Blogs

The myth that we’re all in this together is already wearing thin. COVID-19 has come after ten years of grinding austerity characterised by the gig economy, poverty wages, benefit cuts, attacks on the NHS, and a desperate housing crisis. While the richest 1% have got richer, we’ve had a growth in food banks, child poverty, unaffordable housing and poor health. In fact UK poverty numbers were at their highest level for 18 years even before the coronavirus. Unequal societies are prone to outbreaks of mass disease, and our society gets more unequal with every passing day. Lockdown has shown that this is a public health crisis defined by inequality, and the working class is suffering most.

For the working class the cost of a roof over our heads is a major expenditure, one that can push households further into debt and ultimately onto the streets. This report from our ICT affiliate in Canada shows how the coronavirus lockdown is exacerbating the housing problem for the working class.

A solidarity statement from Safehouse Infoshop and the Local Autonomous Network on the ongoing anti-anarchist repression in Indonesia.

Daily Mail journalist and Michael Gove’s wife, Sarah Vine, spent Sunday evening tweeting photos of her bookshelves. Almost immediately, it was noticed that one of those books was by renowned Holocaust denier David Irving. Things went downhill from there.

A statement from the Bandilang Itim collective on the expiration of the ABS-CBN franchise.

An article dealing with survival of the fittest as mutual aid.

An anarchist perspective on the current situation of state repression of journalists in the Philippines.

Today (02/05/20) is the fifteenth anniversary of the death of our unforgettable comrade Mauro Stefanini. We are not great fans of formal rituals or commemorations (neither was he) but by way of acknowledging our debt to him we publish this short introduction to the volume of his work our comrades of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) published five years ago under the title Le radici spezzate – Il percorso ideologico della controrivoluzione in Italia (Broken Roots – The Course of the Counter-Revolution in Italy).

The realities of life under Covid-19 lockdown, whatever the specifics, are strange. Over the last two months or so, many of us will have seen empty shelves in supermarkets where once-familiar products like flour, eggs, soap and toilet roll are seemingly in short supply. Is this because there are not enough of these products being produced? Have the supply lines broken down, so that existing products aren’t reaching the shelves? Are customers buying these things in a panic, leading to temporary shortages? Are speculators buying them, to sell at a profit later?

A libertarian and post-situationist manifesto for our current times.

An anarchist review of Mao's (in)famous Combat Liberalism and what could of it could be use to the libertarian tradition.

A message from the diaspora to those in the Philippines

Inmates and persons deprived of liberty are at high risk of dying due to COVID-19. The state's campaign of mass arrests and detainment of so-called quarantine violators risks spreading the disease to detainees. As it is the poor who bares the brunt of the state's policing and incarceration, prisons and police must be abolished as they mostly only target the poor.

The world proletariat has in the past celebrated May Day in some dramatic situations: from the imperialist world wars which forced workers to kill, die and produce for their class enemy — their own capitalist class — to the many occasions when the ruling class has unleashed its repressive machine to crush those struggles aimed at making exploitation less onerous, and the chains of the bosses’ oppression a little less heavy.

We’re really excited to announce that Common Notions are publishing an edited collection of our writings.

We have received this letter from the Haringey Solidarity Group and republish it here as it presents a working class perspective on the current PPE scandal, against the bosses' propaganda.
Regarding the call for "fair wages" in the final paragraph however, we must repeat that our emancipation as a class can only be achieved through the abolition of the wages system, not redistribution.

International Workers’ Memorial Day is observed every year on 28th April in countries on every continent, to commemorate workers killed and injured through their work. This year, as many countries across the world are in some form of lockdown, the commemorations are likely to be few, while the number of dead is rising rapidly.