When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails and where Cheney has been labelled the ‘Vice President for Torture’. In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques.

Interrogation in Northern Ireland

Between 1971 and ‘75 more than 2000 people were interned without trial by the state in Northern Ireland. Picked up without having any charges laid, or knowing when they were going to be released, detainees were subject to all sorts of treatments, some coming under the heading of ‘interrogation in depth’. Apart from prolonged sessions of oppressive questioning, serious threats, wrist bending, choking and beatings, there were instances of internees being forced to run naked over broken glass and being thrown, tied and hooded, out of helicopters a few feet above the ground. The ‘five techniques’ at the centre of the interrogators’ work were: sensory deprivation through being hooded (often while naked); being forced to stand against walls (sometimes for over 20 hours and even for more than 40); being subjected to continuous noise (from machinery such as generators or compressors for periods of up to 6 or 7 days); deprivation of food and water; sleep deprivation for periods of up to week. Relays of interrogation teams were used against the victims.

The British state tried to discredit reports of torture. Stories were fed to the media about injuries being self-inflicted - “one hard-line Provisional was given large whiskies and a box of king-size cigarettes for punching himself in both eyes” (Daily Telegraph, 31/10/77). There were indeed instances of self-harm, but these were either suicide attempts or done with the hope of being transferred to hospital accommodation.

Then the press said that any measures were justified if they helped to ‘prevent violence’. They contrasted “ripping out fingernails, beating people with steel rods and applying electric shocks to their genitalia” (Daily Telegraph 3/9/76), examples of “outright brutality”, with the measures used in Northern Ireland.

In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights said that the techniques Britain had used caused “intense physical and mental suffering and … acute psychiatric disturbance”, but that while this was “inhuman and degrading treatment” it didn’t amount to torture. This was a victory for the British state because it was keen to use means that would cause the maximum distress to the victim with the minimum external evidence. They had been previously referred to the European Court over torture in Cyprus, but in fact British interrogators had been using various combinations of the ‘five techniques’ for a long time. When the army and RUC approached Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, for formal approval “They told him that the ‘in-depth’ techniques they planned to use were those the army had used … many times before when Britain was faced with insurgencies in her colonies, including Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, the British Cameroons, Brunei, British Guyana, Aden, Borneo, Malaysia and the Persian Gulf” (Provos The IRA and Sinn Fein Peter Taylor).

By any means deemed necessary

British intervention in the Malayan ‘emergency’ in the 1950s has been held up as a model of suppression and ‘counter-insurgency’. Apart from the camps established, the murder squads, use of rigid food controls, burning down villages and the imposition of emergency regulations, the use of torture was an integral part of British operations. With 650,000 people uprooted and ‘resettled’ in New Villages, or put in concentration camps, there was also a programme of ‘re-education’.

British action in Kenya in the 1950s also showed what British civilisation was prepared to do. At various times over 90,000 ‘suspects’ were imprisoned, in either detention camps or ‘protected villages’. At one point Nairobi (population 110,000) was emptied, with 16,500 then detained and 2,500 expelled to reserves. Assaults and violence, often to the point of death, were extensive. As in Malaya, ‘rehabilitation’ was one of the goals of the operation. More than 1000 people were hanged, using a mobile gallows that was taken round the country. Overall, maybe 100-150,000 died through exhaustion, disease, starvation and systematic brutality.

Recent revelations in The Guardian (12/11/5) concerned a secret torture centre, the “London Cage”, that operated between July 1940 and September 1948. Three houses in Kensington were used to interrogate some 3500 German officers, soldiers and civilians. Still in use for three years after the end of the war, interrogation included beatings, being forced to stand to attention for up to 26 hours, threats of execution or unnecessary surgery, starvation, sleep deprivation, dousings with cold water etc. “In one complaint lodged at the National Archives, a 27-year-old German journalist being held at this camp said he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British.”

No exceptions

There is a continuity in the British state’s actions. The Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the ‘London Cage’ received an OBE for his interrogation work in the First World War. In the 1950s there were reports of Britain experimenting with drugs, surgery and torture with a view to designing techniques that would be effective but look harmless. In the 1970s thousands of army officers and senior civil servants were trained to use psychological techniques for security purposes. Inevitably, the truth about current activities is not in the public domain.

In general, British democracy has been better than others at concealing the brutal way its state functions. Anything that is exposed is denied or dismissed as being an isolated excess. In France the extensive use of torture in the war in Algeria was publicised as part of a battle between different factions of the ruling class. Victims had hoses inserted in their mouths and their stomachs filled with water, electrodes were put on genitals, heads were immersed in water. During the Battle of Algiers 3-4000 people ‘disappeared’: fatal victims of French torture techniques.

Although France, and more recently the US in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, have been less successful than Britain in keeping their actions under wraps, all these democracies use the most brutal methods of interrogation and detention. They also learn from each other’s activities, most notably in Vietnam, where the US drew on British experience in Malaya as much as earlier French experience in Indo-China. Any government can talk about ‘human rights’, but every capitalist state will use any means at its disposal in war or to enforce its social order.  

Car 1/12/5

It’s now getting close to three years since the American army took control of Iraq, and the country is descending further and further into chaos. More than 120,000 Iraqis killed; 2,000 American soldiers killed and 18,000 wounded; massive destruction of infrastructure, houses and public buildings. Iraq is in one of the worst situations of any country since the Second World War. On top of this, the sharpening of imperialist tensions over Iraq has led the whole of the Middle East into a period of increasing instability. The recent bombings in Amman, Jordan, which had so far avoided this infection, are proof of this.

The spread of chaos in the Middle East

Iraq today is a devastated country, hovering on the brink of civil war. The ‘new’, ‘prosperous’, ‘democratic’ Iraq announced by the Bush administration is in total ruins. Non-stop guerrilla warfare against the occupying forces, more and more horrible atrocities against the civilian population, all this shows that any hope for reconstruction is an illusion. Divisions between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish cliques have been violently aggravated, with the whole population caught in the crossfire. Any future Iraqi state will be ravaged by all kinds of dissensions. In the north, Sunni terrorists and former Ba’athists, actively supported by Syria, have carried out numerous attacks on Kurdish interests. In Baghdad and the south, the conflict between Sunni and Shiite predominates. Murder, kidnappings and torture are the daily lot of the population. Last month dozens of Shiites were slaughtered by suicide bombers while praying in their mosques, while the Iraqi state, dominated by Shiites, exacts revenge by setting up torture centres which have nothing to learn from Saddam’s regime.

This situation has whetted the imperialist appetites of Iran and Syria. The latter, which is clearly staking its claim to having a say in the Iraqi melee, has already been serving as a launch pad for Sunni and Ba’athist terrorists. Its eviction from Lebanon will certainly push it towards extending its influence in Iraq.

Iran, currently involved in a stand-off with the US and European states over its nuclear programme, is licking its lips at the prospects opened up by the weakening of Iraq and the strength of the Shiite factions in the new government, especially in the security forces. This is opening the door to Iran gaining a much more powerful place in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf and the oil-producing areas. This perspective is leading it to act in a much more aggressive manner towards the great powers, and has strengthened the hand of the most ‘hardline’ and retrograde factions of the Iranian bourgeoisie. Tensions between Iran and Britain have increased as Tehran is increasing its support for attacks on British occupying forces by Shiite militias.

The Amman bombings remind us that no region of the Middle East is going to be spared from the forces of destruction. They are particularly significant because Jordan represents a link between Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. For a long time Jordan acted as a buffer between Israel and the Palestinian organisations, which it hosted until Black September in 1970 when the regime turned on the PLO at the behest of the Americans. Thus another close ally of the US has now been targeted by the terrorists, just like Saudi Arabia which has seen numerous attacks by Al Qaida since the Iraq war.

In this situation, we also have to take into account the various manoeuvres by Sharon, which will result in growing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian groups, and even among the Palestinian groups themselves, especially Hamas and the PLO. Under cover of the withdrawal from Gaza, the Israeli state is actually tightening its grip on the West Bank and preparing to deploy more forces towards Lebanon. Sharon’s decision to leave Likud and form a new party supported by the former Labourite Shimon Peres does not mean that Sharon has been converted into a dove. It simply means that he is a more intelligent warmonger than the extreme right, which is hampered by irrational dogmas about holding on to every last inch of the Holy Land.

Growing difficulties for the USA

In this situation, it’s clear that the US administration is finding it increasingly difficult to justify its continued presence in Iraq. The idea that invading Iraq would be a blow to international terrorism has been discredited by the simple fact that the terrorist wave has grown stronger and stronger, not only in Iraq but right across the world, including Europe. The same goes for the idea of installing peace and democracy in Iraq. Thus the Bush administration is being subjected to mounting criticism not only from its traditional opponents in the ‘international community’, such as France and Germany, but also from within the American bourgeoisie itself – and not only among the Democrats, but even from inside the Republican party. The dramatic fall in Bush’s popularity in the opinion polls, the debates in the Republican-dominated Senate about the need for the US to fix a date for withdrawal and about the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, the emergence of new scandals about the way the administration manipulated the facts about weapons of mass destruction….all this shows the real impasse facing the American bourgeoisie.

What’s more, despite some recent displays of force against rebel strongholds in the north, the US is showing its powerlessness on the ground as well. The White House is caught on the horns of a dilemma:

-               the pressure of public opinion about the disastrous situation in Iraq, which is pushing it towards withdrawing as soon as it can

-               the threat posed to US interests by withdrawing under the current circumstances, which would not only leave Iraq to sink deeper into the quagmire, but would be seen as a defeat, even a humiliation, for the US, which would have completely failed in its promise to bring peace and democracy to the country.             

America’s difficulties are a source of satisfaction to its imperialist rivals, since it legitimises their opposition to the invasion of Iraq and will give them the opportunity to further their own imperialist ambitions, under the pretext of offering their disinterested services. Thus for example we saw France making overtures to Jordan in the wake of the Amman bombings.

Iraq is the true face of capitalism today. It is also a glimpse of the future that the bourgeoisie is preparing for us. Only the struggle against this dying system can offer humanity a different future.  Mulan

We have recently received a letter from Iran that raises a number of issues. In this response we will focus on the part of his letter that deals with the unions. We have made some minor changes to the text but have left the language unchanged.

“About Iran I can tell you that the situation is very  bad. Even the reformist and syndicalist [union] organisations are disbanded. One syndicate which belonged to bus drivers was about to start working few months ago but it was attacked by the government vandals (which are with the Labour House and the Islamic Labour Councils [1] [4] and are controlled by the intelligence service of Iran) in its first day of work and several activists were damaged. One month later ILO [International Labour Organisation] accepted those who had attacked the syndicate as ‘workers’ organisations’ from Iran. Although the Iranian government has accepted 87 and 98 conventions of ILO (which allow the workers to form their willing organisations or unions and are needed to join the WTO) but still all of the worker’s organizations and even the reformist trade unions are disbanded and several activists are in prison.

“The site which I referred to belongs to ‘Coordinating Committee to form Workers Organisation’. I don’t believe in all of their positions but I think all of the activities should be supported in order to force the government to accept the worker rights.

“… The Trotskyists are playing a very reactionary role in Iran these days. The worker class has already began to end the reformist ways (for example asking the Labour House, Islamic Councils and capitalist organizations such as ILO for assistance) and it’s going to start the radical (not exactly revolutionary) movements but these Trotskyists want to take the worker movement one step back and into reformism again. They have started a campaign called ‘Iranian workers are not alone’ and they ask the capitalists such as the Labour Party of England to support the workers in Iran! This kind of activities can only disarm the revolutionary movements.” 

The working class in Iran

The Iranian workers have a history of struggle. In 1978 and ’79 massive strikes, especially in the oil industry, were marked by exemplary class solidarity and a willingness to confront the state and all of its forces of repression. In this, the Iranian proletariat stood alongside its class comrades around the world:

“Workers have refused to accept the increasing poverty demanded by the capitalist crisis… They have responded militantly, violently, to a standard of life which, for example, demands 60-70% of their income for housing alone.

“Workers have struggled autonomously, organising (as at the oil refineries) their own independent committees, whose delegates – the bourgeois press has complained – are too devoted to ‘utopian ideals’ rather than the ‘give and take of labour-management struggle’. In other words these committees are no doubt the genuine expression of workers’ interests…

“The strikes have given rise also to an inspiring class solidarity – the oil workers have refused to return to work until the demands of 400,000 teachers have been satisfied. The seriousness of the workers’ struggle is shown by the courage with which it has confronted the bourgeois state – ignoring the imposition of martial law (in fact the struggle has tended to escalate after the formation of the military government). Instead of being intimidated by the troops sent to the oilfields, the workers have attempted – often successfully – to fraternise with the soldiers” (World Revolution 21, December 1978/January 1979).

The government in Iran today stands in continuity with its predecessor of 1979. There was no revolution in Iran in 1979. For the workers, the change from the Shah to Ayotollah Khomeini was merely the substitution of one oppressor for another, although the ability of religious obscurantists and bigots to take over a whole country was an early sign of the irrationality that was beginning to develop within capitalism, which was about to enter what we now describe as its phase of decomposition. Both then and now there have been calls from the left for the formation of ‘real’ trade unions rather than the puppet unions of the state. In 1979, many on the left thought Khomeni would put an end to feudalism and promote the growth of democracy, under which unions could flourish. Today, the ‘Co-ordinating Committee’ that our correspondent refers to repeats the call for the formation of a union, even if they avoid the word in favour of a more amorphous term ‘organisation’ [2] [5].

It is certainly true that the working class needs organisation. Indeed many of its most important struggles have been to form and defend its organisations as much as gain increases in wages and the like. The question is surely what sort of organisation? Can a trade union, no matter how ‘real’ or ‘radical’, actually help the working class today? Does the desperate situation of the working class in countries such as Iran mean that we should support any hint of organisation, as our correspondent suggests when he writes “I think all of the activities should be supported in order to force the government to accept the worker rights”?

What kind of organisation?

The question that determines our attitude and our actions is: whose interests does an organisation defend? In other words, is it an organisation of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie? This is not a straightforward question. The ‘Labour House’ our correspondent refers to is probably filled with workers, but that does not make it a workers’ organisation. Today it seems that it is only when workers take organisation directly into their own hands that their struggle can have any success. This is what the Iranian workers did in 1979; it is what the Polish workers did the following year. It is what the Russian workers did in 1917 when they formed the Soviets or workers’ councils. Such organisations are weapons of the struggle, rising with it and disappearing when the struggle ends. Many see this as a weakness and long for some permanent organisation, but this ignores the reality of workers’ struggles in this whole period.

The unions developed when capitalism was young and growing, when it could grant reforms and allow the working class some place in society. Today this is no longer the case. Throughout most of the last century we have seen capitalism attack the working class again and again, imposing new demands on workers to produce more and faster and cheaper. The unions, which grew up to win improved conditions for the workers, to force the ruling class to strike a deal, can do nothing for the working class when the only deals on offer are speed-ups, job cuts and more exploitation. Striking deals can only mean betraying the working class. There is no place for the working class in bourgeois society today. Any permanent mass organisation of the working class can only exist by making deals with the bosses and so betraying the working class. The only long-term organisations the working class can have today are organisations for fighting against capitalism without compromise: its class-wide councils and its political organisations [3] [6]. Of course the very appearance of the councils signifies a revolutionary situation; until that stage, the worker’s struggle can only be organised through assemblies and committees which exist for and during the movement but don’t attempt to perpetuate themselves after the struggle has died down. Otherwise they will be turned into a new form of trade union and become an obstacle to the next round of the fight.  

Trotskyism against the working class

We agree fully with our correspondent about the reactionary role played by Trotskyism. The example he gives of the false ‘solidarity’ of the ‘Iranian workers are not alone’ campaign is a good example of how the language and aspirations of the working class are twisted into their opposite by these practised hypocrites. However, this is nothing new. In 1979, many Trotskyists echoed the Iranian Stalinists in their support for the ‘revolution’ led by Khomeini: “By urging continuation of the strikes and mass demonstrations against the Shah, and by refusing to support any government formed under the royal butchers auspices, Khomeini has played a progressive role” (The Militant – US Socialist Workers Party – quoted in WR 22). In reality the workers were beginning to be drowned in the reactionary movement being built up by the mullahs. However, contrary to what our correspondent says, the Trotskyists do not aim merely to take the working class “back and into reformism” but actually to drag it onto the bourgeois terrain and defeat it. This is as true today as it was yesterday: “All over the world the left wing of the bourgeoisie – the Stalinists of the Communist parties, the Maoists and the Trotskyists – are calling for the defeat of the Shah and his replacement by another part of the bourgeoisie which they see as being ‘more progressive’ than the Shah, always under the call for democracy in the shape of ‘free elections’” (WR 21).

In Iran, as everywhere else in the world, the working class has to learn to struggle again. After years of uncertainty, confusion and loss of confidence workers are beginning to get a sense of who they are and what they are, to understand that they have interests opposed to the ruling class and can only rely on themselves. News about the real situation of the working class in Iran is hard to come by, filtered as it is through the propaganda of the ruling class. We salute the suggestion that the working class is still trying to struggle and encourage our correspondent to write again with any news about the class struggle.

Despite all it has suffered, despite all of the weight of the Islamic regime, we have confidence in the working class in Iran as we have confidence in the working class as a whole.

North 1/12/05.

When independence was declared by East Timor in 1975 it was recognised by Portugal. However the neighbouring Indonesian state had other ideas and invaded the island. In a war that lasted until 1999 up to 250,000 East Timorese died. The 1980 census figure was only 550,000. People died in the conflict, through atrocities committed by Indonesian troops, and as a result of famine, just one of the results of the destruction of 70% of the economic infrastructure.

You can read this anywhere now, in any standard reference work or reliable website. Back in 1975 the Labour government “knowingly lied about Indonesian atrocities in East Timor” (The Times 30/11/5) and “worked with the US and Australia to cover up details” (Guardian 1/12/5) of what troops were doing.

In recently declassified documents the British ambassador in Jakarta said in a secret telegram that the invading troops had gone “on a rampage of looting and killing”. He added “If asked to comment on any stories of atrocities, I suggest we say that we have no information.”

At the time, following the US withdrawal from Vietnam, Indonesia was a major ally of America in the area. The British ambassador wrote before the invasion that East Timor was “high on Henry Kissinger’s list of places where the US do not want to comment or get involved”.

Accordingly Britain followed the US example, including putting pressure on Australia not to demand information from Indonesia on two British journalists working for Australian television who “were killed while filming a clandestine attack on East Timorese soldiers” by Indonesian forces.

British imperialism has never had an ‘ethical foreign policy’, always considering British capitalism’s interests as the only factor to be taken into account.   Car 2/12/5

Relocation (1) is used by all the bourgeoisie’s propagandists, to such an extent that it sometimes not only eclipses all the other attacks that hit the proletariat, but even becomes the explanation for them. Alternative Worldists, leftists, trade unions and parties of the left are at the forefront of this, denouncing the “ultra-liberalism” of the fat-cat bosses and shareholders thirsting for juicy dividends. Against all this we are going to show, in this article, that relocation results from the most fundamental laws that regulate the capitalist system.

Contrary to the Alternative Worldists’ slogan “our world is not for sale”, trade relations, under the aegis of capitalism, have regulated the whole of social and human relations in society for a very long time. In capitalist society, buying and selling a commodity is the only way to avoid being deprived of all means of subsistence. For those who possess no means of production, the proletariat, the only thing left for them to offer on the market is a particular commodity, their labour power.

Capitalist exploitation of labour power

As with any other commodity, the value of labour power finds its expression on the market through a price and in money: wages. Selling labour power is no different from selling other commodities on the market, except that it is inseparable from the seller, the worker, and that it cannot wait too long for a buyer because it would perish with its bearer, through lack of the means to live.

Labour power constitutes for the capitalist buyer, the bourgeois who consumes it, the source of his profit. If the industrial capitalist only pays the worker for the time that he engages him, ie, the time sufficient for the worker to create the wage that he draws, the boss will not realise any benefit. It’s necessary that the worker works longer than this time. The time of work of any worker is composed, without the worker being aware of it, of two parts: one part paid, where the worker only restores the value of his wage, and an unpaid part, where he works for free for the capitalist who appropriates the totality of the production.

The condition of the proletarian sums up the insecurity of his existence: “The proletarian is deprived of everything; he cannot live a single day by himself. The bourgeoisie arrogates the monopoly of all the means of existence in the greatest sense of the term. That which the proletarian has need of can only be obtained from this bourgeois whose monopoly is protected by the power of the state. The proletarian is thus, de facto and de jure, the slave of the bourgeoisie; the latter controls his life and death. It offers him the means to live but only in exchange of an ‘equivalent’, in exchange for his work; he will go as far as to concede to him the illusion that he is acting of his own free will, that he enters into a contract freely and with no constraints in the greater part. Such liberty leaves no other choice to the proletarian than to sign up to the conditions imposed by the bourgeoisie (…)” (2).

In the capitalist system, the thirst for exploitation, for surplus labour, has no limit: the more that capitalism draws unpaid labour from the workers, the better it is. To extort surplus value, extort it without limits, such is the aim and the role of buying the commodity of labour power by the capitalist. “The industrial capitalist remains at root a merchant. His activity as a capitalist (…) is reduced to that which a merchant exercises on the market. His task consists of buying judiciously, at the lowest price possible, the raw materials and accessories, the labour power, etc., which are necessary for him, and to sell as dear as possible the commodities made at his premises. In the domain of production, one sole point must preoccupy him: he must do it in a manner that the worker furnishes for the lowest wage possible, the most work possible, returning the most surplus value possible” (3).

This exploitation only finds its limits in the exhaustion of the exploited and in the capacity of the working class to resist the exploiter. In order to increase the time given to unpaid work, where the proletarian furnishes to capitalism its surplus value, capital uses different means: the lengthening of the working day, the intensification of the rates of work and the lowering of wages, even to the minimum necessary for the simple maintenance of the life of the worker.

As any commodity, labour power is subjected to competition and to the hazards of the capitalist market. “…When there are more workers than the bourgeoisie judges enough to occupy, when consequently in the terms of competition, there still remains a certain number without work, precisely these will have to die of hunger; because the bourgeois cannot give them work, if they cannot sell the product of their work for a profit”. Competition, “the most perfect expression of the war of all against all which rages in modern bourgeois society”, where “the workers are in competition as the bourgeois are in competition”, opposing active and unemployed workers, natives and immigrants or different national fractions of the proletariat, constitutes “the sharpest weapon of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the proletariat” (4).

Relocation, a product of capitalist competition

Relocation of sites of production from the industrialised countries towards countries where a worker is much cheaper is a clear expression of capitalism’s search for the maximum rate of profit. Under the pressure of competition between the great industrialised countries for more and more limited markets, average hourly wages of €18 in Spain, €4 in Poland and the Czech Republic, €2 in Brazil and Mexico, €1 in Romania, €0.7 in India or China against €23 in Western Europe or the United States, offers a certain windfall for capitalism.

From the 19th century, the bourgeoisie has never hesitated, where the technology of production allowed it, to get rid of workers and search elsewhere, in another region, for a cheaper worker or a worker more docile to exploitation. Even if relocation is not a novelty for the working class, but constitutes an old and international phenomenon, since the 1990s, under the impulsion of the economic crisis, which has lasted more than three decades, this phenomenon has accelerated. In many sectors where the cost of the workers represents an important part of the cost of the global return from production, these transfers from the industrialised countries towards those where the costs of production are much cheaper have “already largely been made”  (5).

In France the manufacturers have had recourse to relocation. Renault has produced the R12 in Romania since 1968. “From the 1970s, Renault has multiplied local partnerships in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Turkey. (…) After the restructuring of the 80s, Renault bought into Samsung in South Korea and Dacia in Romania in 1999” (5).  One US toy manufacturer has recently relocated from Haiti, the most poverty-stricken country, with the cheapest labour, in the Western Hemisphere, to China where it is even cheaper to produce and send back products to the USA (6). The bourgeoisie moreover did not wait for the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in order to invest and transfer jobs to the countries of the ex-eastern bloc.

If all the sectors of capitalist production are affected by relocation, all production is not destined to be transferred, as bourgeois propaganda would have us believe. “The sectors of industry concerned by relocation are numerous: leather, textiles, clothing, metallurgy, white goods, automobiles, electronics…Equally affected is the tertiary sector: telephone centres, information, accountancy… Really all mass production and repetitive services are susceptible to being relocated to territories where the cost of a worker is clearly less” (7). The drastic reduction of transport costs accomplished in the 1990s (a reduction of 45% of maritime freight and 35% of air freight between 1985 and 1993) has shrunk the distance between the places where many commodities are produced and the market where they are consumed.

There is also a frenetic search to lower the price of intellectual, high-tech labour power, which is very expensive in the western countries. In China, western public bodies and private enterprises are more and more numerous “creating, in situ, research centres such as France Telecom in Canton, June 2004, so as to benefit from fantastic scientific breeding grounds at the low price offered by the Chinese laboratories” (9). In recent years, India has also become highly prized for its ability to offer low cost computer programming.

On the other hand, relocation is largely used to reduce the non-productive costs of large enterprises (information management, exploitation of research and maintenance, management of wages, financial services, customer services, ordering, telephone call centres) by as much as 40 to 60% and to such an extent that “everything which can be done at a distance and transmitted by phone or satellite is there to be relocated”. Thus India “tends to become the shop-window for British and American enterprises” (5).

In the fight to the death that all nations are caught up in, the states of the developed countries have explicitly put a stop to certain activities going abroad. Maintaining inside their borders certain guaranteed industries connected to the military and capable of rivalling nations of a similar order constitutes a strategic necessity and a question of survival for capitalist states in the imperialist arena. More generally, on the economic level, it is also essential to keep on one’s own soil a productive capacity in key sectors that strengthen the state in the face of competition. In the French automobile industry “Under pressure of competition which obliges ever lower production costs, a movement of relocation takes shape leading to the production of smaller vehicles destined for the French market from countries where labour is cheaper. Whereas the production of higher range vehicles is kept in France in highly automated factories (…) “  (7). The same in the textile industry where “today only textiles incorporating technology and know-how are still made in France” (7).

The number of countries benefiting from outsourcing is limited: “India, the Maghreb, Turkey, the countries of central and eastern Europe and Asia (notably China)” (8). Each of these national capitals is chosen according to the same imperative criteria. They must not only possess a certain domestic stability, which is the case in fewer and fewer countries as entire zones of the planet are given up to the ravages of war, but they must also have a suitable infrastructure and a labour force that has been broken in by capitalist exploitation, and is thus relatively well formed. Most of the countries aimed at have had an industrial past (ex-eastern bloc countries) or a semblance of industrialisation. In contrast, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa that aspire to receive relocations have seen none of it.

The endless crisis of overproduction

The very definition of relocation as “the movement abroad of an existing economic activity from a country whose production is then imported back into that country” (8) reveals to us a part of the secret of the fabulous figures drawn up by the bourgeoisie on the subject of the so-called Chinese or Indian economic miracles. Taking the totality of world production, relocation adds up to zero. If there really is the creation of a pole of production which didn’t exist previously, in no way has there been an overall development or increase of capitalist production, since the creation of a previously non-existing activity in such or such a country has a direct corollary in the deindustrialisation and stagnation of the most advanced economies.

For decades these countries did not generate the investment needed for the massive acquisition of a modern technology, which is an indispensable condition for competing with the most developed countries and achieving an industrialisation worthy of the name. Their very underdevelopment is actually the reason why capitalism is so eager to exploit the working class in these countries.

The absence of any perspective of real improvement of the living conditions of the proletariat in the countries blessed by relocations, as well as the development of unemployment in the western countries, cannot contribute to the expansion of the world market but only to the aggravation of the crisis of overproduction.

Relocation in itself does not constitute the cause of unemployment and the deterioration in the proletariat’s quality of life. It is only one of the forms of the attacks imposed on the class, but all possess the same root: the economic laws of the capitalist system which rule each nation and which plunge the capitalist world into an endless crisis of overproduction.

In order to amass the surplus value produced by the working class that is locked into the commodities produced, it is still necessary for the capitalist to sell these commodities on the market.

The capitalist crisis of overproduction, the scourge of the capitalist system, always finds its origins in the under-consumption of the masses. The working class is constrained by the capitalist system of wage labour, which constantly reduces the part of social production that returns to the proletariat. Capitalism must find a part of its solvent buyers outside of those who have to submit to the labour-capital relationship.

Previously, the existence of an internal market, of large sectors of relatively prosperous pre-capitalist production (artisans, and above all the peasantry), formed the nourishing soil indispensable to capitalist growth. At the world level, the vast extra-capitalist market of the colonised countries swallowed up the overflow of a great many commodities produced in the industrialised countries. Since the beginning of the 20th century capitalism has submitted the whole of the planet to its economic relations. It no longer possesses the historic conditions that permitted it to confront and overcome, to some extent, its contradictions.

From here on capitalism enters into its phase of irreversible decline which condemns humanity to wars, to convulsions, crises and generalised misery, holding out the threat of destruction pure and simple.  Scott

Notes

1)             We are defining relocation as: “the movement abroad of an existing economic activity from a country to a country whose labour is much cheaper with the production then imported back to that country”. Relocation has its domestic corollary in “outsourcing”, the transfer of jobs to areas (or the same area) where terms, wages and conditions are less favourable to the workers. As such it is part of the attack on the working class.

2)             Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, (1845).

3)             K. Kautsky, The Socialist Programme (1892), chapter on the ‘The Proletariat’.

4)             Engels, Ibid.

5)             Novethics.fr. 10 January 2001.

6)             BBC World Service News, 18.11.05.

7)            L’Expansion, 27 January 2004.

8)            Vie publique.fr. 12 January 2004.

9)            Le Monde.fr. 27 June 2004.

The social system which runs the world – capitalism – cannot offer the human race a future.

It is dragging us through an endless spiral of wars. It is poisoning the natural environment, leading to one catastrophe after another. It condemns millions to unemployment and poverty. And now, in the central countries of the system, it is telling us that it can no longer afford to support us after a lifetime of toil.

According to the official line, the pensions crisis is a result of the fact that we are all living longer. But this is only a problem because the capitalist economy is bankrupt.

Faced with the world economic crisis, the response of the capitalist state is to reduce as much as possible the amount it spends on ‘social’ benefits. This is why it has been cutting the NHS to the bone for example – it’s not because people are getting healthier! And it’s the same in all countries: the ‘welfare state’ is being systematically dismantled. This is taking place both in countries which follow the neo-liberal ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model, like the US and Britain, and countries where the state is supposed to have a more ‘interventionist’ policy, like Austria, Germany, or France: all these countries have proposed big ‘reforms’ in their pensions provisions as well as other drastic reductions in social spending. 

Turner versus Brown: either way, we pay

The basic issue facing the British ruling class is thus how to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. The debate between critics (in particular, Gordon Brown) and supporters of Lord Turner’s 460-page report on pensions is basically about what kind of sacrifices are needed: longer working lives, higher taxes, cuts in other public services?

This question of what it’s prepared to spend on keeping proletarians alive once they have stopped producing surplus value has always preoccupied the British bourgeoisie.

When old age pensions were first introduced in Britain in 1908 it was a generation after Bismarck had launched them in Germany. Even British capitalism at its peak was cautious about such expenditure, and the Boer War and preparation for the First World War were greater priorities. Even then pensions were only available for those over 70 – at a time when male life expectancy at birth was only 48.

In the 1940s the Beveridge report recommended a “universal but very basic state pension. It should only be at ‘subsistence’ level: just enough to live. It should be paid for by national insurance contributions as, Sir William Beveridge says, the British people disapprove of ‘something for nothing’, and he hates the idea of a ‘Santa Claus’ society” (Financial Times 1/12/5) . Attlee’s Labour Government acted on this principle and the working class footed the bill.

In 1978 Labour made a second pension compulsory for many people, a clear admission of the inadequacy of the basic pension. In the subsequent Conservative governments the real value of the basic pension continued to get smaller.

Raising the retirement age to 68 is among Turner’s main proposals. This applies to the basic state pension, but at the recent CBI conference there were growing demands for an end to public sector pensions coming in at 60. We were told that the ‘privileged’ public sector workers will just have to accept longer working lives like workers in the private sector. And it seems that local authority workers are already being singled out as being the first ones to be asked to give up their ‘cushy’ retirement schemes. This is a disgusting attempt to divide the working class: many private sector pensions also begin at 60, not 65, and even if they didn’t, it would be in all workers’ interests for everyone to retire sooner, not later.

In sum, we are being told that we will be expected to work until we drop. This applies especially to the poorest sections of the working class, whose life expectancy is well below the national average. And even then, this ‘solution’ won’t produce the wealth required, since already in Britain, the majority of over-55-year-olds are out of work.

As for the prospects for saving for retirement, this would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Millions of people, of all ages, are already having problems with crippling debts that preclude the possibility of significant savings. If you’re paying off a student loan, or out of work, or in irregular or part-time work, or on a low or minimum wage, or overextended with a mortgage, you’re unlikely to be saving. And if there really was any substantial movement towards saving on a significant scale it would lead to a collapse in consumer spending and an impact beyond the retail and manufacturing sectors. Some people have illusions in investment in property, either directly or through inheritance. Already the current retired generation of home-owners has massively turned to equity release for income, leaving less and less to be inherited by their children. In any case, the rise in housing prices is a bubble that will not survive future economic storms, and workers looking for other ‘safe’ areas of investment will be equally disappointed.

A new society is needed

Remember the ‘leisure society’? Not so long ago we were being told that with the increase in automation we would all have much more leisure time. Unfortunately things don’t work like that under capitalism, which can only squeeze profit from living labour power, and which uses technological developments to intensify its exploitation. Far from having a laid-back leisure society, we have seen massive global unemployment on the one hand, and a brutal lengthening of the working day on the other. The current attempt to lengthen working lives is just another prong of this same attack.

None of it is justified on the criterion of human need. If we could end the gigantic waste of human labour power that capitalism pours down the drain of unemployment, of military production, and a whole host of useless unproductive activities (advertising, bureaucracy, etc…); if new machines could be used to reduce the burden of work rather than speed it up – then there could be massive reductions in the working day, or the working week, or the working life. And if, in Marx’s words, labour was transformed from “a means of life to life’s prime need”, to a truly creative activity, there would in any case be no more need for this rigid separation between work and leisure and work and retirement.

All this, however, can only come about through the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a world communist society. This in turn will only become a real possibility through a vast development of class struggle and of class consciousness. But the capitalist crisis and the attacks on workers’ living standards provide the material foundations for this development. The attempt to ‘reform’ pensions, in particular, has already led to large-scale mobilisations of workers in France and Austria, and it could equally have the same effect in Britain. These attacks are directed against all workers: they can thus help workers see the need for a united response. They are being spearheaded by the state: they can thus help workers see that the state is not their protector but the boss of all the bosses, their principal enemy. And they are an assault on our very future: they can thus help workers see that they must make their own future.

In 1880, when Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck introduced a national insurance system, he said: “Whoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect” and will “put up with much more because he a has pension to look forward to”.

What the pensions crisis is showing is that workers have less and less to look forward to from capitalism.

WR, December 05         

Tony Blair appears to be adrift in a sea of troubles: revelations about his role in the build up to the Iraq war, tensions with the rest of the EU,  ‘conflict’ between him and Gordon Brown over pension policy, warnings about the level of government overspending, open revolts in his party over anti-terrorist laws, over the use of nuclear power… The golden boy of British politics, who could do no wrong, is now mired in problems as his stint as the leader of the ruling team comes to an end. He has certainly added to his problems through inept political decisions, such as bringing Blunket back into the cabinet, but it is essential to see that Blair’s problems reflect those of British capitalism as a whole.

At a recent meeting of the ICC section in Britain this situation was analysed in a report on the national situation, taking up the deepening of these problems over the year since the 16th WR Congress adopted a ‘Resolution on the National Situation [18]’ (WR 281). This article is based on the sections of this report which deal with the problems being generated by the deepening economic crisis and the political life of the British ruling class.

The report also dealt with the problems effecting British imperialism. The most important event for British imperialism in the last year has been the London bombings, which brutally expressed the spreading of the imperialist barbarism ravaging Iraq to the very heartlands of capitalism. Readers can find a detailed analysis of these events in International Review 123. Nevertheless, it is important to  see that Blair’s dilemmas arising from the invasion of Iraq are those of the whole ruling class, as they were a year ago.

“The central division that has developed within the British bourgeoisie is not a dispute over strategy but over the best tactic to continue to defend the independent strategy that remains the dominant view in the ruling class. Recently Blair has reaffirmed Britain’s independent stance and declared his opposition to US ‘unilateralism’... The increasing tensions between the great powers can only make it harder for any policy that situates itself between them and that attempts to play one against the other. The British bourgeoisie is incapable of resolving the contradiction it is in. This is because there is no rational solution. The US will continue to assert itself and, recognising the situation of the British bourgeoisie, will put pressure on it without mercy. The danger of the tack towards the US lies in the fact that it makes the British ruling class more vulnerable, not just to pressure from the US, but to reciprocal pressure from its European rivals. The perspective is thus for the contradiction to continue to sharpen”. (‘Resolution of the National Situation’, Nov 2004).

The economic difficulties deepen

The so-called “unprecedented” economic growth of the last few years, as we showed last November, “rests on a regression to the early days of capitalism when growth was achieved through the increase in the absolute rate of exploitation. This situation is the result of a quarter of a century of gradual, covert attacks by the British bourgeoisie, to create a ‘flexible’ labour market and reduce restrictions on business and it reveals once again its intelligence and ruthlessness”. In the past 12 months these attacks have accelerated as the ruling class has felt the fingers of the underlying crisis increasingly gripping it by the throat.

We are coming to the end of the ‘Brownian miracle’ – indeed the bourgeoisie makes no secret of the fact that the UK economy is due for a fall. In WR 286 we reported the prediction of ABM Ambro, one of the City’s biggest banking groups, that the economy is due for a decline, with a vicious circle of falling house prices and unemployment leading to the loss of about half a million jobs by 2008. This is exactly what we must expect given the debt-fuelled nature of the economy with much personal debt guaranteed by inflated house prices. This is just what we showed in WR 288, in the article ‘End of the Brownian miracle’, which looked at the impending housing price crisis. After huge inflation (totally disregarded by the inflation statistics) net housing wealth is falling, due to falling prices and increased mortgage debt. This can only lead to a drop in consumer spending – as well as a huge increase in misery with families evicted when they can no longer keep up with the payments.

Treasury estimates of growth are continually overoptimistic, or downright dishonest, and so are the tax revenues based on them. The Chancellor has only managed to keep up the level of state spending, and maintain the fiction of fiscal prudence, by changing the date he has set for the start of this ‘business cycle’ on the one hand, and creative accounting, so that government guaranteed private investment in public/private finance does not count, on the other. The situation is unsustainable.

The attacks on the working class have continued.  MG Rover collapsed – in the middle of the election campaign – with the loss of 5,000 jobs directly and 15-20,000 in the supply industry. At the same time Index announced the loss of 3,000 jobs. Unemployment continues to be disguised, with a rate of 4.7% according to ILO definitions. However, while unemployment remains static, the number of those claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance has increased month on month for 9 months, with a claimant count of 890,100 in October. Job vacancies have fallen. The employment rate is just under 75% and the economic inactivity rate is 21.3% - nearly 8 million people.

Perhaps most threatening for unemployment is the introduction of proposals for ‘trust status’ in health and education, making hospitals, health trusts, and eventually schools, responsible for hiring and firing staff at local level. This, along with making staff reapply for their jobs, can only be a preparation for future job losses or re-grading downwards to lower pay scales. We are already seeing this:  the NHS is preparing to lay-off 6,000, on top of the loss of 3,000 (including 1,000 nurses) already predicted by 11 Health Trusts  (Nursing Times, 22-28 November). Many other Trusts are stopping recruitment, thus worsening the workload.

Meanwhile the extraction of absolute surplus value is continuing. There is the constant drive to lengthen the working day (see ‘Capitalism in crisis can only lengthen the working day’, WR 285) and also the increasingly draconian efforts to control every aspect of exploitation (‘Big Brother in the warehouse’, WR 286). Average earnings, excluding bonuses, remain static, but including bonuses have fallen (https://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=12 [19]). The proposals contained in the Turner Report to lengthen the number of years in which capitalism can exploit workers before they are entitled to a pension takes this onto a new level: it will mean that millions of workers will be worked to death and forced to pay the capitalist state for the pleasure through increased taxation (see lead article).

The life of the bourgeoisie

“The rules of the game have changed” was Tony Blair’s message in relation to state terror in the wake of the London bombings. In fact, the one thing that was least changed was the new terror legislation, since measures such as Control Orders came in before the bombs and even the 2005 Terrorism Bill was envisaged beforehand. And much of what is in the Bill was already possible without new legislation. What has changed in relation to state terror is the ability to make propaganda about it, particularly the strident discussion of the relation between individual liberty and safety in a democracy. This propaganda campaign is essential to legitimise the use of the enormous repressive powers the state has already given itself. The propaganda around the Bill has allowed an increase in detention without charge from 14 to 28 days to be posed as a defeat for the government’s proposal of 90 days, and a victory for civil liberties and habeas corpus, rather than the draconian increase in repression that it really is.

Something else has changed in the life of the bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the year we were treated to an election campaign with the bourgeoisie making no secret of the fact that it was all about re-electing the Labour government, with a couple of side-shows about when Blair would hand over to Brown, and how soon Michael Howard would go after another disastrous Tory showing. The only other main concern was how to reduce apathy for the election. As we said at the time, the bourgeoisie got the election result it wanted: “Having imposed a range of attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class, having strengthened many aspects of British state capitalism, having brought in a series of repressive measures in the name of ‘anti-terrorism’, and having defended the interests of British imperialism on the world stage, the Labour government is currently the chosen team of British capitalism.

“The measures announced in the Queen’s Speech show that Labour is not going to let up. An Incapacity Benefit Bill will attack 2.7m claimants, there will be reductions in certain other social benefits. Apart from the introduction of ID cards, repressive legislation will include a Counter Terrorism Bill, adding further offences not included in the last Prevention of Terrorism Act. Asylum and immigration will not escape from Labour’s offensive” (WR 285).

Today, the ruling class is quite clearly getting its options ready for a change of PM if not of the governing team as a whole. This is not wholly a surprise as Blair announced he would step down before the next election even before the last one. Since then the Tory leadership election has been played up in the media, with very sympathetic handling of the two remaining candidates. The media darling is the younger David Cameron, portrayed as the potential leader able to reform and modernise the party, as Labour had to be reformed and modernised to fit it for office in the 1990s. The extremely long drawn out leadership election has allowed this message to be repeated ad nauseam.

At the same time the Labour government has been scandal-ridden with Cherie Blair’s earnings from a charity speaking tour making money out of being the PM’s wife; Blunket forced to resign for impropriety a second time in a year; DC Confidential portraying the government as ineffective and incompetent. All in all the current government has been described as having the same stench as the Major government before its defeat in 1997.

The decline in the economy is an important factor here, which will necessitate many further attacks on the working class. Disappointment has been expressed over the government handling of the public sector pensions deal. So “the acceleration of the crisis is focussing the minds of the bourgeoisie, it still means something. The ruling class is broadly happy with Labour’s imperialist policy apart from Blair’s tendency to not maintain the most rigorous independence from the US. Also, at the moment, there is not an immediate need to modify the government team because of the need to confront workers’ struggles. But the economic factor can undermine any government.

“At the same time, if the Tories are to appear as an ‘alternative’ they have to distinguish themselves from Labour. Cameron’s political line is that Blair does indeed have the right policies on many issues, but he is hampered by his own party in introducing the necessary reforms in the public services. The bourgeoisie’s political commentators seem to think that this is exactly how things are going to play out in Blair’s last term as Prime Minister” (WR 289).

The bourgeoisie seem to be keeping their options open for the Blair succession, either to allow the next Labour PM to claim to be of a different mould, or to develop an alternative governing team in the Tory Party, around their version of Blair.

Blair: spearhead of accelerating attacks

These extracts show that Blair’s problems are those of British capitalism as a whole. In the final throws of his leadership Blair will carry out one last major service for British capital: he will drive through the attacks on the working class. He has made his determination to bring about ‘lasting reforms’ amply clear in recent weeks. The ruling class will be able to fully utilise his increasing unpopularity in order to divert workers’ discontent with the attacks into futile anti-Blairism and ideas about a better Labour Party without Blair. It has already done this to a large degree in relation to the quagmire in Iraq: all British imperialism’s problems are reduced to the actions of one man and his team. Blair is quite happy to play the role of hate figure if that means capital can better attack the proletariat at the economic and political level. Anything to stop the working class from seeing the system, rather than individuals, as its enemy.  WR

90 years ago, in September 1915, the first international socialist conference was held at Zimmerwald, not much more than a year after the start of the First World War. In discussing it, we are not just reopening a page in the history of the workers’ movement, but reviving workers’ memories about the meaning of the conference. Faced with the criminal butchery of the European proletariat,  Zimmerwald reaffirmed that the working class response to imperialist war is internationalism, the struggle against exploitation and war in all countries.

Today, while the horrors of the trenches are not hidden from us and the last of the old soldiers are encouraged to tell us what they went through, this war, like all the other wars that succeeded it in capitalism’s epoch of decline, is still ‘commemorated’, celebrated with poppies and Remembrance Days organised by the very state which sent so many workers to be slaughtered at the front. We are still told that our duty is to ‘defend our country’ and to support it in its present and future wars. And the response of revolutionaries today can only be what it was in 1915 -that the workers have no country, and that patriotism is diametrically opposed to the international interests of the working class.     

The impact of the start of the war on the proletariat and workers’ organisations

Zimmerwald was the first proletarian reaction to the first world butchery, and its growing echo gave hope to millions of workers submerged by the bloody horror of the war. The start of the war on August 4th 1914 was an unprecedented catastrophe for the workers’ movement. In fact, alongside the bourgeoisie’s nationalist ideological barrage, the decisive element in the mobilisation for this vile slaughter was the treachery of the main workers’ social democratic parties. Their parliamentary fractions voted for war credits in the name of the Sacred Union, urging masses of workers to kill each other in the interests of the imperialist powers, resorting to the most abject chauvinist hysteria. The unions banned all strikes from the beginning of the war. The Second International, which had been the pride of the working class, was consumed in the flames of the world war, after the largest of its parties, the French Socialist and above all German Social Democracy, rallied shamefully to the war. Although infected with reformism and opportunism, the Second International, under the pressure of its revolutionary minorities, particularly the German left and the Bolsheviks, had previously made a number of pronouncements against the threat of war. In 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, at the Basle Congress in 1912, and right up to the last days of July 1914, it raised its voice against the militaristic propaganda and imperialist designs of the ruling class. So several decades of work and effort were annihilated in one blow. But, having fought opportunism within the Second International and its parties for some years, the revolutionary minority remained loyal and intransigent on the principle of proletarian internationalism, and was able to resist and continue the struggle. Among them:

- in Germany, ‘Die Internationale’ group, constituted in August 1914 around Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the ‘Lichtsrahlen’, the Bremen Left;

- in Russia and among émigrés, the Bolsheviks;

- in Holland, the Tribunist Party of Gorter and Pannekoek;

- in France, some of the revolutionary syndicalists around Rosmer and Monatte;

- in Poland, the SDKPIL

- in Britain, the Socialist Labour Party, John Mclean, Sylvia Pankhurst and others.

Another current was also developing: hesitant, centrist, oscillating between an attitude of calling for revolution and a pacifist position (the Mensheviks around Martov, the Italian Socialist Party), some of whom wanted to renew their ties with the social-chauvinist traitors. The revolutionary movement was able, through the confrontation of positions, to win new forces to its struggle against the imperialist war, and to prepare the conditions for the inevitable split in the socialist parties and the formation of a new International.

The Zimmerwald Conference

The task of the hour was thus to encourage the international regroupment of revolutionaries, and contacts were immediately made between the different internationalists who had broken with social-patriotism. The struggle against the war was given impetus in Germany first of all, when on 2nd December Liebknecht was the only deputy to openly vote against war credits. In the months to come his example was followed by other deputies. Working class activity against the war was developing, among the rank and file of the workers’ parties but also in the factories and in the streets. The hideous reality of the war with its slaughter and death and mutilation at the front, the development of poverty at the rear, would open the eyes of more and more workers and bring them out of the fog of nationalist intoxication. In March 1915, in Germany, there was the first demonstration against the war, by women mobilised for arms production. In October there were bloody confrontations between the police and demonstrators. In November of the same year nearly 15,000 people marched against the war in Berlin. Class movements against the war also appeared in other countries: Austria, Britain and France. This renewal in class struggle, alongside the activity of revolutionaries who distributed propaganda against the war in very dangerous conditions, accelerated the holding of the Zimmerwald Conference (near Berne) where, from 5 to 8 September 1915, 37 delegates from 12 European countries met. This Conference symbolised the reawakening of the international proletariat, which, until then, had been traumatised by the impact of the war. It was a decisive step on the road to the Russian revolution and the foundation of the Third International. The Manifesto it issued was the fruit of a compromise between the different tendencies. In fact the centrists were in favour of putting the end of the war in a pacifist framework without referring to the necessity for revolution. They were strongly opposed by the left, represented by the ‘Die Internationale’ group, the ISD and the Bolsheviks, who made the link between war and revolution the central question. Lenin criticised the pacifist tone and the absence of means for opposing the war expressed in the Manifesto: “The slogan of peace is not at all revolutionary. It can only take a revolutionary character when it is linked to our argument for a revolutionary tactic, when it goes along with a call for revolution, a revolutionary protest against the government of the country in which one is a citizen, against the imperialists of one’s own country” (‘Contre le Courant, vol 1, translated from the French). In other words, the slogan for the imperialist epoch must be “turn the imperialist war into the civil war”. Despite these weaknesses the Left, without abandoning its criticisms, considered this Manifesto a as “step forward towards a real struggle against opportunism, towards a rupture with it” (Vol.21 ‘The First Step’). The Zimmerwald Manifesto created an enormous stir in the working class and among the soldiers. With the strong recovery in the class struggle internationally, the intransigent struggle of the left to split the centrists, the second international conference held in Kienthal in March 1916 was clearly more orientated to the left and marked a clear break from pacifist phraseology.

The considerable widening of the class struggle in 1917 in Germany, in Italy, and above all the outbreak of the Russian revolution, the first step in the world revolution, would make the Zimmerwald movement obsolete, having exhausted all its potential. From then on the only perspective was the creation of a new International which, taking account of the slow maturation of revolutionary consciousness, the formation of sizeable communist parties and the expectation of a revolution in Germany, took place a year and a half later in 1919.

So, despite its weaknesses, the Zimmerwald Movement played a decisive role in the history of the revolutionary movement: as a symbol of proletarian internationalism, as a proletarian standard in its war against the war and for the revolution. It truly represented a bridge between the Second and the Third International.

The lessons for today

One of the important lessons of Zimmerwald, which remains valid in our period of the incredible exacerbation of imperialist conflicts, must be the reaffirmation of the importance of the question of war for the proletariat. The struggle against the bourgeoisie’s militaristic schemes is an integral part of the class struggle, in the same way as the struggle against exploitation. The history of the workers’ movement shows that the working class has always considered war a calamity as it is the principal victim of it. War is not an aberration in capitalism, especially in its decadent period. It is part of its functioning and has become a permanent aspect of its way of life. The reformist illusion of a capitalism without war is deadly for the proletariat. Caught in their contradictions, in an economic crisis which they cannot escape due to the world wide saturation of solvent markets, the different national fractions of the bourgeoisie have no choice but to tear each other to pieces to keep their share of the cake, to take that of others, or to win the strategic positions necessary to their domination. In this sense, to pretend that we can struggle for an improvement in our living conditions or for peace, without affecting the foundations of capitalist power, is a mystification, an impossibility. Without the perspective of a massive, revolutionary political confrontation, there is no real struggle against capitalist war. Pacifism is a reactionary ideology used to channel the proletariat’s discontent and revolt, provoked by war, in order to reduce it to impotence. Similarly, for workers to fall into the trap of defending the democratic bourgeoisie, making common cause with their exploiters and supporting the bellicose campaigns of the ruling class, is to fall head first into the warlike dynamic of decomposing capitalism, which goes from ‘local’ war to ‘local’ war and will end up putting the survival of humanity at risk. The working class struggle for its own interests, which cannot go forward without developing the perspective of overthrowing this society and replacing it with communism, is the only possible struggle against war.  SB