Workshop on exploitation and immigration

   Capitalism and the State have found the world economic situation a convenient excuse to attack workers and intensify exploitation. This is despite the fact that the crisis is of their own making and just another way of maximising profits. Repression of immigrants, price increases, wage freezes, firing large numbers of workers, the new legislation against workers’ rights proposed in the EU, wars and the move to open more nuclear power plants are nothing more than different aspects of the same attack. This attack is done in collaboration with political parties, official unions and charities, all of which are accomplices in this situation.

   Those of us putting up radical resistance against the situation, anarchists amongst them, are pronounced ‘anti-social’, or even ‘terrorists’ by governments and the mass media, the opinion-making machine of the system.

   The member federations of IAF-IFA believe that we must confront this situation by exposing and challenging all those who are carrying  out the attacks and by strengthening the self-organisation of the exploited and oppressed.

Workshop on Nationalism

The appeal of nationalism is based on the confusion between two different tendencies:

·         An affinity with what is familiar to us e.g. the way in which we communicate with those around us (not only the language but also the accent, the body language etc…), the traditions and the physical surrounding…in brief, the attachment  for our surroundings that we have been in since childhood

And,

·         The supposed need for a higher authority to control the life of people. The belief in the idea that without a power of  a priest, a king, or a politician, human beings would start to kill each other.

   The appeal of nationalism relies on both this identification with the familiar and the ideas of the nation state. In this way, something that people are born with is transformed into the need by those in power for authoritarian institutions.

   Historically, nationalism as an ideology developed together with the modern State. National symbolism, and the sentiment it produces, is used to justify state control over property and military control over the free movement of peoples. As the Church did in the Middle Ages, the nationalist ideology sanctifies a hierarchical structure of domination and supports criminal repression in the name of internal security. Nationalism is a social construction which has always been used to deny the real differences in a society formed by classes. One of the consequences of nationalism is that it creates hate between people and has therefore been used to divide the international social movement. As in the past, nationalism, militarism and fascism, are used again as instruments by capital and state to divide people, and pushes for indoctrination of order and hierarchy.

   Today a huge economic and political transformation is underway. Capitalism needs to put its hands on new markets and new territories. Globalisation creates a conflict between the great blocks: US, China, Japan, Europe, India. When economic conflict is no longer enough, the classical tools of capitalism are used, such as war abroad and internal war. The war abroad is seen today in Afghanistan and Iraq. Internal war is led by the police and other repressive services of the state on one hand, and on the other, by neo-fascist and neo-Nazis groups. This often means that anarchists are forced to spend too much energy on anti-fascist activities. We also suffer limitations on out freedom and increased repression of social movements. The situation is even more serious than in the past because new and more dangerous weapons have been developed and new technologies make surveillance of our activities easier.

  Facing this situation, we have to develop practical solidarity, enforce and spread the values of equality. It is necessary to continue building a libertarian culture and to spread the ideas of non-hierarchical organisation. It is also important to reinforce the solidarity amongst comrades all over the world. In some countries the situation of anarchists is so critical that we have to think about concrete strategies to help them.

Workshop on Religion

   Anarchism is atheist. The concept of God is an authoritarian one. For this reason we reject to both religious institutions and religious beliefs. Religion pacifies the population by discouraging free thought and action. In this way, it has been a form of social control throughout history. It has been used to assist and maintain exploitation and power.

   Religion is war. Religion was used, and still is, to justify the ruling class’s most barbaric actions. It does this by creating a moral framework within which any action, no matter how inhumane, can be justified through appeal to an imagined ‘good’. Although sometimes it may appear that religion can be a force for radical social change, if successful it will take the place the structure it has destroyed. Given its authoritarian nature, it carries in it the seed of future oppression. This means that any perspective that seeks to justify a vision of society based on something outside people’s own lives, experience and knowledge is going to stand in the way of us arguing for our own particular vision.

 

The following reports produced by the workshops are an important, but partial contribution. They are an invitation to continue the discussion on issues that we do not always talk about.

Workshop on Gender, Sexuality and Anarcho-feminism

Participants: people from Italy, Spain, Belarus, Poland, France, and Switzerland

The workshop began with French FA comrade reading the text prepared by Swiss comrade from the FdA, unable to attend congress. Most people had not previously had time to read the text. The Spanish text on anarcha-feminism was also read. Both texts needed to be translated into several languages. Translation took up over half of the time allotted for the workshop.

There was a discussion about the right to abortion and moral order in Poland.

The Belarusian comrade asked that the group work toward establishing potential, concrete actions as we were spending too much time talking about things that we all agreed on. The general response was that sexism and patriarchy are not always fought against by all comrades and federations and so it is important for us to keep talking and also be conscious of working against these tendencies in our respective federations.

We realised that we were quite oblivious to the realities of patriarchy in our different countries. Although women are generally considered in one way or another to be dominated by men around the world, we do not have precise information about the types and degrees of sexist violence that women face in different countries (abortion rights, standards of beauty, "family" roles which are becoming more and more politically charged, increasing influence of religion and moral order, particularly in Poland since the rise of Pope JP2, etc.).

Similarly, we are unfamiliar with the different actions undertaken by anarchists in different IFA-federation countries.

The workshop proposed the following text to the congress (which was accepted with an amendment by the AF):

–      The commission did not discuss a precise subject during this workshop, but we realised that feminism had pushed some men to change the way they behave towards women. We are nonetheless far from a total emancipation of women and men with regards to patriarchy/sexism.

–      We realised that we are unfamiliar with the reality of how patriarchy affects people in different countries, which is why we could not come to a common analysis. During the workshop we realised the need for an analysis to be done by each federation.

–      We all agreed that an end must be put to patriarchy; the struggle exists, however, at both the social level (capitalism, state, religion) and at the individual level.

 

The commission proposed that each federation write a short document on the following aspects:

–      the state of patriarchy and sexuality in each country

–      the state of patriarchy and sexuality in each federation (for example: why there are more men than woman, why men talk more than women, etc.)

–      anarcha-feminist struggles in each country

–      the causes of patriarchy and sexual discrimination

 

We propose that these documents be distributed among IFA members before the next congress in 2012 in order to better allow the anarcha-feminist commission to come to a common analysis at the next congress.

Report of environment workshop

(Note: Decroissance is a term developed in France and is difficult to translate into English. Literally it means ‘degrowth’.)

In 2008, the fact of a global environmental crisis is largely accepted. The capitalist system attempts to create consensus around ‘sustainable development’ and suggests false technological solutions. Faced with this global crisis, resistance is being organised in the heart of populations as people turn to direct action. Involved in these struggles, anarchists tend to put them in a wider context. The current crisis brings into question the dogma of growth and the productivism that accompanies it. Infinite growth in a finite world being impossible, ‘decroissance’ is unavoidable.

In a capitalist system, this could only be made to work through an authoritarian system, leading us to ‘ecofascism’. For anarchists, ‘decroissance’ does not mean preventing populations who suffer from getting out of misery. The concept of ‘decroissance’ cannot be limited to the individual level, everyone’s choices being determined at the source by the State in the service of capital. Instead, anarchists see ‘decroissance as coming from  a radical change, a double revolution: social and ecological. It must come form the expropriation of the means of production and the redistribution of wealth. In order for the revolution to be effective, it is necessary for everyone to be able to participate in collective life, which will come through the reduction in working time.

The limitation of human activity to the limits of the capacity of the planet can only result from individuals themselves, self-managed and freely federated. This is the project of a libertarian society.

EDUCATION WORKSHOP REPORT

   We began by discussing the situation in various comrades’ countries. There were comrades representing France, Italy, The Netherlands, Britain and Spain. Though many different problems exist, we felt that certain issues were common to us all. One example was the way in which subjects are fragmented and another was the focus on passing exams rather than learning. The poor economic situation of education workers was also felt to be an issue across our countries. We also felt that the State’s financial support of private schools was increasing the gap between rich and poor. This was a particular problem in Spain and Italy.

   We then discussed what we could do as libertarians. We identified three ways anarchists could have an impact:

·         Inside schools e.g. the co-operative education networks running in France and Italy

·         Outside schools e.g. the Carrara comrades running workshops with local children and working in gypsy communities

·         Attempts to establish libertarian schools in Spain, France and Italy.

To conclude, we must expose the way the education system treats people like machines. To achieve this we must strengthen links between different countries and take an active role in the fight against the system and slowly work towards libertarian, autonomous and self-managed education for all.