Ebola is not merely a medical problem. It is foremost a social question, the product of a system that has all the technology and scientific know-how to reduce the suffering of the people in the world by epidemics to a minimum, but isn’t able to achieve this.

Mankind masters the explosive outbreaks of the most contagious epidemics

In its history mankind was regularly confronted with the outbreak of natural diseases, killing huge amounts of the world population. But the evolution of knowledge made mankind increasingly capable of finding the means to diminish their devastating effects and the number of people killed.

Probably the first massive and global pandemic was the so-called “Black Death”, peaking in Europe in the years 1346–1353. It was one of the most devastating epidemics, leading to the death of an estimated 30–60% of Europe's total population. By applying measures of quarantine mankind succeeded in preventing it spreading further. In the 19th century, in1826, a cholera epidemic broke out, hitting Europe and infecting tens of thousands of people in Britain. At first the idea was that it was caused by direct exposure to the products of filth and decay. But using simple research methods a small number of doctors showed that a lack of hygiene in the water supply spread the disease, something Friedrich Engels showed clearly:

“…..in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic plunged the sanitary police (…) it is in almost the same state as in 1831! (….) Not only the cellars but the first floors of all the houses in this district are damp; a number of cellars, once filled up with earth, have now been emptied and are occupied once more. (….) In one cellar the water constantly wells up through a hole stopped with clay, the cellar lying below the river level, so that its occupant, a hand-loom weaver, had to bale out the water from his dwelling every morning and pour it into the street!” (The Condition of the Working Class in England)

In Hamburg, one of the fastest growing cities in Germany, cholera again raged for ten weeks, bringing all commerce and trade to a complete standstill. 8,600 people died.

In the year 1892 Friedrich Engels hoped that “The repeated visitations of cholera (…) and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities.” (Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892). Science finally found that cholera was transmitted through contaminated water supply and by exposure to the faeces of an infected person.

In the course of the 19th century medicine achieved enormous break-throughs. The development of vaccines and, more importantly, the introduction of environmental sanitary measures, coupled with a better understanding of infectious disease (epidemiology), have been invaluable weapons in the fight for human health. “The most crying abuses described in this book have either disappeared or have been made less conspicuous...” (Idem)

In the first half of the 20th century, the development of science continued, still achieving a considerable progress. The discovery of antibiotics, the introduction of effective drugs vaccination against an increas­ing number of diseases, have meant that a number of diseases no longer cause anything like the same number of deaths as before WWII. Thus sixty years ago the bourgeoisie was convinced that the global war against infectious diseases in the world was on the road to victory.

A new outbreak of pandemics in the decadence of capitalism

However with the aggravation of the contradictions of the capitalist system, the onset of decadence of capitalism, the historical crisis of the bourgeois system, the conditions had ripened for the outburst of two world wars and a numerous number of local wars. This was to have a dramatic impact on public health. World War I in particular led to the outbreak of a new pandemic.

The war had lead to a complete devastation of large regions of Europe, the displacement of millions of people, the destruction of the means of production and habitation, the massive transport of army troops from and to all regions of the world …. In other words: the creation of a huge chaos and a major regression of sanitary conditions and hygiene.

A new strain of influenza – dubbed Spanish flu as a result of wartime censorship rules - became highly contagious in the fall of 1918 in France. Chinese labourers, shipped from northern China to France, working just behind the frontline in the most horrible circumstances, already on the brink of starvation, infected the soldiers in the trenches. The flu quickly spread to the US and parts of Asia. The influenza killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, ranking as one of the deadliest epidemics in history. The bourgeoisie has always denied or played down any links between the conditions created by the war and the huge number of deaths from flu.

The aggravation of living conditions under decomposition

The progress in medical science and health systems which was achieved from the middle of the 19th century on was never extended towards and put into practice in all the countries of the world. In the so-called “developing countries”, access to such improvements remained blocked for the large majority of the workers and peasants. And this has never changed since. Increasing alarms about contagious diseases in these regions of the world are casting a shadow of doubt over the propaganda about the “bright future” and the “good health” of the present system.

For marxism, there is nothing surprising here. These diseases are expressions of the fact that the capitalist system is rotting on its feet, because of the existing stalemate between the two main classes in actual society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As the proletariat is not able to affirm its perspective of revolution, the contradictions of capitalism in decay only aggravate more and more.

The phase of the decomposition, beginning at the end of the 1980’s, provokes a spirit of ‘every man for himself’, tears away at social cohesion and leads to an ever-increasing moral decay. Decomposition has been marked by the tendency towards complete chaos in all corners of the world. Capitalism in decomposition not only fails to counter diseases, but even tends to aggravate and even initiate them.

Against the background of this growing chaos and because of the corresponding worsening of hygienic conditions, at the beginning of this millennium:

• approximately 3.3 billion in the “developing countries” had no access to clean drinking water;

• nearly 2.5 billion people (more than one third of the world population) has no access to basic sanitary supply.

• each year 250 million people get sick by contaminated water, in 5 to 10 million cases leading to death.

The advent of new infectious diseases and the re-emergence of old ones in different areas of the world, avowedly free of such diseases, have precipitated a new health crisis, which threatens to overwhelm all the gains made so far. Diseases that used to be geographically restricted, such as cholera, are now striking in regions once thought safe. While some diseases have been almost completely subdued, others such as malaria and tuberculosis, which have always been among the greatest “natural” enemies of mankind, are fighting back with renewed ferocity, causing millions of deaths every year.

It is the decomposition of society that is clearly responsible for healthcare getting out of control. SARS for instance, one of the last dangerous pandemics before the outbreak of Ebola. SARS “is thought to have jumped species in a poverty-stricken area of South East China where people live crowded together with their animals in conditions, reminiscent of the Middle Ages. This [situation] is at the origin of many of the most serious flu epidemics world wide. The ‘success’ of the world market in decadence lies not in preventing the emergence of the disease, but in providing the means for its spread across the globe.” (‘SARS: Symptom of a decaying society’, World Revolution, May 2003).

The conditions of decomposition in Africa

“It’s in Africa that capitalism’s descent into militarist barbarity is most clearly pronounced. In continuing conflicts, in the fragmentation of capitalist states, the wearing away of frontiers, the role of clans and warlords (……,) it’s possible to see fragmentation and chaos extending across a continent, giving us an idea of what the decomposition of capitalism could have in store for the whole of humanity. (‘The spread of war shows capitalism is at a dead-end, World Revolution, May 2013)

In the past decades, of the three countries worst hit by Ebola (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea), two have been ravaged by civil wars and ethnic massacres. Between 1989 and 2003 Liberia’s infrastructure was devastated by two civil wars. Sierra Leone had been plagued by a civil war of 11 years. More than 100,000 people lost their lives and many more of them had suffered ‘special’ punishment in the form of barbaric mutilation.

Moreover extractive projects by foreign companies, ruthlessly exploiting oil and gas or one of the mineral sources for the new economies, has lead to a massive deforestation and the destruction of the local habitat and natural infrastructure. The breakdown of social cohesion severely affected the livelihoods of the rural population. Indigenous people were forced to quit their land and shift to urban shanty towns.

Among the three countries, Liberia is one of the least economically developed and most impoverished countries in the world. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 1.3 million people in Liberia live in extreme poverty. In Sierra Leone 70% of the population live in extreme poverty. Half the population of the three countries live in the greatest misery, lacking the most basic hygiene such as access to clean drinking water.

Continuous deforestation has also led to a radical change of the climate conditions in the countries of western and central Africa. Precipitation extremes are projected to increase. Sudden shifts from dry to wet conditions are favourable for the outbreak for Ebola. It is the combined effect of exploitation by foreign companies, the radical change of weather conditions and the global economic crisis that has created the conditions for the present health catastrophe.

Ebola’s devastating impact

The outbreak of the Ebola in the course of this year was not the first one. There have been repeated outbreaks almost every year since it was first discovered in 1976 in central Africa. Ebola is primarily a rural disease, where food gathered from hunting exposes people to infected animals, and where lack of clean water spreads infection. The isolated conditions in rural areas limited the numbers affected, only killing some hundreds of people.

This year the Ebola spread for the first time to the heavily populated areas along the west African coast. In these areas not only the conditions of sanitation, but also the state of health care, are disastrous, increasing the vulnerability of the township communities to the epidemic.

The virus completely overran the capacity of the local health systems. It is permanently racing ahead of the ability to control it. After 60 health care workers had died in the Ebola outbreak, there was a certain level of panic. Joseph Fair: “There’s been a lot of abandoning ship.” After the disease had killed nearly 1,000 people and infected nearly 2,000, on August 8th the World Health Organisation declared the Ebola epidemic an international public health emergency.

The pace of the infection is still accelerating. The public health system in Monrovia is nearing total collapse. All the most basic units for health care, including malarial drugs for children and medical care for pregnant women, have been closed.

In the West Point township in Monrovia local residents, upset by the events and out of deep distrust for the government, attacked a school that the authorities had quietly turned into an isolation center for people with Ebola symptoms. The protesters broke into the school and took bedding and other supplies. On Saturday August 18th West Point’s angry residents attacked health care workers.

On August 19th, a quarantine was announced forWest Point, trapping an estimated 75,000 people, turning the township in a huge graveyard. Residents were now in the killing fields of the epidemic. They can die, but at least it’s among themselves! The quarantine, causing the death of hundreds of people, not only because of Ebola, but also through malaria (children) and lack of food and clean water, had to be lifted after 10 days. In any case residents broke out in huge numbers.

The Ebola virus has all the potential to become a disaster on a scale never seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920, nearly one hundred years ago.

The cynicism of the world bourgeoisie

Until now there has only been a tiny influx of aid from the wealthy countries. Half way through September documented pledges or donations totalled $326.7 million dollars. Besides the mobilisation of a few hundred dedicated volunteer doctors and nurses, for the greater part little actual deliveries of supplies, equipment and healthcare personnel take place. The documented contributions still fall short of the $600 million that will be needed for hospital beds, personnel and other needs to subdue an outbreak that is spreading with alarming speed.

US spending, over the past nine months, amounts to barely $100 million dollars. This contrasts dramatically with the billions made available by the imperialist powers, and their allies among the Gulf monarchies, for the new war in Syria and Iraq, let alone the hundreds of billions squandered on wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless Obama described the Ebola outbreak as a “national security priority” for the US, for it could trigger the destabilization of west Africa, posing “profound economic, political and security implications”. So he could think of nothing else than the sending of three thousand troops.

Reports from the WHO point to an exponential increase in cases, doubling roughly every three weeks. The IRC, on behalf of 34 NGO’s, has warned that the globe has only four weeks to stop the crisis from spiralling out of control (October 2, 2014). At the same time it finds that, of the 1,500 new drugs that were made available worldwide between 1974 and 2004, only 10 targeted the tropical illnesses. Regarding Ebola, since 1976, hardly any research has been done. So tropical diseases continue to affect more than a billion people in the world and kill up to 500,000 a year.

John Ashton, Faculty of Public Health in London, described the actual situation as “the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of an ethical and social framework.” The New Yorker bluntly stated that“diseases that mostly affect poor people in poor countries aren't a research priority, because it’s unlikely that those markets will ever provide a return”.

The actual spreading of the Ebola provokes a huge anxiety in the central countries. As always, the very 'anti-racist' states are quite keen to use the fear of African travellers to stir up xenophobic sentiments among the population of Europe. The dominant fractions of the ruling class make their own use of the climate of fear and panic:

• to make everyone to forget the much greater threats that we face today, such as war or nuclear disasters;
• to encourage the population of the central countries to side with the bourgeois state for protection;
• to block with all possible means people from African countries searching for refuge in the central countries.

By using soap and clean water the Ebola virus can be rather simply contained. But present day capitalism is even not capable of applying such a simple measure. The Ebola outbreak is the product of a sharpening of the contradictions of capitalism which, for a century, “has only brought more misery and destruction in all their forms. Faced with the advanced decomposition of its system, the dominant class has nothing other to offer than ideological lies and repression”. (‘SARS: It is capitalism which is responsible for the epidemic’, World Revolution May 2003)

Zyart, 15.10.14

The recent wave of youth protest in Hong Kong was begun by students organised by the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism on September 14, when hundreds of them occupied the roadways of several major arteries in the city, particularly its business district. The protests were over the change in rules imposed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), mainly in restricting “civic” nominations in the electoral process for 2017. In fact, the post of Chief Executive, the issue in contention, has been appointed by Beijing since Britain handed the territory back in 1997 under the so-called “one country, two systems” idea. The change in the rules coming from Beijing aims to strengthen the role of the business community in the electoral process, thus reflecting and responding to the need of the Chinese ruling class to consolidate its already tight grip on Hong Kong politics.

After some hundreds of protesters were initially and violently cleared from the streets, “Occupy Central” (“Occupy Central with Love and Peace”), an organisation initiated by a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, demanded that the PRC (the People’s Republic of China) government listen to them and began a campaign of civil disobedience with the aim of securing a voting system that provides a process that “satisfies the international standards in relation to universal suffrage”. Democratic and pacifist ideas have dominated the left in Hong Kong since the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. The “Occupy Central” demand is doubly absurd because the state in every democratic country in the world today vets its own electoral candidates in one way or another and the origins of this demand lie with a particular legal faction of the island’s bourgeoisie. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) here is simply continuing the strategy used by British imperialism when it ruled the colony both at the level of legal chicanery and at the level of violent repression in order to reinforce its rule.
Following the repression of the students by police and organised thugs, government ultimatums, talking of “outside interference” and threatening bloody reprisals, came and went. What repression there was only served to bring more protesters onto the streets, resulting in a wider occupation of central points. A feature of the now dwindling protest movement has been its pacifism, its “politeness”, holding up arms as if in surrender, etc. This was especially noticeable in the business district of Admiralty and the super-expensive shopping district of Causeway Bay targeted by the protesters. By contrast, in the urban and working class district of Mong-Kok, fighting against the police has been ongoing and has only died down in the last few days. At the time of writing the government has had talks with the protest leaders and, given the demand for “universal suffrage”, appear to have things more or less under control for the moment, thus avoiding a more bloody repression for which the protesters were ill-prepared. The trade unions in Hong Kong, again built up by the British, have also joined the call for the “defence of democracy” alongside the protesters’ denunciation of the Hong Kong electoral process as “pseudo-democracy”. But again, all electoral and democratic processes from Europe to the Americas, from Africa to Afghanistan are “pseudo-democratic”, frauds and shams that keep the ruling class intact and the working class oppressed and divided. Another legacy of British rule is the division imposed by immigration and ghettos for the poor Mandarin-speaking workers with an estimated 50,000 of them living in little more than cages. There’s no concern for these workers in Occupy Central’s demand for “universal suffrage”.

The Mong-Kok “anarchists”

On the libcom website there are three texts coming from Hong Kong: the first is called “Never Retreat, a Mong-Kok State of Mind” signed by Kristine Kwok and another from Mong-Kok called “Hotpot, Gods and ‘Leftist Pricks’: Political Tensions in the Mong-Kok Occupation” signed by a Holok Chen. The third text is “Black vs Yellow: Class Antagonisms and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement” signed by “an American ultra and some friends”. We can look at the third in more detail but first the two based in Mong-Kok: the two texts seem to be from a related unidentified group. They see themselves as “anarchist” – though terms like “anarchist”, “leftist”, “left communist” are impossible to understand here.
These anarchist elements were involved in fights with the police, the organised thugs and some local people that didn’t agree with them. They insist on a carnival-type atmosphere to their occupation, including hot-pot, ping-pong and other games trying to construct their own “eco-system” in the area. They are not affiliated to “Occupy Central” and pose themselves as an opposition to it. They appear to see the need for discussion and assemblies but make no bones about the prime aim being “universal suffrage” (which doesn’t include immigrants incidentally) and for every group to maintain activity in their own area. They seem extremely limited and make no mention of the working class.

A contribution to a class perspective

The “Black vs Yellow...” text is something else and it’s not clear if it is in any way related to the previous group(s). Again some of terminology around the role of the “left” is difficult to understand, but there is much more weight and thought behind this long text which we will try to précis. The text clearly opposes the demand from the HKFS for democracy and universal suffrage and the author asks: what if such demands were met? The response is that it would mean participating in your own exploitation while giving rise to new bourgeois forces. The text criticises the group “Left21”, which expresses a commitment to the struggle for universal suffrage” and the establishment of a “participatory democracy” decided by the “people”. The participation in the democratic process is seen by “Left21” as a stage, a stepping-stone to the future where democratic reform can be superseded. We are familiar with these arguments about the justification of the democratic process as a means to a brighter future and it’s just as empty and dangerous in Hong Kong as it is in Britain and elsewhere. And the be-all and end-all of universal suffrage and democracy was also used against in the Indignados protest movement in Spain, in particular via the “Democracia Real Ya” (DRY), the main force for the democratic counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie.  Indeed this text points to the realities of the democracies of Greece and the United States as an answer to those that demand it here.

Another thing that the author is clear on is the economic basis for the protests. The Hong Kong economy, with the busiest port in the world, became a key re-export and service centre, developing its economy during the 80’s. This was beneficial to both China and Britain until the colony was handed back to China in 1997. Many of the mainland Chinese factories were set up with capital from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. But underlining the student unrest today are questions of inflation, sky-high rents (an average of 40% of wages), food prices, inequality and public transport. And on top of this the relatively “better off” Hong Kong youth suffer desperate competition for university degrees for jobs that will not exist, or increasingly long hours for young workers or graduates – those lucky enough to be on the exhausting treadmill. The original protest movement of 2014, which also has the background of the “approaching doom” of China, has been re-branded in the west as a pacifist movement limited to constitutional alterations. But it was begun by the Occupy movement in 2011 which, though small and chaotic, made some criticisms of the demand for democracy, and many elements from this milieu were behind the beginnings of the current protest. The original Occupy movement was cleared out by the end of 2012; and in March 2013 one of the largest and longest strikes for decades broke out at the Kwai Tsing Container Terminal. The author says, and there’s no reason to doubt it, that the student and worker protest, if not allied, “was generated by the same economic stagnation and intensifying class antagonism”.  Prior to this the text details the riots in the mid-50’s, and riots in 1967 that lasted for eighteen months and were “the largest domestic disturbances in the city-state’s history”. There were massive strikes and street fighting against the police; government buildings and media outlets were bombed and attacked and while we can say that some of this was stirred up by the mainland bourgeoisie which supported the riots against the “fascists”, there are also elements of class struggle. Around the same time the Portuguese army had intervened against the demands of the Chinese-backed protesters in its colony of Macau and then agreed to most of their demands as the colony fell under the de facto control of the mainland. The proletarian aspect to the 67/8 uprising in Hong Kong can be seen in the bourgeoisie’s response: post-68, after thousands of arrests and deportations, the British authorities responded with their post world war one and two “reform” programmes of building more affordable houses, increased wages and an expanded welfare system. There is little such room for manoeuvre today and the author emphasises the “no future” that capitalism holds for youth, the trap of democracy and nationalism and the need for the struggle to spread. There are some ambiguities and the author specifically doesn’t mention the need for assemblies but is relatively clear that the only effective struggle must both involve and be towards the working class. It is clear from the text that the only propensity for a real development of the struggle lies with the working class and first of all its spread to workers on the mainland. And it’s a fact that the majority of strikes have taken place in the Guangdong southern province adjacent to Hong Kong (though it’s also a fact that workers’ strikes on the mainland have spread to all workers and all industries to the interior). The text also makes references to the history of wildcat strikes in Hong Kong, the strikes and riots from the mid-80’s, the wildcat beginnings of the 1997dock strike and its subversion by the union (Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions – HKFTU). In September the union called for support for the students by calling a strike on a national holiday, and what few workers joined the student protest did so as individuals.

Looming problems for the Chinese bourgeoisie

From October 20 to 23, under the auspices of Chinese president Xi Jinping, the 205 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party held its Plenum dedicated to establishing “a system of the strict rule of law” (Reuters. 30.9.14). Under Xi’s eighteen month reign thousands of “corrupt” party officials have been executed, jailed, sacked or demoted in a widespread purge and settling of internal scores. It could mean a hardening stance, moving away from the weiwen policy of the maintenance of stability that has existed up to now. Of late there has been a crackdown on journalists and dissidents; internet censorship has been intensified and protesters from the countryside in the capital, mostly peasants with grievances, have been beaten up, jailed or deported back to their regions. We also saw the incidents of the direct repression of workers in and around the Yue Yuen strikes earlier in the year and the suggestion is that the situation will become more volatile. This need to confront the “social question” is all the more important for the ruling class in China now that the economy is slowing down and debt and the housing bubble are reaching unsustainable proportions. The coincidence of protest in Hong Kong and what must surely turn out to be rising levels of class struggle on the mainland presents the Chinese bourgeoisie with still more potential problems to solve, with repression and “the strict rule of law” the only possible answer that it has. Based in Hong Kong and its legal circles is the so-called “non-governmental organisation”, the “China Labour Bulletin” which is all for the pursuance of democracy and Free Trade Unions for Chinese workers “through peaceful and legal actions”. The CLB has supported and was probably involved in the promotion of the claims for “universal suffrage” among the students and its general approach could either be useful for the ruling class or it could invite repression. Whatever happens the CLB and its backers remain a danger for the working class with its claims for ‘democratic, free trade unions’.

Democracy and nationalism drowns the “Occupy Movement”

The “Black vs Yellow...” text is clear on the current weaknesses of the student protest and the capitalist nature of the demands for democracy that were imposed upon it. It surmises that the student protest has “few paths forward and many routes to defeat” and its critique of the democratic road to defeat, its analysis of “no future” and the necessity of a real extension to the working class as the only way forward are lessons that apply to all the “Occupy” movements across the globe.

We can say the indications are that after the heights of the Indignados movement in Spain, 2011/12, which had clear links with and possibilities for the class struggle, and the profound Occupy movements of Turkey and Brazil in 2012/13, that the movement has been checked first of all and then assimilated entirely into the framework of the bourgeoisie and its ideologies. Beginning in the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia), the more or less positive nature of this movement was expressed in Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, the UK, the US, Canada and Spain and now the international dynamic of this movement is at least on the wane. The Hong Occupy movement, as one example, seems to reflect this in that the vocal minorities of the original movement that were openly critical of democracy have been drowned out in the latest protests. Democracy, and its twin brothers nationalism and imperialism, have filled the vacuum left by a movement whose only possibility was to extend to the working class and for the working class in turn to give it a kiss of life. Another indication of the end of this wave is how the word “revolution” has been linked to elements of the “Arab Spring” and the Occupy movement. A revolution is a mighty event involving untold masses of class conscious workers acting on their own self-organised grounds. As positive as some expressions of Occupy were they never came anywhere near to this and, at best, could only be an element towards it. Instead we see these “revolutions”, in many cases supported by various anarchists, as completely bourgeois, nationalist and imperialist. The Ukrainian “revolution” in Kiev is a case in point where the working class was drowned and mobilised for war. Some anarchists still go on about the Syrian “revolution” by which they mean the US-backed gangs of the Free Syrian Army. And even today in the barbaric free-for-all in Syria, some anarchists, through their rose-tinted magnifying glasses, see “the best example of the ‘Arab Spring’ so far in the movement of the democratic society in Syrian Kurdistan”. These adjuncts to imperialist war define the “Democratic autonomy” of nationalist ideology in Syrian Kurdistan as a “revolution”.

Such forms of anarchism help obscure the way forward for the proletariat by assimilating imperialist war, nationalism and democracy with “revolution”. But the lessons remain the same for the working class in any protest movement or strike even if it’s only small minorities that have drawn them out: assemblies and meetings open to all; free discussion (contrast this to the personalities and leaders of the Hong Kong democracy movement lecturing passive crowds); extension to other workers and self-organisation. The Occupy movement may be done to death but it was a positive and international moment that was unable to go any further without a more profound proletarian turn.

Baboon, 29.10.14 

Public meeting in Budapest on World War I

The Budapest bookshop Gondolkodó Autonom Antikvárium invited the ICC to hold in September 2014 a public discussion in the city, as we have already done in previous years1. The ICC suggested for this year showing the film on our website “How the working class brought an end to World War I”. 100 years ago, the working class – betrayed by its organisations, the unions and the socialist parties – was unable to prevent the outbreak of the most terrible war in history until then. Today, the commemorations of World War I are a further occasion for nationalist propaganda in its liberal-democratic or more populist-patriotic versions. What is left out in most of the expositions, documentaries and articles on World War I is the reality about the end of the war, and the causes of the armistice. As the film illustrates, the first revolutionary wave of the world proletariat is an example of a 'secret in plain sight'.  The material for the film is from widely available sources on the internet; many of the photos come from Wikipedia and original film footage from youtube. The fact that there were strikes, mutinies and uprisings at the end of World War I is hardly a secret. The revolutionary turmoil that led to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the withdrawal of Germany from the war has been extensively covered by bourgeois historians. The connection between these events and the Russian Revolution is also widely known. But despite all this, the simple fact that there was a worldwide wave of workers' struggles, as the film says, “from Canada to Argentina, from Finland to Australia, from Spain to Japan”, and that these struggles were in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously, inspired by the example of the seizure of political power by the Russian workers in October 1917 - this is, in effect, still a secret, a fact that the world bourgeoisie is still very keen to keep hidden. Why? Because, again as the film says, for a few brief years these struggles shook the capitalist world to its very foundations, and the bourgeoisie today, despite all the difficulties of the proletariat, the apparent lack of struggles, the advance of the crisis and of decomposition, is still afraid of the example that the first revolutionary wave sets.

After showing the film we suggested a discussion not only on the historic events but also about the wars in the current phase of capitalist world order and about the role of the working class today. The proposed topics for the following debate were: nationalism vs. internationalism; is a further world war on the agenda of history? Do we face a future with less war? What kinds of wars are being waged today? What were the weaknesses of the first revolutionary wave of 1917-23? What are the difficulties for the working class and its revolutionary militants today?

The debate was, as always in Budapest, very lively and animated by the seriousness of the audience. There’s nothing self-evident about attending a public discussion about the perspectives of a classless society in a country whose inhabitants suffered 40 years of so-called Socialism (1949-89) and whose present government has and for a long time been openly based on Hungarian chauvinism. Taking an interest in such a meeting under these general political circumstances requires an attitude of being “against the current”. The economic situation in Hungary is worse than in most of the former “socialist” countries in Eastern Europe (Poland, Baltic EU members, Czech Republic, Slovakia) and the militancy of the working class is not more visible than in other countries. So the audience was rather politicised, politically and culturally “educated”, informed about the history of the workers’ movement and committed to clarification in open debate – from a proletarian point of view.

Questions about the revolutionary wave

The questions raised in the discussion at the beginning were about historical facts and the political assessment of events: about the Shanghai uprising in 1927, the Limerick workers’ council in Ireland 1920, the Slovak Republic of Councils in May/June 1919:

- The film says: “In 1927 more than half a million workers in Shanghai launch an armed insurrection and take control of the city. Again the uprising is brutally crushed by the nationalists in an orgy of bloodshed”. A participant wanted to know more about these events. The answer given by the ICC underlined the authentic working class character of the isolated but heroic Shanghai insurrection of March 1927.2 These struggles, which were still an expression of the ebbing wave, a “last gasp of world revolution” as we say in an article, took place in the huge expanse of China whose working class went through a phase of revolutionary ferment. The policy of the dominant Stalin faction in Russia towards the Chinese Communist Party consisted of establishing an anti-imperialist united front with the bourgeois Kuomintang to struggle for the ‘national liberation’ of China. Under Stalinist pressure the CCP ordered the workers to hand over their weapons to the Kuomintang who subsequently slaughtered the workers with these same weapons. So the Kuomintang brutally put an end to the Shanghai workers’ uprising, after the CCP had said to the workers to trust in the national army of Kuomintang leader Chang Kai Chek. What then followed and what the Maoists call the preparation of the “revolution” in 1949 was in fact only a long war between different bourgeois armies, leading to the seizure of power by Mao and the CCP in military uniforms.

- A comrade in the audience asked the question why there is nothing in the film about the Limerick soviet in summer 1920. In fact a 23 minutes film about the whole international dimension of the revolutionary wave cannot be complete, there are necessarily many struggles that can’t be mentioned, and many vital issues that can’t be covered – a film is not an article or a book. But it would certainly be worth drawing the lessons of this Irish example of a self-organised workers’ struggle – and about the role of nationalism (IRA, Sinn Fein) in the crushing of this movement.3

- The same could be said about the support given to the Slovak Republic of Councils in June 1919 by the Hungarian Red Army. These events are well registered in the memories of the politicised people in Eastern Central Europe, but not profoundly treated in the film. The ICC delegation could not refer to the concrete events in Slovakia in 1919 because of a lack of profound knowledge about the historical facts, but for the military aspect of the question it insisted on the principle that military means cannot replace the consciousness and self-activity of the working class, as the failure in 1920 of the (Russian) Red Army offensive in Poland showed.

Social democracy before 1914

A longer discussion evolved about the nature of social democracy before 1914 and during World War I. A comrade summed up a criticism of several participants of the ICC statement (also present in the film) about the “betrayal of social democracy”. The ICC defends the position that most of the member parties of the 2nd International betrayed the working class because these workers’ parties of the 19th century declared in different occasions before 1914 their attachment to the principle of internationalism (to defend the class, and not the nation state). However most of the leaders of the majority of these parties betrayed this principle by openly supporting their national bourgeoisie in the first days of August 1914 when war credits were voted in parliaments and the disaster began. Against this view of things the comrade speaking for a divergent position stated that the notion of betrayal does not make sense because “social democracy was never in favour of revolution”. According to this reasoning the parties of the 2nd International were workers’ parties, but not revolutionary ones since the working class in this pre-war period was not revolutionary; the social democratic parties were an expression of the weaknesses of the class in those days, and the latter was not only a victim of betrayal but part of it. Another comrade referred in the same discussion to the enthusiasm for war at the beginning of WWI and to the fact that the SPD (in Germany) was already tied to the capitalist state by its important parliamentary fraction.

There are different aspects to this discussion. The ICC defends the general framework of the ascendance and decadence of capitalism with different tasks for revolutionaries in the different periods. The social democratic parties of the ascendant period, ending with WWI, struggled for reforms within capitalism AND for revolution, as Rosa Luxemburg stated in 1899 in her polemic “Social reform or revolution ?” against party comrade Eduard Bernstein. Consequently the workers’ parties of this period hosted different currents, from openly reformist and statist ones to revolutionary currents like those around Luxemburg, Lenin, Pannekoek, Bordiga etc. In 1914 the leaders of most of the social democratic parties were effectively on the side of the national bourgeoisie – and then betrayed in theory and practice the internationalist principles of the Stuttgart and Basle Congresses of the 2nd International. During the war the revolutionary fractions prepared the formation of the 3rd International because the 2nd collapsed with the outbreak of the world war and because of the betrayal of most of its member parties.

Another aspect in this discussion is the question: to what extent do we consider ourselves to be part of the revolutionary tradition of previous periods? To what extent do we share a common heritage of principles and method, common concepts?

The comrades in the audience who did not share the historical framework of ascendance and decadence of capitalism insisted on the lack of a “communist programme” in social democracy, saying even without the betrayal of the leaders it would have been attached to reformism and the bourgeois/capitalist state. But despite this different historical framework there was a general concern in the discussion to see the working class and its revolutionary vanguard in their mutual relationship: the weaknesses of the class with respect to its self-organisation, but also the theoretical weaknesses of the communists and internationalist anarchists of the period. The role of unions and a lot of questions concerning the relationship between the class and its vanguard still needed to be clarified.

A young participant, referring to the situation of 1919 in Hungary, said that the seizure of power in the name of the working class was carried out by the social democratic and communist party leaders, and not by the spontaneous activity of the self-organized proletariat. Another particpant at the meeting underlined the fact that the Communist Party created in Hungary in autumn 1918 was formed by very different currents (Marxists, syndicalists, former prisoners of war returning from revolutionary Russia, and others) and was eclectic in its programme.

Today’s wars and class movements

In the last part of the discussion questions were raised about current issues. Most of the participants at the debate seemed to agree on the assessment about the increasing danger of war today. The expanding spiral of bloodshed in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine is all too obvious. One participant said that violence and war are stretching their grip from the periphery to the centres of capitalist power. If there was a divergence in this part of the discussion it was probably about the question of an economic rationality of these conflicts. Whereas the ICC comrades stressed the growing irrationality of today’s wars of decomposition, e.g. in the areas claimed by the Islamic State (IS), other participants replied that even these wars are profitable for some capitalists and even for capitalism as a whole. But here we are talking about two different kinds of rationality: on the one side the rationality of profits for some particular capitalists, on the other side the rationality of a species that needs to become fully human.

The last question raised in the discussion was: why didn’t the workers join the Occupy movement? Our reply was that even if numerous people gathering around this banner in 2011/13 belonged to the working class the movement as a whole did not think of extending their struggle towards the working class, except for some limited cases in Spain and in California. And most of the Occupy demonstrators did not conceive themselves as proletarian, although they often were. The difficulty of the class to develop a specific class identity was already a topic in the Budapest discussion in 2010. It is part of the consciousness within the class that must ripen. Without this self-consciousness of the revolutionary subject the jump to a new and really human society will not be possible.

It is – by the way – interesting that in the Budapest discussions one question that we hear often in Western Europe, i.e. the question of the existence of the working class, is never posed. Here the need for a class response is not questioned. It seems that there is a common concept of what the working class is, of its characteristics and responsibilities.

We want to thank again the bookshop Gondolkodó Autonom Antikvárium for the invitation to hold a public discussion and the audience for the debate which can only strengthen mutually our forces and capacities.

ICC, September 2014