Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

We could just repeat what we said when we looked back on 2020 – what an utter shit storm it was! Honestly, it was a bit of a drag to get through this year, both as individual lonely comrades and as a group that wants to meet in the flesh and get down to things. We tried our best to hold ourselves together, discussed quite a lot amongst ourselves and with comrades abroad, which is reflected in various articles on the blog. But let’s start with the few practical efforts amongst fellow workers that we engaged in this year.

We’ve translated another article on the question of the protests against state-imposed Covid measures, such as the Green Pass in Italy.

I don’t know the sequence of events that resulted in the situation that Karim, a British-Asian man in his mid-40s, found himself in during the last two days of his life. I only know that he was dying of lung cancer on a hospital ward, alone, apart from the prison wards that took turns to watch him die. His mother was supposed to see him, but he deteriorated too quickly. It was a painful death. I don’t know his story, but you can imagine how in a working class life one thing can lead to another. You can imagine that prison is not a place of well being and medical prevention.

For some months now the atmosphere over the stretch of sea that separates China from Taiwan has become very heated, but this has become more intense in recent weeks.

The question of whether to support, oppose or remain defeatist about Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the state divides not just the left, but our own collectives. The following report and thoughts do not represent an AngryWorkers position, but hopefully they’re another small contribution to the debate. We’ve already published this translation of a text by Sergio Bologna (https://www.angryworkers.org/2021/12/10/we-cant-leave-the-idea-of-freedo...) on the notion of a neoliberal kind of individual ‘freedom’ that is attached to much of the discourse and ideologies around the vaccine.

An update and a few programmatic points about the current series of defensive struggles. Pre-orders here: https://www.unrast-verlag.de/vorankuendigungen/class-power-detail

The novel, “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” was written between 1906 and 1909. Abridged versions were issued in 1914 and 1918 but the full book was not published until 1955.

We translated this text (https://www.officinaprimomaggio.eu/non-regaliamo-allestrema-destra-lidea...) as part of our debate on Covid-19 related state measures and resistance to them. To be continued…

Metalworkers in Cadiz, Spain were on strike for 9 days in late November until the mainstream unions signed an agreement with the employers that many consider insufficient and even insulting. Nonetheless, things are now pretty much back to normal and it’s time to take a stock of the whole affair.

We translated this article, partly because it lifts the spirits, partly because there is an actual series of struggles going on in ports around the globe. Recently we saw a succesfull strike at the Piraeus port in Greece, which kicked off after a fatal work accident. Shortly after, agency dock workers in Liverpool went on wildcat strike over unpaid wages. One of the bottlenecks in the current supply-chain crunch are global ports – as decribed in an article by Sergio Bologna that we translated a few weeks back.

On 2 January, in response to a sudden increase in gas prices, protests and blockades rose up in the oil city of Zhanaozen in the Mangistau region, western Kazakhstan. The revolt has now spread across the country, including Almaty, the largest city in the country, and Nur-Sultan, the capital. It has forced the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, to sack his cabinet, declare a state of emergency and rescind the rise in gas prices (for six months). Despite this, the unrest continues.

It is hard not to feel depressed. At what is supposed to be a time of the year when families and friends gather together to enjoy each other’s company and exchange gifts, even this small escape from the wage-laborer’s life of fast-paced monotony seems difficult to enjoy when the overbearing clouds of capitalism cover us in darkness. Whatever holiday one celebrates at this time of the year, the festivities and general atmosphere seem tainted and stained by the mess that capitalism has strewn around us, and the woes that it is brewing for our near futures.

Tornadoes that struck Kentucky, Illinois, and other states over the past week have left almost 100 dead across the damaged areas, with around the same number unaccounted for, countless injured, and vast swathes of homes and infrastructure destroyed. As is usual with these phenomena, this is yet another ‘natural’ disaster that has fallen the hardest on our class. And as is usual, plenty of these deaths could have been prevented were it not for the profit-centered system called capitalism that we live in.

Another fragment in AngryWorkers’ process of soul searching. If you want to read up on other texts we have written, check out this recent one on ‘What does it take to be organised politically?’ or this biographical rumination on ‘How not to be organised’.

关于叙利亚2011年的草根社会革命，及其如何被镇压并最后成为一场由国外势力参与的内战

2015 documentary of the Syrian Revolution and Civil War by Camara Negra, in Arabic & Spanish with English & Chinese subtitles.

In the current mode of production the perennial drive to increase capital is a necessity, not one political option amongst many.

(This text was written a few days before the most recent tragedy in the Channel, during which 27 people drowned)

This short text was used for debate at our AngryWorkers meeting in Sheffield a couple of months ago. It is another fragment in the debate about the relation between concrete struggles and the development of an organic working class transitional program. Please read the piece below in conjuncture with these two other contributions:

This is the third of our short series of texts about the climate crisis. Here, the comrade goes over similar themes raised in the first article, but goes into a bit more detail about why we think world leaders won’t be able to solve anything, as well as joining the dots more explicitly between climate catastrophe and workers’ struggles, specifically self-organised struggles that challenge our position as the exploited ones, at the same time as rediscovering our own power as the makers (and potential re-makers) of this world. And is the climate crisis separable from the generally intolerable conditions we all face?