[Shared with us by comrades in Edinburgh]
Attention all opponents of capitalism and the state!
On the 3rd, we are calling for an anti-capitalist and anti-state bloc at Edinburgh’s May Day rally, at 11.30am in City Chambers and Parliament Square.
The last year of struggle has shown Tory and Labour governments deepening austerity and ruthlessly dismantling what’s left of the post WWII welfare state. The NHS is slowly, bit by bit, being privatised. Over 12 million of us in the UK are living in absolute poverty. According to the International Inequalities Institute, government cuts have caused the death of 190,000 people in the UK.
Additionally, governments are increasingly attempting to extend the control of individuals by the state. The ruling by the UK Supreme Court denying trans women legal recognition as women in the eyes of the EHRC is the latest example of a wider backlash against queer people. Of course, the real purpose of the ruling is to provide justification for wide reaching discrimination — it is already being applied in contexts where it is not legally required, such as in the Scottish Football Association. We should understand this move and the general trend it belongs to as an attempt to remove trans people from public life entirely. Deviations from the heteropatriarchal gender system in place is dangerous for the state, and so long as states exist, they will continue to seek the annihilation of trans and queer identities.
Likewise, the state continues to repress mass calls for climate action. They know that addressing the roots of climate change will necessarily endanger the capitalist state system. To preserve their power and profit, they are driving us towards extinction due to ecological collapse. We must radically transform our social and economic system before it’s too late
The parliamentary political developments of the last decade — from the state and bourgeois society’s counter attack against Corbyn, the starmerisation of the labour party, the right turn of the SNP, to the present rise of Reform UK — clearly show us all that hoping to vote our way into genuine change is a pipe dream. The neoliberal stripping of all social aspects of society will continue, the interests of landlords and shareholders will continue to control policy. Taking over the state is a useless activity in instituting revolution, the ruling class does not rule the state, neoliberal imperialist capitalism rules the state.
We propose a smashing of the state and replacing it with a confederation of autonomous participatory councils, communes and assemblies, using recallable delegates to represent decisions taken by the base rather than taking decisions on behalf of the base. Workers should take control of their work places, abolish bosses and place them under workers-self management. Housing should be expropriated from landlords and owned only through usage. Gender autonomy must be considered an unalienable right.
We stand proud as a part of a long tradition of revolt, from the Paris commune of 1871, to the Spanish revolution of 1936 all the way to the ongoing revolutions of the Zapatistas and the autonomous administration of North-East Syria (Rojava), who show us that organising society without the state and capitalism is possible.
We call on those who yearn for a world free from domination to join us on May 3rd. Let us show Edinburgh that a new world is not only possible but necessary!