Red and Black Notes (original) (raw)
A bill to kill a union: What is actually in the government’s CFMEU legislation
The Albanese Labor government has done a deal with the Liberals to pass legislation aimed at destroying the CFMEU. Make no mistake, the government’s CFMEU Act is a plan to kill a union. The strongest argument against this law is this: take a look at what is in it. The […]
Support fighting unions, fight for the CFMEU!
As the government decides how best to cut down the union, it’s essential that workers stand with the CFMEU and defend it against government intervention. Any proposed administrators should be rejected, and the rank and file organised to take control of what’s theirs.
How to write an organising report
We want to publish more reports from anarchists organising in their workplaces, and we want you to write them for us. Your experiences are valuable. It is important that we write about organising in order to reflect, learn, and share lessons. We need anarchists to write about wins, losses, failed […]
Less mobilising, more organising
Chris Oliver argues that left-wing activists should focus less on shallow mobilisation and protest, and more on deep, long-term organising. A few years ago I was involved in protesting outside a café in Sydney alongside a backpacker who’d previously worked there. The backpacker had been paid below the minimum wage […]
Israel and the pinkwashing of genocide
Republished from Geelong Anarchist Communistsby Tommy Lawson and Evan van Zijl As critics of genocide and Zionism, we are often told that settlement of Palestine offers a liberal utopia of pro-gay progressivism. Israel, the supposed sanctuary of Judaism, is in short the only alleged place for women and the LGBTQI+ […]
Palestine, platitudes and silence
‘In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ Martin Luther King Jr. It is no secret that the history of Palestinian resistance is deeply intertwined with the socialist movement. As anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are basic principles, socialists have always opposed […]
Lessons in Struggle from Uruguayan Anarchists
Juan Verala Luz reviews Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-1976. This review began as opening remarks at a recent book launch for Anarchist Popular Power. You can read excerpts from the original statement in this report, and listen to it alongside a discussion with historian Troy Araiza Kokinis […]
Co-operatives or class struggle?
Every so often the question of co-operatives is raised in the revolutionary socialist movement. Optimistic positions suggest that co-ops can form the basis for replacing capitalism with a new economy based on solidarity and labour where workers have ‘control’ and even suggest they are a vital part of revolutionary strategy. […]
Fictitious splits over the Spanish Revolution
David Glanz, a member of the Trotskyist organisation Solidarity, recently gave a talk on the Spanish Revolution, offering it as evidence of the ‘failure of anarchism’. The talk is reasonably representative of the standard Leninist position, and therefore follows the same tendency to misrepresent both the events in Spain and […]
UKRAINE: No war but the class war
First published as ‘The Ukraine War’, in The Anvil Vol 12 No 3. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine became independent. The United States promised Russia that NATO would not expand eastwards, but it didn’t take long for Uncle Sam to renege. Without a global rival to […]