"Amidst this whole swamp, there have been a few shafts of light": high school students recalling working class history

We are publishing here large extracts from a reader who, while welcoming the overall approach of the leaflet on the Yellow Vest movement distributed by our section in France[1], also criticises certain of our positions, in particular the idea that nothing good for the proletariat can come out of this inter-classist movement. These questions touch on extremely important aspects of the proletarian struggle: what is the working class, its struggle, its perspective.

It’s only through a broad, open and animated debate that we can elaborate deeper responses, participate in the development of class consciousness, arm ourselves with the weapons of theory. We thus encourage all our readers to write to us, to formulate their criticisms, their agreements or their questions in order to fuel a debate that is vital for the proletariat. This is the spirit in which we are replying to this letter.

Reader’s letter

I have gone through various statements of position including those of the leftist groups who see this movement as a re-edition of 1968. The differences are obvious right away, but this comparison is used to justify their unbridled support

We can recognise, as your leaflet does, that the spontaneous outbreak of these blockades expresses a very deep social anger. An anger that is very diverse, if not contradictory, expressing the inter-classist nature of the movement and its “citizen” or even nationalist expressions. I basically agree with your critique about this. 

On three points there can be a discussion:

• The idea of a trap laid for the workers. What meaning should we give to this term “trap”? A trap presupposes an organisation that prepares and organises it. But we see nothing of that sort here.

There is also in the leaflet the idea that the working class is being prevented from struggling:

“This whole jolly scene, each with its particular credo, is occupying and patrolling the social terrain to prevent the workers from mobilising massively, from developing their autonomous struggle, their solidarity and unity against the attacks of the bourgeoisie”. Are the workers simply being “prevented” from openly struggling on their class terrain? Obviously not

This is indeed a mixed social movement, in which the balance of forces is not favourable to the working class and is giving a free hand to other strata out to defend their interests, which is hardly surprising today. In this sense, I agree with the passage that says “The proletarians want to express their deep anger but they don’t know how to struggle effectively to defend their living conditions against the growing attacks of the bourgeoisie and its government”;

• Here again, is it possible to conceive of an autonomous class struggle as a precondition for a significant movement? Doesn’t the class struggle become autonomous in the course of the movement itself?
• Even if I share the critique of the content and methods of the movement, I remain open to the possibility of an evolution. You noted the spontaneous way in which these blockades emerged, and some are showing a concern for self-organisation, to function through real general assemblies, etc

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Our reply

Starting from a shared observation of the Yellow Vest movement, characterised by “an anger that is very diverse, if not contradictory, expressing the inter-classist nature of the movement and its ‘citizen’ or even nationalist expressions”, this reader poses three important questions:

A trap for the workers?

Our leaflet asserts that this movement is a real trap for the workers. But the comrade says: “What meaning should we give to this term ‘trap’? A trap presupposes an organisation that prepares and organises it. But we see nothing of that sort here”. It’s quite true that this movement was spontaneous. A young entrepreneur from Seine-et-Marne launched on social media a petition against the increase in petrol prices. Then a lorry driver, dressed up in a yellow vest, from the same department, called for roads to be blocked. Through a whole chain of clicks, these two cries of anger were propagated everywhere, testifying to a general feeling of being fed up throughout the population.

So this was not a trap laid by the bourgeoisie, its state, its parties, its unions or its media; it was a movement which was a trap for the workers because of its inter-classist nature. Because in an inter-classist movement where the workers (employed, students, pensioners, unemployed) are diluted as individual citizens in a milieu made up of all the other layers of society (petty bourgeoisie, peasants, artisans), the social aspirations and methods of struggle of these intermediate layers were dominant.

This why the point of departure for the movement was the explosion of anger among self-employed lorry drivers, taxi drivers and small bosses from the PME[2], in response to the tax increase on petrol that served to penalise their enterprises. This is why the main means of action was the occupation of roundabouts and crossings, then of the “the most beautiful avenue in the world”, the Champs-Élysées, a hi-viz yellow vest on their backs, in order to “be seen”, to “be heard” and above all “to be recognised”. This is why the Tricolore flag, La Marseillaise and the references to the French revolution of 1789 were omnipresent alongside the shouting about “the people of France”. These are methods which in no way express a mobilisation of the working class on its own terrain, putting into question capitalist exploitation through demands such as wage rises, opposition to lay-offs etc.

Furthermore the methods of struggle of the working class were never expressed. The absence of strikes in the different sectors of the class or of general assemblies, in which the exploited can debate and draw out the aims of their struggle, clearly confirms this.

Even worse, the rotten terrain of populism and xenophobia gangrened a large part of the movement. We saw some of the most nauseating expressions of the current historic period. Like the appeals to strengthen anti-immigrant laws and even xenophobic actions. Over 90% of the sympathisers of Marie le Pen’s Rassemblement National support the “Yellow Vests” and over 40% say that they are themselves taking part in the movement. This indeed is the snare that those workers who don the yellow vest are caught up in. This movement has been a real trap for them.

What are the causes of the political difficulties of the working class?

In a few lines this letter poses a central question: “There is also in the leaflet the idea that the working class is being prevented from struggling… Are the workers simply being “prevented” from openly struggling on their class terrain? Obviously not”. What are the causes of the current political difficulties of the working class? The answer can’t be found by taking a snapshot of the proletariat today – you have to examine the whole film of its history. So we can’t reply fully here to this complex question[3]. We can simply insist on one point. We should not underestimate the permanent work of sabotage by the trade unions whose specific role for the past century has precisely been that of undermining the struggle in the workplace and the consciousness of the class. A single example: just a few months before the Yellow Vest movement the trade unions organised the “stop-start strike of the railway workers”; thousands of very militant workers engaged in numerous strike days, completely isolated, cut off from other sectors of the proletariat. And yet at the same time, in the old age homes, in the post office, in the day nurseries, the hospitals, in certain factories etc, struggles were breaking out on a regular basis, each sector in its own corner. Then the CGT issued the call for the “convergence of struggles”, a simulated unity consisting of marching in the street, one sector behind the next, each with its own slogan, its own corporate demand … and then going home without any common general assembly, without discussion, without solidarity in the struggle. These union movements, which are repeated year after year, have the sole function of spreading the poison of division, of despair, of powerlessness. So yes, the systematic sabotage of working class unity is one of the major ingredients in the current weakness of the proletariat, a weakness which creates favourable soil for the explosion of inter-classist anger which has no perspective. In fact, the bourgeoisie is exploiting the weakness of the working class to try to drive it further into the ground. The working class has indeed been going through a very difficult period. Since 1989, with the campaigns on the collapse of Stalinism, which was identified with the so-called “failure of communism”, the proletariat has not been able to rediscover its class identity, to recognise itself as a revolutionary class. Unable to put forward the perspective of a society without exploitation, the exploited class remains very vulnerable, but above all extremely passive when it comes to the struggle. While large sectors of the proletariat have not recognised themselves in the popular revolt of the Yellow Vests, neither have these central sectors been able to mobilise themselves in a massive and unified way against the attacks of the government, on their own class terrain and with their own methods of struggle. However, despite these difficulties, the proletariat has not been defeated. Taking into account the general level of discontent and the new attacks to come, the great mass of the proletariat can still throw off its lethargy in the period ahead. The future still belongs to the class struggle.

The Yellow Vests, a springboard for the class struggle?

“Doesn’t the class struggle become autonomous in the course of the movement itself? Even if I share the critique of the content and methods of the movement, I remain open to the possibility of an evolution. You noted the spontaneous way in which these blockades emerged, and some are showing a concern for self-organisation, to function through real general assemblies, etc”

Even if it started on a bad basis, could the Yellow Vest movement transform itself into something different, into an authentic movement of the working class? In favour of this thesis, you could point to the widening of the demands raised, since the rejection of the tax increase on petrol took a back seat to a broader protest against poverty and in favour of increased buying power. Furthermore, the sympathy for the movement in the population was certainly real. If the movement has never been massive (around 300,000 Yellow Vests at the high point) and while the majority of workers in the big plants and public sector remained spectators, it remains the case that it enjoyed a lot of popularity. Again in support of this thesis, there are historical precedents. Here are three, by no means the least of them: the Paris Commune of 1871 began as an explosion of anger that in appearance was nationalist and anti-Prussian; the mass strike in Russia in 1905 began under a religious banner, led by a priest, Father Gapon; May 1968 in France was initiated by a movement of students who, at the time, had often come out of the petty bourgeoisie. Each time, the working class was finally able to put itself at the head of the struggle, with its own methods, its forms of organisation, its strength. To paraphrase our reader, “the class struggle became autonomous by emerging as such during the movement itself”.

So could the Yellow Vest movement transform itself into something else, into a real workers’ struggle? In fact, the comrade himself answers his own question in his letter: “This is indeed a mixed social movement, in which the balance of forces is not favourable to the working class and is giving a free hand to other strata out to defend their interests, which is hardly surprising today”.

But why is this? Because we are not in 1871, 1905, or 1968. In 1871, the Paris Commune was not an exception. In many regions of Europe, but particularly in France, the working class was in struggle and several “Communes” appeared. The mass strike in Russia in 1905 was preceded by a deep process of rising proletarian struggle, of developing consciousness and organisation, again at the international level, since the 1890s (Rosa Luxemburg masterfully described this process in her book The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions). May 68 broke out after a year marked by very important workers’ struggles, particularly in the big factories in the west of France.

Today, we are not seeing any of this. As we saw above, the working class is going through major difficulties. It is not even conscious of its existence as a social class antagonistic to the bourgeoisie and distinct from intermediate social layers like the petty bourgeoisie. It has lost the memory of its own past and is not able to refer to its immense historical experience; it’s even ashamed of it since the bourgeoisie is constantly assimilating the working class to an extinct species and uses the word “communism” to describe the barbarity of Stalinism.

In this situation, the Yellow Vest movement can in no way function as a kind of springboard or spark for an authentic struggle of the working class. On the contrary, the proletarians who have come out behind the slogans and methods of the petty bourgeoisie, drowned in the interclassist ideology of “citizenship”, diluted among all the other social strata, can only suffer the pressure of bourgeois democratism and nationalism.

In this sense its fortunate that the majority of the working class has contented itself with giving platonic support and that the mass of proletarians have not participated in a movement that has no perspective. This reticence reveals that, leaving aside the sympathy for some of the demands about poverty, the working class has from the start been very circumspect about the fixation on taxes and about the methods used (occupation of roundabouts) and concerned and even disgusted by the immediate support that has come from the right and extreme right.

This distrust shows that, despite its difficulties in engaging in the struggle on its own terrain, the proletariat has not been crushed, defeated, or massively mobilised behind the putrid ideology of the petty bourgeoisie and behind populist, anti-immigrant xenophobia.

In the last few weeks, amidst this whole swamp, there have been a few shafts of light: the high school students came out in struggle against the reform of the baccalauriat (without the Marseillaise and the Tricolore), not for themselves directly, but in solidarity with future pupils who will experience a much degraded education. At the same time, university students mobilised to oppose increasing fees for foreign students and raised the slogan “Solidarity with the immigrants”. The anger of the young educated generation – who are mainly future workers – is a sharp response both to the iniquitous measures of the government and the anti-immigrant slogans raised by the Yellow Vests. Solidarity is key to the strength of the working class.

The proletariat has momentarily lost its class identity. It has been cut off from its history and its experience. But it is still there, still alive. In its depths, reflection about the lack of perspective offered by capitalist society continues, especially among the most conscious and combative elements. Driven by the aggravation of the economic crisis, not yet conscious of its own strength, not yet confident in its capacity for self-organisation, the proletariat will be obliged to engage in the combat for the defence of its own living conditions.

Faced with the momentary paralysis of the class struggle, revolutionaries have to be patient, not fear isolation, all kinds of criticisms and misunderstandings. They have to unmask all the enemies of the proletariat, all the ideological traps and dead-ends, in order to participate, to the maximum of their still limited forces, in the real development of consciousness within the working class, with the conviction that only the class struggle can provide a perspective for the future of humanity.

Révolution Internationale, 24.12.18

Liebknecht addresses a workers' rally in December 1918

In November 2018 the two main groups of the communist left in Britain, the ICC and the Communist Workers Organisation[1], held meetings in London on the centenary of the German revolution. From both meetings it was evident that there is fundamental agreement on a number of key points arising from this experience:

• The immense historical significance of the German revolution as a turning point in the world revolution which had begun in Russia, and the tragic consequences of its defeat: the isolation and degeneration of the revolution in Russia and the global triumph of the counter-revolution in its fascist, Stalinist and democratic forms, which paved the way to the Second World War.;
• The irreversible treason of those parts of social democracy which rallied to the war effort of the ruling class, and then played a central role in the sabotage and repression of the revolution that arose in reaction to the carnage. In any future revolution, it will be the left factions of the bourgeoisie, the true heirs of Noske, Scheidemann and other bloodhounds of the counter-revolution, who will be used by capital as their last line of defence against the proletariat;
• The crucial importance of the struggle for a communist party to oppose the lies of the agents of the bourgeoisie and to put forward a clear and coherent revolutionary alternative. Such a party can only be centralised on a world scale since the revolution itself can only succeed on the world-wide arena. As the CWO put it in their article “The significance of the German revolution: Reflections on the CWO/ICT public meeting in London , November 17 2018”[2], “without a revolutionary working class nucleus around which a party can be built there is not the slightest possibility of a successful outcome of our struggle”.

And yet there were also definite disagreements between our two organisations, which emerged at the CWO meeting and were further debated at the ICC meeting the following week, which was attended by a member of the CWO[3]. These disagreements are raised in the CWO article just mentioned:

“Given the above scenario it was therefore surprising that a member of the Internationalist Communist Current (the only other organisation present in the meeting), and whose other comrades made positive contributions to the discussion, should pose the question that August 1914 was too early for the Internationale group to split from German Social Democracy. He surprisingly argued that August 1914 was not a definitive betrayal of the international workers’ movement.

He went to say that as the ICC and ICT both came from the tradition of the Italian Communist Left that we should recognise that this was just like the members of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) who went into exile in the 1920s. They had seen the party they founded taken over by the ‘centrists’ like Gramsci and Togliatti, with the support of the Communist International (even though the Left still had the support of the majority of the PCd’I). However as they had no clear evidence that this meant that the Third International had finally and irrevocably broken with the international revolution (and given the abrupt changes of policy of the Comintern this was a period of great confusion) they decided that they would form themselves into a ‘fraction’. The aim of the Fraction was either to persuade the Comintern to stick to revolutionary internationalism or, if that failed and the International did something which definitely showed that it had betrayed the working class, then the fraction should form the nucleus of a new party. In actual fact the Fraction did decide in 1935 that the Comintern had gone over to the other side of the class barricades (with the adoption of the Popular Front). However it was then divided between the followers of Vercesi, who now argued that the party could only be formed in conditions when it could win a mass following (similar to Luxemburg), and those who wanted to begin to build it in the 1930s. The issue was never resolved and the Fraction collapsed in 1939.

We replied that the two cases of Germany in 1914 and the Italian comrades in the 1920s were not the same. As the foregoing analysis shows, the SPD’s vote for war credits was a clear and obvious betrayal of the working class cause. And this judgment is not the product of hindsight. There were other socialists at the time (like Lenin, but not just him) who loudly said so. The need was for a new banner around which the revolutionary working class could rally. The sooner that banner was raised the quicker the revolutionaries could get to work to build for the movement which would break out, sooner or later, against the war. And the fact that Germany was a federal state saturated in localism made this task all the more urgent”.

The real tasks of a revolutionary fraction

We have quoted the CWO at length because we want to make sure our response deals accurately with their views. But in doing so, we will have to take up some important inaccuracies in the CWO’s account, regarding both certain historical elements and our own understanding of them.

To begin with, it is misleading to say that, for the ICC, “August 1914 was not a definitive betrayal of the international workers’ movement”. On the contrary: the capitulation of the majority social democrats, inside and outside parliament, was indeed a definite betrayal of everything that international social democracy had stood for and had voted on at major international congresses. It confirmed that the opportunist right wing of social democracy, against which militants like Luxemburg had been waging a determined struggle since before the end of the 19th century, had crossed the line into the enemy camp – a step from which there could be no turning back.

Our point however was that the betrayal of a substantial part of the organisation did not yet signify that the entire party had been integrated into the capitalist state; that precisely because - contrary to what some anarchists claim – social democracy had not been bourgeois from the beginning, the treason of August 1914 gave rise to a huge battle within the party, to a flood of reactions against the betrayal, many of them confused and inadequate, bounded by centrist and pacifist conceptions, but still expressing at root a proletarian internationalist reaction against war. The clearest, most determined and most famous amongst them were the Spartacists. And as long as this battle continued, as long as the various oppositions to the new official line could still operate within the party, the question of the fraction, of an organised, internal fight for the “soul” of the party - until either the purging of the traitors or the expulsion of the internationalists - was still entirely relevant[4].

In an internal discussion text on the nature of centrism, which we published in 2015, our comrade Marc Chirik gave a whole number of examples of the oppositional movement within the SPD after August 1914, both within parliament and in the party as a whole. The most determined expression of this reaction was provided by the group around Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who did not wait for the class to mobilise in massive numbers, but from the first day of the war began to organise their resistance in what later became the Spartakusbund and tried to regroup internationalist forces within the party around the slogan “don’t leave the party in the hands of the traitors”.  Not long after this there was the decision of numerous deputies not to vote for further war credits; the resolutions from many local branches of the SPD that the leadership abandon the policy of the Union Sacrée; the formation of the “social democratic working collective” that would constitute the nucleus of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the UPSD; the publishing of leaflets and manifestos, and the calling of demonstrations against the war and in solidarity with Karl Liebknecht for his intransigent opposition to the militarism of the ruling class. For Marc this was a confirmation that

“what is not true even for the life of individual human beings is a total absurdity at the level of an historic movement such as that of the proletariat. Here the passage from life to death is not measured in seconds or even minutes but in years. The moment when a workers’ party signs its own death certificate and its actual, definitive death, are not the same thing. This is perhaps difficult to understand for a radical phraseologist, but it is quite understandable for a marxist who doesn’t have the habit of deserting a ship like a rat when it begins to take in water. Revolutionaries know the historical meaning of an organisation which the class has given birth to, and as long as it still contains a breath of life they fight in order to save it, to hold onto it for the class”[5]. 

Neither is it true that the situation of the German revolutionaries in 1914 was fundamentally different from the comrades of the Italian left who decided to form a fraction to fight against the degeneration of the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s. On the contrary: in both cases, you have a party that is being increasingly dominated by an openly bourgeois faction (social chauvinists in the SPD, Stalinists in the CP), and an opposition divided into a vacillating centre and a revolutionary left, which has rightly decided that, even if the tide is turning against the class, it remains an elementary duty to fight as long as possible for the real programme and traditions of the party as long as there is any proletarian life left in it. In contrast, the method of the CWO in describing the situation of the SPD in 1914 bears a curious resemblance to the old (essentially councilist) CWO position about the Bolsheviks and the Communist parties – that they were already totally bourgeois in 1921 and anyone who thought otherwise was basically an apologist for their subsequent crimes.

We could also take up the extremely simplistic presentation of the history of the debates within the Italian fraction up to 1939, but it would be better to come back to that in a separate article, since the CWO has recently republished an article by Battalgia Comunista [6]on the question of fraction and party, with a long introduction by the CWO which voices many of their criticism of the ICC, not only on the question of the fraction and the party but also on our analysis of the world situation[7].  But one of the key points that emerge from both the BC article and the new introduction is the idea that a fraction is basically just a discussion circle which has little interest in intervening in the class struggle: as they put it at the end of the article on the public meeting, “This is not a time for fractions or discussion circles. It is time to form nuclei of revolutionaries everywhere and for them to converge in the creation of an international and internationalist revolutionary party in preparation for the inevitable class conflicts of the future”.

If – despite their many weaknesses – the Spartacist group was fundamentally playing the role of a fraction within the SPD, whose long dynamic of degeneration accelerated dramatically towards a final point of rupture after the watershed of August 1914, then fraction work is clearly something very different from a retreat into academic debate removed from the daily reality of war and class struggle. On the contrary, there is no question that the Spartacists did “raise the banner” of the class struggle against the war. Within the SPD the Spartakusbund  had its own organisational structure, published its own newspaper, put out many leaflets and was able, along with some of the most radical elements in the class (in particular the “Revolutionary Shop Stewards” or “Obleute” in the industrial centres) to call for demonstrations which regrouped thousands of workers. This distinct organisational structure was retained as a precondition for the Spartacists entering the USPD almost 3 years after the beginning of the war in April 1917, following the mass expulsion of the opposition from the SPD. This decision was taken, as Liebknecht put it, “in order to drive it forward, to have a platform for our position, to be able to reach thousands of elements.” As Marc comments in his text: “It is more than doubtful if this strategy was valid at this moment, but one thing is clear: if such a question was posed for Luxemburg and Liebknecht, then it was because they rightly considered the USPD to be a centrist movement and not a party of the bourgeoisie”. In sum, the fraction work of the Spartacists continued whether inside or outside a larger party, as an independent force seeking to create the conditions for a new party purged of both bourgeois and centrist elements – just as it continued for the Italian left in the late 20s and 30s after their expulsion from the party and even after their recognition that the CPs had passed over to the enemy. 

Thus a part of the CWO’s criticism of the Spartacists for staying too long in the old party is founded on this misconception of the role of a fraction as a discussion circle whose activity is in some sense opposed to the formation of revolutionary nuclei who prepare the ground for the future world party. On the contrary: that was precisely the concept of the fraction as elaborated by the Italian left. The difference lies elsewhere: in the recognition (shared by both Luxemburg and the Italian left) that the constitution of a new international party was not the product of the will of revolutionaries alone, but was dependent on a much wider and deeper process of maturation in the class. 

Bolsheviks and Spartacists

The CWO presentation at the meeting and the subsequent article lays great stress on the contrast between the Spartacists and the Bolsheviks:

“In Russia the Bolsheviks were estimated at only 8000 – 10,000 in number at the start of 1917 but they were present in almost every town or city and, more importantly, embedded in the wider working class. Thus when the revolutionary movement arose they were not only able to give a lead but grew inside it. Workers had called spontaneously in February 1917 for ‘soviet power’ (based on the memory of 1905) but by the summer of 1917 it was clear that only one party supported ‘all power to the soviets’ and this party in most estimates now had 300,000 members”.

It is certainly true that the Bolsheviks were in the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the years 1914-19. On the question of war, the Bolshevik delegation to Zimmerwald defended a much more rigorous position than that of the Spartacists: they, along with the German “left radicals”, raised the slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war”, whereas the Spartacist delegation showed a tendency to make concessions to pacifism. In their actual practise in a revolutionary situation, the Bolsheviks were able to analyse the balance of class forces with great lucidity and thus play a key role at decisive moments: in July, when it was necessary to avoid the provocations of the bourgeoisie who were trying to draw revolutionary workers into a premature military confrontation; in October, when Lenin insisted that the conditions for the insurrection had definitely ripened and it had become vital to strike before the moment passed. This was in tragic contrast to the young German Communist Party which made the monumental error of taking the bourgeoisie’s bait in January 1919 in Berlin, in no small measure because the Spartacist leader Liebknecht broke party discipline in pushing for an immediate armed uprising.

However, the capacity of the Bolsheviks to play this role cannot be reduced to the notion of being “embedded” in the class. It was above all the product of a long struggle for political and organisational clarity within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which made it possible for the Bolsheviks to grasp what was really at stake after the February uprising, even if it required a determined struggle inside the party to chase out a very strong tendency towards support for bourgeois democracy and a “defencist” position in the war – this was the whole meaning of the debates around Lenin’s April Theses[8]. The fact that the Bolsheviks came out of this debate strengthened and more determined to fight for soviet power was the product of two essential factors: on the one hand, their organisational solidity, which made it possible to maintain the unity of the party despite the very sharp divergences that appeared within it during the revolutionary process; and on the other hand, the fact that, from the beginning, their political programme – even when it was not yet as clear as it became after 1917 – was always based on the principle of class independence from the bourgeoisie, in contrast to the other main tendency in Russian social democracy, the Mensheviks. But what all this really points to is that in the years between the birth of Bolshevism and the outbreak of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had themselves carried out the central tasks of a revolutionary fraction inside the Russian party and the Second International.

The Bolsheviks’ rigour on organisational and programmatic issues was one side of this capacity to make the transition from fraction to party; the other side was the rapid maturation within the Russian proletariat as a whole. This was a proletariat which was far less vulnerable to reformist illusions than its class brothers and sisters in Germany: both at the level of their living conditions, and of the political conditions imposed by the Tsarist regime, their struggle necessarily took on an explosive and revolutionary character which, in a sense, already indicated the circumstances that would face the working class in the most advanced countries in the new epoch of decadence. This was a proletariat which, largely denied the possibility of building mass defensive organisations inside the old system, gave rise in 1905 to the soviet form of organisation and gained an inestimably valuable foretaste of what it means to make a revolution. It must also be remembered that the Russian proletariat faced a much weaker bourgeoisie, whereas the German workers would be catapulted into revolutionary struggles against a powerful ruling class which knew it could count on the support of the SPD and the trade unions as well as that of the international bourgeoisie. From this point of view, we can better understand why the question is not reducible to a kind of physical presence of revolutionaries within the working class, however important that is. The German social democrats certainly had a huge presence within the working class, in all areas of its life – economic, political, cultural. The problem was that this influence within the class was increasingly geared towards institutionalising and thus neutralising the class struggle. The key difference between the SPD and the Bolsheviks was in the latter’s capacity to maintain and develop the class autonomy of the proletariat.

Finally, to really understand the contrast between the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists, to go deeper into the immense problems confronting the communist minority during the revolutionary wave after 1917, we must integrate the particular situations pertaining to this or that country into a wider international vision. The Second International did indeed fall apart in 1914: faced with the betrayal of substantial parts of its national components, it simply ceased to exist. This posed immediately the necessity for a new International, even if the conditions for its formation had not yet come together. The late formation of the Communist International - and its accompanying programmatic weaknesses - was to be a major handicap not only for the German revolution, but for the Russian soviet power and the whole revolutionary wave. We will come back to this in other articles. We have argued that the prior work of the left fractions is an indispensible basis for the formation of the party on a solid basis. But we also have to recognise that, in the early part of the 20th century, when the danger of opportunism within the social democratic parties was becoming increasingly evident, the left fractions who opposed this drift towards integration into the politics of the bourgeoisie were shackled by the federal structure of the Second International. This was an International which largely functioned as a kind of co-ordinating centre for a collection of national parties. There was solidarity and cooperation between the different left currents (for example, when Lenin and Luxemburg worked together to draft the Basel resolution on war in at the International Congress of 1912), but there was never an internationally centralised fraction which could develop a coherent policy in all countries, a unified response to all the dramatic changes that were being wrought by capitalism’s passage to an epoch of wars and revolutions.

Today’s revolutionary groups are not literally fractions in the sense of being an organic part of a former workers’ party, but they will not be able to prepare the ground for the party of tomorrow if they fail to understand what we can learn from the historical contribution of the left fractions.

Amos

ICC introduction 

At the end of December 2018, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz died at the age of 79. As well as being a distinguished writer of novels that chronicled the troubled history of the modern Israeli state, he was also a consistent critic of its increasingly militarist policies. In 1967, amid the euphoria of victory in the Six Day War, Oz was one of the few who warned of the morally corrupting influence that the occupation would bring to Israeli society. He advocated an immediate end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This view might have seemed radical at the time, but it was not long before it entered the mainstream, being at the heart of the Camp David accords in 2000.

In the era of unrestrained populism, however, even this moderate proposal seems utterly utopian. The right wing Netanyahu government in Israel , which has done all it can to scupper any progress towards the formation of a Palestinian state, is facing increasing pressure from those even further to the right who openly demand a “Greater Israel” -  a one state solution which would certainly involve the mass deportation of Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile the Palestinian national movement is increasingly dominated by Islamist factions who will settle for nothing less than the military destruction of the Zionist state, a solution which would no doubt demand another mass deportation - that of Israeli Jews.

In this increasingly poisonous atmosphere, we can only welcome the appearance of an article which is one of the rare expressions of a genuinely internationalist standpoint emanating from inside Israel. The author of the article takes up the marxist position that all national struggles and slogans in the epoch of capitalist decline have become reactionary, and does not hesitate to argue that the only way out of the trap created by imperialism in Israel-Palestine is the unification of Israeli and Palestinian workers on a class basis, leading towards a proletarian revolution against all bourgeois states.

The comrade quite rightly calls for the formation of a revolutionary party which would stand for this perspective. We would argue that this is only possible as part of an international development in which the working class, above all in the main centres of world capital, is able to re-appropriate its historical project of communism. By the same token, it is more than probable that any durable unity between Israeli and Palestinian workers will only be possible as part of a world-wide revival of class struggle, of a movement which is able to push back the waves of nationalism and xenophobia that have been growing in strength everywhere in recent years, but which because of its particular history exert an added force in Israel-Palestine. 

Nevertheless, the appearance of even a tiny minority advocating a proletarian alternative in the Middle East is a vitally important link to this revolutionary future, which is still possible and more than ever necessary. 

ICC

The current 'Left' parties in the Israeli political system do not differ from other parties across Europe and the US in the sense that they defend the capitalist order and spread illusions regarding the possibility of solving the national question within capitalism. They defend an order in decay, an order that suffers from its death agonies. These parties cannot rally the masses around them as the proletariat despises them and do not trust either their leadership or their programme. The proletariat needs its own revolutionary party that will carry forward the communist programme; however, the game suggested by some reformists and Stalinists, namely, to participate in the bourgeois parliament and thus to wait until the revolution will come from nowhere, is false and deceptive. The mystification of bourgeois democracy stems from a false analysis made by those who firmly believe in notions like 'citizenship'. In fact, in a class society the only true democracy, i.e. the rule of the proletariat, is to be achieved by proletarian revolution. This assertion doesn't mean that the revolution is close or nearing; it requires the conscious intervention of the proletariat. However, with illusions about working in bourgeois parliaments, the workers won't be emancipated.

This analysis is not aimed to call the working class in Israel/Palestine to spoil their ballots but rather to get organized in a unified revolutionary party based on a communist programme. The only way to get rid of capitalism as well as of nationalism and wars passes through revolution. Workers have no fatherland and therefore must be united together to build their future in a communist society.

DS

The confrontation between the bourgeois factions in Venezuela  - between Chavismo and the opposition  parties -  has undergone a qualitative leap since the beginning of 2019. It takes place in a context of an unprecedented worsening of the economic and social crisis, the most evident sign of which is the increase in poverty experienced by a large part of the population. But it is also part of a scenario marked by worsening rivalries between the great powers - some giving their open support to the regime of Nicolás Maduro, others to the proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó.

 It is the U.S. which has set the tone: after recognizing Guaidó as president of Venezuela, it has unleashed a more intense and comprehensive strategy that proposes to definitively remove Nicolás Maduro from power. The US threat, as voiced by senior officials and Donald Trump himself, does not exclude a US military intervention, using "humanitarian aid" as a justification. Support for Nicolás Maduro has come mainly from countries such as Russia and China, the main allies of Chavismo. However, rather than a direct military confrontation between the great powers, the potential danger lies in the use of the population and workers as cannon fodder in a war between bandits, resulting in greater bloodshed. More than 40 deaths and the brutal repression of the population (more than 900 detainees in the last two weeks of January alone) are just a small sample.

Faced with this escalation of the confrontation between the bourgeois factions of right and left in Venezuela, which transcends the borders of that country, it is important and urgent to call on the Venezuelan and world proletariat to understand the imminent danger of a massacre; to refuse to line up with any of the internal or external factions of capital, to remain on its class terrain and to reject this infernal slide into chaos and barbarism in the region, an expression of the decomposition of the capitalist system as a whole[1].

The emergence of Guaidó: a strategy "made in the USA"

Guaidó's emergence does not come out of nowhere; his sudden appearance has been scrupulously prepared by the US, with the support of members of the Venezuelan opposition in that country and other countries of the so-called international community (the Lima Group, with the exception of Mexico), which support the US strategy against Maduro's regime. The aggressive and determined action of the US against Maduro has been reinforced at a geopolitical level since it was supported by the triumph of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (to which the USA also made a considerable contribution). It is no coincidence that the first declaration of Mike Pompeo (US Secretary of State) at Bolsonaro's inauguration was to call for a fight against "socialism" and re-establish democracy in Venezuela. Venezuela is being hemmed in at its most important borders, in the west by Colombia (the main US ally in South America) and in the south by Brazil. Several EU countries have also recently recognised Guaidó , although they have tried to develop their own policy of intervention through the so-called "Contact Group", which is trying to weaken US action.

This energetic reaction of the US and its allies in the region is taking advantage of the situation created by the emigration of Venezuelans fleeing from the misery and barbarity imposed by the left bourgeois regime of Chavismo-Madurismo (according to the UN, this already exceeds 4 million migrants).The Venezuelan opposition is now launching this offensive against Maduro, even though it was the conflicts of interest and the decomposition in its own ranks that opened the way for the rise of the adventurer Chávez in 1999. The opposition is seeking to take advantage of the protests and indignation of the workers and the population as whole, who do not have the strength to develop a coherent response to both the Chávez regime and the bourgeois opposition, precisely because of the divisions created by the incessant political confrontations between these factions of capital[2].

The opposition sectors, weakened by the conflicts of interest among them, now seek to unite behind the figure of Guaidó, in another adventure that is gaining support within the population due to the desperation caused by hunger and misery. The action of the majority of the regional and world bourgeoisie that have now turned against Maduro demonstrates the hypocrisy of the exploiting classes, since they now speak of "respect for human rights", after years of praising Chávez as the "defender of the poor”, who supposedly managed to "lift millions of poor people out of poverty and invisibility" in Venezuela and distributed gifts to the population thanks to high oil prices, when in reality Chavismo was laying the bases for the barbarism that we see today, enriching the military and civilian elites that today defend their privileges with blood and fire[3].

For its part, the Chávez regime declares itself "socialist" and "revolutionary", when in reality what it has implemented in Venezuela is a regime of integral state capitalism, in the style of the dictatorial regimes of Cuba, China, North Korea or so-called "Arab socialism"[4]. The regime declared itself to be fighting against "unrestrained neo-liberalism", but the effects of its "socialism" have been equally devastating for the population: extreme poverty has reached 61. 2% of the population and poverty measured by family income 87%; more than 10% of the child population suffers severe malnutrition: in 2017 between 5 and 6 children died per week, due to malnutrition and diseases; between 2017 and 2018 hyperinflation surpassed one million per cent. In addition, Chavismo effectively eliminated collective negotiations and established a repressive regime in the workplace.

These models of capital management like the Chavista regime have nothing to do with the communism fought for by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg , who proposed to put an end to the bourgeois state (whether governed by the right or the left) and to the blind laws of the capitalist mode of production. We must keep in mind that neither the left of capital nor the bourgeois right can offer a solution to the crisis of decaying capitalism. We see for example how the right in Argentina, after displacing the left governments of the Kirchners, is now plunged into a much worse crisis which it is duly unloading onto the workers. The same will happen with the Bolsonaro government in Brazil.

Both Chavismo and its leftist sidekicks in the region and the world, as well as the different oppositions of center and right, by spreading all kinds of lies and confusions, have tried to deform or erase completely the historical and theoretical heritage of marxism and the lessons handed down by the struggles of the working class. This is true whether they proclaim themselves "marxists," or when they vilify "21st century socialism" as an example of "communism”. They have all tried to maintain their class domination; now it is the turn of the right and center-right, saying that "communism" must be extirpated from Latin America, with which they identify Chavismo or Castroism.

The great powers fuel chaos in the region

As already mentioned, Guaidó has been promoted by the US in order to re-establish as close a control as possible over its backyard. China, with its penetration into Latin America and other countries of the world, and now with the vast "Silk Road" programme, intends not only to expand the markets within its reach but also to achieve a strategic imperialist implantation on a world scale. Using economic means, China wants to set up an imperialist network on a world scale, in order to undo the siege that the USA had woven around it since the Obama administration (using Japan, South Korea, Philippines, India, etc.). In this sense, alliances with Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, etc., are very important for China's imperialist ambitions. The "Guaidó operation" on the part of the US is a counter-attack that adds to the positions won in Argentina and Brazil, and through the traditional loyalty of Colombia.

The first step of the US imperialist operation is the deployment of so-called Humanitarian Aid. It is the height of cynicism and hypocrisy that hunger, the shortage of medicines, the desperate situation of millions of workers and exploited in Venezuela, are used to carry out the first phase of their strategy against the Maduro regime. The trucks carrying food and medicine and parked on the famous Tienditas Bridge in the Colombian city of Cúcuta are the equivalent of missiles and bombers. With them, US imperialism tries to put its Chavista imperialist rival in an uncomfortable position, where it might have to reject food and medicine for the hungry and ailing population. The repugnant cynicism of both the Americans and the Chavistas, the supporters of Guaidó and those of Maduro, is thus revealed. The first exploiting the hunger of the population as a weapon of war, repeating an operation that in 1998-99 Clinton carried out in Serbia where tons of food were thrown from planes to weaken Milosevic's regime, or a similar manoeuvre in Haiti in 2004[5]. The latter, led by Maduro, rejecting the aid, thereby demonstrating what is obvious: they don't give a damn about the hunger and unspeakable suffering of the population.

Maduro will resist as long as possible and, no doubt, China and Russia will do their best to support him. So far, the army and repressive forces have closed ranks with Chavismo. The aim now is to weaken the "unbreakable" adhesion of the military-repressive apparatus to Maduro. In carrying out this destabilising operation, the danger of armed confrontations is appearing on the horizon. Given the imperialist rivalries lurking in the background, and the high degree of ideological, political, economic and social decomposition taking place in Venezuela, there is a real potential that the situation will end up in a civil war or, at least, in a succession of bloody confrontations, an increasingly chaotic spiral that could lead the country and the region to collapse. This perspective is also fed by the information provided by the Observatorio Venezolano de la Violencia, according to which there are 8 million illegal firearms in the country. In addition there is no precise data on the number of weapons in the hands of the organised underworld, to which can be added the threat of the Chávez government to hand over 500,000 rifles to its militias.

The massive exodus of the Venezuelan population to countries in the region such as Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Peru (with walking caravans similar to those going from Honduras to the United States) is also a factor in the spread of chaos. It is a problem that cannot be underestimated, and the bourgeoisies of the most affected countries have responded by launching racist and xenophobic campaigns presented as a means of opposing the threatened chaos[6].

Only the proletariat offers an alternative for the future of humanity

The crisis of capitalism is unstoppable; it feeds day by day on the contradictions of the capitalist social relation. For this reason, the solution to the crisis by the exploited will only be possible through the unified struggle of the proletarians of Venezuela, the region and the world. In the current period of the decomposition of capitalism, there is no country in the world that is not threatened with the barbarism that is being lived through now in Venezuela. Neither the populisms of the left nor of the right, nor the defenders of neo-liberalism, represent a way out.

The workers in Venezuela must reject any enlistment in the ranks of the warring factions, rejecting the siren songs of the opposition bourgeoisie that call the exploited masses behind their struggle; in the same way, they must resist falling into the mesh of the parties, groups and unions of the left, including the leftists that oppose the regime, so-called "Chavismo without Chávez", which peddles a more radical version of Maduro’s regime of exploitation.

We have seen that in Venezuela there have been a large number of protests during the Chávez regime. In 2018 alone, there were more than 5,000 demonstrations (an average of 30 protests a day), most of them demanding basic necessities such as food, water, services and better wages. In recent years, we can point in particular to the struggles of doctors and nurses, who have not only dared to challenge the repressive forces of the state, but  have also shown a very class-based solidarity, identifying with patients who have no medicine or possibilities of care, calling for unity with other sectors, such as teachers and lecturers. However, these struggles have not been spared the penetration of trade unions who aim to control and sabotage them, although it is worth noting the fact that there has been a tendency to reject both Chavismo and the opposition, to try to keep their struggles  more independent. The workers must continue their struggles against the regime of bourgeois exploitation on their own ground. In their struggle, the workers must seek to bring other non-exploitative layers behind them; only the proletariat has the capacity to transform social indignation into a real political programme for social transformation.

The revolutionary organisations that descend from the communist left, as well as the most politicised minorities in Venezuela, the region and the world, must call for the development of a movement on the proletarian basis of solidarity and common struggle with the exploited masses who are experiencing situations comparable to what is happening in Venezuela. The world proletariat has the answer to the prospect of sinking into barbarism; for this reason, it must defend its class autonomy tooth and nail. That means rejecting all sides in the conflict and affirming its own demands as a class; it means fighting for the unity of all workers around the slogan: Here or Abroad, the Same Working Class!

International Communist Current 12-2-19

________________________________________

1] To understand in depth this notion of the decomposition of capitalism, see our Theses on Decomposition, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [12]

2] See “The crisis in Venezuela: the proletariat suffers the misery, chaos and repression of capitalism”, https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201710/14408/crisis-venezuela-... [13]

3] See Un proyecto de defensa del capital. Un gran engaño para las masas empobrecidas https://es.internationalism.org/cci-online/201303/3694/un-proyecto-de-de... [14]

4] We have denounced on numerous occasions the Great Lie of the 20th century, the supposed "communism" of countries such as the USSR, China, Cuba and North Korea. See “The Russian Experience: Private Property and Collective Property”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/russian-experience [15]. Also “Five Questions on Communism”, https://es.internationalism.org/accion-proletaria/200510/246/5-preguntas... [16]

5] See “Behind the ‘humanitarian’ operations of the great powers, imperialist barbarism is unchained” https://en.internationalism.org/content/3568/international-situation-beh... [17]. Also:  “The fraud of ‘humanitarian aid’ in Haiti”, https://en.internationalism.org/wr/2010//331/ [18]

 6] See “Migrations in Latin America: Only the proletariat can stop the barbarism of decaying capitalism”, https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoameric... [19]

For the last two months, the question of the ecological catastrophe threatening our planet has been at the centre of attention in Belgium. With the march on 2 December 2019, which brought together 75,000 people in Brussels, this mobilisation around climate change has taken on an unprecedented breadth. Faced with the disdain of the government and the political parties, obsessed with all their squalid manoeuvres around the May elections, it got even bigger with 80,000 demonstrating in Brussels on 27 January.

But the most significant expression of this indignation about the inaction of the political parties is without doubt the wave of Thursday school strikes, initiated by the high school students from the beginning of January, in order to go and demonstrate in Brussels. Launched by high school students in Antwerp, there were 3,000 students at the first demonstration and over 35,000 on Thursday 24th January, coming from both Flanders and Wallonia. Other more local demonstrations took place in Antwerp, Liège and Namur.

The main motivation for this mobilisation of the high school students is the absence of perspective offered by this society on the issue of climate change. Scandalised by the lack of government action, the movement aims to put “maximum pressure on the authorities” to take responsible decisions about the climate problem.

Indignation about the inaction of the governments is quite justified, and so is the disquiet of the students about their future, which also means their future as workers. The search for an alternative to this society which is heading towards disaster is more necessary and urgent than ever. But can we expect anything from the “authorities”? Should we not first and foremost think deeply about the real reasons behind the threat to the planet and its inhabitants? And about what kind of fight we need to deal with this threat?

In order to provide some elements of a reply to these questions and to stimulate reflection, we are republishing here two articles on the question of ecology. Even though they were written in 1990 and 2009, they remain as relevant as ever when it comes to analysing the roots of the ecological problem and the perspectives that need to be put forward.

Brazil is wracked by increased repression, growing poverty and greater insecurity; further attacks on workers, threats of war and risks of chaos - all linked to the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on 1 January, 2019. Bolsonaro symbolises the epoch in which we are living which produces the most sinister and repugnant elements. It is a law that we can be sure will be verified, whatever the political moves of the new president and his ministries, whatever his personality ... that the exploited will pay more than their predecessors and the crisis of capitalism will only get worse.

Faced with all these dangers, only the working class, through its struggles of resistance and its opposition to the fatal logic of capitalism, can open up another perspective. While sharing the global difficulty of recognising itself as a class with antagonistic interests to those of capitalism, it is by basing itself on the experiences of past struggles that the proletariat will be able to respond to the drastic attacks that have been announced and do so in the context of a social crisis of a society in decomposition[1]. But the more the consciousness of the class is liberated from all the deceptions and lies of the bourgeois class from both right and left, the more its combat will be strengthened and, in time, the goal of establishing a society without classes or exploitation.

The Brazilian crime hell and the remedies of Bolsonaro

The extent of criminality is fundamentally the consequence of the economic and moral poverty of society, a product of capitalist society rotting on its feet. The depths reached by this make daily life unliveable in some countries of Latin America such as Honduras or Venezuela; here they are the prime reason for the massive and desperate attempts at emigration. The situation has got so bad in Brazil in recent years, it has propelled the country, and some of its towns in particular, to a place high up in the world league of criminality. The following statistics give a concrete idea of the daily hell to which the most disadvantaged parts of the population are exposed.

"Brazil is one of the world's capitals for homicide, with 60,000 a year out of a population of close to 208 million inhabitants. Each year 10% of people killed in the world are Brazilian. Nearly 50 million Brazilians aged 16 or over - almost a third of the adult population - know someone who has been violently killed, according to research undertaken by the "Instinto de Vido" (Life Instinct) (...) Nearly 5 million people have been wounded by firearms and about 15 million know someone who has been killed by the police, one of the most murderous forces in the world."[2].

"According to another study, the rate of homicide in 2017 was 32.4 per 100,000, with 64,357 killed. In 2016, Brazil registered a record number of 61,819 murders, or 198 per day on average, a rate of deaths of 29.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. Seven of the twenty most violent towns in the world are in Brazil because of the increase in street violence"[3] .

Growing criminality and insecurity are plunging more and more important layers of the population into a total impasse, into the most profound despair. This scourge eating away at society has no possible solution under capitalism nor even the least possibility of its attenuation[4].

In Bolsonaro's election campaign a priority was given to the fight against violence and corruption. He was taking on these issues by advocating measures which reflect the trade-mark of the person. Behind his promises declaring war on criminality the real perspective is in fact that of an aggravation of barbarity. Drawing a critical balance-sheet of politics up until now, he expressed himself in these terms: "We can't fight violence with the politics of peace and love". So, it's necessary "to increase the performance of the police", "to double the number of people killed by the police". Just imagine the possible carnage when, "from 2009-2016, 21.9 thousand people lost their lives following police actions. Nearly all were males between 12 and 29, three-quarters of them black" (Guaracy Mingardi, a specialist in security questions and National Secretary of Public Security in an interview with Huffpost Brasil).

In fact, not only will criminality not be reduced but the number of victims of the police will increase and the first victims will be from the poor areas which are already suffering from the expansion of crime[5]. The accentuation of the violence doesn't only come from criminals and the police but also from those on the sinister and classical appendages of the extreme-right, the bands recruited from lumpen elements who were already active and have been for a while.

Regarding the fight against corruption, Bolsonaro has immediately taken "strong measures" consisting of nominating ex-anti-corruption judge, Sergio Moro, as Minister of Justice. Groomed by the CIA for operation "Lava Jato" ("Operation Car Wash") from 2014 to 2016, Moro aimed at some political figures while sparing many others even more corrupt.

Why was Lula removed from political life and Bolsonaro elected?

The election of Bolsonaro takes place within a global dynamic, verifiable at the international level, of the rise of strong leaders with bellicose language, as illustrated to the point of parody by the election of Duterte in the Philippines. It is one of the consequences of the decomposition of capitalism, mired in its inextricable contradictions. The phenomenon exists in Brazil through insecurity and criminality and the fear that they give rise to, thus laying the ground for the ascension to power of people like Bolsonaro.

Nevertheless, as important as this factor is, it wasn't determinant in the election of Bolsonaro. And the proof is that another candidate, who had been the best politician in the service of Brazilian national capital since Vargas, would have been elected in the first round according to the polls if he'd been able to stand, and that despite accusations of corruption aimed at him. This is Lula, who has been put in prison so that he couldn't stand.

How do you explain the persistence of Lula's popularity? You explain it quite simply by the fact that he doesn't come across as shady as all the other contending candidates. In fact, it's the contrary, because what is clear and conforms to reality, is that the accusation and sanction against him has been particularly severe taking account of the charges against him and the fate reserved for other politicians immersed in scandal who have come out of them with just a slap on the wrist. This is true of Michel Temer of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, which is a "centre" party in the political set-up of the bourgeoisie) for example.

The high results for Lula in the polls doesn't mean that his image hasn't been eroded at the end of the day and among the working class notably because of his attacks on the class during his two successive mandates. But he has largely appeared as a lesser evil, taking account of his stature and faced with all the other candidates. His popularity was greater than that of his own party, the PT, whose defeated candidate would be presented once Lula was definitively out of the race. In effect, whereas Lula would have beaten Bolsonaro in the first round, Addad, the PT's candidate, was heavily beaten by Bolsonaro in the second round. The difference between Lula and the PT is not surprising when one takes into account that, for three successive mandates, the latter was enmeshed in many areas of corruption and equally supported all the policies of austerity: those of two mandates of Lula and the still-more drastic ones of Dilma Rousseff during the first mandate and months of his second mandate before being dismissed[6].

The contrast between the political suitability of Lula on the one hand and the notorious incapacity which seems to affect Bolsonaro on the other, is striking. Why did the bourgeoisie keep back one of its own who was its main figure (during the two mandates of 2002 to 2010) during the emergence of Brazil on the international scene and the second economic miracle?[7]  In fact Lula's ousting was part of a strategy within which the United States played a major role, aiming to bring Brazil under its direct influence, given that the world's 7th economic power has been continually disengaging itself from US influence since the beginning of 2000.

After the dissolution of the western bloc, Brazil frees itself from the tutelage of the United States

For a long time before the formation of the two antagonistic rival blocs, Russia and the USA after the Second World War, Latin America constituted the back-yard of the United States up to when the eastern bloc collapsed followed by that of the west. Up to 1990, Uncle Sam could effectively defend its back-yard from any intrusion from its rival imperialist bloc. In the same way, it integrated the different countries of the South American continent into networks of bi- or multi-lateral commercial agreements primarily benefitting the United States. In order to serve its interests Uncle Sam did what it pleased in setting up governments by installing, for example, extreme right-wing dictatorships to fight against any attempts to set up left-wing governments who could express the interests of the rival bloc. This was particularly the case with Argentina, Chile and Brazil in the 1960's and 1970's. Similarly, when that threat receded, the United States could also support the democratic process putting an end to dictatorships. This was the case in Brazil in 1984 in order to get a democratic government which put an end to the rigidity in the management of the national capital from a state led by the military, thus making it more open to American penetration[8]. It is moreover this management of the state by the military which then inspired Bolsonaro when he promised to "shoot the president who privatises"[9] and who now envisages privatisation.

Following the dissolution of the western bloc, Brazil, as other countries in South America and the world, used this relaxation of pressure in order to play its own geopolitical cards. Thus, it was able to take its distance from the United States on both economic and political grounds. In fact, during the whole period corresponding to the presidency of Lula (2003 - 2007 - 2011) the country distinguished itself through important economic developments but also through certain political positions opposed to the United States. In particular the opposition of the Lula government was crucial in aborting the North American ALCA project (free-exchange zone of the Americas) in 2005, a multi-lateral free-exchange deal which covered all the countries of the continent, with the exception of Cuba. A similar opposition was also shown through the promotion of non-aligned countries in Latin America and elsewhere. Thus, in 2010, Brazil opposed the United States on the question of Iran. At the same time, it established international economic relations (BRICS) which strengthened its independence in relation to the United States. A fact which marked this trajectory and distancing from the United States, in April 2009, China became the main commercial partner of Brazil in place of the United States[10]. Brazil gained a more and more hegemonic position over the whole South American continent, thanks to its economic and diplomatic power. So much so that during the Lula government Brazil became the main competitor to the US in the region; competitor but not declared enemy. In fact, Lula established relations with both China and the United States, while clearly favouring China; it's much more comforting to have a powerful "partner" some geographical distance away, in contrast to the United States.

Some cheating which was also an Achilles heel in the growth of Brazil's power

An expression and factor in the growth of Brazil's power at the economic level was the large Brazilian businesses dynamised by investments from the state banks[11]. These imposed themselves on the international scene, notably through the energy sector, food, naval construction, armaments, services, etc...

Among the above figures were the businesses of Petrobas (oil production and derivatives) BRF (animal proteins, meat and derivatives), Odebrecht (heavy construction, armaments and services to Petrobas).  Thus, for example, thanks to intensive public financing, the BRF became the principal producer and exporter of animal protein in the world, present in more than 30 countries. The Brazilian multinational Odebrecht (twelfth in the world), which had business in almost every country of South America, in some old Portuguese colonies in Africa and even beyond, certainly constituted an important instrument for the economic penetration of Brazil outside the frontiers of South America.

Moreover, protectionist measures were equally applied, aiming to impose the presence of Brazilian businesses in different circumstances: cooperation with foreign businesses wanting to extract oil from Brazilian territory; all equipment put together in Brazil had to integrate components made in Brazil as soon as they were available.

Another type of protectionist measure favourising the large Brazilian enterprises was "illegal" even if practiced around the world. Odebrecht, for example, had a service specialist in bribery for obtaining bigger contracts and this in every country it operated in. This enterprise, the same as others such as the AOS, were organised in a cartel in the BTP, remunerating the staff of the group Petrobas and complicit politicians through an estimated amount of 1 and 5% of contracts. A system was put in place to hold back billions of reals (the Brazilian currency) with the aim of financing political parties and/or enriching personnel ("Brazil: everyone understands how 'Lava Jato' works". Le Monde, published March 26, 2017 and again, April 2018).

The pressure of the United States on the Brazilian state and operation "Lava Jato"

Evidently, none of the economic rivals of the United States can counter the fact that the world's main economic power draws the economic part of its ranking in the world to the detriment of its competitors, particularly from the fact  that its currency is the currency of international exchange. On the contrary, the United States has been particularly vigilant in making sure that there are punishing sanctions against any country guilty of not observing the laws of competition. Thus, cheating by Brazil has served as a pretext and target for a massive offensive aimed at dismantling the entire economic organization on which they relied. The reprisals were all the more draconian since they acted through them not only to inflict economic sanctions for the failures regarding competition, but above all to disorganise the protectionist measures of the Brazilian economy (legal or not, such as the systematic use if bribes), and to bring a pliant Brazil back under exclusive American influence by neutralising the political forces most influential and hostile to such an orientation. Witness the treatment meted out to the most popular politician in Brazil, Lula, condemned to 12 years in prison (a sentence which has since been more than doubled) during an expedient procedure lacking significant proof concerning so-called personal enrichment[12]. It is moreover not insignificant that it’s the accusation most difficult to prove, that of personal enrichment, which has nevertheless been retained against Lula, because it was most likely to be considered by the electorate, whereas other accusations from numerous witnesses, relating to the malpractices of the Brazilian state, seem not to have been taken into account.

The term "Lava Jato" made its first public appearance in March 2014 and was then closely followed by leaks of confessions of an ex-high official of Petrobas, conceded in the hope of a lenient sentence regarding the existence of a vast system of bribery to the management staff of this business, aimed at being awarded contracts. Following which, the opposition daily - "Veja" - published the names of forty suspect deputies from the centre-left in power, essentially from the PMDB, the PT and the Brazilian Socialist Party.

Cases of corruption going back to 2008 led to the mobilisation of the bourgeois state’s organs of control. This led to operation "Lava Jato" whose work was constituted by the federal police, members of the public ministry and judges. Its first public interventions went back to 2014. For its work, this task force appealed to the tribunals responsible for verifying the state's accounts, to the judicial power, to the public ministry and the federal police, with the constitution of special groups of the latter set up to "fight" organised criminality under all its forms.

Some strong elements allow us to consider that this judicial mobilisation took place through a powerful interaction with the highest authorities in the United States, even the product of the overt interference of the latter. Thus documents divulged by Wikileaks talked of a seminar in Rio de Janeiro in October 2009 showing the cooperation of the federal police, Justice, the public ministry of Brazil and representatives from North America[13]. In fact, there was nothing surprising about this seminar when one is aware that, on one hand, the United States had an interest, but also given the fact that, since the 1960's, the leaders of judicial and ministerial power in Brazil were ardent defenders of American institutions which gave them courts, training, conferences, assistance to enquiries, etc. Such cooperation is nowhere denied by the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Rodrigo Janot, someone central to "Lava Jato", when he explained that the "Brazilian results" were the outcome "of an intense exchange with the United States which had provided Brazil with training courses and recycling for Brazilian research and with more technology and planning techniques for research". The prosecutor punctuated this with: "All this means that Brazil has a relationship of equals with all other states"[14]; in case there was any doubt of the relationship with United States! We can quote here the title of another article: "The FBI has been involved in operation Lava Jato since the beginning and prided itself on that fact in front of everyone"[15].

In the context of this pressure of the United States on Brazil, we should also note the recordings made by the NSA of presidential conversations, of ministries, the director of the Central Bank and military chiefs[16].

We shouldn't be surprised at the leaks of the first results of "Lava Jato" in 2014 regarding the system of bribery at Petrobas. In fact, these came at "a good time", weakening Dilma Rousseff and the PT in the re-election campaign whose result was uncertain, while, in the incriminating period in question, Rousseff was the President of the administrative council of Petrobas and the PT was also implicated through some of its members being involved in the management of this state enterprise.

Nevertheless, this first flurry of revelations from "Lava Jato" wasn't enough to remove Dilma Rousseff from carrying out the business of the country. In fact, the outgoing president was re-elected against the candidate for the PSDB, even if it was difficult given that she was tainted by the affair and weakened by the worsening of the economic situation of Brazil. However, the fact that she was re-elected in this context showed the confidence that an important part of the bourgeoisie had in her to assume the defence of the interests of the national capital. In fact, for this electoral consultation, as the previous one, she called upon a significant level of financial resources provided by large industrial businesses, the finance and service sector.

However, she was rapidly and more deeply discredited through the severe anti-working class measures that she had to take (reneging on her electoral promises). She was again confronted in the street early in 2015, through demonstration initiated by the right but avoiding the appearance of political parties. In these demonstrations, which brought together millions, there were also conservatives, liberals and partisans of the military taking power. It's worth mentioning here that these demonstrations served as a springboard for promoting speeches in defence of the military candidate and notorious homophobe, Bolsonaro.

The previous "allies" of Dilma Rousseff then constituted, without her and the PT, a new and striking parliamentary majority in alliance with other opposition parties notably the PSDB and of sections of parties such as the PMDB (Social Democratic Party of Brazil), the PDT (Workers' Democratic Party), the PSB (Socialist Party of Brazil), all of the DEM (Democrats) and other minor parties. Dilma Rousseff was removed in August 2018 by a vote in the Senate at the end of a controversial procedure.

The consequences of "Lava Jato" on the political life of the bourgeoisie.

All the important political formations of Brazilian politics have been affected by the revelations of "Lava Jato". Major figures of the Brazilian bourgeoisie were targeted for investigation, even humiliated (particularly the boss of Odebrecht) by deafening revelations of suspicions, of proofs against them and they were thrown to the wolves by the press who broadcast them immediately. News and specialist programmes became the theatre of "popular judicial deliberations" to which the viewer was invited. The "all powerful" judiciary seemed to cut off the head of the state and even make it submit. No boss or high-level management, or parts of the party could feel safe.

But far from strengthening the image of its institutions and democracy "Lavo Jato" has discredited them still more. If the corruption and the rot have effectively been shamelessly and publicly exposed, the means used for this end was at least questionable. This was the institutionalisation and banalisation of denunciations[17] . Further it quickly became clear that all the defendants were not equal in front of the justice of "Lava Jato", and that the most severe sanctions were applied to those that they wanted to remove from power. The example of Lula alone sums up this situation.

We find the same iniquity regarding the sanctions levelled against the "guilty" Brazilian businesses. In this case it's the United States handing out the punishment and "generously" accepting arrangements in order to avoid colossal penalties. For example, the American government demanded that the J&F business (BRF) transferred its operational control by setting itself up as an American business if it wanted to avoid sanctions. As for Odebrecht, it paid a very heavy penalty.

The return of a Brazil to the exclusive influence of the United States and its consequences

During the election campaign Bolsonaro made it very clear to the United States and China that he would break with the latter if elected by making an official visit to Taiwan. Doing this he clearly showed the orientations of the "Washington candidate", supported by part of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, to be put in place after his election became certain with the removal of Lula. It was the end of the relatively comfortable position of unequal equilibrium between the United States and China[18].

"Lava Jato" constituted an essential link of the "recuperation" of Brazil by the United States, dismantling all economic protections - legal and illegal - and the state subsidies favouring Brazilian business. The consequences will be very heavy for Brazil. In fact, the removal of these protections has already begun to dangerously expose Brazilian business to the competition of the United States. This will only worsen with the strengthening of the economic "cooperation" between the two countries. Added to that, in the context of a more and more difficult world economy, are the devastating consequences of the debt policy of the country under Lula and Dilma Rousseff.

On the level of international relations, like a poodle, Bolsonaro treads in the footsteps of Trump and his erratic diplomacy by deciding, in a move towards Israel, to transfer the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem. More recently the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, went to Brazil for Bolsonaro's investiture and talked in an interview with the new president about the "opportunity to work together against authoritarian regimes", in an allusion to Venezuela and Cuba, and made veiled references to putting the brake on Chinese expansionism. Brazil thus finds itself fully implicated in the global imperialist maelstrom as clearly illustrated by ex-US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley: "It's good to have a new pro-American leader in South America, who will join the fight against the dictators of Venezuela and Cuba and who clearly sees the dangers of the growing influence of China in the region" [19].

With the election of Bolsonaro the United States has effectively re-taken control of its back yard since Brazil occupies almost half of the South American continent, with frontiers with the majority of other countries in the continent, and it is the main military power in the region. And Brazil will be at the forefront of the United States' strategy to put an end to the Maduro regime in Venezuela. As soon as Trump quickly recognised the self-proclaimed new president, Juan Guaido, Bolsonaro did the same. Now Venezuela finds itself practically confined behind its frontier's walls by the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil. This situation has created a climate of confrontation in the region with unpredictable consequences at the military level, since the Maduro government is ready to resist with the support of Russia, China and Cuba; but also on the social level because this will only aggravate the terrible conditions in which the Venezuelan population are living and provoke a new mass exodus, a source of instability  at the borders of the three countries as well as Guyana.

What can we expect with Bolsonaro?

Through a vast enterprise, lasting years and mobilising its own significant forces (without counting those mobilised in Brazil through "Lava Jato"), the United States has finally achieved its aim, which is to fully integrate Brazil under its influence. It is thus a success of American diplomacy and all the services which go along with it: judicial power, the FBI, espionage... But nevertheless, the success is perhaps not complete.

The last stage of the manoeuvre consisted of providing Brazil at the election with a candidate who can carry out the new orientation. The candidate has been found and has won the election[20] thanks to the manoeuvres that we know about. But the least one can say about him is that he is not very "presentable". It's true that there wasn't really much choice given that "Lava Jato" had rendered the traditional political forces and formations unusable for a period. They were even more discredited than before and, equally, someone like Lula, an incomparably more accomplished politician, was incompatible with the new orientation.

If for a time Bolsonaro could seduce a fringe of the population which voted for him at the election, he could also become a weak point in the set-up if he doesn't change his style.

Bolsonaro has a caricature personality and even Marine Le Pen refuses to support his misogyny and homophobia. An old military man, he's nostalgic for the military dictatorship that existed in Brazil between 1964 and 1985. He has promised to cleanse the country of  “reds". His political family clan also make up part of this decor. One of his sons, Edouardo Bolsonaro (Federal Deputy of the state of Sao Paulo) decidedly follows his father's footsteps, but is even more “excessive": he wants to label Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement as a terrorist organisation and for him "there's no problem" if "it's necessary to put a hundred thousand in prison". He also wants to classify communism as a crime.

Riding the "Lava Jato" wave, Bolsonaro is prepared to put on the costume of the White Knight. To this end, in 2016 he quit his old party, the Progressive Party (PP), the party most implicated in the scandals which hit the country (of 56 deputies affiliated to the PP, 31 were accused of corruption). But his first false step occurred before his investiture. Among the political figures that he chose to be part of his future government, some have already been accused of corruption. It's as if Mr. Clean has already stained his white presidential finery even before taking office. Worse, the total absence of restraint from his clan[21] has already made him appear as a sinister clown. In talking about discords in the Bolsonaro camp, one of his sons regaled us with the sordid details. The disagreements were such, he tells us, that, "There are some that would like the death of Bolsonaro". Whether it is bluff or not, it demonstrates the stupidity and hypocrisy of the Bolsonaro clan, its links with criminal militias of Rio de Janeiro[22], or the involvement of his son, Flavio, in dodgy bank deals (the “Queiroz affair”[23]). These are clear proof of the rottenness at the heart of the clan which has been put at the head of the state. 

Unfortunately, we can have no joy in the deep stupidity of Bolsonaro and a part of his entourage by thinking that there could be a good defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Either it will be a puppet manipulated backstage or there could be a tendency for things to spiral out of control, notably on the level of imperialist tensions, which could have disastrous consequences for much of the population.

Against the traps of anti-fascism and anti-Yankee imperialism, develop the class struggle

There are some harsh tests awaiting the working class in Brazil via the economic attacks already underway and those in the pipeline. Pension reform is "the first great challenge" among others, as the ultra-liberal Minister of Economics announced at his investiture and characterised by the media as "The thorny question of a costly regime for the state, with the markets insisting on these steps"[24] ("Brazil: the Bolsonaro government saluted by the stock-exchange").

The general difficulty of the working class at the global level in recognising itself as a class with antagonistic interests to those of capital has affected its reaction faced with a deluge of attacks which will hit it in Brazil. But it's also through the necessary riposte, the criticism of its own weaknesses that it will be able to take a step forward towards a more united, massive and unified struggle and abandon the mystifications weighing on its consciousness, particularly those peddled by the left (PT) and the extreme-left of capital (Trotskyists etc). It's for that reason that it is necessary to re-appropriate past experiences, remembering in particular:

- the massive and spontaneous mobilisation of the metal-workers of 1979, going well beyond the annual mobilisation of this time around wages launched by the unions with the aim of keeping wages in line with inflation.

- the way in which Lula repressed the air-traffic controllers in 2007 who spontaneously went on strike faced with a dramatic deterioration in their working conditions. They organised outside of the union confines (strikes in this sector were forbidden) and this despite threats of imprisonment from the military command of aeronautics. Lula in particular publicly accused them of "irresponsibility and treachery" (read our articles in Portuguese: "Diante dos embates do capital, os controladores aereos respondem com a luta"[25] and "Repressao e marginalizacao do movimento dos controladores aereos"[26].)

- from the experience of the spontaneous movement of 2013, following the increase in transport fares, which was at the initiative of young proletarians and mobilising thousands in more than a hundred towns generalising into a protest against the reduction of the social wage. There was a massive rejection here of the political parties, mainly the PT, as well as the union and student organisations. Other expressions of the class struggle appeared, although in a minority, through assemblies deciding what action to take[27].

New difficulties will probably emerge as a consequence of the present situation and are likely to get in the way of the class struggle in Brazil. It's important to prepare for them.

Bolsonaro is so detestable that he is capable of polarising the anger provoked by the economic attacks around him. The danger would be to only see the personality and not the crisis of capitalism behind the attacks. The possibility exists of a similar danger concerning the political orientation of Bolsonaro and the extreme right, as the extreme left don't hesitate to blame him for the worsening of living conditions. It's possible that in the future Lula and the PT will again assume the responsibility of diverting discontent against the right and extreme right towards a left alternative. It's also necessary to keep a clear head regarding any party, from extreme right to extreme left, taking the reins of the state if necessary, and assuming the responsibility to defend the interest of the national capital to the detriment of the exploited class. Further, it is important to remember that the injustice of which Lula was a victim through "Lava Jato", particularly when one compares his fate to the clemency reserved for many of his notoriously shady political "colleagues", doesn't at all mean that the old metal-worker can be characterised as honest and still less a defender of the workers.

Similarly, there's no lack of voices trying to divert the workers towards opposing " Yankee imperialism which oppresses Brazil" and from which it's necessary to be "liberated". This is a tragic impasse which has already been demonstrated. It implies the mobilisation alongside a part of the Brazilian bourgeoisie against the American bourgeoisie. The proletariat has no country to defend, only its class interests. Faced with such a mystification there is a single slogan: class struggle in every country against capitalism!

That's not immediate and can only be a perspective, but it is always with this aim and this perspective which must guide the action of the proletariat and seen as a link in the chain leading to the world proletarian revolution.

Revolução Internacional, 6 February 2019

Over the past few months, there have been successive demonstrations by young people in 270 cities around the world protesting against the deterioration of the climate and the destruction of the environment.

Young people are taking to the streets to express their fully justified concern for the future of the planet and the human species itself, a future increasingly compromised by the effects of a system of production that destroys the natural environment, while also destroying the lives of millions of human beings through exploitation, war and poverty.  It is now evident that this system is causing changes in the planet's climatic, atmospheric and reproductive conditions with ever more catastrophic consequences.

Similarly, the young are expressing their indignation at the cynicism and hypocrisy of the leaders who have their mouths full of statements expressing "their concern" for the "environmental problem" and who organize countless forums (Kyoto, Paris, etc.) to adopt spectacular and ineffective "measures" while at the same time, in the service of their imperialist and economic designs, they only aggravate the deterioration of the planet further.

The trap of the movement “for the climate”

We fully share the concern and indignation of these tens of thousands of young people, but we must ask ourselves whether this movement, in its objectives, approaches and methods, is a real struggle to solve the problem, or whether it is a trap that can only lead them to discouragement and bitterness about being used and misled.

The history of the past 100 years is full of this kind of repugnant deception perpetrated by governments and parties that serve capitalism. In the 1930s and 1980s, major "peace" demonstrations were organized by governments and "democratic" parties, and experience has shown that this was a terrible manipulation because with these "pacifist" mobilizations they were preparing for war: the Second World War with its 60 million dead or the countless local wars that continue to afflict death, ruins and pain on many parts of the planet.

The current demonstrations focus on "asking the authorities to do something", to put pressure on them, even to fill their computers with emails, tweets etc. full of threats.

But it is these same authorities that, in order to defend the capitalist interests of maximum profit and the occupation of strategic positions on the world market, adopt measures that only aggravate the deterioration of the climate and the environment. Such an approach of "pressure" on governments to "move" is like asking a hacker to take care of computer security or a fox to take care of the chickens.

State leaders are not "at the service of citizens" nor do they seek to "listen to their demands". The state is not the organ of the "people" but a machine that exclusively defends the interests of each national capital, of the minority that exploits us and is responsible for environmental degradation.

The initiators of the movement denounce the fact that "for 40 years, political parties of all colours have been losing the war against climate change!" These parties only promise and mislead the public, while in practice they make economic, military or warlike decisions that contribute to the destruction of the planet. An 18-year-old high school student from Geneva denounced this farce: “There is a great deal of mistrust in institutional politics, but also in environmental organisations like Greenpeace, which are perceived as too moderate and institutionalised”.

The demonstrations focus on conducting "conversations" with ministers, parliamentarians, pressure groups and environmental activists. This only serves to wash the face of the democratic state and to get lost in the maze of laws and government policies. Attempts at "dialogue" with political mouthpieces only lead to grandiloquent promises that do not solve anything.

The motto of the demonstrations is to "Save the climate, change the system", a vague formula that translates into "getting down to business" and getting lost in a series of local or regional measures that solve absolutely nothing and cause fatigue and disappointment.

In different schools, for example, "climate committees" have been created to develop "climate projects" for each school. Under the slogan "Change the world, start with yourself", the proposed objective is to reduce your own "ecological footprint".

This kind of orientation is particularly perverse because it makes us feel responsible for the climate catastrophe, transforming a historical and global problem caused by capitalism into a "domestic" problem caused by individuals. Reducing our "ecological footprint" would mean doing things like using less water to wash dishes, showering only once a week and not flushing the toilet.

This approach of "empowering people" is particularly dangerous. First, because it serves to exonerate capital, and the states and governments that serve it, from any liability.

Secondly, because it prsents these thousands of young people who are today schoolchildren or students but who will tomorrow be workers or unemployed, as "citizens" who "demand things from their governments".  This leads to a false image of the society in which we live. Capitalism is not formed by "free and equal citizens" but by social classes confronted with antagonistic interests: a minority, the capitalist class, which owns almost everything and is increasingly rich, and an immense majority, the proletariat, which owns nothing and is always getting poorer.

And, thirdly, and most importantly: the individualistic approach of "let us each do something for the climate" leads to division and confrontation within the working class itself. When car factories or other industrial or logistical branches are closed in the name of the "climate fight", the authorities will point the finger at workers who resist redundancies by denouncing them as accomplices in the degradation of the climate.

With the same approach, but reversed ("let's stop talking about climate change and keep jobs"), the populist demagogue Trump won many votes in the stricken industrial states of the American Midwest ("the rust belt") that allowed him to win the presidential election.

It is a dilemma in which they want to trap us: to maintain employment at the expense of the climate or to lose living conditions and employment itself in order to "save the planet"? A vicious trap which capitalism uses to preserve its selfish interests, wrapped in the attractive flag of "saving the planet”.

The alternative is in the hands of the world proletariat

The problems of global warming, of the destruction of nature, of the depletion of natural resources, can only be solved on a global scale. The bourgeoisie cannot and will not do so because, in capitalism, the nation-state is the highest form of unity it can achieve. As a result, nations clash like vultures, however "green" their governments may be, despite the existence of international conferences and supranational organizations such as the UN or the European Union.

International organizations such as the United Nations do not aim to "solve the problems of the world's population". There is no "international community of nations". On the contrary, the world is the scene of a brutal imperialist confrontation between all states and a competition to the death to make the most of it. The UN or the multitude of international "cooperation" organizations are dens of thieves used by each national capital to impose its own interests.

The only class that can affirm a true internationalism is the working class.

What social forces can achieve such fundamental change? Unlike the bourgeoisie, the working class is able to unite at the global level, to overcome divisions and oppositions between nation-states and has no privilege to defend in today's exploitative society. It is only within the framework of a revolutionary struggle of the world working class that environmental problems can be tackled.

As the most exploited class in society, the working class has no interest in defending this decadent system; and because of the associated way in which it is organized in capitalism, it can sow the seeds of another society, a society that does not impose a division between peoples, between nature and the products that flow from it, between humanity and its natural environment. When the working class asserts itself as an autonomous class by developing a massive struggle, on its own class ground, it can draw an ever-growing part of society behind its own methods of struggle and unitary slogans and, finally, its own revolutionary project for the transformation of society.

The movement against global warming is developing in a context of an almost total absence of struggles by the working class, which is also facing a loss of self-confidence and even a loss of its own class identity. As a result, the working class is not yet in a position to answer the question that some of the participants in the climate movement are asking themselves, namely what is the future perspective in the face of a capitalist society heading towards the abyss?

What can we do about it? It is not a question of doing nothing, it is a question of rejecting the pretext of "doing something" that boils down to supporting the parties and governments that serve capitalism.

Indignation and concern for the future of the planet will begin to find a historical framework with the development of the struggles of the world working class against attacks on its living conditions, against redundancies, etc. because there is a unity between the struggle against the effects of capitalist exploitation and the struggle for its abolition.

The young people who participate in the present movement must understand that they are not "future citizens" but, in their vast majority, future precarious workers, future unemployed, future exploited, who will have to unite in their struggle against capitalist exploitation the fight against war, environmental catastrophe, moral barbarism, etc. that this system of exploitation secretes from all its pores.

This is what the movement against the First Employment Contract in France in 2006 or the Indignados movement in Spain and other countries began to do, albeit very timidly, in 2011. These were youth movements that saw their future not as "free and equal citizens" but as the exploited who must fight against exploitation and ultimately abolish it.

In capitalism, there is no solution: neither to the destruction of the planet, nor to wars, nor to unemployment, nor to precariousness. Only the struggle of the global proletariat along with all the oppressed of the world can open the way to an alternative.

International Communist Current 14.3.2019

en.internationalism.org

If you agree with this article, you can download it in the form of a two-sided leaflet for further distribution. See the Attachment at the top of the page.

Further Reading:

Copenhagen Summit: Save the planet? No, they can't!

https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/copenhagen [36]

Capitalism and climate change: more evidence of the growing disaster

https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201809/16578/capitalism-and-climate-change-more-evidence-growing-disaster [37]

Ecological crisis: myth or real menace?

https://en.internationalism.org/wr/317/eco-disaster [38]

Capitalism is Poisoning the Earth

https://en.internationalism.org/ir/63_pollution [39]

In the first part of this series[1] we saw that the programme of the parties of the left and far left of capital for transforming capitalism into a "new society" leads to nothing more than an idealised reproduction of capitalism itself.[2] Worse still, the view of the working class they present is a total denial of its revolutionary nature.

In this second article, we will look into the thinking of these parties and their method of analysis, especially by those that consider themselves the "most radical".

The unity between programme, theory, functioning and morality.

In the first article, we denounced the programme for the defence of capital put forward by these mystifiers; now we need to deal with another matter: their way of thinking, the relations between the members, their organisational methods, their vision of morality, their conception of debate, their vision of militancy and finally the whole experience of working inside these parties. Freeing oneself from this way of looking at things is much more difficult than exposing the political mystifications they are peddling, because in these organisations thinking has been conditioned and behaviour poisoned, and this influences their organisational functioning.

The revolutionary organisations of the communist left, being quite fragile, with small numbers of militants, have had to confront this crucial problem. The organisations have been able to reject the programmes of the left and far left capitalist organisations, but what we call their hidden face, namely their way of thinking, their functioning and behaviour, their moral vision, etc., all which is as reactionary as their programme, has been underestimated and has not been subject to relentless and radical criticism.

It is therefore not enough to denounce the programme of the left and far-left groups of capital; it is also necessary to denounce and fight the hidden organisational and moral face that they share with the parties of the right and far right.

A revolutionary organisation is much more than a programme; it is the unitary synthesis of programme, theory and mode of thinking, morality and organisational functioning. There is coherence between these elements. "The activity of the revolutionary organisation can only be understood as a unitary whole, whose components are not separate but interdependent: 1) its theoretical work, the elaboration of which requires a constant effort and the result is neither fixed nor completed once and for all. It is as necessary as it is irreplaceable; 2) the intervention in the economic and political struggles of the class. It is the practice par excellence of the organisation where theory is transformed into a weapon of combat through propaganda and agitation; 3) the organisational activity in developing and strengthening its organs and in the preservation of its organisational acquisitions, without which quantitative development (membership) could not be transformed into qualitative development”[3]

It is clear that we cannot fight for communism with lies, slanders and manoeuvres. There is a coherence between the aspects mentioned above. They prefigure the whole way of life and social organisation of communism and can never be in contradiction with it.

As we have said in the text "The organisational functioning of ICC":

"The question of organisation concentrates a whole series of essential aspects that are fundamental to the proletariat's revolutionary perspective: 1) the fundamental characteristics of communist society and the relations between the members of the latter; 2) the being of the proletariat as a class which is the bearer of communism; 3) the nature of class consciousness, the characteristics of its development, deepening and extension within the class; 4) the role of the communist organisation in the coming to consciousness of the proletariat."[4]

The left and far left of capital, heirs to the falsification of marxism by Stalinism

It can be said that the left and far left groups of capital are political conjurers. They serve up the political positions of capital with a "proletarian" and "marxist" language. They make Marx, Engels, Lenin and other proletarian militants say the opposite of what they wanted to say. They twist, truncate and manipulate the positions they may have defended at a given moment in the workers' movement, to turn them into their absolute opposite. They take quotations from Marx, Engels or Lenin and make them say that capitalist exploitation is good, that the nation is the most precious thing, that we should allow ourselves be supporters of imperialist war and accept the state as our benefactor and protector, etc.

Marx, Engels and Lenin, who fought for the destruction of the state, have magically, for these groups, become its most enthusiastic defenders. Marx, Engels, Lenin, unconditional fighters for internationalism, have become champions of "national liberation" and defenders of the fatherland. Marx, Engels, Lenin, who spurred on the defensive struggle of the proletariat, have become the champions of productivism and in favour of workers sacrificing themselves in the service of capital.

Leading the promotion of this work of falsification was Stalinism[5]. Stalin systematically led this repugnant transformation. We can refer to Ante Ciliga's book, The Russian Enigma to illustrate this[6]. It describes in detail this process that began in the mid-1920s:

"The very unique social regime that developed in Soviet Russia was able to inculcate its own ideology in all branches of science. In other words, it tried to merge its own worldview with that of established science, as well as with the traditional ideology of marxism and new scientific discoveries" (page 103 of the PDF edition in Spanish).

To explain it, he recalled that "Hegel (..) had demonstrated that a phenomenon can retain its form while its content is completely transformed; (...) hadn't Lenin said that often the destiny of great men is to serve as icons after their death, while their liberating ideas are falsified to justify a new oppression and a new slavery?" (page 109).

During his time at the "Communist Academy" in Moscow, he noted that "every year the curricula were changed, historical facts and their appreciation were more and more impudently falsified. This was done not only with regard to the recent history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but also with events as far back as the Paris Commune, the 1848 revolution and the first French Revolution. (...) And what about the history of the Comintern? Each new publication provided a new interpretation, in many respects quite different from the previous ones" (p. 100), "As these falsifications were introduced at the same time in all branches of education, I came to the conclusion that they were not isolated accidents, but a system for transforming history, political economy and other sciences according to the interests and worldview of the bureaucracy (...) In fact, a new school, the bureaucratic school of Marxism, was being formed in Russia." (p. 101)

Accordingly, the left and far left parties would use three methods:

- taking advantage of mistakes made by the revolutionaries;

- defending positions that were right when defended by revolutionaries at a previous time, as if they were still valid now, when they had become counter-revolutionary;

- blunting the revolutionary dimension of these positions by reducing them to a harmless abstraction.

The mistakes of the revolutionaries

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, were not infallible. They made mistakes.

In contradiction with the mechanistic viewpoint of bourgeois thought, mistakes are often inevitable and can be a necessary step towards the truth which, itself, is not absolute, but has a historical character. For Hegel, mistakes are a necessary and evolving moment of the truth.

This is much clearer when we take into consideration that the proletariat is both an exploited class and a revolutionary class and that, as an exploited class, it suffers under the full weight of the dominant ideology. Therefore, when the proletariat - or at least part of it - dares to think, to formulate hypotheses and to put forward demands and to set itself objectives, it rises against the passivity and stupor imposed by capitalist common sense; but at the same time it can make serious misjudgements and fall back into accepting ideas that social evolution itself or the very dynamics of class struggle have already overcome or cast aside.

Marx and Engels believed that in 1848 capitalism was mature enough to be replaced by communism and advocated an "intermediate" capitalist programme that would serve as a platform for socialism (the theory of "permanent revolution").

However, their critical thinking led them to reject this speculation, which they abandoned in 1852. Similarly, they believed that the capitalist state should be seized and used as a lever for revolution, but the living experience of the Paris Commune helped convince them of this error and into concluding that the capitalist state must be destroyed.

We could refer to many other examples, but what we want to show here is how the leftist groups use these mistakes as a justification for their counter-revolutionary programme. Lenin was a committed internationalist, but he was not sufficiently clear on the question of national liberation and made serious mistakes with it. These errors, taken out of their historical context, get divorced from the internationalist struggle he waged, and then get turned into "laws" that are valid for all time[7]. These errors are transformed, hypocritically, into a defence of capital.

How is this falsification possible? One of the most important ways is by destroying the critical thinking of militants. Coherent marxists share with science what it does best: critical thinking, that is, the ability to question positions that, for various reasons, come into conflict with reality and the needs of the proletarian struggle. Marxism is not a set of dogmas produced by the brains of geniuses that cannot be altered; it is a combative, living, analytical and constantly developing method, and for this reason critical thinking is fundamental to it. Suppressing this critical spirit is the main task of the leftist groups, like their Stalinist masters who, as Ciliga said during his time at the "Communist University" in Leningrad, about students and future party leaders, "if it was not written down in the manual, it did not exist for them. You did not question the Party programme. Spiritual life was totally regulated. When I tried to push them beyond the narrow horizon of the programme, to arouse their curiosity and critical senses, they remained deaf. It seemed as if their social skills were blunted." (p. 98).

Thus, faced with the blind adherence advocated by leftist groups (from the Stalinists to the Trotskyists and many anarchists), proletarian militants and revolutionary groups must struggle to keep alive their critical thinking, their ability to be self critical; they should be constantly willing to scrutinise the facts and, based on a historical analysis, know how to re-appraise positions that are no longer valid.

Positions that had once been correct can become blatant lies.

Another characteristic of the leftist method is to defend previously correct revolutionary positions that have been invalidated or become counter-productive by historical events. Take, for example, Marx and Engels' support for trade unions. Leftism concludes that, if trade unions were organs of the proletariat in the days of Marx and Engels, they must be so at all times. They use an abstract and timeless method. They hide the fact that with the decadence of capitalism, trade unions have become organs of the bourgeois state against the proletariat.[8]

There are revolutionary militants who break with leftist positions, but fail to break with their scholastic method. Thus, for example, they simply restrict themselves to reversing the leftist position towards trade unions: if the leftist position was that trade unions have always been in the service of the working class, these revolutionary militants conclude that trade unions have always been against it. They make the position on trade unions a changeless, timeless position, so that, if they seem to have broken with leftism, they still remain prisoners of it.

The same applies to social democracy. It is difficult to imagine that the 'socialist parties' existing today were parties of the working class during the period from 1870 to 1914, that they contributed to its unity, its consciousness and the force of its struggles. Faced with this, the leftists, especially Trotskyism, conclude: social democratic parties have always been and will never cease to be workers’ parties, despite all their counter-revolutionary actions.

However, there are some revolutionaries who say the same thing, but the other way round: if the Trotskyists speak of social democracy as a party that is and will always be a workers’ party, they then conclude that social democracy is and always has been capitalist. They ignore the fact that opportunism is a disease that can affect the workers' movement and can lead its parties into betrayal and integration into the capitalist state.

Trapped by their leftist heritage, they replace the historical and dialectical method with the scholastic method, not understanding that one of the principles of dialectics is the transformation of opposites: a thing that exists can be transformed to act in an opposing manner. The proletarian parties, because of the degeneration due to the weight of bourgeois ideology and of the petty bourgeoisie, can transform themselves into their diametrical opposite: becoming unconditional servants of capitalism[9].

We see this as another consequence of the leftist method: they reject the historical dimension of class positions and the process by which they are formulated. This eliminates another of the essential components of the proletarian method. Each generation of workers stands on the shoulders of the previous generation: the lessons that were produced by the class struggle and by the theoretical effort it made give rise to conclusions that serve as a starting point, but which are not the end point. The evolution of capitalism and the very experiences of class struggle make it necessary for new developments or critical corrections to previous positions to be made. Leftism denies a critical historical continuity by propagating a dogmatic and ahistorical vision.

From the 17th to the 19th centuries, the thinkers who heralded the bourgeois revolution elaborated a materialism that was revolutionary in its time because it subjected feudal idealism to relentless criticism. However, once power was seized in the main countries, bourgeois thought became conservative, dogmatic and ahistorical. The proletariat, on the other hand, has in its own genes a critical and historical thinking, an ability not to remain trapped by the events of a specific period, however important they may be, and to be guided not by the past or the present but by the perspective of the revolutionary future of which it is the bearer. "The history of philosophy and the history of social science clearly show that marxism has nothing in common with ‘sectarianism’ in the sense of a doctrine that is inward looking and ossified, emerging from the long road in the development of world-wide civilisation. On the contrary, Marx, the man, was ingenious in that he answered the questions that advanced humanity had already posed. "[10]

The trap of abstraction

Like bourgeois thought, leftist ideology is dogmatic and idealistic on the one hand, and relativistic and pragmatic on the other. The leftist raises his left hand and proclaims some "principles" elevated to the rank of universal dogmas, valid for all possible worlds and for all time. But, with his right hand, invoking "tactical considerations", he keeps these sacred principles in his pocket because "the conditions are not right", "the workers will not understand", "the timing is wrong", etc.

Dogmatism and tacticism are not opposed but complementary. The dogma that encourages people to participate in elections is complemented by the "tactics" of "using them" in order to "get ourselves known" or to "block the advance of the right wing", etc. So dogmatism appears to be something theoretical, but in reality is an abstract vision, placed outside historical evolution. The "tactics", nonetheless, seem "practical" and "concrete" but are in fact a crude and cretinising vision, typical of bourgeois thinking, that does not come from coherent positions but from a purely adaptive and opportunistic daily activity.

This leads us to an understanding of the third characteristic of the leftist method of thinking: it needs to turn the correct positions of revolutionaries into abstractions, taken out of context, in order to blunt their revolutionary edge; as Lenin had said, to render them harmless to capital by presenting them as abstract and inoperative "principles". Thus, communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ councils, internationalism... become a rhetorical flurry and a cynical verbiage in which the leaders have no belief, but which they use shamelessly to manipulate the faithful supporters. Ciliga, in the aforementioned book, underlined "the ability of the communist bureaucracy to do the opposite of what it was claiming, to disguise the worst crimes under the mask of the most progressive slogans and the most eloquent sentences" (page 52).

In leftist organisations there are no principles. Their vision is purely pragmatic and changes according to the circumstances, that is, according to the political, economic and ideological needs of the national capital they serve. The principles are adaptable to circumstances and specific moments, like during party conferences and major anniversaries; and are used as a pretext for accusing militants of "violating the principles"; they are also used as weapons in disputes between factions.

This vision of "principles" is radically opposed to that of a revolutionary organisation, which is based on "the existence of a programme valid for the whole organisation. This programme, because it is a synthesis of the experience of the proletariat of which the organisation is a part and because it is produced by a class which doesn't just have an immediate existence but also a historic future, expresses this future by formulating the goals of the class and the way to attain them; gathers together the essential positions which the organisation must defend in the class; serves as a basis for joining the organisation"[11]

The revolutionary programme is the source of the organisation's activity, its theoretical works a source of inspiration and a spur to action. It must therefore be taken very seriously. The militant who comes from leftism and has not found how to detach himself from it, often believes unconsciously, that the programme is just for show, a collection of simple phrases that are invoked on solemn occasions, and so he would like the "rhetorical" stuff dropped. At other times, when he is angry with a comrade or thinks he is being marginalised by the central organs, he tries to "blame them" by using the programme to make his point.

Against these two false visions, we claim the essential function of the programme in a proletarian organisation to be that of a weapon of analysis shared by all the militants and to which all are committed in order to further its development; it is a means of intervention in the proletarian struggle, an orientation and active contribution to its revolutionary future.

The pragmatic and "ingenious" sophisms of leftism do much harm because they make it difficult for a global approach to move from the general to the concrete, from the abstract to the immediate, from the theoretical to the practical. The leftist method breaks the bond that unites these two facets of proletarian thought, by preventing the actual realisation of the unity between the concrete and the general, the immediate and the historical, the local and the global. The tendency and pressure is towards unilateral thinking. The leftist is a localist every day, but displays an "internationalist" approach on public holidays. The leftist sees only the immediate and the pragmatic, but embellishes it with some "historical" references and salutes "the principles". The leftist is pathetically "concrete" when it comes to developing an abstract analysis and he goes into an abstract haze when a concrete analysis is required.

The destructive effects of the theoretical method of leftism

We have seen, in a very synthetic way, some of the features of leftist thought and its effects on the position of communist militants.

We can look at some of these. The Third International used a formula that only makes sense under certain historical conditions: "behind each strike is the hydra of revolution".

This formula is not valid if the balance of power between the classes is favourable to the bourgeoisie. Thus, for example, Trotsky used it schematically, considering that the 1936 strikes in France and the courageous response of the Barcelona proletariat in July 1936 against the fascist coup d'état to be "opening the doors to revolution". It did not take into account the unstoppable course towards imperialist war, the crushing of the Russian and German proletariat, the enrolment of workers under the banner of antifascism. He left out this historical and global analysis and applied only the empty recipe of "behind each strike there is the hydra of revolution".[12]

Another consequence is a vulgar materialism imbued to the core with economism. Everything is determined by the economy, which reflects the greatest mental short-sightedness. Phenomena such as war are separated from their imperialist, strategic and military roots, in an attempt to find the most fanciful economic explanations. Thus, the Islamic state, a mafia gang, a barbaric by-product of imperialism, could be equivalent to an oil company.

Finally, another consequence of the manipulation made by leftism of marxist theory is that it is conceived of as a matter for specialists, experts, brilliant leaders. Everything that these enlightened leaders cough up should be followed to the letter by the "rank and file activists" who will have no role in theoretical development because their mission is be distributing leaflets, selling the press, carrying chairs for meetings, sticking up posters... i.e. serving as the manpower or cannon fodder for the "beloved leaders".

This conception is essential for leftism since its task is to distort the thinking of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. and for this they need militants who will unquestioningly believe their stories. However, it is harmful and destructive when such a conception infiltrates revolutionary organisations. Today's revolutionary organisation "is more impersonal than in the 19th century, and ceases to appear as an organisation of leaders guiding the mass of militants. The period of illustrious leaders and great theoreticians is over. Theoretical development has becomes a truly collective task. Like the millions of ‘anonymous’ proletarian combatants, the consciousness of the organisation develops through the integration and transcending of individual consciousness into one common collective consciousness”.[13]

C Mir, 27.12.17

This article, written by a close sympathizer in the US, looks at the adoption of “identity politics” by the left wing of the bourgeoisie – an international phenomenon, but one which, for historical reasons, has reached a particularly advanced level in America. The endless divisions created by this kind of politics are certainly a means for exacerbating divisions within the working class, but they can also bring numerous problems for the bourgeoisie, whose control of the political apparatus is growing less and less secure.

When asked what the greatest achievement of her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was, Margaret Thatcher once quipped it was how she forced the Labour Party to change. By this she meant that even though Labour defeated the Tories in the 1997 election, the party that took over government was no longer the old “social democratic” institution it was when she took office a decade and a half earlier. It had been transformed during her time in office into New Labour, a party thoroughly committed to the neo-liberal consensus.

When the light finally goes out on Donald Trump’s Presidency, one wonders if a similar thing might be said about him. Will the most meaningful effect of his time in office be a change in the political face of the Democratic Party? Has Trumpism had something of the opposite effect of Thatcher’s domestication of Labour, “radicalizing” the Democratic Party to such an extent that the old slightly left of center party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has now become a “socialist” party moving ever so dramatically to the left? Will the Republicans, after a decade of Tea Party rage and the rise of Trumpist populism within its ranks, start to look like the rational adults in the room to the suburban core of the American electorate once again?

Obviously, reality is quite a bit more complicated than this emerging media narrative would suggest. As quantum mechanics teaches us, causality can often be difficult to parse out. If the Democrats’ apparent lurch to the “left” is one of the unitentended effects of Trumpism, it is nevertheless the case that Trump himself is an effect of even deeper historical, social and political forces that precede his candidacy.

Moreover, the narrative of the Democratic Party moving steadily “leftwards,” towards “socialism,” conceals a number of contradictions permeating the political and social field today that makes the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition extremely volatile and increasingly prone to internal strife. If the opposition, or “resistance,” to Trump, keeps the party united on the immediate need to end his Presidency in 2020 (or sooner), this only hides deeper fractures that are likely to erupt as soon as the next Democrat assumed the Presidency.

In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats rode popular revulsion at President Trump to a stunning take over of the House of Representatives. The Democrats were able to capitalize on a wave of female candidates running for office in something like a “Me Too” repudiation of Trumpist disdain for women. Nancy Pelosi, who is now painted by the media as a kind of second “Iron Lady,” is once again Speaker of the House. The Democrats had no hesitations about selling their candidates in the terms of “identity politics.” The freshman class of representatives elected on the Democratic ticket was the “most diverse ever,” they have frequently reminded us, representing a stark rejection of all the bad “isms” that Trump represents.

Among the freshman class of representatives are: Rashida Tlaib (Palestinian-American from Michigan), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, who unseated the fourth ranking member of the Democratic House delegation in a primary), Ayanna Pressley (African-American from Massachusetts, another primary victor over an establishment Democrat) and Ilhan Omar (Somali-American from Minnesota, who often proudly wears an hijab to work in Congress). Some of this group, who call themselves the “Squad,” describe their politics as “socialist,” others as mere “progressive,” but all readily engage in the celebration of their “identities” as core features of their politics and the meaning and purpose behind their lives and work in Congress.

If the stunning primary victories by leftists like Ocacio-Cortez and Pressley, and the subsequent media attention they have received, undoubtedly worry establishment Democrats, they nevertheless welcome the opportunity to promote these young “women of color” as evidence of their party’s moral opposition to the Trump administration. They have repeatedly reminded us that their mid-term election victory made history by bringing the first two female Muslims to the halls of Congress.  In February, Pelosi herself appeared in a photo op with members of the Squad for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. What better contrast to the Trump administration could the Democrats’ make than to champion their new and highly diverse crop of freshman legislators that include members from communities Trump is said to hate: Hispanics and Muslims.

Nevertheless, less than two months into the new Congress, Democrats’ attempts to marketize the diversity of their new members and politicize their identities has hit a bit of a snag. Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar have both been accused of making anti-Semitic comments in their criticisms of Israel. First Tlaib suggested that supporters of Israel were more loyal to that country than America.[1] Then, a 2012 tweet from Omar surfaced in which she wrote that “Israel has hypnotized the world;” on top of this, she authored tweets suggesting that the US’s staunch support for Israel was mostly down to the lobbying efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), suggesting that it was “All about the Benjamins, baby!” [2]

Omars’s tweets led to an immediate outpouring of condemnation from Jewish groups and Jewish members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, who accused her of dealing in age-old anti-Semitic tropes. Senior Democratic leaders quickly rejected her statements and urged her to apologize. Omar bowed to the leadership, tweeting out an apology that acknowledged “Anti-Semitism is real.” However, just a week later, she was caught on camera at a fundraising event, denouncing “The political influence in this country that says its OK to push for allegiance to a foreign power.” [3]

Condemnation from senior Democrats was again swift, with Eliot Engel the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee (on which Omar sits) denouncing her latest comments as “vile anti-Semitic slurs.”[4] Momentum built over the weekend of March 2nd for a formal House resolution rebuking anti-Semitism, but curiously early in the next week a delay in bringing a motion to the house floor suggested the Democratic caucus was far from united on what to do about Omar’s latest comments. Moreover, this time Omar did not back down. She issued no apology. Realizing that much of leftist social media had her back, she appeared ready this time to fight the Democratic leadership over the issue of support for Israel, backed up by an emerging consensus from leftists that she was being unfairly targeted for correctly denouncing Israeli policy and Israeli influence in Washington.

What started as a brief delay by Democratic leadership to “get the language right” on the resolution, turned into a veritable political debacle for the party leadership by mid-week. Legacy media began to worry that Pelosi was losing control of her caucus, while more credentialed commentators fretted a coming “Corbynization” of the Democratic Party. A near rebellion ensued, led by “progressives,” angry from their perception that justified criticism of Israel and its lobby in Washington were being considered “anti-Semitic,” and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), dismayed over what looked like an attempt to gang up on one of their own. Both groups balked at leadership’s attempt to bring a resolution calling out Omar and specifically denouncing anti-Semitism to the House floor.

Voices within the party begin to emerge defending Omar, including House Majority whip Jim Clyburn, who suggested Omar’s comments must be understood in light of her experience and pain as an immigrant refugee. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris worried about Omar’s safety after posters connecting her to the 9/11 terrorist attacks appeared in the West Virginia State House and even Bernie Sanders opined that Omar was being unfairly targeted for criticizing Israel. Media star and socialist celebrity Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped to Omar’s defense, suggesting that any denunciation of anti-Semitism that did not also denounce the anti-Latino bias of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should not go forward.

Apparently, there was now a political dynamic afoot in the Democratic Party that makes an outright rejection of perceived anti-Semitic tropes controversial, without watering it down into a near meaningless condemnation of all things bad. There was simply now no consensus to condemn the specific act of questionable comments from one of their own Congresswomen, without denouncing all forms of bigotry.

The immediate drama concluded with the House voting on a broad condemnation of multifarious forms of “hate,” not specifically mentioning Omar. Over 20 Republicans voted against the measure, with most denouncing it as a cowardly farce. Days later, in typical Trumpian overstatement, the President pronounced the Democrats were now an “anti-Jewish” party.[5]

Whatever the President’s hyperbole, this episode certainly reveals growing tensions within the Democratic Party’s political and electoral collation. The Democrats, whatever their continued united opposition to Trump, appear more and more fractured. With each episode of intra-party fighting, they begin to resemble a loose coalition of competing interest groups suspicious of one another, held together only by the flimsy sticky tape of anti-Trumpism. Barely two months after retaking the House, with a Presidential election against an extremely unpopular President on the horizon, the Democrats are having trouble containing the inevitable political fissures resulting from an increasing reliance on “identity politics” as their legitimating ideology.

Anti-Semitism, “Intersectionality” and the Neo-Liberal Left:

In the span of just several weeks, Omar’s tweets and recorded comments, from 2012 to the present, ran the gamut from accusing Israel of pulling off mass hypnosis, to suggesting that the American government was bought off by Israeli-Jewish money and accusing those who support Israel of having “dual allegiances.”[6] Earlier Congresswoman Tlaib had also made suggestions of conflicted loyalities.

We won’t get into the metaphysical debate that has been playing out in the media over the last several weeks about whether the Congresswomen’s comments were really anti-Semitism dressed up as criticisms of Israeli policy or were really fair criticisms of Israeli policy unfairly attacked as anti-Semitism. It’s pretty clear on this score that in a world defined more and more by ideological polarization and motivated reasoning people are going to see what they want to see in these statements. Suffice it say, while themes of “hypnosis,” political bribery and dual loyalty run right up to the line of some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes that have given rise to pogroms and even the Holocaust itself, Omar’s comments have been generally phrased in a way to leave her true personal intentions debatable. [7]

Nevertheless, it is also clear that the recent row in the Democratic Party over anti-Semitism is only the latest episode in a growing trend towards such provocative anti-Israel activism in the name of “anti-imperialism” emanating from elements associated with the left-wing of the left-of-center parties in major Western states.[8] The long campaign over anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party is the best-known example, which the ICC has previously analyzed here.[9] However, what is most important in the recent controversy surrounding the Democratic Party is the extent to which the underlying ideology of “identity politics,” which has formed the core of the party’s message for some time, has now seemingly come back to bite it in dramatic fashion.

With the ascendancy to power of Bill Clinton, backed by the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC), in the early 1990s, the Democratic party’s underlying ideological justification began to shift away from being the “party of the working class,” in close alliance with the unions, towards becoming the party of educated professionals in alliance with minority and immigrant communities. Although the Democrats have retained the formal alliance of most unions, the party has been hemorrhaging electoral support from blue-collar whites since at least the so-called “Reagan Revolution” of the early 1980s.

The Presidencies of Clinton and later Obama cemented this process, so that by the time Hillary Clinton was nominated for the Presidency in 2016, the Democrats had largely become the party of professionals that eschewed economic messaging towards the working class in favor of promoting racial, ethnic, gender and other forms of identity “diversity” and “equity” and championing the rights of immigrants. The Democrats’ underlying ideology became less about advancing economic programs for improvement of all and more about leveling the playing field in the neo-liberal meritocratic quest for self-improvement. Universal programs were generally frowned upon, while racially targeted measures to supposedly “set the playing right” became the party’s focus.

Barack Obama’s abandonment in office of universal “Medicare-for-All,” in favor of a convoluted private health care delivery system enforced through an individual mandate—a plan originally designed by policy wonks at the free-market Heritage Foundation and championed by Republican Governors—demonstrated the priorities and commitments of the Democratic establishment.

Democrats became the party of the “risk society,” albeit one that was supposedly balanced towards equality of opportunity for all the diverse identity groups that now make-up American society. This turn was theorized in 2002 by the political scientists Ruy Teixeira and Jonathan Judis, whose book The Emerging Democratic Majority,[10] laid out a strategy for building an unassailable electoral majority to rival FDR’s New Deal Coalition. This involved appealing to the young, professionals and the traditionally marginalized elements of American society, who it was argued would only grow in number, primarily as a result of increased immigration.

Not surprisingly, by adopting such a “demographic strategy,” Democrats only hastened the flight of blue-collar whites to the Republicans. While enough of these voters remained loyal to the party to help elect Obama in 2008 and 2012 in the midst of economic crisis, the apparent betrayal of their interests by the Democratic establishment in the post-crisis years led to an increased openness to the kind of populism trafficked by Trump. When Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables,” in the 2016 campaign, it only confirmed for many working class whites that the Democratic Party would not advance their interests.

Meanwhile, as the Republican Party was transformed by Trump in a populist direction, taking up the economic and cultural grievances of the Rust Belt working class, the Democratic Party was accelerating into a headlong flight into “identity politics,” backed up by academic theories of so-called “intersectionality.” In the intersectional worldview, the multifarious identity grievances are supposed to overlap with one another to produce a kind of coalition of the oppressed against white male privilege and to advance the recognition of sub-altern identities.

In this worldview, standing up to speak about oppression is a function of certain innate qualities of individuals that give them moral authority to express the interests of the group identities they claim. The more sub-altern identities one can assert, the more authority one has to speak, and the more personal virtue as a multiply oppressed person one is regarded to hold. Oppression of one’s identity becomes a road to a kind power—a power to speak and define the terms of politics that only the oppressed can have as a function of their “lived experience.”[11] The world is thus divided into oppressors and oppressed in concrete life situations that grant deference to the rights and power of the oppressed to “speak their truth” to power, whether on the stage of national politics or on the micro-level of daily interactions in the lifeworld or in cyberspace.

Intersectionality has long had its academic critics who often derisively describe it as a kind of “oppression Olympics,” and point out the practical difficulties of mitigating just who is an oppressor and who is oppressed in the real world. Moreover, what happens when different kinds of oppression, rather than overlapping, actually come into conflict with one another? Which claims take priority?

Nevertheless, whatever the practical difficulties, the theory and approach were tailor made for the Democratic Party seeking a new legitimating ideology in a world being rapidly remade by neo-liberal capitalism and mass migration. As long as the possible contradictions of intersectionality did not emerge into full view behind the unifying rallying cry of anti-Trumpism then the Democrats could convince themselves they could control the obvious centrifugal tendencies underlying the illusion of a “grand collation of the oppressed.”

However, now, within months of taking power in one house of Congress, the contradictions of this approach are already on full display. Many Democrats who supported Omar initially rejected the idea that her comments were really anti-Semitic, asserting instead that they were reasonable criticisms of Israel and its role in US politics. Of course, this kind of interrogation of claims against a standard of objective reasonableness would seem to violate one of the cardinal rules of intersectionality: it is the oppressed and offended group alone that gets to decide what is offensive speech. Nobody else has the “lived experience” necessary to make this judgment. The fact that there were Jews who defended Omar would not really matter. If some quorum of Jews believed her comments were anti-Semitic, their judgment must be accepted as right. There is no Archimedean point outside of the oppressor-oppressed relationship from which a kind of objective reason can be exercised to pronounce on the legitimacy of the outrage. We must listen to the oppressed and offended group and defer to their judgment. Omar herself seemed to recognize her conundrum at first, walking back her original comments about the role of AIPAC and apologizing for her comments about hypnosis.

But then the intersectional absurdities of the situation hit a new level after Omar’s recorded comments denouncing “dual loyalties” emerged. Faced with a second round of criticism in the span of a week and the threat of an official House resolution denouncing her comments, Omar decided not to apologize this time, but instead play the victim herself. She and Congresswoman Tlaib were being unfairly signaled out for criticism because they were Muslim. Attacking perceived anti-Semitism was thus itself Islamophobic, when it is Muslims making the allegedly anti-Semitic statements.

In a particularly damning illustration of the conundrum into which intersectionality had apparently driven the Democratic Party, Congressman Clyburn defended Omar by comparing her “lived experience” of oppression as a Somali immigrant and former resident of a refugee camp in Kenya to the “lived experience” of Holocaust survivors. Perhaps without knowing what he was doing, Congressman Clyburn—an old school African-American Democrat unlikely to be particularly well versed in the academic intricacies of intersectional theory—confirmed what many had suspected all along: the controversy wasn’t just about Israel and its policies, it was also about the comparative moral weight of Muslim vs. Jewish trauma and pain.

For Clyburn, Omar’s pain was more powerful because it was more recent. Jews were now far removed from the historical reality of the Holocaust. Their group trauma and pain could not compare to Omar’s as a Muslim refugee.[12] Islamophobia thus beats out anti-Semitism in the oppression Olympics and assumes a higher place in the hierarchy of pain and suffering. Of course, just what Omar’s pain as a refugee had to do with her statements was never made clear, other than it may have influenced her poor choice of words somehow. In defending Omar, Clyburn also infantilized her as someone whose personal experience as a sub-altern meant she should not have to take full moral responsibility for having harmed some other oppressed group, whose oppression wasn’t quite so bad anyway. Of course, this only begged another troubling question: can the oppressed also be oppressors in their own right?

Congressman Clyburn’s remarks were revealing in that they demonstrate that in order for Omar’s questionable comments to be mitigated, they either have to be explained away as the effect of some kind of trauma or they have to be placed above the absurd competition of different oppressed groups. One way to do this, which has now been adopted by many of the bourgeois left, is to proffer that Jews are no longer a really oppressed group anyway. In this view, Jews are accepted as “white” in most Diasporic locations and have now, centuries of anti-Semitism aside, become oppressors themselves, as evidenced by their communities’ support for and loyalty to the state of Israel—a state that engages in the ruthless oppression of the Palestinians and its internal Arab minority, violates human rights constantly and has become for all intents and purposed an “apartheid state” in own right that must be overthrown.

This is where the connection between the policies of Israel are tied back to the various Diasporic Jewish communities, through their ability to influence foreign policy in their nations of residence in favor of the Israeli apartheid state, through campaign contributions and other motivated uses of “Jewish money.” Jewish communities’ ability to serve as a kind of “fifth column” of Israeli influence in their nations of residence, something the South African apartheid state couldn’t really rely on, is what makes their loyalties open to question.

Delegitimizing Israel is thus the intended purpose of the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which seeks to use the model of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to delegitimize Israel in international public opinion, deprive it of critical support from the West and force it to abandon its supposed policy of “Jewish Supremacy.” The fact that Israel was itself ostensibly founded as a sanctuary for the oppressed Jewish people following the Holocaust is no longer relevant. In line with Congressman Clyburn’s relative minimization of Jewish pain, BDS supporters suggest the Holocaust can no longer be seen as a legitimate reason to support Israel; the moral authority granted from having been the victims of genocide has long been rendered moot by the Israeli state’s subsequent actions against the oppressed Muslim and Arab populations of the region.  

Unsurprisingly, the BDS movement has proven hotly controversial. Popular on many college campuses, it still does not count many supporters in the halls of power. Senior Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Cardin loudly oppose it, even sponsoring legislation to penalize companies who advocate it by forbidding them from getting government contracts. Many of BDS’s opponents see it as a thinly veiled attempt to erase the Jewish state from the map - considered to be the anti-Semitic act par excellence. While Democratic Presidential Candidates, especially Bernie Sanders (himself Jewish), have recently increased their willingness to criticize Israel, none has yet endorsed BDS. Although with the election of Omar and Tlaib, there are at least two proponents now in Congress.[13]

Clearly, many people today are increasingly and rightly concerned about the condition of the Palestinian people and the overall nature of Israeli policy. As communists that believe in objective standards of reasonableness, we confirm that it is not in itself anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. But it is also the case that the increasing polarization of society around these issues may be pushing otherwise well meaning critics to seek less than savory allies and to make excuses for those who cross the line into questionable tropes out of a pressure to support one’s perceived anti-imperialist team. There is little reason to expect these trends to mitigate. With President Trump attempting to exploit the turmoil in the Democratic Party over this controversy and to make support for Israel a partisan issue, it is likely that the rancor will only increase, tempting others to cross the line from real criticism into questionable tropes.

It is unlikely that this episode will result in major electoral effects right away: Jews are mostly reliable Democratic voters in the US and it is unlikely many will switch to support Republicans due to outrage over what remains a phenomenon largely isolated to the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party. Nevertheless, it is the case that this episode reveals the tensions and cleavages emerging in the Democratic Party and the real instability and fissures that result from attempting to construct a governing ideology out of identity politics and intersectionality.

While for now, Bernie Sanders has been obliged by his own political vulnerabilities in the Democratic primary around race and identity issues to support Omar, it is also clear that intersectionality is not his kind of politics and that he is seeking to rebuild the party’s message along a more class-based populist position that champions universal uplift, refashioning the party along social democratic lines and restoring the classic left-right divide in bourgeois politics in the hopes of building a more durable electoral coalition.

Nevertheless, given the depth of the cleavages in the party today, it is not clear if this vision is the right message to make it through a Democratic primary. Sanders has already been attacked for being “insensitive on race.” As a result of these attacks, he risks overcorrecting — delving into racial disparity discourse, championing his new campaign’s diversity and inclusion, etc. — diluting the universal message that would appeal to the blue collar whites he needs to win in the general election.

However, Sanders problems come not only from the cynical deployment of identity politics against him by the Democratic establishment. Many of Bernie’s most die hard “millennial socialist” supporters are also the most committed to identity politics and intersectionality. Bernie thus must placate this section of his base in the primary, hoping to pivot to more universalist and economic populist themes in the general election. Whether or not this will prove a successful strategy is unclear, but we can say is that it is unlikely that any Democratic candidate who might win the Presidency in 2020 will have the kind of New Deal electoral coalition at their back, that FDR once did. The tensions and the fractures within the neo-liberal body politic run too deep.

What this episode of supposed anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party really shows us is that there are no pure figures, no saintly candidates and no especially virtuous group identities in bourgeois politics. As capitalist society more and more devolves into competing identitarian claims as a result of its inability to offer a truly universal human perspective, it more and more attempts to trap us in a pointless and fruitless exercise of ranking the importance and virtuousness of various group claims among the multiple injuries inflicted upon the entirety of humanity by capital on a daily basis.

Attempts to render capitalist society more palatable by making it more “inclusive” or “diverse,” or by granting recognition to supposedly oppressed group identities, are illusory and self-defeating. In a world that is being sliced by bourgeois ideology into ever thinner slices of humanity defined by more and more particular and stylized identities, no level of inclusion is ever inclusive enough; every act of inclusion is by nature also an act of exclusion.[14] No amount of diversity will ever be definitive. For every group that achieves inclusions in the name of diversity, another will emerge to yell, “But what about our claims?!”[15]

Only a working class that is uncompromisingly putting forward the defense of its living and working conditions can overcome the divisions forced onto us by bourgeois politics and offer a way out of this morass. A genuinely proletarian movement will necessarily include the struggle against all forms of oppression and prejudice, because the proletariat, as Marx put it, is “an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it”[16]. In sum, the working class will overcome the manifold divisions within its ranks because it will need to understand them both as obstacles to its immediate struggle, which must tend towards increasing unification, and as barriers to the conquest of real freedom, defined as the ability to achieve our individual potential in a world that has finally become humanized.

--Henk

03/14/2019

The overwhelming consensus of serious scientific opinion is that we are already entering a global ecological catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. This is not the place to itemise all the various aspects of the disaster facing humanity, from the pollution of the sea, air and rivers to the impending extinction of innumerable of plant and animal species,  culminating in the threats posed by the accelerating process of global warming. Suffice it to say that the combination of all these tendencies, if unchecked, could make the planet itself uninhabitable, and at the very least unfit to sustain a decent human existence.

It is our contention, however, that it is not enough to examine this problem through the lens of ecology, or the natural sciences, alone. To understand the underlying causes of ecological devastation, and the possibility of reversing it, we have to understand their connection to the existing social relations, to the economic system that governs the earth: capitalism. And for us that means using the only really scientific approach to understanding the structure and dynamics of human society – the method of marxism. One excellent point of departure here is Engels’ 1876 essay ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’, an unfinished movement that has been included within a broader unfinished symphony, The Dialectics of Nature[1].

Engels’ essay is an application of the understanding that only by looking at the human past from the standpoint of a class of labour – and of associated labour in particular – does it become possible to understand the emergence of the human species. Contrary to the mechanistic view that it is the result of the development of the human brain seen in isolation – its growth in size and complexity as the simple result of random mutations – Engels argues that in the final analysis man makes himself; that it is the dialectical interaction between hand and brain in the collective production of tools and the transformation of our natural surroundings which determines the “mechanical” capacities of the brain, the dexterity of the human hand,  and the evolution of a specifically human consciousness. This consciousness is one in which planned, purposeful activity and cultural transmission outweighs the more instinctual actions of previous animal species.

“It goes without saying that it would not occur to us to dispute the ability of animals to act in a planned, premeditated fashion. On the contrary, a planned mode of action exists in embryo wherever protoplasm, living albumen, exists and reacts, that is, carries out definite, even if extremely simple, movements as a result of definite external stimuli. Such reaction takes place even where there is yet no cell at all, far less a nerve cell. There is something of the planned action in the way insect-eating plants capture their prey, although they do it quite unconsciously. In animals the capacity for conscious, planned action is proportional to the development of the nervous system, and among mammals it attains a fairly high level… But all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man[2].

In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction”.

There is no question that humanity acquired these capacities through collective activity, through association. In particular Engels argues that the evolution of language – a prerequisite for the development of thought and of cultural transmission from one generation to the next – can only be understood in the context of a developing social connection:

“It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another”.

The human capacity to transform nature has brought it enormous evolutionary and historical advantages, undeniably making humanity the dominant species on the planet. From the utilisation of fire to the domestication of animals and the sowing of crops; from the construction of the first cities to the development of vast networks of production and communication that could unify the entire planet: these were the necessary stages towards the emergence of a global human community founded on the realisation of the creative potential of all its members, in other words, of the communist future which Marx and Engels predicted and fought for.

A warning against arrogant assumptions

And yet The Part Played by Labour is anything but an arrogant hymn to human superiority. In the footsteps of Darwin, it begins by recognizing that everything that is uniquely human also has its roots in the abilities of our animal ancestors. And above all, no sooner has Engels noted the fundamental distinction between man and animal than he issues a warning which has a very clear resonance in the face of today’s ecological crisis:

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”.

In this passage, Engels provides us with a concrete example of the marxist theory of alienation, which is predicated on the recognition that, in given social conditions, the product of man’s own labour can become a hostile power, an alien force that eludes his control and acts against him. Without entering into a discussion into the more remote origins of this human self-estrangement, we can say with certainty that the qualitative development of this process is linked to the emergence of class exploitation, in which, by definition, those who labour are compelled to produce not for themselves but for a class that holds the power and wealth of society in its hands. And it is no accident that the development of exploitation and of alienated labour is connected to mankind’s progressive alienation from nature. The examples of “unforeseen consequences” of production that Engels provides us with in the passage just cited are taken mainly from pre-capitalist forms of class society, and it is precisely with these earlier forms of civilisation that we find the first clear example of man-made environmental disasters.

“The first cases of extensive ecological destruction coincide with the early city states; there is considerable evidence that the very process of deforestation which allowed civilisations such as the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Sinhalese and others to develop a large-scale agricultural base also, in the longer term, played a considerable role in their decline and disappearance”[3].

But these were, relatively speaking, local catastrophes. In contrast to previous modes of production, capitalism is compelled by its deepest inner drive to dominate the entire planet. As it says in the Communist Manifesto,

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere…

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image”.

This necessity to “globalise” itself, however, has also meant the globalisation of ecological catastrophe. For Marx, the capitalist social relation marked the high point of in the whole process of alienation, because now the exploitation of human labour is no longer geared towards a personal relation between master and servant, as it was in previous class societies, but towards the expansion and growth of a fundamentally impersonal power – “Das Kapital”, or the profit system.  The universal advent of production for the market and for profit means that the tendency for the results of production to escape the control of the producer has reached its ultimate point; moreover, the capitalist exploiter himself, though benefiting from the proceeds of exploitation, is also driven by the remorseless competition for profits, and is, in the final analysis, merely the personification of capital. We are thus confronted with a mode of production which is like a juggernaut that is running out of control and threatening to crush exploiter and exploited alike.

Because capitalism is driven by the remorseless demands of accumulation (what it calls “economic growth”), it can never arrive at a rational, global control of the productive process, geared to the long-term interests of humanity. This is above all true in a period of economic crisis, where the pressure to penetrate the last untouched regions of the planet and ransack their resources becomes increasingly irresistible to all the feverishly competing capitalist and national units.

The extreme point in the alienation of the worker in the process of production is thus mirrored in the most extreme alienation of humanity from nature. In the same way that the workers’ labour power is commodified, our most intimate needs and feelings seen as potential markets, so capitalism sees nature as a vast warehouse that can be robbed and ransacked at will in order to fuel the juggernaut of accumulation. We are now seeing the ultimate consequences of the illusion of ruling over nature “like a conqueror over a foreign people”: it can only lead to “nature taking its revenge...” on a scale far greater than in any previous civilisation, since this “revenge” could culminate in the extinction of humanity itself.

 “Taking back control”

Let’s return to the last passage from Engels, where he writes that “all our mastery of (nature) consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”. He goes on thus: “And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities”. 

The paradox of capital is that while the development of science under its reign has allowed us to understand the laws of nature to an unprecedented degree, we seem increasingly powerless to “apply them correctly”. 

For Engels, of course, the capacity to control the consequences of our production depended on the overthrow of capitalism and the appropriation of science by the revolutionary working class. But Engels, confident that the victory of the socialist revolution was not far off, could not have foreseen the tragedy of the centuries that followed his: the defeat of the first attempt at world proletarian revolution, and the prolongation of the capitalist system that has reached such a level of decay that it is undermining the very bases for a future communist society. In the nightmare world that decadent capitalism is shaping before our eyes, scientific knowledge of the laws of nature, which could and should be used for the benefit of humanity, is more and more being enlisted to aggravate the mounting calamity, by bending it to the intensification of the exploitation of man and nature, or the creation of terrifying weapons of destruction which themselves pose a major ecological threat. Indeed, a measure of capitalism’s decadence is precisely this growing gap between the potential created by the development of the productive forces – of which science is a vital part – and the way this potential is blocked and distorted by the existing social relations.

On its own even the most disinterested scientific knowledge is powerless to turn back the tide of environmental despoliation. Hence the endless warnings of concerned scientific bodies about the melting of the glaciers, the poisoning of the oceans or the extinction of species are endlessly ignored or counteracted by the real policies of capitalist governments whose first rule is always “expand or die”, whether or not these governments are ruled by crude climate change deniers like Trump or by earnest liberals and self-proclaimed socialists.

The solution to the ecological crisis – which, increasingly cannot be separated from capitalism’s irreversible economic crisis and its drive towards imperialist war – can only come about if mankind “takes back control” through the suppression of capital accumulation, with all its outward expressions, not least money, the state, and all national frontiers. Labour must emancipate itself from capitalist exploitation: the entire process of production must be organised on the basis of the needs of the producers and their long-term interaction with the rest of nature. 

This is a precondition for the survival of our species. But it is also much more than that. In the last-cited passage, Engels continues: “the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity”.

Here Engels returns to some of the most audacious hypotheses of the young Marx about the nature of communism. Fully realised communism means the emancipation of labour not only in the sense of getting rid of class exploitation: it also demands the transformation of labour from a penance into a pleasure, the unleashing of human creativity. And this in turn is the precondition for the subjective transformation of the human species, which will “feel and know” its oneness with nature.

Such notions take us into a far-distant future. But it will only be our future if the class which embodies it, the world proletariat, is able to fight for its specific interests, to rediscover its sense of itself as a class, and to formulate a perspective for its struggles. This will mean that its immediate, defensive struggles will more and more have to incorporate the struggle against capitalist oppression and barbarism in all their forms; at the same time, it is only by fighting on its own class terrain that the proletariat can draw behind it all those layers of society who want to call a halt to capitalism’s cannibalisation of nature.  The recognition that capitalism is a threat to all life on the planet will be central to this broadening of the class struggle towards a political and social revolution.

 Amos

“...Social relations are no longer the same as when the Republic was founded. The introduction and development of large-scale industry have produced a new revolution, dissolved the old classes, and above all, created our class, the class of propertyless workers. New relations require new institutions.” (Preamble to the demands of the American Workers’ League, 1853) [1]

Introduction

In the first part of this occasional series we looked at the birth of the proletariat in North America and its earliest struggles, showing how black chattel slavery was introduced to keep black and white workers divided along racial lines.[2]

The second part exposed myths surrounding the birth of democracy in America, showing that by successfully harnessing the struggles of white workers to the creation of a separate state, the Revolution of 1776 strengthened capitalist domination in North America and entrenched black slavery while deploying racist ideologies to ensure the working class remained divided.[3]

In the third and final part of the series we will look at the first attempts by the US working class to organise itself into trade unions and political parties and the first mass struggles of the early workers’ movement against American capital. These deserve to be better known today if only because they highlight the vanguard role played by the American working class as a fraction of the world proletariat at this time.

But we also need to understand the extremely difficult conditions imposed on the American working class by the development of capitalism in the USA, where a highly intelligent and flexible ruling class actively prevented the building of solidarity by reinforcing divisions between white and black, ‘free’ workers and slaves, immigrant and ‘native-born’ workers – divisions that still weigh heavily on the struggle for class unity today.

The struggle to organise against American capital

For all the noble phrases of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, workers in the new republic had no right to organise or defend themselves. The new ruling class did not hesitate to use the democratic state to enforce colonial-era laws which treated strikes and trade unions as criminal conspiracies; corporal punishment, the whipping post and branding by the state were all perfectly legal, not only for black slaves but also for ‘free’ men, women and children. Strikes by women workers were called ‘mutinies’…

But workers had no choice but to defend themselves against such a rapacious capitalist class. The earliest struggles of American workers tended to unify around the demand for a shorter working day which was seen by the most politically advanced workers as vital to enable the development of class consciousness. In 1827 unions in Philadelphia formed the city-wide Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in order to build solidarity between trades and fight for political reforms. This led to the formation of the Working Men’s Party (1828), the first independent working class party in the world. For the party’s leaders –.men like William Heighton[4] – the trade union struggle to raise wages and shorten hours was not enough, because “All our legislators and rulers are nominated by the accumulating classes and controlled by their opinions - how then can we expect that laws will be framed which will favour our interest?”[5] It was therefore necessary to call on workers to elect their own representatives to enact the ten-hour day. The formation of working men’s parties in New York and Boston followed and by 1834 the movement had spread to 61 towns and cities.

This early political movement was led by skilled craft workers who found their role and status undermined by speed-ups, lower wages, longer hours and the use of unskilled labour. Having fought as the radical wing of the bourgeois national liberation struggle (see part two) these workers tended to identify with the republican ideology of the American Revolution (Paine, Jefferson et al); by demanding a shorter working day they considered they were seeking the ‘equal rights’ they were entitled to as American citizens. This undoubtedly showed illusions in the democratic state and its founding myth of a republic of ‘free men’, but by de-skilling previously independent craft workers and creating a growing class of wage labourers, capital itself revealed the contradiction between the supposedly “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and the reality of industrial wage slavery – a contradiction the early workers’ movement did not hesitate to ruthlessly expose.

More significantly, the ‘workies’ drew on the ideas of the Ricardian and utopian socialists to develop a political strategy based on the argument that as the producers of all wealth in society workers should receive the full product of their labour. While it was utopian to believe that wage labour could, in effect, be voted out of existence through electing working class representatives, by demonstrating that the working class was the source of all wealth in society, these early American militants boldly ‘threw down the gauntlet to the theory of the capitalists’ (Marx) and challenged the political power of the American bourgeoisie.

The great mass of the American proletariat remained unorganised. Unskilled workers, women, children and freed slaves possessed few or no legal rights or representation and their attempts to defend themselves from ferocious exploitation were treated as dangerous acts of rebellion. Nevertheless, the struggles of these workers, often led by women and children, were among the most militant in this period, frequently leading the way and winning the solidarity of organised workers. On the canals and turnpikes, where an army of unskilled, often recent immigrant workers toiled in murderous conditions, there were hundreds of strikes and violent uprisings as well as acts of sabotage and resistance, reaching a peak in 1834-38. State militias were regularly called out to crush rebellions and shoot down workers; dozens were killed and hundreds arrested, a pattern repeated later in the construction of the railroads,[6] while in the new prison-like mills of New England, where workers – mostly women and children – toiled long hours for miserable wages in appalling conditions, resistance to the repressive regime was led by militant women workers. There was frequent solidarity between factory and skilled craft workers; in the first recorded strike by factory workers in 1828, for example, children supported by parents and local artisans in Paterson, New Jersey, struck over a proposed change in their dinner hour and won.[7] There were also early attempts to organise factory workers, with the formation in 1832 of the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workmen, which despite being unsuccessful played an important role in advancing the struggle of the early US workers’ movement for the shorter working day.[8]

The first great wave of workers’ struggles in the USA

From the beginning of the 1830s we can see a rising wave of workers’ struggles in the USA focused on the demand for a ten-hour day, reaching a high point in 1835 with the first general strike in working class history. The strike wave spread from Baltimore to Boston, with militant workers sending delegations to other cities and distributing a manifesto calling for solidarity, which had an ‘electric’ effect on the movement, extending it to Philadelphia where workers quickly shut down the city and held mass meetings to demand the ten-hour day and higher wages for both men and women. Faced with this demonstration of class solidarity employers were forced to concede most of the workers’ demands and when the news of the victory spread it provoked a renewed wave of strikes by factory and skilled workers across the eastern United States.

This wave of struggles showed a real strengthening of class solidarity, uniting skilled and unskilled, men and women, recent immigrants and native-born proletarians around the demand for a shorter working day, which was also reflected in the development of permanent organisations: membership of trade unions reached a peak of around 300,000 in 1836, a proportion of workers not matched until the New Deal 100 years later.[9] There were also initiatives to form national organisations; the National Trades’ Union formed in 1835 existed for three years. But the most significant development was undoubtedly the formation in more than a dozen cities of general unions to co-ordinate the struggles of skilled, unskilled and factory workers; there were probably the most advanced union organisations created by the working class up to this point in its history.

This growth of class solidarity also had an international dimension. The strike wave in the US can only be understood in the context of the whole wave of class struggles in Europe at this time and the 1830 July Revolution in France was a definite influence on American workers, who sent messages of solidarity to their Paris comrades: “Fellow laborers! We owe you our grateful thanks. And not we only, but the industrious classes – the people of every nation. In defending your rights, you have vindicated ours.”[10]

The development of capitalism and the strategy of capital to manage the class struggle

In this way, in the first three decades of the 19th century, the American working class, led by the skilled craft workers of the northern cities, formed one of the most advanced fractions of the world proletariat, creating its first political parties and city-wide general unions. This early US workers’ movement was militant, internationalist and, in the context of this phase of capitalist development, highly class conscious. One of its key strengths was its recognition of the importance of political action to secure permanent reforms alongside the trade union fight for immediate demands. But, led by the skilled craft workers, it was destined to be eclipsed by the development of capitalism itself and the rise of the industrial proletariat.

With the economic depression of 1837-44 this pioneering fraction was plunged into the depths of defeat. The organisations so painfully built up by the American workers were effectively wiped out and the capitalist class went onto the offensive. When workers’ struggles finally began to revive after 1844, it was in changed conditions due to the development of capitalism itself; in particular the rapid growth of capitalist methods of production based on manufacturing, which hastened the destruction of artisan and skilled craft roles and the emergence of a permanent class of wage labourers in the factories and port cities of the eastern seaboard. These changes were reflected in the strategy of capital to manage the class struggle.

The American working class fought for and won important gains in this period, including higher wages and a shorter working day – although these were paid for through increases in productivity – and the legal right to (peacefully) organise. Still, strikes remained illegal and unions were still considered an alien import into the US. The 1850s saw several waves of struggles by industrial workers culminating in the largest strike in the USA so far; the New England shoemakers’ strike of 1860 (“The Revolution in the North”). From 1844 onwards we see the organisation of the factory workers, with women playing a leading role.[11] This period also saw the growth of permanent organisations including renewed efforts to create city-wide and national unions – although these tended to be short-lived owing to the cycle of boom and ‘Panic’ (ie. financial crisis) which necessitated their rebuilding almost from scratch.

The capitalist class put up bitter resistance to a reduction in the working day and despite some extremely militant struggles – like that of women textile workers supported by men and boys in western Pennsylvania in 1845 – all attempts by the workers’ movement to organise a general strike to win this demand failed, forcing it to resort to exerting pressure on the institutions of the bourgeois state for legislative reform.

With the ‘take off’ of the American economy – by 1860 the USA was the fourth most powerful capitalist industrial nation in the world – the bourgeoisie was able to create a more flexible political apparatus and to grant limited reforms, at the same time diverting potentially threatening class struggles into safer political channels. The independent workers’ parties of the early 1830s rapidly declined and broke up, due partly to the deliberate attempts of the bourgeoisie to destroy them, but also to the success of the left-wing of the Democratic Party (‘Jacksonian Democracy’) in winning a base of support among white male workers and small farmers with policies specifically aimed at mobilising working class electoral support, combining the slogan of ‘equal rights’ for rich and poor and the use of anti-elitist, anti-monopolist rhetoric. As a result, political action by the working class tended to focus on pressuring the Democratic Party to adopt its demands by threatening to withdraw its support and run its own candidates for election. The response of the Democratic bourgeoisie to the Equal Rights Party or ‘Locofocos’, originally a protest against corruption in the New York party and conspiracy charges against striking workers, was to adopt many of its demands, combining reform of the banking and legal systems with an end to conspiracy laws..[12]

There were some significant attempts to create a working class party at this time, in particular by the German-speaking workers (who in some important industrial centres like St Louis were the dominant force in the workers’ movement). The American Workers’ League, formed in 1853 by 800 delegates at a mass meeting in Philadelphia, called on workers “without distinction of occupation, language, color, or sex” to organise into “a closely knit and independent political party”.[13] This met resistance from the narrow craft unions and proved short-lived, but, led by supporters of the ‘Marx party’ in the US, the League attempted to build links between German- and English-speaking workers and link struggles for economic and political demands, in this way laying down important principles for the construction of a future class party in the US.[14]

Reinforcing ethnic, religious and racial divisions in the working class

The biggest challenge to the building of class unity in this period – aside, of course, from the continued existence and growth of black slavery – was mass immigration. In one of the greatest migrations of labour in human history, between 1840 and 1860 4.6 million migrants arrived in the USA, mainly from Britain, Ireland and Germany.

For the working class, this brought a huge influx of fellow proletarians and allies: British workers brought their invaluable experience as pioneers of union organisations and of economic struggles; Irish workers brought their own traditions of violent resistance to landlords, while German workers, some former fighters from the 1848 revolutions, also formed a strong contingent in the trade unions and went on to found the first scientific socialist organisations in the USA.[15]

For the American ruling class, mass immigration brought not only a vital supply of labour but a weapon in its counter-offensive against the working class, to lower labour costs and put pressure on wages and conditions in order to prevent the growth of class solidarity. The fear and hostility of ‘native-born’ workers towards immigrants was carefully exploited by bourgeois propaganda and promoted by religious institutions like the Catholic Church and the two-party system, which mobilised native-born workers behind the Republican Party and Irish workers, for example, into the Democratic Party. Some sections of the working class joined in the pogromist campaigns whipped up against German, Irish and black workers, especially during the period of defeat in 1837-44 when mob attacks, lynchings and destruction of churches were common in the large eastern cities. In 1844, for example, there were violent battles between Protestant Irish native-born workers and Catholic Irish immigrants in Philadelphia which were only ended by militia firing cannons into the crowd.

Skilled craft workers facing the destruction of their role tended to combine a militant defence of working class interests with calls for restrictions on immigration.[16] But the sheer numbers of immigrants continuing to arrive made such a stance increasingly unrealistic, while the periodic economic crises of US capitalism tended to break down divisions, at least temporarily, in the face of mass unemployment; in the 1857 crisis, for example, there were mass meetings of German, Irish and American workers in New York to demand work and in Philadelphia a Central Workingmen’s Committee was formed uniting skilled and unskilled, American- and foreign-born workers to fight for unemployment relief.[17] Some unions actively worked to organise immigrant workers in their trades and combat anti-immigrant campaigns, warning that hostility towards immigrant workers was being deliberately used by employers to distract workers’ attention from class issues.

Above all solidarity was built through struggle. Common experience of industrialisation and repression tended to break down initial hostility and suspicion between groups of workers; impartially meted-out police brutality during an 1850 strike in New York helped to build solidarity between German and native-born American members of the Tailors’ Union, with German workers protesting against the imprisonment of their fellow workers.[18] The 1860 New England shoemakers’ strike – the most extensive struggle in the US before the Civil War – was also significant for uniting Irish immigrant and American-born workers, with militant women again taking a leading role.

It was precisely these tendencies for the struggles of the growing industrial proletariat to overcome ethnic, religious and sexual divisions that forced the bourgeoisie to deploy a strategy based on the racist concept of white supremacy. The reactionary idea that ‘whiteness’ entitled European workers to political rights and jobs was used to justify the systematic exclusion of ‘free’ black workers in the northern states from employment and basic democratic rights, turning them into scapegoats for the poverty of the poorest white workers and easy targets for pogroms. Despite initial support among Irish workers for the abolition of slavery, for example, this was presented with some success – primarily by the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church – as bringing the threat of a ‘flood’ of black labour. This led to so many examples of racial violence that black workers called the bricks hurled at them “Irish confetti”.[19]

The roots of these racial divisions were not simply economic. In fact Irish Catholic workers found themselves in competition for unskilled jobs not with black but other white European workers and their more recent immigrant compatriots. Irish and black workers often lived, worked and struggled side-by-side and were even joint targets of racist attacks (eg. in Boston 1829). But with the growth of Irish immigration, especially after the 1845-49 Great Famine, and the increasing importance of the Irish vote for the two main bourgeois parties, ruling class propaganda cynically manipulated the feelings of powerlessness and anger engendered by the experience of being torn from the land and surviving the horrors of hunger only to be thrown into the brutal world of wage labour, or lack of it, accompanied by the desperate poverty that was the introduction to capitalism in the USA for the poorest immigrants.

Conclusions

The US proletariat in this period faced immense difficulties imposed on it not just by the development of capitalism but the conscious strategy of a highly intelligent and flexible ruling class which understood the need for policies specifically designed to mobilise working class support while at the same time using violence and repression against militant struggles to divert workers’ energies into legal channels of reform. With no need to struggle against pro-feudal forces, the American bourgeoisie was free to use the two-party system to operate an effective division of labour against the working class, developing the Democratic Party as a specific means of diverting growing class struggles while at the same time reinforcing ethnic, religious, sexual and racial divisions in the working class.

Such a strategy was of course far from unique in ascendant capitalism; the most obvious example, dealt with extensively by Marx, was the antagonism between English and Irish workers, deliberately fostered by the capitalist class to force down wages and maintain its political power.[20] Divisions within the proletariat are inevitable in an exploiting system based on the wage labour relationship and competition between human beings; capitalism is above all a social relation between classes in which the ruling class, in order to maintain capitalist private property, must continually and consciously act to prevent the unification of the proletariat.

What was specific to the USA was the existence of black chattel slavery in such a large and potentially powerful capitalist economy. As a result, the industrial revolution in the US was shaped by the political rule of a slave-owning class whose plantation economy was essential to the survival of the capitalist regime installed by the American Revolution and by the racist ideologies developed to justify it, based on pseudo-scientific concepts of biological inferiority and white ‘Anglo-Saxon’ supremacy.[21]

What we see from the 1830s onwards is the development of such ideologies by the American capitalist class in response to the rapid and massive growth of a racially and ethnically heterogeneous industrial proletariat as part of a deliberate strategy to prevent the tendency towards class unity. The concept of white supremacy was – and remains today – deeply embedded in the apparatus of capitalist domination in the USA, as part of the means to control the development of class struggles.

For its own part, despite all these obstacles, and in circumstances definitely not of its own choosing, the American working class was ceaselessly confronted with the necessity to struggle to defend itself and for its forces to come together, to fight for its unity, which required a struggle against all the forces that sought to divide it. For the US proletariat black slavery was thus not only a moral outrage but a practical obstacle to its unification and for this reason, despite the real gains made, in this historic period it was impossible to separate the difficult struggle for class unity from the struggle against black slavery.

We will return to this question in a future article.

MH

NB: This article was revised on April 16  to include the author's latest version.

On 15 April, the spectacular images of Notre-Dame in flames were broadcast throughout the world. A powerful emotion seized hold of all who saw it: this cathedral is one of the most beautiful and impressive masterpieces of Paris, a jewel of gothic architecture which took no less than two hundred years to build and inspired so many artists: Victor Hugo, of course, but also the film-maker Jean Delannoy or the anarchist singer Léo Ferré. The flames destroyed the cathedral spire, the work of Viollet-le Duc, and the striking oak roof structure that dates back to the 12th and early 13th century. The sublime architecture of Notre-Dame has nothing in common with the Sacré-Coeur basilica, that pompous cream cake built in a hurry at the summit of Montmartre to celebrate the repression of the Paris Commune and to exorcise the “misfortunes which have desolated France and the misfortunes which perhaps still menace it”[1] – in other words, the “odious” proletarian revolution….

The heritage of humanity under threat from the decomposition of capitalism

The fire had not abated before the politicians, with the government at their head, rushed to the scene, or to the TV studios, crocodile tears in their eyes, to follow the example of Esmeralda in their circus acts in front of the cameras. “Tomorrow we will rebuild everything, stone by stone, beam by beam, slate by slate” declared the former government spokesman (and candidate for the mayor of Paris), Benjamin Griveaux.  “Bruising for us all. We will rebuild Notre-Dame” intoned the flamboyant mathematician (and candidate for the mayor of Paris) Cédric Villani. “Everyone in solidarity faced with this drama” cried the euro MP (and also a candidate for the mayor of Paris) Rachida Dati. At the same moment, the mayor of Paris (and candidate for re-election) Anne Hidalgo hugged the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, who had come with somber mien to play his role as father of the nation: “it’s the cathedral of all the French people, even those who have never been inside it”.

No surprise, the bourgeoisie and its media began looking for scapegoats: who was responsible? Who forgot to turn off their soldering iron? Who didn’t check this or that electrical circuit? Others more clearly denounced the flagrant lack of funding, affirming that the preservation of heritage only represents 3% of the 10 billion euros of the Ministry of Culture’s budget – implying that artists, theatres, concert halls (live spectacles in technocratic terms) are costing too much!

But behind these ardent declarations of love at Notre-Dame and the hunt for scapegoats, the cold reality of capitalism remains. In order to ensure that the national capital remains competitive, the state imposes budget cuts wherever possible: education, hospitals, social benefits, culture…Thus, with the exception of the most visited monuments (ie the most profitable, as well as being the ones most damaged by being visited too much), Macron and his consorts are concerned that all these “old stones” are becoming too expensive to maintain. Since 2010, the already ridiculous budget allocated to heritage preservation has been cut by 15%[2]. This year, the government proposes to devote only 326 million euros to conserving or restoring no less than 44,000 “historic monuments”. Happily, the Jupiter-like president has conferred on the chronicler of royalty, now converted into a historian of shoddy goods, Stéphane Bern, the mission of saving the “patrimony of the French”. A lottery and a few polemics later, the TV presenter raised 19 million euros…a drop in the ocean against what’s needed.

The case of Italy is even more revolting. The exceptional heritage of this country is literally on the verge of ruin following massive budget cuts demanded by the crisis and the sharpening of international competition: the archaeological site at Pompeii is in a decrepit condition, the Coliseum of Rome is showing serious signs of fragility, as is the Uffizi Museum in Florence. Monuments which are not on the tourist highway are simply being abandoned. The fire at the national museum of Rio de Janeiro on 2 September 2018 shows the same attitude by the Brazilian state which is directly responsible for the loss of nearly all the 20 million objects housed by the building, including a 12,000 year old human fossil.

All the specialists who have talked about the Notre-Dame fire, art historians, conservators, heritage architects, have told us that there is a cruel lack of funds and a very worrying degradation of monuments. Didier Rykner, the chief editor of La Tribune de l’Art, denounced the lax security measures at historic sites: “there has already been a series of fires like this. The rules about works done on historic monuments were insufficient…a heritage architect told me that his could have been avoided if certain measures had been taken”[3]. The fire at Notre-Dame is by no means an isolated case: “Not long ago I visited the church of la Madeleine. I took digital photos from all angles. The rules were not at all being adhered to. Tomorrow, la Madeleine could also go up in flames”. In 2013, the Hôtel Lambert and its 17th century décor, situated not far from the cathedral on the Isle Saint-Louis, also burst into flames during renovation work. More recently, on 17 March, fire broke out at the Saint-Sulpice church in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Now a new “great debate” has started: was Macron being realistic when he promised the French people that “their” cathedral would be rebuilt “more beautiful than ever” within five years? Should the roofing be rebuilt as it was, in oak, or in concrete, etc.

The barbarism of capitalism deliberately destroys the heritage of humanity

When it comes to making war, the bourgeoisie spits on heritage. Bombing, deliberate destruction and fires…the ruling class doesn’t lack imagination when it comes to pulverizing the “world’s great treasures” (Trump).

When Macron says that “we have built towns, ports, churches” he forgets to add that they have so often been built on the ashes of what other “building peoples” once erected. For example, the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, which is full of extremely beautiful pagodas, was brutally sacked by French colonialism at the end of the 19th century with the blessing of the Catholic church: the Bao Thien monstery (which went  back to the 11th century) and the Bao An pagoda were deliberately burned down in the name of evangelising the native Buddhist population. Between 1882 and 1886, on the ashes of the Bao Thien monastery, the colonialists erected, on the model of Notre-Dame, the very ugly and dominating Saint-Joseph cathedral, a symbol of colonial France, all of it paid for – irony of history – by a national lottery! The Bao Thien monastery represented 8 centuries of history ravaged by the flames of a criminal act of arson by the French republic!

It was the same with the destruction of the old temple and the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, razed to the ground by the Spanish conquistadors on the orders of Hernan Cortes, who put up a church which later became a cathedral designed by Charles Quint but which had little in common with Gothic, roman or baroque works of art.

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the allies of the democratic camp bombed the city of Dresden, raining a torrent of iron and fire on one of the most beautiful cities of Germany, “Florence on the Elbe”. Dresden had no strategic interest at the military level and was even called the “hospital city” with its 22 hospitals. Nearly 1300 planes dropped incendiary bombs which killed around 35000 victims and entirely destroyed the old city. Democracy at work against fascism! For the victorious bourgeoisie it was a matter of razing big working class cities like Hamburg or Dresden to make sure that there was no proletarian uprising against the barbarism of war (as had been the case in 1918 with the German revolution).

According to UNESCO, the institution which the UN den of thieves has set up to protect “world heritage”, “the degradation or disappearance of so much cultural and natural heritage is an insidious impoverishment of the heritage of all the peoples of the world”. When the UN’s “member states”  are turning the Middle East, from Syria to Yemen, into a field of ruins, when the great democratic powers like the US, France or Britain are involved everyday in the carpet bombing of the planet, all this hypocrisy is sickening. No one was surprised when Trump, president of the world’s top imperialist power, advocated the use of “water bombers” to extinguish the Notre Dame fire[4]

A new campaign for national unity on the ashes of Notre-Dame

“It’s up to us, today’s French women and men, to ensure this great continuity of the French nation” declared Macron the day after the fire broke out. To ensure the “great continuity of the French nation”, on the very first evening of the catastrophe, the government called on the “generosity of the French” and set up a “national collection”.

The bourgeoisie has always had its hands in our pockets and has no scruples about setting up a racket which asks for contributions from the citizens in the name of saving this symbol of the French nation. All the “people” of France, both bourgeois and proletarian, must come together around the reconstruction of the cathedral because that is “our destiny” (Macron). And indeed the wealthiest bourgeois families have indeed been outdoing each other to show off their philanthropy.

The bourgeoisie knows how to exploit emotions to launch a nauseating campaign of national unity where all the people of France are urged to share their tears alongside the Catholic church, the big bosses, the politicians from Sarkozy on the right to Melanchon  on the left. When Macron promises to rebuild Notre-Dame, “and I want it done in five years”, there is only one, chauvinist aim: to finish the work before the Paris Olympics in order to put a shine on the “image of France”.

The working class can only base its revolutionary perspective on the real conservation of the cultural, artistic and scientific heritage of humanity, a heritage which capitalism can only continue to destroy or leave to decay bit by bit. For the proletariat, art is not a juicy market or a lure for tourists. Its aim is to build the first universal and fully human culture in history, a culture in which no monument or work of art will be a symbol of national prestige, because the ultimate aim of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against capitalism is the abolition of national frontiers and states. In the communist society of the future, works of art will all be considered as “wonders of the world”, symbols of the creativity and imaginative power of the human species.

In homage to the great artist Leo Tolstoy, Trotsky wrote: “And though he refuses a sympathetic hearing to our revolutionary objectives, we know it is because history has refused him personally an understanding of her revolutionary pathways. We shall not condemn him. And we shall always value in him not alone his great genius, which shall never die so long as human art lives on, but also his unbending moral courage which did not permit him tranquilly to remain in the ranks of THEIR hypocritical church, THEIR society and THEIR State but doomed him to remain a solitary among his countless admirers”[5].

EG, 22.4.19

After waves of popular protests flooding the streets of Algiers, Oran or Constantine, demanding the resignation of president Bouteflika and his clique, the former president seems to have finally given in to the pressure of his “people”. “There won’t be a fifth mandate and this has never been a question for me, my state of health and my age mean that my final duty to the Algerian people can only be to have contributed to laying the foundations of a new Republic as the framework for a the new Algerian system which we all want” (Bouteflika’s message to the nation, broadcast by the media on 11.3.19). The media tell us that this is the first step of the people’s victory, of a new democratic project. But while the crowds cried victory, the outgoing president announced that “there won’t be a presidential election on 18 April. It was a question of satisfying a demand which so many of you have addressed to me”. This declaration provoked further popular anger. For the Algerian population, this departure was seen clearly as a fake departure, a contortion by Bouteflika and his clique to prolong its mandate without having to go through fresh elections. What a farce! In the demonstrations you could hear people saying things like “the people must be sovereign, it must decide its destiny, its future, and its president”; “with the departure of Bouteflika, we can have new political parties which can give us a new Algeria”.

These crowds of young people, precarious or unemployed, students and school pupils who headed the demonstrations, bringing whole families out with them, along with all kinds of social categories, small shop keepers and entrepreneurs, functionaries etc, have been mobilising in their thousands since 22 February against Bouteflika’s candidature for a fifth turn in office, denouncing his corrupt system. Bouteflika’s discredit among the population is so strong that no one believed his speeches about resigning. Massive demonstrations have continued to demand the end of the “Boutef” system and the establishment of “true democracy”[1].

The working class in Algeria should not believe in fairytales. Whatever clique is in power, it will remain an exploited class. In this “popular” national unity that aims to chase out this hated clique of leaders, the proletariat is totally drowned in the “Algerian people”, among “progressive” sectors of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals and all kinds of nationalist “democrats”. The terrain of defending bourgeois democracy, the nationalist terrain of aspirations for a “new Algeria”, is not the terrain of the working class. To defend bourgeois democracy and its electoral circus, to aspire to the renovation of the Algerian nation, is to abandon the struggle against exploitation.

It’s always the ruling class that wins elections! Whichever faction is in power, all governments, all heads of state in all countries of the world have only one function: to manage the national capital, to defend the interests and preserve the privileges of the bourgeoisie on the backs of the working class. No doubt the Bouteflika clan has shown itself to be particularly arrogant and contemptuous, ostentatiously piling up its riches while the great part of the population lives in frightful poverty. But you only have to look at what happens in “pluralist democracy’, where governments of left and right perpetually succeed each other: the working class is subjected to the same exploitation, to unemployment, the degradation of living and working conditions, attacks on wages that get worse year after year. The proletarians of Algeria must not be taken in by the siren songs of the trade unions who call on them to join up with the popular protests by organising a general strike. A strike not against poverty and exploitation, against the deterioration of living standards, but to replace Bouteflika with a “good” head of state who cares about the needs of the “people” and wants to build a “new Algeria” for all classes. All these lying parties, these “saviours from on high”, these trade unions who specialize in sabotaging the class struggle, all of them promise the exploited in Algeria a more democratic, more prosperous Algeria at a time when the entire capitalist world is plunging into an economic crisis which is hitting the world working class very hard.

The proletariat of Algeria knows what it means to fight against exploitation. In the past, it has organised strikes in different sectors, it has faced up to the repression handed out by the Bouteflika clique. It should have no illusions: tomorrow, even if Bouteflika goes, the same repression will descend of the working class if it dares to defend its own interests - a repression under the command of a “new look”, democratically elected government.

In Algeria, as in the whole capitalist world, the proletariat has to reject the mystification of bourgeois elections and the poison of nationalism. Bouteflika, this senile potentate, is just a personification of a senile world capitalist system which has nothing to offer the exploited except more poverty and more repression. In Algeria, as in all countries, there is only one alternative: the autonomous struggle of the proletariat against its exploiters!

Raymond 13.3.19

"In honour of what cause do we perish?"

On April 26 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, exploded with around the force of four Hiroshima-type bombs and spewed out a consequent volume of radioactive fallout that had its own fingerprints on it. The response of the Russian authorities was completely chaotic, totally insufficient, and mendacious.  The rulers of this "socialist paradise" left hundreds of thousands of their citizens to their fate, to the growing ambient decomposition of "every man for himself" that was to be the hallmark of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the political and social tremors around the wider world three years later.

Panicked authorities gave no significant warnings such as staying indoors, or point out the dangers to food, milk and drinking water. The May Day parades in Kiev of thousands of schoolchildren were forced to go ahead a few days later and group after group of them marched. The kids struggled for breath and for many their skin showed unusual purple sunburns. Technology was used to seed rain clouds and bring the radioactive fall-out away from Moscow and down into Ukraine and Belarus. Soldiers, workers, prisoners showed exceptional bravery in trying to put the reactor's fire out but the official disaster death toll of 54 of these "liquidators" is plainly another big lie.

There was a military dimension to Chernobyl in that it produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. There had already been 1042 nuclear accidents in the USSR over five years, with 104 at Chernobyl alone. Forget about the usual lie of "operator failure", Chernobyl's RBMK reactor was inherently unsafe and efforts to stop it melting down fed more fuel to the fire. By summer 1986, 15,000 people exposed to Chernobyl's radiation were treated in Moscow's hospitals; 40,000 checked into hospitals in Kiev, Gomel and elsewhere in the east of the country. Half of the 11,600 treated in Belarus were children. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was told by the Minister for Health that 299 people were hospitalised; part of "the Politburo's alternative universe", says Kate Brown.  Not that being hospitalised did much good in the face of an already patchy and overburdened service that sorely lacked ed beds, equipment and, most of all, knowledge about what they were dealing with. What they were dealing with was not only ignorance, but also the lies and smoothing words of a state that called itself socialist but was in reality a highly statified form of capitalism.

Widespread contamination and official cover-up

The spiralling wind carried the radioactive debris from Chernobyl right around Europe and the heavy rain brought it down to accumulate the poison into "hot-spots", with  for example three in Britain, Cumbria, Wales and Devon, about which there was no official explanation - not a word. In the years after the explosion the amount of strontium-90 in the bones of people living in Zagreb, nearly a thousand miles away, doubled. In Ukraine and Belarus and other parts of the USSR, people continued to eat the meat, fruit, vegetables, drink the milk and water, and burn the peat fuel and timber that were all repositories for accumulated and accumulating radioactive cocktails. Lorries were way above the "safe" levels for contamination - given that the safe levels were arbitrary and deliberately underestimated - after carrying sheep's wool and other by-products saturated with radioactivity. Some produce taken through EU contaminated areas was chopped-up with "clean" stuff and sent as aid to Africa. Blueberries from Ukraine and Belarus continued to be picked, warehoused, put in fancy containers and sent to the EU. All the blueberries from this region were radioactive, some of them highly so. They were mixed up with the lower doses and sold in supermarkets and delis across the EU, after which ubiquitous TV food programmes extolled their "miraculous health benefits".

Kate Brown has done a real service in her research and analysis and though no revolutionary her analysis clearly indicts a system of production for profit and militarism for the unfolding public health disaster. Her odysseys in and around the exclusion zone, talking to workers, farmers, peasants and officials at every level, are interesting and revealing, giving this book a much more urgent feel. She was in the Soviet Union before and after its collapse where she clearly identifies a chaotic situation where everyone was left to their own devices, the plunder and ruthlessness of the security forces that harassed, jailed and tortured anyone who suggested that a public health disaster was unfolding.

But this is not a "this is where communism gets you" diatribe that runs alongside the "victory of capitalism". Kate Brown rightly exposes the calculated callousness, stupidity and cruelty of the Russian bourgeoisie but also talks to many brave individuals throughout Russia who raised the alarm and continued to do research and ask questions, with some of them paying a heavy price. In Ukraine, Belarus and other parts of Russia there were widespread strikes and disquiet and cynicism regarding official "explanations" and their advice (the Manual reference in the book's title refers to the manuals that the Russian authorities put out after the disaster along the lines of there being "no problem", with the actual problems being obliquely referred to afterwards). The book goes far wider and deeper than one incident and Kate Brown makes the point that the Chernobyl event is only one part of a continuum of nuclear pollution from the Cold War until now, and she  clearly illuminates the cover-up that necessarily accompanies it.

In East and West – the ruling class is careless about life

The US general in charge of the nuclear bombing of Japan, Leslie Groves, rejected claims of nuclear poisoning, and the medical section of the US army report on the physical damage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is missing from the US National Archives to this day. It was dismissed as "something small", "to be disregarded". In the Three-Mile-Island disaster, Pennsylvania 1979, scientists estimated one or two extra cancers. When State Health Commissioner Gordon McLeod announced 9 months later that child mortality in a ten-mile radius had doubled, he was sacked. Apart from all the nuclear "accidents" before and since Chernobyl - Windscale, Dounreay, before, St. Louis and Fukushima after, to name only a couple, nuclear testing has set off bombs, sometimes in secret, high in the atmosphere and deep into the ground with no concern as to their effects. The normally conservative US National Cancer Institute estimated that nuclear tests in Nevada caused between 11,000 and 220,000 thyroid cancers downwind. To this can be added all other nuclear testing, secret or not, British, French, Pakistani, Indian and Chinese.

In 2015, the physicist James Smith published a one-and-a-half page paper stating that wildlife was abundant in the alienation zone of Chernobyl. Smith had never been to Russia but the media lapped it up, reporting and re-reporting it along the lines that "nature will sort everything out". It even gave rise to "Green" eco-tourism around the Chernobyl zone, documentaries and TV wildlife programmes showing how everything was returning to "normal". But as Kate Brown shows, intrepid scientific researchers in the same area at the same time were finding radioactive damage "under every rock they turned over". Nature has bitten back against nuclear pollution with a vengeance on a global scale and in the long term. Despite all the evidence the UN and its offshoots continue to deny the scale of the problem. The idea that a little radioactivity is good for you persists. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues with high and arbitrary thresholds. In 1995 Unscear (UN Scientific Committee for the Effects of Nuclear Radiation) said nothing needed to be done because there was no problem and that they had been "exaggerated and incorrect", with the UN saying that increasing thyroid problems are "easily treatable".

The cynical balance-sheets of capital

Nuclear fallout permeates a human body through the skin and through every orifice. It's not the sole cause of cancers but a major cause. It also causes respiratory problems, heart problems, gut problems and those of the brain and nervous system. We were told that the rise in cancers was mainly due to the fact that "people are living longer" and through advances in medical care. The "living longer" line is one the bourgeoisie uses a lot: you're getting ill - it's because you are living longer; it's your fault - die earlier and save the state some money! In any case life expectancy is now falling in the US and Britain and much more dramatically in poorer areas while the male fertility rate is falling, particularly in the northern hemisphere where radioactivity tends to cluster. And the argument about living longer doesn't explain the rise in childhood cancers; twenty to twenty-five years ago a child with cancer would bring doctors and specialists from far and wide. Now? Now they appear in clusters everywhere in young bodies which soak up and accumulate nuclear pollution.

And while nuclear energy has a strong military component,  it is also an important source of energy in the capitalist economy. And as such it is a typical showcase of the short-sighted, unsustainable) approach inherent in capitalist economic balance-sheets. Thus for example the calculation of the cost of energy production in a nuclear plant never takes into consideration the huge technical difficulties involved in getting rid of nuclear waste. All the different ways of getting rid of it or even just storing it involve astronomical costs, which will be an ecological and economic burden for centuries. All this is of no interest to the respective energy companies.

**************************

Kate Brown notes with disgust that in the 1960's the western bourgeoisie came up with the concept of the "collective dose" of radiation (ignoring its accumulative and complex interactions) giving a cynical and arbitrary "cost benefit" which weighed the negatives of nuclear testing on the population against the "positives of increased security" from possessing tested nuclear weapons. Decadent capitalism is driven to develop its weapons of destruction in order to defend itself against the historical obsolescence of the national state, which is a central factor in its permanent drive towards war. It is irrational and dangerous but capitalism is enmeshed in this logic and will continue this deadly drive whatever the cost; nature is already having its revenge. This is the “cause in whose honour we perish” in answer to the question raised by those immediately affected in Ukraine. The calculated indifference to the suffering masses by the state, the lies, the blatant cover-ups of the facts, the deceit are not aberrations but an inevitable part of a system based on exploitation, profit and national defence..

Baboon, 3.5.2019

In reality the working class has no stake in the Brexit imbroglio, no camp to choose among the many factions or the umpteen ‘solutions’. All the arguments in the Brexit debate are ultimately to do with the best conditions in which to manage the capitalist economic crisis, the best way to compete with other capitalist swindlers on the world market, with the ultimate aim of extracting the maximum surplus value from the working class and deciding amongst the bourgeoisie who gets the biggest cut.

The inexorable decline of workers’ living standards - now there are 14 million in poverty in Britain according to the latest UN report - began long before Brexit and will continue whatever ‘solution’ is found to the EU conundrum.

And behind Brexit is the question of Britain’s imperialist role in the world and which military conflicts the proletariat will have to pay for.

Workers have no interest or benefit in any of these ‘national interests’. Even if, in the fantasy of the no-deal Brexiteers, immigration were to stop, the erosion of workers’ livelihoods would continue. Even if Britain remained in the EU, workers would still be the target of austerity measures like those imposed on the Greek proletariat.

Indeed, the ongoing media circus about the Brexit mess is used as a means of obscuring the central questions for the working class and pretending that the latter has no interests and perspective of its own.

The different factions in the Labour Party play a full part in creating and maintaining this smokescreen concerning the real interests of the working class, and are barely distinguishable from the Tory factions. Jeremy Corbyn and the ‘hard left’ only provide a subsidiary diversion, with the promise of ‘nationalisations’, the pretence of ‘redistributing wealth’ - which means in reality making poverty more equitable - or on the world arena supporting an alternative set of imperialist gangsters. The Trotskyists and other leftists have still more radical variations on these illusions.

All these political games of the bourgeois parties help to reinforce the present disorientation of the working class.

However, sooner or later, the further worsening of the economic crisis will oblige the working class to revive the struggle to defend its living conditions, to recognise itself as an autonomous class once more and expose more clearly the fact that the present social system has no alternative to the decline of its system other than a growing barbarism.

This renewed class struggle will reveal itself as a political struggle. But the working class has nothing to gain from the bourgeois state or the parliamentary game which, as Brexit shows, excludes the political interests and participation of the proletariat. In the future the working class will therefore have to re-create its own mass organisations of political power and a revolutionary political party.  Como  25.5.19

1. The historical and international significance of the UK’s exit from the EU marks a qualitative acceleration of the impact of decomposition on the political life of the world bourgeoisie. Brexit demonstrates the increasing impact of populism, the political expression of the deepening of capitalist decomposition, which has also taken the form of populist governments in eastern Europe and Italy, and the strengthening of populist parties and factions in Western Europe and the US.  The Brexit mess has become a veritable caricature of political crises internationally.

With the impasse over Brexit, the whole of the British bourgeoisie, state and society has been thrown into a political crisis due to the irresponsibility of minority factions of the bourgeoisie, the result of the contamination of these factions by the upsurge of populism.

To this can be added the other manifestations of the deepening historical crisis: the growing undermining of the post-World War Two institutions of the Pax Americana: the EU, WTO, the World Bank, NATO, and, underlying all this, the irresolvable global economic crisis.

The historical roots

2. Brexit has been able to have such an impact in Britain because of the historical tensions within the ruling class over Europe that have been generated by its decline as an imperialist power. Before 1956 the British ruling class believed it could influence Europe from outside, but after the humiliation of Suez it had to accept the end of its time as an international power of the first rank. Being part of Europe was not only about economic stability but also, very importantly, about continuing the long-term British imperialist policy of trying to keep the continental powers divided, and particularly of opposing the influence of German imperialism.

At the same time, British imperialism also needed to balance its involvement in Europe with the “special relationship” with the USA, a relationship that only really had substance if the UK was part of Europe.

Fundamentally British imperialism had been grudging about having to be part of the EU; nevertheless it had bitten the bullet in order to further the national interest.

Growing chaos and the question of Europe

3. The end of the division of the world into two imperialist blocs in 1989 unleashed powerful centrifugal tendencies. The Eastern bloc collapsed and the Western bloc lost its reason for existence. This pushed all the major imperialist powers into a new historical period, trying to find the best way to defend the national interest in a much more chaotic world. At the imperialist level this meant all of the secondary powers having to navigate international waters in which the US was in decline, and thus all the more determined to maintain its role.

This placed great pressure on the British bourgeoisie, exacerbating the already existing divisions within it, especially in its political apparatus, over how best to defend the national interest in relation to Europe. The rise of German imperialism over the last 30 years and the weight of French imperialism in the EU have both underlined the weakened role of Britain. Thatcher’s stated disquiet about the impact of the rise of Germany expressed a deep historical fear haunting British imperialism, fueling Euroscepticism within the Tory party and xenophobia amongst its electorate. By the early 2010s the ability of the British bourgeoisie to manoeuvre within the EU was thus being undermined due to the increasing weight of Euroscepticism within the Tory party and to the electoral successes of UKIP. It was this that led to the decision to hold the referendum in 2016.

The disaster of the referendum and the impact of populism

4. The political gamble of calling the referendum to counter the growing influence of Euroscepticism and populism ran up against a number of fundamental problems. In particular, the bourgeoisie underestimated the depth of the impact of populism within the population and parts of the working class, the result of:

- the proletariat’s loss of confidence in itself over the last 30 years under the impact of a series of important defeats;

- the growing weight of despair and lumpenisation in areas and regions which have been abandoned to rot;

- a growing cynicism and distrust towards the parliamentary system, not in the context of a developing proletarian alternative but rather in one of confusion, frustration and anger which has left parts of the proletariat prey to the influence of populism. The fact that the Leave campaign was able to mobilise 3 million to vote who had previously abandoned voting enabled them to win the referendum;

- the use of Euroscepticism as a panacea for austerity, the blaming of immigration for the decrease in workers’ living standards.

- the ideology of blaming the economic recession of 2008 on the bankers and the traditional political elites, rather than capitalism itself.

The depth of the political crisis

5. Brexit has thrown the British bourgeoisie, one of the oldest and most experienced in the world, into a profound political crisis. It has faced other crises but never one which has so fundamentally weakened every aspect of its political life.

In the Theses on Decomposition of 1990 the ICC showed that this was one of the manifestations of decomposition:

“Amongst the major characteristics of capitalist society’s decomposition, we should emphasise the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation. Obviously, this is a result of the ruling class’ increasing loss of control over its economic apparatus, the infrastructure of society. The historic dead-end in which the capitalist mode of production finds itself trapped, the successive failures of the bourgeoisie’s different policies, the permanent flight into debt as a condition for the survival of the world economy, cannot but effect the political apparatus which is itself incapable of imposing on society, and especially on the working class, the ‘discipline’ and acquiescence necessary to mobilise all its strength for a new world war, which is the only historic ‘response’ that the bourgeoisie has to give. The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilise as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’”[1]

30 years ago, when the Theses were published, the main expression of this dynamic was the collapse of the Eastern bloc. However, as we said at the time:

“The spectacle which the USSR and its satellites are offering us today, of a complete rout within the state apparatus itself, and the ruling class’ loss of control over its own political strategy is in reality only the caricature (due to the specificities of the Stalinist regimes) of a much more general phenomenon affecting the whole world ruling class, and which is specific to the phase of decomposition”.

6. The political destabilisation of the ruling class in Britain has been most graphically expressed in the chaos that has developed as the date for the UK’s exit from the EU has drawn ever closer. This has led to the paralysis of parliament. The British state was once seen as a master of controlling the political situation; now the political apparatus is being openly mocked, but also distrusted, due to its inability to manage the Brexit process.

The main factions of the state accepted that they had no option but to accept Brexit following the referendum. Nevertheless, British state capitalism has sought to do all it can to try and make the best of a very bad situation. The main factions in the Tory and Labour Parties around May and Corbyn accepted this policy. But with the deepening tensions generated by the realisation of the full implications of Brexit, each of the parties has become increasingly divided by numerous factions pushing their own solutions to the irreconcilable contradictions of Brexit. Even within the main factions of the Tory and Labour Parties there are divisions over how to achieve a planned Brexit. May has to struggle against the hard-line Brexiteers of the European Research Group, while Corbyn seeks to reconcile supporting a planned Brexit in a party that is overwhelmingly Remain. This situation has resulted in more than two years of conflict in both parties as all the factions have battled it out. Both May and Corbyn have had to fight off ‘coup’ attempts in the form of parliamentary confidence motions.

This situation of increasingly irresponsible political conflict has been exacerbated by the faction-fighting as the state desperately seeks to avoid crashing out of the EU. Through May the state has been reduced to attempting to bribe MPs into supporting the Withdrawal Agreement, with millions of pounds being offered to the most pro-Brexit Labour constituencies, which are usually the most deprived. This has generated even more tensions within the Labour Party, with pro-Remain MPs denouncing other MPs for accepting these bribes.

These divisions are not limited to the main political parties but extend into the unions and the leftist groups, which underlines just how integrated they are into the state structure.

7. The state’s efforts to negotiate a deal have not only had to cope with the political crisis domestically but have increased the political crisis in Europe. The result of the referendum poured petrol onto populist bonfires across Europe. The populist governments in Hungary and Poland drew renewed strength from the result. In France, the Front National gained inspiration, whilst in Italy the populists of the Northern League and Five Star Movement rode to power on the coat tails of Brexit. Faced with this upsurge of populism, the main factions of the EU have no choice but to make Brexit as difficult as possible. The most responsible parts of the European bourgeoisie are particularly angry about this fall-out from the British bourgeoisie’s inability to control its own political situation.

8. It is very difficult to make a precise analysis of the perspectives for the unfolding of this crisis because the bourgeoisie is engaged in an increasingly desperate effort to avoid a no-deal Brexit. However, what can be said with certainty is that this crisis and political instability will continue and worsen. Even if the bourgeoisie was able to achieve a planned Brexit it is still faced with the increasingly complex question of steering its way, in a weakened state, through the deepening chaos of the international situation. Given the chaos already inflicted on the British bourgeoisie by the process leading up to Brexit, the accentuating pressures towards political irresponsibility, ‘every man for himself’ and the fragmentation of the political apparatus can only continue.

The impact on the two-party system

9. Over the course of the last 100 years British state capitalism has maintained a two-party system in order to contain and control the political situation. However, even before Brexit this system was being weakened by the emergence of nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. Now we are witnessing a process of fragmentation of the Tory and Labour Parties themselves. The last two years have exacerbated these tensions to levels that threaten the very existence of the Conservative Party. Post Brexit these divisions will widen as the party’s factions blame each other for the deepening problems faced by British capitalism, entering into new battles over which policies to follow. This is assuming that the party does not fracture under the pressure of achieving Brexit.

10. The situation in the Labour Party will not be much less fractious. The rise of Corbyn enabled the bourgeoisie to establish a clear difference between the Labour and Tory Party. This is now in danger as Corbyn’s strategy - trying to please the Leave faction by agreeing to Brexit, but at the same time insisting on the need for the closest possible relationship with the EU in order to contain the Remainers - comes under increasing strain. Fundamental to these tensions is the fact that the greatly increased party membership, who joined in support of Corbyn, in a large majority support a second referendum. This is being used by the Remain MPs to put pressure on Corbyn. The Blairites in particular will continue to use this tension in order to undermine Corbyn. As with the Tory Party, if the party survives Brexit, there will be a sharpening of these tensions as the anti-Corbyn factions try to depose him for allowing Brexit to take place.

The fragmentation of either of the parties would be a major problem for the British ruling class, because it would open up a political arena that could be exploited by the populists, thus further deepening the tensions and difficulties in its political apparatus. Such a collapse of the two-party system would be a further expression of a growing loss of control of the political situation.

11. To this political instability has to be added the prospect of the strengthening of moves towards independence amongst the Scottish fractions of the British bourgeoisie. Such a threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom would provoke unprecedented tensions within the ruling class. Not only between the Scottish Nationalist Party and the rest of the national bourgeoisie, but also within the Scottish bourgeoisie, as not all agree with independence, and also within the national bourgeoisie as a whole, as those who wanted to Remain blame the Brexiters for undermining the territorial integrity of British capitalism.

12. Tensions will also worsen in Northern Ireland between the Loyalist and Irish Nationalist factions of the bourgeoisie. The Good Friday Agreement that brought about the ceasefire was based upon the UK being in the EU, thus providing the Nationalists with the ability to appeal to the EU over the UK. The loss of this framework is not discussed by the bourgeois media. However, the Irish bourgeoisie is very aware of the potential for renewed instability in the North and that is why they are insistent upon the withdrawal plan which tries to ensure there is no hard border and the subsequent potential for reigniting the ‘Troubles’.

The majority in the North voted to Remain in order to avoid this. However, the hard-line Democratic Unionists are fervent Brexiteers, while Sinn Fein was for Remain. These divisions in the context of political instability in the wider political apparatus will accentuate pressures towards the outbreak of open conflicts between the different factions of the bourgeoisie in the North.

The Welsh Nationalists who also supported Remain in order to have a counter to the national bourgeoisie will renew their calls for independence.

Weakening of Britain’s imperialist and economic position

13. Leaving the EU marks a qualitative moment in the 100-year decline of British imperialism:

- being forced out of the EU through its own political weakness means that British imperialism has retreated from one of its most important areas of interest. The whole imperialist policy of Britain within the EU was to contain and undermine a resurgent Germany. For example, Blair’s push for the extension of the EU into Eastern Europe was aimed at bringing into the EU states who historically have opposed Germany. Leaving the EU undermines this ability. British imperialism will now have to stand on the sidelines as its main European rivals Germany and France are given a freer hand. It will only be able to have an influence by provoking tensions within the EU, supporting those countries opposing Germany. However, these countries distrust the UK as it walks away from Europe.

- The ‘special relationship’ with the US is threadbare and will become even more exposed because, without Britain in the EU, the US no longer has the UK to counter German and French imperialism. Trump has already made it clear that he sees Britain as a state whose political life he can openly seek to destabilise, with his support for Brexit. This may have helped to deepen the political crisis in Britain and the EU, but once Britain leaves what role can Britain play for the US in its efforts to undermine the EU and confront Russia and China? A profoundly weakened British imperialism will find itself marginalised and forced into desperate actions in order to try and assert itself.

- For China, Britain outside the EU becomes a secondary European power that it will try to use as a counter-weight to the US.

In this context tensions within the bourgeoisie will be worsened as the ruling class desperately seeks ways to maintain some international influence. The idea of moving closer to the US will provoke strong opposition given the bitter experience of the US’s undermining of Britain’s imperialist role over the last 100 years, intensified by the loss of international reputation caused by the Blair government’s support for the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. The EU will keep the UK at arm’s length. British imperialism will be left looking increasingly like a third-rate imperialist power.

14. Brexit has already had a very important impact on the economy. A central part of the manufacturing base is the car industry but this has seen a 50% fall in investment since 2016. The main business bodies, the City, the Confederation of British Industry, the Chambers of Commerce, have all expressed their anger about the political crisis and paralysis. They, along with other more responsible parts of the bourgeoisie and the state, are determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit, hence their support for the Withdrawal Deal. However, the political instability caused by trying to get this deal agreed holds out a grim prospect for the future trade deal with the EU and this will reignite the tensions over Brexit. The achieving of a trade deal with the EU is of huge importance to the economy not only because of the size of the EU, but also because, as Japan has made clear, until such a deal is agreed it will not discuss a deal with the UK. Given that the EU and Japan in January 2019 signed one of the biggest trade agreements in the world, they will not want to give British capitalism any advantages when it comes to an agreement between them. The signing of this deal underlines just how damaging Brexit is: British capitalism is being forced to leave one of the world’s biggest free trade areas. All the talk of a new, expanding ‘global Britain’ is just hot air.

This is further underlined by the situation facing the UK in relation to the USA. The Brexiteers made much of being able to strike a deal with the US rapidly. The brutal use of US economic, political and imperialist power by Trump to openly attack its main rivals, to rip up existing free trade arrangements and to impose bilateral deals are the most obvious indications that any hopes placed in the US being ‘nice’ to British capitalism are delusions.

The impact of Brexit on the proletariat

15. The referendum campaign and the period since have seen an unprecedented ideological onslaught, outside of a situation of world war, on the proletariat in Britain. Five years of being suffocated by a blanket of democratic, nationalist and xenophobic ideology has seen important divisions generated within the proletariat. The social atmosphere is saturated with manufactured tensions between Leave and Remain, the North and South, City and Country, the poor white working class and the rest of the class. A climate of irrational hate, social tension and boiling potential violence pervades society.

These destructive forces are not new but express the advancing ideological decay of bourgeois society, the noxious fumes seeping from its rotting flesh. The proletariat cannot escape this poisonous atmosphere. As we said in the late 1980s the decomposition of bourgeois society, as its contradictions tear at the fabric of society, would have an impact on the very qualities that are the strengths of the proletariat:

“The different elements which constitute the strength of the working class directly confront the various facets of this ideological decomposition:

·           solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look out for number one’;

·           the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of the relationships which form the basis for all social life;

·           the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society;

·           consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch”

The impact of these tendencies is clearly manifested in the present situation. Already, before the referendum, these toxins were seeping into the working class.

16. The series of defeats suffered by important bastions of the working class in the 70s and 80s combined with the international retreat in the class struggle following the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 led to a sense of disarray and loss of confidence within the working class. This was strengthened by the growing impact of the abandoning of whole regions, cities, towns and villages to a process of social decay following the destruction of the regional and local economies under the impact of the crisis. Workers were abandoned to the crushing poverty of long-term unemployment, or the desperate search for increasingly temporary and insecure jobs. These areas were also faced with a rising tide of destructive drug use, gang rivalries and criminality.

The weight of this decay was also reinforced by the bourgeoisie with its campaigns against asylum seekers, people on benefits, etc. The central message was that the problems of society are the responsibility not of capitalism but of scapegoat communities: shirkers, migrants etc. This ideology is all the stronger because of the lack of open class movements in the recent period (for example, the Office for National Statistics says that the number of strikes in 2017 was the lowest since records began in 1891); but it can also have an impact on struggles around unemployment and low pay, as we saw in 2013 during the Lindsay construction workers’ strike when workers took up the slogan “British jobs for British workers” which had been promulgated by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. 

The whole Brexit campaign fed on and deepened this putrid atmosphere, and all the factional divisions it stirred up have had the result of obliterating any alternative to the proletariat lining up behind one faction or other of the bourgeoisie.

The key to the situation is for the working class to recognise that it has separate interests from all factions of the ruling class. A sober analysis of the present situation must admit that the proletariat’s sense of its own identity as a revolutionary class has weakened. A central aspect of the activity of revolutionary organisations is to contribute to the process that leads to the revival of a conscious class struggle.  WR  January 2019

This resolution, adopted by a conference in January 2019, seeks to draw out the main perspectives for the British situation in the coming period. It is one of the core responsibilities of a revolutionary organisation to put forward the most coherent understanding of the perspectives for the national situation. This takes on even more importance when the whole social situation is dominated by the ruling class’s unprecedented political crisis around Brexit – a crisis that is going to continue to worsen in the coming period. Without an understanding of the roots and consequences of this turmoil it is impossible to draw out the probable implications of this for the proletariat in Britain and internationally in the coming years.

The role of the resolution is not to provide a detailed analysis of dynamics at work - this is done in the report on the national situation from the same conference - but to lay down a general theoretical framework and its implications. In the last issue of World Revolution we published the historical section of the report, which readers can refer to[1].

In this introduction we want to examine if the resolution has been verified by the unfolding of events.

The resolution argues that Brexit is the product of the combination of the century-long decline of British imperialism, the divisions within the ruling class that this has generated, the deepening of the impact of the decomposition of capitalism since the 2008 financial crisis, and the rise of populism. The resolution demonstrates that the bourgeoisie is caught up in irreconcilable contradictions. These are not only represented by the rise of populism, but also by the already existing divisions over Europe within the main parties, which have been pushed to a point where they could destroy the carefully constructed parliamentary political apparatus that has served the British bourgeoisie so well over the last two centuries.

This has been fully confirmed by the paralysis of the parliamentary machine over the last 6 months. Both the main political parties have been torn by factional struggles over Brexit. The Withdrawal Agreement drawn up by the May government and the EU, aimed at preventing Britain from simply crashing out of the EU, has been undermined by the inability of the main factions of both parties to agree on how to carry out this plan. May was unable to compromise because of the pressure exerted by the pro-Brexit hardliners, whilst Corbyn was constrained by the divisions within Labour where important factions want a Customs Union or a Second Referendum. The last desperate effort to get this Agreement were the common talks between both parties but these were doomed because it became obvious that May was going to be driven from power by factions in the Tory party opposed to a deal with Labour, as proved to be the case when May announced that she would resign on 7 June. This paralysis has now produced a leadership contest in the Tory party, with the most rabidly pro-Brexit figures easily in the lead, but whatever the result it will not resolve the stalemate.

This political vacuum has stimulated a new upsurge of populism, fed by anger and frustration at the inability of parliament to progress on Brexit. Farage and his wealthy bourgeois backers have taken full advantage of this void by forming the Brexit Party. This new party expresses a serious danger to the main parties. It represents a new face to populism. Gone is the strident anti-immigration rhetoric and the odd and bizarre characters that made UKIP unacceptable to many. The new party is very slick, it has a very sophisticated internet campaign and sells itself as being both multi-cultural and supported by younger voters. Farage has made much of his rejection of UKIP’s increasing racism and Islamophobia. This operation is a serious effort to make inroads into the main parties, based on being the only party able to defend the democratic vote of “the people”.

The rise of the Brexit Party, has thrown a spanner in the works. A new leader of the Tory party will not want to call a general election, as long as Brexit is not solved, because as one former Cameron aid put it, they will be “toast”. Labour will also be very reluctant to go for an election because the Brexit Party is making an effort to sell itself as the party of working people.

This means that three years after a referendum that was meant to push back the tide of populism the ruling class is now faced with a re-invigorated and more sophisticated populist party pouring petrol onto its political crisis.

As the resolution says, this crisis is threatening the territorial integrity of the British state. The election of a hard-line Brexiteer as Tory leader and/or the arrival of the Brexit party in parliament would worsen tensions with the pro-Independence Scottish fraction of the bourgeoisie.

The impact of this is not confined to Britain. As the resolution explains Brexit contributed to the strengthening of populism in Europe and the US. The EU and the main European powers have responded with a very hard line towards the British bourgeoisie. This line has paid some benefits, because the political chaos has produced a real fear even amongst the European populist parties and governments, who have now abandoned or toned down the demand to leave the EU. However, the populist far right still poses a serious threat to the future of the EU.

The Brexiteers hopes of a new “global” Britain able to strike up free trade deals have already started to hit the hard rock of reality. The developing trade war between the US and China has made it clear that the US has no hesitations to undermine the interests of its former allies in its increasingly desperate struggle with China. The Huawei scandal has seen China threatening its investment in Britain if the British government gives in to US pressure to ban Huawei from its infrastructure.

The struggle with China for global dominance, along with its intention to undermine its European rivals, means that the US has little interest in a weakened Britain outside the EU. Trump was happy to encourage Brexit in order to hurt the EU, but, once Brexit takes place, what role can the UK play for the US?

The resolution’s perspective of the deepening of the political crisis has been verified by events. Its warning of the threat of populism in this situation of paralysis was justified. The emergence of the Brexit Party is another factor of chaos and instability, further endangering the British state’s efforts to ensure an orderly Brexit.

The implications of this situation for the working class are grim. More than a decade of austerity has taken place with hardly any response from the class. This does not mean there is no discontent but it has not found expression through the class struggle due to the proletariat’s profound lack of self-confidence. This disorientation and demoralisation have been exacerbated by Brexit and the political crisis. The support for populism and its simplistic promise of a better tomorrow among parts of the proletariat is an expression of this despair and hopelessness.  However, an even greater danger to the proletariat is being mobilised behind anti-populism and its defence of democracy and the democratic state. At present and in the coming period the proletariat will find it hard to avoid being mobilized behind these different bourgeois factions.

But the economic crisis will continue the deepen, and no matter which bourgeois faction dominates, they are all going to have to attack the proletariat. It is only through struggling against these attacks that the working class can defend itself. Such struggles will see the same response from the Tories, Labour or populists, because in the end they all defend capitalism.  WR, 25.5.19

Those born in 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks will be 18 in 2019. What have they grown up with? What have they been exposed to on the news? What sort of world have they been living in?

Following 9/11 there was Bush’s “global war on terrorism”. In reality, it was just “war” where, in invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and in other campaigns as well) US imperialism attempted (and failed) to assert its position as the only surviving super power.

But what about terrorism? That seems to have gone from outrage to atrocity, from unspeakable massacre to indiscriminate terror. To take a handful of examples, there were the 2002 bombings in a tourist area of Bali where more than 200 people were killed and hundreds injured. In 2004 there were the bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid which killed 193 people and injured 2000. In 2011 there were the attacks by Anders Breivik: a car bomb in Oslo which killed 8 and injured more than 200 - followed by the attack on a summer camp where he killed 69 and injured more than 100. In Paris in November 2015 there were mass shootings and suicide bombing at cafes and restaurants, culminating in the attacks on the Bataclan theatre; 130 died and more than 400 were injured. There was the attack in Nice in 2016 where a lorry was driven through crowds of people celebrating 14 July where 86 died and nearly 500 were injured. Also in 2016, there was the attack on the gay club in Orlando, where 49 people were shot and many injured. More recently we have seen bloody attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego.

And how does the capitalist media explain terrorism? The perpetrators are typically described as Islamist fanatics, or white supremacists. Their crime is “extremism”. But there have been other massacres with individuals “on the rampage” as in the US school shootings such as Parkland, Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. How do they fit into the picture? Or what about the October 2017 shootings in Las Vegas where a man fired more than 1000 rounds of ammunition into a crowd of concertgoers, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds? For the media people are bad or mad, or sometimes there is just no explanation.

The shootings at two mosques in March this year in Christchurch, New Zealand, added one grotesque element to the horror as it was live-streamed on the internet for all the world to see. There were many stories about the 51 Muslim worshippers who were killed, some of whom had moved from other countries (including Iraq, Palestine, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkey) in the hope of finding a haven from war and persecution in their country of origin. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was praised for her empathy and sensitivity, while she tried to find ways to censor the internet

In Sri Lanka the attacks in April on Christian churches and luxury hotels by suicide bombers left 258 people dead and more than 500 injured. The government had received warnings in advance from Indian Intelligence Agencies that the attacks were imminent, but did nothing to stop them. After the events the Sri Lankan government strengthened its apparatus of repression with a number of measures including the need for all sermons in mosques to be submitted to the relevant ministry.

A framework to understand terrorism

How are this year’s 18-year olds supposed to make sense of terrorism? The only possible approach is to look at the phenomenon in class terms, and historically. In 1978 the ICC published an article and a resolution on terrorism, terror and class violence. These were attempts to re-assert the marxist position, on, among other things, the distinction between capitalist state terror and the terrorism of intermediate social strata.

The terror of the bourgeoisie, whether by the state or other bodies, has as its goal the perpetuation of exploitation and the rule of the capitalist class. “Terrorism on the other hand is a reaction of oppressed classes who have no future, against the terror of the ruling class. They are momentary reactions, without continuity, acts of vengeance with no tomorrow”. (https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html [76]). Terrorism is “not directed against capitalist society and its institutions, but only against individuals who represent this society. It inevitably takes on the aspect of a settling of scores, of vengeance, of a vendetta, of person against person and not a revolutionary confrontation of class against class.” (https://en.internationalism.org/content/2649/resolution-terrorism-terror... [77])

In the 19th century two notable exponents of terrorism were the Narodniks in Russia and certain French anarchists in the 1890s. Three consecutive examples of the latter give an idea of their “propaganda by the deed”. In December 1893 Auguste Vaillant threw a home-made bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies, causing only limited injuries to a few of those present. In February 1894 Emile Henry set off a bomb in a bar in the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. When asked why he had hurt so many innocent people he said “there are no innocent bourgeois”. In Lyon in June 1894 Sante Caserio stabbed and killed the French President Carnot. It was episodes like these that gave anarchism a violent image for decades. The leading anarchist Peter Kropotkin distanced mainstream anarchism from this tendency: “an edifice which is built on centuries of history will not be destroyed by a few kilos of explosives”. The classic expressions of petit-bourgeois ‘revolt’ were not so prevalent in the twentieth century, although we can point to the Red Army Faction (Baader–Meinhof Gang) in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy in the 1970s and 80s, and the Angry Brigade in the UK in the 1970s.

In contrast to these petit-bourgeois expressions of ‘revolt’, the methods of terrorism, bombs detonated in public places, indiscriminate shootings etc, became part of the arsenal of factions in intra-bourgeois conflicts, in inter-imperialist wars. The US State Department’s standard definition of terrorism is appropriate here: “politically motivated attacks on non-combatant targets”. Examples that come to mind are the activities of the Stern gang and Irgun in Palestine in the 1940s, the bombings and massacres of the factions in the Algerian War (1954-62), the car bombs, shootings and retaliations of paramilitary gangs in Northern Ireland, or the decades long bombing campaigns of ETA in Spain. All these show terrorism in the service of identifiable bourgeois goals.

Some academics see these as examples of a period of ‘old terrorism’. This changes to a ‘new terrorism’ in the 1990s with, as an early example, the 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre with a massive truck bomb beneath the North Tower (which was supposed to collapse into the South Tower) “So‐called ‘new terrorists’, on the other hand, are nihilistic, are inspired by fanatical religious beliefs, and are willing to seek martyrdom through suicide. They rarely set out aims that appear remotely attainable; they give no warnings; they do not engage in bargaining; they find compromise solutions to problems unappealing; they are willing and even eager to carry out the mass slaughter of non‐combatants; and they frequently do not even claim responsibility for their deeds.” (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics)

Other examples of this ‘new terrorism’ are the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo underground or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh in which hundreds were injured and more than 150 died, in revenge for the attack on Waco

However, neither the analysis of academics nor the sensational accounts of tabloids give any real explanation for this development. For all the talk of irrational hatreds, racism, fanaticism, alienation, nihilism etc, the commentators who serve the bourgeoisie cannot give any truthful answers because the roots of terrorism lie in a global capitalist system that has outlived its usefulness, but will continue its decay until it is destroyed. With a stalemate between the two main social classes in capitalism - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie - terrorism is just one of the phenomena, along with fanaticism and nihilism, which proliferates with decomposing capitalism. For some, desperation in the face of the miserable reality of capitalism leads to the flight into religion or other drugs; for others the certainties of religious or political dogma inflame a desire for destruction, of self or of others. But where the impotent terrorist acts of intermediate strata in the nineteenth century were fleeting moments of ‘revolt’, today’s terrorism is an expression of the nihilism at the heart of a rotting social order.

In Northern Ireland in April, the journalist Lyra McKee was killed by the paramilitaries of the “Real IRA” as they shot at the police. Politicians rushed to condemn the action, while still maintaining their various roles to sustain the society that produces terrorism. In an article published in 2016 (“Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies”) McKee showed that, in Northern Ireland, more people committed suicide in the 16 years after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 than died in the 29 years of violent conflict before it. This shows what capitalism really has to offer; its ‘peace process’ led to a world without prospects, with, for many, seemingly, nothing to live for. The prospects of war are horrifying, the reality of ‘peace’ in capitalism unbearable.  Those in the marxist tradition argue that capitalism has its own gravediggers, the working class, which offers the perspective of revolution against a society where fear and terror are endemic, and for a society based on relations of solidarity.

Car 24/5/19

It is nothing new for capitalist industry, and mining in particular, to cause health problems and pollution. We have only to think of the lives lost to pneumoconiosis, to mining accidents and the collapse of slagheaps. However, mining companies in the Appalachian Mountains have taken this to a new extreme, clearing and blowing the tops of mountains and creating about 16 tons of “overburden” (the waste polluted by iron, sulphur and arsenic) for each ton of coal. Over 1,000 square miles of forest and soil has been destroyed, and 2,000 miles of streams buried, and the local water poisoned to the point that residents, mainly mineworkers themselves, have to travel miles to buy water to wash and cook, as well as to drink. Homes are damaged as orange water destroys pipes, sinks and washing machines.

Health is ruined as well. “Professor Michael McCawley, an environmental engineer who has spent time researching the health impacts of mountaintop removal.

‘It’s kind of like dumping geological trash,’ he explains. ‘It ends up increasing the concentration of acidic ions and metals [in the water], things like arsenic and nickel.’

This pollution, according to his research, has taken a catastrophic toll on the health of those whose water supply lies in its path.

‘This population is under assault from both water and air,’ Professor McCawley says. ‘What we’re finding in the water is likely to cause inflammation in the body, which can set off a lot of other chronic diseases. The big [problems] we have found are certainly cancers. Name a cancer and they’re seeing it here’.”[1]

Dividing up the victims

Various websites describe various ways to tackle the problem. First, rely on the state to restore “the Stream Protection Rule in 2016 to mitigate some of mountaintop mining’s harmful effects. The rule required mining companies to monitor and restore streams polluted by their activities, but Congress got rid of it in one of its first acts under the Trump administration.”[2] This form of mining has been developing since the 80s, with or without the Stream Protection Rule and with or without Trump in the White House. Relying on the state and democracy is a false hope when the state itself belongs to capital.

Secondly, the citizen can take the mining companies to court. “That company is facing a lawsuit from a number of residents … who are seeking compensation for the costs of dealing with their water issues. It won a similar lawsuit a few years ago, and Jason, who was part of that legal battle, said it left the entire community divided between those who supported the coal industry and those who wanted to fight back.”1 For “supported the coal industry” we should read: fear to lose their jobs in an area which has no other industry.

This division, based on the false hope of regaining clean water or compensation by political or legal action as private citizens, is most destructive. Often the media portray the concerned public defending the environment against workers who need to make sacrifices for it, such as higher fuel prices. However, as the Appalachian situation shows, there is an impossible choice between needing to make a living and needing clean water and good health. You simply cannot do without either. And in this situation the division in the community created by this impossible choice is particularly destructive because it is dividing a mining community, which means dividing the workers, and when workers are divided they lose the one strength they have to struggle against capital. 

Alex  23.5.19

“For most of my adult life I’ve railed against ‘corporate capitalism’, ‘consumer capitalism’ and ‘crony capitalism’. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective but the noun. While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I’ve done so slowly and reluctantly. Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism. I was also inhibited by its religious status. To say ‘capitalism is failing’ in the 21st century is like saying ‘God is dead’ in the 19th: it is secular blasphemy. It requires a degree of self-confidence I did not possess.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system”[1].

Monbiot accepts that there are two elements of capitalism which are inherent to the system and which are utterly inimical to maintaining a sustainable environment: the drive towards perpetual growth, and the institution of private property, which allows you to do what you want with the land and nature as long as you have enough money to buy it. He also explains that his lack of enthusiasm for “state communism” derives from the fact that “Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth [82]” 

Of course Monbiot is right that the problem is not this or that form of capitalism but the system itself. The drive to perpetual growth and expansion is the drive to accumulate capital – extracting surplus value from your workforce, producing for the market to realise your profit, then reinvesting to expand your enterprise and outdo the competition. This is not some by-product of the system, it is the system, and anyone who follows a no-growth model of capitalism is doomed to extinction. Similarly, the system can’t be separated from private property, from competition between separate enterprises, even if the older model of individual ownership has to a large extent been superseded by ownership by faceless corporations or nation states, some of them claiming to be “socialist”.

Monbiot humbly tells us that he has no ready answers to the problem but is making inquiries into the work of ecological thinkers like Jeremy Lent, Naomi Klein and Amitav Ghosh, and in particular the “doughnut economics” of Kate Raworth. But while the latter’s  model seeks to factor social justice and ecological consequences into an overall economic diagram, it is telling that Monbiot himself considers that Raworth is “the John Maynard Keynes of the 21st century”[2]. But Keynes was the perfect example of someone who tried to find a way of preserving capitalism while lopping off its worst bits (in his case, the crisis of overproduction in particular); and none of the authors that Monbiot recommends, for all the insights they offer us, are able to go beyond the confines of capitalism when it comes to proposing an alternative society. 

Monbiot’s anti-capitalism (which is increasingly shared by august institutions like the IMF who are getting very concerned about the growing gulf between rich and poor) shows how hard it is to pronounce the God of capitalism to be dead, to make a real break from its ideological grip.

And yet the real alternative is, at one level, childishly simple: if the problem is a system that can’t help but invade the very last corner of the planet, the alternative is to suppress the whole spiral of accumulation by attacking it at its roots: the system of wage labour and generalised commodity production, replacing it with production for direct use. If capitalism equals the privatisation of the planet then private property in land, resources and the means of production needs to be got rid of, whether in its individual, corporate or state form.

In other words, the alternative is communism. Not Monbiot’s contradiction in terms, “state communism”, but a stateless world human community. To make this small step in thinking would seem to be uncomplicated, but in fact it means putting into question the entirety of bourgeois politics and economics and recognising the necessity for a proletarian revolution, because the present rulers of the earth are certainly not going to give up their private property without a fight. 

Amos,  23.5.19

The city of Matamoros is in the state of Tamaulipas which is considered one of the most dangerous regions of the country. There are constant confrontations between the mafia gangs over the control of these areas, sowing terror and death. Kidnappings, extortion and murders are common occurrences faced by the inhabitants of this area, but also for those using it as a crossing point, both Mexicans and those from Central America, in their quest to reach the US[1]. Matamoros, in spite of being marked by this terrible environment, is part of a broader industrial zone, formed at the end of the 1960s, but strengthened and expanded in the mid-1990s as a result of NAFTA[2]; nearly 200 maquiladora[3] factories been installed in this stretch of the frontier alone. These are no longer small and medium-sized units as in the 1970s; some of them are giant companies with different plants and with a workforce of up to two thousand workers.

The maquila factories are characterized by the intense rhythms of their working practices. Since 2002 their working week has been extended from 40 hours per week to 48, wages have stayed at almost the same level for the last 15 years, with minimal annual variations. In order to maintain these rates of productivity and high profits, it is necessary to maintain powerful technical and political vigilance and control within the factory by supervisors and foremen, but above all through the union structure. High productivity and low wages (competing with or equal to the measly wages of workers in China) are the combination that has allowed these investment projects to make big profits. Nevertheless the vigilant presence of trade unions is essential to ensure workers’ subjugation and the continuity of those conditions.

Given the environment that dominates on the border, the fierce political control imposed in the factories of Matamoros by the unions and management, it could be surprising that there has been a workers’ response in this area and one expressing a great combativeness and a broad capacity to build ties of solidarity.  But while this situation demonstrated the potential of the working class’s struggle, the workers involved were unable able to take control of their struggle due to the weight of confusion and lack of confidence in their own strength. The leftist apparatus of capital says that the recent event in Matamoros was a “workers’ rebellion”, others affirm that it was an offensive against Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) and his “fourth transformation”,[4] and there are even those who say that there was a “wildcat and mass strike”[5]. In addition to being false, these statements are deceptive and are a direct attack on the workers, because they pull a veil over the reality in order to prevent the workers from drawing the lessons of their struggles.

The proletariat’s strengths drowned in a sea of bourgeois labour laws

The slogan that unified and mobilised workers for a little more than a month was “20-32”, which simplified their demands: a wage increase of 20% and payment of a bonus of 32 thousand pesos (1,660 dollars). It was the degradation of workers’ lives that propelled the discontent and animated the struggle, but union control trapped this combativity. From the beginning of the mobilisations there were expressions of distrust towards the unions, though at no point did they lead to an understanding that the unions are no longer instruments that the workers can use to defend their interests; therefore they submitted to their practices. At the beginning whilst still showing indecision there was a certain ingenuity when the workers’ discontent began to spread, nevertheless workers believed that it is possible to “pressure” the “union leader” and force him to “defend” them. This indecision was transformed into a widespread confusion that it was enough to receive “honest legal advice” to assert their “rights”.

By focusing its hopes on the law and the lawyer Susana Prieto, the workers’ mobilisation was weakened and confusion spread. Feeling “protected” by the lawyer, they no longer looked for control of their struggle. This underlines a serious problem facing the working class today: loss of confidence in its own strength and the lack of class identity.

This difficulty led to a situation where, in spite of showing distrust towards the union structure, the struggle remained under the unions’ control and on its terrain, which is the framework of labour laws. It is these laws that give power to the union, as they are the signatories of the collective bargaining agreement. By remaining tied to the union framework, the workers handed over control of the struggle to the union itself, allowing it to contain workers’ discontent, shackling their militancy, forcing compliance with bourgeois laws, thus preventing them from achieving a true unification of the workers’ forces by organising themselves outside of the union.

By reducing the struggle to compliance with the laws, the workers, even when they were marching  in the streets and holding general assemblies, when they confronted the bosses, the State and the union, they did so separately, factory by factory and contract by contract, because this is how bourgeois legality stipulates it should be done. This divides and isolates the workers. After all, laws are made to subdue the exploited.

But is it possible to fight outside the union and the law? The history of the working class has diverse experiences that confirm that it is possible to do so. For example, in August 1980 the workers in Poland carried out a mass strike really controlled by the workers themselves. Neither the outbreak of the strike, nor the construction of their unitary combat organs complied with legal guidelines and yet they were able to extend the struggle throughout the country and impose public negotiations with the government. The massiveness of the mobilisations and their capacity to organise allowed them to create a gigantic force capable of preventing repression[6].

The very mechanism that the Polish state used to divide the workers and weaken them was the same one that the bourgeoisie all over the world uses: the trade unions. With the creation of the trade union “Solidarity” (led by Lech Walesa), the state broke the organisation and unity of the workers, and only in this way could it carry out the repression. Sometime later, the trade union leader Lech Walesa was made the head of the Polish state...

The mass strike in Poland is the best example that the workers and especially those in Matamoros should draw on because it makes it clear that the union is a structure that operates against the workers and that it is not enough to distrust it, it is necessary to organise outside it.

Unions against the working class

The first main lesson of the struggle of the maquila workers is that unions are a weapon of the bourgeoisie[7]. The blatant attitude of the trade unions, tricking them into accepting a smaller increase and rejecting the bonus, makes it clear that they are no longer an instrument of the proletariat (as they were in the 19th century). The threats and direct aggression carried out by the unions of Day Labourers and Industrial Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SJOIIM) and by the Industrial Workers in Maquiladoras and Assembly Plants (SITPME), openly confirmed that the interests they defend are not those of the workers. They are weapons of the bourgeoisie at work within the ranks of the proletariat... they are like wolves in sheep’s clothing.

During the course of the strikes the unions acted to defend the interests of the bosses: that is why the majority of the workers repudiated the union leaders Juan Villafuerte and Jesús Mendoza.  The shouts of “outside the union!” were also repeated in each factory and in each demonstration. They did not advance any further however, because the workers’ lack of confidence in their strength prevented them from taking control of the struggle, from organising themselves in a unifying structure that would have enabled them to break completely with the domination of the unions and the divisions they imposed. The workers appeared to have stopped passively following the “traitorous” union leadership, but instead fell into the same trap by passively follow the informal “new leadership”, personified by its legal advisor, who used her skill in litigation[8] to submit the class struggle to the framework of bourgeois legality and sow hope in the creation of an “independent” union that would dispute the collective contract with the old union structures.

The work of confusion, subjugation and control carried out by the unions does not take place only in some regions or some unions, all of them are weapons of the bourgeoisie. Is there is a difference between the SNTE and the CNTE?[9] One uses a traditional language, the other resorts to phrases and actions to appear radical, but its aim is the same: to subdue and control the workers.

There is nothing strange about the AMLO government, in a very silent way, encouraging the creation of union structures that allow it to use the discontent of the workers and direct it into confrontations with the old union structures, associated mainly with the old governing party, the PRI (as is the case of the CTM, CROM and CROC[10]). López Obrador has not only “rescued” the mafia boss of the miners’ union, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia (“Napito”) from the so-called exile where he lived luxuriously in Canada during the last two Presidencies, to turn him into a senator; but fundamentally this was done in order that he could form a “new union”. A few months after his return to Mexico, “Napito” created the International Confederation of Workers (ILC), integrating unions that have broken away from the CTM and CROC, but he has also secured alliances with unions in the U.S. and Canada, particularly the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers.[11]

In his February 14 speech, AMLO stated that his government will not intervene in the life of the unions. However, he adds: “We cannot prevent workers or leaders from requesting to form unions, because this in accordance with the law...”. (La Jornada). On the same lines, “new” unions are emerging, that are seeking to take power from old unions that defend the interests of bourgeois factions different from those aligned with the new government. We have seen the formation of “alternative” union projects in the IMSS, PEMEX and UNAM.[12]

The trade unions in the 19th century were an important instrument for the unity and combat of the workers. This was a period when capitalism itself, by developing the productive forces, allowed the implementation of economic and social reforms that improved the lives of the workers. At present it is impossible for the capitalist system to ensure lasting improvements for the workers. This situation led to the union losing its proletarian nature and being assimilated into the state.

That is why every struggle the workers carry out finds the union trying to contain and sabotage the struggle, submitting discontent to the guidelines of bourgeois laws, creating confusions and fears in order to weaken confidence and impeding the unity and extension of the struggle.

What lessons can we draw from the “20-32 Movement”?

The mobilisation led by the workers of the maquilas was undoubtedly a very combative one. However, it could not avoid the domination of illusions in the law and of confused hopes that the unions, if run “honestly”, can change their anti-proletarian nature. The references to López Obrador’s decree (“Decreto de Estímulos Fiscales de la Región Frontera Norte”[13]) in order to justify the “legality” of the wage increase in the maquilas, demonstrates that the confusion goes even deeper, because it nurtures the hope that the new government can improve the living conditions of the workers. But, in addition, AMLO’s own government took advantage of the workers’ mobilisation to show its North American partner its willingness to comply with the wage increases in the factories of the automotive and electronics sector, installed in Mexico, as demanded by the Trump government in the NAFTA 2.0 (or USMCA) tables.

In order to make a balance sheet of this struggle it is not enough to count up the number of factories which have accepted the demands. That aspect is important, but it is not definitive. In order to have a broader perspective it is necessary to evaluate the massive forces that were unified, but above all it is necessary to consider the level of consciousness reached and its expression in the forms of organisation adopted. For example, the lack of control of struggle by the workers themselves and the dispersion at the end of the movement broke the bonds of solidarity and allowed reprisals to be taken against workers. According to official figures, 5,000 workers were dismissed for having taken part in the strike.

To summarise, the strikes showed a real workers’ combativity generated by the degradation of their standards of living, but the bourgeoisie soon undermined the courage of the workers, feeding illusions in “democratic respect” for the laws and impeding the development of consciousness.

More serious though is the danger that the problems that developed during the mobilisation could spread and deepen. Enthusiasm for the strikes and lack of reflection has created a very propitious environment for renewing illusions in the law and in new union structures. The same legal advisor has argued that the “second phase” of the “20-32 movement” will be orientated towards the formation of an “independent” union that will compete with the old union structures; in addition she will establish in Matamoros a law firm of “honest” lawyers to “defend” the workers. More illusions and more confusion will be propagated, and the workers only way to counter this offensive is the struggle, ensuring that they take control and reflect deeply about the way in which the unions operate.

Tatlin, from Revolución Mundial, ICC publication in Mexico, April 2019

This article, written by a close sympathiser, examines a contribution by the group Internationalist Voice on the strengths and weaknesses of recent workers’ struggles in Iran. While these struggles are extremely important, we think that there has been a tendency among certain parts of the proletarian milieu to overestimate the level of self-organisation in this movement, even implying that soviets were on the immediate agenda. We will return to this question in other articles. Meanwhile, Internationalist Voice has also produced a long polemic with the ICC in response to articles we have published on the street protests erupted in Iran, Iraq and Jordan in 2017-18. This text can be found on our discussion forum https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16670/polemic-international-communist-current-working-class-or-masses [92]. We will reply to this in due course.

On the ICC's discussion page website there's a text from the proletarian political group Internationalist Voice in the slot dated January 29, titled "Lessons from strikes, labour struggles and internationalist tasks"[1]. The main focus of this text is the class struggle in Iran over the last few decades and particularly over the last year or two. But as the title suggests the text poses wider and deeper issues and questions. It is a text we welcome as a contribution to a discussion on the current necessities of the class struggle.

Internationalist Voice defends a proletarian perspective

Before we go onto the specifics of Iran it's important to say that the whole of the text uses a communist analysis in which to frame those specifics: the irresolvable and fundamental economic crisis of capitalism (and not its "... imperfect and corrupt expressions") necessitating its revolutionary overthrow; the vanguard role of revolutionaries preparing for the revolutionary party - an absolute necessity for a revolution; a crystal clear analysis of the trade unions, once bodies and expressions of the working class in the rise of capitalism, now organisations that are firmly the expressions of state capitalism. No equivocation here about the unions being "negotiators" between capital and labour, but a concrete demonstration of how what were once workers' organisations were turned by the bourgeoisie after World War I into very effective organs of ideological and material state repression against the workers. This is what they have been ever since and it's the strength of IV's analysis of capitalist decadence that gives them their strong theoretical basis for its development. And also from this basis there are further positions on the role of imperialism in the Middle East and globally that we would have no hesitation in agreeing with.

On Iran itself, the text lays out some of the developments in the Iranian state since the mass workers' strikes of 1978, the fall of the Shah and the taking of power by an Islamic theocracy in 1979, directly leading to the subsequent defeat of the wave of struggles. It details the capitalist nature of the Mullah's regime, its inability to provide jobs or adequate living conditions, its imperialist nature and its utter ruthlessness and Machiavellianism when faced with workers' independent struggles. IV rightly emphasise the developing intensity of the workers' struggles over the past couple of years, the tendencies for self-organisation, the simultaneity of struggles, the will for extension and solidarity between different enterprises in struggle (even if they remained largely symbolic), the waning influence of the religious leaders (a phenomenon across the Middle East in workers' struggles), the involvement of women in the struggle and the protests, the involvement of students in following the workers' strikes, and the way the strikes and the bourgeoisie's ugly reaction to them brought workers, their comrades and families onto the streets in protest[2]. IV make the interesting point that it is this very class struggle and its development that has helped to hold  back  Iran’s war drive  and has at least contributed to Iran not suffering the same fate as Syria, which at one time seemed a distinct possibility. Faced with a permanent war economy, with all its consequences, both material (scarcity of goods, inflation, repression etc) and ideological (incessant nationalist campaigns) it is extremely important that the resistance of the proletariat in Iran continues. With the sharpening of imperialist tensions between Iran and the USA, this capacity of the workers to resist will face even bigger challenges in the coming period. 

Some questions on the class struggle

 We do however have some questions about IV's analyses of some important elements of class struggle as it's unfolding in Iran. Among its long list of workers involved in escalating strikes, teachers, truckers, steelworkers, miners, etc., are the bus workers and their “workers' syndicate” which IV assesses is an independent workers' organisation ("with all its ups and downs"). There’s no doubt that its members have  been involved in the struggle for better conditions, for the release of arrested workers and against repression, but its "semi-legal" position does not make it a dynamic, independent force for the struggle and we think it's important to be clear about this. The syndicate has existed for a number of years, originally from the self-organisation and assemblies of the class; but its dubious position as a functioning trade union opens it up to getting involved in such mystifications as the International Labour Organisation. Its delegates have had "worthwhile meetings" with ILO officials in Paris 2018 (they were allowed to leave Iran) which were fronted by the French trade unions, the CGT and CDFT, "with a view to meeting class demands in Iran". None of this gives any indication of a genuine independent, autonomous organisation of the workers from and for the struggle. What there seems to be here is a familiar story - what was once a workers' committee, or the remnants of it, which can't see a way forward and thus gets trapped in a semi-legal union framework.

We have similar reservations about the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company Workers' Council, which has received a lot of international publicity, even giving rise to speculations about the existence of “soviets” in Iran today.  We think that more research is needed about the origins of this organ – was it initially a spontaneous factory committee on the model of the “shuras” that arose in the massive struggles of 1978-9, or was it essentially a creation of another union type body? In any case, we know that it has also been around for several years and that, even more so than the bus syndicate, it now seems to be propagating illusions in self-management. One of its leaders, Ismail Bakhshi, writes in November 2018: "Have confidence, believe in yourself. We can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company. It is my wish that, one day, we can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company”. Bakhshi gives two options to the workers: "the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company is completely manned by the workers. We will set up a committee and run the company on a consultative basis. Do not be worried. We have all the skills. Until today, who has run the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company? Have confidence, believe in yourself. We can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company. It is my wish that, one day, we can manage the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company." The second option that Bakhshi gives is that the government takes over the company and should "work under the supervision of the workers' council". In sum, he says, "this plan (the setting-up of the council) looks like a supervisory organization, and it monitors the performance and durability of these managers. We can then decide on the company’s management. Haft Tappeh is a small symbol of Iran".

Elsewhere in its text Internationalist Voice puts forward a clear position on the trap that self-management presents for the workers, saying that it was "utopian during the infancy of the working class" and is now economically and politically destructive to it. But it should really be applying its analysis more consistently to the current situation. Self-management is a dangerous dead-end, not only because it can only offer workers the chance to manage their own exploitation, but, more importantly, because it has in the past been used during massive upsurges of the class struggle to trap the workers in their factories and prevent them from creating real soviets – organs which can unify the whole class across sectional divisions and establish a “dual power” against the capitalist state. This was precisely the critique that Bordiga made of Gramsci’s Ordino Nuovo group in Italy in 1920, which played the role of cheerleader for the factory occupations in Turin and other industrial centres. .

At the same time,  Bakhshi offers us a corrective to some of the more extravagant claims made about soviets already being formed in Iran: "When we say that the independent workers’ council was formed in the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company, some think that this council is the same as the final council, which has reached the highest level. No! We are just beginning and it takes time for even the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Agro-industry Company workers themselves to understand what the work of the council is...".

The problem here is that Bakhshi, who unquestionably emerged as a very courageous militant of the class and has suffered the most brutal repression at the hands of the Iranian police and hired thugs, is now contributing to the general confusion about what workers’ councils are and what they are not, in particular by putting forward the idea that the future soviets can be the next stage in the life of a permanent and trade unionist organ. To fight against this confusion demands a particular kind of courage – the courage that goes along with swimming against the stream to defend a clear proletarian position, which in the end can only mean adopting a revolutionary political standpoint. It would be far better for the most militant and class conscious workers in Iran to regroup around such positions rather than trying to artificially maintain “mass” organisations which no longer serve the needs of the struggle.

Workers' committees, factory committees, workers' councils, all attempts at the self-organisation of the working class, will make mistakes, misjudgements, etc., and this is entirely natural - a necessity even. But what we see here with the Bus Workers' Syndicate and the Haft Tappeh Workers' Council are  - at best – former workers' organisations that have both existed for many years and, in the face of the struggles dying away, their dynamic has been lost, leaving accommodation with structures of capitalism as the only way they see to keep going. 

This text of Internationalist Voice on the class struggle in Iran is important for the whole revolutionary milieu, important for the whole region of the Middle East and for workers' struggle globally. That is why we want to point out what we think are the current weaknesses in the struggles of the working class, so that the struggle can go forward in the future.

Baboon, 4.4.2018

Thirty years ago, a terrible, particularly bloody repression took place on Tianenmen Square and in the main Chinese metropoles. The recently-released Tiananmen Papers fully confirm the facts as we published them at the time, detailing a savage repression involving machine-gun fire, round-ups, massive arrests and executions. Today as yesterday we insist that "the police-military terror and the democratic lie are complementary and both strengthen each other". Behind this dismal anniversary the same propaganda is being spewed out, not only to discredit the growth of Chinese imperialism, incidentally strengthening the idea that this was "communism", but also and above all to strengthen the democratic myth and mask the responsibility of the capitalist system in all the world's horrors past and present[1]. This propaganda is much more important given that it takes place in the context of the growth of tensions between the new Chinese giant and its direct imperialist competitors, the United States and the European Union. As our communiqué of 1989 showed, the only real perspective faced with such barbarity lies with the proletariat. The communiqué was correct to highlight "the particular responsibilities of the proletariat of the central countries”. On its shoulders rests the greatest responsibility to show a way forward, a revolutionary perspective aimed at putting an end to capitalist barbarity

*****

On June 3rd, 1989, the Chinese bourgeoisie unleashed its wound-up killer-dogs onto the population of Peking. With several thousand killed, tens of thousands injured, the inhabitants of Beijing paid a heavy price for resistance to the tanks of the "People's Liberation Army". The repression also raged in the provinces where little by little the massacres reached Shanghai, Nanking, etc. Far beyond the students, who were said to be the victims by the media, the whole proletarian populations of towns suffered the repression: after the gunfire, the round-ups, appeals for informers, mass and arbitrary arrests, terror reigning everywhere.

The world's bourgeoisie has profited from the justified anger caused by this barbaric repression with its crocodile tears and the strengthening of its campaign of democratic diversions.  The media hubbub around democracy is intense but we shouldn't be blinded by it because it's a trap for the working class; as much at the international level as in China itself.

Stalinism, democracy and repression

Western propaganda has used the events in order to accredit the idea that only Stalinist or military dictators have the monopoly on repression, that democracy itself is peaceful, that it doesn't use such methods. Nothing is more false. There's plenty in history that shows that western democracies have nothing to learn from the worst dictators and from this viewpoint there is the historical example of the bloody massacre of workers' struggles in Berlin, 1919. Since then they have shown themselves murderously adept in colonial repressions and in sending employing torturers to maintain their imperialist interests over all over the planet.

Today, Deng Xiaoping has been put in the dock by the good conscience of international democracy, whereas, for the whole of the western bourgeoisie just a few years ago he was the post-Mao symbol of light and one of the "reformers", the man opening up towards the west, the privileged negotiator. Will that change?  Nothing is less sure.  Once the wall of silence was in place, whoever comes out the winner, our democracies, full of indignation, will wipe away their hypocritical tears in order to get in with the new leadership.

There's no antagonism between democracy and repression; on the contrary they are the two interlinked faces of capitalist domination. Police/military terror and the democratic lie complement and reinforce one another. The "democracies" of today are the executioners of tomorrow and the torturers of yesterday; Jaruzelski for example, plays the democratic card[2].

While the democratic barrage echoes around the planet from East to West, massacres follow massacres, Burma, Algeria where, after ordering a fusillade against protesters, President Chadli turned towards democracy. In Argentina, it's the friend of Mitterand, the Social-Democrat Carlos Andres Perez who launched his soldiers against the revolts over misery and hunger.  In Argentina, Nigeria, the USSR (Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan), etc., there have been thousands of deaths imposed by capitalism in a few months. China is part of a long, sinister list.

In China, the war of cliques

The world economic crisis imposes an economic rationalisation/"modernisation" on all the factions of the bourgeoisie, as shown by:

- the elimination of anachronistic systems and those in deficit, the "lame ducks" of capital, provoking growing tensions within the ruling class;

- more and more austerity programmes which polarise a growing discontent among the proletariat.

In China, the "liberal" economic reforms enacted over the last dozen years have led to a growing misery in the working class and stronger and stronger tensions within the Party in which the dominant class regroups. The establishment of economic reforms faces a double trap, firstly through the weight of underdevelopment and then by the specifics of a Stalinist-type state capitalism. While more than 800 million Chinese live in conditions basically unchanged for centuries, widespread quasi-feudal fractions control entire regions, fractions of the army and police and are not happy with the reforms which risk calling into question the basis of their domination. The most dynamic sectors of Chinese capitalism, industry in the South (Shanghai, Canton, Wuhan) are closely linked to world trade, the banks which deal with the west and the military-industrial complex which crystallises advanced technologies, etc., have always had to take account of the enormous force of inertia of the anachronistic sectors of Chinese capital. For some years, Deng Xiaoping has personified the fragile equilibrium which exists at the head of the Chinese CP and the army. Since his old age makes it more difficult for him to undertake his functions and the rivalries between cliques are being aggravated, the faction regrouped around Zhao Ziyang launched a war of succession. Gorbachev produced some imitators, but China is not the USSR.

In the pure Maoist tradition, Zhao Ziyang launched a massive democratic campaign through the medium of students' organisations in order to try to mobilise the discontent of the population to his side and impose himself over all of Chinese capitalism. Representing the reformist faction which dreams of a Chinese "Perestroika" in order to better corral and exploit the proletariat, he wasn't able to impose his point of view and the reaction of rival state factions was brutal. Deng Xiaoping, who had been the father of economic reforms, ridiculed the illusions of his ex-protégé. A dominant sector of the Chinese bourgeoisie thought that it had more to lose than to gain by bringing in forms of democratic control. Perhaps, even, there are grounds for thinking that it's an impossible task and that the only result would be a destabilisation of the social situation in China. However, even if they partially represent divergent interests of Chinese capital the cliques confronting each other today only use ideological arguments as a smokescreen; the organisers of the repression can just as well transform themselves into "democrats" tomorrow in order to better attack the workers. Jaruzelski and Chadli are examples of it.

These dramatic events are part of the process of the destabilisation of the world situation under the blows of the economic crisis. They translate into a growing barbarity imposed by an accelerated decomposition into which world capitalism is sinking. China is entering into a period of instability which risks greatly disturbing the imperialist interests of the two major powers and will open the door to dangerous global tensions.

A trap for the proletariat

On the grounds of a war of succession, engaged in by the different cliques of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the proletariat is not fighting on its class terrain. It has nothing to gain from this fight. The proletarians in Peking who heroically tried to resist the repression - more through hatred for the regime than through the depth of their illusions in the democratic fractions within the Party - paid dearly for their combativity. More than the enthusiasm for demonstrations for democracy from the student apprentice-bureaucrats, the workers in the large industrial towns of the South showed their prudence. The call from the students for a general strike (who also called for support to Zhao Ziyang, facing repression) was not followed.

For the proletariat there's no choice between the military and democratic dictatorship. It is a false choice which has served to mobilise the proletariat and drag it into its worse defeats at the time of the war in Spain, 1936 for example, and then in the second world imperialist butchery. To call for the workers in China to strike today while the repression is being unleashed is to lead the combat into the abattoir for a fight which isn't their own and in which they have everything to lose.

Even if through its strikes these last years and its desperate resistance these last days, the Chinese proletariat has shown a growing combativity, we shouldn't overestimate its immediate capacities. It has had limited experience and nowhere in these last weeks has it had the occasion to really affirm itself on a class terrain. In these conditions, and while the full force of the repression is being deployed, the perspective cannot be the immediate entry of the proletariat onto the social stage.

The effects of the crisis which is shaking the capitalist economy more and more profoundly, particularly in the lesser developed countries such as China, as well as the aggravation of the proletariat’s hatred for the dominant class, violently reinforced these past weeks, announce that it will not stay that way for long.

The events which have shaken the most populous country in the world once again highlight the importance of the global combat of the proletariat against the bloody barbarity of capitalism. Also underlined is the particular responsibility of the proletariat of the central countries which has a long experience of the democratic bourgeoisie and which can, through its struggles, undermine the influence of democratic illusions on a world scale.

ICC, 9-6-1989

At the end of May, a report into austerity in the UK by the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty was issued - to the accompaniment of protests by the British government. The report records 14 million people in poverty, the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”, and that, despite high levels of employment, “close to 40% of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now, 16% of people over 65 live in relative poverty and millions of those who are in work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope”. It describes the record levels of hunger, the extent of food banks, the fact that many people have to choose between heating their homes or eating, the extent of homelessness, the numbers of rough sleepers, falling life expectancy in some parts of the country, the denial of benefits to the disabled, a whole catalogue of the impact of the government’s “harsh and uncaring ethos” with its “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach”.

The government retaliated by saying that the UK was one of the happiest places in the world (15th on a UN list, apparently) and that the rapporteur was “biased”. The latter point is not wrong. The report says “UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available”. It says that the attacks are “ideological”, implying that there are other ‘options’ for capitalism which don’t involve the impoverishment of the working class. The last hundred years of examples show that, internationally, left and liberal governments, in response to the state of the capitalist economy, have also tended to make policy choices that reinforce capitalism at the expense of the exploited and dispossessed. In this context, it’s not the choices of the Tories, or the threat of Brexit that’s to blame but the nature of capitalism impulsed by its economic crisis.  However, the UN report’s empirical observations are accurate, despite the bias of the author. We intend to highlight, in a series of articles, the reality of poverty in Britain, starting with some points on child poverty.

Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,
When you grow old, your wages will stop,
When you have spent the little you made
First to the Poorhouse and then to the grave

(Anonymous verse from Yorkshire.)

The use of Universal Credit is one of the British state’s most recent welfare weapons. Financial support from tax credits and Universal Credit has been limited to two children since 2017. Whenever they DWP tinker with UC they proclaim another triumph. In May the DWP announced the latest changes with the Secretary of State hypocritically saying “I feel very strongly about making sure that the policies of this department are fair, compassionate and that they work for everybody”. The May announcements are the latest in a series of changes to welfare policies. In January the DWP announced a delay to the roll-out of Universal Credit, the introduction of which is extremely delayed and causing untold misery and payment arrears to claimants switching to UC.

There is a two-child limit for UC which means that the child element of tax credits and Universal Credit is limited to the first two children in a family (with a small number of exceptions), and so families do not see any increase in entitlement for the third and other children. Prior to the two-child limit, a family could receive the child element of child tax credit – currently worth £2,780 per year – for each child, subject to a means test. This is in addition to child benefit, which is currently worth £1,079 per year for the first child and £714 for each subsequent one and which, subject to its own rather different form of means test, continues to be available for all children. In total this means that, in the absence of the two-child limit, an out-of-work family with three children would be entitled to £10,840 per year from these benefits; one with four children would be entitled to £14,330. Many of these families are also entitled to other benefits, such as housing benefit and Jobseeker’s Allowance.  The DWP’s relaxation of the two-child system only means that those claiming a third child before April 1917 are exempted. The cuts in children’s allowance will continue and for the very poorest of working-class families throw them into child poverty.

By capping the number of child elements that a family can receive at two, the two-child limit reduces benefit and attacks the very weakest of the working class – children.“The UK has some of the highest levels of hunger and deprivation among the world’s richest nations, according to a wide-ranging United Nations assessment of child health and wellbeing. The Unicef report ranks 41 high-income countries against 25 indicators tracking progress against internationally agreed goals to end child poverty and hunger, promote health, ensure quality education, and reduce inequality.” (The Guardian, 21/5/19)

The Tories’ “cruel and harmful policies” are forcing children into hunger according to a new report. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that austerity and benefit cuts mean tens of thousands of families across England don’t have enough to eat. It said the introduction of Universal Credit (UC) has “exacerbated the hunger crisis”. HRW said ministers have “largely ignored” the impact of their cuts. This includes “skyrocketing food bank use” and “children arriving at school hungry and unable to concentrate”.

The 2015 Budget introduced a four-year freeze on most working-age benefits and tax credits. If the freeze does not end until April 2020 (as currently planned), it will have increased the number of people in poverty by 400,000 and affected 27 million people, including 11 million children. The vast majority of those affected live in working families with children, many working on low pay but still affected by the freeze of child benefits. People living in poverty will be on average £560 worse off, equivalent to around three months of food shopping for an average low-income family. This information was contained in a report written for the Rowntree Trust “In 2018/19, foodbank network the Trussell Trust handed out 1.6 million emergency food packages – a 19% increase on the previous year. More than half a million of the packages went to children.”

When campaigners point out that more than one in four children in the UK lives in poverty they usually do so with a view to strengthening the ‘welfare state’. In reality the welfare state imposes and presides over poverty. In the 1800s poorhouses often had a plaque at the entrance with the slogan “Protect the poor” or “Save the children”. It was a lie then, just as much as the bourgeois state’s claim to ‘help the disadvantaged’ is today.

Melmoth 22/5/19

Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen… the infernal spiral of imperialist conflict continues to plunge the Middle East into the depths of barbarism. This region is a concentration of everything that is most disgusting about decadent capitalism. After decades of instability, invasions, “civil” wars and all kinds of murderous conflicts, Iran is now in the eye of the storm.

In 2015, during the Obama years, Iran signed, together with the members of the UN Security Council and Germany, an agreement aimed at controlling its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of the economic sanctions which had been crippling the country for decades. But since he came to power, supported by the American hawks, the Israeli prime minister and the Saudi monarchy, Donald Trump has been denouncing the “worst deal in history” prior to announcing, in May 2018, that the US would be pulling out of the deal for good[1].

Since then we have seen a sharpening of provocations and tensions on both sides. The US opened the dance by re-establishing a ferocious embargo. A year later, Iran threatened to suspend its commitments by increasing its levels of enriched uranium, unleashing a new salvo of sanctions. A few days before that, invoking obscure “indications of a credible threat”, the US dispatched the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and a number of bombers to the Persian Gulf. According to The New York Times, the Pentagon has envisaged deploying no less than 120,000 extra soldiers in the Middle East. The USS Arlington and the Patriot air defence missile system have already been sent to the Straits of Hormuz, a transit route for an important part of world oil production.

On 13 June, a month after the sabotage of four naval vessels in the same waters, pressure mounted again following an attack on two tankers, Norwegian and Japanese. Trump blamed Iran despite the denials of both Iran and Norwegian and Japanese spokesmen[2]. A week later Iran shot down an American drone accused of flying over Iranian territory. This time it was Trump who issued a denial and mobilised his bombers, only to cancel the strike at the last minute. And all this stoked up by a surge of warlike invective, rhetoric and threats[3]. 

It would seem that Trump, who hardly bothers any more with mystifications about “clean” and “humanitarian” wars, is again using the strategy he calls “maximum pressure”. The American army is not in a position to invade Iran. But it has to be said that the conditions for a spiral into war are coming together: a strategy whose ineffectiveness was proved in the case of North Korea, troops ready for combat on both sides of the frontier, cynical war-mongers at the head of both the American and Iran regimes…The strategy of “maximum pressure” above all contains the maximum risk of war!

The weakening of American leadership

Trump can play the tough guy all he wants, but these tensions are really a clear expression of the historic weakening of American leadership. In the military adventures in Iraq (1990 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001), the US showed its incontestable military superiority, but it also showed its growing powerlessness to maintain a minimum of stability in the region and to oblige its allies in the former Western bloc to close ranks behind it. This weakening would end up with the incapacity of the US to engage its land forces in Syria, giving a free hand to its regional rivals, in the first place Russia but also Iran.

Tehran was thus able to open up a military corridor via Iraq and Syria to its historic ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon, provoking the anger of its main Arab rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, and of Israel which has already carried out air raids against Iranian positions in Syria. Similarly, in Yemen, the theatre of a truly atrocious war, Iran is seriously denting the credibility of Saudi Arabia, the main military power in the region and the American pivot in the Middle East.

In this context, former president Obama had to resign himself to negotiating a deal with Tehran: the US would allow Iran to find a place in the world economy if Tehran agreed to rein in its imperialist ambitions, in particular by giving up its nuclear programme. Obama had in mind the old strategy of destabilizing an enemy state through opening up its economy, thus weakening the local bourgeoisie’s grip over the population and then encouraging revolts to unseat the existing regime.

Still bogged down in Afghanistan, facing European allies that were breathing down its neck, the US was forced to count more and more on its regional allies to push through its policy of isolating Iran. This is why Trump has recently multiplied his commitment to supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia: massive arms supplies to Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, Trump’s continuing support for the Saudi crown prince after the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi…if the muscle-bound and spectacular gestures by Trump are in line with immediate tactical considerations, this strategy will only end up further accelerating the weakening of the US leadership in general and the chaos in the Middle East in particular.

“Populist” or “progressive”, the bourgeoisie sews chaos

While it’s clear that the American bourgeoisie is aiming at the downfall of the ayatollahs’ regime, it remains divided on the way to proceed. Trump’s entourage is partly made up of notorious warmongers like the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, cowboys who want to shoot first and ask questions later. Bolton has already shown this with his ardent advocacy of the invasion of Iraq under the presidency of Bush junior. Iran and its imperialist ambitions are now his target. This is what the man responsible for US foreign policy was already writing in 2015 in The New York Times: “The inconvenient truth is that only military action… can accomplish what is required….. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.[4]. You can’t reproach Bolton with not following through with his ideas, or of being a hypocrite! Not one word, not an ounce of compassion for those who would fall under American or Iranian bombs.

But the ambiguities and contradictory decisions of Trump, leaving aside his tendency to act without thinking, can also be explained by the fact that part of the American bourgeoisie, more conscious of the weakening of the US, is still attached to the more skillful methods of Obama. Three Republican congressmen, led by Kevin McCarthy, have signed a communique, in harmony with the Democratic Party, calling on the government to act in a more “measured” way towards Iran. But the “measure” these bourgeois politicians are talking about is just another word for contortion, because the US is faced with an insoluble dilemma: either they encourage the offensive of their rivals by not intervening directly, or they fuel the slide into chaos by deploying their troops. Whatever they do, the US cannot, any more than the other imperialist powers, escape the logic and contradictions of militarism.

From the great powers to fanatical gangs, from regional powers to the wealthiest oil kingdoms, the vultures are thirsty for blood. Concerned only for the defence of their sordid imperialist interests, they care nothing about the corpses, the countless refugees, the ruined cities, the lives wrecked by bombs, the misery and the desolation. All these war-makers vomit words about peace, negotiation and stability but the barbaric reality that results from their actions bears witness to the utter putrefaction of the capitalist system they all serve.

EG, 1.7.19

The abolition of slavery removed an obstacle to working class unity and accelerated the development of the workers’ movement

The policy of compromise with the South pursued by the ruling faction around Lincoln changed in the course of the war, firstly because the continuing ability of the South to use the institution of slavery to wage war was a source of military weakness for the North, and secondly because of concern at the reaction of the white working class to the class character of the war which was leading to draft riots and unwillingness to fight for the Union. This change resulted in the gradual enlistment and arming of former slaves by the North and the declaration that the abolition of slavery was now an aim of the war.

The effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slavery abolished in those areas no longer in Confederate control, was to encourage around half a million slaves to leave the plantations. In effect this was a mass refusal to continue to work for the slaveholding regime and the ending of slavery was thus due in part to the collective action of the black slaves themselves. Nearly two hundred thousand black soldiers served in the Union army – 10 per cent of its strength. Many more supported the war effort of the North in noncombat roles.

The abolition of slavery was completed by the Confederate surrender and constitutional amendments. For Marx, the “moral impetus” the freeing of the slaves gave to the working class movement was the most important result of the Civil War, immediately reflected in an acceleration of the struggle for the eight hour day, “which ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California, with the seven-league boots of a locomotive”.[17]

This development of the workers’ movement was also reflected in the building of the first national union federation (National Labor Union, 1866) and renewed calls for the formation of an independent workers’ party. Of equal importance was the rise of a workers’ movement in the South and perhaps the single most significant result of the abolition of slavery was the organisation of black workers, who began to form their own associations (“Colored” National Labor Union, 1869) and to engage in militant strike action.

Many of these gains were swept away by the economic crisis of 1873 but the foundations had been laid for a national workers’ movement and, finally, the formation of a socialist party (Workingmen’s Party, 1876).

In the North, unity between white and black workers continued to be impeded by fear of competition

However, despite these historic gains, the struggle of the US working class for unity remained confronted by extremely difficult obstacles.

With the end of the Civil War, an increasing number of black workers, skilled as well as unskilled, moved to the North, where they were met with hostility from white workers and trade unions influenced by bourgeois propaganda that this would lead to higher unemployment and lower wages.

At first the organised workers’ movement evaded the need to take clear position on the exclusion of black workers, although there was a recognition that in the absence of class solidarity the capitalists would be able to exploit any division between black and white workers, and black workers’ leaders powerfully called for class unity (Isaac Myers). In the end it was the self-organisation of black workers and their engagement in strike action that practically posed the need for joint organisation and forced the workers’ movement to take a position. The National Labor Union eventually ended the exclusion of black workers and began to organise black workers, albeit in separate unions, but there was continued hostility from other unions and black workers continued their own efforts to organise separately at a national level.

It is clear that fear of competition remained a potent force within the US workers’ movement, reinforced by the concept of white supremacy which remained deeply embedded in American capitalist society.

In the South the defeat of the slaveholding regime led to real democratic reforms but a regime based on white supremacy was re-imposed

To consolidate its victory over the slaveholding regime the northern bourgeoisie implemented a raft of measures to ‘reconstruct’ the South. Leading Confederates were disenfranchised and state governments re-constituted under the direct control of the US Army, with new state constitutions based on universal male suffrage and federal troops stationed to ensure the voting rights of former slaves. However there were no moves to redistribute land, and there were even measures to ensure unpaid labour to former slaveholders (the ‘Black Codes’), leading to protests by plantation workers.

In fact black workers did not wait for these reforms but took action themselves, agitating, educating, organising and arming, in some places occupying the land of their former owners. In two states with black majorities, South Carolina and Mississippi, there were brief experiments in more radical democratic reform, with former slaves and poor farmers active in drawing up new constitutions and new Reconstruction parliaments voting for social reforms and full civil rights.

Having achieved its own objectives, and alarmed at the spectre of an alliance of former slaves and poor whites pursuing a more radical struggle against private property, the northern bourgeoisie conspired to withdraw federal troops from the South, unleashing a wave of white racist terror which led to the crushing of the Reconstruction parliaments and the re-establishment of a regime based on forced segregation and violent repression.

In this way, despite some lasting democratic reforms, the victory of industrial capital was only ensured in the South by crushing the radical struggles of the black proletariat and reinforcing racial divisions with the poor whites.

Conclusions

The marxist movement’s critical support for the military victory of the North in the American Civil War was based on a global, historic vision which was premised on the materialist conception that the development of capitalism was a necessary step in order to create the conditions for the proletarian revolution; and that, given the system was still waging struggles against feudal remnants and expanding into new territories, these conditions did not yet exist. In the US, in order to ensure the further advance of capital, it was therefore necessary to destroy the economic and political power of the slaveholding regime, and thus hasten the growth and development of the industrial proletariat, the system’s gravedigger, and create the conditions for capital’s eventual overthrow.

As long as the power of the slaveholding regime remained, the threat of the expansion of slavery, both to the industrial capitalist economy of the North and to the wages and conditions of the working class, continued to exist. And even if the North, with its economic superiority and endless supply of manpower, must eventually prevail, every delay not only prolonged the existence of this threat to the development of the proletariat but also of the moral outrage of the slave system itself in all its inhumanity.[18]

The watchword of the workers’ movement was “proletarians of all lands, unite!” But for Marx, the continued existence of slavery paralysed the development of the workers’ movement, both in the US and internationally, preventing this unity because it allowed the ruling class to present wage slavery as superior to chattel slavery, encouraging white workers to believe that, however exploited and oppressed, they were still better off than black slaves, driving a wedge between these fractions of the proletariat.

As a revolutionary class that is also an exploited class in society, the proletariat can oppose capitalism only with its own organisation and its own consciousness. Above all the proletarian revolution depends on the development of class consciousness and this is why the emancipation of the proletariat and the liberation of society from all forms of exploitation is not an inevitability. And this is also why for Marx the “consequent moral impetus” the freeing of the slaves gave to the working class movement was the most important result of the Civil War. [19]

Despite the continuing difficulties of the struggle for class unity imposed by capitalism, it was due to the active, conscious intervention of the working class, both black and white, that a crucial obstacle to the development of proletarian consciousness was removed. Nor was this ‘moral impetus’ confined to the USA; Marx hailed the “heroic example” of the British workers who, despite the acute hardship and severe unemployment caused by the northern blockade, expressed their sympathy with the struggle against slavery, giving the world a practical example of proletarian internationalism. We can also see this impetus in the development of the First International itself which, with the help of its supporters in the US and the European movement, saw a definite growth of its influence as a result of its position on the Civil War[20] and consequently found itself better placed to play a role in the new phase of the class struggle signalled by the North’s victory.

With hindsight we can see the Civil War as signalling that the epoch of progressive bourgeois revolutions was drawing to a close – at least in Western Europe and the USA – and the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat was moving to the centre stage of history. Two years after Marx’s prescient announcement that the Civil War had opened up “a new epoch in the annals of the working class”,[21] the Paris workers “stormed the heavens”, seizing and exercising power in the first historic example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The difficult struggle of the international working class movement for unity continued in new conditions and at a higher level.

     *********

MH

Eighty years ago, one of the most important events of the 20th century, the Spanish Civil War, came to an end. This major conflict was at the heart of the world situation in the 1930s. It had been at the centre of international political attention for several years. It would provide a decisive test for all political tendencies claiming to be proletarian and revolutionary. For example, it was in Spain that Stalinism would play a part, for the first time outside the USSR, as the executioner of the proletariat. Likewise, it would be around the Spanish question that a decantation would take place within the currents that had fought against the degeneration and betrayal of the communist parties in the 1920s, a decantation dividing them into those who would maintain an internationalist position during the Second World War and those who ended up participating in it, such as the Trotskyist movement. Even today, positions on the events of 1936-1939 in Spain are central in the propaganda of the currents that claim to support proletarian revolution. This is especially the case for the different tendencies of anarchism and Trotskyism which, despite their differences, both agree that there was a "revolution" in Spain in 1936. A revolution that, according to the anarchists, went much further than that of 1917 in Russia because of the constitution of the "collectives" promoted by the CNT, the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, an analysis rejected at the time by various currents of the Communist Left, by the Italian Left and also by the German-Dutch Left.

The first question for us to answer therefore is: was there a revolution in Spain in 1936?

What is a revolution?

Before answering, we need to agree on what exactly is meant by "revolution". It is a particularly overused term since it is claimed in France for example by both by the extreme left (Mélenchon with his "Citizen Revolution") and by the extreme right (the "National Revolution" of the Front Nationale). President Macron himself entitled the book setting down his political programme, "Revolution".

In fact, beyond all the fanciful interpretations, the term "Revolution" has historically expressed and entailed a violent change of political regime where the balance of power between social classes is overturned in favour of those representing progressive change in society. This was the case with the English Revolution of the 1640s and the French Revolution of 1789, both of which attacked the political power of the aristocracy in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Throughout the 19th century, the political advances of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the nobility represented progress for society. And this is because at that time the capitalist system was experiencing growing prosperity and setting out to conquer the world. However, this situation would change radically in the 20th century. The bourgeois powers had finished sharing out the world between them. Any new conquests, whether colonial or commercial, would involve challenging the claims of a rival power. This gave rise to the increase in militarism and the outbreak of imperialist tensions that led to the First World War. This was a sign that capitalism had become a decadent and obsolete system. The bourgeois revolutions were no longer relevant. The only revolution on the agenda was the one to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a new society free of exploitation and war, i.e. communism. The only subject of this revolution is the class of wage earners that produces most of the world's social wealth, the proletariat.

There are fundamental differences between bourgeois revolutions and the proletarian revolution. A bourgeois revolution, i.e. the seizure of political power by the representatives of a country's bourgeois class, is the outcome to a whole historical period during which the bourgeoisie has acquired a decisive influence in the economic sphere through the development of trade and techniques of production. The political revolution, the abolition of the privileges of the nobility, constitutes an important (although not indispensable) step in the growing control by the bourgeoisie over society, which enables it to achieve and accelerate this process of control.

The proletarian revolution does not in any sense emerge at the end of a process of economic transformation of society, but on the contrary is active from the very start. The bourgeoisie had been able to establish its own economic “islands” within feudal society, with trade in the towns and other commercial networks, 'islands' that gradually would grow and be consolidated. It's nothing like this for the proletariat. There can be no islands of communism in a global economy dominated by capitalism and market forces. This was the dream of the utopian socialists such as Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen. But, despite all their goodwill and their often profound analyses of the contradictions of capitalism, their dreams clashed with and were shattered by the reality of capitalist society. The fact is that the first stage of the communist revolution consists in the seizure of political power by the proletariat worldwide. It is only through its political power that the revolutionary class will be able to gradually transform the global economy by socialising it, by abolishing private ownership of the means of production along with market relations.

There are two other basic differences between bourgeois revolutions and the proletarian revolution:

 - Firstly, while bourgeois revolutions have taken place at different times depending on the economic development of each particular country (there is more than a century between the English and French revolutions), the proletarian revolution must be concluded within the confines of the same historical period. Should it remain isolated within a single country or within a few countries, it would be condemned to defeat. This is what happened to the Russian revolution of 1917.

 - Secondly, bourgeois revolutions, even extremely violent ones, still retained most of the state apparatus of feudal society (the army, police, legal system and bureaucracy). In fact, the bourgeois revolutions took charge of modernising and perfecting the existing state apparatus. This was possible and necessary since this type of revolution provided for a process of succession between the two exploiting classes, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, to the helm of society. The proletarian revolution is completely different. In no way can the proletariat, the exploited class at the heart of capitalist society, use the state apparatus designed and organised to guarantee this exploitation, and to suppress the struggles against this exploitation, for its own benefit. The first of the tasks of the proletariat in the course of the revolution will be to arm itself in order to destroy the state apparatus from top to bottom and to set up its own organs of power based on its mass unitary organisations with elected delegates revocable by general assemblies: the workers' councils.

1936: a revolution in Spain?

On July 18, 1936, following a military coup against the Popular Front government, the proletariat took up arms. It was successful in defeating the criminal enterprise led by Franco and his associates inside most major cities. But did it then take advantage of this situation, of its position of strength, to attack the bourgeois state? A bourgeois state which, since the establishment of the Republic in 1931, had already distinguished itself in the bloody repression of the working class, particularly in the Asturias in 1934 where 3,000 were killed. The answer is 'absolutely not!'

For sure the workers' response was initially a class action, preventing the coup from succeeding. But, unfortunately, the workers' energy was quickly channelled and ideologically recuperated behind the state banner by the mystifying force of the Popular Front's "antifascism". Far from attacking and destroying the bourgeois state, as was the case in October 1917 in Russia, the workers were diverted and recruited into defending the republican state. In this tragedy, the anarchist CNT, the most powerful trade union movement, played a leading role in disarming the workers, pushing them to abandon the terrain of the class struggle and capitulate, handing them over, with their hands and feet bound, into the arms of the bourgeois state. Instead of leading an attack on the state aimed at destroying it, as they have always claimed to want to do, the anarchists took charge of some of the ministries, stating, as Federica Montseny, anarchist minister of the republican government did:

"Today, the government, with the power to control the state organs, has ceased to be an instrument of oppression against the working class, just as the state no longer acts as an organism that divides society into classes. Both will oppress the people much less now that members of the CNT are involved in them”. The anarchists, who claim to be the state's "worst enemies", were thus able, using this type of rhetoric, to lead the Spanish workers into a pure and simple defence of the democratic state. The working class was diverted from its own political goals into supporting the "democratic" faction of the bourgeoisie against the "fascist" faction. This reflects the full extent of the political, moral, and historical bankruptcy of anarchism. Where it was politically dominant in the Iberian peninsula, anarchism showed its total inability to defend class politics, to stand up for working class emancipation. The class was simply led to defend the democratic bourgeoisie and the capitalist state. But the bankruptcy of anarchism did not stop there. By pretending it could lead the revolution on the basis of local actions that gave rise to the "collectives" of 1936, it actually rendered a proud service to the bourgeois state;

 - on the one hand, it made possible the reorganisation of the Spanish economy in the interest of the war effort of the republican state, i.e. it supported representatives of the democratic bourgeoisie, against the "fascist" faction of the same bourgeoisie;

 - on the other hand, it diverted the proletariat away from taking a generalised political action and into taking direct charge of the management of the factories and plants. This also benefitted the State and therefore the bourgeoisie. The workers were recruited into the "collectives" to deal with day-to-day production, into abandoning a global political activity and all concern for the real needs of the working class in favour of managing local enterprises, leaving them with no contacts between them.

While the proletariat was master of the streets in July 1936, in less than one year it was displaced by the coalition of republican political forces. On May 3, 1937, it made one last attempt to challenge this situation. On that day, the "Assault Guards", police units of the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia - in fact they were tools of the Stalinists who had gained control over them - tried to occupy the Barcelona telephone exchange that was in the hands of the CNT. The most combative part of the proletariat responded to this provocation by taking control of the streets, erecting barricades and going on strike; an almost general strike. The proletariat was fully mobilised and certainly had weapons, but it didn't have a clear perspective. The democratic state had remained intact. It was still on the offensive, contrary to what the anarchists had said, and had in no way given up plans to suppress attempts at resistance by the proletariat. While Franco's troops voluntarily brought an end to the offensive at the Front, the Stalinists and the republican government crushed the very workers who, in July 1936, had defeated the fascist coup d'état. It was at this moment that Federica Montseny, the most prominent anarchist minister, called on the workers to stop fighting and to lay down their arms! So it was a real stab in the back for the working class, a real betrayal and a crushing defeat. This is what the magazine Bilan, publication of the Italian Communist Left, wrote on this occasion: "On July 19, 1936, the proletarians of Barcelona overpowered the attack of Franco's battalions THAT WERE ARMED TO THE TEETH USING THEIR BARE HANDS. On May 4, 1937, these same proletarians, NOW DISARMED,  left behind them many more fallen victims on the streets than in July when they had had to repel Franco; and now it was the antifascist government (even including the anarchists, to which the POUM indirectly gave solidarity) that unleashed the scum of the repressive forces against the workers".

In the widescale repression that followed the defeat of the May 1937 uprising, the Stalinists were actively engaged in the work of physically removing any "troublesome individuals". This was what happened, for example, to the Italian anarchist activist, Camilo Berneri, who had had the lucidity and courage to make a damning criticism of the CNT's policy and the action of the anarchist ministers in an "Open Letter to Comrade Federica Montseny".

To claim that what happened in Spain in 1936 was a revolution that was "superior" to the one that took place in Russia in 1917, as the anarchists do, not only totally turns its back on reality, but constitutes a major attack on the consciousness of the proletariat by discarding and rejecting the most precious experiences of the Russian revolution: in particular those of the workers' councils (the Soviets), the destruction of the bourgeois state, the appeals to proletarian internationalism and the fact that this revolution was conceived as the first stage of world revolution and gave an impetus to the constitution of the Communist International. Despite the anarchists’ assertions to the contrary, proletarian internationalism was proven to be quite alien to the majority of the anarchist movement, as we will see later.

The Spanish Civil war, a preparation for the Second World War

The first thing that confirms our view that the Spanish Civil War was only a prelude to the Second World War and not a social revolution, is the very nature of the fighting between different fractions of the bourgeois state, republicans and fascists, and that between nations. The CNT's nationalism led it to call explicitly for the world war to save the "Spanish nation": "Free Spain will do its duty. In the face of this heroic attitude, what will the democracies do? It is to be hoped that the inevitable will not be long in coming. Germany's provocative and blunt attitude is already unbearable. (...) Everyone knows that, ultimately, the democracies will have to intervene with their air squadrons and armies to block the passage of these hordes of fanatics..." (Solidaridad Obrera, CNT newspaper, 6 January 1937, quoted by Proletarian Revolution No. 238, January 1937). The two battling bourgeois factions immediately sought outside support: not only was there a massive military intervention by fascist states that delivered air support and modern army weapons to the Francoists, but the USSR was also involved in the conflict, supplying arms and "military advisors". There was enormous political and media support, all over the world, for one bourgeois camp or the other. By contrast, no great capitalist nation had supported the Russian Revolution in 1917! Quite the opposite: they had all done what they could to isolate it and fought against it militarily, trying to drown it in blood.

One of the most spectacular illustrations of the role of the war in Spain in preparing the ground for the Second World War was the attitude of many anarchist militants towards it. Thus, many of them became involved in the Resistance, i.e. the organisation representing the Anglo-American imperialist camp on French soil that was occupied by Germany. Some even joined the regular French army, notably the Foreign Legion or General Leclerc's Second Armoured Division; this same Leclerc would later be actively involved in the colonial war in Indochina. Thus, the first tanks that entered Paris on 24 August 1944 were driven by Spanish soldiers and sported the portrait of Durruti, an anarchist leader and commander of the famous "Durruti column", who himself died outside Madrid in November 1936.

All those who, while claiming to be part of the proletarian revolution, took up the cause of the Republic, of the "democratic camp", generally did so in the name of the "lesser evil" and against the "fascist danger". The anarchists promoted this democratic ideology in the name of their "anti-authoritarian" principles. According to them, even if they admit that "democracy" is one of the expressions of capital, it still constitutes a "lesser evil" for them compared to fascism because, it is obviously less authoritarian. That's total blindness! Democracy is not a "lesser evil". On the contrary! It is precisely because it is capable of creating more illusions than the fascist or authoritarian regimes, that it constitutes a weapon of choice of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

Moreover, democracy is not to be underestimated when it comes to suppressing the working class. It was the "democrats", and even the "Social Democrats", Ebert and Noske, who had Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg murdered, along with thousands of workers, during the German revolution in 1919, bringing to a halt the extension of the world revolution. Where the Second World War is concerned, the atrocities committed by the "fascist camp" are well known and documented, but the contribution of the "democratic camp" cannot be forgotten: it was not Hitler who dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations, it was the "democrat" Truman, the president of the great "democracy" of the United States.

And in looking back at the Spanish Civil War, we should remember the welcome that the French Republic, the champion of "human rights" and "Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité", gave to the 400,000 refugees who fled Spain in the winter of 1939 at the end of the civil war. Most of them were housed in concentration camps like cattle surrounded by barbed wire, under the armed guard of the gendarmes of French democracy.

The proletariat must learn the lessons of the Spanish War:

- Unlike those who want to bury the proletariat and seek to discredit its struggle, those who think that the tradition of the Communist Left is "obsolete" or "old fashioned", that we should free ourselves from the revolutionary past of the proletariat, that Spain was a "superior" revolutionary experience and that finally we should forget the past and "try something different", we affirm that the workers' struggle remains the only way forward for the future of humanity. Therefore it is essential that we defend the working class's legacy and its traditions of struggle, in particular the need for class autonomy in fighting uncompromisingly for its own interests, on its own class terrain, with its own methods of struggle and its own principles.

- A proletarian revolution is not at all the same as the "antifascist" struggle or the events in Spain in the 1930s. Quite the contrary, it has to situate itself on the political terrain of the conscious workers' struggle, based on the political force of the workers' councils. The proletariat must maintain its self-organisation and its political independence from all factions of the bourgeoisie and from all ideologies that are alien to it. This is what the proletariat in Spain was unable to do since, quite the contrary, it bound itself, and therefore surrendered, to the left-wing forces of capital!

- The Spanish Civil War also shows that it is not possible to begin "building a new society" through local initiatives at the economic level, as anarchists choose to believe. Revolutionary class struggle is first and foremost an international political movement and not limited to preliminary economic reforms or measures (even through seemingly very radical "experiments"). The first task of the proletarian revolution, as the Russian Revolution has shown us, must be a political one: the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of power by the working class on an international scale. Without this, it is inevitably doomed to isolation and defeat.

- Finally, democratic ideology is the most dangerous of all those promoted by the class enemy. It is the most pernicious, the one that makes the capitalist wolf look like a protective lamb and "sympathetic" to the workers. Antifascism was therefore the perfect weapon in Spain and elsewhere used by the Popular Fronts to send workers to be massacred in the imperialist war. The State and its "democracy", as a hypocritical and pernicious expression of capital, remains our enemy. The democratic myth is not only a mask of the state and the bourgeoisie to hide its dictatorship, its social domination and exploitation, but also and above all, the most powerful and difficult obstacle for the proletariat to overcome. The events of 1936/37 in Spain amply demonstrate this and it is one of their most important lessons.

ICC, June 2019

The following article was written before many of the most recent twists in the continuing Brexit drama, such as the confirmation of the prorogation of parliament, the bill designed to prevent a No Deal Brexit, Boris Johnson’s attempt to have a general election, and the expulsion of 21 moderate Tory MPs from the party. Events have confirmed that the “situation is a clear expression of the fragmentation resulting from the present phase of capitalist decline”. The fact that the opponents of a No Deal Brexit have made advances in parliament shows that the Brexiteers do not have things all their own way. But defeats in parliament for Prime Minister Johnson do not mean the cause of Brexit is lost, especially if the threats to break the law by Johnson and Gove are followed up in practice.

It is possible to see other expressions of the rally of moderates elsewhere. In Italy, for example, when Matteo Salvini’s League withdrew from the government, instead of being a step towards a Salvini takeover, it led to a coalition between the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party. This might only be a short-lived interlude, but it does show that the battle between the factions of the ruling class is not a one-way street toward populism and the extremes.

However, the underlying problem is still there for the bourgeoisie. The loss of control of the political apparatus, the escalation of the conflicts between different factions means the deepening of the political crisis, which will be further worsened by the development of the economic crisis.

The formation of a new government in London under Boris Johnson does not resolve the political crisis and the power struggle within the British ruling class which became a dominant factor in the political life of that country since the Brexit Referendum of June 2016. On the contrary: with the appointment by the Conservatives of Johnson as their new leader and Prime Minister, this crisis has reached a new stage, the power struggle a new degree of intensity. The new phase of this power struggle is not in the first instance one between Johnson and his so called moderate inner party opponents, or between Johnson and the Labour opposition, or between the PM and the staunchly Remainer first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon. As the London Sunday paper The Observer and the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung both concluded, the opponent Johnson and the Tories are mainly trying to counteract is Mr. Brexit himself: Nigel Farage. The calculation (or the gamble) of Johnson is to ‘deliver Brexit’ by October 31, with or without a deal (as Johnson puts it, ‘do or die’) and if possible without calling a General Election beforehand. Otherwise he risks being obliged to form a coalition government with the new Brexit Party of Farage in order to deliver his Brexit. Farage, the reckless outsider of British politics, would thus gain a direct say on government policy (something the established so-called elites want to avoid). On the other hand, should he be prevented by the present parliament to deliver his Brexit on time as promised, this would be likely to give considerable additional momentum to the political career and ambitions of Farage. The problem for Johnson about this (at the time of writing) is that it is not sure that the present parliament would accept whatever deal (or no deal) Johnson presents to it. It would also be possible for the Prime Minister to sidetrack parliament (for example by temporarily suspending it). But some of his opponents in Westminster have already declared they would consider such a procedure to be a coup d‘État, a veritable Putsch. In a word: The mess is becoming a quagmire. This situation is a clear expression of the fragmentation resulting from the present phase of capitalist decline, of each for himself, at every level: economic, military, social, political. The actors in this process, while not being passive, are largely determined by it.

The political situation (which, for the moment, is much worse than the economic one) is going from bad to worse. The creeping paralysis of the past three years threatens to get out of hand. In this context, it should be noted that, if the new PM is putting all his bets on a quick Brexit at all costs, this is not because he thinks this course of action is necessarily in the best interest of British capitalism. In fact it is well known that Johnson was not particularly convinced of the benefits of Brexit at the time of the referendum, that he reacted with surprise and some dismay to the result. His main motive for supporting the Leave camp seems to have been his ambition to build up his own power base in the Conservative Party in order to challenge the party leader and PM of the time, David Cameron. Caught on the wrong foot by the victory of the Leave camp at the referendum, he soon realised that the putting into practise of this verdict would prove to be a thankless task. He thus momentarily withdrew (or rather: postponed) his bid for party leadership, preferring to leave the dirty work to someone like Theresa May. The main concern of Johnson, therefore, seems in reality not to have been Brexit, but his own political career. The fact that today, three years on, he has successfully bidden for party and state leadership, tells us something about the changes in the balance of forces within the ruling class which have taken place since 2016. At the time the Referendum was called, the two opposing camps were clearly drawn up, each behind their respective leader: Cameron and Farage. Farage was an upstart, operating outside the established party-political apparatus. Cameron, as opposed to this, was not only Prime Minister, he had the support of a majority of the Powers That Be both within his own Tory party and in Labour (the main opposition party) as well as that of the even more firm Remainers from the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists. Initially, the outcome seemed almost a foregone conclusion. But the more the campaign of Farage’s UKIP gathered momentum, the more Tories (including Johnson) began to join in with the Brexiteers. For the most part, this was probably not because they had been convinced by UKIP’s arguments. Not that they did not share the latter’s resentment against Europe for having made the country turn its back on its former Empire. But their main motivation seems to have been a tactical one: that of taking the wind out of the sails of Farage in order to sidetrack him.

But the Tories miscalculated.

The Remainers lost.

And this, in turn, altered the balance of forces within British bourgeois politics. It will suffice to recall that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ Theresa May, who became the successor to Cameron, had originally been a Remainer, as had been many of those who today present themselves as hard-line Brexiteers within the Conservative Party. Indeed the remaining clear cut, Cameron-style Remainers in the Tory Party (‘grandees’ like Heseltine, or current MPs such as Dominic Grieve) are currently having a hard time. As of now, the Brexiteers have more or less taken over the Party, and above all they have taken over the government. One of the architects of the Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings, has become chief advisor to the government.

The situation transformed by the referendum result

Before the Referendum, the choice was between leaving or remaining in the European Union. As long as this was the case, a majority within the ruling class clearly favoured the latter option. But after the Referendum this choice was no longer on the table. Theoretically, of course, it could still be attempted to hold a second referendum with the aim of winning a majority for Remain. But such a manoeuvre would be difficult. It is by no means certain that the outcome would be any different from the first time round. And such an attempt would even be dangerous. It would risk deepening the already existing divisions around the Brexit issue, including those within the ruling class itself. This is why this option is at present not much favoured among its representatives. So today, the momentum is heading towards a no-deal Brexit, although, as shown in the European parliament elections, there is a polarisation between no-deal and no Brexit. Theresa May spent most of her premiership trying to persuade the ‘political class’ that her Brexit with a deal should be accepted as the lesser evil. Without success. From the point of view of the ruling class, May’s deal is certainly a much less attractive option than remaining in the EU had been. The lesser evil? For many of the country’s ‘policy makers’ and ‘opinion makers’ it is not really an option at all. They see it as amounting to the UK still by and large having to follow EU policy on many issues, but no longer having a say in formulating them.

This dilemma has caused a growing disorientation within sizeable parts of the state apparatus. One of the products of this mess has been the development of a whole swathe of what we might call waverers. Their state of mind is brought to light by the rhetorical and voting behaviour of a number of members of parliament: MPs who either advocate one thing today and the opposite tomorrow, or who have no idea how to position themselves, and who apparently would prefer not to do so for as long as possible. Impossible to know in advance which side they might take in the end.

Another result has been the crystallisation, within the Conservative Party, of a growing axis of real hardline Brexiteers. ‘Real’ in the sense that they advocate a no-deal Brexit, not out of career opportunism or tactical considerations, but because they really agree with Nigel Farage. This hard core regroups around figures like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who argues that a no-deal Brexit is the best thing which could possibly happen. This group undoubtedly played a leading role in the downfall of May (after repeatedly sabotaging her different attempts to get her deal accepted) and her replacement by Johnson. Although possibly still a minority within the party, it has the advantage over the other Tories right now of knowing exactly what it wants. And indeed, its internal party opponents are at present pushed very much onto the defensive, their radius of action restricted by the fear that their time-honoured Conservative Party is in existential danger. Their fear is that the hard-liners, if they do not get their way, might rebel and, by one means or another, join up with Farage. Possible scenarios: a split in the party, or its ‘hi-jacking’ along the lines of what Trump has done with the Republican Party in the United States.

Populism and the manipulation of social discontent

One thing at least emerges clearly, which is that the established so-called elite has underestimated the factor of political populism in general, and the role of Farage in particular. We can readily agree that the term ‘populism’ is not very precise and in need of further elaboration. This notwithstanding, the term ‘populism’ itself already contains an important kernel of truth, as the present example of Britain clearly illustrates. One of the main reasons for the success of Farage has been that he knows how to mobilise popular discontent, stoke up diffuse resentments, and manipulate widespread prejudices, in order to counter the propaganda of the leading factions of his own capitalist class. Britain was far from being the only European country where the ruling class, whenever it could, blamed the effects of its attacks against its ‘own’ working population on ‘Brussels’. But in Britain, this ploy was used consistently over such a long time, with an intensity, and to a degree of hysteria, almost unparalleled anywhere else. Moreover, this policy reached a new crescendo at the beginning of the new century, when a number of Eastern European countries joined the European Union. Part of the deal accompanying their integration was that the already existing member states were allowed to restrict the influx of labour from the East during a transitional phase of up to eight years. The concern behind this was to ensure that the downward pressure on wages in Western Europe which the competition from the east on the labour market was going to exert could be phased in, in order to avoid a too-sudden exacerbation of social tensions. Only three countries renounced the use of this transitional mechanism: Sweden, Ireland and… the United Kingdom. In the case of the latter, the main motive was not hard to detect. Whole sectors of British industry were losing out to a German competition which was benefiting, among other things, from radically lowered wages thanks to the (in)famous ‘Agenda 2010’ austerity policy put in place there under the Social Democratic/Green government of Gerhard Schröder. In face of this, an enormous influx of cheap Eastern European labour was exactly what British capitalism needed in order to counteract this German offensive. And at the level of labour market policy, the measure was a complete success. Many workers in Britain lost their jobs, replaced by imported ‘EU citizens’ in a more or less desperate economic situation, and as such obliged to work more for less. Not only were the latter correspondingly ‘highly motivated’ (as the capitalist euphemism likes to put it), many of them were also highly qualified. This policy did not only help to lower real wages. It had a series of additional drastic consequences at the social level, best described under the term: capitalist anarchy. Almost no preparations had been made for such an influx of hundreds of thousands of new inhabitants. The already acute situation at the level of housing, health care and public services like transport and health, was brought to the brink of collapse. And this not only in the Greater London area, but also in regions which until then had been much less a destination of European Union labour migration. An example of the mood reigning at the time was the announcement by the National Health Service in the London area that it was contemplating ceasing to train nurses, since more than enough already trained ones from abroad were now pouring in.

But that is not all. More or less with a single voice, the UK government and the allegedly so democratic and pluralistic media presented this influx as something being imposed on the country by the EU, which London could do nothing about: a good example of ‘fake news’! So when Cameron made his capital blunder of calling his referendum about the continuation or not of Britain´s EU membership, Farage knew exactly what he was doing when he made ‘taking back control of our frontiers’ a lynchpin of his Brexit strategy. In so doing he was able to kill two birds with one stone: directing popular frustration against his own bourgeois rivals, and at the same time turning worker against worker and thus undermining working class solidarity. The only difference, at this level, to his populist counterparts in Europe such as Salvini in Italy or the AfD in Germany is that he mobilised against European Union migrants more than against refugees.

A transatlantic cooperation against the European union

But there is also a second means which enabled Farage to take his political opponents by surprise. This was the support he obtained from powerful bourgeois factions outside the UK. Much has been said about the role of Russia in the Brexit campaign. It is evident that Moscow had an interest in the UKIP side winning the Referendum, and probably did everything in its power in favour of it. However, it is nothing new that the British ruling class likes to blame everything and anything on Russia, and in fact has a vested interest in exaggerating its role. No, the foreign aid we are referring to here is that coming from the other side of the Atlantic. It’s not for nothing that the US media have started to refer to the Brexit Referendum as having been a kind of dress rehearsal for Trump’s victory at the 2016 American presidential elections. Both were, to an important degree, taken in hand by the same structures such as the (now defunct) electoral algorithms of the Cambridge Analytica firm owned by the American mathematician and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, or the media empire of the Australian Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch.

There is a long tradition of close collaboration between leading factions of the British and American bourgeoisie, including on economic questions. Famous (or infamous) is the leading role in the establishment of the ‘neo-liberal’ world economic order played by the combined efforts of Margaret Thatcher (GB) and Ronald Reagan (US). More recently, in face precisely of the Brexit Referendum, Barack Obama tried to come to the rescue of David Cameron by throwing in his own political weight and rhetorical skills in his favour. But on this occasion (perhaps the first time ever on such a scale), the ‘official’ support of the Obama administration for the British government was counteracted by a second, ‘unofficial’ transatlantic collaboration: that of the future ‘Trumpists’ for the Brexiteers. The latter collaboration was motivated by a shared conviction that, in the present historic phase, ‘multilateralism’, whether in the form of the European Union or, for example, of the Chinese One Road One Belt Initiative are increasingly likely to be used as battering rams against the interests of the remaining world power, the United States, but also against those of the former world leader, the United Kingdom. Above all, they suspect structures such as the European Union of being prone to manipulation by potential challengers such as China and Germany. The two latter powers in particular are seen in London and Washington as profiting from the single EU market to spread their influence throughout continental Europe. According to this point of view, held by Trump and others, in a more fragmented world deprived of much of its previous ‘multi-lateral’ structure, the strongest power, the USA, would fare best, being in a better position to impose itself on the others. But according to the Brexiteers, the UK could also benefit from a more unilateral/bilateral (dis)order thanks to its historic experience, its longstanding world-wide connections and its status as a world financial power. In this context, the long-term goal of the hard-line Brexiteers cannot restrict itself to taking the UK out of the European Union. As has been pointed out again and again (already by Cameron during the Referendum campaign), in a world in which Britain coexists with, but is outside of the EU, London risks finding itself considerably at a disadvantage compared with the EU. This is why the hard-line Brexiteers cannot be satisfied with withdrawing the UK from the EU. Their final goal is to contribute to the demolition of the EU, at least in its present form. Brexit, in their eyes, is a first step in that direction.

It goes almost without saying that this policy is a gamble of the most hazardous kind. No wonder it was not at all what the traditional political establishment wanted. It is the objective world historical situation – the crumbling of the existing capitalist order – which lends this unlikely project a degree of plausibility.

The response of the European Union

It certainly did not go unnoticed in London how, in recent years, Germany has taken important steps towards affirming its leadership ambitions within the European Union. It has in particular used economic means to that end. It has largely succeeded in converting Eastern Europe into a kind of extended assembly line of Western European, but above all of German industry. And it has profited from its key role as guarantor for the Euro (the currency shared by a majority of EU member states) to at least partly impose its economic policies on Southern Europe. These measures helped, at least for a while, to counter the centrifugal tendencies within the European Union. However, the past few years have witnessed a series of developments threatening this cohesion. As we have discussed in this article, both Brexit and the policy of Trump in the United States at least partly represent an attack against the EU. But also within the European Union itself, in continental Europe, the already fragile cohesion has been more and more strained by developments such as the rise of populism (which in general tends to be more or less hostile towards ‘Brussels’) or the growing discontent of other member states with German economic policy (including the two heavyweights France and – in particular – Italy).

The interaction of these different tendencies and counter-tendencies is complicated and always good for surprises. Indeed, the 27 Remainer EU states have surprised themselves by how well they have succeeded so far in closing ranks in the Brexit negotiations, resisting, up until now, all the attempts of London to divide them against each other. Indeed, the very global turbulences of which Brexit is a part, and in particular the explosion of trade wars centred around, but not restricted, to the big two USA and China, have reminded the Remainers of the benefits of being part of a commercial bloc which is a real heavy weight on the world economic scene. This goes all the more so for the smaller EU member countries who, in addition, are devoid of the economic and political advantages which the British bourgeoisie can at least place its hopes on. There is also the fact that a number of populist governments have been made to consider how difficult leaving the EU can be because of the example of Britain – hence the EU’s uncompromising stance on the question. Another factor of the present resilience of the EU has been the concern of many of its member states about the successes of Russia in recent years. Germany, which does not dispose of the military might which would be needed to impose itself on the European continent, and is thus obliged to employ elements of collaboration and the search for common denominators in its attempt to develop its leadership, has responded to this by developing a foreign policy increasingly hostile towards Russia (with whom it could also have common interests). In the process, it is trying to get the celebrated Franco-German ‘motor’ going again, and to improve its strained relations with Poland.

It is evident that the evolution of the political crisis in London will be influenced by events not only in Europe but also in the United States. The radical Brexiteers (the likes of Farage, Cummings, Rees-Mogg) have little choice but to pin their hopes on the re-election of Trump 2020. But what if he isn´t re-elected? And even if he is, can the Brexiteers be sure that the man in the Oval Office might end up thinking that the break-up, not only of the EU, but also the UK might be in US interests?

Capitalism has always been, in a sense, a casino game, a gambling den, and London is one of its centres. Today, in the phase of capitalist decomposition, this is more than ever the case. A reckless game at the expense of the well-being and the future of humanity. When does this roulette game become a form of ‘Russian Roulette’? We will not even attempt to predict the outcome of the Brexit Game. Except that it will certainly not be to the benefit of the working class either in Britain or anywhere else in the world.

Steinklopfer. 06/08/2019.

In the past month hundreds of thousands, even millions of the inhabitants of Hong Kong have engulfed the streets and squares in protest against an amendment to the Extradition Law [1], proposed by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam. The amendment would make it possible to extradite Hong Kong citizens to the mainland of China. The biggest rally against this amendment took place on 16 June, when nearly two million people gathered in a street protest.

The first protests in June were made possible by “The Civil Human Rights Front” (a coalition of more than fifty bourgeois organisations). This organisation was instrumental in making the June 9 and the June 12 rallies happen by getting the licenses to march and assemble. But the massive scale of the mobilizations was made possible via social media: people have organised their own initiatives, mainly through Facebook, Telegram groups, and the online forum lihkg.

Already on 31 March, an initial protest had taken place. A second demonstration was held on 28 April, attracting more than 100,000 protesters. Thereafter the movement gathered momentum, peaking during three different rallies on 9 and 12 and 21 June 2019, when millions of people entered into the street. On Monday 1 July, as Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of its 1997 handover, the annual pro-democracy march still claimed a record turnout of half a million. [2]

The Hong Kong protests were not only aimed at the extradition law but, behind this, also at the growing attempts of the Chinese Stalinist regime to gain a more rigorous control over this former British colony. In order to understand these attempts of the Chinese state we must return to certain aspects of the past and the present of China. For China is passing through a more dangerous phase, given the developing economic crisis in China and elsewhere and the sharpening of the imperialist tensions.

The aggravation of China’s internal contradictions

Just as any other state in decadence of capitalism the Chinese state is weighed down by growing contradictions. China is a typical example of state capitalism that "takes on its most complete form where capitalism is subjected to the most brutal contra­dictions, and where the classical bourgeoisie is at its weakest." (International Review no. 34) Such a rigid political system is incompatible with any legal democratic opposition.

The regime in China cannot tolerate such oppositional forces without profoundly endangering itself. The Hong Kong movements of the last month have confronted the Beijing government one more time with the spectre of democracy.

In 1997 Hong Kong became an administrative region of China. Under the “one country, two systems” framework, the Chinese government guaranteed Hong Kong the right to retain its own social, legal and political systems for 50 years, until 2047.

But the existence of a semi-independent territory, in which anyone who is opposed to Beijing can find sanctuary, is like a tumor on the body of the Chinese state. Here the policy of “one country, two systems” shows its limits, being in fundamental contradiction with one-party rule. The “dual” system is prey to steady erosion, but the Chinese state cannot risk a second Tiananmen.

Centrifugal tendencies in China

In the period of decomposition, as the result of a stalemate in the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the tendency towards each for himself increases dramatically and centrifugal forces tear apart nation states. The most obvious example was of course the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union. But China is not spared from this centrifugal dynamic either. The resistance against the control of Beijing and the call for autonomy in the periphery continues and even seems to have become stronger in the recent years: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Macao, etc.

After the fall of the Quing Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, China fell apart into smaller political and territorial units. For a few decades, the country was fragmented and ruled over by competing warlords. When the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, it more or less re-established national unity. And if there is one thing the Stalinist Party cannot tolerate, then it is the call for autonomy by peripheral regions.

Before Xi Jinping took office in 2012 all 56 ethnic groups located in China had an equal status and could practice their own cultures and customs. But since then the “us against them” dichotomy, defined by antagonism and pointing at scapegoats, has gained strength in China. Even Taiwan has been not been spared. In January 2019 the Chinese President openly threatened Taiwan with annexation if this country did not yield and unite with the People’s Republic.

The deterioration of Chinese economy

China has also great problems on the economic level. Its actual growth is officially at 6.4 percent. But with a growing population and internal mobility of tens of millions who move from the countryside to the cities every year looking for a job, this figure is more a sign of a stagnant, even worsening economy.

Trump's trade war is also having a serious effect on the Chinese economy.  In February 2019, China's exports showed the strongest decline in three years. Exports fell by 20.7 percent compared to the previous year, despite the government's huge stimulus measures. In 2018, a dramatic year for stock exchanges, the biggest losers could be found in China. The Shanghai Stock Exchange fell by 24.9 percent and the Dow Jones China by 24.7 percent.

In 2013 China launched a geo-strategic project of its own which, it hopes, will counter the worst effect of the crisis: the “New Silk Road”. But now China is even starting to have problems with its allies that joined this project in recent years. Several of these countries (Malaysia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, etc.) are indebted at levels that are no longer sustainable.

The increased repression in all regions of the country.

Given the fact that the China state, by its very nature, is unable to tolerate democratic opposition it has to resort to repression in the face of any discontent. And with the growth of the centrifugal forces and the threat of social unrest, this repression over society has only increased. What we are witnessing is China at this moment is a kind of organised terror with the main aim to create a climate of fear. [3]

Beijing has increasingly deployed mass surveillance systems to tighten control over society. It collects, on a massive scale, biometrics including DNA and voice samples for automated surveillance purposes; developed a nationwide reward and punishment system known as the “social credit system”; and developed and applied “big data” policing programs aimed at preventing dissident voices.

The Chinese government has applied sweeping repression in different regions, in particular Xinjiang, home of the Muslim Uighur population. Since 2016, Chinese authorities have stepped up mass detention centers and prisons in this region. Outside these detention facilities the residents of Xinjiang are subjected to extraordinary restrictions on personal life: if they want to travel from one town or another, they have to apply for permission and to go through several checkpoints.

Even Hong Kong does not lag behind in this respect and applies similar measures in curtailing civil and political freedom. The state repression of the past four years had led to 50 trials, in which several hundred political dissidents and activists have been targeted for arrests and selected prosecution with various allegations, while over one hundred of them have been sent to jail.

Beijing’s tightening control on Hong Kong

Since 1997 China's ruling Party has gradually been exerting more influence over Hong Kong. In the past twenty years it has regularly changed the rules in a sense that responds to the need of the Chinese ruling class to strengthen its grip on Hong Kong politics. Every decision it takes and every step it makes is aimed at gaining a better control over this city.

The first large-scale protest against the growing influence of the Stalinist Party took place in 2003. The implementation of Basic Law Article 23 made it possible to convict people for treason, separatist activities, subversion of state power, and theft of state secrets. The second large-scale protest was in 2014, the so-called “Umbrella Revolution”, against the unilateral decision by the Chinese regime to screen candidates for the leadership of Hong Kong. [4]

In 2017 Chinese imperialism upped the ante further. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the handover, the Chinese Foreign Ministry declared that the Sino-British Agreement, which guarantees independence of Hong Kong on political, juridical and economic matters until 2047, has become “a historical document, [which] no longer has any practical significance”.

The introduction of the new legislation (the amendment to the existing extradition bill), in February of this year, provoked a great concerns and anxiety among the citizens of Hong Kong about the increased risk to be sent to mainland China, where courts are under a rigorous control of the Stalinist state apparatus.

To understand why the protest took on such huge proportions we must keep in mind that nearly half of the population of Hong Kong consists of the second or the third generation who fled China. The moment the Maoist Party came into power, in 1949, millions of Chinese took flight. As many as 100,000 people fled to Hong Kong each month. By the mid-1950s, Hong Kong had increased its population from 500,000 to a staggering 2.2 million.

Therefore the proposal by the Hong Kong government, which puts inhabitants of Hong Kong at risk of deportation to China to stand trial in a despotic court system, really touched the nerve of millions of Hong Kong citizens. They know that, under the rule of the Stalinist Party, people certainly cannot expect due process, and will generally face false convictions. Like the Soviet Union in the 1930’s, China is well-known for its show trials against political opponents. [5]

Censorship and black-out of information

The traditional media are rigorously censored by the Chinese state. Above all since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China has launched an unprecedented crackdown on online freedom, submerging the internet in propaganda and punishing journalists who post messages that are detrimental to the system.

As the mass protests in Hong Kong might resonate across the border and trigger a chain reaction into the mainland of China, the Beijing regime ordered the Chinese censors to wipe out posts and photos from social media sites. Media outlets have been largely silenced, and as a result not many people in China know what has been happening in Hong Kong.

The mystification of democratic rights

No matter how massive they were and no matter how many workers participated in them, the street protests were not a manifestation of working class struggle. In Hong Kong the proletariat was not engaged in a struggle as an autonomous class. On the contrary: the workers of Hong Kong were completely overwhelmed by and drowned in a mass of citizens.

Many protesters were working class youngsters. But during the massive protests a large part of them fought for bourgeois demands and democratic rights. Even if we might salute the courage and the determination of the participants, the mass protests in Hong Kong are a great danger for the proletariat. Completely situated on the bourgeois terrain they cannot but reinforce the illusions in democracy. And the fact that the movement has gained a momentary victory – the amendment being suspended – only increased the illusions among the protesters in Hong Kong and its supporters around the world.

Leftist political organisations only reinforce these tendencies and illusions by encouraging the fight for democratic rights and freedom of speech. In the case of the protests in Hong Kong

• the socialists of “Alternative Socialiste” in Canada propagate for instance "the struggle for democratic rights and against the current authoritarian system, [of course] linked to the need to break down the power of the capitalists".
• the “International Committee of the Fourth International” (WSWS) emphasizes that “Reaching out to mainland Chinese is an important step in the struggle for democratic rights”.

Even if leftists connect the struggle for democratic rights with the struggle of the proletariat for “breaking down the power of the capitalists” (whatever that means),  for the proletariat the struggle for democracy remains a trap, only binding it still more to its capitalist exploiters. The real antagonism within capitalist society is not between the dictatorship and democracy, but between the exploiting ruling class and the exploited working class. The latter has nothing to gain by the participation in the movement for bourgeois democratic rights, no matter how massive it is.

The storming and ransacking of the parliament

We reject any slogan put forward by the capitalist left calling for self-determination, for a democratic worker-led government, etc.

The same goes for the intrusion into the Legco (Legislative Council) on Monday night 1 July. After having forced entry, hundreds of protesters swarmed into the parliament building, tearing down portraits of legislative leaders and spray-painting pro-democracy slogans on the walls of the main chamber.

We do not support such pseudo-radical actions. On the contrary: not a single object smashed in a parliament is sufficient to smash the illusions in the parliamentary system. By ransacking, by looting places, by burning buildings of the state we do not break down illusions in parliamentarism. Actions motivated by democratic ideology only serve the interests of the bourgeois state.

This was shown by the fact that the events were immediately used to put the entire protest movement in a bad light. Chinese state media broadcasted no footage of the massive “peaceful” protest, but it did of the “serious illegal actions”, by “Hong Kong separatists” in which “blind arrogance and rage” dominated.

The smashing of illusions in parliament and democracy can only come through the autonomous action of the working class, in defence of its own class demands. The only way to fight against the false system of parliamentary representation is to hold proletarian mass assemblies, animated by serious discussion about the methods and aims of the struggle.

The hypocrisy of the Western democracies

The western states have expressed their support for the people of Hong Kong in their defence of democratic rights and freedom of expression.

On Monday 10 June US State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, declared that “the United States shares the concern of many in Hong Kong that (…) the proposed amendments could undermine Hong Kong’s (…) human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic values”. On Monday 1 July the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that “it is imperative that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and the rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people are fully respected.”

But neither the United States nor the United Kingdom are any less hypocritical than China, and are far from being innocent regarding human rights violation as the following three examples clearly show.

(1) In China the western companies rely on the repression by the Chinese state to submit the Chinese workers to a system of extreme exploitation. 

Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers must travel thousands of miles to seek job opportunities, often sleeping at the workplace in basic accommodation and only visiting their family once a year and that for a wage that is less than one-tenth of the average monthly wage in America. “In colluding with the government, employers squeeze the maximum labour within the shortest time possible from the workers.” (The Post Multi-Fibre Arrangement era and the rise of China, Au Loong-Yu)

Another factor is the policy of disciplining and repressing of the workers by means of the so-called “household registration system”. This system “acts as a kind of social apartheid, which systemically discriminates against migrant workers, barring them from enjoying public provisions in the cities. Outside the factories and dormitories, they simply cannot survive in the cities. It is an effective way to force them to accept starvation wages, appalling working conditions, and forced overtime.” (Idem)

(2) On their own national territory the western states detain refugees in the most horrible circumstances themselves.

Britain’s network of immigration removal centres are a real humiliation for the 25,000 migrants who pass through each year: there is no rehabilitation, no criminal sentence, inadequate healthcare, very often no time limit on the loss of liberty and overcrowded cells. Many of those incarcerated say that the conditions are far worse than actual prison, as they are physically and verbally abused by staff members, and this includes sexual and racist violence.

In the United States the Homeland Security inspector has found “dangerous overcrowding” and unsanitary conditions at a detention centre in Texas, where hundreds more migrants were being housed than the center was designed to hold. The inspector said that the cells “smelled of what might have been unwashed bodies/body odour, urine, untreated diarrhea, and/or soiled clothing/diapers”, (“Crammed into cells and forced to drink from the toilet – this is how the US treats migrants”, The Guardian, 3 July 2019)

(3) Just like the Chinese government the western ‘democracies’ also use super-intelligent technology to spy on civilians.

In the United States the CIA, via sophisticated hacking tools and software, uses everyday devices - from the phone in your pocket to the television set in your bedroom - to gather information on civilians. “Internal CIA documents (…) indicated the spy agency had gained access to Android and Apple smartphones, Samsung Smart TVs and Internet-enabled cars using a variety of tools.” (“CIA Uses Smart Devices to Spy on Citizens, WikiLeaks Reveals”, Marissa Lang, San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2017)

“At least 100 aircraft are being used by US law enforcement to spy on citizens. These aircraft are equipped with advanced, very high-resolution imaging and video technology — specifically Sting Ray, the secretive bulk cellular phone-tracking technology, and likely infrared or other night-vision hardware. The FBI has placed its eyes across the skies of the nation to mass surveil the public and spy on protesters.” (“Mass Surveillance and ‘Smart Totalitarianism’”; Chris Spannos, ROAR Magazine, February 18, 2017)

The trap of the Western support for democratic rights

The Western democracies are completely indifferent regarding human rights and the well-being of the people around the world. The same goes for the people of Hong Kong, which once was the most successful colony of Britain in the world. But when China became the main focus and more lucrative for the United Kingdom, Hong Kong was disposed of, in full knowledge that it would come under the yoke of a Stalinist regime.

Trump's administration and other western governments are content to work and conduct lucrative trade with a multitude of odious dictatorships around the world, including China. At the same time they are ready to utilise the defence of democratic rights and autonomy by the Hong Kong people as useful propaganda in their trade war against the same Chinese regime.

The protesters in Hong Kong, by waving American and British flags, show that the struggle against the Stalinist dictatorship on the bourgeois terrain of the democratic freedom, only leads them to embrace democratic dictatorship. The mobilisation of Hong Kong citizens is being used, by the United States and Great Britain in particular, for their sordid imperialist interests in the geopolitical confrontation against China.

Dennis

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Notes

[1] Currently, Hong Kong is only obliged to extradite persons suspected of a crime on a case-by-case basis to 20 countries, under two main laws – the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance (FOO) and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance – which expressly exclude “any other parts of the People’s Republic of China”. In February 2019 the Hong Kong government proposed to pass an amendment to the law for transfers of persons suspected of a crime not only for Taiwan and Macau, but also for mainland China.

[2] In the weeks thereafter the mobilisation decreased: Sunday 7 July, protesters came into the street in a mobilization of 250,000 and again on 14 July in demonstration of 100,000 people. But they have become more violent, notably after the intervention of triad gangsters against the demonstrators and increased police use of tear gas and systematic beatings.

[3] In China, anyone seen as a threat to the CCP can be “disappeared”. Some are held in secret prisons, while some are placed in detention centers under false names. Family, lawyers, and even China's state prosecutors are denied access.

[4] See the article “Hong Kong's ‘Umbrella Revolution’: soaked by democratic ideology”; ICCOnline, October 2014

 [5] Many critics of Beijing rule, after being arrested, appear on CCTV, confessing to vague almost non-crimes, criticising themselves, or discrediting others. All this is symbolised by the 11-year prison sentence served on the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo for advocating democracy. He was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

One of the more popular banners on climate change protests reads: “System Change, not Climate Change”.

There is no question that the present system is dragging humanity towards an environmental catastrophe. The material evidence piles up every day: increasingly dangerous heatwaves, unprecedented wildfires in the Amazon, melting glaciers, floods, extinction of whole species – with the extinction of the human species as the ultimate result. And even if global warming were not happening, the soil, the air, the rivers and seas would continue to be poisoned and depleted of life.

No wonder that so many people, and above so many young people who face a menacing future, are deeply concerned about this situation and want to do something about it.

The wave of protests organised by Youth for Climate, Extinction Rebellion, the Green parties and the parties of the left are presented as a way forward. But those who are currently following their lead should ask themselves: why are these protests being so widely supported by those who manage and defend the present system? Why is Greta invited to speak to parliaments, governments, the United Nations?

Of course the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro or Farage constantly vilify Greta and the “eco-warriors”. They claim that climate change is a hoax and that measures to curb pollution are a threat to economic growth, above all in sectors like automobiles and fossil fuels. They are the unabashed defenders of capitalist profit.  But what about Merkel, Macron, Corbyn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others who have heaped praise on the climate protests: are they any less part of the present system?

Many of those taking part in the present protests would agree that the roots of ecological destruction lie in the system and that this is the capitalist system. But the organisations behind the protests, and the politicians who trumpet their hypocritical support for them, defend policies that hide the real nature of capitalism

Consider one of the main programmes the more radical among these politicians put forward: the so-called “New Green Deal”. It offers us a package of measures to be taken by the existing states, demanding massive capital investment to develop “non-polluting” industries that are supposed to be able to turn a decent profit. In other words: it’s framed entirely within the confines of the capitalist system. Like the New Deal of the 1930s, its aim is to save capitalism in its hour of need, not replace it.

What is the capitalist system?

Capitalism doesn’t disappear if it’s managed by state bureaucrats instead of private bosses, or if it paints itself green.

Capital is a world-wide relation between classes, based on the exploitation of wage labour and production for sale in order to realise profit. The constant search for outlets for its commodities calls forth ruthless competition between nation states for domination of the world market. And this competition demands that every national capital must expand or die. A capitalism that no longer seeks to penetrate the last corner of the planet and grow without limit cannot exist.  By the same token, capitalism is utterly incapable of cooperating on a global scale to respond to the ecological crisis, as the abject failure of all the various climate summits and protocols has already proved.

The hunt for profit, which has nothing to do with human need, is at the root of the despoliation of nature and this has been true since capitalism began. But capitalism has a history, and for the last hundred years it has ceased to be a factor for progress and has been plunged into a profound historic crisis. It is a civilisation in decay, as its economic base, forced to grow without limit, generates crises of overproduction that tend to become permanent.  And as the world wars and “Cold War” of the 20th century have demonstrated, this process of decline can only accelerate capital’s drive towards destruction. Even before the global massacre of nature became obvious, capitalism was already threatening to obliterate humanity through its incessant imperialist confrontations and wars, which are continuing today across a whole swathe of the planet from North Africa and the Middle East to Pakistan and India. Such conflicts can only be sharpened by the ecological crisis as nation states compete for dwindling resources, while the race to produce more and more nightmarish weapons – and above all, to use them - can only further pollute the planet. This unholy combination of capitalist devastation is already making parts of the planet uninhabitable and forcing millions to become refugees.

The necessity and possibility of communism

This system cannot overcome the economic crisis, the ecological crisis, or the drive towards war.

 It is therefore a deception to demand that the governments of the world “get their act together” and do something to save the planet - a demand put forward by all the groups organising the current marches and protests. The only hope for humanity lies in the destruction of the present system and the creation of a new form of society. We call this communism - a world-wide human community without nation states, without the exploitation of labour, without markets and money, where all production is planned on a global scale and with the sole motive of satisfying human need. It goes without saying that this society has nothing in common with the state-run form of capitalism we see in countries like China, North Korea or Cuba, or previously the Soviet Union.

Authentic communism is the only basis for establishing a new relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. And it’s not a utopia. It’s possible because capitalism has laid down its material foundations: the development of science and technology, which can be freed from their distortions under this system, and the global interdependence of all productive activity, which can be freed from capitalist competition and national antagonisms.

But above all it’s possible because capitalism is based on the formation of a class with nothing to lose but its chains, a class which has an interest both in resisting exploitation and overthrowing it: the international working class, the proletariat of all countries. This is a class which includes not only those who are exploited at work but also those studying to find a place in the labour market and those whom capital throws out of work and on to the scrap-heap.

 Citizens’ protests or workers’ struggle?

And it is here in particular that the ideology behind the climate marches serves to prevent us from grasping the means to fight against this system. It tells us, for example, that the world is in a mess because the “older generation” got used to consuming too much. But talking about generations “in general” obscures the fact that, yesterday and today, the problem lies with the division of society into two main classes, one, the capitalist class or bourgeoisie, which has all the power, and one far larger class which is exploited and deprived of all power of decision, even in the most “democratic” of countries. It’s the impersonal mechanisms of capital that have got us into the current mess, not the personal behaviour of individuals or the greed of a previous generation.

The same goes for all the talk about the “people” or the “citizens” as the force that can save the world. These are meaningless categories which cover up antagonistic class interests. The way out of a system which cannot exist without the exploitation of one class by another can only take place through the revival of the class struggle, which starts with workers defending their most basic interests against the attacks on living and working conditions inflicted by all governments and all bosses in response to the economic crisis – attacks which are also more and more being justified in the name of protecting the environment. This is the only basis for the working class developing a sense of its own existence against all the lies which tell us that it’s already an extinct species.  And it’s the only basis for the class struggle fusing the economic and political dimensions - drawing the link between economic crisis, war, and ecological disaster, and recognising that only a world-wide revolution can overcome them. 

This series has denounced the least visible part (the hidden face) of the organisations of the left and extreme-left of capital (Socialists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, official anarchism, the 'new' left of Syriza, France Insoumise, and Podemos). In the first article of the series we saw how these organisations negate a working class that they pretend to defend, in the second we unravelled their method and way of thinking. In this third article we want to analyse their functioning, the internal regimes of these parties and how their functioning is the very negation of all communist principles and constitutes an obstacle to any movement towards these principles.

The forces of Stalinism, Trotskyism, etc., have carried out a total falsification of proletarian positions in terms of their organisation and behaviour. For them, centralisation means submission to an all-powerful bureaucracy, and discipline is blind submission to a control commission. The majority position is the result of a power struggle. And debate, in the spirit of manipulation, is a weapon to overcome the position of rival gangs. And so we could continue ad nauseam.

It's possible that a proletarian militant inside a genuinely communist organisation could have a tendency to see its organisational positions and behaviour through the lenses of the grim times that they spent in one or other leftist organisation.

The discipline of the barracks of leftist organisations

When we talk to this hypothetical militant of the need for discipline, they remember the nightmare that they lived through when they were a member of an organisation of the bourgeois left.

In those organisations, 'discipline' means defending absurd things because 'the party demands it'. One day they have to say that a rival part was 'bourgeois' and the following week, according to political changes in the alliances of the leadership, this part is now the most proletarian in the world.

If the policy of the central committee is wrong it is solely the fault of the militants who have 'made an error' and 'have not correctly applied what the central committee had decided'. As Trotsky said: "Each resolution of the Executive Committee of the Communist International recording new defeats declared on one hand that everything had been planned and that, on the other hand, it's the fault of those who interpreted it because they hadn't understood the line given to them from above"[1].

Following these traumatic experiences, the militant who has been through these parties feels a visceral rejection of discipline, not understanding that proletarian discipline is something radically different and opposed to the discipline of the bourgeoisie.

In a proletarian organisation, 'discipline' means respecting all decisions and that everyone is engaged in reaching them. On the one hand it's being responsible and, on the other, it's the practical expression of the primacy of the collective over the individual - which doesn't, however, mean though that the individual and the collective confront one another but rather express different aspects of the same unity. Consequently, discipline in a revolutionary organisation is voluntary and conscious. This discipline is not blind but based upon a conviction and a perspective.

In a bourgeois organisation, on the contrary, discipline means submission to an all-powerful leadership and the renunciation of all responsibility by leaving it in the hands of what this leadership does or says. In a bourgeois organisation discipline is based on the opposition between the 'collective' and the individual. The 'collective' here is the interests of the national capital and its state that these organisations defend in their particular field, an interest which doesn't at all coincide with those of its members. That's why its discipline is imposed either by fear of public reprobation which could lead to expulsion; or, if it is voluntarily assumed, it is the fruit of a feeling of guilt or of a categorical imperative which provokes more or less periodic conflicts with the authentic interests of each individual.

The incomprehension of the radical difference which exists between proletarian and bourgeois discipline often leads some militants, who have been through the left or leftism and find themselves in a proletarian organisation, to fall into a vicious circle. Once they followed the orders of their superiors as sheep; now, in a proletarian organisation, they reject all discipline and only admit to one order: that dictated to by their own individuality. From the discipline of the barracks they oppose the discipline that everyone can do what they want, that's to say the anarchic discipline of individualism. It's to go round in circles, trapped between the ferocious and violent discipline of the parties of the bourgeoisie and individualist discipline (the discipline to "do what I want") characteristic of the petty-bourgeoisie and anarchism.

The bureaucratic centralisation of all bourgeois organisations

Centralisation is another concept which produces a reaction among militants who have been affected by the poison of the influence of the left.

They associate centralisation with:

- all-powerful tops to whom one must submit without complaint;

- a crushing pyramid of a bureaucracy and its control apparatus;

- a total renunciation of all personal initiative and thought, replaced by a blind obedience and tail-ending towards the leadership;

- decisions are not taken through discussion with the participation of all, but through the orders and manoeuvres of the leadership.

In fact, bourgeois centralisation is based on these concepts. That is due to the fact that within the bourgeoisie, unity only exists when faced with imperialist war or the proletariat; as for the rest there is an incessant conflict of interests between its different fractions.

To put some order into such a mess, the authority of a 'central organ' must be imposed by will or force. Bourgeois centralisation is thus necessarily bureaucratic and top down.

This general bureaucratisation of all the bourgeois parties and their institutions is even more indispensable in the 'workers'’ parties or the left who present themselves as defenders of the workers.

The bourgeoisie can submit to this iron discipline of the political apparatus because it enjoys a total and dictatorial power in its own enterprises.  However, in an organisation of the left or extreme-left, there's a carefully hidden antagonism between what is claimed officially and what really happens. In order to resolve this contradiction, it needs a bureaucracy and a vertical centralisation.

In order to understand the mechanisms of bourgeois centralisation practiced in the parties of the left of capital, we can look at Stalinism which was a real trailblazer. In his book, The Third International after Lenin, Trotsky analyses the methods of bourgeois centralisation practiced in the Communist parties.

He recalls how, in order to impose bourgeois policies, Stalinism "adopted a secret society with its illegal Central Committee (the septemvirat) with its circulars, secret agents and codes, etc. The party apparatus created within itself a closed and out of control order which had exceptional resources at its disposal not only for this apparatus but also of the state which transformed a party of the masses into an instrument charged with camouflaging all the manoeuvres and intrigues." (idem).

So as to wipe out the revolutionary attempts of the proletariat in China and to serve the interests of the Russian state's imperialist appetites in the years 1924 - 28, the Chinese Communist Party was organised from top to bottom, an illustration of which is given by the witness of the local committee of Kiangsu making the following reference: "(The Central Committee) launched accusations and said that the Provincial Committee was no good; which in its turn , accused the base organisations and said that the Regional Committee was bad. The latter began to make accusations and said that it was the comrades working on the spot who were at fault. And the comrades defended themselves saying that the masses were not revolutionary enough" (idem).

Bureaucratic centralisation imposes a careerist mentality on party members, where they submit to those above, and distrust and manipulate 'those below them'. It is a clear characteristic of all the parties of capitalism, of the left and the right, which follow the model that Trotsky saw in the Stalinist Communist parties and denounced in the 1920's: "it is formed of entire teams of young academics through manoeuvres which, though Bolshevik flexibility, understood the elasticity of their own backbone" (idem).

The consequences of these methods are that "the rising layers have been impregnated at the same time with a certain bourgeois spirit, a narrow egotism and small-minded calculations. One can see that they have the firm will to carve out a place for themselves without concerning themselves about others, a blind and spontaneous careerism. To get to this point, they all have to prove a capacity for unscrupulous adaption, a shameful and sycophantic attitude towards the powerful. It's what we see in every gesture, on every face in this respect. This was indicated in all the acts and speeches, generally full of crude revolutionary phraseology" [2].

Reclaiming the real meaning of the proletarian concepts of organisation

It is necessary to reclaim - by analysing them in a critical manner - all the concepts of organisation that the workers' movement has used before the enormous catastrophe which saw the first steps of the Socialist parties towards the capitalist state and later the transformation of the Communist parties into the Stalinist forces for capital.

The proletarian position on questions of organisation, even if they have the same name, have nothing to do with their falsified version. The proletarian movement has no need to invent new concepts because these concepts belong to it. In fact those who have changed their terminology are those on the left and extreme-left of capital, these are the 'innovators' who adopt the moral and organisational positions of the bourgeoisie. We are going to look again at some of these proletarian concepts and how they are in total opposition to Stalinism, leftism and, in general, to any bourgeois organisation.

Proletarian centralisation

Centralisation is the expression of the natural unity which exists within the proletariat and, consequently, among revolutionaries. Thus, in a proletarian organisation, centralisation is the most coherent form of functioning and is the result of voluntary and conscious action. Whereas centralisation in a leftist organisation is imposed by a bureaucracy and manoeuvring, in a proletarian political organisation, where different interests do not exist, unity is expressed by centralisation; it is thus conscious and coherent.

In a leftist organisation on the other hand, as in any bourgeois organisation, there exist different interests linked to individuals and factions that in order to conciliate these different interests, and this requires the bureaucratic imposition of a faction or a leader, or a type of 'democratic coordinator' between the different leaders or factions. In all cases power struggles, manoeuvres, betrayals, manipulation, and obedience are necessary in order to 'grease' the functioning of the organisation because otherwise it falls apart and breaks up. On the other hand, in a proletarian organisation "Centralism is not an optional or abstract principle for the structure of the organisation. It is the concretisation of its unitary character. It expresses the fact that it is one and the same organisation which takes positions and acts within the class. In the various relations between the parts of the organisation and the whole, it's always the whole which takes precedence"[3].

Within leftism, this "one and the same organisation which takes positions and acts within the class" is either a farce or a monolithic and bureaucratic imposition of a 'central committee'. In a proletarian organisation it's the very condition of its existence. It is a matter of laying before the proletariat, after a collective discussion and according to its historic experience, everything that takes its struggle forward and not to fool it into fighting for interests which are not its own. For this reason, it is necessary to make a common effort of the whole organisation in order to elaborate its positions.

Within leftism, faced with the decisions of the 'leadership' that are sometimes judged as absurd, the militants at the base look after and act themselves by deciding in local structures or affinity groups the positions that they think are correct. In some cases this is a healthy proletarian reaction faced with the official policy. However, this localist measure of each for themselves is counter-productive and negative in a proletarian organisation and within such an organisation "the conception according to which this or that part of the organisation can adopt, in front of the organisation or of the working class, the positions or attitudes which it thinks correct instead of those of the organisation which it thinks incorrect. This is because:

• if the organisation is going in the wrong direction, the responsibility of the members who consider that they defend the correct position is not to save themselves in their own little corner, but to wage a struggle within the organisation in order to help put it back in the right direction;
• such a conception leads a part of the organisation to arbitrarily impose its own position on the whole organisation with regard to this or that aspect of its work (local or specific)." (idem, Point 3).

The approach of contributing from any part of the organisation (whether a local section or an international commission) in order to reach a correct position, with the effort of all, corresponds to the unity of interests which exists in a revolutionary organisation between all its members. On the other hand, in an organisation of the left, there's no unity between the 'base' and the 'leadership'. The latter's aim is to defend the general interests of the organisation, which is that of the national capital, whereas the 'base' is torn between three forces, all of which go in different directions: the interests of the proletariat, the responsibility for the capitalist interests of the organisation or, more prosaically, that of making a career in the different bureaucratic levels of the party. It's the outcome of an opposition and separation between the militants and the central organs.

The members of revolutionary organisation today have a great deal to learn about all of this. They are tormented by suspicions that the central organs will end up by 'betraying', they often hold the prejudiced position that the central organs are going to eliminate all dissidence through bureaucratic means. A mental mechanism spreads which states that 'the central organs can make mistakes'. That's perfectly true. Any central organ of a proletarian organisation can make a mistake. But there should be no fatality over making errors and if errors are in fact made, the organisation has the means to correct them.

We can illustrate this with an historic example: in May 1917, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party made an error in advocating critical support to the Provisional Government that came out of the February revolution. Lenin, returning to Russia in April, presented the famous April Theses in order to start up a debate in which the whole organisation was engaged to correct the error and redress the orientation of the party[4].

What this episode shows is the gap that exists between the preconceived idea that 'the central organs can be mistaken' and the proletarian vision of combating opportunism wherever it manifests itself (among the militants or within the central organ). All proletarian organisations are prey to the pressure of bourgeois ideology and that affects every militant as much as the central organs. The struggle against this pressure is the task of the whole organisation.

Proletarian political organisations provide the means of debate to correct its errors. We will see in another article of this series the role of tendencies and fractions. What we want to underline here is that if the majority of the organisation, and above all its central organs, tend to be mistaken, minority comrades have the means to fight this drift, as Lenin did in 1917, which led to him demanding an extraordinary party conference. In particular, "a minority of the organisation can call for an extraordinary Congress when it becomes a significant minority (for example two-fifths). As a general rule it's up to the Congress to settle essential questions, and the existence of a strong minority demanding that a Congress be held is an indication that there are important problems in the organisation"[5].

The role of the Congress

There are the sickening spectacles of congresses of organisations of the bourgeoisie. It's a spectacle with hostesses and an open bar. The leadership comes to show off and make speeches to the applause orchestrated by the warm-up team or to make their TV appearances. The speeches provoke the most absolute disinterest, the one and only aim of the congress is to be told who's going to take on which key posts of the organisation and who's going to be sacked. The great majority of these meetings are not given over to discussion, clarification and the defence of positions, but to attribute quotas of power to the different 'families' of the party.

A proletarian organisation must function in a manner diametrically opposed to this. The point of departure of the centralisation of a proletarian organisation is its international congress. The congress brings together and is the expression of the organisation as a whole, which, in a sovereign manner, decides the orientations and analyses which must guide it. The resolutions adopted by the congress define the mandate of the work of the central organs. It cannot act arbitrarily according to the designs or whims of the members, but must take its point of departure of their activity from the resolutions of the congress.

The Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 led to the well-known split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. One of the reasons for the split and the strong controversy between the two parties of the organisation was that the latter had not respected the decisions of the congress. Lenin, in his book One step forward, two steps back fought this disloyal attitude which was itself a bourgeois attitude. If one isn't in agreement with decisions of a congress, the correct attitude is to present divergences clearly and push for patient debate in order to reach clarification.

"The highest moment in the unity of the organisation is its International Congress. It is at the International Congress that the programme of the ICC is defined, enriched, or rectified; that its ways of organising and functioning are established, made more precise or modified; that its overall orientations and analyses are adopted; that a balance sheet of its past activities is made and perspectives for future work drawn up. This is why preparation for a Congress must be taken up by the whole organisation with the greatest care and energy. This is why the orientations and decisions of a Congress must serve as a constant point of reference for the whole life of the organisation in the ensuing period." In a proletarian congress there are not circles from which conspiracies are hatched against rivals, but discussion in order to understand and take positions in the most conscious way possible.

In bourgeois organisations the corridors are the heart of the congress with gossip, conspiracies against rivals, manoeuvres and intrigues fomented. The corridors are the place where the congress is really decided. As Ciliga said: "The sessions were tedious, the public meetings were pure verbiage. Everything was decided in the corridors".

In a proletarian organisation 'the corridors' have to be forbidden as centres of decision and made moments of rest where fraternal links between militants can be established. The heart of the congress must be situated solely and exclusively in its official sessions. There the delegates have to very carefully evaluate the documents submitted to the congress by demanding clarifications and formulating amendments, critiques and propositions. The future of the organisation is at stake because the resolutions of the congress are not a dead letter or mere rhetoric, but consciously taken agreements that must serve as a guide and orientation to the organisation and serve the fundamentals of its activities.

The orientations and decisions of the congress have to engage the whole of the organisation. That doesn't mean that everything becomes infallible. Regular international discussions can lead to a conclusion where there are errors to correct or that the evolution of the international situation undergoes changes that it's necessary to recognise. That can even lead to the convocation of an extraordinary congress. In the meantime, that work has to be undertaken rigorously and seriously with debate on the widest and deepest international basis. That has got nothing to do with what continually goes on in leftist organisations where the losers in a congress get their revenge by proposing new positions which are used to settle their accounts with their victors.

The central organs

In a proletarian organisation the congress gives the orientations which define the mandate of a central organ which represents the unity and continuity of the organisation between congresses and following them. In a bourgeois party, the central organ is an arm of power because it has to submit the organisation to the needs of the state and the national capital. The central organ is an elite separated from the rest of the organisation and has to control it, supervise it and impose its decisions on it. In a proletarian organisation, the central organ is not separated from the organisation as a whole but it is its active and unitary expression. The central organ is not an all-powerful privileged summit of organisation but a means of expressing and developing the whole.

"Contrary to certain conceptions, notably so-called 'Leninist' ones, the central organ is an instrument of the organisation, not the other way round. It's not the summit of a pyramid as in the hierarchical and military view of revolutionary organisation. The organisation is not formed by a central organ plus militants, but is a tight, unified network in which all its component parts overlap and work together. The central organ should rather be seen as the nucleus of the cell which co-ordinates the metabolism of an organic entity" (“Report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation”, Point 5).

The role of the sections

The structure of leftist organisation is hierarchical. It goes from the national leadership to the regional organisations, themselves divided into 'fronts' (workers, professionals, intellectuals, etc.), and, at the bottom of all this, the cells. This form of organisation is inherited from Stalinism which in 1924 imposed the famous "Bolshevisation" under the pretext of "going to the working class".

This demagogy masks the elimination of the structures of workers' organisations based on local sections where all the militants of a town come together in order to provide themselves with global tasks and a global vision. Opposed to this, a "Bolshevisation" structure divides the militants holding them in a milieu bounded by factory or enterprise, according to the job or the social sector... Their tasks are purely immediate, corporatist and they remain  stuck in a hole where only the immediate, particular and local problems are treated. The horizon of militants is closed down and instead a historic, international and theoretical vision is reduced to the immediate, the corporatist, localist and the purely pragmatic. It is a major impoverishment and allows the leadership to manipulate things at its convenience and, therefore, submit to the interests of the national capital while masking this with a popular and workerist demagogy.

The results of this famous "Bolshevisation", in reality the atomisation of militants inside ghettos of the workplace, was described very well by Ciliga: "The people I met there - permanent collaborators of the Comintern - seemed to incarnate the narrowness of the institution itself and the greyness of the building which accommodated it. They had neither range nor depth of vision and showed no independent thought. I waited for giants and I met dwarfs. I hoped to learn from real masters and I met lackeys. It was enough to go to a few party meetings to see that the discussion of ideas only played a completely secondary role in this struggle. The principal role was played by threats, intimidation and terror".

In order to strengthen this isolation and theoretical ignorance of militants even more, the 'central committee' designates a whole network of 'political commissars' submitting strictly to its discipline and responsible to act as a conveyer belt transmitting the orders of the leadership.

The structure that a revolutionary organisation must provide itself with is radically different to this. The main task of the local sections is to study and pronounce on the questions of the organisation as a whole, as well as analysing the historic situation and the study of general theoretical themes considered necessary. Naturally, that doesn't exclude, but gives sense and body to local activities and intervention, the press and discussions with comrades or interested groups. However, the sections must hold "regular meetings of local sections and put on the agenda the principle questions debated in the whole organisation: this cannot be stifled in any way" (idem). At the same time, the "widest circulation possible of different contributions within the organisation through the intended instruments for this effect" is necessary. The international discussion bulletins are the means to channel this debate and for discussion to spread throughout all the sections.

C. Mir, 16 January, 2018.

The series we are publishing on the radical differences (class differences)[1] between on one hand the left and extreme left of capital and, on the other, the small organisations which claim the heritage of the Communist Left, has so far had three parts: an erroneous vision of the working class; a method and mode of thought at the service of capitalism, and a way of functioning that is against communist principles[2]. This fourth part is given over to the moral question in order to demonstrate the abyss that separates the morality of the parties which pretend to defend the exploited and the proletarian morality that any real communist organisation has to practice.

The proletariat has a morality. Arising from this, its organisations must have one that is consistent with its historic combat and the communist perspective that it carries. Whereas amorality, the absence of scruples, pragmatism and the most abject utilitarianism is rife in bourgeois organisations, within a proletarian organisation a coherence between programme, functioning and morality must necessarily exist.

Morality within bourgeois organisations

What sort of morality prevails in a bourgeois party? Quite simply "anything goes": manoeuvres, coups, stabs in the back, intrigues, lies and the worst hypocrisy. Stalinism gives us a striking example with its demands upon its militants to commit the most disgusting acts in the name of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, the ‘defence of socialism’, etc. Just like Stalinism, the Trotskyist groups extol the same moral pragmatism and a blind and unscrupulous support for the theoretical errors made by Trotsky in his book Their morals and ours which otherwise contains valid reflections and elements.

For their part, the ‘Socialist’ parties are presented as the champions of positive feelings: ‘solidarity’, ‘inclusion’, the ‘historic memory’, ‘political correctness’ and ‘good sense’.

All this verbiage is radically contradicted by their actions within government where they pitilessly attack the working class, repress strikes with a ferocity that has nothing to learn from the right, and take measures such as those against immigrants for example which show a pure racism[3]. As to their internal functioning, they show a pattern of the most refined intrigues, subtle changes of alliances, and wars of clans. The Socialist parties are experts in the worst tactics of infiltration, of destruction from within, creators of Trojan Horses etc. Similarly, their proverbial know-how concerning the management of ‘dossiers’ which affects both their ‘friends’ of the high-command as well as their enemies who they try to tie-up with false alliances or evict from places of power.

What moral baggage has been imposed on militants who have been in bourgeois parties in general and more specifically the left and extreme left?

1. Blind obedience to the leaders.

2. Pragmatism and abject utilitarianism.

3. The absence of scruples in the name of the ‘cause’.

4. Unconditional submission to the imperatives of the national capital.

5. Accept the carrying out of actions which deny the most basic morality.

6. Specialisation in manoeuvres and disguised intrigues through ‘brilliant tactics’[4].

All this is justified with a hypocrisy which belongs to a bourgeoisie which defends the worst barbarity and the most outrageous wrongs in the name of the ‘highest morality’: solidarity, honesty, justice... It's the famous double morality: the politicians and the leaders have their morality which consists of enriching themselves through all sorts of sordid trafficking, getting rid of rivals (party comrades included) and maintaining themselves in power at any cost without hesitating to commit the most reprehensible actions. At the same time, they defend ‘another morality’ for their subordinates, for the members, for the shock troops of the party who, as we said earlier, must practice rectitude, sacrifice, obedience, etc.

Is all morality bourgeois or religious?

In order to destroy the proletarian instinct of morality in militants, they strongly insist on the fact that all morality is ‘bourgeois or religious’ and that, from this, the militant can only rely on ‘political considerations’ to orient their conduct and behaviour. This argument is based on the fact that: "It's clear that in all societies divided into classes, the dominant morality has always been the morality of the dominant class; and this to such a point that morality and state, but also morality and religion, have almost become synonymous in popular opinion. The moral sentiments of society as a whole have always been used by the exploiting class, by the state and by religion in order to sanctify and perpetuate the status quo so as to submit the exploited classes to their oppression. The 'moralism' thanks to which the dominant classes have always used to break the resistance of the labouring classes through the installation of a guilty conscience, is one of the great scourges of humanity. It is also one of the most subtle weapons of the dominant classes in order to ensure their domination over the whole of society"[5].

Moralism engenders in us a feeling of guilt. They make us feel guilty about eating, fighting for our needs, wanting to feel good. This, according to moralism, expresses an exclusive and egotistic sentiment. How can one dare to eat when people are starving in the world? How can one drink and bathe in water while every day the environment degrades still more? How can you sleep on a comfortable mattress when immigrants sleep on a hard floor?

The morality of the bourgeoisie is rather that of the decadent bourgeoisie of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries which consists of making workers think that the minimal means of subsistence available to them (somewhere to live, food, clothing) or the conveniences that they have (electrical goods, TV and internet, paid holidays) are insolent luxuries obtained from the backs of the poor of the world, a ‘privilege’ in a word, obscuring that these are the very means for the pursuit of their exploitation.

Moralism and its advocates of the left and extreme left want us to feel guilt for all the woes in the world caused by capitalism, making a social problem a problem of individuals. Thus, the scourge of unemployment is individually caused by the 212 million unemployed individuals in the world.

In general guilt destroys conviction and combativity. This society propagates the feeling of guilt as a way of life and makes accusations against others a means of individualist struggle, of some against the others, making some feel culpable at a given moment then looking to make others responsible at another time. It's not contradictory to feel guilty at one moment and to make accusations against others the next; that makes up part of an inhuman and individualist morality which always circles around someone's ‘fault’. The fight against this, whether it comes from capitalist propaganda and its party specialists or whether it springs from relations between militants as a form of individualism, is a central combat of proletarian morality.

The fight against bourgeois moralism should not lead us to reject morality. We have to make a distinction between moralism and morality: "the perversion of the morality of the proletariat in the hands of Stalinism is no reason to abandon the concept of proletarian morality, in the same way that the proletariat must not reject the concept of communism under the pretext that it has been recuperated and changed by the counter-revolution in the USSR. Marxism has demonstrated that the moral history of human society is not only the history of the morality of the dominant class. Exploited classes have ethical values which are their own and these same values have had a revolutionary role in the history of humanity. Morality has nothing to do with the notion of exploitation, the state or religion; the future belongs to a morality which goes beyond exploitation, the state and religion".

"The conception of morality in the workers' movement, although, let us say, it was never the centre of attention, of debates or theoretical preoccupations, has nothing to do with the version given to us by leftism. Morality is not an ‘idealist’ or scholastic question which only interests the imitators/continuators of the philosophies of the Byzantine Empire who debated about the sex of angels while the Ottomans attacked the defences of Constantinople. Morality, as any social product of human beings, is by definition one of the main characteristics of the social relations with which we have provided ourselves.

"A reality that could be summed up as meaning, collectively calibrated, of whether the form and orientation that we give to the relations we have with each other is adequate or not... Should it be foreign to the proletariat, a class which is both the fruit of determined social relations but which is equally the bearer of other types of relations, an otherwise much higher form of organising our social existence? If the question hasn't really been raised in the past it is because the workers' movement counted on a long and rich tradition of organisational life in which the majority of its militants observed certain rules for debate, addressed each other as comrades, lived with each other and were ready to give assistance as well as confidence and solidarity when that was necessary; in other words, they obeyed the very nature of the proletarian class: the class of solidarity, confidence, carrying the real creative capacities of humanity and a real human culture"[6].

Double Morality

In reality, the individual bourgeois wants a morality for the exploited majority (the morality of slaves as Nietzsche said) and ‘another morality’, much more ‘supple’ and free from any scruples, for the dominant class. For capital, all means (including murder) are fine if they allow an increase in profits or the advance of power. As Marx said, capital was "born in muck and blood" and all means were used in its expansion: massacres, slavery, sordid alliances with the feudal classes, state assassinations, conspiracies... Don't forget that one of the first ideologues of the bourgeoisie was Machiavelli and the word Machiavellianism is used to define moral degeneracy and the scandalous absence of scruples[7].

Double morality is the habit which is best fitted to the ideology and methods of capital. It is the mirror of the ferocious competition of each for themselves which reigns in the relations of capitalist production: "In all the business of speculation everyone knows that one day the collapse will come but everyone hopes that it sweeps away their neighbours after he himself has collected the rain of gold and safely put it away. ‘Après moi le deluge!’, such is the slogan of every capitalist and all capitalist nations"[8].

The proletariat firmly rejects double morality. In its struggle its means must be in line with it aims; you can't fight for communism by using lies, rumours, manoeuvres, duplicity, feelings of guilt, the thirst for notoriety, etc. Analogous attitudes must be energetically fought and rejected as being radically incompatible with communist principles. With these ‘moral shortcuts’ one doesn't move forward a millimetre on the difficult road to communism; the contrary is true and one finds oneself tied hands and feet from a conduct that belongs to the capitalist system; it's to allow oneself to be contaminated by the laws of its functioning and becoming detached from the revolutionary perspective.

For the ICC, proletarian morality has a central role: "One finds in our statutes (adopted in 1982) the living concretisation of our vision on this question. We have always insisted on the fact that the statutes of the ICC are not a list of rules defining what is or isn't allowed, but an orientation for our attitude and our conduct, including a whole coherence of moral values (notably regarding relationships between militants and towards the organisation). That's why we ask from everyone who wants to become members of our organisation a profound agreement with these values. Our statutes are an integral part of our platform."

The moral combat

But developing an organisational functioning and relations between comrades based upon the moral criteria of the proletariat is not an easy task; it needs an assiduous fight. Today the proletariat is suffering from a serious problem of identity and confidence in itself and this, in the general historic context of what we call the decomposition of capitalism[9], increases the difficulties of the living and daily practice of a proletarian morality not only within the working class as a whole but also within its revolutionary organisations. What present society exudes from all its pores in a widespread and deadly way is the absence of scruples, dishonesty, scepticism, cynicism... an endless attack on proletarian morality.

Contrary to the idea that Stalinism has given of communists as individual fanatics capable of anything in order to impose ‘communism’, they have always shown a solid moral attitude[10] and with that they have expressed the importance of the question of morality for the workers' movement[11].

A prejudice exists against marxism which makes it difficult to understand its solid anchorage in moral criteria. Faced with Utopian Socialism, marxism defended the necessity to situate communist positions not in moral positions but in a scientific analysis of the situation of capitalism, the balance of forces between the classes, the historic perspective, etc. However, one mustn't deduce from that that Marxism must be solely based upon scientific principles while rejecting moral ones: "Marxism has never denied the necessity or importance of the contribution of non-theoretical factors in the ascension of the human species. On the contrary it has always understood their indispensable character and even their relative independence. That is why it has been capable of examining their connections in history and recognising their complementary nature".

Marxism is not a cold ideology (as the Greek author, Kostas Papaioannon made out in the 1960s) seeing militants as pawns of the ‘Central Committee’ manipulated at will in a game of chess against the dominant class. In their relations between themselves and towards the organisation, as towards the proletariat, militants carry themselves with the strictest moral rectitude.

This last point is vital for understanding that, in our epoch, social decomposition makes morality within the revolutionary struggle all the more important. "Today, faced with 'each for themselves', the tendency to the disintegration of social tissue and the corrosion of all moral values, it will be impossible for revolutionary militants - and more generally a new generation of militants - to overthrow capitalism without clarifying the question of morals and ethics. Not only the conscious development of workers' struggles but also a specific theoretical struggle towards a re-appropriation of the work of the marxist movement on these questions, has become a question of life or death for human society. This struggle is indispensable not only for proletarian resistance to the manifestations of the decomposition of capitalism and its ambient amorality, but also to re-conquer the confidence of the proletariat in the future of humanity through its own historic project".

The difficulty that revolutionary generations meet today is that, on one side, a proletarian morality based on solidarity, confidence, loyalty, conscious cooperation and the search for truth, is more than ever necessary, but however, the historic conditions of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism as well as the difficulties of the working class make this appear more utopian, more impractical and more senseless.

As our text on ethics said: "the barbarity and inhumanity of decadent capitalism are without precedent in the history of the human species. It's true that it's not easy after the massacres of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and faced with genocides and permanent and generalised destruction, to maintain confidence in the possibility of moral progress (...) Popular opinion confirms the judgement of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) according to which man is by nature a wolf for man. According to this vision, man is fundamentally destructive, a predator, egotistic, irredeemably irrational and his social behaviour is below that of most of the animal species".

There is however another element which adds a supplementary difficulty to the development of morality: the gap between the natural sciences and technology and the still more accentuated lateness of social sciences as Pannekoek observed in his book Anthropogenesis: a study in the origins of man: "Natural sciences are considered as the field in which human thought, in a continuous series of triumphs, has developed with the greatest vigour, the conceptional forms of logic... On the contrary, at the other end of the scale there remains human actions and relations in which action and thought are principally determined by passion and impulses, by arbitrariness and unpredictability, by tradition and belief... The contrast which appears here, with perfection on one side and imperfection on the other, signifies that man controls the forces of Nature but doesn't control the forces of will and passions that are inherent in him. Where he stands still, maybe sometimes going backwards is in the manifest lack of control over his own ‘nature’. Evidentially this is the reason why society is so late behind science. Potentially man possesses domination over Nature. But he still doesn't have domination over his own nature".

This situation of ignorance and incomprehension of these profound aspects of the human condition make it very difficult to confront this phenomenon that social and ideological decomposition constantly makes worse: "the development of nihilism, suicides among youth, despair (such as that expressed by the ‘no future’ of urban riots in Britain), hatred and xenophobia which animates ‘skinheads’ and ‘hooligans’, ... the tsunami of drugs which is becoming a mass phenomenon and powerfully involved in the corruption of states and financial organisations, spares no part of the world and particularly hits the young, who express the flight into chimeras and more and more, madness and suicide... the profusion of sects, the re-emergence of the religious spirit, including in some advanced countries, the rejection of rational, constructive and coherent thought, including in certain ‘scientific’ areas ... ‘each for themselves’, marginalisation, atomisation of individuals, the destruction of family relations, the exclusion of the old, the smothering of affection and its replacement by pornography"[12].

The unity between aims and means: the ends don't justify the means

Whereas all bourgeois parties (whether of right or left) have the objective of managing the present so as to conserve capitalism, the revolutionary organisation is at a point between the present and the communist future of the proletariat. For this it cultivates the moral qualities that have already been mentioned and which will be the pillars of a future world communist society. These qualities are constantly threatened by the weight of the dominant ideology and capitalist decomposition. To defend them requires a permanent effort, a tireless critical spirit and vigilance alongside a constant theoretical elaboration.

For revolutionary organisations, this culture has a place as much inside the organisation (internal functioning) as to the outside (intervention). It's not a matter of isolating the organisation from the world and enclosing oneself in small self-managed communities (which is the reformist error of anarchism) but within itself exists a permanent struggle for the development of these principles. As Lessing the seventeenth century German poet said: "There is something that I love more than truth: the struggle for truth". In a revolutionary organisation, principles are as important as the struggle for them.

The struggle for communism can't be reduced to a simple question of propaganda: explaining what a future society is; showing the proletariat's historic role in overcoming the contradictions of capitalism, etc. That would be a unilateral and truncated concept. Contrary to the modes of production that preceded it, communism cannot emerge from outside the proletariat, but only with the full consciousness and the massive subjective engagement of the proletariat. In the revolutionary organisation, the struggle to live in a coherent manner with communist principles is still more decisive. The struggle for communism is impossible without permanent vigilance and a response against behaviours of envy, jealousy, lies, intrigues, manipulation, theft, violence towards others.

In one of his polemical excesses, Bordiga affirmed that one could arrive at communism even from the basis of a monarchy.

Through this he wanted to demonstrate that the important thing was to get to communism’ whereas ‘the way of getting there’ mattered little, any method would do. We categorically reject such a way of thinking: in order to get to communism it's necessary to know how to reach it, the means must be symbiotic with the communist end. Against the pragmatism of Stalinism and Trotskyism, who blindly follow "the ends justify the means" maxim, the proletariat and its revolutionary organisations must maintain a clear coherence between ends and means, between practice and theory, between action and principles.

Morality and the individual/society conflict

The dominant morality oscillates between two alternatives which appear to be opposed but which gravitate around the conflict between the individual and society, which not only doesn't permit a resolution of the question but rather aggravates it.

On one side we have exacerbated individualism in which the individual does ‘what's good for them’, at the expense of others. On the other hand we have the submission of the individual to the ‘interests of society’ (a formula behind which is hidden the totalitarian domination of the state), which, fundamentally, is presented under two forms: that of a collection of anonymous and impersonal individuals (the form preferred by the Stalinists and Trotskyists) and that of the Kantian moral imperative which leads to individual renunciation and sacrifice for others (Christian morality is also found in this tendency).

In reality, these two moral poles are not opposed. On the contrary they are complementary since they reflect two aspects of the dynamics of capitalism. On one side, the utilitarianism of Bentham is an idealist vision of the ferocious competition which is the motor force of capitalism. Here, each individual struggles for their own well-being without any consideration for others and this is supposed to be for ‘the good of all’, that's to say the ‘good’ of the good functioning of the capitalist system (against feudalism), not respecting privileges or acquired positions other than submitting to the functioning of a cut-throat society of competition.

A second component of the utilitarian and amoral pole is the deformation of the theory of Darwin which is turned into ‘Social Darwinism’. According to this vision natural selection is the result of a ferocious and pitiless war in which the ‘fittest’ triumph and the weak’ are eliminated, thus allowing ‘the amelioration of the human species’. We can't develop here a defence of Darwin's materialist concept of evolution[13] but what is clear is that this moral vision of ‘Social Darwinism’ constitutes an idealisation dressed up in pseudo-scientific clothes, giving the stamp of approval to the very existence of capitalism which is effectively the war of each against all, a reality which is exacerbated by the decomposition of the system.

Faced with this barbaric moral impudence, Kant and other theoreticians glimpsed the result of the chaos and destruction that capitalism carried within it. From this basis it advocated another moral pole that, in all appearances, was opposed to it: the famous moral imperative. The latter constituted a type of ‘restraint of unchained egoism’ in order not to destroy social cohesion. It is a ‘critical’ acceptance of the barbarity of competition while trying to put limits and rules on it so as to avoid its destructive excesses. Capitalism leads to the destruction of humanity because within its DNA it carries the annihilation of the social character of humanity acquired throughout the many millennia of its existence. The Kantian moral imperative, which wants to put a brake on this tendency, is nothing more than an idealist version of the role of a ‘regulator’ and guarantor of the minimal social cohesion that the state assumes, a role which is accentuated under decadent capitalism through the chaos and self-destruction that its contradictions let loose. Kantian moralism is the other side of utilitarianism. The tendency which developed within Social Democracy from the end of the nineteenth century under the slogan ‘return to Kant’ wasn't content to attack and demolish marxist materialism, it also attacked a proletarian morality which has nothing to do with the moral imperative.

Stalinism and Trotskyist groups have propagated the idea that communist militancy is the blind sacrifice of the individual to the moral imperative incarnated by the superior interests of the ‘Party’ or of the ‘Socialist fatherland’.

The rejection of this barbaric morality which lead to blind submission and the self-destruction of militants have, in numerous cases, led to the other extreme of bourgeois morality: the excesses of the cult of individualism which is characteristic of the petty-bourgeoisie, one of the most exacerbated expressions of which is anarchism.

Proletarian morality: a fight to overcome the conflict between society and individual

The proletariat carries within it the solution to the conflict between individual and society. As the Communist Manifesto said, under communism, "in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, comes an association where the free development of each one is the condition for the free development of all". Under capitalism, associated labour at the world scale of the proletariat has the perspective of going beyond it: if labour in common goes much further than the sum of individual labour, the contribution of each one is unique and indispensable for the result of labour in common.

Revolutionary organisations are under constant attack through the individual/society conflict under the form of individualism. Already, in numerous texts, we have looked at the problem that we have briefly raised here[14]. This individualism which makes out it is ‘free’, ‘rebellious’ and ‘critical’ is, in reality, a prisoner of all the destructive impulses incubated by capitalism (competition, egoism, manipulation, culpability, rivalry and the spirit of revenge) and exercises a heavy weight of the life of revolutionary organisation. Its ‘revolt’ goes no further than the blind and stupid polarisation ‘against all authority’, which leads it to be a direct factor of disorganisation and tension between comrades. Finally, its ‘criticism’ is based upon distrust and rejection of all coherent thought, replacing it with speculation, prejudices and the most extravagant interpretations.

This individualism is diametrically opposed to solidarity, which is not only one of the vertical pillars of the proletariat but also of the functioning of revolutionary organisations. We have amply treated this issue in our text of orientation on confidence and solidarity in the proletarian struggle[15].

C. Mir, March 1st, 2018

150 years ago, in the early 1860s, the workers’ movement internationally was still in its infancy, and its different components had not yet acquired much experience in setting up and defending political organisations. Following the wave of repression after the struggles of 1848 many members of the Communist League had to go into exile or were taken to court, as at the trial against the communists in Cologne, 1852.  

In Germany, in the early 1860s, there was no independent political organisation of the working class. In many towns there were Arbeiterbildungsvereine (Workers’ Educational Clubs), but not yet any proletarian political organisation with a clear political demarcation from the bourgeoisie. The debate about whether the working class could still support certain factions of the bourgeoisie in their fight for national unification, or whether the class antagonism with the bourgeoisie should be at the centre of the struggle, was in full swing. In this context, where the bourgeoisie had not yet managed to throw off the chains of aristocracy and the Junkers, where German capital had not yet been able to unify as a national capital, attempts were made to forge the first political party of the working class in Germany.  

At the same time the working class in Germany was going to be faced with one of the most difficult political challenges, that of confronting the activities of political adventurers. Although there is not one single profile of political adventurers, one common trait between them is that they use political organisations not to strengthen the struggle of the working class but instead to put these political organisations at their service; they draw on the organisations of the working class to foster their own ambitions. However, the biggest challenge is to unmask adventurers, because they do not act in the open and do not display their own ambitions in public. On the contrary, they tend to have a great skill in mobilising a large number of supporters behind them, which makes the task of unmasking such “highly esteemed” figures much harder.

As we will show, the real nature of the adventurer Lassalle was never fully unmasked during his lifetime. And while the real face of the adventurer Schweitzer was exposed for the first time at a party conference in Spring 1869 in Wuppertal, the effort to unmask him was not fully successful. It was only a few years later that the working class managed, through the efforts of the General Council of the First International, to expose the activities of yet another adventurer, Mikhail Bakunin, at the Hague Congress. The cases of Lassalle, Schweitzer and Bakunin show that the working class and its political organisations have been confronted from the very beginning with the activities of political adventurers.

In this article we will deal with the cases of Lassalle and Schweitzer. In previous articles we have already given a detailed account of the struggle against Bakunin’s adventurism[1].

The Formation of the ADAV

In 1862 in Leipzig the proposal for the preparation of a general workers' congress was made by workers of an association called "Vorwärts". In January 1863 the Leipzig initiators contacted Ferdinand Lassalle. [2]

In several lectures Lassalle had spoken critically against the bourgeoisie in its quarrel with the Junkers; at the same time he had stressed the importance of the working class for historical progress. Lassalle, however, distanced himself from the communist views outlined a good dozen years earlier in the Communist Manifesto.

The proposal that Lassalle should write the program of the "General German Workers' Association" (ADAV), which was finally founded in Leipzig on May 23, 1863, was addressed to a man who had been eager for years to play a leading role in political life in Germany. 

The fact that the leadership was handed over to a person who - apart from a brief activity during the 1848 struggles - had never participated in a proletarian organisation, who could not represent continuity with the Communist League; a man who had previously been denied admission to the Communist League and was now to act as a de facto "saviour" from "outside," immediately claiming a presidential role - all this reflected the immature state of the labour movement at the time.

At the age of 20, Lassalle had met Sophie Gräfin von Hatzfeldt, who was twice as old as he was. In order to "free herself" from the forced marriage with her husband, Lassalle took on her defence as a lawyer. He not only succeeded in winning the Countess's case, but also made an extraordinary fortune, as the Countess financed him from then on and became his political ally.[3] At the same time, as a member of the nobility, the Countess maintained intensive relations with various parts of the ruling class. In 1856 and 1857 he lived in her house in Düsseldorf; and in 1858 he moved together with her to Berlin. [4]

The self-disclosure of an adventurer: "An informer's report about himself" 

Spurred on by the success of the Hatzfeldt trial and driven by his ambitions to make a career, he began complaining about the "provincial narrowness" in his place of residence, Düsseldorf, in the mid-1850s. In May 1855, he asked the Berlin Police President for the necessary permission to resettle from Düsseldorf to Berlin. [5] In the same month, he wrote an "informer's report about himself", which was to be placed into the hands of the Berlin Police President Hinkeldey (it is not clear whether it was really placed into his hands or was meant to have been). Gustav Mayer reports on "the vicious, cunning, sophisticated, vily, villainous slyness that was employed here" to convince and impress the police president of his importance. Lassalle praised himself as so highly esteemed by the Düsseldorf workers, "who seem to regard Lassalle as their boss and to see an injustice against them and his relationship to them if he leaves the Rhine Province; they did not break with him, but as the conversation shows, threatened very energetically to break with him." Referring to the question of the whereabouts of the former editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (including Marx) after the repression after 1848, he praised his insider knowledge of Marx's place of residence in his "Spitzelbericht" (report of a snitch): "I faked assuming that they had emigrated to America, but Lassalle instructed me that they lived in London and he was apparently well informed about their living conditions”. In order to further increase the interest of the head of the police, he boasted, "So it follows with complete certainty that Lassalle must be in continuous, uninterrupted correspondence with these people in London, at least with Marx”. Knowing well how interested the police were in being informed about the actual mail channels of correspondence between Marx and his fellow combatants, he wrote: "I have […] already mentioned that Lassalle must be corresponding with London, at least with Marx. I must add that, it appears to be likely – as I concluded from a statement - he seems to receive these letters with a fake sender’s name."

To make the bait for the police president more palatable by an additional aspect, Lassalle wrote: "The main reason that drives him to that move is the monotony of life in Düsseldorf that has become unbearable to him. In addition, there is a certain tendency towards enjoyment and especially female distractions, which, despite his great capacity for work, is no less strongly expressed in his temperament, a tendency which he cannot satisfy in Düsseldorf but to which he hopes to feed much more richly in Berlin. He repeated his motive for his intended move to Berlin. (…) if it were not for the influence of the Countess on the one hand, and on the other hand for the already described great inclination towards pleasure and sensual diversion and the unbearable monotony of his Düsseldorf life which are the decisive factor for him...." He described himself as "highly ambitious and vain in character."   

To impress the police (and the political forces behind them), Lassalle boasted: "Since I consider Lassalle to be one of the most intellectually outstanding and rarely energetically gifted representatives of democracy, I am of the opinion that above all this highly dangerous man cannot be observed enough...." Lassalle added another element of attraction to the police: the author of the letter, i.e. the informer, had the prospect of being able to work as Lassalle's secretary. "I already have his benevolence to no small degree. I have acquired the same, partly through a fine use of his vanity..." [...] A short time in the position of his secretary and I would have made myself not only the confidant of his most secret thoughts, but completely indispensable to him." Ready to drive into the arms of the police those who were ready to overthrow the regime (Lassalle and his friends), Lassalle ended his spy report with this: "I would have no difficulty, legitimized by my position with Lassalle and his friendship, in becoming known to all the other more or less outstanding members of democracy and in investigating their affairs from the ground up; in a word, I would thus deliver him and his associates into the hands of the authorities in such a way that it would depend only on their own discretion to destroy these incorrigible partisans of overthrow whenever they find it suitable.” [6]

This spy report about himself, which was only found in his inheritance after his death, sheds much light on his activities as an adventurer in the ranks of the German labour movement.

The true motives of the adventurer

We have here a first trait of political adventurers. Contrary to sincere fighters who selflessly join a revolutionary organisation in order to help the working class to fulfil its historical role, adventurers join revolutionary organisations to fulfil their own “historical mission”. They want to place the movement at their service and constantly look for recognition with this purpose. Lassalle's spy report about himself is nothing but a "publicity show" for his purportedly outstanding abilities. Therefore, proletarian organisations serve them only as a springboard for their career, either within a proletarian organisation or within the ranks of the rulers themselves. Convinced that their abilities are greater than have been recognised so far, they seek recognition from both the workers’ movement and the rulers.

Open or covert claims for leadership...

When the ADAV was founded in May 1863, Lassalle managed to get himself crowned president for five years, with almost dictatorial power over the local sections. Lassalle insisted to the ADAV that he only wanted to participate if he was directly invited to take the leading role. That is, instead of joining a collective struggle he immediately claimed leadership. We have here another distinctive trait, which is often found in adventurers. Not only do they aspire to take a leadership role in an organisation, they often make direct claims to special authority - and even if they do not receive it from an authority, they themselves aspire to a policy of arbitrary and independent action. As if an emperor had been crowned, he declared: "I am thus able to meet the demands of the position you offer me, and therefore generally declare myself ready to meet the demand you make of me and to take over the leadership of the workers' movement". [7] The local branches of the association had no rights whatsoever: they only carried out the orders of the president.

This was a step backwards from the Communist League, which was a centralised organisation, had established a central authority and district authorities that guaranteed a much more collective functioning, and where the local communities had decision-making powers. In this respect, Lassalle succeeded in turning back the wheel of history with the "leadership role" tailored to him.

In the service of the working class or of personal interests?

Bebel wrote in his autobiography: "Lassalle was not satisfied with the applause of the masses, he attached great importance to having men of prestige and influence from the bourgeois camp on his side, and he went to great lengths to win them" (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 85). [8]

While on the one hand the power apparatus in Prussia and other parts of Germany had sent out its agents to monitor the aspiring labour movement and to look for possible "cooperative" forces to lure to Bismarck's side, at the same time Lassalle, as the spy report unequivocally reveals, had himself stretched out his feelers.

Secret cooperation with the rulers

Two weeks before the ADAV was founded on 23 May 1863, Lassalle began an exchange of letters with Bismarck. Bismarck, who wanted to unite Germany "by blood and iron", invited Lassalle to a conversation. In a series of four talks, Lassalle not only tried to give Bismarck advice, but also made concrete suggestions for a joint approach.

Lassalle told Bismarck, who was the king's right hand, that the working class "instinctively feels inclined to dictatorship. (Gustav Mayer, Bismarck und Lassalle p. 60), The workers would recognize the monarchy as a "natural carrier of social dictatorship," if the monarchy were to transform itself from a "royalty of the privileged classes into a social and revolutionary people's royalty”. From Lassalle's point of view, the Prussian monarchy was capable of becoming a social royalty – this was the subject of the first conversation with Bismarck. In another conversation, universal suffrage and campaigns against factions of the bourgeoisie hostile to Bismarck, were discussed. Because the Düsseldorf police had taken action against Lassalle's writings at the time of the third discussion on 23 October 1863, Bismarck offered Lassalle to place his works under his protection. For this purpose, Bismarck wanted to issue a circular to the public prosecutors prohibiting the confiscation of Lassalle's works. Lassalle replied to Bismarck that he was against his offer. He thought that repressive measures against him would strengthen his credibility, while if his writings were spared from repression, his credibility would diminish. During this third discussion, the possibility and necessity of an electoral bloc between conservatives and the ADAV was also discussed. On January 12, 1864, Lassalle offered in the next meeting a direct political cooperation in the reform of the electoral law, for which Lassalle wanted to formulate a draft. Lassalle himself told Bismarck that he feared the revolution, this "gloomy, sinister way". And to avoid this, he proposed to Bismarck that he - in order not to be confronted with a revolutionary onslaught - should introduce universal suffrage immediately. Since, from Lassalle's point of view, the German bourgeoisie was incapable of revolution, the workers’ party had to give the impetus, and Bismarck was to urge the king to carry out this turnaround. Finally, Lassalle offered Prussia support in the war against Denmark (including the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein) if Bismarck changed the electoral law. 

When Wilhelm Liebknecht warned Lassalle against Bismarck, Lassalle told him, "Pah, I eat cherries with Herr von Bismarck, but he gets the stones" (cf. Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 75). After Bebel had questioned Bismarck in the Reichstag at the time of the Anti-Socialist Law in September 1878 about his contact with Lassalle, Bismarck replied to him in parliament: "But Lassalle had attracted him extraordinarily, he had been one of the most witty and kind people with whom he had ever been in contact, he had also not been a Republican: the idea to which he aspired had been the German empire. In this they had had points of contact/agreement. Lassalle had been highly ambitious" https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/aus-meinem-leben-erster-teil-4234/5 [112], Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 76 ").

Lassalle later confessed to Helene von Dönniges, as Bebel found out from a conversation with her, that both Bismarck and Lassalle thought they were too clever to trick each other. [9]

Lassalle wrote of his encounters with leaders of the Italian national movement after his trip to Italy and declared almost megalomaniacally that he had just "prevented Prussia's intervention through his 'booklet on the Italian war' and had in fact guided 'the history of the last three years'" (see below). In this sense, an adventurer is not the same as a police agent or a snitch, who sell their information. Adventurers do not have to be corrupt to serve a regime. For them the desire for fame and recognition, i.e. psychological factors, are somewhat stronger than mere material compensations.

Duplicity...

After Lassalle had been elected president of the ADAV in May 1863, he often presented the programmatic orientation of the ADAV completely differently, depending on who he was dealing with. This duplicity is another characteristic of adventurers - not to play "with open cards" and not to enter the ring openly. While Marx and Engels, for example, wrote many polemics, Lassalle shunned debate himself and appeared in different clothing to different audiences.

...and opportunistic recruitment methods for recruiting members

Lassalle had no real faith in the (yet to be developed) force of the working class, but wanted to win more personalities from the camp of the ruling class for the ADAV, since in his opinion they were called to take the shackles off the working class. Thus Lassalle tried to win over Johann Karl Rodbertus, a representative of so-called state socialism. Rodbertus argued that "friends of the social question", i.e. the conservatives and the bourgeoisie, could also join the association. Lassalle wrote to Rodbertus: "The more good bourgeois members join the association, the better" (F. Lassalle Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, 6th volume, Berlin 1925, p. 358).

And because he was not so much interested in the liberation of the working class as in the promotion of the general democratic movement, he also pleaded for the inclusion of liberals and conservatives in the ADAV. Thus he directed himself against the development of an independent political workers party. At the same time, anyone who wanted should be able to become a member and join immediately – and as a result, the ADAV was flooded with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois people. Here, too, it was a step backwards from the Communist League, whose membership was based on the defence of organisational principles enshrined in its statutes.

Lassalle's programmatic orientation: state socialism ....

Lassalle argued in favour of "the state to supply you [the workers] with capital through credit operations, so that you can then enter into free, equal competition with capital". Lassalle did not even think about the destruction of the Prussian state, but hoped for the socialist intervention of the Prussian state! He aroused the confidence that with the help of the existing state it could grow peacefully into socialism.[10]

... and opposing economic struggles in the name of the "iron law of wages”

According to Lassalle, the workers in capitalist society cannot receive a higher wage than that which exceeds the minimum necessary to maintain their physical forces. On this basis, he resisted the unfolding of workers' struggles for demands, dismissed strikes and rejected trade union federations. In short, the ADAV was to be a sect.

Instead, the workers should be raised to the status of entrepreneurs. The state should lend money, build and finance consumer cooperatives.

Lassalle’s Relationship with Marx and Engels

Although Lassalle claimed to know the Communist Manifesto inside out, he was never a marxist. And although he had known Marx and later Engels since 1848, and corresponded with them again and again, and Marx even spent a few days in his Berlin apartment in 1862, Marx and Engels clashed quite quickly with Lassalle. The reason: profound political divergences (e.g. on the question of the support for Prussia, the demand for the introduction of the right to vote and many more) as well as his behaviour. Marx wrote in a letter to Engels on July 30, 1862, after Lassalle had visited him and his family in London: "The stay in Zurich (with Rüstow, Herwegh etc.) and the later trip to Italy, then his ‘Herr Julian Schmidt’ etc. turned his head completely.

He is now not only the greatest scholar, deepest thinker, most brilliant researcher, etc., but also Don Juan and revolutionary Cardinal Richelieu. (...) As a great secret he told me and my wife that he advised Garibaldi not to make Rome the target of the attack, but that he should go to Naples, declare himself to become a dictator (without Viktor Emanuel being wounded), call the People's Army to campaign against Austria. (…) As the lever of action: Lassalle’s political influence or his pen in Berlin. And Rüstow at the head of a corps of German guerrillas including Garibaldi. Bonaparte, however, was paralyzed by this Lassallean coup d'éclat. He was now also with Mazzini, and ‘he too’ approved and ‘admired’ his plan. He introduced himself to these people as a ‘representative of the German revolutionary working class’ and imputed to them (literally!) the knowledge that he (Itzig) ‘prevented Prussia's intervention’ through his pamphlet on the Italian war, and in fact ‘guided the history of the last three years’. L[assalle] was very angry with me and my wife that we made fun of his plans, teased him as an ‘enlightened Bonapartist’, etc. He screamed, raved, jumped and finally convinced himself thoroughly that I was too ‘abstract’ to understand politics. "[11]

These statements by Marx about the character, the self-portrayal, the megalomania and his entire behaviour show how outraged Marx was about Lassalle. When Marx and Engels shared their assessments about his behaviour , they knew nothing about his contacts and the alliance with Bismarck. Marx’s wife Jenny wrote about Lassalle after his visit to their home in 1861. She also made fun of Lassalle's way of presenting himself: “He was almost overwhelmed by the burden of fame he earned as a scholar, thinker, poet and politician. The fresh laurel crown still rested on the Olympic forehead and the ambrosial curly head or rather the rigid stiff chevelure des nègres. He had just victoriously finished the Italian campaign - a new political coup was hatched by the great men of action. Strong battles took place in his soul. He had not yet entered some fields of science. There was still Egyptology, which had not been so much developed. Should I astonish the world as an Egyptologist, or should I show my universality as a man of action, as a politician, as a fighter, as a soldier” (Jenny Marx, Kurze Umrisse eines bewegten Lebens, 1865).

What Marx thought about Lassalle's programmatic positions and his appearance is also made clear by a letter he sent to Engels on April 9, 1863: "On the other hand, the day before yesterday he sent me his ‘Open Letter of Reply’ to the Central Workers' Committee for the Leipzig Workers' Congress. He behaved – boasting by throwing the phrases around he had copied from our writings - entirely as a future workers’ dictator." (MEW, vol. 30, p. 340) And Marx had recognized in a letter to Engels on January 28, 1863 that the famous "Workers' Programme" was only a bad vulgarisation of the Communist Manifesto. 

After Marx and Engels learned about the negotiations between Lassalle and Bismarck, Marx wrote to Engels: "By the way, since we now know that Itzig [Lassalle] (a fact which was by no means known to us in this way) wanted to ‘offer’ the Workers' Party to Bismarck in order to make himself known as the ‘Richelieu of the Proletariat’...I will now also not show any restraint in indicating clearly in the preface to my book that he is merely a parrot and a plagiarist” (Marx to Engels in Manchester [London] Jan. 30, 1865). In this preface to the first edition of Das Kapital, Marx considered it necessary to point out the method of Lassalle in "borrowing" ideas from Marx's writings, without citing the source... (Capital, MEW, Vol. 23, p. 11). [12]

Manipulation and defamation of the positions of Marx and Engels

Already at that time they considered the speeches and writings of Lassalle as "very disgusting and royalist". (Marx to Engels, Nov. 24, 1864, MEW 31, p. 30)

Marx wrote to Kugelmann:

"Dear friend, I received your very interesting letter yesterday and will now reply to the individual points. Let me start by briefly explaining my relationship with Lassalle. During his agitation, our relationship was suspended: 1. because of his tendency to praise his own reputation and his sloppiness, while at the same time he was the most shameless plagiarist of my texts, etc. 2. because I condemned his political tactics; 3. because I had explained to him already in detail before the opening of his agitation here in London and had proved that an immediate socialist intervention by the Prussian state was nonsense."[13] 

(...) "As soon as he convinced himself in London (end of 1862) that he could not play his game with me, he decided against me and the old party in order to pose as a ‘workers’ dictator’". Engels on June 11, 1863 (three days before the founding of the ADAV) "The guy is now working purely in the service of Bismarck...". (MEW vol. 30, p. 354).

The attempt by Lassalle to isolate Marx and Engels from the labour movement in Germany

Lassalle actually hampered the spreading of Marx and Engels' positions among the workers in Germany and attempted to isolate them from the working class there. Instead, he presented himself as the real "enlightener” and in addition tried to delay and hinder the publication and distribution of texts by Marx and Engels, among other things in order to spread his own positions instead which were often deviating from Marx and Engels, or diametrically opposed to them. Or Lassalle published texts that were often nothing but a plagiarism of the articles by Marx and Engels, without, however, citing the sources. Marx wrote an article specifically for this purpose called "Plagiarism" [14]

Lassalle presented himself as the "true expert" about conditions in Germany, while Marx and Engels lived abroad and did not have the necessary insights.

Lassalle against the struggle of Marx and Engels to defend the organisation

In correspondence with Marx, Lassalle defended the agent of Bonaparte, Karl Vogt. He advised Marx not to take public action against Vogt, not to "stir up" the matter, because this would be badly received by the German "audience". Marx had spent a whole year in 1860 writing an answer to Karl Vogt's book Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung in which he defiled the political activities of Marx and his comrades. "I will write a brochure as soon as I have his smear text (that of Karl Vogt). But at the same time explain in the preface that I will not give a shit about the judgement of your German audience. (Marx to Lassalle, January 30, 1860, MEW 30, p. 438).

When Marx’s work Herr Vogt had been published, Lassalle did nothing to promote its dissemination in Germany. The bourgeois press was anxious to silence Marx's writing, and for his part the president of the ADAV sabotaged Marx’s struggle to defend himself.

Resistance in the ranks of the ADAV against Lassalle's positions and practices

At the end of 1863, beginning of 1864, resistance had developed against Lassalle's positions, especially against his positions in favour of the monarchy in Prussia. On April 11, 1864 he openly called for the support of the monarchy. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had moved to Berlin in July 1862 after his exile in London, was one of the first to clash strongly with Lassalle. Marx warned Liebknecht against public appearances together with Lassalle and advised him not to enter into any close relations with Lassalle.  Liebknecht replied: "In the Lassallean Arbeiterverein [ADAV] something is fermenting. If Lassalle does not give up the 'dictatorial attitude' and the flirting with the reaction, there will be a scandal." In the same letter Liebknecht said, "(...) He plays such an intricate game that soon he will no longer be able to find a way out”.

Together with other forces such as Julius Vahlteich, the secretary of the ADAV, they tried to free the ADAV from the clutches of the dictatorial president. When Lassalle noticed this resistance and felt that he would soon have to answer to the organisation and thus face exposure, he was looking for a way to leave the labour movement. His last letters make this search for a "way out" clear. But Lassalle's sudden death put an unexpected end to his activities.

On 31 August 1864 he was seriously injured in a duel over a woman and died three days later of his fatal injuries. [15] Before his death Lassalle had written a will as president of the ADAV in which he chose Bernhard Becker to be his successor as president. The latter, with the help of Countess Hatzfeldt, then set everything in motion to take over this presidential post and soon began to spread the most infamous insults about "the Marx Party".

In order to preserve the sectarian existence of the ADAV, Becker's successor fought against the affiliation to the First International, which had in the meantime been founded in London on 28 September 1864, almost a month after Lassalle's death.

We cannot go into detail here about the significance of the formation of the First International. However, while its foundation was an enormous step forward for the whole workers’ movement, the forces around Lassalle neither contributed towards the participation of the workers in Germany in its formation nor did they situate their work in the perspectives of the First International.

The material situation of Lassalle

Lassalle had secured a financial income through the Countess through the then 'ground-breaking' winning of the trial as a lawyer... and at the same time he had become dependent on the Countess. So while he didn't have to earn his income as a lawyer, he had a very specific privileged status. Such truly financially parasitic positions made him appear in his eyes as "independent" towards the representatives of the ruling class with whom he interacted. Lassalle had never personally experienced what wage dependency or material hardship meant.

Engels’ “obituary” of Lassalle

 “He was currently a very insecure friend for us, in the future a quite secure enemy ".... (Engels to Marx, 4 September 1864, MEW vol. 30, p. 429)

In their "obituary" of Lassalle, Marx and Engels wrote: "The brave Lassalle gradually turns out to be an ordinary villain. We have never proceeded from judging people by what they imagined, but by what they were, and I don't see why we should make an exception for Itzig [Lassalle]. Subjectively his vanity may have presented the matter to him as a plausible strategy, objectively it was, a betrayal of the whole labour movement to the Prussians. But the stupid fellow does not seem to have demanded anything in return from Bismarck , nothing specific, let alone any guarantees. He seems to have merely relied on the fact that he had to cheat Bismarck, just as he could not fail to shoot Racowitza. Typical for Baron Itzig [Lassalle]. By the way, the time will not be long when it will not only be desirable, but necessary, to publish this whole thing. This can only be of use to us and if the matter with the ADAV and the newspaper in Germany continues, then soon his whole legacy will have to be thrown out. Meanwhile the proletariat in Germany will soon see what Bismarck is worth”. (https://marxwirklichstudieren.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/mew_band31.pdf; [113] MEW vol. 31, p. 45)

Lassalle had been an adventurer, whose true role in his lifetime was recognised only by very few and then only piecemeal. As shown above, even Marx, Engels, Bebel and Liebknecht, who had got to know him better, did not have a complete picture of him.

Misjudgements of the adventurer by Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring

At the same time the case of Lassalle shows that during that period there were grave differences amongst revolutionaries concerning the assessment of such people. Because decades later even such important political minds as Rosa Luxemburg or Franz Mehring were to make rather blatant misjudgements of Lassalle.

For example, in 1913, 50 years after the founding of the ADAV, Rosa Luxemburg wrote a misleading and trivial praise of Lassalle: "Lassalle made mistakes in his fighting tactics, certainly. However, it is only a cheap pleasure for petty hooligans of historical research to find mistakes in a great life's work. For the assessment of a personality such as his, it is much more important to recognise the actual cause, the particular source from which his mistakes as well as his merits arose. Lassalle often sinned by his tendency to play at ‘diplomacy’, to cheat with ideas, as he did in his negotiations with Bismarck about the imposition of universal suffrage, and in his plans for productive associations founded on state credit. In his political struggles with bourgeois society as well as in his struggles with the Prussian judiciary, he liked to descend to the level of his opponent, granting him concessions to his point of view, seeing himself as a daring acrobat: as Johann Philipp Becker wrote, he often ventured a leap to the outermost edge of the abyss, which distinguishes a revolutionary tactic from a pact with reaction.

But the cause that led him to these daring leaps was not the inner insecurity, the inner doubt about the strength and feasibility of the revolutionary cause that he represented, but, conversely, an excess of self-assured belief in the indomitable power of that cause. Lassalle sometimes put a foot on the opponent's ground in the struggle, while not wanting to abandon any of his revolutionary aims, but in the delusion of a powerful personality. He believed that he was able to wrest so much for his revolutionary aims on his own ground that the ground itself should have collapsed under the feet of the opponent. If Lassalle, for example, grafted his idea of productive associations based on state credit onto an idealistic, ahistorical fiction of the state, the great danger of this fiction lay in the fact that in reality he was merely idealising the pathetic Prussian state. But what Lassalle, on the basis of his fiction, wanted to demand and impose on this state in terms of the tasks and duties of the working class, that would not only have shaken the miserable barrack of a Prussian state, but the bourgeois state as such.“[16]

Let’s consider Luxemburg's view that Lassalle was a "bold, daring acrobat” who “often ventured a leap to the outermost edge of the abyss which distinguishes a revolutionary tactic from the pact with reaction" In reality experience shows the opposite; it shows that the correct political statements which a political adventurer can make at some point cannot change his character and overall contribution. No less misleading was the assessment of Franz Mehring, probably the most famous party historian and for a long time someone who stood alongside Rosa Luxemburg. From his point of view Lassalle was a revolutionary and as such "quite equal" to Marx (Mehring, Geschichte seiner Lebens, p. 318). According to Mehring, Lassalle was someone "whom the history of German social democracy will always mention in the same breath with him [Marx] and Engels". (Mehring p. 320). Lassalle's agitational writings have “given a new life to hundreds of thousands of German workers” (ibid. p. 314). According to Mehring, Marx “never completely overcame his prejudices” against Lassalle. Mehring regretted that Marx “judged the dead Lassalle even more bitterly and unjustly than the living”. (ibid. p. 319, 320)

Due to historical circumstances, Lassalle was never fully unmasked during his lifetime. As mentioned above, Marx and Engels broke with him over programmatic questions and his behaviour around 1861/62, but they had not been aware of the nature of his links with Bismarck. His sudden death increased the difficulties of grasping and exposing the full scope of his personality.

Schweitzer – a second adventurer

After Lassalle's death in 1864, Jean Baptist von Schweitzer was elected president of the ADAV in 1867 at the age of 34 years.

To get a picture of Schweitzer's character, we quote August Bebel in detail here.

“J.B. von Schweitzer is one of the leading personalities who, after Lassalle's death, successively took over the leadership of the association he founded. With Schweitzer the association received a leader who possessed to a high degree a number of qualities which were of great value for his position. He had the necessary theoretical background, a broad political view and a cool mind. As a journalist and agitator, he had the ability to make the most difficult questions and issues clear to the simplest worker; he knew how to fascinate and whip up the masses like few others. In the course of his journalistic work, he published a series of popularising science papers in his journal, The Social Democrat, which are among the best that socialist literature possesses. (...) He quickly grasped a given situation and understood how to exploit it. Finally, he was also an able and calculating speaker, who made an impression on the masses and his opponents.

But in addition to these good, in part brilliant qualities, Schweitzer possessed a number of vices which made him dangerous as the leader of a workers' party which was in the early stages of its development. For him, the movement which he joined after several wanderings was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. He entered the movement as soon as he saw that no future was blossoming within the bourgeoisie, that for him, who had become a declassé early through his way of life, the only hope was to play the role in the labour movement to which his ambition and, so to speak, his abilities predestined him. He also did not want to be merely the leader of the movement, but its ruler, and sought to exploit it for his selfish purposes. Educated in a Jesuit-led institute in Aschaffenburg for a number of years, later devoting himself to the study of jurisprudence, he acquired the intellectual tools in Jesuit casuistry and legal rabble-rousing that were by nature cunning and devious He was a politician who unscrupulously sought to achieve his purposes, satisfying his ambition at all costs, and also satisfying his needs to be a ‘bon viveur’, which was not possible without adequate material means, something he did not possess“ (August Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, Part 2, p. 223).

Schweitzer’s morals

After Schweitzer had been elected chairman of the Frankfurter Arbeiterbildungsverein (Workers‘ Educational Club) even before the founding of the ADAV in November 1861, he had not only become known locally as chairman of the Schützenverein (shooting club) and the Turnclub, (gymnastics club) but had also built up his first relationships with the local nobility. In the summer of 1862 he was accused of embezzling funds from the Schützenverein and of a paedophile contact with a 12 year old boy in a park. He was sentenced to two weeks in prison for the offence committed against the boy and for "arousing public anger".

Even though the boy was never found and although Schweitzer denied the whole affair the reproach of child abuse was from then on constantly hanging over him. He never denied the embezzlement of the money of the Schützenverein.

Nevertheless Lassalle protected him and accepted him into the ADAV and made him a board member. 

Bebel later wrote about the behaviour of Schweitzer and his promotion by Lassalle:  "He quickly understood that there was an opportunity here for a position for his future that corresponded to his ambition, which was cut off from him for all time in the bourgeois world because of the events described above [child abuse and embezzlement of money - ICC]. In these circles he was regarded as a person to be shown the door. (Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 232)

Contacts with the ruling class…

Following in Lassalle's footsteps, Schweitzer soon made an effort to establish contacts with ruling circles, in particular Bismarck and his entourage, by means of the Privy Councillor Hermann Wagener. [17]

Like Lassalle, Schweitzer also offered political support to Bismarck. How conscious Hatzfeldt was of Schweitzer's efforts, is shown by a statement by Bebel in his autobiography: "The Countess Hatzfeldt, according to whom Schweitzer‘s policy in support for Bismarck's had not gone far enough, tried to justify this policy towards the end of 1864 in a letter to Mrs. Herwegh, in which she wrote: ‘There is a formal abyss between the following two things: to sell oneself to an adversary, to work for him, whether in a hidden or uncovered way, or to grasp the moment like a great politician, to profit from the mistakes of the adversary, to let one enemy be wiped out by the other, to urge him on a downward trajectory and to take advantage of the favourable situation – no matter who may have brought it about. Those who merely have honest convictions, those who always base themselves only on an ideal vision of things to come, who remain floating in the air, may be considered privately as quite good people, but they are completely incapable of being useful for something, for actions which really affect events, in short, they can only be part of a great mass following the leader who knows better". (Bebel, ibid. p. 251)

Here you can see the point of view often found in adventurers: the masses are stupid and must be controlled, they need a clever head that can act effectively on the opponent. The adventurer is the "chosen one, the one who has been called". And a part of this behaviour is to speak with two tongues. As Bebel wrote: "The way in which Schweitzer knew how to flatter the masses, although inwardly he despised them - I have never seen a thing of this scope." [18]

...Paired with opportunist offers

Because Schweitzer said that "His Majesty our most revered king is the friend of the workers" and that the main enemy for the ADAV lies in the "liberal bourgeois party", he argued that "the social democratic party's struggle must first and foremost be directed against them. But if you defend this view, gentlemen, then you will say to yourself: Why shouldn't Lassalle have turned to Bismarck? (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 233, 247). [...] Bebel continues: “Schweitzer knew that the view he preached was fundamentally a reactionary one, a betrayal of the interests of the workers, but he propagandised it because he believed that it would promote his ascent (...)

It was self-evident that Bismarck and the feudalists gladly accepted such help from the far left and possibly supported the advocate of such a view" (Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 233). (...) “The attempts to make the General German Workers' Association palatable for Bismarck's grand Prussian politics, were thus undertaken very early and then permanently. It will be up to me to prove that Schweitzer consciously served Bismarck's endeavours” (Bebel, p. 227). Efforts to fulfil personal ambitions through direct or indirect contacts with the rulers were therefore often accompanied by programmatic weaknesses and deceptions, as could be seen in the question of electoral law (or see, for example, Schweitzer's article "The Ministry of Bismarck and the Government of the Central and Small States"). Engels later wrote: "At that time, an attempt was made to bring the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein - at the time the only organised association of social democratic workers in Germany - under the wing of the Bismarck Ministry by giving the workers the prospect that the government would grant them universal suffrage. The ‘universal, equal, direct right to vote’ had been preached by Lassalle as the only and infallible means for the conquest of political power by the working class." www.mlwerke.de/me/me16/me16_326.htm [114]

At that time Engels wrote two important programmatic texts, "The Prussian Military Question and the German Labour Party" as well as an answer to J.B. Schweitzer "Über P.-J. Proudhon”. As Engels commented, “this article had Proudhon as its topic, but actually it should also be seen as an answer to Lassalleanism itself” (MEW 15, P. 25).

At the same time Schweitzer reacted to the criticism of his position on Prussia. Because Marx and Engels lived in England and not in Germany, they could not have any "expert knowledge" at all. Only if one has a "local/national" view can one judge correctly "As far as the practical questions of momentary tactics are concerned, however, I ask you to consider that, in order to judge these things, one must stand in the center of the movement". In the Social Democrat of December 15, 1864, an article "Our Programme" defended this national standpoint: "We do not want a powerless and torn fatherland, powerless to the outside and full of arbitrariness within - we want the whole mighty Germany, the one free people's state” (Bebel, ibid., p. 232). Such a strong national vision was put forward at a time when the First International was emphasising the importance of internationalism to the whole working class worldwide.

On December 15, 1865 Schweitzer published an article in Social Democrat praising the "merits" of Lassalle, as if there had been no workers' movement before him. In response, Marx sent the above-mentioned article on Proudhon in order to "almost covertly" encourage critical reflection on Lassalle's role. In addition to Lassalle's glorification, the Social Democrat under Schweitzer wanted to further expand Bismarck's support. As a result, Marx and Engels renounced their collaboration in the Social Democrat on February 23, 1865, after which Schweitzer again falsified the positions of Marx and Engels. [19]

The personality cult around Lassalle

The opposition within the ADAV began to polemicize against the “dictatorial organisational provisions in the Association Statutes, so as Lassalle's very own work the organisation had to be surrounded with a kind of glory. The Lassalle cult was from now on systematically promoted and everyone who dared to hold different views was branded as a kind of desecrator of the most sacred” (Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 246). Bebel went on to say that "And Schweitzer supported these idiotic views, which eventually became a kind of religious belief. (...) In the course of the years it came to pass that the topic ‘Christ and Lassalle’ was placed on the agenda of numerous popular assemblies” (ibid., p. 246). [20]

"Obscure" funding sources

Like Lassalle, Schweitzer did not rely solely on dubious sources of finance. He never explained where the large funds for the production and distribution of the Social Democrat came from, after the suspicion arose that he was receiving funds from government sources. The mere suspicion that he was dependent on government funds, that he thus could not only be blackmailed but even directly corrupted, should not have been left unanswered by Schweitzer. Instead he left this accusation hanging in the air. [21]

And he did nothing when it became known that a police informer named Preuß was active in the organisation and was in contact with his police superior, with whom Schweitzer himself maintained contacts.

Not only spared by the police

It might be argued: aren't prison sentences or repressive actions against adventurers proof of their "innocence"?

In November 1865 Schweitzer had gone to prison and was to have served a year there for insulting His Majesty and defaming official orders, with deprivation of his rights of honour.

"It has been asserted that the various prison sentences are evidence against the accusation that Schweitzer was Bismarck's agent. This view is quite wrong. The relations a government has with its political agents do not bind them to the prosecutors and judges. A temporary conviction of a political agent for oppositional acts is also very suitable to eliminate distrust of the person concerned and to strengthen confidence in him. It is well known that at the same time as Lassalle and Bismarck had their hours of political conversations as "friendly neighbours", the Berlin courts did not shy away from sentencing him to a series of harsh prison sentences, even though it was widely known at the time how Bismarck and Lassalle stood in relation to each other”  (Bebel, ibid., p. 253).

While the Berlin police terrorised suspects during their early in the morning raids, among other things through house searches, "Schweitzer [...] never had to complain about such or similar measures. He went to prison and left the same as if he had been to a hotel" (Bebel, p. 297). In fact, Schweitzer was repeatedly released from prison or could almost enter and leave prison and continue his activities - in contrast to other members of the ADAV who languished there.

In fact the close ally of Lassalle Countess Hatzfeldt even denounced Liebknecht to the police when he was staying illegally in Berlin in 1865, after which he was expelled from the city. [22]

Growing resistance to Schweitzer in the ADAV

In the spring of 1869, resistance formed within the ADAV against Schweitzer's dictatorial powers.

At first against his wasteful lifestyle: “Schweitzer was one of those characters who always spend at least twice as much money as they earn, whose slogan is: my needs do not have to depend on my revenue, but the revenues have to depend on my needs, which requires that they then unscrupulously take the money where they find it. In 1862 Schweitzer had taken 2,600 Taler from the Schützenfestkasse, but later, when he was president of the Allgemeine Deutscher Arbeiterverein and as such had the money at his disposal, he embezzled pennies collected by poorly paid workers in order to satisfy his desires. These were not large sums, but this was not due to Schweitzer, but to the meagre contents of the cash register. He was accused of this mismanagement and it was also proven at various general meetings of the ADAV, and Bracke, who for many years was the treasurer of the association and had to pay out the money on Schweitzer's orders, publicly accused him of these infamous activities without Schweitzer daring to utter a word in his defence. But anyone who is capable of such a thing could not have been incapable of selling himself politically, which could be the only halfway lucrative business for him. No one can prove how much was paid, for such transactions are not concluded on the open market” (Bebel, ibid. p. 270). When the local section of Erfurt wanted to have Schweitzer's cash management checked, Schweitzer threatened to dissolve the association... and three weeks later the police actually appeared as a punitive expedition and dissolved the association (Bebel, ibid., p. 274). And following consultations in a small circle of Chosen Men, he had a new club founded. Its statutes were rigged in Schweitzer’s favour: “The new statutes contained downright outrageous provisions. Thus the president was to be elected six weeks before the ordinary general assembly in a ballot by the members of the association, i.e. before the general assembly had spoken and examined its management" (cf. Bebel, ibid., p. 276).

Denigrations of Marx and Engels

“Schweitzer further declared against Marx and Engels that they had withdrawn from the Social Democrat as soon as they realised that they could not play the leading role in the party. In contrast to them, Lassalle was not the man of infertile abstraction, but a politician in the strict sense of the word, not a literary doctrinaire, but a man of practical action.

It must not be forgotten, however, that Schweitzer later flattered the man of ‘infertile abstraction’ the ‘literary doctrinaire’, Karl Marx, and sought to win him over“. (Bebel, ibid., p. 240).

During the General Assembly of the ADAV in Wuppertal Barmen-Elberfeld at the end of March 1869, at which Schweitzer was to be called to account, Bebel reported to Marx:

“Liebknecht and I sit here in Elberfeld in a small circle of like-minded people to prepare the campaign plan for tomorrow's battle. Here we have heard about such an abundance of Schweitzer's mean, vile acts, that our hair stands on end. It also turns out to be evident that Schweitzer only proposes to accept the programme of the International for the purpose of leading a coup against us and to knock down a good part of opposition elements or rather to draw them over to himself”. (Bebel, ibid., p. 281). Bebel added that "Schweitzer is using all means of perfidy and intrigue against us". Bebel and Liebknecht wanted to expose Schweitzer in this plenary meeting. [23] Bebel reported: "The next afternoon we entered the crowded hall, greeted by the angry looks of the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. Liebknecht spoke first, about an hour and a half, I followed and spoke for a much shorter time. Our accusations contained what I had so far put forward against Schweitzer. Several times there were violent interruptions, namely when I called Schweitzer a government agent. I must withdraw the accusation! I refused to do so. I thought I had the right to speak my mind freely, they, the listeners, did not have to believe me.(...)

Schweitzer, who sat on the podium behind us during our speeches, did not answer a word. So we left the hall, with some delegates walking in front of and behind us to protect us from the assaults of the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. But flattering words like ‘villain, traitor, toe-rag, you should have your bones smashed’ etc., were heard in the crowd as we walked through its ranks. One of those present also tried to bring me down from the podium by pushing me into the hollow of my knee. In front of the door our friends welcomed us to escort us to our hotel as our guardians”.

Schweitzer demanded a vote of confidence from the delegates. After a heated debate he was confirmed as the president – though with a much-reduced number of votes.

“Even though Schweitzer was re-elected at the General Assembly, his powers were severely restricted. Schweitzer swiped the minutes of the General Assembly and made them disappear. (…) Nothing that compromised him was permitted to be made known to the members of the association and become public." (Bebel, p. 285).

For a short time the two wings into which the ADAV had split had proclaimed their reunification under Schweitzer. But the opposition wing around Bracke concluded that "Mr. von Schweitzer uses the association only to satisfy his ambition and to degrade it to a tool of anti-working class reactionary politics” (Bebel, ibid, p. 290). The opposition then called for the holding of a congress of all the social democratic workers in Germany (held in Eisenach). They resigned from the ADAV and declared: "It will become clear whether corruption, meanness, bribery, or honesty and purity of intentions will win out.

Our slogan is: Down with sectarianism! Down with the cult of personality! Down with the Jesuits who acknowledge our principle in words, betray it in actions! Long live Social Democracy, long live the International Workers' Association!

The fact that in this declaration, and later repeatedly, we used the honesty of our intentions against the dishonest Schweitzers in the field, subsequently brought the nickname ‘The Honest’ to the newly founded party of the opponents” (Bebel, p. 293).

“Schweitzer's counter-offensive was not long in coming. The Social Democrat now observed the tactic of constantly proclaiming that our fraction consisted not of workers but of literary figures, schoolmasters and other bourgeois". Above all, the opposition was to be discredited by abuse, attempts at ridicule and slander. "Behind our Congress, it was said in this article, stood the whole liberal bourgeoisie in all its shades. Of course, under a regiment of literary men, schoolmasters, merchants, etc., there could be no question of a tight, uniform organisation. Each of these people must have the opportunity to make themselves quite important. The entire bourgeois press was at our command, he continued. He would see to it that a corresponding number of delegates came to the Eisenach Congress, but not literary men and bourgeois, but real workers” (Bebel, p. 295). Finally, Tölcke, who in 1865 had been elected president of the ADAV, accused Bebel in the Social Democrat of 28 July 1869 of obtaining 600 Taler a month from the ex-King of Hanover - a real slander!

At the founding congress of the Eisenachers held in August, the members feared a violent intrusion by the fanatical supporters of Schweitzer. Approximately 100 people from the "Schweitzer" circle of supporters then appeared at the Eisenach Congress, but were rejected because of non-existent mandates.

With the foundation of the Eisenach Party in1869, which had risen through opposition to the ADAV, the first party was founded: the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland (SDAP -Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany)

In a letter to Schweitzer Marx wrote about the indispensable step of moving from a sect to a real class movement. Lassalle had not only refused to contribute to making this step but had acted as an obstacle, which the movement had to go beyond. “Moreover from the outset, like everyone who declares that he has a panacea for the sufferings of the masses in his pocket, he gave his agitation a religious and sectarian character. Every sect is in fact religious. Further, just because he was the founder of a sect, he denied all natural connection with the earlier movement both in Germany and outside. He fell into the same mistake as Proudhon, and instead of looking among the genuine elements of the class movement for the real basis of his agitation, he tried to prescribe their course to these elements according to a certain dogmatic recipe.

Most of what I am now saying after the event I foretold to Lassalle in 1862, when he came to London and invited me to place myself with him at the head of the new movement.

You yourself have experienced in your own person the opposition between the movement of a sect and the movement of a class. The sect sees the justification for its existence and its ‘point of honour’ not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from it. Therefore when at Hamburg you proposed the congress for the formation of trade unions you were only able to defeat the opposition of the sect by threatening to resign from the office of president. In addition, you were obliged to double yourself and to announce that in one case you were acting as the head of the sect and in the other as the organ of the class movement.

The dissolution of the General Association of German Workers gave you the historic opportunity to accomplish a great step forward and to declare, to prove if necessary, that a new stage of development had now been reached, and that moment was ripe for the sectarian movement to merge into the class movement and make an end of all dependence. Where the true content of the sect was concerned it would, as with all previous working-class sects, be carried on into the general movement as an element which enriched it. Instead of this you actually demanded of the class movement that it should subordinate itself to the movement of a particular sect.

Those who are not your friends have concluded from this that whatever happens you want to preserve ‘your own’ workers' movement" [24]

In July 1871 the Braunschweig party section published an appeal:

“But vis a vis Mr. von Schweitzer, who in the most spiteful and reprehensible way tries to set up workers against workers, social democrats against social democrats, we are obliged to stand up for the workers’ real cause with all our energy. Therefore we call upon the party comrades in Barmen-Elberfeld, (...) to take the necessary steps in this direction without delay; the party is guilty and obliged to clean the general movement of a man who, under the guise of a radical attitude, has so far done everything in the interest of the Prussian state government to harm this movement. The party will support the comrades in Barmen-Elberfeld. Now forward vigorously!” (Bebel, Mein Leben, p. 330).
In spring 1871 Schweitzer was expelled from the ADAV. [25]
As with the case of Lassalle, Schweitzer was never fully unmasked during his life (he died of pneumonia in 1875). He was expelled from the ADAV, but without the lessons having been drawn sufficiently.

It was only in the fight against the activities of Bakunin that the First International and its General Council developed the capacity to expose the activities of an adventurer in an efficient manner.

The struggle against adventurers is not possible without assimilating the experience of the revolutionary movement

The role of the two adventurers, both lawyers, who for years were able to do their dirty work in the ADAV - while in the eyes of many were considered to be acting in the interests of the working class - shows how difficult it is to identify and expose an adventurer.

Exposing and uncovering their behaviour, careers, interactions, reactions and true motives is one of the greatest challenges for a revolutionary organisation. As the past has shown, the fact that these individuals have gained the trust of many members of the organisation by trickery, and may enjoy a high reputation in the working class as a whole, is a major obstacle, but it must not undermine the ability to recognise and understand the very nature of such individuals. The unmasking of such adventurers usually encounters the horror of those who feel closest to them and who are incapable or unwilling to recognise reality out of long-term allegiance, "loyalty" and/or emotional affinity. Since such persons can be "highly esteemed" figures, from whom "no one expects anything like this", it is all the more important to come to terms with the painful historical experience of the revolutionary movement. Engels wrote shortly before the end of his life in 1891 that he "would no longer allow Lassalle's false fame to be maintained and preached anew at Marx's expense”. (Engels with August Bebel, May 1/2, 1891, MEW 38, p. 93)  

So he summed up the hesitations and doubts weighing on the party, and showed why it was important to uncover Lassalle mercilessly:

“You mention that Bebel has written to you saying that Marx’s treatment of Lassalle has caused bad blood amongst the old Lassalleans. That may be. Those people don’t, of course, know the true story and nobody seems to have done anything to enlighten them on the subject. If they don’t know that Lassalle’s reputation as a great man is solely attributable to the fact that for years Marx allowed him to flaunt as his own the fruits of Marx’s research and, what’s more, to distort them because of his inadequate grounding in political economy, that is no fault of mine. But I am Marx’s literary executor and as such I also have my obligations.

For the past 26 years Lassalle has been part of history. If, while the Exceptional Law was in force, he has been exempt from historical criticism, it is now high time that such criticism came into its own and that light be thrown on Lassalle’s position in regard to Marx. The legend which veils the true image of Lassalle and deifies him cannot, after all, become an article of faith for the party. However highly one may rate Lassalle’s services on behalf of the movement, his historical role inside it remains an equivocal one. Everywhere Lassalle the socialist goes hand in hand with Lassalle the demagogue. In Lassalle the agitator and organiser, the Lassalle who conducted the Hatzfeldt lawsuit is everywhere apparent: the same cynicism in the choice of methods, the same predilection for consorting with corrupt and shady people who may be used simply as tools and then be discarded. Up till 1862 a specifically Prussian vulgar democrat in practice with marked Bonapartist tendencies (I have just been looking through his letters to Marx), he made a sudden volte-face for purely personal reasons and began to engage in agitation. And before 2 years had gone by he was demanding that the workers side with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie and had begun intriguing with his kindred spirit Bismarck in a manner that could only have led to the actual betrayal of the movement had he not, luckily for him, been shot in the nick of time. In his propagandist writings the correct arguments he borrowed from Marx are so interwoven with his own invariably false ones that it is virtually impossible to separate the two. Such workers as have been offended by Marx’s judgment know nothing of Lassalle save for his 2 years of agitation and, furthermore, see the latter only through rose-tinted spectacles. But historical criticism cannot forever remain standing hat in hand before such prejudices. It was my duty to settle accounts once and for all between Marx and Lassalle. That has been done. With this I can content myself for the time being. Besides, I have other things to do. And the publication of Marx’s ruthless judgment of Lassalle will undoubtedly prove effective on its own and put heart into others. But if I were forced to do so, there'd be no alternative: I should have to dispose of the Lassallean legend once and for all” (Engels to Kautsky, 23 February 1891, MEW 38, p. 40).

The unmasking of the activities of Bakunin through the General Council of the First International showed that this struggle was only possible because of the political awareness and determination to unmask such adventurers. And this could only be done by establishing a specific report like that of the General Council to The Hague Congress. [26] When Bebel and Liebknecht denounced Schweitzer in 1869 at the Wuppertal Party conference, they did so without having presented a proper report, without offering a full picture, a fact which certainly contributed to the unmasking being ‘half-baked’, and it did not prevent Schweitzer from being re-elected – in spite of growing resistance.

The struggle against adventurers, which as the experience of Marx and Engels in their struggle against Lassalle and Schweitzer showed, is a tremendous challenge, was taken to a higher, much more efficient level through the General Council of the First International at The Hague Congress. By drawing the lessons of the weaknesses and difficulties of the struggle against Lassalle and Schweitzer the General Council forged the weapons to face up to Bakunin. It is up to revolutionary organisations today to re-appropriate the lessons of this struggle.

Dino,    July 2019

The current climate change protests are being encouraged and praised by a whole segment of the ruling class, from the Merkel to Corbyn. That alone should make us reflect on whether these protests are really part of the solution to capitalism’s devastation of nature. In this forum we will look at the relationship between humanity and nature from a communist starting point, and argue that the class struggle alone can halt the slide into barbarism. Join us for the discussion!

2pm, Saturday 19 October, May Day Rooms, 88 Fleet Street,  London EC4Y 1DH (Nearest tube: St Pauls)

This article is part of the series The hidden legacy of the left of capital in which we are proposing how to come to grips with something that is difficult for numerous groups and militants of the Communist Left: it's not only a question of breaking with all the political positions of the parties of capital (populist, fascist, right, left, extreme-left) but it is also necessary to break with their organisational methods, their morality and their way of thinking. This rupture is absolutely necessary but it is difficult because we live daily with the ideological enemies of the liberation of humanity: bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat. In this fifth article of the series, we are looking at the vital question of debate[1].

The proletariat, the class of debate

Debate is the source of life for the proletariat, a class which isn't an unconscious force struggling blindly and motivated by the determinism of objective conditions. It is on the contrary a conscious class whose combat is guided by an understanding of the necessities and possibilities on the road to communism. This comprehension doesn't arise from absolute truths formulated once and for all in the Manifesto of the Communist Party or in the privileged spirit of brilliant leaders but it is a product "of the intellectual development of the working class (which must come from) common action and discussion. Events and the ups and downs of the struggle against capital, defeats more so than its successes, can only make the combatants feel the insufficiencies of all their panaceas and lead them to a fundamental understanding of the real conditions of workers' emancipation"[2].

Revolutionary proletarians stand upon the gigantic debates of the masses. The autonomous and self-organised action of the working class is based on debate in which hundreds of thousands of workers, youth, women, retired, actively participate. The Russian revolution of 1917 was based on a permanent debate of thousands of discussions in localities, the streets, tramways... The days of 1917 have left us with two images that well illustrate the importance of debate for the working class: the blocked tramway because its occupants, driver included, decided to stop and discuss a topic; or a window to the street from which a speaker launches a speech gathering a crowd of hundreds of people coming together to listen and speak.

May 68 was also a permanent debate of the masses. There is a flagrant contrast between discussions of workers in the strikes of May during which there was talk of how to destroy the state, how to create a new society, of union sabotage, etc., and that of a student "assembly" in Germany in 1967, controlled by "radical" Maoists during which it took three hours to decide how to organise a demonstration. "We talk to each other and we listen to each other" was one of the most popular slogans of May 68.

The movement of 2006 and 2011 (struggle against the CPE in France and the Indignados movement in Spain[3]) were founded on the living debate of thousands of workers, youths, etc., and on unrestricted discussion. In occupied places "flying libraries" were organised, recalling an action that appeared with great force during the Russian revolution of 1917, as John Reed underlined in Ten Days Which Shook the World: "All of Russia learnt to read, and they read (political economy, history) because people desired knowledge. In all towns, big or small, on the front, each political fraction had its journal (sometimes it even had several). Pamphlets were distributed in their hundreds of thousands by thousands of organisations and were spread into the army, the villages, the factories and the streets. The thirst for learning which had been repressed for so long took on a real delirious form with the revolution. From the first six month from the Smolny Institute alone trains and trucks loaded with literature saturated the country. An insatiable Russia absorbed all printed matter as the warm sand absorbs sea water. And this wasn't from fairy stories, falsified history, diluted religion and corrupt and cheap novels but social, economic and philosophical theories, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol and Gorky"[4].

If debate is the vital nerve of the working class it is even more so for its revolutionary organisations: “Contrary to the Bordigist standpoint, the organisation of revolutionaries cannot be 'monolithic'. The existence of disagreements within it is an expression of the fact that it is a living organ which does not have fully formed answers which can be immediately applied to the problems arising in the class. Marxism is neither a dogma nor a catechism. It is the theoretical instrument of a class which through its experience and with a view towards its historic future, advances gradually, through ups and downs, towards a self-awareness which is the indispensable precondition for emancipating itself. As in all human thought, the process whereby proletarian consciousness develops is not a linear or mechanical process but a contradictory and critical one: it necessarily presupposes discussion and the confrontation of arguments. In fact, the famous 'monolithism' or 'invariance' of the Bordigists is a decoy (as can be seen in the positions taken up by the Bordigist organisations and their various sections); either the organisation is completely sclerotic and is no longer affected by the life of the class, or it's not monolithic and its positions are not invariant."[5].

Why do they talk of "debate" whereas in reality it's a battle?

However, militants who have been in bourgeois political parties have themselves experienced that this "debate" is a farce and an evident source of suffering. In all bourgeois parties, whatever their colours, the debate takes the form of a "battle with cudgels", the famous painting by Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The electoral debates are just rubbish, full of insults, accusations, dirty laundry, traps and underhand coups. These are spectacles of denigration and the settling of accounts conceived as boxing-matches where reality and truth count for nothing. The sole stake is to see who wins and who loses, who can con and lie the best, who can manipulate feelings with the most cynicism[6].

In bourgeois parties, "free expression" is pure humbug. Things can be said up to a point but not beyond calling into question the dominance of the "leadership". When this threshold is overstepped a campaign of lies is organised against those who have dared to think for themselves and this when they are not directly marched out of the party. These practices have taken place in all the parties where the tormenters and their victims both use it. Rosa Diez, a leader of the Basque PSOE, has thus been the target of a virulent campaign of accusations by informers from within her party "comrades". She wouldn't align with the orientation, in force at that time, for collaboration with Basque nationalism and they made her life impossible up to her quitting the party. She then founded the UYPD (which attempted to hold a centrist position, then taken up by Ciudadanos) and, when rivals and opponents appeared in her own boutique they dealt out the same fate, even reaching new depths of sadism and cynicism that would have made Stalin shudder.

In general debate is avoided in bourgeois parties, whatever their complexity. Stalin forbade debate, profiting from a serious error of the Bolshevik Party in 1921: the prohibition of fractions, a measure put forward by Lenin as a false response to Kronstadt[7]. Trotskyism equally blocks debate within itself and practices the same type of exclusion and repression. The attempt to expel the Left Opposition happened inside a Stalinist prison (!)[8] as witnessed in the book of Anton Ciliga [9], quoted in previous articles in this series: "To the ideological struggle in the Trotskyist ‘Collective’, was added an organisational conflict which, for some months, relegated ideological questions to a second level. These conflicts characterise the psychology and habits of the Russian Opposition. Both right and the centre give to the ‘Bolshevik militants’ the following ultimatum: either they dissolve themselves and stop their publication or they will be expelled from the Trotskyist organisation.

"In effect the majority thought that there was no need to have a sub-group within the Trotskyist fraction. This principle of the ‘monolithic fraction’ was basically the same as that which inspired Stalin for the whole of the party".

In the congresses of such organisations, no-one listens to the presentations which consist of boring displays where one thing and its opposite are affirmed at the same time. Sectoral conferences are organised, seminars and many other events which are nothing but public relations operations.

"Debate" in these organisations arises when it's a question of turfing out the clique in power and replacing it with it with a new one. This can be for various reasons: factional interests, deviations regarding the defence of the national interest, bad election results... From here the "debate" breaks out which turns out to be a struggle for power. On some occasions "debate" consists of when a faction invents a convoluted and contradictory "theses" and is violently opposed to that of rivals, resorting to ferocious criticisms through words, incendiary adjectives ("opportunist", "abandonment of Marxism", etc.) and other sophisticated pretexts. The "debate" becomes just a succession of insults, threats, airing dirty washing in public, accusations...  punctuated now and again by diplomatic acts of approval in order to "show" the wish for unity and that one appreciates one's rival who are "comrades" after all[10]. There finally comes a moment when equilibrium between the contending forces is established making the "debate" a sum of "opinions" that everyone defends as their property, which results in no clarification but rather a chaotic sum of ideas or "conciliatory" texts where opposed ideas sit one with the other[11].

Thus we can conclude that "debate" in bourgeois organisations (whatever their place on the political chess-board which ranges from the extreme-right to the extreme-left) is a farce and a means of launching personal incendiary attacks, which can cause serious psychological consequences for the victims and which shows the striking cruelty and a complete absence of moral scruples of the persecutors. Finally, it's a game in which sometimes the persecutors become victims and vice-versa. The terrible treatment that they have suffered can be inflicted on many others once they have obtained power.

The principles and means of proletarian debate

Proletarian debate is fundamentally different. Debate within proletarian organisations responds to radically different principles than those we have just seen in bourgeois parties.

The class consciousness of the proletariat (i.e., the self-developed knowledge of the ends and means of its historic struggle) alone gives birth to an unlimited and unhindered debate: "Consciousness cannot develop without fraternal, public and international debate" as we affirmed in our text: The culture of debate, a weapon of the class struggle[12]. Communist organisations, which express the most advanced and permanent effort for the development of consciousness in the class, need debate as a vital arm: "... among the first demands (that these) minorities express is the necessity for debate, not as a luxury but as an imperative need, the necessity to take others seriously and listen to what they say; it is also necessary that the process is not brutal but an arm of discussion, nor should it be an appeal to morality or to the authority of theoreticians", as the text continues.

In a proletarian political organisation, debate must be the opposite of the repugnant methods that we've denounced above. It's a matter of finding common ground of a shared truth where there are no winners or losers and where the only triumph is that of common clarity. Discussion is based on arguments, hypotheses, analysis, doubts... Errors are part of the route which leads to operational conclusions. Accusations, insults, the personalisation of comrades or organisational structures must be categorically forbidden because it's not a question of who says it, but what is being said.

Disagreements are necessary moments in coming to a position. Not because there's a "democratic right" but a duty to express them when one isn't convinced by a position or when one senses it is insufficient or confused. In the course of a debate positions are confronted and sometimes there are minority positions which, with time, become that of the majority. Such was the case with Lenin with his April Theses which, when he presented it on arrival in Russian in 1917, was a minority position within a Bolshevik Party that was dominated by opportunist deviations imposed by the Central Committee. Through an intense discussion, widely participated in by all the militants, the party became convinced of the validity of Lenin's positions and adopted them[13].

The different positions expressed within a revolutionary organisation are not fixed postures which are the property of those who defend them. In a revolutionary organisation, "divergences do not express the defence of personal material interests or particular pressure groups, but they are the translation of a living and dynamic process of the clarification of problems which are posed to the class and as such are destined to be re-absorbed with a deepening of the discussion and in the light of experience" ("Report on the Structure and Functioning of the Revolutionary Organisation", quoted above).

In proletarian organisations there can be no "enlightened minds" that must be followed without question. It is clear that there can be comrades with greater capacities or who possess a greater mastery in certain domains. There are certainly militants whose devotion, conviction and enthusiasm contains a certain moral authority. However, none of all that confers on them a particular privileged status which makes this or that militant a "brilliant leader", a specialist expert on this or that question or a "great theoretician". "There's no supreme saviour, no god, no Caesar, no tribune, producers save yourselves and let's decree common salvation", are words from the battle hymn of the Second International.

More precisely, as noted in the text on Structure and Functioning, “Within the organisation there are no 'noble' tasks and no 'secondary' or 'less noble' tasks. Both the work of theoretical elaboration and the realisation of practical tasks, both the work in central organs and the specific work of local sections, are equally important for the organisation and should not be put in a hierarchical order (it's capitalism which establishes such hierarchies)”. 

In a communist organisation it is necessary to fight against any tendency to follow blindly, an error consisting of aligning oneself, without thinking, to the position of a "clear militant" or to a central organ. In a communist organisation, every militant must maintain a critical spirit, not to take anything as read but analyse what the subject is including that coming from the "leadership", the central organs or the "most advanced militants". This is the opposite of the state of things which exists in bourgeois parties and most particularly in their representatives on the left. In these latter organisations blind following and the most extreme respect for the leaders are the norm; and in fact these tendencies already existed in the Trotskyist Opposition: "The letters of Trotsky and Rakovsky, which dealt with the question of the agenda, were smuggled into the prison and gave rise to numerous comments. The hierarchical and submissive spirit in front of the leaders of the Russian Opposition never ceases to amaze. One phrase or a speech from Trotsky was a hallmark. Further, as much as the Trotskyists of the right and left gave these phrases a true meaning, everyone interpreted them in their own way. The complete submission to Lenin and Stalin which reigned in the party was equally present in the Opposition but in relation to Lenin and Trotsky: all the rest was the work of the Devil" (Anton Ciliga, Op. Cit., Page 273).

A very dangerous idea exists which it is necessary to formally reject: there are "expert" militants who, once they have spoken "have said everything", one "couldn't say it better" and others limit themselves to taking notes and keeping quiet.

This vision radically repudiates a proletarian debate which is a dynamic process during the course of which many efforts are made, including some erroneous, in order to confront problems. The superficial vision, rooted in the mercantile logic of only seeing the "product" or the final result without distinguishing it from everything that led to its elaboration, of only focusing on the abstract and timeless value of exchange, leads one to think that everything comes from "brilliant" leaders. Marx did not share this point of view. In a letter addressed to Wilhem Blos in 1877, he wrote: "Neither of us (Marx and Engels) cares a straw for popularity. Let me cite one proof of this: such was my aversion to the personality cult that at the time of the International, when plagued by numerous moves — originating from various countries — to accord me public honour, I never allowed one of these to enter the domain of publicity, nor did I ever reply to them, save with an occasional snub. When Engels and I first joined the secret communist society, we did so only on condition that anything conducive to a superstitious belief in authority be eliminated from the Rules"[14].

During the course of a debate, hypotheses and opposed positions are formulated. Some approximations are made, some errors committed and there are some clearer interventions; but the global result doesn't come from the "most far-seeing militant", rather a dynamic and living synthesis of all of the positions integrated into the discussion. The finally adopted position is not that of those were "right", and it does not imply any antagonism to those who were "wrong"; it is a new and superior position which collectively helps to clarify things.

The obstacles to the development of proletarian debate

Evidently, debate isn't easy within a proletarian organisation. It doesn't evolve in a world apart but it must bear all weight of the dominant ideology and the conception of debate that it carries with it. It is inevitable that "forms of debate" which belong to bourgeois society and which assails us every day through the spectacles of its parties, its television and its rubbish programmes, social networks, electoral campaigns, etc., have infiltrated into the life of proletarian organisations. A constant struggle has to be undertaken against this destructive infiltration. As our text on the culture of debate cited previously shows:

“Since the spontaneous tendency within capitalism is not the clarification of ideas but violence, manipulation and the winning of majorities (best exemplified in the electoral circus of bourgeois democracy), the infiltration of this influence within proletarian organisations always contains the germs of crisis and degeneration. The history of the Bolshevik Party illustrates this perfectly. As long as the party was the spearhead of the revolution, the most lively, often controversial debate was one of its main characteristics. As opposed to this, the banning of real fractions (after the Kronstadt massacre of 1921) was a paramount sign and active factor of its degeneration”. 

This text pointed to the poisonous heritage which Stalinism left in the ranks of the workers and which weigh on communists, a good number of whom began their political life in Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskyist organisations and think that the " These militants were brought up politically to believe that exchange of arguments is equivalent to ‘bourgeois liberalism’, that a ‘good communist’ is someone who shuts his mouth and switches off his mind and emotions. The comrades who today are determined to shake off the effects of this moribund product of the counter-revolution increasingly understand that this requires the rejection not only of its positions but also its mentality.”  

In fact, we must fight the mentality which falsifies debate and which festers from every pore of the bourgeois world and particularly vulgar Stalinism and all its appendices, notably those who feign a greater "openness" such as the Trotskyists. It is necessary to be clear and decisive in the defence of a position but that doesn't mean arrogance and brutality. A discussion can be combative but that doesn't mean quarrelsome and aggressive. We can call a spade a spade but one can't deduce from that that one should be insulting and cynical. It is not necessary to look for conciliation and compromise but that shouldn't be confused with sectarianism and a refusal to listen to the arguments of others. Once and for all, we must open up a route out of the milieu of confusion and distortion that Stalinism and its avatars maintain.

Individualism: the enemy of debate

Although the bureaucratic collectivism of the bourgeois parties, with their monolithism and brutal constraints, constitute an obstacle to debate, it's necessary to protect oneself against what appears as its opposition whereas, in reality, it is its complement. We refer here to the individualist vision of debate.

This consists of everyone having "their own opinion" and this "opinion" is private property. Consequently, to criticise the position of a comrade becomes an attack: their "private property" has been violated because it belongs to them. To criticise this or that position of this or that comrade would be the equivalent of stealing from them or taking their food.

This vision is seriously false. Knowledge doesn't give rise to "personal reasonableness" or to the "intimate conviction" of each individual. What we think is part of a historical and social effort linked to labour and the development of the productive forces. What each person says is only "original" if it is involved in a critical manner in a collective effort of thought. The thought of the proletariat is the product of its historic struggle at the world level, a struggle which doesn't limit itself to its economic combats but which, as Engels said, contains three interconnected dimensions: economic, political and ideological struggle.

Every proletarian political organisation is linked in the critical historical continuity of a long chain going from the Communist League (1848) up to the small existing organisations of the Communist Left. In this historic line, positions, ideas, appreciations and the contributions of each militant are involved. While each militant aim to extend knowledge still further, they don't consider this an individual effort but one with the objective of taking as far as possible the clarification of positions and orientations for the whole of the organisation of the proletariat.

The idea that "everyone has their opinion" is a serious obstacle to debate and is complementary to the bureaucratic monolithism of bourgeois parties. In a debate, where everyone has their opinion, the result can either be a conflict between victors and vanquished or it can be a sum of different, useless, contradictory opinions. Individualism is an obstacle to clarity and, as in a monolithic party, the question of "here's my opinion, take it or leave it", means that there is no debate when each person puts forward their "own opinion".

For the development of an international proletarian debate

Proletarian debate has a historic nature; it welcomes the best of scientific and cultural discussion which has existed in the history of humanity: “Fundamentally, the culture of debate is an expression of the eminently social nature of mankind. In particular, it is an emanation of the specifically human use of language. The use of language as a means of exchange of information is something which humanity shares with many animals. What distinguishes mankind from the rest of nature at this level is the capacity to cultivate and exchange argumentation (linked to the development of logic and science), and to get to know each other (the cultivation of empathy, linked among other things to the development of art)”.

The culture of debate has its roots in primitive communism but made some vital advances in Ancient Greece: "Engels for instance refers to the role of the general assemblies of the Greeks of the Homeric phase, of the early Germanic tribes or of the Iroquois of North America, specifically praising the culture of debate of the latter”.

“Debate arose in response to practical necessity. In Greece, it develops through the comparison of different sources of knowledge. Different ways of thinking, modes of investigation and their results, production methods, customs and traditions are compared with each other. They are found to contradict, to confirm or to complete each other. They enter into struggle with each other or support one another, or both. Absolute truths are rendered relative by comparison”.

Our text on the Structure and Functioning of the Organisation sums up the fundamental principles of proletarian debate:

• “rejection of any disciplinary or administrative measure on the part of the organisation with regard to members who raise disagreements: just as the minority must know how to be a minority inside the organisation, the majority must know how to be a majority, and in particular it must not abuse the fact that its position has become the position of the organisation and annihilate debate in any way, for example, by compelling members of the minority to be spokesmen for positions they don't adhere to;
• the whole organisation is interested in discussion being as wide-ranging and as clear as possible (even when it deals with divergences of principle which can only lead to an organisational separation): it's up to both the minority and the majority to do all they can (obviously without this paralysing or weakening the tasks of the organisation) to convince each other of the validity of their respective analyses, or at least to allow the greatest possible clarity to emerge on the nature and significance of these disagreements.
• To the extent that the debates going on in the organisation generally concern the whole proletariat they should be expressed publicly”

The proletariat is an international class and for that its debate must have an international and centralised nature. If debate is not an addition of individual opinions, it can no more be the sum of a range of local opinions. The strength of the proletariat is its unity and consciousness which aims to express itself at the world level.

International debate, integrating the contributions and experiences of the proletariat of all countries is what gives clarity and a global vision which makes the proletarian struggle stronger.

C. Mir, 11 July 2018

This summer, the images of the Amazon in flames have made their way around the world. This lush forest, a unique treasure of biodiversity and veritable “green lung of the planet”, has been consumed by more than 40,000 fires. The magnitude of the catastrophe is such that the course of the Amazon River itself has been disrupted. Scientists worry that the reduction of its flow risks causing oceanic imbalances. [1]

Faced with this disaster, the leaders of all countries have reacted by crawling over each other to multiply the declarations to… fight better from now on. The last G7, the scene of confrontation between the Brazilian and French states, would be a comical example of this if it weren’t so tragic. The planet may well be burning, but each capitalist nation sees this as nothing but an opportunity to hit its rivals in the global economic arena, a clear metaphor for a rotting system.

The destruction of the Amazon by flames is not an unfortunate natural disaster, nor is it the fruit of abnormally irresponsible local policies. It is symbolic of what capitalism has in store for all the planet, all species, and for humanity.

The number of fires is increasing all over the globe

Throughout 2018 alone, 12 million hectares of forest disappeared from the surface of the earth, including 3.6 million hectares of tropical rainforest. The traditional system of burning forest to obtain land for the growing of produce and the self-sustaining of rural communities has given way to the ravages of deforestation and fires on an industrial scale.

Across South America, trees are burned to facilitate the penetration of mining and logging, to create new pastures for the growing of livestock at low cost, and to mass-produce soy and palm oil. This policy of massive destruction is conducted in all countries, whichever party is in power.

In Brazil, before the populist Bolsonaro came in, the same policy of savage destruction was practiced under the successive governments of Lula, Dilma Roussef and Temer. In Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia, it’s the same disaster. The “revolutionary” Evo Morales, an emblematic figure of all radical leftist movements in the world, has loosened environmental protections and given authorisation to the companies to further destroy the forest. Since the start of the year, 400 000 hectares of trees have thus disappeared from Bolivia’s Chiquitania region (20 000 fires).

In Venezuela, under the reign of the “socialist of the 21st century” Nicolas Maduro, “the mining arc” has also caused destruction of vast magnitude: this vast region has suffered uncontrolled exploitation to favour the extraction of gold and other metals, which permit the civil and military leaders of Chavismo to conserve a certain level of income whilst in power. Since the time of Chavez, the “mining arc” has in effect been placed under the control of a military camarilla.

In Colombia, the “Marxist” guerilla outfit of the Army of National Liberation (ELN) is also active in the exploitation of mineral resources. With the blessing of the Chavez-Maduro duo, these mafias, who occupy elevated positions in their government, exploit (throughout an area far larger than in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru) gold, diamond and coltan mines. [2] These activities destroy the vegetation and animals, as well as causing elevated pollution in the rivers.

In Mexico, the president Andrés Manuel Lòpez (AMLO) has also launched grand public works which are going to eat still further into the woodlands: the “Mayan train” and the Dos Bocas refinery. “The president affirmed that not a single tree will be felled to construct the “Mayan train”, which seems unlikely given the Yucatàn peninsula is almost entirely covered by very dense tropical vegetation, not to mention the forests of Chiapas. The scientists warn of a threat to biodiversity, and notably to the large population of Jaguars in the Yucatàn.” [3]

The same findings can be established in Africa and Asia. In Angola, governed by the MPLA, 130, 000 fires have already taken place this year. In 2015, in Indonesia, the tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra have been struck by gigantic fires, primarily caused by the generalisation of palm plantations (to obtain oil for the purpose of manufacturing biofuel).

Even in Alaska and the Arctic Zone, the earth is being fried. In Siberia, in one year, 1.3 million hectares have burned and cities like Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk have suffered clouds of toxic smoke which have sent thousands to the emergency department.

In Europe, the French state, through its president, has given a lesson to the world. At the recent G7 summit at Biarritz, Macron has threatened to put an end to the EU-Mercosur [4] agreements and has denounced, to the sound of loud trumpets, the carelessness of the Brazilian president, incapable of stopping the fire. But these grand, soaring words are based on unlimited hypocrisy and cynicism. Let us recall that France is one of the major actors in environmental pollution (notably through its massive usage of pesticides) and is also destroying ecosystems through its intensive agriculture. It is also an Amazonian country, owner of the only European tropical forest: French Guiana, which is the second-largest region of France. If for the moment its criminal project of facilitating the implementation of mining operations by the multinationals in what is known as the “Mountain of Gold” seems to have been abandoned by the government due to “the incompatibility of the current project with environmental protection requirements”, the fact that it now plans “a complete evaluation” does not signify its total and definitive abandonment. Besides, “the recent announcements have no legal value until a request made by the mining company has been dismissed by the state”. [5]

It remains the case that such a project was designed knowing that it would result in enormous quantities of toxic waste (arsenic, cyanide, etc.). If today Macron and his government express their desire to drop the project in order to appear responsible and concerned about the environment, let’s recall that in August of 2015, the minister of the economy Macron was ready to “do everything to see that a project of this scale could see the light of day.”

Capitalism is leading humanity towards the abyss

These forest fires, that have nothing natural about them, are a real threat to life. Besides the damage they directly cause, they also aggravate global warming. Today, the smoke from fires is responsible for 25% of the global gas emissions which cause the “greenhouse effect”. [6] The agro-food industry today pollutes more than the oil companies! It’s a vicious circle: global warming exacerbates fires, which facilitate deforestation, which in turn allows the spreading of fires, which release more carbon, which accelerate global warming, in an infernal spiral.

Air pollution (such as we have mentioned in Siberia or the one which has obscured the sky of São Paulo, 15 hours after the fires) is one of the main causes of premature death. A recent study from the UN estimates that 8.8 million people die each year as a result of this pollution. This rate is comparatively higher in the most “developed” countries.

Capitalism kills. It is destroying the planet and killing human beings. That’s the brutal truth! The bourgeoisie wants to make the working class believe that a greener, more just capitalism is possible; where the Amazon will not be treated as a business but as an “environmental reserve”, where everywhere nature and its forests will be more responsibly cultivated. Lies! Capitalism is based on the exploitation by a small minority of the immense majority, on the division of humanity into classes, the transformation of nature and humanity into commodities. Capitalism is a system driven by the pursuit of profit and accumulation. Nothing more! Its only other motivation is to mask its savage exploitation in a hypocritical veil, in this case one fashioned out of democratic ideology. Capitalism divides humanity into nations ready to compete to the death (to the point of war).

The entire planet must cease to be imprisoned by the dictatorship of this system; nature must be freed from its condition as a commodity. But this is not possible without establishing a new order across the world: communism, rising from the international revolution of the working class.

Valerio, 30th of August 2019

1. The Amazon River accounts for 18% of the fresh water discharged into the oceans.
2. Highly coveted minerals formed by two minerals (columbite and tantalite), exploited for their high resistance to corrosion and notably used in the manufacture of electronic components (mobile phones) but also in aeronautics and particularly in the manufacture of reactors.
3. “In Mexico, the presidential project for a Mayan train on the path of controversy,” France Info (7th of March 2019).
4. The Southern Common Market was first formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, then by Venezuela (now suspended), and Bolivia (the latter being in the process of admission).
5. “Mountain of Gold: the government’s words do not bury the project,” Reporterre (19th of June 2019).
6. “Deforestation: anatomy of a predicted disaster,” Le Figaro (21st of August 2017)

From November 2018 to June 2019, the media was filled with news about the social movement of the "gilets jaunes". It was "unprecedented dissent" according to the experts, an expression of a new social model of struggle. For some it was supposed to be better adapted to the evolution of society. Faced with the crisis in the traditional "representative" parties and the trade unions, faced with the excesses of globalisation and liberalism, the "people" were supposed to have found the means to express themselves and make their voices heard, to pressurise the major national political orientations, to say no to injustice, no to precarious jobs and no to the growth of poverty. In brief, the original and particular form of this movement made its mark on the future. The unions called for a future convergence of struggles between the world of work and that of this new social contestation, promising a new "Popular Front". Some organisations of the left and extreme left even saluted the creativity of the demonstrating Yellow Vests. Was this a new, more efficient form of workers' struggle? In reality the "gilets jaunes" are in no way the expression of a workers' struggle. It is an inter-classist movement, an obstacle to the class struggle. The workers are drowned when they are mixed up with the population in general; outside all considerations of social class, they are diluted into the so-called "people". The "gilets jaunes" distil the poisonous ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie which is strongly impregnated with nationalism and xenophobia and bloated with dreams of liberty... entrepreneurial liberty. This movement submits to an institutional framework feeding the worst democratic illusions as if a more "just" and "human" capitalism could be possible in order to ameliorate the institutions of the Republic. In reality everything points to this movement weakening the capacity of the working class to struggle in a unified and organised way.

The petty-bourgeoisie at the centre of this movement

At Perigueux , Dordogne on January 27 2018, around 250 people marched, demanding the withdrawal  of a new speed-limit of 80 km/h. Some wore yellow vests with slogans on the back against the cost of living, the increase of the CSG (social tax) and taxes linked to motoring (tolls, fuel...). They also blocked traffic on roundabouts.  This action called "Anger", launched on social media January 12 by a bricklayer, Leandro Antonio Nogueira, immediately received the support of Jean Lassalle (presidential candidate under the banner of "Resistons") and those close to Marine Le Pen. If a fight over a speed-limit rapidly veered to the larger question of taxes, it's because the 80 km/h was seen as a pretext to mount up fines and thus nick more money from the pockets of motorists. According to the paper Liberation, "this question of the 80 km/h was much more than a road safety measure (...) it was the point of departure of a fiscal revolt". Thus, here appears to be the birth of the "gilets jaunes" movement. As Nogueira affirmed: "I wouldn't want to say that it's the party of Anger (some early elements of this movement took part under the banner of "colère", anger and rage). But if you look at the "gilets jaunes" they are often old members of "colère". In some areas, such as Dordogne or Correze, all the "gilets jaunes" are old members of the Anger movement."

On March 29 2018, the name "gilets jaunes" appeared for the first time in the media at the time of a demonstration on the Paris-Rennes TGV railway line.

The same day a self-employed entrepreneur, Priscilla Ludosky, launched an on-line petition demanding the lowering of fuel prices at the pump.  The response was meteoric. She later became one of the official representatives of the movement.

On October 10 2018, a lorry-driver Eric Drouet called, again through Facebook, for a demonstration for November 17: "A national blockade against the increase in fuel prices". His message was relayed through all the social networks. According to the government, on November 17 287,710 people spread out to 2034 different points, paralysing crossroads, trunk roads, roundabouts, motorways, toll booths and supermarket car parks. The "gilets jaunes" movement was definitely underway. A new, great day of action was programmed for November 24, called "Act II: all of France to Paris". The objective was to blockade the most prestigious areas and the power of the capital: the Champs-Élysées, the Concorde, the Senate and, above all, the Élysées Palace: "It's time to deal a knockout blow and get to Paris by all means possible (car-sharing, train, bus, etc.), Paris because it's here we find the government! We wait for everyone, lorries, buses, taxis, tractors, etc. Everyone!" proclaimed Eric Drouet. The same evening an appeal was launched, again through Facebook, for a third demonstration, a day of action proposed for Saturday December I: "Act III, Macron resign!", putting forward two demands: "an increase in purchasing power and the cancellation of fuel taxes".

How do you explain the success of these different appeals through the internet? Before everything, the breadth of this movement comes from the immense anger gnawing at the entrails of society. Generalised hikes in taxes of all kinds, growing unemployment, the systematic implementation of precarious jobs including in the public sector, inflation hitting basic necessities, unaffordable rents... the reasons for the anger are numerous. That said, we should measure the real breadth of the mobilisation of workers within the movement which, at its highest, brought together some hundreds of thousands at most. The big battalions of the workers were never really involved, neither at the roundabouts, nor on the Champs-Elysees, beyond a Platonic sympathy. What appeared clearly on the contrary, was that this movement was launched on the initiative of the representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie and their aspirations. It's not by accident that, among the eight spokespeople of the "gilets jaunes", designated on November 26, there is an overwhelming majority of small bosses and entrepreneurs. It's not by chance that the leader Eric Drouet called on, in the first instance, "lorries, buses, taxis, tractors", areas dominated by the self-employed. The "gilets jaunes" formed an inter-classist movement: here all classes and the exploited and intermediate layers of society are mixed up and thus are expressing the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie.

The list of the 42 claims of the "gilets jaunes", published November 29 2018, reveals its inter-classist nature and the dominant weight of petty-bourgeois ideology. Here we find, all mixed together, both workers' demands around wages and pensions for example, but also nationalist, localist and small-business requests regarding the economy of enterprises and taxes and even xenophobic and nauseous positions on immigration. And here's some extracts from the unusual mixture on this list:

- "Zero SDF: URGENT.

- SMIC at 1300 euros, minimum.

- Favour small businesses in villages and town centres.

- The likes of Google, Amazon, Carrefour and MacDonald's should pay a lot and small businesses (artisans, TPE, PME) pay a little.

- Social security system for all (including artisans and entrepreneurs).

- Retirement system must remain solid and thus socialised (no retirement points).

- End the tax increases on fuel.

- No retirement pension to pay under 1200 euros.

- Protect French industry: ban relocations. Protect our industry; protect our way of doing things and our employees.

- Those seeking the rights of asylum go back to their country of origin.

- A real political integration is implemented:  living in France means becoming French (language courses, French history courses and courses in French civic education with certification at the end).

- Consequent means given to the police, gendarmerie and the army".

Yes, with the movement of the "gilets jaunes" thousands of workers, unemployed and retired have expressed a cry of legitimate anger faced with poverty. But this diffuse anger was very easily monopolised and manipulated from its early days by the small business people who initiated the demonstrations and their principal slogans so as to pressurise the government and obtain some satisfaction for their cause: the lowering of taxes which are choking their businesses. All the rest, their demands for support for the French economy, tightening of immigrant controls, etc., constitutes the background scenery of the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie[1].

A movement without any perspective

The principle method of action at the origin of the "gilets jaunes" movement consisted of virtual links on social networks, the daily occupation of roundabouts and the setting-up of road-blocks. In a few weeks these links became living links, islands of resistance with camps and barbeques. Here we find agricultural workers, artisans, unhappy small bosses and above all precarious workers in dire straits. The dominant feeling is wanting "to be visible" and show togetherness. The wearing of the yellow vest thus serves as a rallying point for those "just trying to live". The "gilets jaunes" attract motorists who, for the most part, support them by waving and beeping their horns. Every point of the blockade is festooned by the tricolore, La Marseillaise  regularly sung. But the sterility of this method of struggle very quickly appears in the eyes of many and from this, at the end of November, came the decision to occupy the symbolic areas of the large French towns each Saturday, especially the Champs Élysées in Paris. What mainly feeds the immense anger of the "gilet jaunes" is being “taken for granted", ignored by the government, wanting to be heard and recognised by "those on high", which explains the urge to go to the Champs Élysées, "the most beautiful avenue in the world", in order to make themselves "seen and heard".

The days around the end of November and beginning of December 2018 were thus marked by an extremely violent confrontation with the forces of state repression.

Saturday December 1, in Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire), a confrontation with the police degenerated after some demonstrators were gassed; the prefecture was set on fire. But it's above all in Paris that the confrontations are the most spectacular. L'Arc de Triomphe was overrun and vandalised, cars were set on fire and some shops pillaged: images which went around the world. The ruling authorities seemed overwhelmed at first, incapable of maintaining order within the capital. The great majority of the bourgeois political parties exploited the situation in order to try to weaken the position of President Macron; they criticised him for his incompetence over security because of his arrogance or indifference to the suffering of the "people". There is a real danger that he will find himself isolated on the political chessboard, with his international image and stature of a chief of state degraded. On top of that, his party, La Republique en Marche, is not yet sufficiently planted inside the state Moloch and it bases a great part of its stability on its leader:  the "auspicious and Juperterian" Macron. His team in charge responded on two levels, carrot and stick or, more exactly, a little carrot and a very big stick. Saturday December 8, 264 people were injured, including serious injuries (loss of an eye and a hand), notably due to the use of "flash-balls" or grenades exploding solid rubber pellets, only used by the French in Europe. This was a very concrete change of strategy from the Minister of the Interior, who had previously ordered his police to make contact with the demonstrators. On December 10 2018, President Macron gave a televised address in which he announced several measures to prove he was "listening" to "the suffering of the French people". That said, the demonstrators were in reality conscious that their living conditions would continue to get worse despite the ten billion euros waved in front of them. The anger did not abate and the movement continued. December 15, 69,000 members of the forces of order were deployed around France - a ratio of one cop to one demonstrator - 8,000 in Paris; 179 people were arrested and 144 placed under guard. The images on the French and world's media were very different from those on December 1. This time the Champs Elysees was occupied by tanks and cordons of "robo-cops". The state, with Macron at its head, unleashed a real demonstration of force and showed what a few burnt cars and broken windows of the previous weeks mean to capitalism: an insect bite on the skin of an elephant. Order reigned in Paris.

The poison of the democratic illusion

Little by little, one demand came to supplant all the others: the Citizens' Initiative Referendum (RIC), a device for "direct democracy". With the RIC, citizens can collect a number of signatures fixed by the law enabling them to petition for a referendum without the need for action by parliament or the President of the Republic. The "gilets jaunes" wanted four procedures: vote for a proposition of law; abrogate a law or treaty already voted for by parliament; modify the Constitution (constitutional referendum) and revocation of political mandates.

From January 2019, the three letters, RIC, progressively appeared on almost all the backs of the yellow vests. But these hopes for a more democratic capitalism are just illusions and above all a real poison for the working class.

We wrote in 1978: "For the bourgeois ideologues, the state is the emanation of popular sovereignty. Democracy is the supreme form of the state, the achievement and perfection of its being. Marxism, however, sees it very differently; revealing the division of social classes, it demonstrates that there can be no community of interests between exploiters and exploited. Consequently the state, far from managing a so-called common good, is nothing but a trick in the hands of the exploited class. That remains true even if democracy extends its hypocritical veil over class relationships and conjures up the idea of ‘free and equal’ citizens. Behind the formal ideas of freedom and equality comes the shadow of the big stick which the oppressor class uses to subjugate the oppressed class (...) Proletarian struggles that get underway thus find in their way the democratic and parliamentary mirage aiming to mislead, weaken and push aside the dangers that they bear for the bourgeois state, stopping or breaking up their struggles and its élan and, without the use of force, pushing them away from their aims. Because if ‘the military and political apparatus of the bourgeois state organises direct action against the revolutionary proletariat, democracy represents a way for its indirect defence by spreading the illusion amongst the masses, the illusion that they can realise their freedom through a peaceful process’ (Theses of the Italian Left, 1920). Through this means of indirect defence, no state of the dominant class can, in the longer-term, avoid heating up social antagonisms".

Democracy is the most sophisticated and efficient political organisation of bourgeois class domination over society and particularly over the class that it exploits, the proletariat. This or that detail of democratic functioning, such as the RIC, only takes place within this framework. Moreover this type of referendum already exists in about 40 countries including Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Uruguay and even Germany and the United States, all of them parts of the planet where capitalist exploitation, the economic and political domination of the bourgeoisie, exists as much as in France. Democracy is the sharpest weapon of capitalism and with the RIC and the movement of the "gilets jaunes" it allows the ruling class to sharpen it up a bit more. That's why Macron and his government jumped at the opportunity by launching on January 15 2019, a "Great National Debate". For three months (January -March) a particularly rancid debate occupied the news and all opinions: participating in the "Great Debate" or organising discussions between the "gilets jaunes". In reality, these discussions, whether orchestrated by the government or by the "gilets jaunes" (in municipal rooms loaned out... in town halls), are the two faces of the same coin: opposed in appearance they form a whole. Wherever they take place and whoever initiates them, these great and small debates are based on the hope of a "real democracy", where the democratic institutions listen more attentively to the spokesmen and women of the "people". But, to repeat, this democratic system is only a mystification masking the fact that all governments are the managers of their respective national capitals, instruments of a minority class that exploits the majority class: the proletariat.

A state repression calculated to prolong the anger

A part of the "gilets jaunes" was aware of the vacuity of these talks; they wanted to impose their demands by force. The day after the end of the "Great National Debate", Saturday March 16, the anger exploded. Hundreds of Black Bloc members and "gilets jaunes" rioted, trying first of all, unsuccessfully, to launch an assault on the Arc de Triomphe similar to that on December 1, then to ransack the Champs Élysées and neighbouring streets, breaking windows and burning kiosks in order to attack "the symbols of capitalism". The images of the fancy restaurant, Les Fouquet's, ablaze went around the world. According to Le Monde: "more and more demonstrators concluded that wrecking things was the only means to make themselves heard and make the government give in". This revolt of despair was thus increasingly infested with the nihilism of the Black Blocs who extolled the idea: "France is a window and I'm a paving stone". A tag appeared on more and more walls:  "The people applaud the wreckers". The "people" could well applaud but these acts of destruction did nothing at all to undermine the fundamentals of the system. Worse, they allowed the bourgeoisie and its government to legitimise the strengthening of its juridical and police apparatus through an "anti-wreckers" law passed by parliament. If the government and its Ministry of the Interior had wanted to protect "the most beautiful avenue in the world", it could have easily deployed its coach loads of cops, its CRS cordons and even the armoured cars of its gendarmerie in order to block access, as at the time of their demonstration of force on December 15 2018. You would have to be particularly naive to imagine that the government had been completely by-passed by an unexpected situation. Moreover, according to the confession of the Secretary General of the UNSA-Police, the forces of order were "ready to intervene" but did not get "the authority to do so". If Macron and his government clique allowed things to get out of hand on March 16, it was first of all to oblige the other electoral competitor parties and "public opinion" to tighten their ranks around the defence of the Republican state "threatened by chaos" and the acts of destruction of the "wreckers" disguised as "gilet jaunes" or in black costumes: the anti-wreckers’ law was uncontested.

Then Macron declared that: "no-one can tolerate the Republic being attacked in the name of the right to demonstrate". A "national union" had to be set up against vandalism with "the greatest firmness"; all the "people of France" had to accept the measures of strengthening the police against those who demonstrated "illegally", who threatened "to put the Republic in danger".

Thus on March 20, Benjamin Griveaux, government spokesman, calmly announced the implementation of the Sentinelle plan, i.e., the intervention of the army. As a direct consequence of this increased state repression and aggressive government declarations, March 23 in Nice, Genevieve Legay, a "gilet jaune" militant of Attac aged 74, was seriously injured in a charge by the forces of order. She became the symbol of victims of the incessant police violence; images on social media of eyes coming out and hands torn off abounded.

Anti-police hatred welled-up inside the guts of some of the most radical "gilets jaunes" and on April 20, during the demonstration called "Ultimatum", some demonstrators shouted at the police: "Kill yourselves!"

What lessons can we draw from the demonstrations of March and April? The government has continued to use police violence in order to keep the heat on. The aim is to keep up the anger within the "gilets jaunes" movement and use it as a means to mystify the proletariat:

- occupying the whole media space and all social preoccupations, which meant that a large number of small isolated strikes which were going on throughout France were ignored;

- concentrating reflection on how to make the French Republic more democratic (are you with Macron's Great Debate, or with the RIC of the "gilets jaunes"?);

- playing up the vandalism of a minority of "gilets jaunes" and the Black Blocs so as to present all struggle as non-democratic and a "criminal act" of blind violence and thus legitimise the strengthening arsenal of the repressive state in order to deal with it;

- and, finally, presenting the workers' struggle as old-fashioned and tacky compared to the new contestation of the "French people" waving tricolores and singing the Marseillaise.

The unions: the extension…of interclassism

The "gilets jaunes" movement didn't just develop outside the union structures; it largely positioned itself against them. The breadth of this inter-classist movement can be explained by the difficulty of the working class to express its combativity due to the union manoeuvres sabotaging its struggles (as we saw recently with the long, drawn-out go-slow at SNCF). The discontent with the unions that exists within the working class has been recuperated by those who launched this movement. What many of the supporters of the "gilets jaunes" wanted to happen was that the methods of workers' struggles (strikes, general and sovereign assemblies, massive demonstrations, strike committees...) came to nothing. So now it’s necessary to trust in small bosses (protesting against taxes and their general increase) in order to find "other methods of struggle" against the high cost of living and to ameliorate the democratic institutions and their representatives, bringing together "all the people of France".

That said, the unions have profited from the movement in order to try to limit their discredit. Certainly not by defending the methods of struggle of the working class, since they spend their time trying to undermine and break up any possibility of autonomous workers' assemblies. No, they did so by taking up the idea of the "peoples' revolt". This was the sense of the successive calls for "convergence" between the movement of the "gilets jaunes" and the unions' mobilisations. Thus, there was the multiplication of all sorts of coloured body vests for each sector or corporation. For pre-school nursery workers, the "gilets rose"; for the CGT, the "gilets rouges"; for the independent public transport workers, the "gilets oranges"; for the teachers, the more original "red pens"! Not only have the unions accentuated the divisions in an already very fragmented struggle broken up into sectors, a practice that they have systematically used for a century now, but more, the already atomised workers have been called upon to further dilute themselves into the "people", wearing coloured body vests and disappearing as a class. The unions, with the CGT at the head, thus organised large, multi-coloured carnivals for February and the first of May. In Paris, these demonstrations gave rise to a real cacophony where the Marseillaise was echoed by the Internationale and the French national flag flew alongside the red and black flags of the Trotskyists (from the NPA and LO) and the anarchists (of the CNT).

On May 1, the presence at the head of the procession of thousands of "gilets jaunes" and hundreds from the Black Bloc with the blessing of the unions sanctified this atomisation of the workers, their dilution into this inter-classist concoction.

The proletariat must re-discover its class identity

This movement of the "gilets jaunes" is, at best, only the most visible and spectacular manifestation of the enormous anger which eats away inside the population and particularly in all the exploited classes faced with the cost of living and the austerity measures of the Macron government. It's nothing other, at best, than a sign announcing future combats of the proletarian class. Numerous workers are facing poverty, incessant economic attacks, precarious jobs... But in joining up with the "gilets jaunes", these workers are now being misled and they are being towed along behind a movement that can only lead to an impasse. And it's this impasse which today allows the Macron government to re-double its arrogance and continue its preparation for new attacks.

The working class is going through a very difficult period. From 1989, with the campaigns around the collapse of Stalinism presented as the so-called failure of communism, the proletariat has not been able to rediscover its class identity and recognise itself as a class and as a revolutionary subject. Incapable of outlining the contours of a society without exploitation, the exploited class today lacks confidence in its own strength, leaving it very vulnerable and feeling impotent on the field of struggle. The working class is not conscious of its existence as an antagonist of the bourgeois class and distinct from intermediate social layers (notably the petty-bourgeoisie). It has lost its memory of its own past and is not at all up to drawing on its immense historic experience; it's even somewhat ashamed of the latter since the bourgeoisie endlessly assimilates the word worker to an extinct species and the word communism to the hell of Stalinism.

However, despite these important difficulties, the proletariat is not beaten. Taking account of the general discontent and the attacks coming down the line, the great masses of the proletariat are quite capable of coming out of this lethargy in the period to come. Certainly, the proletariat has momentarily lost its class identity and is cut off from its history and experience. But it is still here and very much alive. It remains the gravedigger of capitalism. Deep within itself, reflection on the absence of any perspective for capitalist society continues, notably among its most conscious and combative elements. Pushed by the aggravation of the economic crisis, at first without being conscious of its own strength, without thinking of its possible unity and self-organisation, the proletariat will necessarily be constrained to engage in the combat for the defence of its conditions of existence. Remember what Marx said: "It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.” (The Holy Family). The insurrectional days of June 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871, the struggles of the 1890's in Belgium, the revolutionary combats in Russia in 1905 and 1917 in eastern Europe, the German revolution of 1918 -1919, the eruption of a new movement in May 68 in France and in the rest of the world after a long period of counter-revolution, the mass strikes in Poland 1980, etc., have nothing in common with the populist, inter-classist, falsely radical, "do or die" movement of the "gilets jaunes". As the proletariat develops its struggle, it will be the massive and sovereign general assemblies, open to all workers, which will be at the heart of the movement, links where the proletariat can organise the struggle together and reflect on the unifying slogans for the future. There will be no place for nationalism, on the contrary: the mass strike of the future will have international solidarity at its heart, because "the proletariat has no country". The workers must refuse to sing "their" national anthems and wave their national flags such as the tricolore, the flag of Versailles under which 30,000 workers were murdered at the time of the Paris Commune of 1871!

In order to prepare for this future all those conscious of the necessity for the proletarian struggle must try to regroup, discuss, draw lessons from the latest social movements, reflect anew on the history of the workers' movement and not give into apparently radical siren voices of citizens' mobilisations, the populist and inter-classist voices of the petty-bourgeoisie!

“The autonomy of the proletariat in the face of all the other classes in society is the first precondition for the extension of its struggle towards the revolution. All alliances with other classes or strata and especially those with factions of the bourgeoisie can only lead to the disarming of the class in the face of its class enemy, because these alliances make the working class abandon the only terrain on which it can temper its strength: its own class terrain”. (Platform of the ICC).

The future still belongs to the class struggle!

Révolution Internationale, August 14 2019

Ninety years ago, the stock market crash of 1929, which announced the economic crisis of 1930, confirmed what the First World War had meant: that capitalism had definitively passed into its period of decadence. In a few months, tens upon tens of millions of people fell into total destitution. Of course, during this period, the bourgeoisie learnt to attenuate the violence of the crisis but, despite the lessons drawn from it, this crisis has never really been surmounted. This confirms that, in the period opened up by the First World War, the contradictions of capitalism could only lead to a degradation of the living conditions of the great majority of humanity.

A crisis on a world scale

Without any ambiguity, the crisis of 1929 corresponded to the diagnostic made by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party regarding the economic crises already hitting capitalism in the XIXth century: "A social epidemic breaks out which in any other epoch would seem absurd: the epidemic of overproduction". Such a diagnostic is much more valid when one takes into account that the crisis of 1929 didn't just happen with the stock market collapse of October 24 and 29, 1929, but that before these dates the situation continued to get worse in more and more sectors of the economy and in more and more countries.

Thus, in the United States, production in the automotive and construction sectors had fallen since March 1929, a fall which was generalised to the whole of the economy in the summer of that year. Moreover, economic activity in general was falling in the European countries which themselves had suffered a stock-market crash prior to that of the United States: in these conditions, upward speculation on the New York stock-market could only come up against the decrease in profits and end up in a crash.

The reason for this fall in economic activity in the central countries of capitalism was, on the one hand, the world overproduction of agricultural products since the middle of the 1920's, which meant a lowering of returns from agriculture; and, on the other hand, the persistent weakness of wages which had increased much less than production in all of the industrialised countries. Such a dynamic totally verified the cause of overproduction that Marx identified: "The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit". [1]

Of course, the stock-market crash severely cut the reserves of finance capital and prompted the bankruptcy of such great financial institutions as the Bank of the United States, further aggravating overproduction since it became more difficult to finance the accumulation of capital. Then a drastic fall in investment added to a massive overproduction of productive assets, a general tendency which had already existed for several years. This dynamic provoked a rapid acceleration in the fall of industrial production. Similarly, because of the realities of international and commercial relations, the aggravation of the crisis became global. We should note that it was in the two most developed countries, the USA and Germany, that the fall of economic activity was fastest and deepest.

However, during the first months which followed the crash, the bourgeoisie and the majority of its economists, blinded by the idea of an eternal capitalist system thought, along with US President Hoover, that "everything will be sorted in sixty days" and that as in the crises of the XIXth century, an economic recovery would spontaneously appear. The violence of the crisis caused profound disarray in the dominant class but, since it was first of all a question of maintaining a minimum of profit, the reaction of businesses had been massive cuts in jobs and reductions of wages. All the major countries, despite some hesitations, tried to hold onto their financial credibility by maintaining balanced budgets and reducing public spending. The United States led a policy of reducing the monetary mass, and massive increases in direct and indirect taxes were voted on in June 1932; in Germany, Chancellor Brüning (nicknamed the "Chancellor of Hunger") increased taxes, lowered the wages of state workers by 10% and unemployment pay in 1930 ; then, in in June 1931, even harder measures were taken against the unemployed. In France, from 1933, different governments cut public spending, retirement pay and wages of state workers, and in 1935 these same wages were further cut by 15% and then by 10%.

The other orientation adopted by nation states to protect their national economy was protectionism: all countries followed in the footsteps of the United States whose Congress had voted for the Smoot-Hartley law before the crash of October 1929, which increased customs tariffs by 50%. In fact the 1930's saw a real commercial and monetary war developing between the major powers. In particular, the floating of the Pound Sterling and its more than 30% devaluation decided in September 1931, as well as the devaluation of the dollar by 40% in 1933, showed that each of the big powers, in the image of Great Britain and its Commonwealth which decreed "imperial preference" for their foreign trade, were falling back back into their zones of influence.

The implementation of such policies reveals that the bourgeoisie had not understood that it hadn't the means to halt the overproduction which was relentlessly being pushed along by capitalism's contradictions. The ruling class hadn't yet understood that this was a different period from the one before the First World War, a period when capitalism was in its ascendant phase; in this period crises had led to new phases of growth because the world market was still open and thus permitted the most modern and dynamic national capitals to find new markets. allowing them to overcome the cyclical problems of overproduction. But, as Rosa Luxemburg showed, the First World War was the concrete manifestation that the world market was globally carved-up between the major powers and that there weren't enough new markets to conquer. This implied that capitalism's crisis would lead either to its destruction by the working class or to a new world war. Consequently, the policy of national states in the three or four years following the 1929 crash, guided by the experience of the preceding century, not only could not reduce the impact of overproduction but, on the contrary, aggravated it.

In fact, as the economist Charles P. Kindleberger said, these years saw "a slide towards the abyss". Between autumn 1929 and the first quarter of 1933, the GNP of the United States and Germany was cut in half and the average level of world prices fell by 25%. Such a downturn in economic activity provoked a fall in profits which explains why in the 1932, net investment in the USA was close to zero. In other words, many businesses did not replace their old machinery. As Keynes said, beyond a certain level of falling prices and thus losses, businesses could no longer repay their debts and banks could only collapse - and that's what happened. Large banks went bankrupt in every country. May 13 1931, the KreditAnstaldt[2]  ceased payments: in July of the same year, the great German bank Danabank was also on the edge of bankruptcy and, as the panic spread, every German bank closed for three days; in the United States, at the beginning of 1932, the number of defaulting banks were such that newly-elected President Roosevelt was obliged to shut down the whole banking system and more than a thousand banks never re-opened.

The consequences for the working class were terrible: unemployment shot up in every country; by the end of 1932 unemployment was at least 25% in the United States (in this country there was no help for the unemployed) and 30% in Germany[3]. A great number of workers worked part-time in total destitution; unemployment pay was reduced in Germany and Britain; queues of careworn people, some in rags, waited in lengthening lines outside soup kitchens while tonnes of production that couldn't be sold was destroyed. In Brazil, they were even burning unsold stocks of coffee to run locomotives! Finally, increases in taxes sunk a pauperised working class even lower.

What lessons did the bourgeoisie draw from the 1929 crisis?

The collapse of the world economy obliged the bourgeoisie and certain of its experts to call into question their old liberal and non-state intervention precepts, raised concerns about balanced budgets and led to an examination of this crisis of overproduction, which the bourgeoisie artfully re-baptised, after the theory of Keynes, "insufficiency of demand".

In order to remove the real threat of the collapse of capitalism, nation states had first of all to take the productive apparatus in hand, sometimes directly as was the case in France for rail transport or in Britain for London transport and air transport. But above all this grip of the state was expressed through the control of enterprises and businesses by regulation, adopting management structures that conformed to the interests of the national capital: this was the content of President Roosevelt's famous "New Deal" in the United States or the De Man plan in Belgium. The US administration imposed the "Banking Act", creating a banking insurance organisation that the banks had to adhere to if they wanted to receive funds from the Central Bank (FED). Another law set up supports for agricultural prices and proposed indemnities to the growers if they reduced their cultivated areas.  In industry the "NIRA" law (National Industrial Recovery Act, 1933) required industrial branches to organise fixed quotas of production and sale prices (in Germany it was the corporations who were made responsible); as well as this, it accorded the right of the unions to sign collective agreements, allowing them a greater hold on the working class. Such state legislation which was similarly found in other countries such as France under the Popular Front, did not increase the value of wages since prices grew faster. To reduce overproduction, these laws aimed not only to reduce production but also to re-launch demand through budget deficits. Thus NIRA organised a great public works project including the sanitation of the Appalachian Valley, the construction of the Triborough Bridge in New York or the great water works of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The same will existed in Germany from 1932, with the construction of motorways, the building of canals and sanitation projects over certain geographical zones. These moves towards state control, aimed at artificially increasing demand while strengthening control over the working class, were also adopted by the British bourgeoisie when it reintroduced unemployment benefits, implemented retirement benefits and stimulated building works.

The development of the state's grip over capital, implemented in quite a chaotic manner in the 1930',s would go on to have a great future. It was even theorised in what would be called "Keynesianism". Control over the whole of capital by the state by using a range of means (from nationalisation to support for businesses by public bodies) went on to become more and more systematic. More and more massive indebtment of the whole economy under the impetus of the state, as well as the practice of public deficits, had the aim of attenuating the effects of overproduction. Similarly, the implementation after World War II of the "welfare state", extending what had been done in Western Europe in the 1930's, constituted a regulation of demand while also being an instrument of ideological control over the working class. Just like the 1930's the deployment of all these means allowed the state to stagger the effects of overproduction. But in no case can the bourgeoisie really resolve this crisis and overcome the problem of overproduction.

Today, the crisis of the capitalist system continues to deepen, even if it is at a much slower rate than the 1930's. It confirms that state capitalism is unable to put an end to overproduction because this latter is inherent to capitalism. In fact, the response of capital to the crisis is itself an expression of the senility of the capitalist mode of production which doesn't cease to deteriorate. State capitalism, the policy of all states, only allows a managed limitation of the effects of the permanent crisis and it does this at the cost of sharper and more destructive contradictions in the future.

Vitaz, October 8 2019

In October 2019 Extinction Rebellion (XR) held a 2-week autumn "International rebellion", planned for 60 cities worldwide. In the UK this involved demonstrations, the occupation of road junctions, climbing on trains, erecting a structure in Oxford Circus, getting arrested, and generally staging stunts that would give publicity to the dire state of the world’s ecology. On the 'theoretical side' the booklet Common Sense for the 21st Century / Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse (quotes from this unless otherwise indicated) by Roger Hallam, one of XR's leaders, provides the basis for XR's activity, and their activity is very much in line with the booklet.

The responses to XR's activity have been mixed. In the press you can see agreement that they are drawing attention to important matters, but disapproval of what they do for publicity. There are also the celebrities and leftists who give XR uncritical support. Typically, the SWP praise "people braving arrests and media attacks with brilliant displays of creativity and resistance". "XR has faced a host of attacks this week—from the media, the police and right wing politicians. Despite this, rebels are building a movement which has managed to face down repeated pressure from the state—and are having fun while doing it. They are raising demands for a radical transformation of society, and creating a space to fight for that."  The more radical Trotskyists of wsws.org are still broadly complimentary "XR is seeking to raise public awareness of global warming, while demanding policy changes from the world’s governments … Workers must vigorously oppose the mass arrests of protesters whose only crime is to seek a way out of the terrible environmental calamity threatening humanity."

Meanwhile there are the traditional conservative reactions to protests, characterising XR events as a nuisance, as the actions of 'hippies' and 'crusties'. Alongside this there are the 'contrarians' of Spiked who are against "Extinction Rebellion’s war on the working class. These eco-poshos are full of loathing for the aspirational poor." When an XR protester was dragged from the top of a tube train and attacked by commuters Spiked declared that  "Today’s clashes on the Tube between the commuting working classes and the time-rich, bourgeois fearmongers of the XR cult is a wonderful illustration of the elitist nature of eco-politics and of rising public fury with the eco-agenda."

For a serious critique of XR it is necessary to use the tools of marxism, understanding social phenomena in the context of capitalist society, in the clash of interests between the ruling capitalist class and the working class - a class that is exploited, but has the capacity to overthrow capitalism. Hallam's work is not just a theoretical basis for different means of protest: it shows which side XR is on in the struggle between classes.

Is XR against reformism?

Common Sense opposes 'reformists' "They offer gradualist solutions which they claim will work. It is time to admit that this is false, and it is a lie. They therefore divert popular opinion and the public’s attention and energy away from the task at hand: radical collective action against the political regime which is planning our collective suicide". And yet XR's whole policy is reformist. All other social questions have to be put on hold until capitalism commits itself to addressing the 'climate emergency'. This is echoed in the Guardian newspaper's assertion of "the climate emergency as the defining issue of our times." XR's central concern is the environment, and the possibility of the capitalist state being able, through measures like taxes and tariffs and the decommissioning of harmful technology, to prevent eco-genocide. In theory and practice they want to divert attention towards ecology as a separate issue and away from capitalism as a global system that gives rise to imperialist war as well as ecological depredation.

XR's approach to the repressive apparatus of the state is particularly illuminating. Common Sense says "A proactive approach to the police is an effective way of enabling mass civil disobedience in the present context. This means meeting police as soon as they arrive on the scene and saying two things clearly: ‘this is a nonviolent peaceful action’ and ‘we respect that you have to do your job here’. We have repeated evidence that this calms down police officers thus opening the way to subsequent civil interactions. The Extinction Rebellion actions have consistently treated the police in a polite way when we are arrested and at the police stations". XR prides itself on being reasonable and cooperative "Often a face-to-face meeting with police is effective as they are able to understand that the people they are dealing with are reasonable and communicative." XR sees no problem in the police managing XR events "It is better for the police to manage an orderly and low-cost episode which is compatible with our interest in having a large number of people take part in a highly symbolic and dramatic act" From the standpoint of the ruling class, XR are not seen as a threat to those in power, just an occasional nuisance for traffic.

Certainly, the leadership of XR do not see the police as a threat; on the contrary, they are seen as instrumental in assisting in XR's impact by making multiple arrests. As other critics have said "XR leaders are more than respectful to the police. They actively assist them in making arrests and the courts in securing conviction" (https://libcom.org/article/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-1 [134]). This article by the Out of the Woods[1] collective also reports that "Hallam claims that the Metropolitan Police ‘are probably one of the most civilized forces in the world'". Against XR's view, the historical experience of the exploited and oppressed has been that the police, along with the courts, prisons, security services and army, are integral parts of the capitalist state's apparatus of repression. They only exist to defend the institutions of the ruling class, in the interests of the exploiting bourgeoisie. Anything that threatens capitalist order will be met by the force of the state, in particularly by the police.

Rebellion and 'revolution'
XR claim to be advocates of some sort of 'revolution', but think that "a dogmatic pursuit of discredited revolutionary models can be socially ruinous." Hallam is so confident that XR planning is the key that, without it, "we are left with directionless and spontaneous uprisings … which research shows usually lead to authoritarian outcomes and civil war". Common Sense asks why "revolutionary episodes have failed miserably over the past 30 years", saying that the answer lies in "the most fundamental question of politics – ‘who decides?'". It's not obvious what these recent 'revolutionary episodes' have been. We might ask ourselves what ‘revolutionary episodes’ have taken place in the past 30 years? Hallam refers to Egypt and Ukraine, and the 'Gilets Jaunes' in France.  In reality, none of these movements were revolutionary: the Ukrainian Maidan Square events of 2014 were entirely engulfed in nationalism, the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ is an inter-classist movement dominated by populism. The events in Egypt in 2011 were different because there was a definite influence of the class struggle, but it was nowhere near posing the question of overthrowing the capitalist system. Thus Hallam performs a familiar trick here: debasing the concept of revolution to mean any kind of social unrest or political coup, and obscuring what revolution means and how it can come about. For marxists, the only revolutionary force in capitalist society is the working class, and a proletarian revolution is the only process that can overturn the capitalist state. Common Sense has a very different view of the world.

For a start, there are a number of different elements that make up the XR conception of 'rebellion'. Hallam presents the case as though it's the result of serious scientific study "The historical record shows that successful civil resistance ‘episodes’ last between three to six months" or "The most effective act of mass civil disobedience is to have a significant number of people (at least 5,000-10,000 initially) occupy public spaces in a capital city from several days to several weeks." All this goes along with an understanding that "1% of the general population will lead the disruption". One of XR's 10 basic principles focuses on "mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change". This would seem to be a classic example of elitism. In answer to the questions 'who decides?’, the answer is: a small minority, mobilised by XR, who will somehow compel the state to negotiate: "When the authorities lose the ability to stop mass mobilisation the regime is forced to negotiate".

Capitalist society has driven humanity into a deadly impasse and there is no way out of it except through a massive and radical mobilisation of the exploited class and the most gigantic change in consciousness in human history.  To count on only a small minority to carry this out makes a mockery of the enormous challenge facing the working class and humanity

XR is quite comfortable with the institutions of bourgeois rule. Hallam and some other XR activists stood in the 2019 Euro elections. Of course, they claimed not to be a political party, but were happy to stand alongside all the rest of the bourgeois politicians selling their ideological wares, propaganda about the climate fitting in alongside nationalism, populism, racism, Stalinism and all the other campaigns for changes within capitalism. At different moments Common Sense does propose various different bodies that might be involved in 'social change'. For example, there is the idea of a "National Citizens’ Assembly selected by sortition to work out the programme of measures to deal with the crisis. Sortition involves selecting the members of the assembly randomly from the whole population and uses quota sampling to ensure that it is representative of the demographic composition of the country." This is something that the Conservative government favours. Letters were sent out to 30,000 households across the UK inviting people to join a citizens' assembly on climate change. "The invitees to Climate Assembly UK have been selected at random from across the UK. From those who respond, 110 people will be chosen as a representative sample of the population" (Guardian 2/11/19). This is not a basis for 'social change', since it fits perfectly well into the other institutions of bourgeois democracy. Such non-threatening assemblies are in marked contrast to the various assemblies or councils created by the working class in its attempts to defend its interests, and which, ultimately, have the capacity to overthrow capitalism.

In order to take responsible decisions we do not need delegates picked in a random manner from the population at large. Proletarians fighting this system  need delegates who have clear ideas, a conviction and an orientation on how to tackle the roots of the mechanisms of capitalist destruction We cannot place our fate in the hands of a lottery selection of delegates: we must be able to trust that those who are elected really represent and defend our interests. Furthermore since such delegates can only operate as expressions of a class in movement, genuine workers’ councils can create a ‘rapport de force’ which can push back the ruling class and prepare the ground for its overthrow.

Among other propositions from Hallam are People's Assemblies that will discuss ecological questions. As opposed to working class self-organisation and discussion within an associated class, wi in Hallam’s assemblies "Experts from around the world can help train facilitators and produce agendas." Here we have bodies driven by 'experts' to train 'facilitators' and fix agendas, with no intention to threaten the existing order of things

Although XR sees itself as a movement of the ‘people’ in general, it does recognise the need to recruit more parts of the working class to its campaigns. . There is a concern for "building a mass movement and so move the environmental movement out of the middle-class bubble that has defined it for decades". In this, XR note that "working-class people are almost totally absent from UK environmental movements". But the problem with XR is not its lack of diversity. The problem is that genuine anxieties about climate change are being channelled into a species of reformism with a few added spectacular actions.

While XR claims that it wants to change society, in reality its whole project remains within the boundaries of this system. It does not want to overturn the apparatus of capitalist democracy.  "Parliament would remain, but in an advisory role to this assembly of ordinary people, randomly selected from all around the country who will deliberate on the central question of our contemporary national life – how do we avoid extinction?" It also sees a role for local councils and NGOS like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Fundamentally, XR's shopping list of eco-demands is seen as possible within one country and within the present social system. Despite the 'corruption' of the political system, the 'political class' can be made to negotiate, to dismantle all that is harmful to the environment.

Different interests, different values
In Common Sense there is much advice on how to approach the media, how to speak, what to say, how to avoid jargon. Implicitly, throughout the booklet a sense of values emerges. It says that "Words like honour, duty, tradition, nation, and legacy should be used at every opportunity." We can read about using "Martin Luther King’s speeches as a prime example of how to reclaim the framings of national pride" Since its foundation in April 2018 XR has spread from the UK to other countries, like the US, Australia, Germany and other parts of Europe. While it has an international presence, its outlook is tied to the nation-state, the framework for capitalism, and sees no problems with 'national pride’. On the contrary, it seems to be fully in favour of reviving such values as national pride, which is integral to all forms of bourgeois ideology.

Although it might seem to have a ‘radical’ approach to protest, XR is actually quite cautious about economic action. "Direct action, as a way of creating political change, has been subject to a simplistic analysis that sees winning and losing in narrow material terms. There is a strong argument for this approach as confrontation, strikes, blockades, pickets, stoppages, economic threat and disruption can certainly bring opponents to the table – as shown by the long-term success of many labour strikes around the world." Without dwelling on the "long term success of many labour strikes" (no evidence is presented) Hallam is concerned that "raising the economic costs for an opponent is highly polarising". He thinks that the battle for 'hearts and minds' is more important than an economic struggle. For the working class, the 'economic struggle' is part of the defence of its class interests. In the battle of ideas there is an opposition between XR's protests on the climate emergency bringing the bourgeois state to see sense, and the central idea of marxism: the revolutionary capacity of the working class to overthrow capitalism, which can only come about as a result of the defence of its material interests.

Apparently, one of the inspirations for the work of Hallam/XR is Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. The latter author is a strategic planner with the US Department of State and has worked with the European/NATO policy office of the U.S. Department of Defense, and at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Ideas from such a source are not likely to challenge the capitalist state or other institutions of bourgeois rule.

Recuperating real concerns

There is certainly a very widespread concern with the state of the planet, a desire to react against the future capitalism has in store, but XR provide an ideology and a schedule of protests to recuperate such concerns and militant energies and channel them into support for the capitalist system that is at the root of environmental decline. As with the propaganda from all the green parties over the last 40 years, or the more recent campaign around Greta Thunberg, it is a dangerous illusion to claim that capitalism can address the state of the environment.

All the evidence shows that, far from conceding, capitalism is showing more and more signs of being capable of taking all humanity down with it. The interests of the working class are antagonistic to capital and cannot be satisfied within this society. The state of planet Earth can only be improved through the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. This is not to be accomplished by a minority, no matter how determined. It requires a consciousness of more than the state of the environment. Time is not on the side of the working class, but the actions of campaigns like those of XR actively prolong the life of the capitalist system. 

A common answer by the radical ecologists to those who insist that the only world revolution can overcome the problems posed by capitalism is: we don’t have time for that. But since the ideology of XR and similar ‘radicals’ is acting as a way of channelling concerns about the environment into bourgeois dead-ends, it is nothing less than a brake on the development of class consciousness and thus the potential for an authentic revolution.

Barrow, November 2019

Fifty years after the workers' uprising in the city of Córdoba, it is still necessary to reflect on its meaning, because throughout those same fifty years the left apparatus of capital has been presenting distorted versions of its origins and the political responses it generated, preventing the working class from recovering the experiences left by those days of struggle. The fact that the workers took to the streets expressed their rejection of the Argentine bourgeoisie that ruled through a military dictatorship, but this has been used to claim that they were in search of a democratic life for the country. Other versions, defended by bourgeois tendencies such as Peronism, disfigure the workers' protest, presenting it as something that "sensitised" them and made them change their attitude towards the proletariat, leading them to incorporate "class based" slogans into their programme. And there are not a few accounts that try to erase the spontaneous and combative actions that the workers carried out, surpassing union control, to transform it into an expression of radical unionism and even of the terrorist and guerrilla activities of the seventies.

The Cordobazo, as well as the French May 1968[1] [137], represented the end of the period of more than 40 years of counter-revolution which was instituted after the wave of 1917 to 1923. In order to explain this process we will pause a little to look at the historical development that frames these workers’ mobilisations of half a century ago.

The advance of the economic crisis throughout the world and the end of the counter-revolution

Unlike the revolutionary response of the working class to World War I – where the bourgeoisie was forced to stop this carnage - in World War II the proletariat found itself unable to oppose the bellicose actions of capital. It had not only been physically crushed by Stalinism and fascism, but it had also been trapped in the bourgeois ideology of antifascism and the defense of democracy.

It is necessary to explain that the period 1917-23, centred on the Russian and German revolutions, marked the high point of a great revolutionary wave, though it could still be perceived in 1927 with the workers’ insurrections of Shanghai and Canton in China. However, the series of defeats suffered by the working class in this period opened the doors to World War II and to the opening of a terrible and profound counter-revolutionary period, which lasted until 1968.

The domination of the counter-revolution prevented the working class from responding in a massive and organised way to the blows of the 1929 crisis; on the contrary, it resulted in the further demoralisation of the proletariat. Then the confusion and distrust in their forces became deeper with the preparation of war on the part of the imperialist powers, because the preparations not only implied the militarisation of the economy, but also the launching of ideological campaigns, in which they presented the capitalist state as a "benefactor" and the homeland (and its defense) as a great ideal. That's how they got the proletariat to line up under the flags of the bourgeoisie and threw it into a fierce butchery.

At the end of the war there was a relative growth of the world economy and the period of the so-called "cold war" between the imperialisms of Russia and the United States was opened up. This gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to continue and deepen its campaign, this time adding to its discourse the affirmation that capitalism could grant benefits to all through the policies of "social welfare", once again invoking the joys of "national unity". Under these circumstances, sociologists and intellectuals of left and right proclaimed the "assimilation of the workers into the consumer society", which meant that capitalism had found the formula to perpetuate itself and to politically annul the working class.

But the economic crisis, that the theorists of the bourgeoisie claimed had been banished, reappeared towards the end of the sixties, so that the bourgeoisie needed to increase the rates of exploitation and attack the living conditions of workers. That is why the various economic problems that were appearing all over the planet showed that capitalism cannot escape the crisis, and that, as it spreads and deepens, it can serve as a stimulus to the struggle of the working class, to the recovery of its class identity and of confidence in its own forces. The May 1968 mass strikes in France marked the end of the period of counter-revolution and the beginning of a new wave of workers' mobilisations.

Among the most relevant workers' expressions that make up this wave was the Italian Hot Autumn in 1969[2] [138], but also in that same year the struggles of the workers in Israel, and without a doubt the uprising in Córdoba, Argentina. These combative expressions continued in Poland in 1970, in Spain, Egypt and Great Britain in 1972...

Then, in the mid-seventies, the mobilisations continued to reappear until the end of the eighties. Among the most militant workers' struggles of that period were the mass strike in Poland (1980)[3] [139] and the miners' strike in Great Britain (1984-85)[4] [140].

All these movements showed that the combativity of the working class had been reborn; the creation of general assemblies and strike committees appeared in many places, renewing the experience of the soviets... But while the workers' consciousness and combativity recovered, the bourgeoisie maintained its attack against the proletariat, undermining and sabotaging through its left apparatus and the unions (both the official organisations and the "independents"). The strikes referred to in Poland and Great Britain are illustrative of how the bourgeoisie confronts the proletariat. It undoubtedly requires the strength of its apparatus of repression, but above all the sabotage of the struggle through its parties and unions: in Great Britain, the National Union of Mineworkers intervened actively to prolong and isolate the strike; in Poland, to take control of the struggle away from the workers' assemblies and committees, the formation of the Solidarność union was promoted.

In this way, the Cordobazo cannot be seen as an isolated expression that responded only to "Argentine affairs", it was part of an international response by the proletariat. It was a struggle that managed to develop a great combativity in spite of the presence of the unions and the ferocious repression of the State.

Thus, the reappearance of the economic crisis at the end of the sixties not only broke through the mystification of the perpetual growth of capitalism, but also by pushing the proletarians of the world into combat, it put an end to the period of counter-revolution.

Unions against the Argentine working class

Argentina's process of industrialisation was notable for taking on a more active rhythm than that followed by the other Latin American countries. It took place during the last decades of the 19th century, which is why the working class also extended its presence in society. The development of capital accumulation required new labor power and this was largely supplied by migrant workers from Europe. This allowed the bourgeoisie to have a trained work force, but also, this working mass, by integrating itself into the life of the exploited class in Argentina, transmitted its political experience, helping in some aspects the orientation and development of workers' militancy[5] [141].

In the 20th century this dynamic of capital was maintained and even accelerated at certain "junctures", such as the First and Second World Wars. During these periods, industry expanded throughout Argentina, with some cities becoming industrial centers with high concentrations of workers[6] [142].

But this dynamic process of accumulation also met with obstacles. If we go back to 1929, when the economic crisis broke out and spread throughout the world, we find that Argentina's economy was also affected and dominated by the crisis, but its effects and consequences were magnified by the lack of political unity within the ruling class. That is why some sectors of the bourgeoisie supported successive military coups to enforce a level of unity and social control that would allow them to resist in those critical moments. Thus, through a coup d'état, a military government was imposed under the leadership of José Uriburu in September 1930. This new government took on the task of carrying out fierce repression against the workers' response to the degradation of their living conditions. For the new government it was not enough to apply measures that would further degrade wages and to give free passage to direct fiscal and credit resources for the protection of capital; it had to impose its power through persecution and repression. But to contain the resulting workers' response, the strengthening of the union structure was necessary.

Thus, in the framework of the development of the capitalist crisis of 1929 and the advance of counter-revolution throughout the world, the Argentine bourgeoisie sought to strengthen its trade union political apparatus by creating a great central machinery in order to ensure control of the workers. This project was completed on 27 September 1930 with the formation of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT). Precisely the tasks of this machine were:

- to campaign within the working class for the military government in order to give it credibility,

- to control proletarian discontent in the face of the austerity measures imposed by the state.

For this reason, from its origin and in its daily action, the CGT would be shown up as a bourgeois structure opposed to the workers. In order to convince the workers that it was on their side, they could use very radical language, but they also stood alongside the bourgeoisie in order to faithfully carry out their work of sabotage against the proletariat.

It was the dynamic of industrialization that made the presence of the CGT of greater importance for capital; it is no accident that it was in the mid-1940s, under Perón's government - which had the task of overseeing the new phase of industrialisation made possible by growing exports - when the CGT was strengthened and became the backbone of the government's policies and the main disseminator of Peronist ideology[7] [143]. In short, the presence of a growing working class obliged the bourgeois state to strengthen its union arm.

In 1966, as a product again of an internal fracture of the bourgeoisie, but above all responding to the "national security doctrine" promoted by the USA as part of the Cold War, the military forces once again carried out a coup d'état. Taking advantage of the discredit of the parties, the deputies and other figures of power, the military presented itself as an alternative, as the defender of "national values" and security. For this reason they baptised this project the "Argentine revolution," achieving in a short time the unification of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.

The CGT openly expressed its support[8] [144] for the military government of Onganía, reaffirming that its interests are on the side of the bourgeoisie and that its task is to subjugate the workers. The cohesion that the bourgeoisie tried to ensure with the so-called "Argentine revolution" became fragile as the economic crisis advanced. Under these circumstances, the state intensified its "anti-recession" policies, which implied increasing attacks on workers, thus making the services of the CGT more necessary.

The shameless defense of the military government by the union ensured that was it not very credible in front of the workers. That is why the bourgeoisie itself pushed for the creation of an "alternative" union structure; that is how the CGT of the Argentines (CGT-A) was formed in 1968. Thus, while the official CGT (led by Augusto Vandor), with a moderate discourse tried to subdue the general discontent, the CGT-A (headed by Raimundo Ongaro), took over and trapped the proletarian sectors that were tending to go outside the official trade union domination.

The political documents of the CGT-A contained statements written in "radical" language, which allowed them to disguise their actions oriented to the defense of capital; for example, it presented the interests of the working class as being united with those of the bourgeoisie, justifying their call for the defense of national capital: "The crushing of the working class is accompanied by the liquidation of national industry, the surrender of all resources, submission to international financial organisations (...)The basic sectors of the economy belong to the Nation. Foreign trade, banks, oil, electricity, iron and steel and refrigerators must be nationalized”. (Message to the workers and the people. Programme of May 1, 1968).

It is not at all strange that the "caudillo" Perón recognised, from exile, the political importance of the CGT-A and pushed it to confront Vandor's CGT. And it is not only because Vandor disputed Perón's leadership of "justicialism", postulating the creation of a "Peronism without Perón", but also because his radical phrases created a better camouflage to involve the workers in the defense of capitalism.

Official, "independent" or "radical" trade unions: all enemies of the working class

In the formation of this "combative" CGT (as the CGT-A also called itself), figures from the radicalised "intelligenstia" of petty bourgeois origin and even Catholic priests of the "Movement of Priests for the Third World" collaborated; and without a doubt a great number of workers also took part for very honest reasons, which in no way changed its bourgeois nature. The trade unions are indispensable weapons for the bourgeoisie precisely because it is through them that the ruling class can penetrate the ranks of the workers.

The rise of the military government of Onganía was a political response of the bourgeoisie to the rupture of its unity in the face of the economic crisis. It concentrated its attention on improving the mechanisms for the exploitation and subjugation of the workers, leading to a greater degradation of their lives, to a strict police surveillance of social life and a fierce repression against worker (and student) demonstrations, leaving on each occasion a number of detainees, wounded and murdered.

But the terror applied by the state failed to frighten and paralyse the workers; on the contrary, it fed their courage and fighting spirit.

This atmosphere of struggle also encouraged the Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyist and Peronist parties to enrich their ranks with students and young workers. However, despite the repressive practice of the state, trade union action and action by left-wing parties, some sectors of the Argentine proletariat were able to promote discussion and reflection on the meaning of the economic measures, the policies applied by the government, but also on the possibility and necessity of revolution[9] [145].

By the end of the 1960s, Argentina had some highly industrialised cities (such as Buenos Aires, Rosario and Córdoba), in which large masses of workers were concentrated, often engaging in very militant actions. It was precisely this workers' combativity that began to come to the fore in 1966, showing a response to the attacks of the bourgeoisie and its state.

For example, in the provinces of Corrientes and Rosario, the student mobilisations that protested against the increase in prices in the university canteen ended in both cases in police attacks, leaving a number of murdered and wounded students. These events generated consternation among the workers, but at the same time they acted as triggers of courage and expressions of solidarity.

In Cordoba in May 1969, workers' discontent grew in response to violent economic measures and repressive acts: at the beginning of May transport workers went on strike for better wages. In the automobile factories, since 1968, workers had been dismissed and labor intensity increased, but in 1969 the bosses announced that, for workers in the machine and automobile sectors, the "English Saturday" would be eliminated, which implied the extension of the Saturday workday (4 overtime hours without additional pay). This measure had its complement in the direct reduction of wages (due to the effect of the "zonal removals").

In the rest of the companies, the freezing of wages was maintained (as it had been since 1967). On May 14, the metalworkers were attacked by the police when they held an assembly, so a violent street fight was unleashed, and this would detonate an increase of workers' courage and combativity. The unions did not hide their concern about the combativity that was threatening to spill out of their control, which is why the two CGTs sought to work together.

Despite union control, workers’ militancy was real

In an attempt to prevent rising discontent among the workers from breaking out of union control, the CGT-A in combination with Vandor's CGT, called for a 24-hour national work stoppage for May 30. The Cordovan trade unions[10] [146], for their part, in a kind of competition with the bureaucratic structures of the CGT and even of the CGT-A (with which most of the trade unions in Cordoba were associated), proposed to begin the strike on May 29 at 11 a.m. and end it 37 hours later: in this way they sought to gain prestige among the workers and at the same time show the leadership of the two union centers their local domination and strength, in order to gain a greater presence within the union structure as a whole.

The call for mobilisation was controlled by the union. The arrest of the Peronist Raimundo Ongaro two days before the strike fed the discontent that the unions could take advantage of.

Thus the union structure covered different flanks to ensure control of workers' combativity. It combined the "radicality" of the CGT-A with the "measured and legalistic" attitude of the CGT, but also involved the unions that were not integrated into any of the CGTs and therefore outside the call (as was the case with Fiat).

While some unions tried to prevent the workers from participating in the strike, most of the unions of the various industries would promote the mobilisation, trying to make sure that they would remain as mere parades, occupying the streets but in a dispersed way, maintaining (under the supervision of the unions) the union division that responds to the division of labor in capitalist production. However, on this occasion, they did not succeed in stopping the expression of proletarian discontent on its own class terrain.

May 29, 1969: Workers' rebellion in Cordoba

The proposal that emerged from the union meetings was that, from the morning of May 29, the different contingents of workers and students would leave from the doors of the different factories to advance, forming dispersed contingents, until they arrived at the CGT premises (located at Vélez Sarsfield Avenue).

The first aspect that stands out is the massive response of the workers; not only the workers of the big industrial plants mobilised, but also those of the small workshops spontaneously joined in and even many workers of the Fiat factory, where the union opposed the strike, join the demonstration. The students also stopped their activities and became massively integrated in support of the workers, so that practically the entire city came to a standstill.

Since the early hours of May 29, the police had surrounded Velez Sarsfield Avenue to prevent the arrival of groups of workers, and in various streets and neighborhoods near the factory zones, the government placed squads of the gendarmerie and the cavalry, which began their task of intimidation very early, trying to prevent the advance of the columns of workers. But it was in the streets of the center of the city where the strongest combats took place.

When the police saw the demonstration approaching the rallying point, they attacked first with tear gas bombs, then launched the mounted police squads... with these advances they managed to disperse some groups of demonstrators, but soon they regrouped and responded to the aggression with a lot of courage. Sticks and stones were used by demonstrators against the repressive bodies. The massiveness of the demonstration managed to repel the aggression, but the police, when unable to impose their order, resorted to fire power, so that they no longer used only their "dissuasive armament". Now their rifles and pistols fired on the masses, injuring several workers and murdering Máximo Mena[11] [147], a young worker from IKA-Renault.

The death of this comrade, instead of causing fear, encouraged solidarity and ignited courage. The workers spontaneously built barricades and held assemblies in the streets and around the barricades, in which workers participated without distinction of the factory in which they worked, also integrating students and the inhabitants of the neighborhoods, achieving a high level of unity and solidarity. The testimony of a worker who participated in those battles: "The reaction of the people was remarkable, they went out to help us daily (to light the bonfires that help to diminish the effect of tear gas), the women, the old women, they gave us matches, bottles for us to defend ourselves, sticks..."[12]. [148]

The union structure, no matter how hard it tried to stop the fighting, failed to do so and watched with horror as the demonstration they hoped would be controlled by them turned into a massive workers' rebellion.

Some union leaders, such as Agustín Tosco of Luz y Fuerza, who was impotent in the face of the working force that was rising autonomously, declared to journalists of the magazine "Siete Días": "The people went out for their own sake, now nobody directs them" and his bitterness showed when he said, "It all got out of hand"[13] [149]. The union structure of the UOM (led by the "moderate" Peronist Atilio López), also realised that the workers had freed themselves from their control, so they “separated” themselves and fled, trying to achieve the pardon of the state and save their skins...

After a few hours of fierce combat in the streets of Cordoba, the exploited forced the withdrawal of a large part of the repressive forces, who took refuge in their barracks. Others maintained their action in some neighborhoods farther from the center, but without being able to cross the barricades, so in an act of desperation and revenge, the police attacked the population even when it was not involved in the demonstration, but simply had the bad luck to cross their path.

In the neighborhood of Clínicas, groups made up mainly of students were placed on the roofs of houses from which they fired deterrent shots to impede the advance of the police. Late that night the workers cut the city lights, creating a gloom to hinder the movement of the police and army that had arrived in the city in the afternoon and was preparing an assault.

It was not until the early morning of May 30 that the military squads began the slow advance through the city, given that they still found many barricades being defended. But in the end the soldiers were able to take the city militarily, imposing a curfew and the massive detention of workers and students, whom they judged almost immediately in rapidly formed military tribunals

The lessons of the Cordobazo

The fighting days of May 1969 sparked a wave of struggles in Argentina until the mid-1970s, providing lessons that workers must reappropriate today. Unlike the bourgeoisie, who as Marx said in their struggle against the old system,  “storm more swiftly from success to success” the workers “constantly criticise themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts"[14] [150] And they do so because they are part of a social class that has no economic base in this system: its strength comes from its consciousness and organization, and this can only be strengthened by evaluating its own practice, recovering the lessons of all its combats and in particular of its defeats. In that sense, when we remember the Cordobazo it is not to make an exaggerated or blind apology, a tearful and moving speech or a formal description of an ephemeral event. We remember it after 50 years because the Argentine proletariat showed the strength that can be created when it manages to break the ties of trade unions and of the parties of the left and right of capital that keep it subjugated. This is a great lesson that the proletariat of the world must re-learn, but at the same time this requires a critical balance-sheet that shows the weaknesses of the movement, for example:

- The workers' rebellion of May 29 showed itself as a spontaneous and conscious response to the attacks of capital; it was an incipient but important expression of resistance against capitalism, as long as it managed to awaken combativity, encourage solidarity and self-confidence. However, the mobilisation did not advance any further. One of the aspects that prevented the workers from raising their consciousness to more developed levels was the ideological burden that for years had been inoculated by the trade union apparatus, the left of capital and in particular Peronism, which in Argentina has acted and continues to act in defense of capital and against the proletariat.

Specifically, the "anti-imperialist"[15] [151] ideology has been used to batter the consciousness of the proletariat[16] [152]. "Anti-imperialism" is actually the disguise of a nationalist discourse used by both right and left sectors of capital to confuse and divert the discontent of the exploited towards the defense of national capitalism. The same point is reached when the slogan of struggle against monopoly capital is raised, and even more confusion is created when the exploited are peddled the illusion of possible "alternative" policies, such as protectionism or nationalisation. These old traps have no other objective than to prevent the workers from directing their struggle against the foundations of capitalism.

This burden of confusion appeared during the May 29 rebellion when groups of workers and students tried to show their discontent by burning not only government offices, but also businesses and offices of foreign monopolies (Xerox, Citroën...).

Nationalism is one of the heaviest ideological burdens carried by the proletariat, which is why it is not surprising that these expressions appear even at times of rising combativity, and this is so because the bourgeoisie does not let a day pass in which it fails to feed this campaign. In 1973, invoking nationalism, the Argentine workers were dragged to the polls (and since then the bourgeoisie have repeated the trap countless times) and in 1982 they were submerged in the poisonous atmosphere of patriotism in support of the Falklands War.

- Another aspect that hindered the development of workers' consciousness was the strengthening of the union structure by the state. When the military tribunals blamed the rebellion on the union leaders, Agustín Tosco, Atilio López and Elpidio Torres, they turned them into martyrs, giving prestige to them and to the unions. For this reason, it was not long before the bourgeoisie took advantage of the prestige it gave to Atilio López and Tosco[17] [153], to drive the workers to the polls and to the defense of democracy through their participation in the Justicialist Liberation Front (FREJULI). This meant that the advances in militancy made in the Cordobazo did not have continuity and the lessons were not adequately put together. By snatching control of the struggle from the unions, it was shown that the struggle could be carried on without them, opening the way for building their own organisations (councils, committees...), real expressions of the autonomy of the proletariat.

A few years earlier, when the workers began to recognise the anti-working class character of the official CGT, the bourgeoisie offered them another union, the CGT-A, so that combativity was again recuperated by the union, blocking an understanding that the unions are structures integrated into the state. This same problem was repeated in the "Viborazo" of March 1971, in which the Sitrac-Sitram unions used their "metamorphosis", going from conservative to ultra-radical unions, in order to widen the source of confusion and sterilise workers' combativity.

It is in this framework that the bourgeois press and the apparatus of the left of capital, when they speak of the Cordobazo, highlight the confrontations in the streets, trying to reduce this day to anecdotal events, in order to cover up the fact that these were events where the workers showed their ability to take control of the struggle, going beyond the unions, and from which lessons could be drawn in in order to prepare the next battles.

On this basis, the bourgeoisie also tries to falsify the real terrain of struggle of the proletariat, `presenting as "radical" or "effective" methods of struggle such as looting or pillage, as happened during the protests against the "corralito" of 2001-2002[18] [154], or the roadblocks or the "piqueteros" in 2004[19] [155]. In the pages of our publication we have denounced such methods precisely because they are contrary to true self-organisation and true unity. With the prospect of developing new and brutal attacks in the immediate future, and the expected emergence of new workers' struggles, the proletariat must recover the lessons of its experiences of struggle in Argentina and around the world.

Tatlin, July-2019

1] [156] See “50 years ago, May 1968” where a list of articles on this proletarian experience can be found. https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201804/15127/fifty-years-ago-may-68 [157]

2] [158] See “The 1969 Italian "Hot Autumn" An episode in the historic resurgence of the class struggle”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/hot-autumn-1969 [159] and  https://en.internationalism.org/ir/143/hot-autumn-italy-1969-part02 [160]

3] [161] See “One Year of Workers' Struggles in Poland”,  https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-poland [90]

4] [162] See the Resolution on the relationship of forces between the classes [163] of our 23rd Congress.

5] [164] The presence of migrant workers in Argentina was decisive in the formation of anarcho-syndical groups such as the FORA and they participated very actively in struggles such as in the "tragic week" (1919) or in the strikes of "rebel Patagonia" (1920-21). See our the article dedicated to the FORA https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201802/14921/anarcho-syndicalism-argentinafora1 [165] 6] [166] This was the case of the province of Cordoba, which from the middle of the 20th century became one of the cities with the greatest concentration of industries and services.

7] [167] Peronist ideology is actually a façade on which various sectors of the bourgeoisie group together, presenting themselves as a movement, but without achieving real unity. The Peronist movement has always sought to integrate workers like cannon fodder, so they intervene in its ranks through unions, parties and religious organisations. Peronism has been very useful to the bourgeoisie because it is presented as a confused and flexible ideological expression that moves from the right to the "left", maintaining in all cases a nationalist discourse and to which religious and supposedly "socialist" arguments can be added, bringing together a diverse range of groupings that we could (using their own terms) summarise as follows:

- orthodox Peronists", represented mainly by the Justicialist Party and the CGT trade union,

- "revolutionary Peronists", formed by the various guerrilla tendencies

- neighborhood activists who talk about "mass work” under the Peronist banner,

- “Neo-peronism", as practiced by the most recent governments (Menen, the Kirchner marriage) ...

8] [168] Perón, who ran "Peronism" from his exile in Spain, came up with the phrase: "desensillar hasta que aclare"  - seek the right moment to collaborate with the military government.

9] [169] Some workers expressed their political position with the slogan: "neither coup nor election, revolution", showing their repudiation of the coup government, but also, and more specifically, of the electoral promises of leftism and Peronism, thus posing their demand for revolution as the only way out of capitalism. The truth is that the Argentine working class as a whole achieved  a high level of combativity in the strikes and mobilisations from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, but it did not achieve the complete clarity that would allow it to confront the dominant bourgeois environment imposed by Peronism and leftism.

10] [170] The main unions of the industries present in Córdoba were: Sindicato de Luz y Fuerza, Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor (SMATA), Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM), Unión Tranviarios Automotor (UTA), Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor (SMATA), Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM).

11] [171] The worker Mena was not the only one murdered: according to testimonies of participants in that day of struggle, they were nearly 60. Other journalistic data indicate that 20 were killed, but as in all the rebellions it is difficult to know with exactitude the number of dead and wounded. What is most certain is that the number of detainees was more than 2,000.

12] [172] Testimony collected by Juan Carlos Cena in "El Cordobazo una rebelión popular", Editorial La Rosa Blindada, 2003.

13] [173] Cited in the pamphlet, "Mayo del 69, la llama que no ardió", Argentina, May-1989, from the group "Emancipación Obrera". See "International proposal to the partisans of the world proletarian revolution” https://en.internationalism.org/content/3161/international-correspondence-workers-emancipation-revolutionary-class-militant [174] In 2016 we published the testimony of a former militant of EO, which had dissolved some time before, on the experience of this group “An experience from which lessons can be drawn: the group Emancipation Obrera in Argentina” "Una experiencia de la que sacar lecciones: el grupo Emancipación Obrera en Argentina [175]".

[14] [176] Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, chapter 1

15] [177] It usually associates imperialist policies with the USA alone, when imperialist policies are carried out by all capitalist states to a greater or lesser degree.

16] [178] In the interview made by the magazine "Análisis-Confirmado" (9-February 1973) the trade union leader Tosco defined his political profile as follows: "I am for the anti-imperialist struggle towards socialism. Socialism is still a little far from Argentina, but it is close to the liberating struggle. Antimonopoly, anti-imperialist..." This declaration allows us to glimpse the tone of the ideological discourse disseminated by radical trade unionism.

17] [179] As a result of the military takeover of Córdoba, Agustín Tosco, Elpidio Torres, Atilio López and Jorge Canelles were imprisoned and sentenced to eight years in prison; however, they were released after seven months. Of all of them, it will be Tosco who will gain the most prestige as he was persecuted and forced to live in hiding, which influences his death, because it prevented him from being adequately served. So we do not intend to make an individual judgment of Agustín Tosco, but it is necessary to expose that his action, being tied to the union structure, becomes part of a machine integrated in the state apparatus in charge of preventing the development of the workers' conscience.

18] [180] See: “Argentina: Only the proletariat fighting on its own class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_argentina.html [181]

19] [182] See “Argentina: the mystification of the 'piquetero' movement” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_piqueteros.html [183]

ICC Introduction

We are publishing a contribution from a sympathizer in the US which aims at exposing the empty but dangerous ideology about ‘the elite’ which is being used more and more by different factions of the capitalist class today

Recently, there has been a worrying trend towards the usage of the term ‘the elite’ amongst some popular bourgeois political representatives. Their usage of this term is completely unsurprising, and is a greater reflection of how the capitalist apparatus is attempting to deal with the failures of its mode of production. This recurring phenomenon is something which isn’t new. It is a deeply concerning demonstration of the capabilities of the ruling class to employ abstractions in order to divide the working class on the basis of false consciousness and mystification.

Who are the elite?

The elite has no actual body, it is a myth which is constructed constantly in order to justify the existence of the present state of things. The meaning of ‘the elite’ differs from mouthpiece to mouthpiece, depending on the general intent. For the new emerging social-democrats of the United States, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the phrase is utilized in order to signify the “one percent”. These modernizers posit that the elite, which is already a mystification in its own right, is essentially a statistic. They posit that this conflict between the whole of society is contained not within a class conflict, but rather a conflict between an abstract “one percent” verses the rest of society, or the “ninety-nine percent”.

Any amount of digging shows that this nonsense doesn’t hold up. Does it make any sense that there is a struggle between a group which makes x amount of money and another group which makes y amount of money? According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average income of the top one percent nationwide is $1.15 million[1]. Does this mean that someone who makes $1.14 million dollars has the same interests in fighting this “one percent” as the people who are making $90,000 a month?
Across the sea, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted, “The political elite and establishment have let people down across our country.” Again, the question rings more painfully here, who are the elite? We are merely left with statistics, with the vague terminology of ‘the establishment’, and so on. Nothing concrete, as per usual. But this term is not merely limited to the clique of social democrats, it has been used most recently by prominent hardline conservatives globally.

The likes of Trump, as well as his base, have identified a new elite. This elite refers specifically to what they perceive as the coastal/liberal elite which looks down upon the mid-westerners and southerners. For the anti-EU politicians in Britain and France, the elite are the leadership of the European Union “who dictate their laws and destroy their countries”.

To boil this down, the elite is simultaneously the one percent, the establishment, the coastal liberals, and whatever else the members of the ruling class decide to say. If there was to be an immediate and obvious conclusion here, it would be that there is indeed no “elite”. To the ruling class, the elite is everybody and nobody at the same time, whoever is useful at moment to blame and individualize the problems that capitalism produces.

Throw Aside All Illusions...

The massive political tide which is now growing against this abstract political elite can never be a movement which is capable of doing away with capitalism. The elite exist solely in the minds of the mouthpieces of the ruling class, a verbal tool which is picked up and thrown about when the advancing decomposition of capital becomes far too obvious to ignore. Often enough, those who find themselves attacking the elite are often members of the ruling class itself.

If this term is so concretely unusable, a new question arises: what is the actual enemy of humanity, if not ‘the elite’? The material reality in the world is that of class, and the group relation to the means to produce. There is the working class, which must sell its labor power to a capitalist in order to survive, stripping them of all possibility to self-actualize and grow. On the other hand, there is the bourgeoisie, who exploit the workers’ labor in order to gain surplus value. This is the secret of the ruling class’ survival: exploitation, genocide, destruction, and bloodshed. For the sake of its survival, the bourgeoisie does everything it can to maintain the status quo. The result for the workers is pain, war, poverty, massacres, and famine which will continue until the day that society is in the hands of the working class. This conflict is the primary social division of capitalist society, not an abstract struggle between the “common man” and the “one-percent” or “coastal elite”.

If we are to seriously take up the issue of dealing with the symptoms of capitalism, we should consider the treatment that the doctor prescribed: global proletarian revolution. Capitalism is fundamentally unable to provide humanity with sustainable growth, let alone allowing it to develop towards abundance and self-actualization.

V

1. https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/#epi-toc-3 [184]

Media campaigns on climate change often pit the urgent necessity to stop releasing greenhouse gases against the particular needs of workers or even “the uneducated”. We have the Yellow Vests in France originally protesting against a carbon tax that would make the cost of petrol prohibitive when there is no adequate public transport, or the slogan “Trump digs coal” as he pretended to defend the coal industry and the workers who rely on it. The campaign for a Green New Deal (or sometimes a Green Industrial Revolution) claims to solve the problems of climate change, unemployment and inequality all at the same time. For example: “The Sunrise Movement’s Green New Deal would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other sectors within 10 years. It would also aim for 100% renewable energy and includes a job guarantee program ‘to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one’. It would seek to ‘mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth’”.[1]

The need to address the destructive effect of capitalism on nature, and particularly the danger of greenhouse gases driving climate change, is undeniable. So too is the increase in the inequality intrinsic to capitalism, and the fact that economists are already pointing out the way increases in debt and the trade war between the USA and China are signs of a new recession. It makes the Green New Deal sound like a no-brainer.

If it sounds too good to be true…

Those who warn against con-men often say that if a deal sounds too good to be true it probably is. So let’s take a hard look at the Green New Deal – from the point of view of its reference to the state capitalist measures of Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s; from the point of view of the inability of the capitalist nation state to address a global problem; considering the implications of the policy for the environment; and most importantly the way the policy hides the real nature of capitalism and acts to undermine the development of the working class’ consciousness and struggle.

The Green New Deal takes its inspiration from a state capitalist policy in the 1930s, to restart economic growth in response to the depression[2]. The New Deal itself looked back to the state direction of the economy in the previous Great War in 1917-18, and as well as paying for much needed infrastructure the Public Works Administration “built numerous warships, including two aircraft carriers; the money came from the PWA agency. PWA also built warplanes, while the WPA built military bases and airfields”[3]. In this it was not unlike the policies in Germany at the time, when many of the autobahns were built as part of the process of gearing up for the coming war.

 Climate change is a global problem, one that cannot be addressed nation by nation, yet the Green New Deal wants to do just that: “A green new deal for the UK…”, “Scotland is uniquely placed, given its abundance of renewable resources …”[4], “Aiming to virtually eliminate US greenhouse gas pollution…”[5]. This is nonsense: even the accounting of greenhouse gas production on a national scale is fraudulent, for instance 40% of UK consumption of commodities whose production gives off greenhouse gases, being imported, are not counted in the national figures. Capitalism pollutes world-wide, and this spreads to the furthest reaches of the oceans and the most desolate parts of the Arctic.  

Facile ideas of new growth based on green energy may promise to sustain economic growth, based on state spending, but they are not founded on any real global consideration of the effects of the environmental destruction and greenhouse gases they will cause. Moving to renewables requires large quantities of rare earth metals, the mining of which is causing huge pollution in China where 70% are extracted. Production of lithium in the Atacama desert in Chile has already destroyed salt water lakes relied on by flamingos and robbed the freshwater aquifer, destroying the farming in the region. Meanwhile 2 firms, Albemarle and SQM, blame each other for flouting the rules. Cobalt is now to be mined from the ocean floor, without understanding what this will do to the ecology of a part of the world we know precious little about – and since it is necessary for renewable energy this is supposedly to ‘save the planet’. If we need to buy new electric cars, this will no doubt sustain the car industry, but who has accounted the greenhouse gas emissions from such production?

To understand how capitalist civilisation can be so profligate with the very world on which we all depend it is necessary to understand the nature of capitalism itself.

Distorting the truth about capitalism

The Green New Deal promises to overcome capitalism’s destruction of the environment, particularly climate change, through the bourgeois state, but this is not possible. Capitalism is not a government policy whose various laws can be chosen or altered at will by a parliament, but the result of the long historical development of the mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production. An important step in this was the separation of the producers from their means of production, for instance when peasants were driven off the land in favour of sheep for the more lucrative woollen industry.

This created a system of generalised commodity production, production for the market. In place of peasants who could produce almost all they needed from the land, there were wage workers who needed to buy everything. The capitalists they work for – whether an individual businessman, company, multinational or state-owned industry – are in competition to sell at a profit. The Green New Deal can do nothing to change the way capitalism works.

Capital has a real Midas touch: everything it produces must be sold at a profit if the business is to survive, everything accounted in the bottom line, regardless of what is produced. But for capital the resources of the natural world are a free gift, as Marx showed. “Natural elements which go into production as agents without costing anything, whatever role they might play in production, do not go in as components of capital, but rather as a free natural power of capital; in fact a free natural productive power of labour, but one which on the basis of the capitalist mode of production represents itself as a productive power of capital, like every other productive power.”[6] In capitalism what costs nothing has no (exchange) value, can be used and despoiled at will. In this framework a priceless rainforest is worthless. A farmer who cuts down trees of the rainforest because he wants to plant oil palm, soya, or another crop, is forced to do so, because he can make most money with this, or even because it is the only way he can make enough to live. Within capitalism the question of an economic activity serves the needs of nature and humanity cannot be posed, only whether it is profitable. 

In the 19th Century, when capital was expanding across the globe, it was already polluting and destroying nature. The pollution from mining and industry is well known, as is the history of raw sewage flowing out of large cities. The effect on the soil is less well known. “In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in productivity and the mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying waste and debilitating labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the background of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.”[7] What Marx showed for the 19th Century has only worsened. By the end of that century Kautsky could write “Supplementary fertilisers… allow the reduction in the soil fertility to be avoided, but the necessity of using them in larger and larger amounts simply adds a further burden to agriculture – one not unavoidably imposed by nature but a direct result of current social organisation. By overcoming the antithesis between town and country… the materials removed from the soil would be able to flow back in full.”[8] Since then agriculture, like industry, has expanded enormously, its yields and productivity have grown on a huge scale, and the fertilisers necessary to maintain this have become a real menace to the soil and waterways.

However polluting, murderous and exploitative capitalism was while it was expanding across the globe, the period since the First World War has seen a spiral of destruction of nature, and of human life. World War 1 was followed by World War 2 and local wars backed by bigger imperialist powers have multiplied ever since. And capitalists and states were forced into sharper economic and military competition destruction of the environment has only reached new levels. Capitalist business, whether private or state run, has increased its pollution and robbery of the earth’s resources to unprecedented levels. To which we must add the pollution and destruction carried out by the military and in wars (see ‘Ecological disaster: the poison of militarism’ on our website[9]).

 The danger posed to the environment, to the climate, in a word, to nature, cannot be overcome without overthrowing capitalism. The Green New Deal will be no more successful than the emissions trading scheme which tried to limit greenhouse gas emissions by market mechanisms. Worse, by providing a false ‘solution’ it can only spread illusions in the working class, thus prolonging the life of this system and increasing the danger that it sinks into irretrievable barbarism.

Alex

For several weeks now, we've seen the emergence of numerous social movements in several countries on different continents: Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador, Bolivia, Haiti, Guinea, Algeria... Although these mobilisations have their peculiarities, they all express a reaction of protest and anger faced with the effects of the economic crisis which has shown a further descent these last months. We will treat these international mobilisations in a more global manner on our website soon. In the meantime, we are publishing below an article written by our comrades in Latin America on the subject of the present movement taking place in Chile. Some analyses drawn up in this article are applicable to other current mobilisations. All these movements, by their inter-classist and popular nature, as well as the democratic illusions in which they are imprisoned, lead to a fatal dead-end and constitute a trap for the world proletariat. Consequently, this raises the great responsibility incumbent on the proletariat of the central countries of capitalism, the most experienced when it comes to the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, and the only force capable of showing the way towards the autonomous struggle of the world working class.

What’s happening in Chile flows from the international economic crisis which is manifested in this country through budget deficits that has been dragging down the Chilean state for several years. Organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) show a progressive reduction of growth during the last three or four years. Despite its efforts to diversify its economy, Chile is essentially dependent on copper, the price of which, as a manifestation of the crisis, has fallen heavily. The measures taken to increase metro fares was an attempt to respond to the situation of deficit by the Chilean state. At the global level, we are seeing the first stages in an important economic upheaval and, as in other episodes of the capitalist crisis, the weakest countries are the first to be hit: Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, Ecuador and now Chile. The idea that Chile was supposed to be an "exception" in Latin America through its economy or the so-called "well-being" of its working class is exposed as a lie. President Pinera has had to swallow his triumphalist proclamations that "Chile was an oasis of peace and prosperity in Latin America". The truth behind this smokescreen is: average wages of 368 euros a month, generalised precarious working, the disproportionate cost of food and services, shortages in education, health and pensions which condemn retired workers to poverty. This is the reality which shows the growing degradation of living conditions of the working class and the whole of the population.

The explosion of troubles

The Pinera government underestimated the level of social agitation. An apparently anodyne attack, the increase in Metro fares in Santiago, unleashed a general anger. The response however was not posed on the grounds of the working class but in a context that was unfavourable and dangerous for it: a popular revolt and expressions of minority violence, the action of the lumpenproletariat, which could be utilised by the state. Profiting from the weakness in the social response, the government launched a brutal repression which, according to official figures, left 19 dead. A state of emergency was decreed for more than a week and the maintenance of order was left to the army. The return of the torturers took us right back to the worst times of Pinochet, demonstrating that democracy and dictatorship are two faces of the same capitalist state. The eruption of the lumpenproletariat with its vandalism, pillage, arson and the irrational and minority violence typical of capitalist decomposition [1] has been used by the state to justify its repression, sowing fear among the population and intimidating the proletariat, diverting its attempts to struggle onto the terrain of a nihilist violence that leads nowhere[2].

Union mobilisations to demobilise and demoralise the workers

The Chilean bourgeoisie understood however that brutal repression wasn't sufficient to calm the discontent. The Pinera government made a mea culpa for this reason. The usually arrogant President adopted a "humble" pose, declaring that he "understood" the "message of the people" and he would "provisionally" withdraw the measures and open the door to a "social accord".  That can be translated into: attacks will be imposed by "negotiation" around a "table of dialogue" where the opposition parties, the unions and employers all together "represent the Nation". Why then this change of attitude? It's because repression is not efficient if it isn't accompanied by the democratic deception which includes the trap of national unity and the dissolution of the proletariat into an amorphous mass of the "people". The economic attack required by the crisis necessitates repression but above it necessitates a political offensive. The proletariat, although going through a situation of great weakness in Chile and the rest of the world, remains a historic threat to the maintenance of capitalist exploitation. The proletariat of Chile, one of the most concentrated in Latin America, has a certain political experience. For example it was involved in the mass strike at Iquique[3] in 1907 and suffered terribly under the Allende fraud (1970-73) which paved the way for the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Pinochet (1973-1990). The political offensive of the bourgeoisie opened up with the union mobilisations calling for a "general strike" more than a week after the protests. What cynicism! When the government hiked the price of Metro tickets, the unions called for nothing. When the government deployed the army in the streets they kept their mouths shut. When the army and carabinieri muscled in they didn't lift a finger. And now, they call for "mobilisation". When the workers have to fight, the unions paralyse them. When the workers go into battle, the unions stand in their way. And when the workers haven't the strength, the unions call for "the struggle". The unions always act against the workers, as much as when they oppose spontaneous strikes as when they call for a fight when the workers are weak, confused and divided. The unions demobilise the workers' actions and then mobilise only when they aim for a stronger demobilisation still. The groups of the left, Trotskyist, Stalinist or Maoist, complete the trap by proposing their "unlimited general strike", a parody of workers' self-organisation where instead of assemblies and elected and revocable strike committees, they want to set up a "coordination" composed of unions and leftist groups. Their political alternative is to get rid of Pinera. Why? In order to replace him with the Socialist Party's Michelle Bachelet who, during the course of her two mandates (2006-10, 2014-18) did the same or worse than him. They ask for the setting-up of a "constituent assembly". Behind the facade of their radicalism and their speeches "in the name of the working class", the leftists defend capitalism because they trap the workers on the terrain of the defence of democracy and with the constricting method of trade union "struggles".

The political offensive of the Chilean bourgeoisie

The second phase of the offensive has been the entry onto the scene of the opposition parties (the New Majority, the Stalinist party and the Democratic Front) which appealed for "negotiation" and "consensus" and saluted the crumbs given by Pinera as a victory. In liaison with the government and the army[4], the Chilean bourgeoisie has provided itself with a framework for delivering a new ideological blow to the consciousness of the proletariat, in order to dissolve any tendency within the latter towards acting as an autonomous class and to attach it to the chariot of the nation, to the ideologies of the enemy class, the ideology of democracy in particular. Important demonstrations were organised for the week-end 25 - 27 October with the following axes:

- National unity: thus, at the time of the demonstration of Santiago where a million people were assembled, the slogan was "Chile wakes up". That's to say it's not a matter of a class confrontation but a so-called struggle of the "entire nation" against a minority of corrupt and thieving individuals. During Allende's time the slogan was: "The people united will never be beaten". What we have to remember is that behind this once-fashionable slogan lies the truth that "the proletariat diluted into the people and the nation will always be beaten".

- the demand for a "new constitution": There's a claim for a "constituent assembly"; it is a dangerous trap. In Spain 1931, the "new constitution" affirmed that Spain was a "Workers' Republic". It was a Republic that assassinated fifteen hundred people in the repression of workers' strikes between 1931 and 1933. In 1936, Stalin proclaimed that the USSR had "the most democratic constitution in the world", at the same time as he initiated the Moscow show trials where he liquidated the last of the Bolsheviks and intensified the most ferocious terror. The Weimar Republic repressed the attempt at proletarian revolution (1918-1923) and paved the way for the legal growth of Hitler and the Nazi terror in 1933.

- This orientation aims to dissolve the proletariat into an indistinct and malleable mass of the "people" where all social classes "come together" in the body of the nation. On the Italian Square of Santiago, a large banner proclaimed "For the dignity of the people, protest in the street without fear". The fashionable slogan infesting the Chilean media talks about a "transversal movement". This phrase signifies that there is no class struggle but a "movement which cuts across everyone" in which even the children of the wealthy residents are included. President Pinera sent a tweet saying: "The massive joyful and peaceful march of today, where Chileans demanded a fairer and more equitable Chile opens a grand vista for the future and gives us hope. We have heard the message; we have all changed. With the help of God we will make the development of this Chile better for all". This response is packed with obvious cynicism but it also gives us the measure of the political manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie. Even the boss of the Santiago Metro proudly displayed photos of his daughter taking part in the protests!

The bourgeoisie imposes misery, barbarity and death under the flag of democracy

We denounce this democratic manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie. Democracy is the most perverse and twisted form of capitalist domination. The worst massacres have been perpetrated in the name of democracy. Looking at Chile alone, we can see that at the time of the mass strike of 1907, 200 workers were killed during a massacre at the school of Santa Maria. The "champion of democracy", Salvador Allende, brutally repressed the miners' struggle against increases in productivity and the lowering of wages. "In May-June 1972, the miners were again mobilised: 20,000 went on strike in the mines of El Teniente and Chuquicamata. Miners at El Teniente demanded a 40% wage increase. Allende put the provinces of O'Higgins and Santiago under military rule saying the paralysis of El Teniente ‘seriously threatened the economy’. The ‘Marxist’ leaders of the Popular Union expelled workers and replaced them with scabs. Five hundred carabiniere attacked the workers with tear gas and water cannons. Four thousand miners protested in Santiago on June 11 and were violently attacked by the police. The government treated the workers as ‘agents of fascism’. The CP organised some processions in Santiago against the miners, calling on the government to show ‘firmness’[5]. All the factions of the bourgeoisie, particularly those on the left, closed ranks in order to defend state capitalist "democracy". In November 1970, Fidel Castro came to Chile to support the anti-working class measures taken by Allende and reprimanded the miners, calling them agitators and "demagogues". At the Chuquicamata mine, he stated that "one hundred tonnes less each day meant a loss of $36 million dollars a year"[6]. Allende sent the army to repress the workers, but worse still, during a meeting in front of the Moneda Palace in June 1972, he applauded Pinochet as "a faithful soldier to the Constitution". The re-establishment of democracy in 1990 has brought no amelioration to living and working conditions in Chile. The different presidents (from Alwyn to Bachinet, including Lagos and the first mandate of Pinera) have preserved and strengthened the political economy promoted by the Chicago School which imposed the dictatorship of Pinochet. They haven't at all improved a retirement system which condemns the retired to get a pension lower than the minimum wage and who have to continue to work in order to survive, with jobs here and there until they are 75 years old. This is a system which refuses any future pension to numerous youngsters condemned to precarious employment. Chile today is one of the most unequal countries in the world and the inequality is aggravated by democracy: "When we got democracy back, the military government which had also been bad on the economy, left a poverty rate of 4.7%. Today our GNP has more than doubled and we are several times richer than before. But the percentage of poor has risen to 35%"[7]. The left acted as the favoured voice of the bourgeoisie, calling upon us to support democracy and consider dictatorship as the supreme evil: as if dictatorship had the monopoly on repression and the spoliation of the proletariat, its slogan being: "No to dictatorship, yes to parliamentary democracy". All this propaganda caused a great deal of damage to the working class because it made it think that it was "free", that it could "choose", that with the vote came "power" and, above all, it atomises and individualises the workers, wiping out feelings of solidarity and unity by pushing them into the mire of "look after number one", "the survival of the fittest" and of "get out of my way so I can take your place".

The methods of working class struggle

The workers and their most conscious minorities must reject the trap laid by the bourgeoisie and methodically prepare the ground for the emergence of real workers' struggles. This perspective is still very far away and won't unfold through a sum of events in each country but from an international dynamic in which the role of the great concentrations of experienced workers in Western Europe will be fundamental[8]. The working class of Chile and the entire world must reappropriate the real methods of workers' struggle which have appeared in numerous significant combats throughout history (May 68 in France, Poland 1980, the anti-CPE movement in France in 2006, the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011). These are methods of struggle and organisation which are radically opposed to those of the unions:

- The mass strike which is unleashed by the workers themselves through their own decisions and outside of legal and union strictures.

- General assemblies open to all workers, active and unemployed, retired, students, future workers, immigrants and native workers, ALL TOGETHER.

- The direct extension of struggles through massive delegations.

- The coordination and unification of struggles of struggle assured by elected and revocable delegates.

Some clear conclusions are established:

- Faced with such brutal attacks as those in Chile or Ecuador, the response is not popular revolt, pillage or minority violence but autonomous class struggle.

- The struggle must be controlled by the workers themselves against union sabotage.

- The workers must unite against repression and defend themselves through solidarity and a firm and combative response. Prolonging the fight and reaching a class unity is the best defence possible.

- As we saw earlier with Ecuador and then with events in Chile, the national flag has been waved throughout. It is the flag of exploitation, repression and war. It is the flag of capital.

- Capitalism's descent into the world crisis will cause yet more suffering and misery and that will be accompanied by new imperialist wars and the destruction of the environment.

- The problem is global and there is no national solution. The only global solution is one that comes from the international struggle of the workers.

We know that this perspective of combat is going to be costly. Numerous struggles, numerous defeats, numerous painful lessons will be necessary. However, we have the lessons of three centuries of experience, which, elaborated by marxist theory, provides us with the theoretical, organisational and political means to contribute to this combat. The international communist organisation is the organism which defends this historic continuity of the proletariat. Its programmatic, organisational, political and moral principles are the critical synthesis of this global experience of three centuries of class struggle. Build the organisation, defend it, strengthen it: this is the best contribution to the fight of the proletariat. Today, this is mainly aimed against the current of campaigns for national unity around the defence of democracy, but tomorrow it will be a key part of the renaissance of the international struggle of the proletariat.

ICC, November 1 2019.

Capitalist civilisation – this world system based on wage labour and production for profit – is dying. Like ancient Roman slavery or feudal serfdom, it is doomed to disappear. But unlike previous systems, it threatens to take the whole of humanity with it.

For over a hundred years the symptoms of its decline have become more and more evident. Two world wars of unprecedented levels of destruction, followed by decades of proxy conflicts between two imperialist blocs (USA and USSR), conflicts which always contained the menace of a third and final world war. Since the eastern bloc collapsed in 1989, we have not seen peace but increasingly chaotic local and regional wars, like the ones currently ravaging the Middle East. We have been through global economic convulsions, like those in the 1930s, the 70s, or 2008, which have plunged millions into unemployment and poverty and which accelerate the drive towards open warfare. And when capitalism has succeeded in restoring accumulation – whether in the wake of massive destruction, as after 1945, or by doping itself with debt – we now understand that the very growth and expansion of capital adds a new menace to the planet through the destruction of nature itself.

Rosa Luxemburg in 1916, responding to the horrors of the first world war, pointed to the choice facing humanity: “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 Junius Pamphlet).

Unlike the slave system, which eventually made way for feudalism, or feudalism in turn, which allowed capitalism to grow inside it, this present system in its death throes will not automatically give rise to new social relations. A new society can only be built through the “conscious active struggle of the international proletariat” – through the coming together of all the world’s exploited, recognising themselves as a single class with the same interests in every part of the world.

This is an immense task, made more difficult by the loss of a sense of class identity over the past few decades, so that even many of those who feel that there is something profoundly wrong with the present system find it hard to accept that the working class exists at all, let alone that it has the unique capacity to change the world.

And yet proletarian revolution remains the only hope for the planet because it signifies the end of all systems where humanity is dominated by blind economic forces, the first society where all production is consciously planned to meet the needs of humanity in its interaction with nature. It is based on the possibility and the necessity for human beings to take social life into their own hands.

It is for this reason that we must oppose the slogans and methods of those organising the current climate protests, calling on us to exercise our democratic rights to demonstrate or vote with the aim of putting pressure on governments and political parties to react to the ecological crisis. This is a deception because the role of all these governments and parties – whether of the right or the left – is to manage and defend the very system which is at the root of the multiple dangers facing the planet.

The choices we are offered by the politicians of all stripes are false choices. A Brexit Britain or a Britain that remains in the EU will not shield the working class from the storms brewing in the world economy. A USA run according to Trump’s “America First” vandalism, or the more traditional “multilateral” policies of other factions, will still be an imperialist power compelled to defend its status against all the other imperialist powers. Governments that deny climate change or governments that chatter about investing in a “New Green Deal” will still be obliged to maintain a profitable national economy and thus carry out incessant attacks on working class living conditions. They will still be caught up in the same drive to accumulate which is turning the Earth into a desert.

But, we are told, at least we can vote for a different team, and in countries where even this “right” is denied, we can demand that it is granted to us.

In fact, the illusion that we can have some control over the juggernaut of capitalism by casting our votes every few years is integral to the whole fraud of capitalist democracy. The vote, the polling booth, not only keeps us trapped in the false choices on offer, but is itself an expression of our powerlessness, reducing us to the atomised individual “citizens” of this or that state.

The class struggle of the proletariat has shown a real alternative to this institutionalised impotence. In 1917-19, the working class rebelled against the slaughter of war and formed workers’ councils in Russia, Germany, Hungary and other countries, councils of elected and recallable delegates from workplace and other assemblies that for the first time contained the potential for a conscious control of political and social life. This massive international uprising brought the war to an end as the rulers of the warring camps needed to unite their forces to crush the menace of revolution.

Humanity has paid a heavy cost for this defeat: all the barbarism of the last hundred years has its roots in the failure of the first attempt to overthrow world capital. It will pay an even heavier cost if the working class does not recover its forces and make a second assault on the heavens.

This may seem a distant prospect but as long as capitalism exists there will be class struggle. And because capitalism in its agony has no choice but to increase the exploitation and repression of its wage slaves, the potential remains for the resistance of the latter to move from the defensive to the offensive, from the economic to the directly political, from instinctive revolt to the organised overthrow of capitalism.  ICC,  16.11.19

During election campaigns political parties often turn to questions of immigration, with false alternatives posed over “freedom of movement”, with arguments over the deportation of “illegal” immigrants, but also a warm welcome given to skilled workers who will benefit the economy. The article that appears here, first published on our website in French, is a reminder that the Windrush scandal is not a matter of historical interest but shows the long-held approach of the bourgeoisie:  for the exploitation of labour power, the attempt to intimidate sectors of workers, the sirring up of xenophobia, and also the thin humanitarian veneer.

***

After 1945, gravely weakened by the war, Britain had to get on with its reconstruction. Its biggest colonies (India and what became Pakistan) became independent and it was no longer possible to mobilise free labour power and cannon fodder from them as it had done during the war. So it turned to its colonies across the Atlantic, the British West Indies, where there were high rates of unemployment, in order to import the labour force needed for reconstruction.

For capital, migrants are just another commodity

Thus “from 1946, the Royal Commission on Population proposed to bring a ‘replacement population’ in order to renew the British population in the medium term”[1]. Thus the 1948 British Nationality Act granted the status of “citizen of the United Kingdom and its colonies” to anyone born on British territory or in one of its colonies. The aim was to quickly and easily get hold of cheap labour power. A few months later, the Empire Windrush set off from the Caribbean with a fresh supply of labour, ready to be exploited by the national capital. Up until 1971[2], nearly 600,000 workers, attracted from the colonies by the promise of employment, prosperity and housing, emigrated to Britain. This was the Windrush Generation.

From the beginning the previously unemployed arrivals were crowded together in air-raid shelters, paid for at their own expense. A large number of them were employed by the state (post, hospitals, transport) for very low wages.

The case of the Windrush Generation came to the surface in 2010, when Teresa May became the Home Secretary with the aim of hardening the country’s policy on immigration. In 2012 she declared that she proposed to install a “particularly hostile climate for illegal immigrants”. As soon as she became Minister she organised the destruction of the landing cards[3] which proved that the workers of the Windrush Generation had arrived in the UK before 1971. The aim was to start a hunt for immigrants who had become “illegal”. Home Office employees, when answering requests for confirmation of arrival dates in the UK, were told to respond that there was no available documentation.

Many of these immigrants, and their descendants, thus found themselves unable to prove that their presence in the UK was “legitimate”. Threatened with deportation, they immediately lost their jobs, access to healthcare and housing, and were then sent to detention centres awaiting deportation to the countries they (or their parents) had been born in.

The scandal broke out in November 2017, by which time May had become Prime Minister, and put a momentary halt to the deportations. Teresa May and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary (who ended up being the scapegoat and was pushed out) offered their excuses in April 2018 and promised financial compensation and naturalisation for the whole Windrush Generation.

However, the bourgeoisie continues to deport workers to this day. Despite the promises made by May and the whole British bourgeoisie, 30 workers were still deported to Jamaica last February, because they had a criminal record, even though their appeal for regularisation was still under review.

Both the xenophobic and humanitarian campaigns are nationalist

In fact, the state has taken advantage of all these events to carry out nationalist campaigns against the working class, from two different angles of attack.

Initially, numerous xenophobic campaigns came to light, linked to the very aggressive campaign waged by May against the Caribbean workers and their descendants. She was hoping that a number of “undesirable” immigrants would voluntarily leave British territory and that the “hostile environment” would deter others from trying to enter it. Her “hostile environment” was installed thanks to the new law on immigration: in order to work, rent accommodation, or have access to social and health benefits, you had to show your papers. Landlords were from now on obliged to verify the migration status of their tenants, or face severe fines or even 5 years in prison. Doctors were also incited to denounce patients who were not in a “regular” situation. The Home Secretary also made use of NHS data to track down “immigration offenders”, and thus “prevent people with no right to benefits and services from making use of them at the cost of British tax payers”, a government spokesperson explained. This atmosphere of terror, a consequence of May’s shameful campaign, was pushed to its most hysterical level by the official campaign of the Tory government in 2013, aimed at sharpening suspicion and division within the working class. The project involved sending publicity vans around the country with a slogan that was nothing short of an appeal to ratting on your neighbour: “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest”. For six weeks in mid-2013, a number of these vans toured around London and the surrounding area bearing this message. However, the campaign was far from a success and the government soon had to drop it.

In the face of the indignation provoked by this disgusting policy, the British bourgeoisie was forced to change its tune and give a different slant to the debate on immigration. May herself launched a more “humane” (and thus more pernicious) nationalist campaign. Having kicked out a number of Windrush workers, the May government then set up a hypocritical “Windrush day” which would be “an annual occasion for remembering the hard work and sacrifice of the Windrush Generation”. Windrush Day, which saw a number of official celebrations, also raised a special fund of £500,000 to pay compensation to these workers “who had crossed the ocean to build a future for themselves, their communities and above all for Britain, the country which will always be theirs”. And these are the same workers who still face the threat of deportation.

This scandal is the new face of the nationalist campaign which has enabled the bourgeoisie to drive the working class onto a totally rotten terrain, insinuating that there are two types of migrants: those who are useful (for capital) and those who take unfair advantage of the “generosity” of the nation.

The bourgeoisie has thus instrumentalised the outrage provoked by the Windrush scandal, hiding the fact that the same treatment is being doled out to millions of migrants around the world. While the British government was more or less legalising the situation of workers who have “helped build our country”, it lets Asians die in refrigerator vans or others die at sea, because they are forced to take more and more risks faced with the physical and administrative walls erected by May and company. In a hypocritically humanist guise, the bourgeoisie once again seeks to divide the working class.

Whether its discourse is openly xenophobic or supposedly more humane, the national frontiers of the bourgeoise remain. The British government might establish its day of commemoration, but the bodies will continue to pile up on the beaches or at the barbed wire fences. Only the working class, by fighting for communism, is able to get rid of these murderous borders by putting an end to capitalism.

Olive 1/11/19

In his 1957 novel "On the beach", made into a film a couple of years later, Nevil Shute imagined Australia as the last place on Earth where humans survived after a nuclear war had destroyed the northern hemisphere. It was a brief respite as the deadly radioactivity blew towards the south and the story describes how the various characters approached the demise of the planet as well as their own impending doom. Today, rather than being the last knockings of civilisation described by Shute, the continent of Australia is a harbinger and a microcosm - a particularly significant microcosm being as large as the whole of Europe or the United States - of the Earth being turned into a desert through the rapacious and unquenchable thirst of capitalism for profit. Everything about man-made climate change, global warming and capitalism's absolute inability to even begin to deal with this mortal threat to humanity, as well as the phoney solutions proposed by the likes of the Greens, is here in "Oz" today.

The desertification of Australia

We could go into lots of detailed figures about graphs, increasing temperatures, scales,  the scope and breadth of the fires currently raging across Australia; details about the numbers of homes lost, deaths and illnesses caused but it's sufficient here to say that they are at record levels and rising every day across increasing parts of the continent, where in some places air pollution levels are higher than those of Beijing or Delhi. And, in the New South Wales capital, they are 11 times higher than normal. In populous Sydney fire alarms are going off, ferries and other transportation systems are grounded and schools closed. People with severe respiratory illnesses are clogging up hospitals and doctor's surgeries and no-one is warned that the Beijing-style face masks that are making an appearance are worse than useless. Even inside their homes people are reporting smoke finding its way in and they are rightly scared for their immediate and longer-term health. Conditions are becoming more and more hazardous for fire-fighters, 85% of whom are volunteers (after the latest round of full-time fire jobs cut), and with little break in activity they are falling into fatigue, smoke-poisoning and danger of death from accidents.

Of course there have always been bush fires in Australia but the scope, duration and intensity of these latest developments take them to a new, dangerous level. Like "there's always been bush fires", there's always been climatic changes and fluctuations in the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event which affects Australian and larger weather patterns, in this case heating up the south-east while dumping record levels of rainfall on Africa. But like other weather patterns globally (El Nino, e.g.) they are being bent out of shape and intensified to "unprecedented" levels according to experts; and this is caused by the increase in global warming brought about by the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.

And, as bad as they are, it's not only bush fires and water shortages that are expressions of the long-term and short-term dangers to the population of Australia and beyond; de-forestation is creating more and more dustbowls. Australia is right up there with all the complicit Brazilian (and other) regimes in the scale and ruthlessness of the exploitation of the land. Vast areas, as far as the eye can see, have been uprooted of every form of vegetation - the iconic koala bears were already being wiped out long before these fires. The massive flatlands created for intensive agriculture demand vast volumes of water and tonnes of fertilizer.  They are denuded of all organic growth, leaving little moisture in the ground which further reduces the cloud formations above them. As these plains dry out in the heat what's left is barren dirt decomposing into dust, taken on the wind and laced with pesticides - an additional concern for neighbouring communities. Like Bolsanoro's Brazil, illegal land-clearances and deforestation have been tolerated, even encouraged by the various Australian authorities. All this for the sake of capitalism and its ineluctable drive for greater profits; and given the warnings of experts on future climatic developments, and that nothing is going to change about capitalism's need for profit, it makes you wonder just how long vast swathes of Australia can remain habitable for future generations.

The response of the government...

The Coalition Government of "man of the people", Prime Minister Scott Morrison, unlike his predecessor Tony Abbot, has accepted that "global warming" exists but it's "under control"[1] (like it is in Australia at the moment!). His and his government's position is essentially no different from Abbot who said that global warming "was probably doing good", that it was "greening the planet and increasing plant yields making life safer and more pleasant" and there wasn't much chance of stopping it anyway. Morrison won the election on the basis of not being afraid of coal, saying that he wouldn't put climate change before jobs; that it did exist "along with many other factors" but was a "side issue" in relation to the bush fires and "nothing to worry about" more generally. The government and its energy sector have no coherent climate change policies and here they are no different from the vast majority of the major powers. They are currently using carbon credits linked to creative accounting in order to say that they are doing something towards the Australian government's promised emissions reduction. The Federal Government deflects the problem onto the local authorities, state and territorial, "devolving" the question and thus avoiding and undermining any form of responsibility or coherent approach. This "devolution" tactic is an old trick of the democratic state that also facilitates divide and rule. Meanwhile the New South Wales parliament is trying to push through legislation that will weaken any climatic considerations in the production of coal; Australia has very lucrative coal exports totalling £36 billion per annum according to some reports. Seven new open cast mines have been started in Queensland. Fundamentally, like all governments of all hues, the response of the Australian government has been to deny, deflect and obscure the question of climate change while carrying on apace with the despoliation of the territory in the name of the national interest of making profits.

... and the Greens

The response of the Greens is to make more noise about climate change, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty they belong squarely in the same sack as the government and its politicians. The "Green movement" is very much like the pacifist movement; in fact in Australia, as in all the other major democracies, the two movements, their structures and personnel, are interchangeable and do interchange at certain points of history. The main similarity in the two movements is that they exist to publicise and plead for what capitalism cannot provide - a system without profit, competition and war. They are not just diversions from the necessity for the proletariat to take on capitalism root and branch; they are important props for the perpetuation of the system and are thus partly responsible for the accumulating effects of its decomposition. For the Greens the struggle of labour against capital is to be avoided in order for their "reforms" to succeed, reforms which have no chance of succeeding as long as capitalism exists.

For the Greens generally the situation "requires government attention" and "intervention" in the "banking" industry[2]. State intervention is also required for "new jobs from carbon neutral energy sources", and parliament (the Greens like the pacifists are very strong on parliament and democracy) should "save the people": that is the same parliament which, in reality, represents the interests of capital against "the people" in general and the working class in particular. For the Greens, the working class should support its enemy, make sacrifices for it and forego its struggle for power.

For some Greens in Australia, and elsewhere no doubt, the fires have been welcomed as "a final wake-up call"(in a long-line of "final wake-up calls"). The idea of these activists is that given the increasing damage from fires and floods, insurance companies will refuse to underwrite these and other critical risks associated with global warming and, consequently, the banks will no longer lend to fossil fuel companies, investing instead in "green outcomes". The fundamental problem with this approach is that it is based on the assumption that capitalism is essentially a system that is "open to reason" and will take a logical approach and do what's best for the world. The weight of evidence that we have from the beginning of last century is that this is not the case, as illustrated by two world wars and numerous irrational and illogical wars since as capitalism sinks into further decay. No matter how "radical" these Greens appear to be, their whole purpose is an attempt to reform the system through banking, insurance companies and "green exploitation". But the main function of the Green ideology, like its pacifist twin, is to confuse and demobilise the working class, to turn it away from its struggle against capital and back into the "national interest".

What really exposes the Green movement (and causes a great deal of infighting within the groups) is capitalism's development of militarism and war. When the Greens are not directly pacifist how do they approach the question of imperialist war? The likely approach, given the Greens support for the national interest of capitalism, is that of the influential Greens in Germany who supported their state's "war on terror" in Afghanistan and its overseas military "expeditions". The Greens in general are going to leave the military/repressive apparatus of the state not only intact but expanding, aggressive and running on fossil fuel.

"Capitalism" is not a political policy but a blind, irrational system taking us to destruction and ruin

The Australian bush fires and all the political shenanigans around them are just one more example of capitalism's drive to destruction on a global level. Aside from the frenetic and ultimately complicit response of the Green movement in the descending spiral of decay of this system in the last hundred years or more, there's also the hope, more like a pious dream, that something will turn up to halt this slide, some magic that will reverse the destructive effects of capitalism on the  planet and its populations. It isn't going to happen. Capitalism doesn't act for the good of humanity but for the accumulation of capital and military conquest; reason doesn't come into it:

"Capital is a world-wide relation between classes, based on the exploitation of wage labour and production for sale in order to realise profit. The constant search for outlets for its commodities calls forth ruthless competition between nation states for domination of the world market. And this competition demands that every national capital must expand or die. A capitalism that no longer seeks to penetrate the last corner of the planet and grow without limit cannot exist.  By the same token, capitalism is utterly incapable of cooperating on a global scale to respond to the ecological crisis, as the abject failure of all the various climate summits and protocols have already proved"[3].

On the "other side" of capital stands labour and this latter has already stormed the heavens once and will be required to do so again as the only force able to provide a fighting alternative to the grim future that capitalism has in store for us.

Baboon. 28.12.2019

According to Emmanuel Macron and his ministers, the December 5 strike is "a mobilisation against the end of special regimes", against "equality and social justice". It couldn't be clearer: railworkers and other sectors of workers that have a "special regime" are irresponsibly egotistic and use it to maintain their so-called "privileges". LIES! The government is trying to put us one against the other in order to divide us and render us unable to fight effectively.

All of the working class is under attack

Everywhere, in factories and offices, in every corporation, in every sector, private and public, the bourgeoisie imposes similar conditions of unsustainable workloads. Everywhere workers’ numbers are cut, a process which further increases the workload. Everywhere workers, unemployed, pensioners and youth are threatened by impoverishment. And everywhere, new "reforms" are announcing a harder future still. The attacks from the Macron government are extremely violent. Their objective is to make the French economy as competitive as possible on the international arena, in a period where competition between nations is becoming fiercer and fiercer. In order to increase productivity, the French bourgeoisie, its president, its government and its bosses are about to accelerate the pace of work, cut workers’ numbers, increase flexibility, dismantle the public sector, reduce dole money and pensions, drastically cut teaching budgets, cut social workers (school “reform”, reduction in housing benefit...). They take more and more from the workers in the name of "necessary" profitability or a "duty" to competitiveness, of "unavoidable" balanced budgets, while at the same time the incomes of the capitalists are grossly inflated.

All the working class must struggle!

Not a day passes that doesn't see strikes breaking out. In these last weeks, railworkers, hospital workers and students in precarious circumstances have raised their heads; but they are not alone. For months innumerable walk-outs have taken place. In chronological order, strikes in September have included: emergency workers, firefighters, Deliveroo drivers, Transavia pilots, bus drivers of Metz and Caen, post workers in the Alpes Mantimes and Pyrenees Orientales, Metro and bus workers, public finance, nurses, pilots, public sector, teachers of San Quentin, electricity supply workers, bus drivers in Orleans and Lorient, public sector workers again, laboratory workers, etc., etc. Some of these movements have been going on since the Spring! The phenomenon increased in October and November, hitting for example distribution networks. Yes, the strikes are numerous; yes, social anger is great; yes, it's a full-on attack! But all these struggles remain isolated the one from the others, closed in, separated by particular and corporatist demands. But, faced with a bourgeoisie organised behind its state and its government this division is destructive. In order to resist, in order to build-up a balance of force faced with the attacks that are hitting every sector, the workers must fight together in unity and solidarity.

While the government hits out, the unions divide us!

Is December 5th finally the beginning of this unity? That's what the unions say: an unlimited, national strike across all sectors.

Throughout September, the unions have broken up the movement of social contestation into multiple days of corporatist actions (RATP, public finances, National Education, Justice Ministry, EDF, firefighters). At the beginning of October, they finally promised a great day of mobilisation uniting all sectors... for the month of December. And what have they done for two months? Divided us up as they always do! They have kept workers fighting in isolation, all those on strike confined in their own box, with its own, specific slogan, whereas we are all suffering from the same attacks, the same degradation of our living and working conditions.

A caricature of this sabotage by the unions is the call by the collectives of emergency and hospital workers (entirely directed by the union centres) not to join the December 5th strike in the name of the "specificity" of health service demands, to be replaced by a union day of action on November 30; the same strategy of isolation used for the inter-union committee for the interns which has launched an unlimited strike from... December 10! However, at the general assembly of hospital workers which took place November 14 in Paris, after a day of action of the sector regrouping 10,000 demonstrators, a bitter conflict took place between the participants of the GA and the unions on the question of unity. A number of hospital workers put forward the necessity to undertake one and the same combat, beyond sectors, while the unions defended the idea that "we are a collective that is supposed to talk about hospitals", defending tooth and nail "a specific date for hospitals". On France info one could hear nurses coming out of the GA saying: "We were not able to finish because we were divided. The unions have completely disorganised this meeting", and "There is too much disagreement. December 5th is the date for the general strike and we are involved. Outside our problems at the hospital, there are also the pensioners and we will be retiring in the future. I don't see the problem of a demonstration on December 5". But the unions decided otherwise. The unions in the hospital sector, on strike for nine months now and affected by an immense anger faced with more and more untenable working conditions, call for the sector to continue fighting on their own, isolated and impotent in its struggle. And it's the same for the railworkers.

The unions pride themselves on this radicalism by brandishing the threat of rolling strikes; but these strikes remain corporatist, isolated from each other and are thus condemned to failure because they result in the exhaustion of the most combative sectors. Such is the fate that they would like to reserve, notably for the most determined workers of SNCF(railways) after December 5 and the hospital workers after the 10th: they want them to end up fighting on their own during the holidays at the end of the year. We shouldn't be naive:  why have they postponed these great demonstrations to the 5th and 10th of December? It's clear that they are betting on a "Christmas truce" in order to bury the movement in case it continues after these days of action.

The union's "convergence of struggles" is a fraud

Under the banner of "all together", the unions are in actual fact organising a real dispersion. During these days of "union unity", the workers don't struggle together. At best they find themselves one behind the others tramping the streets, sliced up by sectors and corporations, separated from each other by banners, balloons and the choice of music according to if it's railworkers, teachers, nursery nurses, secretaries, tax workers, a Renault worker, a Peugeot worker, a worker at Conforama, student, pensioner, unemployed... Everyone in their own box.

Our unity is vital: we must build it and defend it

The spontaneous strike by railworkers at the end of October showed us in part the way to go forward. At Chatillon, following the announcement of the reorganisation of work involving, amongst other things, the loss of twelve day's holiday, the workers at the centre immediately walked out, declared a strike and didn't wait for union instructions.

The reorganisation plan was withdrawn twenty-four hours later. A few days earlier, following a train collision in Champagne-Ardenne which showed how dangerous it is to have just one worker (the driver) on the train, the workers on the line, again spontaneously, refused to keep the trains running in these conditions. The dispute spread rapidly in the following days along the railways of the I'lle-de-France. It isn't by chance that here it's the railworkers indicating the first steps to take the struggle in hand. It's the consequence of both experience and of the historic combativity of this sector of the working class in France, but it's also based on a process of reflection which has been brewing up for a year over the bitter defeat of the long movement of 2018... by the unions. With their famous "go-slows" they kept the workers locked-up in an isolated struggle until the exhaustion of their forces.

But, today, the striking railworkers haven't understood how to spread the movement beyond their place of work. They remain enclosed within the SNCF. There hasn't been any autonomous general assembly deciding to send massive delegations, all the assembled workers even, to the closest centres of work (a hospital, a factory, an office...) in order to draw them into the struggle so as to geographically spread the movement. It's vital to put forward the view that all workers have the same interests, that it's the same struggle, that we need unity and solidarity; that it's beyond sectors and corporations that the working class finds its strength. Those are difficult steps to take. A necessary unity in the struggle implies recognition of ourselves no longer as railworkers, nurses, bank workers, teachers or IT, but as exploited workers.

Remember, in Spring 2006, the government had to withdraw its "Contrat Première Embauche" faced with the development of solidarity between generations of workers. The students, facing more uncertainty with the CPE law, organised massive general assemblies in the universities open to workers, the unemployed and the retired, putting forward a slogan which expressed the unity of the movement: the struggle against precarious conditions and unemployment. These GA's were the lungs of the movement, debates were undertaken and decisions made. The result? Every weekend the demonstrators regrouped more and more sectors. Workers and retired workers joined up with the students under the slogan "Young bacon, old croutons, all part of the same salad". Faced with the extension and the tendency towards unification of the movement generated by the students, the French bourgeoisie and the government had no other choice but to withdraw the proposed CPE law. That's why today, Macron and his ministers have launched a nauseous campaign around the "Grandfather clause" (new measures not aiming to hit the whole of the class but only the new generation arriving at the workplace). What they want is an enforced division between the generations of workers. In 1968, when the economic crisis returned again and with it the return of unemployment and the impoverishment of the workers, the proletariat in France was united in its struggle. Following immense demonstrations on May 13 against the police repression suffered by the students, walk-outs and general assemblies spread through factories and places of work, ending up with nine million strikers, the largest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. Very often this dynamic of extension and unity developed outside of the union framework and numerous workers tore up their union cards after the "Grenelle Accords" of May 27 between the unions and the bosses which buried the movement.

Today, workers, the unemployed, the retired and students lack the confidence in themselves, in their collective strength, to dare to take their own struggle in hand. But there's no other way. All the "actions" proposed by the unions lead to division, defeat and demoralisation. Only the coming together within open, massive and autonomous general assemblies, really deciding how to conduct the movement, can constitute the basis for a united struggle, carried along by solidarity between all sectors, all generations. GA's which allow nurses, emergency workers, the unemployed, those who can't go on strike, to participate in the movement. GA's which put forward demands which concern everyone: the struggle against precarious conditions, against cutting jobs, against productivity increases, against pauperisation... GA's in which we feel united and confident in our collective strength.

What is the perspective?

Capitalism, in France as everywhere else in the world, continues to plunge humanity into a more and more dreadful misery. Only the working class represents a force which can put a stop to these attacks. The most combative and determined workers must regroup, discuss, re-appropriate the lessons of the past in order to prepare for the autonomous struggle of the whole class. Only the proletariat will be able, in time, to open the doors of the future for the generations to come faced with a system of decadent capitalism which carries only more misery, exploitation and barbarity and which bears war and massacres like the clouds bear the storm. It's a system which is about to destroy the environment in which humanity lives, threatening the survival of the species.

Only the massive and united struggle of all sectors of the exploited class can halt and push back the present attacks of the bourgeoisie.

Only the development of this struggle can open the way to the historic combat of the working class for the abolition of exploitation and capitalism.

International Communist Current

(December 1, 2019)

Slave market in Libya

Libya continues to make regular appearances in the media since 2011, the year of the liquidation of its now-defunct "guide" Colonel Gaddafi by the forces of Nato (France, UK and USA): "This poor Libya, that the Franco-British war of 2011 has transformed into a paradise for the terrorists of Isis and al-Qaida… The trafficking of arms, drugs and migrants proliferates throughout and rarely comes into conflict with the jihadists. This isn't surprising given that they are fellow businessmen"[1]. It was in the name of "the protection of civilians", after the passing of the "Arab Spring" in Libya (brutally repressed by the ex-dictator), that the western powers declared war on the Libyan leader. Having bombed the population and killed Gaddafi, they left the country in the hands of multiple bloody militias who are still fighting over the moribund Libyan state.

A country preyed upon by chaos

"The fighting rumbles on at the ports of Tripoli, from the regional ‘Godfathers’ feeding the flames to the belligerents stoking up hatred with their propaganda. Since April 4, when the troops of Marshall Haftar attacked Tripoli, the flames of war have been re-ignited in Libya. Eight years after the anti-Gaddafi insurrection (supported by Nato air-strikes) and five years after the civil war of 2014, the giant of North Africa is once again falling into chaos, instability and the risk of extremism (...). It's back to square one".[2]

Today, among the dozen or so militias on the ground, the two most important factions aiming for the status of middle-men with the big powers and the UN are: the "Government of National Accord" (GNA) led by Faise Sarraj, designated by the UN and supported by Turkey and Qatar and the government of the eastern coastal Cyrenaica region, the "Libyan National Army" (ANL) led by Khalifa Haftar who is supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to which can be added (on the quiet), France, Russia and the United States; whereas the government of ex-colonial power Italy supports one or the other faction dependent on the control that they have on the ground, as it did in October when it renewed a contemptible agreement for the formation of Libyan coastguards to hunt down migrants.

Britain, which has done as much as anyone in bringing chaos and destruction to this territory, has been sidelined somewhat and doesn't seem to favour the involvement of Saudi and UAE here at all. Rather it backs Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood. Britain has maintained its links with the Manchester based, al-Qaida-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that travels back and forth under British protection not only to Libya but also to Afghanistan and Syria. It was an element of this jihadi group who is on trial for carrying out the Ariane Grande concert bombing in Manchester, 2017. Along with "aid", the British government, in the form of then Foreign Secretary (and, at the time of writing, Prime Minister) Boris Johnson, committed itself to "fighting terrorism" in Libya in 2017.

In reality, “every man for himself” and hypocrisy dominate the situation and the barbaric spectacle reveals the lying and abject attitude of the major powers that are playing a double game, like the British, and the French government caught red-handed when it shamelessly lied about the missiles provided by its secret services to Marshall Haftar while affirming that "France is in Libya to fight terrorism".

As for the two Libyan war chiefs, their objectives are also villainous: "Thus, standing face to face, the two camps will never dare to admit the truth of their confrontation. The emphatic recourse to rhetorical justification, using terms like ‘revolution’ or ‘anti-terrorism’ cannot cover up the stark character of a rivalry around the appropriation of resources which takes on a very particular sense in this old oil Eldorado which is Libya. Despite some setbacks caused by post-2011 chaos, Libyan oil continues to generate revenues of $70 million (62.5 million euros) per day. Also, control over the lucrative distribution networks sharpens these antagonisms still more"[3]. This is another aspect of the conflict which none of the leaders of the capitalist world talk about in their official speeches! This race to loot oil, opened up by the chaos of 2011, puts a great number of gangsters small and large, local and international, on Libyan soil.

Worse still, for the major capitalist vultures, Libya represents another unmentionable interest: the existence, on their initiative, of the monstrous "camps of welcome" for frustrated migrants or those on stopover waiting for an imaginary boat to take them to Europe.

The political depravity of the European Union in Libya

Further to the bloody chaos provoked by the major imperialist powers, Libya has become a real "market" and cemetery for migrants for which the EU is responsible. Images of a slave market in Libya were broadcast by CNN on November 14 2017, showing human beings auctioned off and sold like beasts. The migrants, whose numbers vary between 700,000 and one million, fall into the traps of the criminal networks and traffickers, with whom the European and African states are accomplices. "What's happening in Libya, a country without leadership and run by armed militias, is a tragedy to which the European Union closes its eyes. African leaders, having opted for hypocrisy, follow the Europeans like sheep. The report by CNN won't change much of the situation on the ground in Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi or Tobruk. In a country devastated by civil war, exploding inflation, a ruined economy where the massive execution of prisoners is practiced, almost everyone works either in the business of contraband and collaboration with the smugglers, or in the fight against contraband and smugglers. The report shows a case of servitude linked to the settlement of debt, but a great number of migrants sold at auction in Libya are detained in the framework of trafficking linked to the payment of ransoms. With the closure of the Libyan route leading to Italy, Sub-Saharan migrants often find themselves cornered with no means to pay the price demanded to return to their homes. The smugglers then sell them to the highest bidder - a militia for example. The buyers then contact their families to demand a ransom which goes from 2000 to 3000 dinars (1200 to 1800 euros) per person”[4]. According to a report published by UNICEF: "The detention centres run by the militias are nothing other than forced work camps, prisons where everyone is robbed under armed force. For the millions of women and children, life in prison consists of rape and violence, sexual exploitation, hunger and endless abuse".

All this illustrates the breadth of the capitalist barbarity that directly implicates the major imperialist powers which, through their policies, are throwing the migrants into the arms of slave-traders from another era. The EU effectively demands that failing and totally corrupt neighbouring states (Niger, Nigeria, etc.,) enact anti-migrant policies through subsidies to build walls and erect death-camps. The EU also takes part in Mafia-type activities and trade between bandits by providing funds and material to the coastguards who are responsible for intercepting migrant vessels and take them to the monstrous detention camps. Today the migrants are still in the same situation of misery, in the middle of the dangers which led them by the million to cross the Mediterranean, as this story shows: "On the beach of Aghir on the island of Djerba, north of Tunisia, there were more bodies than bathers at the beginning of the month. On Monday July 1, a boat sank after leaving the Libyan town of Zuwara, 120 km west of Tripoli with 86 people on board. Three were pulled out alive but the sea took the rest of them. ‘I can't do this any longer. It's just too much’, Chemseddine Marzog, a fisherman who for years has provided a last resting place for the bodies that the sea has thrown up, stated through his anger. ‘I have buried close to 400 bodies and dozens more will arrive in the days to come. It is impossible, it is inhuman and we can't manage alone’, said the desperate guardian of the migrant's cemetery at the town of Zarzis in Tunisia close to the Libyan border”[5].

For some time now the "western democracies" have shut their eyes and turned up their noses faced with this cruel barbarity while continuing their plans for the "security" (i.e., closure) of their borders against "illegal immigrants" while loudly declaring their "universal humanism" and continuing to push forward policies which define their infamous politics[6].

Amina, November 2019