The worst line peddled by the likes of Geldof and Bono is that “those eight men have the power to do some real good for the world”. They say that the world leaders meeting at the G8 summit could do something to alleviate the terrible poverty stalking the planet. That they could halt the destruction of the global environment. That all we have to do is to join the parade and shout loudly, or dance to the music of Live8. That enough pressure, applied gently and democratically, will make the leaders stop in their tracks and pay attention to the needs of the oppressed.
Nothing but illusions – and illusions that prevent real thought and real action.
What are the world leaders? They are statesmen. Men of the state – the capitalist state. And the capitalist state is there to preserve the interests of capital. Capital is wealth extorted from the labour of the many by the few. Capital is wealth that grows fat on the toil and poverty of those who produce it – not to mention the millions whom capital cannot manage to exploit at all, but condemns to permanent unemployment and hunger. This has always been the case. It’s not a question of the good or bad intentions of the leaders. It’s a question of what they have to do to preserve their system of exploitation and profit. And this is more true than ever now that capitalism, as a social system, no longer helps the human race to develop its productive powers, now that it has become a barrier to the needs of humanity. Capital has become a force for destruction. Desperate to survive in the face of razor-sharp competition, it despoils every last corner of the earth. Desperate for markets and strategic influence, it engulfs the whole of society in endless war.
The world leaders are the captains of a ship that is heading inexorably towards icebergs. They cannot change direction because their interests as a class, the interests of the profit system, make it impossible for them to see any other way forward for social life. The needs of human survival cannot be entrusted to them. The hopes of humanity do not lie in begging them to change; the hopes of humanity reside in mutiny and revolt, in the overthrow of the leaders and the system they defend.
But what kind of revolt? There are many who understand that the problem is not what the G8 decides, but in the very existence of the G8. There are many who urge us not to put our faith in the world leaders, and who see the G8 summit mainly as an opportunity to protest against the present social order. The Dissent Network, for example, says that “we live in confusing times: millionaire pop stars shake hands with politicians and tell us that what the poor need is for more power to be given to the G8, that this will make poverty history. Yet, around the world, those excluded from power are increasingly reaching the conclusion that the lives of ordinary people, wherever they are, are unlikely to be improved by the policies of the G8. And, moreover, that the task of building alternatives to the current inhumane and ecocidal social order lies squarely with us” (featured in The Guardian, 29.6.05).
Quite so! But then the problem lies in what you put forward as your alternative. For the Dissent Network, the current Bolivian uprising provides the model, or the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico. Or self-managed factories like Zanon in Argentina. These are put forward as a new kind of movement, a new opposition to capitalism, “in which power is dispersed in diffuse networks, where difference is celebrated rather than sublimated, and where there are no official leaders of spokespeople”.
But opposing capital is not just a question of forms: you have to strike at its roots. And these are all examples of movements that have either been turned aside from a real opposition to capital, or began on the wrong ground from the start. In Bolivia, militant miners are no longer struggling for their interests as workers as they have done so often in the past – they are being drowned in a “popular” movement focused on the patriotic goal of controlling Bolivia’s energy reserves. In Mexico, rebellious peasants and landless labourers have been pulled behind the nationalist outlook of the Zapatistas. In Argentina, striking workers have fallen for the old fraud that managing their own exploitation is the way forward when enterprises fail.
Not everything that moves is radical. It is perfectly possible for an incipient revolt against this system to be taken over by a falsely radical alternative that stays entirely within the framework of capital: the framework of wage labour (even if ‘managed’ by the workers), the framework of commodity production (even if small trade is preferred to big trade), the framework of the nation state (even if small and weaker nations are defended against the more powerful ones).
There is only one movement that can lead to a real confrontation with capitalism, even if it begins from what may seem like unimpressive premises like defending jobs, wages and working conditions: the movement of the working class. It is the only movement which can unite all the exploited behind their common interests. It is the only movement that leads logically to a rejection of the needs of the national economy, to affirming the need for international class solidarity against national competition and war; it is the only movement that can ascribe on its banners the collective seizure of the world’s resources, the abolition of the wages system and the ending of any need to trade.
However much it has changed its appearance since Karl Marx first used the phrase, capitalism everywhere produces its own gravediggers, the proletariat, the exploited class in this society. Capitalism can no more exist without a working class than it can exist without money or profit or unfair trade.
Marx also said that the existence of revolutionary ideas depends on the existence of a revolutionary class. The propaganda of the ruling class tells us day in and day out that there is no such thing in this society, and it’s certainly not the working class. But the fact that so many people are questioning the bases of capitalist society is itself a sign that, after more than a decade of disarray and confusion, the working class is beginning to move again. The struggles against pension ‘reform’ in France in 2003, the solidarity strikes of the German workers in 2004, these are some of the outward expressions of this deep stirring in the underground of present day society.
Those who really want to ask questions about the future this society is shaping, those who want to rediscover the real alternative, can only head in one direction. They can only join the struggle of the working class and help it to carry out its historic mission - the replacement of capitalism with a world communist society. WR 2/7/5
In the run up to the summit in Edinburgh, the finance ministers of the G8 announced a deal to end the debt burden of some of the poorest countries in Africa and elsewhere. For Chancellor Gordon Brown it was “a significant step forward”; for Bob Geldof, the moving figure behind the ‘Live8’ concerts and demonstration, it was a “victory for millions” because “Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny from the burden of debt that has crippled them and their countries for so long.” (Observer, 12/6/05). According to the statement put out by the G8 Finance ministers, the deal will give 100% debt relief to 18 countries, including Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zambia. This has been hailed by all the great and the good as a sign of what can be achieved. It is however, a lie.
The deal covers the major lending organisations but not some of the smaller ones. Countries like Ghana owe money to 9 multilateral organisations, while Latin American and Caribbean countries owe money to many organisations not party to the deal. It is claimed the deal will cancel $40bn worth of debt. In fact, since it will be delivered over 40 years, its actual value is $17bn. It also excludes a large number of poor and highly indebted countries and covers just 10% of the debts of the 62 countries judged to be most in need of debt relief (Devilish Details: Implications of the G8 Debt Deal, published by the European Network on Debt and Development). Furthermore, the amount of debt forgiven will be taken away from future aid for that country. While the money will still be given as aid, it will be redistributed amongst all eligible recipients. Thus, if a country pays $100m a year to service its debt, it will have its future aid cut by $100m and may get very little back once it has been redistributed.
Falsification, exaggeration and empty promises are the reality of international ‘aid’. The statement by the G8 Finance Ministers lauds their efforts to reduce debt, increase aid and make trade fairer in recent years. The reality is quite the opposite.
Levels of debt have increased. Between 1969 and 1976 the debt owed by non oil-producing developing countries tripled from $54.6bn to $172bn. Africa’s total external debt stands now at $300bn, which itself is only 12% of the debt owed by all ‘developing’ countries, giving a total of $2,500bn.Today, the most indebted countries pay $10bn a year to service their debts and nothing that is done changes the conditions in which debts are accumulated. Indeed, rich or poor, north or south, the level of debt is growing as a result of efforts to combat the crisis of capitalism as a whole.
The G8 Finance Ministers hailed the increases in the aid they give. However, the recent increases come after a sustained fall: “Aid levels continue to recover from the falls during 1992-97 and the trough that continued until 2001.” (OECD) and are half the level, as a proportion of income, that they were in the 1960s. In 2004 Britain gave 0.36% of GNI (Gross National Income) in aid; in 1962 it stood at 0.52% and is still less than in 1977 when it stood at 0.38%. In 1970 the richest countries agreed to meet the international target of 0.7% of GNI by 1980. To date only 5 have done this. The aid given by America, although the largest quantity, is just 0.16% of GNI, placing it second to bottom of the OECD countries.
As regards ‘fair’ trade, the reality is that the great powers have always fixed the rules of the game in their interests. In the 19th century Britain imposed its doctrine of ‘free’ trade through the barrel of a gun. The disputes currently taken to the World Trade Organisation show that nothing has changed, other than that the bourgeoisie has learnt that it is better to control such disputes rather than allow them to grow unchecked and risk a trade war.
Aid, debt relief and ‘fair’ trade have nothing to do with relieving human suffering. They are merely tools used to defend national economic and imperialist interests.
This is very clear with aid: “The war on terrorism has also boosted aid flows. Between 2001 and 2003, net aid to Afghanistan from all sources rose from USD [United States Dollars] 0.4 billion to USD 1.5bn and aid to Iraq rose from USD 0.1bn to USD 2.3bn” (OECD, ‘Final ODA Data for 2003’, from OECD website). The US is not alone in this; in the 1950s and 60s when Britain gave a larger proportion of aid, the bulk of it went to its former colonies. Britain’s current efforts are an attempt to compensate for its loss of influence in the years after 1989. By playing the moral leader and making vague promises about ending poverty, it hopes to steal a march over its more obviously self-interested rivals.
The same is true with debt, where the relief for Africa is dwarfed by the $30bn relief granted to Iraq in 2004: “This was more in one day than has been delivered to the whole of the African Continent over the last 10 years” (Devilish Details: Implications of the G8 Debt Deal). This gives the lie to all the hand-wringing about how the great powers would like to help but it is so difficult… When it is in their interests the capitalist powers have very deep pockets; when it is merely human lives at stake, as after the Tsunami, all they can find are empty promises and IOUs.
Further, when aid is given or debt reduced it always has strings attached or, in the jargon, ‘conditionalities’. These are presented as promoting freedom and democracy but are actually a means of exercising control over the recipients that is more effective than the use of gunboats. One recent study found an average of 10 conditionalities imposed on countries receiving funding under one IMF scheme (PRGF Matrix User Guide and Analysis, European Network on Debt and Development, 2004). These covered areas such as inflation targets, privatisation, economic liberalisation and tax policy. For the anti-globalisation movement and Make Poverty History, these express the domination of ‘neo-liberalism’ over alternative models and national autonomy. In reality they express the domination of the economically strong over the economically weak; a reality that has existed for as long as capitalism.
However, such conditionalities are also an expression of a second motive the great powers have for giving aid: to limit the financial and social chaos spreading around the planet. The economic crises that have gripped parts of Asia and Latin America have brought forth substantial aid in an effort to limit the damage to the world economy. The rioting in Argentina in 2001 gave an indication of the social dislocation that can result. But it is in Africa that this has gone the furthest. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been despoiled by war and barbarism in recent years, with local militias and neighbouring armies participating while the great powers pulled the strings. The human consequences in areas such as Kigali have been appalling, with many accounts of torture, rape and mutilation. However, what concerned the great powers was the possibility of such instability spreading, prompting limited UN military intervention and a growing financial intervention. Between 2001 and 2003 the DRC accounted for most of the $4.3bn increase in debt forgiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also shared an increase of $1.6bn in emergency aid with countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Angola.
In late June the BBC showed a drama called the ‘Girl in the Café’. In this fantasy a young woman got into the G8 summit and with her youthful eloquence won over the conscience of the British Prime Minister who proposed to end world poverty there and then. The idea that aid, debt relief and fair trade can end the brutality of capitalism is the same fantasy. They are not an antidote to capitalism but part of the way it functions.
North 29/06/05
For all the supposed ‘success’ of the British economy its real position is actually very fragile. As we showed in a recent article in WR (283 [3] and 284 [4], ‘Britain can’t escape the world economic crisis’), after you’ve stripped away the government falsification of statistics you’re left with a state reliant on debt, an economy increasingly incapable of funding adequate pension provision, unemployment increasing, personal debt still growing and no prospects for improvements stimulated by growth anywhere else in the world economy.
On the day of the general election there was a report from ABN Amro, one of the City’s biggest banking groups, which confirmed that “the UK economy is set for a dramatic decline” with “a chain reaction of higher unemployment and tumbling house prices, with an estimated 500,000 jobs lost from the retail, manufacturing, and construction sector by 2008”. Such a forecast is in continuity with existing trends and proposed state policies. Since Labour came to power in 1997 more than a million manufacturing jobs have gone, according to the latest official figures. And it’s not just in manufacturing, as Gordon Brown aims to cut 84,000 civil service jobs over the next three years. And don’t have any illusions that the IT sector has potential: IBM’s recent announcement that it will be cutting 13,000 jobs across Europe is just the tip of the iceberg. And don’t except the state to leap in and protect pensions: a recent survey showed the extent to which companies would just lay workers off if they were forced to pay into pensions.
There is no ‘booming Britain’, as the ruling class well knows. The £8.7 billion net public sector borrowing in May is the highest figure ever recorded. The budget deficit is one of the clearest indicators that Britain’s position is based on debt rather an underlying economic health.
One of the fundamental problems facing the British economy is that of productivity. For example, the loss of 6000 jobs at Rover was partly because cars could be produced quicker and cheaper elsewhere, but also because internationally there are 30% more car factories than the world needs (see article on Rover in WR 284 [5]).
To be more competitive on the world economy, a national capital only has limited options. Britain is opposing EU restrictions on the hours that can be worked, but longer hours produce a decline in quality. It can try to keep wages down. It’s significant that Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has said that “the 120,000 eastern Europeans who had arrived in Britain since 10 more countries joined the European Union in May 2004 had kept the lid on wages” (Guardian 14 June). It’s difficult to know whether he’s exaggerating the overall impact of workers coming from abroad, but it does show the way that the ruling class thinks.
Capitalism will try anything to get more out of workers. “Workers in warehouses across Britain are being ‘electronically tagged’ by being asked to wear small computers to cut costs and increase the efficient delivery of goods and food to supermarkets…
New US satellite- and radio-based computer technology is turning some workplaces into ‘battery farms’ and creating conditions similar to ‘prison surveillance’ according to a report from Michael Blakemore, professor of geography at Durham University.
The technology, introduced six months ago, is spreading rapidly, with up to 10,000 employees using it to supply household names such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Boots and Marks & Spencer” (Guardian 7 June).
Not only can a computer give workers orders telling them where to go and what to do, it “can also check on whether workers are taking unauthorised breaks and work out the shortest time a worker needs to complete a job”.
This is only the beginning. “Other monitoring devices are being developed in the US, including ones that can check on the productivity of secretaries by measuring the number of key strokes on their word processors; satellite technology is also being developed to monitor productivity in manufacturing jobs”.
The report claims that “Academics are worried that the system could make Britain the most surveyed society in the world” - it already has the largest number of street security cameras. What worries academics is not necessarily of any concern to our exploiters. So the future looks more and more like the world of Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984: in the pursuit of productivity no holds are barred.
It also gives a context to the remarks of Works and Pensions Minister, Margaret Hodge, when she said that there were jobs in Tesco that would meet the needs of Rover workers who had lost their jobs. Forget your skills and experience, and be prepared to be tagged as you’re moved around the store in the most productive way possible. For the capitalist state it doesn’t really matter, as long as you can be taken off the official count of unemployed.
Against the idea that there’s ‘no such thing as class’ anymore, that everyone has a ‘stake’ in society, it’s still quite clear that, in capitalist society, there’s a working class subject to a class of exploiters. The ruling class, for all its many divisions, has a view of what it wants and how it’s going to get it. It wants to fight against all the pressures on its economy, and the intensification of workers’ exploitation is one of its main weapons.
However, in contrast to the capitalist class, the working class is only beginning to struggle again in defence of its class interests. Indeed, many workers do not have any sense of being part of a class. Life is lived as an individual, as part of a family, as a worker employed in a particular industry or by a particular company. This is one of the main questions facing the working class: understanding the reality of class society, where the interests of the working class are in conflict with the interests of capitalism. Anything that divides the working class must be overcome, anything that unites workers or contributes to the development of relations of solidarity needs to be encouraged.
The ruling capitalist class is not slow to defend its interests at every opportunity. The working class needs to appreciate that the defence of its interests bring it up against its exploiters, their state and their apologists.
Car 1/7/5
The ICC participates in a number of different web forums across the world. In Spain, for example, we have been contributing to the CNT’s forums at alasbarricadas.org. We have also helped to create a new forum for the emerging internationalist milieu in Russia (see the article in International Review 118 [7] introducing the Internationalist Discussion Forum [8].
More and more these forums are a point of reference for a whole new generation of people looking for answers about the future capitalism has in store for humanity. Our participation in such forums is thus aimed at stimulating this process of discussion and providing a communist perspective on the questions it raises.
At present, the ICC in Britain has been directing most of its efforts towards two forums, urban75.net [9] and libcom.org [10]. The latter in particular is a major focus for those who identify with a ‘libertarian’ political standpoint. We have taken part in or joined up with a number of threads – on the trade unions, on council communism and anarcho-syndicalism, on whether communism is inevitable, on whether the ICC is a sect [11]…. Debate can be difficult and there is a certain amount of hostility and suspicion towards us, especially from those who are steeped in ‘official’ anarchism. Despite this, we are perfectly able to put forward our positions and in some of the threads there is a real attempt to answer what we have to say, allowing for a genuine discussion.
We certainly intend to continue taking part in these and probably other forums. Readers who want to follow our interventions and the discussions around them should search for the contributions from wld_rvn (urban75) and wld_rvn, beltov, and gustave (libcom). We also strongly encourage our readers and sympathisers to get involved in the process as well. Just click on the relevant forums and they will explain their procedures and ground rules. It would be useful if sympathisers could send us their usernames so that we can follow their threads.
In a forthcoming issue of WR we will give a fuller account of the most interesting web forum discussions we have taken part in so far.
WR 2/7/5
Live8 and its leading spokesmen have received plenty of criticism. From the Right there are charges that there’s no point in development aid as it all gets diverted by corrupt African governments. From the Left the complaint is that Geldof and Bono give legitimacy to Bush and Blair. George Monbiot (Guardian 21/6/5), for example, says of the G7’s debt-relief package “Anyone with a grasp of development politics … could see that the conditions it contains – enforced liberalisation and privatisation – are as onerous as the debts it relieves. But Geldof praised it as ‘a victory for the millions of people in the campaigns round the world’ and Bono pronounced it ‘a little piece of history’”. The actual differences are just quibbles over economic policy (see article on page 1). Both Right and Left agree that, in Monbiot’s words, “The two musicians are genuinely committed to the cause of poverty reduction”, but are naïve in what they do and say.
While Geldof actually insists on others having “mental rigour and discipline” (Times 25/6/5), his own outpourings don’t withstand much examination. In the Independent of 11 June he said that “new political leaders like Prime Minister Meles here in Ethiopia – a really smart guy – are emerging, many of who show a new commitment to the common good of their peoples”. Three days earlier the security forces of Meles Zenawi’s government had killed at least 36 people in a violent crackdown on protests, which also included the arrest of more than 3600 people.
Meles is not a new kid on the block. He was one of the figures in Blair’s Commission for Africa (like Geldof). Since the overthrow of Mengistu in 1991 he has been the central figure in the Ethiopian government, first as President and, since 1995, as Prime Minister. He’s always shown the utmost loyalty to the demands of state capitalism. In the 1970s and 80s he was a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that saw Albanian Stalinism as a model. Since coming to power Meles has undertaken classic free market reforms with the privatisation of hundreds of companies and widespread cuts in government spending, particularly in social benefits and regardless of the famines of 1992, 1997, 2000 and 2002.
One area that was not reduced was military expenditure. It’s estimated that in some recent years only 2 or 3 countries have had a higher proportion of their GDP devoted to military spending. This is partly due to the continuing tensions with Eritrea. Between May 1998 and June 2000 they fought a war along a 500-mile front, in which between 100,000 and 150,000 died. Millions of dollars intended for aid was diverted into military activity and arms procurement, even during the famine of 2000. The subsequent ‘peace’ has been very uneasy as both countries continue to reinforce their frontline positions.
The “commitment” of Meles is the same as that of Bush and Blair and the leaders of every other state in the world, to the maintenance of capitalism, using war and repression wherever necessary.
In this context Live8 and its propaganda, which claims that capitalism can abolish the suffering and impoverishment it’s created, acts as an accomplice of powers great and small. Twenty years ago Band Aid and Live Aid raised between £50m and £70m. In Ethiopia, like nearly all the other NGOs, they went along with the policies of Mengistu’s Dergue regime. This included the forced resettlement of 600,000 to South West Ethiopia where the government was in full control. This process, “the biggest deportation since the Khmer Rouge genocide”, according to the president of Médicins Sans Frontière, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 (MSF’s estimate). Geldof said that “The organisations participating in the resettlement programme should not be criticised” and that “we’ve got to give aid without worrying about population transfers” (Irish Times 4/11/85).
NGOs are not neutral in a class-divided society. Both Live8 and Live Aid have shown how they act in harmony with our rulers and their ideology.
Car 29/6/5
The referendum on the EU constition enabled the French bourgeoisie, through its left wing (the left in the Socialist Party and the extreme left) to successfully drag a large part of the working class onto the terrain of elections and democracy. It could only rejoice over this momentary victory over the proletariat. However, the bourgeoisie in France and in the leading European countries had worked very hard to get the constitution accepted. This was particularly important for the French and German bourgeoisies.
The fact that the constitution wasn’t accepted was largely the fault of the Chirac clique and of the president himself. The Gaullist faction that they represent, which came out of the Second World War, has long been a poor defender of the best interests of French capitalism. The decomposition of society has only accentuated this phenomenon, pushing each bourgeois faction more and more to defend its own interests to the detriment of the national interest. Faced with the broad rejection of the Raffarin government’s austerity policies, with the growth of popular anger and discontent, and in spite of all the efforts of the governing parties in France, supported by a host of major European politicians, the No vote won the day. This opened up an unprecedented crisis in the French political apparatus, and in the whole project of building the European Union.
Immediately after the referendum, Chirac personally put together a new government. The proletariat was told it could be well pleased. It now had two prime ministers for the price of one. Hardly had it been set up, than the new government appeared in its true light: an arena for the merciless struggle between clans and leaders on the chaotic right wing of French politics. But what was new in France was the fact that the Socialist Party had itself been swept along by the effects of decomposition. Laurent Fabius, up to now seen as a proper statesman, had, during the referendum, quite simply pushed forward his own personal interests without any other considerations, without any concern for the defence of French capital.
The Socialist Party, and notably its leadership, with the notable exception of Fabius, was the party most involved in the defence of the Yes vote. This is why it has been so shaken by the rejection of the Constitution. In purely electoral terms, yesterday’s minority around the No vote has now become the majority, while the Party leadership finds itself in precisely the opposite situation. The policy of the SP leadership (Hollande, Strauss-Khan, Lang), by trying to give a new impetus on Europe, was quite simply rejected. Fabius, having been distanced from the leadership, but legitimised as a defender of the No vote, has not lost the opportunity to make himself heard, asking via his supporters “why not a change in strategy, even a change in leadership, in the two years leading up to the Presidential election in 2007?”. As Le Monde wrote on 30 May 2005: “In the year of its anniversary, the SP is thus in crisis…. Francois Hollande weakened and discredited, Lionel Jospin retired from politics (until when?) and Laurent Fabius strengthened but not well liked in the Party”.
Strauss-Khan, announced the tone by publicly stating that “I am not sure that Fabius wants to carry on with us”. While the left wing of the SP doesn’t seem to want to throw oil on the fire, this did not prevent Socialist Senator Melanchon declaring: “The SP candidate for the 2007 presidential election cannot be a man or woman who supported the Yes vote in the referendum”. The war between leaders cannot be avoided within the party. But the crisis in the SP is not just a war of leaders; it has a much wider dimension, involving all the ideological themes and policies defended by the SP, which have been massively rejected by the electorate – not just the traditional SP voters, but the electorate as a whole.
The crisis of the French bourgeoisie is such that today no faction, right or left, really represents a credible governing team, whether on the national or international level. It is the French state, the state of the ruling class, guarantor and defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie, which now finds itself weakened. However, it would be a dangerous mistake for the working class to be lulled to sleep by the current crisis of the bourgeoisie’s political forces. The latter will have to react, especially within the SP, in order to reconstruct government unity around a credible political project. However difficult and complicated, this is an imperative for the French bourgeoisie. The capitalist class has just shown – via the united front on the left around the No vote – its ability to use its own weaknesses against the proletariat.
Courrier International, 16 June 2005, made the following comments on the current state of Europe: “The European Union is in crisis, and the coming summit of heads of state and governments will be especially delicate”. The Spanish paper ABC put it thus: “Under the dual menace of a political and economic crisis the leaders of the 25 will try to save the European Union in one of the most complex situations in recent years”. Finally, for La Libre Belgique, “the atmosphere between the European powers is destructive”. For the proletariat, it is important to understand what is alarming the bourgeois media and what is really happening on the European scene.
Contrary to what the bourgeoisie tells us, Europe is not a haven of peace or a force for peace in the world. We only have to look briefly at its history to prove this. The European Union has its roots in the period immediately after the Second World War. Europe was then being financed and politically supported by the USA to face up to the danger from the newly-formed Russian bloc. This initial European project was built on the economic level, through organs like the European Economic Community in 1957, but it was as the main prize in the global imperialist rivalry between the two blocs that the European project took on its full meaning. On two occasions France rejected Britain’s candidature to the EEC, in 1963 and 1967, because the latter was seen as the spearhead of American policy in Europe. The EU’s economic policies have allowed the European countries to develop a more effective defence of their economies in the context of sharpening global competition. But imperialist rivalries, involving all the European states and the great world powers like the US, made it impossible for Europe to be any more than an economic space, a zone of free trade, which would eventually adopt a single currency, the Euro. At the same time, the possibility of building the United States of Europe was always a myth. Capitalism can never get rid of the nation states of Europe and replace them with a kind of European Super Nation (see the article “The expansion of Europe” in IR 112).
Following the collapse of the eastern bloc, the imperialist situation changed radically. The break-up of the American bloc and the opening of the phase of decomposition resulted in a powerful tendency for each state to pursue its own interests outside any stable and lasting alliance – even the alliance between Britain and the US has not escaped this reality.
The enlargement of Europe towards the east, which has no great economic importance, expresses the greater geo-strategic stakes within the continent, as was already demonstrated by the Balkans war during the 90s. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, created in 1949 as a weapon of the American bloc against the Russian, was very significantly enlarged in 2002. The organisation went from 19 members to 26, with the entry of 7 former eastern bloc countries: after Hungary and Poland in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2002. This enlargement would seem to have no sense, given that it is strengthening an organisation which was set up to defend a bloc which no longer exists! In fact the role of NATO has evolved. It is still controlled by the US but is now a weapon of US imperialist policy in Europe against France and Germany. The entry of the former eastern bloc countries into the European Union, soon after their integration into NATO, allowed the Herald Tribune to declare; “Washington is the big winner from the enlargement of the European Union...according to a German official the entry into the EU of these fundamentally pro-American countries of central and eastern Europe signifies the end of any attempt by the EU to define itself, as well as its foreign and security policy, as being aligned against the USA”. For the same reasons the American state has tried to accelerate the process of integrating Turkey into Europe, a country which for the moment is a forward base for the US in the Middle East.
For its part, German imperialism will be obliged to respond to this US offensive towards countries which are part of its historic sphere of influence. Thus for some time Germany has been trying to come to a rapprochement with Turkey and certain central European countries. The European Constitution, defended very strongly by Germany, France and Spain, while being linked to economic concerns, was above all a means for the Franco-German couple to assert their power in this enlarged Europe.
Germany’s efforts to increase its influence in central and eastern Europe has however also irritated Paris, which is not in a position to exert a comparable influence and is destined to get weaker in comparison to its powerful ally. The failure of the Constitution is bound to increase all these tensions between the states of Europe.
For the Financial Times, “the time is one of confrontation”. The current president of the EU, M Junker of Luxemburg, declared bitterly on 18 June, following the failure of the European summit: “Europe is in a grave crisis” .The European budget has broken down. As Courrier International said on 16 June: “In the end, the UK estimated that the declaration submitted by the presidency did not provide the necessary guarantees”. Then it cited Tony Blair, who responded to the attacks by France and Germany on the question of the budget: “We must change speed to adapt to the world we’re living in…It’s a moment for renewal”.
There certainly won’t be any renewal. But what’s true and new is that the bourgeoisie in Europe is beginning to undo what it has taken so long to build – the European economic space, the European Union.
At the economic level we are seeing an irrational upsurge of national demands to the detriment of the level of cohesion attained up to now. As the Financial Times put it: “Following Germany, which no longer wants to be the EU’s milk cow, as was the case at the Berlin Summit of 1999, this time the countries which are leading the debate on the European budget are no longer the poorest ones, but the ones who pay the bills. Germany, Austria, Britain, France, Holland and Sweden are demanding a reduction of the budget which could reach up to 800 billion Euros for the period 2007-13” (cited by Courrier International, 16 June). Each of the main European powers are from now on refusing to pay what they see as being in the interest of other countries of the EU. The inability to create any political governance in Europe, under the pressure of decomposition, of every man for himself, of the economic and political antagonisms between each country, is accelerating the crisis of the EU. It is this that has brought about the crisis, not Tony Blair’s intransigence over the budget or the No vote by the French working class.
This crisis in Europe corresponds to the inability of the bourgeoisie to deal with the deepening of decomposition and the historic bankruptcy of its system. By giving way to egoistic economic demands, the European economic space has been seriously weakened, since it has been unable to adopt common rules of functioning that will enable it to face up to economic competition from America and Asia. On the economic level, all the European countries are losers to one degree or another. On the imperialist level, the crisis of the EU and the weakening of the Franco-German couple can only serve the interests of the USA and Britain. The working class must be prepared for an acceleration of the economic crisis and a sharpening of imperialist tensions. The crisis of the EU is one more expression of the growing irrationality of the capitalist system.
Tino, 28/6/05.
After the No votes in France and Holland for the new European constitution, a storm suddenly blew up over the British rebate and the spending on the CAP (the common agricultural policy of the EU). These well worn themes were rolled out by the French and British bourgeoisie to distract attention from the complete failure of the European states to convince their populations of the benefits of the European ‘project’.
The media played up to this. The Evening Standard newspaper in London even had a headline: “Now it’s war with France”. Except in the most serious of the bourgeoisie’s newspapers, this theme of confrontation between Britain and France blanked out any consideration of the significance of the demise of the constitution.
It’s certainly true that the victory of the No vote has unchained many of the inbuilt national rivalries that make the project of a truly United Europe an impossible fantasy. Both the British and the French certainly had their own conflicting agendas behind the rebate row. But the artificial stoking up of this difference also served both countries.
Since Britain has assumed the European presidency, Blair has been outlining his vision of a new dynamic Europe, with the money presently spent on the CAP being diverted to more modern sectors of the economy, to make Europe more competitive at a world level. This sounds statesmanlike, and has the advantage of still ignoring the question of the defeat of the constitution. Blair has even implied that the British rebate could be given up if the European budget is given different priorities – which is a pretty safe offer, since there is no real danger of that happening.
The Business newspaper gave a precise summation of what is actually under discussion in Blair’s new vision for Europe. They first noted that the EU budget is presently limited to one per cent of European gross national income (GNI), then observed:
“At present, agricultural subsidies make up about 40% of the EU Budget, or 0.4% of EU national income. Even if the share devoted to farmers were miraculously halved, this would only free up a pathetic 0.2% of Europe’s GNI to be spent on other, more worthwhile things; yet it is on this basis that Mr Blair believes Europe can be transformed and its people reinvigorated with European spirit. Strip away the Blairite rhetoric and you end up with a familiar empty vessel.” Hardin
The ICC held its 16th Congress in the spring. As it says in our statutes, “the International Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC”. This is why, as we always do after such meetings, we have a responsibility to the working class to give an account of it and draw out its main orientations. [1] [19]
The work of this Congress took as its central concern the revival of the working class struggle and the responsibilities this confers on our organisation, in particular as we are confronted with the development of a new generation of elements seeking a revolutionary political perspective. At the same time the Congress obviously discussed the military barbarism being unleashed by a capitalist system that faces an insurmountable economic crisis. Specific reports on the crisis and imperialist conflicts were presented, discussed and adopted by the Congress. The essential elements of these reports are contained in the resolution on the international situation, which is being published in the International Review and on our website.
As this resolution reminds us, the ICC analyses the current historical period as being the final phase of the decadence of capitalism, the phase of decomposition in which bourgeois society is rotting on its feet. As we have argued on numerous occasions, this decomposition derives from the fact that, faced with the irremediable historical collapse of the capitalist economy, none of the two antagonistic classes in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, have been able to impose their own response: world war for the first, the communist revolution for the second. These historical conditions determine the essential characteristics of the life of bourgeois society today. In particular, it’s only in the analytical framework of decomposition that we can really understand the permanence and aggravation of a whole series of calamities which are currently assailing humanity: in the first place, military barbarism, but also phenomena like the ineluctable destruction of the environment or the terrible consequences of ‘natural disasters’ like the tsunami last winter. The historical conditions linked to decomposition also weigh heavily on the proletariat as well as on its revolutionary organisations and are one of the major causes of the difficulties encountered by our class and by our organisation since the beginning of the 90s, as we have shown in previous articles (see in particular IR 62).
The 15th Congress recognised that the ICC had overcome the crisis it went through in 2001, in particular because it had understood this as a manifestation of the deleterious effects of decomposition in our own ranks. It also recognised the difficulties which the working class continued to experience in its struggles against the attacks of capital - above all, its lack of self-confidence.
However, since this Congress, held in the spring of 2003, and underlined by the plenary meeting of the ICC’s central organ in the autumn of that year, “the large-scale mobilisations of the spring of 2003 in France and Austria represent a turning point in the class struggles since 1989. They are a first significant step in the recovery of workers’ militancy after the longest period of reflux since 1968” (See IR 119 [20]).
Such a turning point was not a surprise for the ICC since its 15th Congress had already announced this perspective. The resolution on the international situation adopted by the 16th Congress made this more precise: “The struggles of 2003-2005 have the following characteristics:
- they have involved significant sectors of the working class in countries at the heart of world capitalism (as in France 2003);
- they have been preoccupied with more explicitly political questions; in particular the question of pensions raised in the struggles in France and elsewhere poses the problem of the future that capitalist society holds in store for all of us;
- they have seen the re-emergence of Germany as a focal point for workers’ struggles, for the first time since the revolutionary wave;
- the question of class solidarity has been raised in a wider and more explicit way than at any time since the struggles of the 80s, most notably in the recent movements in Germany”
The resolution also notes that the different expressions of the turning point in the balance of class forces have been accompanied by “the emergence of a new generation of elements looking for political clarity. This new generation has manifested itself both in the new influx of overtly politicised elements and in the new layers of workers entering the struggle for the first time. As evidenced in certain important demonstrations, the basis is being forged for the unity between the new generation and the ‘generation of 68’ – both the political minority which rebuilt the communist movement in the 60s and 70s and the wider strata of workers who have been through the rich experience of class struggles between 68 and 89”
The other essential preoccupation of the 16th Congress was thus to make sure our organisation is capable of living up to its responsibilities faced with the emergence of these new elements moving towards the class positions of the communist left. This was expressed in particular by the activities resolution adopted by the Congress: “The fight to win over the new generation to class positions and militantism is today at the heart of all of our activities. This applies not only to our intervention, but to our whole political reflection, our discussions and militant preoccupations”.
This work of regrouping the new militant forces necessarily involves defending them against all the efforts to destroy them or lead them into a dead-end. This can only be done if the ICC knows how to defend itself against the attacks aimed at it. The previous Congress already recognised that our organisation had been capable of repelling the pernicious attacks of the IFICC [2] [21], preventing it from attaining its declared goal – destroying the ICC or at least the greatest possible number of its sections. In October 2004 the IFICC waged a new offensive against our organisation by basing itself on the slanderous statements of a ‘Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas’ in Argentina, which presented itself as the continuator of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional, a group with whom the ICC had been developing discussions and contacts since the end of 2003. Lamentably, the IBRP made its own contribution to this shameful manoeuvre by publishing on its website, in several languages and for some months, one of the Circulo’s most hysterical and lying statements against our organisation. By reacting rapidly through documents published on our website, we repelled this assault, reducing our attackers to silence. The ‘Circulo’ was unmasked for what it was: a fiction invented by citizen B, a small-time adventurer from the southern hemisphere. This combat against the offensive of the ‘Triple Alliance’ of adventurism (B), parasitism (IFICC) and opportunism (IBRP) was also a combat for the defence of the NCI as the effort of a small nucleus of comrades to develop an understanding of the positions of the communist left in connection with the ICC [3] [22].
Faced with this work towards the searching elements, the ICC must keep up a determined intervention. But it must equally give all its attention to the depth of argumentation it puts forward in discussions and to the question of political behaviour. The emergence of new communist forces must be a real spur, stimulating the energies and capacities for reflection not only of our militants but also of elements who were affected by the reflux in the class struggle after 1989:
“The effects of contemporary historic developments (are)…. destined to repoliticise part of the generation from 1968 originally diverted and embittered by leftism. It has already begun to reactivate former militants, not only of the ICC, but of other proletarian organisations. Each of these manifestations of this fermentation represents a precious potential in the re-appropriation of class identity, the experience of struggle, and the historic perspective of the proletariat. But these different potentials cannot be realised unless they are brought together by an organisation representing the historic consciousness, the marxist method and the organisational approach which, today, only the ICC can provide. This makes the constant, long term development of the theoretical capacity, the militant understanding and the centralisation of the organisation crucial to the historical perspective”
The Congress underlined the whole importance of theoretical work in the present situation: “The organisation can neither fulfil its responsibilities towards revolutionary minorities, nor those towards the class as a whole, unless it is capable of understanding the process preparing the future party in the broader context of the general evolution of the class struggle. The capacity of the ICC to analyse the evolving balance of class forces, and to intervene in the struggles and towards the political reflection in the class, is of long-term importance for the evolution of the class struggle. But already now, in the immediate term, it is crucial in the conquering of our leading role towards the new politicised generation ... The organisation must continue this theoretical reflection, drawing a maximum of concrete lessons from its intervention, overcoming schemata from the past”.
Finally, the Congress focused on the question summed up in the concluding paragraph of our platform: “Relations between the different parts of the organisation and the ties between militants necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society and therefore cannot constitute an island of communist relations within capitalism. Nevertheless, they cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organisation of the class which is the bearer of communism”.
And such a requirement, like any other faced by a marxist organisation, demands theoretical reflection:
“Since questions of organisation and comportment are today at the heart of debates inside and outside the organisation, a central axis of our theoretical work in the coming two years will be the discussion of the different orientation texts and the contributions of the investigation commission, in particular the text on ethics. These issues bring us to the roots of the recent organisational crises, touch the very basis of our militant engagement, and are key issues of the revolution in the epoch of decomposition. They are thus destined to play a leading role in the renewal of militant conviction and in the recovery of the taste for theory and the marxist method of tackling each question with an historical and theoretical approach”.
The Congresses of the ICC are always enthusiastic moments for all the members. How could it be otherwise when militants from three continents and 13 countries, animated by the same convictions, come together to discuss all the perspectives of the historic movement of the proletariat? But the 16th Congress stimulated even more enthusiasm than most of the previous ones.
For nearly half its thirty years of existence, the ICC has worked in the context of a reflux in proletarian consciousness, an asphyxiation of its struggles and a delay in the emergence of new militant forces. For more than a decade, a central slogan for our organisation has been to ‘hold on’. This was a difficult test and a certain number of its ‘old’ militants did not pass it (in particular those who formed the IFICC and those who gave up the struggle during the crises we have been through during this period).
Today, while the perspective is becoming brighter, we can say that the ICC, as a whole, has overcome this ordeal. And it has come out of it the stronger. It has strengthened itself politically, as the readers of our press can judge (and we are receiving a growing number of letters of encouragement from them). But also a numerical strengthening, since there are already more new members than the defections that we experienced with the crisis of 2001. And what is remarkable is that a significant number of these new members are young elements who have not been through the whole deformation that results from being militants in leftist organisations. Young elements whose dynamism and enthusiasm is making up for the tired and exhausted ‘militant forces’ who have left us.
This enthusiasm present at the 16th Congress was quite lucid. It had nothing in common with the illusory euphoria which has affected other Congresses of our organisation (a euphoria which was often especially marked among those who have since left us). After 30 years of existence, the ICC has learned [4] [23], sometimes painfully, that the road that leads to the revolution is not a highway, that it is tortuous and full of traps and ambushes laid by the ruling class for its mortal enemy, the working class, in order to divert it from its historic goal. The members of our organisation know very well today that it is not an easy thing to be a militant: that it demands not only a very solid conviction, but also a great deal of selflessness, tenacity and patience.
Understanding the difficulty of our task does not discourage us. On the contrary, it helps to make us more enthusiastic.
At this time there is a clear increase in the number of people taking part in our public meetings, as well as a growing number of letters from Greece, Russia, Moldavia, Brazil, Argentina and Algeria, in which contacts directly ask how to join the organisation, propose to begin a discussion or simply ask for publications – but always with a militant perspective. All these elements allow us to hope for the development of communist positions in countries where the ICC does not yet have a section, or the creation of new sections in these countries. We salute these comrades who are moving towards communist positions and towards our organisation. We say to them: “You have made a good choice, the only one possible if you aim to integrate yourselves into the struggle for the proletarian revolution. But this is not the easiest of choices: you will not have a lot of immediate success, you need patience and tenacity and to learn not to be put off when the results you obtain don’t quite live up to your hopes. But you will not be alone: the militants of the ICC are at your sides and they are conscious of the responsibility that your approach confers on them. Their will, expressed at the 16th Congress, is to live up to these responsibilities”.
ICC, 2/7/05.
[1] [24] A more exhaustive account of the work of the Congress will be published in IR 122.
[2] [25] The so-called ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’, composed of longstanding militants of our organisation who began to behave like hysterical fanatics looking for scapegoats, as thugs and finally as informers.
[3] [26] See on this subject our article “The Nucleo Comunista Internacional, an episode in the proletariat’s striving for consciousness [27]”, IR 120
[4] [28] Or rather re-learned, since this is a lesson that communist organisations of the past were well aware of, in particular the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left from which the ICC claims descent.
If there’s something in the subject of an event that might attract people who want to talk about the class struggle, or any other aspect of communist politics, then the ICC will be interested. So when some of our militants went to a ‘Community Action Gathering’ held in East London in mid-June, we didn’t like the divisive workshops, but thought that one of the event’s aims - the promotion of “anti-authoritarian, anti-state, anti-capitalist and pro-working class politics, and collective, non-hierarchical forms of organisation” - might have interested people concerned with working class struggle.
Obviously we weren’t blind to the fact that the meeting was organised by two groups noted for campaigning for micro-reforms. The Hackney Independent website pictures abandoned cars that they want the local council to move, they worry about phone masts, they don’t want schools closed and they stood in the recent general election. Haringey Solidarity are concerned about advertising billboards, encourage people to sue the police for damages and want those with money problems to share/exchange second-hand items. But despite such unpromising credentials there was still the possibility that among those participating might be people who might want to discuss the defence of working class interests.
In a workshop on housing and urban regeneration the whole approach was on how to make the local state work. It was all very reminiscent of Fabianism and ‘municipal socialism’. Against private housing and council regeneration, that they thought was a cover for gentrification, there was a shared illusion in the possibility of “decent and affordable housing for all” in capitalism. At a different workshop there was a denial of this possibility, but still a belief that capitalism was capable of granting lasting reforms. For example, the establishment of the NHS in 1948 was seen as a great workers’ gain, with the fact that it was a creation of the capitalist state dismissed out of hand.
Not only were reforms, great and small, seen as the only possible focus for the class struggle, but also trade unions were presented as the means for this struggle. There were some attempts to talk about solidarity that went beyond the ritual of financial collections etc, as well as some basic questions about the development of workers’ self-organisation. However, talk about workers’ organising themselves came up against a basic denial of the way unions work against the attempts of workers to overcome their divisions and develop relations of solidarity. We were told that unions were “shit” and that unions are “part of capitalism”, but also that workers didn’t need to be told this as they use unions like they do shops, without illusions.
Throughout the gathering there were many disparaging remarks about Trotskyists, and the SWP in particular. Yet it was difficult to see much difference between what these campaigning ‘community activists’ were saying and what you can read in the big leftist papers. There was a more libertarian vocabulary employed, but there was also a lot of fashionable modern management-speak. In terms of political orientation the only difference between ‘hierarchical’ Trotskyism and ‘libertarian community activism’ is that the former sows illusions in the capitalist state as a whole, while the latter seem to be the ideology of ginger groups who want to improve the functioning of local councils.
At one point we heard that every situation, every struggle is different and should be seen as such. In reality, the basis of working class solidarity lies in understanding what we have in common, what unites us. It’s divisive to single out the struggle of fire fighters or food workers from the situation of those facing deportation or unemployment or who are anxious about the drive to war. We all face the same ruling class, the same capitalist state, and our strength lies in a unified struggle.
The brand of ‘community activism’ served up at the ‘gathering’ was most dangerous in the way that it concentrated its energies on the state. Campaigns for concessions from local councils risk drawing activists into the lowest reaches of the local state. Yes, housing has always been a major question for the working class, but it’s a problem that can only be solved at the level of the transformation of society by the whole working class after the destruction of the capitalist state. The capitalist state can only be an instrument of the ruling capitalist class, can only work against the interests of the exploited. In the old phrase, the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. In their struggles workers come up against the state locally and nationally. They also come up against ideas that claim that the working class does not have to liberate itself through its own struggles but can rely on unions, local councils, or any other form of the capitalist state.
During one discussion it was claimed that we probably all shared a view of what future society we’d like to see and on the need for fundamental social change. This was impossible to verify as none of the campaigns advocated had any perspective that might possibly challenge capitalism. Certainly the defensive struggles of the working class contribute to a growing confidence in the class, to the development of consciousness and self-organisation; but divisive campaigns that foster illusions in the state undermine the class struggle.
Between sessions at this event there was a break. Before resuming discussions one of the leaders of this ‘non-hierarchical’ meeting insisted (without any dissent) that there should be no talk of revolution during the remainder of the day. In continuity with this there was a thread on the LibCom website following the ‘gathering’ that referred to the presence of “ICC loons” – in contrast to the “sensible people” that have sensible discussions. This is a clear adaptation to the ‘common sense’ of bourgeois ideology. It’s supposed to be sensible to offer endless campaigns that never challenge capitalism, but crazy to talk of revolution and how the struggle of the working class offers a perspective for the transformation of society.
Norm 29/6/05.
See also this short article, Engels on the Housing Question [30]
Against the idea of “decent and affordable housing for all” within capitalism it’s possible to turn to articles that Friedrich Engels wrote on the ‘Housing Question’ [32] in 1872. “It is not the solution of the housing question which simultaneously solves the social question, but only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible. To want to solve the housing question while at the same time desiring to maintain the modern big cities is an absurdity. The modern big cities, however, will be abolished only by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, and when this is once on the way there will be quite other things to do than supplying each worker with a little house and garden.” Having “provided proof of how impractical these so-called ‘practical’ socialists really are” Engels insists that “practical socialism consists rather in correct knowledge of the capitalist mode of production from all its various sides. A working class which is secure in this knowledge will never be in doubt in any given case against which social institutions, and in what manner, its main attacks should be directed.”
WR, 2/7/05.
In Zimbabwe, the poor in shanty towns, slums, illegal dwellings, and even some in brick houses with Court Orders against demolition, have been summarily evicted on a massive scale, leaving them with nothing. To add insult to the injury, and the inevitable deaths, this has been called Operation Murambatsvina, meaning ‘clearing out the rubbish’. As ever, the capitalist state has little interest in counting its victims, but estimates on the number made homeless range from 275,000 (BBC 1.7.05) to a million (Times 1.7.05). The toll of human suffering is, as local people have pointed out, of tsunami proportions.
The press in Britain has long talked about Mugabe as a dictator who is not just evil, but mad as well. And there is no doubt that Zimbabwe is caught up in a real spiral of irrationality and destruction.
One of the main issues in the campaign about the Mugabe government’s human rights abuses has been the violent expulsion of white farmers. Over the last 5 years or so, it has evicted farmers – and large numbers of farm workers – from going concerns, in order to ‘reward’ a surplus population of ‘veterans’ from the fighting in 1970s. When we consider that this ‘land reform’ has not been accompanied by any serious attempt to settle the new occupants or provide them with the means to run the farms profitably, when we add to that the fact that some of these veterans have also been targeted in Operation Murambatsvina, we can see that they have not been rewarded but tricked, and dumped out of harm’s way.
Having dumped the ‘veterans’ on the confiscated farms, Mugabe has now launched “a pre-emptive strike against poor urban people who will be worst affected by the inevitable hunger which is going to stalk the population in the next few months” (Welshman Ncube quoted at bbc.co.uk). The aim is to disperse the hungry before they can engage in unrest, but the result will be to intensify the chaotic state of the economy as a whole.
What is most remarkable is not that the Zimbabwe government should attack its population in this way, but that it has caused such an international outcry. There are many examples of similar slum clearances: “…around 300,000 people were bulldozed out of the Maroko neighbourhood in Lagos in a single week [in 1990]… Soldiers cleared the Washington area of Abidjan in Ivory Coast at gunpoint in 2002, turning people out of their homes, sometimes with less than an hour’s notice…” (from bbc.co.uk). Similar examples could be given from India, Indonesia, and many other countries.
The Zimbabwe evictions coincide with a campaign against the Mugabe government orchestrated by Britain, the former colonial master, which wants to hold on to whatever imperialist influence it can in this area of the world. This is why they have been publicised and condemned.
Britain essentially lost its ability to hang on to its empire in World War 2, ceding most of its influence to the USA through the process of decolonisation. Zimbabwe, however, did not gain its independence as part of the post-war controlled decolonisation process, but as a result of a power struggle within the bourgeoisie involving the white minority government, Mugabe’s ZANU (mainly Shona) and ZAPU (mainly Ndebe). After 15 years of this armed power struggle, ZANU won and was installed in power by the Lancaster House agreement in 1980. At this stage, the new government, now blessed by the old colonial power, cancelled its arms contracts with the Eastern bloc and placed orders with Britain, signalling its orientation to the Western bloc.
The disintegration of the bloc system at the beginning of the 90s profoundly altered this situation. In a global climate of ‘every man for himself’ Mugabe moved further and further away from any fixed alliances and Zimbabwe began to engage in imperialist adventures of its own, in particular a costly intervention in the Congo war. The disastrous state of the Zimbabwean economy testifies to the impossibility of such countries following an independent course, but Mugabe has certainly succeeded in annoying his former patrons.
The British state’s concerns about what is happening in Zimbabwe are not therefore about the miserable state of the population, but about the threat Mugabe’s policies pose to its imperialist interests in the region.
Alex 2.7.05
This article was written 10 years ago, for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is no less relevant today, even if the number of wars has increased since then, above all with the gigantic US and British military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article was published in International Review 85. The ICC is a political descendant of the small number of left communist organisations who, between 1939 and 1945, denounced the Second World War for what it really was: an imperialist war, just like the first, a war in the interests of the capitalist classes of Britain, the USA, Germany, Japan, Russia… They therefore took the same position as revolutionaries had taken during the First World War: no support for either side, no let up in the class struggle, no concession to patriotism and ‘defending my country’. No concession either to the idea of anti-fascism, which argued that the workers of the world should forget their own interests and ally with exploiters and imperialists like Churchill and Stalin against the ‘greater evil’ of Nazism. Hiroshima and Nagasaki – not to mention the slaughter and starvation of the German population at the end of the war – proved that there was indeed no lesser evil in these six years of horrible massacre. To this day, the idea that the Second World War was a ‘good war’ has been used to justify virtually every war since, to keep alive the lie that capitalist democracy is worth fighting and dying for. To oppose war today, it is essential to break with the whole mythology of the Second World War as a war against evil. There are no good or holy wars in this dying society except the class war of the exploited in all countries, the war against exploitation, the war against war.
With the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bourgeoisie has plumbed new depths of cynicism and mendacity. For this high point of barbarity was executed, not by some dictator or blood crazed madman, but by the very ‘virtuous’ American democracy. To justify the monstrous crime, the whole world bourgeoisie has shamelessly repeated the lie peddled at the time that the atomic bomb was only used to shorten and limit the suffering caused by the continuation of the war with Japan. The American bourgeoisie even proposed to issue an anniversary stamp, inscribed: “Atomic bombs accelerated the end of the war. August 1945”. Even if this anniversary was a further opportunity to mark the growing opposition in Japan towards the US ex-godfather, the Japanese Prime Minister nonetheless made his own precious contribution to the lie about the necessity of the bomb, by presenting for the first time Japan’s apologies for its crimes committed during World War II. Victors and vanquished thus came together to develop this disgusting campaign aimed at justifying one of history’s greatest crimes.
In total, the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 claimed 522,000 victims. Many cancers of the lung and thyroid only became apparent during the 50s and 60s, and even today the effects of radiation still claim victims: cases of leukaemia are ten times more frequent in Hiroshima than in the rest of Japan.
To justify such a crime, and to answer the legitimate shock provoked by the bomb’s awful effects, Truman - the US president who ordered the nuclear holocaust - and his accomplice Winston Churchill put about a cynical lie: that the use of the atomic bomb had saved about a million lives, which would have been lost had American troops been forced to invade Japan. In short, and despite appearances, the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which are still killing fifty years later, were pacifist bombs! But this peculiarly revolting tale is given the lie by numerous historical studies published by the bourgeoisie itself.
If we examine Japan’s military situation when Germany capitulated, it is clear that the country was already completely defeated. Its air force, that vital weapon of World War II, had been reduced to a handful of aircraft, generally piloted by adolescents whose fanaticism was only matched by their inexperience. Both the navy and the merchant marine had been virtually wiped out. The anti-aircraft defences were so full of holes that the US B29s were able to carry out thousands of raids throughout the spring of 1945, almost without losses. Churchill himself points this out in Volume 12 of his war memoirs.
A 1945 study by the US secret service, published by the New York Times in 1989, revealed that: “Realising that the country was defeated, the Japanese emperor had decided by 20th June 1945, to end all hostilities and to start negotiations from 11th July onwards, with a view to bringing hostilities to an end” (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990).
Truman was perfectly well aware of the situation. Nonetheless, once he was told of the success of the first experimental atomic test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 [1] [34], he decided, in the middle of the Potsdam Conference between himself, Churchill, and Stalin[2] [35], to use the atomic weapon against Japanese towns. This decision had nothing to do with a desire to hasten the end of the war with Japan, as is testified by a conversation between Leo Szilard, one of the fathers of the bomb, and the US Secretary of State for War, J. Byrnes. When Szilard expressed concern at the dangers of using the atomic weapon, Byrnes replied that “he did not claim that it was necessary to use the bomb to win the war. His idea was that the possession and use of the bomb would make Russia more controllable” (ibid).
And if any further argument were necessary, let us leave some of the most important US military leaders to speak for themselves. For Chief of General Staff Admiral Leahy, “The Japanese were already beaten and ready to capitulate. The use of this barbaric weapon made no material contribution to our fight against Japan” (ibid). This opinion was also shared by Eisenhower.
The idea that the atomic bomb was used to force Japan to capitulate, and to stop the slaughter, has nothing to do with reality. It is a lie which has been constructed to meet the needs of the bourgeoisie’s war propaganda, one of the greatest achievements of the massive brain-washing campaign needed to justify the greatest massacre in world history: the 1939/45 war.
We should emphasize that, whatever the hesitations or short-term view of certain members of the ruling class, faced with this terrifying weapon, Truman’s decision was anything but that of a madman, or an isolated individual. On the contrary, it expressed the implacable logic of all imperialisms: death and destruction for humanity, so that one class, the bourgeoisie, should survive confronted with the historic crisis of its system of exploitation, and its own irreversible decadence.
Contrary to all the lies that have been peddled since 1945, about the supposed victory of a democracy synonymous with peace, World War II was barely over than the new front line of imperialist confrontation was being drawn. Just as the Treaty of Versailles contained inevitably within it the seeds of another war, so Yalta already contained the split between the main victor of 1945, the USA, and its Russian challenger. Thanks to World War II, Russia had risen from being a minor economic power to world ranking imperialism, which could not but threaten the American superpower. In spring 1945, the USSR was already using its military strength to carve out a bloc in Eastern Europe. Yalta did nothing but caution the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist sharks. What one balance of forces could set up, another could undo. In the summer of 1945, the real problem facing the American state was thus not, as the schoolbooks tell us, how to make Japan capitulate as soon as possible, but how to confront and contain the imperialist drive of its ‘great Russian ally.
Winston Churchill, the real leader on the Allied side of World War II, was quick to understand that a new front was opening, and constantly to exhort the Americans to face up to it. He wrote in his memoirs: “The closer a war conducted by a coalition comes to its end, the more importance is taken by the political aspects. Above all, in Washington they should have seen further and wider (...) The destruction of Germany’s military power had provoked a radical transformation of the relationship between Communist Russia and the Western democracies. They had lost that common enemy which was practically the only thing uniting them”. He concluded that “Soviet Russia had become a mortal danger for the free world, that it was necessary without delay to create a new front to stop its forward march, and that this front should be as far East as possible” (Memoirs, Vol. 12, May 1945). Nothing could be clearer. Churchill analysed, very lucidly, the fact that a new war was already beginning while World War II had not yet come to an end.
In the spring of 1945, Churchill was already doing everything he could to oppose the advance of Russian armies into Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, etc). Doggedly, he sought to bring the new American president Truman around to his own opinion. The latter, after some hesitations[3] [36], completely accepted Churchill’s thesis that “the Soviet threat had already replaced the Nazi enemy” (ibid).
It is not difficult to understand the complete and unanimous support that the Churchill government gave to Truman’s decision to begin the atomic bombardment of Japanese cities. On 22nd July, 1945, Churchill wrote: “[with the bomb] we now have something in hand which will re-establish the equilibrium with the Russians. The secret of this explosive and the ability to use it will completely transform the diplomatic equilibrium, which had been adrift since the defeat of Germany”. That this should cause the deaths, in atrocious suffering, of hundreds of thousands of human beings, left this ‘defender of the free world’ and ‘saviour of democracy’ cold. When he heard the news of the Hiroshima explosion, he jumped for joy, and Lord Allenbrooke, one of Churchill’s advisers, even wrote: “Churchill was enthusiastic, and already saw himself with the ability to eliminate all Russia’s major industrial population centres” (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990). This is what was in the mind of this great defender of civilisation and irreplaceable humanitarian values, at the end of five years of carnage that had left 50 million dead!
The nuclear holocaust which broke over Japan in August 1945, this terrifying expression of war’s absolute barbarity in capitalist decadence, was thus not designed by the ‘clean’ American democracy to limit the suffering caused by a continuation of the war with Japan, any more than it met a direct military need. Its real aim was to send a message of terror to the USSR, to force the latter to restrain its imperialist ambitions, and accept the conditions of the pax americana. To give the message greater strength, the American state dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, a town of minor importance at the military level, which wiped out the main working class district. This was also why Truman refused the suggestion of some of his advisers that the explosion of a nuclear weapon over a sparsely populated region would be largely sufficient to force Japan to capitulate. No, in the murderous logic of imperialism, two cities had to be vaporised to intimidate Stalin, and to restrain the one-time Soviet ally’s imperialist ambitions.
What lessons should the working class draw from this terrible tragedy and its revolting use by the bourgeoisie?
In the first place, there is nothing inevitable about the unleashing of capitalist barbarism. The scientific organisation of such carnage was only possible because the proletariat had been beaten worldwide by the most terrible and implacable counter-revolution of its entire history. Broken by the Stalinist and fascist terror, completely confused by the enormous lie identifying Stalinism with communism, the working class allowed itself to be caught in the deadly trap of the defence of democracy, with the Stalinists’ active and indispensable complicity. This reduced it to a great mass of cannon-fodder completely at the mercy of the bourgeoisie. Today, whatever the proletariat’s difficulty in deepening its struggle, the situation is quite different. In the great proletarian concentrations, this is not a time of union with the exploiters, but of the expansion and deepening of the class struggle.
Contrary to the bourgeoisie’s endlessly repeated lie, which presents the 1939-45 imperialist war as one between the fascist and democratic ‘systems’, the war’s 50 million dead were victims of the capitalist system as a whole. Barbarity and crimes against humanity were not the acts of fascism alone. Our famous ‘Allies’, those self-proclaimed ‘defenders of civilisation’ gathered under the banner of democracy, have hands as red with blood as do the Axis powers. The nuclear storm unleashed in August 1945 was particularly atrocious, but it was only one of many crimes perpetrated throughout the war by these ‘white knights’ of democracy[4] [37].
The horror of Hiroshima also opened a new period in capitalism’s plunge into decadence. Henceforth, permanent war became capitalism’s daily way of life. The Treaty of Versailles heralded the next World War; the bomb dropped on Hiroshima marked the real beginning of the ‘Cold War’ between the USA and USSR, which was to spread bloodshed over the four corners of the earth for more than forty years. This is why, unlike the years after 1918, those that followed 1945 saw no disarmament but, on the contrary, a huge growth in arms spending amongst all the victors of the conflict (the USSR already had the atomic bomb by 1949). Within this framework, the entire economy, under the direction of state capitalism in its various forms, was run in the service of war. Also unlike the period at the end of World War I, state capitalism everywhere strengthened its totalitarian grip on the whole of society. Only the state could mobilise the gigantic resources necessary, in particular for the development of a nuclear arsenal. The Manhattan Project was thus only the first in a long and sinister series, leading to the most gigantic and insane arms race in history.
Far from heralding an era of peace, 1945 opened a period of barbarity, made still worse by the constant threat of nuclear destruction of the entire planet. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki still haunt humanity’s memory today, it is because they are such tragic symbols of how directly decadent capitalism threatens the very survival of the human species.
This terrible Damoclean sword, hanging over humanity’s head, thus confers an enormous responsibility on the proletariat, the only force capable of real opposition to capitalism’s military barbarity. Although the threat has temporarily retreated with the collapse of the Russian and American blocs, the responsibility is still there, and the proletariat cannot let its guard drop for an instant. Indeed, war has never been so evident as it is today, from Africa, to the territories of the ex-USSR, to the bloody conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, which has brought war to Europe for the first time since 1945[5] [38]. And we need only look at the bourgeoisie’s determination to justify the bombs of August 45, to understand that when Clinton declares “if we had to do it again, we would” (Liberation, 11th April 1995), he is only expressing the opinion of all his class. Behind the hypocritical speeches about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, each state is doing everything it can either to obtain just such an arsenal, or to perfect its existing one. The research aimed at miniaturising nuclear weapons, and so making their use easier and more commonplace, is accelerating. As Liberation put it: “The studies by Western general staffs based on the response ‘of the strong man to the madman’ are reviving the idea of a limited, tactical use of nuclear weapons. After Hiroshima, their use became taboo. After the Cold War, the taboo has become uncertain” (5th August, 1995).
The horror of nuclear warfare is not something that belongs to a distant past. Quite the contrary: it is the future that decomposing capitalism has in store for humanity if the proletariat lets it happen. Decomposition does not stop or diminish the omnipresence of war. The chaos and the law of “every man for himself” only make its danger still more uncontrollable. The great imperialist powers are already stirring chaos to defend their own sordid interests, and we can be certain that if the working class fails to halt their criminal activity, they will not hesitate to use all the weapons at their disposal, from the fragmentation bombs used so extensively in the Gulf War, to nuclear and chemical weapons. Capitalist decomposition has only one perspective to offer: the destruction, bit by bit, of the planet and its inhabitants. The proletariat must not give an inch, either to the siren calls of pacifism, or to the defence of the democracy, in whose name the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated. On the contrary, it must remain firmly on its class terrain: the struggle against this system of death and destruction, capitalism.
Julien, 24/8/95
[1] [39] To develop the atomic bomb, the US state mobilised all the resources of science and put them at the military’s disposal. Two billion dollars were devoted to the Manhattan Project, set up by that great humanitarian Roosevelt. Every university in the country joined in. Directly or indirectly, all the greatest physicists from Einstein to Oppenheimer took part. Six Nobel prize-winners took part in the bomb’s creation. This gigantic mobilisation of every scientific resource for war expresses a general characteristic of decadent capitalism. State capitalism, whether openly totalitarian or draped in the democratic flag, colonizes and militarises the whole of science. Under the reign of capitalism, science lives and develops through and for war. This reality has not ceased to get worse since 1945.
[2] [40] The essential aim of this conference, especially for Churchill who was its main instigator, was to make it clear to Stalin’s USSR that it should restrain its imperialist ambitions, and that there were limits which should not be passed.
[3] [41] Throughout the spring of 1945, Churchill raged at the Americans’ softness in letting the Russian army absorb the whole of Eastern Europe. This hesitation on the part of the US government in confronting the Russian state’s imperialist appetite head-on expressed the American bourgeoisie’s relative inexperience in the role of world superpower - an experience which the British bourgeoisie possessed in abundance. But it was also the expression of not particularly friendly feelings towards its British ally. The fact that Britain emerged seriously weakened from the war, and that its positions in Europe should be threatened by the Russian bear, could only make her more docile in the face of the diktats which Uncle Sam was going to impose, without delay, even on its closest ‘friends’. It is another example of the ‘frank and harmonious’ relationships that reign among the imperialist sharks.
[4] [42] See International Review no.66, “Crimes of the great democracies”.
[5] [43] Immediately after 1945, the bourgeoisie presented the Cold War as a war between two different systems: democracy against communist totalitarianism. With this lie, it continued to confuse the working class, at the same time hiding the classical and sordid imperialist nature of the one-time ‘Allies’. In a sense, they managed to pull off the same coup in 1989, proclaiming that peace would reign at last with the fall of “communism”. From the Gulf to Yugoslavia, we have seen since then just what the promises of Bush, Gorbachev and Co were worth.
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