The Greek state is on the edge of a precipice. The international media talk non-stop about its bankruptcy. The journalists like talking about the ‘Greek tragedy'. But the dramatic reality of the situation is being felt most cruelly by the workers, the unemployed, pensioners, young people who have precarious jobs or are trying to gain their qualifications...in short, the working class.
The Greek proletariat is facing a massive attack on its living standards. The latest austerity package, aimed at cutting Greece's public deficit to less than 3% by 2014 (it currently stands at 13.6%), is a precondition for Greece receiving the massive injection of euros it needs from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Among the measures contained in the package: a pay freeze for all public sector workers, accompanied by pay cuts for some and redundancies for others. A cap on annual bonus payments, but the ceiling raised for the number of workers that companies can lay off every month. Retirement age put off from 61 to 65 for men. VAT increased by 2%. Indirect taxes - including those on alcohol, fuel and cigarettes - to go up by 10%.
And the big fear of all the political leaders and economic experts is that the situation in Greece will spread throughout Europe. On May 10 The Guardian reported that European governments "approved a 500 billion euro deal to save the euro after 11 hours of talks that took place against the prospect of the single currency drowning in a tidal wave of debt and default fears, and even a question mark over the whole European Union".
Because Greece is anything but an isolated case. Portugal and Spain are next in line, their capacity to deal with their public debt seen as highly uncertain. The Portuguese government has just announced a new austerity plan, with similar ‘remedies' to those in Greece: wage cuts, pension cuts, benefit cuts. Rumania has just announced a 25% reduction in wages for public sector workers. Italy and Ireland are in growing difficulties, as is France. And the fact that Britain is outside the euro zone is not going to spare it from the need for drastic cuts - all the parties standing in the election were united on that point and the desperate need to reduce the public deficit is the first item on the new coalition government's agenda.
So much for all the talk about Greece's problems being down to its particularly dishonest politicians, or their spoilt, privileged public sector workers - in short, to problems specific to Greece or the ‘Greek character'. Greece is cracking up because the world economy is stuck in a profound, a historic crisis. All the states on the planet are groaning under huge piles of debt, and the most powerful economy in the world, the USA, has the most gigantic debts of all. Faced with a global crisis of overproduction which burst to the surface at the end of the 60s but which has deepened in the most spectacular manner since 2007, the ruling class has more and more resorted to the drug of credit to keep the world economy on its feet.
The whole world bourgeoisie is very afraid. It is seeing its system going under, and it is running out of political and economic options. And it afraid not only of economic collapse, but also of its social consequences: that the exploited will refuse to make the sacrifices they are demanding, that they will resist, that they will reject the whole logic of capitalism in crisis. Greece is a particular concern for them because not only is it leading the way towards economic disaster, but its working class is setting a very bad example by openly protesting against the austerity measures in a series of general strikes and massive street demonstrations.
But the working class - and this also applies to the workers of Greece, whose struggles also face many difficulties and obstacles (see the article on p4) - also experiences a great deal of fear when it sees the disastrous state of the world economy. How are we to resist, how can we win our demands, when not only this or that company, but entire states are succumbing to bankruptcy? Problems on this scale can have a paralysing effect. But they also make it clear that capitalism has no future, that this system of exploitation is irrational and inhuman. And above all they reveal that the state - whatever colour it paints itself, whether blue, yellow, red or green, is the worst enemy of the working class. It's the state which is imposing all these austerity attacks, and which sends in its repressive forces when people fight back, as we have seen time after time in Greece.
Confronted with this state monster, which expresses the power and political unity of the bourgeoisie as a class, an isolated worker can only feel powerless.
What can a handful of individuals do when their school, hospital, or factory closes? Nothing, if they remain isolated! But today, the entire working class is being hit at the same time - in all countries, in the private sector as well as the public sector, among the employed as well as the unemployed, the young as well as the retired. All of us are facing a future of poverty not because there is not the means to produce the necessities of life for everyone, but because the laws of capitalism, its drive to compete, to sell, to make a profit, have become a deadly obstacle to the rational use of humanity's productive powers.
The whole working class has the same interests and the same enemy - the bourgeoisie and its state. It is only by fighting as a class, through organising and extending our struggles on a massive scale, that we can resist the attacks of the ruling class and develop the perspective of a new society where there will be no more ‘national debt crisis' because there will be no more need for markets, money or nation states. Pawel 29/4/10
After the election circus we have ‘change', ‘a new way of doing politics', the coalition government, all the better to push through the austerity cuts that all major parties agreed were necessary.
This was a very eventful election, even before the resulting hung parliament: the 3 prime ministerial debates, the chancellor debate, the efforts to encourage young people to vote. There was all sorts of chatter about Nick Clegg and whether the Labour Party would be pushed into third place. On election night the pictures of hundreds of people queuing up outside polling stations for over an hour - only to be turned away when they closed at 10pm - made it look as if there was a real enthusiasm for the election like the first in post-apartheid South Africa. All this effort produced a rise in turnout to 65%, partially reversing the low levels of the last three elections, a small victory for the ruling class.
Then there were five days of negotiation to produce the Tory-LibDem coalition, the first coalition in Britain since the Second World War. Out goes the ‘third way' of the Blair years, in comes the ‘new way' of coalition and cooperation in the national interest. David Cameron finds he has friends everywhere, as when he visited Scotland and Alex Salmond of the SNP. There will even be a referendum on a new system of voting
The new government has promised fixed term parliaments. Most importantly, the coalition has promised to run for a full term, 5 years of stable government in the national interest, allowing it to make a start on cuts and austerity measures immediately without having to worry about delaying or disguising them before a new election - whether or not they can actually last the distance.
We have a new coalition in the national interest. It has announced it will bring forward £6bn cuts in a new budget this year. This is on top of the £11bn ‘efficiency savings' already hidden in the last Labour budget. We don't know where they will fall yet, but this is much more believable than all the promises to maintain front line services. The fact is we always knew the new government would bring in austerity measures sooner or later, with cuts and tax increases, because for capitalism there is no choice. With public sector borrowing at £163.4bn, a current budget deficit £113.7bn and public sector net debt (including financial interventions) 62% of national income, austerity is the job they are elected to do. We have it on very good authority. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England has called the planned cuts "strong and powerful" and "sensible". The markets are showing small signs that they view the British state as a little less of a risky investment, and Richard Lambert director of the CBI notes "Business wants to see a stable government with the authority to take the tough decisions that will be required to keep the economic recovery on track and to get a grip on the fiscal deficit."
“I agree with Nick. You two make the cuts, and Labour will pretend to oppose them”
We must wait till the autumn for a full spending review to know what gets cut, but pensions are surely in the firing line with the establishment of an independent commission to review the affordability of public sector pensions. And watch out for other benefit cuts with the emphasis on ‘welfare to work', also a concern of the previous government. Unemployment has just risen to 2.51m, the highest official figure since 1994, with the prospect of rising further. The government is not short of advice: 28 economists who advise the government have suggested a rise in VAT to 20%. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has looked at what could be gained by eliminating zero rate VAT, among other measures. Meanwhile the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that the government will need to impose tax increases of the order of an extra 6p in the pound to reduce the deficit to 3% by 2020. There are predictions that National Insurance contributions for employees will go up, but not for employers. Whichever measures are taken will hit the working class hard.
It's not just in Britain. The IMF has told developed nations "it is now urgent to start putting in place measures to ensure that the increase in deficits and debts resulting from the crisis... does not lead to fiscal sustainability problems". Austerity packages have recently been announced not only in Greece but also Spain, Portugal and Rumania.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg are in office, but the overall direction of their policies does not follow from manifesto promises or voters' desire but is determined by the needs of the national economy. As such the new government represents the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, like its Labour predecessor.
Beware the Labour opposition
Meanwhile the Labour Party can make the most of its leadership election to show itself returning to its ‘core values', to overcome the fact that it ‘lost touch' with its supporters. It will be able to renew its ‘radical' image in opposition. Perhaps we will forget that Darling had announced that the next round of cuts need to be "tougher and deeper" than under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, that Labour-appointed management consultants recommended cutting the NHS workforce by 10%, the record number of young people out of work, the rise in the pension age... They may hope we have already forgotten or never knew about the Wilson and Callaghan governments' wage restraint, real cuts, and rising unemployment.
If we forget all this, then they can present us with a false perspective of the possibility of improvements through support for the Labour Party. But the history of the last 100 years has shown that in government the Labour Party, just like Tories and Liberals, will do exactly what is demanded by state of the capitalist economy. In opposition, Labour also has a very important role to play, making it look as though there is a real ‘alternative' within capitalism.
How can we react?
The current economic crisis, the real master of our fates, is neither a natural disaster nor the result of corruption or mismanagement by this or that individual or institution (however much that goes on). It is a sign that capitalism has no future to offer humanity but more misery.
We cannot vote it out. Nor can we just lie down and put up with what they have in store for us. Even election fever has not been able to hide widespread discontent among workers, as we can see with the disputes of BA cabin crew, rail maintenance and signal workers. With the new cuts workers can only get more angry. At present the bosses are able to keep most workers' militancy under control with a number of measures: legal injunctions used against BA and railworkers; threats and bullying as in the withdrawal of BA travel perks. The unions are also able to keep workers from getting together, as with the postal workers last year with different offices on strike at different times; and wear them down with on-off strikes and negotiations. Postal workers remain unhappy with the deal imposed on them.
The class struggle cannot stay at this level. As more attacks come in, and as they are more openly the work of the state, there will be more disputes going on at the same time, posing questions about the overall unity of the whole working class. Questions that must be answered in both more massive and united struggles and in the effort to understand the perspective capitalism has in store for us and how we can resist it, the perspective for putting an end to this capitalist system and all its misery. WR 15/5/10
In World Revolution 333 [4] we said the most important thing about the 2010 elections. "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 material situation facing British capitalism is hardly up for debate. All the main parties, despite their efforts, cannot hide the reality of the economic crisis and admit that the next government's cuts will be tougher and deeper than Thatcher's in the 1980s. The little parties - both left and right - who say that capitalism can be run for the benefit of the majority of the population are liars, fantasists, or, mostly, both.
Yet, while the state of the economy is a known quantity, and the austere implications for the working class under a new government are devastating, the political carnival is not obviously leading toward a particular result. The TV debates, the talk of a hung parliament, the emergence of the Liberal Democrats, the fluctuating polls - these are all calculated to draw people into the electoral game, to convince us that our vote could count.
The economic reality we know. What has not yet been revealed is the new shape of the political apparatus of the British ruling class.
Each issue of WR is produced at the beginning of the month. For us to do this at the start of May would be redundant. Everything in WR 333 remains valid up until the election, and after it we want to rapidly analyse what the changes in the political scene say about the line-up of the bourgeoisie. This is not because we are passive consumers of the parliamentary pantomime, but because the British bourgeoisie, at the political level, is one of the most important in the world, and revolutionaries have a responsibility to put forward their understanding of the manoeuvres and conflicts within the capitalist class, the dominant class in modern society.
So, we can tell all our readers and subscribers that WR 334 will be produced in mid-May, and, following on that, WRs 335 and 336 in the middle of June and July respectively. Of course, each issue will continue to be concerned with the whole range of issues facing the working class: the class struggle, the economic crisis, imperialist conflict, the internationalist milieu - as well as the particular spasm of the bourgeoisie we are seeing in this episode of the democratic soap opera.
WR 23/4/10.
What follows is an extract from a report on the British situation presented to a meeting of the ICC in Britian in early April this year. It focuses on the real state of the economy, against all the falsehoods heard before, during and after the recent general election.
According to the bourgeoisie,[1] Britain moved out of recession at the end of 2009 with the final quarter seeing growth of 0.4% (revised upwards in March 2010 from the original estimate of 0.1% and the second estimate of 0.3%). The stock market has been rising, house prices are increasing[2] and unemployment has fallen.
The peak to trough fall of 6.2% (from 1st quarter 2008 to 3rd quarter 2009) makes this recession similar to that of the early 1980s and worse than that of the early 1990s. The growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was largely due to a 0.4% growth in the service sector. Car sales grew by 5.4%, driven upwards by the car scrappage scheme.
The production sector has been the most affected by the recession, registering a peak to trough decline of 13.8% between the fourth quarter in 2007 and the third quarter of 2009. The 0.4% growth in the fourth quarter 2009 was led by the capital goods sector responding to increased demand from abroad and from state infrastructure projects,[3] although the rate of growth is low in comparison to the total decline of 17.1%.
State and private consumption have underpinned the recovery while capital investment and trade have been negative factors, underlining that debt is both the cause and the solution to the present crisis and that the structural problems of the British economy are unchanged. Much has been made of the fact that the increase in the public sector borrowing requirement may not be as massive as first thought but the level of about 12% of GDP or £167bn is still large and on a par with that of Greece. Overall government debt is predicated by the government itself to rise from 54% of GDP this year to 75% by 2014/15.
Inflation has recently begun to rise as the temporary VAT cut ended and fuel prices increased. In January the Consumer Prices Index hit 3.5% and the Retail Prices Index (which includes mortgage repayments) 3.7%.
In March the Government forecast increases in GDP of 1-1.5% this year rising to 3-3.5% in 2011/12 and to 3.25-3.75 the year after. Other forecasters are not so sanguine: "However, the pick-up will be slow with GDP projected to grow by slightly more than 1% in 2010 reflecting strong headwinds from balance sheet adjustments, a still weakening labour market and fiscal tightening. In 2011 the recovery will gain momentum, but resource utilisation will remain low and the unemployment rate is projected to reach 9.5%. Inflation is likely to remain below the 2% target for an extended period."[4]
The immediate apparent improvement is the result of state intervention, the main elements of which were:
- cuts in interest rates to 0.5%. Many banks have kept the rates they charge for borrowing high, so making vast amounts of money and limiting the impact on the economy;
- nationalisations and bail outs, including Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and the Lloyds/HBOS merger as well as the billions of pounds in guarantees given to banks;
- quantitative easing - reached a total of £200bn but rather than stimulating the economy through loans to small businesses it has been argued that this money has simply been used to resume gambling on the stock exchange and explains the increases in the stock market;
- the VAT cut and car scrappage scheme are seen as contributing significantly to the increase in GDP at end of 2009 - both have now ended.
Fig. 1 - GDP Growth
Source: Office for National Statistics
Structural issues
In previous reports we have looked at the range of structural issues that affect the British economy. In particular we noted the relatively low level of productivity and the consequence that the bourgeoisie relied on increasing the absolute rate of exploitation as the basis of the ‘boom' of the 1990s. The latest official report on productivity[5] shows that the productivity gap with rivals such as the US, France and Germany has been reduced but still remains and that one of the factors in this in the lack of investment in research and development and skills.
But such structural issues, which also include the deficit in Britain's balance of trade, are actually only symptoms of the real contradictions at the heart of capitalism: the falling rate of profit and overproduction. When British capitalism moved from manufacture into finances it did so in order to be able to grab as much surplus value as possible. The same necessity has driven production to ever-cheaper locations, financial capital to ever more complex structures and fuelled repeated bouts of speculation. Has the present crisis changed any of this?
There has certainly been a massive destruction of capital[6] and we can see signs of further concentration in car making and the finance sector and it is probable that this will continue in these and other sectors. Is this likely to be sufficient to alter the organic composition of capital and allow an improvement in the rate of profit?
This might improve the competitiveness of certain industries, but, from the Luxemburgist position, the question would be posed of where the demand would come from. Accepting that debt has been used to create an artificial market and that the massive extension and increasing fragility of this market (such as the sub-prime loans) was in large part behind the crisis, what is the perspective of debt fuelling a recovery since it has been massively increased just to prevent the whole edifice from collapsing? In Britain government debt has quadrupled in the last three to four years and personal debt hit an unprecedented high level just before the crisis broke into the open. Today the state is planning a decade of austerity to control the government debt and personal debt, which largely fuelled the boom of the 1990s, is no longer increasing as people, by choice or otherwise, reduce their spending (although the debt remains at £1,464bn[7]).
In short, the fundamental contradictions remain. At best they have been controlled for a moment only to return with renewed force in the future. That said, capitalism is not finished and while it survives it must find some way to grow. Growth figures around the world are turning positive, global forecasts are being revised upwards and the infernal machine lurches forward.
More immediately, it is clear that the crisis in Britain has moved into a new phase, the emergency measures that dominated in 2008-9 have been able to head off the collapse of the finance sector that was feared. The recovery may be weak but, for the time being at least, the bourgeoisie has saved its own skin. Now it is time for the working class to pay the price.
The impact of the recession on the working class
Unemployment has been growing since the middle of 2008 but has recently shown a slight reduction: "The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 per cent on the quarter to reach 7.8 per cent for the three months to January 2010. This was the first quarterly fall in the unemployment rate since the three months to May 2008. The number of unemployed people fell by 33,000 over the quarter to reach 2.45 million. There has not been a larger quarterly fall in the number of unemployed people since the three months to July 2007. However, the number of people unemployed for more than 12 months increased by 61,000 over the quarter to reach 687,000, the highest figure since the three months to August 1997."[8]
The government has boasted about how unemployment has not increased as much in this country as in others, presenting this as a tribute to its economic skill and human compassion. In fact it is partly due to fiddling the figures and partly to the working class accepting cuts in hours and cuts or freezes in pay as the price of hanging onto a job.
The changes to the way unemployment statistics are calculated are familiar to us. One phenomenon of this recession is the role that education has played. Of the 241,000 increase in the number of working age people recorded as inactive, 217,000 were accounted for by young people going to higher education - a route that is likely to become much harder in the face the massive cuts recently announced in funding.
There was a reduction of 2.9% in total hours worked in 2008 (although this includes the impact of the increase in unemployment). Full time employment has declined while part time working has increased (between the end of 2007 and the end of 2008 full time employment declined by 0.5%, or 100,000 people, while part time work increased by 0.8% or 83,000 people[9]). The rate of increase of wages declined from over 3.5% in January 2007 to 3% in March 2009. This decline was most marked in manufacturing where the rate of increase went from just over 3.5% in January 2007 to just over 1% in March 2009. Taking account of inflation real pay has gone down and at the end of March it was reported that average pay declined by 0.5% during 2009.[10]
This is only a continuation of what the working class has experienced over the last thirty years. For example real earnings growth has been kept low over the last two decades and the increase in unit wage costs forced down to nearly zero. This ‘flexibility' of the labour market, so beloved by politicians of all stamps, and presented now as one of the country's strengths, is nothing but a euphemism for the erosion of pay and conditions and the growth of insecurity of employment that was the main fruit of the attacks under Thatcher and her successors in New Labour. This legacy is still with the working class; it is experienced every day in work and is expressed through the tensions and stresses that dominate so many working lives. It is the experience of the working class worldwide.
An indication of the real cost of this flexibility was provided in a recent study of the impact of the recession on mental health. This found that 71% of people who have lost a job in the past year have experienced symptoms of depression, with those aged 18-30 most affected. Around half said they have experienced stress or anxiety.[11]
Perspectives
The attacks on the working class will continue and will be both material and ideological.
The full extent of the material attacks is being hidden until after the election. Today there is a phoney war as the parties posture about who will cut the quickest, the furthest or the cleverest, all the while preserving ‘frontline' services. Labour alternately claims the mantle of Thatcher, promising to outdo her cuts, and tries to frighten workers with her memory. The Tories veer between soft cop and hard cop, promising to start cutting immediately while protecting the NHS. The Liberals for their part posture as the sternest and most realistic of cutters, safe in the knowledge they won't actually have to do anything. The forecasts, by such as the IFS, talk of a decade of austerity with annual cuts twice those under Thatcher.
The scale of these attacks will necessitate an equally large ideological offensive, especially as it will not be possible to hide the disparity between the resources devoted to bailing out the ruling class with the attacks on the working class. There is a danger that this will have an impact on the consciousness of the working class; hence the current strategy of blaming the bankers, while actually doing nothing. The nationalist and racist card will certainly continue to be played with the likes of UKIP, the BNP and the English Defence League tacitly being allowed to develop with the mainstream media drip-feeding more or less explicitly racist stories. The advance of decomposition that is likely to result from cuts will give scope for many campaigns that are likely to be more virulent than those seen to date about delinquent children, single mothers, benefits scroungers etc. WR 4/4/10
[1]. Most of the data in this section is taken from the Economic and Labour Market Review for March 2009 published by ONS.
[2]. Prices dropped from the second half of 2007 until March 2009 and have risen since then (albeit with a dip in February) bringing prices back to where they were in August 2008 and making up a substantial amount of the overall decline. The current inflation rate for house prices is 9%. However, the context of this is of a relatively low level of overall sales with a significant decline in the number of houses being built, suggesting that the current increase in prices may be the result of a tightening of supply. (Source: Nationwide House Price Index, March 2010)
[3]. In the year to February 2010 public sector net investment was £37.2bn, which is 27% higher than for the same period of 2008/9. (Source: IFS Public Finance Bulletin, March 2010).
[4]. OECD Economic Outlook 86, November 2009. The forecasts for GDP are broadly consistent with those of a range of independent forecasters of 1.2% in 2010 and 2% in 2011 (see Forecast for the UK Economy, HM Treasury, March 2010).
[5]. Productivity in the UK 7 - Securing long-term prosperity, HM Treasury 2007.
[6]. It has been reported that economists have worked out the total of lost production for the world economy is $60tn and for the UK £1.8tn, "more than the current annual output of the economy". The article did not cite the source of this calculation. Guardian 01/04/10.
[7]. Credit Action, Debt facts and figures, April 2010
[8]. ONS 17/03/10
[9]. The Impact of the Recession on the Labour Market, ONS May 2009.
[10]. Guardian 30/03/10
[11]. Guardian 01/04/10
British imperialism is at an impasse. Humiliated and all but thrown out of Iraq, failing in Afghanistan and ignored when it tries to take the lead internationally, as at the recent Copenhagen climate change summit, it turns up the volume of propaganda to hide the reality. The deaths of the young men and women slaughtered in Helmand Province are spun into a cynical spectacle about the sacrifice and heroism of ‘our boys'. The reality of the century-long decline of British capitalism since it ceased to be the dominant economic and military power in the world once again confronts the British ruling class and forces it to reassess its imperialist strategy.
There are two main causes of the current impasse. The first is the failure of the strategy pursued by British imperialism since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. The loosening of the order imposed by the Cold War meant that all powers saw the opportunity to assert their own interests. For the majority of the British ruling class this meant trying to pursue an independent line between the US and Europe, which was perceived to be dominated by Germany. This saw some initial success during the 1990s where Britain joined the US in the first Iraq war and worked alongside France during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia to oppose both Germany and the US. However, the ultimate result was that Britain found itself increasingly distrusted and squeezed between the two.
The offensive launched by the US after the destruction of 9/11 led Britain to position itself closer to the US. This change in tactics had two results. On the one hand, it resulted in Britain being caught in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan and being increasingly sidelined by its erstwhile friends and allies. It also resulted in Britain becoming a target of terrorist attacks at home. On the other hand, it reopened the divide in the British ruling class that came to the surface during the last years of John Major's government and which was one of the reasons New Labour came to power in 1997.
Blair's attempt to gain advantage from following in the wake of US imperialism was a failure. When Brown took over his attempts to return to the independent policy of the 1990s through the appointment of advisors who had opposed or been critical of the Iraq war merely annoyed the Americans.
The second cause of the impasse has been Britain's declining economic strength, which has forced it to scale back its ambitions. For example, in recent years the planned defence budget has included an increase of 1.5 per cent per year in real terms, to £34 billion for 2008/9, £35.3 billion for 2009/10 and £36.9 billion for 2010/2011. However, defence inflation runs considerably ahead of the overall inflation rate and in 2008/9 there was already a deficit of £2bn that led to a series of delays in planned expenditure. This has not stopped the ruling class from trying to assert itself, from ‘punching above its weight' as it's often put. One result of this strategy has been that the young people recruited into the British army are sent out without protective equipment, in vehicles that cannot withstand roadside bombs and lacking helicopter support. But, of course, for the armed forces, human beings are always expendable..
The current impasse is the reason why, other than in patriotic propaganda, there is largely silence over foreign policy. This cannot last. The British ruling class, like every ruling class, is compelled to defend its interests against every other power. They are all rivals. Alliances, even when as seemingly stable as during the cold war, are only ever transitory.
During the election the parties had little to say except platitudes. But beyond the electoral circus a real discussion has begun. Chatham House, the think tank that allows academic, military and political figures to discuss foreign policy confidentially, has begun a review while the new government will begin a Strategic Defence Review this year. Within parts of the bourgeoisie there is recognition that Britain's position has declined. An article in the Financial Times (28/4/10) reports one participant at a recent Chatham House discussion saying that "the curtain is falling...on a 400-year old global adventure" and that the forthcoming defence cuts will mark the end of Britain's pretensions.
The same article also quotes the Director of Chatham House on the pressures facing Britain: "the accelerating shift from west to east in the global balance of economic power, the inevitable deep cuts that will need to be made in Britain's military and diplomatic capabilities, a more ambivalent relationship with the US and uncertainty about the European Union's future international influence and capacities." What this underlines is that future British imperialist policy will have to be based on responding to events beyond its control. This is the situation of every minor power.
The pretensions of Blair that Britain can in any way shape the international situation have been utterly refuted. The ‘special relationship' with the US meant American predominance in the period of the Cold War, but hardly anything ever since. It was interesting to see the rapidity of Obama's congratulations to Cameron, as well as Hague's rush to meet with Secretary of State Clinton, but not clear what significance to put on this burst of diplomacy. There has always been a Conservative tendency to be pro-US and Eurosceptic, but this has to be weighed against the LIbDem enthusiasm for all things European. In this the coalition is no different from individual parties that have factions which look either across the Atlantic or the Channel for alliances or inspiration.
Britain stands to one side of Europe; its physical presence around the world largely symbolic. For all its pragmatism and experience the British bourgeoisie may still find that splits will develop as it weighs its options. The British bourgeoisie cannot afford the military, diplomatic or financial tools to allow it to intervene around the world, yet can't escape the framework of modern capitalism that forces all states into imperialist rivalry and ultimately conflict, whatever their resources. North 10/05/10
During the huge demonstrations in Athens against the Greek government's austerity measures on 5 May, the Marfin bank was set alight, apparently by molotovs thrown from the crowd. Three bank workers died of smoke inhalation. These events provoked a frenzied response from the government, eager to brand all demonstrators as ultra-violent hoodlums, and from the police, who have mounted a series of brutal raids in the ‘anarchist' dominated district of Exarcheia in Athens. The deaths have also had at least a temporary numbing effect on the development of the struggle, with many workers confused about how to go forward, and even considering the need to accept austerity measures in order to ‘save the economy' or avoid a slide into chaos (at least according to recent opinion polls which claim that over 50% of the population would be prepared to accept the draconian EU/IMF package or preferred wage cuts to national bankruptcy).
From the side of the ‘protestors', from those very considerable numbers of proletarians who are convinced that the economic attacks must be resisted actively, there have been various responses. Many statements have with real justification blamed the bullying tactics of the banks' owner, Vgenopoulos, who pressured employees to stay at work on pain of losing their jobs, even though the bank was known to be on the route of the demonstration and bank burnings have been a commonplace on such occasions: what's more, entrances to the bank were locked making it extremely difficult to exit the building[1]. Others (see, for example, the statement by the ‘Anarchist Crouch' on the Occupied London blog[2]) blamed paramilitary gangs for the attack.
This may or may not be the case; but such a response, left at that point, doesn't really help us understand why the bourgeoisie in Greece has made such extensive use of ‘false flag' agents to carry out provocations and ultra-violent acts: the truth is that such activities tend to thrive in the context of a culture of minority violence among a substantial part of the ‘anti-authoritarian' milieu in Greece. An addiction to violence as an end in itself can easily become a positive hindrance to the development of a wider class movement and its efforts to organise and extend the fight against the state's assault on working class living conditions.
The following statements, however, show that within this milieu, the recent tragedy has pushed forward a process of serious self-examination and reflection. The first is another text by comrades contributing to the ‘Occupied London' blog, many of them of Greek origin. While in no way exonerating the bourgeoisie from responsibility for the deaths, or succumbing to pacifism, their statement does seek to go to the roots of the problem: "The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years. Our movement has not been strengthened because of the dynamic means it sometimes uses but rather, because of its political articulation. December 2008 did not turn historical only because thousands picked up and threw stones and molotovs, but mainly because of its political and social characteristics - and its rich legacies at this level"[3].
The second statement is from a longer text by TPTG ‘The Children of the Gallery', a libertarian communist group in Greece[4]. In the previous issue of this paper we published part of an article written by the same group (although under a different name)[5], a text which lucidly exposed the sabotaging role played by the trade unions and the Greek Communist Party in the current wave of strikes and demonstrations. As our French comrades have pointed out, certain passages in the complete edition of that article did not seem to take into account the danger that some violent actions carried out during the course of wider struggles can have a counter-productive result[6]. The passage published below, by contrast, shows the same critical approach as the Occupied London statement, for example where it writes: "As for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian milieu itself and its dominant insurrectional tendency, the tradition of a fetishised, macho glorification of violence has been too long and consistent to remain indifferent now. Violence as an end in itself in all its variations (including armed struggle proper) has been propagated constantly for years now and especially after the December rebellion a certain degree of nihilistic decomposition has become evident".
We can only encourage this process of reflection and hope that we can take part in the debates it engenders. Both the Occupied London statement and the various articles of the TPTG argue that the real strength of the movement in Greece, and indeed of any proletarian movement, is its capacity for self-organisation, extension, and "political articulation"; and we can add that this is also the real alternative not only to the substitutionist violence of a minority, but also to the stifling of the class movement by the ‘official' forces who claim its leadership - the unions, the CP, and the leftists.WR, 16/5/10.
The text below summarises some initial thoughts on Wednesday's tragic events by some of us here at Occupied London. English and Greek versions follow - please disseminate.
What do the events of Wednesday (5/5) honestly mean for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement? How do we stand in the face of the deaths of these three people - regardless of who caused them? Where do we stand as humans and as people in struggle? Us, who do not accept that there are such things as "isolated incidents" (of police or state brutality) and who point the finger, on a daily basis, at the violence exercised by the state and the capitalist system. Us, who have the courage to call things by their name; us who expose those who torture migrants in police stations or those who play around with our lives from inside glamorous offices and TV studios. So, what do we have to say now?
We could hide behind the statement issued by the Union of Bank Workers (OTOE) or the accusations by employees of the bank branch; or we could keep it at the fact that the deceased had been forced to stay in a building with no fire protection - and locked up, even. We could keep it at what a scum-bag is Vgenopoulos, the owner of the bank; or at how this tragic incident will be used to leash out some unprecedented repression. Whoever (dared to) pass through Exarcheia on Wednesday night already has a clear picture of this. But this is not where the issue lies.
The issue is for us to see what share of the responsibilities falls on us, on all of us. We are all jointly responsible. Yes, we are right to fight with all our powers against the unjust measures imposed upon us; we are right to dedicate all our strength and our creativity toward a better world. But as political beings, we are equally responsible for every single one of our political choices, for the means we have impropriated and for our silence every time that we did not admit to our weaknesses and our mistakes. Us, who do not suck up to the people in order to gain in votes, us who have no interest in exploiting anyone, have the capacity, under these tragic circumstances, to be honest with ourselves and with those around us.
What the Greek anarchist movement is experiencing at the moment is some total numbness. Because there are pressurising conditions for some tough self-criticism that is going to hurt. Beyond the horror of the fact that people have died who were on "our side", the side of the workers - workers under extremely difficult conditions who would have quite possibly chosen to march by our side if things were different in their workplace - beyond this, we are hereby also confronted with demonstrator/s who put the lives of people in danger. Even if (and this goes without question) there was no intention to kill, this is a matter of essence that can hold much discussion - some discussion regarding the aims that we set and the means that we chose.
The incident did not happen at night, at some sabotage action. It happened during the largest demonstration in contemporary Greek history. And here is where a series of painful questions emerge: Overall, in a demonstration of 150-200,000, unprecedented in the last few years, is there really a need for some "upgraded" violence? When you see thousands shouting "burn, burn Parliament" and swear at the cops, does another burnt bank really have anything more to offer to the movement?
When the movement itself turns massive - say like in December 2008 - what can an action offer, if this action exceeds the limits of what a society can take (at least at a present moment), or if this action puts human lives at danger?
When we take to the streets we are one with the people around us; we are next to them, by their side, with them - this is, at the end of the day, why we work our arses off writing texts and posters - and our own clauses are a single parameter in the many that converge. The time has come for us to talk frankly about violence and to critically examine a specific culture of violence that has been developing in Greece in the past few years. Our movement has not been strengthened because of the dynamic means it sometimes uses but rather, because of its political articulation. December 2008 did not turn historical only because thousands picked up and threw stones and molotovs, but mainly because of its political and social characteristics - and its rich legacies at this level. Of course we respond to the violence exercised upon us, and yet we are called in turn to talk about our political choices as well as the means we have appropriated, recognising our - and their - limits.
When we speak of freedom, it means that at every single moment we doubt what yesterday we took for granted. That we dare to go all the way and, avoiding some cliché political wordings, to look at things straight into the eye, as they are. It is clear that since we do not consider violence to be an end to itself, we should not allow it to cast shadows to the political dimension of our actions. We are neither murderers nor saints. We are part of a social movement, with our weaknesses and our mistakes. Today, instead of feeling stronger after such an enormous demonstration we feel numb, to say the least. This in itself speaks volumes. We must turn this tragic experience into soul-searching and inspire one another since at the end of the day, we all act based on our consciousness. And the cultivation of such a collective consciousness is what is at stake.
It is more than clear that the sickening game of turning the dominant fear/guilt for the debt into a fear/guilt for the resistance and the (violent) uprising against the terrorism of debt has already started. If class struggle escalates, the conditions may look more and more like the ones in a proper civil war. The question of violence has already become central. In the same way we assess the state's management of violence, we are obliged to assess proletarian violence, too: the movement has to deal with the legitimation of rebellious violence and its content in practical terms. As for the anarchist-antiauthoritarian milieu itself and its dominant insurrectional tendency the tradition of a fetishised, macho glorification of violence has been too long and consistent to remain indifferent now. Violence as an end in itself in all its variations (including armed struggle proper) has been propagated constantly for years now and especially after the December rebellion a certain degree of nihilistic decomposition has become evident (there were some references to it in our text ‘The Rebellious Passage'), extending over the milieu itself. In the periphery of this milieu, in its margins, a growing number of very young people has become visible promoting nihilistic limitless violence (dressed up as "December's nihilism") and "destruction" even if this also includes variable capital (in the form of scabs, "petit-bourgeois elements", "law-abiding citizens"). Such a degeneration coming out of the rebellion and its limits as well as out of the crisis itself is clearly evident. Certain condemnations of these behaviours and a self-critique to some extent have already started in the milieu (some anarchist groups have even called the perpetrators "para-statal thugs") and it is quite possible that organised anarchists and anti-authoritarians (groups or squats) will try to isolate both politically and operationally such tendencies. However, the situation is more complicated and it is surpassing the theoretical and practical (self)critical abilities of this milieu. In hindsight, such tragic incidents with all their consequences might have happened in the December rebellion itself: what prevented them was not only chance (a petrol station that did not explode next to buildings set on fire on Sunday the 7th of December, the fact that the most violent riots took place at night with most buildings empty), but also the creation of a (though limited) proletarian public sphere and of communities of struggle which found their way not only through violence but also through their own content, discourse and other means of communication. It was these pre-existing communities (of students, football hooligans, immigrants, anarchists) that turned into communities of struggle by the subjects of the rebellion themselves that gave to violence a meaningful place. Will there be such communities again now that not only a proletarian minority is involved? Will there be a practical way of self-organisation in the workplaces, in the neighborhoods or in the streets to determine the form and the content of the struggle and thus place violence in a liberating perspective?
Uneasy questions in pressing times but we will have to find the answers struggling.
TPTG 9th of May
[1]1 See in particular a statement by an employee of the Marfin bank, published on the Occupied London blog: https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/05/an-employee-of-marfin-ban... [7]
[2] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/09/286-the-"anarchist-crouch... [8]
[3] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/07/what-do-we-honestly-have-... [9]
[4] https://libcom.org/news/critical-suffocating-times-tptg-10052010 [10]
[5] https://libcom.org/news/tptg-"there's-only-one-thing-left-settle-our-acc... [11]
[6] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/prise_de_position_d_un_gr... [12]
At the time of writing the streets of Bankok in Thailand give all the appearance of a civil war. Thousands of protestors, organised in the ‘Red Shirt' movement, have set up a barricaded camp and are now being besieged by the army, who have declared parts of the city to be ‘live fire zones', with the aim of intimidating the protestors and preventing the arrival of any reinforcements. The government's troops killed at least 16 people on 14 May alone. They have claimed to be acting in self-defence and following strict rules of engagement, but the Red Shirts are armed mainly with sticks and stones. What's more the troops have clearly been using snipers against specific targets: a dissident general who had joined the Red Shirts and was advising them on security was shot in the head from long distance and is unlikely to survive.
There is little doubt that the bulk of the Red Shirts are made up of Thailand's poor and dispossessed. Many of those in the camp are from the peasant areas of the north and northwest of the country, but they also seem to be gaining support from the urban poor. According to an article in Time magazine cited on the World Socialist Website (‘Ten dead as Thai military lays siege to protesters', 15/5/10), during the clashes "the soldiers also came under attack from behind after hundreds of slum dwellers from the port neighbourhood of Klong Toey spilled onto the streets to fire rockets and sling shots at the troops... When the Klong Toey mob kept advancing, the soldiers opened fire with rubber bullets. Hundreds of people turned, ducked and ran in a panic, streaming into side streets. At least three people were injured."
There is no doubt about the courage of the protestors, nor about the fact that what has driven them into the streets is the impoverishment heaped on them not only by the current world crisis, but also by the impact of the downfall of the far eastern ‘Tigers' and ‘Dragons' in 1997 and of decades of ‘underdevelopment' before that. But the Red Shirt movement is not a movement of the exploited and the oppressed fighting for their own independent interests. Rather it is an example of deep popular discontent being chanelled in a false direction - the struggle to replace the current clique of militarists and millionaires running Thailand with another bourgeois faction. The principal demand of the Red Shirts is for new, fairer elections and the reinstatment of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who gained a good deal of popularity among the rural poor after he came into office in 2001 by offering farmers easy credit and subsidies and keeping crop prices high; there were also ‘reforms' aimed at the urban masses in the shape of access to healthcare. These changes created a backlash from some of the more well-established parts of the ruling class and parts of the middle class (who sometimes parade around as the ‘Yellow Shirt Movement') and in particular the military, who ousted Thaksin in 2006. But the main objection to Thaksin was less his ‘support' for the peasants or prolearians than the fact that he was beginning to run Thailand as his own personal corporation. Thaksin was a ‘new money' media billionaire and his style of government was cutting across traditional lines of influence and privilege that unite the state bureacuracy and the army.
There have been statements coming from elements within the Red Shirt movement about ‘getting rid of the elite', attempts to appeal to the soldiers to join them, interviews with supporters for whom the return of Thaksin is not really a priority. These are indications that a movement raising real class demands could emerge in Thailand in the future. But the Red Shirt campaign - whose official title is the ‘National United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship' - is an obstacle to the development of such a movement because it is geared towards the installation of a ‘proper' bourgeois democracy in Thailand, and such a goal has long ceased to have any use to the working class. As we wrote in the conclusion to a recent online article, ‘Kyrgyzstan and Thailand: Are revolutions going on [13] ?':
"The ‘Red Shirt' movement is basically one of the urban and rural poor, mobilised behind the new bourgeoisie, who are opposed to the ‘old' military and monarchist factions. It is not a movement of, or controlled by, the working class. The only workers' action during this period, a strike of 8,000 workers at the Camera maker Nikon, emerged completely independently of the ‘Red Shirt' movement.
And here lies the central point of our argument. These so-called ‘revolutions', like the ‘Green movement' in Iran recently, are not movements of the working class. Yes, there are many workers involved in them, and probably in the case of Kyrgyzstan a majority of the participants were workers, but they take part in these actions as individuals not as workers. The movement of the working class is one that can only be based upon class struggle of workers for their own interests, not cross-class alliances and populist movements. It is only within a massive movement of strikes that the working class can develop its own organs, mass meetings, strike committees and ultimately workers' councils, that can assert working class control over the movement, and develop a struggle for working class interests. Outside of this perspective is only the possibility of workers being used as cannon-fodder for different political factions. In Greece, perhaps, we can see the very start of the long slow development towards this process. In Kyrgyzstan, and Thailand, we only see workers getting shot down in the streets on behalf of those who want to be the new bosses". Amos 15/5/10
According to the right-wing press the cause of unemployment is that those seeking jobs are refusing to take the jobs offered to them. The new Lib-Con government is going to crack down on this type of behaviour. This is an example of what we might call the bourgeoisie's attempts to develop an economic narrative, which is often - but not always - interwoven with some threads of economic reality. However, once it is necessary to blame the unemployed for their own condition, then there are no elements of economic reality left.
This takes us back to the 1930s, when the bourgeoisie's economists, for lack of anything else to say, explained that all unemployment was voluntary. Not all the bourgeoisie thought that - Roosevelt and Hitler, for example, thought that creating new jobs might alleviate the problem. Furthermore Keynes, the bourgeoisie's last significant economist, thought so too, thus giving rise to the intellectual framework for the economic policy of the USA and the western European states after the Second World War.
The policies adopted within this framework were called Keynesian policies, in honour of the great man, or else policies of ‘full employment', or policies of ‘demand management'. All these terms meant the same thing, since Keynes had proposed that the disastrous fall off in economic activity during the Great Depression of the 30s, was due to a lack of demand, and that if the state made up the deficiency in demand then the slack in economic activity would disappear and full employment would result.
We do not have to consider here in detail whether these claims were true since we are only concerned with the development of the bourgeoisie's economic narrative which, by definition, cannot be the whole truth, since it is only what they want the world to believe. What we want to underline here, is that once the bourgeoisie are thrown back to the ‘explanation' of unemployment that it is voluntary, it is strong evidence of the depth of the crisis and, also, that they are running out of real ideas for dealing with unemployment.
On one point Keynes was undoubtedly right and that is that long term mass unemployment is a critically important expression of the economic crisis. And, for a lengthy period after the Second World War, the bourgeoisie in the Western metropolitan countries seemed justified in their belief that they did indeed have the secret to containing the economic crisis. This was evidenced by high employment levels and a relative prosperity for major sections of the population.
From the point of the view of the bourgeoisie it was unfortunate that the Keynesian policies proved to have no effectiveness over the longer term. In fact state intervention, whatever form it takes, is only a palliative for the crisis. If the underlying crisis of capitalism were not there, then there would hardly be a requirement for the state to intervene. In the ascendant period of capitalism in the nineteenth century, this type of permanent intervention of the state merely to keep the economy going was unknown. The bourgeoisie cannot admit this, of course, which is why it has to invent a ‘new' explanation each time the crisis enters a deeper phase, even if it is a question of recycling elements from an earlier period, which it often is.
In the mid 1970s the bourgeoisie had reached a point where every attempt to continue to stimulate the economy was resulting in runaway inflation - and furthermore was failing to stimulate the economy in any case. They called this phenomenon ‘stagflation'. Since it was impossible to continue like this, they settled on a compromise solution rather awkwardly called the NAIRU - the non-accelerating inflation, rate of unemployment. In other words they realised that they had to accept a certain rate of long term mass unemployment in order to keep inflation under control and therefore to give up the goal of full employment. The fact that they resisted this as long as possible is testimony to the fact that they recognised that unemployment was a key indicator of the economic crisis. Also it was difficult for them to acknowledge that everything that they had been saying since the Second World War on their mastery of the economic situation was proving to be completely empty.
In real terms we have been on the same economic trajectory ever since. Each downturn in the economy leaves its mark in terms of many more people being jettisoned from economic activity altogether. Meanwhile the upturns do indeed do something to alleviate the problem at the margin but always leave a clear stamp of the underlying problem clearly visible.
During the Thatcher years many unemployed people were persuaded to go onto incapacity benefit, for instance, and there are now 2.64 million people on this register, whereas in the 1970s there were 700,000. The bourgeoisie were just about to ‘do something' about this (according to their own declarations) when the recent recession struck, pushing up the number of ‘officially' unemployed up to 2.5 million. So, if they are serious about that still, it requires finding jobs for almost 5 million people altogether. Even that does not cover all the people who might be viewed as unemployed or partially unemployed but we do not have to be exhaustive here.
According to the bourgeoisie's version of reality - its changing account of the economic situation - while we do pass through ‘difficult and painful periods of adjustment' (as now for instance) we otherwise progress from one golden economic era to the next. Although memories of the ten years before the recent financial crisis and recession must necessarily be fading somewhat now, if you think back it was only a few years ago that Brown's long period of steering the British economy was acknowledged by all commentators as a period of outstanding economic ‘success'. The pound was strong, the City of London raked in huge profits and other parts of the economy forged ahead (house prices for instance). Even those commentators who were critics of Brown's stewardship of the economy accepted the idea of unending and apparently limitless economic expansion with its accompanying rewards (albeit for a much more restricted part of the population than in the 50s and 60s).
Cameron has a decidedly more difficult task in front of him to develop a theme of economic progress. His task is to implement the necessary cuts in state spending to bring the deficit under control (whichever party won the election would have had to do this, of course). Thatcher had to deal with a similar problem in an earlier epoch - she needed to show that somehow the adjustments needed after the collapse of the post-war economic boom portended a bright new future for the British economy. And some real and necessary policy adjustments were made at that time. For example it was necessary from the bourgeoisie's point of view to stop the fruitless and expensive support for sectors of manufacturing - like British Leyland and the steel industry - that had no prospect of ever paying off.
In Thatcher's presentation the resulting ‘withdrawal of the state' from the role of economic ownership and management was what would create the necessary market efficiencies to allow the British economy to flourish. Since some of the state support was simply building in inefficiencies there was a real rationale for what she claimed, in a limited sense. However, elevated to a general concept, we can see from the history of capitalism that we have briefly gone over here, that the idea that the capitalist market holds within itself the key to boundless economic expansion and that the ‘interference' of the state in economic matters is what holds back the natural trajectory of growth does not stand up to examination. More important than this is the fact that the state never actually gave up its role, under Thatcher or anyone else, in keeping the economy going. As indicated above, state intervention was simply reined in within a more manageable objective than the maintenance of full employment.
Much of the state's role in the economy is now disguised behind a limited shielding of ‘private' economic activity: "Lots of businesses in the north-east, south and west Yorkshire are entirely government-funded businesses. It's almost a form of nationalisation." (a spokesman of Grant Thornton quoted in the Financial Times, 10/5/10).
Cameron has indicated that he is well aware that whole geographic sectors of the British economy are actually economic dependencies of the state. When he speaks of cut backs in the public sector this ranges far wider than simply the areas that are directly and obviously under the control of the state. He is unquestionably right in thinking that whole areas of the economy are simply kept functioning to prevent the unemployment totals rising even further (effectively this is disguised unemployment). Therefore figures that total those currently unemployed are merely the first indications of the real underlying rate of unemployment.
If Cameron is serious about making a level of cuts that would bring more of this potential unemployment out into the open, it is important to understand that there cannot at this time be a repeat of the efforts made in the 30s to deal with it. That was the period of the first moves. This is definitely the end game that we have entered. The crisis is very much more developed now than in the 30s. It will be very difficult for the bourgeoisie to develop a new, really convincing explanation of how the economy will revive from now on. For the working class this is positive in the sense that the economic crisis is one of the most important factors driving the development of class consciousness. Hardin 13/5/10
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-and-workers-struggles-greece
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/17/253/us-elections
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201004/3695/whoever-wins-election-there-are-massive-cuts-ahead
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[7] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/05/an-employee-of-marfin-bank-speaks-on-tonights-tragic-deaths-in-athens
[8] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/09/286-the-"anarchist-crouch"-on-wednesdays-events/
[9] https://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/05/07/what-do-we-honestly-have-to-say-about-wednesdays-events/
[10] https://libcom.org/news/critical-suffocating-times-tptg-10052010
[11] https://libcom.org/news/tptg-"there's-only-one-thing-left-settle-our-accounts-capital-its-state''-16032010
[12] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2010/prise_de_position_d_un_groupe_communiste_libertaire_sur_les_evenements_en_grece.html
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/334/thailand-kyrgyzstan
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/thailand