Workers Solidarity Movement

Recently, a number of the UK’s celebrity TV chefs have launched “Fish Fight”[1], a campaign to address the rapidly increasing crisis of declining fish stocks that threaten the continued supply of fish for the dinner table.

The campaign’s aims are worthy and laudable and the sincerity of the celebrity chefs involved is unquestionable. But as much as they understand food and the threat of the collapse of fish stocks, their limited understanding of the economic forces behind capitalism’s inability to sustainably manage limited natural resources guarantees that this well-intentioned campaign is ultimately doomed to failure.

At the same time that we are witnessing a wave of popular protest in North Africa and the Middle East against aged and corrupt neo-colonial dictatorships, in the heart of Europe we are witnessing something unprecedented and absolutely extraordinary.

History appears to moving in the ‘wrong direction’ in the so-called peripheral countries of the Eurozone.

As the scale of the debts loaded onto the Irish people became clear, the calls for defaulting became louder. The moral argument for default is certainly strong: why should Irish workers pay for the poor decisions of Irish and European capitalists? But justified though it may be, would defaulting cause more pain than gain?

The Workers Solidarity Movement, along with anarchist organisations throughout the world, refuses to take part in parliamentary elections. Is it not downright weird, or even hypocritical, when anarchists claim to want more democracy than anyone else? Is this a rejection of democracy? Alan MacSimoin tries to answer some of the questions that arise again and again.

On Tuesday the 7th of December, the Irish government were barricaded inside the parliament in Dublin. They were there to vote on a Budget implementing the cutbacks and austerity measures demanded of them by the IMF and ECB. The budget comes in a year of ever deepening crisis, as the debt of what was once Europe's fastest growing economy, spiralled out of control. The obvious question one is faced with is “What went wrong? What happened to this economic miracle?

The neoliberal model that global capitalism has depended upon for its growth over the last three decades has collapsed in spectacular fashion. The collapse has been remarkable for the astonishing speed with which it has spread all over the world and into every corner of the global economy.

Tens of thousands will take part in today's ICTU demonstration in Dublin but the demonstration is seen by ICTU’s leaders as yet another one-off protest, another ‘letting-off-steam’ exercise, a trek around town from A to B to listen to speeches from the same people that have misled us to this position and then go home and get ready to vote for Labour in the forthcoming election.  Far from ‘standing idly by’ they are actively working to demobilise opposition to the government.   Against this we need to use today's protest as the starting point for the conversation about what we’re going to replace the current rotten mess with and as the first block in building for the general strike that we need to bring that about.

Ireland has an indigenous revolutionary tradition that successfully mobilized tens if not hundreds of thousands in the struggle for more freedom over the 200 years since 1798. Irish republicanism has always included a radical democratic and leveling element and which continues to provide part of the culture of resistance of the most down trodden sections of the working class. Many believe this makes it the best base to build from, at the fifth Rethinking Revolution meeting Andrew Flood asked if they are right?  This article contains the draft text of the talk and the audio recording of the meeting.

The so called rescue loan being negotiated by the ECB is really a jacking up of the interest rate Ireland is paying on its debt from the ECB base rate of 1% to a more profitable rate of 5% or more. If we submit to this deflationary programme of structural adjustment being pushed by the IMF our shrinking economy will never generate enough to pay off these debts. The only way out is to push for a default.

Workers Solidarity Movement position paper on Anarchism and Religion as ratified at November 2010 National Conference.