On the ICC meeting on the 16th November 2024 and the origins of the “rupture” in the class struggle

ICC introduction

We publish here a contribution from comrade Baboon on the international public forum held by the ICC on the significance of the election of Trump in the USA. The comrade agrees with our general analysis of what this means in terms of the acceleration of capitalist decomposition, and also rightly warns against efforts to calibrate the level of class struggle by examining votes cast for this or that bourgeois politician. The extract that follows focuses on the question of the “rupture” in the class struggle and broadly agrees with much of the ICC’s position on this. However, he expresses some disagreements about the moment at which this rupture took place and so his contribution is followed by our response on this point.

 

My aim below is to try to discern some tendencies to the workers’ struggles coming from the five years with some reference to the 1980’s, which these struggles (culminating in 2022) are connected to and have gone beyond.

An international wave of class struggle builds from 2017

An ICC comrade from France at the meeting disagreed with an emphasis on “Britain 2022”, saying that it was “one movement among many”. She was both right and wrong in my opinion. The “rupture of ’22” in Britain has its roots in significant workers’ struggles that began around half-a-decade before. During this five year period the weight of decomposition was visibly increasing with the coming together of the elements of the “whirlwind” effect so the emphasis from the ICC was that of the weight of decomposition on the struggle and the difficulties of the latter to escape from this. But, fortunately, the working class had its own ideas. There is no doubt that this was an international wave of struggle unfolding which, in my opinion, was to turn out more significant than the 1980’s. Eventually, the role of the proletariat in Britain was particularly important in this wave and its culmination in 2022 should not be underestimated. It was fully part of an international wave but the role of the British proletariat became exceptional.

In 2017, Trump was elected for the first time and by 2018, the proletariat in the US and Canada were engaging in significant strikes – not as an immediate response to Trump, but in relation to the increasing attacks that regimes of all kinds had to unleash on the workers. Throughout 2019, large, militant strikes were increasing across the globe. There was nothing spectacular about these strikes but they did show the persistence and strength of class struggle in the face of great difficulties, particularly in the United States. The year ended with one of the most significant strikes in the history of Britain/Ireland with action by nurses and health workers evaporating the sectarian division in Northern Ireland with mass engagements from other workers. It was where the slogan “Enough is enough” was born. It was the most important strike in the UK for over 3 decades and one of the most important strikes in Northern Ireland ever. As far as I can see WR made no comment on this strike – why was that the case?.

Despite the justified fears that the Covid-19 pandemic would put the lid on the class struggle – again – the working class had other ideas. Strikes began in Britain at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. In very difficult circumstances a minority of workers, mainly in low-paid, service industries (the bigger industries being underwritten by state subsidies), went on strikes across the country, often explicitly against the unions. You can’t strike against a virus – that would be pointless. But what you can strike against – if you’re not crushed – is the working conditions imposed by the ruling class as a result of the pandemic. And this is what a significant minority of workers did in Britain throughout with strikes rumbling up and down the country all year. And to prove that this was no fluke, by late summer similar strikes among similar layers of the working class had broken out in North and South America, Italy, France, Spain and parts of Asia (all references of international struggle, their locations and dates, are taken from recent articles on the class struggle in the International Reviews).

In 2021, strikes were continuing everywhere and a significant strike in Britain was the return of the lorry drivers to the proletarian cause. The lorry drivers were the first major sector of the working class to be defeated – deliberately crushed as a proletarian force - by the Thatcher regime in its quest to take on and defeat the “enemy within”. It’s not a paradox that the strikes in this sector in ’21 saw the strengthening of the unions because the unions were already strengthening in the face of the rising struggles. While the unions were strengthening – they had been brought in as levers of the state during the pandemic by the Tory government – the lorry drivers continued to spread their struggles in ’21 as part of the class movement. This was a remarkable resurrection of the lorry drivers as a proletarian force given their reduction by Thatcher to “Gilet Jaunes”-type elements of the petty-bourgeoisie.

Britain 2022: the best solidarity with the struggle is to join it!

It was a job to keep up with the workers’ struggles in Britain, 2022; in continuity with the struggles of the 1970’s and 80’s, but in conditions where it was far more difficult to engage in struggle than that earlier period (decomposition, populism, Trump/Johnson/Truss, massive and divisive ideological campaigns around race and sex, xenophobia and the spread of imperialist barbarism), the proletariat in Britain threw itself into one of the most intense and relentless periods of class struggle it had ever engaged in. This movement, this “rupture” demonstrated, along the way, the necessity for revolutionaries to maintain their confidence in the working class. Not the blind kind but that based on marxism with the proletariat as a potential revolutionary force. Despite all the limitations and the weaknesses of these struggles – lack of workers’ assemblies, little evidence of self-organisation, which are essential elements to take the struggle forward – these strikes, despite the union divisions, saw the workers fighting as a class with a unity of purpose providing a divergent perspective to the global descent into capitalist barbarism. The strikes of ’22 in Britain, following those of the previous two years did not produce any “spectacular” results in the sense of the unions being overwhelmed or of clear tendencies to self-organisation – workers’ committees and the like. So is it a mistake, an exaggeration to say that they went beyond the 1980’s, where both those elements were expressed? In a sense it was a largely “unconscious” struggle, but unconscious development – subterranean maturation - precedes consciousness in a revolutionary class. The difference between the two periods (1970’s – 80’s and the early 2020’s) has to be taken into account, particularly the difficulties facing attempts to fight in the latter. One of the tenets of the class struggle that the ICC has always insisted upon is that the greatest expression of solidarity towards the class struggle that workers can make is to join the struggle themselves – in ’22, that happened in spades and it was relentless, month after month. The working class showed an awareness regarding its responsibilities and obligations as a revolutionary class. It was fight or go under. There is something “political” about this.

Votes for strikes were very often almost unanimous (90 – 97%); at least several small but important sectors of the class that had never been on strike in their history joined the struggle with enthusiasm; strikes would be settled with all the workers’ demands met and two weeks later the same workers were out on strike again. This happened in several industries. There are elements here (“elements” I stress) that belong to the mass strike or Trotsky’s vivid and analytical descriptions of the strikes of 1905 in Russia. The trade unions were not breached and there was little direct association between workers of different industries but there were no “set-piece” set-up strategies from the bourgeoisie to trap the workers and it was unable to put a check on the movement as workers continued to join the struggle for their own interests.

The struggles in Britain in 2022 were not immediate reactions to any attacks but part of a strong, international wave of struggles that began 5 years beforehand, the dynamic and conclusion of which was that “we have to fight”. The emergence of this international wave, in the most difficult of circumstances, demonstrated that the memory of the class struggle exists outside of open struggle in periods of apparent “quiet” and that it reaffirmed itself in such a dramatic way is testament to the intrinsic historic and revolutionary nature of the working class.

The working class has to develop its own struggles; short-cuts and scams lead to confusion and weakness

The working class has to develop its own struggles or it is beaten. Short-cuts and scams, like the IBRP’s “transmission belts” and anti-war committees can only sow confusion within the class because they are attempts to substitute class consciousness for empty schemas. More importantly, these antics underestimate the real content of revolutionary intervention which has to based upon the greatest political clarity and a constantly defined position on the “lines of march” of the communist perspective. Consciousness can’t be injected into the working class. Bringing consciousness from the outside underestimates the necessary relations of ends and means to the communist perspective, while underestimating the role of revolutionaries and its relationship with the proletariat.

I defend the idea of an international strike wave that began in the depths of decomposition from around 2017 on; I also defend the particular role played the proletariat in Britain within and from this international wave in defending the historical and revolutionary nature of the working class.

Baboon. 22.11.24

 

ICC response

We welcome the contribution of the comrade, particularly because it globally endorses the position of the ICC on the rupture in the class struggle. The comrade affirms that the recent struggles are in general no longer “immediate reactions to any attacks” and that “there is something ‘political’ about this”. Important also is his statement that the movement “was a largely ‘unconscious’ struggle, but unconscious development – subterranean maturation - precedes consciousness in a revolutionary class”. This confirmation of the analysis of the ICC is all the more important for the ICC is the only organisation of the communist left that defends this notion of subterranean maturation and is therefore able to develop an intervention that, in the words of the comrade, “has to based upon the greatest political clarity and a constantly defined position on the ‘lines of march’ of the communist perspective”[1].

Having said this, there is however one point in his contribution that is different from the position of the ICC and that is about the moment the rupture clearly started. According to the comrade the rupture already “has its roots in significant workers’ struggles that began around half-a-decade before” the wave of struggles in the UK.

The struggles at the beginning of 2020 in France; ‘Striketober’ in the autumn 2021 in the United States and even the more isolated strikes during the pandemic, such as those of healthcare workers in different countries and lorry drivers in the UK, were clear expressions of workers’ combativity. These struggles showed the maturing conditions in the class, but they were not yet the rupture, the real turning point. They ran into obstacles such as the outbreak of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, which each time threw the workers’ struggle back. Until the summer of 2022.

Should we now say in retrospect that the various struggles the comrade mentions in his contribution were already preliminary steps to the rupture? Yes and no.

Yes, because in retrospect we can establish that some of them were not only valuable experiences for the workers – for example the attempt to go beyond divisions between Catholic and Protestant workers in the struggle in Northern Ireland - but even necessary steps, contributing to the build-up of the conditions for the rupture. No, because they were not yet able “to rise to the occasion”, to offer an adequate reaction to the challenge of the period. They all remained isolated, in their own corporation (such as the struggle of the healthcare workers) or at least within the boundaries of the country (in France at the beginning of 2020). And none of them had the international resonance necessary to be considered as the start of a new phase in the struggle of the working class.

The significance of May ’68 in France was due to the fact that the radiation of the struggles went far beyond the French context alone. The level of the mass struggle of May ’68 was not only a response to the economic attacks on the workers in France, but also a response to a whole historical situation. It was the struggle that put an end to the counter-revolutionary conditions. May ’68 “was the fruit of a long process of disengagement from bourgeois institutions and ideological themes (such as trade unions and the so-called workers’ parties, the myths of democracy and “real socialism” in the east, etc), accompanied by worsening material conditions (the first signs of a new open economic crisis).”[2]

The struggles which started in Great Britain in the summer of 2022, had a similar significance. Like in 1968, a new generation of workers had emerged, less affected by the campaign about the death of communism and the disappearance of the working class. The recovery of workers’ combativity, exemplified by the struggle in the UK, was on such a scale and was so impressive that it could not be explained by national circumstances alone. It was actually a manifestation of the change of the state of mind in the whole international working class, which had shaken off passivity, timidity and disorientation. The struggle itself had become the first victory: “the greatest expression of solidarity towards the class struggle that workers can make is to join the struggle themselves”, as the comrade writes in his contribution.

Since 2022 workers’ struggles are no longer a simple response to this or that immediate attack, even if such reactions are never excluded. As we have already seen in the slogan “enough is enough”, but even in the fight against something like “the cost of living crisis” (against inflation, energy bills, housing costs, etc.), a fundamental characteristic of the rupture was the tendency to go beyond the immediate defence against the economic attacks. A particular feature of the current struggles is that they carry within them the tendency to reject the solution offered by the limitations of capitalism.

In and through the struggle workers begin to recognise themselves as part of the same class, the famous class identity: “we are all in the same boat”. Even if we have not seen examples of direct extension of the struggles beyond the sector, there have also been clear expressions of solidarity as was seen by the statement “we are all fighting for each other”. There have been expressions of solidarity between workers of different companies and sectors, between precarious younger workers and older workers and even embryonic international expressions of solidarity.

The rupture and its characteristics are indeed the outcome of a process of subterranean maturation of consciousness which “exists outside of open struggle in periods of apparent ‘quiet’”, as the comrades writes. But after the class struggle was beaten back heavily by democratic campaigns following the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, this process is still in a relatively embryonic stage, “the broad tendencies initiated by the ‘break’ of 2022 are only at their beginning”[3].

So, it should not surprise us that we have seen very few forms of self-organisation or attempts to break out of the unions in the current struggles.

Regarding the strike in Northern Ireland, the comrade is right that the slogan “enough is enough” was raised in this strike, which may have been an indication that something was changing in this particular sector of the working class. But it did not fundamentally change the nature of that strike. The slogan was raised in the context of an essentially corporatist strike with demands for a fair pay and for the quality of the care for the patients.

But the signification of the slogan “enough is enough”, as was put forward in the strike wave of 2022-23, is that it goes beyond particular working conditions of a certain sector of the class. The slogan expresses a mood that transcends the immediate and particular conditions of this or that sector of the class, and contains an appeal to fight for more general interests. The slogan is the expression of the potential dynamic towards the unification of the struggles of the different sectors of the working class.

The rupture is essentially an international phenomenon, echoing in the class struggles in the whole world. The struggle in the spring of 2023 in France and later that year in the United States, confirmed the rupture and the characteristics of the new period.  "As well as fighting against the deterioration in its living and working conditions, the working class is engaged in a much broader reflection on this system and its future.” (‘Strikes and demonstrations in the United States, Spain, Greece, France... How can we develop and unite our struggles?’, World Revolution no. 398, autumn 2023).

 

[1] See ‘The historic roots of the “rupture” in the dynamic of the class struggle since 2022: Part One: On the subterranean maturation of class consciousness’, World Revolution No 402, Winter 2025.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid