In the week just after mid-May, there were three particular events in the Middle East: the first was an incident involving an attack by US fighter jets on an Iranian-backed militia in south-eastern Syria fighting for Assad; a general election in Iran; and President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia. The context for these events, which mean a deepening of tensions and greater military dangers for the world, is the tendency for centrifugal forces to increasingly dominate over relatively stable blocs and alliances, and how this takes place in a world where American power is increasingly resented and weakening. A couple of weeks after Trump’s visit, this dangerous dynamic was emphasised and reinforced by the sudden and coordinated isolation of Qatar by land, sea and air, led by Saudi Arabia, with apparent US backing. This amounts to a call for Qatari regime change and is virtually a declaration of war. There is no doubt that the Saudi action, in line with its increasingly reckless behaviour, marks a rise in tensions and a more and more aggressive approach towards Iran. At a wider level, and again in line with already developing tendencies, clear differences are shown within Nato between the US and Germany. On June 7, the German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, responding to the Qatar crisis, stated that the "Trumpification of relations (within the Middle East) is particularly dangerous". There is more on this development below.
The historical weakening of the US as a superpower has been a developing expression since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. It's not weakening militarily, on the contrary, and it is still a very powerful economy; but at the level of its global domination, both militarily and political, its influence has eroded. This weakening gives further strength to the innate capitalist tendency of "dog eat dog", each for themselves, which in turn, further acts on US weakening and creates the downward spiral that is typical of this phase of capitalism’s decline which we refer to as the phase of decomposition. After the collapse of Russia, instead of enjoying a great "victory", the US found its hold on its allies beginning to unravel. The first (1990/91) Gulf War was an attempt by the US to pull its allies back into line but it only briefly succeeded, with centrifugal tendencies dominating more than ever once it was over, most obviously in the war in ex-Yugoslavia which saw Germany, France and even Britain backing their own pawns against those of the US. The second Gulf War against Saddam saw a greater distancing by Germany in particular. The re-emergence of Russia onto the imperialist scene has caused the US problems that it's found difficult to deal with, and US and European relations are at very low ebb, as shown by the recent G7 meeting. And even some of its oldest "friends", Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel (who all have tensions with each other) are trying to take advantage of the weaknesses of the US. Along with Turkey and Bahrain they are rather unstable allies.
The US hasn't won a war since it invaded Granada in 1983, a country with no standing army. There have been ongoing military debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya which have been costly in terms of lives and material, laying the ground for more problems in relation to those areas along with those posed by China and North Korea. "Make America Great Again" is a re-launch of the 1990's NeoCon thinking which admits the basic premise of a weakened US and, like the present situation, wants to strike out. Though a token effort militarily, the bombing of the Syrian Shayrat air-base by Tomahawk missiles in early April and dropping the US's biggest non-nuclear bomb, the "Massive Ordnance Air Blast" (MOAB) on the Nangerhar region of Afghanistan a week later, was supposed to send out a powerful message that the US was back and fighting. But, along with the increasing numbers of civilians killed by US and Coalition air-strikes in Syria and Iraq and by drone strikes in Pakistan, these sorts of actions simply make more enemies for the US and the west. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, initiated under Obama, is now being put into question; on the other hand, the "Pivot" to Asia, with the principal aim of containing Chinese expansion, was already being set up under Obama and is likely to be intensified under Trump, who has already engaged in some verbal sabre-rattling by claiming that he was dispatching an “armada” towards North Korea in response to the regime’s nuclear posturing (in fact this turned out to be something of a bluff by Trump[1]). In Africa the US is also reinforcing its presence and any ideas about the US under Trump "withdrawing" from the world stage have been flatly contradicted.
In a sudden turn of events that took the Qatari regime, and many others, by surprise, Saudi Arabia, its proxies in Bahrain and the UAE, along with the support of Egypt and some smaller states, completely cut off this small country from the rest of the world. It was an act of war. The reason for the move according to the Saudi's, was that Qatar was "Supporting terrorism" and "supplying Iranian-backed terrorist groups" which includes its support for Hamas in Gaza[2]. The Saudi move was endorsed by Trump who said that his visit was "paying off" and, in an open disagreement with Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said that the move was "necessary"[3]. The Saudi move would have been quietly egged-on by Israel. That Qatar, like Saudi and the rest of imperialism, supports factions of terrorism is beyond dispute; the Qatari jihadists fighting in the 2011 war in Libya, who were backed by the British and French, were particularly indiscriminate and horrific in their slaughter. Qatar, like Saudi, has backed the al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front in Syria. The Qatari regime has also backed the Muslim Brotherhood, including its rise to government in Egypt during 2011/12, which explains Saudi’s enthusiasm for the "secular" Egyptian despot, El Sissi, who overturned Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government.
The original excuse for the Saudi move was an insipid statement on Qatari state TV that Iran should not be isolated. That was the pretext for the already planned move to be put into effect. Its aim is to distance Doha from Tehran and make it more compliant to the Saudis. There have been tensions within the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council for decades now but this is of a different order of magnitude in a situation of deepening instability and recklessness which brings further dangers to the Middle East. Kuwait, Oman and Pakistan have refused to join in while the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have all increased internal repression against any dissent.
Qatar holds the largest US base in the Middle East, housing its Central Command which directs its regional wars. Rex Tillerson, again contradicting his president, said that the capacities of the base had been "hindered" by the move. Turkey has a small, token military presence in the country but has recently signed an agreement to send in more troops. Qatar has cooperated with Iran over exploiting the largest gas reserves in the world that lie in their off-shore waters, but this move by Saudi is not dominated by any sort of immediate economic motives but by increases in imperialist rivalries against Iran pushed by the Trump administration.
On May 17 US fighter jets destroyed an Iranian-backed convoy of around a couple of dozen militia and their equipment as it headed towards the Jordanian border, killing six of them. Some 25km away on the border is a camp set up by the CIA and manned by British and French intelligence agents and special forces, with Saudi and Bahraini assistance. Its job is to train an anti-Assad, anti-Iranian army which includes some fundamentalist Islamists of the so-called "New Syrian Army". The placing of the camp is important because it is close to the Baghdad-Damascus highway and is part of an important Iranian supply-line which meanders from Tehran all the way to Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast. In the near future the camp could be an element in the partition of Syria and represents an increase in western involvement in the war, but in the meantime it is certainly a threat to Iranian-backed elements. Three days prior to the attack there were media reports of very direct Russian warnings to the Assad regime to reign in its Iranian units and stop their advance to the Jordanian border. They were ignored by the regime but they indicate a number of possible developments: high-level Russian-US communications; the fact that the US doesn't want to confront Russia in Syria; possible Russian ambiguities towards Iran; and the fact that Iran is very much in US sights – Trump’s bombastic words about Iran were, in this case, translated into action. The incident also points to latent tensions between Russia and the Assad clique. But more than this, this attack sends a clear message of US intentions towards Iran. It's one of the contradictions of this war-torn region that in Iraq US and Coalition air power are protecting Iranian-backed Shia units on the ground, but the Tanf incident points to the possibilities of a serious Coalition and Iranian confrontation further down the road[4].
In the same week as Trump's visit there was a general election in Iran in which the re-elected "moderate", Hassan Rouhani, won overwhelmingly. In bourgeois terms this is probably one of the "cleanest" elections in the whole region (no such elections for Saudi) and it has been virtually ignored by the US, the proponent of democracy everywhere. The administration was less welcoming to Rouhani's election than it was to the earlier election of the hard-line Ahmadinejad. Rouhani delivered the 2015 nuclear deal with Europe, Russia and the US, a deal which Trump called "The worse deal ever negotiated". The "pivot" to Saudi Arabia by the US under Trump is a clear move away from the Obama administration's attempt to use Iran as a counter to the growing uncertainties of Saudi Arabian influence in the region[5].
There are still US sanctions on Iran and the next few weeks will see if they are lifted in line with the nuclear agreement or intensified. The development of the economy is crucial for the survival of the Iranian "moderates" as youth unemployment, for example, officially stands at 26%; and while there has been some German and French (and Chinese) investment in Iran[6], putting these countries at odds with the US, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) hardliners have their own business empire to protect. It is extremely unlikely that there will be any US investment, or US "encouragement" to invest in Iran, under the present US regime. This puts the latter at odds with Europe, Germany particularly, over the economy and the nuclear deal. The Iranian hardliners under Ebrahim Raisa, who could well be endorsed by the "Supreme Leader", Al Khamanei, got a significant vote and these deeply irrational forces can only be strengthened by present and developing US policy.
It's hard to not to point out the sickening hypocrisy of "anti-terrorist" Trump going to the snake pit of fundamentalist jihadism which the Saudi state, through its state-run Muslim World League, has exported near and wide. But the "dealmaker" has got a great deal here: $350 billion worth of sales including $110 billion worth of assorted weaponry. This aspect has ruffled some Israeli feathers but it has the advantage for the US of upping the ante on future arms sales to Israel. At any rate the new weapons are unlikely to do the Saudi regime much good when the previous batch (around $40 billion) has not been that effective for Saudi intervention in Syria. For all its military fire power, Saudi Arabia has been unable to subdue Houti regulars in Yemen. Trump met with the de facto Saudi ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the German intelligence report eighteen months ago (see end note), described as a dangerous sectarian interventionist and naive political gambler. Who does that remind you of? Bin Salman has pursued the devastating war in Yemen (along with its "allies", including Britain) and has backed the jihadist "Army of Conquest", al-Qaida, the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham as well as promising to "take the war to Iran".
The anti-Iranian message was crystal clear in Trump's first foreign outing: he spoke to the assembled leaders in Riyadh in NeoCon terms of "Good versus Evil" and evoked "God" in one speech nine times in Israel. Here the aim to isolate and confront Iran was further emphasised when Trump said that "There is a growing recognition among your Arab neighbours that they have common cause with you in the threat posed by Iran"[8]. The US turn to a Sunni Saudi, UAE and the other Gulf states along with Israel and Egypt against Iran has one notable absentee: President Erdogan's Turkey. There are no doubt remaining tensions between Turkey and the US over the former's 2016 "coup" but there are other, deeper divisions emerging between the countries. The main one being the support from the US to the Kurdish YPG units which are a really useful force for US imperialism in the region against Isis. These forces have come into close proximity to Erdogan's Turkish proxies (and the Turkish army) but in general the latter dare not attack the Kurdish units who fly the Stars and Stripes. This army, and the potential for a Kurdish buffer zone, is a major source of Turkish/US tension. On the anarchist forum libcom, the Kurdish "supporters of Rojava" have expressed their unease about the YPG/US relationship[9] but these anarcho-nationalists can only imply that things might have been better with Russia as their main backer. It doesn't look as if the US is going to abandon the YPG any time soon and is in fact building up its presence around Kobane in northern Syria, including an airport designed to take the massive C-17 transporters. But the Kurdish nationalists are right to be worried because, historically, the Kurds are at their most vulnerable when they are up there playing with the big boys.
The anti-Iran turn is by no means restricted to Trump and his immediate clique; there were many in the US military that were dubious about or hostile to the nuclear or any agreement at all with Iran. Trump's move here represents an imperative for US imperialism to impose itself more fully on the world stage. This new "strategy" of the US, from a position of weakness, thus increases the temptation to use its military superiority. A number of generals that are very influential in the Trump administration were in Iraq and, because of US setbacks and casualties caused by the Shia militias and Iranian dominance in the country, have an abiding enmity towards Iran[10] . For them, Isis is not the main issue and the memory of Iranian-backed devastating attacks on US forces in Lebanon in the 1980's is still raw. At the same time, judging from the Jordanian border build-up and their support for a Kurdish army, they seem to be reconciled to a future carve-up of Syria.
The US turn is in line with other developments in the Trump regime and its foreign policy. Trump recently rubber-stamped the new Pentagon strategy to "annihilate Isis", which gives the military carte-blanche. Rules of engagement have been relaxed, more decisions "diluted" and delegated to the Pentagon with Trump's Defence Secretary, General James Mattis saying that the President had delegated "the ability to authorise military operations to him"[11] . These events tend to show the Pentagon more in control of Trump, whatever his eventual fate, than the other way round.
It may seem tenuous to link Trump's Middle East warmongering with the Manchester bombing and the most recent London attacks but the connection is already well established. By stirring up war, militarism and ethnic hatreds, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and their dubious allies, have used and fuelled terrorism for a quarter of a century now. In that process many, many thousands in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and central Africa have been slaughtered, getting scant attention from the British media unless there's a particular campaign furthering their war efforts. Trump's visit and policies are the latest contributions to ensuring more Middle East instability and more terrorist atrocities in Europe for many years to come.
Boxer, 10.6.17. (This article was contributed by a close sympathiser of the ICC)
[2] The regime-funded news organisation al-Jazeera, launched in 1996, has also been a constant thorn in the side of the Saudi's, often exposing the hypocrisy of the latter. Another recent factor that annoyed the Saudis was the payment of $500 million to Iranian authorities that were responsible for the release of a hunting party comprising Qatari royals who were captured in Iraq.
[3] This disagreement, like the many other conflicts that have already appeared within the Trump administration, highlights the unpredictability of the new regime which makes it extremely difficult for it to put forward any long-term, coherent strategies.
[4] There have been two subsequent attacks in this US and British declared "deconfliction zone" in south-east Syria against Assad's forces. It further raises the possibility of wider collisions between British, American and Syrian, Iranian and Russian forces.
[5] In December 2015, German intelligence's BND issued a stark and surprisingly public warning about the destabilising effect of Saudi Arabia in the Arab world (and Europe, as later reports suggest): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/120295... [3]
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201606/13973/iran-and-saudi-ar... [4] gives a wider view of the dynamics of Iran and Saudi and the wider region.
[7] Editorial in the Financial Times, 22.5.17: "Trump of Arabia takes side in sectarian conflict".
[8] WSWS, 23.5.17
[10] The British too, who had to sign a virtual surrender document to the Iranian-backed militia in order to get out of Basra in one piece in 2007. Just like Helmand, Afghanistan in 2014, another ignominious defeat for the British army presented as a victory.
[11] WSWS, 20.5.17
According to a substantial number of politicians and media outlets, one of the most positive outcomes of the recent British election was the fact that Labour’s surprising revival was largely based on a kind of upsurge of young people, breaking with habits of apathy or cynicism towards “politics” and seeing the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn as offering a real alternative, hope for a more equal and fairer society.
As revolutionaries, we beg to differ. The engagement of discontented youth with bourgeois electoral politics is founded on the recuperation of real discontent, on diverting it towards false solutions that lie inside the horizon of capitalist society. The discontent is the positive element, its diversion is the negative. We have seen a similar process in Spain and Greece, where massive movements of a new generation of proletarians, organised in street assemblies, were deflected onto the electoral terrain by new left-wing parties like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, who promise to combine the social struggle on the street with the struggle for power in parliament, when the two paths head in different and opposed directions. Neither is this a new trick played by the left wing of capital. In the German revolution of 1918 the workers and soldiers organised in councils were cajoled by the Social Democratic Party into subordinating the councils to the new “democratic” parliamentary regime – a profound error which could only mean the death of the councils.
The left and the extreme left are differentiated from the right and the extreme right particularly by their language, which seems to be much more humane. Solidarity, welcoming and sharing are among the values that are attributed to them. This image is all the more tenacious since it is anchored in the memories of the glorious past of these parties. In France, for example, the figure of Jean Jaures, murdered for his opposition to the 1914-18 war, still draws a great deal of sympathy today. So, despite the experience of the left in power which everywhere has been responsible for imposing austerity and reduction in workers’ living standards, workers in their millions (in work, unemployed, pensioners, students and precarious workers) regularly go to vote, without much enthusiasm, without believing their programmes, simply to prevent something worse, the arrogant, and often sexist and racist, right, and hateful extreme right. This is what lies behind the idea of tactical voting to “keep the Tories out”. It also lies behind the way austerity measures by the Blair government were consistently described as “Tory policies” when they were patently the policies and actions of the Labour Party in office. Similarly, in France the wish for “anyone but Sarkozy” gave socialist Francois Hollande his victory in 2007, just as many former supporters of the left voted for Macron to keep out Le Pen . However, this illusion of preventing something worse cannot stand up to historical facts. To take a few examples: not only did the Labour home secretary in the Blair government, Jack Straw, play the immigration card, talking of “bogus” asylum seekers among other insults, but the supposedly dangerous radical Jeremy Corbyn said he wants immigration “... based on the needs of our society”[1], meaning based on the needs of British national capital. Obama may not have campaigned on deporting illegal immigrants the way Trump did, but he still became known as “deporter-in-chief” because of the millions expelled under his presidency. Although portrayed as a lesser evil, Obama has never claimed to be a socialist. Bernie Sanders has, and he voted against the immigration reform bill in 2007, supporting the AFL-CIO unions in claiming this was to prevent American workers having their wages undercut. Not a million miles from Trump’s reasoning. The French politician who stated “I think there are too many arrivals, immigration that should not be there... We teach them to speak French and then another group arrives and we have to start over again. This never stops... So, there comes a time when it has to stop” was not Le Pen but Hollande![2] And always actions follow the words: deportations, frontiers reinforced (Corbyn wants 500 more immigration officers), no matter how tragic it is for the refugees, including unaccompanied children as in the Jungle at Calais. All these parties and politicians have supported the very imperialist policies that cause the wars and instability – in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – that only increase the number of refugees risking their lives to reach relative safety.[3]
From the extreme right to the extreme left, for a century, different governments all over the world have many times demonstrated the inhumanity of their policies. Yet there is still an idea fixed in the body and mind of each ‘citizen’ that to vote is to defend democracy and keep it alive. Your vote is your voice. If you don’t vote, what right do you have to complain about what the government does? This message is omnipresent. But what is the reality of the power of this little bit of ballot paper?
Democracy is a mystification for it presupposes humanity is unified, something which has never been the case, whether in the last 5,000 years of class society or before that when humanity was divided into tribes and clans. Throughout the history of class society social cohesion has been maintained by the power of the ruling class and its state machine, to the detriment of the powerless mass of the exploited and oppressed. In one of its first expressions, state power took the sophisticated form of democracy, as in ancient Greece, where the word originated. The Athenian city state was able to adopt this form of government thanks to the growth in wealth brought by a flow of slaves, linked to the pillage of its neighbours. The demos, that is to say the people, of Greek democracy was not the whole population, but only the citizens in the polis. The mass of slaves, the majority of society, as well as women and foreigners, had no rights of citizenship. Democracy in ancient Greece was an arm of the state for the benefit of the slave owners.
Bourgeois democracy is, in essence, no different. The bourgeois parliamentary regimes of the 19th Century openly excluded the working class from the right to vote through the rules of eligibility (it was necessary to own property to be able to vote). And when universal suffrage was granted to society as a whole, the bourgeoisie still had many means to exclude the working class from its political affairs: the many links which united the political parties to the bourgeoisie and to the state; the system of direct suffrage which atomises the classes into isolated and supposedly equal individuals; the control of the media, and so the electoral campaigns, through the state, etc. This is why no election organised by a democratic state has ever given a majority to parties of the exploited class. Quite the contrary! During the Paris Commune, for example, the National Assembly elected in 1871 was nicknamed “la Chambre introuvable” (the unobtainable Chamber), in reference to the Royalist Chamber of 1815, so the bourgeoisie couldn’t dream of a better result for its interests, even when Paris and part of France was caught up in a revolutionary tidal wave.
Democracy, in whichever historic period it has arisen, has always been a method of government ensuring the violent rule of the minority over the majority, and not the reverse as we are led to believe. It has never been, and never could be, a means of self-regulation and control by society as a whole. Democracy is the most sophisticated system of political organisation allowing one class to rule society:
It is no accident that the great democracies are the oldest capitalist countries, where both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have a long experience of struggles. The stronger the working class, the more its consciousness and its organisation have developed, the more the bourgeoisie needs its most effective political weapon. Hitler was able to come to power democratically and supported by all the large German industrialists, in the elections of 1933, precisely because the working class had already been crushed physically and ideologically by German Social Democracy during the revolutionary wave of 1918-1919. It was not the abandonment of the ballot boxes by the ‘citizens’ which led Nazism to power, but the bloody defeat of the working class, militarily and politically vanquished by the very democratic Social Democracy!
The bourgeoisie makes believe that the most important battle has always been “democracy against dictatorship”. So, the main justification for Allied imperialism during the Second World War against fascism was the struggle for democracy against dictatorship. Millions of human beings were massacred in the name of democracy. After 1945, democracy was the main theme mobilising for the Cold War against the Stalinist imperialist bloc by the bloc led by the United States. Whole countries have been ravaged in the name of the struggle against totalitarianism. After1989, the collapse of the USSR bloc marked the start of a whole series of colossal military adventures by the United States to maintain its world hegemony, under the banner of democracy and human rights, against the mad dictators (Gulf war, intervention in Yugoslavia) or against evil terrorists (war in Afghanistan). So, during the imperialist conflicts which have ravaged the planet for more than a century, the strength of the “liberal democracies” has always been to persuade the proletarians used as cannon fodder that they were fighting for democracy, and not defending the interests of a capitalist faction. And these same democracies have shamelessly, cynically used or even put in place this or that dictator when it corresponded to their strategic interests. There is no lack of examples: the USA in Latin America, France in the majority of its African ex-colonies, the UK in ex-colonies when needed. This eternal battle of democracy against dictatorship is an ideological myth. Capitalism as a whole, whatever its mask and political organisation, is a dictatorship, a system of a privileged exploiting minority crushing the majority of humanity.
There could be one remaining reason, despite everything, to go and vote: universal suffrage was won with great and often bloody struggles of the working class in the 19th Century: with the Chartist movement in Britain, in Germany between 1848-49, in Belgium with the immense strikes of 1893, 1902 and 1913... In France, it was only after the Paris Commune was drowned in blood that workers definitively obtained universal suffrage. This demand is even found in the Communist Manifesto written in 1848 by Marx and Engels. But this poses a question: why does this same bourgeoisie which, in the previous century violently repressed workers who demanded universal suffrage, make such efforts today for the maximum number of them to vote? Why the publicity paid for by the state hammering out the message: “Vote, vote, vote!” on all the TV channels, in the press and in schoolbooks? Why in all these media are the “abstentionists” condemned as irresponsible citizens putting our democracy in danger? Why this flagrant difference between the 19th Century and the 20th and 21st Centuries?
To answer this question it is necessary to distinguish two epochs of capitalism: ascendance and decadence. In the 19th Century capitalism was at its height. Capitalist production developed by giant steps. In this period of prosperity the bourgeoisie achieved it political domination and eliminated the power of the old ruling class: the nobility. Universal suffrage and parliament were one of the most important means in the struggle of the radical fraction of the bourgeoisie against the nobility and against its own retrograde fractions. As such the democratic bourgeoisie and its liberal ideology represented a prodigious advance historically in relation to the religious obscurantism of feudal society. The struggle of the proletariat in this period was directly conditioned by this situation of capitalism. In the absence of capitalism’s historic crisis, the socialist revolution was not yet on the agenda. For the proletariat it was a question of strengthening its unity and its consciousness in fighting for lasting reforms, to try to permanently ameliorate its living conditions. The unions and the parliamentary parties allowed it to regroup independently of the bourgeois and democratic parties and to put pressure on the existing order, and even when needed to make tactical alliances with the radical fractions of the bourgeoisie; these were the means it gave itself to obtain reforms. Parliament was the place where the different fractions of the bourgeoisie united or confronted each other to govern society. The proletariat had to participate in this arena, to try to obtain laws and decisions that corresponded to the defence of its interests.
With the 20th Century capitalism entered a new phase, that of its historic decline. The division of the world between the great powers was completed. Each one of them could only appropriate new markets to the detriment of the others. As the Communist International said, the agony of capitalism opened “the epoch of wars and revolutions”. On the one hand the First World War broke out. On the other, in Russia (1905 and 1917), in Germany (1918-23), in Hungary (1919) and in Italy (1920), the proletariat shook the old world with an international revolutionary wave. To face up to these growing difficulties capital was constrained to constantly reinforce the power of its state. More and more the state tended to take control of the whole of social life, in the first place in the economic domain. This evolution in the role of the state was accompanied by a weakening in the role of the legislature in favour of the executive. More concretely, as the second congress of the Communist International said: “The focal point of political life has shifted fully and finally beyond the boundaries of parliament”. Today, in Britain as elsewhere, parliament has become more of a rubber stamp for legislation, almost all of which is proposed by the government. In France it is evident that the National Assembly no longer has any power: 80% of the laws it votes are presented by the government; once voted this law must be put into effect by the President of the Republic and, to take effect, must wait for the signing of the presidential decree. Besides, the President can bypass parliament to legislate by recourse to edict or even, in France, with the aid of Article 16 of the constitution which gives him full powers. In Britain the prime minister has taken on the powers of ‘Royal Prerogative’ in matters such as foreign affairs, defence and security. This insignificant role for parliament is expressed in a ridiculous participation by MPs in its sessions: most of the time there are very few who follow the debates, when in the 19th Century, it was the place for fierce and impassioned debates and sometimes brilliant discourse, like those of Jean Jaures in France or Karl Liebknecht in Germany.
At the same time as parliament’s effective political function diminished, it mystificatory function grew and the bourgeoisie was not mistaken when, in 1917 in Russia and in 1919 in Germany, it brandished the constituent assembly against the proletarian revolution and its workers’ councils. From then on, parliamentary democracy would be the best means to tame the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie does not exercise power as a whole but by delegating it to a minority fraction of itself, regrouped in political parties. This is equally true in democracies (competition between several parties) as in totalitarian fascist or Stalinist (one party) states. This power held by a minority of political specialists does not only reflect the minority position of the bourgeoisie within society; it is also necessary to preserve the general interests of the national capital faced with the divergent and competing interests of the different fractions of this bourgeoisie. This mode of power by delegation is thus inherent in bourgeois society; it is reflected in each of its institutions and above all in universal suffrage. The latter is even the privileged means by which ‘the population’, in fact the bourgeoisie, ‘entrusts’ power to one or several political parties. For the revolutionary action of the proletariat it is the whole of the class that acts to take power, and not the delegation of a minority. This is the condition for the success of all proletarian movements. So universal suffrage cannot, in any shape or form, provide the framework for the revolutionary mobilisation of the proletariat against the existing order.
Far from encouraging the initiative and self-organisation of the masses, it tends on the contrary to maintain their illusions and their passivity. May 1968, the largest strike since the Second World War, was followed a month later by the greatest ever electoral victory for the right in France. The reason for this discrepancy resides in the fact that the election of a deputy exists in a totally different sphere from that of the class struggle. The latter is a collective action of solidarity, where the worker is alongside other workers, where the hesitations of one are swept up by the resolution of the others, where the interests in question are not particular, but those of a class. In contrast, the vote calls on a totally abstract notion, quite outside of the reality of a permanent relation of force between two social classes with diametrically opposed interests: the notion of the “citizen”, who finds himself alone in the voting booth faced with a choice for something outside his daily life. It is the ideal terrain for the bourgeoisie, where the worker’s militancy has no possibility to really show itself. It is no accident that the bourgeoisie makes such efforts to get us to vote. The electoral results are precisely the terrain where the combativity of the mass of workers cannot be expressed at all. On the contrary, in Britain the question of Brexit, or in France the proposition by certain candidates of a VI Republic and a new Constitution, encourage the individual-citizen to limit their reasoning to the narrow framework of national frontiers and the mortifying social relations of capitalist competition and exploitation.
The response to the contradictions of this system and to the growing suffering that it engenders can only come through the international dimension of the proletarian struggle and its global solidarity. In order to liberate society form the destructive consequences of capitalist production, communism must abolish classes and private property, which means the withering away of the state and of democracy: “... it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.
At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even begin to fear that we are expecting the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed – for democracy means the recognition of just this principle.
No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognises the subordination of the minority to the majority, ie, an organisation for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another.
We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, ie, all organised and systematic violence, all use of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But in striving for socialism we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, hence, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.” (Lenin, State and Revolution). Democracy will no longer have any meaning in a communist society which will replace the government of men and capitalist management with “the administration of things”, in a world which, contrary to capitalism, draws its strength from the diversity of needs and the real capacities of the associated individuals.
Sandrine
Adapted from an article on our French web page, https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201703/9528/el... [7]
[2] Said to journalists Davet and Lhomme, 23 July 2014
[3] See https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14333/hard-times-bring-increased-illusions-labour-party [9] for examples of how the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership is no exception to this.
The survivors of the Grenfell fire, those who live in its shadow, those who live in similar towers elsewhere, those who came to manifest their solidarity, whose anger drove them to occupy Kensington town hall and march to Downing Street, were perfectly clear that this horror was no abstract “tragedy”, still less an Act of God, but as one makeshift banner put it, “a crime on the poor”, an issue of class made even more obvious by the fact that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea typifies the obscene contrasts in wealth that mark this social order, summarising them in the very visible and tangible form of the “housing question”.
Long before the outbreak of the fire, a residents’ action group had warned of the dangerous state of the Grenfell building, but these warnings were repeatedly ignored by the local council and its agent, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. There is also a strong suspicion that the cladding which is being pinpointed as the main cause of the rapid spread of the fire was installed not for the residents of the tower but to improve the look of the building for the richer residents of the borough. Again, it is well known that this borough is infested by that new breed of absentee landlord who, encouraged by the British bourgeoisie’s mania to encourage foreign investment, buys up extremely expensive housing stock and in many cases doesn’t even bother to rent it out, but leaves it empty purely for the purposes of speculation. And indeed speculation in housing – fully supported by the state - was a central element in the crash of 2008, an economic disaster whose net effect has been to further widen the huge gulf between those with wealth and those without it. And yet keeping house prices high, especially in London, remains a central plank of today’s debt-driven casino economy.
The depth and extent of the indignation provoked by such policies was such that the media owned and controlled by those at the higher rungs of the wealth ladder had little choice but to go along with the tide of rage. Some of the pro-Brexit tabloids started off by trying to blame the fire on EU regulations[1], but had to backtrack quickly in the face of the popular mood (but also when it was made apparent that the type of cladding used to “regenerate” Grenfell is banned in a country like Germany). A paper not famed for its radicalism, the London Metro, carried the headline “Arrest the Killers”, presented not as a quote but more like a demand, even if based on the rhetoric of Tottenham MP David Lammy who was one of the first to describe the fire as “corporate manslaughter”. And all but a minority of racist internet trolls avoided any disparaging words about the fact that the majority of the victims are not only poor but come from a migrant and even refugee background. The many expressions of solidarity we saw in the wake of the fire – the donation of food, clothes, blankets, offers of accommodation and labour in the emergency centres – came from local people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, who didn’t ask about the personal history of the victims as a precondition for giving their aid and support.
The demonstrators are right to demand answers about the cause of this fire, to pressure the state into providing emergency assistance and into re-housing them in the same area – some of them have referred to the dismal experience of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which was seized upon to carry out a kind of class and ethnic cleansing of “desirable” areas of New Orleans. Those who live in other tower blocks quite understandably want safety checks and improvements to be implemented as soon as possible. But it is also necessary to examine the deeper causes behind this catastrophe, to understand that the inequality which has been so widely cited as a key element is rooted in the very structure of present day society. This is particularly important because so much of the current anger is directed against particular individuals or institutions - Theresa May for shying away from direct contact with Grenfell residents, the local council or the KCTMO – rather than against a mode of production which engenders such disasters from its very entrails. Unless this point is grasped, the door remains open to illusions in alternative capitalist solutions, particularly those proposed by the left wing of capital. We have already seen Corbyn again racing ahead of May in the popularity stakes because of his more “down to earth” and sensitive response to the Grenfell residents, and his advocacy of apparently radical solutions such as the “requisitioning” of empty housing stock to provide homes to those who have been displaced[2].
This is how Marx defined the problem, focusing specifically on the ruthless hunt for profit in the production process:
“Since the labourer passes the greater portion of his life in the process of production, the conditions of the production process are largely the conditions of his active living process, or his living conditions, and economy in these living conditions is a method of raising the rate of profit; just as we saw earlier that overwork, the transformation of the labourer into a work horse, is a means of increasing capital, or speeding up the production of surplus-value. Such economy extends to overcrowding close and unsanitary premises with labourers, or, as capitalists put it, to space saving; to crowding dangerous machinery into close quarters without using safety devices; to neglecting safety rules in production processes pernicious to health, or, as in mining, bound up with danger, etc. Not to mention the absence of all provisions to render the production process human, agreeable, or at least bearable. From the capitalist point of view this would be quite a useless and senseless waste” (Capital, vol III, chapter 5).
But this drive to save space, to neglect safety rules and cut production costs in order to raise the rate of profit applies no less to the provision of housing to the exploited class. Engels, in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) described in great detail the overcrowding, dirt, pollution, and dilapidation of the housing and streets hastily erected to accommodate the factory workers of Manchester and other cities; in The Housing Question (1872) he emphasised that these conditions inevitably gave rise to epidemic diseases:
“Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, smallpox and other ravaging diseases spread their germs in the pestilential air and poisoned water of these working class districts”. But he also went on to say that “In these districts, the germs hardly ever die out completely, and as soon as circumstances permit it they develop into epidemics and then spread beyond their breeding places also into the more airy and healthy parts of the town inhabited by the capitalists. Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pressure of generating epidemic diseases with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in the ranks of the capitalists as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers”.
It is well known that the construction of the London sewer system in the 19th century, a titanic work of engineering which greatly reduced the impact of cholera, and which still functions today, was given a significant boost after the “Great Stink” of 1858 coming from the polluted Thames assailed the nostrils of the politicians in Westminster. Workers’ struggles and demands for better housing were also of course a factor in the bourgeoisie’s decisions to demolish slum areas and provide safer and more salubrious accommodation to the wage slaves. To protect themselves from disease, and to avoid the decimation of the work force, capital was obliged to introduce these improvements – besides, substantial profits could be made from investing in construction and property. But as Engels also noted, even in those days of substantial reforms, made possible by an ascendant mode of production, capitalism’s tendency was simply to shift the slums from one area to another. In The Housing Question he shows how this took place inside the boundaries of Manchester. In the present epoch, marked by the spiralling decay of the capitalist system on a world scale, the shift has most obviously taken place from the more “advanced” capitalist countries to the immense slums that surround so many of the cities of what used to be called the “Third World”[3].
This was why, rejecting Proudhon’s utopia (subsequently revived in the Thatcherite project of buying your own council house, which has considerably intensified the housing problem) where every worker owns their own little house, Engels insisted that “As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labour by the working class itself” (The Housing Question).
The proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917 gave us a glimpse of what, in its initial stages, this “appropriation” might mean: the palaces and mansions of the rich were expropriated in order to house the poorest families. In today’s London, alongside actual mansions and palaces, the dizzying increase in speculative building over the past few decades has left us with a huge stock of prestige towers, some parts of which are inhabited by a few wealthy residents, some parts of which are used for all kinds of parasitic commercial activities, and many parts of which remain unsold and unused. But they certainly have better fire safety systems than Grenfell. These types of buildings are a primary argument for expropriation as an immediate solution to the scandal of sub-standard housing and homelessness.
But Engels, like Marx, stood for a much more radical programme than simply taking over existing buildings. Again, rejecting the Proudhonist fantasy of a return to cottage industry, Engels stressed the progressive role played by the big cities in bringing together a mass of proletarians capable of acting together and thus challenging the capitalist order. And yet he also insisted that the communist future would have gone beyond the brutal separation of town and country and that this involved the dismantling of the great cities - a project even more grandiose in today’s epoch of swollen megacities which make the great cities of Engels’ day look like minor market towns.
“On its own admission, therefore, the bourgeois solution of the housing question has come to grief-it has come to grief owing to the antithesis of town and country. And with this we have arrived at the kernel of the problem. The housing question can only be solved when society has been sufficiently transformed for a start to be made towards abolishing the antithesis between town and country, which has been brought to an extreme point by present-day capitalist society. Far from being able to abolish this antithesis, capitalist society on the contrary is compelled to intensify it day by day. On the other hand the first modern utopian socialists, Owen and Fourier, already correctly recognized this. In their model plans the antithesis between town and country no longer exists. Consequently there takes place exactly the contrary of that which Herr Sax contends; 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 then there will be quite other thing to do than supplying each worker with a little house for his own possession” (The Housing Question).
Continuing this radical tradition, the Italian left communist Amadeo Bordiga wrote a text in response to the post-second world war fashion for tower blocks and skyscrapers, a fashion which has returned in force in recent years despite a series of disasters and despite all the evidence that living in tower blocks intensifies the atomisation of urban living and generates all kinds of social and psychological difficulties. For Bordiga, the tower block was a potent symbol of capitalism’s tendency to cram as many human beings as possible into as limited a space as possible, and he had harsh words for the “brutalist” architects who sang its praises. “Verticalism, that is the name for this misshapen doctrine; capitalism is verticalist.”[4]
Communism, by contrast would be “horizontalist”. Later in the same article, he explains what is meant by this:
“When, after the forcible crushing of this ever-more obscene dictatorship, it will be possible to subordinate every solution and every plan to the amelioration of the conditions of living labour , to fashion with this aim everything that has come from dead labour, from constant capital, from the infrastructure that the human species has built up over the centuries and continues to build up on the earth’s crust, then the brutal verticalism of the cement monsters will be made ridiculous and will be suppressed, and in the immense expanses of horizontal space, once the giant cities have been deflated, the strength and intelligence of the human animal will progressively tend to render uniform the density of life and labour over the habitable parts of the earth; and these forces will henceforth be in harmony, and no longer ferocious enemies as they are in the deformed civilisation of today, where they are only brought together by the spectre of servitude and hunger”.
Amos, 18/6/17
[2]. From Corbyn’s state capitalist perspective, the requisitioning of buildings would not be the result of self-organised initiatives by the working class, but of legal measures taken by the state, similar to the requisitioning of buildings in war time.
[4]. ‘Space against cement’ in The Human Species and the Earth’s Crust (Espèce Humaine et Croûte Terrestre, Petite Bibilotheque Payot, p168). Our translation. See https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201609/14092/1950s-... [15]
The 9.6% improvement in the Labour vote between the general elections of 2015 and 2017 was the biggest increase for the party since the Labour landslide of 1945. The Socialist Workers Party said that millions had voted for “real change” and it was “a great boost” to “all who campaigned against austerity and racism”. A young apprentice put it simply to the Guardian “I want a country that’s fair to everyone, where everyone’s happy, with poverty eradicated. Something similar to what Corbyn wants. Corbyn’s on our side, not like May.” Other young people were reported as seeing Corbyn as “compassionate” and representing a “new type of politics”.
There are many reasons for people to be discontented in Britain, mostly rooted in the state of the economy. Talk of the value of the pound being at its lowest level for 30 years, or GDP growth being sluggish can seem very abstract, but low wages, precarious employment, cuts in services, difficulties in finding decent affordable accommodation, they are all tangible manifestations of the impact of the economic crisis on people’s lives. But it’s not just these ‘bread and butter’ questions: people are also concerned with the global state of the environment, with the proliferation of military conflicts, with the possibility of terrorist attacks.
This is the context of the increased vote for Labour. The Conservative manifesto claimed “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.” They offered increased state intervention in certain areas of the economy. They wanted to improve “workers’ rights” and be the party of “ordinary working people”. After the last 7 years of Conservative government it was clear that some workers might be inclined to look elsewhere.
Labour offered more money for the NHS, the abolition of university fees, an increased minimum wage, increased taxes for high earners, as well as the renationalisation of the railways, post office, electricity and water companies. Although they were criticised for encouraging belief in a Magic Money Tree, many Tory promises were also uncosted.
It was not as though Labour didn’t take the financial situation seriously. They intended to eliminate the deficit within five years and balance spending with the amount raised in taxes. Without resorting to debt this would definitely mean cuts as a Labour government tried to live within its means. They couldn’t promise not to freeze benefits because, as Emily Thornberry put it “We shouldn’t be promising things we can’t afford.”
Some areas would not be subject to cuts. They promised to maintain defence spending at 2% of GDP, including the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, and increase the resources available to the police and security services. The approach to war is one of opposition to “unilateral aggressive wars of intervention”, which means they will support any wars that are supported by NATO or the United Nations. Use of nuclear weapons is not ruled out, although Labour do say they will be “extremely cautious” in their use. As for immigration Labour say that “freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union” and therefore proposed a new system of immigration controls which would involve “employer sponsorship, work permits, visa regulations or a tailored mix of all these.”
People don’t generally read manifestos, they’re like the small print in contracts. But if you look at the programme of the Labour Party it’s in continuity with the rest of modern social democracy. Corbyn used the Blair slogan from 1997 when he said Labour would “rule for the many, not the few”. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true twenty years later. The Labour programme is for state capitalism, which has been the dominant trend over capitalism’s last century internationally. Labour’s call for an increased role for the state means an increased role for a capitalist state, a state that can only act on behalf of the capitalist ruling class. In the present system of production founded on wage labour, workers exchange their labour power for wages, and any surplus value created goes to the capitalist class whether in the shape of individual entrepreneurs, big corporations, or state bureaucracies.
The Labour Party does not propose disturbing this central relationship in capitalist society. The exploitation of the working class will continue. In opposition, they will criticise government policy, but once they take their turn in government they will ensure the management of the economy, the defence of British capitalism and the advancement of British imperialism. In government or opposition, they have consistently upheld the needs of capitalist exploitation. This is true not only for the past hundred years of the Labour party in Britain - it’s no less the case for the last century of social democracy internationally. All these parties have shown that they support imperialist wars, carry out repression against workers’ struggles, and spin a web of lies about offering an alternative to capitalism.
Overall, we are in a period where the bourgeoisie, particularly in Britain, is having great difficulties in the deployment of its political apparatus. One element that has experienced a recent revival is the Labour Party. It offers illusions of social change through parliament and democracy, where the reality is the continuation of capitalist rule. Social change for the working class doesn’t come from trooping through polling stations to vote for left wing capitalist parties. Workers, from small struggles and an initial questioning of capitalism to the point where they can establish themselves as a conscious independent force against capitalism and its state, need to lose all illusions in state capitalism and its proponents. Labour is just another face of the bourgeoisie, but, where the parties of the right are readily rejected by thoughtful workers, illusions in the left are widespread and insidious.
Car 11/6/17
In a previous article about a discussion on libcom[1] we commented on the fact that some comrades appear to reject the concept of decadence even though they agree that capitalism is a historically transitory system. An example of this line of argument is a 1993 text by the UK-based journal Aufheben which claims that: “The theory of the decline of capitalism is an interpretation of the meaning of Marx's insight that capitalism is a transitory system, an interpretation that turns the notion of a particular dynamic of development into a mechanistic and determinist theory of inevitable collapse”.[2]
For us, this seems contradictory to say the least. Surely the decadence of capitalism flows logically and inevitably from the materialist conception that all class societies are transitory, each going through an ascendant and decadent stage? Rejecting decadence implies that capitalism, unlike all previous class societies, is somehow able to avoid the consequences of its fatal contradictions and if that is the case, in what way is it a transitory system?
This article explores in more depth where exactly the concept of capitalism as a historically transitory system comes from and how it relates to the Marxist theory of decadence, with particular reference to the writings of Marx and Engels on this subject, drawing out some of the political implications of denying the intimate connection between these key concepts of historical materialism and showing that they have nothing to do with “mechanistic and determinist theories of inevitable collapse”; on the contrary, the active revolutionary role of human beings lies at their heart.
“The highest maturity or stage which any Something can reach is that in which it begins to perish.” (Hegel)[3]
Marxism is sometimes criticised for taking the whole idea of a succession of modes of production going through ascendant and decadent stages from bourgeois political economy. This rather misses the point; from the beginning, scientific socialism, as the highest theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, consciously based itself on the discoveries and best insights of the bourgeoisie’s historians and philosophers. These included the existence of a series of historical epochs marking the economic development of society.
In the early stage of its ideological struggle against feudalism the revolutionary bourgeoisie’s main focus was on the need to empirically grasp the natural world in order to develop the forces of production. Its most important expression was a form of materialism influenced by discoveries especially in physics, which represented a huge advance for humanity over the theological and metaphysical thought of the Middle Ages.
Bourgeois materialism essentially conceived the entire universe as a machine in motion according to fixed natural laws; human beings were simply more complex and delicate machines whose thoughts and actions were the product of the motion of atoms. If the bourgeoisie could ignore the active role of human beings in history it is because its economic system appeared to operate according to laws as impersonal as those of astronomy in the general interest of human progress. But to consolidate its victory it needed to develop a scientific understanding of the workings of history in order justify its system as the final, perfect form of society.
The first open class struggles of the proletariat sounded the death knell of this attempt by the bourgeoisie to become critically self-conscious of the world and from now on its most important theoretical developments – in particular the development of political economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo and idealist philosophy from Kant to Hegel – could not help but reveal the contradictions of its position as the new ruling class. Above all the bourgeoisie was unable to recognise in the proletariat’s growing struggles the historically transitory nature of its own system.
The science of political economy begins as part of the bourgeoisie’s effort to comprehend empirically the new society it is attempting to establish. But with the first appearance of economic crises and workers’ struggles it retreats to become a justification for bourgeois class rule; a scientific investigation of the basic premises of capitalism can only be undertaken in the form of a critique of its workings from the standpoint of the new revolutionary class.
The development of idealist philosophy by Hegel is the last great attempt by the revolutionary bourgeoisie to grasp the entire movement of history. Hegel’s contribution to human knowledge is immense, fully acknowledged later by the founders of scientific socialism: “not only a creative genius but also a man of encyclopaedic erudition, he played an epoch-making role in every sphere” (Engels).[4] Hegel’s philosophical idealism is an advance over bourgeois materialism because it begins from the recognition of human society, including ideas, thoughts and beliefs, as a subject for scientific, empirical research equal to the natural world; it partially recognises the active role of human beings in history, and, drawing on the findings of political economy, it affirms the crucial role of human labour in the development of society. Above all, it systematically develops a dialectical method with which to comprehend the evolution of human history.
Dialectics, with its long history in the civilisations of Asia and the Middle East as well as Ancient Greece, is intrinsically a critical, revolutionary method because it affirms the transient nature of the existing state of things; everything in the world is in a state of motion, constantly coming into being, changing and passing away. The source of this motion is the struggle between the contradictory tendencies inherent in all phenomena and processes: “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, and it is only insofar as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity” (Hegel).[5] Only by analysing things in the context of this motion rooted in contradictions can we begin to understand the whole picture of the world, including its reflection in the minds of human beings.
Hegel’s lasting achievement is to use this dialectical method to represent the entire sweep of human history as a process of change, transformation and development, and to attempt to identify the laws that underlie this process. He was unable to do this, however, due not only to the limits of his own knowledge and of bourgeois society at the time but also to the flaws and contradictions in his method: having shown that all historical forms were transitory, for political reasons he tried to limit the concept of dialectical change to previous societies, and having proposed an empirical approach to analysing human thoughts, ideas and beliefs as abstract pictures of real things and real historical processes, he fell back into an idealist view that these were the products of an “Absolute Idea” that existed somewhere outside of history and the world; in other words he turned the relationship between ideas and reality completely upside down.
Significantly, after Hegel bourgeois philosophers and historians progressively abandoned the dialectical vision of history and the search for the laws of the evolution of human society. Under the influence of the class struggle a new generation of radical thinkers was able to identify the flaws and contradictions in Hegel’s idealism and restore the dialectical vision of history but was ultimately unsuccessful in using a materialist approach to identify the laws of historical change.
It was the development of the proletarian movement itself that both demanded and made possible a clarification of the laws of historical change. Adhering to this movement, Marx and Engels were finally able to draw on the lessons of its struggles and the gains of its first theorists to identify the motor force of history as the antagonism between the classes, which are themselves the products of material conditions in a given historical period.
Turning Hegel’s method ‘back on its feet’, they were able to show that the thoughts, beliefs and ideas of human beings are determined by the material conditions of their social existence. Dialectics, rather than the workings of some “Absolute Idea” outside of the world, is a reflection in the human brain of real historical processes, and therefore the starting point for a scientific, empirical investigation of bourgeois society. For the first time it was possible to understand the historical conditions that had given rise to capitalist exploitation and therefore to discover the conditions for its ending.
Accepting the research of the bourgeoisie’s own theorists and historians as a “broad outline”, Marx and Engels identified a series of modes of production as historical epochs marking the progressive development of society, showing that, by developing the productive forces of humanity and creating the conditions for a classless society, capitalism was simply the final stage in the class struggle, its revolutionary overthrow concluding the ‘prehistory’ of human society.[6]
The historically transitory nature of capitalist society is thus the foundation stone of this new proletarian scientific method, which assimilates the most advanced methods and conclusions of the revolutionary bourgeoisie and, by extension, the accumulated wisdom not only of bourgeois but all previous societies.
At the core of this method is a dialectical vision of historical progress driven by the growing social productivity of labour; the increasing power of human beings to satisfy the social needs of their existence. These needs are first and foremost physical, because “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals” (German Ideology).[7] But the satisfaction of these immediately creates new needs – emotional, intellectual, sexual – through which human beings express their life. The way human beings define their needs is determined in the final analysis by the way in which they reproduce their social existence in a given historical period and the way they satisfy their needs is through their labour, consciously transforming nature for this purpose.
As the productivity of labour increases, human beings are able to produce an ever greater surplus over and above the needs of the individual and the community; and as the productive forces available to humanity grow, an increasingly specialised division of labour develops, which is expressed in the development of ever more complex forms of ownership of the means of production leading to the evolution of private property. The growth of the social productivity of labour is therefore also expressed in the growing separation of human beings from the products of their labour, which increasingly appear as something alien to them, and from nature, which Marx in an early text describes as “man’s inorganic body”.[8]
This process of increasing alienation reaches its extreme form in capitalism. But at the same time, by rendering the great mass of humanity ‘propertyless’ and by making possible the unlimited development of the productive forces, capitalism creates the practical conditions for its abolition. Historical progress is thus a dialectical process; a working out, through a succession of different modes of production, of the contradictions between the growth of the social productivity of labour and the social relations which increasingly separate human beings from the products of their labour. For historical materialism, ‘progress’ is the extent to which the real movement of history makes possible the liberation of humanity; not economic growth or the development of technology in itself.
Having shown that capitalist exploitation was the product of specific historical conditions, it was necessary for the proletarian movement to discover the precise mechanisms that would create the conditions for its ending.
The Communist Manifesto locates capitalism’s contradictions in its inherent tendency towards the overproduction of commodities and the periodic crises that result. The response of capital to these only creates the conditions for even greater crises and further undermines its ability to prevent them; having conjured up a gigantic growth of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie finds its own relations of production threatening to destroy it. But these same relations also create its grave-digger, the proletariat, whose organisation as a class is the inevitable product of the development of capital itself; this is the fatal contradiction that determines its historically transitory nature.
The Manifesto triumphantly proclaims the fall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat to be equally inevitable. But as we know, the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and the subsequent spectacular expansion of capitalism led Marx to develop a more sober, longer term view of the opportunities for capitalism’s overthrow – and also a more precise analysis of the mechanisms through which capitalism would eventually reveal its fatal contradictions and create the conditions for its overthrow. To do this it was necessary to expose the basic premises of capitalism hidden beneath the science of the bourgeoisie.
If Marx’s critique of political economy appears to be explaining history as an objective process, this is because bourgeois society is a particular form of the social life of human beings in which the relations between human beings in the social reproduction of their lives appear as relations between things. By generalising the production and exchange of commodities, capitalism both separates the producers from the products of their labour and tears asunder all hitherto existing social ties, leaving “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment””. Instead of exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions it substitutes “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Manifesto). But this exploitation is now hidden behind the apparently impersonal workings of ‘the market’ or ‘the necessities of production’, so that capitalism appears to be based on relations between ‘things’ that are completely outside of human control.
For Marx, these ‘things’ – like ‘money’ or ‘commodities’ or ‘wage labour’ – are summoned into existence by the objective laws of capitalism and have their own material reality: “They are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode of social production” (Capital).[9] For political economy, of course, they are ‘natural’, eternal forms. But the critique of this bourgeois science reveals its most fundamental ideas and principles to be mere fetishes, distorted visions of underlying relations between human beings within a specific historical epoch: “The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour on the basis of commodity production, vanishes therefore as soon as we come to other forms of production” (Capital).[10] The objective laws of capitalism themselves are historically specific forms taken by the class struggle at a certain stage in its development, which can only be destroyed in practice through the proletarian revolution.
In Capital Marx more exactly locates the tendency of capitalism towards overproduction in the specific character of capitalism as the first mode of production to have generalised commodity production, and specifically in the wage labour relation. Significantly he begins his investigation with the commodity, the basic unit of the capitalist mode of production, because it is in the commodity that we find the germ of all the contradictions contained in bourgeois society. It is these contradictions beneath the surface appearance of ‘things’ that provide its motion; the same contradiction that is experienced by the worker as “the accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation”[11] also drives capital to the point where it eventually becomes a definitive fetter on the productive forces.
Marx’s analysis of the precise mechanisms that determine capitalism’s historically transitory nature has been dealt with many times.[12] To summarise:
1. The first is in the process of producing surplus value itself. For capital only living labour can create value, but at the same time the capitalists are driven by the whip of competition to improve productivity; that is, to increase the ratio between the dead labour of machines and the living labour of human beings, thus reducing the rate of profit and increasing the mass of commodities produced. The more accumulation accelerates, the more the rate of profit falls, threatening the continuation of the production process. For Marx:
“this characteristic barrier in fact testifies to the restrictiveness and the solely historical and transitory character of the capitalist mode of production; it bears witness that this is not an absolute mode of production for the production of wealth but actually comes into conflict at a certain stage with the latter’s further development”.[13]
2. The production of surplus value is only what Marx calls the ‘first act’ of the capitalist production process. The increasing mass of commodities produced must be sold if the capitalist is to realise the surplus value extracted, but the conditions for this are again determined by the wage labour relation itself, which dictates that the workers can never consume the full value of what they produce: by definition they must always be overproducers, while at the same time capitalism is driven to produce an increasing of commodities without regard to the capacity of the working class to consume. This is why “The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses, in the face of the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute consumption capacity of society set a limit to them”.[14]
In order to try to resolve this inherent contradiction, capital must continually expand the market but this can never keep up with the expansion of production; the more productiveness develops, the more capital finds itself confronting the limits to consumption due to its own social relations.
We can see clearly here that capitalist production describes not a cycle but an ever-increasing circle or spiral and the continual attempts of capitalism to overcome its contradictions, which present themselves as imminent barriers to its own further development, can only create even more formidable barriers in its way, because:
“The true barrier to capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-valorization appear as the starting and finishing point, as the motive and purpose of production; production is production only for capital, and not the reverse. i.e. the means of production are not simply means for a steadily expanding pattern of life for the society of the producers.” [15]
For Marx, what distinguishes capitalism from previous modes of production above all is that it is driven towards the unlimited development of the productive forces but, since it is based on class antagonisms, this is in contradiction with the definite limits of its own relations of production and therefore drives it towards “dissolution” (Grundrisse)[16].
In a nutshell; capitalism is doomed because it must grow without limit – yet it is itself its own limit. This is the fundamental contradiction, the specific reason why capitalism, like all previous class societies, is transitory: it’s only purpose is the self-expansion of capital, but in pursuit of this it confronts the barrier of its own relations of production, eventually reaching the point where these relations become a definitive fetter on the further development of the productive forces, or, to put it another way, the further development of the productive forces itself becomes a fetter on capital: “When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage labour, enters into the same relation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter.”[17]
“To exploit living labour, capital must destroy dead labour which is still useful. Loving to suck warm young blood, it kills corpses.” (Bordiga)[18]
In an abstract, a-historical sense, of course, capitalist social relations are always a fetter on the productive forces of humanity because wage labour and capital place artificial restrictions on their potential growth from the very start. But the real question is whether the material conditions for a new mode of production exist, since in the materialist conception of history, “new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society” (Preface). Only when these conditions exist does capitalism’s continued survival become a definitive fetter on the development of all the productive forces available to humanity.
What are the productive forces? Far from defining these merely in terms of technological development or economic growth, for historical materialism the productive forces cannot be separated from the social relations of production in which they develop and operate, because: “a certain mode of production … is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a “productive force” (German Ideology). Both must be considered as a totality.
The productive forces of humanity in the widest sense are the means available to human beings to reproduce their material life and meet their needs in a given historical epoch. These comprise not only physical means like machines but also scientific knowledge, technical skills and, most important of all, human labour and creativity. In capitalism the most important productive force is the working class itself; not just as the class engaged in social labour, the source of value in society, but as the class that is the bearer of communism, because for Marxism, “Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself”(Poverty of Philosophy).[19]
Decadence is therefore the fettering of the growth of all the means available to human beings to reproduce their social existence compared to what would be possible without the constraint of the existing social relations. This includes not only economic growth and technological development in the broadest terms but also relations between human beings and the ability of individuals to develop their potential knowledge, skills and creativity to the maximum possible given the material conditions.
Once a mode of production has entered into its decadent stage, development does not come to a halt; the dialectical movement of society continues, driven by contradictions that are now sharpened and increasingly come to the surface, while the barriers imposed by the outmoded property relations are pushed to their furthest limits in order to prolong the mode of production’s survival, giving every appearance of growth but in fact heralding its decay.
As the first mode of production to be driven by the continual need for the expansion or accumulation of profit, capitalism’s decadence is characterised not by long-term stagnation or a collapse of production like previous class societies but “bitter contradictions, crises, spasms”, together with “the violent destruction of capital” which for Marx is “the most striking form in which advice is given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social production”.[20]
Starved of sufficient outlets for its expansion, capital must increasingly destroy the productive forces, above all through wars which no longer serve a rational purpose in consolidating national units or extending the field of accumulation but rather express the competitive struggle of the most advanced capitals for a share of the already-existing world market. The world wars of the 20th century, with their destruction of millions of proletarians, in the most developed centres of bourgeois society, along with the accumulated productive forces of humanity, are the clearest proof that the system has entered its epoch of decadence.
With the continued survival of the system, the productive forces themselves are progressively transformed into forces of destruction, in which we see a qualitative development of all the destructive tendencies that are inherent in capital’s mode of operation, including the expulsion of living labour from the production process, the severing of the connection between human beings and nature and the long term despoiling of nature itself in the drive for profit.[21]
The spiralling of this destructive dynamic ultimately poses the alternative for humanity of an advance to socialism or a descent into full-scale barbarism.
But if the entry of capitalism into its epoch of decadence is inevitable from the moment of its birth, its revolutionary overthrow is not. In the Communist Manifesto, despite describing the decline of previous class societies as resulting either in a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large”, or the “common ruin of the contending classes”, Marx and Engels consistently refer to the downfall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat as inevitable. But to be consistent with their scientific method we must indeed affirm that in the absence of the conscious overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat, the outcome of capitalism’s decline will be “the common ruin of the contending classes” – and quite possibly the destruction of human civilisation along with it.
At the heart of historical materialism is a dialectical vision of the evolution of human society unfolding through a succession of modes of production, each going through a stage of ascent and decline. There is no ‘theory of decadence’ separate from the materialist conception, based on the study of history, of historically transitory class societies.
The denial of the theory of decadence at the same time as defending the position that capitalism is a historically transitory system is at best contradictory and confused. At worst it is a deliberate piece of misdirection by those who want to pretend that ‘decadence theory’ is an invention of the ICC or of left communism.
Logically the denial of decadence must also lead to the rejection of the idea that each mode of production goes through a period of ascent in the first place. And since both ascendance and decadence describe the movement of a class society as the result of its inbuilt contradictions, this is also in effect a denial of the dialectical vision of history, or at the very least its taming and dilution.
We have shown that the decadence of capitalism is inherent in the wage labour relationship that is capital’s central contradiction. The same contradiction that is experienced by the worker as exploitation and oppression drives capitalism to the point where it becomes the biggest barrier to the further development of the social productivity of labour. This is why from the moment of its birth capitalist production describes not a cycle but an ever-increasing circle or spiral. But if this point is not reached, it implies that capitalism can somehow overcome its contradictions, or at least avoid their fatal consequences. According to this view, capitalist production thus describes not a spiral but a repetitive cycle.
Despite paying lip service to the concept of capitalism’s transitory nature, the denial of decadence, if taken to its logical conclusion, leaves us with a vision of capitalism as an enclosed, self-perpetuating system that cannot be undermined by its own internal contradictions.
As for the criticism that decadence is a mechanistic and determinist theory that ignores the subjective dimension of the class struggle, we have seen that historical materialism is founded on the recognition of the active, revolutionary role of human beings in history. By developing the productive forces and bringing into existence the proletariat, capitalism creates the material conditions for its own supersession. But human thoughts, ideas and beliefs are also a material factor, and the maturation of all the conditions for capitalism's overthrow depends on the ability of the proletariat to fully develop its class consciousness and understand its historic tasks.
This is the one point where our views appear to coincide with those of the deniers; unless capitalism is destroyed by the proletariat it will persist, albeit in a state of advanced decomposition; there is no ‘third way’. The problem with the denial of decadence is that it underestimates the implications of this for the future of humanity because, as we have seen, it is precisely the fettering of the productive forces by capitalist social relations that provokes a qualitative change in the destructive tendencies of capital, with potentially dire consequences for human civilisation and life on the planet. The alternative facing humanity today is socialism or barbarism; not socialism or simply the continuation of capitalist exploitation.
In fact, far from ignoring the subjective dimension, the ICC has written at some length about the immense difficulties the proletariat faces in taking on its historic tasks, due to both objective and subjective factors.[22] There are undoubtedly objective reasons why the proletariat has so far been unable to overthrow capitalism: for example, the slow rhythm of the development of the open economic crisis since the 1960s has allowed the bourgeoisie to spread out its attacks on the working class over a whole period and to use the apparatus of state capitalism to take measures to ‘manage’ the crisis. But even this has a subjective dimension in that it is also a result of the ruling class’ ability to learn the lessons of dealing with the proletarian threat to prevent the development of class consciousness. As a result we must recognise that, in the ICC’s phrase, the proletariat has so far missed its ‘appointments with history’, above all in the revolutionary wave that put an end to WW1.
Revolutionaries have undoubtedly underestimated the capacities of the bourgeoisie to manage its open crisis for so long. But this should not lead us to underestimate the importance of subjective factors in the survival of capitalism. The final irony of accusing the ‘theory of decadence’ of ignoring the subjective dimension is that it is largely because of this factor, in the negative sense, that we are forced to have this discussion today, a full 100 years after capitalism entered its epoch of decadence and announced its historically transitory nature.
“But the time is coming when “the conditions themselves [will] cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”.[23] If it remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie, human society will never reach the next century, other than in shreds, nothing human any longer left in it. As long as this extreme has not been reached, as long as a capitalist system survives, there will necessarily be its exploited class, the proletariat. And there will therefore remain the possibility that the proletariat, spurred on by capitalism's total economic bankruptcy, will at last overcome its hesitations and take on the enormous task that history has confided to it: the communist revolution.”[24]
MH
[1] “Once more on decadence: some questions for the ‘deniers’”, October 2013, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13467/once-more-decaden... [18].
[2] Decadence: The Theory of Decline or the Decline of Theory?, https://libcom.org/library/decadence-aufheben-2 [19]. Aufheben were later forced to admit the failure of their attempted critique of decadence theory (see the introduction to the above at https://libcom.org/aufheben/decadence [20]), but their arguments are still apparently influential in some parts of the anarchist-influenced milieu. Cf https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201206/4981/decadenc... [21]
[3] Quoted in Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 1941, “Chapter V. The Science of Logic”, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/reason/ch01-5.htm [22].
[4] Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy, 1886, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.h... [23].
[5] Quoted in Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic - Book II (Essence), 1914, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch02.htm/ [24]
[6] In The German Ideology Marx identifies three forms of class society: ancient, feudal and bourgeois. These are the ones described in the Communist Manifesto. As a result of further research, set out in the Grundrisse, he added the Asiatic or oriental system, which is incorporated into the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. For the evolution of Marx’ and Engels’ thinking on this whole subject see Eric Hobsbawm’s introduction to Karl Marx: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, International Publishers, 1963.
[7] Marx, The German Ideology, 1845, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.h... [25]
[8] “Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature” (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm [26].
[9] Capital Volume One, Penguin, 1976, p.169.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Capital Volume One, Penguin, 1976, p.799.
[12] See for example “The decadence of capitalism (v): The mortal contradictions of bourgeois society”, International Review no. 139, 2009, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/139/decadence [27].
[13] Capital Volume Three, Penguin, 1981, p.350.
[14] Op. Cit., p.615.
[15] Op. Cit., p.358.
[16] Grundrisse, Penguin, 1973, p.540.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Murder of the Dead, 1951, https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm [28]. Bordiga is commenting in particular on capital’s appetite for so-called natural disasters but more generally on its crisis of overproduction in the post-war period.
[19] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm [29].
[20] Grundrisse, p.749.
[21] “Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.” (Marx, Capital Volume One, p.638.
[22] “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism, Part 2”, International Review no. 104, 2001, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/104/why-no-revolution-02 [30]
[23] A quote from Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The phrase is a reference to Aesop’s fable about an athlete who boasts he made a stupendous leap in Rhodes; the crowd points to a rose (in Greek Rhodos can mean both ‘Rhodes’ and ‘rose’): “Here is Rhodes, leap here”.
[24] “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism, Part 2”, Loc. Cit.
The new president of the Republic has finally been elected, this “new man” who is “not part of the system”, Emmanuel Macron.
Macron is promising to “change France” and “reunite the French” in a new national, fraternal concord. He promises to re-launch the French economy and claims to be for European renewal, partisan of a more democratic and economically dynamic euro zone. These of course are all entirely bourgeois concerns. Only the bourgeois class and its representatives can win elections. Democracy is the ideology which hides the dictatorship of capitalism and the totalitarian domination of its state. For more than a century, the electoral terrain has been a trap for the working class. Bourgeois elections are one of the key moments for the ruling class to ensure it gets a government which is in line with its interests, while at the same time intensifying its democratic ideology, through which it tries to make us believe that it’s the majority of the population which governs and makes the decisions. This is the exact opposite of reality. Democracy enables the minority to rule over the majority and the proletariat in particular. It covers up class antagonisms which in reality can’t be reconciled. It turns the revolutionary working class into a sum of individuals, of isolated, atomised, powerless “citizens” and “voters”.
It’s obvious that the most responsible sectors of the bourgeoisie were very uneasy about the possibility of the Front National coming to power. This is a party which also defends the national interest but at the same time is totally irresponsible and irrational. In this these sectors of the French bourgeoisie were not alone. The German chancellor Angela Merkel and her minister of the economy, Herr Schlaube, didn’t hide their very active support for Macron. Between the two rounds of the presidential election, Merkel declared “I have no doubt that if Emmanuel Macron is elected he will be a strong president”. Not forgetting ex-president of the USA Obama and the European Commission who also made their support for Macron perfectly clear. At the beginning of the campaign, the French bourgeoisie had been counting on two candidates which it saw as being best placed to manage the national capital while keeping out the FN: messieurs Juppé and Macron. However, Juppé’s candidature had from the start been severely compromised. A former prime minister, a member of a party which has been rejected by the majority (the Républicains), a man of the apparatus, he carried a strong risk of failure. This was amply confirmed by the first round of the right wing primaries which saw the surprise victory of François Fillon. In fact, growing sectors of the bourgeoisie were already working more and more openly for the victory of the “new man”, Macron. The active support of the outgoing president, François Hollande, soon became an open secret. The same went for a certain number of key figures in the Socialist Party, which finds itself in a real mess. The same also went for the right wing parties who were equally in crisis. Supported by numerous business men, financiers and industrialists, backed up by a large part of the media, in particular the BFM news channel, the campaign was extremely effective. Macron had to be promoted at any cost!
Why such determination on the part of these sectors of the French and western bourgeoisie? Certainly not in order to defend the interests of the working class! The truth is that these sectors of the ruling class were deeply concerned about the possibility of an FN victory and at the same time they needed to give the illusion that some kind of “renewal” was taking place.
The bourgeoisie is without doubt the most intelligent ruling class in history. It can never completely lose sight of its class interests and of how to defend them. The history of capitalism shows this, whether the bourgeoisie is up against the revolutionary working class or defending its economic and imperialist interests. This is why the rise of populism in most of the western countries is so alarming for it. This anxiety became a priority concern after the victory of Brexit in the UK and Trump in the USA. These are not events which took place in minor countries. Two of the most powerful bourgeoisies in the world were incapable of preventing the electoral victory of populism. The alarm-bells are now ringing on a permanent basis, especially now that populism is threatening to tear the European Union apart. This couldn’t be allowed in France, where there is a powerful populist formation, the FN, which is sapping the bases of the ideological mystifications which the bourgeoisie uses to maintain a certain level of social cohesion (the “Rights of Man”, universal progress, etc). The irrational, backward-looking FN is incapable of providing an adequate ideological stratitjacket since it openly preaches a form of exclusion, declaring that the world is about to go under and that the only thing you can do is to save “our nation”, our “own kind” at the expense of the rest of the planet.
What most worries the more lucid factions of the bourgeoisie is the fact that the populist parties are so ill-adapted for defending the general interests of the national capital. Marine Le Pen’s call for a referendum about leaving the EU or quitting the euro is a very clear example. The populist parties are incapable of understanding what policies need to be pursued. They propose something one day and its opposite the next, and this is true both at the economic and imperialist levels. To prevent the FN coming to power in France became a priority, just as it was to show that the Brexit and Trump victories were not an irreversible phenomenon. The result of the elections in France has brought considerable relief to a large number of major governments. This is why, despite the historical fragility of the bourgeoisie, this election had been a success not only for the ruling class in France but also on the international level, above all in Europe.
The necessity to react to the rise of populism has its roots in the historic weakening of the ruling class, which includes the main western countries. Underneath this irreversible historic process is the decomposition of the capitalist system. This expresses itself in particular in a growing difficulty to develop a long-term policy, to ensure sufficient cohesion to make it possible to defend the national interest above those of cliques, coteries and personal rivalries. This dynamic has particularly affected the traditional parties which have been at the head of bourgeois states since the end of Second World War. In France, it’s the parties of the traditional right and the Socialist Party which have been most strongly affected, to the point where they have become increasingly marginalised. A large majority of the population no longer wants anything from these parties. Having been running France for decades, they have, each in their turn, done nothing but impose austerity and precarious employment without being able to offer any kind of credible perspective for the future. Gangrened by scandals, clan battles and ego-wars, they have earned disgust and rejection. They made a bed for a form of populism that is particularly strong. This weakening of the most responsible and experienced bourgeois parties is a reality facing the ruling class and it has had the most serious consequences, as we see today in the USA. At the same time there is a need to make new attacks on the working class as soon as possible. Given the urgency of this situation, the discredited traditional parties could no longer do their job. They had become an added factor in the historic weakening of the bourgeoisie. Even if there is no guarantee that the legislative elections in June will give Macron a solid majority, the immense pro-Macron campaign will certainly be continued by the main factions of the French and German bourgeoisies, whatever their genuine economic and imperialist divergences.
The bourgeoisie is getting things in place for unprecedented attacks on living and working conditions. This is what Macron has just repeated to the whole of Europe at a recent press conference in Berlin: “I am here to profoundly reform France. I will keep my campaign promises”. The working class has been warned. Macron is going to act in a full-on manner, with no going back. He is proposing to take a series of measures for which workers will pay the cost – some of them to come into effect this summer when many workers will not be at the workplace alongside their class brothers and sisters.
The key word here is generalised flexibility, with the aim of going much further than the El Khomri law. At each workplace, wage levels will be imposed, along with real working hours and conditions for hiring and firing, all in the name of being more competitive. This means a ferocious increase in exploitation. But even that will not be enough. There will also be blows against unemployment insurance. The increase in the CSG (social security contributions) and the intensified policing of the unemployed is part of the programme. As for pensioners, “the sums contributed individually will determine everyone’s pension level”. This is very clear: you will have to work longer for even more miserable pensions, with the guarantees that still remain disappearing rapidly. And Macron also plans to get rid of special regimes. This is his way of “reducing the social fracture” as he put it, paraphrasing former president Chirac. Precarious employment and impoverishment for the employed, the unemployed, for young people and the retired. The whole working class is about to be violently attacked by the French capitalist state.
It’s clear that elections can only be a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Yesterday Hollande and Sarkozy, today Macron…but for the working class, there is no other perspective but increased exploitation and the degradation of living standards. The bourgeoisie accords no dignity to the lives of the proletarians, or to human life in general. The only things that count are profit and its continued domination. In this Macron can count on other factions of the national bourgeoisie. Mélanchon and his movement have already actively participated in strengthening republican and democratic ideology. In the future they will probably have an even more important role in countering the class struggle. Mélanchon, this old hand of the bourgeois state apparatus, knows this quite well. As do the leftists and the trade unions, especially the CGT and FO, since they are already calling for a “third social round”, which means fully playing their role of boxing in struggles and sabotaging them from within.
For part of the working class, it’s a grave error to think that you can challenge the existing order and hold off the impending attacks by getting pulled into a reactionary populist revolt, which sets worker against worker. Equally dangerous is supporting the “democratic” anti-populist forces. A small number of young people in demos at the end of the first round of the election raised the slogan “Neither Marine nor Macron, neither Fatherland nor Boss”. Whatever confusions might go along with it, and whatever difficulties face the proletariat today at the level of its consciousness and its fighting spirit, this slogan carries the seeds of the class struggle and the necessity to affirm the perspective of another kind of society. The communist revolution remains the only realistic way to construct a truly human society, without classes and without exploitation. And this means consciously confronting the bourgeoisie, its democracy, and all its different factions.
Philippe, 19.5.17
In September 1867, a group of Fenians, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, blew a hole in the wall of Clerkenwell prison in London in an attempt to free another member of the organisation. The resulting explosion, while failing to free the prisoner, caused the collapse of a row of nearby working class houses, killing 12 and injuring over a hundred residents.
This was a time when Karl Marx and other revolutionaries supported the cause of Irish independence, particularly because they saw it as an essential precondition for breaking the ties between the working class in the mainland and their own ruling class, who used their domination of Ireland to create an illusion of privilege among the English workers and separate them from their Irish class brothers and sisters.
Nevertheless, Marx reacted angrily to the Fenians’ action. In a letter to Engels he wrote
“The last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing. The London masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will be made wild by it and be driven into the arms of the of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries. There is always a kind of fatality about such a secret, melodramatic sort of conspiracy” [1]
Marx’s anger was intensified by the fact that, not long before the Clerkenwell explosion, large numbers of English workers had joined demonstrations in solidarity with five Fenians executed by the British government in Ireland.
In this brief passage from Marx, there is a neat summary of two of the main reasons why communists have always rejected individual terrorism: that it replaces the massive, self-organised action of the working class with conspiracies by small elites; and that, whatever the intentions of those who carry out such acts, their net result is to drive the working class away from an independent stance and into the hands of the government and the ruling class.
A great deal has changed since Marx wrote these words. The call for national independence, which made sense in an epoch when capitalism had not yet exhausted its progressive role, became inextricably linked, from the First World War onwards, with support for one imperialist camp against another. For Marx, terrorism was an erroneous method used by a national movement that deserved support. In our epoch, the epoch in which only proletarian revolution can offer a way forward for humanity, national movements have themselves become reactionary. Bound up with the endless imperialist conflicts that plague humanity, terrorist tactics have increasingly mirrored the brutal degradation which marks warfare in this period. Where once terrorist groups mainly targeted symbols and figureheads of the ruling class (as in the case of the Russian ‘People’s Will’ group who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881), most of today’s terrorists translate the logic of the states who wage imperialist war – such as the indiscriminate aerial bombing of entire populations – into their own indiscriminate bombings and murders, aimed at a population which is blamed for the crimes of the governments which rule them.
According to today’s pseudo-revolutionaries on the left[2], behind the religious slogans of al-Qaida or Isis terrorists, we are witnessing the same old struggle against national oppression that the Fenians were engaged in, and today’s marxists should therefore offer support for such movements, even if they distance themselves from their religious ideology and from their terrorist methods. But as Lenin said in response to those social democrats who used the writings of Marx to justify participation in the first imperialist world war: “Anyone who today refers to Marx’s attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie, and forgets Marx’s statement that the ‘workingmen have no country’ – a statement that applies precisely to the period of the reactionary and outmoded bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, is shamelessly distorting Marx, and is substituting the bourgeois point of view for the socialist.” (Lenin, Socialism and War, 1915). The murderous means used by groups like Isis and their sympathisers are entirely consistent with their aims – which is not to overturn oppression but to substitute one form of oppression for another, and to ‘win’ at any cost in the gruesome battle between the one set of imperialist powers and another set (such as Saudi Arabia or Qatar, for example) which backs them up. And their ‘ultimate’ ideal – the global Caliphate – even if it is as unrealisable as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich, is no less an imperialist venture, demanding well-tried imperialist measures of slaughter and conquest.
Marx pointed out that the Fenians’ action in London would drive a wedge between the working class movement on the mainland and the struggle for Irish independence. It would create divisions between English and Irish workers which could only benefit the ruling class. Today, the Islamist terrorists make no secret of the fact that their aim is precisely to create divisions through the atrocities they carry out: most of the initial actions of Isis in Iraq targeted the Shia Muslim population, which Isis regards as heretics, with the goal of sparking a sectarian civil war. The same logic in the London or Manchester terror attacks: to sharpen the gulf between the Muslims and the non-believers, the kaffirs, and thus hasten the outbreak of full-blown ‘jihad’ in the central countries. This is further testimony that even terrorism can degenerate in a society which itself degenerating.
Apart from the openly racist right wing, who like the jihadis also long for a kind of race war in the streets, the stock response of governments and politicians to the terrorist attacks in Europe is to raise the national flag and proclaim that ‘the terrorists will not divide us ‘. They talk about solidarity and unity against hatred and division. But from a working class point of view, this is a false solidarity – the same kind of solidarity with our own exploiters which ties workers to the patriotic war efforts of the imperialist state. And indeed, such calls for national unity are often a prelude for mobilising for war, as after the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, with the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what Marx meant by workers being driven into the arms of the government party. In an atmosphere of mounting fear and insecurity, when you are faced with the prospect of random massacres in the streets, bars or concert halls, an understandable response of those threatened by such attacks is to demand the protection of the state and its police forces. Following the recent atrocities in Manchester and London, the question of ‘security ‘was a major issue in the recent UK election campaign, with the Tories denouncing Corbyn for being soft on terrorism and Corbyn denouncing May for cutting police numbers.
Faced with the terrorists on the one side and the capitalist state on the other, the proletarian position is to reject both, to fight for class interests and class demands. The working class has a deep need to organise itself independently, including the organisation of its defence against state repression and terrorist provocations. But given the weakened condition of the working class today, this need is a long way from being fulfilled. There is a tendency for many workers to see no alternative but to seek the protection of the state, while a small number of disaffected proletarians are drawn towards the putrid ideology of jihadism. And both these tendencies actively undermine the potential for the class to become self-aware and self-organised. Thus, every terrorist outrage, and every state-sponsored ‘solidarity’ campaign in response to it, must be seen as blows against class consciousness – and ultimately, as blows against the promise of a society based on real human solidarity.
Amos 12/6/17
[1] Quoted in K. Marx and F. Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow 1971), p 150
[2] See for example https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/jenkins/2006/xx/terrorism.html#n6 [35], from the SWP’s journal International Socialism, 2: 110, spring 2006
The general election on 8 June gave the UK a hung parliament. The Conservative Party were 8 seats short of the majority Theresa May had hoped to increase. This meant the possibility of a new election before the end of Brexit negotiations and further instability. This is a failure for Mrs May, and leaves her in office as Prime Minister only on sufferance until the Tory Party grandees feel it is opportune to oust her.
More seriously, it reopens the question of what sort of exit from the EU Britain will try to negotiate, which could prove useful for the bourgeoisie. The fact that the government looks likely to be dependent on the 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs from Northern Ireland could undermine the power-sharing agreement there which relies on the government’s apparent “rigorous impartiality”. However, definitely on the plus side for the ruling class, the ‘Corbyn factor’ has really increased illusions in democracy among young people and particularly among young workers. Turnout among the 18-24 age group rose from 43% to 58% since the 2015 election, a significant leap in participation in the electoral circus.
This election cannot be understood without seeing it in the context of the 2015 general election and last year’s Brexit referendum. Like many other countries, Britain faced the growth of populism[1] in the form of the UK Independence Party which offers a simplistic answer to much of the discontent in the population, including parts of the working class, based on opposition to immigration, and the illusion the country could regain its former economic and imperialist power if only it took control back from the EU. In doing this it disparaged elites and experts – particularly economists who warned against the effect of Brexit on growth. On a totally bourgeois terrain of nationalism and xenophobia, without any pretence of humanitarian values, it appeals particularly to those with least hope for the future looking for someone to blame.
But UKIP does not offer a consistent or rational policy to run the state in the interests of the central factions of the ruling class and so is a problem for the bourgeoisie as a whole. While UKIP had been taking votes from both Tories and Labour, its anti-EU policies chimed with the Eurosceptic views that have existed in both major parties, particularly the Conservatives, for decades. In response to this pressure from both UKIP and Eurosceptics in his own party, David Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership in the election manifesto for 2015, with the aim of settling the issue for a generation. This was a huge miscalculation, a loss of control of the electoral game, which resulted in the vote for Brexit which they had not prepared for.[2]
Cameron resigned to be replaced by May, who did much to try and stabilise the situation.[3] She interpreted the referendum result as meaning that immigration had to be cut, and the country leave the European Court of Justice, hence leaving the single market and customs union, a ‘hard’ Brexit; and the government wanted to keep parliament out of any role in the negotiations. Saying that “no deal is better than a bad deal” for Britain in advance of negotiations made her look like a poker player with nothing in her hand trying to convince an opponent to fold. That was the hand she had been dealt. It was in these circumstances, with negotiations imminent and opinion polls strongly in her favour, that she called the snap election to try and strengthen her hand.
Although Brexit was the key to understanding why this election was called, it is not surprising that it hardly featured in the campaign beyond Mrs May telling us she would provide “strong and stable” leadership for the negotiation. With both main parties divided on the issue any discussion during the campaign could only risk severely weakening either or both of them.
The British ruling class has tried to deal with populism in the form of UKIP by taking on a major plank of its policies, leaving the EU, as part of the policy of the government and main opposition party. The government had gone as far as insisting that this meant leaving the single market and customs union in order to limit immigration, whereas this was weakening it on both the economic and imperialist levels. The decision caused a fall in the value of the pound, and strict immigration control would deprive many businesses of either skilled or seasonal labour power. On the imperialist level, outside the EU, Britain will have far less influence. Merkel’s recent statement that the USA and Britain are unreliable partners is a small indication of this. Relying on the ‘special relationship’ with the USA is no compensation since the relationship is more of a fiction based on a huge imbalance in power to the UK’s disadvantage.
Brexit had reopened the question of Scottish independence since Scotland had voted clearly in favour of remaining in the EU, despite a clear vote against independence in the 2014 referendum. To this has been added the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The open border, with both countries in the EU, was an important factor in the Good Friday Agreement which established power sharing between Catholic Republican and Protestant Unionist politicians. Power sharing has been called into question by Sinn Féin walking out of the government, the current sticking point appearing to be the demand for parity for the Gaelic language which has nothing to do with the pretext for the original walk out. So there is also the problem of tendencies towards the disaggregation of the UK.
The British bourgeoisie is also aware of the considerable discontent within the population, and particularly within the working class, after decades of austerity, particularly since the subprime crisis 10 years ago that have left workers worse off. In 2014 wages were almost 10 per cent lower than seven years before. In addition there are the cuts to funding in health and social services, to education, along with public sector pay restraint. Although this is not being expressed in working class struggle, and there is at present no strong feeling of being part of a working class that can struggle effectively – as there was in the period from 1968 to the late 1980s – which is the only really effective way to fight for a future society, the bourgeoisie still need to deal with this discontent. Some of this discontent was expressed in votes for Brexit, more to give the government a bloody nose than out of any conviction. However, the political apparatus has also provided another avenue for expressing discontent with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, which produced a large influx of new members into the party. Despite all the efforts to portray him as incompetent, unwilling to defend the country, going back to the 1970s, this promotion of a left-wing figure is the bourgeoisie’s tried and tested way of absorbing discontent and diverting it back into support for democracy and parliament, that is, for the very state that is imposing austerity.
There is now a new problem with the instability of a minority government, that we might be expecting a new election sooner rather than later, and that the prime minister is much weakened and unlikely to last long. Theresa May did not strengthen her mandate for a hard Brexit, so much as lost it. She told the Tory 1922 Committee of backbenchers “I’m the person who got us into this mess and I’m the one who will get us out of it”. The change in the situation has strengthened the hand of those wanting to argue for a different Brexit that retains access to the single market or at least the customs union. Former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Ken Clarke have both proposed that there is now cross party debate about Brexit. While this holds the promise of the possibility of a Brexit less damaging to the national capital, it also creates difficulties for negotiations starting only 11 days after the election! The EU negotiators are ready, Michel Barnier has a mandate from the other 27 countries, but no-one knows what Britain wants with only 21 months left on the clock. The EU is insisting on a programme of negotiation starting with the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU, which might cause great controversy, despite everyone’s benevolent stated intentions. If there are what The Economist (17/6/17) called “silver linings” Britain remains in a very weakened position.
With the Scottish National Party losing 21 seats, although retaining a majority of Scottish seats, to unionist parties, ie the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats, a new independence referendum is now off the table. But the Tory reliance on the DUP for a majority only adds to Britain’s problems there. It is not only Republicans from Northern Ireland who have warned that the government may be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement to remain “rigorously impartial” between them and the Unionists (even if this could only ever be a fiction). Former PM John Major has also warned that the “men of violence” are still there and that it would be far better to run a minority government, however difficult, than to risk the Agreement with this alliance with the DUP.
When it comes to the question of dealing with discontent, the election has clearly marked a step forward for the bourgeoisie, thanks to Corbyn. Being dismissed as weak and unelectable, and demonised as far left, soft on terrorists such as Hamas, no doubt improved his image as a radical socialist politician, although he is a long term supporter of state capitalism.[4] In much the same way as Bernie Sanders in the USA, Syriza in Greece, or Podemos in Spain, he was able to mobilise young people, particularly young workers, behind the idea that they can change things through the democratic process, encouraging them to register and turn out to vote. For those totally disgusted by the xenophobia of populism he offers the illusion of fighting against it within the democratic system, and he offers the hope of change based on ‘social justice’ – within capitalism. During the election campaign the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London gave him the opportunity to underline his support for the state as the only means to protect the population through the call for more police officers.
Before the election he was regarded as a pariah in the Parliamentary Labour Party, with many refusing to serve in his shadow cabinet after an attempt to get rid of him with a vote of no confidence among Labour MPs. This has all changed with his very successful election campaign and an increase of nearly 10% in Labour’s share of the vote to 40% and an increase of 30 seats. This result makes it appear that he has a credible alternative government, without the loss of credibility that would soon follow if he were to find himself in office and responsible for imposing austerity.
It is not surprising that moderate Labour MPs now recognise the important role Corbyn is playing in soaking up discontent and mobilising it for the election, overcoming much of the cynicism about Labour that is left over from the Blair and Brown governments. Particularly, if they consider how he is playing this role within the Labour Party, as opposed to what has happened in Spain where the growth of Podemos is largely at the expense of the Socialist Party, or in France where the opposition to the populism of Marine Le Pen through Macron’s new party has also come at the expense of the French Socialist Party.
The Trump election, coming hard on the heels of the Brexit referendum, was an important warning for the bourgeoisie of the danger of the disruptive political force of populism. We have already seen how Britain has been weakened by the referendum result, and we can see the difficulties faced by the USA in trying to cope with and control a president who is something of a loose cannon with various investigations and even talk of impeachment. There has clearly been a loss of control of the political apparatus by the most powerful bourgeoisie, in the USA, and the most experienced, in Britain, a clear indication of the difficulties faced by them in the period of the decomposition of the capitalist order.
In the UK, the mainstream bourgeois parties have really limited the UKIP influence in the latest election (the UKIP vote went from nearly 3.9million to less than 600,000) but only by taking on much of its policy and rhetoric – on leaving the EU and on the limitation of immigration.
This has reinforced the political system of two main political parties but at the cost of the self-inflicted wound in the referendum, with the Brexit negotiations still ahead. In the Netherlands, the centre right Prime Minister, Rutte, also used the tactic of undermining support for Geert Wilders by showing he could also stand up to Islamic countries, in this case by refusing to allow Turkish ministers to speak at meetings in the country ahead of their constitutional referendum, and by this means limited the populist party to 20 seats in a chamber of 150. The French bourgeoisie has been more determined in creating a new centre party, La Republique en Marche, behind the new president Macron, who plays at being an outsider.[5] Even his predecessor Hollande, has backed this new party despite the fact it comes at the expense of a huge loss of deputies for his own party.
Our rulers are having difficulties in controlling their political game and their elections to get the results they need. That this is one more piece of evidence that the capitalist system is now obsolete is of no advantage to the working class. The bourgeoisie can no longer provide any sane perspective for society, but the working class has to a large extent lost not only any sense that it can offer the perspective of a new society but even the confidence that it is a class that can struggle against the effects of capitalism and its crisis as a class.
In this situation, while the ruling class has suffered the disruption caused by populism, the working class faces the danger of being caught up in the conflict between populism and anti-populism. And the greatest danger is from the anti-populists, especially those on the left such as Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, who appear to give an answer to xenophobia and hatred, and offer hope for the future within this decaying capitalist system, rather than a perspective for its destruction.
Alex 18/6/17
[1]. See https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14086/questi... [38] for a discussion of this phenomenon.
[2]. See https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201607/14011/growing-difficult... [39] for analysis of the referendum vote.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/trump_us_saudi_arabia_99657-dea71.jpg
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-north-korea-aircraft-carrier-sailing-opposite-direction-warning-a7689961.html
[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/12029546/Saudi-Arabia-destabilising-Arab-world-German-intelligence-warns.html
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201606/13973/iran-and-saudi-arabia-twin-peaks-capitalism-s-decomposition
[5] https://libcom.org/library/we-supporters-rojava-should-be-worried-about-its-partnership-united-states
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/56/middle-east-and-caucasus
[7] https://fr.internationalism.org/revolution-internationale/201703/9528/elections-et-democratie-l-avenir-l-humanite-ne-passe-pas-urnes
[8] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-says-labour-would-deliver-fair-immigration-policy-but-refuses-to-get-into-a-numbers-a7747166.html
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14333/hard-times-bring-increased-illusions-labour-party
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/20/parliamentary-sham
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/359/democracy
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/grenfell_demo.jpg
[13] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/817651/london-fire-grenfell-tower-block-cladding-latest-updates-european-union-regulations
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201301/6246/capitalism-produces-housing-crisis
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201609/14092/1950s-and-60s-damen-bordiga-and-passion-communism
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/momentum_pic.jpg
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201510/13467/once-more-decadence-some-questions-deniers
[19] https://libcom.org/library/decadence-aufheben-2
[20] https://libcom.org/aufheben/decadence
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201206/4981/decadence-capitalism-part-xiii-rejection-and-regressions
[22] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/reason/ch01-5.htm
[23] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htmhis
[24] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch02.htm/
[25] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2
[26] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/139/decadence
[28] https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm
[29] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/104/why-no-revolution-02
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/15/decadence-capitalism
[32] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/macron_victory.jpg
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/_96345151_terrorpolice.jpg
[35] https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/jenkins/2006/xx/terrorism.html#n6
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[37] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/democracy.gif
[38] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201608/14086/question-populism
[39] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201607/14011/growing-difficulties-bourgeoisie-and-working-class
[40] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201702/14253/brexit-british-capitalism-struggles-limit-damage
[41] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201610/14138/corbyn-mobilising-discontent-behind-capitalist-programme
[42] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201706/14329/presidential-election-france-it-s-always-bourgeoisie-wins-elections