book1

Contents
The Gaza Ghetto Uprising 7
The Israeli Response: A Mass Hannibal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Blood Libel and the Myth of the Palestinian Rapist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Rival Tendencies: The Different Flavors of Genocide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Hostages as Leverage: A History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Palestinian Authority: A Tool of Israeli Counterinsurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Looking Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better future 25

one: doom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
two: community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
three: hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Yintah film review: Anarchists in the blind spot 31

Suggested further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

When You Cross Pinochet With a Cyberpunk Dystopia… 37

Life Without Law 41

The World Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Responsibility and Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Anti-Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Anti-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
A World Without Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Mutual Aid & Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Consent & Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Direct Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Prefiguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Engagement With The System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

3
 So Let’s Say You Want to Join . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Suggested fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Suggested films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Suggested anarchist publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

The Consequences to Rahtid 57

The Consequences to Rahtid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
We Cannot Allow Caribbean Nationalism to Suppress Insights from
World Politics — Especially Where We Can Learn About Popular
Self-Directed Challenges to Unions, Parties, and the State . . . . . 61
Understanding Spontaneity as Instinctive Self-Organization . . . . . . . . 61
We Must Overcome the Intrigues of Those Who See Our Struggles As
Equal Opportunity to Enter the Rules of Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . 61
Use Political Methods that Anticipate Workers Self-Management . . . . . 62
Key: The Quality of Activity Preceding Spontaneous Revolt . . . . . . . . 62
From Trinidad to Grenada to Martinique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Union Versus Menegement 65

THE TASKS OF INDEPENDENT WORKER ORGANIZATION 68

FIRST PRINCIPLES 69

STRATEGY OF INDEPENDEDENT WORKER ORGANIZATIONS 70

IMPORTANCE OF THE ORGANIZATION OF SUGAR AND BANANA WORKERS 71

COMMUNITY WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
TO CONSOLIDATE THE POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
THE COMMUNITY SHOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
THE MEDICAL SCHEME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

TRADE UNIONS ARE POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS 75

THE CLERICAL AND TECHNICAL WORKERS 77

THE CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVE-

MENT 79

THE TRADE UNION: THE NATURAL ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKING-CLASS 81

THE WORKERS ORGANIZATION AT THE PLACE OF WORK 83

THE JMU AND BANANA WORKERS 84

4
LESSONS TO DRAW 85
EDUCATIONAL WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
WORKER COUNCILS AND VILLAGE COUNCILS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
OR ELSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

ORGANISING THE UNION 90

PREPARATORY WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
SECRET PREPARATORY WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
OPEN WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
EDUCATE THE MEMBERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
BROADEN THE LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
ONE-MENISM AND HOW TO FIGHT IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
NATIONAL IDENTITY FOR THE INDIPENDENT UNIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

5
The Gaza Ghetto Uprising

Adi Callai

May 2024
 TO THE HEART OF IT: Gaza has been a free kill zone and a “concentration camp” (to quote
Israel’s National Security Director Giora Eiland in 2004), long before October 7.
In light of this, the most radical position comes directly from the simplest question: are Pales-
tinians human beings? If your answer is emphatically yes, unambiguously and without reserva-
tions, then you are a lost cause to Zionism. Because if Palestinians are human beings, then their
self-defense is legitimate, and the defense of their continued existence is necessary.
Gaza, this black box, this holding pen for refugees from the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine—
can we think of its people as we think about ourselves, imagining being enclosed, imprisoned, in
a small stretch of land forever, for no reason other than being born into a specific ethnicity? A
place that has been cut off from the world to varying degrees since 1948. And a place that since
at least 2003 has experienced multiple devastating large-scale military operations. Gazans had
survived twelve of these since 2003, with a death toll of over 8,000 people, before October 7. Since
then, that number has grown by over 34,000. And every minute there’s a new update of more
deaths from Gaza from Israeli fire, but now also from starvation. No fuel, no food, no water, no
medicine. Whatever is coming in is like “a drop in the sea,” to quote UN officials, in a place that
these officials had already, in 2018, predicted would soon be “unlivable,” unfit for human life—a
place that was experiencing what Ilan Pappé called “an incremental genocide” already in 2006.
This is the context that we need to have in mind when thinking about the attack on October
7. And then we need to ask ourselves, what would we do in that situation? Do you acquiesce and
die? Or do you fight?
And if you fight, then how? George Orwell wrote about Gandhi being asked this question
about the Jews in Europe in 1938, before the Holocaust. Gandhi said that the Jews should stage a
kind of collective mass suicide to show the world the brutality of the Nazis, and then the world
would have to intervene.1 Orwell thought this was unhinged. But the Palestinians, in fact, kind of
did this in 2018–19, during the period of the Great March of Return, the Palestinian equivalent to
the Salt March in India. On the first day, about thirty thousand Palestinians marched towards the
fence, and this unarmed protest was gunned down by Israeli snipers. Over one thousand people
were injured and at least seventeen people were killed, just on the first day. And the world did
nothing. Liberal politicians extended some vague condemnations, often against violence on both
sides. Imagine looking at that and condemning violence on both sides.
So what would you do? Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak—the architect of the 2007
siege, considered a liberal Zionist—answered this question himself in 1998, saying he would have
joined armed Palestinian resistance had he been born on the other side.
We think of Gaza, “we Israelis,” think of Gaza as a place that warehouses violence. It contains
the refugees who must hate us so badly for what we did to them. This is also how Americans
think of prisons, as places that warehouse violence, contain it so that we don’t have to think
about it. But actually, the prison produces violence, and it flows out of the prison and into our
seemingly removed lives. That’s why moralistic questions on violence are beside the point.
As for what happened on October 7, I’ll try as much as possible to stick to verifiable obser-
vations. It is very easy to fall into moralistic analysis, and we obviously can’t avoid it, but we
should try to understand what actually occurred. And what happened, as far as we’re able to
gather within the sea of misinformation and disinformation and whatever kind of psychological
operations are happening? What happened, gathering from GoPros, surveillance footage, first

1
George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi,” Partisan Review, 1949.

9
person accounts, as well as reading everything I could put my hands on: military analysts, testi-
monies, media from both sides of the fence? What happened was that armed resistance factions
in Gaza—not only Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas),
most prominently, but also the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Libera-
tion of Palestine (PFLP), which is a Marxist-Leninist organization, and other factions—launched a
meticulously executed guerrilla operation, which immediately turned into a popular insurrection,
against military bases and settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
Around 6 a.m. local time, the resistance2 deployed a wide array of forces—totaling an esti-
mated 3,000 fighters—on sea, land, air, and underground. They started with what Israelis call a
“diversion,” by launching an unusually extensive missile strike targeting the so-called Gaza En-
velope and the coast, up to Gush Dan (the Tel Aviv metropolitan area). Simultaneously, they
attacked Israel’s panoptic surveillance systems and their cameras above and around Gaza, with
what appeared to be relatively cheap commercial drones with DIY explosive capacities. And then
they approached and breached the fence with multiple guerrilla army units, blowing holes in
fences around Gaza at many points with specialized explosives, and laying down metal railings
over which armed motorcyclists in groups of two could ride rapidly. Then heavy construction
equipment like bulldozers and front-end loaders moved in to expand the breaches so that pickup
trucks and sedans could drive through, carrying more armed fighters. Videos show that well-
before 8 a.m. other factions (in this video, the Mujahideen Brigades) were in full gear and uniform,
ready to participate in the uprising. With these forces the resistance completely overwhelmed Is-
raeli defenses across many locations simultaneously, taking over the Erez Crossing—which is the
main checkpoint separating Gaza from the world (alongside Rafah, which separates Gaza from
Egypt to the south)—catching soldiers in their underwear in the bases, taking over entire set-
tlements, killing many hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians—the death toll currently stands
between 1,100 and 1,2003 —killing and capturing high-ranking army officials; killing one mayor,
too, the head of the municipal authority of the Gaza Envelope, and kidnapping over two hundred
people into Gaza.
To qualify this: these figures come largely from Israeli government sources. Without a fully
independent investigation, we will probably never know what exactly happened in those first
few hours. While there is video evidence of a few instances of Palestinians killing unarmed Is-
raelis and foreign nationals who were hiding or fleeing, we do not know the full extent of the
phenomenon. Israel claims that all the hundreds of civilians killed on Oct 7 were “murdered by
Hamas,” but Israeli publications have confirmed that dozens of them were killed by Israeli fire.
With Israel aggressively rejecting an independent investigation, the full extent of its killing of its
own civilians remains unclear. It is evident, too, that unaffiliated Gaza residents joined the attack
and also kidnapped Israelis. What happened after the fences were breached, after the gates were
opened, was that thousands of Gaza residents, or inmates, joined the assault in what became a

2
By “the resistance” I mean the plurality of factions and unaffiliated individuals opposing Israeli siege, apartheid,
and colonization in Palestine and outside of it.
3
Due to the complicated process of identifying hundreds of corpses disfigured by indiscriminate IDF
fire in the Gaza envelope that day, Israeli officials have slowly revised the number down from 1,400,
and Haaretz military journalist Amos Harel now says “almost 1,100.” Amos Harel, “Israel’s Army Makes
Headway in Gaza, but Hamas’ Surrender Is Far from Imminent,” Haaretz, November 14, 2023, sec. Israel
News, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-14/ty-article/.premium/israels-military-is-making-headway-in-
gaza-but-hamas-surrender-is-far-from-imminent/0000018b-ca6f-d8c7-a59b-df6f80560000.

10
prison break and an uprising. And you can see some of the footage where people from Gaza walk
out, kiss the ground, and turn around to go back inside. And then others on bicycles and crutches,
or however they could, kept going. They looted military bases and settlements—expropriating
military vehicles and even horses—and some participated directly in the attack, with children
throwing stones at IDF outposts next to fighters attacking the posts with light arms.
In my binge-reading, I came across one account where an Israeli Haaretz journalist went to
one of the hotels to which residents of the Envelope were relocated by the Dead Sea, and spoke
to people, asked them what they saw. One person talked about seeing teenagers with stones
and machetes next to well-equipped uniformed Hamas fighters. I’m not sure if this is true; I’ve
never seen a machete in Palestine. Another thing we saw was fake news coming in from other
places around the world, including Latin America. I specifically remember one terrible 2013 video
of a woman burned. So it’s possible that this person too was confusing this with a video from
Latin America with machetes. But we do know that there was an element as well of a popular
insurrection once the gates were opened. This reminds me of other rebellions, slave rebellions,
really, where there’s an organized vanguard or an organized underground that leads the attack
with the intention of opening the gates, taking over an armory, arming the populace, and letting
rip the spontaneity of the masses. Fanon talks about this, in the second chapter of Wretched of the
Earth, about launching the spontaneity of the masses, which is uncontrollable.4 Once the rage of
the dispossessed is unleashed, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and some of it might be
horrendous, right? It might. And it’s something we have to grapple with, without falling into a
knee-jerk panic reaction that justifies genocide.
By analogy we can think of Nat Turner’s rebellion, in which dozens of white Virginians were
killed, including women and children. We can think of John Brown, whose idea was to take over
the armory at Harpers Ferry and then free slaves, kill slave owners, arm the slaves, and start a
rebellion that would bring down slavery in the South. Some people saw this as a kind of general
rehearsal for the Civil War. But it failed, and John Brown was executed, and a lot of brutal killing
happened. Still, the way we remember it now is certainly not how people talked about it back
then. I just want to challenge readers to think about their own knee-jerk reactions to seeing news
from October 7, and to put these reactions in a historical context.
Another case that is especially important to me as a Jewish person, having studied our his-
tory of persecution and rebellion, is the Sobibor Uprising. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is of
course the most famous Jewish revolt of that era, and many people made the analogy, including
Refaat Alareer, a Gazan poet who generated controversy for drawing this comparison on BBC,
and who was murdered by Israel as a possible consequence. The Sobibor revolt, while much less
well known, was more of a success story. Sobibor was a concentration camp where, in 1943, re-
alizing they were all going to get killed, a small group of maybe twenty people, some of them
prisoners of war, organized in secrecy, came up with a sophisticated plan to kill high-ranking SS
officers, sabotage the electricity and communications infrastructure, take the guards’ weapons,
loot the armory, arm the other inmates, open the gates, and let people escape and join the par-
tisans. Launched on October 14, 1943, it worked, to an extent. Approximately half of the camp
escaped. But only about fifty rebels survived the war. Still, that’s a much higher percentage than
would’ve survived otherwise. And of course, there are infinite differences between these cases,
but I instantly thought about it when I got the news from my sister, who lived in one of the set-

4
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963).

11
tlements of the Envelope until October 7, in the family WhatsApp group, saying that their power
went out, that there was some kind of sabotage of the electricity infrastructure in the October 7
operation.
There was also an element of short-circuiting Israel’s surveillance capacities, creating the
mirage that Hamas was deterred from confrontation with Israel, and that it had no plans to attack.
According to Israeli and American sources, there were multiple gatherings of forces in the lead-up
that were framed by Hamas as harmless training exercises. There were phone call conversations
among Hamas officials, supposedly—again, according to Israeli sources—saying that they had
no interest in any confrontation with Israeli forces. Apparently, Egyptian and American intel
was delivered to the IDF, but they waved it away as something familiar and unconcerning. This
short-circuiting of surveillance was also long term: in the previous few months, Israel moved
entire divisions from Gaza to the West Bank, assuming that Hamas was contained, banking on
technological surveillance and enclosure systems, like smart fences and robotic sentries, to keep
Gaza pacified.

The Israeli Response: A Mass Hannibal

The Israeli response to all this didn’t materialize until later in the morning. It took the IDF
a few long hours to understand what was going on. And when they finally responded, they
basically implemented the Hannibal Directive, as attested by Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez
who said on the Haaretz podcast on November 9, that October 7 “was a mass Hannibal.”
The Hannibal Directive is a kind of scorched earth response to kidnapping attempts. Mon-
doweiss ran an important piece about this early on. Kidnappings have been an extremely ef-
fective way for Palestinians to generate leverage against Israel for decades, culminating in the
Gilad Shalit deal in 2011, when Israel exchanged 1,027 Palestinian political prisoners, including
Hamas head in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, for one soldier. The Hannibal Directive is an army procedure
where the idea is to prevent something like that by all means necessary, even at risk of killing the
kidnapped soldier or soldiers, which almost always winds up happening, as with Israeli soldier
Hadar Goldin and others in 2014.
So, on and since October 7, this was Israel’s logic. The Israeli Air Force was utilized to bomb
Israeli military bases and settlements, as well as dozens of cars moving in the Envelope (the
leading Israeli newspaper Yediot said “70 vehicles” were bombarded without confirming who
was inside, in an article by Ronen Bergman, who is a staff writer for the New York Times, which
apparently decided that this story didn’t warrant an anglophone audience). There’s a witness
account where an Israeli citizen from one of the kibbutzim, locked in his safe room, describes
getting a phone call from an IDF helicopter operator who asks, “Are there terrorists in your
home? If so, I’m blowing up the house.” (I believe this, by the way, is the first time that this
particular account appears in print in the English language.)
In Sderot, which is a working-class town, not a gated, fenced-in kibbutz like most of those
settlements, Palestinian fighters were able to take over the police station and barricade them-
selves inside with hostages. The IDF did not negotiate with them; they systematically destroyed
the whole reinforced building and killed everyone inside.
Haaretz journalist Amos Harel, who is seen as perhaps the most moderate and collected Israeli
military analyst—though he too has been spreading fallacies concocted by the IDF Spokesper-

12
son’s unit about sexual violence—reported honestly that the south district division was “com-
pelled to request an aerial strike against the base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”
In one interview on Israeli radio, a survivor of the attack describes being treated “humanely”
by her Palestinian captors, and recounts how over fifty people were killed in “heavy, heavy cross-
fire,” and by tank shells, not by Gaza fighters, all while the Israeli radio host tries to goad her
otherwise. In footage published by the biggest Israeli news site Ynet (Yediot) as well as by Is-
raeli Channel 12, you can see Israeli helicopter operators opening fire on what they estimate as
“300 targets” that day, including on people fleeing from the dance party, while they admit being
unable to differentiate partygoers from Palestinian militants, saying Hamas operatives were in-
structed “to walk, in order to confuse” the Israeli Air Force, and that they were “in a dilemma,
not knowing who to shoot, because there were so many.”
The same logic has been applied in Gaza itself: catastrophic shelling, an unending slew of
unapologetic war crimes, and utter disregard for human life, Israeli citizens included. Add to that
a “drawer plan”5 to expel, or, if that is not possible, exterminate the Palestinians, and you get the
current situation—Gaza 2024.
Most mainstream media have been complicit with the erasure of this reality, silencing the
Israeli hostages themselves, as with Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old woman who was released
from captivity, who insisted on telling people at a press conference in an Israeli hospital, sur-
rounded by journalists and Israeli officials, that she was treated very kindly while in captivity.
And still CNN, BBC, New York Times, almost every one of these respected, so-called dependable
news sources omitted her words and quoted her out of context to imply otherwise.
From the very beginning, Israel has been unable to achieve its military goals, so it responded
by attacking and massacring civilians, murdering over 13,000 children and counting. The Pales-
tinian fighters themselves, meanwhile, are underground when the bombing occurs, and emerge
as close to the enemy as possible for attack, similar tactically to Chuikov’s “hugging of the en-
emy” in Stalingrad. And Israel knows this very well—when there’s bombing, the insurgents go
underground, same as in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Middle East, into a very intricate net-
work of tunnels. Israel is aware of this happening, but it still bombs the civilian population to
smithereens, in what is, truly, “a textbook case of genocide,”6 as claimed already early on by
Israeli historian Raz Segal. Clear intent to commit genocide, complete with blood libel.

Blood Libel and the Myth of the Palestinian Rapist

Blood libel is a term I’m taking, again, from my own ancestral history. It’s a term that specif-
ically hearkens to the genocidal lie that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make their
matzah for Passover as a justification for pogroms and worse. So similarly, we’re seeing lies about
the beheading of children, the tossing of babies into ovens, necrophilia, reiterated made-up sto-
ries on sexual violence, the circulation of horrendous older photos of sexually violated Kurdish
fighters as if they’re Israeli women, and so on and so forth. All of this appeared starting the very

5
“Drawer plan” (tochnit megera, in Hebrew): an operational plan that has been devised but not yet enacted.
Minister and MK Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” is one example.
6
Raz Segal, “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Jewish Currents, 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-
of-genocide.

13
first day and has been gradually debunked,7 but it keeps resurfacing periodically.8 The White
House walked back on Biden’s outright lie that he’s seen photographic evidence of children be-
ing beheaded, the LA Times pulled out an unsubstantiated quote on sexual violence, the New
York Times has had an internal firestorm over its own publication of atrocity propaganda, but
mainstream media remains fully complicit, continuing to pump out unsubstantiated claims by
Israeli spokespeople. It’s almost like the IDF spokesperson sits with a button that they can press
to get another bogus NY Times story whenever they need an extra push of legitimacy for their
genocide.
This atrocity propaganda has been the narrative engine of the genocide. As shown by Frank
Luntz—who wrote the confidential 2009 Hasbara manual—and his comprehensive polling, au-
diences respond to claims of “Hamas rape and massacre” more than anything else. This while
Israeli soldiers showcase not only their genocidal intent but also their intent to commit rape—
with impunity—in Gaza. Internationally, at least in the anglophone world, I’m getting the sense
that the Israeli atrocity narrative is falling apart. The damage it has inflicted, however, both on
the struggle against sexual violence writ large, with its overshadowing of actual cases of rape
of Palestinian women by the IDF, and by giving the West a reason to greenlight the genocide,
cannot be overstated.
At this point, we’re still seeing liberal Zionists, people who think of themselves as progres-
sives, reiterating these stories. For me it’s particularly tragic, because it’s also my family, even
Israeli activists or lefty writers who I had looked up to when I started getting disillusioned with
Zionism. On social media, asking for evidence became cause for cancellation, academics and rape
crisis counselors were losing positions for not adhering to Israel’s propaganda, and the #MeToo
hashtag was co-opted to justify genocide.9 While the weaponization of feminist discourse for
genocide in Gaza might seem new, the mobilization of colonial forces to ostensibly protect
women from the colonized “savages” goes way back. This phenomenon shows up throughout
colonial history as one of the prime avenues to legitimize genocide both before and after the
fact, as exemplified so succinctly, and in such a clear analogy to the images disseminated after
October 7, in the 1892 painting La Vuelta del Malón. Translated as “Return of the Indian Raiders,”
this painting, intended to legitimize the genocidal “conquest of the desert” in Argentina,10 is con-
sidered a foundational work of Argentinian art specifically and colonial art at large. It depicts a
fictional image of Mapuche warriors kidnapping a naked white woman.11 Remember this next
time an Israeli art exhibit comes to your hometown.

7
And here’s a partial list of the debunking: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/03/05/israel-
hamas-oct7-report-gaza
8
“CNN Report Claiming Sexual Violence on October 7 Relied on Non-Credible Witnesses, Some with Undis-
closed Ties to Israeli Govt,” Mondoweiss, December 12, 2023, https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/cnn-report-claiming-
sexual-violence-on-october-7-relied-on-non-credible-witnesses-some-with-undisclosed-ties-to-israeli-govt/.
9
“Inside the Campaign to Undermine DEI and Palestine Solidarity at the University of Minnesota: An Inter-
view with Dr. Sima Shakhsari,” Mondoweiss, January 31, 2024, https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/inside-the-campaign-
to-undermine-dei-and-palestine-solidarity-at-the-university-of-minnesota-an-interview-with-dr-sima-shakhsari/.
10
Lauren Kaplan, “Topographical Violence and Imagining the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” Hemi-
sphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas 10, no. 1 (January 1, 2017): 32.
11
Laura Malosetti Costa, “The Return of the Indian Raid (La Vuelta Del Malón),” Equipo de Desarrollo de la
Dirección de Sistemas | Secretaría de Gobierno de Cultura, accessed March 15, 2024, https://www.bellasartes.gob.ar/
en/collection/work/6297/.

14
 Anglophone audiences should be familiar with all this from the history of lynchings in the US.
In their doctoral work, Jameson Austin Leopold highlights how Angela Davis’s 1981 essay “Rape,
Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist” frames the “racist ideological fabrication of ‘the pro-
pagandistic cry of rape’” as “the major political and sociocultural justification of the extrajudicial
institution of lynching.”12 This focus on a phantasmatic Black rapist works, in turn, to make invis-
ible the literally countless rapes that go unreported, and, as Leopold argues, the state-sanctioned
rape that every single one of the United States’ two million plus prison population goes through
on a routine basis in strip and cavity searches. Similarly, this obsessive reiteration of fabricated
October 7 rape stories erases the real, routine, state-sanctioned sexual abuse of countless Pales-
tinians. The trophy images of masses of Palestinian men and boys stripped to their underwear
and held in torture positions for hours and days are images of sexual violence. The erasure of
the rape of countless Palestinian women and men subjected to routine strip and cavity searches
by Israeli forces, as well as those extralegally violated by marauding Israeli soldiers, is driven by
anti-Palestinian racism.
The dehumanization of the entire population of Gaza continues. Minister of Defense Yoav
Gallant now-infamously said they’re beasts, “human animals.” In Hebrew, it’s hayot adam, which
actually is like saying they’re beasts, animals, monsters. That would be the idiomatic translation.
So they’ve created this zero-sum game, like it’s either us or them, which is genocidal thinking. All
the way throughout history, in very different conflicts, we see the creation of this false narrative
that people of different identities cannot coexist. It’s either us or them, and they need to be
annihilated.

Rival Tendencies: The Different Flavors of Genocide

Haaretz, the liberal Zionist newspaper considered “the Israeli newspaper-of-record,” contin-
ues spreading blood libel. But it supports a different idea of statesmanship than the majority of
the Israeli public. Tareq Baconi talks about this—by the way, everyone should read Tareq Baconi.
He wrote an excellent book called Hamas Contained, which doesn’t romanticize Hamas, doesn’t
glorify it in any way at all—it’s critical of Hamas—but at least sees it for what it is and discusses
it openly.13 Since October 7 he’s been courted by mainstream English platforms, including the
New Yorker, where he says that Netanyahu basically had no strategy. I think it was a strategy, but
one that was doomed to fail the moment that the status quo got disrupted. And it has failed, the
moment that Al Aqsa Flood was launched successfully on October 7. Elsewhere I’ve talked about
Sun Tzu’s hierarchy of warfare: you attack the enemy on the level of strategy.14 Hamas did that
right away. And that strategy was Netanyahu’s “manageable conflict” approach, this idea that
every couple of years you could go into Gaza and “mow the lawn” with relatively few losses on
the Israeli side. This is a term they used, “mow the grass.” Any kind of military capabilities that
the Palestinian resistance built up, you just mow it down periodically. Kill a few hundreds, maybe
thousands—in 2014, it was thousands—and just sort of continue living like this indefinitely while

12
Jameson Austin Leopold, “Critique of ’Sexual’ Violence” (Unpublished Manuscript, 2024).
13
Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, Stanford Studies in Middle
Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).
14
Sun Tzu, Sun Tzu On The Art Of War, trans. Lionel Giles (London: Routledge, 2013).

15
building up your technological capacities. This is how Netanyahu sought to create “a durable
peace,” which is the title of his book.15
This strategy has failed. And who knows what will happen with Netanyahu now? He’s still
very popular. But, with his approach failing so spectacularly, there are competing visions for an
Israeli future. One of them is just total genocide, full-fledged, not even pretending to only go for
Hamas, just eliminate Gaza off the map. It’s also very popular. It’s shared by major military and
political leaders currently in office. Bezalel Smotrich, who is the finance minister, is considered
one of the key figures of this tendency simply because over the past decade he laid out a more
or less comprehensive plan, “the decisive plan,” that is essentially a genocidal transfer idea. And
against this genocidal view, there’s a kind of “two states”-ism, which maybe isn’t called “two
states” in Israeli society anymore as that has no popular support whatsoever, but it comes out
of that tradition. This is more aligned with counterinsurgency, more sophisticated. And this is
a view that is much less popular, but is very strongly pushed by the US, which is extremely in-
volved, a lot more than in Ukraine, sending aircraft carriers and top-level military and political
leaders almost daily during the early months. The US is pushing for counterinsurgency, learning
from its military failures in the Middle East over the past couple of decades. Counterinsurgency
is contingent upon dividing populations, isolating insurgents, controlling space, and, perhaps
most importantly, appointing a government that would be working for “USG interests,” US gov-
ernment, and here I’m quoting from the US Army’s counterinsurgency field manual, JP 3–24.16
The counterinsurgents are not concerned about the well-being of Palestinians, but they’re
trying to think in a more sophisticated way about how to achieve the state’s goals effectively,
and the brute force approach, they argue, might in the long run generate more resistance than
it would crush. Counterinsurgency might be even more genocidal, in terms of the loss of human
life and the inability to resolve the conflict and meet people’s needs as if everyone is actually a
human being. But the counterinsurgents are thinking of how to be effective. At first, Israel was
able to recruit a little over 300,000 soldiers from reserves, shutting down various sectors of its
economy to add to its 150,000 conscript army, while Hamas had an estimated 40,000 fighters and
PIJ had at least 10,000 (as noted on the Electronic Intifada podcast). Thousands more have been
fighting back in the West Bank. Hezbollah, which has been constantly shelling Israel from the
north since October 7, has an estimated 100,000. So Israel’s meager manpower has been stretched
thin. By now, all reservists have gone back home. The Americans know that Israel does not have
nearly enough forces to win in urban warfare in as complex a terrain as Gaza. You need a ratio of
one to ten or even one to twenty attackers for defenders, following John Robb and his book Brave
New War, and John Spencer as well, in a maxim that goes back to Clausewitz with his assertion
that defense is the strongest form of warfare.17 So they’re saying, okay, how can you realistically
do this? What are your achievable goals? You can’t just act intuitively and try to wipe out 2.3
million people and think you’re going to win when your adversaries are fighting back and appear
to know what they’re doing.

15
Binyamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place among the Nations (New York: Warner Books, 2000).
16
Joint Publication FM 3–24: Counterinsurgency, 2018.
17
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012); John Robb, Brave New War:
The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2008); John Spencer,
“Mini-Manual for the Urban Defender,” John Spencer Online, 2022, https://www.johnspenceronline.com/mini-manual-
urbandefender.

16
 Accordingly, about every other day since the ground invasion started, the Palestinian resis-
tance has put out unbelievable videos of guerrilla footage, targeting the IDF with snipers, mines,
IEDs, mortars, thermobaric explosives, and countless RPG strikes, frequently with the Yassin
105, which is a made-in-Gaza double-headed munition that disables the tanks’ reactive armor
(Jon Elmer’s Twitter profile is currently a good archive for this footage).
The Israeli casualty rate has risen accordingly, with the army releasing the names of roughly
two to five dead soldiers a day on average over the first couple of months and those of dozens of
wounded soldiers every day. And these are their figures, knowing the Israeli army is a pathologi-
cal liar. Citizens report a constant flow of rescue helicopters from Gaza to the hospitals. According
to Israeli hospital registrations, the actual number of wounded soldiers is about ten times higher
than what the IDF has been releasing,18 with thousands of newly disabled soldiers in what an
Israeli Defense Ministry official says is “unprecedented, not something we’ve ever dealt with.”19
Unable to sustain the mass ground invasion militarily and economically, Israel has by now
(at time of writing, late March) released all of its reserve brigades, still refusing a climb-down
ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, violating a recent UN Security Council resolution. Within
Israel, we’ve seen the rise of Itzhak Brik, a major general in the reserves, who predicted this
collapse of Israeli defenses, having extensively surveyed dozens of Israeli units back in 2018. He
met Netanyahu and Gallant, Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, a few times in October,
as one of many people who are advising them, but as one who’s been vindicated popularly and
militarily. He cautioned against a land invasion, calling it “a trap,” and recommended aerial bom-
bardment, continued tightened siege, and “surgical raids” from the sea, using elite units like the
“Ghost Unit.”20 This unit, the brainchild of Aviv Kohavi, hasn’t been used in large-scale combat
yet, by the way; its head, Colonel Asaf Hamami, was killed on October 7.

Hostages as Leverage: A History

As of this writing, hostages remain the Palestinian wild card. Israel has been in what I would
call a strategic vacuum, reacting out of genocidal rage and humiliation and continuously shatter-
ing to dust its own social contract by bombing, shooting, and even gassing its own citizens held
hostage in Gaza. With the collapse of this paradigm, different strategic approaches are vying to
fill the void: namely, counterinsurgency, which is pushed by the primary genocidal accomplice,
the US, and full-fledged messianic genocide, which is very popular in the extremely fascistic and
racist Israeli society. The counterinsurgency vision would basically see a revamped Palestinian
Authority try to take control of the Gaza Strip in some kind of process towards statehood, but the
problem is that any Israeli leader who would agree to roll with this scenario is unlikely to win
among Israeli voters, who have been conditioned for years to see Arabs as subhuman terrorists
who could never be trusted with a state.

18
Yaniv Kubovich and Ido Efrati, “Discrepancies Arise between IDF and Hospital Reports on Numbers of
Wounded Soldiers,” Haaretz, December 10, 2023, sec. Israel News, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-10/ty-
article/.premium/1-593-israeli-soldiers-wounded-since-october-7-idf-reveals/0000018c-5416-df2f-adac-fe3fbe6d0000.
19
‫ ארצי חן‬,‫ “יותר סרור‬2,000-‫ מתחילת חדשים צה”ל נכי מ‬:‫’” דומה משהו עברנו ’לא המלחמה‬,‫ לזה‬Ynet, December 7, 2023,
https://www.ynet.co.il/health/article/yokra13707397.
20
‫ “יצחק‬:‫ וחכם קטן צבא של התפיסה בריק‬.‫” על להגן צריכים האזרחים כרגע כשלה‬,‫הארץ עצמם‬, ‫ ליאור‬,‫ קודנר‬Oc-
tober 10, 2023, https://www.haaretz.co.il/digital/podcast/weekly/2023-10-10/ty-article-podcast/0000018b-18f7-dcc0-
a3df-9cf7140e0000.

17
 Taking soldiers hostage has been a way for the Palestinian resistance to generate leverage
against Israel for decades. The first deal that broke the status quo of 1:1 prisoner for prisoner
was, according to Israeli negotiator Ariel Merari,21 a 1978 agreement with the PFLP-General
Command (a militant group that splintered from the PFLP) to exchange seventy-six Palestinian
political prisoners for one Israeli soldier. Since then the resistance has been able to raise the floor
of Israeli negotiations with every deal, with the Jibril Agreement being particularly contentious
in the Israeli national memory, where the PFLP-GC was able, in exchange for three Israeli soldiers
captured during the First Lebanon War, to bargain for the release of 1,151 Palestinian political
prisoners, including the Palestine solidarity militant Kōzō Okamoto of the Japanese Red Army.
Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006, marked another watershed deal. Shalit was captured (and
two other soldiers in his tank were killed) during Olmert’s government. This Israeli Prime Min-
ister, who in an Al Jazeera documentary expressed disrespect for Shalit himself for not fighting
back like the others who were killed, basically revealed that Israeli leaders prefer soldiers dead
rather than captured. Shalit’s family, with his dad Noam in the forefront, was able to galvanize
a social movement for his release through a “no matter the cost” prisoner exchange. This social
movement was endorsed by Olmert’s rivals across Zionist political lines, from the right wing to
liberal Zionists. Olmert was still going to broker a deal—of about 350 Palestinians prisoners for
Shalit—but, according to him in the AJ interview, his rival and former PM Ehud Barak visited
Shalit’s family a night before the deal would have been signed, signaling to Hamas that Israel
would bend further yet.
When Netanyahu took power in 2009, with Ehud Barak as Minister of Defense, it was with a
promise to his base to bring Gilad Shalit home. And in 2011 an unbelievable deal was brokered
(1,027 Palestinians, including Yahya Sinwar, for one soldier). This agreement is largely seen by
both sides as a huge failure for Israel and an amazing victory for the resistance.
David Graeber, in the piece he wrote on Palestine after his visit, made one of his quintessen-
tially simple yet profound anthropological observations when he said that hospitality is “the
entire point of life” (“hospitality is everything”) in Palestinian culture, and that one of the tragic
ironies is that Israel is the worst possible guest. And it’s true, you know: anyone who has expe-
rienced Palestinian hospitality will tell you that: in many ways the meaning, the core of social
life in Palestine, is to be generous to guests and strangers. We’re seeing it in the treatment of the
hostages, as they recount their experience on the rare occasions that they’re actually allowed to
speak freely, as was the case with Yocheved Lifshitz. We’ve also seen this with Gilad Shalit. He has
never spoken in detail, apparently not even to his family, about his five-year experience in cap-
tivity, but Hamas released footage of him basically hanging out with his kidnappers, Hamas’s
“Shadow Unit,” chatting, drinking tea, receiving letters from his family, doing a barbeque, and
so on. I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant situation for him, but compare that with the experience of
Palestinian prisoners—who since October 7, have been experiencing retributive torture, beatings,
stress postures, sleep deprivation by blasting Israel’s national anthem in the cell, and murder.
And in international media, we see this absolutely racist double standard—no word about more
than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners held without fair trial, many of whom don’t even know
what the justifications are for their administrative detention; not to mention thousands more,
abducted since October 7. Up until now, every deal has set a new floor in Israel’s hostage negoti-

21
Lior Kodner, “Professor Ariel Merari: Ein Li Safek,” ‫הארץ‬, Haaretz Podcast, November 12, 2023, https://
www.haaretz.co.il/digital/podcast/weekly/2023-11-12/ty-article-podcast/0000018b-c36d-dc2b-a3fb-e7fd61560000.

18
ations with the resistance. The question is whether the Shalit deal and October 7 created enough
of a rift in Israel’s sense of self that this will now change, and that Israel will be able to withstand
the pressure to concede. The cost of not conceding might be too high, paving the way for mass
migration.
Though this might be proven wrong, I would say we might want to wait for the five-year
mark before drawing any conclusions one way or the other. Historically, Israel has taken five
years to concede after a military defeat, and it is only power and violence that forces its hand.
Five years after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, it finally made a commitment to return the Sinai
Peninsula to Egypt. Five years after the beginning of the First Intifada, it allowed thousands
of former Palestinian fighters and refugees, including Yasser Arafat, to return to Palestine and
start the so-called peace process. Five years after the start of the Second Intifada, it withdrew
its settlements from Gaza. And five years after Gilad Shalit was captured, his release deal was
brokered in 2011.
The true gains from the current leverage that Palestinians hold with their hostages from Oc-
tober 7 will only materialize as Israel’s shaky political terrain crumbles internally under the
Netanyahu administration. As with Netanyahu against Olmert, the opposition parties—headed
by the genocidal Zionist centrist Yair Lapid—are claiming to be the rescuers of the hostages now.
Sooner or later they may find themselves brokering Israel’s concession.

The Palestinian Authority: A Tool of Israeli Counterinsurgency

The Israeli wildcard is the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Netanyahu administration is po-
litically incapable of recognizing the PA as its most vital military asset, but, again, a successor
might be able to do so and try to rebrand, revamp, and reappoint the PA as a governing body
in both the West Bank and Gaza. Unless something unexpected happens, which is by no means
impossible, Netanyahu will stay at least until elections are held in October 2026. Meanwhile, the
PA continues to crumble. By now, the resistance—from the armed factions (including Fatah’s
armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade) to the youth rioting in the streets—fully recognizes
the PA as an arm of the Israeli state, and true political wizardry would have to be done to recover
its legitimacy. However, the success of the Israeli-American counterinsurgency idea depends on
this.
Starting in December 1987, the First Intifada was a massive popular uprising against Israeli
apartheid. This uprising saw the use of the tools of mass struggle to great effect—strikes, civil
disobedience, mass rallies, riots, tax resistance—all working together in confluence. And despite
the fact that the uprising was largely unarmed, it was met with unspeakable brutality, the killing
of many hundreds of protesters, the arrests of multiple thousands, and injuries to over a hun-
dred thousand Palestinians by Israeli soldiers who were specifically instructed by Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin to “break their bones.” Still, it’s remembered with incredible fondness by that gener-
ation of rebels, and the way that this uprising was pacified was not by “breaking their bones,” but
by bringing in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was in exile in Tunis, and ap-
pointing it as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. As specified in the US Army’s
Field Manual, successful, long-lasting counterinsurgency “requires development of viable local
leaders and institutions.”22 If there are no leaders, if the resistance is decentralized, counterin-
22
Joint Publication FM 3–24: Counterinsurgency, 2018, 1–22.

19
surgency requires the creation of a centralized leadership. The PLO, which had been created by
Arab states in 1964 as what Baconi calls “a tool to control the insurgent [Palestinian] factions,”23
was now appointed by the US and Israel as the leadership of the uprising. This allowed Israel
and the US to marginalize and ignore the decentralized popular committees that were, to use
Fanon’s terminology, guiding the insurrection away from a recuperable “traditional politics.”24
Then, through the Oslo Accords between 1993–95, the PLO, Israel, and the US formed the PA
as an auxiliary arm of the Israeli occupation, with a limited security apparatus that would be
dedicated to policing and repressing insurgents within Palestinian population clusters in select
areas of the West Bank and Gaza. I can’t describe how successful this move was.
Well-meaning people still see the Oslo Accords as a genuine peace process rather than a
sophisticated counterinsurgency operation that enabled Israel to continue entrenching its settle-
ment project with relative calm. After the so-called peace process collapsed with the conclusion
of the five years allotted for its duration, the PA remained. The Second Intifada broke out in Oc-
tober 2000, and for a brief moment PLO Head Yasser Arafat did act up by releasing 350 political
prisoners, including Hamas and PIJ members, but then the US and Israel effectively fired him,
and a new collaborator-in-chief was appointed, Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen. The PA was
ousted from Gaza in 2007 when Abu Mazen attempted what Baconi calls a “US-planned coup,”25
after Hamas won the elections in 2006.26 But Abu Mazen was able to complete the coup in the
West Bank and greatly help in stabilizing Israel’s control there.27
The PA creates the appearance of Palestinian autonomy, but in fact, much like the govern-
ments of the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, it is simply an extension of the colonial state,
a tool of counterinsurgency that is highly effective for the repression of local rebellions, because
it makes the native population police itself. Fatah, which was a revolutionary movement in the
early days of the armed struggle, is now mostly contained by the PA. Would-be rebels are now
government employees, fighting to keep their collaborationist jobs. Community organizers are
now working for NGOs, exemplifying Colin Powell’s infamous categorization of nonprofits as
“force multipliers” for Empire.28 The money funneled by NATO countries into the nonprofit and
government sector is the main reason for the relative pacification of the West Bank following the
militarization of the Palestinian resistance in the Second Intifada. This echoes General Petraeus’s
guideline of employing “money as a weapons system.”29 These are the winning counterinsur-
gency principles: move in with overwhelming force to control space, isolate the insurgents from
the general population, appoint your own government (but, importantly, make it of the same
identity as the general population), and supply the population with services so they don’t become

23
Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, Stanford Studies in Middle
Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2018), 14.
24
“Les dirigeants de l’insurrection, qui voient le peuple enthousiaste et ardent porter des coups décisifs à la
machine colonialiste, renforcent leur méfiance à l’égard de la politique traditionnelle.” Frantz Fanon, Les damnés de la
terre (La Découverte / Poche, 2016), 127.
25
Baconi, Hamas Contained, 331.
26
David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell,” Vanity Fair, March 3, 2008, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/
gaza200804.
27
Baconi, Hamas Contained, 123.
28
Sarah Kenyon Lischer, “Military Intervention and the Humanitarian ’Force Multiplier,’” Global Governance 13,
no. 1 (2007): 99–118.
29
David H. Petraeus, “Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander’s COUNTERINSURGENCY GUIDANCE” (Military
Review, 2008), 211.

20
insurgents to meet their basic needs (this ties with General Peter Chiarelli’s SWEAT concept,30
standing for sewage, water, electricity, and trash-collection; I recommend Greg Stoker’s short
video on SWEAT-MSO on this). In short: “divide-and-conquer” and money—this is how empires
win wars.
But somehow, even though the world supplied the Palestinian Authority with the neoliberal
institutions that would lead it into the choking counterinsurgent stability of a neocolonial regime,
Israel keeps shooting itself in the foot. Interestingly, Israeli army literature generally fails to rec-
ognize the effectiveness of the PA in furthering its interests. The term “counterinsurgency” has
not been fully translated into Hebrew, and when Israeli strategists do talk about it in English
they generally conflate counterinsurgency with “counterterrorism.”31 You can see this scrolling
through Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies, a 2016 Cambridge publication co-edited by an Is-
raeli author: in their timeline of Israel’s purported “counterinsurgency experience,” they simply
skip the important years following the Oslo Accords,32 revealing to us that they only understand
counterinsurgency as the application of force, and not as “stability operations.”33 How can they
misunderstand this? It might have something to do with the nature of Israel as a settler-colony,
where the foundational idea is to ethnically cleanse and replace the native population rather than
simply contain and control it. But I think the true reason is incompetence and, on a broader level,
greed. The Israeli army, as argued by Israeli historian Uri Milstein, is a deeply anti-intellectual
institution,34 and increased reliance on the army as a generator of GDP incentivizes a suicidal
military strategy. I suppose you could see this as a symptom of capitalism as a whole, where the
logic of the market can be self-undermining. The Palestinian resistance, which, by contrast, fo-
cuses on sumud (perseverance) and on the long-term sustainability of its capacity to fight, might
find this encouraging.

Looking Ahead
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ’What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or
the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing
genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
— Aaron Bushnell

Six months in, the question remains: when will the world intervene? The resistance within
Gaza continues unabated to inflict casualties on the IDF and impede the machinery of genocide.
Resistance continues also, importantly, in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. In the US, there has been
some targeting of the Israeli shipping company ZIM, of arms manufacturer Elbit, and other logis-
tical operations and weapons manufacturers. However, the impression has been that whatever
popular energy had appeared in the first several weeks following October 7 has been mostly
30
Fred M. Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, 1st Simon &
Schuster hardcover ed (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 185.
31
Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir, “Israel’s Counterinsurgency Experience,” in Insurgencies and Counterinsurgen-
cies, ed. Beatrice Heuser and Eitan Shamir (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 168–90.
32
Inbar and Shamir, 178.
33
Joint Publication FM 3–24: Counterinsurgency, 7–3 (89).
34
Uri Milstein, ‫[ המתמשך הכשל “תסמונת‬The Continuous Failure Syndrome],” ‫הארץ‬, April 3, 2012, sec. ,‫ דעות‬https://
www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2012-04-03/ty-article-opinion/0000017f-ef34-d4cd-af7f-ef7c79660000.

21
contained by liberals and identity politicians. Anti-Zionist Arab, Jewish, and student organiza-
tions have been able to channel popular rage towards marches and rallies, and are now gearing
up to continue this de-facto counterinsurgency operation by platforming electoral campaigns.
As soon as someone proposes more decisive action, they defang it by claiming that the action
would pose a risk to people of a marginalized identity. Of course, as Idris Robinson says, their
ability to hold civil protest is “predicated on genocide in Palestine.” Meanwhile, the insurrec-
tionary tendencies that would be able to call out and circumvent the counterinsurgent modality
of the liberal and identity organizations has not yet intervened meaningfully for Palestine. These
tendencies participated in the 2020 George Floyd Uprising and have apparently reappeared as
a completely decentralized network powering the Stop Cop City movement. They successfully
temporarily dismantled the Cop City construction site on March 5, 2023 and pressured multi-
ple construction companies to drop their contracts with the project, includingone company that
held on tenaciously before finally dropping out after dozens of clandestine sabotage attacks all
over the country. A similar campaign could conceivably isolate, drive out, or compel local arms
manufacturers to stop supplying Israel. It remains to be seen whether these tendencies will be
willing or able to connect themselves materially to the popular forces that have still not been
fully co-opted by what Robinson calls “the progressive wing of the counterinsurgency.”
In February, anarchist Aaron Bushnell committed the extraordinary act of killing a US Air
Force soldier by orchestrating his live-streamed self-immolation—an act of solidarity felt deeply
by various Palestinian resistance groups. While his death is tragic and horrifying, it charged what
he had to say with meaning. This seemed to have helped in giving protest in the US another boost,
challenging people here and everywhere to have a fraction of his courage and do everything in
their power to stop the genocide. His sacrifice calls on us all to step up.
I find some hope in the increasing popularity of the writings of Basil Al-Araj in Palestinian re-
sistance discourse. Himself a martyred resistance fighter killed by Israeli soldiers in a shootout in
2017, Basil was heavily influenced by Fanon and adopted his radically inclusive, anti-identity pol-
itics outlook. In his “Eight Rules and Insights on the Nature of War” Basil said, “Every Palestinian
(in the broad sense, meaning anyone who sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of
their secondary identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Palestine, so be
careful not to fail in your duty.”35 In a lesser known piece that has yet to fully appear in English,
he wrote:
I no longer see this as a conflict between Arabs and Jews, between Israeli and Pales-
tinian. I have abandoned this duality, this naïve oversimplification of the conflict.
I have become convinced of Ali Shariati and Frantz Fanon’s divisions of the world
[into a colonial camp and a liberation camp]. In each of the two camps, you will find
people of all religions, languages, races, ethnicities, colors, and classes. In this con-
flict, for example, you will find people of our own skin standing rudely in the other
camp, and at the same time you will find Jews standing in our camp.36
He goes on to criticize Israeli journalist Amira Hass’s editorials as insidious examples of
“the progressive wing of the counterinsurgency,” counterposing Israelis such as Yoav Bar and
35
Basil Al-Aʿraj, “Eight Rules and Insights on the Nature of War,” Resistance News Network, 2017 2023, https://
t.me/PalestineResist/25227.
36
Basil Al-Aʿraj, Wajadtu Ajwibatī: Hākadhā Takallama al-Shahīd Bāsil al-Aʻraj, al-Ṭabʻah al-ūlá (Bayrūt: Bīsān
lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2018), 146. My translation.

22
Jonathan Pollak as examples of Jews who, as Fanon would say, “change sides, go ’native,’ and
volunteer to undergo suffering, torture, and death” as members of the camp of liberation.37 If, as
per Basil and Fanon, the broad resistance would be able to distinguish friends and enemies based
on “the choices they make,”38 on their actions and commitments, rather than their identity and
“race,” then counterinsurgent psychological operations that pit people against each other and dif-
fuse collective action might be halted at the point of implementation, enabling a more formidable
movement trajectory in the heart of Empire.
This essay, based on a transcript of an interview with Silver Lining on WCBN 88.3 FM Ann Arbor
on Oct 27, 2023, has been substantially expanded and updated.

Adi Callai is the host of the Youtube channel Rev & Reve. Their novel The Sodomites was first
published from Xi Draconis in 2020. @adicallai

<brooklynrail.org/2024/05/field-notes/The-Gaza-Ghetto-Uprising>

37
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 94.
38
James Yaki Sayles, Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings
(Chicago, Ill.: Spear and Shield, 2010), 181.

23
anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better
future
there is still time

maia arson crimew

2024-11-14
 one: doom
”All my siblings wanna swim but it’s infested with great whites Tell me if shit
changed since Leelah and Blake died Tell me if my best friend’s about to be next in
line Tell me that I’m brave motherfucker, do you wanna die?” Rural Internet - i
am not brave

the world is looking dire right now. it seems like everything is worse than it has ever been,
or maybe just like things suddenly flipped back to ”bad” after a brief period where it seemed to
be getting better. but no matter what happened or how, one thing is clear: the number of socially
acceptable targets and scapegoats is steadily increasing, the focus shifting constantly.
the fascists call us ”degenerates”, blaming us for all of society’s woes, while the liberal ”left”
throw us under the bus again and again, blaming anyone but themselves for their loss of state
power. none of this is new, per se, but the suffocating feeling of this ever-accelerating descent
into hell is just as scary. the US has voted four times on a federal level since trump first came to
power, and somehow we’re still exactly where we left off almost a decade ago.
it’s paralyzing, really, to see the rights we’ve fought over for decades—maybe even centuries—
eroded away so rapidly all over the world. no matter how predictable this may have been, no
amount of ”told you so” changes just how shocking it still is.
we undeniably are at a turning point of sorts—things are not fine, and this essay does not
want to pretend they are. its goal is instead to provide a perspective for a hopeful future at a
community level, a perspective beyond voting and party politics. and while clearly sparked by
the results of the US election, i did my best to write this for an international audience39 .

two: community
”there is no higher good than the pursuit of self happiness and fun. the act of doing
something purely for fun is blindingly good, as it is the action of doing something
only to create positivity and put more goodness into the world. […] the act of hav-
ing fun creates goodness, which means it is the greatest thing one can do.” elena
fortune, manifesto

one call pierces sharply through all the vaguely hopeful posts whenever a rightward shift
happens, or the state takes another life, or a fascist wins an election, or yet another right is
stripped away, or one more senseless war breaks out: ”organize!”
but what does it really mean to ”get organized”? what is community and how do we find it?
a lot of those posts seem to think of organizing as simply joining a union, a political party or
a similar radical organization. to me this feels too hollow, too shortsighted and too often leaves
people with more questions than answers.
after all, the true heart of any radical movement—of any revolution, of any kind of community—
is the people supporting it and keeping it alive from behind the front lines. think about the
community kitchen that cooks for you; the local bands stoking your morale; the storytellers
keeping the memory of your movement alive; the researchers documenting fascists and the state;

39
i mean, it’s not like im from the US myself

27
the queers who organize the parties where you can be unapologetically yourself for a night; the
mental health and legal support folks making sure you and your friends are safe during and after
a demonstration; the people making flyers, art, and zines; the friends you can count on for always
being around and full of hope.
no matter if you’re at the front lines when we face off against fascists and the state, you play
an integral role in keeping the movement thriving. there’s a role for everyone—no matter your
skillset, risk affinity or ablebodiedness.
any kind of community has the ability to enact change in this neoliberal individualist society—
any kind. this includes not just the examples at the start of this section, but also your local friend
circle, your city’s underground music scene, your polycule, your local book club, your group chat
or really any other group of people. hell, even conservatives have used this to their advantage for
decades now—it’s one of the reasons why homeowners’ associations and groups of ”concerned
parents” are so damn good at politicizing whatever the hell they want to.
we slowly build a future for ourselves by fostering communities of all kinds, creating lifelong
bonds and friendships, making collective memories of moments where time stops just for a little
bit as we sit around a fire and have fun, refusing to give up our love for each other through all
hatred. because no matter how fun it is to imagine the current system laying in ashes before us,
actually getting there is meaningless if we have nothing to fill that void with.
when i think of community i think of friendships, of friend groups, the people who share my
dream for a better future. i think about the people i’ve gone to protests with, the people i’ve ran
away from cops and fascists with, the people who’ve tended to my health afterward, the people
i’ve hacked governments and corporations with, the online music communities that rebuilt my
hope when i was on the verge of throwing in the towel, the people i’ve moshed with at local
shows and all the people i can run to when it feels like everything is just too much. there isn’t
”the community”, there are many communities that every single one of us are a part of.
to me, the problem with any community solely dedicated to ”doing politics”, whatever that
may be, is that the only thing that tends to hold it together is the unifying force of anger. and while
that rage and resentment may be powerful in the short term, it is integral for any community to
also share more positive emotions; the fun times are the glue holding us together and keeping our
spirits high. we cannot just fight, we have to live to be able to fight. anarchism is about togetherness,
and we can only achieve this by coming together not just to fight but also to have fun and laugh
together, even if only for a bit.

three: hope
”We are in crisis. Crisis is opportunity. I absolutely do not want to celebrate the fact
that we are in crisis. It is not good. But it affords certain opportunities, ones that
we need to engage with.” Margaret Killjoy, The Sky is Falling; We’ve Got This
(2024)

it is in this togetherness, this feeling of belonging and this common joy, where i find my hope
for the future. anarchism is alive in the here and now; our bright future is being molded within the
bleak present. autonomous DIY venues, squats, small-scale occupations and entire autonomous
regions show us how a different, non-authoritarian future is not only possible but also already
happening.

28
 more and more people are growing disillusioned with the status quo, and while many of them
join mass actions, be it on the street or online, we can’t be content with just that. make friends
at protests, help people figure out their place in the movement, give each other community. this
is how we keep up the momentum, how we keep our hope for a better future alive. we have a
chance to turn our shared anger at this moment into shared love for each other—a chance to keep
going.
it’s this hope that makes us powerful. it’s this hope that keeps us and those around us going.
it’s too easy to fall into a doomer mindset, to just go ”it’s joever”, but doom won’t save us: we
can’t build a better world on nihilism. spite alone can get you far, but it will never make you happy.
as cheesy as it sounds, one thing all the easy-to-share optimistic posts are right about is that love,
hope and friendship will always be some of the most radical acts we can do.
hope alone obviously doesn’t lead us to this future, but without it we have no reason to raise
our arms, to rebel and tear down the systems holding us back. it is this hope in a world full of
doom that creates solidarity in crisis, this hope that organically leads to mutual aid in natural
disasters, this hope that leads people to pick up guns and fight for their community when an
army tries to tear their world apart. why fight to survive if we don’t allow ourselves to truly live
until our very last breath?
autonomy is the result of hope in moments of crisis, and our love, hope and friendship is the
glue that holds it together. anarchism is a human response to oppression, to our world falling
apart around us, to having no one left but each other. anarchism has always been everywhere.
anarchism starts in the now.

further reading
• The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective, An Anarchist FAQ (2020)

• Adam Gary Lewis, Imagining autonomy on stolen land (2017)

• Phineas Fisher, Hack Back: A DIY Guide (2017)

• Subcowmandante Marcos, Hack Back: A DIY guide to robbing banks (2019)

• maia arson crimew, stop studying cybersecurity because of me (2024)

Retrieved on 2024-11-14 from https://maia.crimew.gay/posts/anarchism-in-the-now/

29
Yintah film review: Anarchists in the blind
spot
The necessity to write our own histories

Anonymous

November 9th, 2024

 Yintah is the latest installment of a long tradition of indigenous documentaries
speaking truth to power against colonial violence in so-called Canada. The story told
is of an anti-pipeline struggle to protect the richness of life that the Wedzin kwa river
offers, a decade long fight that involved not only the Wet’suwet’en peoples of north-
ern British-Columbia, but also hundreds of dedicated non-indigenous comrades who
fought valiantly alongside them. Except the film chose to cast them aside.
The documentary portrays land reoccupation through the personal projects of Freda Huson
and Molly Wickham over the course of ten years, but also makes a point to frame those individual
stories in a more expansive and continual relationship of the Wet’suwet’en people to the land.
The conflict over industrial and otherwise settler-colonial exploitation of the land is part of the
present, past, and future of the territory, and the film does a good job situating the latest struggle
against Coastal Gaslink on a longer timeline. The film ends with a strong position of indigenous
resilience in the face of lost battles, and should inspire many that the fight is never over as long
as we are alive.
A central argument Yintah makes is one most indigenous social movements have been push-
ing forward in North America, which is that the land should be under local and traditional juris-
diction of its original peoples. This framework opens the door to a legalistic approach to anticolo-
nial discourse (« Who is the rightful decider? »), which Yintah gives legitimacy to for example by
recounting the Delgamuukw case as a historical win for the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxan nations. Re-
ferring to or using the western legal system is neither revolutionary nor anarchist, and comrades
involved in indigenous solidarity work have highlighted this point of tension before. Yintah‘s
non-critical approach to legalistic tactics distances its narrative from an uncompromis-
ing and feral position against the colonial state. But I guess it also paints a truthful depiction
of how unfortunately many activists end up wasting their time and energy in lawsuits and legal
cases. If we can briefly hear Freda say Delgamuukw hasn’t changed anything, then why waste
precious screening minutes showcasing the legal fight in a positive light beforehand? It only re-
inforces reformist aspirations to pursue court battles. Relying on the judicial system to recognize
indigenous governance also contributes to creating a new class of indigenous elite deciders (sell-
outs) that move on to exploit the land at the expense of ecosystems. This is happening right now
as the Nisga’a Nation, an indigenous political entity legitimized by a treaty signed in 1998, has
welcomed and invested in the construction of the PRGT pipeline, northwest of the CGL line.
The question of jurisdiction is not where anarchists and indigenous land defenders share
the most affinity. Indigenous jurisdiction, even put through the lens of a pre-colonial political
system, opens the door to legitimizing forms of authority that, in a decolonized future, would pit
anarchists against indigenous figures of power, and is also today encouraging power imbalance
on current shared sites of struggle. Thankfully Yintah does not shy away from including one scene
that recounts one of the most discordant moments of the struggle when chief Namoks decided on
his own, in fear of police use of force, to open the Unist’ot’en gates to pipeline workers, against
the will of companions on site and Freda herself. This was not the only moment when power
was yielded in the name of Wets’uwet’en traditional governance and at the expense of the fight
against police and CGL. But it was maybe the most impactful one, and I am thankful this movie
scene offers a brief moment of nuance in an otherwise sugarcoated version of the power dynamics
on the frontline.
Land is of course absolutely central to anti-colonialism. During the struggle against the North-
ern Gateway project, the Coastal Gaslink construction and the RCMP’s heightened presence

33
(roughly the 2012-2022 decade), the backroads territory has been the site of an impressive game
of snakes and ladders to control the access to isolated valleys. Yintah chose to dedicate a lot of its
screening time to traditional uses of the land. We are shown many scenes of harvesting game and
berries, the importance of transferring wet’suwet’en knowledges and values to younger genera-
tions and the relationship between traditional ways of life and health. Crucial to the #LandBack
movement and Indigenous resurgence, I understand why these themes are explored as an exclu-
sively wet’suwet’en story. But the story of confrontation with pipeline projects was not
exclusively wet’suwet’en, and Yintah turned a blind eye to the central role anarchists
playedin defending the land against industrial invasion. This is what every comrade has
been whispering about since the film came out. Over the decade, there has been hundreds of
anarchists who, from far away and traveling onsite, dedicated their hearts and their time and
sometimes took immense risk to defend wet’suwet’en land. Anarchists organized solidarity ac-
tions in both affinity based models and in larger scale social contexts across the country, expand-
ing all the way to Europe and the Pacific Northwest of the US for years, and insurgent tactics
have flourished during #ShutDownCanada. According to many first hand accounts, the frontline
camps could not have survived without anarchists’ contributions. The struggle was huge and
has changed many non-wet’suwet’en people’s lives, many anarchists, and many others as well.
Including the solidarity from non-Indigenous peoples would only have strengthened
the Wet’suwet’en story of resistance, not diluted it. Do we have the audacity to bring this
up as a grievance to our Indigenous friends? Is it totally misplaced to critique an indigenous film
that makes no place for non-indigenous peoples? Not PC for sure.
The narrative choice of Yintah to focus on Molly and Freda also sometimes feels almost claus-
trophobic, and we lose a sense of the scale of the movement that involved thousands. There is a
risk that countless people will watch Yintah and think that such a large scale moment of rupture
rests on the shoulders of a few key figures, or that indigenous resistance can make do without
the solidarity of allies and accomplices across all social identities. Leadership is a natural human
dynamic that can organically move people to act, and can shift depending on the relationships
in a said group. But there is a fine line between recognizing leadership qualities as natural and
beneficial, and the development of a cult of personality that can be created by certain media defor-
mations. The image of Gidimt’en Checkpoint portrayed through its media channels (instagram
and youtube) has misled many folks who have unfortunately showed up to camp with unreal-
istic expectations such as finding a space that is constantly active in preparing confrontation
or occupied and maintained mainly by Indigenous peoples. The mediatic focus of the struggle
might also have put too much weight on our heroines, and health and the need for a sustainable
involvement has been deprioritized. One of my concerns for upcoming struggles is that the film
could embolden identity politicians to recreate a social hierarchy that enables abuse of power on
future frontlines.
What I find unfortunate is that there is the propensity in activist discourse to constantly por-
tray oneself as a victim. Yintah is unfortunately no exception. The 1h45 minutes of the documen-
tary painfully recounts all the possible events and situations under which the state, the police or
extractive industries have oppressed the Wet’suwet’en peoples. Not that we must shy away from
truth speaking, or that the string of events of the struggle should be manipulated or distorted
(blockades were dismantled, cabins destroyed, people arrested, and so on), but every publication
whether it be book, artwork or film, makes choices in the words used, the scenes that are shown
and the potential scenes that are left out. The History we remember is the one some chose to

34
write how they saw fit. There are ways to speak of and against domination that are unapologeti-
cally defiant, with our sight set on the target. CGL might have completed its construction, but it
took them extra billions and a couple years more than anticipated, because a handful of strong
hearts were barricading roads, scaring away pipeline workers and sabotaging their equipment.
There were countless confrontational moments on the territory that were (maybe, maybe not
filmed) left out of the editing. With its narrative constructed around resilience instead of
resistance, Yintah might not be able to inspire others to draw their daggers.
It might not be our Wet’suwet’en companions’ responsibility to tell our side of the story,
but our complete invisibilisation from the struggle is basically dishonest. If we take a step back,
we can see this situation is not new in the historiography of anarchism. Unpleasant to the gen-
eral opinion and defiant to the leftist movements, anarchist action and involvement in historical
events has always been undermined, evacuated, or falsified when it was time to write down a
page of History. In some ways the film continues the legacy of writing off anarchists as outside
agitators. Instead of recounting how anarchists have been invited to come to the frontlines and
have engaged with land defense in a sustained way for years, Yintah litteraly places anarchists
outside of the frame of legitimate participants in the struggle, and leaves room for the liberal me-
dia narrative of violent hijackers to step forward. This is hard to digest, when we know in reality
that there were moments when only masked white anarchists were present and they were asked
to pose with warrior flags for a good photo op. As I write this, land defense in northern BC has
already kicked off a new chapter of resistance, this time against the PRGT pipeline. When non-
Indigenous anarchists show up, they might be once again be met with confusion from Indigenous
peoples, just as they were at times during the wet’suwet’en struggle, faced with questions like
“why are you here ?” rather than being understood as part of a larger fabric of anti-industiral
actors in the region.
Yintah has only received positive public feedback. What is the point of yet another text doing
the devil’s work at pointing at the problems? While I wanted to share what I think is valuable
criticism that was discussed amongst friends and companions around me, I still think Yintah
tells a beautiful story of two exceptional women that is worth sharing, and a story that hopefully
inspires other Indigenous peoples to reoccupy their land and defend it against industrial destruc-
tion. What I take away from watching the film is the motivation to support and contribute to
anarchists telling their own histories. In a world of overlapping truths, different layers of experi-
ences and their takeaways can compliment and contradict each other. We do not need one official
History of the past decade of struggle on the yintah.

“If anarchists don’t make their own History, their enemies will. […] Should we not
wish that our stories end up in the hands of those who could only write them to suit
their own needs” (Plain Words, Roofdruk/Compass editions, 2024).

In an anarchist history of the struggle on the yintah, the question of jurisdiction and other
legal approaches would be presented as hindrances to the liberation of land and life. In an anar-
chist history of the struggle on the yintah, internal conflict would not be shoved under the rug
but taken as an opportunity to try to draw lessons from, so we can continue to deconstruct how
we relate to each other outside of civilization’s dogmas. In an anarchist history of the struggle on
the yintah, we would recount the dozens of barricades on fire, cop attacks and destroyed machin-
ery to remind us we are truly alive and free in the blissful moment of action. And there would

35
probably be many more anarchist histories of the struggle on the yintah, I am after all just one
amongst many anarchists.

Suggested further reading

• Between Storms, anarchist reflections of solidarity with Wet’suwet’en resistance

• Water Falling on Granite

• The visceral viewpoint

• Call to action against PRGT pipeline

Retrieved on November 14th 2024 from

https://bccounterinfo.org/2024/11/09/yintah-documentary-film-review-anarchists-in-the-blind-
spot-or-the-necessity-to-write-our-own-histories/

36
When You Cross Pinochet With a Cyberpunk
Dystopia…

Kevin Carson

November 9th, 2024

…what do you get? Answer: “Special Little Freedom Zones.”

That’s what Reason’s Liz Wolfe calls the Honduran “charter cities,” officially known as ZEDEs
(Zones for Economic Development and Employment), which were declared illegal in September
by the Honduran Supreme Court (“No More Special Little Freedom Zones,”” September 25). The
ruling prohibits the creation of new ZEDEs; its effect on existing ones, like Próspera, Ciudad
Morazán, and Zede Orquidea, is as yet unknown.
Wolfe describes such charter cities as “special economic economic zones that are still bound
by criminal law but able to create their own civil codes.” And again: “they get to set their own
laws and regulations and typically choose to create more business-friendly conditions with less
taxation.”
Reason — and more specifically Reason’s Brian Doherty — has been shilling for these “spe-
cial little freedom zones” since not long after a right-wing coup regime came to power in 2009.
Doherty quotes an article Bryan Caplan wrote for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

“A charter city begins on empty land,” he said. “It can only grow by voluntary mi-
gration of workers and investors. If no one chooses to relocate, they’re no worse off
than they would have been if the charter city had never existed.”

But that so-called “empty land” bears some looking into. Honduras, Lauren Carasik writes
at Foreign Policy — like many other places in the Third World — has long been characterized by
irregular or informal land titles not legally registered or recognized by the central government.

Ortiz says that he has resided on the land in the community of Playa Blanca on
Zacate Grande Island, off of Honduras’ west coast, for decades. The problem is that
he doesn’t have a title to it, leaving him no recourse to the wall. His quandary is a
common one: approximately 80 percent of the country’s privately held land is either
untitled or improperly so according to a 2011 USAID report.

Writers like Hernando de Soto have argued that this lack of formal legal title, and the certainty
and predictability, the ability to legally protect titles and enter into contract, that go with it, are a

37
major reason for continued underdevelopment. De Soto sees the formalization of informal land
titles as an important step toward prosperity.
The devil lies in the details. There are two ways to formalize customary or informal land
claims — from the bottom up, and from the top down. Consider, for example, the 17th century
English “land reform” after the Restoration of Charles II. As Christopher Hill argued, Parliament
could regularize titles from the bottom up by abolishing feudal titles, fees, and rents and formally
recognizing the peasant cultivators as the legal owners of the land they occupied and worked.
Or, acting from the top down, it could instead abolish the feudal obligations of the landed classes
and the customary rights of their peasant tenants, and transform them into fee simple owners, i.e.
landlords in the modern capitalist sense — thereby turning peasant cultivators into simple tenants
at will with no right to the land. Unsurprisingly Parliament — overwhelmingly dominated by the
landed nobility and gentry — chose the latter course. In Christopher Hill’s words, “feudal tenures
were abolished upwards only, not downwards.”
Interestingly enough, leftist president Manuel Zelaya — the one who was overthrown in the
2009 coup — had, prior to his overthrow, been working on a land reform that would have regu-
larized peasants’ informal and customary claims to the land they were working, and given them
formal legal title. That wasn’t the kind of regularization the landed oligarchy of Honduras — any
more than that of 17th century England — wanted.
President Hernandez, who was swept into power by the coup that overthrew Zelaya, approved
the charter cities project. With the peasant occupants of land coveted by the ZEDE merchant-
adventurers in possession of no formal legal title, the land could be treated as “unoccupied.”
Carasik continues:

Zacate Grande Island, where only a few campesino families have title to their land,
is a window into exactly what that process might look like. Though under the ZEDE
law residents whose land is expropriated are supposed to be repaid, the majority
of the island’s families lack the legal documents necessary to support claims for
indemnities. And without legal and financial resources, Zacate Grande’s campesinos
are unable to contest their evictions by establishing their long-term possession of
the land.

So, while neoliberal advocates of charter cities wring their hands over “weak institutions”
and the need for “rule of law,” ZEDEs’ predatory promoters have in fact taken advantage of
those weak institutions in order to loot the commons for their own ends.
On top of that, while densely populated areas will be allowed to hold plebiscites as to whether
or not to be incorporated into ZEDEs, sparsely populated areas like rural villages which border
on ZEDEs will have no legal defense against being absorbed by them.
Another aspect of ZEDEs that doesn’t meet the smell test: Although Wolfe says the charter
cities get to create “their” own civil codes, the actual “they” is the enterprises located in the zone;
it’s “investors” who get to choose the legal system they’ll be subject to. Although the great ma-
jority of people living within these “charter cities” will be workers, the owners of enterprises —
owners of capital — are the only sources of political authority governing the regulatory frame-
work and civil law.
So we’re talking about a “free market utopia” authorized by a right-wing coup regime, built
on land stolen from peasants, with “property rights” created through robbery, and where the

38
majority of the population lives under a system of laws which their employers had the only say
in making. Now, that might sound like “economic freedom” to a Hoppean, or someone for whom
Snow Crash sounds like an ideal world. But to the rest of us, it sounds like something else.

Retrieved on November 9th, 2024 from https://c4ss.org/content/59956

39
 Life Without Law
An introduction to anarchist politics

Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness

Fall 2013, revised 2024

 I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant
things.
—Emma Goldman, 1931

An anarchist is someone who rejects the domination of one person or class of people over
another. Anarch-ism is a very broad umbrella term for a group of political philosophies that are
based on the idea that we can live as anarchists. We anarchists want a world without nations, gov-
ernments, capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia… without any of the numerous, intersecting
systems of domination the world bears the weight of today.
There is no single perfect expression of anarchism because anarchism is a network of ideas
instead of a single dogmatic philosophy. And we quite prefer it that way.

The World Today

You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live
attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn,
and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas
and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which
makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of
life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain
and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the
civilized world.
—Octave Mirbeau, 1899

There are those who say that anarchism wouldn’t work, that we need laws and cops and
capitalism. But we say that it is the systems currently in place which aren’t working.
Industrialization is warming the planet to the degree that it might yet just kill us all. In the
best case scenario, we’ve already created one of the largest mass extinctions in the history of the
earth. Deforestation spreads the deserts in the wild and systemic racism expands the food deserts
in the cities.
Billions go hungry every day across the globe because global capitalism makes it more prof-
itable for the elite of starving nations to grow crops for export than to feed their own people.
Science has been subverted by the demands of profit, and research is only funded if it explores
what might make some rich bastards richer.
Even the middle class is beginning to fall into ruin, and in this economy there aren’t many
left who buy into the myth of prosperity they sold some of us when we were kids.
We’re told that anarchy can’t work because people are “inherently” flawed and are motivated
solely by self-interest. They somehow make the illogical jump from this idea to the idea that we
therefore need leaders and government. But if we don’t trust people to lead themselves, why do
we trust them enough to put them in charge of everybody?
What if instead of the top-down organizations that have led us into ruin, we created horizontal
organizations? What if we made a society in which we collectively confront problems–without
ignoring what makes each of us unique and without forcing the individual into subservience to
the whole?

43
 Responsibility and Freedom
An anarchist is one who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974

One way some anarchists like to think about it is that anarchism is the marriage of responsi-
bility and freedom. In a state society, under the rule of government, we are held responsible to a
set of laws to which we did not consent. We are expected to be responsible without being trusted
with freedom. There are laws about everything: whom we can love, what imaginary lines we can
cross, what we can do with our own bodies. We are not trusted to act on our own authority, and
at every turn we are being managed, observed, policed, and, if we step out of line, imprisoned.
The reverse—freedom without responsibility—is not much better, and it forms the mainstream
myth of anarchy. Government thrives off this misconception, the idea that it’s only the existence
of cops and prisons that keeps us from murdering one another wholesale. But in reality, the
people in this world who act with total freedom and no responsibility are those so privileged in
our society so as to be above reproach, such as the police and the ultra rich. Most of the rest of us
understand that in order to be free we must hold ourselves accountable to those we care about
and those our actions might impede upon: our communities and families and friends.

Anti-Capitalism
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people
naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how
many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not
any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying
to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget
that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754

There’s this idea, which has proven demonstrably false on a global level, that it’s “good” or
“healthy” or “more natural” for most everyone in a society to act solely for personal gain. In
economic terms, this is the central myth of capitalism: that everyone should try to get one over on
everyone else all the time, and that if everyone does that, most people win. The people who want
you to believe that myth are the people who do win: the people who already control everything.
Capitalism does not, as is popularly misunderstood, mean an economic system in which peo-
ple work for money that they can exchange for goods or services. Capitalism is, instead, an eco-
nomic system in which people can leverage their access to capital to extort money from other
people. That is to say, capitalism is the system by which people who own things don’t have to
work and everyone else does. The owning class makes money just by already having money. They
make money off of investments, off of renting property, off of the value produced by their em-
ployees. They live in luxury because they are in the process of dominating everyone who makes
money through work.
Capitalism is a system by which one class of people dominates another, and we oppose it.
Instead, we suggest all kinds of different ways of organizing our economies. Some anarchists

44
argue for communism, in which the means of production are held in common by communes
or larger sections of society. Others favor mutualism, in which means of production are owned
by individuals or collectives and money is used but money can only be made through work, not
through capital. There’s collectivism, which strikes something of a middle ground between the
two. There are many more ideas than this besides, and most anarchists believe that any given
group of people ought to be free to choose the system that they prefer—as long as these ideas
steer clear from demonstrably oppressive systems like capitalism.

Anti-State
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1894

For the past several hundred years, the progressive rhetoric in Western societies has been
around what sort of government to have. But the division of people and geography into “states”
under which they are ruled is itself preposterous and harmful. To an anarchist, asking what sort
of government to have is like asking whether it’s better to be eaten by wolves or lions. What is
not asked often enough is whether or not we ought to be “governed” at all.
Anarchists do not eschew organization, however. If anything, we spend too much of our time
concerned with its intricacies. We are opposed to government because we are opposed to being
ruled, not because we are opposed to organizing amongst our peers for our mutual benefit.
Some anarchists say that what they want is a direct democracy–that the people themselves
can rule without a state through community councils and other horizontal organizational sys-
tems. Others eschew the word democracy entirely, finding it too wrapped up in the systems
we have now and suggesting that democracy is a government still, one that makes up a set of
laws that everyone is compelled to obey—like when six wolves and four sheep get together to
plan what they would like for dinner. Every anarchist, like every person, is different and finds
resonance in different ideas and different ways of framing our ideas.
Amongst ourselves, we generally create organizational structures that allow for the full au-
tonomy of every individual, wherein no person can be compelled to go along with the wishes of
the group. Because we are not interested, by and large, in static organizational structures with
fixed and official membership, anarchists are able to organize organically. People come and go
from organizations and the organizations themselves come and go over time based on the needs
of the people who make use of them. When larger structures are deemed useful or necessary,
various groups often form networks, which are horizontal structures for disseminating ideas and
information and for planning complex operations.

A World Without Law

How noble the law, in its majestic equality, that both the rich and poor are equally
prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread!
—Anatole France, 1894

45
 No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law?
The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all
regardless of conditions or place or time.
—Emma Goldman, 1917

Some people have an unfortunate tendency to insist that you can’t be against something
unless you know what you’re for. We reject that idea. We don’t feel the burden of proof is upon
the oppressed to identify what they would like to replace their oppressor with.
If you’re being hit with a baseball bat, you shouldn’t feel obliged to articulate what you would
prefer to be hit with instead. Or, more to the point, police hit us with batons and the media insists
that if we wish to stop being hit with batons we need to articulate exactly how it is we’d like to see
crime and punishment handled within a society that doesn’t rely on police. This is nonsensical.
But while identifying and destroying the existing systems of domination is the task immedi-
ately before us, we do spend some of our time imagining what a world without law would be
like. And occasionally we have the chance to enact such a world for days or weeks or years in
groups both big and small, and we’ve met with a fair amount of success. We know anarchism
works because we’ve experienced it.
A world without law is not a world without guidelines. We are opposed to law because law
is a way of understanding human conduct that was designed—and has been implemented—for
social control rather than for the furtherance of justice. Laws are designed to be obscure yet rigid,
creating a series of traps for those who are already disenfranchised by society.
Law is not actually a particularly useful tool for judging human behavior. As the folk wisdom
suggests, good people don’t need laws and bad people don’t follow them. Laws are black and
white, forcing people to obey the “letter” of the law while gleefully ignoring the “spirit.” And
what’s more, because they are enforced through violence at the slightest provocation, they polar-
ize society into those too afraid to step out of line and those who disobey simply for the sake of
disobeying. Either way, they hinder people’s ability to develop their own personal sets of ethics.
They don’t help people learn to respect other people for the sake of respecting people.
People who are encouraged to act socially tend to act socially, and people who are treated
with empathy will, by and large, respond in kind. There will always be exceptions, but for dealing
with those people, guidelines—which remain mutable to circumstance—are a significantly more
useful tool than law will ever be. Further, many anarchists work towards what is referred to
as transformative justice. This is the concept that, while it is impossible to repair the harm
done by the perpetrator of an unjust act, one can work to help the perpetrator take personal
responsibility for what they have done so as to prevent them from returning to such behavior in
the future. An anarchist society, like any other, will still defend itself from those who cannot or
will not take responsibility for their actions, but this self-defense is done in the name of protection
rather than punishment or revenge. It’s worth acknowledging here that like many of our ideas
and methods, transformative justice is practiced—and was developed—not just by anarchists but
by a wide range of marginalized groups.
And of course, we don’t live in an anarchist society, free from the influence of the culture
of domination that surrounds us, and any thoughts we have about a world without law are rea-
sonably hypothetical. Once more, we reserve the right to condemn atrocities, like the culture of
prison and police, without feeling an obligation to field and implement fully-developed alterna-
tives.

46
 Mutual Aid & Solidarity
I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The
freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its
necessary premise and confirmation.
—Mikhail Bakunin, 1871

Mutual aid is a fancy way of saying “helping each other out,” and it’s one of the core anarchist
beliefs. We believe that people can interact in meaningful ways by sharing resources freely, with-
out coercion. We share because it helps ourselves and everyone around us live more meaningful
lives. We put more stock in cooperation than competition.
Solidarity is a fancy word for “having one another’s backs.” Solidarity is the most powerful
force that the oppressed can bring to bear upon their oppressors. Every time they come after one
of us, we act as though they are coming after all of us. Solidarity can look like a thousand different
things. It can be when someone tackles a cop to free another protester, it can be demonstrations
or actions in the names of those whose voices have been silenced by the state. Solidarity can be
offering childcare for parents, it can be medical aid. Solidarity is when we show the world that
none of us is alone, when we choose to intertwine our struggles.
Solidarity is often contrasted with charity. Charity can be understood as a way of providing
aid that reinforces the hierarchical relationship between groups. Rich people donating money to
charity makes poor people even more dependent upon the rich. Poor people, however, organizing
to share resources as equals, are acting out of solidarity.

Consent & Consensus

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him
my enemy.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1849

Since we anarchists are committed to only doing things with people that those people want
to do, we utilize a number of methods to determine what those things are.
On an individual level, we’re interested in practices based on consent. It’s rather amazing
how little mainstream society teaches us to value one another’s consent.
Consent is a way of finding out what other people are interested in doing with you. Mostly,
this just means asking people before you do things with them. “Do you want to come to this
demonstration?” “Can I kiss you?” “Do you want my advice?” “Can I help you with that?” Some
people consciously develop non-verbal ways of communicating consent, but the important thing
is to not act without knowing if the other person is informed of the ramifications of an action, is
in a headspace to make decisions, and is enthusiastic.
One tool, among many, that we use for finding consent in larger groups is consensus. Con-
sensus is a way of determining what everyone in a group is comfortable with doing. “Do we want
to blockade this building?” “Do we want to sign our group’s name on this public letter?” “Do we
want to publish this book?”
Consensus is a useful tool for respecting the autonomy of every individual within a group.
Some people mistake consensus to be basically the same as voting but where everyone agrees

47
instead of a majority. Voting, however, can be a form of competitive decision-making that is not
designed to respect people’s autonomy. Consensus, instead of being a way to convince everyone
to agree to the same plan, is a way of exploring what the logical limits of any given group are.
If all members of a group cannot agree on a specific action, then that action shouldn’t be done
by that group–but perhaps the individuals who are excited about the action can do it separately.
Unlike consent on an individual level, however, it is not always the case that a group seeking
consensus needs everyone to be enthusiastic about the given action, and “standing aside” on a
decision is common and respectable behavior.
Not all collectives and groups are very formal in their consensus decision-making, and many
groups tend to work more on an “autonomy” model in which everyone is trusted to act on behalf
of the group and then be responsible to everyone else for the actions and decisions they made
on behalf of the group.

Direct Action
Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental
change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns,
but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.
—Lucy Parsons, 1890s

Anarchists do not want to reform the existing political system; we want to abolish it. Instead
of political advocacy, by which we might appeal to others to change our conditions, we generally
practice direct action. Direct action is a means by which we take control over our own lives,
by which we regain the autonomy and agency that is systematically stripped away from us by
governmental systems, by which we become self-thinking individuals.
Rather than plead and beg for the government or corporations to start protecting forests, we
put our bodies between the trees and the chainsaws—or sneak in at night and burn their logging
trucks. No system based on industrialization and capitalism is ever going to prioritize natural
ecosystems over profit, so we won’t waste our time asking nicely.
Rather than ask the capitalists to repeal their trade policies that are gutting developing nations,
we will show up en masse to their summits and block trade delegates from ever having the chance
to scheme. Rather than campaign for the right to marry, we’ll live our queer lives however we
feel with whomever we choose, and we’ll defend ourselves from bigots instead of asking the state
to intervene.

Prefiguration
If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year
he would be worse than the Tsar himself.
—Mikhail Bakunin

We participate in direct action because we find “means” and “ends” to be inseparable; it is the
act of working towards a better society that shows us what it is like to live in one. It’s quite likely
that none of us will live in an anarchist society, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act like anarchists

48
now. To be an anarchist is at least as much about the ways in which you engage with the world
and how you treat people as it is about what fantastic utopia you hope to one day live in.
Sometimes we call this intertwining of the means and the ends “prefiguration.” Anarchists
aim to act in ways that maximize other people’s autonomy. Many Leftists, especially Marxists,
suggest a vanguard with which to seize power. We’ve no interest in seizing power for anyone but
ourselves, and we oppose anyone who thinks they ought to rule us, whether they call themselves
“revolutionary” or not.
What’s more, prefiguration means that we don’t put up with oppressive attitudes in our cir-
cles, because we seek a world without oppressive behavior.
Prefiguration doesn’t mean, however, that we have to be nonviolent. While we do believe
a responsible anarchist world would be more peaceful than the world we inhabit today, most
anarchists accept that domination may occasionally need to be met with violent force in order
to stop it. Our problem isn’t with violence itself, but the systems of domination that make use of
it.

Tactics
An anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the
question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition.
—Benjamin R. Tucker, 1895
The same as there is no unified idea of anarchist economics, there is no universally accepted
framework for anarchist tactics. We know we believe in direct action, but what kinds? Almost
every individual anarchist or anarchist group might respond to this question differently.
One of the more famous anarchist tactics so far in the twenty-first century is the black bloc.
The black bloc is a tactic by which we obscure our identities by wearing identical black clothing
and then engage in various direct actions, usually in public. People in black bloc do everything
from destroy corporate property (like breaking out the windows of banks, court houses, chain
stores, and other institutions and symbols of domination) to defend demonstrations from police
attack (often by using shields, reinforced banners, and the occasional weapon like flagpoles or
thrown rocks) to physically confront fascists. The black bloc tactic remains popular today because
it is effective at empowering those who participate in it and, compared to other tactics, is effective
at keeping those involved safe from police repression. This does not mean that every anarchist
participates in—or even supports—black bloc tactics, nor does it mean that people who participate
in black blocs don’t engage in other tactics as well.
The other thing anarchists are perhaps best known for today are mutual aid organizations. In
some ways, these organizations seem like the exact opposite of militant street demonstrations–
instead of attacking the far right and capitalism, mutual aid organizations distribute food, orga-
nize medical care, teach workshops, and generally help us, as part of society, take care of that
society. Yet these two tactics mutually reinforce each other, and while many anarchists prefer
one or the other, many participate in both.
There are many, many more tactics that anarchists are actively engaged with all over the
world besides distributing food in parks or wearing black and taking the streets. (We also, for
example, sometimes wear color when we take the streets.) We organize demonstrations. We or-
ganize workplaces into unions and we start worker-owned cooperatives. We work towards cities

49
designed to suit the needs of people and the ecosystem instead of the desires of the wealthy. We
deliver firewood to those who need it to heat their rural homes. We punch Nazis. We infiltrate
Nazi organizations to disrupt them. We throw pies at politicians to show the world that they
are not untouchable. We run magazines and podcasts and write as journalists. We hack security
databases and leak information to the public about the ways in which the public is being spied
upon. We tell stories that heroize resistance to oppression. We help people cross borders. We help
fellow prisoners or those getting out of prison. We’ve been known to burn down a building or
two. And it’s been awhile, but we used to kill kings.
We advocate what’s called a diversity of tactics, meaning we’ve got as much respect for
those practicing nonviolent civil disobedience as we do for arsonists—that is to say, only as much
respect as the individual actions themselves deserve on their own merit at the time, place, and
social context in which they were used.

Strategy
An anarchist strategy is not a strategy about how to make a capitalist or statist society
less authoritarian or spectacular. It assumes that we cannot have an anarchist society
while the state or capitalism continues to reign.
—Aragorn!, 2005

A lot of broader strategies have been suggested for how we might go about creating an anar-
chist society—or even just strategies of how we might best live as anarchists here and now. Each
has their proponents and detractors, but few people believe that there is one single correct path
to take towards freedom, and all of these strategies have in the past and will continue to overlap.
The most famous strategy is that of revolution, in which a single, reasonably organized mass
uprising allows for the oppressed classes to seize the means of production and take their lives into
their own hands. Many anarchists remain skeptical of how we might go about organizing such a
thing in a way that doesn’t simply leave a different class of people, an anarchist government of
sorts, in charge.
Revolution does not have the best track record in terms of increasing liberty to those in the
revolutionary country. Quite often, state communists or other authoritarian groups have essen-
tially seized control of the revolution at the last minute, stepping into the vacuum of power. This,
many anarchists would argue, doesn’t mean that an anti-authoritarian revolution is impossible,
only that it faces numerous challenges.
A second strategy is that of fostering insurrections. Insurrections are moments of freedom
and revolt, often occurring in times of crisis. These insurrections can allow for areas to be lib-
erated from state control and, if uprisings occur in increasing strength and frequency, allow for
a generalized revolt that could break state power. It has been argued that insurrections do not
provide lasting change and can often simply serve as an excuse for government repression, but
insurrections have also played important roles in numerous anarchist struggles.
A third strategy that anarchists have historically tried is syndicalism. This method relies
on building the power of the working class through organizing workplaces into interwoven,
mutually supportive unions. Syndicalism has been incredibly popular and often successful in the
past, but the second half of the twentieth century fundamentally changed the way that unions

50
and workplaces organize. Conditions are changing again, however, and workplace organizing is
once again a promising strategy.
Another strategy is referred to sometimes as the dual power strategy, or “building the new
world in the shell of the old.” This is a strategy of building up “counter-infrastructure” along an-
archist lines to fulfill people’s needs and desires while simultaneously attacking the mainstream
institutions that are destroying the world.
Other anarchists have no interest in the creation of an anarchist society, but instead are fo-
cused on attacking the society that has immiserated the world. These anarchists generally prac-
tice nihilism.
None of these strategies are mutually exclusive, of course. Neither is this list exhaustive. Some
anarchists find themselves primarily concerned with strategies based around decolonization, ed-
ucation, or intervening in crisis. Others are likely hard at work scheming strategies that have
never been tried, ideas that we can’t wait to test.

Engagement With The System

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power:
and it issues the coins itself.
—Ursula K Le Guin, 1974
Obviously, despite our best efforts, we live within a capitalist, statist world. Anarchism is
aspirational and optimistic—it is not, however, delusional. Just because we do not approve of the
state’s existence doesn’t mean we don’t understand that the state exists and has material power.
We don’t “believe” in prison, but that doesn’t keep the state from locking us inside it. Every action
we take, as individuals and as groups, needs to accept the reality of the situation. Perhaps if we
were perfect anarchists, we would destroy our state-issued IDs and not pull over the next time
a cop puts on their lights behind us, but we must all make strategic concessions. Similarly, we
want a world without wage labor, but this does not make us hypocrites when we work for the
money we need so that we can eat.

History
The anarchists of revolutionary Spain would probably rather we fight our own strug-
gles today than spend so much time discussing theirs! The Spanish anarchists were just
regular folks, and they did exactly what we’ll do when we get the opportunity.
—Curious George Brigade, 2004
Anarchists are more concerned about the present than the future, because how we live here
and now is more important than some illusory utopia. And we’re more concerned with the future
than the past, because we have control over the future and we will live in it. But we do have a
long and rich history, from which we can draw inspiration, pride, and numerous lessons.
It’s worth distinguishing between Anarchism, with a capital-A, and the broader anarchic
tradition (or sometimes “anarchy” as contrasted with Anarchism). Anarchism, as it’s usually dis-
cussed, is an ideological position developed in Europe during the 19th century alongside social-
ism, communism, and other European responses to capitalism. This Anarchism can be seen as a

51
part of a broader anarchic movement–all of the anti-authoritarian, pro-communal traditions that
can be found in almost every culture in history, including many non-Western cultures around
today.
As for anarchism itself, it was a French working-class typesetter, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
who coined the term in 1840 and was the first to self-identify as an anarchist. The idea spread
quickly and grew beyond what one man could have imagined.
Anarchists have played an enormous role in revolutions, labor struggles, uprisings, and cul-
ture ever since. In the 1880s, anarchists fighting against wage labor in the United States got
caught up in the fight for the eight-hour work day. After a series of labor rights culminating in
a fight in Haymarket Square in Chicago, eight anarchists were put on trial explicitly for being
anarchists. Four were hanged and one killed himself in jail as a result. Their martyrdom changed
labor history across the world, and anarchism continued to be a strong voice in the labor move-
ment. A widow of one of those martyrs, a Black anarchist named Lucy Parsons, went on to help
form the most revolutionary union in US history, the antiracist Industrial Workers of the World.
Anarchists in Mexico led that country’s first strikes in the middle of the nineteenth century
and eventually were involved in the uprisings that led to the Mexican revolution.
At the turn of the twentieth century, we killed kings and other heads of state, forever earning
a reputation as bomb-throwers and assassins which some of us wear with pride and others would
prefer to forget.
We fought for revolution in Russia for decades, only to be betrayed when the Bolsheviks
turned around and began to murder us in 1917. For three years, from 1918–1921, seven million
Ukrainians lived as anarchists until the Bolshevik army betrayed an alliance and conquered us
while we were busy fighting armies hired by the capitalists.
In Germany in the 1920s, anarcho-syndicalists organized two hundred illegal abortion clinics,
helping people–anarchist or not–control their bodily autonomy.
We had another three years of revolution from 1936–1939, when anarcho-syndicalist labor
unions took control of Catalonia, a region in Spain, during the Spanish Revolution. Once again,
while anarchists were busy fighting a right-wing invasion, the Bolshevik-controlled communist
party opened fire on us and the country fell to fascists.
Anarchists were heavily involved in Korean independence from Japanese colonial rule–trying
more than once to assassinate the Japanese emperor–and we were involved in labor and land
struggle in South America. We organized hobos with guns in the US and we robbed banks in
France. And we’ve been involved in numerous art, literary, and music movements—from André
Breton’s involvement in surrealism to Crass’s influence on punk and Ursula le Guin’s anarchist
pacifist approach to science fiction and fantasy.
But we cannot be weighed down by the past. We have our own history to make.

Present
Anarchism is not a concept that can be locked up in a word like a gravestone. It is not a
political theory. It is a way of conceiving life, and life, young or old as we may be, old
people or children, is not something definitive: it is a stake we must play day after day.
—Alfredo M. Bonanno, 1998

52
 Since the start of the twenty-first century, anarchism has been, as a movement, on the up-
swing. It started with the anti-globalization demonstrations at the turn of the millennium, then
moved into the era of anti-austerity movements across the world in the early 2010s, and now
into an era of disaster relief, mutual aid organizing, and the fights against rightwing extremism
and the expansion of policing.
The problems the world faces right now are indescribably dire–between a rise in the far right
across the globe to the rise of, well, temperatures across the globe. Yet the economic and gov-
ernmental systems we have in place have proven themselves either inept or complicit. Every
day, more people are willing to reject authoritarianism, capitalism, and the state solutions to our
problems. Which makes sense—capitalism is quickly destroying everything, and we won’t soon
forget what a nightmare the authoritarians made of revolution, whether the right-wing fascists
or the left-wing Stalinists.

So Let’s Say You Want to Join

In a society that has destroyed all adventure, the only adventure left is to destroy that
society.
—Anonymous French Graffiti, 1968
Anarchism isn’t a membership club. Even as a political ideology, we’re more of an anti-
ideology than we are one with a strict set of rules. So there are no membership forms to mail in
and there are no fees. There are anarchist groups, all over the world, working on any number of
problems that might interest you, from ecology to social justice, and many of those groups will
let you join, or at least participate in their actions.
But you can also just, well, do it. Find yourself a like-minded group of people and get to it.
Organize all the gardeners in your neighborhood to share produce for free or organize against
a multinational like Walmart moving into town. Squat a building and steal electricity to throw
shows and raise money for anarchist prisoners. Attack symbols of power. Spread information.
Act in the ways you feel compelled to act.
But the most important things about being an anarchist are: treating other people with respect,
as masters of their own lives; and taking control of your life, seizing freedom, but remaining
responsible to yourself and those you care about.
In some places, there are existing groups who can use your help. Only rarely will these be
anarchist organizations–instead, they will be organizations that anarchists participate in that
organize horizontally. Food Not Bombs is the longest-running mutual aid organization, providing
free food to all those who need it. Prisoner letter writing nights are a good way to plug in as well.
There are fundraisers to attend at community centers.
Rather than looking to join “the anarchists,” it’s generally better to join the social movements
in your area and look for the anarchists or those with anarchic tendencies.
As a word of warning, there are predators in the anarchist movement. Agents of the state
infiltrate our movement and do their utmost to destroy it. They prey upon new people in par-
ticular, setting them up to break the law and then sending them to prison for years or decades.
Don’t commit felonious crimes with anyone you haven’t known for years. Never let anyone con-
vince you that if you “really cared” about anarchism or some other cause that you’d take some
dangerous action.

53
 And even if you’re acting alone or with your closest childhood friends, think carefully and
maturely about the ramifications of any illegal action you might take. While we cannot let our-
selves be paralyzed by fear, we need to remember that certain types of actions will be treated
very, very seriously by the authorities and far more good can be done from outside of prison
than from within.
But that aside, welcome. We need you. The world needs you. Together we can get some things
done.

Further Reading
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live
under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most
suitable to the artist is no government at all.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Some cool historical anarchists to look up for fun include: Lucy Parsons, Ricardo Flores
Magón, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Errico Malatesta, Kuwasi Balagoon,
Ricardo Flores Magón, Jules Bonnot, Maria Nikiforova, Nestor Makhno, Noe Itō, Kaneko Fumiko,
Voltairine DeCleyre, Louise Michel, and Francesc Ferrer.

Suggested fiction
• The Dispossessed, by Ursula K Le Guin

• A Country of Ghosts, by Margaret Killjoy

• Just Passing Through, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

• The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

• V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore

• The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk

Suggested films
• If a Tree Falls

• Breaking the Spell

• Libertarias

• Rebellion in Patagonia

• Anarchist From Colony

• Land & Freedom

• Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (What to Do in Case of Fire)

54
 Suggested anarchist publishers
• AK Press

• PM Press

• CrimethInc

• Eberhardt Press

• LBC Books

• Combustion Books

• Detritus Books

• On Our Own Authority

• Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness (that’s us!)

We are going to inherit the earth . There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bour-
geoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history.
We are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build
again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is
growing this minute.
—Buenaventura Durruti, 1936

Retrieved on November 18th , 2013 from http://www.tangledwilderness.org/life-without-law/

The first edition was published in 2013. This revised edition was published in 2024. Both were
published by Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness. This is the 2024 revised edition.

55
The Consequences to Rahtid

Fundi

February 1974
 Joseph Edwards, a Jamaican refrigeration mechanic, spoke of radical labor politics in Rasta id-
ioms. Let’s reason “to Rahtid!”
His selected writings have been published as Workers Self-Management in the Caribbean (2014).
When we read his ideas comparatively with Trinidad’s CLR James, Guyana’s Walter Rodney, and
Jamaica’s Michael Manley and Trevor Munroe we can begin to see the antagonisms or debates within
the Caribbean radical tradition that nobody wants us to know about. Further research into Edwards’
legacies reveals another one of his fugitive essays. Unsigned, and without a title, it might best enter
history as “The Consequences to Rahtid.” The editors have made some slight edits and added subtitles
to clarify reception of the text.
Edwards aka “Fundi,” the Caribbean Situationist, besides being adept in the language of Rastas,
Rudies, and Dreads, was an experimental thinker alert to anarchism and autonomist Marxism, Sur-
realism and Dada, the intersection of art in everyday life and the search for a liberating psychology.
We were pleased to discover this essay as the Introduction to Documents of the Caribbean Rev-
olution published in February 1974 by New Beginning Movement. This places him firmer among
those who advocated a Caribbean federation from below.
This essay concludes by emphasizing that “none shall escape the consequences to rahtid.”
The Jamaican patwa term“rahtid” can be used in isolation as an exclamation of excitement, astonish-
ment or recognition that a bad outcome will impact us adversely. The way some might respond “Oh,
shit!” when spontaneous events don’t go their way, place their ambitions in danger, or make their
previous plans a burden or embarrassment. In this idiom, though, the suffix “to rahtid” indicates
a punctuation or accent. None shall escape the consequences to their fullest expression and
extent. Reflect on this as we read the popular social motion he recognizes and records alert to dread
philosophy.
He also begins the essay with the word “Iddeally.” A typo was not going to be found in the first
word of the first sentence. And he was not emphasizing “I” like Rastas underscore the presence of Jah.
Instead it was a play on the psychological “Id” that Freud, who was embraced surprisingly often by
radicals of his generation, framed as the unconscious impulses or instincts of our psyche that contain
elemental drives and hidden memories. What did this mean for a radical political life?
Fundi talks about spontaneity and organization in an original manner that reveals that we can-
not understand the unfolding Caribbean Revolution unless we understand how activists with a faulty
way of seeing can replace the social motion and ideas of the Caribbean masses with the pronounce-
ments of their parties, unions, and organizations — remarkably he says despite the insightful visions
offered found therein, this is a limitation of the very book he is introducing.
How many “progressives” are aware trade unions can be oppressive to workers today? How many
mentally go to pieces in the midst of prison breaks and what is termed looting? Are you aware that
in freedom movements there are often a clash between wishing to fulfill one’s ideals and principles
and “radical” activists who believe no matter how rebellious everyday people express themselves they
will never be ready for what they think revolution requires? This is a result that for far too many
“revolution” is their bureaucratic policies coming to state power — and they will relate to any strategy
for them to have weight above society.
Fundi underlines a certain type of Caribbean Nationalism is worried about radical ideas being
shared that are not homegrown in the region. He thrashes the argument as an obstacle to communica-
tion between toilers across the globe together clarifying their experiences. Fundi says it is by learning
comparatively what has happened to struggles for direct democracy and labor’s self-emancipation
on a world scale that one can be confident about the dynamics that will unfold in the Caribbean

59
region, that of course is made up of different territories with borders dividing us. We know from his
other writings he has in mind the popular committees of the French, Russian, Spanish, and Hungar-
ian Revolutions that CLR James taught many Caribbean radicals to value equal to the Haitian and
Cuban Revolutions.
Past revolutionary history is littered with what Fundi calls ‘gaps’ between the aspiring leaders
(in and out of organizations) apparent consciousness, and the masses creative self-directed initiative.
And for Fundi this is how popular self-directed liberating activity appears but can be defeated and
contained by emerging new States where radicals and progressives often justify the joining of its
bureaucracy after the fall of the Old Regime.
Listen to how Fundi encourages us to help unleash the creative spontaneity of everyday people.
He wants us to become comfortable with what appear Jamaican and Caribbean toilers impossible
demands on society. And he poses what happens when we don’t expect such events unfolding before
our eyes.
Consistent with the “Consequences to Rahtid” that none shall escape, will our response to popular
self-directed initiative be an invigorated excitement? Will we smile but be awkwardly astonished?
Or will we see the rebellion of ordinary Caribbean people as “the problem” of the aspiring Black
rulers whose pursuit of power starts from the premise that they preside over an unconscious people?
Joseph Edwards was arguing that none shall escape the consequences of the instincts, elemental
drives, and hidden memories of the Caribbean toiler to self-emancipate. We can with enthusiasm
prepare to take part and fan the flame, or we can reveal our panic, anxiety, sense of inconvenience,
and hostility to the impending confrontation. All are the consequences taken to their logical conclu-
sion — “to rahtid!” Direct democracy and workers self-management must become the foundation of
Caribbean unity and federation.

The Consequences to Rahtid

Ideally this document [or book] is not finished. This is called “Documents of the
Caribbean Revolution.” But at the same time, it does not express the total quality of our
struggle, because the emphasis here is on what certain organisations are doing, which
is not as expressive as they could possibly be of the real struggle taking place in the
region.
The wildcat strike, the armed struggle, the self-organisation for particular demands, the indi-
vidual subjective rebellion, the spontaneous revolts, the fire in the prison and prison breaks, the
mass demonstrations, the day to day appropriations from the banks and warehouses, all these
conscious attacks against capitalism and its agencies of unions, parties, and the state, by the poor
and oppressed of the region, are not expressed in these pages to the extent that it should. At the
same time, the theory that will help to the way towards the radicalisation of these events which
was elaborated by revolutionaries outside of the region, from their experiences, and the experi-
ences of proletarian struggles in other parts of the world, was suppressed on the argument that
the proposed statement to be included was not a Caribbean Statement.

60
 We Cannot Allow Caribbean Nationalism to Suppress Insights from World
Politics — Especially Where We Can Learn About Popular Self-Directed
Challenges to Unions, Parties, and the State
Thus a variant of the same nationalism that the Caribbean struggle is already superseding,
now springs from our ranks to block the continuing supersession that is possible with the shar-
ing of proletarian experiences throughout the world. The compromises made, consciously or un-
consciously for the publication of this [book of documents], sacrificed not only the knowledge of
proletarian activity in other parts of the world, but what is happening in the [Caribbean] region
itself.
What has happened in the production of this [book] parallels with the revolution on a whole.
Which, in essence, within the movement is a struggle between the realities of the ideal and partial
demands. We must necessarily manifest the ideal in whatever we are trying to do. There is a
problem. Even in the revolutionary movement, in its milieu of organisational activity, many are
still afraid to attempt the most radical possible theory and practice that the situation necessitates
to advance.

Understanding Spontaneity as Instinctive Self-Organization

Spontaneity is the motive force of mass mobilisation through instinctive self-organisation.
Spontaneity to date has not achieved its own internal radicalisation to overthrow the State. At
the same time that it moves through time and space, it does so with increasing magnitude.
Witness the five year move from Jamaica 1968, through Suriname 1969, Trinidad in 1970,
Suriname again 1973 and Grenada 1974. The situation bleeds for a revolutionary organisation
that will organically participate with the revolt, radicalising the confrontation with its practical
precision, and with its prevailing influence of revolutionary theory and example, move instinctive
self-organisation to the position of instant self-management in the places of work.
The extent to which production is so a part of daily life, control over affairs where we live
will necessarily move at the same speed as control over production. Because unity is a process
of growth, the unity already established at different points of space throughout the territory,
will naturally move at the same time that it is being further radicalised by the revolutionary
organisation, to the united coordination of these units as a social power into the whole of national
decisions. Decisions [will be] made by mandated delegates who are revocable at any time by their
particular base.

We Must Overcome the Intrigues of Those Who See Our Struggles As Equal
Opportunity to Enter the Rules of Hierarchy
The capacity of the masses to overpower the intrigues of those who want to relate to the strug-
gle only at the point of present leadership, and therefore as future bureaucrat in their scheme of
things, is going to depend from now on revolutionary organisation[’s]… relentless elaborat[ion]
[of] the theory of self-management over all aspects of daily life.
The dynamic of self-management as the end and means to the end, means that the revolution-
ary organisation must proceed from the radicalisation of its own internal relations, by creating
positive projects that will pool its resources and energy to end the dependence on wage slavery
as a means of survival for its members.

61
 Use Political Methods that Anticipate Workers Self-Management
The additional time controlled by members will increase their knowledge of the terrain of
struggle, necessary to be able to move through space and use it to the advantage of security.
This same time affords also to take the initiative with employed workers who are not willing or
able to break with wage slavery at this time, to create an organisation to have more control over
the conditions of their work, an organisation that by its methods of work will be in opposition
to the unions and parties, and be the rudiments of the future decision-making councils of self-
management in production.

Key: The Quality of Activity Preceding Spontaneous Revolt

And the enthusiasm of this activity must demand the best of everything. We may not get it,
but we will get much more of what we want, than if our demands remain limited. This is the
necessary approach that will effectively guarantee the development of maximum capabilities,
towards the maximum possibilities in the revolutionary situation.
This quality of activity preceding the spontaneous revolt, and its emphasis on certain skills,
constitute the organic relationships that will protect the revolutionary organisation from deteri-
orating into the bureaucracy of the new State after the fall of the old regime.

From Trinidad to Grenada to Martinique

Those who are not willing to keep this vision of the new society in the forefront of their
forehead as revolutionaries, are going to be included in history, in the responsibility for any gap
between the consciousness of existing organisational activity, and the demands of the conscious-
ness of spontaneity.
Remember well the failures of the past when the consciousness of spontaneity was at the door
of the [Eric] Williams’s regime [in Trinidad]. It was just now at the doorstep of the [Eric] Gairy
regime [in Grenada]. And what will replace the fall by spontaneity of the Sedney-Lauchmon
regime [in Suriname]? What now is the role of the New Jewelers in the Grenada revolutionary
situation? And as I write the French imperialists are landing troops in Martinique in confronta-
tion with strikes and riots.
Do You Remember?
Remember well the two things that dies in the chasm and gap after each spontaneous revolt:
the real demands of the masses and the organisers both in and out of organisations. Remember
that whatever escapes this burial ground, whether it be the demands of the masses or human life,
is usually reformed and imprisoned in the after calm and come back of the State.
For the consciousness that thinks the wind of change is already blowing in the Caribbean,
the storm is only brewing. To batten windows is to face the additional wrath of flying glass,
for in the cleansing fury and saving grace of the wind with rain, NONE SHALL ESCAPE THE
CONSEQUENCES TO RAHTID.
One Heart
Toward A New Beginning

62
 Retrieved on 2024-11-02 from medium.com/clash-voices-for-a-caribbean-federation-from-
below/joseph-edwards-the-consequences-of-rahtid-february-1974-71bdbe7668e6

Transcribed from Documents of the Caribbean Revolution (Tunapuna: New Beginning, 1974) by
Matthew Quest and Ryan Cecil Jobson.*

63
Union Versus Menegement

Fundi

1970s
 This piece, authored by Joseph Edwards—also known as Fundi or the Caribbean Situationist—
offers a unique perspective within the anti-authoritarian tradition of the Caribbean left.
Assumed to be the first publication of the Trinidadian labor organizing group, The New Beginning
Movement (NBM) (1971–1978), this booklet was released as Abeng Pamphlet No. 1. The NBM drew
inspiration from the Black Power Revolt and the legacy of C.L.R. James, applying his concepts of
workers’ autonomy and self-management to forge a Pan-Caribbean International that extended links
to Canada, the United States, and Great Britain—regions experiencing a growing Caribbean worker
population in the early 1970s. Established during a declared “state of emergency” by the Eric Williams
government, the NBM aimed to create alternative forms of governance, functioning as a rudimentary
coordinating council to facilitate large assemblies and provide essential news services.
The text of this booklet is derived from a talk given at a seminar for workers. The urgency of
Edwards’ critique is rooted in the Rastafarian ideals of the ‘MAN’ and the ‘MEN’ as degenerate
beings, this is reflected in the title. He warns workers that organizing under the banner of unions
can often become a means of extending political control and identifies potential pitfalls that could
obstruct the quest for power, which has been withheld for centuries of colonization in the Caribbean.
Drawing inspiration from the revolutionary Paul Bogle, he calls for a necessary revolt within the
workers’ movement, which he fears may become stagnant under a unionization model that is as
repressive as management itself.
The booklet presents a formulated plan of resistance, inspired by the burgeoning Pan-Caribbean
revolutionary Black Power Movement, tailored for workers who are already reevaluating party poli-
tics in the context of their everyday lives.
Unfortunately, this zine was only available at an antique shop in Brooklyn, NY, priced at $100
USD. My heartfelt thanks go to Christian Kennedy for purchasing it, allowing for its digitization.

Mutt.

67
 THE TASKS OF INDEPENDENT WORKER
ORGANIZATION
One heart brethren. We are supposed to be dealing with the struggle of workers represen-
tation versus menegement which basically is a struggle involving workers and capitalists. But
there are certain things we consider as basic that we would like to mention before going into the
details.

68
 FIRST PRINCIPLES
First it needs to be emphasized that menegment is a part, a functioning part of the ruling
class in Jamaica. and every workers’ representation organized at every place of work should
fully understand workers today and including some in union leadership, who seem to accept
that capitalism is a part of the everlasting makeup of society and do not see menegment as really
part of the oppressor class from which workers will eventually have to take power.
Any union which does not see menegment as part of the oppressor class is unable to construct
any proper strategy directing and influencing their activities. Therefore, what worker organiza-
tions which are independent of the NWUBITU (National Worker’s Union and the Bustamante
Industrial Trade Union) set-up should have is the deep and thorough going understanding that
menegment is the everyday functioning part of the oppressor class. And that all institutions of
today-the churches, the educational set-up, the press, parliament, police, courthouse, etc., which
seem to appear as independent institutions of the society – are in fact a part of the whole set up
of society that strengthens and backs up the position of menegment.
Therefore, the organization of workers is not only a struggle against the men we see in the
manager’s office or the owners of a particular business place, but it is part of the overall struggle
against capitalist society. And this is the position we all face as workers.

69
STRATEGY OF INDEPENDEDENT WORKER
ORGANIZATIONS
We should definitely take all this intro consideration in determining how Unions should func-
tion – what are their objectives and what is the strategy of their actions. What should influence
all unions is an overall strategy for the overthrow of capitalism, which will take away the re-
sponsibility for the management of production out of the hands of the capitalists and place it
in the hands of the working-class and thereby organize the entire society for the benefit of the
working-class people.
A particular union representation at a particular place of work may not consciously express
this objective in a distinct way in their everyday activities. What I speak of is the movement –
the trade-union movement must be particularly directed towards that end – and the activities of
any particular union representation or the tactics of groups of workers at their particular place
of work must be directed towards achieving this overall objective.
With that understanding there is nothing really as an overall strategy concerning any one
particular union representation. What must be understood is a strategy connecting the entire
trade-union movement to bring out the success of the main objective of the working-class. But
workers representation, whether it be an agricultural workers union or the Public Cleansing
Workers Union or any union here in Kingston or in the countryside, should only represent dif-
ferent methods that different groups of workers are using to bring about, gradually but surely,
the stage where they will finally come intro confrontation with capitalist power and will bring
the workers into the position of power in the country.

70
 IMPORTANCE OF THE ORGANIZATION OF
SUGAR AND BANANA WORKERS
COMMUNITY WORK
Sometime ago there were some discussions going around concerning the importance of gen-
uine working-class representation in certain important areas of industry – of bauxite in particu-
lar, of cement, of public services, of electricity and telephone companies. These were considered
as strategic areas where the revolutionary trade-union movement should seek to represent work-
ers, to get workers organized and represented outside the BITU-NWU set-up. This was consid-
ered as very important – as strategic, so to speak, using the word in that sense because unless
the working class trade-union representation is able to influence and have workers consciously
organized outside the BITU-NWU set-up in these industries it would mean that the trade-union
movement would not be able o give maximum effective support to the political movement in the
liberation struggle.
This reasoning went ahead to place much less importance on the organization of sugar work-
ers, banana workers, and agricultural workers in general. One of the basic causes for this kind of
reasoning is because the sugar industry and the banana industry are seen as dying industries in
the set-up of capitalism in the Caribbean today, while the bauxite and other such industries are
seen as growing industries, and industries that involve the direct control of American imperial-
ism which is the main oppressor of the working-class people today.
This is not absolutely true. Let me give some explanation. The main value of working-class
representation in the bauxite industry to the liberation struggle is more or less its capacity to
disrupt, in the sense that any serious trade-union representation in which workers at the bauxite
industry are organized, and which becomes a part of the revolutionary movement in this country,
will no doubt be able to play a very important part in disrupting the influence and control of
American imperialism. But apart from that necessary ability we want to sight-up the ability of
working-class trade-union representation of sugar and other agricultural workers to also play a
very strategic role.
The sugar workers for instance, while not being industrially as important as bauxite workers
in terms of capitalist economics, occupy and involve a much wider area of land. The commu-
nity nature of trade-union representation among sugar workers provide a greater opportunity to
reach home our new cultural and education programme to a greater number of people – of the
poorest and most oppressed – than does the opportunity for community work among bauxite
workers.
In the bauxite industry very few workers live in the area where this industry is set-up, and
one of the natural advantages that allows for the development of the community aspect of trade-
union representation, is where you find workers of any industry living in the area where their
place of work is.

71
 The nature of the bauxite industry is such that most of the work is done by skilled labour
coming from Kingston and even from America and Canada. The labour which comes from the
surrounding country parts is a very small percentage of the labour force. It is only during the
period of construction that more local labour is used, and mainly to do what they call unskilled
jobs. Therefore, the bulk of the labour force and the more educated section live very far away
and every night travel away from the area of work.
The sugar industry is quite different. In the first place, sugar workers are employed for half
of the year and unemployed for the other half of the year. Any honest and genuine trade-union
representation must take serious consideration of this unemployed status of sugar workers. So
it is with banana workers in some instances, and most agricultural workers.
These particular problems of agricultural workers must be attended to by their trade-union
representation, and the unions should develop the kind of community work that attends to the
needs of sugar workers during the unemployed periods of their lives. By the very nature of this
community work, not only will individual sugar workers become involved with the educational
programme, the production activities, and the cultural rejuvenation of themselves, which is the
substance of community work, but the entire community, its poorest and oppressed families,
stretching much further to other surrounding areas will participate.
For instance. there is no doubt that any working-class trade-union representation of sugar
workers in the area of Sav-la-Mar would influence the entire population of Westmoreland.

TO CONSOLIDATE THE POWER

The basic strategy of community work is to extend its attention from the immediate social
needs of workers in the areas where they work and live, to their serious political education as
an oppressed class – the working class. The political consciousness will be decisive at the period
of final confrontation with the imperialist and local capitalists for state power, and that period
of consolidation working-class state power against counter-revolution. And this should be clear
in our minds from now, because one of the things that is puzzling revolutionary movement and
people in the Caribbean today is what are we going to do about the American warships whenever
we hear them parked outside. That is what is worrying everyone and no one seems to have an
answer for that, because they always come. They entered straight into the Dominican Republic,
they entered straight into Cuba, and they were not far off from Trinidad, and therefore this seems
to be a serious contemplation.1
It seems to me that the source of strength in consolidating the power of the working-class
people at any place and any time during struggle is the extent to which we understand the prob-
1
There was a brethren I saw the other day who reasoned to solve this problem by referring to the basic aspira-
tions of Rasta Man going to Africa. I would just like to state here that the Rastafari Movement concerning the struggle
for repatriation is overcoming a very important stage of reasoning today. For while every single Rasta man is united
on the demand for immediate repatriation, there are many brethren who have sighted up that the basic aspirations
of African people is our total liberation from the domination of imperialism and local capitalism. As I sight-up, repa-
triation is not the end but the means to the end – like other thousands of means that oppressed African People are
using for our cultural liberation, for the liberation of our race, for the liberation of Africa, for putting an end to the
exploitation of man by man anywhere on earth. But I only mention this because it comes up forcefully as a way in
which we are to solve the problem of the American imperialist intervention by leaving the Caribbean and going to
Africa. But as is obvious, American imperialism is not only a Caribbean problem, it is also an African problem, it is a
world problem, and the responsibility of people not to leave it where they see it, but to destroy it where they find it.

72
lem at hand. And it is in this overall sense we must see how strategically important it is for
the representation of sugar and other agricultural workers in providing the opportunity for the
development of community work and the political consciousness of the greatest number of our
people over the widest possible area in the country.

THE COMMUNITY SHOP

I’ll give a practical example of how to begin, If sugar workers are being represented by their
working-class trade-union representation in a particular area, what must immediately go up in
that area is a shop. The purpose of that shop is to make as much use as possible of the union
dues that are contributed by the workers in the area. This is so because one of the very important
things in the country that working-class trade-union representation must aim to do, is to stop
– to put an instantaneous break to a certain movement of colonialism. In the same way that
the profits of labour and resources of the country is moving from the whole of Jam-down (A
Rastafarian-derived term for Jamaica which is very popular) here to American and other foreign
countries, is the same way Kingston based trade-unions are practising a type of local colonialism,
in which all union dues contributed by workers in the countryside are leaving the countryside
to the colonialist centre in Kingston, where the headquarters of all trade-unions in Jamaica are
set up. In the same way we intend to stop the imperialist robbery of our resources and profits
from our labour, in the same way we must begin to stop dues from leaving the poverty stricken
areas of the countryside to Kingston.
Over a period of time, with efficient management this shop will be able to do good business,
supplying the consumer goods needed by sugar workers and their families, and providing food
to the more hungry and destitute children of any family in the area.
The shop also has another important purpose. There are many sugar workers who, when
not working on the sugar crop, carry out rice and other crop cultivation in the area of Westmore-
land.Instead of leaving the marketing of their produce to the Agricultural Marketing Corporation
they could market it by way of their shops. There is the wicked practice of trucks going around
collecting rice and taking it. to Spanish Town where the rice mill threshes it and puts it in plastic
bags, labelled “Grace” and “Eve”, and sells it back to people in the same area where they took it
from for approximately four times the price they purchased it for.
Instead of this all around perpetual robbery of agricultural workers labour, their trade-union
representation could begin to organise the marketing of their produce and get rice cultivated by
these small farmers together, keep it within the parish, bag it within the parish, and circulate it at
the time when workers need it most – that is, the period when they are not working. This does not
mean that corps produced in any area should not be marketed in other areas. Basically, what is
meant is that crops produced by sugar workers must be marketed to the benefit of sugar workers
and the community where they live, first and foremost. This is what we call the community aspect
of working-class trade-union representation.

73
 THE MEDICAL SCHEME
Another example is demanding certain improvement to the medical scheme, because what
exists as the medical scheme serving sugar workers today, through the Sugar Welfare Board, is
something which is useless.
There is a sugar worker I met one day whose woman went to the clinic for attention, and
this man at the clinic was asking her if she was married. So, you have a medical scheme for
sugar workers which discriminates against women who don’t marry in this babylonian set up.
About ninety percent of the sugar workers that I know don’t marry in this babylonian kingdom.
They marry how Black people must marry, as man and woman getting together, continuing the
reproduction of their race, and building up the family in peace and love.
Now, if we talk of a medical scheme we must foresee one which takes care of the entire
family of the sugar worker and not only his woman and children, and in so doing our work
would automatically reach home to a section of the people which is permanently unemployed.
This is not difficult. Added to improvement in the existing medical scheme-health education,
greater use of the Blue Cross Society, and the use of preventative medicine can be organized in
this community of sugar workers. The income needed for this service can very well be organized
from the people involved who at the present time are being fleeced by doctors who charge them
high fees and have no interest in the workers state of health.
So we see that the community aspect of our work will do two things at the same time — it will
relate the activities of the trade-union to the problems of the unemployed and also associate the
union with the problems of the entire community. It also provide the opportunist to expose the
entire community to the education programmes of the union. This is not simply being tactical,
it is of strategic importance. It will provide the constant, everyday communication between the
community and the union. It will serve both the immediate and long term interests of the working
class.
When we realize the responsibilities of the future and scientifically try to relate the future
with what we are now doing, we will see that it is the community aspect of our work that will
build the spiritual groundation of our people, and that is their main strength. To consolidate our
people it is going to depend very seriously on their spiritual development, upon their political
understanding – upon their groundation in various forms. It is nothing exceptional to expect the
unions to help to do this.

74
 TRADE UNIONS ARE POLITICAL
ORGANIZATIONS
The reason why I think trade-union representation should do these things is because basically
a union is a political organization, and in truth and in fact Africans and other Black people in
these times cannot afford the luxury of any special organization for any special purpose. That is
to say, we must not use the church only for the purpose of kneeling down and praying to God,
or the unions only to beg the boss to keep the job or to beg him for a little more money. No! We
cannot afford the luxury of using these organizations in the way the Europeans have been using
them, and until now we have been using them. We have got to use them much more creatively
— Black people must use their trade-union representation in the way Paul Bogle used the church
to move us to a position of power, to the position of liberation.
Now I want to make this very important point that we cannot afford this luxury, because what
was expected of the present political organizations — that they would have resolved the problems
of our people — has been totally disappointed. What exists today in the JLP-PNPI (Jamaica Labor
Party and the People’s National Party) organizations and their parliaments amount to an outright
institution of imperialist agents who have been hired and paid.
They get paid in two forms, as wages from taxpayers money and as “gifts”1 collected from the
capitalists. Internationally they are known as the “ten per cent parliament.” These are the two pay
packets they have. The crime is that they are working against those people who pay them wages,
openly against them and the people who give them gifts, they are working for those people. Every
administrative department of the society occupies that position.
Now, if a people find themselves living under a situation like that, not say as in Guyana
where at least you have the People’s Political Party agitating in the interest of the people; nor as
in some other country where a political party might be agitating in the interests of the people
and thereby offer a choice, even if neither of them might be as good as possible. But here in
Jam-down everything operates in the interests of foreigners and capitalism, even trade-unions.
Therefore, we find ourselves rid completely of any organisation through which we can ex-
press our grievances. Trade-union representation is the most fundamental organization today,
through which workers and the working- class people can express their grievances in spite of
the reactionary bureaucratic opportunist leaders.
Those who are still being fooled by the PNP today have to go back to The Gleaner some time
in November. 1969. On the front page Michael Menlie2 was saying that the PNP had long aban-
doned socialism and so on and so forth. We are for economic nationalism he said. He picked
up those two words and put them together and said we are for economic nationalism. Not long
after that the then PNP Mayor, Eric Bell, opening one of Matalon’s big capitalist enterprise, Car-
rier Air Condition Corporation, said that he was glad to Matalon pioneering and encouraging
1
Hon. Wilton Hill in Parliament: “When is a gift not a gift”
2
Nickname for Micheal Manley the leader of the Parliamentary Opposition and the People’s National Party

75
the development of economic nationalism. Now it would appear to me that what is economic
nationalism, according to these pimps of the imperialists, is simply where capitalists in Jamaica
try to make their capitalism as efficient as possible, while still remaining in Alliance with impe-
rialism. It is economics alright, but how the nationalism comes into the economic nationalism
I don’t know, for Carrier Air Corporation is a merchant-contractor firm that imports air condi-
tions from America to be sold and installed in Jamacia. And as for bauxite, the best that Michael
Menlie’s economic nationalism can do is to beg the bauxite imperialists to employ more Black
people in managerial position. In other words, to set up more middle-call managerial pimps of
the material pimps of the imperialists than we already have.

76
 THE CLERICAL AND TECHNICAL
WORKERS
Now, he did not go on to anything further about the bauxite industry, and this is the crime.
Do you know that until this day the BITU and NWU have compromised with imperialism in the
most spineless way and refused to carry out the representation of clerical workers in the bauxite
industry?
And imagine, since 1952 bauxite workers here have been represented by the NWU. What
would be much more effective if done in the bauxite industry – since no one wants to fight for
the people’s control of it, not even the great Joshua1 .
They are so backward that they have even compromised on the representation of clerical
workers in the sugar industry. Some years ago an African-Chinese brother from Duckensfield,
along with other brethren, made an effort to organize a technical and clerical workers union in
the sugar industry only to find themselves faced with extreme problems, and then to find Menlie
and his NWU bureaucrats coming behind to offer them support. When the NWU official oppor-
tunists saw these clerical workers, whom they had abandoned all the time, trying desperately to
represent themselves they offered the kind of support, not to strengthen the workers conscious
independent representation, but to use their “big-men-one-men” status to swallow up the clerical
workers organizations within NWU.
In every single industry in the country trade-union representation compromise with the capi-
talists and passes off the clerical and supervisory workers as a section of menegement. Imagine a
clerical worker being a part of menegment. This is what these people do, look at people who are
writing down numbers, time-keeping workers hours and keeping records here and there, and call
them menegment. But they call them so, so as to keep them out of trade-union representation.
One must understand the nature of this crime, for what this does is to exclude from trade-
union representation the most educated section of the working-class. By doing so, they are able
to more easily fool other workers who are unable to read and write. They also further encourage
the bad practice of those white-collar, tight-pants, mini-skirt clerical workers who are conceited
enough to think that they should not struggle alongside other workers against the capitalist
oppression.
They do not, for instance, to get clerical workers in the sugar industry or in the bauxite in-
dustry participating in Delegate Council meetings with field workers – with the most illiterate
and under-paid workers. No! The capitalist bureaucrats and their BITU-NWU agents do not want
this.
In the same way that they carry out a policy of discrimination and set up a barrier between the
intellectual people and working-class people, they also divide the more educated and conscious
section of the working-class from the other section of the working-class. They try to spread this
1
Another political nickname which Michael Manley himself encourages because of its religio-political signifi-
cance in Jamaica. It builds up his self-image as a leader of the people for bondage into the Promised land.

77
division and confusion on every level where Black people exist, and this is one of the crimes that
is being over-looked by many trade-union organizers today.
Of late there have been certain developments in the organization of clerical and supervisory
workers in their own trade-union representation which is an improvement on the situation. But
what is basically important is the unification of all workers at their place of work, either in the
same union or in the coordination of their different union activities though a workers council
if they are to effectively fight capitalist oppression. This must be achieved if the independent
trade-union are to avoid the risk of splintering themselves and becoming little petty lodgers, and
so deepening the artificial divisions among workers.

78
 THE CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
MOVEMENT OF THE TRADE-UNION
MOVEMENT
We know the failure of the church, the failure of the political parties, the failure of all these so-
cial welfare organizations that exist. They totally failed, every single one of them is nothing more
than babylonian institutions, and the little that they do, it is nothing more than to try and fool
and soften the wrath of the working-class people against the whole society. Their main purpose
is to confuse the working-class, and when a people live in the society where its institutions of
leadership and administration has failed to such an extent, then whatever that exists as a natural
organization for you to participate in must be made full use of. And that is why in my opinion,
the immediate task facing the independent trade unions today is one of transforming the identity
of trade-union representation in the country.
The independent trade-unions must begin to be creative, because we cannot afford the luxury
of using trade-unions in the way the British used it, or the German people, or the American an
Canadian people used it. We must use it in the way we think best, and not as they have been using
it – only to get the best out of capitalism. And the reason why they are able to get so much out of
capitalism as unionized workers, is because the working-class people of Britain and America have
been used to defend imperialism and prevented from supporting in any way the working-class
people of neo-colonial territories. In truth and in fact, what is enjoyed as unemployed benefits,
in the so-called welfare state and the fairly high rate of wages under capitalist ownership of the
means of production in those territories, is possible as a result of the imperialist exploitation of
the neo-colonial peoples of the world. Is is not only based upon the struggle of those workers,
it arises mainly from the imperialist exploitation of Africa and the mineral and sugar industries
in the Caribbean. British productive and industrial capacity developed and more social benefits
reached down to British workers while the British capitalists sill maintain their high rates of
profit. Even British political rights for British workers became more reformed and tolerant, as
economic oppression increased in British colonies, as economic oppression increased in British
colonies.
And what did the British TUC (Trades Union Congress) and trade-union movement do about
colonialism? Nothing that I know of or read of. What the British TUC did on one occasion any-
how, was to support their TUC counterpart did on one occasion anyhow, was to support their
TUC counterpart in South Africa to oppose the trade-union representation of African workers
and white workers in the same Federation of unions. According to the TUC delegation that vis-
ited South Africa in 1953, they did this “in the interest of urge necessity of unity”.
Of whose unity? Of the unity of white workers. Because the white workers were divided on
whether or not they should unite with African workers in the same organization of trade-union
representation. And therefore it can be said that these T.U.C. Men came all the way from England

79
to give official trade-union sanction to apartheid in trade-union representation in South Africa,
making it more difficult for the political struggle of the African people in Africa.
Indeed the so-called policy of working-class internationalism, and the international trade-
union organizations originating in the in the big industrialized countries does not seriously
consider the interests of the working-class of imperialist exploited countries. Whatever support
these international-organizations give-financial and otherwise, end up in strengthening the bu-
reaucratic opportunities in the NWU/BITU set up and even some of the independent union op-
portunities. Genuine working-class representation in the industralized countries and the impe-
rialist dominated countries have yet to communicate we have yet to communicate as genuine
trade-union organization even in the Caribbean itself, in the interest of the working-class of
the Caribbean. And no one up to now has said anything about association with trade-unions in
Africa.
We also have seen the establishment of the Trade Union Institute at the University of the West
Indies, which is mainly financed by American imperialism to train obedient union delegates and
officials of trade-union representation in Jamaica. All the literature of the training courses of this
institution is published abroad in the imperialist countries and does not substantially deal with
the problems of workers in the imperialist dominated countries. The lecturers are drawn from
professional servants and personnel officers of the capitalist class, and from NWU and BITU
official opportunists. And this is the educational base of delegates in the NWU, BITU, TUC and
some independent unions.
Now when we see the extent to which the trade-union movement both internationally and
locally, is dominated by the interest of capitalism, we see that there is nothing that they use, no
method, none of their models that we can adopt.

80
 THE TRADE UNION: THE NATURAL
ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKING-CLASS
Our trade-union representation would have to be used to the maximum of our abilities. There
is no organization that provides for the constant everyday participation of workers as a trade
union does. Surely no official church, because the normal contact that the working-class people
have with the church is only on Sunday mornings or on Saturday mornings if you are you a Sev-
enth Day Adventist, that is the only time you have any contact – once a week. That is a very loose
organization to be on contact with. The political parties are even worse, that is once every five
years when the two-party crooks want your votes which is many times worse than the church.
It is only trade-union representation I see where we are in an organization and everyday that or-
ganization is in contact with us, because workers are allways facing problems. Everyday we are
having problems within our trade-union organization and at our place of work, and are trying to
resolve these problems. And therefore, there is no other organization around that provides this
everyday association among people as does trade-union representation.
And if that is the truth, naturally then, it means it is the most important organization for us
today and we must make sure that it is put to full use. So closely related it is to the life of people.
That is why trade-union representation therefore, has got to take up during the week what the
church hasn’t been able to do. That is why the trade-union representation therefore, has got to
take up during the week what the church hasn’t been able to do. That is why the trade-unions
have to take up the problems which the political parties have failed to solve since they only come
in contact with us every five years. We have to take up our educational problems. There is the
POWU (Public Cleaning Workers Union) which has started its program of literacy training, and
any serious trade union would even have to provide technical training, which is quite possible
and quite practical, quite within the being of any trade-union representation today, to carry out a
technical training programme of youth and unemployed in auto mobile work, in electrical work,
in needlework and other trades.
All these things are within the capabilities of unions. And that is how we must sight up the
trade-union movement – as beginning to deal with the educational problems of our people –
fighting the capitalists and imperialists for higher wages – beating back exploitation and the
extent to which the cost of living is rising – have to do with the cultural rejuvenation of our
people, with the cultural development of an oppressed African and Black people in Jam-down
– and beating back false doctrines of white foreign men and their Black agents – building our
consciousness as solid as a rock for the future struggle for our liberation.
In other words, there is a whole range of things to be done. This is no impossible thing you
know, I am not talking about any dream business. Things that we see which are practical. Why is
it the NWU-BITU workers are just dying to leave out the NWU-BITU bondage? Isn’t it because
the NWU and BITU have failed to do these things? Then which trade-union representation do
you think could come about and represent sugar workers or any other group of workers and

81
don’t go about tackling these basic things? You ask a sugar worker what are his main problems
and see if he does not tell you all those things. And you ask any other group of workers and see
if they don’t tell you all those things. So all the things that workers have problems with is all of
the things that trade-union representation should be dealing with.

82
 THE WORKERS ORGANIZATION AT THE
PLACE OF WORK
Now, I want to come off these general opinions and go to a particular place of work and
show the extent to which the BITU and NWU leadership have ganged up with menegment in
the country to fight against genuine representation and what are some of the experiences and
the methods which workers would have to use today to overcome these capitalist agents.
In organizing a trade-union representations at any particular place of work, union leaders
and workers who are in the fore-front of the organizing at that place of work, must begin to
pay very serious attention to all the problems that will possibly face them during the period of
time when they are trying to bring about their representation at that place of work. The old time
demagogy and soap-boxism can’t work. There have been serious failures and I can’t help but
mentioning a particular failure that provides a very forceful example, but which today, had the
attempt been successful, would have provided an extraordinary stimulus to the development of
independent trade-union representation. I speak particularly of the experiences of the Jamaica
Maritime Union among banana workers.

83
 THE JMU AND BANANA WORKERS
When the JMU started their struggle for representation of banana workers enough consid-
eration was not paid to, nor was there a strategy constructed on a full understanding that the
banana industry was an industry exploited by imperialism, and it wasn’t an industry in which
the local capitalists were completely in control of. We must notice also that workers exist in var-
ious groupings throughout the industry. Some of them are small farmers,some load ships, some
cut ‘the bananas, some carry the bananas from the field to the boxing station-a whole group of
workers, but in different categories, and even with different local needs and interests.
What should have been done is that extensive educational work-slowly but surely-should
have been conducted throughout the entire banana industry, related to the nature of what was
taking place in the industry.
It should be done because anyone seriously engaged in struggle against the imperialist and
capitalist exploitation of labour today, should fully realize that any success of any trade union
representation in the banana industry and the sugar industry will provide serious undermining
of the political power of the parliamentary parties, at the same time as it would win from the
capitalists improved benefits for workers. The source of power, Particularly that of the JLP, rests
upon the votes they get from the people in the countryside. As we an know the NWU and BITU
are the survival machinery between elections that the PNP and JLP use to maintain effective
influence over working-class votes. They also use union bureaucrats who are at the same time
party propagandists, parish councillors and MHRs. The representation and the efforts at repre-
sentation made by the JMU was considered by its enemies not as just an effort to shift workers
from one union to another. Nothing of the sort! At the seat of it was a terrible and dreadful fear
by the Shearer Government that the efforts of the JMU would be the main source of unseating
them in the next election. Any attempt to take these workers out of the bondage of the NWU
and BITU spells serious political doom to JLP/PNP. Therefore in truth and in fact, the activities
of any union attempting to organize these workers constitute very serious political activity.

84
 LESSONS TO DRAW
EDUCATIONAL WORK
Now what should have been done? An extensive amount of educational work was needed
to explain the major problem-that while the local capitalists and small growers are the main
owners of the banana plantations, the shipping and marketing of the bananas is operated by the
imperialists in London and therefore they control the prices that the local section of the industry
gets for the fruits. And with growers, shippers and the marketing agents, all trying to maintain
their rate of profit workers are thus forced to ear the cost of the inefficiency of the Banana Board
and the foreign exploitation of the shipping and marketing arrangement. This is what keeps down
banana workers wages.
Abeng (a weekly newspaper, February-September, 1989) existed at the time, and Abeng was
more than willing to provide the type of material that would have carried out the undermining
of imperalist power over the industry and to make workers aware of their burden-bearing status
in this industry by pointing out of the nature of this Imperialist exploitation. If you check through
the entire history of Abeng we will find only two articles that dealt with banana workers, and
one was at the height of the crisis of the banana workers. And that is one of the problems of
course, which when Abeng starts forward again it mustn’t find itself in. No sense talking in the
midst of a crisis, because there is hardly any answer one can give to workers in the midst of a
crisis. All these answers that one has now, should have been given some time ago during the
period of preparation, but of course the JMU leadership did not see it important to associate with
Abeng all the time. That is one particular method of work that the JMU should have used. In the
same way that any independent union attempting to organize among sugar workers must do.

WORKER COUNCILS AND VILLAGE COUNCILS

The next thing was to settle up in a very serious and consistent way to work for the devel-
opment of banana workers councils throughout the area of the banana industry – throughout
those villages and areas in which the banana is cultivated, boxed and transported and eventually
reach the wharves to be loaded on ships. Now these two distinct works would have done two
things. It would have educated the population to the need of changing the trade-union represen-
tation in the banana industry, and not just banana workers alone being conscious of this need,
for Abeng had a wide coverage. And this would have strengthened the JMU against anti-trade
union activities of the big banana growers and the government.
And another thing, any change of trade-union representation in the banana industry by the
nature of what it is saying and doing would have provided the opportunity for the unity of the
small banana growers and the workers. Now that is very key. No trade-union representation
can be effectively successful among agricultural workers, either in banana or sugar, unless small

85
cane farmers are associated with the struggle of sugar workers and small banana growers are
associated with the struggle of banana workers.
The entire struggle during that time excluded even a single word in any way, of any serious
nature, to small banana growers who are equally exploited as the banana workers — in the same
way that the small cane farmers are equally exploited as the sugar workers cause of the nature
of imperialist domination.
Now the village council which is the community form of working-class trade-union orga-
nization would have provided the working opportunity for the better relation between banana
workers and small banana growers, while the banana workers council could have provided the
organization for the immediate representation of banana workers at their respective places of
work. So we see, how these two units of workers organization, coordinating their social power
both at the place where they work and the area in which they live, would effectively unite the
poorest and most oppressed people in the banana industry, the small banana growers and banana
workers to struggle effectively for their interests in the industry and their community.
But non of this basic work was done – none of this tedious, everyday, night and day work
was done. None of this basic fundamental work was done. No. Instead, the banana workers were
agitated into almost, but not quite a final struggle, but final in the sense that if the workers and
the JMU had won, it would have provided the opportunity for maximum rights of representa-
tion, Before that stage of confrontation was reached, all that work should have been done. But
no, it wasn’t done. But the banana workers were agitated into confrontation with the capitalist
ownership and government without this work being done. And we mention now what happened.

OR ELSE
Immediately after the strike was called by the JMU leaders the big banana growers, headed by
Cargill and Champaignie, if I am not mistaken, and others, were able to go into the areas where
the Maritime Union did not go and organize banana growers including small banana growers, to
be the backbone of the strikebreaking effort at Bowden Wharf, which did not close down, and
was a threat to the other wharves which were closed down by strike action. But why was Cargill
able to go in there? Cargill is a capitalist white man. And be was able to go agitate strike-breakers
from among poverty stricken and exploited Black people. He was able to do this for there was
great political backwardness existing, because there was no educational work done among the
people. He had the opportunity to organize strike breaking from among the very people who
should have stoned him when he entered the village — the very people whom he is exploiting,
he was able to go in there and use big words and get them organized. with these small growers
believing that their interests were tied up with his breaking the banana-port workers strike. So
we see how without education work the capitalists can always use the potential allies of the
workers — the small farmers – to fight against the worker’s interests.
That was the work of the big banana growers, backed by the government and the Banana
Board. And what did Shearer do? He went all the way to Port Antonio and agitated the people
politically to fight against the Jamaican Maritime Union. Every second word that comes from
the JMU leader’s mouth is that “I am non-political”, “I am a non-political union” while every
single effort to destroy it was a political effort. How a man without a gun can be fighting a man
with a gun I don’t know. Or how any political effort can fight against a counter political effort

86
with a non-political program I still don’t know. But that is one of the self-made problems that
this union is faced with. Calling itself a non-political union – while engaging itself in one of the
national political problems concerning the banana industry, and being destroyed politically by
the parliamentary political agents and their political methods.
I am mentioning this because to me, it is one of those regrettable periods of my life. It is
one of those regrettable periods of my life. It is one of those periods of my life I don’t think I
will ever forget the extent to which it hurts me. Because the existence of the Maritime Union
has provided the opportunity for me to be associating myself in a meaningful way with the
struggle of sugar workers – identifying the efforts and development of sugar workers councils
in Westmoreland, in the western section of the Island with the work of the Maritime Union in
the eastern section of the Island. For at a particular conference of banana-port workers six sugar
workers and myself travelled from Westmoreland to Oraccabessa to say our piece at this big
conference which, it would appear to me, had the beginning of a vital and important aspect of
political work – the development of revolutionary trade-union representation among the two
largest groups of agricultural workers – banana and sugar.
And all this great political potential was defeated – like a piece of paper that is suddenly
ablaze – it suddenly out – flickering little pin head lights – then to soft light ashes that even the
breeze could blow away.
Now, you have people around telling us that the government destroyed the Maritime Union –
I don’t want to hear any ignorance like that. Government cannot destroy any genuine working-
class representation in the country today. Destroy what‼ How are you going to destroy some-
thing that the people want – that is a working everyday part of the people? You think these
government people are some gods – some big bad tin gods? You destroy yourself by the methods
of work that you are engaged in, and if we can be making tangible efforts like these and whenever
we fail to say that it is the oppressor who is destroying us, then it means that what we are doing
is actually undermining our every effort – every single effort we are to make in the future will
be destroyed with that attitude of thinking that the capitalist class and their government agents
are invincible.
No – we won’t be destroyed by that. It is the same problem at another place, and though I don’t
know the details of the problem I no don’t believe that it is the same problem that the Maritime
Union faces at the Ariguanabo Mills – not doing enough basic work not having enough foresight
and dedication of leadership to judge constructively the extent of the opposition of its enemies
and cunningly manoeuvre around it and use scientific methods to reach home to the workers in
a serious way – spending a little time with basic work – basic ground work and handwork, secret
work, before you jump on the platform with demagogy and so on and so forth.
The platform is only for the last moment, or some particular moment when it is necessary to
further education, agitate and mobilize people around a particular happening. But no political
movement or trade-union representation or no effort of the people in this country is going to
succeed without genuine homework, without basic homework in the nooks and corners of this
country here today – in the nooks and corners of the villages and places where people work and
live.
The Maritime Union of today has developed almost a loser personality. Possibly the JMU did
not realize the extent of its commitment – it did not realize the serious extent to which it could
have motivated the independent trade-union movement on a national scale, and its failure today
has created very serious problems for banana-port workers – a very serious set back, creating a

87
situation of unemployment in Port Antonio, Oracabessa and Mobay that did not exist before, for
the government closed down the banana port in these three towns in their effort to destroy the
JMU and keep banana workers under the bondage of the BITU-NWU set up. And this failure also
poses certain problems for the further development of the sugar workers council is Westmore-
land.
We mentioned these detailed happenings to banana workers and the JMU because there is
a very sharp line between success and failure when it comes to the liberation of the poor and
oppressed people. A very sharp and distinct line – it is like standing at the edge of a precipice –
there is nothing like failing now, then going in a corner to rest and sigh to yourself till you feel
cool to come back and start over – no, we are in much more serious times – we are in such a period
now that when we fail, serious and dreadful setbacks are placed upon us. It is so serious that we
got to see to it that we do not fail, that the struggle of working-class trade-union representation
do not fail.
The problem-that facing the representation of banana workers is a problem to get the port
re-opened in these towns, which is a very sharp dividing line. And the problem facing the sugar
workers is one of starting forward all over again.
After seeing the victimisation of banana workers who tried to escape BITU-NWU and TUC
bondage in their independent union effort, let us sight up how in another way the NWU leaders
used the workers who have not yet escaped from the NWU bondage, for the PNP parliamentary
opportunist purposes.
I did not see the Gleaner report, about the workers who were fired, all of them together, down
St. Ann’s Bay by the Government for agitating against the last budget proposals concerning
wages to government “subordinate” workers. I know many of them were fired in Savanna-la-
mar and none of them have got back their jobs yet, although in a reasoning with Guy Ottey, the
PNP Chairman of the Westmoreland Parish Councils, he said they would. In other words this is
a wicked plot by the NWU and PNP — because they are so narrow, because they failed so totally
and completely as a Party for the people and as leaders who sit in parliament to provide the most
elementary leadership to people who claim they are still following them.
That they are faced with the dilemma of having to use the NWU workers to fight their political
oppositional battles that they should be doing in parliament — you know what I am stating
positively — I am stating that the strike called by the NWU leaders at a meeting at a school house
in Porus to agitate the workers in Westmoreland, Portland, St. Elizabeth, St. Ann and other places
to come out and strike at the Hospitals and Alms Houses was a strike that had nothing to do with
the wage increases proposed by government for these workers.
It s a pity, to Rahtid, that those workers could believe this and allow themselves to be fooled
in these times — it had nothing to do with any wage increase. It is mainly an effort of these
capitalist oppositional pimps in shirking their responsibility to the electorates to use parliament
as a platform to raise and agitate against the serious problems now facing the working class.
Now anybody examining the nature of that PNP agitated strike will see this, because these
guys were so careful about their intentions that they tell workers to “go on strike but come back
Thursday”. When a man tells you “go on strike” and reminds you so seriously that you must come
back on Thursday, you will understand that the strike is not really something to get anything. All
they wanted was two days of agitation where the press, or the New Nation or the radio could just
say. “oh, oh, oh – blah blah PNP-NWU fighting against JLP for workers wages, PNP against the

88
budget”, and so on and so fourth and get everybody excited, and thereby give some oppositional
life to the PNP Party.
And how did the JLP section of parliament react? They fired the workers – yes, Shearer fired
them – but God forbid! Must the NWU workers make this sacrifice to bring them to their senses
to realize the extent to which their trade union leaders and the PNP have failed in parliament?
Because, don’t tell me that all these big time talkers like Blake and Coore and Manley couldn’t
out-talk the JLP members of parliament in such a way so that the population could realize that
the PNP is a good Party and the JNP is a wicked Party. What happen to all these big talkers?
But ah I remember some time ago there was a proposal for parliament to be subjected to the TV
lenses. And everyone of those sons-of-bitches oppose it – not one of them wanted to come on TV
before the people when they are in parliament. And yet the American parliament is on television
in some instances, and the British parliament is on television in some instances. What we see
here is that do not just copy the white men – they copy the worst practices of the white men.
They do not want parliament on TV because they have a reputation of not coming to work,
that is what I understand about the history of parliament. Many times you have more absence
in parliament of PNP members than you have of JLP members. And sometimes the majority of
both these Parties of men are absent — that is to say more than half of the fifty-three members of
parliament are absent. So ‘all these things they don’t want to reveal to the population. They don’t
want to reveal to the population how lazy they are. how late they come to work, how much days
they take from work. how much ignorance they chat about. the many laws they pass to protect
the capitalists and against the workers who voted for them. They don’t want to reveal all this to
the population, and of course the capitalist press is not revealing it at all — when they do report
you have to read between the lines.
And to further remind ourselves of the hypocrisy of the PNP parliamentarians — do you
remember what happened when Seaga made certain proposals to collect two million dollars
a year in taxes the employers have been evading to pay for over eight years now? The entire
capitalist class came out — small and big — all their legal brains were shouting about how the tax
bill affected certain democratic society rights. The capitalist church, known as the Farquharson
Institute of Public Affairs, began to make excuses for the greedy souls of the employers. and the
Gleaner as always, defended them to the maximum.
During all this time, the PNP parliamentarians did not do a single thing to support the tax
proposals to get the taxes owned these greedy employers. Instead they encouraged the capitalists
for their own opportunist purposes – for they expect the capitalists to pay them back for their
Parliamentary service with greater financial contribution to contest the coming elections.
This is absolute hypocrisy. Unless the PNP can explain to us, how come they agitated the
NWU workers to strike against the wage proposals in the budget, while at the same time did not
support the tax proposals in the same budget, which was needed to help pay the wage increases
to government employees.
In truth and in fact these men are not just the parliamentary opposition they are an opposition
to the progress of the working class people.

89
 ORGANISING THE UNION
PREPARATORY WORK
If the experience of the Jamaica Maritime Union in the banana industry must be seriously
taken into account, and if it is important that workers should not be used in the way that they
are used by the NWU. it means that trade union representation must pay attention to some
particular things.
It is not necessary for the kind of sacrifices that have been made to be made continuously to
bring about a trade union representation.
From the experiences that I have certain very serious mistakes were made concerning the
development of the trade union representation at Western Meat Packers. (A food processing plant
in the parish of Westmoreland) Serious in the sense that although there have been some measure
of success up to now, it could have been made much more certain if those things were done.
We did not carry out enough educational preparation among the before it came to the knowl-
edge of the menegement that there was an effort to bring about a trade union representation in
the factory. And the Importance of that is this. The moment the meneger hears about an effort,
the first thing they do, if they don’t have an informer ring as yet, is to construct one to find out
about the serious workers who are carrying out sounds and work about trade union representa-
tion. Then they fire those workers. For by firing them they hope they will be able to frighten the
rest of the workers from making any further attempt towards this trade union representation.
The consequence of this is to destroy the early efforts of communication between workers – es-
pecially if it is a Union representation for the first time – preventing workers picking up names
secretly, and providing information and education as to what trade union representation is all
about.
If we don’t have these conscious brothers and sisters in the place of work, it can seriously
weaken the chances of success and therefore it would appear to me that gone are the days of
those old time methods when you bulldoze yourself into a place of work on popularity or some-
thing like that. Therefore, the defence and protection of the right to work of the more conscious
brothers and sisters is a vital necessity for the s success of genuine trade union representation.
This is something trade union bureaucrats have never taken into account, and the sacrifices of
the hundreds of conscious but unknown brothers and sisters have been in vain. This situation
suits both the capitalists and the trade union bureaucrats alike. But on the other hand, it weakens
the power and consciousness of the entire work force at the place of work.
Therefore, if workers are working at a place of work and feel that trade union representation
should come about, they should first realise the extent of the opposition of the capitalists for as
I said before the capitalists are backed up by the entire society and all its institution, including
some union leaders themselves.

90
 SECRET PREPARATORY WORK
The one, two or three brothers and sisters who first take up the task of union representation
should recognise the importance of their defence and should settle down to secret meetings to
check out and find our the most confidential of their co-workers, whether it is one more, two
more or three more. Get into contact and establish a proper relationship with the trade union
that they seek to affiliate themselves with, bearing in mind at all times the security of their small
but important organisation at the time, and settle down, very tediously, night and day settle
down to solid educational work and the ground work of constructing a solid collective leader-
ship within the place of work. Educating these particular people who are confidential enough to
come together, to educate themselves about all the problems and all what they must expect in
opposition to their union representation, and seriously prepare for this.
All the time should be given to this period of work. Oh yes there should not be anything like
saying… ‘look, yes everybody want it now – yes, we want it now.’ Spend all the time, all the
time in this preparatory ground work, it does not matter whether it takes a month in getting this
done, or two months – if it even takes six months in getting this done. We must conscientiously
educate and build up the ground work of these brothers and sisters who are to pioneer the union
representation at their place of work.

OPEN WORK
While this is being done, after a certain period of time a certain open and public work is
carried out by the trade-union that you seek to affiliation yourself with. Not by the workers –
the particular group of secret pioneer workers. Oh, no, NOT BY THEM. But the professional
union organisers and the trade-union organisers and their trade union organisation as a whole
should come along, make their presence felt, and by meetings at the place of work and educa-
tional leaflets begin to explain to workers the importance of bringing about their trade union
representation. The educational leaflets and the sounds that the officially union representatives
will put out would be constructed from the information given to them by this secret pioneer
group of workers within a place of work – so secret that when these trade union representatives
as an organisation comes on at the place of work and keep their meetings and distribute these
leaflets – those brothers and sisters are in no way openly connected to this public activity, be-
cause the work that they are doing, building the ground work of a conscious collective leadership
of workers themselves, require secrecy.
And over a period of time, when we believe that enough understanding is had by other work-
ers – not in waiting for one hundred percent understanding – but enough to provide the strength
of strike action to defend any worker against victimisation for joining their trade union repre-
sentation then an open effort of organisation is now made to bring about total membership in
the union representation.
There is no doubt that the conscious brothers and sisters will be known by menegement
at that time, when it now becomes necessary to build the Delegate Council as the collective
leadership body of workers at the place of work in the final preparation for union recognition.
So the problem we basically face is although we need an efficient and public organisation of
workers to be successful in the representational rights poll for union recognition, these wicked

91
employers feel that they can wantonly victimise workers if their union representation is not yet
officially recognised according to the Government Labour Relations policy.
Therefore, as workers we run the risk of being victimised before we are recognised , and nei-
ther the Ministry of Labour, the official trade unions, and the leaders of the Executive Govern-
ment and Opposition Government, who themselves are trade union leaders, have done anything
to stop the employers from victimising workers for organising the ttrade union representation
of their choice. So our experiences are, since we need trade union representation, since we must
have trade union representation in this state of affairs, then the substance of our organisation
must be such that we are able to strike – to instantaneously strike in defence of any brother or
sister who is victimised for exercising this elementary human right. And I know of no other way
to successful strike action that the unity and consciousness of workers, organised in a scientific
way to bring about their maximum power at their place of work and their maximum love for
each other. This is the only way. And although there have been unnecessary sacrifices arising
from mistakes in our preparation, we eventually made our own organisation and developed con-
sciousness and strength to strike successfully against further victimisation of our brothers and
sisters by the employers at Western Meat Packers. And all that I am saying here can be related
to all workers and all places of work.

EDUCATE THE MEMBERSHIP

When the trade union representation comes about, one of the most important considerations
for it must be the educational programme among workers. There must be nothing left unturned,
in terms of what is required to be explained to workers in the form of meetings at the work spot,
lunch time meetings by organisers and delegates and by leaflets circulating in the workplace
and surrounding areas and at other places of work. Because what we must realise is that the
opposition and propaganda that the employer is going to put out is not only against this union
representation. They are going to talk so many things to intimidate workers that you will find
that the educational programme, in order to beat back the propaganda of the employer will have
to go into everything. A serious union representation educational programme must be more
complete than that of many schools you see around you. It must deal with more things. more
comprehensively than many colleges you see around you because the educational programme
apart from setting to undo the three hundred odd years of colonial deformation and white-wash
of workers minds and morality, has also got to be tackling everyday, the new propaganda that
will be introduced. Everyday the capitalists bring up new lines and spread confusion. you have
to tackle them. And in dealing with many workers you have to tackle what was in that brother
and sisters mind. from the time he and she was old enough to think and begin to talk.

BROADEN THE LEADERSHIP

So there re two problems our educational program faces, having gone on to some extent with
this type of work – and with success – we will have to continue to develop another particular
emphasis. All efforts must be made to broaden the character and capacity of leadership. In the first
instance, as you see we will have two, three or four workers coming out as the pioneer organisers
to bring about trade union representation. But that should remain for as short a time as possible.

92
As early as possible, the burden of leadership upon these three or four brothers and sisters should
now begin to extend to as many of their brethren as possible. If the Delegate Council can take
fifty delegates, LET IT TAKE FIFTY DELEGATES, so as to broaden the area of leadership and
reduce the problem of getting over what we have to say and do among the rest of the workers.
The only consideration in the size of the Delegate Council is the amount of departments in the
place of work and the amount of workers in each department. There must be representatives
from each department and the amount of representatives from each department depends on the
quantity of workers and and different skills in that department. We must broaden our leadership
by any method we can use, but we must get it broadened.
Another of the methods that we see as important to the aim of broadening our representa-
tional leadership – and I think it is important for the independent unions in particular – is that of
negotiating for ourselves. This is an effort we carried out at Western Meat Packers. Now don’t tell
me workers need a man from the University or a Lawyer to come to talk to Grace Kennedy and
Company to give them 15¢ more to keep their hands in brine in the production process. This is an
industrial hazard – a health hazard to the worker himself, and the best person who could never
talk about this problem is the worker who works with his hands in the brine. So if we could get
that worker to come and tell management he wants 15¢ more to keep their hands in brine, that
is something achieved, something very important achieved in broadening the representation of
leadership and developing the capacity of leadership and collective representation as seen in the
principles of Delegate Council that we must practice.
As far as workers interests are concerned, gone are the days of the single individual negotiator
– which was what developed the popularity of Shearer and Manley, who are two main anti-trade
unionists in Jamaica today, because that is where Shearer and Manley got their popularity from
– as being the old and only big time negotiators against the white men in the bauxite industry
and the sugar industry.
I read Manley the other day in the Gleaner saying… “we can look forward to great and diffi-
cult negotiation with the bauxite companies”. I heard it over the radio the other day. Now this
bureaucratic opportunist wants to do all the talking to the white men with NWU delegates sitting
mainly as givers of evidence when the negotiation starts. I know that he wants to do it. Because
he wants to attach his name to all the things workers may get, and this helps him you see, for the
next election. So it is with Shearer. It was his practice to do most of the talking on behalf of sugar
workers before the SMA. (Sugar Manufacturers’ Association) In those instances, sugar workers
most of the time never were present, for every single negotiation was always in Kingston to the
convenience of Shearer and SMA, while sugar workers slaved in the fields as they were slaving
from the days our people were brought from Africa. This type of ONE-MENISM is going on and
on, and so the independent unions must develop a broad collective leadership of trade union
representation if they are to justify their existence in the trade union movement. And workers
wherever they are, in the BITU, NWU and TUC, must fight for democratic rights in these bureau-
cratic unions, at least fifty percent of union dues in their own control and ownership, and more
honest representation from these official union men.

93
 ONE-MENISM AND HOW TO FIGHT IT
The methods of representation in the sugar industry are highly ONE-MENIST. All you have
is a thief who exists as an area supervisor who lives in the area. He collects most of the bribes
of that particular area, plus his wages from head office. And at each farm of five hundred, three
hundred and one hundred workers, you have one of two delegates from these farms who may
never attend any negotiations with the SMA. And this in my opinion can be their undoing, funny
enough, I have always thought that this is one of the powerful ways in which these bandits keep
themselves in power, but a very detailed examination of the nature of their one-men structure
shows it is not so. It is their undoing because by the simple process of getting into contact with
a brother delegate at a cane farm who was the delegate of the BITU, and discussing with him in
a very serious way about the problems that he and other workers are having within one week,
the entire fifty-five workers at that farm were transferred from under the bondage of the BITU
to the membership of the JMU – just as simple as that. Now if these sons-of-bitches had gone on
to establish a representative council there and were bribing say, five workers, then our problem
would have been that of convincing five workers. You may possibly be able to convince three of
the five workers.
This brother, of course, used to get two shillings in the pound to collect union dues. All BITU
and NWU chief delegates, as a matter of fact get 10¢ on the dollar. If there are any independent
unions practising this today, I want to tell them to stop it now.
The entire service of the Delegate Council is based upon a voluntary service, voluntary and
committed on the basis of our consciousness as workers and any trade union representation
practising this ten percent cut as independent unions – and I don’t know of any – must cease
it immediately. It is one of the crimes – it is internal bribery – it is a backward method. It is a
method in which you emphasise what you are getting from – rather that what you do in the
interest of your co-workers. It tries to make out that there could be something more important
that our contribution towards the liberation of our people, on which all our emphasis must be. It
must be on what you do.
None of the leftist brothers are getting ten cents on the dollar, and this same BITU brother
who was getting two shillings on the pound was able to be influenced by conscious reasoning to
come over to the JMU representation without getting anything from the JMU. Because the brother
understood the problems of the JMU as a new organisation facing financial problems, and with
the Sugar Workers Council as the basis of his organisation, he himself would not continue to
accept the two shillings on the pound, whether the JMU wanted to offer this or not.
I had this same experience among a group of workers in the food processing in industry. This
brother delegate of the NWU was getting two shillings on the pound, and in spire of his getting
two shillings on the pound, and in spire of his getting two shillings in the pound which increased
his take-home pay to about thirty shillings a week more than other workers were getting he
was prepared to without this commission tomorrow morning, and dash away his existing NWU
representation. What we are seeing is that workers are liberating themselves from the moral
degeneracy that trade-union bureaucrats themselves become more degenerate day by day.
Now, this problem, the ONE-MENISM that they have constructed their organisation upon can
be turned to their undoing – anyhow that we apply the relevant scientific method of work. ONE-
MENISM is not capable of keeping workers in bondage, it might appear so but it can be effectively
opposed by grounding with those workers, who by nature of their position within the work place

94
as BITU, NWU and TUC delegates have influence over their co-workers. There is no delegate
that I know today, unless he is a delegate of late, that is prepared to stick to representation of
BITU, NWU, or TUC when the great majority of his co-workers want a change. I don’t know of
that. No! He, the delegate, apart from getting his ten cents on the dollar, is concerned with this
reputation , and how his brother and sister workers see him, and therefore many workers today
are abandoning this role of ONE-MEN delegate for the trade union officials.
The delegate who collects this ten cents on the dollar is expected to deal with all aspects of
union representation – outside of negotiation for claims – at his work place. This he cannot do,
so what he ends up doing is to make excuses for union officials who themselves cannot attend
to many problems, and is silenced by the menegment, either with fear of favours, while his co-
workers un-settled grievances pile up week after week. And with workers dues floating around,
the union officials see it necessary to pay the delegate a portion of the spoils so as to keep them
on their side.
But organise a Delegate Council to collectively attend to the workers interests and put union
dues under workers control and ownership and you will find there is no reason to pay any indi-
vidual delegate, either chief or otherwise.
It is now only for us, on this genuine side of trade union representation, to examine all these
problems within the trade union movement as a whole and to act on them accordingly – help-
ing workers move from their frustrating strike actions against union bureaucracy that does not
attend to their problems, and give organisational form to their conscious intentions for genuine
representation at their place of work.

NATIONAL IDENTITY FOR THE INDIPENDENT UNIONS

Well, finally I just want to add that the whole problem of trade union representation as seen
by the independent trade union representation is that we need a national identity that is very
seriously lacking. And why do we need this identity so badly? Because workers are loosing hope
more and more each day. They are losing confidence in trade union representation on a whole.
The increasing burdens of low wages, high prices, high rental and refusal by landlords to allow
children in the homes, unemployment in the family and victimisation at work is becoming un-
bearable. For years now workers are resorting to spontaneous strike action as the only way out,
and even this has not improved the situation to any real extent, for many of the strikes have
failed because of the sell-out by union leaders.
The younger generation, faced with permanent unemployment is rebelling against the whole
society in various ways, and all that the PNP can come up with is a commission on crime1 while
the Government increases its police brutality and the oppression in the lock-downs and court-
house.
Our women folk have to settle for a life of permanent drudgery in the homes, or offering
their bodies to would-be employers as the only means of getting a little food and somewhere to
live, because as women they are the most unemployed and the most unorganised where they are
employed. Those who can afford it are fleeing the country by way of the Canadian and American
Embassies.
1
In 1969 the PNP organised a Commission on Crime which was made up largely of professional people and
clergymen.

95
 On the other hand, the capitalist wallowing in luxury and profits, does not depend solely on
their JLPNP political agents to represent them. They have their own particular national organisa-
tions — the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, the Jamaica Manufacturers Association, the Jamaica
Employers Federation — that are responsible for particular areas of capitalist representation. For
instance, not long ago, Fletcher, then Managing Director of the Daily Gleaner advocated at a
meeting of the Jamaica Employers Federation the establishment of a strike insurance fund to
secure themselves against losses arising from strike action. When he was asked at the meeting…
“what if the unions organised a strike fund of their own.” Fletcher answered saying that … “this
needs money, union dues would have to be raised and the unions are having trouble to collect
the present fees.” This is indeed an expression of utter contempt for the organisational capacities
of workers. but if we are serious, history could easily prove Fletcher wrong.
As a matter of fact, you will notice that what Fletcher is talking about is union leaders and
increase of union dues to them but that is not what we are talking about. The basis of our strike
fund is the establishment of co-operatively owned markets and production activities, in associ-
ation with the community and places of work, as we had outlined in the principles of Workers
Councils and trade union representation.
Faced with these complex problems, that amounts to the increasing power of capitalists and
the frustration of workers, it is urgent that our work begin to take on a national outlook if our
activities are not to be isolated from the knowledge of the great majority of workers, and if those
workers who will inevitably strike are able to win their strikes.
By this identity I mean that you hear that a certain place is the headquarters of a independent
union, but I am prepared to ask anybody in this audience what they understand by “an inde-
pendent union”, and bet they are unable to give any tangible example At best, their explanation
is negative – an explanation of withdrawal – that is to say “I am not a BITU, I am not a NWU
member”. That is all they can say – what they are not – but what they are, well that is left to be
answered.
IT IS NOT…
IT IS NOT…
IT IS NOT ENOUGH.
Now what I am saying is that it is not enough to say what you are not — we have got to
have a positive identity, we have got to have an identity in which people can see us as a positive
and working movement in the struggle of our people — not what we are not. Because to be not
anything is not to be anything nowadays. Nothing at all, You have got to be something. When
you give your explanation of something as being ‘non’ then I think you have a problem on
your hands. This problem is highly exemplified in the consistent sounds in the magazines and
arguments of the independent unions which keep calling themselves non-political unions. That
is their best explanation. But this is a cheap explanation . It is a cheap response to the angry
sounds that workers are putting out that “the unions are controlled by the political parties”, for
instead of working seriously to develop the political consciousness of workers we try to satisfy
their existing political consciousness by telling them we are non political hoping they will join
us quicker.
But let me ask: if the JLP and PNP were practising political and economic policies in the
interest of the working class, would the workers be complaining about the affiliation of these
parties to their trade union representation?

96
 Or to be more positive… isn’t it because the majority of MHR’s and Senators are themselves
owners of capitalist businesses and big shareholders in other capitalist companies (quite apart
from the fact that the party policies of these men defend capitalism which is opposed to the
interest of the working class) why workers are complaining about the parliamentary parties
affiliated to their trade union representation.
Therefore, with our entire lives being influenced by politics, with politics being nothing more
or less than the administration of economic policies, with the economic situation being the im-
mediate reason for trade union representation, it is ridiculous to think that we can make any
headway, that the workers’ cause can be defended from a non-political position. Apart from
achieving nothing, what this position might very well do is to make us suspect as regards our
theoretical foresight and serious practical commitment to the cause of the working class.
Therefore, we should immediately drop this word, non-political from our vocabulary and
begin to identify our work with the economic, cultural and political liberation of the working
class. We must develop a working policy that says what we mean and does what we say we are
going to do — so as to guarantee our consistent dedication to the working class.
We must build co-operatively owned markets and production activities from the various skills
that exists among us and the union dues under our control, so as to guarantee an efficient eco-
nomic base to materially sustain our strike actions.
We must build the national collective leadership of the independent trade unions from the
most conscious participants of the workers councils at places of work – so as to guarantee that
the administration and destiny of our organisation is controlled by us the workers, not only in
person but also in ideology and spirit.
We must organise the workers councils among agricultural workers in such a way, that the
centre of administrative activity is based in the villages where workers live – so as to guarantee
the unity of workers and peasants. To more effectively straighten out the problems of life and
work in the country, and be more able to occupy and cultivate the unused lands of the Govern-
ment and estate owners for the benefit of workers’ families and workers councils on the whole.
We must organise the details of our trade union activities in such a way that all benefits
and facilities of our organisation are available to unemployed workers; it is from the employed
and self-employed of the community that we must organise the workers of our production and
marketing operations. We must defend the rights of employed to work and consistently expose
capitalism for what it is – the cause , and only cause of unemployment.
We must build a research and educational programme that I will be as efficient as possible,
to be the socialist ideological motive force of our practical activities, so as to relentlessly expose
the ideology of capitalism and the activities of its governing agents both local, foreign, black and
white, and educate ourselves to the heights of consciousness as the working class who produces
everything for the existence of society but who, continuing to labour from no-pay chain slav-
ery to our present condition of money wage slaves, at all times to the benefit of capitalism and
foreigners. We have no other alternative but to overthrow capitalist society if there is to be a
better way of life for all workers. There and then we will not only be concerned with getting
more pay, but would be fully occupied with organising agriculture, the factories, the schools and
communities for the benefit of the working people.
This must be our identity, must be what we are working for, if our present status of being
independent of the parliamentary two party union is to have meaning at all, if the efforts we
have made to come to this independent existence is to have any real purpose at all.

97
 Now, it is good to remind ourselves as we did at the start of our talk – that our struggle is one
of the working class versus the capitalist class and the only reason why we can speak of unions
versus menegement is because it is in production – in the working relations of production in
the factories and on the farms that the most regular everyday contradiction between the social
co-operative way in which production work is done, and the way in which the goods that are
produced is individually owned by shareholders for purposes of profits and power, that the most
consistent struggles of the working-class takes place.
That is why the struggle does not end at the negotiating table, in claims won, which is proven
by the fact that claims won only have meaning over a period of time according to the terms of
contract. Therefore we must recognise this struggle of unions versus menegment for what it is –
a central part of the struggle of our people for the total liberation and everything we do and say
must be directed towards this outcome.
Therefore I trust this identity will be so clear in our minds that a man leaving this hall could
say to anyone “I went to a meeting of the independent unions” and he is asked “what is that…
independent unions?” and you answer “yes man, is the independent unions. They are so and so
and so.” And the person will be able to say “Oh, I see, so that is the independent unions. When
you going back to another meeting you must tell me. I would love to know some more about
them so I can tell my other co-workers.”

Joseph Edwards

Retrieved on 2 November 2024 from <organisemagazine.org.uk/2024/11/01/union-versus-

menegement-joseph-edwards-theory-and-analysis>

Transcribed by Mutt.

98
 The Anarchist Library
Anti-Copyright

book1

theanarchistlibrary.org