Cats for Chaos! An Anarchy Cats picture special.

It has been noted previously on the Streetlamp (see 'here' ) that the contributors, as well as having a passing interest in libertarian socialism, are all great cat lovers. That's not surprising, as the idea that cats, particularly black cats, are symbolic of anarchism has a long history.

Most people will be familiar with the the  Industrial Workers of the World inspired Wildcat (above), said to represent  the spontaneity, direct action, solidarity and militancy of a wildcat strike. Usually depicted with an arched back and with claws and teeth bared, it is closely associated with anarcho-syndicalism and was designed by Ralph Chaplin, who was a prominent figure in the IWW.

More recently, the IWW has cottoned on to the lolcat phenomenon, most specifically the I Can Has Cheezburger? offshoot with these image macros popping up on the internet:

Another historical black cat, Felix the Cat , the popular 1920s cartoon character, has also been seen to pop up occasionally as an anarchist logo:

Very recently, I've noticed image macros of cats popping up on anarchist sites and on the blogs and personal sites of anarchist acquaintances. The best and funniest of these is almost certainly this little hooded kitten:

There are a few other variations of this floating around on the internet but I reckon this is the best of them. A few other 'anarchist cat'  images have been cropping up too. Here's a selection, of variable quality:

So, why cats, you may be thinking. Well, I reckon that humans have long recognised that the cat is just too much a lover of liberty to be ever truly domesticated in the way that, for example, dogs are. Back in the Victorian era, when Kipling was explaining the fantasy origins of various creatures through his Just So stories, when it came to writing about the cat, he finishes the tale of The Cat That Walked by Himself by writing:

"But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone."

Yes, writers recognise the strong streak of independence that just can't be coaxed, bribed, starved or beaten out of the cat. Hemingway, a fanatical cat lover, wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls :

"It is not liberty not to bury the mess one makes, he thought. No animal has more liberty than the cat; but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist. Until they learn that from the cat I cannot respect them."

Another great American writer, Mark Twain, wrote the following in his notebook in 1894:

"Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

And it's not just writers who recognise this quality in cats. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson , widely considered to be the master of street photography and the father of modern photojournalism, loved cats and was once quoted as saying:

 "I'm an anarchist, yes. Because I'm alive. Life is a provocation.... I'm against people in power and what that imposes upon them. Anglo-Saxons have to learn what anarchism is. For them, it's violence. A cat knows what anarchy is. Ask a cat. A cat understands. They're against discipline and authority. A dog is trained to obey. Cats can't be. Cats bring on chaos."

 So it seems that this seemingly recent internet phenomenon of the 'anarchy cat' has a long and proud tradition. Areas of political protest closely allied to anarchism have also been employing the image. Here are a few examples:

We here at the Streetlamp enjoyed these images so much that we decided to see whether we could come up with some ourselves. Below are our first efforts. We hope you like at least some of them:

We'll finish off with a tribute to the oldest anarchist joke in the book:

If you know of any more 'anarchist cat' pictures we've missed, drop us a line. We'd also be delighted to see any of your own efforts.

Griff
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Let's get slavery out of our system!

January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month so the Streetlamp wanted to provide you with some tools you could use to raise awareness and to start making a difference. First up, we wanted to bring your attention to the Slavery Footprint site, which was launched in September 2011, and which asks the simple question;

"How Many Slaves Work For You?"

Do you have any idea? Well, now you can find out about your connection to modern day slavery by visiting  slaveryfootprint.org and taking their survey. This effective little tool, which is beautifully designed and actually fun to use, poses a series of seemingly innocuous questions, such as; 

what do you eat? what do you wear? what medicine do you take? what electronics do you use? 

Upon completion, a number is revealed, which is the calculation of how many slaves work for you. You may be shocked at just how high the number is. Of course, the precise number isn’t the real point of the test.  The real value of the site lies in the way that it makes you think about the true nature of the global economy, and your actions in it. So, please, take the test and find out how knowing where your clothing, furniture and electronic goods come from is vitally important.

Slavery Footprint is the brainchild of Justin Dillon a onetime musician with the band Tremolo who got involved in the anti-slavery movement through hosting benefit concerts. Justin has now made abolitionism his full-time job, and has also made his directorial debut in the human-trafficking documentary, CALL+RESPONSE.

For more information about how you can take part in the fight to end modern slavery you can visit the Slavery Footprint blog 'here'.

To take action to end trafficking and to download resources, such as a toolkit with 20+ ways to take action, visit the Fairtrade Fashionistas site 'here'.

Griff

Griff says; Ready for some riot grill?

Happy New Year, everybody, I've something a little bit light-hearted for you this evening. I think you deserve it after last year's final, long and rambling post about the German Revolution. Regular readers will know that the Streetlamp team are big fans of the subversive children's animation series Adventure Time, so you'll not be surprised to learn that we were rather pleased to stumble across tonight's track free on bandcamp. The song is called Bacon Pancakes and the band are called Lady Boners. If you need us to spell out the sexual innuendo in any of that last sentence then award yourself 100 innocence points and prepare to listen to a song that to you is all about food and to us is about something else entirely.



 I really rather like that. I hope you do too. The track is available as a free download on bandcamp and appears to be a demo. I know nothing about the band other than that it seems to consist of four young women and is based in Orlando, Florida. If you can fill in any of the blanks then drop us a line.

For those of you who are not Adventure Time fans, the song is a rap based around a short jingle sung by Jake the Dog, who sings it while making breakfast in the episode "Burning Low." The original song was written by Rebecca Sugar. In the show, the Jake the Dog character frequently makes ambiguous remarks which can be interpreted in a risqué manner. Here he is in action:

The cover art for Bacon Pancakes was inspired by the art of Kitty Cassandra.
And for no reason other than that her art is rather sweet and the Streetlamp team are all cat lovers, here are a few samples:

Griff
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Endings and Beginnings - Alle Macht den Räten!

And so, we come to the final blog post of the year and, as custom dictates, take a moment to reflect on what has slipped into the past and what lies before us. I was interested to look back at a blog I posted at the end of last year (see 'here') where I spoke about 2011 being imbued with the spirit of change and optimism via the events of  the Arab Spring, the Occcupy movement, Los Indignados in Spain, and the Europe wide anti-austerity protests. At that time, I was still heavily involved in the public sector unions' attempt to co-ordinate a concerted riposte to the government's attack on workers' terms and conditions. Unfortunately, as outlined in this excellent, detailed piece by Steven John's on libcom.org, we - meaning the ordinary union members - were soon to find ourselves being led into a dead-end by the union 'leaders'. Plus ça change, and all that.

So, in terms of generating a spirit of change amongst the mass of the population, 2012 has felt like a bit of a damp squib to some extent - and 2011 can be written off as just another false dawn. And yet, and yet...

Here in Scotland in 2012 there was something happening which seemed to offer the genuine possibility of a chance for radical change, in this country at least. I'm referring to the Radical Independence Campaign, which I've covered previously on these pages 'here'. Right now, some of the things we promised would happen at the conference in November are already being planned, not least of which was a commitment to a mass blockade of Faslane nuclear submarine base. I can promise Streetlamp readers that this will definitely happen next year over the 3 days of 13th to 15th of April. The event will be called Scrap Trident and as the date approaches we will keep you up to date with ways that you can participate.

Despite this positive attempt to unite left radicals in this country, there remains within libertarian socialist circles a lingering suspicion of the Radical Independence Campaign and where it may lead. This is understandable, I am not going to deny that history shows that the more authoritarian elements of the radical left have manipulated and betrayed anarchists in the past. And yet, and yet...

Recently I was alerted via another article on the wonderful libcom.org site (please do check it out) to the release of a new book by PM Press called All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919. Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, and drawing on newly uncovered material uncovered through meticulous archival historical research, this new documentary collection gathers eyewitness accounts and revolutionary voices from Germany’s 1918–1919 worker-soldier-council revolution. Unlike most of the histories of this period, which are written from a strongly communist perspective and focus almost exclusively on the role of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg,and the Communist Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), this book shows that there were other equally important radical left and anti-military traditions involved. In particular, Kuhn presents documents from Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam, the famous Munich anarchists who took part in the struggle for a councils´ republic in Bavaria. He also exhibits documentary evidence from Bremen, Brunswick, Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. All of these German cities were taken over by workers´ uprisings or sailors and soldiers in mutiny. Kuhn's sources demonstrate that the German Revolution was not orchestrated by a Marxist political vanguard, but by a spontaneous eruption of the whole population. Many very different groups were involved,  from centrist social democrats to trade unions, syndicalists and radical anarchists. Many ordinary workers only got radicalised during the events themselves.

One of the most interesting groups involved, formed during WWI, were the Revolutionary Stewards, a group of rank and file unionists independent from the official unions. Starting out by striking for better wages in the war industry, they ended up being one of the most radical advocates of a councils´ republic in Germany. Kuhn shows that when the Revolution unfolded in November 1918 this group was far more influential then Liebknecht and the Spartacists, because unlike them it had a wide network of supporters in the factories and workshops. In organizing three mass strikes between 1916 and 1918, the Revolutionary Stewards were decisive in bringing about the Revolution.

OK, history shows that the centrist social democrats’collaboration with reactionary counter-revolutionary and military forces paved the way to the Weimar Republic, and from there to Nazi Germany, but one can not but help wonder if, had the anarchist influence been more central, coherent and convincing, and tied closely to the mass, independent union movement, could the revolutionaries have created a less bureaucratic and centralist socialist model?

Is there anything that can we learn from these events that is pertinent to our position here in Scotland today? The anarchists, notably Landauer and Mühsam, were strong champions of federalism and formulated a strong critique of what they saw as the centralist tendencies of the Spartacists. That they were involved and embedded in the revolution from the start meant that they were able to do so. Had they more support within the ranks of the Revolutionary Stewards movement might they have been more effective?

All Power to the Councils! raises other questions too that all movements who promote radical change must face. For example; What are the actual demands, needs, and interests of the people? How do we best secure democratic and social progress? How do we facilitate a true transition of power? How do we establish political and economic institutions that really alter the forms of government and production?  How do we prevent powerful political forces, on the left and the right, from using the situation for their own ends? How do we go from being a mass protest movement to organising the mass effort of building a new society?

How do we turn a radical moment into longlasting radicalism?

Another question for some might be - can the libertarian left work effectively with the wider left? Perhaps it can, it is worth remembering that, despite the tensions between the different radical traditions in the German revolution, the various factions continued to defend each other in the face of social democratic and counter-revolutionary attacks. Landauer, for example, gave the Munich eulogy to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg after they were murdered in January 1919. Mühsam called Luxemburg “the flame of the revolution” in an obituary published in his journal Kain. It is worth noting that, at the outset of the revolution, all of the radical factions were also united in their commitment to a council system and in their opposition to bourgeois parliamentarism.

Reading this book, I found myself wondering where they went wrong, how they organised together originally to form this co-ordinated vision and how they might have organised subsequently to protect that vision. During the revolutionary period, all of the radicals shared a single rallying cry - Alle Macht den Räten! (All Power to the Councils). How could they have protected that ideal - how could we?

These are interesting questions to ponder as we look forward into 2013.If you want to read All Power to the Councils! you can order it from PM Press. While you are on their site please take some time to check out their stimulating collection of fiction and nonfiction books, pamphlets, t-shirts, visual and audio materials. Alternatively, for those financially embarrassed, you can download a free pdf copy 'here'.

As usual, I'd like to end the blog, and the year, with a song that, I hope, demonstrates something of the reflective mood I'm in - facing more questions than answers. The song, fittingly for this time of year, is called 'Hogmanay' and was written several years ago by the current writer, so let me offer profound apologies for the shameless self-publicity. I do hope you'll forgive my self-indulgence and, hopefully, enjoy it in the spirit in which it is offered.




Griff
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