Lamentamos tener que informar a nuestros lectores la muerte de nuestro compañero Mac Intosh el 27 de agosto después de una enfermedad muy breve.
Su muerte súbita nos ha conmocionado. Escribiremos más sobre él próximamente y tenemos la intención de preparar la edición de una colección de sus escritos.
We are sad to inform our readers of the death of our comrade Mac Intosh on 27 August after a very short illness.
His unexpected death has shocked us. We shall write more about him and intend to prepare an edited collection of his writings.
Below is an editorial published by our comrades in Angry Workers about the latest eruption of conflict between Israel and Palestine. While we obviously condemn the brutal occupation and the conditions imposed on the people in Gaza, we remain critical of all nationalist movements. As the article makes clear, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas organizations are no heroes and hostile to proletarian class interests.
We wholeheartedly agree with the Angry Workers’ conclusion that the only way out of this mess is through an internationalist convergence of working class struggles.
José
Over the last two weeks, the Israeli state has launched devastating aerial attacks on Gaza, and Hamas have fired over 3,000 rockets towards Israel. The dead now number 13 from Israel (including 1 child and two migrant workers from Thailand) and 248 in the Palestinian territory (including 66 children) with a further 1,900 wounded. Everywhere, the bourgeoisie and middle classes, along with their representatives in the press and state, have wept over the mounting corpses in the hopes that their crocodile tears will wash away the evidence of their complicity in this barbarism. It is crucial that the working class, both in the Middle East and the world over, sees through this pantomime.
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Una nueva conmemoración de las jornadas de mayo de 1886 nos encuentra para recordar, compartir, conmovernos, inspirarnos, debatir, reflexionar y agitar.
Nos encontramos otro 1° de mayo en la lucha anticapitalista por la cual hace tantísimos años fueron ejecutados a manos del Estado cinco compañeros y otros tres condenados a cadena perpetua, conocidos luego como los “mártires de Chicago”.
La lucha anticapitalista es tan necesaria como ayer para quienes sufrimos el Capital en carne propia: en cada jornada laboral, sea dentro o fuera de donde vivimos, con o sin salario, con o sin horario fijo, cada vez que buscamos trabajo, cuando padecemos las carencias, cada vez que nos relacionamos con otros seres humanos mediados por el dinero que todo lo cosifica.
Desde hace siglos el proletariado libra combates; sin embargo, aquellas jornadas de mayo en Chicago eran parte de una lucha en la cual proletarios y proletarias se organizaban con una perspectiva emancipatoria. George Engel, tipógrafo y anarquista ahorcado en 1887 lo expresaba de esta manera: «Yo no combato individualmente a los capitalistas; combato el sistema que da el privilegio.
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At the occasion of May First, the Argentina-based group La Oveja Negra (‘The Black Sheep’) draws up a balance sheet of past struggles against capitalism and finds a perspective of the future in the present ones.
A new commemoration of May Day, 1886, allows us to remember, share, inspire, debate, reflect and agitate.
We commemorate another anti-capitalist May Day struggle many years ago for which five comrades were executed at the hands of the State and another three sentenced to life imprisonment, later known as the “Chicago Martyrs”.
The anti-capitalist struggle is as necessary today as yesterday for those of us who suffer the consequences of Capitalism in our everyday life: every working day, whether inside or outside of where we live, with or without wages, with or without fixed hours, every time we look for work we suffer the deficiencies, every time our relations with other human beings are mediated by money which turns them into relations between things.
For centuries the proletariat has been waging battles; however, those May days in Chicago were part of a struggle for which proletarians organized with an emancipatory perspective. George Engel, a typographer and anarchist hanged in 1887, expressed it this way: “I do not fight the capitalists individually; I fight the system that gives rise to privilege.
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Half of America breathed a sigh of relief when power was finally transferred from, the would be autocrat Donald J. Trump, to the less colorful but entirely predictable Joe Biden. The Biden half believe his ascension represents a return to rationality, to social justice, to the standards of comportment expected of a liberal democracy, indeed, to civility itself. This half of America hopes we can end this chapter of American history and return to normal. But, what of the other half, the half for whom normal is not working, the millions who voted for Trump? Where will they go, what will they do, how will their anger be manifest? Will “Trumpism” turn into a proto-fascist movement as many fear? Are the conditions ripe for such a movement? It would seem so. Trumpism seems to share some important features with historical fascism:
The whole world looked on with astonishment at the events at the US Capitol on 6 January. The commentators and politicians berated the orgiastic attack on the ‘beacon of democracy’; this attack gave a performance usually associated with other parts of the world (and often paid for by the US government). However, another thought went through millions of minds: have Americans gone mad?
This question arose not simply because of the violence on the day but because the participants were unrestrained in expressing their beliefs about what was going on in the US, and crystallising five years’ worth of tirades about conspiracy and ‘fake news.’ But this was only the tip of the iceberg. There has been a ready acceptance in a growing proportion of the American population to believe the most bizarre stories about what is going on in their country. Consider these: that the ‘deep state’ ruling the country is composed of (Democratic, of course) Satan-worshipping cannibalistic paedophiles; Californian wildfires were started by alien Jewish lasers; the Parkland school shooting was staged to attack the gun lobby; the Covid vaccination campaign aims to inject Bill Gates’s microchips into the population. All these went alongside the Trump ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign and the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington.
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The plague of SARS-Covid-19 that has spread everywhere in 2020 brings into stark relief the natural behaviour of the bourgeoisie which defends only its own class interests and has no inclination to defend the interests of humanity; indeed, its very participation in dealing with the virus heightens the problems we all confront. The scrabbling for profits or political benefits, the bureaucratic infighting, the competition, the corruption, the drive for centralisation and the maintenance of power structures, the indifference to the needs of populations: all these facets of bourgeois rule are alive and active in their response to the pandemic. It could not be otherwise.
Behind the many faces the bourgeoisie presents to its national populations – democratic or authoritarian in varying degrees – is the historic enemy of humanity: the capitalist socio-economic system which dominates all aspects of human life. And this system, which has everyone in its grip, gives its ruling class the power to determine how the current pandemic is dealt with. The nature of the bourgeoisie is shown in its actions and is clearly revealed in its handling of the various chapters of the pandemic story to date. Indeed, the behaviour of the bourgeoisie in this pandemic highlights why the working class must rid the world of this parasitic system of exploitation which poses an existential threat to humanity.
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Un coup d’État raté ou un coup de théâtre réussi ?
Est-ce que ce qui s’est passé à Washington le 6 janvier était un coup d’État raté ? Une insurrection armée contre l’État ? Une attaque terroriste du genre du 11 septembre ? Un sacrilège dans le temple de la démocratie ? Une gifle à l’Amérique comme Pearl Harbor ? L’équivalent de la Nuit de cristal nazie ? Etait-ce “l’un des jours les plus sombres de l’histoire américaine” ? Les médias et les politiciens n’ont pas manqué de superlatifs pour décrire l’événement. Même la presse de Murdoch (Fox News etc.) y a participé (à contrecœur).
Mais un coup d’État, c’est autre chose. Si des milliers de personnes avaient pris le Capitole par la force et pris des politiciens en otage dans le cadre d’un plan coordonné de prise de pouvoir, il s’agirait d’une tentative de coup d’État. Mais ce n’est pas ce que nous avons vu le 6 janvier.
Terroristes ou touristes ?
“Surréaliste” est le mot qui vient à l’esprit pour décrire ce cirque. Trump l’a mis en branle, en exhortant son jamboree de milliers de partisans purs et durs à se rendre au Capitole pour faire pression sur les membres du Congrès afin qu’ils rejettent les résultats des élections.
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Dans l’article suivant, R. Victor du Cercle de Paris, nous met en garde contre « le danger que représente la pratique qui consiste à rejeter de véritables analyses qui mettent en évidence la réalité des manipulations, l’omniprésence du secret, de la malveillance, des complots dans la gestion sociale capitaliste, au nom d’une lutte contre le “complotisme“. »
Complot ?
Le terme de “complotisme” est devenu un anathème, une condamnation de toute pensée qui met en doute ne fut-ce qu’une partie des discours officiels concernant la pandémie du Coronavirus. Et pourtant : c’est quoi un “complot” ?
D’après le CNRLT (Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales) :
Complot : “Dessein secret, concerté entre plusieurs personnes, avec l’intention de nuire à l’autorité d’un personnage public ou d’une institution, éventuellement d’attenter à sa vie ou à sa sûreté.”
“Par extension : Projet quelconque concerté secrètement entre deux ou plusieurs personnes.”
Le Robert : “Projet concerté secrètement afin de nuire (à quelqu’un, à une institution)”
Deux notions sont présentes : le secret et la malveillance.
Dans son sens le plus général la malveillance est absente. Quand les parents préparent les cadeaux du Père Noël on pourrait dire qu’ils complotent.
Le terme “complotisme” pourrait contenir deux sens.
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