Workers Solidarity Movement

Wind and rain, a city in lockdown due to the upcoming royal visit and the best efforts of An Garda Siochana (who, despite the WSM gaining the correct permit to advertise the event on lamp-posts around Dublin, removed approximately 100 of our posters), the sixth annual Dublin Anarchist Bookfair continued the trend set by its predecessors in being one of the largest annual events on the calendar of Dublin’s Left.

While in South East Asia recently Sean Matthews caught up with two Malaysian anarchists who told me about the issues they face as workers and anarchists in their country. Over a few drinks and few hours we discussed the current political and social situation including the problem of race and religion in their country. We exchanged ideas and experiences, the wider international anarchist movement and most important what we can do to assist anarchists in this part of the world.

Zabalaza Books, the anarchist printing project linked to the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) in South Africa, recently produced this pamphlet to commemorate the Kronstadt uprising in March 1921, when the sailors and workers of the Kronstadt naval base rose up against the Bolsheviks and were slaughtered by the dictatorship.

Anarchists are those socialists who are anti-authoritarian, who place great stress on liberty and workers’ control. For this reason, we want to abolish the state at the same time as we abolish the division of society into a boss class and a working class.

It’s the time of year again that the Workers' Solidarity Movement is busy finalising the last minute details for our annual Anarchist Bookfair. Much has changed since we first began the venture back in 2006, not least the scale of the event, but also the implosion of the Celtic Tiger and its catastrophic effect on Irish society.

DUE TO WEATHER CONDITIONS THIS MEETING HAS BEEN POSTPONED TILL THE NEW YEAR

The population of the south have just been subjected to the toughest austerity budget that western Europe has seen in 30 years. Yet the tax hikes that targeted the low paid and those on average income actually saw the richest 1% gain! Someone earning only 15,000 euro could be paying nearly 6% more tax but someone whose income is a million will be paying 6% less tax.

This new history of anarchism provides a thorough and approachable examination of the tradition’s key ideas, debates and strategies, placing them in the context of the social struggles in which they arose. Anarchism is not blessed with the most attractive of brand names. While dictionaries and news media alike have successfully associated it with disorder and chaos, the anarchist political pantheon itself seems to share these traits; anarchism is label to both capitalists and communists, radical individualists and revolutionary socialists.What can ‘anarcho-capitalists’ such as Murray Rothbard have in common with revolutionaries such as Mikhail Bakunin and Piotr Kropotkin? Even the latter, among the most important of the movement’s theorists, himself claimed that anarchism’s political pedigree stretched back as far as Ancient Greek philosopher Xeno and Lao Tzu, the originator of Taoism. If one tries to and accommodate such a diversity of personas under this single term, the word loses all meaning.

Rag celebrates the launch of our 5th annual magazine with a Queer Anarchafeminist Cabaret. Food, feminists reading magazines, dancing, music fun fun fun fun.

The society we live in is a long way off the kind of society that anarchists advocate. So the question that anyone interested in creating a better society has to answer is: how best to act for positive change? The question of how anarchists should organise is one that has been debated over and over. It is clear that anarchism, rooted in ideals of equality, freedom and democracy, needs to adopt organisational practices which foster rather than stifle these ideals.

This Tuesdays Winter Talk at Solidarity Books, 8pm! 02/11/10 Come learn about The Spanish Revolution with a talk given by James O' Brien!