raised this de facto party dictatorship into a key ideological principle. Anarchists were not surprised, as the state is not simply "bodies of armed men" but rather a top-down structure which concentrates power in the hands of a few. The Marxist definition of the state ignores the key question, "who has power, the masses or a handful of leaders?" So, in reply to the question "are you serious?" I simply ask the same of you. lain McKay Join Socialist Resistance Youth! If you agree with what you see in this supplement and want to get involved, why not join us? Simply fill in the form and send it to us - or
Email.. Or send a cheque to us at PO Box I 109, London N4 2UU Tel: 0208 800 7460. www.socialistresistanceistance.net. [email protected] PHIL HEARSE is wrong to assert anarchists do not believe in defending a Revolution. All history does show that a ruling class will not retire quietly and a revolution will need to defend itself. If Anarchists did believe that they would retire peacefully then Marxists would be correct to attack us However, Marxist assertions are false. Indeed, they
must think Anarchists are morons if they genuinely do think we do not believe in defending a revolution. "[L]et us suppose ... it is Paris that starts [the revolution]... Paris will naturally make haste to organise itself as best it can, in revolutionary style, after the workers have joined into associations and made a clean sweep of all the instruments of labour, every kind of capital and building; armed and organised by streets and quartiers, they will form the revolutionary federation of all the quartiers, the federative commune... All the French and foreign revolutionary communes will then send representatives to organise the necessary common services... and to organise common defence against the enemies of the Revolution." [Bakunin, Selected Writings] Published by Socialist Resistance, PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU. Printed by East End Offset, London E3 Bakunin was well aware that revolution implied "civi war"- i.e. attempts by the ruling class to maintain its power. He was also well aware of the needs to defend a revolution after destroying the state and abolishing capiSimilarly we discover Malatesta arguing that we should "arm all the population," and for the "creation of a voluntary militia, without powers to interfere as militia in the life of the community, but only to deal with any armed attacks by the forces of reaction to re-establish themselves, or to resist outside intervention by countries as yet not in a state of revolution." [Life and Ideas] Not only do we have this theoretical position, we can also point to concrete historical examples — the Makhnovist movement in the Russian Revolution and the CNT militias during the Spanish Revolution, among others — that prove that anarchists do recognise the need and importance of defending a successful revolution. Statements asserting that Anarchists are against defend. ing a revolution are either spreading a conscious lie, or a product of deep ignorance. Thus the question is not one of defending or not defending a revolution. The question is how do we defend it (and, another key question, what kind of revolution do we aim for). Marxists urge us to "create a new state, for the first time to defend the rule of the majority over the minority." Anarchists reply that every state is based on the delegation of power into the hands of a minority, and so cannot be used to defend the rule of the majority over the minority. Rather, it would be the rule of those who claim to represent the majority. The confusion between people power and party power is at the root of why Leninism is not revolutionary.
Zoe Barton
page 15 of the scan
Phil Ward
Two recent studies have highlighted T the central artement laue.
change as an environmental issue. The first, published in Nature in January, studied 1103 species from many animal and plant groups in six varied regions of the
The authors modelled how climate change up to 2050 will affect species' geographical ranges and concluded that by that time 15-37 per cent of them will be doomed to extinction. Scaled up to all species, over 1 million are under threat.
The lower estimate of 15 per cent is based on drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, which capitalism has already shown it cannot achieve, as Socialist Resistance argued last October. All the extinction estimates may be optimistic, as they are based on gradual, average temperature increases and the interaction between warming and other factors is ignored.
The study shows that habitat loss due to .... climate change is now the biggest extinction threat. This is important, not only because many of our resources come from plants and animals (food!), the production of the oxygen we breathe and systems for dealing with our wastes do too.
These processes are not well understood. But climate change-induced destruction of our biodiversity resources is a far greater danger than the threat of running out of land or minerals that was such an issue in studies carried out in the 1970s.
The second study featured in The Observer on February 22, but was released by the Pentagon to Fortune business magazine in January.
It was commissioned by Pentagon guru and father of ballistic missile defence, Andrew Marshall. The study considers a possible scenario ("not a forecast") if global warming results in the failure of the Gulf Stream
The consequences could be massive cooling in both Europe and North America and major weather changes in the rest of the that by 2020 the US, which it wrongly claims will be affectLed, will have retrenched behind strong borders to keep out starving Mexicans, at the same time defending its Middle East oil supplies and trying to keep the rest of the world off its natural resources.
Outside of the US, there will be perpetual famine. Wars will "revert" to being over resources (since when were they over any
thing else?) Although the document says that trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are "worthwhile endeavours", the main thrust is US "national security", the argument being that "the most combative societies are the one that survive". This means that concrete measures to deal with the scenario are "adaptive response teams" to respond to migration, disease, epidemics, famine and water shortage and ensuring reliable access to resources". The only other is the ridiculous idea of releasing HFCs - very powerful ance February 2004 15 hemisphere. The authors seem to forge that the local cooling in their scenario occur in the context of global warming
The report shows that the military arm o the dominant imperialist power openl admits that their economic and political sys tem is unable to take meaningful action to prevent either the "abrupt climate change they envisage or the "disruption and conflic [that will] be endemic features of life" there after
Such a conclusion can only be drawn by leaving class struggle entirely out of the equa tion. The future of humanity depends or that struggle. • Nature Article: put Volume 427, page 107 into the Nature advanced search engine http://www.nature.com/
Pentagon article through web site http://www.heatisonline.org/
("An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario anc Its Implications for United States Nation: Security")