The riots that took place in the Lozells area of Birmingham during one weekend in October were a further reminder of the threat posed to the working class by the rotting of the capitalist system.

Fuelled by rumours that a young black immigrant had been raped by 3 Asian youths, the tensions between black and Asian 'communities' rose to the point where for several nights clashes took place between black and Asian youths. An IT worker - Isaiah Young-Sam - was on his way home from the cinema when he was stabbed to death. Another man was shot dead not far from the scene the following evening. The rape allegations have so far been unproved, and it seems likely that they were started by rival shopkeepers desperate to put each other out of business.

What led to this situation? It is important to see that the collapse into mob violence is not an isolated event. For many decades the inner city areas of Britain - as in any other country, 'developed' or 'developing' - have seen high unemployment and deprivation. The economic crisis in the 1980s hit these areas hardest and the lack of perspective offered by capitalism has led to proletarians from the younger generation taking out their frustrations in confrontations with the police that offer no way forward. The riots currently sweeping France have exactly the same origin. However, the deepening of capitalist decomposition has added more sinister elements. The remorseless rise of gangsterism and drug-related crime – combined with the strengthening of racism and religious fundamentalism - is eroding away at the basic elements of class solidarity, leading to greater levels of irrational and anti-social behaviour.

Some forces on the bourgeois political spectrum are actively stirring up these divisions. The desecration of a Muslim graveyard in Birmingham in the wake of the riots was claimed by a group calling itself ‘Black Nation’; in fact it was probably the work of fascists out to sharpen racial divisions. But the reaction of the ‘official’ and ‘democratic’ sectors of the ruling class is equally dangerous. They preach multi-culturalism, anti-racism, solidarity between ‘communities’. But real solidarity can’t be built up by the working class losing itself in a patchwork of religious, racial or national identities. Real solidarity means defending the common interests of all the exploited against the interests of the exploiters.

Spencer, 5/11/05.

Decadent world capitalist system – the real breeding ground of increasing wars and terrorism

Working masses in shopping mood on the eve of the biggest festival of the year in Delhi, the capital of the Indian bourgeoisie witnessed with horror and shock the same barbarous repetition of heinous crime. Terrorist bombs exploded almost simultaneously in two crowded market places and in a bus stop in the evening of 29th October. According to preliminary reports 60 persons including children have died so far in this heart rending, grossly abominable act of the ever rising heights of barbarism. About two hundred persons have been injured, some of them very seriously. Common masses of people have been terrorized and panic stricken.

As usual the prime minister and the political leaders of the Indian bourgeoisie are pointing the accusing finger at the terrorist groups based in neighboring Pakistan. Thus they are trying to fully utilize this inhuman criminal act to score a point over their nearest imperialist rival on the one hand and trying to mobilize the working class and the exploited people for the defense of their democracy and national integrity on the other. The bourgeoisie is also trying its best to project itself as their real protector.

Victims of this terrorist attack are not the Bushes, Blairs, Putins, Chiracs, Monmohans or Musharofs but the working class and exploited masses of people as everywhere in the world whether it is in the World Trade Center or the trains in Madrid, or the London tube or Beslan school or streets of Bangladesh, or Bali or Sharm el Sheikh or Mumbai or Delhi. They are the principal victims of cyclones, tsunami, hurricane Katrina, floods and earthquakes. These very people have died and are dying in their thousands in the imperialist world wars and the ever increasing imperialist wars of today and their latest incarnation the ‘war against terrorism’.

Political leaders of the left hand or right hand of capital (all the leftist and rightist parties without any exception) are never lacking in a colorful show of sympathy and concern for the sufferings of the affected people. Here also the prime minister and other ministers and political leaders are full to the brim with ‘love, sympathy and concern’. World leaders from Bush, Blair, Putin to Musharof have expressed their ‘profound’ grief and sympathy for the victims and their families and condemned this terrorist attack in the strongest words. The Indian prime minister has described it as ‘dastardly acts’ and ‘nefarious designs of terrorist elements’. They have denounced it as a crime against humanity. This latest terrorist act is, of course, a most barbarous crime against humanity. But these very self righteous leaders and the capitalist states and governments they lead are the most powerful, organized and inhuman terrorists and they are directly associated with the most barbarous massacre of hundreds of thousands of the masses of common innocent people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Afganistan, Serbia, Bosnia, Chechnia, Rwanda etc., in the pursuit of sordid imperialist interest of the national capital they have pledged to defend. It is perfectly like the pot calling the kettle black. They have no other way but to resort to more barbarous killing in the present international situation of intensifying imperialist conflict. They cannot but defend their capitalist class interest through the ideological weapon of democracy, freedom, national liberation, integrity and defense. They are all very busy in focusing the attention of the masses of working class and exploited people on their humanitarian credentials. All this mystification, they believe, is indispensable for the existence of the decadent capitalist system. This political necessity is in essence at the root of their relief and rescue work which they can not but resort to because in its total absence their very survival will be at stake.

Their real concern is never the protection of the working class and exploited people. But it is in essence the protection of profit, the system of capitalist exploitation and repression and those at the helm of the capitalist state. Their sole concern is the protection of the interest of national capital or bourgeoisie. This is why they are sending hundreds of thousands of workers in uniform to massacre each other in imperialist wars and intensifying attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class and repressing the working class movements with brutal police and military attacks everywhere in the world. A few months back the struggling Honda workers in the vicinity of Delhi were most barbarously repressed. The ‘humanitarian’ leaders turn into savage barbarians whenever confronting the struggle of the working class against exploitation and repression. This barbarian reality of the ‘humanitarian leaders’ were fully exposed in the railway strike of 1974 and in the Swadeshi cotton mill strike in Kanpur in mid eighties. This was the case in the bloody suppression of the Paris commune of 1871, the Berlin insurrection of 1919, encirclement and counterrevolutionary struggle for the suppression of the proletarian revolution in Russia after October 1917. These crusaders against terrorism are always busy inventing newer and newer repressive measures to terrorize the working class people more and more. They have taken and are taking full advantage of every terrorist act to strengthen further the state repressive machinery to make it capable to crush any attempt of the working class and exploited masses of people to liberate themselves for ever from the stranglehold of any exploitation and repression.

All capitalist states themselves are terrorist no. 1 and each of them utilizes to the fullest possible extent the services of terrorist groups and organizations everywhere in the world. But each of them blame others for terrorist attacks within its national border. The US bourgeoisie, the pioneer in the war against terrorism discovered, trained and equipped Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda, the most dreadful terrorist organization of these days. Bin Laden was a hero and freedom fighter when he served the imperialist interest of the US bourgeoisie against that of the Russian. The CIA has resorted to innumerable terrorist attacks to assassinate other world political leaders who refused to toe the US line. The intelligence agencies of each and every capitalist country do the same heinous barbarous acts. The Indian bourgeoisie is not and can never be an exception. What is its RAW ( research and analysis wing) doing? Is it practicing Gandhi’s non violence? No, no state in a class divided society can be non violent. RAW has been specially created for counter intelligence and subversive activities using the services of crime syndicates in enemy territories. There is every possibility of its involvement in the terrorist explosions in various parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh in the same way as the ISI may be involved in the terrorist attacks in various parts of India. In these days of increasing crisis and imperialist conflict for survival, the bourgeois ruling cliques of each and every country without any exception, can not but resort to all possible sorts of terrorist means including war whenever possible, against its rival. The Indian bourgeoisie in the same way as the Pakistani bourgeoisie can not escape this material compulsion whatever noble and humanitarian appearance they may try to project.

The material conditions of decadent capitalism, the ceaseless intensification of social contradictions and conflicts, the increasing unemployment, poverty, misery and spread of inhuman living conditions, slums, ghettoes and desperation of the petit bourgeois masses, provide the very fertile breeding ground of terrorism and capitalist factions and states cannot but utilize fully the services of the terrorist groups.

Thus we are moving towards the future of increasing uncertainty of life and livelihood everywhere in the world in this phase of decomposition of decadent world capitalism. We have no respite from this so long as this decadent world capitalist system is intact. Our passivity and confusions will accelerate further the uncertainty of our life and livelihood. On the contrary our class combativeness, struggle against the increasing attacks of capital on our livelihood, living and working conditions, revolutionary class consciousness and organization are the only weapons with which we can put an end to the decadent capitalist system, the root of all evils endangering more and more the very existence of the whole human species. So we have to intensify our class struggle refusing disdainfully to be mystified further by the bourgeois ruling cliques in any part of the world and rallied behind any one of them to defend their sordid capitalist imperialist interests. This is the only way to get rid of exploitation and repression , war and terrorism, increasing uncertainty of life and livelihood.

Communist Internationalist, ICC section in India

7th November, 2005

In April 1998, following the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA were insistent: “Let us make it clear that there will be no decommissioning by the IRA”. Yet the process of putting weapons ‘beyond use’ started in October 2001. In July this year, the IRA ordered “an end to the armed campaign. … All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.” Finally, in September, General de Chastelain from the body responsible for checking off weapons against estimates of the IRA’s armoury, declared that “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioning represents the totality of the IRA’s arsenal.” Yet, while Tony Blair spoke of “an important step in the transition from conflict to peace in Northern Ireland”, there has been widespread suspicion, not limited to the ranks of loyalism, that there has not been any real change in the situation.

Has the IRA changed?

In the pages of WR we have always insisted that you could only understand the role of the IRA if you looked beyond Northern Ireland to British imperialism and its relations with other major powers. In particular US imperialism has a long history of manipulating Sinn Féin and the IRA, particularly since the early 1990s and the end of the ‘special relationship’ between the US and Britain. The forms of republican activity involved violence just as much as pressure in the democratic framework for the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Whether bombing in London or Manchester, standing in parliamentary elections or sitting in Stormont, the IRA/Sinn Féin has acted as an arm of US imperialism, to which Britain has responded with conventional means as well as through the unionist parties and loyalist paramilitaries.

As with any other capitalist force, both ‘peaceful’ and violent means can be used in the same cause. The British government rules with a combination of repression and democratic ideology. Similarly Sinn Féin/ the IRA have used brute force as well as nationalist rhetoric to maintain their position. They continue to put forward the demand for a United Ireland even though it’s never going to be brought about by the limited forces of Irish republicanism, and would require the deployment of the forces of a major imperialism such as the US or Germany to achieve it. The only alternative route was shown in World War Two when Churchill offered the prospect of a United Ireland if the Irish state abandoned its neutrality.

However, while not being distracted by the means used by Irish republicanism, the question remains: has the IRA changed, or, rather, do the criticisms made by leading US figures over the murder of Robert McCartney and last year’s Northern Bank robbery indicate that American use of Sinn Féin and the IRA has changed? In WR 283 we said that “If US rebukes to Sinn Féin prove to be more than passing … it will be because US imperialism is using other means to pursue its interests.”

As things stand there has been no further significant evidence pointing toward US dissatisfaction with Sinn Fein. In the same way that British governments have often criticised the terrorist activity of loyalist paramilitaries, while at the same time encouraging them and controlling them through its agents, a little criticism of the IRA from time to time is to be expected from the US. The IRA’s ‘total decommissioning’ is designed to make the republicans look responsible and put on further pressure for the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Predictably, Paisley’s DUP has criticised the whole process as being very dubious, with no photographic evidence, suspicious witnesses, no indication of how weapons were destroyed and not even a hint of an inventory. It’s also clear that any re-armament could be undertaken rapidly. So both the US and Britain still seem to be using their various forces as they have done previously. 

Riots, assassinations and organised crime

Northern Ireland therefore remains a focus for the imperialist clashes between Britain and the US. It would be wrong to think, just because most paramilitary groups are on cease-fire, and that there haven’t recently been the spectacular shootings and bombings like those that hit the headlines in the 1970s and 80s, that life in Northern Ireland is the same as anywhere else in the UK.

For a start the paramilitaries on either side have not disappeared. There has recently been the campaign of the UVF (still officially recognised and either allowed or encouraged in its actions) trying to wipe out the LVF with a series of killings. There was the IRA’s offer to kill those responsible for the McCartney murder. Punishment beatings continue. September’s riots can’t just be dismissed as loyalist protests as they did show the frustration existing in parts of the population. The population of Northern Ireland didn’t need May’s report by the Independent Monitoring Commission to tell them about paramilitary involvement in drug dealing, car hijacks, armed robberies, kidnapping, extortion, money laundering, tobacco and fuel smuggling, security and taxi businesses, all alongside the continuation of paramilitary policing. A new investigation has been initiated into the activities of an estimated 200 gangs engaged in ‘organised crime’ in Northern Ireland. And still the paramilitary groups, mostly ‘on ceasefire’, continue recruiting and training …

None of these things are related to whether or not there’s a normal political process underway in Northern Ireland but to the period of decomposition that engulfs capitalist society. The ruling class can’t offer any future perspective for peace or security in Ireland or anywhere else. The electoral drift from the SDLP and the ‘moderate’ unionists to Sinn Féin and the DUP shows the gradual discrediting of the centre ground and the shift towards parties of open conflict. But while the bourgeoisie is not able to offer the resolution of any problems within capitalist society, the perspective offered by the development of workers’ struggles is recognised by very few. In Ireland the labels of Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Republican are still taken on by workers, with only rare evidence of any sense of the need to unite in the defence of their class interests. As long as it remains divided, the working class of Northern Ireland will continue to live under the shadow of conflict between different factions of the bourgeoisie.

Car 4/11/5

Valley of death

Kashmir is known as the heaven on earth in popular parlance. The recent earthquake in the morning of eighth October-2005 has turned this heaven into a hell and valley of death. The earthquake measured 7.6 on the Richter scale and had its epicenter in a place 100 km away from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The north western part of Pakistan has been badly affected, but both the Pakistan occupied and the Indian occupied parts of Kashmir have been worst affected. According to the defense ministry spokesman of Pakistan “this is the worst earthquake in recent times”. Thousands of people have died, more thousands have been injured and several millions have been rendered homeless. Both the governments of Pakistan and India are not in a position to put the correct figures and the figures of casualties and homeless people are being increased with every passing day, reflecting the sheer inefficiency, inability to reach the devastated areas and the victims, and the insensitivity of both ruling cliques in both the capitalist states. The latest (up to 25th October) number of those killed in the wake of the quake is eighty thousand according to a report in The Statesman of 26th October 05. The same report says that 3.3 million people have been rendered homeless. The injured far outnumber the dead. More than 1500 persons are reported to have died in the Indian occupied part of Kashmir. More than a hundred thousand people have been rendered homeless there.

Not quakes but decadent capitalism is the real killer

The decadent capitalist system killed 20 million people in the 1st World War. It killed another 60 million in the 2nd World War. The democratic US imperialist superpower killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not for victory in the ongoing war but to strengthen itself strategically for the inevitable imperialist conflict of the future. Millions more have been killed and are being killed in all parts of the world in the ‘peace period’ and the period of the ‘new world order’ by all the state and non state agents of the world capitalist system. This killing and massacre is still not only going on unabated but is increasing more and more with each passing day.

But the explosion of the fury of the forces of nature are not killers in that sense. The inability of the social forces to protect people is solely responsible for the social disaster, death and devastation in the wake of the explosion of nature’s fury. Today mankind has the requisite knowledge, technology, means, materials, machines to build earthquake resistant structures. But the sole question is: who will build those structures? Are the majority of people living in the earthquake prone zones able to purchase those structures? Is a handsome profit ensured in constructing those structures? Have the capitalist governments the necessary political will and resources to shoulder that social responsibility? Is it or can it be in any case the priority for any capitalist state or government in this phase of decomposition of the world capitalist system? The very emphatic answer to these very natural questions is ‘NO’.

Was the quake totally unpredictable?

The capitalist states and governments in India and Pakistan, as those anywhere in the world, leave no stone unturned to make us believe that the earthquakes are quite unpredictable; and even if predictable, there are few means to prevent or control these quakes. It may be true that quakes are impossible to control, but is it true that they are totally unpredictable? According to a report in The Statesman of 10th October, professor B.L. Dhar of the department of geology of the University of Jammu said after this most serious quake in the last 120 years, “We knew all along that Kashmir was sitting on a high seismic zone and we had been warning about it. The entire Himalayan region is a danger area”. From 6th June, 1828 up till 20th November, 2002 this particular zone has been struck by nine earthquakes, the overwhelming majority of which had measured 6 or more on the Richter scale. So the entire region has a long history of seismic activity, as it is located in the Indian tectonic plate, which is moving north at the rate of 40mm per year.

Why no precautionary measures then?

This area is not only very earthquake prone but it is also very war prone. Since August, 1947 when India and Pakistan came into being as two ‘independent’ imperialist twins, this zone has experienced many small and big imperialist war quakes. This has rendered this zone of scenic natural beauty into a permanent war zone where bloodshed and killing either by the military forces of the two imperialist neighbors or the terrorist outfits trained, aided, equipped and financed by both has been a daily affair. Both these imperialist twins have sent to death many more people than all the earthquakes and landslides in this area since their birth in 1947. Each of these imperialist neighbors has stationed a significant part of their military machinery in this strategically very significant war zone. The ruling clique in each is obsessed with the thought of scoring a point over the other in the intensifying regional and world imperialist conflict, in spite of the latest round of the ‘peace process’. Both have already spent and are spending billions of dollars for no other but strategic gain. Both boast of being nuclear powers and are seriously engaged in boosting striking capability with newer and more powerful missiles. They are busy in procuring new and more powerful means of destruction. They have modernised and are constantly modernising further their respective military machinery. According to defense analysts, the recent military operations to dislodge the Pakistani intruders from the strategic heights in Kargil cost the Indian state about 2.5 billion dollars (Sunday Mid-day , July 4, 1999, page 10). Since April, 1984 the Indian military has spent about 4 billion dollars for control of the Siachen glacier in this war prone zone (idem). It can be easily assessed what a huge amount of monetary resources have been spent and human lives destroyed in all the open or hidden wars up till now by both the imperialist states of India and Pakistan. They have no other way. They are compelled by the material conditions of decadent world capitalism to make this war preparedness and these efforts their no 1 priority. Thus it is impossible for them to set aside sufficient money and political will for social security, building of earthquake, cyclone, tsunami or flood resistant shelters for the masses of working class and exploited people.

Rescue, relief and the most cynical imperialist interests

All the most barbarous killers of humanity are now in the role and guise of saviors. The US bourgeoisie, which wields the greatest forces of death these days, has also come to the field to try to whitewash its anti-Islam image and has been loudly vocal in heralding its humanitarian concern. Other major imperialist powers and killers are not also far behind in this diplomatic, political competition, which repeats what was crudely and shamefully exposed in the relief work in the social disaster in the wake of the tsunami in last December. But the relief in reality has been much less than what is needed to save the survivors and the injured from the expanding jaws of death through increasing cold, hunger, misery and disease. According to Jan Egeland, the Chief UN relief coordinator, “the world isn’t doing enough” (Times of India, 12.10.05 , New Delhi edition). There have been reports of the agitation of the hungry people having no food, shelter and warm clothes in both the Pakistan and India occupied parts of earthquake-affected areas. People were compelled to resort to looting in the absence of timely and adequate relief and rescue.

But the imperialist political, diplomatic maneuvering has been in full swing. The Indian government proposed to its Pakistani counterpart to put in action some of its helicopters for the rescue work in the Pakistani occupied areas. The Pakistan government replied that they would accept the offer provided the helicopters are not flown by Indian pilots, which the Indian government did not agree with. The proposal died in the imperialist, diplomatic wrangling. The result would have been the same had each actor exchanged its role with that of the other. Suspicion about each other’s real motives in the relief and rescue work is the supreme and determining factor. Everybody can guess the inner reality of the high sounding ‘peace process’. Both the governments have behaved in an absolutely inhuman manner in the criminal delay in taking the political decision to open the Line Of Control between the two imperialist neighbors in this quake and war prone zone. According to the chief UN relief coordinator in Geneva “these discussions [between India and Pakistan] are now holding up a bigger operation and they shouldn’t. I would want them to work out a compromise immediately”(idem). Very quick decisions on purely humanitarian grounds and concern could have rescued and saved many people and could have provided the affected people in both sides of the LOC with indispensable relief in time. But sordid imperialist interest and concern of each for diplomatic, political, military and strategic strengthening stood in the way and overwhelmingly outweighed the humanitarian concern.

No safety in decadent capitalism

Decadent capitalism means increasing attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class in every part of the world. This means a constant increase in imperialist open wars and hidden wars through terrorism. Thus it is ceaselessly leading the working class and the exploited masses of people towards increasing uncertainty of life and livelihood. This means also the continuous increase in the inability of all the capitalist states everywhere to invest in activities indispensable for protecting the people from the free play of the fury of the forces of nature. This is inevitable in the evolving material conditions of capitalism. Moreover the activities of the forces of nature and the consequent destructive social impact are often not confined to the artificial national boundaries. Social disaster in the wake of this earthquake cared not a straw for the artificially created and forcibly maintained LOC. Such was the case with the death and devastation in the wake of the tsunami. This has brought to the fore the indispensability of internationally coordinated and centralised efforts to minimise the destruction and maximise the safety of the common people. But it is impossible for the capitalist states in the evolving international situation. Thus all aspects of the safety of the common people are bound to be more and more uncertain in the coming period.

Destruction of capitalism is the only way out

No other class but the class conscious and internationally organised and united working class can put an end to the decadent world capitalist system - the root of all evils confronting and endangering more and more the very survival of humanity. The working class will have to pierce through the humanitarian masks and see the barbarous, murderous essence of the capitalist states and leaders without any exception. It will have to disdainfully refuse to be rallied behind any fraction or political party of capital, leftist or rightist, and the calls of nationalism and democracy, the two most powerful ideological weapons of decadent capitalism. The political parties of capital, no matter whether they are leftist or rightist, extreme or moderate, blame each other for the increasing socio- economic and political problems, but carefully hide the truth: that the decadent capitalist system is the root cause of all ills and evils. They thus try their best to rally the working class behind their counterrevolutionary political projects, to keep them confined to and stuck in the capitalist political terrain. Class struggle against the increasing attacks of capital will have to be intensified and united across all sectors and national borders. This is the only way out of the hell on earth which the capitalist system is creating.

Communist Internationalist, ICC section in India, November 2005

The SPGB in its review of the British Communist Left (Socialist Standard 1213, September 2005) shows that it has understood nothing of the question of revolutionary organisation, even after 100 years of existence. Less than half of the review actually deals with the book, the rest is an attack on the ICC. The article as a whole seeks to dismiss the communist left, yesterday and today, as irrelevant.

The book is judged to be “a largely accurate account of those identified with the left-wing of Bolshevik politics in this era”. However, the notion that the communist left was simply the left of the Bolsheviks ignores the reality that it was the continuation of the tradition of the left in the workers’ movement; a tradition that included but pre-dated the Bolsheviks. This ‘mistake’ allows the SPGB to attribute all evil to the Bolsheviks. Thus the communist left “struggled towards taking up socialist positions” but “made some serious errors during its political evolution too – and continues to do so, largely because of its adherence to the vanguard politics of Leninism”. All the debates in the communist movement, including the differences with the Bolsheviks and the criticism of Lenin’s positions count for nothing. After this the British Communist Left is easily dismissed as being composed merely of “elements in the Socialist Labour Party and the British Socialist Party” and the Workers’ Socialist Federation, which was little more than “a one woman show”. There is no mention of the struggle of the working class itself, of which the communist left was a part and in whose struggles they played an active role. There is no reference to the anti-war activity of John Maclean, which recognised the link between the working class’ defence of its immediate interests and the revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism. There is nothing about the discussions on the unions, parliament and Labour Party. This should be no surprise, because in all of the writings of the SPGB there is no real attempt to understand the working class as a class with a history of its own and positions to defend. Its role is simply to imbibe socialism from the SPGB and to “muster under its banner” (SPGB Declaration of Principles).

The attack on the ICC repeats the same themes. It had “interesting beginnings” but is now “a paranoid sect” [1] [6] that is Leninist and sectarian. Above all, the SPGB is offended by the book’s criticism of its supposed “impeccable record of actively opposing both world wars” and argues that the ICC’s activity is actually the same as the SPGB’s - “i.e denounce it as a capitalist conflict not worth the shedding of a drop of blood”.

The SPGB certainly criticised the war, but Maclean and the “elements in the SLP and BSP” sought to mobilise the working class against it, not through denunciations in the abstract but through intervention into the actual struggle of the working class. This was because they understood that when the class defends its interests, even at the immediate economic level, it opposes the bourgeoisie and stands in the way of the war machine.

The SPGB’s criticism reveals an interesting vision of what it means to be a revolutionary. It is only able to see in the slogan “turn the imperialist war into a world wide civil war against capitalism” a “suicidal slogan”: “if the ICC was ever crazy enough to put its own tactic into operation it would soon cease to exist organisationally”. This is a vision of revolutionaries as something separate from the working class. The whole point of Lenin’s slogan was not for revolutionaries to hurl themselves into kamikaze raids on the capitalist state, but to take part in a growing movement of the class which would - and did - inevitably lead to a general confrontation with the bourgeoisie. As The British Communist Left shows, one of the strengths of the communist left was its criticism of the substitutionist vision which ends up replacing mass activity with the intrigues of a minority. Substitutionism, however, remains a good description of the theory and practice of the SPGB. This can be seen in its central strategy of “the conquest of the powers of government”; that is, the winning of an SPGB majority in parliament “in order that this machinery…may be converted from an instrument of oppression into an instrument of emancipation” (SPGB Declaration of Principles). This means participation in the bourgeoisie’s democratic game and the sending of representatives to parliament ‘on behalf of’ the working class with the aim of the SPGB actually taking power. In practice it is much less than that. It means the SPGB standing token candidates completely separate from the struggles of the working class.

Where the SPGB is notable for its loyalty to parliamentary democracy, the communist left in Britain has been distinguished for its opposition to the parliamentary circus of our exploiters. NA 5/11/5

More than 6,000 vehicles burned: private cars, buses, fire-trucks; dozens of buildings torched: shops, warehouses, workshops, gyms, schools, creches; more than a thousand arrests and already more than a hundred prison sentences passed; several hundred injured - rioters, but also policemen and several dozen fire-fighters; shots fired at the police. Each night since 27 October, hundreds of districts in all regions of the country have been affected. Districts and neighbourhoods which are among the poorest in the land, where, crammed into sinister tower-blocks, live millions of workers and their families, the great majority of them from North Africa and black Africa.

The violence of desperation

What is most striking about these actions, apart from the extent of the damage and violence, is their total absurdity. It’s easy to understand why the youth of the most deprived neighbourhoods, especially those from immigrant families, should want to confront the police. Day by day they have been subjected to crude and intrusive identity controls and body searches, accompanied by racist insults; it’s perfectly logical for them to see the cops as their persecutors. But here the main victims of their violence are their own families or those close to them: younger brothers and sisters who can’t go to their usual school, parents who have lost cars, for which they will get pathetic insurance pay-outs because the cars are old and cheap, and who will now have to shop away from where they live because the nearer and cheaper shops have been burned out. The young people were not smashing up the rich neighbourhoods inhabited by their exploiters, but their own grim suburbs, which will now be all the more uninhabitable than before. In the same way, the injuries inflicted on the fire-fighters, people whose job is to protect others, often at risk to their own lives, are truly shocking, as are the injuries inflicted on the passengers of a bus which was set on fire, or the death of a man of sixty struck by a young man, apparently for trying to stop him from committing some act of violence.

In this sense the depredations committed in the poor neighbourhoods night after night have nothing whatever to do with the struggle of the working class. Certainly, in its struggle against capitalism, the working class is obliged to use violence. The overthrow of capitalism is necessarily a violent act because the ruling class, with all the means of repression it has at its disposal, will defend tooth and nail its power and its privileges. History has taught us, especially since the Paris Commune of 1871 among many other examples, the extent to which the bourgeoisie is prepared to wipe its feet on its grand principles of ‘democracy’ , of ‘freedom, equality and fraternity’ when it feels threatened. In one single, bloody week 30,000 Parisian workers were massacred because they had tried to take power into their own hands. And even in the defence of its immediate interests, the working class is often faced with repression by the bourgeois state or the bosses’ private armies – repression which it has to oppose through its own class violence.

But what’s happening now in France has nothing to do with proletarian violence against the exploiting class: the main victims of the current violence are the workers themselves. Apart from those who are suffering most directly from the damage that has been done, the whole working class of the country is affected: the media barrage around the present events is covering up all the attacks which at this very moment the bourgeoisie is unleashing, while at the same time obscuring the struggles which workers have been trying to wage against these attacks.

The response of the ruling class

As for the capitalists and the leaders of the state, sitting calmly in their posh neighbourhoods, they are taking advantage of the current violence to justify the strengthening of the apparatus of repression. Thus the main measure taken by the French government to deal with the situation has been to decree, on 8 November, a state of emergency, a measure last adopted 43 years ago and which is based on a law passed over 50 years ago, during the Algerian war. The major element in this decree is a curfew, a ban on going out onto the street after a certain hour, as during the days of the German occupation between 1940 and 1944 or during the state of siege imposed in Poland in 1981. But the decree also permits other inroads into classical ‘democracy’, such as house raids by day or night, control of the media or the use of military tribunals. The politicians who decided to impose the state of emergency or who support it (like the Socialist Party) assure us that these are exceptional measures and that they won’t be abused, but it is a precedent which it is getting the population - and in particular the workers - to accept. Tomorrow, faced with the workers’ struggles which the attacks of capital are bound to engender, it will be easier to resort to similar measures and to make the weapons of bourgeois repression seem more acceptable.

The present situation can bring nothing good either to the young people burning cars, or to the working class as a whole. Only the bourgeoisie can, to a certain degree, draw profit from it for the future.

This doesn’t mean that the ruling class has deliberately provoked the current violence.

It’s true that certain of its political sectors, like the extreme right National Front, can expect to reap electoral gains from the events. It’s also true that Sarkozy, who dreams of winning votes from the extreme right during the next presidential elections, threw oil on the fire by talking about using fire-hoses to ‘clean out’ the rebellious neighbourhoods and by describing the rioters as ‘rabble’ when the violence first began. But it is also clear that the main sectors of the ruling class, beginning with the government, but including the left parties who, in general, run the most affected municipalities, are highly embarrassed by the situation. This embarrassment is motivated in part by the economic cost of the violence. Thus the boss of French bosses, Laurence Parisot, declared on Radio Europe on 7 November that “the situation is grave, even very grave” and that “the consequences for the economy are very serious”.

But above all the bourgeoisie is embarrassed and anxious on the political level. The difficulty it is having in ‘restoring order’ is undermining the credibility of the institutions of its rule. Even if the working class cannot draw any benefit from the present situation, its class enemy, the bourgeoisie, is also finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the ‘republican order’ it needs to justify its place at the head of society.

And this disquiet isn’t only being felt by the French bourgeoisie. In other countries, in Europe but also right across the world, as in China for example, the situation in France is front page news. Even in the USA, a country where in general the press has little to say about what goes on in France, images of cars and buildings in flames have hit the headlines.

For the US bourgeoisie, displaying the crisis hitting the poor neighbourhoods of French towns lets them settle a few scores: the French media and politicians made a huge noise about the failure of the American state to cope with Hurricane Katrina. Today, there is a certain jubilation in the US press or among certain of its leaders, who have taken the opportunity to mock the ‘arrogance of France’. This friendly exchange is par for the course between two countries which are in permanent opposition on the diplomatic front, especially over Iraq. This said, there is real anxiety in the tone of the European press, even if it has flicked a few barbs at the ‘French social model’, which Chirac has so often boasted about as against the ‘Anglo-Saxon model’. Thus, on 5 November, the Spanish daily La Vanguardia wrote that “no one is rubbing their hands; the autumn storms in France could be the prelude to a European winter”. And it was the same for the political leaders: “The images coming from Paris are a warning to all democracies that the efforts towards integration can never be considered as finished. On the contrary we must give them a new impetus… The situation here is not comparable, but it is clear that one of the tasks of the next government will be to accelerate integration” (Thomas Steg, a German government spokesman, 7 November). “We cannot think that we are so different from Paris here, it’s only a question of time” (Romano Prodi, leader of the centre left in Italy, and former president of the European Commiission). “Everyone is anxious about what is happening” (Tony Blair).

This anxiety reveals that the ruling class is becoming aware of its own bankruptcy. Even in countries where there has been a somewhat different approach to the problems of immigration, the bourgeoisie is still faced with difficulties it can’t overcome, because they derive from an insurmountable economic crisis which has been facing it for the last 30 years or more.

Today the ‘good guys’ of the French bourgeoisie, and even the government which up till now has resorted to the stick rather than the carrot, declares that ‘something must be done’ for the deprived neighbourhoods. They are talking about renovating the miserable suburbs inhabited by those now in revolt. They are calling for more social workers, more cultural, sports or leisure centres where young people can occupy themselves in activities other than burning cars. All the politicians agree that one of the causes of the current malaise among the young is the high level of unemployment they suffer from: it’s over 50% in these areas. The right is saying that it needs to be easier for companies to install themselves in these areas, notably through a reduction in taxes; the left calls for more teachers and better schools. But neither of these policies can resolve the problem.

The underlying causes of the revolt

Unemployment won’t go down because a factory is set up in one area rather than another. The need for education workers or social workers to deal with the hundreds of thousands of desperate young people is such that the state budget isn’t up to it. It’s the same in all countries where the state is obliged to reduce ‘social’ expenditure in order to boost the ability of the national economy to compete on a saturated world market. And even if there were lots more social workers or teachers, that wouldn’t solve the fundamental contradictions which weigh down on capitalist society and which are the true source of the alienation affecting young people.

If the young of the suburbs are rebelling by using totally absurd methods today, it’s because they are sunk in a profound despair. In April 1981, in Brixton, a poor area of London with a large immigrant population, the young people who had rebelled in a similar way daubed the walls with the slogan ‘No Future’. It’s this feeling of ‘No Future’ which hundreds of thousands of young people are feeling today in France, as in many other countries. They feel it in their guts, every day, because of unemployment, because of the discrimination and disdain with which they are treated. But they are not alone. In many parts of the world the situation is even worse and the response of young people takes on even more absurd forms: in Palestine, the dream of many children is to be ‘martyrs’ and one of the favourite games of 10 year old kids is to strap on a toy suicide bomber’s belt.

But these more extreme examples are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s not only the poorest young people who are being invaded by despair. Their despair and their absurd actions reveal a total lack of perspective not only for themselves, but for the whole of society, in all countries. A society which, more and more, is stuck in an economic crisis which can’t be solved because the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are themselves insoluble. A society which, more and more, is ravaged by wars, famines, uncontrollable epidemics, by a dramatic deterioration of the environment, by natural catastrophes which are transformed into vast human tragedies, like last winter’s tsunami or the flooding of New Orleans at the end of the summer.

In the 1930s, world capitalism went through a crisis comparable to today’s. Capitalism’s only response was world war. It was a barbaric response but it did allow the bourgeoisie to mobilise society around this objective. Today, the only response of the ruling class to the impasse in its economy is once again war: this is why we are seeing one war after another, wars that increasingly involve the most advanced countries, countries which have been spared from the direct impact of war for a very long time (like the USA or even certain European countries, like Yugoslavia throughout the 90s). However, the bourgeoisie cannot go all the way towards a world war. In the first place because when the first effects of the crisis made themselves felt, at the end of the 60s, the world working class, especially in the most industrialised countries, reacted with such vigour (general strike in France May 68, ‘hot autumn’ in Italy 69, Poland in 70-71 etc) that it showed that this time round it was not ready to serve as cannon fodder for the imperialist ambitions of the bourgeoisie. In the second place, because with the disappearance of the two great imperialist blocs that followed the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, the diplomatic and military conditions for a new world war do not exist today, even if this doesn’t prevent more localised wars from continuing and multiplying.

The only perspective: the struggle of the proletariat

Capitalism has no perspective to offer humanity, except increasingly barbaric wars, ever-greater catastrophes, more and more poverty for the great majority of the world population. The only possibility for society to emerge from the barbarism of the present world is the overthrow of the capitalist system. And the only force capable of overthrowing capitalism is the world working class. It’s because, up till now, the working class has not had the strength to affirm this perspective through the development and extension of its struggles, that so many of its children are plunging into despair, expressing their revolt in absurd ways or taking refuge in the mirages of religion, which promises them a paradise after they are dead. The only real solution to the ‘crisis of the disinherited neighbourhoods’ is the development of the proletarian struggle towards the revolution. It is this struggle alone which can give a meaning and a perspective to the whole revolt of the younger generation.

ICC 8th November 2005

This article was first published in issue no. 88 of Revolucion Mundial [14], the publication of the ICC’s section in Mexico.

In the context of the lead-up to the 2006 elections, the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (the Zapatista National Liberation Army) has issued a communique with a tone that is apparently critical of the developing electoral circus, and for the first time it says that exploitation is at the centre of the capitalist system. This communique may appear to be critical of the electoral process and capitalism, but in reality it is an accessory of the electoral campaign.  It shores up the ideology of the ruling class that wants us to believe that our lot can be improved through making better laws or through defending the “Welfare State”. For this reason this 6th Communique (6th-C) is irrefutable confirmation of the counter-revolutionary nature of the EZNL.

The “Other Campaign” complements the election circus

The 6th-C and previous comments by Marcos appear to show a change of direction by the EZLN. In their 2nd Communiqué (June 1994), the Zapatistas openly defended democracy and elections: “Now the possibility of a peaceful transition to democracy and freedom can be put to the test: the electoral process of August 1994. The CND (Convention Nacional Democratica) must demand the carrying out of free and democratic elections...”

Now the EZLN declares that it is against the electoral process and has declared war on the PRD and Lopez Obrador (the ‘radical’ mayor of Mexico City). These changes, which the capitalist press and the apparatus of the left present as “radical”, are in reality deceitful and hollow.

The so-called denunciation of these elections and groups is not evidence of a reflection on what they represent. Commandante Marcos' apparent revulsion with the main political parties (PAN, PRI, and PRD) is due to his discovery in “April of 2001” that “politicians have no decency”.  Thus it was from 2001 they realised that the PRI, Pan and PRD were lying and they therefore tell us: “...we already have no contact with the federal powers; we understand that dialogue and negotiations with them would be a farce because of these political parties”. This is not because the EZLN considers the capitalist system uses these institutions (such as the parties) and its tools (such as the electoral process) in order to reinforce its domination. Rather these parties, and therefore the electoral process in which these participate, are seen as not carrying out their true role. That is to say, it would be enough to put other parties in their place in order to change the nature of the mechanisms of bourgeois rule.

It is their apparently radical attitude and denunciation of the electoral process and the PRD that has encouraged many sections of the working class to believe that the EZLN will now help to advance the development of the class struggle. But the EZLN’s anti-electoralism is a lie. They say they were betrayed by the PRD and deceived by the PRI and PAN when they signed the San Andres agreement; but this is only strengthens the idea that the apparatus of bourgeois domination can be used or reformed to serve the interests of the exploited.

In the same way, the role that the EZLN plays as the promoter of the “Other Campaign” reinforces the idea that, faced with capitalism, democracy is the only road to take. If the EZLN’s criticisms of the PRD and Lopez Obrador make it look like a radical group, an organisation of the “Left”, as Marcos says, it is because they are trying to present themselves as being different from the PRD.

We want to underline that while their form may be different, the nature of the EZLN has not changed. They remain alien to the proletariat and organically part of capital. They present themselves as being different, as ‘anti-globalisationists’ who maintain that ‘another world is possible’. But this ‘other world’ is merely capitalism with a human face.

We know that many workers, above all the younger generation, are taken in by the apparent radicalism of the EZLN, and that our denunciation of the 6th-C makes it appear that we being haughty or sectarian. But revolutionaries are obliged to denounce these so-called allies and friends who do nothing but swell the old structures of capital and stop the process of clarification and reflection.

The “6th Communique” in defence of Mexican capitalism

Along with the EZLN's supposedly anti-electoral talk goes its promotion of nationalism and the defence of the capitalist economy. While pretending to criticise the Free Trade Treaty (FTT), they end up defending the national economy and Mexican business. They thus conclude that the problem is not capitalism, but the interference of large foreign capital. “They make laws such as the Free Trade Treaty that leaves many Mexican in poverty, especially the peasants and the small producers, because they are swallowed up by the great agro-industrial businesses, and the workers and small businessmen, because they cannot compete with the great multinationals...”. Of course the FTT was set up to strengthen the USA and ensure its domination over the capitalist states of Latin America, but the working class cannot identify its own interests with those of capitalists large and small who have been driven to ruin by economic competition.

The same goes for the EZLN’s call to keep companies in the hands of the state, which is presented as a “great radical project” and a different form of property that workers have to defend. Without even blushing they call on workers to organise themselves to carry out “...a full and coordinated defence of national sovereignty, through intransigent opposition to the privatisation of electrical energy, oil, water and natural resources.” Faced with the EZLN’s patriotism and praise for state property, it is valuable to remember the denunciation that the Grupo de Trabajabores Marxistas[1] made of the poisoned talk and state capitalist policies of Cardenas, the 'radical' President of the Mexico in the 1930s: “...The task of the Mexican proletariat is not to sacrifice itself so that the oil industry and the railways become profitable for the imperialist and ‘national’ capitalists... the task of the proletariat  is to seize the industries, that is, wrench them from bourgeois hands through the proletarian revolution!” (Comunismo, 1938).  It’s the same today: the call for the defence of state industries means nothing more than the defence of capitalism.

In the same way, the EZLN’s critique of the “new  economic model” shows that it also yearns for the old state interventionist policies of Keynesianism used throughout the 1970's “...Neo-liberalism has changed the political class of Mexico, or rather its politics, because they act like shop employees, who have to do everything possible to sell everything cheaply.” It also continues with its tradition of defending the Constitution[2] adding “We have already seen the changes of the law that remove Article 27 from the Constitution and mean that the common land and communal land can be sold... And they also say they are going to privatise, or rather sell to foreigners, the businesses that the State once used to help the people's welfare. Not because they are not working properly... Instead of the social rights that were conquered by the 1910 revolution being improved, they are being shamefully abandoned...”

The electoral campaigns, including the “Other Campaign”, are no part of the cause of the proletariat, which needs to recognise that the real terrain for its struggles is the defence of its own living conditions. At the same time workers must be able to identify the fraudsters who present themselves as friends but who are carrying out the destructive work of the bourgeoisie.

Tatlin 14.08.05.