Seventy years ago in Hiorshima,on August 6 1945, more than a hundred thousand of its inhabitants were atrociously pulverised, being used as a target in a grand demonstration of the new US nuclear force. According to official figures, close to 70,000 perished in the initial explosion and thousands of others suffered the same fate in the days that followed[1]. Three days later on August 9, a second bomb exploded above Nagasaki killing a similarly terrifying number of victims. The barbarity and suffering inflicted on so many people is hardly conceivable.
Thus, as we wrote in 2005, on the 50th anniversary of this event: “In order to justify such a crime, and to answer the legitimate shock provoked by the bomb’s awful effects, Truman - the US president who ordered the nuclear holocaust - and his accomplice Winston Churchill put about a cynical lie: that the use of the atomic bomb had saved about a million lives, which would have been lost had American troops been forced to invade Japan. In short, and despite appearances, the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which are still killing fifty years later, were pacifist bombs! But this peculiarly revolting tale is given the lie by numerous historical studies published by the bourgeoisie itself”.
When one looks at the military situation of Japan at the time when Germany capitulated, we can see that the former was already virtually beaten. Its aviation, an essential arm of the Second World War, was almost finished, reduced to a small number of machines generally piloted by a handful of adolescents who were as fanatical as they were inexperienced. The navy, merchant as well as military, was practically destroyed. Anti-aircraft defences covered only a small area of the sky, which explains why the B29’s were able to carry out thousands of attacks throughout spring 1945 with practically no losses. And Churchill himself admitted as much in volume 12 of his memoirs!
A study by the American secret services of 1945, published by the New York Times in 1989, revealed that: “Conscious of defeat, the Emperor of Japan decided on June 20 1945 to cease all hostilities and open up talks on July 11 with a view to the cessation of hostilities”[2]. And since in capitalist society cynicism and contempt have neither limits nor frontiers, we can only recall that the survivors of these explosions, the “hibakusha”, have only been recognised as victims by the state from the year 2000[3].
Concerning the real objective of these bombardments, here’s what we wrote in 2005:
“Contrary to all the lies that have been peddled since 1945, about the supposed victory of a democracy synonymous with peace, World War II was barely over than the new front line of imperialist confrontation was being drawn. Just as the Treaty of Versailles contained inevitably within it the seeds of another war, so Yalta already contained the split between the main victor of 1945, the USA, and its Russian challenger. Thanks to World War II, Russia had risen from being a minor economic power to world ranking imperialism, which could not but threaten the American superpower. In spring 1945, the USSR was already using its military strength to carve out a bloc in Eastern Europe. Yalta did nothing but caution the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist sharks. What one balance of forces could set up, another could undo. In the summer of 1945, the real problem facing the American state was thus not, as the schoolbooks tell us, how to make Japan capitulate as soon as possible, but how to confront and contain the imperialist drive of its ‘great Russian ally’”.
In reality it was on the basis of aggravated imperialist tensions that the nuclear arms race began before 1945. A great capitalist power worthy of the name could only maintain its ranking on the imperialist scene and be taken seriously by its rivals by showing them that it possessed, or better still showed that it could make use of nuclear arms. This is particularly true for countries that were “bloc leaders” which by then were made up of the United States and the USSR. Ranged behind one or the other, the other great powers could only fall into line. From 1949, the Russians started tests for their own bomb. In 1952, it was the turn of the British. In 1960, the very French “Gerboise bleue” showed in its turn its nuclear power at Reggane, in the Algerian Sahara. During this whole time one could say without exaggeration that there were hundreds of nuclear tests with consequences on the environment (and sometimes on surrounding populations) that the states have kept quiet about. Beyond this crazy race between the USA and the USSR to deploy a still-greater quantity of these types of arms, unrelenting research was undertaken in order to maximise their power of destruction. If the bombs of 1945 were a moment of intense cruelty in the history of capitalist barbarism, they are far from the culminating point of the destructive potential of existing arms.
Capitalist barbarism has no limits! As if the hundreds of thousands of deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn’t just a foretaste of what decadent capitalism is capable of producing, the Americans went to another level in 1952 with the explosion of “Ivy Mike”, the famous H-Bomb with a power of 10.4 megatons, six times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb! And who can forget the “Tsar Bomba” that the Russians exploded over the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya (Arctic Russia) in 1961. With a power of more than 50 megatons it literally vitrified the soil over a radius of 25 km and destroyed wooden buildings hundreds of kilometres away. The army was satisfied with the idea that the heat of the radiation produced caused third degree burns over a radius of more than 100km. From a formal point of view the big nuclear powers of the United States, Russia, the UK and France, signed a non-proliferation pact (NPT) in 1968. This agreement, which was supposed to halt the proliferation of nuclear arms, had only a very limited impact. It is just as hypocritical as the Kyoto Accords against global warming! Since the NPT came into effect in 1970 several countries have to be added to the list: India, China, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Further there’s a list of countries whose possession of nuclear weapons is a matter of discussion between bourgeois factions: Iran of course, but also Brazil which is suspected of developing a nuclear programme[4], Saudi Arabia and Syria whose nuclear reactor in Damascus was much talked about. In short, it is clear that “non-proliferation” is only a pious wish essentially aimed at masking the sordid reality of the trafficking of nuclear materials. In a system based on competition and relations of force, the idea of a return to reason can only be a pure mystification. Since the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the blocs in 1990, military instability has progressively gained ground in all zones of the planet. The international situation shows us this on a daily basis. It’s a real process of decomposition which generates still more barbarity and irrationality. It is within this framework that we should put the announcement by Putin on June 16, according to which: “Russia is going to strengthen its nuclear arsenal with the deployment of more than forty new inter-continental missiles from here to the end of the year (...). This announcement was made on the basis of the aggravation of tensions between Russia and the United States, whose plans to deploy heavy weapons in Europe revealed by the New York Times have provoked anger in Moscow”[5]. On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the nuclear holocaust, such a declaration is a significant marker of the putrefaction into which capitalist society is sinking[6].
The working class, the sole class bearing a perspective for the future of humanity, is thus also the only class capable of putting an end to the barbaric wars of the imperialist powers. The proletariat cannot let itself be panicked by the horror of which the capitalist class is capable and it cannot remain paralysed faced with the attacks from the latter. It’s true that the atrocity of August 1945 and of war in general generates fear. And for good reason! In the troubled game of capitalist competition, the bourgeoisie always wants to wipe out its rivals. The only real brake on this barbarity is the level of consciousness of the revolutionary class and its capacity for outrage at the horror of a decomposing society.
Finally, let’s remember that summer 2015 is also the 110th anniversary (June 27 1905) of the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, though the media is much more discreet about this. Here the Russian sailors, scandalised by the contempt shown to them by their officers and worn out by the war with Japan, turned their guns against them and stood up in one of the heroic moments of the history of the workers’ movement[7]. It’s not tears of despair, but rather outrage and the will to fight which bear the promise of the construction of a communist society.
Tim, July 2 2015
[1] In Japan, the “peace memorial” gives the number of victims of Hiroshima as 140,000.
[2] Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1990. For more ample developments of the denunciation of this cynical fable, we invite our readers to look at the article “50 years after: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the lies of the bourgeoisie” in International Review no. 83.
[3] Previously these victims benefited from no help by the state. “In May 2005, there were 266,598 hibakusha recognised by the Japanese government” (according to an article of the Japan Times, March 15 2006, reprinted on Wikipedia).
[4] Lula signed an agreement in 2008 with Argentina for the joint development of a nuclear programme which could not be devoid of a military aspect.
[5] Le Monde, 16.06.2015.
[6] In a recent “breakthrough”, amid rising Sino-US tensions, China has announced that it has developed a multiple nuclear warhead delivery system capable of breaching US defences. https://uk.businessinsider.com/china-developed-multiple-warhead-missiles... [2]
[7] It’s also important to remember that it was the workers’ movement, with the revolutionary wave of 1917, that put an end to the First World War at the beginning of the 20th century.
What is the significance, for the working class, of the first Tory majority government in 18 years? It is certainly going to mean even more draconian cuts in benefits, as we show elsewhere in this issue. On a wider scale the results of the election have reinforced the state’s offensive against the proletariat at the ideological level. This is as important as its actions at the economic level. The new political line up of the British state’s democratic facade has the aim of deepening the sense of disorientation within the working class in order to weaken its ability to develop its struggle, and above all its capacity to offer an alternative perspective to the hell of decaying capitalism. Thus the proletariat can expect a whole array of ideological attacks to be launched against it.
The central theme of the current democratic campaigns is the idea that each ‘citizen’ can contribute to the political process. This was exemplified by the election itself. There was the constant message that the outcome of the election was in the balance, could go either way, thus it was important to vote. The polls showed Labour and Tories nearly neck and neck; there was the idea that UKIP may make a break through; in Scotland the question was would Labour mobilize enough votes to stop the SNP decimating the number of Labour MPs? These questions were endlessly debated on the news. The whole message was this: voting could make a difference.
All the “surprise” at the results and the opinion polls getting it so wrong was guff. The secret polls carried out by the parties and the state showed the Tories would win. Also looking at the political situation made it clear the Tories would win. The Liberal Democrats signed their own death certificate when they joined the Coalition and agreed to rises in university tuition fees and other blatant attacks. The SNP’s crushing of Labour in Scotland was hardly a surprise, given that the SNP set itself up as the radical opposition to the austerity measures that Labour quietly accepted. As for UKIP, this populist bogeyman served its role in stoking up the anti-immigrant atmosphere during the election: the others parties used them as a justification for making their own contribution to this poison, but then cast Farage and Co. aside and left them in disarray. The BNP had suffered the same fate previously.
The election campaign has also served to continue the nationalist campaigns around questions such as should Scottish MPs vote on matters related to England, or should there be an English assembly like in Scotland and Wales? During the election itself the threat of the SNP forming an alliance with Labour was used to scare voters. The election, like the Scottish referendum before it, has reinforced nationalist illusions in parts of the working class. In Scotland, which has a long history of proletarian militancy, the working class is confronted with an openly nationalist party representing itself as the radical alternative, as the only real opposition to the Tories.
This democratic circus is not going to stop now the election is behind us. There is now the prospect of months of ceaseless campaigning around the referendum about European Union membership. Workers will be called on see their interests as the same as those of the ruling class and to throw their weight into this ‘decisive’ historical vote. This will add further confusion and divisions as we are told we have to choose a side in this referendum, which will also stir up a new hornets’ nest of nationalism and xenophobia.
The idea of democracy as a British value is also a central theme in the whole anti-terrorism campaign. The politicians were falling over themselves to take full advantage of the barbaric massacre of tourists in Tunisia to use the argument that in order to defend democracy it would be necessary to impose even more draconian anti-terror laws and measures.
The referendum on European membership is not simply a democratic circus. It is also an important part of the British bourgeoisie’s attempt to counter the efforts of its historical European imperialist rivals, France and above all Germany, to draw the EU under greater centralised control. The Eurozone crisis has seen German capitalism strengthening its dominant economic and political role in the EU. British imperialism on the other hand wants to use the referendum to reinforce its distinctive role in Europe – hence its drive to re-negotiate the rules of membership, aimed at undermining German and French efforts to strengthen them. It’s a mark of the confidence of the British ruling class, that it has called a referendum on the EU so quickly after the election. It would not do such a thing if it felt it would not get the right result. This demonstrates to those inclined to support British efforts to counter-balance Germany, such as Holland, that the British ruling class is not playing fast and loose with EU membership. The majority and strongest fraction of the British bourgeoisie is pro-EU, and it has reason to hope that the referendum will deliver a powerful defeat to the Eurosceptic fraction which crosses both Labour and Conservative Parties.
The new government is also seeking to take advantage of the growing chaos in Syria and the wider actions of Islamic State to regain the confidence of the population about military action abroad. Recent parliamentary debates about whether Britain should join in the bombing of Islamic State in Syria, rather than just in Iraq, have cleverly used the idea that the government has learnt the lessons of the debacle over Iraq. One of the central tasks of the Coalition government was to overcome popular distrust in the state’s military actions following the Iraq war and the blatant lying about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The last government defeat two years ago over the bombing of Assad in Syria is being presented as a lesson learned, as proof that the new government’s proposals for action will take much more account of the democratic will of parliament. Again we see the bourgeoisie cynically using the bloodbath in Syria and the rise of Islamic State to further its own imperialist aims, above all its efforts to mobilise the population behind its military actions.
As with the previous government and the Labour government before that, the new team is making every effort to whip up a climate of fear in the population. The murders in Tunisia and the cases of British citizens running off to join IS in Syria are the most recent excuses for strengthening the state’s repression of the population. The government instruction that teachers must test children for signs of ‘radicalisation’ and inform the police and social services if they have any suspicions is another step in the integration of teachers, social workers and health workers into the work of the secret police. All such workers have to attend education classes about extremism and the defence of “British values”, and are expected to cooperate with the police and security services. This is an integration of the “social” face of the state into the repressive apparatus that would impress the old Stalinist and fascist regimes.
These anti-terrorist measures fit in with the state’s need to keep control of elements who might link up with hostile imperialist forces, but they will be unleashed on the working class and its revolutionary minorities in the future. Already the new guidelines for identifying ‘extremists’ includes anyone opposed to the bourgeoisie’s democratic apparatus and in favour of its forcible overthrow.
The right has emerged from the election with renewed strength, whilst Labour is in a “historic crisis”, or so we are told. Labour is engulfed in a leadership campaign between Blairites and one hard left candidate in the shape of Jeremy Corbyn who is not seen as a serious contender. The other candidates talk mainly about the need to reconnect with the “core vote”, to deal more realistically with the question of immigration, to be open about the necessity to make more cuts, to be the party of the Centre etc. At a time when the working class is suffering huge attacks it seems strange that the left face of the capitalist state is seeking to distance itself even further from the class, but this is a well thought-out strategy to reinforce the proletariat’s loss of confidence in its ability to struggle against these attacks and to be able offer an alternative. The whole New Labour project was based on reinforcing the disorientation in the working class following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, with its rejection of Labour’s old-fashioned “socialist policies”, and its emphasis on the democratic citizen and ‘the people’.
Since the election there have been some small expressions of discontent, such as the unexpectedly large “anti-austerity” demonstrations called by the leftist Peoples’ Assembly umbrella group in June, but these were well controlled events. Such discontent will mount but it will be trapped in the idea that the Tories are to blame for cuts in living standards, not the capitalist system. This new anti-Toryism, which was so powerful in the 1980s and early 1990s, leads nowhere but to looking to Labour and the trade unions to defend the working class, offering the working class a false choice between the left and right faces of British state capitalism.
Phil, 4.7.15
Tory Chancellor George Osborne is set in the July Budget to announce details of the new phase of the Spending Review which will undoubtedly continue the vicious attacks on benefits which have continued to hit the very poorest sectors of the working class under Labour and Coalition governments.
David Cameron has hinted at a plan to raid Working Tax Credit Benefits. He justified these cuts by wanting to abolish the ‘merry-go-round’ of benefits paid to people in work. Cameron has had the gall to make low pay part of his case for cuts. He argued, “We need to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society.”
We cannot say precisely where the cuts will fall but the Tory election manifesto gave some important indications of the areas they are aiming at:
In a leaked exposé leaked before the election, Danny Alexander, the former Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, said that in June 2012, members of an inner group of senior cabinet members were sent a paper by the Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith that involved:
The director general of the right-leaning Institute for Economic Affairs think-tank supports the need for making savings in the welfare budget, but has said that the composition of the proposed cuts “looks set to be extremely unfair on the working age population […] simply salami-slicing the value of tax credits will hit certain households hard”[1].
Another area where the axe is due to fall is incapacity benefits. ‘Reforming’ incapacity benefit, crystallised in the notorious fit-for-work tests carried out by Atos, was a major PR disaster for the Coalition. Today, Atos has been replaced with a new agency – Maximus - but this body still has the function of throwing as many claimants off benefits as possible. The Tories promise to push on with this, and with parallel reductions in the numbers of people receiving disability benefits, “so that help goes to those who really need it”.
This list of attacks planned by the new government could be greatly extended, but they already demonstrate that the Tories will ruthlessly accelerate the attacks on working class living standards carried out under the Coalition.
But just in case anyone should think that these attacks are the invention of the Tories, let’s recall that the Coalition merely kept up the attacks of the previous Labour governments of Blair and Brown:
“The consequences of Labour’s welfare reforms were devastating. 52,399 benefit sanctions were inflicted on Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants in March 2010. This was twice the number from just two years earlier and more than the 51,142 sanctions handed out by the Tories in September 2014…
“In March 2010 the number of people on sickness benefits who had their benefits stopped for failure to carry out work related activity hit a high of 3,673. This is just slightly below the 3,828 sanctions handed out to this group in September 2014.
“To hear the current rhetoric from the TUC, you would think that mass benefit sanctions were a Tory invention. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady recently released a statement saying ‘Under this government the sanctions system has become a cruel maze in which it is all too easy for claimants to lose cash for minor breaches of rules and random decisions’. This was in response to a report showing the desperate toll that sanctions were taking on lone parents and most importantly their children. As far back as 2008 the government’s own experts, the Social Security Advisory Committee, recommended that lone parents should not face sanctions. The Labour government rejected this advice”. (Johnnie Void, 8/3/15, posted on the The Void)
Cutting working class living standards, subjecting proletarians to increased surveillance and repression, is not an ‘ideological’ choice of this or that bourgeois party. It is a remorseless necessity for the state in its defence of the profitability of the national economy in the face of an irresolvable economic crisis and the fierce competition of other nation states. Capitalist profit and human need are irreconcilably opposed.
Melmoth 28/6/15
When the Greek government decided at short notice to call a referendum it was clear that the differences between the Syriza-led coalition and the IMF/ECB/EC Troika were minimal. When it came to the referendum campaign the differences between No and Yes sides, despite much melodramatic language, were, therefore, also limited.
Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis accused the Troika of trying to “humiliate” Greece. “Why have they forced us to close the banks? To frighten people. And when it’s about spreading terror, that is known as terrorism.” (El Mundo 4/7/15) Syriza claim that the purpose of the referendum was to improve the negotiating position of the Greek state. Meanwhile, the proponents of the Yes vote warned of the disastrous consequences of an exit from the Eurozone and the possibilities of leaving the EU.
Both sides mobilised the population as so many atomised individuals blindly following the campaigns of the bourgeoisie. A Greek professor quoted in the New York Times (3/7/15) said “There is no discussion of the real issues … They are exaggerating the feelings of fear and agony and creating an atmosphere that makes it impossible for anyone to think clearly.” Thinking clearly is something that the bourgeoisie discourages at every opportunity. What it needs are millions trooping into polling stations to express their passivity in the face of the bourgeoisie’s economic attacks.
When the coalition led by Syriza assumed office after January’s election it claimed that it would end austerity. Many naively believed that this was possible. The negotiations with the Troika were undertaken in an atmosphere of charge and counter-charge. However, as the June 30 deadline approached, when Greece would default if there was no agreement producing new funds, it seemed as though agreement was imminent. But the Greek government walked out of talks a few days before the deadline. Even after the deadline Syriza continued to make concessions on the measures proposed by the Troika.
In the end the sticking points were matters of detail. The Greek government accepted most of the proposed changes to VAT, with the exception of the special treatment of the Greek islands. It accepted most of the attacks on pensions, but not all. On defence cuts there were initially no concessions made by Syriza at all. After all national defence is one of the central concerns of every capitalist state, whether led by a party of the left, right or centre. In the end what was offered by the Greek state was close to what was demanded by the Troika.
As far as the austerity experienced in Greece over the last five years is concerned the prospect is only for the situation to worsen. The US and the IMF might speak more of restructuring debt relief, the EC/ECB more of the particular measures that must be introduced, and Syriza more about the suffering of the Greek people. No one can offer any improvements in the actual conditions of life of those living in Greece. Both Yes and No campaigns, apart from describing the impossible horrors of supporting the other side, insisted that following them would restore Greek pride. Both sides posed things in terms of the Greek nation, the Greek people and the Greek economy. Nationalists tell us that Greek workers should be proud of the fact that the Greeks work among the longest hours in Europe, despite the fact that this shows them to be among the least productive. The quality of Greek agriculture is often extolled, and yet 70% of food consumed in Greece is imported. In the final analysis Greek capitalism has proven uncompetitive and has lost out to larger and stronger economies. The problems of the Greek economy are not due to the particular Hellenic problems of corruption and the non-payment of taxes (widespread though they are), but are an expression of the international crisis of decadent capitalism.
In reality in Greece there is no prospect for a reduction in unemployment, many taxes rise, wages and pensions will be further reduced, the age of retirement will go up to 67, and further public services will decline because of a lack of viability. In practice, for all their talk of opposition to austerity, Syriza have shown themselves in continuity with the governments of New Democracy and Pasok that preceded it.
If the population in Greece has suffered the rigours of sustained austerity, it is not unique. The economic crisis of capitalism, as it worsens, always means the capitalist class will make the working class, and other non-exploiting strata of the population, pay … in reduced wages, lost jobs, higher prices, cut services, and ultimately in imperialist war. The anti-austerity rhetoric of parties such as Syriza is exposed as just so many words as soon as they are part of government.
But the working class does not only suffer from privation and pauperisation, it also faces capitalism’s ideology and its apparatus of democracy. In Greece, in the past there have been many general strikes ‘against austerity’, but these have been very much initiated, controlled and divided by the rival union federations. Far from developing any sense of class identity or the possibility of autonomous action, the unions have pulled the workers into relying on factions in parliament and supported the parties of the left. In the past this meant the social democrats Pasok and the Greek Stalinists (KKE), more recently it’s meant Syriza.
The fierce polarisation of Greek bourgeois politics continues to draw in the working class. Coups and counter-coups in the 1920s and 30s, the dictatorship of Metaxas, the Civil War in the 1940s, the regime of the colonels (1967-74), the emergence of Pasok and New Democracy – all these past expressions of divisions within the ruling class have found workers rallied behind factions of the bourgeoisie rather than against it.
Although the question posed in the referendum was of Byzantine complexity, the answer was reduced to a choice between ΝΑΙ or ΟΧΙ (Yes or No). ΟΧΙ is not a neutral term in modern Greek culture. Every 28 October in Greece is ΟΧΙ Day, a national holiday celebrating the refusal of Metaxas of an ultimatum from the Axis powers and the entrance of Greece into the Second World War. In Greece today the political parties of the bourgeoisie compete to display their nationalist credentials. None of them can offer anything but further austerity and war.
It will be a great step forward for the working class when it realises that its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. In the past there have been political minorities in Greece that have defended the perspectives of working class revolution. During the 1940s the group around Agis Stinas defended an internationalist position against the Second World War. More recently there were internationalist voices during the social movements of 2009-2011 The way forward for the working class in Greece, even if it is not an immediate prospect, is to link its struggles with those of the world working class and to develop a truly internationalist and revolutionary perspective.
Car 4/7/15
The British economy is growing. The latest GDP growth was 2.9% with a predicted growth of 2.4% for 2015 (The Economist, 4.7.15). At the same time average pay has increased faster than inflation in the year to March, in other words the fall in real wages has been halted. However, this does not tell the whole story and the economy in both the UK and the world, despite having emerged from the deep recession of 2008, remains fragile.
“Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”[1]. Britain has become a low productivity economy, with output per worker per hour lagging behind Italy and Canada, and way behind France, Germany and the USA. A US worker can do in 3 weeks what will take a worker in the UK a month. It was improving at approximately 1.75% a year, or slightly faster than the rest of the group of 7 countries, until the start of the recession in 2007, since when productivity has stagnated in Britain although not in the other advanced countries, widening the gap. The loss of the improvement in productivity has been across the spectrum of economic activity particularly in manufacturing, but not excluding services. These sectors have seen either a very significant fall in productivity improvement, or a loss of productivity, since then. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has noted a 0.3% increase in hourly productivity in the first quarter of this year, or 1.3% in the year to the end of March.
Whether or not this improvement is sustained, 8 years of stagnation has left productivity approximately 16% lower than it would have been if it had continued improving at the previous rate. This does not mean workers would be an average of £5,000 better off if productivity had continued to grow as before – it was the recession that caused the stagnation in productivity because capital could no longer produce and sell so many products or services profitably. In fact some employers kept workers on through the recession, often at reduced pay, in the expectation of future growth so that unemployment did not rise so fast or so high as in previous recessions, which contributed to the initial fall in productivity at the start of the recession. This was accompanied by the cut in investment during the recession, leaving workers using fewer and more out of date machines.
Low productivity in Britain is also a long term problem that dates back to the start of the open crisis of capitalism at the end of the post World War 2 boom nearly 50 years ago. “Prof Haskel [of Imperial College] admits it is impossible to pin point one factor to explain why the economy has all of sudden become less efficient. Instead, he makes several conjectures. One is the slowdown in the amount of research and development undertaken by companies and the state since the 1970s compared with the immediate postwar period. As R&D’s affect on productivity has a long lag, what happened forty years ago may help to explain the productivity problem Britain faces today.”[2]
Productivity is a problem for British national capital[3]. It is something of an interminable mantra imposed in the public sector, in the NHS and in our schools, and predicted to be an important concern in the budget. It makes it harder to complete internationally. And it is driving down wages. There are dangers for the ruling class in imposing conditions of low pay, poor working conditions on a working class with strong traditions of struggle for too long – even while politicians of left and right have had some success with blaming these conditions, and unemployment, poor housing, etc. on immigration.
British national capital relies on its international trade for its survival and therefore on the health of the world economy. “In 2015, the IMF says, for the first time since 2007 every advanced economy will expand” (The Economist, 13.6.15) but hazards remain such as Greek debt and China’s shaky markets and slowing growth, as well as the Brazilian and Russian economies likely to shrink this year. “The danger is that, having used up their arsenal, governments and central banks will not have the ammunition to fight the next recession”. It’s not that The Economist is predicting a recession on the horizon, but that they tend to come along regularly in capitalism and there are all sorts of fragilities in the world economy. Including Europe’s debt and dependence on exports. The EU is Britain’s most important partner accounting for approximately 50% of its trade in goods (imports and exports) and a substantial proportion of its trade in services. While any particular business may have a greater or lesser interest in the EU, the UK cannot grow indefinitely while the Euro area lags behind, with only 1% growth according to the latest figures and 1.5% predicted for this year.
What The Economist is most concerned about is the ability of the various economies to respond to a new crisis by increasing borrowing, manipulating the Government budget balance and interest rates. After the debt accumulated since 2007 and the exceptionally low interest rates – for instance in Britain Bank Base Rate never fell below 2% until 2007, and is now at 0.5% – you can see their concern. But when base rate is close to zero “Central banks’ capacity to conduct QE [quantitative easing] is theoretically limitless … markets will tolerate much more QE than economists had thought” (The Economist, 13.6.15). Lenders remain confident that the British government can repay loans despite a £1.5 trillion debt equal to 80% of GDP.
While average pay has gone up a little higher than inflation after several years of falling real wages, some of the poorest have done very badly such as care escorts averaging £7,400 with a loss of 3.3% or retail check out staff on around £9,160 down 3.4%[4]. The income gap has only widened as the working class is made to pay for the crisis.
The government response is to continue to impose more attacks on the working class (see page 2) with cuts and restrictions in budgets for social services, schools and health and particularly on benefits. These measures, like the restrictions on immigration, are also being used to paint sections of the population as scapegoats for the problems in the economy. This is particularly the case for the attacks on working age benefits for those in work, out of work or unable to work.
Any attempt to follow the evolution of the economy naturally uses the statistics produced by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes: to help manage state policy to defend the national capital, to provide information for capitalists trying to make profitable decisions whether the economy is doing well or badly. On the other hand we are trying to follow the evolution of a decadent system, one in which the exploitative relations of production are in conflict with the forces of production, and most importantly the working class. It is not just a question of the fall in production with each recession – capitalism has always experienced that even when it was vigorously expanding across the globe – but also the fragile and anaemic recoveries or the various bubbles that follow in which the productive forces continue to be hindered. And all the while it is doing so in ways that damage both the environment and the health of the population and the working class in particular through pollution.
Alex 4.7.15
[1]. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist quoted https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41be9e38-e521-11e4-bb4b-00144feab7de.html#axz... [8]
[3]. In this article we are taking the statistics produced by the bourgeoisie at face value. However productivity is a complex problem that goes back to the 19th century and one we will need to come back to in future articles.
As the Greek government – almost immediately after the victory of the ‘No vote’ which it had campaigned for - agreed to the intensification of austerity measures, there was genuine sympathy from workers internationally for their Greek comrades. The extent of the attacks on jobs, incomes, pensions and a whole range of essential services has struck a chord because this is not something restricted to the workers in Greece. But at the same time every part of the bourgeoisie’s political spectrum felt confident to use the situation for its own benefit, and against the consciousness of the working class, above all by distorting the real meaning of class solidarity.
The various right wing factions try to show how harmful the EU is for the defence of national interests and demonise the German government, while others continue to blame the ‘lazy Greeks’ for living beyond their means. The left, after supporting Syriza and the No vote in the referendum, still claims that capitalism can function without austerity and that their campaigns will have a different outcome to Syriza’s. At the same time they tell us that solidarity with the Greek workers means solidarity with the Syriza government against the EU.
In fact the ‘Greek crisis’ is part of a crisis facing the whole working class and is indicative of the future for all of us. Instead of following the nationalists of right and left, workers need to grasp that their interests come up against all factions of the bourgeoisie, and their struggles can only develop if they take on an internationalist, and therefore revolutionary perspective.
The soap opera which has gone on since the latest cycle of negotiations began in February has partly obscured a situation of economic catastrophe and increasingly terrible living conditions for the proletariat in Greece. The brutal pauperisation, mass unemployment and the mind-boggling fall of wages and pensions, the delays and threats of non-payments, the terrible decline of hospitals, the collapse of care and services, the drastic rationing of medicines, the proliferation of suicides and depression, the nervous tension, the dramatic spread of homelessness and even hunger and rationing following the closure of banks, all this feeds a terrible backdrop, that of the descent of capitalism into its ultimate phase, the phase of decomposition.
On the basis of the chronic economic crisis, where for the first time a western state finds itself in default of payment, we see the use of this event indecently transformed into a great theatrical spectacle with multiple twists and turns. We are once again held in suspense over this famous ‘Greek debt’ where the rivalries of the great powers are further strained and where each country tries to defend its own sordid national interests. All TV channels drag out the suspense about the possibility of ‘Grexit’ up to the fateful moment, that of the symbolic hour when the great clock is going to strike midnight: Tuesday June 30. And afterwards? Is the Greek fairy godmother going to turn into a pumpkin? No! The IMF has ‘learned’ that the Greek state could not repay 1.5 billion euros demanded of it. More acrobatics and it’s then necessary to spice up the drama even more with the referendum initiated by Tsipras and his government: are the Greeks going to vote Yes or No?
Finally, on Sunday July 5, after a series of polls carefully staged before the count, it’s No that has it.
Contrary to the exaggerations of a ‘storm of panic’ conjured up by some elements of the media in order to try to frighten the population, the better to enslave them and carry forward the attacks, the reality is rather that of a degradation of the Greek economy that’s already been bled dry for years, aggravated by the anti-working class measures of the Syriza government itself.
The result of the referendum changed nothing about that. It is for this reason that the game of the negotiations engaged in on the basis of the crisis between on the one side, the IMF, the political forces of the EU, the ECB, and on the other, the Greek government (defending its national interests) was reminiscent of the arm-wrestling which accompanies such politico-media circuses that go beyond the sphere of the economy. Faced with the gravity of the situation, the bourgeoisie has already been led to adapt and organise itself by anticipating the economic difficulties of Greece and the euro zone, as it had to do faced with the shocks and consequences of the preceding financial and banking crisis, the so-called ‘sub-primes’ of 2008. It had to react in a concerted manner so as to avoid the worse consequences of the fall of the markets.
By taking measures at the level of capitalist states and the central banks (European Central Bank or the US Fed), they supported the markets and avoided a too brutal drying up of liquidity. In fact, they are well on top of the situation of Greece. It is evident that the banks (notably the ECB) and the capitalist states have very largely anticipated events in order to organise themselves and take measures faced with the difficulties of Greece. Tsipras didn’t so much see a break with the past in the No vote as “the strengthening of our negotiating position”.
The historic decline of capitalism has, for a century now, generated a universal tendency to state capitalism, pushing this latter to the central stage at the heart of the economy. This tendency, initiated both by the necessities to face up to the growing contradictions of the system and to the need to mobilise for total war, was strongly accentuatedafter the stock market crash of 1930 and has never let up since. A whole experience has been accumulated by the setting up of Keynesian measures and perfected during the great economic convulsions of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, 1990s and ‘globalisation’, still more complex mechanisms are put to work and all sorts of palliatives and trickeries with the law of value have allowed the most powerful capitalist states to slow down the most disastrous effects of the economic crisis and, above all, to push back the most devastating effects onto weaker rival capitalist states.
In some ways Greece is already on the periphery of the EU. It is situated on the southern margins of Europe and shows all the weaknesses paradoxically and hypocritically exploited by their predatory rival states that are looking out for themselves. Well before the case of Greece, the IMF had already faced up to other catastrophic situations, as was the case in Argentina at the beginning of 2000. Let’s add however that preoccupying as the case of Greece it is, in reality it has only 1.8% of the GDP of the euro zone, which limits the ‘risks of contagion’. Moreover the private banks are largely relieved of the burden of this ‘Greek debt’ to the profit of the ECB and of the principal public actors that are the capitalist states. All this shows that the essential stakes in this whole set up have quite another political dimension.
The main reason for all the media masquerade exploiting the gravity of the situation is essentially to mystify the proletariat, to cloud its consciousness, notably to try and mask the bourgeois and nationalist nature of Syriza and the Tsipras government. It is also to give credence to the idea of a possible credible ‘alternative’ of the ‘radical left’ which is gradually emerging in Europe (the examples of Podemos in Spain, Die Linke in Germany, the NPA and the Left Front in France, etc.). This is offered as an alternative to the traditional Socialist Parties, judged as ‘traitors’ who have supposedly abandoned the ‘the values of the left’. Also the essential aim is naturally to facilitate the swallowing of the pill of austerity and the attacks on all the workers, and not only in Greece! To bring to power a fraction as ‘radical’ as the extreme left of the bourgeois political apparatus can only bring discredit to the leftist ideologies necessary for the political control of the proletariat. Much more so now that these ideologies have already been weakened since the collapse of the Berlin Wall by virtue of their support, over several decades, for the Stalinist regimes (certainly in a “critical” but none the less zealous manner for all that).
The whole set up, expressing in passing some real divergences and rivalries between the protagonists involved in the negotiations, constitutes in essence a means to preserve the radical left image of Syriza. Even if that appears paradoxical, the attitude of all involved has only consolidated the ‘intransigent’ image of the Greek government and established its will to ‘refuse the diktats of Brussels’ – an image which is also strengthened by the victory of the No. The very firm position of Angela Merkel contrasted to the will to maintain more open negotiations on the part of those European authorities with a more ‘understanding’ attitude, such as President Hollande, more ‘open to the left’ regarding Greece while remaining firm, ultimately allows the Greek government to be presented as ‘faithful to the people, categorically refusing ‘austerity’. In short, Syriza and Tsipras are confirmed as ‘heroes’ and ‘victims’ of the ex-Troika which is presented as ‘wicked capitalists’[1].
Thus, despite the brutal and growing attacks directly led by the Greek state, they are made to appear as if imposed from the ‘outside’. The Greek government which represses and pressures the proletarians as ever, this real hangman at the head of the bourgeoisie state, here finds the status of a real ‘fighter’ standing toe to toe with the capitalists to supposedly limit the ‘suffering of the Greek people’. Syriza, strengthened by this helping hand and its ‘popular support’, can thus benefits from a ‘working class’ image. And this mystification is much more efficient in that it’s been largely disseminated and supported by leftists of all types in Europe who applaud the victory of the “No” in order to back up their arguments about a so-called possible alternative to austerity: “Since January 25 2015 and the electoral victory of Syriza in Greece, the EU/ECB/IMF Troika has used unprecedented brutality in order to make the government of Tsipras capitulate, so that the popular choice to finish with austerity is ridiculed”[2].
Another major consequence of all these ideological manipulations is the accentuation of divisions within the working class. Firstly by presenting Greek proletarians as pariahs and victims, whose fate is ‘foreign’ to the other ‘well off’ workers in Europe, the media try to cut off the Greek workers from the rest of the working class. In this analysis, only the Greek workers have a ‘valid reason’ to struggle, although they are strongly recommended to accept the ‘necessary sacrifices’ in order ‘to come out of the crisis’. This perversion is all the more potent when it’s accompanied by the completely noxious addition of solidarity by the leftists who reduce the question to a simple electoral support in favour of No: “Massive mobilisations of solidarity are needed in order that confidence is increased so that a No is secured in Greece” (ibid). Such is the ‘solidarity’ of the leftists, nothing more nor less than support for the Greek government, a government which defends its sordid, capitalist, national interests! Finally, through this democratic ideology the referendum is framed and motivated; the divisions within the Greek proletariat are strengthened through the Yes/No division, even if the No carries a majority.
In the final account, as we said in one of our preceding articles:
“For the leftists to depict Syriza as some sort of alternative is utterly fraudulent. Just before the election, a group of 18 distinguished economists (including two Nobel Prize winners and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee) wrote to the Financial Times endorsing aspects of Syriza’s economic policies … As a commentator in the New Statesman (29/1/15) put it: ‘Syriza’s programme … is mainstream macroeconomics. The party is merely planning to do what the textbooks suggest.’ And so, following the textbooks, Syriza negotiated with Greece’s European creditors, in the first instance to extend the bailout and its conditions”
Syriza and the leftists who defend it, the famous Troika and its consorts, the media setting the scene, all of them are continuing their mystifications after the referendum. They all belong to the same world and that world is that of decadent capitalism. They are the political commissars, defenders of the state, and defenders of bourgeois order at the service of the most brutal exploitation.
WH. 6/7/15
[1] Ex-minister Varoufakis accused the bankers of being “terrorists”! In quitting following the referendum despite the No victory, he allowed the political apparatus to preserve a left wing faced with inevitable new measures of austerity from the Tsipras government, which makes it possible to build up its ‘real’ radicalism.
[2] According to the French leftist group the New Anti-capitalist Party
The ICC has contributed to the first Korean edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet, written 100 years ago in response to the carnage of the First World War. We are publishing the introduction written for the new edition here. In its 100 year ‘commemorations’ of the war, the ruling class and its propaganda machine offers us so many forms of apology for the massacre; revolutionaries on the other hand can take pride in celebrating the moral and intellectual courage of those internationalists who stood against the war and for the proletarian revolution.
The Junius Pamphlet was written as a first major theoretical-political analysis of the First World War which had inaugurated a world historic change. A machine of destruction was set in motion, massacring human beings on a scale never seen before. For example in the north of France and in Flanders (Belgium) within a few weeks hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed through the use of new weapons such as mustard gas. Some 20 million dead were counted by the end of the war. And immediately after the war an epidemic which later became known as “the Spanish flu” provoked the death of another 20 million exhausted and often undernourished people.
On 4 August 1914, the parliamentary group of the German Social Democratic Party voted in support of war credits. For the first time, the leadership of a proletarian party, and in this case one of the oldest and most influential parties of the Second International, betrayed the most crucial principle of internationalism: workers have no fatherland. A group of the few remaining internationalists in Germany came together in the apartment of Rosa Luxemburg and began to organise the defence of internationalism against the traitors. A year later a first international meeting of internationalists was organised in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald[1]. In response to the unleashing of the war and the betrayal of the leadership of Social Democracy revolutionaries started to put forward an analysis of the roots of the war and its consequences. Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet The Crisis of Social Democracy and the Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy which she drafted were part of these international efforts to understand the new situation for humanity and to draw out the perspectives for the work of revolutionaries. She wrote her text only a few months after the beginning of the war in April 1915, producing it in prison under the nom de guerre “Junius”. Due to the conditions of war the text could not be published immediately; only in January 1916 could it be published outside of Germany. In view of this new world historic situation her slogan was first of all: understand in depth what happened, why the war could begin and above all learn from our own mistakes. It was necessary to make a ruthless and fearless self-critique.
In several chapters of her pamphlet she analysed the historic development of capitalism. She showed how and why capitalism in its world-wide expansion had to constantly conquer new markets and how those countries which “arrived (too) late” had no other choice but to snatch away conquests from “those who had arrived first” by means of violence, i.e. war. These chapters on the ascent of imperialism illustrate the role of war in the capitalist system. She unmasked the imperialist ambitions of all states and recognised that this development was not triggered off by a single country alone. “(…) Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole” (Chapter 7).
The analysis she had put forward in the 1890s, arguing that Poland could no longer become an independent state and revolutionaries could no longer support the demand for national self-determination, was confirmed by the events of the world war. Rosa Luxemburg was amongst the first in the revolutionary camp to reject any support of national wars of defence. “Every socialist policy that depends upon this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies in the world whirlpool from the point of view of a single nation, is built upon a foundation of sand.” (Chapter 7)
The few months of war helped Rosa Luxemburg to grasp the new characteristics of this war, which would lead to the economic ruin of most of the participating countries.
After having analysed the new historical conditions, this qualitatively new phase rooted in the laws and contradictions of capitalism itself, she underlined the subjective conditions for the unleashing of war. Her conclusion: without the betrayal of the leadership of Social Democracy, the oldest and strongest workers’ party, and without the proclamation of social peace (i.e. the prohibition of strikes) in the factories, a pact which the trade unions signed with the capitalists, in short without the mobilisation of the working class for war through Social Democracy and the trade unions, the war could never have been begun.
While Social Democracy in Germany called for support for the fatherland, Luxemburg insisted on the crucial role of the working class for the ending of the war. And she warned against the pacifist hope that capitalism might eliminate its own drive to war and destruction. She recognised the danger that if capitalism continued to exist the very survival of humanity would be at risk. Humanity was faced with the alternative between socialism and barbarism.
Faced with the betrayal by the SPD leadership, the determined internationalists in Germany around Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring and others did not want to let the SPD leadership bring the whole party under its control, because the party leadership did not have the majority of the party behind it. The group round Luxemburg stood for the regroupment of all internationalist forces in the party and the preparation of a new International on a new basis. Luxemburg drafted the “Theses on the tasks of International Social Democracy” which were published as an annexe to the Junius Pamphlet and adopted with a few changes by the newly founded Spartacusbund as the guidelines of the group.
As well as offering a historical-theoretical framework for understanding the qualitatively new step taken by capitalism, Luxemburg’s pamphlet offered a political framework for the activities of revolutionaries. Its main ideas (the historical development of imperialism, the perspectives of capitalist society in its decadent phase, socialism or barbarism, the question of internationalism in the workers’ movement and the task of revolutionaries) and its method (go to the roots and clarify the principles of each question, a ruthless self-critique, the long-term view for the task of revolutionaries) are all points of reference valid not only for the period of the First World War but to this day.
The theoretical-historical foundations of the Junius Pamphlet can be found in another text, which Rosa Luxemburg wrote before World War One (The Accumulation of Capital). In this text she outlined the driving forces of capitalism, its basic contradictions and why the accumulation of capital from a certain phase on inevitably leads to war and destruction.
In the same way as the publication of The Accumulation of Capital had already provoked considerable controversy in the workers’ movement, the publication of the Junius Pamphlet also gave rise to passionate debate amongst internationalists. In particular, Luxemburg's conclusion that with the development of capitalism imperialism had become the cancer of all countries, whether big or small, and that thus the call for ‘national self-determination’ was no longer on the agenda, caused a big controversy. In the midst of the war a thorough-going debate started amongst internationalists, in which Lenin was one of the strongest critics of Luxemburg.
However, it is important to underline that this debate took place within the framework of a common internationalist standpoint, a shared perspective of proletarian revolution. The discussion about the deeper roots of the development of imperialism, of the betrayal of internationalism and the perspectives of the struggle, never prevented them from pulling in the same direction - fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist system, under the most adverse conditions of repression and exile.
In the face of this historic disaster for humanity, this betrayal by the former workers’ party, Rosa Luxemburg gave an example of the revolutionary spirit, of an unwavering, determination and a capacity to carry out theoretical-political analysis with a long-term view.
The unfolding of this unheard of level of barbarism and the betrayal of the party was a true shock for revolutionaries and led to a feeling of depression amongst some of them. Many revolutionaries in Germany were thrown into jail or driven into exile. Rosa Luxemburg herself was detained in jail for most of the war. Altogether she spent 3 years 4 months in jail during the 4 years 4 months of war. After having been thrown into prison in order to break her determination and to silence her, the reaction of Luxemburg was to fight back with the weapon of theory. She wrote the Anticritique, a reply to criticisms of her book The Accumulation of Capital. During her activities as a teacher at the German Social Democratic party school she had given courses on political economy. Now, in prison she wrote her Introduction to Political Economy using the initial material she had used as a party teacher. And she also dealt with questions of literature and culture. She wrote a foreword to the book of the Russian author Korolenko History of my Contemporary and translated his book into German. And it was from prison that she also wrote her first analysis of the Russian revolution, On the Russian Revolution, developing some first important points for a critique of the errors made by the revolution in Russia.
Of course Luxemburg suffered from being locked-up in jail, but this could never break her will or undermine her morale. It is highly inspiring to read her notes and correspondence during her time in prison. The large variety of issues that she dealt with in prison and the series of letters on art and literature give testimony to an untameable, creative spirit. “Often I do nothing else but read and write from 6 in the morning until 9 in the evening”[2].
Faced with the moral bankruptcy of capitalism and the perspective of socialism or barbarism she not only flung herself into the most determined struggle, but she also maintained her courageous spirit even after the terrible loss of people who were very close to her. She preserved her strength through her theoretical efforts, her capacity to follow other passions (such as for drawing and for botany) and through a large network of support from outside. She received food from outside of the prison (because of the bad health of her stomach, which required a special diet). Her writings were repeatedly smuggled out of prison (sometimes with the connivance of the prison guards). While in prison she corresponded with a lot of comrades, gave them advice and supported them as best as she could from behind prison walls. No prison cell could be thick enough to silence her and to prevent her from offering her support to individual people, to her comrades and to the working class as a whole. Thus her voice could be ‘heard’ outside of the prison – politically and as a human being. The day she was released from prison some 1000 workers (many of them women) waited at the prison gate for her and accompanied her home.
Her time in prison was in continuity with her whole life.
Rosa Luxemburg was born in Zamość [12] (Poland) in March 1871 as the fifth and last child of a Jewish family. 1871 was the year of the Paris Commune and the time of the struggle within the First International against the conspiracies of Bakunin. As a 17 year old young woman the repression in Poland forced her to emigrate to Switzerland, where she studied several subjects (amongst others botany, mathematics, economics, history, and law). In 1897 she presented her doctorial thesis on “The industrial development of Poland”. Already during the 1890s, together with other comrades from Poland, she put into question the old doctrines of the Second International. She had the intellectual capacity to detect a new development in capitalism and she had the courage to conclude, against the resistance of the Second International, that Polish self-determination was no longer on the agenda. This position was at odds with the dominant position of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and in particular with Lenin
In 1898 she moved to Germany, where she joined the ranks of the SPD. Within the SPD a current had emerged, whose main representative was Bernstein, which defended the idea that capitalism had become more or less crisis free, that the transition to socialism would be possible by peaceful means. In fact Bernstein was ready to abandon the goal of the movement. Rosa Luxemburg wrote her reply, “Reform or revolution” (1899). Already during that period she was in the vanguard of the struggle against opportunism
In 1903 in her text “Stagnation and Progress of Marxism” she deplored a stagnation in the Marxist movement since the death of Marx and Engels and insisted on the need of renewed theoretical efforts, stressing that Marxism itself needed to be further elaborated.
This is why she wrote “Marxism is a revolutionary view of the world, which must constantly strive for new insights, which despises nothing so much as the fossilization of forms which are considered to be valid once and for all, and which through the intellectual weapon of self-critique and in the thunderstorms of history can best preserve its living force.” (1916)
Following the war between Japan and Russia in 1904 the first big wave of mass strikes erupted in Russia. Rosa Luxemburg was one of the first to discover the new dynamic of the class struggle in the 20th century, where the workers’ initiative becomes the distinguishing feature, and where the class struggle cannot be ‘planned’ by the apparatus of the trade unions or a party. Although she did not yet understand the role of the workers’ councils, in her book The Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions, she insisted on this mass activity. This new dynamic of the class struggle was fiercely combated by the trade unions and growing layers within Social Democracy. In close cooperation with the trade union apparatus the Social Democratic leadership issued a ban on debates about the mass strike within the party. In 1906 Rosa Luxemburg had to go to jail for 2 months, convicted of “incitement to class hatred”, after her book on the mass strike was published. The former leading figure of Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, who was known as the orthodox “Pope” of Marxism, increasingly took a position against Rosa’s radical course. During these years there was an intensification of smear campaigns and calumnies against Rosa Luxemburg as a “Jew”, “foreigner”, and “spinster”, creating trouble in the “peaceful”, “harmony-loving” Social Democracy.
At the 1907 Stuttgart congress of the Second International which was organised in response to the growing danger of war, Luxemburg, Lenin and Martov fought for a common orientation of “hastening the abolition of capitalist class rule” if the war broke out. In 1912 in her book The Accumulation of Capital she had the courage to point to the limits and contradictions in Marx’s works. Her book offers a basis for understanding the role of extra-capitalist markets and the specific function of militarism. Written barely two years before the unleashing of World War One the book offers an indispensable insight into the basic contradictions of capitalism.
As mentioned above, immediately after the betrayal of the SPD leadership in August 1914 Luxemburg became a leading figure in the struggle against war. The Junius Pamphlet was thus in direct continuity with her struggle since the early 1890s for understanding the new conditions, for offering an explanation of the political, social and economic conditions for the run up to World War One and the challenge facing the proletariat..
In 1917, still in prison, she offered a first analysis of the importance of the revolution which had just started in Russia. It was clear to her that in Russia the question of revolution could only be posed; it could not be solved in Russia itself. When Luxemburg was released from prison in November 1918 the ruling class feared her more than ever. Social Democracy above all made her the target of their campaigns against the working class. In December 1918, at the Berlin Workers’ Council she and Karl Liebknecht, the most famous of the leaders of the working class in Germany, were not allowed to participate, under the pretext that they were not workers. At the founding Congress of the German Communist Party, the KPD, at the end of December 1918, in a speech on the programme, she highlighted the historic dimension of the proletarian revolution and insisted that the revolution cannot resort to terror, but must mobilise to the full the energy and consciousness of the working class as a whole. She was one of the very few who spoke up against any immediatist illusion of a quick and easy victory against a very cunning enemy. Finally, the smear campaign and calumnies against her reached a peak in the first days of January 1919. After the crushing of the so-called Spartacus-rising in the second week of January 1919, when thousands of workers were massacred, Rosa Luxemburg was also assassinated. The ruling class finally managed to wipe out one of the most courageous and clear-sighted revolutionaries of the time.
The Junius Pamphlet remains one of her greatest works, an indispensable tool for understanding the growing barbarism of capitalism throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and for developing the perspective for its revolutionary overthrow by the exploited class.
D
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_zimmerwald.html [13] and https://en.internationalism.org/node/3154 [14]
[2] letter from Rosa Luxemburg to Clara Zetkin, July 1,1916
By starting a new heading of ‘Readers’ Contributions’ on our website, and occasionally in our paper, we hope to encourage our readers and sympathisers to write texts and articles which can go into greater depth than is possible in our discussion forum, and so stimulate a longer term reflection. These articles, while being broadly based on proletarian politics, need not fully represent the positions of the ICC, or may deal with issues on which the ICC does not have a collective view. The following article is a good example of what we mean: as an attempt to explore the historical origins of Islam and to situate the actions of the current ‘Islamic State’ against this background, it raises questions which are of general concern to marxists but which can also give rise to a fruitful confrontation of ideas.
Recently there have been fresh reports of the cultural destruction wrought by the IS thugs in Iraq as these ‘brave monotheists’ cast down long dead idols of past civilisations. In the process destroying links to the time when Iraq was the cradle of civilisation while making a handy profit on the black market with what they didn’t destroy. This cultural destruction and the attendant attitude of contempt for the past is not only reactionary but also completely in sync with wider trends within bourgeois society and culture both Western, ‘modern’ and ‘secular’ and in the backward view of religious fundamentalism. After all no civilisation in history has been more culturally destructive than capitalism which has destroyed almost every other culture and social form in existence.
These ‘Islamic’ gangsters want to depict themselves as modern day heirs of Moses and Mohammed, casting down pagan idols, ignoring the fact that no one worships these idols anymore and haven’t done for over a thousand years. In actuality ISIS do nothing and can do nothing to oppose the real problem of idolatry in the modern world, because they serve the very same idols as the rest of the world bourgeoisie.
Many Marxist writers including Marx himself have pointed out the connection between our concepts of alienation, fetishisation and reification with the older concept of idolatry. Erich Fromm, in his book Marx’s Concept of Man, makes the point particularly explicit when he says:
“The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols” (Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, 1961, page 39)
This is true of things which are not directly created by man as well, for example a natural object such as a tree; even an idea or experience such as success or love can become idols. This happens when they are fetishised and separated off from their true being which is always in connection with other beings and with being as a whole. This is the essence of reification, the giving of independent power and existence to something which is in reality a part of a whole or one aspect of a dialectical relation. ‘Reification’ is therefore fundamentally the same as ‘deification’ because it involves cutting off and turning a partial aspect of reality into a ‘god’.
By this reckoning modern capitalism is perhaps the most idolatrous society to date, as it is pre-eminently the society of the ‘thing’. Not only in the sense of its worship of commodities and its elevation of Profit as the jealous God of the whole human race, but also in the way that this effects its entire worldview and its whole mode of consciousness. This is not altered by the fact that this idolatry is a repressed, unconscious idolatry; in the spirit of typical bourgeois cynicism the idea that people worship things like greed, success, their own ego or any other expression of reified modern power is denied by all or at least turned into a minor criticism of ‘popular’ culture; the extent to which this ‘worship’ is hard-wired into the system itself is vehemently denied.
All three monotheistic religions began as a rebellion of the oppressed. There are numerous theories about what the true origins of Judaism were; the official founding myth of Judaism is the rebellion against slavery led by Moses. However historians disagree on how much historicity can be lent to this tale. Norman Gottwald[1] put forward a theory in the 1970s that was at first derided among mainstream historians but has gained more traction even in these circles since then: that Judaism in fact started as a ‘peasant revolt’ which aimed to ‘re-tribalise’ society (i.e. to go back towards primitive communistic ideals and practices), to avoid the necessity of the state and to create a more egalitarian and free society than the Cannanite society he claims they lived in prior to this. Whatever the case might be, it is almost certain that a rebellion of some oppressed strata was fundamentally involved. Christianity starts as a rebellion not just of ‘the Jews’ against Rome but was fundamentally a movement of the most oppressed and exploited of the time (Kautsky in Foundations of Christianity refers to the proletariat of the day, although its nature was very different from the proletariat under capitalism). This can be seen in the explicit communism of the early Christians (as well as other Jewish groups of the time such as the Essenes) which is more pronounced in Christianity than all other religions, although it is present in nearly all religions to some extent.
Islam was not a movement of the most dispossessed alone, of an equivalent to Kautsky’s proletariat. However it was certainly a movement of the oppressed; in particular it was a movement of the oppressed tribal groups, those who had not emerged to take control of the power and wealth of the newly emerging economic and social reality of 6th and 7th century Arabia. It was a movement which drew in support from all the oppressed strata of this social reality: the poor, women, orphans and widows, unprotected foreigners and slaves, and which attacked the power and the sources of wealth of the leading tribes such as the Quraish (the tribe Muhammad, although an orphan, belonged to).
Islam painted itself from the start as a return to a previous way of being. Firstly this meant that Arabs should remember their own moral codes that had been lost in the rush towards individual success and economic ruthlessness. A ‘pagan’ morality of self-interest and prideful contempt for the ‘weak’ became widespread as the emerging relations of private property eroded the tribal principles based on caring for all members of the community. War and blood feuds had also gotten out of control. This is where the newness of the Islamic morality really comes into play. The shifting influence of moral responsibility from the tribe collectively as in the traditional Arab worldview of the time to an ‘individualistic’ morality which saw the individual as alone being responsible for his/her actions in Islam reflects many contradictory historical tendencies. Firstly, it can be said to represent the growing alienation of the individual from the community; however it is a community by this point which has already degenerated and no longer fits the new historical circumstances. This expresses itself in the way that this ‘individualistic’ morality was able to help combat the prevalence of blood feuds in which one life from a tribe was seen as being interchangeable for another.
Islam was also a movement of a growing merchant class and it would be wrong to obscure or diminish this fact. Marx and Engels, in the little writing they did dedicate to the history of Islam, make the accurate observation that Islam was the ideological basis which expressed and gave body to the movement towards Arab unification and an early kind of ‘nationalism’. This unification was made possible and could only be made possible at this time through the growing importance of trade and the merchant class in general.
The fact that Islam was less radical than Christianity in its rejection of money and possessions is not only connected to the fact that Christianity was a more ‘proletarian’ movement and was therefore expressing the views of people who could see firsthand, to an extent the majority of Arabs of this time could not, the inherent problems and injustices that money and trade create. It reflects also a difference in ‘temperament’ between the two movements; Christianity was a movement of a class which, as rebellious they might have been, had no realistic way in which to establish their ‘kingdom of God’ on earth and could only imagine it coming through an apocalyptic struggle with the aid of divine intervention; the early Muslims on the other hand had a realistic programme of social reform and saw the ‘end times’ and the perfect age of righteousness as still firmly in the future, not as an immediate goal. This was why the revolution of Islam in taking power and giving rise to a new society (even if it immediately disappointed the most radical of the followers of Muhammad such as Abu Dharr, for following wealth and status and becoming like all the other kingdoms) was successful while Christianity could only be co-opted and sanitised by its enemies in the form of the Roman empire.
This is not to say that the civilisation that was established and came to dominate much of the world throughout the medieval period, as progressive as it was in many respects, would not have been a huge disappointment to Muhammad. The degree of this disappointment can be glimpsed at in particular by considering the example of one of his most radical followers, Abu Dharr, who did live to see the beginnings of this process. Abu Dharr, who was likened to Jesus in his humility and way of life by Muhammad, was a proto-communist who was exiled by the second Caliph Uthman for preaching against the slide back towards the ‘old ways’ of ostentatious and luxurious living of the powerful at the expense of the poor. Abu Dharr declaimed against this stating that: “This capital, wealth, gold and silver which you have hoarded must be equally divided among all Muslims. Everyone must share in the others' benefits in the economic and ethical system of Islam, in all blessings of life." (https://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/once_again_abu_dhar1.php#sthash.9xmYwI2A.dpuf [17])...
The question to be posed then is what was it about monotheism that allowed it to be so closely connected to revolutionary movements. Firstly monotheism in its original sense implied a rejection of the worldly powers. The connection between ‘having power over’ and being the ‘god of’ someone was much clearer to those living in the ancient world than it is today in our so called ‘secular’ world; and in declaring that there was no ‘god but God’ as in the Islamic Shahada (declaration of faith) the early Muslims, like the early Jews and Christians, were directly challenging and rejecting the existing power structures of their times. It is obvious as well that monotheism in the case of Islam was a rebellion against the economic and social power connected with the worship of these idols. Control of the holy site of the Kaaba and the markets connected to it for example was central to the social-economic power structure of the day. This connection between ‘theological’ ideas and concrete economic and social questions was also much clearer in the ancient world than it appears today when the idolatry inherent to capitalism is hidden behind a veil of repression and ‘common sense’ and monotheism has long since been accommodated to worldly power.
Therefore not only did monotheism originally entail a rejection of the power structures, but also an attempt at a critique of the increasingly alienated economic structures and practices of the time. If we look at this question historically we see that the idea of a ‘Supreme Being’ is extremely common throughout the world and in all stages and forms of human society; and indeed Allah was just such a ‘Supreme Being’ recognised by the pre-Islamic Arab peoples as well as the Muslims. Why then does monotheism as such, i.e. a conscious and vehement denial and denunciation of all other gods, only emerge at a certain point in history? It is precisely because it is only when the economic break up and fragmentation of the tribal community had reached such a level that a symbol of a higher unity, one that goes beyond the tribal conception in that it aims to incorporate all of humanity, while also harking back to it in terms of its emphasis on solidarity and equality, can emerge.
So where do IS stand in all this and how do they relate to idolatry? How do they relate to the ‘gods’ of our times? They like to portray themselves as being the only true heirs to the original followers of Muhammad and paint their current struggle almost as a re-run of the original struggles of Muhammad. While we must denounce these claims it is also necessary to analyse them from a historical perspective in order to really understand the differences and similarities between the two movements. This is the only way to avoid the bourgeois right wing/left wing or moderate/extremist dead ends. The problem with IS and their ilk is not, as the ‘moderates’ (both Muslim and non-Muslim) claim, that they are ‘extreme’ or ‘radical’. It is precisely the opposite- it is that they are not radical at all. They do not understand let alone offer an alternative to capitalism and in fact simply represent capitalism in its most raw, undisguised gangster form.
One key similarity between IS and the original movement of Muhammad lies in the historical context. Both are expressions of the disintegration of ‘great civilisations’ and a vacuum left by the collapse or non-existence of state power; as well as the desperate search for new ways of thinking and being which these historical situations at all times produce in those living through them. However this is where the similarity ends and the key differences in the two movements is most clearly illustrated.
Whereas the early Muslims aimed to unite all of humanity into one community and in practice their movement led to an enlarging of the community and allowed massive strides forward in various fields of life, not least morality, medicine and science, IS can only offer bloodshed, oppression and a shrinking and dividing of the community to a greater and greater extent. Early Islam saw itself as not starting a new religion but as the renewal and fulfilment of all the prophets sent to all the nations of the earth through time. IS on the other hand do not even recognise fellow Muslims as belonging to their community; extreme sectarianism and xenophobia have replaced the ideas of universal brotherhood and equality which gave early Islam its impetus. IS’ ‘takfiri’ policies of denouncing all other Muslim groups and communities as well as all non-Muslims as non-believers, and hence legitimate targets of their brutal violence, are the polar opposite of the original Islamic conception and practice. IS therefore can clearly be seen to worship the idols of ‘their’ religion and ‘identity’ serving the most deadly and corrosive idol of our times in the form of nationalism (albeit disguised with a veil of hypocritical talk of the Umma, the world community of Islam)....
Norman O Brown made an accurate enough observation when he said that Marxism and Islam agree on one proposition: “there will be one world or there will be none” (The Challenge of Islam, Norman O. Brown, 2009,p 12 – a collection of lectures first given at Santa Cruz university in 1980). In the past this uniting of humanity was envisioned in many traditions including Islam as a result of the actions of a conquering hero/ prophet/messiah establishing a kingdom of peace and justice. This vision is flawed and can only be seen as a symbolic view of a change which for most of history was impossible to achieve in reality but now can only be achieved by the united self-determined force of the workers of the world. The Caliphate even in its most exalted sense cannot be a programme of progress in the present epoch for this precise reason. IS’ vision is the most extreme example of the purely negative aspect of this vision and this is reflected in the fact that despite the fact that the Quran clearly states that there can be ‘no compunction in religion’, their only hope of achieving their insane ideal is to force the whole world at gun point (including even the vast majority of Sunni Muslims whom they supposedly represent) to bow before them...
It is no coincidence that IS derives a lot of its support from ex-gang members and was actually created by an ‘ex’ gangster in Al Zakarwi. Their entire world view and practice is gangsterism; from the protection money, black market trading and intimidation which are the keys of their ‘economic model’ to their celebration of brute force, extreme violence and misogyny which make up their ‘teachings’.
This shows not only that the first and foremost god they serve, just as every other capitalist ‘nation’, gang, or individual company, is the world-eating god of profit; it also illustrates the most important difference between the present historical moment and that of early Islam. Unlike with the collapse of Roman and Persian civilisation, the collapse of capitalism will not result in any new progressive civilisations such as the Islamic (even if the eventual civilisation established under the banner of Islam would have been a massive disappointment to Muhammad himself and was an immediate disappointment to his most radical followers) or feudalism in Europe. The barbarity capitalism will produce will not be related to any organic growth coming out of any other social strata for the simple reason that capitalism has destroyed all other societies and social relations bar its own.
In contrast to this, both European feudalism and the Islamic civilization created after the life-time of Muhammad could develop tribal social models and the surrounding ‘civilized’ but collapsing societies into a new synthesis of the two, creating a new civilization and a higher form of culture.
This should remind us that there is one truth which IS and their ideology has at least an intimation of, however perverted that insight is, and that is the sheer extremity of the situation facing the world in the current epoch. The idea that these are the Last Days has much truth to it. Humanity stands at a cross-road between world revolution and the creation of a world-wide communist community or the gradual (or not) destruction of huge swathes (if we are lucky) of life on earth. Those proletarians who have been fooled by IS are not all simply ‘mad’ or stupid as they are portrayed in the bourgeois press. They are having their real insights and healthy instinctive opposition to and will to fight against this situation corrupted and led into a dead end by one sect among thousands of bourgeois ideologues. The simplistic claim by ‘the moderates’ of all stripes that ‘Islam is a religion of Peace’ hides the truth that IS corrupts; that the movement of Muhammad and the prophets before him were movements of struggle; a sometimes violent struggle against oppression and alienation and against the false gods which support them. We do not aim to re-fight their battles nor make a fetish of the past as all religion does to some extent; but we are the inheritors of the dreams of the past, charged with the task of making them flesh; and to do that we need to understand them.
Jaycee 3/7/15
[1] The Tribes of Yaweh, A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050BCE, New York, 1979
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/hiroshima.jpg
[2] https://uk.businessinsider.com/china-developed-multiple-warhead-missiles-2015-5?r=US&IR=T
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/6/2049/hiroshima
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/22/poor-families-hit-unfairly-welfare-cuts-institute-economic-affairs
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/greecebailoutprotestsjune292015.jpg
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/greece
[8] https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41be9e38-e521-11e4-bb4b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3epzhkdtH
[9] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2f7f42e8-e2b2-11e4-aa1d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3epzhkdtH
[10] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2868911/Best-paid-UK-jobs-2014-Compare-pay-national-average.html
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/tsipras_and_merkel.jpg
[12] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamo%C5%9B%C4%87
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_zimmerwald.html
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/node/3154
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/third-international
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/rosa-luxemburg
[17] https://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/once_again_abu_dhar1.php#sthash.9xmYwI2A.dpuf
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/131/religion