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 [11]). 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 [12]). 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
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/elections-0
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/30/economics
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/world-war-ii
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/2020/winston-churchill
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/asia
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[11] http://www.liberty.org
[12] http://www.liberty,org