Since the beginning of the year, several hundred thousand people have demonstrated in Russia against Government measures aimed at dismantling the existing benefits available to retired people, the sick, or certain state employees. The state will no longer provide free basic medicine and medical treatment, public transport or reductions in the price of phone calls or rents. In Germany, the period in which you can get unemployment pay has been cut from 36 months to 18 for the over 55s and to 12 for the rest; this at a time when unemployment has risen above 5 million.
On top of this, after the sixth week of sick leave in a year, social security will no longer pay and you will have to take out private insurance to cover it. At the same time contributions towards medical costs will be reduced. In Holland and Poland the governments are taking similar measures, following in the wake of the French and Austrian governments who, in 2003, ‘reformed’ the system of pension payments, adding several years to people’s working lives. The French government continues with its attacks on social protection, while the British government also intends to force more and more categories of workers to carry on toiling until they are 65 or even 70. In the US, the Bush administration is concocting a law aimed at transforming the present pension system. Measures have already been taken: extending working lives, lowering pensions, diverting a portion of wages into a state-run fund which will be invested in shares and treasury bonds – investments that could go up in smoke tomorrow given the risk of company closures and stock exchange crashes.
Never has the proletariat faced such brutal, massive and widespread attacks. Millions are under threat. In all the industrialised countries the welfare state is on the verge of collapse. It’s no longer possible to maintain the labour force. This is a clear expression of the bankruptcy of the system.
The economic crisis is laying bare all the contradictions of capitalism, and revealing the impossibility of finding a solution to them. Too many commodities are being produced; the world market is glutted. The bourgeoisie’s need to make profits in order to avoid bankruptcy is increasing rivalries between the main industrial countries. The result is an open economic war where the prize is to grab the markets from your rivals. This in turn leads to the desperate search to lower production costs. The only way to do this is to attack the working class. On the one hand the bourgeoisie is trying to raise productivity through speed-ups and increasing the flexibility of the labour force, so that it can get away with employing as few workers as possible. On the other hand it is carrying out a vast programme of ‘reforms’ – i.e. attacks on the social wage: pensions, unemployment benefits, medical benefits, sick pay, and so on. NO section of the working class is being spared – older or younger generation, at work or on the dole, public sector or private sector. The consequence of these attacks is a general degradation of living and working conditions for the whole international working class. The ferocious exploitation imposed on the workers leads to a general decline in health at the very time it becomes more difficult to get medical assistance; workers who have looked forward to a period of rest after years of wage slavery see these hopes threatened by the retirement age being raised and pension payments being lowered; younger workers face the problem of precarious employment, going from one job to the next with wage levels always being pulled downwards, all this interspersed by periods of unemployment on reduced benefits. Finding accommodation and putting something away for retirement becomes increasingly difficult.
The attacks are not going to stop there - they are going to get worse. This is why the working class has to become aware that the system is indeed bankrupt and that the solution lies not in reforms, or a change of government, but in a change in the very basis of society. Andre, 1/3/05
The world’s oceans have become warmer and more acidic due to capitalism spewing out increasing quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. There is an urgent need to limit these emissions and keep the rise in global temperatures below 2°C. Failure to do so threatens not just wildlife, but increasing disasters, droughts, floods and loss of human life on a massive scale.
We have been alerted on these matters by a conference of climate scientists in Exeter, by the report on ocean temperatures and by the publicity surrounding the introduction of the Kyoto Protocols on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Given the seriousness of the situation it is natural that anyone who thinks about the future should want to work towards saving the environment.
The Exeter conference, ‘Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change’, was called by Tony Blair to coincide with Britain’s presidency of the G8. Alongside climatologists warning that the Kyoto Protocol does not go nearly far enough, that the problem is already at dangerous levels, “the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out - just before his company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the main causes of the problem - to warn that unless governments take urgent action there ‘will be a disaster’.” (www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0206-01.htm [2]). This contradiction reveals the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, and particularly the organisers of this conference, but it is nothing unusual: “Countries like Britain are pretending to reduce their national emissions while actively supporting massive fossil fuel projects in other countries, such as the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline project. Meanwhile, the World Bank has been exposed as investing primarily in fossil fuel projects despite a massive public relations effort to portray itself as focused on climate change mitigation” (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/ecology/ [3]).
This is not just a public relations exercise. Britain can use the Kyoto Protocol as a diplomatic weapon against the USA, which continues to refuse to sign it. It is certainly not a question of discussion between reasonable men, trying to persuade the world’s largest consumer of natural resources of the danger of its actions. It is part of the current imperialist strategy where 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” (‘Resolution on the British situation’ WR 281). After supporting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that show complete contempt for the environment – “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” (WR 281) the Kyoto Protocol, allows Britain to move out of America’s shadow.
The ruling class has produced a lot of propaganda on responding to climate change. We only have to turn on the TV to see hints on small energy saving measures: turn the TV off instead of putting it on standby, don’t put more water in the kettle than we need… This is no mere public relations exercise, any more than the Exeter conference, but an ideological campaign directed against the working class with 3 big lies. Lie number one is that we are responsible as greedy and profligate individuals for using too much of the earth’s resources and should choose to live in poverty instead. Lie number two is that we can ‘do something’ about the problem by everyday frugality within present day capitalism. Lie number three is that the ruling class are taking action to deal with the problem.
The fact is that the very competition that made capitalism so dynamic, that gave rise to modern industry, that makes it impossible for any capitalist, or all capitalists put together, to rein back the environmental disaster that their system is creating. “The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels). This need for a constantly expanding market forces each capitalist to expand production, to reduce costs, to try and corner the market at the expense of his rivals, which holds true – sooner or later – whether the capitalist is an individual proprietor, a huge corporation or a nationalised industry. If burning fossil fuel, CO2 emissions and all, is cheaper energy for production then the capitalist who uses it has a competitive advantage over the capitalist who uses something more expensive and will tend to drive the latter out of business.
This is why their conferences on climate change, science or no science, can never rise above the basest hypocrisy, and why the head of Shell is not out of place in such company.
Within the broad church of anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism there are many organising around environmental issues, many of these recognising the role of the various capitalist corporations and their search for profit, concentrating their energies on publicising or opposing their harmful actions. So we can read about the occupation of the London petroleum exchange on the day the Kyoto Protocol came into effect, or the protests against a Greenpeace Business Lecture in January for its ‘greenwash’ of Shell.
What is implied in these actions is that it is this or that ‘bad’ or ‘polluting’ enterprise that is responsible for the destruction of the environment, as though it were not the logic of capitalist competition itself that forces them to pollute. For this reason, when such protests are reported at all they simply become grist to the mill of the campaigns about global warming that are being conducted by Blair et al.
Others have tried to take on big business through the courts. A meeting in Cambridge shortly after the ESF in London heard, among other projects, about efforts to protect water resources in Brazil: “Franklin is part of a campaign that launched a lawsuit against NESTLE. This court case was won and the factory was shut down for two days. However, the company’s lawyers managed to reopen the plant and the next part of the court case may well take 10 years to finish. By then, the water resource will be depleted” (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/300007.html [4]). In each case, whether or not they win a court case, capital continues its destructive march.
What each little court case victory does is give the impression that the national state, or the European Court, or the UN, or any other bourgeois institution can be used by the ‘individual’ or the ‘community’ to halt this destruction. All these institutions ultimately represent capitalism, the ruling class and its interests. The activists, like gamblers winning a few coins, or missing only one number for a win in the lottery, are induced to go on investing more and more of their energies in something that really benefits the illusions in democracy.
An article on the Enrager website, ‘Advertising and Consumerism’ (www.enrager.net/thought/topics/advertising.php [5]) linked consumerism, the most brutal forms of exploitation in the third world and the destruction of the environment. It even stated “If we want to create real freedom and happiness for ourselves and a decent environment to live in we need to start challenging the constant messages thrown at us by those who are presently in control and who don’t have our interests at heart. They’ve got us into this mess and they’re hardly likely to get us out. We need to regain control of our own lives, and communities, creating a new society.” Unfortunately, it did not attempt to explain who it is that is in control, and how and why they have got humanity into this mess. But without such an analysis, which can only be made by marxism, it is not possible to challenge the constant messages thrown at us by bourgeois propaganda effectively. The same article, under the heading “What can we do?” begins its answer “Talk to friends, neighbours and workmates about these issues. When you’re out shopping, QUESTION - Do I really need it? Could I make one? Could I re-use, repair or recycle what I already have? Could I share one with someone else?” In other words it takes us back to the same individual frugality recommended in the public service campaign on TV.
The individual consumer is simply not able to choose to shop in an environmentally friendly way. “The use of products is determined by the social conditions in which the consumers find themselves placed, and these conditions are based on class antagonisms” (Marx, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’). When economics dictates, we buy shoddy goods that fall apart, we live somewhere cheap even if we spend hours travelling to work. When economics dictates, we consume that which we know to be destroying the environment. As Marx said “In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to different articles will be determined by the degree of their social utility” and that social utility will include their safety for both human beings and the environment. Alex, 1.3.05
When the Asian tsunami struck, the media concentrated considerable attention on the aid that would be donated by the population and governments of the rich Western countries. They presented this as an expression of ‘humanitarian concern’ on the part of both the population and the governments. In the case of the giving from the general population, that did, of course, express solidarity with the victims of the disaster. In the case of the governments matters are different.
As we said in our article on the tsunami (see the ICC website):
“As for the financial aid initially promised by governments around the world, and notably by the most developed countries, it was so miserly that the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland even described the ‘international community’ as skinflints.
Faced with the extent of the disaster, the various capitalist states have behaved like real vultures, bidding up their aid with the sole objective of appearing more ‘generous’ than their rivals. The USA has proposed $350 million, instead of the initial announcement of $35 million (while they are spending $1 billion a week on the war in Iraq, and $1 billion a month in Afghanistan!), Japan has offered $500 million, and the European Union $436 million. France, which spends 1 billion a year on its military interventions, even thought it could take the lead among donor countries with its $50 million; then it was the turn of Australia, Britain, Germany, etc.”
We also explained in this article that the sums delivered by the bourgeoisie end up a great deal less than what is offered in the headlines:
“This verbal upping the stakes is all the more disgusting, in that it is a pure sham, since the promised aid is seldom followed by payment. We should remember that the ‘international community’ of imperialist gangsters promised $100 million after the earthquake in Iran (December 2003), of which only $17 million has been paid. The same thing happened in Liberia: $1 billion promised, $70 million paid.”
But there is more to uncover behind the appearance of aid than the fact that it is frequently just an empty promise.
The bourgeoisie has made much ado about the idea of a debt moratorium for the poorest countries. It came up as one of the ways to offer aid in response to the tsunami disaster:
“As for the proposed moratorium on debt repayments for the countries hit by the disaster, this is a bubble that will soon burst, since it is merely proposed to put off payment of interest on the debt, not to wipe it out completely. Moreover, among the countries most affected by the tidal wave, five will have to pay $32 billion dollars of debt next year; in other words ten times more than they have been promised in ‘humanitarian aid’ (and which is probably far more than they will actually receive).”
Some countries that have been offered this kind of debt relief are thinking of turning it down - such aid can be an even more potent disaster than the tsunami itself: “Thank heavens the debtor nations can see sense even if many in the west remain blinded by the simplistic policies of the debt forgiveness lobby. Your article … correctly pointed out that many of the tsunami-hit debtor nations are reluctant to accept debt forgiveness from the Paris Club because of the negative impact this will have on their credit standing in the private market.” (Letter to the Financial Times, January 7, 2005).
There is also the question of where all the indebtedness of the poorest countries came from in the first place. Essentially, this is the effect of aid provided previously, which they are still trying to pay off. Aid primarily takes the form of loans at relatively low interest from a more industrialised country. This is often tied to the purchase of its goods, and these are very often armaments, since armaments are a primary export of the industrialised countries.
It is this kind of debt that it is proposed to write off. Why do the bourgeoisie want to write off this kind of debt? To answer this one needs to know what the bourgeoisie in the donor countries will get out of the arrangement..
We can look at the role of the British bourgeoisie in this issue of debt forgiveness. They are always to the fore in proposing this line of action,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown proposed ‘a new Marshall Plan’ for the poorer countries that would involve full debt relief, a rewriting of global trade rules and an international aid fund worth half a trillion dollars over the next decade. This is something of a poisoned chalice. Such aid can buy influence within a government, fund sales from the donor, or, rarely, be rejected. Either way, it is a disaster for the population. Aid is given, when it is actually given, to support the imperialist and economic interests of the metropolitan countries – why else would they offer aid?
At the most basic economic level capitalism functions to accumulate, to make a profit – this is its fundamental law. The notion of giving for giving’s sake is alien to this logic - above all at a time when the capitalist crisis is raging through the world and the struggle to make a profit becomes more and more cut-throat. France has 10 per cent unemployment, Germany has over 5 million unemployed, Japan is, even by the strict terms of the bourgeoisie, in recession. The British bourgeoisie claim that the British economy is booming, but they cannot hide the fact that their booming economy cannot provide either housing or pensions for the younger generation. And it is these tottering metropolitan countries that are supposed to find the resources to lift the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, or the regions devastated by the tsunami, out of the desperate straits that even the bourgeoisie admit they are in!
If the so-called developing countries really were developing their economies, i.e. producing more and getting richer, why would they need aid? The fact is that they are not developing, but being ruined. The intervention of more powerful countries – by trade, aid or armed intervention - has not aided their development, but pushed the effects of the capitalist crisis onto the poorest regions.
The crisis not only sharpens economic rivalries; it also accentuates imperialist competition. Despite all the humanitarian propaganda, aid for the stricken region was clearly divided along imperialist lines: “The same diverging interests that were present in Afghanistan and Iraq are clashing around the Indian Ocean. France has sent its Foreign Minister to accompany a first plane-load of medicines, and French President Chirac, supported by Germany, has proposed the creation of a ‘humanitarian rapid reaction force’, controlled by the European states but at the service of the United Nations.
The US response was not long in coming: the United States not only sent its ships, helicopters and aircraft to the region, it announced the creation of an international humanitarian coalition (with Australia, India, and Japan) to ‘coordinate their assistance’.”
And the reasons for this division were quite clear: “The discord among the great powers, each state trying to gain an advantage over the others, are eloquent testimony to the humanitarian ‘concerns’ of these capitalist vultures. As one US official pointed out: ‘This is a tragedy, but also an opportunity. Rapid and generous help from the United States could improve our relations with the Asian countries’.
Given Indonesia’s strategic importance in the Indian Ocean, it is obvious that the United States will try to profit from the disaster to gain a military footing in the region (something that the Indonesian armed forces rejected, accusing the USA of interfering in Indonesian affairs when Washington suspended its military aid to Jakarta in 1999, on the grounds of the massacres committed by the Indonesian army in East Timor). US ‘humanitarian relief’ in Sri Lanka has taken the form of a ‘peaceful’ landing by amphibious tanks (unarmed according to one officer), whose mission is ‘not to destroy but to help the population’.
The European states would also like to establish a military and diplomatic presence in the region. China is trying to assert itself as a regional power, and in doing so is coming up against opposition from Japan. And if India has refused all foreign aid, even if this means leaving the victims of the disaster to die, it is solely because it wants to assert its own presence as a regional power to be reckoned with” (ICC statement).
Aid is a direct expression of the historical crisis of capitalism, of a system plunging into economic disaster and imperialist war. To call this ‘humanitarian relief’ is the vilest hypocrisy. Hardin, 4.3.05
Expecting a general election soon, the political parties of the ruling class have united in a campaign round immigration, refugees and race. The Daily Telegraph (7/2/5) thinks that “a chasm remains between the two main parties on immigration … No one can complain that the country is being denied a genuine choice.”
You’d actually be hard put to distinguish the differences between Labour and Conservative policy. Both have been inspired by the restrictive immigration policies of other countries and come to very similar conclusions. Labour want to replace current work permits schemes with a 4-tier points system where financial experts can settle here without a job offer, low skilled non-EU nationals will only be allowed in under very specific circumstances and will have to leave at the end of their stay, and students can briefly pass through. Labour promise that refugees will be removed even quicker, that a National Border Force will be established, that arrivals will be fingerprinted and tested for TB and other diseases. In contrast, the Tories’ health tests would include HIV, they would have quotas for immigrants and refugees, would process asylum applications abroad, make deportation and detention easier, withdraw from the 1951 UN convention on refugees, and finance all their schemes by charging migrants for all the tests and checks they’ll have to take.
These differences are like those on prison policy. Labour is putting more people in prison than any British government before it and boasts that there are now 17,000 more prison places. The Tories promise that their longer sentences will mean another 14,000 in prison and they’ll therefore build 20 new prisons. There’s no “chasm” between the parties, more a competition in repressive measures and propaganda about all the threats that innocent people are under.
The message of the political parties is backed up by commentators in the press, TV and radio. Britain is under threat. There are terrorists out to destroy thousands of lives if they could. There are hundreds under surveillance just waiting for the moment when they can commit some atrocity like 9/11, Bali or Madrid. There are millions of foreigners that want to take advantage of British ‘prosperity’. The unions denounce British jobs being exported to other countries. Politicians say that Britain can only take in so many people from ‘alien’ cultures because of the danger of foreigners either ‘swamping’ or not accepting the ‘British way of life’. Hazel Blears, minister responsible for counter-terrorism, has said Muslims will have to accept they’ll be stopped and searched by the police more often than other people. House arrest is supposed to be a fair price to pay at such times.
All this hysteria is actually making it hard for the overt racists of the BNP to make headway - the mainstream parties are stealing their ideas, they wail (but the BNP still has a role to play as a fascist bogeyman: everyone from Michael Howard to the SWP warns that it is a major threat to democracy and freedom).
This campaign is partly based on straightforward nationalism. Because of foreign threats – real or manufactured – the population is supposed to rally to the government, forget how it has suffered under Tory and Labour alike, and make sacrifices in the defence of British capitalism.
But there’s more to it than that. The ruling class and all its media are trying to make us not only afraid of terrorists or foreign invaders, but distrustful of those about us, even our neighbours and those we work with. Look at the continuing scares about paedophiles; any one who works with or has contact with young people is now under suspicion as a potential child molester. Not that children are innocent: there’s a constant procession of ‘wild’ children in the media who don’t know the meaning of the word ‘discipline’. Accordingly Charles Clarke at the Home Office has said that those as young as 10 who are the subject of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders will have their names and photographs published.
So, while the racism of the capitalist parties is intended to divide the working class along ‘ethnic’ grounds, the sowing of distrust and fear in the population has a more insidious effect. Take the government’s advice on burglars. You’re now allowed to use whatever force is necessary to protect your home against intruders. What this actually conjures up is a world where a violent break-in is imminent at any moment. The political parties say that they are responding to the real fears of decent people. In fact it is a continuing campaign in the bourgeois media that foments people’s anxiety and suspicion.
The different parts of the political spectrum play particular roles in the campaign, but to the same end. While the right scream about asylum seekers living in luxury, Muslims failing to integrate and terrorists lurking in suburbia, liberal commentators say that politicians have to respond to what’s being said on the street – otherwise the Tories and BNP will monopolise the argument.
Martin Kettle in the Guardian (8/2/5) asks if Britain is “a nation whose fears about immigration, asylum and crime are now so strong that the parties are compelled to bid and outbid each other in an effort to keep up with our anger” and thinks that “politicians have to be alive to the concerns of the voters.” Polly Toynbee, also in the Guardian (23/2/5), answers that that “Asylum plays horribly well: canvassers report that people talk of it incessantly, crazily, despite a steep fall in applications” and that “it’s no use pretending that a profoundly nasty streak in the voters will go away if it’s just ignored.”
This sort of argument can only be fought with a marxist understanding of where ideas come from. In modern bourgeois society the ruling capitalist class not only controls the mass media, its ideas are dominant at every level of society. The agenda for all debate in the bourgeois media is determined by the concerns of the capitalist class. Any discussion of the economy is on how to make capitalism most profitable; any discussion on foreign policy is on how best to defend national interests.
So, the “nasty streak” identified by Toynbee is something that has been stirred up by contributions both crude and refined, direct and oblique across the media. And where fear and suspicion is aroused by the ruling class they also insist that the capitalist state is the only force that could possibly defend us. All political parties insist the number one priority of the state is the security of the citizen. In reality the capitalist state can only defend the interests of the capitalist class, and workers can only defend themselves when they struggle as a class. But if you’re worried, isolated and insecure you are more likely to believe capitalism’s lies.
None of this means that there is no increase in crime, that terrorism isn’t on the rise across the world, that daily life is not becoming more and more insecure. These are all products of the accelerating decay of capitalist society and usually the first victims of crime and terrorism are not the rich and powerful but the oppressed and the exploited. But the true cynicism of the ruling class is shown by its willingness to use the very decomposition of its own system to prevent any real questioning of that system and to keep the exploited in their place with its deafening campaigns of fear and loathing. Car 4/3/5
As the phoney election campaign runs into the real one we will hear more and more from the government about its economic achievements. Blair has already launched six new pledges to make the country fairer, safer, healthier and with no unwelcome foreigners. Labour claims are endorsed by a recent book on the second term of the Blair administration. Written by Guardian journalists Polly Toynbee and David Walker, Better or Worse? has no doubts: “By 2005 Britain was a richer and fairer society than in 1997. It was healthier, safer and in many respects better governed…Many fewer people – children and pensioners especially – lived in dire hardship. Most people felt the warm glow of growing income and wealth…Crime kept falling, schools and hospitals improving, work was plentiful…Blair’s era was a better time to be British than for many decades” (p.327-8).
It is true that the British economy has done better than many of its rivals in the last few years in that the rate of growth has been above the global average and this has allowed some significant increases in spending. Whereas the global trend has been a decade on decade decline of production, the British economy has experienced a slight rise in the period after 1999. This in turn increased the amount of money being taken by the government and was the foundation of the increase in government expenditure from 37.0% in 2000 to 42% in 2004, although this has actually only taken the rate back to that of 1996.
Does this mean that things really got better? Toynbee and Walker point to falling waiting lists, reduced employment figures, reductions in poverty and improvement in the lot of pensioners to answer yes. A brief look beyond the headlines gives a different answer.
The government has trumpeted the fall in hospital waiting times and is busy setting new targets to reduce them further. Toynbee and Walker agree and resent the fact that people are not more grateful: “Why were people not more impressed with the sharpest ever falls in waiting times? Because those grumbling on waiting lists of six months were not on the far longer waiting lists five years previously” (ibid, p.43). It is certainly true that much money has been spent on achieving this target, along with various statistical ruses and outright deceptions along the way, such as the unofficial waiting list to get on the official one. More significant are the facts that hospitals only account for 10% of what the NHS does - “most health work takes place in GP surgeries and in people’s homes” (ibid, p.18) – and that good health is related to standards of living and quality of life that are not directly affected by a service that only responds once people are already ill. Health inequality is stubbornly linked to class and no amount of admonition to smoke less, eat better and be better parents has affected that: “The link between child poverty and health is strong and cyclical. Children born into poverty have worse outcomes across a range of indicators. For example, they are more likely to be born prematurely, have low birth weight, die in their first year of life or die from an accident in childhood…Children and young people from lower income households are more likely to report longstanding illness and less likely to report good or very good general health…By middle age, women and men from more disadvantaged backgrounds have death rates that are double those of women and men with advantaged family backgrounds.” (Child Poverty Review, HM Treasury, June 2004, p.63).
“Whatever else Blair’s Britain did, it worked… from 2001 to 2005 some 1.5 million jobs were created; a million or so disappeared. The net result was near full employment…” (Better or Worse?, p. 131). The official unemployment figures certainly show a steady decline with rates below that of major competitors; but they mask a situation of a persistent level of economic inactivity at around 25% of the population. This is because the fall in the number officially unemployed is mirrored by the increase in the number on incapacity benefit, as Toynbee and Walker are forced to acknowledge: “The number claiming sickness and disability benefits hit a record 3.1m in the second quarter of 2004, up from 2.8m. Many were de facto unemployed. Indeed the number of adults registered as economically inactive rose to eight million in 2004, up 124,000 on the previous year. Among them were over a million aged under twenty-five – a huge and dismaying waste of potential” (ibid, p.131-2).
Poverty
“By 2001/02 – the latest data available – steady progress had already been made towards our milestone target of reducing the number of children in low-income households by a quarter between 1998/99 and 2004/05 – achieving a reduction of around half a million children at a time when high income growth significantly raised the low-income threshold…This means that incomes for the poorest households are growing more rapidly than for the average household”. (Opportunity for All, Fifth Annual Report, Department for Work and Pensions 2003, p.46).
Such reports of progress, leading to the promise by Blair to abolish child poverty by 2020, have to be set in the context of a steady increase in the number of children living in poverty over recent decades: “The UK has had one of the worst records on child poverty among industrialised nations. The proportion of children living in households with below 60 per cent of contemporary median income more than doubled between the late 1970s and mid 1990s. This was largely due to: demographic changes, in particular a growth in the number of lone parent families; a concentration of worklessness among low-skilled households; and a widening wage distribution with increased in-work poverty and weaker work incentives.” (Child Poverty Review, HM Treasury, June 2004, p.15). This merely reflects the continuing polarisation between the classes: “…over the past 20 years the incomes of the poorest have fallen in real terms (i.e. allowing for inflation) as the richest have grown. Between 1979 and 1999/2000, the poorest tenth in the income distribution saw a real rise of only 6 per cent in their ‘after housing costs’ (AHC) incomes, compared with an average rise of 80 per cent, while the top tenth gained 86 per cent” (Poverty: the facts, Child Poverty Action Group 2001, p.158-9). This situation has not been halted, let alone reversed: “At the end of the 1970s, the tenth of the population best off had 21 per cent of disposable income. By 2003 they had even more, 29 per cent. But the first five years of the twenty-first century may come to be distinguished in the eyes of historians by the explosion of top incomes. On Blair’s watch a relatively small number of people got grotesquely richer” (Better or Worse?, p.50).
Toynbee and Walker are at their most blind on the question of pensions. They begin by declaring that “The number of pensioner households living in poverty fell by a fifth by 2005” before murmuring “although two million old people still lived below the poverty line” (ibid, p.63). The real issue, the plans to dismantle the pensions system posed in the recent Turner report, is of no concern. This assault has been going on for twenty years with the promotion of private pensions, the introduction of second pensions and the erosion of the basic pension. Now various dramatic alternatives are proposed: “Either:(i) pensioners will become poorer relative to the rest of society; or (ii) taxes/National Insurance contributions devoted to pensions must rise; or (iii) the savings rate must rise; or (iv) average retirement ages must rise” (Pensions: Challenges and Choices. The First Report of the Pensions Commission).
That we live in a society in which increasing life expectancy becomes a threat is an extraordinary indictment of that society.
New Labour has become the master at drowning the truth in a sea of facts. By concentrating on this or that facet, by pushing one or another issue to the fore, be it waiting lists, unemployment figures or children in poverty, the bigger, longer term picture is ignored. To take the last as an example: “Since 1996, living standards have improved the most for children who were living just below the poverty line. But children in households with the lowest incomes have benefited much less…According to government surveys, 1.1 million children live in households with less than 40% of the national average income. Four out of 10 of these children live in households that do not receive any of the main means-tested benefits – even though they may be entitled to claim” (BBC News Online, 23/6/03, reporting research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies). Above all, any changes in the situation, any apparent improvements in living standards, are based on the increased exploitation of the working class. Although it is not possible to look at this in detail here, it is important to note that this increase came not from increases in productivity, where Britain lags behind many other developed nations, or from advances in technology or skills, but above all from an increase in the hours worked. While contracted hours have gone down there has been an increase in the amount of overtime worked, both paid and unpaid. The level of unpaid overtime in particular increased sharply between 1988 and 1998: from 25.2% to 40.6% of males working fulltime and from 27% to 57% of females working fulltime (From: Working long hours: A review of the evidence Vol.1, DTI November 2003).
The Labour Party has shown the ruthless capacity and determination of the ruling class to extract more from the working class through an increase in exploitation, and then use some of that money to present a distorted picture to hide the reality of the situation. Against ruling class attacks workers must learn how to defend their class interests with equal determination.
North 2/3/05
With the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, an old focus of imperialist conflict has been revived in the Middle East. This new episode in the capitalist barbarism spreading across the world and particularly the Middle East, where we are seeing an endless spiral of terrorist atrocities, reminds us once again that all the bourgeoisie’s speeches about peace are just cynical lies.
The assassination of Hariri shows the emptiness of all the propaganda that followed the election of Mahmoud Abbas to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. Supposedly this marked a great step towards peace.
In reality, the assassination has enabled France and the USA, who were behind the September 2004 UN Security Council resolution 1559 that demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, to take up their positions in Lebanese political life. Both have rushed to point the finger at Syria (just as Sharon immediately blamed the Tel Aviv suicide bombing at the end of February on the Damascus regime). And these great powers are not acting out of concern for the freedom of the Lebanese population. Far from it. For Chirac, who waxed lyrical about his friendship with Hariri, this was an ideal opportunity to gain a French toehold in a country from which it was booted out in the 80s, culminating in 1991 with the expulsion of its principal Lebanese agent, General Aoun. As for the US, this was a new step in their military strategy in the Middle East and Central Asia. They are increasing pressure on Syria, which the Bush administration has been blaming for harbouring al-Qaida terrorists and members of the old Saddam regime. Washington has made it clear on several occasions recently that Syria could well face military strikes.
Thus the current entente between America and France over Lebanon and Syria is aimed merely at justifying the defence of their respective imperialist interests. It can only lead to new rivalries that manipulate local terrorist gangs and sow further chaos in the region.
Neither should we have any illusions that recent diplomatic trips by the Washington clique are heralds of harmony between the US and Europe. Certainly US diplomacy has been courting Europe very intensively. After the visit by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, we then had Donald Rumsfeld at the 41st Security Conference in Munich, followed by the boss himself, Bush, who attended the summits of NATO and the European Union and had a number of meetings with European heads of state, especially those who had opposed the military intervention in Iraq: Chirac, Schroeder and Putin. Why all this diplomatic froth? What is really being prepared in the corridors, behind the hypocritical accolades between rivals, between Uncle Sam and the Europeans? What’s all this about the new partnership for spreading freedom around the world?
The USA’s change of style does not mean that it has given up using its military strength to defend its economic, political and strategic interests. It means it is changing its tactics and its rhetoric to take account of the difficulties it is encountering, particularly as a result of being stuck in the Iraqi quagmire. Its policy in Iraq has everywhere created bitter hostility to the US and isolated it internationally. Unable to retreat on Iraq without undermining its global authority, the US faces contradictions that are extremely hard to deal with. As well as being a financial black hole, Iraq is a permanent focus for criticisms by its main imperialist rivals. Furthermore, the elections in Iraq saw a victory for the unified list of Shiite parties which are close to Iran, and the defeat of America’s man Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister. “This government will have excellent relations with Iran…in terms of regional geopolitics, it’s not the result the USA hoped for” (Courrier Internationale, 746). Alongside this waning influence over the political parties in Iraq, there is the whole climate of terror which every day sees new atrocities by the ‘resistance’: the suicide bombing which killed 120 people south of Baghdad at the end of February was the worst single attack since the fall of the Saddam regime. The so-called victory of Iraqi democracy – claimed simply because the elections were held – has by no means reduced the risk that the country will split apart along different ethnic and religious factional interests.
The US diplomatic offensive, its desire to be seen to be ‘on the same wavelength’ as the Europeans, has the aim of trying to convince the latter to stand by the US in its campaign to propagate democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East. In fact, the Bush administration has the same military objectives as before, but the ideological packaging has changed: they are giving out that from now on nothing will be done without first consulting the Europeans, since we all share the same human values of freedom and democracy. And it is not to be ruled out that France will be promised a privileged role in sorting things out in Iraq, in exchange for a greater involvement alongside the US.
Behind the ostensibly unifying phrases of US diplomacy, the real divergences are still there and continue to develop. As a high-ranking NATO official put it, “old Rumsfeld has been playing the violin to us, as did Condoleeza Rice last week” (Le Monde 15.2.05). Whereas up to now the Bush team conducted an ‘iron fist’ policy, now it’s an iron fist in a velvet glove. Rumsfeld said that for the US “the mission (in the military sense) determines the coalition”. In other words, America will only call upon NATO if it suits its strategic interests. For their part, the Europeans, notably Germany with the support of France, are talking openly about the need to reform NATO and to replace the Alliance by a group of experts, representing American but above all European interests. Germany is saying clearly that “in the European framework, it feels co-responsible for stability and international order” and on this basis is demanding a seat on the UN Security Council. Given America’s immediate refusal to reform NATO, Germany has even raised the tone via its foreign affairs minister Joschka Fischer, who declared: “we have to know whether the US places itself inside or outside the system of the United Nations”.
This tension around the role of NATO was crystallised by the refusal by the Europeans to contribute to a programme for the formation of military and police forces in Iraq, or by their meagre contributions to it. Vis-à-vis Afghanistan, the European powers have agreed to increase their contribution to the International Force under NATO command, since the latter is under the orders of a French general and has important units of French and German troops. However, they don’t want this military force to eventually fall under the command of operation ‘Enduring Freedom’, i.e. of the American army. The question of NATO is not the only point of discord. After playing symphonies to the Rights of Man concerning the repression of the student movement in Tianenmen Square in China in 1989, the Europeans, as good arms dealers, are ready to lift the arms embargo on China. The Americans don’t agree, and neither do Japan, but that’s nothing to do with the Rights of Man: it’s simply because this would re-launch the arms race on the Asian continent and threaten their influence in a region already subject to powerful military tensions – tensions which have been sharpened recently by North Korea’s official announcement that it does have nuclear weapons.
The USA’s diplomatic visit to Europe does not therefore announce a new era of unity in transatlantic relations. On the contrary, the differences are growing and positions are more and more irreconcilable. The strategies and interests of one and the other are different because each one defends its national capitalist interests. It’s not a matter of bad Americans on the one hand and good Europeans on the other. They are all imperialist brigands and the policy of every man for himself which lies behind all the games of entente cordiale can only lead in the end to new splits, conflicts, and military slaughter – with Iran and Syria as the next possible targets.
Indeed the divergences over Iran are already very deep. The big European powers, including Britain, are in general in favour of negotiating with Iran in order to dissuade it – so they say – from developing a military nuclear programme. Moscow, on the other hand, is Tehran’s leading partner on the nuclear level and has no intention of changing its policies. As for the US, given Iran’s importance as a regional power – now strengthened by the electoral victory of the Shiites in Iraq – they will be obliged to increase the pressure on the Europeans and on Putin to ensure that their line prevails. The Bush clique is threatening to go to the UN with plans in the medium term for a new military escalation which can only exacerbate chaos and barbarism in the region.
As we have argued regularly in our press, the chaos and conflicts that have been developing on a planetary scale are the direct product of the new period that opened in 1989 with the collapse of the eastern bloc, which was soon followed by the break-up of the western bloc. Far from signalling a ‘new order’ of peace as George Bush Senior promised at the time, we insisted that the world was heading towards a murderous disorder, a bloody chaos in which the US gendarme would try to impose its authority through the increasingly massive and brutal resort to its military power (see ‘Militarism and Decomposition’ in International Review 64).
From the 1991 Gulf War to Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Chechnya, from Somalia to East Timor, from the attack on the Twin Towers to the Madrid bombings, to cite only a few examples of the violent convulsions of this phase of decomposition (see our theses on ‘Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism’ in IR 107), the real cause of these massacres is the imperialist confrontation between states large and small. For the US, whose national interests coincide with the maintenance of a global order built to its own advantage, this aggravation of chaotic imperialist conflicts makes their position of world leadership more and more difficult to sustain. Since the old Russian threat no longer exists, their former allies, in particular the European states led by Germany and France, have persistently sought to defend their own national capitalist interests. The deepening of the economic crisis sharpens the imperialist appetites of all states and leaves the US with no alternative but to launch itself into attempts to conquer new ground, to destabilise its rivals and above all to use its military strength more and more. But this has the consequence of worsening the chaos and the barbarism in the regions where its military adventures take place. In this context, the strategy put forward by the administration under Bush Junior following the attacks of September 11 2001, the ‘war on terrorism’, is a new attempt to respond to the weakening of US leadership. Faced with the growing challenge from other imperialist powers, the Americans have used September 11 and the nebulous threat of al Qaida as a pretext for conducting an unprecedented military offensive across the globe. This long-term military campaign has identified a number of countries as being part of the ‘Axis of Evil’, as states that ‘harbour’ terrorists, or as ‘tyrannies’ which have to be dealt with militarily. This is the case with Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and increasingly, Syria. In fact, behind all this rhetoric, the US has a much wider strategic aim, which includes the need for a decisive presence in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. The overall strategic goal is the encirclement of Europe and of Russia. America has a particular concern to ensure control over the world’s main sources of energy supply, so that in future imperialist crises it can have a decisive advantage over the European powers, Russia, Japan and China. This has certainly been the aim of the US but it has faced all kinds of difficulties in carrying out the plan, given the determination of its rivals to defend their own imperialist interests. The result of this can only be the greatest chaos in history. Donald, 5/3/05.
The society we live in, capitalist society, is once again marching to war: Serbia yesterday, Afghanistan and Iraq today, Iran or Syria tomorrow, and even more grave conflicts after that. This time around, it may not be towards one big World War, but towards more and more chaotic wars all over the world. But the threat is the same: the destruction of humanity, unless this system is overthrown.
In 1914, capitalist civilisation showed that it no longer had any useful purpose for mankind as it plunged Europe into the biggest imperialist slaughter the world had ever seen. In 1917-19, from Petrograd to Berlin, from Turin to Glasgow, the workers’ response was an international wave of mass strikes and revolutions. The Communist International outlined the perspective: either the victory of the socialist revolution in all countries, or an epoch of ever more destructive wars.
The revolutionary wave was defeated and the International died; but it had been right. Within 20 years, a new and even more horrifying world war began to ravage the planet. Even before this nightmare was over, the imperialist allies in the ‘anti-fascist’ camp were confronting each other for control of the globe. For the next 40 years, humanity lived under the shadow of a third and final world war between US and Russian imperialism, while millions died in their proxy wars under the guise of ‘national liberation’ struggles from Vietnam to the Middle East and Africa.
In 1989 the weaker Russian bloc, encircled by its US rival, collapsed like a house of cards; and we were told by George Bush Senior that a new world order of peace was on the agenda. Almost immediately, the former partners of the old US bloc were themselves fighting each other in proxy wars in Africa and the Balkans. America responded by launching massive displays of military force in the Gulf in 1991 and in Serbia in 1999. And since 2001, it has been engaged in the ‘war against terrorism’, whose real aim is to control the world’s main energy supplies and build a circle of steel around Europe and Russia.
In short: decaying capitalism means endless war. The history of the last 90 years shows that all talk of peace in this system is a lie. Peace is no more than an imperialist truce between wars.
If capitalism cannot make peace, then pacifism is a lie. Pacifism, the so-called anti-war movement led by those who selectively claim to be against this or that war, such as the present military adventure in Iraq, tells us that, through legal demonstrations and democratic elections, we can persuade the capitalist state to turn swords into ploughshares. It tells us that if we support this capitalist politician against that one - such as Kerry against Bush - we can reverse the slide towards war. It even tells us that we can serve the cause of peace by supporting certain imperialist powers - like France and Germany - against others, like America or Britain, or by getting America and Europe to work together in the framework of the good old United Nations (even George Bush is paying lip service to this idea today).
As we said: all this is a lie. Capitalism is not dragging humanity through the hell of war because it has the wrong leaders, but because it is a social system in profound and irreversible decay.
The struggle against war can only be a struggle against capitalism.
Many will reply: they are fine-sounding words, but in the meantime, what are we supposed to do? Surely pacifist demos are better than nothing?
The question is false. The struggle against capitalism is not some utopian ideal. It starts from the day to day reality of the class struggle, the workers’ fight to defend themselves against the growing attacks on their living standards. Against the effects of the same economic crisis which also pushes capitalism towards war. Of course the workers’ struggle must extend and unify and above all it must become openly political. But it is already there, and it grows stronger every time workers recognise their common interests as a class.
Pacifist campaigns only weaken the class struggle by calling on workers to see themselves as part of a democratic movement of respectable citizens. They obstruct the growth of class consciousness by claiming that peace is possible without revolution.
Faced with the extension of war across the world, the response of the working class in all countries can only be to refuse all the sacrifices demanded by the capitalist economy and its war drive; to fight for its own class interests against the national interest defended both by open warmongers and pacifists; to oppose the nationalist logic of war with the internationalist programme of world revolution and a world human community. WR 5.3.05
In recent months militants and sections of the ICC have received threats or thinly veiled calls for their assassination.
In December the UHP-ARDE [1] published on its website a text titled ‘The science and art of blockheads’ [2] which continues a call for the assassination of our militants via a macabre chain of syllogisms, which begin by openly accusing us of being “racists” and of defending bourgeois politics in a veiled way; then they establish a hierarchy of definitions that starts with “blockheads”, passing on to “stupid arses” and ends up with “imbeciles”. Upon these premises the following conclusion is drawn “AGAINST THE BOURGEOIS CAMPAIGNS OF LIES AND REPRESSION OF OUR STRUGGLES: DEATH TO THE IMBECILES!” [3]
A month previously, we had received in the mail box of our section in Spain an anonymous letter that finished with the following threat: “You are a gang of sons of whores and you will reap what you are sowing, little professors of shit. Signed, a lumpen”
Recently, in January 2005, a member of the so-called IFICC [4] threatened to “cut the throat” of a member of our section in France. [5]
Faced with the succession of threats by these gangsters, which are totally alien to proletarian behaviour, what should the attitude of revolutionaries and proletarian elements be? Not to give it any importance because they are just boasts or the product of a moment of over excitement? To fall into such an appreciation would be a grave error.
In the first place, such an attitude means forgetting the historical experience of the workers’ movement. This teaches us that the killing of worker militants has been preceded - and in great part prepared - by a succession of apparently trivial acts: false accusations, threats, intimidation. In short, a series of small links that joined together form a great chain. Thus, the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg in January 1919 - perpetrated by forces following the orders of the Social Democrat executioners - had a long period of incubation: from 1905 there were serious denigrations, threats and challenges against this proletarian militant. None of these acts appeared worrying but the crime of 1919 was the manifestation of the infernal logic that they contained. In the same way, the assassination of Trotsky, executed by the infamous Mercader, was the culmination of a series of orchestrated steps by the Stalinist rabble: first Trotsky was accused of being an agent of the Gestapo; there then began a campaign which openly demanded his head. Then came the pressure on one of his sons (Lyova) which ended in what had all the hallmarks of a ‘medical’ assassination [6]. Later on there were the intensifying direct death threats by Stalinism’s Mexican hit men, leading to the tragic end that we all know about. History shows that there exists a more or less direct link between today’s threats and tomorrow’s assassinations. These are the outcome of a network of lies, threats and hate campaigns.
In the second place, we cannot forget the context in which these three threats we have received have taken place. In recent months we have seen a new outbreak and multiplication of the IFICC’s campaigns. As their Bulletin no 28 shows they refer to us as “bastards”; this, linked to endless insults, threats and lies, helps to produce a climate where physical attacks against the ICC are legitimised.
It is no accident that these threats happened in the context that we have laid out. Their authors have clearly decided on their camp. To the insults, hate campaigns, the whole fabric of lies and calumnies, they have now added calls for assassination.
This is not the first time that we have seen such an “intervention”. In 1995-96, in the context of an equally repugnant campaign against the ICC carried out by other protagonists, [7] the so-called GCI – a group that figures on the links page of the UHP/ARDE – used the same method of syllogisms to attack the ICC and call for the killing of our comrades in Mexico. The first premise being that our comrades had denounced the Stalinist Maoist Sendero Luminoso group in Peru. This apparently made us accomplices in the massacre of proletarian prisoners and led to the following ‘logical’ deduction: “for the ICC, as for the Peruvian state and police, to place oneself on the side of the oppressed is to support the Sendero Luminoso”. This led to another syllogism, according to which “in the worker’s camp, this kind of amalgam is considered to be typical of the police or informers”. From here to a new sophism: “these are the same Social Democratic arguments that Domingo Arango and Abad de Santillan used faced with the violent actions of revolutionary militants”. And what is the conclusion of this logic? “As a result of this type of calumny, which is really used by the state, Domingo Arango received a bullet in the head and we cannot but deplore that Abad de Santillan did not suffer the same fate” (from Communisme no 43, organ of the GCI) . [8]
We are aware of the process that these threats are part of. We are not intimidated by this and we will respond to it in the same way as we did in 1996: “None of this is going to make us retreat. We are deepening our struggle and the whole of the ICC is mobilised to defend our section in Mexico, using a weapon that only the proletariat possesses: internationalism. The international unity of the ICC, from the bourgeois point of view, contains the intolerable inconvenience that all attempts to destroy one of its parts immediately runs into the active mobilisation and solidarity of the whole”. [9]
We have firmly rejected the infiltration of this kind of behaviour into the ranks of revolutionaries because this is the only way to break the chain that unites the present murky calls for the “death of the imbeciles” with the assassination of communists tomorrow.
Each social class has its methods. We already know those of the bourgeoisie: on the one hand, the ‘political’ weapons of slander, threats, intimidation and blackmail, and on the other, the more direct weapons of crime, terror and torture. [10]
Naturally, these weapons do not form part of the arsenal of the proletariat and its genuinely revolutionary groups. We have other, much more effective weapons for the struggle against capitalism. One of these, the most important, is solidarity.
Solidarity is the strength of the proletariat, the expression of its unity. Solidarity shows its enemies that any attack on its parts will immediately encounter the reply of the whole.
Therefore, the ICC unanimously expresses its solidarity with the threatened comrades and sections and adopts all of the necessary measures for its defence. In the same way, we ask our sympathisers to express their active solidarity. We equally ask this of all those who take part in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism; and even if they have disagreements with the positions of the ICC, we hope that they will see the necessity to fight disgusting attacks like this.
Solidarity with the threatened comrades is not only the best form of defence for them but also for the defence of all the militants and comrades who struggle against capitalism. Equally it is the best contribution that we can make towards assuring the defence of communist militants tomorrow.
The practice of slanders, lies, threats and intimidation is totally incompatible with the goal of the world human community that the proletariat aspires to install after the destruction of the capitalist state. It is vital to eradicate the infiltration of behaviour that is nothing but the expression and reproduction of the rotting capitalist society that we want to abolish.
The clarification of revolutionary positions, the struggle against capitalism and it barbarity, cannot be unbalanced by the shady manoeuvres of these gangs of phonies who stealthily work behind ‘revolutionary positions’ in order to hurl poisonous darts against the true struggle for the proletarian cause.
Solidarity with our militants and the threatened sections!
International Communist Current 15.2.05
[1] UHP are the initials of the Unios Hermanos Proletarios (United Proletarian Brothers). ARDE is the publication that appears to be the mouthpiece of the various groups that form the UHP.
[2] See the reply of our Section in Spain in Accion Proletaria No 180: ‘Reply to UHP-ARDE: an honest blockhead is better than a cheating scoundrel’.
[3] This underlines the cowardly and devious way in which these individuals call for the killing of our militants. With disgusting hypocrisy, they do not say things openly: firstly, they say the ICC is composed of “imbeciles” and then later on they end with “death to imbeciles”.
[4] A group of thugs that call themselves the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ and whose only activity consists of spewing forth tons of lies against the ICC.
[5] See the article denouncing this episode in Revolution Internationale no 354.
[6] See the testimonies about the strange confinement of Trotsky’s son in a Russian clinic in Paris in Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky and Vereeken’s The GPU in the Trotskyist movement.
[7] At this time it was groups like the ‘Communist Bulletin Group’ in Britain or ‘Hilo Rojo’ in Spain, along with certain other ‘circles’, who were the authors of these campaigns. We have not heard much from them since.
[8] We can see from these that the editors of UHP-ARDE have not invented anything in their cowardly calls for our assassination. They must have been inspired by the methods of their cousins in the GCI.
[9] Extract from the article ‘The GCI parasites call for the murder of our militants in Mexico’, which denounces the GCI in solidarity with our section in Mexico. This was published in all our territorial press at the time.
[10] We should point out that the lumpenised elements are deeply attracted to these bourgeois methods and this is why, in periods of revolution, they are used to fill the ranks of the ‘Frei Korps’ and similar shock troops of capital, as in Germany in 1919.
Anyone observing the world can’t help but be struck by the incredible level of chaos that is generated daily across the globe: poverty stretches even to the heart of the most developed countries; there is unemployment on a massive long term scale from which no one is any longer protected; war between states afflicts almost every continent; and when the population doesn’t die at the hand of the state, it does so in the murderous terrorist attacks that are becoming more and more numerous, or from diseases once believed to have disappeared, but which now return to decimate the poverty-stricken masses who cannot afford even the simplest treatments; and the terrible events in southeast Asia at the end of 2004 are there to remind us of the equally devastating consequences of the so-called natural and ecological catastrophes that are always down to negligence by capitalism when not the direct result of capitalist production itself.
Faced with this permanent spiral of destruction, we don’t stop hearing about the well being of the economy, prosperity and progress. But where is the progress in war that, almost everywhere, decimates populations and destroys towns, fields, forests? Where is the well being when thousands of human beings starve everyday? Where is the prosperity when no worker on this earth can any longer know what his future holds, whether he will be able to feed himself and his family?
Faced with this colossal paradox, people inevitably ask questions. Why does a society that is supposed to progress, to bring ever more goods and security, provide humanity with the exact opposite? Why is this so? Is it inevitable? Is it a temporary circumstance that will disappear of its own accord? And if it continues, where is it leading? Can we escape it?
The bourgeoisie has some answers: we are assured either that these problems are the result of the maliciousness, the nastiness, which is at the core of the human race; or that they can be blamed on a lack of democracy, hatred, transient economic difficulties due to poor regulation of financial flows, the increase in the price of raw materials on the markets, the immoral greed of speculators. Put briefly, nothing serious, in any case nothing that can’t be mastered by the famous international community.
All of this clashes with the reality of the situation, since we have been hearing arguments of this kind for a long time and the situation does nothing but deteriorate. To take just one example: the peace and prosperity we were promised at the time of the collapse of the eastern Bloc, which up until then had played the role of the villain. Since then, the complete opposite has occurred: there has never been more barbarism and destitution in the world.
Why, then, such a disaster after all of the progress that humanity has achieved? Why so much poverty even though there seems to be so much wealth to exploit?
In fact, these explanations, deliberately or not, skirt around the only reality which allows us to understand why, on all levels, this modern world, one that appears so potentially prosperous, drags us into chaos and destruction. This reality is that of the economic crisis. Certainly, the bourgeoisie cannot always hide the economic difficulties of its system and, from time to time, it is obliged to admit that there is a crisis. However, when we, marxist revolutionaries, speak of crisis today, it is not on the same basis. Certainly, crisis is inherent in capitalism; it has been a feature of capitalism since its birth. But today the crisis is different: it is insurmountable; it reveals the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
We can say this, not from knowledge developed through a superficial, or even a detailed, observation of the state of the planet but because when we speak of crisis today, we rely on the totality of the marxist analysis of the development of capitalism that the workers’ movement has developed. We affirm on that basis that capitalism entered its phase of decadence almost a century ago and that in this phase, in contrast to the phase of ascendance, the capitalist crisis becomes insurmountable; that the only result of this will be the destruction of humanity and of all its achievements made during the course of history – unless the working class is able to overcome the mortal contradictions of capitalism in the struggle for the construction of a new society.
For marxists it is in this sense that decadence is the fundamental framework for analysing the world situation. Without this framework it is impossible not only to understand the reality of the contemporary world but also to draw up a realistic perspective. Far from leading us into demoralisation, or to the impression that there is no future, to a kind of fatalism where we can only ‘Look After Number One’, the marxist theory of decadence is the foundation of the communist perspective, which is not a simple matter of willpower but is built upon a complete method for analysing the development of human societies: historical materialism. On this basis we can understand why, although this barbarism is inevitable for capitalism, it is not inevitable for humanity, which could, through the struggle of the working class, transcend this situation and establish a new society.
It is within this framework that we hope to tackle the question of decadence.
We haven’t the time here to explain the marxist theory of decadence in detail or with the preciseness it deserves. That is not the purpose of this text. We have written a lot on this issue in the International Review and in pamphlets, and we will write more. Decadence is neither an invention of the ICC nor its discovery. On the contrary, it is a concept at the heart of the marxist analysis of the development of human societies, at the centre of historical materialism. From the beginning, Marx and Engels established that the analysis of the economic development of humanity was the key to understanding the development of contemporary society. Through their research the two founders of marxism discovered that human society organises itself around production, the first and central activity of man. Thus the organisation of the means of production delineates the social relations.
Putting the issue immediately on the historical level, they managed to analyse how the evolution of the means of production and its organisation had influenced social organisation. To summarise as much as possible, it is apparent that the development of the means of production, which is faced with a quantity of needs to satisfy, attains such a level that the organisation of the means becomes obsolete to the aim of production and finally a hindrance. It then becomes necessary to profoundly modify the organisation of production so that the existing means of production can be used to the maximum and continue their development.
This is how Marx, speaking of capitalism, summarised it in the Principles of a Critique of Political Economy:
“Beyond a certain point, the development of the productive forces becomes a barrier for capital; in other terms, the capitalist system becomes an obstacle for the expansion of the productive forces of labour. Having reached this point, capital, or more exactly wage labour, enters into the same relation to the development of social wealth and of productive forces as the system of guilds, serfdom, or slavery, and is necessarily rejected as a fetter. The last form of servitude in human activity - wage labour on one side and capital on the other - is then cast off, and this casting off is itself the result of the mode of production which corresponds to capital. Wage labour and capital, themselves the negation of previous forms of enslaved social production, are in their turn repudiated by the material and intellectual conditions stemming from their own process of production. It is by acute conflicts, crises, and convulsions that the growing incompatibility between the creative development of society and the established relations of production manifests itself”.
This modification does not take place smoothly: social organisation takes shape around production, as we have said, and until today humanity has had to manage conditions of material scarcity. Initially this was a general scarcity, as in primitive societies, then later on it was relative: each producer provides enough for himself and even a little more, but not enough for everyone. From this necessarily arise ownership, property and exploitation. Thus interests and powers crystallise around production. The calling into question of the organisation of production [i.e. the existing society] amounts to calling into question the economic, political and social position of the dominant classes. It is only by a more or less violent, but always radical, break-through that change can take place.
This is why, very succinctly, the evolution of the means of production does not occur in a linear manner and without such breakthroughs, or in a continual ascent. This is why each system of production is succeeded by a phase of decadence, during which the evolution of the means of production comes into insoluble contradiction with its organisation [i.e. existing society], while in society there emerge revolutionary forces opposed to the reactionary classes still attached to their privileged position in society.
A method of production, a way of producing, corresponds in history to a stage of the development of production. In Roman society production was organised between slaves, who worked, and masters, who made them work. This mode of production allowed the development of production until it attained a level that posed a problem: to continue to produce, you needed more slaves, who were in fact prisoners taken during wars; and the geographical limits of war, within the means of that epoch, were starting to be reached. Furthermore, the developments of the techniques of production were demanding more sophisticated forms of labour that slavery could not provide. This example shows that the manner in which production was organised became less and less suited to production itself, and that if the latter were to continue to develop, this mode of organisation, which until then had permitted an unprecedented development, was in the future going to prevent it. It was becoming a hindrance. To each level of production there corresponds a suitable mode of organisation.
This is why the slaves were emancipated and became serfs. In its turn the feudal system permitted the development of production until it attained such a level that society was again faced with an obstacle. It was then that capitalist relations transformed the producer of the Middle Ages into the ‘free’ man selling his labour power to the capitalist. Again, production found an organisation capable of permitting its development: a very rapid development, never seen before, that makes it possible for humanity to leave scarcity behind for the first time.
If the passage from one mode of production to the other does not occur smoothly and in a linear manner, from one ascent to the next as it were, it is because the mode of production finds an expression in a particular social organisation; and within this the dominant class defends its interests tooth and claw against the perspective of the overthrow of the established order. During this time the growing incompatibility between the levels attained by production and the manner in which it is organised gives rise to ever-greater convulsions.
Decadence therefore starts when the relations of production become a hindrance to the development of production. It continues so long as new relations of production have not been established. Decadence is the period of the bankruptcy of the old society.
Capitalism, as we have seen, certainly does not escape this rule. But the decadence of capitalism differs from previous periods of decadence by virtue of the fact that, in the societies of the past, the seeds of the new society already existed and were developing within the old society. Within feudal society, the bourgeoisie conquered economic power little by little and at the same time transformed a good part of production before attaining political power. In capitalism, this process has not taken place. The revolutionary class, the proletariat, cannot institute new relations of production without destroying those which now exist. Therein lies the extreme gravity of capitalist decadence.
We thus see that, for marxists, decadence is not a moral concept. When bourgeois specialists speak of the decadence of the Roman Empire or the waning of the Middle Ages, they often situate this idea on the moral plane: decadence arises from human greed, from the dissolute morals of our leaders, etc. As marxists we develop the concept of decadence as a rational, materialist concept, that is to say based on the material development of human societies. We do not deny that these periods exhibit evidence of the greed and dissolute morals of the rulers: we know full well that the historical blockage of the development of the productive forces finds its reflection in human society on all levels. And we can easily see the differences in philosophical thought and artistic expression between periods of ascendance and periods of decadence in various social systems, capitalism included. Decadence is not a purely economic theory; Marx, incidentally, never did anything other than write a critique of the economy. But the explanation for social decline must nevertheless be clearly situated on a materialist terrain.
How does the decadence of capitalism express itself?
When the Communist International spoke of an era of war and revolution it couldn’t have better summarised what the onset of decadent capitalism meant for humanity. Capitalism had, during the course of its ascendance, created the ideal framework for its development, that of the nation. It was on the basis of the nation state that capitalism secured its development and, using it as a starting point, launched its assault on the regions that it turned into colonies. Today the relations of competition exacerbated by the crisis are still based on the nation state. The only solution for the bourgeoisie to its crisis of overproduction is war, which leads to a period of reconstruction that tails off into a new crisis of overproduction.
We can easily situate capitalism’s entry into decadence at the beginning of the 20th century: the First World War, the first in the whole history of humanity, clearly expressed the new situation. The reconstruction that followed it quickly ran into a crisis without precedent, in the thirties, then the Second World War. The cycle, crisis, war, reconstruction, new crisis is apparent, but this is not a cycle of development. On the contrary, it is an infernal spiral that drags everything into its wake. For if capitalism could transcend the crises of overproduction during its ascendant phase, through economic expansion and the growing proletarianisation of the population, today the limits have been reached and the crisis is permanent. The only prospect is war.
Although we are talking about an epoch of war, we are also, as the Communist International stated at its foundation, talking about an epoch of revolution.
Indeed, capitalism’s development gave birth to its gravedigger: the proletariat, the only social force capable of overthrowing capitalism and of bringing about a new society. In attaining its limits, capitalism opens the door to its suppression. The order of the day for the proletariat is henceforth the immense task of founding, on the ruins of capitalism, a new society capable of managing abundance and providing the productive forces with a framework suited to their development.
The communist perspective is not new. The idea of constructing a society without oppression and injustice can be found in antiquity and the Middle Ages. But wanting a better society is not enough to bring it into being. The material conditions have to make this change possible. Equally, the revolt of the downtrodden is not new: by rejecting their conditions Roman slaves provided human history with valuable lessons in how a class struggles. But, these revolts were doomed to failure because the material situation, the level of production, did not permit humanity to go beyond a social structure of class and exploitation: as long as humanity had to manage scarcity, it could not build a just society.
It is capitalism that permits humanity to glimpse this perspective. Henceforth, production has attained a level that permits the suppression of scarcity: prehistory can come to an end. The communist perspective is not an ideal or a utopia, it is a material possibility and, furthermore, it is a necessity in order that the development of production can continue. We say once again: it is necessary to halt capitalism in its destructive spiral, which threatens to return humanity to the primitive era.
This is what makes capitalist decadence different from decadent periods in other epochs: it indicates the end of prehistory, the end of humanity’s long march from scarcity towards abundance. But this goal is not written in stone: the end of prehistory could simply be the end of history if nothing happens to stop the barbarism which is setting the planet alight. Communism is not a certainty: it can only be implemented through the hard struggle of the working class, and the result of this struggle is not known. That is why revolutionaries must be fully armed politically so that they in turn can arm the working class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the construction of a new society.
Decadence is part of this armament. It is a fundamental framework developed by marxism right from its origin. Indeed, Marx and Engels speak of decadence in The German Ideology, written even earlier than the Communist Manifesto. Decadence permeates the whole marxist analysis of the evolution of human societies. By illuminating the succession of periods of ascendance and decadence in history, marxism allows us to understand how humanity was able to organise itself and to progress; why the world is the way it is today; and finally, that it is possible to transcend this situation and build another world. RI
In April 1975 the Vietnam War was coming to an end. A ‘revolution’ had occurred in Portugal and a massive strike wave had been developing in Spain. World Revolution Nº3, then a 48-page magazine, published in that month covered these and other issues. The response to the war in South East Asia and the upheavals in Lisbon and other Portuguese cities was symptomatic of an implacable hostility to the fashionable causes of the left at the time. It judged that:
“Just as the slogan ‘Defence of the Free World’ has helped dragoon Vietnamese workers and peasants in the interests of US imperialism, the ideology of ‘national liberation’ is also a cover for the interests of Russian, Chinese and North Vietnamese imperialism in Vietnam. It has mobilised workers for capitalist interests in the same way that the ideology of anti-fascism mobilised workers in the Spanish Civil War and in World War 2 to fight and die for one faction of the capitalist class against another”.
WR also disavowed the extreme left putsch of March 11th in Portugal: “With the disarray of the right after the aborted coup, the left in Portugal can take on the dual role of disarming the working class ideologically and repressing it physically when the crisis demands the mounting of savage attacks on the class. The left is therefore ready to play out the role not only of an Allende but also of the Noskes and Scheidemanns”(1).
The hostility of WR to bourgeois movements of all descriptions incurred the wrath and ostracism of leftism which was and still is characterised by a willingness to choose its camp from among contending capitalist factions within each national state and from between competing imperialist adversaries. But as the pages of the magazine of this period show, WR was by no means politically ‘indifferent’ as the leftists claimed. The struggle of the workers in Spain, in the Middle East, and in the Glasgow dustcart drivers’ strike - all expressions of the wave of international class struggle that had begun in France in 1968 - were defended wholeheartedly against the sabotage of the forces of the bourgeois state including the left and the trade unions.
Furthermore WR was arguing for the eventual formation of an international revolutionary party on a “sure basis”. Indeed the first article in this magazine is a report of the formation at the beginning of 1975 of the International Communist Current, from the groups of the international tendency to which World Revolution belonged, as an essential step on the road to this goal:
“The manner in which our political current has developed is unlike international regroupments in the past which began as a set of national regroupments before fusing on the international plane. Ours has taken place as if in reverse. Its origins were on the international level before expressing itself within particular national boundaries. In this specific way the international character of all proletarian political organisation, acknowledged explicitly as a founding principle since 1847, is being reaffirmed today in the International Communist Current. The Current’s role as the international pole of regroupment of revolutionaries has now been put upon a concrete organisational footing, reflecting the need to act effectively in a period of heightening class struggle....There are only two main obstacles which can stand in the way of other groups regrouping with us: that they have different class standpoints from our own, or that they are infused with sectarian attitudes for which the working class has no need. Only vigorous political discussion and clarification can resolve differences or demonstrate their irreconcilability”.
As if to illustrate this perspective WR 3 also contains two substantial polemical articles. One castigates the Liverpool group Workers’ Voice for “unlimited” sectarianism. WV told WR that “we have all come to agree on the same class boundaries” but it nevertheless abruptly “broke off relations” with WR because of the ICC’s views on the state in the period of transition between capitalism and socialism.
The other, over ten pages, ‘From leftism to the void’, is a scathing survey of the ‘modernist’ political trend which had a significant influence in the wider political milieu at the time. The key invention of modernism was the idea that the working class had become a ‘class for capital’. The article concludes with a resounding denunciation of its pretensions:
“The present resurgence of the world proletariat, that giant the bourgeoisie and its druids thought forever dead, is therefore also the resurgence of the ultra-left (2). Against the babblings of those who claim to have broken with this rich and vital tradition and to have discovered ‘new realities’ in a ‘modern movement’ , revolutionaries must take up again the clarion call of the Spartakusbund, which defiantly said of the revolutionary struggle of the working class: ‘I was, l am, l shall be!’
(1) Salvador Allende: ‘Socialist’ president of Chile from 1970 to 1973. Gustav Noske and Phillip Scheidemann, members of the German Social Democratic Party, whose government organised the bloody defeat of the German Revolution from 1918-1923
(2) At this time, this term was sometimes used instead of the more accurate ‘left communist’.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[2] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0206-01.htm
[3] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/ecology/
[4] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/300007.html
[5] http://www.enrager.net/thought/topics/advertising.php
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/asian-tsunami
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/56/middle-east-and-caucasus
[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/life-icc/intervention
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/parasitism
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/15/decadence-capitalism