Early anarchism in New Zealand: an introduction

The following is an early draft of the introduction to my paper on Philip Josephs and early anarchism in New Zealand. It's likely to change over time, but I post it to a) reassure the IAS that I'm on track, b) because others may be interested, and c) to get some feedback.


Philip Josephs—a Latvian-born Jew, recent arrival to New Zealand by way of Scotland, and self-proclaimed anarchist—took to the floor of the Wellington 1906 May Day demonstration amidst orchestral outbursts and a flurry of motions. ‘This meeting,’ moved Josephs, ‘sends its fraternal greetings to our comrades engaged in the universal class war, and pledges itself to work for the abolition of the capitalistic system and the substitution in New Zealand of a co-operative commonwealth, founded on the collective ownership of the land and the means of production and distribution.’1 The motion, as well as highlighting his involvement in the radical milieu of New Zealand’s capital, conveys the key concepts of his anarchism—internationalism, mass collective action, and socialism.

However if one were to form an understanding of anarchism based on the newspapers of the day, or from the accounts of New Zealand’s labour movement by certain historians, a very different conclusion would be drawn. On the rare occasions it is mentioned, anarchism is used hysterically by the press to denounce or decry; by labour leaders in order to show the fallacy of their opponent’s positions; and by Labourist historians to symbolise wayward ideas or acts of extremism—painting a nightmarish picture of anarchist practice in the vein of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday.2 ‘Gods Own Country is not safe from the vagaries of the person who believes in the bomb as opposed to argument,’ bellowed the Marlborough Express in 1907. 

Although highly exaggerated, the Express article contained one truth. God’s Own Country—the ‘workingman’s paradise’ that was New Zealand in the early years of the twentieth century—had anarchists in its midst. To describe this small number as a coherently organised movement would be another exaggeration, but nonetheless, those that subscribed to anarchism in New Zealand were a valid part of the labour movement, imparting uncredited ideas and influence. Unfortunately these radicals have fared badly in labour historiography—even more so than their communist counterparts who, at least, are mentioned, even if they are ‘frequently dealt with by a very brief, generally dismissive, characterisation, often little more than a caricature.’3 New Zealand anarchists and their commitment to social change deserves more than the relative silence that currently represents their struggle. 

Indeed, the only work on anarchism in New Zealand during the turbulent teens is the indispensable 32-page pamphlet ‘Troublemakers’ Anarchism and Syndicalism: The Early Years of the Libertarian Movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Frank Prebble. Drawing on snippets of primary and mainly secondary sources, his research was pioneering in that it was the first specific work on anarchism—highlighting a definite strand of libertarian praxis in New Zealand that has been overlooked. Yet as Prebble notes in the introduction, ‘this pamphlet is not complete, much of the information is very fragmentary and a lot more work needs to be done.’4 

Apart from the small number of its adherents, one of the reasons that early anarchism in New Zealand has been understudied and why further research is difficult, is due to the lack of historical records: 

a great deal of material has simply been lost due to the transitory characteristics of events. Those who were active in personal discussions and other forms of activism in their dynamic, often convulsing, and ever changing world often did not see the need or lacked the literacy to be able to document their ideas… what is left as source material are the thoughts only of those who were literate, who spoke loudly enough to be documented by others, or who wished to make themselves heard in a more durable way.5

Another factor that has limited past anarchist historiography is the tendency to view its subject/s solely within national boundaries. Anarchism was a transnational movement—built upon global economic integration and both formal and informal networks crossing national lines.6 When framed within geographical limits anarchism in New Zealand certainly appears submerged in a sea of ‘pink’ socialism, even insignificant. Yet a transnational lens allows New Zealand anarchists to be viewed as part of a wider, international movement, spurred on by transoceanic migration, doctrinal diffusion, financial flows, transmission of information and symbolic practices, and acts of solidarity.7 The role of New Zealand anarchism, both in the New Zealand labour movement and its own international movement, increases in scope when placed in such a context. 

With that in mind, and by drawing on work by Constance Bantman and others,8 this contribution will explore early anarchism in New Zealand through a biography of one of its key players. The transnational nature of anarchism in the period between its emergence in the workers movement of the late 1860’s, and the interwar years, can be seen in the migration and activity of Philip Josephs (1876-1946). His sustained activism, whether from the soapbox or through the mailbox, and his involvement in the class struggle that swept through New Zealand prior to the First World War, makes Josephs one of New Zealand’s most important and pioneering anarchists. 

As well as providing previously scarce biographical information on Josephs, I hope to convince the reader of three main claims. Firstly, before the arrival of Josephs in New Zealand the ‘broad anarchist tradition’—defined by Schmidt and van der Walt as a revolutionary form of libertarian socialism against social and economic hierarchy (specifically capitalism and the state), in favour of international class struggle and revolution from below in order to create a self-managed, socialist, and stateless social order9—had next to no organised presence. There were anarchists and anarchist ideas in New Zealand before Josephs, but it was his activity within the New Zealand Socialist Party and later through his formation of New Zealand’s first anarchist collective, The Freedom Group, that ensured a level of organised anarchism previously absent from the wider labour movement. 

The second point is one of legitimacy: anarchism was a valid part of the New Zealand Labour movement—directly through the activity of Philip Josephs, or indirectly due to anarchist ideas. Although often missing from the indexes of New Zealand labour histories, anarchism was ‘more influential than most have realised.’10 The anarchist communism of Josephs reflects the rejection of violent individualism (propaganda by the deed) and the move back to the labour movement taken by the majority of anarchists in the late 1880’s. His support of syndicalist class struggle and the general strike, and his activity alongside the local branches of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) typifies the relationship of anarchism with revolutionary syndicalism. Indeed, if one went so far as employing Schmidt and van der Walt’s definition of syndicalism being a variant and strategy of the broad anarchist tradition, the era of the New Zealand Federation of Labor (the ‘Red Feds’) of 1908-1913 can be seen in a whole new light.11 

Finally, the New Zealand anarchist movement, and Josephs in particular, was rooted within the international anarchist movement. Josephs’ birth in Latvia, his radicalisation in Glasgow, Scotland, and his almost two decades in New Zealand before leaving for Australia highlights the transient nature of labour; while his distribution of international anarchist literature, and personal networking with overseas revolutionaries and groups such as Freedom (UK) and the Mother Earth Publishing Association (USA), illustrates the doctrinal diffusion and sharing of information so vital to informal, intercontinental anarchist networks. This sharing went both ways: Josephs’ activities, the bankruptcy of state-socialist legislation, and accounts of the 1912 Waihi Strike in New Zealand popped up on the pages of various anarchist journals abroad, lending weight to the notion that: 

anarchism was not a Western European doctrine that diffused outwards, perfectly formed, to a passive ‘periphery.’ Rather, the movement emerged simultaneously and transnationally, created by interlinked activists on many continents—a pattern of interconnection, exchange and sharing, rooted in ‘informal internationalism.’'12

Josephs personifies the interlinked activist, operating within a small local scene but with an eye towards international events and developments. As a result, anarchism took hold in New Zealand—the Freedom Group of 1913 being the first of many anarchist collectives to play a vibrant part in the history of the New Zealand left.

---

1 Evening Post, 7 May 1906.

2 G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, J.W. Arrowsmith Publishing: London, 1908.

3 Kerry Taylor, ‘Workers Vanguard of People’s Voice?: the Communist Party of New Zealand from Origins to 1946’, Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1994, p. ?.

4 Frank Prebble, “Troublemakers” Anarchism and Syndicalism: The Early Years of the Libertarian Movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Libertarian Press, 1995.

5 Rob Knowles, Political Economy From Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914, Routledge, 2004, p. ?.

6 Steven Hirsch & Lucien van der Walt, ‘Rethinking Anarchism, Syndicalism, the Colonial and Postcolonial experience’ in Hirsch & van der Walt (eds.), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution, Brill, 2011.

7 Ibid., p. Ii.

8 Constance Bantman, ‘The Militant Go-between: Emile Pouget’s Transnational Propaganda (1880-1914)’ in Labour History Review, 74(3), 2009, p. 274-287; David Berry & Constance Bantman (eds.), New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010; Marcel van der Linden, Transnational Labour History: Explorations, Ashgate, 2003.

9 Michael Schmidt & Lucien van der Walt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, AK Press, 2009, p. 71. ‘Red Feds’ explanation if not mentioned later in the text.

10 Eric Olssen, email to the author, 20 August 2010.

11 Schmidt & van der Walt, Black Flame.

12 Hirsch & van der Walt, ‘Rethinking Anarchism’, p. Iiv.

Communisation: in print

Can we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present?

 

These are some of the questions posed in a number of recent publications on the ‘buzzword’ that is communisation, illustrating a rich history of thought that has its roots in the decomposition of proletariat ‘identity’ and the crisis of 1970′s capitalism. Bringing together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontents treats Communization as a problem to be explored rather than a solution. Taking in the new theorisations of Communization proposed by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Theorie Communiste, post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies, and tactics of struggle.

 

Featured in the book is the work of Endnotes, a journal also worth exploring. The introduction to Endnotes #1, Bring Out Your Dead, nicely summarises a key debate between two major players in the development of communisation theory, and also provides a concise definition:

…groups like Mouvement Communiste, Négation, and La Guerre Sociale advocated a conception of revolution as the immediate destruction of capitalist relations of production, or “communisation”. As we shall see, the understanding of communisation differed between different groups, but it essentially meant the application of communist measures within the revolution — as the condition of its survival and its principle weapon against capital. Any “period of transition” was seen as inherently counter-revolutionary, not just in so far as it entailed an alternative power structure which would resist “withering away” (c.f. anarchist critiques of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”), nor simply because it always seemed to leave unchallenged fundamental aspects of the relations of production, but because the very basis of workers’ power on which such a transition was to be erected was now seen to be fundamentally alien to the struggles themselves. Workers’ power was just the other side of the power of capital, the power of reproducing workers as workers; henceforth the only available revolutionary perspective would be the abolition of this reciprocal relation.

Another recent addition to the literature is Sic, an international journal on communisation from Endnotes, Blaumachen, Théorie Communiste, Riff-Raff and more:

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any kind of property ; the extension of a situation in which everything is freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are all “measures” for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is communisation ; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism…

This is only a brief summary as there are a number of other sources always arising on the topic, but there is much anarchists and other radicals can learn from some of the debates and theory listed above.

the miners' militant history

My text for the November issue of The Spark (and the LHP Newsletter).

From the arrival of colliers in the 1870s to New Zealand’s biggest strikes, miners have played an active part in the struggle against capitalism. As Len Richardson points out: ‘Coalminers occupy a special place in the history of industrial radicalism in New Zealand’. Socialists of many shades considered them ‘a revolutionary vanguard destined to bring capitalism to its knees’—to employers they were troublemakers holding back the progress of modern development. Regardless of how they are painted, there is no doubting the importance of miners in New Zealand’s labour history.

Miners were some of New Zealand first migrants, transplanted from the English coalfields to the ‘New World’ in the late 1870s. Unfortunately for the colonial coal masters, these miners brought with them the ‘twin evils’ of Methodism and unionism, and in 1884 formed the first miners’ union in Denniston. They quickly went about organising their own Federations to accommodate the diverse situations of the coalfields—the Amalgamated Miners’ and Labourers’ Association in the 1880s and the more successful Miners’ Federation of 1908. Meanwhile, during the Maritime Strike of 1890 miners took strike action in support of the general seamen’s strike.

The latter Federation was the result of a dramatic strike in the town of Blackball —traditional home of New Zealand radicalism. Growing militancy was stoked by the arrival of radicals like Patrick Hickey and the propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Their advocacy of direct action and revolutionary industrial unionism related to the miners’ disenchantment with the labour laws of the day, such as the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (ICA) Act, which disallowed unions from striking. In 1908 the formation of a New Zealand Socialist Party branch signalled the rise of revolutionary ideas in the valley.

From 1907, ‘Blackball miners and their employers had been on a collision course’ over conditions, Richardson says, so when seven miners were fired for taking 30 minutes ‘crib-time’ instead of the 15 imposed by the company it was the final straw. All 120 Blackball miners ceased work on 27 February 1908. This was a deliberate challenge to the ICA Act and the Arbitration Court tried to intervene, but community solidarity was too strong.

After three months the company gave in, sending waves of enthusiasm for direct action throughout the country. The resulting Miners Federation grew into the ‘Red’ Federation of Labour, whose preamble stated ‘the working class and the employing class having nothing in common’. This ‘baptism of fire’ did not end in Blackball however, for the Red Feds soon found themselves involved in two of New Zealand’s most violent labour struggles: the Waihi Strike of 1912 and the Great Strike of 1913.

The Red Feds encouraged class struggle free of ‘labour’s leg iron’: the ICA Act. Affiliated unions, including the miners of the Waihi Trade Union of Workers, began to de-register from the ICA. So in 1912 when 30 engine drivers in Waihi re-registered under the ICA (reportedly encouraged by the bosses), the union struck in protest. On 13 May, Waihi came to a standstill. However the strike failed. Intense police repression and violence saw the balance of power shift to the bosses. During what became known as the ‘Black Week’, the Miners’ Hall was stormed, striker Fred Evans was killed by a police baton to the head (becoming the first worker do die in an industrial dispute in New Zealand), and unionists and their families were driven out of town as police stood by.

On the heels of the Waihi Strike came the Great Strike of 1913, in which miners played an important part. In October, Huntly miners called a strike when the company dismissed two union executive members, while in Wellington the watersiders struck when the Union Steam Ship Company refused to pay travelling time for shipwrights. Strike action soon spread. Miners on the West Coast took wildcat strike action without waiting for official sanction, and shut down the ports of Westport and Greymouth. Fearful of the miners’ militancy, explosives were shifted from the Runanga state mine to a private munitions magazine in Greymouth.

The Great Strike involved some 16,000 workers and resulted in a general strike in Auckland. Massive demonstrations and union control of the waterfront was eventually broken with ‘Massey’s Cossacks’—farmers enrolled as special police—and the hand of the state. Before long naval ships in the port of Wellington had their guns trained on the city, machine guns lined the streets, and soldiers with naked bayonets protected ‘free’ labour to re-open the docks. By December, strike leaders were arrested for sedition, the strike collapsed, and the coalition of government and employers gained a complete victory. Miners, true to their fighting spirit, were some of the last to return to work.

After the Great Strike, miners battled employers over conditions and the contracts system, until the outbreak of the First World War threw up new a new issue: conscription. When the government introduced a national register of men of military age, West Coast miners threatened industrial action to halt what was perceived to be the first-step towards compulsory conscription. A ‘go slow’ was put in place in late 1916. The government promptly assured miners that if called up their appeals would be favourably heard, but nonetheless miners were refused exemption until coal production was back to normal rates. In April 1917, miners on the West Coast struck, demanding that all military conscription cease. A compromise was made—legal action against the strikers and the refused exemptions were dropped in exchange for a promise of no strike action for the duration of the war. Although radical anti-conscriptionists on the Grey Valley were unsatisfied, the miners accepted the government’s terms.

Throughout the 20th century, miners were also heavily involved in  revolutionary political groups. As well as the aforementioned New Zealand Socialist Party and the IWW, miners were members of New Zealand’s first Communist Parties. West Coast Marxists were involved in the New Zealand Marxian Association (1918), the Communist Party of New Zealand (1921), and the West Coast Communist Federation (1922). In 1925, Blackball became the  headquarters of the Communist Party, whose secretary in 1927 was also the secretary of the United Mine Workers, a federation of miners formed in 1923.

From the 1919 Alliance of Labour and the unemployed workers’ unions of the Depression years to the 1951 Lockout, miners featured in the many struggles of labour against capital. However the defeat of 1951 signalled what Richardson describes as the ‘slow and lingering death of mining unionism and the communities that sustained it’. Mining no longer played the crucial role it had during its development, technologies changed, and communities fragmented. Yet miners’ struggles continued, and will continue as long as mining  and capitalism exist. As recently as 2009-2010, miners at Stockton, Spring  Creek, Rotowaro and Huntly East took industrial action against Solid Energy, showing that the struggles of miners in New Zealand are far from history.

Sources
Len Richardson, Coal, Class and Community: The United Mineworkers of New Zealand 1880-1960, Auckland University Press, 1995; Bert Roth & Janny Hammond, Toil and Trouble: The Struggle for a Better Life in New Zealand, Methuen, 1981.

Reproduced courtesy of The Spark.

occupied wall street poster journal

A handful of crew in NYC (including Justseeds and Occuprint) have been hard at work on an all poster edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, the paper that was produced by those occupying Wall Street. I was lucky enough to be approached by Josh MacPhee and get my poster, Never in History, into the mix.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the picture of the Occupy Wall Street Library, with my poster, smack bang in the middle.

I'm stoked people are seeing it (around 20,000 copies were printed) and that of all places, it made it onto the canvas walls of the people's library. I should note that I would never have made the poster if it wasn't for the good folk at Kotare Trust commissioning me to do so.

IAS Grant: Philip Josephs and early anarchism in New Zealand

The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is an American-based organisation designed to foster the development of anarchism, primarily through grants but also through their journal, Perspectives. From their website:

Since the inception of the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 1996, the grant program has been a central project. By awarding grants to radical writers and translators around the world -- many of whom work without the support of academic institutions, and are connected in important ways to the movements about which and for which they write -- the IAS has tried to support the development of the theoretical tools necessary for critiquing the systems of domination in which we are enmeshed as well as proliferating resistances and alternatives to these systems in order to maximize freedom, justice, and dignity.

A few months ago I thought I would have a crack at submitting an application for the latest round of funding. I'm currently researching Philip Josephs (founder of New Zealand's first anarchist collective) and early anarchism in New Zealand, so I knew a grant of any kind would really help with travel/research costs.

I thought I may have a slim chance, as Mark Derby is the only other New Zealander to win a grant so far. But when I received an email saying that I had won a grant for $750 USD from the IAS towards this project I was pretty damn surprised! This much-needed financial boost will help me employ a researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where the complete archive of the UK Freedom Group is held. It will also get me to the National Archives in Wellington, a trip that I usually can't justify due to the costs involved. In return the IAS gets an article on anarchism in New Zealand for their journal, as does New Zealand labour historiography.

Thanks to the IAS for this amazing award, and to everyone who has helped me along the way—both with my Joe Hill research and my current project. Hopefully I can do Philip and the anarchist movement justice.

I'll be posting updates and bits from my research from time to time on my blog if anyone is interested: http://www.garagecollective.blogspot.com/

Subtle subversions: Polish film posters

 

Justseeds bloggers recently pointed out this great website of Polish film posters from the 1940's onwards. As well as being visually striking, a number of these posters contain subtle political overtones—film posters escaping the eyes of the Soviet censors. It was a format that allowed Polish designers to critique Soviet rule in a mainstream context.

An excellent book on this process is Western Amerykanski: Polish Poster Art and the Western, which looks at how the Western genre enabled poster artists to comment on Russian Imperialism and other taboo subjects.

Celebrate Resistance: Katipo Books November Update

“This type of historical awareness is a key reminder that we still live in a society deeply divided by class. The actions of the past stand as inspiring, yet unfinished movements to continue to build upon and to adapt to present conditions.” (Nicholas Lampert, Realising the Impossible).

With occupations and general strikes taking place around the world, what better time to read up on some ideas to help further the struggle. We can learn from those who have walked similar paths before us—their methods and tactics, successes and failures. And we can be inspired to push our actions further.

Here's a few titles that we hope may be relevant:

Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity – Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937
For anarchist Lucy Parsons, a general strike and an occupation are synonyms.
Her amazing speech can be read here. Other elements of her talks resonate greatly with the present moment. Parsons discusses her experiences with the police and state murder of her husband, sadly relevant to recent police violence. Parsons talks about how U.S. residents drew inspiration from struggles around the world, another parallel to the present where protests around the world look to each other for ideas and motivation. Parsons also discusses gender divisions within movements of her day, issues which we still need to address today.
Read more here.

Rabble Rousers & Merry Pranksters: A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the Mid-1950s to the Early 1980s
Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters captures some of the imagination, the audacity, the laughs and the wildness that animated many of the social movements of the sixties and seventies in Aoteaora/New Zealand. During this time, particularly from the late sixties to the early seventies, an astonishingly broad-based revolt occurred throughout the country. Thousands of workers, Maori, Pacific people, women, youth, lesbians, gays, students, environmentalists and others rebelled against authority. Innovative new styles and anarchistic methods of political dissent became popular.
Read more here.

We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism
7″ 5″, b&w photo-studded tour of the global justice movement’s many locales and leaderless actors, from a mostly London-based editorial collective that includes an editor of New Internationalist magazine. The book is divided into seven primer-like chapters-”Emergence,” “Networks,” “Autonomy,” “Carnival,” “Clandestinity,” “Power” and “Walking”-each with a headline-like subtitle (e.g., “Power: building it without taking it”). The book as a whole makes a case for “direct action,” or organized resistance to specific policies or decisions
Read more here

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (2nd edition)
Pacifism as Pathology was written as a response not only to Churchill’s frustration with his own activist experience, but also to a debate raging in the activist and academic communities. He argues that pacifism is in many ways counterrevolutionary; that it defends the status quo, rather than leading to social change. In these times of upheaval and global protest, this is a vital and extremely relevant book.
Read more here

Gathering Rage: The Failure Of 20th Century Revolutions To Develop A Feminist Agenda
In Gathering Rage, writer, poet,and activist Margaret Randall describes how two of these revolutions, in Nicaragua and Cuba, addressed or failed to address a feminist agenda. Writing as both observer and participant, Randall vividly describes how in each case, to varying degrees and in different ways, women’s issues were gradually pushed aside. Combining anecdotes with analysis, she shows how distorted visions of liberation and shortcomings in practice left a legacy that not only shortchanged women but undermined the revolutionary project itself.
Read more here

The Essential Rosa Luxemburg
This new, authoritative introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s two most important works presents the full text of Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike, with explanatory notes, appendices, and introductions.

One of the most important Marxist thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg is finding renewed interest among a new generation of activists and critics of global capitalism.
Read more here

An Anarchist FAQ
The bible of anarchism! This exhaustive volume, the first of two, seeks to provide answers for the curious and critical about anarchist theory, history, and practice. More a reference volume than a primer, An Anarchist FAQ eschews curt answers and engages with questions in a thorough, matter-of-fact style.

Having been an internet staple for over a decade, we are proud to offer this solicitously edited print version. AFAQ’s oversized and affordable format (topping out at over 700 pages) will ensure it a place on every shelf, where it will be referenced again and again.
Read more here

How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth
Bringing to bear more than twenty years of experience as an environmental journalist, Kempf describes the invincibility that many of the world’s wealthy feel in the face of global warming, and how their unchecked privilege is thwarting action on the single most vexing problem facing our world.

In this important primer on the link between global ecology and the global economy, Kempf makes the following observations: First, that the planet’s ecological situation is growing ever worse, despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around the world. And second, despite environmentalists’ emphasis that “we’re all in the same boat,” the world’s economic elites—who continue to benefit by plundering the environment—have access to “lifeboats” that insulate them from the resulting catastrophes.
Read more here

This Friday we will be ordering new books from AK Press (once they're back from the Oakland General Strike!), so stay tuned for some new material over the next month or so. Also, Justseeds posters are back on the site for your viewing pleasure.
In Solidarity,
Katipo Books Workers' Co-Operative

Past to Present: Lessons of the New Zealand Labour Movement (video of Occupy workshop)

'Past to Present: Lessons of the New Zealand Labour Movement' was a workshop I gave at Occupy Christchurch.

Due to the massive scope of the topic I limited my focus to major union struggles, but this should not be taken that I believe the union movement is the working class movement in New Zealand. There are so many struggles outside and against the unions that could also be talked about, but time did not permit this.

0.00 to 31.00 gives an overview of union struggles in New Zealand, and draws out lessons that could inform our future activity. Comments and responses follow, and includes talk about the nature of capital, general strikes, Occupy and the workers movement, co-operatives, and whether one can escape capitalism.

There were about 15-20 in the workshop, with people coming and going on the periphery as well. There was lots of nodding, which I guess is a good sign, and I hope this perspective has contributed to the analysis happening down at Christchurch Occupy.

Liberal Cult of Militant Non-Violence

The General Strike: The Strike of the Future, by Lucy Parsons

From Recomposition: This is a speech given by the famous anarchist Lucy Parsons. This excerpt in particular is particularly relevant to the Occupy movement and recent discussions of a general strike:

“Nature has (…) placed in this earth all the material of wealth that is necessary to make men and women happy. (…) We simply lack the intelligence to take possession of that which we have produced. (…) My conception of the future method of taking possession of this is that of the general strike: that is my conception of it. The trouble with all the strikes in the past has been this: the workingmen like the teamsters in our cities, these hard-working teamsters, strike and go out and starve. Their children starve. Their wives get discouraged. (…) That is the way with the strikes in the past. My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production.”

For Parsons, a general strike and an occupation are synonyms. 

The rest of the speech can be read here. Other elements resonate greatly with the present moment. Parsons discusses her experiences with the police and state murder of her husband, sadly relevant to recent police violence. Parsons talks about how U.S. residents drew inspiration from struggles around the world, another parallel to the present where protests around the world look to each other for ideas and motivation. Parsons also discusses gender divisions within movements of her day, issues which we still need to address today.

PDF Zine of libcom's introductions on capitalism, class, and class struggle

http://libcom.org/library/capitalism-class-class-struggle-ex-dummies

I've just finished designing a downloadable, ready-to-print PDF adapted from libcom.org's introductions to capitalism, class, and class struggle.* Includes graphics (the prole pyramid is the centerfold). Hope that it may be of some use.

*a section on unwaged work has been added.

An Occupation or Just a Gathering?

From Libcom.org: The “Occupy Wall St.” model has done what many have tried and failed, it has pushed past the apathy and created a venue for possibility. In cities and towns across the country people are finding one another in situations few ever dared to venture into before. Meetings are being held, food shared and ideas discussed. But as one participant put it - “The fuzzy ultra-left ideal about forging new kinds of relationships through struggle and finding each other and such can’t just be about meeting in space and time, otherwise we could start a bowling league and be done with it.” What the gatherings themselves lack is a coherent substance, a sense of self-understanding. Towards this end, we raise the following questions.

An Occupation or Just a Gathering?
The term occupation is often associated with a few things, namely the idea of disruption of or interference with the flow of goods or capital. When you ask for permission, when you seek a permit, the “occupations” become ‘camping’ and the term becomes a catch phrase.

The original encampment, which has spawned many franchises in it’s wake, has been likened to other movements from around the globe, most notably the Tahrir Square occupations this past January. The major differences between the movement currently emerging in the US and those of the square occupations throughout Northern Africa and Europe is strength. It was not merely the fact that 50,000 people took over Tahrir Square, it was the fact that they would not be forced to leave that made the difference. As a movement they were ready to physically defend the areas they had liberated and attack those trying to destroy it. By deciding on a strategy of “non-violence,”we have cut our legs out from under ourselves. They do not hold Zuccoti park, it is given to them under police supervision, and will be taken away just as easily when the moment is deemed appropriate, i.e. when the police and the mayor have had enough.

When the Occupy Wall St. protestors took their message outside of the NYPD contained area they were attacked. Over 80 arrests occurred when the crowd marched near Union Square. When they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge hundreds were detained and received citations. While the numbers swelled after those attacks, we missed a chance to sway the balance of power for just a moment.
That could change if the parameters of conflict were widened, if new avenues were opened to the possibility of physically holding space, not negotiating for it’s rental. Our individual refusals are small but collectively it is one of the last and strongest weapons we can wield together.

Are we Anti Capitalists or just Anti Corporations?
There is a difference between being an anti-capitalist and being against corporations, or “corporate greed” as some have chosen to describe it. Anti-capitalists reach for a world free of the kinds of social relationships that require domination. Landlords and tenants; bosses and workers; police and prisoners. These are relationships inherent to a capitalist system and to the democracy we live under. It is not indicative of a “broken” system for unemployment rates to soar, inflation to reign and wages to continually drop. The money can not even out, congress can not legislate it’s way to equality. From where we all sit now, our personal freedoms and any wealth we can accumulate is done on the backs of someone else or at our own expense.

Though it may have acquired new forms, none of the poverty or exploitation we are protesting is unique to our modern age of corporate dominance. Regulating or taxing corporations will not come close to solving these problems, because these institutions are only one part of the vast structure of social relationships called State and Capital.

The future is wretched and marked with the poverty we all feel today. This in and of itself is a cause for indignation. When that rage turns towards petitioning congress for a brighter tomorrow or demanding accountability of corporations, we have already lost.

The Police are not our friends!
Capitalism, as a system, is based on a series of relationships between those who have power and those who do not. The police, whether they are a beat cop, a detective or the Chief act as the enforcers of this economic system. They stand between us and the food we need to survive. They evict us from the homes we can no longer afford. Their job is to enforce the laws of capital, the ones created not to keep us safe but to protect capital and ensure the system works as smoothly as it can.
The police who enter our liberated zones, our occupations, are doing so as agents of the State. As individuals they may have families and problems. They may hate their jobs just like the rest of us, but that does not mean they will not do them. If we are to stand together as the proposed 99% we can not allow the thugs and mercenaries of the 1% to pierce our spaces.

Download 'Wobblies Down Under'

Wobblies Down Under

The Swedish-American radical socialist, songster and poet Joe Hill, became a martyr for the working classes world-wide when he was executed in 1915 for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. His ashes were distributed around the world including New Zealand but no trace of them has ever been found here. Researcher Jared Davidson set out to track them down but in the process uncovered the story of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, known as the 'Wobblies') and their repression in New Zealand during the early 1900s and World War 1. (47′06″)

Download: Ogg Vorbis  MP3 | Embed

"...and we might cut you in half"

From here: http://jacobinmag.com/blog/?p=1854

Politics averted: thoughts on the 'Occupy X' movement

 An analysis on the protests in Ireland and the US from an Irish anarchist. 

What are we to make of the global 'Occupy X' movement which has exploded onto the streets of cities across the world, turning public spaces into campsites of opposition? Certain things are obvious: Firstly, the fact that there are thousands of people across the world taking over public spaces to express their anger at the financial system is undeniably a good thing. Having camped out outside the Central Bank on Dame Street on Saturday night, I can also say that these protests exude a positivity and hopefulness that is so often lacking from the ritualistic parades of anger that make up most protest marches. But there are also, in my view, serious political problems that prevent the movement from moving beyond a 'radical sleepover' and becoming a genuine anti-austerity grassroots resistance movement.

The analysis below is based in my own particular experience of the Dame St. protest on the ground and of the US protests as a media event. Obviously any attempt to discuss a diverse and fluid movement like this as a whole can only ever be approximate and reductive. This account is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to sketch what I see as the major trends and tendencies emerging within the movement, and should be read with that in mind.

Non-politics, incoherence, (neo)liberalism
The 'Occupy X' movement has since its inception shown an extreme aversion to being seen as political. Some aspects of this, such as banning political party banners, are an understandable pragmatic reaction to the tendency of various Leninist parties to hijack these kinds of events by swamping them with flags, banners and paper-sellers. But the anti-politics of the movement, at least on the part of the organising core and the Adbusters collective who issued the call for the original Wall St. protest, is also ideological: an odd synthesis of post-leftist anti-organisationalism (which sees formal political organisations, trade unions, etc. as being necessarily oppressive) and neoliberal post-politicism (which sees a Left vs. Right contest of ideas as being largely irrelevant after the fall of the Berlin Wall). After decades of neoliberal governance and media spin attempting to drive ideology and politics out of public discourse in order to enshrine the liberal-capitalist consensus as being 'above politics' and to reduce political questions to technical ones best dealt with by 'experts', it is perhaps unsurprising, but nonetheless disheartening, to see this depoliticisation reflected in contemporary forms of resistance.

Most obviously, this has been expressed in the movement's unwillingness to attempt to agree on a coherent set of positions beyond some very basic points of unity with no underlying analysis of society. Instead, the occupied space is used by individuals to express a range of incoherent and often mutually contradictory ideas which are related only by being in some sense opposed to the status quo and the political and financial elites. On Saturday, I spoke to individuals who believe in everything from Rawlsian social democracy, to anarchism, to paranoid crypto-anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (the New World Order, etc.), to Stalinism. Of course, the advantage of this is that it's extremely inclusive - the only requirement to participate is a sense that things are not as they should be and that the financial sector and the state are in some way to blame - but this also means that reactionary ideas are treated the same as progressive ones rather than being robustly challenged. In practice, this means that the ideas that come to the fore tend to be those that are already dominant in society: the ideas of the ruling class. In the US context, the dominant messages from Occupy Wall Street have been liberal, reformist and nationalistic: those that posed the least threat to the establishment. For example, a call to "make Wall Street work for America" amounts to little more than a call for increased exploitation of the Third World as an alternative to imposing austerity. A call to reform banking practice to constrain "corporate greed" is merely a call to stabilise capitalism so that the course of exploitation runs more smoothly. The problem is capitalism, not regulatory failure, or corporate greed or a lack of economic patriotism, and the inadequacies of these analyses need to be exposed rather than uncritically welcomed. The Irish protest seems to be following a similar pattern, with a particular anti-IMF/EU flavour.

The theory underlying this anti-politics, so far as I can gather, is this: no two people experience oppression in the same way, and thus any attempt to unite people under a political programme inevitably ends up erasing some people's perspectives. This is superficially quite a pleasing analysis, since it creates a framework under which all ideas can be understood as equally valid, since they all derive from lived-experience, but it's extremely problematic. Implicitly, it denies the possibility of coming to an inter-subjective understanding (i.e. one based in mutual recognition of shared experiences and understanding of differing ones) of oppression through collective discussion and compromise, and instead collapses into a naive relativism that produces a vague and weak politics, which plays into the hands of those who wish to dismiss the protesters as 'hippies' who don't understand the complexities of capitalism. In any case, it's easy to overstate the case for subjective perspectives and ignore the objective factors that shape experiences: the processes and structures of capitalist domination.

Bring back the working-class!
One of the major victories of neoliberalism is the eradication of the working-class from the popular consciousness. One of the results of this is the prevalence of the idea among certain sections of the left that the working-class is no longer relevant to understanding power in the modern world - an outdated idea clung to by old-left dinosaurs. This is reflected in the idea of 'the 99%' which has become the slogan of the 'Occupy X' movement, which expresses a very crude understanding of class, where the ruling class are an arbitrarily defined proportion of the wealthiest people in society. This makes for some great chanting - "we are the 99%!" - but is a poor criterion for membership of an anti-capitalist or anti-austerity movement. Put bluntly: there are an awful lot of capitalists, bosses, managers, bankers, CEOs, politicians, police, prison wardens etc. in the 99%.

Properly understood, class is not a classification system of individuals based on how much money they have, it's a social relation between people that derives from the organisation of labour under capitalism. In other words, it's the way people are forced to relate to one another in order to participate in capitalist society. Class oppression is not a small cabal of the ultra-rich in Wall Street or Washington or Leinster House, it's in every workplace, every police station, every dole queue, every courtroom, every prison and every territory occupied by Western militaries, and can only be sensibly understood as such.

Conclusion
The radically democratic nature of the occupations creates the potential for the movement to evolve in any number of possible directions. Whether or not they become genuine resistance movements depends largely on how much the radical left are willing to engage with them, and re-assert the importance of class politics in understanding and countering oppression, by participating in the actions, discussions, and assemblies. A key hurdle has already been overcome: people are on the streets, expressing their dissent, reclaiming public spaces; it remains to be seen what comes of it.

Originally: October 12, 2011 on Workers Solidarity Movement