| Type | Title | User | Replies |
Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publication | Battaglia Comunista #01-02 | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:50 | |
| Article | Invasione del Kurdistan siriano | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:44 | |
| Article | Ed ora si riprova col “protezionismo” | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:40 | |
| Article | Governo Conte bis - Niente di nuovo sul fronte occidentale | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:36 | |
| Publication | Battaglia Comunista #11-12 | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:30 | |
| Publication | Battaglia Comunista #09-10 | webmaster | Sun, 2020-02-16 23:25 | |
| Article | Woher wir kommen – Ein kurzer Überblick über die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Linken | ikt (editor) | Sun, 2020-02-16 15:42 | |
| Publication | Aurora #2020-02-14 | Dyjbas (editor) | Sun, 2020-02-16 14:09 | |
| Article | The Merchants of Death | Cleishbotham (editor) | 7 | Sat, 2020-02-15 11:33 |
| Article | Vecchie ricette per problemi che si aggravano | webmaster | Mon, 2020-02-10 19:17 |
DAYS OF HOPE? CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE 1970s
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
As the post-war accumulation cycle was coming to an end, capitalist states of the West and the East alike were facing a crisis of stagnation. They responded in the only way they could: by extracting more and more value out of the working class and reducing its share of national product. In practice this meant layoffs, unemployment, deskilling, reduced job security, lower wages and higher prices for basic necessities.
COMMUNIST ABSTENTION – NOT ELECTORAL CON TRICKS
PUBLIC MEETING/DISCUSSION
Whoever You Vote For... The Bosses Still Win!
Once again the working class is being urged to play a part in keeping up the pretence that electing M.P.s can provide us with a better future. This is a lie that we need to resist.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER - NO SOLUTION WITHIN CAPITALISM!
Evidence of the crisis threatening the entire planet is increasingly stark. Desertification, flooding, hurricanes and cyclones, uncontrolled forest fires all destroy the very basis of life for the "women and men of no property" - the worldwide working class. This, of course, is massively increased by the spreading "wars without end". Whole communities are forced to migrate while the bosses' states raise barriers and walls.
TOWARDS THE FUTURE INTERNATIONAL!
From Iran to Mexico, a rising tide of strike actions across the globe shows that class resistance to the horrors of capitalism is still the "spectre that haunts" the capitalist class.
At the same time we are also encouraged by the appearance of new militants attracted to the ideas of Internationalist Communism — the only alternative to the abyss towards which capitalism is dragging the entire planet.
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR
PUBLIC MEETING/DISCUSSION
As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens our rulers are determined to make the working class pay for it by increasing exploitation and reducing wages and living conditions.
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR
PUBLIC MEETING/DISCUSSION
As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens our rulers are determined to make the working class pay for it by increasing exploitation and reducing wages and living conditions.
Lessons of the German Revolution
Public Meeting/Discussion organised by the Communist Workers’ Organisation
On November 9 1918 the soldiers, sailors and workers of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven rose in revolt at the continuation of a war which had brought nothing but death, disease and food shortages. Within hours the Kaiser was overthrown and workers’ councils sprang up all over Germany in imitation of those that had taken power in Russia only a year earlier.
The meeting will take place on Saturday the 29th Sept from 1pm to 5pm at the Friends Meeting House (room F18) 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS, which is just behind the central library near Manchester Town Hall.
There will be a short introduction that provides an overview of 20th century wars and their underlying economic and social conditions as these changed from the 19th into the 20th century with a reference to the Marxian analysis of the 'formal and real domination of capital', with plenty of time for discussion.
Organised by the Midlands Discussion Forum
Perspectives for the CWO as discussed in its AGM, November 2019
Overview
Capitalism, the most dynamic mode of production in history, has created a world economy and the material means (productive forces) to support the present world population of 7.7bn. Everyone could be living comfortably without hunger or undue toil. In short, the material basis already exists for a peaceful, prosperous, world community based on production to directly meet the needs of everyone rather than the generation of profit for a tiny few.
In Turin the repression began in the early morning, with the charges of the first No Tav [1] demonstrators present. Standing firm but with reduced ranks, it ended with two of the injured being sent to the hospital. Many No Tav demonstrators, for the occasion, also wore a T-shirt depicting Aldrovandi [2], probably not appreciated by those who have embarked on a career in bourgeois state security.
Internationalist communists oppose every war that the capitalist class and their governments create to defend their own selfish interests. This position is nothing new but is the legacy from previous generations who saw that "War or Revolution" is a choice that has to be made clearly and consistently.
I thought this strike was going to be revolutionary, a history-maker, because that’s the feeling I had when we walked out. I thought America was due for a revolution and our strike was going to be it.(1)
In spring 2019, a crisis on an unprecedented scale was sparked in French hospitals. The emergency services went on strike in massive numbers. Barely three months from its beginnings on 18 March, in the Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris, it had spread to around a hundred establishments all across France by July. The movement will not stop spreading as long as the situation remains untenable. In September, the number of emergency services on strike was 239, or more than half of all services. This mobilisation has not died down and even rose to 267 services on strike in mid-October.
Grades. Punctuality. Detentions. You wake up in the morning, get your school uniform on, march to the bus stop, hope you’re not late again, spend hours in boring lessons taught by overworked teachers, learning about things you’ll never get to do or see. GCSEs, apprenticeships, university degrees, whichever, only to end up in low-paid work or unemployment anyway, what’s the point? Only friends, petty vandalism and video games provide some relief.
On Thursday 30 May construction workers at the Tees Renewable Energy Plant, owned by MGT Power, walked out in a wildcat action over safety conditions at the site. When workers act on their own class terrain they begin to challenge the capitalist structure as a whole.
At least 70,000 workers from 45 factories—including tens of thousands of auto parts and assembly workers at companies that supply GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler—have launched a wildcat strike in the US-Mexico border town of Matamoros.
The strike is a rebellion against both the “maquiladora” manufacturing corporations and the pro-company trade unions. Over 1 million workers endure low wages and sweatshop conditions at the 3,000 “maquiladora” factories that line the Mexican side of the border and account for 65 percent of Mexican exports. It looks like it has the potential to escalate.
Ant
China has detained student organisers and factory workers in at least three cities as a crackdown against labour protests spreads across the country. Security forces stormed student and worker dormitories in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen on Friday night, according to student activists, taking away five university students, three workers in Guangdong province, as well as several employees at a Shenzhen-based labour rights organisation.
For more from the Financial Times article see: ft.com
It has now spread to other cities.
Thousands of teachers on strike in both states following the strike in West Virginia
In Kentucky its the pensions issue again but in Oklahoma the continual cuts in the state budget due to tax cuts has forced schools to shut an extra day a week and some schools find they cannot buy textbooks despite sacking teaching assistants and teachers en masse. edition.cnn.com
More than 200 workers at the flagship rail construction project have downed tools today in solidarity with more colleagues who have been sacked and locked out.
The Communist Workers’ Organisation is (unsurprisingly!) a not-for-profit organisation. We have no so-called “professional revolutionaries”, nor paid officials. Our sole funding comes from the subscriptions and donations of members and supporters. Anyone wishing to donate (to “Prometheus Publications”) can now do so safely using the Paypal button below.
Subscriptions to Revolutionary Perspectives (3 issues) and Aurora (at least 4 issues) are:
Take out a supporter’s sub by adding £10 (€12) to each sum. This will give you priority mailings of Aurora and other free pamphlets as they are produced.
Publications. CWO publications are not copy-righted and we only ask that those who reproduce them acknowledge the original source on our website www.leftcom.org. Purchasing any of the publications listed on this site or in our various documents can be done in several ways:
DAYS OF HOPE? CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE 1970s
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
As the post-war accumulation cycle was coming to an end, capitalist states of the West and the East alike were facing a crisis of stagnation. They responded in the only way they could: by extracting more and more value out of the working class and reducing its share of national product. In practice this meant layoffs, unemployment, deskilling, reduced job security, lower wages and higher prices for basic necessities.
The working class did not take this lying down. A wave of protests, strikes and occupations spread across the industrial centres of the world, with some workers beginning to pose the social question. The 1970s gave birth to a plethora of organisations – including in Britain, where the ideas of the Communist Left were revived for the first time since the 1920s.
Alas, as harsh state repression was meted out and the initial enthusiasm died down, the class was diverted into political dead-ends, and the trade unions re-established their control. By the 1980s the capitalist class found a temporary solution: massive restructuring of production, as manufacturing was exported to the low-wage periphery of countries like China, changing the composition of and disorganising the class for decades.
Join us for a screening of two documentaries on class struggle in 1970s Italy and Poland, and a discussion on what we can learn from that decade and how internationalists should relate to future struggles to come.
When: Monday, 17 February 2020, at 6pm
Where: Next to Nowhere, Liverpool, L1 4HY
Communist Workers' Organisation
Spring 2020
Aurora is the broadsheet of the ICT for the interventions amongst the working class. It is published and distributed in several countries and languages. So far it has been distributed in UK, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Colombia.
Winter/Spring 2020 (Series 4) - Now out!
Journal of the Communist Workers’ Organisation -- Why not subscribe to get the articles whilst they are still current and help the struggle for a society free from exploitation, war and misery? Joint subscriptions to Revolutionary Perspectives (3 issues) and Aurora (our agitational bulletin - 4 issues) are £15 in the UK, €24 in Europe and $30 in the rest of the World.
Written by Onorato Damen
"The present volume is the product of Damen’s considerations on Gramsci’s shortcomings as an analytical and practical Marxist which he evidently wrote over a period of years. The structure is loose because he died before he completed it and the draft chapters were only discovered posthumously and eventually published in 1982."
The book can be ordered by emailing us at uk@leftcom.org and asking for our banking details, by donating the cost of the publications required via Paypal using the “Donate” button, or via Amazon (amazon.co.uk).
Written by Onorato Damen
"The originality and importance of this volume – in a expanded edition including new documents and editorial notes, from the two previous editions: 1971 and 1977 – mainly lies in the documents that throw permanent light on the distinctive development and perspectives of the “Italian Left” over decades (among the most tragic in modern history) in the history of international communism."
The book can be ordered by emailing us at uk@leftcom.org and asking for our banking details, by donating the cost of the publications required via Paypal using the “Donate” button, or via Amazon.co.uk (amazon.co.uk). Don't go to Amazon.com as it says "unavailable" there.
The issue of “consciousness” is one of the most important for the working class and for revolutionaries. Our approach is unashamedly historical and attempts to draw out the real experience of the working class in its struggles of the last two centuries.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
