Where the big meetings at the ESF considered how government policies could be changed, the fringe events 'Beyond the ESF' had proposals for action. Typically they put a positive spin on all sorts of activities that have nothing to do with the struggle of the working class. For example, a Class War meeting on the issue of precarity (job insecurity), extolled the virtues of the black economy, and saw petty trafficking (e.g. in contraband cigarettes) as an expression of the class struggle, just because those who engage in it are hassled by the police. At other meetings there were calls for individuals to shoplift, fare dodge and squat empty buildings.
A pamphlet on sale during the ESF, Days of dissent: reflections on summit mobilisations, summed up the attitude of this wing of the anticapitalist movement. It's full of pictures and accounts of demonstrations but with no attempt to place these events in a historic or international framework. That's what happens when you reject marxism and the experience of the working class. They prefer people who are prepared to 'fight back', whoever that might be, and whatever they do. Many groups declare that they are part of a 'new' movement free of the old ideologies of the 20th century. But denying the acquisitions of the workers' movement means searching for an alternative to the revolution of the working class and the destruction of the capitalist state. The slogans of 'solidarity - autonomy - direct action' are meaningless when they're part of the 'radical' wing of an 'anticapitalist' movement that is not only no challenge to capital but an obstacle to the development of class consciousness.
When capitalism insists that workers are flexible and put up with short term contract work, with inevitable periods of unemployment, in increasingly insecure patterns of working, it's a very real problem.
Attacks on social security have increased throughout Europe in the last ten years with the British state leading the way. Recent struggles in France and Italy over the question of pensions have mobilised hundreds of thousands of workers. Workers who lose their jobs are often forced, alongside migrant workers, into low paid, insecure, work or government schemes aimed at hiding the real unemployment figures. The idea of a 'job for life' has gone and, as the pensions crisis deepens, capitalism clearly offers no perspective for the future for the majority of workers.
This is the stark reality of the situation; what is problematic is how to respond to these measures. The only revolutionary class in capitalism, the working class, employed or unemployed, organises to defend its interests. The development of this struggle leads to a confrontation with capitalism and the bourgeois state. This is a fundamental understanding of the workers movement.
But many of those at the meetings on precarious work posed 'dole resistance' as a response to the state's attacks. This can mean anything from tobacco smuggling, squatting, 'liberating' property & food from multinationals and attacking job centre workers. Such actions tend to be the responses of desperate individuals trying to survive; as proposals for struggle they're not part of the combat of a revolutionary class that poses the possibility of a future society.
For example, a leaflet distributed by the French group, Action Chomage (AC), From wage earners (salariat) to precarious workers (precariat), ends up calling for a united front (of whom?) to confront the latest attacks, alongside a call for the 'rethinking' of the welfare system and a demand for the unions to strengthen themselves for the defence of all. This is plain old leftist reformism sowing the illusion that the capitalist system, and its supporters the unions, can be altered for the benefit of the exploited and dispossessed. A video was shown of AC activists staging pointless occupations of expensive shops and restaurants in Paris; it didn't mention why they hadn't involved the undoubtedly poorly paid workers of these businesses in their activities. So much for a united struggle!
A German group ACT seemed to advocate more radical action. In their leaflet, From protest to rebellion, they reject the welfare state and parliament. They hope to "appropriate, expropriate and be rebellious" ... through anti fascism, environmentalism and anti-globalisation, to cite a few of the 'struggles' they are involved in. Their radicalism is just another veneer for the familiar slogans of the more conventional left.
The weight of the bourgeoisie's campaigns around the 'death of communism' has meant that any mention of the working class, marxism or communism is met by incomprehension or even hostility from younger generations of workers like some of those present at 'Beyond the ESF'. The lie that marxism=Stalinism has been repeated so often that it is often accepted without a second thought.
Workers are disarmed if they don't challenge that lie. With the proliferation of wars and the growing attacks on working and living standards we live in difficult and dangerous times. Humanity faces the alternative of socialism or barbarism. The working class, the only force that can overthrow capitalism, needs to rediscover its identity. It needs to reclaim the acquisitions and clarity of the historic workers' movement.
At the heart of this process is a commitment to discussion and clarification. This wasn't on offer at the ESF. Those who want to be part of the struggle for the only possible 'alternative world', communism, will need to look beyond the ESF, towards the clarity of the communist left.
William 29/10/04
The European Social Forum, having visited Florence and Paris in previous years, passed through London in mid October. As before there were hundreds of meetings, seminars, 'workshops' and cultural events touching on a wide range of issues, and a concluding demonstration where everyone was able to dress up and make a lot of noise. While a Guardian (18/10/04) leader announced that "New politics takes a bow" and banners declared that "Another world is possible", it was clear that there was nothing 'new' on display and nothing that even hinted at the possibility of an end to capitalist society and all its horrors.
The ESF received �500,000 of state funding from the Mayor of London, including free travel for participants and accommodation at the Millennium Dome. There was also a lot of union sponsorship. It is significant that these pillars of capitalist society were so keen to ensure that the ESF would run smoothly with no financial problems. Socialist Worker (23/10/04) saluted "the beautiful, crazy, creative chaos", and thought that the ESF was a "great success". As a 'media partner' of the ESF the Guardian was bound to be enthusiastic about the "content and style of the inclusive non-party politics now emerging under the ESF umbrella". It also revealed the hopes of the ruling class in wondering whether "the ESF can refresh mainstream British politics and influence the European left."
Many people, the young in particular, want to understand what's going on in the world and how to change it, but are disillusioned with 'mainstream politics'. Spectacles such as the ESF offer the illusion of an 'alternative', an extensive variety of events all claiming to be different from the stale sedative of stuffy parliaments and the spin of the mass media.
But what was really on offer? One of the main slogans of the ESF (and the demonstration) was 'stop the war'. Yet, in all the meetings on conflicts in the Middle East, Latin America, Nepal, Burma, Western Sahara, Ireland etc, the call was not for opposition to war, but for support and participation. Today's war cries are not flagrant outbursts of jingoism but attempts to mobilise against the US, against global corporations, for democracy, against racism, as well as the less subtle nationalist appeals to rally to capital.
The possibility of reorganising the global capitalist economy was one of the ESF's other main concerns. In showing the role of multinational corporations, the IMF or World Bank, or what has happened in particular national economies there were not (according to Socialist Worker) "repetitive denunciations of neo-liberalism". They had taken up Susan George's exhortation (Guardian 15/10/04) to "take the time to examine power coldly, determine its strategic weaknesses and decide, together, how to push our neo-liberal adversaries back until at last they fall over the edge of the political cliff."
They 'examined power' and came up with the answer to all economic and social ills: the capitalist state. If only the state was not controlled by the transnationals, if only privatisation was reversed and everything taken into public ownership, if only governments were more democratic and responded to the pressure of a thousand campaigns, if only political leaders appreciated the importance of sustainable development, then � 'another world is possible.' The experience of humanity, as understood by the marxist current in the workers' movement, is that the state has always expressed the interests of the ruling class which are in opposition to the interests of those it exploits and oppresses. The capitalist state is at the heart of the bourgeoisie's domination of the world. It is the first line of capitalism's defence and will be its last bastion against the revolution of the working class.
It is quite usual to see non-governmental organisations, unions and leftists rallying to the state, trying to channel workers' energies behind their reformist schemes and campaigns. Some people might have expected a different message from 'Beyond the ESF' in the fringe events and 'autonomous spaces'.
There were many events organised 'outside' of the ESF: included in the official publicity, but trading under the name of 'Beyond the ESF' in 'autonomous spaces'. These events promoted "a celebration of resistance, organised without funding from government, or political parties", focused more on direct action, DIY media and "A world of autonomy, self-organisation and sustainability". Yet, apart from the more 'radical' language, they were just an authorised loyal opposition to the main events.
Take the protest against Ken Livingstone at an anti-fascist meeting. Although the mayor of London didn't put in an appearance, the protestors displayed a banner with "Ken's Party, War Party" on it. Ken was supposed to be a hypocrite in speaking about racism when he's just rejoined a party that is "prosecuting an unjust and racist war" (in the words of a sympathetic explanation of what happened). Livingstone's presence would have been in conflict with the principles of the World Social Forum, point 9 of which includes "Neither party representations nor military organisations shall participate in the Forum".
Why pick on Livingstone in such a carnival of reaction? At the ESF ideas acceptable to the parties of the left were common currency and the armed struggle of many imperialist conflicts was consistently acclaimed. However, it is worth remembering that it was anti-racist reasons - the persecution of Bosnians and Kosovans by Serbs - that 'Red' Ken gave for supporting the bombing of Belgrade.
This was typical of the 'alternative' approach, where there were reservations about some aspects of union activity, criticisms of the 'corporate' culture of the main events, and a rejection of the 'authoritarianism' of the traditional leftists.
There was certainly a different atmosphere at the 'alternative' meetings. Entirely contradictory points of view were put forward without anyone seeming to mind. This didn't matter, because when you're not interested in a process of clarification there's no need for the confrontation of ideas. To celebrate the autonomy of the atomised individual the meetings in the 'autonomous spaces' spent their time (in the words of an ad for a meeting on 'Life despite capitalism') "weaving discourses of empowerment".
The different ambience could not hide the fact that the same politics were on offer. If unions were criticised it was because of their 'limitations' and the 'concessions' they had made, not because of their role against workers' struggles. The state was still seen as the tool of the multinationals.
Above all there was no evidence that the struggle of the working class meant anything in the 'autonomous spaces'. In sessions at the SchNEWS conference 'direct action' was identified in union struggles, the ANC in South Africa, the Iraqi Resistance, as well as squatting, consumers making 'ethical' choices, food co-ops, using weblogs and opting for bio-diesel. There was praise for the seizure of churches in Colombia to get the Catholic Church to put pressure on the state, and a salute to an indigenous people that was going to commit mass suicide if its demands weren't met. The central reality of capitalist society, the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie and its state, was not a concern of such meetings. We were told that the state was too powerful to be overthrown, it had to be undermined. For example, if you build your own house you won't have to pay rent.
At the Radical Theory Forum there was a debate on whether marxism and concepts of class have anything to offer the anticapitalist movement. This was attended by about 60 people, and immediately split up into workshops. The groups reporting on 'revolution' told us that the majority view in their group was that the concept of revolution as a particular 'utopian' event was out of date, and that we should be looking at a more "processual" approach.
An Indymedia meeting billed as "Infowar: Media Deception and Disinformation Vs Dissent and Direct Democracy" was on the media treatment of protests, and on attacks on alternative sources of information. We made a basic point about the media as part of the capitalist state apparatus, how it will give publicity to struggles that unions have firmly under control, but conceal any examples of workers extending their struggle or taking it into their own hands. This was against the spirit of the meeting which, at root, stood for democracy and free speech. It was blind to the reality that democracy is one of the main means that the bourgeoisie uses to rally workers to the defence of their exploiters. Indymedia had an online petition against the seizure of hard drives from two of its servers. The list of names was due to be delivered to the FBI, the US Department of State, the Italian and Swiss governments and David Blunkett.
Militants of the ICC intervened outside the main event at Alexandra Palace, at a number of the 'Beyond the ESF' events and at the closing demonstration. Although the label on the ESF product said 'Another world is possible', you'd never have got any sense of the historic struggle of the working class and of its potential to destroy capitalism. As communists we not only criticised the ESF and the way such events act against the development of class consciousness, we were also a small voice putting forward a perspective for a working class revolution that can establish a world-wide human community with relations of solidarity at its heart.
Car 28/10/04.
Twenty years ago one million people died of starvation in Ethiopia following a severe drought. In response to the tragedy Bob Geldorf organised charity concerts and released 'Do they know it's Christmas' as part of the benefit. Since then many Ethiopians have relied on aid to stave off famine. Today followers of Sir Bob will release a new version of the same record in the face of a much more extensive crisis in and around the Horn of Africa. In other words, the problem has got worse over the last 20 years.
This year the Ethiopian government began driving 2 million people away from the arid eastern highlands, claiming this will be a lasting solution to famine in the country. This is hardly convincing given that the drought of 2002/3 has been much more extensive than that in 1984 (Northern Highlands) or 2000 (South Eastern pastoral region), covering areas never previously needing food aid. At the same time, Somalia has fallen apart with effectively no central government since 1991, its new 'president' sworn in not in the Somali capital but in Kenya. Most of the little industry it had has been sold off as scrap metal by the local warlords, and its agriculture and pastoralism is threatened by desertification. To the west, Sudan is suffering the very worst crisis as drought in the neglected Darfur region has sharpened the competition between settled and pastoral people for scarce water and pasture. It was the government that turned this into a massacre by sending in the military and recruiting the Janjaweed, so that now 70,000 have been slaughtered, 1.6 million driven from their homes, and the tragedy extended to Chad with the refugees from Sudan. The whole situation has been worsened by this year's rain, making it harder to bring in aid, and by the plague of locusts being blown in first to Chad and then to Darfur.
The Darfur tragedy "would have been so easy to avoid. None of this had to happen" according to General Ibrahim Suleiman, who as governor had been one of those most instrumental in causing it (quoted on the New York Times web site, 17 Oct). The role of the Sudan government in arming the militia to put down the SLA and JEM rebels in Darfur has been well publicised.
But this is no mere local conflict; it is a small corner of the conflict between the great powers for control of the strategically vital Red Sea and North East Africa. The long running conflict in Southern Sudan was stirred up and used first by the Western and Eastern blocs in the 1970s and 1980s (with the SPLA being supplied by Russia via Ethiopia and the government armed by the US), and is now being used in similar ways by the US and its former allies turned rivals (see WR 276). In the conditions of instability that followed the collapse of the blocs, each country, rebel army or warlord will seek its backers among the great powers while the latter seek influence with whatever client they can use against their rivals. So the SPLA has been backed by Russia, and later by the US, when Sudan was backed by France. Meanwhile France has armed both the SLA and JEM in Darfur (discretely, via Chad), once Khartoum began to get more friendly with Washington again.
In the 1970s and 1980s Ethiopia, as a client of the USSR, supported rebels in Sudan and in turn suffered Western-backed rebels launched from Sudan and Somalia. The pro-Russian regime fell in 1991 following the collapse of its backer.
Somalia fell into the US orbit in the 1970s and 1980s. The fall of its government in 1991 was even more catastrophic, with mass starvation and the country plunging into the grip of ruthless warlords. The US invasion in the 1990s only added to the chaos.
In these circumstances we can understand the current 'humanitarian' intervention by the various imperialist powers as simply the expression of their self-interest. EU foreign minister Javier Solana's visit to Ethiopia and Sudan, with the promise of 100 million Euros to support the increase in the size of the African Union force in Darfur from less than 500 to more than 3,000, is nothing more than the effort of the powers he represents to gain influence in the region. The US sponsored Security Council resolution threatening sanctions against Sudan is likewise a manoeuvre aimed at keeping its domination of the region. And the opposition to that resolution from China is a completely understandable response from Sudan's main trading partner.
Without doubt there are presently millions in the Horn of Africa and Sudan totally dependent on food aid to survive. Yet international aid has not prevented the succession of famines and massacres in the region. Even worse, aid is given in circumstances in which it cannot be anything but an instrument of imperialism. With aid provided by nation states this is crystal clear, as a report on US aid shows: "U.S. national interests are clear: stability and security will not be achieved in the greater Horn of Africa region without putting an end to conflict and stopping potential Somali support for terrorism" (www.usaid.gov [3]).
This has always been the case: "In 1984 16,000 tons of emergency food aid went to Somalia of which 9% went to the armed forces, 21% to other government bodies and 58% was left to rot!" (WR 157).
Non-government organisations cannot escape becoming integrated into the plans of imperialism, whatever the intentions of those who work for them or donate money to them: "Through them [imperialisms] not only channel aid to their clients, but also get the working class to help pay for this through charitable donations. The aid agencies may not give arms to war-lords, but they do something equally as important: they feed and care for their populations for them. Without this 'aid' they would not have the cannon fodder they need to wage the war: a war that causes the famine and misery in the first place" (WR 219). In this period the refugee camp becomes the base for the war lord.
It is no accident that Sir Bob got his knighthood for arranging aid that got Western agencies into Ethiopia at a time when it was a Russian client. Today in the name of 'doing something practical', Sir Bob has become an open advocate of US and British government 'Plans for Africa'. This is the fate of the ideology of charity in an epoch when revolutionary politics are the only realistic hope for humanity.
Alex, 30/10/04.
On Saturday 2nd October the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party held a public meeting on the theme 'Why the war in Iraq?' The ICC welcomed this initiative by the IBRP, as it did with its public meetings in Berlin, an account of which can be seen on our website. However, this IBRP meeting in Paris had a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the ones in Germany: it was decided upon and organised on the suggestion and with the political and material support of a parasitic group which calls itself the 'Internal Fraction of the ICC'.
It's because of this peculiarity that, before giving an account of the debate between the ICC and the IBRP on the analysis of the war in Iraq, we are devoting the first part of this article to the question of the 'joint work' between the IBRP and the IFICC, which had already been announced in no. 27 of the IFICC's Bulletin ('Account of a discussion between the IBRP and the Fraction').
This question seems all the more important to deal with given the manner in which the IFICC presented this public meeting in its advertisement for it on its website:
"Since the beginning of the crisis that the ICC is currently going through, a crisis which led to our formation as an 'Internal Fraction' of this organisation, we have not stopped underlining a painful reality - the serious weakening of an important proletarian political pole, which has manifested itself in the Paris region by the fact that its so-called 'open' public meetings have been deserted or are forbidden to some people, and above all are not places for debate and the confrontation of points of view within the class.
We have also underlined that, given what's at stake in the present situation, the necessary strengthening and regroupment of revolutionary forces within the proletarian camp can only take place today around the only serious pole that exists: the IBRP
On our suggestion and with our political and material support, the IBRP will be holding a public meeting in Paris (a meeting which, we hope, will be merely the first) in which we call on all our readers to participate" (our emphasis)
We can see that in this advertisement, the IFICC did not judge it useful to write a single phrase of analysis or denunciation of the war in Iraq (unlike the leaflet published by the IBRP). This advert was dedicated to one question only: how to reconstruct in the French capital a pole of regroupment for revolutionaries following the collapse of the ICC. A collapse which has, according to the IFICC, been verified by the fact that its public meetings have been "deserted"" and no longer serve as a place of debate (which is a lie, as all the sympathisers who regularly come to our public meetings can attest - ten of them came to the IBRP meeting).
Apart from the delegation of the IBRP and four members of the IFICC (only the element Jonas was absent), the following were present at the meeting:
Three other people breezed through the meeting but left without taking part in the debate.
Thus, this public meeting which was, according to the IFICC, supposed to prove that the IBRP is the "only serious pole" of discussions and reference of the communist left would have been a total fiasco if the ICC had not been present and had not invited its contacts to participate. There was a large delegation of ICC militants and ten sympathisers.
Thus despite the brilliant publicity put out by the IFICC about this meeting, it managed to demonstrate one thing: it has created a void around it. The ICC and its sympathisers made up two thirds of the participants and filled the room. This was so obvious that:
The audience at this public meeting was the proof that the IFICC (and perhaps also the IBRP?) takes its desires for reality: the ICC is not yet dead and buried as a "serious pole" of the proletarian camp. It is precisely because its own meetings would be totally deserted that the IFICC does not organise its own public meetings and has no other policy than to feed parasitically off the meetings of the groups of the communist left!
But even more important is the question: why, despite the loud publicity done by the IFICC, was this public meeting, announced as such a scoop, boycotted by the readers of the IFICC Bulletin and by our subscribers?
It's precisely because the latter learned that this meeting of the IBRP had been organised on the "suggestion" and with the "political and material support" of a parasitic group whose main activity is to heap the worst kinds of insults on the ICC! Thus, one of our contacts told us that he would not be taking part at this meeting because he didn't want to "put his feet in the shit"!
The only elements that the IFICC could attract were its own supporters and experience has shown that there are not many of them.
If the IFICC had not yelled from the rooftops that it was with its "political and material support" that the IBRP was organising this public meeting, other searching elements (who are by no means all in agreement with our positions) would surely have come to take part in the debate.
It is a lesson that the IBRP should draw from this slap in the face: you can't be better served than by yourself. It has made an alliance with the IFICC, which has rained tons of slanders on the ICC, which has openly behaved like a group of informers, which has stolen the material and money of the ICC - and all this clearly has had the effect of repelling serious elements close to the communist left.
The IFICC's excess of zeal (as well its flattery towards the IBRP) has only served to make the IBRP look ridiculous.
What the IFICC has tried to show is that, without its help, an organisation of the communist left which has existed for several decades would have been incapable of taking the initiative of holding this public meeting!
It is regrettable that the IBRP didn't see the trap the IFICC was laying for it when, in its Bulletin no.27, this so-called 'Fraction' claimed that, on the question of building the party, "the Fraction defends positions which are more categorical than those of the IBRP". Which means that, by claiming to defend positions that are much more 'radical' than those of the IBRP, the IFICC is presenting itself as being to the left of the IBRP.
In reality, this parasitic grouplet has used the name of the IBRP to make its own publicity and to gain a certificate of respectability, while at the same time presenting the IBRP as being less advanced than the IFICC! This is what the IBRP has refused to admit (despite repeated warnings from us) before celebrating its nuptials with the IFICC. If it had taken the ICC seriously, it wouldn't have had to go through this experience to understand that every flatterer lives at the expense of those it flatters, as La Fontaine put it in his story.
By offering its "political and material support" in organising this meeting, the IFICC is clearly seeking to gain recognition as a group that belongs to the proletarian political milieu. Unfortunately the marriage between the IFICC and the IBRP can only have the effect of making the IBRP look ridiculous. It has helped to throw discredit on an organisation of the communist left which, up till now, has never infringed one of the basic principles of the workers' movement: the rejection of any practice of stealing the material of other communist organisations.
Thus, during the course of this public meeting, the ICC asked to be able to read out a letter which one of our subscribers has sent to the IBRP and has asked us to make public. This comrade (and he's not the only one) received in his name and at his personal address the IBRP leaflet about this meeting. He expressed to us his astonishment about this (again, like other ICC contacts who also received this document in the mail): how did the IBRP obtain his address when he had only given it to the ICC? Following this question posed by several of our contacts, the ICC decided, on the eve of this public meeting, to address a letter of protest to the IBRP (and we hope that this will not simply be ignored, as other letters have been in the past).
As soon as we raised the question of the theft of our list of addresses, the presidium initially tried to stop us speaking with the argument that the IBRP "does not want to take sides between the ICC and the IFICC" because this is an "internal" matter for our organisation. Then, following our protest, the presidium told us twice that the IBRP does not have RI's list of addresses and added: "even if had been offered to us, we would in any case have refused it". We then asked the comrades of the IBRP: "does that mean that you condemn the theft of this address list?" To this question the presidium refused to reply despite our insistence and declared that "we will clarify this between ourselves and the IFICC after the public meeting".
This incident demands several remarks:
For our part, we can only take note of the declaration that the IBRP would have refused to accept the IFICC putting this 'war chest' stolen from the ICC into the wedding dowry.
It seems clear (and we believe the comrades of the IBRP when they tell us that they do not have a copy of our address list) that the members of the IFICC have acted behind the IBRP's back (as they did over and over again when these elements were members of the ICC, holding secret meetings with the aim of "destabilising" us ([2])).
We hope that the IBRP will be able to draw the lessons of this disastrous experience, which we vainly tried to spare it from with our repeated warnings. When you sleep with a woman of easy virtue ([3]), you shouldn't be too surprised about picking up the clap.
The trade between the IBRP and the IFICC is on all evidence a dupes' market. By accepting this so-called Fraction's offers of service, by giving ground to its flatteries and taking its gross lies as the truth, the IBRP has taken the risk not only of losing all credibility but also its honour as a group of the communist left.
We invite the IBRP to take position on our 'Theses on parasitism' (International Review 94) in which we show that the main activity of parasitic groups is to discredit communist organisations. Using either slander or flattery, these political tics can only live by sucking the blood of the groups of the proletarian camp. It is now clear that the parasitic function of the IFICC goes well beyond the ICC. By using the IBRP for its own ends (as it did with Le Proletaire in 2002 ([4])), by throwing discredit on this group, this so-called 'Fraction' shows that it is not just a parasite on the ICC, but on the whole of the communist left.
If the IBRP wants to carry on with its joint work with the IFICC, if it wants to continue being the turkey in this farce, obviously we can't stop it. On the other hand, the ICC cannot accept that it uses (even indirectly, via its commerce with the IFICC) theft and slander against our organisation and our militants as part of its policy of regroupment.
The ICC has always stigmatised the opportunism of the IBRP, which has led it, since its foundation, to carry on a policy of regroupment lacking in principles. On numerous occasions, we have warned it against the danger of getting together with groups and elements of the extreme left of capital (such as the Iranian SUCM) or which have made an incomplete break with leftism (such as Los Angeles Workers Voice [6]). Today, the opportunist collaboration of the IBRP with the IFICC reveals the danger that threatens this organisation of the communist left. By allowing itself to use the recruitment methods of the leftists (based not on open and loyal clarification of political divergences but on fishing for new members), the IBRP risks moving further and further away from the methods and traditions of the communist left and closer towards those of Trotskyism ([5]). The IBRP thought it could use the IFICC as bait for catching big fish at this public meeting. Not only has it had to go home without any miracle catch, but it's lost some of its own feathers in the process.
What's most serious about all this is the fact that the opportunist approach of the IBRP has led it to give its approval to practises which are totally alien to the workers' movement, based as they are on theft and slander. If these methods are common coin among bourgeois groups, they have always been rejected and condemned by the organisations of the proletarian camp. ([6])
Opportunism is "the absence of any principle" (Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution [7]). By making an alliance with individuals who use the methods of the bourgeoisie (the theft of material belonging to the ICC), the IBPR has totally lost sight of a principle which it was still able to defend when, after being the victim of a fraud perpetrated by a fictitious group in the Ukraine (whose aim was to extort money) it wrote: "When means and ends are separated... the road towards the counter-revolution is open" (IBRP Declaration on the 'Radical Communists of the Ukraine, 9/9/03).
In their combat for the overthrow of capitalism, revolutionaries have always rejected the Jesuitical morality of the bourgeoisie, according to which "the end justifies the means", countering this with a proletarian ethic in conformity with the essence of the class that is the bearer of communism (as Trotsky among others showed, in his pamphlet Their Morals and Ours). This is why revolutionary organisations must firmly reject any policy of regroupment that makes use of the theft of material belonging to other communist organisations.
This pitiful misadventure shows that the IPRB has indeed been taken hostage by a gang of thugs (and we have to ask how the IBRP is going to escape from this situation). We hope that this experience will at least oblige it to take off its dark glasses and finally understand the nature of this so-called 'Fraction'.
What determines the proletarian nature of a political group is not just the programme it defends or claims to defend. It is also its political behaviour, i.e. its practice and the principles it is based upon. This position of ours has nothing to do with 'psychology' (as the IFICC claims). And this is because as Marx says in his Theses on Feuerbach: "Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power of his thinking, in practice.".
Faced with the dangerous attitude that the IBRP is adopting, it is the duty of communist militants to appeal to the sense of responsibility of the comrades of this organisation. They have to see what is really at stake here for the future of revolutionary organisations, to understand the consequences of any opportunist collaboration with parasitic groups, with adventurers, thugs or with phantom groups which only exist upon an Internet site.
In order to defend its principles the ICC will continue to close the door of its public meetings to parasites without any principle who have behaved like informers. But it does not see itself as the only pole of reference of the communist left; its public meetings are always open to the IBRP and we strongly encourage it to participate in them.
ICC 10/10/04.
Notes
1. Furthermore, as we shall see in the second part of this article, the debate on the question of war did not take place around the analyses of the IBRP, but around those of the ICC.
2. According to the terms used by a member of the IFICC, Olivier, in one of these secret meetings (the notes of which we discovered by chance).
3. We admit that this comparison between the IFICC and 'women of easy virtue' is a bit of an insult to the latter.
4. See our article 'PCI trails behind the "internal fraction" of the ICC' in WR260 [8].
5. As we already showed four years ago in our article 'The marxist and opportunist vision of the construction of the party [9]' in International Review 103.
6. The methods of the IFICC, typical of those of gangsters, can be seen all the more clearly in the vocabulary it is now borrowing from the lumpen proletariat (see on its website 'No limits to ignomy!). Here we can find a veritable call for a pogrom against our comrades who are now called "salauds" (bastards). When the masks fall, this so-called Fraction shows its true face.
In October the ICC held a public meeting in Calcutta attended by a large number of people from a diverse milieu. Their participation was testimony to the ICC's success in pushing for discussion and reflection. The debate that unfolded in the meeting took this process of clarification further.
The ICC made a brief presentation on the 'revolutionary perspectives' being peddled by different varieties of leftists, in particular the Naxalites (Maoists), and others in India. Since the 1960s a large array of Maoists, in India and other 'third world' countries, have talked of a 'new democratic' revolution in conjunction with the so-called 'progressive' and 'national bourgeois' revolutions. The underlining mystification is one of 'India Mortgaged' by a 'comprador bourgeoisie', a ruling class acting on behalf of foreign interests. But because recent decades have given the most naked display of the Indian bourgeoisie's imperialist appetites, the mystifications of 'India Mortgaged' and 'national liberation' have lost their hold. Some Maoists have now come up with the idea of a national 'socialist revolution', just as much marked by nationalism and patriotism. This is the Dalit movement, the political expression of the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie among the lowest and untouchable castes, that talks of 'Dalit Liberation' instead of class struggle. Throughout the bourgeois left there are claims to have discovered revolutionary potential in forces other than the working class - peasants, tribal communities, lower castes, students, women. The proletarian revolution - the only revolution
The entry of capitalism into its decadent phase in the early 20th century did not only have an impact on the most advanced capitalist countries. The bourgeoisie was not reactionary in some countries while still retaining a progressive or even 'revolutionary' role in the 'third world'. The entirety of capitalist relations - wage labour, commodity production, money economy, nation states - wherever they existed they became fetters on the progress of humanity. Capitalism everywhere became a reactionary system. It needed to be destroyed everywhere. The only revolution that can destroy world capitalism is the revolution of the world working class, the only revolutionary class under capitalism. It's only the bourgeois left that talks of any other sort of 'revolution'. And when it does it's to mobilise the working class in the service of national capitals.
The subsequent discussion brought up the following questions:
(1) With the vast majority of the exploited population in the 'third world' being peasants, how can the ICC talk of the working class being the only revolutionary class? Can't the working class at best provide 'leadership'?
(2) The ICC talks of the peasantry splitting, but aren't there different strata in the working class too? How can you talk of the working class being the have-nots when workers own lots of things, including shares?
(3) It's fine to talk of proletarian revolution being the only revolution. But can't partial struggles, for example for the defence of environment, feminism etc work in tandem with proletarian struggles?
(4) What about the struggle of the unemployed?
(5) And finally, isn't it a bit much to talk about the counter-revolutionary nature of the Maoist movement?
Due to limited time the point on unemployed struggles couldn't be taken up, and the question of partial struggles wasn't fully developed. But there was a chance to clarify the bourgeois nature of the so-called 'struggle' for the protection of environment. Someone at the meeting gave the example of the Indian Supreme Court putting itself at the forefront of the campaigns over pollution, in no way contradicting its role as defender of bourgeois interests.
When Marx spoke of society being more and more split into two great camps, that of the working class and the bourgeoisie, he was not blind to the capitalist reality of his times. He knew that the peasantry still constituted a substantial proportion of the population even in advanced capitalist countries in Europe. But owing to his deep understanding of capitalism, he insisted that the peasantry in capitalism is a class of the past. Its dreams are those of a petty proprietor, individual peasants only change their circumstances by joining the working class or the bourgeoisie (or becoming completely destitute). As a class it is incapable of waging a revolutionary struggle for the destruction of capitalism
This applies perfectly to the situation in countries like India. The peasantry has been torn into warring strata. On one hand there is the landed peasant, part of the bourgeoisie that owns local transport, flour and rice mills and other means of production. On the other hand there is the rural proletariat. In between are the peasants who need to mechanise or modernise to survive; they take on loans which they can't repay, they are pushed into indebtedness and the mass suicides of whole peasant families. These have been seen in the 'advanced' states of India (Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana). This is all part of a 'green revolution' encouraged by a 'peasant friendly' government that is helping poor peasants by giving them more loans� This stratum lives an insecure existence, their only prospects are death, despair or disappearance into other strata. Of all the classes within capitalism only the working class is capable of waging a revolutionary struggle for the destruction of capitalism.
Yes, there are divisions within the working class. But these are not expressions of different relations to the means of production. All sections of the working class are separated from the means of production and must sell their labour power for wages. When there are divisions they are often fostered by the bourgeoisie, for example, by manipulating the remnants of pre-capitalist society, as in the caste divisions in India. There is also the conscious, relentless propaganda of the bourgeoisie over differences in the working class, like higher wage rates for more skilled workers or the mystification of share-holder capitalism.
Maoism emerged as a patriotic, nationalistic current that has openly advocated, and at one time or another gone into alliances with war lords and factions of the bourgeoisie. It has played the game of one or other imperialist power at different moments. After the triumph of the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia Maoism emerged, not as a proletarian revolutionary current, but as a child of the counter-revolution.
AM, October 2004.
In a situation of generalised chaos, of permanent civil war, of daily terrorist attacks and the abduction of hostages of all nationalities including Iraqis, the American army in Iraq has launched a new land and air offensive. For the first time since the beginning of the war, Iraqi soldiers armed entirely by the US and under American command have taken part in the first phase of this offensive. As the Financial Times put it "it's better to confer military operations on Iraqi forces in order to minimise the political repercussions". On October 3 this resulted in the fall of Samara, 100km north of Baghdad. The assault involved bitter fighting and house to house searches. It is well known that many civilians died even though statistics are hard to verify. According to a recent inquiry by a team of American and Iraqi researchers, the number of civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion in March 2003 may be as high as 100,000, the majority the result of aerial bombardments by the Coalition, which now hardly even bothers to claim that it is using 'precision' methods aimed at limiting civilian deaths. Since the team was unable to operate in Falluja, which has been reduced to a semi-ruin, the real casualty figures could be even higher.
So far there have been at least 2300 attacks on Coalition forces, the Iraqi police and the civilian population, in an area that reaches from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south. Not one region of Iraq has been spared. The situation is so bad that some of the countries who are maintaining troops in the country are openly questioning whether they will remain. The Polish defence minister Jerzy Somajdzinski announced in an interview with Gazeta Wyboteza that Polish troops might be withdrawn by the New Year. Not one of the imperialist states which took part in the war alongside the Anglo-American forces has managed to avoid the same impasse as the US.
The USA's loss of control over the situation, despite the new military offensive, is such that there is a real danger that Iraq will fall apart as a unified entity. In the north, the town of Kirkuk is claimed in an increasingly aggressive manner by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. But more significant than this is the fact that now all the southern provinces are threatening to secede. "Members of the municipal council of Basra, Iraq's second city, with a Shiite majority, have begun talks with their counterparts in the two neighbouring towns of Maysan and Dhiqar in order to discuss the creation of a federal region in the south" (Courier International 19/10/04). Although the break-up of Iraq in the manner of the Balkans or the Caucasus is not on the immediate agenda, wherever imperialist wars ravage the world today they bring the possibility of the complete dismantling of national entities. Since the control of oil as a strategic and military weapon is so important, it's worth recalling that 80% of Iraq's oil reserves are in the south where there is a push for autonomy; and here the Shiites are very close to Iran. The increasingly chaotic situation in this part of the world casts serious doubts on the USA's ability to control the oil producing zones.
But the present military offensive by the US has a more immediate objective. The American bourgeoisie hopes that the elections, due to be held on 31 January, will stabilise the situation, if only temporarily. However, even the holding of the elections is extremely problematic. The Iraq authorities and the representatives of the UN who are trying to organise these elections have said that they will be very difficult to hold. A member of the organising committee has even declared: "compared to here, the Balkans are Norway". The White House has even envisaged a worst-case scenario of holding the elections only in the regions that are secure. With the elections discredited in advance, the Iraqi authorities have been compelled to react, since a half-baked election will not ensure the position of Prime Minister Allawi. In order to limit the damage as much as possible, the US has had to discretely inject 100 million dollars into the "education of electors", as well as carrying out the military offensive. It has also asked for extra help from Britain. After a period of playing hard to get, the British government has dispatched the Black Watch to Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, where foreign and Iraqi forces have been subjected to frequent attacks.
Recent polls suggest that only 2% of Iraqis see the American army as liberators. US imperialism is widely hated for its imperialist policies in this part of the world. This has not always been the case: up till 1967 and the Six Day war, France was far more unpopular - it had conducted a brutal war in Algeria, had taken part in the Suez fiasco and was the main supplier of arms to Israel. Today all this has been turned on its head and France poses as the friend of the Muslim world. The weakening of US hegemony is such that, even if the elections managed to regain a certain degree of credibility, the aftermath will be worse, not better, for US imperialism. "No Iraqi government could last long after the departure of American troops, unless it was made up of forces that had already proved themselves as opponents of the occupation" (John V Whisbeck in the journal Asharq al-Awsat)
The terrorist attacks that took place recently on hotels in the Sinai are the latest step in the descent into chaos in this part of the Middle East. This had been one of the last places where Arabs and Jews could rub shoulders without being threatened by violence. Whoever carried out the hotel bombing in Sinai, it shows that there are no longer any sanctuaries in the region. For the Israelis, Egypt is less and less reliable as a kind of ally. "It is not necessary to be subjected to the insensitivity, indolence, indifference, even hostility which the Egyptian authorities displayed in a revolting manner the night the attacks took place to understand that the security of Israel and Israelis is not one of Egypt's priorities" (Martin Sherman in Yediut Aharamut). Since it stood so close to the US, Egypt has for some time been one of Israel's main interlocutors in the Arab world; but now it has become a haven for terrorist groups like Hamas and has been drawn more and more into the heart of the conflict. This can only be aggravated by Israel's military offensive in Gaza and the West Bank, which has continued despite the Knesset's backing for Sharon's plan to dismantle a limited number of Jewish settlements to withdraw troops from these areas. Even if Sharon succeeds in overcoming the opposition to these plans from the hardliners in his own party, there is no basis for claims that Sharon is a peacemaker. His plan aims at the creation of a Palestinian Bantustan which will do nothing to defuse nationalist tensions in the region. Meanwhile there are widespread fears that if Arafat doesn't survive his current illness, the resulting political void will further strengthen the position of the extremist wing of Palestinian nationalism.
An even more sinister sign of growing conflict in the region is the fact that Israel's real bête noire is Iran, which stands to gain a great deal from the consequences of inter-imperialist confrontations in the Middle East. With the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, its main rivals have been eliminated. In a situation of every man for himself, where no one imperialist state can impose its will over another for long, Iran is desperately seeking to arm itself with nuclear weapons, which are already possessed by neighbouring rivals Israel and Pakistan. "The people in charge of Israel's security services are faced with a paradox: pleased by the disappearance of a sworn enemy thanks to the American invasion of Iraq, they are becoming more and more anxious that this same invasion has created another enemy for them. And they are seeing the Middle East going from conventional rivalries to far more dangerous nuclear rivalries" (Stevens Erlanger in The New York Times). This is why we are hearing increasingly bellicose declarations from Israel's leaders. These are not the expression of a few individuals who are losing their head; it reflects the frightful reality of decomposing capitalism. Left to its own dynamic, this perspective is just as real as the danger of nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
The accelerating decline of US leadership can only push its rivals large and small to strike out in defence of their imperialist interests. Every state, every war lord is being drawn into this spiral of violence. The working class, the only class which can unify and organise itself on a planetary scale, is the only social force that can offer humanity a different perspective. The proletariat cannot afford to allow itself to become habituated to the nightmarish scenes it sees on TV screens all around the world. Faced with this flood of massacres and atrocities, the only healthy response is indignation, informed by a clear understanding of the capitalist origins of all this horror.
RI, October 2004.
In October the Pensions Commission published its first report on the future of pensions in Britain. It painted a stark picture of what the working class faces with the intensifying attack on pensions.
The introduction of state pensions was presented as one of the great triumphs of capitalism, as proof that it was capable of meeting human needs. The politician responsible for introducing the first state pension in an industrial country was more pragmatic. "Whoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect. Look at the difference between a private servant and a servant in the chancellery or at court; the latter will put up with much more because he has a pension to look forward to". These were the words of Otto Von Bismarck, the German Chancellor, as he began to introduce a system of national insurance across Germany in the 1880s. This 'state socialism' was the counterpart to the anti-socialist law of 1878 that banned socialist organisation and agitation and the publication and distribution of socialist literature. Where the one sought to deny the independent political expression of the working class, the other sought to remove the need for such expression. Further, the introduction of state benefits tended to replace or minimise the system of benefits set up through the trade union and social organisations of the working class and, thereby, tied the workers to the bourgeois state.
Pensions were introduced in Britain with the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, which gave means-tested benefits to those over 70. The Act was passed in the middle of an intense period of class struggle that was beginning to have revolutionary overtones and also when there were growing concerns about the ability of British capitalism to keep up with its rivals. Subsequent legislation continued to have the twin aims of pacifying and containing the working class and of ensuring a sufficient supply of healthy workers. The role of pensions, as Bismarck said, was to give workers something to hope for, but also something to lose, while the social impact of industrialisation made it necessary to give some support to the non-productive parts of the working class in order to allow the better exploitation of the productive part. Welfare legislation always arises from the economic and political needs of the bourgeoisie.
During the First World War a ministry of pensions was set up in Britain as part of the wider 'welfare movement' that expressed the strengthening of the state necessary to wage the military struggle. After the war, as the struggle of the working class and the economic crisis shook capitalism around the world, pensions were extended and the amount increased, although those receiving them were still below the poverty line. At the end of the Second World War, the National Health Service and National Insurance Acts established the framework of the Welfare State. The Basic State Pension was introduced, linked either to earnings or prices. This has never been very generous (in 1946 it was £1.30 a week, in 2003 £77.45) and a range of occupational or private pension schemes developed alongside it. In 1978 it became compulsory for all employees who earn above a certain level to enrol in a second pension, either the State Earnings Related Pension (SERPs) or a private pension.
Today pensions around the world are in crisis as the funds available become insufficient to meet the need. A recent OECD report noted "there seems to be increasing concern over the funding situation of defined benefit plans in many OECD countries. In the United Kingdom, where pension funds always have had a relatively high equity allocation, recent estimates for the aggregate shortfalls range from BP 55 to 65 billion (or 6� per cent of GDP). In Japan, estimates of deficits of around USD 200 billion were cited in the press. 73 of the 1650 corporate pension funds were dissolved in fiscal year 2002, while 366 reduced the benefits they had promised to pay. A recent report estimated that pension fund assets at 100 of Japan's largest companies covered less than half the cost of payments due to retirees. In Canada, underfunding has been put at CAD 225 billion (20 per cent of GDP). In the Netherlands, the average funding ratio of pension funds fell by 25 percentage points in the two years to 2002, dropping in many cases below 100 per cent� In Switzerland, funding ratios have declined to 100 per cent or less in most pension funds... In Germany, Siemens indicated that under US accounting rules its pension shortfall exceeded 5 billion Euro in mid-2002." (Recent Developments in Funding and Benefit Security, November 2003).
According to the mouthpieces of the ruling class this is a simple, 'natural' consequence of the increase in the older population. In reality the pensions 'crisis' is an expression of the global crisis and the response of the bourgeoisie. In Britain pensions have been under attack since the late 1970s:
Many companies gave themselves 'contributions holidays', or even took money out of the pension funds. Some £19bn was not paid into funds, with 94% of this being used to reduce employers' contributions and only 6% to reduce employees. Over three-quarters of final salary pension schemes have already been closed and replaced by less valuable ones, with the result that the contributions of many employers has halved from 12% to 6%.
The overall tendency has been to shift the risk to the employees: "The UK places greater responsibility on its citizens for looking after their own needs than any other developed state. Indeed, both major parties are still committed to changing the current 60:40 ratio between state and employee investment in retirement income to 40:60." (Guardian 13/10/04).
The Labour government and its apologists have made great claims about reducing pensioner poverty. But they can't hide the fact that the working class, and especially the poorest part of it, have not actually benefited that much. Firstly, as is noted by the author of an article in the Guardian (13/10/04, 'We cannot allow the poor to fall into the pensions abyss'). "A third of poor pensioners don't claim pension credit, leaving a million people to live on the basic pension with little or nothing else, in a poverty that is beyond contemplating" She is mystified by this "since they [the government] already pay these missing claimants their pension every week. They know who they are; they know where they live�it should not be beyond the wit of the Department of Work and Pensions to knock on the door of every single one of them and help fill out the now simple forms". Secondly, the poor tend not to live so long to collect their pensions: "Sir Michael Marmot, director of the International Centre for Health and Society at University College London, recently pointed out that the difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor rose from 5.5 in the 1970s to 9.5 years in the 1990s. If you take the central line from the centre to the east of London, he explained, for every stop there is a drop in life expectancy of a year" (Guardian 14/10/04). Given that significant numbers of the working class don't live much beyond 70, the proposal being floated of an increase in the retirement age, albeit dressed in the hypocritical language of choice and equal opportunities, could go a long way to solving the crisis.
The assault on pensions that is taking place throughout the developed world is part of the systematic dismantling of the post-war welfare state (see WR 277 'The dismantling of social security'). The approach in Britain has been a gradual, piecemeal one, but, in the case of pensions, it has gone on for a quarter of a century so that cumulatively such attacks have gone furthest here. These are not Tory attacks or New Labour attacks but attacks by the bourgeoisie as a whole; an expression of the class war.
The pensions crisis is not due to increased numbers of old people but to the inability of capitalism to use the immense resources it has created to meet human needs. Capitalism is locked in a contradiction it cannot resolve. With pensions this is expressed in the fact that the working class is being exhorted to save more for the future while it is also required to spend more now to keep the economy going: "if everyone responded to the recent pleas for a dramatic increase in savings to fund future pensions, a huge hole would appear in the economy: consumer spending would collapse" (Guardian 12/10/04)
Capitalism is no longer able to offer the pretence of a better tomorrow. The future will be one of increasing exploitation and poverty. There will be efforts to hide this, but it is becoming harder to do so. If the working class wants to plan for the future it must regain the vision of communism. It must raise again the rallying cry of "from each according their means to each according to their needs". To realise this vision it must renew the struggle against capitalism today - against its attacks and its lies. This has nothing to do with the anti-globalisation and 'alternative world' movement that celebrated its futility in London last month. To defend the welfare state of the 20th century against 'neo-conservatism' is no more in the interests of the working class than to have defended the laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century. The working class has no interest in looking back to decide which period of its exploitation was preferable, it can only look forward to the ending of all exploitation.
North, 30/10/04.
The capitalist propaganda barrage that accompanies each electoral circus always promotes the democratic mystification, the capitalist political swindle that tries to convince the working class that its participation in choosing the particular politician who will formally preside over the capitalist class dictatorship for the next few years means that it is free. While it is fashionable this year for journalists, politicians, pundits, professors, and clergymen to proclaim that this is the most important election in a generation or in our lifetime, one must note that similar claims were made in many previous elections. From the perspective of the democratic mystification, there is no such thing as an 'unimportant' election.
This year the media blitz is awesome. The war in Iraq, national security, terrorism, civil liberties, chronic unemployment, medical care, social security, abortion, gay marriage, the environment - are all invoked as hot button issues, the better to get people interested in voting.
But despite the hoopla, like all elections in the period of capitalist decadence, this election is not really about the clash of alternative policies advocated by different factions of the bourgeoisie, but about manipulation and mystification. Certainly there are differences within the bourgeoisie but these disputes are confined primarily to tactical questions on how best to implement a shared strategic outlook internationally and domestically. No matter who wins the election, the US will continue a policy of austerity at home (making the working class pay for the brunt of the economic crisis) and military intervention abroad (making the working class risk the lives of its young men and women to protect US imperialist interests). The style in which these policies are implemented may differ slightly, but the end result - austerity and war - will be the same.
On the level of political strategy, the ruling class this year has two primary political imperatives:
1) It needs to revive and repair the credibility of the democratic mystification which suffered a heavy blow in the debacle of the 2000 election.
2) It needs to adjust the capitalist political division of labor between the major political parties, making sure that the team formally in power is best suited to carry out the strategic requirements necessary to defend effectively the needs of the ruling class in the period ahead. These needs include a) the implementation of the ruling class's agreed-upon imperialist strategy designed to block the rise of any rival superpower in Europe or Asia, and b) the continued implementation of austerity, attacking the standard of living of the proletariat, making it bear the brunt of capitalism's global economic crisis.
Readers are of course well aware that in 2000 the outcome of the US election wasn't resolved for 36 days - determined only by a controversial Supreme Court decision, decided along narrowly divided partisan political lines, which deeply eroded political confidence in the court and the Bush presidency. For the first time in the modern era, the candidate who lost the popular vote won the presidency by gaining a majority in the antiquated Electoral College, based on the chaotic mess in Florida, the state controlled by George Bush's brother (Governor Jeb Bush). The whole thing was more reminiscent of what one would expect of a third world banana republic rather than the most powerful democracy in the world. The 2000 debacle was a reflection of the effects of social decomposition on the ruling class electoral process, which has made it increasingly difficult for the bourgeoisie to control its own sham electoral circus. In fact, the political strategy of the bourgeoisie in 2000, which was to keep the Democrats in office actually worked. Gore received 500,000 more votes in the popular balloting. His loss by 500 votes in Florida was attributable to a variety of miscues, ranging from confusing ballots, disenfranchisement of voters who typically voted for Democratic candidates (African Americans), and outright fraud. Once the recount process began, the capitalist politicians lost all sense of self-control and propriety. Each side adopted an irrational attitude to win at any cost, with no-holds barred squabbling. This loss of ruling class discipline and decorum stood in sharp contrast to the more mature and responsible comportment of Richard Nixon in 1960, for example, when he decided not to initiate a court challenge against Kennedy's election due to voting fraud in Chicago. Nixon understood better his role in the electoral circus and put the interests of the nation above his own partisan desires to win the White House.
This year the bourgeoisie needs to restore confidence in elections. To do so, it needs a decisive victory at the polls in order to avoid any repeat of the ugliness of four years ago. The media has been very successful in spreading propaganda about the importance of each citizen's vote - the idea that every vote counts is crucial in getting as many people as possible to participate in the electoral sham. To keep the pressure on for people to go to the polls, the media incessantly portrays the contest as too close to call, even though their public opinion survey results make no sense. Beginning with the first debate, the polls showed that Kerry had gained ground and that 'momentum' was with the Democrats, yet suddenly all the polls show Bush is slightly ahead. At the same time, the Bush campaign has gotten increasingly desperate in its tactics, a clear indication that they don't think they're winning. The propaganda about the supposed dead heat keeps the tension alive and serves the purpose of making sure that no one loses interest in the race, assuring that as many people as possible actually come out to vote. The campaign has been incredibly effective. In the battleground state of Iowa, the media reports that every eligible voter has been registered to vote. In Ohio, another swing state, the campaign has been so successful that there are an estimated 120,000 more people registered to vote than are eligible - either some people have registered more than once or the ghosts of citizens past are lining up to vote.
Because of the proletariat's continuing difficulties in breaking free of the disorientation that has characterized the reflux in class consciousness since the collapse of the Russian bloc, the bourgeoisie has considerable flexibility in deciding whether to put its left team (Democrats) or right team (Republicans) in power. In times of intense class struggle, the bourgeoisie often prefers to keep the left in opposition, as a means of controlling and derailing working class discontent. But today this is not a necessity - the left is equally capable of implementing austerity, beefing up the repressive apparatus, and waging imperialist war without jeopardizing its ability to control the working class. The Clinton administration demonstrated that amply.
The central consideration for the bourgeoisie today in the US, as it has been for more than a decade now, is not how to contain the class struggle, but rather the defense of its imperialist interests in a drastically changed international arena in the post-cold war period.
While there is a general agreement within the dominant factions of the American capitalist class on the strategic goal of maintaining US imperialist hegemony and preventing the emergence of any new imperialist rival, there are significant controversies over the tactical implementation of that strategy. Most notably this dispute has focused on the war in Iraq for the past year. In the winter of 2003, the ruling class was united on invading Iraq as a reminder of American supremacy aimed at potential rivals, as a reinforcement of direct American military presence in a strategically important zone of imperialist competition, and as a means to put pressure on Europe by establishing a growing American control of Mideast oil supplies. As the ICC has said on numerous occasions, this strategy was doomed to failure because in the phase of capitalist decomposition the dominant characteristic is the tendency for each nation state to play its own card on the inter-imperialist terrain, which results inevitably in growing chaos on the international level. In this period, every venture that US imperialism undertakes ultimately aggravates the very circumstances that it aimed to combat, increasing rather than decreasing the level of chaos in the world and the challenges to US hegemony.
The divergences on Iraq within the American bourgeoisie emerged only after the abject failure of the Iraq invasion. There are today three positions within the American ruling class on Iraq: 1) the situation is going well, and the US needs only to stay the course, a position defended by the Bush administration, and one that seems to contradict blatantly the reality on the ground; 2) the situation is a mess, and the US should withdraw immediately - an extreme position defended by a few elements on the left and others on the right; 3) the situation is a mess, and the US must find a way to minimize the damage of the Iraq quagmire in order to be able to respond effectively to new challenges to its hegemony, a position increasingly defended by the dominant factions of the ruling class.
The utter failure of the Bush administration's propaganda justifications for the Iraq invasion raised concern for the ruling class not because they were lies (the bourgeoisie, left or right, is united on the necessity to lie), but because their exposure has made it increasingly difficult to prepare popular acceptance for future military adventures, particularly within the proletariat. Bush's ineptness squandered the considerable political capital gained from the 9/11 attacks, which had given the bourgeoisie an opportunity to use patriotism to manipulate the population at large. But now patriotism has once again become increasingly identified with the political right, as Kerry noted in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party Convention when he promised to reclaim patriotism for the left as well.
As we pointed out in Internationalism 131, the controversy over Bush's unilateralism versus Kerry's alleged multilateralism "is a gross distortion. Ever since World War II, US imperialism has always acted unilaterally in the defense of its imperialist interests as a superpower�As the head of the bloc, the US was easily able to oblige its subordinates in the bloc to go along with their decisions�" While Kerry proposes to be more patient in pressuring European powers to go along with American imperialist military operations, he is committed to the same doctrine of taking unilateral action, not allowing any foreign power or authority (i.e., the UN) dictate American policy and, as he pointed out in the October presidential debates, he is committed to Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive military action - in fact he insists that the doctrine of pre-emptive strike is a longstanding American policy orientation.
This year it has been especially difficult for the bourgeoisie to reach a consensus on the preferred division of labor. In part this reflects the same effects of decomposition that made 2000 such a shambles. It is clear, however, that the election of John Kerry will best serve the needs of the bourgeoisie in the immediate period ahead. As we have pointed out previously in Internationalism, Kerry is not an anti-war candidate. He promises to be more sensitive to how he takes the US into war, to win in Iraq, to expand the American military, to increase the size of American Special Forces units, and modernize weapons systems. This is not the political program of a dove. Kerry's program coincides with the view of a growing majority within the bourgeoisie that recognizes the seriousness of the mess in Iraq. The Bush administration's refusal to face reality increasingly makes Bush's continuance in office untenable. From the bourgeoisie's perspective, Kerry offers the possibility of being able to convince the population to accept further military excursions in the future, in contrast to Bush's loss of credibility.
If Kerry's campaign appeared to falter during the summer after the Democratic Convention, it was because he did not clearly assert a critique of the Bush administration on the war, implausibly insisting he would have still supported the invasion of Iraq even if he known that all the reasons justifying the invasion were wrong. He was criticized for this inconsistency in the editorial pages of the New York Times for example. It was only after Kerry's speech at New York University in September in which he changed position and embraced the view that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time that his support within the bourgeoisie began to solidify. Already at the convention in July, a dozen retired admirals and generals had endorsed him, including three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. In September, Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the chair of the Foreign Relations committee, openly criticized the Bush administration for incompetence in Iraq. Another Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel, the second ranking Republican on the same committee, also lashed out at Bush's handling of Iraq. And even, Republican Sen. John McCain, while still avowing support for Bush's candidacy, also criticized the administration for not leveling with the nation on Iraq. When leading Republicans openly attack their own candidate on the central foreign policy issue of the day just five weeks before the presidential election, it gives a real glimpse of the thinking of the bourgeoisie. The Democrats of course quickly took out a full page campaign in major newspapers featuring photographs of these leading Republicans and excerpts from their anti-Bush statements.
The media quickly followed suit, its coverage shifting on balance to support of the Kerry candidacy, as could be seen in the coverage of the debates and their aftermath, which portrayed Kerry as the winner. At the same time, an ABC News policy memo surfaced, which argued that while both candidates were distorting and stretching the truth in their campaign speeches and political commercials, Kerry's distortion tended to involve only peripheral issues, but Bush's dealt with issues at the heart of the campaign. The memo instructed ABC journalists to highlight these gross distortions in their coverage. One media commentator even noted a shift in coverage by the pro-Bush media controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - Fox News and New York Post.
If 2000 demonstrated one thing, it was that the even in the US, the most powerful and sophisticated state capitalist regime in the world, decomposition means that the ruling class has an increasing difficulty to control the outcome of its own electoral circus. The win-at-any-cost attitude that was so devastating in 2000 has not been expunged. While capitalism has always been characterized by official dishonesty, the rampant increase in corruption, cronyism, and outright greed has escalated in the last four years, to a degree that represents an erosion of state capitalism's role in safeguarding the interests of the national capital at the expense of this or that sector of the capitalist class. Blatant efforts to steal votes and distort the election are reported in the media everyday. These include incredible stories like a company hired by the Republicans in Washington state to register voters on street corners, which then threw out all the registration cards for those who registered as Democrats, the casting of absentee ballots by nursing home owners for elderly alzheimer patients, the Republican party's attempt to block blacks from voting on election day, and the Democratic party's lining up of 10,000 volunteer lawyers to launch legal challenges across the country on election day. This scenario of vicious scheming and conspiring does not reflect a mature state capitalist bourgeoisie but rather a decomposing bourgeoisie that has reverted to the more primitive political gangsterism of bygone eras. In this sense, while the election of John Kerry best coincides with the political strategy and needs of the American ruling class at this conjuncture, there is no guarantee that the bourgeoisie can actually deliver this result.
If victory again goes to a candidate who loses the popular vote, it will be an even more serious blow to the democratic mystification, undermining any talk about the 'will of the people' in democratic America, and will lead to divisive fights over amending the Constitution and challenges to the validity of the winner's authority. If Bush wins, political divisions will continue to be exacerbated, opposition to the war in Iraq will not only become more difficult to contain, but it will be even more difficult to mobilize support for future military operations abroad, which will be necessary to respond to continuing challenges. The economic crisis will worsen, giving impetus to a further revival of class struggle.
On the other hand, if Kerry wins, the honeymoon will be exceedingly short. His promised attempts to revive multilateralism are doomed. Whatever the diplomatic clumsiness of the Bush administration, the situation the US faces internationally is not a crisis of the Bush administration, but a crisis of US imperialism. It may be more difficult initially for the French and the Germans to say 'no' to Kerry, but their imperialist interests are still in fundamental contradiction to those of the US, and there is no way that Kerry can be successful in the long run. On the domestic level, Kerry's promises to fund all manner of domestic spending programs by rolling back Bush's tax cuts on the top 2 percent of American income-earners are also doomed to failure. Austerity is caused by capitalism's global economic crisis, not by the greed of the wealthy friends of George Bush. For the working class, the 2004 election is truly a no-win situation. The only defense for the workers is the class struggle, not the ballot box.
JG, October 25, 2004.
The British government's announcement of the need to 'reform' the pensions system is not unique. Every national bourgeoisie is adopting the same measures: redundancy plans which don't leave any economic sector untouched; relocation of plant and investment; increasing hours of work; dismantling of social protection (pensions, health, unemployment benefits); wage cuts; the growing insecurity of employment and housing; deterioration of working and living conditions. All workers, whether at work or on the dole, whether still active or retired, whether they are in the private sector or the public sector, will from now on be confronted with these attacks on a permanent basis.
In Italy, following attacks on pensions similar to those in France and a wave of redundancies in the FIAT factories, there have been 3700 job cuts (over a sixth of the workforce) at the Alitalia airline.
In Germany, the Socialist and Green government led by Schröder, with an austerity programme baptised 'Agenda 2010', has begun to cut health insurance, increase the policing of work stoppages, increase sickness contributions for all employees, increase pension contributions and raise the retirement age which is already set at 65. At Siemens, with the agreement of the IG-Metall union and under the threat of relocating to Hungary, it is making the workers work between 40 and 48 hours instead of the previous 35 without any wage increase. Other big enterprises are negotiating similar agreements: DeutscheBahn (the German railways), Bosch, Thyssen-Krupp, Continental, as well as the entire car industry (BMW, Opel, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Daimler-Chrysler). It's the same in the Netherlands, where the minister of the economy has announced that the return to the 40 hour week (with no compensatory payments) would be a good way of re-launching the national economy.
The 'Harz IV plan', which is due to come into effect at the beginning of 2005 in Germany, shows the direction that all bourgeoisies, and first and foremost those in Europe, have begun to take: reducing the length and amount of unemployment benefits and making it harder to obtain them, notably by forcing people to accept offers of employment which pay a lot less than the jobs they have lost.
These attacks are not limited to Europe but are taking place on a world scale. While the Canadian aircraft builder Bombardier Aerospace intends to cut between 2000 and 2500 jobs, the US telecommunications firm AT&T has announced 12,300 lay-offs, General Motors 10,000 more, posing a threat to its Swedish and German plants, and the Bank of America has announced 4500 lay-offs in addition to the 12,500 from last April. In the USA, where unemployment is reaching record levels, more than 36 million people, 12.5% of the population, live below the poverty line. In 2003 1.5 million more people had precarious jobs while 45 million are deprived of any social protection.
And all this without mentioning the terrible conditions of exploitation facing workers in the 'third world', where there is a race to lower wages as a result of frenzied competition on the world market.
Most of these attacks are presented as indispensable 'reforms'. The capitalist state and each national bourgeoisie claim that it is acting in the general interest, for the good of the people. In order to get workers to accept sacrifices, it claims that these 'reforms' are all about 'solidarity' between 'citizens', that they will make society fairer and more equal, as opposed to any defence of egoistic privileges. When the ruling class talks about greater equality, its real aim is to reduce the living standards of the working class. In the 19th century, when capitalism was expanding, the reforms carried out by the bourgeoisie really did tend to raise the living standards of the working class; today capitalism can't offer any real reforms. All these pseudo-reforms are not the sign of capitalism's prosperity, but of its irreversible bankruptcy.
Despite the strength of union control over the struggles, despite workers' hesitation to enter into the fray, it has become clear that the working class is beginning to respond to these attacks of the bourgeoisie, even if this revival is still a long way below the level of the attacks themselves. The mobilisation of the Italian tram drivers and the British postal workers and firefighters in the winter of 2003, then the movements of the FIAT workers at Melfi in the south of Italy in the spring against redundancy plans were already signs of a revival of class militancy. The wide-scale movements in France and Austria against pension 'reforms' in the spring of 2003 provided definite proof that there is a real change of mood in the class; and today there are many more examples to be added.
In Germany last July, more than 60,000 workers at Mercedes-Daimler-Chrysler took part in strikes and demonstrations against threats and ultimatums by the bosses. The latter demanded that workers either accept certain 'sacrifices' regarding their working conditions, increase productivity, and accept job-cuts or face the relocation of the plants to other sites. Not only did the workers of Siemens, Porsche, Bosch and Alcatel, who all faced similar attacks, take part in these mobilisations; at the same time, when the bosses tried to stir up divisions between the workers of different factories, many workers from Bremen, where the jobs were to be relocated, associated themselves with the demonstrations. This is a very significant embryo of workers' solidarity.
In Spain, the workers at the shipyards of Puerto Real and San Fernando in Andalusia, as well as Ferrol in Galicia, launched a very determined movement against privatisation plans that involved thousands of job-cuts. The unions, which had already prepared a 'calendar of mobilisations', were taken aback by the workers' militancy. On 17 September, the workers of Ferrol decided in a general assembly, against the advise of the unions, to demonstrate outside the headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party. In San Fernando the workers spontaneously decided to march through the town. Part time workers and workers on insecure contracts often joined the movement. To keep control of the movement, the unions changed strategy, leaving the programme of mobilisations 'open' to such initiatives and allowing the base unionists to take them over. Even though the movement was dominated by traditional union actions aimed at derailing workers' anger into dead ends (such as blockading motorways and railways as at Sestao, often resulting in futile confrontations with the police), the newest and most significant aspect of these struggles was a push towards seeking the solidarity of workers in other sectors. Again at San Fernando, the unions were forced to organise a one-day general strike and demonstration which was the biggest in the town's history.
More recently, a demonstration organised by the unions and 'alternative worldists' in Berlin on 2 October, which was supposed to 'close' a series of 'Monday protests' against the government's Hartz IV plan, attracted 45,000 people. On the same day, a gigantic demonstration took place in Amsterdam against the government's plans, and it had been preceded by important regional mobilisations. Officially there were 200,000 participants, constituting the biggest demonstration in the country for ten years. Despite the main slogan of the demo, "No to the government, yes to the unions", the most spontaneous reaction of the participants themselves was surprise and astonishment at the size of the demo. It should also be remembered that the Netherlands, alongside Belgium, was one of the first countries to see a revival of workers' struggles in the autumn of 1983.
On October 14, 9400 workers from the Opel factory in Bochum, in the industrial heart of the Ruhr, came out on strike as soon as General Motors had announced its plans for massive redundancies across Europe (see our leaflet on this situation [19]), and during union-led strikes in General Motors plants in other countries workers expressed real sentiments of class solidarity. Opel workers at Zaragosa in Spain stopped production in support of "comrades in Germany". In Silesia in Poland workers said "today it's the Germans' turn, tomorrow it will be ours", while German workers were quoted as saying "the policy of the bosses is to set the wage earners of Europe against each other". However, we have to remember that these Europe-wide union mobilisations also have the aim of diverting class solidarity into nationalist anti-Americanism (GM being a US-owned multinational).
Conscious of its responsibility in the slow maturation of consciousness going on in the class, the ICC has intervened very actively in these struggles. It produced leaflets and distributed them widely in Germany in July and in Spain in September. On 2 October, both in Berlin and Amsterdam, the ICC achieved record sales for its press, as it did during the struggles of spring 2003 in France
This situation opens up new perspectives. Even though these struggles are sporadic, the fact that they have involved large numbers of workers in important proletarian concentrations, and the fact that they have followed one after the other, show that they are not a flash in the plan. Each of these movements is a sign of the reflection going on in the working class. The accumulation of attacks by the bourgeoisie is bound to sap illusions that the ruling class is trying to spread. Workers are becoming increasingly anxious about the future which this system of exploitation has in store for their children, for the future generations. Above all, the recent struggles reveal the beginnings of an awareness that workers everywhere are facing the same attacks, and that they can only fight back as a class pitted against capitalism in all countries.
Wim 30.10.04
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/anti-globalisation
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/social-forums
[3] http://www.usaid.gov
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/africa
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/123_lawv.html
[7] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/260_pci.htm
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_ibrp.htm
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/public-meetings
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/61/india
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/14/proletarian-revolution
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/maoism
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/17/253/us-elections
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_germany.html