Workers Solidarity Movement

The Cork Autonomous Zone has bee functioning for over a year now. The shared space has become an irreplaceable part of the agitational infrastructure of anti-capitalism in Cork city.

There is an increasing number of books about anarchism being published every year. As anarchism grows in popularity more anarchist organisations are able to produce books, and mainstream commercial publishers certainly see this growing popularity as a way of making extra cash.

'Liberty without socialism is poverty and injustice. Socialism without liberty is tyranny and brutality'
(Bakunin)
Bakunin had a vision of an alternative way to run society and it is a vision that we share today. I want the replacement of the current economic system, a system based on profit and hierarchy, with a system based on need and freedom. I don't believe the current system can be reformed to make it more human. In different ways, and on various levels, the political work I do is aimed at creating the possibility of revolution. Revolutionary change is not as unusual as is often thought; in 1974 we had the Portuguese revolution, in 1979 Iranian Revolution, in 1979 Nicaragua, in the eighties we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Max Stirner was an obscure prophet of individualism living in nineteenth century Germany. many anarchists today including anarcho communists also consider themselves Stirnerists and a Stirnerist tradition lives on in places like Glasgow. Conor Mc Loughlin examines some of Stirner's ideas.

There is a strong history of anarchist struggle in South America. Anarchist ideas were first brought to South America during the 1880's and 1890's through the influence of european immigrants. Anarchist ideas found fertile ground and during the first two decades of the 20th century anarcho-syndicalism was the most important current in the latin amercian labour movement.

Look at the world. There is so much wrong with it. Africa is being decimated by AIDs. Children are dying in Iraq because they can't get basic medical treatment. Millions of people worldwide daily live in the shadow of poverty, millions of people fall through the cracks. Even in Ireland, rich in comparison to many places in the world, the best most of us can hope for is to spend the most of our lives working for somebody else.

We traveled in Africa for just over a year and, whenever possible, tried to meet with anarchists in the countries we visited. In Africa the organised anarchist movement is quite young, starting with the formation of the Workers Solidary Federation in South Africa in 1995. Unfortunately due to internal problems this organisation disbanded about 2 years ago. The people we met from the old WSF were now involved in anarchist publishing organisations as well as being heavily involved in struggles such as the anti-privatisation forum. They hope one day to reform the WSF.

Any honest account of the September 26 (S26) demonstrations in Prague would start off by saying that the numbers that took part in the demonstrations, some 12,000 people, were a little disappointing. But it should go on to say that those 12,000 people succeeded in not only completely disrupting the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (WB-IMF) congress but in causing it to be abandoned by the majority of delegates on the second day and the last day was then cancelled. In short we closed it down. It says a lot that you would be hard pushed to find any media, mainstream or 'left' that makes these two points.

It's good to know that more than porn and adverts for jobs exist on the internet. Coming fresh off the presses -"What is Anarchism - the anarchist FAQ" is the first pamphlet in a series that will attempt to answer all the questions that you wanted to know about anarchism but never got a chance to ask. This pamphlet is section A of the FAQ, the other sections are as yet only available on the internet.

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