Workers Solidarity Movement

Issue 4 of Red & Black Revolution

Contents Include:

• Anarchism with a future - The Czech Republic
• Anarchism & Environmental Survival
• Racism: Where it comes from, How we should fight it?
• The 1798 Rebellion

Anarchist organisations that have been influenced by the Platform are well aware that it is no Bible full of absolute truths. There is no grouping anywhere that would be so stupid to treat it as one. Anarchists have no need of such things. It is just one of the signposts pointing us in what we believe is the direction of making anarchism the most realistic and desirable alternative to both the present set-up and the authoritarian alternatives served up by most of the left.

A guide to 'The Organisational Platform of the libertarian communists'

The Friends of Durruti organisation, which arose from the ranks of anarchist militants during the Spanish Civil War, condemned the CNT and FAI members who joined the anti-Franco government. For their pains they were accused of wanting to establish an "anarchist dictatorship". Alan MacSimóin reviews the first English language book about them, and looks at the lessons to be learnt from Spain. The 'Friends of Durruti' appear in just about every book on the Spanish Civil War, especially in relation to the 1937 May Days in Barcelona. They get mentioned but we are told very little about their politics or activities. Some organisations, like the Workers Solidarity Movement, see their political stance as important to the tradition of revolutionary anarchism. Other anarchists, most notably sections of the syndicalist movement, condemn them for 'flirting with Bolshevism/Leninism/Trotskyism' or for 'advocating an anarchist dictatorship'. So who were they, where did they come from, what did they say, and what did they do?

Readers views on some controversy generated with the last issue

Purchase's proposal for more ecologically integrated communities usually meets with most scepticism when it is imagined applied to cities. Even a relatively small city, like Dublin, is almost completely dependent on food from neighbouring regions, and its ecosystem is made up of cars, people and concrete. If a city like New York or Mexico was sealed off from the rest of the world, it would die within days; the only question is whether it would be from starvation or asphyxiation. Given the number of such large cities around the world, and the fact that, even if it were possible, given the size of the earth's population, for everyone to live in small towns and rural communities, many would not want to, how can cities be accommodated within an environmentally sound anarchist society?

Vegetarianism and environmentalism often go hand in hand. This is partly because the consumption of large livestock has itself an effect on the environment. It takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef - if we were all to become vegetarian, so the argument goes, much less land would have to be used for agriculture. This is true to a certain extent, but the grain:meat ratio leaves out many things. For example, a cow produces not just meat, but milk, leather and dung (a fertiliser, soil stabiliser, and even fuel source). Wool, feathers and eggs are all useful 'by-products' of animal husbandry that have to taken into account.

Graham Purchase is one of the most prolific writers in the Australian anarchist movement, and in books such as 'Anarchist Society & its Practical Realisation', has made a serious contribution to the debate on the future of the anarchist movement, and how our ideas can best be put into practice today. Here, we review his latest book, 'Anarchism and Environmental Survival'.

Kevin Doyle talks to Vadim Barák of the Solidarita organisation in the Czech Republic about the problems and possibilities facing anarchists in the process of rebuilding a revolutionary movement.

ONCE AGAIN this small little area of the world has been front-page news as the horror of mass murder and genocide of the Timorese people is being witnessed. What was supposed to be a safe referendum carried out under the auspices of the United Nations has led to thousands of East Timor people being gunned down in cold blood and hundreds of thousands of these brave people are now displaced and being held in West Timor. This part of the island remains a media black hole - and the Indonesian forces are allowing no one in or out of the area so we can only fear for the lives of the people there.