Climate Charades

from asr 84

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

ASR 84 – Winter 2021/2022

2 Editorial: If Voting Changed Anything, It’d be Illegal
3 Climate Charades by Jon Bekken
4 Wobbles: Pensions attack workers, Union Scabbing…
6 International Shorts: Italy General Strike, Iranian Oil Workers Organize, Danish Nurses Wildcat, South Korea…
8 Articles: Undemocracy in the U.S. by Wayne Price
10 Migrant Workers Protest, Strike Amid Pandemic by John Kalwaic
13 Green Syndicalism and the Iron & Earth Report: Beyond Jobs Versus Environment by Jeff Shantz
15 Keeping Up With the Times: More on Syndicalist Strategy by Gabriel Kuhn
16 The Crisis Facing Swedish Syndicalism by Rasmus Hästbacka
19 Boston Labor Solidarity Committee by Steve Kellerman
20 The Union by Émile Pouget, translation by Iain McKay
27 Juanita Nelson: An Anarchist Life by Louis H. Battalen
29 Economic Disarmament by Juanita Morrow Nelson
31 Reviews: Caste in the USA review by Wayne Price
33 Resisting the Gig Economy review by Jon Bekken
33 Anarchy, Crime & Prisons review by Wayne Price
35 Globalization & Labor review essay by Ridhiman Balaji
39 Correction: Sources on Kronstadt by Malcolm Archibald

Keeping up with the times: More on syndicalist strategy

by Gabriel Kuhn, published in ASR 84

Rasmus Hästbacka has written an interesting article titled “Greetings from Sweden: A dual-track syndicalism?” Rasmus cites a few texts that I have written, some of them together with comrades from Sweden and Germany. I interpret Rasmus’s article as an invitation to continue the debate about the future of the SAC and syndicalist unions that find themselves in a similar position. My response reflects my own thoughts and not necessarily those of the comrades I have collaborated with. Continue reading