• In the name of the “struggle against terrorism”, the central power in Burma has used the opportunity to resume control of a strategic region, rich in minerals, and coveted by a whole number of imperialist vultures: the USA, India, China, Britain...
• The rebels themselves, like the mass of the ethnic group, have always served as pawns, manipulated by this or that power in the region. They were used by British imperialism as a “loyal” force against those calling for independence, from the 19th century until 1948. Today the rebels are widely suspected of being financed by Saudi Arabia; and there seems to be a rallying to the Rohingya cause throughout the Muslim world, from Morocco via Iran to Indonesia.

After months of violence, officially there have been 1000 killed and half a million forced to flee towards neighbouring Bangladesh. These now join the 300,000 Rohingya refugees already living in miserable and unhygienic camps in Bangladesh, having fled Burma after previous waves of persecution, such as the terrible military repression of 2012. This minority now joins the long list of minorities subjected to state violence in the region. Since 1948, for example, the Tibetan-Burmese Karen minority has suffered persecution on a scale where it is not an exaggeration to talk about genocide.

Ethnic cleansing, exclusion: specialities of capitalism

Burma itself is no exception when it comes to persecution and massacre. History is full of the most horrible examples, from the colonisation of Africa and Asia by Britain and other imperialist powers, passing through the very formation of the USA through the genocide of the native Americans to the methodical extermination of Jews and gypsies during World War Two. Since its origins, the life of capitalism has been marked by the extermination of whole populations. Although the democracies loudly chorus that the Holocaust must never happen again, fill scholarly books that call on us never to forget, make themselves the champions of freedom against the persecutions of Nazi or Stalinist totalitarianism, “ethnic cleansing” has continued and has even multiplied in the last few decades:  Chechnya, Darfour, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Tamils in Sri Lanka...and these are only the most emblematic examples, the ones that have witnessed the  worst atrocities and the most hypocritical reactions from the democratic powers, who in some cases were directly implicated in the massacres (most notably Rwanda, with France backing the Hutu killers and the US the Tutsi rebels who came to form the present government).

The decadent, rotting state of capitalism today can only accelerate and amplify this process of persecution and destruction of peoples and ethnic groups accused of being the source of all that is wrong with society, an obstacle to the development of “civilisation”. They are the easy scapegoats that no state can do without.

Aung San Suu Kyi: an icon of peace in the service of war

For a month or more, the bourgeois press and numerous political, religious and artistic figures have been appealing to the sense of responsibility of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in power in April 2016, asking her to put a stop to the massacre. Initially there was total silence from Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1991, and known as an “intransigent” opponent of the Burmese military junta for nearly 15 years. Her imprisonment by the junta gave her a halo and when she was freed, she initiated a “democratic opening” for the country. When in mid-September she finally spoke, it was to deny the reality of the massacres and to denounce the “fake news” being put out by the western press. Presented yesterday as the Asian Nelson Mandela, a white knight for democracy, this is someone who declared that she had been born for no other reason than to “protect human rights, and I hope that I will always be seen as a champion of the Rights of Man”; someone who said that “all the repressive laws must be repealed. And laws must be introduced to protect the people’s rights”. Now she has fallen from her pedestal.

Yesterday, the whole humanitarian and diplomatic milieu, from rock stars like Bono to cineastes like Luc Besson and John Boorman, to former world leaders like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Jacques Delors, all of them saluted the determination of this “Mother Courage”. The following declaration is typical: “it’s not said often enough that the strategy of active non-violence (which is also at the roots of ecology) followed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her partisans is the real success story.  Perseverance, patience, the will to understand and to reconcile, the capacity for compromise....but also firmness and inflexibility as regards the objective, all this Aung San Suu Kyi shares with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Vaclav Havel...and today the Dalai Lama...In the face of totalitarianism, peace and democracy are possible one day, especially when you know that ‘the most patient wins out in the end’. And indeed, the evolution of Burma and the freedom of expression and action of the ‘Lady of Rangoon’ are signs of hope for the whole of Asia, for all the non-violent combats on the planet. Signs of hope for freedom, for solidarity, for ecology” (June 2012 communiqué of Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV).)  Are we dreaming?

Has the brave “Lady of Rangoon” betrayed, given up her principles? Is this someone who has deceived the whole world? Not at all. The reality is more down to earth. Aung San Suu Kyi is merely a representative of the capitalist world, an expression of the bourgeois class, no more, no less. This Nobel Prize winner is indeed the daughter of the general Aung San, protagonist of Burmese independence and Burmese nationalism, which from the start has always excluded the country’s ethnic minorities. Continuity, tradition....in mud and blood! She herself has declared proudly: “I have always been a  political woman. I didn’t go into politics as a defender of Human Rights or as a humanitarian worker, but as the leader of a political party”. This has the merit of being clear. The icon of peace has simply taken up her role at the head of the Burmese state, cooperating without problem with the very same soldiers who put her in prison, then put her in power, mainly with the aim of giving themselves a more respectable image and currying favour with the US

Certain people, aware of her role as a “politically correct” face of the Burmese state, have waited for at least a few worlds of compassion, an “appeal to reason” faced with the killings. But no: she salutes the army for its struggle against terrorism and in defence of the general interest. But for the bourgeoisie, defending the general interest, the national interest, means defending the capitalist state and its violence, whether democratic or not. Aung San Suu Kyi has always been loyal to her cause, the cause of capitalism and her class, the bourgeoisie. At root the stunning communiquéof the EELV is right: Aung San Suu Kyi is indeed in the tradition of all the other apostles of peace: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter or Obama. A few examples:

• Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison and came to power to found a “new South Africa”; he was made a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1993. And despite the fact that the extremely demanding role he was called upon to play demanded a person of a different calibre from Aung San Suu Kyi,  “South Africa remains a ‘third world’ state where certain high-performing sectors, diminishing in number and mainly run by whites,  sit over an ocean of poverty, corruption, and violence...the social climate is poisoned by the crying inequalities nourished by the ‘Black Diamonds’, the black nouveaux  riches, insatiable and corrupt profiteers who insolently flaunt their luxurious life-style”[1]. No comment.
• The ‘historic victory’ of Obama, the first black president of the USA, gave rise to the same kind of rhetoric: at last a black man in a command of a country ravaged by social inequality and racism. “Together we will change this country and change the world”. On 10 December 2009, Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Eight years later, according to the organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), the USA is one of the countries with the biggest gap between rich and poor. More than 30,000 people are gunned down every year in the USA, very often black people. From the military point of view, Obama continued to defend US imperialist interests in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, while involving the country in areas where it had previously been more or less absent: in Libya, in Mali and Nigeria. He set up drone bases in Niger which has frontiers with Nigeria and Mali and is close to Cameroun, while “targeted” air strikes have been carried out in Somalia and Pakistan.

Each time, these icons thrust forward as symbols of hope have played on the illusions of the exploited and diverted them from the collective, conscious struggle against capitalism and its barbarity.

Buddhism bolsters the capitalist state

We should also look at the religious dimension of the situation in Burma. The most violent rejection of the Muslim Rohingya has been expressed within the majority Buddhist population. Buddhist monks have themselves been stirring up this hatred and calling for pogroms. They haven’t hesitated to engage in physical aggression themselves, led by the ultra-nationalist, anti-Muslim monk Wirathu or the “Venerable W” as he is known. This person was himself imprisoned for several years by the junta for preaching hatred.

There are some who defend Aung San Suu Kyi whatever she does. According to Alter Info, September 2017, “the great lady follows a very pure Buddhist path, and she does her best despite all the insults and lies propagated by the western media...what can she do? Favour a minority which endangers the majority? Let the US destabilise the country through the Rohingya who, for many, are really Bengalis? No, she is doing what she can for the country and the majority of its inhabitants are certainly not responsible for the crimes attributed to them”.

In reality, the “purity” of Buddhism in Burma is being used in the interest of the capitalist state, a state based on religious identity and on national chauvinism. But here again, we shouldn’t be surprised. Like many of the world religions, Buddhism originated in a revolt of the oppressed against the existing order, in particular the Indian caste system. Hence, like the religion of ancient Israel, early Christianity and Islam, it was characterised by high moral values based on an emerging vision of a common humanity. But unable to offer a real solution to the sufferings of mankind, these movements were transformed into state religions which expressed the interests of the ruling class, and even their best ethical insights were turned into justifications for preserving the existing class-divided order. In decadent and decomposing capitalism, however, the religions of the world have increasingly become naked apologists for exclusion, racism and war. Buddhism, still widely reputed to be a religion of tolerance and peace, has not been able to escape this destiny.

The situation in Burma is only a further episode in the bloody agony of the capitalist system. Behind all the indignant noises coming from the bourgeois world, imperialism’s confrontations and alliances continue. Concretely, despite the denunciations, support for the Burmese state and its army will not be dropped by the western states because it can act as a barrier to the advance of Chinese imperialism  - its push to gain direct access to the Gulf of Bengal and from there to the open sea, and  its new “Silk Road” towards Europe.

Only the proletarian struggle, the development of international class solidarity, can put an end to the scourge of scapegoating and ethnic cleansing. The road ahead is long, very long, but there isn’t another one. 

Stopio, 2.10.17

Divisions in the ranks of the capitalist class are natural for a class that competes at every level, from individual enterprises to inter-imperialist war. However, in the face of imperialist threat, economic difficulties or a resurgent class struggle, there is a tendency for the bourgeoisie to come together in the national interest. The decomposition of capitalism has pushed forward the tendency to division within the bourgeoisie, and in particular a tendency towards a loss of political control among the most experienced bourgeoisies.

The 2016 UK Referendum on membership of the EU produced a result against what the central factions of the British bourgeoisie considered as their best interests. The international populist tide was amplified with the election of President Trump. And the specific political difficulties of the British government were exacerbated by the general election of June 2017. Called to increase the Conservative government’s majority and strengthen its position in negotiations over British withdrawal from the EU, the election resulted in a loss of seats and the need to form an alliance with the DUP from Northern Ireland.

Far from improving the position of the British government and assisting in the EU negotiations, the loss of control is being shown in the plotting of various factions, divisions that go beyond those of Leave v Remain and Hard v Soft Brexit, and a general disarray within a ruling class that seems to have no coherent plans and is improvising at every turn. The British bourgeoisie faces real difficulties in the Brexit negotiations, yet appears to be unable to regain political control and at least try to get the best out of a difficult situation. The economic consequences of Brexit will be made worse by this political disarray.

The contrast between the historical strengths of the British bourgeoisie and its current situation is dramatic. The long term experience of the British bourgeoisie has meant that it has been able to unite in times of imperialist war, adapt in the face of economic crises, and adopt an appropriate strategy in the face of workers’ struggles. In 1974, in the middle of an open economic crisis and with a miners’ strike as the latest expression of a wave of workers’ militancy, an election was called which resulted in a Labour government that would be far more effective in dealing with the working class because of the extent of illusions in Labour and the unions. In the 1980s, while the Conservative government presided over attacks on the wages, jobs and conditions of the working class, Labour in opposition posed as the workers’ friend.  Together with the unions, Labour presented alternative capitalist economic strategies and, in various ways, recuperated and/or diverted working class militancy.

In addition to the different ways that the British bourgeoisie have used the Labour Party against the working class, they have also handled well the differences within the ruling class. In 1990, the attitude of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher towards Europe was deemed inappropriate in a period where the blocs dominated by the US and Russia were breaking up. The ‘men in grey suits’ had the previously unassailable Thatcher removed with very little fuss.

Today there are still manoeuvres going on within the British bourgeoisie, and specifically in the Conservative Party, but, far from leading to coherent policies or at least a dominant position by one faction, the strife within the ruling class shows every sign of growing. Britain was one of the countries worst hit by the economic blows of 2008, and the political unravelling within the Tory party is contributing to a further worsening of the situation.

The weaknesses of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily opportunities for the working class. The view of many leftists is summarised by the Socialist Workers Party when they say “The Tories are down but not out - we need to start kicking to bring them down” (Socialist Worker 4/7/17). They see the problems of the Conservative Party and declare that “We need resistance on a scale that can get rid of Theresa May and the rest of the Tory rabble”. (4/10/17). This is the prelude to a Labour government, although “A Corbyn-led government would not make Britain a socialist country. But millions will have been cheered by his pledges to tax the rich, renationalise industries and put more money into services.” (3/10/17). That is to say, many have illusions in Labour, and it’s one of the functions of leftism to reinforce illusions in this cornerstone of British state capitalism. Against this the working class need to understand that it is only through its own self-activity, through a growing consciousness that capitalism has nothing to offer, and an understanding that the working class is not just an exploited class but has the capacity to transform society, that the squabbles of the right and the lies of the left can be left behind. Car 21/10/17

On the first of October the masses who had been led by the Catalan separatists to the farce of the referendum were brutally beaten by the police dispatched by the Spanish government. Both Madrid and the Catalan authorities covered themselves in the mantel of democracy in order to justify both the vote and the repression. The Catalan separatists have presented themselves as the victims of repression in order to advance their call for independence. The Rajoy government has justified its repression in the name of defending the Constitution and the democratic rights of all Spaniards. The “neutrals” (Podemos, the Party of Ada Colau[1] etc.) have declared that democracy is the means for containing Rajoy and “finding a solution” to the Catalan conflict.

We denounce this trap set by the struggles between factions of capital: on the one hand, the deception of the rigged referendum; on the other, the brutal repression of the Spanish government. The working class and the oppressed are the victims of both.

All of them present democracy as the Supreme Good. However, they want us to forget that behind the democratic mask hides the totalitarian state. Like the military regimes and one-party states, the democratic state is also a dictatorship of capital that imposes its own interests and designs in the name of the popular vote, and against the real interests of all the exploited and oppressed.

In the First World War with its 20 million dead, all the contending gangs justified their barbarism in the name of democracy. In the Second World War, whilst the defeated Nazi regime was based on openly reactionary ideologies such as the “supremacy of the Aryan race”, the victors - which included not only the democratic powers but also the tyrannical regime in the USSR- dressed themselves in democratic robes in order to justify their participation in the massacre of 60 million human beings, which included the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was in the name of democracy that the Spanish Republic managed to enrol the workers and peasants in the terrible slaughter that was the Civil War of 1936-9; a war between factions of the bourgeoisie -Republicans and Francoists - that cost a million dead.

In the name of democracy, the modernized Francoists and the self-proclaimed democrats, through the regime set up by the 1979 Constitution, have imposed the non-stop degradation of our living and working conditions. This has led to the present situation where permanent work has been replaced by generalized job insecurity. The Catalan separatists and Spanish nationalists have collaborated in this degradation. We cannot forget that it was the government of Artur Mas which in 2011-12 pioneered the cuts in health, education, unemployment payments etc, which have been generalized throughout Spain by the Rajoy government!

The hands of both the Spanish nationalists and Catalan separatists are stained with blood from the repression of workers’ struggles. Democracy began in post-Franco Spain with the death of 5 workers in the 1976 mass strike in Victoria. During the Felipe Gonzalez government, 3 workers were killed in the struggles in Gijón, Bilboa and Reinosa, The Catalan separatist government of Artur Más unleashed a brutal repression against the assemblies of the 15 May, leaving 100 injured. Before, in 1934, the current partners of the ERC organised a militia – Los Escamots - which specialised in the torture of militant workers.

They all flout their own “democratic” rules which they claim to be their Ideal. We have seen this with the separatists who have organized the parliamentary stupidity of the “Process” towards independence,  with its “pregnant” ballot boxes, filled to the brim with Yes votes.

In the name of Democracy a war to the death is being unleashed around that other pillar of capitalist domination: the Nation. The nation is not a “fraternal” amalgamation of all the inhabitants of the same land, but the private estate of all the capitalists of a country, who through the state organise the exploitation and the oppression of the great majority.

The Catalan separatists, who are aspiring for a new estate of their own, present themselves as victims of the barbarity of their rivals, claiming that “Madrid robs us”, in order to mobilize their cannon fodder in the name of “true democracy”.

This “true democracy” of the separatists is based on the exclusion of those who do not share their aims. The harassment of those who did not vote; posters and public displays aimed at shaming those who don’t agree; the moral blackmail of those who simply want to maintain a critical attitude. In all areas the “civil” associations have imposed their dictatorship, with the weapons of insults, lies, ostracism, harassment, control, trying to “homogenise” the population around “Catalonia”. This is even more marked with the Catalan separatist groups that use Nazi methods and theorise about the “purity” of the “Catalan race”.

The Spanish nationalist democrats are likewise not holding back. The stirring of hatred against Catalans; the manoeuvres to get large companies to move away from Catalonia; “spontaneous” demonstrations in favor of  urging on the  repressive forces with the barbaric slogan "give it to them", recalling the Basque nationalist cry of "ETA kill them"; the call to put Spanish flags in windows: all this reminds us of the way the Franco regime unleashed the nationalist beast in order to impose a reign of terror.

What both sides share is exclusion and xenophobia; they all agree on hatred of immigrants, contempt for Arab, Latin American and Asian workers, under the repugnant slogans of “they take it away from us”, “they steal our jobs”, “they increase waiting times for health care” etc, when it is the crisis of capitalism and the bankruptcy of its states, whether the Spanish or the Catalan Autonomous government, which generates attacks on everyone’s conditions and pushes thousands of young people into a wave of migration that recalls the ones in the 50s and 60s.

Meanwhile the “neutrals” of Podemos and the followers of Ada Colau try to make us believe that democracy with its “right to decide” will be the balm that allows negotiation and a “civilized solution”. From within this medley of illusions has appeared “Hablemos/Parlem” -Let us Talk-, which wants to put the Spanish and Catalan flags to one side and raise the “white flag” of dialogue and democracy.

The proletariat and with it all the exploited cannot have such illusions. The conflict that has irrupted in Catalonia is of the same ilk as the populist conflicts that led to Brexit or the enthroning of an irresponsible neurotic at the head of the world’s main power: Trump. It the expression of the degeneration and decomposition of the capitalist system which has provoked not only an economic crisis but also a political one in different capitalist states.

Capitalism at the present gives the appearance that “all is well”, that “we are getting out of the crisis”, that there is “technological progress” and dynamism on a world scale. But behind this superficially dazzling facade the violent contradictions of capitalism are growing in strength. Imperialist war, the destruction of the environment, moral barbarity, centrifugal tendencies of each for themselves are feeding the ideology and actions of xenophobia, exclusion, pogromism.

This volcano is also bursting out in the Middle East and with the danger of war between North Korea and the USA; and it is also seen in the Catalan conflict, where the apparently civilized and democratic forms, the use of “negotiations” and “truces”, are progressively disintegrating and run the risk of becoming entrenched and insoluble. If until now there have been no deaths, this is an increasingly dangerous prospect. A climate of social dislocation, violent clashes, intimidation, is taking root throughout society, not only in Catalonia, but in the whole of Spain. Growing numbers of people are finding it hard to bear a situation which is affecting  friends, families, children, workmates…

We are getting a glimpse of what Rosa Luxemburg wrote about in such a penetrating and prophetic way in 1915, faced with the horrors of the First World War :“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.” (The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy).

The danger for the proletariat, and thus for the future of humanity, is that it will be trapped in the suffocating atmosphere that is being spewed forth by the Catalan swamp. The proletariat’s sentiments, aspirations and thinking, are not currently gravitating around what the future holds for humanity, how to respond to job insecurity and miserable wages, how to overcome the general worsening of living conditions. Rather they are polarizing around the choice between Spain or Catalonia, the Constitution, the right to decide, the Nation…that is, the very factors that have contributed to the present situation and threaten to take it to the level of paroxysm.

We are conscious of the situation of weakness that threatens the proletariat today. However, this cannot stop us recognizing that a solution can emerge only from its autonomous struggle as a class. To contribute to this perspective today means opposing the democratic mobilization, the choice between Spain and Catalonia, the national terrain. The struggle of the proletariat and the future of humanity can only be determined outside and against the putrid terrain of so-called Democracy and the Nation.

International Communist Current 9th October 2017.

Leaflet for our organization’s intervention – help to distribute it!

Saturday 11 November 2017, May Day Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH, 11am to 6pm

One hundred years after the October insurrection in Russia, we will be holding a day of discussion about the relevance of the Russian revolution for the class struggle today. We will look at its historic importance as a first step towards the world revolution against capitalism, at its huge political and organizational achievements, as well as the tragic process of its degeneration and defeat.

Presentations will be given both by the ICC and the comrades of the Communist Workers Organisation [5]. We also hope that the debate will include other groups and individuals who are trying to understand history - and what the future holds in store for us - from the standpoint of the working class.

Email: [email protected] [6]

Website: en.internationalism.org

The Labour Party, that last year was hopelessly divided and looking as if it might split, today presents itself as the new normal, a government in waiting. This is taking place in the context of Brexit on the one hand, and a situation where we see other left wing forces and personalities around the world, whether Sanders in the US Democratic Party, or Podemos in Spain and Melanchon in France, that have grown at the expense of the Socialist Parties. So what is the real state of the party led by Jeremy Corbyn? And who benefits from its actions, the working class or the capitalist state?

Promising to undo the damage done by austerity, to close the gap between rich and poor, to increase tax on the top 1% of earners and, at least until the election, to scrap and repay tuition fees, it has mobilised many young workers to register to vote, and even to join the party. Led by a man who has visited many picket lines and was welcomed as a “socialist” by the Socialist Workers’ Party when elected to the leadership, it sounds – and is – too good to be true. Corbyn’s long record as a ‘radical’, complete with previous MI5 investigation of most of his advisors, underlines and emphasises his credentials, but as Paul Mason shows, recalling his days as a full-on Trotskyist, this is false: “The idea that the left, the miners and various environmental groups wanted to ‘destroy the democratic system’ in the 80s was pure paranoia. ... what we wanted was a left Labour government.... a new kind of radical social democracy stands on the brink of government. It wants to save British capitalism from wage stagnation, grotesque inequalities of wealth and the kamikaze mission of a no-deal Brexit. .... It has boosted democratic engagement, especially among the young, by building the biggest mass political party in Europe”[1] (Our emphasis).

In other words it wants to save capitalism from those policies likely to create discontent and to provide a harmless channel for the discontent that does arise. This is why the Labour Party has played a key role for capitalism in opposition as well as in government, as we can see from its role over the last century. In fact, it can be more effective in responding to discontent within the working class when in opposition, since it does not have to impose austerity at the same time. In opposition it has tended to elect more left wing leaders, such as Corbyn today, or Michael Foot in the 1980s, as opposed to the likes of Blair or Brown in government, and to display more ‘radical’ policies. Policies such as spending more on health and education, and even the police, paid for either by taxing the rich, or as Dennis Skinner so helpfully explained, “we’re going to borrow it. ... When the private sector expands where do you think they get their money from? They borrow it.”[2] And the renationalisation of railways etc, when the contract comes up for renewal. These policies hark back to the 1945 Atlee government that is so beloved of the left because of it nationalised parts of the economy and set up the National Health Service – actions which can only be called “socialist” by forgetting that they flowed from the needs of capitalist reconstruction after the war, whatever government was elected, and the Conservative government of the 1950s had no thought of reversing them. They were policies of a capitalist state which had just waged a devastating imperialist war. Some Labour leaders in opposition, such as Foot and Corbyn, have a long record of campaigning against nuclear weapons, but this has never been more than window dressing in a party that has consistently supported all the UK’s imperialist wars since 1914, whether in or out of government, and has never put in question its nuclear arsenal when in office.

Greater difficulty in political control

However, Corbyn is leading the Labour Party in a new situation in which there is a much greater tendency to fragmentation internationally, and in which the ruling class is finding it more difficult to control the political situation. The old USSR has broken up, as has Yugoslavia, and more recently we see calls for independence in Scotland and Catalonia. The Trump election and the Brexit referendum result also show the difficulty our ruling class has in getting the electoral results it wants.

In relation to Brexit, it is easy for Labour to point to the “chaos” in the government, to call for a Brexit for jobs, and to promise to unite the Leave and Remain voters, but it remains a difficult and divisive issue for Labour as well, so much so that the party congress vote on the issue was cancelled. It is hardly surprising to find the Labour Party divided on an issue that divides the whole of the UK bourgeoisie. Corbyn, following a tradition of Labour nationalism, was always a reluctant and half-hearted Remainer during the referendum campaign, and he is happy with Brexit to the extent that it gives more leeway for state capitalist policies - not only nationalisation but also favouring British suppliers for nationalised industries which would not be allowed in the EU. The local authority in Preston is “inspiring” in carrying out such policies by encouraging businesses to buy locally and set up co-operatives that “begin to democratise the economy”. But unfortunately the real inspiration for Preston is that “you have to be clever in austerity” when the annual spending on services has been cut by a third.[3] These are absolutely not policies that help the working class.

We will not speculate about whether there is likely to be a Labour government, or even an election, soon, but remaining vague on such a key policy issue as Brexit is the privilege of opposition.

Another aspect of the greater tendency to fragmentation and loss of control can be seen in the changes taking place in long-established political forces. One example we see of this is the way the left forces are now split in France and Spain between the traditional Socialist Party and Melanchon and Podemos respectively. This tendency underlines the seriousness of the divisions in the Labour Party at the time of the parliamentary party’s vote of no confidence in Corbyn and the subsequent leadership challenge. It is a sign of the strength of the UK bourgeoisie and its two party system in parliament that the Labour Party has held together as a ‘broad church’, in contrast to the marked decline in several Socialist Parties in Europe. Despite the fiasco of the Brexit referendum and all the pressures on the political system, we should not underestimate the ability of the UK bourgeoisie.

The other side of the new political difficulties we can see in many countries is the rise of right wing and populist forces, such as the NF in France, AfD in Germany, and Trump in the USA. Here, the rise of UKIP with its xenophobia and little Englander ideas was one of the factors, alongside a longstanding Euroscepticism particularly in the Tory party, which pushed the government into the referendum and Brexit. We can see the efforts made internationally to deal with this problem in the elections this year, most dramatically with Macron’s new party, République en Marche, in France. Despite the record of Labour governments on immigration policy, the Labour Party is perceived as being a way to fight such xenophobic populism, and this is part of its attraction to many, particularly young urban proletarians.

Another important strength of the Labour Party in dealing with discontent is its close historical link to the trade unions, particularly emphasised by the left of the party and when it is in opposition. Corbyn’s close association with Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union is a good example. This not only provides a power base for some politicians on the left of the party, but is an important resource for the bourgeoisie. The trade unions continue to be the major arm for monitoring discontent in the working class for the bourgeoisie and to containing it in limited, divided, demonstrations and strikes. Through the Unite union the Labour Party, and the bourgeoisie as a whole, have been made aware of the anger of public sector workers against the long continues 1% pay cap and the fact that continuing it would necessarily lead to disruptions. In addition, mobilisation through the “grass roots” of Momentum has a very important role in supporting Corbyn, and allows the party to respond to the discontent of an important part of the working class, particularly young workers,  offering them a false perspective of change through electing a Labour government.

The Labour Party is not and never has been a revolutionary party, and since the First World War it has been an integral part of the capitalist state. It has nothing to offer the working class but the illusions that it can speak on their behalf, when in reality it is one of the strongholds of the ruling class’ political apparatus, with an important role in responding to and dissipating discontent through providing false alternatives.  Alex, 21.10.17

The escalation of the push towards Catalan independence and the difficulties of the Popular Party government, and more generally the whole of the state, in dealing with this problem through a framework of agreements and negotiations, represents an important political crisis for the Spanish bourgeoisie. It has thrown the “1978 consensus”[i] up in the air (i.e. the rules of the game that the state has followed since the democratic transition in 1975). And this is a state which has already been greatly weakened by the crisis of two party rule – the tandem of the PP and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party)  -  and the difficulty to provide an alternative through the formation of new parties (Podemos and Ciudadanos)[ii].

The immediate causes of this situation are the intensification of the struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie and the tendency towards irresponsibility which places particular interests before the global interests of the state and national capital. To these factors can be added the crisis of the principal state party since the transition: the PSOE. The underlying historic causes are the aggravation of the economic crisis and the decomposition of capitalism[iii]

In the absence, at the moment, of the proletarian alternative to the situation, the workers have nothing to gain and much to lose. The demonstrations in Catalonia, the encircling of the Conselleria de Economia and the confrontation with the Guardia Civil after the arrest of several heads of the Generalitat (the Catalan government), or the dockers’ boycott of police boats, do not express the strength of the workers. On the contrary, these actions are being pushed:

• by the openly separatist parties to defend the arrested members of the autonomous government (the same one which cuts wages and attacks living conditions) and party leaders such as those of the PdCat or ERC parties that are openly bourgeois; the fact they are Catalan serves our interests no more than do their rivals, the PP or Ciudadanos;
• and by Podemos or the “Comunes” of Barcelona’s radical mayor Ada Colau[iv], to  take up the “defence of the democratic state” against the repression directed by the PP.

In short, the danger exists that the workers will be pulled from their own class terrain, from the confrontation with the bourgeoisie, to the rotten terrain of confrontations between factions of the bourgeoisie; that they will be shackled to the defence of the democratic state, which is the expression of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Is exploitation, moral barbarity, ecological destruction, war, going to go away because democracy dresses itself up in the Spanish flag or the Catalonian?

The problem of separatism in Spain

In order to understand the Catalan conflict it is necessary to step back and understand the international and historical situation in which it is unfolding.

We will begin with the international context. The worsening of the Catalan conflict is taking place at the same time that the Kurdish referendum is pouring oil onto the fire of the tensions in the Middle East, and that the confrontation between two nuclear armed thugs -North Korea and the United States- further demonstrates the degradation of the imperialist situation. All this, as well, at a moment when the world economy is being darkened by storm clouds.

We now pass to the historic analysis. We have already presented before in our publications the marxist analysis that in Spain there is not the problem of a “prison-house of nations”[v] but the poor cohesion of the national capital[vi]. The development of capitalism in Spain was held back by the powerful disequilibrium between those regions more open to trade and industry - those on the coast- and the rest, who were trapped in isolation and backwardness. The country entered the decadence of capitalism (1914 and the First World War) without the bourgeoisie having found any solution to this problem. Rather, faced with the blows of the crisis, there was an aggravation of tensions, particularly between sectors of the bourgeoisie in Catalonia and the Basque Country on the one hand, and the central bourgeoisie on the other.

Each time that Spanish capital has posed the necessity to restructure its economic and political organisation, the separatist fractions have asserted their aspirations by all means at their disposal, including violence (ETA, or Terra Lliure), and the attempt to use the proletariat as cannon fodder.

Thus the publication of the Italian Communist Left, Bilan, wrote in relation to Catalan separatism and the events of 36:

“The separatist movements, far from being an element of the bourgeois revolution, are expressions of the irresolvable contradictions and inheritances of the structure of Spanish capitalist society which carried out industrialization in the coastal regions whilst the central plateaus remained sunk in economic backwardness. Catalan separatism, instead of tending towards total independence, remains trapped by the structure of Spanish society. This means that the extreme forms in which it manifests itself serve to channel the proletarian movement”.[vii]

The relations between Catalan separatism and the proletariat, despite the present “left” discourse of the CUP, is not that of fellow travelers but class antagonists.

Maćia, founder of the ERC, originally came from reactionary Carlism (Spanish monarchism); but many years later, after taking up Basque nationalism, he integrated elements of Stalinist ideology into Catalan nationalism. During the 2nd Republic his party organized the Escamots, a militia that specialized in persecuting and torturing militant workers.

Cambó, leader of the Regionalist League, made a pact with the central bourgeoisie in order to confront the strikes in Spain that were part of the revolutionary wave of 1917-19, and supported the Primo de Rivera dictatorship.

Companys in 1936 made the independent Generalitat of Catalonia the bastion that saved the national state and mobilized the workers onto the front of the imperialist war against Franco, diverting them from the class front against the central state and the Generalitat[viii].

And Tarradellas, then leader of the ERC, made a pact in 1977 with the old Francoists to restore the Generalitat[ix].

The autonomous regions and the 1978 consensus

The way the democratic transition faced up to the problem of separatism was through the idea of autonomous regions, which, without leading to a federal state, conferred powers in relation to collection of taxes, health, education, security, etc to the different regions and particularly to Catalonia and the Basque Country.

The pillar of this policy was the PSOE. It set up a “federal” structure which maintained the discipline of the regional organizations. To this was added the PNV( the Basque Nationalist Party)  and the Catalan right-wing party, the CiU, who were conveniently bulldozered  into it [x]

The PNV as much as the CiU for a long time played the role of a tampon, channeling the demands of both the most moderate and the most anachronistic nationalist sectors towards the framework of negotiations, serving as a crutch mainly to the right wing governments, but also to the PSOE when they needed to be in government[xi].

This does not mean however that the stormy sea of nationalist conflicts was calmed. Behind the facade of the PNV’s parliamentary fairplay the intransigent separatism of the HB and ETA was growing. Equally with the CiU and the ERC in Catalonia. Likewise, in the PSOE, regional barons emerged who increasingly put centralized discipline into question.

The sectors of Basque nationalism used the ETA’s outrages in their negotiations in the same way that they have been pressured by HB and ETA to put into question the framework of autonomy and to move towards independence.

Not only that: because of the configuration of the problem of separatism in Spain, there is no solution, but instead it will continue to deepen. The worsening of the crisis and decomposition has lead to “a spiral of increasingly blatant challenges, which tend to lead Spanish capital into insurmountable dead ends”, where in addition “the most radical sectors (from Basque nationalism to more reactionary forms of Spanish nationalism) instead of losing relevance, have in reality become more predominant”[xii].

In the Basque Country, the Ibarretxe[xiii] Plan, a real declaration of independence, was the confirmation of this dynamic. The central state, however, knew how to deactivate this separatist challenge. Ibrarretxe believed it could be carried out with constitutional legality but when he took it to parliament, it was treated with contempt and rejected out of hand.

In Catalonia there has been the formation of the two three-party alliances (under Maragall and Montilla[xiv]) and the wearing out of the CiU and its involvement in cases of corruption, and this has stimulated the rise of the radical separatists. Faced with its noticeable loss of electoral support and the threat of its disappearance in the medium term due to the rise of the ERC and the impact of the decline of “Pujolism”, the CiU converted itself into the PdCat in order to hide its shameless corruption, and launched a take-over bid hostile to the separatism of the ERC. However the result has been the ERC gaining electoral ground, making the PdCat its hostage and indirectly the CUP.

On the other hand, the PSOE begun the manoeuvre of the “reform of the autonomous regions” which resulted in a resounding failure and ended up weakening its own cohesion. In the resolution on the national situation which we published in Accion Proletaria 179 we took account of this fiasco: “the fact is that the famous and talented Zapatero has not managed to reduce the pro-sovereignty claims of Basque nationalism, on the contrary, because Ibarretxe has renewed his gamble in the face of  Spanish nationalism. The same is true of the situation in Catalonia, where the attempt to control the most radical sectors of ERC through the tripartite government led by Maragall is leading to Maragall appearing (to what extent it is difficult to know) as a hostage to the ultra-nationalist Carod Rovira. The problems of the cohesion of Spanish capital are being aggravated, since Zapatero’s policy of 'gestures' is not satisfying the Basque and Catalan nationalists, who see his proposal of constitutional reform as a scam. Rather it is serving to encourage in other nationalisms the same feeling of "chauvinism", of "shared grievance", etc., which in turn leads to opening the Pandora’s Box of  Spanish nationalism that is not limited to the PP, but has important branches within the PSOE itself”.

The two Catalan “tripartites” did not serve to calm the pro-independence movements in Catalonia, nor have they subjugated the ERC, which, on the contrary, became radicalized in its claims for "sovereignty", and ended up dislocating the Catalan branch of the PSOE that lost a large part of its pro-Catalan fraction. In fact this laid the foundations of today's enormous radicalization.
 

The Catalan quagmire, product of decomposition
 

All this confirms what was said in the Theses on Decomposition “Amongst the major characteristics of capitalist society’s decomposition, we should emphasize the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation (...) …..The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilize as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’”[xv]

This has led to the present situation in which the PP government and more generally the Spanish bourgeoisie has really underestimated the 1st October Referendum.

The impression is that they thought that the failure of the Ibarretxe Plan could be repeated faced with the challenge of Catalan separatism, and that after the fiasco of the 2014 referendum, the pro-independence sectors would be pushed back. But on the contrary, not only has their determination grown, but the Spanish bourgeoisie has not taken into account the impact of decomposition upon the political apparatus of the state, particularly:

• The crisis of the PSOE, a party divided into regional fiefdoms and which has partly lost its capacity to take political initiatives and its role as an example of responsibility for all the parties of national capital[xvi]
• The separatist drift of the CiU; the party has become increasingly controlled by a gang of ultra-nationalist Taliban, based in the most backward comarcas (counties) of Catalonia, which has led to a succession of purges of those suspected of “Spanish proclivities”.  First it was Duran i Lleida and then all those that preached the old nationalist politics and collaboration with the whole of Spanish capital.
• The ERC, an old pro-independence party which, however, has given great service to Spanish capital (see above), has taken as its flag the immediate achievement of independence (before, it was an “historical” aim) and has developed a nationalist and xenophobic discourse[xvii]  all of which could turn it into  the central party of the Catalan political spectrum, displacing the old CiU, today the PdCat.
• The irruption of the CUP, an indigestible mixture of Stalinists, former Catalan terrorists and anarchists, that practice a discourse of exclusionary, quasi-ethnic purity and xenophobic Catalanism, which speaks of independent and republican "Catalan Countries" and whose aim is to force the ERC-PdCat duo to go as far as possible in the challenge to the central Spanish bourgeoisie.

The Ibarretxe Plan was “resolved” and this appears to have re-established “tranquility”; the PNV has been turned into an “exemplary pupil” in the hands of Urkullu. This has made the central Spanish bourgeoisie believe that history will repeat itself faced with the Catalan challenge. Enter the Catalanists who have not made the same monumental error as Ibarretxe of going to the Spanish Parliament. They have followed the only possible route: a unilateral referendum which leaves the central Spanish bourgeoisie without room for manoeuvre since the constitution does not allow it “to tear up national sovereignty” in the 17 autonomous regions.

What we are living through is the crisis of the “1978 consensus”, the agreement that in 1977-8 all the political forces signed up to in order to assure a “democracy” whose axis has been until very recently, the two party system, the alternation of the PSOE and the PP, although the first of these parties has shown a much greater political capacity than the second.

All of this has been blown to pieces and the Spanish bourgeoisie is faced with the danger that the main economic region of Spain – which represents 19% of GDP- could escape its control. It has bet on a repressive response: the courts, arrests, de facto suspension of Catalan autonomy...

In other words, it is incapable of putting forward political alternatives that will allow it to control the situation. The supporters of this course (Podemos, Cola…) lack sufficient strengthen to put it into practice and are themselves divided by contradictory tendencies. The partner of Pedemos, IU[xviii], has roundly declared its rejection of the Catalan referendum and its unconditional defence of “Spanish Unity”. But on the other hand Iglesias is face by a rebellion of his Catalan constituents, who are inclined to “critically” support separatism. For its part, Colau plays the mediator and has been obliged to make an unlikely balance between one and the other, which has earned her the jocular name of the Catalan Cantinflas[xix].

The PSOE is incapable of a coherent policy. One day its supports the government, even defending article 155 of the Constitution that allows the suspension of Catalan autonomy. On another day, it proclaims that Spain is a “nation of nations”. It has proposed a “parliamentary commission in order to discuss the Catalan question” which has been rejected with disdain by its political adversaries[xx].

However, the main reason for the failure of the political system is not the clumsiness of this one or the other but the inflammation of the situation, the impossibility of finding a solution. And this can only be explained by the overall analysis that we have developed, the notion of the decomposition of capitalism.

It is now obvious that we are witnessing the general crisis of the Spanish political apparatus which, with the Catalan question, will end up being even more divided.

However it is necessary to underline another element of this very important analysis and that is equally linked to decomposition: political blockage.

Although the situation is very different, it is something that we also see in Venezuela: neither of the two teams  is capable of winning the game. We can also see this at the level of imperialist conflicts, where the authority of the United States, its role as world policeman is getting weaker, a process that has accelerated with the victory of Trump. This has led to an insoluble deadlock in numerous conflicts around the world.

The separatist gang has a “ceiling”: its powerbase is in the Catalan comarcas of the interior. However it is weaker in the large cities and, especially, in Barcelona’s industrial belt. The high Catalan bourgeoisie view it with reserve because it knows that its businesses are linked to the hated Spain. The petty bourgeoisie are divided, although, of course, the comarcas of “deep Catalonia” massively support “disconnecting from Spain”. But the enormous economic concentration of Barcelona – more than 5 million inhabitants- is inclined towards indifference. This concentration has much less “Catalan purity”; it is an enormous “melting pot” made up of people from more than 60 different nations.

We must complete the analysis by showing the importance of the centrifugal tendencies, the flight towards taking endogamic, identity-based refuge in "small closed communities", tendencies endlessly fed by capitalist decomposition. Capitalism’s decadence leads fatally “to the dislocation and disintegration of its components. The tendency of decadent capitalism is discord, chaos; this expresses the  essential necessity of socialism which seeks to build a world community”[xxi] The mounting disarray, exacerbated by the crisis, “generates growing tendencies  to clutch onto all sorts of false communities such as the nation, which provides an illusory sense of security, of ‘collective support’”[xxii]

In the three Catalanist parties this is clear. Completely absurd propaganda that represents “free” Catalonia as an oasis of progress and economic growth because “we will have gotten rid of the weight of Madrid”; the CUP’s advocacy of the persecution of tourists because they " make life in Catalonia more expensive"; offensive allusions to immigrants and foreigners, all this shows a clearly xenophobic, identitarian tendency which is little different from the populist preaching of Trump or Alternative for Germany.

These tendencies towards exclusion have their root in society but they are blatantly and cynically used by the three parties of the JuntsXSi[xxiii], although the prize goes to the CUP.

But the Catalan separatists do not have a monopoly of this barbarity. Their Spanish rivals engage in double speak: the great leaders fill their mouths with the “constitution”, “democracy”, “solidarity between Spaniards” “co-existence” etc. At the same time they incite hatred of “the Catalans” and everything “Catalan”, propose boycotts of “Catalan” goods, call for “reinforcing the identity of the Spanish people”, while their anti-immigration politics are stock-full of racism.

The true face of the democratic state

In reality, the conflict between Spanish and Catalan nationalists demonstrates what Rosa Luxemburg said with great insight: “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.” (The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy, chapter 1, 1915)

This situation shows the true face of the democratic state. All the political forces defend democracy, freedom, the rights they claim are in the tradition of the state. Some in the name of the “defense of the constitution” and “national sovereignty” (PP, Ciudadanos, PSOE). Others in the name of the “democratic freedom” to organise a referendum and equally the Constitution (Podemos, Comunes, Separatists).

But behind this official democratic discourse, what is really dealt are low blows, traps, corruption scandals that they expose when it serves their  interests.

Some deal in "blows" in the strictest sense of the term, sending in the civil guard and the police (even in ships painted with drawings from Warner Brothers [xxiv]); others deal in theatrical stunts. But the point is that what counts are not the ballot boxes nor the votes, but the relations of force, the blackmail, in the purest Mafioso style.

CUP’s “anti-system” stance does not fall far short of this, organizing demonstrations in front of private houses to intimidate their occupants, putting up posters denouncing the mayors who oppose the referendum.

This is the real functioning of the democratic state. It cogs are not driven by votes, rights, freedoms or other phrases, but by manoeuvres, lies, campaigns of harassment and discrediting…

The situation of the proletariat

The proletariat is disorientated. It has lost its sense of identity, its movement is in retreat, and it is very weak, but there have been pointers to the future, in particular the 15M[xxv], the “Indignados” movement, despite its many confusions and its difficulties in grasping its real class interests. The greatest danger is that the proletariat’s thinking remains trapped in the poisoned well that is the Catalonia-Spain conflict, forcing it to think and feel according to the dilemma “with Spain or Independence”.

These are feeling, thoughts, aspirations which are not centered around the struggle for our living conditions, the future for our children, the future of the world; thinking that expresses the proletarian terrain, even in an embryonic way. Rather this is a way of thinking polarized around ideas like “Madrid robs us” or “do we want to be part of Spain”, around the choice between the  Catalan star and the red and yellow of the Spanish flag; thinking entangled in a web of bourgeois concepts: democracy, national self-determination, sovereignty, the Constitution..

The thinking of the proletariat in the main workers’ concentrations in Spain is being kidnapped by conceptual garbage that only looks to the past, to reaction, to barbarity.

In these conditions the methods of repression that the central government adopted on the 20th September creates a series of martyrs, which will generate an irrational sense of victimisation and, in this way, ratchet up an already emotional situation to a higher pitch, probably on the nationalist side.

The main danger, however, is to diverted towards the defense of democracy.

The Spanish bourgeoisie has a long experience of confronting the proletariat by diverting it towards the defense of democracy then massacring it and violently strengthening exploitation.

We should recall how the initial struggle on 18th July 1936 faced with Franco’s uprising was on the class terrain, but was then diverted towards the defense of democracy against fascism, choosing between two enemies: the Republic and Franco, the result of which was ONE MILLION DEAD.

We should also recall how in 1981, faced with the threat posed by the latest threats of Francoism, with the ‘coup’ of the 23rd February, there was a large scale democratic mobilization of the “Spanish people”. In 1997, a decisive step in the isolation of ETA was the massive mobilizations around “the defense of democracy against terrorism”.

The Catalan imbroglio is a dead-end. With or without the referendum of the 1st October it can only lead to one conclusion: the radicalization of the confrontation between the separatists and Spanish nationalists, as in Goya’s Fight with cudgels, that will go on piteously exchanging blows, will dislocate society even more, accentuating increasingly irrational divisions and confrontations. What is most dangerous is that the proletariat will become trapped on this battlefield, above all because all the contenders will ceaselessly use the weapon of democracy in order to legitimize their proposals, to ask for new elections and new “rights to decide”.

We are conscious of this situation of weakness that threatens the proletariat. However, it cannot stop us recognizing that a solution can emerge only from autonomous class struggle. The contribution to this perspective today is to oppose the democratic mobilization, the choice between Spain and Catalonia, the national terrain. The proletarian struggle and the future of humanity can only emerge from outside and against these putrid terrains.

Acción Proletaria, (section of the ICC in Spain) 27 September 2017

In a TV broadcast in 1965, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, one of the leading scientists working on the development of the US atomic bomb during World War Two, recounted his feelings when he witnessed the first atomic bomb test in the deserts of New Mexico in July 1945:

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another”[1].

Prior to capitalism, many societies had developed mythologies of the end of the world. The apocalypse anticipated by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, seen as the final destiny of this world, was understood to be the precursor of a new heaven and a new earth that would last for all eternity; whereas in the Hindu vision, new worlds and even new universes are endlessly born, dissolved and reborn in a vast cosmic cycle.

But if the idea of the apocalypse is not new, what is new in the capitalist mode of production is first, that the world inhabited by humankind for hundreds of thousands of years can be destroyed by the technologies that human beings themselves have created, rather than by supernatural beings or an inexorable fate. And second, that such a destruction would not be the prelude to a new and better world, but destruction pure and simple.

The atomic bomb tested in the desert in July 1945 would, one month later, be tested on tens of thousands of human beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world would indeed not be the same. The atomic bomb was the “scientific” proof of something that many had already begun to suspect in the wake of the First World War: in the words of Sigmund Freud in 1929, that “men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of the current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety”[2].

Psychoanalysts of the future – if mankind is able to survive capitalism – will perhaps write treatises on the enormous psychological cost of living with the threat not only of individual death, but the death of humanity and perhaps even all life on earth. It’s already possible to discern many of the outward manifestations of this mental burden: the flight into nihilism and the numerous forms of self-destruction, the vain search for hope in returning to old apocalyptic stories, central in particular to Christian and Muslim “fundamentalism”. For Freud’s rival Jung, the wave of UFO sightings in the late 40s was a modern version of old myths: faced with the unbearable reality posed by the nuclear threat, there was a marked tendency to project one’s real fears into “things seen in the skies”, often accompanied by hopes that wiser beings would come and save us from our own follies[3]. Little wonder that in 1952, during the Korean war, which many feared would explode into World War Three, the comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France were observing that “mental alienation in all its forms is to our epoch what the great epidemics were to the Middle Ages”.[4]

The nuclear Sword of Damocles, from 1945 to 2017

The democratic ruling class justified the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the story that, on balance, it saved lives, above all American lives, because it made it possible to avoid a military invasion of Japan. In reality, the bomb was a warning directed less against the collapsing Japanese military than against the USSR which had only recently declared war on Japan and was asserting its presence in the Far East. So Hiroshima was more the first act of “World War Three” than the last act of World War Two. This third world war, the global contest between the American and Russian imperialist blocs, remained a “cold” war in the sense that it never took the form of a direct conflict between the two camps. Rather it was waged via a series of proxy wars with local states and “national liberation movements” doing the actual fighting, while the two superpowers supplied arms, intelligence, strategic support and ideological justification. At certain moments, however, these conflicts threatened to escalate into all-out nuclear confrontations, in particular, during the Korean War in the early 50s and over the Cuba crisis in 1962. And all the while the spiralling “arms race” meant that the two blocs were directing vast quantities of labour and research – which in capitalist terms, means vast quantities of money – into perfecting weapons that could obliterate humanity several times over. Politicians tried to reassure the world’s population with the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD – the idea that world war was unthinkable in the nuclear age because no one could win it. Thus the best guarantee of peace was to maintain and develop this gigantic arsenal of death. Or in other words: a Sword of Damocles hangs over your head? Get used to it, because it’s the only possible way to live. 

After the collapse of the Russian bloc at the end of the 80s[5], the politicians tried a new line: the end of the Cold War would mean a New World Order of peace and prosperity. A little over a quarter of a century later, the words of George Bush Senior, the president who “delivered” the US bloc’s victory in the Cold War, sound extremely hollow. Prosperity remains a chimera for millions, and this in a world system constantly menaced by huge financial storms, like the one in 2008. As for the promise of peace, the breakdown of the discipline of the old blocs has engendered a series of increasingly chaotic military conflicts, above all in the area around the Biblical Armageddon – the Middle East. This region – already the scene of the Arab-Israeli wars, the war in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war, and the battle for Afghanistan – has hardly known a day when it was not being torn apart by war, from the first major military adventure launched by the US after the collapse of the eastern bloc – the 1991 Gulf war – to the current military nightmare stalking through Syria and Iraq. This conflict, perhaps more than all the others, reveals the profound irrationality and uncontrolled nature of the wars in this present phase. Unlike the proxy wars between the two blocs which dominated the previous period, we now have a war with so many sides and so many shifting alliances that it is increasingly difficult to count them.  To keep himself in power, Syria’s president Bashir Assad lays waste large swathes of his own country, while the opposition to his rule splits into “moderate” and  “radical Islamic” factions constantly at each other’s throats. The American-backed coalition against “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq is rent by rivalries between Shia militias and Kurdish peshmerga, especially following the controversial referendum on Kurdish independence which threatens to disintegrate the fragile Iraqi state; regional powers like Saudi, Qatar, Iran and Turkey play their own game and swap pawns and alliances to suit their immediate interests. Meanwhile the vast majority of the population is either forced to flee towards Turkey, Jordan or Europe while those that remain try to keep sane and survive in ruined cities like Aleppo, Raqqa, Mosul... Furthermore, these conflicts are linked to a wider band of equally intractable wars, from Libya to the Horn of Africa and from Yemen to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this epidemic of warfare can no longer be isolated from the centres of western “civilisation”: the blowback of western involvement in these wars is the wave of refugees heading for the “haven” of Western Europe and the efforts of terrorist gangs like IS to take the war to the homelands of the “unbelievers”

These wars already provide us with a terrifying glimpse of what could lie ahead for the whole world if the destructive tendencies within the capitalist system are allowed to reach their full fruition. But there is another aspect to the spreading law of “every man for himself”: the reappearance of the nuclear threat in a new form. Under the reign of the blocs, the two superpowers had a real interest, and capacity, to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to themselves or to regimes that they trusted to obey their commands. The nuclear arming of China in the 1960s was a break in this chain of command because China had by then broken from the Russian bloc; but since the blocs came to an end “nuclear proliferation” has increased at some pace. India and Pakistan, two states which have already gone to war on several occasions and live in a permanent state of tension, now have nuclear weapons pointing at each other. Iran has made considerable steps towards acquiring one and numerous other regimes and even terrorist groups are no doubt quietly working to join the club.

But looming above all this today is the acquisition and piratical testing of nuclear weapons by the Stalinist regime in North Korea, while the world’s leading military power, the USA, is in the hands of an unpredictable narcissist who rode to power on the global populist wave. These two forms of “rogue regime” issue new threats of fire and fury against each other with each week that passes, and it is not possible to say that this is all bluster. There are, within both regimes, factors that constrain them from unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Trump for example does not have an entirely free hand because he is opposed at almost every turn by powerful elements in his own security and military apparatus. But these inner conflicts, like the populist wave itself, point to a loss of political control by the bourgeoisie which favour unpredictable, rash decisions. And more: behind the conflict between the US and North Korea lies a more global rivalry, between China and the USA. Meanwhile Russia remains the second most heavily armed nuclear power in the world, has recovered much of the status it lost with the collapse of the USSR, and is pursuing an ever more aggressive foreign policy, especially in the Ukraine and Syria. The danger of nuclear warfare remains as real as ever, even if the form it takes may have changed since the period 1945-89.

“Ecological Armageddon”

During the Cold War period, a considerable part of which was characterised by the economic growth that followed the Second World War, there was little awareness of what this growth might hold in store for the balance between man and the rest of nature. But the last few decades have shown how limited “mans’ control over the forces of nature” really are under the capitalist drive for profit, where looting, wastefulness and destruction have always dominated what Marx called man’s “metabolic exchange” with nature.

On October 19, The Guardian reported that “The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies [23] were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is ‘on course for ecological Armageddon’, with profound impacts on human society”[6].

We already knew, of course, about the alarming decline of the bees. And this is only one part of a tendency towards the mass extinction of countless living species, brought about by the poisoning of the air and seas by pesticides, industrial and transport emissions, and the veritable scourge of plastic waste. And this toxic cloud is also killing human beings at an increasing rate. The day after the article about insect decline, The Guardian published a new report that estimates that nine million people die every year as a direct result of pollution[7]. Add to this the melting of the ice caps, the unleashing of superstorms, the droughts and wildfires all linked to man-made climate change, and the threatened “ecological Armageddon” more and more closely resembles the traditional stories about the world perishing in flood and fire.

Thus to the menace of destruction through imperialist war, the ecological question adds another and no less terrifying menace, but these two horsemen of the apocalypse will not ride separately. On the contrary: a capitalist world faced with dwindling vital resources, whether we are talking about energy, food or water, is far more likely to deal with the problem through exacerbated national competition, military pillage and robbery – in short, economic  and imperialist war – than through the rational, planet-wide cooperation which alone could find a solution to this new challenge to human survival.

The other side of despair

Looked at one-sidedly, this summary of humanity’s situation can only induce despair. But there is another side: if the products of man’s own hands have become capable of “exterminating one another to the last man”, realising the darkest apocalyptic nightmares, so the same powers of production could be used to realise another ancient dream: a world of plenty where there is no need for one sector of society to lord it over another, a world that has gone beyond the divisions that lie at the heart of conflict and war.

It is one of contradictions in the evolution of capitalism that precisely at the point that such a world becomes materially possible – we would say round the beginning of the 20th century – this social order plunges mankind into the most barbarous wars in history. From this point on, its very survival becomes increasingly antagonistic to the survival of humanity. This is the most striking proof that capitalism, for all its intact capacities to innovate, to develop, to find remedies for its crises, has become obsolete, a fundamental obstacle to the future advance of our species.

The recognition of this reality is a key factor in the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the exploited masses who are always the first victims of capitalism’s crises and wars. The understanding that capitalism, as a world civilisation, had entered its epoch of decay, was a crucial factor in the monumental events set in motion by the revolution in Russia in 1917 – in the international revolutionary wave which forced the bourgeoisie to call a halt to the slaughter of the First World War and which, for an all-too-brief period, brought the promise of the overthrow of capitalism and the advent of a world communist society.

Today, such revolutionary hopes might appear to belong entirely to the past. But contrary to the ideology and active propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the class struggle has not disappeared from history and indeed, even before it takes on a generalised and conscious revolutionary character, still has an enormous weight in the world situation. During the Cold War, as we have seen, the ruling class tried to convince us that its MAD doctrine was preserving the planet from a third world war. What they would never tell us is that there was a more powerful “deterrent” to world war after capitalism entered its present phase of economic crisis at the end of the 60s. This was a factor that had been missing in the 1930s, when the economic depression did lead rapidly to war: an undefeated working class more prepared to fight for its own interests than to rally to the war plans of the bourgeoisie.

Today, the break-up of the blocs and the accelerating imperialist free-for all is another factor that makes a classic third world war a less likely scenario. This is not a factor that favours the proletariat however, because the threat of world war has been by-passed by a more insidious slide into barbarism in which, as we have argued here, the danger of nuclear warfare has by no means diminished. But the class struggle – and its escalation towards revolution – remains the sole barrier to the deepening of barbarism, the sole hope that humanity will not only avert the apocalypse of capital but realise all its untapped potential.

Amos, 21.10.17

We are publishing here an article written by our comrades of Internacionalismo, the ICC's section in Venezuela, in which our organisation takes a position from the viewpoint of the international proletariat on the serious crisis which is hitting the country. Within this we denounce the hypocrisy of the world's bourgeoisie and its complicity with both the Chavist clique and the opposition which have plunged the proletariat and the population as a whole into the most barbaric conditions. Our comrades analyse how Chavism, a product and expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system, uses an ideological swindle of "the socialism of the twenty-first century" which is set up on the basis of an attack against the living conditions, consciousness and combativity of the proletariat. Similarly, they analyse how inter-imperialist tensions are a factor which contributes to aggravating the crisis. The article gives the perspective that the only possible outcome to the barbarity of the situation of Venezuela and the entire world continues to remain in the hands of the proletariat which, through its conscious struggle, can aim to overthrow the capitalist system which is plunging us into chaos and despair.

Every day the world's press and an endless number of internet and social networks are drowning us with news of the dramatic situation coming from Venezuela: the aggravation of shortages, lack of food, medicines and basic products; uncontrolled increases in the prices of the few products which remain available, now reducing a part of the population to famine; death by the malnutrition of children and sicknesses caused by the degradation of the health and hospital system. To this situation add more than 120 deaths to date, thousands of wounded and those detained, coming from the confrontations between rival factions of Venezuelan capital in their struggle for power, caused by the brutal repression of police and military forces of the Chavist regime of Maduro during the demonstrations called by the opposition and the protests of the population between April and June this year.

The despair of the population is such that thousands of people are trying to flee the country. The governments of Colombia and Brazil are faced with the arrival of thousands of Venezuelan migrants, some of whom are living in miserable conditions on the streets of towns closest to their respective borders. The increase of political tensions with the accentuation of the economic crisis threatens to create a wave of refugees similar to that produced by the exodus of populations from Syria, Afghanistan or some African countries fleeing the barbarity and misery of war.

However, the media, conforming to its ideological role, conveys a totally deformed vision of reality by taking sides with one or the other, pro-Chavist or oppositional, bourgeois factions who are fighting each other for power in Venezuela. On one hand, a great number of Latin American other governments try to outdo each other by coming forward and denouncing the "humanitarian crisis" and the repression against the population and demanding that what they call the dictatorial regime of Maduro respect "democracy" and "Human Rights". They want us to forget that the majority of them, just a few years ago, enthusiastically welcomed and saluted the government of Chavez for "taking into consideration" the fate of the disinherited and marginalised masses and which, according to them, brought millions of Venezuelans out of poverty thanks to a so-called "redistribution of social wealth"; and that the UN paid homage to the successes of the Venezuelan government for having fulfilled the objectives of the Millennium. What these governments and organisations express is the immense hypocrisy of the bourgeois class at the world level: the same goes for the Venezuelan bourgeois factions fighting for power: the Chavists regrouped in the GPP, the Great Patriotic Pole, and the oppositional forces brought together around the MUD - Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, the Democratic Unity Roundtable[i]. The ruling classes at the regional, as well as at the global level, have a responsibility for the barbarity in which the proletariat and population of Venezuela have been immersed.

In order to stand up to this ideological campaign, it's necessary for the proletariat to get to the causes of this tragedy by, in the first place,  keeping in mind that it mustn't back any of the bourgeois factions confronting each other in their struggle for control of the state. This crisis is a pure product of the decadence and decomposition of the capitalist system which is no longer a factor in the development of the productive forces, in particular of labour power; instead of that, every day society sinks further into misery and barbarity. On the other hand, faced with this historic impasse the only thing that matters to the factions of capital (whether they defend the models of the pretend-left "socialists" like the Chavist/Maduro regime or the neo-liberal models of the centre-right that the opposition forces defend) is to maintain their power at any price; and in their thirst for power they couldn't care less that the working population that follows them in the circumstances, die like flies in their hundreds or thousands because of hunger and repression.

The crisis hitting Venezuela is the expression of the fact that no country or region of the world can escape the effects of the decomposition of the capitalist system. The reasons for this crisis are the same as those which provoked the barbarism which reigns in Syria, Afghanistan or in a number of African countries; or those which are expressed by the terrorist attacks which follow one another in a growing sequence in Europe, the United States and other central countries. The world finds itself in a situation of impasse, at the mercy of the actions of the most irrational factions of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.

The only way of really coming out of this situation is in the hands of the proletariat which, through its combat, its class consciousness, its unity and solidarity can serve as a reference point for the indignation of the despairing masses of the population who want to break out of poverty and suffering.

How did Venezuela come to this?

Some analysts and intellectuals, when asked for their opinion on the situation in Venezuela, try to explain why this country, having been one of the most rich and stable among the countries of South America, has fallen in such a brutal manner since the beginning of the century into such poverty and suffered a political chaos which threatens to make it ungovernable. Some see the Maduro regime as a failed state; others designate it as the retreat of another "Castro-communist" dictatorship. And as good defenders of bourgeois order they don't lose a trick in feeding the repugnant lie which assimilates the Stalinist-type totalitarian regimes with communism. They try to hide the fact that the regime imposed by Chavez, of which Maduro is a successor, is a new offspring of the decomposing capitalist system that they themselves feed with their so-called "analyses".

We have analysed the causes of the rise of the Chavez project in an article published in 2013, written after his death[ii]:

"Chavez first came to public notice when he led the attempted military coup against the Social Democrat Carlos Andrés Péres in 1992. From then on his popularity underwent a spectacular growth until he was elected President of the Republic in 1999. During this period he capitalised on the discontent and lack of trust across broad sectors of the population towards the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic Parties who had alternated power between themselves since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1958. This discontent was particularly marked amongst the most impoverished masses affected by the economic crisis of the 80s, who were the main protagonists of the 1989 revolt. The two main political parties were undergoing a process of disintegration, characterised by corruption at the highest levels and the neglect of government tasks. This was an expression of the decomposition that had engulfed the whole of society, principally the ruling class, which had reached such levels that it was impossible to cohere its forces in order to guarantee reliable governance and ‘social peace'.

Maduro has  inherited from Chavez a country and a political project affected by a terrible economic crisis and capitalist decomposition. Chavez and the highest civil and military executives always underestimated the weight of the world economic crisis while the price of oil remained high. At this time the repositories of state funds had not yet been emptied by the country's new proprietors and the state still had the capacity for debt and borrowing. Already in 2012, when Chavez was still in power and the price of a barrel of oil went over $100, shortages and lack of provision of different food and basic goods had begun. The reduction in the price of oil of 2013 aggravated the situation. Since then the government of Maduro, like other oil-producing countries of the region (Ecuador, Columbia, Mexico, etc.), have used the lower price of oil as a pretext to accentuate the deterioration of the living conditions of the population and the workers. With the intent of giving a "socialist" colour to these measures, the Maduro regime opened up an ideological campaign, which continues up to today, which claims that the lower price of oil is due to an "economic war unleashed by 'North American imperialism'" allied to a bourgeois Venezuelan oligarchy whose intent is to attack the "Bolivarian Revolution". However, the world economic crisis and the fall in oil prices are not sufficient in themselves to explain the gravity of the situation in this country. The implementation of the political, social and economic measures required by the "socialist" plan of Chavez, in a context of accelerating  decomposition, has also contributed to such an outcome.    

Contrary to other governments of the left allied to Chavism (Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.), Chavez developed a Stalinist-type totalitarian state capitalist model. He progressively took measures to weaken and exclude private sectors of capital and the old state bureaucracy which controlled the institutions and enterprises of the state. Through expropriations in industry and agriculture, nationalisations and economic measures (price controls among others) the productive infrastructure of the country was dismantled. This economic policy, as in other countries where similar measures have been applied, created distortions in the economy which added to an irresponsible management of state funds and an unrestrained corruption which led the country into an economic collapse.

The previous state bureaucracy was replaced by a new hegemonic caste in which the military predominated but which had no experience in economic and administrative management. The Chavist nomenklatura practically abandoned economic management by the state and squandered the national resources, using it to get rich and create networks of corruption which amassed immense fortunes which were deposited in fiscal havens, showing the pathetic degree of decomposition achieved by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.

The left-populist character of the Chavist project, used to enrol masses of the poor and proletarians which served as its electoral base, transformed social programmes (called "missions") under the flag of "Bolivarian Socialism" with the pretended aim of "overcoming poverty". Maduro followed the same economic policy as his mentor by keeping up public spending, a determinant factor in sharpening the economic crisis which exists today in Venezuela[iii].

The high costs involved in the development of an imperialist policy aiming to make Venezuela a regional power within a multi-polar world which led to rivalry with the United States and other countries in the region. With this aim it developed a strategy of "selling cheap" to other regional countries, principally those of the Caribbean and Central America; it increased the purchase of armaments; it dedicated considerable resources to develop means of international communications for intervening in different countries of the region and the world with the aim of supporting parties and groups of the left opposed to the interests of the United States and other powers.

In order to strengthen its populist policy, on many occasions Chavez advanced the idea that his government wasn't going to "repress the poor who stole by necessity". On this basis, the regime developed a policy of impunity in certain areas: "laissez-faire" towards law-breaking by armed groups made up of lumpenised elements and formed by his own regime; he reduced police surveillance mainly through the night leaving the population at the mercy of bands of thugs who imposed their own laws. In this way, he used and accentuated the level of social decomposition which already existed before his arrival to power by implementing a curfew at night and part of the day which wasn't imposed by direct state terror but by the terror sown by lumpen elements. This policy multiplied the rate of criminality which made Venezuela[iv] one of the most dangerous countries on the planet; and this situation also contributed to the increase in the rate of emigration.

Chavism fashioned a state subject to decomposition: a gangster state dominated by lumpen behaviour  within sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie and the new "Bolivarian" bourgeoisie; it has established a state run by new mullahs who don’t pay the external or internal debts which they have contracted with their capitalist partners, and which also don’t pay past contracts with the workers through collective agreements. Lying and impunity are the norm within this state. Chavism, aided by the very mechanisms of the democratic bourgeoisie, has implanted a real mafia at the heart of the Venezuelan state.

The crisis in Venezuela: an international crisis

The Chavez project sees itself as a regional and global project. It's fed by the fact that since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, the world has ceased to be ruled by the two great imperialist poles, the United States and the USSR: the world has become multi-polar. The regime developed with a vision of being able to constitute one of these regional poles by profiting from the strategic regional position of Venezuela in South America,  due to its oil reserves and the weakening of the United States as a world power. With this objective, Chavism developed an aggressive imperialist policy at the regional level, a policy  of confrontation with the United States and other countries of the region. For this it has used oil as a weapon to play a role in regional geopolitics, principally aiming at the Caribbean and Central America. Its policy is fed by a radical anti-Americanism and for that it has looked for alliances with other governments of the region, as well as at the global level, who reject the imperialist policies of the United States.

With this aim, it has tightened links with Cuba which has need of oil and capital after the collapse of the imperialist bloc around the USSR. With Cuba it has formed the group of countries of ALBA to compete with ALCA[v] which is promoted by the United States; it has strengthened its alliance with Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, the Indigenists of the Cordillere (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador), the Sandinista Movement of Nicaragua, etc. It has largely opened the door to Chinese capital, to Russia (mainly through armaments purchases), to Iran and even to the representatives of the so-called "Arab Socialism" of North Africa and the Middle East.

Thus, as Cuba did some years ago, Chavez developed a strategy of posing as the victim of the United States, which is permanently accused of wanting to expropriate Venezuelan Oil and conspiring against the "Bolivarian revolution" since the time of George Bush. In effect, since the beginnings of the Obama administration, the United States has developed a policy against the Chavez regime and against its influence in the region through the OAS[vi], which hadn't been able to obtain advantageous conditions. However, Obama was able to weaken the influence of governments of the left in the region (through its strategy of "the fight against corruption and drug-trafficking") which is shown in the changes towards governments of the right in Brazil and Argentina and the policy of rapprochement with Cuba.

Before the latest US election and after the triumph of Trump, there was a period of several months of blockage of the US policy in the region, concentrating mainly on the question of the construction of a wall on the Mexican border; during this period there wasn't a clear position from the new government towards the situation in Venezuela. In mid-July, before the call from Maduro to vote for a new National Constituent Assembly[vii], the Trump administration again took the initiative in actions against Venezuela through an aggressive policy aimed against the regime by declaring that it would use all means to confront it, including the recourse "to military force if it was necessary", which showed a change in relation to the more prudent policy of Obama. The Maduro government has profited from Trump's declarations and his international unpopularity in order to pose as the victim and try to rally support domestically as well as from the outside.

Today, the regional geopolitical configuration has changed and the influence of Chavism has been significantly weakened: Argentina and Brazil are no longer its allies; it looks like the new government in Ecuador will take up a different policy than its predecessor of Correa who openly supported the Maduro regime. At the same time, important states of the region, like Mexico, Peru and Colombia, have taken a more active part in the region by supporting American policy. The tendency is towards the isolation of the Maduro regime. Much more than the actions of the leaders of these states have been the sanctions of the Trump government for the violation of human rights, narco-traffic and money-laundering. Similarly Spain and the countries of the European Union have pressured for the "return of democracy" to Venezuela. The support of the countries of the OAS is also weakening bit by bit.

Everything seems to indicate that the Maduro regime has no other outcome than to bow to domestic, regional and international pressures. But that's not quite the case. The regime has picked up the challenge: it has profited from the threats of Trump in order to look for international support. Maduro has declared that he was ready to fight "imperialist aggression" and he claims to have concluded military alliances with Russia in order to ensure his defence. Even if it looks difficult for China or Russia to directly intervene in an armed conflict in America's "back-yard", these states have certainly intervened for some years now in support of the Chavez and Maduro regimes through arms supplies, financial aid, provisions, etc. , and through blocking any action of the Security Council of the UN against Venezuela,  all in the name of the "self-determination of the people"

The radicalisation of the Maduro regime is about to create a situation of destabilisation in the whole region through the emigration of Venezuelans to other neighbouring countries. On the other hand, the unpopularity of the Trump administration at the world level could allow radicalised elements of the left, including some partisans of jihadism, to come into Venezuela to support the Maduro regime by perpetrating terrorist actions or supplying the guerrillas.

The situation in Venezuela is unpredictable. The Maduro government has declared that it will use armed force to impose itself and, on the other side, it is possible that sectors of the opposition could again call for demonstrations in the streets, knowing that the government would respond to them with increased repression. All the competing cliques of the bourgeoisie in Venezuela are caught up in a cycle which is inciting them in their strategy of confrontation up to its ultimate consequences. Up to now they have shown that they haven't the will or the capacity to reach a minimum agreement to be able to govern.

Apparently, international pressure has had no effect on the Maduro regime. Worse, it serves him as a pretext to intensify his repression of the opposition and the population in general. An important factor which increases the uncertainty even more is the unpredictable imperialist actions of Trump whose engagement in a unilateral military action would be an aggravating factor of the crisis (in some way similar to his trial of strength between the US and the North Korean regime).

As in other conflicts around the world, it would be the Venezuelan population who pay the costs of military confrontation. Already, it's suffering from a vociferous ideological campaign against "North American imperialism". Anti-Americanism is the scapegoat that the factions of the left use at the global level in order to sow confusion among the population and within the proletariat; that serves them as an alibi to support other, also despotic and imperialist, regimes such as China, North Korea or Cuba. It allows them to mask the imperialist policies of the regimes of the left, like Chavez and Maduro, who, in their turn, impose their own local model of a system of exploitation and reduce the population to conditions of misery that are identical, or even worse, than the regimes of the right.

Chavism: an attack against the living conditions, the combativity and consciousness of the working class

The Chavist project rests both on an ideological attack and on an attack on the living conditions of the proletariat. Like other plans of the capitalist class, the so-called "Socialism of the 21st century" is fed by the pauperisation and the precarious position of the workers. The regime has systematically worked to reduce wages and the social advantages that workers were receiving under contract; it began with the workers of the oil sector and commodity-based primary industries and then moved to the public sector. The social plans of Chavism, used to share out some crumbs to the "people", were principally financed by cuts in the wages and social conditions of the workers under contract. After the death of Chavez, he left a mass of impoverished workers and a greater number of people still more miserable and betrayed, each month receiving less state subsidies. Similarly, on the economic level, Maduro has only impoverished even more workers up to the point that wages and social payments do not even cover basic needs and each month the poor who receive sacks of provisions that the government sells them cheap are less and less numerous, while the members of the Chavist nomenklatura live like lords.

The political bi-polarisation has been a strategy permanently maintained and fed by the Chavist regime up to today; this has constituted a decisive factor whose effects reverberate on all social life and has led to the situation of disorder. Chavez was able to stoke up his policy of bi-polarisation because of the support of the most deprived masses, pariahs excluded from society, who saw in him a new Messiah who would offer them the gifts of a benefactor state as, decades before, the Social-Democratic and Social-Christian parties had offered them. But Chavism needed to dragoon the mass of workers who were constituted during these years behind him, while at the same time he began to put in place a political strategy of division and the bi-polarisation within the Venezuelan working class. Through the ideology of the "Socialism of the 21st Century", he developed an attack against the consciousness, combativity and solidarity within the working class of Venezuela. As the noxious campaign of the world bourgeoisie proclaimed "the death of communism" after the collapse of the Russian bloc, he proposed the building of "Bolivarian Socialism". Chavism, with the help of parties of the left in other countries, principally the Cuban Communist Party, developed a real laboratory of pitfalls against the proletariat: self-management, workers' control, etc., while in an increasing and systematic manner they accentuated the divisions in the ranks of the workers and made the living conditions of the most advanced sectors of the working class more precarious. 

Despite this ideological attack the workers have, since the beginning of the Chavez regime, developed important struggles against the state on their class terrain. But these same workers have been systematically confronted by the unions controlled by Chavism and, when these weren't sufficient, came the repression from the police and military forces (in the same way that preceding governments had done, with the parties now opposed to the regime at their head), or those of armed lumpenised bands formed by Chavism. Up to today there are an incalculable number of expressions of struggle and of discontent of workers from different sectors, but these struggles appear sectoral, atomised and they remain strangled by the political bi-polarisation. This situation has allowed the petty-bourgeoisie to play a political role, from its radicalised sectors on the left, most of which supported Chavez and encouraged greater control by the state, up to those who have openly defended neo-liberal measures.

Because of the gravity of the economic crisis, shortages and lack of supply of basic products and ever-increasing prices, the popularity of the Maduro government has gradually dwindled. This situation was shown in the parliamentary elections of December 2015, in which the opposition largely triumphed and took control of the National Assembly, which represented the most stinging electoral rout that Chavism had received during the course of its sixteen year existence. Since then the political confrontation has sharpened due to the fact that the regime sees itself as under the threat of losing power. Its reaction, like a wounded beast, has been to look for the means to keep itself in power at any price.

For its part, the opposition grouped in the MUD today presents itself as the real defender of the Chavist Constitution of 2000 that it rejected years ago. Like the governing party it presents itself as the real defender of democracy. The two factions fight each other to show who will be the most democratic: everyone knows very well that the slogan "the struggle for democracy" represents a very powerful ideological weapon for the control of the population and of the proletariat, as well as  a key to gaining recognition at the international level.

The two rival bands say to the population that we are at the final stages of the confrontation between the "dictatorship" and "democracy". The reality is that each one of these two cliques defends the dictatorship of capital through democratic republicanism or by the democratic totalitarianism of the Chavist regime. On the other hand the Venezuelan opposition and those of other countries say that the failure of the Maduro government represents the setback of "Castro-communism"; and they advocate neo-liberal policies with a human face, that's to say the old recipe of implementing "capitalism with a human face". They say that Maduro has set up a "communism" similar to that of Cuba. Left Communism has shown since the beginning of the so-called "Cuban revolution" that the regime in this country for more than 50 years is a Stalinist-styled state capitalist regime. Maduro and his allies are trying to apply the same model with their "Socialism of the 21st century".

The millions of people who are today protesting against the Maduro regime show the indignation, despair and anger of a population which doesn't want to just "survive" in such miserable conditions. Although many of them have illusions in the proposals of the MUD, many others are calling for demonstrations in order to express their discontent, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are partisans of this bourgeois oppositional regroupment; this is expressed mainly through the resistance movements formed mainly by young people, many of whom have been cowardly assassinated by the regime's forces of repression or by thugs in the pay of the regime, while others have been imprisoned after being taken to military tribunals. Hypocritically, the leaders of the MUD present these as "martyrs for the democratic cause", seeking to use them as cannon-fodder with the aim of imposing their neo-liberal capitalist model which also offers no solution to the crisis hitting the population.

What is the perspective?

The dangerous and difficult situation in Venezuela is the expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system as a whole which is expressed in a caricatured manner in this country. Different ruling factions in this region and the wider world are today pointing the finger at the Maduro regime as an example of how not to run a government. In the present situation of capitalism in Venezuela there are no guarantees about what could happen; a handful of spiteful and lumpenised adventurers, whether of the right or left, could assume control of the state and submit the population, including the proletariat, to chaos and barbarity. In fact, the United States, the main economic and military power on the planet, has as its Commander-in Chief, a populist adventurer of the right whose sole difference with Chavez is that the latter proclaims himself of the left and that he puts forward an imperialist policy marked by "amateurism".

No nation can escape the effects of decomposition, in which the future is seriously threatened by wars, poverty and famine. This impasse is the consequence of a situation in which the two principal classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, have not been capable of imposing their respective "solutions": either humanity submits to a new world war on the side of the bourgeoisie, or a world communist revolution in the perspective of the working class. Such an impasse plunges society into a growing loss of reference and a decay of the whole social body.

Venezuela, like Syria or other countries of the Middle East, Asia or Africa are the mirror in which is reflected what we, the proletarians of the world, have to see; they show us what capitalism has in store if we don't finish with this system. For some years now decomposition has been knocking at the door of the most developed countries of Europe, Asia and America through the advance of terrorism.

The populist leftist regime put in place by Chavez is the demonstration that neither the left of capital, nor its right, nor the most extreme sections of these bourgeois expressions, can represent any sort of escape from the exploitation and barbarity of capitalism: from the right to the left both must be rejected and consciously fought by the proletariat and by the minorities of the class who are fighting against the existing order. The "Socialism of the 21st century" and the so-called "Bolivarian revolution" have nothing to do with socialism. They are one and the same patriotic and nationalist movements. As defenders of socialism, we stand before everything with the spirit of the Communist Manifesto, the first political programme of the proletariat put forward in 1848, which says that "the proletarians have neither country nor national interests to defend".

We must be conscious of the strength of the working class because it is the producer class whose exploitation produces all social wealth. The indignation of the proletariat and the majority of the Venezuelan population who are fighting for a decent life, impossible under the reign of capitalism, must serve as an encouragement to develop this feeling among the proletarians of the entire world, to become conscious that the proletarian revolution is the sole way out of the barbarity that capitalism is reserving for us all. To finish with this barbarity threatening the whole of humanity, it is necessary to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus, supported by an exploitative minority which increasingly is showing its incapacity to manage and which, day after day, strengthens and imposes its terror on the whole of society. Only through its consciousness and international solidarity can the proletariat put an end to this dramatic situation.

It is a reality of the present time that the world proletariat hasn't the capacity to break this advance of barbarity. However, despite the political bi-polarisation by the factions of the bourgeoisie, whether of the right or the left, there exists in Venezuela and other countries, an immense number of the population, who do not believe that "we are coming out of the crisis". Many of those who march in an honest fashion behind one or the other of these cliques are confronted by the reality that they can see no solution to the situation. Similarly, even if they only represent a minority of the working class, elements exist who are looking for a proletarian perspective faced with the barbarity in which we are living.

It is for that reason that it's urgent that we, as a revolutionary minority of the working class, intervene with the aim of of recovering the revolutionary consciousness and class identity of the proletariat. We must take up the road of the struggle for real communism  like the Bolshevik Party and the Soviets a hundred years ago, protagonists of the first great attempt at the development of the world revolution: the October revolution.

Neither the "Socialism of the 21st century", nor democracy, nor the right populism of Trump or the left populism of Chavez and Maduro.  The proletariat must find its own perspective outside of capitalism by returning to the struggle for its own class interests.

Internacionalismo, section of the International Communist Current in Venezuela, September 25, 2017.

For the most “responsible” factions of the world bourgeoisie, the international upsurge of populism has created a succession of problems and obstacles, not least Brexit and the unpredictable reign of Trump in the USA. In the last few months we have seen some vigorous attempts to stem the populist tide, the most evident expression of which was during the French presidential election last April/May, when weighty international figures like Merkel and Obama, plus the French Socialist Party and others gave their unqualified backing to the pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron, widely seen as the most effective barrier to the populist, anti-EU Front National. However, the underlying social forces generating the populist tide have by no means gone away and its political expressions continue to exert a real weight in bourgeois political life. The result of the general election in Austria – coming soon after the spectacular gains made by the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland  in Germany - provides further confirmation that populism is much more than a political bubble and expresses a real dysfunction at the roots of capitalist society. 

The rise of Sebastian Kurz

The winner of the recent general elections (Nationalratswahlen) in Austria has been acclaimed the new young shooting star of European politics: the Christian Democrat Sebastian Kurz. His “List Kurz – new ÖVP“ gained 31,49% of the votes, followed by the Social Democratic SPÖ with 26,86% and the right wing populists of the FPÖ with 25,97%. For the first time ever, an ÖVP leader won a general election against an SPÖ chancellor in office. It is also only the second time since the beginning of the chancellorship of the famous Bruno Kreisky in 1971 that the ÖVP won more votes at a general election than the SPÖ.

Sebastian Kurz has been mandated by the Austrian president Van Der Bellen to form a new government. If he succeeds, he will become Europe’s youngest head of government at the age of 31. Kurz is being compared with the new French president Emmanuel Macron, not only on account of his youthfulness, but also because he – like his French counterpart – waged a successful electoral campaign essentially around his own person and his own “charisma”.

But despite these similarities, there are also important differences between these two politicians. Whereas Macron created a kind of new political movement around himself (République En Marche), Kurz used the existing structure of the ÖVP for his electoral campaign. How he did this was very different from the way Donald Trump in the United States more or less hijacked the Republican Party for his own purposes. The once proud ÖVP, one of the two main parties of the Austrian state throughout the post-war epoch, gladly accepted being degraded to the status of electoral helping hands of its leader. They did so because Kurz successfully presented himself to them as the only hope they had not only of getting more votes than the Social Democrats, but also of avoiding being overtaken electorally by the populist FPÖ. In other words, what motivated the ÖVP was not a political strategy in the interests of the national bourgeois state (which was clearly one of the motives of Macron and his supporters), but the preservation of the particular interests, the influence and privileges of the ÖVP.

The gamble paid off. During the summer Kurz, who was the leader of the ÖVP as the junior partner in the social democratic-led coalition under the SPÖ chancellor Christian Kern, actively provoked a governmental crisis and the calling of new general elections. In fact, Kurz had prepared this coup step by step over a period beginning in the autumn of 2015 with the “refugee crisis”. Originally, the Kern government had supported the so-called “welcoming” policy of the German chancellor Angela Merkel. This was not difficult, since the role of Austria consisted mainly in waving the refugees on through from the Balkans route to Germany. All of a sudden Kurz, who obviously has a finely developed sensitivity for changes of mood within the electorate, initiated a radical reversal in the refugee policy of the Austrian government: the closing of the Austrian border, active assistance to Hungary and other states in sealing the Balkan Route. Kurz profited from his role as foreign minister in promoting this new policy, which became associated with his person. The refugee question was and is entangled under capitalism with foreign policy interests. The end of Austrian support for Merkel’s refugee policy introduced an element of confrontation into the relations of Vienna with Germany, and also with Turkey. Berlin wants Turkey, and also the North African coastal states, to play a leading role in preventing refugees from fleeing to Europe. In this way, it also hopes to gain in influence in these countries, and to counteract the influence of such powers as Russia or China there. By concentrating on closing the Balkan Route, Austria, under the impulsion of Kurz, is more determinedly pursuing its own interests on the Balkan peninsula, which are antagonistic to those of Turkey. However, on this point, the thinking of Kurz may have been somewhat short-sighted (in German: kurz-sichtig). Unlike Hungary, for example, Austria is not only a neighbour of the Balkans, it is also an Alpine country. With the closing of the Balkans route, the refugees started arriving instead from northern Africa through Italy into Austria. By closing one gap, Kurz helped to open another. In response to this, the government in Vienna announced the mobilisation of the army (there was even talk of setting tanks in motion) against half-starved and helpless men, women and children. Government circles in Rome were dismayed by this sudden deployment of the Austrian military close to its border with Italy. But even Austrian diplomats began to express consternation about Austria, in response to the refugee question, worsening relations with its two most important neighbours: Germany in the north and Italy in the south. However, there was no stopping Kurz, since his foreign policy against refugees managed to stir up a wave of nationalism among parts of the population. Among the ingredients of this nationalism were, alongside fear of refugees and Islamophobia, old anti-German and anti-Italian resentments which suddenly re-surfaced.

But above and beyond the refugee question, Kurz increasingly began to put in question the coalition government itself, condemning stagnation and blockages which he himself was partly helping to cause. In the end, all involved were relieved when the coalition was brought to an end and new elections called. Already when in government, Kurz had begun his electoral campaign, developing the rhetoric of an oppositional leader. He profited from his youth to present himself as the champion of a revolt against “the establishment” to which he belongs. His success with these ploys is all the more striking when you consider the failure of the neighbouring Bavarian CSU in Germany under Horst Seehofer, who as a member of the Grand Coalition in Berlin tried to profile itself as an opposition force in the refugee question. The CSU lost more votes at the recent German general elections than any of the other parties of the government coalition. At this level, Kurz seems to have something else in common with Macron: a highly developed ability to win and to wield political power. But whereas, for Macron, power is not only an end in itself, but a means of realising a political programme for the national capital, it is not yet at all clear what Kurz wants to achieve. Apart from the vague promise to lower taxes, and making Austria a safer and more homely place... nobody seems to know what he intends to do. Does he know himself?

The consolidation of the populist FPÖ

Alongside the “List Kurz” the main winner of this election is the right wing populist FPÖ. Under its leader Heinz-Christian Strache (a rhetorical talent) it almost attained the record score achieved by the “Freiheitlichen” (“The Free”) under the notorious Jörg Haider around a quarter of a century before. It also obtained almost as many votes as the leading party of the Austrian state for many decades, the SPÖ. Today, the FPÖ is one of the most experienced, best organised and established populist right wing parties in Europe. It succeeds in avoiding many of the mistakes of similar parties in other EU countries. For instance, it strongly criticised Madame Le Pen and her Front National in France for toying with the idea of leaving the European Union or the Euro Zone. Instead, the FPÖ calls on Austria to play a leading role in making the EU “more a Union of Fatherlands”, and in making the Euro a more “Nordic” currency (getting rid of Greece and possibly other southern members). It also condemned as ridiculous the proposal of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to have the Koran forbidden. None of this means that the positions and members of the FPÖ are any less “extremist” than in the days of Jörg Haider. But it should be recalled that Haider, before he died in a car crash, split off from the FPÖ and founded his own party, the BZÖ (now no longer in parliament). The FPÖ of today is not the same as the Haider FPÖ. It is more professional, more “market liberal”, and above all a current has disappeared which under Haider played a prominent role, the “Deutschnationalen”. This was the current which, partly out of nostalgia for the Third Reich, expressed sympathy with the idea of a “re-unification” of Austria with Germany. This option is at present anathema to the main factions of the Austrian (and also the German) bourgeoisie. In the past quarter of a century, the FPÖ has succeeded in making itself more acceptable both to the Austrian and to the European bourgeoisie. When Jörg Haider’s FPÖ formed a government with the ÖVP in 2000, there were big protest demonstrations on the streets of Austria and Europe, and the European Union imposed a kind of diplomatic semi-isolation on its Austrian member. Today the situation could hardly be more different. Not only the ÖVP, but also the SPÖ have signalled their readiness to govern with the FPÖ; there are no objections to be heard from the other European states, and so far no big protests either.

The present success of the FPÖ is another confirmation of the failure of the policy of the former ÖVP Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who justified forming a government in 2000 with Jörg Haider with the argument that involving the populists in power would rob them of their anti-establishment nimbus. Now the FPÖ is not only as strong as ever, it has been able to maintain its image as a protest party. It has partly learnt this at the provincial and regional levels, and partly, as the FPÖ themselves say, from the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. Although Orban has been the head of the Hungarian government for seven years now, he still partly succeeds in presenting himself as an oppositional force: in opposition to “Brussels”, to “finance capital” or to the “Open Society Foundation” of his favourite enemy, the Hungarian-American hedge fund billionaire George Soros. In fact, the “anti-establishment” reputation of the likes of the FPÖ is largely based on their readiness to advocate – and implement – measures which contradict some interests of the “elite”, and even the best interests of the national capital as a whole, but which are “popular” among parts of the electorate. The “business as usual” reaction of the bourgeoisie in Austria and in the rest of Europe does not mean they now think the FPÖ have become a reliable representative of their interests. It reflects in the first instance a certain resignation in face of the inevitable. Unable to resolve the problem of “populism”, which is a product of the rotting of its own social system, the bourgeoisie has to make the best of it, limiting as much as possible its negative effects.

The present hobby horse of the FPÖ is that Austria should “join” the Visegrad-Group, an informal regroupment of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, originally formed to counter the overweight of the older western members within the European Union institutions. No more than a loose coordination, it has gained a new impetus and prominence through the present refugee crisis and through the rise of populism in Europe. Hungary and Poland already have right wing “populist” governments. The ANO of Andrej Babis (known as “the Donald Trump of the Czech Republic – in fact he is Slovakian) has just won the elections in Prague. All four countries are in the forefront in refusing refugees and Muslims into their countries. After his electoral victory, Babis declared that he is counting on Austria and Sebastian Kurz joining what he sees as an “anti-liberal” front within the EU. The “Visegrad movement”, as it is now being called, tends to give populism an additional dimension by establishing a policy of “popular provocation” as part of relations between European Union governments. But the FPÖ has another provocation up its sleeve: it wants to “re-pose” the question of South Tirol, presently a northern Italian province which many in the FPÖ want to see return to Austria. Depending on whether or not the FPÖ joins the government, and how far it intends to go on this question, this could amount to the first putting in question of a border between two members of the European Union (the rule is that the EU does not allow membership of countries which dispute borders with EU countries).

The crisis of the existing bourgeois party political system

The partisans of political stability, and not only within Austria itself, would have preferred it if the previous coalition under Christian Kern could have continued its work. The SPÖ and even the ÖVP still have the reputation of being the two most responsible and reliable state parties. Between the two of them, they would have a stable majority to form a new coalition now, this time under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz. But precisely this option appears in many ways as the most problematic. Because Kurz campaigned against the Grand Coalition, not only the votes for the FPÖ, but also those for the ÖVP appear as votes against the Grand Coalition. To ignore this would mean putting the political leadership of the country in blatant contradiction with its own democratic ideology. The dilemma of the Austrian bourgeoisie today is that the viable alternatives to a Grand Coalition both involve having the FPÖ in government.

A few weeks before the Austrian elections, the German bourgeoisie, at its general election, was able to respond to the rise of the right wing “populist” Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) by creating a new six party constellation in parliament. The option of bringing to an end the Grand Coalition (Christian and Social Democrats) in Berlin was opened up by bringing the liberal FDP back into parliament. If the establishment of a so-called Jamaika-Coalition between the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens (presently under negotiation) succeeds, the AfD in Germany will not only be kept at arm’s length from governmental responsibility, it will also be prevented (by the SPD) from being the biggest opposition party in the new Bundestag. No such precautions were taken in Austria. On the contrary. The electoral campaign there was dominated by a brutal power struggle between the SPÖ and the ÖVP to the extent that Kern and Kurz seemed completely oblivious to anything else. The contest between the two took on such scandalous proportions (blatant defamations and intrigues) that the FPÖ (normally the provocateur par excellence) was able to remain calmly on the sidelines, presenting itself on its best behaviour. Under these circumstances, nobody paid much attention to the fact that the Greens (the only established party maintaining the “refugees welcome” slogan) were being buried beneath the monstrously xenophobic electoral campaign of all three of the bigger parties, and were splitting on account of a power struggle within their ranks. The result was that the Greens are no longer represented in the new parliament. This is a party which the Austrian bourgeoisie had been trying for years to encourage as an additional governmental option, as a possible alternative to the FPÖ.

After World War I, Vienna was still one of the great centres of cultural activity and of learning in Europe. During those years, one of the main centres of intellectual life there was the regular public, one man dialogue of the most celebrated figure of Viennese culture at the time. This person was not Sigmund Freud (the father of psychoanalysis) or Robert Musil (one of the creators of the modern novel) or Arnold Schönberg (who revolutionised modern “classical” music). It was a man called Karl Kraus. Kraus was able, on the basis of an analysis of changes in the local Vienna slang, or the way headlines in the sensationalist press, or death announcements were formulated, to detect what was going on in society – and not only in Austria. He was like someone looking at a single raindrop and seeing reflected there the whole surrounding landscape in every detail. Instead of ignoring these details, instead of getting lost in them, he strove to unlock the general truths contained in the more significant specificities. It is clear that the analysis of the elections in Austria today can also help us to better understand the world political situation as a whole. Austria is one of the countries in Europe where contemporary right-wing populism developed earliest and most. Today the FPÖ is on a par with the two traditional established parties in Austria. Like the Brexiteers in Britain, the Trumpists in the United States or the Independentists in Catalonia, they are ready to do things which mobilise people behind them, even when these things sometimes contradict the interests of capital and even their own particular interests.

Perhaps the most striking specificity of Austria, which favours the development of populism there, and which at the same time represents a general tendency in contemporary capitalism, is the decline of its party political apparatus. The SPÖ and the ÖVP have had such an undisputed monopoly of party political power and privileges for over three quarter of a century now, that they are for the most part more concerned with protecting their own vested interests than with doing their job for capital. They are also increasingly discredited in the eyes of a significant part of the population. It is in relation to this question that Sebastian Kurz has put forward something like a political project of his own: “Rationalising”, “cutting down to size” the apparatus of the ÖVP. If he is serious about this, it will entail party members losing their privileges and even their jobs. This would inevitably create new conflicts, this time within the ÖVP itself. On account of its inability to put forward a perspective for society as a whole, the ruling class has enormous difficulties in renewing its party political apparatus. With the recent elections, Austria seems to be sinking deeper into the quagmire of its political crisis in the context of capitalist decomposition.

Steinklopfer. 23.10.2017