Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 there has been no let up in the effects of the conflict on the local population, caught between invading western armies, feuding warlords and the Taliban. While the media fawn on ‘our hero' Prince Harry, leading US generals admit that the mission is on the verge of failure, claiming that Karzai's Kabul government only controls 30% of the country.
Equally, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq you can look back and see an endless procession of atrocities, whether by the occupying forces or the insurgent ‘Resistance'. Despite the US government's claim that the ‘surge is working', the numbers of Iraqis meeting violent deaths has again started to rise, with at least 633 civilians dying in February alone. And death comes not only though the aerial, car and suicide bombardments that indiscriminately leave their victims strewn across the landscape, but the collapse of the infrastructure and the threat of diseases like cholera.
Having stirred up these hornets' nests in Afghanistan and Iraq, the current US administration seems hell-bent to spread the chaos and destruction even further, as it continues to rattle sabres at Iran. And this is in turn related to the fact that Iran has itself been trying to assert its own regional imperialist interests, particularly through its support for Shia factions in Iraq.
In fact the entire region from the Mediterranean to India is an actual or potential war-zone. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has deprived the population of absolutely basic necessities while civilians continue to be the main victims of Israeli bombardments and Hamas rocket attacks. To the north, Lebanon is still a powder-keg and Turkey is conducting another armed incursion into Iraq in pursuit of the PKK.
Further east, the instability in Pakistan, the possessor of nuclear weaponry, together with the increasing intervention of China and the US in the area, holds the possibility of a precarious situation tipping into catastrophe.
Everywhere you look capitalism's wars continue or, where there is ‘peace', threaten to flare up at a moment's notice. In Europe the ‘independence' of Kosovo brings with it the possibility of re-igniting conflict in the Balkans. In Africa the massacres in Kenya (that ‘haven of peace') take their place alongside Darfur, Chad, Congo and so many other places that could soon be joined by renewed wars between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
The organisers of the 15 March demonstrations describe them as "a global day of protest against Bush's wars". But Bush, whatever his faults, is not uniquely responsible for all the conflicts in the world. His predecessor Bill Clinton didn't hesitate to bomb Serbia. Among his potential successors Hillary Clinton supported the initial attack on Iraq and Barack Obama has said "I will not hesitate to act against those that would do America harm. Now, that involves maintaining the strongest military on earth..." And in Britain since 1997 Blair and Brown have shown themselves far greater warmongers than Thatcher and Major were in the 18 years of Conservative rule.
It's not because of dodgy individuals, or even particular states, no matter how powerful, that the planet is plagued with military conflict. It's because we live in the historic period of capitalist decline that war has become inherent to the way every nation functions. Every country is compelled to fight for its position, not just economically, but with force of arms in the cockpit of imperialist conflict. This applies just as much to the newest ‘independent' countries such as Kosovo, East Timor and Eritrea as it does to the big powers such as America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan. Militarism is a condition of contemporary capitalism regardless of the hopes and desires of the individuals in the ruling class.
It was the First World War that definitively confirmed that, because the great capitalist powers had divided up the world market, all each capitalist state could do was fight for its re-division in their favour.
The First World War was not the ‘war to end all wars'. The Second World War mobilised and massacred even more millions under the ideological banners of fascism or democracy, and led to a world redivided between American and Russian imperialist blocs. The period of Cold War was not one of peace but of scores of local wars, most of them as much proxy battles between greater powers as between the participants on the ground. Meanwhile both blocs coldly developed the technology for Mutually Assured Destruction, the ultimate no-win situation.
And when the Russian bloc fell apart, which meant that there was no way that the US could maintain the discipline of its ‘allies', it unleashed the period in which we are still living: that of ‘everyone for themselves'. Alliances have become less stable and conflicts more chaotic, and the threat of nuclear war is in many ways even more acute than it was in the Cold war period.
War has become integral to the way that capitalism functions. The weakest countries fight for their very existence. The strongest countries try to consolidate and reinforce their position. Imperialism is not a sin restricted to a few powerful states but has become a way of operating essential to all capitalist regimes, down to the smallest proto-state or nationalist gang.
But, just as the drive to war is fundamental for capitalism, so is the existence of the working class, the class whose exploitation is at the heart of capitalist production. The working class is the only force with the capacity to take on the capitalist system that gives rise to war. The clearest demonstration of this was the end of the First World War. It was the weight of workers' strikes, soldiers' mutinies and revolutions in Russia and Germany which brought the Great War to a finish. The working class had had enough of the slaughter and started struggling for its own interests, which do not correspond to those of the capitalist war machine.
Internationally, in the late 1960s, in the 70s and 80s, you didn't have to look far to see expressions of the class struggle. Indeed it was the resistance of the working class which made it impossible for the two imperialist blocs to mobilise their respective populations for world war during that period. During the 1990s there was disorientation in the working class and a very low level of struggles. But in recent years we have begun to see the re-emergence of the class struggle. Whatever the immediate reasons for workers' struggles, the defence of our own interests, the self-organisation and extension of our struggles, and the development of relations of solidarity, all lay the basis for creating a force that can finally put and end to capitalism and its war machine. WR 29/2/8
We are publishing here the first of two articles on British capitalism from Bilan, the theoretical organ of the Italian communist left in the 1930s. ‘Evolution de l'imperialisme anglais', signed Mitchell, appeared in Bilan 13 and 14, December 1934 and January 1935. The motivation for studying the situation of British imperialism is stated at the beginning of the article: the necessity for the proletariat to have a precise understanding of the major imperialist forces leading it towards another world war, and the specific reasons for the decline of British imperialism as part of the general decline of the capitalist system as a whole. Many of the elements given in Mitchell's essay are still enormously important for any analysis of the real state of British capitalism today. We thus intend to follow up the Bilan articles with other contributions which will enable us to update and concretise the rich historical insights that they contain.
In our study ‘Crises and cycles of capitalism in agony' (republished in International Reviews no102 and 103), we tried to show the significance of the general crisis of bourgeois society. We aimed to make it clear that capitalism in general and the imperialist groupings in particular are now obliged to follow the decadent historical course that has been mapped out for them. Because the irresolvable contradiction between the ‘socialist' form of production and the capitalist mode of distributing products no longer allows capitalism to continue with the development of its productive forces, it is clear that all the expressions of its activity from now on are simply various aspects of its need to adapt to the conditions that history has imposed upon it. Since these are very far indeed from representing steps towards the strengthening or stabilisation of capitalism and a revival of its progressive role - such a perspective has now been definitively excluded - these expressions, these ‘recoveries', are leading the system, through the exacerbation of its contradictions, towards imperialist war or revolution. Now that a series of proletarian defeats has stifled the second eventuality, the political and economic course being followed by capitalism can only be a material preparation of the economic apparatus, and the ideological preparation of the masses, for imperialist war. The road towards this is uneven and incoherent, since it can only reflect the different degrees of development of the various imperialisms and their readiness for conflict. In order to throw off the chains that bind it to the approaching carnage and oppose it with its own revolutionary solution, the proletariat must make an immense effort aimed at discerning and analysing the enemy forces that confront it.
British imperialism is one of the most powerful of these forces, one of the two or three poles of attraction for the secondary capitalist formations. But the powerful group which dominated the world prior to the 1914 conflict is now being undermined by the microbes of decomposition; and although the decadence of Britain is just one aspect of the decadence of capitalism in general, the classic form it has assumed and the considerable weight it exerts within the world economy makes it a particularly interesting case to examine.
While Britain was the birthplace of industrial capitalism, it was not in fact the first capitalist nation. In the history of primitive accumulation, of mercantile capital, the product of commercial and colonial pillage, it was preceded by Spain and above all by Holland.
But after the opening up of the great ocean routes, England's key position by the Atlantic favoured its rise to maritime and colonial supremacy. The bourgeois revolution which Cromwell carried through in 1649 in the interest of the already-powerful class of merchants and manufacturers, allowed the latter to extend their commercial networks across the globe (this took them the best part of a century). The Navigation Act of 1651, by assuring the British Isles a monopoly in maritime transport, laid the basis for its naval power. At the same time, the adoption of protectionism, vital for the defence of its nascent industry (and which soon provoked a response from Colbert in France) made Britain the greatest manufacturer in the world.
In sum, Britain's prosperity, which blossomed in all its arrogant pride up until the end of the 19th century, was fed by three essential activities by the bourgeoisie: first, its universal role as a merchant class which, as Engels said, "is the class, which, without playing the slightest part in production, knows how to conquer its general management and to economically subjugate the producers; a class which makes itself the indispensable intermediary between two producers and exploits both of them". It was this parasitic function which assumed a considerable importance in the British economy and we should not lose sight of this.
Next, its industrial activity, which was able to embark upon a dizzying ascent thanks, on the one hand, to the support of a considerable sum of merchant capital accumulated over nearly two centuries of pillage and exploitation of the indigenous and colonial masses; and, on the other hand, to the immense possibilities both for realising surplus value and for capitalising it by placing it in the vast colonial domain won by despoiling the Spanish, Dutch and French colonies. The four corners of the world thus kept British coffers full to the brim. Finally, there was its function as the world's banker.
The cement of the British Empire was its fleet, merchant or naval. This was an indispensable instrument in its capacity to rule over a huge scattered domain which lacked any geographical, economic or political unity. Equally vital was the dense network of its banking apparatus, spread like a net over the whole globe; finally, there were the contractual links of its loans and investments, subjugating the debtor peoples to the City of London, the world's lender. In 1932 this golden chain was worth more than the equivalent of the total national income of the same year, or 3 billion 700 pounds sterling, 3/5 of which were invested in the Dominions and the colonies and the remaining 2/5 abroad, representing almost double the investments of French imperialism, which were mainly placed in Europe.
A domain three times more extensive and with seven times the population of France, with nearly one third of the population of the globe, boasting immense resources of grain, cattle, wool, rubber, metals: this was the field in which British imperialism was able to grow. But this geographical milieu's lack of homogeneity was accentuated by the very sharp differentiation of its constituent parts: on the one hand, former colonies for population, now become Dominions and highly evolved capitalist states in themselves but whose solidarity with the Metropolis was becoming increasingly tenuous: Canada, Australia. On the other hand, colonies for exploitation, such as its possessions in Africa and India - countries which remained backward and where the indigenous bourgeoisie (as in India) far from representing a force capable of moving towards its own emancipation, has made itself the servile instrument of British capitalism in order to subdue a starving proletariat which can only attain its own liberation by linking up with the proletariat of the advanced countries. We should also add the ‘independent' states like the Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Argentina and other so-called ‘sterling' territories: zones of influence and operation for British imperialism.
The financial apparatus was very different from the banking system of French imperialism: the latter, more centralised, more closely linked to production (less however than German or American finance capital) confined its principal activity to exports of capital by states. British banking capital, began its concentration during the Victorian era and this was only just completed on the eve of the war. It reduced the number of banks from 104 in 1890 to 18 in 1924, but it still retained a decentralised character: the five great London banks alone possessed between 1,500 to 2,000 branches spread over Britain and the rest of the world, and, linked to numerous other banking establishments, made up a network of incomparable breadth. But an important characteristic of this colossal apparatus was the fact that it was not greatly interested in direct industrial participation and long-term loans, limiting itself to short term loans and the financing of the wheels of production indirectly, through loans on commodities. Banking income was thus much more a function of the circulation of commodities than of their production: the surplus value which these revenues expressed was produced outside the direct control of the banks. It is a fact that British finance has for a long time ceased to be interested in the industrial and agricultural sphere in the Metropolis, contenting itself with gleaning profits from merchants and colonies and from the capital exports derived from accumulation in industry. It thus serves a powerful bourgeoisie with an aristocratic origin, detached from production and whose interests are in sharp opposition to those of the industrial bourgeoisie. This is explained by the fact that organically, British bank capital is lagging behind that of France, Germany or the USA; the process of fusion of industrial and banking capital was never pushed so far in Britain; its character as ‘finance capital' was never so pronounced. This lag, while it can explain the relative stagnation of the productive forces, can itself be explained by the existence for nearly a century of a highly centralised productive apparatus which was the motor for the prodigious accumulation of British capital and which allowed it to make use of credit for its expansion.
The structural particularities of finance capital constitute both a weakness and a strength: a weakness, because, due to its intimate links with the mechanisms of world trade, it suffered from their perturbations; a strength because, cut off from production, it retains a greater elasticity of action in periods of crisis.
Such was the imperial field of expansion which the metropolitan economy could rely upon, and which enabled it to reach the peak of its power at the end of the 19th century. How then could its machinery come apart to the point where today it can only function to the extent that the Empire keeps it going with the surplus value extracted by an even more ferocious exploitation of the colonial peoples? To answer this we have to make a very brief analysis of its evolution.
Cobden and his Manchester League, by abolishing the Navigation Act, protection rights and the Corn Law, around the middle of the 19th century, established ‘Free Trade', the pivot of British economic policy. The bourgeoisie, equipped with a solid productive organisation, with abundant resources in coal and minerals, could profit from its privileged situation and accumulate huge amounts of capital as long as it retained a quasi-monopoly in the field of manufacturing. Through the export of its transformative industry, incomes derived from freight and investments, it could overcome the deficiencies of an economy dependent on the outside world for 5/6 of its food needs (the agricultural population is today 6% of the active population whereas in France it is as much as 40%).
The sectors which supplied the essential of British exports were coal, iron and steel, textiles, precisely the ones which were to be the most affected by the decline of the economy and the hardest hit by unemployment.
The structural organisation of the coal industry, although based on the existence of rich seams of carbon that were easily accessible and close to the sea, concealed a ‘congenital' weakness that resulted from the mode of appropriation in the mines. The latter belonged to the owners of the land, who demanded a rent, a "royalty", in exchange for the right to exploit the coal underground. Furthermore, important seams of coal made up the frontiers between different properties; they thus remained unexploited and were definitively lost. A backward technology also increased the price of bringing coal to the surface. At the same time, the development of the coal industry in continental Europe and the US, and the growing use of other sources of energy - hydro-electric, oil etc - led to Great Britain definitively losing its preponderant position in world coal exports, ceding this to the US and falling into third place. But, more importantly, this regression undermined one of the main pillars of its economic armoury: export cargo. Coal constituted the main outgoing cargo that the British fleet distributed to the four corners of the earth, bringing back food and raw materials. The reduction of this cargo considerably cut down the competitive strength of the fleet and the income derived from merchant activity.
The power of the iron and steel industry, which reached its culminating point in the middle of the 19th century, was thus inevitably and strongly affected by the world-wide rise of the capitalist mode of production and the rapid and formidable development of other centres of iron and steel production. Already in 1897 Joseph Chamberlain had tried to react against this threat to the whole of British industry, projecting the creation of an imperial ‘Zollverein'; but the Dominions - themselves capitalist states - would not go along with it. In 1923 Baldwin failed in a similar attempt.
There is no doubt that British heavy industry entered into its phase of decline when we note, for example, that German cast iron production, which was only 2/3 of British levels in 1892, succeeded in doubling itself by 1912. In 20 years, Germany had progressed by 320% and Britain by only 32%. The retreat in British production in relation to world production also manifested itself clearly. For cast iron, 13% in 1913, 7.8% in 1929, rising to 8.4% in 1933. For steel, 10.2% in 1913, 8% in 1929 and 10.5% in 1933. The relative improvement in 1933 is explained by the fact that, sheltered by the 33% protection imposed on imports in 1932, steel producers managed to replace lost external markets with a monopolised national market. The necessity to maintain a monopoly also prevented them from finding a place in the continental steel cartel, and thus from enlarging their exports which, in 1933, remained essentially stationary. We are now seeing an attempt to face this difficulty through export subsidies appropriated from the income derived from domestic sales.
But where the situation proved particularly grave was in the cotton industry which had been the leading source of exports.
Between 1770 and 1815, Britain held a monopoly over the cotton market and through its advanced technology was able to inundate the world with its textile products. Through the mass ruin of native Indian artisans it was able to develop its exports in the subcontinent, after going through the great crisis of 1847 and having pushed the cost onto the proletariat, which was reduced to famine levels. The Lancashire magnates reached the summit of their power around 1860. The saturation of the market in India (its main client) and Australia, the American Civil War, led to the debacle of 1862-63 and threw the cotton industry onto the road of decline. Later on, other factors further aggravated the situation: Japanese competition for the Asian markets, US competition in South America, the growth of the Indian textile industry which, in 1913, had 6 million bobbins, and 9 million in 1933, and which in 1905 worked 50,000 looms and 154,000 in 1926.
The structural weakness of the Lancashire industry, losing ground to better equipped competitors, was above all expressed through the existence of a number of small and medium enterprises which were extremely specialised and constituted a major obstacle to a stronger centralisation. Furthermore, the speculative fever of 1919-20 resulted in overcapitalisation and multiplied the bank charges which weighed heavily on prices.
In the process of concentration and centralisation of cotton enterprises, Britain today is clearly behind Japan, which is the most direct threat to its position in Asia. In 1932, the number of Japanese enterprises was three times lower, with three times as much capital as that of the British factories. Britain, which had been the first to mechanise its looms - since in 1789, it already had steam power - had twice the number of looms as the Japanese in 1932, but they were only 5% automated whereas Japan's were 50% automated: it had five times more automated looms than Britain.
These differences could only result in a considerable reduction in Britain's markets. In relation to 1913, the fall in the overall export of cotton textiles was 41% in 1926-29, 63% in 1930, 79% in 1931. Exports to India represented 45% of the total in 1913 and they fell to 25% in 1931. The scale of the collapse in production can be measured by looking at the levels of utilisation of productive capacity. In 1930-31, for every 1,000 bobbins installed, those in Lancashire processed 36 bails of cotton, while in Japan it was 357 and India 275. In certain British factories, 50% of machines lay idle and 60 to 75% of workers were unemployed.
The decomposition of this industry, once the pride of the British economy, has now reached the stage where a re-organisation of the spinning sector is on the agenda: it will mean the withdrawal of around a quarter of existing looms from the sphere of production. Capitalism is resolved to destroy materialised labour, productive forces that are useful to humanity but harmful to the bourgeoisie, because they can't function as Capital. Destroy what the proletariat has produced and at the same time intensify its exploitation, because in the textile industry the problem of the productivity of labour, clearly ‘insufficient' in the face of Japanese competition which has a workforce of 85% women as opposed to 65% in Britain, 4 ordinary looms per man in Britain against 8 in Japan, which also pays wages in...rice!
Furthermore, the reaction of the Lancashire employers was already expressed in 1929 with the great lock-out, during which they vainly tried to impose the ‘more loom' system, or an increase in the number of looms per worker. On the other hand, in 1933, the failure of the general strike allowed it to push through a reduction in wages. The proletariat in the textile sector is more under threat than ever.
Coal, iron and steel, textiles, were thus the three sectors most hard hit by the decomposition of the British economy, as well as by the chronic depression which, for the last 13 years, following the brief phase of artificial prosperity of 1919-20, gnawed at the productive apparatus like a cancer and made high and mighty Britain the classic county of endemic unemployment: a million men constituted the army of unemployed which British capitalism, even during the post-war revival, had definitively ejected from the sphere of production. In 1934, this figure had already doubled, while in certain branches of industry, levels have more or less gone back to what they were in 1928-29. The effects of a ‘salutary' rationalisation and intensification of labour, condemns two million proletarians (13% of the working population) to permanent unemployment, since the British economy has now reached the limits of its capacity for absorbing new workers and because it can now only throw thousands of others out of the labour process.
In 1928, the year of the economic high point, unemployment among British miners stood at 25%. For all the declining industries put together, unemployment rose from 17% in 1929 to 33% in 1932 and 28% in 1933. For manufacturing industries in general, the percentage was respectively 8, 25 and 15. For the consumer industries, it was only 6, 13 and 11 percent. A particularly significant fact which underlines the growing parasitism of the British bourgeoisie: from 1920 to 1930, it was the industries producing food, furniture and luxury domestic equipment which expanded the most. In 1861, Marx had already pointed out that the number of domestic servants was practically equal to the number of industrial proletarians (see Capital volume 3). This relative and absolute growth of the unproductive population - servants, lackeys etc - was one of the consequences of the general process of capitalist accumulation which engenders, on the one hand, a gigantic development of the productive forces, a considerable elevation in the organic composition of capital (less pronounced however in Britain than in Germany or the US), resulting in the increasing productivity of labour; and, on the other hand, the export of capital.
The changes that took place in the distribution of the economic functions of the active population in the 80 year period between 1851 and 1931 clearly express the structural evolution taking place within the British economy; thus the percentage of men occupied in the industrial sphere went from 51% in 1851 to 42% in 1931. In agriculture, the regression was much more striking: the abolition of the Corn Law accelerated the penetration of capitalist production into this sector, further aided by the existence of a strongly capitalist form of landownership. In 1920, there were only 300,000 landowners, whereas in France there were ten times this number. In Britain, 8,000 of these landowners owned half the land between them, and most had replaced crops with cattle. As a result the percentage of men involved in agricultural work fell from 24% in 1851 to 7% in 1931. The proportion of productive workers of both sexes (workers and small farmers) went from 59% in 1920 to 52% in 1930, and the number of workers in commerce, transport, domestic service, and offices went up from 40.21% to 47.2%. The industrial proletariat went from 33.4% to 30.9% and domestics alone went from 8.1% to 10.1%, giving a proportion of three workers to each domestic servant. Such a social relation should not surprise us if we refer to the figures for the export of capital, expressing a considerable enlargement of the British bourgeoisie's extra-metropolitan activity, enabling it to live more and more on surplus value produced outside of its direct control, and to draw from it a revenue that was up to 5 times higher than what could be derived from external trade.
This can be explained easily through the collaboration of British imperialism with the leaders of the trade unions and the Labour Party and thus the deep influence of bourgeois ideology in the minds of the workers, translating itself into an extreme weakness of the political consciousness of the proletariat.
A profound alteration of the internal balance of the active population of the metropolis is thus one of the aspects of the parasitic decomposition of British imperialism. The revisionists of marxism rush to claim that this once again confirms that Marx was mistaken in predicting a growing process of proletarianisation resulting in general pauperisation. De Man in particular, in the columns of Le Peuple in Brussels, has tried to demolish the perspective traced by Marx and to justify his Labour Plan and the shifting of the centre of gravity of reformist policies towards the middle classes.
These expert falsifiers of marxism hide one fundamental aspect of this prediction: that the increase in the ‘unproductive' but exploited population, even though reaching near saturation point, is still based on the mass of surplus value produced, a part of which is used for the upkeep of this population; and that, consequently, given the relative and absolute diminution of the proletariat, this mass of surplus value can only be maintained through the intensification of the exploitation of this proletariat, which must necessarily lead it to become aware of the historic role it is called upon to play. We think that such a conception is much more imbued with the ‘spirit' of marxism than with its ‘letter'. Mitchell
To be continued
"For four decades, one speech has cast a shadow over British immigration policy" (The Observer 24.2.08). Enoch Powell's anticipated river "foaming with much blood" may have failed to materialise but, forty years on, immigration continues to pose difficult questions both for the working class and the bourgeoisie. Enoch's prophecy was wrong but it seems "the anxiety [that he] exploited has not gone away" (ibid).
One of the latest expressions of this "anxiety" is Labour's proposed "new route to citizenship" - in reality, a new attack on immigrant workers and a new means of creating divisions within the working class as a whole. Currently, "skilled economic migrants" can apply for British citizenship after five years, or after two if they are joining family members. According to The Guardian (21.2.08), "about 150,000 people a year successfully apply for a British passport, there is no compulsion to do so and around 100,000 with indefinite leave to remain in Britain retain their original citizenship". Plans that will effect economic migrants, relatives of British and permanent residents, refugees and asylum seekers, as outlined in a new Home Office green paper, The path to citizenship, would change this. "Newcomers will be classed as temporary residents for two to five years before becoming probationary citizens for a minimum of one year and a maximum of three years depending on their behaviour" (The Guardian 21.2.08).
The proposed three stage "route" would mean that becoming a British citizen would take six years (or three years for those joining family members, or eight years in some circumstances). But only migrants who play by the rules will be successful. For example, in order "to secure citizenship, applicants will need to fulfil a number of requirements. These include: speaking English, paying tax and becoming self-sufficient, obeying the law, and demonstrating integration into British life by playing an active role in the community" (The Guardian 20.2.08). Full access to benefits may be denied to some migrants until they have been in the UK for five years. Migrants who have been imprisoned will be prevented from accessing ‘probationary citizenship' while those who have committed minor offences will have their ‘journey' to citizenship slowed down. Citizenship will now have to be ‘earned'. As Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, made clear when the scheme was announced, these changes will "ensure that the rights of British citizenship are matched by the responsibilities and contributions we expect of newcomers to the UK" (ibid).
Even though the proposed plans don't affect the rights of migrants from the European Economic Area (which includes Poland) some people will undoubtedly think that they are a good starting point: ‘finally, the government is going to do something about the hordes of immigrants flooding Britain who are abusing our public services and destroying our communities'. Attitudes like this are certainly common, as The Guardian (ibid) noted, "recent surveys have found, for example, that the public believes that 20% of the population are immigrants", while "another poll found that the average Briton believes this country takes 25% of the world's asylum seekers". Even though the real figures are quite different - immigrants only make up 4% of the population and Britain only takes 2% of the world's asylum seekers - those questioned in these surveys would still think that their anxieties about the damaging affects of immigration are legitimate concerns rather than potential racist propaganda. Immigration minister Liam Byrne agrees; "consultation around the country has shown that Britain [is] not a nation of Alf Garnets"; people just want "newcomers to speak the language, obey the law and pay taxes like the rest of us" (ibid).
Instead of criticising workers who hold such views, shouldn't we try and engage with their ‘legitimate' concerns? After all, aren't they just an expression of class consciousness? No, the empirical evidence for xenophobic ideas amongst sections of the working class doesn't make them a manifestation of class consciousness. Historically, the workers' movement has understood the principle that the working class is one international class. Workers have no country. It is a class of immigrants. It has no ‘community' to defend. These ideas are central to the principle of international proletarian solidarity. Attitudes, like, for example, the ‘concern' over asylum seekers exploiting the NHS or the fear that Polish builders will force British builders' wages down, expressed by some British workers and regurgitated in the bourgeois press are a manifestation of bourgeois not working class consciousness. They are a virus in the body of the class. It's not surprising given the bourgeoisie's recent ideological campaign around the question of immigration and ‘national identity' that some of its ideas have found an echo in the working class. As Marx wrote in The German Ideology, "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas". But just because the origin of these ideas may be recognisable, and sections of the class are receptive to them, this does not make them legitimate. Communists cannot make any concessions to the imagined ‘communities' of bourgeois ideology. The history of the workers' movement shows us that the real enemy has always been the capitalist class, not foreign workers.
Rather than worrying about how many Polish plumbers there are in the UK British workers should be more anxious about what the British state is planning to do. Faced with the deepening economic crisis the bourgeoisie will have to make more ‘tough decisions' over jobs, pay, pensions and public services as it struggles to offer any perspective for the future. As it begins its attack, Labour's official mask of liberal anti-racism will slip away to reveal the racism that lies at the heart of the British bourgeoisie. For over forty years it has exploited the question of race and immigration to divide and rule the working class while benefiting from cheap and ‘flexible' labour. Today's campaign around ‘citizenship' is just the latest example.
Certainly the bourgeoisie uses immigrant workers to cheapen the overall price of labour; it does the same thing by ‘relocating' industries to countries like India or China. But for the working class the answer to this can never be found by going along with the bourgeoisie's manipulations and divisions, but by uniting all workers together in a common struggle against attacks on the living and working conditions of all workers. And this is not a utopia. Despite all the bourgeois campaigns we have already seen examples of native and migrant workers struggling together, at, for example, Cottam power station in 2006 and in Liverpool during last year's postal strike. Since 2003 workers internationally have slowly begun to rediscover their combativity and as a consequence have also rediscovered the importance of solidarity across the artificial barriers created by the bourgeoisie: race, nation and ‘community'. It is in these (at the moment small) struggles where we see a real perspective for the future, a perspective imbued with a vision which is the antithesis of the bourgeois world of competing nations and ethnic groups: communism, the human community, a world without frontiers. Kino (28.2.08)
This article has already been published on our site here:
https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/02/turkey [6]
Acting under US imperialist protection, a large chunk of southern Serbia, the province of Kosovo, was last month declared ‘independent' from Serbia, raising the prospect of a Greater Albania that also draws in Macedonia to the east, further squeezing Serbia. The ramifications are wide and dangerous and posit a further serious destabilisation in inter-imperialist relations. Within Kosovo itself, with its 90%, 1.9 million Albanian majority, three Serb municipalities, including the divided city of Mitrovica, are effectively partitioned. About 120,000 Serbs live in this region that Serbia considers its historic and spiritual heartland. It is a sign of the decomposition of capitalism that this Kosovan enclave, with its depressed economy, massive unemployment, endemic corruption and gangsterism, can be called a ‘nation state'. But this is the reality of nations and nationalism from World War I to today. Kosovo, itself awash with weapons, has needed the permanent presence of 17,000 Nato ‘peacekeepers' for ten years, and 2,000 more are to be added to the strength.
The powers that make up the ‘international community' are once again at each other throats over Kosovo's declaration. The EU itself, far from reacting as a unified ‘bloc', is riven by divisions over the issue. So far, France, Britain, Italy, the USA and Germany have backed Kosovan independence. Russia, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Spain, Romania and many others battling separatist movements (Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka and China) are implacably opposed. The opposition to the new Kosovan statelet is led by resurgent Russian imperialism that threatens to open a new can of worms in retaliation. It sees a precedent in its interference in Georgia and Moldova. "Above all this we must not forget: behind Serbian nationalism stands Russian imperialism" said Rosa Luxemburg in The Junius Pamphlet. While there's little chance of direct Russian intervention in the present circumstances, it shouldn't be forgotten that the 1999 war ended in a tense, three day stand off in Kosovo's Pristina airport between Russian and Nato troops. And, discounting direct Russian intervention, the commander of the EU forces in Bosnia was nevertheless talking last November about the need for Europe to be able to intervene militarily "in the event of another outbreak of war" (The Observer, 18.11.7).
It can be somewhat bewildering looking at the complexities of the Balkans - its states, politics, geography, and incessant wars; and this has been the case since capitalism began to plunge humanity into a cycle of ever-increasing and expanding war since the turn of the 20th century. The Balkans has since then been a fundamental expression of the development of imperialism and can only be understood in a global and historical context. This region is where the new period of imperialism expressed itself most starkly in 1914, when the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the spark that lit the conflagration of World War I. It was a key battleground in the deepening barbarism of World War II, a focus of rivalries between the two imperialist blocs between 1945 and 1989, and played a pivotal role in the phase of chaotic warfare that followed the collapse of the old bloc system, shown in the cruel and horrendous wars of the 1990s.
Writing in the first year of WWI, Rosa Luxemburg in The Junius Pamphlet is as clear as a bell: "In their historical connection, however, which makes the Balkan the burning point and the centre of imperialistic world politics, these Balkan wars, also, were objectively only a fragment of the general conflict, a link in the chain of events that led, with fatal necessity, to the present world war..." The "great game of world politics... the general world-political background", for revolutionaries, had to be taken into account in order to form a sound judgement and not get dragged in to the imperialist whirlpool. The gunshot in Sarajevo led to world war in 1914 because it brought into play the imperialist alliances which were already sharpening their swords for control of the region: Serbia, Russia, Britain and France on one side, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey on the other.
At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the imperialist rivalries are just as acute. In 1991, after the break up of Yugoslavia, it was Germany in 1991 that unleashed the rabid dogs of nationalism into the region with its open support for Slovenia and Croatia. It was Britain, Russia and France, for their own imperialist interests, who not only looked the other way from the ethnic cleansing undertaken by Milosovic and the Greater Serbia nationalists, and covered his back while he was committing atrocities. And it was the USA that set up and armed its own nationalist gangs (in Bosnia), attacking the manoeuvres of its imperialist rivals (everyone else), and, through its ‘humanitarian' air strikes and superior weaponry in the 1999 war, eventually came out on top.
At least 10,000 Albanians were killed and over 800,000 displaced in the brutal crackdown of Serb President Milosovic in 1998/9. With Nato (on this occasion expressing the interests of the US) bombing Serbs out of Kosovo in 1999, the Albanian bourgeoisie, through the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), had its revenge, paving the way for today's ‘declaration of independence'.
The formation of the new state of Kosovo will not resolve the nationalist tensions in the Balkans. On the contrary: the process of ‘Balkanisation' into unviable states was inseparable from the slide towards war in the first part of the 20th century and remains part of the same grim dynamic in the early years of the 21st. For the working class in this region, the euphoric celebrations of Albanian nationalists or the backlash from pro-Serbian forces (which has already resulted in violent clashes on the Serb/Kosovan border and attacks on the US embassy in Belgrade) are equally dangerous and reactionary, serving only to drag the exploited and the oppressed further into the sordid squabbles of their exploiters and oppressors. Baboon, 1.3.8.
Dear Comrades,
I read with much interest your debate with EK on the question of Che, national liberation, Stalinism etc. This seems to me to be a crucial question at the moment particularly amongst leftists and from what I see, in Latin America with the rise of left-leaning governments in Venezuela etc. From what I gather from friends who have travelled in Latin America, the iconography of Che is as prevalent as ever and is seen as a symbol of revolution, or change... sometimes in a quasi-religious sense. Now my thoughts on the "Che" question (him as a symbol for the whole question of Stalinism in Latin America) are basically the same as yours. I'm no expert but when I read the biography of Che it was obvious that their "revolution" was parachuted in by a minority of bourgeoisie nationalists (Castro). The rest of Che's career in the Congo and Bolivia seems to be explained by the term "parachuting" as well. This is Stalinism for sure. However, the question becomes one that has often arisen when I consider the positions of the ICC. The positions of the ICC seem to me to be "trenchant" - vigorous in their defence of internationalist positions, which are essentially my positions. But yours is a tiny fraction with little support among the proletariat. The proletariat may be becoming more combative... but not yet in a revolutionary direction. In the absence of this, I suspect a lot of people of the "left", socialist, communist or even anarchist look around for something, anything that is remotely similar to their positions. So, we turn to Che, Cuba, Chavez, Venezuela etc. We see US imperialism being fought... and we can't help but approve. We see vast poverty of the masses and some attempts to address them (Venezuela). We see the masses in action (Venezuela), we see workers talking about "workers control". In this situation it is very tempting to have a sneaking regard for positions historically alien to us. "Someone is fighting back", would be the refrain I suppose. Further, I was looking at a speech by the Trotskyist Alan Woods on the web (Hands off Venezuela) - he quotes or paraphrases Lenin (apparently) "those of you who wish to see a pure workers revolution will never see one." Presumably he means that revolutions always begin as complex affairs with the mobilization of a variety of classes and class interests etc. So his Trotskyite organisation takes the official stance of "critical support" of Chavezism - looking for the trends that might drive it forward. I suppose you could take a similar stance to the whole phenomenon of the Stalinist left in Latin America, to Che and all the rest? But the ICC does not do this. They are probably right in their "trenchant" position. But what concerns me is two fold, practical and theoretical: 1. That communist internationalists will forever be a tiny minority with no effective voice because they alienate those who might otherwise by sympathetic. In their hostility to all movements that are not proletarian internationalist they may get left behind in their theoretical purity? 2. That to stick rigidly to a vision of revolution from 1917 (etc.) and to assess all movements by that standard has the danger of verging into idealism - or even Platonism: the view that there is a perfect idea of revolutionary path to which reality must adjust itself. Thus, the real situation of complexity, for example in Venezuela, becomes dismissed out of hand as not conforming to the Platonic "internationalist positions"?
.... I look forward to your in-depth reply as always. These thought of mine lack coherence - but somewhere in there is something that approximates to a critique of your method. Good luck and I hope you appreciate that these comments emerge from a sympathiser looking to be involved in supportive and constructive debate!
Dear comrade,
Thank you for your letter. In our response we hope to deal with some of the questions and issues you raise. First of all we are glad you agree with us on the role and nature of Che Guevara, as you say in your letter “… the iconography of Che is as prevalent as ever and is seen as a symbol of revolution, or change... sometimes in a quasi-religious sense”. He has been made into the official poster boy for all things relating to ‘revolution’ and not a few things relating to style and fashion! We don’t call Che and his coterie Stalinist just because they were ‘parachuting in’, but also because of the fact that very quickly they aligned themselves with the imperialism of the USSR. This is the reality behind ‘national liberation’ and ‘anti-imperialism’.
Despite your agreements you say that “..But yours is a tiny fraction with little support among the proletariat. The proletariat may be becoming more combative... but not yet in a revolutionary direction. In the absence of this, I suspect a lot of people of the “left”, socialist, communist or even anarchist look around for something, anything that is remotely similar to their positions. So, we turn to Che, Cuba, Chavez, Venezuela etc. We see US imperialism being fought... and we can’t help but approve. We see vast poverty of the masses and some attempts to address them (Venezuela).” In essence you seem to be saying that although we have a correct position, the fact that most people aren’t aware of it means that there has to be some ‘in-between’ action, until there is movement in a revolutionary direction. Of course, we don’t espouse the vision of ‘revolution or nothing’ in the sense of deriding everything that is one fraction less than revolutionary. We support workers’ struggles and movements. It has often been said, not least by us, that a class which is unable to defend itself economically and politically is not a class which will make a revolution.
You ask in your letter: “1. That communist internationalists will forever be a tiny minority with no effective voice because they alienate those who might otherwise by sympathetic. In their hostility to all movements that are not proletarian internationalist they may get left behind in their theoretical purity? 2. That to stick rigidly to a vision of revolution from 1917 (etc.) and to assess all movements by that standard has the danger of verging into idealism - or even Platonism: the view that there is a perfect idea of revolutionary path to which reality must adjust itself. Thus, the real situation of complexity, for example in Venezuela, becomes dismissed out of hand as not conforming to the Platonic ‘internationalist positions’?”
It is true today that there are not the mass workers’ parties of the past. The counter-revolution combined with the betrayal of the mass parties and organisations of the working class (Social Democracy, unions etc.) dealt heavy blows to the consciousness of the masses. This is also compounded by the weight of bourgeois ideology that teaches us that there is no alternative to capitalism and the people who argue and militate for such a thing are ‘loonies’ or ‘crazy’ or, indeed, a ‘tiny cult’. We are a long way from the days when militants were known amongst the class, when there was a daily press and mass meetings... And yet, despite all of that, the working class on a worldwide scale has not been defeated. Indeed since 2003 there has been a slow resurgence of struggles world wide, often small in scale, but on significant political questions.
Being a ‘tiny minority’ in itself isn’t the crucial question, because being a revolutionary inherently means being in a minority against the mainstream of society and bourgeois ideology. If the main concern of revolutionaries was to be ‘with the masses’ then why not just join one of the Social Democratic parties, or a big union? In reality the main question is whether one defends clear positions that correspond to the needs of the working class struggle, even when they fly in the face of majority opinion. Even in a period of downturn in the class struggle, it’s important to see the long-term perspective. For example after the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 there followed a period of huge reflux in consciousness, reflected in the low level of struggle throughout the 1990s. The bourgeoisie was singing from the rooftops about the ‘death of communism’ and the triumph of capitalism. In contrast, the ICC showed that we had entered a new period in imperialist relations, a period of ‘each against all’ which would lead to ever greater conflicts. What has been the reality? Since that time we have had two wars in the Gulf, near genocide in Rwanda and Congo, the proliferation of nuclear technology to some of the most unstable regions of the world (India, Pakistan, North Korea), spectacular economic collapses (Argentina) as well as generalised economic downturns, and the ‘war on terror’ – when it will end, no one knows
However, it was our understanding that the working class hadn’t been historically, definitively defeated. Despite everything, there has also been a resurgence of interest in the positions of the communist left, with new contacts (individuals and groups) coming forward from all over the globe. That’s not to say they all have identical positions to the ICC, but there is a minimum criteria of the defence of proletarian internationalism, and we have been able to engage at a number of levels. What is most significant is the impulse pushing forward this political maturation – the stagnation of the economy, ecological crisis, war.... In general we can say that those parts of the working class which follow populist movements tend to end up demoralised and burnt out. There are legions of combative workers who have been recuperated by the left wing of capital and thus neutralised.
On your second point, undoubtedly, all large scale struggles involve complexities; the fact that there are workers of different sectors, of different levels of political consciousness and organisation, or who have been subject to different influences. The question to ask when judging a class based movement is what direction are the different classes going, what is the class dynamic? Even in a situation where there are many confusions, where the first demands are not necessarily those coinciding with the interests of the workers (Russia 1905, Poland 1980 to give two examples) things can develop very rapidly in a particular direction. One of the hallmarks of the “movement towards a revolutionary direction” is that the working class is increasingly taking direct control of its own struggles, that it is prying away from the grip of the unions and other bourgeois factions (leftists etc.). The working class will have to draw in other factions and classes (e.g. the peasantry) behind its struggles and demands – which is certainly not the same as saying we should support Chavez because he says he is doing something for the poor or fighting US imperialism. It’s against these historical indicators that we have to measure reality, not some “Platonic ideal” of a perfect uprising, as you say in your letter.
You seem to pose the situation in Venezuela as an example of this ‘in between’ situation – so the question is, what is the reality of Chavism? Does the rule of Chavez present an opportunity for the working class to develop its struggles, its self identity and collective strength? Is the specific fight against ‘US imperialism’ a workers’ struggle? We would say loudly: no! There is nothing new in the rule of Chavez – he is in the best traditions of state capitalism. The fact that he has taken control of the country and the economy (nationalising industries etc.) does not mean he has escaped the iron laws of capitalism. He is the head of the capitalist state and so is tasked with defending the national capital. He must still ensure that all of the nationalised industries generate profit – and where economic activity is interrupted say, for example, by workers’ struggles, he has responded the same way as all bourgeoisies all over the world, with an iron fist. A recent example has been the struggle of the oil workers (see our article online at: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/dec/ven-oil-struggles [7] ). History shows us, time and time again, the working class will always be faced by the bourgeois state in all its various guises and by individuals and factions who claim to represent the interests of the working class. But the praxis of the working class, whose highest point was in Russia in 1917, shows the dangers of believing that the capitalist state can be taken over and used for furthering the interests of revolution…
On the occasion of the anniversary of the October 1917 revolution in Russia, the scribblers of the ruling class regularly serve us up with the same refrain: the dictator Stalin is the heir of Lenin; his crimes were the inevitable consequences of the policies of the Bolsheviks of 1917. The moral? The communist revolution can only lead to the terror of Stalinism.
Men make history, but they do so in definite circumstances that necessarily weigh on their actions. So, the principal cause of the emergence of a regime of terror in the USSR was the tragic isolation of the 1917 October revolution. Because, as Engels said in 1847, in his Principles of Communism, the proletarian revolution can only be victorious at the world level: "The communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries...It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace. It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range."
The Russian revolution wasn't beaten by the armed forces of the bourgeoisie during the civil war (1918-1920), but from the inside, through the progressive identification of the Bolshevik Party with the state. That is what allowed the bourgeoisie to spread its historic big lie, either presenting the USSR as a proletarian state or spreading the idea that any proletarian revolution can only end up with a Stalinist-type regime.
Contrary to what the ideologues of the bourgeoisie affirm, there is no continuity between the politics of Lenin and those undertaken after his death by Stalin. The fundamental difference that separates them rests in the key question of internationalism: the idea of ‘socialism in one country', adopted by Stalin in 1925, constituted a real betrayal of the basic principles of proletarian struggle and the communist revolution. In particular, this thesis, presented by Stalin as a ‘principle of Leninism', meant the exact opposite of Lenin's position. The intransigent internationalism of Lenin, his total adherence to the cause of the proletariat, was a constant throughout his life. His internationalism wasn't dimmed with the victory of the Russian revolution in October 1917. On the contrary, he saw this as the first step of the world revolution: "The Russian revolution is only one detachment of the world socialist army, and the success and triumph of the revolution that we have accomplished depends on the action of this army. This is a fact that no one amongst us forgets (...). The Russian proletariat is conscious of its revolutionary isolation, and it clearly sees that its victory has the indispensable condition and fundamental premise of the united intervention of the entire world proletariat". (Report to the Factory Committees of the Province of Moscow, 28 July, 1918).
It's for that reason that Lenin played a decisive role, with Trotsky, in the foundation of the Communist International (CI) in March 1919. In particular it was Lenin who drew up one of the fundamental texts of the founding congress of the CI: the ‘Theses on the democratic bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat'.
At the time of Lenin, the CI no connection with what it was to become under the control of Stalin: a diplomatic instrument of Russian state capitalism and the spearhead of the counter-revolution on a world scale.
Contrary to Lenin, Stalin affirmed that it was possible to construct socialism in a single country. This nationalist policy of the defence of the ‘socialist fatherland' in Russia constituted a betrayal of the proletarian principles enunciated by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: "The proletarians have no country. Proletarians of all countries unite!" The politics of Stalin served to justify the strengthening of state capitalism in the USSR with the accession to power of a privileged class, the bureaucracy, living on the ferocious exploitation of the working class. Stalin was the iron fist and the figurehead of the counter-revolution.
If he was able to be the hangman of the revolution, it's because he had certain personality traits that rendered him more apt than other members of the Bolshevik Party to fulfil this role. It was exactly these traits of personality that Lenin had stigmatised in his ‘last testament': "Comrade Stalin in becoming General Secretary has concentrated an immense power into his hands and I am not sure that he always knows how to use it with sufficient prudence."
And in a post script, drawn up on the eve of his death, Lenin wrote: "Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a General Secretary. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a minor detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance" ( 4 January 1924).
From the middle of the 1920s, Stalin oversaw the ruthless liquidation of all the old comrades of Lenin, using the organs of repression that the Bolshevik Party had originally put in place in order to resist the White Armies (notably the political police, the Cheka).
After Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin was quick to place his allies in key posts within the Party. He took his aim at Trotsky principally, the alter ego of Lenin during the revolution of October 1917. Opportunistically, Stalin allied himself with Bukharin who committed the fatal error of theorising the possibility of constructing socialism in one country (later, Stalin had no scruples about executing Bukharin).
From 1923-24, a whole series of divergences appeared within the Bolshevik Party. Several oppositions were constituted, the most important of which was led by Trotsky, later joined by other militants of the Bolshevik old guard (notably Kamenev and Zinoviev). With the growth of bureaucracy within the Party, the Left Opposition had understood that the Russian revolution was degenerating.
Stalin occupied a key post. He controlled the apparatus of the Party and even the promotion of its leadership. This is what allowed him to put his men in place and transform the Bolshevik Party into a deadly machine. He particularly favoured the entry into the Party of a great number of ambitious arrivistes. The latter, whom Stalin supported, were only looking for a career within the state apparatus.
Henceforth, he had a free hand to undertake the great purge of the Party, with the principal aim of removing from the leadership the principal figures of the October revolution (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and above all Trotsky) in order to finally liquidate everyone.
Progressively Stalin withdrew all political responsibilities from Trotsky up to the time he was expelled from the Party in 1927 and from Russia in 1928. This is the period where all oppositions to Stalin and all suspects filled up the Gulags. The Moscow Trials (1936-1938) allowed Stalin to liquidate the Bolshevik old guard under the fraudulent pretext of hunting ‘terrorists', following the assassination of the party chief of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov, on 1 December 1934.
Dozens of Bolsheviks were persecuted, imprisoned, and finally exterminated in terrifying conditions. It was the time of the great Stalinist campaign against the "Hitlero-Trotskyists". Accusing them of a lack of ‘loyalty' towards the ‘Socialist Fatherland', Stalin also executed thousands of Bolshevik militants who had been the most implicated in the October revolution. It was necessary to definitively muzzle all those who had kept their internationalist and communist convictions. It was necessary to wipe out for ever all the witnesses capable of contradicting the ‘official' history, by exposing the great lie: the idea that Stalin was the executor of Lenin's will, the idea of a direct continuity between Lenin and Stalin[1].
Faced with the barbarity of Stalinist repression, what was the reaction of the great democracies of the West? When, from 1936, Stalin organised the wretched ‘Moscow Trials', when the old comrades of Lenin, broken by torture, were accused of the most abject crimes and themselves ended up asking for exemplary punishment, this same democratic press in the pay of capital let it be known that ‘there was no smoke without fire' (even if some newspapers made some timid criticisms of Stalin's policies, affirming that they were ‘exaggerated').
It was with the complicity of the bourgeoisies of the great powers that Stalin accomplished his monstrous crimes, that he exterminated, in his prisons and concentration camps, hundreds of thousands of communists, more than ten million workers and peasants. And the bourgeois sectors that showed the greatest zeal in this complicity were the democratic sectors (and particularly Social-Democracy); the same sectors that today virulently denounce the crimes of Stalinism and present themselves as models of virtue.
It's only because the regime that consolidated itself in Russia after the death of Lenin and the final crushing of the German revolution (1923) was a variant of capitalism, and even the spearhead of the counter-revolution, that it received such warm support from all the bourgeoisies that only a few years earlier had ferociously fought the power of the Soviets. In 1934, in fact, these same ‘democratic' bourgeoisies accepted the USSR into the League of Nations (ancestor of the UN), an institution that Lenin had called a "den of thieves" at the time of its foundation. This was the sign that Stalin had become a ‘respectable Bolshevik' in the eyes of the ruling class of every country, the same rulers who had once presented the Bolsheviks of 1917 as barbarians with knives between their teeth. The imperialist brigands recognised Stalin as one of their own. Henceforth, the communists who opposed Stalin submitted to the persecutions of the entire world bourgeoisie.
It was in this international context that Trotsky, expelled from country after country, under police surveillance at all times, had to face a campaign of shameless Stalinist lies, which were obligingly repeated by the bourgeoisies of the western democracies.
But where the complicity of the big democratic powers is most evident is in the fact that no one would give Trotsky asylum when he was expelled from Russia. The old leader of the Red Army was considered persona non grata everywhere. For Trotsky, the world became a planet without visa.
At the time of his stay in France in 1935, journalists, members of the intelligentsia, and some members of the Academie Francaise (like Georges Lecomte) went as far as circulating rumours that Trotsky was planning a terrorist ‘coup d'état'. Following these rumours, Trotsky was expelled by the French democratic state. To prevent him being delivered to the Stalinist political police, the Norwegian government offered him provisional asylum, before expelling him.
After wandering for more than ten years, Trotsky was finally welcomed by the Mexican government in 1939 thanks to the painter Diego Rivera who had some sympathy for Trotskyism. After a first murder attempt from a squad led by the Stalinist painter Siqueriros, Trotsky was assassinated on 20 August 1940 by an agent of Stalin, Ramon Mercader, who infiltrated his entourage by seducing one of the old revolutionary's collaborators.
Trotsky succumbed to the blows of Stalinist repression at the very time when he was beginning to understand that the USSR wasn't a "proletarian state with bureaucratic deformations" so dear to the epigones of the Fourth International (to which many of today's Trotskyist organisations give allegiance).
Today's democrats can shout as loud as they like about the abominable crimes of the Bolshevik Party. They will not wipe out our memory of these historic facts: it is with the blessing and complicity of their predecessors that Stalin was able to carry out his dirty work.
This reminder of one of the most tragic episodes of the 20th century reveals, if it's needed, that there was no continuity but a radical break between the politics of Lenin and those of Stalin. On his death-bed Lenin had seen correctly: Stalin had concentrated too much power in his hands[2]. Replacing him wouldn't have changed the course of history: another leader of his stamp would have taken on the role of hangman of the revolution. Stalin's personality was suited to take on this role, as was that of Hitler, himself benefiting from the favours of a German bourgeoisie avid for revenge after the defeat of 1918 and shaken to the core by the revolutionary wave of 1918 and 1923.
Contrary to the lies spread by democratic propaganda, the worm wasn't in the fruit of October 1917. Bolshevism did not contain in itself the terror of Stalinism. It was the crushing of the revolution in Germany that opened the royal road to the counter-revolution in Russia, the same as the death of Lenin on 20 January 1924 removed one of the last obstacles to Stalin's grip on the Bolshevik Party. The latter became a Stalinist party with the adoption of the theory of ‘socialism in one country.
Bolshevism belongs to the proletariat, not to its hangman, Stalinism.
Sylvestre, 20/1/08.
[1] In order to wipe out any trace of the past, all testimony, Stalin even tried to liquidate foreigners residing in Russia, such as Victor Serge who was imprisoned. He was quite a well-known writer and was only saved thanks to a large international campaign.
[2] It's for that reason moreover that Lenin's doctor, under orders from Stalin, estimated that it wasn't necessary to prolong his agony and proceeded with his euthanasia (this ‘humanitarian' gesture had the ‘merit' of preventing Lenin giving his last directives about the weaknesses of the Party).
When the announcement to formally nationalise Northern Rock was finally made there was a burst of optimism from the Financial Times "The differences between this nationalisation and failed nationalisations of the past are clear. Northern Rock's spell in public ownership will be temporary. It will be managed at arm's length. ... Therefore anybody who suggests that the Labour government has gone back to the 1970s socialism deserves ridicule." (18/2/8)
It is not, certainly, a question of the Labour party ‘going back to 1970s socialism' since the Labour government is a government of the capitalist state and nationalisations are part of the defence of the national capital in the face of the economic crisis. The state apparatus is always and everywhere intervening in each country to keep the economy moving, or at least attempt to combat the worst effects of the crisis.
As for the 1970s, Rolls Royce was nationalised when it ran into financial difficulties in the development of an aero-engine. It was subsequently privatised again in 1987. So it's wrong to say that the idea of holding a company in the public sector while it is financially repaired is some king of modern notion that was never tried in the past. Even British Leyland was finally sold back to the private sector in the end - simply to get rid of the corpse that the business had become. It is not necessary to speculate about the future of Northern Rock to see that there are rather serious problems confronting the bourgeoisie's ambitions to rescue it in some way.
The Financial Times thought that "Once the bank is in public ownership it will be possible to look to the future. It may even be a bright future. The inflated £100bn-plus size of its loan book will have to be scaled back to reflect its deposit base, but Northern Rock has efficient operations and some well-located branches."
Amidst the buoyant optimism we have here the central point - the fact that the size of the loan book is out of proportion to the deposit base at the Rock. Has this got better over the five months since the famous scenes of depositors standing in queues outside the bank? No, in fact it has got worse - very much worse. When the government gave its guarantees to the depositors it stopped people queuing outside the Rock's branches, but people still pulled out more and more money. This is known, not because it is officially admitted, but because the money has turned up at the bank's competitors - for instance at the Leeds, Nottingham and Newcastle building societies.
The bourgeoisie say it is set on the idea that the Rock can be turned round. But there is the unfortunate point that, although the loan book of the Rock is relatively ‘good quality' (meaning that it is not all sub-prime mortgages) the security on which they rest is vanishing as the housing market starts to tumble. That is based on absolutely fundamental factors that no management of the Rock has control over - whether the management is from the private sector or the public sector. The Bank of England has issued dire warnings about current financial problems being the "the largest ever peacetime liquidity crisis."
The bourgeoisie are not deluded about the real extent of the financial crisis, and the government danced a minuet with Mr Branson and the other private sector bidders for the Rock essentially for reasons of publicity. The mandarins at the Bank and the Treasury have not lost their minds and are just as clever as they ever were. Obviously they would have been very pleased to dump the wreckage of the Rock onto anyone - as long as they were guaranteed to get back the money the state has put in. At the end Branson remained the only bidder because his team was the only one prepared to say that they would pay the money back in 3 years, rather than 5 as originally stipulated. Since that was a fantastic offer the mandarins obviously did not believe he could actually do it.
What has really changed since the 1970s is that the state's room for manoeuvre in the face of the crisis has radically diminished. Not only is the Rock still going down, it is taking the £55 billion of loans and guarantees from the state down with it. The Evening Standard thought that the new management put in place by the state would cut the number of staff working for the bank and that that would help find the money to pay back the loans. If they cut half the staff, as has been suggested, that would save £75 million a year - if one takes £25,000 as the average wage for the Rock's workers. On the basis of such a saving it would take 700 years to pay back the loans!
Under Brown the treasury pretended for years that state spending has been kept within the bounds of Brown's self-imposed measures of prudence in relation to the scale of the state's debt - by making ‘adjustments' to the calculations and taking key items of expenditure ‘off balance sheet' (effectively not counting them). All this ‘good work' on the accounting front has been completely destroyed by the size of the loans to the Rock. The Rock itself is of no importance - the government would put it into administration, except for the blow that would deliver to confidence in the banking system. But the finances of the state are of critical importance to the whole economic situation, since the state constitutes 40 or 50 per cent of the entire economy and the welfare of the rest of the economy is absolutely dependent on the stimulus provided by state expenditures.
The British state's room for manoeuvre to confront the present open phase of crisis has therefore been seriously restricted right at the outset because of the collapse of a second order bank. But this is the fire that the bourgeoisie have been playing with in the period of so-called ‘globalisation' - where growth has, to a very large extent, been a question of financial engineering. The state has to act as guarantor for all the financial chicanery that goes on in the ‘private sector'. And this phase of open crisis is just beginning as it spreads from the financial sector into the wider economy. Hardin 29/2/8
With the ‘sub-prime' credit crunch, the world economic recession stands out clearly. Throughout the world hundreds of thousands of workers have been simultaneously and brutally hit by the economic crisis. Among the first victims are the families evicted from their homes because they cannot pay their debts or have lost their jobs. In the US the rate of repossessions has doubled in a year, with 200,000 repossession proceedings in the second half of 2007 creating ghost towns. Runaway pauperisation is making much greater demands on existing food aid programmes: ‘Kids Café' distributes children's meals in 18 counties; and in New York soup kitchens have increased 24% in a year. Furthermore, 27,000 building workers are due to be made redundant, 12,000 jobs are due to go at Ford factories, and General Motors has asked for 74,000 ‘voluntary' redundancies. Already in 2006 the sacking of 30,000 hourly paid workers showed the bosses determination to emulate the productivity of Asian construction workers. The same motives are involved in today's plan to hire new workers paid a third of the previous rate: $25 an hour, including benefits, instead of $75 an hour currently (reported in Libération 23.2.08). We should add that there the great difference between this plan and previous attacks are that the workers must agree to give up their health insurance and pensions on leaving. There are also increasing job losses in manufacturing industry and elsewhere. Clearly this devastation will spread to the service sector. In the financial sector 26,000 redundancies are planned in previously untouched concerns such as HSBC, UBS and Citigroup envisage between 17,000 and 24,000 job losses.
The effect of the credit crunch is just as visible in Britain where repossessions rose 21% last year, to 27,100, with those behind on mortgage payments up 8.6%. And the Council of Mortgage Lenders has warned it will get worse this year with food and fuel price rises and over a million homeowners coming off their fixed rate mortgage deals, and lenders taking fewer risks. In addition to the ubiquitous relative pay cuts (below inflation pay deals) local government is imposing horrendous cuts in pay presented as ‘single status' or equal pay policies, such as bin men in Waltham Forest who stand to lose up to £8,000.
Today the frontal attacks linked to the crisis cannot just be pushed onto the peripheries of capitalism, the poor countries of the third world, and now the heart of the capitalist system and the most concentrated proletariat in the world is affected. In Europe Germany, a country whose export performance and the dynamism of its enterprises has been extolled, there are more and more redundancies: 35,000 planned for this year at Deutsche Telecom; 8,000 jobs to go at BMW to maintain profitability; Siemens intends to throw 3,000 employees into the street from its Enterprise Network division. Nokia is getting ready to move to Rumania in order to cut costs and prices. The telecommunications sector elsewhere is also cutting jobs with 2,000 to go from KPN in the Netherlands in addition to 8,000 already announced in 2005. In France, 23,000 public sector job losses are anticipated, 18,000 from Peugeot between now and 2010. Many bankruptcies are also leading to redundancies, particularly for the most vulnerable workers, immigrants and especially illegal immigrants without papers, but ‘legally' employed in public building works, restaurants, electronics etc. This disaster is only at its beginning, and affects all the countries in Europe and the rest of the world. Even in the China, which is presented as the new El Dorado, the contraction in the world market is leading to numerous bankruptcies and redundancies. In Shenzhen in the South one enterprise in ten has shut (see www.lagrandeepoque.com [15]) and a new ‘right to work' introduced on 1st January has provoked massive redundancies.
We should have no illusions, poverty is increasing everywhere! What the bourgeoisie presents as a ‘leaner' healthier economy or a ‘necessary correction' is in reality one of the most significant expressions of the bankruptcy of the capitalist economy. WH (adapted from RI 388)
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/afghanistan
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/immigration
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/02/turkey
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/dec/ven-oil-struggles
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/venezuela
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/hugo-chavez
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1917-russian-revolution
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/stalin
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[15] http://www.lagrandeepoque.com