Tuesday, May 09, 2006

International Cycle of Struggles!

We need not demand the right to work, but the right to a decent life!

“Extensively, the common is mobilized in communication from one local struggle to another… the geographical expansion of movements takes the form of an international cycle of struggles in which revolts spread from one local context to another like a contagious disease through the communication of common practices and desires.”

-Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Multitude

We need not demand the right to work, but the right to a decent life! Capital chooses when it needs one’s labor, when the opposite should transpire out of our struggle, we must gain control over our labor and lives. The government and businesses are in business with one another, nation-states and supernational organizations are the collective think tanks and enforcer for capitalism. Two consequences: the illusion of business not wanting illegal labor, in turn for cheaper wage labor and successfully eliminating workers being able to dissent and demand their rights, out of fear of deportation and prison. The opening of borders for corporations to freely move across the globe but walls, borders, and death await those who want to move freely. Throughout the world a contradiction keeps money and profit circulating without static but detains the very element that makes this profit possible, the worlds working population.

Attempting to create a chasm between the struggling people of different geographical regions, neutralizing the threat of an already existing true international class war where workers with common desires for freedom from poverty, boredom, wage slavery, border laws, and from work itself will fail because of our unity and creativity. Taking it upon one self to move, freely, without abstract interpretation, we stand in solidarity with the idea that no matter what the reason, the freedom to move without consequence should undoubtedly exist. Not only to describe the notions and paths of the multitude (the North American housewife, the student, part-time worker, Mexican free-trade zone laborer, migrant worker, Palestinian refugee, Indios, illegal immigrant, peasant, teacher, nurse, cubical wage-slave, homeless, youth, elderly, material and immaterial laborer, etc…), but to support human liberation from restraint in all its forms. Neutralizing the “multitude” is impossible, thus our presence nation wide today.

No matter the tactics of capitalism: from racist minutemen, nationalist politicians, reactionaries, propaganda machines, spectacle driven news corporations, to neo liberal free-trade capitalists, people continuously resist border laws and capitalism, thus a dis-rhythm is presented. Reorganizing society to benefit business and not people is not in our interest, we must struggle against capitalism to obtain true global human liberation.

A paradox exists in the encroachment of mobility and human freedom. It will never be tolerated. Proof of this exists in a migrant and non migrant proletarian gathering, in the streets, in solidarity, in revolt. Resistors, workers, and neighbors must unite, are uniting, in common desires, to demand freedom from the market, not a free market.

Contact GRAF: grafbeyondgraf@yahoo.com or www.myspace.com/grafbeyondgraf


GRAF: Non-Party Program

GRAF

Global (Greensboro’s) Revolutionary Autonomous Front

Non-Party Program

(SECOND DRAFT)

“…At first glance good reason to rejoice; but no sooner does the slightest suspicion enter one’s mind that it becomes obvious that all these forces have simply redeployed, and are now waging the same war under different colors. Green, lest not forget, is also the color of the dollar bill. The new and improved consumerism may be democratic, it maybe ironic, but always presents its bill, and the bill must always be paid. A life governed by a sanctioned greed is by no means freed thereby from the old tyranny of having to forfeit one’s life simply to pay for it…”

~Raul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, preface to the 1st French paperback edition.

  1. We are for a society that is free of monetary exchange, socio-economic hierarchies, and societies that glorify the use-value of commodities vs. exchange-value. Therefore we are anti-capitalists and consider ourselves left-communists, anarchist-communists, anarchists, and autonomous-leftists.

  1. We recognize that the free-market organizes itself through a state-apparatus in order to collectively conduct repressive and expansive measures that erect a society of control which constructs economic regions of domination kept in place by police and military forces who inhibit freedom of movement. By creating a society with no outside existence, the multitude is forced to take part in the capitalist’s cogs. We support the social call for no-nations/no-borders and will partake in constructing a society free of a state-apparatus, while enthusiastically empowering communities of people to create community participation based on more non-hierarchical decision making processes, a multitude of international-worker class democracies.

  1. We recognize that classism and racism exists on two plains: social and institutional. Understanding that capitalism effectively uses both racial prejudices and tolerance to manipulate that working class to extract cheap labor and socially divide local and global communities on the basis of fear, fear will be replaced with respect and alliances (GRAF will also work on internal racism).

  1. Capitalism maintains a class society for its very survival. The owning class projects a certain class perspective through education, media, and supposed leisure activity, this is not our class therefore not our perspective. We hope to make visible the class contradictions/hypocrisies integrated into our current social situation to better re-create a society riddled with class-division and privilege into a vibrant classless society.

  1. We are for a society that respects each individual’s sexuality that is nurturing and compassionate. We recognize that hetero-sexism has socially integrated sexist and homophobic perspectives and behavior into the collective populous; therefore we will be active in the struggle for women’s liberation and homosexual freedom.

  1. We are for a society free of sexism and male domination. We understand that patriarchal-capitalism has instilled a false male-superiority complex in social relations that emotionally and physically drain women. Patriarchal-capitalism has also made personal relationships and social interactions based on the commodity economy, making love financial. Understanding this, the movement of movements must destroy sexism and patriarchy once and for all (GRAF will also work on internal sexism).

  1. During the existence of capitalism the physical world has become more and more integrated to better serve the free-market, with little regard to various bio-regions, ecological sustainability, animal and plant life, and indigenous cultures bound to traditional lands. We recognize ecological sustainability insures healthy specie survival and bio-diversity; therefore we support animal liberation from capitalism, eco-defense, and indigenous resistance to corporate-globalization and privatization of traditional communal lands.

  1. We recognize there exists a healthy multitude of movements against the same enemies and we embrace this multitude. Understanding what works for us may not for fighting people in Asia, Europe, South America, Africa, Central America, the Middle East, or city to city. Communication is key! There exists an interconnectedness between these multitudes as with the North American housewife, the student, part-time worker, Mexican free-trade zone laborer, migrant worker, Palestinian refugee, Indios, illegal immigrant, peasant, teacher, nurse, cubical wage-slave, homeless, youth, elderly, material and immaterial laborer, etc…

  1. We understand that work is something that is determined and dictated to the multitude by capitalism, therefore we support the idea of zero work for capital while undertaking socially conscious productive labor (necessary labor) for the local and global community, subverting the capitalist work place and “open” social spaces to create.

  1. We support various tactics and methods of action to overcome this sexist-racist-class dictatorship to create a free, vibrant, and fun global classless societies.


MISSION STATEMENT

Without a doubt, capitalist created technologies, innovations, and development have allowed for faster communication, faster means of production, more agricultural production, and medical breakthroughs that could potentially benefit a classless society. These commodities currently have a price and are subject to classism. Now more than ever, Capitalism has entered into our everyday life and is visible in all aspects of social interactions. Our personal relationships with lovers and friends are beginning to embody behavior dictated by capital. As capitalism integrates huge portions of living life into a society that resembles theatrics, our lives and social relations are viewed rather than action. Capitalism or spectacular society is attempting to make its own negation internalize capitalistic ideology in hopes of safe guarding its own existence. GRAF wants to project a radical and true working class perspective into the cogs of capitalism to bring about its demise.

EDUCATION & THEORITICAL RADICALISM

Working will never be demonized by capitalism because human labor binds all capital together. In this fact rests both capitalism’s negation and the class war. Due to compromise of some past labor movements and current trade-union perspectives (AFL-CIO) the battle for no work has been lost and converted to empty labor slogans such as, “equal work opportunities for all,” and “jobs for all who want to work”. We must find the radical, spontaneous, and true labor perspective once again, the resurrection of autonomous class warfare.

Though, the working class can benefit from the state-apparatus, welfare and other government assistance, we want to expose the fraternal police orders for what they really are, city-to-city thugs who carry out day-to-day repressive measures to maintain order within the spectacle, the streets are the trenches before private property. In order to understand our own wishes we must fully understand the inner-workings of this spectacular-capitalist society in order to overcome! No matter how progressive either liberal labor union demands become or how socially progressive global governing bodies become we recognize: 1. the working class’s own struggle for freedom demanded capitalists and bureaucrats to reform current conditions, 2. these reforms will be revoked as quickly as they were created if the situation presents itself, and 3. we demand freedom from the market, not a free-market!