Who was Nestor Makhno?

We have updated out guide to Anarchists and Communists so click to find out who Nestor Makhno was!

The state corrupts

The state is a tool of one class (usually a minority) used to oppress another (usually the majority).

If the majority is in power, is a state required?
Once we smash the bourgeois state to atoms, they will be powerless. We are free to run society as we wish. We will run our villages, towns and cities through direct democracy with soviets, and send representatives to the district, regional and national soviets.

Is a state required for the people to run their society?
No, the state hinders democracy, it hinders freedom.
We have seen this system in action in revolutionary Russia, with the Kronstadt sailors et cetera.
We have seen this system crushed by state oppression and terror, smashed by force and proclaimed an imperialist plot. The main force of the revolution was brutally executed for daring to oppose Bolshevik repression. One can understand terror against counter revolutionaries, but against socialists, against anarchists, against communists.
The state is, by nature, a repressive entity. We do not need a state for our transition into a classless, equal society.
We have seen the state and the power that comes with it turn even the purest revolutionaries into those who betrayed Marxism, those who shot striking worker whilst doing it in their name. There is no such thing as a workers’ state, only a workers council.

Signed, your anarchist comrade,
Anton

“30th September, 1921: One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror and despotism have crushed the life born in October. Dictatorship is trampling the masses under the foot. The revolution is dead; its spirit cries in the wilderness. The Bolshevik myth must be destroyed. I have decided to leave Russia.”
Alexander Berkman

Communism and mankind

By George Volkov

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne

We communists are inquisitive beings. When someone is in poverty, yet others, but a mere street away, are in unimaginable luxury, we ask why.
Why do so few have so much, whilst we, the majority, who work for the rich and make society run, live off the scraps of the privileged elite? Solidarity is important among us, race will not separate us, nations will not divide us, because we are all human, we are all proletarians. While one passes a homeless man on the street, assuming that they are homeless through their own fault, a communist stops, gives them their change, and time permitting, has a conversation. To you, that loose change is worthless, to him, it is the difference between having a cup of tea, or having no tea. Capitalism has evolved. It has realised how strong we are united. This notion of nationalism, a pathetic ideology, has reduced otherwise good people into believing their country is better than another. Racism is another clever scheme the capitalists have used to divide us, but if one looks past the skin, the accent, the nationality, we all bleed red blood.
As communists, we want to end this system of exploitation. In socialism, you receive according to the labour you put in. No more will man be able to subsist from the labour of another. We communists do not want to improve our lives, but we want to improve the lives of all men.

Ernesto “che” Guevara:
“Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity.”

Kurdish activists murdered in Paris

By Leon J Williams

News is filtering through the media of three female Kurdish activists being murdered in Paris.

One of the murdered is Sakine Cansiz a co-founder of the Kurdish separatist group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The other two are:
Fidan Dogan a Paris representative of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNC) political group and Leyla Soylemez a diplomatic relations junior activist.

For more details click here.

Who murdered them and why?

Initial suspicions will undoubtedly point to the Turkish government who have been at war with the PKK for 25 years and have been known in the past to murder people who disagree with the government such as journalists and communists.

On the 1st of January the Turkish government announced that it was in talks with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah öcalan after admitting that they couldn’t defeat the PKK.

Is this a sign that the Turkish government is turning to more desperate measures?