At this year's Anarchist Bookfair there was a meeting devoted to 'direct action' against the war in Iraq. The ICC intervened at it because the question of war is a vital issue which has stirred up a lot of people, some searching for an anti-war struggle based on the working class and wanting to go beyond the 'official' protests and demonstrations. In the meeting much of the discussion focused on the tactics of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) within the Stop the War Campaign (STWC). From a 'direct action' point of view the SWP were energetic but tended to dominate meetings. Some thought that the SWP were boring, others didn't like the way that the SWP tended to criticise advocates of direct action as 'elitist' - a criticism that was taken to heart.
The reason for this discussion was the fact that the partisans of 'direct action' had decided to participate in the Stop the War Campaign over the last year. Although the reason for this decision was not put forward explicitly, the logic seemed to be that if you wanted direct action, then you didn't want to be sidelined during the massive demonstrations mounted since the start of the run-up to the attack on Iraq. They wanted to be 'with the masses'.
The ICC intervened to point out that the problem with the Stop the War Campaign was that it was part of the bourgeoisie's mobilisation for the Iraq war. It raises the banners of pacifism and democracy to lead workers into the arms of the ruling class. It defends an anti-American foreign policy for the British state, it defends the national bourgeoisie at the very moment it's advancing its interests with military means. Leading figures from the government such as Robin Cook and Clare Short expressed their 'anti-war' views in harmony with the more leftist opposition of the STWC.
The general reaction was that the ICC's intervention was 'bonkers'. However, it is a matter of record that the bourgeoisie always rolls out pacifist campaigns when it's preparing for war. It preaches harmony between classes with different interests, it says that 'peace' is wanted by all reasonable people. Like the Stop The War Campaign previous pacifist mobilisations have said that war is a specific policy of particular governments, rather than the result of capitalism's inherent imperialist appetites.
In International Review 113 we published an article by Trotsky from 1917 on "Pacifism as the servant of imperialism" in which he shows how pacifism presents a supposed alternative for those who are shaken by the prospect of military conflict, as part of the recruitment for imperialism. In Britain, for example, a figure like Lloyd George was noted as an opponent of the Boer War, as an advocate of disarmament and neutrality, condemning the march toward the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, with the German invasion of Belgium he took his place in the ranks of the unashamed warmongers, as Minister for Munitions, then War Secretary and then as the pacifist Prime Minister who directed the British war effort to victory.
Today, if you look at the Stop The War Campaign, you can see that what's wrong with the SWP or CND is not that they're 'boring' but in the politics they defend. The SWP defends particular policies for British imperialism, demands that the government put a different emphasis in its dealing with other countries. Although, in the case of Palestine for example, the SWP line up directly with the major battalions of the British bourgeoisie. With the CND there is a commitment to national defence that is quite explicit. It only argues against using nuclear weapons for the defence of the British state. The massacres of the First and Second World Wars become quite acceptable from this point of view - with the sole exception of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaskai.
So, both these groups defend British imperialist interests, and this underlines that the Stop the War Campaign cannot be taken at face value as an 'anti-war' group. Those supporters of 'direct action' who have enrolled in the STWC's meetings and demonstrations have, in their own terms, 'given in' to the 'mainstream'. 'Direct action' becomes just another facet of the bourgeoisie's democratic mystifications. After all, didn't Tony Blair himself invite the 'anti-war' movement to protest during Bush's visit - as a demonstration of their democratic rights, the democracy that Bush and Blair are currently trying to impose with force of arms on Iraq.
At the Anarchist Bookfair meeting there was some tentative support expressed for the ICC's position. There was a recognition that the ICC was pointing to 'contradictions' in the view being put forward by the defenders of direct action. Subdued and partial as this support undoubtedly was, it was important as a concrete expression of the fact that the working class will not inevitably be drowned in the pacifist mobilisations of the bourgeoisie - it is capable of putting forward a perspective based on the development of the class struggle and, therefore, of showing a real, effective class resistance to the bourgeoisie's wars.
Hardin, 4/12/03.
In the middle of 2002 there were intensive war preparations in the Indian subcontinent. Both the Indian and the Pakistani ruling cliques were on the verge of open war. Both these imperialist states resorted to an unprecedented mobilisation of arms, ammunition and soldiers on the international borders between the two countries. Both sides mobilised one million soldiers armed to the teeth with all sorts of lethal weapons. Threatening statements about using nuclear weapons were issued by some sections of the political authorities in both countries. The Indian bourgeoisie proved to be much more aggressive and seemed to be bent on going towards open war in response to the more hidden war through terrorist activities sponsored by the bourgeoisie of Pakistan. But the pressure of the 'international community', particularly the US, compelled the Indian bourgeoisie to call a temporary halt to the march to war.
Since May - June 2003 we have seen new 'peace' initiatives in the subcontinent, culminating in the current cease-fire declared by Pakistan and welcomed by India. The Indian Prime minister has been extending the 'hand of friendship' to his Pakistani counterpart. The Pakistani bourgeoisie and the state authority have been responding favourably to the peace overtures. 'Confidence-building' measures are being taken by both sides. Both sides have released some prisoners. Talks are going on to re-establish air, road, railway and sea links. Road links have already started functioning on a limited scale. Ambassadors have already returned, a year after they left or were compelled to leave the capital of the other country. In January the Indian Prime minister Vajpayee is due to visit Islamabad for the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, although so far New Delhi has ruled out any bilateral talks with Pakistan's leaders on the margins of the summit. Most recently, in November 2003, a cease-fire was declared that has so far held along the entire frontier of the disputed Kashmir region. So apparently the 'peace' initiative is gaining momentum in a border conflict which has left tens of thousands dead.
Can there be any real peace between these two imperialist states, whose very birth was from the womb of intensifying imperialist conflict - the epoch of capitalist decadence? Can there be any real peaceful and harmonious relations between any two capitalist states, all of whom are bound to be imperialist in this phase of the life of world capital? A loud NO is the only answer. War and 'peace', in decadent capitalist society are two inseparable aspects of the same imperialist strategy. 'Peace' in this epoch is nothing but a particular moment between two phases of open war. It is used by the warring imperialist states for the political and military preparation of a new, more dreadful and devastating war. 'Peace' and 'peace initiatives' are nothing but the continuation of war in a different form and are a very important part of the overall diplomatic offensive of one side against the other. There cannot be any real, permanent peace in dying capitalism.
In the Indian subcontinent 'peace' was always followed by outbreaks of open war. The Kargil war was preceded by the Lahore 'peace'. The Agra 'peace' was followed by the near war situation in January and June of 2002. The Tashkent 'peace' was followed by the bloody war of 1971, which resulted in the dismemberment of the eastern part of Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. Bangladesh was born as the product of the intensifying conflict between the two factions of the Pakistani bourgeoisie, of the imperialist conflict between the Indian and the Pakistani bourgeoisies, and the global battle between the US and Russian imperialist blocs. So war and 'peace' efforts are nothing but the two sides of the same imperialist coin. The needs of US imperialism
The latest 'peace' initiative cannot be any different. It is nothing but a cover for the intensifying imperialist conflict. It is inseparably linked with the ceaselessly intensifying diplomatic offensive of each against the other, aimed at enhancing the political standing of each in the eyes of the 'international community', particularly of the US super-boss after its spectacular and unilateral show of military muscle in the war in Iraq. These are nothing but complementary steps for furthering the cause of the future war. In June 2002, when war initiatives in the subcontinent were reaching a climax, the US left no stone unturned to prevent the outbreak of war and to maintain 'peace' in the region. 'Peace' in this part of the world is necessary for America's current global imperialist strategy. Its aim is to consolidate its strategic position in Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of central Asia. The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan - with the extension and strengthening of armed attacks against the US-led forces of occupation - has further reinforced the USA's need for 'peace' in the subcontinent. So this imperialist juggernaut has to wear the robes of a peacemaker and resort to peace initiatives in certain strategic areas, in order to increase its ability to launch its military adventures elsewhere, and to intensify its offensive against its most dangerous potential rivals - Germany, France and other major powers.
It's much the same with other imperialist powers, whether large or small. We have seen the 'peace-mongering' role of the French, German, Russian and Chinese bourgeoisies in the last Iraq war, just as we have seen the more open war-mongering of the same major powers in other wars. In any case, the conflict between the lesser powers and the sole super-power, whether hidden or open, is bound to increase. The political authorities in India often speak of the double standards of the US when it comes to the struggle against international terrorism. The Indian bourgeoisie can neither totally support the imperialist policies of the US nor can it totally oppose them. But it is compelled to maintain relations with this military and economic giant, and the recent 'peace' initiative is very intimately linked with the strategy that Indian capitalism has to adopt in its relations with the US.
The audacious aggressiveness of the Indian bourgeoisie, with its insistence on open military confrontation with the Pakistani bourgeoisie, and the efforts of the latter to avoid open war with its Indian counterpart, have led to some diplomatic isolation of the Indian state in the 'international community'. The Indian ruling clique was not very successful in convincing the 'world community' with its endless claims that Pakistan is the sole source of terrorism, not only in Kashmir but also in other parts of India and abroad.
India is not the US. It has to bother a lot about the attitude of the 'international community'. The first and second Iraq wars and the current situation of the US have pushed the Indian state to take the 'peace' initiative. The Indian bourgeoisie has realised that it will have to pay very dearly for any open aggression against the Pakistani state without the consent of the 'international community', and of the US in particular. On top of this, the role of the Indian bourgeoisie in the Iraq war did not satisfy Washington. So the imperialist interests of the Indian bourgeoisie have obliged it to resort to the 'peace' initiative as the best bet in the present situation. This initiative got a sudden boost just before the visit to the subcontinent of Richard Armitage, the deputy US Secretary of State and a very important person in the Bush administration.
The Pakistani state also needs to please the US boss following the role it played during the Iraq war. Pakistan has indeed been identified internationally as a state which harbours Islamic terrorists and there have long been rumours of connections between the Pakistani secret services and gangs like al-Qaida. Moreover, the Pakistani bourgeoisie has learnt the bitter lessons from its past open wars against India. Hence the blossoming of 'peace' initiatives by both imperialist twins at the present moment. These initiatives also got a boost just after the return of the Indian defence minister from China following a "very successful and cordial trip". This minister has now made a series of statements that make him one of the most China-friendly politicians in the ruling clique. In the present international balance of forces, China is also encouraging both Pakistan and India to make 'peace', rather than reiterating its classic policy of playing Pakistan off against India. Growing tensions
But the undercurrent of inevitable imperialist tension, mutual suspicion and confrontation is gathering momentum just beneath the thin cover of peace initiatives. The Indian Prime Minister said in Switzerland on June 2, 2003, "Earlier we used to be asked to talk to Pakistan. Now the world is telling them to stop cross border terrorism". According to Brajesh Mishra, the national security adviser of India, "a core consisting of democratic societies has to gradually emerge from within our existing coalition, which can take on international terrorism in a holistic and focussed manner". The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, said in an interview on 16th June 2003, "the problem with India is they are too conscious of their larger size and they believe in coercing their neighbours. They want to dictate terms to us, they want to dictate their version of a solution. We will not take that � let them not treat us like any small country around. We are a powerful nation". According to the political resolution of the BJP, the dominant political party in the ruling coalition of India, the basis for any dialogue with the Pakistani authority will be to get back that part of Kashmir that they call POK i.e. Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. According to a report in The Telegraph of 19th June 2003, India has blocked the entry of Pakistan into the high-profile Asean Regional Forum and the Indian foreign minister has played a crucial role in this. Mr Yashwant Sinha, from the ministry of external affairs of India, said in front of top armed forces officers and diplomats on 19th October 2003: "Who is friend and foe in this battle against terrorism is a critical question �if foes were allowed to masquerade as friends, the forces of global terrorism will never yield". He further added, "the penchant of some to deal with authoritarian regimes for short term gains will also remain short lived." The implications are quite clear. In the same meeting the Prime Minister of India spewed venom against the Pakistani bourgeoisie: "Does Pakistan have a democracy? Does it have an elected government? Those who rule at gun point are talking of rights of self-determination [in Kashmir]". The Statesman, a sophisticated newspaper of the Indian bourgeoisie, highlighted a news item with the title "Rocca blow for Islamabad". It is reported here that the US assistant secretary of state, Ms Christina Rocca, has said that India is a victim of terrorism and Pakistan should "redouble" its efforts to curb cross border infiltration.
As for the cease-fire, it has been timed as a propaganda exercise to coincide with Vajpayee's visit to Islamabad. Ershad Mahmud of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad says "it is more symbolic than substantive". A member of the Kashmiri militant groups in Muzzafarabad voiced his suspicion of the cease-fire: "Pakistan may get some political benefit from the cease-fire because it initiated the move, but the real beneficiary is India, which will strengthen its positions and improve its bunkers" (Yahoo! News, 26.11.03). Once again imperialist peace paves the way to imperialist war.
Above all, the nuclear threat has by no means been removed. The Pakistani president Pervez Musarraf said in Seoul in South Korea on 7th November, 2003: "I think we are fully justified in developing our nuclear and missile capability because there was an external threat and if ever that threat arises in any other area�we will again respond to it in a similar manner in future also." The Indian Prime Minister said in London on 7th November: "it is a matter of concern for us as this programme (Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme) is unambiguously directed only against India". From all these glimpses, the reality of the 'peace initiative' is very clear.
Communist Internationalist, November 2003.
More and more people are becoming convinced that the world in which we live in is sliding towards barbarism.
War, terrorism, economic crisis, pollution, famine, disease, crime, drug addiction - the horsemen of the apocalypse seem to have gone forth and multiplied.
The bourgeoisie, its media and above all its politicians, still prattle on about peace and economic recovery and reforms. Their promises are less and less credible.
The problem for most people is not in understanding that this world is sick, even mortally ill. The problem is seeing the cause of the illness and its cure.
This is hardly surprising. There are so many false explanations. No hope in false explanations
Faced with a world that is rapidly descending into chaos, millions have turned to religion - to Islam, Christianity, the numerous New Age cults - to provide some hope. Many see the catastrophic state of the world as the fulfilment of ancient prophecies about the Last Days. But this flight into archaic mythologies is itself the expression of a decaying social system. And all the apocalyptic ideologies have one major feature in common: they reduce mankind to a passive plaything of divine forces, and are thus opposed to any rational understanding of the present mess, and thus to any solution based on conscious human action.
Many blame the problems of the world on individual leaders. The massive demonstrations against Bush's visit to Britain were largely animated by intense hostility to the particular individuals in the White House and at 10 Downing Street and the small cliques around them, as though some other leader or clique would follow a fundamentally different strategy for US or British imperialism. This is just the mirror image of blaming bin Laden or Saddam for all the terrorism and insecurity in the world.
But perhaps the most false of all false explanations is the current vogue for 'anti-capitalism', 'anti-globalisation' and 'alternative worldism', as typified by the huge European Social Form recently held in France. A strange 'anti-capitalism' this, which accepts enormous funds from the state (for example, over 2 million Euros were given to the Forum by the local governments of Paris and surrounding regions); which preaches, not the end of trade but 'fair trade'; which doesn't want nation states to be abolished but to be strengthened against the 'globalising power of the multinationals'; which declares that the 'alternative world' will be set up not by what Marx called the gravedigger of capitalism, the international working class, but by an amorphous mass of 'citizens' reclaiming their 'democratic rights'.
Every one of these explanations serves the interests of the existing social system, because every one of them diverts and obstructs any genuine search for the underlying cause of the sickness of present-day civilisation. The class which rules over this system, the bourgeoisie, will do everything in its power to hide this truth: that the current form of social organisation, the capitalist order that dominates the entire planet, has become not only an obstacle to further social, economic and cultural development, but a threat to the very survival of humanity. For workers' revolution
These false ideologies not only block any understanding of the cause, they also stand in the way of the cure: the revolution of the working class, a class that has the capacity to destroy lethal capitalism and establish a new society based on relations of solidarity. Capitalism is divided into a chaotic mess of national units defending their particular interests with every military means - the revolution of the international working class provides the basis for a single world community. Capitalism is an inherently crisis-ridden economy devoted to production for the profit of the bourgeoisie - the working class can establish an organisation of production undertaken for humanity's needs. Capitalism devotes its energies to the refinement and strengthening of its repressive state machine, whereas the overthrow of capitalism opens up the possibility of man "organising his political forces as social forces", as Marx put it.
Since the present organisation of society is utterly against the real interests of the vast majority of humanity and benefits only the tiny minority of exploiters who run it, it can't be reformed out of existence. It can only be replaced by a revolution which takes on the same programme in all countries: destruction of the capitalist state; establishment of the political power of the workers' councils; abolition of private property and of production for sale and profit.
What makes this so difficult is that it requires a break with all the habits, ethics, assumptions, and ideologies which are daily pumped into us by the existing order. It demands the theoretical clarity to see the bankruptcy of the existing social relations, and the political confidence of hundreds of millions of anonymous workers to take complete charge of the running of society.
Opponents of revolution from right to left denounce this as, at best, utopian and unrealistic, at worst, the bearer of new and even more terrible forms of chaos or tyranny.
But it is not a utopia - that is an abstract scheme coming from nowhere, the mere dream of isolated intellectuals. It is the logical culmination of the struggle of a very real force - the working class - against exploitation. And in spite of all the proclamations to the contrary, despite all its real difficulties, that struggle is more and more raising its head today.
At the end of the 1960s, the international class war returned after being prematurely dismissed during the post-war economic boom. There followed twenty years of waves of workers' struggles. Then, again, since the end of the 1980s there has been a demoralising propaganda barrage about the 'end of the class struggle'. And yet the recent outbreak of wide-scale movements against attacks on the social wage in Europe, the return of spontaneous strikes in Britain and other countries, confirm once again that the working class continues to react to the crisis of the system, of which it is the principal victim. However limited they may seem, today's defensive struggles contain the potential for the development of more massive, more conscious and more political struggles where the perspective of revolution is no longer seen as a utopia, but as the only realistic response of the working class to capitalism's drive to war and barbarism.
WR 6/12/03
What does it mean to defend internationalism? In the first two parts of this series, written by a close sympathiser of the ICC, we saw how revolutionaries in Britain stood up and opposed the First World War. In this part we look at how revolutionaries defended the international interests of the working class in the even more difficult conditions of the Second World War, which demanded an understanding of the balance of forces between the classes after the defeat of the revolutionary wave. It was particularly important for revolutionaries in this country to be clear about the real nature of democracy and the dangers of supporting it against fascism. The different responses of proletarian groups and elements provide both positive and negative lessons for revolutionaries today.
Proletarian political groups in Britain
By the Second World War there were very few proletarian political groups which had managed to survive the counter-revolution without betraying or succumbing to the effects of defeat and demoralisation.
The Communist Party (CP) had long ago betrayed the interests of the working class by adopting Stalin’s policy of ‘socialism in one country’, and had actively joined the bourgeoisie’s preparations for war by calling on the working class to mobilise in a ‘Popular Front’ with the main bourgeois parties and trade unions for a ‘just war’ against fascism (albeit with an abrupt change of line on the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact).
The original left communist opposition in the CP, around Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Dreadnought paper, had been expelled early on and disappeared in 1924. Among those groups and elements remaining either on a clearly proletarian terrain or in the more ambiguous swamp between the working class and the bourgeoisie were:
- the Socialist Party of Great Britain;
- some elements in the anarchist movement;
- the anti-parliamentary or council communists around the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation and Guy Aldred’s United Socialist Movement;
- the Trotskyists in the Revolutionary Socialist League (the official British section of the Fourth International), and the Workers’ International League.
What was the correct stance for revolutionaries to adopt on the war? In the face of a second threatened worldwide massacre the slogan raised by internationalists in 1914 was even more relevant: “Turn the imperialist war into a civil war!” (Lenin, 1914). In the face of the very real brutalities of the fascist regimes, and the massive use of anti-fascist ideology to mobilise workers for war, it was all the more vital for revolutionaries to warn the class against the no less brutal nature of bourgeois democracy and to affirm, in the words of Karl Liebknecht, that: “The enemy is in your own country!”
The example of the Vanguard group around John Maclean in the first world war still provided a model for revolutionaries in Britain: a refusal to support the bourgeoisie’s war effort and calls for the class war against British capitalism, through anti-war propaganda in the working class and intervention in every struggle for immediate demands, to at least try to develop a mass movement agaist the war.
Understanding the course of history
For the Italian Communist Left around the journal Bilan the victory of fascism in Germany marked a break in the revolutionary course which appeared in 1917 and a decisive turn towards the only capitalist outcome of its historic crisis: world war (1). The late 1930s saw a build up of military preparations and an extension of imperialist conflicts: the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the war in Spain, and the war between China and Japan. In this situation the watchword of Bilan was: “No betrayal!”
Trotsky, on the other hand, while defending the correct position that capitalism was in its death throes, drew the opposite conclusion; that the situation was pre-revolutionary, requiring only the necessary leadership, which the Fourth International – founded on the very eve of the world war – would provide. As we will see, this led his supporters to depart from the principle of internationalism - which Trotsky himself still clung to despite his opportunism - and to participate in the war.
Other proletarian political groups, while clinging to the principle of internationalism at least in words, did not defend it in practice, or found it very difficult to go beyond abstract slogans. The two questions that proved to be a ‘litmus test’ for these groups’ ability to defend internationalism were:
- whether democracy was in any way to be supported against fascism;
- whether all states were equally reactionary and therefore to be opposed.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain
The SPGB had adopted a social pacifist position in the First World War and sided with bourgeois democracy against the soviets in the Russian revolution.
In response to the war in Spain and the rise of fascism one part of the party called for the defence of democracy, basing itself on the SPGB’s own position that the revolution would be won through the democratic process, although the SPGB as an organisation took the position that “Democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it” (2). The SPGB’s 1936 pamphlet War and the Working Class declared war to be an inevitable product of capitalism and opposed any participation by the working class: “War...solves no problem of the working class. Victory and defeat alike leave them in the same position...They have no interest at stake which justifies giving support to war” (3).
In the issue of Socialist Standard following the declaration of war in 1939 the party’s executive committee printed a statement reiterating this position and denouncing both sides in the war. It expressed its concern at the “sufferings of the German workers under Nazi rule”, declared its wholehearted support for “the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights” but repeated its position on “the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy”. It called on workers to refuse to accept the prospect of war and “to recognise that only socialism will end war”, concluding by repeating the expression of “goodwill and socialist fraternity” to all workers that it had made in 1914.
In practice the SPGB made no attempt to oppose the war. From July 1940 onwards its paper carried no openly anti-war propaganda in order to avoid being suppressed by the state, apologising to its readers that “While we deeply regret having to adopt this course, we cannot see any workable alternative to it” (4). As a consequence Socialist Standard continued to appear throughout the war, filled with ‘historical’ and ‘theoretical’ articles, and the party continued to hold public meetings. It was left to the individual member whether to accept conscription or become a conscientious objector.
To summarise, the SPGB defended internationalism in words but not in practice. Its position was close to pacifism while its propaganda about ‘democratic rights’ added a small dose of mystification to the bourgeoisie’s own war propaganda.
The anarchists
In 1914, after a short struggle, the anarchist Freedom group had broken with Kropotkin over his pro-war stance and came out against the war. In the war in Spain the Freedom group and anarchists generally gave uncritical support to the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT-FAI and their call for a united anti-fascist struggle, but at least one section took a more critical stance. In 1936 the journal Spain and the World, started by the Italian anarchist Vero Recchioni (Vernon Richards) later joined by Marie Louise Berneri, published criticisms of the CNT-FAI’s collaboration with the bourgeois Popular Front government (5).
On the outbreak of the second world war this same grouping started the journal War Commentary, which strongly denounced the pretence that the war was an ideological struggle between democracy and fascism, and the hypocrisy of the democratic allies’ denunciations of Nazi atrocities after their tacit support for the fascist regimes and for Stalin’s terror during the 1930s. Highlighting the hidden nature of the war as a power struggle between British, German and American imperialist interests, War Commentary also denounced the use of fascist methods by the ‘liberating’ allies and their totalitarian measures against the working class at home. In 1942, after a sordid deal by Churchill and Roosevelt with the ‘French Quisling’ Admiral Darlan, the paper ruthlessly exposed the democratic illusions of the bourgeois left:
“…it should be obvious to the Tribune that capitalists, politicians, generals and diplomats…have gone to war to defend the British Empire, ‘to hold our own’ as Churchill put it: they have gone to war to defend Christianity, that is to say the principles upheld by Franco and Co; they have gone to war to reinforce their position… If the allies’ victories continue, many more fascist rats will leave the Axis’ sinking ship, and be welcomed by the democratic camp. And that is as it should be. The rats who helped Mussolini to conquer Abyssinia, who helped Franco to crush the Spanish revolution (sic), who armed Japan against China, who bombed the Arabs and the Indians, come together when it suits them… Everywhere workers will understand that it is not through military or diplomatic victories that fascism will be crushed” (6).
But the paper’s perspectives for the working class remained rather abstract. It did call for international working class solidarity and the class struggle “as the only means for the workers to achieve control over their destiny” (7), but despite its clear analyses of international events and sharp exposés of democratic hypocrisy, War Commentary explicitly avoided any ‘slogans, manifestos and programmes’, claiming merely that: “Our policy consists in educating [the working class], in stimulating its class instinct, and teaching methods of struggle” (8). In this, it revealed its anarchist prejudices against centralised political organisation and intervention in the class struggle.
The council communists
During the depths of the counter-revolution some of the communist left’s positions were kept alive by those who called themselves ‘anti-parliamentary’ or ‘council’ communists, mainly regrouped in the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF) on Clydeside. Influenced by the surviving Dutch and German Left, but also by anarchism, these revolutionaries stubbornly continued to denounce the Labour Party and trade unions and to highlight the counter-revolutionary nature of the Stalinist regime in Russia.
But the APCF welcomed the election of the Spanish Popular Front government in 1936 and threw itself enthusiastically into support for the ‘Spanish struggle’, supporting the legal government against the flouting of ‘international law’ and urging protest strikes to pressure the British government into lifting its arms embargo, effectively taking sides in what was in reality an inter-imperialist struggle. The group also gave uncritical support to the CNT-FAI and co-operated with the Freedom group to publish a bulletin, Fighting Call, which reprinted without comment articles by the CNT-FAI and speeches by anarchist ministers in the bourgeois government. But some militants who went to Spain were more critical of the CNT-FAI leadership, rejecting the idea the ‘democratic’ capitalism was preferable to ‘fascist’ capitalism, and warning that anti-fascism was the “new slogan by which the working class is being betrayed” (9).
Before the war in Spain ended, the anarchists in the group split away and the APCF managed to avoid making the same errors at the outbreak of the Second World War. The APCF denounced the British democratic capitalists who used fascist methods against colonial workers and peasants, and warned against driving the Italian and German workers into the arms of their rulers by supporting British imperialism. Rejecting the slogan of ‘Victory for the Allied nations’ raised by a group of Indian nationalists, the APCF stated:
“We stand for the victory over Hitlerism and Mikadoism - by the German and Japanese workers, and the simultaneous overthrow of all the Allied imperialists by the workers in Britain and America. We also wish to see the reinstitution of the workers’ soviets in Russia and the demolition of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In a word, we fight for the destruction of all imperialism by the proletarian world revolution” (10).
The APCF thus remained faithful to the watchwords of internationalism, although its practical slogans remained abstract, for example calling on workers to demand that their ‘spokesmen’ organise a general strike against conscription on the eve of war (11). It is not clear whether the group engaged in any practical anti-war activity, but Solidarity provided informative coverage of the class struggle against the war abroad, via correspondents like the ex-Spartacist Ernst Schneider (‘Icarus’) who was a regular contributor (12). Later in the war, commenting on the trend for democratic capitalism to use totalitarian methods, the APCF did try to give a more practical perspective to the growing workers’ struggles:
“The only answer to fascism is the workers’ social revolution, by workers’ control, by immediately fighting conscription in all its phases, by building up workers’ committees in opposition to the boss and the trade unions; by building workers’ open forums, where the workers themselves can discuss and decide. By that method we can stem fascism and open up the road to workers’ power” (13).
But the main strength of the group was as a forum for diverse anti-war elements. For example, in the middle of the war Solidarity carried an important debate on the relationship between party and class, with contributions from Pannekoek and Paul Mattick. While remaining a heterogeneous grouping which was unable to decisively break from the influence of anarchism the APCF, unlike Guy Aldred’s grouping (14), was able to make a real contribution to the understanding of the Marxist movement in Britain on a number of important questions, including the change in period from ascendant to decadent capitalism and its implications for the proletariat’s struggle, and the capitalist and imperialist nature of the Russian state. Unlike the Trotskyist movement, which we shall examine in the next article, the council communists’ basic grasp of the principle of proletarian internationalism allowed them to pass the acid test of imperialist war, by refusing to support democratic anti-fascism and calling for class struggle against the capitalist system as a whole. MH
(To be continued)
1. See ICC pamphlet The Italian Communist Left 1926-45, p.69
2. Robert Barltrop, The Monument: The story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, Pluto Press, 1975, p.99.
3. Quoted in War and Capitalism, SPGB, 1996.
4. David Perrin, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, Bridge Books, 2000, p.115.
5. These criticisms were by Camillo Berneri, Marie Louise’s father, who was editor of the Italian revolutionary anarchist paper Guerra di Classe and fought in Spain. In Barcelona, he discussed with delegates of the majority of Bilan - the only one of their contacts to have any positive results - before being murdered by the Stalinists during the May events of 1937 (see The Italian Communist Left, p.98). Vero Recchioni, later Vernon Richards, was a collaborator of Berneri.
6. War Commentary, December 1942, quoted in Neither East Nor West, selected writings by Marie Louise Berneri, Freedom Press, 1952, p.49.
7. War Commentary, August 1941, Ibid., p32.
8. War Commentary, December 1940, Ibid., p.19.
9. Workers’ Free Press, October 1937, quoted in Wildcat, Class War on the Home Front, 1986, p.29. The APCF also reprinted a denunciation of the counter-revolutionary actions of the CNT-FAI from International Council Correspondence, journal of the American council communist group
around Paul Mattick (‘”Tear Down the Barricades”’, Workers’ Free Press, September 1937, reprinted in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.1).
10. Solidarity, October-November l942, Wildcat, Op.Cit., p.51. At the same time this article did express support for the nationalists in their ‘fight for liberation from British imperialism’.
11. Solidarity, May 1939, in Wildcat, Op. Cit., p.40.
12.As a revolutionary sailor in the First World War, Schneider had taken part in the armed uprising in the German Navy, later writing an account of these events (The Wilhelmshaven Revolt by ‘Icarus’, first published by Freedom Press, 1944; Simian Press edition, 1975).
13. Solidarity, May 1944, Wildcat, Op. cit., p.57.
14. Guy Aldred’s United Socialist Movement, which was formed after an obscure split in the APCF in 1933, opposed the Second World War but lapsed into bourgeois pacifism, collaborating with dubious elements like the Duke of Bedford, an apologist for Nazism who advocated a negotiated peace with Hitler.
The once all-powerful dictator reduced to a haggard tramp who didn't even try to defend himself when he was caught, humiliated by filmed medical examinations and soon to be put on a very public trial: these images, broadcast all around the world, aren't neutral. They have been carefully set up and selected by the Bush administration.
The message is clear: the USA has done what it set out to do; it has made a prisoner out of one of the bloodiest tyrants on the planet. Bush and co. have scored a point in the war against terrorism. Didn't Bush himself say in September that "Iraq is the central front in the war against terrorism"? This coup has come at such an opportune moment for the US that we are entitled to ask whether or not the moment to close in on Saddam was itself carefully chosen by the occupying power.
At the point that Saddam fell into the hands of the US, it had been becoming more and more evident that the US army was stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, completely unable to stabilise the situation. Not a day passed without a terrorist attack on the coalition forces. The attacks had even spread beyond Iraq, to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and so on. The US had been obliged to alter its attitude towards its main imperialist rivals, in particular Germany, France and Russia. This is why they sent Colin Powell to negotiate with these powers about assisting the US to substantially disengage from Iraq before November 2004. Even a 'hawk' like Rumsfeld has publicly supported this idea - the decision is supposed to be taken in June 2004 at the NATO summit in Istanbul next June. Countries like France, Germany and Belgium did not openly come out against this US request; in fact they were quick to say that "was something presented as an idea to think about". Meanwhile at the NATO summit in Brussels, the bargaining came out into the open: German, French and Belgian forces would take part in the Iraq operation if the US accepted the creation of independent European structures within NATO. The announcement that France, Germany, Russia and Canada would not be allowed to bid for contracts in the 'reconstruction' of Iraq could not hide the fact that the USA was losing the initiative in the global inter-imperialist conflict.
The capture of Saddam, however, enabled Bush to savour some revenge. It will certainly give a boost to the 'hard line' position of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. As the former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrines put it, "with this capture, the Americans have recovered political authority and legitimacy". It will also allow the US to regain the initiative at the diplomatic level. The Bush administration is for the moment in a more favourable position to push countries like France to accept a freeze or moratorium on Iraqi debt. It will also help to improve the international image of the American-backed interim Iraqi government. In Europe, countries like Spain and Poland, which have been accused of sabotaging the accord on the European constitution, will also benefit along with other countries like Britain and Italy that participated in the war. For the moment, the French-German couple has been weakened. This arrest has really come as the perfect Christmas present for the USA.
The USA's position has also been greatly strengthened by the almost simultaneous announcement that Libya has agreed to give up its own 'weapons of mass destruction' - in effect, to return to some degree of international respectability. Britain's defence secretary Geoff Hoon immediately touted this new deal as proof of the correctness of the war-like approach to Iraq: "We showed, after Saddam Hussein failed to cooperate with the UN, that we meant business and Libya - and I hope other countries - will draw that lesson" (Guardian, 22.12.03). In Iraq, as elsewhere, capitalism can only lead humanity into barbarism
However, we didn't have to wait long before there were new terrorist attacks in Iraq - in fact they came the day after Saddam's arrest was announced. Whoever carried them out, they prove that nothing has been resolved. The rivalries between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, brought to the surface by the collapse of the Saddam regime and sharpened by the US occupation, can only worsen in the future. The Iraqi population will also benefit very little from the much-heralded 'reconstruction' This will largely be limited to state and transport infrastructures and the restoration of order in the oil fields - all of which obeys the needs of imperialist strategy or state repression and has nothing to do with ensuring the welfare of the population. Despite the momentary strengthening of the USA, the perspective in Iraq, just as in Afghanistan, is one of chaos, misery and desolation.
As for the current reinforcement of the US position, the capture of Saddam is a double-edged sword: as the chaos continues to spread, it will no longer be possible to put it all down to Saddam working in the shadows Indeed it will be even more obvious that the principal factor of destabilisation is the US intervention itself, and this will no doubt be exploited to the full by the USA's main rivals. In any case, whatever form the future American military presence in Iraq may take, whatever the degree of involvement of the European powers, the tensions between the USA and its European rivals in the region can only dramatically increase.
Revolutionaries have to denounce all the hypocritical speeches that claim that stability and peace are possible in this society. If the working class is not yet in a position to prevent the development of wars and barbarism across the world, it is still the only force that can prevent this barbarism reaching its ultimate conclusion - the destruction of humanity.
Bird, 20/12/03.
We are seeing the return of the wildcat strike, with unofficial walkouts in the post and the civil service, by fire-fighters and by BA workers at Heathrow. In the context of the developments in the struggle of the working class internationally this year, and particularly the large strikes and demonstrations against the attacks on pensions in France and Austria (see WR 266 and IR 114), this is a small sign of increasing militancy.
Workers face many open enemies in these struggles, including the bosses and the government and the more devious enemy of the unions. Even more dangerous are those who would condemn the development of militancy and class consciousness to a dead-end; not with faint praise, but with absurd cries of victory: 'Postal workers 1st class victory' and 'We've given Royal Mail a good hiding' screamed the headlines in Socialist Worker 8/11/03 with the article stating "Victory! At last, a real victory by a big group of workers against a very important employer." Really?!
The reality of the recent postal workers' strike is very far from the great victory presented by SW. Workers walked out over the demand for increased London weighting, but on this aspect of the 'real victory' SW is silent as the grave. It spread because of management provocation, as workers were immediately "faced with a wave of intimidation, bullying and enforced changes to working practices by local managers. Those who have refused to accept the changes have been suspended. Their fellow workers have walked out on unofficial strike in solidarity" (WR 269). Unsorted mail was sent to other offices leading to solidarity strikes in other areas.
If we have any doubts that the provocation was carried out by the bosses acting in concert with the government, we only have to look at the way the same policy of provocation is being carried out in other industries. For instance, the Department of Work and Pensions has imposed a wage settlement even before there was a ballot, and at a time when the main civil service union, the PCS, is balloting its members on national pay bargaining. Workers walked out on strike. Fire-fighters, faced with the provocation of half their meagre pay increase being deferred, walked out on a wildcat strike answering only 999 calls. Strengthening the union against the workers
At first sight it may seem insane for the government and employers to provoke wildcat strikes at a time when we are seeing a new development of militancy, but they have a clear strategy. "What's at stake in the post office isn't just the question of making it more competitive economically at the workers' expense. The postal workers have in the last two decades established themselves as the most militant sector of the entire working class in Britain" (WR 269). The ruling class is provoking workers to struggle to teach the whole class a lesson.
Let us go back to the Socialist Worker and its presentation of the 'good hiding' suffered by Royal Mail: "Union busting charter smashed", "Bosses must negotiate NOT impose change", and the six points management insisted strikers sign up to before they could return to work have been withdrawn for the moment and will be discussed with the union. In other words, workers who originally struck for pay, or to defend working conditions, or in solidarity with other workers, were left appearing to rely on the CWU to negotiate conditions in which it was possible for them to return to work without the immediate imposition of a whole barrage of new attacks. Attacks which will only be brought in after negotiation. And make no mistake, the Royal Mail intends to complete the 30,000 planned job losses (17,000 of which have already been achieved) and the brutal increases in productivity envisaged in the 'Way Forward' national agreement.
Although the postal workers were too angry and too militant to be held to a limited, legal strike delayed by a postal ballot, they were not yet strong enough to break the bounds of the union altogether. It was an open secret that the CWU was in fact controlling the strike through its 'rank and file' apparatus of workplace representatives and officials. Management demands for an end to time granted for union activity only added weight to the notion pushed by both mainstream and leftist media according to which the union takes the credit for workers' militancy, and the leftists add that the strike was to defend the union against attack.
If we look only at the immediate result of the postal workers' strike than we find that it is the unions that achieved the 'real victory', not the workers. We need to look beyond the immediate result. The turning point in the class struggle
By provoking workers in many different sectors the government and bosses are showing that they need to force through the economic attacks necessitated by the crisis. But we also need to understand what it tells us about the overall development of the class struggle.
"The ruling class is fully aware of the threat posed by the working class. The capitalist state has a whole apparatus for dealing with workers' actions: the trade unions, democracy, leftists, courts, police, etc. Nonetheless, its greatest fear is that the workers will develop their class identity and on the basis of this begin to pose political questions about the nature of capitalism, and the need for an alternative" ('Turning point in the international class struggle [7]', WR 269). By class identity we mean the recognition by workers that they are part of a class with common interests to defend. The nature of the attacks being imposed provides the basis for this, particularly when those attacks, involving the intensification of exploitation and growth of mass unemployment, are repeated in industry after industry all over the world, or involve the dismantling of social buffers such as health and pensions. In addition, the attacks on pensions, whether in France, Austria or the civil service in Britain, pose the question of what future capitalism can offer those who have put up with a lifetime of exploitation.
For nearly a decade and a half the bourgeoisie has benefited from the propaganda campaign it developed using the collapse of the Eastern European countries and the Russian imperialist bloc to tell us that workers must remain within the framework of the unions and democracy or their class struggle would lead inevitably to the most brutal Stalinist state capitalism. This lie is no longer so effective in holding back the development of struggles and the sense of class identity that goes with them.
It is no longer enough for the ruling class to divide workers up between those in the capital and those in the rest of the country with the issue of London weighting (as for teachers, council workers, postal workers) or members of different unions (in schools, railways) or different enterprises or bargaining units (civil servants are divided into 170 such units, the break up of British Rail into different concerns). The militancy and the solidarity expressed in the post and other strikes recently illustrates this point.
Despite the fact that the post strike was provoked by the ruling class at a time that suited them, that it has been used to create a propaganda to strengthen the unions, it has been an important sign of the increasing militancy in the working class world wide today. It is that militancy and the massive struggles that it engenders, which will lead to the development of the class identity that is so important in the further development of class consciousness.
Alex, 6/12/03.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/official-anarchism
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/61/india
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/144/pakistan
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/marieberneri.jpg
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/269_turning_point.htm
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle