Earlier this year, Internationalism received copies of two leaflets distributed by the Toronto based group Red and Black Notes, who also publish a magazine and maintain a website of the same name, at the anti-war demonstrations of last winter. In an effort to develop a constructive process of debate and criticism among the various groups of the ?proletarian political milieu? (PPM) in North America, we have responded to these two leaflets with the letter that we reproduce below. The ICC has always said that the advancement of revolutionary theory can only occur as a result of open and constructive debate among the various ideas that circulate in the PPM. We publish our response in an effort to contribute, however modestly, to this process, a process that is an essential precondition to the eventual construction of proletarian class party. As readers will see, although we salute the internationalist frame of Red and Black Notes? leaflets, we also advance some important criticisms and disagreements. This is different from the behavior of some groups in the milieu, when they ?flatter? new and emerging groups in order to curry their favor, rather than point out what they may feel are their errors and mistakes. If we are upfront and somewhat insistent in expressing our disagreements with some of the formulations in Red and Black Notes? leaflets, this not done out of any desire to be sectarian. Rather, debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of the PPM, its dialectical motivation to advance and develop. Even if we conclude that there is much more that unites our perspectives than divides them, we have the responsibility as revolutionaries to see that our differences confront one another so that mistaken ideas may be discarded, correct positions may be reaffirmed and new syntheses produced in the light of criticism. We encourage all other groups in the milieu to contribute to this process as well. This is in the tradition of all the great revolutionaries of the past (1).
Dear comrades:
We have discussed the two leaflets you prepared and distributed at the Toronto anti-war demonstrations during the lead-up to the recent war in Iraq (?A Plague on Both Your Houses? and ?No War But the Class War?). In the spirit of open debate, we would like to take this opportunity to share with you some comments and criticisms.
First, we want to salute the effort you have made to distribute these leaflets at the recent demonstrations. Your intervention was undoubtedly quite out-of-step with the main themes of these demonstrations, which in our analysis were all situated well within the realm of bourgeois politics. Your defense of proletarian internationalism in the face of both the official bourgeois pacifism of the demonstrations, as well as all the accompanying leftist calls to defend one imperialism against another, clearly demonstrate your desire to defend a working-class perspective on war in this historical period. In particular, your denunciations of the Trotskyists and leftists were to the point. For example, in ? A Plague on Both Your Houses? you write, "For others on the left, it?s about defending imperialism. This has led some, most notable the Trotskyists, to claim opposition to imperialism in this conflict means support to Iraq in the hopes of bloodying the nose of the ?main? imperialist power (?) While sounding radical, the position is essentially a lesser-evilism. (?) Capitalism is a world system, and the wars it generates are wars between the greater and the lesser imperialist powers for the right to exploit and rule. Yesterday?s national liberation movements fighting against imperialism are today?s exploiters of labour and tomorrow?s allies of larger powers. (?) We will not choose between the greater and the lesser powers."
Moreover, your denunciations of all the belligerent parties of World War II, or as you call it the ?second imperialist world war,? shows a stern refusal to fall for the bourgeois ideological justification for this war, that of defending ?democracy? against fascism, a call that was repeated throughout the twentieth century not only by the official parties of bourgeois order, but also the Stalinists, Trotskyists and many anarchist currents as well; and which is being deployed in full force by the world bourgeoisie today. For us, and?as it would appear from your leaflet?for you as well, the proletariat had no side to choose in this war either. The following passage from ? A Plague on Both Your Houses? demonstrates this internationalist commitment particularly well, ?The second imperialist world war between 1939 and 1945 claimed tens of millions of lives. But the ?peace? that followed it also claimed untold millions of lives across the globe, as capital has engaged in low level, and sometimes not so low level wars to preserve the imperialist ?peace.? It is the peace of the grave. The only way to stop war is to uproot the capitalist system.?
We believe that whether openly fascist or cloaking itself in democratic verbiage, all factions of the ruling class have been equally reactionary since the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase at some point early last century. The rejection of the defense of ?democracy? is for us a key component of any attempt to defend a proletarian perspective today. We thus think that your leaflet might have been made stronger if you expressly argued that the proletariat never has any interest in taking sides between different fractions of the bourgeoisie, that there are no circumstances in which a tactical exception should be made to a ?united front? policy, no matter what the ideological justification.
Moreover, despite our agreement with your leaflets? internationalist framework we do find a number of instances in which our analysis of the Iraq war differs from yours to some degree. For example, you seemed to argue that the main reason behind the war is to be found in the US?s failing economy. By going to war, you seem to say, the American bourgeoisie was seeking some sort of ?shot in the arm? for its current economic woes. In a Plague on Both Your Houses? you write, for example, ?While few in the Bush administration argue that the war will revitalize the sagging US economy, it is precisely that economy which is pushing the US toward war. Trillions of dollars of debt, a stock market bubble that is about to burst and a plunging US dollar, make a war to secure massive oil reserves, and a commodity which is paid for in dollars an irresistible prize.?
These assertions seem to go down the same path as the IBRP?s, which argues that by taking over Iraq?s vital oil reserves, the American bourgeoisie is seeking to safeguard the international oil trade in dollars against the encroachment of the Euro. While we agree that oil is an important strategic commodity in the world economy and an important pawn on the inter-imperialist chess board, we do not think that the US decided to go to war to gain control of Iraq?s oil reserves out of any immediate intention to improve its economy, to reap super-profits or to combat the challenge of a currency-war between mounted by the European Union.
In our view, the decision to invade Iraq was the latest in a long series of military interventions that the US has been compelled to make stretching back to the First Gulf War and the collapse of the old Eastern bloc. Essentially, since the collapse of its Cold War rival, the Western bloc has ceased to have a raison d??tre. Since this time, what we have witnessed are all the second and third-rate imperialisms that used to follow ?bloc discipline? challenging more and more the leadership of the old bloc hegemon, the US. Faced with the collapse of bloc discipline, but still the world?s only superpower, the US has since been forced to engage in direct displays of its military power, as an attempt to keep its erstwhile allies in line. What we witnessed in the lead-up to the war in Iraq only confirms this analysis with France, Germany and Russia?the powers with the most to loose from a US take over of Iraq?protesting the loudest. In this sense, the importance of oil in this war is to be found more on the strategic level?with the US now strengthening its military presence in an area of the world upon which Europe and Japan are depended for oil?rather than for any immediate quest to reinvigorate a struggling economy. You seem to hint in the direction of our analysis, for example in ?A Plague on Both Your Houses?, ?While the US?s erstwhile European allies are expressing reluctance, it is only because they see the US?s actions as a way to strengthen its position relative to their own through the seizure of Iraqi oil and the establishment of a semi-permanent US base in Iraq;? and again in ? No War But the Class War!? ?For France has its own reasons for opposing the US, and they have little to do concern for the Iraqi people; rather, they concern the French imperialist state?s position vis-?-vis the US.? Nevertheless, it does seem as if you never quite get away from the idea, mistaken in our view, that this war was about the US economy itself, or a currency rivalry between the US dollar and the Euro.
In fact, as we have shown in our press, the US intervention in Iraq can only have a negative effect on the latter?s economy forcing it to attack the living and working conditions of the working class even harder. We think that your leaflets? analysis of the origins of the war, with its focus on immediate economic factors, leads you towards some false predictions which underestimate the gravity of imperialist rivalries at this historic juncture as well as the primacy of strategic considerations in the international relations between states: i.e. the idea that the European powers would jump in and participate in the war along with the US. For example, in ?A Plague on Both Your Houses,? you write, ?Nevertheless, the reluctant allies will likely get on board because they fear the US will go ahead and they will be left out in the cold.?
For the most part, this wasn?t the case, because for countries like France, Germany and Russia had just too much to lose if the US were to strengthen its grip in the Middle East with a direct military presence in Iraq. In fact, as we wrote in our press, part of the American bourgeoisie?s strategy in the lead up to the war in Iraq was precisely to raise the ante in its confrontation with its erstwhile allies by picking a fight with which these countries could not even pretend go along, and thus forcing the confrontation between the US and countries like Germany and France into the open. On the other hand, the idea that there is an emerging confrontation between a US led-bloc and a new bloc based on the European Union?a possible conclusion of seeing the war as the result of a confrontation between the dollar and the Euro?is for us a bit premature. While this may appear to be the case on the surface?and this is often how the bourgeois media on both sides of the Atlantic presents it?for the most part, however, we think the EU is little more than a sad fiction when it comes to exhibiting a united foreign policy. This was also confirmed by the lead up to the Iraq war, with a number of European countries supporting the US policy against German and French opposition.
On another level, we also feel that your leaflets tended to overestimate the current balance of class forces on the global level. As such, your calls for workers to engage in direct action tactics like sit downs and go slows against the war seems to us to be both premature and unrealistic. For example, you write in ?No War But The Class War!,? ?And while only a full-scale break with capitalism can create a new world, resistance can be practiced on multiple levels: absenteeism, informal work to rule actions (?go-slows?), even occupations and creative industrial repairs.?
While calls for workers to reject the war are perfectly legitimate in the historic sense and perfectly in line with an internationalist denunciation of imperialist war, we think it is important not to fall into the illusion of thinking the ?revolution is right around the corner? today, or that a massive working class struggle against the war is likely on the immediate agenda. What we are seeing today is that much of the global proletariat is still struggling to recover its class identity after the collapse of the Soviet-bloc and all the accompanying calls of the ?death of communism? and the ?disappearance of the working class?. What we are witnessing now is a process of the ?subterranean maturation? of consciousness in the class, where through its daily struggles against capitalist exploitation and the intensification of the austerity measures?which the bourgeoisie is compelled to impose faced with a permanent global economic crisis?the proletariat is slowly coming to recognize the connection between the drive to war and the capitalist system itself.
We think it is through these daily struggles at the point of production, on its own class terrain, where the working-class can recover its class identity and come to possess a revolutionary consciousness of the need to destroy the capitalist state and build a new society. That is why in our intervention we called on workers not to abandon their economic struggles in the face of war, not to allow either war or pacifist propaganda to distract them from the class struggle. We felt there was some tendency in your leaflets to call on the working-class to engage in an immediate ?political? struggle against the war. For example, you argue in ?No War But the Class War!,? ?If actions against the war were significant and the battle in Iraq does not go smoothly, it could provoke the kind of break down in authority in the armed forces as was seen in Vietnam: desertions, mutinies and a concern for one?s own survival over that of the unit. Were these conditions to take shape, the imperialist war might well begin to resemble a civil war.?
Once again, while this is a perfectly legitimate call as part of a general internationalist political line, it is, in our view, important not to fall into the trap of endorsing the idea of a ?working-class anti-war movement?, in today?s context. For us, revolutionary class-consciousness can only rise from a unity of the economic and political aspects of the class struggle, and this is a process that unfolds in an historic and political context on the global level. Today, the conditions are not such that we are likely to see the type of movement you seemed to call for in your leaflets, and as such these calls could end up legitimizing the idea of ?working class pacifism.? This could possibly end up inadvertently reinforcing the bourgeois anti-war movement. Once again, this does not mean that revolutionaries should cease to call on the class to resist the war simply because it is not, at the moment, a realistic prospect; we only mean to point out that it is crucial to avoid the temptation towards an immediatist euphoria based on some isolated instances of workers appearing to struggle against the war, such as demoralized troops criticizing their commanders or workers refusing to load trains and ships with war supplies. Many of these actions occurred on the terrain of the capitalist unions, while others were perfectly in line with the policy of certain fractions of the national bourgeoisie. While we would be among the first to salute such actions, were they to take place on the class?s own terrain, we think it crucial to always keep the historic context in mind, avoid any temptation towards immediatism and try to analyze such events with a critical eye to situating them in a global context. We do not think there is a difference of principle between Red and Black Notes and ourselves on the internationalist and revolutionary defeatist framework of our intervention towards the class, but we think your leaflets may contain a certain overestimation of the reality of the class struggle at this juncture. While the historic course towards decisive class confrontations remains open, the proletariat still confronts major difficulties in finding its own class terrain in the period ahead.
Despite these differences and criticisms, we nevertheless fully support the internationalist and proletarian basis of your intervention and extend our full solidarity with your effort. We look forward to further correspondence in the future and would welcome any comments or criticisms you may have of the recent issues of Internationalism we have sent you, or correspondence on any other political question.
Communist Greetings,
Internationalism
November, 2003.
On the 1st of May 2003, President George Bush - the cowboy turned fighter pilot-landing on an aircraft carrier under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished", announced with great fanfare the end of the military phase of the war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime, confronted with the overwhelming military superiority of the US war machine, had collapsed in a few weeks of war without presenting any meaningful resistance. In the celebration that followed, the American bourgeoisie, full of itself, announced the beginning of a new era of peace and democracy for the "liberated" Iraqi population and for all the countries of the Middle East. Today, seven months after, there is not much to brag about it. The new free Iraq is so dangerous a place that the man behind the army that liberated it, Mr. Bush, had to sneak into the country in the middle of the night-protected of course by a lot more than just darkness - to share Thanksgiving dinner with his "brave warriors." The Middle East is not much better a place than before the war, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is still very much alive, while the chaos and instability of Iraq are spreading to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, where there have been recent brutal terrorist actions that have left dozen dead and hundreds of people wounded. A War Without End
The fine speeches of the Bush administration about the improvement of the situation in Iraq are in sharp contrast with the harsh reality on the ground. The butcher of Baghdad has been out of power for almost eight months, but there is not yet a functioning society in Iraq. The one billion dollars a month being spent by the US bourgeoisie in this political-military adventure have brought neither stability nor reconstruction to this country.
The guerrilla war being waged by a mixture of old regime loyalist and anti-American Islamic fundamentalist groups, far from being over, is getting more devastating as the tactics of these groups grow in determination and effectiveness. The weekend after Mr. Bush's photo-op stunt it was announced that 79 American soldiers have been killed since October 31, making November the deadliest month for US troops in Iraq since the start of the war in March. And the Americans are not he only foreigners dying in Iraq. On mid-November a truck bomb attack took the life of 18 Italian soldiers, and in November 30, seven Spaniards, one Japanese and 2 South Koreans were also killed in different violent incidents.
Moreover, the sabotage by the guerrilla movement of Iraq's oil industry - its highly vulnerable pipelines have been continually bombed - the backbone of this country's economy, is adding to the miseries of the Iraqi population. The shortage of gas and electricity is causing frequent blackouts and long lines at the gasoline pumps fuelling unrest on the street. Last August a riot broke out in the Southern city of Basra over these very issues.
Up to the present, the 150,000 US soldiers, and their foreign and domestic allies, have been unable to roll back this tide of violence. On the contrary, the brutal attempts of the occupation forces to crush their opponents, the killing of innocent civilians, the widespread arrests and the disappearance of thousands of "suspected terrorists" and the destruction of family homes are in turn stirring anti-Americanism and adding fuel to the spiral of violence. Remarkably, one has the impression of seeing in the American military tactics used in Iraq a re-edition of Israeli, Mr. Sharon's, antics in the Palestinian occupied territories. Iraqis looking for missing relatives caught in the frantic American raids against "suspected" terrorists can't help the comparison of Saddam's era with the new democratic paradise of the American occupation: "at least in Saddam's days the police would tell families that they had arrested their people" (Time magazine, 12/8/03). The "No-Exit" Strategy
The Bush administration, pressed to respond to the increasing scepticism among the American population of its Iraq policy, is quick to affirm, "We are going to stay to get the job done". And this job, Mr. Bush candidly explains, is: "to make Iraqi people happy, to return liberty to it, and to build democracy and economic prosperity for it."
This is today the preferred ideological mask with which the US bourgeoisie would like to cover its imperialist policy, particularly after its war mongering justification for invading Iraq - the weapons of mass destruction line - has been shown to be a blatant lie.
However, this ideology of benevolent fatherly imperialism, militarily occupying a country and forcibly reorganizing its society in the best interest of its population is also a pure mystification. Contrary to the new ideology being peddled by some intellectuals of the "right wing" of the American bourgeoisie to justify its military adventures, there are no good imperialist powers, only national states willing to defend, without much concern for the cost in life and material destruction, their narrow political and economic interests. Of course, it is also not the case that the US soldiers in Iraq are valiant heroes, or modern crusaders defending the free world against "the evil doers". This is all ideological rubbish intended to mystify the working class, which is in this instance the one that pays for the military adventures of the dominant classes.
As we have said many times, the US war against Iraq is nothing but an imperialist war, that can only be understood in the broader context of the offensive of the US bourgeoisie against the imperialist powers that are challenging its supremacy at the world level. In this sense, the target of the Iraq invasion was not Saddam Hussein, but the European powers, in particularly Germany and France, which have - since the collapse of the system of imperialist blocs at the beginning of the 90's - attempted to play their own imperialist card at the expense of their former American boss. In fact, it has been in reaction to the expansionist ambitions of these powers that the US has responded with a long-term operation designed to keep their rivals within the confines of Western Europe. The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the building of military bases in several former republics and satellites countries of Russia in South East Asia and Eastern Europe, and the present occupation of Iraq, are all part of this strategy of containment and isolation of its imperialist rivals. On this level, the Bush camarilla does not hold exclusive rights to the present American war mongering. In fact, this long-term imperialist policy is designed to deal with the post Cold War world "order" and it has been the lynchpin of both the Democratic and Republican administrations since the one term presidency of Mr. Bush, the father.
It is because there is no possibility of turning back in this offensive, that the Bush administration has a "no exit-strategy" in Iraq. The intransigent defense of the US's global imperialist interests is what determines the nature of the "job" to be done, regardless of the personal qualities of the "commander in chief" of the moment. Towards More Imperialist Confrontations
The determined American unilateral invasion of Iraq and the military occupation of this country against the very vocal opposition of its main imperialist challengers, gives a measure of the overall overwhelming superiority of the US compared with its rivals. However, these countries, despite the humiliation, have not given up their ambitions and have not lost time trying to create new problems for the American bourgeoisie. The US's present difficulties in Iraq, and its relative loss of credibility and political authority, have emboldened its rivals to go on their own offensive. This is the meaning of the energized activity directed at the creation of an autonomous European military force, with Germany and France at its center. Also, it is this same logic of sabotaging American policy that sees Germany, France and Great Britain posing themselves as the mediators between the Iranian regime and the US over the American pressure regarding its nuclear program.
The fact that the whole historical situation-capitalism's decomposition, an undefeated working class and the overwhelming global superiority of the US compared with its rivals is not favorable to the formation new imperialist blocs and thus to a third world war does not make the present situation less dangerous. The wars, chaos and barbarism spreading today all over the planet could destroy the very material possibility for the rebuilding of society on a truly rational basis. Capitalism has no future to offer; only the world working class revolution can give humanity a chance for survival.
ES, 11/25/03.
Since 1994, with the public appearance of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), the editorials of the bourgeois press left and right have used every opportunity to launch their attack against Marxism. The book by B. de la Grange and M. Rico, "Marcos, The Genial Impostor", is structured as if it was the synthesis of police archives. It shows the origins and actions of the EZLN and, even though it seeks to be an offensive against Marcos, it also subtly spreads calumnies and attacks against Marxism, pointing out that all of the authoritarian attitudes of the EZLN are a legacy of its supposed 'marxist' past, which the book says is rooted in the guerrilla group called National Liberation Forces, which were never Marxist, but rather expressions of radical Stalinism with a special cult for Fidel Castro. Marcos himself, while at the beginning of his 'career' cautious, has not missed an opportunity to launch ironic and critical attacks against what he, from his vision of ex-Stalinist, regards as Marxism.
The book by Vasquez Montalban, "Marcos, the Lord of the Mirrors", contains an 'interpretation' of the world events since the fall of the Eastern bloc. It points to a crisis within the left consisting in its "inability to capture today's reality". The followers of this book's author, for example J. Holloway, who wrote "Changing the World Without Taking Power", define the crisis in the left in this way: "the crisis of Marxism is the liberation from dogmas..." which helped to discover (yet again!) that the proletariat is not the subject of change because, by manipulating the concept of 'anti-power' and 'anti-capitalism', it is possible to establish an assessment of history and of the dominant system which is not based in the material comprehension of how this system functions, that is, on the separation between producer and product, labor and capital, value and surplus value, but rather on ambiguous concepts such as 'dignity' ([1]). This makes of each individual oppressed by capital a revolutionary being. Armed with this 'new' reasoning, J. Holloway and his followers can say that pauperized peasants, locked in the traditions of the Indian culture, or any other social entity oppressed by capital, such as the petty bourgeoisie, are capable of transforming the world. By contrast, the role-played by the proletariat in production and the fact that it is the only modern class that has no organic or material ties with capital or other past systems of production are totally ridiculed as simple dogmatic postulates. This argument is a new weapon used to deepen the confusion within the proletariat and further demoralize it.
Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, explain the material bases to recognize the proletariat as the only revolutionary class. They clarify that, "The petty bourgeoisie - the small industrialist, the small businessman, the artisan, the peasant- all of them struggle against the bourgeoisie to safeguard their own existence. For this reason, they are not revolutionary. On the contrary, they are conservative. They will be revolutionary only when they will abandon their own point of view and embrace that of the proletariat." In spite of this, the ideologues of zapatismo want to 'enrich' Marxism and with an impressively entangled ideological argument, they claim a similarity between "the Paris Commune, the workers' councils, and the zapatist town councils [insofar as] these are all experiments in self-determination." (Holloway). Such aberration, beyond being the irresponsible expression of a philistine, or an idiotic statement made out of good intentions, is a conscious attack directly aimed at the proletariat and its weapon of combat, i.e. Marxism.
The negation (and even the death) of the proletariat as a revolutionary class has been proclaimed on several occasions. More recently this has been coupled with affirmations about 'the end of history' and 'the death of communism'. It is precisely this argument, which is spread by Marcos' speeches and those of his 'army of intellectuals'. They justify such an argument by using a marxist verbiage, as it's the case with Holloway & co., who fill the pages of a number of reviews. During his visits to Mexico City, Marcos, always escorted by the Federal Police, expresses his hatred for Marxism when he mocks it at the UNAM, the most important university in Mexico City. He uses a kind of irony which has the clear aim of denigrating the internationalist principle defended by communists when he says, "Forgive me if I bore you. I am here to make you waste your time when I talk to you about an Indian child, instead of talking about the world revolution." Brazenly, Marcos has had the guts to affirm that 'we are the only radicals'. However, such glorified radicalism of zapatismo IS NOT noticeable in its submission to capital's institutions and symbols, such as the House of Representatives, to which it pleads for a chance to have its voice heard. Neither is it noticeable in its defense of the constitution, the flag, or the national anthem. We can't note this supposed radicalism in its critique of the system of exploitation, the destruction of which they don't even dare to pose. On the contrary, they demand that capital give 'a few non-transferrable actions' to its workers when they retire, as the 'zapatist laws' dictate. Zapatismo's true radicalism rests in its constant attack against Marxism. Never before had another guerrilla group gained so much attention by the media, making of each declaration an advertising event. Because of this, each attack against Marxism is exaggerated, reproduced, and justified by the press and its 'intellectuals', as the media are at the same time engaged in capturing the attention of the young generation of workers, who have less experience and a weaker attachment to the Marxist tradition. For all of these reasons, the working class today needs to reflect collectively more than ever before. It needs to re-appropriate the experience of its struggles and its theoretical arsenal. This is the only way for it to recover the confidence in its own strength, while strengthening its consciousness and giving an impulse to its organization. Only the world proletarian revolution can transform the world
The concepts of 'civil society' and 'citizenship of the struggle' are supported by zapatismo and reproduced by the 'anti-globalization' groups to define a movement that calls itself 'transformational' and 'different', a movement by which it is possible 'to change the world without taking power'. This argument, which apparently embraces a vocation to total freedom and an 'inclusive' nature, does nothing but reproduce the bourgeois argument about democracy, with a few more colorful strokes. In fact, it is a direct attack against Marxism. In order to strengthen its 'new' ideas, it has to equal Stalinism with Marxism. For instance, Rodriguez Lascano, in "Rebellion" N.1, in order to conclude that the EZLN is the alternative which humanity has been waiting for centuries, states that there has been a "failure of the experiences in the construction of post-capitalist societies [in the sense that, these experiments have led to a] binding of marxism's conception of emancipation with the bureaucratic mechanism of political dominion." ([2]). It is clear that he does not want to make a critical analysis of history. All he wants to do, in an incorrect manner, is establish an identity between the aberrations of Stalinism with Marxism. A popular practice with the bourgeoisie is to attack Marxism by linking it to Stalinism, and the 'intellectuals of zapatismo' share such practice but revolutionaries know that Stalinism is not a particular expression of Marxism, but rather it exposes the defeat of the world revolution and, with it, the extension of the counterrevolution. Because of this, it is only either ignorance, or the planned attack against the principles of Marxism that can explain the arguments of these 'illustrious' intellectuals.
The real issue here is the insistence on the idea that the taking of political power, as a consequence of the proletarian revolution, implies its being locked within the national borders or the reproduction of the very repressive state apparatus that the revolution was seeking to destroy. Worse still, zapatismo's fiercest attack is the spreading of the idea that the origin of the problem rests in the existence of a proletarian party structure, insofar as it imposes a 'hierarchy of combat' (Holloway). We can see how zapatismo starts by posing that Marxism is a 'coup' by a minority, and ends by ascribing a kind of nationalism to Marxism. In addition, by pointing to a supposed interest by Marxism in gaining state power, it portrays the former as a bourgeois current interested in gaining hegemony over the state structures.
Where do they get these ideas about Marxism? The above mentioned author tells us: "not only from the experience of the Soviet Union and China, but also from the numerous movements of national liberation and from the guerrillas of the 60's and 70's." That is to say, from expressions and experiences that have nothing to do with Marxism.
The bourgeoisie's hatred for Marxism has found an echo in the voices and writings of these 'intellectuals'. The activity of zapatismo and its intellectuals is to denigrate Marxism. We cannot deepen here, but it's important to at least note that the radical transformation of the capitalist mode of production, which is what Marxism proposes, is derived from the material understanding of this mode of production, in which capital itself is conceived as a relation of production, which can be destroyed only by abolishing the exploitation of wage labor. This is why the taking of political power is just the beginning of this process, which must lead not to the perpetuation of the proletariat as a class, but rather to its disappearance. This is why Marx says that for the radical transformation of society what's necessary is both "a violent revolution, and also the destruction of the state's power apparatus, created by the dominant class." A desperate minority cannot accomplish this. It is rather conceived of as a historical process, constructed and conducted by the proletariat, which exposes its revolutionary nature by founding its practice in conscious and massive actions.
Lastly, among the lies dished out by these 'wise' supporters of the 'new style' guerrilla, is the one that portrays marxism as a mystical and rigid structure, which conceives of the revolution and communism as inevitable events. By contrast, Marxism talks about revolutionary combat and the construction of a truly human community (communism) as a possibility based in necessity. This is why it does not need utopian illusions that look backward, nor does it need desperate voluntaryism such as the one embraced by the guerrilla. This is why when communists defend the legacy of the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary experience of the Communist Left, which fought against the degeneration of the III International, they don't deny the mistakes that were made. What communists do is tread marxism's historic thread to unite in time the experiences of the past with the present, and thus prepare for the future. This means to acquire the METHOD to discuss, to analyze, to struggle, and to organize. It is the same method we use to denounce in front of the working class all those who, like the EZLN, disguise themselves in sheep's clothes the better to launch a systematic attack against the proletariat's program and organization.
MA, 11/25/03.
NOTES
1. If anyone thinks this is just irony, we invite them to read Revista Chiapas #5 (The Revolt of Dignity), in which Holloway himself, after 'explaining' that the principal antagonism in capitalism is not to be found in the struggles between classes and that the proletariat is nothing but an old word used by Marxism, concludes that, "Dignity is therefore the revolutionary subject."
2. Following his trotskyist past, R. Lascano claims that the ex-USSR and its satellite nations are not capitalist societies, and while he previously called them 'degenerated workers' states, now he subtly calls them 'post-capitalist'.
The turn in class struggle discussed in the accompanying article on this page has been echoed here in the US, demonstrating the international character of the struggle between the working class and capitalism.
In the US, the precipitating issue has not been pensions, but medical benefits which have been under severe attack for several years. The struggles that have emerged around this issue are particularly important because they have begun to raise fundamental issues concerning the growing bankruptcy of the capitalist system, as its deepening economic crisis forces it to attack the wages and standard of living of the working class.
The social wage in the US - that part of the cost of reproduction of the working class not paid directly to the workers as cash wages, but paid by the state - is less centralized than in European countries. Medical benefits, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, and pensions are not centralized through the state in the same way as they are in many European nations. Instead, the social wage is diffused through a sophisticated web of federal, state, employers and union programs and pension funds. For example, social security, a federal government program which covers all retirees is only a base level pension, providing a fundamentally poverty level subsistence, and must be supplemented for most workers by other pension plans to maintain an acceptable standard of living during their retirement. Some of these plans are administered by unions, some by employers, some by private pension funds. When the ruling class moves to attack pensions, it doesn't do so by announcing a national policy of across-the-board cuts, which, as experience elsewhere amply demonstrates, risks provoking a massive reaction from the working class. Rather, the attacks are diffused through different pension plans in different ways, cutting benefits, increasing the amount workers must contribute, raising the age of retirement, or even plunging some funds into bankruptcy, in which case pensions are entirely lost.
Likewise with medical benefits, which are only funded directly by the federal government for the poor (Medicaid) and for the elderly (Medicare), rather than Washington announcing an outright cut in medical coverage, the attacks are diffused through thousands of employer plans and HMO's and insurance plans. However, in the past three years the attacks on medical benefits have escalated to the extent of increasingly appearing as a generalized attack. Employers and unions have been working hand in glove to slash workers medical benefits. Typically this takes the form of forcing workers to pay higher out of pocket expenses and to pick up larger and larger portions of the insurance premium, which becomes tantamount to a wage cut on the one hand and a slash in quality of medical care for workers and their families on the other.
The era when large companies covered all or most of health care costs is over. In the last two years insurance premiums rose fastest in a decade, at the rate of 14% per year, more than 3 times the official government rate of inflation. In 2003, only 4% of large employers still pay 100% of insurance, down from 21% just 15 years ago in 1988. From 2000 to 2003, there has been a 50% increase in what workers must pay for their medical coverage. The situation in regard to prescription coverage is even worse. The amount that workers must pay for prescription drug coverage jumped 46 to 71% in the same period. A total of 43.6 million people in the richest, most powerful capitalist country in the world have no medical coverage - 15% of the population.
All of this combined has meant a gross deterioration in the real wages and standard of living of the proletariat and has pushed workers inescapably towards the necessity of taking up the class struggle in defense of their class interests.
Earlier this year, there was a strike at General Electric over the issue of medical insurance premiums. But things came to a head in October, when a whole series of struggles erupted over medical benefits. In Chicago it was sanitation workers, in Los Angeles transit workers. Later this was followed by 30,000 grocery store workers in Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, and then by an additional 70,000 grocery workers in California - who are still on strike after seven weeks. Significantly in California truck drivers are now refusing to make deliveries to the struck stores.
These struggles are in stark contrast to other strikes in the 1990s, such as the United Parcel Strike (UPS) in 1997, which was essentially a manoeuvre to strengthen the badly damaged image of the unions in the eyes of the workers. Those strikes did not correspond so much to the genuine combativeness of the workers, as it did to the needs of capitalism to strengthen its shop floor police - the unions. The strikes we have seen in October are not union manoeuvres but a genuine manifestation of growing working class combativeness. In each case, the union involved reached agreement with management on contracts granting cuts in medical benefits and recommended these contracts for ratification by membership vote. However, in each case these agreements were rejected by the workers overwhelmingly, by more than 66% margins. At the beginning of the strike in California the supermarkets ran full page ads reprinting the union president's letter to the members urging ratification of a fair and equitable agreement. "We couldn't agree more," concluded the company's ad. It was only after the resounding rejection of the contracts that the unions scurried to catch up and in order to keep control of the struggle, in order to sabotage it from within.
Powerless to prevent these outbreaks of workers combativeness, the unions role internationally and in the US has been to sabotage these struggles as much as possible, to retard the process of re-appropriation of the lessons of past struggles. How? By keeping struggles isolated, by emphasizing a struggle around specific demands of the particular sector on strike, by insisting that "we are fighting for our benefits," not against a generalized ruling class attack against all workers. This blocks development of consciousness seeing the link between the attack on medical benefits and pensions and the bankruptcy of capitalism. It leads to isolation, rather than active solidarity, and distorts the tendency towards extension into division within the class. In fact the unions limit the struggle to the defense of the medical benefits and abandon any attempt for other gains. So if the company pulls back on the medical benefits cuts in exchange for double-zero wage settlements, the union declares a victory, even though the workers still emerge as losers.
These recent struggles are significant but they should not be exaggerated. The working class does not need cheerleaders who hail any manifestation of combativeness and class struggle uncritically, but revolutionaries who are capable of recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the struggle, and can put forth an intervention that can maximize the potentiality contained in the situation, and attack the weaknesses of the struggles. As important as these struggles are, it is abundantly clear that the workers still have difficulty to break free of the unions' grasp. Despite the fact that in each case, the workers rejected the austerity contract agreed to by the union, in each case they were incapable of seeing the fact that the unions' cooperation with management exposed their capitalist class nature. Rather than take the struggle into their own hands, the workers permitted the same union leadership that had been content to sell them out, to lead the strike and continue negotiations.
This difficulty to see the necessity to confront the unions as part of the capitalist class is closely linked to the reflux in consciousness and disorientation that has gripped the international proletariat since the collapse of the Stalinist bloc, which has been characterized by a loss of self-identity as a class, and a consequent lack of self-confidence on the part of workers. The intervention of revolutionaries in these struggles must on the one hand be aimed at exposing the unions' role in sabotaging and isolating the struggles, and on the other hand at helping the class to regain its self identity as a class, and its understanding of active solidarity in struggle.
JG, 11/25/03.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/zapatismo
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle