The twentieth century was a century of unparalleled barbarism in the history of humanity. In an epoch dominated by the defeat of the first world revolution and the massacre of millions of human beings in two global imperialist wars, certain bourgeois leaders arose who, in their own way, best expressed the interests of their respective national capitals and the need for ruthlessness and cunning in dealing with their common enemy, the proletariat.
Throughout his long career of service to the British state, Winston Churchill demonstrated the intelligence demanded of a representative of a ruling class confronted by the decadence of its own social system and the need to survive on a saturated world market:
While other ‘great leaders’ of the capitalist class in the twentieth century – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – demonstrated similar qualities in defence of their own imperialist interests, what distinguishes Churchill is that his reputation is still relatively intact.
Today, in the English-speaking world at least, the bourgeoisie hails Churchill as a ‘man of the century’ – and given that the century in question was dominated by the murder of millions on the altar of decadent capitalism, this is, in a sense, quite appropriate!
For the British bourgeoisie, of course, Churchill is still revered as a great war leader, who led the country during the darkest days of the second world war – and given that Churchill was always distinguished by his advocacy of utterly ruthless policies and the use of mass terror in defence of British imperialism, this is also, in a sense, fitting...
As Marxists, we do not believe that history is made by ‘great leaders’. But by examining the role that Churchill played for the British bourgeoisie, we can learn something about the intelligence, viciousness and tricks of a ruling class faced with the historic bankruptcy of its system, and therefore about the nature of the enemy facing the proletariat in the 21st century. And if Churchill was able to demonstrate a degree of historical understanding of the issues facing the ruling class, and to know how to employ the most Machiavellian tactics to defend its interests, this only emphasises the dangers we will face in the class confrontations of tomorrow.
In a year marking the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the second world war, it is also timely to look at Churchill’s role in the second world war and what it reveals about Britain’s real motives and interests in a war supposedly fought for democracy against the evils of Nazism.
In this first part, we will look at Churchill’s role in the British state up until 1939.
Churchill began his political career in the Conservative Party, identifying with those elements that were less wedded to landed interests and recognised the need for more state intervention in the economy. Displaying a characteristic opportunism and lack of deep ideological attachment, he ‘crossed the floor’ to the Liberal Party in 1904, later ‘re-ratting’, in his words, back to the Conservatives, in 1925.
By the turn of the century, the most advanced sections of the British bourgeoisie recognised the need for social welfare programmes to ensure the survival of British capital and divert dangerous class militancy into safe channels. The trade unions were given an increasing role in the running of the capitalist economy and union officials were drawn into the whole machinery of collective bargaining and conciliation set up by employers to more tightly control dangerous class militancy and divert it into safer channels.
As President of the Board of Trade from 1908 to 1910, Churchill played an important role in implementing this strategy. The Board of Trade was in the advance guard of the bourgeoisie’s state capitalist defences, gathering vital intelligence on the working class in the factories, intervening directly into labour disputes and incorporating a growing army of union officials into the state’s everyday activity.
Churchill was also prominent in the Liberals’ social welfare programmes, introducing labour exchanges and unemployment insurance schemes, with advice from the Fabian Sydney Webb, as mechanisms to increase the competitiveness of British capital and control the working class more effectively. A key feature of these repressive measures was that the trade unions were given a role in administering them, thus further incorporating the unions and the Labour Party into the running of the capitalist state.
Without such state capitalist measures, Churchill warned the ruling class, “there is nothing before us but the savage strife between class and class.”
The need to avert the threat of proletarian revolution and use repression against the working class
When the working class threatened to break out of these state-imposed bounds, the bourgeoisie was quick to use ruthless repression. As Home Secretary during the pre-war mass strikes in Britain, when the workers’ struggles began to go beyond and against the official unions, Churchill directed operations in the South Wales coalfields and in the London docks, bringing in police reinforcements and mobilising military units in a massive show of force designed to intimidate the workers and their supporters. He was quite prepared to use the army if necessary, as at Llanelli in 1911 when two workers were shot dead, but he also knew that the police could be relied upon in most situations to mete out repression; or as he put it, to “scatter the rioters” and give them “a good dusting”.
When the Russian workers seized political power in October 1917 it was shocking proof to the bourgeoisie internationally that it now faced a mortal threat from its class enemy. At first the British bourgeoisie thought it could use its guile and cunning to negotiate with the Bolsheviks to keep Russia in the war, but quickly realised its mistake; Churchill exploded with fury when he realised that Lenin and Trotsky were not interested in making a sordid deal with the Entente powers, denouncing the Bolsheviks as “bloody baboons” and “foul murderers” in an expression of visceral hatred which masked the bourgeoisie’s real fear.
Churchill was convinced of the need to destroy the Russian bastion before the world revolution spread, declaring that Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle”. Despite a lack of real commitment from other factions of the British bourgeoisie, and against strong resistance from the working class, he was responsible for escalating and extending British military intervention in Russia, and fought against the withdrawal of British support to the counter-revolutionary forces. Only belatedly did he come round to the preferred strategy of accommodation with the Russian state in the context of a downturn in the revolutionary wave, and the use of trade deals to advance British capitalist interests.
During the General Strike in 1926 Churchill was again a strong advocate of ruthless measures against any threat from the working class. He personally edited the British Gazette, the government’s anti-strike paper, and is reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used against striking workers. Despite the fact that by 1926 the international conditions for a proletarian threat to the state were receding, he recognised at least the potential for the class struggle in this period to develop into a confrontation with the state.
As part of its counter-revolutionary strategy in this period the British bourgeoisie also gave its support to fascism in Italy as a bulwark against the threat of revolution. Speaking in Rome on 20 January, 1927, Churchill praised Mussolini’s fascist regime, which had rendered a service to the whole world for its “triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’. This gives the lie to the British bourgeoisie’s later rally to the banner of anti-fascism as a war ideology to cover its own sordid interests.
British capitalism’s emergence from the first world war as a ‘victor’ could not disguise the underlying weakness of its economy, which was dependent on the empire for raw materials and as a protected market for British commodities. In the 1920s, Britain faced various threats to its imperial rule, in Ireland, Iraq, India… As Secretary of State for the Colonies, Churchill devised a strategy aimed at maintaining British domination with stretched resources, by proposing the use of air power as a cheap way of garrisoning the empire rather than stationing costly ground troops. From the beginning, air power was intended as an offensive weapon of terror against potential rivals; it was from this time that Churchill began a lifelong enthusiasm for the use of poison gas, suggesting that British air squadrons should be equipped with mustard gas bombs to “inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives.”
Churchill vehemently opposed Home Rule for India, seeing it as a direct threat to the continued existence of the Empire. The more intelligent, far-sighted factions of the British bourgeoisie, on the other hand, could see that the only way to preserve British imperialism in the longer term was by granting a degree of autonomy to those national bourgeoisies who were attempting to defend their own local capitalist interests. It was this issue that led to his estrangement from the Conservative Party; when he returned, it was because his short-term view of the need for an intransigent struggle to defend British imperialism was put on the immediate agenda by the direct threat from Germany.
For the British bourgeoisie, Churchill’s reputation is above all as a ‘lone voice’ calling for re-armament against Germany, and as a ‘fierce critic’ of the appeasement of Hitler. Contrary to this myth, however, Churchill was not opposed to making concessions to Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. In fact, he was openly admiring of Hitler as a German nationalist: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement… If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.” Churchill wanted to be able to deal with Hitler from a position of strength, by building up Britain’s air force to rival Germany’s. Far from being anti-German, he was quick to stress that he was simply following the traditional policy of the British bourgeoisie, which was to oppose the emergence of any stronger rival on the European mainland:
“British policy for four hundred years has been to oppose the strongest power in Europe by weaving together a combination of other countries strong enough to face the bully. Sometimes it is Spain, sometimes the French monarchy, sometimes the French Empire, sometimes Germany. I have no doubt who it is now. But if France set up to claim the over-lordship of Europe, I should equally endeavour to oppose them.”
Churchill was an aggressive ‘continentalist’, who argued that the best interests of British imperialism were served by its active intervention in mainland Europe and the construction of military alliances to prevent the emergence of a military rival. Lacking a large land army of its own, Britain traditionally preferred to get other European powers, large and small, to do its fighting for it...
The leading faction of the British bourgeoisie, around Baldwin (later Chamberlain) and the Conservative Party, represented an ‘isolationist’ tendency, which foresaw that Britain’s involvement in a war against Germany would inevitably lead to the break up of the empire and the final eclipse of British power by America. It therefore sought to avoid getting British imperialism entangled in alliances that would drag it into a disastrous European war.
Up until the late 1930s, the ‘appeasers’ still hoped that German expansionism would be directed eastwards and therefore not directly threaten British imperialist interests; with any luck it would result in a war between Germany and Russia, thus removing two military rivals. For the British bourgeoisie, there was also a good economic argument for appeasement: the historically weak and uncompetitive British economy was wholly dependent for its survival on foreign trade. Any large-scale re-armament programme would be at the expense of the already weakened and uncompetitive economy. The stark choice was between saving the empire or fighting a European war.
Churchill had no solution to this dilemma, which is why he remained isolated from the rest of the British bourgeoisie until the direct threat from German imperialism became unavoidable. In the end, German interventions in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, combined with the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, meant that further German expansion would be towards the west, and by 1938 a ‘war party’ began to cohere around Churchill. To begin with, his supporters were in those sections of the state apparatus charged with protecting British interests from external threats: the military, the Foreign Office and the intelligence services. They were later joined by the Labour Party and the trade unions, which actively supported re-armament but more importantly provided the ideological cover for British imperialism’s war effort under the banner of anti-fascism.
By finally appointing Churchill prime minister in 1940, the British bourgeoisie was admitting that it no longer had any choice but to fight a major European war, even though this would lead to economic ruin and Britain’s eclipse as a world power. Its aim in fighting the war was to ensure the very survival of British imperialism; an aim it knew Churchill was guaranteed to pursue with the utmost ruthlessness.
MH
The second part of this article will focus on Churchill’s role for British imperialism in the Second World War.
This is the first part of a report presented to WR’s recent 16th Congress.
In the recent budget Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer boasted “Britain is today experiencing the longest period of sustained economic growth since records began in the year 1701 […] Inflation has been the lowest for 30 years. Interest rates the lowest for 30 years; employment the highest ever. And with living standards since 1997 rising on average by 3% each year, Britain has today the best combination of low inflation, high employment and rising living standards in a generation”. It is true that rates of growth in Britain have been above those in much of Europe while the unemployment rate has been lower. In the report on the National Situation presented to the 16th congress of World Revolution last November, which we are publishing below, we showed how the ruling class has achieved this by increasing the exploitation of the working class. The means it has used to do this, far from expressing the health of the economy, actually confirm its fundamental weakness. Far from escaping the crisis British capitalism is caught fast and sinking further. It is the ability of the ruling class to manage the crisis, above all through the attack on the working class, which it has sustained for the last quarter of a century, that has put the British economy at a temporary advantage compared to its rivals.
The economic crisis of British capitalism is an expression of the global economic crisis of capitalism. Consequently the latter provides the framework in which the former must be understood. At the level of the whole historical period this is provided by the theory and reality of the decadence of capitalism… The basic theory is set out in our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism and it has been further deepened in numerous articles in the International Review, including, most recently, the series that began in IR 118. Complimenting this, the publication of extracts from the report on the crisis to the 14th International Congress in IR 114, provides the framework for understanding the current evolution of the crisis at a global level:
- It shows the growing struggle of capitalism to maintain its momentum: “Since the sixties, each decade has shown a mean growth rate lower than the preceding one:
1962-69 = 5.2%
1970-79 = 3.5%
1980-89 = 2.8%
1990-99 = 2.6%
2000-02 = 2.2%”.
- It shows the growing weight of debt: “The weight of the national debt expressed as a percentage of GDP decreases throughout the ascending period. In general it never exceeds 50%. This ratio explodes at the time of the entry into decline, to ebb only during the period 1950-80, but without ever going down below 50%. It then goes up during the years 1980-90”.
- It shows the growing weight of the state: “Oscillating at around 10% throughout the ascendant phase of capitalism, the share of the state (i.e. the non-market sector) in the creation of added value climbs during decadence to almost 50% in 1995 in the OECD countries”.
- It shows that this distorts the figures for growth “insofar as national accounting partly counts the same thing twice […] In short to correctly evaluate real growth in decadence it is necessary to deduct nearly 40% of current GNP corresponding to the growth of the unproductive sector since 1913”.
- It shows the growth of military spending: “From 2% of world production in 1860, to 2.5% in 1913, it rose to 7.2% in 1938, reached around 8.4% in the 60s and again went up to about 10% at the height of the cold war”.
- And since such expenditure is a sterilisation of capital “To the 40% growth of unproductive expenditure in the period of decadence, we thus have to add another 6% corresponding to the relative increase in military expenditure…which gives us a world production overvalued by nearly 50%”.
“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. Apart from Canada, it is the only G7 economy, for which output has not fallen by significantly more than one percentage point below potential. Moreover, it has been one of the few European countries (large or small) to display such a degree of robustness during the downswing. At the same time the unemployment rate has remained continuously close to 5 per cent. In 2003, it will be the lowest among the major seven economies, while deviations of inflation from the target have been as small as could have been reasonably expected” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.23).
Since the mid 1990s growth in Britain has been above that of the Euro area and close to that of the OECD as a whole, which includes the US. It has been above that of Germany since 1992 and also of France, other than for a few years at the turn of the millennium.
Inflation in Britain averaged 7.4% between 1979 and 1989, rising to 13.4% in 1990. It fell sharply in the early 1990s and since 2000 it has been below the Euro area average (OECD Economic Outlook – Consumer price index).
“A recent study concluded that evidence of the benefits of two decades of structural reform in the United Kingdom was provided by the halting of ‘the nearly century-long trend in relative economic decline of the United Kingdom relative to its historic competitors France and Germany’… Indeed, over the last decade the gap in GDP per capita with the major continental European countries has been substantially closed” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.37). Does this really mean that Britain is an exception to the economic problems besetting Europe and most of the world as the Labour government argues? Does Britain show that the economic crisis can be managed and even overcome?
The first part of the answer comes from understanding the relationship between growth and productivity. A recent publication by the Department of Trade and Industry identified a number of ‘paradoxes’ in relation to the productivity and competitiveness of the economy. The first of these stated “Productivity is the long run driver of prosperity, and relative prosperity has increased since 1998. However, the UK’s relative productivity performance remains poor” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.8). “Over the last five years, the UK has indeed become a more prosperous economy, both absolutely and relative to others. In 1998, UK prosperity, measured in terms of GDP per head – was below that of Germany, Italy, the OECD average and the EU average. It is now above all four of these areas. This has been achieved despite subdued productivity growth and little movement to close the productivity gap with our major competitors. The gap with the US, France and Germany remains at just over 20 per cent in terms of output per hour worked.
“The UK has been able to achieve higher prosperity because of strong labour market performance. Prosperity depends on both the productivity of workers and the proportion of the workforce employed. For the UK, the former has improved slightly while the latter has risen sharply since 1998.” (ibid, p.9).
The underlying problem confronting British capitalism can be shown by comparing unit labour costs in Britain with those of its rivals. Taking 1995 as the starting point, there has been a strong divergence between Britain and the other powers, especially those in Europe.
This means that the increase in production in Britain is based on an increase in the quantity of labour employed and not on the level of productivity per worker. Such an increase in quantity can be achieved either by bringing more workers into productive activity or by increasing the amount of labour provided by the existing number of workers, that is by requiring them to work longer hours. This is supported by the OECD’s definition that labour utilisation “is measured as trend total number of hours worked divided by population” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.39).
In Britain, both options seem to have been followed, although the official reports tend to stress the former: “The growth in labour force utilisation in the UK has been stronger than in Continental Europe and is the decisive factor that allowed the UK to catch up in terms of prosperity” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 10).
There has, indeed, been an increase in the number of hours worked, even though recent government publications suggest the opposite, reporting a reduction in the numbers working over 48 hours a week following the introduction of the EU working time directive.
A longer view shows that hours declined from the start of the last century until 1984 and then began to rise again. “The TUC…using the LFS,[Labour Force Survey] shows that the number of full-timers working 45 hours or more increased from 4.7 million (29 per cent) in 1984 to 5.7 million (36 per cent) in 1994. Within these, those working 45 to 49 hours went up just one per cent, but those working 48 hours or more rose from 20 per cent to 25 per cent. Furthermore, those working 50 hours or more increased from 15 percent to 21 per cent. There was a simultaneous decline in proportions working a ‘standard’ week of 35 to 39, or 40 to 44 hours” (Working long hours: A review of the evidence Vol.1, p.44 DTI November 2003).
The true picture of the hours actually worked is distorted in several ways. 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.
Secondly, the growth in part-time working has the effect of reducing the average hours worked, so masking the growth in working long hours. What this implies is that there is a polarisation between those working shorter hours and those working longer ones, between underwork and overwork. This would fit into the overall picture of the divide between those with little or no work (see below) and those facing increasing absolute exploitation. Such a situation is entirely consistent with the marxist analysis of capitalism: “The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists, and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation” (Capital, Vol I, Part VII, Chapter XXV, Section 3 “Progressive production of a relative surplus population or industrial reserve army”)
The recent OECD report provides some evidence to suggest that the growth in the number working has been less important than the increase in the hours worked because the fall in the rate of unemployment is not the same as more people being in work “while the structural unemployment rate has fallen by around 4 percentage points since 1990 there has been virtually no fall in the trend inactivity rate…The flat aggregate inactivity rate conceals a number of worrying trends. While the female inactivity rate has fallen, the male inactivity rate has shown a consistent upward trend. The latter has been accompanied by a similar rise in men reporting long-term sickness or disability as the main reason for inactivity…In 1980 the numbers claiming invalidity benefit were less than the number claiming unemployment benefit, whereas they are now more than two-and-half times as great” (ibid, p.103). While the report tentatively suggests that this “may partly reflect disability benefits being used as an alternative pathway to early retirement given the absence of other ‘formal’ early retirement schemes” (ibid, p.105) the truth is that this is one of the major ways in which the bourgeoisie has hidden the real level of unemployment. This is why, in the midst of such growth, Britain continues to have “a high level of poverty relative to other European countries at similar levels of prosperity” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 9). As we note in the article in WR 275, in which this passage was first quoted, “While for the economic geniuses of the bourgeoisie the paradox that a richer capitalist nation is also a poorer one is merely unfortunate, Karl Marx explained some 150 years ago that the polarisation of wealth and poverty in society is the necessary, inevitable, result of capitalist production; that the two extremes are dependent on each other. The more wealth the working class produces, the poorer it becomes. Surplus value, upon which capitalist growth depends, can only increase if the value of labour power decreases” (“British economy rising on a mountain of debt”).
The argument that there is a quantitative increase in exploitation is also supported by the evidence about the level of investment: “The UK continues to suffer from low levels of capital investment. Over the most recent cycle, business investment per worker remained lower than our major competitors... The persistence of under investment over the past thirty years has created a significant deficit of capital available to each UK worker. This is common across manufacturing and services” ” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.29). “The UK has a lower capital stock per worker and per hour worked than the other three countries, lagging France by 60%, Germany by 32% and the United States by 25% in terms of capital stock per hour worked” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 12). The workforce is also relatively less skilled: “The UK continues to show weakness in terms of relative levels of human capital. Too many workers lack the key basic and intermediate level skills. There have been improvements in the flow of workers into the labour force – through the reforms made to schooling – but weaknesses in the stock of skills remain” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.54).
What all of this suggests is that despite all the rhetoric about a knowledge-based, high-tech economy, the growth achieved by British capitalism, that is the increase in the level of exploitation of the working class, is due to an increase in the level of absolute surplus value extracted from the proletariat: “The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working-day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working-day, I call relative surplus-value” (Marx, Capital Vol.1, Part IV, Chapter XII “The concept of relative surplus value”). The countries with lower growth rates than Britain, principally its European rivals tend to have lower levels of labour utilisation but higher levels of productivity while those ahead of Britain, such as the US, Australia and Canada have both higher levels of labour utilisation and higher levels of productivity.
The increase in GDP has not come from manufacturing but from services. Taking 1995 as a starting point, services have increased from 100 to over 130 while manufacturing has dropped below 100, that is, there has been an absolute decline in manufacturing. While such a divergence is true of most developed industrial countries, the situation in Britain is worse than in the US (rising to over 120 in 2000 before dropping back to over 115 two years later) and the Euro area as a whole (increasing to just under 115 by 2002).
WR, November ’04.
Never has distrust for politicians been so widespread. Never has ‘apathy’ about the democratic process been so strong. The political parties, from right to left, are getting more and more anxious about this. They are desperately trying to convince us that we must do our duty as ‘citizens’ and get involved in the coming round of national and local elections. They are particularly concerned about the younger generation. Copying P Diddy’s ‘Vote or Die’ campaign in the US, Jesse Jackson and British ‘urban’ musicians have been roped in to get black youth to the ballot box; George Galloway and Respect focus on the young in general and disaffected Asian youth in particular.
Millions of people have the feeling that ‘all the politicians are the same’ and that voting for them won’t change anything. And they are right.
We live in a capitalist social system where, in all countries, a tiny minority rules an exploited majority. In such a system, democracy is a cover for the dictatorship of the ruling class. What’s more, capitalism has been in decay for almost a hundred years. Since the early part of the 20th century, it has held itself together by vastly increasing the power of the state in all areas of society. When it comes to all the serious decisions to do with its very survival – decisions about going to war, or about suppressing the threat of revolt by the exploited class – parliament has no say in the matter. The decision to invade Iraq was only the latest example of that. As for the political parties, they are nothing but extensions of the capitalist state. That’s why they all agree on the fundamentals.
All the parties are pro-war. The Tories backed Blair to the hilt over the Iraq war. The Liberal Democrats pose as an ‘anti-war’ party but as soon as the fighting started in Iraq they told us ‘we have to support our troops’. The leftists of Stop the War, the SWP or Respect tell us to support the ‘Resistance’ in Iraq. In short, all of them tell workers that they have a country to defend, that they must take sides in capitalism’s conflicts. And they have been doing this in every imperialist massacre since 1914!
All the parties preach austerity and sacrifice. In a world system racked by economic crisis, any party managing the capitalist state has to call on workers to accept cuts in their living standards, for the ‘good’ of the national economy. New Labour like the Thatcherite government before it makes savage cuts in social benefits. Old Labour and the leftists tell us that sacrifices would be OK if more of the economy was nationalised: then we would be working for ‘socialism’. In reality we would still be wage slaves and the capitalist state would still be our overseer.
All the parties are racist. Tory and Labour try to outdo the BNP in stirring up fear about asylum seekers, immigrant, or gypsies. The leftists trumpet their support for the Islamic fundamentalists who propagate hatred of ‘Jews and Crusaders’. All of them accept the existing division of the world into competing nation states which is at the root of all racist attitudes towards ‘foreigners’.
So what’s the alternative? We are not preaching apathy. The world is in far too dangerous a state to think that political questions can be avoided. Apathy can also be used by the ruling class to keep the exploited in their place, to press ahead with its military adventures and its attacks on living standards.
Against bourgeois politics, we are in favour of working class politics. Turning our back on the political game of our exploiters is part of this. But abstention from the election farce is only one side of the coin. The working class has to assert itself as an independent force, standing in opposition to capitalist society.
Today, faced with all the propaganda about the ‘end of the working class’, about the class war being a thing of the past, the proletariat cannot become an independent force without first recovering its basic identity as a class. So while the capitalist state tries to bury this identity by driving us into the polling booths as isolated citizens, we need to fight as a class.
All of us, employed and unemployed, public sector and private sector, male and female, native and immigrant, are under attack. The dismantling of Rover shows that there are no safe jobs, and that nothing is to be gained by going cap in hand to the bosses – whether they are British, German or Chinese, state or private. In all countries the social wage - sick pay, unemployment benefits, etc - are being restricted or reduced. The assault on pensions in particular is very clear proof that this society has no future to offer us.
If we are to resist these attacks, we must overcome all divisions between workers – divisions which the politicians left and right are constantly trying to widen.
Our future lies in massive, common struggles around unifying demands, opposing all the different facets of the attacks: wage-freezes, lay-offs, speed-ups, cuts in social benefits, repression and victimisation.
We need to unite; and this means organising ourselves because the official representatives of the working class, the trade unions, have - just like the political parties - become organs of the capitalist state which divide us and police us. We need to get used to holding our own general assemblies, open to all workers, where we can take decisions about how and when to struggle. 100 years ago, assemblies of striking workers in Russia sent delegates to the first workers’ council or soviet. That form of organisation is still the future of our struggles, and has made both parliament and trade unions useless for the working class.
All this is already working class politics because even when we are only fighting for our economic interests, we will have the whole force of the capitalist state - police, legal system, army and trade unions - arrayed against us. It’s politics because when the working class is fighting on its own ground, it acts as a barrier to the capitalist drive to war, and you can’t be more politically subversive than that.
Above all, the class struggle is politics because we will only be able to take this struggle forward by posing fundamental questions about the whole direction of the present social system - a system that is threatening to destroy the planet through war and ecological disaster. A system that cannot be reformed. A system that can only be overcome through a global political revolution and a radical social transformation.
Already there is a whole new generation asking these questions, even if only a minority of them have seen that the key to mankind’s fate still lies in the conflict between the classes. But that minority is already the expression of a movement towards a real working class party – a party not for electoral politics or for taking power on behalf of the workers, but for pointing the way towards the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide.
AGAINST ALL ILLUSIONS IN CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY!
AGAINST THE ELECTION FARCE!
FOR THE INDEPENDENT STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS!
World Revolution, April 2005.
Never exactly popular in the British media, the IRA and Sinn Féin have complained of a “sustained campaign” being waged against them. The IRA was blamed for the £26.5m Northern Bank raid. Members of the IRA/SF were accused of killing Robert McCartney, as well as removing evidence in a cover-up and intimidating witnesses. Because of the various rackets it runs and the violence it uses in punishment beatings and shootings the IRA has been branded a criminal gang of thugs. Sinn Féin has been told by politicians from Britain, Ireland and the US to get rid of its “private army” if it wants to take any further part in the institutions of democracy.
What’s different about these attacks is that they’ve not only come from the expected British sources, but also from the Irish government, leading Irish Americans, and from ‘nationalist’ areas and SF supporters in Northern Ireland.
In the context of this media barrage, the leftist groups have, in their different ways, come to the defence of Irish nationalism. Workers Power (March 2005) issued a straight “Hands off Sinn Féin!” against the “filthy attempt by the unionists and the British and Irish governments to isolate and intimidate republicanism”. The British Socialist Worker (26/3/5) said “Don’t fall for the politicians’ campaign against Sinn Féin”.
The Irish Socialist Worker (No 237), more critical of the IRA, felt that its “conspiratorial methods mean that the IRA has come to act as a power over their neighbourhoods” and that “the desire to seek power over communities means that IRA men also act like a local police force.” They criticise Sinn Féin for accepting money from Coca Cola, SF Ministers at Stormont for presiding over cuts and privatisation, SF councillors in Derry for attacking absenteeism and low productivity, and SF councillors who’ve worked with Paisley’s DUP to push budgets and targets. At root they see the IRA/SF as coming from a different tradition that is ‘elitist’ and ‘conspiratorial’: undemocratic rather than anti-working class.
The World Socialist Web Site (7/3/5) thought that “power sharing” had been ”translated into an agreement on the part of Sinn Féin to police the Catholic population”. The Weekly Worker (25/2/5) ridiculed SF’s craving for respectability and its transition into a proper constitutional party.
There is an idea here that the IRA once defended ‘nationalist communities’, but, for various reasons, it has degenerated. The Irish Socialist Worker said that “Robert McCartney’s sister put her finger on a real problem when she talked about a New IRA and an Old IRA”. Catherine McCartney compared the “struggle” of the past with the “criminal gangs” of today. Gemma McCartney saw “parallels between the current generation of IRA thugs and the Nazis”.
At the end of the 1960s, in the demonstrations, riots, bombings and the driving out of thousands of people from their homes, the IRA’s role was initially limited. It had next to no weapons and was heading for a split between Officials and Provisionals in December 69. Not surprisingly “IRA – I Ran Away” appeared on walls in Belfast and Derry.
When the Provisional IRA did start acquiring finance and weapons it was in pursuit of their nationalist goals. They wanted to make Northern Ireland ungovernable and assumed that a continual campaign of disruption and destruction would create turmoil which would force Britain to withdraw. Some of the Provisionals’ first leaders were influenced by the success of the Irgun terrorist group against British targets in Palestine in the 1940s. As well as military targets, the Irgun bombed market places, cafes, hotels, banks and other ‘soft’ targets. These would be the means adopted by the IRA in the battle for a United Ireland – terrorist means are completely in keeping with the pursuit of a nationalist goal.
At the level of the ‘nationalist community’, the IRA behaved as a military force right from the start. The example of Ballymurphy (where Gerry Adams comes from) in Belfast shows the dynamic of republicanism at war. By January 1971 rioting had been regularly going on there for 6 months. The IRA thought it was no longer serving their interests. One night they succeeded in limiting disturbances by putting some of the participants under armed arrest. The next day the British army contacted the IRA. “The military were appealing to the IRA for help in controlling Ballymurphy”. One of the IRA men at the meeting said “If you get out of Ballymurphy, we can control it without your assistance”. By the end of the meeting “the British army seemed happy enough to allow the IRA to keep order in Ballymurphy” (Ballymurphy and the Irish War, Ciarán De Baróid).
Although this particular arrangement was only temporary, it’s a formal expression of the understanding there has been ever since between the British army and paramilitaries in both loyalist and republican areas. Against petty crimes, as well as more serious ‘anti-social’ behaviour, and in defence of their various business ventures such as drug dealing, paramilitary gangs have served as judge, jury and executioner – with punishments from beatings and kneecappings to exile or death. The IRA have not suddenly started policing neighbourhoods; it’s been going on since the Provisionals first emerged.
When the McCartney sisters met George Bush during their American visit they heard that “there are people going on the radio back home saying that we’re visiting the world’s biggest terrorist”. Martin McGuinness warned them of the danger of being used as political pawns. That was the grossest of hypocrisy. Sinn Féin has been openly consorting with US presidents since 1994 when Clinton gave Gerry Adams a visa, and then lifted the ban on the group so that they could legally raise tens of millions of dollars from American supporters. In the talks that led up to the Good Friday Agreement SF were in round-the-clock contact with the White House, not able to take a step without the approval of US imperialism.
Even after his recent snub in Washington, Adams remained convinced that the basic position of the US administration had not changed. Although if it did “I would be very, very perturbed”.
US manipulation of Sinn Féin and the IRA against Britain has greatly increased since the end of the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ in the early 1990s. Britain is no longer a loyal lieutenant in a US imperialist bloc against the USSR. It has tried to forge an independent imperialist policy, which the US has used every means to try to restrain. In Ireland Britain has used everything from demands for decommissioning, allegations of IRA spying, and now the charges of murder and robbery to limit the role of Sinn Féin
The loyalty of Irish republicanism to the US comes from a whole historical period in which an independent Ireland is impossible. As Trotsky said after the Easter Rising of 1916 “an ‘independent’ Ireland could exist only as an outpost of an imperialist state hostile to Britain” (Nashe Slovo 4/7/16). Because of this Irish nationalism has always courted powers that could take on British imperialism, particularly Germany and the US. The famous proclamation made in front of the Post Office in Dublin in 1916 refers to the support of “exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe”. This is not just a topical reference to the abortive attempt to use American money to get arms from Germany, but an acknowledgement that no nationalist movement can make advances without becoming a piece in greater imperialist conflicts.
If US rebukes to Sinn Féin prove to be more than passing it will not be because of what Edward Kennedy calls “the IRA’s ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law”. It will be because US imperialism is using other means to pursue its interests. Car 28/3/5
The western media are telling us about the wave of democratic change that is sweeping the world, from Iraq to Lebanon and the countries of the former USSR. According to them, there is a real push towards a freer world. Elections have taken place or are about to take place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, central Asia; and we have seen democratic ‘revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine and now Kyrgyzstan. In Lebanon there have been massive demonstrations against the presence of Syrian troops, as well as a new impetus for the ‘peace process’ in Israel-Palestine. All this, we are told, expresses the will of the people to enter the paradise of democracy. The main promoters of this idyllic world are the great western powers, above all the USA which has proclaimed that the “thaw has begun” in the countries of the Middle East and that “the hope of liberty is gaining ground across the planet”. This unlimited optimism is in fact a huge deception, aimed at hiding reality from the world proletariat. In fact the world situation has never been as grave as it is today. Behind all this rigmarole is a very sharp aggravation of imperialist tensions. And it is precisely the countries being praised for their contribution to the ‘struggle for democracy’ that are the focus of the growing rivalries between the great powers and in particular of the imperialist offensive that the USA has been carrying out since the re-election of Bush.
The anniversary of the second year of the occupation of Iraq by the American forces needs little comment: more than 100,000 Iraqi deaths, the majority of them innocent civilians. 1520 American soldiers killed and 11,300 wounded. Dozens of towns and villages have been destroyed, and with them the infrastructure of water and electricity, and even to some extent oil. Over $200bn has already been spent on this barbarism. And it is precisely because the Bush administration is aware that Iraq is a quagmire that is seriously weakening its position as the world’s leading power that it is now marked upon this counter-offensive.
Whoever was responsible for the attack which left 19 dead including Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese opposition, we have to pose the question: who profits from the crime? Certainly not Syria. Not only has Syria been accused of the crime by all the developed countries, but also countries of the Arab League including Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also pointed the finger at it. Furthermore, international pressure has forced it to abandon military positions in the Lebanon which it fought hard for in the 1980s, and to loosen its grip on Lebanese political life, clearing the way for the interference of the French and the Americans.
This assassination thus has the appearance of an ‘opportunity’ for Bush and Chirac, the two countries which were behind the September 2004 UN vote for resolution 1559, which calls for the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. The real aim of the loud support that France and the US have given to the gigantic demonstrations by the Lebanese opposition, calling for the replacement of the pro-Syrian government and the holding of elections as soon as possible, has been to insert themselves into Lebanese political life and defend their own prerogatives.
France is trying to regain the influence it used to have in Lebanon during the cold war, when it was acting in the interests of the western bloc. This influence was progressively reduced and virtually disappeared with the ejection of the Christian general Michel Aoun, Paris’ man on the spot. With the new situation, Chirac envisages Aoun’s return to the Lebanon. However, this is not guaranteed for France, which still hasn’t got many points of support in the country. In fact it was to evaluate the new situation that Chirac rushed to Beirut immediately after the death of this ‘friend of France’ Hariri. France now faces the difficult situation of having to keep a foot in all camps. Thus, contrary to the US, it has carefully avoided condemning Hezbollah as a terrorist group, in order to avoid turning its back not only on Syria (which has links to Hezbollah), but also Iran. At the same time it is trying to keep in with the different elements of the Lebanese opposition, such as the Christian militia. And on top of this it is obliged to limit its criticisms of the White House, with whom it shares a certain convergence of interest over Lebanon. As for the Bush administration, it will no doubt turn against French diplomacy when it comes to limiting France’s ambitions in the region.
It is above all the US and its Israeli ally which will benefit most from the death of Hariri. The assassination has opened up a situation which will give the Bush administration a decisive advantage over the ‘axis of evil’ in the Middle East, i.e. Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. Since last spring, Syria has been openly threatened by Uncle Sam under the pretext that it is harbouring al-Qaida terrorists and Saddam loyalists. At the same time the Israeli authorities have launched a campaign demonising Hezbollah and the support it gets from Syria and Iran. Washington has demanded that Syria leaves Lebanon. But the ultimate aim is to destabilise the regime in Damascus and impose a Sunni government in order to isolate the Shiite Hezbollah and Iran. Thus, behind Syria, the target for the US is Iran, which has more and more asserted itself as a regional power, in particular by going ahead with its nuclear weapons programme in defiance of the US.
Thus, the pressure by the Bush administration on Syria is part of the same plan as the tough stance on Iran. If the US offensive against Iran is currently passing through Syria, this is because of the huge difficulties posed by any military intervention in Iran, which would be far greater even than the problems caused by the invasion of Iraq. Despite the leaking of Israeli plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations if Tehran does not give up its nuclear ambitions, because of the mess in Iraq it is very unlikely that the American military is planning to open up a new military front for the time being. But this is no guarantee of peace in the region. In Lebanon, it is likely that we will see murderous conflicts between the different communities, which are being stirred up by the various local cliques acting on behalf of regional or global powers. The declarations of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, for whom the retreat by Damascus will lead to civil war, are no bluff, as can be seen by the terrorist attacks that have already begun in Lebanon. What’s more, US pressure on Syria will only force the latter to strengthen its links to Iran and to give further support to the anti-US resistance in Iraq. What’s clear is that we are entering a new stage in the spread of chaos and bloodshed to new areas.
US diplomacy is also at work in the former USSR, in the republics of the Caucasus and in Central Asia. In the name of democracy and freedom, the White House is financing and encouraging movements opposing governments linked to Russia. After the ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia in 2003, and the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine, the recent ‘Tulip Revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan is a new US blow against Russian imperialism’s defensive wall.
Washington is openly boasting about this. The American ambassador in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, told CNN just after former president Akayev fled the country: “What’s happening is the concern of the Kyrgyz people and its decisions, and the USA is proud to play a supporting role in this”. You couldn’t be much clearer.
The USA is financing all these opposition movements through various government organisations and other associations specialised in promoting democracy around the world, for example George Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute (www.soros.org [9]) or the National Endowment for Democracy (www.ned.org [10]). We should underline that as well as their active participation in the anti-Russian ‘revolutions’, the USA has a real influence in Moldavia and that the US Senate has just adopted a resolution saying that democracy is the target in Belarus.
We are thus witnessing the encirclement of Russia from the west, the east and the south, all this following the military invasion of Afghanistan.
As we have already shown in our press, since the collapse of the eastern bloc, Russia has more and more lost influence in eastern and central Europe. This is expressed by the fact that all the countries which were once part of the Warsaw Pact have now joined NATO and the European Union. And on top of that, all the countries which were part of the ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’ set up by Russia in 1991 are in turmoil and have moved further and further away from Russia.
If the Russian bear has seen its empire vanishing bit by bit, this is because the US has been trying to weaken it, especially since Russia refused to go along with the US in its invasion of Iraq. The fact that Russia adopted such a position greatly increased the determination of France and Germany to face up to the US. Now Russia is getting its pay-back for failing to follow the USA.
But the main motivation of the US in trying to subject the countries of the former USSR to its influence is to prevent them from falling into the orbit of the European powers, especially Germany, whose traditional direction for imperialist expansion is the east. In fact the essential goal of the US offensive is to complete the encirclement of Europe itself. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2003 was the first step in this strategy.
The stakes are so high that the tensions between these powers can only get worse. What’s more, the game is made more complicated, and the situation all the more unstable, by the fact that regional powers like Turkey and Iran also have ambitions towards certain of the territories of the former USSR. Claiming this or that territory gives them an added card to play around their own frontiers.
For Russia, it is out of the question to stand by passively while it is reduced to a second rate regional power. It should also be added that losing certain of its former satellites means a considerable weakening of its nuclear potential. The example of Ukraine, which has important Russian bases on its soil, is significant in this respect.
Thus, far from stabilising the region, the wave of ‘democratisation’ sweeping the former republics of the USSR can only push Russia into new military adventures. The assassination by the Russian security forces of the Chechen leader Maskhadov – the only person with enough legitimacy to oversee a political resolution of the Chechnya conflict, is a clear expression of this. By eliminating Maskhadov, Russia is preventing the US from using him as part of another process of ‘democratisation’ in Chechnya.
The growing pressure of the US, both against Russia and certain European powers, can only lead the latter to more openly oppose US plans. Thus, far from submitting, France, Germany and Russia, now joined by Zapatero’s Spain adopted a harder tone at their recent summit, in particular by issuing a call for withdrawal from Iraq. And such developments will in turn push the USA towards new military responses.
Fifteen years ago, following the collapse of the eastern bloc, the western bourgeoisie promised us an era of peace in a new world order. From Iraq to ex-Yugoslavia, passing through Rwanda, Somalia, the Middle East, western and central Asia, the planet has seen an awful harvest of atrocity and violence. The bourgeoisie’s ‘wind of democracy’ will not bring any fresh air, but the fetid stench of a system in decay. Donald 25/3/05
Before the last UK general election in 2001 the ruling class were very concerned that there would be a dramatic drop in the number of people voting. When it turned out that a record low number had bothered (and 18 million hadn’t) the various leftist groups that made up the Socialist Alliance could at least say they’d done their best to get people interested in capitalism’s electoral spectacle.
Four years later and the Socialist Alliance has gone. Of its constituent parts the Socialist Party (ex-Militant), with some other groups, has formed a Socialist Green Unity Coalition (SGUC), while the Socialist Workers Party is the dominant force in the Respect coalition that also includes George Galloway and the Muslim Association of Britain.
The names have changed but the function of such groupings at election time remains the same. In 2001 there was already growing disillusion with the Labour government. Following the murderous wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on workers’ living standards, and all the cynical lies of politicians, even more people are convinced that there’s nothing to choose between any of the parties. The leftist groups feed on this estrangement. They agree with every criticism of the Labour Party while claiming to be an ‘alternative’, or at least a way of making a protest.
Yet, if you consult one of those easy-to-follow guides to what the main parties stand for, it’s not difficult to find a place for the leftists. After all, if you’re putting forward policies for a capitalist government to adopt you’re going to follow the needs of the capitalist ruling class. Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory all agree on the need for more police, just differing on the numbers; they all declare that they’re more environmentally friendly; and while Labour and Lib Dem say they’ll spend more, the Tories say they’ll be less wasteful and more efficient. The only difference when you turn to the leftists is that they want the role of the capitalist state to be made explicit.
All the leftists are against the Post Office being sold off, for the re-nationlisation of the rail, gas, electricity and water industries, against further privatisation of health services and for massive funding for education. They don’t think that there’s a problem in finding the money. As the Socialist Party insists in its manifesto “No cuts! No privatisation… It doesn’t have to be like this… Britain is a rich country”. The SWP agrees that “Blair can find £6 billion to fund the war, but he can’t find the money to invest in our community and public services” (Socialist Worker 19/3/5). According to the left it’s just a matter of priorities, the capitalist state can be made to provide – even if the historic experience of the working class and the depth of capitalism’s economic crisis completely contradict this idea.
Also, for all their criticisms of New Labour, the leftists still claim that not so long ago the Labour Party had something to do with the defence of working class interests. Where revolutionaries can show that over the last 90 years Labour has been an integral part of capitalism’s political apparatus, Respect in “An invitation to Labour Party members and supporters” (8/3/5) says that “For many it was the obvious party to join if you believed in equality, peace and justice. But Tony Blair has transformed Labour into New Labour. And New Labour no longer stands for those traditional working class values”. Dave Nellist, launching the SGUC thought that “the New Labour party of Blair and Brown has deprived the working class of political representation”.
It’s true that many people have had illusions in parties like Labour – (and in Stalinism and Trotskyism and other political tendencies that have claimed to defend the interests of the working class). The fundamental tests that definitively demonstrate the class nature of any political party are wars and revolutions. The Labour Party (and other social democratic parties across the world) showed that it had joined the ranks of our exploiters when it put its weight into the war effort in the First World War in 1914, and has served British capitalism, in government and in opposition, ever since. Yet Respect and the SGUC claim that until Blair came along Labour stood for working class interests.
The strength of the revolutionary argument is that we can draw in depth on the working class’s historic experience to demonstrate the thoroughly bourgeois nature of the Labour Party. From the 1924 government’s bombing and gassing of Kurds in Iraq, to Labour’s clamour for war in the 1930s, the austerity of the 1940s – all decades before the arrival of Blair. Leftists, like other bourgeois politicians, have no interest in the truth – as their job is to confuse and mystify.
In the case of most of the leftists, for all their supposed anger at Blair, there is also provision for openly lining up with Labour at election time. As a resolution from last year’s Respect conference states, Labour is “a mass party to whom millions of working people still owe their allegiance” and therefore “we will not challenge anti-war MPs and will consider voting for Labour in those areas where Respect is not standing and where there is no other credible left candidate.”
None of this is going to “clear out the warmongers in Downing Street and their puppets in Westminster” (George Galloway in Socialist Worker 26/3/5), nor “teach Tony Blair a lesson” (SW 19/3/5).
In a nutshell the leftists stand for state capitalism, support for Labour, and participation in capitalism’s democratic circus. For the ruling class the parliamentary game exists to convince workers that they can have a stake in the system that exploits them. In reality the only way that workers can defend their interests is in developing a sense of their class identity, in becoming conscious of the nature of capitalist society and the central role of the working class in its overthrow, in organising as a class to destroy the state power that the leftists worship. Car 1/4/5
“On present evidence we may only just cross the 50% threshold and deliver a narrow majority of the electorate to the polling stations.” This is how Robin Cook expressed the ruling class’ concern about low turnout at the forthcoming election (Guardian 18.3.05). While “barely a third of the population believed that they really can change the way the country is run by getting involved” the risk is “In the long term, ebbing public confidence in democracy will erode it of legitimacy” – as well as a short term loss of control of the political machine with the rise of populist parties.
The problem for those who want to convince us of the importance of voting is that experience teaches us time and again that a change of government only puts a new team in charge of the same policies – those demanded by the needs of British capital. So in 1979 the Tories campaigned on the issue of rising unemployment under the Labour government with the slogan “Labour isn’t working” only to preside over a continued rise in unemployment. In addition they continued with the policies – particularly redundancies in the steel and coal industries – that had been started under the Callaghan government. In 1997 the one Labour promise we could believe in was that they would stick to the previous government’s projected spending limits for public services – the continuation of austerity was not at issue between the parties. The similarity is not just between Labour and Tory policies in this country, but also extends to attacks on living standards everywhere – as for example with pensions.
Similarly, when it comes to the issue of the latest Gulf war, we saw clearly two years ago that 2 million (claimed) demonstrating on the streets of London – provided they remain mobilised behind liberal and left wing bourgeois politicians – do not weigh in government calculations.
This, not the dumbing down of the press or poor presentation of Labour values, is the reason why “the proportion of the electorate who perceive much difference between the two main parties has fallen from more than 80% under Thatcher to less than 30% under Blair” as Cook observes.
To the rescue of the democratic mystification – and legitimacy – Tony Benn tells us that polling day “is the one day in five years when every voter has exactly the same political power as the prime minister” (Guardian 17.3.05). This is a lie – and always has been. On polling day, as every other day, the bourgeoisie controls the media, politicians’ statements are widely reported, and all this with the benefit of years of opinion polls and focus groups to warn them how best to manipulate public opinion. It is all the more dishonest after a century of capitalist decadence when the policies of the national capital are determined by the demands of the crisis and the need to manoeuvre on the imperialist chess board.
What Benn sees in the lack of interest in elections is not apathy, but anger, and this too can be mobilised by: “many popular movements growing up which provide a real outlet for those who no longer feel connected to the parliamentary process and its media entourage. The result it that real politics increasingly focuses on the issues of peace, the environment, civil liberties, pensions, student debt, and the rights of women and trade unions…” In other words, we can continue to be mobilised behind those whose aim is to prevent us questioning the capitalist system as a whole.
However, underneath this, there is another process at work in the hidden development of consciousness within the working class. Right now it is often expressed only by the tiniest minorities. Some try to find coherence in the contradictory atmosphere of the various campaigns Tony Benn is relying on to keep us controlled. Others get together in small discussion groups, committed to reflecting as much on general historic questions as on recent struggles. It’s here and in the positive response to the intervention of revolutionaries, rather than in elections or in single issue reformist campaigns, that we can see signs for the future. Alex 2.4.05
The death of Pope John Paul II has given rise to a deafening barrage from the world’s media and politicians, asking us to listen respectfully to the many tributes and to take part in the mourning for ‘the Holy Father’. They are telling us that this is a true World Event, and there’s no doubt that the media campaign has already made it one.
The Catholic Church is indeed a true power of this world. For nearly two thousand years its has been lined up with the Thrones, Powers, and Dominions which the early Christians warned against. At its origins, Christianity came from the poor and the exploited. The first Christians, influenced by radical sects like the Essenes and the Zealots, were in revolt against the dying Roman Empire and they wanted all things to be held in common. But the Catholic Church and the Papacy came to preside not over the new Heaven and new Earth which the first Christians had hoped for, but over a new society of exploitation – the feudal system. In the days of feudalism, no king or emperor in Europe could by-pass the Church of Rome or altogether control it. It was a political, military, economic and ideological bastion of the first order.
The bourgeoisie’s rebellion against feudalism was initially wrapped in the clothes of Protestantism, and after that the Catholic Church lost its monopoly in the ideological domination of society. Later the Protestant reformers were succeeded by secular and anti-clerical bourgeois radicals, as in the French revolution of 1789. But once the proletariat raised its ugly head and threatened the egalitarian idyll of capitalist exploitation, a significant part of the bourgeoisie returned to the comforts of religion. And although the bourgeoisie had effectively conquered the globe by the end of the 19th century, it never succeeded in developing the entire world in its progressive and democratic image. It left large parts of the world ‘underdeveloped’ and still ideologically attached to old religious illusions.
Today the capitalist system has been in decline for almost a century. And one of the proofs that we are in the last stages of this decline is the revival of religion as a key source of ideological intoxication. In the world’s mightiest country, ‘born-again’ Christianity has a real influence not only over large sectors of the population but even in the highest echelons of the Bush administration. In the Middle East, Asia and Africa, fundamentalist Islam poses as the only answer to the misery of the oppressed. In Israel, messianic religious parties have a major say in national politics. In Europe and America, the neo-pagan fantasies of the New Age have grown in strength. Many of these ideologies hold that we are living in the Last Days; and, in a sense, they are right. Their own renaissance is an expression of the profound irrationality and hopelessness of a decomposing social order.
The role of the Catholic Church in all this should not be forgotten. There are a billion Catholics world wide and the Church of Rome still wields enormous influence in the ‘less developed’ regions: Africa, Asia, and especially Latin America. It remains a major force of social control. This control is partly exerted through the overtly reactionary doctrines which were reinforced under John Paul II’s reign, such as the Vatican’s position on contraception, which particularly since the advent of AIDS has brought about a veritable slaughter of the innocents all around the world. But the Church serves capital no less faithfully when it acts as a false opposition to the status quo. Thus John Paul II himself is being presented as the voice of all the impoverished victims of ‘excessive’ capitalism, while radical clerics like the ‘Liberation Theologians’ of Latin America work side by side with the left parties and the trade unions to divert the potential for mass revolt into the dead-ends of democracy and nationalism.
And even in Europe, the Catholic Church still has an important place in the sordid operations of the capitalist system. During the 1930s and the Second World War, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were in cahoots with the Catholic hierarchy, which gave tacit assent to the Holocaust. To this day, the Papacy refuses to acknowledge its full role in these crimes.
During the Cold War period, the Vatican became an important player in the struggle of the western bloc against Atheistic Communism (in fact, the Stalinist form of capitalism) in the east. And John Paul II, as a Pole, was uniquely placed to act as an envoy of western imperialism towards the eastern bloc. In his obituaries, he is being fêted as “the Pope who changed the world”, “the Pope who defeated Communism”. He certainly played an indispensable role in defeating the mass strikes of the Polish workers at the beginning of the ‘80s, giving his full backing to the Solidarnosc union which undermined the class movement with its religious, nationalist and democratic sermons.
Since the old bloc system broke down at the end of the ‘80s, the Papacy has returned to its more traditional imperialist alignments with the powers of Old Europe. It is this, rather than some deep devotion to the cause of humanity, which lies behind the late Pope’s critical stance on the Iraq war.
Thus we as communists will not be joining in the glorification of this or any other Pope, and we look forward to the day when the power of the churches and religions will at last be overcome. For just as you can only become King by exploiting the peasants, you can only become Pope by selling your soul to the powers that be.
Amos 4.4.05
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/winston.churchill.sten_.gun_.jpg
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/1982/general-strike-britain-1926
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2020/winston-churchill
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/northern-ireland
[9] http://www.soros.org
[10] http://www.ned.org
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/russia-caucasus-central-asia
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/socialist-workers-party
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/131/religion