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* South Africa: Khanya Journal on Marikana Massacre: End of the Old Labour Movement?
Peter sez:
Amongst the several valuable items below the most relevant is surely that from Khanya Journal, long linked with - though autonomous from - the union movement in South Africa. I would like to hope this piece will contribute to the growing debate on the necessity for a new kind of labour movement, not only in South Africa but internationally. It does seem to me that what is being demonstrated in, admitedly extreme form, in that country is the bankruptcy of a union-cum-industrial relations model that is quasi universal.
Another labour movement is necessary - and not only in South Africa. So is another kind of international labour solidarity - one that surpasses the international relations of union offices and officers (and their comfortable relations with the inter-state International Labour Organisation) with a worker controlled, worker-powered internationalism, itself integrated into the new global justice movement.
Now read on...
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Police viciously attacked at Lonmin mine - SAPS
Unrest at Lonmin Mine
Following extensive and unsuccessful negotiations by SAPS members to disarm and disperse a heavily armed group of illegal gatherers at a hilltop close to LonminMine, near Rustenburg in the North West Province, the South African Police Service was viciously attacked by the group, using a variety of weapons, including firearms. The Police, in order to protect their own lives and in self-defence, were forced to engage the group with force.
This resulted in several individuals being fatally wounded, and others injured. The crime scene, which covers a vast area, is currently being managed by senior officials from the Independent Police Investigative Directorate and supported by an expert team of detectives and forensic experts.
The National Commissioner of the South African Police Service, General Riah Phiyega, and members of her top management are currently at the scene, appraisingthemselves of the situation, which is still unfolding.
Accordingly, in order to allow the investigators to manage the crime scene, and to stabilise the situation, the National Commissioner will be holding a media briefing at 11:30am tomorrow morning (Friday 17 August 2012) at Lonmin Training Centre (on the R27 just off the Mooinooi / Marikana off-ramp on the N4).
Statement issued by Captain Dennis Adriao, SAPS National Spokesperson, August 17 2012
***
From Ficksburg to Marikana: South Africa's post-apartheid democracy on trial!
Khanya Journal Editorial Statement on the Marikana Massacre
The murder of more than 35 miners by the South African police at Marikana on Thursday 16th August marks a watershed in South Africa's post-apartheid history. Attempts by the media, the state, the ANC other established political parties, and the established trade unions including Cosatu, to portray the massacre and the strike by Lonmin workers as caused by inter-trade union rivalry cannot hide the fact that the massacre put the South Africa's democracy on trial.
A strike driven by deepening poverty and inequality
The strike at Lonmin, one of the world's largest platinum producers, is driven by deep and systemic poverty of the workers and their communities in South Africa today. While a few rich bosses and their BEE hangers-on flaunt their wealth, the working class continues to endure poverty wages, lack of housing and other social services, lack of education, and a deteriorating food security. The Marikana workers' refusal to end the strike was primarily driven by the need for survival and to defend living standards.
The ANC government defends the platinum bosses
Today the platinum bosses occupy the same position that had been occupied by the gold mining bosses throughout the history of capitalism in South Africa. With Gold mining on the decline, and with South African capitalism set to continue on its road of being an extractive economy, the future of South African capitalism is now linked to the future of platinum groups metals mining. It is this industry that will settle the future of the black capitalist class and its ANC connections, the role of the state, its political parties and its economic policy.What is done with platinum wealth will also determine whether South African capitalism can be tamed to provide a decent if basic standard of living for the majority black working class. Over the last few months the platinum bosses have been calling on the state to 'rescue' them from the effects of the global economic crisis. Workers in the platinum mines have refused to shoulder the burden of the crisis, and have mounted ongoing battles to defend their living standards. A mining lekgotla, signs by the state that it is prepared to lower safety standards on the mines, and signals by the state it is considering support to the mining bosses are part of the responses by the ANC government. The intervention of the SAPS to break the strike by Marikana workers by force is the latest in these responses to the pleas of the mining bosses. All that was left was to find a pretext to move in and break the strike by heavy forces. On the 15 August the ANC issued a statement commending SAPS for deploying "3000 heavily armed police" in Marikana.
The ANC government takes the road of violence against the working class
The massacre in Marikana marks an important moment in the growing brutality of the post-apartheid state against working class communities. The road from Ficksburg to Marikana is littered with bullets and armoured cars that have been used to suppress struggles of communities and workers for social justice and a decent life. With the massacre at Marikana the ANC government has finally abandoned any attempt or pretence to respect the rights of the working class to struggle, and has embraced the philosophy of the old apartheid state of 'shoot first and set up a commission later'. With Marikana the ANC government has placed itself in a long line of massacres of the working class from Bulhoek in 1921, the masscres of miners in 1946, Sharpville in 1960, Soweto in 1976, Langa in 1985, and Boipatong in 1990. South African capitalism was built on the massacres of the black working class : the ANC government has now placed itself as an inheritor of this tradition of massacres.
The end of the anti-apartheid democratic labour movement
The Marikana massacre also marked a watershed moment in the history of the labour movement that was born out of the Durban strikes of 1973. For Cosatu, the slogan of "an injury to one is an injury to all' has now lost any meaning; working class solidarity and struggle no longer concerns the federation. At its CEC convened after the massacre, Cosatu said not a word about the demands of the workers, not a word about the mining bosses, not a line of criticism of SAPS, and not a word about the appaling living conditions of the miners. Cosatu focused on condemning 'breakaway unions' and made arrangement to convene an urgent CEC on 'breakaways'. For Cosatu the road to Marikana began over a decade ago, with the old labour movement consistently refusing to support and linkup with communities struggling for a better life. With the Marikana massacre the old labour movement completed its delinking from the working class and its struggle.
A weak working class movement and a culture of political violence
The Marikana massacre, the workers' refusal to end the strike and their preparedness to face state machine guns speaks to a deep preparedness to struggle. The levels and strategies of organising by the workers also reveal a weak and divided working class. As a new labour movement emerges out of the factories and mines, and as a new working class movement emerges out of the townships, universities and schools, all of us who are committed to a socially just world need to dedicate ourselves to overcoming deep organisational, political and strategic weaknesses of this new movement. A major challenge facing a new cadre of struggle is to overcome the culture of political violence that has been inherited from the previous cycle of struggle (against apartheid). A new working class cadre needs to learn that violence within the working class is not a method of organising, and that the terrain of political and organisational violence is a terrain of the ruling class.
Mobilise! Don't Mourn!
The spirit of the workers who died at Marikana will not be defeated by attempts to turn the massacre into an instance of 'black on black violence'. The apartheid state tried this and failed. It will not be defeated by turning it into 'union faction fights'. The apartheid state tried this and failed. With Marikana its not enough to condemn the state, the bosses and all those who support and defend capitalism. The spirit of the Marikana workers can only be honoured by an intensification of the struggle to build and strengthen a new, organised and militant anti-capitalist working class movement.
Arm yourself with Knowledge! Organising and Fight!
Khanya Journal Editorial Collective
18 August 2012
***
18 August 2012
The Marikana Mine Worker's Massacre – a Massive Escalation in the War on the Poor
It’s now two days after the brutal, heartless and merciless cold blood bath of 45 Marikana mine workers by the South African Police Services. This was a massacre!
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The amount of poverty is excessive. In every township there are shacks with no sanitation and electricity. Unemployment is hovering around 40%. Economic inequality is matched with political inequality. Everywhere activists are facing serious repression from the police and from local party structures.
Mining has been central to the history of repression in South Africa. Mining made Sandton to be Sandton and the Bantustans of the Eastern Cape to be the desolate places that they still are. Mining in South Africa also made the elites in England rich by exploiting workers in South Africa. You cannot understand why the rural Eastern Cape is poor without understanding why Sandton and the City of London are rich.
Mining has been in the news in South Africa recently. Malema, a corrupt and authoritarian demagogue who represents a faction of the BEE elite, has been demanding nationalisation. Progressive forces inside and outside of the alliance oppose Malema because he represents the most predatory faction of the elite and is looking for a massive bail out for his friends who own unprofitable mines. What we stand for is the socialisation, under workers' control, of the mines. We also stand for reparations for the hundred years of exploitation.
Things are starting to change but not for the better. Khulubuse Zuma, the president’s nephew and Zondwa Mandela, the former president’s grandchild, and many others with close family ties to politicians have become mining tycoons overnight. China has joined the bandwagon as well, plundering our resources.
Frans Baleni, the General of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) earns R105 000 a month. NUM has become a route into high office in government and even to places on the boards of the mining companies. The union is rapidly losing all credibility on the mines. It is clear that it is now co-opted into the system and is part of the structures of control. It is the police that take NUM to address the workers. Baleni's betrayal of the workers has made him a very rich man – a rich man who condemns and tries to suppress the struggles of the poor. It is no surprise that workers are rejecting NUM, trying to build an alternative union or acting on their own without any union representing them. The workers are right to chase the NUM leaders away from their strikes.
The Marikana Mine is the richest platinum mine in the world and yet its workers live in shacks. Most of the slain workers are rock drillers, the most difficult and dangerous work in the mine. They do the most dangerous work in the mine and yet they earn only R4 000 a month. Through the blood and sweat in the mines they do not only produce wealth that is alienated from them, they also produce the fat cats, which wine and dine on naked bodies and call that sushi.
The workers who occupied the hill came from many places including Swaziland and Mozambique. But most of them came from the rural Eastern Cape, from the former Bantustans where people live their lives as a living death under the chiefs, without work, without land and without hope. Every Rand that they win back from the capitalists is another rand coming to the poorest part of the country. The part of the country that has been most devastated by the mines over the last century. We celebrate every Rand that the workers have taken back from the capitalists and fully support their demand of a salary of R12 500 a month. Will Baleni or Nzimande or Zuma accept R4 000 a month? If not why should anyone else?
The strikers see the NUM leaders as traitors. They delinked from the NUM because they saw that they needed to delink from the alliance of capitalists and tendepreners that run the ANC. The decision to delink was very courageous! We will have to delink in every sector if we are going to build a real movement for change.
Workers under the tripartite alliance are being sundered from socialism; they are only being encouraged to vote for the ruling party. Nothing is being done to fuse social consciousness in their struggle. They are encouraged to participate in sensational politics, the politics of who should lead and who should be removed. They are encouraged to see communities and workers that organise independently as their enemies.
It is easy to decide not to decide. It is much harder to make a decision pregnant with risk and promise. For miners to delink from the likes of Baleni and tripartite alliance was a courageous decision. They understand that courage is an important element of all struggles. They understand that there is no quick fix in the struggle for a just society, a society that will respect and uphold the rights of workers and nature, a society that will be ruled on the principle of each according to his needs. This society is based on each according to his political connections with the elite that has captured the ANC and its alliance partners.
If the strikers were protesting under the banner of the tripartite alliance they wouldn’t have been slaughtered. COSATU strikes have often been violent but their members are not shot like animals. In fact the campaigns to support Zuma in his rape and corruption trials were full of threats of violence and yet Zuma supporters were not gunned down.
Before the miners occupied the hill they made a vow that no bullet will deter them. They were willing to fight and die to get a far share of the wealth of this mine for themselves and their families. What this demonstrates is that these were people who were aware of the risks that their decisions entailed, who thought about such risks carefully, guided by their conscience and concluded that they were willing to face the consequences that could arise.
Hellen Keller's words ring true “There is no such thing as a complete security, and if there was what fun would life be. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success". She adds “To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate and adversity is strength undefeatable.”
The immense courage of the miners that gathered on Nkaneng hill was tremendous. They were prepared to take a real stand. They were prepared to face real risks. We do not see this courage amongst the left. In fact most of the left has abandoned real struggle in real communities for meetings and conferences and emails. The left has become something that NGOs run. It is about bussing poor black people into meetings that they have no control over and that are very very removed from the realities of our real struggles. It is about educating the poor and not about fighting with the poor. When real struggles happen in places like the shack settlements of Zakheleni, eTwatwa or Kennedy Road most of the left is not there. But when there is a big conference they are all there.
The ANC government has killed workers for demanding a salary increment from a notoriously exploitative and very, very rich company. The workers earn only R4000, per month, doing the most dangerous work. The ANC president and cabinet ministers earns not less that R2 million per year. And on top of that there is corruption everywhere. Our politicians are part of the global elite. The lowest ANC deployee earns not less than R20 000 excluding benefits.
The Marikana mine workers lived in shacks with their families. The president of the ANC has recently built a mansion in his homestead, a mansion that cost tax payers not less than R200 million.
It is the ANC government that shoot sand kill protesters when they are fighting for the assertion of their humanity. They recently killed Andries Tatane. They have killed at least 25 others on protests since 2000. If you are poor and black your lives counts for nothing to the ANC.
What lesson can be learnt from the Marikana mine workers 'massacre? The ruthlessness of this government does not diminish but on contrary increases with the number of workers and unemployed who starve. They are criminalising our struggles and militarising their police. It is clear that anyone who organises outside of the ANC, in communities or in the workplace, will face serious and violent repression from the party and the police.
The NUM and the SACP have made it very clear which side that they are on. By supporting the massacre and calling for further repression against the workers they have made it quite clear that they are on the side of the ruthless alliance between capital and the politicians. They have declared, very clearly, that they support the war on the poor. Their reactions to the massacre are a total disgrace. No credible left formation in South Africa or anywhere in the world can work with the NUM or SACP again. The decision of the miners at Marikana to delink from the corrupt and ruthless politics of the alliance has been vindicated.
Things will not get better but will get worse. When the elite’s power is threatened they will respond with more and more violence. War has been declared on the poor and on anyone organising outside of the control of the ANC. We are our own liberators. We must organise and continue to build outside the ANC. We must face the realities of the situation that we confront clearly and courageously. Many more of us will be jailed and killed in the years to come.
What they have done can never be forgotten nor forgiven.
Ayanda Kota
078 825 6462
***
Gordimer distressed at Lonmin mine 'massacre'
Nobel literature prize winner Nadine Gordimer, a powerful critic of apartheid, told AFP she never imagined the police violence that killed 34 miners could ever happen in the new South Africa.
In scenes that drew comparisons to the infamous 1960 Sharpeville massacre, when apartheid police fired into a crowd of blacks, police on Thursday opened fire into group of striking miners demanding a tripling of their salaries.
"I am absolutely devastated. I can't believe this terrible massacre between our own people, our own black people," she said in an interview. "Ghastly, completely unacceptable."
"If you ask me when we celebrated our victory in the struggle, when Umkonto weSizwe (the ANC armed wing) won against the South African army, and especially those of us around, as I was in the ANC, we could never have believed this would ever happen," she said.
Police said they acted in self defence against the armed protestors.
Gordimer said South African police lacked crowd control skills, despite the recurring protests against poor living conditions across the country.
"I don't understand why, since we have had so many protests over the living conditions of people living in shacks, why the police do not have sophisticated, more competent methods of dealing with people who become violent in a crowd.
"Why would you simply pick up your gun and shoot back?"
Gordimer, who had several works banned by the apartheid regime, said in the dawn of democracy euphoria, a host of inequalities were overlooked and no plans were put in place to deal with them.
"There were many factors we didn't take into account. All we were absolutely interested about was getting rid of apartheid. We didn't realise that the financial inequality along with all the other inequalities, were sure going to be with us."
"And unfortunately we seem to have quite wrongly not talked about this before, and how we were going to deal with this situation."
The 88-year-old writer and political activist said as a young white girl she was made to believe that black miners were dangerous.
But as she grew up and became politically aware, she got to understand the deplorable living conditions of black mine workers, who were kept far away in so-called compounds.
As co-author of the book On The Mines, she went in to understand first-hand the mine workers' living conditions, which she believes have not improved much.
"The compounds, the sleeping quarters, were concrete bunks, one above the other, concrete. And I don't know what the conditions are like now (but) I am sure they are not particularly comfortable.
She said the "incredible" compound system continued "until I am sure, very recently."
"These people are really the most important working factor in bringing out the wealth that we have, our wealth, our platinum, our gold and uranium underground. They have always been underpaid and under-cared for."
Many of them have suffered from mining-related illnesses such as tuberculosis, she said.
She was also annoyed that President Jacob Zuma did not return home immediately in the thick of the violence.
"President Zuma was on some mission in Mozambique. Why didn't he get on one of his private jets and come back immediately to deal with the trouble?"
She does not spare mine owners from blame.
"I want to see them brought into the public domain to (explain) what they intend to do to change the conditions of these workers."
***
Justice organisation blames Zuma for Marikana shooting
Sapa | 18 August, 2012 15:07
A New Zealand-based organisation has blamed President Jacob Zuma and the ANC-led government for a shootout at the Lonmin mine in Marikana, in the North West, that left 34 workers dead.
Spokesman for the Global Peace and Justice Auckland (GPJA) John Minto wrote in an open letter to Zuma that the government had "blood on their hands".
"Just as we held the apartheid regime responsible for the massacres in the 70's and 80's, we now hold the ANC government responsible for the massacre of striking mineworkers."
Minto said members of the organisation had watched with growing alarm at the direction the ANC leadership had taken South Africa since the first democratic election in 1994.
"Under the ANC we have seen South Africa change seemlessly from race-based apartheid to economic apartheid".
He said the strike came as a result of the ANC's choice to follow free-market economic policies.
"Such policies had always transferred wealth from the poor to the rich and stripped hope from the majority" he said.
He said the struggle for liberation was not aimed at placing a few black faces at the top table in South Africa.
New Zealand-based media outlet 3 News reported on Saturday that GPJA protesters attacked the South African consulate building in Auckland in response to the shooting.
They used red paint bombs to splatter the walls and windows and stuck the open letter on the door.
***
http://archive.org/details/MassacreOfStrikingMineworkersInMarikanaS...
Massacre of Striking Mineworkers in Marikana, South Africa
On August 16th, heavily armed police in Marikana, South Africa opened fire on striking mineworkers, reportedly killing over 34 workers in an action reminiscent of the worst days of the apartheid regime. The platinum miners were demanding increases in pay and improved living and working conditions in a nation where poverty, unemployment and inequality persist 18 years after the end of the apartheid system of white rule. The governing African National Congress (ANC), which once represented the hope of equality for all South Africans, obliquely condemned the violence but refrained from criticizing the police.
With Patrick Bond, political economist and senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies in Durban, South Africa. Radio interview by Amy Grunder, first aired live on Sounds of Dissent on WZBC 90.3 FM Boston on 2012-08-18. --- Sounds of Dissent has aired since 1998 on WZBC 90.3 FM in Greater Boston. Catch us every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Live streams & archive links at wzbc.org.
This audio is part of the collection: Community Audio
It also belongs to collection:
Artist/Composer: Sounds of Dissent
Keywords: South Africa; Marikana; ANC; African National Congress; Lonmin; mine workers; apartheid; National Union of Mineworkers; NUM; Association of Mine Workers and Construction Union; AMCU
Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
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| Marikana Massacre | 18.6 MB |
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Comment by peter waterman on August 28, 2012 at 15:29 -
Sandeep:
'The other way' that the second woman suggested was not pointed out in that cartoon. The point is, rather, that repetition of old tried and trusted ways is not smart, particularly if they have failed.
The traditional ways were also those of an earlier phase of capitalism/imperialism. And the experience is that capitalism has its own revolutions, or at least undergoes profound transformations that we ignore at our peril.
The three major labour/socialist strategies of the past have all failed, or, in the case of China, turned into their opposites. Actually all three - Communist, Social-Democratic or Radical-Nationalist (Peronist, African Socialist, etc) were what Patrick Bond has called the South African transformation, 'Elite Transitions'. Without denying mass involvement and influence on, for example, the Russian Revolution, it was successful due to a unqiue combination of circumstances - one of these being the dramatic expansion during WW1 of the working class, which therefore consisted in large part of 'semi-proletarianised peasants', or 'lumpen proletarians' (in traditional Marxist language), who were highly inflammable, if hardly organised (think, here, Marikana underground workers). It was the 'unreliability' of these that caused Lenin to abolish, first, the Constituent Aseembly, second, the Soviets (Councils, leading later to the phenomenon of Council Communism in Germany). No one 'betrayed' the Russian Revolution. Neither the Bolshevik leadership nor the worker/peasant mass was capable of producing in Russia more than an industrialising, modernising (education, social services), centralising, chauvinistic, militaristic and imperial (all the marginal ethnic/national minorities and even such (would be) nation states as Poland and Finland.
So I see these revolutions as creating societies parallel to, rather than surpassing, the dominant capitalist ones. And then collapsing internally due to the dramatic developments and transformations of capitalism. Bear in mind that this did not require invasions, except for the wars of intervention following the Russian Revolution). Thus the risings in Post-WW2 Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, were due to profound internal contradictions. And the transformation of China from a model Communist to a model Capitalist state, suggests that the models had to do with modernisation rather than emancipation. Likewise in South Africa.
So, another emancipation is necessary. And this cannot be projected on political-economic grounds (the bourgeoise produces its own gravediggers in the industrial proletariat), unless such grounds are understood to require social, cultural, gender, anti-racial and sexual emancipation of the working class(es) - along with the other sections of - say - the 75 (rather than the rhetorical 99) percent of the population.
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Comment by sandeep on August 28, 2012 at 14:56 -
*
many many Thanks to Ira for "I am not being cynical here. I just believe at a certain point we will have to build entirely new formations just as the soviets were built in Russia in the years preceding the October Revolution."
interestingly both the commune and the soviet were produced by or evolved through spontaneous mass class actions and they were not 'planned' by the 'conscious' party and implemented by the party machine -- many of the bolsheviks were not very open to the idea of soviets and Lenin needed to hammer the necessity in ...
Later, just after the end of WW1, i cannot recollect exactly whether before or after the murder of our Rosa and Libnecht, another form was cropping up in Germany, some sort of ‘committee’ i do not exactly remember the name, in a speech at a party congress Lenin mentioned it indirectly while saying the factory level technologists/engineers telling workers to take up the administration/power -- and Lenin was very specific to tell and retell that when 'they' (Germans) would do it (revolution) they would teach us how to do (socialism, transition).
our venezuelan friends are tying some sort of 'workers control' which was not within the ambit of 'workers conytrol' in the early soviet days.
perhaps we cannot foretell (at least and more so now) what would be the form of state-power-cum-self-organisation of the proletariat.
but the spirit behind the last sentences or Ira is The Thing without which, perhaps, we cannot move ahead - and we are in a fantastic time in the sense that the 'new' is now in the germinal stage
* But Peterman, sir, what is "the other way that I suggested"?
the class is of course trying to suggest us and criticise 'our' past - that is 'the old working class movement' - in the way the class can
and it is heartening that persons like you are trying to listen, to understand, to give expression ... well, i cannot express myself more at this point, sorry
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Comment by peter waterman on August 28, 2012 at 14:45
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Thanks Sandeep and Ira.
However, Ira, I have to say that the necessity of 'an international insurrectionist quasi-illegal party' also belongs to that 'old labour movement'. It comes over to me as more appropriate to Russia, 1905 or 1917 than South Africa - or anywhere else - today.
History would seem to confirm the failure of both the insurrectional and the incremental strategies based on Marxist assumptions about the primacy, the revolutionary capacities and internationalism of what they assumed would be a growing industrial/mining working class.
Indeed, the problem reminds me of a caricature showing a discussion between two women:
Woman 1: We have been trying to do it this way for years and it just never works.
W2: Then why don't we try it the other way that I suggested?
W1: But what if it doesn't work?
So, I am really with the second woman here.
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Comment by Ira Wechsler on August 27, 2012 at 20:35 -
Thanks Peter for some eye-operning debate and information. I agree on your assessment of the current bankruptcy of the union movement globally. While there are still some local unions that are democratic, responsive, and effective they are very few and far between. I see know way of signing a contract to live under wage slavery and maintaining over the long run the integrity of a labor movement to challenge the right of capital to rule our lives. It is more than a bit of a contradiction.
There has to be an international insurrectionist quasi-illegal party. They will of course work within the labor unions and other mass formations because that is where the people are at. But to move the existing unions to shake of their deep-seated bureaucracy and patriotic view of capitalism is almost out of the question. We can take over a local but I can't see how we can take over an international . They enforce the their rule in much the same way the capitalists enforce their control over the state apparatus. I am not being cynical here. I just believe at a certain point we will have to build entirely new formations just as the soviets were built in Russia in the years preceding the October Revolution. This will require years of pain-staking organizing and events catapulting the dire immediate need for these forms in the eyes of the workers.
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Comment by sandeep on August 22, 2012 at 8:46
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as far as my little knowledge goes - it is not only in S.A., but elsewhere too we witnessed the "End of the Old Labour Movement" and also the signs of germinal of the New Working Class Movement - sometimes through plant/factory level fights under the control of the workers, sometimes through defying the rigid-parliament-centric lines of the Old bureaucratic TU and their bosses, through rebellion and etc. In some cases desperation + severe attacks from govt-old-TU-police-capitalist nexus is compelling them to take some course like what happened in Ssangyong (South Korea) etc; sometimes their 'independent' movement (Al Mahallah, etc in Egypt) is paving the road for country-wide mass upsurge; sometimes the new is expressing itself by decreasing TU density + increasing militancy in the streets (2010 France, Greece) which may 'incite' some to write "Indignez Vous" ... [Toussants wrote in 2011, "...estamos asistiendo a una aceleración de la historia"]
You are in a position to study all facets of the rise of the new (after the Great Defeat of the international working class movement) [perhaps Lenin said in Junius Pamphlet, 1916, that ... if there heppens no revolution in developed Europe within 10-20 years 'history will make a great leap backward'] and so we can expect more articles from you covering continents on the rise of the new
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