When workers are faced with unemployment, wage cuts and harsher working conditions, the question is posed of how workers' struggles can develop. In the UK, with a general election round the corner, the media tell us that this is an opportunity to use our democratic rights. However, democracy is not an abstract principle that stands above society - it is an integral part of the current order of things. Capitalism is a class society and the democratic circus hides the truth of what parliament and elections really are. As Lenin put it in State and Revolution: "To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics."
The idea that workers can embrace democracy along with their exploiters is a delusion the ruling class puts a lot of energy into promoting.
The real field where the working class can advance their collective struggle is not in elections, but in the class struggle. The class struggle is where the force of the working class lies. It is where it develops its consciousness and discovers the forms of organisation it needs to succeed and the ones it needs to jettison.
In the nineteenth century the main forms of organisation that developed in the workers movement were the trade unions and the mass workers parties. The trade unions were able to win lasting reforms and the workers' political organisations supported democratic demands such as the right to organise in unions and for workers to vote in bourgeois elections. As the electorate expanded, the parties of the Second International sent members to parliament to win political reform. Within certain limits, therefore, workers could meaningfully participate in bourgeois elections through their own parties.
However, the relative success of the struggle of the struggle for reforms led to the development of the ideology of ‘reformism': Marx and Engels' views on the eventual need to overthrow the capitalist state through revolution were gradually sidelined, and the idea that the working class could gradually move towards socialism through democratic reforms became more and more widespread, especially as the ascent of the capitalist economy seemed unstoppable. All that was needed was to win parliament for socialism and turn capitalism's bounty to the needs of everyone. Only a minority, on the left, stood up to this ‘revision' of marxism.
The advent of capitalism's decadence was very loudly announced with the destruction unleashed in the Great War. It was not a ‘war to end all wars', but the beginning of a period of great imperialist rivalries and destruction. The new Communist International summed up the change in period and the change in attitude to elections. In this extract from a report to the Second Congress of 1920, for example:
"The struggle for communism, however, must be based on a theoretical analysis of the character of the present epoch (the culminating point of capitalism, its imperialist self-negation and self-destruction, the uninterrupted spread of civil war etc.) ...The attitude of the Third International to parliament is determined not by new theoretical ideas, but by the change in the role of parliament itself. In the preceding historical epoch parliament was an instrument of the developing capitalist system, and as such played a role that was in a certain sense progressive. In modern conditions of unbridled imperialism parliament has become a weapon of falsehood, deception and violence, a place of enervating chatter. In the face of the devastation, embezzlement, robbery and destruction committed by imperialism, parliamentary reforms which are wholly lacking in consistency, durability and order lose all practical significance for the working masses... At the present time parliament cannot be used by the Communists as the arena in which to struggle for reforms and improvements in working-class living standards as was the case at certain times during the past epoch. The focal point of political life has shifted fully and finally beyond the boundaries of parliament...."
Although the Third International was able to recognise this shift in focus, the full implications were not drawn out. While the majority followed the contradictory idea of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism', it's in the contributions of the communist left that you see a greater development of understanding.
At the Second Congress, for instance, Amadeo Bordiga put forward theses on parliamentarism that insisted "Parliamentarism is the form of political representation peculiar to the capitalist order [...] Communists deny the possibility that the working class will ever conquer power through a majority of parliamentary seats. The armed revolutionary struggle alone will take it to its goal. The conquest of power by the proletariat, which forms the starting point of communist economic construction, leads to the violent and immediate abolition of the democratic organs and their replacement by organs of proletarian power - by workers' councils. The exploiting class is in this way robbed of all political rights, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, a system of class government and representation, will be realised. The abolition of parliamentarism becomes a historical task of the communist movement. [...] In the present historical epoch ... there is no possibility of exploiting parliamentarism for the revolutionary cause of communism. Clarity of propaganda no less than preparation for the final struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat demand that communists carry out propaganda for a boycott of the elections on the part of the workers."
In the same year as the Second Congress Anton Pannekoek published World Revolution and Communist Tactics in which he emphasised the need to leave behind old ideas "How we are to eradicate the traditional bourgeois mentality that paralyses the strength of the proletarian masses ...The most tenacious and intractable element in this mentality is dependence upon leaders, whom the masses leave to determine general questions and to manage their class affairs. Parliamentarianism inevitably tends to inhibit the autonomous activity by the masses that is necessary for revolution. Fine speeches may be made in parliament exhorting the proletariat to revolutionary action; it is not in such words that the latter has its origins, however, but in the hard necessity of there being no other alternative. ... Revolution requires social reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions made, the whole proletariat involved in creative action - and this is only possible if first the vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves, know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect, assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and laborious; thus, so long as the working class thinks it sees an easier way out through others acting on its behalf - leading agitation from a high platform, taking decisions, giving signals for action, making laws - the old habits of thought and the old weaknesses will make it hesitate and remain passive."
The movement of the working class requires the development of a consciousness of the need to overthrow the existing capitalist economic and political system. Part of this is the realisation that the existing democratic state is a barrier to creating the new society, not a tool to achieve it.
This requires the working class to understand that its interests are opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. This understanding does not develop through electoral campaigns that encourage individual isolation in the ballot box, followed by passivity and frustration as the realisation dawns that nothing has changed.
Consciousness develops in the class struggle, in the workplaces and the streets, as the working class develops solidarity and confronts the reality of the capitalist state. Instead of seeing themselves as isolated citizens workers can begin to see that the attacks on them are part of wider attacks on the rest of the class, and the attacks on living and working standards are undertaken by all capitalist states, whether monolithic or multi-party.
The greatest obstacles to the development of class consciousness are ideological. Workers are confronted with campaigns about the impossibility of communism/socialism, about there being no alternative to capitalism, about the democratic values that supposedly unite us across the class divide.
Democracy is one of the most powerful ideologies that the bourgeoisie has in its armoury. The bourgeois idea of ‘good citizenship' means it is your duty to vote, even if it's only for a ‘lesser evil'. Millions are cynical and apathetic about elections and don't vote because of the corruption of politicians and the accurate view that ‘they're all the same'. However, in itself this is nothing to celebrate and obviously leaves social relations as they are. The course advocated by revolutionaries is an active one.
When workers begin to take control of their own struggles in the first steps toward self-organisation, when discontent about capitalism begins to turn into reflection on the possibility of a completely different society, when consciousness begins to develop with the class struggle, when we see expressions of solidarity and collective action that point to a future human community, then we are witnessing the movement of the working class rather than the dead weight of bourgeois campaigns and parliamentary charades. Revolutionaries aim to play their part in the forward steps taken by the working class, and in exposing the sham of bourgeois democracy. When capitalism offers another round in the democratic game, revolutionaries try to show that the working class struggle offers the prospect of a society that could begin to satisfy human needs, communism.
Hugin 2/4/10
This article is based on a presentation given at WR public meetings.
The ruling class, faced with a bottomless economic crisis, is becoming more and more brutal in its attacks on the exploited.
Every capitalist political party is agreed that the only way to cope with Britain's debt burden is to make unprecedented cuts in public services. In their efforts to squeeze the last drop of profit out of workers' labour power, bosses everywhere are resorting to bullying and intimidation. This is all the more evident when workers show a willingness to resist the assault on their living and working conditions.
Injunctions against strikes
Faced with the threat of a nationwide rail strike against plans to suppress the jobs of 1500 rail maintenance workers, Network Rail got together with the courts to declare that the ballot for strike action was unlawful. This is now becoming an increasingly common response to impending national strikes, especially when they are to take place in key economic sectors. The original British Airways strike at Christmas was also delayed after the court found irregularities in the ballot proceedings. Since such irregularities could be discovered in virtually any strike ballot, the use of injunctions is gradually eroding any possibility of legal strike action - especially because another factor taken into account in the court's decision was the ‘negative' impact on the public interest that a strike on the railways could have.
Ballots were originally made compulsory by the so-called ‘anti-trade union' laws brought in under the last Tory government. Their essential purpose was to stop workers from making the decision to strike in mass meetings where class solidarity is strongest, to make voting on strike action a purely individual choice like voting in elections, and to introduce interminable delays that can sap workers' will to fight. Along with the rules banning secondary pickets and solidarity strikes, these laws already make it virtually impossible for any effective form of class action to be legal. But far from being ‘anti-trade union', the aim of this legislation has always been to strengthen the ability of the union machine to control unofficial action and self-organisation by workers at the level of the shop floor and the street. Now similar legal restrictions are being imposed in response to official union strikes at a national level. Faced with the crisis, the democratic ruling class is moving away from the pretence that the unions have any independent sphere of action. They are increasingly being given the role of unions in Stalinist or fascist regimes as open enforcers of labour discipline. The RMT's acceptance of this legal framework was signalled by the fact that they immediately called off the strike.
In British Airways the majority of cabin crew workers have entered into a second week of strikes which has seen them coming up against a bullying and intransigent management. BA has stripped the 2,000 plus striking cabin crew of staff travel perks, which many need in order to travel to work, and docked nearly a fortnight's pay from long-haul flight staff in order to starve them out of the strike. BA have also imposed a disciplinary code which prevents cabin crew from communicating with other workers or passengers, organising internet discussion forums or even making a joke on pain of sacking or suspension from work. BA's greatest fear is that cabin crew will extend the fight to other sectors such as baggage-handlers or pilots, and it has been nakedly encouraging strike-breaking, especially among the pilots who have been offered training as temporary cabin-crew.
BA has also been trying to cut out certain ‘privileges' for union organisers, such as offices for shop stewards and time off for union activities; and this has led Unite to present the struggle as being against BA's ‘union busting' tactics. BA workers are being called upon to stand up for their democratic right to organise in trade unions. Bob Crow, the RMT's left-wing leader, came out with a similar line after the injunction: "this judgment...twists the anti-union laws even further in favour of the bosses" (Guardian, 2 April). For the RMT, the court decision was "an attack on the whole trade union movement" (ibid). The call to defend trade unions from this attack echoes throughout the left-wing press.
If you don't go beyond the surface, the current struggles seem to be an example of militant unions leading the fight against intransigent bosses. The Unite union with its cabin-crew subsidiary BASSA have attempted to elicit support from the US Teamsters Union and have raised a £700,000 war-chest, imposing a 2% levy on Unite members to support this strike. But look a bit further and you will notice that BASSA have already made it very clear that they were prepared to accept wage-cuts ‘in order to save jobs' as long as they were consulted. BA imported Willy Walsh to take a hatchet to cabin crew staffing in a bid to make BA workers pay for the current recession. The response from BA unions was to immediately concede a pay-cut. Thus we were faced with the sickening image of pickets carrying official union placards saying "we offered a pay-cut" .
There can be no doubt that there is a real willingness among cabin crew workers to fight these attacks: at a mass meeting over 80% of them voted for strike action. However, unless the workers are able to break out of the confines of the present action and spread the strike to other workers in BA and beyond, there is a real danger that the BA workers will be ground down in a long-drawn out strike similar to that of the recent postal workers' strike. After the Communication Workers' Union had exhausted the postal workers with a series of strikes that were rigidly divided between different regions and categories, and isolated within the postal sector, the final deal agreed between the CWU and Royal Mail provides further grounds for doubt that unions really offer the workers any defence from the bosses' attacks.
Posties will receive a 6.9% pay rise over three years and payments totalling £1,400 when all agreed changes have been made, and a 39 hour working week,. All posties know that with inflation (which is set to rise even higher) this is clearly a pay-cut over three years. In exchange the Communication Workers Union have accepted the large-scale modernisation plan put forward by Royal Mail, which will see a retention of 75% of posties as full time with part-time working taking up the remainder. The introduction of new sorting-machines which was at the heart of the dispute will lead to significant job-cuts. The response from the CWU was to praise the settlement saying that it represented a "good deal for its members, particularly in the current financial climate" A CWU representative also went on to say that "many workers - particularly in the public sector- are facing pay freezes, compulsory redundancies and even, in the case of Unite members at British Airways, the prospects of pay cuts. We feel that the proposed deal for our Royal Mail members compares extremely well" (BBC News 23/3/10).
Given the fact that legal strikes are becoming increasingly impossible, workers will be increasingly faced with campaigns to enter the legal arena in order to restore the ‘democratic right to strike' via the trade unions. These campaigns will certainly make it difficult for workers to grasp the real role and nature of the trade unions. In fact, the tendency for unions to become cogs in the capitalist state goes back a long way and is irreversible. It is this fundamental reality which time and time again leads to unions dividing up workers' struggles and selling rotten deals at the end of them. Stifling the class struggle and imposing austerity has become the principal job of the unions in the period of state capitalism. But the great advantage of democracy as a form of bourgeois rule is that it can permit a certain degree of independence to the union apparatus, which is vital if workers are still to see them as their own organisations. In Stalinist and fascist regimes, workers have few illusions in the official unions and are often compelled to take the struggle directly into their own hands - a prime example being the mass assemblies and revocable strike committees which sprang up in Poland during the mass strike of 1980. By removing the last pretence that the workers can use the existing unions to organise effective resistance, the bourgeoisie is running the risk that workers in democratic countries will also come to the conclusion that the only way forward is to take things into their own hands - defy the law, defy the unions, and create their own organisations to direct and generalise the struggle.
Melmoth/Amos 3/4/10
The ruling class is gearing up for its election. This time the big issue is not who will win, not even how many people will bother to vote, but how to reduce the deficit over the next few years - how to make the working class pay by cutting jobs, pay and services.
The opinion polls and media have gone from predicting a Tory landslide several months ago, to suggestions of a hung parliament with the Liberal Democrats as king-maker. In parallel with this, Gordon Brown has gone from being characterised as a liability for his party to predictions of an unbelievable political comeback. Meanwhile cynicism and apathy have grown with every new scandal about corrupt politicians. But, however the election turns out, all parties know that the priority for the next government is the deficit and the economy. And whether they prioritise cutting the government deficit, or are restrained by fear of a new recession, they all know that they have to attack the working class.
The British economy shrank by 6.2% in the recession and the technical recovery remains fragile at best. Borrowing this year is predicted to be £167bn - down slightly - and to peak at 74.9% GDP in 2014-15. This was the background to the 24 March pre-election budget, which maintained a discreet silence on the attacks they are bringing in, but couldn't hide them completely. Hidden away in a separate document was the plan for £11bn efficiency savings - including 4.3bn in the health service by cutting among other things the IT programme and staff sickness. These savings can only be based on job losses, even if these will not be specified till after the election. As for savings on staff sickness, postal workers and BA staff can tell us what that means: the development of a culture of management bullying.
The TV debate between the Chancellor and his Tory and Lib Dem shadows only reiterated the need for ‘efficiency savings' to cut the deficit. Osborne pledged £12bn, by reducing waste and controlling recruitment. None of them want to say how they will make the savings, whose jobs will go, who will work longer and harder, before the election. Instead they talked about how they would use half these savings - Osborne wants to limit the planned increase in National Insurance contributions to those earning over £35,000, Darling and Cable say the country can't afford it as it's needed to cut the deficit. On the other hand, they claim to want to plough savings back into ‘front line services', which doesn't add up either, both because they've just told us it's needed to reduce the deficit and because once they've cut jobs in ‘efficiency savings' they will be short of workers to deliver the services. So services will also go on being cut - that's health, education, care of the elderly, everything they have promised to maintain.
Opinion polls confirm that while there are many wanting a change, this does not necessarily mean wanting a Tory government. Disgust with the present Labour government cannot completely outweigh suspicion that a new Tory government will attack on the scale of Thatcher in the 1980s when unemployment trebled. We should be in no doubt what the next government will bring in, whichever it is. Darling's budget speech announced that the new spending review would be the "toughest in decades" and in a BBC interview he confirmed that this means a new Labour government's spending cuts would be "tougher and deeper" than Margaret Thatcher's, "What is non-negotiable is that borrowing is coming down by half over a four-year period." George Osborne is competing with the Chancellor on who can promise the deepest cuts after the election, and Nick Clegg has joined in the criticism of a budget that made no mention of the intended cuts.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies points out that spending increased 1.1% a year under Thatcher, three times the 0.4% pencilled in by the Chancellor for after the election: "if we subtract spending on welfare and debt interest then we estimate that the rest of public spending would be cut in real terms by an average of 1.4% a year compared to an average increase of 0.7% in the Thatcher era. We have not seen five years with an average annual real cut as big as this since the mid-1970s." This is also a useful reminder that the real effective cuts of the 1970s were more scathing than under Thatcher, although her government did its best to follow the example of its Labour predecessors.
The contraction in the UK economy has already had a deep impact. Official figures for unemployment have marginally declined, but so have figures for those employed. The number of people working part-time (in many cases reluctantly) continues to climb. The number of people claiming Jobseekers' Allowance is higher now than at any time since Labour came to power in 1997.
The official figure for people who are ‘economically inactive' does include students, the long-term sick, unpaid carers and those who retire early, as well as those who are officially unemployed and the ‘discouraged' who have given up looking for work or have been bureaucratically barred from claiming JSA or other ‘benefits'. However, even when you allow for categories such as students (who might well have taken up study because of the poor prospects for employment) the current figure of more than 8 million, more than 1 in 5 of the working age population, the highest on record, is a stark condemnation of the capitalist economy's capacity to employ the class that creates most value in bourgeois society.
As for the impact of future cuts, bourgeois commentators have made no attempt to hide the staggering prospect of what's in store. Try this extract from an article by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books (11/3/10). "Broadly speaking, the circumstances are such that it shouldn't much matter who wins the election, not in economic terms. ... The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to cuts of about 11 per cent across the board. Both parties, however, have said that they will ring-fence spending on health, education and overseas development. Plug in those numbers and we are looking at cuts everywhere else of 16 per cent. (By the way, a two-year freeze in NHS spending - which is what Labour have talked about - would be its sharpest contraction in 60 years.)
Cuts of that magnitude have never been achieved in this country. Mrs Thatcher managed to cut some areas of public spending to zero growth; the difference between that and a contraction of 16 per cent is unimaginable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies ... thinks the numbers are, even in this dire prognosis, too optimistic. ... The guesstimate for the cuts, if the ring-fencing is enforced, is from 18 to 24 per cent. What does that mean? According to Rowena Crawford, an IFS economist, quoted in the FT: ‘For the Ministry of Defence an 18 per cent cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army.' The FT then extrapolates: ‘At the transport ministry, an 18 per cent reduction would take out more than a third of the department's grant to Network Rail; a 24 per cent reduction is about equivalent to ending all current and capital expenditure on roads. At the Ministry of Justice an 18 per cent reduction broadly equates to closing all the courts, a 24 per cent cut to shutting two-thirds of all prisons.'"
As it's clear that the state will continue to have an army, courts and prisons, the effect on those areas that will be cut will surely be even more dramatic.
Whoever wins the election, the next government will defend the national capital, by cutting jobs, reducing real wages, reducing services, and, when it's in the national interest, sending young soldiers to fight in imperialist adventures like Afghanistan. For workers there is nothing to choose between any of them. However the results do matter, and it is clear that the ruling class do not simply leave this to chance, not because there is any doubt that any of the serious contenders would carry out the necessary attacks, but because they want to prepare the ground to make it as hard as possible for the working class to resist them. Media stories about Brown the ‘ditherer', the Sun's support for the Tories, give some idea of how they are thinking. David Cameron's claim that Labour are in hock to the unions shows us why - they want us to think that we can rely on the unions and the left to resist the attacks that are being planned, and to think that voting in the election will make some difference, despite all experience to the contrary.
The working class also has to prepare - not by voting, not by apathy or cynicism, but by remembering all the attacks by governments of right and left, both here in Britain and abroad, over the last 40 years, and by discussing and drawing the lessons of the efforts to struggle against those attacks.
Alex 2/4/10
A year and a half after the ‘credit crunch', the international working class is still reeling under the avalanche of attacks on its living standards by all governments, whether of the left or the right. But over this period it has not remained entirely passive as can be seen from a number of struggles which we have written about in our press - the refinery workers' strikes in Britain, the Tekel workers' strike in Turkey, or the moves towards unity between shipyard workers and unemployed in Vigo, Spain. These struggles have shown that workers have not lost the will to fight, nor have they forgotten about the need for solidarity, even in the face of vicious ideological campaigns aimed at stirring up national or sectional divisions. We should also remember the uprising of young proletarians in Greece in December 2008, which really scared the bourgeoisie, anxious that this bad example would spread across borders and into the working class as a whole. It's no accident that the eyes of the ruling class are on Greece and the reactions of the working class to the brutal austerity plans which have been imposed by the ‘Socialist' government and its backers in the European Union. This is a real test for the growing list of other states threatened with insolvency. Already proposed austerity plans have also provoked protests in other ailing economies like Portugal and Spain. And even if the working class still faces huge difficulties, especially in the face of redundancy plans which often make workers feel that strikes and demonstrations cannot lead anywhere, we can see that there is a gradual change in the social climate. In the last couple of months, for example, as well as the large-scale strikes in Greece recounted in the following article, we have seen demonstrations against the rising cost of living in Russia, despite the government declaring these gatherings illegal; occupations and demonstrations by American university students and teachers against cuts in the budget for university education, and the current strikes in the transport sector in the UK.
The following two texts both are both contributions to gaining a better grasp of the present dynamics of the class struggle on a global scale. The first is a report on the struggles against austerity measures in Greece, written by a group calling itself ‘Proles and Poor's Credit Rating Agency', formerly TPTG, whose analysis of the uprising in December 2008 we published in WR 328 (https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/greece [10]).This report is a first-hand account of the recent demonstrations and strikes against what it calls the "fiscal terrorism" aimed at the working class in Greece, a country which is being turned into a "laboratory of a new shock policy" that will no doubt be directed against other sections of the world working class in the near future. For reasons of space we have cut the first part of the article (on the economic crisis and the Greek state's dive into debt that underlie the austerity measures) and have shortened some of the narrative dealing with specific events, while retaining as much as possible of the general analysis which shows in particular the role of the Socialist and Stalinist parties and trade unions, which have retained overall control of the workers' response. The article gives a number of concrete examples of how the parties of the left and their union machines have kept workers' divided, collaborated directly with the police during the demonstrations, and sought to impose a nationalist framework on the movement. At the same time it shows that if these organisations have been able to retain this degree of control, it is to a large extent because the central battalions of the working class, faced with a crisis of unprecedented scale and intensity, are facing real difficulties in actively developing their own perspective and their own forms of organisation. A full version of the text can be found on libcom.org.
We are also publishing a report on workers' struggles in India in the recent period, written by our Indian section for a conference in India attended by several ICC sections (Philippines, Turkey, UK, and France as well as a sympathiser from Australia).
WR 3/4/10
So, in a climate of fiscal terrorism that has been orchestrated for some months now by the media, a state of emergency has been called in Greece in an effort by international capital and the Greek state to turn the country into a laboratory of a new shock policy. The huge ‘public debt' and the ‘imminent bankruptcy of the country' are the mottos used as efficient tools to terrorize and discipline the proletariat and legitimize the decrease of the direct and indirect wage and thus curb its expectations and demands in an exemplary neoliberal fashion of international proportions.
The mobilizations have been rather lukewarm so far and certainly do not correspond to the critical situation and the ferocity of the measures. There is a generalized feeling of impotence and paralysis but anger as well that cannot find a proper outlet. Certainly, there is a real discontent for the shock policy that the PASOK government is promoting (cuts on wages, cuts on benefits, more direct and indirect taxes, extension of retirement age, intensification of police control etc). One can trace that discontent in the everyday conversations in the work places; however, there is a prevailing fragile silence facing the dictatorship of the economy and the omnipotence of the ‘markets'. The ‘national unity' mantra is one of the government's favourite tools...
The union confederations, GSEE (the umbrella organization of the private sector unions) and ADEDY (the corresponding organization of the public sector) are totally controlled by the Socialist government and do their best to avoid any real resistance against the recent offensive....On the 10th of February there was the first strike called by ADEDY with a rather low participation of strikers from the public sector. We will try below to give a description of the demo in Athens on the 24th of February when the first general strike against austerity measures was called by GSEE and ADEDY. The estimation on the number of people that went on strike is around 2-2.5 million. In some sectors (ports, shipyards, oil refineries, construction industry, banks and public service companies) the participation ranged between 70-100%. In the public sector (education, health, public services and ministries, post offices) the participation was lower, ranging between 20% and 50%....
Two were the main features of this demo. The first is the noticeable participation of many immigrants not only ‘under the command' of left-wing organizations but also diffused in the body of the demo. ...The second feature is the street fighting that took place between riot police and protesters who did not necessarily come from the antiauthoritarian-anarchist milieu -in a lot of cases there was close combat, since the riot police have been ordered by the Socialist government to use less tear gas. There was breaking of bank fronts, looting of commercial shops (bookshops, department stores, supermarkets and cafes) and, though not generalized, they certainly gave a quite different tone to what one might expect from the usual GSEE-ADEDY strike demos. One incident in the end of the demo can maybe best convey this change of climate: as the protesters were marching down Panepistimiou St where Kolonaki, a posh district in the heart of Athens, starts, they saw that in Zonar's, a traditional bourgeois and very expensive café, dressed-up and prim customers were drinking champagne (!) and enjoying their expensive flavoured beverages. The enraged crowd invaded the café, smashed its window panes and soon cakes were distributed among them at a much more affordable price!
These features, in our opinion, show the great impact of December 2008 revolt on the way of protesting. A general approval of violent acts against cops and capitalist institutions like banks and stores was obvious during the demo. Actually, there were a lot of cases where demonstrators attacked the cops to prevent them from arresting ‘trouble-makers'.
... Last, we should mention a spectacular move by the Communist Party (actually by its workers' front called PAME) on the eve of the strike: they squatted the Stock-Exchange building early in the morning with a surrealist and rather unintelligible banner saying in English "Crisis pay the plutocracy". Their purpose was, in their words, to "show to the inspectors of the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF where the money is" - as if they did not know.....
On the 3rd of March the Socialist government announced the new measures for the ‘salvation of the country' including a 30% cut in the 13th and 14th salaries of public workers, a 12% cut in salary subsidies, increases in petrol, alcohol and tobacco taxes as well as cuts in education and health spending....Once again, the initiative for the strike on the 5th of March was taken by the CP which had called for a ‘general strike' on that day and a demo. ADEDY and GSEE followed with a 3-hour work stoppage, while other unions (both primary and secondary teachers' unions, public transport unions) called a day strike. The PAME demo gathered around 10,000 people and it ended before the other one had started. Anti-authoritarians and younger people had a more visible presence this time and the atmosphere was tense from the beginning at Syntagma Square near the Parliament where the Socialist Party was going to vote for the new measures.
After a while, the head of GSEE, Panagopoulos, made the mistake to try to speak to the crowd only to have first some yoghurt landed on him, then some water and coffee and finally punches...He was chased and beaten all the way to the entrance of the Parliament and then protected by the riot police. Soon an angry crowd gathered just below the building. The folklore Guards of the Parliament had to leave immediately and some fighting started between the enraged people and the riot squads.... When Glezos, an 88-year old SYRIZA member and a symbol of the national resistance to the Nazi occupation tried to prevent the riot police from arresting a young man, he was beaten and sprayed in the face and soon the fighting with the police was generalized. About three hundred or more people were throwing stones at them (mostly anti-authoritarians but not only) and the rest remained there shouting and cursing for some time until the riot police made a heavy attack trying to disperse the crowd. A refreshing incident occurred when some people took the microphones of the union confederation and chanted slogans against wage slavery and the cops that could be heard all over the square in the clouds of tear gas. ....The demo then started marching towards the Ministry of Labour, something that was criticized by many demonstrators as an effort on the part of the unionists to release the tension near the Parliament. However, spirits were still running high and so when the demo reached the building of the State Council, some demonstrators attacked the riot squad which was guarding it. Soon a huge crowd started throwing rocks and various objects against them chasing them inside the building. One of them, however, did not make it and was captured and almost lynched by the angered people. The incident, which points both to an acceptance of the escalation of violence even by people who would normally react differently and to the increasing hatred against police especially in those days, lasted some time because support riot squads were hindered from approaching by nearby laid-off workers of Olympic Airways. These workers, soon after the new measures were announced, occupied the State General Accountancy in Panepistimiou St and had been blocking the traffic up till the 12th of March with cars and dustbins......
The present conjuncture constitutes an ideal terrain for the activities of the CP since the propaganda of the government itself and of the mass media about the alleged imposition of the tough measures by EU, international markets and speculators seems to confirm its rhetoric about "exiting EU" and "resisting the monopolies and big capital", which it keeps repeating with religious devotion since the 80's. As one of the main political representatives of the working class (as a class of the capitalist mode of production and communication) inside the Greek state and its institutions, the CP proclaims the establishment of a nationalist ‘popular' economy where the working class will enjoy the merits of a social-democratic capitalism with a flavour of Stalinism. As a matter of fact, the actions of the CP ensure the entrapment of struggles into the limits of capitalist institutions, and what's more, into the most fetishized of them, elections and the parliament, since for the CP, voting for the party and getting organized in it constitutes the culmination of class struggle.
The most prominent characteristic of the CP's activism remains the complete separation of the mobilizations of its union organ (PAME) from the rest of the struggling proletarians. The demonstrations organized by PAME and the CP never come together with the demonstrations called by other workers' unions and student organizations. Although we are not in the position to know exactly what's happening inside the apparatuses of both the CP and PAME because of their completely secretive mode of organization, the experience we have from our participation in union assemblies shows that they exercise complete control upon their rank 'n' file. We are certain that actions are decided by the party leadership without a trace of rank 'n' file participation in the decisions...
It must be admitted that the level of class activity is low: neither have long-term strikes been organized by many sectors simultaneously nor there are daily militant massive demonstrations. In this context, PAME activities (occupations of public buildings such as the Ministry of Economics and the stock market, massive demonstrations and rallies -practices that have not been unusual for the CP since at least the mid 2000's) seem impressive, especially when they succeed to call first for a strike or a demo obliging GSEE and ADEDY to follow. It is possible that a plan for splitting GSEE and ADEDY and creating a third ‘independent' union confederation lies underneath this strategy. Of course, it goes without saying that if the situation gets out of hand by going beyond some 24-hour strikes on a weekly basis, that is to say if long-term strikes break out accompanied by a permanent proletarian presence and militant activity in the streets, the CP will again assume the role of the police by undermining the strikes it does not control, by calling its members off the streets and by trying to repress violently every radical activity. After all, this has been its standard practice since the fall of the dictatorship and they did exactly the same during the December 2008 rebellion.....
On the 5th of March, GSEE and ADEDY called for another 24 hour strike on Thursday the 11th of March, in response to the climate of a general yet passive discontent with the announced austerity measures, attempting to retain a grain of legitimacy. There are no definite figures available for the levels of participation in the strike, but we can say for sure that it was higher than the previous one (GSEE claims that participation in the strike reached 90%). This was also proved by the number of demonstrators which was almost double than the demo on the 24th of February. According to our estimations, a number of around 100,000 people participated in both demonstrations of PAME and GSEE-ADEDY (PAME organized a separate demonstration following its standard practice), even if the media estimate this number at around 20-25,000. The composition of the crowd was also slightly different since there were more university students, a few high school students and more young workers while immigrants were absent this time. Moreover, a large number of demonstrators coming from almost the entirety of the antiauthoritarian milieu participated in the GSEE-ADEDY demo, dispersing into its whole body.
Another distinctive characteristic of the demonstration was the different, far more offensive tactics of the police. More than five thousands cops tried to prevent an escalation of proletarian violence by closely following the demo from its both sides. Their goal was reached to a certain extent since relatively fewer people not coming from the anarchist-antiauthoritarian milieu supported the street-fighting or actively participated in clashes with the police...Furthermore, it must be noted that this time the leadership of the union confederations did not just openly cooperate with the police but they actually gave specific commands to the riot squads to stop the demonstrators on Patision avenue in order to take the lead of the demo and avoid possible conflicts with the rank ‘n' file and a repetition of the events of last Friday, when they received the (active) booing they deserve...
The composition of these last demos is different from the December 2008 demos, as expected. High school students did not show up at all, at least in recognizable blocks, except for a few ones in the last demo, but university students were present in the two last demos as more and more general assemblies are called. In general, apart from the students, the precarious, ‘lumpen', marginal segments of the class which was the dominant subject of the riots is understandably not present, since the point at issue, at least for the time being, is the fiscal terrorism imposed through the austerity measures threatening workers with more stable jobs and more to lose. So, what needs some explanation is rather the inertia showed by this part of the proletariat since its mobilizations so far have neither constituted a movement nor have corresponded to the present critical situation. The strikes have been called by the leaderships of either the confederations or the federations of the unions. Even where first-degree unions have called a strike, no mass extraordinary assemblies have preceded, which means that no rank 'n' file processes have been organized. The destructive and paralyzing influence of the Socialist unionists and the control they still have of the unions is still the major obstacle and can be illustrated with the following example. The employees of the National Printing Office occupied it on the 5th of March on the grounds that the new measures provide for an extra 30% cut of the income of the employees of the Ministry of the Interior. The occupation, however, was closed to anyone who "was not employed at the Ministry", as comrades who tried to visit them were told and were actually sent away. The Socialist union cadres who control the union decided to end the occupation in a hurry without even bringing the matter to the assembly with the argument that the government ‘promised' to omit the particular regulation -a decision that was met by anger but has not been reversed. The occupation of the State General Accountancy by laid-off workers of Olympic Airways had the same sad ending. They are mostly technicians that have not been paid for 3 months now after Olympic Airways had been privatized, or laid-off workers that were promised to get transferred to other workplaces. In the first day of the occupation they kept an official as a hostage for several hours and in the same evening they beat and chased a riot squad away. Although they were open to discussions and seemed determined to keep the blockade as long as it needed, since, in their own words, they had "nothing to lose", they let no one into the occupied building. After a 10-day occupation, their Socialist (and right-wing) representatives decided to accept the government's ‘promise' to have a special committee formed to look into the matter! In this case, the Socialist unionists acted as conveyor belts of the government's threats against the workers and the Public Prosecutor's order to have them arrested.
As we had already noted last year in relation to the inability of the December rebellion to extend to the workplaces, the lack of autonomous forms of organization and new contents of struggle beyond the trade unionist demands seem to weigh heavily down on the proletarians in an era of ‘public debt' terrorism. What's more, the limits of that rebellion with its minority character are even more obvious now and soon those who had stayed out of it will probably discover that they will need almost to start a new one to get themselves out of this mess.
Proles and Poor's Credit Rating Agency, aka TPTG 14/3/10
This article in the print edition of World Revolution has already been published online here [14]
In March relations between the US and Israel reached a 30 year low. US Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel trying to push forward the ‘Israel/Palestine peace process', but the announcement of the building of another 1600 homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem led to the withdrawal of the Palestinian Authority. This slap in the face for the US brought a blunt response from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "As Israel's friend, it is our responsibility to give credit when it is due and to tell the truth when it is needed". The US does not agree with more building in East Jerusalem, as President Obama re-emphasised when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington at the end of March.
This public row appears to demonstrate that the Obama regime is going to ‘stand up' to Israel's increasingly unpredictable actions, after the Bush administration's automatic backing for Israel. The new White House team looks like it's trying to advance the Israel/Palestine peace process and work towards a long-term settlement. That, at least, is how the media has been presenting it.
Of course, the Obama team would dearly love to bring about a settlement because the Israel/Palestine conflict is a festering sore in its side. But it's not because the US state want to bring ‘peace and good will' to the Middle East, but because the current impasse is undermining its wider imperialist strategy in the area, which is to impose its control over the region.
The fact that, a year after coming to power, the Obama team has been faced with such an act of insubordination by its ally underlines the stark assessment made of its inability to impose its will made by the International Crisis Group (a think-tank that offers advice on ‘resolving' conflicts)."Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking in 2009 never really got off the ground, as symbolised by the Obama Administration's inability to bring the parties to the negotiating table. The US was unable to achieve either a comprehensive settlement or steps by Arab states to begin normalising relations with Israel. By the end of the year, the peace process was at an impasse, with both sides increasingly questioning the viability of an end-of-conflict two-state solution". (ICG Annual Report 2010.) This is a damning indictment of what was supposed to be a newly invigorated peace offensive.
The new president came into office insisting that he would usher in a new era of US engagement with the rest of the world after the eight years of the Bush administration. Central to this ambition was the new emphasis on peace making between the ruling classes of Israel and Palestine. Along with the US ‘withdrawal' from Iraq - an odd form of withdrawal that leaves 100,000 US troops still stationed there - this was meant to revamp the image of America around the world: from warmonger to peacemaker.
Is this failure down to Netanyahu increasingly operating as a loose cannon? Has this one man and his coalition allies managed to scupper the ambitions of the world's only superpower and its bright new smiley figurehead? No!
It's true that Netanyahu's intransigence over the building of new homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, and his reluctance to comply with US demands that he makes a real effort to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority dominated by Fatah (and even Hamas in Gaza), are an obstacle to US ambitions to clean up its image and its ability to engage with other imperialist powers in the region. Why should the Syrian or Iranian ruling classes limit their own imperialist ambitions when the US is not even able to bring to heel an ally that is totally dependent upon it? The central question however, is why does Netanyahu feel able to defy the world's only superpower?
Netanyahu and his six-party coalition can see that the US is weak. In the Bush years the US let Israeli imperialism pursue its ambitions in the Lebanon, towards the two Palestinian statelets (and their regional backers Syria and Iran) as part of a policy that tried to impose the US's will militarily. This policy failed in Iraq and is looking increasingly like failing in Afghanistan. It is one of the reasons Bush's team was replaced by Obama's. But the new team is still faced with the same situation. In this context the current factions that make up the Israeli government are now more confident about defending the Israeli national interest, with much less concern for the consequences.
Other fractions of the bourgeoisie have criticised Netanyahu's headstrong approach, especially towards the US, but they are all united in the desire to defend the national interest. This means confrontation with its regional rivals, above all Iran. The other fractions may want to do this through cooperation with the US, but, faced with the weakness of the world's policeman - exemplified by its inability to impose its diktat over Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world - their arguments are weakened. And the arguments for pursuing Netanyahu's line, even if its means problems with the US, are being strengthened. After all, what is the US going to do to Israel? Despite its unruliness it's still the main ally of the US in an increasingly unstable region.
Other regional powers such as Syria and Iran are also trying to take advantage of the US's inability to impose its will.
Iran is the starkest example. Its determination to develop nuclear weapons has been reinforced by the US's weakness. The US has very limited options. A direct military strike is something that it wants to avoid while it still has Afghanistan on its hands. In addition, the situation is pushing Israeli imperialism into an increasingly belligerent posture, even allowing for the already significant weight of the military apparatus in the Israeli state. Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear power station in 1981, and is part of the international propaganda campaign to justify a pre-emptive strike to stop Iran getting nuclear weaponry.
The US is thus faced with a double challenge. It wants to stop the development of Iranian nuclear weapons and at the same time stop Israel further undermining its position and making the situation much worse by attacking Iran.
The influential US journal Foreign Affairs summed up the prospect facing the US. "The advent of a nuclear Iran -- even one that is satisfied with having only the materials and infrastructure necessary to assemble a bomb on short notice rather than a nuclear arsenal -- would be seen as a major diplomatic defeat for the United States. Friends and foes would openly question the U.S. government's power and resolve to shape events in the Middle East. Friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington; foes would challenge U.S. policies more aggressively". (‘After Iran gets the Bomb' Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010.)
Syria is one of these foes. As another report by the International Crisis Group underlined, while the ‘West' (ie the US) is looking to Syria to engage with it, the Syrian ruling class is waiting to see how much clout the US actually still has.
"The West wants to know whether Syria is ready to fundamentally alter its policies - loosen or cut ties to Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah; sign a peace deal with Israel - as a means of stabilising the region. Syria, before contemplating any fundamental strategic shift, wants to know where the region and its most volatile conflicts are headed, whether the West will do its part to stabilise them and whether its own interests will be secured.
From Syria's vantage point, there is good reason to cling to the status quo. For almost four decades, it has served Damascus well. Despite a turbulent and often hostile neighbourhood, the regime has proved resilient. It has used ties to various groups and states to amass political and material assets, acquiring a regional role disproportionate to its actual size or resources. One does not readily forsake such allies or walk away from such a track record." (‘Reshuffling the Cards? (I) Syria's Evolving Strategy' ICG Middle East and North Africa Report 14 December 2009)
Faced with a US that is looking increasingly weak in the Middle East, and an Israeli imperialism that is increasingly inclined to throw its weight around, the Syrian bourgeoisie is going to have to receive some good offers from the US to side with it. However, it is also not very keen on a nuclear Iran. It is allied with Iran in its confrontation with Israel as their mutual rival, but they also have conflicts over Iraq and, more widely, their competing influence in the region.
This cauldron of tensions is being stirred up further by the other major powers. French imperialism has been developing its relations with Syria, while German imperialism has been courted by Israel. In March a very high level Israeli delegation of ministers visited Berlin. China and Russia have also been involved with Iranian imperialism.
It's not because of Netanyahu or because of Israeli imperialism as a whole that the US has failed to impose itself in the region.
Unlike a bourgeois think tank like the International Crisis Group that wants to solve capitalism's insoluble problems, the ICC analyses the situation in order to understand the direction imperialist conflicts are leading. We can see that, faced with the weakness of the US, it is trying to impose itself more and more brutally. The diplomatic quarrel with Israel is an expression of this. It had to make a display of slapping down Israel in order to show the rest of the world that it was serious. The fact that the Israeli bourgeoisie is still going ahead with its building projects is yet another blow to US credibility. It is also another reason for regional powers to push ahead in the drive to satisfy their imperialist appetites. If the US cannot maintain order in the area then all states are going to be set against each other. In the Middle East this has the terrifying prospect of the use of nuclear weapons either by an increasingly desperate Israel or by an Iranian imperialism grown more confident with the reduction of Iraqi influence.
At the beginning of April Israel carried out a series of bombing raids on Gaza in retaliation for the killing of the first Israeli soldiers in the area in over a year, and the renewal of rocket attacks from Gaza. This is the most serious assault since Israel's 22-day offensive against Gaza in late 2008/early 2009. Israel has threatened to further escalate the air strikes. Iranian President Ahmadinejad warned Israel that any further attacks would bring it "closer to certain death." None of the imperialisms in the area are holding back as the US is showing itself less and less capable of policing the region.
Phil 3/4/10
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/1.trap.jpg
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/illusions-democracy
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/union-manouevres
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/legal-manouevres
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/attacks-workers
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328/greece
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/condition-working-class
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/greece
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-and-workers-struggles-greece
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/03/jerry-grevin
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/vietnam-war
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/core
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/life-icc
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/jerry-grevin
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism