High School students struck and marched across Germany yesterday in protest against classroom overcrowding, lack of teachers, and the pressure of examinations.
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A lecture delivered at Kingston University in 1996 by the great historian of the English Civil War on the subject of Gerard Winstanley; a founder of the Diggers, visionary, land squatter and early communist pamphleteer.
Yeah, so I wanted to see what australian comrades think of the relevance of the ASN.
For those who don't know who it is, go to [url=http://www.rebelworker.org/]
Anyway, so what do people think of the ASN? I've gathered from a lot of people its not very popular within various anarchist groups, which is either due to the posts of ASN members on here in respect to other anarchists, or to the workerist politics of the ASN.
In any case, I think that they happen to represent the polar opposite of what goes on in the Australian anarchist movement - that is, the focus of many anarchist groups appears to be largely around environmental struggles and anti-war, occasional anti-capitalist (though, this mainly takes the form of summit protests), and international solidarity (primarily with the Zapatistas).
The ASN, on the contrary, represents a negation of most of these, if not all of these, struggles in favour a total focus on the workplace, and in particular, transport in Australia (but also does address workers struggles abroad in the paper Rebel Worker, and also in Sparks)
What this shows, however, is a complete difference in focus in both of these "factions" of the anarchist movement: One side is primarily focused on struggles which are not linked directly to working class politics, the other, is completely focused on the workplace, and negating all other forms of struggle.
What seems to have occurred, in this, is that one is a product of the other, essentially, the ASN's approach is a reaction to the approach that was dominated in the post-60's era of anarchism, that which focused on social struggles.
At least, for me, I was disillusioned with the lack of class struggle politics within the Australian anarchist movements (and no, I haven't joined ASN, but was part of the forming of a class struggle anarchist group, SACT) and the monumentus focus of anarchists on environmental and social struggles, rather than any focus on workers struggles.
Anyway, what I want to know is what other peoples thoughts are on the relevance of the ASN.