In WR 280 we included part of a report presented to our recent 16th Congress on the current position of British imperialism. In this issue we’re publishing the resolution on the British situation adopted by the Congress.
1. The economic crisis has continued to develop for more than 35 years. The bourgeoisie has been able to slow the pace of the crisis and even to gain temporary respite in some areas of the world. But it is unable to halt or reverse the crisis. One illustration of this is the slow decline in the average global growth rate per decade, which fell rapidly from 5.2 % in 1962-69 to 2.8% in 1980-89 and more slowly after that, with rates of 2.6% in 1990-99 and 2.2% in 2000-2002. A second illustration is the growth of debt, both national and household, which has risen significantly and remains high. This debt is crucial to the survival of capitalism. A third illustration is the increase and persistence of unemployment.
2. The British economy seems to stand at odds with this. “Since the mid-1990s, GDP growth, inflation and unemployment have been remarkably stable in the United Kingdom. Nowhere else in the OECD has economic activity remained so consistently close to trend over this period. The United Kingdom has also been among the most resilient economies during the recent downturn” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.23). It has even been able to close the gap with France and Germany, its historic economic rivals, leading to claims that it has been able halt its historic decline.
3. The above average growth rates achieved by British capitalism in recent years are the result of an increase in exploitation. The productivity of British industry is substantially below that of Germany, France and the US. Unit labour costs have risen more rapidly than in the US, while Germany and France have achieved reductions. Investment in research and development and in training remain below that of the OECD as a whole. The increase has been due principally to an increase in the hours worked and to a lesser extent to an increase in the proportion of the population of working age actually in work. While the official working day has declined there has been a real increase due to the growth of overtime, which is frequently unpaid. The hours worked declined from the start of the last century until 1984 when they began to rise again. Long hours for one part of the working class goes hand in hand with part time work for another part and reflects a general polarisation between overwork and underwork. The health of the British economy rests on a regression to the early days of capitalism when growth was achieved through the increase in the absolute rate of exploitation. This situation is the result of a quarter of a century of gradual, covert attacks by the British bourgeoisie, to create a ‘flexible’ labour market and reduce restrictions on business and it reveals once again its intelligence and ruthlessness.
4. The increase in production has not been realised through a corresponding increase in trade. The historical decline of Britain’s share of world trade, from 25.4% of manufactured goods in 1959 to 7.9% in 1992 has now reached 5.2% of both manufacturing and service industries while the overall balance of trade remains negative. Nor is it due to increased government spending, which has averaged about 40% of GDP a year since 1990. The increase in growth rates rests on a very substantial rise in the indebtedness of the working class. Average household debt has risen to 135% of income; credit card debt has gone up at a rate of 12% a year and re-mortgaging is currently running at 16% per year. Total debt in Britain reached £1 trillion in the spring of 2004.
5. The developing pensions’ ‘crisis’ in Britain, as in the rest of the advanced capitalist countries, is an eloquent expression of the bankruptcy of the whole capitalist system. Something that should be positive, the increase in life expectancy, in decomposing capitalism becomes negative because it confronts the working class with a future of continued exploitation and poverty. Furthermore, the working class benefits least from the increase in life expectancy. The pensions’ ‘crisis’ is not a result of the success of capitalism but its failure. A consequence of the crisis of capitalism, it is turned into an ideological and material attack on the working class by the ruling class.
6. The health of the British economy rests on diseased foundations; its current animation is a result of the drug of debt. The ruling class knows this and is trying to manage and limit the decline; hence the policy of gradually increasing interest rates to slow the escalation of debt. At the same time it cannot allow it to stop: if the working class decides to follow government advice and save for its pension the economy will slide; if house prices decline sharply it has been estimated that growth will drop by 2 percentage points. This is the dilemma of the ruling class and is why it is renewing efforts to increase the labour force participation rate, notably through the assault on incapacity benefit. Similarly, the increase in the absolute exploitation of the working class risks provoking a response; hence the efforts to once again increase productivity through a range of measures to increase skill levels, favour investment and research and reduce costs. The British bourgeoisie will try to maintain its success in managing the crisis but it will become harder and harder for it to do so, requiring more direct attacks on the working class that risk provoking the response it has worked so hard to prevent.
7. Following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, the ICC recognised that imperialist rivalry had entered a new phase: “In the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterised the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force” (IR 64, “Militarism and Decomposition”, 1991). This has been amply confirmed in the years since, above all by the wars in the Gulf, in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Gulf again but also by the innumerable small, but no less cruel and bloody wars all over the globe.
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8. The British bourgeoisie, drawing on its long experience, generally recognised that its interests were best served by trying to play the US off against Europe. One of the main reasons for the election of the Blair government was because it was capable of pursuing this independent strategy in an effective manner. This led to conflict with the US in which Britain gave and received blows, tacking now to the US, as in the first Gulf War and now against, as in the offensive in Kosovo. The US for its part used the situation in Northern Ireland to apply pressure, culminating in the Good Friday agreement that brought the republican movement into the government.
9. Following the attack on the World Trade Centre, the US launched its war on terror, in reality an attempt to encircle its main rivals in Europe. The British bourgeoisie’s response was to immediately turn towards the US, not from any sense of loyalty or solidarity in the war against terror, as the media proclaimed, but in order to be in as good a position as possible to safeguard and defend its interests. In this it showed its understanding of the real stakes of the situation. It recognised that it had either to turn to the US or to Europe – in reality Germany. The move towards the US was the best tactic for it to maintain its independent strategy by adapting it to the new situation; it was not a change of strategy.
10. Since 9/11 the independent strategy has continued to be pursued by the British bourgeoisie in both word and deed. It has proclaimed its determination to be a ‘force for good’ in the world and affirmed its intention to maintain alliances with a range of powers. While it has very publicly continued its alliance with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, elsewhere it has been willing to quietly oppose US interests. It has sided with Europe against the US in Iran, with France in Africa and played its own hand in the Middle East and Libya. In Ireland it has tried to reduce the impact of the Good Friday agreement through the suspension of the power-sharing executive and the refusal to hold elections.
11. The central division that has developed within the British bourgeoisie is not a dispute over strategy but over the best tactic to continue to defend the independent strategy that remains the dominant view in the ruling class. Recently Blair has reaffirmed Britain’s independent stance and declared his opposition to US ‘unilateralism’.
12. The tactic that the British ruling class is following is dictated by the dynamic of the situation, but it is unstable. The increasing tensions between the great powers can only make it harder for any policy that situates itself between them and that attempts to play one against the other. The British bourgeoisie is incapable of resolving the contradiction it is in. This is because there is no rational solution. The US will continue to assert itself and, recognising the situation of the British bourgeoisie, will put pressure on it without mercy. The danger of the tack towards the US lies in the fact that it makes the British ruling class more vulnerable, not just to pressure from the US but to reciprocal pressure from its European rivals. The perspective is thus for the contradiction to continue to sharpen.
13. With the collapse of the Eastern bloc the class struggle entered a new phase. The reflux in class consciousness and combativity led to the loss of the class’ sense of identity. In the decade and a half that followed there were important developments in the situation, with some significant expressions of combativity and a high level of manoeuvres by the bourgeoisie. The weakening of the impact of the campaigns around the ‘death of communism’, the evident falseness of the idea of a new world order and of an economic recovery created the situation in which a qualitative change in the situation could begin to develop. The large scale struggles in France in 2003 were one expression of this. The subsequent relative success of the ruling class in re-imposing a degree of social peace has not reversed this development.
14. There have been no similar large scale struggles in Britain although there have been some significant smaller strikes, such as by postal workers and the fire-fighters. The British bourgeoisie has continued to use manoeuvres against the working class. This does not mean that the situation in Britain is an exception but that the evolution of the situation does not affect everywhere equally or at the same time. In particular, the relative success of the British bourgeoisie in defending the economy and spreading propaganda about its health means that illusions in the economy are greater than elsewhere.
15. Another factor in the relative calm in the class struggle in Britain has been the ability of the bourgeoisie to introduce its attacks in a gradual, almost hidden way. Official unemployment has fallen substantially, the reality being hidden by various methods and most effectively by pushing workers onto incapacity benefit. The fact that these efforts are hidden somewhat clumsily means that the ideological impact of unemployment - spreading fear amongst the working class – is still there. Real poverty has also grown, albeit hidden behind a plethora of anti-poverty strategies while the polarisation of wealth has increased. In the degradation of the environments in which it lives and works and in its human relationships the proletariat feels the impact of decomposition increasingly sharply. Despair, violence and the fear of violence grip many and obliterate the idea of a meaningful future for humanity.
16. The ruling class has waged a largely successful offensive against the working class, both materially and ideologically. It has led the world bourgeoisie in the effectiveness of its economic attacks and has continued to mount successful manoeuvres against the class struggle. The election of the Labour government marked a strengthening of the ruling class against the working class, especially given the anger directed at the Tory government and the illusions in the new government, which was consequently able to take the attacks to a level impossible under the previous government. Overall, the Labour government expressed a strengthening of state capitalism.
17. However, the ruling class also suffers from the effect of decomposition. One expression of this is the personalised dispute between Blair and Brown. Another is the informalism of the Blair government, which prompted criticism from the Butler Report.
18. The working class in Britain is not currently at the forefront of the class struggle. This expresses the heterogeneity of the situation of the class, which results from the continuing weight of the reflux and the campaigns of the bourgeoisie and the real difficulty of the working class even to recognise itself as a class in society rather than just a collection of individuals. There are a number of reasons for the current situation in Britain: the experience of the two classes, the historic strength of the unions, the legacy of the defeats suffered in the miners’ strike, the effectiveness of the gradual introduction of economic attacks and the continuing ideological weight of the Labour government. The working class in Britain still harbours illusions in the capacity of capitalism to meet its needs but, despite all the skill of the bourgeoisie in managing the crisis, its deepening means that more direct attacks have to be made and illusions become harder to sustain. As this happens the working class in Britain will begin to march in step with its class comrades around the world.
After the tsunami of 26 December hit countries around the Indian Ocean, and the extent of the devastation became apparent, the media bombarded us with a massive news offensive. They started with images of people drowning, buildings and boats smashed to pieces, dead bodies lying wherever they had come to rest and then moved on to villages entirely wiped out, road networks completely destroyed, satellite pictures of areas so trashed that they were barely recognisable. Accompanying this came an avalanche of statistics alongside heartbreaking individual stories of those who died and those who have survived.
The media behaved as though we were witnessing an unforeseen act of God.
In the light of this propaganda the ICC rapidly prepared an international statement (“Capitalism is the real disaster!” see our website internationalism.org) and has held meetings in a number of countries showing capitalism’s responsibility for the human disaster, the hypocrisy of the ruling class, saluting real acts of solidarity and showing the potential of international working class solidarity.
The tsunami wasn’t a bolt from the blue. “The experts on the spot knew that a disaster was imminent. During a meeting of physicists in Jakarta in December, a group of Indonesian seismologists brought up the subject with a French expert. They were perfectly aware of the danger of tsunamis, since earthquakes occur constantly in the region” (Libération, 31/12/04). An ex-director of the International Centre for Information on Tsunami insisted that “The Indian Ocean possesses the basic infrastructure and communications for seismic measurement. And nobody should have been taken by surprise, since an earthquake of 8.1 on the Richter scale occurred on 24th December. This should have alerted the authorities. What is lacking is the political will in the countries concerned, and an international coordination on the scale of what has been built in the Pacific” (Libération, 28/12/04). And indeed, within 15 minutes of the earthquake, the American weather bureau in Hawaii warned 26 countries of the danger of tsunamis close to the epicentre, and yet the Japanese weather bureau failed to pass on the information, because the news did not concern Japan. The Indian Airforce got the information, but its warnings were delayed. The central weather bureau in Thailand took no action.
This wasn’t negligence or lack of political will. It was the criminal policy of the ruling class which revealed its profound contempt for the exploited and oppressed who are the main victims of the capitalist state.
In contrast to the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie - always quick enough to mobilise for war - there were tremendous examples of solidarity across the world. Survivors did not wait for relief before helping each other. In the tourist areas, the local population helped out travellers who had lost everything, while tourists helped clear debris and start rebuilding. Spontaneously, millions of people, and workers in particular, offered food, clothing, and money to help the victims.
But working class solidarity can’t be reduced to mere charity. On the one hand, because the financial help offered will be no more than a drop in the ocean given the extent of the catastrophe. On the other, because the money collected will never relieve the distress of people who have lost their nearest and dearest, whose bodies been dumped without ceremony in common graves.
Money cannot repair the irreparable. Nor can these gestures of financial solidarity attack the problem at its root: they cannot prevent the repetition of new disasters in other parts of the world.
Class solidarity can only develop on the basis of a denunciation of the capitalist system’s ruling class: they alone are guilty of this disaster!
The workers of the world must understand that by resisting the ruling class, and by overthrowing its system of death, they alone can raise a worthy monument to all those human lives sacrificed on the altar of capitalism in the name of profitability.
In a few months, for the ruling class and its charity organisations, this disaster will be forgotten. The working class cannot forget it, just as it cannot forget the massacres perpetrated by the Gulf War and all the other wars and so-called ‘natural’ disasters. The workers of the world can never consider this disaster ‘resolved’. It must remain in their memory, and spur on their determination to develop their struggle and their class unity against the barbarity of capitalism.
The working class is the only force in society today which can offer a real gift to the victims of the bourgeoisie by overthrowing capitalism and building a new society, based not on profit but on the satisfaction of human need. It is the only class whose revolutionary perspective can offer a future to the human race.
This is why the solidarity of the proletariat must go much further than an emotional solidarity. It must be based, not on feelings of impotence or guilt, but above all on class consciousness.
Only the development of proletarian class solidarity, a solidarity based on the awareness of capitalism’s bankruptcy, will be able to lay the foundations for a society where the crimes that the bourgeoisie presents to us as ‘natural’ disasters can no longer be committed, where all this abominable barbarism can at last be overcome and abolished. WR
Hitherto unpublished documents have been dug out to illustrate once again the abomination suffered by the deportees, and the unimaginable barbarity of their Nazi torturers and executioners. But it is certainly no accident that the search for truth and ‘authenticity’ comes to a grinding halt as soon reality threatens to compromise the ‘democratic camp’. For the Allies, who were perfectly aware of the reality of the Holocaust, did nothing to hinder the execution of the Nazis’ macabre schemes. It is up to revolutionaries to bring this reality to light, as we do here through the republication of extracts from an article first published in the International Review n°89: ‘Allies and Nazis jointly responsible for the Holocaust’.
Moreover, the barbarism of the democratic camp during World War II lived up to that of the fascist camp, in both the horror of their crimes and the cynicism with which they were committed: the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg, or the nuclear devastation visited on an already defeated Japan. This is why we declare, together with our comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France (in their leaflet of June 1945 which we publish below: “Buchenwald, Maideneck: macabre demagoguery”), that it was not the German, American, or British workers who were responsible for a war they never wanted, but the bourgeoisie and capitalism.
From 1945 to the present day, the bourgeoisie has constantly exhibited the obscene images of the heaps of corpses found in the Nazi extermination camps, and the starving bodies of those who survived that hell. By contrast, during the war, the Allies were very discreet about the camps, to the point where they were completely absent from the wartime propaganda of the ‘democratic camp’.
This might be explained by the Allies’ ignorance, not of the camps’ existence but of their use for systematic extermination from 1942-43 onwards. After all, spy satellites did not exist in those days... This fairy story, according to which the Allies only found out what was really happening at Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka etc, will not stand up to the slightest historical study. The secret services existed already, and were very active and efficient, as we can see from certain episodes of the war where they played a determining role, and the existence of the death camps could not have escaped their attention. This is confirmed by the work of numerous historians of World War II. Thus in the French paper Le Monde of 27th September 1996 we read: “A massacre [ie that perpetrated in the camps] whose extent and systematic nature were contained in a report by the Jewish social-democratic party, the Polish Bund, was officially confirmed to American officials by the famous telegram of 8th August 1942, despatched by G. Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva on the basis of information supplied by a German industrialist from Leipzig named Edward Scholte. We know that at this time, most of the European Jews doomed to die were still alive”. It is thus clear that the Allied governments were perfectly aware, from various sources, of the existence of the genocide under way by 1942, and yet the leaders of the ‘democratic camp’, Roosevelt, Churchill and their henchmen, did everything to avoid these revelations being given any hasty publicity, and even gave strict instructions to the press to maintain an extreme discretion on the subject. In fact, they lifted not a finger to save the millions condemned to die. This is confirmed in the same article of Le Monde, which writes “(...) in the mid-1980s, the American author D. Wyman, in his book The Desertion of the Jews (Calmann-Lévy) showed that several hundred thousand lives could have been saved were it not for the apathy, or even the obstruction, of certain organs of the US administration (such as the State Department), and of the Allies in general”. These extracts from the thoroughly bourgeois and democratic Le Monde only confirm what has always been said by the Communist Left. As for the loud and virtuous cries of horror - after 1945 - from all the champions of the ‘rights of man’ at the horror of the Holocaust, the Allies’ silence during the war shows just how much they are worth.
Is this silence to be explained by the latent anti-Semitism of certain Allied leaders, as some post-war Jewish historians have maintained? Anti-Semitism is certainly not restricted to fascist regimes but this is not the real reason behind the silence of the Allies’, some of whose leaders were either Jews themselves, or close to Jewish organisations (Roosevelt for example). No, the real reason behind this remarkable discretion lies in the laws that regulate the capitalist system, whether its rule be covered by the banner of democracy or of totalitarianism. As in the enemy camp, all the Allies’ resources were mobilised for the war. No useless mouths, everybody must be occupied, either at the front or in the production of armaments. The arrival en masse of populations from the camps, of children and old people who could not be sent to the front or the factory, of sick and exhausted men and women who could not be immediately integrated into the war effort, would only have disorganised the latter. So the frontiers were closed, and such immigration prevented by every means possible. In 1943 - in other words at a time when the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie was perfectly aware of the reality of the camps - Anthony Eden, minister of His Most Gracious and Democratic Britannic Majesty decided at Churchill’s request that “no ship of the United Nations can be affected to transfer the refugees to Europe”, while Roosevelt added that “transporting so many people would disorganise the war effort” (Churchill, Memoirs, Vol 10). These are the real and sordid reasons that led these accredited anti-fascists and democrats to remain silent about what was happening in Dachau, Buchenwald, and others of sinister memory! The humanitarian considerations that were supposed to drive the anti-fascist camp, united against fascist barbarism, had no place in their sordid capitalist interests and the demands of the war machine.
However, contrary to the laments of this bourgeois paper, the ‘democratic camp’ was not an accomplice to Holocaust merely out of ‘bad faith’ or bureaucratic sloth. As we will see, this complicity was wholly conscious. At first, the deportation camps were essentially labour camps, where the German bourgeoisie could benefit from a cheap labour force entirely at its mercy, directed entirely to the war effort. Although the extermination camps existed already, at the time they were more the exception than the rule. But after its first serious military reversals, especially against the terrible war machine set in motion by the USA, German imperialism could no longer properly feed its own troops and population. The Nazi regime thus decided to rid itself of the excess population in the camps, and from then on the gas-ovens spread their sinister shadow everywhere. The abomination of the executioners carefully gathering their victims’ teeth, hair, and finger-nails to feed the German war machine, was the fruit of an imperialism at bay, retreating on every front, and plumbing the depths of the irrationality of imperialist war. But although the Nazi regime and its underlings perpetrated the Holocaust without a qualm, it brought little benefit to German capital, desperately trying to gather together the wherewithal to resist the Allies’ inexorable advance. In this context, there were several attempts - in general conducted directly by the SS - to make some profit out of these hundreds of thousands, even millions of prisoners, by selling them to, or exchanging them with the Allies.
The most famous episode of this sinister bargaining was the approach made to Joel Brand, the leader of a semi-clandestine organisation of Hungarian Jews, whose story has been told in the book by A. Weissberg, cited in the pamphlet on Auschwitz, the Great Alibi. He was taken to Budapest to meet the SS officer in charge of the Jewish question, Adolf Eichmann, who instructed him to negotiate with the British and American governments for the liberation of a million Jews, in exchange for 10,000 trucks, but making it clear that he was ready to accept less, or even different goods. To demonstrate their good faith, and the seriousness of their proposal, the SS even proposed to release 100,000 Jews as soon as Brand obtained an agreement in principle, without asking anything in exchange. During his journey, Brand made the acquaintance of British prisons in the Middle East, and after many delays which, far from being accidents were deliberately put in his way by the Allied governments to avoid an official meeting, he was finally able to discuss the proposal with Lord Moyne, the British government’s representative in the Middle East. There was nothing personal in the latter’s utter refusal of Eichmann’s proposal: he was merely following the instructions of the British cabinet. Nor was it a moral refusal to bow to a revolting blackmail. There is no room left for doubt when we read Brand’s own account of the discussion: “I begged him to give me at least a written agreement, even if he failed to keep to it, which would at least save 100,000 lives. Moyne then asked what would be the total number. I replied that Eichmann had spoken of a million. ‘But how can you imagine such a thing Mr Brand? What would I do with a million Jews? Where would I put them? Who would take them in?’. In desperation, I said that if the earth no longer had room for us, there was nothing left for us but to let ourselves be exterminated”. As Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi so rightly says of this glorious episode of World War II, “unfortunately, while the supply was there, the demand was not! Not just the Jews, but even the SS had been taken in by the Allies’ humanitarian propaganda! The Allies did not want these million Jews! Not for 10,000 trucks, not for 5,000, not even for nothing”.
Some recent historiography has tried to show that this refusal was due above all to Stalin’s veto. This is just another attempt to hide the direct complicity of the ‘great democracies’ in the Holocaust, revealed in the misadventure of the naïve Brand, whose veracity nobody seriously contests. Suffice to say in reply that during the war, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were in the habit of being dictated to by Stalin, while on this particular point they were on the same wavelength as the ‘little father of the peoples’, demonstrating the same brutality and cynicism throughout the war. The thoroughly democratic Roosevelt refused other, similar attempts by the Nazis, for example when at the end of 1944 they tried to sell Jews to the “Organisation of American Jews”, demonstrating their good faith by deporting 2000 Jews to Switzerland, as is detailed by Y. Bauer in his book Jews for Sale (published by Liana Levi).
None of this is an accident, or the fault of leaders rendered ‘insensitive’ by the terrible sacrifices demanded by the war against the ferocious fascist dictatorship - the explanations usually put forward to justify Churchill’s ruthlessness, for example, of certain inglorious episodes of the 1939-45 war. Anti-fascism never expressed a real antagonism between on the one hand a camp defending democracy and its values, and on the other a totalitarian camp. This was never anything but a ‘red rag’ waved before the workers to justify the war by hiding its classically inter-imperialist nature as a war to divide up the world between the great imperialist sharks. The Communist International had already warned that this war was inevitable as soon as the Treaty of Versailles was signed; anti-fascism made it possible to wipe this warning from the workers’ minds, before enrolling them for the biggest slaughter in history. While it was necessary, during the war, to keep the frontiers firmly closed to all those who tried to escape the Nazi hell in order not to disorganise the war effort, once the war was over it was another matter entirely. The publicity suddenly given to the camps’ existence after 1945 was manna from heaven to the bourgeois propaganda machine. Turning the spotlight on the awful reality of the death camps allowed the Allies to hide their own innumerable crimes, and to attach the proletariat firmly to the defence of a democracy presented by all the bourgeois parties, from the right to the Stalinists, as a value common to working and ruling classes, something defended against the danger of new Holocausts.
The role of the SS, the Nazis, and their camp of industrialised death, was to exterminate in general all the opponents of the fascist régime, and above all the revolutionary militants who have always been in the forefront of the combat against the capitalist bourgeoisie, in whatever form: autocratic, monarchical, or ‘democratic’, whether led by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Leopold III, George V, Victor-Emmanuel, Churchill, Roosevelt, Daladier or De Gaulle.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in October 1917, the international bourgeoisie tried every possible and imaginable means to crush it; in 1919, they broke the German revolution with an unprecedentedly savage repression; they drowned in blood the insurrection of the Chinese proletariat. The same bourgeoisie financed fascist propaganda in Italy, then that of Hitler in Germany; the same bourgeoisie put into power in Germany the man they had appointed as the gendarme of Europe. And today, the vary same bourgeoisie is spending millions “to finance the creation of an exhibition on Hitler’s crimes”, with photos, and the public projection of films on “German atrocities”, while the victims of these atrocities continue to die, often without any medical attention, and those who escaped are returning home without the means to live.
It is the same bourgeoisie that paid for Germany’s rearmament, and then dragged the proletariat into the war with the anti-fascist ideology; that helped Hitler to power, and then used him to crush the German proletariat and then hurl it into the bloodiest war, the vilest butchery imaginable.
It is the very same bourgeoisie that today sends its representatives to kneel hypocritically, with their floral bouquets, on the tombs of the dead that they themselves caused, because it is incapable of running society, and because war is its only way of life.
We accuse it for the millions of deaths that it has caused and which are, alas, no more than an addition to an already too long list of the martyrs of ‘civilisation’, of a decomposing capitalist society.
It is not the Germans who are responsible for Hitler’s crimes. They were the first, in 1934, to pay for Hitler’s bourgeois repression with 450,000 deaths, and who continued to suffer this merciless repression even when it was exported abroad. Neither are the French, the British, the Americans, the Russians or the Chinese responsible for the horrors of a war they did not want, but which their rulers forced on them.
Millions of men and women died slowly in the Nazi concentration camps; they were savagely tortured and now their bodies are rotting somewhere. Millions died fighting in the war, or were struck down by a ‘liberating’ bombardment. These millions of corpses, mutilated, amputated, torn apart, disfigured, buried in the ground or rotting in the open, these millions of dead, soldiers, women, old people, children, all cry out for vengeance. And they cry for vengeance, not against the German people, who are still paying, but against this infamous, hypocritical, and unscrupulous bourgeoisie, which did not pay for the war, but on the contrary profited from it. Today, their pigs’ faces stuffed with the fat of the land, they are teasing their still hungry slaves.
The only position for the proletariat, is not to respond to the demagogues’ calls to continue and heighten chauvinism through anti-fascist committees, but the class struggle in direct defence of their interests, their right to life: the struggle every day, every instant, until the destruction of this monstrous régime, capitalism.
Towards the end of last year, George Monbiot, celebrated opponent of ‘neo-liberalism’, announced “the resumption of the most deadly conflict since the second world war” (Guardian 14/12/04). He claimed “the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), already responsible for 3.8 million deaths” has, in his words, “started again”.
Since the first eruption of the conflict in the DRC in October 1996, people have been dying from war, famine and disease. Monbiot, drawing on research from the International Rescue Committee states that “over 1,000 people a day are still dying from disease and malnutrition” but says this is “caused by the last conflict”. What he seems to have missed is that, despite the past return of some troops to Rwanda and Uganda, the official ceasefire of December 2002, a new constitution, a transitional government from June 2003, and subsequent agreements to end hostilities and disarm, the imperialist war in the =DRC has never stopped.
Monbiot says “it is hard to find anyone who gives a damn about the Congo”. If he ‘gave a damn’ about the situation he could, for example, have turned to the website of the UN mission to the DRC (monuc.org) where an outline of events shows that there has been no let up in the conflict during the last two years.
Continuing troop movements, fighting between different militia, hostilities between armed groups, violence against government forces, attacks on UN forces, massacres in villages, massacres in refugee camps, slaughtered civilians and children, movements of hundreds of thousands of people away from areas with the worst fighting, explosions, exactions by local militia, attacks on rebel training camps, attacks on government military camps, towns taken by insurgents, areas retaken by government forces, weapons continuing to arrive in the country despite an arms embargo: all these and more are recorded by the UN. The UN Security Council has condemned violent attacks on the population (and the UN mission), and other actions of the armed militias. It has regularly renewed the mandate of one of the most expensive UN ‘peacekeeping’ forces, and progressively increased its numbers, for example, last August more than doubling it to nearly 24,000 troops.
Monbiot, suddenly alert to Rwandan military intervention in north-eastern DRC and conflict between rival factions of the Congolese Army, recalls the “last conflict” when the “six African armies that had been drawn into the conflict, their proxy militias and the government of the DRC started fighting a monumental turf war” over the mineral resources of the eastern DRC. While all the armed forces committed atrocities in the past, he singles out the Rwandan army for criticism, and suggests “it would not be hard for the international community to defuse the world’s most deadly conflict”.
As both an explanation of what is happening and a suggestion of how a peaceful resolution is possible this is inadequate. As we have explained in previous articles on the Congo (WR 246, 264, 266) this vast country, sharing borders with nine other nations is of great strategic importance in Central Africa. Its copper, diamond, coltan and cobalt resources are not the central question, and while neighbouring African states are interested in establishing some influence, bigger imperialist powers have control over the DRC as an aim.
For 32 years before his overthrow in 1997, President Mobutu had the support of French imperialism. Using military forces from Rwanda and Uganda (at the bidding of the US) Laurent Kabila came to power, demonstrating the growing influence of the US in the region, and the undermining of France’s position. Once in power he put the interest of his own faction above those of his imperialist backers, threatening to destabilise Rwanda and Uganda, while getting the backing of troops from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad (the last three countries not even being immediate neighbours).
The assassination of Kabila in January 2001, and his replacement by his son was supposed to have given hopes for peace. The subsequent situation has shown that the main hopes of the major imperialist powers lie not in peace but in controlling the ruling faction in the DRC. France has been very active at the diplomatic level and played a leading role in the multinational forces active in the conflict, but it has not reclaimed its former position in the region. The “international community” cannot “defuse” the war because the interests of the major powers bring them into conflict and the lesser powers can easily change their allegiances.
In January a ‘peace’ deal was signed in Sudan. The current conflict, between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, in which more than 2 million people have died and 4 million been displaced, has lasted since 1983. Large areas of the country are now desolate and uninhabitable.
With the backing of the US, there has been agreement between the government and the SPLA that the South of the country will have its own government, banking system, national anthem and flag. Initially the South’s revenues, including significant oil income, will be split 50/50 between North and South. In 2011 there’ll be a vote on whether the South wants to secede from the rest of the country.
There are many reasons to believe that Sudan will not be a model of tranquillity in the coming period. For a start, since February 2003 there has been the continuing conflict in the Darfur region in which 70,000 people have died and more than 2 million been driven from their homes. Darfur is in the west of Northern Sudan, where the government have used conventional military forces and militia to terrorise the population. A UN report clears the government of genocide, but accuses them of war crimes in the form of mass killings, rape, torture and other atrocities including the destruction of an estimated 700 villages. Both the US and France have accordingly made threatening noises towards the Sudanese government. Among other big powers intervening in the area, China has extensive oil interests in the country that it’s determined to defend. The ‘peace’ deal doesn’t cover Darfur, an area where the war continues and where all parties have ignored a number of ceasefire agreements.
There is also the nearby example of Ethiopia and Eritrea to show that splitting countries up doesn’t prevent conflicts. Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and yet, between 1998 and 2000, the two countries fought a murderous war in which an estimated 75,000 people on each side died. In the last two years both countries have been re-arming and, over the last few months, moving huge military resources to their shared border. Military analysts are already speculating on what shape a seemingly imminent war will take. A growing war of words between Eritrea and Ethiopia only needs a spark to re-ignite conflict.
Africa is currently a very fashionable cause. It’s claimed that Britain’s presidency of the G8 and the EU and the decision to make Africa a priority can have a positive impact on debt, trade, hunger, Aids, malaria and other health and economic matters in the poorest continent. The evidence shows that every capitalist state only defends its own interests, and is pushed into imperialist conflict with its rivals. The ruling class can only make things worse. Car 2/2/5
Despite the lowering of the dollar and the increases in oil prices, the specialist economic forecasters are reassuring themselves with the positive rates of growth for 2004: 4.7% for the USA; 3% for Japan; 1.6% for the Eurozone; 9.1% for the first three quarters of 2004 for China. How do we interpret these results? Is the world economy getting better? Can the United States, and above all China, presented by the bourgeoisie as the new Eldarado, be the locomotives of the world in order to re-launch the economy, including that of Europe?
To answer these questions it is first of all necessary to analyse the situation of the main world power, in order to see how the bourgeoisie uses its underhand methods to hide from the proletariat the growing bankruptcy of its system.
If there is one thing on which all the specialists of the world economy are not mistaken it is on the debt of the world’s main power. In order to re-launch the economic machine, the American administration has let public and commercial deficits run wild. It has artificially financed household spending (this consumption represents more than two-thirds of US GDP and has a determinant influence on economic activity), through the massive lowering of taxes on household goods, which was decided after the election of 2001 (in fact there were repeated reductions in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, to a total of 1,900 billion dollars over 10 years) and of interest rates on borrowing, brought to their lowest level since 1945 (reduced by the FED to 1%). Despite these measures, economic growth has fallen to 3.5% against the 5% of only a few months ago. Consumer confidence again fell in October 2004 to its lowest level for 7 months and deficits do not stop rising. The American administration is even talking of “twin deficits” in order to qualify their gravity. The budget deficit has risen to 413 billion dollars after the 377 billion of 2003. The experts are looking at an accumulation of supplementary debts of 3,000 billion dollars from here to 2011.
“The government must now borrow 1.1 billion dollars a day and spend more in order to assure the servicing of interest on debt (159 billion), which corresponds to the accumulated budgets of education, domestic security, justice, the police, army veterans, space exploration and international aid” (Le Monde of November 4, 2004). As to the commercial deficit, it has gone beyond $650 billion, or 5.7% of GDP. The situation is not much better for the other capitalist states. The jump in petrol prices and the rise of the Euro will lead to maximum rates of growth in Europe of 2%, in a context where public debt doesn’t stop growing and where no European state is up to respecting the 3% of deficit fixed by the Maastricht Treaty: more than 4.1% deficit for France, 3.9% for Germany, 3.2% for Britain (double the previous year) and more than 4% for Italy.
The G7 Summits follow one another and behind the determined speeches in favour of common policies, in reality the opposite is the result. The aggravation of the crisis and notably of American debt, with its inflationary risks, tends to increase the competitive aspect that is at the very basis of the capitalist system. With the lowering of interest rates, the American administration has developed a policy of lowering the dollar against the Euro, its main competitor currency, in order to gain parts of the export market and lower the level of its financial debt. This policy of “competitive devaluation” has already been used by the United States, in 1980 and 1995. What’s different today is the context in which the American government uses this lowering of the dollar: the unprecedented indebtedness of its economy. Despite the pressure on its rival economic powers through the fall of the dollar, American exports still only cover some 75% of its imports, thus making the insolubility of American debt yet more flagrant. In this raging commercial war, while the dollar loses 25% of its value, the external deficit is about to pass 5.5% of American GDP. “To take it below 3.5% of GDP, which seems to be the objective, will doubtless necessitate a supplementary depreciation of the dollar of 35% against all monies. The fall in the Greenback is an attempt to lead the American economy back towards a better equilibrium. The Euro will have to climb to 1.7 a dollar, heavily penalising European exports”. (Les Echos, November 6). Faced with this perspective of an unprecedented lowering of the dollar, Japan (whose tiny economic recovery is based on the re-launch of exports) is openly threatening the United States with an intervention on the financial markets through their central banks in order to raise the American currency. The gravity of the present situation doesn’t so much reside in the competition between the industrial countries, which is the very essence of capitalism, as in the tendency to call into question the very minimum of agreement which has existed up to now between the major powers in order to offset the effects of the crisis onto the rest of the world.
In the context of the monstrous debt of the main developed countries and the lowering of the dollar, the rise in the price of raw materials and notably of oil has just reactivated the spectre of inflation, which ravaged the world economy during the course of the 1970s. This warning came from the IMF: “To wait very long before reacting to the first signs of inflation could turn out to be costly, and could cost the central banks a part of the credibility that they have been building up in the 1980s and 1990s” (Le Monde, October 1). Despite this warning, the bourgeoisie’s experts focus attention on the causes of these increases which are supposed to be due to a strong demand for oil at the world level, notably China and the United States. And also to a certain instability in some producing countries (e.g. Iraq and Saudi Arabia), which we are told is only a temporary problem. On the other hand, the marxist analysis situates this phenomenon in a more global framework. The increases of 1973, 1979, 1997 and 2000, were largely utilised by the United States in the commercial war against other capitalist states, Europe and Japan notably (see our article ‘Increases in oil prices: a consequence and not the cause of the crisis’ in International Review no. 19). These latest increases, on the contrary, strongly penalise the US economy in general and notably American domestic consumption, in a context where the US is obliged to import much more oil than before. The higher price for oil immediately reverberates into an aggravation of the American budget deficit, much more so because oil is paid for in dollars and it thus costs America dearer than the European economies (which pay per barrel with dollars cheaper than their own money, the Euro). Thus the oil price increase shows the gravity of the economic crisis and at the same time the link that it can have with present wars. The speculative dimension accounts for a part of this increase (the experts estimate it to be between 4 and 8 dollars per barrel); but the impact of war on oil prices is even more clearly the expression of the growing weight of chaos and barbarism at the world level. The incapacity of the United States to restart Iraqi production because of the military mess it’s getting sucked into in Iraq, the threats of attacks against the installations of the main producer country, Saudi Arabia, social troubles in Venezuela and Nigeria are elements in this. All of these events demonstrate that there is not the economic aspect on one side and the military or imperialist aspect on the other, but a greater and greater interpenetration of all these factors, each feeding the other and giving rise to a more and more chaotic situation that is less and less controllable by the bourgeoisie. Instability and growing disorder in the capitalist world feed economic instability, which in turn can only produce still more military instability.
In the context of this astronomic debt of the world economy, especially of the main world power, the increase in military expenditure is a further factor in the aggravation of budget deficits. Military spending is at the expense of civil budgets, and these can only be reduced in order to finance the endless, spreading barbarism.
Thus, since unleashing the war in Iraq, the United States has spent 140 billion dollars. This effort is not sufficient since “At the beginning of November the Pentagon asked for an extension of $70 billion to finance military operations in 2005 (Le Monde, November 9). The budget of the Pentagon will in 2005 go beyond $400 billion, not counting the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which represents almost half of world military expenses (45% exactly).
Comparison with previous wars shows the exorbitant cost of present spending. While WW I cost the US economy $190.6 billion, WW II $896.3, the first Gulf War in 1991 absorbed $76.1 billion in a few months (sources: Economic Problems, 1.9.4).
But other states are not far behind and we can cite the case of France where, since the end of the 90s, military budgets have been hiked up to the world level. While France’s arms budget has increased significantly, the government has decided to grant “an extra 550 million Euros to finance the military engagement going on in the Ivory Coast and a hundred million more to cover other external operations. These amounts are at the expense of the civil ministries.” (Les Echos, November 10).
Spending in the military sphere does not serve the reproduction of productive capital. It represents the destruction, pure and simple, of capital invested. That means that the development of militarism and the spending increases that are linked to it are a supplementary weight which can only accentuate economic stagnation.
Behind the figures of so-called capitalist growth for 2004, we can discern a dramatic new stage in the worsening of the crisis, illustrating the historic failure of the capitalist system of production. Donald, 12.12.4.
The six day strike at Opel in Bochum in October 2004, in response to the threat of mass redundancies and possible plant closures by General Motors, was the longest and most significant, spontaneous, unofficial strike in a major plant in Germany since the great wildcat strikes of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
For almost a week, the working population followed with interest and great sympathy the events in Bochum. At the other plants of General Motors (GM) in Europe, the workforces openly expressed their identification with and admiration of the courage and combativity of their colleagues at Bochum. The importance of the seeds of solidarity that have been awakened by this workers’ struggle can be measured by the fact that the employers, as long as the strike was in progress, did not dare to take legal action against the strikers. Of course, the bosses made the usual threats, denigrated the so-called ‘ring leaders’, spread rumours about vandalised cars and machinery, and threatened to call in the police if the strike did not immediately cease. But the propertied class understood perfectly well that the use of open state repression would be more likely to transfer the (mostly) still passive sympathy of the other workers into open indignation and active solidarity.
Although the IG Metall trade union and the factory council of Opel Bochum justified the ending of the strike with the argument that the workers had obliged the employers to return to the negotiating table, the main demand of the strikers – that there would be no sackings – has certainly not been met.
However, the significance of this struggle lies above all in the fact that it has demonstrated the capacity of the working class to act as an independent force in present day society. It was no coincidence that the conflict at Opel gave rise to a debate in the bourgeois media between sociologists, on the one hand, who talk of a ‘return of the class struggle in the marxist sense of the word’, and ideologists of the ‘alternative globalisation’ and the ‘struggle against work’ movements, on the other, who long ago declared the workers’ struggle to be dead and buried. Such discussions serve not just to confuse the workers, but also to enable the ruling class as a whole to understand that the period, especially after 1989, when it was possible to deny the reality of the class struggle with some credibility, is slowly drawing to a close. The deepening antagonism between rich and poor, between capital and wage labour, and above all the resistance of the workers under attack, has opened the way towards the recovery of its class identity by the proletariat. This in turn is one of the main preconditions for more powerful and conscious defensive struggles by the proletariat.
Like all significant workers’ struggles, the strike at Bochum did not come as a bolt out of the blue. Such class struggles are always part of an international series of combats. Today the proletariat is beginning to fight back against the new, qualitative sharpening of the capitalist crisis and attacks against its living conditions (see WR 279). A particular feature of the situation is the central role being played by the question of unemployment. Mass layoffs and plant closures multiply. The attacks against the unemployed become increasingly brutal. The growing importance of unemployment is beginning to take concrete form. On October 2nd 2004, in the Netherlands and Germany, simultaneous demonstrations of 200,000 people in Amsterdam and 45,000 in Berlin took place against the state’s attacks on the unemployed. In September 2004 shipyard workers at Puerto Real and San Fernando in Andalusia, Spain, struck and demonstrated against mass layoffs. Another feature is the national and international simultaneity of the attacks, as the crisis at Opel and Karstadt in October ‘04 clearly expressed.
However, it is a fact that such significant workers’ struggles, which affect the consciousness of the class as a whole, are effectively signalled and prepared in advance through other, less spectacular skirmishes in the same or neighbouring sectors. Thus, there was already a spontaneous downing of tools four years ago at Opel in Bochum in response to the threat of redundancies. In the spring of 2004 there was also a wildcat stoppage at the Ford car plant in Cologne. Above all, there is a common foundation to the strike in Bochum and the protests three months before at Daimler-Chrysler. It was the work force at Mercedes that in a sense summoned the class to struggle. They put into practise the lesson that one cannot, and must not, accept the blackmail of the ruling class without putting up a fight. They countered the attempts of the bosses to play off the employees of the different plants against each other, through the reawakening of class solidarity. In this sense, the Opel Bochum workers received the flame of courageous struggle from their Mercedes colleagues. It seems to us that this common framework - which those Mercedes workers, who travelled from Stuttgart to Bochum to participate in the October 19th day of action spoke of - is important to underline.
The different ‘critical trade unionists’, have tried to explain the resumption of work in Bochum after six days without the main demands of the workers being met, by the manoeuvre of IG Metall and the factory council leadership on October 20th. Of course, the formulation of the alternative, upon which the striking workers were made to vote – either ending the strike and opening negotiations, or staying on strike without negotiating – was a typical example of a union manoeuvre against the workers. The endless continuation of an already isolated strike was thus presented as the only alternative to breaking off the struggle. In so doing, the decisive questions were brushed aside. These are: firstly, how to make the enforcement of the workers demands as effective as possible? Secondly, who should negotiate: the unions and the factory council, or mass assemblies and the delegates chosen by them?
However, we intend to show that the ‘critical trade unionists’ were themselves involved in the emergence of this false alternative between giving in, and staying out on a long and isolated strike. We will also show that the organisation of the division and the defeat of the struggle began long before the 20th of October.
When the news broke of planned redundancies in Europe, the workers at all the Opel plants reacted with indignation and the downing of tools. Just as at Mercedes during the summer, where strikes took place simultaneously in Sindelfinden (Stuttgart) and Bremen, thus demonstrating that the work forces of the different plants were determined not to let themselves be played off against each other, here also the plants singled out, Bochum and Rüsselsheim (each threatened with anything up to 5,000 layoffs), reacted together. IG Metall and the factory council at Bochum did not even try and put a brake on the initial combative élan of the workers. But instead, everything was done to ensure a rapid resumption of work at Rüsselsheim. This is a fact which has been systematically ignored by the leftist media. If they even mention it, it is in order to give the impression that the workers themselves, i.e. those at Rüsselsheim, were the cause of this division.
The fact is that the quick resumption of work at the ‘mother plant’ of Opel near Frankfurt (Rüsselsheim) was experienced by those at Bochum, who stayed out, as a weakening of solidarity. In this way the wedge of division, which the Mercedes workers had been able to keep at bay, was felt to be at work already on the second day of the movement at Opel.
How can this be explained? A few weeks before the announcement of the elimination of some 12,000 jobs in Europe, GM had already made it known that, in the future, it would build its middle of the range models from Saab and Opel at only one plant in Europe, either at Rüsselsheim or at Trollhätan in Sweden, and would close down the other plant. And when the ‘master-plan’ for the salvaging of the company was released in October, it was immediately made known that the question of ‘either Rüsselsheim or Trollhätan’ would be negotiated as part of this package. During the first day of the strike, the factory council and IG Metall in Rüsselsheim left no doubt about the fact that they would not tolerate any further solidarity action with colleagues in Bochum, since this could lead to the plant in Rüsselsheim losing out to its ‘Swedish rival’. If the union, the factory council and the SPD had really been concerned, as they claimed, about the common defence of the different plants, they would not have called, as they did, for separate demonstrations by the different plants on October 19th, and could have easily organised a common action. Instead of this, the Bochum and Rüsselsheim workers were constantly kept at a distance from each other, to make sure that they would never get the opportunity to meet and discuss their common interests. They did not even allow a small delegation to go from Rüsselsheim to Bochum or vice versa to deliver a solidarity greeting. Instead of this, the factory council at Rüsselsheim was warning against the ‘hotheads’ on the Ruhr, while their counterparts in Bochum repeatedly made sarcastic, indirect remarks about the solidarity of the ‘dear colleagues’ in Rüsselsheim. To get an idea of the scale of the hypocrisy of the trade unions during the “European day of solidarity”, it will be sufficient to mention how the Swedish trade unions, at a workers’ assembly, first produced their usual phrase-mongering about their solidarity with the Opel workers, only to subsequently triumphantly announce that the Swedish Prime Minister Persson had promised to intervene personally to ensure that the mid-range cars will be built there in future and not in Rüsselsheim!
What of the situation at Bochum, where the strike continued? There, the official representatives of IG Metall and the factory council adopted such a low profile at the beginning of the strike, that part of the media accused them of having lost control of the situation. Others criticised them for surrendering the field to the trade union radicals. Just a few days later the unions demonstrated how little they had really lost control by putting an end to the strike with relative ease. However, it is true that, during the first days, the union leadership did indeed leave the field to the ‘radicals’. As soon as it became clear that the workers at Bochum were being left alone with their strike, these pseudo-radicals, as the most faithful representatives of trade union ideology, began campaigning for a long, drawn-out strike to the bitter end. Over a century ago, when workers in struggle were mainly dealing with individual capitalists, they could indeed impose their interests by striking on their own. But ever since these family enterprises became giant corporations, which at the national level are fused with each other and with the state, the workers have to fight as a class: they have to extend and unite their struggles in order to be able to put up an effective resistance. Today, as in the 20th century, the trade union ideology of isolated, separate struggles, has become a bourgeois point of view, a recipe for the defeat of the workers. At Opel in Bochum, it was used once again as a way to divide the workers. While a majority of them – already sensing the dead end an isolated strike was leading to – were voting to go back to work, a combative, embittered, minority, wanted to stay out regardless of the consequences. Some of them even accused the majority of having betrayed the common cause. Now, the division was in place, not only between Bochum and Rüsselsheim, but also within the Bochum work force.
Afterwards, the representatives of a ‘strike to the bitter end’ claimed that if the strike had lasted only a few days longer, the capitalists would have been obliged to capitulate. In support of this, they point out the vulnerability of the present day ‘just in time’ production methods. These arguments are not very convincing in view of worldwide overproduction and overcapacity, not least in the car industry. But in addition, there is much more at stake in the workers’ struggle than simply shutting down production. It is above all a question of tipping the political balance of class forces in favour of the proletariat, through the extension and unification of workers’ struggles.
It is nonetheless true that, after a week, the bourgeoisie was in a hurry to end the strike at Bochum, but not because there was any threat of a worldwide collapse of production at GM. Here, we have reached the crux of the problem. The strike at Bochum did indeed impress the bourgeoisie, making the defenders of the system nervous. Not primarily because of the consequences for production, but rather because of the possible consequences of this struggle for the other workers, for the development of the consciousness of the class as a whole. What they feared was not even, in the first instance, the extension of the immediate struggle to other parts of the class. The situation, the general combativity and above all the level of consciousness were probably not really ripe for this. What they were most worried about was the manifestation of workers’ combativity in the context of a growing simultaneity of attacks against all workers. The massive attacks against the employees at Karstadt came just before; those at Volkswagen just after the struggle at Opel. What the ruling class fears is that the working class, spurred on by struggles such as at Opel, will slowly but surely recognise that the workers of the different companies, branches or regions have common interests, and need a living solidarity.
The struggle at Opel already posed a greater challenge for workers than at Mercedes. At Opel the potential for blackmail was much more threatening, including the possibility of shutting down entire plants. The workers answered this challenge, at least in Bochum, with an intensified combativity but not yet with a further development at the level of class consciousness. That is not surprising. The class today is more and more confronted with the increasingly visible bankruptcy of the whole social formation that is capitalism. It is evident that the proletariat will have to try again and again before it can even begin to understand the scale of the whole problem; that it will repeatedly recoil in the face of the vastness of the task. It is the job of revolutionaries today to support workers in the struggle to acquire a class perspective of their own. This is why the ICC distributed a leaflet during the day of action in Bochum and Rüsselsheim, which did not satisfy itself with calling the workers to struggle, but attempted to stimulate political reflection within the class.
19.11.04.
(From WELTREVOLUTION 127, paper of the ICC in Germany and Switzerland.)
Since we published the article ‘The NCI has not broken with the ICC’ (see our website), a number of sympathisers of the ICC have sent messages of support and financial contributions for the comrades of the Nucleo Comunista Internacionalista in Argentina, who, despite the terrible living conditions they face, are determined to continue political activity alongside the ICC. We want to give very warm thanks to all the comrades who have expressed their solidarity in this way. This can only encourage the comrades in Argentina to maintain their militant commitment; and it shows that, despite their geographical isolation, they are not alone. Such gestures are an illustration of the international nature of the solidarity of the proletariat, the class that bears within itself the communist future.
The elections in Palestine and Iraq, we are told, have been great triumphs for democracy. George Bush was euphoric about them in his State of the Union speech. The peoples of the Middle East are not just getting peace but freedom and democracy too!
For Bush, spreading such noble ideals around the planet is the sacred mission of the USA. Few of the USA’s main imperialist rivals – Germany, France, Russia, etc – failed to heed the message: despite the Iraq fiasco, US imperialism will continue to assert its interests wherever it chooses.
The elections in the Middle East have indeed provided a short-lived gain for those interests. In Palestine, the election of the ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas as successor to Arafat offers the possibility of reining in the radical Islamic groups like Hamas who tend to adopt an anti-US position. There is already a plan for Abbas to meet Sharon and Israeli troops have handed over police-keeping duties to the Palestinian Authority in certain parts of the West Bank. The elections in Iraq showed the relative weakness of the ‘insurgent’ forces. Although they managed to carry out some murderous attacks on polling day, they failed to prevent the elections from going ahead. The very fact that they took place can be presented as a propaganda victory by the US. Although the White House has been obliged to officially admit that its main justification for invading Iraq, Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, do not exist, it can still claim that the establishment of a democratic Iraq was a goal worth fighting for.
But the democratic festivities in the Middle East are certainly not a gain for the oppressed in Iraq and Palestine or anywhere else, despite Bush’s claim that the interests of the US coincide with the needs of the oppressed, the victims of tyranny around the world.
The Iraqi elections were highly militarised: because of the threats by the terrorist gangs, military regulations were made even tougher than usual: borders closed, extra patrols, curfews, banning of private cars on polling day. Whole areas of Iraq – essentially the Sunni-dominated ones – stayed out of the election, either because of intimidation by the insurgents or out of sympathy for their arguments.
This then was hardly a model of democratic good practice, and many critics of the US occupation have pointed this out. But for us that is not the point. Even in the best of cases capitalist democracy is a fraud. It is used to hide the fact that, whatever political form it adopts, capitalist society is in essence a dictatorship of the ruling class, of the rich, the powerful, the state bureaucrats, the generals and police-chiefs. This applies to democratic America and Britain just as much to Iraq under Saddam or Iran under the Mullahs.
This view of democracy – the marxist view – will no doubt be branded by apologists for the war as giving comfort to the Islamic terrorist gangs who also attack democracy. And it is true there are many fake ‘socialists’ who wave the flag for the so-called ‘Resistance’ in Iraq . But real communists oppose capitalist democracy because it is a barrier to the liberation of humanity and the elimination of all forms of state power; the radical Islamists oppose democracy because they believe that mankind must always live under a hierarchical state. And while communists seek to act on the consciousness of the exploited, to remind them of the fact that their own struggles have already revealed the forms of organisation through which they can emancipate themselves (the soviets or workers’ councils), the Islamists try to enforce their dogma through the violent intimidation of the masses: “you vote, we kill you”.
The working class must not fall into this false dilemma: Bush or Saddam, democracy or Islamism. It can only free itself by finding its own path, by engaging in its own struggles, and discovering its own perspective – the perspective of social revolution.
Even viewed as a gain for US imperialism, the euphoria over the elections in Iraq being displayed by the Bush administration will not last.
The perspective opening up after these elections is in fact the dismemberment of Iraq. The Sunnis, virtually excluded from the electoral process, will emerge as an even more marginalised sector of the population. This can only increase the scope for the Sunni ‘insurgency’. The likelihood is that the religious Shia factions will dominate the new government: at the time of writing, the United Iraqi Alliance, under the spiritual guidance of Ayatollah Sistani, seems to be well ahead. And while a secular Shia like the current Prime Minister Alawi is abjectly pro-US, the majority of these factions, particular the radical elements around Moqtadar al-Sadr, are hostile to the US occupation. What’s more, these are forces closely connected to Iran, which has invested heavily in the Shia parties, and which certainly aims to win greater influence over its neighbour. At the same time Kurdish demands for independence are set to grow louder: “the Kurds want at all cost to include the region of Kirkuk, with its immense oil wealth, in their autonomous zone, which the Sunnis and Shiites don’t seem ready to accept. There will be frictions, perhaps confrontations. The hypothesis of a slide towards a division of the country – in principle rejected by the US as by all of Iraq’s neighbours – even of a civil war, cannot be excluded” (Le Monde 5.1.05). These frictions will certainly whet the appetite of all the powers – regional and global – who will seek to gain their own advantages from the USA’s difficulties.
Similarly, in Palestine, while the US will take comfort from any temporary lull in the round of terrorist strikes and military bombardments, the current ceasefire is extremely fragile. The new Sharon team, allied to the Labour party, has merely modified its policy of out and out military conquest, despite the noises being made by Israel’s religious right who don’t understand the need for small concessions of land in order to preserve the overall strategy. Thus the retreat from Gaza is aimed merely at reinforcing Israel’s hold over the West Bank. And in order to remove any legitimacy from the demand by the Palestinian Authority to have East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, Israel has discretely dug up a 1950 law which sanctions the confiscation of Palestinian land without any compensation.
The drive towards war dominates the entire capitalist order: moments of peace are merely pauses in which knives are sharpened for the next round of conflict. How far the Middle East, and the world, is from peace under the present social order can be measured by the new threats being made against the regime in Tehran. Iran (along with Syria) was highlighted in Bush’s speech as a haven of global terrorism, an evil tyranny which is currently equipping itself with nuclear weapons. In her latest visit to Europe Condoleeza Rice played down the possibility of a US military attack on Iran “at this point”; but added that “while no one ever asks the American President to take all his options, any of his options, off the table, there are plenty of diplomatic means at our disposal to get the Iranians to finally live up to their international obligations.” (Yahoonews, 4.2.05) In other words, the military option is certainly being considered at some point. The fact that the US bourgeoisie can even pose the question in the midst of the chaos in Iraq shows that the irrational drive towards war is far stronger than any rational concern for the possible consequences. An attack on Iran would not only be a far greater disaster for the region than the invasion of Iraq, but it would sharpen imperialist rivalries on a world scale: “As for Iran, for the moment, there is an incompatibility between the American and European positions. For Washington, it is unacceptable for Iran to become a nuclear power, even if it means using force to prevent this. For the Europeans, what’s unacceptable is the use of military force” (Le Monde, 5.1.05).
This push towards war cannot be halted by calls for the capitalist carnivore to become vegetarian. And make no mistake, the USA is not the only ravenous imperialist beast. All countries are imperialist today, all of them are involved in this mad scramble to divide up the world in their own interests. This is why the war drive can only be opposed, and ultimately stopped, by the struggle of the working class against their exploiters in all countries. WR 5/2/5
In December the Law Lords ruled that the government’s detention of suspects without trial at various high-security prisons was unlawful. So, towards the end of January, Charles Clarke took the opportunity to propose a whole new range of measures that could be employed without any charges being made.
“Control orders” could be imposed by the Home Secretary on the basis of information provided by the security services. These could involve surrendering passports, curfews, electronic tagging, reporting regularly to the police, limits on use of the telephone and internet, and house arrest.
The Labour government has already added extensive anti-terrorist legislation to the array of legal measures introduced by previous governments. These new proposals reflect the ruling class’s constant concern to have whatever devices it needs to protect its interests. It needs to deal with the potential threat from hostile imperialisms; it is also concerned about the threat of the struggles of the working class, and the activity of revolutionaries who work with the perspective of the overthrow of capitalism.
The latest proposals are not exceptional when you consider the automatic introduction of internment that happens in wartime, or during other periods of ‘emergency’. You could also recall what the British government has done at various times during the last 35 years in Northern Ireland, in particular during the 1970s and 80s, when it used the area as a training ground for actions it might want to take elsewhere. Internment, torture, experiments with a range of brutal interrogation techniques, surveillance, secret agents and a shoot-to-kill policy have all been employed by British governments.
And yet, along side the usual complaints from human rights lawyers and civil libertarians on the left there has been opposition from the Tories and others on the right. Of course they all have their own favourite repressive measures they would prefer to introduce, but it’s significant that they feel it necessary to express hesitations.
Obviously, we’re probably in a pre-election period, but there’s more to it than that.
The Lib Dems say that the plans are “wholly unacceptable” and worry that Britain would be out of step with Europe. Meanwhile the Tories think that Labour is taking a “dangerous path” and that it’s important to protect “the British way of life”.
Simon Jenkins in The Times (28/1/5) thinks internment without trial “stinks”. He draws comparisons with Hitler in 1933 and 34 . He says that “Mr Clarke wants to put under house arrest any people he considers a menace, be they Muslims, Irish or animal rights activists”. He ridicules Clarke’s claim that there are people who want “to kill hundreds and thousands of people who are innocent of everything”. Clarke “knows who they are from ‘secret intelligence’ which he cannot divulge to anyone” . During the last two years intelligence has been used “as an agency of public fear”. We have been threatened by ‘intelligence’ with “sarin, anthrax, smallpox and nuclear attack”, not to mention the “dodgy dossiers”. Warming to his attack Jenkins says that “For Mr Clarke to demand pre-emptive imprisonment on a par with what was used during the Second World War is an insult to history”.
The bourgeois figures who have expressed ‘opposition’ to Labour’s latest proposals have no disagreement with the basic principle that the capitalist state defends ruling class interests with every means at its disposal. But they also know that the bourgeoisie rules with ideological weapons as well as with state repression. Jingoism and xenophobia are used by the capitalist class at certain points, but at present it’s the ‘defence of democracy’ that’s the main plank of bourgeoisie propaganda.
So, with the arguments over control orders, opposition focuses on the ‘rule of law’, habeas corpus, ‘ancient liberties’ and all the hocus pocus of bourgeois law. Not only is the state refining and extending its weapons against the threat of the class struggle, it also wants us to rally to the defence of the democratic state. Workers need to recognise that their class interests and their class struggle bring them into conflict with the capitalist state, whether it’s trading under a democratic or authoritarian label. The repressive measures taken by the bourgeoisie, internment in Belmarsh prison or in Guantanamo Bay, are not blemishes on the face of democracy but integral to capitalism’s democratic dictatorship. Car 4/2/5
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/asian-tsunami
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/dr-congo
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/sudan
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/germany
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/argentina
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-left-influenced
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain