full time officer jobs for their comrades. Of course all the above is mechanical (everything just follows from one thing to another; take over the United left, then the NEC etc.) and does not involve winning the members over but SP would believe that if you win the superstructure of the union and the organised left, then the members will follow – or at least they will not get in the way. We have a different conception of politics to the SP. Ours involves winning members and activists to ideas, creating a rank and file movement that really does control the leadership; not as a means to winning places on committees. Also as said the SP conception is mechanical. For example if they did succeed in winning the United Left in Unite they seem to think they could just take it over intact. But it is highly likely that the UL would split and a new ‘left’ would be created. Certainly the Labour Party and full time officials would not stand idly by and let SP operate unchallenged. So what would the members get out of all this? Well no doubt a SP comrade would argue that Unite under their control or if they had a significant voice within it, would be a radical union in the same way as PCS; that breaking from the Labour Party is a vital necessity for the working class. We have our doubts as to the former. Whilst PCS does take strike action it does not- as you would assume a radical union would- openly challenge other unions, appeal direct over the heads of other union leaders to the members in those unions, argue a radical change in the political system (the union’s demand for PR maybe part of such a change but in itself is not that radical change) and for a radical democratisation of the economy (saying that austerity should end is not the same thing as saying who should own what). The SP have made no substantive real case as to why a transfer to Unite would be better for members but, as we argue above, the proposed link up with Unite is not really for the members." This is not me having a swipe at my old party although i have many issues with them this should be something which concerns many union members who hold democracy close to their hearts of doing things. with thanks and solidarity to those over at your voice PCS and the independent left grouping in the PCS union their blog can be read at http://pcsindependentleft.com/2014/05/25/pcs-why-does-the-socialist-party-want-a-transfer-to-unite/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=1342&relatedposts_position=1

Why I no longer support democratic centralism and Trotskyism in general

I was once a signed up proud Socialist party member with a good grounding in Trotskyism. This was a while ago now and I do look back and cringe at some of the posts I used to post up on here on this blog. I have since left the socialist party and began the long task of revaluating my politics and my idea of democracy. Starting with Trotskyism which I was always a little uneasy with from the start with the democratic nature of the whole thing a little under played I felt. Many socialists follow the ideas of Lenin and, in particular, his ideas on vanguard parties. These ideas were expounded by Lenin in his (in)famous work What is to be Done? which is considered as one of the important books in the development of Bolshevism. The core of these ideas is the concept of "vanguardism," or the "vanguard party." According to this perspective, socialists need to organise together in a party, based on the principles of "democratic centralism," which aims to gain a decisive influence in the class struggle. The ultimate aim of such a party is revolution and its seizure of power. Its short term aim is to gather into it all "class conscious" workers into a "efficient" and "effective" party, alongside members of other classes who consider themselves as revolutionary Marxists. The party would be strictly centralised, with all members expected to submit to party decisions, speak in one voice and act in one way. Without this "vanguard," injecting its politics into the working class (who, it is asserted, can only reach trade union consciousness by its own efforts), a revolution is impossible. Lenin laid the foundation of this kind of party in his book What is to be Done? and the vision of the "vanguard" party was explicitly formalised in the Communist International. As Lenin put it, "Bolshevism has created the ideological and tactical foundations of a Third International . . . Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all." [Collected Works, vol. 28, pp. 292-3] Using the Russian Communist Party as its model, Bolshevik ideas on party organisation were raised as a model for revolutionaries across the world. Since then, the various followers of Leninism and its offshoots like Trotskyism have organised themselves in this manner (with varying success). I once did support the idea of democratic centralism as I felt it was working it most certainly is not now and if it ever did I am not sure. Seeing how a Trotskyist party works up close scared me in all honesty the subservience to the leadership of the delegates at two congresses’ I attended was alarm bell ringing level. The way all branch’s and groups agreed wit the EC – executive council was deeply troubling and did I’m honest seed an element of doubt in my mind at how much are the leadership of this party held to account. I have now seen the party and especially its leadership for what it is thankfully and broken with that undemocratic tradition I was being sucked into. To observe this is not always easy and I do think my deep thinking mind caught this well thankfully otherwise I’d still be a member putting out drone type tweets and trotting out the party line which although powerful in that a number would put out same message lets be honest very few workers in the class we were looking to win over gave us a second look. One of the major points which I do now fully accept is the question of organisational structure. Vanguard parties are based on the principle of "democratic centralism". Anarchists argue that such parties, while centralised, are not, in fact, democratic nor can they be. As such, the "revolutionary" or "socialist" party is no such thing as it reflects the structure of the capitalist system it claims to oppose. Which indeed it does if you have a hierarchical structure which has the tag democratic creating hierarchy in your own organisation and hoping to put an end to capitalist form of hierarchy is just silly as you’re literally trying to replace like with like regardless of how good your intentions are. I don’t for a moment suggest Leninist and trotskyist followers are not sincere and are good people deep down I just now feel they are misguided and wrong in their overall theory of how a revolutionary organisation should function and its role and purpose . So how is a "vanguard" party organised? To quote the Communist International's 1920 resolution on the role of the Communist Party in the revolution, the party must have a "centralised political apparatus" and "must be organised on the basis of iron proletarian centralism." This, of course, suggests a top-down structure internally, which the resolution explicitly calls for. In its words, "Communist cells of every kind must be subordinate to one another as precisely as possible in a strict hierarchy." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 193, p. 198 and p. 199] Therefore, the vanguard party is organised in a centralised, top-down way. However, this is not all, as well as being "centralised," the party is also meant to be democratic, hence the expression "democratic centralism." On this the resolution states: "The Communist Party must be organised on the basis of democratic centralism. The most important principle of democratic centralism is election of the higher party organs by the lowest, the fact that all instructions by a superior body are unconditionally and necessarily binding on lower ones, and existence of a strong central party leadership whose authority over all leading party comrades in the period between one party congress and the next is universally accepted." [Op. Cit., p. 198] For Lenin, speaking in the same year, democratic centralism meant "only that representatives from the localities meet and elect a responsible body which must then govern . . . Democratic centralism consists in the Congress checking on the Central Committee, removing it and electing a new one." [quoted by Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 131] Thus, "democratic centralism" is inherently top-down, although the "higher" party organs are, in principle, elected by the "lower." However, the key point is that the central committee is the active element, the one whose decisions are implemented and so the focus of the structure is in the "centralism" rather than the "democratic" part of the formula. All this has clear parallels with Lenin's What is to be done?, where he argued for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation, which concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities, an organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation." This call for centralisation is not totally dependent on secrecy, though. As he noted, "specialisation necessarily presupposes centralisation, and in its turn imperatively calls for it." Such a centralised organisation would need leaders and Lenin argued that "no movement can be durable without a stable organisation of leaders to maintain continuity." As such, "the organisation must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession." Thus, we have a centralised organisation which is managed by specialists, by "professional revolutionaries." This does not mean that these all come from the bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie. According to Lenin a "workingman agitator who is at all talented and 'promising' must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory. We must arrange that he be maintained by the Party, that he may in due time go underground." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 158, p. 153, p. 147, p. 148 and p. 155] Thus the full time professional revolutionaries are drawn from all classes into the party apparatus. However, in practice the majority of such full-timers were/are middle class. Trotsky noted that "just as in the Bolshevik committees, so at the [1905] Congress itself, there were almost no workingmen. The intellectuals predominated." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 101] This did not change, even after the influx of working class members in 1917 the "incidence of middle-class activists increases at the highest echelons of the hierarchy of executive committees." [Robert Service, Op. Cit., p. 47] An ex-worker was a rare sight in the Bolshevik Central Committee, an actual worker non-existent. However, regardless of their original class background what unites the full-timers is not their origin but rather their current relationship with the working class, one of separation and hierarchy. The idea of bottom up workers control and self management are however alien and opposite to what Trotskyists stand for if you look at it as I have done. The two while seemingly want the same thing a class less society both have very different aims and ways of going about this which for me mark the two trends of socialism thought apart. In summary, we have a model of a "revolutionary" party which is based on full-time "professional revolutionaries" in which the concept of direct democracy is replaced by a system of, at best, representative democracy. It is highly centralised, as befitting a specialised organisation. the "organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the top downward" rather than "from the bottom upward." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Rather than being only applicable in Tsarist Russia, Lenin drew on examples from advanced, democratic capitalist countries to justify his model in 1902 and in 1920 he advocated a similar hierarchical and top-down organisation with a dual secret and public organisation in the Communist International. The continuity of ideas is clear. Is it any wonder then that Stalinism found itself a fertile base to grow, cement ideas and in fact take the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky to their unfortunate conclusion of a bureaucratic and centralised state confusing workers power with one party power. So I haven’t just been brainwashed if anything I’ve cleansed my thoughts and ideology and come to my sense’s in some ways. All of this has been through experience of going through a vanguardist party I don’t think I’m the first and almost certainly wont be the last to be churned up and spat out of a democratic centralist party claiming itself to be something its not. People will learn and make up their own minds I’m confident of that much.

Westminster panics as pro independence campaign gains ground

With little over 2 weeks until the referendum in Scotland which could be one of the biggest referendum yet in terms of its potential impact will take place. Scotland will vote on whether it is to go it alone or stay with the UK. Of course it isn’t as simple as that for much the pro independence campaign has won significant concessions and although devolution max was not on the ballot paper it’s highly likely that will pretty much be what they get even if a No vote wins I suspect. For me who doesn’t live in Scotland watching this from afar hasn’t been easy to grasp the issues but if I had a vote to ditch the Tories forever that would tempt me too. The polls make interesting reading for sure with the pro independence campaign pulling an ahead 51 to 48 in one of the polls that is least favorable to them so something is afoot. A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times over the weekend was the first mainstream study to put Yes Scotland narrowly ahead. The poll of 1,084 people, carried out between 2 and 5 September, suggested that, of those who have made up their mind, 51% planned to back independence, while 49% intended to vote no. The cross-party Better Together campaign had previously retained a lead in polls, often reaching double digits. The fact that many who the polls have missed those who don’t normally vote are messing with the polling figures is making for some very worried politicians. Even the Queen today who isn’t known for making political statements has come out today in the papers in support of Britain remaining a union of nations. Better Together campaign has denied plans to set out a timetable for giving more powers to Scotland were a sign of panic. Alistair Darling was speaking after a poll suggested the pro-UK campaign had lost its lead. Chancellor George Osborne has promised to unveil a timetable for further devolution if voters in Scotland reject independence. The SNP has dismissed the proposal as a last-minute "bribe". Mr. Osborne said on Sunday that a "plan of action" would be set out in the next few days to give "more powers to Scotland; more tax powers, more spending powers, more powers over the welfare state". BBC Scotland's political correspondent Glenn Campbell has reported that a new body will also be set up to hammer out more powers for Holyrood if there is a "No" vote on 18 September. 'Already announced' Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr. Darling acknowledged that the referendum race was "clearly very tight" but said there was no panic. He added: "We are in a position now where every voter in Scotland could potentially tip the balance in the referendum. "But I am confident we will win because we do have a very strong, positive vision of what Scotland can be, both in terms of the opportunities and the security that come from being part of the UK, a strengthened Scottish Parliament, with more powers which is what people want and you can do that without having to break up the country to do it." FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT; ALT=line" Analysis: Glenn Campbell, BBC Scotland political correspondent Whether it's a committee, a commission or a conference - the pro-union parties plan to create a new body to agree extra powers in the event of a 'No' vote. It would be expected to report before the 2015 general election. The chancellor promised more detail in the next few days. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, will tell the TUC today that the process should begin right after the referendum. It's understood a prominent person has already been identified to convene the group. It would consider the blueprints for the further devolution of income tax and some welfare measures produced by the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats and be open to ideas from wider Scottish society. The SNP would also be asked to contribute. The first minister, Alex Salmond, said the proposal was a "panicky" attempt to "bribe" Scots as opinion polls tighten, with one suggesting the Yes campaign may have edged ahead. Whatever the result on 18 September there has been a political earthquake people in Scotland are talking about their country their future and the type of society they want. This feeling is not going away anytime soon. It’s hilarious to watch the Westminster clowns running around like headless chickens worried about their own legacy if Scotland does indeed decide to go it alone. The ramifications are huge. I'm not saying the Yes campaign will win but the better together campaign has failed hugely and has ran a negative fear mongering campaign from the start. Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney told the BBC that it was a fair assessment of the polls to say the Yes campaign remained behind in general, but said his experience was that undecided voters were moving to yes by a factor of two to one. He added: "The movement is in our favor and the campaign is exciting an enormous amount of interest and activity and participation on the ground across Scotland. I think it is the formidable strength of the 'Yes' campaign that is motivating that." Referring to Mr. Osborne's announcement, Mr. Swinney said: "There is nothing new being offered this week. We may well get a timetable but the substance, the actual powers, the things that matter, Alistair Darling made absolutely crystal clear yesterday in contradicting George Osborne, that on the substance there will be absolutely nothing new. "The second point is that in 1979 Scotland was told vote 'No' in the referendum and you'll get a stronger parliament and what we got was a Conservative government for 18 years that we never voted for, industrial devastation and no parliament. "So I think the moral of the story of recent history in Scotland is if you want a guarantee of strong powers for the Scottish Parliament you have to vote 'Yes' in the referendum a week on Thursday." BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said the outcome of the referendum now looked "utterly uncertain". All to play for then chaps. The next week and a bit will be very interesting indeed.

Building the rank-and-file for July 10

As we get closer to the proposed coordinated public sector strikes on July 10th , debate continues to rage about how best to build for the event. In particular, on the libertarian left there has been much talk of the need to build a new rank-and-file. This has been the subject of recent open meetings all across the left The sad thing is that because of the course worker organisation has taken at least over the last thirty years, these debates must essentially be seen as attempts to revive a practice long-forgotten. In considering how to build from below, for a rank-and-file strong enough to take control of its own struggles, there are a number of obstacles to overcome. The myth of the authoritarian left is that of the “crisis of leadership,” whereby an otherwise directionless or apathetic working class lacks the particular form of top-down control that brings militancy and effective fightback. In fact, the opposite is true: the focus on leaders and top-down organisation, combined with the defeats of the past few decades, has demoralised and disempowered the rank-and-file workforce. As such, the task is not to get “the right leadership,” but to build people’s confidence in their ability to take control of their own struggles and abandon the leadership. A culture of resistance We need to talk up our recent victories including the small ones which go unnotice by much of the left today these can serve to increase the confidence of people to act on their own initiative Building people’s confidence means, ultimately, demonstrating that ordinary people can win on their own terms. Thus, the self-belief required to win victories and the successes that increased confidence feed into one another – though obviously such a cycle has to start small and build up. The fortunate thing is that, as dire as things can often seem, we aren’t starting from scratch. Rank-and-file based organisations and campaigns already exist on a community basis, if not a workplace one, and provide a springboard from which to build something bigger. For example, the IIWGB union involved in the tres caoses campaign I may not have spelt that100% workers victory in london and at ULU with outsourced cleaners who are still in battle who continue to fight for the big win on the living wage making the point that such wins are possible, and making exactly the point that solidarity and direct action work. In a similar vein, the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty who involved in a won in a year-long dispute against “workfare” providers A4E. They had been denying an ex-miner his JSA because of his refusal to attend meetings without a rep. A campaign of disruptive solidarity actions here also won the day with the stopped benefits repaid. The point with both cases (and no doubt other examples before them) is that they prove to ordinary people the power of collective action and the protection we get from sticking together. Unlike joining a servicing union, which is as empowering as joining the AA, it is something tangible that can be seen on the ground. The more it happens, the more people are inclined to be part of it. A culture of resistance grows, and you see more and more people acting on their own initiative. Of course, this does not spontaneously transfer to the workplace, especially in the case of a strike by a traditional union. It often seems to be the case that whilst the current escalation in the class struggle has inspired the resistance culture in those who don’t come under the umbrella of traditional organising – the unemployed, agency workers, the UK Uncut movement, and even school pupils, to give just a few examples – those within the strongholds of the trade unions remain the least radical. This comes back to the focus on building “broad lefts” and the “right leadership,” reducing those on the shop floor to little more than chess pieces in other people’s power plays. The unions play their role as the keepers of industrial peace well, and most of the left goes along with it by promoting illusions to the contrary. Hence why, in the midst of uprisings across the world and genuinely radical direct action against state and capital, a one-day strike being initiated entirely within the restrictive parameters of the law is hailed as the possible end of the government by various “revolutionary leaderships” who really ought to know better. It is here that militant workers face one of the more difficult tasks. Not only do we have to build from the ground up, an imposing task in itself given the conditions mentioned earlier, but we have to challenge the existing hierarchies of the union. Circumventing the bureaucracy We should always strive for mass work place meetings with 100% democracy with workers on the job deciding wahte action to be taken at all times ensuring we keep to Recallable delegates, not representatives, where necessary and Local control of strike funds • Rank-and-file controlled strike committees Direct action On which basis, people can learn the power in their own hands and to act on their own initiative. There is a strong libertarian trend within the growing youth movement, and recent disputes over schools becoming private academies on Merseyside have inspired spontaneous mass walkouts by pupils We need to go beyond the one day off for a bit of strike action is fine but any more is a no go. We need to support our fellow worker by a strike fundif any future battles crop up with democratically controlled trust of the hardship fund The current law states we must not go beyond the official line but we must if we are to win. current lines generally consist of the six official pickets recommended by the code of practice. But this is part of the growing disconnect between the working class and the struggles they’re involved in and it is vital that this is challenged. But it needs to also be stated that those who come down wouldn’t be “observers” or “supporters,” for the purposes of nervous officials wanting to keep everything strictly above board. We should be arguing for mass pickets, and those joining the line should take an active role not only in the duty but in deciding on how the action plays out. In other words, we need to mobilise people to act for themselves, not to be led. Propaganda plays a significant role in this, and it will be integral that a message of rank-and-file control gets out there. Even if we discover that thirty years of demobilisation cannot be overcome that easily, the seeds need to be sown now rather than left until the next big struggle that comes along. A culture of ideas The examples given above are just a few ideas. No doubt there is much more that can be done in terms of mobilising people. But I will end by suggesting that one of those things should be to encourage people to take part in the discussions that are going on about how to build for both these strikes and the broader fight. The authoritarian left claims to share the concern to organise at a rank-and-file level. But they do so with the clear intention of building up a broader base of footsoldiers, to be led into battle. As vanguards and revolutionary leaderships, they are above the working class, separate from it by their belief that they should be in charge of it whilst it doesn’t hold the right consciousness. The same, too, with union officials, who talk of “members” and “reps/activists” as though two separate species. For those of us on the libertarian left, and particularly within the anarchist tradition, that cannot be the case. We reject illusions in the existing leadership precisely because we reject formal leadership. We are not seeking to become a replacement vanguard, and we are part of that rank-and-file that needs to take control of its own struggles. This means that we do not debate only amongst our fellow militants and radicals, but that we take part in and seek to recreate the vibrant intellectual culture that was an inherent feature of the working class at the height of its power. The ideas we promote should be strong enough to stand up on their own merits. This being the case, scrutiny and robust debate with other workers who do not necessarily share your viewpoint is no bad thing and is to be encouraged. We can only have a situation where decisions are made by mass meeting if everybody is aware of and part of the discussion on the same issues. Everyone’s viewpoint is equally valid, and unlike the authoritarian left and the trade union bureaucrats we should be seeking not to dominate or steer meetings and discussion but to be a part of it as everyone else. Ultimately, if the aim is to have ordinary people taking action for themselves, then the ideas are the most important part of the equation. We can promote a culture of resistance, but by the nature of the beast we cannot produce a formula or a rigid programme. If people are to take control of their own struggles, they must decide how for themselves. The role of militants within the workplace is simply to be part of that, and to argue and demonstrate that it can be done.

Why i joined the IWW

The IWW - the international workers of the world or wobblies as they are often known as is a movement i came across earlier this year i find their politics fascinating and a new take on trade unions which i had not come across before. After todays confirmation that Len Mckluskey of unite who i am still a member of also for the time being to fully bankroll the labour party at next years general election i may consider leaving that union. I do not wish my money to go towards backing a labour party determined to carry on the destruction of the gains we as workers have made over the last decades. So much hot air from red Len is too much for me he threatens to break the labour link each time it comes out with another neo liberal policy yet nothing changes and yet again Len and his unite union will be cheerleading for labour in the coming year this is a huge let down for me and may well be the final straw in a union which gives me very little say in things. This is on top of the undemocratic attempt to ram through a merger with the PCS union who have been one of the more left unions of late and do have a reasonable record of fighting back. Why PCS and unite are merging will become clear in time but aswell as financial it is also as i understand it being forced through as a way of moving unite further left and in the hope it'll break with labour. This is all being aggitated for by the socialist party who control a majority on the PCS NEC at present who feel a merger with unite getting themselves onto the unite NEC could be the best way to break the labour link. But do we really need to close down an independent civil service union? Even if we did, surely joining up with Unison, the largest public sector union would make more logical sense from a trade union viewpoint. As usual political agendas are put before members interests in the myopic world of Serwotka & the Socialist Party. PCS needs to put it’s own house in order before going cap in hand to other unions. The whole issue of a merger has led to the creation of at least two Face Book groups The first I came across is simply called No to the PCS-Unite merger and states categorically: Page for PCS members opposed to being consumed by the monolithic bureaucracy of Unite in the proposed merger of the two unions Description The leadership of the PCS is driving the union towards a merger with Unite. This merger is not in the best interests of members: • It will be a takeover rather than a merger, with PCS consumed whole • It is an arrangement of financial convenience to preserve the perks of the paid union bureaucracy • Unite is a vastly less democratic union than PCS on every possible level • Unite is an FTO-dominated bureaucracy, whereas in PCS lay reps run their own branches and have a far greater degree of autonomy • Unite is affiliated to the Labour Party, who are in turn wedded to capitalism, austerity and the boss class Overwhelmingly, PCS members disagree with the concept of a merger or are at best indifferent to it. The possibility of a merger passed through conference in 2013 only thanks to a strong whip from the leadership and the Left Unity faction and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again with the merger proper. A second group is: Members against the merger. They have gone with a much simpler statement: Quite straightforward really: PCS are open to an approach from Unite with a view to merging. This groups is for PCS members who want to stop it. There you go. The Left Unity/Democracy Alliance has run PCS for eleven years. Over that time it has totally failed to overcome successive governments’ divide-and-rule policy of carving the civil service up into a huge number of “delegated bargaining units” and to regain civil service national bargaining. Yet that same leadership now asserts that merely by joining Unite it will overcome the bargaining divisions between public and private sector workers. The PCS leadership effectively assumes that union “merger” is a shortcut to the development of wider working-class political awareness and industrial militancy. The PCS leaders state that “merger” (transfer!) would create “a new, powerful force in the public sector adapted to today’s changing industrial circumstances that can deliver more for members” but has not explained precisely what it sees as the changing industrial circumstances and precisely how this new force within Unite would be better able to deliver for Unite and PCS public sector members. They do not say how the awful defeats PCS has suffered under their leadership would have been avoided if we had been Unite members. The underlying and only very partially stated argument would seem to be that: • PCS cannot “win” against the state on its own (winning is rarely defined by the PCS leadership), • Public sector workers must therefore strike together on pensions, pay, jobs and services (and presumably keep striking until the demands of all the different occupational areas of the striking public sector workers have been satisfied – not a model the PCS leadership followed in the pensions dispute with the last Labour Government) • Unison and other unions cannot be trusted to do so, as shown by the pensions debacle in November 2011 • If PCS “merges” with Unite and a large public sector group is created, then Unite will be able to call out its civil service, NHS and local authority workers at the same time, and thereby put pressure on Unison and other unions to join with it. There is plenty of talk about a “new powerful force”, “making a difference”, needing “a more effective trade union fightback in the public sector” and PCS and Unite sharing the same basic approach of being genuine fighters for members. However, nothing has prevented Unite and PCS from calling such joint action before now if they wanted to. In reality, Unite remains a relatively minor player in the NHS and local government. A fully united public sector fightback would require Unison to play an effective and committed role. That is extremely unlikely under the current Unison leadership. PCS should certainly agitate for joint action, but has to develop its own independent strategy for winning on issues facing PCS members. There is no short-cut through merger with Unite. The PCS leaders hint that they see themselves (in Unite) as competing with Unison for authority in the TUC and members in the NHS and local government. They say, “A merged union would become the second largest public sector union. It would be the first public sector union to hold substantial membership in…the NHS, local government and central government.” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka spoke at last year’s PCS conference of creating a “left wing pole of attraction” in the union movement. But competition with Unison is unlikely to attract its membership in mass numbers. If a few left-wingers are won over, that will be at the price of them abandoning the fight to replace the leadership in Unison of Dave Prentis or a successor in the same mould chosen in Unison’s next General Secretary poll in 2015. Mark Serwotka or the Socialist Party, the dominant group in the PCS leadership quite clearly see themselves running Unite’s public sector group. They are certainly not going to give up the leadership of an independent trade union just to play second fiddle in one sector within Unite. And Socialist Party must have high hopes of dominating Unite’s “United Left” through the much bigger PCS Left Unity membership. Merger is likely to mean losing PCS’s democratic structures and its actual and potential industrial coherence. PCS has annual elections at all levels; annual national and group conferences; delegates directly elected by branch members; and a widespread membership understanding of the key industrial issues. Delegates to Unite’s national conferences are indirectly elected by regional committees and regional industrial sector committees; national policy conference takes place every two years; national rules conference every four years; industrial sector conferences every two years. Elections for the Unite NEC, Regional and Branch Committees are held every three years. PCS’s very different circumstances enable direct relationships between members and the different levels of the union and within the single “industry” that is the civil service and the private sector support companies that provide services to the civil service. The end result is a membership with common workplace experiences and issues that gives national PCS an explicit and (potentially) unifying coherence of trade union purpose. That makes accountability (potentially) easier to judge and deliver. There is simply no real industrial logic to merger with Unite. There is some opposition on the left and right to merger with Unite because of its relationship to the Labour Party. It’s an opposition which either sees PCS in apolitical terms (a union for state employees!) or sees politics purely in terms of standing would be left-wing independent candidates in opposition to the Labour Party. Both are wrong and fail to outline any way in which PCS can help remove the Tories from government, ease the considerable pressures on members, and replace them with a trade-union based party whose leaders need to be opposed and tested with positive working class policies. For certain an alternative to Labour will not be found through TUSC or similar candidates. Serious socialists opposed to the merger should not get caught up with opposition on sectarian grounds. Well it is a cynical move which ignores members interests once again. It is a lash up for small political means i suspect. Members of both Unite and PCS should oppose any merger as this would not advance any strategy that would benifit them i believe a independent voice in your own union is far better for now. So... Why Join the IWW? It does not take long to figure out that workers and their employers do not have the same interests. Workers want shorter hours, higher pay, and better benefits. We want our work to be less boring, less dangerous, and less destructive to the environment. We want more control over how we produce goods and provide services. We want meaningful work that contributes to our communities and world. Our employers, in contrast, want us to work longer, harder, faster, and cheaper. They want fewer safety and environmental regulations and they demand absolute control over all decisions, work schedules, speech, and actions in the workplace. PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF A UNION The easiest way to stand up for each other in our workplaces and communities and the easiest way to improve our working conditions is to join a union. That is why employers fight so hard, and spend so much money, to keep unions out of their workplaces. Workers with unions generally have higher pay and job security, better benefits, and fewer scheduling problems. More pay equals fewer hours at work and more hours for enjoying the good things in life. Union workplaces are safer and have less harassment, discrimination, and favoritism. This is because a union gives workers the power to make workplace decisions. The less we let our employers make all of the decisions, the better our lives and communities will be. Unions also provide mutual aid and community. This means assistance with problems at work, but it could also mean help with a community project or fighting a landlord. WHY EVERY WORKER SHOULD BE IN THE ONE BIG UNION Whether your job sucks or is "pretty good" (at least today), we in the IWW believe you should join us for the following reasons. We need to start sticking up for our coworkers in our workplaces and in our industries. Ask around on your next shift. How many coworkers have two or three jobs? How many are one paycheck away from an eviction? We have a duty to our co-workers, and those who will follow in our footsteps, to make things better. The only way to do this is to organize together. When we band together around our common experiences and interests, we can improve our jobs and industries. Our labor, not our bosses, is what makes our workplaces tick and we can use our labor power to improve our jobs and our communities in the short term. In a lot of ways, that is what unions are all about. With the IWW, you also belong to a union that has a long term vision and plan for workers' control of their own work, without bosses, making our industries and economy democratic. As an IWW member, you get: 1) volunteer organizers if you choose to organize your workplace and industry. 2) union organizing expertise in areas of strategy, media, community support, infrastructure building, and bargaining. 3) commitment to democratic unionism, which means members control their own organizing campaigns and the direction of the union. 4) an international organization dedicated to working together to build worker power on our jobs and in our communities. 5) mutual aid and support. 6) some practical things: a subscription to the Industrial Worker (union newspaper), the IWW internal newsletter, access to the IWW website, the union's constitution, your local branch newsletter (if applicable), and a member button. ABOUT THE IWW Founded in Chicago in 1905, the IWW is open to all workers. Don't let the "industrial" part fool you. Our members include teachers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, bartenders, and computer programmers. Only bosses are not allowed to join. You have a legal right to join a union and your membership is confidential. It is up to you whether you discuss the union with your co-workers. If you are currently unemployed, you can still join. We are a volunteer-driven union, and this means we, not union bosses, run the union. The IWW is not controlled by or affiliated with any political party or political movement. No money goes to politicians. Membership dues are used to maintain the union and assist organizing campaigns. As a result, monthly dues are low. So lets not put up with endless bureaucracy lets start by organising ourselves for ourselves and taking control of our own struggles.

Why do we fight for workers self management

You will often here by some on the left of the labour movement that workers self management is the way to go instead of the tired worn out slogan of nationalise everything which a lot of people on the old left seem to cling to like it is the key to all troubles. “What is workers self-management? Workers self-management is a way of running a workplace without bosses or a fixed managerial hierarchy. Instead, the workplace is run democratically by its workers. By democracy, we do not mean that workers elect a manager to make decisions for them. We mean that the workers themselves decide how they will do things as a group. No one in a self-managed enterprise has control over any of the other workers - decision making power is shared equally between all workers. How does it work? Each self-managed workplace is managed by a face-to-face meeting of everyone who works there – a workers’ assembly. The workers of each enterprise collectively make all "management" decisions on a basis of one-worker-one-vote or consensus. The workers of each department form their own smaller assemblies, in which they make the decisions that affect only their department, and so on to the smallest work groups. Isn't that very time consuming? Not really. Managers will often complain about how time consuming their jobs are, but they spend most of their time doing administrative work. Relatively little time is spent making big management decisions. However, in great factories and plants there are too many workers to gather in one meeting every day. The workplace-wide assemblies might occur once a week, or once a month instead. They are the focus of major "policy" decisions - i.e. those which the workers DECIDE are most important. So how will work be coordinated on a daily basis? The workers will meet in their department assemblies and work groups to make the thousands of day to day decisions that crop up. Each department sends a delegate to a "shop committee" to coordinate their activities. Delegates are not professional managers: They are ordinary workers who have been sent by their department assemblies with special instructions (mandates); they return to these assemblies to report on the discussion and its result, and after further deliberation the same or other delegates may go up with new instructions. Once the shop committee meeting is over, they return to their everyday jobs. Any compromises reached at delegate meetings are subject to ratification by the department assemblies, and delegates can be recalled and replaced at any time. Therefore the shop committee does not tell the workers what the official policy is - the workers tell them. They are not a management board, but means of communication between the different departments. Indeed, the shop committee is not even a permanent body, since different delegates will probably be chosen for each meeting, so that everyone in the workplace gets to serve this role. Will there be managers? No. Workers’ self-management abolishes the permanent division between managers and workers. Instead, the people who do the actual productive work – making products, designing them, maintaining machinery, collecting information and so on - will collectively manage their own work. Workers self-management means that workers literally manage themselves, and therefore there are no professional managers or managerial hierarchy – just normal workers cooperating as equals. Note that rejecting a fixed managerial hierarchy does not necessarily reject leadership. If packing luggage onto an aeroplane needs a team leader, then so be it. But there is no reason why it should be the same person today as it is tomorrow. Similarly, a book may require a chief editor, but there is no reason why that person should be in charge of all the books published. Another member of his working group might edit the next book they take on. And where a team requires a leader for a specific task, she should be elected and removable by that team, and should work within the democratic decisions made by the whole team. But even if cleaners have full voting rights in plant decisions, how will they ever exert the same influence as those who develop budgets or design products? You are right. Despite equal rights, cleaners' work may not challenge their intellectual capacities or provide them with information about technological options or with skill at making decisions. One approach is to rotate jobs regularly, so that engineers do some cleaning work and so on. The most unpleasant jobs could be rotated between the whole workforce, so that no one is made to spend their whole working life doing degrading tasks. However, hierarchies of power will not be wholly undone by temporary shuffling, if the quality and empowerment of peoples’ day to day jobs differ largely. Instead of dividing workers into brain workers and manual workers, it has been suggested that each worker have a “balanced job complex”*. Each worker has a set of jobs composed of comparably fulfilling responsibilities. This does not mean everyone must do everything. But it does mean that the half dozen tasks that I regularly do must be roughly as empowering as the different half dozen tasks that you do regularly. Everyone must have a comparable balance of conceptual and rote tasks. So Instead of secretaries answering phones and taking dictation, some workers answer phones and do calculations while others take dictation and design products. We are not suggesting that everyone has completely equal abilities, although better education and less poverty would do a great deal to equalize things. We won’t all do intellectual or manual jobs equally well, but we will all do them well enough to bring our own unique experiences and insights to bear on decision making. After all, good ideas aren’t the monopoly of any individual or group. For sex or sports we don't say that only the "best" should participate - the same should be true for using one's head. But what about relationships between workplaces? Well, this depends on how people wish to do things. Self managed workplaces could compete in a market as capitalist workplaces do now, although this could still create a myriad of injustices. Others argue that workplaces should join “confederations” – free and equal associations of workplaces which replacing competition with co-operation. These would be run through conferences of delegates elected by each workplace, who come together to make decisions that effect the economy as a whole. These would be controlled from below, because delegates would be mandated and subject to instant recall by the workers who elected them. All decisions made at conferences would be subject to ratification by a vote of the workers’ assemblies in every workplace. So in fact, decisions affecting the whole economy would be made by everyone, with delegates being ambassadors rather than decision makers. In these confederations, workplaces would agree a fair price for each product, probably based on the number of hours they take to produce. Or otherwise, workplaces might make a mutual agreement to give their products away for free. * The credit for this idea must go to Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. Many of their books and essays are available online at www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm By Alejandro Vega With thanks to sam sanchez Over at http://www.libcom.org/library/workers-self-management-faq