In the 2008 US Presidential election Barack Obama is the favourite, and if John McCain gets in it will be the biggest surprise since 1948 when Harry S Truman beat Thomas Dewey. The advantage of installing Obama is that his whole campaign is centred on the idea of ‘change', for America and the world. The illusion of change is one that the ruling class, if it can, often conjures up at election time. ‘You think things are bad? They can get better.' This time round even McCain has tried to make out he's different from Bush, attacking the doubling of the US national debt since 2001 and criticising the mismanagement of the war in Iraq.
The details of the candidates aren't what's essential. Obama's father was from Kenya, and McCain's father and grandfather were both admirals. So what? What's fundamental is that the circus of democracy can be given its latest performance and people are led to believe that something will change.
The financial crisis has been a good test for the candidates. When emergency financial measures were being adopted both Obama and McCain voted for the $700 billion rescue bill in Congress and supported the takeovers of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. These interventions weren't their idea, nor were they Bush's. They happened because the logic of capitalist development has led to a crucial role for the state,
The New York Times (14/10/08) reported how others accepted the inevitable.
"The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left. The chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, was receptive, saying he thought the deal looked pretty good once he ran the numbers through his head. The chairman of Wells Fargo, Richard M. Kovacevich, protested strongly that, unlike his New York rivals, his bank was not in trouble because of investments in exotic mortgages, and did not need a bailout, according to people briefed on the meeting.
But by 6:30, all nine chief executives had signed [...]
Mr. Paulson announced the plan Tuesday, saying ‘we regret having to take these actions.' Pouring billions in public money into the banks, he said, was ‘objectionable,' but unavoidable to restore confidence in the markets and persuade the banks to start lending again." Elsewhere, with similar plans in Britain and other European countries, there had been some consultation "But unlike in Britain, the Treasury secretary presented his plan as an offer the banks could not refuse."
This is state capitalism at work. The democratic charade has no connection with the bourgeoisie's real decision-making process that mostly goes on behind closed doors. The banks know when they have to acquiesce. At no point does the ‘public' get any say in the outlay of ‘public money'.
Obama has promised ‘change', but it's only in the details. He has said that it is necessary to step up the war in Afghanistan. He plans to send an extra 15,000 soldiers as soon as he takes over. He's also promised that if he wants to attack Taliban or al Qaida targets in Pakistan he won't wait for Islamabad's permission. On the home front Obama has supported legislation to extend the powers of bodies like the FBI and National Security Agency for surveillance and wiretapping.
All this has upset left-winger Alexander Cockburn. In an article in the Independent on Sunday (‘Obama, the first rate Republican' 26/10/8) he criticises Obama's plans "to enlarge the armed services by 90,000 ...to escalate the US war in Afghanistan, ... to wage war against terror in a hundred countries, creating a new international intelligence and law enforcement ‘infrastructure'". He thinks that "Obama is far more hawkish than McCain on Iran" and that "Obama has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines."
There's nothing exclusively ‘Republican' about this approach. The Democratic presidents of the 20th century also set an example for Obama to follow. The First World War was fought under Woodrow Wilson, who had been re-elected on the slogan "He kept us out of the war." Roosevelt geared up American imperialism for the Second World War and, during it, ensured the execution of its most ruthless and brutal strategies. Under Truman the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nearly 6 million Americans were sent to fight in the Korean War. Kennedy and Johnson escalated and sustained the US offensive in the Vietnam War. With Clinton we saw the bombing of Serbia and the devastating sanctions and air attacks on Iraq.
Without even turning to the prospects that the economic crisis offers the American working class under a new president - i.e. a sustained and savage attack on their living standards - it is obvious that Obama is in the mainstream of Democratic politics.
For the world's media each presidential election is presented as a vital moment of decision-making that affects everyone on the planet. The truth is that the factions of the American bourgeoisie make their decisions according to the blows of material reality. The deepening of the economic crisis; the difficulty, as the only remaining superpower, of waging war on a number of fronts; the threat of workers' struggles: these are what confront the ruling class in the US. The new president has only austerity and repression to offer the working class in the US, and further conflicts for the rest of the world.
Car 29/10/8
The sight of thousands of desperate panicking people fleeing towns in the North Kivu region in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was a sad reminder of a war that never went away, a devastating conflict more lethal than any since World War 2.
Between 1998 and 2003, the DRC, with assistance from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, fought off the attacks of Rwanda and Uganda, and hostilities have continued to flare up since, particularly in Kivu. This reached such a point that a peace deal involving a whole range of armed groups was signed in January this year.
It didn't last long: fighting broke out again in August as Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People, a Tutsi militia of 5,500, attacked a number of towns and camps (both military and refugee). The movement of people increased. There were already 850,000 displaced persons from the two previous years of conflict. Since August another 250,000 have been on the move, in some cases for the second or third time. In the DRC as a whole there are more than 1.5 milion displaced people. More than 300,000 people have fled the country.
With Goma, the North Kivu capital, under siege from Nkunda's forces, but also partly terrorised by retreating Congolese army soldiers looting and rampaging, there are fears of a full-scale resumption of war. Already, since 1998, 5.4 million people have died, from the war and from war-related violence, famine and disease. The director of the International Rescue Committee has said that "Congo is the deadliest conflict anywhere in the world over the past 60 years" (Reuters). The chief executive of Irish relief agency GOAL said "It's the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust," telling Reuters that it was "the greatest example on the planet of man's inhumanity to man."
Laurent Nkunda claims that his forces are in North and South Kivu because the DRC should have brought various Hutu forces to justice. In particular they focus on the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) for their part in the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda. Backed by Rwanda, Nkunda has threatened to go right across the country to the DRC capital, Kinshasa, 1500km away.
The role of groups such as the FDLR is well documented, but so is the progress of Nkunda's own forces as they systematically loot, rape and murder their way across the country. It's not the first time that the claim to ‘defend the people' has been used to terrorise the population. In Rwanda and the DRC the incitement of ethnic hatred and the desire for revenge continue to inflame the situation
In trying to explain what lies behind the continuing conflict in the DRC, it is impossible to ignore the variety of valuable minerals it has. From the Guardian (30/10/8): "A UN investigation on the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Congo found that the conflict in the country had become mainly about ‘access, control and trade' of five key mineral resources: diamonds, copper, cobalt, gold and coltan - a metallic ore that provides materials for mobile phones and laptops.
Exploitation of Congo's natural resources by foreign armies was ‘systematic and systemic', and the Ugandan and Rwandan leaders in particular had turned their soldiers into ‘armies of business'. The UN panel estimated that Rwanda's army made at least $250m in 18 months by selling coltan."
In the Independent (30/10/8) there is an article in which the Africa Director of the International Crisis Group says "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit." The article continues "At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables."
The DRC has an area 90 times that of Rwanda, and a population more than 6 times as big, yet it seems incapable of seeing off a relatively small militia force, even with the help of 17,000 UN troops. The rapid retreat of its army in the face of a new offensive is apparently normal. The Guardian (28/10/8) says that DRC government troops "are notorious for turning their guns on civilians and for fleeing when faced with a real threat. The Congolese army, a motley collection of defeated army troops and several rebel and militia groups after back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2003, is disjointed, undisciplined, demoralised and poorly paid." The state of the army reflects the state of a ruling class that can't control its frontiers or what goes on inside them. The reality of dozens of heavily armed groups, many of them backed by countries like Rwanda and Uganda, some of them more determined to act on ethnic hostilities, others more wanting to profit the exploitation of valuable natural resources, is a classic expression of the gangsterisation of capitalist society. In a world of ‘each against all' the DRC government can't control the situation, but the armed gangs can't have any ambition beyond becoming bigger gangs, if they survive at all.
The UN, the EU, aid agencies and ‘concerned' western governments denounce the violence, and plead their sympathy for the stricken populations. But like local imperialist states such as Uganda and Rwanda, the big powers are also part of the problem. Let's not forget that behind the Hutu murder squads in 1994 stood French imperialism, while the Americans backed the Tutsi forces in order to strike a blow against France's presence in the region; France was also a mainstay of the Mobutu regime in Zaire, as the DRC was formerly called, and the Americans were deeply involved in supporting the forces that were working towards Mobutu's overthrow. Thus Congo's cauldron of chaos has also been well stirred by the ‘democratic' world powers, pillars of the UN and the ‘international community'.
Ethnic divisions and mineral resources are among factors in the continuing conflict, but the most important reality is the decomposition of capitalist society, which is expressed not only in the tendency of the weaker countries to fall apart, but also in the sharpening rivalries between imperialist powers large and small. The fact that the capitalist system still exists, however decrepitly, means that brutal wars will continue to erupt. Capitalism is not just an economic crisis; it's also all the killing fields that scar the face of the planet.
Car 31/10/8
There can be no doubt about the government's determination to defend the interests of British national capital abroad. We have only to look at the UK involvement in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain isalways pronouncing on current conflicts, even if it is powerless to influence, as it was in Georgia, and even more now with David Milliband proposing an EU force on stand-by for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recent events indicate the very great difficulties in the way of Britain making a successful defence of its interests on a global scale.
Britain is not so much withdrawing from Iraq, as being told it is no long wanted: "the presence of this number of British soldiers is no longer necessary. We thank them for the role they have played, but I think that their stay is not necessary for maintaining security and control", as PM al-Maliki said in the interview in The Times. It's difficult to see why Iraq would want the 4000 troops holed up in Basra Airport. Their defeat was already obvious in February last year when Blair announced a partial withdrawal, "By March-April 2007, renewed political tensions once more threatened to destabilise the city, and relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds. Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by the militias..." (‘Where is Iraq going? Lessons from Basra' June 07, International Crisis Group). And "Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, asserts that British forces lost control of the situation in and around Basra by the second half of 2005" (The Independent 23.2.07).
Britain also showed it was not capable of standing up to Iran, the main regional threat in Southern Iraq, when it captured 15 UK Naval personnel in March 07. A year later the Iraqi government called on US forces to help them with their push in Basra, rather than British troops from much closer. Why would they want to keep them?
The UK commander in Helmand has warned we should not expect a decisive victory, as Britain finds itself bogged down with its much bigger US ally in Afghanistan. The whole situation is one of spreading chaos as the US makes more incursions into the Taliban's bases within western Pakistan - attacking one of its erstwhile great allies in the ‘war on terror'.
Meanwhile an SAS commander has resigned in disgust at the poor equipment provided for soldiers, in this case the Snatch Land Rover which becomes a death trap, offering no protection when it hits a landmine. There was a similar scandal over "serious systemic failures" condemned by a coroner after unnecessary deaths due to lack of explosion suppressant foam. This should remind us one more time that when the ruling class is determined to defend the national interest abroad, it always makes the working class pay for it - by increased exploitation at home, and in the blood spilt in adventures abroad. When the country finds its resources stretched by participation in too many conflicts it will send in its soldiers without the protection expected by a modern army.
British imperialism's difficulties should not lead us to think it is no longer a significant military power, far from it; but it is a declining power, one that ruled the world a hundred years ago, one that still has interests worldwide but no longer has the strength to act independently to defend them - a point made very forcibly at Suez in 1956. To defend its interests now is to ‘punch above its weight', and this can only be achieved by positioning itself in relation to stronger powers and trying to play them off against each other. When the USA and Russia faced each other at the head of two military blocs armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, Britain was clearly positioned behind the US bloc. When Russia collapsed it had the space to play a more independent role, particularly in the break-up of Yugoslavia where Britain and France gained some influence in Serbia, while Germany encouraged Croatia and the USA based itself on Bosnia. But this success could not last, and after 9/11 the UK positioned itself closer to the USA under the force of its ‘war on terror', joining its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. This brought scant reward - it had to face the July 7th bombing in 2005, and by summer 2006 Britain was humiliated again when Blair waited for the call to negotiate at the top table over the Lebanon crisis, a call that never came.
The British bourgeoisie needed to find a new position less closely identified with the US and better able to play it off against Europe. Blair had to be forced out of office, through the loans for peerages scandal, before he was ready because "...Mr Blair's room for pragmatic manoeuvre in foreign affairs was limited by his partnership with George Bush... his insistence on seeing problems of the Middle East in purely Manichean terms - as a global struggle between Good and Evil, between Western Civilisation and apocalyptic terrorism - does not lend itself to good policy-making. Stabilisation in Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israel's occupation of Palestine - these are problems that require separate treatment" was a typical comment in the Observer 29.4.07. When Brown finally became PM the change in foreign policy was illustrated by the appointment of David Milliband, a critic of Blair's policy on Lebanon, as foreign secretary; Shirley Williams, who had opposed the Iraq war as an advisor; and another critic, Mallach Brown, as minister for Africa. Mallach Brown's appointment was described as "inauspicious" by John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN.
The problem for Britain however is that its closeness to the USA was a result not so much of Blair's relationship with Bush as its weakness as a declining power in the face of the pressures from America's ‘war on terror'. Indeed, steering a path between the US and Europe will only get harder, whoever is in no 10. Essentially the British bourgeoisie has been unable to extricate itself from the disaster of its close relationship to the USA and still finds itself bogged down and increasingly humiliated in unsuccessful military adventures. As the economic crisis worsens so will the barbaric military conflicts around the world, further exposing Britain's weakness, damaging its prestige and reducing its margin for manoeuvre in future conflicts.
Alex (1.11.08)
This text is a translation of an article by the section of the ICC in Spain.
Today French President Sarkozy proclaims that "Capitalism must be re-built on ethical bases". German Chancellor Merkel attacks the speculators. Spanish PM Zapatero points an accusing finger at the ‘free-marketeers' who pretend that markets will regulate themselves without state intervention. They are all telling us that this crisis announces the end of ‘neo-liberal' capitalism and that hopes are turning today towards ‘another kind of capitalism'. This new capitalism would be based on production and not finance, liberating itself from the parasitic layer of financial sharks and speculators who were presented as its champions under the pretext of ‘deregulation', ‘limiting the state', and the primacy of private interests over ‘public interests' etc. To hear them speak, it's not capitalism that could collapse, but a particular form of capitalism. The leftist groups (Stalinists, Trotskyists, anti-capitalists) proudly claim: ‘The facts are proving us right. Neo-liberal measures are leading to disaster!' They remind us of their opposition to ‘globalisation' and to ‘unfettered liberalisation'. They demand the state take measures to make the multinationals, the speculators and others, supposedly responsible for this disaster through their excessive thirst for profits, see reason. They claim their solution is a ‘socialist' one that reins in the capitalists for the benefit of ‘the people‘.
Is there any truth in these claims? Is ‘another kind of capitalism' possible? Does benevolent state intervention provide a solution to the capitalist crisis? We will attempt to provide some elements of a reply to these vital questions. But, to begin with, we must first clarify a fundamental question: does socialism come through the state?
Chávez, the illustrious champion of ‘21st century socialism' has just made an amazing declaration: "Comrade Bush is about to introduce measures associated with comrade Lenin. The United States will become socialist one day, because its people aren't suicidal". For once, and without wanting to set a precedent, we are in agreement with Chávez. Firstly on the fact that Bush is his comrade. Indeed, even if they are in a bitter competitive imperialist struggle, they are no less comrades in the defence of capitalism and in using state capitalist measures to save the system. And we can also agree with saying that "the United States will one day be socialist", even if this socialism has nothing to do with what Chavez advocates.
Real socialism defended by marxism and revolutionaries throughout the history of the workers' movement has nothing to do with the state. Indeed socialism is the negation of the state. The construction of a socialist society requires that the state be destroyed in every country of the world. A period of transition from capitalism to communism is required, as communism can't be created overnight. This period of transition will still be subject to the law of value peculiar to capitalism. The bourgeoisie isn't totally destroyed and along with the proletariat, there are non-exploiting classes still in existence: the peasants, the marginalised, the petite-bourgeoisie. As a product of this transitional situation, a form of state is still needed but it no longer has any similarities to the other states that have existed; it becomes a ‘semi-state', to use Engels' formulation, a state on the road to extinction. To advance towards communism in the historical context of a period of transition which is both complex and unstable, full of dangers and contradictions, the proletariat will have to undermine the foundations of this new state as well. The revolutionary process will have to overcome it or run the risk of losing sight of the perspective of communism.
One of the authors within the workers' movement who has addressed this question more than any other is Friedrich Engels. He is very clear on this point: "The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The ‘people's state' has been thrown in our faces ad nauseum by the Anarchists, although already Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto, directly declare that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the State will dissolve itself and disappear. Since the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, during the revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people's state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist." (Letter to Bebel, 1875).
State intervention to regulate the economy in the interests of ‘all the people', etc, hasn't anything to do with socialism. The state will never be able to act in the interest of ‘all the people'. The state is an organ of the ruling class and is designed, organised and constructed to defend the ruling class and to support its productive system. The most ‘democratic' state in the world is no less the servant of the bourgeoisie and will defend the capitalist system of production tooth and nail. On the other hand, the specific intervention of the state into the economy has no other purpose than preserving the general interests of the reproduction of capitalism and the capitalist class. Engels makes this clear in Anti-Dühring: "And the modern state, too, is the only organisation with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over as its property, the more it becomes the real collective body of all the capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme."
Throughout the 20th century, with the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase, the state has been its main defence faced with the worsening social, military and economic contradictions. The 20th and 21st centuries are both characterised by the universal tendency to state capitalism. This tendency exists in every country of the world, no matter what political regime is in place. State capitalism is implemented in two basic ways:
- Complete statification more or less of the whole economy (this is what existed in Russia and still exists in China, Cuba, North Korea...) ;
- The combination of the state bureaucracy and the big private capitalists (as in the United States, Britain or Spain, for example).
In both cases, it is always the state that is in control of the economy. The first makes an open display of its ownership of a large part of the means of production and services. The second intervenes in the economy through a series of indirect mechanisms; taxes, fiscal policies, buying into companies[1], fixing the inter-bank interest rates, price controls, standards of accounting, state advisory, inspection and investment agencies[2], etc.
We are overwhelmed with ideological hype that is based on two associated lies: the first identifies socialism with the state, the second identifies neo-liberalism with deregulation and with the free market. Throughout the period of decadence (the 20th and 21st centuries), capitalism couldn't survive without being propped up all the time by the state. The ‘free' market is directed, controlled and supported by the iron hand of the state. The great classical economist Adam Smith once said that the market ruled the economy like an ‘invisible hand'. Today the market is ruled by the invisible hand of the state![3] When Bush was forced to save the banks and the insurance companies, he wasn't doing anything exceptional, any more than he was doing "what comrade Lenin did". He was only continuing the work of controlling and regulating the economy that is the daily responsibility of the state.
After a period of relative prosperity from 1945 to 1967, the recurring world crises of capitalism returned with periodic convulsions followed by tremors that have brought the world economy to the brink of disaster. We can go back to the 1971 crisis when the dollar had to be detached from the gold standard; that of 1974-75 that ended with galloping inflation of over 10%; the debt crisis of 1982, when Mexico and Argentina had to suspend debt repayment; the Wall Street crash of 1987; the crisis in 1992-93 that led to numerous European currencies collapsing; that of 1997-98 that exposed the myth of the Asian Tigers and Dragons; that of the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2001...
"What characterises the 20th and 21st centuries is that the tendency towards overproduction - which in the 19th century was temporary and could easily be overcome - has become chronic, subjecting the world economy to a semi-permanent risk of instability and destruction. Meanwhile competition - a congenital trait of capitalism - became extreme and, crashing up against the limits of a world market which constantly verged on saturation, lost its role as a stimulant for the expansion of the system, so that its negative side as a factor of chaos and conflict came to the fore"(‘Capitalist economy: is there a way out of the crisis?' WR 315).
The different stages of the crises that followed each other through the last forty years are the product of this chronic overproduction and the exacerbation of competition. The capitalist state has attempted to combat the effects using various palliatives, the main one being increasing indebtedness. The strongest states have also deflected the most harmful consequences, ‘exporting' the worse effects onto the weakest countries[4].
The classic policy adopted in the 1970s was state indebtedness, backed up by a policy of direct state intervention into the economy: nationalisations, taking companies over, a rigid supervision of external trade etc. This was the ‘Keynesian' policy[5]. We should remind the amnesiacs who want to impose a false dilemma between neo-liberalism and state intervention that every party from the right to the left, were ‘Keynesians' then and publicised the benefits of ‘liberal socialism' (like that of the Swedish social democratic model). The disastrous consequence of runaway inflation arising from this policy, destabilising the economy, tended to paralyse international trade. The ‘solution' adopted in the 1980s was christened ‘the neo-liberal revolution' in which the key figures were the ‘Iron Lady', Margaret Thatcher, in Britain, and the ‘Cowboy' Ronald Reagan in the United States. This policy had two objectives:
Don't listen to stories about how ‘private initiative' promotes ‘neo-liberalism'. These mechanisms don't spring spontaneously from the market but are the fruit and the consequence of a state economic policy for curbing inflation. It only postponed it, and it paid a heavy price as a result: using obscure financial mechanisms, debts were transformed into speculative credits at high rates of interest, yielding some juicy benefits at first which would however need to be disposed of at the earliest opportunity because, sooner or later, no-one would be able to pay out any more. At first these credits were the most attractive ‘shining stars' in the market which the banks, the speculators, the governments, all fought over, but they were very rapidly transformed into doubtful and devalued credits that investors avoided like the plague.
The failure of this policy was revealed with the brutal Wall Street ‘crash' in 1987 and the collapse of the American savings banks in 1989. This ‘neo-liberal' policy continued throughout the 1990s; but given the mountains of debt that were weighing the economy down, the costs of production had to be cut back by improving productivity and through outsourcing, which consisted in exporting whole parts of production to countries like China, where poverty wages and harsh working conditions dramatically affected living conditions for the world proletariat. This is when the concept of ‘globalisation' emerged: the bigger, richer countries demanded that protectionist trade barriers be removed and then swamped the smaller, poorer countries with their products to relieve their chronic overproduction.
Once again, these ‘medicines' only worsened the problem and the crisis of the Asian Dragons and Tigers in 1997-98 showed the ineffectiveness of these policies as much as the dangers that they held. But then capitalism pulled a rabbit out of the hat. The new century introduced us to what would be called the ‘net economy', in which excessive speculation in companies dealing in computers and the internet took place. In 2001 this quickly proved itself a staggering failure. Capitalism delivered a new magic trick in 2003 with a period of unrestrained speculation in the property market, with a growth in commercial and residential property around the world (in the process, adding to environmental problems). This gave rise to a terrible escalation in property prices, leading us to... the horrendous fiasco of the present day!
The current crisis can be compared with a gigantic mine field. The first to explode was the crisis of the subprimes in the US in the summer of 2007. We might have thought at first that things were going to fall back into place, after several billion dollars were paid out. Hadn't we seen it all before? But then the collapse of the banking institutions from the end of December was a new mine that shattered all illusions. The summer of 2008 has been breathtaking with a succession of bankruptcies of banks in the United States and Britain. By October 2008 another illusion that the bourgeoisie thought it could use to deflect our concerns went up in smoke: they said that the problems were immense in the United States but that the European economies had nothing to fear. As if. But the mines now began exploding in the European economies too, starting with the most powerful state of all, Germany, which looked on without reacting to the collapse of its principal savings bank.
When everything seemed to be ticking along for the bourgeoisie, what triggered the violent explosion of these mines? This is the product of 40 years of treating the crisis with palliatives that masked the problems and more or less allowed a system burdened with insoluble problems to carry on functioning. It resolved nothing, but it aggravated the capitalist contradictions to their breaking point, and now in this current crisis we are seeing the consequences unfold one after the other.
This idea is a false consolation:
Some things are clear: capitalism is today experiencing its most serious economic crisis. There has been a brutal acceleration of history. After 40 years of a slow and uneven development of the crisis, this system is on course to sink into a terrible and extremely deep recession from which it will not emerge unscathed. But above all, from now on, the living conditions of billions of people will be severely affected for the longer term. Unemployment will hit a lot of homes, 600,000 in less than a year in Spain, 180,000 in August 2008 in the United States. Inflation is hitting prices of basic foodstuffs and hunger has been ravaging the world at breathtaking speed during the last year. Cuts in wages, temporary shut-downs of production, threats to retirement pensions... There is not the least doubt that this crisis is going to have consequences of unprecedented brutality. We don't know if capitalism can recover from this but we are convinced that millions of human beings will not. The ‘new' capitalism that will emerge from this crisis will be a much poorer society with vast numbers of proletarians having to face general insecurity, in a world of disorder and chaos. Each of the previous convulsions throughout the last 40 years has ended in a deterioration of the living conditions of the working class and with more or less major shut-downs of the productive apparatus. The new period that is opening up will take this tendency to a much higher level.
Capitalism is not going to give up the ghost. Never has an exploiting class accepted the reality of its failure and given up power without a struggle. But we know that after more than a hundred year of catastrophes and convulsions, all the economic policies that state capitalism has used to solve its problems have not only failed, but have made the problems worse. We expect nothing from the so-called ‘new solutions' that capitalism is going to have to find to ‘come out of the crisis'. We can be certain above all that they will cause still more suffering, more poverty; and we have to be ready to face up to new, even more violent, convulsions.
This is why it is utopian to put any trust in any so-called ‘solution' to the crisis of capitalism. There is none. The whole system is incapable of hiding its bankruptcy. Being realistic means participating in the proletariat's efforts to regain confidence in itself, taking part in the struggles and discussions, the attempts at self-organisation which will enable the class to develop a revolutionary alternative to this rotting system.
ICC (8/10/08)
[1] An example of this is in the United States, presented as the Mecca of neo-liberalism. The US state is the main customer of companies and the computer companies are obliged to send a copy of the programmes they create and the components of the hardware they make to the Pentagon.
[2] It's a fairy tale that the American economy is deregulated, that its state doesn't intervene etc. The stock market is controlled by a specific Federal Agency, banks are regulated by a state commission, the Federal Reserve determines the economic policy through mechanisms like the rate of interest.
[3] The scourge of corruption is clear proof of the omnipresence of the state. In the United States, as in Spain or China, the ABC of the enterprise culture is that business can only prosper by having contacts inside the state ministries, and by sucking up to the political ‘men of the moment'.
[4] In the articles on ‘30 years of capitalist crisis', published in nos 96, 97 and 98 of the International Review, we analysed the techniques and methods with which state capitalism has accompanied this fall into the abyss so as to slow it down, succeeding in doing this in successive stages.
[5] Keynes is especially famous for his support for an interventionist state policy in which the state would use fiscal and monetary measures with the aim of offsetting the unfavourable effects of periods of cyclical recession in economic activity. The economists consider that he is one of the main founders of modern macro-economics.
[6] We should remember here that, contrary to what is stated by all kinds of ideologues, this policy is not a characteristic of ‘neo-liberal' governments but was approved one hundred per cent by ‘socialist' or ‘progressive' governments. In France, the Mitterand government, supported by the Communist Party until 1984, had adopted measures as tough as those adopted by Reagan or Thatcher. In Spain, the ‘socialist' government of Gonzalez organised a ‘redeployment' that led to one million jobs being lost.
[7] It is particularly stupid to think that this deluge of billions will not have any consequences. It is in fact preparing an even more uncertain future. Sooner or later, this folly will have to be paid for. The generalised scepticism that has met Paulson's financial rescue plan, the most gigantic in history (700 billion dollars!), demonstrates that the remedy is going to create new mine fields, more powerful and devastating than ever, in the subsoil of the capitalist economy.
After months in the political doldrums, Gordon Brown finally has something to be cheerful about. At one point nearly removed by an internal Labour Party coup, he's now feted by Nobel Prize winning economists for saving the world economy through the example set in the bailout of British banks.
The key components of Brown's UK bank rescue package are: (a) £200 billion made available for short-term loans through the Bank of England; (b) support for interbank lending between British banks to the tune of £250 billion; and (c) a recapitalisation programme for the banks of £50 billion (£25 billion initially, more later if needed). This has meant the effective nationalisation of big High Street banks including LloydsTSB-HBOS, RBS (owner of NatWest) and others, a total cost of £500 billion, approximately 37% of current UK GDP. To put this figure in perspective, the UK's total government expenditure for the 07-08 year is estimated at around £519 billion!
Although a large proportion of the money is not necessarily being given away or actually spent, but issued as loans and/or guarantees which the government hopes to be able to recoup, this is still a massive plan. So why has the UK bourgeoisie found it necessary to effectively nationalise large proportions of its financial apparatus?
Britain's productive sectors have suffered from a century of decline since the end of the 19th Century as other capitalist nations began to industrialise and compete with Britain on the world market. After World War 1, Britain stagnated throughout the ‘roaring 20s' and was then savaged by the Great Depression. World War 2 saw its dependence on the US colossus grow to the point of ultimate submission. It emerged from the conflagration in hock to Uncle Sam and was forced to surrender the British Empire.
Even the post-war boom saw several short-but-sharp slowdowns and when the boom came to an end in the late 60s, Britain was one of the worst hit by the new crisis. British manufacturing is now seriously diminished, with some sectors reduced to next to nothing. Today, British industry is a moribund shadow of its former self and for all the blather about the ‘knowledge economy', the principle method of survival for UK manufacturing is not through the development of new technology but through attempts to increase the productivity of the working class.
In August 2008 the UK had an overall trade deficit of around £4.8 billion. The deficit in goods is a staggering £8.2 billion but is countered by the £3.5 billion surplus in services. What are the ‘services' that prevent the deficit position from becoming an outright disaster? In large part those are provided by the financial sector. London is the world's largest financial centre, while Edinburgh is the 5th largest in Europe. Over 500 banks have offices in London and the UK exported over £21 billion of financial services in 2005. The finance industry accounts for approximately 9.4% of GDP.
Britain is thus acutely exposed to the current financial crisis. It has the potential to annihilate the main sector that has allowed the British bourgeoisie to keep its head above water in the face of chronic economic stagnation.
The British bourgeoisie has moved quickly to prevent the last of the family silver - the financial industry - being destroyed by the ‘credit crunch'. It has been followed by similar efforts in the other main capitalist states. However, the ‘credit crunch' is only a symptom of a far deeper problem: the economic crisis that has been unfolding since the end of the post-war boom. The credit bubble that is now exploding is the result of a series of state capitalist policies employed in an effort to contain this ever deepening crisis of overproduction. It is this very strategy that is now blowing up in the bourgeoisie's face.
To make matters worse, the vast bailouts orchestrated by the state must ultimately be paid for by increasing taxes on wages and profits. They may prevent outright collapse - although this is far from certain - but only by placing further burdens on real wages and capital accumulation, thus pushing the contradictions of capitalism even further to the edge of disaster.
Workers should not be fooled by the rhetoric of the bourgeoisie. The bailout does not represent a ‘solution' to the crisis. It is simply a vast IOU by the state on behalf of the working class. Workers will pay it in the form of a brutal decline in jobs, wages and working conditions. The only alternative is for the working class to present its own bill to the bourgeoisie - the communist revolution.
Silver 30/10/8
A culminating point of discontent and rejection of the war had been reached. After four years of murder with more than 20 million dead, innumerable injured, the exhausting trench warfare involving heavy losses, with their gas attacks in Northern France and Belgium, the starvation of the working population; after this endless carnage, the working class had become totally fed up with the war and it was no longer ready to sacrifice itself for the imperialist war. However, the military command wanted to force the continuation of the war with brutal repression and it was ready to use draconian punishment against the mutinous marines.
In reaction, a broad wave of solidarity unfolded, starting in Kiel and immediately spreading to other towns in Germany. Workers downed tools, soldiers refused to follow orders, and as they had done already in January 1918 in Berlin they formed soldiers' and workers' councils which spread rapidly to other cities. On November 5/6th Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck started moving; Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hanover, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Munich were taken over by the workers' and soldiers' councils on Nov. 7/8th. Within one week there was no German big city where there was no workers' and soldiers' council.
During this initial phase Berlin quickly became the centre of the rising: "On Nov 9th, thousands of workers and soldiers took to the streets in massive demonstrations. Only shortly beforehand the government had ordered the ‘reliable' battalions to hurry to Berlin for the protection of the government. But on the morning of November 9th, the factories were deserted at an incredible speed. The streets filled with huge masses of people. At the periphery, where the biggest plants were located, large demonstrations were formed, merging towards the centre. Wherever soldiers gathered, it was usually not necessary to make a special appeal; they just joined the marches of the workers. Men, women, soldiers, a people under arms flooded through the streets towards the neighbouring barracks" (R. Müller, November Revolution, Vol. 2, p. 11). Under the influence of the huge masses gathered in the streets, the last remnants of troops loyal to the government changed sides; they joined the mutineers and handed over their weapons to them. The police headquarters, the big newspaper printing offices, the telegraph offices, the parliamentary and government buildings were all occupied that day by armed soldiers and workers; prisoners were liberated. Many government employees ran away. A few hours were sufficient to occupy these posts of bourgeois power. In Berlin a central council of workers' and soldiers' councils was formed - the Vollzugsrat (executive council).
The workers in Germany thus followed in the footsteps of their class brothers and sisters in Russia, who in February 1917 had also formed workers' and soldiers' councils and who had successfully taken power in October 1917. The workers in Germany were about to embark upon the same road as the workers in Russia: overcoming the capitalist system by taking power through the workers' and soldiers' councils. The perspective was opening the gate towards world wide revolution, after the workers in Russia had made the first step in this direction.
Through this insurrectionary movement the workers in Germany had started the biggest ever mass struggles in Germany. All the ‘social peace' deals agreed upon by the trade unions during the war were smashed by the workers' struggles. By rising up in this way, the workers in Germany shook off the effects of the defeat of August 1914. The myth that the working class in Germany was totally paralysed by reformism was broken. The workers in Germany used the same methods of struggle which were going to mark the period of decadence and which previously had already been tested by the workers in Russia in 1905 and 1917: mass strikes, general assemblies, formation of workers' councils, in short the self-initiative of the working class. Next to the workers in Russia, the workers in Germany formed the spearhead of the first big international revolutionary wave of struggles which had emerged from the war. In Hungary and in Austria in 1918 the workers had risen as well and started to form workers' councils.
While proletarian initiatives were spreading, the ruling class did not remain passive. The exploiters and the army needed a force able to sabotage and curb the movement. Having learned from the experience in Russia, the German bourgeoisie through the leaders of the military command pulled the strings. General Groener, supreme commander of the army later put it like this: ".. in Germany there was no party which had enough influence with the masses to re-establish government power with the supreme military command. The parties of the right had collapsed and of course it was unthinkable to form an alliance with the extreme Left. The supreme military command had no other choice but to form an alliance with Social Democracy. We united in our common struggle against revolution, in our struggle against Bolshevism. It was unthinkable to aim at the restoration of monarchy. The goals of our alliance which we formed on the evening of November 10th were: total struggle against revolution, reinstalling a government of order, supporting the government through the power of troops and the earliest possible formation of the national assembly" (W. Groener on the accord between the Supreme Military command and F. Ebert of November 10th 1918).
In order to avoid the mistake by the ruling class in Russia following the February rising, when the Provisional Government continued the imperialist war and thus sharpened the resistance of the workers, peasants and soldiers against the regime, preparing the successful insurrection of October 1917, the capitalist class in Germany reacted swiftly and in a more cunning way. On November 9th, the Kaiser was forced to abdicate and sent abroad; on November 11th an armistice was signed, which helped to pull out the thorn of war from the flesh of the working class - the first factor which had compelled the workers and soldiers to fight. Thus the ruling class in Germany managed to take the wind out of the revolution's sails at an early stage. But apart from the forced abdication of the Kaiser and the signing of the armistice, the handing of government power to Social Democracy was a decisive step in sabotaging the struggle.
On November 9th, three leaders of the SPD (Ebert, Scheidemann, Landsberg), together with three leaders of the USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party[1]) formed the Council of People's Commissars, actually a bourgeois government loyal to capitalism. The same day, while Karl Liebknecht, the most famous Spartacist leader, proclaimed the Socialist Republic in front of thousands of workers, calling for the unification of the workers in Germany with the workers in Russia, the SPD leader Ebert proclaimed "a free German Republic" with the new Council of People's Commissars at its head. This self-proclaimed (bourgeois) government was set up to sabotage the movement. "By joining the government, Social Democracy comes to the rescue of capitalism, confronting the coming proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution will have to march over its corpse", Rosa Luxemburg had already warned in October 1918 in Spartacus Letters. And on November 10th, Rote Fahne (Red Flag) the paper of the Spartacists, warned: "For four years the Scheidemans, the government socialists, pushed you into the horrors of war; they told you it was necessary to defend the ‘fatherland', although it was only a struggle for naked imperialist interests. Now that German imperialism is collapsing, they try to rescue for the bourgeoisie what still can be rescued and they try to squash the revolutionary energy of the masses. No unity with those who betrayed you for four years. Down with capitalism and its agents".
But the SPD now tried to mask the real class divide. The SPD brought up the slogan: "no fratricide" . It wrote: "if one group fights against another group, one sect fights against another sect, then we will have the Russian chaos, general decline, misery instead of happiness. Will the world, after the fantastic triumph of the abdication of the Kaiser, now witness the spectacle of self-mutilation of the working class in a pointless fratricide? Yesterday showed the necessity of inner unity within the working class. From almost all cities we hear the call for the re-establishment of unity between the old SPD and the newly founded USPD" (Vorwärts, 10.11.1918). Drawing on these illusions in unity between the SPD and the USPD, the SPD insisted at the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council that since the Council of People's Commissars was composed of three members of SPD and USPD, the delegates to the Berlin workers' council should also be composed on such party proportions. It even managed to receive a mandate from the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council to "head the provisional government", which in reality was the direct force opposing the workers' councils. Rosa Luxemburg later drew a balance sheet of the struggles in that phase: "We could hardly expect that in the Germany which had known the terrible spectacle of August 4, and which during more than four years had reaped the harvest sown on that day, there should suddenly occur on November 9, 1918, a glorious revolution, inspired with definite class consciousness, and directed towards a clearly conceived aim. What happened on November 9 was to a very small extent the victory of new principles; it was little more than a collapse of the extant system of imperialism. The moment had come for the collapse of imperialism, a colossus with feet of clay, crumbling from within. The sequel of this collapse was a more or less chaotic movement, one practically devoid of reasoned plan. The only source of union, the only persistent and saving principle was the watchword ‘Form workers' and soldiers' councils'" (Founding Congress of the KPD, 1918/19).
In November and December, when the revolutionary élan of the soldiers was ebbing away, more strikes in the factories started to occur. But this dynamic was only at its beginning. And at that moment the council movement was still inevitably dispersed. Seizing its chance, the SPD took the initiative to call for a national congress of workers' and soldiers' councils to be held in Berlin on December 16. Thus at a moment when the movement in the factories had not yet come into full swing and the centralisation of the councils was still premature, the SPD wanted to use the opportunity of such a national congress of councils to disarm it politically. In addition, the SPD drew on the illusion, widespread at the time, that the councils would have to work according to the principles of bourgeois parliamentarianism. At the opening of the congress the delegation formed fractions (of the 490 delegates, 298 were members of the SPD, 101 of the USPD (amongst them 10 Spartacists), 100 belonged to other groups). Thus the working class had to confront a self-proclaimed congress of councils which claimed to speak on behalf of the working class but immediately laid all power into the hands of the newly self-proclaimed "provisional government". For example: a delegation of Russian workers who came to attend the congress was held back at the border under the instruction of the SPD. The presidium used tactical ruses to prevent leading Spartacists such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg from participating in the work of the congress and they even prevented them from speaking under the pretext that they were not workers from Berlin factories. The congress pronounced its own death sentence when it decided to support the call for the formation of a national assembly. This abdication of power to a bourgeois parliament disarmed the councils.
The Spartacists, who wanted to put pressure on the congress, organised a massive street demonstration of 250,000 workers in Berlin on December 16. The national congress allowed the ruling class to score an important point over the proletariat. The Spartacists concluded: "This first congress finally destroyed the workers' only acquisition - the formation of the workers' and soldiers' councils - thus snatching away power from the working class, throwing back the process of revolution. The congress, by condemning the workers' and soldiers' councils to impotence (through the decision to hand over power to national assembly) has violated and betrayed its mandate. The workers and soldiers councils must declare the results of this congress as null and void" (Rosa Luxemburg, 20.12.1918). In some cities workers' and soldiers' councils protested against the decisions of the national congress.
Encouraged and strengthened by the results of the congress, the provisional government started to initiate military provocations. In an attack by Freikorps in Berlin (counter-revolutionary troops set up by the SPD) several dozen workers were killed on December 24. This provoked the outrage of the workers in Berlin. On December 25 thousands of workers took to the streets in protest. Given these openly counter-revolutionary actions of the SPD, the USPD commissars withdrew from the Council of Commissars on December 29. On December 30th/ January 1st the Spartacists, together with the International Communists of Germany (IKD), formed the German Communist Party (KPD) in the heat of the fire. Drawing a first balance sheet and drawing up the perspective, Rosa Luxemburg on January 3 1919 insisted: "the change from the predominantly ‘soldiers' revolution' of November 9 to a clear workers' revolution, the change from a superficial, merely political change of regime to a long drawn out process of economic and general confrontation between capital and labour, requires from the working class quite a different degree of political maturity, training, and tenacity than what we saw in this first phase of struggles" (3.1.1919, Red Flag).
The movement was then to enter a crucial stage in January 1919, which
we will take up in the next article.
Dino (2/11/08)
[1]. The USPD was a centrist party, composed of at least of two wings fighting against each other: a right wing, whose aim was to reintegrate into the old party, which had gone over to the bourgeoisie, and another wing, which was striving towards the camp of revolution. The Spartacists joined the USPD in order to reach more workers and to push them forward. In December 1918 the Spartacists split from the USPD to found the KPD.
Among the factors identified as being behind the food crisis[1] are: poor harvests attributed to climate change, high energy and other production costs, lack of investment in agriculture, the subsidies put into bio-fuels, speculation, ‘unfair' trade, changes in diet, and the disruption caused by wars and ‘natural disasters'. Some of these elements have indeed contributed to current circumstances. But understanding that the food crisis is serious, and seeing some of the things behind it, doesn't mean that any of capitalism's ‘experts' can come up with a solution.
After all, there have, during the last 30 years, been Food Summits, Millennium Goals and UN initiatives designed to cut or even eradicate serious hunger and malnutrition. In reality, the FAO's High-Level Conference on World Food Security this year had to admit that, instead of reaching the target of 400 million people, hunger has been increasing. The World Bank's projection for those living in extreme poverty has been revised upward to 1.4 billion. At present it calculates that there are over three billion people living on less than $2 a day.
The World Bank is among the institutions that have been criticised in the past for putting pressure on the poorest countries to dismantle various systems of state support for agriculture and local food production. Now, with the clamour over unregulated markets and financial speculation, with massive state intervention in the face of the financial crisis, calls are being made for help for the hungry, as there was help for banks, money markets and currencies. "Bailout the needy, not the greedy" is the cry of Socialist Worker sellers.
Ingeborg Schäuble, the President of Welthungerhilfe (14/10/8) said: "Almost a billion starving people is a scandal for the world. In contrast to the banks, they themselves are not guilty for their plight. The general rethinking about the role of the state and the international community, brought about by the financial crisis, must be extended to also cover the hunger crisis. The world needs a rescue package to combat global hunger, and we therefore demand that funding for the development of agriculture in developing countries be increased by at least ten billion euros every year and that fairer trading conditions should be created."
From Oxfam (16/10/8) we hear similar demands "Developing country governments must invest more in supporting agriculture, focused on small farmers and women. They should have social protection policies, such as minimum income guarantees, and support for schooling and health. Developed country governments and other donors like the IMF, World Bank and other multilateral agencies and NGOs, should support developing countries to implement these policies and not pressure them to open up their markets too quickly."
Past experience indicates that there are not going to be any rescue packages or fundamental changes in governments' priorities.
The history of failed hunger initiatives over the decades is something that Oxfam is well aware of. It recently said "The international community's response to the crisis has been inadequate, both in terms of the amount of aid promised and its coordination. At an emergency meeting in Rome earlier this year, $12.3bn was pledged for the food crisis, but little more than $1bn has so far seen the light of day."
Experience shows that the ‘international community' is capable of promising the earth, but each individual capitalist state will only act in what it deems to be its own interests. This can be a straightforward defence of immediate economic self-interest, or something that fits in with an overall imperialist strategy. A deepening financial crisis in the ‘developed' countries means that aid will be one of the first items to be either cut or eliminated. As for the ‘developing' countries, they are often tied up in imperialist conflicts, or reliant on the sale of raw materials that are subject to wide price fluctuations. Their precarious situation determines their priorities, and the military option usually comes first. The example of Zimbabwe, from where, at great expense, despite a worsening economic situation, from 1998-2002, troops were sent to fight in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is typical.
As for the myth of ‘fair trade', the reality of competition in capitalism means that the weaker economies lose out to the stronger. The most powerful national capitals have enough of their own problems at present and are hardly likely to favour less advantageous trading conditions. Competition isn't supposed to be ‘fair.' Someone has to lose.
The fundamental material reality is that the ruling classes of every capitalist state will only defend their own interests, against all rivals and regardless of people starving. The deaths of millions do not figure in the profit and loss accounting of the bourgeoisie.
The worldwide nature of the food crisis also demonstrates that, while national specificities can be significant, the reality of a global crisis is the dominant factor, alongside the fact that all present day nations are divided into classes.
In India, for example, despite self-sufficiency in food grains, substantial economic growth rates in recent years, and rising industrial output, there are more than 200 million people going to bed hungry every night. In Madhya Pradesh food shortages are so severe they have brought comparisons to conditions in Chad and Ethiopia. Despite its much-acclaimed economic progress, more than three quarters of the Indian population live on only 30 pence a day. Commentators suggest that corruption and bureaucracy in distribution, as well as discrimination against the lower castes and ethnic minorities, have contributed to the situation. They certainly have; but, in a class divided society, those who are already poor, marginalised or exploited will always suffer first the crushing impact of a global crisis.
Or take the example of Venezuela, to a certain extent cushioned from events by the extent of its oil supplies. Corruption, 30% inflation, and the imposition of price controls have all exacerbated existing food shortages and led to food hoarding - these are specific to Venezuela, as is Chávez's ‘socialist' rhetoric. But Venezuela is in no way immune from the effects of the world economic crisis, and it's the poorest that will be affected, not Señor Chávez.
The food crisis has also hit the Middle East and North Africa, an area rich in valuable raw materials, but also the region of the world that most depends on imports for food staples. Food riots, strikes and other protests have hit Egypt, the UAE, Yemen and Lebanon this year. The region is the scene of a number of conflicts, but when prices jump or food becomes scarce those who are most affected have shown they will not accept it passively.
The crisis of world capitalism hits every country. The trouble with the food crisis is that it is literally a matter of life and death in the weakest economies. "At a time when the productive capacities of the planet would make it possible to feed 12 billion human beings, millions and millions are dying of hunger because of the laws of capitalism ... a system of production aimed not at satisfying human need but at generating profit; a system totally incapable of responding to the needs of humanity" (IR 134).
Car 29/10/8
[1]. Previous ICC articles on this question include ‘Capitalism can't feed the world' (WR 314), ‘What lies behind rise in global food prices?' (WR 316) and ‘Only the proletarian class struggle can put an end to famine' (International Review 134).
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