Dear friends,

Our last Zoom discussion raised some important questions regarding the process of ‘getting organised together and within the class’.

To recap, our ‘vision’ if you like is to build and grow a network of grassroots organising groups that exchange ideas and experiences together – based on stuff inside and outside the workplace. We think a more ‘formal’ organisation can only grow out of these grassroots experiences and political work – which takes time and a bit of patience. Only if we have a ‘force on the ground’ can we have some actual power to enforce ‘demands.’ Groups like AngryWorkers, Teesside Solidarity and the new group in Croydon who are targeting a local industrial area as their focus of activity for example, can be seen as examples of some initiatives trying to build these local bases.

For the next meeting, we thought we could focus the debate a bit more by basing it on your local areas and experiences so far.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday, 14th of April at 7:30pm.

If you want to take part and haven’t received this through personal email, please email us for the link: angryworkersworld@gmail.com

We think we have to approach the question of ‘class and organisation’ from at least two viewpoints simultaneously – to put it bluntly: ‘theoretically’ and ‘practically’.

The ’theoretical’ means trying to understand what constitutes the current social order, the revolutionary potential of class struggle, the role of day-to-day organisational practice.

The ‘practical’ means how to ‘get rooted’ and address the question of workers’ self-organisation and power strategically where we live and work.

We think that these two poles should be connected by what we could call ‘workers inquiry’, which means that the ‘theoretical’ debate and ideas are verified and tested in working class areas and on shop floors.

We think the aim for the next Zoom meeting should be to focus on the more practical side of things, as a foundation to thinking more seriously about the question of ‘organisation’ in future. In other words, to discuss in more detail our local conditions, the potentials and difficulties to organise a basic structure, such as a solidarity network, activities around interesting workplaces and a publication.

To that end, we’ve come up with some basic questions that we could all prepare answers to for the next meeting. These are:

1. Based on your recent local experiences of ‘being part of a group’ (organising around a specific issue, reading circle etc.) what were your good and bad experiences? Where did you hit a brick wall in expanding both the practical activity and its roots as well as the political horizon of the group? And where did things work really well and push things forward? In case you are in a group: What is your group’s capacity for practical involvement? Can it commit to run a monthly/fortnightly solnet? Can it maintain a regular (at least monthly) presence at a strategic workplace for a prolonged period?

2. If ‘getting rooted’ means to act within ‘working class areas’ and around ‘interesting workplaces’ and ‘common issues’, what could that mean in your area?

3. Are there people you know who are also interested in engaging in a practical / theoretical process like this? If not, why do you think that is?

4. Have there been any interesting struggles within the local class recently? What could a fruitful organised support have looked like?

(For future meetings we have to focus more the ‘theoretical’ side of things.
Meaning: we also need to think about the political content and international dimension of our activities. What are the main general issues we have to grasp better theoretically, e.g. automation, the energy crisis or migration, in order to verify our ideas ‘on the ground’? How do we put forward a common ‘communist’ position in, for example, the way we conduct the solidarity network, how we react to workers’ in a given situation, or what kind of structures we build at work? Or what kind of articles we write in the newspaper? Things to bear in mind going forward…)

Let us know if you think these questions are okay and whether you are okay to prepare some short inputs to them for the next meeting…

Nice one!
some
AngryWorkers