This excerpt from Alain Badiou's important essay on the Paris Commune in Polemics argues that radical politics always requires a break with the left - it always requires a decision for people to take things into their own hands.
An excerpt from
Quote:
The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration on Politics
in Polemics, Verso, 2006. To read the full essay in pdf click here.
In what Partha Chatterjee calls 'most of the world' the state and capital have two defences against grassroots political society - the police and civil society (especially NGOs and the academy). The first protect oppression with violent repression, the second does the same by throwing up a spongy wall around it in which grassroots political society is absorbed via individualising technocratic 'public participation' processes and educated to accept domination via all kinds of workshops and training that teach people to know their place. This article is an important attempt to think with grassroots militancy against civil society.
During mid-June 2008 the Iberian counter-information collective A Las Barricadas posed several questions to the Movimiento Libertario Cubano (Cuban Libertarian Movement), an affinity group of Cuban anarchists abroad. The complete text of this interview follows.
We’re interviewing the Cuban Libertarian Movement (Movimiento Libertario Cubano – MLC), an organization made up of anarchists in exile in different parts of the world. In these days of apparent change, of transition, as the European and North-American media would have it, it’s of interest to know first hand about what’s happening inside the island.
May 2nd more than 600 followers of coordination 75 of the sans-papiers (75 is the number of the department of Paris) entered as a big group the Center of the Unions in order to occupy it. In this article, some of the delegates of this occupation give their views on struggle with and against the unions.
From the time of our arrival the gate of the big hall at bottom floor was quickly closed, so the occupation was limited to the courtyard, the stairs up until the forth floor and the hallways of the floors.
For 58 days, from the 2nd may, on the initiative of the coordination 75 around 800 children, men, and women have occupied the Center of the Unions at rue Charlot (metro République) in Paris.
Something new is coming into force in this historically important location in the workers struggle in France. The occupation is made in an autonomous way against every "advice" and recommendation of the big political organizations and against the unions, and it is holding out well.
First issue of an irregular workers' bulletin put together by users of the website, libcom.org. This issue focuses on the 2008 pay dispute over sub-inflation pay offers.
