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MayDay 2025 Nattsvart Speech

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Friends, comrades, frenemies, fuck-ups, misfits and so on and so forth.

It’s May first again and history is calling. Fuck we love our people who fought and won/lost in the streets of chicago so many years ago.

We remember the beautiful insanity of the Paris commune, not the least of which involves an anarchist geographer in a hot air ballon trying to do reconnaissance from a hot air balloon. Fuck we got Lucy Parsons, we got Geronimo, the Zapatistas. Malatesta, Goldman, Makhno, so many cool people fighting the only fight that really matters. We got a lot to be proud of.

Our history is super fucking bad ass, but, as usual, honies, we got a fucking problem, and that is the labour-movement.

I must say now, that I love my fucking union. SAC, as conservative and filled with moderate center left gubbar as it is, is there when it matters and ready to stand up.

But this organized labour has reached the limits of its revolutionary potential. There are many reasons for this. The most important is probably that the abolition of wage labor, that was an integral demand of the first International, has been put aside in place for control, adjustments and keeping the machine running. After the first international, various state-involved leftists learned that exploitation of workers is just as good for state capitalism as it is for liberal capitalism.

The labour movement has turned on its head and become a movement for labour. With the saltsjöbadsavtalet raised high to the sky and the swedish model of compromise seen as the one, true ‘civilized’ way of a union to follow. Organize, unionize, as long as you never disrupt business as usual. This movement had for a long time, devolved into a laborious way to tweak the dials on capitalism in a way that can keep a certain kind of stability based on a regulation via the state of the tension between classes. But today that power has been diminshed for a very long time.

The left, my friends, is dying and we probably should have buried it long ago like a favorite radical aunt who we’ve mourned and treasured. I mean, people hate the left, fuck the left hates the left! We see that in how much we hate each other.

There is the left of Deleuze, the becoming-minority, but only like a few nerds even care. The
general left apart from that is a golem which has outlived its utility.

The problem of the traditional left runs deep: A eurocentrist colonial attitude, a history of sexism, homophobia, and racism (including strong antisemitism), yes Bakunin we’re fucking looking at you along with the authoritarian leftists.

And we can never forget that the Swedish left and especially Swedish social democracy has always been a national movement. The fact that they were here earlier today to sing The International is just laughable. The rasbiologiska institutet was built by and due to this form of social democracy, the folkhemmet was built for white swedes on the backs of immigran-labour, and until this day these leftists keep fucking over sami in all sorts of diabolical ways.

Even among more modern anarchists there are problems with whiteness: Black Anarchism exists for a reason and many Native American groups are suspicious of the left, yes, even anarchists, for being too Eurocentric in their analysis.

I gotta say, each of us here probably would be fucked over from a unity with this left. Imagine this is as a speech, us asking: who’s antiwork?! who’s too fucking gay?!, Who’s neurodivers?!, who’s too fucking brown ? who hates husmanskost?

We do need to work together along lines of mutual aid and self defence in order to create revolutionary networks to facilitate our attempts of survival. The problem is that left unity will never get us there, because this left does not hold our interests.

Modernism, the philosophical background of Lenin and Trotsky, proposes unified ideas which we should all follow. Modern leftist social movements have inherited this by demanding unification on certain issues. For example being opposed to the right of sex workers to organize as a left party line in order to support entrenched campaigns of many old groups. This also holds the traps of pacifism, non-violence, and moderation in terms of expropriation.

The trouble with all of this is the trade-off between efficiency and the ability to react to complexity in a system. Authoritarian systems, for example, can’t deal with the necessary exception that Grandma needs to a rule because the central committee can’t process that information.

We anarchists shouldn’t have this problem. Our autonomy lets us react to complexity as needed. Our organizing can’t be from a culture of attempted homogeneity via unity. We have to work together when it works for the groups who find mutual benefit in working together without counting on interfaces which can work for everyone at all times. We know that, like in the case of Grandma, we need our autonomy to be able to adapt our tactics and with who we align with depending on the situation. We reject the Leninist notion that there exists a “one true doctrine”. And because of this we need to always reject this unity.

We know this: The only way out, is anarchy. Anarchy means decentralization, and that can only really happen if we reject the discipline of allegiance.

Fuck your flag, fuck your party,

Long live anarchy, unless you don’t want to, then go do something else.

Nattsvarts första Maj text 2024 – Nattsvart’s MayDay text 2024

ENGLISH BELOW.

Första maj närmar sig igen och återigen är det dags att fira historien och framtiden för de förtryckta som försöker bryta sig loss från våra förtryckare. Problemet är bara att det inte riktigt är vad arbetarrörelsen gör längre.

Den anarkistiska rörelsen – och socialismen i allmänhet – har i första hand varit en rörelse för arbetare att organisera sig i och bygga upp kollektiv makt; ibland i syfte att göra revolution – ibland för att överleva.

Denna rörelse har förfallit till socialdemokratins brutna klasskompromiss. Nu har vi övergivit ett av Första internationalens huvudmål: avskaffandet av lönearbetet. Verkligheten är att arbete är den största formen av social kontroll i kapitalismen. Marx räcker inte.
Arbete har tvingats på människor under mycket lång tid, via kolonialism, via införande av privat egendom. Ibland har det till och med genomdrivits med samma utopiska vision som gav oss panopticon, och ibland var det bara conquistadorernas eller deras ättlingars grymhet. Ibland är det ett kontrakt mellan en stats fängelseförvaltning och ett girigt företag. Det spelar ingen roll – arbetet utförs på grund av ett hot om våld.

Piskan, fängelset, hotet om hemlöshet eller svält. Kanske dina barn kommer att tas ifrån dig, kanske du kommer att steriliseras. Vem vet! Det viktiga är att du skapar värde för någon som “betyder något”: någon som makten faktiskt bryr sig om. Du måste arbeta. Och du måste älska det. Du måste brinna för den förnedring som du kommer att utsättas för, precis som en konstnär älskar sin musa, och nej, chefen kommer fan inte att älska dig tillbaka.

Identiteten som “arbetare” har varit viktig, och det förstår vi. Vi har haft jävla skitjobb. Det var så vi började lura, stjäla och lura till oss pengar! Arbete är skit och det vet vi alla. Problemet är att vi har accepterat klasskompromissen. Kommer vi att fortsätta att acceptera den underordnade positionen som arbetare? Kommer vi att avstå från revolution och låta de rika, cheferna och staten fortsätta sitt grymma spel? Arbetarrörelsen är inte längre lika kraftfull som den
den var. Kanske beror det på att oavsett vad resultatet blir så innebär det att vi accepterar att vi kommer att fortsätta att arbeta. Varför sänkte vi våra vapen? Varför bryr vi oss det minsta om de rikas och borgarklassens förhoppningar och drömmar? Varför fortsätter vi att följa order?
Detta är ett fuck you inte bara till cheferna utan också till den auktoritära vänstern. Som Margaret Killjoy säger: “Vi är fortfarande jävligt förbannade över Kronstadt. Låt oss sluta försöka komma överens. Det finns inget annat sätt än vägran och revolution. När ska våra hjärtan bli tillräckligt svarta?

Arbete är inte valfritt. Det är en disciplinär metod, skapad för att förvandla drömmande och kännande människor till redskap för någon annan. Vi bryr oss inte om ifall chefen är en företagsjävel eller en stats- eller partibyråkrat. Arbete är lika carceralt som fängelse – det är förstörelsen av den mänskliga anden och gemenskapen. För att arbetarrörelsen ska ha någon mening måste den förgöra sig själv, eftersom den måste förgöra arbetet och därmed arbetarna. Är vi redo att dö den döden och gå vidare? För annars är vi bara fast i en position som bara blir svagare och svagare.

ENGLISH:
The First of May is coming again and again it is time to celebrate the history and the future of the subjugated trying to break free of our oppressors. The trouble is, that’s not really what the workers’ movement is doing anymore.

The anarchist movement – and socialism in general – has primarily been a movement for workers to organize and build collective power; sometimes for the purpose of revolution – sometimes for survival.

This movement has deteriorated into the broken class compromise of social democracy. Now we have abandoned one of the main goals of the First International: the abolition of wage labor. The reality is that work is the biggest form of social control in capitalism. Marx isn’t enough.
Work has been forced on people for a very long time, via colonialism, via imposition of private property. Sometimes it has even been enforced with the same utopian vision that brought us the panopticon, and sometimes it was just the cruelty of conquistadors or their descendants. Sometimes it is a contract between a state’s prison administration and a greedy corporation. It doesn’t matter – work is performed because of a threat of violence.

The whip, the prison, the threat of homelessness, or starvation. Maybe your kids will be taken away, maybe you’ll be sterilized. Who knows! The important thing is that you are creating value for someone who ‘matters’: someone who power actually cares about. You have to work. And you have to love it. You must burn for the degradation that you will be subjected to, as an artist loves their muse, and no, the boss will not fucking love you back.

The ‘worker’ identity has been important, and we understand that. We have worked fucking shit jobs. That is how we started scamming, stealing, and sicking in! Work is shit and we all know it. The problem is that we have accepted the class compromise. Will we continue to accept the subservient position as a worker? Will we forego revolution and allow the rich, the bosses, and the state to continue their cruel game? The workers’ movement is no longer as powerful as it
was. Maybe this is because no matter what the outcome is, it means we’ll accept that we will continue to work. Why did we lower our weapons? Why do we give the slightest of fucks about the hopes and dreams of the rich and the bourgeoisie? Why do we continue to follow orders?
This is a fuck you not only to the bosses but also to the authoritarian leftists. As Margaret Killjoy says, We’re still fucking pissed about Kronstadt. Let’s stop trying to get along. There is no other way than refusal and revolution. When will our hearts become black enough?

Work is not optional. It is a method of discipline, made to turn dreaming, and feeling humans into instruments of someone else. We don’t care if the boss is some corporate fuckhead or a state or party bureaucrat. Work is just as carceral as prison – it is the destruction of the human spirit and community. For the workers’ movement to have meaning it must destroy itself, since it must destroy work, and with that, workers. Are we ready to die that death and move on? Because otherwise, we’re just stuck in a position which just keeps getting weaker.