In WR 280 we included part of a report presented to our recent 16th Congress on the current position of British imperialism. In this issue we’re publishing the resolution on the British situation adopted by the Congress.
1. The economic crisis has continued to develop for more than 35 years. The bourgeoisie has been able to slow the pace of the crisis and even to gain temporary respite in some areas of the world. But it is unable to halt or reverse the crisis. One illustration of this is the slow decline in the average global growth rate per decade, which fell rapidly from 5.2 % in 1962-69 to 2.8% in 1980-89 and more slowly after that, with rates of 2.6% in 1990-99 and 2.2% in 2000-2002. A second illustration is the growth of debt, both national and household, which has risen significantly and remains high. This debt is crucial to the survival of capitalism. A third illustration is the increase and persistence of unemployment.
2. The British economy seems to stand at odds with this. “Since the mid-1990s, GDP growth, inflation and unemployment have been remarkably stable in the United Kingdom. Nowhere else in the OECD has economic activity remained so consistently close to trend over this period. The United Kingdom has also been among the most resilient economies during the recent downturn” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.23). It has even been able to close the gap with France and Germany, its historic economic rivals, leading to claims that it has been able halt its historic decline.
3. The above average growth rates achieved by British capitalism in recent years are the result of an increase in exploitation. The productivity of British industry is substantially below that of Germany, France and the US. Unit labour costs have risen more rapidly than in the US, while Germany and France have achieved reductions. Investment in research and development and in training remain below that of the OECD as a whole. The increase has been due principally to an increase in the hours worked and to a lesser extent to an increase in the proportion of the population of working age actually in work. While the official working day has declined there has been a real increase due to the growth of overtime, which is frequently unpaid. The hours worked declined from the start of the last century until 1984 when they began to rise again. Long hours for one part of the working class goes hand in hand with part time work for another part and reflects a general polarisation between overwork and underwork. The health of the British economy rests on a regression to the early days of capitalism when growth was achieved through the increase in the absolute rate of exploitation. This situation is the result of a quarter of a century of gradual, covert attacks by the British bourgeoisie, to create a ‘flexible’ labour market and reduce restrictions on business and it reveals once again its intelligence and ruthlessness.
4. The increase in production has not been realised through a corresponding increase in trade. The historical decline of Britain’s share of world trade, from 25.4% of manufactured goods in 1959 to 7.9% in 1992 has now reached 5.2% of both manufacturing and service industries while the overall balance of trade remains negative. Nor is it due to increased government spending, which has averaged about 40% of GDP a year since 1990. The increase in growth rates rests on a very substantial rise in the indebtedness of the working class. Average household debt has risen to 135% of income; credit card debt has gone up at a rate of 12% a year and re-mortgaging is currently running at 16% per year. Total debt in Britain reached £1 trillion in the spring of 2004.
5. The developing pensions’ ‘crisis’ in Britain, as in the rest of the advanced capitalist countries, is an eloquent expression of the bankruptcy of the whole capitalist system. Something that should be positive, the increase in life expectancy, in decomposing capitalism becomes negative because it confronts the working class with a future of continued exploitation and poverty. Furthermore, the working class benefits least from the increase in life expectancy. The pensions’ ‘crisis’ is not a result of the success of capitalism but its failure. A consequence of the crisis of capitalism, it is turned into an ideological and material attack on the working class by the ruling class.
6. The health of the British economy rests on diseased foundations; its current animation is a result of the drug of debt. The ruling class knows this and is trying to manage and limit the decline; hence the policy of gradually increasing interest rates to slow the escalation of debt. At the same time it cannot allow it to stop: if the working class decides to follow government advice and save for its pension the economy will slide; if house prices decline sharply it has been estimated that growth will drop by 2 percentage points. This is the dilemma of the ruling class and is why it is renewing efforts to increase the labour force participation rate, notably through the assault on incapacity benefit. Similarly, the increase in the absolute exploitation of the working class risks provoking a response; hence the efforts to once again increase productivity through a range of measures to increase skill levels, favour investment and research and reduce costs. The British bourgeoisie will try to maintain its success in managing the crisis but it will become harder and harder for it to do so, requiring more direct attacks on the working class that risk provoking the response it has worked so hard to prevent.
7. Following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, the ICC recognised that imperialist rivalry had entered a new phase: “In the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterised the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force” (IR 64, “Militarism and Decomposition”, 1991). This has been amply confirmed in the years since, above all by the wars in the Gulf, in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Gulf again but also by the innumerable small, but no less cruel and bloody wars all over the globe.
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8. The British bourgeoisie, drawing on its long experience, generally recognised that its interests were best served by trying to play the US off against Europe. One of the main reasons for the election of the Blair government was because it was capable of pursuing this independent strategy in an effective manner. This led to conflict with the US in which Britain gave and received blows, tacking now to the US, as in the first Gulf War and now against, as in the offensive in Kosovo. The US for its part used the situation in Northern Ireland to apply pressure, culminating in the Good Friday agreement that brought the republican movement into the government.
9. Following the attack on the World Trade Centre, the US launched its war on terror, in reality an attempt to encircle its main rivals in Europe. The British bourgeoisie’s response was to immediately turn towards the US, not from any sense of loyalty or solidarity in the war against terror, as the media proclaimed, but in order to be in as good a position as possible to safeguard and defend its interests. In this it showed its understanding of the real stakes of the situation. It recognised that it had either to turn to the US or to Europe – in reality Germany. The move towards the US was the best tactic for it to maintain its independent strategy by adapting it to the new situation; it was not a change of strategy.
10. Since 9/11 the independent strategy has continued to be pursued by the British bourgeoisie in both word and deed. It has proclaimed its determination to be a ‘force for good’ in the world and affirmed its intention to maintain alliances with a range of powers. While it has very publicly continued its alliance with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, elsewhere it has been willing to quietly oppose US interests. It has sided with Europe against the US in Iran, with France in Africa and played its own hand in the Middle East and Libya. In Ireland it has tried to reduce the impact of the Good Friday agreement through the suspension of the power-sharing executive and the refusal to hold elections.
11. The central division that has developed within the British bourgeoisie is not a dispute over strategy but over the best tactic to continue to defend the independent strategy that remains the dominant view in the ruling class. Recently Blair has reaffirmed Britain’s independent stance and declared his opposition to US ‘unilateralism’.
12. The tactic that the British ruling class is following is dictated by the dynamic of the situation, but it is unstable. The increasing tensions between the great powers can only make it harder for any policy that situates itself between them and that attempts to play one against the other. The British bourgeoisie is incapable of resolving the contradiction it is in. This is because there is no rational solution. The US will continue to assert itself and, recognising the situation of the British bourgeoisie, will put pressure on it without mercy. The danger of the tack towards the US lies in the fact that it makes the British ruling class more vulnerable, not just to pressure from the US but to reciprocal pressure from its European rivals. The perspective is thus for the contradiction to continue to sharpen.
13. With the collapse of the Eastern bloc the class struggle entered a new phase. The reflux in class consciousness and combativity led to the loss of the class’ sense of identity. In the decade and a half that followed there were important developments in the situation, with some significant expressions of combativity and a high level of manoeuvres by the bourgeoisie. The weakening of the impact of the campaigns around the ‘death of communism’, the evident falseness of the idea of a new world order and of an economic recovery created the situation in which a qualitative change in the situation could begin to develop. The large scale struggles in France in 2003 were one expression of this. The subsequent relative success of the ruling class in re-imposing a degree of social peace has not reversed this development.
14. There have been no similar large scale struggles in Britain although there have been some significant smaller strikes, such as by postal workers and the fire-fighters. The British bourgeoisie has continued to use manoeuvres against the working class. This does not mean that the situation in Britain is an exception but that the evolution of the situation does not affect everywhere equally or at the same time. In particular, the relative success of the British bourgeoisie in defending the economy and spreading propaganda about its health means that illusions in the economy are greater than elsewhere.
15. Another factor in the relative calm in the class struggle in Britain has been the ability of the bourgeoisie to introduce its attacks in a gradual, almost hidden way. Official unemployment has fallen substantially, the reality being hidden by various methods and most effectively by pushing workers onto incapacity benefit. The fact that these efforts are hidden somewhat clumsily means that the ideological impact of unemployment - spreading fear amongst the working class – is still there. Real poverty has also grown, albeit hidden behind a plethora of anti-poverty strategies while the polarisation of wealth has increased. In the degradation of the environments in which it lives and works and in its human relationships the proletariat feels the impact of decomposition increasingly sharply. Despair, violence and the fear of violence grip many and obliterate the idea of a meaningful future for humanity.
16. The ruling class has waged a largely successful offensive against the working class, both materially and ideologically. It has led the world bourgeoisie in the effectiveness of its economic attacks and has continued to mount successful manoeuvres against the class struggle. The election of the Labour government marked a strengthening of the ruling class against the working class, especially given the anger directed at the Tory government and the illusions in the new government, which was consequently able to take the attacks to a level impossible under the previous government. Overall, the Labour government expressed a strengthening of state capitalism.
17. However, the ruling class also suffers from the effect of decomposition. One expression of this is the personalised dispute between Blair and Brown. Another is the informalism of the Blair government, which prompted criticism from the Butler Report.
18. The working class in Britain is not currently at the forefront of the class struggle. This expresses the heterogeneity of the situation of the class, which results from the continuing weight of the reflux and the campaigns of the bourgeoisie and the real difficulty of the working class even to recognise itself as a class in society rather than just a collection of individuals. There are a number of reasons for the current situation in Britain: the experience of the two classes, the historic strength of the unions, the legacy of the defeats suffered in the miners’ strike, the effectiveness of the gradual introduction of economic attacks and the continuing ideological weight of the Labour government. The working class in Britain still harbours illusions in the capacity of capitalism to meet its needs but, despite all the skill of the bourgeoisie in managing the crisis, its deepening means that more direct attacks have to be made and illusions become harder to sustain. As this happens the working class in Britain will begin to march in step with its class comrades around the world.
After the tsunami of 26 December hit countries around the Indian Ocean, and the extent of the devastation became apparent, the media bombarded us with a massive news offensive. They started with images of people drowning, buildings and boats smashed to pieces, dead bodies lying wherever they had come to rest and then moved on to villages entirely wiped out, road networks completely destroyed, satellite pictures of areas so trashed that they were barely recognisable. Accompanying this came an avalanche of statistics alongside heartbreaking individual stories of those who died and those who have survived.
The media behaved as though we were witnessing an unforeseen act of God.
In the light of this propaganda the ICC rapidly prepared an international statement (“Capitalism is the real disaster!” see our website internationalism.org) and has held meetings in a number of countries showing capitalism’s responsibility for the human disaster, the hypocrisy of the ruling class, saluting real acts of solidarity and showing the potential of international working class solidarity.
The tsunami wasn’t a bolt from the blue. “The experts on the spot knew that a disaster was imminent. During a meeting of physicists in Jakarta in December, a group of Indonesian seismologists brought up the subject with a French expert. They were perfectly aware of the danger of tsunamis, since earthquakes occur constantly in the region” (Libération, 31/12/04). An ex-director of the International Centre for Information on Tsunami insisted that “The Indian Ocean possesses the basic infrastructure and communications for seismic measurement. And nobody should have been taken by surprise, since an earthquake of 8.1 on the Richter scale occurred on 24th December. This should have alerted the authorities. What is lacking is the political will in the countries concerned, and an international coordination on the scale of what has been built in the Pacific” (Libération, 28/12/04). And indeed, within 15 minutes of the earthquake, the American weather bureau in Hawaii warned 26 countries of the danger of tsunamis close to the epicentre, and yet the Japanese weather bureau failed to pass on the information, because the news did not concern Japan. The Indian Airforce got the information, but its warnings were delayed. The central weather bureau in Thailand took no action.
This wasn’t negligence or lack of political will. It was the criminal policy of the ruling class which revealed its profound contempt for the exploited and oppressed who are the main victims of the capitalist state.
In contrast to the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie - always quick enough to mobilise for war - there were tremendous examples of solidarity across the world. Survivors did not wait for relief before helping each other. In the tourist areas, the local population helped out travellers who had lost everything, while tourists helped clear debris and start rebuilding. Spontaneously, millions of people, and workers in particular, offered food, clothing, and money to help the victims.
But working class solidarity can’t be reduced to mere charity. On the one hand, because the financial help offered will be no more than a drop in the ocean given the extent of the catastrophe. On the other, because the money collected will never relieve the distress of people who have lost their nearest and dearest, whose bodies been dumped without ceremony in common graves.
Money cannot repair the irreparable. Nor can these gestures of financial solidarity attack the problem at its root: they cannot prevent the repetition of new disasters in other parts of the world.
Class solidarity can only develop on the basis of a denunciation of the capitalist system’s ruling class: they alone are guilty of this disaster!
The workers of the world must understand that by resisting the ruling class, and by overthrowing its system of death, they alone can raise a worthy monument to all those human lives sacrificed on the altar of capitalism in the name of profitability.
In a few months, for the ruling class and its charity organisations, this disaster will be forgotten. The working class cannot forget it, just as it cannot forget the massacres perpetrated by the Gulf War and all the other wars and so-called ‘natural’ disasters. The workers of the world can never consider this disaster ‘resolved’. It must remain in their memory, and spur on their determination to develop their struggle and their class unity against the barbarity of capitalism.
The working class is the only force in society today which can offer a real gift to the victims of the bourgeoisie by overthrowing capitalism and building a new society, based not on profit but on the satisfaction of human need. It is the only class whose revolutionary perspective can offer a future to the human race.
This is why the solidarity of the proletariat must go much further than an emotional solidarity. It must be based, not on feelings of impotence or guilt, but above all on class consciousness.
Only the development of proletarian class solidarity, a solidarity based on the awareness of capitalism’s bankruptcy, will be able to lay the foundations for a society where the crimes that the bourgeoisie presents to us as ‘natural’ disasters can no longer be committed, where all this abominable barbarism can at last be overcome and abolished. WR
Hitherto unpublished documents have been dug out to illustrate once again the abomination suffered by the deportees, and the unimaginable barbarity of their Nazi torturers and executioners. But it is certainly no accident that the search for truth and ‘authenticity’ comes to a grinding halt as soon reality threatens to compromise the ‘democratic camp’. For the Allies, who were perfectly aware of the reality of the Holocaust, did nothing to hinder the execution of the Nazis’ macabre schemes. It is up to revolutionaries to bring this reality to light, as we do here through the republication of extracts from an article first published in the International Review n°89: ‘Allies and Nazis jointly responsible for the Holocaust’.
Moreover, the barbarism of the democratic camp during World War II lived up to that of the fascist camp, in both the horror of their crimes and the cynicism with which they were committed: the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg, or the nuclear devastation visited on an already defeated Japan. This is why we declare, together with our comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France (in their leaflet of June 1945 which we publish below: “Buchenwald, Maideneck: macabre demagoguery”), that it was not the German, American, or British workers who were responsible for a war they never wanted, but the bourgeoisie and capitalism.
From 1945 to the present day, the bourgeoisie has constantly exhibited the obscene images of the heaps of corpses found in the Nazi extermination camps, and the starving bodies of those who survived that hell. By contrast, during the war, the Allies were very discreet about the camps, to the point where they were completely absent from the wartime propaganda of the ‘democratic camp’.
This might be explained by the Allies’ ignorance, not of the camps’ existence but of their use for systematic extermination from 1942-43 onwards. After all, spy satellites did not exist in those days... This fairy story, according to which the Allies only found out what was really happening at Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka etc, will not stand up to the slightest historical study. The secret services existed already, and were very active and efficient, as we can see from certain episodes of the war where they played a determining role, and the existence of the death camps could not have escaped their attention. This is confirmed by the work of numerous historians of World War II. Thus in the French paper Le Monde of 27th September 1996 we read: “A massacre [ie that perpetrated in the camps] whose extent and systematic nature were contained in a report by the Jewish social-democratic party, the Polish Bund, was officially confirmed to American officials by the famous telegram of 8th August 1942, despatched by G. Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva on the basis of information supplied by a German industrialist from Leipzig named Edward Scholte. We know that at this time, most of the European Jews doomed to die were still alive”. It is thus clear that the Allied governments were perfectly aware, from various sources, of the existence of the genocide under way by 1942, and yet the leaders of the ‘democratic camp’, Roosevelt, Churchill and their henchmen, did everything to avoid these revelations being given any hasty publicity, and even gave strict instructions to the press to maintain an extreme discretion on the subject. In fact, they lifted not a finger to save the millions condemned to die. This is confirmed in the same article of Le Monde, which writes “(...) in the mid-1980s, the American author D. Wyman, in his book The Desertion of the Jews (Calmann-Lévy) showed that several hundred thousand lives could have been saved were it not for the apathy, or even the obstruction, of certain organs of the US administration (such as the State Department), and of the Allies in general”. These extracts from the thoroughly bourgeois and democratic Le Monde only confirm what has always been said by the Communist Left. As for the loud and virtuous cries of horror - after 1945 - from all the champions of the ‘rights of man’ at the horror of the Holocaust, the Allies’ silence during the war shows just how much they are worth.
Is this silence to be explained by the latent anti-Semitism of certain Allied leaders, as some post-war Jewish historians have maintained? Anti-Semitism is certainly not restricted to fascist regimes but this is not the real reason behind the silence of the Allies’, some of whose leaders were either Jews themselves, or close to Jewish organisations (Roosevelt for example). No, the real reason behind this remarkable discretion lies in the laws that regulate the capitalist system, whether its rule be covered by the banner of democracy or of totalitarianism. As in the enemy camp, all the Allies’ resources were mobilised for the war. No useless mouths, everybody must be occupied, either at the front or in the production of armaments. The arrival en masse of populations from the camps, of children and old people who could not be sent to the front or the factory, of sick and exhausted men and women who could not be immediately integrated into the war effort, would only have disorganised the latter. So the frontiers were closed, and such immigration prevented by every means possible. In 1943 - in other words at a time when the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie was perfectly aware of the reality of the camps - Anthony Eden, minister of His Most Gracious and Democratic Britannic Majesty decided at Churchill’s request that “no ship of the United Nations can be affected to transfer the refugees to Europe”, while Roosevelt added that “transporting so many people would disorganise the war effort” (Churchill, Memoirs, Vol 10). These are the real and sordid reasons that led these accredited anti-fascists and democrats to remain silent about what was happening in Dachau, Buchenwald, and others of sinister memory! The humanitarian considerations that were supposed to drive the anti-fascist camp, united against fascist barbarism, had no place in their sordid capitalist interests and the demands of the war machine.
However, contrary to the laments of this bourgeois paper, the ‘democratic camp’ was not an accomplice to Holocaust merely out of ‘bad faith’ or bureaucratic sloth. As we will see, this complicity was wholly conscious. At first, the deportation camps were essentially labour camps, where the German bourgeoisie could benefit from a cheap labour force entirely at its mercy, directed entirely to the war effort. Although the extermination camps existed already, at the time they were more the exception than the rule. But after its first serious military reversals, especially against the terrible war machine set in motion by the USA, German imperialism could no longer properly feed its own troops and population. The Nazi regime thus decided to rid itself of the excess population in the camps, and from then on the gas-ovens spread their sinister shadow everywhere. The abomination of the executioners carefully gathering their victims’ teeth, hair, and finger-nails to feed the German war machine, was the fruit of an imperialism at bay, retreating on every front, and plumbing the depths of the irrationality of imperialist war. But although the Nazi regime and its underlings perpetrated the Holocaust without a qualm, it brought little benefit to German capital, desperately trying to gather together the wherewithal to resist the Allies’ inexorable advance. In this context, there were several attempts - in general conducted directly by the SS - to make some profit out of these hundreds of thousands, even millions of prisoners, by selling them to, or exchanging them with the Allies.
The most famous episode of this sinister bargaining was the approach made to Joel Brand, the leader of a semi-clandestine organisation of Hungarian Jews, whose story has been told in the book by A. Weissberg, cited in the pamphlet on Auschwitz, the Great Alibi. He was taken to Budapest to meet the SS officer in charge of the Jewish question, Adolf Eichmann, who instructed him to negotiate with the British and American governments for the liberation of a million Jews, in exchange for 10,000 trucks, but making it clear that he was ready to accept less, or even different goods. To demonstrate their good faith, and the seriousness of their proposal, the SS even proposed to release 100,000 Jews as soon as Brand obtained an agreement in principle, without asking anything in exchange. During his journey, Brand made the acquaintance of British prisons in the Middle East, and after many delays which, far from being accidents were deliberately put in his way by the Allied governments to avoid an official meeting, he was finally able to discuss the proposal with Lord Moyne, the British government’s representative in the Middle East. There was nothing personal in the latter’s utter refusal of Eichmann’s proposal: he was merely following the instructions of the British cabinet. Nor was it a moral refusal to bow to a revolting blackmail. There is no room left for doubt when we read Brand’s own account of the discussion: “I begged him to give me at least a written agreement, even if he failed to keep to it, which would at least save 100,000 lives. Moyne then asked what would be the total number. I replied that Eichmann had spoken of a million. ‘But how can you imagine such a thing Mr Brand? What would I do with a million Jews? Where would I put them? Who would take them in?’. In desperation, I said that if the earth no longer had room for us, there was nothing left for us but to let ourselves be exterminated”. As Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi so rightly says of this glorious episode of World War II, “unfortunately, while the supply was there, the demand was not! Not just the Jews, but even the SS had been taken in by the Allies’ humanitarian propaganda! The Allies did not want these million Jews! Not for 10,000 trucks, not for 5,000, not even for nothing”.
Some recent historiography has tried to show that this refusal was due above all to Stalin’s veto. This is just another attempt to hide the direct complicity of the ‘great democracies’ in the Holocaust, revealed in the misadventure of the naïve Brand, whose veracity nobody seriously contests. Suffice to say in reply that during the war, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were in the habit of being dictated to by Stalin, while on this particular point they were on the same wavelength as the ‘little father of the peoples’, demonstrating the same brutality and cynicism throughout the war. The thoroughly democratic Roosevelt refused other, similar attempts by the Nazis, for example when at the end of 1944 they tried to sell Jews to the “Organisation of American Jews”, demonstrating their good faith by deporting 2000 Jews to Switzerland, as is detailed by Y. Bauer in his book Jews for Sale (published by Liana Levi).
None of this is an accident, or the fault of leaders rendered ‘insensitive’ by the terrible sacrifices demanded by the war against the ferocious fascist dictatorship - the explanations usually put forward to justify Churchill’s ruthlessness, for example, of certain inglorious episodes of the 1939-45 war. Anti-fascism never expressed a real antagonism between on the one hand a camp defending democracy and its values, and on the other a totalitarian camp. This was never anything but a ‘red rag’ waved before the workers to justify the war by hiding its classically inter-imperialist nature as a war to divide up the world between the great imperialist sharks. The Communist International had already warned that this war was inevitable as soon as the Treaty of Versailles was signed; anti-fascism made it possible to wipe this warning from the workers’ minds, before enrolling them for the biggest slaughter in history. While it was necessary, during the war, to keep the frontiers firmly closed to all those who tried to escape the Nazi hell in order not to disorganise the war effort, once the war was over it was another matter entirely. The publicity suddenly given to the camps’ existence after 1945 was manna from heaven to the bourgeois propaganda machine. Turning the spotlight on the awful reality of the death camps allowed the Allies to hide their own innumerable crimes, and to attach the proletariat firmly to the defence of a democracy presented by all the bourgeois parties, from the right to the Stalinists, as a value common to working and ruling classes, something defended against the danger of new Holocausts.
The role of the SS, the Nazis, and their camp of industrialised death, was to exterminate in general all the opponents of the fascist régime, and above all the revolutionary militants who have always been in the forefront of the combat against the capitalist bourgeoisie, in whatever form: autocratic, monarchical, or ‘democratic’, whether led by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Leopold III, George V, Victor-Emmanuel, Churchill, Roosevelt, Daladier or De Gaulle.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in October 1917, the international bourgeoisie tried every possible and imaginable means to crush it; in 1919, they broke the German revolution with an unprecedentedly savage repression; they drowned in blood the insurrection of the Chinese proletariat. The same bourgeoisie financed fascist propaganda in Italy, then that of Hitler in Germany; the same bourgeoisie put into power in Germany the man they had appointed as the gendarme of Europe. And today, the vary same bourgeoisie is spending millions “to finance the creation of an exhibition on Hitler’s crimes”, with photos, and the public projection of films on “German atrocities”, while the victims of these atrocities continue to die, often without any medical attention, and those who escaped are returning home without the means to live.
It is the same bourgeoisie that paid for Germany’s rearmament, and then dragged the proletariat into the war with the anti-fascist ideology; that helped Hitler to power, and then used him to crush the German proletariat and then hurl it into the bloodiest war, the vilest butchery imaginable.
It is the very same bourgeoisie that today sends its representatives to kneel hypocritically, with their floral bouquets, on the tombs of the dead that they themselves caused, because it is incapable of running society, and because war is its only way of life.
We accuse it for the millions of deaths that it has caused and which are, alas, no more than an addition to an already too long list of the martyrs of ‘civilisation’, of a decomposing capitalist society.
It is not the Germans who are responsible for Hitler’s crimes. They were the first, in 1934, to pay for Hitler’s bourgeois repression with 450,000 deaths, and who continued to suffer this merciless repression even when it was exported abroad. Neither are the French, the British, the Americans, the Russians or the Chinese responsible for the horrors of a war they did not want, but which their rulers forced on them.
Millions of men and women died slowly in the Nazi concentration camps; they were savagely tortured and now their bodies are rotting somewhere. Millions died fighting in the war, or were struck down by a ‘liberating’ bombardment. These millions of corpses, mutilated, amputated, torn apart, disfigured, buried in the ground or rotting in the open, these millions of dead, soldiers, women, old people, children, all cry out for vengeance. And they cry for vengeance, not against the German people, who are still paying, but against this infamous, hypocritical, and unscrupulous bourgeoisie, which did not pay for the war, but on the contrary profited from it. Today, their pigs’ faces stuffed with the fat of the land, they are teasing their still hungry slaves.
The only position for the proletariat, is not to respond to the demagogues’ calls to continue and heighten chauvinism through anti-fascist committees, but the class struggle in direct defence of their interests, their right to life: the struggle every day, every instant, until the destruction of this monstrous régime, capitalism.
Towards the end of last year, George Monbiot, celebrated opponent of ‘neo-liberalism’, announced “the resumption of the most deadly conflict since the second world war” (Guardian 14/12/04). He claimed “the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), already responsible for 3.8 million deaths” has, in his words, “started again”.
Since the first eruption of the conflict in the DRC in October 1996, people have been dying from war, famine and disease. Monbiot, drawing on research from the International Rescue Committee states that “over 1,000 people a day are still dying from disease and malnutrition” but says this is “caused by the last conflict”. What he seems to have missed is that, despite the past return of some troops to Rwanda and Uganda, the official ceasefire of December 2002, a new constitution, a transitional government from June 2003, and subsequent agreements to end hostilities and disarm, the imperialist war in the =DRC has never stopped.
Monbiot says “it is hard to find anyone who gives a damn about the Congo”. If he ‘gave a damn’ about the situation he could, for example, have turned to the website of the UN mission to the DRC (monuc.org) where an outline of events shows that there has been no let up in the conflict during the last two years.
Continuing troop movements, fighting between different militia, hostilities between armed groups, violence against government forces, attacks on UN forces, massacres in villages, massacres in refugee camps, slaughtered civilians and children, movements of hundreds of thousands of people away from areas with the worst fighting, explosions, exactions by local militia, attacks on rebel training camps, attacks on government military camps, towns taken by insurgents, areas retaken by government forces, weapons continuing to arrive in the country despite an arms embargo: all these and more are recorded by the UN. The UN Security Council has condemned violent attacks on the population (and the UN mission), and other actions of the armed militias. It has regularly renewed the mandate of one of the most expensive UN ‘peacekeeping’ forces, and progressively increased its numbers, for example, last August more than doubling it to nearly 24,000 troops.
Monbiot, suddenly alert to Rwandan military intervention in north-eastern DRC and conflict between rival factions of the Congolese Army, recalls the “last conflict” when the “six African armies that had been drawn into the conflict, their proxy militias and the government of the DRC started fighting a monumental turf war” over the mineral resources of the eastern DRC. While all the armed forces committed atrocities in the past, he singles out the Rwandan army for criticism, and suggests “it would not be hard for the international community to defuse the world’s most deadly conflict”.
As both an explanation of what is happening and a suggestion of how a peaceful resolution is possible this is inadequate. As we have explained in previous articles on the Congo (WR 246, 264, 266) this vast country, sharing borders with nine other nations is of great strategic importance in Central Africa. Its copper, diamond, coltan and cobalt resources are not the central question, and while neighbouring African states are interested in establishing some influence, bigger imperialist powers have control over the DRC as an aim.
For 32 years before his overthrow in 1997, President Mobutu had the support of French imperialism. Using military forces from Rwanda and Uganda (at the bidding of the US) Laurent Kabila came to power, demonstrating the growing influence of the US in the region, and the undermining of France’s position. Once in power he put the interest of his own faction above those of his imperialist backers, threatening to destabilise Rwanda and Uganda, while getting the backing of troops from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad (the last three countries not even being immediate neighbours).
The assassination of Kabila in January 2001, and his replacement by his son was supposed to have given hopes for peace. The subsequent situation has shown that the main hopes of the major imperialist powers lie not in peace but in controlling the ruling faction in the DRC. France has been very active at the diplomatic level and played a leading role in the multinational forces active in the conflict, but it has not reclaimed its former position in the region. The “international community” cannot “defuse” the war because the interests of the major powers bring them into conflict and the lesser powers can easily change their allegiances.
In January a ‘peace’ deal was signed in Sudan. The current conflict, between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, in which more than 2 million people have died and 4 million been displaced, has lasted since 1983. Large areas of the country are now desolate and uninhabitable.
With the backing of the US, there has been agreement between the government and the SPLA that the South of the country will have its own government, banking system, national anthem and flag. Initially the South’s revenues, including significant oil income, will be split 50/50 between North and South. In 2011 there’ll be a vote on whether the South wants to secede from the rest of the country.
There are many reasons to believe that Sudan will not be a model of tranquillity in the coming period. For a start, since February 2003 there has been the continuing conflict in the Darfur region in which 70,000 people have died and more than 2 million been driven from their homes. Darfur is in the west of Northern Sudan, where the government have used conventional military forces and militia to terrorise the population. A UN report clears the government of genocide, but accuses them of war crimes in the form of mass killings, rape, torture and other atrocities including the destruction of an estimated 700 villages. Both the US and France have accordingly made threatening noises towards the Sudanese government. Among other big powers intervening in the area, China has extensive oil interests in the country that it’s determined to defend. The ‘peace’ deal doesn’t cover Darfur, an area where the war continues and where all parties have ignored a number of ceasefire agreements.
There is also the nearby example of Ethiopia and Eritrea to show that splitting countries up doesn’t prevent conflicts. Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and yet, between 1998 and 2000, the two countries fought a murderous war in which an estimated 75,000 people on each side died. In the last two years both countries have been re-arming and, over the last few months, moving huge military resources to their shared border. Military analysts are already speculating on what shape a seemingly imminent war will take. A growing war of words between Eritrea and Ethiopia only needs a spark to re-ignite conflict.
Africa is currently a very fashionable cause. It’s claimed that Britain’s presidency of the G8 and the EU and the decision to make Africa a priority can have a positive impact on debt, trade, hunger, Aids, malaria and other health and economic matters in the poorest continent. The evidence shows that every capitalist state only defends its own interests, and is pushed into imperialist conflict with its rivals. The ruling class can only make things worse. Car 2/2/5
Despite the lowering of the dollar and the increases in oil prices, the specialist economic forecasters are reassuring themselves with the positive rates of growth for 2004: 4.7% for the USA; 3% for Japan; 1.6% for the Eurozone; 9.1% for the first three quarters of 2004 for China. How do we interpret these results? Is the world economy getting better? Can the United States, and above all China, presented by the bourgeoisie as the new Eldarado, be the locomotives of the world in order to re-launch the economy, including that of Europe?
To answer these questions it is first of all necessary to analyse the situation of the main world power, in order to see how the bourgeoisie uses its underhand methods to hide from the proletariat the growing bankruptcy of its system.
If there is one thing on which all the specialists of the world economy are not mistaken it is on the debt of the world’s main power. In order to re-launch the economic machine, the American administration has let public and commercial deficits run wild. It has artificially financed household spending (this consumption represents more than two-thirds of US GDP and has a determinant influence on economic activity), through the massive lowering of taxes on household goods, which was decided after the election of 2001 (in fact there were repeated reductions in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, to a total of 1,900 billion dollars over 10 years) and of interest rates on borrowing, brought to their lowest level since 1945 (reduced by the FED to 1%). Despite these measures, economic growth has fallen to 3.5% against the 5% of only a few months ago. Consumer confidence again fell in October 2004 to its lowest level for 7 months and deficits do not stop rising. The American administration is even talking of “twin deficits” in order to qualify their gravity. The budget deficit has risen to 413 billion dollars after the 377 billion of 2003. The experts are looking at an accumulation of supplementary debts of 3,000 billion dollars from here to 2011.
“The government must now borrow 1.1 billion dollars a day and spend more in order to assure the servicing of interest on debt (159 billion), which corresponds to the accumulated budgets of education, domestic security, justice, the police, army veterans, space exploration and international aid” (Le Monde of November 4, 2004). As to the commercial deficit, it has gone beyond $650 billion, or 5.7% of GDP. The situation is not much better for the other capitalist states. The jump in petrol prices and the rise of the Euro will lead to maximum rates of growth in Europe of 2%, in a context where public debt doesn’t stop growing and where no European state is up to respecting the 3% of deficit fixed by the Maastricht Treaty: more than 4.1% deficit for France, 3.9% for Germany, 3.2% for Britain (double the previous year) and more than 4% for Italy.
The G7 Summits follow one another and behind the determined speeches in favour of common policies, in reality the opposite is the result. The aggravation of the crisis and notably of American debt, with its inflationary risks, tends to increase the competitive aspect that is at the very basis of the capitalist system. With the lowering of interest rates, the American administration has developed a policy of lowering the dollar against the Euro, its main competitor currency, in order to gain parts of the export market and lower the level of its financial debt. This policy of “competitive devaluation” has already been used by the United States, in 1980 and 1995. What’s different today is the context in which the American government uses this lowering of the dollar: the unprecedented indebtedness of its economy. Despite the pressure on its rival economic powers through the fall of the dollar, American exports still only cover some 75% of its imports, thus making the insolubility of American debt yet more flagrant. In this raging commercial war, while the dollar loses 25% of its value, the external deficit is about to pass 5.5% of American GDP. “To take it below 3.5% of GDP, which seems to be the objective, will doubtless necessitate a supplementary depreciation of the dollar of 35% against all monies. The fall in the Greenback is an attempt to lead the American economy back towards a better equilibrium. The Euro will have to climb to 1.7 a dollar, heavily penalising European exports”. (Les Echos, November 6). Faced with this perspective of an unprecedented lowering of the dollar, Japan (whose tiny economic recovery is based on the re-launch of exports) is openly threatening the United States with an intervention on the financial markets through their central banks in order to raise the American currency. The gravity of the present situation doesn’t so much reside in the competition between the industrial countries, which is the very essence of capitalism, as in the tendency to call into question the very minimum of agreement which has existed up to now between the major powers in order to offset the effects of the crisis onto the rest of the world.
In the context of the monstrous debt of the main developed countries and the lowering of the dollar, the rise in the price of raw materials and notably of oil has just reactivated the spectre of inflation, which ravaged the world economy during the course of the 1970s. This warning came from the IMF: “To wait very long before reacting to the first signs of inflation could turn out to be costly, and could cost the central banks a part of the credibility that they have been building up in the 1980s and 1990s” (Le Monde, October 1). Despite this warning, the bourgeoisie’s experts focus attention on the causes of these increases which are supposed to be due to a strong demand for oil at the world level, notably China and the United States. And also to a certain instability in some producing countries (e.g. Iraq and Saudi Arabia), which we are told is only a temporary problem. On the other hand, the marxist analysis situates this phenomenon in a more global framework. The increases of 1973, 1979, 1997 and 2000, were largely utilised by the United States in the commercial war against other capitalist states, Europe and Japan notably (see our article ‘Increases in oil prices: a consequence and not the cause of the crisis’ in International Review no. 19). These latest increases, on the contrary, strongly penalise the US economy in general and notably American domestic consumption, in a context where the US is obliged to import much more oil than before. The higher price for oil immediately reverberates into an aggravation of the American budget deficit, much more so because oil is paid for in dollars and it thus costs America dearer than the European economies (which pay per barrel with dollars cheaper than their own money, the Euro). Thus the oil price increase shows the gravity of the economic crisis and at the same time the link that it can have with present wars. The speculative dimension accounts for a part of this increase (the experts estimate it to be between 4 and 8 dollars per barrel); but the impact of war on oil prices is even more clearly the expression of the growing weight of chaos and barbarism at the world level. The incapacity of the United States to restart Iraqi production because of the military mess it’s getting sucked into in Iraq, the threats of attacks against the installations of the main producer country, Saudi Arabia, social troubles in Venezuela and Nigeria are elements in this. All of these events demonstrate that there is not the economic aspect on one side and the military or imperialist aspect on the other, but a greater and greater interpenetration of all these factors, each feeding the other and giving rise to a more and more chaotic situation that is less and less controllable by the bourgeoisie. Instability and growing disorder in the capitalist world feed economic instability, which in turn can only produce still more military instability.
In the context of this astronomic debt of the world economy, especially of the main world power, the increase in military expenditure is a further factor in the aggravation of budget deficits. Military spending is at the expense of civil budgets, and these can only be reduced in order to finance the endless, spreading barbarism.
Thus, since unleashing the war in Iraq, the United States has spent 140 billion dollars. This effort is not sufficient since “At the beginning of November the Pentagon asked for an extension of $70 billion to finance military operations in 2005 (Le Monde, November 9). The budget of the Pentagon will in 2005 go beyond $400 billion, not counting the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which represents almost half of world military expenses (45% exactly).
Comparison with previous wars shows the exorbitant cost of present spending. While WW I cost the US economy $190.6 billion, WW II $896.3, the first Gulf War in 1991 absorbed $76.1 billion in a few months (sources: Economic Problems, 1.9.4).
But other states are not far behind and we can cite the case of France where, since the end of the 90s, military budgets have been hiked up to the world level. While France’s arms budget has increased significantly, the government has decided to grant “an extra 550 million Euros to finance the military engagement going on in the Ivory Coast and a hundred million more to cover other external operations. These amounts are at the expense of the civil ministries.” (Les Echos, November 10).
Spending in the military sphere does not serve the reproduction of productive capital. It represents the destruction, pure and simple, of capital invested. That means that the development of militarism and the spending increases that are linked to it are a supplementary weight which can only accentuate economic stagnation.
Behind the figures of so-called capitalist growth for 2004, we can discern a dramatic new stage in the worsening of the crisis, illustrating the historic failure of the capitalist system of production. Donald, 12.12.4.
The six day strike at Opel in Bochum in October 2004, in response to the threat of mass redundancies and possible plant closures by General Motors, was the longest and most significant, spontaneous, unofficial strike in a major plant in Germany since the great wildcat strikes of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
For almost a week, the working population followed with interest and great sympathy the events in Bochum. At the other plants of General Motors (GM) in Europe, the workforces openly expressed their identification with and admiration of the courage and combativity of their colleagues at Bochum. The importance of the seeds of solidarity that have been awakened by this workers’ struggle can be measured by the fact that the employers, as long as the strike was in progress, did not dare to take legal action against the strikers. Of course, the bosses made the usual threats, denigrated the so-called ‘ring leaders’, spread rumours about vandalised cars and machinery, and threatened to call in the police if the strike did not immediately cease. But the propertied class understood perfectly well that the use of open state repression would be more likely to transfer the (mostly) still passive sympathy of the other workers into open indignation and active solidarity.
Although the IG Metall trade union and the factory council of Opel Bochum justified the ending of the strike with the argument that the workers had obliged the employers to return to the negotiating table, the main demand of the strikers – that there would be no sackings – has certainly not been met.
However, the significance of this struggle lies above all in the fact that it has demonstrated the capacity of the working class to act as an independent force in present day society. It was no coincidence that the conflict at Opel gave rise to a debate in the bourgeois media between sociologists, on the one hand, who talk of a ‘return of the class struggle in the marxist sense of the word’, and ideologists of the ‘alternative globalisation’ and the ‘struggle against work’ movements, on the other, who long ago declared the workers’ struggle to be dead and buried. Such discussions serve not just to confuse the workers, but also to enable the ruling class as a whole to understand that the period, especially after 1989, when it was possible to deny the reality of the class struggle with some credibility, is slowly drawing to a close. The deepening antagonism between rich and poor, between capital and wage labour, and above all the resistance of the workers under attack, has opened the way towards the recovery of its class identity by the proletariat. This in turn is one of the main preconditions for more powerful and conscious defensive struggles by the proletariat.
Like all significant workers’ struggles, the strike at Bochum did not come as a bolt out of the blue. Such class struggles are always part of an international series of combats. Today the proletariat is beginning to fight back against the new, qualitative sharpening of the capitalist crisis and attacks against its living conditions (see WR 279). A particular feature of the situation is the central role being played by the question of unemployment. Mass layoffs and plant closures multiply. The attacks against the unemployed become increasingly brutal. The growing importance of unemployment is beginning to take concrete form. On October 2nd 2004, in the Netherlands and Germany, simultaneous demonstrations of 200,000 people in Amsterdam and 45,000 in Berlin took place against the state’s attacks on the unemployed. In September 2004 shipyard workers at Puerto Real and San Fernando in Andalusia, Spain, struck and demonstrated against mass layoffs. Another feature is the national and international simultaneity of the attacks, as the crisis at Opel and Karstadt in October ‘04 clearly expressed.
However, it is a fact that such significant workers’ struggles, which affect the consciousness of the class as a whole, are effectively signalled and prepared in advance through other, less spectacular skirmishes in the same or neighbouring sectors. Thus, there was already a spontaneous downing of tools four years ago at Opel in Bochum in response to the threat of redundancies. In the spring of 2004 there was also a wildcat stoppage at the Ford car plant in Cologne. Above all, there is a common foundation to the strike in Bochum and the protests three months before at Daimler-Chrysler. It was the work force at Mercedes that in a sense summoned the class to struggle. They put into practise the lesson that one cannot, and must not, accept the blackmail of the ruling class without putting up a fight. They countered the attempts of the bosses to play off the employees of the different plants against each other, through the reawakening of class solidarity. In this sense, the Opel Bochum workers received the flame of courageous struggle from their Mercedes colleagues. It seems to us that this common framework - which those Mercedes workers, who travelled from Stuttgart to Bochum to participate in the October 19th day of action spoke of - is important to underline.
The different ‘critical trade unionists’, have tried to explain the resumption of work in Bochum after six days without the main demands of the workers being met, by the manoeuvre of IG Metall and the factory council leadership on October 20th. Of course, the formulation of the alternative, upon which the striking workers were made to vote – either ending the strike and opening negotiations, or staying on strike without negotiating – was a typical example of a union manoeuvre against the workers. The endless continuation of an already isolated strike was thus presented as the only alternative to breaking off the struggle. In so doing, the decisive questions were brushed aside. These are: firstly, how to make the enforcement of the workers demands as effective as possible? Secondly, who should negotiate: the unions and the factory council, or mass assemblies and the delegates chosen by them?
However, we intend to show that the ‘critical trade unionists’ were themselves involved in the emergence of this false alternative between giving in, and staying out on a long and isolated strike. We will also show that the organisation of the division and the defeat of the struggle began long before the 20th of October.
When the news broke of planned redundancies in Europe, the workers at all the Opel plants reacted with indignation and the downing of tools. Just as at Mercedes during the summer, where strikes took place simultaneously in Sindelfinden (Stuttgart) and Bremen, thus demonstrating that the work forces of the different plants were determined not to let themselves be played off against each other, here also the plants singled out, Bochum and Rüsselsheim (each threatened with anything up to 5,000 layoffs), reacted together. IG Metall and the factory council at Bochum did not even try and put a brake on the initial combative élan of the workers. But instead, everything was done to ensure a rapid resumption of work at Rüsselsheim. This is a fact which has been systematically ignored by the leftist media. If they even mention it, it is in order to give the impression that the workers themselves, i.e. those at Rüsselsheim, were the cause of this division.
The fact is that the quick resumption of work at the ‘mother plant’ of Opel near Frankfurt (Rüsselsheim) was experienced by those at Bochum, who stayed out, as a weakening of solidarity. In this way the wedge of division, which the Mercedes workers had been able to keep at bay, was felt to be at work already on the second day of the movement at Opel.
How can this be explained? A few weeks before the announcement of the elimination of some 12,000 jobs in Europe, GM had already made it known that, in the future, it would build its middle of the range models from Saab and Opel at only one plant in Europe, either at Rüsselsheim or at Trollhätan in Sweden, and would close down the other plant. And when the ‘master-plan’ for the salvaging of the company was released in October, it was immediately made known that the question of ‘either Rüsselsheim or Trollhätan’ would be negotiated as part of this package. During the first day of the strike, the factory council and IG Metall in Rüsselsheim left no doubt about the fact that they would not tolerate any further solidarity action with colleagues in Bochum, since this could lead to the plant in Rüsselsheim losing out to its ‘Swedish rival’. If the union, the factory council and the SPD had really been concerned, as they claimed, about the common defence of the different plants, they would not have called, as they did, for separate demonstrations by the different plants on October 19th, and could have easily organised a common action. Instead of this, the Bochum and Rüsselsheim workers were constantly kept at a distance from each other, to make sure that they would never get the opportunity to meet and discuss their common interests. They did not even allow a small delegation to go from Rüsselsheim to Bochum or vice versa to deliver a solidarity greeting. Instead of this, the factory council at Rüsselsheim was warning against the ‘hotheads’ on the Ruhr, while their counterparts in Bochum repeatedly made sarcastic, indirect remarks about the solidarity of the ‘dear colleagues’ in Rüsselsheim. To get an idea of the scale of the hypocrisy of the trade unions during the “European day of solidarity”, it will be sufficient to mention how the Swedish trade unions, at a workers’ assembly, first produced their usual phrase-mongering about their solidarity with the Opel workers, only to subsequently triumphantly announce that the Swedish Prime Minister Persson had promised to intervene personally to ensure that the mid-range cars will be built there in future and not in Rüsselsheim!
What of the situation at Bochum, where the strike continued? There, the official representatives of IG Metall and the factory council adopted such a low profile at the beginning of the strike, that part of the media accused them of having lost control of the situation. Others criticised them for surrendering the field to the trade union radicals. Just a few days later the unions demonstrated how little they had really lost control by putting an end to the strike with relative ease. However, it is true that, during the first days, the union leadership did indeed leave the field to the ‘radicals’. As soon as it became clear that the workers at Bochum were being left alone with their strike, these pseudo-radicals, as the most faithful representatives of trade union ideology, began campaigning for a long, drawn-out strike to the bitter end. Over a century ago, when workers in struggle were mainly dealing with individual capitalists, they could indeed impose their interests by striking on their own. But ever since these family enterprises became giant corporations, which at the national level are fused with each other and with the state, the workers have to fight as a class: they have to extend and unite their struggles in order to be able to put up an effective resistance. Today, as in the 20th century, the trade union ideology of isolated, separate struggles, has become a bourgeois point of view, a recipe for the defeat of the workers. At Opel in Bochum, it was used once again as a way to divide the workers. While a majority of them – already sensing the dead end an isolated strike was leading to – were voting to go back to work, a combative, embittered, minority, wanted to stay out regardless of the consequences. Some of them even accused the majority of having betrayed the common cause. Now, the division was in place, not only between Bochum and Rüsselsheim, but also within the Bochum work force.
Afterwards, the representatives of a ‘strike to the bitter end’ claimed that if the strike had lasted only a few days longer, the capitalists would have been obliged to capitulate. In support of this, they point out the vulnerability of the present day ‘just in time’ production methods. These arguments are not very convincing in view of worldwide overproduction and overcapacity, not least in the car industry. But in addition, there is much more at stake in the workers’ struggle than simply shutting down production. It is above all a question of tipping the political balance of class forces in favour of the proletariat, through the extension and unification of workers’ struggles.
It is nonetheless true that, after a week, the bourgeoisie was in a hurry to end the strike at Bochum, but not because there was any threat of a worldwide collapse of production at GM. Here, we have reached the crux of the problem. The strike at Bochum did indeed impress the bourgeoisie, making the defenders of the system nervous. Not primarily because of the consequences for production, but rather because of the possible consequences of this struggle for the other workers, for the development of the consciousness of the class as a whole. What they feared was not even, in the first instance, the extension of the immediate struggle to other parts of the class. The situation, the general combativity and above all the level of consciousness were probably not really ripe for this. What they were most worried about was the manifestation of workers’ combativity in the context of a growing simultaneity of attacks against all workers. The massive attacks against the employees at Karstadt came just before; those at Volkswagen just after the struggle at Opel. What the ruling class fears is that the working class, spurred on by struggles such as at Opel, will slowly but surely recognise that the workers of the different companies, branches or regions have common interests, and need a living solidarity.
The struggle at Opel already posed a greater challenge for workers than at Mercedes. At Opel the potential for blackmail was much more threatening, including the possibility of shutting down entire plants. The workers answered this challenge, at least in Bochum, with an intensified combativity but not yet with a further development at the level of class consciousness. That is not surprising. The class today is more and more confronted with the increasingly visible bankruptcy of the whole social formation that is capitalism. It is evident that the proletariat will have to try again and again before it can even begin to understand the scale of the whole problem; that it will repeatedly recoil in the face of the vastness of the task. It is the job of revolutionaries today to support workers in the struggle to acquire a class perspective of their own. This is why the ICC distributed a leaflet during the day of action in Bochum and Rüsselsheim, which did not satisfy itself with calling the workers to struggle, but attempted to stimulate political reflection within the class.
19.11.04.
(From WELTREVOLUTION 127, paper of the ICC in Germany and Switzerland.)
Since we published the article ‘The NCI has not broken with the ICC’ (see our website), a number of sympathisers of the ICC have sent messages of support and financial contributions for the comrades of the Nucleo Comunista Internacionalista in Argentina, who, despite the terrible living conditions they face, are determined to continue political activity alongside the ICC. We want to give very warm thanks to all the comrades who have expressed their solidarity in this way. This can only encourage the comrades in Argentina to maintain their militant commitment; and it shows that, despite their geographical isolation, they are not alone. Such gestures are an illustration of the international nature of the solidarity of the proletariat, the class that bears within itself the communist future.
The elections in Palestine and Iraq, we are told, have been great triumphs for democracy. George Bush was euphoric about them in his State of the Union speech. The peoples of the Middle East are not just getting peace but freedom and democracy too!
For Bush, spreading such noble ideals around the planet is the sacred mission of the USA. Few of the USA’s main imperialist rivals – Germany, France, Russia, etc – failed to heed the message: despite the Iraq fiasco, US imperialism will continue to assert its interests wherever it chooses.
The elections in the Middle East have indeed provided a short-lived gain for those interests. In Palestine, the election of the ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas as successor to Arafat offers the possibility of reining in the radical Islamic groups like Hamas who tend to adopt an anti-US position. There is already a plan for Abbas to meet Sharon and Israeli troops have handed over police-keeping duties to the Palestinian Authority in certain parts of the West Bank. The elections in Iraq showed the relative weakness of the ‘insurgent’ forces. Although they managed to carry out some murderous attacks on polling day, they failed to prevent the elections from going ahead. The very fact that they took place can be presented as a propaganda victory by the US. Although the White House has been obliged to officially admit that its main justification for invading Iraq, Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, do not exist, it can still claim that the establishment of a democratic Iraq was a goal worth fighting for.
But the democratic festivities in the Middle East are certainly not a gain for the oppressed in Iraq and Palestine or anywhere else, despite Bush’s claim that the interests of the US coincide with the needs of the oppressed, the victims of tyranny around the world.
The Iraqi elections were highly militarised: because of the threats by the terrorist gangs, military regulations were made even tougher than usual: borders closed, extra patrols, curfews, banning of private cars on polling day. Whole areas of Iraq – essentially the Sunni-dominated ones – stayed out of the election, either because of intimidation by the insurgents or out of sympathy for their arguments.
This then was hardly a model of democratic good practice, and many critics of the US occupation have pointed this out. But for us that is not the point. Even in the best of cases capitalist democracy is a fraud. It is used to hide the fact that, whatever political form it adopts, capitalist society is in essence a dictatorship of the ruling class, of the rich, the powerful, the state bureaucrats, the generals and police-chiefs. This applies to democratic America and Britain just as much to Iraq under Saddam or Iran under the Mullahs.
This view of democracy – the marxist view – will no doubt be branded by apologists for the war as giving comfort to the Islamic terrorist gangs who also attack democracy. And it is true there are many fake ‘socialists’ who wave the flag for the so-called ‘Resistance’ in Iraq . But real communists oppose capitalist democracy because it is a barrier to the liberation of humanity and the elimination of all forms of state power; the radical Islamists oppose democracy because they believe that mankind must always live under a hierarchical state. And while communists seek to act on the consciousness of the exploited, to remind them of the fact that their own struggles have already revealed the forms of organisation through which they can emancipate themselves (the soviets or workers’ councils), the Islamists try to enforce their dogma through the violent intimidation of the masses: “you vote, we kill you”.
The working class must not fall into this false dilemma: Bush or Saddam, democracy or Islamism. It can only free itself by finding its own path, by engaging in its own struggles, and discovering its own perspective – the perspective of social revolution.
Even viewed as a gain for US imperialism, the euphoria over the elections in Iraq being displayed by the Bush administration will not last.
The perspective opening up after these elections is in fact the dismemberment of Iraq. The Sunnis, virtually excluded from the electoral process, will emerge as an even more marginalised sector of the population. This can only increase the scope for the Sunni ‘insurgency’. The likelihood is that the religious Shia factions will dominate the new government: at the time of writing, the United Iraqi Alliance, under the spiritual guidance of Ayatollah Sistani, seems to be well ahead. And while a secular Shia like the current Prime Minister Alawi is abjectly pro-US, the majority of these factions, particular the radical elements around Moqtadar al-Sadr, are hostile to the US occupation. What’s more, these are forces closely connected to Iran, which has invested heavily in the Shia parties, and which certainly aims to win greater influence over its neighbour. At the same time Kurdish demands for independence are set to grow louder: “the Kurds want at all cost to include the region of Kirkuk, with its immense oil wealth, in their autonomous zone, which the Sunnis and Shiites don’t seem ready to accept. There will be frictions, perhaps confrontations. The hypothesis of a slide towards a division of the country – in principle rejected by the US as by all of Iraq’s neighbours – even of a civil war, cannot be excluded” (Le Monde 5.1.05). These frictions will certainly whet the appetite of all the powers – regional and global – who will seek to gain their own advantages from the USA’s difficulties.
Similarly, in Palestine, while the US will take comfort from any temporary lull in the round of terrorist strikes and military bombardments, the current ceasefire is extremely fragile. The new Sharon team, allied to the Labour party, has merely modified its policy of out and out military conquest, despite the noises being made by Israel’s religious right who don’t understand the need for small concessions of land in order to preserve the overall strategy. Thus the retreat from Gaza is aimed merely at reinforcing Israel’s hold over the West Bank. And in order to remove any legitimacy from the demand by the Palestinian Authority to have East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, Israel has discretely dug up a 1950 law which sanctions the confiscation of Palestinian land without any compensation.
The drive towards war dominates the entire capitalist order: moments of peace are merely pauses in which knives are sharpened for the next round of conflict. How far the Middle East, and the world, is from peace under the present social order can be measured by the new threats being made against the regime in Tehran. Iran (along with Syria) was highlighted in Bush’s speech as a haven of global terrorism, an evil tyranny which is currently equipping itself with nuclear weapons. In her latest visit to Europe Condoleeza Rice played down the possibility of a US military attack on Iran “at this point”; but added that “while no one ever asks the American President to take all his options, any of his options, off the table, there are plenty of diplomatic means at our disposal to get the Iranians to finally live up to their international obligations.” (Yahoonews, 4.2.05) In other words, the military option is certainly being considered at some point. The fact that the US bourgeoisie can even pose the question in the midst of the chaos in Iraq shows that the irrational drive towards war is far stronger than any rational concern for the possible consequences. An attack on Iran would not only be a far greater disaster for the region than the invasion of Iraq, but it would sharpen imperialist rivalries on a world scale: “As for Iran, for the moment, there is an incompatibility between the American and European positions. For Washington, it is unacceptable for Iran to become a nuclear power, even if it means using force to prevent this. For the Europeans, what’s unacceptable is the use of military force” (Le Monde, 5.1.05).
This push towards war cannot be halted by calls for the capitalist carnivore to become vegetarian. And make no mistake, the USA is not the only ravenous imperialist beast. All countries are imperialist today, all of them are involved in this mad scramble to divide up the world in their own interests. This is why the war drive can only be opposed, and ultimately stopped, by the struggle of the working class against their exploiters in all countries. WR 5/2/5
In December the Law Lords ruled that the government’s detention of suspects without trial at various high-security prisons was unlawful. So, towards the end of January, Charles Clarke took the opportunity to propose a whole new range of measures that could be employed without any charges being made.
“Control orders” could be imposed by the Home Secretary on the basis of information provided by the security services. These could involve surrendering passports, curfews, electronic tagging, reporting regularly to the police, limits on use of the telephone and internet, and house arrest.
The Labour government has already added extensive anti-terrorist legislation to the array of legal measures introduced by previous governments. These new proposals reflect the ruling class’s constant concern to have whatever devices it needs to protect its interests. It needs to deal with the potential threat from hostile imperialisms; it is also concerned about the threat of the struggles of the working class, and the activity of revolutionaries who work with the perspective of the overthrow of capitalism.
The latest proposals are not exceptional when you consider the automatic introduction of internment that happens in wartime, or during other periods of ‘emergency’. You could also recall what the British government has done at various times during the last 35 years in Northern Ireland, in particular during the 1970s and 80s, when it used the area as a training ground for actions it might want to take elsewhere. Internment, torture, experiments with a range of brutal interrogation techniques, surveillance, secret agents and a shoot-to-kill policy have all been employed by British governments.
And yet, along side the usual complaints from human rights lawyers and civil libertarians on the left there has been opposition from the Tories and others on the right. Of course they all have their own favourite repressive measures they would prefer to introduce, but it’s significant that they feel it necessary to express hesitations.
Obviously, we’re probably in a pre-election period, but there’s more to it than that.
The Lib Dems say that the plans are “wholly unacceptable” and worry that Britain would be out of step with Europe. Meanwhile the Tories think that Labour is taking a “dangerous path” and that it’s important to protect “the British way of life”.
Simon Jenkins in The Times (28/1/5) thinks internment without trial “stinks”. He draws comparisons with Hitler in 1933 and 34 . He says that “Mr Clarke wants to put under house arrest any people he considers a menace, be they Muslims, Irish or animal rights activists”. He ridicules Clarke’s claim that there are people who want “to kill hundreds and thousands of people who are innocent of everything”. Clarke “knows who they are from ‘secret intelligence’ which he cannot divulge to anyone” . During the last two years intelligence has been used “as an agency of public fear”. We have been threatened by ‘intelligence’ with “sarin, anthrax, smallpox and nuclear attack”, not to mention the “dodgy dossiers”. Warming to his attack Jenkins says that “For Mr Clarke to demand pre-emptive imprisonment on a par with what was used during the Second World War is an insult to history”.
The bourgeois figures who have expressed ‘opposition’ to Labour’s latest proposals have no disagreement with the basic principle that the capitalist state defends ruling class interests with every means at its disposal. But they also know that the bourgeoisie rules with ideological weapons as well as with state repression. Jingoism and xenophobia are used by the capitalist class at certain points, but at present it’s the ‘defence of democracy’ that’s the main plank of bourgeoisie propaganda.
So, with the arguments over control orders, opposition focuses on the ‘rule of law’, habeas corpus, ‘ancient liberties’ and all the hocus pocus of bourgeois law. Not only is the state refining and extending its weapons against the threat of the class struggle, it also wants us to rally to the defence of the democratic state. Workers need to recognise that their class interests and their class struggle bring them into conflict with the capitalist state, whether it’s trading under a democratic or authoritarian label. The repressive measures taken by the bourgeoisie, internment in Belmarsh prison or in Guantanamo Bay, are not blemishes on the face of democracy but integral to capitalism’s democratic dictatorship. Car 4/2/5
Since the beginning of the year, several hundred thousand people have demonstrated in Russia against Government measures aimed at dismantling the existing benefits available to retired people, the sick, or certain state employees. The state will no longer provide free basic medicine and medical treatment, public transport or reductions in the price of phone calls or rents. In Germany, the period in which you can get unemployment pay has been cut from 36 months to 18 for the over 55s and to 12 for the rest; this at a time when unemployment has risen above 5 million.
On top of this, after the sixth week of sick leave in a year, social security will no longer pay and you will have to take out private insurance to cover it. At the same time contributions towards medical costs will be reduced. In Holland and Poland the governments are taking similar measures, following in the wake of the French and Austrian governments who, in 2003, ‘reformed’ the system of pension payments, adding several years to people’s working lives. The French government continues with its attacks on social protection, while the British government also intends to force more and more categories of workers to carry on toiling until they are 65 or even 70. In the US, the Bush administration is concocting a law aimed at transforming the present pension system. Measures have already been taken: extending working lives, lowering pensions, diverting a portion of wages into a state-run fund which will be invested in shares and treasury bonds – investments that could go up in smoke tomorrow given the risk of company closures and stock exchange crashes.
Never has the proletariat faced such brutal, massive and widespread attacks. Millions are under threat. In all the industrialised countries the welfare state is on the verge of collapse. It’s no longer possible to maintain the labour force. This is a clear expression of the bankruptcy of the system.
The economic crisis is laying bare all the contradictions of capitalism, and revealing the impossibility of finding a solution to them. Too many commodities are being produced; the world market is glutted. The bourgeoisie’s need to make profits in order to avoid bankruptcy is increasing rivalries between the main industrial countries. The result is an open economic war where the prize is to grab the markets from your rivals. This in turn leads to the desperate search to lower production costs. The only way to do this is to attack the working class. On the one hand the bourgeoisie is trying to raise productivity through speed-ups and increasing the flexibility of the labour force, so that it can get away with employing as few workers as possible. On the other hand it is carrying out a vast programme of ‘reforms’ – i.e. attacks on the social wage: pensions, unemployment benefits, medical benefits, sick pay, and so on. NO section of the working class is being spared – older or younger generation, at work or on the dole, public sector or private sector. The consequence of these attacks is a general degradation of living and working conditions for the whole international working class. The ferocious exploitation imposed on the workers leads to a general decline in health at the very time it becomes more difficult to get medical assistance; workers who have looked forward to a period of rest after years of wage slavery see these hopes threatened by the retirement age being raised and pension payments being lowered; younger workers face the problem of precarious employment, going from one job to the next with wage levels always being pulled downwards, all this interspersed by periods of unemployment on reduced benefits. Finding accommodation and putting something away for retirement becomes increasingly difficult.
The attacks are not going to stop there - they are going to get worse. This is why the working class has to become aware that the system is indeed bankrupt and that the solution lies not in reforms, or a change of government, but in a change in the very basis of society. Andre, 1/3/05
The world’s oceans have become warmer and more acidic due to capitalism spewing out increasing quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. There is an urgent need to limit these emissions and keep the rise in global temperatures below 2°C. Failure to do so threatens not just wildlife, but increasing disasters, droughts, floods and loss of human life on a massive scale.
We have been alerted on these matters by a conference of climate scientists in Exeter, by the report on ocean temperatures and by the publicity surrounding the introduction of the Kyoto Protocols on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Given the seriousness of the situation it is natural that anyone who thinks about the future should want to work towards saving the environment.
The Exeter conference, ‘Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change’, was called by Tony Blair to coincide with Britain’s presidency of the G8. Alongside climatologists warning that the Kyoto Protocol does not go nearly far enough, that the problem is already at dangerous levels, “the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out - just before his company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the main causes of the problem - to warn that unless governments take urgent action there ‘will be a disaster’.” (www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0206-01.htm [15]). This contradiction reveals the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, and particularly the organisers of this conference, but it is nothing unusual: “Countries like Britain are pretending to reduce their national emissions while actively supporting massive fossil fuel projects in other countries, such as the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline project. Meanwhile, the World Bank has been exposed as investing primarily in fossil fuel projects despite a massive public relations effort to portray itself as focused on climate change mitigation” (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/ecology/ [16]).
This is not just a public relations exercise. Britain can use the Kyoto Protocol as a diplomatic weapon against the USA, which continues to refuse to sign it. It is certainly not a question of discussion between reasonable men, trying to persuade the world’s largest consumer of natural resources of the danger of its actions. It is part of the current imperialist strategy where the “British bourgeoisie, drawing on its long experience, generally recognised that its interests were best served by trying to play the US off against Europe” (‘Resolution on the British situation’ WR 281). After supporting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that show complete contempt for the environment – “not from any sense of loyalty or solidarity in the war against terror, as the media proclaimed, but in order to be in as good a position as possible to safeguard and defend its interests” (WR 281) the Kyoto Protocol, allows Britain to move out of America’s shadow.
The ruling class has produced a lot of propaganda on responding to climate change. We only have to turn on the TV to see hints on small energy saving measures: turn the TV off instead of putting it on standby, don’t put more water in the kettle than we need… This is no mere public relations exercise, any more than the Exeter conference, but an ideological campaign directed against the working class with 3 big lies. Lie number one is that we are responsible as greedy and profligate individuals for using too much of the earth’s resources and should choose to live in poverty instead. Lie number two is that we can ‘do something’ about the problem by everyday frugality within present day capitalism. Lie number three is that the ruling class are taking action to deal with the problem.
The fact is that the very competition that made capitalism so dynamic, that gave rise to modern industry, that makes it impossible for any capitalist, or all capitalists put together, to rein back the environmental disaster that their system is creating. “The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels). This need for a constantly expanding market forces each capitalist to expand production, to reduce costs, to try and corner the market at the expense of his rivals, which holds true – sooner or later – whether the capitalist is an individual proprietor, a huge corporation or a nationalised industry. If burning fossil fuel, CO2 emissions and all, is cheaper energy for production then the capitalist who uses it has a competitive advantage over the capitalist who uses something more expensive and will tend to drive the latter out of business.
This is why their conferences on climate change, science or no science, can never rise above the basest hypocrisy, and why the head of Shell is not out of place in such company.
Within the broad church of anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism there are many organising around environmental issues, many of these recognising the role of the various capitalist corporations and their search for profit, concentrating their energies on publicising or opposing their harmful actions. So we can read about the occupation of the London petroleum exchange on the day the Kyoto Protocol came into effect, or the protests against a Greenpeace Business Lecture in January for its ‘greenwash’ of Shell.
What is implied in these actions is that it is this or that ‘bad’ or ‘polluting’ enterprise that is responsible for the destruction of the environment, as though it were not the logic of capitalist competition itself that forces them to pollute. For this reason, when such protests are reported at all they simply become grist to the mill of the campaigns about global warming that are being conducted by Blair et al.
Others have tried to take on big business through the courts. A meeting in Cambridge shortly after the ESF in London heard, among other projects, about efforts to protect water resources in Brazil: “Franklin is part of a campaign that launched a lawsuit against NESTLE. This court case was won and the factory was shut down for two days. However, the company’s lawyers managed to reopen the plant and the next part of the court case may well take 10 years to finish. By then, the water resource will be depleted” (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/300007.html [17]). In each case, whether or not they win a court case, capital continues its destructive march.
What each little court case victory does is give the impression that the national state, or the European Court, or the UN, or any other bourgeois institution can be used by the ‘individual’ or the ‘community’ to halt this destruction. All these institutions ultimately represent capitalism, the ruling class and its interests. The activists, like gamblers winning a few coins, or missing only one number for a win in the lottery, are induced to go on investing more and more of their energies in something that really benefits the illusions in democracy.
An article on the Enrager website, ‘Advertising and Consumerism’ (www.enrager.net/thought/topics/advertising.php [18]) linked consumerism, the most brutal forms of exploitation in the third world and the destruction of the environment. It even stated “If we want to create real freedom and happiness for ourselves and a decent environment to live in we need to start challenging the constant messages thrown at us by those who are presently in control and who don’t have our interests at heart. They’ve got us into this mess and they’re hardly likely to get us out. We need to regain control of our own lives, and communities, creating a new society.” Unfortunately, it did not attempt to explain who it is that is in control, and how and why they have got humanity into this mess. But without such an analysis, which can only be made by marxism, it is not possible to challenge the constant messages thrown at us by bourgeois propaganda effectively. The same article, under the heading “What can we do?” begins its answer “Talk to friends, neighbours and workmates about these issues. When you’re out shopping, QUESTION - Do I really need it? Could I make one? Could I re-use, repair or recycle what I already have? Could I share one with someone else?” In other words it takes us back to the same individual frugality recommended in the public service campaign on TV.
The individual consumer is simply not able to choose to shop in an environmentally friendly way. “The use of products is determined by the social conditions in which the consumers find themselves placed, and these conditions are based on class antagonisms” (Marx, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’). When economics dictates, we buy shoddy goods that fall apart, we live somewhere cheap even if we spend hours travelling to work. When economics dictates, we consume that which we know to be destroying the environment. As Marx said “In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to different articles will be determined by the degree of their social utility” and that social utility will include their safety for both human beings and the environment. Alex, 1.3.05
When the Asian tsunami struck, the media concentrated considerable attention on the aid that would be donated by the population and governments of the rich Western countries. They presented this as an expression of ‘humanitarian concern’ on the part of both the population and the governments. In the case of the giving from the general population, that did, of course, express solidarity with the victims of the disaster. In the case of the governments matters are different.
As we said in our article on the tsunami (see the ICC website):
“As for the financial aid initially promised by governments around the world, and notably by the most developed countries, it was so miserly that the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland even described the ‘international community’ as skinflints.
Faced with the extent of the disaster, the various capitalist states have behaved like real vultures, bidding up their aid with the sole objective of appearing more ‘generous’ than their rivals. The USA has proposed $350 million, instead of the initial announcement of $35 million (while they are spending $1 billion a week on the war in Iraq, and $1 billion a month in Afghanistan!), Japan has offered $500 million, and the European Union $436 million. France, which spends 1 billion a year on its military interventions, even thought it could take the lead among donor countries with its $50 million; then it was the turn of Australia, Britain, Germany, etc.”
We also explained in this article that the sums delivered by the bourgeoisie end up a great deal less than what is offered in the headlines:
“This verbal upping the stakes is all the more disgusting, in that it is a pure sham, since the promised aid is seldom followed by payment. We should remember that the ‘international community’ of imperialist gangsters promised $100 million after the earthquake in Iran (December 2003), of which only $17 million has been paid. The same thing happened in Liberia: $1 billion promised, $70 million paid.”
But there is more to uncover behind the appearance of aid than the fact that it is frequently just an empty promise.
The bourgeoisie has made much ado about the idea of a debt moratorium for the poorest countries. It came up as one of the ways to offer aid in response to the tsunami disaster:
“As for the proposed moratorium on debt repayments for the countries hit by the disaster, this is a bubble that will soon burst, since it is merely proposed to put off payment of interest on the debt, not to wipe it out completely. Moreover, among the countries most affected by the tidal wave, five will have to pay $32 billion dollars of debt next year; in other words ten times more than they have been promised in ‘humanitarian aid’ (and which is probably far more than they will actually receive).”
Some countries that have been offered this kind of debt relief are thinking of turning it down - such aid can be an even more potent disaster than the tsunami itself: “Thank heavens the debtor nations can see sense even if many in the west remain blinded by the simplistic policies of the debt forgiveness lobby. Your article … correctly pointed out that many of the tsunami-hit debtor nations are reluctant to accept debt forgiveness from the Paris Club because of the negative impact this will have on their credit standing in the private market.” (Letter to the Financial Times, January 7, 2005).
There is also the question of where all the indebtedness of the poorest countries came from in the first place. Essentially, this is the effect of aid provided previously, which they are still trying to pay off. Aid primarily takes the form of loans at relatively low interest from a more industrialised country. This is often tied to the purchase of its goods, and these are very often armaments, since armaments are a primary export of the industrialised countries.
It is this kind of debt that it is proposed to write off. Why do the bourgeoisie want to write off this kind of debt? To answer this one needs to know what the bourgeoisie in the donor countries will get out of the arrangement..
We can look at the role of the British bourgeoisie in this issue of debt forgiveness. They are always to the fore in proposing this line of action,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown proposed ‘a new Marshall Plan’ for the poorer countries that would involve full debt relief, a rewriting of global trade rules and an international aid fund worth half a trillion dollars over the next decade. This is something of a poisoned chalice. Such aid can buy influence within a government, fund sales from the donor, or, rarely, be rejected. Either way, it is a disaster for the population. Aid is given, when it is actually given, to support the imperialist and economic interests of the metropolitan countries – why else would they offer aid?
At the most basic economic level capitalism functions to accumulate, to make a profit – this is its fundamental law. The notion of giving for giving’s sake is alien to this logic - above all at a time when the capitalist crisis is raging through the world and the struggle to make a profit becomes more and more cut-throat. France has 10 per cent unemployment, Germany has over 5 million unemployed, Japan is, even by the strict terms of the bourgeoisie, in recession. The British bourgeoisie claim that the British economy is booming, but they cannot hide the fact that their booming economy cannot provide either housing or pensions for the younger generation. And it is these tottering metropolitan countries that are supposed to find the resources to lift the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, or the regions devastated by the tsunami, out of the desperate straits that even the bourgeoisie admit they are in!
If the so-called developing countries really were developing their economies, i.e. producing more and getting richer, why would they need aid? The fact is that they are not developing, but being ruined. The intervention of more powerful countries – by trade, aid or armed intervention - has not aided their development, but pushed the effects of the capitalist crisis onto the poorest regions.
The crisis not only sharpens economic rivalries; it also accentuates imperialist competition. Despite all the humanitarian propaganda, aid for the stricken region was clearly divided along imperialist lines: “The same diverging interests that were present in Afghanistan and Iraq are clashing around the Indian Ocean. France has sent its Foreign Minister to accompany a first plane-load of medicines, and French President Chirac, supported by Germany, has proposed the creation of a ‘humanitarian rapid reaction force’, controlled by the European states but at the service of the United Nations.
The US response was not long in coming: the United States not only sent its ships, helicopters and aircraft to the region, it announced the creation of an international humanitarian coalition (with Australia, India, and Japan) to ‘coordinate their assistance’.”
And the reasons for this division were quite clear: “The discord among the great powers, each state trying to gain an advantage over the others, are eloquent testimony to the humanitarian ‘concerns’ of these capitalist vultures. As one US official pointed out: ‘This is a tragedy, but also an opportunity. Rapid and generous help from the United States could improve our relations with the Asian countries’.
Given Indonesia’s strategic importance in the Indian Ocean, it is obvious that the United States will try to profit from the disaster to gain a military footing in the region (something that the Indonesian armed forces rejected, accusing the USA of interfering in Indonesian affairs when Washington suspended its military aid to Jakarta in 1999, on the grounds of the massacres committed by the Indonesian army in East Timor). US ‘humanitarian relief’ in Sri Lanka has taken the form of a ‘peaceful’ landing by amphibious tanks (unarmed according to one officer), whose mission is ‘not to destroy but to help the population’.
The European states would also like to establish a military and diplomatic presence in the region. China is trying to assert itself as a regional power, and in doing so is coming up against opposition from Japan. And if India has refused all foreign aid, even if this means leaving the victims of the disaster to die, it is solely because it wants to assert its own presence as a regional power to be reckoned with” (ICC statement).
Aid is a direct expression of the historical crisis of capitalism, of a system plunging into economic disaster and imperialist war. To call this ‘humanitarian relief’ is the vilest hypocrisy. Hardin, 4.3.05
Expecting a general election soon, the political parties of the ruling class have united in a campaign round immigration, refugees and race. The Daily Telegraph (7/2/5) thinks that “a chasm remains between the two main parties on immigration … No one can complain that the country is being denied a genuine choice.”
You’d actually be hard put to distinguish the differences between Labour and Conservative policy. Both have been inspired by the restrictive immigration policies of other countries and come to very similar conclusions. Labour want to replace current work permits schemes with a 4-tier points system where financial experts can settle here without a job offer, low skilled non-EU nationals will only be allowed in under very specific circumstances and will have to leave at the end of their stay, and students can briefly pass through. Labour promise that refugees will be removed even quicker, that a National Border Force will be established, that arrivals will be fingerprinted and tested for TB and other diseases. In contrast, the Tories’ health tests would include HIV, they would have quotas for immigrants and refugees, would process asylum applications abroad, make deportation and detention easier, withdraw from the 1951 UN convention on refugees, and finance all their schemes by charging migrants for all the tests and checks they’ll have to take.
These differences are like those on prison policy. Labour is putting more people in prison than any British government before it and boasts that there are now 17,000 more prison places. The Tories promise that their longer sentences will mean another 14,000 in prison and they’ll therefore build 20 new prisons. There’s no “chasm” between the parties, more a competition in repressive measures and propaganda about all the threats that innocent people are under.
The message of the political parties is backed up by commentators in the press, TV and radio. Britain is under threat. There are terrorists out to destroy thousands of lives if they could. There are hundreds under surveillance just waiting for the moment when they can commit some atrocity like 9/11, Bali or Madrid. There are millions of foreigners that want to take advantage of British ‘prosperity’. The unions denounce British jobs being exported to other countries. Politicians say that Britain can only take in so many people from ‘alien’ cultures because of the danger of foreigners either ‘swamping’ or not accepting the ‘British way of life’. Hazel Blears, minister responsible for counter-terrorism, has said Muslims will have to accept they’ll be stopped and searched by the police more often than other people. House arrest is supposed to be a fair price to pay at such times.
All this hysteria is actually making it hard for the overt racists of the BNP to make headway - the mainstream parties are stealing their ideas, they wail (but the BNP still has a role to play as a fascist bogeyman: everyone from Michael Howard to the SWP warns that it is a major threat to democracy and freedom).
This campaign is partly based on straightforward nationalism. Because of foreign threats – real or manufactured – the population is supposed to rally to the government, forget how it has suffered under Tory and Labour alike, and make sacrifices in the defence of British capitalism.
But there’s more to it than that. The ruling class and all its media are trying to make us not only afraid of terrorists or foreign invaders, but distrustful of those about us, even our neighbours and those we work with. Look at the continuing scares about paedophiles; any one who works with or has contact with young people is now under suspicion as a potential child molester. Not that children are innocent: there’s a constant procession of ‘wild’ children in the media who don’t know the meaning of the word ‘discipline’. Accordingly Charles Clarke at the Home Office has said that those as young as 10 who are the subject of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders will have their names and photographs published.
So, while the racism of the capitalist parties is intended to divide the working class along ‘ethnic’ grounds, the sowing of distrust and fear in the population has a more insidious effect. Take the government’s advice on burglars. You’re now allowed to use whatever force is necessary to protect your home against intruders. What this actually conjures up is a world where a violent break-in is imminent at any moment. The political parties say that they are responding to the real fears of decent people. In fact it is a continuing campaign in the bourgeois media that foments people’s anxiety and suspicion.
The different parts of the political spectrum play particular roles in the campaign, but to the same end. While the right scream about asylum seekers living in luxury, Muslims failing to integrate and terrorists lurking in suburbia, liberal commentators say that politicians have to respond to what’s being said on the street – otherwise the Tories and BNP will monopolise the argument.
Martin Kettle in the Guardian (8/2/5) asks if Britain is “a nation whose fears about immigration, asylum and crime are now so strong that the parties are compelled to bid and outbid each other in an effort to keep up with our anger” and thinks that “politicians have to be alive to the concerns of the voters.” Polly Toynbee, also in the Guardian (23/2/5), answers that that “Asylum plays horribly well: canvassers report that people talk of it incessantly, crazily, despite a steep fall in applications” and that “it’s no use pretending that a profoundly nasty streak in the voters will go away if it’s just ignored.”
This sort of argument can only be fought with a marxist understanding of where ideas come from. In modern bourgeois society the ruling capitalist class not only controls the mass media, its ideas are dominant at every level of society. The agenda for all debate in the bourgeois media is determined by the concerns of the capitalist class. Any discussion of the economy is on how to make capitalism most profitable; any discussion on foreign policy is on how best to defend national interests.
So, the “nasty streak” identified by Toynbee is something that has been stirred up by contributions both crude and refined, direct and oblique across the media. And where fear and suspicion is aroused by the ruling class they also insist that the capitalist state is the only force that could possibly defend us. All political parties insist the number one priority of the state is the security of the citizen. In reality the capitalist state can only defend the interests of the capitalist class, and workers can only defend themselves when they struggle as a class. But if you’re worried, isolated and insecure you are more likely to believe capitalism’s lies.
None of this means that there is no increase in crime, that terrorism isn’t on the rise across the world, that daily life is not becoming more and more insecure. These are all products of the accelerating decay of capitalist society and usually the first victims of crime and terrorism are not the rich and powerful but the oppressed and the exploited. But the true cynicism of the ruling class is shown by its willingness to use the very decomposition of its own system to prevent any real questioning of that system and to keep the exploited in their place with its deafening campaigns of fear and loathing. Car 4/3/5
As the phoney election campaign runs into the real one we will hear more and more from the government about its economic achievements. Blair has already launched six new pledges to make the country fairer, safer, healthier and with no unwelcome foreigners. Labour claims are endorsed by a recent book on the second term of the Blair administration. Written by Guardian journalists Polly Toynbee and David Walker, Better or Worse? has no doubts: “By 2005 Britain was a richer and fairer society than in 1997. It was healthier, safer and in many respects better governed…Many fewer people – children and pensioners especially – lived in dire hardship. Most people felt the warm glow of growing income and wealth…Crime kept falling, schools and hospitals improving, work was plentiful…Blair’s era was a better time to be British than for many decades” (p.327-8).
It is true that the British economy has done better than many of its rivals in the last few years in that the rate of growth has been above the global average and this has allowed some significant increases in spending. Whereas the global trend has been a decade on decade decline of production, the British economy has experienced a slight rise in the period after 1999. This in turn increased the amount of money being taken by the government and was the foundation of the increase in government expenditure from 37.0% in 2000 to 42% in 2004, although this has actually only taken the rate back to that of 1996.
Does this mean that things really got better? Toynbee and Walker point to falling waiting lists, reduced employment figures, reductions in poverty and improvement in the lot of pensioners to answer yes. A brief look beyond the headlines gives a different answer.
The government has trumpeted the fall in hospital waiting times and is busy setting new targets to reduce them further. Toynbee and Walker agree and resent the fact that people are not more grateful: “Why were people not more impressed with the sharpest ever falls in waiting times? Because those grumbling on waiting lists of six months were not on the far longer waiting lists five years previously” (ibid, p.43). It is certainly true that much money has been spent on achieving this target, along with various statistical ruses and outright deceptions along the way, such as the unofficial waiting list to get on the official one. More significant are the facts that hospitals only account for 10% of what the NHS does - “most health work takes place in GP surgeries and in people’s homes” (ibid, p.18) – and that good health is related to standards of living and quality of life that are not directly affected by a service that only responds once people are already ill. Health inequality is stubbornly linked to class and no amount of admonition to smoke less, eat better and be better parents has affected that: “The link between child poverty and health is strong and cyclical. Children born into poverty have worse outcomes across a range of indicators. For example, they are more likely to be born prematurely, have low birth weight, die in their first year of life or die from an accident in childhood…Children and young people from lower income households are more likely to report longstanding illness and less likely to report good or very good general health…By middle age, women and men from more disadvantaged backgrounds have death rates that are double those of women and men with advantaged family backgrounds.” (Child Poverty Review, HM Treasury, June 2004, p.63).
“Whatever else Blair’s Britain did, it worked… from 2001 to 2005 some 1.5 million jobs were created; a million or so disappeared. The net result was near full employment…” (Better or Worse?, p. 131). The official unemployment figures certainly show a steady decline with rates below that of major competitors; but they mask a situation of a persistent level of economic inactivity at around 25% of the population. This is because the fall in the number officially unemployed is mirrored by the increase in the number on incapacity benefit, as Toynbee and Walker are forced to acknowledge: “The number claiming sickness and disability benefits hit a record 3.1m in the second quarter of 2004, up from 2.8m. Many were de facto unemployed. Indeed the number of adults registered as economically inactive rose to eight million in 2004, up 124,000 on the previous year. Among them were over a million aged under twenty-five – a huge and dismaying waste of potential” (ibid, p.131-2).
Poverty
“By 2001/02 – the latest data available – steady progress had already been made towards our milestone target of reducing the number of children in low-income households by a quarter between 1998/99 and 2004/05 – achieving a reduction of around half a million children at a time when high income growth significantly raised the low-income threshold…This means that incomes for the poorest households are growing more rapidly than for the average household”. (Opportunity for All, Fifth Annual Report, Department for Work and Pensions 2003, p.46).
Such reports of progress, leading to the promise by Blair to abolish child poverty by 2020, have to be set in the context of a steady increase in the number of children living in poverty over recent decades: “The UK has had one of the worst records on child poverty among industrialised nations. The proportion of children living in households with below 60 per cent of contemporary median income more than doubled between the late 1970s and mid 1990s. This was largely due to: demographic changes, in particular a growth in the number of lone parent families; a concentration of worklessness among low-skilled households; and a widening wage distribution with increased in-work poverty and weaker work incentives.” (Child Poverty Review, HM Treasury, June 2004, p.15). This merely reflects the continuing polarisation between the classes: “…over the past 20 years the incomes of the poorest have fallen in real terms (i.e. allowing for inflation) as the richest have grown. Between 1979 and 1999/2000, the poorest tenth in the income distribution saw a real rise of only 6 per cent in their ‘after housing costs’ (AHC) incomes, compared with an average rise of 80 per cent, while the top tenth gained 86 per cent” (Poverty: the facts, Child Poverty Action Group 2001, p.158-9). This situation has not been halted, let alone reversed: “At the end of the 1970s, the tenth of the population best off had 21 per cent of disposable income. By 2003 they had even more, 29 per cent. But the first five years of the twenty-first century may come to be distinguished in the eyes of historians by the explosion of top incomes. On Blair’s watch a relatively small number of people got grotesquely richer” (Better or Worse?, p.50).
Toynbee and Walker are at their most blind on the question of pensions. They begin by declaring that “The number of pensioner households living in poverty fell by a fifth by 2005” before murmuring “although two million old people still lived below the poverty line” (ibid, p.63). The real issue, the plans to dismantle the pensions system posed in the recent Turner report, is of no concern. This assault has been going on for twenty years with the promotion of private pensions, the introduction of second pensions and the erosion of the basic pension. Now various dramatic alternatives are proposed: “Either:(i) pensioners will become poorer relative to the rest of society; or (ii) taxes/National Insurance contributions devoted to pensions must rise; or (iii) the savings rate must rise; or (iv) average retirement ages must rise” (Pensions: Challenges and Choices. The First Report of the Pensions Commission).
That we live in a society in which increasing life expectancy becomes a threat is an extraordinary indictment of that society.
New Labour has become the master at drowning the truth in a sea of facts. By concentrating on this or that facet, by pushing one or another issue to the fore, be it waiting lists, unemployment figures or children in poverty, the bigger, longer term picture is ignored. To take the last as an example: “Since 1996, living standards have improved the most for children who were living just below the poverty line. But children in households with the lowest incomes have benefited much less…According to government surveys, 1.1 million children live in households with less than 40% of the national average income. Four out of 10 of these children live in households that do not receive any of the main means-tested benefits – even though they may be entitled to claim” (BBC News Online, 23/6/03, reporting research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies). Above all, any changes in the situation, any apparent improvements in living standards, are based on the increased exploitation of the working class. Although it is not possible to look at this in detail here, it is important to note that this increase came not from increases in productivity, where Britain lags behind many other developed nations, or from advances in technology or skills, but above all from an increase in the hours worked. While contracted hours have gone down there has been an increase in the amount of overtime worked, both paid and unpaid. The level of unpaid overtime in particular increased sharply between 1988 and 1998: from 25.2% to 40.6% of males working fulltime and from 27% to 57% of females working fulltime (From: Working long hours: A review of the evidence Vol.1, DTI November 2003).
The Labour Party has shown the ruthless capacity and determination of the ruling class to extract more from the working class through an increase in exploitation, and then use some of that money to present a distorted picture to hide the reality of the situation. Against ruling class attacks workers must learn how to defend their class interests with equal determination.
North 2/3/05
With the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, an old focus of imperialist conflict has been revived in the Middle East. This new episode in the capitalist barbarism spreading across the world and particularly the Middle East, where we are seeing an endless spiral of terrorist atrocities, reminds us once again that all the bourgeoisie’s speeches about peace are just cynical lies.
The assassination of Hariri shows the emptiness of all the propaganda that followed the election of Mahmoud Abbas to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. Supposedly this marked a great step towards peace.
In reality, the assassination has enabled France and the USA, who were behind the September 2004 UN Security Council resolution 1559 that demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, to take up their positions in Lebanese political life. Both have rushed to point the finger at Syria (just as Sharon immediately blamed the Tel Aviv suicide bombing at the end of February on the Damascus regime). And these great powers are not acting out of concern for the freedom of the Lebanese population. Far from it. For Chirac, who waxed lyrical about his friendship with Hariri, this was an ideal opportunity to gain a French toehold in a country from which it was booted out in the 80s, culminating in 1991 with the expulsion of its principal Lebanese agent, General Aoun. As for the US, this was a new step in their military strategy in the Middle East and Central Asia. They are increasing pressure on Syria, which the Bush administration has been blaming for harbouring al-Qaida terrorists and members of the old Saddam regime. Washington has made it clear on several occasions recently that Syria could well face military strikes.
Thus the current entente between America and France over Lebanon and Syria is aimed merely at justifying the defence of their respective imperialist interests. It can only lead to new rivalries that manipulate local terrorist gangs and sow further chaos in the region.
Neither should we have any illusions that recent diplomatic trips by the Washington clique are heralds of harmony between the US and Europe. Certainly US diplomacy has been courting Europe very intensively. After the visit by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, we then had Donald Rumsfeld at the 41st Security Conference in Munich, followed by the boss himself, Bush, who attended the summits of NATO and the European Union and had a number of meetings with European heads of state, especially those who had opposed the military intervention in Iraq: Chirac, Schroeder and Putin. Why all this diplomatic froth? What is really being prepared in the corridors, behind the hypocritical accolades between rivals, between Uncle Sam and the Europeans? What’s all this about the new partnership for spreading freedom around the world?
The USA’s change of style does not mean that it has given up using its military strength to defend its economic, political and strategic interests. It means it is changing its tactics and its rhetoric to take account of the difficulties it is encountering, particularly as a result of being stuck in the Iraqi quagmire. Its policy in Iraq has everywhere created bitter hostility to the US and isolated it internationally. Unable to retreat on Iraq without undermining its global authority, the US faces contradictions that are extremely hard to deal with. As well as being a financial black hole, Iraq is a permanent focus for criticisms by its main imperialist rivals. Furthermore, the elections in Iraq saw a victory for the unified list of Shiite parties which are close to Iran, and the defeat of America’s man Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister. “This government will have excellent relations with Iran…in terms of regional geopolitics, it’s not the result the USA hoped for” (Courrier Internationale, 746). Alongside this waning influence over the political parties in Iraq, there is the whole climate of terror which every day sees new atrocities by the ‘resistance’: the suicide bombing which killed 120 people south of Baghdad at the end of February was the worst single attack since the fall of the Saddam regime. The so-called victory of Iraqi democracy – claimed simply because the elections were held – has by no means reduced the risk that the country will split apart along different ethnic and religious factional interests.
The US diplomatic offensive, its desire to be seen to be ‘on the same wavelength’ as the Europeans, has the aim of trying to convince the latter to stand by the US in its campaign to propagate democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East. In fact, the Bush administration has the same military objectives as before, but the ideological packaging has changed: they are giving out that from now on nothing will be done without first consulting the Europeans, since we all share the same human values of freedom and democracy. And it is not to be ruled out that France will be promised a privileged role in sorting things out in Iraq, in exchange for a greater involvement alongside the US.
Behind the ostensibly unifying phrases of US diplomacy, the real divergences are still there and continue to develop. As a high-ranking NATO official put it, “old Rumsfeld has been playing the violin to us, as did Condoleeza Rice last week” (Le Monde 15.2.05). Whereas up to now the Bush team conducted an ‘iron fist’ policy, now it’s an iron fist in a velvet glove. Rumsfeld said that for the US “the mission (in the military sense) determines the coalition”. In other words, America will only call upon NATO if it suits its strategic interests. For their part, the Europeans, notably Germany with the support of France, are talking openly about the need to reform NATO and to replace the Alliance by a group of experts, representing American but above all European interests. Germany is saying clearly that “in the European framework, it feels co-responsible for stability and international order” and on this basis is demanding a seat on the UN Security Council. Given America’s immediate refusal to reform NATO, Germany has even raised the tone via its foreign affairs minister Joschka Fischer, who declared: “we have to know whether the US places itself inside or outside the system of the United Nations”.
This tension around the role of NATO was crystallised by the refusal by the Europeans to contribute to a programme for the formation of military and police forces in Iraq, or by their meagre contributions to it. Vis-à-vis Afghanistan, the European powers have agreed to increase their contribution to the International Force under NATO command, since the latter is under the orders of a French general and has important units of French and German troops. However, they don’t want this military force to eventually fall under the command of operation ‘Enduring Freedom’, i.e. of the American army. The question of NATO is not the only point of discord. After playing symphonies to the Rights of Man concerning the repression of the student movement in Tianenmen Square in China in 1989, the Europeans, as good arms dealers, are ready to lift the arms embargo on China. The Americans don’t agree, and neither do Japan, but that’s nothing to do with the Rights of Man: it’s simply because this would re-launch the arms race on the Asian continent and threaten their influence in a region already subject to powerful military tensions – tensions which have been sharpened recently by North Korea’s official announcement that it does have nuclear weapons.
The USA’s diplomatic visit to Europe does not therefore announce a new era of unity in transatlantic relations. On the contrary, the differences are growing and positions are more and more irreconcilable. The strategies and interests of one and the other are different because each one defends its national capitalist interests. It’s not a matter of bad Americans on the one hand and good Europeans on the other. They are all imperialist brigands and the policy of every man for himself which lies behind all the games of entente cordiale can only lead in the end to new splits, conflicts, and military slaughter – with Iran and Syria as the next possible targets.
Indeed the divergences over Iran are already very deep. The big European powers, including Britain, are in general in favour of negotiating with Iran in order to dissuade it – so they say – from developing a military nuclear programme. Moscow, on the other hand, is Tehran’s leading partner on the nuclear level and has no intention of changing its policies. As for the US, given Iran’s importance as a regional power – now strengthened by the electoral victory of the Shiites in Iraq – they will be obliged to increase the pressure on the Europeans and on Putin to ensure that their line prevails. The Bush clique is threatening to go to the UN with plans in the medium term for a new military escalation which can only exacerbate chaos and barbarism in the region.
As we have argued regularly in our press, the chaos and conflicts that have been developing on a planetary scale are the direct product of the new period that opened in 1989 with the collapse of the eastern bloc, which was soon followed by the break-up of the western bloc. Far from signalling a ‘new order’ of peace as George Bush Senior promised at the time, we insisted that the world was heading towards a murderous disorder, a bloody chaos in which the US gendarme would try to impose its authority through the increasingly massive and brutal resort to its military power (see ‘Militarism and Decomposition’ in International Review 64).
From the 1991 Gulf War to Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Chechnya, from Somalia to East Timor, from the attack on the Twin Towers to the Madrid bombings, to cite only a few examples of the violent convulsions of this phase of decomposition (see our theses on ‘Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism’ in IR 107), the real cause of these massacres is the imperialist confrontation between states large and small. For the US, whose national interests coincide with the maintenance of a global order built to its own advantage, this aggravation of chaotic imperialist conflicts makes their position of world leadership more and more difficult to sustain. Since the old Russian threat no longer exists, their former allies, in particular the European states led by Germany and France, have persistently sought to defend their own national capitalist interests. The deepening of the economic crisis sharpens the imperialist appetites of all states and leaves the US with no alternative but to launch itself into attempts to conquer new ground, to destabilise its rivals and above all to use its military strength more and more. But this has the consequence of worsening the chaos and the barbarism in the regions where its military adventures take place. In this context, the strategy put forward by the administration under Bush Junior following the attacks of September 11 2001, the ‘war on terrorism’, is a new attempt to respond to the weakening of US leadership. Faced with the growing challenge from other imperialist powers, the Americans have used September 11 and the nebulous threat of al Qaida as a pretext for conducting an unprecedented military offensive across the globe. This long-term military campaign has identified a number of countries as being part of the ‘Axis of Evil’, as states that ‘harbour’ terrorists, or as ‘tyrannies’ which have to be dealt with militarily. This is the case with Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and increasingly, Syria. In fact, behind all this rhetoric, the US has a much wider strategic aim, which includes the need for a decisive presence in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. The overall strategic goal is the encirclement of Europe and of Russia. America has a particular concern to ensure control over the world’s main sources of energy supply, so that in future imperialist crises it can have a decisive advantage over the European powers, Russia, Japan and China. This has certainly been the aim of the US but it has faced all kinds of difficulties in carrying out the plan, given the determination of its rivals to defend their own imperialist interests. The result of this can only be the greatest chaos in history. Donald, 5/3/05.
The society we live in, capitalist society, is once again marching to war: Serbia yesterday, Afghanistan and Iraq today, Iran or Syria tomorrow, and even more grave conflicts after that. This time around, it may not be towards one big World War, but towards more and more chaotic wars all over the world. But the threat is the same: the destruction of humanity, unless this system is overthrown.
In 1914, capitalist civilisation showed that it no longer had any useful purpose for mankind as it plunged Europe into the biggest imperialist slaughter the world had ever seen. In 1917-19, from Petrograd to Berlin, from Turin to Glasgow, the workers’ response was an international wave of mass strikes and revolutions. The Communist International outlined the perspective: either the victory of the socialist revolution in all countries, or an epoch of ever more destructive wars.
The revolutionary wave was defeated and the International died; but it had been right. Within 20 years, a new and even more horrifying world war began to ravage the planet. Even before this nightmare was over, the imperialist allies in the ‘anti-fascist’ camp were confronting each other for control of the globe. For the next 40 years, humanity lived under the shadow of a third and final world war between US and Russian imperialism, while millions died in their proxy wars under the guise of ‘national liberation’ struggles from Vietnam to the Middle East and Africa.
In 1989 the weaker Russian bloc, encircled by its US rival, collapsed like a house of cards; and we were told by George Bush Senior that a new world order of peace was on the agenda. Almost immediately, the former partners of the old US bloc were themselves fighting each other in proxy wars in Africa and the Balkans. America responded by launching massive displays of military force in the Gulf in 1991 and in Serbia in 1999. And since 2001, it has been engaged in the ‘war against terrorism’, whose real aim is to control the world’s main energy supplies and build a circle of steel around Europe and Russia.
In short: decaying capitalism means endless war. The history of the last 90 years shows that all talk of peace in this system is a lie. Peace is no more than an imperialist truce between wars.
If capitalism cannot make peace, then pacifism is a lie. Pacifism, the so-called anti-war movement led by those who selectively claim to be against this or that war, such as the present military adventure in Iraq, tells us that, through legal demonstrations and democratic elections, we can persuade the capitalist state to turn swords into ploughshares. It tells us that if we support this capitalist politician against that one - such as Kerry against Bush - we can reverse the slide towards war. It even tells us that we can serve the cause of peace by supporting certain imperialist powers - like France and Germany - against others, like America or Britain, or by getting America and Europe to work together in the framework of the good old United Nations (even George Bush is paying lip service to this idea today).
As we said: all this is a lie. Capitalism is not dragging humanity through the hell of war because it has the wrong leaders, but because it is a social system in profound and irreversible decay.
The struggle against war can only be a struggle against capitalism.
Many will reply: they are fine-sounding words, but in the meantime, what are we supposed to do? Surely pacifist demos are better than nothing?
The question is false. The struggle against capitalism is not some utopian ideal. It starts from the day to day reality of the class struggle, the workers’ fight to defend themselves against the growing attacks on their living standards. Against the effects of the same economic crisis which also pushes capitalism towards war. Of course the workers’ struggle must extend and unify and above all it must become openly political. But it is already there, and it grows stronger every time workers recognise their common interests as a class.
Pacifist campaigns only weaken the class struggle by calling on workers to see themselves as part of a democratic movement of respectable citizens. They obstruct the growth of class consciousness by claiming that peace is possible without revolution.
Faced with the extension of war across the world, the response of the working class in all countries can only be to refuse all the sacrifices demanded by the capitalist economy and its war drive; to fight for its own class interests against the national interest defended both by open warmongers and pacifists; to oppose the nationalist logic of war with the internationalist programme of world revolution and a world human community. WR 5.3.05
In recent months militants and sections of the ICC have received threats or thinly veiled calls for their assassination.
In December the UHP-ARDE [1] published on its website a text titled ‘The science and art of blockheads’ [2] which continues a call for the assassination of our militants via a macabre chain of syllogisms, which begin by openly accusing us of being “racists” and of defending bourgeois politics in a veiled way; then they establish a hierarchy of definitions that starts with “blockheads”, passing on to “stupid arses” and ends up with “imbeciles”. Upon these premises the following conclusion is drawn “AGAINST THE BOURGEOIS CAMPAIGNS OF LIES AND REPRESSION OF OUR STRUGGLES: DEATH TO THE IMBECILES!” [3]
A month previously, we had received in the mail box of our section in Spain an anonymous letter that finished with the following threat: “You are a gang of sons of whores and you will reap what you are sowing, little professors of shit. Signed, a lumpen”
Recently, in January 2005, a member of the so-called IFICC [4] threatened to “cut the throat” of a member of our section in France. [5]
Faced with the succession of threats by these gangsters, which are totally alien to proletarian behaviour, what should the attitude of revolutionaries and proletarian elements be? Not to give it any importance because they are just boasts or the product of a moment of over excitement? To fall into such an appreciation would be a grave error.
In the first place, such an attitude means forgetting the historical experience of the workers’ movement. This teaches us that the killing of worker militants has been preceded - and in great part prepared - by a succession of apparently trivial acts: false accusations, threats, intimidation. In short, a series of small links that joined together form a great chain. Thus, the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg in January 1919 - perpetrated by forces following the orders of the Social Democrat executioners - had a long period of incubation: from 1905 there were serious denigrations, threats and challenges against this proletarian militant. None of these acts appeared worrying but the crime of 1919 was the manifestation of the infernal logic that they contained. In the same way, the assassination of Trotsky, executed by the infamous Mercader, was the culmination of a series of orchestrated steps by the Stalinist rabble: first Trotsky was accused of being an agent of the Gestapo; there then began a campaign which openly demanded his head. Then came the pressure on one of his sons (Lyova) which ended in what had all the hallmarks of a ‘medical’ assassination [6]. Later on there were the intensifying direct death threats by Stalinism’s Mexican hit men, leading to the tragic end that we all know about. History shows that there exists a more or less direct link between today’s threats and tomorrow’s assassinations. These are the outcome of a network of lies, threats and hate campaigns.
In the second place, we cannot forget the context in which these three threats we have received have taken place. In recent months we have seen a new outbreak and multiplication of the IFICC’s campaigns. As their Bulletin no 28 shows they refer to us as “bastards”; this, linked to endless insults, threats and lies, helps to produce a climate where physical attacks against the ICC are legitimised.
It is no accident that these threats happened in the context that we have laid out. Their authors have clearly decided on their camp. To the insults, hate campaigns, the whole fabric of lies and calumnies, they have now added calls for assassination.
This is not the first time that we have seen such an “intervention”. In 1995-96, in the context of an equally repugnant campaign against the ICC carried out by other protagonists, [7] the so-called GCI – a group that figures on the links page of the UHP/ARDE – used the same method of syllogisms to attack the ICC and call for the killing of our comrades in Mexico. The first premise being that our comrades had denounced the Stalinist Maoist Sendero Luminoso group in Peru. This apparently made us accomplices in the massacre of proletarian prisoners and led to the following ‘logical’ deduction: “for the ICC, as for the Peruvian state and police, to place oneself on the side of the oppressed is to support the Sendero Luminoso”. This led to another syllogism, according to which “in the worker’s camp, this kind of amalgam is considered to be typical of the police or informers”. From here to a new sophism: “these are the same Social Democratic arguments that Domingo Arango and Abad de Santillan used faced with the violent actions of revolutionary militants”. And what is the conclusion of this logic? “As a result of this type of calumny, which is really used by the state, Domingo Arango received a bullet in the head and we cannot but deplore that Abad de Santillan did not suffer the same fate” (from Communisme no 43, organ of the GCI) . [8]
We are aware of the process that these threats are part of. We are not intimidated by this and we will respond to it in the same way as we did in 1996: “None of this is going to make us retreat. We are deepening our struggle and the whole of the ICC is mobilised to defend our section in Mexico, using a weapon that only the proletariat possesses: internationalism. The international unity of the ICC, from the bourgeois point of view, contains the intolerable inconvenience that all attempts to destroy one of its parts immediately runs into the active mobilisation and solidarity of the whole”. [9]
We have firmly rejected the infiltration of this kind of behaviour into the ranks of revolutionaries because this is the only way to break the chain that unites the present murky calls for the “death of the imbeciles” with the assassination of communists tomorrow.
Each social class has its methods. We already know those of the bourgeoisie: on the one hand, the ‘political’ weapons of slander, threats, intimidation and blackmail, and on the other, the more direct weapons of crime, terror and torture. [10]
Naturally, these weapons do not form part of the arsenal of the proletariat and its genuinely revolutionary groups. We have other, much more effective weapons for the struggle against capitalism. One of these, the most important, is solidarity.
Solidarity is the strength of the proletariat, the expression of its unity. Solidarity shows its enemies that any attack on its parts will immediately encounter the reply of the whole.
Therefore, the ICC unanimously expresses its solidarity with the threatened comrades and sections and adopts all of the necessary measures for its defence. In the same way, we ask our sympathisers to express their active solidarity. We equally ask this of all those who take part in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism; and even if they have disagreements with the positions of the ICC, we hope that they will see the necessity to fight disgusting attacks like this.
Solidarity with the threatened comrades is not only the best form of defence for them but also for the defence of all the militants and comrades who struggle against capitalism. Equally it is the best contribution that we can make towards assuring the defence of communist militants tomorrow.
The practice of slanders, lies, threats and intimidation is totally incompatible with the goal of the world human community that the proletariat aspires to install after the destruction of the capitalist state. It is vital to eradicate the infiltration of behaviour that is nothing but the expression and reproduction of the rotting capitalist society that we want to abolish.
The clarification of revolutionary positions, the struggle against capitalism and it barbarity, cannot be unbalanced by the shady manoeuvres of these gangs of phonies who stealthily work behind ‘revolutionary positions’ in order to hurl poisonous darts against the true struggle for the proletarian cause.
Solidarity with our militants and the threatened sections!
International Communist Current 15.2.05
[1] UHP are the initials of the Unios Hermanos Proletarios (United Proletarian Brothers). ARDE is the publication that appears to be the mouthpiece of the various groups that form the UHP.
[2] See the reply of our Section in Spain in Accion Proletaria No 180: ‘Reply to UHP-ARDE: an honest blockhead is better than a cheating scoundrel’.
[3] This underlines the cowardly and devious way in which these individuals call for the killing of our militants. With disgusting hypocrisy, they do not say things openly: firstly, they say the ICC is composed of “imbeciles” and then later on they end with “death to imbeciles”.
[4] A group of thugs that call themselves the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ and whose only activity consists of spewing forth tons of lies against the ICC.
[5] See the article denouncing this episode in Revolution Internationale no 354.
[6] See the testimonies about the strange confinement of Trotsky’s son in a Russian clinic in Paris in Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky and Vereeken’s The GPU in the Trotskyist movement.
[7] At this time it was groups like the ‘Communist Bulletin Group’ in Britain or ‘Hilo Rojo’ in Spain, along with certain other ‘circles’, who were the authors of these campaigns. We have not heard much from them since.
[8] We can see from these that the editors of UHP-ARDE have not invented anything in their cowardly calls for our assassination. They must have been inspired by the methods of their cousins in the GCI.
[9] Extract from the article ‘The GCI parasites call for the murder of our militants in Mexico’, which denounces the GCI in solidarity with our section in Mexico. This was published in all our territorial press at the time.
[10] We should point out that the lumpenised elements are deeply attracted to these bourgeois methods and this is why, in periods of revolution, they are used to fill the ranks of the ‘Frei Korps’ and similar shock troops of capital, as in Germany in 1919.
Anyone observing the world can’t help but be struck by the incredible level of chaos that is generated daily across the globe: poverty stretches even to the heart of the most developed countries; there is unemployment on a massive long term scale from which no one is any longer protected; war between states afflicts almost every continent; and when the population doesn’t die at the hand of the state, it does so in the murderous terrorist attacks that are becoming more and more numerous, or from diseases once believed to have disappeared, but which now return to decimate the poverty-stricken masses who cannot afford even the simplest treatments; and the terrible events in southeast Asia at the end of 2004 are there to remind us of the equally devastating consequences of the so-called natural and ecological catastrophes that are always down to negligence by capitalism when not the direct result of capitalist production itself.
Faced with this permanent spiral of destruction, we don’t stop hearing about the well being of the economy, prosperity and progress. But where is the progress in war that, almost everywhere, decimates populations and destroys towns, fields, forests? Where is the well being when thousands of human beings starve everyday? Where is the prosperity when no worker on this earth can any longer know what his future holds, whether he will be able to feed himself and his family?
Faced with this colossal paradox, people inevitably ask questions. Why does a society that is supposed to progress, to bring ever more goods and security, provide humanity with the exact opposite? Why is this so? Is it inevitable? Is it a temporary circumstance that will disappear of its own accord? And if it continues, where is it leading? Can we escape it?
The bourgeoisie has some answers: we are assured either that these problems are the result of the maliciousness, the nastiness, which is at the core of the human race; or that they can be blamed on a lack of democracy, hatred, transient economic difficulties due to poor regulation of financial flows, the increase in the price of raw materials on the markets, the immoral greed of speculators. Put briefly, nothing serious, in any case nothing that can’t be mastered by the famous international community.
All of this clashes with the reality of the situation, since we have been hearing arguments of this kind for a long time and the situation does nothing but deteriorate. To take just one example: the peace and prosperity we were promised at the time of the collapse of the eastern Bloc, which up until then had played the role of the villain. Since then, the complete opposite has occurred: there has never been more barbarism and destitution in the world.
Why, then, such a disaster after all of the progress that humanity has achieved? Why so much poverty even though there seems to be so much wealth to exploit?
In fact, these explanations, deliberately or not, skirt around the only reality which allows us to understand why, on all levels, this modern world, one that appears so potentially prosperous, drags us into chaos and destruction. This reality is that of the economic crisis. Certainly, the bourgeoisie cannot always hide the economic difficulties of its system and, from time to time, it is obliged to admit that there is a crisis. However, when we, marxist revolutionaries, speak of crisis today, it is not on the same basis. Certainly, crisis is inherent in capitalism; it has been a feature of capitalism since its birth. But today the crisis is different: it is insurmountable; it reveals the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.
We can say this, not from knowledge developed through a superficial, or even a detailed, observation of the state of the planet but because when we speak of crisis today, we rely on the totality of the marxist analysis of the development of capitalism that the workers’ movement has developed. We affirm on that basis that capitalism entered its phase of decadence almost a century ago and that in this phase, in contrast to the phase of ascendance, the capitalist crisis becomes insurmountable; that the only result of this will be the destruction of humanity and of all its achievements made during the course of history – unless the working class is able to overcome the mortal contradictions of capitalism in the struggle for the construction of a new society.
For marxists it is in this sense that decadence is the fundamental framework for analysing the world situation. Without this framework it is impossible not only to understand the reality of the contemporary world but also to draw up a realistic perspective. Far from leading us into demoralisation, or to the impression that there is no future, to a kind of fatalism where we can only ‘Look After Number One’, the marxist theory of decadence is the foundation of the communist perspective, which is not a simple matter of willpower but is built upon a complete method for analysing the development of human societies: historical materialism. On this basis we can understand why, although this barbarism is inevitable for capitalism, it is not inevitable for humanity, which could, through the struggle of the working class, transcend this situation and establish a new society.
It is within this framework that we hope to tackle the question of decadence.
We haven’t the time here to explain the marxist theory of decadence in detail or with the preciseness it deserves. That is not the purpose of this text. We have written a lot on this issue in the International Review and in pamphlets, and we will write more. Decadence is neither an invention of the ICC nor its discovery. On the contrary, it is a concept at the heart of the marxist analysis of the development of human societies, at the centre of historical materialism. From the beginning, Marx and Engels established that the analysis of the economic development of humanity was the key to understanding the development of contemporary society. Through their research the two founders of marxism discovered that human society organises itself around production, the first and central activity of man. Thus the organisation of the means of production delineates the social relations.
Putting the issue immediately on the historical level, they managed to analyse how the evolution of the means of production and its organisation had influenced social organisation. To summarise as much as possible, it is apparent that the development of the means of production, which is faced with a quantity of needs to satisfy, attains such a level that the organisation of the means becomes obsolete to the aim of production and finally a hindrance. It then becomes necessary to profoundly modify the organisation of production so that the existing means of production can be used to the maximum and continue their development.
This is how Marx, speaking of capitalism, summarised it in the Principles of a Critique of Political Economy:
“Beyond a certain point, the development of the productive forces becomes a barrier for capital; in other terms, the capitalist system becomes an obstacle for the expansion of the productive forces of labour. Having reached this point, capital, or more exactly wage labour, enters into the same relation to the development of social wealth and of productive forces as the system of guilds, serfdom, or slavery, and is necessarily rejected as a fetter. The last form of servitude in human activity - wage labour on one side and capital on the other - is then cast off, and this casting off is itself the result of the mode of production which corresponds to capital. Wage labour and capital, themselves the negation of previous forms of enslaved social production, are in their turn repudiated by the material and intellectual conditions stemming from their own process of production. It is by acute conflicts, crises, and convulsions that the growing incompatibility between the creative development of society and the established relations of production manifests itself”.
This modification does not take place smoothly: social organisation takes shape around production, as we have said, and until today humanity has had to manage conditions of material scarcity. Initially this was a general scarcity, as in primitive societies, then later on it was relative: each producer provides enough for himself and even a little more, but not enough for everyone. From this necessarily arise ownership, property and exploitation. Thus interests and powers crystallise around production. The calling into question of the organisation of production [i.e. the existing society] amounts to calling into question the economic, political and social position of the dominant classes. It is only by a more or less violent, but always radical, break-through that change can take place.
This is why, very succinctly, the evolution of the means of production does not occur in a linear manner and without such breakthroughs, or in a continual ascent. This is why each system of production is succeeded by a phase of decadence, during which the evolution of the means of production comes into insoluble contradiction with its organisation [i.e. existing society], while in society there emerge revolutionary forces opposed to the reactionary classes still attached to their privileged position in society.
A method of production, a way of producing, corresponds in history to a stage of the development of production. In Roman society production was organised between slaves, who worked, and masters, who made them work. This mode of production allowed the development of production until it attained a level that posed a problem: to continue to produce, you needed more slaves, who were in fact prisoners taken during wars; and the geographical limits of war, within the means of that epoch, were starting to be reached. Furthermore, the developments of the techniques of production were demanding more sophisticated forms of labour that slavery could not provide. This example shows that the manner in which production was organised became less and less suited to production itself, and that if the latter were to continue to develop, this mode of organisation, which until then had permitted an unprecedented development, was in the future going to prevent it. It was becoming a hindrance. To each level of production there corresponds a suitable mode of organisation.
This is why the slaves were emancipated and became serfs. In its turn the feudal system permitted the development of production until it attained such a level that society was again faced with an obstacle. It was then that capitalist relations transformed the producer of the Middle Ages into the ‘free’ man selling his labour power to the capitalist. Again, production found an organisation capable of permitting its development: a very rapid development, never seen before, that makes it possible for humanity to leave scarcity behind for the first time.
If the passage from one mode of production to the other does not occur smoothly and in a linear manner, from one ascent to the next as it were, it is because the mode of production finds an expression in a particular social organisation; and within this the dominant class defends its interests tooth and claw against the perspective of the overthrow of the established order. During this time the growing incompatibility between the levels attained by production and the manner in which it is organised gives rise to ever-greater convulsions.
Decadence therefore starts when the relations of production become a hindrance to the development of production. It continues so long as new relations of production have not been established. Decadence is the period of the bankruptcy of the old society.
Capitalism, as we have seen, certainly does not escape this rule. But the decadence of capitalism differs from previous periods of decadence by virtue of the fact that, in the societies of the past, the seeds of the new society already existed and were developing within the old society. Within feudal society, the bourgeoisie conquered economic power little by little and at the same time transformed a good part of production before attaining political power. In capitalism, this process has not taken place. The revolutionary class, the proletariat, cannot institute new relations of production without destroying those which now exist. Therein lies the extreme gravity of capitalist decadence.
We thus see that, for marxists, decadence is not a moral concept. When bourgeois specialists speak of the decadence of the Roman Empire or the waning of the Middle Ages, they often situate this idea on the moral plane: decadence arises from human greed, from the dissolute morals of our leaders, etc. As marxists we develop the concept of decadence as a rational, materialist concept, that is to say based on the material development of human societies. We do not deny that these periods exhibit evidence of the greed and dissolute morals of the rulers: we know full well that the historical blockage of the development of the productive forces finds its reflection in human society on all levels. And we can easily see the differences in philosophical thought and artistic expression between periods of ascendance and periods of decadence in various social systems, capitalism included. Decadence is not a purely economic theory; Marx, incidentally, never did anything other than write a critique of the economy. But the explanation for social decline must nevertheless be clearly situated on a materialist terrain.
How does the decadence of capitalism express itself?
When the Communist International spoke of an era of war and revolution it couldn’t have better summarised what the onset of decadent capitalism meant for humanity. Capitalism had, during the course of its ascendance, created the ideal framework for its development, that of the nation. It was on the basis of the nation state that capitalism secured its development and, using it as a starting point, launched its assault on the regions that it turned into colonies. Today the relations of competition exacerbated by the crisis are still based on the nation state. The only solution for the bourgeoisie to its crisis of overproduction is war, which leads to a period of reconstruction that tails off into a new crisis of overproduction.
We can easily situate capitalism’s entry into decadence at the beginning of the 20th century: the First World War, the first in the whole history of humanity, clearly expressed the new situation. The reconstruction that followed it quickly ran into a crisis without precedent, in the thirties, then the Second World War. The cycle, crisis, war, reconstruction, new crisis is apparent, but this is not a cycle of development. On the contrary, it is an infernal spiral that drags everything into its wake. For if capitalism could transcend the crises of overproduction during its ascendant phase, through economic expansion and the growing proletarianisation of the population, today the limits have been reached and the crisis is permanent. The only prospect is war.
Although we are talking about an epoch of war, we are also, as the Communist International stated at its foundation, talking about an epoch of revolution.
Indeed, capitalism’s development gave birth to its gravedigger: the proletariat, the only social force capable of overthrowing capitalism and of bringing about a new society. In attaining its limits, capitalism opens the door to its suppression. The order of the day for the proletariat is henceforth the immense task of founding, on the ruins of capitalism, a new society capable of managing abundance and providing the productive forces with a framework suited to their development.
The communist perspective is not new. The idea of constructing a society without oppression and injustice can be found in antiquity and the Middle Ages. But wanting a better society is not enough to bring it into being. The material conditions have to make this change possible. Equally, the revolt of the downtrodden is not new: by rejecting their conditions Roman slaves provided human history with valuable lessons in how a class struggles. But, these revolts were doomed to failure because the material situation, the level of production, did not permit humanity to go beyond a social structure of class and exploitation: as long as humanity had to manage scarcity, it could not build a just society.
It is capitalism that permits humanity to glimpse this perspective. Henceforth, production has attained a level that permits the suppression of scarcity: prehistory can come to an end. The communist perspective is not an ideal or a utopia, it is a material possibility and, furthermore, it is a necessity in order that the development of production can continue. We say once again: it is necessary to halt capitalism in its destructive spiral, which threatens to return humanity to the primitive era.
This is what makes capitalist decadence different from decadent periods in other epochs: it indicates the end of prehistory, the end of humanity’s long march from scarcity towards abundance. But this goal is not written in stone: the end of prehistory could simply be the end of history if nothing happens to stop the barbarism which is setting the planet alight. Communism is not a certainty: it can only be implemented through the hard struggle of the working class, and the result of this struggle is not known. That is why revolutionaries must be fully armed politically so that they in turn can arm the working class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and for the construction of a new society.
Decadence is part of this armament. It is a fundamental framework developed by marxism right from its origin. Indeed, Marx and Engels speak of decadence in The German Ideology, written even earlier than the Communist Manifesto. Decadence permeates the whole marxist analysis of the evolution of human societies. By illuminating the succession of periods of ascendance and decadence in history, marxism allows us to understand how humanity was able to organise itself and to progress; why the world is the way it is today; and finally, that it is possible to transcend this situation and build another world. RI
In April 1975 the Vietnam War was coming to an end. A ‘revolution’ had occurred in Portugal and a massive strike wave had been developing in Spain. World Revolution Nº3, then a 48-page magazine, published in that month covered these and other issues. The response to the war in South East Asia and the upheavals in Lisbon and other Portuguese cities was symptomatic of an implacable hostility to the fashionable causes of the left at the time. It judged that:
“Just as the slogan ‘Defence of the Free World’ has helped dragoon Vietnamese workers and peasants in the interests of US imperialism, the ideology of ‘national liberation’ is also a cover for the interests of Russian, Chinese and North Vietnamese imperialism in Vietnam. It has mobilised workers for capitalist interests in the same way that the ideology of anti-fascism mobilised workers in the Spanish Civil War and in World War 2 to fight and die for one faction of the capitalist class against another”.
WR also disavowed the extreme left putsch of March 11th in Portugal: “With the disarray of the right after the aborted coup, the left in Portugal can take on the dual role of disarming the working class ideologically and repressing it physically when the crisis demands the mounting of savage attacks on the class. The left is therefore ready to play out the role not only of an Allende but also of the Noskes and Scheidemanns”(1).
The hostility of WR to bourgeois movements of all descriptions incurred the wrath and ostracism of leftism which was and still is characterised by a willingness to choose its camp from among contending capitalist factions within each national state and from between competing imperialist adversaries. But as the pages of the magazine of this period show, WR was by no means politically ‘indifferent’ as the leftists claimed. The struggle of the workers in Spain, in the Middle East, and in the Glasgow dustcart drivers’ strike - all expressions of the wave of international class struggle that had begun in France in 1968 - were defended wholeheartedly against the sabotage of the forces of the bourgeois state including the left and the trade unions.
Furthermore WR was arguing for the eventual formation of an international revolutionary party on a “sure basis”. Indeed the first article in this magazine is a report of the formation at the beginning of 1975 of the International Communist Current, from the groups of the international tendency to which World Revolution belonged, as an essential step on the road to this goal:
“The manner in which our political current has developed is unlike international regroupments in the past which began as a set of national regroupments before fusing on the international plane. Ours has taken place as if in reverse. Its origins were on the international level before expressing itself within particular national boundaries. In this specific way the international character of all proletarian political organisation, acknowledged explicitly as a founding principle since 1847, is being reaffirmed today in the International Communist Current. The Current’s role as the international pole of regroupment of revolutionaries has now been put upon a concrete organisational footing, reflecting the need to act effectively in a period of heightening class struggle....There are only two main obstacles which can stand in the way of other groups regrouping with us: that they have different class standpoints from our own, or that they are infused with sectarian attitudes for which the working class has no need. Only vigorous political discussion and clarification can resolve differences or demonstrate their irreconcilability”.
As if to illustrate this perspective WR 3 also contains two substantial polemical articles. One castigates the Liverpool group Workers’ Voice for “unlimited” sectarianism. WV told WR that “we have all come to agree on the same class boundaries” but it nevertheless abruptly “broke off relations” with WR because of the ICC’s views on the state in the period of transition between capitalism and socialism.
The other, over ten pages, ‘From leftism to the void’, is a scathing survey of the ‘modernist’ political trend which had a significant influence in the wider political milieu at the time. The key invention of modernism was the idea that the working class had become a ‘class for capital’. The article concludes with a resounding denunciation of its pretensions:
“The present resurgence of the world proletariat, that giant the bourgeoisie and its druids thought forever dead, is therefore also the resurgence of the ultra-left (2). Against the babblings of those who claim to have broken with this rich and vital tradition and to have discovered ‘new realities’ in a ‘modern movement’ , revolutionaries must take up again the clarion call of the Spartakusbund, which defiantly said of the revolutionary struggle of the working class: ‘I was, l am, l shall be!’
(1) Salvador Allende: ‘Socialist’ president of Chile from 1970 to 1973. Gustav Noske and Phillip Scheidemann, members of the German Social Democratic Party, whose government organised the bloody defeat of the German Revolution from 1918-1923
(2) At this time, this term was sometimes used instead of the more accurate ‘left communist’.
The twentieth century was a century of unparalleled barbarism in the history of humanity. In an epoch dominated by the defeat of the first world revolution and the massacre of millions of human beings in two global imperialist wars, certain bourgeois leaders arose who, in their own way, best expressed the interests of their respective national capitals and the need for ruthlessness and cunning in dealing with their common enemy, the proletariat.
Throughout his long career of service to the British state, Winston Churchill demonstrated the intelligence demanded of a representative of a ruling class confronted by the decadence of its own social system and the need to survive on a saturated world market:
While other ‘great leaders’ of the capitalist class in the twentieth century – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – demonstrated similar qualities in defence of their own imperialist interests, what distinguishes Churchill is that his reputation is still relatively intact.
Today, in the English-speaking world at least, the bourgeoisie hails Churchill as a ‘man of the century’ – and given that the century in question was dominated by the murder of millions on the altar of decadent capitalism, this is, in a sense, quite appropriate!
For the British bourgeoisie, of course, Churchill is still revered as a great war leader, who led the country during the darkest days of the second world war – and given that Churchill was always distinguished by his advocacy of utterly ruthless policies and the use of mass terror in defence of British imperialism, this is also, in a sense, fitting...
As Marxists, we do not believe that history is made by ‘great leaders’. But by examining the role that Churchill played for the British bourgeoisie, we can learn something about the intelligence, viciousness and tricks of a ruling class faced with the historic bankruptcy of its system, and therefore about the nature of the enemy facing the proletariat in the 21st century. And if Churchill was able to demonstrate a degree of historical understanding of the issues facing the ruling class, and to know how to employ the most Machiavellian tactics to defend its interests, this only emphasises the dangers we will face in the class confrontations of tomorrow.
In a year marking the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the second world war, it is also timely to look at Churchill’s role in the second world war and what it reveals about Britain’s real motives and interests in a war supposedly fought for democracy against the evils of Nazism.
In this first part, we will look at Churchill’s role in the British state up until 1939.
Churchill began his political career in the Conservative Party, identifying with those elements that were less wedded to landed interests and recognised the need for more state intervention in the economy. Displaying a characteristic opportunism and lack of deep ideological attachment, he ‘crossed the floor’ to the Liberal Party in 1904, later ‘re-ratting’, in his words, back to the Conservatives, in 1925.
By the turn of the century, the most advanced sections of the British bourgeoisie recognised the need for social welfare programmes to ensure the survival of British capital and divert dangerous class militancy into safe channels. The trade unions were given an increasing role in the running of the capitalist economy and union officials were drawn into the whole machinery of collective bargaining and conciliation set up by employers to more tightly control dangerous class militancy and divert it into safer channels.
As President of the Board of Trade from 1908 to 1910, Churchill played an important role in implementing this strategy. The Board of Trade was in the advance guard of the bourgeoisie’s state capitalist defences, gathering vital intelligence on the working class in the factories, intervening directly into labour disputes and incorporating a growing army of union officials into the state’s everyday activity.
Churchill was also prominent in the Liberals’ social welfare programmes, introducing labour exchanges and unemployment insurance schemes, with advice from the Fabian Sydney Webb, as mechanisms to increase the competitiveness of British capital and control the working class more effectively. A key feature of these repressive measures was that the trade unions were given a role in administering them, thus further incorporating the unions and the Labour Party into the running of the capitalist state.
Without such state capitalist measures, Churchill warned the ruling class, “there is nothing before us but the savage strife between class and class.”
The need to avert the threat of proletarian revolution and use repression against the working class
When the working class threatened to break out of these state-imposed bounds, the bourgeoisie was quick to use ruthless repression. As Home Secretary during the pre-war mass strikes in Britain, when the workers’ struggles began to go beyond and against the official unions, Churchill directed operations in the South Wales coalfields and in the London docks, bringing in police reinforcements and mobilising military units in a massive show of force designed to intimidate the workers and their supporters. He was quite prepared to use the army if necessary, as at Llanelli in 1911 when two workers were shot dead, but he also knew that the police could be relied upon in most situations to mete out repression; or as he put it, to “scatter the rioters” and give them “a good dusting”.
When the Russian workers seized political power in October 1917 it was shocking proof to the bourgeoisie internationally that it now faced a mortal threat from its class enemy. At first the British bourgeoisie thought it could use its guile and cunning to negotiate with the Bolsheviks to keep Russia in the war, but quickly realised its mistake; Churchill exploded with fury when he realised that Lenin and Trotsky were not interested in making a sordid deal with the Entente powers, denouncing the Bolsheviks as “bloody baboons” and “foul murderers” in an expression of visceral hatred which masked the bourgeoisie’s real fear.
Churchill was convinced of the need to destroy the Russian bastion before the world revolution spread, declaring that Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle”. Despite a lack of real commitment from other factions of the British bourgeoisie, and against strong resistance from the working class, he was responsible for escalating and extending British military intervention in Russia, and fought against the withdrawal of British support to the counter-revolutionary forces. Only belatedly did he come round to the preferred strategy of accommodation with the Russian state in the context of a downturn in the revolutionary wave, and the use of trade deals to advance British capitalist interests.
During the General Strike in 1926 Churchill was again a strong advocate of ruthless measures against any threat from the working class. He personally edited the British Gazette, the government’s anti-strike paper, and is reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used against striking workers. Despite the fact that by 1926 the international conditions for a proletarian threat to the state were receding, he recognised at least the potential for the class struggle in this period to develop into a confrontation with the state.
As part of its counter-revolutionary strategy in this period the British bourgeoisie also gave its support to fascism in Italy as a bulwark against the threat of revolution. Speaking in Rome on 20 January, 1927, Churchill praised Mussolini’s fascist regime, which had rendered a service to the whole world for its “triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’. This gives the lie to the British bourgeoisie’s later rally to the banner of anti-fascism as a war ideology to cover its own sordid interests.
British capitalism’s emergence from the first world war as a ‘victor’ could not disguise the underlying weakness of its economy, which was dependent on the empire for raw materials and as a protected market for British commodities. In the 1920s, Britain faced various threats to its imperial rule, in Ireland, Iraq, India… As Secretary of State for the Colonies, Churchill devised a strategy aimed at maintaining British domination with stretched resources, by proposing the use of air power as a cheap way of garrisoning the empire rather than stationing costly ground troops. From the beginning, air power was intended as an offensive weapon of terror against potential rivals; it was from this time that Churchill began a lifelong enthusiasm for the use of poison gas, suggesting that British air squadrons should be equipped with mustard gas bombs to “inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives.”
Churchill vehemently opposed Home Rule for India, seeing it as a direct threat to the continued existence of the Empire. The more intelligent, far-sighted factions of the British bourgeoisie, on the other hand, could see that the only way to preserve British imperialism in the longer term was by granting a degree of autonomy to those national bourgeoisies who were attempting to defend their own local capitalist interests. It was this issue that led to his estrangement from the Conservative Party; when he returned, it was because his short-term view of the need for an intransigent struggle to defend British imperialism was put on the immediate agenda by the direct threat from Germany.
For the British bourgeoisie, Churchill’s reputation is above all as a ‘lone voice’ calling for re-armament against Germany, and as a ‘fierce critic’ of the appeasement of Hitler. Contrary to this myth, however, Churchill was not opposed to making concessions to Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. In fact, he was openly admiring of Hitler as a German nationalist: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement… If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.” Churchill wanted to be able to deal with Hitler from a position of strength, by building up Britain’s air force to rival Germany’s. Far from being anti-German, he was quick to stress that he was simply following the traditional policy of the British bourgeoisie, which was to oppose the emergence of any stronger rival on the European mainland:
“British policy for four hundred years has been to oppose the strongest power in Europe by weaving together a combination of other countries strong enough to face the bully. Sometimes it is Spain, sometimes the French monarchy, sometimes the French Empire, sometimes Germany. I have no doubt who it is now. But if France set up to claim the over-lordship of Europe, I should equally endeavour to oppose them.”
Churchill was an aggressive ‘continentalist’, who argued that the best interests of British imperialism were served by its active intervention in mainland Europe and the construction of military alliances to prevent the emergence of a military rival. Lacking a large land army of its own, Britain traditionally preferred to get other European powers, large and small, to do its fighting for it...
The leading faction of the British bourgeoisie, around Baldwin (later Chamberlain) and the Conservative Party, represented an ‘isolationist’ tendency, which foresaw that Britain’s involvement in a war against Germany would inevitably lead to the break up of the empire and the final eclipse of British power by America. It therefore sought to avoid getting British imperialism entangled in alliances that would drag it into a disastrous European war.
Up until the late 1930s, the ‘appeasers’ still hoped that German expansionism would be directed eastwards and therefore not directly threaten British imperialist interests; with any luck it would result in a war between Germany and Russia, thus removing two military rivals. For the British bourgeoisie, there was also a good economic argument for appeasement: the historically weak and uncompetitive British economy was wholly dependent for its survival on foreign trade. Any large-scale re-armament programme would be at the expense of the already weakened and uncompetitive economy. The stark choice was between saving the empire or fighting a European war.
Churchill had no solution to this dilemma, which is why he remained isolated from the rest of the British bourgeoisie until the direct threat from German imperialism became unavoidable. In the end, German interventions in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, combined with the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, meant that further German expansion would be towards the west, and by 1938 a ‘war party’ began to cohere around Churchill. To begin with, his supporters were in those sections of the state apparatus charged with protecting British interests from external threats: the military, the Foreign Office and the intelligence services. They were later joined by the Labour Party and the trade unions, which actively supported re-armament but more importantly provided the ideological cover for British imperialism’s war effort under the banner of anti-fascism.
By finally appointing Churchill prime minister in 1940, the British bourgeoisie was admitting that it no longer had any choice but to fight a major European war, even though this would lead to economic ruin and Britain’s eclipse as a world power. Its aim in fighting the war was to ensure the very survival of British imperialism; an aim it knew Churchill was guaranteed to pursue with the utmost ruthlessness.
MH
The second part of this article will focus on Churchill’s role for British imperialism in the Second World War.
This is the first part of a report presented to WR’s recent 16th Congress.
In the recent budget Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer boasted “Britain is today experiencing the longest period of sustained economic growth since records began in the year 1701 […] Inflation has been the lowest for 30 years. Interest rates the lowest for 30 years; employment the highest ever. And with living standards since 1997 rising on average by 3% each year, Britain has today the best combination of low inflation, high employment and rising living standards in a generation”. It is true that rates of growth in Britain have been above those in much of Europe while the unemployment rate has been lower. In the report on the National Situation presented to the 16th congress of World Revolution last November, which we are publishing below, we showed how the ruling class has achieved this by increasing the exploitation of the working class. The means it has used to do this, far from expressing the health of the economy, actually confirm its fundamental weakness. Far from escaping the crisis British capitalism is caught fast and sinking further. It is the ability of the ruling class to manage the crisis, above all through the attack on the working class, which it has sustained for the last quarter of a century, that has put the British economy at a temporary advantage compared to its rivals.
The economic crisis of British capitalism is an expression of the global economic crisis of capitalism. Consequently the latter provides the framework in which the former must be understood. At the level of the whole historical period this is provided by the theory and reality of the decadence of capitalism… The basic theory is set out in our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism and it has been further deepened in numerous articles in the International Review, including, most recently, the series that began in IR 118. Complimenting this, the publication of extracts from the report on the crisis to the 14th International Congress in IR 114, provides the framework for understanding the current evolution of the crisis at a global level:
- It shows the growing struggle of capitalism to maintain its momentum: “Since the sixties, each decade has shown a mean growth rate lower than the preceding one:
1962-69 = 5.2%
1970-79 = 3.5%
1980-89 = 2.8%
1990-99 = 2.6%
2000-02 = 2.2%”.
- It shows the growing weight of debt: “The weight of the national debt expressed as a percentage of GDP decreases throughout the ascending period. In general it never exceeds 50%. This ratio explodes at the time of the entry into decline, to ebb only during the period 1950-80, but without ever going down below 50%. It then goes up during the years 1980-90”.
- It shows the growing weight of the state: “Oscillating at around 10% throughout the ascendant phase of capitalism, the share of the state (i.e. the non-market sector) in the creation of added value climbs during decadence to almost 50% in 1995 in the OECD countries”.
- It shows that this distorts the figures for growth “insofar as national accounting partly counts the same thing twice […] In short to correctly evaluate real growth in decadence it is necessary to deduct nearly 40% of current GNP corresponding to the growth of the unproductive sector since 1913”.
- It shows the growth of military spending: “From 2% of world production in 1860, to 2.5% in 1913, it rose to 7.2% in 1938, reached around 8.4% in the 60s and again went up to about 10% at the height of the cold war”.
- And since such expenditure is a sterilisation of capital “To the 40% growth of unproductive expenditure in the period of decadence, we thus have to add another 6% corresponding to the relative increase in military expenditure…which gives us a world production overvalued by nearly 50%”.
“Since the mid-1990s, GDP growth, inflation and unemployment have been remarkably stable in the United Kingdom. Nowhere else in the OECD has economic activity remained so consistently close to trend over this period. The United Kingdom has also been among the most resilient economies during the recent downturn. Apart from Canada, it is the only G7 economy, for which output has not fallen by significantly more than one percentage point below potential. Moreover, it has been one of the few European countries (large or small) to display such a degree of robustness during the downswing. At the same time the unemployment rate has remained continuously close to 5 per cent. In 2003, it will be the lowest among the major seven economies, while deviations of inflation from the target have been as small as could have been reasonably expected” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.23).
Since the mid 1990s growth in Britain has been above that of the Euro area and close to that of the OECD as a whole, which includes the US. It has been above that of Germany since 1992 and also of France, other than for a few years at the turn of the millennium.
Inflation in Britain averaged 7.4% between 1979 and 1989, rising to 13.4% in 1990. It fell sharply in the early 1990s and since 2000 it has been below the Euro area average (OECD Economic Outlook – Consumer price index).
“A recent study concluded that evidence of the benefits of two decades of structural reform in the United Kingdom was provided by the halting of ‘the nearly century-long trend in relative economic decline of the United Kingdom relative to its historic competitors France and Germany’… Indeed, over the last decade the gap in GDP per capita with the major continental European countries has been substantially closed” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.37). Does this really mean that Britain is an exception to the economic problems besetting Europe and most of the world as the Labour government argues? Does Britain show that the economic crisis can be managed and even overcome?
The first part of the answer comes from understanding the relationship between growth and productivity. A recent publication by the Department of Trade and Industry identified a number of ‘paradoxes’ in relation to the productivity and competitiveness of the economy. The first of these stated “Productivity is the long run driver of prosperity, and relative prosperity has increased since 1998. However, the UK’s relative productivity performance remains poor” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.8). “Over the last five years, the UK has indeed become a more prosperous economy, both absolutely and relative to others. In 1998, UK prosperity, measured in terms of GDP per head – was below that of Germany, Italy, the OECD average and the EU average. It is now above all four of these areas. This has been achieved despite subdued productivity growth and little movement to close the productivity gap with our major competitors. The gap with the US, France and Germany remains at just over 20 per cent in terms of output per hour worked.
“The UK has been able to achieve higher prosperity because of strong labour market performance. Prosperity depends on both the productivity of workers and the proportion of the workforce employed. For the UK, the former has improved slightly while the latter has risen sharply since 1998.” (ibid, p.9).
The underlying problem confronting British capitalism can be shown by comparing unit labour costs in Britain with those of its rivals. Taking 1995 as the starting point, there has been a strong divergence between Britain and the other powers, especially those in Europe.
This means that the increase in production in Britain is based on an increase in the quantity of labour employed and not on the level of productivity per worker. Such an increase in quantity can be achieved either by bringing more workers into productive activity or by increasing the amount of labour provided by the existing number of workers, that is by requiring them to work longer hours. This is supported by the OECD’s definition that labour utilisation “is measured as trend total number of hours worked divided by population” (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.39).
In Britain, both options seem to have been followed, although the official reports tend to stress the former: “The growth in labour force utilisation in the UK has been stronger than in Continental Europe and is the decisive factor that allowed the UK to catch up in terms of prosperity” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 10).
There has, indeed, been an increase in the number of hours worked, even though recent government publications suggest the opposite, reporting a reduction in the numbers working over 48 hours a week following the introduction of the EU working time directive.
A longer view shows that hours declined from the start of the last century until 1984 and then began to rise again. “The TUC…using the LFS,[Labour Force Survey] shows that the number of full-timers working 45 hours or more increased from 4.7 million (29 per cent) in 1984 to 5.7 million (36 per cent) in 1994. Within these, those working 45 to 49 hours went up just one per cent, but those working 48 hours or more rose from 20 per cent to 25 per cent. Furthermore, those working 50 hours or more increased from 15 percent to 21 per cent. There was a simultaneous decline in proportions working a ‘standard’ week of 35 to 39, or 40 to 44 hours” (Working long hours: A review of the evidence Vol.1, p.44 DTI November 2003).
The true picture of the hours actually worked is distorted in several ways. While contracted hours have gone down there has been an increase in the amount of overtime worked, both paid and unpaid. The level of unpaid overtime in particular increased sharply between 1988 and 1998: from 25.2% to 40.6% of males working fulltime and from 27% to 57% of females working fulltime.
Secondly, the growth in part-time working has the effect of reducing the average hours worked, so masking the growth in working long hours. What this implies is that there is a polarisation between those working shorter hours and those working longer ones, between underwork and overwork. This would fit into the overall picture of the divide between those with little or no work (see below) and those facing increasing absolute exploitation. Such a situation is entirely consistent with the marxist analysis of capitalism: “The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists, and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation” (Capital, Vol I, Part VII, Chapter XXV, Section 3 “Progressive production of a relative surplus population or industrial reserve army”)
The recent OECD report provides some evidence to suggest that the growth in the number working has been less important than the increase in the hours worked because the fall in the rate of unemployment is not the same as more people being in work “while the structural unemployment rate has fallen by around 4 percentage points since 1990 there has been virtually no fall in the trend inactivity rate…The flat aggregate inactivity rate conceals a number of worrying trends. While the female inactivity rate has fallen, the male inactivity rate has shown a consistent upward trend. The latter has been accompanied by a similar rise in men reporting long-term sickness or disability as the main reason for inactivity…In 1980 the numbers claiming invalidity benefit were less than the number claiming unemployment benefit, whereas they are now more than two-and-half times as great” (ibid, p.103). While the report tentatively suggests that this “may partly reflect disability benefits being used as an alternative pathway to early retirement given the absence of other ‘formal’ early retirement schemes” (ibid, p.105) the truth is that this is one of the major ways in which the bourgeoisie has hidden the real level of unemployment. This is why, in the midst of such growth, Britain continues to have “a high level of poverty relative to other European countries at similar levels of prosperity” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 9). As we note in the article in WR 275, in which this passage was first quoted, “While for the economic geniuses of the bourgeoisie the paradox that a richer capitalist nation is also a poorer one is merely unfortunate, Karl Marx explained some 150 years ago that the polarisation of wealth and poverty in society is the necessary, inevitable, result of capitalist production; that the two extremes are dependent on each other. The more wealth the working class produces, the poorer it becomes. Surplus value, upon which capitalist growth depends, can only increase if the value of labour power decreases” (“British economy rising on a mountain of debt”).
The argument that there is a quantitative increase in exploitation is also supported by the evidence about the level of investment: “The UK continues to suffer from low levels of capital investment. Over the most recent cycle, business investment per worker remained lower than our major competitors... The persistence of under investment over the past thirty years has created a significant deficit of capital available to each UK worker. This is common across manufacturing and services” ” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.29). “The UK has a lower capital stock per worker and per hour worked than the other three countries, lagging France by 60%, Germany by 32% and the United States by 25% in terms of capital stock per hour worked” (UK Competitiveness: moving to the next stage, DTI May 2003, p. 12). The workforce is also relatively less skilled: “The UK continues to show weakness in terms of relative levels of human capital. Too many workers lack the key basic and intermediate level skills. There have been improvements in the flow of workers into the labour force – through the reforms made to schooling – but weaknesses in the stock of skills remain” (UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators 2003, DTI November 2003, p.54).
What all of this suggests is that despite all the rhetoric about a knowledge-based, high-tech economy, the growth achieved by British capitalism, that is the increase in the level of exploitation of the working class, is due to an increase in the level of absolute surplus value extracted from the proletariat: “The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working-day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working-day, I call relative surplus-value” (Marx, Capital Vol.1, Part IV, Chapter XII “The concept of relative surplus value”). The countries with lower growth rates than Britain, principally its European rivals tend to have lower levels of labour utilisation but higher levels of productivity while those ahead of Britain, such as the US, Australia and Canada have both higher levels of labour utilisation and higher levels of productivity.
The increase in GDP has not come from manufacturing but from services. Taking 1995 as a starting point, services have increased from 100 to over 130 while manufacturing has dropped below 100, that is, there has been an absolute decline in manufacturing. While such a divergence is true of most developed industrial countries, the situation in Britain is worse than in the US (rising to over 120 in 2000 before dropping back to over 115 two years later) and the Euro area as a whole (increasing to just under 115 by 2002).
WR, November ’04.
Never has distrust for politicians been so widespread. Never has ‘apathy’ about the democratic process been so strong. The political parties, from right to left, are getting more and more anxious about this. They are desperately trying to convince us that we must do our duty as ‘citizens’ and get involved in the coming round of national and local elections. They are particularly concerned about the younger generation. Copying P Diddy’s ‘Vote or Die’ campaign in the US, Jesse Jackson and British ‘urban’ musicians have been roped in to get black youth to the ballot box; George Galloway and Respect focus on the young in general and disaffected Asian youth in particular.
Millions of people have the feeling that ‘all the politicians are the same’ and that voting for them won’t change anything. And they are right.
We live in a capitalist social system where, in all countries, a tiny minority rules an exploited majority. In such a system, democracy is a cover for the dictatorship of the ruling class. What’s more, capitalism has been in decay for almost a hundred years. Since the early part of the 20th century, it has held itself together by vastly increasing the power of the state in all areas of society. When it comes to all the serious decisions to do with its very survival – decisions about going to war, or about suppressing the threat of revolt by the exploited class – parliament has no say in the matter. The decision to invade Iraq was only the latest example of that. As for the political parties, they are nothing but extensions of the capitalist state. That’s why they all agree on the fundamentals.
All the parties are pro-war. The Tories backed Blair to the hilt over the Iraq war. The Liberal Democrats pose as an ‘anti-war’ party but as soon as the fighting started in Iraq they told us ‘we have to support our troops’. The leftists of Stop the War, the SWP or Respect tell us to support the ‘Resistance’ in Iraq. In short, all of them tell workers that they have a country to defend, that they must take sides in capitalism’s conflicts. And they have been doing this in every imperialist massacre since 1914!
All the parties preach austerity and sacrifice. In a world system racked by economic crisis, any party managing the capitalist state has to call on workers to accept cuts in their living standards, for the ‘good’ of the national economy. New Labour like the Thatcherite government before it makes savage cuts in social benefits. Old Labour and the leftists tell us that sacrifices would be OK if more of the economy was nationalised: then we would be working for ‘socialism’. In reality we would still be wage slaves and the capitalist state would still be our overseer.
All the parties are racist. Tory and Labour try to outdo the BNP in stirring up fear about asylum seekers, immigrant, or gypsies. The leftists trumpet their support for the Islamic fundamentalists who propagate hatred of ‘Jews and Crusaders’. All of them accept the existing division of the world into competing nation states which is at the root of all racist attitudes towards ‘foreigners’.
So what’s the alternative? We are not preaching apathy. The world is in far too dangerous a state to think that political questions can be avoided. Apathy can also be used by the ruling class to keep the exploited in their place, to press ahead with its military adventures and its attacks on living standards.
Against bourgeois politics, we are in favour of working class politics. Turning our back on the political game of our exploiters is part of this. But abstention from the election farce is only one side of the coin. The working class has to assert itself as an independent force, standing in opposition to capitalist society.
Today, faced with all the propaganda about the ‘end of the working class’, about the class war being a thing of the past, the proletariat cannot become an independent force without first recovering its basic identity as a class. So while the capitalist state tries to bury this identity by driving us into the polling booths as isolated citizens, we need to fight as a class.
All of us, employed and unemployed, public sector and private sector, male and female, native and immigrant, are under attack. The dismantling of Rover shows that there are no safe jobs, and that nothing is to be gained by going cap in hand to the bosses – whether they are British, German or Chinese, state or private. In all countries the social wage - sick pay, unemployment benefits, etc - are being restricted or reduced. The assault on pensions in particular is very clear proof that this society has no future to offer us.
If we are to resist these attacks, we must overcome all divisions between workers – divisions which the politicians left and right are constantly trying to widen.
Our future lies in massive, common struggles around unifying demands, opposing all the different facets of the attacks: wage-freezes, lay-offs, speed-ups, cuts in social benefits, repression and victimisation.
We need to unite; and this means organising ourselves because the official representatives of the working class, the trade unions, have - just like the political parties - become organs of the capitalist state which divide us and police us. We need to get used to holding our own general assemblies, open to all workers, where we can take decisions about how and when to struggle. 100 years ago, assemblies of striking workers in Russia sent delegates to the first workers’ council or soviet. That form of organisation is still the future of our struggles, and has made both parliament and trade unions useless for the working class.
All this is already working class politics because even when we are only fighting for our economic interests, we will have the whole force of the capitalist state - police, legal system, army and trade unions - arrayed against us. It’s politics because when the working class is fighting on its own ground, it acts as a barrier to the capitalist drive to war, and you can’t be more politically subversive than that.
Above all, the class struggle is politics because we will only be able to take this struggle forward by posing fundamental questions about the whole direction of the present social system - a system that is threatening to destroy the planet through war and ecological disaster. A system that cannot be reformed. A system that can only be overcome through a global political revolution and a radical social transformation.
Already there is a whole new generation asking these questions, even if only a minority of them have seen that the key to mankind’s fate still lies in the conflict between the classes. But that minority is already the expression of a movement towards a real working class party – a party not for electoral politics or for taking power on behalf of the workers, but for pointing the way towards the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide.
AGAINST ALL ILLUSIONS IN CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY!
AGAINST THE ELECTION FARCE!
FOR THE INDEPENDENT STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS!
World Revolution, April 2005.
Never exactly popular in the British media, the IRA and Sinn Féin have complained of a “sustained campaign” being waged against them. The IRA was blamed for the £26.5m Northern Bank raid. Members of the IRA/SF were accused of killing Robert McCartney, as well as removing evidence in a cover-up and intimidating witnesses. Because of the various rackets it runs and the violence it uses in punishment beatings and shootings the IRA has been branded a criminal gang of thugs. Sinn Féin has been told by politicians from Britain, Ireland and the US to get rid of its “private army” if it wants to take any further part in the institutions of democracy.
What’s different about these attacks is that they’ve not only come from the expected British sources, but also from the Irish government, leading Irish Americans, and from ‘nationalist’ areas and SF supporters in Northern Ireland.
In the context of this media barrage, the leftist groups have, in their different ways, come to the defence of Irish nationalism. Workers Power (March 2005) issued a straight “Hands off Sinn Féin!” against the “filthy attempt by the unionists and the British and Irish governments to isolate and intimidate republicanism”. The British Socialist Worker (26/3/5) said “Don’t fall for the politicians’ campaign against Sinn Féin”.
The Irish Socialist Worker (No 237), more critical of the IRA, felt that its “conspiratorial methods mean that the IRA has come to act as a power over their neighbourhoods” and that “the desire to seek power over communities means that IRA men also act like a local police force.” They criticise Sinn Féin for accepting money from Coca Cola, SF Ministers at Stormont for presiding over cuts and privatisation, SF councillors in Derry for attacking absenteeism and low productivity, and SF councillors who’ve worked with Paisley’s DUP to push budgets and targets. At root they see the IRA/SF as coming from a different tradition that is ‘elitist’ and ‘conspiratorial’: undemocratic rather than anti-working class.
The World Socialist Web Site (7/3/5) thought that “power sharing” had been ”translated into an agreement on the part of Sinn Féin to police the Catholic population”. The Weekly Worker (25/2/5) ridiculed SF’s craving for respectability and its transition into a proper constitutional party.
There is an idea here that the IRA once defended ‘nationalist communities’, but, for various reasons, it has degenerated. The Irish Socialist Worker said that “Robert McCartney’s sister put her finger on a real problem when she talked about a New IRA and an Old IRA”. Catherine McCartney compared the “struggle” of the past with the “criminal gangs” of today. Gemma McCartney saw “parallels between the current generation of IRA thugs and the Nazis”.
At the end of the 1960s, in the demonstrations, riots, bombings and the driving out of thousands of people from their homes, the IRA’s role was initially limited. It had next to no weapons and was heading for a split between Officials and Provisionals in December 69. Not surprisingly “IRA – I Ran Away” appeared on walls in Belfast and Derry.
When the Provisional IRA did start acquiring finance and weapons it was in pursuit of their nationalist goals. They wanted to make Northern Ireland ungovernable and assumed that a continual campaign of disruption and destruction would create turmoil which would force Britain to withdraw. Some of the Provisionals’ first leaders were influenced by the success of the Irgun terrorist group against British targets in Palestine in the 1940s. As well as military targets, the Irgun bombed market places, cafes, hotels, banks and other ‘soft’ targets. These would be the means adopted by the IRA in the battle for a United Ireland – terrorist means are completely in keeping with the pursuit of a nationalist goal.
At the level of the ‘nationalist community’, the IRA behaved as a military force right from the start. The example of Ballymurphy (where Gerry Adams comes from) in Belfast shows the dynamic of republicanism at war. By January 1971 rioting had been regularly going on there for 6 months. The IRA thought it was no longer serving their interests. One night they succeeded in limiting disturbances by putting some of the participants under armed arrest. The next day the British army contacted the IRA. “The military were appealing to the IRA for help in controlling Ballymurphy”. One of the IRA men at the meeting said “If you get out of Ballymurphy, we can control it without your assistance”. By the end of the meeting “the British army seemed happy enough to allow the IRA to keep order in Ballymurphy” (Ballymurphy and the Irish War, Ciarán De Baróid).
Although this particular arrangement was only temporary, it’s a formal expression of the understanding there has been ever since between the British army and paramilitaries in both loyalist and republican areas. Against petty crimes, as well as more serious ‘anti-social’ behaviour, and in defence of their various business ventures such as drug dealing, paramilitary gangs have served as judge, jury and executioner – with punishments from beatings and kneecappings to exile or death. The IRA have not suddenly started policing neighbourhoods; it’s been going on since the Provisionals first emerged.
When the McCartney sisters met George Bush during their American visit they heard that “there are people going on the radio back home saying that we’re visiting the world’s biggest terrorist”. Martin McGuinness warned them of the danger of being used as political pawns. That was the grossest of hypocrisy. Sinn Féin has been openly consorting with US presidents since 1994 when Clinton gave Gerry Adams a visa, and then lifted the ban on the group so that they could legally raise tens of millions of dollars from American supporters. In the talks that led up to the Good Friday Agreement SF were in round-the-clock contact with the White House, not able to take a step without the approval of US imperialism.
Even after his recent snub in Washington, Adams remained convinced that the basic position of the US administration had not changed. Although if it did “I would be very, very perturbed”.
US manipulation of Sinn Féin and the IRA against Britain has greatly increased since the end of the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ in the early 1990s. Britain is no longer a loyal lieutenant in a US imperialist bloc against the USSR. It has tried to forge an independent imperialist policy, which the US has used every means to try to restrain. In Ireland Britain has used everything from demands for decommissioning, allegations of IRA spying, and now the charges of murder and robbery to limit the role of Sinn Féin
The loyalty of Irish republicanism to the US comes from a whole historical period in which an independent Ireland is impossible. As Trotsky said after the Easter Rising of 1916 “an ‘independent’ Ireland could exist only as an outpost of an imperialist state hostile to Britain” (Nashe Slovo 4/7/16). Because of this Irish nationalism has always courted powers that could take on British imperialism, particularly Germany and the US. The famous proclamation made in front of the Post Office in Dublin in 1916 refers to the support of “exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe”. This is not just a topical reference to the abortive attempt to use American money to get arms from Germany, but an acknowledgement that no nationalist movement can make advances without becoming a piece in greater imperialist conflicts.
If US rebukes to Sinn Féin prove to be more than passing it will not be because of what Edward Kennedy calls “the IRA’s ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law”. It will be because US imperialism is using other means to pursue its interests. Car 28/3/5
The western media are telling us about the wave of democratic change that is sweeping the world, from Iraq to Lebanon and the countries of the former USSR. According to them, there is a real push towards a freer world. Elections have taken place or are about to take place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, central Asia; and we have seen democratic ‘revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine and now Kyrgyzstan. In Lebanon there have been massive demonstrations against the presence of Syrian troops, as well as a new impetus for the ‘peace process’ in Israel-Palestine. All this, we are told, expresses the will of the people to enter the paradise of democracy. The main promoters of this idyllic world are the great western powers, above all the USA which has proclaimed that the “thaw has begun” in the countries of the Middle East and that “the hope of liberty is gaining ground across the planet”. This unlimited optimism is in fact a huge deception, aimed at hiding reality from the world proletariat. In fact the world situation has never been as grave as it is today. Behind all this rigmarole is a very sharp aggravation of imperialist tensions. And it is precisely the countries being praised for their contribution to the ‘struggle for democracy’ that are the focus of the growing rivalries between the great powers and in particular of the imperialist offensive that the USA has been carrying out since the re-election of Bush.
The anniversary of the second year of the occupation of Iraq by the American forces needs little comment: more than 100,000 Iraqi deaths, the majority of them innocent civilians. 1520 American soldiers killed and 11,300 wounded. Dozens of towns and villages have been destroyed, and with them the infrastructure of water and electricity, and even to some extent oil. Over $200bn has already been spent on this barbarism. And it is precisely because the Bush administration is aware that Iraq is a quagmire that is seriously weakening its position as the world’s leading power that it is now marked upon this counter-offensive.
Whoever was responsible for the attack which left 19 dead including Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese opposition, we have to pose the question: who profits from the crime? Certainly not Syria. Not only has Syria been accused of the crime by all the developed countries, but also countries of the Arab League including Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also pointed the finger at it. Furthermore, international pressure has forced it to abandon military positions in the Lebanon which it fought hard for in the 1980s, and to loosen its grip on Lebanese political life, clearing the way for the interference of the French and the Americans.
This assassination thus has the appearance of an ‘opportunity’ for Bush and Chirac, the two countries which were behind the September 2004 UN vote for resolution 1559, which calls for the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. The real aim of the loud support that France and the US have given to the gigantic demonstrations by the Lebanese opposition, calling for the replacement of the pro-Syrian government and the holding of elections as soon as possible, has been to insert themselves into Lebanese political life and defend their own prerogatives.
France is trying to regain the influence it used to have in Lebanon during the cold war, when it was acting in the interests of the western bloc. This influence was progressively reduced and virtually disappeared with the ejection of the Christian general Michel Aoun, Paris’ man on the spot. With the new situation, Chirac envisages Aoun’s return to the Lebanon. However, this is not guaranteed for France, which still hasn’t got many points of support in the country. In fact it was to evaluate the new situation that Chirac rushed to Beirut immediately after the death of this ‘friend of France’ Hariri. France now faces the difficult situation of having to keep a foot in all camps. Thus, contrary to the US, it has carefully avoided condemning Hezbollah as a terrorist group, in order to avoid turning its back not only on Syria (which has links to Hezbollah), but also Iran. At the same time it is trying to keep in with the different elements of the Lebanese opposition, such as the Christian militia. And on top of this it is obliged to limit its criticisms of the White House, with whom it shares a certain convergence of interest over Lebanon. As for the Bush administration, it will no doubt turn against French diplomacy when it comes to limiting France’s ambitions in the region.
It is above all the US and its Israeli ally which will benefit most from the death of Hariri. The assassination has opened up a situation which will give the Bush administration a decisive advantage over the ‘axis of evil’ in the Middle East, i.e. Syria, Hezbollah and Iran. Since last spring, Syria has been openly threatened by Uncle Sam under the pretext that it is harbouring al-Qaida terrorists and Saddam loyalists. At the same time the Israeli authorities have launched a campaign demonising Hezbollah and the support it gets from Syria and Iran. Washington has demanded that Syria leaves Lebanon. But the ultimate aim is to destabilise the regime in Damascus and impose a Sunni government in order to isolate the Shiite Hezbollah and Iran. Thus, behind Syria, the target for the US is Iran, which has more and more asserted itself as a regional power, in particular by going ahead with its nuclear weapons programme in defiance of the US.
Thus, the pressure by the Bush administration on Syria is part of the same plan as the tough stance on Iran. If the US offensive against Iran is currently passing through Syria, this is because of the huge difficulties posed by any military intervention in Iran, which would be far greater even than the problems caused by the invasion of Iraq. Despite the leaking of Israeli plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations if Tehran does not give up its nuclear ambitions, because of the mess in Iraq it is very unlikely that the American military is planning to open up a new military front for the time being. But this is no guarantee of peace in the region. In Lebanon, it is likely that we will see murderous conflicts between the different communities, which are being stirred up by the various local cliques acting on behalf of regional or global powers. The declarations of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, for whom the retreat by Damascus will lead to civil war, are no bluff, as can be seen by the terrorist attacks that have already begun in Lebanon. What’s more, US pressure on Syria will only force the latter to strengthen its links to Iran and to give further support to the anti-US resistance in Iraq. What’s clear is that we are entering a new stage in the spread of chaos and bloodshed to new areas.
US diplomacy is also at work in the former USSR, in the republics of the Caucasus and in Central Asia. In the name of democracy and freedom, the White House is financing and encouraging movements opposing governments linked to Russia. After the ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia in 2003, and the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine, the recent ‘Tulip Revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan is a new US blow against Russian imperialism’s defensive wall.
Washington is openly boasting about this. The American ambassador in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, told CNN just after former president Akayev fled the country: “What’s happening is the concern of the Kyrgyz people and its decisions, and the USA is proud to play a supporting role in this”. You couldn’t be much clearer.
The USA is financing all these opposition movements through various government organisations and other associations specialised in promoting democracy around the world, for example George Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute (www.soros.org [32]) or the National Endowment for Democracy (www.ned.org [33]). We should underline that as well as their active participation in the anti-Russian ‘revolutions’, the USA has a real influence in Moldavia and that the US Senate has just adopted a resolution saying that democracy is the target in Belarus.
We are thus witnessing the encirclement of Russia from the west, the east and the south, all this following the military invasion of Afghanistan.
As we have already shown in our press, since the collapse of the eastern bloc, Russia has more and more lost influence in eastern and central Europe. This is expressed by the fact that all the countries which were once part of the Warsaw Pact have now joined NATO and the European Union. And on top of that, all the countries which were part of the ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’ set up by Russia in 1991 are in turmoil and have moved further and further away from Russia.
If the Russian bear has seen its empire vanishing bit by bit, this is because the US has been trying to weaken it, especially since Russia refused to go along with the US in its invasion of Iraq. The fact that Russia adopted such a position greatly increased the determination of France and Germany to face up to the US. Now Russia is getting its pay-back for failing to follow the USA.
But the main motivation of the US in trying to subject the countries of the former USSR to its influence is to prevent them from falling into the orbit of the European powers, especially Germany, whose traditional direction for imperialist expansion is the east. In fact the essential goal of the US offensive is to complete the encirclement of Europe itself. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2003 was the first step in this strategy.
The stakes are so high that the tensions between these powers can only get worse. What’s more, the game is made more complicated, and the situation all the more unstable, by the fact that regional powers like Turkey and Iran also have ambitions towards certain of the territories of the former USSR. Claiming this or that territory gives them an added card to play around their own frontiers.
For Russia, it is out of the question to stand by passively while it is reduced to a second rate regional power. It should also be added that losing certain of its former satellites means a considerable weakening of its nuclear potential. The example of Ukraine, which has important Russian bases on its soil, is significant in this respect.
Thus, far from stabilising the region, the wave of ‘democratisation’ sweeping the former republics of the USSR can only push Russia into new military adventures. The assassination by the Russian security forces of the Chechen leader Maskhadov – the only person with enough legitimacy to oversee a political resolution of the Chechnya conflict, is a clear expression of this. By eliminating Maskhadov, Russia is preventing the US from using him as part of another process of ‘democratisation’ in Chechnya.
The growing pressure of the US, both against Russia and certain European powers, can only lead the latter to more openly oppose US plans. Thus, far from submitting, France, Germany and Russia, now joined by Zapatero’s Spain adopted a harder tone at their recent summit, in particular by issuing a call for withdrawal from Iraq. And such developments will in turn push the USA towards new military responses.
Fifteen years ago, following the collapse of the eastern bloc, the western bourgeoisie promised us an era of peace in a new world order. From Iraq to ex-Yugoslavia, passing through Rwanda, Somalia, the Middle East, western and central Asia, the planet has seen an awful harvest of atrocity and violence. The bourgeoisie’s ‘wind of democracy’ will not bring any fresh air, but the fetid stench of a system in decay. Donald 25/3/05
Before the last UK general election in 2001 the ruling class were very concerned that there would be a dramatic drop in the number of people voting. When it turned out that a record low number had bothered (and 18 million hadn’t) the various leftist groups that made up the Socialist Alliance could at least say they’d done their best to get people interested in capitalism’s electoral spectacle.
Four years later and the Socialist Alliance has gone. Of its constituent parts the Socialist Party (ex-Militant), with some other groups, has formed a Socialist Green Unity Coalition (SGUC), while the Socialist Workers Party is the dominant force in the Respect coalition that also includes George Galloway and the Muslim Association of Britain.
The names have changed but the function of such groupings at election time remains the same. In 2001 there was already growing disillusion with the Labour government. Following the murderous wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on workers’ living standards, and all the cynical lies of politicians, even more people are convinced that there’s nothing to choose between any of the parties. The leftist groups feed on this estrangement. They agree with every criticism of the Labour Party while claiming to be an ‘alternative’, or at least a way of making a protest.
Yet, if you consult one of those easy-to-follow guides to what the main parties stand for, it’s not difficult to find a place for the leftists. After all, if you’re putting forward policies for a capitalist government to adopt you’re going to follow the needs of the capitalist ruling class. Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory all agree on the need for more police, just differing on the numbers; they all declare that they’re more environmentally friendly; and while Labour and Lib Dem say they’ll spend more, the Tories say they’ll be less wasteful and more efficient. The only difference when you turn to the leftists is that they want the role of the capitalist state to be made explicit.
All the leftists are against the Post Office being sold off, for the re-nationlisation of the rail, gas, electricity and water industries, against further privatisation of health services and for massive funding for education. They don’t think that there’s a problem in finding the money. As the Socialist Party insists in its manifesto “No cuts! No privatisation… It doesn’t have to be like this… Britain is a rich country”. The SWP agrees that “Blair can find £6 billion to fund the war, but he can’t find the money to invest in our community and public services” (Socialist Worker 19/3/5). According to the left it’s just a matter of priorities, the capitalist state can be made to provide – even if the historic experience of the working class and the depth of capitalism’s economic crisis completely contradict this idea.
Also, for all their criticisms of New Labour, the leftists still claim that not so long ago the Labour Party had something to do with the defence of working class interests. Where revolutionaries can show that over the last 90 years Labour has been an integral part of capitalism’s political apparatus, Respect in “An invitation to Labour Party members and supporters” (8/3/5) says that “For many it was the obvious party to join if you believed in equality, peace and justice. But Tony Blair has transformed Labour into New Labour. And New Labour no longer stands for those traditional working class values”. Dave Nellist, launching the SGUC thought that “the New Labour party of Blair and Brown has deprived the working class of political representation”.
It’s true that many people have had illusions in parties like Labour – (and in Stalinism and Trotskyism and other political tendencies that have claimed to defend the interests of the working class). The fundamental tests that definitively demonstrate the class nature of any political party are wars and revolutions. The Labour Party (and other social democratic parties across the world) showed that it had joined the ranks of our exploiters when it put its weight into the war effort in the First World War in 1914, and has served British capitalism, in government and in opposition, ever since. Yet Respect and the SGUC claim that until Blair came along Labour stood for working class interests.
The strength of the revolutionary argument is that we can draw in depth on the working class’s historic experience to demonstrate the thoroughly bourgeois nature of the Labour Party. From the 1924 government’s bombing and gassing of Kurds in Iraq, to Labour’s clamour for war in the 1930s, the austerity of the 1940s – all decades before the arrival of Blair. Leftists, like other bourgeois politicians, have no interest in the truth – as their job is to confuse and mystify.
In the case of most of the leftists, for all their supposed anger at Blair, there is also provision for openly lining up with Labour at election time. As a resolution from last year’s Respect conference states, Labour is “a mass party to whom millions of working people still owe their allegiance” and therefore “we will not challenge anti-war MPs and will consider voting for Labour in those areas where Respect is not standing and where there is no other credible left candidate.”
None of this is going to “clear out the warmongers in Downing Street and their puppets in Westminster” (George Galloway in Socialist Worker 26/3/5), nor “teach Tony Blair a lesson” (SW 19/3/5).
In a nutshell the leftists stand for state capitalism, support for Labour, and participation in capitalism’s democratic circus. For the ruling class the parliamentary game exists to convince workers that they can have a stake in the system that exploits them. In reality the only way that workers can defend their interests is in developing a sense of their class identity, in becoming conscious of the nature of capitalist society and the central role of the working class in its overthrow, in organising as a class to destroy the state power that the leftists worship. Car 1/4/5
“On present evidence we may only just cross the 50% threshold and deliver a narrow majority of the electorate to the polling stations.” This is how Robin Cook expressed the ruling class’ concern about low turnout at the forthcoming election (Guardian 18.3.05). While “barely a third of the population believed that they really can change the way the country is run by getting involved” the risk is “In the long term, ebbing public confidence in democracy will erode it of legitimacy” – as well as a short term loss of control of the political machine with the rise of populist parties.
The problem for those who want to convince us of the importance of voting is that experience teaches us time and again that a change of government only puts a new team in charge of the same policies – those demanded by the needs of British capital. So in 1979 the Tories campaigned on the issue of rising unemployment under the Labour government with the slogan “Labour isn’t working” only to preside over a continued rise in unemployment. In addition they continued with the policies – particularly redundancies in the steel and coal industries – that had been started under the Callaghan government. In 1997 the one Labour promise we could believe in was that they would stick to the previous government’s projected spending limits for public services – the continuation of austerity was not at issue between the parties. The similarity is not just between Labour and Tory policies in this country, but also extends to attacks on living standards everywhere – as for example with pensions.
Similarly, when it comes to the issue of the latest Gulf war, we saw clearly two years ago that 2 million (claimed) demonstrating on the streets of London – provided they remain mobilised behind liberal and left wing bourgeois politicians – do not weigh in government calculations.
This, not the dumbing down of the press or poor presentation of Labour values, is the reason why “the proportion of the electorate who perceive much difference between the two main parties has fallen from more than 80% under Thatcher to less than 30% under Blair” as Cook observes.
To the rescue of the democratic mystification – and legitimacy – Tony Benn tells us that polling day “is the one day in five years when every voter has exactly the same political power as the prime minister” (Guardian 17.3.05). This is a lie – and always has been. On polling day, as every other day, the bourgeoisie controls the media, politicians’ statements are widely reported, and all this with the benefit of years of opinion polls and focus groups to warn them how best to manipulate public opinion. It is all the more dishonest after a century of capitalist decadence when the policies of the national capital are determined by the demands of the crisis and the need to manoeuvre on the imperialist chess board.
What Benn sees in the lack of interest in elections is not apathy, but anger, and this too can be mobilised by: “many popular movements growing up which provide a real outlet for those who no longer feel connected to the parliamentary process and its media entourage. The result it that real politics increasingly focuses on the issues of peace, the environment, civil liberties, pensions, student debt, and the rights of women and trade unions…” In other words, we can continue to be mobilised behind those whose aim is to prevent us questioning the capitalist system as a whole.
However, underneath this, there is another process at work in the hidden development of consciousness within the working class. Right now it is often expressed only by the tiniest minorities. Some try to find coherence in the contradictory atmosphere of the various campaigns Tony Benn is relying on to keep us controlled. Others get together in small discussion groups, committed to reflecting as much on general historic questions as on recent struggles. It’s here and in the positive response to the intervention of revolutionaries, rather than in elections or in single issue reformist campaigns, that we can see signs for the future. Alex 2.4.05
The death of Pope John Paul II has given rise to a deafening barrage from the world’s media and politicians, asking us to listen respectfully to the many tributes and to take part in the mourning for ‘the Holy Father’. They are telling us that this is a true World Event, and there’s no doubt that the media campaign has already made it one.
The Catholic Church is indeed a true power of this world. For nearly two thousand years its has been lined up with the Thrones, Powers, and Dominions which the early Christians warned against. At its origins, Christianity came from the poor and the exploited. The first Christians, influenced by radical sects like the Essenes and the Zealots, were in revolt against the dying Roman Empire and they wanted all things to be held in common. But the Catholic Church and the Papacy came to preside not over the new Heaven and new Earth which the first Christians had hoped for, but over a new society of exploitation – the feudal system. In the days of feudalism, no king or emperor in Europe could by-pass the Church of Rome or altogether control it. It was a political, military, economic and ideological bastion of the first order.
The bourgeoisie’s rebellion against feudalism was initially wrapped in the clothes of Protestantism, and after that the Catholic Church lost its monopoly in the ideological domination of society. Later the Protestant reformers were succeeded by secular and anti-clerical bourgeois radicals, as in the French revolution of 1789. But once the proletariat raised its ugly head and threatened the egalitarian idyll of capitalist exploitation, a significant part of the bourgeoisie returned to the comforts of religion. And although the bourgeoisie had effectively conquered the globe by the end of the 19th century, it never succeeded in developing the entire world in its progressive and democratic image. It left large parts of the world ‘underdeveloped’ and still ideologically attached to old religious illusions.
Today the capitalist system has been in decline for almost a century. And one of the proofs that we are in the last stages of this decline is the revival of religion as a key source of ideological intoxication. In the world’s mightiest country, ‘born-again’ Christianity has a real influence not only over large sectors of the population but even in the highest echelons of the Bush administration. In the Middle East, Asia and Africa, fundamentalist Islam poses as the only answer to the misery of the oppressed. In Israel, messianic religious parties have a major say in national politics. In Europe and America, the neo-pagan fantasies of the New Age have grown in strength. Many of these ideologies hold that we are living in the Last Days; and, in a sense, they are right. Their own renaissance is an expression of the profound irrationality and hopelessness of a decomposing social order.
The role of the Catholic Church in all this should not be forgotten. There are a billion Catholics world wide and the Church of Rome still wields enormous influence in the ‘less developed’ regions: Africa, Asia, and especially Latin America. It remains a major force of social control. This control is partly exerted through the overtly reactionary doctrines which were reinforced under John Paul II’s reign, such as the Vatican’s position on contraception, which particularly since the advent of AIDS has brought about a veritable slaughter of the innocents all around the world. But the Church serves capital no less faithfully when it acts as a false opposition to the status quo. Thus John Paul II himself is being presented as the voice of all the impoverished victims of ‘excessive’ capitalism, while radical clerics like the ‘Liberation Theologians’ of Latin America work side by side with the left parties and the trade unions to divert the potential for mass revolt into the dead-ends of democracy and nationalism.
And even in Europe, the Catholic Church still has an important place in the sordid operations of the capitalist system. During the 1930s and the Second World War, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were in cahoots with the Catholic hierarchy, which gave tacit assent to the Holocaust. To this day, the Papacy refuses to acknowledge its full role in these crimes.
During the Cold War period, the Vatican became an important player in the struggle of the western bloc against Atheistic Communism (in fact, the Stalinist form of capitalism) in the east. And John Paul II, as a Pole, was uniquely placed to act as an envoy of western imperialism towards the eastern bloc. In his obituaries, he is being fêted as “the Pope who changed the world”, “the Pope who defeated Communism”. He certainly played an indispensable role in defeating the mass strikes of the Polish workers at the beginning of the ‘80s, giving his full backing to the Solidarnosc union which undermined the class movement with its religious, nationalist and democratic sermons.
Since the old bloc system broke down at the end of the ‘80s, the Papacy has returned to its more traditional imperialist alignments with the powers of Old Europe. It is this, rather than some deep devotion to the cause of humanity, which lies behind the late Pope’s critical stance on the Iraq war.
Thus we as communists will not be joining in the glorification of this or any other Pope, and we look forward to the day when the power of the churches and religions will at last be overcome. For just as you can only become King by exploiting the peasants, you can only become Pope by selling your soul to the powers that be.
Amos 4.4.05
The governing team coming out of this election knows exactly what it has to do for the British ruling class: defend the capitalist economy, chiefly by attacking workers' jobs and living conditions; and defend Britain's imperialist interests in the deadly struggles on the world arena.
While the Labour Party has been trumpeting its success in the economy, promising prosperity and employment, the failure of Rover, right in the middle of the election campaign, is a clear illustration of the future capitalism has in store. The initial 5,000 job losses have been followed by another 421 at the end of April. And after Rover, Marconi is now desperately seeking a foreign buyer.
The new government has the job of defending the national capital's competitiveness in a world market which has been in crisis for 35 years. British manufacturing is in decline, absolutely and in relation to its competitors, with low productivity, and low investment in research, development and training. "The health of the British economy rests on a regression to the early days of capitalism when growth was achieved through the increase in the absolute rate of exploitation. This situation is the result of a quarter of a century of gradual covert attacks by the British bourgeoisie, to create a 'flexible' labour market and reduce restrictions on business; and it reveals once again its intelligence and ruthlessness" ('Resolution on the British situation' WR 281). The 'prosperity' promised by the ruling class is based on nothing but the increasing austerity facing the working class: long hours, insecure jobs, cuts in social benefits.
We are promised high employment, but we did not need Rover's collapse to show us that this is nothing but a dishonest manipulation of statistics. Unemployment may have fallen but "since 1990 there has been virtually no fall in the trend inactivity rate" (OECD report quoted in WR 283). In other words there are just as many people without jobs, either counted as on incapacity benefit or pushed off benefit and into destitution.
Britain already has a high rate of poverty relative to other European countries. The new government has the task of bringing in attacks that will increase poverty. One of these is the continued attack on pensions (underway since 1980 - see page 2), with the rise in pension age and the increase in the amount workers will have to pay in contributions. With high household debt, the inevitable interest rate rises will be devastating.
The last weeks of the election campaign have been filled with attacks on Tony Blair for his dishonesty in taking Britain to war in Iraq, for leaning on the Attorney General to give legal advice in favour of launching the invasion. This has undoubtedly been a message to the PM that an election victory should not be seen as a reason to stay in office personally. It has absolutely nothing to do with any real criticisms of Britain's role as an imperialist power. Michael Howard remains clear that he agreed with the war and the Lib Dems supported 'our troops' as soon as hostilities began.
Imperialist states do not go to war because they have dishonest leaders, neither was the Iraq war the only war based on a lie. On the contrary, all imperialist wars are fought under lying pretexts, including the century's so-called 'good war', World War Two, which Britain did not enter to save democratic freedoms or Hitler's victims, but to save the Empire (see the article on Churchill on p4).
In a world of cut-throat imperialist competition, Britain, like every other capitalist state, has to use any means at its disposal to survive. No longer a leading world power, Britain's strategy today is to defend its national interests by playing off Europe and America - supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, but opposing it over Iran alongside France and Germany. This strategy will force any governing party into new adventures in an increasingly unstable situation. "The increasing tensions between the great powers can only make it harder for any policy that situates itself between them and that attempts to play one against the other. The US will continue to assert itself and, recognising the position of the British bourgeoisie, will put pressure on it without mercy. The danger of the tack towards the US lies in the fact that it makes the British ruling class more vulnerable, not just to pressure from the US but to reciprocal pressure from its European rivals" (WR 281).
In short, Britain's rulers will play their patriotic part in dragging the world further into war and chaos.
Britain's participation in the 'war against terrorism' has made terrorist attacks against British targets more likely, increasing the climate of fear and insecurity among the population. And the state has not hesitated to take cynical advantage of this. Most recently, it encouraged the media to invent an al-Qaida cell around a 'ricin plot' dreamed up by one disturbed individual. The aim of this particular trick was to add legitimacy to the invasion of Iraq. But the current government is bringing in a whole panoply of measures against terrorism and against crime and anti-social behaviour which are wide-ranging enough to be used not only against real terrorists and criminals but also against all who question the present social order (see the article on p3). This trend will certainly be continued by the new government because the ruling class knows that the crisis of its system is sowing the seeds of social revolt.
The growth in the number of imperialist wars around the world, and the economic devastation of huge areas, is forcing more and more people to flee towards the more developed countries. The various spokesmen of the ruling class are using this to whip up a campaign to scapegoat immigrants for all the problems of their system. If the Labour Party has been less voluble in this campaign recently, we should not forget how Labour politicians have attacked refugees as 'bogus', how they force them to live every day under the threat of being thrown on the streets or deported to some of the most dangerous places on the planet. The new government will certainly maintain this enlightened approach: sweating all the surplus value it can from cheap immigrant labour while simultaneously using the immigration issue to divide workers and divert them from seeing the real causes of their poverty.
At the time of writing it appears that the Labour government will be returned again - indeed we have been promised this since the start of the campaign - although the British ruling class is solid enough to have leading factions in both the main contending parties who understand exactly what is required of the new government.
However, this has left the whole of the British bourgeoisie with one other major concern in this election - how to get sufficient of the electorate to the polls and how to keep alive the myth of democracy. Alongside all the impossible promises we have been given there is one other that has been put forward by the Liberal Democrats and the extreme left of the ruling class - that of the protest vote. If you can't bring yourself to vote for one of the two main parties, vote Lib Dem, vote Respect, vote anyone, but vote. In other words, give up on all the lying politicians if you like, but don't give up on the bourgeois state, on the vote itself. Even the notion of the Socialist Party (SPGB) that you can participate by writing 'socialism' on a ballot paper cannot distinguish itself from this circus.
But a ruling class that can only take us forward into crisis, austerity, unemployment and war, has no legitimacy. The growing scepticism about elections is connected to a wider and deeper concern about the future that this society is offering us, especially among the young. So-called apathy can give way to conscious antipathy - to active opposition to this system of wage slavery. That is the real fear of the ruling class and the real hope for the future.
WR 30.4.05
In the last issue of World Revolution we published the first part of the report on the National Situation presented to the 16th Congress of WR in November last year. This examined the reasons for the increase in the rate of growth of GDP in recent years, concluding that it came from an increase in the absolute rate of exploitation of the working class and, in particular, from an extension of the working day through an increase in the rate of overtime, especially unpaid overtime. In the second part, published below, we go on to consider how the ruling class completes the task - once again at the expense of the working class.
The production of surplus value is only one half of the task for the capitalist. The other is its realisation.
Britain has maintained its share of the global market at about 5.2% for much of the last decade, due to the growth of the service sector that has compensated the continuing decline in exports of goods. This has been a significant achievement at a time when many other countries, including the US, have experienced a slow down. However, over the longer term Britain has experienced a significant decline. In 1950 it had 25.4% of the world market in manufactured exports. This dropped to 9.1% in 1973 and to 7.9% in 1992. Not only is the current level below that of 1992 but it includes both manufactures and services.
The overall balance of British trade has remained negative, although not on a scale to compare with the US. This makes it clear that the growth of Britain's economy is not the result of greater trade.
Nor is it the result of increased government spending, which has remained above 40% throughout the 80s and 90s. Today it is slightly lower than when the Conservatives were in power with the declared aim of rolling back the state. That said, there has been a growth in the fiscal deficit over the last few years, exceeding both earlier government predictions and the EU limit of 3% of GDP. This has been due both to increases in expenditure and decreases in receipts and was the main reason for the increase in National Insurance contributions announced in the 2002 budget.
The growth of the British economy has been based on the domestic market and the increase in private consumption.
"Growth has been led by private consumption since the mid-1990s with net exports acting as a drag on activity in every year since 1996. However, in nominal terms the excess of consumption over output growth appears unremarkable compared with many G7 countries. This underlines the importance of relative price changes following the rise of the real effective exchange rate by 25 per cent between 1996 and 1998. Although the household saving rate fell by around 3 percentage points between 1997 and 1998, between then and early 2002 the increase in consumption was largely underpinned by growth in disposable income. More recently, however, personal disposable income has slowed, partly due to tax increases, and private consumption has outpaced personal disposable income since early 2002. The housing market has become an increasingly important factor in two respects: the rise in housing wealth has almost entirely offset the effect of the fall in equity prices on household wealth since 2000; and mortgage equity withdrawal was running at close to a record high of 6 per cent of disposable income in the first half of 2003. As house prices have risen on average by nearly 15 per cent per annum since 1999, the vulnerability of consumption and the wider economy to an abrupt fall in the housing market has increased" (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.24-6).
The consequence of this has been an escalation in the level of indebtedness of large parts of the working class: "In the last quarter of 2003, British borrowers added a total of £16 billion to their mortgages, the highest quarterly figure on record. Credit card debt now stands at more than £44 billion - around 5% of Britain's annual economic output - and grew by 700 million in January alone, according to the Bank of England. Britain's total debt, including mortgages, is estimated at œ1 trillion" (International Herald Tribune, 28/04/04, cited in WR 275).
This is supported by figures from the OECD, which show that "The level of financial liabilities is now among the highest in the G7, second only to Japan in relation to disposable income and to Germany in relation to financial assets. The rise in household liabilities has been heavily influenced by developments in the housing market, with long term loans secured on dwellings making up nearly three-quarters of household financial liabilities" (OECD Economic Surveys, United Kingdom, 2004, p.47-8).
The June 2004 edition of the Bank of England's Financial Stability Review shows that these trends have continued. Household debt has risen to about 135% of income while total borrowing is growing at an annual rate of about 14%. Unsecured borrowing - credit cards etc - grew rapidly between 1993 and 1997, peaking at an annual rate of 18% before dropping back to 12%. Secured borrowing - essentially re-mortgaging - rose more slowly but has now overtaken unsecured borrowing to stand at a rate of nearly 16% per year.
The 'health' of the British economy is based on the exploitation of the working class in work and its indebtedness outside. The importance of the housing market in funding the consumption that has led UK growth makes it particularly vulnerable to a collapse in house prices, as is currently being forecast in some quarters. The Bank of England has warned of households' "vulnerability to any unexpected rises in interests rates or falls in incomes" (Financial Stability Review, June 2004, p.17) The OECD is sufficiently concerned to devote a whole chapter in its latest survey of the UK to "Reducing the risk of instability from the housing market". It identifies a number of concerns, firstly that the level of debt repayment could cause difficulties leading to arrears and repossessions, as happened at the end of the 1980s. However, it considers this unlikely with the present level of interest rates, a view shared by the Bank of England (Financial Stability Review, June 2004, p.18). That said, the OECD recognises that "although the households with the highest absolute levels of debt tended also to have the highest incomes and net wealth, the youngest and lowest-income households increased their debt-to-income ratios by most - and from the highest levels - between 1995 and 2000. These are also the households most vulnerable to financial and other shocks likely to increase financial stress, such as unemployment or increases in interest rates" (ibid, p.49).
Secondly, it argues that "recent rates of house price inflation are unsustainable, and an abrupt change could have a large and rapid effect on consumers' spending" (ibid). Such changes, it argues, have a disproportionate impact on consumer spending and "an immediate levelling off in nominal house prices (i.e. zero house price inflation) would lead to a fall in the consumption-income ratio by about 2 percentage points over four quarters" (ibid). While it thinks that the impact would be limited "because of a partial offset as imports fall and due to the likely policy response" it is significant that it goes on to examine a scenario of falling house prices and concludes "an abrupt fall in the level of house prices, particularly if immediately preceded by a period of high house price inflation would be likely to have substantial effects on the real economy, and it is doubtful that monetary policy reactions would be able to impact quickly enough to offset them" (ibid, p50-51). The solution it recommends is for increases in interest rates to manage the decline. It also considers the government's review of house supply and possible reforms of the mortgage market.
While the issue of debt hangs over the working class today an even greater threat of poverty tomorrow comes from the gathering crisis over pensions. It shows that, even in the richest countries, capitalism is becoming less able to meet human needs.
A recent report by the International Monetary Fund (United Kingdom - Selected Issues, March 2004) summarises many of the issues. It begins by noting that, in common with many other developed countries, the population in Britain is ageing. The old-dependency ratio, which is defined as the ratio of the population aged 65 and over to the population aged 15 to 64, is set to rise by 60% over the next 50 years, from under 30% of the 15 to 64 population to over 40%. To maintain the current level of pension would require a rise in the total pension income of about 3% of GDP, increasing the total used in this way from 5% to 8% of GDP. However, published government projections plan no such increase, which means that the burden will be borne by the working class by paying more (through increased taxation or buying additional pensions), by working longer or by facing even greater poverty in old age. The British bourgeoisie has already begun to use all of these avenues:
- the 1980 Social Security Act switched the indexation of the Basic State Pension from either earnings or prices (whichever was the higher) to just prices, reducing its value from 24% of average earnings in 1981 to 16% in 2002;
- Social Security Acts in 1986, 1993 and 1995 made various changes to the State Earnings Related Pension that 'encouraged' members to opt out into private schemes;
- the increase in the retirement age for women from 60 to 65 that will be introduced between 2010 and 2020 will reduce the increase in the old-dependency ratio from 60% to 35%, with a consequent significant reduction in costs.
Such moves are on a par with those to create a 'flexible' labour market and to reduce restrictions on speculation, the movement of money and lending that were also initiated in the 1980s. The creation of such legislative and economic frameworks is one the main ways in which state capitalism operates in advanced capitalist economies.
In his speech to the Labour Party Conference Gordon Brown gave an overview of the government's achievements:
"No longer the most inflation prone economy, with New Labour, Britain today has the lowest inflation for thirty years.
No longer the boom-bust economy, Britain has had the lowest interest rates for forty years.
And no longer the stop-go economy, Britain is now enjoying the longest period of sustained economic growth for 200 years.
And no longer the country of mass unemployment, Britain is now advancing further and faster towards full employment than at any time in our lives.
And after decades of underinvestment, investment in schools is doubling, in policing doubling, in transport doubling, in housing doubling, and instead of œ40 billion spent on the NHS in 1997, by 2008 £110 billion for the NHS.
From being the party not trusted with the economy, this conference should be proud that Labour is today the only party trusted with the economy" (emphasis added).
The truth is that such a barrage of statistics and claims hides the fragility of Britain's economic position and falsifies the real situation of the working class. The most obvious example of the latter are the unemployment figures where all that has happened is that the part of the working class thrown out of work and never reabsorbed has simply been moved from unemployment benefit, where it is counted, to other benefits, notably invalidity, where it is not.
At the level of GDP growth, it is true that Britain has exceeded that achieved by its European rivals but it is still below that of America and Australia and, more significantly, it has also followed the global post-war decline in growth. The reversal in this trend over the last few years is not the result of a fundamental improvement in economic performance, as is clear from the below average level of productivity, but from the actions of the state in the preceding twenty or more years that has given Britain a relative advantage by increasing the exploitation of the working class.
One of the main ways it has done this is through the growth of debt. While state debt has remained constant, but relatively low, consumer debt has been allowed to grow substantially. Again, this is not an accident but the consequence of government policy to liberalise the financial sector.
State expenditure in Britain is on a par with that in other developed countries and current projects suggest an increase, which may be necessary if the anticipated slump in house prices leads to a reduction in the growth of consumer debt.
What underlies every aspect of the British economy is the action of the state; not as the owner and micro-manager of economic performance but as the setter of the context, of the direction, dynamic and pace of the economy. This is the reality of state capitalism in the 21st century and the British bourgeoisie practises it at a level befitting its history, experience and ruthlessness.
WR, November 2004
As the bourgeoisie marks the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the second world war as the "victory of freedom", the second part of this article focuses on Churchill's wartime role and what it reveals about Britain's real motives and interests in a war supposedly fought for democracy against the evils of Nazism.
For British imperialism, as Churchill stated clearly, the second world war was a life or death struggle to preserve its status as a world power: ". we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Britain's only option was to try to destroy German imperialism as its main rival on the European mainland. This Churchill pursued with single-minded ruthlessness.
Churchill's first priority as war leader in 1940 was to protect the imperial homeland and its vital supply routes across the Atlantic; his second was to bring America into the war. In return, the American bourgeoisie set out to bankrupt Britain and turn it into a dependency of the US, by using schemes like lend-lease to bleed its ally dry: "During the early stages of the war the application of these policies hit the British economy harder than the German bombers could."
Given the nature of its strategic interests, Britain unsurprisingly put its main military efforts into protecting its bases in the Mediterranean; the Middle East with its vast oil reserves and control of the route to India; and India itself, which was vital to Britain's world power status. Even at the height of the German invasion scare some 250,000 troops were deployed for the defence of the Suez Canal, and Churchill later spent much of his time fruitlessly pressing the Americans to open a second front in the Mediterranean rather than north-west Europe. In Asia, after the humiliating loss of Singapore to the Japanese, Britain was only able to 'hold its own' with increasing military help from US imperialism, whose post-war aim was to hasten the break-up of the British Empire under the slogan of 'decolonisation'; to which Churchill put up stubborn but futile resistance.
Too weak to defeat Germany on its own, British imperialism needed stronger military allies, whatever their ideology or motives. After Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941, Stalin provided the necessary ally in the east to enable Germany's encirclement. For Churchill, the supposed anti-Communist, of necessity this meant 'speaking well of the Devil himself'. The resulting Grand Alliance of Britain and the USA with Stalinist Russia says much about the cynical self-interest of Britain's motives and gives the lie to the myth of a war between a 'democratic' and a 'totalitarian' camp.
The war in Asia receives much less attention in British bourgeois histories because the systematic brutality and blatant racism of colonial rule, and Britain's ruthless suppression of any threat to that rule, reveal the sordid realities of a war supposedly fought for democracy. Even more clearly than in Europe this was a struggle between the great powers for control of raw materials and markets.
Churchill had intransigently opposed Home Rule for India as a threat to the Empire, and throughout the war the British army maintained a substantial force in India, not to fight the Japanese but to suppress any move towards independence. When in 1942 the popular Quit India Movement threatened to disrupt the war effort, it was brutally put down with public shootings and mass whippings, torturing of protesters and burning of villages, leading even bourgeois observers to make comparisons with 'Nazi dreadfulness'.
Churchill apparently believed that the Indians were the next worst people in the world after the Germans. When in 1943 food shortages began as a direct result of British scorched earth policies, the British War Cabinet ignored the problem, refusing to stop ordering Indian food abroad in the interests of the war effort. The resulting man-made famine in Bengal may have accounted for as many as 4 million deaths - about 90% of the total British Empire casualties in WW2. Yet Churchill's six-volume History of the Second World War fails to mention it.
Having promoted the use of aerial bombing as an offensive weapon of terror against the Empire's opponents, Churchill became closely associated with the wartime policy of targeting German cities for destruction. Discussion of this policy by bourgeois commentators usually focuses on the devastating attack on Dresden in February 1945, which killed at least 35,000 people (among them many thousands of refugees), and whether this was 'justified' or not; which of course implies that the devastation of other German cities was somehow legitimate (like the raid on Hamburg in 1943 which killed more than 42,000 people in an eight-hour firestorm).
The whole purpose of the bomber fleets built by Britain, Germany and other powers was to threaten total devastation, just like their post-war nuclear equivalents: the role of the RAF was to meet terror with counter-terror. The British bourgeoisie knew exactly what the effect of bombing would be on civilian populations because it spent so much time preparing for the devastating effect on British cities.
British imperialism deliberately targeted the German civilian population for destruction: Churchill boasted to Stalin that "We sought no mercy and we would show no mercy. If need be, as the war went on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city." The real target of this policy was the German working class: a 1942 Air Ministry directive explicitly ordered a switch to what it called 'area bombing', i.e. the bombing of city centres: "It has been decided that the primary object of your operations should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civilian population and, in particular, of the industrial workers." In the logic of barbarism labour power was a vital resource for the Nazi war effort, and therefore to be destroyed along with factories, railways and refineries. But in the bourgeoisie's mind also was the memory of the revolutionary wave that had ended the first world war, and the need above all to prevent any future threat from the proletariat in a country that had been key to the world revolution.
The British were not the first to bomb cities: German imperialism led the way in the use of this weapon of terror in the war in Spain, as well as Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and other British cities after 1939. But the Allied imperialisms more than matched the scale of German barbarism, and British imperialism in particular refined the use of bombing as a strategy directed at the working class, 'scientifically' perfecting the technique of creating firestorms in which to incinerate the maximum number of human beings. This was one of Britain's special contributions to the logic of barbarism in the second world war.
The Allies' overriding objective when they went onto the offensive against German imperialism after 1942 was not the 'liberation' of Europe but the maintenance of bourgeois order and the suppression of any threat to their rule, particularly from the proletariat.
In the infamous case of Warsaw in August 1944, Stalin halted his advancing armies to let the German army put down the uprising led by the Polish government in exile, and then arrested, imprisoned and shot the surviving insurgents. But it wasn't just Stalinist terror that resorted to such tactics. When it suited their interests, the 'democratic' powers were quite happy to do deals with fascist supporters like the 'French Quisling' Admiral Darlan, and Marshal Badoglio the 'victor' of Italy's dirty war in Africa. They also made use of former local fascist forces to ensure their control, as in Greece in 1944, and, when faced with a dangerous outbreak of workers' struggles, in effect used the German army to crush the working class before continuing to pursue their military objectives.
In Italy in 1943, where Mussolini had to be replaced after an upsurge of workers' strikes, the RAF, acting on urgent political orders, bombed the centres of working class resistance in Milan, Turin and Genoa. This effectively cleared the way for the German army to occupy the north of Italy and restore order, while in the south the Allied leaders propped up the fascist and monarchist government of Badoglio to enable it to do the same. Alarmed by the appearance of the proletariat in the midst of the imperialist war, Churchill, who had in the 1920s praised Mussolini for his role in crushing the working class, warned against the danger of Italy "sliding into anarchy." The Allies only negotiated Italy's unconditional surrender after dealing with the threat from the working class.
In Greece in December 1944, as the Germans withdrew the British army moved in, as agreed with Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. When faced with local Stalinist-backed resistance to its plan to impose a puppet regime, Churchill cabled the British general in charge to act as if he were "in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress." British troops used tanks and machine guns against demonstrators in Athens, and working class suburbs were bombarded with artillery and rockets. More damage was done to Athens in three months of British 'liberation' than under four years of Nazi occupation.
At the war's end, Churchill was one the key players in the imperialist carve up, deciding with Stalin and Roosevelt (later Truman) who got the spoils of 'victory' in Europe and in Asia, which involved the forcible expulsion of millions of people, mainly ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe. Churchill enthusiastically supported this policy, which was in effect 'ethnic cleansing' of enormous proportions: "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions then they ever were before." These 'transferences' resulted in the deaths of some 500,000 to 1,500.000 people.
Churchill also supported plans to rip out Germany's industrial capacity and reduce the country to a medieval subsistence level, because this would provide much needed markets for British industry. These plans if fully implemented would have led to the death by starvation and disease of 20-30 million Germans in the first few years after the war.
Finally, instead of being indicted as a war criminal, with a breathtaking cynicism only the bourgeoisie is capable of, Churchill was honoured after the war as an early supporter of 'pan-Europeanism' and in 1956 was awarded for his 'contribution to European peace'.
Historically the British bourgeoisie has always had to use cunning and guile in order to manoeuvre between its more powerful European rivals, and to deflect the threat from a large and potentially powerful proletariat, for which it has developed all the techniques of espionage, deception and terror. Churchill, with his keen awareness of the continuity of British interests, stood squarely in this tradition: his observation at the height of WW2 that the truth was so precious it should always be attended by "a bodyguard of lies" expresses the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie far beyond the needs of purely military operations.
As we have seen, over his long career for the British state, Winston Churchill demonstrated the necessary intelligence of the bourgeoisie in the epoch of capitalist decadence: he understood the need to strengthen state capitalism and to try to incorporate the 'Labour movement' into the state apparatus, and the need to deal with the threat from the proletariat. Above all, Churchill's role for the British bourgeoisie was as a war leader to defend the interests of a declining imperialist power facing an immediate threat to its survival. But it is no accident that as soon as the war ended the British bourgeoisie replaced him and brought the Labour Party into power; the British bourgeoisie had learned the lesson from the revolutionary wave at the end of the first world war that at moments of potential class struggle it was necessary to bring forward its left-wing apparatus - the trade unions and the Labour Party - as the specific means to mystify the working class and deflect unrest into support for a 'socialist' government. Ultimately, Churchill remains a warning of just what we can expect from the 'democratic' British bourgeoisie when it feels threatened, and the gloves finally come off.
MH
After a week of uncertainty the fate of the workers at the MG Rover in Birmingham was decided: 5,000 to be made redundant with an estimated 15-20,000 jobs threatened in the supply industries and local community. On the same weekend, the retailer Littlewoods announced the closure of its national chain of Index stores with the loss of some 3,000 jobs over the next 6 months. April may well be the cruellest month, but the coming months and years hold new storms that herald wider and deeper attacks on the working class.
When BMW decided to sell off the loss-making parts of MG Rover in 2000, the workers were strongly encouraged by the unions and the Labour government to put their faith in the 'Phoenix Four' of 'proud, British entrepreneurs' who would keep the workers in jobs rather than have the company gutted by the Alchemy group. But as World Revolution said at the time, workers "cannot rely on the Phoenix bid.No boss, new or old, private or state, can guarantee jobs whatever improvements are made in productivity, whatever concessions are made on wages" (WR234, May 2000, p.1).
The only surprise in the situation is how long MG Rover has actually managed to survive. Faced with the need to attract new investment, MG Rover sought to clinch a deal with the Chinese company SAIC. This spring the workers were once again exhorted by the unions to put their faith in the bosses and the Labour government in their forlorn efforts to convince SAIC to accept the deal. When the Chinese pulled out of the negotiations the bosses admitted defeat and administrators were appointed.
Very quickly, both Blair and Brown were on the scene in Birmingham to appear to be doing all they could to restart negotiations with the Chinese and offer a œ150 million package to 'soften the landing'. The timing of the Rover crisis - falling during the run-up to the General Election - poses certain difficulties for local Labour MPs, but in the grand scheme of things New Labour are assured a comfortable majority and the concern showed for sacked workers and their families by the government will evaporate like the dew on the grass in Parliament Square on the morning of May 6th.
Following the collapse of Rover there have been the usual
calls from the leftists such as the SWP to nationalise the company. These have
been given credibility by the likes of Mark Seddon, a member of the Labour
Party's National Executive Committee, who points to the French and Chinese
states who, "believe that manufacturing and car making are far too
important to be left to anything as fickle as market forces, which is why
Renault, part state owned and state aided, is such a great success"
(Guardian, Comment, 14/4/05). However, as we said in 2000, "Calling for
nationalisation, for the state to become the new boss, is not the answer.
Nationalisation has been used in the past, but it definitely didn't benefit
workers. Every time Rover changed hands (and name) in the past there have been
job losses and increases in productivity, but the 54,000 redundancies when
Leyland was nationalised in 1974 were among the worst ever" (ibid).
There have also been calls this time around for MG Rover to be run as a workers' co-operative. According to George Monbiot, darling of the anti-globalisation movement, the classic contradiction between the interests of 'absent shareholders' and the workers is being moderated as broader share ownership encourages a wider concern for the long-term health and stability of the company.
What these false solutions have in common is the fundamental belief that capitalism can somehow be reformed and that these reforms - carried out by the state or the employees - are steps towards 'socialism' or an 'ethically oriented' capitalism. For the likes of Monbiot, co-ops have the advantage that, "At least within the firm wealth is widely distributed. An economy dominated by co-operatives would be a more equal one than an economy like ours" (Guardian, 'A Vehicle for Equality', 12/4/05).
However, the true situation is that globally there is chronic over-production in the car industry. As we wrote last autumn at the time of the job losses at Jaguar in Coventry and GM in Germany, ".the Austrian automotive analysts Autopolis estimate that 'The world as a whole has about 30% more car factories than it needs. That's about 170 factories around the world, and most of these, quite frankly, are surplus to requirements' (BBC Online, 14/10/04). These problems are not just restricted to the car industry in Europe. Swathes of jobs are being cut across Europe and the US. The attacks are not just limited to employment, but also the 'social wage': unemployment benefits, pensions, health care etc." ('Class solidarity is the only answer to massive redundancies', WR280, Dec/Jan 04/05).
Only last year, the bosses of Phoenix were applauded by a government minister for taking risks to keep British workers in jobs, and their 'enlightened accounting techniques' were saluted. Nonetheless, as one correspondent from The Times wryly noted, "The only thing that has risen is their bank balances", while the workers' pension fund is in deficit to the tune of œ67 million. Once the scale of the job losses became clear a veritable witch-hunt was unleashed by the media and unions to scapegoat the Phoenix Four 'fat cats'. The Financial Times branded them 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' and the government announced an investigation into the company's shady accounting practices.
But workers should not for one moment have any illusions that there is an 'acceptable' face of capitalism. As an exploiting class, the bourgeoisie quietly rob the proletariat of billions of pounds worth of unpaid labour every day! In the words of the Communist Manifesto, the proletariat is "a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is." ('Bourgeois and Proletarians'). The closing phrase will not be lost on the Rover workers who have found out not only that they've lost their jobs - but also that they'll still have to pay back the loans they took out from the company to buy Rover cars!
It is interesting to note what has changed in the historic situation over the past few years. In 2000, the unions were keen to organise a mass demonstration in Birmingham against the threat to Rover. Back in 1992, when the wave of pit-closures was announced, there were mass demonstrations in support of the miners. Why isn't there a protest movement now, after the largest single announcement of job losses in the UK for 5 years? Why, when redundancies were made at Jaguar last autumn, were the unions so keen to absorb the anger of the workers and delay the demonstration in Coventry? Why, when tens of thousands of workers in the Civil Service voted strongly in favour of strike action in the face of a planned 100,000 job losses and pension reforms, did the unions agree to cancel strikes in March when the government agreed to re-open negotiations? Why were national strike ballots among teachers, lecturers and local government workers cancelled soon after? Why were the government and unions in Germany so keen to reach a rapid end to the disputes at Opel and Bochum?
To begin with, the ruling class is increasingly sensitive to the fact that deep within the working class there is a growing unease about the precarious nature of their jobs and pensions. Whereas five years ago British unions could claim that it was easier to sack workers here than anywhere else in Europe - due to the low Euro and stronger employment regulation - today the bourgeoisie is keen to hide the fact that unemployment is rising rapidly on the continent. In France, 10%. In Germany 12.5%, over 5 million. According to one German academic, "This figure of more than 5m unemployed in this country is very high. Unemployment figures reach 20% in parts of former Eastern Germany. The last time in history that we had such an enormous figure was in the early 1930s, the Great Depression, and I simply thought that this was atrocious for our country." In Britain, there has been a sharp drop in business confidence and a larger than expected increase in unemployment in March.
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of massive struggles, of an unleashing of seething tensions, of anger and discontent. What the ruling class fears is wider numbers of workers beginning to come together, to see the common threads in the attacks raining down upon them; in the wars and conflicts engulfing wider areas of the globe; in the destruction of the environment; the absolute bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production.
Spencer, 28/4/05.
On March 14th 2005, the Chinese parliament passed a law against secession, authorising Peking to use military means against Taiwan in case the latter opted for independence. The day before, the Chinese president Hu Jintao, dressed in military uniform, had publicly called on Chinese army officers to "be ready for armed conflict". The message was clear: the Chinese bourgeoisie will not tolerate the separation of Taiwan, and is prepared to go to war to stop it.
Immediately after that, tension mounted, not only in South East Asia, but also between China and Japan. The latter could not avoid reacting to China's belligerent declarations. Tokyo thus made it known that this anti-secession law would have a highly negative impact on peace and stability in the region, simultaneously announcing that its military forces had taken control of a lighthouse situated on the Senkaku Archipelago. This Archipelago has been traditionally claimed by Beijing, which calls it Diayou. China replied by calling this military act "a serious and totally unacceptable provocation".
The growing tensions between China and Japan then found a very obvious expression with the series of anti-Japanese demonstrations stirred up by the Chinese state, their pretext being Tokyo's publication of a school history book that minimises the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the colonisation of parts of China in the 1930s. In reply to this, Japan now for the first time called China "a potential menace". The situation in the Far East has deteriorated so much that, for the first time since 1945, Japan has now officially abandoned its neutral stance over Taiwan.
This sudden burst of war fever in China has not only provoked a response from Japan. Despite the fact that since 1972 the USA has recognised only one China, with Taiwan being a part, Washington made it clear that it would not passively accept any resort to force by China over Taiwan. "This anti-secession law is unfortunate" declared Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman. "We are against any unilateral changes in the status quo". These very clear statements were also made by the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to Hu Jintao when she visited Beijing on March 21st. It is now plain that faced with the China's growing imperialist appetite, Japan and the USA have an interest in working together in this part of the world.
This is the significance of the accord signed by Washington and Tokyo, which states that its "common strategic objective" is to work for the "peaceful resolution" of the question of Taiwan.
The collapse of the USSR in 1989, which left the USA as the world's only superpower, had a major impact on China's imperialist position. At the time of the formation of the Chinese People's Republic in 1949, China was aligned with Stalin's USSR; but by the 1960s tensions between these two powers had resulted in the 'Sino-Soviet Split'. After a short-lived attempt to go it alone, China formed an alliance with the US in 1972. In other words, the existence of the two imperialist blocs imposed a certain discipline on China, which had to pursue its imperialist ambitions within the framework of the imperialist status quo.
This all changed after 1989, with the disappearance of the common enemy which had been at the basis of the Sino-US alliance. During the 1990s, we saw the first signs of tensions between the US and China in the region. The USA's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, just one month after a high-ranking Chinese diplomat had paid a visit to Washington, was an obvious expression of the USA's opposition to China playing the role of lone ranger on the imperialist frontier.
Since then, however, Beijing's imperialist appetites have grown sharper still, and China has made every effort to present itself as a military force to be reckoned with. It is particularly significant that the Chinese military budget has grown bigger and bigger. Over the past 15 years, Beijing's military expenditure has grown at an annual rate in double figures: 17 % in 2002, 11.6% in 2004. This represents no less than 35% of the national budget. The focus has been on rapid modernisation, with submarines and aviation being the main beneficiaries.
The Chinese state has done its best to take advantage of the USA's difficulties in imposing its global authority. Proof of this is China's interference in the debate over Iran's nuclear programme. The Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing, during a trip to Tehran, declared that China would be opposed to any attempt in the UN to impose sanctions on Iran. The same imperialist interests have pushed China to support the Islamic regime in the Sudan, and its policy towards North Korea follows the same logic. All these are definite indications that China is seeking to advance its pawns in its natural sphere of influence, if necessary at America's expense. The Chinese bourgeoisie is also trying to consolidate its influence in Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indochina, again in direct conflict with the interests of the USA.
If the development of imperialist tensions around Taiwan is a grave new threat to the world, this is not the only focus of potential conflict in Asia. Aksai-Chin and Arunachal-Pradesh, on the frontier between China and India, are also being claimed by the two states and are possible sources of confrontation between these two nuclear powers. Although of late there has been a certain cooling of tensions between India and Pakistan on the one hand, and India and China on the other, this does not mean that the region is becoming more stable. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared recently that "India and China share the same aspiration to construct an equitable and democratic economic and political order". But this is only because the imperialist sharks of Asia are obliged to set aside their mutual rivalries to face up to the US offensive in this region.
In such a situation, it's obvious that the other world imperialist powers, notably France, Germany and Russia can't abstain from trying to defend their own interests in this part of the world. This can only infuriate the US, whose leadership is being challenged all around the planet. The recent trips by Chirac and Raffarin to China didn't only have the goal of strengthening economic ties between Paris and Beijing. It was also a matter of France, echoed by Germany, repeating its calls for the lifting of the embargo on arms sales to China. A China which is stronger and more aggressive towards the USA fits in with the plans of France and Germany. By the same token, the US strategy of implanting military bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, which is aimed at encircling Europe and Russia, also has the objective of blocking Chinese expansion westwards. The USA's overall aim is to prevent its main imperialist rivals from linking up.
With the development of imperialist tensions over Asia, capitalist barbarism is set to accelerate in other regions as well. It's clear that America remains bogged down in Iraq, despite its declared intention to withdraw part of its military forces between now and 2006. It is also faced with the knotty problems of Syria and Iran in the Middle East and North Korea in the Far East. To maintain its position as global cop, the USA is being pushed towards more and more military adventures. The multiplication of hot spots in the Far East, where the pressure of Chinese imperialism is bound to be the central concern, has already led the White Hose to strengthen its military bases in the region and to reaffirm its links with Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The evolution of the situation in South East Asia shows once again that all the bourgeoisie's speeches about peace only pave the way for new military conflicts and that the capitalist system has nothing to offer but barbarism on an ever-increasing scale.
Tino, 31/4/05.
In Devon and Cornwall at the end of April, the Police Executive sent out letters to its civilian support staff - from cleaners, canteen workers, and telephone staff to people working in forensic labs - informing them that the new pay evaluation meant pay cuts of up to 28% for hundreds of workers. The response was immediate. Workers of all categories immediately walked off the job and held protest rallies. "Staff abandoned their posts in spontaneous protests in Plymouth, Launceston, Camborne and at the Middlemoor headquarters in Exeter.single mothers wept as they faced the prospect of a drop in their income of up to £10,500, many wondering how they would avoid losing their homes" ('this is Devon' website). The anger was widespread and very deep. As one worker interviewed by 'this is Devon' put it: "I have given 16 years to this force, working on the front desk, all over. I have had my head kicked in and yet I have stuck at it. I have a newborn baby and I am the only wage earner in the house. I don't know how we're going to cope, I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage, and I'm scared. I've never been treated so badly by an employer in my life". Some rank and file police officers also joined the rallies.
The main union involved, the GMB, was no doubt surprised by the scale of the workers' response, but lost no time in trying to get back in control by talking tough "It is disgusting how Devon and Cornwall Police have treated people." said GMB spokesman Gary Smith. "The decision to cut people's wages is short-sighted as it will end up costing the force even more. Long-standing experienced staff will leave. They will have to be replaced with new people and they will have to be trained.. Our message to staff is to stay and fight. We will not sit back and accept this".
Smith also announced that the mass meeting to be held on the Monday after the walkouts - where the union was to propose official industrial action - would be open to all police support staff, even non-union members. Allowing non-union members into the hallowed sanctuary of a union meeting goes against the grain of British trade unionism and is a sign of the pressure towards real unity coming from the workforce.
The Police Executive was even more staggered and backed down almost immediately; within days all the proposed pay cuts had been dropped. The police authorities broke new ground by blaming computers for the pay evaluation that had recommended such massive pay-cuts. A manager of the police communication system said "This evaluation was carried out by a computer which takes the job, looks at what's involved in it, then puts a price tag on it. We have been told that there are councils who have refused to use this system because it is useless" (ibid).
The workers were jubilant about the management climb-down, some calling it a victory for "people power" and for "democracy in motion".
No doubt this is a sector of workers with many illusions, working as they do in such close proximity to the police force (which is certainly not part of the working class, even if, in moments of class struggle, individual policemen may defect to the side of the workers). It also took place in a region of the country not generally associated with militant action. But in a way this increases the significance of their reaction. Faced with an open attack, anger and frustration that has been building up for a long time exploded to the surface, and workers were not afraid to defy the law, cast aside the union rule book and hit the streets. They gave the bosses a brief glimpse not of peoples' power, but of workers' power - the power of the working class to defend itself. And the bosses took heed, even if the attacks will certainly be repackaged in a less crude way in the near future.
This strike was a small expression of a much wider process going on inside the working class. Faced with the growing arrogance of capital, its demands for ever-greater sacrifices, the working class is beginning to shake off years of passivity and demonstrate its readiness to fight back.
Amos 29.4.05
The election campaign has further strengthened the atmosphere of fear about terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour, asylum seekers and foreigners. This atmosphere is not only the result of the crude stirring up of the most bestial passions by both Labour and Tories. It is part of a calculated process aimed at justifying the strengthening of capitalism's repressive apparatus.
The capitalist class has no real answer to the deepening economic crisis, advancing social decay and mounting imperialist tensions. The idea that 'things can only get better' has become an increasingly hollow joke as military barbarism has engulfed ever larger parts of the planet, unemployment has increased, work has become ever more alienating and the dream of retirement has turned into a nightmare of continuing to work till you drop. We have also seen a growth of terrorism internationally, which is a reflection of increasingly chaotic imperialist antagonisms, and an explosion of anti-social behaviour, which again is a reflection of a general tendency towards the disintegration of social ties. However, the inability of capitalism to offer a future is also generating the conditions for the emergence of massive workers' struggle. The response of the ruling class to this situation can only be the development of the fortress state.
One of the reasons that the ruling class brought Labour to power in 1997 and kept it there has been its ability to carry out an unprecedented, systematic development of the repressive apparatus. In the name of 'modernising' the state through 'joined up government' the supposed welfare aspects of the state - health, social services, education - have been tied into the repressive apparatus. These institutions of state control over social life has always maintained the appearance of being there to 'help'. Now, through the cynical use of the tragic death of children such a Victoria Climb‚ these bodies have been forced into even closer links with the police. Joint databases have been set up, whose aim is to make all information kept on the population, including children, easily available to the police and the security services.
This centralisation of information has been further developed with the insistence that Internet providers keep records of all e-mails and the browsing habits of their subscribers. The security services can now sit at a computer and access a vast pool of information.
Whilst at the computer they can also access many of the 4,000,000 CCTV's that spy on the population, making it the most watched population in the world (The Independent 12.1.2004). This includes the apparently innocent system of 700 cameras that monitor cars entering the traffic congestion zone in central London. "MI5, Special Branch and the Metropolitan Police began secretly developing the system in the wake of the 11th of September attacks" (The Observer, 9.2.2003). The system not only records registration numbers but also has facial recognition software. This technology is also being introduced throughout the CCTV network.
Thus, the state has the ability to monitor and film workers' demonstrations, strikes, and political activity that takes place in the street. And in the future this system will be a powerful tool when openly repressive measures are taken against the developing economic and political struggle of the working class.
The excuse of fighting crime and anti-social behaviour has been the cover for the introduction of unprecedented draconian powers through Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO's). The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 defines an antisocial manner as "that which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress to one or more persons not of the same household as the person against whom the order is made". These measures introduced in 1998 give the police and local authorities powers to impose curfews in designated areas which force those under the age of 16 to stay at home between 9 pm and 6 am. 79% of police forces in England and Wales have imposed such curfews ('Police curfew', www.liberty.org [41]). Today this law is used to repress working class youth, tomorrow it will be extended to include all workers in designated areas.
The 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act gives the police the power to disperse groups of two or more persons "if any members of the public have been intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed". The perfect tool for dispersing pickets, workers' demonstrations or revolutionaries selling their press in the streets.
If readers think we are exaggerating, the state is already using ASBO's, according to the civil liberties group Liberty, against protesters. "Protesters are also being issued with ASBO's by police and local authorities. Breaching an ASBO - which lists forbidden behaviour such as waving a banner or being in a certain area - is a criminal offence and can result in imprisonment" ('Right to protest', www.liberty,org [42]). We do not think that there is a right to protest, but if the state is using such orders to repress protesters today there can be no doubt they will use them against the revolutionary class and its political minorities in the future.
The actions taken by the state against peace protesters during the Iraq war also show how the anti-terrorist laws are going to be used against the working class. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the police to stop and search people in designated areas. This power, according to Liberty, has been used to stop people going to anti-war demonstrations. Protests outside of RAF Fairford, during the Iraq war, were broken up though the use of anti-terrorist laws. This included an eleven year old girl being issued with an anti-terrorism order.
The anti-terrorism laws also provide legal cover for the existing activities of the political police and secret services: bugging, surveillance, following, the placement of agent-provocateurs, etc.
History also underlines that the bourgeoisie will use such laws against the working class. Faced with the revolutionary wave that followed the Russian Revolution, the British state established the Emergency Powers Act 1920. This allowed a state of emergency to be imposed if "any persons or group of persons....(interfere with) the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel, or light, or with the means of locomotion, to deprive the community of the essentials of life" (quoted in States of Emergency, Keith Jeffery and Peter Hennessy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983). This power was used against the 1920 strike of miners, railway and transport workers, and during the 1926 general strike. And after the second world war, the 'radical' Labour governments no less than its Tory successors invokeded this act in breaking the 1948 and 1949 dock strikes, 1955 rail strike, 1966 seamen's strike, the dock and electricity workers' strikes in 1970, the miners' and dockers' strikes in 1972.
In 2004 the state updated the Emergency Powers Act with the Civil Contingencies Bill, which says a state of emergency can be called if amongst other criteria an "event or situation" threatens to disrupt the supply of money, food, water, energy, fuel, electronic or other systems of communications, transport, and services relating to health. This means a state of emergency (which gives ministers powers to impose martial law, stop movement around the country, ban meetings etc) could be called if strikes affected these central aspects of the economy.
If at present the state is not using the measures laid out in this article against the working class, it is because the level of the class struggle is not high enough. The ruling class, through the Labour Party, is taking full advantage of this situation in order to re-forge and strengthen its weapons of repression. But faced with this daunting armoury it is essential to remember that its very development expresses the ruling class' long-term fear of the future that the working class offers humanity.
Nevertheless, it was not mainly naked force that defeated the revolutionary struggles between 1917 and 1927, but illusions in the democratic process, which is in reality a cover for the dictatorship of capital. The working class will only strengthen this dictatorship if it demands that the state respect its rights. Groups like Liberty may be good at pointing out the facts of repression in Britain and elsewhere but they will never be able to halt the state's drive to control every aspect of our social lives. Only the working class can do this through its collective struggle. There are tentative signs that the working class is beginning to take up this struggle again. For it to be successful it must not be drawn into the dead end of the democratic process but must show the same will and daring that its ancestors showed in 1917. Only then, with the destruction of the state, will we see the end of bourgeois repression.
Phil 30.4.05
1000 dead, around 2000 injured, thousands of refugees fleeing towards neighbouring Kyrgystan – that’s the horrible balance sheet of the repression carried out by the Uzbek army against the popular riots [1] [43] which took place on 13 May in several Uzbek towns in the Ferhana valley, notably Andijan, Pakhtabad and Kara Su. The army didn’t hesitate to use armoured cars, helicopters and heavy machinegun fire against demonstrations of tens of thousands. A large number of unarmed civilians including children were killed, with soldiers finishing off the wounded with a bullet in the head, while the police arrested many hundreds more. Faithful to traditional Stalinist methods, the government led by the despot Karimov did all it could to hide the truth, first imposing a media black-out, then presenting the massacre as a legitimate response to an armed Islamic uprising. Initially the American, Russian, Chinese and European governments lent support to this version, only growing more critical when the testimonies of a number of people who had been caught up in this tragedy began to circulate. In order to defend their interests as imperialist bandits, the grand democracies have cynically backed Karimov in his ‘struggle against terrorism’, merely asking him to carry out a few token democratic changes. [2] [44] Now, feigning indignation, as they do after every massacre engendered by the barbarity of capitalism, the international organisations, like the UN, the EU and numerous Non-Government Organisations, have been calling for an inquiry.
Faced with the bourgeois media, who reduce events like this to issues like terrorism or the behaviour of individual tyrants like Karimov, it is necessary to understand the real background to this bloody repression: the heritage of Stalinism, the growing decomposition of capitalist society and the sharpening of imperialist tensions which have made Central Asia in particular a strategic focus for military rivalries.
The republics of Central Asia were created by Stalin in 1924, carving up the region in the same way that the great powers divided up Africa or the Middle East. This patchwork of countries was held together by the Stalinist terror meted out to the population until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, which resulted in the independent status of the Central Asian republics. Then a Pandora’s box opened up. The richest and most populated region, the Ferghana valley, has been at the centre of all kinds of discord: shared between Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikstan, and is cut up into a series of enclaves which can only encourage border conflicts and ethnic and religious tensions. These tensions have exploded into outright violence on several occasions: in 1990, hundreds died in clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the south of Kyrgyztan; up to 50,000 were killed in the civil war in Tajikistan between 1992 and 1997. Behind the ethnic tensions, the three local republics are in dispute over territory, water rights, and the control of the arms and drugs trade from neighbouring Afghanistan. In this chaotic context, the war in Afghanistan between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance has had major repercussions throughout Central Asia, giving birth to a multitude of Islamist groups which have served to accentuate rivalries between the different republics and draw a part of the population into new massacres. The dramatic situation facing the mass of the population has been further aggravated by the authoritarian practices of these states, most of whose leaders are former Stalinist bosses. In Uzbekistan, the family clan around Karimov has appropriated all the main sources of wealth – mainly from raw materials – and corruption is the law. The average earnings are 10 to 20 dollars a month and production per inhabitant has fallen by 40% since 1998. The population is caught in a deadly trap, with the choice between plague and cholera – Stalinist bureaucrats or Islamist fanatics. The pauperisation of the population is helping to make this region a real powder-keg. The US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, under the banner of the war against terrorism, has strongly accelerated the whole process of destabilisation, since Uncle Sam’s concern for the region is not to bring peace but to defend its world leadership.
“For the first time in history, the United States has established itself in Central Asia, and it plans to stay there, not only in Afghanistan but also in the two neighbouring ex-Soviet republics (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). This is an open threat to China, Russia, India and Iran. However, its scope is far more profound: it is a step towards an authentic encirclement of the European powers - a new edition of the old policy of ‘containment’ that the US used against Russia. From the high mountains of Central Asia it will exercise strategic control over the Middle East and its oil supplies, which are crucial for the European nations’ economies and military action” (International Review 108).
Thus Eurasia has become the axis of conflict between the imperialist powers. The Americans have spent millions on setting up military bases for their intervention towards Afghanistan and for winning control of the region (according to the US press, the CIA even uses Uzbek know-how in the field of torture, using special planes to deliver ‘terrorists’ arrested in Afghanistan or Iraq to interrogation centres in Uzbekistan). Facing this offensive in its own backyard, Russia has strengthened its own bases in the region, notably in Kyrgystan and Tajikistan, while China has also been supplying military equipment to the Kyrgyz army, hoping to get a foothold in this strategic zone. All this military activity only adds to the prevailing instability, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq, but this in turn will oblige the US to intensify its military presence, while other powers can’t afford not to respond in kind. For the population of this region, the intervention of these powers will bring not a new dawn of democracy but a further slide into repression and violence.
Donald, 4/6/05.
[1] [45] It seems probable that the riots were the product both of a major economic attack by the government (in April new restrictions were imposed on small street traders in a situation where, given the massive unemployment, the black market and the bazaar are the only form of economic activity open to millions of Uzbeks) and of a trial of 23 small entrepreneurs accused of having links with Islamism. The population hit the streets to demand ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’, accompanied by opposition political groups, which include certain Islamist groups.
[2] [46] While the US administration supports Karimov for now, it can’t be ruled out that it may try to extricate itself from this Stalinist embarrassment, especially if it is able to create a viable political opposition. This would be more in conformity with its stated aims of bringing justice and freedom to the region.
In WR 284 we said that the election campaign had been “filled with attacks on Tony Blair for his dishonesty in taking Britain to war in Iraq, for leaning on the Attorney General to give legal advice in favour of launching the invasion. This has undoubtedly been a message to the PM that an election victory should not be seen as a reason to stay in office personally. It has absolutely nothing to do with any real criticisms of Britain’s role as an imperialist power. Michael Howard remains clear that he agreed with the war and the Lib Dems supported ‘our troops’ as soon as hostilities began.
"Imperialist states do not go to war because they have dishonest leaders, neither was the Iraq war the only war based on a lie. On the contrary, all imperialist wars are fought under lying pretexts, including the century’s ‘good war’, World War Two, which Britain did not enter to save democratic freedoms or Hitler’s victims, but to save the Empire….”
Although Blair has undoubtedly been caught telling outright lies to support the decision to go to war in Iraq, the biggest lies have come from the side of his critics. The ‘anti-war’ campaign is responsible for the key ideological attack on the consciousness of the working class. By putting the blame on Blair ‘personally’ it obscures the fact that the attack on Iraq was launched by an imperialist British state. Even Blair’s responsibility is masked by the constant repetition of the ‘poodle’ insult. Blair is to blame, but suffers from ‘diminished responsibility’ because he is just a ‘poodle’ to Bush. The war was often referred to simply as ‘Bush’s war’. You are supposed to believe that the British state did not really make a decision to attack Iraq at all. It just happened that the British state was led by a ‘poodle’ who couldn’t stop himself from following the US.
This all fits in very well with the anti-Americanism that provides the glue for this very thin tissue of lies. America is designated as the only real imperialist power in the war. However, this is just the usual moan from the British bourgeoisie that it no longer has the power it did in the nineteenth century – and anti-Americanism in France and Germany has the same nostalgia for past glories. Even Churchill, who understood the key role that the US had to play in the Second World War, and struggled consistently to get the US to commit to the war, understood very well the ultimate consequence: US intervention would underline the permanent diminution of British power and the ascendancy of the US, something that greatly depressed him.
Because of the decline of Britain’s global position the British bourgeoisie pretends that it no longer has any imperialist interests. The frequently expressed interest in Africa, for instance, is supposed to be seen as concern for the welfare of the inhabitants of that continent, and should not at all be construed as being in any way similar to the rapacious interest they showed in the nineteenth century, when Africa was carved up between it and other European powers. Likewise, the British ruling class tries to give the impression that it would never dream of attacking a country like Iraq simply to bolster its strategic position in the Gulf – an area where it’s maintained a presence for two centuries. Obviously such thoughts would not enter the minds of people running the modern democratic British state!
Towards the end of the Second World War President Roosevelt had a somewhat more penetrating view of the attitude of the British bourgeoisie:
“‘The British would take land anywhere in the world, even if it were a rock or a sandbar’, Roosevelt observed caustically to his secretary of state.” (Max Hastings, Armageddon, the battle for Germany 1944-45)
Because Blair could only come up with paper-thin pretexts to engage in this war, it was the responsibility of the ‘stop the war’ campaign to cover up its imperialist nature. This is so, regardless of the fact that much of the opposition did represent a real tension within the bourgeoisie about moving so close to the US and supporting its determination to go into Iraq despite the violent opposition from France and Germany.
The bourgeoisie never goes to war without an ideological cover. The so-called ‘anti-war’ campaigns are, at the ideological level, the most dangerous expression of capitalism’s dynamic towards war, because they give the impression that each war can somehow be dealt with in its own terms, that it’s the result of a specific policy or a particular government. They obscure the fact that imperialist war is a fundamental part of the fabric of capitalist society in decadence. In fact, the ‘anti-war’ campaigns are themselves a direct and quite fundamental expression of the tendency towards war. They provide a cover for the present war, and prepare for the next.
‘But surely you’re not saying that the millions who demonstrated against the Iraq war are agents of capitalism?’ our critics often cry. Indeed not. On the contrary, it’s precisely because those millions are potentially enemies of capitalism that the ruling class needs to corral them into these pacifist parades, needs to provide false answers to their real questions.
Hardin, 4/6/05.
World Revolution 283 carried an article from WR’s 16th Congress entitled 'Britain can’t escape the world economic crisis [47]'. It explained the reasons for the relative ‘health’ of the British economy compared to its traditional European rivals. The main reason it identified is the increase in the level of exploitation of the working class in Britain over the last 20 to 30 years due to a general increase in the length of the working day (taking place alongside an increase in unemployment and part-time working), which gives British capital an increase in the absolute surplus value extracted from the working class. While this tendency exists in every country, it is in Britain that the bourgeoisie has used it to the utmost in order to drive home a short-term advantage against its economic rivals: refusing to accept any EU limitations on the length of the working day.
The following article, written by a close sympathiser, looks at the question of the extension of the working day, firstly in the context of the development of ascendant capitalism and the struggle to reduce the working day; secondly in the context of the decadence of capitalism and its inability to further reduce the working day, and thirdly in the context of the tendency for the working day to increase in recent decades.
For Marx, the question of the working day lies at the very heart of capitalism: “The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus value. It forms the general groundwork of the capitalist system.” (Capital, Chapter XVI, ‘Absolute and relative surplus-value’).
Getting more out of a working day of fixed hours or extending those hours by any trickery has always been a goal of capitalism. Going back to its roots, capitalism demands an increase in the working day in order to increase exploitation and the extraction of absolute surplus value. Any increase in the working day leaves cost of labour power (i.e. the monetary equivalent necessary for the worker to exist in the general manner to which he has become accustomed) the same, but worsens the condition of the worker by increasing the pressure upon him or her. As Marx noted, not only is the general tendency of capitalism to increase the working day and wear out its wage slaves, but it is also to reduce the cost of labour power (the amount necessary for the maintenance and regeneration of the worker and the workers’ family). In Capital, Marx often refers to capitalism as a “blood-sucking vampire”, a “gnawing worm”, and capitalism’s “blood lust”, (consuming) “the worker as the ferment of their own vital processes”. For Marx it was never, and, contrary to what the leftists claim today, it will never be a question of the nastiness of individual (or state organised) capitalists. The anarchy of capitalism, its devouring and destruction of labour power in its quest for profits doesn’t “depend on the good will or evil will of the individual capitalists … the immanent laws of capitalist production hold sway irresistibly over every individual capitalist” (ibid.).
By lengthening the working day, by increasing the period of production, capitalism ever more deteriorates and shortens the life of workers as a whole. Here, on the basis of Marx’s own analysis, is one of the major contradictions that expose capitalism as an essentially short term and self-destructive system. There is no other conclusion to be drawn.
During capitalism’s ascendancy in the 19th century, as the working class found its feet, the tendency of capitalism to make the working day as long as possible clashed with the tendency of the proletariat to limit the working day to the minimum. “When two rights come into conflict, force decides the issue”, said Marx in Capital. This is the class struggle in its “aggregate”. With enormous sacrifices the class struggle, a “protracted civil war, more or less veiled, between the capitalist class and the working class” (chapter on ‘The working day’), wrested real reforms from the hellish conditions of capitalism in its ascendant phase. Despite enormous resistance from the bosses, the average working day fell, the worst conditions of children’s and women’s labour were attenuated and legislation was enacted and (more or less) enforced in order to improve the general conditions of the working class. But a historical materialist analysis must insist that even these reforms couldn’t have been made unless capitalism was in a position to grant them – otherwise revolution would have immediately been on the agenda. These reforms spurred the most powerful and far-sighted elements of the bourgeoisie to increase the development of machinery and the productivity of labour. Thus a reduction in the working day, amelioration in the condition of the working class, led to a further increase in exploitation and surplus value, leading capitalism to expand afresh.
During the latter part of the 19th century, capitalism more and more filled the limits of the world market. With a lack of solvent outlets available its cyclical crises became increasingly violent. Unable to create sufficient internal markets and having spread to all regions of the planet, capitalism, again demonstrating its essential destructiveness, could only turn in on itself and seize the markets of other nations, whatever the cost. Like slavery and feudalism before it, capitalism could only go into irreversible decline and this event was marked in the bloodiest way possible by the First World War. And, contrary to those who saw this as a one-off (“the war to end all wars”), it was followed by deeper crises and then by a second world war. Wars, crises, famines and disaster have continued ever since. Compared to the tribute in blood and suffering that the working class has paid during this period of decay, the acquisition of a few weeks paid holiday and the temporary decrease in the working day during part of the 20th century count for nothing. On the contrary, the threat to the very existence of the working class, and of all humanity, is far greater today than it ever was in the 19th century.
With the decadence of capitalism came not only the development of permanent, sharpened competition between all nations – imperialism, but also the same permanent sharpening of the class struggle - the revolutionary perspective.
Along with the massacres of millions of the proletariat – mostly its youth – the two world wars saw the militarisation of labour in all the capitalist metropoles, including increases in the working day, the extension of night work and child labour. Outside of periods of open, generalised warfare came increased exploitation, productivity drives and increased overtime enforced by the trade unions, now transformed from workers’ organisations into capitalism’s shop-floor cops promoting the ‘national interest’. The anarchy and irrationality of capitalism means that in its decadent phase, as productivity and the intensity of work increases, it also becomes necessary to increase the length of the working day in order to extract even more profit.
This has particularly been the case during the last two or three decades, which have seen the slow but inexorable deepening of the economic crisis following the end of the post-war reconstruction period. In recent years – which we are ceaselessly told have seen a vast increase in prosperity and even the end of class divisions – the extraction of absolute surplus value at the expense of the working class has in reality reached levels undreamed of by the capitalism of the 19th century. In Britain, a country at the forefront of extending the working day, 1.7 million women (13.7% of women workers) and 2.6 million men (18%) work some sort of shift pattern (Office of National Statistics). If you add up the unpaid time for shift handovers and the general rule that meal breaks are taken within shifts and toilet breaks supervised, the millions of hours daily robbed from workers, over and above the profit already extracted, can be seen. In Australia there are over a million workers on shifts, half on rotating shifts, and this is increasing rapidly. Studies show 50,000 workers with sleep disorders and the appearance and growth of heart disease in young shift workers under 20. The same study shows that the unions have agreed to and implemented 79% of new shift patterns. Between 1985 and 1997 shiftworking rose 30% in the USA to include some 15 to 20 million workers with over 50% suffering sleep disorders (US Department of Labor).(1)
All the injurious and deleterious sicknesses detailed by Marx in Capital from the hellholes and sweat-shops of the mid-19th century are increasing and becoming much more extensive today: heart disease, high blood pressure, back pain, stomach problems, psychological and sleep disorder, stress related illnesses. On current estimates a shift worker has 75% of the life span of an ‘average’ worker.
Britain has led the way in cutting public transport and health care, affecting travelling time and family obligations, thus making the working day even longer. Under the guise of privatisation there have been centralised, state-organised attacks in the gas, electricity and water industries, innovating such measures as the electronic ‘tracking’ of mobile workers (being taken up by local authorities) as well as clocking on and receiving daily work through mini-computers as soon as the worker leaves home. Such shackles, undreamed of by the most caricatured mill-owner of the 19th century, are the real stuff of the ‘technological revolution’.
Again Britain is at the forefront of informal unpaid overtime, formal contractual overtime, annualised hours – where you’re sent home when there’s not enough work and called in by pagers or mobile phone when the work is there. Workers on the end of a electronic rope, yanked back into work at the whim of the boss, take us right back to the attempts to get around the restrictive factory legislation of the 19th century, but with the difference that today such efforts are legal, more efficient and are backed by the unions. Similarly “stand-by” is on the increase. Here, again electronically, and for a pittance of usually a couple of pounds a day, the worker, after a day’s work, is on call for 24 hours for days at a time. Technology is neutral and depends upon the social system. But in capitalism’s hands, what chains are forged – invisible but so much more effective and backed by the trade unions. At the same time traditional overtime payments of time and a half and double time are becoming things of the past throughout industry, being reduced to fractions like time and a sixth (Post Office, retailing) when they are not disappearing altogether in union-imposed ‘flexibility’ and ‘annualised hours’ agreements. All these tendencies are growing, even while they exist alongside unemployment, part-time working and long-term sickness, and they drive on the increases in the working day – a tendency which the British bourgeoisie, whatever the government, has pushed forward over the last decades.
In Capital, Marx showed, amongst other things, the horrors of capitalist production. But whereas in the period of the ascent of the system these horrors could be somewhat attenuated, both under the impetus of the class struggle and the system’s ability to grant reforms, such a situation does not exist today and will never exist in the future under capitalism. We are now in a dramatic, downward decline where, even if it wanted to, capitalism cannot deliver any reforms but, on the contrary, can only attack the working class more and more head on. Marx’s Capital was a call to arms, a critique of the inherent anarchy and contradictions of capitalist production as well as its inherently transient nature. Taking this critique as a whole, it is obvious that any reforms for the working class, any reduction in the working day for example, can only henceforth come about after the seizure of power by the proletariat and as steps towards a fully communist society.
Ed. 23/4/05.
(1) All these figures were collated before the take-off of 24 hour manned call centres in the banking, insurance and other industries. Therefore, millions more can be added.
First in France, and then the Netherlands, the vote against the European constitution was presented as a popular movement against politicians and bureaucrats. A typical left wing claim was that “Above all this is a victory for workers, employees, youth, the unemployed who have rallied to the ballot box to reject this neo-liberal straitjacket”. A leading social democrat insisted that “This is a triumph for a citizens’ Europe”, while another saw “a victory against the politico-media elite”, and one Trotskyist saw a “movement of social revenge”.
The left is at the front line of those presenting the No vote as “a great victory for the working class”. That’s a lie! A pure ideological fraud! The working class has gained nothing. On the contrary, it has been trapped, drawn from its class terrain into an impasse. The bourgeoisie has used its elections to attack workers’ consciousness by fomenting illusions in democracy and the electoral circus.
Workers should remember that their worst defeats are always presented as great victories. For example, in France in 1936 the advent of the Popular Front government was presented as a ‘great victory’ for the working class - which allowed the bourgeoisie to recruit under the flag of anti-fascism and dragoon workers into the horrors and massacres of the Second World War. Or, take the example of the Stalinist counter-revolution which used the lie of ‘socialism in one country’ and the ‘socialist fatherland’ for the sacrifices, exploitation, massacres, deportation and imprisonment of the working class. Or, to take a more banal recent example from Britain, who can forget the lies about the new 1997 Labour government and how things were going to change after eighteen years of the Tories.
In the Netherlands they prided themselves on their ‘intelligent debate’, in France we were supposed to be witnessing the re-awakening of the Gallic ‘spirit of rebellion’. The referendum campaigns had only one goal: to convince the working class that the most effective way to express its discontent and make the ruling class listen, even retreat, is not through the development of the class struggle but by marking your ballot paper.
For months the French bourgeoisie succeeded in turning workers’ attention to the electoral terrain, sowing the most harmful illusions. The referendums were omnipresent in all the media. It wasn’t possible to escape the intensity of the debate, the impassioned arguments on what was supposed to be at stake. This ideological furore tried to persuade every ‘citizen’, above all every worker, that this ‘consultation’ was absolutely crucial and fundamental. Every section of the ruling class played its part in the ‘great democratic debate’, to create the maximum confusion in the minds of the working class. All the media, and many politicians were insistent on the need to ‘vote Yes or vote No – but vote!’
The principal ideological poison in the French campaign was that the rise in the No vote, caused by social discontent towards the government, had forced the bourgeoisie to put social preoccupations at the centre of its campaign. This was partly true, but the only intention of this manoeuvre was to push workers into the democratic trap when previously they’d shown a complete disinterest in the campaign. This turn showed the bourgeoisie’s attempt at channelling social discontent on to the electoral arena.
After the French referendum the bourgeoisie wanted to give the impression that it still had social concerns. This is another lie. More than ever the only future prospect that capitalism offers is the intensification of attacks on the working class. The propaganda of the ruling class tries to convince us that the reaction of ‘citizens’ can change capitalism’s direction, influence the bourgeoisie and bar the way to neo-liberalism and globalisation. In reality, government policy is not going to change by an iota.
The principal objective of the bourgeoisie towards the working class is to convince it to abandon the collective terrain of the class struggle and express itself as so many atomised citizens with no class interests - when in fact the isolation of individuals is absolutely in the interests of the ruling class. For the working class the electoral terrain is an ideological trap that creates the most harmful of illusions and holds back the development of class consciousness.
This wasn’t always the case. In the nineteenth century workers struggled and died for universal suffrage. Today it’s governments who use very means at their disposal to get the maximum number of citizens to vote.
During the ascendant period of capitalism the different factions of the bourgeoisie confronted each other in parliament – or united to defend their shared interests. In a period when the proletarian revolution was not on the agenda workers had an interest in intervening in these confrontations between bourgeois fractions, and even sometimes supporting some fractions against others in so far as it meant improvements in the system. That was how the working class in Britain got the reduction of the working day to 10 hours in 1848, or how union rights were recognised in France in 1884.
But the situation has been totally changed since the early 20th century. Capitalist society entered into its period of permanent crisis and irreversible decline. Capitalism has conquered the planet and the carving up of the world by the big powers has finished. Each imperialist power can only gain new markets at the expense of others. This is a new “epoch of wars and revolutions” as the Communist International declared in 1919, an epoch of economic collapses like the crash of 1929, two world wars and the revolutionary eruption of the proletariat in 1905 in Russia and from 1917-23 in Russia, Germany, Hungary, Italy. To face its growing difficulties capital is constantly forced to strengthen the power of its state. More and more the state tends to take over the whole of social life, above all at the economic level. This evolution of the role of the state is accompanied by a weakening of the legislative in favour of the executive. As the Second Congress of the Communist International put it “The centre of gravity of political life has now completely and definitively left parliament”.
For workers it is no longer a question of fitting in with capitalism but of overturning it, because this system is no longer capable of lasting reforms or improvements.
For the bourgeoisie parliament has become a chamber for ratifying decisions taken elsewhere.
But electoralism retains an important ideological role. The mystificatory function of parliamentary institutions already existed in the 19th century, but that was secondary to their political function. Today mystification is the only function that remains for the bourgeoisie: it wants us to think that democracy is the most precious thing, that it is the expression of the sovereignty of the people. The mystification of democracy is the best means to poison workers’ consciousness and the most dangerous and effective ideological weapon to subjugate the working class.
Attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class didn’t stop during the referendum campaigns. As with the recent general election in Britain the bourgeoisie tried to convince workers that the capitalist system can be reformed. But the attacks on the working class are the products of the permanent economic crisis and a demonstration of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system world-wide. The ruling class wants to hide this from workers. For the working class its response can not be at the level of elections and democracy but only in the development of the class struggle. It’s the only way to respond to the attacks of capitalism.
Adapted from an article in RI 358. In a future article we will look at how the current crisis over the European constitution effects the policies of the bourgeoisie at the level of economics and imperialist rivalries.
In issue 279 of World Revolution we wrote an article [49] (1) criticising the false alternatives to the crisis of capitalism posed by the activists present at the ‘Beyond the ESF’ event, which ran alongside the ‘official’ European Social Forum in October last year. This event, organised by the WOMBLES, attracted a wide range of ‘anti-capitalists’ from around the world with the promise of a “part conference, part direct action [and] part celebration of self-organised cultures of resistance”. Unfortunately, as we wrote at the time, anyone looking for discussion and clarification at this ‘carnival of the oppressed’ would have come away from the meetings disappointed. Behind all the talk about ‘new social movements’, all that was on offer was good old fashioned reformism wrapped up in new packaging.
In preparation for the demonstrations and meetings that will take place in July at the G8 summit in Scotland, we would like to return to one of the questions posed at the ‘Beyond the ESF’ event, the question of “precarity”.
Precarity is just another term for job insecurity or casual labour. Neither are new concepts for the working class, just facts of life within capitalism that generations of workers have been forced to experience. As our Spanish section wrote in response to ‘anti-globalisation’ activists there, “precariousness has always been part of workers’ existence. The existence of an important layer of the population needing work and therefore the means to procure its existence (what Marx & Engel’s called the ‘reserve army of labour’) is not only a consequence but a necessity, a pre-condition, of the capitalist economy itself” (‘Questions & answers about the casualisation of labour’, ICC website). This insecurity invades every area of workers lives making them the “class of precariousness” (ibid)
From the late 1960s onwards, following the end of the period of reconstruction after the Second World War, capitalism has been in deep crisis. Increases in job insecurity, or more accurately mass unemployment, are a product of this crisis. Incapable of masking successive waves of lay-offs or integrating new generations of workers into the productive process, the state is forced to use a variety of measures to keep labour costs to a minimum. Increasing the amount of temporary and part time workers is one way of doing this.
However, for those ‘anti-capitalists’ who were present at the ‘Beyond ESF’ events, and will certainly be present at the forthcoming G8 demonstrations, precarity is a product of something else, something new: neo-liberalism and globalisation. The WOMBLES, for example, state this very clearly: “the new economic experience is one of precarious work and work in the informal economy for large sections of our populations, and can be seen as dynamic occupational practice under neo-liberalism” (from the programme for Beyond ESF). For them, “precarity is fast emerging as the central social issue in heavily flexiblized Europe. Job precariousness and associated social anxiety are spreading all over Europe” (ibid).
This suggests that it is only certain right-wing governments in specific countries that are to blame for the problem of precarity - those nasty neo-liberals who emerged in the early 1980s and are behind ‘globalisation’ and the multinationals. But all governments, including those on the left, in all countries, “have been developing the use of such contracts under preposterous names such as ‘insertion contracts’, ‘replacement contracts’, etc. In Spain, the process of casualisation was begun by the socialist Gonzalez government with the whole series of measures that it began to impose in 1984. The leading proponent of casualisation in Spain is the public sector. ‘Left wing’ regional and town councils have carried this out on a large scale” (‘Questions & answers…’).
The reality is that job insecurity is not a ‘new economic experience’ for workers. The speed of the attacks may have increased but this just a reflection of the speeding up of capitalism’s crisis. The idea of a job for life has disappeared; capitalism is no longer able to offer a perspective for the future. Therefore the real question remains how we, the working class, can respond.
We say the working class deliberately, because it is the only revolutionary class within capitalism, the only social force capable of providing a perspective for the future. Precariousness, as we have shown, has not created a new type of worker, despite the claims that some ‘anti-capitalists’ make about the ‘changing working class’. These ideologists like to stress the difference between older, privileged workers with ‘permanent’ contracts, and those younger workers without any ‘security’ at all – the ‘precariat’. In reality, “The aim of all this ideology about the ‘new composition’ of the proletariat is to sow divisions and conflicts within the proletariat’s ranks, to the great rejoicing of the capitalists” (ibid).
Like any other attack on its living and working conditions, the working class can only struggle against the capitalists’ efforts to impose increasingly insecure job contracts by using the weapons at its disposal – the weapons of unity, self-organisation, and solidarity. In another epoch of capitalism, the trade unions could be instruments in this struggle, but this is no longer the case.
This is not, as the Precarity Network suggests, because they are hierarchical and bureaucratic organisations, still less because they only defend the interests of the ‘secure’ workers. It’s because they don’t represent the interests of the proletariat. Since capitalism became a decadent system, incapable of providing reforms, the unions have become part of the state, co-managing exploitation and sabotaging workers’ struggles from within. This also applies to those ‘rank and file trade unionists’ who argue for casual workers to be integrated into the existing unions. These are the same organisations that helped “underwrite these measures against permanent workers and helped to develop casualisation” (ibid).
But the biggest illusion spread by the ‘anti-capitalists’ around the question of precarity is the idea of setting up a “network of struggle”, which “can begin posing serious alternatives to capitalism [and work towards] creating a new world in the shell of the old” (‘What are social centres?’ available at: www.wombles.org.uk [50]). This network is supposedly being built right now, through the establishment of ‘social centres’ in various towns, usually in squatted buildings.
In our view, this idea of creating the new world in the shell of the old is just an anarchist version of the gradualist, reformist vision that once took hold of the old social democratic parties. It is one thing to find a place where you can hold political meetings, provide literature and other resources to aid the process of discussion and clarification. It is quite another to claim that the very act of squatting, or conducting experiments in communal living, constitutes a challenge to the present system. In fact capitalism is perfectly capable of recuperating such efforts – the 70s were replete with examples of local councils institutionalising similar neighbourhood initiatives. And with illusions like these, it’s not surprising that the political level of much of the discussion that takes place at these centres is extremely low. The dominant mood is usually the kind of activism that is radical in appearance but leftist in content (it’s no accident, for example, that the nationalist Zapatistas are so widely admired and emulated in these circles).
This dead-end activism was very evident on Mayday when the Precarity Network occupied a London branch of Tesco, which it targeted because “it is at the forefront of exploitative work practices on a global scale, paying new supermarket employees below minimum wage (rising to only just above minimum wage after several months), cutting Sunday pay (so Sunday becomes a normal working day), etc.” (euroMAYDAY: London Report! available from: www.wombles.org.uk [50]). We won’t ask the obvious question: why not target Sainsbury or Waitrose as well? But how does giving out ‘London for free vouchers’ to bemused shoppers accompanied by a samba band, then fighting the police, challenge precarity? Workers need to lose much more than their chain stores before exploitation will end. Stunts like this don’t build solidarity as the Precarity Network claims, but reinforce the status quo. Where was the working class in all this? Did the activists involve the low paid Tesco workers?
The working class today is faced with the urgent need to rediscover its class identity. This doesn’t mean denying the real changes that have taken place in the conditions of exploitation over the past 30 years or more; but the chorus of theories that claim to have discovered a ‘new’ subject of social transformation fixate on these changes to undermine the essentials, the things that haven’t changed and are the most important things to reaffirm: that the working class is still the exploited class in this society and still the only subject of revolutionary change.
William, 4/6/05.
(1) All the ICC articles cited in this article are available from our website: www.internationalism.org [51].
We recently learned of the death after a long illness of Mauro Stefanini, one of the oldest and most dedicated militants of Battaglia Comunista, and himself the son of an old militant of the Italian left. We are publishing here extracts from the letter of solidarity which the ICC sent to the militants of the IBRP and from the letter of thanks written in reply by a militant of the IBRP in the name of his organisation.
Comrades,
It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of comrade Mauro…his vivacity and warmth always made a great impression on the militants of our organisation who knew him personally.
But there are two other reasons why his death has had a particular effect on us.
In the first place, we feel the death of Mauro as a loss for the working class. Obviously, his personal qualities, notably his abilities as a writer and speaker, are part of this. But what is more important for us is his militant commitment and dedication, which he kept up even when his illness was getting the better of him.
In the second place, we don’t forget that Mauro was the son of Luciano, a member of the Italian Fraction for whom our comrade MC had considerable regard, for his devotion but also for his political lucidity, since he was one of the first within the Fraction to fully understand the implications of the historic period opened by the First World War for the fundamental question of the nature of the trade unions.
One of the consequences of the terrible counter-revolution which descended on the working class after the failure of the world revolution was the near-disappearance of a once very lively tradition of the workers’ movement of the past: the fact that many children of militants (like Marx’s daughters, the son of Wilhelm Liebknecht and many others) took up the torch from their parents and thus kept up the continuity of proletarian combat between the generations. Mauro was one of the rare ones to carry on this tradition and this is an extra element of our sympathy for him…
This is why, comrades of the IBRP, you can believe in the absolute sincerity of our solidarity and our communist greetings.
The ICC.
Comrades,
In the name of the IBRP, I would like to thank you for the expression of your solidarity following the very major loss of our comrade Mauro. As you say, this death is a very painful one for us. With his gifts of humanity, passion and devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Mauro was a comrade of rare quality. We could even say that his communist being was ‘written’ in his genes: not only because he came from a family which gave so much to the cause of communism, but above all because his spirit instinctively rebelled against the least manifestation of oppression and injustice. It will not be easy to fill the political void that he leaves behind and it will be impossible to fill the human void… In thanking you again, we send you our communist greetings.
The forthcoming British presidency of the G8 - and the accompanying summit in Scotland in July - has been the focus of a campaign to ‘Make Poverty History’: a coalition of ‘the great and the good’. Churches, charities, trade unions, and a galaxy of celebrities are calling for fair trade, debt-relief and improved aid. Huge parades and rock concerts are being planned, their stated aim being ‘to make the politicians care’. And the politicians are already falling over each other to show how caring they really are, with Gordon Brown leading the way by announcing increased aid for the ‘developing’ world.
The first plank of the Make Poverty History campaign is ‘unjust trade’: “the rules are rigged - loaded in favour of the wealthiest countries and their business interests. So no matter how hard people work in the developing world, or how much their countries produce, trade relationships benefit the rich world most.” Yes, trade is unjust, but there can never be ‘fair trade’ under capitalism, a system where a wealthy minority - the ruling class - own and control the means of production used to exploit the working class, who have nothing to sell but their labour power. However hard workers toil, in the ‘rich countries’ as well as the ‘poor’, the relations of wage-labourer to capitalist can only benefit the latter!
Yes, the rules of international trade are rigged in favour of the more developed countries. But why is this? Basically, because the laws of capital dictate that wealth will always concentrate around the most competitive and technically advanced poles of accumulation. And these laws function even more ruthlessly in periods of economic crisis. When the period of reconstruction after World War II closed at the end of the 1960s, capitalism was once again plunged into a deep economic crisis, with rising unemployment, stagnant growth rates and spiralling levels of debt. The largest economic powers have systematically used the international institutions (G8, IMF, World Bank) to deflect the worst effects of the crisis onto the weaker economies on the peripheries of capitalism. To expect these institutions to operate in any other way is like trying to persuade a shark to convert to vegetarianism when it’s about to bite your leg off.
What’s more, the deepening of the economic crisis works to sharpen the economic and imperialist rivalries between all nation states, and any initiative by one capitalist power to ‘re-write’ the rules of international trade is aimed at weakening the position of its rivals. This is precisely the goal of the British bourgeoisie faced with the economic and military might of the US. Finally, just a brief glimpse of the history of Africa shows how the great powers have led the destruction of the continent through endless imperialist conflicts that have done so much to contribute to the suffering of the poor.
However, while the poorest countries have suffered the worst, this does not mean that those who work and live in the ‘rich world’ are having a fine time of things! Throughout the ‘rich countries’ unemployment is rising, pensions and the social wage are under attack and extremes of poverty and wealth continue to increase. No capitalist state can overcome the inherent contradictions in the economy any more than a man can jump over his own shadow. Capitalism - a bankrupt, decadent system - is completely responsible for the levels of poverty throughout the planet and is utterly incapable of reform. Calls to re-write the trade rules do nothing more than foster the illusion that the capitalist system could function without ruthless cutthroat competition.
The second plank of the Make Poverty History campaign is the call to ‘Drop the Debt’. According to the MPH campaign, “The United Kingdom has shown welcome political leadership in unilaterally cancelling 100% of the debt owed directly to it by many of the world’s poorest countries... It must now push other countries to follow its lead, and use its influence to ensure that the debts of the poorest countries are cancelled in full.” This quote expresses very clearly how the question of debt-relief is closely tied up with the ‘use of influence’: flexing imperialist muscles to get rival nations to follow the strategic and economic interests of the power concerned. This is what Britain’s “political leadership” really boils down to – seeking new ways of gaining power and influence. With such ‘generous’ gestures, debts are often just restructured, not cancelled, and many countries have refused to accept the poisoned chalice, having seen the restructuring policies they have to implement.
The situation is even clearer when we consider the third plank of the MPH campaign: the need to “deliver more and better aid”. To begin with, the Asian Tsunami crisis demonstrated that offers of aid are more often than not empty promises – with donors failing to give the full amounts pledged. And when the money is provided, it normally comes with numerous strings attached: demands to ‘reform’ economic and political structures in ways designed to benefit the countries providing the aid. Recognising this reality, the MPH campaign demands that “Aid needs to focus better on poor people’s needs. It should no longer be conditional on recipients promising economic change… Aid should support poor countries’ and communities’ own plans and paths out of poverty.” But once again: why should the capitalist providers of aid be concerned about the needs of the poor? Their motive for providing aid is not the elimination of poverty but the defence of their economic profits and imperialist influence. This whole do-gooding ideology serves to spread the dangerous illusion that this brutal system of exploitation can ever function for different motives.
There is no doubt that many will go to the anti-G8 protests because they are genuinely angry and disillusioned about the state of the planet and the direction in which capitalism is taking it. However, far from being ‘anti-capitalist’, the role of the official campaigns is to divert any questioning away from a radical critique and reflection on the root causes of these ills. The history of the last hundred years has made it perfectly clear that the present social system is dragging mankind towards economic, ecological, and military disaster. Not only can capitalism not exist without poverty, looting the environment and war - these scourges are getting worse and worse. There is no basis whatever for hoping that those who run the system will or can change it for the better.
But this is no reason for despair. Capitalism, for all its horrors, has created the possibility of mankind uniting into a world community, of using the vast technical knowledge developed under this system to eliminate poverty and useless toil all over the planet. But:
International Communist Current, June 2005
Two years after the invasion of Iraq, after the loss of 1,300 US soldiers, there is growing insurgency in Iraq and hardly a day goes by without new reports of killings. The Iraqi dead have not been counted, but is estimated to be in the region of 100,000, mainly civilians. Elections brought no legitimacy to a government that can only survive thanks to military occupation, and have certainly brought no peace or reconstruction.
Iraq remains rich in crude oil, but production of oil shows no sign of reaching the pre-war levels of 2.5m barrels a day, let alone the peak of 3.5m in 1979. Oil production is taking second place to the fighting. Much of the country has an unstable electricity supply and large areas have regular problems with water supply. With the UN estimating $36bn needed for reconstruction by 2007, $32bn has been promised, but only $5.5bn disbursed, and much of that spent on security, not reconstruction.
Meanwhile the violence has escalated through April and May, with both the US operations near the Syrian border and the activity of dozens of ‘insurgent’ groups, sometimes fighting the US coalition, sometimes each other, and sometimes targeting civilians. If the occupation of the country is almost universally unpopular, it has certainly not united the country against it. The ‘Iraqi resistance’ is itself a factor of chaos and division. The ‘Islamic’ Sunni gangs have more and more been attacking Shiite Muslims, raising the spectre of bloody sectarian conflict.
What we see in Iraq is the clearest example of the tendency of states in the region to break up into a civil war between bourgeois factions. “The epicentre is Iraq, whose shock waves are spreading in all directions: constant terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, which are only the tip of the iceberg in a hidden struggle for power; open war between Israel and Palestine; warlordism in Afghanistan; the destabilisation of the Russian Caucasus; terrorist attacks and armed conflict in Pakistan; bomb attacks in Turkey; a critical situation in Iran and Syria” (IR 119). Far from being able to contain this destabilisation, the great powers are only exacerbating it, particularly with the new threats against Syria and Iran.
If each new conflict only causes more instability, why do they do it? Each power has to defend its imperialist interests against its rivals. The USA, the world’s only remaining superpower with massive military dominance, needs to assert itself against all potential rivals. To do so it has employed the strategy of making massive displays of force for the last 15 years, starting with the first Gulf War in 1991. But if these demonstrations of military power may initially make its rivals hesitate, they later return with renewed determination. So the first Gulf war was soon followed by Germany’s encouragement of Croatian secession from Yugoslavia, pushing forward its interest in gaining access to the Mediterranean. This set in motion a whole series of interventions by all the major powers, each defending its interests regardless of the disintegration of the region into war.
In the Middle East the USA wants complete domination of this region for two strategic reasons. Since this is a major oil-producing region, it can use it to control the supply of oil to any potential rivals in Europe or Japan. It is also part of the process of encircling Europe and Russia. These military adventures are the only way the US can defend its interests, regardless of the destabilisation, regardless of the destructive effect on Iraqi oil production, regardless of the fact that in Iraq the US “is confronted with a ‘black hole’ which not only threatens to swallow up a large proportion of its troops, but also threatens its authority and prestige” (IR 119).
Because of their military inferiority to the USA, the other great powers can often only fight a rearguard resistance, using calls for ‘international law’, ‘co-operation’ and the UN. Such was the policy of France and Germany in relation to the Iraq War, since it was not in their interests. Such is the policy of France, Germany and Britain in relation to the new threats against Iran, since they all want to defend their interests there.
For all the claims that this is a war against terror, the military offensive of the world’s greatest power, and the resistance of its rivals, can never contain the spread of chaos. On the contrary, they are the major agents in extending it across the planet. Imperialist war is not a rational choice that governments can be dissuaded from. As Rosa Luxemburg said “Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations and from which no nation can hold aloof at will” (Junius pamphlet, 1915).
Alex 4/6/05.
The dispute at the BBC that led to a strike on 23 May is an indication of the difficulties facing the working class. Ever since the plans were published in December last year they have been presented as unavoidable; and the whole argument has been presented as being about how best to preserve the supposed excellence of the BBC.
The Director of the BBC, Mark Thompson, expressed his regret for the ‘painful’ plans he had to impose but explained that they were the necessary price for maintaining the BBC’s position as “one of the greatest – perhaps the greatest – force for cultural good on the face of the earth” (quoted in The Guardian 7/12/04). The impetus for the changes comes directly from the government, which has required the BBC to prepare for a future with the greater involvement of ‘independent’ producers and technical services as a condition of the renewal of the licence fee agreement. This has led to the plans for ‘savings’ of £320m and job losses of up to 6,000, totalling 20% of the workforce (Guardian 21/3/05). For the bosses of the BBC, as for the bosses of any organisation subject to the laws of capitalism, the truth is that they have no alternative but to carry out such actions if they are to continue. In the words of Mark Thompson: “We are going through the toughest period any of us can remember. It’s a difficult and painful process but necessary. We need to free up money to start investing in our digital future, to end our current Charter in December 2006 on budget and to show we are serious about providing value for money” (ibid).
In a joint statement by Bectu, Amicus and the NUJ, published after the plans were announced, the unions began by denouncing the plans as showing “high-handed disregard for the future of thousands of staff” and as threatening “the very heart of the BBC”. They went on to promise a campaign of resistance: “The unions will resist all compulsory redundancies. Through the coming months we will stand together in workplaces to oppose the scale and extent of cuts, and work in the public arena with Licence Fee payers, politicians, and opinion formers, to make the case that the BBC offers the best value for money in British broadcasting.” However, for all the fighting talk, the statement accepts the essential need to adapt to the reality of the situation. Thus the unions will resist “all compulsory redundancies” and will oppose “the scale and extent of cuts”. This was repeated as the campaign developed. A letter in January this year appealed to the BBC governors to “allow representatives of the unions’ BBC National Joint Council the opportunity to have a significant input on behalf of staff to inform your decision-making”. A leaflet given out at the same time stated “The joint unions are committed to oppose any compulsory redundancies, we’ll be doing everything possible to persuade the management to tone down their plans” (our emphasis). A leaflet given out during the strike listed what the unions were asking for: “Proper negotiations with our management; no compulsory redundancies; talks about the future shape and scale of the BBC” and “an end to cuts for cuts sake” (our emphasis).
As with the managers of the BBC, the unions have no other options given as they accept the context in which organisations like the BBC exist, and the ideology about the nature and role of the BBC. Their role then becomes to reach some kind of deal – the ‘best’ that they can get – and to ensure the compliance of the workers that they claim to represent.
The consequence of this is that the bosses and the unions work together to manage the workers. The bosses have acted tough. The unions have voiced their opposition but mounted a campaign that has been drawn out and isolated. After the announcement of the plan in December nothing was done until January when the appeal was made to the BBC governors. Then in March a low-level protest was mounted: “As part of a campaign day on March 2 against cuts and privatisations due to be announced this month, staff across the BBC wore union-issued badges in protest at the plans. Outside many BBC buildings groups of staff gathered at lunchtime to show their support for the union campaign, and at a meeting in London senior union figures warned that many of Thompson’s plans could wreck the BBC’s ability to deliver top-quality public service broadcasting (PSB)” (Bectu website 9/3/05). At the end of May came the one-day strike, followed by negotiations at ACAS, the calling off of the next planned strike and the presentation of the management’s proposals. The unions stated that “Management has made significant concessions regarding privatisations, but has failed adequately to address concerns over job losses” (joint union press statement 27/05/05). At the time of writing the new proposals have been rejected and the possibility of further strikes has been raised.
Does this mean that workers are merely passive victims in the manoeuvres of the bosses and unions? No. The working class is always an active factor in the class struggle. It is always a threat to those who would manage capitalism for the ‘best’. The workers at the BBC have been carefully handled by the unions and the bosses who have been mindful to gauge the mood of the workers. The one day strike came well after the original announcement; there were illusions in ACAS; the unions had no recommendations on the BBC’s revised proposals. The truth is that the unions and the bosses know there is anger amongst workers. Around the world the ruling class knows this. So today, it does not risk large scale manoeuvres, as we saw in the 1990s. It is more cautious about imposing cuts, even though the situation requires it to become more bold by making deeper and repeated attacks.
The dilemma that faces the working class is that it is presented with a situation that it seems unable to affect: over the last fifteen or sixteen years cuts and attacks seem to have multiplied and resistance seems to have achieved little. This explains the patchiness of the strike at the BBC. Overall some 40% of workers took part, but this ranged from 85% in some regions and sectors of the BBC to under 10% in others. There is anger and confusion in the working class in equal measure. This will continue while workers remain isolated, while strikes remain trapped at the level of one particular organisation and seek to defend that organisation. In reality, when workers strike at the BBC they are not BBC employees but part of the international working class and they are struggling not to defend the BBC but the interests of the working class.
This is the objective reality of the working class that confronts the objective reality of capitalism and ruling class. This confrontation lies within every strike, but only becomes real when workers begin to break out of the limits imposed on them by bosses and unions alike. When workers begin to act consciously as part of the proletariat they resolve the dilemma they face. They can affect the situation, if not at the level of winning this or that particular struggle, which becomes more and more difficult as the economic crisis bites deeper, then at the more fundamental level of strengthening the proletariat. It is this strengthening, this movement from the everyday experience of the working class to its final goal of a society without exploitation, that is the real fruit of the class’ struggles and the real hope of humanity.
North, 4/6/05
2005 abounds in gruesome anniversaries. The bourgeoisie has just celebrated one of them - the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps in January 1945 - with an ostentation that outdid the 50th anniversary of the same event. This comes as no surprise. For the last sixty years, parading the monstrous crimes of the side defeated in World War II has proved the surest means of absolving the Allies from the crimes that they too committed against humanity during and after the war. It has served moreover to present democratic values as the guarantee of civilisation against barbarity.
The Second World War, like the first, was an imperialist war fought by imperialist brigands and the slaughter it generated (60 million dead), was a dramatic confirmation of the bankruptcy of capitalism. For the bourgeoisie it is of the utmost importance that the mystification that made the mobilisation of their elders possible remains in the minds of the new generations; that the illusion remains that to fight in the democratic camp against fascism was to defend human dignity and civilisation against barbarism. That is why it is not enough for the ruling class to have used the American, English, German, Russian or French working class as canon fodder: they are directing their sick propaganda specifically against the present generation of proletarians. Today the working class is not prepared to sacrifice itself for the economic and imperialist interests of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless it is still vulnerable to the mystification that it is not capitalism that produces the barbarity in the world, but that the latter is the responsibility of certain totalitarian powers that are the sworn enemies of democracy
The experience of two world wars shows us the common characteristics that explain the barbarity which is the responsibility of all the camps involved:
– The most sophisticated technology is reserved for the military, which drains society’s strength and resources, as does any form of war effort.
– An iron corset encircles the whole of society in order to bend it to the extreme demands of militarism and war production.
– The most extreme means are used to impose oneself militarily: mustard gas during the First World War, which, up until its first use, was said to be the ultimate weapon, that would never be used; the atomic bomb, the supreme weapon against Japan in 1945. Less well known but still more murderous, was the bombing of towns and civil populations during the Second World War, in order to terrorise and decimate them. Germany was the first to use this strategy when it bombed London, Coventry and Rotterdam. The technique was perfected and made systematic by Britain, whose bombers unleashed real fire balls at the heart of the towns, raising the temperature to over 1,000°C in what became a gigantic inferno. “The crimes of Germany or Russia should not make us forget that the Allies themselves were possessed of the spirit of evil and outdid Germany in some ways, specifically with terror bombing. When he decided to order the first raids on Berlin on 25th August 1940, in response to an accidental attack on London, Churchill assumed the devastating responsibility for a terrible moral regression. For almost five years, the British Prime Minister, the commanders of Bomber Command, Harris especially, attacked German towns relentlessly (…) This horror reached its zenith on 11th September 1944 at Darmstadt. In the course of a remarkably concerted attack, the entire historic centre disappeared in an ocean of flames. In 51 minutes, the town was hit by a volume of bombs greater than those dropped on London throughout the whole war. 14,000 people died. As for the industrial zone, situated on the outskirts and which represented only 0.5% of the Reich’s economic potential, it was hardly touched.” (Une guerre totale 1939-1945, stratégies, moyens, controverses by Philippe Masson) [1] [58]. The British bombardments of German towns killed nearly 1 million people.
Far from moderating the offensive against the enemy and so reducing the financial cost, the rout of Germany and Japan in 1945 had quite the opposite effect. The intensity and cruelty of the air raids was redoubled. This was because what was really at stake was no longer victory over these countries; this had already been won. The purpose was in fact to prevent parts of the German working class from rising up against capitalism in response to the suffering caused by the war, as had happened at the time of the First World War [2] [59]. So the British and American air raids were intended to annihilate those workers who had not already perished on the military fronts and to throw the proletariat into impotence and disarray.
There was another consideration as well. It had become clear to the Anglo-Americans that the future division of the world would place the main victors of World War II in opposition to one another. On one side there would be the United States (with Britain at its side, a country that had been bled dry by the war). On the other side would be the Soviet Union, which was in a position to strengthen itself considerably through the conquest and military occupation that would follow its victory over Germany. So a concern of the western Allies was to set limits to Stalin’s imperialist appetites in Europe and Asia by means of a dissuasive show of force. This was the other purpose behind the British bombardment of Germany in 1945 and it was the sole reason for using atomic weapons against Japan.
The fact that military and economic establishments were targeted less and less, as these had become secondary, demonstrates the new stakes in the bombings, as in the case of Dresden: “Up to 1943, in spite of the suffering inflicted on the population, the raids still had a military or economic justification, aimed as they were at the large ports in the north of Germany, the Ruhr complex, the main industrial centres or even the capital of the Reich. But from the autumn of 1944, this was no longer the case. With a perfectly practised technique, Bomber Command, which had 1,600 planes at its disposal and which was striking at a German defence that was increasingly weak, undertook the attack and systematic destruction of middle sized towns or even small urban centres that were of no military or economic interest. History has excused the atrocious destruction of Dresden in February 1945 under the strategic pretext that it neutralised an important rail centre, behind the Wehrmacht’s lines as it engaged the Red Army. In fact, the disruption to rail traffic did not last more that 48 hours. However there is no justification for the destruction of Ulm, Bonn, Wurtzburg, Hidelsheim; these medieval cities, these artistic marvels that were part of the patrimony of Europe, disappeared in fire storms, in which the temperature reached 1,000-2,000°C and which cause the death and dreadful suffering of tens of thousands of people” (P. Masson).
There is another characteristic shared by the two world conflicts: just as the bourgeoisie is unable to maintain control of the productive forces under capitalism, so too the destructive forces that it sets in motion during all-out war tend to escape its control. Equally, the worst impulses that have been unchained by the war take on a life and dynamic of their own, giving rise to gratuitous acts of barbarity that no longer even have anything to do with the aims of the war, however despicable the latter may be.
In the course of the war, the Nazi concentration camps became a huge machine for killing all those suspected of resistance within Germany or in the countries it had occupied or that were its vassals. The transfer of detainees to Germany became a way of using terror to impose order in zones occupied by Germany. But the increasingly hurried and radical nature of the means used to get rid of the population in the camps, the Jews in particular, shows that the need to impose terror or for forced labour was less and less a consideration. It was a flight into barbarism in which the only motive was barbarism itself. At the same time as these mass murders were taking place, the Nazi torturers and doctors carried out ‘experiments’ on the prisoners, in which sadism vied with scientific interest. These individuals would later be offered immunity and a new identity in exchange for collaborating with projects in the United States that were classed as ‘military defence secrets’. The march of Russian imperialism across Eastern Europe towards Berlin was accompanied by atrocities that betrayed the same logic:
“Columns of refugees were crushed under tanks or systematically strafed from the air. The entire population of urban centres was massacred with refined cruelty. Naked women were crucified on barn doors. Children were decapitated, had their heads beaten to pulp with sticks, or were thrown alive into pig troughs. All those in the Baltic ports who did not manage to get away or who could not be evacuated by the German navy, were simply exterminated. The number of victims can be estimated at 3 or 3.5 million (…) “This murderous madness was visited unabated on all the German minorities in Southeast Europe, in Yugoslavia, Rumania and Czechoslovakia, and on thousands of Sudeten Germans. The German population in Prague, which had been established in the city since the Middle Ages, was massacred with a degree of sadism rarely witnessed. Women were raped and then their Achilles tendon cut, condemning them to bleed to death on the ground in terrible agony. Children were machine gunned at school entrances, thrown into the road from the top floors of buildings or drowned in basins or fountains. Some were walled up alive in cellars. In all there were more than 30,000 victims… these massacres were the product of a political will, of an intention to eliminate, with the help of a stirring of the most bestial impulses ” (P. Masson).
The ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the German provinces in the East was not the responsibility of Stalin’s army alone but was done with the co-operation of the British and American armed forces. Although, even at his time, the lines for future tension were already drawn between the USSR and the United States, these countries and Britain still co-operated without reservations in the task of removing the proletarian danger, by the mass murder of the population. Moreover, they all had an interest in ensuring that the yoke of the future occupation of Germany could be exercised over a population that had been made passive by all the suffering it had gone through, and that included having to deal with the least number of refugees possible. This aim in itself incarnates barbarism but it was to become the departure point for an uncontrolled escalation of brutality at the service of mass murder.
On the Far Eastern front, American imperialism acted with the same brutality:
“To return to the summer of 1945. Sixty six of the largest towns in Japan had already been destroyed by fire following napalm bombardments. A million civilians in Tokyo were homeless and 100,000 people had died. To repeat the words of Curtis Lemay, the general of the division responsible for the firebombing, they were ‘grilled, boiled and cooked to death’. President Franklin Roosevelt’s son, who was also his confidant, said that the bombings had to continue ‘until we had destroyed about half of the civilian population of Japan’. On 18th July, the Emperor of Japan sent a telegraph to President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded Roosevelt, asking once more to make peace. His message was ignored. (…) A few days before the bombing of Hiroshima, vice admiral Arthur Radford boasted: ‘Japan will end up as a country without towns - a population of nomads’.” (‘From Hiroshima to the Twin Towers’, Le Monde Diplomatique of September 2002).
There is yet another characteristic of the bourgeoisie’s behaviour which is particularly present in war, and even more so in all-out war. Those of its crimes that it does not decide to erase from history (as the Stalinist historians had already begun to do in the 1930s), are dressed up as their opposite; as courageous, virtuous acts that enabled them to save more human lives than they destroyed.
With the Allied victory, a whole segment of the history of the Second World War has disappeared from the records: “the terror bombings have fallen into almost total oblivion, as have the massacres carried out by the Red Army or the terrible settling of scores in Eastern Europe.” (P.Masson). Of course, these acts are not included in the commemoration ceremonies for these ‘gruesome’ anniversaries. They are banished from them. There remain just a few historical testimonies, too deeply rooted to be openly eradicated, and so are given a ‘media makeover’ in order to render them inoffensive. This is the case with the bombing of Dresden in particular: “…the most beautiful terror raid of the whole war was the work of the victorious allies. An absolute record was made on 13th and 14th February 1945: 253,000 dead, refugees, civilians, prisoners of war, labour deportees. No military objective.” (Jacques de Launay, Introduction to the French 1987 edition of David Irving’s book The Destruction of Dresden.)
Nowadays it is customary for the media, when covering the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, to give the number of victims as 35,000. When the number of 250,000 is mentioned, it is promptly attributed to either Nazi or Stalinist propaganda. The latter ‘interpretation’ is not very consistent with the great concern of the East German authorities, for whom at the time, “there was no question of spreading the correct information that the town had been overrun by hundreds of thousands of refugees, fleeing from the Red Army.” (Jacques de Launay). In fact at the time that the bombardments occurred, Dresden counted about 1 million inhabitants, of which 400,000 were refugees. In view of how the town was devastated, it is hard to imagine that only 3.5% of the population perished!
The bourgeoisie’s campaign to render innocuous the horror of Dresden by minimising the number of victims is complemented by another one, aiming to present legitimate indignation at this barbaric act as an expression of neo-Nazism. All the publicity given to the demonstrations in Germany, mobilising the nostalgic degenerates of the 3rd Reich to commemorate the event, can only serve to discourage any criticism casting doubt upon the Allies, for fear of being taken for a Nazi.
Unlike the British bombardment of Germany, where great pains are taken to hide its enormity, the use of the atomic weapon for the first and only time in history, by the world’s most powerful democracy, has never been hidden or minimised. On the contrary, everything possible has been done to publicise it and to make clear the destructive power of this new weapon. Every provision had been taken to do this even before the bombing of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. “Four cities were marked out [to be bombed]: Hiroshima (major port, industrial city and military base), Kokura (main arsenal), Nigata (port, steelworks and oil refinery) and Kyoto (industries) (…) From that moment on, none of the cities mentioned above were touched by bombs. They had to be damaged as little as possible in order to put the destructive power of the atomic bomb beyond discussion.” (Article ‘The bomb dropped over Hiroshima’ on https://www.momes.net/dictionnaire/h/hiroshima.html [60]). As for the dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki, it expressed the intention of the United States to show that it could use nuclear weapons whenever necessary (which was not true in fact, because the other bombs that they were building were not yet ready.)
According to the ideological justification for this massacre of the Japanese population, it was the only way to ensure the capitulation of Japan and save the life of a million American soldiers. This is a gross lie which is still propagated today: Japan had been bled dry and the United States (having intercepted and decoded the communiqués of the Japanese diplomatic corps and headquarters) knew that they were ready to capitulate.
The most important lesson to draw from the six years of bloodshed of the second world slaughter is that the two camps that fought it out, and the countries that followed them, were all the rightful creation of the vile beast that is decadent capitalism, no matter what ideology they used; Stalinist, democratic or Nazi. The only denunciation of barbarism that can serve the interests of humanity is that which goes to the root of this barbarity and uses it as a lever for the denunciation of capitalism as a whole. And which does so with a view to overthrowing it, before it buries the whole of humanity under a heap of ruins. LC-S (16/4/5)
[1] [61] Philippe Masson is head of the history section of the French marines’ history service and teaches at the naval war senior school.
[2] [62] From the end of 1943 workers’ strikes broke out in Germany and the number of desertions from the German army tended to increase. In Italy, at the end of 1942 and especially in 1943, a large number of strikes broke out in the main industrial centres in the north.
Almost immediately after the general election Gordon Brown spoke at the Amicus union’s annual conference and made it clear that the Labour government would carry on in the way it had already established. He insisted on “wage discipline” and was blunt about the Labour government’s opposition to any attempt to impose limitations on the length of the working week. Don’t expect wages to go up, don’t think you’re going to work fewer hours and, with David Blunkett put in charge of pensions, expect the prospects of retirement to look even worse than they do already.
Although, in the words of the Financial Times (3 May), “All the main parties support the policy framework … of the past decade”, the Labour Party has a proven record of excellent service to the ruling class over the last eight years. It was supported by not only the Daily Mirror and the Guardian, but also the Economist, Financial Times and Sun.
Having imposed a range of attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class, having strengthened many aspects of British state capitalism, having brought in a series of repressive measures in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’, and having defended the interests of British imperialism on the world stage, the Labour government is currently the chosen team of British capitalism.
The measures announced in the Queen’s Speech show that Labour is not going to let up. An Incapacity Benefit Bill will attack 2.7m claimants, there will be reductions in certain other social benefits. Apart from the introduction of ID cards, repressive legislation will include a Counter Terrorism Bill, adding further offences not included in the last Prevention of Terrorism Act. Asylum and immigration will not escape from Labour’s offensive.
During the election it was clear that Labour wasn’t going to save Rover. In the week immediately after the election, as statistics showed a further slump in manufacturing output to levels lower than when Labour came to power in 1997, and that personal debt and bankruptcies are soaring further out of control, it was clear that the working class will continue to pay for the further deterioration in the capitalist economy.
Yet, while British capitalism has its chosen governmental team in place, Tony Blair is now seen as a liability. The Daily Mail said that he’d been given a “bloody nose” and Socialist Worker (21 May) headlined “A bitter blow for Blairism”.
Cast your mind back to the election campaign and you might recall the emphasis on the question of Iraq, the leaking of previously secret information (presumably from the state’s security services), and the revival of issues that Blair thought he had ‘drawn a line under’. Iraq is important to the ruling class because Blair’s past actions over intelligence sources, ‘weapons of mass destruction’, 45 minute warnings etc mean that it will be more difficult when it comes to selling any future military adventures. The bourgeoisie don’t want to get rid of a Labour government that has in most things proved thoroughly reliable, but Blair now has a reputation for being untrustworthy (and a tendency to get too close to the US) which British capitalism doesn’t need.
Gordon Brown would be an ideal replacement for Blair as he represents continuity in economic policy, his ‘Old Labour’ image would help in the imposition of attacks on the working class, and he is not tarnished with the same brush as Blair on imperialist policy.
With so much continuing concern about Iraq and previous military interventions by Labour against Afghanistan and Serbia, the recent elections showed how capitalist democracy is able to absorb hostility to war. A million more voters turned to the Liberal Democrats. George Galloway was elected when he stood against a pro-Blair Labour MP. Democracy means that people can protest without for a moment challenging the capitalist system that gives rise to imperialist war.
Much media discussion after the election focussed on the Labour government getting the support of only just over a fifth of the electorate. Once again voices are heard calling for a ‘fairer’ voting system, some sort of ‘proportional representation’. As the Financial Times and other commentators remarked, there was no basic difference between the main parties, so a re-allocation of parliamentary seats would make no difference in the policies pursued by a more ‘representative’ government. More fundamentally, all the main parties participating in capitalism’s elections only have policies for the capitalist state to adopt, and are an integral part of capitalism’s political apparatus. And those groups that use elections as a means for protest are equally a part of capitalism’s political circus, sowing illusions in the possibilities of democratic change.
The British ruling class is very attached to its current electoral arrangements which it has been able to rely on to produce a stable two-party system. The BNP, UKIP, Respect and other small parties all have their function for capitalism, but their intervention in the electoral arena, especially if enhanced by PR, would tend to undermine the established system. Campaigns for a ‘fairer’ democracy will no doubt continue, but the traditional view of the British bourgeoisie is that a situation with more parties is less easy to control. Workers observing any debate over electoral reform must remember that it is between its class enemies and is solely concerned with how best to use democracy in the service of a capitalist dictatorship.
The ruling class has the team it wants in government. The state of the economy will determine what measures it takes against the working class. Democracy is just one of the weapons that capitalism has at its disposal.
Car, 31/5/05.
The worst line peddled by the likes of Geldof and Bono is that “those eight men have the power to do some real good for the world”. They say that the world leaders meeting at the G8 summit could do something to alleviate the terrible poverty stalking the planet. That they could halt the destruction of the global environment. That all we have to do is to join the parade and shout loudly, or dance to the music of Live8. That enough pressure, applied gently and democratically, will make the leaders stop in their tracks and pay attention to the needs of the oppressed.
Nothing but illusions – and illusions that prevent real thought and real action.
What are the world leaders? They are statesmen. Men of the state – the capitalist state. And the capitalist state is there to preserve the interests of capital. Capital is wealth extorted from the labour of the many by the few. Capital is wealth that grows fat on the toil and poverty of those who produce it – not to mention the millions whom capital cannot manage to exploit at all, but condemns to permanent unemployment and hunger. This has always been the case. It’s not a question of the good or bad intentions of the leaders. It’s a question of what they have to do to preserve their system of exploitation and profit. And this is more true than ever now that capitalism, as a social system, no longer helps the human race to develop its productive powers, now that it has become a barrier to the needs of humanity. Capital has become a force for destruction. Desperate to survive in the face of razor-sharp competition, it despoils every last corner of the earth. Desperate for markets and strategic influence, it engulfs the whole of society in endless war.
The world leaders are the captains of a ship that is heading inexorably towards icebergs. They cannot change direction because their interests as a class, the interests of the profit system, make it impossible for them to see any other way forward for social life. The needs of human survival cannot be entrusted to them. The hopes of humanity do not lie in begging them to change; the hopes of humanity reside in mutiny and revolt, in the overthrow of the leaders and the system they defend.
But what kind of revolt? There are many who understand that the problem is not what the G8 decides, but in the very existence of the G8. There are many who urge us not to put our faith in the world leaders, and who see the G8 summit mainly as an opportunity to protest against the present social order. The Dissent Network, for example, says that “we live in confusing times: millionaire pop stars shake hands with politicians and tell us that what the poor need is for more power to be given to the G8, that this will make poverty history. Yet, around the world, those excluded from power are increasingly reaching the conclusion that the lives of ordinary people, wherever they are, are unlikely to be improved by the policies of the G8. And, moreover, that the task of building alternatives to the current inhumane and ecocidal social order lies squarely with us” (featured in The Guardian, 29.6.05).
Quite so! But then the problem lies in what you put forward as your alternative. For the Dissent Network, the current Bolivian uprising provides the model, or the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico. Or self-managed factories like Zanon in Argentina. These are put forward as a new kind of movement, a new opposition to capitalism, “in which power is dispersed in diffuse networks, where difference is celebrated rather than sublimated, and where there are no official leaders of spokespeople”.
But opposing capital is not just a question of forms: you have to strike at its roots. And these are all examples of movements that have either been turned aside from a real opposition to capital, or began on the wrong ground from the start. In Bolivia, militant miners are no longer struggling for their interests as workers as they have done so often in the past – they are being drowned in a “popular” movement focused on the patriotic goal of controlling Bolivia’s energy reserves. In Mexico, rebellious peasants and landless labourers have been pulled behind the nationalist outlook of the Zapatistas. In Argentina, striking workers have fallen for the old fraud that managing their own exploitation is the way forward when enterprises fail.
Not everything that moves is radical. It is perfectly possible for an incipient revolt against this system to be taken over by a falsely radical alternative that stays entirely within the framework of capital: the framework of wage labour (even if ‘managed’ by the workers), the framework of commodity production (even if small trade is preferred to big trade), the framework of the nation state (even if small and weaker nations are defended against the more powerful ones).
There is only one movement that can lead to a real confrontation with capitalism, even if it begins from what may seem like unimpressive premises like defending jobs, wages and working conditions: the movement of the working class. It is the only movement which can unite all the exploited behind their common interests. It is the only movement that leads logically to a rejection of the needs of the national economy, to affirming the need for international class solidarity against national competition and war; it is the only movement that can ascribe on its banners the collective seizure of the world’s resources, the abolition of the wages system and the ending of any need to trade.
However much it has changed its appearance since Karl Marx first used the phrase, capitalism everywhere produces its own gravediggers, the proletariat, the exploited class in this society. Capitalism can no more exist without a working class than it can exist without money or profit or unfair trade.
Marx also said that the existence of revolutionary ideas depends on the existence of a revolutionary class. The propaganda of the ruling class tells us day in and day out that there is no such thing in this society, and it’s certainly not the working class. But the fact that so many people are questioning the bases of capitalist society is itself a sign that, after more than a decade of disarray and confusion, the working class is beginning to move again. The struggles against pension ‘reform’ in France in 2003, the solidarity strikes of the German workers in 2004, these are some of the outward expressions of this deep stirring in the underground of present day society.
Those who really want to ask questions about the future this society is shaping, those who want to rediscover the real alternative, can only head in one direction. They can only join the struggle of the working class and help it to carry out its historic mission - the replacement of capitalism with a world communist society. WR 2/7/5
In the run up to the summit in Edinburgh, the finance ministers of the G8 announced a deal to end the debt burden of some of the poorest countries in Africa and elsewhere. For Chancellor Gordon Brown it was “a significant step forward”; for Bob Geldof, the moving figure behind the ‘Live8’ concerts and demonstration, it was a “victory for millions” because “Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny from the burden of debt that has crippled them and their countries for so long.” (Observer, 12/6/05). According to the statement put out by the G8 Finance ministers, the deal will give 100% debt relief to 18 countries, including Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zambia. This has been hailed by all the great and the good as a sign of what can be achieved. It is however, a lie.
The deal covers the major lending organisations but not some of the smaller ones. Countries like Ghana owe money to 9 multilateral organisations, while Latin American and Caribbean countries owe money to many organisations not party to the deal. It is claimed the deal will cancel $40bn worth of debt. In fact, since it will be delivered over 40 years, its actual value is $17bn. It also excludes a large number of poor and highly indebted countries and covers just 10% of the debts of the 62 countries judged to be most in need of debt relief (Devilish Details: Implications of the G8 Debt Deal, published by the European Network on Debt and Development). Furthermore, the amount of debt forgiven will be taken away from future aid for that country. While the money will still be given as aid, it will be redistributed amongst all eligible recipients. Thus, if a country pays $100m a year to service its debt, it will have its future aid cut by $100m and may get very little back once it has been redistributed.
Falsification, exaggeration and empty promises are the reality of international ‘aid’. The statement by the G8 Finance Ministers lauds their efforts to reduce debt, increase aid and make trade fairer in recent years. The reality is quite the opposite.
Levels of debt have increased. Between 1969 and 1976 the debt owed by non oil-producing developing countries tripled from $54.6bn to $172bn. Africa’s total external debt stands now at $300bn, which itself is only 12% of the debt owed by all ‘developing’ countries, giving a total of $2,500bn.Today, the most indebted countries pay $10bn a year to service their debts and nothing that is done changes the conditions in which debts are accumulated. Indeed, rich or poor, north or south, the level of debt is growing as a result of efforts to combat the crisis of capitalism as a whole.
The G8 Finance Ministers hailed the increases in the aid they give. However, the recent increases come after a sustained fall: “Aid levels continue to recover from the falls during 1992-97 and the trough that continued until 2001.” (OECD) and are half the level, as a proportion of income, that they were in the 1960s. In 2004 Britain gave 0.36% of GNI (Gross National Income) in aid; in 1962 it stood at 0.52% and is still less than in 1977 when it stood at 0.38%. In 1970 the richest countries agreed to meet the international target of 0.7% of GNI by 1980. To date only 5 have done this. The aid given by America, although the largest quantity, is just 0.16% of GNI, placing it second to bottom of the OECD countries.
As regards ‘fair’ trade, the reality is that the great powers have always fixed the rules of the game in their interests. In the 19th century Britain imposed its doctrine of ‘free’ trade through the barrel of a gun. The disputes currently taken to the World Trade Organisation show that nothing has changed, other than that the bourgeoisie has learnt that it is better to control such disputes rather than allow them to grow unchecked and risk a trade war.
Aid, debt relief and ‘fair’ trade have nothing to do with relieving human suffering. They are merely tools used to defend national economic and imperialist interests.
This is very clear with aid: “The war on terrorism has also boosted aid flows. Between 2001 and 2003, net aid to Afghanistan from all sources rose from USD [United States Dollars] 0.4 billion to USD 1.5bn and aid to Iraq rose from USD 0.1bn to USD 2.3bn” (OECD, ‘Final ODA Data for 2003’, from OECD website). The US is not alone in this; in the 1950s and 60s when Britain gave a larger proportion of aid, the bulk of it went to its former colonies. Britain’s current efforts are an attempt to compensate for its loss of influence in the years after 1989. By playing the moral leader and making vague promises about ending poverty, it hopes to steal a march over its more obviously self-interested rivals.
The same is true with debt, where the relief for Africa is dwarfed by the $30bn relief granted to Iraq in 2004: “This was more in one day than has been delivered to the whole of the African Continent over the last 10 years” (Devilish Details: Implications of the G8 Debt Deal). This gives the lie to all the hand-wringing about how the great powers would like to help but it is so difficult… When it is in their interests the capitalist powers have very deep pockets; when it is merely human lives at stake, as after the Tsunami, all they can find are empty promises and IOUs.
Further, when aid is given or debt reduced it always has strings attached or, in the jargon, ‘conditionalities’. These are presented as promoting freedom and democracy but are actually a means of exercising control over the recipients that is more effective than the use of gunboats. One recent study found an average of 10 conditionalities imposed on countries receiving funding under one IMF scheme (PRGF Matrix User Guide and Analysis, European Network on Debt and Development, 2004). These covered areas such as inflation targets, privatisation, economic liberalisation and tax policy. For the anti-globalisation movement and Make Poverty History, these express the domination of ‘neo-liberalism’ over alternative models and national autonomy. In reality they express the domination of the economically strong over the economically weak; a reality that has existed for as long as capitalism.
However, such conditionalities are also an expression of a second motive the great powers have for giving aid: to limit the financial and social chaos spreading around the planet. The economic crises that have gripped parts of Asia and Latin America have brought forth substantial aid in an effort to limit the damage to the world economy. The rioting in Argentina in 2001 gave an indication of the social dislocation that can result. But it is in Africa that this has gone the furthest. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been despoiled by war and barbarism in recent years, with local militias and neighbouring armies participating while the great powers pulled the strings. The human consequences in areas such as Kigali have been appalling, with many accounts of torture, rape and mutilation. However, what concerned the great powers was the possibility of such instability spreading, prompting limited UN military intervention and a growing financial intervention. Between 2001 and 2003 the DRC accounted for most of the $4.3bn increase in debt forgiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also shared an increase of $1.6bn in emergency aid with countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Angola.
In late June the BBC showed a drama called the ‘Girl in the Café’. In this fantasy a young woman got into the G8 summit and with her youthful eloquence won over the conscience of the British Prime Minister who proposed to end world poverty there and then. The idea that aid, debt relief and fair trade can end the brutality of capitalism is the same fantasy. They are not an antidote to capitalism but part of the way it functions.
North 29/06/05
For all the supposed ‘success’ of the British economy its real position is actually very fragile. As we showed in a recent article in WR (283 [47] and 284 [63], ‘Britain can’t escape the world economic crisis’), after you’ve stripped away the government falsification of statistics you’re left with a state reliant on debt, an economy increasingly incapable of funding adequate pension provision, unemployment increasing, personal debt still growing and no prospects for improvements stimulated by growth anywhere else in the world economy.
On the day of the general election there was a report from ABN Amro, one of the City’s biggest banking groups, which confirmed that “the UK economy is set for a dramatic decline” with “a chain reaction of higher unemployment and tumbling house prices, with an estimated 500,000 jobs lost from the retail, manufacturing, and construction sector by 2008”. Such a forecast is in continuity with existing trends and proposed state policies. Since Labour came to power in 1997 more than a million manufacturing jobs have gone, according to the latest official figures. And it’s not just in manufacturing, as Gordon Brown aims to cut 84,000 civil service jobs over the next three years. And don’t have any illusions that the IT sector has potential: IBM’s recent announcement that it will be cutting 13,000 jobs across Europe is just the tip of the iceberg. And don’t except the state to leap in and protect pensions: a recent survey showed the extent to which companies would just lay workers off if they were forced to pay into pensions.
There is no ‘booming Britain’, as the ruling class well knows. The £8.7 billion net public sector borrowing in May is the highest figure ever recorded. The budget deficit is one of the clearest indicators that Britain’s position is based on debt rather an underlying economic health.
One of the fundamental problems facing the British economy is that of productivity. For example, the loss of 6000 jobs at Rover was partly because cars could be produced quicker and cheaper elsewhere, but also because internationally there are 30% more car factories than the world needs (see article on Rover in WR 284 [64]).
To be more competitive on the world economy, a national capital only has limited options. Britain is opposing EU restrictions on the hours that can be worked, but longer hours produce a decline in quality. It can try to keep wages down. It’s significant that Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has said that “the 120,000 eastern Europeans who had arrived in Britain since 10 more countries joined the European Union in May 2004 had kept the lid on wages” (Guardian 14 June). It’s difficult to know whether he’s exaggerating the overall impact of workers coming from abroad, but it does show the way that the ruling class thinks.
Capitalism will try anything to get more out of workers. “Workers in warehouses across Britain are being ‘electronically tagged’ by being asked to wear small computers to cut costs and increase the efficient delivery of goods and food to supermarkets…
New US satellite- and radio-based computer technology is turning some workplaces into ‘battery farms’ and creating conditions similar to ‘prison surveillance’ according to a report from Michael Blakemore, professor of geography at Durham University.
The technology, introduced six months ago, is spreading rapidly, with up to 10,000 employees using it to supply household names such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Boots and Marks & Spencer” (Guardian 7 June).
Not only can a computer give workers orders telling them where to go and what to do, it “can also check on whether workers are taking unauthorised breaks and work out the shortest time a worker needs to complete a job”.
This is only the beginning. “Other monitoring devices are being developed in the US, including ones that can check on the productivity of secretaries by measuring the number of key strokes on their word processors; satellite technology is also being developed to monitor productivity in manufacturing jobs”.
The report claims that “Academics are worried that the system could make Britain the most surveyed society in the world” - it already has the largest number of street security cameras. What worries academics is not necessarily of any concern to our exploiters. So the future looks more and more like the world of Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984: in the pursuit of productivity no holds are barred.
It also gives a context to the remarks of Works and Pensions Minister, Margaret Hodge, when she said that there were jobs in Tesco that would meet the needs of Rover workers who had lost their jobs. Forget your skills and experience, and be prepared to be tagged as you’re moved around the store in the most productive way possible. For the capitalist state it doesn’t really matter, as long as you can be taken off the official count of unemployed.
Against the idea that there’s ‘no such thing as class’ anymore, that everyone has a ‘stake’ in society, it’s still quite clear that, in capitalist society, there’s a working class subject to a class of exploiters. The ruling class, for all its many divisions, has a view of what it wants and how it’s going to get it. It wants to fight against all the pressures on its economy, and the intensification of workers’ exploitation is one of its main weapons.
However, in contrast to the capitalist class, the working class is only beginning to struggle again in defence of its class interests. Indeed, many workers do not have any sense of being part of a class. Life is lived as an individual, as part of a family, as a worker employed in a particular industry or by a particular company. This is one of the main questions facing the working class: understanding the reality of class society, where the interests of the working class are in conflict with the interests of capitalism. Anything that divides the working class must be overcome, anything that unites workers or contributes to the development of relations of solidarity needs to be encouraged.
The ruling capitalist class is not slow to defend its interests at every opportunity. The working class needs to appreciate that the defence of its interests bring it up against its exploiters, their state and their apologists.
Car 1/7/5
The ICC participates in a number of different web forums across the world. In Spain, for example, we have been contributing to the CNT’s forums at alasbarricadas.org. We have also helped to create a new forum for the emerging internationalist milieu in Russia (see the article in International Review 118 [65] introducing the Internationalist Discussion Forum [66].
More and more these forums are a point of reference for a whole new generation of people looking for answers about the future capitalism has in store for humanity. Our participation in such forums is thus aimed at stimulating this process of discussion and providing a communist perspective on the questions it raises.
At present, the ICC in Britain has been directing most of its efforts towards two forums, urban75.net [67] and libcom.org [68]. The latter in particular is a major focus for those who identify with a ‘libertarian’ political standpoint. We have taken part in or joined up with a number of threads – on the trade unions, on council communism and anarcho-syndicalism, on whether communism is inevitable, on whether the ICC is a sect [69]…. Debate can be difficult and there is a certain amount of hostility and suspicion towards us, especially from those who are steeped in ‘official’ anarchism. Despite this, we are perfectly able to put forward our positions and in some of the threads there is a real attempt to answer what we have to say, allowing for a genuine discussion.
We certainly intend to continue taking part in these and probably other forums. Readers who want to follow our interventions and the discussions around them should search for the contributions from wld_rvn (urban75) and wld_rvn, beltov, and gustave (libcom). We also strongly encourage our readers and sympathisers to get involved in the process as well. Just click on the relevant forums and they will explain their procedures and ground rules. It would be useful if sympathisers could send us their usernames so that we can follow their threads.
In a forthcoming issue of WR we will give a fuller account of the most interesting web forum discussions we have taken part in so far.
WR 2/7/5
Live8 and its leading spokesmen have received plenty of criticism. From the Right there are charges that there’s no point in development aid as it all gets diverted by corrupt African governments. From the Left the complaint is that Geldof and Bono give legitimacy to Bush and Blair. George Monbiot (Guardian 21/6/5), for example, says of the G7’s debt-relief package “Anyone with a grasp of development politics … could see that the conditions it contains – enforced liberalisation and privatisation – are as onerous as the debts it relieves. But Geldof praised it as ‘a victory for the millions of people in the campaigns round the world’ and Bono pronounced it ‘a little piece of history’”. The actual differences are just quibbles over economic policy (see article on page 1). Both Right and Left agree that, in Monbiot’s words, “The two musicians are genuinely committed to the cause of poverty reduction”, but are naïve in what they do and say.
While Geldof actually insists on others having “mental rigour and discipline” (Times 25/6/5), his own outpourings don’t withstand much examination. In the Independent of 11 June he said that “new political leaders like Prime Minister Meles here in Ethiopia – a really smart guy – are emerging, many of who show a new commitment to the common good of their peoples”. Three days earlier the security forces of Meles Zenawi’s government had killed at least 36 people in a violent crackdown on protests, which also included the arrest of more than 3600 people.
Meles is not a new kid on the block. He was one of the figures in Blair’s Commission for Africa (like Geldof). Since the overthrow of Mengistu in 1991 he has been the central figure in the Ethiopian government, first as President and, since 1995, as Prime Minister. He’s always shown the utmost loyalty to the demands of state capitalism. In the 1970s and 80s he was a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that saw Albanian Stalinism as a model. Since coming to power Meles has undertaken classic free market reforms with the privatisation of hundreds of companies and widespread cuts in government spending, particularly in social benefits and regardless of the famines of 1992, 1997, 2000 and 2002.
One area that was not reduced was military expenditure. It’s estimated that in some recent years only 2 or 3 countries have had a higher proportion of their GDP devoted to military spending. This is partly due to the continuing tensions with Eritrea. Between May 1998 and June 2000 they fought a war along a 500-mile front, in which between 100,000 and 150,000 died. Millions of dollars intended for aid was diverted into military activity and arms procurement, even during the famine of 2000. The subsequent ‘peace’ has been very uneasy as both countries continue to reinforce their frontline positions.
The “commitment” of Meles is the same as that of Bush and Blair and the leaders of every other state in the world, to the maintenance of capitalism, using war and repression wherever necessary.
In this context Live8 and its propaganda, which claims that capitalism can abolish the suffering and impoverishment it’s created, acts as an accomplice of powers great and small. Twenty years ago Band Aid and Live Aid raised between £50m and £70m. In Ethiopia, like nearly all the other NGOs, they went along with the policies of Mengistu’s Dergue regime. This included the forced resettlement of 600,000 to South West Ethiopia where the government was in full control. This process, “the biggest deportation since the Khmer Rouge genocide”, according to the president of Médicins Sans Frontière, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 (MSF’s estimate). Geldof said that “The organisations participating in the resettlement programme should not be criticised” and that “we’ve got to give aid without worrying about population transfers” (Irish Times 4/11/85).
NGOs are not neutral in a class-divided society. Both Live8 and Live Aid have shown how they act in harmony with our rulers and their ideology.
Car 29/6/5
The referendum on the EU constition enabled the French bourgeoisie, through its left wing (the left in the Socialist Party and the extreme left) to successfully drag a large part of the working class onto the terrain of elections and democracy. It could only rejoice over this momentary victory over the proletariat. However, the bourgeoisie in France and in the leading European countries had worked very hard to get the constitution accepted. This was particularly important for the French and German bourgeoisies.
The fact that the constitution wasn’t accepted was largely the fault of the Chirac clique and of the president himself. The Gaullist faction that they represent, which came out of the Second World War, has long been a poor defender of the best interests of French capitalism. The decomposition of society has only accentuated this phenomenon, pushing each bourgeois faction more and more to defend its own interests to the detriment of the national interest. Faced with the broad rejection of the Raffarin government’s austerity policies, with the growth of popular anger and discontent, and in spite of all the efforts of the governing parties in France, supported by a host of major European politicians, the No vote won the day. This opened up an unprecedented crisis in the French political apparatus, and in the whole project of building the European Union.
Immediately after the referendum, Chirac personally put together a new government. The proletariat was told it could be well pleased. It now had two prime ministers for the price of one. Hardly had it been set up, than the new government appeared in its true light: an arena for the merciless struggle between clans and leaders on the chaotic right wing of French politics. But what was new in France was the fact that the Socialist Party had itself been swept along by the effects of decomposition. Laurent Fabius, up to now seen as a proper statesman, had, during the referendum, quite simply pushed forward his own personal interests without any other considerations, without any concern for the defence of French capital.
The Socialist Party, and notably its leadership, with the notable exception of Fabius, was the party most involved in the defence of the Yes vote. This is why it has been so shaken by the rejection of the Constitution. In purely electoral terms, yesterday’s minority around the No vote has now become the majority, while the Party leadership finds itself in precisely the opposite situation. The policy of the SP leadership (Hollande, Strauss-Khan, Lang), by trying to give a new impetus on Europe, was quite simply rejected. Fabius, having been distanced from the leadership, but legitimised as a defender of the No vote, has not lost the opportunity to make himself heard, asking via his supporters “why not a change in strategy, even a change in leadership, in the two years leading up to the Presidential election in 2007?”. As Le Monde wrote on 30 May 2005: “In the year of its anniversary, the SP is thus in crisis…. Francois Hollande weakened and discredited, Lionel Jospin retired from politics (until when?) and Laurent Fabius strengthened but not well liked in the Party”.
Strauss-Khan, announced the tone by publicly stating that “I am not sure that Fabius wants to carry on with us”. While the left wing of the SP doesn’t seem to want to throw oil on the fire, this did not prevent Socialist Senator Melanchon declaring: “The SP candidate for the 2007 presidential election cannot be a man or woman who supported the Yes vote in the referendum”. The war between leaders cannot be avoided within the party. But the crisis in the SP is not just a war of leaders; it has a much wider dimension, involving all the ideological themes and policies defended by the SP, which have been massively rejected by the electorate – not just the traditional SP voters, but the electorate as a whole.
The crisis of the French bourgeoisie is such that today no faction, right or left, really represents a credible governing team, whether on the national or international level. It is the French state, the state of the ruling class, guarantor and defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie, which now finds itself weakened. However, it would be a dangerous mistake for the working class to be lulled to sleep by the current crisis of the bourgeoisie’s political forces. The latter will have to react, especially within the SP, in order to reconstruct government unity around a credible political project. However difficult and complicated, this is an imperative for the French bourgeoisie. The capitalist class has just shown – via the united front on the left around the No vote – its ability to use its own weaknesses against the proletariat.
Courrier International, 16 June 2005, made the following comments on the current state of Europe: “The European Union is in crisis, and the coming summit of heads of state and governments will be especially delicate”. The Spanish paper ABC put it thus: “Under the dual menace of a political and economic crisis the leaders of the 25 will try to save the European Union in one of the most complex situations in recent years”. Finally, for La Libre Belgique, “the atmosphere between the European powers is destructive”. For the proletariat, it is important to understand what is alarming the bourgeois media and what is really happening on the European scene.
Contrary to what the bourgeoisie tells us, Europe is not a haven of peace or a force for peace in the world. We only have to look briefly at its history to prove this. The European Union has its roots in the period immediately after the Second World War. Europe was then being financed and politically supported by the USA to face up to the danger from the newly-formed Russian bloc. This initial European project was built on the economic level, through organs like the European Economic Community in 1957, but it was as the main prize in the global imperialist rivalry between the two blocs that the European project took on its full meaning. On two occasions France rejected Britain’s candidature to the EEC, in 1963 and 1967, because the latter was seen as the spearhead of American policy in Europe. The EU’s economic policies have allowed the European countries to develop a more effective defence of their economies in the context of sharpening global competition. But imperialist rivalries, involving all the European states and the great world powers like the US, made it impossible for Europe to be any more than an economic space, a zone of free trade, which would eventually adopt a single currency, the Euro. At the same time, the possibility of building the United States of Europe was always a myth. Capitalism can never get rid of the nation states of Europe and replace them with a kind of European Super Nation (see the article “The expansion of Europe” in IR 112).
Following the collapse of the eastern bloc, the imperialist situation changed radically. The break-up of the American bloc and the opening of the phase of decomposition resulted in a powerful tendency for each state to pursue its own interests outside any stable and lasting alliance – even the alliance between Britain and the US has not escaped this reality.
The enlargement of Europe towards the east, which has no great economic importance, expresses the greater geo-strategic stakes within the continent, as was already demonstrated by the Balkans war during the 90s. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, created in 1949 as a weapon of the American bloc against the Russian, was very significantly enlarged in 2002. The organisation went from 19 members to 26, with the entry of 7 former eastern bloc countries: after Hungary and Poland in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2002. This enlargement would seem to have no sense, given that it is strengthening an organisation which was set up to defend a bloc which no longer exists! In fact the role of NATO has evolved. It is still controlled by the US but is now a weapon of US imperialist policy in Europe against France and Germany. The entry of the former eastern bloc countries into the European Union, soon after their integration into NATO, allowed the Herald Tribune to declare; “Washington is the big winner from the enlargement of the European Union...according to a German official the entry into the EU of these fundamentally pro-American countries of central and eastern Europe signifies the end of any attempt by the EU to define itself, as well as its foreign and security policy, as being aligned against the USA”. For the same reasons the American state has tried to accelerate the process of integrating Turkey into Europe, a country which for the moment is a forward base for the US in the Middle East.
For its part, German imperialism will be obliged to respond to this US offensive towards countries which are part of its historic sphere of influence. Thus for some time Germany has been trying to come to a rapprochement with Turkey and certain central European countries. The European Constitution, defended very strongly by Germany, France and Spain, while being linked to economic concerns, was above all a means for the Franco-German couple to assert their power in this enlarged Europe.
Germany’s efforts to increase its influence in central and eastern Europe has however also irritated Paris, which is not in a position to exert a comparable influence and is destined to get weaker in comparison to its powerful ally. The failure of the Constitution is bound to increase all these tensions between the states of Europe.
For the Financial Times, “the time is one of confrontation”. The current president of the EU, M Junker of Luxemburg, declared bitterly on 18 June, following the failure of the European summit: “Europe is in a grave crisis” .The European budget has broken down. As Courrier International said on 16 June: “In the end, the UK estimated that the declaration submitted by the presidency did not provide the necessary guarantees”. Then it cited Tony Blair, who responded to the attacks by France and Germany on the question of the budget: “We must change speed to adapt to the world we’re living in…It’s a moment for renewal”.
There certainly won’t be any renewal. But what’s true and new is that the bourgeoisie in Europe is beginning to undo what it has taken so long to build – the European economic space, the European Union.
At the economic level we are seeing an irrational upsurge of national demands to the detriment of the level of cohesion attained up to now. As the Financial Times put it: “Following Germany, which no longer wants to be the EU’s milk cow, as was the case at the Berlin Summit of 1999, this time the countries which are leading the debate on the European budget are no longer the poorest ones, but the ones who pay the bills. Germany, Austria, Britain, France, Holland and Sweden are demanding a reduction of the budget which could reach up to 800 billion Euros for the period 2007-13” (cited by Courrier International, 16 June). Each of the main European powers are from now on refusing to pay what they see as being in the interest of other countries of the EU. The inability to create any political governance in Europe, under the pressure of decomposition, of every man for himself, of the economic and political antagonisms between each country, is accelerating the crisis of the EU. It is this that has brought about the crisis, not Tony Blair’s intransigence over the budget or the No vote by the French working class.
This crisis in Europe corresponds to the inability of the bourgeoisie to deal with the deepening of decomposition and the historic bankruptcy of its system. By giving way to egoistic economic demands, the European economic space has been seriously weakened, since it has been unable to adopt common rules of functioning that will enable it to face up to economic competition from America and Asia. On the economic level, all the European countries are losers to one degree or another. On the imperialist level, the crisis of the EU and the weakening of the Franco-German couple can only serve the interests of the USA and Britain. The working class must be prepared for an acceleration of the economic crisis and a sharpening of imperialist tensions. The crisis of the EU is one more expression of the growing irrationality of the capitalist system.
Tino, 28/6/05.
After the No votes in France and Holland for the new European constitution, a storm suddenly blew up over the British rebate and the spending on the CAP (the common agricultural policy of the EU). These well worn themes were rolled out by the French and British bourgeoisie to distract attention from the complete failure of the European states to convince their populations of the benefits of the European ‘project’.
The media played up to this. The Evening Standard newspaper in London even had a headline: “Now it’s war with France”. Except in the most serious of the bourgeoisie’s newspapers, this theme of confrontation between Britain and France blanked out any consideration of the significance of the demise of the constitution.
It’s certainly true that the victory of the No vote has unchained many of the inbuilt national rivalries that make the project of a truly United Europe an impossible fantasy. Both the British and the French certainly had their own conflicting agendas behind the rebate row. But the artificial stoking up of this difference also served both countries.
Since Britain has assumed the European presidency, Blair has been outlining his vision of a new dynamic Europe, with the money presently spent on the CAP being diverted to more modern sectors of the economy, to make Europe more competitive at a world level. This sounds statesmanlike, and has the advantage of still ignoring the question of the defeat of the constitution. Blair has even implied that the British rebate could be given up if the European budget is given different priorities – which is a pretty safe offer, since there is no real danger of that happening.
The Business newspaper gave a precise summation of what is actually under discussion in Blair’s new vision for Europe. They first noted that the EU budget is presently limited to one per cent of European gross national income (GNI), then observed:
“At present, agricultural subsidies make up about 40% of the EU Budget, or 0.4% of EU national income. Even if the share devoted to farmers were miraculously halved, this would only free up a pathetic 0.2% of Europe’s GNI to be spent on other, more worthwhile things; yet it is on this basis that Mr Blair believes Europe can be transformed and its people reinvigorated with European spirit. Strip away the Blairite rhetoric and you end up with a familiar empty vessel.” Hardin
The ICC held its 16th Congress in the spring. As it says in our statutes, “the International Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC”. This is why, as we always do after such meetings, we have a responsibility to the working class to give an account of it and draw out its main orientations. [1] [75]
The work of this Congress took as its central concern the revival of the working class struggle and the responsibilities this confers on our organisation, in particular as we are confronted with the development of a new generation of elements seeking a revolutionary political perspective. At the same time the Congress obviously discussed the military barbarism being unleashed by a capitalist system that faces an insurmountable economic crisis. Specific reports on the crisis and imperialist conflicts were presented, discussed and adopted by the Congress. The essential elements of these reports are contained in the resolution on the international situation, which is being published in the International Review and on our website.
As this resolution reminds us, the ICC analyses the current historical period as being the final phase of the decadence of capitalism, the phase of decomposition in which bourgeois society is rotting on its feet. As we have argued on numerous occasions, this decomposition derives from the fact that, faced with the irremediable historical collapse of the capitalist economy, none of the two antagonistic classes in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, have been able to impose their own response: world war for the first, the communist revolution for the second. These historical conditions determine the essential characteristics of the life of bourgeois society today. In particular, it’s only in the analytical framework of decomposition that we can really understand the permanence and aggravation of a whole series of calamities which are currently assailing humanity: in the first place, military barbarism, but also phenomena like the ineluctable destruction of the environment or the terrible consequences of ‘natural disasters’ like the tsunami last winter. The historical conditions linked to decomposition also weigh heavily on the proletariat as well as on its revolutionary organisations and are one of the major causes of the difficulties encountered by our class and by our organisation since the beginning of the 90s, as we have shown in previous articles (see in particular IR 62).
The 15th Congress recognised that the ICC had overcome the crisis it went through in 2001, in particular because it had understood this as a manifestation of the deleterious effects of decomposition in our own ranks. It also recognised the difficulties which the working class continued to experience in its struggles against the attacks of capital - above all, its lack of self-confidence.
However, since this Congress, held in the spring of 2003, and underlined by the plenary meeting of the ICC’s central organ in the autumn of that year, “the large-scale mobilisations of the spring of 2003 in France and Austria represent a turning point in the class struggles since 1989. They are a first significant step in the recovery of workers’ militancy after the longest period of reflux since 1968” (See IR 119 [76]).
Such a turning point was not a surprise for the ICC since its 15th Congress had already announced this perspective. The resolution on the international situation adopted by the 16th Congress made this more precise: “The struggles of 2003-2005 have the following characteristics:
- they have involved significant sectors of the working class in countries at the heart of world capitalism (as in France 2003);
- they have been preoccupied with more explicitly political questions; in particular the question of pensions raised in the struggles in France and elsewhere poses the problem of the future that capitalist society holds in store for all of us;
- they have seen the re-emergence of Germany as a focal point for workers’ struggles, for the first time since the revolutionary wave;
- the question of class solidarity has been raised in a wider and more explicit way than at any time since the struggles of the 80s, most notably in the recent movements in Germany”
The resolution also notes that the different expressions of the turning point in the balance of class forces have been accompanied by “the emergence of a new generation of elements looking for political clarity. This new generation has manifested itself both in the new influx of overtly politicised elements and in the new layers of workers entering the struggle for the first time. As evidenced in certain important demonstrations, the basis is being forged for the unity between the new generation and the ‘generation of 68’ – both the political minority which rebuilt the communist movement in the 60s and 70s and the wider strata of workers who have been through the rich experience of class struggles between 68 and 89”
The other essential preoccupation of the 16th Congress was thus to make sure our organisation is capable of living up to its responsibilities faced with the emergence of these new elements moving towards the class positions of the communist left. This was expressed in particular by the activities resolution adopted by the Congress: “The fight to win over the new generation to class positions and militantism is today at the heart of all of our activities. This applies not only to our intervention, but to our whole political reflection, our discussions and militant preoccupations”.
This work of regrouping the new militant forces necessarily involves defending them against all the efforts to destroy them or lead them into a dead-end. This can only be done if the ICC knows how to defend itself against the attacks aimed at it. The previous Congress already recognised that our organisation had been capable of repelling the pernicious attacks of the IFICC [2] [77], preventing it from attaining its declared goal – destroying the ICC or at least the greatest possible number of its sections. In October 2004 the IFICC waged a new offensive against our organisation by basing itself on the slanderous statements of a ‘Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas’ in Argentina, which presented itself as the continuator of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional, a group with whom the ICC had been developing discussions and contacts since the end of 2003. Lamentably, the IBRP made its own contribution to this shameful manoeuvre by publishing on its website, in several languages and for some months, one of the Circulo’s most hysterical and lying statements against our organisation. By reacting rapidly through documents published on our website, we repelled this assault, reducing our attackers to silence. The ‘Circulo’ was unmasked for what it was: a fiction invented by citizen B, a small-time adventurer from the southern hemisphere. This combat against the offensive of the ‘Triple Alliance’ of adventurism (B), parasitism (IFICC) and opportunism (IBRP) was also a combat for the defence of the NCI as the effort of a small nucleus of comrades to develop an understanding of the positions of the communist left in connection with the ICC [3] [78].
Faced with this work towards the searching elements, the ICC must keep up a determined intervention. But it must equally give all its attention to the depth of argumentation it puts forward in discussions and to the question of political behaviour. The emergence of new communist forces must be a real spur, stimulating the energies and capacities for reflection not only of our militants but also of elements who were affected by the reflux in the class struggle after 1989:
“The effects of contemporary historic developments (are)…. destined to repoliticise part of the generation from 1968 originally diverted and embittered by leftism. It has already begun to reactivate former militants, not only of the ICC, but of other proletarian organisations. Each of these manifestations of this fermentation represents a precious potential in the re-appropriation of class identity, the experience of struggle, and the historic perspective of the proletariat. But these different potentials cannot be realised unless they are brought together by an organisation representing the historic consciousness, the marxist method and the organisational approach which, today, only the ICC can provide. This makes the constant, long term development of the theoretical capacity, the militant understanding and the centralisation of the organisation crucial to the historical perspective”
The Congress underlined the whole importance of theoretical work in the present situation: “The organisation can neither fulfil its responsibilities towards revolutionary minorities, nor those towards the class as a whole, unless it is capable of understanding the process preparing the future party in the broader context of the general evolution of the class struggle. The capacity of the ICC to analyse the evolving balance of class forces, and to intervene in the struggles and towards the political reflection in the class, is of long-term importance for the evolution of the class struggle. But already now, in the immediate term, it is crucial in the conquering of our leading role towards the new politicised generation ... The organisation must continue this theoretical reflection, drawing a maximum of concrete lessons from its intervention, overcoming schemata from the past”.
Finally, the Congress focused on the question summed up in the concluding paragraph of our platform: “Relations between the different parts of the organisation and the ties between militants necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society and therefore cannot constitute an island of communist relations within capitalism. Nevertheless, they cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organisation of the class which is the bearer of communism”.
And such a requirement, like any other faced by a marxist organisation, demands theoretical reflection:
“Since questions of organisation and comportment are today at the heart of debates inside and outside the organisation, a central axis of our theoretical work in the coming two years will be the discussion of the different orientation texts and the contributions of the investigation commission, in particular the text on ethics. These issues bring us to the roots of the recent organisational crises, touch the very basis of our militant engagement, and are key issues of the revolution in the epoch of decomposition. They are thus destined to play a leading role in the renewal of militant conviction and in the recovery of the taste for theory and the marxist method of tackling each question with an historical and theoretical approach”.
The Congresses of the ICC are always enthusiastic moments for all the members. How could it be otherwise when militants from three continents and 13 countries, animated by the same convictions, come together to discuss all the perspectives of the historic movement of the proletariat? But the 16th Congress stimulated even more enthusiasm than most of the previous ones.
For nearly half its thirty years of existence, the ICC has worked in the context of a reflux in proletarian consciousness, an asphyxiation of its struggles and a delay in the emergence of new militant forces. For more than a decade, a central slogan for our organisation has been to ‘hold on’. This was a difficult test and a certain number of its ‘old’ militants did not pass it (in particular those who formed the IFICC and those who gave up the struggle during the crises we have been through during this period).
Today, while the perspective is becoming brighter, we can say that the ICC, as a whole, has overcome this ordeal. And it has come out of it the stronger. It has strengthened itself politically, as the readers of our press can judge (and we are receiving a growing number of letters of encouragement from them). But also a numerical strengthening, since there are already more new members than the defections that we experienced with the crisis of 2001. And what is remarkable is that a significant number of these new members are young elements who have not been through the whole deformation that results from being militants in leftist organisations. Young elements whose dynamism and enthusiasm is making up for the tired and exhausted ‘militant forces’ who have left us.
This enthusiasm present at the 16th Congress was quite lucid. It had nothing in common with the illusory euphoria which has affected other Congresses of our organisation (a euphoria which was often especially marked among those who have since left us). After 30 years of existence, the ICC has learned [4] [79], sometimes painfully, that the road that leads to the revolution is not a highway, that it is tortuous and full of traps and ambushes laid by the ruling class for its mortal enemy, the working class, in order to divert it from its historic goal. The members of our organisation know very well today that it is not an easy thing to be a militant: that it demands not only a very solid conviction, but also a great deal of selflessness, tenacity and patience.
Understanding the difficulty of our task does not discourage us. On the contrary, it helps to make us more enthusiastic.
At this time there is a clear increase in the number of people taking part in our public meetings, as well as a growing number of letters from Greece, Russia, Moldavia, Brazil, Argentina and Algeria, in which contacts directly ask how to join the organisation, propose to begin a discussion or simply ask for publications – but always with a militant perspective. All these elements allow us to hope for the development of communist positions in countries where the ICC does not yet have a section, or the creation of new sections in these countries. We salute these comrades who are moving towards communist positions and towards our organisation. We say to them: “You have made a good choice, the only one possible if you aim to integrate yourselves into the struggle for the proletarian revolution. But this is not the easiest of choices: you will not have a lot of immediate success, you need patience and tenacity and to learn not to be put off when the results you obtain don’t quite live up to your hopes. But you will not be alone: the militants of the ICC are at your sides and they are conscious of the responsibility that your approach confers on them. Their will, expressed at the 16th Congress, is to live up to these responsibilities”.
ICC, 2/7/05.
[1] [80] A more exhaustive account of the work of the Congress will be published in IR 122.
[2] [81] The so-called ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’, composed of longstanding militants of our organisation who began to behave like hysterical fanatics looking for scapegoats, as thugs and finally as informers.
[3] [82] See on this subject our article “The Nucleo Comunista Internacional, an episode in the proletariat’s striving for consciousness [83]”, IR 120
[4] [84] Or rather re-learned, since this is a lesson that communist organisations of the past were well aware of, in particular the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left from which the ICC claims descent.
If there’s something in the subject of an event that might attract people who want to talk about the class struggle, or any other aspect of communist politics, then the ICC will be interested. So when some of our militants went to a ‘Community Action Gathering’ held in East London in mid-June, we didn’t like the divisive workshops, but thought that one of the event’s aims - the promotion of “anti-authoritarian, anti-state, anti-capitalist and pro-working class politics, and collective, non-hierarchical forms of organisation” - might have interested people concerned with working class struggle.
Obviously we weren’t blind to the fact that the meeting was organised by two groups noted for campaigning for micro-reforms. The Hackney Independent website pictures abandoned cars that they want the local council to move, they worry about phone masts, they don’t want schools closed and they stood in the recent general election. Haringey Solidarity are concerned about advertising billboards, encourage people to sue the police for damages and want those with money problems to share/exchange second-hand items. But despite such unpromising credentials there was still the possibility that among those participating might be people who might want to discuss the defence of working class interests.
In a workshop on housing and urban regeneration the whole approach was on how to make the local state work. It was all very reminiscent of Fabianism and ‘municipal socialism’. Against private housing and council regeneration, that they thought was a cover for gentrification, there was a shared illusion in the possibility of “decent and affordable housing for all” in capitalism. At a different workshop there was a denial of this possibility, but still a belief that capitalism was capable of granting lasting reforms. For example, the establishment of the NHS in 1948 was seen as a great workers’ gain, with the fact that it was a creation of the capitalist state dismissed out of hand.
Not only were reforms, great and small, seen as the only possible focus for the class struggle, but also trade unions were presented as the means for this struggle. There were some attempts to talk about solidarity that went beyond the ritual of financial collections etc, as well as some basic questions about the development of workers’ self-organisation. However, talk about workers’ organising themselves came up against a basic denial of the way unions work against the attempts of workers to overcome their divisions and develop relations of solidarity. We were told that unions were “shit” and that unions are “part of capitalism”, but also that workers didn’t need to be told this as they use unions like they do shops, without illusions.
Throughout the gathering there were many disparaging remarks about Trotskyists, and the SWP in particular. Yet it was difficult to see much difference between what these campaigning ‘community activists’ were saying and what you can read in the big leftist papers. There was a more libertarian vocabulary employed, but there was also a lot of fashionable modern management-speak. In terms of political orientation the only difference between ‘hierarchical’ Trotskyism and ‘libertarian community activism’ is that the former sows illusions in the capitalist state as a whole, while the latter seem to be the ideology of ginger groups who want to improve the functioning of local councils.
At one point we heard that every situation, every struggle is different and should be seen as such. In reality, the basis of working class solidarity lies in understanding what we have in common, what unites us. It’s divisive to single out the struggle of fire fighters or food workers from the situation of those facing deportation or unemployment or who are anxious about the drive to war. We all face the same ruling class, the same capitalist state, and our strength lies in a unified struggle.
The brand of ‘community activism’ served up at the ‘gathering’ was most dangerous in the way that it concentrated its energies on the state. Campaigns for concessions from local councils risk drawing activists into the lowest reaches of the local state. Yes, housing has always been a major question for the working class, but it’s a problem that can only be solved at the level of the transformation of society by the whole working class after the destruction of the capitalist state. The capitalist state can only be an instrument of the ruling capitalist class, can only work against the interests of the exploited. In the old phrase, the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. In their struggles workers come up against the state locally and nationally. They also come up against ideas that claim that the working class does not have to liberate itself through its own struggles but can rely on unions, local councils, or any other form of the capitalist state.
During one discussion it was claimed that we probably all shared a view of what future society we’d like to see and on the need for fundamental social change. This was impossible to verify as none of the campaigns advocated had any perspective that might possibly challenge capitalism. Certainly the defensive struggles of the working class contribute to a growing confidence in the class, to the development of consciousness and self-organisation; but divisive campaigns that foster illusions in the state undermine the class struggle.
Between sessions at this event there was a break. Before resuming discussions one of the leaders of this ‘non-hierarchical’ meeting insisted (without any dissent) that there should be no talk of revolution during the remainder of the day. In continuity with this there was a thread on the LibCom website following the ‘gathering’ that referred to the presence of “ICC loons” – in contrast to the “sensible people” that have sensible discussions. This is a clear adaptation to the ‘common sense’ of bourgeois ideology. It’s supposed to be sensible to offer endless campaigns that never challenge capitalism, but crazy to talk of revolution and how the struggle of the working class offers a perspective for the transformation of society.
Norm 29/6/05.
See also this short article, Engels on the Housing Question [85]
Against the idea of “decent and affordable housing for all” within capitalism it’s possible to turn to articles that Friedrich Engels wrote on the ‘Housing Question’ [87] in 1872. “It is not the solution of the housing question which simultaneously solves the social question, but only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible. To want to solve the housing question while at the same time desiring to maintain the modern big cities is an absurdity. The modern big cities, however, will be abolished only by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, and when this is once on the way there will be quite other things to do than supplying each worker with a little house and garden.” Having “provided proof of how impractical these so-called ‘practical’ socialists really are” Engels insists that “practical socialism consists rather in correct knowledge of the capitalist mode of production from all its various sides. A working class which is secure in this knowledge will never be in doubt in any given case against which social institutions, and in what manner, its main attacks should be directed.”
WR, 2/7/05.
In Zimbabwe, the poor in shanty towns, slums, illegal dwellings, and even some in brick houses with Court Orders against demolition, have been summarily evicted on a massive scale, leaving them with nothing. To add insult to the injury, and the inevitable deaths, this has been called Operation Murambatsvina, meaning ‘clearing out the rubbish’. As ever, the capitalist state has little interest in counting its victims, but estimates on the number made homeless range from 275,000 (BBC 1.7.05) to a million (Times 1.7.05). The toll of human suffering is, as local people have pointed out, of tsunami proportions.
The press in Britain has long talked about Mugabe as a dictator who is not just evil, but mad as well. And there is no doubt that Zimbabwe is caught up in a real spiral of irrationality and destruction.
One of the main issues in the campaign about the Mugabe government’s human rights abuses has been the violent expulsion of white farmers. Over the last 5 years or so, it has evicted farmers – and large numbers of farm workers – from going concerns, in order to ‘reward’ a surplus population of ‘veterans’ from the fighting in 1970s. When we consider that this ‘land reform’ has not been accompanied by any serious attempt to settle the new occupants or provide them with the means to run the farms profitably, when we add to that the fact that some of these veterans have also been targeted in Operation Murambatsvina, we can see that they have not been rewarded but tricked, and dumped out of harm’s way.
Having dumped the ‘veterans’ on the confiscated farms, Mugabe has now launched “a pre-emptive strike against poor urban people who will be worst affected by the inevitable hunger which is going to stalk the population in the next few months” (Welshman Ncube quoted at bbc.co.uk). The aim is to disperse the hungry before they can engage in unrest, but the result will be to intensify the chaotic state of the economy as a whole.
What is most remarkable is not that the Zimbabwe government should attack its population in this way, but that it has caused such an international outcry. There are many examples of similar slum clearances: “…around 300,000 people were bulldozed out of the Maroko neighbourhood in Lagos in a single week [in 1990]… Soldiers cleared the Washington area of Abidjan in Ivory Coast at gunpoint in 2002, turning people out of their homes, sometimes with less than an hour’s notice…” (from bbc.co.uk). Similar examples could be given from India, Indonesia, and many other countries.
The Zimbabwe evictions coincide with a campaign against the Mugabe government orchestrated by Britain, the former colonial master, which wants to hold on to whatever imperialist influence it can in this area of the world. This is why they have been publicised and condemned.
Britain essentially lost its ability to hang on to its empire in World War 2, ceding most of its influence to the USA through the process of decolonisation. Zimbabwe, however, did not gain its independence as part of the post-war controlled decolonisation process, but as a result of a power struggle within the bourgeoisie involving the white minority government, Mugabe’s ZANU (mainly Shona) and ZAPU (mainly Ndebe). After 15 years of this armed power struggle, ZANU won and was installed in power by the Lancaster House agreement in 1980. At this stage, the new government, now blessed by the old colonial power, cancelled its arms contracts with the Eastern bloc and placed orders with Britain, signalling its orientation to the Western bloc.
The disintegration of the bloc system at the beginning of the 90s profoundly altered this situation. In a global climate of ‘every man for himself’ Mugabe moved further and further away from any fixed alliances and Zimbabwe began to engage in imperialist adventures of its own, in particular a costly intervention in the Congo war. The disastrous state of the Zimbabwean economy testifies to the impossibility of such countries following an independent course, but Mugabe has certainly succeeded in annoying his former patrons.
The British state’s concerns about what is happening in Zimbabwe are not therefore about the miserable state of the population, but about the threat Mugabe’s policies pose to its imperialist interests in the region.
Alex 2.7.05
This article was written 10 years ago, for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is no less relevant today, even if the number of wars has increased since then, above all with the gigantic US and British military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article was published in International Review 85. The ICC is a political descendant of the small number of left communist organisations who, between 1939 and 1945, denounced the Second World War for what it really was: an imperialist war, just like the first, a war in the interests of the capitalist classes of Britain, the USA, Germany, Japan, Russia… They therefore took the same position as revolutionaries had taken during the First World War: no support for either side, no let up in the class struggle, no concession to patriotism and ‘defending my country’. No concession either to the idea of anti-fascism, which argued that the workers of the world should forget their own interests and ally with exploiters and imperialists like Churchill and Stalin against the ‘greater evil’ of Nazism. Hiroshima and Nagasaki – not to mention the slaughter and starvation of the German population at the end of the war – proved that there was indeed no lesser evil in these six years of horrible massacre. To this day, the idea that the Second World War was a ‘good war’ has been used to justify virtually every war since, to keep alive the lie that capitalist democracy is worth fighting and dying for. To oppose war today, it is essential to break with the whole mythology of the Second World War as a war against evil. There are no good or holy wars in this dying society except the class war of the exploited in all countries, the war against exploitation, the war against war.
With the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bourgeoisie has plumbed new depths of cynicism and mendacity. For this high point of barbarity was executed, not by some dictator or blood crazed madman, but by the very ‘virtuous’ American democracy. To justify the monstrous crime, the whole world bourgeoisie has shamelessly repeated the lie peddled at the time that the atomic bomb was only used to shorten and limit the suffering caused by the continuation of the war with Japan. The American bourgeoisie even proposed to issue an anniversary stamp, inscribed: “Atomic bombs accelerated the end of the war. August 1945”. Even if this anniversary was a further opportunity to mark the growing opposition in Japan towards the US ex-godfather, the Japanese Prime Minister nonetheless made his own precious contribution to the lie about the necessity of the bomb, by presenting for the first time Japan’s apologies for its crimes committed during World War II. Victors and vanquished thus came together to develop this disgusting campaign aimed at justifying one of history’s greatest crimes.
In total, the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945 claimed 522,000 victims. Many cancers of the lung and thyroid only became apparent during the 50s and 60s, and even today the effects of radiation still claim victims: cases of leukaemia are ten times more frequent in Hiroshima than in the rest of Japan.
To justify such a crime, and to answer the legitimate shock provoked by the bomb’s awful effects, Truman - the US president who ordered the nuclear holocaust - and his accomplice Winston Churchill put about a cynical lie: that the use of the atomic bomb had saved about a million lives, which would have been lost had American troops been forced to invade Japan. In short, and despite appearances, the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which are still killing fifty years later, were pacifist bombs! But this peculiarly revolting tale is given the lie by numerous historical studies published by the bourgeoisie itself.
If we examine Japan’s military situation when Germany capitulated, it is clear that the country was already completely defeated. Its air force, that vital weapon of World War II, had been reduced to a handful of aircraft, generally piloted by adolescents whose fanaticism was only matched by their inexperience. Both the navy and the merchant marine had been virtually wiped out. The anti-aircraft defences were so full of holes that the US B29s were able to carry out thousands of raids throughout the spring of 1945, almost without losses. Churchill himself points this out in Volume 12 of his war memoirs.
A 1945 study by the US secret service, published by the New York Times in 1989, revealed that: “Realising that the country was defeated, the Japanese emperor had decided by 20th June 1945, to end all hostilities and to start negotiations from 11th July onwards, with a view to bringing hostilities to an end” (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990).
Truman was perfectly well aware of the situation. Nonetheless, once he was told of the success of the first experimental atomic test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 [1] [89], he decided, in the middle of the Potsdam Conference between himself, Churchill, and Stalin[2] [90], to use the atomic weapon against Japanese towns. This decision had nothing to do with a desire to hasten the end of the war with Japan, as is testified by a conversation between Leo Szilard, one of the fathers of the bomb, and the US Secretary of State for War, J. Byrnes. When Szilard expressed concern at the dangers of using the atomic weapon, Byrnes replied that “he did not claim that it was necessary to use the bomb to win the war. His idea was that the possession and use of the bomb would make Russia more controllable” (ibid).
And if any further argument were necessary, let us leave some of the most important US military leaders to speak for themselves. For Chief of General Staff Admiral Leahy, “The Japanese were already beaten and ready to capitulate. The use of this barbaric weapon made no material contribution to our fight against Japan” (ibid). This opinion was also shared by Eisenhower.
The idea that the atomic bomb was used to force Japan to capitulate, and to stop the slaughter, has nothing to do with reality. It is a lie which has been constructed to meet the needs of the bourgeoisie’s war propaganda, one of the greatest achievements of the massive brain-washing campaign needed to justify the greatest massacre in world history: the 1939/45 war.
We should emphasize that, whatever the hesitations or short-term view of certain members of the ruling class, faced with this terrifying weapon, Truman’s decision was anything but that of a madman, or an isolated individual. On the contrary, it expressed the implacable logic of all imperialisms: death and destruction for humanity, so that one class, the bourgeoisie, should survive confronted with the historic crisis of its system of exploitation, and its own irreversible decadence.
Contrary to all the lies that have been peddled since 1945, about the supposed victory of a democracy synonymous with peace, World War II was barely over than the new front line of imperialist confrontation was being drawn. Just as the Treaty of Versailles contained inevitably within it the seeds of another war, so Yalta already contained the split between the main victor of 1945, the USA, and its Russian challenger. Thanks to World War II, Russia had risen from being a minor economic power to world ranking imperialism, which could not but threaten the American superpower. In spring 1945, the USSR was already using its military strength to carve out a bloc in Eastern Europe. Yalta did nothing but caution the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist sharks. What one balance of forces could set up, another could undo. In the summer of 1945, the real problem facing the American state was thus not, as the schoolbooks tell us, how to make Japan capitulate as soon as possible, but how to confront and contain the imperialist drive of its ‘great Russian ally.
Winston Churchill, the real leader on the Allied side of World War II, was quick to understand that a new front was opening, and constantly to exhort the Americans to face up to it. He wrote in his memoirs: “The closer a war conducted by a coalition comes to its end, the more importance is taken by the political aspects. Above all, in Washington they should have seen further and wider (...) The destruction of Germany’s military power had provoked a radical transformation of the relationship between Communist Russia and the Western democracies. They had lost that common enemy which was practically the only thing uniting them”. He concluded that “Soviet Russia had become a mortal danger for the free world, that it was necessary without delay to create a new front to stop its forward march, and that this front should be as far East as possible” (Memoirs, Vol. 12, May 1945). Nothing could be clearer. Churchill analysed, very lucidly, the fact that a new war was already beginning while World War II had not yet come to an end.
In the spring of 1945, Churchill was already doing everything he could to oppose the advance of Russian armies into Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, etc). Doggedly, he sought to bring the new American president Truman around to his own opinion. The latter, after some hesitations[3] [91], completely accepted Churchill’s thesis that “the Soviet threat had already replaced the Nazi enemy” (ibid).
It is not difficult to understand the complete and unanimous support that the Churchill government gave to Truman’s decision to begin the atomic bombardment of Japanese cities. On 22nd July, 1945, Churchill wrote: “[with the bomb] we now have something in hand which will re-establish the equilibrium with the Russians. The secret of this explosive and the ability to use it will completely transform the diplomatic equilibrium, which had been adrift since the defeat of Germany”. That this should cause the deaths, in atrocious suffering, of hundreds of thousands of human beings, left this ‘defender of the free world’ and ‘saviour of democracy’ cold. When he heard the news of the Hiroshima explosion, he jumped for joy, and Lord Allenbrooke, one of Churchill’s advisers, even wrote: “Churchill was enthusiastic, and already saw himself with the ability to eliminate all Russia’s major industrial population centres” (Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990). This is what was in the mind of this great defender of civilisation and irreplaceable humanitarian values, at the end of five years of carnage that had left 50 million dead!
The nuclear holocaust which broke over Japan in August 1945, this terrifying expression of war’s absolute barbarity in capitalist decadence, was thus not designed by the ‘clean’ American democracy to limit the suffering caused by a continuation of the war with Japan, any more than it met a direct military need. Its real aim was to send a message of terror to the USSR, to force the latter to restrain its imperialist ambitions, and accept the conditions of the pax americana. To give the message greater strength, the American state dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, a town of minor importance at the military level, which wiped out the main working class district. This was also why Truman refused the suggestion of some of his advisers that the explosion of a nuclear weapon over a sparsely populated region would be largely sufficient to force Japan to capitulate. No, in the murderous logic of imperialism, two cities had to be vaporised to intimidate Stalin, and to restrain the one-time Soviet ally’s imperialist ambitions.
What lessons should the working class draw from this terrible tragedy and its revolting use by the bourgeoisie?
In the first place, there is nothing inevitable about the unleashing of capitalist barbarism. The scientific organisation of such carnage was only possible because the proletariat had been beaten worldwide by the most terrible and implacable counter-revolution of its entire history. Broken by the Stalinist and fascist terror, completely confused by the enormous lie identifying Stalinism with communism, the working class allowed itself to be caught in the deadly trap of the defence of democracy, with the Stalinists’ active and indispensable complicity. This reduced it to a great mass of cannon-fodder completely at the mercy of the bourgeoisie. Today, whatever the proletariat’s difficulty in deepening its struggle, the situation is quite different. In the great proletarian concentrations, this is not a time of union with the exploiters, but of the expansion and deepening of the class struggle.
Contrary to the bourgeoisie’s endlessly repeated lie, which presents the 1939-45 imperialist war as one between the fascist and democratic ‘systems’, the war’s 50 million dead were victims of the capitalist system as a whole. Barbarity and crimes against humanity were not the acts of fascism alone. Our famous ‘Allies’, those self-proclaimed ‘defenders of civilisation’ gathered under the banner of democracy, have hands as red with blood as do the Axis powers. The nuclear storm unleashed in August 1945 was particularly atrocious, but it was only one of many crimes perpetrated throughout the war by these ‘white knights’ of democracy[4] [92].
The horror of Hiroshima also opened a new period in capitalism’s plunge into decadence. Henceforth, permanent war became capitalism’s daily way of life. The Treaty of Versailles heralded the next World War; the bomb dropped on Hiroshima marked the real beginning of the ‘Cold War’ between the USA and USSR, which was to spread bloodshed over the four corners of the earth for more than forty years. This is why, unlike the years after 1918, those that followed 1945 saw no disarmament but, on the contrary, a huge growth in arms spending amongst all the victors of the conflict (the USSR already had the atomic bomb by 1949). Within this framework, the entire economy, under the direction of state capitalism in its various forms, was run in the service of war. Also unlike the period at the end of World War I, state capitalism everywhere strengthened its totalitarian grip on the whole of society. Only the state could mobilise the gigantic resources necessary, in particular for the development of a nuclear arsenal. The Manhattan Project was thus only the first in a long and sinister series, leading to the most gigantic and insane arms race in history.
Far from heralding an era of peace, 1945 opened a period of barbarity, made still worse by the constant threat of nuclear destruction of the entire planet. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki still haunt humanity’s memory today, it is because they are such tragic symbols of how directly decadent capitalism threatens the very survival of the human species.
This terrible Damoclean sword, hanging over humanity’s head, thus confers an enormous responsibility on the proletariat, the only force capable of real opposition to capitalism’s military barbarity. Although the threat has temporarily retreated with the collapse of the Russian and American blocs, the responsibility is still there, and the proletariat cannot let its guard drop for an instant. Indeed, war has never been so evident as it is today, from Africa, to the territories of the ex-USSR, to the bloody conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, which has brought war to Europe for the first time since 1945[5] [93]. And we need only look at the bourgeoisie’s determination to justify the bombs of August 45, to understand that when Clinton declares “if we had to do it again, we would” (Liberation, 11th April 1995), he is only expressing the opinion of all his class. Behind the hypocritical speeches about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, each state is doing everything it can either to obtain just such an arsenal, or to perfect its existing one. The research aimed at miniaturising nuclear weapons, and so making their use easier and more commonplace, is accelerating. As Liberation put it: “The studies by Western general staffs based on the response ‘of the strong man to the madman’ are reviving the idea of a limited, tactical use of nuclear weapons. After Hiroshima, their use became taboo. After the Cold War, the taboo has become uncertain” (5th August, 1995).
The horror of nuclear warfare is not something that belongs to a distant past. Quite the contrary: it is the future that decomposing capitalism has in store for humanity if the proletariat lets it happen. Decomposition does not stop or diminish the omnipresence of war. The chaos and the law of “every man for himself” only make its danger still more uncontrollable. The great imperialist powers are already stirring chaos to defend their own sordid interests, and we can be certain that if the working class fails to halt their criminal activity, they will not hesitate to use all the weapons at their disposal, from the fragmentation bombs used so extensively in the Gulf War, to nuclear and chemical weapons. Capitalist decomposition has only one perspective to offer: the destruction, bit by bit, of the planet and its inhabitants. The proletariat must not give an inch, either to the siren calls of pacifism, or to the defence of the democracy, in whose name the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated. On the contrary, it must remain firmly on its class terrain: the struggle against this system of death and destruction, capitalism.
Julien, 24/8/95
[1] [94] To develop the atomic bomb, the US state mobilised all the resources of science and put them at the military’s disposal. Two billion dollars were devoted to the Manhattan Project, set up by that great humanitarian Roosevelt. Every university in the country joined in. Directly or indirectly, all the greatest physicists from Einstein to Oppenheimer took part. Six Nobel prize-winners took part in the bomb’s creation. This gigantic mobilisation of every scientific resource for war expresses a general characteristic of decadent capitalism. State capitalism, whether openly totalitarian or draped in the democratic flag, colonizes and militarises the whole of science. Under the reign of capitalism, science lives and develops through and for war. This reality has not ceased to get worse since 1945.
[2] [95] The essential aim of this conference, especially for Churchill who was its main instigator, was to make it clear to Stalin’s USSR that it should restrain its imperialist ambitions, and that there were limits which should not be passed.
[3] [96] Throughout the spring of 1945, Churchill raged at the Americans’ softness in letting the Russian army absorb the whole of Eastern Europe. This hesitation on the part of the US government in confronting the Russian state’s imperialist appetite head-on expressed the American bourgeoisie’s relative inexperience in the role of world superpower - an experience which the British bourgeoisie possessed in abundance. But it was also the expression of not particularly friendly feelings towards its British ally. The fact that Britain emerged seriously weakened from the war, and that its positions in Europe should be threatened by the Russian bear, could only make her more docile in the face of the diktats which Uncle Sam was going to impose, without delay, even on its closest ‘friends’. It is another example of the ‘frank and harmonious’ relationships that reign among the imperialist sharks.
[4] [97] See International Review no.66, “Crimes of the great democracies”.
[5] [98] Immediately after 1945, the bourgeoisie presented the Cold War as a war between two different systems: democracy against communist totalitarianism. With this lie, it continued to confuse the working class, at the same time hiding the classical and sordid imperialist nature of the one-time ‘Allies’. In a sense, they managed to pull off the same coup in 1989, proclaiming that peace would reign at last with the fall of “communism”. From the Gulf to Yugoslavia, we have seen since then just what the promises of Bush, Gorbachev and Co were worth.
Who were the first victims of the terrorist attacks in the centre of London on July 7 2005? Like the ones in New York in 2001 and Madrid in 2004, the bombs were deliberately aimed at workers, people crowding the tubes and buses on their way to work. Al Qaida, which has claimed responsibility for this mass murder, says that it has acted in revenge for “British military massacres in Iraq”. But the endless slaughter of the population in Iraq is not the fault of working people in Britain; it’s the responsibility of the ruling classes of Britain, America – not to mention the terrorists of the so-called ‘Resistance’, who play their own daily part in the killing of innocent workers and civilians in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The architects of the war on Iraq, the Bushes and the Blairs, are meanwhile left safe and secure; what’s more, the atrocities committed by the terrorists provide them with the perfect excuse to launch their next military adventure, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of September 11.
All this is in the logic of imperialist war: wars fought in the interest of the capitalist class, wars for the domination of the planet. The vast majority of the victims in such wars are the exploited, the oppressed, the wage slaves of capital. The logic of imperialist war stirs up national and racial hatred, turning entire peoples into “the enemy”, to be insulted, attacked and annihilated. It turns worker against worker, making it impossible for them to defend their common interests. Worse, it calls on workers to rally behind the national flag and the national state, to march off willingly to war in defence of interests which are not theirs, but the interests of their exploiters.
In his statement about the London bombings at the meeting of the rich and the powerful at the G8 Summit, Blair said: "It's important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people."
The truth is that Blair’s values and Bin Laden’s values are exactly the same. Both are equally prepared to cause death and destruction to innocent people in pursuit of their sordid aims. The only difference is that Blair is a big imperialist gangster and Bin Laden is a smaller one. We should reject utterly all those who ask us to take the side of one or the other.
All the “world leaders’” declarations of solidarity with the victims of the London bombings are pure hypocrisy. These are the leaders of a social system which over the last century has wiped out tens of millions of human beings in two barbaric world wars and countless other conflicts from Korea to the Gulf, from Vietnam to Palestine. And contrary to all the illusions peddled by Geldof, Bono and the rest, they are the leaders of a system which by its very nature cannot “make poverty history” but condemns hundreds of millions to increasing misery, and is busy poisoning the planet in defence of its profits. The solidarity the world leaders want is a false solidarity, the national unity between classes which will allow them to unleash new wars in the future.
The only real solidarity is the international solidarity of the working class, based on the common interests shared by the exploited in every country. A solidarity which cuts across all racial and religious divisions and which is the only force which can oppose capitalism’s logic of militarism and war.
History has shown the power of such solidarity: in 1917-18, when mutinies and revolutions in Russia and Germany put an end to the carnage of the First World War. And history also showed what a terrible price the working class paid when this solidarity was again replaced by national hatred and loyalty to the ruling class: the holocaust of the Second World War. Today capitalism is again spreading war across the earth. If we are to stop it engulfing us all in chaos and destruction, we must reject all the patriotic appeals from our rulers, fight to defend our interests as workers, and unite against this dying society, which can offer us nothing but horror and death on an ever-growing scale.
International Communist Current, 7th July 2005
All sorts of political animals label themselves as anarchists. They can range from leftists who are hardly distinguishable from Trotskyists, except perhaps for their antipathy for the idea of a political party, to real internationalists who are seriously trying to defend the interests of the working class. An example of the latter is the KRAS group in Russia. At several political conferences in Russia, when the subject of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ came up, the comrades of the KRAS had no hesitation about ranging themselves alongside the marxists of the ICC in denouncing the various justifications for this war from Stalinists, Trotskyists, and anarchists, all of whom used the slogan of anti-fascism to justify support for the ‘democratic’ (and Stalinist) camp.
In recent weeks the ICC has begun a thread on the libcom.org discussion forums (go to Forums/Thought), entitled ‘1939 and all that’. In it we have argued in favour of the activity of the communist left during the second world war, which involved intervening in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances to defend an internationalist position against both imperialist blocs.
The discussion on this thread has been very revealing. While a number of individual comrades have intervened to defend the ICC and the communist left, the reaction from the majority of anarchists has been one of total outrage. For the left communists, the patriotic ‘Resistance’ was the bourgeoisie’s force for mobilising the most combative workers into the imperialist war. It was a direct appendage of the Allied armies. For the outraged anarchists, on the other hand, the Resistance must be defended at all costs and is even hailed as constituting an anti-capitalist threat to the bourgeoisie. The most extreme expression of this position was put forward by a French anarcho-syndicalist (L’agite) who says he prefers “the fucking Stalinists who were in the Resistance and who killed cops and fascists rather than the pseudo-intellectual wankers of the left communists who never did anything…”. As we said in one of our replies: “So let’s speak plainly: L’agite, the anarchist, “prefers” the Stalinist resistance officers who at the time of the so-called Liberation issued the call “chacun a son Boche” – “everyone kill a German” – and led the chauvinist hysteria against German proletarians in uniform, the shameful witch-hunts against French “collaborators”. He “prefers” the Stalinist hit-men who, during this orgy of nationalism, arrested internationalists like our comrade Marco in Paris – known not for “doing nothing” but for carrying out revolutionary propaganda against the war - and accused them of being agents of fascism and demanded they be shot. He “prefers” the Stalinist partisans in Italy who did shoot members of the Internationalist Communist Party in Italy on exactly the same pretext. ….”
And apart from those who sympathise openly with the ICC, very few of the anarchists’ posts seem even slightly troubled by such open declarations of support for patriotism. The concern of most of these posts has been to make trivial and irrelevant digs at the ICC, or – in some of the more honest cases – to openly admit that they think that it was necessary to fight for the democratic states in this war.
We will come back to the implications of this debate on another occasion. But as we said on the post quoted above, “these are not speculative questions about the past. The bourgeoisie still uses the ideology of the Second World War as a justification for its wars today. In the Bush/Blair justification for the war in Iraq, for example, Saddam was the new Hitler and not invading Iraq would have been a form of “appeasement”. Or, if like the SWP or Galloway you line up with another set of gangsters, then the Islamic terrorists and nationalists in Iraq are “the Resistance”. Clarity about internationalism in 1939-45 is a starting point for clarity about internationalism today”.
Recently we published an article on our website welcoming the statement put out by various anarchists condemning the London bombings. In it we said: “In the midst of all the statements on the bombings in London, most of which are only notable for their varying levels of hypocrisy, we have become aware of two statements, both from the libertarian and anarchist milieu, that attempt to defend a class position. One is from the libcom.org website, the other from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of South Africa.
The ZACF begin by declaring that they “stand foursquare with the working and poor people” who were the targets of the bombings, while the libcom.org statement deplores “the horrific attacks on innocent people this morning in London”. They then deal with the question of terrorism: “Terrorist actions are completely at odds with any struggle for a freer, fairer society and never help oppressed people in any part of the globe. Instead violence against civilians is a tool of states and proto-states every bit as brutal as the ones they profess to oppose” (libcom.org); “…we are unrepentant in our bitter opposition to terrorism in all forms, whether driven by state or sub-state opportunism” (ZACF)”.
Our article also cites the libcom.org statement’s declaration of solidarity “with all people fighting exploitation and oppression in all its forms, from opponents to the occupation of Iraq here to those in Iraq who are opposing both the occupying forces and the ultra-reactionary Islamists that the Occupation helps strengthen”.
However, our article makes a number of criticisms about the libertarians’ difficulty in defining a real class perspective on terrorism and war; and the thread about 1939, and another one dealing with the Iraqi Resistance, pose serious questions about the depth of the libertarians’ opposition to the current imperialist conflict.
We know that the ‘official’ leftists trumpet their support for the Iraqi Resistance. As we wrote in an article published in WR 275 “Last November Tariq Ali speculated whether guerrilla warfare would turn into “an Iraqi National Liberation Front”. According to his leftist co-thinkers that wish has come true. The Weekly Worker (15/4/4) has announced that “the situation has been transformed. The entry of previously uncommitted forces - Shia Islamist forces with real mass support and roots - into open armed opposition has produced a real confrontation of the masses themselves with the coalition. The real war of national liberation has begun”. The World Socialist Web Site cheers a “broad and popular movement” and a “heroic and justified nationwide uprising against colonial repression”. And although WW (22/4/4) is concerned about “the influence of clerical and reactionary elements” and WSWS warns of attempts to divide the “resistance”, there is no mistaking their enthusiasm for “a movement of Iraq’s urban poor and most oppressed” (WSWS) dying in the cause of Iraqi nationalism”.
Furthermore, the leftists themselves make the link between Iraq today and the second world war Resistance movements: at WSWS (7/4/4) you can read that “The Iraqi resistance against US occupation is just as legitimate as the struggles waged by the French resistance against German occupation in the 1940s and the liberation struggles that swept the colonial countries in the 1960s and 1970s.”
In the same article in WR, we also noted that there is a pseudo-communist organisation, the Internationalist Communist Group, which justifies the defence of the Iraqi Resistance in the most ‘proletarian’ language. “In their French publication (Communisme no 55) they …begin by stating that “the proletariat in Iraq has given an example to its brothers throughout the whole world in refusing to fight for its oppressors”, that workers have “refused to die for interests that were not their own”. And it’s certainly true that Iraqi workers showed little enthusiasm for dying on behalf of Saddam’s army when the US Coalition first invaded. But it is criminally false to identify this response with the subsequent active mobilisation of Iraqi proletarians behind the ‘resistance’ with its reactionary capitalist agenda. This is exactly what the GCI does. They conflate the desertions and demonstrations of the unemployed that have undoubtedly taken place with the bombings, acts of sabotage and armed expressions of the military conflict, and claim that in all this “you can see the contours of the proletariat which is trying to struggle, organising itself against all fractions” while minimising the influence of the “Islamists or pan-Arab nationalists” on this alleged proletarian movement”.
The GCI, with its fascination for ‘exemplary’ violence, has long had an influence in anarchist circles. Just as some anarchists may be directly influenced by the arguments of the Trotskyists and other leftists, they may also fall for the GCI’s more radical language. Either way, there are reasons to believe that the anarchists will have a hard time standing up to these different siren songs in favour of the ‘heroic people’s war’ in Iraq.
Recently there appeared on the libcom.org forums a statement by a group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Army; posted by one of the forums’ regular contributors, avowedly a “pro-situationist” element. It was submitted without much comment, and neither has it given rise to many replies. This statement is certainly different from the usual al-Qaida rants against Jews and Crusaders and exulting in the slaughter of all “infidels”. It is addressed to the people of the world; it calls for worldwide protests against the war and recognises that many in the west oppose the war. It even ends by saying: “And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq, as we have done with a few others before you.
Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq. ….”
There is no doubt that many Iraqi workers are not taken in by the hateful, racist ideology of al Qaida etc. But the ‘Islamic Jihad Army’ group, far from expressing the real needs of those workers, is still functioning to recruit them into the imperialist war. As its name implies, its standpoint is either “Islam” or “our country”, not the working class, and its methods are not the methods of the class struggle. Even if this group is not involved in the many acts of indiscriminate terror (or those directly aimed at certain groups, like Shia Muslims or Christians) which kill more Iraqi civilians than occupying troops, still they are not fundamentally distinct from factions like Zaqawi’s Al Quaida in Iraq. This can be seen from the militarist video that accompanies its statement on certain websites; these show the group brandishing their guns and engaging in roadside attacks on US army vehicles “in the name of Allah”. Of course, the class struggle does, at a certain stage, involve armed actions. But they assume their proletarian nature from the context of the movement in which they take part – for example the self-defence squads organised by strike committees, or the militias organised by the workers’ councils. And contrary to the sophisms of the GCI and others, the chaos and violence ravaging Iraq is not an expression of the class struggle; on the contrary, it is the product of an imperialist war of a new kind. It is a kind of warfare specific to the extreme decomposition of world capitalism, a sort of international civil war which links the ‘intifada’ in Palestine to the Iraqi resistance, conflicts in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Chechnya, and the July 7 London bombers. The fact that many of the actions in this war are carried out by apparently uncontrolled gangs and warlords does not alter its imperialist character; and on a global level, these actions cannot escape the context of the growing conflict between capitalist states: at any time the uncontrolled terrorist groups can become direct agents of this or that imperialist power. We can see this from the statement of the Islamic Jihad Army, which thanks the governments of France and Germany for their stance on the Iraq war and calls on us to boycott the dollar in favour of the Euro. It also echoes the more crude anti-Semitism of al-Qaida by attributing to Zionism an exaggerated position in global affairs. It thus tells us we must “put an end to Zionism before it puts an end to the world.”
As we said in response to the GCI, there have been proletarian reactions in Iraq since the invasion – massive desertions from the army, strikes, demonstrations by the unemployed. But the mobilisation of Iraqi workers behind the resistance goes in a completely opposite direction. And any expression of proletarian politics in Iraq, far from lining up with the religious/nationalist partisans, would have to insist on this irreconcilable opposition between the terrain of the class struggle and the imperialist terrain of the resistance. This is precisely the same conflict that emerged at the end of the second world war, between for example the mass strikes of the Italian workers in 1943, who raised the slogan “down with the war”, and the actions of the anti-fascist partisans which sought to drag the most militant workers back into the trap of the war ‘for democracy’. Then as now those who blur the lines of this conflict are acting as recruiting sergeants for imperialist war.
Needless to say the defence of an internationalist position in Iraq today would be extremely dangerous because the balance of forces is not in favour of the class front, but of the imperialist front. Internationalist workers in Iraq they would certainly face not only imprisonment and torture at the hands of the occupying forces but also summary executions by the jihadists who control large parts of the country. All the same, one internationalist statement coming out of Iraq would be worth more to the cause of real liberation than a thousand roadside bombs.
The question remains: where do those who call themselves anarchists stand on this issue?
Amos, 3/9/05.
Since the end of the period of reconstruction after the Second World War, the capitalist world has continued to slowly, but inexorably, sink into economic crisis.
In the first part of this article we are going to show the reality of this evolution up to the end of the 20th century.
The second part will try to show that capitalism has entered into a new, more serious, phase of economic recession compared to those that preceded it.
The bourgeoisie is not unprepared. At a time when the economic crisis is again ready to undergo a sharp acceleration, our rulers are trying to corral the working class onto a false terrain: to fight against the liberal or market economy, in the case of continental Europe, or against its “worse excesses”, as in the case of the “Anglo-Saxon” economies. This is to consciously hide from the workers the reality that the great director of the capitalist economy and thus of the attacks against the working class is the capitalist state itself. Within the lines of the European Constitution we can read that states must reform “the excessively restrictive conditions of employment legislation, which affect the dynamic of the labour market” and promote “ diversity in the forms of working contracts, notably regarding hours of work.”
The rejection, or acceptance, of the Constitution will not modify this policy one iota. The proletariat is thus being asked to forget the latest recessions and also the financial crash of 2001-2002, all the massive attacks, all the deterioration of its conditions of life since the open reappearance of the world economic crisis at the end of the 1960s and especially since the beginning of 2000. The working class is paying a heavy tribute to bankrupt capitalism, leaving aside the massive attack on retired workers and the dismantling of health care. The bourgeoisie is once again cynically trying to convince the proletariat that if it accepts more sacrifices then all will be better tomorrow, living conditions will improve and unemployment will fall. Here again the lies have only one aim: to make the working class accept and pay in misery and exploitation for the catastrophic plunge of capitalism into its own economic crisis.
The recessions of 1967, 1970-71, 1974-75, 1991-93 and 2001-2002 were successively longer and more profound, and this was in the context of a constant decline in the rate of average growth of the world economy. The growth of world Gross Domestic Product has also followed this same downward tendency, going from more than 4% in the 1950s to less than 1% at the beginning of 2000. Following the collapse of the economy which hit the world at the end of the 1920s and beginnings of the 1930s, capitalism drew a maximum of lessons. Since then, and especially after the Second World War, capitalism has organised itself in order to try to prevent a sudden collapse of its economy. We thus see a strengthening of the role of the state in all national economies. The development of state capitalism throughout the world has also been key to the militarisation of society and the disciplining of the working class. On top of this, the bourgeoisie provided itself with international organisms such as COMECOM for the old Eastern Bloc and the IMF for the Western Bloc, responsible for limiting any violent jolts in the economy. In the same sense, and unlike the period before the Second World War, the bourgeoisie strengthened the role of the central banks, which now played a direct role in economic policy through control of interests rates and the money supply.
Despite what the bourgeoisie tells us, the evolution of the economy is slowly but surely in decline. State capitalism can certainly slow down this process but it cannot prevent its inexorable development. Thus, since the 1960s, economic recoveries have been always more limited and periods of recession more profound. The capitalist world is sinking into a crisis. Beyond their particularities, Africa, Central America, the old Russian Bloc and the greater part of Asia have plunged into a growing economic chaos. For some years now the effects of the crisis have hit the United States, Europe and Japan directly. In the United States the rate of growth by decade between 1950-1960 and 1990-99 has gone from 4.11% to 3% and for the same period in Europe from 4.72% to 1.74% (source: OECD). The growth of world Gross Domestic Product per inhabitant from 1961 to 2003 has gone from practically 4% to less than 1%. After the period of reconstruction following the Second World War (the “golden years” for the bourgeoisie) the world economy has progressively taken the road of recession. If this period has been intercut with periods of recovery (though shorter and shorter, nevertheless real), it is quite simply because the world bourgeoisie has resorted to mounting debt and the use of ever-growing budget deficits. The main world power, the US, is the clearest example. It has gone from a budgetary surplus of 2% in 1950 to a budget deficit today approaching 4%. Thus the total debt of the United States, which has increased slowly from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1980s, has, in twenty or so years, undergone a real explosion. It has doubled from fifteen thousand billion dollars to more than thirty thousand billion. The United States has gone from the main financier of the planet to the world’s most indebted country. But it would be totally wrong to think, despite the specificities of the world’s major power, that this tendency doesn’t correspond to the global evolution of the capitalist economy. At the end of the 1990s, Africa reached more than 200 billion dollars of debt, the Middle East also; Eastern Europe’s debt is more than 400 billion dollars; Asia and the Pacific region (including China) more than 600 billion; the same for Latin America (source Etat du monde 1998).
If we take industrial production, the reality of the slowdown of world economic growth since the end of the period of reconstruction is still more marked.
From 1938 to 1973, or in 35 years, industrial production of the developed countries increased 288%. During the following 22 years, its growth reached only 30% (sources OECD).
The slowdown in world industrial production appears here very clearly. The working class is inevitably forced to pay for this reality. If we look at the five most economically developed countries in the world, we can see a particularly striking evolution of unemployment. This has gone from an average of 3.2% from 1948-1952 to 4.9% in 1979-1981, to end up in 1995 at 7.4% (source: OECD). These figures are those of the bourgeoisie and they tend to consciously underestimate this reality for the working class. Further, since 1995, unemployment has only continued to develop over the whole of the planet.
In order to slow down its plunge into crisis, it isn’t enough for the bourgeoisie to provide itself with new institutions at the international level, or to pile up a mind-boggling debt to artificially maintain some life in a saturated world market. It has also been necessary to try to halt the progressive fall in its rate of profit. Capitalists only ever invest in order to obtain a profit on the capital invested. This is what determines its famous rate of profit. From 1960 to 1980 the latter fell from 20% to 14% for Europe, to rise as if by magic to 20% in the United States and to more than 22% in Europe at the end of the 1990s. Should the working class believe in miracles? Two factors could explain this increase: the growth of workplace productivity or the increased austerity inflicted on the workers. But the growth of productivity at work has been eroded by half over this period. It is thus by attacking the living conditions of the working class that the bourgeoisie has been able to restore, for the moment, its rate of profit. The evolution of wages as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in Europe perfectly illustrates this reality. In the years 1970-1980 this rose more than 76% to fall to at least 66%. It is well and truly the aggravation of exploitation and the development of workers’ misery that lie behind the momentary restoration of the rate of profit in the 1990s.
In the second part of this article we will examine more closely the present aggravation of the world economic crisis.
T, 24/8/05.
Since the bomb attacks of the 7th July the British government has used every available opportunity to boost the image of the state as the only thing which can protect the population from attack. The media were simultaneously calling for ‘national unity’ whilst decrying the forces of ‘Islamic terror’ present in our midst. The massive media barrage was repressive in itself, as it sought to overwhelm the population’s consciousness, and it undoubtedly contributed to the huge rise in racist attacks that followed the bombings. With the general fear in the population on their side, the chance arose to increase the repressive apparatus.
New laws have been proposed, including:
Another strand of the state’s response has been, under the guise of ‘greater integration’ and ‘creating stronger links’, to urge the ‘Muslim community’ (something which doesn’t exist in a class-divided society) to police itself better. This has been the spearhead for a campaign to recruit more Asian police officers, and for members of the said community to inform on each other.
We have also had the response at the street level: the shooting at Stockwell station of Jean Charles de Menezes on the 22nd July. Since the shooting it has become very clear that this was a planned execution. Almost all of the initial ‘facts’ about this incident have been shown to be lies. The overwhelming message was clear: this is an example to everyone else - we will shoot whoever we want.
As with the repressive measures introduced after the 9/11 attacks, this strengthening of the state will not only be aimed at rivals in imperialist conflicts, but at the social force opposed to all imperialist conflicts: the working class and its revolutionary minorities. History shows us that this is the traditional response of the bourgeoisie faced with a situation of ripening discontent. Already ‘anti-terror’ laws have been used to restrict demonstrations and strike actions – something which will increase, especially as the economic and social conditions in Britain deteriorate, and the working class becomes a more overt threat to the interests of the capitalist economy and the state apparatus which exists to protect it.
Graham, 02/09/05
On Friday 22nd July, at 10:00 in the morning, the police shot down a 27-year old Brazilian electrician, Jean-Charles de Menezes, with five bullets fired at point-blank range and in cold blood. This young worker’s crime, for which he has been summarily executed, was simply that of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and perhaps (since one always has doubts about the official version) to have run away from a group of threatening policemen who had mistaken him for someone else. This didn’t happen in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, and the gunslinging police officers were not members of the "death squads" who are given a free hand by the authorities, in Brazil and other Third World countries, to "clean up" the "anti-social elements" (whether petty criminals or political opponents). It happened in London, the capital of the "most democratic country in the world", and the policemen were the "bobbies" famous all over the world for their good nature, operating under the orders of the world’s most prestigious police agency: Scotland Yard.
Needless to say, this crime has provoked a certain emotion among the spokesmen of the ruling class: the Financial Times has spoken of "a potentially dangerous turn" taken by the security forces. Obviously, London police chief Sir Ian Blair has "regretted" the "error" and presented his condolences to the victim’s family. Needless to say, an enquiry has been opened to "establish the truth". It is even possible that a police officer or two will be sanctioned for having failed to distinguish between a Brazilian Catholic and a Pakistani Muslim. But those responsible for the crime are not the trigger-happy gunslingers. If they killed young Jean-Charles, it is because they had orders to "shoot to kill".
There is no lack of explanations, delivered with all the subtle hypocrisy so characteristic of the British ruling class: According to Sir Ian Blair, "There is nothing gratuitous or cavalier going on. There is no shoot to kill policy, there is a shoot to kill to protect policy".[1] [103] His predecessor, John Stevens, who no longer has to watch his language, spoke out more brutally a few months ago: "There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfil his mission -- destroy his brain instantly, utterly. That means shooting him with devastating power in the head, killing him immediately."[2] [104] Nor is it just the police who have adopted this language; the thoroughly "left-wing" Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has justified the shooting in the following terms: "If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious they could trigger plastic explosives or whatever device is on them. Therefore overwhelmingly in these circumstances it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy".[3] [105]
Let there be no mistake, the argument about "suicide bombers determined to fulfil their mission" is a deceptive pretext: when British troops shot down innocent Irish citizens because they thought they were terrorists, it is not because the real IRA terrorists were suicide bombers (suicide being moreover forbidden by the Catholic church). In reality, the capitalist state, in Britain as in all the "democratic" countries, has always used terrorist attacks like those of 7th and 21st July in London as an excuse to strengthen its repressive apparatus, to put in place measures that are generally considered the preserve of "totalitarian" regimes, and above all to get the population used to their existence. This is what happened after 9/11 in the USA, or after the bomb attacks in France in 1995 attributed to the Algerian "Groupes Islamistes Armés". According to the ruling class’ propaganda, you have to choose: either accept an ever more stifling police presence at every moment and everywhere, or else "play the terrorists’ game". In Britain today, this all-powerful police presence has reached new extremes: they now have not only the right, but orders to kill anyone who may appear "suspect" or who fails to obey their summons. And this in the country which invented the law Habeas Corpus in 1679, banning arbitrary arrest. Traditionally in Britain, as in all the "democratic" countries, you could not be imprisoned without charge for more than 24 hours. In Britain today, there are already people imprisoned in Belmarsh prison (near London), and held without trial.[4] [106] Now, they can be shot on sight in the street!
For the moment, the official targets are "suicide bombers". But it would be a terrible mistake to think the ruling class will stop there. History has shown over and over again that whenever the capitalist class feels threatened, it doesn’t hesitate to trample its "democratic principles" underfoot. In the past, these principles were a weapon in its struggle against arbitrary rule and aristocratic domination. Once it had taken undivided power over society, it kept them as ornaments, especially to deceive the exploited masses and make them accept their exploitation. During the 19th century, the all-powerful British bourgeoisie could afford the luxury of offering asylum to political refugees from defeated revolutions all over the Continent, such as the French workers fleeing the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871. The bourgeoisie is not threatened by "Islamic terrorism". The main victims of this criminal terror are the workers taking the Tube to work, or the office-workers of the Twin Towers. And thanks to the perfectly justified horror that it inspires among the population in general, "terrorism" has provided an excellent pretext for a whole series of states to justify their imperialist adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
No, the only force that can threaten the bourgeoisie is the working class. For the moment, the workers’ struggles are far from being an immediate menace to bourgeois order, but the ruling class knows perfectly well that the inexorable crisis of its system, and the ever more violent attacks that it will have to make on the workers, can only push the latter to more and more widespread struggles, to the point where they will threaten the power of their exploiters. When that happens, it is not the "terrorists" who will be shot down like dogs, but the most militant workers and revolutionary elements (who will be described as "terrorists" for the occasion)[5] [107], and communists. And there won’t be any Habeas Corpus.
These are not idle speculation, or predictions from a some crystal ball. This is how the bourgeoisie has always behaved whenever its vital interests are threatened. The treatment normally reserved for Third World or colonised populations by ALL the "democratic" countries, is applied to the proletarians as soon as they revolt against their exploitation. In 1919, in a Germany governed by the Social-Democratic Party, in other words the party of Gerhard Schröder, the counterpart to Tony Blair’s Labour Party, thousands of workers were massacred for having stood up, after the 1917 revolution in Russia, against bourgeois order. As for revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, they were assassinated by soldiers who had arrested them on the pretext that they were "trying to escape". The disgusting assassination at Stockwell station should not only be denounced. All the usual whining liberals who moan about the "damage to democratic freedoms" can do as much. Above all, it should serve as a lesson to the workers in Britain and everywhere in the world to understand the real nature and the real methods of their class enemy, the capitalist class. These are the "death squads", that the bourgeoisie is preparing today all over the world, that the working class will have to confront tomorrow.
ICC, 25th July 2005
[1] [108] Guardian.co.uk, 24th July
[ [108]2 [109]] [108] News of the World Sunday March 6th, 2005 page 13 "Forget Human Rights. Kick Out The Fanatics" by Sir John Stevens, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner
The slaughter of 55 workers and the wounding of 700 hundred more on the 7th July followed by the attempted bombings of 21st July have confirmed the fears of millions that they risk being blown to bits on the way to or from work. The slaughter and the debilitating fear are the terrible price paid by the working class for the deepening of the impact of decomposition in the heartlands of capitalism. London, the oldest capital city of capitalism, has become part of the carnage that has spread around the globe and which is fuelled by the imperialist chaos in Iraq. It is a glimpse of the future that capitalism has in store for humanity.
In Baghdad many hundreds have been killed with equal brutality since July 7th. Children, drawn out by the offer sweets from American soldiers; men and women trying to find food to survive; young men forced by poverty and hunger to join the Iraqi police; the hundreds of Shias crushed to death during a religious procession in Baghdad, where the panic had been fuelled by earlier mortar attacks on the march. The deaths caused by the occupying armies are carefully concealed behind the bombings of the ‘resistance’, but estimates of the total killed are rising towards 100,000.
The London bombings have been followed by an ideological assault by the state and its hired hacks. The working class is being subjected to endless 'revelations', 'breaking news' and pointless speculation; all of which leave it confused and very threatened. The only consistent messages from this propaganda barrage are that there is a real possibility of more attacks by Islamic extremists and that only the state can protect us. The arrest of the four alleged bombers of July 21st is a spectacular ‘victory’ intended to drive home the point.
The execution of the Jean-Charles de Menezes, his head ripped apart by numerous bullets, has also contributed to this horrendous spectacle, although he had nothing to do with terrorism.[1] [113] On the one hand it has rammed home the message that the state is ready to “shoot to kill to protect”, along with terrifying speculation on what would have happened if the police had hesitated to shoot if their victim had not been ‘the wrong man’. On the other hand the leaked revelations that the initial police report was nothing but a pack of lies have given the bourgeoisie plenty of scope to continue the campaign, complete with London Mayor Ken Livingstone defending Sir Ian Blair as a ‘reforming’ chief constable who should be supported against those who leak against him. Whatever else the enquiry finally comes up with, we can be sure it will include the need for more resources to the police and their intelligence.
The British state has undoubtedly gained some immediate benefit from the bombings with the idea that the police and secret police are all that stand between us and chaos, that democracy is the only defence against terror, that there needs to be national unity behind our way of life. And at the same time, the ruling class can also find advantages in the increase in terror, suspicion and hatred within the population, leading to a significant increase in attacks on people perceived as ‘Muslims’: all this can be used to heighten divisions within the working class and divert attention away from any serious questioning of the present social order But there is without doubt another dimension at work here: the bourgeoisie’s growing loss of control, the fact that the chaotic imperialist barbarity that has been pulling apart any form of civil society in Iraq is now spreading directly to Britain and other countries in the heartlands of capitalism.
This point was underlined by the International Herald Tribune a week after the first attacks: “If it is confirmed, as the British police have indicated, that the London bombers were suicide terrorists of British nationality, then…something very new has hit Europe, the sort of suicide attacks heretofore believed to be a problem for Israel and Iraq, and, in one spectacular instance, on Sept 11 2001, the United States” (15/7/2005).
The trail of bloodshed and destruction from New York, through Madrid and to London has brought the effects of the decomposition of capitalist society into the very centre of the capitalist system.
The destruction of the Twin Towers by suicide bombers in September 2001 marked the opening of a new phase in the growth of barbarism and chaos. This terrible massacre was used as a pretext by US imperialism to launch a much more direct military offensive to try and maintain its world leadership. However, as we have repeatedly shown, this was not a matter of choice: the US has no other option than to impose its leadership through brutal military might, leading to the inevitable response from its rivals.
The slaughter of nearly 200 workers and the injuring of many others in Madrid marked a further deepening of decomposition. The fact that the instability generated by the war in Iraq spilled over into Western Europe expressed the acceleration of chaos. The anti-US fraction in Spain used the bombings in Madrid to achieve a new imperialist orientation. Contrary to what the left says, this is not a turn towards peace or an expression of the will of the people, but simply a change in imperialist strategy that will reinforce violence and chaos as much as the previous strategy.
The London bombings of July 7th marked yet another step in the descent into imperialist barbarism. They showed that within one of the main countries of capitalism there are more and more elements reduced to such despair that they can see no future but death; a future where their own self-destruction is the consciously planned means for the slaughter of as many of their fellow human beings as possible. It is the negation of a virtue that has been celebrated throughout human history: the sacrifice of oneself for one’s fellow human beings.
The attempted bombings on the 21st demonstrated that this was not a one-off event, but the opening up of a spiral of such events carried out by 'home grown' cannon-fodder using the same methods as in Baghdad. We are seeing a fusion between the chaos that finds its strongest and most enduring expression in the Middle East, and the advancing decay of social life in the heartlands of capitalism, especially in Britain. This link was confirmed in the days and weeks after the bombings by a number of horrific random murders which show that the streets and transport systems of Britain are becoming increasingly dangerous places: a young black man in Liverpool killed with an axe after being subject to racist taunts; another young man, who had just lost a friend in the July bombings, stabbed to death on a London bus because he tried to stop someone throwing food at passengers; a young woman shot dead while holding a baby as thieves raided a christening service in south London. The suicide bombers are only a more ‘politicised’ form of this growing cult of violence and death.
To fully understand the implications of these events we need to go back to the analysis of decomposition.
In the 1980s the ICC identified a number of apparently irrational developments within capitalism:
The effort to understand these events led the ICC to develop the analysis of the decomposition of capitalism.[2] [114] The collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 prompted a further development within the framework of the marxist analysis of the decadence of previous modes of production. We recognised that the present phase of decomposition “is fundamentally determined by unprecedented and unexpected historical conditions: a situation of temporary ‘social stalemate’ due to the mutual ‘neutralisation’ of the two fundamental classes, each preventing the other from providing a definitive response to the capitalist crisis” (“Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism”, International Review 62. Reprinted in International Review 107 [115]). Many of the elements we identified then can be seen in the recent events:
“All these signs of the social putrefaction which is invading every pore of human society on a scale never seen before, can only express one thing: not only the dislocation of bourgeois society, but the destruction of the very principle of collective life in a society devoid of the slightest project or perspective, even in the short term, and however illusory.” (ibid).
Following the attacks in New York, the bombing in Bali, the Beslan siege, the war in Iraq and then the Madrid bombings last year, we made an important development of this analysis: “Fifteen years later, the rise of so-called “Islamist” terrorism presents us with a new phenomenon: the disintegration of the states themselves, and the appearance of warlords using young kamikazes, whose only perspective in life is death, to advance their interests on the international chessboard.
Whatever the details – which still remain obscure – of the attack in Madrid, it is obviously linked to the American occupation in Iraq. Presumably, those who ordered the attack intended to ‘punish’ the Spanish ‘crusaders’ for their participation in the occupation of Iraq. However, the war in Iraq today is far from being a simple movement of resistance to the occupation conducted by a few irreconcilable supporters of Saddam Hussein. On the contrary, this war is entering a new phase, that of a kind of international civil war which is spreading throughout the Middle East. In Iraq itself, there are increasingly frequent confrontations not only between the ‘resistance’ and US forces, but also between the ‘Saddamites’, Wahhabite Sunnis (the sect which gave birth to Bin Laden), Shiites, Kurds, and even Turkmen. In Pakistan, a discreet civil war is in progress, with the bomb attack against a Shiite procession (40 dead), and a large-scale military operation in progress as we write in Waziristan. In Afghanistan, all the reassuring declarations about the consolidation of the Kabul government cannot hide the fact that the latter’s writ runs no farther than Kabul itself, and that only with difficulty, while civil war continues to rage throughout the southern part of the country. In Israel and Palestine, the situation is going from bad to worse, as Hamas has started to use young children to carry its bombs. In Europe itself, the resurgence of violence between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo is a sign that the wars in ex-Yugoslavia have not come to an end, but have merely been smothered temporarily by the massive presence of occupying troops.
“We are no longer faced here with an imperialist war of the ‘classic’ sort, but with a general disintegration of society into warring bands. […] This tendency towards the disintegration of capitalist society will in no way hinder the strengthening of state capitalism, still less will it transform the imperialist states into society's protectors. Contrary to what the ruling class in the developed countries would like to make us believe – for example by calling the Spanish population to vote ‘against terrorism’ or ‘against war’– the great powers are in no way ‘ramparts’ against terrorism and social decomposition. On the contrary, they are the prime culprits. Let us not forget that today’s ‘Axis of Evil’ (Bin Laden and his kind) are yesterday’s ‘freedom fighters’ against the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR, armed and financed by the Western bloc. And this is not finished, far from it: in Afghanistan, the United States used the unsavoury warlords of the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban, and in Iraq the Kurdish peshmergas. Contrary to what they would like us to think, the capitalist state will be increasingly armoured against external military threats and internal centrifugal tendencies, and the imperialist powers – whether they be first-, fourth-, or nth-rate – will never hesitate to use warlords and terrorist gangs to their own advantage.
“The decomposition of capitalist society, precisely because of capitalism’s worldwide domination and its vastly superior dynamism in transforming society compared to all previous social forms, takes on more terrible forms than ever in the past. We will highlight just one of them here: the terrible obsession with death weighing on the young generations. Le Monde of 26th March quotes a Gaza psychologist: ‘a quarter of young boys over 12 have only one dream – to die as a martyr’. The article continues: ‘The kamikaze has become a respected figure in the streets of Gaza, and young children dress up in play explosive waistcoats in imitation of their elders’.
(“Bombing in Madrid: Capitalism sows death”, International Review 117)
The London bombings fully confirm this and demonstrated that this new phenomenon is not confined to the peripheries. The “general disintegration of society into warring bands” is now finding expression in the heartlands, and the warlords can now find those willing to defend their interests within the terrain of their enemy.
Fundamentalism: the product of capitalist decomposition.
The bombings in London have been used to try and divide the population, and the working class in particular, by developing suspicion and hatred against the Muslim community. Behind the soft words about the wonders of British ‘multiculturalism’ the state has spread the idea that the ‘Muslim community’ contains a dangerous threat to the whole of society. According to Tony Blair “it is not a clash of civilisations - all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it...its roots are not superficial, but deep, in the Madrassas of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life.
“This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion.” (Speech to the Labour Party national conference 16/7/05).
There are many analyses of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism around. The crude version, peddled in the mass media and by populist politicians, is that it is a clash between democracy, with its virtues of freedom and equality, and those who hate it. A more sophisticated version, peddled by the left, such as the SWP and Respect, is that the actions of the ‘West’, usually meaning the US and Britain, have built up a ‘swamp of hatred and despair’ that leads young men to see suicide bombing as the only way to get even. In this case, ‘analysis’, partly based on the truth, soon gives way to justification. Such explanations are essentially attempts to get workers to choose one imperialist faction over another, no matter how many crocodile tears are spilt over the dead and injured.
The growth of Islamic fundamentalism is a particular expression of some of the tendencies identified in the analysis of decomposition. In particular, it brings together the disintegration of imperialist struggle into factional gangsterism and the individual’s loss of hope: “To the ruined petty bourgeois, to the slum dwellers with no hope of a job, even to elements from the working class, it offers the mirage of a 'return' to the allegedly pure state founded by Muhammad, which supposedly protected the poor and prevented the rich from making too much profit. In other words, this state is presented as an 'anti-capitalist' social order. Typically, Islamist groups assert that they are neither capitalist nor socialist, but 'Islamic', and fight for an Islamic state on the model of the old Caliphate. But this whole argument makes a mockery of history: the original Muslim state existed long before the capitalist epoch. It was based on a form of class exploitation, but, like western feudalism, had not perfected the enslavement of man to profit in the way that capitalism has, nor could it have done within its historical limitation. Today, however, whenever radical Islamic groups take control of a state, they have no alternative but to become the overseers of capitalist social relations and thus to strive for the maximisation of national profit. Neither the Iranian mullahs nor the Taliban could escape from this iron law.
This perverted 'anti-capitalism' goes along with an equally perverted 'Muslim internationalism’: the radical Islamic groups of the world claim to owe no allegiance to any particular nation state and call for the unity of all Muslim brothers across the world. Here again both these groups and their bourgeois opponents portray them as something unique - as an ideology and a movement that transcends national frontiers to form a fearsome new 'bloc', threatening the West in a similar way to the old 'Communist' bloc. In part, this is because they are virtually inseparable from the international criminal networks: gun-running (which now almost certainly includes the trade in 'weapons of mass destruction' - chemical and nuclear means) and the drug trade. Afghanistan in particular is a pivotal link here… Within this, bin Laden's 'imperialist warlordism' might be seen by some as a new offshoot of 'globalisation' (i.e., transcending national barriers). But this is true only in so far as it expresses a certain tendency towards the disintegration of the weakest national units. The 'global' Muslim state can never exist, for it will always founder on the rock of competing Islamic bourgeoisies. This is why, in order to fight for this chimera, the 'mujahadeen' are always obliged to join in with the imperialist great game, which remains one of competing national states.
“The 'holy war' proclaimed by the Islamic gangs is really a cover for the old unholy war fought by competing imperialist powers.” (‘The resurgence of Islam: a symptom of the decomposition of capitalist social relations’, International Review 109).
What is most significant about Islamic fundamentalism is not its specific characteristics but what it shares with capitalism as a whole. In the final analysis it is not Islamic fundamentalism that produces despair and terror, but the despair and terror created by rotting capitalism that produces Islamic fundamentalism. In other parts of capitalism such despair and terror take other forms, such as the Japanese cult that released poison in the Tokyo underground. The Middle East is at the centre of the current deepening of decomposition because the loss of hope in the future and the imperialist barbarism that characterise capitalism as a whole coexist particularly strongly in this geographical area, reinforce each other and take the particular form of the suicide bomber. The suicide bomber is thus not the essence of Islamic fundamentalism but of decomposing capitalism.
Why was Britain the target of the first suicide bombings in Western Europe? As we have seen, those who want the working class to take sides in this imperialist struggle offer their reasons: For Blair there is the clash between democracy, freedom and its enemies. For the leftists there is the anger stirred up by Britain’s foreign policy and its link to the US above all else. For the Islamic fundamentalists themselves there is the Jihad against the ‘crusaders’ and the corrupt, godless West. For marxists, there are two aspects: imperialist strategy and the social situation, both of which have to be understood in the context of decomposition.
Following the collapse of the blocs in 1989, Britain’s imperialist policy has been to defend its interests by playing the US against Europe, since it wishes to be dominated by neither. It had some success in this during the Balkans war in the 1990s, but more recently has come under immense pressure. This was increased after the bombing of the Twin Towers and forced the British bourgeoisie to lean more towards the US than previously: “British policy has continued to be to position itself between the US and the European powers but, today, the point of equilibrium has moved… The tack to the US is the adaptation of the existing policy to new conditions” (‘British imperialism between a rock and a hard place’, World Revolution 280). The main part of the British ruling class backed the war with Iraq but with varying levels of concern over how close to get to the US. The Hutton and Butler inquiries that came out of the war were a means to put pressure on Blair not to get too close to Washington; they were never intended to get rid of him. However, Britain has been increasingly drawn into the chaos now reigning in Iraq and the unease within the ruling class has grown. The execution of the British hostage Ken Bigley was a sign that Britain had become a target. Fundamentalist websites warned that Britain would pay. The London bombings only confirm the fact shown in every war over the last fifteen years, that the main targets of war, the first victims, are ordinary people, workers above all, whether the killing is done in the name of ethnic cleansing, the defence of democracy, or Jihad.
One aspect of British imperialist strategy that the bourgeoisie is particularly discreet about is its part in the development of Islamic fundamentalism. In the 1980's the British secret service, along with the CIA, poured money into funding the jihadis against the Russians in Afghanistan. Then the likes of Bin Laden were ‘freedom fighters’, ‘heroes for freedom’. Jihad was not a word to strike fear into the population with, but something ‘noble’ to be encouraged and financed. As long as this ideology could recruit cannon fodder for the killing fields of Afghanistan it was financed. When the Russians withdrew at the end of the 1980s, we caught a glimpse of the dragon’s teeth they had sown, as these ‘noble gentlemen’ laid waste to those parts of Afghanistan that had not already been destroyed. And still the 'democratic West' gave money to the warlords in order to use them to defend their own interests.
The lessons taught by the CIA and MI5 in the ’80s were put to good use in the ’90s in the terror unleashed by the fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and Armed Islamic Groups (GIA) in Algeria. 50,000 were slaughtered, including the mass throat-slitting of train passengers and entire villages. The leaders and members of these extremist Islamic groups found sanctuary in England, and were allowed to go about their business: “As long as these individuals presented no threat to British National security, MI5 and MI6 were more than happy to have them here because they were a ready source of intelligence about what became known as 'political Islam’. From 1991 Algeria was embroiled in bloody civil war...Although the conflict spilled over into France, the British authorities embarked on a bold experiment by allowing opposition activists into the country” (The Observer 17/7/05). These fundamentalists were not simply a source of information; they were also a means to put pressure on French imperialism and other imperialisms in the Middle East and elsewhere. Thus, whilst Blair and the rest of the bourgeoisie warn of the dangers of 'evil extremists', it is they that gave birth to the warlords who today have turned on them.
It is no accident that it was in Britain that fundamentalist ideology was able to inspire the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. British capitalism has been the most affected by the last 30 years of crisis and has been unable to escape the disintegrating effects of decomposition. Since the late 1970s unemployment has increased and remained high, albeit hidden behind a mass of statistical manipulations. In some parts of the country generations have grown up with no prospect of any real work. Above all this has weighed on young people. The 1970's saw the development of the punk ideology of ‘no future’; the 1980s saw riots in several major cities, animated by the disaffected and despairing young. Twenty years later, the angry ideology and the open anger has gone, or rather has been turned inwards with significant numbers of young people raging against each other and life itself in a culture of violence where only gang loyalty links people together.
The ethnic minorities have fared even worse, enduring the highest rates of unemployment and the worst living conditions. Whole sections of society have been marginalised. Muslim communities have been ghettoised, especially in the North of England where there has been a deliberate policy of keeping communities separated and thus stoking up tensions. For the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie of Asian origin this has generated despair and hopelessness, which have spilled over into parts of the working class, especially the youth faced with unemployment.
The immediate response of the British ruling class to the bombings was to make a show of unity. This marked the start of a conscious campaign to draw the working class behind the ‘nation’ and forget any struggle for its own interests. The campaign also allowed Blair to try and quell some of the anxiety within the bourgeoisie at being drawn into the quagmire of Iraq. Beginning on the day of the bombing, there has been a sophisticated media campaign to rubbish any idea that the bombings have anything to do with Iraq. The 'unity' this has produced between the main political parties is an expression of the common understanding that the bombings express a very serious problem for the British state.
This 'unity' is unlikely to be long-lived as regards imperialist strategy because the bombings have accentuated the fears within the British bourgeoisie about the impact of the war. Despite all the talk of 'national unity' it is clear that the bombings express the weakness of British imperialism rather than its strength. And those in the British bourgeoisie opposed to the war are infuriated by the terrible problems that these bombings are generating and will generate for the control of its political life.
One expression of this concern, of the anger of a part of the ruling class, came only a week after the bombings in a report from a group of former senior Foreign Office, military, political and intelligence personal entitled Riding Pillion for Tackling Terrorism is a High-risk Policy. This refuted the claim that the bombings had nothing to do with Iraq: “There is no doubt that the situation over Iraq has imposed particular difficulties for the UK, and for the wider coalition against terrorism. It gave a boost to the Al-Qaeda network's propaganda, recruitment and fund raising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, and deflected resources and assistance that could have been deployed to assist the Karzi government and to bring Bin Laden to justice. Riding pillion with a powerful ally has proved costly in terms of British and US military lives, Iraqi lives, military expenditure, and the damage caused to the counter-terrorism campaign”. The recent leaked letter written in May last year by Sir Michael Jay, head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, expressed the same concern that British foreign policy would aid recruitment by ‘extremist’ organisations.
This situation can only increase the tension within the British ruling class. It sharpens the dilemma that British imperialism has had to endure for many years: the attempt to play the US against Europe has ended with Britain being squeezed between the two.
The immediate impact on the working class has been one of shock and disorientation. The war in Iraq has become ever more unpopular as ‘liberation’ has turned into nightmare, and there is real reflection in the class about the nature of the war. The bombing will initially hold back this reflection because of the terrible fear and uncertainty that has been generated. However, this is not likely to last very long. The initial response has not been marked by the nationalist and patriotic fervour that swept over the US after 9/11. Rather there is a sense of shock and very real fear. The ruling class has tried to use this to boost the image of the state as the only thing that can defend the population both against terrorism and a racist backlash. The fast pace of the campaign, with arrests and revelations announced daily, has reinforced the image of the state as the protector of the weak.
There has been much talk in the media about the spirit of the Blitz and the Second World War, of defending our way of life against the terrorists and so on. However, today we are not in the very depths of the counter-revolution, and people are not willing to be dragged to war. People are scared, confused, and disoriented. This is partly because the working class is only just beginning to find its path again and its sense of itself. They go to work because they have to, not because they are mobilised for democracy against terror. Amongst a minority there is active reflection on the situation they face, a situation that can take in the war as well. More widely there is a hidden, subterranean, development of consciousness underway, that may reveal itself unexpectedly as the attacks develop. This is the difference between a period of defeat and today.
The propaganda of the bourgeoisie has sought to calm the situation and to pacify workers and prevent them from acting and thinking on their own behalf. It portrays the authorities as being in control of the situation. This is their main concern, not the safety of the population.
The action of some of the London tube drivers was potentially very significant. On Thursday 21st the Bakerloo line and Northern Line were shut down because drivers refused to take the trains out after the bomb scares. But the RMT union soon got on top of the situation, stressing the need for armed police on the trains, for functioning radios in the drivers’ cabs etc. Bob Crow, the RMT leader, said that the union would defend any driver who refused to drive, thus isolating the workers action. So the unions managed to nip in the bud any general class thinking and action and turn it into a sectional aspect of civil defence.
The deepening of decomposition in the very centres of world capitalism shows how important if is for the proletariat to rediscover its class identity – which ultimately means seeing itself as a class with the only answer to this growing bloody chaos. The strike by workers at Gate Gourmet in early August, and the solidarity strike by workers at BA, are not only an inspiring example of what working class identity and solidarity are; they also showed that despite all the campaigns about ‘national unity’ after the bombings, workers are still ready to defend their interests as workers.
These bombings have raised the stakes for the working
class not only in Britain but also internationally. They show that if the class is unable to
develop its struggle to the level necessary to challenge capitalism, the future
will witness the heartlands plunging into the levels of chaos previously only
seen in Bosnia, Iraq or Africa.
World Revolution, 3/9/05.
[1] [116] See the statement on our website: “Execution at Stockwell, London: Today’s democratic ‘shoot to kill’ policy prepares tomorrows death squads”. However, his death isn’t really a problem since we have now been told that was an illegal immigrant.
[2] [117] See: “The decomposition of capitalism” in International Review 57.
On 17 August, to deafening media coverage, the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was begun. Despite the widespread portrayal of distressed settlers being forced to leave, this was generally presented as ‘a step towards peace’.
The plan to withdraw from Gaza is the work of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been praised by all the world’s leaders, from Bush to Schroeder, from Chirac to Blair. And behind their hypocritical sermons in favour of peace, each one of them was hiding their own imperialist interests. And despite all the criticisms of Sharon by the Israeli right – Sharon’s own Likud party as well as the religious parties – the retreat from Gaza serves Israel’s own imperialist interests very well.
The Israeli withdrawal from this tiny strip of land, home to a million and a half Palestinians, involves a mere 7,000 settlers. The Israeli state has paid a very high price, in both economic and military terms, for maintaining its presence in this tiny morsel of territory, which has no particular strategic value. Now the withdrawal will turn the Gaza Strip into an immense prison. In a context of terrible poverty and social chaos, the different armed Palestinian factions, both those of the Palestinian Authority and of Hamas, will vie to impose their rule. Meanwhile the Israeli army will keep the whole territory under close surveillance, intervening as and when necessary. The population of Gaza will continue to live in an atmosphere of instability, violence and despair, providing more and more new recruits to religious radicalism and terrorism
This fake step towards peace is summed up in the scorched earth policy of the Israeli state – destroy everything before you leave: houses, farms, irrigations, etc.
The essential aim of Sharon’s plan is to give an impression of good will, of peaceful intentions, that masks the Israeli state’s real offensive in the West Bank. Over the last 25 years, the Israeli-Jewish population of the occupied territories has more than tripled, and has now reached around 250,000 people. The number of Israelis installed in neighbourhoods built on the annexed municipal territories around East Jerusalem has risen fivefold in the same period, and now stands at around 200,000. Meanwhile the Sharon government has placed a whole series of settlements and towns on the ‘right’ side of the anti-terror Wall, starting with Gush Etzyon and followed by Kafr Abbuch and Nablus in the north, passing by Jerusalem west and east, and going as far as Hebron and Rahiya in the south. The whole West Bank is now carved up by this wall separating Israeli and Palestinian populations. Presented as a means of protection it is in reality a spearhead for the expansionist policy of the Israeli state. While recognising, on the express demand of the Bush administration, the existence of “Israeli population centres” on the West bank, it enables Sharon to put forward the real aims of his policy: “The government will do all it can to strengthen Israeli control over all the territories destined to be integrated into the State of Israel in the eventuality of a diplomatic accord”. Right now, behind the smokescreen of the withdrawal from Gaza, permission has been granted for around 640 housing units to be built, whereas at Gival Tal, a small colony near Alfei Menaske, no less than 1000 units have started to be constructed (Courrier Internationale 28.7.05). The Israeli bourgeoisie needs to control the West Bank to maintain its imperialist offensive; it is a geo-strategic axis of prime importance. This is the frontal zone with Jordan, but also with Lebanon and Syria (along with the Golan Heights). The permanent imperialist conflict between Israel and Syria makes the West Bank a vital stake in the game, and the sharpening of US/Israeli tensions with Iran can only make the situation worse.
For its part the Palestinian bourgeoisie, even though the Palestinian Authority has been weakened and divided after the death of its historic leader Arafat, can only react with increased violence to defend its own interests. Despite the current softening of tone by the most radical elements of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, such as Hamas, these factions will also be pushed into an increasingly warlike stance. The West Bank threatens to become a vast powder-keg, where both the Israeli and Palestinian populations will be subjected to growing violence and desperation. Such is the reality of peace in decomposing capitalism.
Tino, 24.8.05
After the July bombings in London, Tony Blair explained everything by referring to an “evil ideology”, and his government tried to deny that there was any connection between the London attacks and the war in Iraq. Many people were not convinced. In an ICM opinion poll (Guardian 19/7/5) 64% thought that the government’s decision to go to war in Iraq bore some degree of responsibility for the London bombings. In a Daily Mirror poll 85% thought there was a connection between government foreign policy and the July 7 attacks. Politicians’ expressions of sympathy have been treated with caution.
The groups and individuals of the extreme left – calling themselves socialists, Trotskyists or just Respect – tapped into this suspicion and blamed Blair and the invasion and occupation of Iraq for events in London. “Bush, Blair and their allies are ultimately responsible for the deaths in London” (Workers Power). “If the British government continues on the course Tony Blair has set, these will not be the only innocent people to suffer” (Socialist Worker). “The blood of the victims of the London bombs stains [Blair’s] hands, and is mixed with the blood of Fallujah’s dead” (Socialist Resistance). In the simple words of John Pilger in the New Statesman “The bombs of 7 July were Blair’s bombs”.
This opposition to the Blair government’s foreign policy is based on its association with the US. As with substantial other groupings within the ruling class, the leftists think that the relationship with the US is too close. As Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop The War Coalition, said “All roads lead back to the government’s uncritical identification with the US neoconservative agenda” (Guardian 27/7/5). Socialist Worker (13/7/5) criticised “the disastrous consequences of hitching this country to George Bush’s wars in the Middle East” and thought that “By associating this country with the US puppet regime in Iraq … Blair increases the threat to everyone who lives here.”
While a Guardian editorial (20/7/5) politely suggests that “it could still be useful to draw up a timetable for ending the occupation”, the leftists’ demand for “Troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East now” only differs in terms of scale and timing. A major section of the British bourgeoisie is convinced that British imperialism should pursue an independent line, in particular, one not tied up with a US policy from which British capitalism gains little. ‘Troops Out’ can only be a measure proposed to capitalist governments, which they will adopt if it serves their interests and ignore if it doesn’t. Reform of foreign policy will never be in the interests of the working class. In all this the leftists show their commitment to the nationalist framework of capitalism.
Having made the link between the London bombings and the war in Iraq, the leftists show how they support massacres and indiscriminate murder.
The conflict in Iraq does not consist in isolated skirmishes but, as the leftists tell us, it’s like the London bombings every day. As an informed individual was reported saying in The Times (4/1/5) “I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people”. He thought that “People are fed up after two years without improvement” and that “People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something.” The individual in question was General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq’s new intelligence services, a leading figure in the ‘US puppet regime’. For this eminent bourgeois figure it is logical for suffering humanity to turn to the nationalist cause, to an Iraqi capitalism free of foreign influence. You would not expect someone in his position to consider that workers have material interests, class interests that are not going to be met by a ‘foreigner-free’ regime any more than they are in occupied Iraq. The leaders of the Iraqi resistance have pretensions to becoming a future Iraqi government; the vast majority of the 200,000 are, as in any capitalist military force, disposable foot-soldiers, doomed to die in a nationalist campaign from which they have nothing to gain.
George Galloway (Socialist Worker 13/8/5) wrote that “The height of treason is to put the people of this country at risk of attack and to send young men and women, recruited from the dole queues, to kill and be killed on a lie”. Yet it is the same nationalist lies that leftists use against the ‘people who are fed up’ in Iraq - in order to kill and be killed. They agree with Iraq’s intelligence director that workers must forget their class interests and follow the nationalist path of their exploiters. Workers Power call for “Victory to the Iraqi resistance” where Galloway is more flowery: “These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable.”
But, having made the connection between the war in Iraq and the bombs in London, at a critical moment there is denial. To take a typical example, Workers Power describes the situation in the Middle East over the last 15 years - the Gulf War, the sanctions against Iraq, the violence of Israel - and insists: “These actions give rise to heroic guerrilla wars of resistance and national liberation but also to desperate and self-defeating acts such as the London bombings.” To make sure you get the message they say “We do not for one minute confuse indiscriminate attacks against civilians, whether carried out in London or Iraq, with this justified Iraqi resistance to the occupation forces”.
Yet what could be more ‘desperate and self-defeating’ for workers than to line up in the cause of Iraqi nationalism behind a faction of the bourgeoisie? Whether it’s trading under the name of ‘government’ or ‘resistance’ the interests of Iraqi capitalism are in conflict with those it exploits, oppresses and wants to die in its name. And ‘indiscriminate attacks against civilians’ are one of the main weapons in any capitalist military campaign, as the Iraqi ‘insurgents’ have very amply shown.
When Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida deputy, said, after the London bombings, that “you spilled blood like rivers in our countries and we exploded the volcanoes of wrath in your countries” he was, like any other bourgeois propagandist, lumping all classes together. The video of suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, recently broadcast, is in the same vein, with a naïve faith in democracy: “Your democratically elected governments perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you responsible”. When Blair wants people to rally behind ‘British values’ he’s making a classic call for national unity. Everything put forward by the leftists shows that their activities are equally determined by the same nationalist framework, and are implacably opposed to the struggle of the working class.
Car 31/8/5
As with the Bam earthquake which killed tens of thousands in Iran two years ago, as with the Tsunami which left hundreds of thousands dead in the Indian ocean region in December, so in New Orleans, in Mississippi and Alabama, the capitalist system has turned a natural disaster into a social disaster.
The nightmarish scenes unfolding in the USA make this clearer than ever. This is not something that can be explained away by vague talk of underdevelopment and global poverty. This catastrophe, whose toll of death and destruction cannot yet be calculated, is happening in the richest, most powerful nation on earth. It is proof that the present social order, for all its technological and material resources, can only drag humanity towards its ruin.
In every single one of its aspects, the disaster unleashed by Hurricane Katrina is an indictment of capitalism and class society.
In the origins of the disaster. The catastrophe that has all but destroyed the city of New Orleans, a unique memento of all that is best in American culture, has been predicted for a long time. An environmental study of the destruction of the wetlands around New Orleans – which could have provided protection against the massive water surges that engulfed the city – concluded that the city could be devastated by an ‘ordinary’ hurricane, let alone a force five storm. In 2003, the US government reversed its previous policy of ‘no net loss’ of wetlands, opening the door to massive ‘development’ and get-rich-quick commercial building. Warnings were also made about the perilous state of the levees built to protect the city. Again studies were made into this, but again the state had other priorities. As the Times-Picayune reported on September 2: “That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.”
And this is not even to begin on the subject of global warming: there is growing evidence that the heating up of the world’s oceans – the product of capitalism’s inbuilt need for unrestrained ‘economic growth’ – is at the root of the increasingly extreme weather conditions being felt all over the planet. The US government can hardly bear to acknowledge that this problem even exists, let alone take measures to counter it.
In the fiasco of the ‘evacuation’ before the storm, which reveals a complete lack of planning and a total failure to provide resources to the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society. All that the local and national state could do faced with the coming storm was to tell people to flee. Not a thought was given to how the poor in New Orleans and in the rest of the region were actually to get away, given that they didn’t have enough cars, or the money to pay for train or bus tickets. Even more telling was the abandoning of whole hospitals and old peoples’ homes. The sight of elderly patients left to die in the open air, as those around them desperately tried to help, provided some of the most heart-wrenching images from the disaster. This is the price of being old and poor in the 21st century.
In the farce of ‘rescue’ after the storm. For days, those who were left behind have been enduring hellish conditions, in the streets, in the ruins, in the Superdome where they were told to take shelter, lacking food, water, protection from the sweltering heat and basic sanitation, while the mighty US ‘authorities’ seemed incapable of reaching them either by land, sea or water. The administration itself called the delay “unacceptable” but has so far offered no explanation. And once again, social class determined survival, as can be seen by the contrast between the conditions imposed on the Superdome refugees and a privileged group housed at the Hyatt Hotel. “Gordon Russell of the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted pointedly that these hellish conditions “stood in stark contrast to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New Orleans Centre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could get in lounged in relative comfort.” A line of state police armed with assault rifles drove the crowds of homeless refugees back from the entrance to the facility”. Later these same police ensured that these VIPs were given precedence over other survivors when it came to being evacuated; and it turned out that most of them were officials of the mayor, Ray Nagin.
On the other hand, when it came to evacuating the Superdome, no sign of such generosity. According to the World Socialist Website: “While Bush was conducting his tour, the death toll in New Orleans continued to mount rapidly. Mass evacuations have begun at the Louisiana Superdome, the largest emergency shelter for displaced people, after the arrival of a huge National Guard convoy escorting trucks loaded with food and water and hundreds of buses. But the buses dumped many of the refugees only a few miles away, at a cluster of overpasses on Interstate 10 where thousands of homeless people were gathered in the broiling sun. At least a half dozen deaths were reported among the overpass refugees” (3.9.2005).
In the future economic and ecological consequences of the disaster: The task of ‘rebuilding’ the region – an area larger than the UK and with some of the poorest areas in the US – has been much talked about already, but the US was already sliding inexorably into open economic crisis before the storm, and the disaster is already showing clear signs of making it worse. This has so far been expressed in the sharp rise in oil prices which is resulting from the huge blow to supplies: the storm has ripped a hole into the oil infrastructure with 30 oil rigs lost, another 20 broken from their moorings, and the refinery network shut down. This helped the oil companies make a fast buck – their share prices rose in the immediate aftermath of the storm. But the longer term effects of these oil price rises on the world economy are already causing real concern to the bourgeoisie’s economic experts.
The hurricane is also threatening further ecological calamities: the coastal area was already known as “cancer ally” before the storm because of the concentration of the refineries and chemical plants. Now this has been mauled by the storm and could lead to whole areas of New Orleans and elsewhere being left uninhabitable. Commentators spoke of a “witches’ brew” of toxic waste being carried by the flood waters, greatly increasing the danger of disease for the stranded survivors.
In the diversion of social resources into war: A point made over and over again by the victims: the USA can mobilise its army to invade a country thousands of miles away, but not to rescue other Americans? The gruesome priority given to war over the protection of human life was expressed in the fact that funds to pay for the Iraq adventure were withdrawn from budgets aimed at improving New Orleans’ defences; and massive amounts of equipment and manpower from the National Guard were also siphoned off to Iraq, which must partly explain the slowness of the rescue efforts.
In putting private property before life: And how many of the troops that could have been spared were sent in to restore ‘law and order’ rather than bring help to the needy? Certainly the forces of repression arrived well in advance of the forces of aid. They were accompanied by a huge media campaign about looting, shooting, and raping. No doubt criminal gangs were trying to take advantage of the situation, no doubt desperation drove some into irrational and destructive acts, but the cynicism of the ruling class reached new heights as it launched a systematic media campaign to turn attention away from the failure of the State, at every level, onto those desperately trying to survive in the ruins of New Orleans. Suddenly the victims were to blame for their own sorrows, and instead of sending any help the ruling class had the pretext for sealing off New Orleans, abandoning rescue efforts and sending guns, armoured cars and troops instead of water and food
Let’s be clear: the majority of ‘looters’ were ordinary people facing starvation and utter misery, taking what they could from abandoned stores; in many cases they unselfishly shared out the goods they found. Web logs based on first hand experience recounted innumerable acts of basic human solidarity, by those who had themselves lost everything towards others whose age, injuries or illness put them in an even worse state. And while the overall impact of the disaster was to create chaos, there were real efforts by people to organise impromptu aid on the spot. On TV there were images of ‘looters’ giving out food. A group of doctors at a conference on HIV organised a clinic in one of the affected areas. In the hospitals health workers have worked to maintain care faced with terrible circumstances. Thus, we can see that whilst all the ruling class can offer is crude stunts and repression, it has been the working class and the dispossessed who have put solidarity with those suffering above their own safety.
Much scorn has been poured on Bush and his cronies, both inside and outside America, for his inept speeches, empty gestures, and slow-motion response to the disaster. And certainly this new crisis is adding to the woes of an administration which was already becoming increasingly unpopular. But ‘anti-Bushism’ is utterly simplistic and can easily be recuperated by the other bourgeois parties in the USA, and by America’s imperialist rivals. The excesses of the present gang in the White House – its incompetence, corruption, irrationality and callousness – only reflects the underlying reality of US capitalism: a declining superpower presiding over a ‘world order’ that is sinking into chaos. And this situation in turn reflects the terminal decay of capitalism as a social system which rules the whole planet. We are living under a mode of production whose continuation threatens the survival of the human species. However much they may criticise Bush or America, the rest of the ruling class has no alternative to the blind march towards destruction through war, famine and ecological disaster. Hope for humanity does not lie with any faction of the exploiting class, but with those who are always the first victims of the system’s wars and disasters: the exploited class, the proletariat. Our solidarity, our indignation, our collective resistance, our efforts to understand the real nature of the present system – these are the seeds of a society in which labour, science and human creativity will be no longer be in the service of war and profit, but of life and its enhancement.WR, 3/9/05
The solidarity shown by the workers at BA and Gate Gourmet is an example to the whole working class. The article below, written by the ICC shortly after the strike by BA workers, draws out the main lessons of this action. These deserve to be studied and understood by everyone who really wants to defend the working class. The weeks since then have provided a lesson of a different kind, but one that is equally important and worthy of study. It is an example of how the ruling class works together against the working class.
The bosses of Gate Gourmet have played the card of financial realism. They point to their losses in recent years and the predicted loss of some £25m this year and argue that without job cuts and changes in working practices the company will have to go into administration. They have also taken the offensive, attacking “outdated and inefficient work practices” (Gate Gourmet website) where workers are paid “a full day’s pay for half a day’s work” (ibid). They have victimised the most militant workers and gone to court to try and stop all picketing at their premises. This has bought accusations of bringing American work practices into Britain, ignoring the fact that British Airways created the whole situation by outsourcing the provision of meals in order to cut costs in the late 1990s. In fact the attacks have nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with the economic situation. As we show in our article, the reality is that every company is under intense and unsustainable pressure as the economic crisis of capitalism gets worse. They can only survive by doing each other down and, above all, by increasing the exploitation of the working class by cutting wages and worsening working conditions. In this situation making a deal with the bosses almost always means accepting something a little bit worse than the time before. Since the job of the union is to make these deals they inevitably end up on the same side as the bosses, working hand in glove with them. This can be seen clearly in the actions of the TGWU.
Before the unofficial action the TGWU was engaged in protracted talks with Gate Gourmet: “Talks have been ongoing with Gate Gourmet for many months in order to improve the business. During this time the T&G, has played an active role in meeting the business needs” (TGWU website). Following the strike they suddenly discovered that “Gate Gourmet had planned this action for some time” (ibid). When the workers took action to defend themselves and their fellow workers at BA showed real, practical solidarity, the union denounced their ‘unlawful’ action, and, in the words of Tony Woodley, head of the TGWU, took “appropriate action” to end the strike (letter from the TGWU to BA quoted in the Guardian 19/08/05) - although this is not mentioned on the union’s website. With the BA workers going back to work and the Gate Gourmet workers sacked the union began to sound militant. The bosses at Gate Gourmet and BA were warned of further action if workers were victimised. At the same time the union continued “working hard to find a settlement” (ibid), even though Gate Gourmet was adamant that 600 or more workers had to go. The workers are now isolated from real solidarity, stuck on a hill while the lorries of Gate Gourmet thunder past. Fake solidarity, the solidarity of the phrase, of the fiery resolution and the passionate union boss’s speech takes its place. Tony Woodley has launched a campaign for the legalisation of solidarity “within the framework of the law…subject to regulations on balloting and notice that regulate other industrial disputes”, although, of course “This is not to argue in favour of the sort of ‘wildcat’ action taken last Thursday” (“Solidarity will have to be legalised” by Tony Woodley in the Guardian 16/08/05).
Behind the company and the union bosses stand the government and the state. The government has not taken sides, other than to regret the ‘disruption’ caused, while letting it be known that it is working ‘behind the scenes’ for a settlement. The courts dispense words of wisdom about protecting lawful business and the right to protest. This pretence of impartiality and concern for law and order hides the fact that such law and order is the ‘law’ and ‘order’ of the ruling class. Throughout its history the working class has only made real progress when it has challenged the domination of the ruling class. Its real struggle has always been outlawed and its militants always portrayed as thugs and bullies. The Labour MPs now expressing support are happy to do so because they know that the real potential of the workers struggle has been defeated.
The bosses, the unions and the state have come together to defeat the workers. They want the working class to learn the lesson that class struggle, initiated and controlled by the working class, is futile and that only the unions can defend them. The working class, on the contrary, must draw an entirely different lesson. That lesson is simply: Know your enemy. North 31/08/05
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The media – the public voice of the state and the ruling class - have been venting their fury against the Heathrow strikers. How dare the workers there put class solidarity above the profits of the company? Don’t they know that things like workers’ solidarity and class struggle are out of date? All that sort of thing went out of fashion in the 70s didn’t it? According to an executive from one of BA’s rivals, quoted in the Sunday Times (13 August): “In many ways aviation is the last unreformed industry…It is like the docks, the mines or the car industry were in the 1970s”. Why won’t these Jurassic workers get wise to the fact that the principle of today’s society is ‘every man for himself’, not ‘workers of the world unite’?
It’s strange though how this ‘new’ philosophy of freedom for every separate individual doesn’t prevent the bosses from demanding absolute obedience from the wage slaves. Some media voices, it is true, have been a tad critical of Gate Gourmet’s overt shoot-to-kill methods: when the food workers held a meeting to discuss how to respond to a management ploy aimed at their jobs, the meeting was locked in by security goons, and 600 workers – even those off sick or on holiday – were sacked on the spot for taking part in an unofficial action, some of them by megaphone. This is pretty high handed, but it’s just a more open expression of a management attitude that is increasingly widespread. Workers at Tesco are facing the abolition of sick pay for the first three days off – other companies are looking with interest at this new ‘reform’. Warehouse workers are being electronically tagged to make sure that not a second of company time is wasted. The present political climate – when we are all supposed to accept any amount of police harassment in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’ – will only increase the bosses’ arrogance.
These attacks are not down to this or that set of bosses being especially ‘greedy’, or adopting ‘American-style’ methods. The growing brutality of attacks on workers’ living and working conditions is the only way the capitalist class can respond to the world economic crisis. Wages must be kept down, productivity kept up, pensions slashed, unemployment pay reduced, because every firm and every country is involved in a desperate struggle to out-sell its rivals on a glutted world market.
And faced with these attacks, the solidarity of the workers is our only defence. The baggage handlers and other staff at Heathrow who walked out when hearing about the mass sackings showed a perfect understanding of this. They themselves have been subjected to the same kinds of attacks and they have been involved in similar struggles. The immediate effectiveness of their strike immediately revealed the power of the workers when they take united and determined action. It is the only basis for forcing the bosses to reinstate the sacked workers, and it will make airport bosses hesitate about launching similar attacks in the near future. Isolated in one category, workers are easy prey for the ruling class. The moment the struggle begins to spread to other workers, the picture is transformed.
But there’s an even more important meaning to workers’ solidarity.
In a society that is disintegrating all around us, where ‘every man for himself’ takes the form of terrorist bombs, racist assaults, gangsterism and random violence of all kinds, the solidarity of the workers across all trade, religious, sexual or national divisions provides the only antidote to this system, the only starting point for the creation of a different society, one based on human need and not the hunt for profit. Faced with a system sinking into generalised warfare and self-destruction, it is no exaggeration to say that class solidarity is the only true hope for the survival of the human race.
That this is by no means a vain hope becomes clearer when you look beyond the borders of Britain. Over the past two years, there has been a growing revival of workers’ struggles after years of disarray. In the most important of them – the French workers’ struggles against attacks on pensions in 2003, the German car workers’ fight against redundancies – the element of solidarity has been fundamental. These movements confirm that the international working class has not disappeared and is not defeated.
Naturally the media have been trying to hide the significance of the solidarity actions at Heathrow. They started talking about the family ties between the food workers and the baggage handlers and other airport staff. These do exist but while the majority of the food workers are from an Indian background, the majority of the baggage handlers are ‘white’. In short, this was authentic class solidarity, cutting across all ethnic divisions.
The news broadcasts also tried to undermine the sympathy that other workers might feel for the airport employees by shining a spotlight on the sufferings of passengers whose flights were disrupted by the strike. When you’ve spent the best part of a year sweating away at a job of work, it’s certainly no joke to find that your holiday plans have been thrown into chaos as well. Explaining their actions to other workers and the population in general is a task that all workers have to take on when they go into struggle. But they also have to resist the hypocritical media blackmail which always seeks to make them the villains of the piece.
If the ruling class doesn’t want us to recognize class solidarity when we see it, there’s another truth it tries to obscure: that workers’ solidarity and trade unionism are no longer the same thing.
The methods used in this struggle were a direct challenge to the union rule book:
- the Gate Gourmet workers decided to hold a general meeting in their canteen in order to discuss the latest management manoeuvre. This was an unofficial assembly, held on company time. The very idea of holding general meetings where you discuss and take decisions goes against all official union practices;
- the other airport staff equally ignored these official guidelines by striking without ballots; and they further defied the union rulebook by engaging in ‘secondary’ action.
These kinds of action are dangerous for the ruling class because they threaten to take workers beyond the control of the unions, which have now become the ‘official’ – i.e. state-recognised - organs for keeping the class struggle under control. And in the recent period, there has been a steady increase in ‘wildcat’ actions of this type: the last major dispute at Heathrow, numerous strikes in the post; and at the same time as the latest Heathrow struggle, there were unofficial strikes among the bus drivers of Edinburgh and at the Ford foundry in Leamington Spa.
In the case of Heathrow, the TGWU succeeded in keeping a lid on the situation. Officially, it had to repudiate the unofficial walk-outs and urge the workers back to work. But with the help of ‘revolutionary’ groups like the SWP, the T and G has managed to present the struggle as being about ‘union busting’, identifying the victimisation of militant workers – which was certainly part of Gate Gourmet’s strategy – with an attack on the union. This makes it easier for the rank and file union reps – most of who genuinely think that they are acting on behalf of their fellow workers – to keep the struggle inside the union framework.
But what’s brewing underneath these appearances is not a struggle to ‘defend the unions’, but increasingly massive movements in which workers will confront the trade union machine as their first obstacle. In order to build the widest possible class solidarity in and through the struggle, workers will face the need to develop their own general assemblies open to all workers, and to elect strike committees answerable only to the assemblies. Militant workers who understand this perspective now should not remain isolated, but should begin to get together to discuss it in preparation for the battles of the future.
WR, 15/8/05.
The abiding image of the 2005 Labour Party conference is not of rousing speeches by the party leaders, nor of the latest episode in the Blair-Brown soap opera. It is of 82-year-old party member and refugee from Nazi persecution, Walter Wolfgang, being forcibly ejected from the hall after shouting “nonsense” at Jack Straw when the latter was pontificating about Iraq. Later, Wolfgang was prevented from re-entering the conference with the Prevention of Terrorism Act being used against him.
Despite an official apology, this incident has led many in the party to lament that Labour under Blair has been hi-jacked by control freaks, that it’s no longer the party it once was. The Guardian (1.10.05) published letters comparing Wolfgang’s treatment to the way Old Labour used to do things. KE Smith of Huddersfield gets quite wistful about it: “Does anyone remember (Harold) Wilson’s way of responding to hecklers? He would let them have their say and then launch an intelligent and pointed reply. Wilson was not only a very witty man but also a profoundly democratic Labour prime minister who avoided being dragged into a misguided US-led war”.
The next letter, however, puts a rather different slant on these Good Old Days. It’s from family members of the old anarchist campaigner, Nicolas Walter:
“There is nothing new in the treatment meted out to Walter Wolfgang, and nothing new in the intolerance shown by New Labour to anti-war protestors. In 1966 Nicolas Walter heckled Harold Wilson during the Labour Party conference in protest at the support given by the UK government to US behaviour in Vietnam. He got as far as shouting ‘hypocrite’ before being bundled out. He was arrested and charged with ‘indecency in church’ – Harold Wilson was speaking in a church, which gave him protection under the 1860 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act. The only difference is in the legal justification given for this absurd and heavy-handed suppression of hecklers. In those days, it was even more heavy-handed. Nicolas Walter was imprisoned for two months”.
A timely reminder that The Good Old Days of Labour as a working class and socialist party are no less mythical than the Garden of Eden. If ‘Old Labour’ means the days of Wilson and Callaghan, then it was Old Labour which confronted the striking seamen in 1966, which maintained Britain’s role as loyal lieutenant of US imperialism, not only in Vietnam but all over the globe, and which in 1969 wanted to crush working class resistance through the In Place of Strife proposals. These prefigured Tory legislation on strikes and solidarity action and were only withdrawn when the unions agreed to police workers’ actions more forcefully. It was Old Labour in partnership with the unions that brought in the Social Contract which cut wages and, along with attacks on the public sector, provoked the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1979.
But then maybe the real Good Old Days were the 1930s and 1940s, when the Labour Party and especially its left wing led the fight against appeasement, championed anti-fascism, and then, after the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, rewarded the working class by nationalising the mines and the railways and brought in the National Health Service? Wasn’t the Labour party a true socialist party then?
Yes, if you swallow the line that socialism means defending the national interest in imperialist wars, if it means state control of a capitalist economy, if it means ruthlessly suppressing any independent movement of the working class as a threat to the war effort or the post-war reconstruction. Labour in the 1930s and 40s was a crucial asset for the capitalist system. It alone could mobilise workers for a second round of im-perialist butchery by peddling the lie that the only way to oppose Hitlerism was for workers to line up with their own capitalist state. It alone could introduce the post-war ‘reforms’, such as the NHS, which could put the lid on working class discontent after six years of sacrifice. And it alone could bring in the state capitalist measures needed to shore up Britain’s ailing economy during the reconstruction period. This was the ‘true socialist’ party which committed Britain to developing nuclear weapons as part of the US military bloc, which defended the remains perialist butchery by peddling the lie that the only way to oppose Hitlerism was for workers to line up with their own capitalist state. It alone could introduce the post-war ‘reforms’, such as the NHS, which could put the lid on working class discontent after six years of sacrifice. And it alone could bring in the state capitalist measures needed to shore up Britain’s ailing economy during the reconstruction period. This was the ‘true socialist’ party which committed Britain to developing nuclear weapons as part of the US military bloc, which defended the remains of the Empire in Malaysia, Aden and Palestine, and which sent in troops to break strikes by dockers and other workers who were not prepared to tamely accept the demands of post-war austerity.
But what about the adoption of Clause Four in 1918, didn’t that commit the Labour party to socialism, and wasn’t it a terrible betrayal of party principles when it was ditched under New Labour?
This is what a real socialist paper of the time, Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers’ Dreadnought, had to say about the role of the Labour in the wake of the First World War:
“The social patriotic parties of reform, like the British Labour Party, are everywhere aiding the capitalists to maintain the capitalist system; to prevent it from breaking down under the shock which the Great War has caused it, and the growing influence of the Russian revolution. The bourgeois social patriotic parties, whether they call themselves Labour or Socialist, are everywhere working against the communist revolution, and they are more dangerous to it than the aggressive capitalists because the reforms they seek to introduce may keep the capitalist regime going for some time to come. When the social patriotic parties come into power, they fight to stave off the workers’ revolution with as strong a determination as that displayed by the capitalists, and more effectively, because they understand the methods and tactics and something of the idealism of the working class” (21 February 1920).
‘Social patriotic’ was a term used by revolutionaries at the time to describe those parties or political tendencies which had helped to recruit the working class for the capitalist war of 1914-18, above all by claiming that dying for King and Country was somehow in the interests of socialism and the working class. The Labour Party had played the role of recruiting sergeant with enthusiasm. This was the decisive moment in its passage from the working class to the bourgeoisie, and when a party takes that fateful step, there is no going back. As the Dreadnought said, the social patriots proved this during the revolutionary upheavals that were provoked by the war. In Germany, in 1918-19, the Social Democratic Party openly acted as the bloodhound of the counter-revolution, using the army and proto-fascist gangs to crush workers’ uprisings and assassinate revolutionary militants like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In Britain, the Labour Party was faced with massive unrest, but not open revolution. Its response was to try to neutralise the “growing influence of the Russian revolution” by offering a fake socialism which did not call for the destruction of the capitalist state and which did not criticise the fundamentals of capitalism: wage labour and production for the market. Clause Four, calling for the nationalisation of the economy by the existing state, was an ideological sop to the workers, while at the same time proposing nothing more radical than the ‘war socialism’ which the capitalist states had already adopted in order to engage more effectively in the imperialist carnage.
If the Labour Party definitively became an adjunct of the capitalist state in 1914, that doesn’t mean that it had enjoyed a true Golden Age prior to the war. It had been formed during the mid-1900s as the political wing of a trade union machinery that was itself being more and more incorporated into the capitalist system. At a time when the growth of opportunism was becoming a real plague in the international workers’ movement, preparing the ground for the betrayal of 1914, the working class in Britain did not need a new opportunist party, but one that would defend the internationalist and revolutionary principles of socialism. The Russian revolution of 1905, which saw the first workers’ soviets, had shown that a new epoch in the class struggle was dawning. The Labour Party, which did not even claim to be in favour of socialism when it was first formed, was to show itself to be totally incapable of defending the interests of the working class when war and revolution put it to the test.
When it comes to defending the interests of capitalism against the needs of the working class, when it comes to hypocritical apologies for imperialist war, there is nothing new about Blair and Brown’s New Labour. As a party of capital, Labour cannot be pressured or reformed into serving the interests of the working class. Faced with a deepening world economic crisis, Labour will continue to mount savage attacks on working class living standards; faced with the growing threat of imperialist wars, Labour will call on workers to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the national interest. If they are to defend themselves from all these dangers, workers will have to overcome all sentiment and all illusions: the Labour Party is their deadly enemy, and the day will come when they will have to dismantle it along with the rest of the capitalist state.
WR 1/10/5
In comparison to the economies of countries like France and Germany the British economy is supposed to be doing spectacularly well under the prudent direction of Gordon Brown. Inflation is ‘under control’, there’s ‘full employment’, low interest rates and, most recently, high levels of foreign investment, as well as the rest of the litany of claims that Labour always trots out.
The Brownian miracle is now coming swiftly to an end. This is not because of economic mismanagement (as the Tories claim) but as one national expression of an underlying international economic crisis that affects every part of the world economy. The basic reality of the declining British economy is coming back to the surface: rising inflation, rising unemployment and slowing growth. In fact, beyond the appearances so carefully crafted by the bourgeoisie, nothing has changed. And now even surface appearances are looking grim for capitalism.
For the last few years, one of the most important factors giving rise to the sense of ‘economic prosperity’ has been inflation in the housing market. Housing costs are not counted in every measure of inflation, so it has been possible for the rate of inflation in the cost of homes to be 20% a year or more, without that affecting the official rate of inflation. The reason that the bourgeoisie has encouraged this phenomenon is that it has created a sense of increasing wealth for homeowners, which in Britain is an exceptionally high, and still increasing, proportion of households.
This has provided the basis for a consumer driven stimulus to the economy. But, no real wealth is actually created by the process of inflation – the real value of homes has remained exactly the same. All that this process has given rise to is an increasing indebtedness on the part of consumers, alongside the appearance of wealth with rising property prices.
The Governor of the Bank of England maintains that only a fool would predict what is going to happen to house prices. This may be true, but we can at least predict that they will go up, stay the same or go down. All these possibilities are catastrophic. If the prices remain more or less constant then it implies stagnation in the market, as we have now. If the prices fall radically then many people – very many indeed – will be ruined because they have bought into the illusion that inflation in the housing market creates wealth. If the prices go up again then the situation we have now will simply be re-created in due course, but at a higher level of prices – and that would be more dangerous still. There is evidence that the housing market bubble is coming to an end.
“British net housing wealth has declined for the first time in a decade because of rising mortgage debt and falling house prices, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.
The net wealth tied up in British homes dropped by more than £60 billion in the second quarter. This was because falling house prices wiped close to £40 billion off the value of the housing stock and total mortgage debt rose by over £20 billion. The last time net housing wealth fell was in the fourth quarter of 1995.” (Financial Times, 20/8/5)
The impact on the economy as a whole is not lost on the bourgeoisie:
“Prof John Muellbauer of Nuffield College, Oxford, says a decline in housing wealth is already slowing the economy: ‘The decline in the growth rate of consumer expenditure is exactly what I would have expected and it has got further to run.’” (ibid)
The crisis over house prices is very serious in itself, but it is by no means the only cloud on the horizon for the bourgeoisie. In response to the slow down in consumer expenditure, the Bank of England put down the interest rate by 0.25 per cent in August, in order to stimulate the economy. It had been widely expected that it would do just that, and it would be just the first step in reducing the interest rate. But the inflation figures produced since then show inflation increasing to an extent that the Bank will be very constrained in making further reductions. Even if the increase in the official rate of inflation is not dramatic, the combination of increasing inflation and slowing growth is a very serious problem that the bourgeoisie has not had to face for over a decade.
The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England has the responsibility for setting interest rates. If they want to stimulate the economy they put the interest rate down, and if they want to choke off inflation they put it up (earlier in this year, for instance, they put it up to choke off further inflation in the housing market which they rightly regarded as extremely dangerous and de-stabilising). In September they left the interest rate as it was, because they could not decide whether the danger from inflation or the danger from declining growth was the more threatening.
The bourgeoisie like to blame the pension crisis (which exists in every country) on the problem of demographics: people live longer and the ratio of idle older people to productive young people is getting worse. There is no reason to deny that these problems do indeed accentuate the problem facing the bourgeoisie on the level of pensions. However, a recent report that deals with the question of demographics very seriously, underlines their importance and also shows that they are not the actual source of the problem. This report shows that the fact that people are living longer has not been factored in to the calculations of the deficits of company pension schemes, so that all the figures produced so far represent an underestimation of the problem.
“A British man born in 1950 will live, on average, to just two months short of his 90th birthday, with far reaching implications for pensions and the definition of old age, according to data released yesterday.
The figures from the Continuous Mortality Investigations Bureau should have a broad impact on company pension schemes that are already struggling with large funding deficits.
Most corporate pension schemes base their liability estimates on outdated projections for longevity.”
Since pensions have to be funded from future production the collapse of pension schemes simply reflects the bourgeoisie’s estimate of their own future. Since the future is bleak so is the outlook for pensions. This, no doubt combined with the issues of increasing longevity and demographics, is the reason for the collapse in annuity rates. An annuity is what is purchased at the point at which someone retires, if they are in a money purchase pension scheme. It is the amount you are paid until you die. It is what most people refer to as their ‘pension’ – the money they are supposed to live on. Although the precise figures can differ according to which article one is reading in the press, the basic situation is that £100,000 would buy an annuity of £9,000 a decade or so ago, and now will buy an annuity of £4,500.
The bourgeoisie cannot possibly do anything serious about this. This is a deep, structural expression of the crisis of capitalism that cannot be remedied by any means at all. Consequently they are putting forward meaningless ideological campaigns about having to ‘work until you drop’. In fact many older people would no doubt prefer the dignity of working to complete pauperisation. However, the main employers’ organisations have made it very clear that they will not employ older people. On the other hand they do support a rise in the state pension age – to start at 70. What people are supposed to do in between being kicked out of work and starting to receive their pension is not explained.
Economic difficulties experienced by the bourgeoisie in France and Germany has allowed the British bourgeoisie to claim that their economy is an example to all, and that it shows the value of their economic ‘reforms’. In reality the British economy is no better placed than those of Germany or France. The increasingly open manifestations of the crisis show that. These will be very important stimuli to reflection in the working class and, potentially, a spur to the development of workers’ struggles.
Hardin 30/9/05.
The dispute at Gate Gourmet has been brought to an end. The 670 catering staff were sacked in August for taking unofficial action when they heard of the scale of the attacks their employers were planning to implement. The dispute lead to a secondary walkout by British Airways baggage handlers and ground staff at Heathrow airport, which led to massive disruption for several days. According to the BBC, the deal struck between the employers and the T&GWU – and accepted by a mass meeting of the workers at the end of September - means that 300 of the sacked staff have accepted voluntary redundancy, with 144 compulsory redundancies being imposed – which means that only 226 of the workers have got their jobs back. We can safely assume that very few of the ‘troublemakers’ the employers initially refused to take back are amongst those being reinstated.
As we said in the last issue of WR, “…the attacks have nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with the economic situation. …[T]he reality is that every company is under intense and unsustainable pressure as the economic crisis of capitalism gets worse. They can only survive by doing each other down and, above all, by increasing the exploitation of the working class by cutting wages and worsening working conditions. In this situation making a deal with the bosses almost always means accepting something a little bit worse than the time before.” (‘Strikes at Heathrow: Class solidarity is our only defence’, WR 287)
As on many other occasions, the union has presented this deal as a ‘victory’, but since the job of the union is to make these deals they inevitably work hand in glove with the bosses. This can be seen clearly in the actions of the TGWU. Before the dispute broke out they were involved in discussions with Gate Gourmet, so they were well aware of its precarious financial position. When the workers at Heathrow took solidarity action the union leadership denounced them and pulled out all the stops to get those who had walked out back to work. With the Gate Gourmet workers then isolated, the union began to make militant noises, with fiery speeches at the TUC Congress calling for the legalisation of secondary picketing. While the Labour government have no intention of overturning the Tory ‘anti-union’ legislation, neither do the trade unions have the interests of the workers at heart, in fact completely the opposite. The unions are concerned about future struggles that pose the possibility of workers breaking out of the union prison. Such ‘legalised’ secondary action – “within the framework of the law and subject to balloting” – is akin to an ‘open prison’ where workers would still be under close supervision by the union’s goons.
Indeed, if the words and deeds of the T&G have benefited anyone then it is the employers. Their central complaint was that British Airways – Gate Gourmet’s principal customer - was driving such a hard bargain that it was throwing the company to the wall. As a result of the settlement deal Gate Gourmet have “…provisionally secured an improved BA contract…” (‘Gate Gourmet approves peace deal’, BBConline, 28/9/05).
The central tack taken by the leftists, principally the SWP, has been to divert attention away from the real reasons for the attacks – the economic crisis - by developing a campaign to defend ‘British unions’ against Gate Gourmet’s ‘union-busting’ American parent company. This has further developed into a campaign to defend 3 union officials at Heathrow who are under investigation by British Airways (with the support of the state) for allegedly organising the secondary unofficial action that caused such disruption. There have even been accusations that workers have been offered up to £350,000 for information implicating the leader of the T&G – Tony Woodley – in giving the go-ahead to the action at Heathrow, which would leave the union open to a £40million bill for compensation. (‘Heathrow: plot to break union’, SW, 1/10/05). While it is certainly true that the employers and the state are keen to nip any genuine signs of class solidarity in the bud, they certainly wouldn’t want to ‘break’ the union which provides very mechanisms for policing the working class. The leftists are clearly carrying out their loyal duty as the left wing of capitalism by calling on the workers to rally round the union officials, to come to the defence of their gaolers.
The dispute at Gate Gourmet and the show of solidarity by the workers at Heathrow provided a boost of confidence not only to workers in Britain, but at the international level. Again, as we said WR 287, “The bosses, the unions and the state have come together to defeat the workers. They want the working class to learn the lesson that class struggle, initiated and controlled by the working class, is futile and that only the unions can defend them. The working class, on the contrary, must draw an entirely different lesson. That lesson is simply: Know your enemy.” By bringing the dispute to a relatively quick end, by not dragging it out, the bourgeoisie has shown its own intelligence. It is keenly aware of the growing unrest within the proletariat and its ability to draw its own conclusions, of the threat posed by its mortal enemy.
Spencer 1/10/05.
At first the 7th July bombings in London were attributed to the anonymous, unknown forces of al-Qaida. There was shock when it was revealed that the bombers were brought up in Britain. People wondered how someone could let off a bomb that would inevitably kill people who had been through the same education system, used the same health service, seen the same TV programmes or even been of the same religious faith.
The video of Mohammad Sidique Khan gave an explanation for the massacres on public transport. “Your democratically elected governments perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you responsible just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security, you will be our target. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we’ll not stop this fight.” We’ve heard these sorts of threats many times before. They’re typical of the justifications given by all imperialist war-mongers. It is usual military practice to talk about how you’re providing protection or security, as you prepare the weapons that are going to be used indiscriminately against other victims of imperialist conflict.
It was also predictably hypocritical for Tony Blair to denounce an “evil ideology” and an “extremist minority” when the approach of the London bombers has so much in common with what’s put forward by the occupiers of Downing Street or the White House.
Khan reduces the world to two parts. There are the governments who have intervened in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as all the people who live in the countries run by these governments, without distinction. Against this there is the ‘world of Islam’, presumably including everyone who professes faith in Allah, without any differentiation.
Blair has a similar approach. There is the ‘civilised world’ and there are those who support or incite ‘terrorism’ against it. You can see from the imperialist policy pursued by the Labour government since 1997 that they too make little distinction or differentiation when using military means to defend the interests of British capitalism. The bombings of Belgrade, Kabul and Baghdad were every bit as brutal and indiscriminate as car bombings in Iraq or suicide bombings on London transport. Whether it’s the ‘defence of civilisation’ or the ‘defence of Islam’ or ‘opposition to the occupation of Iraq’, these are just the banners under which bourgeois policies, capitalist interests are advanced.
What the ideologies - whether Islamic, New Labour, Republican or whatever - do is attempt to mystify us as to what’s really happening in the world. Take the example of the idea of ‘democratically elected governments’ being somehow responsive to the needs of ordinary people, in contrast to absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia or military dictatorships such as Burma/Myanmar. In reality the capitalist state defends the interests of the ruling capitalist class, regardless of the details of the political system in each country.
In Khan’s statement the attempt to imply that everyone in the West should be identified with their governments or that all Muslims have something in common might seem crude, but to turn to the spin-doctored sophistication of the advanced liberal democracies is not to find much difference.
Bush is derided as a buffoon wrapped in the US flag, but all of American mainstream politics is soaked in nationalist rhetoric. On top of that there’s the idea of two Americas, the red Republican states and the blue Democrat states. And then there’s the idea of the specific ‘ethnic’ communities that you’re supposed to identify with - African-American, Hispanic, Jewish etc.
In Britain years ago Norman Tebbitt was ridiculed for his insistence on everyone rooting for the English team in sporting events. But now it’s automatically assumed that everyone has a national side to support. It doesn’t matter if you support Jamaica, Ireland or India; you’re still locked into the nationalist framework. Also the addition of questions on ethnicity, religion and culture to the census is just one small sign that the US example is being taken up. The debates over ‘multiculturalism’ and segregation, or on assimilation against integration, all assume that there’s such a thing as a Muslim community, an Irish community, or even a ‘host community’. There is also the assumption that Northern Ireland is divided into a Catholic and Protestant community, or that all Londoners can be lumped together. All these bourgeois assumptions, whether emphasising ‘British values’ or the diversity of many ‘cultures’, only serve to reinforce the rule of the bourgeoisie.
For the working class, whether we’re united behind explicit British nationalism or divided into an array of communities, we will be defeated if we don’t start from an understanding of class interests. The working class, the class that has only its labour power to sell, is exploited by a capitalist class that has a parasitic existence leaching on the value workers create. Not only do we have to develop a sense of ourselves as a class, to understand the means and goals of our historic struggle; we also have to see clearly what the bourgeoisie is and the lies it tells to sustain its rule. Mohammad Khan said he was a soldier. Like so many other soldiers, he died having swallowed the lies of the ruling class.
Car 30/9/05.
When it comes to lies and hypocrisy, the British media was in top form in its description of the riots provoked by the British army in Basra last month. The freeing of two undercover British agents at the barrel of a tank from an Iraqi police station was described as robust and even heroic, while the Iraqis throwing petrol bombs at the tank were denounced as a baying, bloodthirsty mob. What has gone less reported is the reason for the anger of the crowd: not just the arrogant show of force by British troops against their supposed allies in the Iraqi state apparatus, but the widespread reports that the undercover agents were not only dressed as Mehdi army militia men (the armed supporters of Shia radical Moqtada al Sadr), not only fired on Iraqi police when questioned, but were carrying a stash of weapons, including an anti-tank gun and, most curiously, explosives and a detonator. This accusation has been made official by Iraqi government spokesmen. The implication is that the agents were on their way to carrying out a terrorist atrocity.
In the atmosphere of fear and terror that reigns in Iraq, it is routine for the population to blame the occupying forces for massacres which are officially attributed to groups like al Qaida. The western press usually dismisses such claims as typical of Arab paranoia. In our minds there is no doubt that al Qaida and similar groups are indeed responsible for many bloody crimes against the civil population. But we are also keenly aware that the occupying forces are perfectly capable of carrying out such attacks themselves. The British state, which supposedly adheres to the rule of law and abhors the ‘men of violence’ in Ireland, has so deeply infiltrated the IRA and Protestant terror gangs that its agents have been directly involved in torture, assassination, and terrorist bombings. In the case of the Protestant gangs, the infiltration is so thorough that groups like the UDA are more or less a covert wing of the British army; but even in the ‘enemy’ IRA you had the absurd situation where one British agent (‘Stakeknife’) became the head of the IRA commission investigating…British agents in the IRA, and was therefore regularly involved in the torture and killing of fellow British agents.
The insistence of Iraqi forces, from the local police to the Moqtada organisation to the central government, that these agents were involved in something very shady indeed was if anything confirmed by the haste and violence of the operation freeing them. It seems clear that the British army has something to hide.
The question is then posed: what would the British army gain by planting bombs and further wracking up the mounting tensions that separate Shia from Sunni, Arab from Kurd, and even Shia faction from Shia faction? Up till now, the British have tended to favour the Moqtada al Sadr organisation over some of the more mainstream Iraqi Shia groups such as the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, which is seen as a stooge of Iran. So why would the British want to discredit the Mehdi army by carrying out atrocities in their garb? The situation is too murky to provide clear answers. But both in America and Britain certain elements of the bourgeoisie are already assuming that Iraq is doomed to break up into three separate states – Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the centre, and Shia in the south(1). It could be that such elements are already thinking that the more Iraq descends into chaos, the better, because it will bring it closer to this final dismemberment.
Or it could be that, like the terrorist gangs caught up in an irrational spiral of hatred and revenge, the armed forces are simply being dragged into the destructive logic that is currently devastating Iraq. The net result is the same: bloodshed and chaos on an ever-mounting scale. The ‘liberating heroes’ of the great democracies are once again shown to be the mirror image of the terrorists they claim to be opposing.
Amos 30/9/5
(1) For example, former high-ranking State Department and Pentagon official Leslie Gelb published an article in the New York Times on 25 November 2003 advocating ‘The Three State Solution’ in Iraq. A ‘British’ argument in favour of a Shia state, on the other hand, would be that it could serve as a counter-weight to the USA and would preserve a stronger British influence than in the rest of the country.
WR, 1/10/03.
It’s now more than two years since the US army took control of Baghdad, and George Bush came out with the cynical victory cry: “mission accomplished”. A bright future was promised: the world would be a safer place and Iraq would become a stable democracy. Reality is elsewhere. Iraq is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos and barbarism.
The US military intervention opened a real Pandora’s box. The situation has got worse and worse, becoming more and more uncontrollable and explosive. There is a now a pitiless war between Sunnis and Shias, a murderous spiral of hatred and terror. Armed repression, suicide attacks, pogroms, summary executions follow each other day after day.
On Saturday 10 September, the US army and the Iraqi security forces carried out a major offensive against the rebel bastion of Tel Afar in the north of Iraq, close to the Syrian frontier. The official death toll was 160. But far from controlling the Sunni uprising, this attack by the US and Iraqi governments only fanned the flames. The Iraqi branch of Al-Qaida immediately called for revenge, and there has been a new wave of terrorist attacks since then. On Wednesday 14 September alone there were 11 attacks and nearly 150 killed. The most bloody of these was carried out in a Baghdad square where workers were gathering in the hope of finding work for the day in the building trade. 140 were killed. More recently, on 26 September, five Shia teachers and a school bus driver in a mainly Sunni village south of Baghdad were taken away from their pupils and shot dead. Up till now, attacks on schools have been extremely rare.
The warlords of Iraq have imposed a true reign of terror! The working class and the poorest layers of the population are clearly the first victims of all these atrocities. A few hours after the massacre of the Shia building workers, there was a revenge operation in which armed men opened fire on Sunnis gathered at a market. Two days after the attack on the marketplace, a queue of Shia workers waiting for payment were raked by machine gun fire. The day after that, a bomb went off at the market in Nahrawan, killing another 30 people. The list goes on and on. This reign of blind revenge is a symbol of society in full decomposition.
The frightful panic which led to the death of a thousand people on 31 August during a Shia procession in Baghdad shows the degree to which the population lives in a state of terror. A million and a half people were converging on the Kadhimiya mosque; unable to assure their safety, the American and Iraqi military forces closed all the bridges over the Tigris, except one, in order to concentrate the population on one single route. The pilgrims were thus already being packed together when a rumour spread about suicide bombers being in the crowd. A true collective hysteria ensued. Hundreds of people were crushed or drowned in the stampede.
On 15 October, Iraqi electors will be called upon to vote “for or against” the new constitution. This referendum is supposed to be a demonstration of national unity. Those responsible for the new text have hidden behind a few superficial declarations, while George Bush has spoken of the dawn of a “period of hope”.
But reality is giving the lie to this phoney optimism. The new constitution will not only not put an end to the prevailing chaos; it will exacerbate rivalries more than ever. Iraqi president Talabani has himself recognised that “Iraq is not on the edge of civil war, it’s already in the middle of it”.
The text is essentially the result of a compromise between Shias and Kurds who dominate the Assembly and the government. Thus the Sunni bourgeoisie can only violent reject the proposed constitution, which symbolises its loss of power.
And the Shias themselves are divided over the adoption of this text. These differences have led to actual armed clashes between different Shia cliques. On Wednesday 25 August, there were violent confrontations between fighters loyal to the radical Imam Moqtada Al-Sadr and the rival Shia militia, the Badr brigade, in Najaf. Al-Sadr is taking advantage of the debate over the constitution to make a comeback and try to redistribute the cards in his favour.
Thus the real alternative put forward by the referendum on 15 October is this: more chaos, or more chaos? If the new constitution is adopted, the Sunni warlords and part of the Shia warlords will unleash even more blood and fire as they feel power slipping away from them. If the No wins it, which is most likely, the Kurds and the Shias in power will probably be tempted to proclaim their autonomy, leading to the break up of the Iraqi state.
This uncontrollable war which is bit by bit dismembering Iraq is about to radiate across the whole surrounding region.
First of all Turkey is getting very nervous about the autonomist ambitions of the Iraqi Kurds. It knows very well that this situation, pregnant with instability for the whole of Kurdistan, could put the unity of its own state in danger. This is why throughout the summer there have been real tensions within the Turkish bourgeoisie, between those who stand for the ‘soft’ method, for more ‘democracy’, and those who stand for the ‘hard’ method, calling for new laws to deal with ‘terrorism’.
At the same time the chaotic situation in Iraq reveals the growing impotence of the USA. Despite repeated demonstrations of military power, the world’s leading power is incapable of making up for the historic weakening of its leadership. The catastrophic situation of the American army in the region is thus sharpening the imperialist appetites of all the neighbouring countries. Syria, with its frontier on the Sunni region, is secretly fuelling the rebellion with men and arms. And Iran is more and more openly interfering in Iraqi affairs.
Faced with this loss of control, the USA can only respond with increasing brutality. We have seen a growing number of bellicose declarations against Syria, which is accused of fomenting terrorism, and against Iran, above all over the issue of its nuclear programme. In the same way the display of force by the US army against the rebel stronghold of Tel Afar has opened the door to new rounds of massive destruction.
The whole of the Middle East is threatened by war and chaos. A picture of this region would not be complete without a brief description of the terrible situation in the Gaza strip. Following the withdrawal of the Jewish settlers, the Israeli state is in the process of building a new ‘hi-tech’ wall on its side, while Egypt has closed its border with a line of barbed wire and machine gun posts. Between these walls, in this ghetto, the population goes hungry and suffers from the double yoke of the Palestinian police and the Islamist militias. And despite the fact that one of them, Hamas, declared on 26 September that it would keep to the ceasefire with Israel, within a few hours of this statement Israeli jets had launched attacks on militia sites in Gaza. New revenge attacks and suicide bombings are guaranteed to follow.
The perspective is not peace but growing barbarism. At stake now is the very unity of Iraq. Kurdistan, the Sunni and Shia regions are heading towards a break-up of the country, and for all its military power the USA cannot stop this process. And the effects of this will be felt throughout the Middle East.
Capitalism is a moribund system that is soaking the planet in mud and blood. The proletariat must put an end to it before it plunges the whole of humanity into out-and-out barbarism.
Pawel
The regroupment of revolutionaries, the unification of the proletariat’s political forces around the positions of the communist left must, in order to be successful, proceed at every stage according to the needs of the long term interests of the proletariat as a whole, rather than the particular or competitive interests of one group against another to the detriment of the whole movement and its future. The history of the Communist Workers Organisation and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (of which the CWO is the ‘British Affiliate’) is the negative proof of this fact. The opportunist regroupment policy of the IBRP has reached a new low with the recent support given by the IBRP to the parasitic group the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ and its anti-communist behaviour against the ICC (slanders, theft, etc)1. This was illustrated in the support of both these organisations for the slanders of the completely bogus Argentine group ‘Circulo des Comunistas Internacionalistas’ against the ICC in October 2004.2 This opportunist adventure with the Circulo ended in another fiasco for the IBRP. The lessons must be drawn by all revolutionaries today. As a contribution to this effort the following article will try to show how this opportunist regroupment policy has followed a pattern over the past thirty years. It has particular interest for revolutionaries in Britain.
Following an appeal launched in November 1972 by the American group Internationalism a series of meetings was organised between several groups which reclaimed the tradition of the communist left. The most regular participants of these meetings were Revolution Internationale from France and three groups based in Britain, World Revolution, Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers’ Voice. WR and RP came from splits in Solidarity which was based on anarcho-councilist positions. WV was a small group of workers from Liverpool who had broken with Trotskyism a short while before. Following these discussions the three British groups came to positions close to those of Revolution Internationale and Internationalism (around which the ICC was constituted the following year). However, the process of unification of these three groups ended in failure. On the one hand the elements of Workers’ Voice decided to break with World Revolution. The latter had retained semi-councilist positions on the 1917 revolution in Russia: it considered that it was a proletarian revolution but that the Bolshevik Party was bourgeois, a position of which it had convinced the comrades of WV. And when WR, at the time of the meeting in January 1974, rejected these last remnants of councilism and rallied to the position of Revolution Internationale these comrades felt ‘betrayed’ and developed a great hostility to those in WR (whom it accused of ‘capitulating to RI’). This led them to publish a ‘Statement’ in November 1974 defining the groups who were going to form the ICC shortly after as “counter-revolutionaries”3. For its part, RP demanded to be integrated into the ICC as a ‘tendency’ with its own platform (to the extent that there were still differences between it and the ICC). We responded that our approach was not to integrate ‘tendencies’ as such, each with its own platform, even if we consider that there can be differences on secondary aspects of the programmatic documents within the organisation. We did not shut the door on discussion with RP but this group began to distance itself from the ICC. An attempted ‘alternative’ international regroupment to the ICC, with WV, the French group ‘Pour une Intervention Communiste’ (PIC) and the ‘Revolutionary Workers’ Group’ (RWG) of Chicago was short-lived. The only question which brought these four groups together was their growing hostility to the ICC. Finally, however, there was the regroupment between RP and WV in Britain (September 1975) to constitute the ‘Communist Workers’ Organisation” (CWO). RP had to pay a price for this unification: its militants had to accept the position of WV that the ICC was ‘counter-revolutionary’. It was a position they maintained for some time, even after the departure from the CWO, one year later, of the old members of WV who particularly reproached those of RP for their … intolerance of other groups!4
It was only much later, when the CWO had started to discuss with the Partito Comunista Internazionalista of Italy (Battaglia Comunista) that it renounced the view that the ICC is ‘counter-revolutionary’ (if it had maintained its previous criteria it would also have had to consider BC an organisation of the bourgeoisie!).
So, the birth of the CWO was marked by the fact that the ICC did not accept the demand for RP to be integrated into our organisation with its own platform. These ‘birth marks’ finally led to the formation of the IBRP in 1984: the CWO could at last participate in an international regroupment after its previous failures.
The process which led to the formation of the IBRP was marked by the sort of approach where those ‘disenchanted with the ICC’ turned towards the IBRP. We will not go into the three conferences of the groups of the communist left which were held between 1977 and 1980 following an appeal from BC in April 1976: readers can refer to a new article on the conferences in International Review 122. In particular our press has often stressed that BC and the CWO deliberately scuttled this effort in a totally irresponsible way, solely for petty sectarian reasons, by hastily calling for a vote at the end of the 3rd conference on the question of the role and function of the party as a supplementary criterion. This was specifically aimed at the exclusion of the ICC from future conferences. The 1982 ‘conference’ brought together, apart from BC and the CWO, the “Supporters of the Unity of Communist Militants” (SUCM) a group of Iranian students mainly based in Britain. The ICC had concluded that this was a leftist group coming from Maoism, despite their declarations of agreement with the communist left. The SUCM then turned to the CWO which did not take account of the warnings against this group from our comrades in the section in Britain. In fact, all the other ‘forces’ that the CWO-BC tandem had ‘selected’ for invitation (according to the term used by BC) deserted: whether because they could not come, as was the case for ‘Kommunistische Politik’ from Austria or L’Eveil Internationalist, or because they had disappeared by the time of the ‘Conference’ as was the case for two American groups, ‘Marxist Worker’ and ‘Wildcat’. Bizarrely, the latter, despite its councilism, was considered as an entrant according to the ‘criteria’ decreed by BC and the CWO.
The flirtation with the SUCM was not pursued for long, not due to the lucidity of the comrades of BC and the CWO but simply because this leftist group, which could not hide its real nature for ever, ended up integrating itself into the Communist Party of Iran, a radical Stalinist organisation formed from a fusion between the Iranian UCM and the Kurdish ‘peshmergas’ of Komala.
As for the conferences of the communist left, BC and the CWO did not call any others, preferring to avoid the ridicule of a new fiasco.
Our press has carried several articles about the Communist Bulletin Group5. This tiny parasitic group was made up of former members of the ICC who left in 1981 with the theft of material and money from our organisation; its sole reason for existence was to throw mud at our organisation. At the end of 1983 this group had responded favourably to an ‘Address to proletarian political groups’ adopted by the 5th ICC Congress. However, it made not the slightest critique of its thuggish behaviour. We thus wrote in reply “Until the fundamental question of the defence of the political organisations of the proletariat is understood, we are obliged to consider the CBG’s letter as null and void. They got the wrong Address.”
Probably disappointed that the ICC had repulsed their advances, and visibly suffering from isolation, the CBG turned towards the CWO. A meeting was held in Edinburgh in December 1992 following a “practical collaboration between members of the CWO and the CBG”. “A large number of misunderstandings have been clarified on both sides. It has therefore been decided to make the practical co-operation more formal. An agreement has been written that the CWO as a whole should ratify in January (after which a complete report will be published) and which includes the following points…” There follows a list of different agreements for collaboration and especially: “The two groups will discuss a proposed ‘popular platform’ prepared by a comrade of the CWO as a tool for intervention” (Workers’ Voice 64, January-February 1996).
Apparently this flirtation was not continued for we have never heard any more on the collaboration of the CBG and the CWO. Nor have we ever read anything explaining why this collaboration came to nothing.
In the 1980s, the IBRP began to argue that conditions in the countries of the periphery “make mass communist organisations possible” (Communist Review 3), which obviously supposes that it is more easy to create them there than in the central countries of capitalism. The abortive flirtation of the IBRP with the SUCM was therefore particularly disappointing. The IBRP’s discussions with the Lal Pataka group in India provided no relief. This was a group of Indian nationalist extraction which, like the SUCM, had not really broken from its origins despite the sympathies that it expressed for the positions of the communist left. The IBRP rejected the warnings of the ICC against this group (which ultimately was reduced to just one element). For some time Lal Pataka was presented as the constituent part of the IBRP in India, but, in 1991, this name disappeared from the pages of the press of the IBRP, to be replaced by that of the group Kamunist Kranti formed by an element who had previously been in discussion with the ICC. The IBRP announced: “We hope that in the future productive relations will be established between the International Bureau and Kamunist Kranti” . But these hopes were soon dashed because, two years later, you could read in Communist Review 11: “It is a tragedy that, despite the existence of promising elements, there doesn’t yet exist a solid nucleus of Indian communists”. Effectively Kamunist Kranti disappeared from circulation. There still exists a small communist nucleus in India, that publishes Communist Internationalist, but it is part of the ICC and the IBRP “forgets” to make any reference to it.
This group was made up of elements who had taken classes in Maoism (of the pro-Albanian variety). We had discussions with these elements for a long period but we noted their inability to overcome their leftist confusions. Also, when in the mid-1990s this small group got close to the IBRP we warned them against the confusions of the LAWV. The IBRP took this warning very badly, thinking that we didn’t want it to develop a political presence in North America. For several years the LAWV was a sympathising group of the IBRP in the United States, and in April 2000 it participated in Montreal, Canada, in a conference intended to strengthen the political presence of the IBRP in North America. However, a short time after, the Los Angeles elements began to express their disagreements on a whole series of questions, adopting a more and more anarchist vision (rejection of centralisation, depiction of the Bolsheviks as a bourgeois party, etc). But above all it began pouring out sordid slanders against the IBRP and particularly against another American sympathiser of this organisation, AS, who lived in another state. Our press in the US denounced the behaviour of the LAWV elements and expressed its solidarity with the slandered militants.6 It’s for this reason that we thought it useful at that time to recall the warnings that we had made to the IBRP at the beginning of its idyll with the LAWV.
One can only be fascinated by the repetition of the phenomenon where elements who are “disenchanted with the ICC” later turn towards the IBRP. Perhaps after having understood that the positions of the ICC are erroneous, these elements turn to the correctness and clarity of the IBRP? The problem is that all the groups mentioned here have disappeared or, like the SUCM, returned to the ranks of bourgeois organisations. The IBRP must ask itself why, and it would be interesting if it could produce a balance sheet of its experiences for the working class.
Quite obviously, what animates the approach of these groups is not the search for clarity that they’ve not found in the ICC, seeing that they ended up abandoning communist militancy. The facts have amply demonstrated that their distancing from the ICC corresponds fundamentally to a distancing from the programmatic clarity and the method of the communist left, most often ending in a rejection of the demands of militancy within this current. In reality their ephemeral flirtation with the IBRP is only one step before their abandonment of combat in the ranks of the proletariat. The question is posed then: why has the IBRP been drawn into such a trajectory? To this question there is a fundamental answer: the IBRP defends an opportunist method on the regroupment of revolutionaries.
It is this opportunism of the IBRP that allows elements that refuse to make a complete break with their leftist past to find a temporary “refuge”, allowing them to think, or to say, that they are still engaged in the communist left. The IBRP, particularly since the 3rd Conference of the Groups of the Communist Left, has not stopped insisting on the necessity for a “rigorous selection” in the proletarian milieu. But, in reality, this selection is one way: it says that the ICC is no longer “ a valid force in the perspective for the future world party of the proletariat” and that it “can’t be considered by us [the IBRP] as a valid partner in defining any kind of unity of action” (response to our appeal of the 11 February 2003 addressed to groups of the communist left for a common intervention on the war in Iraq and published in International Review 113). Consequently it is out of the question for the IBRP to establish the least cooperation with the ICC, even for a common declaration of the internationalist camp in the face of imperialist war. However, this great rigour is not exercised in other directions, and notably towards groups that have nothing to do with the communist left, when they are not leftist groups pure and simple.
The counterpart of this opportunism of the IBRP is the indulgence that it shows towards elements hostile to our organisation. As we have seen at the beginning of this article, one of the bases for the constitution of the CWO in Britain was not only the desire to maintain its own “individuality” (RP’s demand to be integrated into the ICC as a “tendency” with its own platform) but as a means of opposing the ICC (considered at one time as “counter-revolutionary”). More precisely, the attitude of the Workers Voice elements in the CWO - consisting, as we have seen above, in “using RP as a shield against the ICC” - is found with a lot of other elements and groups where the principle motivation is hostility towards the ICC. This was the case with the parasitic CBG, with whom the CWO engaged in a short-lived flirtation: the level of their sordid denigrations of the ICC has not been rivalled until recently with the IFICC and the ‘Circulo’.
Adapted from International Review 121 [120]
1 See the article on our website in response to the IBRP: ‘Theft and slander are not methods of the working class’.
2 See our website for the different ICC texts on the ‘Circulo’: ‘A strange apparition’; ‘A new strange apparition’; ‘Imposture or reality’ and also in our territorial press: ‘Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas’ (Argentina): An impostor unmasked’. The Circulo claimed that it was the successor to the group Nucleo Comunista Internacionalista, which had been developing fraternal relations with the ICC. In fact, the NCI’s alleged ‘break’ with the ICC was a fabrication concocted by a single member of the NCI, behind the backs of the rest of the group. This was clearly demonstrated when the NCI published a declaration on 27 October 2004 denouncing the actions of the ‘Circulo’ (see our website). The ICC strongly criticised the IBRP for publishing the slanders of the Circulo without verifying them or even establishing whether the Circulo really existed. We asked the IBRP to publish a disclaimer by the ICC on its website, which it did, and also the declaration of the NCI, which it did not. At a recent ICC forum in London, a comrade of the CWO acknowledged that it had been a mistake to publish unverified attacks by the Circulo on the ICC. We can only encourage the IBRP to take further steps in this direction – for example, by accepting that it was also a mistake not to have published the NCI’s statement and for Battaglia’s website to maintain, to this day, a link with the website of the non-existent Circulo.
3 See Workers’ Voice 13, to which we responded in International Review 2 as well as our article ‘Sectarianism unlimited’ in World Revolution 3.
4 When the CWO was constituted we called it an “incomplete regroupment” (see World Revolution 5). The facts very rapidly confirmed this analysis: in the minutes of a meeting of the CWO to examine the departure of the elements from Liverpool, it is written “It was felt that the old WV had never accepted the politics of the fusion, rather they had used RP as a shield against the ICC” (quoted in ‘The CWO; past, present and future’, text of the elements who left the CWO in November 1977 to join the ICC, published in International Review 12).
5 See particularly ‘In answer to the replies’, International Review 36.
6 See our article ‘Defence of the revolutionary milieu’ in Internationalism 122 (summer 2002).
Since the end of the 1980s, terrorism has regularly been at the forefront of the international situation; and for the bourgeoisie of the big powers it has become ‘Public Enemy No.1’. In the name of the fight against the barbarity of terrorism, the two main powers which were at the head of the Western and Eastern blocs, the United States and Russia, have unleashed war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya.
During the 1980’s, the multiplication of terrorist attacks (such as those of 1986 in Paris) executed by fanatical grouplets commanded by Iran, brought forward a new phenomenon in history. No longer, as at the beginning of the 20th century, were terrorist actions limited to those led by minority groups, aiming for the constitution or the national independence of a state. Now it was states themselves which took control and used terrorism as an arm of war against other states.
The fact that terrorism has become an instrument of the state for carrying out war marked a qualitative change in the evolution of imperialism.
In the recent period, we can see that it is major powers, in particular the United States and Russia, which have used terrorism as a means of manipulation in order to justify their military interventions. Thus, the media itself has revealed that the bombings in Moscow of summer 1999 were perpetrated with explosives made by the military, and that Putin, the boss of the FSB (ex-KGB) at the time, was probably in command of them. These attacks were a pretext to justify the invasion of Chechnya by Russian troops.
Similarly, as we have fully analysed in our press, the September 11 attack against the Twin Towers in New York served as a pretext for the American bourgeoisie to launch its bombs on Afghanistan in the name of the fight against terrorism and against ‘rogue states’.
Even if the American state didn’t directly organise this attack, it is inconceivable to imagine that the secret services of the leading world power were taken by surprise, just like any banana republic. It is more than likely that the American state let it happen, sacrificing its Twin Towers and close to 3000 human lives.
This was the price that American imperialism was ready to pay in order to be able to reaffirm its world leadership by unleashing the “Unlimited Justice” operation in Afghanistan. What’s more, this deliberate policy of the American bourgeoisie is not new. It was already used in December 1941 at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [1] to justify the USA’s entry into the Second World War; and, more recently, at the time of the invasion of Kuwait by the troops of Saddam Hussein in August 1990 in order to unleash the Gulf War under the aegis of Uncle Sam.
But this policy of “non-interference” no longer consists, as in 1941 or in 1990, of letting the enemy attack first according to the classic laws of war between states.
It is no longer war between rival states, with its own rules, its flags, its preparations, its troops, its battlefields and armaments, which serves as the pretext for the massive intervention of the big powers.
Now it is blind terrorist attacks, with their fanatic, kamikaze commandos directly striking the civil population, which are then utilised by the big powers in order to justify letting loose imperialist barbarity.
Today, terrorism is inseparable from imperialism. The form that imperialist war is taking now is the result of the world disorder which capitalism entered with the collapse of the eastern bloc and the dislocation of the western bloc. This event, as we have shown, spectacularly marked the entry of capitalism into the ultimate phase of its decadence, that of decomposition.
Since we developed this analysis in the middle of the 1980’s, [2] this phenomenon has only widened and intensified. It is characterised by the development of terrorism on a scale unprecedented in history.
The use and manipulation of terrorism is no longer restricted to lesser states like Libya or Iran. The fact that this “poor man’s atomic bomb” is now utilised by the big powers in defence of their imperialist interests on the world chessboard is a particularly significant expression of the decomposition of society.
Up to now the ruling class has succeeded in pushing obvious manifestations of the decadence of its system onto the peripheries of capitalism. Thus the most brutal manifestations of the economic crisis of capitalism had first of all affected the countries of the periphery. In the same way that this insoluble crisis has now begun to come back home with force, hitting with full strength the very heart of capitalism, the most barbaric forms of imperialist war now make their appearance in the great metropoles such as New York, Madrid, London and Moscow.
Moreover, this new expression of imperialist war reveals the suicidal dynamic of a bourgeois society in full putrefaction. In fact, the use of terrorism as an arm of war is accompanied by the acceptance of sacrifices. Thus it is not only the kamikazes who sacrifice lives in the image of a world which is killing itself, but equally the ruling class of the states struck by terrorist attacks, such as the American bourgeoisie. Doesn’t the broadcasting on all the screens of the world of the images of the Twin Towers collapsing like a house of cards convey to us the vision of a world heading towards the apocalypse? By allowing the September 11 attacks to happen, the first world power deliberately decided to sacrifice the Twin Towers, a symbol of its economic supremacy. It deliberately sacrificed close to 3000 American citizens on its own national soil. In this sense, the dead of New York have not only been massacred by the barbarity of Al Qaida; the deed was also done with the cold and cynical complicity of the American state itself.
The use of terrorism as an arm of imperialist war in the present historic period of the decomposition of capitalism reveals that all states are “renegade states” led by imperialist gangsters. The sole difference which distinguishes the big gang leaders, such as the American Godfather, and the second-rate gangsters who set off the bombs, lies in the means of destruction they have at their disposal.
By sweeping away the classical rules of war, by becoming the common instrument of all nations big and small, terrorism has become one of the most striking expressions of a system that is rotting on its feet. In New York, London, Madrid, Moscow, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Bali, it is the civil populations that are today terrorised by the murderous madness of capitalism.
Generally speaking, classical terrorism could be defined as the violent action of small minorities in revolt against the overwhelming domination of the existing social order and its state. It is not a new phenomenon in history. Thus, at the end of the 19th century, the Russian Populists made terrorism their main instrument in the combat against Tsarism. A little later, in countries like France and Spain for example, it was taken up by certain sectors of anarchism. Throughout the 20th century, terrorism continued to develop and frequently accompanied movements for national independence, as we saw with the IRA, ETA from the Basque country, the FLN during the war in Algeria, the Palestinian PLO, etc. It was also used by the Allied camp during the Second World War by the nationalist Resistance groups fighting Nazi occupation, now loudly praised by Stalinists, Trotskyists and anarchists. In the aftermath of the war, it was used by certain sectors of the Zionist movement who were seeking to set up the state of Israel (Menachem Begin, one of the most celebrated Prime Ministers of Israel - and a signatory to the Camp David accords of 1979 - had, in his youth, been one of the founders of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group which shot to fame through its attacks against the British).
Thus terrorism has not only been able to present itself (above all at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries) as a means for the struggle of the oppressed against the domination of the state; it has also been (principally in the 20th century) a favourite instrument of nationalist movements aiming to set up new states. This said, is it still possible to resort to acts of terrorism in order to carry out the struggle against the bourgeois state? The question is worth posing since, as well as certain anarchist movements which say they are fighting for the emancipation of the working class, some groups laying claim to the communist revolution have taken up terrorism, claiming that it can be an arm of combat of the working class; and as a result they have sometimes drawn groups of sincere workers behind them. This was notably the case during the 1970’s in Italy and Germany.
In reality this terrain of violent struggle by armed minorities is not that of the working class. It is the terrain of the desperate petty-bourgeoisie, that’s to say a class without a historic future which can never raise itself to mass actions. Such actions are the emanation of individual will and not of the generalised action of a revolutionary class. As a practice terrorism reflects its content perfectly: when it is not an instrument of certain sectors of the bourgeoisie itself, it is the emanation of layers of the petty bourgeoisie. It is the sterile practice of impotent social layers without a future.
The ruling class has always used terrorism as an instrument of manipulation, as much against the working class as in its own settling of internal accounts.
From the fact that terrorism is an action which is prepared in the shadows of a tight conspiracy, it thus offers “a favourite hunting ground for the underhand activities of agents of the police and the state and for all sorts of manipulations and intrigues” (‘Resolution on terror, terrorism and class violence’, International Review 15). Already last century, the terrorist actions of the anarchists were used by the bourgeoisie to strengthen its state terror against the working class. There is the example of the “Villainy law” voted by the French bourgeoisie following the terrorist attack by the anarchist Auguste Vaillant who, on December 9 1893, threw a bomb into the Chamber of Deputies, wounding forty people. This attack had been manipulated by the state itself and served as a pretext for the ruling class to immediately vote for exceptional measures against the socialists, repressing the freedom of association and of the press.
Similarly, in the 1970’s, the massive anti-terrorist campaigns orchestrated by the bourgeoisie following the Schleyer affair in Germany and the Aldo Moro affair in Italy served as a pretext for the state to strengthen its apparatus for the control and repression of the working class.
It was subsequently demonstrated that the Baader Gang and the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by, respectively, the secret services of East Germany, the Stasi, and the secret services of the Italian state. These terrorist grouplets were in reality nothing other than the instruments of rivalry between bourgeois cliques.
The kidnapping of Aldo Moro in a raid of military efficiency and his assassination on May 9 1978 (after the Italian government had refused to negotiate his freedom) wasn’t the work of some terrorist fanatics. Behind the action of the Red Brigades, there were political stakes implicating not only the Italian state itself, but also the big powers. In fact, Aldo Moro represented a faction of the Italian bourgeoisie favourable to the entry of the Communist Party into the governmental majority, an option to which the United States was firmly opposed. The Red Brigades shared this opposition to the policy of the “historic compromise” between Christian Democrats and the CP defended by Aldo Moro and thus openly played the game of the American state. Moreover, the fact that the Red Brigades had been directly infiltrated by the Gladio network (a creation of NATO whose mission was to set up networks of resistance should the USSR invade Western Europe) revealed that from the end of the 1970’s, terrorism had begun to become an instrument of manipulation in imperialist conflicts.
Today terrorism is being revealed more and more as an expression of capitalism’s slide into barbarism and war.
This situation constitutes an appeal to the responsibility of the world proletariat. The latter is the sole force in society capable, through its revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of capitalism, to put an end to war, massacres, and to capitalist terror in all its forms. Louise
Based on an article which
first appeared in English in World Revolution 262
[1] See International Review 108, ‘Pearl Harbor 1941, the Twin Towers 2001: the Machiavellianism of the Bourgeoisie’.
[2] See International Review 107 ‘Decomposition, the Final Phase of the Decadence of Capitalism’.
In September and October relations between Britain and Iran grew increasingly hostile. In late September Britain supported calls for Iran to be reported to the UN Security Council over its determination to restart its nuclear programme; for several years beforehand, Britain had opposed this. In early October it accused Iran of complicity in the killing of British soldiers in Iraq by supplying the insurgents with arms, explosives and training. Iran responded by accusing Britain of involvement in a bombing in Tehran that killed several people and wounded about 100. At the end of the month Tony Blair attacked the call by the Iranian president for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and seemed to hint at military action (Guardian, 28/10/05). The latest action has seen the recall of a number of ‘moderate’ diplomats by Tehran, including the ambassador to Britain.
In Britain this has been portrayed as the result of the new hard line taken by Iran following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. In reality these developments are a consequence of the growing instability in the region. This instability has existed for some time but has been sharply accelerated by the invasion of Iraq and the bloody chaos that has resulted.
Britain, for its part, is neither the USA’s loyal ally in the fight against terrorism, as the right would have it, nor the pawn of the US, as the left would have us believe. Britain’s interest in Iran, as with its involvement in Iraq, is motivated by its own imperialist interests rather than subservience to those of the US. Contrary to what the left says, Britain has pursued its own policy since the collapse of the cold war blocs in 1989. It is true that at times this has seen it going in the same direction as the US, but its destination was never the same. Throughout the last 16 years Britain has sought to pursue an independent foreign policy, steering a course between the forces of America and those of the European powers, particularly Germany. However this has become an increasingly hard course to follow as the gradual worsening of the global situation has increased the pressure from both sides, with the result that Britain is increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place. The bombing of the Twin Towers in 2001 made this dilemma even worse and led to an apparent shift towards America. In reality, this was not the abandonment of the independent policy, but its adaptation to the new situation, dominated by the US offensive under the smokescreen of the ‘war on terror’.
The strategic importance
of the Middle East
The Middle East has been an arena for imperialist struggle for close to two centuries. It remains so today. The US has recognised its strategic importance for decades; since the collapse of the blocs it has assumed an even greater importance, and today domination of this region is an important part of the USA’s global strategy. Through a succession of spectacular military interventions in the region, the USA has attempted to reinforce its status as the world’s only superpower; but from the first Gulf war of 1991 to the current mess in Iraq, the result each time has been to create new rivals and new enemies for every one it subdues.
Britain has sought to pursue its own path in the Middle East, marked by a tendency to try to win influence amongst Arab states more than with Israel. This has been a difficult and largely unsuccessful effort – diplomatic efforts have been rebuffed, sometimes publicly, as when Robin Cook visited Syria some years ago. There have been diplomatic overtures towards Iran on several occasions. In 2003, Britain sided with Europe to oppose the US call to refer Iran to the UN: “this is the first time that the Americans and the Europeans – with Britain for once in the European camp – have been so severely at odds” (Guardian, 21/11/03). Britain has continued this more recently as part of the EU Troika (with France and Germany). This initiative seemed to have some success earlier in the year when the US softened its rhetoric, having previously hinted that Iran might be the next country to benefit from liberation, US style. Iran has made itself into a serious obstacle to US domination of the area, and is consequently on the receiving end of a growing barrage of threats.
Iran’s regional ambitions
That said, Iran is also an imperialist state, and has had aspirations to be a regional power for many decades. Iraq has been its main rival in the region and this rivalry was one of the causes of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The imposition of a fundamentalist theocracy following the Iranian ‘revolution’ of 1979 was an expression of an irrational trend within the life of the bourgeoisie, an early sign of the decomposition of capitalist society. But this did not prevent Iran from playing its own hand in the imperialist game. The religious rhetoric in which it framed its imperialist ambitions was a precursor of that employed today by Al Qaida and echoed by the London bombers of 7th July. The changes in the global imperialist configuration following 1989 and 9/11 required Iran to adapt its strategy, just as every country has had to. In particular, it has sought to strengthen its situation through diplomatic means: “Since the early 1990s Iran has accelerated the normalisation of relations with its neighbours (in particular Saudi Arabia), and, as a number of experts have pointed out, has strengthened political, economic and commercial ties with the European Union, Russia, China and India.” (Le Monde Diplomatique, English Language Edition, January 2005). In the Middle East it retains close links with Lebanon and Syria and with Hizbollah and Palestinian armed groups; it also has influence within the forces of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Despite the ritual anti-US rhetoric, Iran backed the US invasion of Afghanistan and accepted the subsequent invasion of Iraq, doubtlessly hoping to benefit from its rival’s misfortune. This seemed to be mirrored by internal changes under the supposedly more moderate leadership of the former president Mohammed Khatami. The evolution of the situation, in particular the fact that America is getting bogged down by the chaos and that this chaos is threatening to break Iraq apart, is not merely encouraging Iran to be more bold; it is actually requiring it to be so if it is to have any chance of advancing its interests in the present climate. This is what lies behind its resumption of nuclear activity and its growing involvement in the violence in Iraq. The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is fundamentally a symptom of the situation in the region rather than a cause.
British policy adapts to
the spread of chaos
British strategy towards Iran has also changed as a result of the development of the situation in Iraq and its consequences for power relationships in the Middle East and beyond. In the past Britain has sought to maintain the territorial integrity of Iraq, readily going along with the decision of the US to leave Saddam Hussein in place after the first Gulf war and even to allow him to brutally crush the uprisings in the north and south of the country in the immediate aftermath of the war. Support for Iran was a counterbalance to this: participation in the Troika provided a convenient means to offer this support and, more importantly, to apply some pressure on the US. Today, however, the possible splintering of Iraq into separate Kurdish, Shia and Sunni parts, implies that Iraq can no longer be relied on a counter-weight to Iran. For British diplomacy, this requires an equally weakened Iran. At the same time Iranian backing for insurgents in Iraq has led to the death and injury of a number of British soldiers.
Britain now wants to see Iran reined in. This is what lies behind the hard line now being taken by Britain over the nuclear issue and its open attack on Iran for harbouring and training terrorists. It may also explain why the SAS soldiers caught in Basra were carrying bombs and dressed as members of Moqtada Al Sadr’s Mehdi Army, a Shia militia with links to Iran: they may have been planning a ‘false flag’ operation to discredit Iran.
Britain’s convergence with US strategy over Iran is more apparent than real: while the US wants to impose its order in the region in order to maintain its position as the sole superpower, Britain wants to play one against another in order to enhance its influence. Essentially, the change in policy is an adaptation to the spread of chaos, an attempt by British imperialism to ride on the rising wave of barbarism. However, such a strategy can only have one outcome: the fuelling of still more imperialist confrontation and the acceleration of the spread of chaos.
North, 3/11/05
Everything the government led by citizen K (1) says about the ‘fantastic revival of the Argentine economy’ after the debacle of 2001 is just lies. The reality facing the workers and the immense majority of the population is more and more disturbing. A few figures illustrate this: those on incomes below the poverty level, which was 5% of the population in 1976, reached 50% in 2004. 11 million people live on $150 a month, with the poverty level standing at $389(2). Famine, previously limited to the northern provinces (Tucumain or Salta, for example, where 80% of infants suffer from chronic malnutrition) is beginning to reach the poorest areas of the terrible slum belt around the south of Buenos Aires.
Workers have begun to revolt against this unbearable situation. Between June and August, the country has seen the biggest wave of strikes for 15 years (3). The most important struggles were those at the hospitals in Quilmes and Moreno, at enterprises like the Coto supermarkets, Parmalat, Tango Meat , Lapsa, the Buenos Aires subway (the Subte), the municipal workers of Avellaneda, Rosarion and the main towns of the central province of Santa Cruz; sailors and fishermen at national level, judicial employees throughout the country, teachers from five provinces, doctors employed by the city of Buenos Aires, university teachers in Buenos Aires and Cordoba. Among all these struggles, a particular mention should be made of the struggle at the children’s hospital of Garrahan in Buenos Aires because of its militant spirit of unity and solidarity. In Cordoba, one of the main industrial centres of the country, there were for a month and a half more struggles than have been seen for two decades, in automobiles, gas, teaching and the public sector.
At the time of writing the wave of strikes is receding. The social situation in Argentina is now focused on the widely publicised confrontation between the piquetero organisations and the government (4), as well as the spectacle of politicians preparing for the coming legislative elections. The struggles here and there won some ephemeral wage increases – above all in the public sector – but, faced with a capitalist system stuck in a crisis with no way out, the main gain of the struggles is not on the economic level but on the political level, in the lessons drawn from these struggles. These lessons will serve to prepare the new struggles which will inevitably break out: the need for unity, the understanding of who are our real friends and our enemies…
In 2001 there was a spectacular social revolt in Argentina, saluted by the ‘alternative world’ groups as well as by at least one group of the proletarian milieu (the IBRP) as representing a ‘revolutionary’ situation. But this mobilisation took place on an inter-class basis, and was geared towards nationalist preoccupations and ‘reforms’ of Argentine society which could only serve to strengthen the capitalist state. In an article that we published in International Review 109, we pointed out that “the proletariat in Argentina has been drowned and diluted in a movement of inter-classist revolt, a movement of popular protest which has expressed not the proletariat’s strength, but its weakness. The class has been unable to assert either its political autonomy or its self-organisation”.
As we said in the same article, “the proletariat has no need to console itself or to clutch at illusions. What it does need, is to rediscover the path of its own revolutionary perspective, to assert itself on the social stage as the sole class able to offer humanity a future, and in doing so to draw behind itself the other non-exploiting strata of society”. We also said that the combative capacities of the Argentine proletariat have not been exhausted, and they will develop once again, above all if it draws a clear lesson from the events of 2001: “inter-classist revolts do not weaken the power of the bourgeoisie but of the proletariat itself”.
Four years later, the wave of strikes in Argentina has revealed a combative proletariat fighting on its own class terrain, and beginning to recognise itself, if only in a timid way, as a class with its own identity. We are not the only ones to say this: the publication Lucha de Clases: Revista marxista de Teoria y Politica in July 2005, edited by left wing intellectuals, recognised that “one of the most remarkable facts of this year has been the return of the employed workers to the centre of the Argentine political scene, after years of retreat. We are facing a long cycle of demand struggles, where the workers fight for the improvement of their wages and against deteriorating working conditions and try to re-appropriate gains lost in previous decades”, adding that “at a time when the workers of industry and the services begin to find their voice, others are staying silent: those who had decreed ‘the end of the proletariat’”.
This militant upsurge of the proletariat is not a local phenomenon resulting from particular Argentine circumstances. Without for a moment denying the influence of specific factors, particularly the rapid and violent fall in the living standards of huge parts of the population, in turn the result of an accelerating economic decline since the collapse of 2001, it remains the case that this wave of strikes is part of the international revival of class struggle that we have been pointing to since 2003.
In a text published recently (5), we showed the general characteristics of this revival: slow and difficult, not yet taking the form of spectacular movements, advancing not through a succession of victorious struggles but through defeats from which workers draw lessons that will bear fruit in future struggles. The conducting wire which contributes to their slow maturation is “the feeling, still very confused but which can only develop in the coming period, that there is no solution to the contradictions of capitalism today, whether at the level of its economy or other expressions of its historic crisis, whose irresistible character is shown up more clearly by each passing day, such as the unending military confrontations, the growth of chaos and barbarism”.
During this wave of strikes we have seen, as in other struggles around the world (Heathrow in Britain, Mercedes and Opel in Germany) a fundamental weapon of the proletarian struggle: the search for class solidarity.
In the Subte, all the workers stopped work spontaneously after the death of two maintenance workers as a result of the total lack of protection against accidents. The workers of the hospitals in the federal capital carried out a number of solidarity actions with their comrades at Garrahan. In the south, in the Santa Cruz province, the municipal employee’s strike in the main towns won the sympathy of wide layers of the population. This was concretised in the massive participation at demonstrations in the town centres. At Caleta Olivia, oil workers, judicial workers, teachers, the unemployed, joined in with the demonstrations of the municipal workers. The oil workers came out on strike for the same demands as the municipal workers as well as their own demands. The same was done by the workers at the Barillari company, in the fishing sector. At Neuquen, the health workers spontaneously joined the demonstration of striking primary school teachers which was marching towards the seat of the provincial government. Violently attacked by the police, the marchers managed to regroup and were joined by passers-by who were extremely critical of the police, the latter retiring to a more prudent distance. A work stoppage in the all the country’s schools was called in support of the Neuquen teachers.
We should also draw attention to the unitary manner in which the workers at Garrahan raised their wage demands: instead of demanding proportional increases which would only sharpen divisions between workers of different categories, they fought for an equal increase for everyone, which reduced the differences and favoured the less well paid sectors.
During the last 15 years, the news have been dominated by the most violent consequences of the degeneration of capitalism: wars, economic convulsions, catastrophes of all kinds, terrorism, mass murder, unbridled barbarism…The only thing which seems to go in an opposite direction are the protests led by capitalist organisations disguised as ‘anti-capitalists’, whose programme is now being carried out by their colleague Lula in Brazil, or else desperate and impotent inter-class revolts. The picture is now beginning to change. Slowly, painfully, the proletariat is rediscovering its own class terrain, raising the real banner of struggle against capitalist barbarism, a banner which can be taken up by all the exploited and oppressed of the world.
It would be stupid to think that the ruling class is going to stand with folded arms in the face of its mortal enemy. It responded rapidly by deploying not only the weapons of repression, but also a more deadly one: political and trade union manoeuvres.
The federal government and the provincial governments used the police against the strikers: arrests, courts, administrative sanctions were directed at many workers, But the real focus of the bourgeoisie’s reply was a political manoeuvre aimed at isolating the most combative sectors, at leading the different centres of struggle towards a demoralising dead-end with the message that ‘struggle doesn’t pay’, that mobilising brings you nothing, that those who want to improve things have only one alternative:
- ‘action from below’: violent operations by minority groups like the piqueteros, or activities supposedly aimed at reducing poverty, such as the work of self-managed enterprises, barter networks, soup kitchens, etc;
- action from above, by the union leaders and the politicians.
In other words, the proletariat has no choice but to run from one false alternative to the other - a situation where the capitalist state remains firmly in control.
The main focus for this manoeuvre was the struggle at Garrahan hospital. There was a deafening campaign about workers being ‘terrorists’, putting their own interests above those of the children being looked after at the hospital. With nauseating cynicism, the government, which allows thousands of children to die of hunger, made a whole song and dance about the threat to the children by these abominable strikers. The government of citizen K, supported unfailingly by the main unions (CGT and CTE, with the latter’s health unions being firmly opposed to the strike) took an attitude of brutal intransigence. The Garrahan workers were deliberately excluded from the state employees’ wage negotiations. At the same time, the government bureaucrats agreed to receive representatives of other sectors on strike (for example the university teachers), but refused any contact with the Garrahan workers.
All this was obviously a provocation to isolate the Garrahan workers, crowned by the absurd accusation that they were being manipulated by a so-called anti-progressive conspiracy formed by Menem, Duhalde and Maccri (7)
But what weakened the struggle of the Garrahan workers the most was the ‘help’ it received from the piquetero organisations. These groups swarmed like flies around the Garrahan struggle, just as they did with the Tango Meat workers, in the name of ‘solidarity’. The Garrahan workers were linked to the methods of ‘struggle’ favoured by the piqueteros, minority commando actions which, instead of really hitting capital and the state, cause problems for other workers. For example the piquetero organisations blocked the Pueyrredon bridge, a vital link in the capital city, at rush hour, resulting in monster traffic jams which mainly affected the workers of the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. At Canadon Seco, in the south, about 40 people cut off access to the Repsol-YPF refineries without the slightest prior consultations with the workers of that plant.
Little by little attention was focused on the struggle at Garrahan and on another highly publicised confrontation between the piqueteros and the government, culminating in a spectacular deployment of the police around the Pueyrredon bridge.
The final blow was provided by the organisation of false solidarity with the Garrahan workers, They were invaded by an avalanche of rank and file union groups, piqueteros, groups of the extreme left, social organisations of all kinds, all offering wonderful speeches about support and solidarity. This gave an illusion of solidarity when in fact the workers were being isolated, encircled and led towards utter demoralisation.
This was possible because the struggle at Garrahan, despite its militancy and its desire for unity, was tightly controlled from the start by a ‘Red List’ belonging to the ATE union, opposed to the ‘Green List’ which runs the union from the top. Given the workers’ growing disaffection from the unions, these ‘Red Lists’ are taking up the slack, especially in moments of struggle, to make sure that workers remain under union control. This was concretised in the organisation of a false solidarity through the setting up of ‘coordinations’ with other rank and file organisations. The leader of the Red List at Garrahan said that “you can’t say today that the ATE is really struggling, it’s us, the rank and file, who are on strike. The idea is to coordinate with all those we can; we have to try to do at the base what the leaders won’t do at the top…the unemployed organisations, the piqueteros, our patients – they’re the ones who are in solidarity with us”. Solidarity is thus limited to “support groups” and to the “patients”, in other words, it’s not a question of a general class struggle, but a private affair between workers and patients.
Real solidarity can only develop outside and against the union prison, through a common struggle which integrates new sectors of workers, where there are mass delegations, demonstrations, unified assemblies, where the workers can fight, discuss and decide together, and where other oppressed and exploited layers can join in with them. In such a movement, the divisions between the workers begin to disappear because they can see concretely that they belong to the same class, because they can become aware of their strength and their unity.
This direct, active, massive solidarity, the only kind that can take the proletarian struggle forward, was replaced by a ‘solidarity’ organised by intermediaries, passive, limited to a minority, generating a false euphoria about being supported by the ‘masses’ who are supposedly behind these organisations. The end result is isolation and division.
“The worst thing for the working class is not a clear defeat but rather the sense of victory after a defeat that is masked (but real): it is this sense of “victory” (against fascism and in defence of the “socialist fatherland”) which has been the most efficient poison to plunge and maintain the proletariat in the counter-revolution during four decades of the 20th century” (‘A turning point in the class struggle’ IR 119).
ICC 16.9.05
(1) A popular term for Kirschner, the president of Argentina
(2) Figures supplied by the newspaper Clarin 30.8.05
(3) “June saw the highest number of conflicts in the past year: 127 movements, 80% affecting the public sector, 13% the services and the remaining 7% from different industrial branches, This has surpassed the number of conflicts for the month of June in any year since 1980” (Colectivo Nuevo Proyecto Historico, a group that has recently appeared in Argentina in its text ‘Sindicato y necessidas radicales’)
(4) On the piqueteros, read ‘Popular revolts in Argentina: only the affirmation of the proletariat on its class terrain can make the bourgeoisie retreat’ in International Review 109. ‘Popular revolts in Latin America: the class autonomy of the proletariat is indispensable’ International Review 117; ‘Argentina: the mystification of the piqueteros’ in IR 119
(5) IR 119 ‘Resolution on the class struggle’
(6) Ibid
(7) Menem and Duhalde are former Argentine presidents of dubious memory.
Mass poverty within present day society is not accidental: capitalism creates poverty as an inevitable byproduct of its system of exploitation of the working class. The extraction of surplus value leads to the grotesque polarisation of wealth and want at two opposite poles of society. It also leads to economic crisis and imperialist war. The movement ‘make poverty history’ and other similar campaigns – for fair trade, debt relief etc - that are presently protesting the obvious evils of capitalism are sowing the illusion that poverty can be abolished within capitalism without overthrowing it. These movements divert anger into dead ends. Capitalism must be replaced by communism and only the revolutionary working class can do so. To do this the working class, which today is a sleeping giant, will have to pass onto the offensive and create an international party.
Such, in broad outlines, was the theme of the presentation of the public meeting held by the Communist Workers’ Organisation on 15th October in London. The CWO is the British wing of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) and like the ICC claims the tradition of the communist left. Despite the serious differences that exist between our organisations (see World Revolution 288), the ICC in Britain welcomed the holding of the meeting (particularly as it has been several years since the last CWO public meeting in London) as a forum for the discussion and development of left communist politics.
Indeed the ICC helped impulse the discussion with several questions and interventions about the CWO’s analysis. Their presentation spent a long time (some 45 minutes) elaborating on the almost obvious fact that capitalism produces poverty as an inevitable result of its system of exploitation and that therefore a socialist system is at least desirable. But it failed to say whether the overthrow of capitalism by a communist revolution is historically necessary. The idea that capitalism since 1914 has been a decadent mode of production that is historically obsolete has always been the bedrock of the programmatic positions of the communist left. But in the CWO presentation this basic concept was missing. Indeed, in recent publications of the IBRP this fundamental marxist concept of the decadence of capitalism has been questioned. So we asked if the CWO thought that the present crises and wars and mass pauperisation signify that capitalism is a decadent mode of production and therefore objectively obsolete? Their reply was ambiguous. The CWO said that capitalism was in a decadent phase but they preferred to use the word ‘imperialist’ to describe it because the word ‘decadence’ implies, according to them, a fatalist view of the revolutionary process. However we don’t think the absence of the word ‘decadence’ from the lips of the CWO was a question of words but of substance. The presentation claimed that “wars now play a prominent economic role to permit a new period of accumulation”, an idea that implies that war is a beneficial economic weapon that still allows capitalism to perpetuate itself indefinitely rather than contributing to its growing collapse. Instead of seeing a period of growing military chaos, of unbridled imperialism characteristic of the final phase of capitalist decadence - the period of social decomposition - the CWO sees the prospect of the re-stabilisation of imperialism where the imperialist blocs will be ‘reconstituted’.
The CWO was even quite optimistic about the present health and economic prospects of capitalism, judging by their claim that ‘globalisation’ was laying the basis for a wider unity of the working class because of rapid industrialization and the creation of millions of new workers in China and elsewhere on the peripheries of the system. This apparently would lead to the massive development of class consciousness. The material conditions for communism are better today than in 1917, they said.
The ICC, in answer to this unwarranted optimism about capitalism’s fortunes, tried to make clear that wars in capitalism have had a very different nature since 1914 than before. In the 19th century wars were broadly a spur to economic development. In the decadent period of the system the massive scale and duration of wars bring the resources of the whole of the national capital into play. The economy has come to serve war. War has become the way of life of capitalism. But it is not an economic weapon; it’s a leech that bleeds the economy white. War is not a rejuvenating elixir but accompanies and accelerates the convulsions of a dying system.
The economic expansion going on in China or India, rather than a harbinger of prosperity in the peripheries, is a temporary and artificial interruption in the descent of capitalism into the abyss. As the ICC and its sympathisers pointed out Chinese capitalism, rather than massively expanding the working class is massively expanding unemployment. The development of class consciousness is not the automatic product of industrialisation as the CWO suggested but depends on historical factors. And these factors place the main responsibility for the development of consciousness on the shoulders of the working class in Western Europe.
The CWO’s theories are therefore coming into more and more conflict with reality, particularly as it has chosen the culminating period of capitalism’s decline to reject the theory of its decadence upon which the entirety of left communist politics depend.
But the CWO’s theories are also coming into conflict with each other as well as reality. During the meeting they tied themselves up in knots on the connection between war and economic development.
The CWO in reply to a question from the floor at the beginning of the discussion, said that the recent war and occupation of Iraq was a means for the United States to make its capitalist rivals pay for the crisis through the US control of oil production and exchange in the Middle East. Indeed this view that the present growth of US militarism since the collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc in 1989 is determined by the search for economic benefit and protection of raw materials has been extensively developed in the IBRP press and in the advertising for the present meeting.
However the CWO later flatly contradicted this analysis after it was pointed out that the Iraq war and occupation has been an immense drain on the US economy. Henceforth the CWO then claimed that the Iraq war was only a ‘skirmish’ that didn’t help the US economy. Localised wars like the one in Iraq were of little use to capitalist accumulation, they said.
The conclusion to the meeting therefore had to modify the initial presentation considerably. Now wars in general could not open up a new period of accumulation, as the presentation had it, but only world wars. But this change in analysis – on the fly – only landed the CWO in more self-contradiction with its previous theory that the real reasons for the US recent wars in the Middle East is to control oil production and distribution in order to maintain its economic supremacy. If these wars are then proved to be an economic disaster why does the US still pursue them so assiduously? How does the CWO now explain the economic logic of US imperialism? Does the US want to make itself even more bankrupt than ever?
In reality the main reason for the recent wars led by US imperialism is geo-strategic. They are conducted at the expense of the economy. They exemplify the growing economic irrationality of war today; something the CWO’s vulgar materialism – that wants to explain history by ‘economic mechanisms’ alone – is incapable of understanding. In its confusion it is not competent to explain either unfolding events or the seriousness of the long term stakes facing the working class.
The CWO was even more incoherent on the other main theme of the meeting, revolutionary organisation. This theme focused on how revolutionary groups behave towards each other. Towards the end of the meeting the ICC asked why the IBRP had republished on its website last year (in several languages) some very serious slanders against the ICC from an Argentine ‘group’ called the ‘Circle of Internationalist Communists’. These slanders could be found in a document entitled ‘Declaration against the nauseating methods of the ICC’ which said, for example, that the ICC uses “practices which don’t belong to the legacy of the Communist Left, but rather to the very method of the bourgeois left and of Stalinism”1. What would have the CWO’s reaction have been had the ICC published such slanders on its website? Would the CWO not have demanded a public retraction of such scandalous and totally unfounded accusations? A year later, however, the IBRP have yet to retract the slanders they published about the ICC, maintaining a deliberate silence on the question.
The CWO chair, in continuity with this policy, tried to rule the ICC question out of order and simply refused to answer it, even though at the public forum of World Revolution in September the CWO suggested that ‘they had made mistakes’ about this episode (see WR 288). Now they only wanted to discuss ‘programmatic’ questions, not supposedly sectarian disputes between groups, as though lies and slanders are not important! Instead of replying to the legitimate ICC question, they proceeded to throw more mud at our organization - no doubt in the interests of non-sectarianism. The CWO accused the ICC of creating pretend disagreements, and of not sticking to the subject of the meeting. More: the ICC was apparently guilty of attacking the CWO for the last twenty five years; reducing every meeting to a ‘ping-pong’ match. In other words the CWO presented themselves as the victims of the trouble-making ICC and not the perpetrators of slanders against the ICC! All this noise was designed to hide their silence on the real question on the table2.
The ICC and its sympathisers tried to make it clear at the meeting that our question was perfectly valid and required an answer. It was artificial to separate ‘programmatic’ from organisational problems; they are inevitably connected to each other. Indeed, the problem of creating the party was raised by the presentation to the meeting, so the ICC could hardly be accused of talking off the subject. Our question about the Argentine episode directly relates to this problem of the party. It is about the behaviour of groups who want to create this party: do they try to advance their own separate cause at the expense of other groups, in this case by helping to slander them? Or do they abide by certain minimum rules of mutual solidarity and respect? Without the latter there can be no talk of a class party.
Superficially the CWO’s attempted silence on a vital question of organisation seemed to be justified by the intervention at the meeting by someone new to politics who had hoped to hear about communism and complained they had had to listen to an argument between two small organisations. Those coming to a political meeting for the first time may well be disappointed with the apparent discrepancy between the enormity of the revolutionary project and the intractability of the disagreements between groups espousing it. However it is up to those with more knowledge of the marxist movement to explain that the communist project is a long term prosaic struggle, requiring an enduring passion and commitment to political research and debate. Revolutionary politics and discussion cannot be conducted like the empty spectacle of leftist meetings where the only contribution of the audience is to listen and applaud rousing but empty speeches.
In this regard an ICC contact quite rightly emphasized the importance of ‘ping pong’ matches both to maintain contact between revolutionary organizations and to eventually clarify vital political questions in preparation for the future when the arms of criticism give way to criticism by arms3.
It’s the job of more experienced militants to refer newcomers to the real nature of the marxist movement that has always been an extreme minority outside of revolutionary periods (Trotsky noted at Zimmerwald in 1915 that all the revolutionaries in the world could fit into two taxis). It has also always been marked by its passion for political argument and debate. In the Second International the Bolsheviks were derided by the opportunists and centrists for their constant polemics. Yet it was the glacial unanimity of the German Party that collapsed in front of the test of 1914, while political combat and polemic tempered the Bolshevik Party for its success in 1917.
The failure of the CWO to answer on this point, its encouragement of the illusions of those looking to the revolutionary movement for guidance, which it used to justify its policy of ‘non-reply’, could not be more irresponsible.
Not only did the CWO try to justify a policy of non-discussion of difficult organisational questions, the way the meeting itself was run by the CWO seemed to show they were in two minds about whether they wanted a discussion with other revolutionaries. In the first place they insisted on a period during the short amount of time after the presentation for ‘questions only’. This made it very difficult to develop interventions that could help enrich the debate and was a break with the tradition of previous left communist public meetings where other internationalist organisations are allowed a decent period in which to express their position. The format of the CWO meeting was at least a misreading of the nature of the audience which was almost entirely made up of people to whom the positions of the CWO were well known: there was no need have a period of questions about them. The ‘question only’ format is a typical feature of leftist meetings designed to prevent the elaboration of opposing political positions and thus real debate. And this was the effect at the CWO meeting. On top of this the CWO praesidium, rather than encouraging discussion, constantly interrupted ICC speakers, sniggered amongst themselves while the latter were speaking, with the result that the elaboration of opposing ideas was discouraged. When ICC militants complained of this, they were invited, on two occasions, to leave the meeting.
This CWO public meeting confirmed that the IBRP is in sorry state. It is unable to recognize let alone explain the full seriousness of the current conditions facing the working class, and contradicts its own positions about the nature of the current wars.
Its opportunist policy towards other groups and refusal to justify or correct its behaviour shows that the CWO is unable to put forward the minimum conditions for the construction of the revolutionary organisation. Most worrying is its growing distaste for discussion with other revolutionary groups. In other words, as we say in our ‘Open letter to the IBRP’, the CWO is putting its own ‘right to exist’ as a revolutionary organisation into question.
Como
Notes
1 See ‘Open letter to the militants of the IBRP’ on the ICC website: en.internationalism.org. This letter shows that the ‘Circle’ was a complete sham pretending to replace a real Argentine group called the Nucleus of Internationalist Communists.
2 Nevertheless the CWO couldn’t resist compounding the original slanders of the Argentine ‘Circle’: they said that the ICC had itself written the declaration of the Nucleus of Internationalist Communists exposing the myth of the ‘Circle’. In other words the CWO suggested the NCI didn’t really exist. The CWO is cordially invited to the next ICC public meeting in Buenos Aires to test their allegations.
3 If we had had more opportunity to intervene the ICC would also have reminded comrades that alongside our commitment to debate between revolutionaries, we have always insisted on the adoption of common positions on events of fundamental importance by other organisations of the left communist camp. But from the invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 to the war in Iraq in 2003, the ICC’s appeals to the IBRP in this regard have always been refused.
Since the London bombings in July the ruling class have put a lot of energy into the discussion of counter-terrorism legislation. Immediately after the bombings the leaders of the three main parties got together to discuss proposed new powers – even though they had actually been planned beforehand. A new Terrorism Bill is currently going through Parliament which prohibits not just incitement to terrorism, but also its glorification; it outlaws acts preparatory to terrorism or even owning something that could be used for it; there will be all premises search warrants and increased stop and search powers. Most publicity has been given to the proposal to extend detention without charge to 90 days. For asylum seekers there is the further threat to return them to countries that regularly use torture, and alongside this the Law Lords have discussed the use of evidence gained by torture. Clearly there is a concerted effort to beef up the state’s powers of repression.
However, we need to be very clear that the state already has considerable powers of repression. Justice, a legal pressure group, in a letter to Charles Clarke (27/7/5) “consider that many of the proposed measures are unnecessary on the basis that they seek merely to replicate existing law”. For instance, it is already a criminal offence to refuse to disclose a key, password or code for access to electronic data, or information which may prevent an act of terrorism under the Terrorism Act, 2000.
The well publicised arrest of 82 year old Walter Wolfgang at the Labour Party Conference took place under previous terrorism legislation, and this is far from an isolated case. “Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the police to stop and search people in designated areas. This power, according to Liberty, has been used to stop people going to anti-war demonstrations. Protests outside of RAF Fairford, during the Iraq war, were broken up though the use of anti-terrorist laws. This included an eleven year old girl being issued with an anti-terrorism order” (World Revolution 284). Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 suspects can be denied access to a solicitor if the police believe it will lead to interference with evidence.
Jean Charles de Menezes was shot without any new legislation being introduced. The state has already equipped its security forces with the power to use bugging, surveillance, tailing and agent provocateurs, even murder.
The new powers proposed include the extension of the powers to outlaw “encouragement” of terrorism beyond the present law against “incitement”. Similarly it broadens the law to outlaw training. This has led to criticism that the law will not pass the “Mandela test”, or allow journalists and others to support ‘good armed struggle’ (‘freedom fighters’, ‘resistance’) when it involves precisely the same use of bombs against civilians as terrorism! Lord Carlile’s report on the Terrorism Bill makes it clear that the legislation only applied to those terrorists the British Government does not support: “However, it is important that there should be the clearest understanding that this clause and clause 8 would not be misused. I question whether it is the role of our law, or even enforceable, to make it a criminal offence triable in our country to fight in a revolution the aims of which we support” (our emphasis). The law has always been made to support Britain’s imperialist policy, for instance with internment in 1939 “if the Secretary of State has reasonable cause to believe” it necessary.
The extension of detention without charge well beyond the current 14 days, even if the state settles on less than the 90 days proposed in the Terrorism Bill, is also a significant new proposal. With or without Lord Carlile’s proposal for this to be reviewed by judges with special security clearance every week, this remains a severe punishment designed to cause long term disruption to family and ability to work. Some of those bringing it in cut their political teeth in the 1960s and 1970s denouncing 90 day detention and pass laws as the mark of the lack of democracy in Apartheid South Africa, and now have the gall to bring in those very measures as the defence of democracy in Britain today.
In the new Terrorism Bill the government is introducing many measures that can make no contribution to fighting terrorism, either because they duplicate existing legislation, or because, in the words of the Newton Committee of Privy Councillors, 2001 “it has not been represented to us that it has been impossible to prosecute a terrorist suspect because of a lack of available offences”. Yet the Bill, and the propaganda about it, is necessary for a further development in repression. On the one hand, it attempts to rally the population, and above all the working class, around the state which pretends to be the only protection from random terrorist violence. At the same time publicising the various measures can both intimidate and get the working class used to an increase in the level of repression. The ‘debate’ about the balance between ‘human rights’, ‘civil liberties’ and ‘security’ is a vital part of this.
Today we are 3 decades into the crisis, and specifically coming to the end of the ‘Brownian miracle’, added to which, as the Gate Gourmet strike and the solidarity strike at BA showed, the working class is not demoralised. The introduction of repressive measures, even when aimed at an ‘external’ threat such as terrorism, requires a cover or spin – to be precise, mystification.
The mystification that supports the counter-terrorism legislation is the idea that democracy is not just the best form for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie but allows the ‘public’, ‘communities’ and individuals – regardless of class – a real voice in society. The debate surrounding the legislation is, in the words of Lord Carlile’s report for the government, “a good thing especially in relation to laws potentially affecting on the one hand the liberties of the subject, and on the other seeking to protect the lives of the majority from the horrific prospect of being blown apart whilst going about their everyday lawful business.” In the media it is never posed as a question of the bourgeois state using its full force to defend its imperialist interests, as in Iraq, while silencing or rendering harmless opposition at home, nor of getting the working class used to the repression that will be used against it in the future as in the past. From left and right, from Justice and Liberty as much as the government, it is always posed as a question of balancing civil liberties against protection from terrorism.
The debates in Parliament have been typical of a government bringing in repressive policies ‘in the national interest’ and the opposition questioning it, with all the melodrama of close-won votes. We know very well that exactly the same would have happened if the Tories had been in power and Labour in opposition. And if the 90 day detention has been temporarily withdrawn for further discussion, government and opposition are both agreed to extend the period well beyond 14 days.
One new aspect of the present campaign is the emphasis on judges ‘standing up for human rights’. Traditionally judges have backed all sorts of repressive measures without question – internment, in the war and in Northern Ireland, laws against secondary picketing etc. Traditional liberties only exist if they suit the ruling class: “habeas corpus can be an effective remedy to control the exercise of the discretionary power, but policy considerations may often make the courts reluctant to act” (R.J.Sharpe quoted in The politics of the judiciary, Griffith). Today ‘policy considerations’ require them to emphasise international law, human rights and individual liberty – which does nothing to prevent the increase in state repression, but does provide a cover for it.
As we said after the legal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes “the capitalist state, in Britain as in all the ‘democratic’ countries, has always used terrorist attacks like those of 7th and 21st July in London as an excuse to strengthen its repressive apparatus, to put in place measures that are generally considered the preserve of “totalitarian” regimes, and above all to get the population used to their existence” (‘Execution at Stockwell: today’s “shoot to kill” prepares tomorrow’s death squads’ WR 287). All repressive measures will, when necessary, be used against the working class, the real threat to the bourgeoisie, as we have seen, for example, in the 80s with the miners’ strike and more recently when Gate Gourmet strikers were chased away from Heathrow by armed police. But repression alone cannot defeat the struggle of the working class without “illusions in the democratic process, which is in reality a cover for the dictatorship of capital. The working class will only strengthen this dictatorship if it demands that the state respect its rights” (‘The state arms itself against future class battles’ WR 284). Groups like Liberty may point out the facts of increasing repression, but their protests only add to the democratic debate that the state needs to legitimise it.
Alex 5.11.05
In the first part of this article [123] (in WR 287) we showed the evolution of the economic crisis of capitalism since the end of the 1960s following the period of reconstruction after World War II. In the second part we are going to try to show that the capitalist world is sinking into a new world recession and the bourgeoisie will be obliged to make the working class pay still more heavily.
World capitalism confronts a new acceleration of its crisis
Faced with the decline of the capitalist economy, the bourgeoisie, at the beginning of 2000, wanted to make us again think that we were in for a new phase of economic expansion, mainly through the United States but also through China and India. We will return in more detail to the brazen propaganda of the bourgeoisie about India and China in the near future. As far as the United States is concerned, it is not difficult to show the hollowness of the bourgeoisie’s lies! Without a public deficit whose breadth and rate of increase frightens the bourgeoisie itself, the American economy would doubtless already be in recession.
But what are the other factors in this American ‘recovery’?
The first is the massive support the US administration has given to household consumption. This policy is due to a spectacular lowering of taxes on the well-off and middle classes, at the price of growing cuts in the federal budget.
In the second place, the lowering of interest rates, from 6.5% at the beginning of 2001 to 1% at the beginning of 2004; this has further increased household debt.
Finally, an ever growing drain on savings, the latter shrinking from more than 12% in 1980 to a tiny 2% at the beginning of the year 2000.
The spectacular lowering of interest rates and the phenomenal drain on savings have produced massive debt for households across the US.
The American state has totally and artificially supported the property and automobile markets. The American bourgeoisie has pushed innumerable households, sometimes by lending at zero interest, to buy their own houses; this has been the source of record borrowings. Since 1977, mortgage debt in the United States has increased 94% to reach 7.4 billion dollars. Since 1977 banking credit intended for property acquisition has increased 200%. Since 1988 the cost of property has more than doubled. On average, in the United States, mortgage debt for a family of four corresponds to an average debt of $120,000. The accelerated rate of increase in the cost of property is also shown in the frantic speculation in this sector.
As long as interest rates remain low, close to zero, household debt can be bearable. But with the increase in interest rates getting underway, the resulting increase in debt leads to the ruin, pure and simple, of a very large number of American households.
Finally, the United States, thanks to this policy of extremely low interest rates, has shamelessly carried out a policy of competitive devaluation of the dollar. This has allowed the US to push the most dramatic effects of the worsening of the economic crisis onto the rest of the world. This in turn has driven every national bourgeoisie to launch itself into a merciless trade war.
The proletariat in Europe has already had bitter experience of the crisis, with the development of redundancies and the dismantling of the ‘welfare state’ (cuts in health care, pensions, etc…). But what is still more significant is that despite the extent and the unprecedented nature of the measures adopted, any resulting recovery will have been extremely brief. The new recession and the return of inflation leave the bourgeoisie no respite. The French Groupe Financier Banque TD, which above all aims to reassure, announces a slow down of world growth: “Real world GDP will probably slow down from 4.8% in 2004 to 4.2% in 2005 and to 3.9% in 2006… In fact American growth must slow down from 4.4% in 2004 to 3.8% in 2005, then to 3.2% in 2006, while in China one can see that the rate of growth will oscillate between 8% and 8.5%… in relation to a rate of 9% and more in 2004.”
Even though these forecasts seem to underestimate reality, the bourgeois experts are still predicting dark days ahead for the capitalist economy, openly contradicting the ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie.
Last 22 February, important new troubles appeared in the financial markets, indicating once again the disastrous conditions in which the international financial system finds itself. The main editorial in the New York Times (24/2/5) said: “The liquidation of the dollar on Tuesday has not provoked a collapse. But it has without a doubt given a foretaste of it (…) Tuesday’s episode has its origins in America’s structural imbalance…” For its part the Washington Post, during the course of the same month, wrote: “The clock continues to tick towards a meeting with disaster. A broken down financial superstructure is jolted by a new energy crisis, the movements of the dollar and out of control American finances”. The dollar was being exchanged at $1.32 against the euro. The perspective of a lowering of the dollar seemed to be on the cards. However, the crisis also hit the eurozone, momentarily upsetting the currency. On June 3 the euro reached its lowest levels for 8 months, in line with a sudden run on the dollar.
The bourgeoisie is finding itself confronted with more and more serious monetary turbulence, cutting off any medium term vision. To that it must be added that, in recent years, the dollar has mainly been supported by Japan, Saudi Arabia and China. We know that, for two years, the Saudis have diverted their investments away from the United States, towards other regions of the world. Today, China shows that it too has reached a point where it can no longer go on supporting the US economy. The Japanese and Chinese central banks, inundated with dollar credits, with some banks on the edge of bankruptcy, can no longer absorb any more. The largest acknowledged holders of American debts are the central banks of Asia and the Pacific region. Japan and China alone hold American state obligations of more than a billion dollars.
China disposes of a great part of its production through the US domestic market. It is paid in dollars that it uses in part to buy bonds from the US Treasury, thus financing the colossal deficit of the United States. In return this policy allows Beijing to open up more and more new factories, which, with the approval of the United States, produce goods to be sold on the American market. However, the Chinese economy is subsidised by the budget and state deficit. As in the United States this swollen mass of debt has reached a danger point. It was little more than a 100 billion yuans in 1987 and today it is close to 500 billion. This is a deficit that is essentially financed by the Chinese banking system, which is drowning in highly dubious credit. The growing instability of the dollar today represents a major risk to the international financial system.
For the majority of countries, holding dollars makes no sense other than it being the principal money of world commerce. This function is really put in danger by the threat of its collapse. Despite the present recovery of the dollar faced with the weakening of the euro, the fantastic level of debt of the US economy can, in the period to come, only push the level of the dollar to fall. Faced with this reality, the danger comes from the necessity for numerous countries to diversify their credits into strong currencies. The rocketing prices of raw materials, which on March 8 - according to the CRB index (Commodity Research Bureau) which covers 17 of the most important raw materials - reached their highest levels for 24 years. It is not only the cost of oil that is climbing, even if a barrel that was $10 six years ago has now risen to more than $55. Speculation is ever present, including a building bubble that is now quite close to implosion; and the catastrophic state of the international money system has pushed up the price of gold to a historic level of $440 an ounce. A few days ago the former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, declared: “It is necessary to prepare ourselves for a catastrophic crash of the dollar and an explosion of panic”.
Despite the pressure to lower prices through a policy of declining wages, generalised indebtedness brings about, along with the recession, the spectre of inflation. The excessively strong pressure to lower the mass amount of wages, in turn bringing about a tendency to the lowering of prices, is not enough to put a brake on the longer-term inflationary tendencies. All the industrial countries of Europe, Asia and America are again undergoing inflationary tensions. The reduction of the monetary mass that ineluctably flows from this will be an additional active factor in the recession that is taking shape. The bourgeoisie itself is thus obliged to take measures that will slow down the economy while the recession is already happening. With a debt equivalent to 58% of GDP and 60% of the rate of growth attributable to military expenses (2003 figures), the coming American recession gives the tone for the whole of the world economy. The weakening of economic cohesion that is now hitting Europe, particularly with the management of finances, will also tend to speed up the descent into recession. The upheavals that the international financial system is going to suffer will have a major impact effect on the entire capitalist economy.
A more profound recession than previous ones
Since the very short economic recovery at the beginning of 2000 was accompanied by a massive acceleration of unemployment and the pauperisation of the working class, we can just imagine the breadth of the attacks that capitalism will have to inflict on the proletariat when the recession really gets going. One of the symbols of the recovery coming to an end is perhaps the virtual bankruptcy of the two greatest builders of automobiles: General Motors and Ford. Faced with such a deterioration of the capitalist economy, and the development of the exploitation of workers, the proletariat more than ever must not mistake its enemy. It is not neo-liberalism or free enterprise, or the individual boss, or what’s called ‘globalisation’. It is capitalism that is today bankrupt, its state and the bourgeois class which alone are the real enemies of the working class and all of humanity. Here and now we can affirm that the new recession will be much more profound than all of those since the end of the post-war reconstruction. The proletariat must not be discouraged by this perspective. If the economic crisis is accelerating and with it the attacks on the working class, the proletariat can respond to the attacks by develop its struggle, its self-confidence, its solidarity and its class consciousness. This situation is rich and full of potential for the proletariat.
T
In the last few years, there seems to have been one natural disaster after another, and the human consequences of these gigantic dramas have been growing bigger and bigger each time.
After each hurricane, earthquake, drought or famine, we have heard all kinds of laments from the ruling class and its governments, and all kinds of promises about help for the victims. The real attitude of the bourgeoisie can be judged by the fact that each catastrophe has been exploited to further the imperialist interests of this or that national capitalism.
In December last year, the Tsunami ravaged southern Asia. It left more than 500,000 dead in Indonesia, Sumatra, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. The bourgeois media everywhere shed crocodile tears and talked about a massive mobilisation of aid. But the real concerns of the capitalist states were elsewhere. In a region of powerful tensions between different nations, in particular between India and Pakistan, all the great powers tried to use their respective ‘Non-Governmental Organisations’ to get the best position for themselves. Seeing the total ineffectiveness of humanitarian aid, even the journalists were forced to admit, “the climate of competition in which the NGOs and the UN agencies are operating requires explanation. Four recent studies arrived independently at the same conclusions: the financial manna of international humanitarian aid led to a rather undignified rush for the resources of the donors, often to the detriment of the populations affected by the catastrophes and emergencies, and of the integrity of the NGOs. The latter were often guided more by the priorities of the donors, who give out funds in a manner aimed at favouring their national interests” (Le Monde Diplomatique, 17 October, our emphasis). Even worse, “the absence of coordination and the multiplication of initiatives by the NGOs have led to rivalries and duplication or inappropriate forms of aid” (Liberation 20 October). The reality could hardly be more cynically expressed. This inter-imperialist competition, which the NGOs have spearheaded, has resulted in a waste or a sterilisation of a good part of the already miserly aid doled out by governments, or given by ordinary people out of real sympathy for so much human suffering.
Capitalism’s real interest in human life, the real motives behind its humanitarian mask, can be seen all the more clearly when catastrophes hit geographical zones which have no great strategic interest. Just a few months before the Tsunami struck south east Asia, terrible earthquakes devastated Haiti and Dominica. There were thousands of deaths and there was virtually no aid, precious little publicity and no huge media campaign of ‘solidarity’ with the suffering population. The same can be said about the Amazon, which for the last four years has been experiencing the most terrible drought in its history: the population there has simply been abandoned to its fate. Or again, in September when hurricane Stan directly hit Guatemala, as well as El Salvador, Nicaragua and south east Mexico, and left thousands dead and tens of thousands injured or made homeless. To give another example of what we mean; on October 9th the TV devoted just a few seconds to a mudslide that wiped out a Guatemalan village, leaving 1400 dead. Men, women and children, the whole village, perished under a tidal wave of mud.
In response to the tragedy, Washington promised to send six helicopters to help with evacuations. Most of the NGOs, and the main imperialist powers of the world, expressed a total lack of interest in this tragedy, leaving this part of the world to fall into indifference, misery, and epidemics.
When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the south east coast of the USA, the attitude of the various bourgeoisies was very different. Indifference was replaced by massive media coverage. On TV, in the papers, every moment of the day was filled with images of a poverty-stricken population, trapped, without food and shelter, surrounded by US soldiers armed to the teeth. None of this was innocent. There was a concerted effort by the USA’s main rivals to show the inhumanity, the indifference and the incompetence of the USA and its inability to protect its own population in contrast to the massive mobilisation by this same USA to bomb the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The French and German bourgeoisies were at the forefront of this anti-American campaign, rubbing salt into the wound by offering help to the US. The response from Bush was immediate and animated. “In an interview on ABC, Bush said at first ‘we appreciate help, but we are going to deal with this ourselves’. Then the US president made his position even clearer: ‘we haven’t asked anyone to help us’”. Condoleeza Rice had to repair a few bridges after that.
The cynical use made of this catastrophe by the USA’s main imperialist rivals bore some fruit because the world was made well aware of the USA’s inability to deal with the distress of its own population.
In October, a new earthquake hit the region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The death toll has already gone well above 70,000. As with the Tsunami, the NGOs have rushed in to offer their aid; and behind them, the great powers have been advertising their desire to help. With what result?
“I don’t think many people can survive in this cold…In the last few days we have seen cases of diarrhoea, fever, respiratory infections” (Doctor Bilal, cited by Courrier Internationale 16 October).
As winter approaches in the mountains of Kashmir, the stench of death is everywhere and survivors are still looking for shelter, food and medicine.
Several weeks after this huge disaster, the aid given to this region has been minimal. This is a region of considerable geo-strategic importance, a cardinal point between Europe, Asia and Russia. For years it has been a theatre of conflict between India and Pakistan. There is a striking contrast between the military resources deployed in this region and the extreme misery of its population. With the exception of a few symbolic acts, these military resources cannot be adapted for use in dealing with the emergency. “The nearest source of supply of helicopters is India, but relations between the two countries is tense as both dispute control over Kashmir”. The Pakistani president Parvez Musharraf said that “he would accept Indian helicopters, on condition that they arrive without equipment” (Liberation 22 October). But even more clear and more inhuman was his statement that “there are military defence plans, there are military deployments up there, as there are on the Indian side. We don’t want any of their soldiers to go there, not at all”. If Musharraf was responding in this manner, it is because he knows very well that India’s humanitarian gestures hide its military intentions. But the imperialist rivalry between India and Pakistan also directly involves all the great powers: USA, China, Germany, Britain…no great power is uninterested in this part of the world. Proof of this is the following: “NATO decided to send 500-1000 men to the north of Pakistan, but will not be able to respond to the UN’s appeal for the creation of a vast air bridge to break the isolation of the hundreds of thousands of victims threatened by hunger and cold” (Liberation 22 October). If international bodies like NATO and the UN are incapable of coordinating the smallest relief effort, it’s quite simply because their role has nothing to do with humanitarianism. They are nothing but arenas for conflict between the imperialist powers.
The damage caused by so-called natural catastrophes in the 90s was three times greater than during the previous decade and 15 times greater than during the 1950s. If more and more geographical zones and populations are being destroyed by the consequences of these catastrophes, it must be clear to the proletariat that this problem is only of interest to the bourgeoisie if it can exploit it for the defence of its national and imperialist interests. In the zones which are not abandoned to their fate because of their geo-strategic importance; ‘humanitarian intervention’ is used to aggravate the situation, resulting in further disorder and mayhem.
Capitalism’s descent into imperialist chaos is an integral part of the terrible barbarism that results from these disasters. The working class is the only class capable of overthrowing capitalism and bringing an end to this suicidal logic by creating a society that is no longer founded on exploitation and profit. Tino
There has been a continuous revolutionary trend within the working class in Britain from the Chartist movement in the early 19th century through the First World War, the revolutionary wave that followed and, to a lesser extent, the Second World War and after. A new book, The British Communist Left, published by the ICC, makes a major contribution to the history of the revolutionary movement in Britain in the 20th century. As it says in the introduction “there is a deep tradition within the British proletariat of principled opposition to parliamentarism and reformism, and an understanding of the need for a workers’ revolution against the bourgeois democratic state” (p.2). It is the latest in a series of books published by the ICC on the history of the communist left – the others being on the Italian, Dutch and German, and Russian communist lefts. Although written by a close sympathiser of the ICC, rather than the ICC itself, we fundamentally agree with its broad arguments and conclusions.
The common struggle
The greatest strength of the book is its recognition that the struggle of the proletariat in Britain is part of the international struggle of the whole proletariat. Time and again it shows that over and above the particular details of the national context the working class and its revolutionary minorities face the same challenges and respond in the same way.
The outbreak of war in 1914 saw betrayal and confusion throughout the workers’ movement but also principled, class-based opposition. In Britain, the Labour Party and unions rallied to the flag of the exploiters but a minority not only declared their opposition to the war but also intervened to defend the interests of the working class and to rouse it against the bourgeoisie. Following Lenin, the British Communist Left identifies three trends in the workers movement: “…the Labour Party and the trade union leaders, together with the Fabians and Hyndmanite leadership of the BSP [British Socialist Party], easily fell into the social chauvinist category. Of the centre or ‘swamp’, the Independent Labour Party was a classic example…Into the swamp also fell the majority of the opposition in the BSP” (p.13). The Socialist Labour Party and the SPGB are also placed in the centre although individual militants of the former participated actively in anti-war activity. The internationalist tendency was best expressed by the Vanguard group, a regroupment of the left within the BSP, centred in Scotland and animated by John Maclean. In September 1914 Vanguard declared “Our first business is to hate the British capitalist system that, with ‘business as usual’, means the continued robbery of the workers…It is our business as socialists to develop ‘class patriotism’, refusing to murder one another for a sordid world capitalism” (p.9).
The Russian revolution drew a response from workers around the world, but the British Communist Left shows that the British working class didn’t just support the revolution but was animated by the same need to oppose the barbarism of capitalism as its comrades in Russia. In 1915 and 1916 workers in all parts of the country went on strike in defiance of the law, the state and their own unions, culminating in strikes in England in March 1917 involving 200,000 workers. Revolutionaries in the SLP and the Vanguard group saw themselves as part of the revolutionary movement whose future was prefigured by the struggles in Russia and Germany: “This is the class war on an international basis, a class war that must and will be fought out to the logical conclusion – the extinction of capitalism everywhere. The question for us in Britain is how we must act in playing our part in this world conflict” (p19).
The left in Britain was also marked by its support for October 1917 and defence of the Bolsheviks. The Workers Socialist Federation that had evolved, under the leadership of Sylvia Pankhurst, from an organisation focused on gaining the vote for women to be part of the revolutionary left, declared in the Workers Dreadnought that “Their opponents strive to make it appear that Lenin and his party are a handful of people which has imposed its domination upon the unwilling Russian people; but it is the workers’ and soldiers’ council which has now deposed Kerensky and the provisional government, and itself becoming the government has chosen Lenin to be its prime minister” (p.22).
The creation of the Communist Party in Britain was an essential step in developing the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. By going beyond its formation as a coming together of particular groups and focussing on the programmatic questions that underlay it, the British Communist Left is able to show that the Communist Party, far from being an imposition of the Bolsheviks, arose from the situation in Britain itself. It considers a number of questions that animated debate in the workers movement in Britain and that contributed to the formation of the Communist Party. The question of affiliation to the Labour Party was one such question, where the experience of the imperialist war and the role played by Labour made it clear to the revolutionary left that Labour had betrayed the working class. Militants of the BSP denounced the Labour leaders as “recruiting sergeants and labour lieutenants of the capitalist class” while Maclean denounced the whole party as “bound up at present with capitalism and fighting socialism”. This experience was to make opposition to affiliation to Labour one of the foundations of the communist left in Britain, even in the face of pressure from the Third International and Lenin himself.
Faced with the isolation of the revolution and the degeneration of the Third International the left communists in Britain took up the struggle alongside their comrades internationally: “…linked by a web of political, organisational and personal connections to the Russian Bolsheviks, the German Spartacists, the Dutch Tribunists and the Italian Abstentionists… The British left participated alongside the Russian, German, Dutch and Italian lefts in the same political struggles…” (p.38). The Workers Dreadnought very rapidly became the focal point for left communists within the Communist Party in their struggle to defend the Third International. It published extracts from Lenin’s Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder but also the manifesto of the German KAPD and Gorter’s reply to Lenin. It called for open debate and warned against the imposition of formal discipline to stifle such debate.
Opportunism and sectarianism
The conclusion to the British Communist Left recognises that “The communist left’s struggle for an intransigent class party in Britain in the early 1920s ended in failure” and asks “why did it fail?…what lessons can we draw for today?” (p.93). It recognises that the key factor was international: the defeat of the global revolutionary struggle and the change in the historical situation: “…the question of whether revolution was on the agenda in Britain was determined primarily by the international balance of class forces rather than any national specificities, and this balance of forces was dynamic rather than static” (p.93). However, this recognition poses the question of the capacity of the revolutionary movement in Britain to contribute to the dynamic rather than just respond to it, leading to the important and absolutely correct conclusion that “The real lesson…is not that the formation of a communist party in Britain was premature but that it was too late”. Revolutionaries have to have the capacity to respond without hesitation to the historical moment when it arrives; such capacity has to be fought for in the hard and patient struggles in the years and decades before. It is here that the real weakness of the revolutionary movement in Britain lies. From the latter part of the 19th century, when the revolutionary movement re-emerged after the defeat of Chartism and the decades of work building the unions, it had to fight against the twin dangers of opportunism and sectarianism.
The British Communist Left is clear about the danger of opportunism: “The struggle of the left for a class party was above all a struggle against the ever present influence of bourgeois ideology within the working class; a struggle principally against opportunism, which expressed the enormous weight of the past on the class…This opportunism expressed itself not only in open political positions but also in attitudes towards organisation: fear of centralised control; support for ‘local autonomy’, for ‘freedom of opinion’ in the name of ‘unity’…” (p.98). However, it has less to say about the opposite side of the coin: sectarianism.
The Social Democratic Federation, founded in the 1880s was marked by both its sectarianism and its opportunism. The opposition that developed within it gave rise to two organisations in the first years of the 20th century: the Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Known as ‘impossibilists’ they were animated by opposition to the opportunism of the SDF. However, while opposing the SDF’s opportunism they kept its sectarianism. The SLP left the SDF prematurely, undermining the efforts of the left to combat the right-wing leadership and isolating other revolutionaries, including those who were to form the SPGB. Both organisations showed a dangerous lack of understanding of the importance of struggling to defend the organisations created by the working class, not only denouncing other parts of the workers’ movement in Britain but also the Second International itself.
The same weaknesses became evident during the struggle to form the Communist Party. The British Communist Left shows the strength of this effort, such as the break by parts of the SLP from its previous sectarianism in order to fight for a party of the revolutionary left. However, the difficulties encountered in this struggle, in particular over the participation of the BSP, prompted the WSF to form a party ahead of the pace of negotiations. The creation of the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) “was a voluntarist attempt to create a class party which avoided the difficult but necessary confrontation of positions” (p.52). The fact was that the revolutionary movement in Britain lacked the tradition and the experience of organisational struggle to be able to maintain the effort needed. It is telling that in the struggles in the BSP it was the émigrés who had participated in organisational struggles elsewhere who were the most determined in their struggle against the right. Similarly, it was her experience at the second congress of the CI that led Pankhurst to reverse her position on the CP (BSTI) and to support the formation of a united Communist Party.
The intelligence of the British ruling class
Another important factor in the failure of the revolutionary movement in Britain to form a class party was the strategy of the ruling class. At the time of the Russian revolution the British ruling class had had well over a century of experience of combating the working class. Like its counterparts elsewhere, it had tried violent repression, such as at the Peterloo massacre in 1819, and had learnt that this only strengthened the determination and revolutionary temper of the working class. A strategy of concessions and manoeuvres, such as granting limited reforms and winning over leading figures was far more effective. The aftermath of the war and the revolutionary wave saw the ruling class take this to a new height through the use of the Labour Party, which had adopted a more radical programme after the war, to absorb the anger in the working class. This was joined with the selective use of force at key moments. In 1919 a demonstration by 30,000 workers in Glasgow was attacked by the police in order to provoke the working class into premature action. In 1918 the arrest of John Maclean, who was sentenced to five years for sedition, “robbed the revolutionary movement in Britain of its most able and determined leader at a moment when the threat of revolution at home seemed most imminent” (p.24) In September 1919 Sylvia Pankhurst’s arrest “removed from the scene the most prominent left-wing communist and advocate of further communist unity” (p.64).
The experience of the British Communist Left shows that in order to create a strong revolutionary organisation revolutionaries need to build on the revolutionary reflexes of the working class in a conscious, planned and long-term manner. Despite its size and its isolation from the mass of the working class it is the struggles of revolutionaries today that will determine the capacity of the working class to form the world communist party of tomorrow. Understanding the history of our predecessors is a vital part of this work.
North, 26/09/05.
For the past 15 years all the propaganda of the ruling class has been trying to tell us that the working class is dead, a thing of the past. But reality is showing that the proletariat is very much alive and that all over the world it has no choice but to develop its struggle.
Over the summer we saw a clear expression of working class solidarity in the Heathrow strike (see WR 288 or our website). Fear of a wider movement within the working class has also obliged the Blair government to withdraw part of its plans to force public sector workers to carry on working until they are 65 instead of 60 as it its today. Even so, according to the agreement reached with the unions, from 2006 onwards new recruits in the health, education, and other sectors will still be subjected to this attack. After the national strike on 4 October in France, which saw the unions call over a million workers on the streets in order to siphon off growing social discontent, the ‘Socialist’ FGTB union in Belgium brought large segments of the economy to a halt. Again the aim was to keep the lid on mounting protest against the government, which is launching a new attack on social security and raising the pensionable age from 58 to 60. On 28 October both the big union federations of the country organised a second general mobilisation, the first time they have acted together this way for 12 years.
In the USA, the strike by 18,500 engineering workers at Boeing, called after an 86% vote in favour by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers lasted from 2 to 29 September (the previous strike by Boeing workers in 1995 dragged on for 69 days before ending in a heavy defeat). The workers have once again rejected the contract offered by the bosses, which includes an attempt to lower pensions at a time when contributions for social benefits have tripled since 1995, and when the bosses are avoiding giving any guarantees about job security. The workers’ anger was all the stronger given that the firm’s profits have also tripled over the last 3 years. The enterprise also wants to get a cut in payment of medical costs, in particular by getting rid of any medical cover for retired workers. The workers rejected this whole manoeuvre of division between ‘new’ and ‘old’ workers. They also opposed another attempt by the management to set workers against each other by introducing different measures for workers between the three production factories (the one in Wichita in Kansas was to be put in a less favourable position than the ones in Seattle Washington or Portland Oregon). The workers demanded the same conditions for all the firm’s engineering workers. In the end, the bosses agreed to give exceptional bonuses and for the moment to keep their hands off medical cover and pensions, but, on the other hand, the workers will still see a reduction in wage increases and increased welfare contributions. However the most striking fact about all this has been the almost total blackout surrounding this strike, notably in Europe. The aim of this is to prevent the working class recognising that there is an exploited working class in the USA and that there too it is fighting to defend its interests.
Again, the strikes which swept through Argentina between June and August have had no publicity in Europe, in contrast to the noise made about the social revolt of 2001, which was dominated by inter-classism (see International Review 109, 117 and 119). The struggles of last summer are the most important wave of strikes there for 15 years, especially in the industrial region of Cordoba. On page 4 of this issue we have an in-depth article that shows workers’ search for solidarity, the brutal reaction of the bourgeoisie, the denigrations by the media and the attempts by the leftist piqueteros to drag workers into commando actions. Faced with all these manoeuvres and the preparations for the coming electoral circus, the strike wave retreated. But it has confirmed that the everywhere the proletariat is raising its head and affirming itself as a class in struggle. In the last issue of this paper we pointed as well to the strikes of the Honda workers in India. There is also the example of China, whose economic ‘success story’ is the subject of a gigantic campaign of deception and lies. An NGO in Hong Kong has counted no less than 57,000 labour conflicts in 2004, involving 3 million wage workers, involving the private sector as well as the state factories.
Despite all the limits of these struggles, despite all the union manoeuvres against them, these are not movements that belong to a forgotten past. The working class is not dead! It has no choice but to fight for its interests and to take its struggles forward. More than ever the working class carries within its struggle the only future for humanity. ICC 28/10/5
In the next round of the Conservative Party leadership election the party membership takes the final decision. The press suggests that they will follow the MPs and opt for David Cameron. At one stage the media was hounding Cameron about youthful drug taking. But he faced down the challenge and refused to answer. The issue has now gone down the agenda. That small triumph showed him as a serious contender for the party leadership.
On the other hand, the whims of the Tory party faithful are not easily predictable, and David Davis has been doing his best to appeal to basic right-wing concerns. So, even if the hierarchy of the party seems to have established that Cameron would be a good new leader, the outcome of the party vote is not absolutely certain. Some senior members of the Tory party do not like the current system of electing a leader for precisely that reason.
This is not the first Tory leadership election since they went into opposition, but it is the most important. As long as the party remained in opposition the leadership was less important since the leader was not Prime Minister. Michael Howard, the current leader, was chosen to give more political weight to the leadership and the party in the run up to the last election, even though the ruling class had no intention of replacing Labour as government. While the Tory party is not being prepared for an immediate return to government, we are entering a period in which the capitalist class will want to have an ‘alternative’ in waiting. It is well aware of the deterioration in the economy - what can be summed up as the end of the ‘Brownian miracle’ - and there is a definite unease in the bourgeoisie about the situation. The following is a good example: decisions over retirement age and paternity leave “have fuelled concern about the government’s future direction, particularly after Tony Blair steps down as prime minister. ‘We’ve had high-level discussions [with government] to make sure we understand each other’s positions. That’s been helpful but it hasn’t bridged the differences,’ John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI employers’ group, told the Financial Times. ‘These are the first two major decisions by the Department of Trade and Industry affecting business since the election and they haven’t made the right judgement calls from a business point of view.’
David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the BCC had thought that the government had understood what business needed. But after the deal on public sector pensions, ‘our view now is – does the government understand at all?’” (Financial Times, 31/10/5)
Such remarks are not definitive, but, when we know that the acceleration of the crisis is focussing the minds of the bourgeoisie, it still means something. The ruling class is broadly happy with Labour’s imperialist policy apart from Blair’s tendency to not maintain the most rigorous independence from the US. Also, at the moment, there is not an immediate need to modify the government team because of the need to confront workers’ struggles. But the economic factor can undermine any government.
At the same time, if the Tories are to appear as an ‘alternative’ they have to distinguish themselves from Labour. Cameron’s political line is that Blair does indeed have the right policies on many issues, but he is hampered by his own party in introducing the necessary reforms in the public services. The bourgeoisie’s political commentators seem to think that this is exactly how things are going to play out in Blair’s last term as Prime Minister.
A bad week for Blair, like when David Blunkett resigned for a second time, does not mean that Labour is about to lose office. But potentially it provides grist for Cameron’s mill if he is elected Tory leader. If Blair ends up fighting his own party over reforms in the public services that he wants to push through, then Labour opponents can look like they have consciences and compassion, and the Tory party will begin to look more like a serious contender for office. The deterioration in the economic situation will, in addition, make the Labour Party look less competent in the management of the economy.
The worsening state of the economy will compel any government to try and make the working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system. In a situation of growing social discontent workers need to be aware of all the political manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, not because they can benefit from any of the alternatives but because of the basic need to know your enemy. Hardin 4/11/5
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails and where Cheney has been labelled the ‘Vice President for Torture’. In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques.
Between 1971 and ‘75 more than 2000 people were interned without trial by the state in Northern Ireland. Picked up without having any charges laid, or knowing when they were going to be released, detainees were subject to all sorts of treatments, some coming under the heading of ‘interrogation in depth’. Apart from prolonged sessions of oppressive questioning, serious threats, wrist bending, choking and beatings, there were instances of internees being forced to run naked over broken glass and being thrown, tied and hooded, out of helicopters a few feet above the ground. The ‘five techniques’ at the centre of the interrogators’ work were: sensory deprivation through being hooded (often while naked); being forced to stand against walls (sometimes for over 20 hours and even for more than 40); being subjected to continuous noise (from machinery such as generators or compressors for periods of up to 6 or 7 days); deprivation of food and water; sleep deprivation for periods of up to week. Relays of interrogation teams were used against the victims.
The British state tried to discredit reports of torture. Stories were fed to the media about injuries being self-inflicted - “one hard-line Provisional was given large whiskies and a box of king-size cigarettes for punching himself in both eyes” (Daily Telegraph, 31/10/77). There were indeed instances of self-harm, but these were either suicide attempts or done with the hope of being transferred to hospital accommodation.
Then the press said that any measures were justified if they helped to ‘prevent violence’. They contrasted “ripping out fingernails, beating people with steel rods and applying electric shocks to their genitalia” (Daily Telegraph 3/9/76), examples of “outright brutality”, with the measures used in Northern Ireland.
In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights said that the techniques Britain had used caused “intense physical and mental suffering and … acute psychiatric disturbance”, but that while this was “inhuman and degrading treatment” it didn’t amount to torture. This was a victory for the British state because it was keen to use means that would cause the maximum distress to the victim with the minimum external evidence. They had been previously referred to the European Court over torture in Cyprus, but in fact British interrogators had been using various combinations of the ‘five techniques’ for a long time. When the army and RUC approached Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, for formal approval “They told him that the ‘in-depth’ techniques they planned to use were those the army had used … many times before when Britain was faced with insurgencies in her colonies, including Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, the British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guyana, Aden, Borneo, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf” (Provos The IRA and Sinn Fein Peter Taylor).
British intervention in the Malayan ‘emergency’ in the 1950s has been held up as a model of suppression and ‘counter-insurgency’. Apart from the camps established, the murder squads, use of rigid food controls, burning down villages and the imposition of emergency regulations, the use of torture was an integral part of British operations. With 650,000 people uprooted and ‘resettled’ in New Villages, or put in concentration camps, there was also a programme of ‘re-education’.
British action in Kenya in the 1950s also showed what British civilisation was prepared to do. At various times over 90,000 ‘suspects’ were imprisoned, in either detention camps or ‘protected villages’. At one point Nairobi (population 110,000) was emptied, with 16,500 then detained and 2,500 expelled to reserves. Assaults and violence, often to the point of death, were extensive. As in Malaya, ‘rehabilitation’ was one of the goals of the operation. More than 1000 people were hanged, using a mobile gallows that was taken round the country. Overall, maybe 100-150,000 died through exhaustion, disease, starvation and systematic brutality.
Recent revelations in The Guardian (12/11/5) concerned a secret torture centre, the “London Cage”, that operated between July 1940 and September 1948. Three houses in Kensington were used to interrogate some 3500 German officers, soldiers and civilians. Still in use for three years after the end of the war, interrogation included beatings, being forced to stand to attention for up to 26 hours, threats of execution or unnecessary surgery, starvation, sleep deprivation, dousings with cold water etc. “In one complaint lodged at the National Archives, a 27-year-old German journalist being held at this camp said he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British.”
There is a continuity in the British state’s actions. The Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the ‘London Cage’ received an OBE for his interrogation work in the First World War. In the 1950s there were reports of Britain experimenting with drugs, surgery and torture with a view to designing techniques that would be effective but look harmless. In the 1970s thousands of army officers and senior civil servants were trained to use psychological techniques for security purposes. Inevitably, the truth about current activities is not in the public domain.
In general, British democracy has been better than others at concealing the brutal way its state functions. Anything that is exposed is denied or dismissed as being an isolated excess. In France the extensive use of torture in the war in Algeria was publicised as part of a battle between different factions of the ruling class. Victims had hoses inserted in their mouths and their stomachs filled with water, electrodes were put on genitals, heads were immersed in water. During the Battle of Algiers 3-4000 people ‘disappeared’: fatal victims of French torture techniques.
Although France, and more recently the US in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, have been less successful than Britain in keeping their actions under wraps, all these democracies use the most brutal methods of interrogation and detention. They also learn from each other’s activities, most notably in Vietnam, where the US drew on British experience in Malaya as much as earlier French experience in Indo-China. Any government can talk about ‘human rights’, but every capitalist state will use any means at its disposal in war or to enforce its social order.
Car 1/12/5
It’s now getting close to three years since the American army took control of Iraq, and the country is descending further and further into chaos. More than 120,000 Iraqis killed; 2,000 American soldiers killed and 18,000 wounded; massive destruction of infrastructure, houses and public buildings. Iraq is in one of the worst situations of any country since the Second World War. On top of this, the sharpening of imperialist tensions over Iraq has led the whole of the Middle East into a period of increasing instability. The recent bombings in Amman, Jordan, which had so far avoided this infection, are proof of this.
Iraq today is a devastated country, hovering on the brink of civil war. The ‘new’, ‘prosperous’, ‘democratic’ Iraq announced by the Bush administration is in total ruins. Non-stop guerrilla warfare against the occupying forces, more and more horrible atrocities against the civilian population, all this shows that any hope for reconstruction is an illusion. Divisions between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish cliques have been violently aggravated, with the whole population caught in the crossfire. Any future Iraqi state will be ravaged by all kinds of dissensions. In the north, Sunni terrorists and former Ba’athists, actively supported by Syria, have carried out numerous attacks on Kurdish interests. In Baghdad and the south, the conflict between Sunni and Shiite predominates. Murder, kidnappings and torture are the daily lot of the population. Last month dozens of Shiites were slaughtered by suicide bombers while praying in their mosques, while the Iraqi state, dominated by Shiites, exacts revenge by setting up torture centres which have nothing to learn from Saddam’s regime.
This situation has whetted the imperialist appetites of Iran and Syria. The latter, which is clearly staking its claim to having a say in the Iraqi melee, has already been serving as a launch pad for Sunni and Ba’athist terrorists. Its eviction from Lebanon will certainly push it towards extending its influence in Iraq.
Iran, currently involved in a stand-off with the US and European states over its nuclear programme, is licking its lips at the prospects opened up by the weakening of Iraq and the strength of the Shiite factions in the new government, especially in the security forces. This is opening the door to Iran gaining a much more powerful place in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf and the oil-producing areas. This perspective is leading it to act in a much more aggressive manner towards the great powers, and has strengthened the hand of the most ‘hardline’ and retrograde factions of the Iranian bourgeoisie. Tensions between Iran and Britain have increased as Tehran is increasing its support for attacks on British occupying forces by Shiite militias.
The Amman bombings remind us that no region of the Middle East is going to be spared from the forces of destruction. They are particularly significant because Jordan represents a link between Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. For a long time Jordan acted as a buffer between Israel and the Palestinian organisations, which it hosted until Black September in 1970 when the regime turned on the PLO at the behest of the Americans. Thus another close ally of the US has now been targeted by the terrorists, just like Saudi Arabia which has seen numerous attacks by Al Qaida since the Iraq war.
In this situation, we also have to take into account the various manoeuvres by Sharon, which will result in growing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian groups, and even among the Palestinian groups themselves, especially Hamas and the PLO. Under cover of the withdrawal from Gaza, the Israeli state is actually tightening its grip on the West Bank and preparing to deploy more forces towards Lebanon. Sharon’s decision to leave Likud and form a new party supported by the former Labourite Shimon Peres does not mean that Sharon has been converted into a dove. It simply means that he is a more intelligent warmonger than the extreme right, which is hampered by irrational dogmas about holding on to every last inch of the Holy Land.
In this situation, it’s clear that the US administration is finding it increasingly difficult to justify its continued presence in Iraq. The idea that invading Iraq would be a blow to international terrorism has been discredited by the simple fact that the terrorist wave has grown stronger and stronger, not only in Iraq but right across the world, including Europe. The same goes for the idea of installing peace and democracy in Iraq. Thus the Bush administration is being subjected to mounting criticism not only from its traditional opponents in the ‘international community’, such as France and Germany, but also from within the American bourgeoisie itself – and not only among the Democrats, but even from inside the Republican party. The dramatic fall in Bush’s popularity in the opinion polls, the debates in the Republican-dominated Senate about the need for the US to fix a date for withdrawal and about the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, the emergence of new scandals about the way the administration manipulated the facts about weapons of mass destruction….all this shows the real impasse facing the American bourgeoisie.
What’s more, despite some recent displays of force against rebel strongholds in the north, the US is showing its powerlessness on the ground as well. The White House is caught on the horns of a dilemma:
- the pressure of public opinion about the disastrous situation in Iraq, which is pushing it towards withdrawing as soon as it can
- the threat posed to US interests by withdrawing under the current circumstances, which would not only leave Iraq to sink deeper into the quagmire, but would be seen as a defeat, even a humiliation, for the US, which would have completely failed in its promise to bring peace and democracy to the country.
America’s difficulties are a source of satisfaction to its imperialist rivals, since it legitimises their opposition to the invasion of Iraq and will give them the opportunity to further their own imperialist ambitions, under the pretext of offering their disinterested services. Thus for example we saw France making overtures to Jordan in the wake of the Amman bombings.
Iraq is the true face of capitalism today. It is also a glimpse of the future that the bourgeoisie is preparing for us. Only the struggle against this dying system can offer humanity a different future. Mulan
We have recently received a letter from Iran that raises a number of issues. In this response we will focus on the part of his letter that deals with the unions. We have made some minor changes to the text but have left the language unchanged.
“About Iran I can tell you that the situation is very bad. Even the reformist and syndicalist [union] organisations are disbanded. One syndicate which belonged to bus drivers was about to start working few months ago but it was attacked by the government vandals (which are with the Labour House and the Islamic Labour Councils [1] [125] and are controlled by the intelligence service of Iran) in its first day of work and several activists were damaged. One month later ILO [International Labour Organisation] accepted those who had attacked the syndicate as ‘workers’ organisations’ from Iran. Although the Iranian government has accepted 87 and 98 conventions of ILO (which allow the workers to form their willing organisations or unions and are needed to join the WTO) but still all of the worker’s organizations and even the reformist trade unions are disbanded and several activists are in prison.
“The site which I referred to belongs to ‘Coordinating Committee to form Workers Organisation’. I don’t believe in all of their positions but I think all of the activities should be supported in order to force the government to accept the worker rights.
“… The Trotskyists are playing a very reactionary role in Iran these days. The worker class has already began to end the reformist ways (for example asking the Labour House, Islamic Councils and capitalist organizations such as ILO for assistance) and it’s going to start the radical (not exactly revolutionary) movements but these Trotskyists want to take the worker movement one step back and into reformism again. They have started a campaign called ‘Iranian workers are not alone’ and they ask the capitalists such as the Labour Party of England to support the workers in Iran! This kind of activities can only disarm the revolutionary movements.”
The Iranian workers have a history of struggle. In 1978 and ’79 massive strikes, especially in the oil industry, were marked by exemplary class solidarity and a willingness to confront the state and all of its forces of repression. In this, the Iranian proletariat stood alongside its class comrades around the world:
“Workers have refused to accept the increasing poverty demanded by the capitalist crisis… They have responded militantly, violently, to a standard of life which, for example, demands 60-70% of their income for housing alone.
“Workers have struggled autonomously, organising (as at the oil refineries) their own independent committees, whose delegates – the bourgeois press has complained – are too devoted to ‘utopian ideals’ rather than the ‘give and take of labour-management struggle’. In other words these committees are no doubt the genuine expression of workers’ interests…
“The strikes have given rise also to an inspiring class solidarity – the oil workers have refused to return to work until the demands of 400,000 teachers have been satisfied. The seriousness of the workers’ struggle is shown by the courage with which it has confronted the bourgeois state – ignoring the imposition of martial law (in fact the struggle has tended to escalate after the formation of the military government). Instead of being intimidated by the troops sent to the oilfields, the workers have attempted – often successfully – to fraternise with the soldiers” (World Revolution 21, December 1978/January 1979).
The government in Iran today stands in continuity with its predecessor of 1979. There was no revolution in Iran in 1979. For the workers, the change from the Shah to Ayotollah Khomeini was merely the substitution of one oppressor for another, although the ability of religious obscurantists and bigots to take over a whole country was an early sign of the irrationality that was beginning to develop within capitalism, which was about to enter what we now describe as its phase of decomposition. Both then and now there have been calls from the left for the formation of ‘real’ trade unions rather than the puppet unions of the state. In 1979, many on the left thought Khomeni would put an end to feudalism and promote the growth of democracy, under which unions could flourish. Today, the ‘Co-ordinating Committee’ that our correspondent refers to repeats the call for the formation of a union, even if they avoid the word in favour of a more amorphous term ‘organisation’ [2] [126].
It is certainly true that the working class needs organisation. Indeed many of its most important struggles have been to form and defend its organisations as much as gain increases in wages and the like. The question is surely what sort of organisation? Can a trade union, no matter how ‘real’ or ‘radical’, actually help the working class today? Does the desperate situation of the working class in countries such as Iran mean that we should support any hint of organisation, as our correspondent suggests when he writes “I think all of the activities should be supported in order to force the government to accept the worker rights”?
The question that determines our attitude and our actions is: whose interests does an organisation defend? In other words, is it an organisation of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie? This is not a straightforward question. The ‘Labour House’ our correspondent refers to is probably filled with workers, but that does not make it a workers’ organisation. Today it seems that it is only when workers take organisation directly into their own hands that their struggle can have any success. This is what the Iranian workers did in 1979; it is what the Polish workers did the following year. It is what the Russian workers did in 1917 when they formed the Soviets or workers’ councils. Such organisations are weapons of the struggle, rising with it and disappearing when the struggle ends. Many see this as a weakness and long for some permanent organisation, but this ignores the reality of workers’ struggles in this whole period.
The unions developed when capitalism was young and growing, when it could grant reforms and allow the working class some place in society. Today this is no longer the case. Throughout most of the last century we have seen capitalism attack the working class again and again, imposing new demands on workers to produce more and faster and cheaper. The unions, which grew up to win improved conditions for the workers, to force the ruling class to strike a deal, can do nothing for the working class when the only deals on offer are speed-ups, job cuts and more exploitation. Striking deals can only mean betraying the working class. There is no place for the working class in bourgeois society today. Any permanent mass organisation of the working class can only exist by making deals with the bosses and so betraying the working class. The only long-term organisations the working class can have today are organisations for fighting against capitalism without compromise: its class-wide councils and its political organisations [3] [127]. Of course the very appearance of the councils signifies a revolutionary situation; until that stage, the worker’s struggle can only be organised through assemblies and committees which exist for and during the movement but don’t attempt to perpetuate themselves after the struggle has died down. Otherwise they will be turned into a new form of trade union and become an obstacle to the next round of the fight.
We agree fully with our correspondent about the reactionary role played by Trotskyism. The example he gives of the false ‘solidarity’ of the ‘Iranian workers are not alone’ campaign is a good example of how the language and aspirations of the working class are twisted into their opposite by these practised hypocrites. However, this is nothing new. In 1979, many Trotskyists echoed the Iranian Stalinists in their support for the ‘revolution’ led by Khomeini: “By urging continuation of the strikes and mass demonstrations against the Shah, and by refusing to support any government formed under the royal butchers auspices, Khomeini has played a progressive role” (The Militant – US Socialist Workers Party – quoted in WR 22). In reality the workers were beginning to be drowned in the reactionary movement being built up by the mullahs. However, contrary to what our correspondent says, the Trotskyists do not aim merely to take the working class “back and into reformism” but actually to drag it onto the bourgeois terrain and defeat it. This is as true today as it was yesterday: “All over the world the left wing of the bourgeoisie – the Stalinists of the Communist parties, the Maoists and the Trotskyists – are calling for the defeat of the Shah and his replacement by another part of the bourgeoisie which they see as being ‘more progressive’ than the Shah, always under the call for democracy in the shape of ‘free elections’” (WR 21).
In Iran, as everywhere else in the world, the working class has to learn to struggle again. After years of uncertainty, confusion and loss of confidence workers are beginning to get a sense of who they are and what they are, to understand that they have interests opposed to the ruling class and can only rely on themselves. News about the real situation of the working class in Iran is hard to come by, filtered as it is through the propaganda of the ruling class. We salute the suggestion that the working class is still trying to struggle and encourage our correspondent to write again with any news about the class struggle.
Despite all it has suffered, despite all of the weight of the Islamic regime, we have confidence in the working class in Iran as we have confidence in the working class as a whole.
North 1/12/05.
[1] [128] “Workers’ House” or “Labour House” are English translations of “Khane Kargar”, which is the name of the Iranian regime’s official trade unions.
[2] [129] We do not intend to consider the ‘Co-ordinating committee’ in any detail since the information available to us about it is patchy. However, it clearly aspires to a union organisation of some type, as this excerpt from one of the main documents available to us indicates: “We do have the right to be organized. We must form our organization and then ask the government to officially recognize it. To form workers’ organizations does not require any governments’ permission, and this is so self-evident and obvious that it is stipulated in the Convention 87 of the ILO concerning the freedom of association and, ironically, this is even approved by the Iranian government. Therefore, the ILO who has itself compiled the conventions and had the governments sign them must force the Iranian government to put an end to the suppression of the workers’ activities and activists instead of conceding to the government. And the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran must assure the security of the working class activists” (“Let us form workers organisation with our own power!” at www.komiteyehamahangi.com [130]).
[3] [131] See our pamphlet Unions against the working class [132] for a fuller explanation of this analysis.
When independence was declared by East Timor in 1975 it was recognised by Portugal. However the neighbouring Indonesian state had other ideas and invaded the island. In a war that lasted until 1999 up to 250,000 East Timorese died. The 1980 census figure was only 550,000. People died in the conflict, through atrocities committed by Indonesian troops, and as a result of famine, just one of the results of the destruction of 70% of the economic infrastructure.
You can read this anywhere now, in any standard reference work or reliable website. Back in 1975 the Labour government “knowingly lied about Indonesian atrocities in East Timor” (The Times 30/11/5) and “worked with the US and Australia to cover up details” (Guardian 1/12/5) of what troops were doing.
In recently declassified documents the British ambassador in Jakarta said in a secret telegram that the invading troops had gone “on a rampage of looting and killing”. He added “If asked to comment on any stories of atrocities, I suggest we say that we have no information.”
At the time, following the US withdrawal from Vietnam, Indonesia was a major ally of America in the area. The British ambassador wrote before the invasion that East Timor was “high on Henry Kissinger’s list of places where the US do not want to comment or get involved”.
Accordingly Britain followed the US example, including putting pressure on Australia not to demand information from Indonesia on two British journalists working for Australian television who “were killed while filming a clandestine attack on East Timorese soldiers” by Indonesian forces.
British imperialism has never had an ‘ethical foreign policy’, always considering British capitalism’s interests as the only factor to be taken into account. Car 2/12/5
Relocation (1) is used by all the bourgeoisie’s propagandists, to such an extent that it sometimes not only eclipses all the other attacks that hit the proletariat, but even becomes the explanation for them. Alternative Worldists, leftists, trade unions and parties of the left are at the forefront of this, denouncing the “ultra-liberalism” of the fat-cat bosses and shareholders thirsting for juicy dividends. Against all this we are going to show, in this article, that relocation results from the most fundamental laws that regulate the capitalist system.
Contrary to the Alternative Worldists’ slogan “our world is not for sale”, trade relations, under the aegis of capitalism, have regulated the whole of social and human relations in society for a very long time. In capitalist society, buying and selling a commodity is the only way to avoid being deprived of all means of subsistence. For those who possess no means of production, the proletariat, the only thing left for them to offer on the market is a particular commodity, their labour power.
As with any other commodity, the value of labour power finds its expression on the market through a price and in money: wages. Selling labour power is no different from selling other commodities on the market, except that it is inseparable from the seller, the worker, and that it cannot wait too long for a buyer because it would perish with its bearer, through lack of the means to live.
Labour power constitutes for the capitalist buyer, the bourgeois who consumes it, the source of his profit. If the industrial capitalist only pays the worker for the time that he engages him, ie, the time sufficient for the worker to create the wage that he draws, the boss will not realise any benefit. It’s necessary that the worker works longer than this time. The time of work of any worker is composed, without the worker being aware of it, of two parts: one part paid, where the worker only restores the value of his wage, and an unpaid part, where he works for free for the capitalist who appropriates the totality of the production.
The condition of the proletarian sums up the insecurity of his existence: “The proletarian is deprived of everything; he cannot live a single day by himself. The bourgeoisie arrogates the monopoly of all the means of existence in the greatest sense of the term. That which the proletarian has need of can only be obtained from this bourgeois whose monopoly is protected by the power of the state. The proletarian is thus, de facto and de jure, the slave of the bourgeoisie; the latter controls his life and death. It offers him the means to live but only in exchange of an ‘equivalent’, in exchange for his work; he will go as far as to concede to him the illusion that he is acting of his own free will, that he enters into a contract freely and with no constraints in the greater part. Such liberty leaves no other choice to the proletarian than to sign up to the conditions imposed by the bourgeoisie (…)” (2).
In the capitalist system, the thirst for exploitation, for surplus labour, has no limit: the more that capitalism draws unpaid labour from the workers, the better it is. To extort surplus value, extort it without limits, such is the aim and the role of buying the commodity of labour power by the capitalist. “The industrial capitalist remains at root a merchant. His activity as a capitalist (…) is reduced to that which a merchant exercises on the market. His task consists of buying judiciously, at the lowest price possible, the raw materials and accessories, the labour power, etc., which are necessary for him, and to sell as dear as possible the commodities made at his premises. In the domain of production, one sole point must preoccupy him: he must do it in a manner that the worker furnishes for the lowest wage possible, the most work possible, returning the most surplus value possible” (3).
This exploitation only finds its limits in the exhaustion of the exploited and in the capacity of the working class to resist the exploiter. In order to increase the time given to unpaid work, where the proletarian furnishes to capitalism its surplus value, capital uses different means: the lengthening of the working day, the intensification of the rates of work and the lowering of wages, even to the minimum necessary for the simple maintenance of the life of the worker.
As any commodity, labour power is subjected to competition and to the hazards of the capitalist market. “…When there are more workers than the bourgeoisie judges enough to occupy, when consequently in the terms of competition, there still remains a certain number without work, precisely these will have to die of hunger; because the bourgeois cannot give them work, if they cannot sell the product of their work for a profit”. Competition, “the most perfect expression of the war of all against all which rages in modern bourgeois society”, where “the workers are in competition as the bourgeois are in competition”, opposing active and unemployed workers, natives and immigrants or different national fractions of the proletariat, constitutes “the sharpest weapon of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the proletariat” (4).
Relocation of sites of production from the industrialised countries towards countries where a worker is much cheaper is a clear expression of capitalism’s search for the maximum rate of profit. Under the pressure of competition between the great industrialised countries for more and more limited markets, average hourly wages of €18 in Spain, €4 in Poland and the Czech Republic, €2 in Brazil and Mexico, €1 in Romania, €0.7 in India or China against €23 in Western Europe or the United States, offers a certain windfall for capitalism.
From the 19th century, the bourgeoisie has never hesitated, where the technology of production allowed it, to get rid of workers and search elsewhere, in another region, for a cheaper worker or a worker more docile to exploitation. Even if relocation is not a novelty for the working class, but constitutes an old and international phenomenon, since the 1990s, under the impulsion of the economic crisis, which has lasted more than three decades, this phenomenon has accelerated. In many sectors where the cost of the workers represents an important part of the cost of the global return from production, these transfers from the industrialised countries towards those where the costs of production are much cheaper have “already largely been made” (5).
In France the manufacturers have had recourse to relocation. Renault has produced the R12 in Romania since 1968. “From the 1970s, Renault has multiplied local partnerships in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Turkey. (…) After the restructuring of the 80s, Renault bought into Samsung in South Korea and Dacia in Romania in 1999” (5). One US toy manufacturer has recently relocated from Haiti, the most poverty-stricken country, with the cheapest labour, in the Western Hemisphere, to China where it is even cheaper to produce and send back products to the USA (6). The bourgeoisie moreover did not wait for the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in order to invest and transfer jobs to the countries of the ex-eastern bloc.
If all the sectors of capitalist production are affected by relocation, all production is not destined to be transferred, as bourgeois propaganda would have us believe. “The sectors of industry concerned by relocation are numerous: leather, textiles, clothing, metallurgy, white goods, automobiles, electronics…Equally affected is the tertiary sector: telephone centres, information, accountancy… Really all mass production and repetitive services are susceptible to being relocated to territories where the cost of a worker is clearly less” (7). The drastic reduction of transport costs accomplished in the 1990s (a reduction of 45% of maritime freight and 35% of air freight between 1985 and 1993) has shrunk the distance between the places where many commodities are produced and the market where they are consumed.
There is also a frenetic search to lower the price of intellectual, high-tech labour power, which is very expensive in the western countries. In China, western public bodies and private enterprises are more and more numerous “creating, in situ, research centres such as France Telecom in Canton, June 2004, so as to benefit from fantastic scientific breeding grounds at the low price offered by the Chinese laboratories” (9). In recent years, India has also become highly prized for its ability to offer low cost computer programming.
On the other hand, relocation is largely used to reduce the non-productive costs of large enterprises (information management, exploitation of research and maintenance, management of wages, financial services, customer services, ordering, telephone call centres) by as much as 40 to 60% and to such an extent that “everything which can be done at a distance and transmitted by phone or satellite is there to be relocated”. Thus India “tends to become the shop-window for British and American enterprises” (5).
In the fight to the death that all nations are caught up in, the states of the developed countries have explicitly put a stop to certain activities going abroad. Maintaining inside their borders certain guaranteed industries connected to the military and capable of rivalling nations of a similar order constitutes a strategic necessity and a question of survival for capitalist states in the imperialist arena. More generally, on the economic level, it is also essential to keep on one’s own soil a productive capacity in key sectors that strengthen the state in the face of competition. In the French automobile industry “Under pressure of competition which obliges ever lower production costs, a movement of relocation takes shape leading to the production of smaller vehicles destined for the French market from countries where labour is cheaper. Whereas the production of higher range vehicles is kept in France in highly automated factories (…) “ (7). The same in the textile industry where “today only textiles incorporating technology and know-how are still made in France” (7).
The number of countries benefiting from outsourcing is limited: “India, the Maghreb, Turkey, the countries of central and eastern Europe and Asia (notably China)” (8). Each of these national capitals is chosen according to the same imperative criteria. They must not only possess a certain domestic stability, which is the case in fewer and fewer countries as entire zones of the planet are given up to the ravages of war, but they must also have a suitable infrastructure and a labour force that has been broken in by capitalist exploitation, and is thus relatively well formed. Most of the countries aimed at have had an industrial past (ex-eastern bloc countries) or a semblance of industrialisation. In contrast, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa that aspire to receive relocations have seen none of it.
The very definition of relocation as “the movement abroad of an existing economic activity from a country whose production is then imported back into that country” (8) reveals to us a part of the secret of the fabulous figures drawn up by the bourgeoisie on the subject of the so-called Chinese or Indian economic miracles. Taking the totality of world production, relocation adds up to zero. If there really is the creation of a pole of production which didn’t exist previously, in no way has there been an overall development or increase of capitalist production, since the creation of a previously non-existing activity in such or such a country has a direct corollary in the deindustrialisation and stagnation of the most advanced economies.
For decades these countries did not generate the investment needed for the massive acquisition of a modern technology, which is an indispensable condition for competing with the most developed countries and achieving an industrialisation worthy of the name. Their very underdevelopment is actually the reason why capitalism is so eager to exploit the working class in these countries.
The absence of any perspective of real improvement of the living conditions of the proletariat in the countries blessed by relocations, as well as the development of unemployment in the western countries, cannot contribute to the expansion of the world market but only to the aggravation of the crisis of overproduction.
Relocation in itself does not constitute the cause of unemployment and the deterioration in the proletariat’s quality of life. It is only one of the forms of the attacks imposed on the class, but all possess the same root: the economic laws of the capitalist system which rule each nation and which plunge the capitalist world into an endless crisis of overproduction.
In order to amass the surplus value produced by the working class that is locked into the commodities produced, it is still necessary for the capitalist to sell these commodities on the market.
The capitalist crisis of overproduction, the scourge of the capitalist system, always finds its origins in the under-consumption of the masses. The working class is constrained by the capitalist system of wage labour, which constantly reduces the part of social production that returns to the proletariat. Capitalism must find a part of its solvent buyers outside of those who have to submit to the labour-capital relationship.
Previously, the existence of an internal market, of large sectors of relatively prosperous pre-capitalist production (artisans, and above all the peasantry), formed the nourishing soil indispensable to capitalist growth. At the world level, the vast extra-capitalist market of the colonised countries swallowed up the overflow of a great many commodities produced in the industrialised countries. Since the beginning of the 20th century capitalism has submitted the whole of the planet to its economic relations. It no longer possesses the historic conditions that permitted it to confront and overcome, to some extent, its contradictions.
From here on capitalism enters into its phase of irreversible decline which condemns humanity to wars, to convulsions, crises and generalised misery, holding out the threat of destruction pure and simple. Scott
Notes
1) We are defining relocation as: “the movement abroad of an existing economic activity from a country to a country whose labour is much cheaper with the production then imported back to that country”. Relocation has its domestic corollary in “outsourcing”, the transfer of jobs to areas (or the same area) where terms, wages and conditions are less favourable to the workers. As such it is part of the attack on the working class.
2) Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, (1845).
3) K. Kautsky, The Socialist Programme (1892), chapter on the ‘The Proletariat’.
4) Engels, Ibid.
5) Novethics.fr. 10 January 2001.
6) BBC World Service News, 18.11.05.
7) L’Expansion, 27 January 2004.
8) Vie publique.fr. 12 January 2004.
9) Le Monde.fr. 27 June 2004.
The social system which runs the world – capitalism – cannot offer the human race a future.
It is dragging us through an endless spiral of wars. It is poisoning the natural environment, leading to one catastrophe after another. It condemns millions to unemployment and poverty. And now, in the central countries of the system, it is telling us that it can no longer afford to support us after a lifetime of toil.
According to the official line, the pensions crisis is a result of the fact that we are all living longer. But this is only a problem because the capitalist economy is bankrupt.
Faced with the world economic crisis, the response of the capitalist state is to reduce as much as possible the amount it spends on ‘social’ benefits. This is why it has been cutting the NHS to the bone for example – it’s not because people are getting healthier! And it’s the same in all countries: the ‘welfare state’ is being systematically dismantled. This is taking place both in countries which follow the neo-liberal ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model, like the US and Britain, and countries where the state is supposed to have a more ‘interventionist’ policy, like Austria, Germany, or France: all these countries have proposed big ‘reforms’ in their pensions provisions as well as other drastic reductions in social spending.
The basic issue facing the British ruling class is thus how to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. The debate between critics (in particular, Gordon Brown) and supporters of Lord Turner’s 460-page report on pensions is basically about what kind of sacrifices are needed: longer working lives, higher taxes, cuts in other public services?
This question of what it’s prepared to spend on keeping proletarians alive once they have stopped producing surplus value has always preoccupied the British bourgeoisie.
When old age pensions were first introduced in Britain in 1908 it was a generation after Bismarck had launched them in Germany. Even British capitalism at its peak was cautious about such expenditure, and the Boer War and preparation for the First World War were greater priorities. Even then pensions were only available for those over 70 – at a time when male life expectancy at birth was only 48.
In the 1940s the Beveridge report recommended a “universal but very basic state pension. It should only be at ‘subsistence’ level: just enough to live. It should be paid for by national insurance contributions as, Sir William Beveridge says, the British people disapprove of ‘something for nothing’, and he hates the idea of a ‘Santa Claus’ society” (Financial Times 1/12/5) . Attlee’s Labour Government acted on this principle and the working class footed the bill.
In 1978 Labour made a second pension compulsory for many people, a clear admission of the inadequacy of the basic pension. In the subsequent Conservative governments the real value of the basic pension continued to get smaller.
Raising the retirement age to 68 is among Turner’s main proposals. This applies to the basic state pension, but at the recent CBI conference there were growing demands for an end to public sector pensions coming in at 60. We were told that the ‘privileged’ public sector workers will just have to accept longer working lives like workers in the private sector. And it seems that local authority workers are already being singled out as being the first ones to be asked to give up their ‘cushy’ retirement schemes. This is a disgusting attempt to divide the working class: many private sector pensions also begin at 60, not 65, and even if they didn’t, it would be in all workers’ interests for everyone to retire sooner, not later.
In sum, we are being told that we will be expected to work until we drop. This applies especially to the poorest sections of the working class, whose life expectancy is well below the national average. And even then, this ‘solution’ won’t produce the wealth required, since already in Britain, the majority of over-55-year-olds are out of work.
As for the prospects for saving for retirement, this would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Millions of people, of all ages, are already having problems with crippling debts that preclude the possibility of significant savings. If you’re paying off a student loan, or out of work, or in irregular or part-time work, or on a low or minimum wage, or overextended with a mortgage, you’re unlikely to be saving. And if there really was any substantial movement towards saving on a significant scale it would lead to a collapse in consumer spending and an impact beyond the retail and manufacturing sectors. Some people have illusions in investment in property, either directly or through inheritance. Already the current retired generation of home-owners has massively turned to equity release for income, leaving less and less to be inherited by their children. In any case, the rise in housing prices is a bubble that will not survive future economic storms, and workers looking for other ‘safe’ areas of investment will be equally disappointed.
Remember the ‘leisure society’? Not so long ago we were being told that with the increase in automation we would all have much more leisure time. Unfortunately things don’t work like that under capitalism, which can only squeeze profit from living labour power, and which uses technological developments to intensify its exploitation. Far from having a laid-back leisure society, we have seen massive global unemployment on the one hand, and a brutal lengthening of the working day on the other. The current attempt to lengthen working lives is just another prong of this same attack.
None of it is justified on the criterion of human need. If we could end the gigantic waste of human labour power that capitalism pours down the drain of unemployment, of military production, and a whole host of useless unproductive activities (advertising, bureaucracy, etc…); if new machines could be used to reduce the burden of work rather than speed it up – then there could be massive reductions in the working day, or the working week, or the working life. And if, in Marx’s words, labour was transformed from “a means of life to life’s prime need”, to a truly creative activity, there would in any case be no more need for this rigid separation between work and leisure and work and retirement.
All this, however, can only come about through the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a world communist society. This in turn will only become a real possibility through a vast development of class struggle and of class consciousness. But the capitalist crisis and the attacks on workers’ living standards provide the material foundations for this development. The attempt to ‘reform’ pensions, in particular, has already led to large-scale mobilisations of workers in France and Austria, and it could equally have the same effect in Britain. These attacks are directed against all workers: they can thus help workers see the need for a united response. They are being spearheaded by the state: they can thus help workers see that the state is not their protector but the boss of all the bosses, their principal enemy. And they are an assault on our very future: they can thus help workers see that they must make their own future.
In 1880, when Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck introduced a national insurance system, he said: “Whoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect” and will “put up with much more because he a has pension to look forward to”.
What the pensions crisis is showing is that workers have less and less to look forward to from capitalism.
WR, December 05
Tony Blair appears to be adrift in a sea of troubles: revelations about his role in the build up to the Iraq war, tensions with the rest of the EU, ‘conflict’ between him and Gordon Brown over pension policy, warnings about the level of government overspending, open revolts in his party over anti-terrorist laws, over the use of nuclear power… The golden boy of British politics, who could do no wrong, is now mired in problems as his stint as the leader of the ruling team comes to an end. He has certainly added to his problems through inept political decisions, such as bringing Blunket back into the cabinet, but it is essential to see that Blair’s problems reflect those of British capitalism as a whole.
At a recent meeting of the ICC section in Britain this situation was analysed in a report on the national situation, taking up the deepening of these problems over the year since the 16th WR Congress adopted a ‘Resolution on the National Situation [137]’ (WR 281). This article is based on the sections of this report which deal with the problems being generated by the deepening economic crisis and the political life of the British ruling class.
The report also dealt with the problems effecting British imperialism. The most important event for British imperialism in the last year has been the London bombings, which brutally expressed the spreading of the imperialist barbarism ravaging Iraq to the very heartlands of capitalism. Readers can find a detailed analysis of these events in International Review 123. Nevertheless, it is important to see that Blair’s dilemmas arising from the invasion of Iraq are those of the whole ruling class, as they were a year ago.
“The central division that has developed within the British bourgeoisie is not a dispute over strategy but over the best tactic to continue to defend the independent strategy that remains the dominant view in the ruling class. Recently Blair has reaffirmed Britain’s independent stance and declared his opposition to US ‘unilateralism’... The increasing tensions between the great powers can only make it harder for any policy that situates itself between them and that attempts to play one against the other. The British bourgeoisie is incapable of resolving the contradiction it is in. This is because there is no rational solution. The US will continue to assert itself and, recognising the situation of the British bourgeoisie, will put pressure on it without mercy. The danger of the tack towards the US lies in the fact that it makes the British ruling class more vulnerable, not just to pressure from the US, but to reciprocal pressure from its European rivals. The perspective is thus for the contradiction to continue to sharpen”. (‘Resolution of the National Situation’, Nov 2004).
The so-called “unprecedented” economic growth of the last few years, as we showed last November, “rests on a regression to the early days of capitalism when growth was achieved through the increase in the absolute rate of exploitation. This situation is the result of a quarter of a century of gradual, covert attacks by the British bourgeoisie, to create a ‘flexible’ labour market and reduce restrictions on business and it reveals once again its intelligence and ruthlessness”. In the past 12 months these attacks have accelerated as the ruling class has felt the fingers of the underlying crisis increasingly gripping it by the throat.
We are coming to the end of the ‘Brownian miracle’ – indeed the bourgeoisie makes no secret of the fact that the UK economy is due for a fall. In WR 286 we reported the prediction of ABM Ambro, one of the City’s biggest banking groups, that the economy is due for a decline, with a vicious circle of falling house prices and unemployment leading to the loss of about half a million jobs by 2008. This is exactly what we must expect given the debt-fuelled nature of the economy with much personal debt guaranteed by inflated house prices. This is just what we showed in WR 288, in the article ‘End of the Brownian miracle’, which looked at the impending housing price crisis. After huge inflation (totally disregarded by the inflation statistics) net housing wealth is falling, due to falling prices and increased mortgage debt. This can only lead to a drop in consumer spending – as well as a huge increase in misery with families evicted when they can no longer keep up with the payments.
Treasury estimates of growth are continually overoptimistic, or downright dishonest, and so are the tax revenues based on them. The Chancellor has only managed to keep up the level of state spending, and maintain the fiction of fiscal prudence, by changing the date he has set for the start of this ‘business cycle’ on the one hand, and creative accounting, so that government guaranteed private investment in public/private finance does not count, on the other. The situation is unsustainable.
The attacks on the working class have continued. MG Rover collapsed – in the middle of the election campaign – with the loss of 5,000 jobs directly and 15-20,000 in the supply industry. At the same time Index announced the loss of 3,000 jobs. Unemployment continues to be disguised, with a rate of 4.7% according to ILO definitions. However, while unemployment remains static, the number of those claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance has increased month on month for 9 months, with a claimant count of 890,100 in October. Job vacancies have fallen. The employment rate is just under 75% and the economic inactivity rate is 21.3% - nearly 8 million people.
Perhaps most threatening for unemployment is the introduction of proposals for ‘trust status’ in health and education, making hospitals, health trusts, and eventually schools, responsible for hiring and firing staff at local level. This, along with making staff reapply for their jobs, can only be a preparation for future job losses or re-grading downwards to lower pay scales. We are already seeing this: the NHS is preparing to lay-off 6,000, on top of the loss of 3,000 (including 1,000 nurses) already predicted by 11 Health Trusts (Nursing Times, 22-28 November). Many other Trusts are stopping recruitment, thus worsening the workload.
Meanwhile the extraction of absolute surplus value is continuing. There is the constant drive to lengthen the working day (see ‘Capitalism in crisis can only lengthen the working day’, WR 285) and also the increasingly draconian efforts to control every aspect of exploitation (‘Big Brother in the warehouse’, WR 286). Average earnings, excluding bonuses, remain static, but including bonuses have fallen (https://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=12 [138]). The proposals contained in the Turner Report to lengthen the number of years in which capitalism can exploit workers before they are entitled to a pension takes this onto a new level: it will mean that millions of workers will be worked to death and forced to pay the capitalist state for the pleasure through increased taxation (see lead article).
“The rules of the game have changed” was Tony Blair’s message in relation to state terror in the wake of the London bombings. In fact, the one thing that was least changed was the new terror legislation, since measures such as Control Orders came in before the bombs and even the 2005 Terrorism Bill was envisaged beforehand. And much of what is in the Bill was already possible without new legislation. What has changed in relation to state terror is the ability to make propaganda about it, particularly the strident discussion of the relation between individual liberty and safety in a democracy. This propaganda campaign is essential to legitimise the use of the enormous repressive powers the state has already given itself. The propaganda around the Bill has allowed an increase in detention without charge from 14 to 28 days to be posed as a defeat for the government’s proposal of 90 days, and a victory for civil liberties and habeas corpus, rather than the draconian increase in repression that it really is.
Something else has changed in the life of the bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the year we were treated to an election campaign with the bourgeoisie making no secret of the fact that it was all about re-electing the Labour government, with a couple of side-shows about when Blair would hand over to Brown, and how soon Michael Howard would go after another disastrous Tory showing. The only other main concern was how to reduce apathy for the election. As we said at the time, the bourgeoisie got the election result it wanted: “Having imposed a range of attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class, having strengthened many aspects of British state capitalism, having brought in a series of repressive measures in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’, and having defended the interests of British imperialism on the world stage, the Labour government is currently the chosen team of British capitalism.
“The measures announced in the Queen’s Speech show that Labour is not going to let up. An Incapacity Benefit Bill will attack 2.7m claimants, there will be reductions in certain other social benefits. Apart from the introduction of ID cards, repressive legislation will include a Counter Terrorism Bill, adding further offences not included in the last Prevention of Terrorism Act. Asylum and immigration will not escape from Labour’s offensive” (WR 285).
Today, the ruling class is quite clearly getting its options ready for a change of PM if not of the governing team as a whole. This is not wholly a surprise as Blair announced he would step down before the next election even before the last one. Since then the Tory leadership election has been played up in the media, with very sympathetic handling of the two remaining candidates. The media darling is the younger David Cameron, portrayed as the potential leader able to reform and modernise the party, as Labour had to be reformed and modernised to fit it for office in the 1990s. The extremely long drawn out leadership election has allowed this message to be repeated ad nauseam.
At the same time the Labour government has been scandal-ridden with Cherie Blair’s earnings from a charity speaking tour making money out of being the PM’s wife; Blunket forced to resign for impropriety a second time in a year; DC Confidential portraying the government as ineffective and incompetent. All in all the current government has been described as having the same stench as the Major government before its defeat in 1997.
The decline in the economy is an important factor here, which will necessitate many further attacks on the working class. Disappointment has been expressed over the government handling of the public sector pensions deal. So “the acceleration of the crisis is focussing the minds of the bourgeoisie, it still means something. The ruling class is broadly happy with Labour’s imperialist policy apart from Blair’s tendency to not maintain the most rigorous independence from the US. Also, at the moment, there is not an immediate need to modify the government team because of the need to confront workers’ struggles. But the economic factor can undermine any government.
“At the same time, if the Tories are to appear as an ‘alternative’ they have to distinguish themselves from Labour. Cameron’s political line is that Blair does indeed have the right policies on many issues, but he is hampered by his own party in introducing the necessary reforms in the public services. The bourgeoisie’s political commentators seem to think that this is exactly how things are going to play out in Blair’s last term as Prime Minister” (WR 289).
The bourgeoisie seem to be keeping their options open for the Blair succession, either to allow the next Labour PM to claim to be of a different mould, or to develop an alternative governing team in the Tory Party, around their version of Blair.
These extracts show that Blair’s problems are those of British capitalism as a whole. In the final throws of his leadership Blair will carry out one last major service for British capital: he will drive through the attacks on the working class. He has made his determination to bring about ‘lasting reforms’ amply clear in recent weeks. The ruling class will be able to fully utilise his increasing unpopularity in order to divert workers’ discontent with the attacks into futile anti-Blairism and ideas about a better Labour Party without Blair. It has already done this to a large degree in relation to the quagmire in Iraq: all British imperialism’s problems are reduced to the actions of one man and his team. Blair is quite happy to play the role of hate figure if that means capital can better attack the proletariat at the economic and political level. Anything to stop the working class from seeing the system, rather than individuals, as its enemy. WR
90 years ago, in September 1915, the first international socialist conference was held at Zimmerwald, not much more than a year after the start of the First World War. In discussing it, we are not just reopening a page in the history of the workers’ movement, but reviving workers’ memories about the meaning of the conference. Faced with the criminal butchery of the European proletariat, Zimmerwald reaffirmed that the working class response to imperialist war is internationalism, the struggle against exploitation and war in all countries.
Today, while the horrors of the trenches are not hidden from us and the last of the old soldiers are encouraged to tell us what they went through, this war, like all the other wars that succeeded it in capitalism’s epoch of decline, is still ‘commemorated’, celebrated with poppies and Remembrance Days organised by the very state which sent so many workers to be slaughtered at the front. We are still told that our duty is to ‘defend our country’ and to support it in its present and future wars. And the response of revolutionaries today can only be what it was in 1915 -that the workers have no country, and that patriotism is diametrically opposed to the international interests of the working class.
Zimmerwald was the first proletarian reaction to the first world butchery, and its growing echo gave hope to millions of workers submerged by the bloody horror of the war. The start of the war on August 4th 1914 was an unprecedented catastrophe for the workers’ movement. In fact, alongside the bourgeoisie’s nationalist ideological barrage, the decisive element in the mobilisation for this vile slaughter was the treachery of the main workers’ social democratic parties. Their parliamentary fractions voted for war credits in the name of the Sacred Union, urging masses of workers to kill each other in the interests of the imperialist powers, resorting to the most abject chauvinist hysteria. The unions banned all strikes from the beginning of the war. The Second International, which had been the pride of the working class, was consumed in the flames of the world war, after the largest of its parties, the French Socialist and above all German Social Democracy, rallied shamefully to the war. Although infected with reformism and opportunism, the Second International, under the pressure of its revolutionary minorities, particularly the German left and the Bolsheviks, had previously made a number of pronouncements against the threat of war. In 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, at the Basle Congress in 1912, and right up to the last days of July 1914, it raised its voice against the militaristic propaganda and imperialist designs of the ruling class. So several decades of work and effort were annihilated in one blow. But, having fought opportunism within the Second International and its parties for some years, the revolutionary minority remained loyal and intransigent on the principle of proletarian internationalism, and was able to resist and continue the struggle. Among them:
- in Germany, ‘Die Internationale’ group, constituted in August 1914 around Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the ‘Lichtsrahlen’, the Bremen Left;
- in Russia and among émigrés, the Bolsheviks;
- in Holland, the Tribunist Party of Gorter and Pannekoek;
- in France, some of the revolutionary syndicalists around Rosmer and Monatte;
- in Poland, the SDKPIL
- in Britain, the Socialist Labour Party, John Mclean, Sylvia Pankhurst and others.
Another current was also developing: hesitant, centrist, oscillating between an attitude of calling for revolution and a pacifist position (the Mensheviks around Martov, the Italian Socialist Party), some of whom wanted to renew their ties with the social-chauvinist traitors. The revolutionary movement was able, through the confrontation of positions, to win new forces to its struggle against the imperialist war, and to prepare the conditions for the inevitable split in the socialist parties and the formation of a new International.
The task of the hour was thus to encourage the international regroupment of revolutionaries, and contacts were immediately made between the different internationalists who had broken with social-patriotism. The struggle against the war was given impetus in Germany first of all, when on 2nd December Liebknecht was the only deputy to openly vote against war credits. In the months to come his example was followed by other deputies. Working class activity against the war was developing, among the rank and file of the workers’ parties but also in the factories and in the streets. The hideous reality of the war with its slaughter and death and mutilation at the front, the development of poverty at the rear, would open the eyes of more and more workers and bring them out of the fog of nationalist intoxication. In March 1915, in Germany, there was the first demonstration against the war, by women mobilised for arms production. In October there were bloody confrontations between the police and demonstrators. In November of the same year nearly 15,000 people marched against the war in Berlin. Class movements against the war also appeared in other countries: Austria, Britain and France. This renewal in class struggle, alongside the activity of revolutionaries who distributed propaganda against the war in very dangerous conditions, accelerated the holding of the Zimmerwald Conference (near Berne) where, from 5 to 8 September 1915, 37 delegates from 12 European countries met. This Conference symbolised the reawakening of the international proletariat, which, until then, had been traumatised by the impact of the war. It was a decisive step on the road to the Russian revolution and the foundation of the Third International. The Manifesto it issued was the fruit of a compromise between the different tendencies. In fact the centrists were in favour of putting the end of the war in a pacifist framework without referring to the necessity for revolution. They were strongly opposed by the left, represented by the ‘Die Internationale’ group, the ISD and the Bolsheviks, who made the link between war and revolution the central question. Lenin criticised the pacifist tone and the absence of means for opposing the war expressed in the Manifesto: “The slogan of peace is not at all revolutionary. It can only take a revolutionary character when it is linked to our argument for a revolutionary tactic, when it goes along with a call for revolution, a revolutionary protest against the government of the country in which one is a citizen, against the imperialists of one’s own country” (‘Contre le Courant, vol 1, translated from the French). In other words, the slogan for the imperialist epoch must be “turn the imperialist war into the civil war”. Despite these weaknesses the Left, without abandoning its criticisms, considered this Manifesto a as “step forward towards a real struggle against opportunism, towards a rupture with it” (Vol.21 ‘The First Step’). The Zimmerwald Manifesto created an enormous stir in the working class and among the soldiers. With the strong recovery in the class struggle internationally, the intransigent struggle of the left to split the centrists, the second international conference held in Kienthal in March 1916 was clearly more orientated to the left and marked a clear break from pacifist phraseology.
The considerable widening of the class struggle in 1917 in Germany, in Italy, and above all the outbreak of the Russian revolution, the first step in the world revolution, would make the Zimmerwald movement obsolete, having exhausted all its potential. From then on the only perspective was the creation of a new International which, taking account of the slow maturation of revolutionary consciousness, the formation of sizeable communist parties and the expectation of a revolution in Germany, took place a year and a half later in 1919.
So, despite its weaknesses, the Zimmerwald Movement played a decisive role in the history of the revolutionary movement: as a symbol of proletarian internationalism, as a proletarian standard in its war against the war and for the revolution. It truly represented a bridge between the Second and the Third International.
One of the important lessons of Zimmerwald, which remains valid in our period of the incredible exacerbation of imperialist conflicts, must be the reaffirmation of the importance of the question of war for the proletariat. The struggle against the bourgeoisie’s militaristic schemes is an integral part of the class struggle, in the same way as the struggle against exploitation. The history of the workers’ movement shows that the working class has always considered war a calamity as it is the principal victim of it. War is not an aberration in capitalism, especially in its decadent period. It is part of its functioning and has become a permanent aspect of its way of life. The reformist illusion of a capitalism without war is deadly for the proletariat. Caught in their contradictions, in an economic crisis which they cannot escape due to the world wide saturation of solvent markets, the different national fractions of the bourgeoisie have no choice but to tear each other to pieces to keep their share of the cake, to take that of others, or to win the strategic positions necessary to their domination. In this sense, to pretend that we can struggle for an improvement in our living conditions or for peace, without affecting the foundations of capitalist power, is a mystification, an impossibility. Without the perspective of a massive, revolutionary political confrontation, there is no real struggle against capitalist war. Pacifism is a reactionary ideology used to channel the proletariat’s discontent and revolt, provoked by war, in order to reduce it to impotence. Similarly, for workers to fall into the trap of defending the democratic bourgeoisie, making common cause with their exploiters and supporting the bellicose campaigns of the ruling class, is to fall head first into the warlike dynamic of decomposing capitalism, which goes from ‘local’ war to ‘local’ war and will end up putting the survival of humanity at risk. The working class struggle for its own interests, which cannot go forward without developing the perspective of overthrowing this society and replacing it with communism, is the only possible struggle against war. SB
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[15] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0206-01.htm
[16] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/ecology/
[17] https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/300007.html
[18] http://www.enrager.net/thought/topics/advertising.php
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[32] http://www.soros.org
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[41] http://www.liberty.org
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[47] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/283_crisis_report.htm
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[63] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/284_crisis_report_part2
[64] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/284_rover.html
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[67] https://www.urban75.net/forums/
[68] https://libcom.org/
[69] https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/is-the-icc-a-sect.44912/
[70] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/ethiopia
[71] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/mobilisations-people
[72] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/europe
[73] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/32/decomposition
[74] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/european-union
[75] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftn1
[76] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_turnpoint.html
[77] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftn2
[78] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftn3
[79] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftn4
[80] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftnref1
[81] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftnref2
[82] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftnref3
[83] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/120_regroupment-i.html
[84] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_16thcongress.html#_ftnref4
[85] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_housing.html
[86] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/leftism
[87] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/index.htm
[88] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/zimbabwe
[89] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftn1
[90] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftn2
[91] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftn3
[92] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftn4
[93] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftn5
[94] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftnref1
[95] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftnref2
[96] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftnref3
[97] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftnref4
[98] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html#_ftnref5
[99] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/japan
[100] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr286-supplement-london-attacks.pdf
[101] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/london-bombings
[102] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/anti-fascismracism
[103] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote1sym
[104] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote2sym
[105] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote3sym
[106] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote4sym
[107] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote5sym
[108] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote1anc
[109] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote2anc
[110] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote3anc
[111] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote4anc
[112] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_stockwell.html#sdfootnote5anc
[113] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_carnage.html#_ftn1
[114] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_carnage.html#_ftn2
[115] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition
[116] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_carnage.html#_ftnref1
[117] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_carnage.html#_ftnref2
[118] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/hurricane-katrina
[119] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/287_heathrow_leaflet.pdf
[120] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/121_ibrp
[121] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/public-meetings
[122] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-workers-organisation
[123] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/287_economic_crisis.html
[124] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/british-communist-left
[125] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftn1
[126] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftn2
[127] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftn3
[128] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftnref1
[129] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftnref2
[130] http://www.komiteyehamahangi.com
[131] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_correspondence_iran.html#_ftnref3
[132] https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/unions.htm
[133] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters
[134] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/260/iran
[135] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/19/union-question
[136] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/australasia
[137] https://en.internationalism.org/node/1131
[138] https://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=12
[139] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/zimmerwald-movement