general strikes

By Irvin Jim - NUMSA, October 7, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s. The following event is unfolding as this goes to press:

A. The origins and foundations of South Africa’s unique corruption

There is concrete evidence, and also an admission by a key individual with a conscience, Ronnie Kasrils, about the extent of the sell-out deals the ANC made with capital during the 1990s, namely that the ANC would only get political power, without economic power, and that no radical measures would be embarked upon to restructure and to transform the South African economy.

We now know for certain that those deals sold the struggle for liberation in South African down the drain, and instead they ensured that post apartheid South Africa would be an extremely corrupt neoliberal capitalist state and society. South Africa is now in that space – an Olympic gold medal winning corrupt neoliberal capitalist system and society.

In place of the radical and full implementation of the Freedom Charter, the ANC abandoned both the philosophy and ideology of the liberation struggle – which were based on moving South Africa out of apartheid capitalism and all its evils including corruption and environmental destruction, into a society free of racism, colonialism, patriarchy and one of shared human values, social and economic justice and a transition to socialism.

Such a society was not capable of being created on the foundation of our inherited racist and patriarchal colonial capitalism.

Secretly and publicly, the ANC sold the dream for a racism free, equal and just society for a neoliberal capitalist society, complete with the corruption that comes with that package.

Apart from accepting International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank neoliberal capitalist dogma, and guaranteeing that land justice would never take place outside the capitalist markets, here are some of the deals the ANC struck with the devil, literally and figuratively, between 1990 and 1994:

• The ANC accepted to repay $25 billion of inherited apartheid-era foreign debt (October 1993).
• They gave the central bank formal independence in the interim and final constitutions (November 1993 and July 1996).
• They borrowed $850 million from the IMF with tough conditions (December 1993)
• They reappoint apartheid finance minister Derek Keys and SA Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals (May 1994).
• They agreed that South Africa would join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later renamed World Trade Organisation) on disadvantageous terms (August 1994).
• They agreed to lower the main corporate tax rate from 48% to 29% and maintain countless privileges enjoyed by wealthy white people and corporations (1994-99)
• They agreed to privatise peripheral parts of the state (January 1995).
• They agreed to relax exchange controls (the ‘finrand’) and raise interest rates (March 1995).
• They granted permission to South Africa’s biggest companies to move their financial headquarters to London (1999).
• Finally, of course, they adopt a neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy (June 1996).

The adoption of the GEAR policy (June 1996) effectively buried any hope of sustaining any liberation ethos and cultures, as South Africa was now fully confirmed as a neoliberal capitalist state and society replete with all the cutthroat competition, capitalist greed and pathological craving for accumulation of wealth by all means necessary including all and extreme forms of corruption.

All that we have said above is in the public domain. Why are our own state regulators, academics and journalists not blowing the whistle? Why must it take the FBI to tell us the details of the $10 million bribe that Thabo Mbeki and Danny Jordaan made to Sepp Blatter’s cronies, and the $6 million (R80 million) that Chancellor House made from the corrupt Hitachi deal to build Medupi’s boilers?

In effect an elite has agreed to use its control of the state to allow the white racist colonial capitalist foundation of South Africa to remain intact, in the process, allowing white dominated and foreign corporations to continue with their economic activities unchanged. It has done this in exchange for a share of the spoils. We know some of them are direct beneficiaries. They are businessmen and women during the night and politicians during the day. And of course their families are crony capitalists night and day. Today, the ANC itself acknowledges this fact – just read their 2015 NGC documents.

There is no difference between the ANC and the network of public officials and private individuals who agree to corruptly allocate tenders in exchange for a share of the spoils. This behaviour is a logical and necessary corrupt character structure of the society that neoliberal capitalism thrives on.

By x363464 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 29, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In preparation for May Day protests, a determined unionist dropped a banner early this morning reading "May Day #SHUTITDOWN!" at 17th and Broadway. This Banner was intentionally dropped near Latham Square, the site of the 1946 Oakland General Strike, in hopes to revive the tactic. We think it is the most effective tool for working class people to achieve their demands for a living wage, against police violence, and against austerity and gentrification. We hope to shut down the city this May Day to show the world that the workers are the ones that run the system and it is time to stop it's exploitation and stop the destruction of the working class, poor, and the planet we inhabit.

May Day ‪#‎SHUTITDOWN‬ Full Schedule and Posters!
https://maydayshutitdown.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/may-day-shutitdown-full-schedule-and-poster/

Share and invite your friends!

All around the world May Day has been a day for direct action, reclaiming the streets, speaking out against injustice. Systematic racism, police violence, environmental catastrophes, and economic inequality are some of the many oppressions that are destroying our lives and the planet we live on. May Day should always be the day to take it to the next level and #shutitdown. We cannot continue to live this way and May Day we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

By Quebec IWW - SITT-IWW, March 29, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

English Translation. Pour lire cet article en français, cliquez ici. 

A phantom haunts the province of Quebec. It is the phantom of the General Strike. Since 2012, our elites have known that the working class, the students, and all those who continue to decry injustice and repression have the power to take to the streets and impose their legitimacy in the face of the State. Despite this dread, the high-priests of capitalism, and especially those preaching its liberal vision, can not hold back from waging an open war against everything that isn’t merchandise, against everything that isn’t financially valuable. From budget cuts to over-arming police forces, and from underpaid jobs to public insults against the poor and the exploited, everything leads one to believe that Quebec is now the foreground of unbridled capitalism. This neo-liberal paradise, protected by the State and its minions, ruins our lives and those of our families and friends, quashes what little is left of our liberty, spits in the faces of those most hard on their luck and on the misery of its own creation.

We have long ceased to believe in the regulatory capacity of this system. By destroying itself, it will destroy us too. Each new day we are reminded of this programmed failure: environmental disasters, increased inequality, the deterioration of working conditions, institutional racism, systemic corruption of our political system, and harassment of women in their workplaces or at school. Generally speaking, it is all forms of domination that are dangerously increasing, pushing the most exploited and dominated to the breaking point, all in order to install our elites on a too-comfortable pedestal.

This is why we call the rebellious among us to insurrection. We hope that the spring will bring out the most angry, those who are disgusted at the system, in the streets and in actions. Because apathy just isn’t enough, we firmly believe in our common capacity to create a better world. More than a simple timely struggle against austerity, we see on the horizon the premises of a social war, of which the 2012 strike was only a beginning. Each government, left or right, has tried time and again to impose their rotten economic and societal concepts upon us. A single day of strikes is not enough to push back a government which dearly protects the financial assets of the most dominant in society. We believe that a global revolt of all society must emerge during the spring. This revolt must be planned on the long term: in Quebec as in Europe, there are too many recent examples that demonstrate the futility of punctual and singular actions against governments that are now used to and prepared for social discontent.

Against capitalism and liberalism, we reaffirm our right to manage our own lives, whether the people who rule us like it or not. Our daily lives belong to us, our cities too. We firmly believe that capitalism must be erased from Quebec. In this goal, we will always be in solidarity with those who struggle, and always at odds with those who remain resigned and prostrate. We will be alongside workers and students in their struggles, and we will oppose all police brutality with working class solidarity. In the streets, in our workplaces and schools, in our neighborhoods, we are here to struggle and help.

Let us not fear our utopias!

Let us dare to overthrow the established order!

By Jeffrey Free Luers - Strike for Climate Justice, March 20, 2009

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s. Note that this call wasmade five years ago, but is still entirely relevant today.

Twenty years ago governments of the world met for the first ever climate talks. The talks, then, focused largely on the growing hole in the world’s ozone layer (a hole that still exists today) and the need to eliminate CFC emissions (which also still exist today though in much smaller amounts). The other climate item on the agenda was global warming. Scientists warned that there was growing evidence that the world was warming, possibly due to human activity much like the root cause of the ozone hole.

Unfortunately, in 1988 it was decided that global warming did not pose a significant threat to warrant action. The problem could wait to be addressed.

Nearly a decade later, in 1997, the governments of the world met for their annual climate talks in Kyoto, Japan. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel of the world’s leading scientists from countries around the globe, presented growing evidence that the world faced a severe threat from climate change. These scientists concluded that the single largest contributor to climate change were human greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2).

For the first time since the inception of the climate talks, world leaders agreed action was needed to combat climate change. The world took notice with a collective gasp as 180 governments pledged their support to a worldwide climate treaty to reduce CO2 emissions in an effort to conquer global warming.

In 2007, a decade after Kyoto and twenty years since the first climate talks, the IPCC declared in its strongest language yet that the world faced imminent global catastrophe unless immediate and drastic action was taken to reduce and then eliminate greenhouse emissions.

In the years following the Kyoto protocol, the United States – the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the world – pulled out of the treaty. CO2 emission around the world continued to rise. Governments that had promised to reduce emissions failed to impose strict limits, instead relying on voluntary cuts from industry. As industries refused to limit their emissions and governments balked at regulation, the Kyoto protocol collapsed.

The U.S. and numerous other countries with high greenhouse emissions have steadfastly refused to cut CO2 emissions, claiming that doing so would harm their ability remain economically competitive.

In the face of the largest economic collapse in world history, brought about by the very same green, deceit and malfeasance of the worlds most powerful multinational and government deregulation that has allowed CO2 emissions to go unchecked. Government and corporate claims that reducing emissions would create economic hard ring hollow.

People around the world put faith in our governments and institutions to act on our behalf and in our best interests. Our governments have had 20 years to act on global warming and climate change. 20 years to act on a threat that the world’s leading scientists say is the greatest threat to human kind the world has ever faced.

We call the entire working class for a
GENERAL STRIKE on 11/27/2014

Against austerity and predatory neoliberal policies
Against the terrorism of poverty and degradation
Against State’s authoritarianism and the policing of public spaces
Against the relentless onslaught of capitalist elites and their state-servant
The working class does not claim fraternal benefits and privileges
It fights for the liberation of all humanity from the tyranny of the capital
Our resistance will be unyielding until they are finally overthrown.

ΙWW Greece
iwwgreece@yahoo.gr