Historian, labor lawyer, and antiwar, civil rights and labor activist Staughton Lynd died Nov. 17, 2022. He was 92.
The child of famous sociologists, Staughton did pioneering work in history before being blacklisted after organizing antiwar protests (including at Spelman College, where he taught), helping organize Freedom Summer in 1964, and being arrested for his role in protests against the Vietnam War. Continue reading
ASR 86 is significantly delayed, though it will go in the mail before the year is out. In the meantime, we will bring you some articles slated for the issue…
The government of the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine in February, allegedly in the name of “denazification.” This conflict had been slowly brewing since 2014 when the Euromaidan movement toppled the pro-Russian government and led to a government much more aligned with the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West in general. The Russian Federation and its president, Vladimir Putin, who functions as a dictator, wants to recreate the old empire that collapsed when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, after which Ukraine became an independent country. Putin and his allies are trying to reestablish Russia’s former status as the Russian Empire from 1721-1917 and the Soviet Union from 1917-1991. Right before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government and allied states helped repress an uprising in Kazakhstan. Continue reading
“Solidarity means that we stand up for one another and expect something from each other, even if we don’t like the other very much or even understand each other.”
— Frances Tuuloskorpi
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and the nation-states. In two previous essays, Rasmus Hästbacka touched on this vision and strategies to reach it. The following essay concludes with recipes for rebuilding the labor movement.
A vision is pointless without strategies to reach it. Strategies are pointless without a movement that can pursue them. At least in Europe and North America, we need to “bring back the movement in the labor movement,” to quote Labor Notes. Continue reading
“Those who work in the mills ought to own them, not
have the status of machines ruled by private despots.”— The Mill Girls of Lowell, 1845
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and the nation-states. The syndicalist SAC—Central Organization of Workers in Sweden—neither advocates armed struggle to reach the vision nor revolt through a general strike. So, what do Swedish syndicalists propose? Rasmus Hästbacka addresses this question in the second in a series of three essays.
ASR is presenting this series in the spirit of debate and an exchange of ideas across national borders. We do not agree with every formulation. The SAC’s evolutionary approach is, we believe, unique in the international syndicalist movement. It is certainly possible to fetishize the general strike, transforming it into an idle fantasy that serves as a substitute for the day-to-day struggle in the workplaces for workers’ control and better conditions. But this is to violate the very essence of syndicalism: its emphasis on building revolutionary unions that battle for better conditions today while building the capacity and power to take over the industries and bring them under workers’ self-management. Continue reading
“Most people live most of their lives within totalitarian institutions. It’s called having a job.”
— Noam Chomsky
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and nation-states. But isn’t the nation-state the guarantor of all citizens’ security? What alternatives do syndicalists propose? These issues are addressed by Rasmus Hästbacka in the first in a series of three essays that will be posted to our website.
We are presenting this series in the spirit of debate and an exchange of ideas across national borders. We do not agree with every formulation, and have been quite explicit in our rejection of “participatory economics,” which fails to offer a vision of a free society, is unworkable, and seems to have given no thought as to how their bureaucratic utopia could be brought into being. We also reject the notion expressed below that markets are compatible with syndicalism, or indeed with any vision of social solidarity and emancipation. Continue reading
Editorial The War in Ukraine
Wobbles Organizing Amazon, ‘Green Capitalism’…
Syndicalist News Myanmar, Turkish Strike Wave…
Articles Support the Trucker Convoys? by John Kalwaic
South Asian Truckers Build Class Solidarity, ‘Freedom Convoy’ Builds Fascism by Jeff Shantz
Mandates, Vaccines & Freedom by Wayne Price
Capital-labor relations in France, healthcare and American television by René Berthier
Responding to the Ukrainian War by Wayne Price
Black Wobblies: Hubert Harrison & Ben Fletcher review essay by Jeff Stein Continue reading
By the time you read this, Russian forces may be in Kyiv, or not, depending on how the battle goes. Ukrainian resistance and Russian military incompetence has given the lie to Western tales of Russian military might that has fueled NATO expansionism since the end of the Cold War.
What induced Putin to invade Ukraine now? The war has actually been ongoing since 2014, Continue reading
In a previous article I made a distinction between three types of organizations: narrow cadre unions, broad popular movement unions and networks of workplace organizers. I hope that we in Sweden will develop the syndicalist SAC as a popular movement union (or, if one prefers the term: open class organization). Such a union can also build various forms of cross-union cooperation: forums, groups and networks of workplace organizers. Continue reading
As this issue goes to press, diplomats are meeting in Glasgow to make their contribution to the climate crisis: a barrage of hot air. Even as they “pledge” to reduce greenhouse gases at some point in the distant future new coal-burning plants are being built, oil wells drilled, forests cleared, more of the earth buried in concrete.
Climate change is inflicting catastrophe on a daily basis. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world’s governments have stalled on meaningful action for so many decades that it is no longer possible to avoid intense global warming. This summer, blistering heat waves killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods devastated Germany and China, and wildfires raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece. Continue reading