After Noam delivers the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture, join us for a debrief and discussion. The Chomsky Forum organisers have been lucky enough to be invited to do a short interview with Noam when he is in Sydney. Come along to this debrief to learn what Noam's answers were and discuss how this applies to acitivist causes within Australia.

For free events and more info check out http://www.chomskyforum.net

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Who is Noam Chomsky?

Chomsky is a political dissident and a truly dangerous thinker. He is the world's most-quoted living author. His ideas reveal the possibilities for radical, democratic change - to increase the scope of human freedom. He writes: 'This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. People must decide: does that concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out!'

Chomsky has spent a lifetime seeking out and challenging illegitimate structures of authority. His razor-sharp critiques of mass media, government and capitalism have led at times to him being vilified, jailed and denied entry to Israel. 'There is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.' He has also been a tireless opponent of war: 'Either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world.'

Chomsky is also an anarchist: 'Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time. Then anarchists work at unmasking and mastering the structures, whether they involve patriarchal families, a Mafia international system or the private tyrannies of the economy, the corporation. As soon as a person identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists.'

But despite all this, Chomsky is just one individual; he can’t change the world alone. Freedom is won by people acting together, not one celebrity activist.

Join us in the fight to make anarchism a reality!

As well as being a world-famous activist and thinker, Chomsky is a libertarian socialist - an anarchist. His ideas issue a revolutionary challenge to the illegitimate systems of the State and capitalism. This forum will explore Chomsky's libertarian socialist politics and what they might mean for revolutionary social change in Australia today. There will be two speakers followed by discussion

www.chomskyforum.net

Essential Reading

Notes on Anarchism - http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1970----.htm

Untangling the Knots - http://terrornullius.noblogs.org/post/2011/06/28/untangling-the-knots/

Extra Reading

Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future - http://struggle.ws/rbr/noamrbr2.html

Solidarity and Sectarianism - In The Wolves at the Door - http://zinelibrary.info/wolves-door

Last week (19 July) was the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution. Between 1936 and 1939, more than eight million workers and peasants participated in a revolution that turned anarchist ideals into a reality in their factories, farms and schools.

Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas were collectivised and run as libertarian communes. Hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivised and managed by their workers. Free healthcare and education were organised. Women formed autonomous groups to fight for their rights.

The workers and peasants raised barricades in the streets and took up arms in voluntary militias in order to defend their collectivised areas from the fascist military forces of Franco (directly supported by Hitler and Mussolini). They died by their thousands for the ideal of 'libertarian communism'.

This revolution was spearheaded by rank-and-file anarchist militants. The CNT was an anarchist union that numbered over 700,000; the FAI was an anarchist political organisation that coordinated the struggle. There were hundreds of anarchist papers, with a readership of hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of workers' centres where people would meet to learn and debate politics. This community had a strong sense of solidarity and a well-developed culture and ethics. These anarchists informed their spontaneity with theory, structured organisation and purposeful activity.

So why do we hear so little about the Spanish Revolution? Then and now, both liberals and Stalinists have acted in shameless complicity to conceal the facts about this inspiring upsurge. For them, it's a terrifying spectre: workers in control of their own revolution fighting for libertarian socialism. The Stalinists undermined the revolution from the rear, while the liberal 'democracies' stood by while Hitler and Mussolini gave arms, soldiers and resources to Franco.

Today, capitalist culture churns out representations of anti-fascist struggle where the liberals are the heroes, and the revolutionaries are authoritarian failures (usually Russian). Che is on t-shirts and selling beer, but the Spanish Revolution remains impossible to commodify.

But does anyone remember?

In 2011 Spain, millions have been protesting around the demand, 'real democracy now!' This movement demands radical change in Spanish politics: they reject mainstream political parties along with banks and the capitalist financial system. They fight for 'basic rights' - home, work, culture, health and education. Tens of thousands camped out in Madrid's main square, in an explicit echo of the Arab Spring. Placards read 'Welcome to Revolution 2.0' and 'Nobody expected the Spanish Revolution either'. They remember.

The Spanish Revolution of 1936 is still alive. It is not someone else's revolution, to be consigned to history. It belongs to the current generation of revolutionaries all around the world. It is our revolution. The Spanish anarchists grappled with issues that are still pressing today: How to respond to State power? How to organise democratically among workers and non-workers? How to put anarchism into practice?

The Spanish Revolution is well worth learning about. There are dozens of books in the Jura bookshop and library and even more information online. You could start with this short article in Wikipedia, which is pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution

An even better way to learn about the Spanish Revolution is to talk about it with fellow activists. Come along to an upcoming discussion, organised by Jura and the Sydney Chomsky Forum. We are reading Chomsky's classic article on the Spanish Revolution, 'Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship' available online here:
http://www.ditext.com/chomsky/1968.html
You'll get more out of the afternoon if you read the article, but if you don't, come along anyway - Sid Parissi will give short talk on the Spanish Revolution to get the discussion started.
-> Spanish Revolution reading group and discussion, 3pm, Sat 6 August, at Jura.