"Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration - a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales".
2. Almost 90 years later, the report from the laboratory of social history confirms the clarity and precision of Luxemburg's diagnosis. Rosa argued that the conflict that began in 1914 had opened up a "period of unlimited wars" which, if permitted to go on unchecked, would lead to the destruction of civilisation. Only 20 years after the hoped-for rebellion of the proletariat had halted the war, but failed to put an end to capitalism, a second imperialist world war had far surpassed the first in the depth and extent of its barbarism, which now featured not only the industrialised extermination of men on the battlefields, but first and foremost the genocide of whole peoples, the wholesale massacre of civilians, whether in the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka or the firestorms that liquidated Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The record of the period 1914-45 alone is enough to confirm that capitalist society had irreversibly entered its epoch of decline, that it had become a fundamental barrier to the needs of humanity.
3. Contrary to the propaganda of the ruling class, the 60 years since 1945 have in no way invalidated this conclusion - as if capitalism could be in historic decline in one decade and miraculously snap out of it the next. Even before the second imperialist slaughter had ended, new military blocs began to jockey for control of the globe. The US even deliberately postponed the end of the war against Japan, not to spare the lives of its troops, but to make a spectacular display of its awesome military might by obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a display aimed first and foremost not at defeated Japan but at the new Russian enemy. But within a short lapse of time, both of the new blocs had equipped themselves with weapons capable not only of destroying civilisation, but of annihilating all life on the planet. For the next five decades, humanity lived under the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the world's 'underdeveloped' regions, millions went hungry but the war machine of the great imperialist powers was fed with all the resources of human labour and ingenuity its insatiable maws demanded; millions more died in the 'wars of national liberation' through which the superpowers conducted their murderous rivalries in Korea, Vietnam, the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Middle East.
4. MAD was the principal reason advanced by the bourgeoisie for the fact that the world was spared a third and probably final imperialist holocaust: thus, we should learn to love the bomb. In reality, a third world war was staved off
- in an initial period, because it was necessary for the newly formed imperialist blocs to organise themselves and to introduce new ideological themes to mobilise the populations against a new enemy. Furthermore, the economic boom linked to the reconstruction of the countries destroyed by the second world war - a reconstruction financed by the Marshall Plan - allowed for a certain calming of imperialist tensions.
- in a second period, because when the boom brought about by the process of reconstruction came to an end in the late 1960s, capitalism no longer faced a defeated proletariat as it had done in the crisis of the 1930s, but a new generation of workers fully prepared to defend their own class interests against the demands of their exploiters. In the period of decadent capitalism, world war requires a total and active mobilisation of the proletariat: the international waves of workers' struggles that began with the general strike in France in May 1968 showed that the conditions for such a mobilisation were lacking throughout the 70s and 80s.
5. The final outcome of the long rivalry between the US and Russian blocs was thus not world war but the collapse of the latter. Unable to compete economically with the far more advanced US power, incapable of reforming its rigid political institutions, militarily encircled by its rival, and - as the mass strikes in Poland in 1980 demonstrated - unable to pull the proletariat behind its war-drive, the Russian imperialist bloc imploded in 1989. This Triumph of the West was immediately hailed as the dawn of a new period of world peace and prosperity; no less immediately, global imperialist conflicts merely took on a new form as the unity of the western bloc gave way to fierce rivalries between its former components, and a reunified Germany posed its candidature as a major world power to rival the US. In this new phase of imperialist conflicts, however, world war was even lower down the agenda of history because:
- the formation of new military blocs has been retarded by the internal divisions between the powers that would be the logical members of a new bloc facing the USA, in particular, between the most important European powers, Germany, France and Britain. Britain has not abandoned its traditional policy of working to ensure that no major power asserts its domination over Europe, while France has very strong historical reasons for putting limits on any possible subordination to Germany. With the break-down of the old two-bloc discipline, the prevailing trend in international relations is therefore towards 'every man for himself';
- the overwhelming military superiority of the USA, especially compared to Germany, makes it impossible for America's rivals to square up to it directly
- the proletariat remains undefeated. Although the period that opened up with the collapse of the eastern bloc has thrown the proletariat into considerable disarray (in particular, the campaigns about the 'death of communism' and the 'end of the class struggle'), the working class of the major capitalist powers is still not ready to sacrifice itself for a new world carnage.
As a result, the principal military conflicts of the period since 1989 have largely taken the form of 'deflected' wars. The dominant characteristic of these wars is that the leading world power has tried to stem the growing challenge to its global authority by engaging in spectacular displays of force against fourth-rate powers; this was the case with the first Gulf war in 1991, the bombing of Serbia in 1999, and the 'wars against terrorism' in Afghanistan and Iraq which followed the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. At the same time, these wars have more and more revealed a precise global strategy on the part of the USA: to achieve total domination of the Middle East and Central Asia, and thus to militarily encircle all its major rivals (Europe and Russia), depriving them of naval outlets and making it possible to shut off their energy supplies.
Alongside this grand design - sometimes subordinated to it, sometimes obstructing it - the post-1989 world has also seen an explosion of local and regional conflicts which have spread death and destruction across whole continents. These conflicts have left millions dead, crippled and homeless in a whole series of African countries like the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, or Sierra Leone; and they now threaten to plunge a number of countries in the Middle East and Central Asia into a kind of permanent civil war. Within this process, the growing phenomenon of terrorism, often expressing the intrigues of bourgeois factions no longer controlled by any particular state regime, adds a further element of instability and has already brought these murderous conflicts back to the heartlands of capitalism (September 11, Madrid bombings…).
6. Thus, even if world war is not the concrete threat to mankind that it was for the greater part of the 20th century, the dilemma between socialism and barbarism remains just as urgent as ever. In some ways it is more urgent because while world war demands the active mobilisation of the working class, the latter now faces the danger that it will be progressively and insidiously swamped by a kind of creeping barbarism:
- the proliferation of local and regional wars could devastate entire areas of the planet, thus rendering the proletariat of those regions incapable of making any further contribution to the class war. This applies very clearly to the extremely dangerous rivalry between the two nuclear powers on the Indian subcontinent; but is no less the case with the spiral of military adventures led by the USA. Despite their intention of creating a New World Order under the benevolent auspices of Uncle Sam, each one has added to an accumulating legacy of chaos and division, and the historic crisis of US leadership has only increased in depth and gravity. Iraq today provides clear proof of this, and yet without even making a show of rebuilding Iraq, the US is being driven towards new threats against Syria and Iran. This perspective is not invalidated by the recent attempts of US diplomacy to ‘build bridges’ with Europe over Syria, Iran or Iraq. On the contrary, the current crisis in the Lebanon is clear evidence that the USA cannot delay in its efforts to attain complete mastery in the Middle East, an ambition which can only greatly accelerate imperialist tensions overall, since none of the USA’s major rivals can afford to allow the US free rein in this strategically vital zone. This perspective is also confirmed by the USA’s increasingly brazen intervention against Russian influence in the countries of the former USSR (Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan), and by the serious disagreements which have arisen over the question of arms to China. At the very time that China is underlining its growing imperialist ambitions by shaking a mailed fist at Taiwan stoking up tensions with Japan, France and Germany have been at the forefront of trying to revoke the embargo on arms sales to China introduced after the massacre of Tien An Man Square ;
- the present period is marked by the philosophy of 'every man for himself' not only at the level of imperialist rivalries, but also at the very heart of society. The acceleration of social atomisation and all the ideological filth that arrives with it (gangsterisation, the flight into suicide, irrationality and despair) bears with it the threat of permanently undermining the capacity of the working class to recapture its class identity and thus its unique class perspective of a different world, based not on social disintegration but on real community and solidarity;
- to the threat of imperialist war the maintenance of the capitalist mode of production so far past its sell-by date has uncovered a new menace, one equally capable of destroying the possibility of a new and human social formation: the increasing threat to the planetary environment. As successive scientific conferences warn of the mounting danger posed in particular by global warming, the bourgeoisie shows itself utterly incapable of taking even the minimum measures required to reduce greenhouse emissions. The south east Asian Tsunami exposed the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to lift a finger to spare the human race from the devastating power of uncontrolled nature; the predicted consequences of global warming would be vastly more destructive and extensive. Furthermore, because the worst of these consequences still appear remote, it is extremely difficult for the majority of the proletariat to see them as a motive for struggling against the capitalist system today.
7. For all these reasons, marxists are justified not only in concluding that the perspective of socialism or barbarism is as valid today as it was in 1916, but also in saying that the spreading intensity of barbarism today could undermine the future bases of socialism. They are justified in concluding not only that capitalism has long been a historically obsolete social formation, but also that the period of decline that definitively began with the first world war has entered into its final phase, the phase of decomposition. This is not the decomposition of an organism that is already dead; capitalism is rotting, turning gangrenous on its feet. It is passing through a long and painful death agony, and in its dying convulsions it threatens to drag the whole of humanity down with it.
8. The capitalist class has no future to offer humanity. It has been condemned by history. And precisely for this reason it must strain all its resources to hide and deny this judgment, to pour scorn on the marxist prediction that capitalism, like previous modes of production, was doomed to become decadent and to disappear. It has thus secreted a succession of ideological antibodies, all aimed at refuting this fundamental conclusion of the historical materialist method:
- even before the epoch of decline had definitively opened up, the revisionist wing of social democracy began to contest Marx's 'catastrophist' vision and argue that capitalism could continue indefinitely, and that as a result socialism would come about not through revolutionary violence but through a process of peaceful democratic change
- in the 1920s, the staggering rates of industrial growth in the USA led a genius like Calvin Coolidge to proclaim the triumph of capitalism on the very eve of the great crash of 29
- during the reconstruction period after world war two, bourgeois leaders like Macmillan told the workers that "you've never had it so good", sociologists theorised about the "consumer society" and the "embourgoisement" of the working class, while radicals like Marcuse looked for "new vanguards" to replace the apathetic proletarians
- since 1989, we have had a real overproduction crisis of new theories aiming to explain how different it all is today and how everything Marx thought has been invalidated: the End of History, the Death of Communism, The Demise of the Working Class, Globalisation, the Microprocessor Revolution, the Internet Economy, the rise of new economic giants in the Far East, the latest being China and India. These ideas are so pervasive that they have deeply infected a whole new generation of those who are asking questions about the future capitalism has in store for the planet, and, even more alarmingly, have been picked up and wrapped in synthetic marxist theory by elements of the communist left itself.
In short, marxism has had to wage a permanent battle against all those who seize on the slightest sign of life in the capitalist system to argue that it has a bright future in front of it. But time and time again, after maintaining a long-term and historical vision against these capitulations to immediate appearance, it has been aided in its battle by the sharp blows of the historical movement:
- the blithe 'optimism' of the revisionists was shattered by the truly catastrophic events of 1914-1918, and by the revolutionary response of the working class that they provoked
- Calvin Coolidge and Co. were rudely interrupted by the most profound economic crisis in capitalism's history, which resulted in the unmitigated disaster of the second imperialist world war
- those who declared that economic crisis was a thing of the past were refuted by the reappearance of the crisis in the late 60s; and the international resurgence of workers’ struggles in response to this crisis made it difficult to maintain the fiction that the working class had fused with the bourgeoisie
The current spate of theories about 'New Capitalism', 'Post-Industrial Society' and the rest are similarly doomed. Already a number of key elements of this ideology have been exposed by the remorseless development of the crisis: the hopes put in the Tiger and Dragon economies were crushed by the sudden slide which hit these countries in 1997; the dot.com revolution proved to be a mirage almost as soon as it had been proclaimed; the 'new industries' constructed around computing and communications have shown themselves to be no less vulnerable to recession than the 'old industries' like steel and shipbuilding. And despite being pronounced dead on numerous occasions, the working class continues to raise its head, as for example in the movements in Austria and France in 2003, or the struggles in Spain, Britain and Germany in 2004.
9. It would nevertheless be a mistake to underestimate the power of these ideologies in the present period, because, like all mystifications, they are based on a series of partial truths, for example:
- faced with the crisis of overproduction and the ruthless demands of competition, capitalism in the main centres of its system has in the last few decades created huge industrial wastelands and pushed millions of workers either into permanent unemployment or into unproductive, low paid jobs in the 'service' sectors; for the same reason it has relocated huge amounts of industrial jobs to the low-wage areas of the 'third world'. Many traditional sectors of the industrial working class have been decimated through this process, which has aggravated the difficulties of the proletariat to maintain its class identity;
- the development of new technologies has made it possible to increase both rates of exploitation and the speed of circulation of capital and commodities on a world scale
- the reflux in the class struggle over the last two decades have made it hard for a new generation to see the working class as the unique agent of social change
- the capitalist class has shown a remarkable ability to 'manage' the crisis of its system by manipulating and even deforming its own laws of operation
Other examples could be given. But none of them put into question the fundamental senility of the capitalist system.
10. The decadence of capitalism has never meant a final and sudden collapse of the system, as certain elements of the German left argued in the 1920s, or a total halt in the productive forces, as Trotsky mistakenly thought in the 1930s. As Marx observed, the bourgeoisie becomes intelligent in times of crisis and it has learned from its mistakes. The 1920s were the last moment that the bourgeoisie really believed it could go back to the laissez-faire liberalism of the 19th century; this for the simple reason that the world war, while ultimately a product of the system's economic contradictions, had broken out before these contradictions could reach their full import at a 'purely' economic level. The crisis of 1929 was thus the first global economic crisis of the decadent period. But having experienced it, the bourgeoisie recognised the need for fundamental change. Despite ideological pretensions to the contrary, no serious faction of the bourgeoisie would ever again question the necessity for the state to retain overall control over the economy; the need to abandon any notion of 'balancing the books' in favour of deficit spending and financial trickery of all kinds; the necessity to maintain a huge arms sector at the centre of all economic activity. By the same token, capitalism has gone to considerable lengths to avoid the out and out economic autarky of the 1930s. Despite growing pressures towards commercial war and the break-down of international bodies inherited from the period of the blocs, the majority of these bodies have survived as the major capitalist powers have understood the necessity to put some limits on unrestrained economic competition between national capitals.
Thus capitalism has kept itself alive through the conscious intervention of the bourgeoisie, which can no longer afford to trust the invisible hand of the market. It is true that the solutions also become part of the problem - the recourse to debt clearly piles up enormous problems for the future, the bloating of the state and the arms sector generate tremendous inflationary pressures. These problems have since the 1970s given rise to different economic policies, to alternating emphases on 'Keynsianism' or 'neo-Liberalism', but since neither policy can get to the real causes of the crisis, neither approach will ever achieve final victory. What is noteworthy is the bourgeoisie's determination to keep its economy going at all costs, its ability to hold off the inherent tendency towards collapse by maintaining a gigantic facade of economic activity fuelled by debt. Throughout the 1990s the US economy led the way in this regard; and now that even this artificial 'growth' is beginning to falter, it is the turn of the Chinese bourgeoisie to surprise the world: considering the inability of the USSR and the Stalinist states of eastern Europe to politically adapt to the necessity for economic 'reform', the Chinese bureaucracy has pulled off an amazing feat merely by surviving, let alone by presiding over the current 'boom'. Critics of the notion of capitalist decadence have even pointed to this phenomenon as proof that the system still has the capacity for real growth and development
In reality, the present Chinese ‘boom’ in no way calls into question the overall decline in the world capitalist economy. In contrast to the ascendant period of capitalism:
- China’s current industrial growth is not part of a global process of expansion; on the contrary, it has as its direct corollary the de-industrialisation and stagnation of the most advanced economies who have re-located to China in search of cheap labour costs;
- the Chinese working class does not have the perspective of a steady rise in living standards, but is predicated upon increasingly savage attacks on living and working conditions and on the continued impoverishment of huge sectors of the proletariat and peasantry outside the main areas of growth;
- China’s frenzied growth will contribute not to a global expansion of the world market but to an deepening of the world crisis of overproduction: given the restricted consumption of the Chinese masses, the bulk of China’s products are geared towards export towards the more developed capitalisms;
- The fundamental irrationality of China’s swelling economy is highlighted by the terrible levels of pollution which it has generated – a sure sign that the planetary environment can only be harmed by the pressure on each nation to exploit its natural resources to the absolute limit in order to compete on the world market;
- Like the system as a whole, the entirety of China’s growth founded on debts that can never be reabsorbed through a real expansion of the world market.
Indeed, the fragility of all such spurts of growth is recognised by the ruling class itself, which is increasingly alarmed by the Chinese bubble. This is not because it is worried about the terrifying levels of exploitation upon which it is based - far from it, these ferocious levels are precisely what makes China such an attractive proposition for investment - but because the global economy is becoming too dependent on the Chinese market and the consequences of a Chinese collapse are becoming too horrible to contemplate, not just for China, which would be plunged back into the violent anarchy of the 1930s, but for the world economy as a whole.
11. Far from refuting the reality of decadence, capitalism's economic growth today confirms it. This growth has nothing in common with the cycles of accumulation in the 19th century, based on a real expansion into outlying fields of production, on the conquest of new extra-capitalist markets. It is true that the onset of decadence occurred well before the total exhaustion of such markets, and that capitalism has continued to make the best possible use of such remaining economic areas as an outlet for its production: the growth of Russia during the 1930s and the integration of remaining peasant economies in Europe during the period of post-war reconstruction are examples of this. But the dominant trend by far in the epoch of decadence is the use of an artificial market, based on debt. It is now openly admitted that the frenzied 'consumerism' of the past two decades has been based entirely on household debt of staggering proportions: a trillion pounds in Britain, 25% of the GNP in America, while governments not only encourage such indebtedness but practice the same policy on an even vaster scale.
12. There is another sense in which capitalist economic growth today is what Marx called “growth in decay” (Grundrisse): it is the principal factor in the destruction of the global environment. The runaway levels of pollution in China, the vast contribution made by the USA to the sum total of greenhouse gases, the frenzied exploitation of the remaining rainforests...the more capitalism is committed to growth the more it must admit that it has no solution whatever to the ecological crisis, which can only be solved by placing global production on a new basis, "a plan for living for the human species" (Bordiga) in harmony with its natural environment.
13. Whether in boom or 'recession' the underlying reality is the same: capitalism can no longer spontaneously regenerate itself. There is no longer a natural cycle of accumulation. In the first phase of decadence from 1914-1968, the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction replaced the old cycle of boom and bust; but the GCF were right in 1945 to argue that there was no automatic drive towards reconstruction after the ruin of the world war. In the final analysis, what convinced the US bourgeoisie to revive the European and Japanese economies with the Marshall Plan was the need to annex these zones to its imperialist sphere of influence and to prevent them falling into the hands of the rival bloc. Thus the greatest economic 'boom' of the 20th century was fundamentally the result of inter-imperialist competition.
14. In decadence, economic contradictions drive capitalism towards war, but war does not resolve these contradictions. On the contrary, it deepens them. In any case the cycle of crisis war and reconstruction is over and the crisis today, unable to debouch on world war, is the prime factor in accelerating the decomposition of the system. It thus continues to push the system towards its own self-destruction.
15. The argument that capitalism is a decadent system has often been criticised on the grounds that it leads to fatalism - the idea of automatic collapse and spontaneous overthrow by the working class, thus removing any need for the intervention of a revolutionary party. In fact, the bourgeoisie has shown that it will not permit its system to collapse economically. Nevertheless, left to its own dynamic, capitalism will destroy itself through wars and other disasters. In this sense, it is indeed 'fated' to disappear. But what is anything but fatal is the response of the proletariat. As Luxemburg put it in the same pages as the previously-cited passage on socialism or barbarism:
“Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind. For this reason, Friedrich Engels designated the final victory of the socialist proletariat a leap of humanity from the animal world into the realm of freedom. This "leap" is also an iron law of history bound to the thousands of seeds of a prior torment-filled and all-too-slow development. But this can never be realized until the development of complex material conditions strikes the incendiary spark of conscious will in the great masses. The victory of socialism will not descend from heaven. It can only be won by a long chain of violent tests of strength between the old and the new powers. The international proletariat under the leadership of the Social Democrats will thereby learn to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history”.
Communism is thus the first society in which mankind will have conscious mastery of its own productive powers. And since in the proletarian struggle there can be no separation between ends and means, the movement towards communism can only be “the self-conscious movement of the immense majority” (Communist Manifesto): the deepening and extension of class consciousness is the indispensable measure of progress towards the revolution and the ultimate supercession of capitalism. This process is necessarily an extremely difficult, uneven and heterogeneous one because it is the emanation of an exploited class which has no economic power in the old society and is constantly subjected to the ideological domination and manipulation of the ruling class. In no sense can it be guaranteed in advance: on the contrary, there exists the real possibility that the proletariat, faced with the unprecedented immensity of the task, will fail to live up to its historic responsibility, with all the terrible consequences for humanity that would flow from it.
16. The highest point hitherto reached by class consciousness was the October insurrection in 1917. This has been strenuously denied by bourgeois historiography and all its pale reflections in anarchism and related ideologies, for whom October was merely a putsch by the power-hungry Bolsheviks; but October represented a fundamental recognition within the proletariat that there was no way forward for mankind as a whole but to make the revolution in all countries. Nevertheless, this understanding did not grip the proletariat in sufficient depth and extent; the revolutionary wave failed because the workers of the world, and principally of Europe, were unable to develop the overall political understanding that would have enabled them to respond adequately to the tasks of the new epoch of wars and revolutions that opened in 1914. The result of this, by the end of the 1920s, was the longest and deepest retreat by the working class in its history: not so much at the level of combativity, since the 1930s and 40s were punctuated with major outbreaks of class militancy, but above all at the level of consciousness, since politically speaking the working class rallied actively to the anti-fascist programmes of the bourgeoisie, as in Spain 1936-39 or France in 1936, or to the defence of democracy and the Stalinist “fatherland” during the second world war. This profound reflux in consciousness was reflected in the near-disappearance of revolutionary political minorities by the 1950s.
17. The historic resurgence of struggles in 1968 once again posed the long-term perspective of the proletarian revolution, but this was only explicit and conscious in a small minority of the class, as reflected in the rebirth of the revolutionary movement internationally. The waves of struggle between 1968 and 1989 did see important advances at the level of consciousness, but they tended to be at the level of the immediate combat (questions of extension, organization, etc). Their weakest point was their lack of political depth, partly the reflection of the hostility to politics that was a result of the Stalinist counter-revolution. On the political level, the bourgeoisie was largely able to impose its own agendas, first by offering the prospect of change through installing the left in power (1970s) and by giving the left in opposition the task of sabotaging struggles from the inside (1980s). Although they were capable of preventing the development of a course towards war, the inability of the waves of struggle from 68 to 89 to take on a historic, political dimension determined the passage to the phase of decomposition, The historic event marking this passage – the collapse of the eastern bloc – was both the result of decomposition and a factor in its aggravation. Thus the dramatic changes at the end of the 80s were at the same time a product of the proletariat’s political difficulties; and, as they gave rise to the propaganda barrage about the end of communism and the class struggle, a key element in bringing about a serious retreat in class consciousness - to the point where the proletariat even loss sight of its basic class identity. Thus the bourgeoisie has been able to declare a final victory over the working class and the working class has so far not been able to respond with sufficient strength to refute this claim.
18. In spite of all its difficulties, the period of retreat has by no means seen the ‘end of the class struggle’. The 1990s was interspersed with a number of movements which showed that the proletariat still had untapped reserves of combativity (for example in 1992 and 1997). However, none of these movements represented a real shift at the level of consciousness. Hence the importance of the more recent movements which, though lacking the spectacular and overnight impact of a movement like that of 1968 in France, nevertheless constitute a turning point in the balance of class forces. The struggles of 2003-2005 have the following characteristics:
- they have involved significant sectors of the working class in countries at the heart of world capitalism (as in France 2003);
- they have been preoccupied with more explicitly political questions; in particular the question of pensions raised in the struggles in France and elsewhere poses the problem of the future that capitalist society holds in store for all of us;
- they have seen the re-emergence of Germany as a focal point for workers’ struggles, for the first time since the revolutionary wave;
- the question of class solidarity has been raised in wider and more explicit way than at any time since the struggles of the 80s, most notably in the recent movements in Germany
- they have been accompanied by the emergence of a new generation of elements looking for political clarity. This new generation has manifested itself both in the new influx of overtly politicized elements and in the new layers of workers entering the struggle for the first time. As evidenced in certain important demonstrations, the basis is being forged for the unity between the new generation and the ‘generation of 68’ – both the political minority which rebuild the communist movement in the 60s and 70s and the wider strata of workers who have been through the rich experience of class struggles between 68 and 89.
19. The subterranean maturation of consciousness, denied by the empiricist distortion of marxism which sees only the surface of reality and not its deepest underlying tendencies, has not been obliterated by the general reflux in consciousness since 89. It is a characteristic of this process that it becomes manifest only in a minority, but the growth of this minority is the expression of the advance and development of a wider phenomenon within the class. Already after 89 we saw a small minority of politicized element questioning the bourgeois campaigns about the ‘death of communism’. This minority has now been reinforced by a new generation preoccupied with the whole direction of bourgeois society. At the most general level this is the expression of the undefeated nature of the proletariat, of the maintenance of the historic course towards massive class confrontations which opened up in 1968. But at a more specific level the ‘turning point’ of 2003 and the emergence of a new generation of searching elements are evidence that the proletariat is at the beginning of a second attempt to launch an assault on the capitalist system, following the failure of the attempt of 68-89. Although at the day-to-day level the proletariat is faced with the apparently basic task of reaffirming its class identity, behind this problem lies the prospect of a far closer intertwining of the immediate struggle with the political struggle. The questions posed by struggles in the phase of decomposition will more and more be around seemingly ‘abstract’ but in fact more global issues like the necessity for class solidarity against the ambient atomization, the attacks on the social wage, the omnipresence of war, the threat to the planetary environment – in short, the question of what future this society holds in store, and thus, the question of a different kind of society.
20. Within this process of politicisation, two elements which up till now have tended to have an inhibiting effect on the class struggle are destined to become increasingly important as stimuli to the movements of the future: the question of mass unemployment, and the question of war.
During the struggles of the 1980s when mass unemployment was becoming an increasingly obvious fact, neither the struggle of the employed workers against impending lay-offs, nor the resistance of the unemployed in the streets, reached significant levels. There was no movement of the unemployed on anything like the scale reached during the 1930s, even though the latter was a period of profound defeat for the working class. In the recessions of the 80s, the unemployed faced a terrible atomization, especially the younger generation of proletarians who had never had any experience of collective labour and combat. Even when employed workers did launch wide-scale struggles against redundancies, as in the British mining industry, the negative outcome of these movements has been used by the ruling class to reinforce feelings of passivity and hopelessness, demonstrated recently by the response to the bankruptcy of Rover cars in Britain, where workers’ only ‘choice’ is presented as being between one or other set of new bosses to keep the company running. Nevertheless, given the narrowing of the bourgeoisie’s margin of manoeuvre and its increasing inability to offer even the minimum of benefits to the unemployed, the question of unemployment is set to develop a far more subversive side, facilitating solidarity between employed and unemployed, and pushing the class as a whole to reflect more deeply and actively on the bankruptcy of the system.
The same dynamic can be observed with the question of war. In the early 90s, the first major wars of the phase of decomposition (Gulf, Balkans) tended to reinforce the feelings of powerlessness which had been induced by the campaigns around the collapse of the eastern bloc, while the pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Africa and the Balkans could still have a semblance of credibility. Since 2001 and the ‘war on terrorism’, however, the mendacity and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie’s justification for war has become increasingly evident, even if the growth of huge pacifist movements has largely soaked up the political questioning this has provoked. Furthermore, the current wars are having a much more direct impact on the working class, even if this still mainly limited to countries directly involved in these conflicts. In the USA, this has manifested itself through the number of families affected by death and injury to proletarians in uniform, but even more significantly by the awesome economic costs of military adventures, which have risen in direct proportion to cuts in the social wage. And as it becomes apparent that capitalism’s militarist tendencies are not only an ever-growing spiral, but one over which the ruling class has less and less control, the problem of war and its connection to the crisis is also going to lead to a far deeper and wider reflection about the stakes of history.
21. In a paradoxical sense, the immensity of these questions is one of the main reasons why the present revival of struggles seems so limited and unspectacular in comparison to the movements which marked the resurgence of the proletariat the end of the 1960s. Faced with vast problems like the world economic crisis, the destruction of the global environment, or the spiral of militarism, the daily defensive struggle can seem irrelevant and impotent. And in a sense this reflects a real understanding that there is no solution to the contradictions assailing capitalism today. But while in the 1970s the bourgeoisie had before it a whole panoply of mystifications about the possible ways of ensuring a better life, the present attempts of the bourgeoisie to pretend that we are living in an epoch of unprecedented growth and prosperity more and more resemble the desperate denials of a dying man unable to admit his impending demise. The decadence of capitalism is the epoch of social revolution because the struggles of the exploited can no longer lead to any real amelioration in their condition; and however difficult it may be to move from the defensive to the offensive levels of the struggle, the class will have no choice but to make this difficult and daunting leap. And like all such qualitative leaps, it is being preceded by all kinds of small preparatory steps, from strikes around bread and butter issues to the formation of tiny discussion groups all around the globe.
22 Faced with the perspective of the politicization of the struggle, revolutionary political organisations have a unique and irreplaceable role. However, the conjunction of the growing effects of decomposition with long-standing theoretical and organizational weaknesses and opportunism in the majority of proletarian political organizations have exposed the incapacity of the majority of these groups to respond to the challenge posed by history. This is illustrated most clearly by the negative dynamic in which the IBRP has been caught up for some time: not only in its total inability to understand the significance of the new phase of decomposition, compounded by an abandonment of a key theoretical concept like that of the decadence of capitalism, but even more disastrously in its flouting of the basic norms of proletarian solidarity and behaviour, via its flirtation with parasitism and adventurism. This regression is all the more serious in that the premises are now being laid for the construction of the world communist party. At the same time, the fact that the groups of the proletarian milieu are more and more disqualifying themselves from the process which leads to the formation of the class party only highlights the crucial role which the ICC has been called upon to play within this process. It is increasingly clear that the party of the future will not be the result of the ‘democratic’ addition of the different groups of the milieu, but that the ICC already constitutes the skeleton of the future party. But for the party to become flesh, the ICC must prove itself equal to the tasks imposed by the development of the class struggle and the emergence of the new generation of searching elements.
In the midst of all the statements on the bombings in London, most of which are only notable for their varying levels of hypocrisy, we have become aware of two statements, both from the libertarian and anarchist milieu, that attempt to defend a class position.[1] [2] One is from the libcom.org website,[2] [3] the other from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of South Africa.[3] [4]
The ZACF begin by declaring that they “stand foursquare with the working and poor people” who were the targets of the bombings, while the libcom.org statement deplores “the horrific attacks on innocent people this morning in London”. They then deal with the question of terrorism: “Terrorist actions are completely at odds with any struggle for a freer, fairer society and never help oppressed people in any part of the globe. Instead violence against civilians is a tool of states and proto-states every bit as brutal as the ones they profess to oppose” (libcom.org); “…we are unrepentant in our bitter opposition to terrorism in all forms, whether driven by state or sub-state opportunism” (ZACF). The libcom.org statement ends by declaring solidarity “with all people fighting exploitation and oppression in all its forms, from opponents to the occupation of Iraq here to those in Iraq who are opposing both the occupying forces and the ultra-reactionary Islamists that the Occupation helps strengthen”; while the ZACF conclude: ”We, the ‘great unwashed’, are the only thing that stands between terrorists - whether they lurk in the shadows or bask on TV - and the barbarism they attempt to midwife”.
The importance of both statements is that they grasp something of the fundamental fact that terror, like imperialism, is not a function of this or that country, or a result of one foreign policy rather than another, but is a product of capitalism as a whole from which no state can stand apart. As we say in our own statement: “The truth is that Blair’s values and Bin Laden’s values are exactly the same. Both are equally prepared to cause death and destruction to innocent people in pursuit of their sordid aims. The only difference is that Blair is a big imperialist gangster and Bin Laden is a smaller one”. ('World Leaders', 'International Terrorists' – all of them massacre the workers!) [5]
The workers’ movement has always rejected terrorism as standing opposed to the interests of the working class. Suicide bombings are not ‘weapons of the oppressed’ anymore than IRA car bombings, shootings and beatings were before them, or the bombs planted in cafes by the ‘anti-imperialist’ forces in the Vietnam War before that or the actions of the terrorist gangs that helped create the state of Israel before that. This year will see the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest terrorist bombings of all time: the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[4] [6] Terror has always been a weapon of the bourgeoisie, whether it be the genocide committed against native peoples during the colonial era, the slaughter of workers after the revolution of 1919 in Germany or the Nazi concentration camps and the democratic firebombing of Dresden during the second world war. The ZACF statement is the clearer of the two on this point: “the only beneficiaries of today's global ‘strategy of tension’ (the misnamed ‘war on terror’), that thinks nothing of the lives or ordinary people are those who, like the vultures of the G8 elites roosting at Gleneagles, are left cold by the pleas of humanity”. In contrast, the libcom.org statement echoes the leftists in arguing that: “The British Government, by sending British soldiers to kill and die in Iraq and Afghanistan has made all of us a target for terrorists in their pursuit of increased profit and power at the expense of ordinary working people”. It is not that there is no truth in this statement, the actions of one power will always provoke a response from its rivals, but the error is the suggestion that this could be avoided by a change in policy, thereby implying that peace is an option under capitalism. It is because this is impossible, because all that capitalism can bring is increasing war, terror and misery, that movements such as Stop the War and the Make Poverty History reinforce the grip of the bourgeoisie.
Both statements suffer from this lack of precision about the nature of capitalism and both reflect a certain ‘liberal’ approach in contrasting ‘the people’ to ‘the state’. For the ZACF “What matters is that humanity refuses to be led like sheep to the slaughter by their leaders” while detecting in the actions of “the G8 elites” the “stench of fascism”. The first loses sight of the fact that it is only the offensive action of the working class against capitalism that can end the slaughter, while the second implicitly sees current developments as undemocratic, whereas in reality democracy is as bloodstained as any fascism or Stalinism. Similarly, libcom.org’s solidarity with “all people fighting exploitation and oppression in all its forms” also lacks the necessary clarity about the role of the working class. There is no surprise in these weaknesses since they reflect anarchism’s roots in radical liberalism. However, it is possible for them to be overcome if the militants who produced these two statements continue their efforts to defend a class position.
The strength and sincerity of the positions taken by libcom.org and the ZACF can be seen by comparing them with those of the SWP and George Galloway.
The SWP declared that “Our thoughts are with all those killed and wounded in this morning’s terrible attacks in London” (statement on website, 7/7/05) while Galloway, on behalf of Respect, stated “We extend our condolences to the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives today and our heartfelt sympathy to all those who have been injured by the bombs in London” (statement on website, 7/7/05). Both present the current policy of the British state as the immediate cause of the bombings: “if the British government continues on the course Tony Blair has set, these will not be the only innocent people to suffer” (SWP statement, 13/7/05); “We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings” (Galloway, ibid).
The current state of terror is the result of bad policy decisions by governments, the US first and foremost of course, that have created a situation where the only possible opposition seems to be terror. The SWP asks “how could four ordinary young men from Yorkshire be driven to blow themselves up in London?” and then lists the wars and atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere that “produced the swamp of bitterness that Osama bin Laden tapped”. They conclude: “So, like the rest of us, they will have raged. But they will also have despaired. Then they succumbed, like other desperate young people on every continent at different times over the last 150 years, to the disastrous fantasy that they could rid the world of violence by hurling back a portion of it in some act aimed at innocent people.
“When people in the Catholic ghettoes of Northern Ireland found their cries for justice ignored and violently repressed in the 1960s, some turned to terrorism. The repression of ordinary Catholics served merely to prolong the bloodshed for 30 years until there was finally some attempt to address the political causes of the conflict.
“The repressive measures the government has introduced and is contemplating now will also bring further grievances, further bitterness that feeds a terrorist reaction.” (Statement of 13/7/05).
Galway’s argument is the same, but with an added dash of personal egoism: “A swamp of hatred towards this country has been watered by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the daily destruction of Palestinian homes and by the occupation of Afghanistan… I said nearly four years ago that if they handled 9/11 in the wrong way they would create 10,000 bin Ladens. Does anyone doubt that 10,000 bin Ladens at least have been created by the events of the past few years?”
For both there is a simple way out: “There has to be a dramatic reverse in policy, at home and abroad. Pulling the troops out of Iraq will begin to drain the swamp of bitterness that nurtures terrorism. It will not end the threat of terrorism overnight, but it is the necessary first step. The majority of people in the US have turned against Bush’s war — we must intensify the pressure on the British government to break from him as well” (SWP); “The only way out of this morass is to reverse the policies that have taken us into it. As the Spanish people showed us last year, the way out is to withdraw from Iraq and to break from Bush’s war on terror.
“It is to address the grievances across the region, not to add to them by support for Israel’s Ariel Sharon, and for the corrupt kings and presidents of Arabia” (Galloway).
This is not the simple open support for ‘resistance’ movements of the past but a more sophisticated and ‘sorrowful’ and hypocritical ‘understanding’, which reflects, in part, the leading roles played by Galloway and the SWP in the so-called peace movement. This more discreet approach is evident in the image of the ‘swamp of bitterness and hatred’ that both use. This swamp has supposedly been created by the actions of the US and its British sidekick and the suicide bombings in Palestine, Iraq, New York, Madrid and now London are a consequence. Those who resist are 'justified', while their methods are merely understood and excused. This was expressed more explicitly by another leftist (and now media pundit), Tariq Ali, through a historical comparison: “Throughout the Vietnam War the US denounced the Vietnamese when they planted bombs in the capital, Saigon. But the resistance had to do this to make the country ungovernable. It is not a pretty thing. But the character of the occupation determines the nature of the resistance — this is true in every single instance.” (From SWP website). The implied message is that the resistance in Iraq today also seeks to make it ungovernable and that the London bombings bring this home to one of the invaders. Today it is more effective to put this position across in the language of pacifism, just as the great powers hide their imperialist appetites under a cloak of humanitarianism. In the end, behind the lies and hypocrisy, there is no difference between Blair and Galloway, between Labour and the SWP: all champion peace through terror; all are part of capitalist barbarism, all oppose socialism. The ZACF and libcom.org, for all of their confusions, are at least trying to stand against the tide of capitalist barbarism whereas the SWP and Galloway are part of it.
North, 23/7/05.
[1] [7] We are not dealing here with the statements produced from within the proletarian milieu, such as the one by the IBRP, which we will come back to another time.
[3] [10] https://www.zabalaza.net [11]. Their statement is published here: https://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=895 [12]
[4] [13] See the article in WR 286 “Hiroshima and Nagasaki expose the myth of the good war [14]”.
The following article appeared as a ‘box’ in the most recent publication of the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’
The ICC of today: “but in contrast to the 1968-89 period, when the outcome of these class contradictions could only be world war or world revolution, the new period opens up a third alternative: the destruction of humanity..” [1] (Resolution on the international situation, International Review 113, 2003, we underline once again)
The ICC from yesterday, back to its origins (1974) :
‘This theory of the bureaucracy…claims that the historic dilemma is not between capitalism and socialism but that a third solution has arisen with the bureaucratic class. We categorically reject any theory which tends to spread the belief that history offers another alternative to capitalism that is not socialism” (‘Defence of the proletarian character of October’, 1965, reproduced in the Bulletin d’Etude and de Discussion de Revolution Internationale, no.4 January 1974) underlined by the IFICC.
When will there be a serious response on this question which develops this revision, this third way? Recognising it as a gross error and a revisionist and opportunist deviation? Another alternative that liquidationism cannot escape, whether they try to remain silent or not. In one way or another. The material, historical facts cannot be ignored. And what could be more historic, more material for a communist organisation, than a congress resolution?
A last word on this. This text (of 1965) was written by the comrade MC, now deceased, from whom the liquidationists are trying at any price to claim the exclusive inheritance, the ‘red thread’ being assumed by that great celebrity, Peter. ‘The IFICC doesn’t walk ‘in the footsteps of MC’, it walks over all the principles which he always defended’, they dare to affirm on their website – this article which is simply announced in the June RI: they no longer venture to put these kinds of documents in their papers [2]. And for good reason: it’s not the first time that the writings of the militant MC, and not confidences whispered (according to them) in the ears of …Peter and his partner are there to denounce their current policies. Here again, there are two opposing methods.
So the IFICC maintains its fiction: they are the Real ICC. They are the true heirs of MC, the militant of the Italian left who played a crucial role in the foundation of the ICC. (and in doing so, they also maintain their repulsive campaign of personalised attacks on our militants).
The ICC’s website article they mention (see the French language pages) has already shown the falsity of their claim to be walking in MC’s footsteps. The greater part of MC’s political life was spent in unremitting opposition to the opportunist course adopted by that wing of the Italian left which formed the Partito Ccomunista Internazionalista in 1943, an opportunism continued by both descendants of the 1952 split in the PCInt, the Bordigists and the IBRP. The IFICC of today, by contrast, has become a professional flatterer of these currents, especially of the IBRP, and this at the very time that the latter’s abandonment of proletarian principles of behaviour and of fundamental theoretical acquisitions- above all the theory of capitalist decadence – has reached unprecedented depths.
No less did MC lead the struggle against parasitism and gangsterism in the workers’ movement, in particular, the struggle against the political thievery of the Chenier tendency of 1981, which has not had any equal… till the IFICC’s blatant robbery of ICC money and resources (justified by the IBRP as being acceptable for “leading elements” of a proletarian organisation).
In the IFICC’s latest attempt to recruit MC against the organisation to which he devoted the last two decades of his life, we are presented with proof that MC’s words contradict the alleged revisionism of the ICC concerning the theory of decomposition, which argues that following the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 and the unchaining of a war of each against all on the imperialist front, humanity now faces the danger that it could be dragged into barbarism and even ultimate destruction not by third world war but by the acceleration of all the horrors of a decaying system – regional wars, ecological catastrophe, epidemics, etc. This is not a ‘third way’ which is neither capitalism or socialism, not some new form of social system – which is what MC was polemicisng against – but an alternative route into barbarism, even more insidious than that of a third world war. Socialism or barbarism remains the only historical alternative.
The members of the IFICC are not confused about this. They are deliberately lying. They know perfectly well that this vision of a ‘new’ route into barbarism was contained not only the congress resolution of 2003, but in all the fundamental texts on decomposition which the ICC has published since it developed this idea in the late 80s, not least the Theses on Decomposition adopted in 1990, which they voted for and defended for several years after that [3].
They also know perfectly well that the ICC militant who first put forward the theory of decomposition was none other than MC, who, following the terrorist attacks on the Paris metro in 1986, had begun to recognise that something profound was changing at the level of relations between states, and that the class struggle, for all its militancy, was not offering humanity the clear perspective of a new society.
If there is a revision here, it is the members of the IFICC who are the revisionists. They have ‘revised’ (in fact, abandoned) the theory of decomposition, partly because it is unpopular with the groups they are trying to flatter. They have ‘revised’ (in fact, abandoned) the contribution of MC both at the level of theory and of organisational behaviour. And in shamelessly declaring themselves to be following in his footsteps, they once again prove that they have revised their status as militants of the proletariat and joined the ranks of political parasitism.
Amos, 28/7/05.
[1] To someone unfamiliar with this question, the IFICC’s quotation is devoid of sense, because they cut off the ensuing phrase. The original ICC quote reads “the destruction of humanity not through an apocalyptic war, but through the gradual advance of decomposition, which could over a period of time undermine the proletariat’s capacity to respond as a class, and could equally make the planet uninhabitable through a spiral of regional wars and ecological catastrophes”.
[2] We are disappointed in the IFICC’s failure to keep up with the ICC press. Usually they scour our publications in fine detail to find proof of disagreements between sections, discords, and various forms of revisionism. They don’t seem to have noticed that the practise of publishing web supplements is now very widespread in the ICC, and that ICC Online is now a publication of the ICC in its own right. If we wanted to hide anything we have written, we would certainly not put it on our website, which has a wider readership than any of our printed papers.
[3] The 1990 orientation text is quite explicit: “today we have to clarify the fact that the destruction of humanity may come about as a result of imperialist world war, or the decomposition of society…the course of history cannot be turned back: as its name suggests, decomposition leads to social dislocation and putrefaction, to the void. Left to its own devices, it will lead humanity to the same fate as world war. In the end, it is all the same whether we are wiped out in a rain of thermo-nuclear bombs, or by pollution, radio-activity from nuclear power stations, famine, epidemics and the massacres of innumerable small wars (where nuclear weapons might also be used) the only difference between these two forms of annihilation lies in the fact that one is quick, while the other will be slower, and would consequently provoke more suffering”.
A reminder to the bold knights of the IFICC that they used to defend this point of view: “The longer the agony of capitalism goes on, the more devastating its ravages will be. The more the decomposition of capitalist social relations advances, the more it threatens to compromise the very perspective of the proletarian revolution and handicap the future construction of communism…The stakes are becoming more and more dramatic. The proletariat doesn’t have an unlimited time to accomplish its tasks. The victory of the proletarian revolution or the destruction of humanity – that’s the alternative”. Editorial of International Review 63, fourth quarter 1990, signed by RL, now a member of the IFICC. We can add that this issue also contained the ICC’s first major contribution on how capitalism is threatening the planet with ecological disaster - a question on which the IFICC remains studiously silent, since it clearly raises the possibility of the destruction of humanity through means other than a world war between two blocs.
Since the beginning of 2005, 17,000 jobs have been lost in this sector and 14 enterprises closed in the USA. This is linked to a 120% increase in imports in cotton shirts and a 300% increase in underwear. The American government reacted immediately: “By acting so quickly to impose protection measures, the American government has sent a strong message, showing that it understands that this enormous flood represents a real crisis for our workers” (C Johnson, president of the Textile Federation). In fact, the American bourgeoisie, like the bourgeoisie elsewhere, doesn’t give a damn about the workers. What worries it about the current economic war is the declining ability of its national capital to compete on the world market. It’s for the same reason that the countries of the European Union are trying, despite their divisions, to enter the war in battle order. The European Commissioner of Trade has just announced that the EU aims to put urgent limits on Chinese T-shirts and linen. It has also asked China itself to take measures to avoid using the protection clauses contained in the agreement around China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation. As for France, which is still an important textile producer, its demand is even clearer. The French bourgeoisie is demanding protectionist measures right now. It is obvious that several thousand lay-offs have already been envisaged in this sector. The French bourgeoisie would like us to believe that it is doing this to protect the working conditions of ‘its’ workers. It even goes so far as to denounce the lot of the Chinese workers, who are being sacrificed on the altar of profit. This is just a way of hiding its own attacks, its own behaviour as an exploiting class. The fact is that the bourgeoisie’s policies are everywhere the same. In a situation of profound economic crisis, maintaining profits means reducing wages on its home turf in order to export at a lower price. Contrary to what is said by the ‘alternative worldists’ or the leftists, this is not the policy of this or that neo-liberal state. The capitalist crisis obliges all nations to engage in a merciless trade war, and all of them impose the same pressures on the working class. For each country, it’s vital to grab the best possible place on the market, whatever the consequences for the workers.
This is why the Chinese bourgeoisie reacted straight away to the protectionist measures put into place by the USA and the EU. The Chinese minister Bo Xilai, cited by the Nouvells de Chine agency made it clear that “China is firmly opposed to the limitations imposed by other countries”. This same minister declared on 18 May last year; “Integration into the textile trade is a right which China has enjoyed since joining the WTO. China will not impose limits on its own exports on textile products”. The message could hardly have been clearer. With the new recession that has already started, no capitalist country can afford to hand out presents to the others.
The same goes for the question of relocations – shifting whole enterprises to areas where costs are lower. A study commissioned by the Finance Commission of the French Senate, carried out by the Katalyse group, envisages “the relocation of 202,000 service employees” during 2005-2006 in France This phenomenon of relocation, which got going in the 90s, is going through a real acceleration. Here again the only concern for capital is the maximum return on investment. For France, as with the other main industrial countries of Europe, the favourite destinations are precisely China, India, and now Eastern Europe. The most recent important example of this is the transfer of the giant electronic company Philips to Lodz in Poland. The Confederation of British Industry says that over the next 10 years “there will be no jobs for unqualified people in Britain”. The Daily Telegraph comments cynically: “We must make sure that people get qualifications. If you are qualified, you have nothing to fear”. Lies! Lay-offs are falling like rain in all sectors, whether state of the art or not. Unemployment registers are full of people with too many diplomas.
Not content with attacking the wages of the working class, the bourgeoisie uses issues like Chinese textile imports and relocations to mount a huge propaganda campaign against the workers.
The bourgeoisie makes the most cynical use of the terrible living and working conditions of workers in India, China or Eastern Europe in order to argue that workers in Europe don’t have so much to moan about. This then allows them to demand new sacrifices in order to stand up to the competition from Asia or Eastern Europe. This serves the purposes of the ruling class in a number of ways.
First, it serves to make workers in the more developed countries feel guilty, so that they hesitate to fight against attacks when so many workers in the world live in even worse conditions. It also raises the threat that if workers don’t work more for less, there will be even more relocations. Any resulting unemployment won’t be the fault of bankrupt capitalism, but of the selfish workers.
Finally, by painting a picture of Asian workers who, under threat of starving to death, put up with working for practically nothing, the whole propaganda barrage creates divisions between workers. This use of scapegoats has been a constant feature in the life of capitalism. Today fingers are pointed at the workers of China, India, Poland or Hungary. Yesterday it was the workers of the Caribbean, Algeria, Morocco, or elsewhere. The proletariat should not be taken in by this nauseating message. Everywhere the working class is exploited. It is exploited all the more ferociously where it is less able to defend to itself.
As the Communist Manifesto proclaimed in 1848, “the workers have no country”. Everywhere they have the same interests; everywhere they suffer the same oppression.
Whether companies or countries are competitive is the problem of the bourgeoisie, not of the workers. Workers need to develop their unity and solidarity across enterprises and across nations, to fight capitalism’s attacks wherever they occur. And the current revival of class struggle renews the promise that this is no dream but the real future being carved out of the present.
Tino, 2/7/05.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftn1
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftn2
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftn3
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_bombings_leaflet
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftn4
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftnref1
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftnref2
[9] https://www.libcom.org/features/londonbombings/
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftnref3
[11] https://zabalaza.net/
[12] https://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=895
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2005_London_anarchist_statements.html#_ftnref4
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/286_1945.html
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/leftism
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/outside-communist-left
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/london-bombings
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internal-fraction-icc
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis