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 [4]). 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] [7], 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] [8], 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] [9] and the miners' strike in Great Britain (1984-85)[4] [10].

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] [11].

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] [12].

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] [13]. 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] [14] 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] [15].

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] [16], 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] [17], 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]. [18]

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] [19]. 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] [20] 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] [21] ideology has been used to batter the consciousness of the proletariat[16] [22]. "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] [23], 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] [24], or the roadblocks or the "piqueteros" in 2004[19] [25]. 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] [26] 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 [27]

2] [28] 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 [29] and  https://en.internationalism.org/ir/143/hot-autumn-italy-1969-part02 [30]

3] [31] See “One Year of Workers' Struggles in Poland”,  https://en.internationalism.org/content/3114/one-year-workers-struggles-poland [32]

4] [33] See the Resolution on the relationship of forces between the classes [34] of our 23rd Congress.

5] [35] 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 [36] 6] [37] 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] [38] 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] [39] 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] [40] 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] [41] 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] [42] 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] [43] Testimony collected by Juan Carlos Cena in "El Cordobazo una rebelión popular", Editorial La Rosa Blindada, 2003.

13] [44] 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 [45] 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 [46]".

[14] [47] Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, chapter 1

15] [48] 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] [49] 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] [50] 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] [51] See: “Argentina: Only the proletariat fighting on its own class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/109_argentina.html [52]

19] [53] See “Argentina: the mystification of the 'piquetero' movement” https://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_piqueteros.html [54]

 

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 [55]

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