Strange as it may seem, it appears that GR is repeating the SWP line on
Genoa. This is from their "Genoa Special":

"Yet only hours before, scores of riot police had stood by and watched as the
black bloc anarchists, known as the tute nere - 'black overalls' - ran
unhindered down Corso Torino, smashing bank windows and setting light to
upturned rubbish bins.

"The scene fuelled accusations of police collusion with the black bloc as a
means of discrediting the non-violent majority of protesters."

"collusion" between the BB and police? GR, like the SWP, are pushing the
same demonisation of the BB (and anarchists in general). What a surprise!

Now, this accustation of "collusion" between the BB and the cops is
accompanied with an editorial which states:

"The most difficult challenge that anti-capitalists must all take up is to keep
united and to continue to attract new activists. . . .Globalise Resistance has
one aim: to unite those opposed to the worst effects of global capitalism. "

Keep united with people who accuse the BB of "collusion" and helping the
cops? Interesting idea of "unity" GR have -- accuse your "comrades" while
urging "unity" (i.e. for no one to indicate the sectarianism of the SWP and its
front organisations, or critique its politics).

and, btw, what happened to being anti-cpaitalist? Being against the
"worse effects of global capitalism" does not mean being anti-capitalist!
Any pro-capitalist would say they are against the "worse effects" of the
system -- and they do.

Interestingly one person is reported as saying:

What does anti-capitalism mean to you?
"Social control, social accountability, democratic accountability. The right of
workers to manage their firms; we can run industry the same as they can, if we
are given the opportunity."

In that case, the SWP and the rest of the Leninist tradition are not anti-capitalists.
Lenin opposed the right of workers to manage their firms and did not think
workers could run industry.Instead, he argued for one-man management
with "dictatorial" powers. Nor was he in favour of democratic accountability
-- the Bolsheviks disbanded any soviet which elected a non-Bolshevik majority.

but we all knew that already.

Had a look at the website. Interesting that the only placard I can see in the top photo behind the GR banner is an SWP banner. Perhaps it's symbolic. All I can say is it all looks very professional and well-financed. Where's the money coming from?

union branches donating money, fundraising etc...

Must have been all those lovely bandanas they were selling! :)

anarcho- I know it's a difficult concept to get your head around but the resist magazine includes contributions from people who were there from all sorts of groups and different politics who can say what they want about what they saw.

If you read more you will find that Black Bloc activists have their say within the magazine.

But hey why bother checking the facts when you can try to start the usual old rant

;-)

noel

to Anarcho:

hate to be forced into the position of defending the SWP/GR again but anarcho publications are just as bad.

have you read the most recent Black Flag? it is predominantly a manifesto of why the Trots are crap and have no place in the anti-capitalism movement. the answer (hammered home with no room for doubt) is clearly to turn to the anarchists.

as if to underline the cliched Trost-bad-anarchos-good view of the world the 'reviews section' has three reviews about books dealing with...... the Spanish Civil War.

it is just as biased as Socialist Worker/Socialist Review.

Just to reassure Serengoch: the reason it looks professional is not because we went out and paid lots of clever designer types in ironic glasses to do stuff for us; we relied on clever designer types in ironic glasses to do stuff for free - which they did, from their own desire to help build the movement. The results, I think, are excellent. As for the webspace, etc: we got it dirt cheap from some ISP, although I forget which one. Printing costs will be met by selling the magazine, plus the union sponsorship and so on that Noel mentions.

Anarcho: the editorial - so what? "Demosthenes" was simply reporting what he saw - if scenes like this should fuel accusations of police and "Black Bloc" collusion, then that's what happened. Nor did he claim that the Black Bloc were colluding with the police - he mere suggested that this was what others were saying. Read the rest of the magazine a little more closely: you'll notice the two pages on the Black Bloc, including interviews with BB activists, a reprint of the statement some BB groups issued after Genoa, and what I hope is a fair and truthful account of their side of the story. We also print quite a bit about collusion/infiltration, it's true: we could hardly omit such a serious allegation. I would suggest, also, that the suspicion of collusion or infiltration of the Black Bloc is one that is far more widely held in the movement than simple support for the BB's tactics; our coverage is in line with that. We could be wrong in our assessment, but I think we get the balance about right.

Firstly, I wonder what our SWP comrades would say if an anarchist magazine
published an article which had someone saying "many activists think that the
SWP are trying to take over and dominate the globalisation movement"?
I'm sure that cries of "sectarian" would soon result -- same with the "collusion"
with the police comment.

Second:
"anarcho- I know it's a difficult concept to get your head around but the resist
magazine includes contributions from people who were there from all sorts of
groups and different politics who can say what they want about what they saw."

Yes, of course, GR is not a "front" because it has lots of contributions from
different people -- given that Socialist Review had an article by Starhawk,
can we assume that Socialist Review is not an SWP organ?

"If you read more you will find that Black Bloc activists have their say within the
magazine."

I had another look at the webpage and could not find these comments. Could
you point me to the url which has them in it?

"But hey why bother checking the facts when you can try to start the usual old rant"

so where are these facts on the webpage? I'm being honest -- I could not find any
Black Block activist comments on "resist-online" -- perhaps you can point me in
to the appropriate url? And if they are not on-line, then why not?

and talking of letting others "have their say," its funny how the new Bookmarks
book on Globalisation does not have any articles from anarchists in it. It does
have an article about anarchism, but its not written by an anarchist. ah, well,
what can you expect?

the "usual old rant"... talking of which, why *did* the SWP ignore the non-BB
anarchists in its account of Genoa? Still waiting for an answer to that one?

and, of course, the "usual old rant" is based on political disagreements and an
analysis of history and politics. Still, lets not bother discussing politics -- mindless
activitism suits the SWP, cause a discussion of their politics would show them up
as being totally at odds with anti-capitalist ideas. That probably explains why
"Marxism 2001" was so fundamentally undemocratic in nature and not based
on real discussion.

Anarcho- part of the problem with trying to debate with you is that you seem to have a different analysis of lots of things even from other anarchists!

>Firstly, I wonder what our SWP comrades would say if an >anarchist magazine published an article which had someone >saying "many activists think that the SWP are trying to take over and dominate the globalisation movement"?

Year Zero carries just such a statement, but to be honest with you I'm not bothered, how can one group (of around 5000) dominate 300 000? Maybe you should start moaning at Communista Refoundionze as they had around 100 000 out in Genoa....


>Yes, of course, GR is not a "front" because it has lots of contributions from different people -- given that Socialist Review had an article by Starhawk, can we assume that Socialist Review is not an SWP organ?

again, I know you like to keep banigng the same drum, but GR is funded by a range of different political groups and individuals, of course it was intiated by the SWP, but that was I feel a necessary step that someone had to take.
-We had a speaker from COBAS come to our Genoa report back in central london, and in my local group SWP members make up around 30%. We have speakers from Tutte Bianche, GSF and people from Bolivia at our forthcoming conference, please come along and have a good moan at them ;-)

>"If you read more you will find that Black Bloc activists have their say within the magazine."

>I had another look at the webpage and could not find these comments. Could you point me to the url which has them in it?

If you read what I said 'within the magazine' then there lies the answer, it seems the whole magazine is not online, don't know why because I didn't do it.


>and talking of letting others "have their say," its funny how the new Bookmarks book on Globalisation does not have any articles from anarchists in it. It does have an article about anarchism, but its not written by an anarchist. ah, well,
what can you expect?

Well I'm sure Micheal Albert considers himself an Anarchist, I don't know why you don't???

>the "usual old rant"... talking of which, why *did* the SWP ignore the non-BB anarchists in its account of Genoa? Still waiting for an answer to that one?

Again we talked a lot about COBAS and the rank and file groups but again to me they are syndacalist organisations that are a mix of Marxist and Anarchist ideas, again I don't know why you think they are not Syndicalists??

Socialist Worker is not ediited by me, so I don't know why decisions were taken about the reporting, but it seems to me that the paper is not there to list everyone that was involved but to give working class people some sense of what went on. As I say we talked about all the large groups that were there that represent some significant social forces.

Whouldn't mind hearing what you think of BB tactics post-genoa when obviously the police did use the groups as cover for there activities????

>and, of course, the "usual old rant" is based on political disagreements and an analysis of history and politics. Still, lets not bother discussing politics -- mindless activitism suits the SWP, cause a discussion of their politics would show them up as being totally at odds with anti-capitalist ideas. That probably explains why "Marxism 2001" was so fundamentally undemocratic in nature and not based
on real discussion.

When I say the 'usual old rant' what I mean is that regardless of what people say to you, you use the same arguments again, and again but without adapting it to what people are actually arguing. We are not in Russia in 1920, things are different, I have no problem discussing politics and doing activism, in fact of course the two go hand in hand. And yes SWP ideas are at odds with some parts of Anti-capitalism but isn't this so with all the other groups? As you would expect in any dynamic building social movement that includes revolutionaries and reformists. We never hide our disagreements though.

Any got to go, leafetting Oldham today to help turn back the Nazis I'm sure I'll have lots of 'mindless' conversations with local people - wanna come???

noel

Michael Albert is not an anarchist. The article in question was a piece attacking the anarchist movement for being explicit in their opposition to authority, as opposed to his vague libertarian leftist vision of "anarchy with leaders", whatever that means. The fact that Albert allowed this article to be published in a book which was a clear Trotskyist manifesto for co-opting the movement shows how seriously we should take him when he calls himself an anarchist. Indeed, I have never seen him unconditionally accept this label, but only when he makes it clear that his version of anarchism does not reject leaders. Albert is not down with the anarchist movement and has very little credibility as an anarchist, if he indeed is one.

If you reject all authority, why should I listen to you? From what position do you make this claim???

The usual idealist tautology you can't escape.....

I find it extremely bizzare that Anarcho spends so much time tracking the movements of the SWP. He seems to have read their texts as soon as they have come off the press. This is rather disconcerting and suggests that maybe he has some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Anarcho - I have a psychologist friend who might be able to help you, but you may not feel that she should have the authority to judge your mental state :-)

Anyway, the SWP are so fucking insignificant in the great scheme of things, WHY DO YOU CARE?

Where is Anarcho's critique of capitalism TODAY in the HERE and NOW? For him its simple: Capitalism is Capitalism. There is no point analysing it. Just throw about a few quotes from Kropotkin and everything will be OK.

BORING!!!!!!!!!

Peace (unless you feel violent)

munkle