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 [4]”
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 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.
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.
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
[1]. In 2010, there was the macabre discovery of 79 bodies of Central American migrants, and then in 2011, a grave containing about two hundred bodies was found again, although some sources reported that there were about 500 corpses. Concerning the recent caravan of emigrants from Central America see https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoameric... [8]
[2]. NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the USA, Canada and Mexico, came into force in 1994.
[3]. “A maquiladora, or maquila, is a company that allows factories to be largely duty free and tariff-free. These factories take raw materials and assemble, manufacture, or process them and export the finished product. These factories and systems are present throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Specific programs and laws have made Mexico’s maquila industry grow rapidly.” Wikipedia.
[4]. Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected President last year and leads a coalition government of his party “Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional”, which describes itself as being nationalist, the left wing Labour Party and right wing Social Encounter Party, and has been presented as a “ray of hope” after years of corruption. He also made all sorts of promises to the poor and workers, which he is selling as the “fourth transformation”, a completion of the ‘Mexican Revolution’ of 1910.
[5]. These affirmations are put forward by: “Socialist Left” (https://marxismo.mx/rebelion-obrera-en-matamoros-tamaulipas [9]), the MTS (www.laizquierdadiario.mx/Matamoros-donde-late-fuerte-la-lucha-proletaria [10]...) and “New Course” (https://nuevocurso.org/dos-mexicos-dos-alternativas-universales-tlahueli [11]...). There are other leftist groups that repeat those same arguments with certain variations, but we take these as a sample to illustrate the way in which they use exaggeration, lies and deceit, helping the ruling class to feed the confusion among the workers.
[6]. On the experience of Poland 1980 see ‘Mass Strikes in Poland: the proletariat opens a new breach’, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/023/mass-strikes-in-poland-1980 [12] and ‘One Year of Workers’ Struggles in Poland’ https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-... [13]
[7]. See our pamphlet Trade Unions Against the Working Class
[8]. We do not intend to dwell on conjectures about the honesty of the lawyer S. Prieto: the principles of her profession lead her to move within the framework of bourgeois laws, but the fact that she maintains a sympathy and support (as she herself has declared) for the government of López Obrador places her on a clearly bourgeois terrain.
[9]. SNTE: National Union of Education Workers (official union). CNTE: National Coordination of Education Workers (“dissident” union).
[10]. CTM: Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), created in 1936. CROM: Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, founded in 1918. CROC: Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), formed in 1952. The PRI is the “Institutional Revolutionary Party” that governed Mexico for decades.
[11]. The “American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations” (AFL-CIO) is the largest of the US trade union structures, also grouping unions such as the United Steelworkers (USW) of Canada.
[12]. IMSS: Mexican Social Security Institute; PEMEX: Mexico’s main oil company with international projection. UNAM: National Autonomous University of Mexico, considered one of the best in the world.
[13]. On December 10, 2018, AMLO’s government presented a programme to boost investment and employment in the border area. Its objective is to co-opt a portion of Mexican and Central American migrants, in order to slow the flow of migrants to the United States. In summary, this programme offers: i) Reduction of the Income Tax (ISR) from 30% to 20%; ii) Reduction of the Value Added Tax (IVA) from 16% to 8%; iii) Equalization of the price of fuels with the United States; iv) Increase in the minimum wage at the border to $8.8 dollars.
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 [15]. 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
[2] We discussed with IV recently over what we thought were its underestimation of street protest as part of the class struggle, https://en.internationalism.org/content/16599/internationalist-voice-and... [17], but there's no question of that here.
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
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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
[1] There's a similar edge to the recent western campaign around a new Beijing-dominated extradition treaty applying to Hong Kong. The Independent, reporting on the "large, peaceful demonstrations against the new law in Hong Kong (11.6.2019) denounces "the Communist dictatorship in Beijing". On the same day, the Guardian piece attacks Beijing and supports the "freedom" protesters who have been "denied democracy". There's genuine anger against the Hong Kong government about the cost of living and the threat of repression, but the movement is one that is isolated and drowned in "freedom and democracy for Hong Kong". There was a similar deafening campaign around democracy over Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" in 2014 - see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201410/10506/hong-kongs-umbrel... [18]
[2] Jarulzelski was the main architect of the repression unleashed against the Polish workers in 1981.
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
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/mountain_top_removal.jpg
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47165522
[3] https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/12/10/coal-mine-next-door/how-us-governments-deregulation-mountaintop-removal-threatens#
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/08/red-plenty-francis-spufford
[5] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-25/dare-to-declare-capitalism-dead-before-it-takes-us-all-down-with-it/
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/mexican_strikes.jpg
[8] https://es.internationalism.org/content/4377/migraciones-en-latinoamerica-solo-el-proletariado-puede-parar-la-barbarie-del
[9] https://marxismo.mx/rebelion-obrera-en-matamoros-tamaulipas
[10] http://www.laizquierdadiario.mx/Matamoros-donde-late-fuerte-la-lucha-proletaria
[11] https://nuevocurso.org/dos-mexicos-dos-alternativas-universales-tlahueli
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/023/mass-strikes-in-poland-1980
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-poland
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/iranian_workers.jpg
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16670/polemic-international-communist-current-working-class-or-masses
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/forum/16622/lessons-strikes-labour-struggles-and-internationalist-tasks
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16599/internationalist-voice-and-protests-middle-east
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201410/10506/hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution-soaked-democratic-ideology
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/food-bank-press.jpg