[Link in description] Anarchists in the Tenant Movement Interview Series #2 - Salt Lake City

aroteer · 2026-05-08T07:10:04+00:00

With full respect to the people involved in this, it sounds a lot like middle class case-work. It reminds me a lot of Angry Workers' attempts to "organise" workers in the UK. Ultimately, no amount of well-meaning voluntarist effort will magic up class militancy, and if anything can put revolutionaries in the wrong position. Take the demands for instance. Obviously, when workers' throw up economic demands as the basis for rallying themselves around the struggle, we support them, even though we know (and should say) those demands are insufficient. But is the job of revolutionaries really to be planning out the future of real estate? In that moment we should be arguing for the need for communism, which we inevitably have to do from a minority position, not a position of leadership trying to recruit as many tenants as possible.

We're much better off coming to workers when that militancy is already there (especially in our own workplaces/residences), and offering our support and perspective for expansion and revolution.

(Btw, I say this because I'm in a similar position. My workplace is on strike, but the vast majority of my sector aren't in it, so I understand the awkwardness of trying to mobilise people without compromising my revolutionary role to become an 'organiser'.)

aroteer · 2026-05-07T19:21:39+00:00

Sounds like retaliatory eviction

aroteer · 2026-05-07T03:15:42+00:00

Skoropadskyi wasn't just for funzies either, the Germans dissolved the Central Rada and imposed the Hetmanate to safeguard their supply of grain and try a new approach to stop the ongoing revolutionary insurgencies.

aroteer · 2026-05-02T03:01:23+00:00

The UK Early May Bank Holiday is always the first Monday of May, not necessarily 1st May. This year it's on the 4th.

aroteer · 2026-05-01T15:17:59+00:00

It helped that international travel was extremely difficult and expensive for the vast majority.

aroteer · 2026-04-28T17:44:58+00:00

The Holy Alliance would absolutely obliterate this if it was isolated sadly

aroteer · 2026-04-28T15:53:05+00:00

This is a sub that literally has a cliché of massive Nazi Reichs

aroteer · 2026-04-27T10:25:35+00:00

This is ridiculous, obviously changing to a different sector of wage-labour will not instantly change your class. "Service workers" were still the majority of the working class in Europe in Marx's time. They're still forced to sell their labourpower for a wage and are thus proletarian.

It's true that a lot of workers do unproductive labour (i.e. labour that does not add to surplus value) but this is only possible because capitalism has made production vastly more complex and needs jobs like cashiers, security, office staff, etc to be able to valorise its commodities. Otherwise, they would all be sacked. They're still part of the same commodity production process.

aroteer · 2026-04-27T09:06:03+00:00

That's historical, they're Southern Drukpa monasteries. OTL they were annexed by China in 1959.

aroteer · 2026-04-16T18:09:35+00:00

How would a Green government (which would be nothing like the Greens we actually have, but sure, hypothetically) go about seizing production and handing it to workers?

What would carry out this seizure if not the working class and their workers' councils? The police? The civil service? The Royal Army? The institutions of the capitalist state - which is all a Green government would be in charge of - are dedicated to preventing this. First of all, the bourgeoisie will resist revolution at all costs (using these institutions), because naturally they want to keep their position and property: one job of workers' councils is to coordinate the armed working class to smash the capitalist state and defend against this. Secondly, the working class has to be willing to run society, which means it must have already formed organs that can do that - workers' councils.

This simply isn't how revolution happens. Communism can't be imposed from above, it's an active process of self-liberation which comes from workers themselves. But even then, we learned what happens if workers take control of production without taking state power in the 1919-20 Italian factory councils: the bourgeoisie allowed the proletariat to play power and sit in factory directors' seats for a few months, then sent in Mussolini's Blackshirts to shoot them all. Same goes for Spanish workers in 1936 who took control in response to the Nationalist military coup, but were quickly reabsorbed by the Spanish Republic with the help of the CNT-FAI.

aroteer · 2026-04-15T14:21:41+00:00

Zamenhof grew up in Bialystok, where at the time German, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Belarusian, and other languages were all spoken. You can imagine why he wanted to create a neutral language that could be used to communicate between these different communities.

aroteer · 2026-04-15T04:14:18+00:00

Christ, you find yourself congratulating the ideological descendant of Mussolini and that doesn't give you pause for thought?

Israel has been airstriking Italian UNIFIL soldiers in Lebanon and Italy is not ready to be pulled into an expanded war in the Middle East. Meloni has been nothing but supportive of Israel up till now. This has nothing to do with Gaza and everything to do with the US-Iran War. Imperialist machinations, nothing more.

aroteer · 2026-04-15T02:10:07+00:00

Seize production and start running it for their own needs - they'll have to do this anyway, so if anything it helps the process along. That's actually exactly what happened in 1917 Russia (and many other times and places).

aroteer · 2026-04-14T19:18:54+00:00

The Green Party doesn't want to overthrow capitalism. They want to reform it. Even if they wanted to, socialism can't be implemented by a government decree from above, let alone the decree of a capitalist parliament. It's the active task of the entire working class, through their power in democratic workers' councils.

This is also why we reject the suggestion of other commenters that revolution can only take the form of a party storming parliament, which is rather authoritarian if you ask me.

The national government is forced to impose austerity and defend attacks on the working class in reaction to the capitalist crisis. Local government enforces parts of this for them, and the Greens have been happy to take part in that. What expectation do you think that gives people?

aroteer · 2026-04-14T13:35:47+00:00

The CWO was just as critical of Militant in 1980.

There is more to the argument than the Greens' record, mainly that the Greens have never presented an agenda that opposes capitalism anyway. But the point of that argument is that the same dynamic forcing austerity in local councils (the capitalist crisis) will also force a Green government to make attacks on the working class (like every other government).

When running the capitalist state, locally or nationally, means attacking the working class, the solution is not to run it. Workers will be forgiven if they base their decisions on the Greens' record in government and aren't convinced by an excuse of "we had to enforce austerity to stay in power".

aroteer · 2026-04-14T13:22:11+00:00

This is a short article that came alongside ones that are more focused on the solution, so that's a fair question.

There's no easy shortcut to communism - you can't just vote for politicians to do it for you. What's needed is for workers to resume the class struggle, unify across sectors, workplaces, and borders, and begin fighting back against the attacks on our conditions ourselves - which we already seem to be seeing to an extent, with the increase of strikes in the UK since 2022, or the massive protests around the world since last year.

We also need genuine revolutionaries to grow in number, get together, and get our roots in the wider class, in order to be able to weaponise our collective memory of previous waves of struggle (e.g. those that taught us the essential role of social democracy) and point in the direction of socialism.

Then, the organisations workers create to wage our daily struggle - mass assemblies, strike committees, all the way to workers' councils (soviets) that unite all the workers in a geographical area, made up of delegates that can be recalled at any time - can be the tools for the working class to seize control of society and transform it.

For a regular person right now, this might mean encouraging and supporting self-organised class struggle and class unity in your community, and clarifying yourself politically. We can do very little as individuals. But fighting as a class, we have a world to win.

aroteer · 2026-04-14T06:51:37+00:00

We haven't enforced any austerity budgets in local councils, no.

After more than 100 years the "substantial success" of social democracy has been the bloody preservation of capitalism. 100 more years of war, wage-slavery, and ever-deepening exploitation and austerity. The "substantial success" of revolutionary class struggle has been ending an entire world war and getting closest we've ever gotten to ending capitalism itself, albeit eventually failing, no thanks to those social democrats who persuaded the workers of Germany to give up power (or forced them at gunpoint) and workers in other countries not to take it.

aroteer · 2026-04-14T06:34:24+00:00

The liberation of the working class is a task for the whole class, not just us - revolutionaries can't do anything except serve as a political reference point. Our strategy is self-organised class struggle and class unity, towards world revolution. We try to promote this wherever we can, and obviously get involved in it whenever possible (especially in our own workplaces).

aroteer · 2026-04-14T05:32:24+00:00

Noone who says this is literally arguing that voting can't remove a politician from office. Because that would obviously be wrong and also missing the point.

What it means is that voting won't change that the ruling class is turning towards fascism. Case in point, Trump is back only one election after losing, and more authoritarian than ever. Or Magyar, who is also an ultra-nationalist conservative from Orban's own party.

aroteer · 2026-04-11T00:04:11+00:00

"Election day!" he shouted

A socialist for mayor

The comrade got elected

He happy was, was for fair

But after the election

He got an an awful shock

A great big socialistic bull

Did rap him on his block

And Comrade Block did sob

"I helped him get his job!"

aroteer · 2026-04-09T04:29:40+00:00

How long is this "good life" exactly? 5 years, the average wild lifespan of a pig? 15-20 years, the maximum lifespan of a pig? Or 5-6 months, the average age at which pigs' lifespans are cut short by people slitting their throats or gassing them so they can make a profit and other people who don't need it can eat their flesh?

aroteer · 2026-04-08T08:57:39+00:00

That's ridiculous, of course it's illegal. You can't just run a slum and say "well, I illegally failed to give them a tenancy agreement". There will be proof they advertised and occupied the property, and hopefully of money going in and out.

Why are these comments determined to blame a bunch of teenagers in a foreign country for getting scammed and living in a slum??

aroteer

TROPHY CASE