What is New Democracy?

Reading the extensive propaganda published by this group (if it is really a group) in Discussion Bulletin and on its Web site, one would hope to find some references regarding its origins, political evolution or some claim of political affiliation. Wishful thinking! ND actually seems to have come from nowhere with some ready-made ideological remedies to the problems of today’s society. This political attitude of hiding one’s past, or pretending to be discoverers of political principles, is already quite suspect about the real political motivations of this group, mistrust that only grows as one goes to the essential content of its printed materials.

The movement by 33,000 transit workers in New York City in December, resisting renewed austerity and fighting for a significant wage increase, was clearly a genuine workers struggle, a significant moment in the revival of class struggle. In the anger and combativeness of the workers, in their distrust of the union, in the embryonic reflection on how to struggle, this movement was fully inscribed in the recovery of the international class struggle, we have discussed in previous articles. Simultaneously, however, this movement shared all the weaknesses and confusions that illustrate how difficult it is for the workers to reclaim the lessons of past struggles.

In an atmosphere of growing worker militancy, contracts for hundreds of thousands of municipal workers in New York City are scheduled to expire in the coming months. The bosses – in this case the city government -- and the unions are preparing to impose new belt-tightening concessions on the workforce and to defeat any attempt by the working class to fight back against this new assault to their living and working conditions. Workers need to prepare themselves to confront their enemies on their own terrain, the terrain of the working class struggle.

The ruling class has long gone out its way to give American workers an inferiority complex, to give the working class the false impression that they are powerless to change things, and that struggle is useless. A key ingredient in this bourgeois ideological campaign is the attempt to hide its own history from the working class, in order to prevent workers from building upon the lessons of their experience. In the last issue of Internationalism, we discussed the revolutionary heritage of the U.S. working class as demonstrated by events in 1919, with the tremendous support shown by American workers for the Russian Revolution, the General Strike in Seattle, and the massive strike wave involving four million workers including, miners, transport workers and steel workers. It is important to understand that the struggles of 1919 did not come out of the blue, but were part and parcel of a long history of militant struggle in the U.S.

The euphoria of victory didn't last very long. The images of happy crowds lining the streets to greet their British and American 'liberators' are already a distant memory. Since the fall of Baghdad we have seen enormous Shiite demonstrations chanting slogans like 'No to Saddam, No to Bush - Yes to Islam' and calling for an Islamic state. In Mosul, within the space of two days in late April, American troops fired on two marches of Iraqi civilians demanding that the Americans pull out. Nearly 20 people were killed and many more injured. This will add to a death toll from the war which will certainly run into thousands, especially when we include the as yet unknown numbers of conscripts obliterated by the carpet bombing of Iraqi military positions. The collapse of the Saddam regime resulted in widespread looting in which much of Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage was stolen or destroyed. To restore order, the occupying armies have had to recall Saddam's old police force, or allow local clerics and their newly formed militia to come to the fore. The USA's attempts to fabricate some kind of 'interim government' are coming against all the political, ethnic and religious divisions which have always existed in Iraqi society and which were only kept underground by Saddam's reign of terror. Meanwhile the hospitals are still completely incapable of coping with the masses of horrific injuries caused by the coalition's bombardments, and large parts of the population have been without decent drinking water for weeks, exposing them to the risk of epidemics which would only further reveal the breakdown of health services throughout the country.

We are publishing here an item of correspondence received from a comrade who read our article How Australian imperialism benefits from the Bali massacre from World Revolution 259, November 2002. This article is reprinted below and our reader's comments appear in red.

The looming war against Iraq, coming after the wars in ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan is causing great concern, particularly in the working class. Young men and women, dragooned into the armed forces by economic conscription, are being sent to the Gulf, while the rest of the working class pays the cost of the war through increased taxes and exploitation. Much of the concern and unease is focused on the aims of the war, particularly the idea that the US is going to war in order to gain control of Iraq's oil supplies. This is an idea encouraged by the Left, particularly in the Daily Mirror, which has consistently linked the war to oil: through TV advertisements, on its front pages etc. Left-wing groups such as the Socialist Workers Party, also say the same thing, in more 'radical' language.

From the very first moments, American bourgeois propaganda has likened the 11 September attack on the World Trade Center to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941. This comparison is laden with considerable psychological, historical and political impact, since it was Pearl Harbor that marked American imperialism’s direct entry into the Second World War. Like all bourgeois ideological myths, whatever the elements of truth that offer superficial credibility, this propaganda barrage is laced with half-truths, lies, and self-serving distortion. But this is no surprise. The politics of the bourgeoisie as a class are based on lies, deception, manipulation, and maneuver. This is particularly true when it comes to the difficult task of mobilizing society for all out war in modern times. There is considerable evidence that the bourgeoisie was not taken by surprise by the attacks in either case, that the bourgeoisie cynically welcomed the massive death toll in both cases for the purposes of political expediency in regard to implementation of its imperialist war aims, and other long range political objectives.

The terrible bloodbath on the 11 September was not a sudden bolt out of the blue by “Islamic fanatics”. On the contrary, it was a new, and qualitatively more serious, link in a long chain of wars, acts of destruction, developing militarism and arms build up.

The ruthless slaughter of thousands of civilians in New York and Washington, the majority of them workers, in the very heart of the USA, of capitalism's number one economic and military machine, was not only an abominable war crime. It also marks a giant step in the decomposition of the existing social order.

At the time of writing, the latest atrocity in Israel/Palestine is the suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco, which left at least 17 young people dead and scores more injured. By the time this paper comes back from the printer, it is more than likely that the Israeli state will have exacted its revenge � perhaps another air raid on a refugee camp charged with harbouring the terrorists of Islamic Jihad who have claimed responsibility for the Tel Aviv bombing. Sharon will pretend that this is an attack on a military target, but as ever it will be defenceless civilians who will die or see their homes reduced to rubble. This in turn will provoke new acts of revenge by the Islamic groups or even by hapless, despairing individuals, like the Palestinian bus driver who drove his bus into a line of Israeli passengers.

And what a victory it was. Who would have thought, even a year ago, that sixty thousand people would turn up to greet delegates of the World Trade Organisation. Who'd have thought that trade unionists would be marching with environmentalists people dressed as turtles marching with sacked steelworkers, the topless lesbian avengers mingling with farmers. Churchgoers with the anarchist black-block. The mass protests helped focus world-wide attention on what the WTO really stands for and it crumbled under the pressure. Forget all their talk about 'free trade', the WTO is nothing more than a nasty little organisation fighting for the rights of multinational organisations to dismantle every country's labour and environmental laws" SchNEWS website bulletin, 10.12.99

But these events are also the product of the collapse of the eastern bloc ten years ago, which ended the period of the two imperialist blocs around the USA and the USSR. They are a new manifestation of the tendency towards chaos and 'every man for himself' which has grown more and more marked since then, and has given rise to an explosion of nationalism across the globe. 

In the last issue of WR we carried an article on the railway strike in France. This strike took place against a background of growing discontent and agitation in numerous sectors of the working class. This movement was particularly significant in that it has developed during the Balkans war and despite the campaigns of the ruling class to strengthen the ideology of "national unity" around"national unity" around the war effort. In early June, there was a further expression of this combative mood in the working class: a spontaneous strike around the question of safety in the metro, which rapidly spread to the whole of the metro system and the urban railway in Paris, and also to transport workers in Marseilles and Lyon. Although quickly isolated by the unions, the speed of the workers' reaction was above all an expression of an exasperation with deteriorating wages and working conditions that is common to wide layers of the working class.

The re-election of George Bush in the USA has led many commentators, especially in Europe, to warn about the danger of new military adventures by the US superpower. And it's quite true that while the ruins of Fallujah are still smoking, the mouthpieces of the Bush administration are already making threatening noises about Iran. The replacement of the 'moderate' Colin Powell as Secretary of State by the 'hawk' Condoleeza Rice is another indication that the US war machine is going to grind forward remorselessly in the period ahead.