Anarchism and the student protests, etc

The lessons of the Spanish Civil War continued: Carl Packman has a thought-provoking post on “left unity” in the context of student activism in the UK today, drawing out some of the lessons of the Spanish Civil War. I’m not totally sure what he’s saying about the POUM, but I think I agree with what he says about the students.

Anarchism re-evaluated: Comrade Coatesy has a post on anarchists and the student protests. He makes excellent points. I was thinking about the long history of the relationship of centrist Marxism to anarchism, of which Keir Hardie‘s defence of the anarchists at the formation of the Second International is one example, and the POUM-CNT axis another.

Here, meanwhile, is the most embarassing defence of anarchism I’ve seen in a while, from someone my uncle describes as “famous mediocre intellectual” and “a stupid child who never grew up — and is proud of that fact.”

ADDED: Ian Bone asks why today’s anarchists are so scruffy.

Principia Dialectica on Ralph Rumney:

New exhibition of Ralph Rumney’s works here through December 2010.

The funny thing about Rumney is what Debord told me about him. According to Debord, a cow’s tail dipped into paint would have done better than what Ralph Rumney produced as art. Strangely enough Debord was diverting what Krutschev said about Picasso.The SI NEVER criticized Picasso’s art. Since his stuff was against socialist-realist art. The day Stalin died in 1953, L’Humanite , the paper of the PCF asked Picasso to do something for their beloved dead leader. The drawing by Picasso was really funny, Stalin had an enormous moustache. It created as scandal amongst the faithful of the PCF and also amongst the fellow-travellers. RUMNEY NEVER CREATED A SCANDAL Now some people seem determined to cash in on his name and his membership to the SI.. A sad affair. But then again art is dead …

Below the fold, some items from the archive of struggle:

Black Flag:

IV 7 (March 1976)
IV 8 (May 1976)
IV 9 (July 1976)
IV 10 (September 1976)
210 Drugs, Death and Kroptotkin (from around 1996)
211 Chomsky, Albania and the CNT/FAI/IWA
212 Race, organisation and class
213 End of work
214 Never forget, Never Forgive
215 Money has only one face, that of the boss
216 121, Chile, Indonesian anarchism
217 Welfare warfare
218 In the City, J18
219 Shooting to Kill! (from around 2000)

Via Entdinglichung:

* William Morris: News from Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest (1890)
* Communist Party of the USA (Opposition) (CPUSA(O)): Workers Age, 15. Dezember 1933
* Alexander Schapiro: Palästina, England und die jüdische Frage (1930)
* Ante Ciliga: Även du, min Lenin! (1938)
* Hugo Bell [Benno Sarel]: Le Stalinisme en Allemagne Oriental (suite) 8:31-49 (1951)
* R. Stone (Grace Lee Boggs): La reconstruction de la société (II) 8:50-72 (1951)
* Raya Dunayevskaya: The Gang Lawyer (1954)
* Raya Dunayevskaya: American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard [Excerpt] (1963)
* Hal Draper: Cliff on Russia is „a matter of terminological taste“ (1955)
* Hal Draper: The Student Movement of the Thirties in the USA: A Political History (1965)
* Bernhard Reichenbach: The KAPD in Retrospect (1969)
* Exit of the ‘marxist faction’ from Solidarity (1973)
* Socialist Standard: How I became a socialist (1979)
* Past Tense / Present Unrest – Local Working Class History – Faridabad, India (1977-1998)
* Boris Souvarine: Autour du Congrès de Tours (1981)
* Sean Matgamna: When the scab was hero (1984)
* Martin Thomas: Gorbachev Through Polish Eyes (1987)
* Brian Pearcce: Foring the weapon Part 2 (1987)
* Paddy Dollard: INLA’s Bloody Feud (1987)
* Workers Against Gorbachev (1987)
* Bob Fine: Black Gold, White Profits (1989)
* Ann Mack/Mark Dupont: The Way to a Workers’ Party (1989)
* The struggle for socialism does not die (1995)
* Luigi Fabbri: Revolution and dictatorship (19??)
* Birth of the FAI (1993)
* Agustín Guillamón: A biographical sketch of Josep Rebull, 1906/1999 (?)
* Sean Matgamna: Ireland: blame the British ruling class! (1993)
* Sean Matgamna: Ernest Mandel, 1923-1995 (1995)
* Sean Matgamna: Ernest Mandel and post-Trotsky Trotskyism (1995)
* Martin Thomas: Social-democracy in the ’90s (1996)
* Larry Gambone: The Spanish CGT: the new anarcho-syndicalism (2004)
* Anarchism, anthropology and Andalucia: An Analysis of the CNT and the ‘New Capitalism’ (200?)
* Ten days in the class war: Merseyside and the 1926 general strike (2006)
* Michael Löwy: Trotsky, Lenin, Lukacs: Dialectics and Revolution (200?)
* Ngo Van Xuyet: A ‘Moscow Trial’ in Ho Chi Minh’s Guerilla Movement (?)
* Ngo Van Xuyet: On Vietnam (1967-1968)
* Ngo Van Xuyet: Ta Thu Thau: Vietnamese Trotskyist Leader (?)
* Workers’ Liberty: Factory bulletins from the early communist movement and today (2005)

Via Slack Andy:

Old from Cienfuegos Press: A Critique of State Socialism Reprint of Richard Warren’s classic 1981 illustrated version of Michael Bakunin’s seminal essay ‘A Critique of State Socialism’.

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