Thirty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall demonstrated the bankruptcy of the reviled Stalinist regimes. This event was the real symbol of the implosion of the Eastern Bloc.

Its thirtieth anniversary has been the chance for the bourgeoisie to use the same lies today as yesterday. The working class has to permanently reject and fight back against this ideological assault.

This anniversary has unfolded without fanfares in an atmosphere of gloom. Contrary to the euphoria and popular jubilation of November 9 1989, the "great party" organised by the bourgeoisie fell flat[1]: "the incorrigibly pessimistic Europeans have faced the thirtieth anniversary (...) like a funeral. Morale is low"[2]. And, as a "sign of a lack of enthusiasm for the celebration, none of the major western leaders went to Berlin on Saturday November 9"[3]. Finally, only the odious propaganda of the bourgeoisie served to decorate this drab occasion.

The necessity to maintain the great lie about the "death of communism"

Facts are stubborn and the bourgeoisie is not too confident about accounting for these last thirty years. Even the Stalinist monster, so detested beforehand in the regimes of the east, has sometimes aroused a wry nostalgia and doubts from populations of the "liberated" territories, as the situation has degraded so much since:

"Thirty years ago, communication and solidarity between people were so much better. Today one must fight for everything, for work, for somewhere to live, for a doctor. Before the doctor wasn't an accountant, today he is an entrepreneur", said Amoud"[4].

And in fact the state of society is still catastrophic, most notably in the territories of the ex-Easter Bloc - grimmer if anything. The growing threats of capitalist society are pushing the population into the arms of the populists who pretend that they will "protect" them. A good number of these countries (Hungary, Poland, etc.) are thus marked by openly right-wing regimes, prone to virulent nationalism and a "bunkerisation" of their frontiers. The decomposition and chaos of the capitalist world radically contradicts the lying promises of the bourgeoisie, denting the illusions it spread at the time of the fall of the Wall in November 1989 when it promised a radiant future: a sort of democratic benevolence for the world and for the "unified German nation". At the time of these events, the perspective of being finished with Stalinist terror and chronic shortages led to an immense relief which fed the illusions of East Germans, and these illusions were used to the hilt by the western bourgeoisie in order to divide the workers and mount a vast ideological campaign, the greatest lie against the proletariat: the fall of the wall and the bankruptcy of Stalinism meant "the death of communism"! Today, even if they go about it more artfully given the rancour and anger within the populations faced with the so-called "benefits of democracy", the whole political class and its media serve us up the same nauseating speeches: "Even if today Europe is in crisis in some areas, we shouldn't forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled the end of communism and totalitarian regimes"[5].

At the time we were already fighting against this idea that Stalinism=communism, which has been hammered home ever since then. And what we said then remains absolutely valid today:

Recent events have been the occasion for a barrage of lies, and in the lead the biggest and vilest of them: the claim that this crisis repre­sents the failure of communism, and of marxism! Over and above their various antagonisms, democrats and Stalinists have always formed a holy alliance in saying to the workers that so­cialism (however deformed) reigns in the East. For Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, for the entire marxist movement, communism has always meant the end of the exploitation of man by man, the end of classes, the end of frontiers, all made possible only on a world scale, in a soci­ety governed by the abundance of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", where "the government of men gives way to the administration of things". The claim that there is anything "communist", or even ap­proaching "communism", in the USSR and the countries of the Eastern bloc, ruled by exploitation, poverty, and generalised scarcity, is the greatest lie in the history of humanity." [6]

All the political factions of the bourgeoisie feed themselves on this same repeated lie and with the same complicity in order to make this same, gross assimilation of Stalinism with communism: from democrats and leftists to the extreme-right as we see for example  with the AfD and its insidious slogan "Today as yesterday: freedom rather than socialism"[7]. Thirty years later, the bourgeoisie hammers home this same nail into the consciousness of workers. And only the Communist Left is today capable of denouncing it!

The euphoria of 1989 and the propaganda of the illusion-mongers faced with capitalist reality

A little while after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President Mitterand in his November 22 speech to the European parliament evoked the vibrant manner of this historic event. Standing close to his great friend Chancellor Kohl, he said: "liberty and democracy, inseparable one from the other, have brought us their most impressionable victories" thanks to the fall of the wall. Twelve months later, in the wake of the "benefits" of the wall coming down, the knights of freedom of the western world straightaway launched themselves into a bloody crusade in the Middle East, the first Gulf War, under the aegis of the United States. This was a war in which the 500,000 deaths were supposed to, according to the mantra of the White House at the time under George Bush Snr., bring in "a new world order" for "peace, prosperity and democracy".

For thirty years, contrary to the propaganda of these charlatans, the dynamic destructiveness of capitalism is there for all to see in its degradation everywhere and on every level. Judge for yourselves:

- The "New World Order" and "Peace"? The fall of the Berlin Wall opened up a Pandora's Box. What followed wasn't a "new world order" but the greatest chaos in history[8]. Thus, on every continent and territory of the planet, the tendency towards “every man for himself” is exacerbated and military conflicts multiply, generalise and spread. In the countries on the periphery of capitalism, notably in Africa and the Middle East, as in Asia, the world is falling into growing instability, multiplying massacres and bloodbaths. Above all we've seen real scenes of war at the very heart of Europe and the western world, unprecedented since 1945. From the war in ex-Yugoslavia with its charnel houses, through conflicts in Georgia, Ukraine, etc., and the multiplication of attacks since the tragedy of the Twin Towers in the United States, September 2001, "peace" has been the peace of the grave. The catastrophe of the Twin Towers, which was unimaginable beforehand, inaugurated a terror, a banalisation of scenes of war and barbarity throughout the heart of the "civilised" world: attacks in Madrid (Atocha station, 2004), London (July 2005), Paris (Bataclan concert, November 2015), etc. One could also add the horror of the more recent ravages of war in Syria and its collateral damage, the intensive bombardments which recall the worst exactions of the Second World War. Similarly, we can also add the massacres and famines in Yemen (with the involvement of western imperialisms such as Britain and France who have unfailingly provided arms to the Saudi regime). Note as well that the global arms race has heated up again in a terrifying fashion.

- As for "prosperity"? For thirty years, the economic situation globally has degraded at every level, scandalously exposing growing inequalities. Since the world financial crisis of 2008, proletarians have felt the growing weight of exploitation and the justifications for it from bourgeois politicians that are more and more cynical: attacks on living conditions and wages, unemployment and the explosion of precarious work, degradation of the health services and mounting homelessness. All this aggravated by reforms in the pipeline and those to come, pensions for example. Added to these attacks we have seen the systematic pillage of resources and the despoliation of the environment motivated by the desperate search for profits in a world in crisis. In brief, the infernal logic of moribund capitalism now clearly threatens the survival of human civilisation.

- More "democracy"? For thirty years states have only toughened-up their repressive arsenals. Decomposition has only maintained and favoured nationalist and xenophobic reflexes, populist ideology and every man for himself. The bourgeoisie has above all profited from the bloody terrorist attacks in order to beef up its juridical and police apparatus and the criminalising of social conflicts. Brutal repression and violence have gradually increased at every level. That means that rather than much-vaunted "public freedoms", it leaves the real face of the "democratic state" more transparent, revealing an apparatus which coldly monopolises violence so as to maintain its order against the exploited. We should also raise the issue of the great "democratic spirit" of the countries of the western world who are everywhere building new walls draped with razor wire, militarising maritime or terrestrial borders and knowingly leaving immigrants to die, as practiced by the EU in the Mediterranean. The idea of "democracy" is anyway an empty concept while society remains divided into antagonistic classes based on the exploitation of labour. This doesn't at all stop the bourgeoisie from adapting its hypocritical speeches in order to crow about its "great principles" and its "values"; it does this to cover up and justify all its crimes so as to excuse its bloody system and the exactions of its exploiters. Today, while the declining mode of production is in agony and dragging us down towards the abyss, the bourgeoisie asks us to defend it by pushing its principal ideological mystification: the "democratic values" which have always served to cover up its atrocities. It's in this sense that we should interpret the insistencies of Chancellor Angela Merkel in her commemoration speech where she warned about the dangers of "totalitarianisms" and "growing revolts" (notably, populism in the east): "the values that Europe is based upon, liberty, democracy, equality, rights and the preservation of human rights can't be taken for granted" and "(they) must always be defended" she added. Accordingly, for the bourgeoisie: "if this thirtieth anniversary can be useful it must be in trying to re-think the democratic model for all those who have adopted it..."[9] As it's obliged to mask its weaknesses, the bourgeoisie needs to regain some credibility, to "re-think" its "democratic model" that's in trouble in order to... better attack and keep the exploited quiet!

What lessons? What perspectives?

From the thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the proletariat must keep these essential lessons in its head:

- Communism is neither "dead" nor "bankrupt". It is Stalinism, the political expression of Eastern Bloc state capitalism, which has foundered and fallen under the blows of the crisis of this decomposing system.

- The proletariat must reject all the lying media campaigns, notably all the traps feeding divisions: for example in Germany those opposing the "Ossies" to the "Wessies", but also the traps which opposes "populist" ideologies to "anti-populism" and other democratic ideologies.

- The bourgeoisie will always be a class of liars, obliged to permanently mask its domination and its exploitation of the proletariat. Its promises, such as those of 1989-90, are nothing but wind, empty phrases aiming to anesthetise the proletariat.

- The fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Eastern Bloc are the most spectacular expressions of the crisis and the decomposition of this system. From now onwards, capitalism can only fuel the dreadful spiral of destruction and has no other possible future. It's thus necessary to destroy it before its decomposition engulfs humanity.

Faced with all the destruction that the logic of this system imposes upon us, there is only one solution and that is the struggle of the revolutionary class. That is an international combat of all the workers, beyond divisions, beyond and against all national divides and against the bourgeois state. Only the international proletariat can offer this alternative perspective, that of another society, without walls or barbed wire, without class and without exploitation: a real communist society.

WH (December 2019)

After years of weakness, the social movement against pension reform shows a re-awakening of the combativity of the proletariat in France. Despite all its difficulties the working class has begun to raise its head. Whereas, just a year ago, the whole social terrain was occupied by the inter-classist movement of the Gilets Jaunes, today the exploited of every sector and all generations have used the days of action organised by the unions to come onto the streets, determined to fight on their own class ground against this massive and frontal attack of the government which is hitting all the exploited.

The working class exists and "here it is"!

Whereas nearly ten years ago workers remained paralysed, totally isolated and alone in their own workplaces, these last few weeks they have returned to the route of collective struggle.

Aspirations to unity and solidarity in the struggle show that the workers in France have begun to again see themselves as part of one and the same class, having the same interests to defend. Thus, in several marches, and notably in Marseille, you could hear: "The working class exists!" In Paris, groups of protesters who didn't march behind the union banners chanted: "We are here, here for the honour of the workers and for a better world". In a demonstration on January 9, even onlookers on the edges of the union march sung the old song of the workers' movement: "The International", while students and schoolchildren behind their own banners chanted "The young with their problems, the old in their poverty!"

It is clear that in refusing to stay on its knees, the working class in France is about to re-discover its dignity.

Another very significant change in the social situation has been the attitude and state of mind of the "passengers" in the transport strikes. It's the first time, since the movement of 1995, of a transport strike that hasn't been "unpopular" despite the campaigns orchestrated by the media around the "difficulties" faced by "passengers" to get to work, to get home or those going away at the time of the holiday period at the end of the year. Nowhere, except in the state media, have we heard that the workers of SNCF and the RATP are taking rail passengers "hostage". On platforms, in trains and on the suburban routes, people waited patiently. In order to get around the capital, people managed without complaining about the striking workers: carpools, motor-bikes and scooters... But even more, the support and respect for the rail workers was concretised in the donations for the strikers, given in solidarity, who had sacrificed more than a month's wages (more than three million euros were raised in a few weeks!) who fought not only for themselves but also for others.

However, after a month-and-a-half of strikes, after daily protests bringing together hundreds of thousands of people, this movement has not forced the government to retreat.

Since the outset, the bourgeoisie, its government and its "social partners" have planned a strategy in order to get the attacks on pensions through. The question of the "age pivot" (access to full pension or not) was a card that it had kept up its sleeve in order to sabotage any response of the working class and let its "reform" go through thanks to the classic strategy of division of the "union front".

More than this, the bourgeoisie armed its police in the name of the maintenance of "Republican Order". Up front and in bold, the government deployed its forces of repression so as to intimidate us. The cops continually gassed and beat up workers (including females and older people) supported by the media which made the connection between the exploited class and the Black Bloc and other “wreckers”. So as to prevent the workers meeting up and regrouping at the end of the demonstrations in order to discuss together, the columns of the CRS dispersed them on orders from the Prefecture using stun grenades. The police violence wasn't at all down to individual errors or excited and out of control members of the CRS. What it announced was the future pitiless and ferocious repression that the dominant class will not hesitate to unleash against the proletariat (as it did in the past, for example the "Bloody Week" of the Paris Commune in 1871).

How can we force the government back?

In order to be able to confront the ruling class and force the government to retreat, the workers must take their struggles in hand by themselves. They should have no confidence in the unions - these "social partners" - who have always done deals behind their backs, in secret within the ministerial cabinets.

If we continue to ask the unions to "represent" us, if we continue to stand aside and wait for them to organise the struggle in our place, then we are indeed "fucked"!

In order to undertake our own struggle, spread and unify it, we must organise ourselves in massive general assemblies, autonomous and open to all the working class. It is in these GA's that we can discuss together; collectively decide what actions to take and form strike committees with elected delegates revocable at any time.

The experience of the young workers who took part in the movement against the "First Employment Contract" (CPE - a particular attack on young workers) in spring 2006, when they were still students or schoolchildren, should be remembered and transmitted to their comrades at work, to the young, to the older workers. How they made the Villepin government retreat obliging it to withdraw its CPE, which they did thanks to their capacity to organise the struggle themselves in their massive general assemblies in all the universities and without any trade unions. These GA's were not closed up affairs. On the contrary, the students called on workers, active and retired, to come and discuss in their meetings and to participate actively in the movement in solidarity with the younger generation confronted with unemployment and precarious work. The Villepin government had to withdraw the CPE without any "negotiation". Here the students, young precarious workers and future unemployed were not represented by any "social partners" and they won.

Even if we lose the battle we haven't lost the war!

The railworkers who have been the spearhead of this mobilisation cannot continue to strike alone without other sectors themselves engaging in the struggle with them. Despite their courage and determination, they can't fight in place of the whole working class. "Strikes by proxy" can't make the government retreat however determined they are.

The working class is not yet ready to engage in massive struggles today; even if numerous workers from all sectors, all categories of job (essentially from the public sector), and all generations took to the streets in the demonstrations organised by the unions since December 5. What we need to halt the attacks of the bourgeoisie is to develop active solidarity in the struggle and not only through donations which help the strikers "keep going".

The return to work which has already begun in the transport sector (notably the SNCF) is not a capitulation! To pause in the struggle is also a way of avoiding the exhaustion of the long and isolated strike which only leads to feelings of impotence and bitterness.

A large majority of the mobilised workers had the feeling that if they lost this battle, if they did not force the government to withdraw its reforms, we were "fucked". It's not the case! The present mobilisation and the massive rejection of this attack is only at the beginning, a first battle which announces others to come. Because the bourgeoisie, its government, its bosses will continue to exploit us, reduce our spending, drive us into poverty and into greater misery. Anger can only grow and lead to new explosions, to new movements of struggle.

Even if the working class loses this first battle, it hasn't lost the war. It can't give way to demoralisation!

The "class war" is made up of advances and retreats, moments of mobilisation and pause to renew the struggle at a stronger level.  The fight never goes along a "straight line" where all is won immediately. All the history of the workers' movement has shown that the combat of the exploited class against the bourgeoisie can only end in a victory that follows a series of defeats.

The only way to strengthen the struggle is to use periods of falling back in order to reflect and discuss together through a general regroupment, at work, where we live and in public areas.

The most combative and determined workers, whether active, unemployed, retired or students, must try to form "struggle committees" that cut across jobs and sector, open to all generations in order to prepare for future struggles. We need to draw the lessons of this movement, understand its difficulties to be able to overcome them in the next combats.

This social movement, despite all its limits, weaknesses and difficulties, is already a first victory. After years of paralysis, disarray and atomisation, it has brought hundreds of thousands of workers out onto the streets in order to express their will to fight against the attacks of Capital. This mobilisation has allowed them to express their need for solidarity and unity and it has also allowed them to experience first-hand the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie in driving home its attacks.

It's only through the struggle and in the struggle that the proletariat can become conscious that it is the only force in society capable of abolishing capitalist exploitation and constructing a new world. The road that leads to a world proletarian revolution and to the overthrow of capitalism will be long and difficult. It will be strewn with ambushes and defeats, but it can't be any other way.

More than ever, the future belongs to the working class!

 

International Communist Current, January 13, 2020

Following the USA’s targeted assassination of Iran’s top military strategist Qaseem Soleimani, the talk in many of the world’s capitals, especially in western Europe - whether or not they voiced explicit support for the US action - was about the need to avoid an “escalation” of military tensions in the Middle East. Commenting on the limited nature of Iran’s initial response – a missile attack on US air bases in Iraq which seemed to have caused little damage or loss of life – the same voices were breathing a sigh of relief, hoping that Iran would now call it quits.

But the escalation of military confrontations in the Middle East– and the USA’s particular contribution to it – has deeper and wider roots than the current stand-off between Iran and the Trump government in the US. Already in the Cold War period the strategically vital region had been the theatre of a number of proxy wars between the US and Russian blocs, notably the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 and the “civil wars” that tore through Lebanon and Afghanistan or the war between Iran-Iraq in the 1980s. With the collapse of the Russian bloc at the end of that decade, the US sought to impose itself as the world’s only super-power, demanding that its former western bloc partners join the first war of Bush Senior’s “New World Order” against Saddam’s Iraq in 1991. But this New World Order soon proved to be a delusion. Instead of achieving a new global stability - one that would be dominated by the US of course - every new American military adventure only accelerated a slide into chaos: the current state of the two countries it invaded at the beginning of the new century, Afghanistan and Iraq, provides ample evidence of that. Under Obama, US reverses in these countries and the need to “pivot” towards the Far East to face up to the rising challenge of China further underlined the weakening of American imperialism’s grip on the Middle East. In Syria it has had to cede more and more ground to Putin’s Russia, which has now formed an alliance with Turkey (a NATO member) to disperse the Kurdish forces which had previously held northern Syria with the backing of the US[1].

However if the US has been in retreat, it has continued to insist that it has by no means withdrawn from the region. It has instead shifted its strategy towards unfailing support for its two most reliable allies in the region - Israel and Saudi Arabia. Under Trump it has virtually abandoned any pretence to be an arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians, supporting Netanyahu’s openly annexationist moves without demur. Equally, it has no qualms about supporting the Saudi regime which is waging a brutal war in Yemen and which brazenly murders opposition spokesmen like the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. And above all, it has piled on the pressure against its chief enemy in the region, Iran.

Iran has been a thorn in the US flesh ever since the so-called Islamic Revolution which overthrew the strongly pro-US Shah in 1979. In the 80s it supported Saddam’s war against Iran in order to weaken the new regime. But the toppling of Saddam in 2003 has opened a large part of Iraq to Iranian influence: the Shia-dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad is closely aligned to the Tehran regime.  This has greatly increased Iran’s own imperialist ambitions in the entire Middle East: it has established a kind of state within a state via Hizbollah in Lebanon and is the main support for the Houthi forces battling Saudi Arabia and its proxies in Yemen. And Soleimani was the principal architect of Iranian imperialism in these and other adventures.

Trump’s decision to go ahead with the assassination of Soleimani was not, therefore, based on a mere whim of this admittedly unpredictable US president, but is part of an imperialist strategy backed by a considerable portion of the US bourgeoisie – even though pursuing its logic has certainly sharpened divisions within the military/political apparatus of the US ruling class. In particular it has angered those who supported Obama’s more conciliatory approach to Iran as embodied in the agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, one of the first diplomatic deals to be ditched by Trump when he became president. This attempt to build bridges with Iran has also been the approach of the main European powers, including Britain, who have again expressed their misgivings about Trump’s policies following the Soleimani killing.

Behind the spiral of violence: the impasse of world capital

These bourgeois critics of Trump have complained that they can’t see the “long game” behind Soleimani’s assassination, that Trump hasn’t thought things through. They continue to affirm their commitment to rational, political, diplomatic solutions to the war-like conflicts and rivalries that are spreading throughout the globe. But capitalism’s slide into militarism is not the product of Trump or other bad leaders, but of the historic impasse of the capitalist system, and these “responsible” bourgeois factions are no less reliant on the military machine than Trump and other populists – the use of drone warfare in the Middle East and surrounding regions was pioneered under Obama.

Trump’s administration is founded on the recognition that both the old order of disciplined military alliances, which held sway during the Cold War, and the post-1989 New World Order project, are equally dead and that the real dynamic in the world since 1989 is “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost”: this is the real significance of Trump’s “America First” slogan. And this in turn is the expression, at the level of international relations, of the underlying decomposition of capitalist society itself – of the final phase of capitalism’s decline as a mode of production, which was first clearly signalled by the outbreak of the First World War.  In this context, the US is no longer the gendarme of the world, but the principal factor in the descent into chaos. Trump is merely the personification of this remorseless tendency. That is why the “long game” being played behind the Soleimani killing, irrespective of the subjective fantasies of Trump or his acolytes and supporters, can only have one result: the escalation of military barbarism, whether or not this takes place in the shorter or longer term. And, as the nightmare in Syria starkly illustrates, the first victim of this escalation will be the mass of the population, the “collateral damage” of militarism. In this sense, whether intentional or not, the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner over Tehran on the same day as the Iranian missile strike against US airbases demonstrates the real human cost of these military confrontations.

The Iran regime and the left wing of capital

The left wing of the capitalist political machine – the Democrats and “Democratic Socialists” in the US, the Corbynists in the UK, the Trotskyists everywhere – have their own agenda when they blame the racking up of tensions in the Middle East on Trump or US imperialism. This flows from the idea that America or the western powers are the only imperialists, and that they are opposed by non-imperialist or even anti-imperialist countries such as Russia, China – or Iran. This is a lie: in this epoch, all countries are imperialist, from the biggest and most influential states to the smaller and less global powers. Iran, no less than Israel, has its own imperialist drives, expressed in its attempts to use proxy forces to become the leading power in the Middle East. And behind them lurk the bigger imperialist states of Russia and China. By contrast, those exploited by capital, whatever nation state presides over their exploitation, have no interest in identifying with the imperialist adventures of their own ruling class

The left, while calling for the defence of the so-called “oppressed” nations and nation states, also claims to be on the side of the exploited and the oppressed in these countries, where the long reign of the war economy together with the impact of the world economic crisis –to which we can add the weight of US sanctions in a country like Iran[2] – has certainly led to a massive build-up of social discontent and opposition to the existing regimes across the Middle East. This has been demonstrated by the popular revolts in countries like Lebanon, Iraq and Iran in the past two years.  But while the leftists trumpet their support for these movements, they really undermine the possibility of an independent class movement emerging in these countries, because they refuse to criticise the weaknesses in these revolts where different class interests are melded together. Indeed, with their support for the “nationalism of the oppressed”, the leftists can only further strengthen the tendency of these revolts to take on a nationalist direction (as with the anti-Iranian slogans raised in the protests in Iraq, or the waving of the Lebanese flag as a false solution to sectarian divisions in Lebanon). And now that the regimes in Iran and Iraq, are for the moment, seeking to drown discontent towards the regime in a hysterical campaign of anti-American national unity, the left, by echoing the anti-US slogans, reveals itself as a cheerleader to the war effort of the Ayatollahs. And it is one of the ironies of the situation that the US assassination of Soleimani enables the Tehran regime to use these campaigns to bolster its credibility as the defender of Iranian “national interests”.

And yet, despite the well-publicised pictures of hundreds of thousands in the streets weeping for Soleimani, we doubt that the exploited and the oppressed of Iran and Iraq have been entirely taken in: this after all is the same Soleimani whose elite forces have been in the forefront of the merciless repression of the protests against the regime, which has left hundreds of corpses in the streets. The angry anti-government demonstrations that broke out across Iran immediately after the authorities admitted that they had shot down the Ukrainian airliner show that the “Sacred Union” promoted by the regime after the killing of Soleimani has no real solidity.

The working class in Iran has waged some courageous struggles in the past two years, revealing once again that it has the potential - as we saw at certain moments in 1978-79 – to provide a leadership to the mass of the population, to integrate their discontent into an authentically proletarian movement.

But for this to happen, the workers of Iran, Iraq and other countries in the front line of imperialist conflict will have to develop the capacity to avoid all the traps laid in their path, whether in the form of nationalism or illusions in the superiority of “western democracy”. And they will not be able to make this vital step forward without the active solidarity of the international working class, above all in the central countries of the system. The current struggles of the working class in France indicate that this is not a forlorn hope.

Against the escalation of military barbarism, the only way forward for humanity lies in the escalation of the international class struggle against capital, its national rivalries, its repression and its wars.

Amos, 12.1.20

The proletariat will only be able to free humanity from the increasingly suffocating chains of world capitalism if its struggle is inspired and fertilised by the critical historical continuity of its communist organisations, that thread that runs from the Communist League in 1848 to the current organisations that identify with the tradition of the communist left. Deprived of this compass, the workers’ reaction against the barbarity and misery imposed by capitalism will be condemned to blind, desperate actions, which may lead to a definitive chain of defeats.

The Nuevo Curso blog tries to pass off the work of Munis as part of the "Communist Left", but Munis never really managed to break with the erroneous approach and orientations of the Left Opposition that would degenerate into Trotskyism, a current that since the 1940s has clearly positioned itself behind the defense of capitalism, together with its big brothers, Stalinism and social democracy.

We responded to this claim with the article “Nuevo Curso and the ’Spanish Communist Left’: what are the origins of the Communist Left?”[1]

“Thus the future world party, if it is to make a real contribution to the communist revolution, can’t take up the heritage of the Left Opposition. It will have to base its programme and its methods of action on the experience of the communist left. There are disagreements among the existing groups who have come out of this tradition, and it is their responsibility to continue confronting these political disagreements so that the new generations can better understand their origins and significance…there exists a common heritage of the communist left which distinguishes it from other left currents which came out of the Communist International. Because of this, anyone who claims to belong to the communist left has the responsibility to know and to make known the history of this component of the workers’ movement, its origins in reaction to the degeneration of the parties of the Communist International, and the different branches which compose it (the Italian left, the German-Dutch left etc). It is above all important to draw out very precisely the historic contours of the communist left and the differences which separate it from other left currents of the past, notably the Trotskyist current”.

This article, written in August 2019, has been totally ignored by Nuevo Curso. The sound of its silence has resounded loudly in the ears of all of us who defend the heritage and critical continuity of the communist left. This is even more shocking when Nuevo Curso publishes a new article every day which deals with every imaginable subject from Netflix, to the Spanish King's Christmas message and the origin of the Christmas festival. However, it has not thought it necessary to devote anything to something as vital as developing arguments to justify its claim to pass off as part of the communist left the more or less critical link between Munis and the Left Opposition that gave rise to Trotskyism.

Our article concluded by saying: “Perhaps we are looking at a sentimental cult of a former proletarian combatant. If that is the case, we must say that it is an enterprise destined to create more confusion because its theses, turned into dogmas, will only distil the worst of his errors… Another possible explanation is that the authentic Communist Left is being attacked with a spam ‘doctrine’ built overnight using the materials of that great revolutionary. If such is the case, it is the obligation of revolutionaries to fight such an imposture with the maximum energy”.

The worst thing about the defeat of the 1917-23 world revolutionary wave is that the gigantic distortion perpetrated by Stalinism was passed off as "communism", "Marxism" and "proletarian principles". Today's revolutionary organisations cannot allow all the heritage that was painfully developed over almost a century by the communist left to be replaced by a spam doctrine based on the confusion and opportunist gangrene that was the Left Opposition. This would be a brutal blow to the perspective of world proletarian revolution.

The origins of Nuevo Curso

In September 2017 we discovered the blog called Nuevo Curso[2], which initially presented itself as being interested in the positions of the communist left and open to debate. That’s at least what NC said in its response to the first letter that the ICC sent them. Here is their reply:

“We don’t see ourselves as a political group, a proto-party or something like that…On the contrary, we see our work as something ‘formative’, in order to aid discussion in the workplaces, among the young, etc, and once we have clarified certain basic elements, serving as a bridge between the new people discovering marxism and the internationalist organisations (essentially the ICT and you, the ICC) who, as we see it, have to be the natural solidifying forces of the future party even though they are very weak today (as, of course, is the entire working class)” [3]

This approach disappeared a few months later, without a detailed and convincing explanation, when NC declared itself to be the continuation of a so-called Spanish Communist Left, the origins of this being Munis and his group, the FOR[4]. We have already pointed out that this claimed ancestry was nothing but a confusion between the communist left and Trotskyism, and that from the standpoint of the continuity of political principles, the positions of NC were not in continuity with those of the communist left, but with Trotskyism or, at best, with attempts to break with Trotskyism[5]. There is thus no programmatic continuity between NC and the communist left.

But what about organic continuity? This is what they originally said about themselves:

“Under the blog and the ‘School of Marxism’, we are a small group of five people which has worked and lived together for 15 years in a work cooperative which functions as a community of possessions. This is our way of resisting precarity and earning a living. And also of maintaining a way of life where we can discuss, learn and be useful to our families and friends in a difficult period” (ibid)

And as they also recognised, their main activity was far from being marxist criticism; in general, in the absence of something more concrete, it consisted of devoting their efforts “to making organised work possible in a productive manner (a new cooperative or communitarian movement which would highlight the technological possibility of a de-commodified society, i.e. a communist society”[6] (ibid).

On the other hand, in addition to this central nucleus, and apparently coming from different dynamics of reflection and discussion, various groups of young people converged towards this group in several towns[7].

What is surprising is how with such elements, NC’s website presented itself from the beginning by referring to the positions of the communist left. The role of one of the elements who contributed to this is explained in this letter

“one of us (ie of the cooperativist nucleus, editor’s note), Gaizka[8], who was one of your contacts in the 1990s, and who, as he said of himself, had learned a lot about marxism from you. The fact that we counted on him and on the library he brought with him was an important part of our process” (ibid).

In fact, this “cooperativist member” appeared at our public meeting in December 2017 on the centenary of the Russian revolution and was someone we already knew, the above-mentioned Gaizka, who in the 90s had taken part in a programmatic discussion with the ICC. At the end of the meeting he told us that he was in contact with a group of young people, to whom he was “giving a marxist formation”, encouraging us to make contact.

Our response to his proposal to make contact was that he should first clarify certain political behaviours which he had not managed to explain in the 90s, and which involved careerist attitudes and a close and long maintained relationship with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE)[9] at the same time as laying claim to the positions of the communist left[10].

He didn’t reply to this in December 2017, nor, after that, to the four letters we sent to him in similar terms; that’s why, according to the proletarian tradition of trying to clarify these kinds of “obscure” episodes in political life, we are still asking for explanations. In the absence of these explanations, the monitoring of his political activity[11] since we met him shows that links with the PSOE have been maintained.

The uneven path of Gaizka

1992-94: contact with the ICC, and sudden disappearance

In 1992, Gaizka made contact with the ICC, presenting himself as a member of a group called “The Spartacist Union”, which claimed to defend the positions of the German communist left (positions which no longer seem to his taste). In reality, this was essentially him and his partner[12] ; and at this point their acquaintance with the programmatic positions and traditions of the communist left was more an aspiration than a reality.

From the beginning, he was interested in joining our organisation very quickly and felt ill at ease when discussions had to be prolonged to make the necessary clarifications, or when certain of his behaviours were questioned – in particular concerning another element who had joined a discussion circle in Madrid, in which Battaglia Comunista also occasionally participated.

The discussion on his political history also posed problems. Although he told us that he had been in contact with the Socialist Youth (of the PSOE), he showed a sort of fascination with the experience of the kibbutz[13], and made comments which seemed to link him to Borrell[14] and the pro-Israel Socialist lobby[15]. What’s more, Gaizka never clarified his organisational relationship with the PSOE or his break with it.[16]

In 1994, in the ICC, there were debates going on about the problem of the weight of the circle spirit in the workers’ movement since 1968 and on affinity-based relations under the cover of “communitarian” projects for living. During discussions on our principles of organisation, we presented Gaizka with our positions on all this. And it is perhaps for this reason that, when we asked him directly for explanations about the aspects of his trajectory which seemed unclear[17], first of all he didn’t seem at all surprised, despite the fact that we introduced this meeting as a confrontation that was being recorded (we had never recorded a discussion with him before that). And second, he did not give us any explanation at all and disappeared from the milieu of the communist left. Until now!

Links with the PSOE kept up…

What posed questions about Gaizka’s political trajectory was not the fact that, at a certain moment, he had been a sympathiser or militant of the Socialist Youth and that he had not said this clearly; what merited an explanation was the fact that, despite his claims of being convinced by the positions of the communist left, his life history left many traces which revealed a political relationship with people who were or had been high-ranking functionaries in the PSOE.

In 1998-9, he participated as an “adviser”, without ever making precise what this meant, in Borrell’s campaign in the PSOE primaries, as can be seen from some of his accounts on the internet. One of our militants saw him on television in the candidate’s office[18]. Gaizka tried to minimise the question by saying that he was only there as an “office boy” in the campaign, someone that Borrell hadn’t even noticed. But the truth is that certain PSOE leaders, like Miquel Iceta[19] for example, said publicly that they had met Gaizka during this campaign. And it doesn’t seem very logical that the high-ups in the PSOE should go to Borrell to ask him to introduce them to his office boy.

Furthermore, during these same years, Gaizka also participated in a “humanitarian mission” organised by the European Council of Humanitarian Action and Cooperation in Kosovo[20] alongside David Balsa, now president of the Euro-Central American Conference, and formerly president of the European Council of Humanitarian Action and Cooperation. He is a former leader of the Socialist Youth and a former member of the Executive of the Socialist Party in Galicia. In a letter to the Italian Radical Party, Gaizka said that he was “the lad who went to Albania in my place”.

Apart from what this suggests regarding suspicions of a closer relationship between Gaizka and the PSOE than he admitted, this implies an active participation in an imperialist war under the cover of “humanitarian action” and the “rights of man”[21].

In 2003, he was also an adviser in the campaign for the PSOE’s Belloch[22] for the mayor of Zaragoza, and this time he admits: “I was very involved in the campaign of the mayor, Juan Alberto Belloch, to redefine the city as an urban space, as an economic landscape, where there could be a development of types of enterprises linked to real communities, very transnational and hyper-connected”.

In 2004, after the terrorist attacks of 11 March and the national electoral victory of the PSOE, Rafael Estrella wrote a prologue for a book by Gaizka, full of praise for his qualities. This gentleman was a member of the PSOE, a spokesman for the Commission for Foreign Affairs in the Congress of Deputies, and president of the parliamentary assembly of NATO[23]. The book underlined the incapacity of the right-wing Popular Party to understand the Atocha attacks, but there is not one word of criticism of the PSOE. Felipe Gonzalez quoted from it on occasions.

This same PSOE deputy later became Spain’s ambassador in Argentina in 2007 (until 2012) and invited Gaizka to present his book at the embassy, putting him in contact with the political and economic milieu in this country.

Another “patron” who played an important role in Gaizka’s South American adventure was Quico Maňero, of whom he says in a dedication to another of his books: “To Federico Maňero, friend, connector of worlds and so many times a master, who for years has pushed us to ‘live in the dance’ of continents and conversations, received us and took care of us everywhere we went. Without him, we would never have been able to live as neo-Venetians”.

This is what the Izquierda Socialista (a left current in the PSOE) says about this gentleman:

“the branch of REPSOL[24] in (or owned by) Argentina is the affair of Señor Quico Maňero, the former husband of Elena Valenciano[25], a historic leader of the PSOE (general secretary of the Socialist Youth), adviser to enterprises close to Felipe Gonzalez, named in 2005 as a member of the Argentine Administrative Council of REPSOL-YPF. He is currently the object of an inquiry into the Invercaria scandal and the Andalusian funds of the ‘reptiles’ (a financial scandal) from which he received 1.1 million euros”[26].

During the same period, in 2005, Gaizka worked for the Jaime Vera Foundation of the PSOE, which traditionally is an institution for forming the party’s political cadres, and it seems that in 2005, this body began an international programme for the formation of cadres with the aim of gaining an influence beyond Spain’s borders. In this context, Gaizka participated in the formation of the “K-Cyberactivists” in Argentina, who supported the campaign of Cristina Kirchner in 2007, when she became the president.

“The idea was born two years ago of a political agreement with the government. It was in 2005, among twenty young people selected by the Casa Rosada (the seat of the Argentine president) to be formed by the Jaime Vera Foundation, the government school of the PSOE leaders, the Spanish Socialist Party. They included the creators of the K-Cyberactivists: the militant Sebastian Lorenzo (www.sebalorenzo.co.ar [10]) and Javier Noguera (nogueradeucuman.blogspot.com), a government secretary of José Alperovich, the governor of Tucumán…We were stupefied when he spoke to us about blogs and social networks, declared Noguera to La Nación. This was the least of it: the Spanish ‘professor’ was the worldwide reference for cyberactivism…the same one who, a month ago, accompanied by Rafael Estrella, presented his new book in Buenos Aires”[27]

During the years after 2010, and especially after the electoral defeat of the PSOE, there is less proof of involvement with this party.

…And sometimes with right wing liberalism

In fact, before the PSOE’s victory in 2004, Gaizka tried to draw the covers of the PP over himself, and collaborated with the PP Youth, in setting up Los Liberales.org, which according to this organisation would serve “to create a repertoire would bring a bit of order to online Spanish liberalism. This weekend we set ourselves to work and, after several hours in front of the computer, we mapped out what existed on the internet, the product of different liberal and libertarian families (not to be confused with the anarchists) which are sometimes at odds with each other. This is how Los Liberales.org was born, a non-partisan project for liberals and those who are interested in this kind of thought”[28].

This household included people like Jiménez Losantos[29] and his paper Libertad digital, for whom Gaizka wrote several articles, or the Christian liberal conservatives, about whom the others were not sure whether they should be seen as liberals or as part of the extreme right.

As the journalist Ignacio Esolar[30] wrote in the book la Blogoesfera hispana, this club “didn’t last long. Ideological disagreements between the founders put an end to the project”

What is someone like Gaizka doing in a place like the communist left?[31]

An examination of Gaizka’s political Curriculum Vitae clearly shows his close relationship with the PSOE. Since it definitively abandoned the proletarian camp at its extraordinary congress in April 1921[32], the PSOE has a long history in the service of the capitalist state: under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-30) its union the UGT acted as a police informer, snitching on many CNT militants; and Largo Caballero, who acted as a bridge between the PSOE and the UGT, served as an adviser to the dictator. In 1930, the PSOE quickly changed its tune and put itself at the head of the forces which, in 1931, established the Second Republic, where it headed a government in collaboration with the Republicans from 1931 to 1933. It should be noted that during these two years, 1500 workers were killed in the repression of strikes and uprisings. Later on, the PSOE was at the heart of the Popular Front government which led the war effort and the process of militarisation, giving carte blanche to the Stalinist thugs to repress the workers’ uprising in Barcelona in May 1937. With the re-establishment of democracy in 1975, the PSOE was the backbone of the state, becoming the party that would serve longest at the head of government (1982-1996, 2004-2011, and since 2018). The most brutal measures against the conditions of the working class were imposed by PSOE governments, notably the reconversion plans of the 80s which involved the loss of a million jobs, or the programme of social cuts launched by the Zapatero government and which Rajoy’s PP government would continue.

It's with this bastion of the bourgeois state that Gaizka has been collaborating; we are not talking about “rank and file elements”, more or less duped, but with those high up in the party, no more or less than with Borrell who has been named responsible for the foreign policy of the European Commission, and with Belloch who was a minister of the interior, with Estrella who was president of the parliamentary assembly of NATO.

In Gaizka’s CV, you don’t find the slightest trace of firm conviction in the positions of the communist left; to be clear, it’s not as if he has any political convictions at all, since he has not hesitated to flirt at one point with the right-wing camp. The “marxism” of Gaizka is rather a form of “Groucho-marxism”: remember the celebrated comedian Groucho Marx when he quipped: “here are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others in my pocket”.

This is why the question is: what is that has made Gaizka create Nuevo Curso as a “historic” link with the so-called “Spanish Communist Left”? What does this gentleman have to do with its positions, with the historic struggle of the working class?

And in continuity with that, what is a parasitic group like the “International Group of the Communist Left” doing in all this? Certain members of the IGCL were members of the central organ of the ICC in 1992-94 and were au fait with the behaviour of Gaizka at the time, just as they are today since he is the main animator of Nuevo Curso. But they are turning a blind eye to this, keeping quiet and trying to hide his trajectory and declaring that this group is the future of the communist left and things like that.

“Nuevo Curso is a blog of comrades who have begun publishing regularly on the situation and on wider questions, including theoretical issues. Unfortunately, their blog is only in Spanish. The ensemble of positions they defend are class positions which are part of the programmatic framework of the communist left…We are very impressed not only by their affirmation of class positions with no concessions, but also by the ‘marxist quality’ of the comrades’ texts….”[33]

“Thus the constitution of Emancipacion as a fully-fledged political group expresses the fact that the international proletariat, although subjugated and very far from being able to push back the various attacks of capital, is tending to resist through struggle and to break out of the ideological grip of capital, and that its revolutionary future remains intact. It expresses the (relative) ‘vitality’ of the proletariat”[34].

In the tradition of the workers’ movement, whose historical continuity is represented today by the communist left, principles of organisation, of functioning, of comportment and the honesty of militants are just as important as programmatic principles. Some of the most important congresses in the history of the workers’ movement, like the Hague Congress of 1872, were dedicated to this struggle for the defence of proletarian behaviour (and this despite the fact that the congress took place a year after the Paris Commune and was faced with the necessity to draw out its lessons)[35]. Marx himself dedicated a whole book, which took him more than a year, interrupting his work on Capital, to the defence of proletarian behaviour against the intrigues of Herr Vogt, a Bonapartist agent who organised a campaign of slander against Marx and his comrades. We have recently published an article on the denunciation by Bebel and Liebknecht of the dishonest behaviour of Lassalle and Schweitzer[36]. And in the 20th century, Lenin devoted a book – One Step Forward Two Steps Back – to drawing the lessons of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party regarding the weight of behaviour alien to the proletariat. We can also cite Trotsky who called upon a jury of honour to defend his integrity against Stalin’s slanders.

The fact that someone who has close links with the high up leaders of the PSOE should suddenly arrive in the camp of the communist left should alert all groups and militants struggling for the historic interests of our class, including those involved in the Nuevo Curso blog who are doing so in good faith, believing that they are fighting for the principles of the communist left.

In 1994, we asked Gaizka to clarify his trajectory and his already dubious associations at the time. He disappeared from the scene. In 2018, after he came back bearing a whole rucksack of contacts in the upper spheres of the PSOE, we again asked him and he stayed silent. For the defence of the communist left, its integrity and its future contribution, we must ask him to account for all this.

ICC  20.1.20

We are publishing an article written by our sections in Spain and Italy, which shows that in all countries the bourgeoisie is displaying the same criminal negligence towards the pandemic and the same contempt for the lives of the exploited.

The capitalist state is presenting itself as our saviour. This is a scam of the worst kind. Faced with the spread of the pandemic, what have they done? The worst! In all countries they took measures at the last minute, forced to do so by the rising death toll; they have kept millions of workers at their workplaces, with no masks, or gel or gloves, and all crowded together. Why? To continue production at any cost. They want to win parts of the market by taking advantage of the difficulties of their competitors. “China is on the floor? Keep producing!” “Italy is down? Keep producing!” And so on. Even when the pandemic really began to bite, when the lock-downs started, the pressure to ensure the “health of the economy” didn’t go away. The declarations by Trump or Bolsanaro about the economy coming first are just a caricature of the murderous policy of the leaders of all the governments on the planet.  And yet, in acting this way, each national bourgeoisie, by facilitating the spread of the virus, is putting its own economy in danger.

In response, we have seen a number of strikes in Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, the USA, Brazil, Canada…Certainly these struggles are limited, how else could it be during the lock-down when it’s impossible to gather together in large numbers? But their appearance in different countries in these extremely difficult conditions shows that, in certain parts of the working class, there is resistance to the “sacrifices” being demanded, to the idea of serving as cannon fodder for the interests of capital. We cannot afford to bow down to the capitalist state which takes advantage of its role as "coordinator" in the fight against the pandemic to further strengthen its totalitarian control, to deepen our atomisation and develop an ideology of national unity and even of war.

More than ever, this pandemic shows us the alternative: either we allow ourselves to be dragged down into capitalist barbarism, or we contribute, with patience and a vision of the future, to the perspective of the world proletarian revolution.

Today, the streets pf Madrid offer us the spectacle of ambulances rushing at high speed, of chaos in the health services, of suffering comparable to the terrorist attacks of 2004 (193 dead and 1400 wounded). But this time this is a pandemic which has already killed 2,300 people and infected 35,000 in Spain, according to the official figures; an epidemic which is spreading faster than in Italy, which, a few days ago, had already beaten all records in terms of daily deaths. The death toll (over 7000 at the time of writing) already shows this pandemic to be the worst health disaster in the two countries since the Second World War. What’s happening in these two countries is only a preview of what will probably hit the populations of big cities like New York, Los Angeles, London. And it will be even worse when it hits Latin America, Africa and other regions where health systems are even more fragile or don’t exist at all.

But for weeks before this, the leaders of Spain and Italy – just as in France (as we show in our French publication[1]) and other capitalist powers – could easily have imagined the damage the epidemic would cause. However, like the other capitalist states (and not only those led by populists like Johnson in the UK and Trump in the US), they decided to put the needs of the capitalist economy before the health of the population. Now of course they are boasting histrionically that they are ready to do everything to protect the health of their citizens, and they have declared all out “war” on the virus.

But the responsibility for the deaths caused by the pandemic is entirely linked to the present social conditions, to a mode of production which, instead of dedicating the productive forces, natural resources and advances in knowledge to the benefit of life, is sacrificing human life and nature on the altar of profit.

The exploited class is the main victim of this pandemic

We are constantly being told that this pandemic affects everyone without distinction between rich and poor. They tell us all the famous people (like Prince Charles and Boris Johnson in the UK) who have been infected or even killed by Covid-19. But these news items are put around above all to hide the fact that it is the conditions of exploitation which explain the rise and propagation of the pandemic.

First, because of the overcrowding of the neighbourhoods in which the exploited have to live, a fertile soil for the spread of epidemics. This is easily verified given the higher incidence of the pandemic in regions of dense human population brought together by the needs of exploitation (Lombardy, Venice and Emilia Romagna in Italy, Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque country in Spain) than in areas of lower population, such as Sicily or Andalusia. The worsening of housing conditions for proletarians further accentuates this vulnerability. In the case of Madrid, the hospitals which are most saturated and where services are collapsing are essentially those which serve the population of the industrial towns of the south. In dilapidated and overcrowded apartment blocks it’s also much more difficult to put up with the quarantine decreed by the authorities. In the luxury chalets of Somosierra or the villas of Nice where Berlusconi has taken refuge with his children, isolation is a lot easier to deal with. The exploiters’ talk about their “civic sense” is just cynicism.

Not to mention the impact on those living from precarious jobs or looking after children or elderly people, massed together in these kinds of dwellings. The situation of the elderly is particularly scandalous: having been exploited their whole life, many of them are forced to live alone or neglected in “care homes” run by the laws of capitalist profit. With one carer for 18 residents on average, care homes have become one of the main sources for the spread of the pandemic, as we have seen in Spain not only among the residents, but also those working there on temporary contracts and miserable wages, trying to take care of patients often without the basic measures of protection. The situation is identical in France, up till recently presented as a model of social protection run by the state. In Spain, the pits were reached when we saw hospitalised patients having to remain isolated in their wards next to the corpses of their fellow unfortunates, because the funeral services are overrun or lack the protective equipment to enable them to dispose of human remains. At the same time, numerous sick people, especially the old, who have been transferred to the saturated hospitals are relegated to the third and fourth rank by a “triage” organised according to the available resources and personnel, and by a cost-benefit analysis which is a real affront to human dignity, to the social instincts which enabled humanity to develop in the first place. This “treatment of the fittest” system has been openly put in place by the Italian, Spanish, French and other authorities.

To this we can add the intensified exploitation and exposure to the virus among the health workers, who make up to 8% of those infected: more than 5000 in Spain alone. Even these statistics are widely falsified, because a large number of these workers could not be tested. Nevertheless, they are frequently obliged to work without the necessary masks, gloves and overalls, which were previously seen as “superfluous” expenses by health budgets dictated by the needs of the capitalist economy. Beds in intensive care units, ventilators, research into coronavirus, into possible vaccines….al this has been sacrificed in the name of profitability. Today the media’s list of complaints, often expressed by politicians on the “left”, is used to deflect anger onto the “privatisation” of healthcare systems. But whoever owns the hospital, the pharmaceutical lab, or the care home, the truth is that that the health of the population is subjected to the rule of the profits extracted by an exploiting minority at the expense of society as a whole.

The defence of life against the laws of exploitation

The dictatorship of the laws of capital over human need is clearly revealed in the quarantine  and lock-down measures in Italy, Spain and France, countries which have imposed draconian restrictions on shopping trips and visits to elderly people, while being totally lax when it comes to inciting people to get to the container docks and to keep up production in various factories (textiles, domestic appliances, automobiles). And to “protect” the conditions of exploitation, while hassling a few joggers or workers who share a car to reduce the cost of travelling to work, they still allow people to crowd together on a reduced tube and bus service to get to work and ensure that national production continues. Many workers have been scandalised by the criminal cynicism of the bourgeoisie and have expressed their anger through social networks, since in present conditions it is impossible to get together in the streets or in general assemblies. Thus, in response to the media campaign around the slogan “Stay at home”, there is a popular hashtag: “I can’t stay at home” launched by Uber and Deliveroo workers, home helps, workers in the huge underground economy etc.

Protests and strikes have also broken out against working conditions which risk the life and safety of the workers. As workers shouted out at demonstrations in Italy: “Your profits are worth more than our health!”

In Italy, this anger exploded on 10 March at the FIAT factory in Pomigliano where 5000 workers are present every day. Workers went on strike to protest against the unsafe conditions in which they are being forced to work. In other factories in the metallurgical sector, in Brescia for example, the workers put an ultimatum on the firms to adapt production to the workers’ need for protection, threatening strike action. Finally, the firms decided to close the factories. And on 23 March, when a decree issued by Prime Minister Conte gave a green light to continuing work in industries that are not really essential, spontaneous strikes broke out again, which obliged the CGIL union to make a show of calling for a “general strike”.

In Spain it started in the Mercedes factory in Vitoria: after a case of Covid-19, the workers decided to stop work immediately. The same thing happened in the Balay domestic appliance factory in Zaragoza (1000 workers) and the Renault factory in Vallodolid. It should be said that in a number of cases, it was the firm itself which decided on a lock-out (as at Airbus in Madrid, SEAT in Barcelona or Ford in Valencia in the same period, then at PSA in Zaragoza or Michelin in Vitoria), so that the funds of the state (in other words the surplus value extracted from the working class as a whole) would pay part of these workers’ wages; in fact, before the pandemic, there were already planned redundancies  (in the Ford factories or Nissan in Barcelona).

But there were also open expressions of class militancy, wildcat strikes outside and against the unions, such as with the bus drivers in Liege (Belgium), which was one of the first countries to bring in a lock-down. It was the same with the Neuhauser bakery workers and the naval shipyard at Andrézieux near Lyon in France. There were also some militant demonstrations at the shipyards in Saint-Nazaire. One of the workers said in a TV interview: “I am forced to work in a confined space with 2 or 3 colleagues, in a booth 9 metres square and without any protection, then I have to go home to my wife and children who are self-isolating. And I ask myself anxiously if I am a danger to them. I can’t put up with this”.

As the epidemic spread, with its disastrous effects on workers, we saw further workers’ protests against this imposition of the logic of capitalist exploitation, even if only amongst a minority: we saw it at the FIAT-Chrysler factories in Tripton (in Indiana, USA), where there were protests against having to go to work when outside the factories it is forbidden to gather. There were further reactions at the Lear factory in Hammond Indiana, the FIAT factories in Windsor Ontario or the Warren truck factory outside Detroit. The Detroit bus drivers also stopped work until the firm provided a minimum of safety at work. It is very significant that, in these struggles in the USA, the workers had to impose their decision to stop working against the advice of the union (in the this case the UAW), which had been encouraging them to carry on working so as not to jeopardise the interests of the company.

In the port at Santos, Brazil, workers demonstrated against the authorities obliging them to go into work. Also in his country, there were growing concerns among the workers at Volkwagen, Toyota, GM etc against having to continue production as though the pandemic wasn’t there.

However limited these protests may be, they are an important element in the class response of the proletariat to the pandemic. Even on a purely defensive terrain, the exploited are refusing to be reduced to cannon fodder in the interests of their exploiters.

The response of the bourgeoisie: hypocrisy and state totalitarianism

The bourgeoisie itself is aware of the potential for the development of class consciousness and combativity contained in this accumulation of indignation at the sacrifices being demanded of the workers. Even the main protagonists of “austericide”[2] (like Merkel, Berlusconi, or in Spain Luis de Guindos) are full of promises of social assistance. But the weapons of the exploiting class are the traditional weapons of the whole history of the class struggle: deception and repression.

For example: the hypocrisy of the campaigns of applauding health workers, programmed and organised everywhere. Of course these workers deserve recognition and solidarity because it is essentially they whose efforts are devoted to keeping the health system going. They have been doing this for years in the face of lay-offs and the deterioration in material resources. What is repulsive however is the sight of the government authorities, the very ones who have created these conditions for the over-exploitation and powerlessness of these workers, cynically seeking to advertise their “solidarity” with the health workers and proclaiming that we are “all in it together”, singing the national anthem and propagating patriotic values as a response to the spread of the virus. The disgusting nationalism of these “mobilisations” promoted by the organs of the state are aimed at hiding the fact that there cannot be the slightest common interest between exploiters and the exploited, between capitalists and those affected by the degradation of the health infrastructure, between those whose only concern is to maintain production and the competitive edge of the national capital, and those who put respect for life and human needs first. The “country” or the “nation” are just a tall story as far as the workers are concerned, whether it’s put forward by populist factions like Salvini or Vox, or by the sirens of democracy like Podemos, Macron or Conte.

In the name of this fake “national solidarity”, citizens are called on to denounce people who flout the quarantine, creating a witch-hunt atmosphere towards people like mothers of autistic children or elderly couples doing the shopping, or even towards health workers on their way to the hospital. It’s particularly cynical to put all the blame on the minority flouting the lock-down rules for the spread of the virus or the deaths it is causing or the stress suffered by health workers.

There is nothing more anti-social (ie contrary to the human community) than the capitalist state, which is there to defend the interests of the minority class of exploiters, and which hides this precisely with the fig leaf of false solidarity. In a doubly hypocritical way, the bourgeoisie is trying to use the disaster caused by the negligence of the capitalist state to divide some workers against others. If the hospital workers refuse to work without protective material, they are denounced as being “against solidarity” and threatened with sanctions, as was recently the case with the sacking of the medical director of the hospital at Vigo in Galicia, for daring to denounce the “blah-blah” of the bourgeois politicians on the issue of protective measures. The local government of Valencia (composed of the same parties as the “progressive” coalition governing Spain at the national level) have threatened to censor images showing the disastrous state of hospital care in the region, citing the right to privacy of the patients crowded together in the emergency wards!

If the workers of local authorities’ funeral services refuse to work without protection with bodies killed by Covid-19, they are accused of preventing family and friends from taking part in the funerals of their loved ones. Like in the housing estates or the public transport where we are herded like cattle on our way to work, or at the workplaces where ergonomics is applied not to the physiological needs of the workers but to the need for productivity, those killed by the coronavirus are also piled together in buildings transformed into improvised mass morgues, like the Palacio de Hielo in Madrid.

All this brutality is presented to us as the highest expression of a united society. It’s no accident that, at the press conferences of the Spanish government, faced with repeated questions like “when will the tests arrive?” And the masks? And the ventilators?”, we always get the same imperturbable and evasive response from the health minister: “In a few days….”, while alongside him stand army generals, police chiefs, heads of the civil guard, bedecked in their medals. The aim here is to impregnate the minds of the population with a militarist atmosphere: “Obey without asking questions”. The bourgeoisie is also profiting from the events to habituate the population to all kinds of restrictions on their so-called “civil liberties”, all at the discretion of the government and some with highly dubious usefulness, but all of which favour social self-discipline and snitching, presented as the only barrier to disease and social chaos. Neither is it any accident that the western bourgeoisie is displaying a thinly-veiled admiration for the control which certain totalitarian regimes, like the one in capitalist China[3], are able to exert over their population. If the success of China’s lock-down in slowing the spread of the virus  is today being saluted, it’s also to camouflage their admiration for the instruments of state control being used (facial recognition, following people’s movements and encounters, and using this information to categorise the population according to their level of ‘social threat’), and to be able, in the future, to present these means of totalitarian state control as a more effective way of “protecting the population” against epidemics and other products of capitalist chaos.

The only alternative is communism

We have shown how a crisis in society reveals the existence of two antagonistic classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Which one is actually using its best efforts to try to limit the impact of this pandemic? It’s essentially the work of the ambulance drivers, the public transport workers, the workers of the supermarkets and the food industry who are doing the real work, hindered at every turn by the negligence of the state. It has been shown once again that, on a world scale, the proletariat is the class which produces social wealth, and that the bourgeoisie is a parasitic class which profits from the tenacity, the creativity and the team efforts of the workers in order to enlarge its capital. Each of these antagonistic classes offers a completely different perspective to the global chaos into which capitalism has plunged humanity: the capitalist regime of exploitation is hurling humanity into more and more wars, epidemics, poverty and ecological disasters; the revolutionary perspective will liberate the human species from subjection to the laws of private appropriation by an exploiting minority.

But the exploited can’t make an individual escape from this dictatorship. They can only escape by reacting collectively against the chaotic orientations of a state which is working for the mode of production which rules the whole planet. Individual sabotage or disobedience is the impossible dream of classes who have no future to offer humanity as a whole. The working class is not a class of powerless victims. It is a class which carries within itself the possibility of a new world free of exploitation, of division into classes and nations, of the subjection of human need to the laws of accumulation.

A philosopher (Buyng Chul Han), who is becoming very fashionable because of his description of the chaos provoked by capitalist social relations, recently declared that “we can’t leave the revolution to the virus”. That’s certainly true. Only the conscious action of a world-wide class, aimed at pulling out the roots of class society, can constitute a real revolutionary force.

Valerio 24.3.20

For several months, the region of Idlib in the north of Syria has been devastated by the forces of Bashar El Assad and the Russian army. Nearly three million civilians (a million of them children) are trapped in this last outpost of the rebellion[1]. As with Aleppo and eastern Ghouta, the Assad regime is trying to re-take this region through terror and a scorched earth policy. Russian planes are indiscriminately bombing apartment blocks, public buildings like schools and hospitals, markets and fields. More than a thousand people have died since the end of April 2018 according to the UN, and nearly a million are trying to escape the massacre, hungry, homeless, subjected to the glacial temperatures of winter. In this theatre of barbarism and chaos, the populations have only one way out: to flee for their lives. To head for the Turkish border or try to reach the Greek frontier, the nearest port to enter Europe.

Only the frontier between Syria and Turkey is now closed. Since 2015, the Turkish state has been carrying out a well-paid service to the European democracies by taking in the waves of refugees which the Europeans refused to deal with. The Turkish offensive in the north of Syria has changed the situation. The three million inhabitants of Idlib have now become hostages, prisoners of the region’s imperialist powers. As we have seen, Turkey and Russia are capable of anything, including the bloodletting of whole regions, terrorising the population and massacring them to satisfy their rapacious appetites. Today the region of Idlib has become a macabre board-game for imperialism, a region that moribund capitalism has sown with misery and death.

The refugees: commodities to be sold or disposed of

While Erdogan is refusing to take in the new exiles, he also wants to get rid of the three and a half million already inside Turkey. For him and his regime, these people are just objects to be used as commodities in their political ambitions. On the domestic level, the refugees are already the target of a disgusting campaign of denigration aimed at restoring the popularity of the AKP in Turkey. But it’s above all on the imperialist level that the refugees have their “value”, since they are being used to blackmail the powers of the EU. For months Erdogan has been threatening to open the country’s western borders in order to compel the European powers to support his military campaign in the north of Syria and to give him financial aid. On 28 February, he carried out his threats and tens of thousands of refugees have been trying, at considerable risk, to enter Europe via Greece, despite the categorical refusal of the Greek authorities, supported by the great democracies of the EU. At least 13,000 refugees are massing at the frontier, prey to cruel exactions from all sides. Others are trying to reach the islands of Chios or Lesbos by sea. Here too they face the same conditions: herded like animals, lacking water, heating, food and elementary hygiene. On Lesbos, the Moria camp, designed to hold 2,300 people, 20,000 are massed together behind barbed wire. The Repubblica newspaper gives us this abominable description: “The first to go under are the children. Here, there is nothing for them, not even beds, toilets or light. Here there is only the mud, the cold, and the waiting. An absurd, maddening purgatory. Day after day, as hope to reach Europe disappears over the horizon, there’s nothing for the weakest but to attempt suicide…but because they are afraid, they rarely go all the way. From time to time, an adult knocks on the doors of the clinic at the bottom of the hill, carrying in his arms a small child who has highly eloquent marks on his body. Everyone knows what has just been done. In a few months he will try again”. More than three quarters of a century after Auschwitz, it’s the same frightful reality for those populations that capitalism has judged undesirable.

Those who try to reach this Eldorado are being stopped with the greatest violence and brutality by the Greek authorities. We have seen unbearable, revolting images of Greek guards trying to sink an inflatable dinghy full of refugees and to scare them away with live rounds. In the Evros region, the police and the army are patrolling the zone and the 212 kilometres of the border are impassable. Those who try to get across are met with tear gas and even with real bullets, which according to the Turks has led to injuries and deaths. Those arrested are beaten, stripped, humiliated and sent back. Thinking that they are only metres away from paradise, they are faced with the cruel reality of Fortress Europe, for whom they are just refuse, stray animals which no state wants to help out. Each state blames the other but they all have the same aim: categorical refusal to welcome these populations who are victims of the barbarism engendered by the imperialist powers with the most incredible cynicism and hypocrisy[2].

The hypocrisy of the democracies faced with the waves of refugees

Soon after the Turkish regime announced that it was opening the gates in the direction of Europe, the reaction of the main EU states was clear: all the representatives of the European bourgeoisies cried out against the “unacceptable” policies of Erdogan (Angela Merkel). The head of the Austrian government Sebastian Kurz, elected specifically on the basis of his anti-immigration policies, feigned disquiet about “these human beings being used to put pressure on the EU”

The great democracies of Europe can come out with all kinds of compassionate phrases, they can put all the responsibility on their Russian and Turkish rivals, but the reality of Europe’s migrant policy reveals their ignominious hypocrisy. It is the “motherland of the rights of man” which has most clearly expressed the real intentions of the EU states: “The European Union will not give in to this blackmail,, the frontiers of Greece and the Schengen space are closed and we will make sure they remain closed, let’s be clear about this” said Jean-Yves le Drian, the French minister of Foreign Affairs. Thus, millions can perish of hunger and cold – the European states will do nothing for them, unless it is to make their situation even harder by strengthening the hermetic seal on the Greek border. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU president, guaranteed that “all necessary aid” would be supplied to the Greek state. Already the Frontex agency has sent police reinforcements and 700 million euros to this end. The intransigence of the European leaders reflects their desire to cut the grass under the feet of the populist governments and movements which will not hesitate to use this new exodus for their own benefit.

The European powers want to present themselves as the victims of the wicked manipulator Erdogan, or shed crocodile tears about the refugees, pleading that they are powerless to help, but they are all responsible for this, just as they are responsible for allowing hundreds of thousands of people to succumb to Russian bombs, Greek bullets, or Turkish cynicism.

Their nauseating tirades about the rights of man and their phoney indignation are just a smokescreen to hide their anti-migrant policies. Deportations, the dismantling of refugee camps, the erecting of walls and barbed wire fences, the militarisation of the frontiers and the increase in administrative measures aimed at restricting access – all these measures are first and foremost being set up and applied with the greatest rigour by the democratic states[3], where the dictatorship of capital functions in its most perverse and cynical way. The western democracies, whether run by the left or the right, are not only accomplices to the “bad guys” like Erdogan and Putin: they treat people in the same degrading way, but with a sprinkling of added hypocrisy.

Barbarism and chaos are all capitalism has to offer

After thirty Turkish soldiers were killed in an attack by the troops of Assad, giving rise to fears about an escalation of tensions, Moscow and Ankara signed a cease-fire on 5 March. This a farce which no one believes in given that the ambitions of both powers can only push them towards further clashes and confrontations. There is no sign of any stabilisation in the Middle East. The continuing retreat of the USA, and as a consequence, of France and Germany, brings with it a number of dangers in which the civilian population, as always, will be the first victims. It is undeniable that Assad has decided to reconquer all the territory he possessed prior to 2011. To this end, he has not hesitated to shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Putin, the only one who can modify the ambitions of the “butcher of Damascus”, does not seem to be completely opposed to this. But at the same time the master of the Kremlin has an interest in maintaining cordial relations with Erdogan in order to put pressure on NATO and maintain his precious naval base in Tartus in the west of Syria. For its part, Turkey now has a free hand to mop up the Kurds, denying them their autonomous territory in the north, which it fears will be a prop for the nationalist demands of the Turkish Kurds. Last October, after violent battles, Turkey managed to establish a “security zone”, breaking up the territorial integrity of Rojava. While up to now the American presence has provided protection for the Kurds, the departure of US troops from Syria will probably sign their death warrant.

This is all the more the case in that the European powers like France and Britain have lost a lot of ground and are no longer in a position to pursue their strategy of fighting both Daesh and the Assad regime through a game of alliances with the rebels and the Kurds. Thus, all the elements are coming together for new massacres which will create more millions of refugees.

What’s happening on the Turkey-Greece border is not an exception but one illustration among many of the horror that capitalism is making hundreds of millions go through. The lot of the African migrants on the Moroccan border, the living hell in Libya[4], or the situation facing Latin Americans between Mexico and the US are not so different. All of them are fleeing war, violence, criminality and ecological disaster. Today, more than seven million people are in the situation of exiles struggling to survive.  They are trying to escape the barbarism of capital but are the pawns and victims of the national bourgeoisies who are instrumentalising the “refugee question” for their sinister imperialist interests.

Vincent, 8.3.20

[1]The rebels against the Assad regime are just a rival faction within the Syrian bourgeoisie. They are used by the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other imperialist powers as pawns in the defence of their imperialist interests

Introduction

The coronavirus epidemic is leaving thousands of dead around the world. Why? Because research into this kind of virus, which has been known about for a long time, was abandoned because it wasn’t seen as profitable! Because when the epidemic took off it was more important to the Chinese bourgeoisie to do everything to hide the gravity of the situation in order to protect its economy and its reputation; it didn’t hesitate to make up all kinds of lies and put pressure on the doctors who had sounded the alarm!

Because in all countries, the measures of isolation were taken too late, since the first concern of the state was “not to block the economy”, “not make business suffer”! Because everywhere, there weren’t enough masks, cleansing gel, equipment to test for the illness, hospital beds, ventilators…Is it necessary to recall that in France care workers and emergency workers have been striking for a year, denouncing the lack of human and material resources in the hospitals[1]? The politicians have the nerve to talk about protecting those most vulnerable to the virus, elderly people, at a time when the workers in residential care homes, the EHPAD, have also been out on strike over the past year, indignant about the mistreatment of the “residents” that results from a lack of workers to look after them. In France, which is the second biggest European economic power, it is impossible to find any masks. Even within the pneumological services, at the front line of the fight against the pandemic, the doctors have to limit themselves to three masks a day. In Italy, the same shameful situation prevails. Workers are forced to go to work, herded together on public transport, because they have to keep the economy going … as in the car factories for example, where they are again pressed together on the production line, without masks, soap or any other precautions.

Strikes have broken out in this country in the last few days. Here is a short extract from a testimony in Bologna, where workers raised the slogan “The workers are not lambs to the slaughter”. ”Strikes in the factories are multiplying. Forced to work without any health protection, workers are in revolt: ‘I am obliged to work in a work environment which puts my health in danger, the health of those close to me, my comrades at work, the people I meet…inside the warehouses and the factories none of the wise precepts we hear about all the time are worth anything. In many of these places, there is a total absence of the minimal conditions to avoid the spread of the virus:

• The presence of workers in large numbers in reduced spaces has never been put in question
• There isn’t even soap in the toilets!
• Calling for gloves and masks? The bosses say these are just excuses by people who don’t want to work’”

The rallying cry for these strikes is “Your profits are worth more than our health!”. And this is indeed the reality under capitalism, this decadent system of exploitation. But these struggles show that hope does exist. The working class is the bearer of solidarity, dignity and unity. It is the bearer of a world which is no longer governed by the hunt for profit.

Faced with this pandemic, we not only have to develop solidarity, look after the most vulnerable, but also reflect on what capitalism is, why it’s rotting on its feet, and discuss such questions as much as possible in order to develop our collective understanding. The article that follows aims to contribute to this process.

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At the end of our first article on the Covid-19 pandemic, we underlined: "Whether this new Covid-19 virus becomes a new pandemic, as happened with SARS, or whether it persists as a new seasonal respiratory virus, this new disease is a new warning that capitalism has become a danger to humanity and to life on this planet. The enormous capacity of the development of the productive forces, including medical science, to protect us from disease is being undermined by the criminal pursuit of profit, by the excessive concentration of a large part of the human population in unbearable cities, with the risks of new epidemics that this entails."
Today, this pandemic has become a problem on a major scale worldwide and has provoked a veritable economic "tsunami" with disastrous consequences. We will not go into the analysis of its economic implications here; we will do so in a future article. Here we will show the way in which this epidemic reveals the disease of capitalism.

We have confirmation: Covid-19 is a manifestation of capitalist decomposition!

Today, the most pessimistic predictions are confirmed and the WHO (World Health Organisation) has recognised that this is a global pandemic that has already spread to 117 countries on all continents, that the number of people affected has exceeded 120,000, that the number of deaths in the first weeks of the pandemic was over 4,000, etc. What began as a "problem" inside China has now become a social crisis for the world's major capitalist powers (Japan, United States, Western Europe, etc.). In Italy alone, the number of deaths has already exceeded those caused worldwide by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03. And the draconian population control measures taken one month ago by the "tyrannical" Chinese authorities, such as the confinement of millions of people[2], and those of a veritable "social Darwinism" consisting of excluding all those who are not a "priority" from hospital services in the fight to contain the disease, are now commonplace in many large cities in all the affected countries on all continents.
The bourgeois "media" are constantly bombarding us with information, with recommendations and endless "explanations" of what they present to us as a kind of scourge, a new "natural" disaster. But there is nothing "natural" about this catastrophe; it is the result of the asphyxiating dictatorship of the senile and outmoded capitalist mode of production, in conflict with nature and a threat to the human species.

Revolutionaries are not equipped for producing epidemiological studies or in making prognoses on the evolution of diseases. Our role is to explain, on a materialist basis, the social conditions that make the occurrence of these catastrophic events possible and inevitable. We have therefore made it clear that it is in the nature of the capitalist system to put exploitation, profit and accumulation before human need and that it is not possible for any different kind of capitalism to exist.  But we can also affirm that those same capitalist relations of production which, at one point in history, had made possible an enormous development of the productive forces (of science, of a certain mastery of nature to limit the suffering imposed on humanity ...) have today become an obstacle to their development.  We have also explained how the prolongation for decades of this phase of capitalist decadence has led, in the absence of a revolutionary solution, to the entry into a new phase: that of social decomposition[3], where all these destructive tendencies are even more concentrated, producing a downward spiral of chaos, barbarism and the gradual collapse of the very social structures that guarantee a minimum of social cohesion, threatening the very survival of life on planet Earth.

Are these the delusions of a handful of old fashioned marxists?  Certainly not. The scientists who speak most authoritatively about the development of the current Covid-19 pandemic affirm that the proliferation of this type of epidemic is caused, among other things, by the accelerated degradation of the environment, which leads to a greater contagion from animals (zoonoses) that live among the human populations in order to survive, and is, at the same time, further assisted by the concentration of millions of human beings in megalopolises that produce a truly dramatic rise in contagion.  As we explained in our previous article on Covid-19[4], some doctors in China had indeed tried to warn of a new risk from a coronavirus epidemic, starting in December 2019, but they were directly censored and suppressed by the state, as this would threaten the image to which Chinese capital aspires as a major world power.

The ICC is also not the first to insist that one of the main driving forces behind the spread of this pandemic is the increased lack of coordination of the policies of various countries, which is one key features of capitalism, but which is reinforced to an ever greater extent by the advance of "every man for himself" and the inward-looking attitude which characterises states and capitalists in the phase of decomposition of this system and which tends to permeate all social relations.
We are not revealing anything new when we point out that the danger of this disease lies not so much in the virus itself, but in the fact that this pandemic is taking place against a background of enormous degradation, over decades and on a global scale, in health infrastructures. It is, in fact, the “administration" of these increasingly leaner and more defective structures that is dictating the policies of the various states, who have tended to delay the announcements of the appearance of new cases, even if it means prolonging the effects of this pandemic over time. And this irresponsible degradation of the resources accumulated by decades of human work - knowledge, technology, etc: does it not reflect an absolute lack of perspective, a total absence of concern for the future of the human species, which is characteristic of a form of social organisation - capitalism - that is in its phase of decomposition?

How is it possible that in the 21st century there is an epidemic that the world's most powerful states are unable to contain?

Of course, there have been other extremely deadly epidemics in the history of mankind. Nowadays, it is easy to find in the bourgeois "media" investigations and books on how smallpox and measles, cholera or the bubonic plague caused millions of deaths. What is missing in such claims is an explanation that the cause of these deaths is essentially the result of society's shortcomings, both in terms of the living conditions and the knowledge of nature. Capitalism poses, precisely, the historical possibility of overcoming this stage of material scarcity and, through the development of the productive forces, of laying the foundations for an abundance that could make possible a true unification and liberation of humanity in a communist society. If we consider the 19th century, namely the highest point of capitalist expansion, we can see how health, and therefore sickness, were no longer seen as fatalistic, how there was progress not only in research but also in communication between different researchers, how there was a real change towards a more "scientific" approach to medicine[5]. And all this has an application in the daily life of populations: from measures to improve public hygiene to vaccines, from the formation of medical specialisations to the creation of hospitals. The increase in world population (from one to two billion people) and especially in life expectancy (from 30-40 years at the beginning of the 19th century to 50-65 years in 1900) is essentially due to this advance in science and hygiene. None of this was done by the bourgeoisie in an altruistic spirit for the needs of the population. Capitalism was born "dripping with blood and mud", as Marx said. But in the midst of this horror, its aim was to obtain maximum profitability from the labour force, from the knowledge acquired by its wage slaves during the decades of learning new production techniques and to ensure the stability of the transport of supplies and goods, etc. This has made the exploiting class "interested" - at the least cost, to be true - in prolonging the working life of its employees, in ensuring the reproduction of the commodity that is labour power, in increasing relative surplus value by increasing the productivity of the exploited class.
This situation was reversed with the change of historical period between the ascendant period of capitalism and its decadence, which we revolutionaries have identified, along with the Communist International, since the First World War[6]. It is no coincidence that, around 1918, one of the deadliest epidemics in the history of humanity occurred: the so-called "Spanish flu" of 1918-19. In the magnitude of this pandemic, we see that it was not so much the virulence of the pathogen itself as the social conditions characteristic of imperialist war in capitalist decadence (global dimension of the conflict, impact of the war on the civilian population of the main nations, etc.) that explain the scale of the catastrophe: 50 million dead, almost twice as many as in the trenches.

The horror of war had a second, even more terrifying expression in 1939-45. The atrocities of the first imperialist carnage, such as the use of asphyxiating gases, were briefly set aside before the barbarities of the World War of 1939-45 were unleashed by all the participating powers: the German and Japanese military using human beings in experiments and the industrial mass murder of the Nazi concentration camps; the  early use of biological weapons (the British military experimented with anthrax, for example); the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans.

And how should we understand the so-called period of "peace" that followed? It is true that the major capitalist powers created health care systems, based on the model of the British NHS created in 1948 - which is considered one of the founding landmarks of the so-called "welfare state" - to provide "universal" health care that aimed, among other things, to prevent epidemics such as the Spanish flu. Was this 'capitalist humanitarianism' and a victory for the workers? Certainly not. The purpose of these measures was to ensure the renewal, at the lowest cost, of a workforce (a precious commodity because the war had sent large sectors of the proletariat to the grave) and to ensure that the productive work of reconstruction was fulfilled. And this does not mean that the "remedies" employed do not themselves become sources of new disorders. We see this, for example, in the use of antibiotics prescribed to combat infections but which, in serving the needs of capitalist productivity, are abusively prescribed on a regular basis to shorten periods of sick leave. This has led to a major problem of bacterial resistance - the so-called "superbugs"- which eventually diminishes the medicinal arsenal for attacking infections. This has also manifested itself in the increase of diseases such as obesity and diabetes, caused by a worsening quality of the diet of the working class - that is, a devalorisation of the reproduction of the labour power of the exploited class - and of the poorest strata of society, to the point that capitalism's use of food technology is a factor in the spread of obesity. And we can also see how the drugs dispensed to make the pain that this system of exploitation inflicts on the working population more bearable, have led to phenomena such as the epidemic caused by the extensive use of opiate substances. Until the arrival of the coronavirus, this was the number one health problem in the United States, causing more deaths than all the victims of the Vietnam War.

The Covid-19 pandemic cannot be separated from the rest of the problems affecting the health of humanity. On the contrary, they show that the situation can only get worse if it remains subject to the dehumanised and commercialised machine that is the capitalist health system of the 21st century. The origin of diseases today is not so much humanity’s lack of knowledge or technology. Similarly, current knowledge in epidemiology should make it possible to contain a new epidemic. For example: within just two weeks of the discovery of the disease, research laboratories had already succeeded in sequencing the virus that caused Covid-19. The obstacle that the population has to overcome is that society is subject to a mode of production that benefits an exploiting social minority and has become a hindrance to the fight against disease. What we are seeing is that the race to develop a vaccine, instead of being a collective and coordinated effort, is actually a commercial war between laboratories. Genuine human needs are subordinated to the laws of the capitalist jungle. Fierce competition to get a product to market first and to be able to take advantage of that advantage is the only thing that matters to any capitalist.

Who is threatening the future of humanity, is it "irresponsible" individuals or the pressures of decomposition within the social system?

At our recent 23rd International Congress, we adopted a resolution on the international situation, in which we returned to and re-affirmed the validity of what we had written in our Theses on Decomposition:

“The May 1990 theses on decomposition highlight a whole series of characteristics in the evolution of society resulting from the entry of capitalism into this ultimate phase of its existence. The report adopted by the 22nd Congress noted the worsening of all these characteristics, such as:

- ‘the proliferation of famines in the ‘Third World’ countries…;

- the transformation of the ‘Third World’ into a vast slum, where hundreds of millions of human beings survive like rats in the sewers;

- the development of the same phenomenon in the heart of the major cities in the ‘advanced’ countries, … ;

- the recent proliferation of ‘accidental’ catastrophes (…) the increasingly devastating effects, on the human, social, and economic levels, of ’natural’ disasters …;

- the degradation of the environment, which is reaching staggering dimensions’ (Theses on decomposition, pt. 7)”

What we see today is that these manifestations have become the decisive factor in the evolution of capitalist society, and that it is only through them that we can interpret the emergence and development of major social events. If we look at what is happening with the Covid-19 pandemic, we can see the importance of the influence of two elements characteristic of this terminal phase of capitalism:

- First of all, China is not just the geographical setting for the origin of the most recent epidemics with the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003 and Covid-19. Beyond this circumstantial element, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of the development of Chinese capitalism at the stage of the decomposition of global capitalism and its influence on the current situation. In a few years, China has become the second world power with an enormous importance in world trade and economy, benefiting at first from the support of the US after its change of imperialist bloc (in 1972), and, after the disappearance of these blocs in 1989, as the main beneficiary of so-called globalisation. But precisely because of this, "China's power bears all the stigma of terminal capitalism: it is based on the over-exploitation of the proletariat's labour force, the unbridled development of the war economy of the national program of ‘military-civil fusion’ and is accompanied by the catastrophic destruction of the environment, while ‘national cohesion’ is based on the police control of the masses subjected to the political education of the One Party state (...).In fact, China is only a giant metastasis of the generalised militaristic cancer of the entire capitalist system: its military production has developed at a frenetic pace, its defence budget has increased sixfold in 20 years and it is ranked second in the world since 2010".[7] 
This development of China, which is so often put forward as an illustration of the enduring strength of capitalism, is in fact a clear manifestation of its decrepitude. Its technological conquests or its expansion throughout the world thanks to spectacular initiatives like the new "Silk Road", should not make us lose sight of the enormous conditions of overexploitation (the exhausting workdays, the poverty wages, etc.) where hundreds of millions of workers endure extremely poor housing, food and general living conditions, which, moreover, are further deteriorating. For example, per capita health expenditure, already meagre, has fallen by 2.3%. Another edifying example is that food is produced with very low hygiene standards or by ignoring them, as in the consumption of the meat from wild animals purchased on the black market. In the last two years, the worst epidemic in the history of African swine flu has spread inside China, necessitating the slaughter of 30% of these animals and causing a 70% increase in the price of pork meat.

- The second element that shows the growing impact of capitalist decomposition is the erosion of the minimum level of coordination that existed between the different national capitals. It is true that, as marxism has showed, the maximum unity to which capitalism can aspire - even reluctantly - is the national state, and therefore a super-imperialism is not possible. This does not mean that, when the world was divided into imperialist blocs, a whole series of structures were not created, from UNESCO to the WHO, which tried to implement a minimum of common interests between the different national capitals. But this tendency towards a minimum of coordination is deteriorating as the phase of capitalist decomposition progresses. As we have also analysed in the already quoted resolution on the international situation of our 23rd Congress: "The deepening of the crisis (as well as the demands of imperialist rivalry) is putting the multilateral institutions and mechanisms to a severe test”. (Point 20).

This can be seen, for example, in the role played by the WHO. The international coordination in the face of the SARS epidemic in 2002-03, as well as the speed of certain discoveries[8] in laboratories around the world, explains the low incidence today of a virus from a family very similar to that of the current Covid-19. However, this role has been jeopardised by the WHO's disproportionate response to the 2009 influenza A epidemic, in which the institution's alarmism was used to generate massive sales of the antiviral "Tamiflu" manufactured by a laboratory in which former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, had a direct interest. Since then, the WHO has been almost relegated to the role of an NGO making pontificating "recommendations", but it is incapable of imposing its directives on the various national capitals. They are not even able to unify the statistical criteria for counting infected persons, which opens the door for each national capital to try to conceal, for as long as possible, the impact of the epidemic in their respective countries. This has happened not only in China, which tried to hide the first signs of the epidemic, but also in the United States, which is trying to sweep under the carpet the number of people affected so as not to reveal the weaknesses of a health system based on private insurance to which 30% of American citizens have practically no access. The heterogeneity of the criteria for the application of diagnostic tests, or the differences between the protocols for action in the different phases, undoubtedly have negative repercussions for containing the spread of a global pandemic. Worse still, each national capital is adopting protectionist measures in terms of the provision of protective and hygienic equipment or artificial ventilation devices, as Merkel's Germany is doing.

These are measures which put the defence of national interests above what might be more urgent needs in other countries.

How to overcome the threat to health produced by capitalist social relations?

The media propaganda is constantly bombarding us with appeals for individual citizens to show responsibility in order to prevent the collapse of the health systems which, in numerous countries, are showing signs of exhaustion (physical exhaustion of the workers in the sector, lack of material and technical resources, etc). The first thing to denounce here is that we are dealing here with the chronicle of a catastrophe foretold.  And not because of the irresponsibility of citizens but because of decades in the reduction of health spending, of jobs for health workers and budgets to maintain hospitals and medical research[9] Thus in Spain for example, one of these countries closest to this “collapse” we are being called on to avoid, successive cuts have led to the disappearance of 8000 hospital beds[10], with beds in intensive care below the European average and with materials in a poor state of repair (67% of ventilators are over 10 years old). The situation is very similar in Italy and France. In Britain, presented as the model of universal healthcare, we have seen a continual deterioration in quality over the last 50 years, with more than 100,000 vacancies for healthcare personnel. And all that well before Brexit!

And it’s these same health workers who have seen their living and working conditions get worse and worse, facing growing pressure to provide care to more patients and deal with more illnesses, with staff numbers being reduced more and more, who now face the added pressure of a collapse of health services as a result of the pandemic. And those who applaud the courage and self-sacrifice of these public employees are the same people who have been driving them to exhaustion by getting rid of official breaks, transferring them from one job to another and making them work – in the face of a pandemic whose future evolution is not known – without adequate protective equipment (masks, clothing, etc) or adequate training. The fact of making health personnel work in these conditions makes them all the more vulnerable to the impact of the disease itself. As we have seen in Italy where at least 10% of health workers have caught the virus.

And to force the workers to obey these orders, they resort to the repressive arsenal of the “state of emergency”, threatening them with all kinds of sanctions against those who refuse to obey. These policies of the authorities have in a number of cases made the existing chaos even worse.

Faced with this situation, which imposes on the health personnel the fait accompli of the disastrous state of the care system, the workers in this sector are forced to apply methods which are close to those of eugenics, since they have no choice but to devote the meagre resources available to them to those patients who have the best chance of surviving, as we have seen with the directives issued by the Italian association of anaesthetists and emergency staff, which characterises the situation as a “state of war”[11]. And this is indeed a war on human need waged by the logic of capital, where the workers in this sector are afflicted with growing anxiety because they have to apply these inhuman laws. The anguish expressed by many of these workers is the result of the fact that they can’t even rebel against such criteria, or refuse to work in shameful conditions, or even reject making sacrifices in their living conditions, because if they did this by going on strike this would have a serious impact on their own class brothers and sisters, on the rest of the exploited. They can’t even meet together with other comrades, physically express their solidarity with other workers because that would contravene the rules of “social isolation” imposed to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

Our comrades in the health sector can’t come out in open struggle in the present situation but the rest of the working class can’t leave them on their own. All workers are victims of this system and all workers will sooner or later pay the costs of this epidemic. Whether it’s as a result of cuts in non-priority health services (suspension of surgical operations, medical consultations etc) or through the suppression of thousands of temporary contracts, or the reduction of wages to the level of sick pay etc. And to accept all this would give the green light to new and even more brutal anti-working class attacks that are being prepared. We must therefore continue to sharpen the weapons of class solidarity with rage in our hearts, as we saw recently with the strikes in France against pension “reforms”.

The explosion of the insurmountable contradictions of capitalism at the heart of the health system are unequivocal symptoms of the terminal phase of capitalism’s senility. Just as the virus has the strongest impact on aging bodies, provoking the most serious illnesses, so the healthcare system has been profoundly weakened by years of austerity and “management” based not on the needs of the population but on the demands of capitalism in crisis and decline. The same goes for the capitalist economy, which has been kept going artificially by manipulating the law of value and plunging head first into a sea of debt. This has made it so fragile that the epidemic could well trigger a new and brutal global recession.

But the proletariat is not merely the victim of this catastrophe for humanity that is capitalism. It is also the class which has the potential, the historic capacity, to eradicate the system once and for all, through its struggle, through developing its consciousness and its class solidarity. Only the communist revolution can and must replace human relations based on division and competition by relations based on solidarity, by organising production, labour, the resources of humanity and of nature on the basis of human need and not the laws of profit which serve an exploiting minority.

Valerio, 13.3.20

 

 

On July 20 1969, two men took the first steps on the moon. These exploits concretised one of the most audacious dreams of humanity, an unparalleled plan already imagined by Lucien of Samosata in the IInd century, later by the poet Cyrano de Bergerac and more recently, Jules Verne. But with capitalism, everything useful, every conquest, every advance, has its downside. The Apollo II Mission brought in its wake a frenzy of competition and a bellicose mentality which at the level of states is called imperialism. The militarisation of space is an old obsession of the great powers. In effect, the space-race was a crucial stake in the Cold War between the USA and Russia. It was necessary for them to get to the moon first and, if possible, them alone.[1]

The "space-race": a race to militarisation

First of all these space programmes were useful propaganda: the first Sputnik, the first man in space was triumphantly broadcast around the world by the USSR. Even today there remains a real cult devoted to Yuri Gagarin since his voyage around the Earth[2]. The flight of the three Apollo II astronauts was presented as the success of advanced American technology.

But behind the propaganda, these space programmes had a quite concrete military dimension. The fact is that everyone sent into space had come from the military (the first civilian to set foot on the moon was Harrison Schmitt in 1972... the last Apollo mission), the rocket science used by both the Americans and the Russians was initially developed for inter-continental missiles. NASA appealed to Wernher von Braun, who was lifted out of Germany after the war in a secret operation that included hundreds of other scientists who worked for the Nazis[3]. Following his work for the Third Reich and its success with his V2[4] rocket, the US employed him to design the US Saturn V rocket used to go to the moon. The Soviet launchers were also adapted copies of the German V2's. The R-7, which put Sputnik I in orbit, was nothing other than an inter-continental missile. As for the Europeans, Britain and France also profited from German technology by launching V2 rockets and then, in France, there was a development from this basis of its own launcher ending up in the "Ariane" programme. The Russian and American states first of all built missiles to carry nuclear charges before being interested in the space exploration made possible by the technology.

Moreover, the first satellites sent into space had a strictly military aim: the 144 satellites of the US Corona programme, begun in 1959, had the sole aim of spying on the enemy. In 1962, the United States made its first high-altitude nuclear test at 400 km ("Starfish Prime") while the Russians developed their "kamikaze satellites" in order to eliminate American spy satellites. The USSR even succeeded in putting into orbit two secret space stations armed with automatic cannons (Salyut 3 in 1974 and Salyut 5 in 1976).

During President Reagan's tenure, the US army prompted the "Strategic Defence Initiative" popularised under the name "Star Wars". The aim of this military programme was to be able to intercept ballistic missiles whose trajectory (like the V2) left Earth's atmosphere. Some real weapons were developed during this period, the anti-satellite ASM-135 or the "Patriot" anti-missile system, notably deployed during the Gulf War. The USSR tried to keep up but quickly gave up given the enormous resources thrown at it by the Americans: twelve billion dollars over five years, enabling them to get up to 30,000 scientists working on their projects. The technological advances made from this allowed the US to completely dominate their imperialist rivals in the domain of space. The effort here made by the USSR led to its ruin, ending up in its economic and political collapse in 1990.

A new race to the militarisation of space

Today, numerous signs point to a greater and greater interest by the main imperialist powers in space as a field of battle, possibly in the confrontation where one opposes the other. One could see this as just a technological and scientific issue, but the runners in this race, when they talk openly, see things much more "strategically": "faced with the quarrels taking place in European and French space agencies, Thomas Husak (...) considers that 'given the strategic stakes we cannot allow ourselves to be divided'. A word to the wise... Much more than the USA and China, beyond questions of sovereignty, there is participation in a real commercial war in developing space capacities (launchers, applications...). The European Union is well aware of this, betting heavily on space with a constantly increasing budget: five billion euros in 2007, then thirteen billion in 2018 and finally sixteen billion in 2027"[5].

Today, as well as the Russians, Americans and Europeans, there are other actors arriving on the scene of space competition: India and China have shown their ambitions in this domain... by demonstrating their ability to destroy orbiting satellites. In launching satellites capable of approaching other satellites, Russia has worried certain other states sufficiently enough push France into providing itself with an autonomous space command whose avowed aim is to protect French satellites: "We can see with this intrusion that we are vulnerable, said Stephane Mazouffre. And that's even truer when Europe hasn't developed a system to destroy satellites from the ground up. In March 2019, India became the fourth country to destroy, by missile, one of its satellites in low orbit"[6].

General Friedling, leader of the French inter-army command on space, made clear in an interview that it wasn't illegal to install armaments in space "if their aim were non-aggressive"[7]. When we know that the most developed states depend on the US GPS satellite system for 6 or 7% of their GDP, we can understand the interest that they have in protecting their satellites and their space communications!

The "peaceful" exploration of space masks the hypocrisy over its militarisation

Evidently, when the bourgeoisie develops an overtly aggressive strategy, above all in the domain of space which doesn't appear strategic at first sight, it also develops a whole range of propaganda in order to obscure its real intentions. In France, such has been the role, conscious or not, of astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who became a leading expression of the state's propaganda claiming to show the most "peaceful" side of the space activity of the major nations. Outside of the fact that the equipping of the International Space Station (ISS) has always been international, links between schools, direct scientific experiences and numerous photos of Earth taken by Pesquet have given a very "peaceful" and "neutral" image of present space activity[8]. President Macron’s involvment in the official welcome that the astronaut received when he returned to Earth illustrates all the French state's effort of communication behind this episode. The exploration of the moon and Mars poses many scientific elements but also more clearly prosaic elements too; notably who can lay claim to the resources that could eventually be extracted from the lunar or Martian soils.

Since the 2000's we've seen more or less fantastical projects put together, from "tourism in space" to the pure and simple exploitation of the mineral resources of asteroids or even the moon and Mars. On the off-chance, various countries have provided themselves with legislation regarding the ownership of celestial objects[9]. The aim is to establish a juridical support to eventual mining prospecting in space. A certain number of firms and billionaires like Richard Branson have proclaimed their interest in these opportunities and in the creation of space tourism, but a certain number of elements show that in reality this is only a mirage. The Virgin Galactic company, founded in 2004, is still incapable of achieving what it was created for, sending "tourists" into terrestrial orbit. If the creation of an "orbital aeroplane" capable of following a trajectory coming out of Earth's gravitational attraction is a possibility, sending tourists to the moon is another story completely: even the future rockets of NASA cannot carry more than four passengers! However, cosmologically speaking, the moon is not far away! But, technically, nothing is ready.

If "space tourism" appears a chimera, what about the exploitation of mineral resources from space? In order to exploit fanciful natural resources in space it would be first of all necessary to send numbers of workers into space with particularly sophisticated and thus costly heavy equipment. Profits from such an operation thus appear totally illusory, much more so when the necessary technology remains to be invented. None of this can solve the problems of capitalism in any case; what it lacks is not raw materials but buyers!

Finally, a recent independent report published in February 2019, concluded that in the present conditions there is no precise aim, nor the technical capacity, nor the finance to send anyone to Mars between now and ... 2033! "We note that, even without budget restraints, an orbital mission to Mars 2033 cannot be realistically planned in the framework of the present plans and theory of NASA"[10]. When we know that the above report puts a figure of at least 217 billion dollars in costing a space programme to Mars, we can see the breadth of the effort demanded of the American economy at a time when global economic perspectives are darkening by the day. As to the reason effectively pushing the US space agency to plan a Martian expedition, the report concludes... there are none!

It's funny to note that the problems of costs do not spare the "peaceful" space industry: NASA's budget represented 4.5% of US GDP in 1966, but now only represents 0.5% of it. Last September, India launched a moon lander module whose main characteristic was its low cost (six times cheaper than an identical programme developed by China). But the set-backs of this moon landing were preceded by various incidents affecting the launch, showing that trying to do too much with so little is not really a strategy that pays off in space... Far from doping the economy, these projects not only cost a fortune without any returns but they are already prey to the "low cost" approach which is gangrening the whole capitalist economy.

From all this we can only conclude one thing: the scientific and "peaceful" perspectives that states are developing for the conquest of the Solar System are nothing but propaganda; propaganda which is against the real, hidden objective of providing themselves with an array of military satellites in the framework of an imperialist confrontation!

In fact space is an essentially military and strategic stake: spying, telecommunications, GPS tracking and military communications all converge to make space the present field of strategic operations of the major imperialisms. "Space is already militarised, warns Stephane Mazouffre, research director of the Icare laboratory of CNRS, at Orleans-La Source. All countries have spy satellites, communication satellites dedicated to the military which also utilises GPS systems... A satellite itself is a weapon. Why? Because if its orbit can be altered, it's enough for it to approach another satellite in order to perturb its orbit and make it inoperable. The simple fact of being able to move a satellite closer to another can be considered as a possible attack"[11]. All the deployments of armies, from the movement of troops to strategic bombardments, depend on the GPS system or its European competitor, Galileo. All securitised communications go through satellites that consequently have to be protected from the risk of being totally disarmed faced with an enemy. In this optic one can understand why the great powers provide themselves with a specifically military space operation with its own budget. The collapse of the imperialist blocs and the development of "everyone for themselves" have largely meant that new actors are constantly looking out to get involved in this vital domain for their own imperialist interests. These intentions are clear in the case of France which has some experience in this matter: [12] "The law on the French military programme (LPM) 2019-2025, foresees a budget of 3.6 million euros for space defence. It must in particular allow for the renewal of French observational satellites (CSO) and communications (Syracuse), and launch into orbit three electromagnet listening satellites (Ceres) and modernise the Graves space surveillance radar.[13]

Capital makes war everywhere, including space

As we see, and despite soothing declarations of intentions, space has been a field of rivalries between the major imperialist sharks for a long time; and today more than ever it’s a key element in the affirmation of their military power. Even beyond the economic aims that bourgeois propaganda and some private operators have broadcast (space tourism, extraction of minerals from asteroids, planetary exploration, regular return trips to the moon) which themselves constitute a component of imperialism, it is also the object of an intense battle for the protection of the advanced technology of the major powers towards eventual new competitors. But above all that, the real stakes of the militarisation of space can only be the preparation for future conflicts.

"Capitalism brings war as the clouds bring the storm" Jaures said. He could never have imagined that capital, far from stopping at the level of the ground and the sky, would a century later bring war and militarism much higher than the clouds, so that the necessity to destroy this system in order to halt this universal militarism becomes ever more urgent.

H.D.

"Each of us must participate in this massive effort to preserve global security," said the director of the WHO in a press release dated March 16. On March 27, French President Macron declared: "We will not overcome this crisis without strong European solidarity, on the health and budgetary levels". And German Chancellor Merkel demanded, in the face of the health crisis: "more Europe, a stronger Europe and a Europe that works well"! Politicians urge people to show solidarity, good citizenship and unity to fight "the invisible enemy". While the need for masks and medical equipment is immense due to a scandalous shortage, all politicians and the media have denounced thefts in hospitals, pharmacies and even from carers' cars. The bourgeoisie winds up the media and widely publicises the selfish behavior of these “infamous and despicable” thugs, at a time when the whole world is in a so-called “war” against the pandemic of Covid-19.

In reality, while on the one hand the bourgeoisie displays its indignation and contempt for theft, on the other it coldly applies the same methods of brigands on the international scene: hijackings and “requisitions” of orders from other countries, outbidding and purchases of medical equipment directly from airport tarmacs. This is how the bourgeoisie expresses its “solidarity” “to preserve world security”!

So, at the start of the epidemic in Europe, China diplomatically and interestingly, sent some masks and respirators to Italy, but these were immediately diverted by the Czech Republic. With staggering hypocrisy, the latter completely denied any theft and pleaded an unfortunate “mistake”!

At the beginning of March, it was France which "requisitioned" Swedish masks on its territory from under the noses of Spain and Italy, countries very hard hit by the epidemic. It was only after the intervention of the Swedish government that the French state agreed, under pressure, to keep "only" half of the stolen stock. A month later, with the affair gaining momentum (it was, of course, a “misunderstanding”), Macron pleaded for "more coherence" and, despite himself, sent all of the masks on to their destinations.

The United States is also accused of having diverted medical equipment destined for Germany, Canada and France. Trump, unlike his foreign counterparts with more civilized appearances, nevertheless displayed his colours clearly and brutally: "we need these masks; we don't want other people to get them"!

In Africa, an epidemiologist recently warned about the very worrying situation on the continent: hospitals cannot obtain tests. Priority is given to the big guys, the big sponsors: the United States or Europe. The “great democracies” are holding on to testing equipment for their own interests! No wonder then that Africa seems little affected by COVID-19! The list of cynical acts of piracy by bourgeois states grows ever longer![1]

Even at the national level, the bourgeoisie falls into the war of each against all by default. In fact, like the states that scramble on the tarmac in order to steal medical equipment, federal states, regions and even cities are tearing themselves apart in order to protect "their" inhabitants.

Similarly, in Spain, where the weight of regionalism weighs heavily, a controversy erupted when the government decided to requisition and centralise the stocks of masks. But the incompetence of the Spanish authorities has led each regional government to look for its own supplies in competition with the others. The central state has been accused of fueling tensions and even of "invasion" by Torra, the president of the Generalitat in Catalonia. Everything is a pretext to assert petty “regional” interests where one is master of one's home! In Mexico too, the governor of Jalisco is pressuring the federal government to stop keeping back tests for the benefit of the Mexico region.

The bourgeoisie drapes itself with beautiful moralising speeches and calls for international solidarity, urges its "troops" to close ranks around the protective state. What lies! The "solidarity" which the bourgeoisie calls for is only an expression of each for itself, a reinforcement of chaos and capitalist barbarism on a planetary scale!

Faced with the crisis, letting the national state rip-off masks intended for "foreigners" only aggravates the problem. Capitalism, cynical and deadly, has no perspective to offer to humanity other than what is illustrated today by this lamentable spectacle of plunder: misery and destruction! The only social force capable of putting an end to the war of each against all is the working class, a class that has no homeland to defend, whose interests are the needs of all humanity and not that of the “nation” (or its “regionalist” version)! It is the working class, through health and careworkers, who today are saving lives at the risk of their own. Although the current pandemic context prevents any massive mobilization and limits expressions of solidarity in the struggle, it is the working class which, in many sectors and in several countries, is trying to resist the consequences of the negligence of the bourgeoisie and the anarchy of capitalism. Our class is the bearer of a society without borders and without competition, where hospital workers will no longer be forced to make an abominable "assessment" between the “productive” and “unproductive” patients (retired or disabled), where the value of lives will no longer be determined by budgets!

 Olive, April 7 2020

We have received an article on the legislative elections in Korea from the comrades of the Korea-based group Internationalist Communist Perspective. The comrades underline in this article “However, nothing can be achieved for the working class through elections. This is because the electoral system itself maintains all the political systems and governing bodies of bourgeois society and strengthens the passivity of the workers...

(…) The working class should not have the illusion that the liberation of the workers can be obtained through parliamentary means and winning majorities in elections. Taking power by the working class and its full political participation can only be achieved through the destruction of capitalism and its state institutions.”

The article of the comrades was written before the elections in Korea, which took place on 15 April 2020 and ended in a landslide victory for the current president Moon Jae-in, to a large extent because of the country’s relatively effective response to the Covid-19 outbreak. According to the comrades this text was the only voice raised against participating in the elections.

With the highest turn-out over the past decades – 66% - the ruling class achieved what it wanted: strengthening the credibility of bourgeois democracy and its parliamentary system. While the measures put in place under president Moon Jae-in were praised as most efficient in combating the health risks of the corona virus, the ruling class will now use the elections to bolster its democratic legitimation – because the Democratic Party and the Citizens’ Together Party won more than 60% of the seats, and they will now claim that the biggest majority of any government coalition in power is entitled to defend the interests of Korean national capital and demand more sacrifices. Because while the dangers to the health of people may have been protected better than in other countries, as the comrades of IPC write, the working class will now be presented with a heavy bill for the economic consequences. And their warning in the article that “regardless of the outcome after the elections, the capitalists and the government will start attacking the working class” was a very realistic assessment. We agree with the comrades’ strong denunciation of bourgeois elections. Some formulations in the article such as the rise of fascism in Korea are not clear from our point of view and would need further clarification and this should be subject of a debate.

ICC, April 27, 2020

ICP Statement

Another bourgeois election is due (on 15th April 2020) in the face of the capitalist crisis, the Covid19 pandemic, and the resulting catastrophe for the world proletariat. Again the Korean working class is being told to exercise its ‘democratic right’ to elect representatives that they cannot control. There is no alternative unless the working class has power in its own hands.

What is the reality for the working class that has repeatedly gone to the polls? Governments change, politicians change, and individuals from a working class background have been elected to the National Assembly to ‘represent’ the workers, but the living conditions of the workers have not improved. Rather, they have got worse and workers live in an increasingly dangerous society where no one is guaranteed a stable life. Even the Moon Jae-in government which claimed to be the successor of the candle light movement and took “respect for labor” as its slogan, and claims to be fighting against the threat of worsening living conditions and all kinds of discrimination, has no solution. The promises of politicians have for a long time been promises that cannot be kept. It was the same with the promises of the so-called progressive labour parties that persuaded you to vote for them and to wait until they take power to change the world through elections.

The bourgeois parliamentary system conceals the violent rule of the capitalist state. It uses relatively less barbaric violence than other forms of rule, and allows periodic elections to replace the governing party by other factions of the ruling class. Elections and parliamentary systems create the illusion that the working class directly elects people to govern them and is participating in political power.  Workers are supposed to believe that they have delegated power to the elected politicians when they participate in the elections, that they participate in power by voting. However, once elected, politicians are not directly controlled by the voters, and most of them, apart from during the election period, act independently of the voters.

In addition, since bourgeois elections exist primarily to strengthen capitalist rule, they are never allowed to change capitalist rule itself or abolish exploitation and oppression. Therefore, in the bourgeois election the main forces are not ‘voters’ but bourgeois political forces, and the whole election process and its results are obliged to operate according to their rules.

It was the very same politicians who got together to make the vicious labor laws and maintained the national security laws that have turned this election into high comedy. They are defenders of the system that discriminates and excludes people with disabilities, the poor, migrants, and sexual minorities.

In this, one of the worst ever bourgeois elections, there are still many forces that want to get into the bourgeois dining room as representatives of the “Jinbojeongdang (the Progressive Party)” and as “workers’ candidates”. There is also a more radical left which supports and declares solidarity towards them, saying that it will help to develop “class consciousness”. They criticise electoralism in words but they participate in the elections in the name of “tactics”. Instead of defending the politics of the working class on the terrain of the class struggle they have idealised the “election struggle”, begging for votes at the bourgeois banquet, saying that workers' politics can be implemented at the parliamentary level.

However, nothing can be achieved for the working class through elections. This is because the electoral system itself maintains all the political systems and governing bodies of bourgeois society and strengthens the passivity of the workers, turning them into a “voting machine”. In bourgeois politics, even the achievements of the mass struggle are delegated to and used by professional politicians for their own purpose. We have experienced countless negative consequences when the struggle was delegated to bourgeois politicians and saw how rights that were not defended by struggle collapsed in an instant.

If you reflect on bourgeois politics and elections, you have to conclude that they have only brought bitter defeats for the working class. You should now turn away from the bourgeois “banquet” of the elections. Defending the working class position, we have to publicly declare that capitalism is the cause of human misery, and beyond that, a communist society is the only alternative.

The Covid 19 pandemic is a global disaster, but it is announcing even more pain and sacrifice for the working class. The situation is the same in South Korea. Regardless of the outcome after the elections, the capitalists and the government will start attacking the working class. It should not be forgotten that the one-sided sacrifice and patience of the working class is hidden by the propaganda that the Moon Jae-in government is responding to Covid-19 relatively well.

The current crisis is not new. Capitalism has already been in a deep crisis for a long time, and the Covid- 19 crisis is just the latest warning signal that will bring about a bigger crisis. The inability of bourgeois politics to prevent the capitalist crisis is facing workers with a more serious crisis, boosting racism and xenophobia, populism and fascism. With the Covid-19 crisis, capitalism has officially thrown away its universalist values of peace and coexistence. Covid-19 threatens human health and life, but the ruling class has not stopped exploiting it to generate profits, and will pass the cost of the crisis onto the working class.

Capitalism's savagery is the result of the system of exploitation itself. This is obviously a consequence of the capitalist system, not of misled leaders or representatives through elections. The only solution is to overcome the capitalist system through revolution and to replace the law of profit, which serves the exploiting minority, by organising production, labor, human and natural resources according to human needs.

The working class should not have the illusion that the liberation of the workers can be obtained through parliamentary means and winning majorities in elections. Taking power by the working class and its full political participation can only be achieved through the destruction of capitalism and its state institutions. Although there are only a few of us now, it is our hope workers will recognise that elections cannot change anything, and create a system where the majority can control society. Those who create democracy for themselves through struggles, without committing their lives to the bourgeois politics of hypocrisy and inequality, those who create democracy from below, equal to all and enabling the involvement of all, are the future of the working class.

In the period of capitalist decadence all bourgeois elections are nothing but a fraud. Every day, hundreds of workers’ struggles occur all over the world, and tens of thousands of times a year. However, with elections which are held once every few years, the working class is deprived of its potential and most of its daily life is dominated by them. This is the reality of the 'democratic rights' in which workers become slaves through elections. As long as workers obey the rules of bourgeois politics and elections, capitalism can never be overcome.

The politics of the working class is possible only in places of resistance and struggle, not in polling booths. It is only possible where workers live, debate and act, and where class solidarity and unity exist.

· In the face of this general election with the Covid-19 crisis restricting mass struggles, let's overcome electoralism and parliamentarism!

· Let's prepare for a massive struggle against the total offensive of the capitalist class that the Covid-19 crisis will bring!

· the Covid-19 Pandemic reveals that capitalism is the most serious virus. The cure is communism!

· Beyond the bourgeois elections, toward communism as the future of the working class !!!

April 11, 2020
Internationalist Communist Perspective

Graph showing the decline in the number of hospital beds and places in France between 2013 and 2018

While the epidemic was already largely spread in Europe and notably in Italy, the French bourgeoisie were very late in timidly beginning to take measures in order to "protect" the population. It wasn’t until the situation was catastrophic in certain regions such as Picardy and the Alsace that the Macron government woke up and took drastic decisions: necessary isolation, closing of frontiers, police controls and mobilisation of the army to help medical teams that are totally overwhelmed.

"We are at war!" declared President Macron in his speech of March 16. Elements of martial language flourished in the mouths of all the ministries and politicians of every stripe: "The enemy is here"! "National unity"! "War"! "General mobilisation"! "War effort"! The government even resorted to the poor old men, "heroes of World War II", in order to explain that coughing into your elbow was like an "act of Resistance".

If "the enemy" remains "invisible" and "unknowable", the fight against this pandemic has, in fact, been that of a real war: government lies and half-truths have multiplied, they send millions of workers to risk their lives at the front (economic, that is) and that's when they are not sacrificing people by telling them to walk into polling booths for the local elections; an action that's both suicidal and irresponsible!

The bourgeois state is responsible for the mass graves!  

'We are ready and ultra-ready. Should it last two years, there will no shortages of masks, hydro-alcoholic gel for our soldiers (in white uniforms)', General Macron could have declared. But the reality is the exact opposite: faced with the negligence of the state and the amateurism of Macron, the government is winging it and now relies entirely on doctors to protect the population. Thus, while the Jupiterian war-chief and his ministers play their little games, hospital personnel sacrifice themselves in order to save lives and are doing so with largely insufficient means.

Today, faced with COVID-19, working hours are lengthening in a crazy fashion in all the services and nurses are exhausted from working shifts of fourteen hours, increasing still more the risks of serious errors. The hospital workers have vented their anger on all the TV channels. In Alsace, faced with the number of dead and patients with severe breathing difficulties, the state has had to improvise a "military hospital campaign" in an unprecedented logistical fog in order to support civilian hospitals choked by the lack of beds and equipment.

As to stocks of masks, hydro-alcoholic solutions, protective caps, uniforms, respirators, there is general shortage! In 2005, the state held a strategic stock of 723 million masks (1.4 billion in 2011 following the H1N1 crisis). But in 2013, budget restrictions meant that the stocks fell to 150 million. Faced with rationing, the recourse to out-of-date masks, even the re-use of old masks, the government has drawn 12 million from the already depleted state reserves... for masks for 1.1 million hospital workers who are supposed to throw them into the bin after four hours use. That's enough for four days use if the hospital is lucky enough to get a delivery. As to "non-priority" services and laboratories doing thousands of tests daily, they face identical problems.  More masks![1] Hospital workers in "the front line" thus find themselves exposed to the sickness. An emergency doctor in Compiègne has just died due to the virus and others will probably follow him to the grave! How can Macron look at himself in a mirror when he dares to assert that health must come before everything else?

Moreover, in order to shift its responsibility and the reality of the situation, the state, acting like a banana republic, blatantly lied. The numbers of sick were thus largely underestimated and the government and the Regional Health Agencies kept quiet for several days about the fact that screenings were "no longer systematic", according to the admirable understatement of the Minister of Health. Similarly the authorities let it be understood that the "saturation of hospitals" was localised to some areas. Shameless lies! The press and even social networks buzzed with poignant witness to tearful medical staff, showing the breadth of the catastrophe.

It has to be clearly stated: this chaos is the product of the decadence of the capitalist system, of budget cuts that the state has had to make for decades in order to keep the national capital afloat!

From 2004, the state made the choice to drastically reduce basic research into coronavirus for budgetary reasons[2]. The ruling class knew perfectly well that hospitals, already drained by simple, seasonal flu, wouldn't stand up to the shock of a major epidemic[3]. The bourgeois state has deliberately chosen to let workers die in order to put its finances first.

With an unbearable paternalistic tone, General Macron today praises the courage and heroism of the doctors, nursing assistants, nurses and paramedics, forgetting very conveniently that he sent his CRS to gas them for a whole year while the “soldiers in white coats” asked for the equipment and staff in order to care for their patients! During a year of strikes and demonstrations, the bourgeoisie hasn't ceased to show contempt for medical workers, their only response being the totally insignificant[4] "hospital plan" and sickening insinuations about the privileged position of public sector workers. Macron may well flatter them by describing them as "heroes" but their wages and working conditions will not stop getting worse.

The dismantling of the health system in France

The health system in France, as everywhere else in the world, is in ruins, cut to the bone on the altar of "budgetary rigour" so dear to Minister of Public Action and Accounts, Gerald Darmanin, one of General Macron’s best soldiers. In twenty years, the number of hospital beds has been reduced by 100,000! The numbers of hospitals and clinics has gone down from 1416 sites in 2014 to 1356 in 2018[5]. Symbolic of the destruction of the health care system, the government decided in 2014 to sell the military hospital of Val de Grace, the best performing and the best equipped hospital in France.

Logically, in 2017, France had 309 intensive care places per 100,000 inhabitants against 601 in Germany[6] which (a miracle!) is suffering a mortality rate much lower (for the moment) than its neighbours. In some regions, as in eastern France or Corsica, beds and equipment are sorely lacking and the triage of patients has already begun. It's a real dose of "war medicine" where the wounded and most seriously ill (notably the elderly) are left to die and can't be treated because of the profitability of the national economy.

All this is of course accompanied by a chronic lack of personnel with those working subject to killer shifts, extra hours and wages of misery[7]. The dismantling of the care system is also shown through the so-called policy of numerus clausus, limiting numbers of medical staff from all areas into the system. For 50 years, doctors and nurses have been selected by competition with a number of laureates arbitrarily fixed by ministerial decree, in what one suspects is the strictest logic of budgetary discipline. This forced the second European economic power to literally "import" cheaper doctors and nurses from Spain, the Maghreb or the countries of the East.

The bourgeoisie has no other means than coercion to stem the pandemic

In order to lessen the impact of the health crisis on the "French production apparatus", a series of urgent measure were adopted at the highest levels of the state, the first of which was a very late semi-isolation. While the epidemic began in Europe in February, we had to wait until March 16 for General Macron to finally announce measures of isolation. Up until then his priority was to take measures of austerity against the working class, notably forcing through the pension reforms while the epidemic continued to spread.

However, the government was well aware of the danger that COVID-19 represented. Ex-health minister, the "white angel" Agnes Busyn, publicly let the cat out of the bag (motivated no doubt by the electoral results that finished her attempts to become mayor of Paris) and warned the head of the state very early on of the imminence of the catastrophe: "I know that there is a tsunami coming towards us". “January 30, I warned (Prime Minister) Edouard Philippe that doubtless the elections shouldn't take place", "They should have stopped them, it was a masquerade"[8].

The "masquerade" took place. The government knowingly aggravated the spread of the epidemic by sending millions of citizens out to vote in a great democratic mass. The crying incapacity of one of the world's major powers to provide its population with the means of effective protection (masks, gloves, washing solutions) imposed more drastic measures of confinement.

But "masquerade" doesn't at all sum up the criminal organisation of elections in the full force of an epidemic; and then, in the same speech of March 16, Macron asked his "dear compatriots" not to come out onto the streets... "... except to vote and do the shopping". This paradoxical injunction (go out, don't go out, go to work, don't go to work) meant that many couldn't believe in the reality and the seriousness of this pandemic. It was thus not surprising that numerous "citizens" lacked "civil responsibility" and took advantage of the good weather to go for a stroll by the river or in public parks.

The speech of Macron trying to play both ends against the middle is similar to his decision to maintain the first round of the municipal elections which was still an "error" that was exploited by Marine Le Pen in her electoral campaign.

Under pressure from medical bodies, Macron and his Interior Minister Christophe Castaner took the decision for a general confinement. An army of 100,000 cops and military was deployed over the territory in order to enforce the lock-down and the multiplication of curfews. Faced with the gravity of the pandemic, the dominant class had no other choice than to use coercion in order to avoid mass deaths.

On the Cote d'Azur, a drone with a loudspeaker attached flew over the communes of Nice and Cannes ordering pedestrians to go home: "Remember the rules around the Covid-19 epidemic, going outside is forbidden unless you have an exemption. Keep a distance from each other of at least a metre apart", repeated the message from the drone.

The police, with the sense of discernment that we know so well, has not hesitated in applying and aiming the government's measures at the poor and the homeless: "several homeless people have been warned by the forces of order in France because they weren't respecting the lock-down (...) Cases have been registered in Paris, Lyon and Bayonne"[9]. The cops didn't hesitate to warn four people in mourning at the door of a cemetery for "not respecting the rules", affirming that there was "nothing imperative about a funeral". The bourgeoisie can do no other than deploy its forces of order, but it also profits from the situation by habituating the population to the militarisation of society when the "enemy within" will no longer be the virus but the working class in struggle.

On all the TV channels, every day, hospital workers mobilised on "the frontline" are interviewed to exhort the population to rigorously respect the lock-down and social distancing. Because, alas, it's the only means today to fight the ravages of the coronavirus and limit the contagion.

The bourgeoisie treats the health of the exploited with the greatest contempt

The "masquerade" is also expressed in the millions of people pressed together every day in public transport, in the workshops of factories and the areas which the bourgeoisie has "confined" workers by the hundreds. The criminal "masquerade" of the bourgeoisie and its government is that thousands of businesses are still open for the production of essentials only in name. When workers in a building refused to expose themselves to the virus for no reason, the Minister for Work, Penicaud, dared to talk about "defeatism". "In the war against this epidemic, the economic world represents a rear-guard", the President of MEDEF (the French employers' organisation) underlined.

In order to get workers who want to leave their place of exploitation to stay put, the government has unleashed two of its most redoubtable arms: repression and propaganda. The state naturally counts on its trade union guard dogs to ensure discipline. The latter have continually called for "the indispensable means for the protection of the health and security of workers who have to go to work" and "to salute the engagement of workers in public services and elsewhere"[10]. This can be translated as: go to work! We are expressing concerns about your protection thanks to the "social dialogue" with the company and the boss! When the workers express their reticence more openly, the unions are quick to talk about the "right to withdraw" of each individual from "their" workplace.

"The state of health emergency" hasn't prevented the government from exhorting workers not to respect isolation when work from home is not possible. But henceforth, if workers refuse to go to work and prefer to guard their health and those of their loved ones, will we see the cops arrest them and sanction all those that the state judges a hindrance to the good functioning of the national economy? The idea of taking holidays has been mooted by employers to "compensate" for absenteeism. Even workers in some tax offices have been told not to abandon their posts. This selective confinement is part of the logic of capital, which demands that this killer pandemic mustn't prevent the "continuity" of the national economy.

"My priority is to save the French productive apparatus", thus declared Bruno Le Maire, Economy Minister/dragoon, sword drawn. As so pleasantly underlined by the journalist of Atlantico, Jean-Sebastien Ferjou, on LCI: "the real question (...) is do we prefer to sacrifice our old and weak or do we prefer to lose two points off the GDP?" The government has chosen to sacrifice the old and weak.

It's the working class who will pay the bill

Regarding its outrageous propaganda, the French bourgeoisie, in the image of its neighbours, has spared nothing. In calling for a "general mobilisation" and "national unity", the bourgeoisie has unleashed a most nauseating nationalist campaign.

The bourgeoisie has already prepared the ground for the economic devastation that this "health war" will engender, and it's the working class who will pay the bill. The "spirit of sacrifice" that goes along with a period of "reconstruction" is already the order of the day. Already, the most precarious workers have lost the hours that allow them to survive. Already, those technically unemployed will not receive their full wages, contrary to government promises. The propaganda is drummed into our heads that because of the epidemic everyone in the future will have to tighten their belts. While they made us think that "greedy bankers" and "crazy finance" was the at the origin of the financial crisis of 2008, they are trying today to make us think that it's Covid-19 which is at the origin of the economic crisis. But reality is far different: not only is the epidemic only a catalyst, an accelerant of the capitalist crisis, it is itself a pure product of the crisis.

In the press and on social networks, from television to Youtube, people out jogging alone are being designated as irresponsible for spreading the virus. Hasn't it dawned on the journalists and "Youtubers" that these impudent exercisers have found it ridiculous to be forbidden to breathe fresh air after being heaped together in their millions on trains, in factories, in warehouses, in the polling booths? The state is also unleashing a campaign of individual guilt in order to better hide its own negligence and its incapacity to stem the pandemic.  

But where the ideological campaign of the bourgeoisie is most pernicious is the call for applause for hospital personnel. TV channels have shown, on the loop, the images of an illuminated Eiffel Tower and of the surrounding areas applauding the doctors and nurses every night at 2000, sometimes from windows and even to the strains of the Marseillaise. The bourgeoisie will not hold back from any cynicism, any indecency as it did when it called for the population to redouble its applause after the death of the first doctor. "Soldiers dying for France" falling on the field of honour under popular jubilation and applause! It's nothing other than a distortion of proletarian solidarity echoing the military discourse of General Macron vaunting the "heroism" of the carers. Although the applause could warm their hearts, the medical workers have no need of medals for their good and loyal service to the "Nation". They need personal protective gear, specialised equipment, masks, tests and extra workers. They need the "recognition" of their exploiters to be shown by increases in wages and staff so they don't go under due to the diabolical hours they are working.

Anger can only spread

Faced with the negligence of the bourgeoisie and the breakdown of a health system that makes it more and more difficult to look after the sick, anger is rising among the workers. The contempt of the dominant class for human life appalls the exploited. There are many who no longer put up with the government exposing those not obeying the rules, or having to expose themselves to sanctions when nothing justifies their attendance at work. Delivery drivers of Deliveroo and Uber, the SNF workers of Andrezieux, those of La Redoute and Saverglass in the Oise thus went on strike to protest against their dangerous working conditions. At Amazon and the postal service workers also walked out. Elsewhere, numerous proletarians enthusiastically expressed their solidarity from their windows demanding equipment for the hospital workers, not applauding them as "the Nation's heroes", but with the cry of "Money! Money for the public hospitals"!

In the immediate though, what dominates is fear and paralysis faced with a health catastrophe that the dominant class is unable to get on top of. The impossibility of meeting up together doesn't allow the working class today to take up the road to struggle on its own grounds.

Nevertheless, all these expressions demonstrate that combativity is very much alive, that the proletariat will not fatally accept the negligence of those who exploit them. "We are not cannon-fodder" could be heard among health workers.

When this health crisis is overcome, the "protector" state will once again reveal its true face. The attacks on all of the conditions of proletarian life (aggravated by the plunge of the economy into the abyss of recession) can only end up, in time, not with a Sacred Union of exploited and exploiters, but with new explosions of indignation and anger.

This global health catastrophe can only contribute to reflection in the working class and a development of consciousness that capitalism is a completely rotten system, a real curse threatening the survival of the human race.

EG, 22 March 2020

Following the publication of our article “Who is who in Nuevo Curso”[1], which denounces the collaboration of the individual known as Gaizka with the high functionaries and institutions of the bourgeois state, this person has up till now maintained absolute silence. No comment. Silence is his response. And we can hardly believe that he hasn’t understood what we are saying, because his friends have immediately leapt to his defence[2]. But none of them have refuted any of the facts that we have brought to light: nothing, zero, nada.

This silence is a crying confirmation that Gaizka’s career is that of an arriviste and an adventurer. He says nothing because he has nothing to say.

This silence is a well-known kind of response which can only corroborate the fact that our accusations are well-founded, and in this respect Paul Frölich[3] relates in his autobiography an edifying anecdote about the behaviour of one of the editors of the press: “He had an instinct for tactical behaviour. Once I was very surprised that he did not respond to repeated attacks from another party newspaper. ‘Very simply’, he said, ‘I was wrong about an important point. Now I let them bark until they are hoarse and the story is forgotten. Until then I'm deaf”.[4]

However, every time that revolutionaries were accused of being agents provocateurs or of collaborating with the bourgeoisie, or simply suspected of unworthy behaviour, they dedicated all their energies to denying it. Marx spent a whole year writing a book in response to the accusations of Herr Vogt[5], according to whom Marx was a police agent. Similarly, a bit later on and along with Engels, as we can see in their correspondence[6], they took part in all the battles against attempts to discredit the International Workingmen’s Association and themselves. Bebel was accused of stealing money from the treasury of the ADAV (General Association of German Workers) and he didn’t cease fighting until he had proved the falsity of these accusations. Trotsky, though completely isolated and harassed by Stalin, was able to bring together sufficient forces to convoke the Dewey Commission[7] in his defence, and so on. But true adventurers and provocateurs have always done everything they could to go to ground, to slip between the cracks of the truth.

A deafening silence

Bakunin, for example, in response to the IWA’s internal circular on the “Veritable Split in the Internationale”, behind a scandalised tone, recognised that he could only reply with…a prolonged silence.

“For two and a half years, we suffered these filthy attacks in silence; our slanderers first began with vague accusations, mixed up with loose references and poisonous insinuations, which were at the same time so stupid that, for lack of any other reason to remain silent, the bad taste they left in my mouth during the period of my withdrawal would have been enough to explain and legitimise my silence" .[8]

In vain can the whole letter be scrutinised for some argument, which is conspicuous by its absence. However, Bakunin announced that he would convene a Jury of Honour, and that he would write an article before the next congress (the Hague Congress of 1872):"On the other hand, I have always reserved the right to call all my slanderers before a jury of honour, which the next congress would no doubt not refuse me... It’s necessary to re-establish the truth, contributing as far as I can to the demolition of the system of lies built by Marx and his acolytes, that will be the aim of a paper which I intend to publish before the holding of the congress”.

Needless to say, he never convened such a jury of honour, nor did he write any articles. Instead, upon learning of the publication of the IWA’s report on the Alliance of Socialist Democracy[9], what he wrote in a letter of September 25, 1873 to the Geneva Journal (in addition to insults against Marx, for being a "communist, a German and a Jew") was a capitulation:

"I confess that all this has deeply upset me with public life. I am sick of it all. After spending my whole life fighting, I am tired. I am over sixty years old and a heart condition that worsens with age makes my life more and more difficult. Let other young people get to work. As for me, I no longer feel the strength, or perhaps the confidence, to push the Sisyphus stone against the triumphant reaction everywhere. Therefore, I withdraw from the fight, and ask my dear contemporaries for only one thing: oblivion." [10]

Bakunin also deploys here another of the classic strategies of adventurers, which is to present himself as a suffering victim when his personal behaviour is unmasked.

Similarly, when Schweitzer [11] was accused of stealing money from sick workers who could not go to work, to spend it on champagne and delicacies, he, unlike Bebel, was never able to defend himself:

"Schweitzer was publicly accused more than once of this shameful action, but he never dared to defend himself." [12]

What’s more, when Bebel and Liebknecht denounced him as a government agent at the congress in Barmen-Elberfeld (Wuppertal), Schweitzer, who was sitting on the same stage right behind them, did not utter a single word, leaving his acolytes to respond with insults and threats:

"Our speeches contained a summary of all the accusations we had made against Schweitzer. There were several violent interruptions, especially when we accused him of being a government agent; but I refused to withdraw anything... Schweitzer, who was sitting behind us when we spoke, did not utter a word in response. We left at once protected by some delegates against the assaults of Schweitzer's fanatical defenders, in the midst of a storm of imprecations and insults like ‘rogues!’, ‘traitors!’, ‘scoundrels!’ and so on. At the door we met our friends who escorted us under their protection until we arrived safely at the hotel”. [13]

And we can also cite the historical example of Parvus, accused by Gorky of swindling money for the rights to his work in Germany, denounced as an adventurer and social patriot by Trotsky [14] , who had been his friend, rejected by Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Leo Jogiches, for trying to sell himself to German imperialism, and prevented by Lenin from returning to Petrograd after the revolution, because he had "dirty hands". Parvus never took up his defence against all these accusations, leaving others (Radek in particular) to defend him in the exile milieu in Switzerland during the war.

And we could go on, Lassalle, Azev..., etc., etc. all tried to make the accusations against them be forgotten behind a wall of silence, to disappear, or, like Parvus, to carry on as if nothing had happened.

But there is no need to go back so far; in 2005 we could see how "citizen B", who proclaimed himself "unanimously" (since it was only himself) as the "Circle of Internationalist Communists" of Argentina, put himself at the service the IFICC[15] (now the International Group of the Communist Left -IGCL) to denigrate the ICC, and then fled the scene as soon as we denounced his imposture. [16]

There are also examples of such deafening silences when the ICC has denounced adventurers in its own ranks. Such was the case of the discovery and sanctioning of the militant known as Simon [17] , to which he responded with a stubborn silence that even provoked a "Resolution on the silence of comrade Simon", which said:

"Since Comrade Simon withdrew from the life of the ICC at the end of August 1994, he has never acceded to the organisation's request that he make known in writing the disagreements he had with its analyses and statements of position, which, according to him, partly motivated his withdrawal... This silence on the part of Simon is even more inadmissible since he had fundamental disagreements with the two resolutions adopted by the extended meeting of the International Secretariat on 3 December 1994".

But this stubborn silence of adventurers and shady elements when they are caught red-handed is not only a confirmation of the accusations made against them or a way of trying to be forgotten, it is also a strategy aimed at allowing others to come to their defence.

Gaizka's friends and companions

If Gaizka has not opened his mouth since we published our accusations, his friends have wasted no time coming to his defence. And so only 4 days later the IGCL published a statement: "New ICC attack against the international proletarian camp”.

We are not surprised that a parasitic group with a gangster behaviour comes to the defence of an adventurer. It had already done the same thing in 2005 by taking up the cause of citizen B of Argentina. And perhaps we should begin to think that the IGCL has the power to see the future since it published and distributed a communiqué from the "Circle" of Argentina before Citizen B had published it on his own website.

The unfortunate thing is that the IGCL (then IFICC) duped the IBRP[18], now the ICT, which, although discreetly, without taking the floor directly, published the IFICC/citizen B communiqués denigrating the ICC , thus encouraging the unworthy behaviour of both of these rogues.

Of course, the IGCL does not provide in its communiqué any denial of what we denounce in our article, except for the statement that they "have not noticed anything": "we must point out that to date we have not noticed any provocation, manoeuvre, denigration, slander or rumour, launched by the members of Nuevo Curso, even in an individual capacity, nor any policy of destruction against other groups or revolutionary militants". We won’t waste any time on this declaration.

In reality, the purpose of the communiqué is to attack the ICC, since it is we "who have developed these practices under the guise of its theory of decomposition and parasitism and which it is now returning to". And at the same time the ICC has fallen "into the rotten domain of the personalisation of political issues".

The website Pantopolis run by  Doctor Bourrinet[19] immediately reproduced the IGCL article preceded by an introduction that competes with and even outdoes the IGCL in its hate-filled invective against the ICC.

Another group that has condemned our Gaizka exhibition is the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction in the US, which has said in a communication to the ICC[20] : "we have nothing but condemnation for this egregious and immoral hit-piece of personalized gossips completely removed from a political terrain”.

In short, two recriminations: 1) that it is not Gaizka, but the ICC that is behaving in a manner unworthy of the proletariat, resorting to denigration and provocation; 2) that in our denunciation political questions are replaced by personal ones.

It is not the first time that in the face of rigour in the defence of the proletarian milieu and the denunciation of unworthy behaviour, revolutionary organisations have been attacked with slanders about their "authoritarianism" and their "manoeuvres", as if they were employing the same means as the adventurers and provocateurs who have been unmasked. This was also the case in the IWA: "The bourgeoisie, which understood, from its point of view, the historical danger for its class interests represented by the lessons drawn by the First International, responded to the revelations of the Hague Congress, doing everything possible to discredit that effort. And so the press and the politicians of the bourgeoisie pointed out that the struggle against Bakuninism was not a struggle of principle, but a sordid dispute for power within the International, accusing Marx of having eliminated his rival, Bakunin, through a campaign of falsification. What, in other words, the bourgeoisie was trying to instil in the workers is that the workers' organisations used the same methods, and were therefore no better, than the organisations of their exploiters. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the International supported Marx was attributed to the ‘triumph of authoritarianism’ in its ranks, and to the supposed tendency of its members to see enemies of the Association lurking everywhere. Bakuninists and Lassalleans went so far as to spread rumours that Marx himself was an agent of Bismarck”. [21]

Bakunin himself did not hesitate to present the struggle of the International for the defence of its statutes and functioning against the sectarian spirit and its intrigues as a "fight between sects”. Thus, in his "Letter to the brothers in Spain", Bakunin claims that the 1872 London Conference resolution against secret societies, aimed in particular against the Alliance, has only been adopted by the International "in order to clear the way for their own conspiracy, for the secret society, which under the leadership of Marx has existed since 1848, founded by Marx, Engels and the deceased Wolff, and which is none other than the almost exclusively Germanic society of authoritarian communists (...)

One has to recognise that the struggle which has broken out in the midst of the International is none other than between two secret societies"[22]..

In the world view of elements like Bakunin, the IGCL, or Gaizka, there is no room for honesty, organisational principles or proletarian morality; they only project onto others their own way of behaving. As popular wisdom says, "the thief believes that everyone acts like he does”

However, “Much more serious and dangerous is when such denigrations find a certain echo within the revolutionary camp itself. This was the case with Franz Mehring's biography of Marx. In this book Mehring, who belonged to the determined left wing of the Second International, declared that the pamphlet of the Hague Congress on the Alliance was ‘inexcusable’ and ‘unworthy of the International’. In his book, Mehring defended not only Bakunin, but also Lassalle and Schweitzer against the accusations made by Marx and the Marxists.

Mehring's discrediting of the Marxist struggle against Bakuninism and Lassalleanism had devastating effects on the workers’ movement in the following decades, for it not only led to a certain rehabilitation of political adventurers like Bakunin and Lassalle, but above all allowed the opportunist wing of social democracy before 1914 to erase the lessons of the great struggles for the defence of the revolutionary organisation. It was a decisive factor in the opportunist strategy to isolate the Bolsheviks in the Second International, when in fact their struggle against Menshevism belongs to the best tradition of the working class. The Third International also suffered from Mehring's legacy: in 1921, an article by Stoecker (‘On Bakuninism’), likewise based on Mehring's criticisms of Marx, justified the most dangerous and adventurist aspects of the so-called March Action of 1921 by the KPD (German Communist Party) in Germany”. [23]

The fact that the IBRP allowed itself to be pulled behind the IFICC and “citizen B” in 2005 also gave a boost to parasitism, hampering the struggle against it in the proletarian milieu.

But let’s move on to the second charge, that of personalising political issues and, more precisely, evoking "gossip or private affairs". To begin with, our accusation was not based on airing intimate matters, but on exposing public political behaviour, which is widely documented. What we exposed about Gaizka are facts that belong to the sphere of the public activity of bourgeois politicians, and therefore they should be carefully considered by communist militants. What was an individual who had repeatedly frequented the high-level political circles of the bourgeois state doing in the area of the Communist Left?

Now, in the second place, there are "private" facts (intrigues, manoeuvres, secret contacts, obscure relations etc.) which need to be made known in order to understand and be able to denounce destructive actions against the proletariat or against revolutionary organisations. Denouncing them has nothing to do with gossip.

Here, rather than ourselves answering, let Engels do it. In one of the many articles Marx and himself had to write in defence of the IWA, attacked by the whole bourgeois press, and by the provocateurs and the followers of Bakunin, and questioned by the undecided militants themselves, Engels answers an article in Vperyod by Peter Lavrov[24] , which questions the report of the Hague Congress Commission on "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the IWA ([25]) because it is a “caustic polemic on personal and private matters with information that can only come from gossip". This is how Engels replies:

"The main charge (against the report on the Alliance, editors), however, is that the report is full of private matters... of gossip. His statement is in any case extremely frivolous. The facts in question are proven by authentic evidence and those involved have been careful not to answer them.

But Friend Peter [26] is of the opinion that private matters, like private letters, are sacred and should not be published in political debates. To accept the validity of this argument in whatever terms is to make it impossible to write about history... So, if one is describing the history of a gang like the Alliance, in which one finds such a number of tricksters, adventurers, scoundrels, police spies, swindlers and cowards, along with those who have been deceived, should one falsify that history by knowingly concealing the individual villainies of those gentlemen as ‘private affairs’?

When the editor of Vperyod nevertheless describes the report as a clumsy concoction of essentially private facts, he is committing an act that is difficult to characterise ... No one can read ‘A Plot Against the International’ without being convinced that the private affairs interspersed in it are the most insignificant part, are illustrations to provide a more detailed picture of the characters involved, and could be suppressed without calling into question the main point of the report. The organisation of a secret society with the sole intention of subjecting the workers' movement in Europe to the hidden dictatorship of a few adventurers, the infamies committed in pursuit of that purpose, particularly by Nechayev in Russia - that is the central theme of the report, and to maintain that everything revolves only around private matters is, to say the least, irresponsible”. [27]

Conclusion

Can we tolerate in the proletarian political milieu an element that has maintained contacts and collaborated with high officials of the bourgeois state? Can we accept that someone like that now presents himself as a representative of the Communist Left? Can we build organisations of the proletariat and prepare the future party of the revolution with individuals like this? Gaizka's silence is a confirmation of his collaboration with the bourgeois state. His service record mainly to the PSOE [28] and at some point to the liberals, and then his contacts with the Communist Left and his disappearance when questioned about problematic aspects of his behaviour, constitute the trajectory of an adventurer. [29]

The aspiration of a group formed around this element to be considered part of the Communist Left would mean the introduction of a Trojan Horse whose purpose could only be to distort and undermine the heritage of the proletarian tradition and the programmatic and organisational principles represented by the organisations of the Communist Left. And this regardless of the honesty of the members of the Gaizka group, who may well have been deceived by him.

In that sense, and keeping all proportions in mind, just as Bakunin, as Engels says, wanted to impose his dictatorship on the International, which grouped together the workers' movement in Europe, Gaizka wants to play a similar undercover role behind a group – Nuevo Curso - where there are possibly elements who have been duped; he wants to appear as a reference point of the Communist Left, especially for young people in search of proletarian political positions. But his link with the Communist Left can only confuse the positions of the latter by passing off leftist or Stalinist notions and the methods of adventurism as positions of the Communist Left.

In this criminal endeavour, Gaizka has the organised support of the parasitic and gangster group of the IGCL, which presents him precisely as a champion of regroupement; but he also draws benefit from the silence towards his initiatives from other groups in the proletarian milieu.

ICC 11.4.2020

The picture is bleak, the deaths are counted in their hundreds, the smell of acid floods several sectors of the city, entire families have perished, as have many health workers. So far, the Ecuadorian state has recognized 315 deaths from Covid-19 [1], without specifying how many of these took place in the city of Guayaquil. However, the number of deaths from Covid-19 in Guayaquil does not represent the objective number of people, doctors, journalists and foreigners who have witnessed the enormous tragedy; for its part, the state, unable to respond to the health emergency, is trying to hide the numbers of bodies scattered on the streets and avenues which, in response to the complaints of many people, are gradually being removed and stored in three hospital facilities; furthermore, the morgues are full of unidentified bodies. In the face of this situation, every day hundreds of families live through the drama of claiming the remains of their loved ones in order to proceed with a dignified burial. It is a horror show resulting from the lack of hospitals, without sufficient medical personnel, without medicines, the result of permanent budget cuts, which indicates that the bourgeoisie is not interested in solving the elementary needs of the population. The cynical and lying behaviour of the bourgeoisie is the behaviour of criminals.

For the time being, the city of Guayaquil remains immersed in hysteria and fear, the images of which are travelling around the world, provoking the indignation and solidarity of many workers. The same reaction is occurring in many places where the state cannot take care of thousands of people infected by an epidemic that the bourgeoisie has known for years was bound to occur.

How does the bourgeoisie respond to the effects of Covid-19?

The media expose the scale of the disaster; no country has really been prepared for an emergency of the magnitude that humanity is experiencing. On the contrary, we have seen the neglect and deterioration of the health systems in China, USA, Spain, Italy, and one could even predict the same effects in countries that have supposedly become models of excellence in bourgeois administration like Denmark. In all countries the behavior of the bourgeoisie has been similar. First they minimised the impact of the pandemic, then they changed to a display of concern. But either way deplorable health systems are being exposed, systems that cannot respond to the Covid-19 epidemic that has been latent for the last twenty years. The hypocritical behaviour of those in power can be summarised as: save the economy at the expense of human lives, as the U.S. Vice President put it in early March 2020.

As part of the deterioration of the global health system, the Ecuadorian state, as has happened in other countries, laid off 2,500 workers in 2019, including doctors, nurses and cleaning staff. As for the health budget for 2020, the National Assembly approved it minus $81 million compared to the previous year, when it stood at $3,097 million. If we compare the 2019 health budget with the payment of the foreign debt for the same year, which was $8.107 billion, this shows the preference of the Ecuadorian state in capital accumulation. The health of the population comes a poor second.

For this reason, the impact of Covid-19 in Guayaquil is due to a bourgeoisie that is not interested in the health of the population, in investing in infrastructure, let alone in health workers. Thus, since March 16, when the pandemic was officially declared in Ecuador, that same day the Minister of Economy Richard Martinez declared his intention to pay $325 million to the holders of State Bonds, which became effective on March 21, in the midst of a health crisis that was overflowing with deaths everywhere. This same act led to the resignation of Health Minister Catalina Andramuño, accusing the Moreno government of failing to provide her with the resources to deal with the pandemic. Meanwhile, the right-wing Mayor of Guayaquil, Cintya Viteri, transferred the responsibility for removing the bodies to Moreno's central government. For his part, since March 16, Vice President Otto Sonnenholzner appeared as a hero in the face of the pandemic, although in truth, he is waging a campaign promoting himself for the upcoming presidential elections. This panorama sums up the degree of decomposition of the bourgeoisie in Ecuador and in many countries of the world.

The tragedy that the city of Guayaquil is experiencing is probably the most crude and dramatic to date, but the responsibility does not lie with the virus nor with the population who are often blamed for being ‘undisciplined’. The responsibility lies with the capitalist system, which is incapable of satisfying human needs. As we declared in our article published on March 25, 2020 : “it will be even worse when it hits Latin America, Africa and other regions where health systems are even more fragile or don’t exist at all”. [2] A predictable announcement, precisely because of the contradictions of capitalism at the global level. 

What are the consequences of the ineffectiveness of the bourgeoisie in Guayaquil?

The bourgeoisie’s response to the pandemic in Guayaquil has a number of distinguishing features:

• Keeping the decomposing body of a relative who has died from the pandemic indoors for some days without any response from the state will obviously have psychological consequences, but also brings the risk of an endless contamination process.
• Faced with this situation Ecuador, like other states, has decreed mandatory quarantine at the national level. In order to comply with this provision, the state has mobilised the army and the police, who are acting in a very repressive manner towards people who cannot stay at home because they don’t have a roof over their heads; neither does the state guarantee that people will have enough food during the quarantine, so the chaos may become more dramatic than it is today.

• The health crisis has prompted complaints from doctors and nurses about ill-treatment and the deplorable conditions in which they are forced to work, but they have gradually been silenced.   
• The state acts in an authoritarian way to the population as a whole, but to the bourgeoisie it says nothing, as for example with regard to the thousands of redundancies that took place during the quarantine.  

The health crisis has demonstrated the bourgeoisie’s true attitude to human needs. For this reason, the workers, in addition to recognising how their enemy class behaves, must be prepared to intervene in the not too distant future to change the root of the capitalist society that promises no future. The only way out of this horrible quagmire is proletarian revolution guided by a communist perspective. In this impasse of the bourgeoisie, it is clear that:  

1. Bourgeois society promises nothing but desolation and death as demonstrated by the worldwide pandemic,
2. In the midst of a situation of anguish and despair of the population, the states have resorted to the use of force to silence those who protest against the inability of the capitalist state to meet basic needs of food, protection, medicine, and to enforce the confinement the scientists recommend to prevent the increase of contagion.
3. It has been demonstrated that for the bourgeoisie and its state, its priority is not the people, much less the workers, but its own sordid interests, which is why, without morals or principles of any kind, it resorts to lies, hiding the quantity of dead without being able to give them a dignified burial, as happens in Ecuador.

A chaotic society that seeks only profit cannot envisage the satisfaction of human needs. The productive forces potentially available to humanity derive from the labour of the international working class which is exploited in the service of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, it will be the same workers who will be able to carry out the world revolution to change the destiny of humanity, so that it can live in a single world human community. 

Against the virus of decomposing capitalist society,

Proletarians of all countries unite!

 

Internacionalismo, Ecuador Section of the ICC, April 2020.

 [1] At the time of publication of this article, the Ecuadorian government has acknowledged 369 deaths, which is a gross underestimation. Source: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51705060 [53]

 [2] “Either the world working class puts an end to capitalism, or capitalism puts an end to humanity” https://en.internationalism.org/content/16826/either-world-working-class-puts-end-capitalism-or-capitalism-puts-end-humanity [54]

Germany - once again exception, once again world champion?

The whole world is threatened by a new kind of pandemic: the new giant China initially tried to hide it, and then mobilised the power of its dictatorial, state capitalist machine; then it hit countries at the historic heart of capitalism: Italy, Spain, France and Great Britain. The pandemic knows no borders and surprises completely unprepared countries; almost 200,000 people have died (at the time of writing this article); the health apparatus is collapsing in several regions. Currently, the crumbling world power of the defunct era of the Cold War, the USA, is being shaken[1]. And Germany? After the authorities were similarly unprepared and hesitant in the first phase, they then proceeded more forcefully and left the international impression that they were more effective in combating and managing the pandemic, and, apart from South Korea, appear almost as a successful exception.[2] The availability and utilisation of intensive care beds and the rate of deaths (which had topped the 5,000 mark at the time of writing this article) are cited in particular as indicators.

Why is Germany just barely scraping by in the face of a potentially catastrophic situation for all countries?

The creeping capitalisation of the health and care sector

As in Italy, Spain, France or Great Britain, the health and care sector in Germany has been restructured in recent years in a determined manner, partly privatised, with costs being ruthlessly kept down.[3] Hospitals, for example, became pure "investment opportunities" for hedge funds, from which the highest possible return was expected. In fact, Germany was a pioneer in this kind of restructuring. The simultaneous restructuring - and thus the cuts - in the social sector (Agenda 2010, Hartz IV) but also the restructuring of former state enterprises (Deutsche Post, Telekom, Deutsche Bahn etc.) laid the foundations for Germany, backed by its industrial strength and export capacity, to make substantial profits by international standards over the past 15 years, bucking the trend of the worsening crisis.

If we now take a closer look at the health and care sector, we find that 37% of hospitals have already been privatised. But what is more important is that the management of the hospitals has been very heavily submitted to the laws of the capitalist economy for all the funding bodies (including the public and church authorities). This applies, for example, to the rationalisation of work processes, the settlement of accounts with health insurance companies and the closure of hospitals. Whereas there were 2263 hospitals in Germany in 1998, these have been reduced from 2007 to 2087 and in 2017 to 1942 hospitals. Accordingly, the number of hospital beds was reduced by around 10,000 within ten years, from 506,954 (2007) to 497,200 (2017). Despite increased labour intensity, nursing staff has been reduced since 1993.[4]

A similar trend can be seen in nursing homes, with a simultaneous ageing of the population. The exploitation of nursing and health care personnel has increased massively. Already in 2016 it was predicted that in 2025 there would be a shortage of between 100,000 and 200,000 trained nursing staff, and at the same time the attractiveness of the nursing profession has declined due to the unbearable working conditions[5] . The length of time people stay in the profession of nursing for the elderly is just 8 years. The various international recruitment attempts are unable to entice staff to go and work in the country where milk and honey flows.[6] In other words, people leave and change professions as soon as possible, since, among other things, shift work, changed work schedules at short notice and, in particular, the confrontation with inhumane working conditions are things that nobody can stand for long.

The capitalist reality in the health factories was structurally inhuman even before the pandemic in Germany. The hospitals are supposed to patch up the sick workers for further use and disgorge them as quickly as possible. The poorly paid personnel, who were subject to a strict work regime, had to be recruited from the low-wage areas.

As in the economy as a whole, where an ever higher proportion of machines is used (an ever higher organic composition of capital), the proportion of "apparatus medicine" has also steadily increased in the field of medicine. Medical technology produces increasingly expensive and technically complicated medical equipment, which is used in health factories and has to generate profit, but can only be operated by highly trained specialists. These new apparatuses and new technologies can offer a huge advance in the field of diagnosis and treatment, but because of the enormous costs of acquisition, maintenance and operation involved, they accentuate the need to "channel" more and more patients in order to have the highest return on the equipment, pay the staff and finally make a profit.

At the same time, medicine in the 21st century has not been able to shake off the old scourge of illness (and death) in hospitals due to lack of hygiene, from which most hospital patients died in the 19th century before the introduction of modern hygiene techniques. According to the Robert Koch Institute, it is estimated that up to 20,000 people die each year from hospital germs caused by an estimated 600,000 hospital infections each year.[7]

Ultimately, this means, on the one hand, that the patients only appear as "customers" in the health care business, to whom one tries to sell as much "service" as possible, and the employees are squeezed like lemons to push the accumulation of value in the health care industry to the highest possible level. The patient faces the carer for whom he becomes a commodity, the social relationship becomes a service, the work process is subject to enormous time pressure and compulsion. This perversion describes very well what Marx analysed as objectification, dehumanisation and exploitation. The actual purpose of the activity (the use value), the healing and/or care of people almost completely disappears. The fixation of under-cared-for people in nursing homes, the general neglect caused, among other things, by understaffing, blatant abuses that go unrecognized for a long time[8] , the questioning or refusal of certain operations for the elderly are expressions of this structural inhumanity, which is only broken up by the proletarian solidarity and sacrifice of individual care workers in the face of this daily and structural dehumanisation and objectification. Even before the outbreak of the pandemic, the social contradictions of a rotting system in health factories had already appeared very starkly.

Political ignorance and lack of preparation for pandemics

Medical historians and epidemiologists have long warned that the danger of worldwide pandemics is increasing. In addition, the living conditions under capitalism reinforce the negative and destructive forces of such pandemics: the destruction of natural habitats for wild animals, their sale and consumption without proper veterinary controls, the industrialisation of agriculture and in particular of animal husbandry[9] , urbanisation, which mainly takes the form of "slumisation" etc. reinforce the tendency of viruses to cross species boundaries[10] .

In anticipation of such pandemics, investigations, business simulations and emergency drills were carried out worldwide, including Germany 2012, where an "extraordinary epidemic event" was played out: "Anti-epidemic measures, phase-oriented recommendations for action, crisis communication, official measures, assessment of the effects on the forementioned objects of protection, monitoring the development of the spread and the number of new cases of the disease, etc.". etc. etc. "[11] If we observe the first weeks of the response to the crisis, and if we take all the indications of a severe lack of available protective equipment, emergency capacities, personnel etc. together, we can only see this as an irresponsible reaction by the political class. Hospital beds, personnel, infrastructure, equipment have been cut in many areas instead of being built up preventively. A male nurse from Berlin reports about the use of self-made protective clothing[12], several Berlin hospitals write a joint appeal, the Berlin hospital association asked volunteers to sew masks, nursing workers who complain are confronted with repression ... [13]

In Germany, too, we see the destructive nature of capitalism, which already kills under normal circumstances and now, in the face of a worldwide pandemic, refuses to do what is scientifically possible. This is causing outrage among the workers in the front line: many reject the false praise of politicians and the symbolic applause. In Mittelbaden, the first nurses are said to have quit their jobs due to the lack of protective equipment[14], in Brandenburg, protective clothing was demanded in an open letter at the beginning of April and the situation was clearly analysed: "Our hospitals became factories and health became a commodity "[15]. It may be surprising that the mortality rate in Germany is still much lower than in Italy, Spain and France[16].

The mobilisation of the German bourgeoisie

There are many factors that must be taken into account in the particular course of the pandemic in Germany. For example, one can even speak of some fortunate circumstances, to a certain extent, because the first cases could still be localised immediately and thus quickly isolated. Secondly, a large wave initially affected mainly young and sporty skiers; thirdly, the family structure in Germany is different from that in Italy and Spain, where many grandparents live close to their children and grandchildren; and fourthly, despite all the savings and restructuring, the health system is still much better equipped than in other European countries[17] and even worldwide.

The decisive factor, however, is the ability of the German bourgeoisie to mobilise much more strongly and cohesively after the first weeks of disorientation than in other countries. Germany, as the motor of the EU, still has a stable economy. Its political class is not free from the disintegrating tendencies in world capitalism, and from the urge to behave irresponsibly, which is becoming more and more widespread[18] , but populism here, for example, unlike in almost all other European countries (and the USA), has not yet eroded the political apparatus. And, as a further central factor in the ability of the ruling class to mobilise itself, the particularly strong role of the trade unions in Germany must be emphasised. Although difficulties in global supply chains (especially the links with China and then Italy) had made the German automotive industry aware of the effects of the corona virus at an early stage, it took a wake-up call from the Chairman of the Works Council, Bernd Osterloh, to close down VW's plants as early as March 17 (before the official political shutdown by the German government!)[19] . VW, with its historically close amalgamation of State-Länder and capital (the Volkswagen of the National Socialist system), is virtually a leading company, virtually a representative of the avant-garde of German state capitalism.

After the Second World War, this role was strengthened and further developed through the close involvement of the IGM. While on March 17th the assembly lines were still running at BMW, and Porsche and Daimler had only planned a break for a few days (to allow for the care of children), the IGM via VW set the trend. Unlike in other European countries (or even the USA), where national capital, despite medical knowledge, ordered the workers to the assembly line under life-threatening conditions, thus provoking strikes (see our articles on this subject), the German bourgeoisie, with the help of the unions and in agreement with its state apparatus, demonstrated its instinct for power. The sophisticated "social partnership system" between trade unions and capital to control the working class, to strengthen national capital and Germany’s world role appears as a game of give and take. The collective bargaining conflict which would have been on the agenda in the metal and electrical industry on 31 March (including possible warning strikes) was called off in the face of the crisis in the collective bargaining district of North Rhine-Westphalia by an emergency agreement without any wage increase (after years of boom)[20]. This emergency agreement was immediately adopted by other districts.

After a short phase of political negligence and lack of planning[21] , the bourgeoisie has again demonstrated this partly reduced but still economic strength and political power instinct. This allowed political decisions to be made which were by no means marked by concern for the health of the workers per se, but rather by a long-term strategy of maintaining power and continuity of the capitalist production process. For the capitalists, it is a question of calculation: either a workforce contaminated by the pandemic and therefore sick for a long time, with much higher health costs, or a controlled reduction in production and cessation of economic activities as an "economically" more favourable option.

First, the sober natural scientist Angela Merkel gathered a scientific team from the Robert Koch Institute around her and had a strategy[22] for action drawn up, which she announced on 18 March[23] in a television address: lockdown and social distancing. Germany, the world's leading exporter, closed almost all business with the public (excluding grocery stores, pharmacies, drugstores, etc.). In close coordination with the trade unions, the entire automobile industry was shut down[24] , setting the course for other sectors. Schools, universities and kindergartens were closed. This shock measure was flanked by a mobilisation of the state-capitalist money bazooka, at the centre of which was the tried and tested means of short-time work[25] , accompanied by countless municipal and federal variations of emergency money. On 20 March, a supplementary budget of 150 billion euros was adopted, to which several billion euros were added from state and EU funds. It is assumed that a total of 750 billion euros will be spent as  emergency money, and new subsidies for other ailing industries are announced daily.[26] What is now perceived as an immediate "rescue" from redundancy etc. will sooner or later lead to the most violent attacks in various forms, for which the working class in particular will have to pay. It will be left to a later article to analyse the catastrophic consequences of this growing mountain of debt.

The military is involved in all this: for example, a hospital for 1,000 beds was to be built in Berlin within a month with the support of the Bundeswehr; the Minister of Defence AKK reports an increasing number of requests for administrative assistance by the army and brings the mobilisation of reservists into play. This mobilisation of the military cannot be compared quantitatively in any way with that in France. In Germany any war rhetoric was completely missing; nevertheless the creeping strengthening of the military and its medical utilization is [27] remarkable given the background of German history. All in all, the measures should send out the signal: "we'll do anything for you" and at the same time, Germany has renounced draconian curfews and contact restrictions as for example in Spain, Italy, or France, thus rallying the population behind its government[28].

This shows that the German bourgeoisie, in comparison with other leading states in world capitalism, is still able to act skilfully and has not lost its political intelligence. This is the only explanation for the fact that a study classifies German crisis management as the world leader.[29] This political intelligence of the German bourgeoisie is based on its historical success in fending off the revolutionary onslaught in Germany of 1918/19, albeit with much blood. The counterrevolutionary elements active at that time, consisting of trade unions, social democracy (majority and Independent), the Free Corps and big capitalists, have 'grown together' in a solid state-capitalist block 100 years down the line. This is the historical background to the German bourgeoisie’s pronounced instinct for power.

Today, this is expressed in an apparently greater consideration for the health of the workers, which is not, however, based on a greater "humanity", but on the one hand on the concern for the best possible, most cost-effective preservation of the workforce, but also on the knowledge of the dangerous consequences of a mobilisation of the working class in Germany. We have already mentioned elsewhere that the centrifugal forces of capitalist disintegration and especially populism have not spared Germany, and yet the political apparatus in Germany is still far more stable than in France, Italy, the UK, and even more so in the USA. It can already be seen that elements of populism have been partially absorbed and applied in the measures taken by the bourgeoisie through the mobilisation of the state apparatus (it remains to be seen whether this means the beginning of a decomposition of the apparatus or whether populism will thus be easier to control) and thus the populist party AfD is weakened for the time being. The crisis management shows that the German bourgeoisie has incorporated a strong state, closed borders, indifference to the misery of the refugees and national egoism into its reservoir of action and that for now the AfD is only an annoying troublemaker.

In view of the worldwide character of the pandemic and completely inadequate preparation for it on a world scale, even the ruling class in Germany has not been able to escape the pull of the each for himself. In the desperate search for masks, the German government's regulation that medical equipment may only be exported if Germany's vital needs are met was also applied in Germany. This applies even if a lack of protective equipment in other countries endangers human lives. Defending the nation‘s interests comes first. And in its attempt not to let the EU fall apart, but to proceed in this ever-increasing chaos in a way that is as nationally coordinated as possible, German capital has turned on the credit tap for the domestic economy almost indefinitely At the same time the German bourgeoisie has remained largely intransigent towards the faltering "partners" in Italy, Spain and the demanded introduction of coronabonds. What consequences this will have for the EU cannot be foreseen at present.

Nor can anything be said today about the prospects of being able to ward off the increasingly aggressive appearance of Chinese imperialism in Europe and elsewhere. The mountain of follow-up costs of the economic rescue[30] measures decided by the world's ruling powers will lead to an increase in debt[31] , where the tendency of the every man for himself will become increasingly devastating. In the midst of this chaos, the German bourgeoisie may have been more successful than its rivals to date, but as one of the countries most dependent on exports and international stability, it cannot, despite certain advantages, escape the shocks of the crisis and the chaos it has brought about in the long run. What challenges this poses to the working class will be discussed in a forthcoming article.

Gerald, 23 April 2020

We are publishing this article because of the paramount importance of gaining a deeper understanding of the rise of Chinese capitalism in the last three decades, and more specifically of the aims of its “New Silk Road” project. It should be noted that it was written some time before the current Covid-19 pandemic, which will certainly have a significant impact on the global imperialist pecking order. It also puts forward a number of elements – such as the sections on the “Mackinder Doctrine” and on the development of the “credit economy” in Stalinist regimes – which are currently under discussion in the ICC. We therefore offer it as the contribution of an individual comrade.

One of the motives of US capitalism for the economic war it has begun, under Donald Trump, against China, is that the “One Road One Belt” (OROB) Initiative of Beijing[1], China’s most ambitious ever imperialist project , is seen in Washington as a direct challenge to the status of the United States as the sole remaining world “super power”. The intention of this central project of the Chinese ruling class, also known as the “New Silk Road”, is to cover and link together Asia, Europe and Africa with an ultra-modern infrastructure of motorways, railways and harbour facilities. It constitutes the most ambitious infrastructure in world history, with a volume calculated at anything between one and two trillion dollars. The project is audacious, not only financially, but also technologically. It proposes, for instance, to link the Finnish capital Helsinki with its Estonian counterpart Tallinn through a railway tunnel under the Baltic Sea. Even more ambitious is the plan to link Korea and Japan through a similar tunnel. It is no surprise, therefore, that the OROB has aroused the interest, and whetted the appetites, of the so-called business community throughout the world. In a situation in which the growth of the world economy is faltering and threatening to grind to a halt, China presents the “New Silk Road” (as it is also called) as a blessing for the economic development of the world.

A project greeted with misgivings and hostility

This notwithstanding, even at the economic level, the Chinese mega-project has met with a very mixed response. On the one hand, dozens of so-called “developing” countries have already acquired elements of a modern infrastructure and even of industrialisation thanks to massive Chinese investment. Although the countries receiving such investments often have to offer key resources as security for credits (resources which risk passing over into Chinese hands in the event of repayment default), for the ruling class of such countries, the New Silk Road is often the best possibility they have at present of the developing the economic basis of their power. But there are also other, more developed countries, for example European Union members in the east and south east of Europe, but also a European heavyweight, Italy, which welcome China as an investor and as a counter-weight to German and French (but also to American) capital on the European continent.

On the other hand, however, there are a number of countries which are either wary and hesitant, or even downright hostile towards the OROB. What is striking is that this group includes a majority of the main capitalist countries other than China. One of the most important of these countries is Russia. Already for geographical reasons, a project with the goal of placing an infrastructural grid over the Eurasian double-continent will always be very incomplete unless it includes Russia (the largest country in the world). Yet at present, the north and north-west bound motorways and railway lines beginning in China mostly end at the Russian border. The Kremlin stubbornly continues not to fulfill its part of the agreed projects. In the words of its head of state, Vladimir Putin, “Mother Russia”, after successfully averting the danger of becoming what he calls an “economic colony” of the United States, must now take care not to be colonised by China instead. This is why Moscow is demanding from Beijing “equal partnership” in at least that part of the OROB which takes place on Russian soil. For the moment, China has not given Russia the guarantees it is looking for. This is why the whole Russian sector of the New Silk Road is, for the moment, more or less blocked.

To the group of wary, middle-sized powers also belong the three leading economic powers of western Europe: Germany, Britain and France. Since, unlike Russia, they are not immediate neighbours of China, the ruling class in western Europe feels less immediately in danger of being economically or otherwise “colonised” by China. Nonetheless, not unlike Russia, they demand an equal share of and an equal say in the European part of the OROB. For the moment, they have been no more successful than Moscow in obtaining this. Indeed, despite the blocking attitude of the western European powers, Beijing has, to date, been much more successful in advancing its projects in Europe than it has been in Russia. This is because China was able to get a number of eastern and southern European states on its side. The attempts of Berlin, Paris and London to forge a united negotiation position of the European Union towards Beijing have largely failed. Above all, the defection of Italy (the first G-7 state to actively adhere to the New Silk Road, in the “spirit of Marco Polo” as Rome argued) was a huge blow to this unitary endeavour.

Of the countries which more openly oppose the Chinese initiative, the most important ones are Japan, India and (most significant of all) the United States. Their hostility has a number of dimensions, as we shall see. But already at the economic level, the three forementioned powers are particularly displeased. Whereas Japan has the impression that China wants to progressively nudge it out of the continental Asian market, India feels itself not only by-passed, but also encircled by the massive Chinese investments in surrounding countries such as Pakistan, Myanmar or Sri Lanka.[2] As for the United States, one of its concerns is that the OROB will strongly contribute to enforcing a kind of Eurasian hub as the powerhouse of the world economy. Instead of helping to “make America great again”, this could even, in the long term, render the position of the US economy, not peripheral, of course, but less central than it is now. As things stand, the USA is not only by far the leading military power, it is also, without a doubt, the economic/scientific/technological heart of the world capitalist system. Its ruling class is clearly determined to ensure that things stay like that.

To begin to understand why its main rivals are so worried about China’s “blueprint for the 21th century”, it may be helpful to take a look at the infrastructure grid with which it intends to cover Eurasia and Africa. It immediately becomes apparent that this network resembles less a grid than the spokes of a wheel, the hub of which is China. Beijing plans to finance as many of these projects as it can on its own, contracting mainly Chinese companies and employing Chinese labour. At the economic level, the intention is obviously that China assumes the role which the old capitalist powers of western Europe once used to play: the masters of Eurasia/Africa. But that is not all. In the robbers’ den of global imperialism, such things as infrastructure, trade routes, secure and reliable supplies of raw materials and labour power all have to be “safeguarded” by military might, which is the foundation of every imperialist expansion. No surprise, therefore, that the New Silk Road has an essential “security” dimension, the heart of which is the establishment of military bases along the transport and coast routes of Asia, Africa, and beyond (where possible in Oceania, Latin America and even Europe). To this must be added the striking of military agreements with governments in states along the OROB wherever possible. The full realisation of this dimension of the New Silk Road would give China a considerable degree of control over the trade routes and sources of labour and raw materials on which its main rivals, above all in east and south-east Asia and western Europe, so heavily depend. A control which at present the United States almost exclusively exercises.

The Mackinder Doctrine

To better understand the extent to which the New Silk Road represents a challenge to the existing balance of forces between the main imperialist powers, it is useful to know that, since the time of World War I, the United States has consistently adhered to the so-called Mackinder Doctrine originally developed by its predecessor as “world leader”, the United Kingdom. First formulated by the British geographer Mackinder, this doctrine poses the modern capitalist contest of imperialist powers in mythological, biblical terms as a struggle between the land-based monster Behemoth and the sea monster Leviathan. The core of this concept consists of two very simple ideas, ideas however which have the advantage of corresponding rather closely to the reality they describe. The first idea is that, in a struggle for the domination of the world between mainly land-based and mainly naval powers, the latter are likely to win out in the end. This is because capitalism (unlike any of the modes of production which preceded it) was a global “system” from the beginning. For example, the first modern capitalist mass production industry – the British cotton industry – was based on raw material grown mainly in the southern states of the USA, and cultivated through slave labour deported from Africa. Thus, by means of an effective sea blockage, mainly land-based powers can be brought to their knees. The second idea formulates the exception to the rule contained in the first one: the Eurasian continent is so large (and it even has a narrow land connection to Africa via the Sinai peninsula) and so populous that it could, if made into some kind of a unit, more or less immunise itself from any sea blockade. In other words, if ever Eurasia, or large parts of it, were to come under the domination of a single or an alliance of its main land-based powers, the ensuing power bloc would have a real chance of gaining the upper hand over its maritime rivals.

Precisely this doctrine helps to explain why, in both world wars of the 20th century, the United States took the side of Britain against Germany – and this despite the fact that London was the main rival of Washington in many parts of the world. The main concern both of the United States and the United Kingdom during both world wars was that Germany, by overrunning Russia, might gain the degree of domination in Eurasia which Mackinder had warned against. Following the same logic, the Number One enemy of the USA during the “Cold War” was always the USSR (although its main commercial rivals lay elsewhere, in western Europe and in Japan). Alongside the deadly nuclear ballistic threat Moscow represented to America, perhaps the most important single reason for this was, once again, the concern about the control of the “Eurasian Heartland”. Although its fears about this were somewhat alleviated once China began to break with the Soviet Union, this concern remained a central factor of US world policy until the Eastern Bloc fell apart in 1989. In the years which followed, the powerful economic development of China was not perceived as a serious threat to the US (or to western Europe or even Japan for that matter). To a certain extent, even the contrary was the case. China was seen as a more than welcome outlet for profitable “western” investments, attracted in particular by the unrivaled cheapness of a Chinese labour power which could be exploited to the hilt. During these years, the old capitalist powers (who were still busy celebrating themselves as the “winners of the Cold War”), underestimated the long-term consequences for themselves of the rise of China.

In a certain sense, the ruling class in the United States in particular allowed itself to be distracted from its Mackinder guidelines by another of its doctrines, one much in vogue after 1989: that of “neo-liberalism”. According to this latter concept (in its American version as formulated by Milton Friedman and the “Chicago Boys”), economic development anywhere in the world will, sooner or later, mainly benefit the kingpin of global capitalism – which is of course the US. Certainly there was an element of truth in this. Of course the Chinese boom was the single most important factor enabling crisis-ridden capitalism to continue to accumulate. Of course the USA, but also western Europe and Japan, over many years, as the leading established capitalist powers, at many levels benefited most from the momentary stabilisation of a world “system” of which they were the leading players. But they were deluding themselves in thinking that this would always and necessarily be the case. Today, under Donald Trump, it has become blatantly clear that, for US imperialism, China has become the enemy Number 1. The so-called “Asian turn” of the US bourgeoisie in fact already began under Barack Obama. The central idea of this “Asian turn” is that the first priority, in the defence of US interests, is no longer Europe or the Middle East, but Asia. To an important degree, the Asian turn is a RETURN to the Mackinder doctrine in American foreign policy. Already under Obama, and again under Trump, the Pentagon has published its global analysis according to which the main threats to American supremacy are China and Russia.

We have already seen how, during the 20th century, the main candidates for Eurasian leadership which the US (and the UK) first and foremost opposed, were Germany and Russia (in the form of the USSR). Two things in particular are striking about the present list. The first thing is that Russia is still on the list. This is partly connected to the economic strengthening of Russia since it abandoned its Stalinist model. Today we can see more clearly that the main reason for the backwardness of the USSR was not the level of qualification of its work force, its technicians and scientists, but a chronic scarcity of capital resulting from the Stalinist economic regime. In this context, Russia is again seen today as a threat to the USA because it has proven able to modernise its atomic ballistic military power, which is second only to that of the USA in its size and capacities. After the break-up of the USSR in 1991, when Russia inherited its nuclear arsenal, this appeared of lesser importance than it does today. Back in 1991, the ruling class both east and west still adhered to the doctrine that a thermonuclear war cannot be “won” - it would by literally MAD (resulting in Mutually Assured Destruction). But things have changed at this level also. Both in Washington and in Moscow, a new doctrine is gaining ground, according to which an atomic war can be limited in space and time and thus be “won”. To this end, both sides are busily producing so-called tactical atomic weaponry with more localised explosiveness and nuclear fall-out. This “evolution” of military doctrine (literally insane from any point of view other than the capitalist one) largely contributes to putting Russia back on the list of the main enemies of America. But the other main reason for this lies not in Russia itself. It is the rise of China. This has the effect of “re-charging” the importance of Russia as the geographical lynch-pin of Eurasia. Russia is the only country covering significant portions both of Europe and of Asia. In other words, if Russia were either to ally itself with, or be overrun by, any other Eurasian power, the worst-case scenario Mackinder wanted to avoid would be on the agenda.

To understand how potentially unstable the imperialist situation of Russia presently is, it is important to realise that Russia would be quite unable to defend its frontiers by conventional means alone against a direct military threat either on its western borders (NATO) or to the east (China). Russia thus sees itself reliant, to an exorbitant degree, on its nuclear arsenal. It is on this level that Russia is still far superior to China (whose own atomic apparatus is still considered to be inferior to that of France, for instance).

The second striking aspect of the present list of enemies of the US is that Germany (the main enemy throughout much of the first half of the 20th century) has been overtaken by China as the leading threat to  US hegemony. Today Germany represents a threat to the US above all at the commercial level. As far as the military dimension is concerned, a possible strengthening of the (relatively still very weak) German fire power is a problem for Britain much more than for the USA. Germany’s bid for leadership in Europe would devalue the status of the United Kingdom. But as long as Germany is unable to defend itself militarily in the face of Russia, it will remain dependent on the kind of support which, as present, only the United States can supply. As long as Germany remains militarily so inferior to Russia, it is not likely to dare to make an alliance with Moscow.

Thus it is China which today is, in a sense, assuming the role played by Germany in the first half of the 20th century: the latecomer to and main challenger of the existing imperialist pecking order (this pecking  order cannot be called a “balance of forces” precisely because it is out of balance). Here also lies the essential difference between the respective roles of Moscow and Beijing today. Russia, to its west, having lost eastern Europe and the Baltic states to NATO, is concentrating on preventing other former “Soviet Republics” from becoming NATO states. To the east, it has to meet the challenge of the US, and more recently, of China above all in the former “Soviet Republics” of central Asia. It is also worried about signs of a Chinese migration into southern Siberia. In other words, Russia is a power mainly on the defensive – not because it is less belligerent, but simply because it is being pushed back and is facing frictions and tensions with countries on all sides of its territory. As opposed to this, the role of China in the so-called concert of powers has become an offensive one. It was not the case under Deng, when China was concentrating on its economic “reforms”. This began to change under the successors of Deng. It is under Xi Jin Ping, however, that China has most clearly gone over onto the offensive. This offensive includes, for example, the development of “conventional” middle range missiles and the establishment of new naval bases “offshore” (on artificial islands). The heart of this offensive is the One Road One Belt initiative. More than anything else, it was this project which made the American bourgeoisie realise that China is no longer just another serious economic rival, but a challenger at the imperialist level.

And that is the decisive point. The twin goals of the ruling class under capitalism are profit and power. One of the most common misunderstandings about marxism is to assume that profit is the more important of these two goals. Many anarchists, on the other hand, are able to understand that the pursuit of power is the more important factor. But anarchism tends to explains this through some kind of intrinsic craving for power which can only be overcome through the libertarian re-education of humanity. In recognising the importance of power in the contemporary world, anarchism concludes that marxism overestimates the importance of economic factors in capitalism. But what marxism in fact realises is that, under capitalism, economy and power are inseparable. Many capitalists fail to make a profit. Their elimination through capitalist competition is not a problem for bourgeois society, but on the contrary essential to its mode of existence. Much more important than the profit of any capitalist or group of capitalists is the maintenance of capitalist class rule, the control of that class over society as a whole, the defence of the basis of its domination – bourgeois private property – by the state. This defence of its property, both against the threat from below (proletarian revolution) and against the threat from other capitalist robber states, is the precondition for everything else. All its wealth and privileges depend on this class rule. This is why almost any bourgeois class, faced with the unfortunate choice between the defence of its rate of profit and the defence of its “security interests”, will always be more likely go for the latter. This is why the main rivals of China, even in the case that they can themselves benefit economically from OROB or some of its projects, are ready to plunge the world economy into turmoil if necessary, should they feel their imperialist “vital interests” under threat.

“It was the straitjacket of the organisation of the world into two opposing imperialist blocs (permanent between 1945 and 1989) in preparation for the world war that prevented any disruption of the hierarchy between powers. China's rise began with American aid rewarding its imperialist shift to the United States in 1972. It continued decisively after the disappearance of the blocs in 1989. China appears to be the main beneficiary of ‘globalisation’ following its accession to the WTO in 1991 when it became the world's workshop and the recipient of Western relocations and investments, finally becoming the world's second largest economic power. It took the unprecedented circumstances of the historical period of decomposition to allow China to rise, without which it would not have happened.

China's power bears all the stigma of terminal capitalism: it is based on the over-exploitation of the proletarian labour force, the unbridled development of the war economy through the national program of ‘military-civil fusion’ and is accompanied by the catastrophic destruction of the environment, while ‘national cohesion’ is based on the police control of the masses subjected to the political education of the One Party and the fierce repression of the  populations of Uighur Muslims and Tibet. In fact, China is only a giant metastasis of the generalized militaristic cancer of the entire capitalist system: its military production is developing at a frenetic pace, its defence budget has increased six-fold in 20 years and has been ranked second in the world since 2010”. (Resolution on the International Situation from the 23rd Congress of the ICC).

The Chinese Economic Boom Approaches Its Limits

Xi Jin Ping is the initiator, but not the cause, of the OROB. In general, phenomena tend to have more than one cause. This goes all the more so for a project of the magnitude of the New Silk Road. The stage of development reached by the Chinese economy when Xi came to power explains the use by China of its economic weight in order to take decisive steps on the geo-strategic, imperialist level.

Here it will be helpful to compare the example of China with that of Japan. Throughout the 1980’s, the growth of the Japanese economy, the success of its exports, the expansion of its finance sector, the development of its methods of production and its technology, were such that most of the “experts” at the time thought it would only be a matter of time before Japan eclipsed the United States as the world’s leading economy. But during the past thirty years, nothing of the kind has happened. Not only did the gap between the US and Japan not continue to grow smaller. On the contrary, since the beginning of the 1990’s the gap has not ceased to widen again. Whereas the USA consolidated its economic, financial and technological lead, Japan was in for three decades of economic stagnation.

Something similar has started to happen now in China. Until a few years ago, a lot of economists and statisticians were debating, not about if, but about when the Chinese would overtake the American economy. In the meantime, the doubters on this issue seem to be getting the upper hand. Not surprisingly. The recent data for China begin to resemble those for Japan from the early 1990’s on. Economic growth is beginning to fall, the rate of urbanisation starts to lose some of its dynamic, the mass production of cheap goods begins to be transferred to countries with lower wages, the average age of the population is rising, and an increasingly insane portion of investment goes into property speculation. These similarities with Japan (although the Chinese slow-down is less abrupt) are striking. And they are hardly a coincidence. Both express the same “leveling off” process after a long expansion period. Something similar happened in South Korea or in Taiwan and will happen in Vietnam or India.

As Karl Marx analysed in Capital, capitalism came into the world through the separation of the producers from their means of production and the transformation of these producers into wage labourers. Marx called this process “primitive accumulation”. According to the marxist analysis of Rosa Luxemburg in her book The Accumulation of Capital, capitalism accumulates through expanding into and gobbling up the pre-capitalist world around it. Two main phases of this process can be distinguished. The first phase is not “obligatory”: it only applies when capitalism encounters so-called natural economies: subsistence production in which money plays little to no role. In such cases, capitalism usually first endeavors to convert those who exclusively or mainly produce their own means of subsistence into producers for the market. At the heart of this transformation is the introduction and generalisation of monetary relations, for instance through the state imposing taxes only payable with money. Or it lures producers into debt. In so doing, capitalism expands a little bit each time the market it needs.

The second phase however is the decisive one: the conversion of simple commodity producers (who own their means of production, whether individually or collectively) either into proletarians who no longer sell their own products, but instead sell their labour power, or into capitalists who own the means of production but no longer work them themselves. Like the first phase, the second one opens up new markets and thus new possibilities of accumulating capital. Both phases radically change the way of life and the nature of economic activity in the countryside. But in addition, the second transformation leads above all to the industrialisation and urbanisation of society.

It is not least for this reason that the contribution of this second transformation to capital accumulation is of a much greater magnitude. Industrial society requires the construction of factories, mines, power stations, roads and railways; the new proletarians need to be housed, clothed, fed, transported to and from work, but also to be policed, distracted, ideologically manipulated and so on. As soon as this transformation has been completed, these additional proletarians and capitalists no longer represent a new or additional market for capitalism. But it would be wrong to imagine this as an overnight act, where the peasants leave their farm one day and start work in a factory the next. Whereas pre-capitalist producers often provide for much of their own means of subsistence, construct their own cottages, produce their own food etc. not only for themselves, but for their children, all of this must be provided for by capital in order that proletarisation can even take place. It is not easy to say exactly when, in each individual case, or as a whole, this transformation has been completed, so that it no longer represents an area of capitalist expansion. Theoretically it is over when a new generation is born and is brought up whose parents are already proletarians (or capitalists), so that they have become part of the existing capitalist market. It should be noted, however, that extra-capitalist areas still remain even within industrialised, urbanised capitalism.

In principle, however, once the producers outside capitalism have been transformed into proletarians or capitalists, they constitute part of the existing capitalist market, no longer providing new outlets for capitalist expansion. On each occasion, therefore, this process of absorption is a one-off event, limited in time and space, which cannot be repeated with the same persons. This is why capitalism cannot expand and accumulate eternally. At the latest when the great majority of humankind has been turned into either wage labourers or their “employers”, the system reaches its expansion limits. This is not yet completely the case today at the planetary level. But the “leveling off” of the expansion of China today is a clear sign that, although this expansion has not yet reached this limit, it is coming close enough to it to markedly slow things down. In so doing, the situation is increasingly destabilised. This phenomenon is not at all specific to China. As we have seen, it already happened in Japan, and not only there, but, in one way or another, in Europe, in North America, everywhere where there is a developed capitalism.

Another important aspect of the present slow-down in China is the following: as long as the Chinese capitalists could recruit their work force mainly from the countryside, more specifically, from societies which do not produce on the basis of wage labour and capital, they receive this influx of labour power without having to pay for its upbringing. This is almost certainly the main reason why wage levels in countries like China can be drastically lower than in the highly developed countries. But when the abundant supply of this kind of cheap labour begins to falter, and/or when capitalist competition obliges newly industrialised countries such as China to expand into high technology production (requiring a highly trained work force such as the countryside cannot provide), the likes of China progressively lose their advantage as a low wage location. This today is also contributing to the “normalisation” of Chinese growth rates.

The  dynamising effects of Deng’s post-Stalinist “reforms” also approach their limit

China has this basic scenario in common with neighbouring east Asian countries like Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. But there is an additional, very important factor of the Chinese “economic miracle” which distinguishes it from the likes of Japan or South Korea. This is the fact that, between Mao’s victory over the Kuomintang at the end of World War Two and the reforms of Deng Xiaoping which began in the 1980’s, the Chinese economy was organised on the Stalinist model. Stalinism was a form of capitalism, based as it was on the exploitation of wage labour serving the accumulation of capital by the ruling class. But it was a weird kind of dysfunctional capitalism producing a chronic scarcity of capital. In fact, the development of the Stalinist form of state capitalism was a kind of freak product of history, resulting from the taking of power by the proletariat in the Russian Empire, followed by the international isolation and the destruction from within of that revolution. What was left over in the Soviet Union was capitalism without a proper capitalist class. The new Stalinist state bourgeoisie assured its power and privileges through state ownership of the means of production. This form of state ownership, while tending to be economically less efficient, is not in itself incompatible with a properly functioning capitalism. The problem was first and foremost a political one: the hostility of the Stalinist bourgeoisie towards any other forms of ownership than its own state one – which it falsely identified with socialism. For this reason, a “normal” bourgeois credit economy could not develop. Credit is based on forms of private property where debtors vouch with their property and forfeit if they cannot meet their debts. Capitalism, however, is credit economy par excellence. Before it can be used to exploit wage labour as the source of surplus value, private property is the source of credit for investment. But under the Stalinist regimes, it was forbidden to forfeit state property. The resulting shortage of credit was the most important reason for the phenomenon of scarcity of capital in these economies. This was also the case for Maoist China. The perhaps most important single economic “reform” of Deng, therefore, was the legalisation of forms of private property, which provided the conditions for an important increase of agricultural productivity and the creation of a huge amount of surplus labour power, virtually freed from the land. It was on this basis that a real capitalist credit system could develop. At this level, although the Stalinist industrial sector and state services were already based on the capitalist exploitation of wage labour, Deng’s property reform had an effect similar to that of the integration of pre-capitalist resources, to the extent that these resources (factories, machines, buildings, terrain, blueprints etc.) could now be used to create credit for capitalist accumulation. This juridical act, this modification of the way the capitalist state defines and legislates private property, was to have enormous implications for the Chinese economy. Indeed, precisely the characteristic combination of the absorption of huge pre-capitalist areas and populations (in particular hundreds of millions of peasants) within the country, with the possibility of starting up a proper credit economy, mainly accounts for the spectacular economic rise of China. In fact, in some ways at least, China has gone through a transformation over the last two decades which in the United States took one to two centuries. A comparable combination of these two factors can exist in a developing, modernising Stalinist-led country such as Vietnam. But a similar dynamic is less likely in other big “emerging” countries such as Brazil, Mexico or India.

Today, however, the Chinese expansion is approaching its limits also at the level of its credit economy. Not only have credits already been taken on the main property assets, they are also taking on an increasingly risky, speculative character. All of this helps us to understand that the present slowing down of the Chinese “powerhouse” is not a momentary problem, but a fundamental one. Its own inner logic is leading China towards the kind of “leveling off” (which will eventually lead to stagnation, or worse) which now seems to permanently afflict Japan. But if this is the case, why is the ruling class in the US and elsewhere so worried? Why can they not patiently wait for the rise of China to come to a halt of its own accord? The reason is that China is not Japan. Beijing has options which Tokyo did not have. Today, this Chinese option is embodied in particular by the New Silk Road Project.

China plans its expansion beyond its own borders

As we have seen, the most important factor of the Chinese boom has been the possibility, within the country itself, of tapping the resources of pre-capitalist zones (soil, terrain, natural resources, raw materials, labour power, markets, and everything which can be used to generate credit), exploiting them through their ongoing conversion to a capitalist, and in the last analysis, wage labour based mode of production. It is thus fairly evident that, when the Chinese bourgeoisie begins to approach its limits within its own country (limits which, as we have indicated, are elastic rather than iron), it can attempt to do something similar beyond its border. When we say “beyond its borders”, we mean neither the influx of foreign investment into China, nor the flooding of the world market with products “made in China”. Both of these things have been going on for three decades already, nor is there anything new about them. Britain was the first industrial capitalist country in the world, and every other major power which followed in its footsteps (including Germany and the United States) relied to an important extent on capital investment from abroad to fuel their own economic lift-off, and on export offensives on the world market to consolidate it. What we mean here is the presence of extra-capitalist zones in the neighbourhood of China. This was not the case for Japan, for instance, once its economic rise lost momentum in the 1990’s. It invested heavily in China, for instance, thus participating in and profiting from the absorption of its extra-capitalist zones. But in the end it was China rather than Japan which benefited most from these investments. This was because Beijing was largely able to impose on the Japanese and all the other foreign investors its own conditions: obligatory Chinese majority shares in Joint Ventures with foreign companies, limitations to the transfer of profits out of China, mandatory technology transfer to Chinese partners, strict state control of when, where and how much foreign capital is invested etc. In other words, one of the main differences was and is that Japan is under the military domination and politico-strategic tutelage of the United States. China isn’t. A second very obvious difference is that Japan is an island country, whereas China is a mainland one (moreover with the world’s biggest population). If Japan wants to not only invest on the Asian mainland, but also to politically control, or at least strongly influence, the areas where it invests, it would need to accompany its investments with an invasion army. This is actually what Japan did in the past, particularly between 1904/05 (war with Russia) and the end of World War Two. At present, however, Japan is militarily much too weak for such an option.

As opposed to this, China can indeed follow such an option. Its principal means to this end at the moment is the OROB Initiative. In a sense, its gigantic infrastructure projects represent the economic dimension of the imperialist invasion, by which “it seeks to expand its industrial, technological and, above all, military expertise and power”.[3]

This Chinese invasion is particularly difficult to stop, not only because China is so much stronger than any of its neighbouring countries, but also because these countries themselves, in some ways, need this invasion (i.e. the infrastructure which Beijing supplies) in order to develop their own economies. It happens to be the case that many of the countries in the proximity of China still have pre-capitalist resources for exploitation. It is the case, for example, for Myanmar, Pakistan, or for the central Asian former “Soviet Republics”. On the other hand it also makes China more dependent on these countries. Being the creditor of all these huge infrastructure projects, in case of a payment default by the countries concerned, the Chinese state will have to find ways to compensate.

These resources, even if they could all be added together, would not contain a potential on a par with China’s own former internal ones. But this does not mean that they are not important. Moreover, the OROB method of infiltration via infrastructure construction allows China to spread its imperialist tentacles ever farther afield, reaching out towards potential resources of a similar kind, in western Asia or Africa (and even in Oceania and Latin America). And as we have seen, this expansion has a military dimension of paramount importance. Far from being a peaceful project (as the Chinese government of course claims) it is a preparation for future wars.

As we have seen, capitalism is not in the first instance an “economic system”. It is a form of class rule, one which, as never before, mobilises economic means in order to multiply its power, to consolidate its class rule. In other words, capitalism is, in the last analysis, more a “political” than an “economic” project. In order to hide this, it prefers to refer to capitalism in purely economic terms as a “market economy” or as an “industrial” (or even “post-industrial”) society. By the same token, it pretends (even to itself) that capitalism, historically speaking, developed spontaneously and naturally out of the division of labour and out of equivalent commodity exchange. In reality, however, the birth of capitalism was a political act: the separation of the means of production from the producers, and the transformation of the latter into wage labourers (often after initial, more or less long phases of the exploitation of different kinds of forced labour such as the workhouse system, slavery, and different forms of debt serfdom, for example the “coolie” system). At the heart of this process is always the establishment, enforcement and spreading of bourgeois private property. Its priorities are above all political. This is illustrated by the fact that, during the last third of the 19th century and large parts of the 20th century, the established capitalist countries, through the colonial and (after World War Two) the post-colonial systems largely hindered the economic development of large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. They did so not only because they wanted to keep for themselves the benefits of the exploitation of the labour power and the natural resources of these zones, but above all in order to prevent the rise of new and dangerous imperialist rivals. In so doing, they actually contributed to hampering the development of their “own” world capitalist economy. The priority of the military over the economic dimension is particularly well illustrated precisely by the exceptions to this rule. After World War Two, in Asia, the economic development of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were encouraged mainly because they were “front line” states of the US-led imperialist bloc during the “Cold War”, as was Cuba for the Soviet bloc.

Similarly, the willingness of the Chinese bourgeoisie to invest in the development of countries economically neglected and even held down by the old capitalist powers is mainly directed against these latter. In so doing, Beijing itself takes great care not to inadvertently beef up any potential rival which could become a threat to it. It is striking, for instance, that the OROB does not connect much with India.

A potentially unstable social situation

As was pointed out above, the ruling class has to defend its power, its private property, not only against bourgeois rivals, but also against the proletariat, the class from whose labour it mainly lives. This is also the case in China today. Already during the economic boom of the past 30 years, China has possibly been the country which has witnessed the most widespread manifestations of workers’ protest. In this context, the perspective of the beginning of the end of the economic expansion phase threatens to exacerbate social tensions. This is all the more worrying for the Chinese bourgeoisie – still led by its Stalinist party – since it does not dispose of the more politically sophisticated instruments of the old western powers such as “democracy” or “free trade unions”. Although it tries to compensate for this through a kind of total Big Brother Plus surveillance (presently being complemented by a system of individual rewards and punishments in order to enforce social conformism), the more the economy tends to slow down, the more these mechanisms risk proving insufficient. In particular the perspective of mass lay- offs and rampant mass unemployment must be truly daunting for the ruling class. This is all the more the case since, during the past three decades, the Chinese bourgeoisie has mainly relied on economic growth in order to control the social situation.

All of this does not mean that there is any threat of a proletarian revolution in China in the foreseeable future. We also have to take into account that the working class in China lacks the historical experience of its counterparts in the old capitalist countries, and that it is cut off from the traditions of the workers’ movement and from the perspective of communism by their perversion through Stalinism. But this does not mean that the Chinese ruling class can afford to ignore or neglect the situation on the social front. This is all the more the case since the danger for Chinese capital today is not only the proletariat, but also that of the general crumbling of social cohesion. A possible loss of cohesion which also threatens the ruling class itself.

In the old capitalist countries, the relatively high degree of unity of the national bourgeoisie of the leading countries which it was possible to maintain during the second half of the 20th century (under western style ‘liberal’ state capitalism) is now partly giving way to increasing divisions within its ranks. Far from being immune to such tendencies, their Chinese counterpart is in some ways even more at risk on account of the more rigid character of political Stalinism. In addition, the present governing generation in China has certainly not forgotten the painful lessons of the past: the decades of internecine conflict between “warlords” before the Maoists came to power, or the factional clashes during the so-called Cultural Revolution which were almost on the civil war level. For all of these reasons, the social motive and component of the One Road One Belt Initiative plays in the background too. The attempt to maintain economic growth, to obtain new contracts and outlets for Chinese companies, and to find new employment for Chinese workers, all these things are part and parcel of the OROB. A project which, in relation to the social question “at home” has not only an economic, but an extremely important ideological function. During the 19th century, the dream of a new life in America was one of the main utopias which ascendant capitalism put forward. Not only deported convicts, but also millions of European emigrants, also embarked for Canada, Australia, Algeria or Argentina in the hope of escaping misery, and lured by the prospect of acquiring a more favourable social status as part of the project of reproducing one’s existing culture in a very different part of the world. A “utopia” which already, at the time, more closely resembled a dystopia, often entailing murdering one’s way through the “aboriginal” populations from one coast to the other. The infernal character of such projects under the conditions of decadent capitalism came to light in particular through the attempted colonisation of western Russia and parts of eastern Europe during World War Two, when the Nazis were promising to convert (“reconvert”) millions of Germans into land-owning farmers. The result was mass murder on an even more monstrous scale, whereas the project itself failed. Today, probably the first time in history, the population of China is being called on to “go west!” The move, not only into western China, but into central Asia (where big stretches of land are being put under cultivation), has already begun (as it has, more stealthily, into southern Siberia). The development, not only of infrastructure, mining or industry, but also of agriculture in the republics of central Asia and in parts of Africa, is also intended to ensure food supplies to a China suffering severely from desertification and generalised environmental destruction.

The opposition of the other powers

OROB thus has the potential of helping to maintain the rise of China as a great power in face of increasingly adverse circumstances. But whether or not, or to which extent, this potential can be realised depends not only on the politics of China’s ruling class, but also on a number of other factors. Of these, the most important one is probably the threat that it will be sabotaged by its rivals. Although these rivals are not, for example, the cause of the present protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government, they are certainly doing what they can to encourage them. The United States obviously has influence in high circles, in what is one of the most important financial centers of the world. This is all the more the case for Britain with regard to its former “crown colony”. On the other hand, not only in Hong Kong, but within the Chinese community throughout south-east Asia, there are very rich and powerful Chinese clans with strong family ties to mainland China and are ready to assist Beijing against its rivals. In the first years of Deng’s economic reforms, more than half of the foreign investment in China is said to have come from this Chinese diaspora (which also probably advised Deng and Co. about how to set up a “properly” functioning capitalism). Taiwan, which Beijing considers as part of China, can be expected to become even more of a hot spot in the confrontation between China and its rivals.

More globally, we can speak of a three-pronged attack aimed at stopping, or at least at putting a break on, the rise of China. The first one is America’s economic war against China. It began as a “trade war”, but more recently has also threatened to escalate into a “currency warfare” (i.e. a devaluation contest between Yuan and Dollar). The degree to which this offensive against China is not just a caprice of Donald Trump was clearly revealed at the last G-20 summit of the world’s leading economic powers in Japan, by the reaction in Washington to the offer made by Trump to Xi Jin Ping to lift the technology embargo he had imposed on the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei: not only the Democratic Party, but also many Republicans (the party of Trump) were furious. They made it clear that, for them, what is much more important than customs and tariffs, is the need they see to impose a technology transfer embargo on China something along the lines of that levied on the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

The second prong of this offensive against China is of course the military dimension. An example of this is the decision of Washington to install middle range missiles in the Asian Pacific region, aimed at China. This in turn is partly a reaction to the development and production of such missiles by China. It is an open secret that one of the reasons the United States and Russia recently scrapped their treaty agreement mutually restricting such weapons is that both Washington and Moscow want to react to developments on the Chinese side.

The third prong is the stirring up of trouble along some of the most important routes of the New Silk Road itself. This is at least one of the reasons for India rekindling its conflict with Pakistan in Kashmir, or for the USA heating up its conflict with Iran.

We must conclude, therefore, that, far from being the blessing to humanity as the OROB announces itself, this project is one of a number of additional factors exacerbating the contradictions of decomposing capitalism. A development fraught with dangers for the world. Far from being proof that world capitalism is still something progressive, the rise of China, and the conflicts this leads to, are another confirmation that, with the two World Wars of the 20th century, capitalism irreversibly entered its phase of decadence. More than anything else, the characteristic of the decadence of capitalism is that the continuation of the existence of bourgeois society puts at risk the continued existence of humankind.

Steinklopfer,  28 August 2019.

[1] On our website: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201809/16572/china-s-silk-road-imperialist-domination [79]; “China’s Silk Road to imperialist domination”; September 2018.

[2] On our website: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201211/5331/deadly-string-pearls [80]; “A deadly “string of pearls”; International Review - Special Issue - Imperialism in the Far East, past and present, Imperialism in Asia in the 21st century.

[3] On our website: https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201807/16486/report-imperialist-tensions-june-2018 [81]; “Report on Imperialist Tensions (June 2018)”. 

A debate with a group of comrades in Alicante, Spain, about the significance of the present pandemic.

 

Contribution by the comrades of Alicante - Debates against the virus of capitalism

In these strange days in which the abnormal has become the norm, faced with the exacerbated suffocation of everyday life, with an increasingly empowered capitalist state as the mediating entity of all social life, a group of comrades who have been sharing militancy in various initiatives in the city of Alicante and its surroundings for many years, have come together to initiate a debate on the current and historical situation. Our militancy, which has gone in different directions over the years, retains two elements from a class point of view: the affirmation of the real need for the autonomy of the working class (our class) and proletarian internationalism. Consequently, even if there are divergent views on certain questions, we recognise ourselves in the historical and international revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

General framework from which we started:

• The permanent need for capital accumulation determines the permanence of its crises. The historical science of the working class has come to establish a time pattern: every 10 to 15 years the crisis is an unstoppable phenomenon.
• The crisis was solved through the destruction of people, goods and markets; war is the most favoured means for the necessary destruction imposed by the suicidal logic of capital.
• The globalisation of capitalism (since the beginning of the 20th century), and the progressive disappearance of pre-capitalist markets, exacerbates inter-bourgeois rivalries and gives rise to a situation of accumulated crisis, where large-scale imperialist wars with a power of mass destruction are developing.

• The Second Imperialist World War and the terrible destruction it caused (as a continuation of the First Imperialist War), with the consensus of the workers in all countries allied with their respective bourgeoisies under the banners of fascism or democracy (both perverse faces of perverse capital), bring about the economic recovery of the so-called ‘glorious 30 years’, years of reconstruction and accelerated growth. A shot of oxygen for capital, cornered by its own development.
• Since the return of the crisis (1970s) and of the proletarian struggle, there have a number of attempts by capital to mobilise us for a great war, or for local wars that have been fought over our bodies and those of our class brothers and sisters.
• However, two factors have prevented the development of a large-scale war in the classical sense: humanity refuses to be enlisted in new wars, there is a consciousness (not yet class consciousness) of the logical rejection of war from a pacifist, non-revolutionary point of view. A forced attempt by capital towards war could accelerate the current slow awareness. On the other hand, the proliferation of nuclear weapons could turn into an ultimate war adventure. The bourgeoisie, an unscrupulous class, is not afraid to spill the blood of others if it fears for its own skin.

The current coronavirus crisis raises some issues that need to be weighed and clarified:

• On the ideological level, it exacerbates the most brutal elements of the dominant ideology, the pillars on which the false consciousness of reality rests: nationalism, the defence of the nation and the united struggle across class divisions of society against the evil virus, the union of rich and poor beyond reality itself, the constant appeal (amid cheers and applause and cascading songs) to the sacrosanct NATIONAL UNITY. The strategy of atomisation and separation, crystallized to perfection in the lock-down, the prohibition of contact, affection and solidarity.
• Politically, it renews the need for state capitalism, the superior and preponderant role of the state as the guarantor and direct mediator of all human relations. And let us not forget (as the capitalist left so fervently does) that the state is the organ of power of the bourgeoisie, it is not a neutral state that objectively watches over the interests of the majority, it is the state of power, of a minority. Repression under the viral pretext, the militarisation of social life, are only a few symptoms of this disease, and perhaps they will remain. We talk about a war economy, a state of war, and they want to turn us all into little soldiers, according to this disgusting MILITARY logic.

In the economic field we have looked at various options, which we are not able to elucidate at the moment:

Obviously, the truth is that what's going on will only start to become more or less clear after a while.

In the economic field we see how it affects more or less all countries and it is not so clear that the ‘imperialist bloc’ will be the winner.  Although it is true that the free movement of goods benefits accumulation, it is no less true that in recent years a trade war has being waged between China, the USA and the EU. Protectionist policies have increased in the face of a smaller pie (the world) to be divided among the same scavengers. How the phenomenon of the coronavirus affects this and how capital will take advantage of it remains to be seen, but a hypothesis is looming and intertwined with the needs of imperialist war:

We wonder whether the viral phenomenon can be a substitute for classical imperialist warfare, since it could come to equate its capacity to destroy labour power, goods and markets, thus favouring cyclical processes of reconstruction. If this option is viable (it does not depend only on the will of the bourgeoisie), the re-edition of these situations, states of emergency and the temporary and partial paralysis of certain economic areas, will become cyclical and permanent. In fact, this type of situation already occurs in certain regions of the planet, where what is considered exceptional here is everyday normality. This could be proof of the irreversible decadence of the capitalist system, or a way of accumulating in the face of its irreversible decline. In other words, it would be the form of a large-scale imperialist war in the immediate future.

However, we have serious doubts about this hypothesis, since for this to be the case, it would have to cause, in addition to the destruction of markets and goods (which is feasible due to the economic collapse), millions of deaths in order to destroy enough labour power that would otherwise be left in poverty.  This does not seem to be the case: the number of deaths, even if it is given much media hype, is far from alarming, rather it seems that what is wanted to be avoided is the collapse of the hospitals. Daily misery alone is already causing millions of deaths from hunger and disease or pollution in industrialised countries... And while equally feasible, it is too dangerous even for the elites, being comparable with a nuclear war. In other words, a true major viral pandemic would affect both rich and poor, unless they had the vaccine beforehand.

Nor should we ignore the repeated warnings about the imminent destruction of millions of jobs by robotisation, mass migrations due to climate change, and the overpopulation of cities that have been converted in many cases into gigantic slums.

Perhaps this ‘pandemic’ will serve as a pretext for a new approach to labor relations, increasing precariousness, etc., and for a new world order, but this would enter the realm of conspiracy, with its capitalist ‘International’ capable of dictating what policies states must comply with (all of them?) Although, to tell the truth, the capitalists have their International in different bodies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the G7, the WHO.

We know about the simulation of a viral epidemic that was carried out in September and which has come to light. Could it be that this is a smokescreen hiding an ‘imminent’ collapse of the world economy and that this  could serve to reset the system... and in so doing sneaks in new repressive measures for another time?

The logic of capitalism undoubtedly requires the destruction of labour power, while making it cheaper overall, and from different viewpoints (some more conspiratorial than others) this is taken for granted. Overpopulation is a security problem and a major concern for all states.

Nor can it be excluded that these pandemics are in fact due to climate crises and the harmful relationship between humans and other species, in addition to the inability of States to provide solutions beyond the implementation of police/military measures …. and perhaps in passing making some money.

Other necessary considerations:

• The limits of capital are not only, nor mainly in its economic contradictions, in this mathematical tendency to decrease the rate of profit. Capital demonstrates in this sense, its creative capacity to develop new forms of accumulation, even if on a false basis, to keep its head above the mud and the blood.
• The real limit of capital, in the sense of the POWER to overthrow it and transform the world at its roots, to establish true life as opposed to mere survival, is the world proletarian revolution.
• As in every imperialist war, the bourgeoisie focuses its efforts on the ideological terrain, bombarding us with a barrage of banal activities to be carried on during the lock-down and to keep us active and thoughtless (like good zombies), while ferociously expanding its classic ideological elements: defense of the national economy and rejection of ‘what is outside’ (now turned into a dangerous disease) and distrust of our equals. Loneliness will continue to kill us, faster than any virus.
• It is not necessary to deny the existence of the virus to demand the need to deny, in practice, the brutality of existing society, the military and warlike logic of capital.
• Today, as yesterday, the internationalist and revolutionary slogan of the proletariat will be to confront all the bourgeoisies and their states, to insist, if we have the choice, that we choose our class autonomy because, undoubtedly, all the fractions of the bourgeoisie are worse.

Our intention is to continue discussing and debating, the most subversive activity that can be developed today is to recover the weapons of criticism, and we wish to open that discussion to all comrades who wish to approach it and share their positions with us. So this document is only the beginning of a tool for debate... IT WILL CONTINUE...

• Proletarians of all countries, let us embrace
• Proletarians of all countries, we cough loudly against the nearest bourgeois

Fdo: ex­-CAUs

 

ICC’s response

We welcome the initiative to meet and discuss. It is an expression of the effort of the self-consciousness in the working class and simultaneously a contribution to its development.

The comrades take as their starting point their adherence to the working class and internationalism. They see this as a framework for discussion where divergences can be expressed. On the other hand, they conceive their reflections as something open, evolving, and declare their intention “to continue discussing and debating: the most subversive activity that can be developed today is to recover the weapons of criticism, and we wish to open that discussion to all comrades who wish to approach it and share their positions with us.”

We think this is the right method in the proletarian milieu: starting from what unites us in order to address what may differentiate us through healthy and open debate. This is the method we are going to follow in our response in order to encourage a discussion involving other groups and comrades.

In the face of the pandemic crisis and the looming economic crisis, the comrades reject the fact that capitalism will disappear by itself, crushed by its own contradictions. On the contrary, they affirm that “The real limit of capital, in the sense of the POWER to overthrow it and transform the world at its roots, to establish true life as opposed to mere survival, is the world proletarian revolution.” Therefore “It is not necessary to deny the existence of the virus to demand the need to deny, in practice, the brutality of existing society, the military and warlike logic of capital.” So “Today, as yesterday, the internationalist and revolutionary slogan of the proletariat will be to confront all the bourgeoisies and their states, to insist that, if we have the choice, we choose our class autonomy because, undoubtedly, all the fractions of the bourgeoisie are worse.”

We fully share these positions, as well as the denunciation of how capital is ‘managing’ the pandemic crisis: it takes advantage of the confinement to impose an ideology of war and of National Unity, which favours atomisation, individualism, every man for himself, all against all, the fear of ‘the strange’ and therefore insidiously stimulates xenophobia and racism. “The bourgeoisie focuses its efforts on the ideological terrain, bombarding us with a barrage of banal activities to be carried on during the lock-down and to keep us active and thoughtless (like good zombies), while ferociously expanding its classic ideological elements: defense of the national economy and rejection of ‘what is outside’ (now turned into a dangerous disease) and distrust of our equals. Loneliness will continue to kill us, faster than any virus.”

Sharing this valuable common ground, we want to analyse what we do not find valid in the positions expressed by the comrades.

One part of their text develops speculations about the possibility that the pandemic was provoked by capital so that, by massively extinguishing lives, it played the role of an imperialist war: liquidating labour power and goods in order to resume the accumulation of capital [1]. The comrades themselves have serious doubts about these ideas.

The Covid-19 pandemic is triggering a social crisis of global dimensions

However, the comrades are still a bit skeptical about the seriousness of the pandemic: "The number of deaths, even if it is given much media hype, is far from alarming. Daily misery alone is already causing millions of deaths from hunger and disease or pollution in industrialised countries...". It is not the strictly virological nature of the disease that makes it so deadly, but a series of historical and social factors of great relevance: the collapse of health systems all over the world; its rapid and dizzying spread based on the enormous intensification of world production in recent decades; the social and economic disorganisation and paralysis that it has brought about and aggravated; the very response of states that reveals evident incompetence and outrageous negligence. It is this set of factors, linked to the historical phase of the decomposition of capitalism [2], that makes the virus the catalyst of a social crisis of global dimensions.

In the history of mankind, the great pandemics have been linked to historical moments of decline in a mode of production. The Black Death of the 14th century broke out in the decadence of feudalism. The First World War, the entrance of capitalism in decadence, brought with it the terrible pandemic of the Spanish flu that caused 50 million deaths.

Covid-19 is, for us, an expression of the decadence of capitalism and more precisely of its terminal phase, the phase of decomposition. It needs to be understood within the framework of a system whose contradictions have caused enormous catastrophes such as two world wars and an endless chain of even more devastating local wars; the great economic cataclysms that result in chronic unemployment, worsening precariousness, collapsing wages, and widespread impoverishment; in climatic change and environmental destruction that also lead to catastrophes labeled as ‘natural’; in the general deterioration of health; and, not least, social dislocation with a moral barbarity and ideological decomposition that favours all kinds of mystical and irrational aberrations.

It is very positive that the comrades insist on the need for world proletarian revolution as the only possible answer to this escalation of barbarism. But what is the material basis for this demand? For us it is the decadence of capitalism, as the Platform of the Communist International (1919) has already pointed out: “A new epoch is born! The epoch of the dissolution of capitalism, of its inner disintegration. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat.”

This pandemic shows precisely the validity of applying the marxist concept of decadence - when the mode of production becomes a brake on the productive forces it has developed - to the situation of capitalism today. In the14th century the cause of the plague was not understood; in 1918-1919 viruses had not been discovered. But today? The Covid-19 virus was sequenced within weeks. The unbearable thing about the deaths from the coronavirus is not their quantity, but that all of them would be perfectly avoidable if the science and technology that already exist were not subjected to the laws of profit and competition.

Cyclical crises or chronic crisis?

The comrades develop certain ideas that relativise the notion of the decadence of capitalism. Thus they affirm that "The constant need of capital accumulation determines the unstoppable permanence of its crises. The historical science of the working class came to establish a time pattern: every 10-15 years the crisis is an unstoppable phenomenon".

In the ascendancy of capitalism (its heyday in the 19th and early 20th century) crises had a cyclical character as they were “a manifestation of the fact that the old markets were saturated and a new expansion was nee­ded. They were thus periodic (every 7 to 10 years …..) and were resolved by the opening up of new markets. (…) They broke out abruptly (…). They were short-lived (…). They didn’t generalise to all countries. They did not generalise to all branches of indus­try. They led onto a new phase of industrial growth (……). They didn’t pose the conditions for a political crisis of the system.” [3].

In the ascendant period the cyclical crises were the manifestation of the development of capitalism: each one of them was a stimulus for new expansion all over the world, for the conquest of markets and a spectacular development of the productive forces.

In contrast, in decadence (since the second decade of the 20th century), crises “develop in a progressive manner. (…) Once they’ve begun, they last for a long time. Thus, while the relationship between recession and prosperity was around 1:4 in the 19th centu­ry (2 years of crisis in a cycle of 10 years), the relationship between the length of the de­pression and the length of the revival has been around 2:1 in the 20th century. Between 1914 and 1980, we’ve had 10 years of generalised war (without counting the permanent local wars), 32 years of depression (1918-22, 1929-39, 1945-50, 1967-80): a total of 42 years of war and crisis, against only 24 years of reconstruction (1922-29 and 1950-67). (…) Whereas in the 19th century the economic machine was revived by its own forces at the end of each crisis, the crises of the 20th century have, from the capitalist point of view, no solution except generalised war. These crises are the death-rattles of the system. They pose, for the proletariat, the necessity and possibility of communist revolution. The 20th century is indeed the ‘era of wars and revolutions’ as the Communist International said at its founding congress”

Since 1914 the capitalist economy does not function according to the crisis-prosperity scheme in an upward dynamic, but rather, it tends to become a chronic crisis, which, despite the massive state intervention - state capitalism –gets worse and worse.

Wars in decadence of capitalism

The comrades clearly denounce the imperialist nature of the war and firmly oppose the flags with which the forces of capital (from the extreme right to the extreme left) intend to mobilise the proletarians behind them: nation, fascism, democracy etc.

This is completely right and we share it. However, they consider that “two factors have prevented the development of a large-scale war in the classical sense: humanity refuses to be enlisted in new wars, there is a consciousness (not yet class consciousness) of the logical rejection of war from a pacifist, non-revolutionary point of view. A forced attempt by capital towards war could accelerate the current slow awareness. On the other hand, the proliferation of nuclear weapons could turn into an ultimate war adventure. The bourgeoisie, an unscrupulous class, is not afraid to spill the blood of others if it fears for its own skin”

We are in complete agreement on the first factor. If humanity did not sink into a Third World War in the 1970s and 1980s, it was because of the resistance of the proletariat in the large industrial concentrations. This resistance was rather passive and occurred on a limited basis, which seriously limited its strength as the comrades say.

Now, the second factor they point to does not seem to be right to us. The imperialist war has an infernal logic which, once unleashed, creates a vortex of destruction and barbarism that is almost impossible to stop.

In the ascendant period of capitalism “war had, in general, the func­tion of ensuring that each capitalist nation had the unity and territorial extension needed for its development. In this sense, despite the calamities it brought with it, it was a moment in the progres­sive nature of capital. Wars were, therefore, limited to two or three coun­tries, they were short-lived, they didn’t lead to much destruction, they resulted in a new burst of development both for victor and vanquished.”

On the other hand, the wars of decadence “no longer derive from the economic necessity to develop the producti­ve forces of society, but have essentially po­litical causes: the balance of forces between the blocs. They are no longer ‘national’ wars as in the 19th century: they are imperialist wars. They are no longer moments in the expansion of the capitalist mode of production, but express the impossibility of its expansion. They no longer aim at dividing up the world, but at re-dividing the world in a situation where a bloc of countries cannot develop, but can only maintain the valorisation of its capital at the direct expense of a rival bloc: the final result being the degradation of world capital as a who­le. Wars are now generalised across the whole globe and result in enormous levels of destruction for the whole world economy, leading to generalised barbarism. (…) The wars of the 20th century are in no way ‘youth­ful maladies’ as some claim. They are the con­vulsions of a dying system.”

Imperialist wars do not offer any solution to the contradictions of capital; on the contrary, they aggravate them. While it is true that, as the comrades say, "The second imperialist world war and the terrible destruction it generated (...), brought about the economic recovery of the so-called ‘30 glorious years’, years of reconstruction and accelerated growth. A shot of oxygen to capital, cornered by its own development", this reconstruction was due to the fact that, on the one hand, the United States did not suffer any destruction in its own country, so it could become a factor of accumulation on a world scale; and, on the other hand, that there were still non-capitalist areas on the planet to allow that shot of oxygen to capitalism.

From that point of view, imperialist war is an irrational machinery that is beyond the control of the different participating national imperialisms. It is possible that each one ‘regrets’ the ruin that has been caused, but the bet of each national capital is to come out as the winner and to make its rivals (and its own working class) pay for the consequences of the war. Hence, the current proliferation of nuclear weapons constitutes not the least obstacle in the sense of making the capitalists ‘rational’ and avoiding going ‘too far’.

The increasingly uncontrollable nature of the system and its contradictions, far from expressing any rationality even according to the system’s own logic, allows us to understand the current pandemic. In the same way that imperialist wars - especially those that are generalised - become an unstoppable mechanism, pandemics, like the current one, are like a machine that, once set in motion, is very difficult to control.

This irrationality leads to the point where the most ‘advanced’ countries are stealing from each other the supplies needed to deal with the pandemic, even if this means aggravating it on a global scale! And thus sooner or later for themselves. As we pointed out in the article on “The War of the Masks” [4], in the face of global problems, the exploiting class cannot get rid of its fragmentation into competing national interests. The irrational centrifugal dynamic in the current pandemic is also expressed in the phenomenon of regional administrations within nation states fighting and cheating each other over the supply of health products, as we have seen in the United States, Germany and Spain.

We are seeing that the pandemic will exacerbate a nascent global economic crisis that was already taking shape, and will take on proportions that many analysts even consider will be greater than in 2008.

Focusing on the epidemiological dimension, they talk about ‘passing the quarantine’ in the hope of the ‘day after’. However, first of all, that ‘day after’ is slow in coming and tends to be prolonged. Secondly, there is a consensus in the scientific community that new waves of infection may occur with unpredictable consequences. How will these health systems, already badly damaged before the pandemic, cope in the face of many other diseases? Let us not forget that in recent years epidemics as Ebola, dengue fever, AIDS, cholera, zika, etc. have proliferated.

Therefore, we think that the key question is not the pandemic itself, but the historical conditions in which it is developing; as a result and accelerating factor of the serious contradictions ravaging capitalism after a century of decadence and more than 30 years of social and ideological decomposition.

International Communist Current 2020-04-20

[1] ‘Conspiratorial’ ideas about the virus, including those which completely deny its existence, have been having some impact. A survey in the US showed that 33% of respondents believed that the pandemic was artificially caused. We intend to write an article on the subject.

[2] See: https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [34]; “Theses on decomposition”, International Review 107.

[3] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/023_proletariat_under_decadence.html [82]; “The proletarian struggle under decadence”, International Review 23. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotes that follow are from this document. 

 [4] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16832/war-masks-bourgeoisie-class-thieves [83]; “War of the masks: the bourgeoisie is a class of thieves!”

In this article, our section in Peru denounces the ravages of the pandemic, but above all the cynicism and negligence of the democratic state, which has no other concern than profit and the accumulation of capital, abandoning and sacrificing both health workers and the sick. Health workers in Lima and other cities tried to organise sit-ins and demonstrations, demanding protection and resources. The state has responded with police repression and arrests!

More than 20 days of quarantine and confinement have already passed, the maximum measure applied by most States in the world to isolate the Covid-19 virus also known as the Coronavirus. In Peru, the state of emergency is accompanied by a curfew imposed by the democratic state, a situation that has reinforced social atomisation. This global pandemic has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, according to official figures. The rapid and brutal spread of the virus has paralysed all the economies of the world. The world bourgeoisies of the different countries are still not coordinating their efforts to contain the epidemic, which is sharply aggravating the world economic crisis.

Covid-19 and its economic effects on the working class

The IMF already points out that the international economy is in a recession equal to or worse than the one of 2008-2009. Covid-19 has generated terrible economic consequences at the international level, where the working class will once again suffer most from this situation. For example, in Peru, the Coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of a large part of the population, even apart from children and the elderly people in general: the workers. Large sectors of the workers in the country are economically vulnerable because of the forced unemployment imposed by the pandemic.

In Lima and other cities in the country, the unemployment rate has tripled in the first 15 days of the quarantine[1]. Thirty percent of the population has been left directly in ruins, without work or savings, since 70% of the population lives in the informal economy, earning a living from day to day in support of their families. Millions of workers in Peru live on less than $5 US a day. There is also a growing concern in the private sector because 3.7 million formal jobs will be affected by this crisis as well.

Payment of wages has completely broken down, and many families are struggling to pay rent, buy food, medicine and other necessities. This whole situation has begun to multiply at all levels, directly affecting the workers and feeding the panic of the whole population. This situation has put the government on alert and forced it to act.

In view of this situation, the government led by Vizcarra has developed an economic plan to try to mitigate the consequences of the lock-down, which in its first stage has meant releasing funds from the CTS[2]. The second measure was the bonus of 380 soles ($115 US) that was delivered in the first fortnight of the quarantine, with a second bonus after these first two weeks. The third measure along the same lines was to release up to 25% of the funds of the Private Pension System (AFPs). But these measures are not, nor will they be, sufficient to face the economic crisis that the pandemic has already unleashed in the country, if only because 70% of the population are self-employed informal workers who do not benefit from CTS, or AFPs, or any other reserve funds.

On the other hand, Cepal[3] points out that the crisis could leave 22 million more people in extreme poverty in Latin America, and speaks of the beginning of a profound recession. “We are facing the strongest drop in growth ever experienced in the region,” said Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Many local companies are already taking advantage of this situation, advancing unpaid holidays, “pending” payment, laying off workers, cutting payroll costs. These are “maneuvers” executed by companies so as not to see their profits affected in the midst of the tragedy. According to Ricardo Herrera, a lawyer specialising in labour law, companies can opt for these alternatives because the Labor Productivity and Competitiveness Law allows it. This leads to workers having work suspended for up to 90 days without being paid[4]. The law of value and profit always condemns the working class to exploitation and misery.

The coronavirus has revealed the precariousness of health care on a world level

The arrival of the coronavirus[5] exposed the criminal lack of prevention and the cuts in health budgets on the part of bourgeois states: saturated hospitals, doctors and nurses working without equipment, without “health security”, etc. The week-to-week increase in the number of infected people has made it clear that all the years of economic prosperity enjoyed by the Peruvian bourgeoisie, as a result of the high prices of raw materials, privatisations, mining concessions, tax revenues and other operations, only served to fill their pockets and that to-day the workers will pay the price for the damage caused by the bourgeois state and the employers. Moreover, the bourgeoisie and employer’s state cynically appeal to the individual responsibility of citizens by imposing confinement by decree in order to prevent the collapse of the already overwhelmed public health system.

The virus has caused a real health crisis at the national and planetary level. In Peru, ESSALUD[6] and MINSA[7] have been hiding the terrible conditions in which hundreds of doctors and nurses have to work. This whole situation of precariousness in social security was denounced by a group of workers from the National Medical Union of Social Security of Peru (Sinamssop), who were later arrested in the room of the union by the national police on the orders of the president of ESSALUD, Fiorella Molinelli.

Hospitals at the point of collapse trying to deal with extra hundreds of sick people, with zero medical material, zero medical protection equipment, that is what the health system shows today, in France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and the whole planet.  For decades the bourgeoisie did not care about public health, there was never a yearly sustainable investment; on the contrary, there were only cuts in health budgets. Peru, with 33 million inhabitants, has no more than 350 beds in Intensive Care Units.

Today, as this global health emergency explodes, we see authorities rushing to buy equipment and other supplies in the midst of the crisis. For it is the aim of the bourgeoisie to stop the pandemic without sacrificing exploitation and profit. The first thing to denounce is that we are facing the chronicle of an announced collapse of the public health system. And it is not because of the “irresponsibility” of the citizens, but because of decades of cuts in health care spending, in health care workers, in hospital maintenance and medical research budgets.[8]

The media are making a big effort to put out reports and images about the quarantine: images of empty streets or people who do not respect the curfew, the police and army in the streets doing their job of controlling order and repressing any sign of working class discontent. However, there are no reports, images or news items showing the medical centers or public hospitals that are directly treating cases of the coronavirus. Because they don’t want to show the collapse of their health care system and facilities. Every day more and more doctors and nurses go on social networks denouncing the terrible conditions in which they have to work every day.

It is not only medical care that has suffered a collapse. For instance, in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the largest cemetery in the world is being prepared, as the number of deaths is on the rise, with morgues and other cemeteries in the city already filled to capacity. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, where misery has advanced brutally in the last 10 years, gang violence connected to the drug trade, overcrowding, lack of public infrastructure and of basic services are some of the problems that have already been highlighted more clearly in this pandemic.  Dead people burned in the streets because of the saturation of the morgues and cemeteries. Many families keep their dead outside their homes, some authorities start filling containers with the bodies, a situation that resembles a war scenario with bodies everywhere.

On the control of the population and the repression of the workers

The bourgeois state, with Vizcarra at the head, has passed a law allowing the security forces to shoot in “self-defense” in the face of possible demonstrations and reactions by the working class. Law No. 31012, the Police Protection Act, states that the Peruvian National Police, in the performance of its duty, may use its weapons or other means of defense. This law is a new weapon against the proletariat, and shows the fear of the bourgeoisie and the government of workers’ demonstrations that are already beginning to take place in different parts of the country, due to the unsustainable poverty resulting from the economic crisis, now being sharply exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. The bourgeoisie shows its claws once again with this law, which even for some law specialists is unconstitutional.

But the ideological attack of the bourgeoisie is also present with a message that today governments are doing “everything necessary” to save - not “the banks”, as during the “financial crisis” of 2008 - but the population. In Peru we hear it with phrases like “Peru first”, “everyone against the coronavirus” “together we can” phrases that are repeated daily in the midst of the crisis. We must denounce here nationalism and that false community of interests between exploiters and exploited, an ideological poison used to call for sacrifices and dilute the proletariat in inter-class revolts. We have already seen this in the popular revolts of last autumn in Chile and Ecuador, where the proletariat was pulled along behind the banners of indigenous rights, democracy, gender issues, leftism, the new constituent assembly and other ideological traps of the bourgeoisie.[9]

This global pandemic, that comes on top of appalling cases of malnutrition, tuberculosis or dengue fever which already result in countless numbers of deaths every year, adding to the contamination and death from mining activity, is one more proof that global capitalism has entered a terminal stage, that of social decomposition[10] that visibly threatens the survival of humanity.

In the midst of this situation, we can only affirm that, whatever happens with the Covid-19 virus, this new disease warns us that capitalism has become a danger to humanity, and to life on this planet. The enormous capacities of the productive forces, including medical science, to protect us from diseases clash with this criminal pursuit of profit, with the overcrowding of a large proportion of the human population in unlivable cities[11] (Lima alone has almost 9 million inhabitants) and with the risks of new epidemics that this entails.

Doctors and nurses protest and demonstrate

Doctors and nurses from several hospitals in Lima and some provinces demonstrated and protested against the lack of medical security, the lack of materials and the government’s health policy. Many doctors and nurses have held sit-ins, using banners and loudspeakers denouncing and protesting the poor working conditions they have to face every day, putting their health and that of their families at risk.

In Peru, the government knew since January what was coming and yet it ignored the warnings and underestimated the pandemic. And when the damage was done, ESSALUD and MINSA sent in the health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, even medical students, without any protection, like soldiers conscripted for war, a situation that brought further contagion and death

However, the workers have not remained silent. For example, last April 7 at the Ate-Vitarte Hospital, pompously presented by Vizcarra as a “model of the fight against Covid-19”, doctors and nurses refused to work and stood at the doorway to protest against the government about the lack of masks, gloves, ventilators and safety protocols[12]. Many of them were threatened with dismissal, others were arrested.

Many doctors and nurses have also taken action through social networks, making videos with their cell phones of hospital facilities and denouncing the precariousness in which they work. This is now multiplying on a national scale; but by order of the bourgeoisie and the government the mass media hide all this news so that the terrible misery in the hospitals does not come to light.

In other parts of the world we have also seen health workers protesting against the pandemic crisis, such as in France, Spain and Italy, where there have been demonstrations against the lack of protection at work, against the lack of safety protocols, stretchers, ventilators, gloves and masks. The same pattern is to be seen everywhere: the precarious state of public health systems, due to health budget cuts.

The economic crisis lays the ground  for a proletarian response 

The world economic crisis is intensifying more and more, making its effects felt on the working class and expressed above all in the precarious conditions of labor and the increase in unemployment, A SITUATION NOW AGGRAVATED BY THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND THE DROP IN ECONOMIC GROWTH. This perspective of new and more brutal attacks on the working class throughout the world raises the possibility of a development of struggles of the proletariat on its class terrain. This terrain is not one of interclass rage in the style of what happened, for example, in France in the “yellow vest” movement, but on the contrary in the struggles that have taken place since the end of last year, as we have seen in France[13] with the workers’ movements against the pension “reforms” and where we are seeing a tendency to reflect on how the working class should fight and organise itself against its historical enemy. Even if many weaknesses have been seen in this movement, lessons can be drawn from it for the world proletariat, in preparation for a new period of struggles informed by a process of political maturation.

Internacionalismo, section of the ICC in Peru (April 11, 2020)

This article was written by a close sympathiser in the US. We welcome this initiative and encourage others to follow the example. And of course we also welcome the fact that workers in the US have been reacting against the severe dangers they are facing. As we have argued in our article on the class struggle internationally (https://en.internationalism.org/content/16855/covid-19-despite-all-obstacles-class-struggle-forges-its-future [88]), it is important to recognise that the working class is not willing to submit to everything that capitalism is trying to impose on it at the moment, even though the objective conditions of the pandemic and the lock-down are a real obstacle to the development of the open, mass struggle. The effects of the economic crisis engulfing the entire planet will hit the working class much harder than before - but we cannot at the moment predict exactly how and when the working class will respond. It may well be that the sheer brutality of the attacks – especially the development of mass unemployment – will create a certain paralysis for an initial period, but sooner or later the proletariat will be forced to respond. Therefore we should not be discouraged if this response is not immediate, but as the article says at the end, we must build on the long-term potential of the class struggle. ICC

****

The working class is facing, and responding to, an unprecedented situation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. All over the world, workers are facing great dangers at both the hands of the virus and the hands of the bourgeoisie; not only that, but it can clearly be observed that the standard operating procedures of the bourgeoisie and its political apparatus are intensifying the danger of, and the harm done by, the virus. However, with these dangers at the forefront of their minds, the working class has begun to struggle against the bourgeois intensification of natural disaster; an intensification which itself is a clear indication and result of the period of capitalist decomposition. The working class response to this intensification of disaster and misery is the further development of an increasingly common mood of discontent which started in France before spreading to Finland and some cities in the US. Nowhere is this spread of class struggle and discontent more obvious than in the increase in class action against the worsening of working conditions in the United States of America, a country in which actions of class struggle has been historically more sparse compared to others. That the struggle has spread to, and within, a country which is typically weighed down and confused by popular, inter-classist, democratic mystifications is evidence that this movement very well may continue to grow throughout the pandemic and beyond. This struggle has the potential to intensify once the pandemic has “run its course”, so to speak. When the need for such intense isolation and distance begins to dissipate, the struggles which are playing out now, just as they had begun before the pandemic, could very well build a base for the next steps to be taken. That said, the struggle in the US also clearly shows the challenges which the working class faces internationally in these strange, uncertain times; and coming to important conclusions about the lessons which are to be discerned from the class struggle under the conditions of the pandemic could very well be more challenging than usual. Both these positive developments and the drawbacks which come with the conditions in which these developments have arisen show that there is great potential for the further development and intensification of class struggle; but just like many other aspects of life in these times, this is not entirely certain. In spite of this uncertainty about where the situation will lead, there is no doubt that recent struggles show that the future has much potential.

The United States has quickly become the epicenter of the pandemic, something which any casual observer could have predicted; America boasts the robust economy of its European counterparts, but has a healthcare system which is constantly the subject of ridicule. Even with this economy, however, the working class is facing dire circumstances. This is no surprise, as the rewards of capitalist production will always be reaped by the bourgeoisie while the working class are laid out as a cushion to catch them as they fall. The working class will always be put at the front line when capitalism’s contradictions become violent and destructive. With the American economy taking a massive blow due to the pandemic’s grip on the US, we clearly see the circumstances of the workers become far more dire. Not only is the healthcare system inadequate in so many ways, but the lives of the workers are being put on the line by all the differing responses to the pandemic by the bourgeoisie as well. There is no doubt that workers are living under increasingly worsening conditions as a result of this pandemic and the response to it by the bourgeoisie.

There are two predominant responses to the severity of the pandemic by the bourgeoisie; workers are either forced to remain at their workplaces where, across the country, proper protective measures and materials are not being implemented, or to stay home and subject themselves to the ill-equipped unemployment systems of state governments. For those who remain at work, the needs which must be met to protect workers are not being provided. From factories to warehouses, grocery stores to “essential” retailers, the proper equipment and distancing measures are not being provided or followed to a degree which prevents the spread of the virus. For example, Amazon warehouses are finding more and more reports of infections, and are in some cases preventing this news from reaching workers in order to keep productivity from falling. The essential workers which the media and government praise as heroes are still forced to place their life on the line and are treated as replaceable machines. On top of this, in many workplaces there are schedule changes which can spell disaster for workers: after all, just three years ago it was found that 78% of American workers were living paycheck to paycheck, an increase from the figure of 75% the year before[1]. A reduction in working hours, typical of a business which is attempting to distance employees from each other, will stretch paychecks to their breaking points and plunge workers into further debt and despair. This stretch is also true of those who have been laid off, the number which is staggering. In April, 20.5 million layoffs occurred and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%[2]. These numbers are the highest ever recorded since the government started tracking these numbers in 1939 and 1948 respectively, even higher than the Great Recession of just a decade before. We can clearly see that, with or without foresight, the response of the bourgeoisie is directly taking a toll on the working class.

Indirect results of these responses are also exacerbating the misery of the workers as well, intensifying systemic issues of capitalism to a point where they cannot be glossed over. Hunger in America, an issue swept under the rug in order to preserve the image of a country of prosperity, has been revealed and aggravated by broken supply chains and hoarding. Food banks are struggling to keep up with the influx of those going hungry. In the wake of this situation, organizations like Food Not Bombs have modified and increased their activity, making deliveries and providing service more consistently, in order to make sure those in need still have food to put on their tables without breaking the bank or risking infection. However, not every city or town is so lucky to have these collective efforts. American “food deserts”, towns in which the grocery stores are already poorly stocked or are located in towns many miles away, are still suffering from shortages and workers are going hungry. Racial disparities are also being exacerbated by the virus and the response to it, as racial and ethnic minorities comprise a disproportionate amount of cases of the coronavirus. This is due to the fact that racial and ethnic minorities are predominantly workers themselves, comprising a smaller amount of the population as well as being subjected to racial preference of whites in America. Racial relations which were developed to divide the working class are still working centuries after their violent establishment. The Seattle Indian Health Board, a health center serving the indigenous community in Washington State, asked the government for supplies to help with the inevitable influx of coronavirus patients: in return, they received body bags. Communities comprised of minorities are being targeted by police enforcement of social distancing measures far more than those with a white majority. It is clear that the thinly veiled white supremacy which operates through state channels in America and general racial injustice still remains a prevalent force and terrible tragedy during these times[3]. All around, the working class is finding itself in desperate conditions at work and at home.

The desperate conditions of the working class, however, is not being accepted at face value as the hardships of the collective sacrifice of the American people. The national unity which the government desires in proclaiming that “we are all in this together” is nowhere in sight. Since March, the working class has been resisting attacks on them by the bourgeoisie and have insisted that human lives are more valuable than profit. To borrow a slogan raised by Italian factory workers, workers in America have insisted that they are not “lambs to the slaughter”. Autoworkers in the vehicle factories in Michigan, who just last year had been on a strike led by the United Auto Workers union, began the struggle for their safety by resisting a stay at work order which was issued by both the bosses and the UAW. Many of these workers won the right to stay at home without being fired, but production resumed on May 11th after collusion with the Democratic governor, the UAW, and the bosses. Healthcare workers have been using the little off time they have to demonstrate against the little equipment they receive, though the nature of their jobs makes striking properly for their demands next to impossible. President Trump has ordered meatpacking workers back to work in spite of the rapid spread of the coronavirus in these plants, an unpopular decision which will surely meet even more resistance, as in the past several weeks workers have walked off the job in multiple states. Amazon delivery workers have been some of the most active and vocal workers during this pandemic, with action taking off more as the weeks have gone by. Both Amazon and Whole Foods have been subjected to retaliation by their workers, whose jobs had already earned a reputation amongst the working class as having some of the worst possible conditions. Strikes against worsening conditions have gone on at various warehouse locations across the company, and workers have attempted to meet in ways which would enable discussion without putting their safety at stake, through online meetings. Walkouts have been organized both in person during work hours, and over channels of internet communication. The chatroom, the video meeting, these are becoming the means by which planning class action in a time of social distancing is carried out. Amazon has done its best to stamp out the flames of discontent within its ranks, deleting an email inviting workers to this online meeting from all of its servers and firing many of the most outspoken warehouse workers. However, this could not stop the workers from self-organizing, and a meeting which was put together by both corporate tech workers and warehouse workers proceeded with nearly 400 participants. This online format of meeting is something which will be very likely to play a larger role in the current struggles, as a physical meeting of 400 workers now would be an act of self-sabotage by all parties involved. On top of these actions, there have been calls for rent strikes across the country. With many people losing their sole and/or primary income, rather than sit by and be evicted with little resistance, tenants have organized deliberate non-payment of rent in solidarity with those who cannot afford theirs. While this is not necessarily an immediate self-organized action of workers, rent strikes have historically accompanied previous waves of class struggle. On top of that, it goes without saying that one is far more likely to be a proletarian if they are renting their living space as opposed to owning it. All of this clearly indicates that the working class is increasingly refusing to be divided by supporting this or that faction of the bourgeoisie, to be united without any class character in the “national struggle against the coronavirus”, and to lie down and allow itself to be attacked by the bourgeoisie.

Drawing conclusions from these past few months of increasing class struggle is one of the most important things which can be done in order to ensure that this mood does not sour, that the increasingly combative nature of the working class does not lose its footing and take a blow from which it cannot quickly recover. The first lesson which must be understood is that many workers may not win the demands for which they struggle. They may not be victorious in their struggle, but this is no reason to give up. When a struggle does not win any of its demands, the struggle in itself is its own victory. The fact that the workers could see that there is power in numbers, that there is a way to organize beyond the unions (the largest of which have been notably all but absent in the struggles of American workers lately) is a victory. With that being said, there should be no illusions that unions are completely out of the picture; some workers who have banded together are demanding the creation and recognition of unions for themselves, believing a semi-syndicalist type of “radical” rank-and-file union to be the organ of the current, and future, struggles. This should not be taken as a prevailing mood amongst the whole of the struggling working class in America. Those workers who are struggling against their own unions surely have no illusions about who is on whose side. However, there is a need for these semi-syndicalist notions to be dispelled; workers must recognize that there is a need to organize with a class autonomy, not to ask for a seat at the table. On top of this, there is a need for that minority of workers who have become the most radicalized, the most class conscious, to meet and prepare for future struggles by discussing their experiences and learning valuable lessons from them, as well as holding political debates which lead them to communist positions. In this respect, the online format of meeting which the Amazon workers have been demonstrating presents little to no disadvantage; workers can meet and discuss without being threatened by the danger of the ongoing pandemic as well as working around inflexible schedules to promote attendance from those who may have problems or obligations which would prevent them from being able to leave their homes. However, for larger assemblies of workers, the online format presents more problems. Its use for such large groups of participants is new, and the usage of a technology in its infancy only means there are more and more kinks to be worked out. Debate can be hard to organize on such a large scale, and many services have limits on how many users can be hosted at a time. In spite of all this, the working class is clearly still self-organizing, in an embryonic stage of class struggle which seems to have the potential to develop even further as conditions shift and change.  The absence of unions and their subsequent inability to direct this struggle shows that the class struggle has the potential to break from the shackles which bind it to bourgeois subservience and that the working class has recognized that it can only organize on the basis of class and fight as a class. There is hope for the future of class struggle in the United States, and around the world. Though this struggle may develop slowly, hindered by the need to keep others at a distance, it will develop. Though the working class may face many obstacles, there are no signs of resignation in the class. Though there is no way of knowing for sure where it will lead, there is no doubt about it: “the future belongs to the class struggle”[4]!

Noah Lennox

12.5.2020

Because of the Covid-19 and the lock-down, it is not possible to distribute a paper version of World Revolution at the moment. But we have produced a PDF of WR 386 in A4 which makes it easier for readers to print off copies for their own use. Subscriptions to the paper press will be held in suspense until the next paper is produced, although subscribers to the International Review should now be receiving International Review 164 in the mail, containing the reports and resolutions from the 23rd ICC Congress.

This dossier contains all the articles on the present COVID19 health crisis.

• Covid-19 in Peru: Capitalism means more death, misery and attacks on the workers! [93]
• Covid-19 in the United States: Working class response to the cynical indifference of capitalism [94] 
• The British government's "Herd Immunity" policy is not science but the abandonment of the most sick and vulnerable  [95]
• US bourgeoisie’s chaotic response to the pandemic [96]
• Covid-19: despite all the obstacles, the class struggle forges its future  [88]
• The pandemic reveals and accelerates capitalist decadence and decomposition [97]
• The German bourgeoisie’s instinct for power [98]
• In Guayaquil, Ecuador: in the face of a health crisis, capitalism inflicts pain and death  [86]
• The profound impact of the Covid-19 crisis in Britain [99]
• "War of the masks": the bourgeoisie is a class of thieves! [83]
• Generalised capitalist barbarism Or World proletarian revolution (International leaflet) [91]
• Epidemic in France: the criminal negligence of the bourgeoisie  [100]
• Either the world working class puts an end to capitalism, or capitalism puts an end to humanity [54]
• The Covid-19 Pandemic: A symptom of the terminal phase of capitalist decadence [84]
• More evidence that capitalism has become a danger to humanity  [36]
• Population lockdown: the bourgeois state shows its brutality [101]

On January 30, 2020, in relation to Covid-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" regarding its imminent spread. On March 11, nearly two weeks after it was obvious to everyone, the WHO declared a "global pandemic" of the virus. Warnings, very specific and science-based warnings on the dangers and spread of corona viruses were made by the CIA in 1999 and then frequently by various bodies including the UN, which particularly pointed out Britain's unpreparedness for a pandemic, up to Britain's National Security Risk Assessment a year ago which pointed out the shortages of safety equipment in British hospitals, the lack of facilities and nurses and the numbers of deaths a pandemic would result in. There were also secret investigations by the British state which have remained secret.

In the face of this and the advice of the WHO to "act quickly" and test, at a meeting of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE, mostly held in secrecy) on February 21, the British state deemed the danger from the virus as "moderate" despite the overwhelming evidence of its dangers.

Basically nothing was to happen: Cheltenham race meeting went ahead in early March with 250,000 people present (later resulting in clusters of the outbreak), Boris Johnson was among a seventy-thousand crowd at Twickenham days after, spluttering and spitting over everyone around him (at the end of the week he gave a government press conference where he said he had shaken the hands of many Covid-affected patients and would continue to do so). And the "medical advisor" to the Scottish government had this to say about the spread of viruses and crowds: "Speaking at Murrayfield ahead of Scotland’s Six Nations clash with France, Dr Catherine Calderwood said: ‘I’ve looked at the scientific evidence very carefully, and what’s emerging is that there’s actually very little impact on virus spread from mass gatherings, particularly if they are in the open air. This is not a risk to the Scottish population in hosting this match’.” Calderwood (the same Chief Medical Officer to the Scottish government who was driving backwards and forwards to her holiday home on the coast during lockdown) was giving her "expert" opinion on March 3 as to whether the Scotland/France rugby match could go ahead a few days later. The match went ahead on her advice because, as she says, after looking at the evidence very carefully, there was little risk of the spread of the virus in mass gatherings; not so much science as medieval ignorance in the service of capitalist normality.

"Herd immunity", or the science of kicking out the “bed-blockers”

On March 13, SAGE made its pronouncement: it would do nothing. The policy was announced by Chief Government Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance (ex-President of GlaxoSmithKline, GSK). It was that of "Herd Immunity", whose aim was for 60%[1] of the population to contract the virus, i.e., 40 million people. This was "one of the key things we need to do" and this policy would "help everyone" become immune (SkyNews, early March) - apart from those sacrificed along the way, the "collateral damage" of the old and the sick of whom Vallance, naturally, didn't care to mention. The committee was spending more time discussing death figures that might be "acceptable" than they were in making any real preparations for the storm to come. The British state and its various governments had laid the basis for this crisis anyway with their massive cuts to the health and social sectors over the previous three decades from 1990 to now.

Sir Patrick Vallance must have known when he talked about "herd immunity" that, as far as science was concerned, he was talking absolute rubbish. The properties of the Covid-19 virus were hardly known (and are still not) and certainly nothing at all was known in relation to it and herd immunity. Herd immunity is either built up by vaccination or occurs "naturally" through a large part of the population going down with the disease, which assumes survivors are immune (possible, but we don’t know yet) and assumes that the large number of deaths and disruption of health services are a price worth paying. The herd immunity in four months that Vallance was proposing was unheard of in any branch of science. Various specialists immediately came forward to say so and were generally ignored by a hysterical British media that was going into "war-time" and "we are all in this together" mode. One immunologist thought Vallance's statement was "a hoax"; another immediately called it "unethical"; epidemiologists called it "baffling" and virologists expressed their astonishment and, all the while, the government said that it was "following the science". Vallance wasn't of course: his "herd immunity" was unknown to any science and what he was doing was acting as a stooge, fronting a government policy that had more to do with capitalist eugenics[2] than "protecting the vulnerable". A former medical adviser to the Scottish government, Professor Jane Andrews, let the cat out of the bag saying in early March that Covid-19 would be "quite useful" in removing "bed-blockers", "these people would be taken out of the system". Taken out of the system no less! Andrews made the usual apology that the democratic eugenicists make for such brutal language and actions, saying it's for the greater good but it's for the greater good of capitalist production and the maintenance of its cut-throat activity at the expense of useless lives as far as the ruling class is concerned.

"Operation Stiff Broom" to sweep away the bed-blockers

It became clear that the British state's do-nothing policy meant, according to some experts within its ranks, that deaths from Covid-19 in Britain could hit a quarter-of-a-million or more. The state had to impose some form of lock-down in order to stop the spread and thus on March 23 the government reluctantly ordered a lock-down and social distancing. But the eugenics-based policy of herd immunity continued, was refined and became more directed. Thus Whitehall came up with its policy of the "Stiff Broom" in order to clear the old and the sick out of hospitals and "back into the community" if they were "medically fit" i.e. into care homes that were already creaking under the weight of decades of cuts, poor wages, inadequate supervision and lacks of protective equipment. If the government's Cobra committee and its SAGE group had sat up in a meeting all night trying to come up with the most dangerous policy for spreading the disease among the most vulnerable it couldn't have come up with a better policy than "Stiff Broom". "Stiff Broom" was part of the government's "defence and ring-fencing of the NHS" - something it would defend and ring-fence by turfing its most difficult patients out of hospitals. And as it sent these people to care homes the government advice was that they may have the virus or be carrying it, but care homes were where they would be "looked after properly" - which takes on the sinister gangster linguistics “to be taken care of".

The numbers of people "swept" out of hospitals wards and into care homes is difficult to ascertain, not least because the British state, unlike the Chinese, doesn't "suppress" figures, it just makes it harder to report them and keeps kicking them down the road. There are a couple of estimates that say well over 4000 and it's certainly in the thousands. The decision to put them into care homes was taken with no testing before or after, a decision some care home owners called "unfathomable" and "lacking foresight". The original pie-in-the-sky plan was to send them to the new "Nightingale" hospitals but these are not hospitals but warehouses with empty beds and nowhere near enough nurses to run them. They are Stalinist-style propaganda exercises and the one in Birmingham hasn't had a single patient. So vulnerable people were dumped into care homes where the virus would be absolutely guaranteed to spread through residents and staff who often work shifts at different care facilities or travel between individual's homes. The virus could spread not just through the old and sick in care homes but to the chronically sick, the autistic and the many layers of physical, mental health problems and various disabilities that varieties of care homes deal with.

People were dying like dogs in care facilities in April and the body which ultimately runs these homes, the state's Care and Quality Commission (notoriously lax about both care and quality) didn't even ask for the number of deaths from Covid-19 in care homes until mid-April when residents’ families started kicking-up. No-one knows the number today and probably never will because for a long time doctors were encouraged by the system to write "pneumonia" or other causes on the death certificates causes. In order to "protect" its NHS, the "envy of the world", the state off-loaded its living burdens onto care homes and no-one said a word until more and more relatives started complaining as more and more people became infected and dying over a wider range of care home facilities. Between 10 and 24 April care homes reported 4,343 deaths from Covid-19: half of these came between 19 and 24 April, indicating an accelerating death toll.

Herd immunity, they told us, was to "protect the vulnerable"; it wasn't. It was to abandon them in care homes while opening up a whole range of many of their ten million residents and one-and-a-half million staff to the dangers of the virus. While they calibrated the number of "acceptable" deaths their criminal negligence, cold-bloodied indifference, incoherence and incompetence has resulted in far greater numbers of deaths among the most vulnerable in society. Whether they did this with a deliberate policy, laissez-faire, wishful thinking or a combination of those and others, the spread of this disease among the most vulnerable and weak has been the result.

Eugenics: the natural science of the bourgeoisie

Throughout its history eugenics has been a natural science of both the left and the right of capital. William Beveridge, the founder of the National Health Service, thought that people with "general defects" should be denied civil freedom and parenthood. In the 1930's, left-wing publications like The Guardian and The New Statesman offered their support to the sterilisation process that "the eugenists soundly urge". Left wing intellectuals around the Labour Party like the Fabians and so on were enthusiastic supporters - as were the Nazis. But eugenics didn't end with Auschwitz. Churchill was a supporter and had no time for "inferior" people. Obama's "Science Czar" in the 70's, Dr. John Holdren of Harvard, was a keen eugenist, comparing people to "bacteria on a culture dish" and "fruit flies in a jar". And today there is a clique in control of Downing Street which appears well disposed to eugenics and the state has provided it with certain means in order to carry out its policies.

Capitalism is a society of dog eat dog, rabid competition, survival of the fittest[3] and let the weak go to the wall. That's how it's always been and that's how it will always be. The calculations made by its managers, its states, will always be towards the elimination of non-productive elements, nuisances, bed-blockers and the like and with Covid-19 we get a real glimpse of the ruthlessness behind the mask of democracy.

In this sense, "herd immunity" has been the factory-set, default policy of all the major capitals from Russia, through Europe to the Americas and the Middle East; to say nothing of its application to the masses of migrants and refugees fleeing wars that seem to be intensifying.

China escaped somewhat, partly because the one-party state, following its initial period of suppressing news about the contagion, was able to use extremely ruthless methods to limit the contagion, but also because they had gained some real experience from previous epidemics. South Korea as well had been through the traumatic experience of Sars, although they were able to use methods, such as mass testing, which made it unnecessary to impose exactly the same draconian measures as their Stalinist neighbours. The eugenics of "herd immunity", arrogantly stated by the British government, is the major factor behind all the care home deaths in Europe and North America, which some estimates are giving as double the number of the official figures for deaths. And these elements of eugenics go wider and deeper. The expressions of populism that we've seen recently have exposed its deep kinship with elements of fascist ideology. We saw this with significant parts of the Yellow Vest movement, with Trump, Brexit and the rise of far-right groups who all point to inferior races and their own nationalist supremacy.

There's something of a paradox here

Capitalist society was born in blood and muck and it prospered on it. It has had, and continues to have, a "moral, caring wing" but that is just ideology, a smokescreen for a regime that has no use whatsoever for morality. But this decaying system based on ruthless competition, pillage, oppression and exploitation also gave rise to a revolutionary class, a producer class, a class of associated labour whose overall and overarching weapons are consciousness, solidarity, unity and struggle. The reverend T. R. Malthus, a vicious early nineteenth century proponent of capitalism and of population control by starvation, saw a paradox in how the poor looked after the weak. The strength and potential of the working class lies in its position in the production, running and maintenance of virtually everything and from this comes its potential as a revolutionary class able to overthrow the capitalist state and start out on the road to communism. One of the factors in the consciousness of the working class, or maybe its unconscious, is that it comes from a long line of the oppressed all the way through civilisation and before that. This is a factor in the intrinsic morality of the working class today and one that will find it defending minorities and the weak against a capitalism which sends them to the wall under such lies as "herd immunity". It is part of what determines the working class today as an expression of the future in the final clash against a ruling class that represents destruction, disease and decay.

This is not a question of the defence of one scientific theory against another, but the defence of the proletariat and its morality against capitalism and its ideology of eugenics-based "herd immunity”.

Baboon. 28.4.2020

“If people are dying like flies today, at the very heart of the most developed countries, it is in the first place because everywhere governments have cut budgets destined for research into new diseases. Thus in May 2018 Donald Trump got rid of a special unit of the National Security Council, composed of eminent experts and created to fight against pandemics.” [1]

At the end of December 2019, reports indicated China was investigating an outbreak of respiratory illness in the city of Wuhan. Between January 6-8 this year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a series of warnings and alerts while the first reported US case of Covid-19 was landmarked on January 21. The following day, US President Donald Trump said that the US has coronavirus "totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."

By the middle of May, it was becoming evident that “it” was neither under control nor fine. Statistics showed over 1.3 million Americans infected with Covid-19 virus – one third of global cases at that time – with over 80,000 officially dead from the disease, more US personnel than died during almost two decades of the Vietnam War!

In large cities, reality revealed bodies – victims of the virus – lying rotting in hire-trucks outside overwhelmed undertakers or stored in refrigerated vans parked near institutions absurdly labelled “care homes”. In the countryside: “Rural America was already coping with an epidemic when the virus struck… [in regions] racked by deaths from oxycontin, fentanyl and alcohol — ‘diseases of despair.’… There are the 38 million Americans living below the federal poverty level, many of whom work several jobs. Over 27.5 million now lack medical insurance – up from the 25.6 million uninsured in 2017 before the Trump administration began its attack on the Affordable Care Act [‘Obamacare’] — and millions of others have high co-pays and deductibles and poor coverage. Infections will spread easily among the more than two million in the close quarters of prisons. Equally at risk will be the corrections officers and staff, often living in communities where prisons provide the only work and where the opioid crisis has packed rural prisons. Some 10 million undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek medical care for fear of attracting the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement…” [2]

Furthermore, in the six weeks to the end of April, over 30 million US workers - 1 in 5 - applied for unemployment ‘benefit’, indicating an unprecedented unemployment rate of between 16 to 20%. Not all who applied received all or even any of the federal state’s emergency handouts.

By many measurements, America is still the ‘most powerful nation on earth’. As global stock markets collapsed between February 24-28 and the demand for credit rose, it was the US Federal Reserve which advanced funds to major domestic financial institutions and enabled central banks around the world to exchange their own currencies for dollars through "swap lines".

So nothing better illustrates the global and historic blockage represented by capitalist social relations than the contrast between the technological, productive and innovative potential of the United States and the distress, division and death on the streets and behind shuttered doors of the world’s most advanced country; between the provision of the best medical resources in the world and the socially limited access to such ‘benefits’.

Cock-up, conspiracy, or decomposition?

In truth, the response of the Trump administration to the virus crisis – in its broad outlines – closely resembled that of the majority of major nation states: lie, deny, delay and decry before being forced grudgingly to act through the partial closure of the economy with a view to ‘business as normal’ asap.

• Lie: Trump claimed the World Health Organisation hadn’t issued clear warnings. In fact, the Trump administration’s belittling of and threat to cut funds to the WHO which had helped coordinate a relatively centralised and global response to the 2003 SARS outbreak illustrates how capitalism is forging ahead – by abandoning the international structures and accumulated knowledge it previously erected precisely to cope with situations like the current pandemic. It reveals a general shift away from multilateralism to bilateralism, coupled in the US with an abandonment of the moral high-ground of ‘world leadership’ in favour of a populist ‘American first’ policy, an open recognition that at the level of international affairs, as well as domestic politics, it’s “every man for himself.” This episode – along with the theft of medical supplies destined for other countries – is but one further demonstration that the former world cop is now a leading factor in the spread of global chaos and gangsterism, an active factor in the break-down of existing international arrangements and institutions. Similarly, the seizures within the US of hospital equipment and supplies to be stockpiled by the Federal authorities or diverted to states supportive of the Trump clique, or to marginal ‘swing’ state requiring inducements, displays a level of corruption and contempt for national protocols that would make even the Bush clan squirm.
• Deny: Having ignored the reality of the virus crisis (“it’s a hoax”), then denying the severity of the outbreak  (“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle—it will disappear”), then peddling a series of quack remedies, most notoriously the suggestion that injecting disinfectant might be a good idea, the President variously claimed that he’d inherited from the Obama administration a “bare cupboard” in terms of testing kit, that everyone who needed tests and/or personal protective equipment (PPE) had access to them, before saying none of this was his responsibility – it was all down to state Governors. Hence the ridiculous spectacle of different federal states bidding against each other for masks, gowns, gloves, driving up the price to the delight of profiteers and the despair of those ‘key workers’ requiring them. Thus the chaos unleashed on the globe by the decomposition of capitalist social relations was mirrored internally in America as the pandemic unfolded.
• Delay: The drive to protect the economy and profits at the expense of people, the dissembling and deceit coming from the top, fuelled delays in obtaining PPE and testing kit and in procuring ventilators, hospital beds and specialist medical staff, thus driving up infection and death rates. Appearing to abandon decision-making to the Federal states led to varied approaches between different states – and sometimes within each state, for example between cities and rural areas, with such divisions often appearing along party divides. This amounted to a sinister living lab experiment of enthusiastically enforced quarantining versus a ‘laisser-faire’ attitude to social distancing and ‘lockdowns’. In truth, neither approach could or can square the circle of ‘profits before people’. And to understand where real power resides – Washington, the Pentagon and Wall Street – it’s only necessary to recall that eventually it was the National State of Emergency declared by Trump on March 13 (backdated!!) which paved the way for the issuing of an unprecedented $2.3 trillion bail-out for federal states, corporations, businesses and individuals in the face of mass unemployment and a collapsing economy. And it’s Washington that’s faced with drumming up international loans to cover the ensuing $3trillion deficit…
• Decry: Initially praising the efforts of China’s President Xi Jinping, the Trump administration soon took to baiting its rival in the East, calling the epidemic the ‘Wuhan virus’, threatening further trade sanctions against China and those dealing with it, and even adding to the burgeoning conspiracy theories muddying the waters and consciousness of reality in America by suggesting the Covid-19 was produced in a Chinese laboratory and that China may have deliberately spread it around the world. In this sense, at the level of inter-imperialist antagonisms, Trump’s administration is clearly continuing Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ policy which aims at containing China’s own economic and imperialist appetites. In this he’s ably abetted by the Democrats’ presumed presidential nominee Joe Biden, who criticises Trump for being ‘too soft’ on China. During an unprecedented medical emergency, the US seeks to take advantage on the world arena through bombast and force, choosing this moment (March 21) to announce the successful launch of a hypersonic missile prototype. China has acted no differently: it attempted a cover-up the same as the US, and has tried to score propaganda points from its subsequent apparent success in containing the spread of the virus. The planet’s two major economic and military powers are driven by the same profit motive and behave in the same manner. [3]

A certain loss of control

The same chaos that was unleashed by the US in response to the pandemic was replicated as it sought to end measures of quarantine and ‘unlock’ the economy.

By the end of the first week in May:

• Stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders around country were lifted in some states and extended in others.
• Trump announced his intention to disband the government’s coronavirus task force, but appeared to row back after an outcry. In all events, as infections and deaths continued to rise in many regions, the Administration says it’s looking forward to ‘unlocking’ the economy, not keeping America locked up for 5 years, and task force front-man Dr Anthony Fauci who is the public face of the ‘fight against the virus’ was one of three White House staff self-quarantining after coming into contact with infected persons;
• The President encouraged demonstrations (some armed) against lockdown orders in a dozen states, quashed advice on how to open up the economy prepared by his own advisors yet hadn’t actually taken any positive steps to legislate for renewed economic activity (utterances don’t count).
• Had planned to issue a Defence Production Act order to compel workers at meat packing plants – hotspots of virus transmission – to return to factories in the face of threatened food shortages, yet many such institutions remained shut.

The President’s Democrat critics – Obama included – accused the Administration of presiding over chaos. His Republican supporters said continued lockdown was not an option and harmed as many as it helped. Both in a way were correct: the ruling class in the US has no answers.

Robert Frank     11.5.2020

[1] ICC International Leaflet Covid 19: Generalised capitalist barbarism or World Proletarian Revolution  [91]

[2] New York Times, March 20 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-poverty-homelessness.html [173]

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/hong-kong-arrests-and-taiwan-flybys-chinas-advances-its-interests-during-covid-19-crisis [174]

Libya has had regular media attention since 2011, the year of the liquidation by the imperialist powers of NATO (France, Britain, United States) of Muammar al-Gaddafi who led the country with a rod of iron for forty years.

"This unfortunate Libya, which the Franco-British war of 2011 has transformed into a paradise for the terrorists of Daesh and al-Qaida, has today inherited a civil war. The trafficking of arms, drugs and migrants proliferates and it rarely comes into conflict with the jihadists. That is to be expected; they are often business partners..."[1]

After the "Arab Spring" was over in Libya, where a part of the population rose up against the bloody and corrupt regime of Gaddifi, the western powers (in the name of the "humanitarian protection of the civilian population" that the ex-dictator had brutally repressed) declared war on the Libyan leader. After massacring numerous civilians under a barrage of bombs and liquidating Gaddafi, they left the country in the hand of multiple bloody groups who are still fighting over control of the moribund Libyan state.

Among the dozen or so groups and militias in the country, the two most important factions with pretences to privileged access to the major powers and the UN are: the "Government of National Accord" (GNA) based in Tripoli and led by Fayez el-Sarraj, and the "Libyan National Army" (LNA) led by Benghazi-based Khalifa Haftar who governs the region of Cyrenaica. Both of these "petty" gangsters benefit from a number of supporters, larger imperialist sharks that are more or less open about their support.

"At the heart of the tribes and the city states that Libya has become, the Kremlin sits in the same camp as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and... France; whereas Italy, Qatar and above all Turkey give their support to the government of Fayez el-Sarraj. This support takes multiple forms as Russia is printing shipping-container loads of Libyan dinars for its protégé, whose rival controls the Libyan Central Bank, in exchange for cargos of oil. In this endless war, where Chinese and Turkish drones at two million dollars apiece are being fired by militias wearing T-shirts, jeans and trainers, the Kremlin is playing a game which is everything except stabilising.  But who outside of an African Union almost totally marginalised on this issue, really wants to see Libya rise from the ashes? ”[2]

On paper both groups formally confront each other on Libyan soil but the reality is that every man for himself dominates.

This barbaric spectacle reveals the abject and hypocritical attitude of the major powers in Libya who are all playing a double game: "The resurgence of conflict in Libya has shown numerous instances of manoeuvring behind the scenes that certain regional or global powers would have preferred kept in the shadows"[3]. Just like the French government for example when it was caught red-handed when it tried to deny the existence of missiles provided to Marshall Haftar by its secret services while affirming that "France is in Libya in order to combat terrorism".

As for the two Libyan war-lords, their objectives are equally villainous: "Standing face-to-face, the two camps do not dare to admit the real motive of their confrontation. Extreme language is used by them ('revolution' or 'anti-terrorism') but that cannot cover up the naked character of a rivalry around the appropriation of resources which takes on a very particular sense in the old oil Eldorado which is Libya. Despite some upsets caused by the post-2011 chaos, Libyan oil continues to generate revenue of 70 million dollars (62.5 million euros) a day. Also the management of distribution networks for the oil income further sharpens appetites" [4].

This is another aspect of the conflict that no-one talks about in the official speeches of the leaders of the capitalist world! This race for the oil "booty", opened up by the chaos of 2011, pits a large number of small and big gangsters, local and international, against each other on Libyan soil.

Turkish and Russian imperialism violently dispute the control of Libya "as friends"

Not content with the atrocities perpetrated in Syria, Russia and Turkey are imposing their presence in Libya with the declared aim of dislodging the rival existing mafias:

"While fighting has ravaged the periphery of Tripoli since 2019, Russia and Turkey are the new actors putting themselves forward as part of a future political solution in Libya. An edifying scene illustrates this great geopolitical turn around in the eastern Mediterranean:  a meeting up on January 8 in Istanbul between the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the boss of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. On this day the two men ostensibly displayed their complicity when announcing the launch of the Turk Stream, a gas line linking Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea. More important, they launched a joint appeal for a cease-fire in Libya 'to come in on January 12' and, in a sign of their growing influence on ground, which they had been discrete about up to now, the truce was relatively respected by their local affiliates. In the current battle around Tripoli, Moscow supports the dissident Marshall, Khalifa Haftar, patron of the Libyan National Army (LNA), rooted above all in the Cyrene (eastern) region. On its side, Ankara supports the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Fayez Sarraj, based in Tripoli and formally recognised by the international community. Nine months after the assault unleashed by Haftar against the Libyan capital, Russia and Turkey have thus demonstrated that they were masters of tempo on this front, capable of alternating escalations and curtailments as they pleased"[5].

As the press has underlined, in the new Libyan situation Europe and the United States are just extras as NATO is totally paralysed by its own divisions. The Russian and Turkish leaders can thus occupy the empty space and militarily confront each other through opposing acolytes, exporting to Libya the bloody atrocities that they have already perpetrated in Syria. Of course these two countries are emerging (or, in Russia’s case, re-emerging) powers with limited capacities[6].

But the two states have firmly decided to gulp down the "Libyan cake". For this reason they have already dispatched their respective mercenaries (2,000 "Wagner" Russians and 3,000 Syrian fighters, brigades in the pay of Erdogan) with a view to backing their local champions of the moment. Moreover each of these monsters is trying to "legitimise" their involvement, as when Erdogan affirmed: "We are on these grounds where our ancestors marked history because we have been invited there to resolve injustice". But the real motivation of the Turkish leader's move into Libya is the prospect of enticing contracts. For example, Erdogan hopes to re-justify the 25 billion dollars worth of contracts signed under the Gadaffi regime which went out of the window in 2011. Turkey is displaying its imperialist ambitions not only towards its close neighbours (Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Greece) but is also trying to implant itself in Africa and the Persian Gulf. In fact Libya constitutes a major prize for Turkey's imperialist ambitions and its deranged "New Ottoman Empire".

However, Erdogan has lit fuses and spread trouble everywhere he can, all the while knowing that Turkey hasn't the means to back up its political adventurism, neither at the military level (NATO doesn't want to follow it in its confrontation with Russia), nor on the financial level[7].

As to Russia, remember that the USSR was the first state to recognise the regime of Colonel Gaddafi after his military coup in 1969. It remained the principal provider of arms up to the assassination of the "Libyan dictator" in 2011. Putin has strongly insisted on the fact that Moscow has erased 4.6 dollars of Libyan debt that has been piling up since the time of the Cold War (in military materials), and that it intends to recuperate its "rights" weapons in hand, i.e., through its discrete mercenaries.

According to Le Monde, January 26, 2020: "In 2017, Marshall Haftar began to get Russian support, principally the sending of mercenaries linked to the ‘Wagner Group’ created at the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, and which since has operated in Syria, Sudan, Central Africa and now in Mozambique (...). The Wagner connection has the advantage for Russia that it can always deny it: 'If there are Russian citizens there, they don't represent the interests of the Russian state and do not receive money from the Russian state', Vladimir Putin argued on January 11".

Putin is an extraordinary cynic, hardly surprising for an ex-member of the KGB, an organisation versed in lies and the falsification of history.

For a long time to come Libya will remain a battlefield of capitalist vampires, large and small, for whom anything goes in order to defend their sordid interests.

"Libya: small murders between friends"

"It's a report of fourteen pages counter-signed by a Ghason Salame (...). Published at the end of January by the United Nations mission in Libya, this is an autopsy of a mass murder committed six months ago, 20 kilometres west of Tripoli and has been swept under the carpet for one simple reason: the victims are Africans and the guilty party has relations in high places so the enquiry only suggests his identity without ever revealing it. We are in Tadjourah, a village of 50,000 inhabitants not far from the Tunisian border and more precisely in the detention camp of Daman. Guarded by a brigade of militias linked to the Interior Minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Fayez el-Sarraf, Daman is one of 34 detention centres of north-west Libya in which ten thousand migrants and refugees are crammed and about which no-one knows what to do. The camp contains a workshop for the repair of military vehicles and, a hundred metres away are two hangers with tin roofs where the detainees are kept, with men and women separated. There were about 600 of them, with Africans in the great majority, their dreams of Europe having turned into a daily nightmare of privations, humiliations and exactions.

The heat was suffocating on the night of the 2nd to the 3rd of July, 2019, when the inhabitants heard the bombardments from a drone which flew above the base at high altitude. The guards were nervous and the prisoners worried. In May, a similar appearance preceded a brief bombing of Daman by a small enemy device of the National Libyan Army of Khalifa Haftar, the Marshall of Benghazi. Some were left with a few injuries and there was great fear. But at 23h30 this night it was the howling of an engine of a fighter-bomber which sent everyone to the ground. Precision-guided, a bomb pulverised the workshop which was empty of occupants. What happened then in the course of the next ten minutes was a tragedy. Panicking, the migrants fled the hangers for shelter outside the camp. Led by an over-excited commander, the brigade militias fired their Kalashnikov's in the air in order to hold them back. Then in the chaos, three inmates collapsed, the rest of them ran back in disorder into the warehouses, where they were locked up. At 23:40, a second plane identical to the first dropped a 300 kg bomb on the hanger crowded with men which pierced the roof and exploded on the ground, digging out a crater four metres wide and three deep. It’s a shambles. The Daman guards hastily counted at least 57 shredded bodies, 96 missing, unknown whether they are dead or on the run, and 80 seriously injured. All anonymous. [...]

Just following the carnage, Khalifa Haftar's spokesman trumpeted the air attack as coming from 'the air-force of the Libyan National Army on the Daman camp', which was qualified as a 'military target' whose defenders used the migrants as human shields. Observers smiled at the announcement: everyone knew that the Marshall's tiny air-force had neither the means nor the pilots to carry out nocturnal raids with GPS/laser-guided bombs. On the other hand, as the UN reported with diplomatic prudence, 'a foreign state', sponsored and allied to the Marshall, had 'a certain number of planes' positioned at bases in Jufra and Al-Khadim which could have easily carried out this type of operation. According to some specialists these semantics hid an open secret: the state was the United Arab Emirates of Prince Mohammed Ben Zayad (MBZ), and the planes, Mirage 2000-9's, were sold to Abu Dhabi by France"[8].

In other words, it's really France which is behind this horrible massacre of migrants perpetrated by the UAE, big clients and allies of Paris in this zone. The criminal responsibility of France is so clear that the bourgeois press speaks openly of a war crime implicating the French government from the fact that Abu Dhabi's and Dassault Aviation signed a modernisation process of the Mirage 2000-9's November last, exposing Paris to the accusation of "complicity in war crimes by virtue of an arms treaty of which France is a signatory". The UN was equally aware of what went on in this abominable carnage. Its report shows that it knew perfectly well the identity of the real assailants on the refugee camps and kept it to itself.

"Alongside the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (the real allies of the LNA), Russia today has taken the place of France in the list of principal protectors of Haftar, notably on the Security Council of the UN. But while waiting on the taking of Tripoli, French support is still wanted by the Benghazi clan"[9]. In fact French imperialism finds itself in "good company" at the heart of the bloody chaos of Libya. But its criminal responsibility doesn't stop there: it shares with its European partners the responsibility for the monstrous "welcome camps" for migrants fleeing repression or on a deadly journey towards Europe.

The disgusting policy of the European Union in Libya

As part of the bloody chaos provoked by the major imperialist powers, Libya has become a real "market" and cemetery for migrants, a situation for which the EU is largely responsible. 

Images of a slave market in Libya were broadcast by CNN on November 14 2017, showing human beings auctioned off and sold like beasts. The migrants, whose numbers vary between 700,000 and one million, fall into the traps of the criminal networks and traffickers, whose accomplices are the European and African states.  According to a report published by UNICEF: "The detention centres run by the militias are nothing other than forced labour camps, prisons where everyone is robbed under armed force. For the numbers of women and children, life in prison consists of rape and violence, sexual exploitation, hunger and endless abuse". All this illustrates the breadth of the capitalist barbarity that directly implicates the major imperialist powers which, through their policies, throw the migrants into the arms of slave-traders from another age.

The EU effectively demands that failing and totally corrupt neighbouring states (Niger, Nigeria, etc.,) enact anti-migrant policies through subsidies to build walls and erect death-camps. The EU also takes part in Mafia-type activities and trade between bandits by providing funds and material to the coastguards who are responsible for intercepting migrant vessels and taking them to the monstrous detention camps. The great European democracies are undertaking an abominable and terribly inhuman policy!

The market of slaves alongside the march of soldiers

"There are Chadians or Sudanese buying a mouthful of bread at the 'great bazaar of the mercenaries' (...). The human goods are thus shown off early in the morning on the pavements (dozens of Africans waiting in slippers, their feet as dusty as their lives, their future as black as their skin), and those who pass through in pick-ups stop a while, examine the workers for sale, giving orders: Today we want someone who can push a wheelbarrow, plaster with lime, unload some lorries. At least they weren't looking for someone to fight in their war; preparing weapons for the militias is OK; stay at the back if you can't do anything else. Some accept to fight because at least there's 300 euros a month, food lodgings -  the job pays. Others declined the offer, refusing to pay with their lives"[10].

In Libya migrants are more than ever in the same situation of misery, of distress in the middle of the perils which have led thousands to their death while trying to cross the Mediterranean, as this quote shows: "On the beach of Aghir on the island of Djerba, north of Tunisia, there were more bodies than bathers at the beginning of the month. On Monday July 1, a boat sank, after leaving the Libyan town of Zuwara, 120 km west of Tripoli, with 86 people on board. Three were pulled out alive but the sea took the rest of them.

‘I can't do this any longer. It's just too much.’ Chemseddine Marzog, a fisherman who for years has provided a last resting place for the bodies that the sea has thrown up, stated through his anger. ‘I have buried close to 400 bodies and dozens more will arrive in the days to come. It is impossible, it is inhuman and we can't manage alone’, said the desperate guardian of the migrant's cemetery at the town of Zarzis in Tunisia close to the Libyan border"[11].

During this time the "western democracies" firmly closed their eyes and turned up their noses at this cruel barbarity and continued their policy of the "securitisation" (closure) of their borders against "illegal immigrants" while proclaiming from the rooftops their "human universality".

But it's not only the EU which undertook this barbaric policy towards migrants, there's also their "great friend and client" Saudi Arabia. In fact Riyadh beats, imprisons and expels the "undesirable" migrants that it finds on its territory. "10,000 Ethiopians have been expelled from Saudi Arabia every month since 2017, the date on which the authorities of this country have intensified their merciless campaign to send back migrants without papers. About 300,000 have been returned since March of that year, according to the latest figures from the International Organisation for Migrants (IOM), and special flights full of the deported arrive each week at Addis Ababa. (...) Some hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have been deported following an unprecedented wave of chaotic repression in force between 2013 and 2014"[12].

Here is a work of cold criminality from the grand buyer and supplier of the European countries, and Britain and France in particular, which finds itself in Libya in the same camp as Paris in order to sow terror. To tell the truth, this is business with a band of "big" and "small princes" of the Gulf, newly-rich capitalists (thanks to black gold), stuffed with blood and power and permanently looking for imperialist influence elsewhere.  First and foremost this is what we are seeing in Libya, in Syria, Yemen, etc., in all the massacre zones: the blood-soaked states who fuel the conflicts.

Taking account of the importance of the "Libyan cake", none of these bandits want to give up their share to any of the others. In fact the situation here resembles, with all its terror, that of Syria with its destiny of permanent murder and destruction without any possible reconstruction.

Against the bloody chaos and the capitalist barbarity in Libya and elsewhere, only the united international class struggle, led by the most experienced fractions of the working class, can stay the bloody hand of capitalism.

D. March 22, 2020.

The cold-blooded police killing of George Floyd has provoked outrage across America and across the world. Everyone knows that this is the latest in a long line of police murders in which black people and immigrants have been the main victims. Not only in the US, but in the UK, in France and other ‘democratic’ states. In the US, in March, police gunned down Breonna Taylor in her own home. In France, Adama Traoré was asphyxiated in police custody in 2016. In Britain, in 2017, Darren Cumberbatch was beaten to death by police. These are just the tip of the iceberg.

And in responding to the protests that first broke out in the US, the police have shown that they are already a militarised force of terror, with or without the assistance of the army. The brutal repression of the demonstrators – 10,000 arrests in the US – shows that the police in the US as in other “democratic” countries act in the same manner as the police in openly dictatorial regimes like Russia or China.

The anger at all this is real, and it has been shared by white people as well as black, by Latinos, Asians, and among the young in particular. But we live in a society which is dominated materially and ideologically by a ruling class, the bourgeoisie or capitalist class. And anger in itself, however justified, is not enough to challenge the system that lies behind police violence, or to avoid the many traps laid by the bourgeoisie. The protests were not started by the ruling class. But it has already succeeded in pulling them onto their own bourgeois political terrain.

Riots and peaceful marches for “justice”: both are dead ends

In the first outburst of anger in the US, there was a tendency for the protests to take the form of riots: supermarkets were looted, symbolic buildings burned down. The provocative actions of the police certainly contributed to the violence of the early days of the protests. Some of the demonstrators justified the riots by referring to Martin Luther King, who said that “the riot is the voice of the unheard”. And that is true: they are an expression of impotence and despair.  They lead strictly nowhere except to more repression by a capitalist state which will always come out on top against disorganised, fragmented actions on the streets.

But the alternative put forward by official activist organisations like Black Lives Matter – peaceful marches demanding justice and equality – are no less a dead end, and in some ways are even more insidious, because they play directly into the hands of the political forces of capital. Take for example the call to defund the police, even to abolish the police altogether. On the one hand, it is completely unrealistic inside this society: it is akin to the capitalist state voluntarily dissolving itself. On the other hand, it spreads illusions in the possibility of reforming the existing state in the interest of the exploited and the oppressed – when its very function is to keep them under control in the interests of the dominant class. 

The fact that the ruling class is comfortable with such radical-seeming demands is shown by the fact that within days of the first protests, capitalist media and politicians– mainly but not only those on the left – “took the knee” literally or figuratively in fervent condemnation of the killing of George Floyd and in enthusiastic support of the protests. The example of leading politicians in the Democratic Party machine in the US is the most obvious, but they were soon joined by their counterparts across the world, including the most articulate representatives of the police. This is the bourgeois recuperation of legitimate anger.

We can have no illusions: the dynamic of this movement cannot be transformed into a weapon of the exploited and the oppressed, because it has already become an instrument in the hands of the ruling class. The present mobilisations are not a 'first step' towards a genuine class struggle but are being used to block its development and maturation.

“Anti-racism”: a false alternative to racism

Capitalism could not have become the global system it is today without the slave trade and the colonial subjugation of the indigenous populations of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Racism is thus imprinted in its genes. From its inception, it has used racial and other differences to set the exploited against each other, to prevent them uniting against their real enemy – the minority that exploits them. But it has also made ample use of the ideology of “anti-racism”: the idea that you can fight racism by uniting not on class lines, but around this or that oppressed community. But organising on the basis of your racial or national “community” becomes yet another means of blurring the class divide that underlies this system: thus, there is no “black community” as such because there are black capitalists as well as black workers, and they have no common interest. Let’s simply recall the massacre of striking black miners in Marikana in 2012 by the “post- apartheid” South African state.

The murder of George Floyd was not the result of a deliberate plan by the bourgeoisie. But it has made it possible for the ruling class to focus all attention on the question of race when the capitalist system as a whole has been revealing its utter bankruptcy.

Faced with the decay of capitalism, the class struggle is the only alternative

Capitalist society is in a profound state of decay. The barbaric massacres that continue to spread across Africa and the Middle East, the incessant gang wars in Latin America – all of which are forcing millions to become refugees - are a clear symptom of this, and so is the current Covid-19 pandemic, a by-product of capitalism’s devastation of the planet’s ecology. At the same time, the system is mired in an insoluble economic crisis. Following the crash of 2008, capitalist states launched a brutal strategy of austerity, aimed at making the exploited pay for the crisis. The resulting decimation of health services is one of the main reasons why the pandemic has had such a catastrophic impact. In turn, the world-wide lock down has plunged the system into an even deeper economic crisis, certainly comparable to the depression of the 1930s.

This new descent in the economic crisis is already causing widespread impoverishment, homelessness and hunger, not least in the USA which provides its workers with such minimal social back-up in the face of unemployment or illness. There is no doubt that the resulting material misery has fuelled the anger of the protests. But faced with the historic obsolescence of an entire mode of production there is only one force that can unify against it and offer the perspective of a different society: the international working class.

The working class is not immune from the rotting of capitalist society: it suffers from all the national, racial and religious divisions which are being sharpened by the sinister progress of social decomposition, most evidently in the spread of populist ideologies. But this does not change the fundamental reality: the exploited of all countries, of all colours, have the same interest in defending themselves against the deepening attacks on their living conditions, against wage cuts, unemployment, evictions, reduction in pensions and social benefits – and against the violence of the capitalist state. This struggle alone is the basis for overcoming all the divisions that benefit our exploiters, and for resisting racist attacks and pogroms in all their forms. And when the working class does organise itself to unite its forces, it also shows that it has the capacity to organise society on a new basis. The workers’ councils that emerged across the world in the wake of the revolution in Russia in 1917, the inter-factory strike committees that arose in the Polish mass strike of 1980 – these are the proof that the struggle of the working class on its own terrain offers the perspective of creating a new proletarian power on the ruins of the capitalist state, and of reorganising production for the needs of humanity.

For several decades at least the working class has been losing the sense of itself as a class opposed to capital, the result both of vast ideological campaigns (like the “death of communism” onslaught that followed the collapse of the Stalinist form of capitalism) and sweeping material changes (like the dismantling of traditional centres of working class struggle in the most industrialised countries). But just before the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world, the strikes in the public sector in France had begun to show us that the working class is not dead and buried. The arrival of the pandemic and the global lock-down blocked the immediate potential for an extension of this movement. But even then, in the first phase of the lock down, there were very militant reactions by the working class in many countries against being treated like “lambs to the slaughter”, against being forced to work without adequate safety equipment simply to protect the profits of the bourgeoisie. These struggles – again not least in the USA – already cut across racial and national divisions. At the same time, the lock-down has laid bare the fact that the functioning of this system is entirely dependent on the “essential” labour of the class it exploits so ruthlessly. 

The central question for the future of humanity is here: can the capitalist minority continue to divide the exploited majority along the lines of race, religion or nation, and thus drag it behind its march towards the abyss. Or will the working class, in all the countries of the world, recognise itself for what it is – the class that, in Marx’s terms, is “revolutionary or it is nothing”.

Amos

A close sympathiser of the ICC makes an appeal to the organisations of the proletarian political milieu to take up their responsibility in response to the dangerous manoeuvres of an adventurer.

I would like to express my full support for the ICC’s text published on Gaizka[1]. Above all, it must be recognised that the ICC has not published the article on Gaizka as part of an attack on the individual (his real name is carefully omitted), but as an identification of an opportunist, adventurist element that is able to derail the milieu. More broadly, the article of the ICC sets out to put a finger in the wound with regard to the programmatic and organisational weakness of the milieu, of which the uncritical acceptance of Nuevo Curso (NC) by the milieu is an expression.

The latest article, in tandem with the article on the history of the so-called ‘Spanish Communist Left’[2], unveils the fraudulent nature of Nuevo Curso’s politics. Its overtures to historical Trotskyism have been adequately criticised as antithetical to the programmatic positions of the communist left. So why then publish an article on the leading element in Nuevo Curso? The existence of NC demonstrates how easily the milieu can be enraptured by adventurist elements. In what follows, I will point out some of the questions that the rise of Gaizka poses for the milieu.

The nature of adventurist elements

It is not our goal here to repeat what has already been confirmed with regard to the nature of this particular element in Spain. But it seems to me that the nature of these adventurist elements has to be understood more historically. The history of the proletariat, and the history of its political organisations, has been marred by the appearance of ‘great leaders’ who have tried to use these movements for their own personal glory. One of the main examples was the figure of Lassalle, but there have been others. But adventurism has to find a fertile host in order to fester. We need to consider the reasons for which some scattered, weakly politicised elements are able to create another ‘left communist’ grouplet that is equally able to regroup itself under the guidance of any other existing groups in the milieu. And why it is that other groups are willing to accept the existence of tendencies that are so clearly in contradiction with their own programme?

Historically, as the texts by the ICC on adventurism have shown, the prominence of adventurist elements is primarily predicated on the weakness of the proletarian milieu at a particular historical moment. That is not to say that organisations are helpless to do anything in a difficult historical moment for communists, but it requires a strong theoretical and organisational firmness to be able to go against the current.

In other words, it is imperative that the milieu be able to confront the attack on its theoretical principles. There should be a full reflection on how and why it is that we are currently being haunted by elements that seek to deviate from the tradition of the Communist Left. Generally, the problem seems to reside in the weakness of the milieu. But before going into this weakness, it might be fruitful to understand how a new organisation might legitimately become part of the milieu. In doing so, we champion the concept of the milieu, precisely because it prevents us from putting our heritage between brackets every time a new group appears, and because it limits what can be legitimately held to be considered ‘communist’; and additionally because it can exclude what, on the basis of historical experience, can never be a position of the working class.

You can’t reinvent the wheel

And yet, it is possible to come to the milieu with new ideas, and to join the milieu as a new group, or join one of the existing groups, while holding opinions that might seem to disturb common wisdom. In fact, it is precisely the fierce struggle against the Second International dogma that enabled the Left Fractions to break on a clear basis with the old organisation and maintain their proletarian kernel.

However, there can be no theory that is not developed in debate with reality and in debate with other political groups that currently exist. And we cannot ignore what has already been extensively proven by history, for instance the regressive role of the unions. For us communists, there can be no reinvention of the wheel: at this moment in time, given the fragility of our political current, and given the demographic distribution of our militants, and more importantly, the difficult political moment we are in (with the borders, populism, politics of blame, etc.) any sowing of political doubt regarding the basic principles of our politics is quasi-suicidal.

In defending the milieu and the (unacknowledged) points of agreement that it represents, it should be equally unthinkable that one represents both a communist organisation and a bourgeois organisation.

Of course, it is impossible to live and work in capitalism without becoming somewhat entangled in it, but there is still an important difference with working as an advisor to a political figurehead and with actively supporting a bourgeois party and its ideology. If such dual representation of communist and bourgeois causes were accepted, it would obscure the meaning of communism, and it would cloud the way the working class should direct its attention.

As was said earlier, a break has to be made. Neither of these two conditions, despite being common sense, has been met by the leading figure of Nuevo Curso. No explanation of Gaizka’s political oscillations has been provided, and neither has his organisation fundamentally defined its differences in relation to the other groups. Nor, should we note, has it issued a real defence of the existence of the so-called Spanish Left. The clarity of communist theory has to be safeguarded by engaging in debate, by openly developing a set of shared positions that define communist politics. Unfortunately, the milieu seems to be unable to do so.

This leaves us in a particularly difficult political position, in which adventurists elements are able to grow uninhibitedly, and gain an unearned legitimacy. It would be foolish to deny the possibility of legitimate differences in programmatic points between communist groups. But it is vitally important that we do not leave the doors open to the manoeuvres of adventurers and leftist positions, which seems little earned to be the most immediate danger if we continue to let elements like Nuevo Curso enter unhindered. Parasitic groups like the so-called International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL) will, undoubtedly, persist in defending the exact opposite position of the ICC, saluting the appearance of a new current among the others, as it suits their goal of imploding the milieu for their own purposes of liquidating theory and organisation. It further demonstrates their ultimate purpose, and their underlying hatred of clarification, their love of ‘choice’ i.e. democracy, and their inability to engage in discussions without seeing their opinions as their own personal property. Their errors lead them to distort the current criticisms of NC as a form of character assassination, as that is their own modus operandi, and they simply cannot think outside of it.

The weakness of the milieu

We cannot deny that new arguments or revised theories might be valid in political debate between groups. The invocation of a so-called ‘Spanish left’ is both a consequence and a symptom of an unwillingness to debate within the milieu, that is to say to fully map any that might legitimately remain, and is thus an obstacle to the ability of the milieu to move forward on a common platform. The creation of a new communist tradition is to sidestep the debate and an expression of the fundamentally parasitic nature of this group.

So, we have to ask, what has the milieu done until now? Generally, it has accepted the existence of the new elements, and has failed to critically engage with its positions. Translated texts that appear from Nuevo Curso are introduced by other groups with little to no comment on its political deviations. Apparently, for some parts of the milieu, the reverence for the ‘miracle’ of the emergence of new elements leads them to an almost devotional attitude towards any and all elements that appear.

The moment seems to deceive most current political groups. Some young new elements, led on by their own coming to communist positions, tend to think that the party is about to be founded in the (very) near future. The fundamental error is to think that even if we are able to regroup the left communist milieu as one organisation, it instantaneously becomes the ‘party’. It is not a party because it has no actual impact within the working class: it would merely be yet another party, indistinguishable from all the other small leftist parties that have nothing as their content. It would be foolish to ‘regroup’ solely to regroup. On the contrary, what is needed now is vigorous theoretical discussion to make such a regrouping possible in the future on a solid programmatic and organisational basis.

I salute the work that the ICC has done to theoretically identify the roots of Nuevo Curso, and to detail in what manner an adventurer like Gaizka has been able to go under the guise of a ‘new theory’ to pull searching elements into the swamp between communism and leftism. I can only wholeheartedly hope that the milieu will be able to overcome its weaknesses and can begin to reinitiate the debates that are necessary to begin a process of necessary programmatic solidification, and subsequently, the exclusion of elements that are not actively approaching these positions.

Merwe, 2020-07-10

Racial tensions in the United States are related to the role played by the slave system in the development of primitive accumulation in that country. Slavery existed throughout the Americas and the Caribbean (Brazil, Spanish colonies, the Caribbean islands) but in no other developed country has this system conditioned social relations and the obstacles to working class unity as much as in the US. At another level of development and importance, the case of South Africa has some similarities [1].

Capitalism in its origins, after the “discovery” of the Americas, was marked by slavery [2]. And it was in the Americas in particular, not just in the US, that this system took root. To understand the history of the advent of capitalism, of the formation of the working class, including the present situation, it is necessary to address the problem of slavery.

The trauma of slavery, of the slave trade, has marked the history of the African continent of course, but above all, the history of the American continent in all aspects, in particular in the development of the working class. A large part of the American working class has its origins in slavery. We are not going to talk here about the role of the ruling classes (aristocracy and bourgeoisie) of the old European monarchical regimes in the abominable “triangular trade” between the main ports of the European powers, the African coasts and the Americas.

Slavery and primitive accumulation

As Marx writes: "The discovery of gold and silver in America [especially by the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers, Editors’ Note], the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation." (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 31, “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist” [3])

The primitive capitalist accumulation under the old regimes, still marked by feudalism, was often carried out with slave labour. And Africa, to the misfortune of this continent, will continue to be, from the 17th, 18th and even much of the 19th century, an arena for “slave-hunting”. This type of exploitation will not be the same as that of capitalism, but its early days it served the process of primitive accumulation: “The sporadic application of cooperation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in modern colonies reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form [of cooperation], on the contrary, presupposes from first to last the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour power to capital. Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts. From the standpoint of these, capitalistic cooperation does not manifest itself as a particular historical form of cooperation; but cooperation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist process of production. (…) The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers in one and the same process forms the starting point of capitalist production.” (Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 9, “How Capital revolutionises the Mode of Production”, (A) “Cooperation”). Since capitalism began and developed in a non-capitalist environment, which at first was overwhelmingly dominant), it also developed in the midst of and thanks to other forms of exploitation and “cooperation”.

Feudalism brought under its control the old primitive communist communities that it “left alone” as long as they regularly paid tax in kind (agricultural, livestock or handicraft products) and in human beings (servants and soldiers). On the other hand, capitalism tends to transform all social relations into commercial and wage relations, and yet in the course towards them it is capable of using old forms of exploitation such as slavery, making them much more profitable through refined and systematic barbarism.

In the 19th century, slavery continued to exist on a large scale, as in the cotton-producing states in the US South: there were as many as 5 million slaves until well beyond the mid-century. They sold their production to the Northern states and, above all, to the first great capitalist country of the time, Great Britain. For decades, after American independence, the slave system remained vigorous [4] serving the process of accumulation in that immense country. But the confrontation between the capitalism of the Northern States and the slave States of the South became inevitable, in particular because of the expansionist dynamic towards the West, leading to the Civil War.

And, after the colonisation of Egypt, Great Britain began to stop buying the cotton of the South of the US. This, with the usual cynicism of the ruling classes, intensified the anti-slavery campaign waged by a good part of the British bourgeoisie [5].

And yet there was an exponential increase in the number of slaves over decades: " When, the first census of slaves was taken in the US in 1790, their number was 697,000; in 1861 it had nearly reached four millions", as Marx recalls in Capital (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 15 "Machinery and Modern Industry", Section 6 “The theory of compensation as regards the workpeople displaced by machinery”) And that took place in the US, the first country in the world “liberated” from the old regime, and together with France a “democratic” beacon for the rising bourgeoisies of other countries.

 “Hence the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the Negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of production of surplus-labour itself.” (Capital, Volume I, “The working day”, Section 2: “The greed for surplus labour. Manufacturer and boyard”).  Despite these huge profits, it was still not a fully-fledged capitalist system.

The accompaniment of wage-earning exploitation by the system of racial segregation

The consequences of the "stain", that is to say the insult to human morality that slavery represented in the country that would end up being the most powerful on earth, did not disappear by magic after the Civil War. Slavery was gone, but not its consequences in the difficult struggle of the working class. As much as it was in the interest of the bourgeoisie to end slavery, we know very well that the ills of past class societies are concentrated in capitalism as if it were a melting pot of them all. The bloody Civil War [6] accelerated the spread of wage labour throughout the US, with black workers gradually being incorporated into "free" labour, but this "freedom to be exploited" was enveloped almost from the beginning by a system of racial segregation that added horrible suffering to this part of our class and created a dangerous division within the proletariat.

Racial separation laws remained in effect in virtually every state, backed by repeated sentences of the Supreme Court. The height of cynicism was attained by the Supreme Court, which only three years after the end of the Civil War (in 1868) ruled that “Negroes must live apart. The white man called them by their first name only and could abuse them for any reason. Blacks could vote, but only if they paid a special tax and the names of all Supreme Court presidents and judges were known by heart.” [7]

The legal system of segregation protected and encouraged a parallel, supposedly ”popular” system (thanks mainly to the fanaticism of the white petty bourgeoisie) of aggression, collective killings, and systematic lynchings. The petty bourgeoisie, especially in the Southern States, but not only there, unleashed their destructive fury with metronome regularity to terrorise the proletarians of slave origin. The racism of the American petty bourgeoisie reflects one of the ideological features of American capitalism: a culture imbued with a violent, biblically-inspired puritanism, one of the bases of which is the furious, visceral horror of any mixture of “races”. True, racism and the rejection of others is a widely shared mentality in all class societies, but in the case of the US it is a founding element of the country.

In Opelousas (Louisiana, 1868), New Orleans, and Memphis (1866) the white rabble reacted with lynchings to the attempts of the blacks to exercise the “new rights”.  “In Thibodaux, Louisiana, 1887, more than 300 sugar cutters died during a strike for the right to stop living in the former slave quarters.” (https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20200603/481582308546/violenc... [178])

The 20th century was even worse: "Up to 250 died in Wilmington, (1928 in North Carolina) including women and children when a white mob attacked one of their newspapers over an anti-segregation article. Several hundred more died in East St. Louis (Missouri in 1917) when a rumour spread that a black worker had spoken to a white woman at a union meeting. In Elaine (1919 in Arkansas) the trigger for the death of more than 200 blacks, also with women and children among them, was a labour claim by the pickers in the fields of the white landowners. And in Tulsa, (1921 in Oklahoma) it all started when a group of white people tried to lynch a young black man they accused of stealing. Up to 300 people died and 8,000 lost their homes when the angry white population set fire to Black Wall Street and the surrounding black neighbourhood.” (https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20200603/481582308546/violenc... [178])

The system of racial segregation was reinforced by a half-illegal militia, the Ku Klux Klan, that persecuted black workers and inflicted savage torture on them in ritual acts. Officially dissolved in 1871, it reappeared in 1915 and is still preserved through local groups that defend a xenophobic, white supremacist and racist ideology. The big American democratic parties have occasionally openly encouraged these blatantly barbaric expressions of capitalism; at other times they have expressed their “outrage” about them, to favour the trap of “anti-racism”, yet they have always tolerated them as a complementary means to keep the working class divided.

The struggle of the workers’ movement against slavery

When slavery in the US was at its height, Marx (1860) described the life of the proletarians in England, [8] an atrocious “life” as Engels had already described it in his famous book in 1845 [9]. No doubt the life of the proletarians in those times was as miserable and exhausting as that of many slaves. But it is not the same, for the future of the revolutionary class, the exploitation of slavery as “the existence of the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour power to capital”. The proletariat experiences a new form of exploitation that contains the possibility, if it is able to develop a conscious struggle, of overcoming the contradictions of capitalism by installing a communist society. The exploitation of the proletariat entails a universal suffering encompassing all forms of oppression and exploitation that have existed in class societies and that, consequently, can only be resolved by a universal revolution going to the roots of all the exploitation and oppressions that exist in capitalism and, therefore, in all class societies. [10] That's why one of the aspects of the working class struggle had to be the fight against slavery, especially in a country like the US.

In view of the situation of the American Civil War, the IWA (International Workers Association, First International), did not hesitate to send a message of support, written by Marx, to the Northern States led by Lincoln. It was not a question of supporting one faction of the bourgeoisie against another reactionary class (the big landowners of the South) [11]. Marx rightly thought that the end of slavery would give a boost to the unification of the working class. And so in Capital (written at the same time as the end of the Civil War in the US and the “official” end of slavery, 1865)he establishes a link with the struggle for the 8 hour day: “In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California.” (Capital, Volume I, “The working day”, Section 2: “The greed for surplus labour. Manufacturer and boyard”). 

What about the working class in America?

Both Marxists and anarchists clearly put forward the unity of the working class, whatever its colour. This tradition took shape at the beginning of the 20th century in the IWW, the well-known revolutionary industrial union in the US, which was formed on the basis of an internationalist policy, against war and obviously for the unification of the working class, whatever its colour. [12] We already know the limits of revolutionary unionism and the failure of the IWW. But, in the worker's memory will remain “The experience of the IWW, the exemplary courage of its militants in the face of a ruling class for whom no violence or hypocrisy was too vile, is thus a reminder that the workers of America are indeed the class brothers of workers the world over, that their interests and struggles are the same, and that internationalism is not a vain word for the working class, but the touchstone of its very existence. The divisions between native-born, English-speaking workers (even if the latter were only second generation immigrants themselves) and newly arrived immigrant workers who spoke and read little or no English had long been a cause for concern in the workers’ movement in the US. In a letter to Sorge in 1893, Engels warned against the bourgeoisie’s cynical use of divisions within the proletariat, which retarded the development of the workers’ movement in the US. The bourgeoisie skilfully used race, ethnic, nationality and linguistic prejudices to divide workers amongst themselves, and to disrupt the development of a working class that saw itself as a united class. These divisions were a serious handicap for the working class in the US because it cut off the native Americans from the vast experience gained by workers in Europe and made it difficult for class conscious American workers to keep up to date with the international theoretical developments within the workers’ movement.”  (“The IWW: The failure of revolutionary syndicalism in the USA, 1905-1921”; International Review no.124 - 1st quarter 2006)

In a letter of December 2, 1893, Engels replied to a question by Friedrich Adolf Sorge about the absence of a significant socialist party in the US, explaining that “There is no denying that conditions in America present considerable and peculiar difficulties to the steady growth of a labour party”.   Among these difficulties, one of the most important was “immigration, which splits the workers into two groups, native-born and foreign, and the latter again into 1. Irish, 2. Germans, 3. a number of smaller groups, each speaking only its own language - Czechs, Poles, Italians, Scandinavians, etc. And, in addition, the negroes. To form a party of one’s own out of all these calls for exceptionally strong incentives. Every now and again a powerful élan may suddenly make itself felt, but all the bourgeoisie has to do is to stick it out passively, whereupon the dissimilar working-class elements will disintegrate again.” (https://www.koorosh-modaresi.com/MarxEngels/V50.pdf [179])

Black workers, who had already begun to flee to the North during slavery (when even in those states they could be persecuted and sent back to the South), began to go to the industrial zones especially from the beginning of the 20th century. And this “division” that Engels speaks of was reflected in the appearance of ghettos, a trend that was accentuated with the counter-revolution. The abominable ignominy of “modern” slavery had the particularity of its “unique” “racial” origin (sub-Saharan Africa, as opposed to ancient, Medieval or Eastern slavery where the slave could be of very different origins) so that newly proletarianised former slaves were immediately seen as having just come out of their commodity-object status. The US bourgeoisie, on the other hand, prohibited until very recently “coloured” emigration, favouring in the great years of emigration to the US from the end of the 19th century until the 1930s, the European populations. It is true that the existence of “ethnic” neighbourhoods is a “tradition” in the urban habitat in the US, but with the black ghettos the separation was much more clear-cut.

Civil rights and police brutality

Racial segregation was officially abolished in 1964, a century after the abolition of slavery. The idea was to give a channel to a growing sector of the black bourgeoisie that was being hindered in their business by these laws. The “great fruit” of the Civil Rights Laws was the promotion of black people to the upper echelons of politics and business. In the Bush administration, Colin Powell, the butcher of Iraq, and Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, stood out, with the high point being Obama's election in 2008 as the first black president.

However, for black workers nothing changed. They continued to be victims of police and judicial discrimination that makes a black person seven times more likely to end up in prison than a white person.

Especially cruel is the treatment of black people by the police, even though there are many more black police officers. The 1992 Los Angeles crime that sparked violent protests was horrible. During Obama's term there were more police killings than ever before [13].

The murder of Georges Floyd on May 26 at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers was a tragic further demonstration of this continuation of official ruling class violence. The dominant classes, through their states, have a monopoly on violence. They exercise it in general to impose their domination, especially against the working class. Alongside the “official” forces of order, there are militias, more or less illegal armed groups. Over the years, the US has become a paradigm of the most extreme violence. And in many other countries this extreme official, unofficial or illegal violence (take the “example” of Mexico) has been established to last as long as this criminal system lasts. All these scourges are old, yes, but the trend of this model has become general, it is sharpened in all corners of the planet. We are living today through the decomposition of the capitalist system and all that official, unofficial or illegal criminal violence is on the march. Whether we are ruled by democracies or dictatorships, by single or pluralistic parties, everyday life is marked by the growing violence of a criminal system, capitalism.

In the face of such outrages, very widely known this time thanks to the images of Floyd's agony transmitted by the whole world, people of all races and conditions took to the streets in outrage to end up demanding... a more democratic police, demanding the executioner to be more humane. On the one side, Trump throwing more wood on the fire, encouraging supremacists who are willing to shoot everyone that is not white; on the other side, the Democratic (and many Republican, like former President Bush) factions of the American political spectrum take the knee, calling on outraged artists and stars, supporting “patriotic” demonstrations (as the New York Times described the Black Lives Matter marches).

The fight for the unity of the working class

With the counter-revolution, from the 1930s onwards, the killings, the lynchings multiplied. In the Depression of 1929, the white petty bourgeoisie - well manipulated by the media that took advantage of its narrow search for scapegoats - attributed the crisis to “the Negroes”, “In Harlem, New York, there were an undetermined number of deaths and more than a hundred injured, in addition to numerous lootings, as a result of the alleged robbery of a young Negro in a white man's store. It was the first modern-day riot because it completely destroyed the shops. From then on, Harlem suffered episodes of almost continuous racial violence until the 1960s.” (https://www.zinez.net/internacional/20200603/481582308546/violencia-raci... [180])

In reality, the stain of slavery that had sullied capitalist development in the US and elsewhere ended up creating a barrier in workers' struggles in the US that has been difficult to break through.

This barrier has been raised higher by the social process of capitalist decomposition [14]. This involves a putrefaction of social relations, a fragmentation of society into ethnic, religious, localist, or “affinity” groups, that lock themselves in their own small ghettos to give themselves a false sense of community, of protection from a more and more inhuman world. This tendency favours the division in the ranks of the workers - accentuated to the point of paroxysm by the poisonous action of parties, unions, institutions, propaganda, etc. - into “communities” of race, religion, national origin etc. To add more fuel to the fire of racial and linguistic divisions in the US proletariat, the emigration of workers from Latin America, which became massive from the 1970s, has been used by the bourgeoisie to create more ghettos, to subject immigrant workers to illegality and to push down the living conditions of all workers [15].

However, some workers’ struggles in the last 50 years have crossed that barrier: Detroit 1965, the Chrysler wildcat strike in 1968, the Post Office wildcat strike in 1970, the New York subway in 2005, the Oakland strike during the Occupy movement in 2011... Despite their limits, these struggles are an experience from which we can draw lessons in the struggle for class unity.

In the 19th century fighting against slavery was fighting for the working class. Today, the brutality of the police, the white supremacists and the state in general (and its prisons) on the one hand, and the anti-racist movements on the other, serve to divide the working class and transform its most oppressed layers into an entirely separate population. Racism and anti-racism belong to the bourgeoisie. They are ideologies against the working class.

That's why the slogan of the proletariat is: We are neither white, nor black, nor any other color. We are a working class! As a banner in the protests against California's anti-immigrant law 187 said, WE ARE NOT COLOMBIANS, WE ARE NOT MEXICANS, WE ARE WORKERS.

Pinto 11-07-2020

[1] See the Series on the South African labour movement in our International Review https://en.internationalism.org/content/9459/history-class-struggle-south-africa [181]; https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201508/13355/south-africa-world-war-ii-mid-1970s [182]; https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201702/14250/soweto-1976-anc-power-1993 [183]; https://en.internationalism.org/content/16598/election-president-nelson-mandela-1994-2019 [184]

[2] See: “1492: The discovery of America” https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200912/3406/1492-discovery-america [185]

[3] [186] The numbering of books or volumes, chapters and subchapters of Capital does not necessarily appear to be the same from one edition to another.

[4] [187] The majority thesis of American historians of the 1970s was that the South lost because of an inefficient and unprofitable pre-capitalist system. For some years now, the majority thesis has been that the slave system was fully capitalist. It is difficult to know what these academics want to demonstrate; perhaps what they are looking for is to know which system has been more brutal, exploitative and inhumane. And therefore they use marxism, for which capitalism is first and foremost a social relation, the last class society to be overthrown in order to put an end to the exploitation of man by man. Thus, according to a well-known French historian, Nicolas Barreyre, speaking very recently about the system of the cotton farmers of the South of the United States, “In the 1970s, the dominant idea among historians, as among economists, was that the slave-owning South lived in an inefficient and unprofitable pre-capitalist economy that could not survive against the North, which had entered the industrial and capitalist revolution since the early 19th century. After the 2008 crisis, historians have once again become interested in the origins of the American economic system, forging what has been called the ‘new history of capitalism’. The idea is that the slave economy of the South was fully capitalist, which contributed to the rise of capitalism in the North” (Interview in Le Monde of 28/06/2020).  We do not intend to make addenda to such eminent historians. The logic of the historians of the 1970s that the economy of the Southern States was “inefficient and unprofitable” because it was “pre-capitalist” seems to result from a rather vulgar version of “marxism”. Capitalism, at its height, made use of other non-capitalist economies for its expansion, both of markets and of sources of raw materials and capital. And until their full assimilation or destruction many of these economies were able to enrich themselves and serve the primitive accumulation of capital, especially when they belonged to the same nation. In the 19th century, throughout the world, there were systems not yet dominated by capitalism with which it did business, threatening them if necessary. See also https://en.internationalism.org/content/16709/american-civil-war-and-struggle-working-class-unity [188]

[5] [189] The hypocrisy of the English bourgeoisie knows no limits. On the one hand, it tolerated slavery in those countries that could serve it as allies and in those colonies where it suited its interests, while simultaneously turning itself into a “hammer against slavery” against rivals such as Spain, Portugal or Brazil, which did not have enough economic power to do without slavery, which they abolished very late (in 1886 in Spain and in 1888 in Brazil)

[6] [190] It was one of the deadliest in history “630,000 people died. Even today, this figure is half of all the casualties the US has suffered in all the wars it has fought since, including Afghanistan.” https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20200603/481582308546/violencia-racial-eeuu-historia-racismo.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=claves_de_hoy [191]

[7] Source already cited in note 6, unless otherwise indicated we refer to this source in subsequent quotations.

[8] Just read: “Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10: The Working day; Section 3: Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation”, [a shocking chapter, with the example of children and the 15 hours of work for a seven year old child!]

[9] Condition of the Working. Class in England https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/condition-worki... [192]

[10] [193] See: The principles of communism, in particular the points VI and VII https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm [194]

[11] “When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, ‘slavery’ on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding ‘the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution’, and maintained slavery to be ‘a beneficent institution’, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of ‘the relation of capital to labor’, and cynically proclaimed property in man ‘the cornerstone of the new edifice’ — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic”. Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm [195])

In 1864, more than 150 years ago, when the working class was still affirming itself as a class for the transformation of society, its organisations supported and had to support fractions of the bourgeoisie that were fighting against the - still important and strong - remnants of old systems of exploitation. Today, the reason that communists reject support for “democratic republics”, “human rights” and other bourgeois slogans is not that they are slogans “from another epoch”, but that they are, above all, hoaxes and weapons against the proletariat. And that's since the advent of decaying capitalism.

[12] See our series on the IWW: https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/200601/1609/iww-failure-revolutionary-syndicalism-usa-1905-1921 [196]; https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125-iww [197]

[13] [198] See the report Racial conflicts in the Obama era, https://www.vozpopuli.com/internacional/Barack_Obama-Racismo-Estados_Unidos-racismo-estados_unidos-obama-conflicto_racial-matanzas-negros_0_933206737.html [199]

[14] [200] See our “Theses on Decomposition”, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_decomposition [34]

[15] [201] See: "’Latino’ demonstrations in the USA: Yes to the unity of the working class! No to unity with the exploiters!”  https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/200605/1778/latino-demonstrati... [202]

Since we wrote about the elements that were to found the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) in February 2018 [[1]], this organisation has gone through a process of defining its course and determining its programme. Its main objective was to turn away from the domination of identity politics, as had developed in the Anarchist Federation and in the anarchist milieu in general, and to return to the class struggle as the fundamental basis of its activities. After the group was founded it made some steps, as it said, “to break with the swamp of traditional anarchism” [[2]] and in the direction of class positions.

In June 2018 it took the initiative to start a campaign under the slogan “No War, but the Class War” (NWBCW). Other participants in this initiative were also the Guildford Solidarity Group and an organisation of the Communist Left: the CWO. At the inauguration of this campaign these three groups organised a joint meeting in London. In the year thereafter the ACG organised different public meetings on the subject of which some were organised together with the CWO, as in January and April 2019. [[3]]

On different occasions it defended the class struggle as the only solution for the liberation of all those who are subjugated to oppression by capitalism, as was the case when an ACG member gave a presentation at a Rebel City Collective meeting at the Anti-University in London in June 2018: “Though the fight against oppressions may take priority for those oppressed at different times, ultimately they will only achieve full liberation as working class women or people of colour when classes are abolished” [[4]].

Having said this we also must establish that the attempts of the group to leave the anarchist swamp behind has not really succeeded, since there are too many points on which it has not been able to make any significant progress towards communist positions. One of the striking examples is the way it wants to solve the problem of the anti-Zionism in the article “Identity politics and anti-Semitism on the left” [[5]].

The left and anti-Zionism

For a number of years there has been an intense campaign against leftist groups and individuals in Britain who defend an anti-Zionist position. The campaign has been directed in particular against the left wing in the Labour Party which was openly accused of anti-Semitism. In response to this campaign certain anarchists decided to take the side of the Labour Party.

In 2016 “Winter Oak”, an anarchist group that is particularly concerned with ecology, did not yet openly take the side of the Labour Party but warned against “a toxic new ideological weapon [that] has been unleashed by the capitalist system (…): the witch-hunt accusation of “anti-Semitism”. This phenomenon has come to its head in the UK in recent weeks with fevered accusations of 'anti-Semitism' within Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which seems to be regarded as dangerously radical.” [[6]]

David Graeber however openly defended the Labour Party against the smear campaign. In December 2019 he posted several messages on Twitter, targeting the reportage in The Guardian on institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. “If you add up false with misleading, 90% of Guardian news articles on IHRA controversy [[7]] were designed to trick the reader into falsely believing Labour was institutionally #antisemitic. This was an historical crime against truth. Who were editors? They need to be shamed for this” [[8]].

While this is a real ideological campaign led by various bourgeois factions, this does not mean that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party does not exist. Corbyn and the Trotskyists indeed made and still make common cause with the most extreme Islamic gangs like Hamas and Hezbollah, and in doing so they act as “a vehicle not only of a more shamefaced anti-Semitism, but of its most open manifestations” [[9]]. The ACG is able to face this reality when it wrote that “many who support the Palestinian cause (…) seem genuinely unable to distinguish between criticising Israel and sowing hatred against a people” and that “left wing ideas of anti-Zionism have become increasingly colonised by anti-Semitic forms” [[10]].

Due to the intensity of this campaign, in Britain (and elsewhere), it has indeed become increasingly difficult to criticise the state of Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism. And every element or group that considers itself as part of the left in general – in contrast to the revolutionary communist left - is faced by this dilemma. In order to circumvent this dilemma, the ACG therefore decided no longer to speak of anti-Zionism. Instead it argues “that it is far safer to use more precise and unambiguous phrases like opposing the Israeli state, its policies, or its actions” [[11]].

According to the ACG “a problem arises when we see identities before we see relationships” [[12]], in other words: before seeing classes. If classes were put first and identities second one would, it seems, be freed from the problem of the identification of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Has the problem of the identification of both really been solved by this? We don’t think so. Identity politics, which is a trap for the working class struggle, as the AGC rightly admits, is persistent and more difficult to combat than the ACG thinks.

This is quite clearly shown by the article of the ACG in which it makes an appeal to help “the anti-racism movement in this country and worldwide” with the argument “racism, other prejudices, and systems of oppression, are so tightly linked that in fighting one of them, we also fight the others” [[13]]. Here the ACG puts race before classes again since it starts from the premises that fighting racism automatically means fighting capitalism. “Racism divides the working class against itself” [[14]], the ACG writes, and this is of course true, but it forgets that its support for anti-racism divides the working class as much. And the picture by the article, with its publicity for Black Lives Matter, a campaign that puts race above class, only underlines this.

But let’s return to the question of anti-Zionism. In its attempt to avoid the use of this word, another problem has arisen: that of the acceptance of the state of Israel if only it would be “a secular, non-discriminatory, democratic state”, since “states exist, and we need to work within the reality we have before us” [[15]]. What is the meaning of this statement, which is indistinguishable from the programmes of the anti-Zionist left? Have anarchists not always tried to reject and combat the bourgeois state as a repressive organ in the service of the ruling class?

In the ACG’s more general writings, there seems to be no confusion on this point. “The State is the means by which the ruling class retains and enhances its power” [[16]]. “Any economic system based on wage labour and private property will require a coercive state apparatus to enforce property rights and to maintain the unequal economic relationships that will inevitably arise” [[17]]. But, if this is really the ACG’s conception of the state, it has to explain at least how it reconciles its anti-state position with the phrase that in the case of Israel “a secular, non-discriminatory, democratic state” is “acceptable”?

The question of identity politics cannot be solved by expelling it through the front door only to let it slip in through the back. Even above the article, in which the ACG says that it prefers no longer to use the word Zionism, there is a picture of a billboard with the slogan: “Confront Zionism, Boycott Israel”, signed by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. This whole trick with the word Zionism doesn’t bring the group one step closer to the internationalist position it claims to defend. On the contrary, it is still submerged in the international campaign that forces each and every one to support or reject the “legitimacy” of the Zionist state.

The difficult path of internationalism

Ten years ago we wrote about internationalist anarchism. And we defended the internationalist tendencies within anarchism as an expression of proletarian internationalism. Today we think that a group as the ACG globally defends internationalist positions. But this position is not clearly and solidly established and based on a working class approach: on the proletariat as the class that can only emancipate itself by emancipating the whole of the non-exploiting world population from the scourge of exploitation and repression by means of a worldwide revolution.

That’s why we also underlined that “The anarchist movement (...) remains a very heterogeneous milieu. Throughout its time, a part of this milieu has sincerely aspired to the revolution and socialism, expressing a real will to finish with capitalism and exploitation. These militants have effectively placed themselves on the terrain of the working class when they affirmed their internationalism and dedicated themselves to joining its revolutionary combat.” But “deprived of the compass of the class struggle of the proletariat and of the oxygen of discussion and debate with the revolutionary minorities it produces, elements trying to defend class principles were often trapped in the intrinsic contradictions of anarchism” [[18]].

And this is exactly what we see today with the ACG. It is not able to defend a consistent internationalist position. We can see this with their position “accepting” a secular democratic Israel. But it can also be seen, for example in its statement regarding the invasion of the Turkish army and the situation around Afrin: “An Internationalist Position”.

The statement starts with a clear denunciation of the different bourgeois factions in the imperialist conflict. “As anarchist communists we do not support any faction in an inter-imperialist war (...). We also do not support nationalist political parties who have the goal of establishing new States, no matter how libertarian the rhetoric may be. There may well be examples of self-organising in areas of Rojava but (…) it is not a move towards genuine self-organisation if you are able to do it because the great leader has said that this is what you should do” [[19]].

So far, so good, but then the ACG pulls a rabbit out of its hat as it ends this statement with the words: “the situation is very complicated and (...) we do not then support uncritically the nationalist parties such as the YPD, which have assumed the leadership of the resistance” [[20]], which at least seems to imply that it 'critically' supports nationalist parties such as the YPD; despite the fact that it also characterizes this party in the same article as “one of high-disciplinary and authoritarian political parties” [[21]].

Support for the “lesser evil” leads to the abandonment of internationalism

For the ACG there is supposedly no such thing as the “lesser evil” “No faction of the capitalist class is worth supporting and none is “a lesser evil”!” [[22]]. But, from our experience, we know that anarchism very often ends up choosing the “lesser evil”. If the Kurds are attacked by Saddam, there are anarchists who consider the Kurds the lesser evil and supports them – especially if they advertise an ideology of “democratic confederalism” and talk about a “Rojava revolution”. If the Catalans rise up against the authoritarian regime of Madrid in 2017, there are anarchists who consider the Catalans the lesser evil and tends to support them.

A clear example of this policy of the “lesser evil” is shown by the article, recently published by a group in the Philippines on the website of the ACG without any criticism, called “Philippines: call for international solidarity”. This article concludes with a slogan that says: “Fight for social justice! Fight fascism and state sponsored terrorism!” [[23]] Moreover, above the article there is a picture on which one can read “Destroy fascism”. The ACG claims to defend the struggle of the proletariat on its own class terrain, but this slogan has nothing to do with the working class struggle and only deflect the workers away from their class terrain. The slogans make an appeal to fight for democracy in general which, in the end, means nothing else than bourgeois democracy. This is a trap for anarchism which goes back to its policy of the 1930’s.

The ACG does not consider the ministers of the CNT-FAI in 1936-1937as real anarchists and writes that their antifascist policy “paved the way for World War II.” [[24]]. But how does the ACG explain then what happened after 6 October 1934 when Luís Companys had declared an independent Catalan State in a Spanish Federal Republic? For after this proclamation was suppressed by the Spanish army and the Catalan government was arrested, the CNT issued a Manifesto in which it put “itself forward as the best rampart against fascism and insists on its right to contribute to the anti-fascist struggle. Against the whole tradition of the CNT and against the will of many anarchist militants, it abandoned the terrain of workers’ solidarity to embrace the terrain of anti-fascism and ‘critical’ support for Catalan nationalism.” [[25]]

In World War II this same anti-fascism lured the anarchists into the orbit of the Allied countries. Anarchists formed anti-fascist combat groups all over Italy to defend the “lesser evil” against the regime of Mussolini, even in honour of Malatesta who had never betrayed internationalism: “In Genoa, anarchist combat groups operated under the names of the ‘Pisacane’ Brigade, the ‘Malatesta’ formation, the SAP-FCL, the Sestri Ponente SAP-FCL and the Arenzano Anarchist Action Squads. (....) Anarchists founded the ‘Malatesta’ and ’Bruzzi’ brigades, amounting to 1300 partisans: these operated under the aegis of the ’Matteotti’ formation and played a primary role in the liberation of Milan” [[26]].

The examples above show clearly that, in the practice of everyday struggle, it is not so easy for an anarchist organisation to maintain its internationalist position. And the main reason for this failure is that anarchism. and even anarchist communism, don’t have a clear understanding of what the proletariat is and a historical method for clarifying its tasks in particular historical epochs. Without such a method it is impossible to develop a solid, universal and coherent political programme, as has been developed in particular by the organisations of the communist left. We will return to this in another article.

Dennis, July 2020

 

The aim of this polemic is to stimulate a debate in the proletarian political milieu. We hope that the criticisms we make of other groups will give rise to responses because the communist left can only be strengthened through an open confrontation of our differences.

Faced with major social upheavals, the first duty of communists is to defend their principles with the utmost clarity, offering workers the means to understand where their class interests lie. The groups of the communist left have above all been distinguished by their loyalty to internationalism in the face of wars between bourgeois gangs, states, and alliances. Despite differences over their analysis of the historic period in which we live, the existing groups of the communist left – the ICC, the ICT (Internationalist Communist Tendency), the various Bordigist organisations – have generally been able to denounce all wars between states as imperialist, and to call on the working class to refuse any support for their protagonists. This marks them off very sharply from pseudo-revolutionaries like the Trotskyists, who invariably apply an utterly distorted version of marxism to justify support for one bourgeois faction or another.

The task of defending proletarian class interests is of course also posed by the eruption of major social conflicts – not only movements which are clearly expressions of the proletarian struggle, but also by large mobilisations which involve large numbers protesting on the streets and often clashing with the forces of bourgeois order. In the latter case, the presence in such movements of workers, and even of demands linked to working class needs, can make it very difficult to put forward a lucid analysis of their class nature. All these elements existed, for example, in the Yellow Vest movement in France, and there are those (such as the group Guerre de Classe) who concluded that this is a new form of the proletarian class struggle[1]. By contrast, a number of the groups of the communist left were able to see that this was an inter-classist movement, in which workers were participating essentially as individuals behind the slogans of the petty bourgeoisie, and even behind openly bourgeois  demands and symbols (citizens’ democracy, the Tricolore, anti-immigrant racism, etc)[2].  This did not mean that considerable areas of confusion were excluded from their analyses. The wish to see, despite all this, some working class potential in a movement which had evidently begun and continued on a reactionary terrain, could still be discerned among some of the groups, as we will see later on.

The Black Lives Matter protests pose an even bigger challenge for revolutionary groups: there is no denying that they originated in a wave of genuine anger against a particularly disgusting expression of police brutality and racism. Furthermore, the anger was not restricted to black people and it went far beyond the borders of the US. But outbreaks of anger, of indignation and opposition to racism, do not automatically lead in the direction of the class struggle. In the absence of a real proletarian alternative, they can easily be instrumentalised by the bourgeoisie and its state. In our opinion, this has been the case with current BLM protests, and communists are thus faced with the necessity to show exactly how a whole panoply of bourgeois forces – from the BLM on the ground to the Democratic Party in the US, to major branches of industry, even the heads of the army and the police – have been present from day one to take charge of legitimate anger and use it for their own interests.

How have communists responded? We will not deal here with those anarchists who think that the acts of petty vandalism by Black Blocs within such demonstrations is an expression of class violence, or with “communisers” who think that looting is a form of “proletarian shopping” or a blow against the commodity form. We can come back to these arguments in future articles. We will limit ourselves to statements made by the groups of the communist left in the wake of the first riots and demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Three of the groups belong to the Bordigist current, and in fact all of them have the title “International Communist Party”, so we will define them according to their publications: Le Proletaire/The Proletarian; Il Partito Comunista/The Communist Party; /Programma Comunista/The Internationalist. The fourth group is the Internationalist Communist Tendency

Is the Black Lives Matter movement proletarian?

All of the statements issued by these groups contain elements we can agree with: for example, the intransigent denunciation of police brutality, the recognition that such brutality, like racism in general, is a product of capitalism and can only be eliminated through the destruction of this mode of production. Le Proletaire’s statement makes this very clear:

“In order to get rid of racism, whose roots can be found in the economic and social structure of bourgeois society, it is the mode of production on which it grows that must be gotten rid of, starting not with culture and “conscience”, mere reflections of the capitalist economic and social structure, but with proletarian class struggle, in which the decisive element is the shared wage worker condition, regardless of the color of the skin, the race, or the country of origin. The only way to successfully oppose every form of racism is the struggle against the ruling bourgeois class, regardless of the color of its skin, its race or its country of origin, because it is benefiting from all oppressions, from all forms of racism, from all forms of slavery”.[3]

Il Partito’s slogans make the same point: “Workers!
Your only defense is in organization and struggle as a class
The answer to racism is communist revolution!”[4]

However, when it comes to the most difficult question facing revolutionaries, all these groups, to a greater or lesser extent, make the same cardinal error: the riots following the murder and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations are part of the movement of the working class. The Internationalist writes:

“Today American proletarians are obliged to respond with force to police abuse and do well to retaliate blow by blow to the attacks, just as they do well to respond blow by blow to the “white supremacist” scoundrels, demonstrating by the practice of mutual defence that the proletariat is a single class: whoever touches one of us touches us all”[5].

Il Partito:

“The severity of the crimes committed by the representatives of the bourgeois State in recent weeks and the strength of the proletariat’s response to them certainly prompts a search for historical comparisons. The protests and riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 come immediately to mind, as do those that followed the acquittal of the police who beat Rodney King in 1992”.

The ICT:

“The events in Minneapolis are yet another addition to a historical and systemic problem. In addition to suffering unemployment at twice the rate of their white counterparts (a consistent number since the 1950s), the black proletariat is disproportionately targeted by police violence, with seemingly no end in sight to the death toll. Yet, the class shows itself, again, to be combative in those dire moments. The black workers of America, along with the rest of the proletariat standing in solidarity, took to the streets and pushed back against state repression. Nothing has changed. In 1965, just like in 2020, the police kill, and the class responds in defiance to the crooked social order they murder for. The struggle continues”.[6]

Of course, all the groups add the qualification that the movement “doesn’t go far enough”:

The Internationalist:

“But these revolts (which the mass media, the organs and expression of the bourgeoisie, insist  on downsizing as ‘protests against racism and inequality’, thus condemning any form that goes beyond the complaining and whining of the poor devils) must be a lesson and remind proletarians all over the world that the knot to be untied is that of power: rebelling or burning police stations is not sufficient and it is not enough to seize goods from the stores or money from the banks and the pawnshops”.

Il Partito:

 “The present antiracist movement makes a serious mistake when it separates itself from the class basis of racism, continuing political action solely along racial lines in hopes of appealing to the bourgeois State. It has stopped short of openly declaring the role of law enforcement and the military in the maintenance of the capitalist State and the political domination of the bourgeoisie. For people of color, and for the proletariat as a whole, the solution lies in the conquest of political power away from the State, not in appealing to it”.

ICT:

 “While we're encouraged to see sections of the class fighting back, the tendency for these riots is to die down after a week or so as order is restored and oppressive structures are rebuilt”.

To criticise a movement for not going far enough only makes sense if it is going in the right direction to begin with. In other words, it would apply to movements on a class terrain. In our view, this was not the case with the protests about the murder of George Floyd. 

What is the “terrain of the working class”?

There is no doubt that many of the participants in the protests, black, white and “other”, were and are workers. Equally no doubt that they were and are rightly outraged by the vicious racism of the cops. But neither are enough to confer a proletarian character on these protests.

This is true whether the protests took the form of riots or pacifist marches. The riot is not a method of proletarian struggle, which necessarily takes on an organised, collective character. A riot – and above all, the act of looting – is a disorganised response of a mass of separate individuals, an expression of pure rage and despair, but one which exposes not only the actual looters, but all those participating in street protests, to intensified repression from the far better organised forces of a militarised police force.

Many of the demonstrators saw the futility of the riots, which were often deliberately provoked by the savage assaults by the police, and which gave free rein to further provocations by shady elements in the crowds. But the alternative advocated by BLM and immediately taken up across the media and the existing political apparatus, above all the Democratic Party, was the organisation of peaceful marches raising vague demands for “justice” and “equality” or more specific ones like “defunding the police”. And these are all bourgeois political demands.

Of course, a genuine proletarian movement may contain all kinds of confused demands, but it is primarily motivated by the need to defend the material interests of the class and is therefore most often focused – in an initial period - around economic demands aimed at mitigating the impact of capitalist exploitation. As Rosa Luxemburg showed in her pamphlet on the mass strike, written after the epoch-making proletarian struggles in Russia in 1905, there can indeed be a constant interplay between economic and political demands, and the struggle against police repression may well be part of the latter. But there is a big difference between a movement of the working class demanding, for example, the withdrawal of police from a workplace or the release of imprisoned strikers, and a general outpouring of anger which has no connection to the resistance of workers as workers and which is immediately taken in hand by the ‘oppositional’ political forces of the ruling class.

Most important of all: the fact that these protests are first and foremost posed around the question of race means that they cannot serve as a means for the unification of the working class. Irrespective of the fact that the marches were from the beginning joined by many white people, many of them workers or students, the majority of them young, the protests are presented by BLM and the other organisers as a movement of black people which others can support if they wish. Whereas a working class struggle has an organic need to overcome all divisions, whether racial, sexual, or national, or it will be defeated. And again, we can point to examples where the working class has mobilsed against racist attacks using its own methods: in Russia in 1905, aware that pogroms against the Jews were being used by the existing regime to undermine the revolutionary movement as a whole, the soviets posted armed guards to defend Jewish neighbourhoods against the pogromists. And even during a period of defeat and imperialist war, this experience was not lost: in 1941, the dockers of occupied Holland came out on strike against the deportation of the Jews.

It is no accident that major factions of the ruling class have been so eager to identify themselves with the BLM protests. As the Covid-19 pandemic began to hit America, we saw an important number of working class reactions against the criminal irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie, its attempts to force whole sectors of the class to go to work without adequate safety measures and equipment. This was part of a global reaction in the working class[7]. And while it’s true that one of the reasons for the anger behind the protests sparked off by the murder of George Floyd was the disproportionate number of black victims of the virus, this is above all the result of the position of black and other minority groups in the poorest sections of the working class – in other words, of their class position in society. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic contains the possibility of highlighting the centrality of the class question, and the bourgeoisie has shown itself only too willing to push it into the background.

The role of revolutionaries

When they are faced with a developing movement of the working class, revolutionaries can indeed intervene with the perspective of calling for it to “go further” (through developing autonomous forms of self-organisation, extension to other sectors of the class, etc). But what if large numbers of people are being mobilised on an inter-classist or bourgeois terrain? In such cases, there is still a need to intervene, but then revolutionaries have to recognise that their intervention will be “against the stream”, mainly with the aim of influencing minorities who are questioning the basic aims and methods of the movement.

The Bordigist groups, perhaps surprisingly, didn’t talk much about the role of the party with regard to these events, although The Internationalist is right – in the abstract – when it writes that

“the revolution is a necessity that requires organization, a programme, clear ideas and the practice of collective work: in simple terms, the revolution needs a party to direct it”.

The problem remains: how does such a party emerge? How do we go from the present dispersed milieu of small communist groups to a real party, an international organ capable of providing political leadership to the class struggle?

This question goes unanswered by The Internationalist, which then reveals the depth of its misconception of the party’s role:

“The struggling proletariat, the rebellious proletariat, must organize with and in the communist party”.

Merely declaring that your group is The Party doesn’t make it so, not least when there are at least three other groups all claiming to be the true International Communist Party. Neither does it make sense to argue that the entire proletariat can organise “in the communist party”. Such formulations express a total lack of understanding about the distinction between the revolutionary political organisation – which necessarily only regroups a minority of the class – and class wide organisms such as the workers’ councils. Both are essential instruments of the proletarian revolution. Here we should say that Il Partito at least is more aware that taking the road to revolution requires the emergence of independent class-wide organisations, since it calls for workers’ assemblies, although it weakens its argument by calling for them “in every workplace and within every existing trade union” – as though genuine workers’ assemblies are not essentially antagonistic to the trade union form. But Il Partito doesn’t make what is perhaps a more crucial observation: that there was no tendency whatever for actual workers’ assemblies to develop as part of the BLM protests.

The ICT doesn’t agree with calling itself the party. It says that it is for the party but it is not the party[8]. But it has never made a really deep critique of the mistakes that lie at the root of Bordigist substitutionism – the error, made in 1943-45, of declaring the formation of the Internationalist Communist Party in a single country, Italy, and in the depths of the counter-revolution. Both the Bordigists and the ICT have their origins in the PCInt of 1943, and both theorise the error in their own way: the Bordigists with the metaphysical distinction between the “historic” and the “formal” party, the ICT with its idea of the “permanent need for the party”. These conceptions separate the tendency towards the emergence of the party from the real movement of the class and the effective balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Both involved abandoning the Italian communist left’s vital distinction between fraction and party, which aimed to show precisely that the party cannot exist at any moment, and thus to define the real role of the revolutionary organisation when the immediate formation of the party is not yet on the agenda.

The last part of the ICT leaflet clearly highlights this misconception.

The subheading of this section of the ICT’s leaflet sets the tone: “7. The urban rebellion needs to be transformed into world revolution”.

And it continues:

While we're encouraged to see sections of the class fighting back, the tendency for these riots is to die down after a week or so as order is restored and oppressive structures are rebuilt. In order for the power of the capitalists and their mercenaries to be truly challenged and abolished, what is needed is an international, revolutionary class party. Such a party would be a tool in the hands of the working class to organize itself and direct its pent up rage towards not only tearing down the racist state but building worker power and communism”.

This single paragraph contains a whole compendium of errors, from the sub-heading onwards: the present revolt can move on a straight line to world revolution, but for this to happen, you need the world party. This party will be the organising means and the instrument for turning base metal into gold, non-proletarian movements into proletarian revolutions. The passage reveals the extent to which the ICT sees the party as a kind of deus ex machina, a power that comes from who knows where, not only to enable the class to organise itself and destroy the capitalist state, but which has the even more supernatural ability to transform riots, or demonstrations which have fallen into the hands of the bourgeoisie, into giant steps towards the revolution.

This is not a new error. In the past we have criticised the illusion of the PCInt in 1943-45 that the partisan groups in Italy – entirely aligned to the imperialist war on the side of the Allies – could somehow be won over to the proletarian revolution by the participation of the PCInt in their ranks[9]. We saw it again in 1989 when Battaglia Comunista not only mistook the coup d’État by the security forces which ousted Ceausescu in Rumania for a “popular insurrection”, but also argued that it only needed the party to lead it in the direction of proletarian revolution[10].

The same problem with the Yellow Vests last year. Despite describing the movement as “interclassist” we are told that

“Another body is needed, this is an instrument that unifies the class ferment, enabling it to make a qualitative, that is a political, leap, to give it a strategy, and anti-capitalistic tactics, to direct the energies emanating from the class conflict towards an assault on the bourgeois system; there is no other way forward. In short, the active presence of the communist, international and internationalist party is necessary. Otherwise, the rage of the proletariat and the declassed petit bourgeoisie will be crushed and dispersed; either brutally, if needed, or with false promises”. [11]

Again, the party is invoked as the panacea, an ahistorical philosopher’s stone. What’s missing from this scenario is the development of the class movement as a whole, the need for the working class to recover its sense of itself as a class, and to overturn the existing balance of forces through massive struggles. Historical experience has shown that not only are such historical shifts necessary to enable the existing communist minorities to develop a real influence within the working class: they are also the only starting point for transforming the class character of social revolts and providing a perspective for the whole population oppressed by capital. A clear example of this was the massive entry of the workers of France into the struggles of May-June 1968: by launching a huge strike movement in response to police repression of student protests, the working class also changed the nature of the protests, integrating them into a general reawakening of the world proletariat.

Today, the possibility of such transformations seems remote, and in the absence of a widespread sense of class identity, the bourgeoise more or less has a free hand to recuperate the indignation provoked by the advanced decay of its system. But we have seen small but significant signs of a new mood in the working class, a new sense of itself as a class, and revolutionaries have the duty to cultivate these green shoots to the best of their ability. But this means standing up to the prevailing pressure to bow down in front of the bourgeoisie’s hypocritical calls for justice, equality and democracy inside the boundaries of capitalist society.

Amos, July 2020

 

Introduction

From different sides we are told that the protests against police brutality and racism in the US are an excellent opportunity to develop the struggle against the bourgeois state and its repressive apparatus. Such messages come above all from the leftist[1] and anarchist[2] organisations. But they are not the only ones. Even certain organisations of the communist left tend to see the existence of a working class potential in these protests, as we have already demonstrated in the article on our website “The groups of the communist left faced with the Black Lives Matters protests: a failure to identify the terrain of the working class” in relation to the position of Il Partito, The Internationalist (Il Programma) and the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT)[3].

And this tendency is not limited to the protests against police violence in the US. Whether it concerns the protests of the “Yellow Vests” in France, of the youth in Hong Kong or the reactions to police racism in the US, workers are being called on to pass directly from these protests to a real workers’ resistance. But these appeals do not recognise that the whole basis of these kinds of movements is in complete contradiction with the nature of the workers’ struggle and thus cannot be transformed into a genuine fight of the working class. None of these movements can ever function as a kind of “springboard” for the proletarian struggle.

Although the anti-racist protests are completely on a bourgeois terrain, similar positions have also been put forward in the discussions with regard to the “Yellow Vests” in France in 2019, which was not a bourgeois but a typical interclassist movement. The questions that arose in the public meetings of the ICC’s section in France, on the “Yellow Vest” movement, in the spring of 2019, are no less relevant to the BLM protests: the definition of the terrain of the working class and the necessity for its class autonomy. In these meetings the ICC clearly argued that not “everything that moves” in the street is necessarily “revolutionary” and that it is a dangerous illusion to think that these protests “could give rise to a clearly proletarian class dynamic”.

 -------------------------------------------

The ICC has just held six public meetings in France on the theme “Why proletarians must defend their class autonomy”. This intervention, in the context of the "Yellow Vests" movement, which has been going on for many weeks in France, was made necessary in order to answer many questions concerning this struggle, questions posed by the proletariat in general and by many elements in the process of politicization. We have, in fact, been able to hear in the media as well as in the political milieu, that this movement is an unprecedented demonstration of the class struggle, something comparable to the general strike of May 68. We reject this analysis and refer our readers to our articles published since the beginning of this movement.

In these public meetings, it was important to be able to respond directly to our sympathisers and to new elements who are interested in understanding this movement, and it was especially important to recall why the working class cannot allow itself to be drowned in an interclassist movement with the risk of being swallowed up by reactionary and anti-proletarian ideologies such as patriotic nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant racism. The working class is a class of immigrants and its watchword is: “The proletarians have no fatherland. Working men of all countries unite!”

It was therefore necessary to recall and debate why interclassism represents a danger and to better understand the need for autonomy of the working class to carry out its struggle. These questions are not simple and our positions are not "idealistic rants" as one participant reproached us for example at the public meeting in Lyon.

Are these notions of classes, interclassism, class autonomy, etc, secondary today, to be relativized and “adapted” to the immediate context in which the proletariat finds itself? Have they become downright obsolete? Can the proletarian struggle find new ways or shortcuts to renew its revolutionary perspective? Is any social convulsion beneficial to the working class struggle? Nothing could be further from the truth!

Interclassism is a major obstacle for the struggle of the proletariat, for its consciousness and the defence of its own interests as a revolutionary class, as the only social force capable of putting an end to capitalist chaos.

A very lively debate

Among those present at these public meetings, some were meeting the ICC for the first time, others represented the proletarian political milieu (militants of the Bordigist current were present at the public meeting in Marseille).

The discussions that took place in several large cities in France (Paris, Lille, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes) all confirmed the need to clarify and understand the current social situation and the perspectives of the proletarian struggle.

Unlike other public meetings in the past, where groups from the political milieu put forward their differences with the ICC as a priority, we found ourselves together with these comrades in defending a proletarian voice and a Marxist position in the face of interclassism (without erasing our differences). We want to salute this responsible attitude, this effort to defend the legacy of marxism and the communist left at a time when others are throwing this legacy in the dustbin and at the same time undermining the whole effort of clarification in the face of conservative and reactionary ideologies.

The still very limited presence of politicised elements at these public meetings also has a significance that we must recognise, regardless of the fact that there were demonstrations of “Yellow Vests” taking place at the same time. This reality remains linked above all to the great difficulties that the working class is currently experiencing (especially its loss of class identity), faced with the intense bourgeois propaganda generating mistrust of revolutionary ideas. All this strongly hinders reflection and leads even the most combative proletarians to underestimate all the dangers that interclassism represents for the workers' struggle today.

All the elements present at these public meetings expressed a need for political clarification and resistance to all the talk about the alleged “breath of fresh air” that the “Yellow Vests” movement supposedly brings to the working class and its consciousness. This so-called “hope”, consciously maintained by the dominant ideology, is once again a very dangerous illusion. We therefore wanted to pay tribute to the richness of the debates, this effort of political reflection and clarification, going against the ambient political climate which wants to make people believe that “everything that moves” in the street is necessarily “revolutionary”.

Nevertheless, the debates in these public meetings also expressed all the difficulties in understanding in depth the crucial issues posed by the “Yellow Vest” movement:

• What is an interclassist movement?
• What do the middle classes, the petit bourgeoisie represent?
• What is the class autonomy of the proletariat?
• What is the working class as the only revolutionary class in society?
• What does the loss of class identity mean for the proletariat? What are its weaknesses today and how can it regain this class identity?
• What is the weight of the decomposition of capitalism on society, on the proletariat and on the “Yellow Vests” movement?
• What is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations in passing on the lessons of the class struggles of the past and in defending the revolutionary perspective for the struggles to come?

We can't go through all these questions here. We will endeavour to give account of the debate on the first two.

Interclassism, an epiphenomenon that has to be relativised?

Although almost all participants expressed agreement with the interclassist dimension of the movement, the in-depth understanding of what interclassism represents and means still remained rather superficial.

In Lille, for example, sympathisers expressed the idea “that positive things came out of the movement that could contribute to the development of consciousness in the class”. One of them said that “the movement has made it clear that we are all the same”.

Actually, that's not true. In this movement we find small entrepreneurs, craftsmen, liberal professions and farmers, as well as impoverished workers who have lost their way out of despair in this general movement of anger against the attacks of the Macron government. The reality is that everyone’s interests are not the same. In the middle classes, with the petty bourgeoisie in the lead, competition reigns supreme and each small boss is anxious to preserve his own interests. The working class, possessing nothing but its labour power, has no individual interest to defend, separated from others and from the general interest of the class.

A working class movement or a protest by a sum of individual citizens?

Another difficulty that was expressed in the debates: was the working class as such present in the “Yellow Vest” movement? At the public meeting in Lille, an important moment of the discussion was devoted to clarifying the nature of the movement, the difference between the presence of workers in the “Yellow Vests” revolt and a real proletarian movement. This question is fundamental. This is an aspect on which the participants in our meetings often have focused, without seeing the danger of putting the two things on the same level.

Despite their proletarian demands against the decline of their purchasing power, the workers present in these protests did not mobilise on their class terrain, that of the proletariat, but as individuals and French citizens. In the discussions, in the street, the word “people” was in everyone's mouth: “people who are being flouted”, “people who are being ignored”, “working people”, and it is, indeed, the anger of the “French people” (and not of the exploited class) that is being expressed in this movement. Hence La Marseillaise was regularly sung in demonstrations, and the tricolour national flag waving on roundabouts became the banner of this interclassist movement. All these expressions of nationalism have NEVER been questioned.

This nationalist concept of “the French people” can only lead to the dilution of the proletariat in all other social strata and classes. Calling for a citizens’ referendum (the famous Citizens’ Initiative Referendum), a tax cut, the demand for a “fairer” State, etc. - all this can only lead, in certain historical circumstances, to national union, to the sacred union of the exploited with their own exploiters.

The class nature of a social movement is not determined by its SOCIOLOGICAL composition, but by its POLITICAL orientation and methods of struggle.

We must say loud and clear that the notion of “the French people” does not belong to the vocabulary of marxism and the workers’ movement, and this has been the case since the days of June 1848. The tricolour flag of the 1789 Revolution was later that of the troops of Versailles, the butchers of the Paris Commune, while the Communards had replaced this flag with the Red Flag, which had become the symbol of the workers’ movement and internationalism. The reference of the “Yellow Vests” is to the French Revolution of 1789 where the popular revolt of the “sans-culottes” against famine allowed the bourgeoisie, asphyxiated by tax levies, to take political power and get rid of the nobility who had the privilege of not paying taxes.

On this point, some sympathizers of the ICC have relativised this aspect and considered that “the references to 1789, the songs of the Marseillaise are not conscious, but result from a lack of knowledge of what it means”, which is true. But is it a secondary question, a mere detail of no importance? Contrary to the revolution of 1789, during the insurrectional days of June 1848, the proletariat was obliged to detach itself from the other social strata in order to assert itself as an independent class, and as the only revolutionary force in society. The Communist Manifesto then became the revolutionary programme of the class that was the bearer of communism, even though in 1848, as Marx later recognised, the conditions for the communist revolution were not yet ripe. Many participants in these public meetings seemed to be unaware of this fundamental episode in the history of the workers' movement, which provided a historical and theoretical framework for the debates.

Is the autonomy of the proletariat a luxury?

The class autonomy of the proletariat means its independence from the other classes of society, its ability to give a political orientation to all the other non-exploiting strata. This class independence of the proletariat constitutes an INDISPENSIBLE CONDITION for its revolutionary action aiming, in the long run, at the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a classless society and thus without exploitation of man by man. The objectives of the struggle of the proletariat have nothing to do with the objectives of the nationalist and “citizen” movement of the “Yellow Vests”: to improve bourgeois democracy, reform the capitalist system for a better distribution of the French nation’s wealth, and greater “fiscal justice”. This is the reason for the reference of the “Yellow Vests” to the Revolution of 1789, and their nostalgia for this revolution of the “French people” with its list of grievances, drawn up at the time by the priests of the Catholic parishes, is totally reactionary.

All these doubts and questionings about the necessary autonomy of the working class in relation to other social strata without any historic future (especially the petty bourgeoisie) correspond, in reality, to a difficulty in understanding what the working class as a revolutionary class is. These difficulties are not new and have been the basis of discussions for many years with a whole milieu of elements who are being politicized and raising questions about the revolutionary perspective and about who or what class can change the world. These difficulties are further reinforced by the fact that the working class has suffered a setback in the consciousness of its own identity, momentarily forgetting its past experience of glorious struggles against capitalism.

Despite the agreement of our sympathisers concerning the danger of interclassism, most of them expressed the idea that this movement could represent a spark, a kind of springboard for future proletarian movements. Some comrades considered it “normal that today’s proletarians are not conscious, as consciousness develops in the struggle, and it is therefore up to the revolutionaries to show them that the movement does not respond to the needs of the class and that something else must be done”. This analysis reveals deep illusions about the potentialities of the “Yellow Vest” movement and the possibility that it could give rise to a clearly proletarian class dynamic. Such an illusion obscures the dangers contained in this interclassist movement, notably the contamination of the proletariat by ideologies and methods of struggle that are totally foreign to it. The idea that this movement would be a kind of supreme guide for the working class, or a “springboard” for its struggles, also reveals a lack of confidence in the potentialities of the proletariat as a historically revolutionary class.

Only the marxist method makes it possible to identify the social forces in movement, their profound nature, beyond mere sociological appearances. As for the role of revolutionaries in this movement itself, it is extremely limited. Revolutionaries have to swim against this interclassist and nationalist tidal wave. For the vast majority of “Yellow Vests”, revolutionaries appear at best as beings from another planet, at worst as saboteurs of their movement (or “indifferentists”).

In Marseilles, due to the presence at our public meeting of comrades of the Bordigist current (who publish Le Fil Rouge), the debate allowed us to deepen the question of the danger of interclassism, recalling that in 1789, the French revolution against the monarchy was a popular interclassist movement that allowed the bourgeoisie to take power. A comrade of Le Fil Rouge brought many very profound arguments to support our analysis of the nature of the “Yellow Vests” movement. This comrade recalled, among other things, that one of the demands of the small traders in yellow vests, was the boycott of supermarkets and the call to do shopping in small local shops. If workers prefer to go to the supermarket, it is simply because the basic necessities of life are much cheaper there than in small neighbourhood shops. It is therefore obvious that the interests of poor workers in yellow vests are not the same as those of small shopkeepers, asphyxiated by the competitiveness of supermarkets!

The interests of the proletariat can only be diluted in the midst of the demands of the petty bourgeoisie and the small bosses. We must remember that the class struggle is not a “popular” struggle between the “rich” and the “poor”, but a class struggle between an exploiting class and an exploited class.

Due to lack of time the debates could not really develop on the question of violence. Again, it will be important to come back to this and understand why the bourgeoisie has used such a degree of repression (in the face of a movement that cannot put its class domination in danger) and why the confrontations of the “Yellow Vests” with the forces of law and order, although quite spectacular, cannot represent an end in itself, a means to strengthen the struggle itself and to “make the government bend”, let alone to push Macron to resign!

In conclusion, many fundamental questions remain to be discussed. In order to approach them, to clarify them, and to understand the stakes of the current social situation, the political framework of marxism, based on the history of the workers’ movement, remains absolutely fundamental.

Stopio, 29.3.20

The discussion texts we are publishing here are the product of an internal debate within the ICC regarding the significance and direction of the historical phase in the life of decadent capitalism which was definitively opened up by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989: the phase of decomposition, the terminal phase of capitalist decadence.  

***

Divergences with the International Situation Resolution at the 23rd ICC Congress

At the 23rd ICC Congress, I presented a number of amendments to the resolution on the international situation. This contribution will focus on those of my amendments, rejected by the Congress, revolving around the two central divergences I have with the position of the Congress: on imperialist tensions, and on the global balance of class forces between proletariat and bourgeoisie. There is a red thread linking these disagreements, and it revolves around the question of decomposition. Although the whole organisation shares the same analysis of decomposition as the terminal phase of decadent capitalism, when it comes to applying this framework to the present situation, differences of interpretation come to light. What we all agree on is that this terminal phase was not only inaugurated by, but has its deepest roots in the inability of each of the two main classes of capitalist society to implement their opposing solutions to the crisis of decadent capitalism: generalised war (the bourgeoisie) or world revolution (the proletariat). But, from the point of view of the present position of the organisation, there would appear to be a second essential cause and characteristic of this terminal phase, which is the tendency of each against all: between states, within the ruling class, within bourgeois society at large. On this basis, concerning imperialism, the ICC presently tends to underestimate the tendency towards bi-polarity (and thus towards the eventual reconstitution of imperialist blocs), and with this the growing danger of military confrontations between the big powers themselves. On this same basis, the ICC today, concerning the balance of class forces, tends to underestimate the seriousness of the present loss of revolutionary perspective by the proletariat, leading us to think that it can regain its class identity and begin to reconquer a revolutionary perspective, essentially through defensive workers’ struggles.

For my part, while agreeing that the bourgeois each against all is a very important characteristic of decomposition (playing an enormous role in the inauguration of this terminal phase with the disintegration of the post-World War II imperialist world order), I do not agree that it is one of its main root causes. On the contrary, I remain convinced that the stalemate between the two main classes on account of their inability to impose their own class perspective is the essential cause – and not each against all. For me, the ICC is moving away from our original position on decomposition by giving “each against all” a similar causal importance as the absence of perspective. As I understand it, the organisation is moving towards the position that, with decomposition, there is a new factor which did not yet exist in previous phases of decadent capitalism. This factor is the predominance of each against all, of the centrifugal forces, whereas, prior to decomposition, the tendency towards bloc discipline, the centripetal forces, tended to get the upper hand. For me, as opposed to this, there is no major tendency in the phase of decomposition which did not already exist beforehand in the period of decadence. The new quality of the phase of decomposition consists in the fact that all of the already existing contradictions are exacerbated to the hilt. This goes for the tendency of each against all, which also becomes exacerbated to the hilt under decomposition. But the tendency towards wars between leading powers is also exacerbated, as are all the tensions around the move towards new blocs, the attempts by the United States to put down new challengers, etc.

1. The divergences on imperialism

This is why I submitted the following amendment to point 15 of the resolution, recalling the continuing existence of imperialist bi-polarity (the development of a main rivalry between two leading powers), and the dangers this poses for the future of humanity:

“During the period of military blocs after 1945, there were two kinds of war mainly on the agenda:

- an eventual World War III, which would probably have led to the annihilation of humankind

-proxy local wars more or less well controlled by the two bloc leaders.

At present, although World War III is not on the agenda, this does not mean that the tendency towards bipolarity of imperialist antagonisms has disappeared. The rise and expansion of China, which might eventually be able to challenge the United States, is at present the main expression of this (for the moment still clearly secondary) tendency towards the formation of new blocs.

As for the phenomenon of local wars, they have of course continued unabated in the absence of blocs, but have a much stronger tendency to get out of control, given the number of regional and of great powers involved, and the degree and extent of the destruction and chaos they cause. In this context, the danger is greater than before of the use of atomic bombs and other weapons of mass destruction, and of direct military clashes even between the great powers themselves.”

The rejection of this amendment by the Congress speaks for itself. We are turning our back on what is probably the most important single danger of war between the big powers in the coming years: that the United States will use its still existing military superiority against China in an attempt to halt the rise of the latter. In other words, the danger at present is indeed not that of a world war between two imperialist blocs, but of military adventures aimed at either mounting or preventing a challenge to the existing imperialist status quo, and which would be prone to becoming an uncontrollable global conflagration very different from the two world wars of the 20th century. Today’s Sino-American rivalry resembles that at the time of World War I between the rising challenger Germany and the existing world power Britain. The latter conflict led to the decline of both. But this was taking place on a European scale, whereas today, it is happening on a world scale, so that there is no longer any third party (like America in the two World Wars) waiting to step in from outside to reap the benefits. Today, the “no future” will most probably be for everyone. Far from being excluded by our theory of decomposition, the contemporary conflicts between the big powers striking confirm it.

In a reply on our website to a critique of this part of the 23rd Congress resolution by an ICC sympathiser (Mark Hayes), after affirming that “Militarism and imperialist war are still fundamental characteristics of this final phase of decadence,” we add “even if the imperialist blocs have disappeared and are probably not going to form again.”  In the same reply, we argue: “The perspective is towards local and regional wars, their spread towards the very centres of capitalism through the proliferation of terrorism, along with growing ecological disaster, and the general putrefaction.” Regional wars, the proliferation of terrorism, ecological disasters: yes! But why do we so carefully exclude from this perspective the danger of military clashes between the great powers? And why do we affirm that imperialist blocs are probably not going to form again? In fact, what we tend to forget is that “each against all” is but one pole of a contradiction, the other pole of which is the tendency towards bipolarity and imperialist blocs.

The tendency towards each against all, and the tendency towards bipolarity, both exist permanently and simultaneously in decadent capitalism. The general tendency is for the one to get the upper hand over the other, so that one is primordial and the other secondary. But neither of them ever disappear. Even at the high point of the cold war (when the world was divided into two blocs remaining stable over decades) the tendency towards each against all never fully disappeared (there were military confrontations between members of the same bloc on both sides). Even at the high point of each against all, and the overwhelming superiority of the United States (after 1989) the tendency towards blocs never fully disappeared (the Balkan and eastern European policy of Germany after its unification). Moreover, the domination of the one tendency can quickly pass over to the other, since they are not mutually exclusive. The imperialist each against all of the 1920s, for instance (mitigated only by the fear of the proletarian revolution) transformed itself into the bloc constellation of World War II. The bipolarity of the post-war era quickly transformed itself into an unprecedented each against all in 1989. All of this is not new. It is the position the ICC has always defended.

The main obstacle to the tendency towards imperialist bipolarity in decadent capitalism is not each against all, but the absence of a candidate strong enough to mount a global challenge to the leading power. This was the case after 1989. The reinforcement of the bipolar tendency in recent years is therefore above all the result of the rise of China.

At this level, we have a problem of assimilation of our own position. If we think that each against all is a major cause of decomposition, the very idea that the opposite pole, that of bi-polarity, is presently regaining strength, and might someday even gain the upper hand, necessarily appears to be a putting in question of our position on decomposition. It is true that, around 1989, it was the falling apart of the eastern bloc (making its western counterpart redundant), which inaugurated the phase of decomposition, triggering off the biggest explosion of “each against all” in modern history. But this each against all was the result, not the cause, of deeper lying developments: the stalemate between the classes. At the heart of these developments there was the loss of perspective, the all prevailing “no future” which characterises this terminal phase. More recently, the contemporary wave of political populism is another manifestation of this fundamental lack of perspective on the part of the whole ruling class. This is why I proposed the following amendment to point 4 of the resolution:

“Contemporary populism is another clear sign of a society heading towards war:

- the rise of populism itself is not least a product of the growing aggressivity and destruction impulses generated by present day bourgeois society

- since, however, this ‘spontaneous’ aggressiveness is not in itself sufficient to mobilise society for war, todays populist movements are needed to this end by the ruling class.

In other words, they are at once a symptom and an active factor of the drive towards war”.

This amendment was also rejected by the congress. In the words of the amendment commission:

“We do not disagree with the fact that populism is part of a growing climate of violence in society, but we think there is a difference of conception about the march towards war which does not correspond to the general approach of the resolution.” This is very true. The intention of the amendment was to modify, indeed correct the resolution on this point. (The amendment commission, by the way, gave the same argument for its rejection of the amendment to point 15, see above). It wanted not only to ring the alarm bells in relation to the growing danger of war, but also to show that the particular irrationality of populism is only one part of the irrationality of the bourgeois class as a whole. This irrationality is already a major feature of decadent capitalism, long before decomposition: the tendency for growing parts of the ruling class to act in a manner damaging to its own interests. Thus, all the main European powers emerged weakened from the First World War, and the challenge to the whole rest of the world by Germany and Japan in the Second World War already had something of a suicidal running amok. But this tendency was not yet an all-prevailing one. In particular, the United States profited both economically and militarily from its participation in both world wars. And it could even be argued that, for the western bloc, the Cold War turned out to have a certain rationality, since its policy of military containment and economic strangulation contributed to the collapse of its eastern counterpart without a world war. As opposed to this, in the phase of decomposition, it is the world’s leading power itself, the United States, which is in the vanguard of creating chaos, of running amok, and it is difficult to see how anyone could benefit from wars between the US and China. Irrationality and “no future” are the two sides of the same coin, a major tendency of decadent capitalism.  In this context, when some of the populist currents in continental western Europe now advocate preferentially doing business in future with Russia or China, and are ready to break with their preferred “Anglo-Saxon” enemies (the United States and Britain), this is clearly an expression of “no future”. But, in opposing them, the rationality of the likes of Angela Merkel consists in the recognition that, if the polarisation between America and China continues to accentuate like at present, that Germany would have no choice but to take the side of the US, knowing that it would, under no circumstances, allow Europe to fall under “Asian” domination.

2. The divergences on the balance of class forces

Moving on to the part of the resolution on the class struggle, fundamentally the same divergence about the application of the concept of decomposition becomes apparent. A key part of the resolution is point 5, since it deals with the problems of the class struggle in the 1980s – the decade at the end of which the phase of decomposition begins. Summarising the lessons of this decade, it concludes as follows:

“But worse still, with this strategy of divide the workers and encouraging ‘each for themselves’, the bourgeoisie and its trade unions were able to present defeats of the working class as victories.

Revolutionaries must not underestimate the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie in the evolution of the balance of class forces. This Machiavellianism can only continue with the aggravation of attacks on the exploited class. The stagnation of the class struggle, then its retreat at the end of the 80s, resulted from the capacity of the ruling class to turn certain manifestations of the decomposition of bourgeoisie society, especially the tendency towards ‘each for themselves’, against the working class.”

 Point 5 is right to underline the importance of the negative impact of “each for themselves” on the workers’ struggles at the time. It is also right to underline the Machiavellianism of the ruling class in promoting this mentality. What is striking, however, is that the problem of lack of perspective is absent from this analysis of the difficulties of the class struggle. Which is all the more remarkable since the 1980s have gone down in history as the “no future” decade. It is the same approach we have already encountered concerning imperialism. Events are analysed above all from the point of view of each against all, to the detriment of the problem of lack of perspective. In order to correct this, I proposed the following amendment, to be added at the end of the point:

 “However, these confrontations with the trade unions in no way reversed, or even brought to a halt, the regression at the level of the revolutionary perspective. This was even more the case in the 1980s than in the 1970s. The two most important and massive workers’ struggles of the decade (Poland 1980, the British miners) resulted in an enhanced prestige of the trade unions involved”.

The congress rejected this amendment. The argument given for this by the Amendments Commission (AC) was:

“The regression in the revolutionary perspective began with the fall of the Stalinist regimes in 1989. Poland 1980 did not have the same characteristics as the sectional struggle of the miners in Britain in 1984-5. In Poland, there was a dynamic of the mass strike, with the geographic extension of the movement and self-organisation in sovereign general assemblies (MKS) in a Stalinist country, before the foundation of the Solidarnosc union. Poland 1980 was the last movement of the second wave of struggles. Because of the loss of acquisitions, we need to reread our analyses of the third wave of struggles”.

This at least has the merit of being clear: before 1989, there was no regression in the revolutionary perspective. But how does it correlate with our analysis of decomposition? According to this analysis, it was the inability of the two main classes to advance their own solutions which caused and led to the phase of decomposition. If the latter begins in 1989, what caused it must already have existed beforehand: the absence of perspective – whether from the bourgeoisie or from the proletariat. The Amendments Commission, but also point 5 of the resolution itself, cite Poland as proof that there was no regression in the perspective before 89. But, if anything, Poland proves the opposite. The first wave of struggles of a new and undefeated generation of the proletariat, beginning 1968 in France and 1969 in Italy, produced a new generation of revolutionary minorities. The ICC itself is a product of this process. As opposed to this, the wave of struggles of the late 1970s, culminating in the mass strike 1980 in Poland, produced nothing of the kind. And what followed, in the 1980s, was a crisis affecting the whole of the existing proletarian political milieu. None of the big workers’ struggles of the 1980s produced either a political élan in the class as a whole, or a revolutionary élan among its revolutionary minorities anything like that of the previous decade. Ignoring this, the resolution presents things as if each for themselves was the main weakness, carefully separated from the question of the perspective. This approach of the Congress is also underlined in the rejection of another amendment formulation I made, and which said that “Already before the world historic events of 1989, the class struggle was ‘treading on the spot’ at the level of combativeness and regressing in relation to the revolutionary perspective”. The argument of the Amendments Commission. “This amendment introduces the idea that there was a continuity between the difficulties of the class struggle in the 1980s (treading on the spot) and the rupture provoked by the collapse of the eastern bloc.” So, there is no “continuity’? One can of course argue as such. But has this anything to do with our analysis of the stalemate between the classes being the cause of decomposition? 1989 was indeed a rupture, but one with a prehistory of class struggle, as well as of imperialist struggle. Although this idea of “each for oneself” as being central to decomposition, something like on a par with the absence of perspective, is not (or not yet?) the official position of the organisation, I would argue that it is at least implicit in the argumentation of this resolution.

 In point 6 of the resolution, the events around 1989, and their connection with the class struggle, are dealt with like this:

“As the third wave of struggles began to wear out in the late 1980s, a major event in the international situation, the spectacular collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Stalinist regimes in 1989, dealt a brutal blow to the dynamics of class struggle, thus changing the balance of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the benefit of the latter in a major way. This event loudly announced the entry of capitalism into the final phase of its decadence: that of decomposition. When Stalinism collapsed, it did one last service to the bourgeoisie. It allowed the ruling class to put an end to the dynamic of class struggle which, with advances and setbacks, had developed over two decades.

Indeed, insofar as it was not the struggle of the proletariat but the rotting of capitalist society on its feet that put an end to Stalinism, the bourgeoisie was able to exploit this event to unleash a gigantic ideological campaign aimed at perpetuating the greatest lie in history: the identification of communism with Stalinism. In doing so, the ruling class dealt an extremely violent blow to the consciousness of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie's deafening campaigns on the so-called ‘bankruptcy of communism’ have led to a regression of the proletariat in its march towards its historical perspective of overthrowing capitalism. They were a major blow against its class identity”.

Here, the dramatic events of 1989 appear to have nothing to do with the global balance of class forces. This assumption, however, stands in contradiction, not only with our theory of decomposition, but also with our theory of the historic course. According to the ICC, it was the eastern bloc, after 1968, which, because it was falling more and more behind on most other levels, needed to seek a military resolution of the Cold War. Attacking in Europe with “conventional” means of warfare (where the balance of forces was not so unfavourable to it), the Warsaw Pact would have to pin its hopes on its western foe (out of fear of MAD - “Mutually Assured Destruction”) not daring to retaliate at the nuclear level. But, during the 1979s and 80s, the eastern bloc was unable to play this card, and one of the main reasons was that it could not rely on the compliance of its “own” working class. This however would be essential for warfare on such a scale. At this level, the mass strike 1980 in Poland was a massive vindication of our analysis. Soviet troops, mobilised at the time near the border in preparation of an invasion of Poland, mutinied, the soldiers refusing to march against their class sisters and brothers in Poland. But Poland 1980 demonstrated not only that the proletariat was an obstacle to world war, but also that it was unable to go beyond this blocking of its opponent in order to advance its own revolutionary alternative. The working class in the west would have had to jump into the breach. But in the 1980s it was unable to do so. The stage was thus set for the stalemate ushering in the phase of decomposition at the end of the decade. The resolution is perfectly right that the collapse of Stalinism 1989, and the maximum use made of this by bourgeois propaganda, was the main blow against the combativeness, the class identity, the class consciousness of the proletariat. What I contest is the affirmation that this was not prepared before by the stalemate between the classes, and in particular by the weakening of the presence of the perspective on the side of the proletariat. Apparently without realising it, the resolution itself admits the existence of this link between 1989 and beforehand when it writes (point 6) that the bourgeoisie was able to exploit this event “insofar as it was not the struggle of the proletariat but the rotting of capitalist society on its feet that put an end to Stalinism.”

The workers’ struggles of the late 1960s ended the counter-revolution, not only because they were massive, spontaneous and often self-organised, but also because they broke out of the ideological stranglehold of the Cold War according to which one had either to be on the side of “communism” (the eastern bloc) or of “democracy” (the western bloc). With the workers’ combat of the 60s appeared the idea of a struggle against the ruling class both east and west, of marxism against Stalinism, of a revolution by means of workers’ councils leading to real communism. This first politicisation (as the resolution points out) was successfully countered by the ruling class during the 1970s. In the face of the ensuing de-politicisation, the hope in the 1980s was that the economic struggles, in particular the confrontation with the trade unions, could become the crucible of a re-politicisation, perhaps even at a higher level. But although there were indeed massive struggles during the 80s, although there were indeed confrontations with the unions, and even with radical base unionism, mainly in the west, but also, for example, in Poland against the new “free” trade union, they failed to produce the hoped-for politicisation. This failure is already recognised by our theory of decomposition, since it defines the new phase as one without perspective, and this absence of perspective as the cause of the stalemate. Proletarian politicisation is always political in relation to a goal beyond capitalism. Because of the centrality of the idea of a kind of stalemate between the two main classes for our theory of decomposition, the differences of evaluation of the struggles of the 1980s are of particular relevance for the estimation of the class struggle up to this day. According to the resolution, the proletarian combat, despite all the problems it came up against, was basically developing positively until, in 1989, it was stopped in its tracks by a world historic event which was fundamentally exterior to it. Since the effects of even the most overpowering of such events are bound to wear off with time, we should be quite confident in the ability of the class to resume its interrupted journey along the same path. This path is that of its political radicalisation through its economic struggles. Moreover, this process will be accelerated by the deepening of the economic crisis, which at once obliges the workers to struggle and makes them lose their illusions, opening their eyes to the reality of capitalism. It is thus that the resolution advocates the model of the 1980s as the way forward. Referring to the mass strike of 1980, it says:

“This gigantic struggle of the working class in Poland revealed that it is in the massive struggle against economic attacks that the proletariat can become conscious of its own strength, affirm its class identity which is antagonistic to capital, and develop its self-confidence”.

The resolution is perhaps thinking of these economic struggles when it concludes point 13 with a quotation from our Theses on Decomposition:

 "Today, the historical perspective remains completely open. Despite the blow that the Eastern bloc’s collapse has dealt to proletarian consciousness, the class has not suffered any major defeats on the terrain of its struggle (...) Moreover, and this is the element which in the final analysis will determine the outcome of the world situation, the inexorable aggravation of the capitalist crisis constitutes the essential stimulant for the class struggle and development of consciousness, the precondition for its ability to resist the poison distilled by the social rot. For while there is no basis for the unification of the class in the partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, nonetheless its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis constitutes the basis for the development of its class strength and unity".

Perfectly true. But the proletarian struggle against the effects of the capitalist crisis has not only an economic, but also a political and a theoretical dimension. The economic dimension is indispensable: a class unable to defend its immediate interests would never be able to make a revolution. But the two other dimensions are no less indispensable. This is all the more the case today, when the central problem is the lack of perspective. Already in the 1980s, the main weakness of the class was not at the level of its economic struggles, but at the political and theoretical levels. Without a qualitative development at these two levels, the defensive economic struggles will have growing difficulties in remaining on a proletarian terrain of class solidarity. This is all the more the case today since we have reached a stage where the de-politicisation which was such a major characteristic already in the 1980s is being replaced by different versions of putrid politicisation such as populism and anti-populism, anti-globalisation, identitarian causes and inter-classist revolts. It was on the basis of the advance of all of these putrid politicisations in recent years that I put forward at the congress the following analysis of the present balance of class forces:

“However, these first proletarian reactions did not succeed in reversing the world wide reflux of combativeness, class identity and of consciousness in the class since 1989. On the contrary, what we are presently experiencing is not only the prolongation, but even the deepening of this reflux. At the level of class identity, the modification of the discourse of the ruling class is the clearest indication of this regression. After years of propaganda about its alleged disappearance in the old capitalist heartlands, today it is the populist right which has ‘rediscovered’ and ‘rehabilitated’ the working class as the ‘true heart of the nation’ (Trump)”.

And

“At the level of the revolutionary perspective, the way in which even the classical institutional representatives of the ruling order (such as the International Monetary Fund) make capitalism responsible for climate change, environmental destruction or the growing income gulf between rich and poor, shows the degree to which the bourgeoisie, as a ruling class, is, for the moment, sitting securely and confidently in its saddle. As long as capitalism is considered as part of (the contemporary form, so to speak) ‘human nature’, this anti-capitalist discourse, far from being an indication of a maturation, is a sign of a further retreat of consciousness within the class”.

The Congress rejected this analysis of the deepening of the retreat since 1989. Nor did it share my concern of recalling that the defensive struggles, in themselves, are anything but a guarantee that the proletarian cause is on the right track:

“However, the degree to which the economic crisis can be the ally of the proletarian revolution, and the stimulus of class identity, depends on a series of factors, the most important of which is the political context. During the 1930s, even the most militant, radical and massive defensive struggles (factory occupations in Poland, unemployed protests in the Netherlands, general strikes in Belgium and France, wildcat strikes in Britain (even during the war) and the United States, and even a movement taking an insurrectional form  (Spain) were unable to reverse the regression of consciousness within the class. In the present phase, partial defeats of the class, including at the level of its class consciousness, are anything but excluded. They would, in turn, hamper the rôle of the crisis as the ally of the struggle of the class.

But unlike the 1920/30s, such defeats would not lead to counter-revolution, since they have not been preceded by any revolution. The proletariat would still be able to recover from such defeats, which would be much less likely to have a definitive character”. (Rejected amendment, end of point 13)

This question of whether or not there is a further weakening of the proletariat at the level of the present balance of class forces was one of the two major divergences at the Congress concerning the class struggle. The other one concerned the subterranean maturation which the resolution claims is presently taking place within the class. This refers to an as yet not visible, underground maturation of consciousness, the famous “Old Mole” referred to by Marx. The divergence at the Congress was not about the general validity of this concept of Marx – which we all share. Nor was it about whether or not such a process can take place even when the workers’ struggles are in retreat – we all affirm that it can. The question under debate was whether or not such a process is taking place right now. The problem here is that the resolution is unable to give any empirical evidence in support of this claim. Either its postulate is a product of wishful thinking, or else of a purely deductive logic, according to which, what ought to be taking place – according to our analysis – can be assumed to be taking place. The evidence given is threadbare: the continuing existence of revolutionary organisations, the existence of contacts of these organisations. Although the Old Mole burrows underground, it leaves traces of its industriousness on the surface. Criticising the inadequacy of the indications given in the resolution, I put forward:

“In this sense, the qualitative development of class consciousness by revolutionary minorities does not, in itself, give us an indication of what is happening momentarily at the level of subterranean maturation within the class as a whole – since this can take place both during a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary phase, both during phases of development and of reflux of the class as a whole .By the same token the emergence of small minorities and of young elements in search of a class perspective and Left Communist positions is also possible even during the darkest hours of the counter-revolution, since they are first and foremost the expression of the revolutionary nature of the proletariat (which never disappears as long as the working class still exists).It would be different if a whole new generation of revolutionary militants begins to appear. But it is still too early to make any judgement about this possibility now”. (Rejected amendment).

And I proposed the following criteria:

“It is, by definition, not easy to detect a subterranean maturation outside of periods of open struggle: difficult, but not impossible. There are two indicators of the underground activities of the old mole which we should particularly watch out for

a) the politicisation of broader sectors of the searching elements of the class such as we witnessed in the 1960/70s

b) the development of a culture of theory and a culture of debate (such as began to nascently express themselves from the anti-CPE to the Indignados) as fundamental manifestations of the proletariat as the class of consciousness and of association. On the basis of these two criteria, there is a high degree of probability that we are presently passing through a phase of ‘subterranean regression’ (where the Old Mole has taken a temporary break), characterised by a renewed strengthening of suspicion of political organisations, by the enhanced attraction of petty bourgeois politics, and by a weakening of theoretical endeavour and of culture of debate”.

Without its goal beyond capitalism, the workers’ movement cannot effectively defend its class interests. Nor can the economic struggles in themselves – indispensable as they are – suffice to regain revolutionary class consciousness (including its dimension of class identity). In fact, in the quarter of a century which followed 1989, the most important single factor of the proletarian class struggle was not that of the economic defence struggles, but the theoretical and analytical work of revolutionary minorities, above all in developing a deep understanding of the existing historical situation, and a profound and convincing rehabilitation of the reputation of communism. This may seem a strange evaluation, given that the revolutionary minorities are a mere handful of militants, compared to the several billion who comprise the world proletariat as a whole. However, in the course of history, tiny minorities have regularly developed, without any mass participation, ideas capable of revolutionising the world, capable of eventually “conquering the masses”. One of the main weaknesses of the proletariat in the two decades after 1989 was in fact the failure of its minorities to accomplish this work. The historic groups of the Communist Left have a particular responsibility for this failure. The result was that, when a new generation of politicised proletarians began to appear (such as the Indignados in Spain or the different “Occupy” movements in the wake of the “finance” and the “Euro” crises after 2008), the existing proletarian political milieu was unable to arm them sufficiently with the political, theoretical weapons they would have needed in order to be oriented and to feel inspired to face the task of inaugurating the beginning of the end of the proletarian reflux.

 Steinklopfer, 24/05/2020

Reply to comrade Steinkopfler on the International Situation Resolutions of the 23rd ICC Congress

The discussion texts we are publishing here are the product of an internal debate within the ICC regarding the significance and direction of the historical phase in the life of decadent capitalism which was definitively opened up by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989: the phase of decomposition, the terminal phase of capitalist decadence.  One of the key ideas in the orientation text we published in 1991, the Theses on Decomposition[1], is that history never stands still: just as the period of capitalist decadence has its own history, so too does the phase of decomposition, and it is essential for revolutionaries to analyse the most important changes or developments that take place within it. This is the motivation behind comrade Steinklopfer’s text, whose starting point is the recognition – at the present time unique to the ICC – that we  are indeed living through the phase of decomposition, and that its roots lie in a social stalemate between the two major classes in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, neither of whom, in the face of a now permanent economic crisis, have been able to impose their perspective on society: for the bourgeoisie, world imperialist war, for the proletariat, world communist revolution. But in the course of the debate on decomposition, which encompasses the evolution of imperialist rivalries and the balance of forces between the classes, divergences have appeared which we think have matured to the point where they can be published externally. In our view, comrade Steinklopfer's current position tends to weaken our understanding of the meaning of decomposition, but this is something which we will have to demonstrate through an open confrontation of ideas.

The comrade’s contribution begins by arguing that – implicitly at least, as he puts it later on – the ICC is revising its position on the causes of decomposition; that along with the social stalemate, a root cause of decomposition is also the growing tendency of every man for himself:  “from the point of view of the present position of the organisation, there would appear to be a second essential cause and characteristic of this terminal phase, which is the tendency of each against all: between states, within the ruling class, within bourgeois society at large”.

The consequence of adding this second cause is then summarised: “On this basis, concerning imperialism, the ICC presently tends to underestimate the tendency towards bi-polarity (and thus towards the eventual reconstitution of imperialist blocs), and with this the growing danger of military confrontations between the big powers themselves. On this same basis, the ICC today, concerning the balance of class forces, tends to underestimate the seriousness of the present loss of revolutionary perspective by the proletariat, leading us to think that it can regain its class identity and begin to reconquer a revolutionary perspective essentially through defensive workers’ struggles”.

Comrade Steinklopfer also seems to think that he is alone in considering that “there is no major tendency in the phase of decomposition which did not already exist beforehand in the period of decadence. The new quality of the phase of decomposition consists in the fact that all of the already existing contradictions are exacerbated to the hilt”.

Before replying to the comrade’s criticism of our position on imperialist conflicts and the state of the class struggle, we think it’s necessary to say that neither of his descriptions of the organisation’s general understanding of decomposition is accurate.

The Theses on Decomposition already present this phase  as “the conclusion, the synthesis of all the successive contradictions and expressions of capitalist decadence”: we can add that it is also the “conclusion” of some key features of capitalism’s existence from the beginning, such as the tendency towards social atomisation which Engels, for example, pointed out in his Conditions of the English Working Class in 1844.

As early as 1919, the Communist International, at its First Congress, noted that.

“Human culture has been destroyed and humanity is threatened with complete annihilation. There is only one force able to save humanity and that is the proletariat. The old capitalist ‘order’ has ceased to function; its further existence is out of the question. The final outcome of the capitalist mode of production is chaos. This chaos can only be overcome by the productive and most numerous class – the working class”[2].

And indeed this judgment was entirely justified when we consider the state of the central countries of capitalism in the wake of the First World War: millions of corpses, millions of refugees, economic breakdown and hunger – and a deadly pandemic. A similar nightmare haunted Europe and much of the globe in the immediate aftermath of the second imperialist war. But if we look at the situation of capitalism for most of the period between 1914 and 1989, we can see that the tendency towards complete chaos was to a large extent held in check (even, as comrade Steinkopfler also recognises, it never disappears completely) by the capacity of the ruling class to impose its solutions and perspectives on society: the drive towards war in the 1930s, the post-1945 carve up of the planet and the formation of blocs, a long period of economic recovery. With the protracted economic crisis from the end of the 1960s and the growing stalemate between the classes, the tendency towards fragmentation and chaos at all levels is unleashed to the point where it takes on a new quality. Contrary to comrade Steinklopfer’s assertion, we do not conclude from this that has retrospectively become a “cause” of decomposition, but it certainly does become an active factor in its acceleration. It is this understanding of the qualitative change operating in the phase of decomposition which we think is missing from comrade Steinkopfler’s text.

We also want to make it clear that, just as signs of decadence became increasingly apparent before World War One (state capitalism, corruption of unions, arms race between great powers…), so the ICC noted the signs of decomposition prior to 1989: the victory of the Mullahs in Iran, the Paris terrorist attacks of 1986, the war in Lebanon, and the difficulties facing the class struggle, of which more below. So the collapse of the eastern bloc was by no means a bolt out of the blue, but the product of a long prior development.

The divergence on imperialist antagonisms

Regarding the concrete differences at the level of imperialist antagonisms, we were certainly late in understanding the significance of the rise of China, but over the last few years we have clearly integrated this factor into our analysis both of global imperialist rivalries and the evolution of the world economic crisis. We do not reject the idea that even in a world dominated by every man for himself at the imperialist level, we can see a definite tendency towards “bipolarisation”, i.e. for the rivalries between the two most powerful states to become a major factor in the world situation. In fact, this has always been our position, as we can see from the orientation text on “Militarism and Decomposition”, written at the beginning of the new phase, where we affirmed that “the present situ­ation implies, under the pressure of the crisis and military tensions, a tendency towards the re-formation of two new imperialist blocs”[3]. We then assessed the possibility of other powers (Germany, Russia, Japan…) posing a challenge to the US and becoming a candidate for the role of a new bloc leader. In our view, at that stage, none of these contenders had the necessary “qualifications” to play this role, and we concluded that it was very likely that new imperialist blocs would never be reformed, while insisting that this by no means meant an attenuation of imperialist conflicts. On the contrary, these conflicts would take the form of an increasingly chaotic free for all, in many ways a more dangerous threat to humanity than the previous period where national or regional conflicts were to some degree held in check by the discipline of the blocs. We think that this prognosis has largely been borne out, as we can see most obviously in the current multi-sided conflicts in Syria and Libya.

Of course at this stage, as we have said, we underestimated the possibility of China emerging as a major world power and as a serious contender to the US. But China’s rise is itself a product of the phase of decomposition[4] and while it does provide definite evidence for the tendency towards bipolarisation, there is a big difference between the development of this tendency and a concrete process leading towards the formation of new blocs. If we look at the two major poles, the increasingly aggressive attitudes of both of them tends to undermine this process rather than reinforce it. China is profoundly distrusted by all its neighbours, not least Russia, which often aligns with China in matters of immediate interest (such as the war in Syria) but is terrified of becoming subordinated to China as a result of the latter’s economic strength, and is one of the fiercest opponents of Beijing’s “Silk Road” initiative. America meanwhile has been busily dismantling nearly all the old bloc structures it had previously used to preserve its “New World Order” and so resist the slide towards “every man for himself” in international relations. It more and more treats its allies in NATO as enemies, and in general  - as comrade Steinklopfer himself states quite firmly - has become one of the main factors aggravating the chaotic character of imperialist relations today.

In this situation, the danger of war reflects this process of fragmentation. We certainly cannot rule out the possibility of military clashes between the US and China, but neither can we discount increasingly irrational outbreaks pulling in India against Pakistan, Israel against Iran, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, etc. But this is precisely the meaning, and the terrible threat, of every man for himself as a factor aggravating decomposition and endangering the very future of humanity. We continue to think that this tendency is not only far in advance of the tendency towards the reformation of blocs, but is in direct conflict with it.

The divergence on the class struggle

As we have seen, comrade Steinklopfer suggests that the resolution on the balance of forces from the 23rd Congress is no longer concerned with the problem of revolutionary perspective, and that this factor has disappeared from our understanding of the causes (and consequences) of decomposition. In fact, the question of the politicisation of the class struggle and the bourgeoisie’s efforts to prevent its development is at the heart of the resolution. The tone is set in point one of the resolution, which talks about the revival of the class struggle at the end of the 60s and the reappearance of a new generation of revolutionaries: :  “Faced with a dynamic towards the politicisation of workers' struggles, the bourgeoisie (which had been surprised by the May 1968 movement) immediately developed a large-scale and long-term counter-offensive in order to prevent the working class from providing its own response to the historical crisis of the capitalist economy: the proletarian revolution”. In other words: for the working class politicisation essentially means posing the question of revolution: this is exactly the same issue as that of the “revolutionary perspective”. And the resolution goes on to show how, faced with the waves of class struggle in the period between 1968 and 1989, the ruling class used all its resources and mystifications to prevent the working class from developing this perspective. 

Regarding the question of the struggles in Poland, which play a central part in comrade Steinklopfer’s argument: there is no disagreement between us that Poland 1980 was a key moment in the evolution of the balance of class forces in the period opened up by the May 1968 events in France. The comrade is right to say that, unlike May 68 and the ensuing international wave of class movements whose epicentre was in western Europe, the struggles in Poland did not give rise to a whole new generation of politicised elements, a number of whom (from 68 onwards) found their way to the positions of the communist left. But it nevertheless posed a profound challenge to the world working class: the question of the mass strike, of the autonomous organisation and unification of the workers as a power in society. The Polish workers raised themselves to this level even if they were unable to resist the siren songs of trade unionism and democracy at the political level. The question, as we said at the time, paraphrasing Luxemburg on the Russian revolution, was posed in Poland but could only be resolved internationally, and above all by the politically more advanced battalions of the class in western Europe. Would the workers of the west take up the gauntlet and develop both self-organisation and unification in the context of offering the perspective of a new society? The ICC contributed a number of texts in the early 80s to evaluate this potential[5]. 

More specifically, would the new wave of struggles which began in Belgium in 1983 be able to take up the gauntlet? While the ICC noted many important advances in this wave of struggles (the tendencies towards self-organisation and the confrontation with rank and file unionism in France and Italy, for example), this vital step of politicisation was not taken, and the third wave began to run into difficulties. At the 8th congress of the ICC in 1988, there was an animated debate between those comrades who felt that the third wave was moving forward inexorably, and what was then a minority who stressed that the working class was already suffering from the impact of decomposition in terms of atomisation, loss of class identity, the ideology of every man for himself in the form of corporatism etc – all of which were the result of the inability of the class to develop a perspective for the future of society. Thus – and here we must take issue with a formulation by the Amendments Commission for the class struggle resolution of the 23rd congress, which comrade Steinklopfer refers to in his text – there is indeed a continuity between the difficulties of the class in the 80s (the influence of decomposition) and the retreat of the post-89 period (where we saw a huge regression at the level both of consciousness and of combativity). But in our view here again comrade Steinklopfer underestimates the qualitative change brought about by the events of 1989, which had the appearance of descending on the working class from the heavens, even if they had in reality long been fermenting within bourgeois society. They brought about a retreat in class consciousness and combativity which would be much deeper and longer lasting than we suspected, even if we were able to predict it in the immediate aftermath of the collapse.

Populism and war mobilisation

There is thus no disagreement about the fact that the working class has in recent decades been going through a long process of disarray, characterised by a loss of class identity and of its perspective for the future. We also agree that certain movements that took place during this period of general retreat pointed to the possibility of a revival of the struggle, both at the level of combativity, and of consciousness about the impasse of capitalism society: as comrade Steinklopfer puts it, in these movements we saw “the development of a culture of theory and a culture of debate (such as began to nascently express  themselves from the anti-CPE to the Indignados) as fundamental manifestations of the proletariat as the class of consciousness and of association”.

However we disagree strongly with two of the comrade’s conclusions about the present difficulties of the class:

• That the rise of populism is the expression of a society gearing up for war
• That we are now witnessing not a subterranean maturation of consciousness but a veritable “subterranean regression”.

First, we do not think that populism is the product or expression of a clear course towards war by the ruling class of the major capitalist countries. Certainly it is a product of aggravated nationalism and militarism, of that nihilistic violence and racism which oozes out of the decomposition of this system. In this sense of course it has many similarities with the fascism of the 1930s. But fascism was the product of a real counter-revolution, a historic defeat suffered by the working class, and directly expressed the capacity of the ruling class to mobilise the proletariat for a new world-wide imperialist war. Populism, on the other hand, is the result of the stalemate between the classes, which implies a lack of perspective not only on the part of the working class, but also of the bourgeoisie itself. It expresses a growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie of its political apparatus, an increasing fragmentation both within each nation state and at the level of international relations. If the rise of populism really meant that the bourgeoisie has recovered the possibility of marching the working class off to war, we would have to conclude that the concept of decomposition as we have defined it so far is no longer valid. It would imply that the bourgeoisie now has a “perspective” to offer society even if it is a totally irrational and suicidal one.

 Comrade S’s amendment argues that  “Contemporary populism is another clear sign of a society heading towards war:

- the rise of populism itself is not least a product of the growing aggressivity and destruction impulses generated by present day bourgeois society

- since, however, this ‘spontaneous’ aggressiveness is not in itself sufficient to mobilise society for war, todays populist movements are needed to this end by the ruling class.

In other words, they are at once a symptom and an active factor of the drive towards war”.

In other words, phenomena such as Brexit in the UK or Trumpism in the US are not, first and foremost, a result of the bourgeoisie’s loss of control of its political (and increasingly, its economic) apparatus, a concentrated expression of the short-termism and fragmentation of the ruling class. On the contrary: the populist factions are the best representatives of a bourgeoisie which is really uniting behind the mobilisation for war.

Given this vision of where things are headed, it is not surprising that comrade Steinklopfer sees little in the way of the bourgeoisie’s drive towards war: despite the nascent expressions of  the revolutionary nature of the class in 2006 and 2011, today we cannot even discern signs of a subterranean maturation of consciousness, which might imply that the bourgeoisie does not have all the cards stacked in its favour.

Certainly, as the comrade reminds us, we have always argued that proletarian consciousness can develop in depth – largely, but not entirely, as the result of the work of revolutionary organisations – even in a period of counter-revolution when it is severely limited in its extent, as we saw with the work of the Italian and French Fractions of the Communist left in the 30s and 40s. But if it goes on even in such periods, what is the meaning of the term “subterranean regression”?  Would it not imply that the situation today is even worse than it was in the 1930s? It’s not clear from the comrade’s text how long this process of subterranean regression has been going on: if we saw a general development of consciousness among the young generation in 2006 and 2011, it would be logical to argue that these movements had been preceded by an “underground” process of maturation. In any case, we agree that on the level of open struggles and the extent of class consciousness, these advances were, as with virtually every upward movement of the class, followed by a phase of retreat and regression: for example, a few years after the Indignados movement, which had been particularly strong in Barcelona, some of the same young people who in 2011 had taken part in assemblies and demonstrations which had put forward clearly internationalist slogans, were now falling into the absolute dead-end of Catalan nationalism. 

But this doesn’t prove that the Old Mole itself decided to have a rest, either in 2012 or earlier. The period 2006-2011 was accompanied by the emergence of a politicised minority which showed a lot of promise but to a large extent foundered in the swamps of anarchism and modernism, so that their net contribution to the real development of the revolutionary milieu was extremely limited. The searching minorities who have been developing in the last few years, for all their youth and inexperience, seem to start at a higher level than the ones we encountered a decade earlier: they are in particular, more aware of the terminal nature of the capitalist system and the necessity of renewing with the tradition of the communist left. In our view, such advances are precisely the product of a subterranean maturation.

According to comrade Steinklopfer, the fact that recent movements which are already situated on the terrain of “reforming” bourgeois society, such as the demonstrations around the climate question, often claim to be locating the problem at the level of the system, of capitalist society itself, expresses no more than the confidence of the ruling class, which can afford to blow hot air about the need to go beyond capitalism precisely because it has no fear whatever of the working class taking such discourse seriously. But it is no less plausible that this anti-capitalist speechifying is a typical anti-body of bourgeois society, which has a profound need to derail any incipient questioning of its fundamental bases. In other words: as the apocalyptic nature of this system becomes more and more evident, it becomes increasingly necessary for bourgeois ideology to prevent an authentic understanding of its roots and of the real alternative.

At the end of comrade Steinklopfer’s text, it is hard to see where the revival of class identity and the revolutionary perspective will come from and we are left with an impression that he has fallen into a deep pessimism. The comrade is not wrong to point out that the economic struggles, the immediate resistance to attacks on living standards, aren’t sufficient in themselves to generate a clear revolutionary consciousness, but they nevertheless remain absolutely vital if the working class is to regain a sense of itself as a distinct social force, above all in a period where growing unrest with the state of capitalist society is being pushed towards a host of interclassist and openly bourgeois mobilisations. In the 1930s, amid all the hype about the revolutionary conquests of the Spanish workers, the comrades of Bilan stood almost alone in asserting that in such conditions the smallest strike around economic demands (above all in the war industries controlled by the CNT!) would be a first step towards the working class finding the way back to its own terrain. The recent strikes around the question of pensions in France, and in a number of countries around health and safety at work at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, were much less “newsworthy” than the Fridays for Climate of the Black Lives Matter marches, but they make a real contribution to a future recovery of class identity while the latter can only stand in its way.  

We agree with comrade Steinklopfer of course that recovering class identity and developing a revolutionary consciousness are inseparable: for the working class to really understand what it is, it must also understand what it must be historically, as Marx put it: the bearer of a new society.  And we also agree that the organisations of the communist left have an indispensable role in this dynamic process. The comrade leaves us with a very severe judgement on the actual role these organisations have played in the last decade and more:

“In the course of history, tiny minorities have regularly developed, without any mass participation, ideas capable of revolutionising the world, capable of eventually ‘conquering the masses’. One of the main weaknesses of the proletariat in the two decades after 1989 was in fact the failure of its minorities to accomplish this work. The historic groups of the Communist Left have a particular responsibility for this failure. The result was that, when a new generation of politicised proletarians began to appear (such as the Indignados in Spain or the different ‘occupy’ movements in the wake of the ‘finance’ and the ‘Euro’ crises after 2008), the existing proletarian political milieu was unable to arm them sufficiently with the political, theoretical weapons they would have needed in order to be oriented and to feel inspired to face the task of inaugurating the beginning of the end of the proletarian reflux”

It is not at all clear from this how, and with what theoretical contributions, the organisations of the communist left could have armed the new generation to the point where they could have avoided the retreat that followed the movements of 2011. But there seems to be a methodological problem behind this judgment. The organisations of the communist left must certainly make a severe critique of the errors they made in the face of the “new generation of politicised proletarians”, errors above all of an opportunist nature. This criticism is necessary above all because it takes place in a realm of circumstances which small revolutionary groups can directly effect: the regroupment of revolutionaries, the steps needed to construct a vibrant and responsible revolutionary milieu and thus to lay the foundations of the party of the future. But it would appear to be verging on substitutionism to suggest that our theoretical/political efforts alone could have halted the reflux that followed after 2011, which was essentially a continuation of a process which had been in full force since 1989. Future discussions will determine whether there is a real divergence on the question of organisation here.

ICC, August 24, 2020

Idlib, Syria, 2020

The Middle East appears today as a zone of desolation, continuous massacres and the brutal repression of populations, an immense field of ruins. Whole countries like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine or Libya are totally devastated by military confrontations, civil wars and the most brutal massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians, while millions more are forced to join the masses of refugees in the camps. In Iran for 40 years the population has suffered a backward regime which plunges it into a disastrous economic situation, a permanent state of war and repression. Egypt has been a boiling pot since the fall of Mubarak and the seizure of power by General Sisi. Lebanon is on the verge of economic bankruptcy and community tensions are intensifying again, just like in the Arabian Peninsula where tensions between states (Saudi Arabia with Qatar or the Sultanate of Oman), as well as within them (between cliques within the Saudi state), are intensifying. Popular revolts are crushed in blood while sinister militias impose their rule under the banner of religious fundamentalism (Al Qaida, Daesh, Hezbollah), nationalism (Kurdish militias) or tribalism (Libya, Yemen).

This dramatic picture is that of a region which vividly illustrates the descent of capitalism into a cycle of wars which constantly open up new areas of conflict:

• the military interventions of the big international vultures like the United States, Russia, China and the European powers, and regional scavengers (Turkey, Iran, Israel, etc.), transforms the region into an open-air cemetery;
• the daily reality of repression and massacres represents a nightmare for the populations and feeds an inexhaustible source of refugees trying to escape this hell;
• from Iran to Turkey, from Lebanon to Egypt, the states of the region are strangled by the war economy and many of them are in virtual bankruptcy. In the emirates or kingdoms of Arabia, the opulent skyscrapers of barbaric and backward regimes are erected by hired labour treated like convicts;
• the incessant barbarism reigning in the region constitutes a fertile ground for all the ideologies of despair such as jihadism;
• the development of all-out tensions also increases the risk of a generalised conflagration which could have dramatic consequences for the entire planet.

Of course, from the conquests of Alexander the Great to the Crusades, from the struggle between the Roman consuls Marc Antony and Augustus to the digging of the Suez Canal, since Antiquity the region has often been at the centre of economic, political and military appetites and the wars that ensued.

This text does not aim to develop a history of recent conflicts in the Middle East but to show how the understanding of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism is an essential framework for understanding the explosion of contradictions which plunge this region of the world today into warlike bestiality and chaos. This barbarism has a history, and it reflects the rotting of the system.

30 years ago, in our orientation text on “Militarism and Decomposition” [1] the ICC already underlined the importance for revolutionaries of being discerning on this essential question of the role of war and militarism:

“it is important that revolutionaries should be capable of distinguishing between those analyses which have been overtaken by events and those which still remain valid, in order to avoid a double trap: either succumbing to sclerosis, or ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. More precisely, it is necessary to highlight what in our analyses is essential and fundamental, and remains entirely valid in different historical circumstances, and what is secondary and circumstantial - in short, to know how to make the difference between the essence of a reality and its various specific manifestations.”

It is by applying these principles and in continuity with this method that we will situate and analyse the last thirty years of wars and conflicts in the Middle East.

Militarism, imperialist blocs and declining state capitalism

The question of wars and militarism is obviously not a new problem. It has always been a central issue within the workers’ movement. The attitude of the working class towards bourgeois wars has evolved in history, ranging from support for some of them to a categorical rejection of any participation. If, during the 19th century, revolutionaries could call on the workers to lend their support to this or that belligerent nation (for the North against the South during the Civil War in the United States, for the attempts at national insurrection by the Poles in 1846, 1848 and 1856 against Czarist Russia), the basic revolutionary position during the First World War was precisely the rejection and denunciation of any support for either side.

The modification of the position of the working class with regard to wars was precisely in 1914 the crucial point of cleavage in the Socialist parties (and particularly in the German social democracy) between those who rejected any participation in the war, the internationalists, and those who referred to the old positions of the workers' movement in order to better support their national bourgeoisie. This change corresponded to the modification of the very nature of military conflicts linked to the fundamental transformation capitalism underwent between its periods of ascendancy and decline.

In particular the Communist International based itself on this analysis to affirm the necessity for the proletarian revolution. Since its founding, the ICC has adhered to this analysis and more specifically to its elaboration by the Gauche Communiste de France which, in 1945, spoke without ambiguity about the nature and characteristics of war in the period of capitalist decadence:

“In the era of ascending capitalism, wars (national, colonial and imperialist conquest) expressed the upward march of fermentation, strengthening and expansion of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist production found in war the continuation of its economic policy by other means. Each war was justified and paid its costs by opening a new field of greater expansion, ensuring the development of greater capitalist production. […]

War was the indispensable means for capitalism to open up possibilities for further development, at a time when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up by means of violence. Likewise, the collapse of the capitalist world having historically exhausted all the possibilities of development, finds in modern war, imperialist war, the expression of this collapse which, without opening up any possibility of further development for production, does nothing but to plunge the productive forces into the abyss and to accumulate ruins after ruins at an accelerated rate. […]

If in the first phase, the function of war is to ensure an enlargement of the market, with a view to greater production of consumer goods, in the second phase, production is essentially focused on the production of means of destruction, that is, with a view to war. The decadence of capitalist society finds its striking expression in the fact that from wars for economic development (ascending period), economic activity becomes restricted mainly with a view to war (decadent period).

This does not mean that war has become the goal of capitalist production, the goal for capitalism always remaining to produce surplus value, but it does mean that war, taking on a permanent character, has become the way of life of decadent capitalism”. [2]

What therefore characterises war in the period of capitalism's decadence is its increasingly irrational character. In the nineteenth century, despite the destruction and massacres they caused, wars were a means for the advance of the capitalist mode of production, promoting the conquest of the world market and stimulating the development of the productive forces of the world. For society as a whole, the wars of the 20th century are no more than the extreme expression of the barbarism into which capitalist decadence plunges society.

In this sense, military spending does not represent a field of accumulation for capitalism but constitutes a cancer eating away at the capitalist economy by pumping more and more technical, human and financial resources into unproductive sectors. Indeed, while the means of production or the means of consumption can be incorporated in the next productive cycle as constant capital or variable capital, armaments constitute a pure waste from the point of view of capital itself since their only purpose is to go up in smoke (including literally) when they are not responsible for massive destruction.

Faced with a situation where war is omnipresent in the life of society, decadent capitalism has developed two phenomena which constitute major characteristics of this period: state capitalism and imperialist blocs: [3]

• State capitalism, the first significant manifestation of which dates from the First World War, responds to the need for each country, in view of the confrontation with other nations, to obtain the maximum of discipline within it from the different sectors of society, to reduce as much as possible conflicts between the classes but also between rival factions of the dominant class, in order, in particular, to mobilise and control all of its economic potential.
• Likewise, the constitution of imperialist blocs corresponds to the need to impose a similar discipline between different national bourgeoisies in order to limit their reciprocal antagonisms and to bring them together for the confrontation between the two military camps.

Consequently, neither state capitalism, nor the imperialist blocs, nor a fortiori the combination of the two, means any “pacification” of relations between different sectors of capital, much less a “strengthening” of the latter. On the contrary, they are only the means that capitalist society secretes to try to resist the growing tendency towards its dislocation.

This omnipresence of war in the life of society and its irrational character were particularly confirmed during the two world wars which marked the 20th century, as during the Cold War and its mad arms race. This warlike rampage has been clearly materialised in the Middle East. [4]

Confrontations between the blocs in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s

The history of the Middle East vividly illustrates the development of militarism and military tensions in decadent capitalism.[5] For economic and strategic reasons (access to “warm seas”, trade routes to Asia, oil, etc.), the Middle East, like the Balkans for that matter, has always been an important stake in the confrontation between powers. Since the entry of capitalism into decadence and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in particular, the region has been at the centre of imperialist tensions. After the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, the implementation of the Sykes-Picot agreements divided the area between England and France. It was then the theatre of the Turkish civil war and the Greco-Turkish conflict, of the emergence of Arab nationalism and Zionism;[6] it was a major stake in the Second World War (German offensives in Russia towards the Caspian Sea and Iran and of Italian-German forces in North Africa and Libya towards Egypt).

After 1945 and the Yalta Agreements, the region constituted a central zone for the confrontation between the blocs of East and West. The period was marked by the establishment of the new state of Israel and the successive Israeli-Arab wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and above all, in this context, by the persistent attempts by Russia and its bloc to establish itself in the region through support for Mossadegh in Iran in the early 1950s, for Nasser in Egypt during the 1960s, for Hasan al-Bakr in Iraq around 1972, for the Palestinian Fedayeen and the PLO during the 1970s, for Hafez el-Hassad in Syria in 1980. These attempts were met with strong opposition from the United States and the Western bloc, which made the state of Israel one of the spearheads of their policy. At the end of the 1970s, although the American bloc gradually gained overall control of the Middle East and reduced the influence of the Russian bloc, the fall of the Shah and the “Iranian revolution” in 1979 not only deprived the American bloc of a key stronghold but announced, through the coming to power of the backward regime of the Mullahs, the growing decomposition of capitalism.

The 1980s opened under the auspices of the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran, resulting in the dismantling of the Western military system to the south of the USSR, and the invasion of Afghanistan by troops of the Red Army. This situation caused the American bloc, spurred on by the pressure of the economic crisis, to launch a large-scale imperialist offensive aimed at pulling recalcitrant small imperialisms (Iran, Libya, Syria) into line, at pushing Russian influence to the periphery of capitalism and at establishing a “cordon sanitaire” around the USSR:

“The growth of armaments in both blocs isn't the only thing which reveals the present scale and intensity of imperialist tensions. This intensity corresponds to what is at stake in all the local conflicts which ravage the planet. This scale corresponds to the breadth and objectives of the present offensive of the US bloc.

This offensive has the objective of completing the encirclement of the USSR, of depriving this country of all the positions it has been able to maintain outside its direct area of domination. It has as a priority the definitive expulsion of the USSR from the Middle East, through the disciplining of Iran and the re-insertion of this country into the US bloc as an important pawn in its global strategy. It has the ambition of going on to recuperate Indochina. In the final analysis, its aim is to completely strangle the USSR, to strip it of its status as a world power.

The present phase of this offensive, which began right after the invasion of Afghanistan by the armies of the USSR, (which was a major advance by the latter towards the ‘warm seas'), has already achieved some major successes:

- the winning of complete control over the Near East where Syria, previously linked to the Russian bloc and, along with the PLO, was the main loser from the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in ‘82, has now become one of the pawns of US strategy, sharing with Israel the role of ‘gendarme' in this region and where the resistance of recalcitrant bourgeois factions (PLO etc) has been progressively broken […]

- the growing exhaustion of Iran (which is the condition for its complete return to the US fold) due to the terrible war with Iraq, which is supported by the US bloc via France […]

One of the main characteristics of this offensive is the western bloc's more and more massive use of its military power, notably through the sending of expeditionary corps from the US or other central countries (France, UK, Italy) to the battle zones (as was particularly the case with the Lebanon, to ‘convince' Syria of the necessity to align itself with the US bloc, and in Chad in order to put an end to Libya's pretensions to independence). This corresponds to the fact that the economic card so abundantly used in the past to grab hold of the enemy's position is no longer sufficient:

- because of the present ambitions of the US bloc;

- because of the aggravation of the world crisis itself, which creates a situation of internal instability in the third world count­ries that the US bloc used to rely on.” [7]

Thus, despite the indiscipline and the upheavals in a whole series of Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Syria, Iraq or Libya, plunged into a catastrophic economic situation and with their imperialist ambitions perpetually frustrated, trying by permanent blackmail to sell themselves as dearly as possible, the last years of the decade marked a noticeable increase in pressure from the Western bloc and the United States to consolidate their control in the Middle East.

However, the “loss of control” of the situation in Iran from 1979, the destabilisation of Lebanon (the term “Lebanonisation” would become a concept designating the destabilisation and fragmentation of states), the occupation of Afghanistan by Russia and finally its defeat, as well as the murderous war between Iran and Iraq, were already warning signs of the initiation of the dynamics of decomposition and provided the ingredients which would generate the new imperialist configuration of the period of decomposition.[8]

1990: Decomposition exacerbates imperialist tensions

The implosion of the Eastern bloc marks the beginning of the period of decomposition of the system. It dramatically accelerates the stampede of the different components of the social body towards “every man for himself”, a descent into chaos. If there was one area where this trend was immediately confirmed, it was that of imperialist tensions: “The end of the ‘cold war’ and the disappearance of the blocs therefore only exacerbated the unleashing of the imperialist antagonisms inherent in capitalist decadence and aggravated in a qualitatively new way the bloody chaos into which the whole of society is sinking […]”.[9]

The disappearance of the blocs in no way calls into question the reality of imperialism and militarism. On the contrary, they become more barbaric and chaotic:

“The constitution of imperialist blocs is not the origin of militarism and imperialism. The oppo­site is true: the formation of these blocs is only the extreme consequence (which at certain moments can aggravate the causes), an expression (and not the only one), of decadent capitalism's plunge into militarism and war.  […] the end of the blocs only opens the door to a still more barbaric, aberrant, and chaotic form of imperialism.”[10]

The exacerbation of warlike barbarism that followed tended to be expressed more concretely through two major trends, which would prove to be crucial for the development of imperialism and militarism, particularly in the Middle East:

• the explosion of all-out imperialist appetites resulting in the multiplication of tensions and conflicts: “The difference, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms, which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs, will now come to the fore. […] with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest"
• the development of “every man for himself” and corresponding attempts to contain the resulting chaos, both of which are aggravating factors in warlike barbarism: “the chaos which already reigns in a good part of the world and which now threatens the large big developed countries and their reciprocal relations, […] faced with the tendency towards generalised chaos which is specific to decomposition and which has been considerably accelerated by the Eastern bloc's collapse, capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different components, than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging.”

This pressure of “every man for himself” and the multiplication of imperialist appetites which results from it in a period of decomposition are also major obstacles to the reconstitution of new blocs. The predominant historical tendency is therefore towards every man for himself, towards the weakening of the control of the United States over the world, in particular over its ex-allies, even if the first world power tried to thwart this tendency on the military level, where it had enormous superiority, and maintain its status by imposing its control over these same allies.

First Gulf War: the “world policeman” tries to thwart the tendency towards “every man for himself”

Operation “Desert Storm”, unleashed by the United States against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the early months of 1991, is a manifestation that fully corroborates the characteristics of imperialism and militarism in the period of decomposition, as identified in the orientation text on “Militarism and Decomposition”. Faced with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, President Bush Sr. mobilised a large international military coalition around the United States to “punish” Saddam Hussein.

The Gulf War highlighted the reality of a phenomenon which necessarily resulted from the disappearance of the Eastern bloc: the disintegration of its imperialist rival, the Western bloc. This phenomenon was already at the origin of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: it was because the world had ceased to be divided into two imperialist constellations that a country like Iraq believed it was possible to take control of an ex-ally of the same bloc. This same phenomenon manifested itself during the preparation phase of the war, with the various attempts by European countries (notably France and Germany) and Japan to torpedo, through separate negotiations carried out on behalf of the release of hostages, the central objective of US policy in the Gulf. The US therefore aimed to make the punishment of Iraq an “example” to discourage any future temptation to emulate the behaviour of that country.

But it was not limited to this objective. In reality, its fundamental goal was much more general: faced with a world increasingly dominated by chaos and “every man for himself”, it was a question of imposing a minimum of order and discipline, first of all among the most important countries of the former Western bloc.

In such a world, more and more marked by warlike chaos, by the “law of the jungle”, it fell to the only surviving superpower to play the role of world policeman, because this was the country that had the most to lose in the global disorder, and because it was the only one that could afford to do it. Paradoxically, it would only be able to fulfil this role by increasingly encasing the whole world in the steel corset of militarism and warlike barbarism.

“Desert Storm” reveals two basic characteristics of imperialist clashes in the period of decomposition:

- In the first place, there is the total irrationality of the conflicts, which is one of the hallmarks of war in a period of decomposition.

“While the Gulf war is an illustration of the irrationality of the whole of decadent capitalism, it also contains an extra and significant element of irrationality which is characteristic of the opening up of the phase of decomposition. The other wars of decadence could, despite their basic irrationality, still take on apparently 'rational' goals (such as the search for 'lebensraum' for the German economy or the defence of imperialist positions by the allies during the Second World War). This isn't at all the case with the Gulf war. The objectives of this war, on one side or the other, clearly express the total and desperate impasse that capitalism is in today:

- on the Iraqi side, the invasion of Kuwait undoubtedly had a clear economic objective: to grab hold of the considerable wealth of this country […] On the other hand, the objectives of the war with the 'allies' which was accepted by the Iraqi leaders as soon as they remained deaf to the ultimatum of 15 January 1991, were simply to 'save face' and inflict the maximum damage on the enemy, at the price of considerable and insurmountable damage to the national economy;

- on the 'allied' side, the economic advantages obtained, or even aimed for, were nothing, including for the main victor, the USA. The central objective of the war, for this power - to put a stop to the tendency towards generalised chaos, dressed up in grand phrases about the 'new world order' - did not contain any perspective for any amelioration of the economic situation, or even for preserving the present situation. In contrast to the time of the Second World War, the USA did not enter into this war to improve or even preserve its markets but simply to avoid a too-rapid amplification of the international political chaos which could only further exacerbate economic convulsions. In doing this, it could not avoid aggravating the instability of a zone of prime importance, while at the same time aggravating the difficulties of its own economy (especially its indebtedness) and of the world economy.” [11]

- In the second place, we must note the central role played by the dominant power in the extension of chaos across the whole planet:

“The difference is that today the initiative isn't being taken by a power that wants to overturn the imperialist balance but on the contrary the world's leading power, the one that for the moment has the best slice of the cake […] The fact that at the present time the maintenance of 'world order' […] doesn't imply a 'defensive' attitude […] on the part of the dominant power, but by an increasingly systematic use of the military offensive, and even of operations that will destabilise whole regions in order to ensure the submission of the other powers, expresses very clearly decadent capitalism's slide into the most unrestrained militarism. This is precisely one of the elements that distinguish the phase of decomposition from previous phase of capitalist decadence.”

Operation “Desert Storm” effectively suppressed the challenge to American leadership and the various imperialist appetites for a time. However, it exacerbated the polarisation of the mujahedin who fought the Russians in Afghanistan against the American “crusaders” (constitution of Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s). From the second half of the 1990s, European countries such as France or Germany exploited the desire for autonomy in countries such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, while, after its failure during the invasion of Southern Lebanon, the Israeli “hard” right came to power (the first Netanyahu government) against the will of the American government which supported Shimon Peres, and which would do anything from then on to sabotage the peace process with the Palestinians that was one of the greatest successes of American diplomacy in the region.

A more obvious expression of the challenge to American leadership was the dismal failure in February 1998 of Operation “Desert Thunder”, which aimed to inflict a new “punishment” on Iraq and, beyond that country, on the powers that secretly supported it, especially France and Russia.

In 1990-91, the United States trapped Iraq by pushing it to invade another Arab country, Kuwait. In the name of “respect for international law”, they succeeded in rallying behind them, willy-nilly, almost all the Arab states and all the great powers, including the most reluctant like France. “Desert Storm” thus made it possible to assert the role of American power as sole “world policeman”, which opened the door to the Oslo process (the Israeli-Palestinian agreements). In 1997-98, on the other hand, it was Iraq and its “allies” who trapped the United States: the obstacles posed by Saddam Hussein to the visits of “presidential sites” by international inspectors led the superpower to a new attempt to assert its authority by force of arms.

But this time around, it was forced to give up this enterprise in the face of staunch opposition from almost all of the Arab states, most of the great powers, and (timid) support from Britain alone. The contrast between “Storm” and “Thunder” highlighted the deepening crisis of United States leadership.

Of course, Washington didn't need anyone's permission to strike when and where it wanted (which it did in late 1998 with Operation “Desert Fox”). But by pursuing such a policy, the United States was placing itself at the head of precisely the tendency it wanted to counter, that of every man for himself, as it had momentarily succeeded in doing during the Gulf War. Worse yet: the political signal given by Washington during “Desert Fox” turned against the American cause. For the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, the American bourgeoisie had shown itself incapable of outwardly presenting a united front, despite being in a situation of war. On the contrary, the procedure of “impeachment” against Clinton intensified during the events: American politicians, engulfed in a real internal conflict on foreign policy, instead of disavowing the propaganda of the enemies of America according to which Clinton had made the decision to intervene militarily in Iraq because of personal motivations (“Monicagate”), gave credence to this propaganda.

The underlying foreign policy conflict between certain factions of the Republican and Democratic parties had proven to be very destructive, precisely because this “debate” revealed an intractable contradiction, which the resolution of the 12th ICC Congress formulated as follows:

“On the one hand, if it gives up using or extending the use of its military superiority, this will only encourage the countries contesting its authority to contest even more. On the other hand, when it does use brute force, even, and especially when this momentarily obliges its opponents to rein in their ambitions towards independence, this only pushes the latter to seize on the least occasion to get their revenge and squirm away from America's grasp.” [12]

On this point, the resolution of the 13th Congress of Révolution Internationale (section of the ICC in France) in 1998 was prescient:

“While the US has not recently had the opportunity to use its armed might and to participate directly in this ‘bloody chaos’, this can only be a temporary situation, especially because it cannot allow the diplomatic failure over Iraq to pass without a response.” [13]

Second Gulf War: decline of American leadership and the explosion of imperialist ambitions

The attacks of September 11 2001 led President Bush junior to unleash a “war on terror” against Afghanistan and especially Iraq (Operation “Iraqi Freedom” in 2003). Despite all the pressure and spread of “fake news” aimed at mobilising the “international community” against the “axis of evil”, Bush junior failed in his attempt to mobilise other imperialisms against Saddam's “rogue state” and was forced to invade Iraq with Tony Blair's UK as his only significant ally.

The resolution on the international situation at the 17th ICC Congress (2007) noted how much the failure of Operation “Iraqi Freedom” underlined the inability of the American policeman to impose its “world order”. On the contrary, the “war on terror” had reinforced imperialist tensions, the development of every man for himself, and the weakening of American leadership:

“The failure of the American bourgeoisie, throughout the 1990s, to impose its authority in any lasting sense, even after a series of military operations, led it to look for a new enemy of the ‘free world’ and of ‘democracy’, so that it could once again pull the world's powers into line, especially those which had been its allies: Islamic terrorism. […] Five years later, the failure of this policy is obvious. If the September 11 attacks allowed the US to draw countries like France and Germany into their intervention in Afghanistan, it didn't succeed in dragging them into its Iraqi adventure in 2003; in fact it even provoked the rise of a circumstantial alliance between these two countries and Russia against the intervention in Iraq. Later on, some of its main allies in the ‘coalition’ which intervened in Iraq, such as Spain and Italy, quit the sinking ship. The US bourgeoisie failed to achieve any of its official objectives in Iraq: the elimination of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the establishment of peaceful ‘democracy’"; stability and a return to peace throughout the region under the aegis of America; the retreat of terrorism; the adherence of the American population to the military interventions of its government.

The question of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was soon settled: it became clear that the only ones to be found in Iraq were the ones that had been brought in by the coalition. This quickly exposed the lies concocted by the Bush administration to sell the invasion of Iraq.

As for the retreat of terrorism, we can see that the invasion of Iraq has in no way clipped its wings but on the contrary has been a powerful factor in its development, both in Iraq itself and in other countries of the world, as we saw in Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005.

The establishment of a peaceful democracy in Iraq took the form of the setting up of a puppet government which couldn't maintain the least control over the country without the massive support of American troops - a control which is in any case limited to a few ‘security zones’, leaving the rest of the country free for massacres between Shias and Sunnis and terrorist attacks which have claimed tens of thousands of victims since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Stabilisation and peace in the Middle East has never seemed so far away: in the 50 year conflict between Israel and Palestine, the last few years have seen a continuous aggravation of the situation, made even more dramatic by the inter-Palestinian clashes between Hamas and Fatah and by the growing discredit of the Israeli government. The loss of authority in the region by the US giant, following its shattering defeat in Iraq, is clearly not separate from this downward slide and the failure of the ‘peace process’ of which it was the main proponent.

This loss of authority is also partly responsible for the growing difficulties of the NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Karzai government's loss of control of the country in the face of the Taliban.

Furthermore, the increasing boldness of Iran over its preparations for obtaining nuclear weapons is a direct consequence of the US falling into a quagmire in Iraq, which for the moment prevents a similar massive use of troops elsewhere […]

Today in Iraq the US bourgeoisie is facing a real impasse. On the one hand, both from the strictly military standpoint and from the economic and political point of view, it doesn't have the means to recruit a force that would eventually allow it to ‘re-establish order’. On the other hand, it can't simply withdraw from Iraq without openly admitting the total failure of its policies and opening the door to the dislocation of Iraq and an even greater destabilisation of the entire region.” [14]

In fact, the occupation of Iraq resulting from the invasion led to a fiasco for the United States. Occupation troops suffered heavy losses in attacks and ambushes and Iran's rise to strength as a regional power defying the United States was by no means blocked, on the contrary, and the Baathist cadres of Saddam's regime joined the resistance and formed the backbone of extremist Sunni movements such as Islamic State.

More fundamentally, Bush junior's Iraqi adventure fully opened up the Pandora's box of decomposition in the Middle East. Indeed, it first vividly exposed the growing stalemate in US policy and the aberrant escape into warlike barbarism. It severely weakened the global leadership of the United States. Even though the American bourgeoisie under Obama tried to reduce the impact of the catastrophic policy pursued by Bush, and the commando action decided by Obama resulting in the execution of Bin Laden in 2011 expressed an attempt by the United States to arrest this decline in its leadership and underlined its absolute technological and military superiority, these reactions could not reverse the underlying trend, while leading the United States into a headlong rush into warlike barbarism.

In addition, the warlike adventure of Bush junior exacerbated the spread of every man for himself, which manifested itself in particular in an all-out growth of the imperialist ambitions of powers like Iran, which has developed its hold on the Shiite parties and militias not only dominating Iraq but also in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, even the Gulf Emirates and Qatar, which have increased their support for radical Sunni groups. These ambitions brought no peace to Iraq but only the exacerbation of tensions between imperialist sharks and an even deeper plunge of this country and its people into bloody carnage.

Part II to follow.

M. Havanais, July 22, 2020

The development of the situation in the Middle East between 1990 and 2010 has shown vividly that the imperialist confrontations, the militarism and barbarism, which are essential characteristics of the period of the decadence of capitalism, have not only intensified but, above all, in the phase of the widespread decomposition of capitalist society, their irrational and chaotic nature has become more and more evident.

This was powerfully demonstrated by the two Gulf Wars. They illustrate the fact that the abortive attempts of the American "world policeman" to keep control of the situation and counter the tendency of "every man for himself" at the imperialist level, not only led to the decline of its leadership but also opened a Pandora's box of exploding imperialist appetites everywhere. These tendencies have increased dramatically in the second decade of the 21st century.

1. The US withdrawal from Iraq and civil war in Syria: the explosion of chaos

The year 2011 was marked by two major events that symbolise the growing chaos in the imperialist relations in the Middle East and would decisively mark the present period: the US withdrawal from Iraq and the outbreak of civil war in Syria.
The planned withdrawal of the US and NATO troops from Iraq (and later Afghanistan) caused unprecedented instability in these countries and would contribute to the further destabilisation of the entire region. At the same time, this withdrawal also underlines the extent to which US imperialist power is declining. While in the 1990s it managed to fulfil its role as "world policeman", its central problem in the first decade of the 21st century is attempting to mask its impotence faced with the global chaos.
In that same year, the outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria confirmed the increasingly chaotic and uncontrollable nature of the imperialist conflicts. It came soon after the popular movements of the "Arab Spring" which affected Syria and many other Arab countries. By weakening the Assad regime, this opened up a Pandora's box with a multitude of contradictions and conflicts that had been kept under wraps for decades by the iron hand of this regime. Western countries called for Assad's removal, but were quite incapable of producing any suitable replacement when the opposition to him was totally divided and its predominant sector was made up of Islamists. At the same time, Russia has provided unfailing military support to the Assad regime and it is guaranteed a permanent presence for its war fleet in the port of Tartus in the Mediterranean.

It is not the only state that supports Assad's regime since Iran had seized the opportunity, along with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias it controls, to establish a large Shi’ite front. In addition, we can't discount the role played by China. Hence Syria has become a new and bloody game involving multiple rivalries between first and second-rate imperialist powers which can only mean the threat of further conflagrations and increased destabilisation of the region for which the people of the Middle East will once again pay a heavy price.

The report on imperialist tensions of the 20th Congress of the ICC (in 2013) underlined how these two events gave rise to the spectacular growth of militarism, barbaric war and all-out confrontations between the imperialisms in the region, taking advantage of the increasingly conspicuous decline of US leadership:

"The Middle East is a terrible confirmation of our analyses about the impasse of the system and the flight into the 'every man for himself':
 - the region has become an enormous powder keg and arms purchases have multiplied in recent years (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman);
 - flocks of vultures of first, second and third-rate order confront each other in the region (…);
 - in this context, we should point to the destabilising role of Russia in the Middle East (since it wants to maintain its last points of support in the region) and China (which has a more offensive attitude in support of Iran, which is a crucial provider of oil (...)).
It is an explosive situation which is escaping the control of the big imperialisms; and the withdrawal of western forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will further accentuate this destabilisation, even if the United States has made attempts to limit the damage (...). Globally, however, throughout the ‘Arab Spring’, the US has shown its incapacity to protect regimes favourable to it (which has led to a loss of confidence, e.g. the attitude of Saudi Arabia which has distanced itself from the US) and it is becoming increasingly unpopular.

This multiplication of imperialist tensions can lead to major consequences at any moment: countries such as Israel or Iran could provoke terrible shocks and pull the entire region into turmoil because it's under no-one's control. We are thus in an extremely dangerous and unpredictable situation for the region, but also, because of the consequences that can arise from it, for the entire planet.)
 (Report on Imperialist Tensions, 20th Congress of the ICC, International Review 152, 2013).

This report also highlighted that these events were leading to growing instability in many states across the region with the spread of reactionary and barbaric ideologies and an endless series of massacres which caused floods of refugees in the region and towards Europe: "Since 1991, with the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf war, the Sunni front put in place by the west to contain Iran has collapsed. The explosion of ‘every man for himself’ in the region has been breathtaking and Iran has been the main beneficiary from the two Gulf wars, with the strengthening of Hezbollah and some Shi'ite movements; as for the Kurds, their quasi-independence has been the collateral effect of the invasion of Iraq. The tendency towards each for themselves is again sharpened in the extension of the social movements of the ‘Arab Spring’, in particular where the proletariat is weakest, and this has led to the more and more marked destabilisation of numerous states in the region (...):

The aggravation of tensions between adverse factions is mixed up with diverse religious tensions. Thus, outside of Sunni/Shi'ite or Christian/Muslim opposition, oppositions within the Sunni world are also increasing with the coming to power in Turkey of the moderate Islamist Erdogan or recently the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Tunisia (Ennahda) and within the Moroccan government, supported today by Qatar, which opposes the Salafist/Wahhabi movement financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), which supported Mubarak and Ben Ali respectively (…).

But, in particular, this explosion of antagonisms and religious factionalism since the end of the 80s and the collapse of ‘modernising’, ‘socialist’ regimes (Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq...) above all expresses the weight of decomposition, of chaos and misery, the total absence of any perspective through a descent into totally reactionary and barbaric ideologies” (Ibid.)

These orientations highlighted in the report would tragically be confirmed in the following years.

2. From Syria to Yemen: the intensification of conflicts and the unpredictability of alliances

The major consequences of the US withdrawal from Iraq and the civil war in Syria for the exacerbation of imperialist tensions in the Middle East are clearly highlighted in the Resolution on the international situation of the 23rd International Congress of the ICC (2019): "The Middle East, where the weakening of American leadership is most evident and where the Americans’ inability to engage too directly on the military level in Syria has left the field open to other imperialisms, offers a concentration of these historical tendencies:

 - Russia has imposed itself as an essential power in the Syrian theatre thanks to its military force, in particular to preserve its naval bases in Tartus;

 - Iran, through its military victory to save its ally, the Assad regime, and by forging an Iraqi-Syrian land corridor directly linking Iran to the Mediterranean and the Lebanese Hezbollah, is the main beneficiary and has fulfilled its objective of taking the lead in this region (...).
 - Turkey, obsessed by the fear of the establishment of autonomous Kurdish zones that can only destabilise it, is operating militarily in Syria.” (International Review 164)

Since 2011, the evolution of the situation in the region is effectively characterised by a significant extension of 'every man for himself' and an explosion of instability: the interminable civil war in Syria, the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, the civil wars in Yemen and Libya, the regular flare-ups between the USA and Iran, the 'Kurdish question' which pushes Turkey to intervene continually in Iraq or Syria and the eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict have all sharpened the appetites of an army of first, second or third order vultures, which confront each other in the region in the framework of often fluctuating alliances. The United States, Russia and China are of course at the forefront, but other gangsters are prepared to join in the fray too, such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and of course Israel bombing Hamas in Gaza, or Iran and its allies in Lebanon and Syria, and this is not to mention the militias and armed gangs in the service of these powers or the local warlords acting on their own behalf.

Russia consolidates its position in the region
In the Middle East, the demise of the "world policeman" has primarily benefited Russian imperialism, which has managed to establish itself as the dominant power in the Syrian conflict by rescuing Assad's regime. Thus it first of all secured its foothold in the region (in particular its naval base in Tartus) and tried to accentuate the divisions between Turkey and NATO. To underline its weight in the region, Russia has also organised joint naval manoeuvres with Iran and China, which imports oil from Iran and has supported the action of Russia and Iran in the region. It then tried to consolidate this position by establishing a strategic alliance with Iran and Turkey (Sochi Conference in February 2019), since it has an interest in promoting the current status quo, supported by China, which is also keen to stabilise the situation. Although China does not yet have the means to compete directly with the main sharks in this part of the world, it is nevertheless trying to act and defend in an underhanded way its own imperialist ambitions[1]. Turkey's ambiguous relations with both the US (and NATO) and also with Russia offers opportunities for Chinese imperialism (see below on Turkey's position).

Iran extends its domination from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea
Iran is a second major beneficiary of the weakening of the US presence in the Middle East: the dominant position of the Shi’ite fractions in Iraq has enabled it to considerably strengthen its hold on this country. The intervention on the ground of the Al-Quds force as well as the presence on the front lines of Hezbollah fighters and Iraqi Shi’ite militias have changed the balance of power in Syria and are in fact leading the Assad regime towards victory. Also, Iran controls a large part of Lebanon through its Hezbollah allies, which means that it dominates large territories from the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and has thus achieved a dominant imperialist position in the region.
However, its ambition to become a nuclear power has led it into a greater confrontation with the US. Moreover, both its nuclear objectives and its progress on the ground (Lebanon, Syria) collide head-on with Israel's interests, while support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen exacerbates tensions with Saudi Arabia. Originally, the state of the Ayatollahs was linked to India by a series of trade agreements (oil in exchange for Indian investment in the Iranian port of Chabahar), but the US embargo led to a 40% reduction in India's Iranian oil imports (see Le Monde Diplomatique, Sept. 2019), which has led India to turn to Saudi Arabia for its oil. As a result, Iran has now tended to move closer to Pakistan and thus to align itself with the China-Pakistan economic corridor.
For the Iranian theocratic state, there is fundamentally no other perspective than a policy of systematic search for conflict, since this alone allows the regime to mobilise the population and to get them to accept terrifying economic and social pressures: "For Tehran, the perpetuation of tension makes it possible to consolidate the domination of the hard-line wing of the regime, whose backbone comprises the military-economic complex of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran ('guardians')" (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2020, p.1 ). Hence the regular provocations, such as the recent boarding of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, the bombing of oil installations in Saudi Arabia or the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad (even if in the latter case it underestimated the symbolic impact of the attack on a US embassy, after the occupation of that in Tehran in 1979 and Benghazi in 2012). In short, Iran will not change its behaviour, even if it can calm things when the situation of 'asymmetrical warfare' becomes too explosive. It thus remains a powerful vector of destabilisation in the region.

Turkey: a complex game of alliances
Turkey's geographical position, occupying a key place in the region, is both critical in the evolution of future conflicts and also poses a threat to the very stability of the country, as any emergence of the seeds of a Kurdish state or independent entity is a nightmare for Ankara. Moreover, Turkey has important imperialist ambitions in the region, not only in Syria or Iraq, but also towards all the Muslim countries, from Libya to Qatar, from Turkmenistan to Egypt. Restricted in its imperialist ambitions at the time of the opposition between the Russian and US blocs, it is now playing its own imperialist card to the full: once one of the pillars of NATO, its status as a member of the Alliance has become largely 'unsettled', firstly because of its strained relations with the US and other Western European NATO members, secondly because of tensions with the European Union over refugees, and thirdly because of the conflicted relations with Greece. Also, it is trying to play a game of blackmail between the imperialist powers by getting closer in recent years to Russia and even Iran, which are a major imperialist competitors in the Middle East theatre.
Turkey had found itself in a difficult situation in the civil war in Syria, as the US was dependant on its Kurdish enemies in the fight against ISIS. In fact, the US believed that the Kurds were the most reliable cannon fodder in Iraq or Syria and, moreover, it distrusted the Turks who tolerated and exploited the actions of various jihadist groups in the areas they controlled, as illustrated by the fact that the "Caliph" of ISIS, El-Baghdadi, had taken refuge in an area under Turkish control. The rapprochement with Russia was also a form of blackmail against the US. Now, the Americans have withdrawn their support for the Kurds, allowing the Turks to launch an offensive against the Kurdish militias and drive them out of certain areas along the Syrian-Turkish border, with the consent of the Russians. As a result, the Sunni militias allied to the Turks and the Turkish army itself have increasingly come into confrontation, particularly in the Idlib pocket, with the Alawite Syrian government troops and the Iranian and Lebanese Shiite militias supported by the Russians.
Within the Sunni “community”, Turkey also opposes Saudi Arabia in its conflict with Qatar, and in Egypt, where Turkey (and Qatar) support the Muslim Brotherhood while Saudi Arabia supports and finances Sissi's military regime. Similarly, in the civil war in Libya, the former supports the government of Tripoli while the latter supports the army of the rebel leader Marshal Haftar. In conclusion, confrontations between the imperialist brigands are developing in all directions, and the instability of imperialist relations means predicting where tensions will break out next is difficult.

What Le Monde Diplomatique concludes about Russian-Turkish relations is fully valid for all the protagonists in the region: "More generally, the very concept of alliance or partnership, which would induce a certain number of reciprocal political duties and constraints, does not make it possible to grasp the essentially pragmatic nature of the Russian-Turkish relationship. One should not confuse ideological, political and economic cooperation made necessary by the geopolitical context with a strategic rapprochement in a bloc logic, nor should one forget the constant reassessment of its interests by each country" (LMD, October 2019, p.17)

3. From Bush to Trump: the Middle East is central to the tensions within the US bourgeoisie and to its decline in leadership

The development of the war and the occupation of Iraq underlined the decline of US leadership. It also highlighted strong tensions inside the US bourgeoisie on how to maintain its global supremacy. The coming to power of populist president, Donald Trump, would accentuate these tensions and bring out more clearly the role of the US as a major vector of destabilisation in the Middle East (and, to varying degrees, in other parts of the world).
An overview of the confrontations in the Middle East over the past 30 years shows the marked tensions unfolding within the US bourgeoisie on how to maintain US global supremacy in a world where the blocs had disappeared: on the one hand there were those advocating a "multilateral" approach based on mobilising a broad "coalition of allies" around the US to control the situation, as Bush senior did in 1991 and Obama tried to do again during his presidency (e.g. the Iranian nuclear treaty) but with increasingly mixed success; on the other hand, faced with of the rise of  "every man for himself", there were those advocating the "unilateral" approach, where the United States takes on the singular role of the world's sheriff. This approach was taken by Bush Junior after the attacks of 11 September 2001, but led to the bitter failure of the Iraqi adventure.
When Trump came to power, the various factions within the American bourgeoisie sought to “direct”  the populist president, whether it was the proponents of "multilateralism" like Secretary of State Tillerson and Defence Secretary Mattis, or the supporters of "unilateralism" like John Bolton. Instead, in accord with the decisions of the unpredictable populist president, an "America First" type policy at the imperialist level was adopted. This orientation is in fact the official recognition of the failure of US imperialist policy over the past 25 years:

"The Trump administration's formalisation of the principle of defending only their interests as a national state and the imposition of profitable power relations as the main basis for relations with other states, confirms and draws implications from the failure of the policy of the last 25 years of fighting against ‘every man for himself’ as a world policeman in defence of the world order inherited from 1945. (...)" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 23rd ICC International Congress, in International Review 164, point 13).
A common principle, aimed at overcoming the chaos in international relations, is summarised in the following Latin phrase: "pacta sunt servanda" – treaties, the agreements must be respected. If someone signs a global - or multilateral - agreement, they are supposed to respect it, at least in appearance. But the United States, under Trump, abolished this concept: "I can sign a treaty, but I can also abolish it tomorrow if it is in the interest of the United States". This was reflected in the termination of the Transpacific Pact (TPP), the free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and the Paris Treaty on Climate Change. The same is true in the Middle East with the cancellation of the nuclear treaty with Iran or the UN resolutions with regard to Israel and Palestine. According to Trump, the US will impose "bilateral" agreements on other countries, through economic, political and military blackmail,  that will serve their interests.
"Despite Trump's populism, despite disagreements within the American bourgeoisie on how to defend its leadership and divisions especially regarding Russia, the Trump administration adopts an imperialist policy in continuity and consistency with the fundamental imperialist interests of the American state..." (ibid). However, this policy, only exacerbates tensions within the US bourgeoisie, as is illustrated by the following two emblematic cases:

- the possible rapprochement with Russia:
The Trump faction has identified the profound change in geostrategic conditions which required a rethinking of relations with Russia: ("... the instability of power relations between powers gives the Russian Eurasian state-continent a new strategic importance in view of the place it can occupy in the containment of China") and is in favour of better relations with the Kremlin. On the other hand, "...the remaining American institutions [retain] great hostility towards Russia. This is notably the case with the American intelligence agencies which have demonstrated Russian interference but were publicly disavowed by the President during his meeting with V. Putin in Helsinki in July 2018. In line with Congress, most Republicans have maintained their traditional hostility towards Russia - which dates back to the Cold War - and are supported by the Democrats, who are increasingly anti-Russian because of Putin's anti-democratic stance". (Diplomacy, Major Topics No. 50, p50)[2].

- negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan:
Trump had gambled - and failed - to reach a quick agreement with the Taliban to achieve the US withdrawal by conceding "to the demands of the Taliban, despite the lack of guarantees for combatting the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. These negotiations established the Taliban as credible interlocutors for all countries in the region and beyond, which was a major objective of the insurgency. Moreover, as the entire process was conducted without the Kabul regime's involvement, the legal government had no say in the future of Afghanistan. But then, after paying the price of political recognition of the Taliban and alienating the Afghan government, President Trump cancelled the planned meeting with them at Camp David and declared (...) the negotiations dead. The precise reason for this last-minute about-face is not known, including by U.S. diplomats" (Le Monde 24/10/19).

Trump's policy of "unilateral" withdrawal from Afghanistan in defiance of the allies and the government in power has also aroused strong opposition within the diplomatic corps, the secret service and certain political factions of the American bourgeoisie: "The fact that Trump secretly planned a personal meeting with a murderous group classified by the United States as terrorists a few days before the eighteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which the group participated, would have raised a few eyebrows in Washington. A diplomatic way of expressing shock and horror," The Guardian Commentary (International Newsletter, 11/09/19).

Trump's policy will have two major consequences, which are clearly visible in the Middle East:
(a) it confirms the continued decline of US leadership.
This "bilateral" policy tends to undermine the reliability of the US as an ally: Trump's ranting, bluffing and abrupt changes of position - threatening Iran with military reprisals on the one hand and cancelling military strikes at the last moment on the other, or making use of the Kurdish militias only to abandon them later - not only undermines the credibility of the US but leads to the fact that fewer and fewer countries trust it.
Furthermore, Trump's unpredictable decisions and gambling with the future have the effect of undermining the basis of previous political strategies of the US administrations in the Middle East: by denouncing the nuclear agreement with Iran, the US is not only leaving the field open to China and Russia, but is opposing its EU "allies", even Great Britain. Its seemingly paradoxical alliance with the only countries prepared to support it in confronting Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia, can only lead to a growing rapprochement between Turkey, Russia and Iran.
Finally, in Iraq, the US has progressively lost the support of the Sunnis (after the fall of Saddam), the Kurds (after having abandoned them to their fate in Syria) and recently the Shi’ite militias (after the "elimination" of their leaders and Soleimani), which actually endangers the American forces retained in Iraq and can only increase distrust by Turkey, which Trump has threatened with economic and military pressure.
Therefore, this "Trump" strategy remains controversial, firstly because its results are far from being evident and it tends to accentuate the chaos and the loss of US control over the situation; and secondly because the interests of local imperialisms on which Trump claims to base his policy in the region, namely Israel or Saudi Arabia, will not necessarily always correspond with those of the US.
(b) it makes the US's "world policeman" a major factor of destabilisation and chaos.
In line with his promise to bring "the boys" home, Trump fears more than anything that he will be dragged into a military operation with "boots on the ground". That is why he is anxious to accelerate the withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan. On the other hand, in order to maintain the interests of US imperialism, he fully exploits the assets in which the US has an overwhelming superiority:

• economic pressure, like the economic blackmail against Turkey or the economic sanctions against Iran;
• technological warfare to take advantage of the overwhelming superiority of the US in this field. The knock-out operations against Al-Baghdadi in northern Syria and the drone operations against Iranian General Soleimani near Baghdad airport, in an area under the control of pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, demonstrate an unparalleled ability of the US to strike when and where it wants with terrifying precision.

Moreover, as mentioned above, the US strategy aims to rely on two of the most important military powers in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who they arm to the teeth and over whom they have close control, in carrying out the policy of containment of Iran. However, here too, Trump's unpredictable decisions are often contested not only within the political apparatus of the US bourgeoisie but even within the military hierarchy (e.g. the resignation of Defence Minister J. Mattis). Thus, several announcements of troop withdrawals from Syria or Iraq have been ignored or circumvented by Pentagon strategists. Similarly, the Pentagon and the intelligence services have expressed an adverse opinion regarding the drone attack on Qasem Soleimani.

US policy can therefore only lead to an increase in imperialist tensions and further destabilisation of the situation in the region. Moreover, the vandal-like behaviour of Trump, who can renounce US international commitments overnight in defiance of the established rules, represents a new and powerful factor of uncertainty and development of every man for himself. "It is a further indication of the new stage in which capitalism in sinking into the barbarism and the abyss of untrammelled militarism" (Resolution on the International Situation from the 23rd ICC International Congress, in International Review 164, point 13)

4. Growing barbarism and chaos in the region
The spread of conflicts and wars is leading to a dramatic expanse of chaos, barbarism and despair in the Middle East. This takes on several characteristics.

The destabilisation of many states in the region and the proliferation of terrorist groups
Entire parts of the Middle East, including whole states, are sliding into instability and chaos. This is clearly the case of countries such as Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and "liberated Kurdistan" or the Palestinian territories that are sinking into the horror of civil war or even into outright gang warfare. And in other countries, such as Egypt, Jordan (where the Muslim Brotherhood opposes King Abdullah II), Bahrain and even Iran or Turkey, social tensions and opposition between bourgeois factions make the situation unpredictable.
The exacerbation of tensions between opposing factions equally divides the various religious tendencies. Thus, in addition to the Sunni/Shi’ite or Christian/Muslim opposition, oppositions within the Sunni world have also multiplied with the coming to power in Turkey of the moderate Islamist Erdogan supporting the Muslim and associated Brotherhood in Egypt and in Tunisia (Ennahda) as well as the official Libyan government. The Muslim Brotherhood is also supported by Qatar and these factions oppose the Salafist/Wahhabi movement, financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which in turn supports the military regime of Sissi in Egypt or rebel leader General Haftar in Libya. In southern Iraq, Iraqi Shiites are increasingly opposed to the Iranian Shi’ite tutelage.
The increasingly bloody military confrontations and the destabilisation of various states have led to the emergence of numerous terrorist organisations, such as Al-Qaida, Islamic State (ISIS), the Al-Nusra Front, Hezbollah and various other Salafist groups, which are financed and used by various regional imperialisms (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, Turkey and Iran) and which sow terror and desolation not only in the region but also strike directly at Europe through terrorist attacks (Madrid, Paris, London, Brussels, ...). Of course, these religious tendencies, each one more barbaric than the next, are only there to hide the imperialist interests that govern the policies of the various ruling cliques. More than ever today, with the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, it is obvious that there is no "Muslim bloc" or "Arab bloc", but different bourgeois cliques defending their own imperialist interests by exploiting religious tensions (Christians, Jews, Muslims...). This is also apparent in the struggle between countries such as Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia or Qatar for control of mosques "abroad", particularly in Europe.

Impotent popular revolts crushed in blood
From the end of 2010 to the end of 2012, a series of popular protests engulfed many countries in the Arab world. People protested both against poverty and unemployment and against the tyranny and corruption of authoritarian governments that had been in power for decades. This movement, which began in Tunisia, later spread to other countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Syria. However, all of these social movements were either hijacked to benefit a bourgeois faction fighting against others, or crushed in blood.

“The fact that the manifestation of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Syria has resulted not in the least gain for the exploited and oppressed masses but in a war which has left over 100,000 dead is a sinister illustration of the weakness of the working class in this country – the only force which can form a barrier to the barbaric warfare. And this situation also applies, even if in less tragic forms, to the other Arab countries where the fall of the old dictators has resulted in the seizure of power by the most backward sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Islamists in Egypt or Turkey, or in utter chaos, as in Libya". (Resolution on the International Situation, pt 7, 20th International Congress of the ICC, International Review 152, 2013)
A new wave of social revolts would break out in 2019 in those populations subjected to the dramatic consequences and traumatic experience of endless imperialist wars. In Iran, popular protest exploded once more with the rise in fuel prices in the autumn of 2019; in the autumn of 2019 and the winter of 2020, Iraqi Shi’ites rose up against corruption and to Iran's stranglehold on the country (around 500 were left dead and more than 20,000 wounded); in Lebanon the social revolt is spreading through the movements of the retired (especially ex-members of the army), civil servants and the youth, creating a broad movement, the "Hirak" ("movement") which has been occupying the streets since October 2019 in the face of economic collapse and the bankruptcy and impoverishment linked to the consequences of war and the corruption of the ruling cliques. Yet again, all these movements are successfully sidelined or crushed in blood, underlining the impotence of the population in the absence of a proletarian world perspective. These popular revolts against poverty, exploitation, violence and corruption express the desperate and hopeless rejection of imperialist barbarism by millions of people, victims of the region's plunge into bloody chaos. By accentuating the instability and potentially worsening the chaos, these revolts also affect the ability of the various imperialisms to achieve their objectives or to maintain their "established" positions.

The "displaced" and the refugees: the despair of whole populations
The continual barbarism of war means the number of dead continues to rise. In Syria, for example, it is estimated that 580,000 people will die between 2013 and early 2020, with the systematic destruction of homes or entire cities (such as Aleppo and Idlib in Syria or Mosul in Iraq) and the repeated bombing of hospitals under the pretext that they are serving as refuges for rebel forces. Not to mention the countless victims, now generally overlooked, of the food shortages that have plagued the disaster areas since 2013. In the current phase of capitalist decomposition this situation can only deteriorate further with the deportation or mass exodus of populations fleeing the war zones and surviving in the ruins of razed cities or crammed into insanitary camps or shanty towns. In the Middle East, this takes on cataclysmic proportions: more than 6 million Syrians have fled abroad, and there are more than 6 million internally "displaced persons", totalling about half of the country's population. And the situation is similar in the other countries of the region: there are 300,000 Iraqi refugees and more than 2.6 million internally displaced persons, 2.5 million Afghans, mainly refugees in neighbouring countries, 280,000 Yemeni refugees, with 2.1 million internally displaced persons, 500,000 Libyan internally displaced persons, more than 3 million Palestinian refugees and 2 million "internal" refugees.
Masses of poor victims flock to the richest states, desperately seeking a place of asylum, especially in Europe. Yet Europe has no real solution to the influx of migrants other than to seek at all costs to intercept them, to incarcerate them, to flatly reject them and send them back to die or to otherwise erect walls and barbed wire. The European governments constantly spread fear of the foreigner, even severely punishing those who reach out to migrants and try to help them.

Moreover, the cynicism of the European states has no limits. Turkey, in return for economic and financial aid from the EU, is made responsible for blocking the passage of migrants to Greece and placing them in refugee camps in inhuman conditions (currently almost three million refugees). Behind this agreement there has been a real bartering of human lives, with a 'drip-drip' processing of those who will be able to join a European country and those, the vast majority, who will remain in the camps.

5. The illusion of stabilising the region

The "victory" over ISIS, which materialised in the capture of Mosul, Rakka, Deir-Ez-Zor, the imprisonment and dispersal of the last jihadist fighters, as well as the "victory" of the Assad regime in the civil war in Syria, could have implied a stabilisation of positions and a reduction in confrontations. As the resolution of the 23rd International Congress points out, today the opposite is true: "The military ‘victories’ in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and the retention of Assad in power offer no prospect of stabilisation. In Iraq, the military defeat of the Islamic State did not eliminate the resentment of the former Sunni fraction around Saddam Hussein that gave birth to it: the exercise of power for the first time by Shi’ites only fuels it. In Syria, the regime's military victory does not mean the stabilisation or pacification of the shared Syrian space which is subjected to intervention of different imperialism with competing interests." (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164).

Victories as the precursors of new confrontations
The Islamic State was defeated by US planes and drones, but the "boots on the ground" were the Kurdish militias and Shi’ite legions trained by Iran. The 'betrayal' of the Kurds by Trump and the 'elimination' of the principal leader of the Shiite militias at the same time as General Soleimani, head of the 'Guardians of the Revolution', by a US drone shatters this circumstantial alliance and can only lead to further tensions:

• the confrontations between Kurdish militias and the Turkish army in Syria, between Kurdish units and the Iraqi army and pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias in Kirkuk, Iraq, are heralding new bloody battles in the region.
• the cessation of military collaboration has allowed the remnants of the ISIS forces to regroup in the desert at the Syrian-Iraqi border (Anbar province) or in the mountains around Kirkuk, which is already leading to a further intensification of ISIS guerrilla actions in Syria and Iraq.

The defeat of ISIS has thus in no way reduced the instability and chaos. All the more so since the various imperialists do not hesitate to provoke confrontation.
This is also true with regard to Syria. "Russia and Iran are deeply divided over the future of the Syrian state and the presence of their military on its territory." (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). Russia and Iran do not have the same vision for the future of the Syrian state and a possible redirection of forces against Israel. Behind the scenes, Russia is trying to set up a project for rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus, but this looks difficult with the current ruling faction: Assad has described Erdogan as a "land grabber" and has reiterated "his total rejection of any occupation of Syrian lands by anyone under any pretext". His aim is to eventually restore his government's control over the whole of Syria; but to legitimise Syrian power on the international scene and also to begin the material reconstruction of the country (at least of certain vital infrastructures) he would require funds that his Russian and Iranian sponsors are not really in a position to provide. Moscow has resigned itself to the reintegration of Damascus into the "Arab family" (see "Syria: a muffled return to the Arab family", in Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2020). As a result, Syria is beginning to make appeals to Arab countries, particularly at this time to the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, but this line of action can only fuel tensions with the Iranian godfather and exacerbate the factional struggle within the regime itself

There are some subtle indications of the growth of tensions with Iran: there is, for example, 'The distribution through the offices of Ayatollah Khamenei, the regime's 'Supreme leader' since 1989, of a poster representing a common prayer on the esplanade of the Jerusalem Mosques, the third holy place of Islam. (…). The place of honour of this virtual ceremony goes to Hassan Nasrallah, recognisable by the black turban of the alleged descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. Since 1992, he has been the leader of Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian ‘party of God’ in Lebanon, which recognises Khamenei as both a political and spiritual authority. On the other hand, Bashar al-Assad, (...), appears only in the third row on the left. This protocolary demotion has caused turmoil within the Syrian dictatorship, which has owed its survival since 2011 to the engagement on the ground of Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias, led by the Revolutionary Guards. Indeed, Assad has never ceased to present himself as the spearhead of the 'resistance' to Israel, thus discrediting the Syrian opposition as a 'Zionist plot’. Seeing the man who is officially the 'President of the Syrian Arab Republic' relegated behind militia leaders raises questions about the strength of Iranian support for his regime.
Such humiliation comes at a time when the Assad family is openly involved in settling scores. These leadership disputes are themselves amplified by the unprecedented criticism being voiced in Moscow against the Syrian dictatorship and its inability to emerge from a pure war rationale. Although very dependent on Russia at the military level, the Assad regime is even more dependent on Iran, whose representatives have claims to extra-territorial privileges in Syria". (Le Monde, 31.05.20).

The policies of Trump and his cronies in the region can only add fuel to the fire... 
The withdrawal of the vast majority of US troops from the region in no way means an end to all American interference in the Middle East: " ...the United States and the West cannot give up their ambitions in this strategic area of the world" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). The main objective of Trump's policy is imposing constant pressure on Iran, aimed at destabilising and overthrowing the Ayatollah-led regime by playing on its internal divisions.
To this end, in addition to economic blackmail and knock-out actions against that country, Trump is pursuing a policy of unconditional support for Saudi Arabia and Israel, in which the US provides each of these states and their respective leaders with unfailing support on all levels (with the supply of state-of-the-art military equipment; the support from Trump for Saudi Arabia as regards the brutal assassination of the regime's opponent Jamal Khashoggi; Trump's recognition of East Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights) in order to cement their alliance. In this way these states are caught in a trap, being tied to unconditional support for US policy with measures that isolate them from the rest of the world.

Prioritising Iran's containment also means the abandoning of the Oslo Accords, of the "two-state" solution (Israeli and Palestinian) in the "Holy Land". American aid to the Palestinians and the PLO has been terminated and there is the proposal for a "big deal" on the Palestinian question (the abandonment of any Palestinian claim to the creation of a Palestinian state and the annexation by Israel of large parts of Palestine in exchange for "giant" American economic aid). This is aimed in particular at facilitating the de facto rapprochement between the Saudis and Israel: "Israel is no longer the enemy of the Gulf monarchies. This great alliance began to take place long ago behind the scenes, but has not yet been played out. The only way for the Americans to advance in the desired direction is to obtain the green light from the Arab world, or rather from its new leaders, MBZ (The Emirates) and MBS (Saudi Arabia), who share the same strategic vision for the Gulf, for whom Iran and political Islam are the main threats. In this vision, Israel is no longer an enemy, but a potential regional partner with whom it will be easier to counter Iranian expansion in the region. (...) For Israel, which has been seeking to normalise its relations with the Sunni Arab countries for years, the equation is simple: it is a matter of seeking an Arab-Israeli peace, without necessarily obtaining peace with the Palestinians. The Gulf countries, for their part, have lowered their demands on the Palestinian question. This ‘ultimate plan’ (...) seems to aim to establish a new reality in the Middle East. A reality based on the Palestinians accepting their defeat, in exchange for a few billion dollars, and where Israelis and Arab countries, mainly from the Gulf, could finally form a new alliance, supported by the United States, to counter the threat of the expansion of a modern Persian empire." (L'Orient-Le Jour, Beirut, 18.06.19)

However, this plan, which is a pure provocation at the international level (it abandons the international agreements) as well as at the regional level, can only re-ignite fury over the Palestinian question, directed by all the regional imperialisms (Iran of course, but also Turkey and even Egypt), directed at the United States and its allies. Moreover, it can only embolden its Israeli and Saudi supporters in their own desire for confrontation. Thus, the tensions between these Trump cronies and the other imperialisms of the region are becoming more acute: "Neither Israel, hostile to the strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, nor Saudi Arabia can tolerate this Iranian advance" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164):

- Israel bombs Hezbollah or the Iranian Al Quds Brigade facilities in Lebanon, Syria and even Iraq on a regular basis and is always ready to attack Iranian nuclear power plants. Thus, during the month of July, 'mysterious' explosions destroyed various sites linked to the Iranian nuclear programme, including a plant in Natanz building centrifuges, causing a significant delay to this programme: "These attacks represent a new escalation in the indirect confrontation between Iran and Israel which gives rise to fears of a regional explosion. (...). These outbreaks of violence demonstrate Israel's fierce determination to counter Iran's expansionist agenda in much of the Middle East." (New York Times 28.08.19). In addition, disputes with Turkey have also increased over the Palestinian question, as well as over plans to drill for Turkish oil off the coast of Libya.

- Saudi Arabia faces Iran in Iraq and Syria, but also in Yemen, where the presence of Iranian-backed Houthi troops on the ground also arouses the displeasure of the Sultanate of Oman. Its confrontation with Turkey is just as strong: "(...)  In July 2013, this opposition [between the Ankara-Doha axis and the Riyadh-Abou Dhabi axis]was already perceptible in the Egyptian theatre on the occasion of the coup d'état against President Mohamed Morsi, (...)" (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2020, p.13) and it extends to many conflicts, such as in Syria, Sudan and even more acutely today in Libya.

As for the regime of the Ayatollahs, while it is put under strong pressure by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States, by the social tensions within Iranian society itself, suffering from poverty and shortages of vital goods, the result of 40 years of war economy, and by the increasingly explicit opposition of the Shi’ite population of Iraq against Iranian 'colonialism,' its only choice is to rush headlong into confrontations. It is this deterioration of the situation that would have pushed Soleimani to orchestrate increasingly stronger provocations against the United States: "Soleimani's plan (...) aimed to provoke a military response in order to deflect the rising anger against the United States" (“Inside the Iranian plan devised by Soleimani to attack US forces in Iraq”, Reuters, January 4, 2020). The objective was above all to strengthen the sacred union against the "Satans": "Certainly, Iran has lost in the person of Soleimani a military leader of great prestige and valuable experience. But his funeral, organised on a larger scale than that of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini in 1989, was the occasion of an enormous campaign to exalt Iranian nationalism. The leaders of the regime's internal opposition, and even the partisans of the monarchy which fell in 1979, joined in this sacred union" (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2020, p. 11).

Turkey's imperialist manoeuvres
The USA is using economic pressure against Turkish President Erdogan that is having an impact on the Turkish economy and the growing social discontent in the country; this has led to a sharp decline in the popularity of AKP (the government party) in the local elections, especially in the big cities. At the imperialist level, Erdogan sees his regional rivals making gains, Iran in Syria, Saudi Arabia in Egypt.

However, "(...) Turkey cannot accept the excessive regional ambitions of its two rivals" (Resolution on the International Situation, 23rd International Congress of the ICC, International Review 164). This situation pushes him to radicalise his rhetoric with regard to Europe, the Kurds, Egypt and Palestine in order to rally the population behind him and his nationalist message. At the same time, Turkey is intervening more and more actively in the regional conflict by sending in its troops. In Syria, the Sunni groups supported by Turkey are increasingly losing ground in the province of Idlib, which is likely to bring a new wave of refugees (1 million refugees are likely to head for Turkey, which already has 3 million). By sending its troops into the Idlib pocket, Ankara may come into serious confrontations with Syrian government troops, Kurdish militias and even Russian forces. In this context, Turkey is trying to improve relations with Europe and NATO, but finds itself confronted with the unpredictable policy of Trump, who first gave his approval to an operation against the Kurds and then, faced with  disagreements inside his own administration and an outcry among the allies, ordered it to limit the operation with threats to destroy its economy if Turkey did not comply.
After the failure of the Moscow conference on Libya, Erdogan also sent troops to "save" the government in Tripoli (which has the recognition of the EU), and was threatened by the advancing troops of rebel leader, Marshal Haftar, who is supported not only by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also by Russia (and France!), in return for drilling rights off the Libyan coast, which has provoked an outcry from Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. The latter, moreover, has now decided in turn to send troops to Libya.

Turkey's imperialist ambitions are even stiffening opposition within NATO and the EU: the Turkish navy prevented a Greek ship of the European control force in the Mediterranean from examining the cargo (probably Turkish arms) of a ship en route to the Libyan port of Misratah.
Hence it is clear that Ankara's policy is a major contributor to the spread of militarism and chaos and a major factor in extending instability and conflict to a region that stretches from the Sahel to Afghanistan. In short, the idea of stabilising the region, curbing imperialist ambitions across the board is a pure figment of the imagination and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, which is hitting the region hard, will only add fuel to the war, barbarism and chaos. Primarily, "(...) if militarism, imperialism, and war are identified to such an extent with the period of decadence, it is because the latter corresponds to the fact that capitalist relations of production have become a barrier to the development of the productive forces: the perfectly irrational nature, on the global economic level, of military spending and war only expresses the aberration of these production relations' continued existence" (“Orientation Text: Militarism and Decomposition”, International Review 64).

In this context, the last 30 years of the dramatic history of the Middle East fully reveals the devastating impact on the region of the growing tendency to putrefaction and disintegration of capitalism:

• first of all, the war there manifests itself more than ever as a totally irrational process, from which no country derives any economic benefit; on the contrary, it has become an almost permanent cancer that has been ravaging all the countries of the region for decades, with no light on the horizon; no clear victor can emerge from the rubble and, on the contrary, the defeated countries are quickly rearmed by other imperialist vultures to facilitate a further massacres; hence the war economy exerts an increasingly crushing weight on the whole region;
• despite its destructive bombardments and murderous military interventions, the US superpower has suffered its most resounding setbacks (Iraq, Afghanistan) and the decline of US leadership is clear to see; this has especially benefited Russia, which has made a "great comeback" among the imperialist sharks and fed the flames of the Syrian inferno in its military support for the embattled Assad;
• The number of regional sharks has mushroomed and it is more than ever 'every man for himself' that dominates the military conflicts in the Middle East. In this context, religious or ethnic divisions are continually utilised to justify the massacres, while the fundamentalist gangs that are on the increase terrorise the frightened populations;
• with the weakness of the working class in the region, desperate popular revolts get buried in blood while hundreds of thousands of helpless refugees are crammed into unsanitary refugee camps.

This apocalyptic description of the situation in the Middle East foreshadows what awaits us if we allow the decay of the capitalist mode of production to spread further. The growth of imperialist tensions can have major consequences at any time: in addition to the confrontations between major imperialisms, such as the US, China or Russia, countries like Israel or Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia can cause terrible upheavals and drag the whole region into turmoil, without any power being able to prevent this, as they have their own imperialist agendas and are beyond any real control. The situation is therefore extremely dangerous and unpredictable not only for the region, but also, because of the consequences which may ensue, for the whole planet. The degree of imperialist chaos and barbaric warfare, beyond what could have been imagined 30 years ago, reflects the obsolescence of the capitalist system and the urgent need for its overthrow.

R. Havanese, 22.07.2020
 

Fire ravages Moria camp, already unfit for human habitation

In the night of Wednesday, September 9th, the refugee camp Moria on Lesbos burned down. Nearly 13,000 refugees, about a third of them minors, and about half of them children under the age of twelve, had to flee from the flames - now exposed to nature and left more or less to their own devices.

The refugee camp, which was designed for 2,900 camp inmates, was 'home' to about 13,000 refugees. When news of the Corona infection of some inmates spread and a quarantine was ordered by the authorities, the fire broke out shortly afterwards. The authorities accused refugees unwilling to quarantine of setting the fire.

The politicians speak of a humanitarian catastrophe, but in reality they themselves set the tinder to the fire.
 
The fact is that for years the EU has been pursuing a refugee policy of closed borders, blocking the Balkan route, confining refugees in camps, repatriating illegally apprehended refugees, deterring refugees in boats on the Mediterranean by not accepting or delaying acceptance of refugees rescued from the sea, etc.

This policy of wall-building, sealing off and deportations is not limited to the EU; it is pursued by the USA - long before Trump promised his "beautiful wall" - as well as by countless other countries.
According to official figures, 80 million people worldwide are on the run, desperately in search of a place to live and a future.

Meanwhile the permanent gigantic refugee camps of the Rohingya in Bangladesh, the Somali refugees in Kenya (Dadaab), in Sudan, in Libya, or the smaller camps e.g. at the French coast opposite England, have become an everyday reality - in addition to the countless people who have fled because of increasing political and economic chaos, as in Venezuela, or  environmental destruction and ecological disaster, and contribute to the rapid growth of the slums in the mega-cities of Africa, South America and Asia.

Refugee camps and slums in the metropolises are two faces of a spiral of destruction, wars, barbarism. In addition, the reign of terror (e.g. against Uighurs, Kurds, etc.) and pogroms in many areas make life hell for more and more people. 

Only a small part of this mass of displaced people has made it to the coasts of the Mediterranean or to the borders of the USA, where they hope to find a way to reach the industrialised countries, nearly always at the risk of their lives.

But the ruling class has closed the borders. Gone are the days when slaves were stolen from Africa and exploited without limits on plantations in the USA, gone are the days when they paid premiums for cheap labour from the Mediterranean, as in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the global economy is groaning under the economic crisis - and not just since the Corona Pandemic, when everything deteriorated dramatically once again. Today, mainly well-trained workers are selectively recruited...the rest are supposed to perish.

Capitalism can offer nothing to this army of millions of desperate people

Because the combination of various factors (war, environmental destruction, economic crisis, repression, catastrophes of all kinds) is driving more and more people to flee, and a considerable number of them will make their way towards industrial centres, the greatest possible levels of deterrence have been established. Thus the German government advisor Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative reported on 10 September on the German state radio station Deutschlandfunk: "The Greek refugee minister Notis Mitarakis says that people should stay in Moria or on Lesbos. The camp has burned down, the people have no shelter, they sit on the streets, that is the total loss of control. (...) And yet the Greek government is not demanding outside support. Why? The answer is obvious. These bad conditions are deliberate. This is a policy of deterrence.
On the island the tensions are enormous. Greek nationalists have attacked aid organisations. There are radical groups that also attack asylum seekers. (...) Getting people away quickly is in the interest of the island, in the interest of the migrants. Why are they being held there when they know (...) none of these people will be sent back to Turkey. (...) There are practically no more deportations due to the Corona restrictions. (...) This means that we have very, very many people in need of protection and very, very many irregular migrants (...) who are detained for a single reason: as a deterrent”. The closure of the Balkan route is intended to “prevent people from leaving Greece at the northern border, which only makes sense if you then say that the people in Greece should experience such bad conditions there that the influx into Greece, i.e. into the EU, stops”. An obvious consequence: unbearable conditions not only in the refugee camps, but also for the local inhabitants, some of whom then defend themselves violently against the refugees. The refugees then face barbed wire, armed state power and violence from nationalist gangs…

The same policy is also pursued off the coast of Italy, where refugees rescued from unseaworthy boats in the Mediterranean Sea are to be prevented from reaching the European mainland for as long as possible.

This deterrent tactic is, by the way, presented to potential refugees in the social media by German and other European governmental institutions in Africa and other refugee strongholds. The message is: "We will detain you as long as possible, as brutally, as inhumanely as possible like prisoners and let you die miserably in even worse refugee camps than in Africa and Asia, surrounded by barbed wires and fortifications; stay where you are, even if you have no home anymore". 

When politicians speak of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in this situation, they cover up the fact that these people are in reality a hostage of the politics of this system, which is defended by the ruling class by all means and in all countries. 

Eastern Mediterranean: The global impasse of capitalism concentrated in one region 

The eastern Mediterranean is also a focal point of capitalism's destructive tendencies: a century ago Turkey and Greece fought each other in a war that saw the first organised ethnic cleansing; now the two imperialist rivals are facing each other again over the dispute over gas and oil resources in the region. But in addition to the threat of war in the region, capitalism is also threatening the people through the economic crisis and explosions like those in Beirut, factors that will drive even more people to flee.

Ruthlessness of the rulers hidden behind fine phrases

The infamy in the attitude of the ruling class is not diminished by pretending to show a little "mercy" to the "weaker" among the refugees. It is only after certain forces from the bourgeois parties' own ranks, concerned about the loss of prestige of the Western democracies, exerted pressure, and after local administrations showed their willingness to accept a limited contingent, that France and Germany called for  400 "unaccompanied" young people to be allowed to enter. And after almost a week of delaying tactics, 1500 children and their families will be allowed to enter Germany. The remaining 10,000 from Moria will languish in Greece – not to mention the many other thousands stuck in in other refugee camps on Greek islands. The rulers hide behind their fear of the populists or the heads of state in Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands and Austria, who are unwilling to accept refugees. No country can shoulder the fate of the refugees alone – and under this pretext, they insist on a uniform European approach.

In fact, they do not want to attract a new wave of refugees like in 2015, and they do not want to allow the populists to continue their upsurge. The Greek government prefers to lock up the refugees who are now surviving in the open in newly built camps instead of allowing them to enter the mainland, from where camp inmates could then continue to flee. The rulers in the EU have diligently learned from all the textbooks on the construction of camps from Guantanamo, Siberia, special camps in the GDR or Xinjiang.  Prevent escape at all costs, deterrence by all means! Their actions are not guided by the need to protect the wretched, but by their need to hold on to power. And they defend this rule with all means, whether by building impassable borders and prison camps, or by the fine phrases of democracy and humanitarianism.  The repression of protesters in Belarus, Putin's assassination squads or the Uighur prison camps in Xinjiang are being denounced by the Europeans, but they themselves have been cooperating with these regimes for years, even if at times the cooperation - especially armament contracts - is postponed or even cancelled.

In the U.S. the Democrats and Republicans with Trump at their head condemn China's dictatorial methods, which in Hong Kong uses masked snatch squads against protesters, but Washington sends the National Guard assisted by masked snatch squads of the American police, which also kidnap protesters in camouflaged cars.  Whether Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Xi Jinping in China, Trump in the USA, etc. - they all defend their system and power mercilessly and with means that are often exactly the same.

Humanitarian solutions are eyewash – we have to get to the root of the problem!

It is futile to count on the mercy of the rulers, and it is at best a dangerous illusion to believe that the problems that capitalism confronts us with can be eradicated through humanitarian rescue operations.

 The demand "No borders, no nation" takes up a real concern, but it can only be realised through a revolutionary struggle which will abolish all states. Therefore it is not enough to show indignation about the barbaric conditions facing refugees. The first step must be to recognize where the evil comes from and then to call it by its name. Only then can we get to the root of the problem, and that means attacking capitalism and all its mechanisms.

Toubkal, 15.09.2020      

When the world is facing the trial of the Covid-19 pandemic, we in the ICC have also been through the painful experience of the passing away of our comrade Kishan on 26th March, 2020. This is a great loss for the ICC and its section in India, and we will miss him greatly. Kishan made an important contribution to the life of the ICC and was a comrade with a great fighting spirit till his last breath.

Kishan was born in 1939 in a remote village of West Bengal in India. He entered university in the 1960s,  at a time before the working class had reappeared on stage with the strike of 9 million workers in France in 1968, followed by the Hot Autumn in Italy in 1969, Polish workers’ struggles in 1970, which meant the   end of the period of counter-revolution.  The 1960s were a period of protest in the universities across the world, particularly against the Vietnam war and racism. The young people who got involved in these movements were sincere in their desire for ‘revolutionary’ change, but acted mainly on a petty bourgeois terrain with the illusion of ‘changing life immediately’. However, both before and after 1968 there were leftist organisations, i.e. bourgeois organisations, ready to recruit young people and block their interest in the positions of the working class. These were the global conditions in which Kishan was sucked into the Naxalite movement. During 1963-65 he was pursuing an MSc in physics from North Bengal University. He completed his Masters with a first-class degree.  While he was a graduate student, he became part of a young generation attracted towards the Naxalite movement. Gradually the term Naxalism became synonymous with Maoism. As a young student Kishan plunged himself into the vortex of the movement, leaving his research incomplete and being imprisoned for these activities. After eight years imprisonment he was released in 1978.  The unspeakable tortures in jail took a toll on him till the end of his life. With a narrow cell and insufficient, sometimes inedible food, Kishan contracted tuberculosis and this infection of the lungs was a constant companion till the last day of his life. During his sentence he read Marx in particular and this helped him to be open to the discussion of the marxist ideas of the communist left when he came across them. 

Kishan was one of the very few who, having been sucked into Maoism, a particularly vicious form of leftist bourgeois ideology, was able to make a full break from it and commit his life to the proletariat through attaching himself to the tradition of the communist left. Such a break inevitably required clarification through long patient work of discussion with the ICC during the 1980s and 1990s. In the year 1989 the formation of the nucleus of the ICC in India was a stimulus to this dynamic of clarification. When Kishan got in touch with the ICC he found out the real history of communist left. He was surprised when he realised through the theoretical elaboration of the ICC that Maoism is nothing but another form of bourgeois ideology, a counter-revolutionary political current. “Maoism has nothing to do with the working class’ struggle, nor its consciousness, nor its revolutionary organisations. It has nothing to do with marxism: it is neither a tendency within nor a development of the proletariat’s revolutionary theory. On the contrary, Maoism is nothing but a gross falsification of marxism; its only function is to bury every revolutionary principle, to confuse proletarian class consciousness and replace it with the most stupid and narrow-minded nationalist ideology. As a ‘theory’, Maoism is just another of those wretched forms adopted by the bourgeois in its decadent period of counter-revolution and imperialist war”[1]. The explanation of ICC about Maoism made a momentous impact on comrade Kishan. The political attitude of being able to make a full critique of his past was essential for Kishan to become a militant of a real revolutionary organisation. 

The Communist Party of India was formed in 1925, when the Communist International was already degenerating and the most important struggles of the revolutionary wave had been defeated, particularly the Russian and German revolutions. The orientation of the CP in India was to become an anti-colonial, anti-British movement, linked with many other nationalist movements. There was a heavy impact of nationalism and patriotism on the CP in India. The working class in India suffers from a lack of the tradition and continuity of the communist left. This underlines the important responsibility for the ICC in India to make the historical heritage of the communist left better known.   

By taking the path of in-depth study and continuous discussion, gradually Kishan became a militant of the ICC in India. His loyalty to the ICC and to the struggle of the international proletariat marked him as a true proletarian internationalist. He always defended the positions of the ICC with immense dedication. He was determined to participate in the ICC’s debates internationally and within our section in India through his frequent contributions. Comrade Kishan contributed his passion to the life of the ICC at many levels. He travelled across the country to find out new bookshops where the ICC’s literature could be sold. He took part in discussion circles and public meetings wherever possible. He played a notable role in increasing the number of subscribers of ICC’s literature. He participated and played a very active role in various International Congresses of the ICC as well as territorial conferences of our Indian section. His precious and well-thought-out contributions added an edge to the process of political clarification. His greatest strength was to defend our organisation from all the attacks and slanders aimed at it.

Comrade Kishan had the ability to overcome the many ups and downs of life. His firm conviction in the ICC’s politics and his optimistic attitude helped him to stand tall in the most difficult political situations. It is difficult to evaluate appropriately Kishan’s contribution to the political struggle for the emancipation of the working class in a short text of tribute. We should also add that Kishan was very hospitable and down to earth. Many comrades of ICC, whether coming from other countries or from other parts of India, experienced his generous hospitality. We express our revolutionary salute and solidarity to his family. The ICC stands by his daughter and wife with all its sympathy and solidarity.

The ICC, October 2020

 

Situated in the heights of the Caucusus between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh is a zone of intense conflict between two neighbouring states and the larger imperialist powers that support them. The barbarity and war confronted by the populations of this unstable region are not new but, for the last six months, tensions have risen and violence has become generalised. Since the end of December, fighting has already led to thousands of deaths, involving hundreds of civilian victims. The Russian president has said that there are close to 5000 victims.

The two camps have not hesitated to hit civilians by attacking enemy towns: "Sunday morning (November 1st), the separatist capital of Stepanakert (55,000 inhabitants) has been the target of intense bombardments of heavy artillery from the Azerbaijan army from around 0930. Baku (Azerbaijan's capital city) indicated that these rocket attacks were responding to those of the Armenian forces on the town (...). Azerbaijan's second-largest town, Ganja, has been ‘under fire’ from Armenian forces according to a statement on Sunday from Azerbaijan's ministery of defence"[1]. In this bloody escalation, the use of cluster bombs and particularly phosphorus against civilians amplifies the horror of the situation. The belligerents have implemented a real policy of hatred and terror. The chaos and devastation has pushed more than 90,000 people to leave their homes in order to find refuge in Armenian territory. Those remaining are condemned to live in cellars to protect themselves from artillery strikes. If the cease-fire has given them a period of respite, the bellicose announcements offer no illusions about what awaits the populations of this unstable region: still more violence, terror and chaos!

Today, the fragile cease-fire coming from the "accords" between the parties involved also supports no illusions about a "peaceful settlement" of the conflict. It is the product of a situation which can only sanction a precarious "order" and a relation of forces imposed by both Russia and Turkey. It settles nothing. On the contrary it represents another stage in the exacerbation of military tensions and feeds the chaos in this imperialist fault-line which risks reigniting the flames of war later on.

It's clear that Russia, which is posing as an arbitrator in this conflict, is aiming to turn the situation to its advantage. The conflict allows it to take a grip on the direction of the operations which had tended to escape it previously and to re-install occupation troops under cover of the protection and maintenance of the cease-fire agreement (2,000 soldiers along with a clause to renew this force of occupation every five years). It has thus been able to re-establish a permanent military control that it lost 30 years ago.

The recuperation of a major part of this territory by Azerbaijan seals the military victory and the striking supremacy of the Azeri forces. This is evident in the taking of the town of Choucha (Shushi for Armenia) leaving Armenia only a narrow corridor still linking it to the capital Stepanakert. That opens the way for the Azeri government to annexe seven districts from which it was expelled following the war of 1991-94.

Behind and on the back of the military victory of Azerbaijan, its firm supporter Turkey is strengthening its influence in the Caucusus by making a display of its aggression. This is another illustration of its new imperialist ambitions of expansion (its "New Ottoman Empire"), carving itself a place among the big gangsters of the region; this is along with its offensive in the eastern Mediterranean faced with Greece and its active role in Libya and Syria.

In fact these developments announce a more intense fight and a more direct confrontation than that already engaged in by Russia and Turkey, heightening the level of tensions and rivalry between the two protaganists. However the situation does give Turkey some supplementary assets in order to strengthen its pressure and exert a permanent blackmail within the framework of NATO. The situation is much more complex and difficult to manage on the international situation than President-elect Biden promised in his first speeches about "re-activating" NATO, which can only arouse irritation and concern within the Kremlin.

But this agreement clearly represents a striking defeat for Armenia which has totally lost the control of territory while the great majority of Armenians and their western "supporters", in particular France and the United States, have been completely marginalised and reduced to impotence, thus confirming their growing loss of influence and control.

This also opens up a crisis and a destabilisation of the Armenian government which has had to resign itself to sign the agreement under the threat of a more crushing military rout. It's also opened up a division between a Prime Minister accused of treason and other factions demanding his departure and openly trying to wind up the Armenian population to rebellion and patriotic mobilisation.

So the situation expresses no step at all to peace and stabilisation but on the contrary, a sinking into decomposition and chaotic warfare.

The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is a dismal illustration of the historic impasse into which capitalism is dragging the whole of humanity. Such chaos finds its roots in the consequences of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the 1990's: "Frontiers have been set up within the USSR, defended by armed nationalist militias. Lithuania has set up frontier posts, and its frontier guards have clashed several times with Moscow police, resulting in several deaths. The conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijani militias has not diminished in the least since the intervention of the ‘Red’ Army. Pogroms, war and repression in Baku have caused hundreds of deaths. The ‘Red’ Army has got bogged down, without being able to impose a solution on the conflict. In Georgia, recent clashes between Georgians and Ossetians are growing now that a new area of tension has opened. Ethnic conflicts are proliferating at the farthest confines of Russia."[2] The years that followed were a terrible confirmation of what we wrote in 1991. Between 1991-1994 armed confrontations between Azerbaijan and Armenia resulted in nearly 30,000 deaths and provoked an exodus of more than a million refugees. In May 1994, the attachement of the Nargono-Karabakh enclave to Armenia fed a strong feeling of revenge within the Azerbaijani state (which had lost almost a third of ex-Soviet territory). Subsequently the conflict has become what some experts describe as "frozen", but tensions and provocations increased, with numerous "incidents" on the frontier.

The military campaign undertaken by Azerbaijan to re-conquer this small, automous territory is an expression of the disintegration of the situation and its growing instability. For Russia, the historic and dominant power in the region, although it is linked to Armenia by a mutual defence pact (as is the EU and Iran), the situation is far from simple: "If Russia is maintaining a privileged relationship with Yerevan (Armemia's capital), it nevertheless has a economic partnership with Azerbaijan, including in the armements domain with its undeniably superior army compared materially to that of Armenia”.[3] Russia cannot allow itself to openly take a position supporting one camp or the other. Turkey has exploited this situation by actively supporting Azerbaijan in its military offensive. In this strategy, it is easy for Turkey to base its position on the Muslim culture of a very large section of the Azeri population (more than 90%), echoing the recent declarations of Erdogan claiming to be the real "defender of Islam". It's clear that successive pushes of Turkish imperialism, which are being followed very closely by Moscow, will incite Russia to intervene in one way or another. [4] With the conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan aims to extend its territory towards the frontier bordering its Turkish ally. Ankara hasn't hesitated in sending jihadist fighters and Syrian mercenaries to support the offensive: "In fact, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), at least 64 Syrian fighters have been killed in the territory since the beginning of the fighting. It also affirms that 1,200 Syrians have been sent by Turkey to fight alongside Azeri forces against the separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh”.[5]

The new cease-fire has given rise to demonstrations in Armenia. These mobilisations, in which Prime Minister Pacharan is accused of being a traitor, are nothing other than a settling of accounts between different factions of the Armenian bourgeoisie to which the population is hostage. Here as elsewhere, we must defend the idea that the global proletariat has no country, no territory to defend, nor imperialist war to get involved in. Choosing one camp against another is always a trap which divides us and which diverts us from the only perspective which can bring humanity out of capitalist barbarity: class struggle for the world revolution!

 

Marius, November 10 2020

The USA, the most powerful country on the planet, has become a showcase for the advancing decomposition of the capitalist world order. The presidential election race has cast a harsh light on a country torn by racial divisions, by increasingly brutal conflicts within the ruling class, by a shocking inability to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic which has left nearly a quarter of a million dead, by the devastating impact of economic and ecological crisis, by the spread of irrational, apocalyptic ideologies. And yet these ideologies, paradoxically, reflect an underlying truth: that we are living in the “last days” of a capitalist system which rules in every country of the world.

But even in this final phase of its historic decline, even as the ruling class increasingly demonstrates its loss of control over its own system, capitalism can turn its own rottenness against its real enemy – against the working class and the danger that it could become conscious of its true interests. The record turn-out in these elections and the noisy protests and celebrations on both sides of the political divide represent a powerful reinforcement of the democratic delusion – of the false idea that changing a president or a government can halt capitalism’s slide into the abyss, that the vote enables “the people” to take charge of their destiny.

Today this ideology is spearheaded by the belief that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will save American democracy from Trump’s authoritarian bullying, that they will heal the nation’s wounds, restore rationality and reliability to the USA’s relationship with other global powers. And these ideas are being echoed in a gigantic international campaign which hails the renewal of democracy and the retreat of the populist assault on liberal values.

But we, the workers, should be warned. If Trump and “America First” stood openly for sharpening economic and even military conflict with other capitalist states – China in particular – Biden and Harris will also pursue America’s drive for imperialist domination, perhaps with slightly different methods and rhetoric. If Trump stood for tax cuts for the rich and ended his reign presiding over a vast surge in unemployment, a Biden administration, faced with a world economic crisis that has been severely aggravated by the pandemic, will have no choice but make the exploited class pay for the crisis through mounting attacks on its living and working conditions. If immigrant and “illegal” workers think they will be safer under a Biden administration, let them recall that under president Obama and vice-president Biden 3 million “illegal” workers were deported from the US.

No doubt much of the current support for Biden comes in reaction to the real horrors of Trumpism: the blatant lies, the dog-whistle racism, the harsh repression of protests, the total irresponsibility in the face of Covid-19 and climate change. No question that Trump is a clear reflection of a putrefying social system. But Trump also claims to speak in the name of the people, to act as an “outsider” who will oppose the unaccountable “elites”. And even when he openly undermines the “norms” of capitalist democracy he strengthens the counter-argument that more than ever we must rally to the defence of these norms. In this sense, Biden and Trump are two wings of the same democratic fraud.

This doesn’t mean that the two wings will be working together peacefully. Even if Trump is removed as president, Trumpism won’t disappear. Trump has normalised armed right-wing militias parading in the streets and brought fringe conspiracy cults like QAnon into the ideological mainstream. This in turn has fed the growth of anti-fascist squads and black power militias ready to oppose the white supremacists on a military terrain. And behind all this, the whole bourgeois class and its state machine is riven by conflicting economic and foreign policy interests which cannot be wished away by Biden’s “healing” speeches. There is every possibility that these conflicts will become more intense and more violent in the period ahead. And the working class has no interest whatever in being caught up in this kind of “civil war”, in giving its energy and even its blood to the battle between populist and anti-populist factions of the bourgeoisie.

These factions have no hesitation in appealing to their version of the “working class”. Trump presents himself as the champion of the blue-collar workers whose jobs have been endangered or destroyed by “unfair” foreign competition. The Democrats, especially left-wing figures like Sanders or Ocasio-Ortez, also claim to speak on behalf of the exploited and the oppressed.

But the working class has its own interests and they don’t coincide with any of the parties of the bourgeoisie, Republican or Democrat. Neither do they coincide with the interests of “America”, of the “nation” or the “people”, that legendary place where the exploited and the exploiters live in harmony (albeit in ruthless competition with other nations). The workers have no nation. They are part of an international class which in all countries is exploited by capital and oppressed by its governments, including those who dare to call themselves socialist, like China or Cuba, simply because they have nationalised the relationship between capital and its wage slaves. This form of state capitalism is the preferred option of the left wing of the Democratic Party, but it does not mean, as Engels once pointed out “that the capitalist relation is done away with. Rather, it is brought to a head”.

Real socialism is a world human community where classes, wage slavery and the state have been abolished. This will be the first society in history where human beings have a real control over the product of their own hands and minds.  But to take the first step towards such a society requires the working class recognising itself as a class opposed to capital. And such an awareness can only develop if workers fight tooth and nail for their own material needs, against the efforts of the employing class and its state to drive down wages, cut jobs and lengthen the working day. And there can be no doubt that the global depression that is shaping up in the wake of the pandemic will make such attacks the unavoidable programme of all parts of the capitalist class.  Faced with these attacks, workers will have to enter massively into struggle in defence of their living standards. And there can be no room for illusion: Biden, like every other capitalist ruler, will not hesitate to order the bloody repression of the working class if it threatens their order.

The workers’ struggle for their own class demands is a necessity, not only to counter the economic attacks launched by the bourgeoisie, but above all as the basis for overcoming their illusions in this or that bourgeois party or leader, and for developing their own perspective, their own alternative to this decaying society.

In the course of its struggles, the working class will be obliged to develop its own forms of organisation such as general assemblies and elected, revocable strike committees, embryonic forms of the workers’ councils which, in past revolutionary moments, have revealed themselves as the means through which the working class can take power into its own hands and begin the construction of a new society. In this process, an authentic proletarian political party would have a vital role to play: not in asking workers to vote it into power, but in defending principles derived from the struggles of the past and in pointing the way towards the revolutionary future. In the words of the Internationale, “No saviour from on high delivers. No faith have we in prince or peer”. No Trump, no Biden, no false messiahs - the working class can only emancipate itself by its own efforts, and in doing so, free all of humanity from the chains of capital.

Amos

We are publishing a letter from a sympathiser who took part in a recent online discussion meeting and raises some questions about our approach towards ant-racism and “identity politics”. Our response follows.

Thoughts on ICC meeting 14.6.2020

I have been around ICC meetings all my life, and they around me, but have only been to a couple of public meetings (in the quaint old days when people could sit in halls together). Yesterday was the first online, non-public meeting I have attended and it sparked a lot of thoughts and reflections. These are some of those.

Nick’s intervention struck me as particularly important. As someone on the peripheries of the academic world, I am all too aware of the cult of the new, of the production of intellectual work for the sake of it, and the economic, cultural and political logics driving it all. This of course mirrors wider logics in society that generate a million ‘new’ ideas, products and movements that embody processes and imperatives (Capital, profit, exploitation) that are little changed since Marx’s day, but which in their outward form may appear – (green technologies, antiracism …) - to offer solutions to the crises of the moment. Accosted by the proliferation of old, worn ways presented as the endless possibilities of the perpetually new, it is no wonder people become confused, and see causes of crises as solutions. (Apologies for my academic style of writing – it’s a habit that is difficult to unlearn).

This is why I think Nick was precisely right to remind us of the advice of a late comrade: the role of revolutionaries is to repeat.  As people get lost in the misdirections that capitalism generates as a matter of its ‘natural’ course, it is vital that revolutionaries resolutely offer perspectives that cut through the noise and which are grounded in concepts and theories that generations of experiences in struggle and thought have shown to be accurate and effective. Nick also pointed out that this is not meant as a mechanical repetition. By this, I understand that the comrade meant that this should be a reflexive kind of repetition that learns and adjusts – in very careful, critical ways - in response to the shifting conditions of the moment. I envision this kind of repetition as more of a spiral than a circle, repeating but never returning to exactly the same place twice.

This for me raises an important question: how to be conceptually and practically responsive to shifting conditions and social-ecological-productive relations of capitalist society while also holding a clear revolutionary course. How to get the balance right?

At one point during the meeting, it was stated unequivocally that “there can be no revolutionary anti-racism”. I understand the antipathy towards antiracism and towards the ways that various identities – and the concept of identity itself - are exploited by capitalist ideologies on the left and the right in the maintenance of our current, apocalyptic mode of production. Liberal antiracism can only envision, at best, equal exploitation for all ‘races’ under capitalism and will not undo the social relations that require, create, and maintain hierarchies, whether those are based on gender, colour of someone’s skin, or any other category. This restates the position of the ICC in relation to feminism as laid out here https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/199604/3709/transformation-social-relations [237]

At the same time, my feeling is that these kinds of statements are often repeated in a more or less a mechanical sense, giving the impression that marxists can be quite flippant about race and gender issues. Not because they don’t take these issues seriously, but because they sometimes don’t want to think about their own selves in relation to these categories of being that run to the heart of capitalist power. Like it or not, everyone, revolutionaries included, are products of capitalist society – itself a varied stew of other authoritarian, patriarchal, egalitarian, feudal etc. social forms - and we embody its ways of doing, thinking, and being, inevitably and unavoidably. Believing everyone is equal, that race and gender are constructs, an ideological tool of the ruling class, etc, is not the same as being free of the more and less subtle cues, modes of speech, gestures, and so on that racism, sexism and so on exist in and perpetuate through. These are incredibly pernicious and sticky, hard to spot, and hard to get rid of because they infuse everything they touch. For example, in the article inserted above, we read that proletarian movements are necessarily engaged in “unceasing combat against the penetration of the ideas of the ruling class within its ranks.” This is an important statement which is nevertheless written in the imperial language, and couched in militaristic terminology taken directly from bourgeois playbooks and discourse.

It might well be asked “well how else should we write this kind of statement? This is the language we use, we are engaged in a war.” At that is exactly the point because colonial modernity has built an entire world of its own image. We must necessarily transform the world to something else from within that world and in order to do that it is necessary to pay very close attention to ways in which we might change everyday modes of practice and discourse in order that we don’t perpetuate the divisions that work so well to divide the class. These are not ‘just’ identitarian or politically correct mystifications but have real implications for cultivating class solidarity and strength. It takes work – in practice and in theory – to overcome our own enculturation. It does not magically disappear because someone holds to theoretical perspectives that are antithetical to the capitalist order, or accurately reflect the world.  There are whole bodies of literature borne out of decolonial, indigenous, and black struggles that can attest to this and just because many of these struggles might not align entirely with proletarian revolutionary struggles, does not mean we cannot learn from them.

Clearly, liberal, leftist ideology is having far more success in capturing the passions of a broader sweep of the working-class than are marxist organisations at the present. There are many reasons for this, including centuries’ long, vicious campaigns of propaganda. Partly, however, I think that this is also because organisations such as BLM, and other liberal organizations are doing the necessary self-reflexive work, are reading those broader literatures, in order to cultivate solidarities among those who have suffered differently under capitalism because of the identities capitalism uses to divide and rule. Ultimately, of course, these solidarities work in the defence of capitalism but I don’t see why revolutionaries cannot even imagine forms of anti-racism, anti-sexism etc that work towards the greater aim of opposing capitalism along a class basis. In fact, I think not trying to imagine these will likely get in the way of cultivating the solidarities we need, and actively make the chance of broad and meaningful revolution less likely to occur. At the least, I think this is a valid conversation to pursue rather than something that is entirely and finally resolved.

JB

ICC Response

Comrade,

First we want to welcome your contribution to the reflection on the combat of our class against the effects of decadence and (by extension) the decomposition of capitalism, in particular the oppression of the different categories (identities) of people. We also welcome your participation in the contact meetings of the ICC. It is a first step to overcoming a sterile academic approach - “the production of intellectual work for the sake of it” - towards the questions you pose in your letter. 

In your letter you develop mainly two points. The first is

“I don’t see why revolutionaries cannot even imagine forms of antiracism, antisexism, etc. that work towards the greater aim of opposing capitalism along a class basis. In fact, I think not trying to imagine these will likely get in the way of cultivating the solidarities we need, and actively make the chance of broad and meaningful revolution less likely to occur.”

To start we want to note that you have a rather glamorous image of the defenders (protagonists) of what we call “partial struggles” (some of which are nowadays also called identity struggles) such as anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc, when you tell us that “organizations such as BLM, and other liberal organizations are doing the necessary self-reflexive work, are reading those broader literatures, in order to cultivate solidarities among those who have suffered differently under capitalism”

You seem to forget here what you say elsewhere that, since such movements for the emancipation of specific oppressed “identities” develop their politics and activities within the boundaries of capitalist society and “are products of capitalist society”, we can be sure that they are not free from what you have defined in your letter as “a varied stew of other authoritarian, patriarchal, egalitarian, feudal, etc. social forms”, and we don’t see why it should be otherwise.

In order to make our point clear about the nature of these “identity” movements, we would like to develop on the question of antiracism, as it is a key example of struggles against the repression of particular groups of people under capitalism.

You might agree with us that oppression is inherent to capitalism and that capitalism without different kinds of oppression can’t exist: be it oppression based on ethnicity, gender, race, age or something else. Like the oppression of women, racial oppression (of black people certainly, but also the millions of indigenous people that have been partially or completely wiped out by the Spanish Conquistadores during their conquest of Americas) is imprinted in the genes of capitalism. Slavery of African, Indian and Javanese people was an indispensable element in the global expansion of capitalism. Thus, in order to eradicate racism, it is necessary to do away with the capitalist mode of production.

But, as you write in your letter, “liberal antiracism will not undo the social relations, that require, create, and maintain hierarchies”. And we agree with you. But what to think about more radical forms of antiracism, for instance the one that makes the link with the struggle for anti-capitalism? Will this kind of antiracism be able to undo the social relations of capitalism? For the ICC there is no fundamental difference between the liberal and the radical version of antiracism. Even radical antiracism, as defended for instance by Angela Davis (briefly in the Black Panthers, then a long time Stalinist and, more recently, a social democrat), who states that “we can't eradicate racism without eradicating capitalism”, will certainly not end up in challenging the basis of capitalist productive relations.

The reason for the failure of each fight against racism to challenge capitalist domination is the fact that any particular antiracist movement does not fight for the emancipation of oppressed humanity as whole, but only against discrimination, directed towards their particular category. One of the six main demands of BLM is the exclusive “independent black political power and black self-determination in all areas of society” (Platform of BLM). Such a movement, taking racial differences as the point of departure for its struggle, to fight for more power for the people of your own “race”, by excluding other “races”, perpetuates the racial divisions introduced into society and in the working class rather than serving to overcome these divisions and to build class solidarity in order to defeat the bourgeoisie and destroy capitalism.

Worse: the ideology of the anti-racist protests takes place on a terrain that can easily be manipulated by leftists and well-publicised factions like “the Democratic Socialist current within the Democratic Party in the USA” (see “Report on the impact of the decomposition on the political life of the bourgeoisie of the 23rd ICC Congress”) They are even a welcome gift for these factions of the bourgeoisie since, by focusing on particular aspects of capitalism they deflect attention from the historic crisis of the present system. In your own words “the ways that various identities – and the concept of identity itself - are exploited by capitalist ideologies on the left and the right in the maintenance of our current, apocalyptic mode of production”.

At first sight a grass root organisation like BLM (not having a well-defined and hierarchical structure, but decentralised, with the emphasis on local organising) seems to be very spontaneous and open-minded. Its structure gives room for local organisations to develop their own initiatives where efforts to do “self-reflexive work” and “reading those broader literatures” are enabled. But this doesn’t make this organisation a proper means for the development of an effective struggle against capitalism. For such a struggle to be developed something completely different is needed.

It may be that the antiracist movements do cultivate a kind of solidarity “among those who have suffered differently under capitalism” and it is always good to see expressions of solidarity among people. But the essential questions are: what kind of solidarity and on what material basis? The solidarity of “white allies” with the struggle of black or coloured people, for instance, is completely different from proletarian solidarity. While the first is an activity motivated by indignation about the injustice inflicted towards another group of people and will be constrained by racial divisions, the latter solidarity is based on common material needs and historical destination. Workers’ solidarity is not constrained by the divisions capitalism has imposed on society, but is universal. Inherent to proletarian solidarity is the capacity to transcend all divisions, whether racial, sexual, corporatist or national: it’s the expression of a class whose autonomous struggle is destined to develop a fundamental alternative to capitalism. “The proletariat is the first class within which there are no conflicting economic interests, and in this sense, its solidarity announces the nature of the society it is fighting for” (see Orientation Text 2001: Confidence and solidarity in the proletarian struggle, Part 2 [238]).

For instance: is it possible for people from antagonistic classes, participating in the same movement, to cultivate strong ties of solidarity in their ranks? We don’t think that this is possible. This kind of solidarity will always be superficial and volatile. Therefore, in contrast to what you think, these liberal organisations (like BLM for instance) cannot “cultivate solidarities among those who have suffered differently under capitalism”.

BLM as the exponent of the bourgeois racial struggle

Let’s examine Black Lives Matter a bit further. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGN), the official name of the organisation, calls itself “a Movement to fight for Freedom, Liberation and Justice” for black people in the US. It was founded in 2013, following increased police violence against black people.

Already in 2016 the Ford Foundation and other corporations set up a fund for BLM and started to back its activities with huge amounts of financial support which, together with the millions of dollars of donations it raises every year, gave BLM it the possibility to construct a bureaucracy of salaried staff and lobbyist positions. Much of this money is spend on salaries, consultants and travel; however there is no real transparency on the level of finances as is shown by a Statement of the Frontlines of the BLM of 30 November 2020. In this public statement 10 local chapters of BLMNG published deficits in leadership, organisation, and financial accounting. “In our experience, chapter organizers have been consistently prevented from establishing financial transparency” (“It is Time for Accountability; Statement from the Frontlines of BLM”)

Since the very beginning BLM leaders have been active towards the Democratic Party. “Leading Black Lives Matter spokespersons made repeated trips to the White House in 2015 and 2016 to hold meetings with President Obama and his representatives. The Democratic Party was conferring official authority upon the group”. (“Black Lives Matter cashes in on black capitalism”; WSWS; 4 April 2017) Thus, even if BLM is not affiliated to and has no formal links with the Democratic Party, BLM has developed close ties with the Democratic Party.

In the 2020 race for the presidency, the leaders of BLM have actively propagated participation in the democratic elections. They regularly addressed the leadership of the Democratic Party to accede to their demands. In August 2020 Alicia Garza said for instance that, when Joe Biden chooses his running mate, that it would be better to choose “A Black woman in particular and not just a woman of colour”. Patrisse Cullors in turn said that she was “calling the Democratic Party to the table”, in order to change the party platform to more boldly address police brutality and racial injustice. 

After it was clear that Biden had won the presidential election, BLM published a statement in which it said to “congratulate Joe Biden on becoming President, and particularly Kamala Harris, on becoming the country’s first woman - a Black woman — to serve as Vice President. This historic win is a testament to the work Black women have been doing in the streets, in this campaign, and at every level of politics.” (Statement of BLMGN About Biden-Harris Victory; November 7, 2020)

Thus the policy of BLM is essentially capitalist, and the social justice rhetoric (“defund the police”) only throws a veneer of radicalism over it.

The capitalist trajectory of BLM is the direct product of its antiracist ideology, which argues that each oppression can be fought on its own terms, without the abolition of all forms of oppression within capitalist society. For the working class such a struggle is no option. For the workers there can be no end to the struggle if the demands of one sector of the class has not yet been granted. The slogan of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) was “all for one, one for all”. This slogan was put in practice for instance in the mass strike in Poland in 1980, when workers, whose demands were conceded by the government, decided not to return to work before the demands of all the workers in Poland had been met.

Therefore, in contrast to what you think, it is these antiracist, antisexist, etc struggles that actually “get in the way of cultivating the solidarities we need, and actively make the chance of broad and meaningful revolution less likely to occur”. Anti-racism only ties the protesters more to the bourgeois state. These kinds of struggle are a barrier to the development of working class struggle, its solidarity and its consciousness, the only instruments that are able to achieve a broad and radical overthrow of the basis of racism: the capitalist mode of production. 

The impact of the dominant ideology on revolutionaries

The second point you develop in your letter is about the fact that even revolutionaries are not “free of the more and less subtle cues, modes of speech, gestures, and so on that racism, sexism and so on exist in and perpetuate through”. (…) “Everyone, revolutionaries included, are products of capitalist society – itself a varied stew of other authoritarian, patriarchal, egalitarian, feudal etc. social forms - and we embody its ways of doing.” (…..) “Our own enculturation does not magically disappear because someone holds to theoretical perspectives that are antithetical to the capitalist order.”

In face of the weight of this legacy of capitalist society on the revolutionaries you also make a suggestion for a solution: “we can learn from literature borne out of decolonial, indigenous, and black struggles that can show how to fight our own enculturation”. Evidentially “it takes work – in practice and in theory – to overcome our own enculturation”. But you think that Marxists “sometimes don’t want to think about their own selves in relation to these categories of being that run to the heart of capitalist power”.

It is true that “everyone, revolutionaries included, are products of capitalist society (…) and we embody its ways of doing”. And revolutionaries are not “free of the more and less subtle cues, modes of speech, gestures, and so on that racism, sexism and so on exist in and perpetuate through”. But you admit that we are not passive victims of these behaviours, since “we can learn from literature borne out of decolonial, indigenous, and black struggles that can show how to fight our own enculturation”.

To limit ourselves to the question of racism, the ICC has already written articles that express our view on the question of racism and antiracism and, in preparation for these articles, we have discussed that question many times. In these discussions we also refer regularly to “literature borne out of decolonial, indigenous, and black struggles”, varying from W.E.B. Du Bois to Franz Fanon to more recent academic works. So, we can assure you that revolutionaries do not accept being unconscious victims of these racist behaviours, and neither do they advocate ignorance of whatever serious studies are being produced by various writers and academic institutions. But they do start from a different theoretical framework, based on the traditions of the workers’ movement.

Revolutionaries are militants of the class who fight for a communist society and in that framework their behaviour cannot be in contradiction with the goal they want to achieve, for such a behaviour would precisely stand in the way not only of “cultivating the solidarities that are needed”, but also of developing a fraternal culture of debate, of organising an effective struggle, of founding a solid combat organisation, etc.

The participation in a revolutionary organisation and the ideological and theoretical struggle that takes place in such an organisation, makes these revolutionaries less vulnerable to the weight and influence of the bourgeois or petty bourgeois ideology than any individual militant of the class.

In this framework it is not completely clear to us what you mean by your remark that Marxists “sometimes don’t want to think about their own selves in relation to these categories [race or gender issues] of being that run to the heart of capitalist power”. It may be that this is sometimes the case, but it depends on what you mean by “Marxists” and whether you mean all Marxists or only by certain elements pretending to be Marxists.

Revolutionaries do not limit themselves to self-reflection on an individual basis, to a kind of therapy, (which, by the way, they do not reject). But the self-reflection in the revolutionary sense of the word is carried out in a collective framework, on a collective basis, as an associated whole, by drawing the lessons of previous struggles, by clarifying the stakes of the situation, and by looking for better means to develop their political capacities in order to contribute to the struggle of the class against all forms of oppression.

Moreover, the ICC does not share your position that issues such as race and gender “run to the heart of the capitalist power”. The central question within capitalism is the contradiction between capital and wage labour, between the bourgeois class and the working class. The liberation of race and gender from oppression by capitalist society can only come from the struggle of the main class in capitalist society, the proletariat, because it is only this class that contains and brings together the universal suffering of all oppressed in the world. It is the latter that must take up the struggle against racial and sexual divisions as an integral part of its struggle towards its unification.

The proletariat is the class of dispossession, without any property, and submitted to a precarious existence, in which it has only its labour power to sell. It is a class that has no economy to defend. The class, by definition, has nothing to lose … but its chains. This makes proletariat a revolutionary class that is able to abolish all oppression.

2020-12-18

“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic”. This declaration followed the January 6 invasion of the Capitol by several hundred Donald Trump partisans, who had come to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. You might think that such a severe judgement of the political situation in the US might come from someone who is viscerally hostile to America, or from an American “leftist”. Not at all: this was from ex-president George W Bush, a member of the same party as Trump. This tells us a lot about the gravity of what happened in Washington that day. A few hours earlier, in front of the White House, the defeated president, like a third world demagogue, had been warming up his supporters “We will never give up. We will never concede…you’ll never take back our country with weakness ...I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”. 

Following this thinly veiled call to riot, the vengeful crowd, led by semi-fascist Trumpist gangs like the Proud Boys, only had to walk down the National Mall towards the Capitol and attack the building, watched by a totally overwhelmed security force. How come the cordons of cops whose job was to guard access to the Capitol allowed the attackers to go past them when the impressive force put in front of the same building during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations were able to prevent any loss of control? Such striking images can only feed the theory that the assault on this emblem of American democracy was a “political September 11”.

Faced with this chaos, the authorities were however deployed rather quickly: anti-riot troops and the National Guard were sent in, one demonstrator was shot and three others died, a curfew was installed while the army patrolled the streets of Washington. These stunning images did indeed resemble post-election nights in the “banana republics” of the third world, torn apart by bloody rivalries between mafia cliques. But these events. which made headlines across the world, were not down to some megalomaniac army general. They took place in the most powerful country on the planet, in the “world’s greatest democracy”.

The world’s leading power at the centre of growing chaos

The “desecration of the temple of American democracy” by a crowd made up of white supremacists armed with selfie sticks, by fanatical armed militias, by a conspiracy theorist wearing a horned fur helmet, is a flagrant expression of the growing violence and irrationality infecting US society. The fractures in its political apparatus, the explosion of populism since the election of Trump, are an eloquent illustration of the fact that capitalist society is rotting on its feet. In fact, as we have argued since the end of the 1980s[1], the capitalist system, which entered into its period of decadence with the First World War, has over the past few decades been sinking into the final phase of this decadence, the phase of decomposition. The most spectacular demonstration of this situation was the collapse of the eastern bloc three decades ago. This major event was not simply an indication of the fragility of the regimes which ran the countries of this bloc. It expressed a historical process affecting the entire global capitalist system and which has got worse ever since. Up till now the most obvious signs of this decomposition have been seen  in the already very weak countries of the “periphery”: angry crowds acting as cannon fodder for the interests of this or that bourgeois clique, extreme violence on a daily basis, the blackest poverty visible at every street corner, the destabilisation of states and whole regions …all this seemed to be what happened only in the “banana republics”.

But for a number of years, this general tendency has more and more been explicitly hitting the “central” countries. Of course, not all states have been affected in the same way, but it is clear that decomposition is now striking at the most powerful countries: the multiplication of terrorist attacks in Europe, surprise victories by irresponsible individuals like Trump or Boris Johnson, the explosion of irrational ideologies and, above all, the disastrous response to the Coronavirus pandemic which in itself expresses an unprecedented acceleration of decomposition. The whole capitalist world, including its most “civilised” parts, is evolving inexorably towards barbarism and increasingly acute convulsions.

If today, among the most developed countries, the US is most affected by this putrefaction, it also represents one of the major factors of instability. The incapacity of the American bourgeoisie to prevent a billionaire clown nurtured in Reality TV from gaining access to the Presidency already showed the growing chaos in the US political apparatus. During his mandate, Trump has not ceased aggravating the divisions in American society, notably racial divisions, and fuelling chaos all over the planet, through all kinds of biting declarations and hazy deals proudly presented as the subtle manoeuvres of a skilled businessman. We can recall his run-in with the American military command which stopped him, at the last minute, from bombing Iran, or his “historic meeting” with Kim Jong-un who only a few weeks before he had nicknamed “Rocket Man”.

After the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, after decades of running down health systems, all states displayed a criminal negligence. But here again the American state led by Donald Trump was in the forefront of the disaster, both at the national level, with a record number of deaths[2], as on the international level, through destabilising an institution of world cooperation like the World Health Organisation.

The assault on the Capitol by fanatical Trumpist bands is fully part of this explosion of chaos at all levels of society. This was an expression of the growth of totally irrational and violent conflicts between different parts of the population (white against black, people versus elites, men against women, gays against straights etc) – the caricature of which is represented by the heavily armed racist militias and delirious conspiracy theorists.

But these “fractures” are above all a reflection of open confrontations between cliques of the American bourgeoisie: the populists around Trump on the one hand, those with a greater concern for the long-term interests of the national capital on the other. Within the Democratic Party along with elements of the Republican Party, in the cogs of the state and the army, in the big news media or at the lectern of Hollywood ceremonies, the campaigns of opposition against the gesticulations of the populist President have been constant and sometimes very virulent.

These clashes between different sectors of the bourgeoisie are not new. But in a “democracy” like the US, and in contrast to what goes in in the countries of the third world, they normally take place in the framework of the institutions, with a certain “respect for order”. The fact that they are now taking this violent form in a “model democracy” testifies to a spectacular aggravation of chaos within the political apparatus of the ruling class, and this marks a significant step in capitalism’s slide into decomposition.

By whipping up his fan base, Trump has crossed a new line in his “scorched earth” policy following his defeat at the Presidential election, which he still refuses to recognise. His strike against the Capitol, the legislative symbol of American democracy, has opened up a gulf within the Republican Party, with its most “moderate” wing having no choice but to denounce this “coup d’État” against democracy, and to distance itself from Trump in order to save the party of Abraham Lincoln. As for the Democrats, they have raised the stakes by making a big hue and cry against the criminal behaviour of Trump.

To try to restore the image of America in front of an appalled world bourgeoisie, to contain the explosion of chaos in the “Land of Liberty”, Joe Biden and his clique have immediately thrown themselves in a fight to the death against Trump, denouncing Trump’s irresponsible actions, calling for his removal from power even in the short period prior to the inauguration of new President.

The succession of resignations by Republican ministers, the appeals for the resignation or impeachment of Trump, as well as the calls for the Pentagon to closely survey the President and ensure he doesn’t press the nuclear button, are witness to a will to eliminate him from the political game. The day after the attack on the Capitol, the political crisis took the form of one half of Trump’s electoral base disavowing him, the other half continuing to support and justify the attack. Trump’s political career seems to be seriously compromised. In particular, measures are being taken to ensure that he will no longer be eligible for election in 2024. Today, the defeated President only has one objective: to save his skin faced with the threat of judicial prosecution for instigating insurrection. On the same evening as the attack on the Capitol, Trump, while refusing to condemn their actions, called on his troops to “go home”. Two days later he ate the rest of his hat by describing this attack as “heinous” and said he was “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem”. And, keeping a low profile, he quietly recognised his electoral defeat and declared that he would vacate the throne for Biden, while still insisting that he would not be present at the inauguration on 20 January.

It's possible that Trump will be eliminated from the political game once and for all, but this isn’t the case with populism! This reactionary and obscurantist ideology is a ground-swell which can only keep on coming with the aggravation of social decomposition, of which the USA today is the epicentre. American society is more than ever divided and torn. Violence will continue to rise with the permanent danger of confrontations (including armed clashes) within the population. Biden’s rhetoric of “reconciliation” for the American people shows an understanding of the gravity of the situation, but whatever partial or temporary success this may have, it can’t halt the underlying tendency towards social dislocation in the world’s leading power.

The greatest danger for the proletariat in the USA would be to be dragged into this confrontation between different factions of the bourgeoisie. A large part of Trump’s electorate is made up of workers who reject the “elites” and are searching for a “man of destiny”. Trump’s promises to re-launch industry had allowed him to rally many unemployed proletarians from the “rust belt”. There is a risk of confrontations between pro-Trump and pro-Biden workers. What’s more, the decent into decomposition also threatens to sharpen the racial divide which is endemic in the USA, feeding identity ideologies and setting black against white.

The gigantic democratic campaign is a trap for the working class!

The tendency towards the loss of control of its political game by the bourgeoisie, as we saw with Trump’s accession to the Presidency, does not mean that the working class can take advantage of the decomposition of capitalism. On the contrary, the ruling class doesn’t stop turning the effects of decomposition against the working class. Already in 1989, when the collapse of the eastern bloc was a glaring expression of the decomposition of capitalism, the bourgeoisie in the main countries used this event to unleash a gigantic democratic campaign aimed at drawing an equals sign between the barbarity of the Stalinist regimes and authentic communist society. The lying talk of the “death of the revolutionary perspective” and the “disappearance of the working class” disoriented the proletariat, resulting in a profound reflux in its consciousness and combativity, Today the bourgeoisie is instrumentalising the events at the Capitol to launch a new international campaign for the glory of bourgeois democracy.

When the “insurgents” were still occupying the Capitol, Biden immediately declared “Like so many other Americans, I am genuinely shocked and saddened that our nation, so long the beacon of light and hope for democracy has come to such a dark moment…The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy”. This was followed by a cascade of declarations going in the same direction, including from within the Republican Party. The same overseas, particularly from the leaders of the main western European countries. “These images have angered and saddened me. But I am sure that American democracy will prove itself to be stronger than the aggressors and rioters”, declared Angel Merkel. “We will not give in to the violence of those who want to put democracy into question” offered Emmanuel Macron. And Boris Johnson added: “All my life America has stood for some very important things. An idea of freedom, an idea of democracy”.

After the mobilisations around the Presidential elections, which saw record participation, and the Black Lives Matter movement demanding a more “just” and “clean” police, large sectors of the world bourgeoisie are trying to mobilise the proletariat behind the defence of the democratic state against populism. The proletariat is being called on to line up behind the “Democratic” faction against the “Dictator” Trump. This false choice is a pure mystification, a trap for the working class!

In the wake of the international chaos that Trump has fed, will the Democrat Biden establish a more just world order? Certainly not! The Nobel peace Prize winner Barack Obama, and his Vice President Joe Biden, went through 8 years of uninterrupted war. Tensions with China, Russia, Iran and all the other imperialist sharks will not miraculously disappear.

Will Biden offer a more human future for migrants? We only have to look at how cruelly all his predecessors, like all the “great democracies”, have treated these “undesirables”. We only have to recall that during the eight years of the Obama presidency, with Biden as Vice President, there were more deportations of immigrants than during the eight years under George W Bush. The Obama administration’s measures against immigrants merely opened the door to the anti-immigration escalation under Trump.

Will economic attacks against the working class come to an end under the “return to democracy”? Certainly not! The world economy’s dive into a crisis without any solution, further aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, will bring an explosion of unemployment, of poverty, of attacks against the living and working conditions of the exploited in all the central countries led by “democratic” governments. And if Joe Biden manages to “clean up” the police, the democratic state’s repressive forces, in the US as in all countries, will still be unleashed against any movement of the working class, against all its efforts to fight for the defence of its living conditions and its most basic needs.

There is nothing to hope for in the “return to democracy” in America. The working class must not let itself be lulled and trapped by the siren songs of the democratic factions of the bourgeois state. It must not forget that it was in the name of the defence of democracy against fascism that the ruling class succeeded in mobilising tens of millions of proletarians into the Second World war, to a large extent under the leadership of the left and the popular fronts. Bourgeois democracy is just the hidden, hypocritical face of the dictatorship of capital!

The attack on the Capitol is a new symptom of a dying system which is dragging humanity along with it in a gradual descent into hell. Faced with the reality of a bourgeois society rotting on its feet, only the world working class, by developing the struggle on its own class terrain against the effects of the economic crisis, can overthrow capitalism and end the threat of the destruction of the planet and the human species.

ICC 10.1.21

We are publishing this article written by a close sympathiser, of the ICC in the US, which defends our general analysis of the significance of the events of January 6 in Washington, and points out the role of those ardent apologists of bourgeois democracy – the Trotskyists, “Democratic Socialists” etc - in helping to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state.   ICC

The March to Save America

The results of the 2020 election have been a point of contention due to widespread conspiracy theories among a sector of American voters and deep mistrust in both of the two major parties to adhere to a “fair” election. The prevailing sentiment amongst supporters of the Democratic Party was that the campaign for Donald Trump had colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election. The full truth to this story demonstrates the bourgeoisie’s corruption and disregard for the democratic rights which they had established in their own revolutions centuries ago. The sentiment amongst supporters of the Republican Party now, in the wake of Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in November of 2020, is that the Democrats have rigged voting machines, thrown out mail-in ballots (the use of which increased this election cycle due to the Covid-19 pandemic), and schemed in other various ways to ensure their victory. While the underhanded tactics of the ruling class are certainly well-documented, the proof of widespread election fraud remains lacking, culminating in the President himself promoting news stories with sources that trace back to unconfirmed, unhinged conspiracies on message boards. In lieu of this belief that the election results were illegitimate, conservative mouthpieces sprang up and spoke out against the election of Biden. These rightist figures, groups, organizations, etc. began to organize the March to Save America on January 6th in Washington, D.C. with no clear goals but to demonstrate against the election results, “stop the steal” of the election, and prevent the ruin of the United States by the supposedly communist boogeyman, the “Chinese puppet” Joe Biden constructed by the most conspiratorial of the right. January 6th would be the day that patriots would stop the certification of the election results and the confirmation of the election of Joe Biden.

The “Insurrection”

The speeches at the official March to Save America rally were dangerously provocative and included vague calls to action, calls for “trial by combat”, and calls to march down to the Capitol building and show the strength of the protesters coming from President Trump and members of his inner circle. The way this march ended was not the peaceful fizzle expected, nor was it the clashing of rightists and police officers with antifascist demonstrators common to these sorts of rallies. It ended with an unprecedented action unseen in the history of the United States: a great mass of protesters storming the Capitol building and forcing their ways into the halls of Congress. The response of the police was lackluster at first as a rowdy crowd became rowdier, pushing forward against an underprepared police presence. Rather than immediate confrontation, the police attempted to verbally de-escalate before more physical tactics were used to attempt to hold demonstrators back. These tactics proved ineffective, and demonstrators soon stormed the Capitol steps and forced their way into the building; soon there were people flooding into the halls of Congress and the offices of legislators, some stealing objects and vandalizing the walls while others simply stood around and took photos of themselves in defiance. As the perimeter was breached, Representatives and other Capitol staffers were evacuated through tunnels under the building. Some, like Democratic Representative of New York’s 14th District Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were forced to hide in their office bathrooms. Some of the invaders were armed and some had zip-ties, implying intention to take hostages to stop the certification of the election. In the chaos, some were trampled, one woman was shot, and the body count was confirmed, after the dust had settled, to be five people killed.

The Aftermath

In the aftermath of this scuffle, it may be possible to see some of what the Biden administration has in store for the next four years: the strengthening of the security and law enforcement apparatuses of the state under the pretense of crushing the dangerous Trump cult. Populism has been forced out of the White House, but remains in the streets and in many of the Representatives elected to Congress back in November. The Democratic majority in government now must fight against the receding tide of populism, while piggybacking off of the disastrous past four years. While Hillary Clinton promised a continuation of the Obama legacy, Biden does not signal a return to the “normalcy” of Obama’s presidency. Biden’s foreign policy, for example, will not be a reversal of Trump’s, but will build itself off of the blunders and carelessness of the past four years; one needs only to look toward his provocation of China on the military front, guaranteeing military protection of the disputed Senkaku Islands under Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty. When it comes to social unrest, it appears that the ferocity of the state will be in continuity with the Trump presidency as well.

Leftists have been open in their support for the arrest and prosecution of those who stormed the Capitol, acting in unofficial cooperation with federal agencies to identify those who participated. These same leftists have spent the previous summer marching out in the streets for Black Lives Matter, defending riots as legitimate expressions of popular anger, and are now happy to expose their political opponents to the same agents who arrested, beat, shot at, and gassed them in droves. The left has been more than happy to become the cops they themselves have been speaking out against. However, it’s not enough that the leftists should engage in police-like behavior; this behavior is in direct support of the defense of democracy and support for incoming president Joe Biden. This demonstrates the trap of democratic and anti-fascist ideology as espoused and spread by the left: since capitalism always creates anti-democratic and fascist tendencies which will always threaten those nominal liberties which democracy grants to the national population, when does the defense of democracy give way to class struggle? At what point does the working class which is dissolved into movements for the defense of democracy immediately reconstitute itself on its own ground against fascism and democracy and for communism?

The communist left clearly knows that the answer is never, which is why we always resolutely stand against any movement which harms the development of the proletariat as an independent political force of its own. The same leftists who have spent so much time and energy setting themselves up to be the allies of the workers in the public eye have proven themselves once again to be false friends: mobilization behind the leftist political project has proven itself to be a mobilization for the preservation of bourgeois society as it has countless times in the past. The left’s own demands which have been used to gain popular support have been cast aside as the political project of the Democratic Party’s almost unrivaled administration begins. Their cries to defund the police, which have made their way into the halls of Congress, have swiftly been replaced by calls for a harder stance on the same actions which they take when confronted with the injustices of the capitalist system. The left has paraded workers into the streets under various banners through the Trump presidency, not one of these banners being the self-activity of the workers, and now it must march these workers off the streets and back into passivity; this final demobilization will go hand-in-hand with future mobilizations of Trump supporters to discredit street mobilization of any political faction. The left has served its true purpose openly: the deception of the workers with the intent to keep their feet firmly planted on the bourgeoisie’s ground. 

So it is in this light that we can plainly set out what must be done by militants and sympathizers of the proletarian milieu: the fight against the all illusions and mystification of the real situation must go on. It must be affirmed that the events of demonstrations like this are a symptom of a decadent society that is decomposing and rotting on its own feet, that the opposition of the left to the right seeks to crush the workers just like the opposition of the right to the left, and that the only solution to the issues of crumbling capitalist society is proletarian revolution.

Noah Lennox, February 2nd, 2021

In the last year, the world has been shaken by two unprecedented events of extreme importance in the life of capitalism: the Covid-19 pandemic and, most recently, the assault on the Capitol in Washington after the American elections that sanctioned the defeat of Donald Trump. These two events are neither insignificant nor separate from each other. They can only be understood in a historical framework that we will present in this introduction.

The health crisis we are experiencing today is the most serious event since the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

This pandemic has spread like wildfire from an outbreak in China last winter. The virus has crossed every border and every continent. It has already claimed more than 2 million victims. Everywhere, in every country, there is a state of health emergency, a race against time to vaccinate the population in order to avoid a planetary hecatomb.

What is the origin of this pandemic? It seems that this fearsome virus was transmitted to us by animal species introduced into the human environment (the pangolin and the bat). Contrary to past epidemics of animal origin (such as the plague introduced in the Middle Ages by rats) today, this pandemic is essentially due to the spiralling devastation of the natural environment. Global warming, deforestation, the destruction of the natural territories of wild animals, as well as the proliferation of slums in underdeveloped countries, have encouraged the development of all kinds of new viruses and contagious diseases.

The Covid-19 pandemic is therefore not an unpredictable disaster resulting from the laws of chance and nature! Capitalism itself is responsible for this planetary catastrophe, for these millions of deaths. A system based not on the satisfaction of human needs, but on the search for profit, for profitability through the ferocious exploitation of the working class. A system based on unbridled competition between companies and between states. A competition that prevents any international coordination and cooperation to eradicate this pandemic. This is what we see today with the "war of vaccines", after the "war of masks" at the beginning of the pandemic.

Until now, it was the poorest and most underdeveloped countries that were regularly hit by epidemics. Now it is the more developed countries that are being shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the very heart of the capitalist system that is under attack, especially the world's leading power.

In the United States, there are now at least 25 million people infected and more than 410,000 dead. There have been more Covid deaths than American soldiers killed in the Second World War! Last April, the number of dead had already exceeded the number of those killed during the Vietnam War.

The spread of the pandemic has become even worse with the mutation of the virus. In the large metropolis of Los Angeles, 1 out of 10 inhabitants is contaminated. In California, the hospitals are full to bursting point. At the beginning of the health crisis, the entire American population was shocked by the huge trenches where "unclaimed" deaths were piled up in the state of New York, on Hart Island.

With Trump's irresponsible policy, the calamitous management of this pandemic was even worse than in other countries. The former President had bet on herd immunity, without wearing a mask, without social distancing. Trump even went so far as to peddle the completely delusional idea of injecting bleach into your veins to kill the virus.

In the most developed country in the world, at the forefront of science, all sorts of conspiracy theories have flourished. While the pandemic had already begun to sweep across the American continent, a large part of the population in the United States imagined that Covid-19 did not exist and that it was a plot to torpedo Trump's re-election!

Today, with several vaccines available, each American state is following its own policies in the most disorganised and total mess. In Europe, faced with the resurgence of the epidemic and the variants of the virus, Great Britain is topping the death rate. Everywhere, the ruling class vaccinates at full speed and must now manage the shortage, while waiting for the laboratories to speed up the production of vaccines. 

The explosion of this global pandemic has revealed:

- a loss of control by the ruling class over its own system.

- an unprecedented worsening of the "every man for himself" situation with unbridled competition between laboratories to be the first to find a vaccine and sell it on the world market. In this race for vaccines, Russian Sputnik has been overtaken by those in the United States who came out on top with Pzifer-BionTech and Moderna. And if the State of Israel was able to obtain so many doses and vaccinate the majority of its population, it was because it bought the Pfizer vaccine at a price 43% higher than the one negotiated by the European Union.

It is clear that the main concern of the bourgeoisie of every country is above all to save the national capital from its competitors.

If all states are struggling so hard to produce vaccines, it is certainly not out of concern for human life. The only thing that interests the ruling class is to preserve the labour power of those it exploits to prolong the agony of the capitalist system even further.

This pandemic, and the inability of the ruling class to contain it, is first and foremost the most obvious manifestation of the total bankruptcy of capitalism. In the face of the worsening economic crisis, in all countries, governments on both the right and the left have for decades been constantly cutting social, health and research budgets. As the health system is not profitable, they have cut the numbers of beds, closed down hospital services, eliminated doctors' posts and worsened the working conditions of carers. In France, the Sanofi laboratory (linked to the Pasteur Institute) has cut 500 research posts since 2007. All the cutting-edge scientific and technological research in the United States has been devoted essentially to the military sector, including research into bacteriological weapons. For its part, China sells its own vaccines to the Maghreb and East African countries. The Chinese vaccine market is therefore following the Silk Road. A hypothesis is even being put forward today: Covid-19 might be a virus that escaped from a laboratory. The World Health Organisation has therefore set up a team to carry out an investigation in China to find out the origin of this virus.

This uncontrollable global pandemic confirms that capitalism has become, since the cataclysm of the First World War, a decadent system that is putting the survival of humanity at stake.

After a century of sinking into decadence, this system has entered the ultimate phase of this decadence: that of decomposition.

Why capitalism has entered its phase of decomposition and what are its main manifestations 

In 1989, after 20 years of global economic crisis, a major event, the most important since the Second World War, shook the world: the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Stalinist regimes. It was the most spectacular manifestation of the decomposition of capitalism. This situation also caused a dislocation of the Western bloc with a tendency towards the development of every man for himself.

This decomposition of capitalism was due to the fact that neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat could bring its own answer to the economic crisis: either a new world war (as was the case with the crisis of the 1930s) or proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie has not succeeded in recruiting the proletariat behind the national flags and sending it to be massacred on the battlefields. But the proletariat, for its part, has not been able to develop revolutionary struggles to overthrow capitalism. It is this lack of perspective that has caused capitalist society to rot on its feet since the late 1980s.

For 30 years, this decomposition has manifested itself in all kinds of murderous calamities: the multiplication of massacres, including in Europe with the war in the former Yugoslavia, the development of terrorist attacks also in Europe, the waves of refugees (men, women and children) desperately seeking asylum in the countries of the Schengen area, repeated so-called natural disasters, nuclear “accidents” like Chernobyl in 1986 in Russia and Fukushima in 2011 in Japan. And more recently, the disaster that completely destroyed the port of Beirut in Lebanon on 4 August 2020. And the list goes on and on.

Now we have a global health catastrophe that spares no country, no continent, piling up corpses at a staggering rate. Faced with the saturation of mortuaries during the first wave of the pandemic, some European states, such as Spain, even had to pile up corpses in ice rinks!

The bourgeoisie everywhere has had to impose medieval measures with confinements, curfews, social distancing. In some countries, compulsory face masks with police checks at every street corner. Borders are locked, all public and cultural places are closed in most European countries. Never since the Second World War has humanity experienced such an ordeal. The Covid-19 pandemic is therefore the main manifestation today of the accelerated decomposition of capitalism.

It is still this decomposition that explains the rise of the most irrational, reactionary and obscurantist ideologies. The rise of religious fanaticism provoked the creation of the Islamist state with more and more young suicide bombers enlisted in the "Holy War" in the name of Allah. The barbarity of terrorist attacks regularly strikes populations in Europe, and particularly in France. All these reactionary ideologies have also been the manure that has allowed the development of xenophobia and populism in the central countries, and especially in the United States.

The arrival of Trump in power, then the refusal to admit his electoral defeat in the last presidential elections, caused a frightening explosion of populism. In Washington, his shock troops, with their completely fanatical armed militias, stormed the Capitol on January 6, without the security forces, who were supposed to be protecting the building, being able to stop them. This bewildering attack on the temple of American democracy gave the whole world a disastrous image of the world's leading power. The country of Democracy and Freedom appeared as a vulgar Third World banana republic (as former President George Bush himself acknowledged) with the risk of armed clashes among the civilian population.

The rise in social violence, crime, the fragmentation of American society, racist violence against black people, all show that the United States has become a concentrate and a mirror of the decay of bourgeois society.

Even if the new President, Joe Biden, will try to contain as much as possible the gangrene of populism (with the ambition to "reconcile the American people" as he puts it), he will not be able to stop the general dynamic of decay. The new administration will do everything it can to repair the considerable damage Trump has done in the management of the health crisis. But the chaos is such that the pandemic will continue to wreak further havoc and claim many more victims. Despite the discovery of vaccines, it will not be possible today, and for many months to come, to immunise the entire population. Moreover, the WHO has announced that there will be no collective immunity in 2021.

The accumulation of all these manifestations of decomposition, on a global scale and on all levels of society, shows that capitalism has entered, over the last thirty years, a new historical period: the ultimate phase of its decadence, that of decomposition. The whole of society is tending to break up in an unprecedented outburst of violence. The capitalist system is going completely mad. Everywhere it sows death and desolation. Drawn into an infernal spiral, it exhales an increasingly unbreathable and nauseating social atmosphere.

We are facing a descent into chaos – the danger of a true apocalypse.

But is this the only possible future? Our answer is: NO!

Despite this accelerating decay, there remains a social force capable of overthrowing capitalism and building a new world, a true unified human society. This social force is the working class. It is the working class that produces the bulk of the world's wealth. But it is also the main victim of all the catastrophes caused by capitalism. It is the working class that will pay the price for the worsening of the world economic crisis.

The health crisis can only make the economic crisis even worse. And we can already see it with the bankruptcies of enterprises, the growing list of redundancies, since the beginning of this pandemic.

Faced with the aggravation of misery, the degradation of its living conditions in all countries, the working class will have no other choice but to fight against the attacks of the bourgeoisie. Even if, today, it is reeling from the shock of this pandemic, even if social decomposition makes the development of its struggles much more difficult, it will have no choice but to fight for survival. With the explosion of unemployment in the most developed countries, fight or die is the only alternative for growing masses of proletarians, and above all for the young generations of the working class!

It is by struggling on its own class terrain and in the midst of the miasmas of social decomposition, that the proletariat will have to find its way, to find and affirm its revolutionary perspective.

In spite of all the sufferings it engenders, the economic crisis remains, even today, the proletariat's best ally. We must not therefore see in misery only misery, but also the conditions for overcoming this misery. The future of humanity still belongs to the exploited class.

ICC, 23 January 2021

Marc Chirik passed away 30 years ago, in December 1990. In tribute to the precious contributions of our comrade, of this great revolutionary in the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, we are republishing the two articles from International Review 65 and 66 that were written just after his death. These two articles go over the broad lines of his life and summarise what he brought to the proletarian cause and the defence of marxism.

In this short introduction to these texts, we simply want to underline three essential elements which characterised his life and revolutionary activity.

First, during the course of his life as a militant for more than 70 years, he was, from his youth to his last breath, a devoted fighter, a tireless combatant for the cause of the proletariat and communism. He dedicated all his energy to the intransigent defence of internationalist principles and of marxism. He never ceased to be at the forefront of the struggle, putting to good use his political, theoretical and organisational experience. Revolutionary militancy was a constant compass in his life. Even during the terrible period of the counter-revolution, Marc never gave up the work of patiently elaborating and clarifying the positions of the communist left. During these dark years, he fought against all the betrayals of the proletarian camp but also struggled inside all the organisations in which he militated, against opportunist manoeuvres, against centrist attitudes, against both academic and activist deviations. He was able to hold out during this period and with the same determination was able to play an active part in the resurgence of the proletariat onto the historic scene in May 1968, enthusiastically involving himself in the regroupment of the revolutionary forces which were born out of that period, and which gave birth to the ICC. He brought all his militant energy, his conviction and experience to orienting and constructing this organisation, as well as to the efforts towards the coming together of the organisations of the proletarian political milieu in the 1980s, towards the mutual confrontation and clarification of their positions.

Another fundamental trait of his character was his ability to keep alive the theoretical acquisitions of the revolutionary movement, particularly those produced by the left fraction of the Communist Party of Italy. As a result, he was able to maintain a lucid and critical analysis of the evolution of the world situation. This political “flair”, founded on the global analysis of the balance of class forces, enabled him to question certain “dogmas” of the workers’ movement, not by distancing himself from the historical materialist method, but on the contrary by anchoring himself in in the dynamic evolution of historical reality. At the end of his life, he made a final theoretical contribution by being one of the first in the ICC to recognise that capitalism had entered into the terminal phase of its decline, the phase of decomposition. He also argued that the proletariat could in no way make use of capitalism’s putrefaction and that this situation raised the stakes for the proletariat and the survival of humanity.

The last element we want to emphasis is his determination to transmit the lessons of the workers’ movement and the organisational experience of revolutionaries to the new generations in order to form new militants and to allow the ICC to ensure a political continuity in the future struggles of the class. He was totally convinced of the indispensable need for the revolutionary organisation as a bridge between past, present and future, and he was conscious that he himself represented a link to the past historical experience of the class, that he was part of the living memory of the workers’ movement. While always insisting that “the proletariat gives rise to revolutionary organisations and not revolutionary individuals”, he also laid great stress on the individual responsibilities of each militant and the need for solidarity and respect between comrades.

Nothing can better express Marc’s life than Rosa Luxemburg’s simple phrase: “I was, I am, I will be”.

The articles can be found here:

Marc, Part 1: From the Revolution of October 1917 to World War II | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [241]

Marc, Part 2: From World War II to the present day | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [242]

After the Russian revolution in 1917, the revolution in Germany in 1918, the creation of the Communist International in 1919, we mark the hundredth anniversary of the tragic crushing of the revolt by the workers, soldiers and sailors of Kronstadt in March 1921 with a document “The lessons of Kronstadt” from International Review 3[1], in order to indeed draw the key lessons of this event for the struggles of the future.

In March 1921, the Soviet state, led by the Bolshevik party, used its military forces to put an end to the workers’ and sailors’ revolt in the Kronstadt garrison on the island of Kotlin in the gulf of Finland, 30 kilometers from Petrograd (today St Petersburg). The 15,000 insurgents were attacked by 50,000 Red Army troops on the evening of 7 march. After ten days of bitter combats, the Kronstadt uprising was suppressed. It’s not possible to get reliable figures for the number of victims, but it has been estimated that there were 3,000 killed in the fighting or executed on the side of the insurgents, and 10,000 dead on the Red Army side. According to a communique of the Cheka dating from 1 May 1921, 6,528 rebels were arrested, 2,168 executed, 1,955 sentenced to forced labour (1,486 for five years), and 1,272 freed. The families of the rebels were deported to Siberia, and 8,000 sailors, soldiers and civilians managed to escape to Finland.

Less than four years after the seizure of power by the working class in October 1917, these events were a tragic expression of the degeneration of an isolated revolution coming to the end of its tether. This was a workers’ revolt by partisans of the Soviet regime, by those who in 1905 and 1917 had been in the vanguard of the movement, and who during the October revolution had been seen as “the pride and glory of the revolution”. In 1921, the Kronstadt insurgents demanded the satisfaction of the same demands as the Petrograd workers who had been on strike since February: liberation of all imprisoned socialists, end of military rule, freedom of expression, of the press and of assembly for all those who work, equal rations for all workers… But what underlined the importance of this movement and expresses its profoundly proletarian character was not only the reaction against the restrictive measures, but above all the rection to the loss of political power by the workers’ councils to the benefit of the party and the state, which had substituted themselves for the councils and claimed to represent the aims and interests of the proletariat. This was expressed in the first point of the resolution passed by the insurgents: “In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot, with freedom to carry on agitation beforehand for all workers and peasants”.

The bourgeoisie, when it talks about the suppression of the revolt by the Red Army, always tries to prove to proletarians that there is an uninterrupted chain linking Marx and Lenin to Stalin and the Gulag. The aim of the bourgeoisie is to make sure that workers turn away from the history of their class and don’t reappropriate their own experiences. The theories of the anarchists arrive at the same conclusions by starting off from the allegedly authoritarian and counter-revolutionary nature of marxism and the parties acting in its name. The anarchists have an abstractly “moral” view of these events. Beginning with the idea of the authoritarianism inherent in the Bolshevik party, they are incapable of explaining the degeneration of the revolution in general, and the Kronstadt episode in particular. This was a revolution that was becoming exhausted after seven years of world war and civil war, with an industrial infrastructure in ruins, a working class that had been decimated, starved, confronted with peasant uprisings in the provinces. A revolution that had been dramatically isolated and where an international extension had become less and less likely after the failure of the revolution in Germany. Faced with all the problems posed to the working class and the Bolshevik party, the anarchists simply close their eyes.  

Considered from the perspective of the world proletarian revolution, the fundamental historical lesson of the repression of the Kronstadt revolt concerns the question of class violence. While revolutionary violence is a weapon of the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and its class enemies, under no pretext can it be used within the working class, against other proletarians. Communism can’t be imposed on the proletariat by force and violence because these means are categorically opposed to the conscious nature its revolution, which can only advance through its own experience and the constant critical evaluation of this experience. The decision by the Bolshevik party to crush the Kronstadt uprising can only be understood in the context of the international isolation of the revolution and the terrible civil war which had swept the country. Nevertheless, such a decision remains a tragic mistake, since it was exerted against workers who had risen up to defend the main weapon in the conscious political transformation of society, the vital organ of the proletarian dictatorship: the power of the Soviets.

The article can be found here: The lessons of Kronstadt | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [244]

ICC, March 2021

With the recent military coup in Myanmar, the army officially took back power. But had it really ever left? The Myanmar army, a central institution of the state and, historically, the gangster in chief, has been imposing its dictatorship and making the most of its position for decades. It is, in fact, the only force still able to maintain order, stability and unity in a country of more than 130 different ethnic groups, where ethnic divisions and conflicts are legion. Because of this the imperialist appetites of powers such as China, Russia, the US and India focus on the army, which only serves to intensify tensions in this highly strategic region of Asia. The Myanmar army has usually asserted its interests by force, with open support from Chinese and Russian imperialism.

Despite the 2015 election and the handover to a façade of democratic government, the first since 1961, the February 1st coup was part of the logic of permanent military domination by an all-powerful army that has never ceased to be a state within a state since independence in 1948. Burma (as the country was known until 1989) has been ruled without interruption by generals like Aung San Suu Kyi's own father who was assassinated by rivals in 1947. The icon of democracy, supposedly the face of peace, has now been overthrown by soldiers who previously arrested her, then imprisoned her for many years, finally bringing her to power in 2015. Aung San Suu Kyi was able to come to an accommodation with these same soldiers without a moment's hesitation, unscrupulously supporting the bloody repression of the Rohingyas in 2017. In fact, the Burmese armed forces have never relinquished power, granting themselves key ministries and a substantial percentage of seats in parliament. 

An expression of sinking into decomposition...

On 22 December 2020, the head of the Tatmadaw (the official name of Myanmar's armed forces) reaffirmed that the armed forces must also play a leading role in the defence of "national policies, the sasana [Buddhist religion], traditions, customs and culture". He could have added that the Burmese army's power is not only military or "cultural" (sic), it is also economic. The army has had control of the country's economy since the coup of 1962. Today, officially, it has 14% of the national budget, although in reality it's much more, when corruption and largely opaque financing are taken into account.

In addition to its involvement in jade mining, the teak wood industry, precious stones and (the icing on the cake), the highly profitable drug trade, the Myanmar military also benefits from the dividends reaped by a conglomerate it owns, the Myanmar Economic Holding Public Company Ltd (MEHL), one of the country's most powerful and corrupt organisations. MEHL has expanded its influence into virtually every economic sector, from breweries to tobacco, mining and textile manufacturing. Historically, for the capitalist state, it is often the army which, as a last resort, ensures national cohesion and the defence of bourgeois interests in situations of internal division and confrontation. Myanmar is certainly no exception, but it is a caricatural example. If the army has ensured a certain unity of the country in the face of ethnic divisions, its interests remain in "divide and rule", to guarantee its profits, to maintain the dissensions of the various bourgeois factions in order to maintain its power.

The coup led by General Ming Aung Hliang is the latest incarnation of the process of growing chaos and decomposition where it is sometimes difficult to get one's bearings in such a maelstrom of confrontations, violence, ethnic cleansing and barbarism... And all the street demonstrations of the population in defence of the bourgeois clique of Aung San Suu Kyi, this faith in democratic illusions, all this only promises ever more chaos and repression. Every crisis in Burma, as in 1988 or 2007, has, in practice, led to bloody repression with thousands of deaths each time. This is still a possibility today with live ammunition being used by the forces of repression which have already claimed their first victims. So, why a coup now?

Many bourgeois commentators consider this coup d'état to be unexpected, incomprehensible, in view of the military domination that has never wavered, including in recent years with the opening up of democracy under military control, and the coming to power of Aung San Suu Kyi in April 2016. Hypotheses are put forward in the media: the army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, soon to retire, could have been brought before the International Court of Human Rights for crimes against humanity. Another explanation: the latest crushing victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's party in the legislative elections would have been a bitter setback for the military junta, which was not able to accept it... All these elements, however plausible they may be, express above all the exacerbation of the struggles between the different factions of the bourgeoisie within the Myanmar state apparatus, all this to the detriment of the stability and rational management of the state itself.

In other words, the respective interests of each faction, whether dressed in military uniform or in the cloak of democracy, take precedence over the overall interests of the national capital, increasingly fuelling corruption at the top of the state as well as at all levels of the functioning of society. Myanmar's already precarious economic situation has worsened dramatically with the pandemic. In addition to rising unemployment, historically always high, and the impoverishment of the population, and while GDP has fallen dramatically in recent years in one of the poorest countries in the world, according to the IMF, there's a growing humanitarian and health crisis, which has already caused the emigration of hundreds of thousands of people to Bangladesh and Thailand. Ultimately, the events in Myanmar are an expression of the same decomposition that permeates every pore of bourgeois society, from the assault on the Capitol to the global health crisis...

… and the sharpening of imperialist tensions

But these disputes between factions are not enough to completely explain the situation. It is above all in imperialist rivalries and tensions that you find out what's at stake. The main western powers, starting with the US, have unanimously condemned this military operation. Immediately after the coup, the US asked the UN for a resolution to this effect and demanded sanctions against Myanmar. This resolution was not adopted because of the vetoes of Russia and China. In the context of the growing confrontation between China and the United States, Burma remains a key strategic area. At stake is the control of the South China Sea, Taiwan and the Bay of Bengal. Chinese imperialism has absolutely no interest in allowing any "stabilisation", particularly with any democratic pretensions, which would benefit the US above all. Maintaining the mire in Myanmar is a Chinese strategic choice in Asia, access to the Bay of Bengal being a major objective for China, as well as India. It is therefore in China's interest to maintain instability by, for example, supporting guerrillas in the north, for instance in Rakhine (Arakan) State, while at the same time treating the military in the right way, notably by calling the latest coup a "ministerial reshuffle"! One of Beijing's objectives is to complete the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which will allow access to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Straits of Malacca, which has always been controlled by the US Navy. It is committed to maintaining stability in trade and political relations with Myanmar. Above all, it is a major strategic pawn in its "Silk Road" project, along which Beijing needs to secure points of support, notably in the form of future military bases and diplomatic alliances. Following Beijing's expression of support for Pakistan, strong support in the region for Myanmar's military regime is an opportunity to defend its interests while blocking proposals for embargoes and sanctions on the Myanmar military regime demanded by the United States.

Russian imperialism has implicitly endorsed the coup. "A week before the coup, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu travelled to Myanmar to finalise an agreement on the supply of ground-to-air missile systems, surveillance drones and radar equipment, according to Nikkei Asia Magazine. Russia has also signed an agreement on flight safety with General Ming, who is said to have visited Russia six times in the last decade". India finds itself in a trickier situation: while it resolutely opposed the putsch of the Burmese military regime 30 years ago, it did not stop forging links with the Burmese regime, both with the junta and with the Aung San Suu Kyi faction. Today, Modi's government is tempted to continue the dialogue with its neighbour. But it wants at all costs to avoid giving up even an inch of ground to China.

In the trap of the defence of democracy

Faced with this third coup d'état, and in a context of crisis where 60% of people live in extreme poverty, the whole population reacted, particularly the younger generation. Numerous street demonstrations and even strikes have occurred. This movement of "civil disobedience" with acts of sabotage in transport, telecommunications and information technology, with the aim of "restoring democracy", will not put an end to this situation of chaos and violence. Even if it is clear that the army has underestimated the civil resistance by provoking an unprecedented movement of rejection, especially among young people, the social movement that is developing on the purely bourgeois terrain of democratic demands does not contain the seeds of a better future.

Young people have many illusions in the bourgeois democracy of recent years. But the defence of the democratic state, the defence of the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, an accomplice in the crimes perpetrated by the army against the Rohingya people, is a trap that can only bring them serious disappointments. Despite the poor economic record of four years in power of "State Counsellor" Aung San Suu Kyi, she remains popular with a population marked by the years of dictatorship (1962-2011). However, the democratic party and the military junta are two sides of the same coin, that of the bourgeois state. The latter is a body whose function is to maintain social order and the status quo in order to preserve the interests of the ruling class and not to improve the lot of the exploited and oppressed. As a result, the hundreds of thousands of youth and workers participating in these demonstrations are prisoners of a movement that only reinforces the capitalist order. The defence of democracy is a trap and a true dead end. Worse: fighting on this terrain can only lead to impotence and bloody sacrifices for the working class as well as for the whole population.

Stopio, 27 February 2021

150 years ago, on 18 March 1871, the proletariat mounted its first revolutionary offensive – the one that gave birth to the Paris Commune. Though the bourgeoisie declared an all-out war on it, the Commune resisted for 72 days, until 28 May 1871: the ruthless repression cost the lives of 20,000 proletarians. Since then, the Paris Commune, whose memory has been passed down from generation to generation of the working class, remains an example, a reference and a legacy for the exploited of the whole world, though not for its executioner, the bourgeoisie, which is currently holding indecent commemorations to falsify its own history and to bury the precious lessons that the workers' movement was able to draw from it.

For several weeks, historians, journalists, politicians and writers will all be serving up vile propaganda in the newspapers and on the television and radio channels on behalf of their class. From the right to the left, including the extreme left, the whole bourgeois class will churn out lies, from the most flagrant to the most subtle.

For 'the right-wing' the communards are bloodthirsty savages

If the right-wing was indignant about the timidity with which the state planned to “commemorate” the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon I, it has of course showed a total disdain for the Communards (1), these “murderers”, these “troublemakers”, these “agents of disorder” who should just stay where they are, i.e. six feet under. You have to go back to 2016 to see how Le Figaro, a well-known French right-wing newspaper, bluntly states what the “party of order” has always thought in substance, and unequivocally: “The Communards destroyed Paris, massacred honest people and even starved Paris by destroying the large warehouses that stored the grain reserves that supplied the bakers of Paris”. This shameless slander knows no bounds. This is how the insurgents, already regarded as vermin at the time, became responsible for their own famine and at the same time for starving the “honest people”. In other words, if the working class in Paris was reduced to eating rats, it was their own fault! As usual, and especially since the aftermath of the event, the right-wing, which has always felt terrorised by the “dangerous classes”, repeats over and over again a kind of hate speech, equating the Communards with bloodthirsty savages.

But this campaign of crude accusations, trampling on the truth, cruelly lacking any finesse, is very easily seen through for what it is by the working class. It therefore remains in the hands of the forces of the left of capital to carry out the real and necessary work of falsifying the meaning of the Paris Commune.

The Left lays claim to the Commune, the better to subvert it

For 72 days from 18 March, the Paris City Hall will organise no less than fifty events to supposedly celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Commune. The stage will be set on 18 March in Square Louise Michel (18th arrondissement of Paris), in the presence of the “socialist” mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo.

This location has not been chosen at random. Louise Michel was one of the most famous and heroic fighters of the Commune who, when she was tried, refused even to accept any pity from the executioners of the Commune, saying to their faces: “Since it seems that every heart that beats for liberty is only entitled to a bit of lead, I claim my share! If you are not cowards, kill me”. So who are these people who, today, want to stage the memory of the Commune in a totally truncated way? Who are Madame Hidalgo and her entire “socialist” city council? Nothing less than the descendants of the social-democratic traitors who irretrievably passed into the camp of the bourgeoisie at the time of the First World War.

Since then, in opposition or in government, the “socialists” have always acted against the interests of the working class. Therefore, for purely political reasons, Anne Hidalgo's Deputy Mayor cynically exploits the memory of Louise Michel in the 2021 commemorations by quoting her: “Everyone is seeking a way forward, we are too, and we think that the day when liberty and equality reign is when the human race will be happy”. For the Communards, these words meant the end of wage slavery, the end of the exploitation of man by man, the destruction of the bourgeois state. That is what the words “liberty” and “equality” meant to them. That’s why, instead of the tricolour flag of France, which flies on the roof of the Hôtel de Ville (town hall) in Paris today, the Communards erected the red flag, a symbol of the struggle of the workers of the whole world! But for this class of exploiters and mass murderers, the “reign of liberty” is nothing more than the reign of commerce and the domination and exploitation of proletarians in workshops and on production lines.

The Socialist Party have increased rallies to the glory of bourgeois democracy in the four corners of the capital and the left-wing intellectuals, writers and film-makers have released lots of films and books to dilute the revolutionary character of the Commune. Also, the bourgeois press, like the Guardian, (2) passes it off as a “people's struggle” and compares it to the interclassist movement of the “Yellow Vests” in order to deny its unquestionably proletarian character. But the Paris Commune was neither a struggle for the implementation of bourgeois values and democracy, that most sophisticated form of class domination and capital, nor a struggle of the “people of Paris”, or even of the “petty-bourgeoisie”. On the contrary, it incarnated a struggle to the death to overthrow the power of the bourgeois class, of which the Socialist Party and all the spokespeople of the “left” are the worthy representatives today.

The extreme left of capital completes the dirty work

The leftists are not to be outdone when it comes to making their own little contribution to the falsification of the experiences of the workers' movement. More often than not they provide the most insidious of distortions.  Thus, the Trotskyists of the NPA (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) peddle the cause of “direct democracy” to distort the meaning of the Commune. These leftists do recognise that the Communards made an attack on the state, but only so they can draw false lessons from this and draw conclusions harmless to capital which they zealously support. The NPA, for example, in the Loiret district, in a bulletin they published on 13 March, gives space in its pages to the historian Roger Martelli (3) whose prose is a real plea for bourgeois democracy: “With no fixed doctrines, not even a finished programme, the Commune did in a few weeks what the Republic would take a long time to realise. It opened the way to a conception of ‘living together’, based on equality and solidarity. Finally, it set out the possibility for a less narrow representative, more direct citizen-oriented form of control. In short, it sought to put into practice the 'government of the people by the people', which US President Lincoln had announced years earlier.”

What an utter disgrace this is! Martelli shamelessly spits on the grave of the communards! The NPA, in a totally open and “uninhibited” way, reduces the Commune to a simple democratic reform dressed up as popular participation. In the end, the future prefigured by the Commune is reduced to the bourgeois democratic ideal!

Jean Jaurès, despite his reformist prejudices, at least had the intellectual honesty, unlike the falsifiers of the NPA, to say that: “the Commune was in essence and in substance the first great pitched battle of labour against capital. And that’s precisely why it was defeated, why it was slaughtered”. (4)

For its part, Lutte Ouvrière (LO), the other main French Trotskyist party, contributes with its fake radical language to this campaign of falsification by pretending to oppose parliamentary democracy (in which LO has been participating for decades) to the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., in its eyes, a more radical form of bourgeois democracy. This is how this electoralist party explained it in 2001: “In a programme which they did not have time to develop, the Communards proposed that all the communes from the big cities to the smallest hamlets in the countryside should organise themselves according to the model of the Paris Commune and that they should constitute the basic structure of a new form of truly democratic state.” (5). That said, LO is then quick to point out: “This does not mean that revolutionary communists are indifferent to so-called democratic freedoms, quite the contrary, if only because they allow militants to defend their ideas more openly". (6)

The organisations of the left of capital play without question the most treacherous role, consisting in presenting the Commune as an experiment in “radical” democracy, which would have had no other objective than improving the functioning of the state. Nothing more! 150 years later, the Paris Commune is once again faced with the Holy Alliance of all bourgeois reactionary forces, like it did in its own day with the Holy Alliance of the Prussian state and the French Republic. The political treasures bequeathed by the Commune are what the bourgeois class seeks to hide and bury.

The Commune is a key moment of working class history

Indeed, as Marx and Engels stated loud and clear in its aftermath, the Paris Commune waged the first revolutionary assault of the proletariat by fighting for the destruction of the bourgeois state. The Commune aimed to immediately consolidate its power by abolishing the standing army and the state institutions, and by adopting the permanent revocability of the members of the Commune who were responsible to all those who had elected them.

The historical conditions were not yet ripe at this time - it was well before the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia - but the Communards did introduce plans to form workers’ councils, “the finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat” as Lenin put it. So it was not the construction of a “truly democratic” state that the Communards made their objective, but the rejection of the domination of the bourgeois class. The Paris Commune demonstrated that the “the working class cannot simply take control of the existing state machinery and use it for its own purposes”. (7) This is one of the essential lessons that Marx and the workers' movement drew from this tragic experience.

If the Paris Commune was a premature insurrection that ended in the massacre of the finest flower of the world proletariat, it was nevertheless a heroic struggle of the Parisian proletariat, an invaluable contribution to the historical struggle of the exploited class. For this reason, it remains fundamental that the working class of the 21st century is able to appropriate and assimilate the experience of the Commune and the invaluable lessons that revolutionaries have drawn from it.

Paul, 18 March 2021.

To deepen the lessons of the Paris Commune, we recommend reading the following articles on our website:

• Paris Commune of 1871: When the workers first took power | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [250]
• On the 140th anniversary of the Paris Commune | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [251]
• 1871: The first proletarian dictatorship | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [252]

(1) In the Paris City Council, right-wing politicians opposed the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Commune, leading a deafening campaign on the legitimacy and even the national duty of celebrating the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.

(2) “Vive la Commune? The working-class insurrection that shook the world”, The Guardian (7 March 2021).

(3) Linked to the reviving current of the Stalinist party in France, the PCF, now close to the left-wing party, La France Insoumise, with a very muscular nationalist discourse.

(4) Jean Jaurès, Histoire Socialiste.

(5) “Democracy, parliamentary democracy, communal democracy”. Cercle Léon Trotski intitulé issue n° 89 (26 January 2001). In this article, which says a lot about LO’s democratic ideology, the Trotskyist party adds, without batting an eyelid: “Of all bourgeois institutions, the municipalities [i.e. the cogs of bourgeois democracy where LO has the best chance of obtaining elected representatives] are still potentially the most democratic, because they are the closest to the population and the most subject to its control”. No comment...

(6) “La Commune de Paris et ses enseignements pour aujourd’hui”, Lutte de classe, issue no.214 (March 2021).

(7) Marx et Engels, Preface to the Manifesto of the Communist Party (24 June 1872) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/pre... [253]

Below we are publishing substantial extracts from a letter from one of our readers, followed by our response. This letter criticises our "Report on the question of the historic course", adopted at the 23rd ICC Congress and published in International Review 164. The comrade also addresses another issue: that of the prospect, still possible, of a generalised nuclear war.

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My multiple readings of the report on the historic course published in the International Review number 164 have left me very perplexed and doubtful. I find it very difficult to form a precise and definitive opinion on this text. Rather than taking a position, I prefer to share with you some somewhat disjointed and disparate remarks. I hope that these remarks will help to move the debate forward, possibly in letters from the paper's readers.

The first remark is a certain astonishment at the appearance now of this questioning. Indeed, the ICC, even if it makes no claim to any 'Bordigist' invariance, has never performed a 180° about face in this way. I have no other example of such a calling into question of a 'cornerstone' position of this importance in the 45 years since the creation of the ICC. Do tell me if there have been any precedents? […]

The second concerns the moment when this historic 'revolution' has happened, that is to say 30 years after the collapse of the USSR and its imperialist bloc. What event in recent months, internal or external to the ICC, has provoked this calling into question of one of its programmatic cornerstones, 30 years after 1989? The only 'internal' event was the need to take stock of the 40 years of the ICC and to revise an analysis which was no longer appropriate. I remember many discussions in public meetings over the last 30 years where this affirmation of the historic course, against the questioning by sympathisers about the state of the working class, where this was a decisive argument in the argumentation.

Third remark: the distinction between the historic course and the balance of forces between the classes is difficult to grasp and does not convince me. A first understanding on my part of this text is the evolutionary character in one direction contained in the expression "historic course" as opposed to a perception of the balance of forces between the classes as a blocked, indecisive and ultimately random situation as to its evolution. To illustrate my position, I will use the expression of Albert Einstein in his criticism of the postulates of quantum mechanics: "God does not play dice". Finally, the notion of the historic course is more relevant to me because in the balance of force between the classes 'measured' at a given moment, there is a basic tendency, a movement (which can be reversed) which is continually at work and which will go to its conclusion. To conclude this remark, I have the impression that there has been a 'pessimistic' evolution in the ICC's appreciation of the historic course over the last 50 years. We went from a course toward 'revolution' in the 70s and 80s, then to a course toward 'class confrontations' of the 90s and 2000s to finish with the current perception of a course announcing the defeat of the proletariat.

One last remark that I will develop further, because my ideas are clearer on this, and it concerns an argument put forward by the ICC to justify its abandonment of a historic course in practice. This argument is the current non-existence of military blocs and the lack a tendency toward different countries coming together to form such blocs. Unlike the alliances preceding the First World War between France, the United Kingdom and Russia on the one hand, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey on the other, or the alliances preceding the Second between France, the United Kingdom and Poland this time and Germany, Italy and the USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact!) on the other; there have been no such alliances since the collapse of the USSR. Apart from the question of long-range nuclear weapons, there is at the moment one country that does not need to have formed a united and perfectly controlled and sustained bloc in order to embark on a war which, if not global, will not be confined to a theatre of operations limited in time and space (as in the two wars against Saddam Hussein, for example). It is of course the United States that has the economic power, the military supremacy and the bases nonetheless for intervention anywhere in the world. For a war with battles in different parts of the planet, which take place simultaneously and over a fairly long period of time (several years) to occur, all that is needed is for another power, which has several vassal states through foreign trade and economic investment, to set up military bases abroad in these vassal states, start building aircraft carriers and generally an efficient and numerous navy, so that at some point the risk of widespread conflict becomes a significant probability. This country already exists, it is China which, thanks to the Covid-19 epidemic, may soon overtake the United States economically. The possibility of a 'blunder' in the coming years over the Taiwan question, degenerating into a generalised confrontation between these two countries in different places, forcing other states to position themselves and to take sides with one or the other (e.g. France, the United Kingdom and Germany for the United States within the framework of NATO, and Russia for China) is a possibility that is not at all far-fetched. Battles in countries in the East and bombings in Western Europe could result from this situation. I think that the question of war is not at all overcome by the theory of decomposition replacing the theory of the historic course.

To conclude on this last remark, by chance I recently read two articles in the press that add grist to the mill. In Obs magazine, in a brief article on the evolution of the world economy, it says that the power that was at the origin of this pandemic is the only one that will, paradoxically, see positive growth in 2020. The article ends as follows: "When the crisis is over, we will have to make a new assessment of the forces at play. But already, we can announce that China is getting dangerously close to the United States". Canard Enchaîné reports the words of US nuclear weapons chief Charles Richard: "It's time for the US to revise and update its nuclear doctrine, because the nation has not taken seriously enough, until now, the possibility of direct armed competition with nuclear-armed adversaries. For 30 years the Pentagon has considered that there were no threats. This post-Cold War rhetoric is over. We have to accept the prospect that a nuclear war could one day take place. Our adversaries have taken advantage of this period to conceal their aggressive behaviour, increase their military potential and reconsider their tactics and strategies. We cannot expect our adversaries to respect the constraints that everyone has imposed on each other until now, depending on whether the war is conventional or nuclear, who now have a different conception of deterrence from ours".

I hope that these few remarks may be useful in developing the discussion on the key issue of the ICC's abandonment of the idea of the historic course.

D

Our response

First of all, we would like to warmly commend the effort of comrade D and the reflection he has undertaken on the idea of the "historic course", which will feed and enrich the debate.

The comrade asks, first of all: how is it that the concept of the "historic course", which has always been one of the "cornerstones" of the ICC's analysis since its foundation, is today called into question and abandoned in the "Report on the question of the historic course" from our 23rd Congress? The comrade also asks us: has the ICC abandoned or rectified other positions?

To the first question, we must refer the comrade to what is stated very explicitly in the introduction to the Report in the International Review: "By making the necessary change in our analysis, we were adopting the method of Marx and the marxist movement since its inception, which consists of changing positions, analyses and even the programme as a whole as soon as it no longer corresponds to the march of history; this is fully in line with the goals of marxism as a revolutionary theory. The most celebrated example of this is the important modifications which Marx and Engels made to the Communist Manifesto itself, summarised in the later prefaces they added to this fundamental text, in the light of the historic changes that had taken place. 'Marxism is a revolutionary world outlook which must always strive for new discoveries, which completely despises rigidity in once-valid theses, and whose living force is best preserved in the intellectual clash of self-criticism and the rough and tumble of history' (Rosa Luxemburg, An Anti-critique)

Rosa’s insistence, in this period, on the necessity to reconsider prior analyses in order to remain faithful to the nature and method of marxism as a revolutionary theory was directly linked to the profound significance of the First World War. The 1914-18 war marked a turning point in capitalism as a mode of production, its passage from a period of ascent and progress to a new period of decadence and collapse which fundamentally changed the conditions and the programme of the workers’ movement. But only the left wing of the Second International began to recognise that the previous period had definitely ended and that the proletariat was now entering into the “epoch of wars and revolution”.

It is therefore by adopting the same approach as that of the workers' movement of the past that we have been led to question the concept of the "historic course". A concept which we consider outdated since the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, opening up a new phase within the historic period of the decadence of capitalism, its ultimate phase: that of decomposition, the ultimate phase of the decadence of capitalism. Just as the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence had rendered obsolete the national liberation struggles defended by marxists in the 19th century, the analysis of the "historic course", which allowed us to understand the direction in which society was evolving, became obsolete. The historic alternative today is no longer "World war or proletarian revolution" (as it was in the past) but "Destruction of humanity in generalised chaos or proletarian revolution".

The "historic course" and the balance of forces between the classes in the 20th century

Our article in International Review 164 explains in great detail the difference between the concept of the "historic course" and that of the "balance of forces between classes". We had made the mistake of identifying these two notions in the past when they are two distinct concepts. In the 19th century, in the ascendant period of capitalism, the concept of "historic course" had not been used by revolutionaries because we had not yet entered the "era of wars and revolutions" (as the Communist International said in 1919). Neither the failure of the revolution of 1848 nor the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871 had led to an imperialist war, although the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat had been reversed in favour of the ruling class.

With the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence, the idea of the "historic course" was adopted by revolutionaries in order to understand in which general direction society was going. In 1914, the ideological defeat of the proletariat (with the voting of war credits by social democracy and the betrayal of the workers' parties) had allowed the recruitment of tens of millions of proletarians in the First World War. The balance of forces between the two fundamental classes of society had swung to the bourgeoisie, which had succeeded in sending the proletariat enthusiastically to the battlefields. For the first time in history, the alternative was posed: "socialism or barbarism", "proletarian revolution or the destruction of humanity in World War I". Then in 1917, with the triumph of the Russian Revolution and its impact in other countries (notably Germany), the balance of forces between classes was reversed in favour of the proletariat, ending the World War. The "historic course" was, for the first time, a course towards the world proletarian revolution, posing the question of the overthrow of capitalism, which manifested itself in a real revolutionary wave that developed throughout the world between 1917 and 1923, and again in 1927 in China. But, with the bloody crushing of the revolution in Germany and the Stalinist counterrevolution under the guise of "socialism in one country", the bourgeoisie was able to regain the upper hand. This physical defeat of the proletariat was followed by a profound ideological defeat that led to its recruitment under the flags of antifascism and the defence of the "socialist homeland". The balance of forces between the classes having been reversed in favour of the bourgeoisie, a new historic course was affirmed in the 1930s: society was inexorably heading toward a Second World War. The ruling class had been able to subject the working class to the dead weight of a long period of counter-revolution by giving itself all the means to prevent the proletariat from repeating the revolutionary undertaking of 1917-18. This period of victorious counter-revolution had therefore not allowed the proletariat to reverse the historic course by affirming once again its revolutionary perspective. Such a situation could therefore only leave the bourgeoisie free to impose its own response to the historic crisis of its system: world war.

It was only after half a century of counter-revolution that the proletariat, by gradually rebuilding its forces, was able to raise its head again: at the end of the 1960s, with the resurgence of the economic crisis and the exhaustion of the post-war economic "boom", the proletariat reappeared on the scene of history. The wave of workers' struggles that shook the world, notably in May 1968 in France and during the "hot autumn" in Italy in 1969, showed that the proletariat was not willing to accept the deterioration of its living conditions. As we have always affirmed, a proletariat that does not accept the sacrifices imposed by the economic crisis is not ready to accept the ultimate sacrifice of its life on the battlefields. With the erosion of the bourgeois mystifications that had allowed its recruitment in World War II (that of anti-fascism and Stalinism), the working class regained the upper hand at the end of the 1960s. By obstructing the outbreak of a new world war, the international resumption of class struggle had put an end to the period of counterrevolution and opened up a new historic course: a course toward widespread class confrontations that put the perspective of proletarian revolution back on the agenda.

The history of the twentieth century has thus shown the dynamics of capitalism and the evolution of society according to the balance of forces between classes. It is this balance of force that determines the "historic course", that is to say in which direction society is heading in the face of the permanent crisis of capitalism: either towards world war or towards proletarian revolution.

Although the "historic course" ultimately depends on the balance of forces between the classes, the two concepts are not identical. For marxists, the "historic course" is not fixed. It is fundamentally determined by the response that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat give, at a given moment, to the crisis of the capitalist economy. "We have tended, on the basis of what the working class experienced during the 20th century, to identify the notion of the evolution of the balance of power between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat with the notion of a “historical course”, whereas the latter indicates a fundamental alternative outcome, the world war or revolution, a sanction of this balance of power. In a way, the current historical situation is similar to that of the 19th century: the balance of power between classes can evolve in one direction or another without decisively affecting the life of society" [1]

The incomprehension of this notion of "historic course" had, moreover, led some revolutionaries of the past to make dangerous mistakes. This was notably the case of Trotsky who, in the 1930s, when the proletariat of the central countries was being recruited under the bourgeois flags of antifascism and the defence of the "workers' gains" in the USSR, did not understand that society was heading irreversibly towards world war. Trotsky did not understand that the War in Spain was the laboratory for World War II. Seeing the uprising of the Spanish proletariat against Franco as a "revolution" following on from the October 1917 revolution in Russia, Trotsky had ended up pushing prematurely for the foundation of a Fourth International, at a time when historic conditions were marked by defeat and when the "task of the hour" was for revolutionaries to draw the balance sheet and lessons from the failure of the Russian revolution and the first revolutionary wave.

Why question the concept of the "historic course" today?

Our reader makes the following criticism: he expresses "a certain astonishment at the appearance now of this questioning […] What event in recent months, internal or external to the ICC, has provoked this calling into question of one of its programmatic cornerstones, 30 years after 1989. The only 'internal' event was the need to take stock of the 40 years of the ICC and to revise an analysis which was no longer appropriate. I remember many discussions in public meetings over the last 30 years where this affirmation of the historic course, against the questioning by sympathisers about the state of the working class, where this was a decisive argument in the argumentation."

The first question we want to answer is: was the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 an event of such historic significance that it justifies our examining the direction in which society is heading? As we have highlighted in our press, the collapse of the Stalinist countries put a definitive end to the myth of the "socialist fatherland". An entire sector of the capitalist world fell apart, not thanks to the revolutionary action of the proletariat, but from the battering of the world economic crisis. The disappearance of the Eastern bloc put an end to the Cold War and to the bourgeois alternative of a Third World War as the only response that the ruling class could give to the crisis of its system. As a result, the Western bloc finally broke up, since the threat of the "Evil Empire" had disappeared. The prospect of a Third World War between the USSR and the US had itself disappeared, without giving way to the alternative of proletarian revolution. How did we explain this "void" left in the course of history? Our analysis was the following: neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie having been able to affirm their own response to the economic crisis at the end of the 1980s, the historic alternative "War or world proletarian revolution" was "blocked". If capitalism has entered its phase of decomposition, it is because the working class has not been able to go on the offensive, to politicise its struggles to raise them to the gravity of the stakes of the historic situation. The dynamics of the class struggle can no longer be analysed within the framework of the "historic course". The analysis of the "historic course" therefore had to be re-examined since the prospect of a new world war had receded, as had that of proletarian revolution.

The changing historic situation required us to critically examine the 40 years of ICC in order to determine the validity of our analyses. This is what we began to do at our 21st Congress, which was devoted exclusively to this critical examination. It was therefore on the basis of this Congress that we reflected on the historic course and updated our analysis in the light of the new world situation opened up by the collapse of the Eastern bloc. This major event, the most important since the Second World War, had provoked a decline in the consciousness and combativeness of the proletariat because of the impact of the gigantic campaign of the bourgeoisie claiming that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes meant the "collapse of communism". The bourgeoisie had been able to turn this major manifestation of the decomposition of its system against the consciousness of the working class, thus obstructing its revolutionary perspective and making its forward march towards generalised class confrontations more difficult, slower and more uneven.

Moreover, during this Congress we had affirmed that the reconstitution of new imperialist blocs (which is an indispensable objective condition for a third world war) was not on the agenda. With the end of bloc discipline, the dynamics of imperialism were now characterised by the growing tendency of "every man for himself", a tendency which did not exclude the possibility of alliances between states. But these alliances are marked by a certain instability. This "every man for himself" in the life of the bourgeoisie can only aggravate global chaos, especially in increasingly deadly localised wars. "Every man for himself" is also a manifestation of the decomposition of capitalism. It can be seen today in the calamitous management of the Covid-19 pandemic by each national bourgeoisie, as witnessed by the "war of masks" and the competitive race for vaccines.

It was therefore on the basis of the marxist method of analysing historic evolution that the ICC considered that the concept of "historic course" had become obsolete. The dynamics of class struggle and the balance of forces between the classes can no longer be posed today in the same terms as in the past. Faced with a new historic situation (and one which has not been seen since the beginning of the decadence of capitalism), it was up to us to review an analysis which had been for 40 years, as comrade D says, one of our "programmatic cornerstones". This is not quite right, by the way: the analysis of the "historic course" is not a position that is an integral part of our programmatic platform (as is the analysis of the decadence of capitalism and its implications for national liberation struggles, participation in elections, or the nature of trade unions and the former USSR).

The "theory of decomposition" does not replace "the theory of the historic course", as Comrade D asserts. A new world war is not today a necessary condition for the destruction of mankind. As we highlighted in our "Theses on Decomposition", the decomposition of capitalism can have the same effects as war: it can lead, in the long run, to the destruction of humanity and the planet if the proletariat does not succeed in overthrowing capitalism.

Self-criticism: a vital necessity for revolutionary organisations

To conclude, we must briefly answer the other question raised by Comrade D's letter, still concerning our questioning of the concept of "historic course”: "I have no other example of such a calling into question of a 'cornerstone' position of this importance in the 45 years since the creation of the ICC. Do tell me if there have been any precedents?"

There have indeed been some "precedents". The first is pointed out by the comrade himself: we had questioned the notion of a "course to revolution" to replace it with that of "course to class confrontations" in the 1980s. Indeed, the notion of a "course to revolution" was strongly marked by a certain immediacy on our part. The historic resumption of class struggle at the end of the 1960s did not mean that a new revolutionary wave was going to emerge quickly. It was the analysis of the slow rhythm of the economic crisis in the 1970s that allowed us to understand that this resumption of the class struggle could not yet immediately lead to a revolutionary uprising of the proletariat as was the case with the barbarity of the First World War.

Another example of the necessary rectification of our analyses is the question of the emergence of China as the second world power. In the past, we had indeed defended the idea that, in the period of decadence of capitalism, there was no possibility for the countries of the "Third World" (including China) to emerge from underdevelopment. It was in the light of the consequences of the collapse of the Eastern bloc with the opening up of the countries of the Soviet zone and their integration into the 'market economy' that we were led to revise this analysis, which had become obsolete. Nevertheless, this new analysis in no way called into question the historic framework of the decadence of capitalism.

Like revolutionaries in the past, the ICC has never been afraid to recognise and rectify its mistakes, nor to adapt its analyses to new realities in the world situation. If we were not able to criticise our own mistakes, we would not be an organisation faithful to the method of marxism. As Rosa Luxemburg said in September 1899, "There is probably no other party for which free and untiring criticism of its own shortcomings is as much a condition of existence as for social democracy. As we have to progress in line with social evolution, the continual modification of our methods of struggle and, consequently, the incessant criticism of our theoretical heritage, are the conditions for our growth. It goes without saying, however, that self-criticism in our Party only achieves its goal of serving progress, and we cannot be too pleased about this unless it moves in the direction of our struggle. Any criticism that contributes to making our class struggle more vigorous and conscious in achieving our final goal deserves our gratitude" ("Freedom of Criticism and Science").

It is in this sense that we must also welcome Comrade D's letter and his critical remarks. His questioning contributes to the public debate which we can only encourage. By opening the columns of our press, as we have always done, to any reader who wishes to criticise our analyses and positions, our aim is to develop the culture of debate within the working class and the proletarian political milieu.

Is the prospect of generalised nuclear war on the agenda?

The conditions for the outbreak of a generalised war

Comrade D states in his letter that "the question of war is not at all overcome by the theory of decomposition replacing the theory of the historic course."

Apart from the fact that the ruling class has not been able since 1989 to reconstitute new imperialist blocs, the comrade forgets that the second condition for the outbreak of a new world war is the ability of the bourgeoisie to recruit the proletariat behind national flags, especially in the central countries of capitalism. This is by no means the case today. As we have always affirmed, a proletariat that is not willing to accept the sacrifices imposed by the worsening economic crisis is not prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of its life on the battlefield. After the long counter-revolutionary period where states were able to send millions of proletarians to their deaths behind the flags of fascism and anti-fascism during the Second World War, the working class returned to the stage of history at the end of the 1960s (May 68 in France, the "hot autumn" in Italy, etc.). The bourgeoisie had been prevented from unleashing a third planetary butchery during the Cold War because it was unable to recruit a proletariat which, although it was unable to develop its struggles on a revolutionary terrain, was both very combative and absolutely unwilling to be killed or to massacre its class brothers. Despite all the difficulties that the working class has faced in massively developing its struggles since 1989, the historical situation is still open. Since the proletariat has not suffered a decisive and definitive defeat, the worsening of the economic crisis can only push it to fight tooth and nail to defend its living conditions, as we have seen again recently with the movement against pension reform in France during the winter of 2019-2020. And in its capacity to resist the attacks of capital, we have also seen a tendency to seek solidarity in the struggle between all sectors and all generations. Of course, this in no way means that the bourgeoisie can never again inflict a historic and decisive defeat on the working class. But, as we affirmed in our "Theses on Decomposition" (International Review 107), social decomposition can destroy any capacity of the working class to overthrow capitalism and lead to the destruction of humanity and the planet.

Towards a reconstitution of imperialist blocs?

In support of his analysis of the current potential for a large-scale military conflict, Comrade D states: "Apart from the question of long-range nuclear weapons, there is at the moment one country that does not need to have formed a united and perfectly controlled and sustained bloc in order to embark on a war which, if not global, will not be confined to a theatre of operations limited in time and space (as in the two wars against Saddam Hussein, for example). It is of course the United States that has the economic power, the military supremacy and the bases nonetheless for intervention anywhere in the world. For a war with battles in different parts of the planet, which take place simultaneously and over a fairly long period of time (several years) to occur, all that is needed is for another power, which has several vassal states through foreign trade and economic investment, to set up military bases abroad in these vassal states, start building aircraft carriers and generally an efficient and numerous navy, so that at some point the risk of widespread conflict becomes a significant probability. This country already exists, it is China which, thanks to the Covid-19 epidemic, may soon overtake the United States economically".

It is true that it is around the conflict between these two superpowers that the strategic battle for a "new world order" is focused. China, with its vast "Silk Road" programme, aims to establish itself as a leading economic power by 2030-50 and to build up by 2050 a "world-class army capable of winning victory in any modern war". Such ambitions are causing a general destabilisation of relations between imperialist states and are pushing the United States to try since 2013 to contain and break the rise of the Chinese power that threatens it. The American response, which began with Obama (taken up and amplified by Trump), represents a turning point in American policy. The defence of its interests as a national state now embraces the "every man for himself" which dominates imperialist relations: the US is moving from the role of policeman of world order to that of principal propagator of "every man for himself" and the chaos and calling into question of the world order established in 1945 under its aegis. On the other hand, the idea inferred by what the comrade says is that there is a tendency towards bipolarisation, since on the one hand the European countries, within the framework of NATO, would take the side of the United States, while China would not only be able to rely on its vassal states but would have a major ally, Russia.

Yet the emergence of China itself is a product of the phase of decomposition, in which the tendency towards bipolarisation is being broken by "every man for himself" reigning between each imperialist power. Similarly, there is a big difference between the development of this tendency and a concrete process leading to the formation of new blocs. The increasingly aggressive attitudes of the two major powers tend to undermine rather than reinforce this process. China is deeply distrusted by all its neighbours, especially Russia, which often aligns itself with China only to defend its immediate interests (as it does in Syria), but is terrified of being subordinated to China because of the latter's economic power, and remains one of the fiercest opponents of Beijing's "Silk Road" project. America, meanwhile, has been actively engaged in dismantling virtually all the structures of the old bloc that it had previously used to preserve its "new world order" and which resisted the shift in international relations towards "every man for himself". It increasingly treats its NATO allies as enemies, and in general has become one of the main actors in aggravating the chaotic nature of current imperialist relations.

Is a nuclear war possible in the current period?

In short, by putting to one side one of the essential conditions for the outbreak of a new world war (the need for the ideological enlistment of the proletariat), comrade D puts forward another hypothesis. He refers to articles in the bourgeois press (L'Obs and Le Canard Enchaîné) to affirm that a nuclear war is quite possible, notably between the US and China (which has become an industrial and imperialist power facing the first world power).

As we have always affirmed, imperialism has its own dynamics and is an integral part of the way of life of capitalism in its period of decadence. And as Jean Jaurès said, "capitalism brings war as the cloud brings the storm". No economic power can compete with others, and assert itself as such on the world stage, without developing ever more sophisticated weapons. The trade war between states is therefore always accompanied by an exacerbation of imperialist tensions. While it is true that nuclear armament is no longer just a means of "deterrence" as it was during the "Cold War", today the arms race is a means of blackmail and bargaining between nuclear-armed states. The exacerbation of imperialist tensions does not always lead to a direct conflagration, as we saw, for example, in 2017 with the military tensions between the US and North Korea (which had moreover given rise to alarmist talk in the bourgeois press). After several months of negotiations, this conflict ended (at least momentarily) with warm embraces between Trump (president of the United States) and Kim Jong-un (president of North Korea).

The more the bourgeoisie is forced to face the bankruptcy of its system and the acceleration of the trade war, the more each power seeks to advance its pawns in the imperialist world arena for the control of strategic positions against its rivals. As capitalism sinks into social decomposition, the bourgeoisie appears more and more as a suicidal class. Uncontrolled slip-ups on the imperialist level cannot be ruled out in the future if the proletariat does not take up the challenge posed by the gravity of the historical situation. But for the moment, the perspective of a nuclear conflagration between China and the US is not on the agenda. Moreover, what interest would these two powers have to gain by massively dropping nuclear bombs on their rival? The destruction would be such that no occupying troops from the victorious country could be sent to the piles of ruins. We have always rejected the vision of the "push-button" war, where the bourgeoisie could unleash a global nuclear cataclysm at the touch of a button, without any need for the proletariat to be recruited. The ruling class is not completely stupid, even if irresponsible and completely insane heads of state can come to power at particular moments. It is not a question of underestimating the danger of imperialist tensions between the great nuclear powers like China and the US, nor of totally ruling out the prospect of a conflagration between these two powers in the future, but of measuring the catastrophic repercussions at the world level: none of the warring powers would be able to take advantage of it. Contrary to the alarmist rhetoric of certain media and the predictions of geopoliticians, we must guard against playing Nostradamus. If the dynamic of imperialism (the outcome of which we cannot predict today) leads to such a situation, its origin will be in the total loss of control by the ruling class over its decomposing system. We're not there yet and we must be careful not to "cry wolf" prematurely.

Revolutionaries must not give in to the pervasive idea of "no future". On the contrary, they must keep faith in the future, in the capacity of the proletariat and its younger generations to overthrow capitalism before it destroys the planet and humanity. By abandoning today our past analysis of the "historical course", we do not now have, as comrade D thinks, a "pessimistic" vision of the future. We still bet on the possibility of generalised class confrontations allowing the proletariat to recover and affirm its revolutionary perspective. We have never, in any of our articles, announced a "defeat" for the proletariat, as our reader's letter maintains.

Sofiane

[1] "Report on the question of the historic course", International Review 164 (first half of 2020).

In the article below we show how, faced with “an accelerated deterioration and precariousness of living conditions”, students in France demonstrated on 21 January 2021, when “hundreds of students took to the streets across France to express their anger and frustration”.

In the UK students have also fought against the same worsening of their living conditions with rent strikes that involved thousands of students at dozens of universities, lasting from October 2020 until February 2021. Besides a rent rebate, at several universities students also demanded a reduction in tuition fees

With regular government guidelines to stay at home over the past year, many students in Britain have found themselves spending less time in student accommodation. But many of them were still expected to pay the full rent on empty rooms.

In this situation students had their backs against the wall. So they decided to take action and started to collectively organise to withhold their rent from universities. After an initial rejection, the spontaneous initiatives of the first rent strikes were then ‘taken over’ by the student unions. Others seem to have been organised by self-appointed leftist committees.

The most combative example was set “by the rent strikes in Bristol and Manchester. These strikes, both large and militant in character, have shown students not only that it is possible to organise a rent strike, but that it is only through collective, militant action that students can win against the marketised university”. (Matthew, Lee Rent Strike Reflections).

The demands put forward by striking students in Manchester in October-November revealed broader concerns, as their demands were not limited to rent alone, but also included other issues such as flooding, rat infestations and lack of access to facilities due to lockdown.

And confronted with “regularly stopped face-to-face classes in universities, leaving students with no other perspective than a face-to-face meeting with a computer screen”, the Manchester students also expressed their grievances against the lack of support for students during isolation and the cancelling of the face-to-face teaching.

Unlike the protest in France, which showed tendencies to question present capitalist society, the rent strikes in the UK were limited to students' specific concerns, but were not of a lesser importance. Firmly anchored on the terrain of the defence of immediate living conditions, it shows the way to the working class as a whole.

The movement in the UK, the biggest wave of university rent strikes in four decades, revealed that the situation of students in Europe is not limited to France. Students in the UK experience the same conditions and, as we have seen in the past few months, are determined to fight for descent living conditions and “the right to study with dignity”.

WR 23/3/21

On 21 January, hundreds of students took to the streets across France to express their anger and frustration. For a year now, in an attempt to cope with the pandemic, the government has regularly stopped face-to-face classes in universities, leaving students with no other prospect than virtual meetings in front of a computer screen. President Macron may have said that a lockdown only for the old and the young was out of the question, but this is one of the main thrusts of French government policy for managing the pandemic. As a result, courses are limited to online meetings for the lucky ones or just reading pdf files for the rest. As for lecturers on sick leave, they are not replaced and students have to try on their own to find the content of their courses on the internet. In addition to this isolation, financial insecurity makes young people among the first victims of increasing poverty. In normal circumstances 40% of students work to try and pay their bills... but student jobs have all but disappeared, leaving a large number of them struggling to make ends meet. 75% of students say they have financial difficulties. Many can no longer afford to pay their rent or even to feed themselves after the middle of the month, which has led to a growing number of students being reduced to using "soup kitchens" and resorting to "food banks".

The few crumbs distributed by the Macron government to pacify people will not change anything. A health voucher to go and see a psychologist?... There's typically only 1 for every 30,000 students on campus! Two meals at a euro per day?... This has led some university restaurants to drastically reduce the portions and quality of meals!

Less money, almost no social life, no prospects, this is the fate that society is "offering" to the younger generation: "One young person in six has stopped studying, 30% has given up access to healthcare, and more than half are worried about their mental health"[1]. Psychological problems have escalated, affecting 30% of students compared to 20% four years ago.[2] The extreme isolation, linked to the pandemic and the atomisation of capitalist society, seems to be affecting a whole generation. Faced with such an unbearable situation, suicide attempts have multiplied in recent months[3], a further sign of despair and the absence of a future among an increasing minority of the population.

"Between fatigue, limbo, anger and loneliness, what do we do?"[4]

If students see themselves as "an abandoned generation", they are not ready to give up and let themselves be trampled by putrefying capitalism. "The life of a student should not end in the cemetery!”[5].

Thus, despite the health risk, the most combative have taken to the streets to denounce their living conditions but also on behalf of those who remain isolated: "that's also why we're here, to speak out for the others", said a student on a demonstration[6].

But the student malaise has existed for years, even decades. Already, in 2017, 20% of students were living below the poverty line and 46% were working for a living. These are telling statistics; students' cost of living has been rising steadily since 2009[7]. In September 2019, as a personification of this endless degradation, a student set himself on fire in front of the CROUS[8] of the University of Lyon. He accompanied his gesture with a message on Facebook in which he denounced the conditions of student life and "the policies carried out for several years" by the various fractions of the bourgeoisie in power, "Macron, Hollande, Sarkozy in particular".[9] In response, students took to the streets to demand the right to study with dignity: "Precariousness kills!" "Decent living conditions for all students"[10], you could already read in the period before Covid.

Today, if the pandemic has certainly reinforced isolation and atomisation, it has only been a catalyst for the continuous deterioration of student living conditions, not only in France but throughout the European Union and in Britain, where an accelerated deterioration and precariousness of living conditions is widespread.[11] A proportion of the new generation of proletarians is suffering. Anger is not only directed against the harmful effects of the Covid crisis such as atomisation and the lockdown imposed by the state. As we could see in the demonstrations, the concerns remained much broader: "students in revolt: against the state and precariousness", "students: isolating us is their weapon, solidarity was, is, and will be our response", "at school, at university, at the factory and everywhere, let's fight precariousness and poverty".[12] Behind these demands, there is an underlying theme: How to fight against this society? How can we imagine a different future?

The student demonstrations of this January in France are in line with the struggles of autumn 2019 and winter 2020. Although initially stunned and unable to react to the outbreak of the pandemic, the will to fight has not been totally broken, nor the ability to struggle together, to discuss and to exchange points of view, even if the path to the development of more massive struggles is still long.

These struggles have been very short-lived because of the health situation and the capacity of the bourgeoisie to defuse actions very quickly by dismissing the "fear" of a new lockdown and by the work of division of the unions. The latter did everything possible to prevent the participation of students in the interprofessional day of action of 6 February by organising alternative rallies and isolated and sterile general assemblies inside the universities themselves or by putting forward slogans such as "forgotten youth: we won't pay for the crisis"!

However, despite these attempts to portray young people as being "sacrificed for the health of the elderly", students aren't swallowing these stories. "70% of 18-30 year olds think that it is shocking to say that their generation has been sacrificed to save the elderly".[13]

No: there is no conflict of interest between generations of the same class! It is in solidarity and from the lessons of past struggles that young proletarians must draw their strength. Capitalism has nothing to offer to any proletarian generation. The slogan coined during the movement against the First Employment Contract (CPE) in 2006 remains fully relevant: "Young bacon, old croutons, all part of the same salad"[14].

Élise, 18 February 2021

We are publishing here a three-part series on the question of education that first appeared in the pages of World Revolution in 2001 (numbers 243-245). While it starts with references to the UK general election of 2001, what the series says is still relevant today. On the views developed by the workers’ movement in the 19th century, on the contradictory approach of the bourgeoise in capitalism's decadence, on the programme of the Bolsheviks when it dealt with education, or on certain traps that revolutionaries have to fight against today, all these questions have not become outdated with the passage of time.

Education remains important for the working class, and we can see how students, whether at school or university, are currently suffering with the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown – from social isolation, disruption to their educational programmes, and, in the universities, exorbitant fees and rents. The bourgeoisie has been cutting education budgets for years, but still needs skilled workers to exploit. Hypocritically it talks about the importance of education while reducing the necessary funding. It's true that education is one of the means for instilling bourgeois ideology, but it's also necessary for workers to be able function in capitalist society. This doesn’t alter the fact that, as the articles conclude, there will need to be a "fundamental reorganisation of education in the post-revolutionary period of transition to a truly human community".

WR, March 2021

Part 1: A class sunk in ignorance may revolt, but it will never make a revolution

Education has always been important to the working class. From the first days of the workers’ movement there were demands for children to attend school as well as attempts at self-education. Today, every part of the ruling class plays on this concern, just as they play on the concern for health care. In reality, the interests of the two classes remain as opposed in the realm of education as they do in every other aspect of life.

During the 1997 general election Labour promised to make education their “number one priority” with increased spending, lower class sizes and improved standards. For their part, the Tories claimed that they had already increased spending by 48% in real terms and guaranteed to set new national standards that would require schools to improve their performance. As the next election gets closer the game has been renewed, with Labour boasting that investment will grow by a third between 1998/9 and 2003/4, with an additional £2bn being spent on school buildings this year alone. The Tories have replied that schools are weighed down by bureaucracy and class sizes have actually increased. Not to be outdone, the leftists have put forward their own promises which, since they will never be put into practice, are limited only by what they think people will fall for. The SWP in its alternative budget last month promised £12bn while the Socialist Alliance went for £22bn to be funded from the sale of mobile phone licences. All of these demands and promises are just so many tricks to divert the real concern of the working class into support for the system of education set up by the ruling class to serve its own interests. They all aim to sow the illusion that, despite the economic crisis, capitalism has the means to provide an education through which the individual can realise his or her potential.

The situation of the working class

As the industrial revolution developed in Britain through the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the ruling class saw no need to educate the ‘hands’ who laboured for them. This was revealed in the various official reports compiled at the time for the government. These found children not only unable to read or write, but also unable to do the most simple maths: “A boy, seventeen years old, ‘did not know how many two and two made, nor how many farthings there were in twopence, even when the money was placed in his hand.’” Their general knowledge was found to be equally poor: “Several boys had never heard of London… Several had never heard the name of the Queen nor other names such as Nelson, Wellington, Bonaparte […] a third, seventeen years old, answered several very simple questions with the brief statement, that ‘he was ne judge o’ nothin’.” These excerpts were drawn together by Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1842-4 and led him to conclude: “The means of education in England are restricted out of all proportion to the population. The few day schools at the command of the working class are available only for the smallest minority and are bad besides. The teachers, worn out workers and other unsuitable persons who only turn to education in order to live, are usually without the indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral discipline so needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervisions.” It has been estimated that, in 1839, 41.6% of the population were illiterate, with the rate being considerably higher amongst women than men. Expenditure on education was virtually non-existent: Engels gives a figure of £40,000 for 1844 out of a ministerial budget of some £55 million, mainly split between schools run by the established Anglican Church or the smaller dissenting sects, where religious prejudice was the main subject. Many Sunday Schools refused to teach writing, either because it was seen as too worldly an activity for a Sunday or because of the belief that all a working person required was the ability to read the bible. New teaching methods introduced in this period reduced education to the rote learning of chunks of ‘knowledge’ to be answered mechanically in question and answer form. Given this, the rate of literacy suggested by the figures quoted above should be treated with caution. In this period the bourgeoisie were not confident in their ability to use education to control and indoctrinate the working class and feared the spread of knowledge to a class that had already shown a tendency to question the established order in both words and deeds. Consequently, as Engels argues, the main form of education was force and what this taught was class hatred: “There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if the workers, treated as brutes, actually become such; or if they can maintain their consciousness of manhood only by cherishing the most glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power. They are men only so long as they burn with wrath against the ruling class. They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break the yoke.”

The efforts of the working class

The working class did not sit idly by, waiting for their betters to condescend to educate them. Nor did they generally oppose education because they wanted their children to work.

During the first decades of the nineteenth century repeated demands were made to Parliament to reduce the working day. This was an essential precondition if children were to learn anything, since working weeks of up to 72 hours left them neither the time nor the energy for schooling. Between 1802 and 1833, five Labour Laws were passed, but no resources were ever made available for their implementation. It was not until the Act of 1833 established Factory Inspectors, raised the age at which children could be employed and restricted their working hours, that any progress was possible. Even then the proposals were so hedged around with exceptions that they had little real effect. This and subsequent legislation allowed children a few hours education a day.

Alongside this struggle, the working class maintained and developed a tradition of self-education. E.P. Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class, describes some of the weaving communities where the inhabitants had some control over the pattern of work and could intersperse weaving and education both of their children and themselves: “Every weaving district had its weaver-poets, biologists, mathematicians, musicians, geologists, botanists... there are accounts of weavers in isolated villages who taught themselves geometry by chalking on their flagstones and who were eager to discuss the differential calculus.” (p.322). Where such traditional patterns of life had been destroyed by the development of the factory system, the desire for education still emerged amongst the artisans or mechanics who were the direct product of the new system. This was expressed in the building of Mechanics Institutes and Halls of Science, in the proliferation of clubs and the publication of numerous journals and pamphlets. If these partly echoed the bourgeois ideology of self-improvement, they also expressed a class attitude. This could be seen particularly in the political journals that came and went with such frequency in the early 19th century and which were a focus for the discussion of strategy, whether constitutional or revolutionary. This was particularly true of papers like the Poor Man’s Guardian and, above all, the Northern Star. It was common practice for groups of workers to take out a joint subscription and for the paper to be read aloud to the rest of the group and then discussed. Many workers later described this as the foundation of their political education. On the particular question of the education of children, the Chartists explicitly opposed its control by the middle class and attempts were made to set up their own schools.

Education and the workers’ movement

The demand for education featured in nearly every programmatic statement of the workers’ movement throughout the 19th century, from the Communist League in 1847 to the Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democratic Party in 1891. In 1845 Engels argued that the introduction of general education for children was one of the measures “which are bound to result in practical communism” (Collected Works, Vol.4, p.253) since “an educated proletariat will not be disposed to remain in the oppressed condition in which our present proletariat finds itself” (ibid. p.254). At the start of the 20th century, the Bolsheviks called for compulsory education to the age of 16. However, this demand was rarely just for a greater quantity of education, it also included a critique of the role and content of education in class society that went far beyond the demand for increased provision.

Underlying the critique is the recognition that humanity in capitalist society is alienated from itself as a result of the division of labour in which the separate interests of the individual are opposed to the common interests of humanity. “For as soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood.” (Marx & Engels The German Ideology). This is contrasted with communist society: “whereas in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” (ibid).

Consequently, education in capitalist society can never be about the full realisation of the potential of humanity, either individually or collectively, but only about training people to fulfil those tasks necessary for the continuation of capitalism. This point was made by William Morris in 1888: “People are ‘educated’ to become workmen or the employers of workmen or the hangers-on of the employers, they are not educated to become men. With this aim in view the conditions under which true education can go on are impossible. For the first and most necessary of them are leisure and deliberation; and leisure is a thing which the modern slave-holder will by no means grant to his slave as long as he grants him his rations: when the leisure begins the rations end. Constant toil is the only terms on which they are to be had.” (“Thoughts on education under capitalism”, Commonweal, Vol.4, no. 129, in Morris Political Writings p.377).

This did not mean that the struggle for education was useless since, as Engels argued, a class sunk in ignorance may revolt but will never make a revolution. For Marxists in the 19th century, education was not only a reform that could be won and which could improve the immediate situation of the working class, it was also a contribution to the revolutionary struggle against bourgeois society. The Communist League argued in 1847 in the “Principles of Communism”, that education would come with democracy and would in turn help prepare the way for communism. At the time this tended to be seen as the work of the state embodied in the democratic constitution, but later Marx and Engels developed their critique of the role of the state. In 1875, when the SPD adopted the Gotha Programme, which called for “Universal and equal public education by the state”, Marx strongly attacked the uncritical reliance on the bourgeois state: “’Equal education of the people’? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present day society… education can be equal for all classes? […] ‘Education of the people by the state’ is altogether objectionable… Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school.” (Collected Works Vol.24, p.96-7). In Britain socialists stood for election to the local boards which ran schools in order to counter the influence of church and state.

The struggle for education thus moved directly into a struggle over the form and content of education. Here Marx actually argued that the development of capitalism itself, and specifically the educational clauses of the 1864 Factory Act, were the germ of a new form of education: “an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings.” (Capital Vol.1, p.454).

The second part of this article will examine the education system actually set up by the bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries and how the passage of capitalism into its period of decadence influenced the position of the workers’ movement on this question.

Part 2: Education in decadence: the guardian of class rule

The extension of education to the working class by the bourgeoisie was very hesitant. It was not made free and compulsory in Britain until the start of the 20th century and it was only after the First World War that consideration was given to extending secondary education to all children, and then only to the age of 14. The leaving age was raised to 15 after the Second World War and to 16 in the 1970s. It was only in the last decades of the 20th century that tertiary education for workers developed to any significant extent.

Two basic concerns have shaped the bourgeoisie’s educational policy towards the working class.

Firstly, the need to increase productivity in order to remain competitive against its economic rivals. In the first half of the 19th century Britain had no significant rivals and the productive processes were relatively simple and, consequently, there was no real need to educate the working class. However, in the second half of the century competitors began to emerge in Germany and America whose production was based on the most advanced technology. Britain could only compete by adopting the new and more complex production processes. This required a more skilled and developed workforce. “Industry needed operatives who were able to read its rules and regulations, and an increasing supply of skilled workers able to work to drawings and to write at any rate a simple sentence. Commerce needed a rapidly growing army of clerks, book-keepers, shop assistants, touts and commercial travellers. The state needed more Civil Servants and local government employees for the developing tasks of public administration.” (Cole and Postgate, The Common People, p.364).

Secondly, concerns about the ability to control the working class. In the decade following the French Revolution of 1789 the British ruling class adopted some of the most repressive measures in its history. All attempts to organise by the working class were attacked. A wide-spread system of spies and agent-provocateurs was established. Workers were executed, transported and imprisoned. Despite this the strategy failed: “The pamphleteers were gaoled, and from the goals they edited pamphlets. The trade unionists were imprisoned, and they were attended to prison by bands and union banners.” (E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p.914). The culmination was the Chartist Movement, which organised as a working class party and, at times, threatened the power of the ruling class. Yet the movement also marked a turning point in the strategy of the ruling class. Alongside direct repression ran a more subtle tactic which aimed to pacify and diffuse the working class. One result was the relative leniency shown to many Chartist activists by the courts. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century the British bourgeoisie refined the mixture of flexibility and brutality for which it became famous. It learnt how to use reforms to disarm the working class. Where the extension of the vote threatened the ruling class in 1800, by 1900 it was on the verge of becoming the bedrock of that rule. Where a popular press threatened to drown out the ideology of the ruling class it became its loudest mouthpiece. Where education threatened to be the great leveller it became the guardian of class rule.

The spread of education

Prior to 1870, various pieces of legislation had been passed which permitted the setting up of schools, and grants had been given to two voluntary bodies, one under the control of the Church of England and the other by the dissenting sects. The money granted had grown from £30,000 in 1839 to £813,000 in 1861 but was reduced to £637,000 over the following four years in response to complaints of waste. At the same time teachers’ pay was tied to ‘results’. The Education Act of 1870, which is usually presented as the turning point in the provision of education, actually made it neither compulsory nor free. It only sought to supplement the work of the voluntary bodies by allowing locally elected School Boards to set up schools were none already existed. Nonetheless, the new system advanced rapidly and by 1876 School Boards existed in areas with a total population of 12.5 million. In the same year attendance was made compulsory, although there were some exemptions. In 1891 fees for ‘elementary’ education were abolished except in schools offering ‘higher grade’ education.

The content of this education is not so well documented. Many political autobiographies of the time begin when the author left school. Tom Bell (first of the Socialist Labour Party and then of the Communist Party) went to school in Glasgow between 1889 and 1894. He left at the age of eleven and a half, recalling the difficulty his family had in finding the money each fortnight to pay for school, and the cruelty of some teachers which “led to their being mobbed by the boys after school hours” (Pioneering Days, p.17). More detail is given by Flora Thompson who went to school in rural Oxfordshire at the end of the 19th century: “Reading, writing and arithmetic were the principal subjects, with a scripture lesson every morning, and needlework every afternoon for the girls… Governess taught all the classes simultaneously, assisted only by two monitors – ex-scholars aged about twelve who were paid a shilling a week for their services… The writing lesson consisted in copying copperplate maxims… History was not taught formally; but history readers were in use containing such picturesque stories as those of King Alfred and the cakes, King Canute commanding the waves… and Raleigh spreading his cloak for Queen Elizabeth.” (Lark Rise to Candleford, p.179-80).

The education for most working class children went no further. In 1897 fewer than 7% of children at grammar school came from the working class. When the leaving age was raised to 14 in 1900, two out of 5 working class children still left before this age. The Education Act of 1902 nominally increased the opportunity for children to go on to secondary education but actually reinforced the class divisions in education: “The two systems of education catered for different classes and provided education, different in quality and content, for rulers and ruled.” (A.J.P. Taylor English History 1914-1945, p.226). “The British therefore entered the twentieth century and the age of modern science and technology as a spectacularly ill-educated people.” (E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, p.169).

Education in decadence

Paradoxically it is in the period of capitalism’s historic decline that the greatest development of education took place. This is explained by the fact that one of the principal characteristics of decadence is a massively increased role for the state, which more and more has to control all aspects of the nation in order to compete with its rivals. Education became an integral part of state capitalism, and education policy was determined by the economic and political needs of the ruling class. As in many areas, war provided much of the impetus, with three of the major pieces of legislation in the 20th century directly following wars (the 1902 Act after the Boer War, the 1918 Act after the First World War and the 1944 Act towards the end of the second).

The 1918 Act proposed a system of education stretching from nursery schools to adult evening classes. However most of these proposals were swept aside as the economy went into recession. Where spending had increased between 1914 and 1922 from £14.7m to £51m, it was cut by nearly £10m the following year. The attempt to extend secondary education failed with only 7.5% going on beyond Elementary School in 1923. While, by 1938 two in three children were attending ‘modern’ schools which offered a slightly extended education, only some 14% of working class children actually went from elementary to secondary education, ensuring that all of the class distinctions were maintained. At higher levels the numbers dropped away completely, with just 0.4% to 0.5% of Elementary school pupils going on to university.

The attempt to plan a more efficient education system for the needs of capitalism continued, notably with the Hadow Report commissioned by the Labour government of 1924 laying the foundations for the 1944 Act. Education thinking was strongly influenced by pseudo-scientific studies of the child mind and the supposed inherited nature of intelligence which justified the existing division of society. While all children were to go from primary to secondary education only a minority were to go to the elite grammar school with the majority going to Secondary Moderns or, in a few cases, to technical schools. All children, however, were to receive religious instruction, which was made compulsory for the first time by the 1944 Act.

The introduction of comprehensive schools in the 1960s actually made little difference, since ‘streaming’ and ‘setting’ meant that the divisions merely existed within the schools rather than between them. The period also saw a major expansion of the universities and technical colleges which, for the first time, allowed significant numbers of working class children to go on to further education. However, one of the principal aims of this expansion, to increase the number of workers with higher scientific and technical training, met with little success.

As the economic crisis began to hit home in the 1970s and ‘80s both Labour and Tory governments sought to tie the education system more closely to the economic needs of the ruling class. In the late 1970s Labour introduced a ‘core curriculum’ covering literacy and numeracy. This was developed by the Tories in the 1988 Education Act which established a National Curriculum with attainment targets for all children, who were to be tested at the ages of 7, 11, 14 and 16. Further education is also under attack with the replacement of student grants by loans, which inevitably affects working class children the most. Children now go into education under pressure to achieve spurious ‘targets’ that have nothing to do with realising their potential and leave weighed down by a debt that may take years to pay off. Many now avoid education, either by not attending at all or being disruptive when they are there. A recent report by the TUC revealed that half a million children are employed illegally, with many working unsocial hours and receiving extremely low wages. Thus, as capitalism continues to rot, even the limited reforms it once gave are now under threat, although the needs of competition and political control make it likely that the pace of attacks on education will continue to be tightly controlled.

Part 3: Defence of state education is not a workers’ demand

In WR 243 we outlined the marxist critique of education, recalling that the workers’ movement in the 19th century gave a high priority to the struggle for education and also supported self-education by the working class. In WR 244 we examined the system of education set up by the ruling class in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, concluding that its fundamental role is to produce workers with the necessary skills to serve the needs of the economy and to reinforce the ideology of the ruling class as a means of controlling the working class. Capitalism is unable to offer an education that meets the needs and potential of humanity. In this concluding article we show the marxist approach and look at the practical lessons from the Russian revolution, as well as the position of revolutionaries today.

The Russian Revolution

The demand for compulsory education had been part of the programme of Russian Social Democracy, as it had of all Social Democratic parties in the period before the revolution. Following the revolution some immediate steps were taken to extend education to the masses. However, the difficult situation in which the revolution developed and the rapid spread of the counter-revolution meant that these could only be first hesitant steps. But this did not prevent the Bolsheviks from setting out a long term perspective for the development of education, which was seen as central to the establishment of communism.

The priority given to education is shown in the setting up of the Commissariat of Public Education in December 1917. Immediate steps included the confiscation of private libraries for collective use, extending opening hours of libraries and the creation of a system to exchange books across the country. In August 1918 the Council of People’s Commissars called for measures to be taken to increase the availability of higher education, concluding that “Priority must certainly go to workers and poor peasants, who are to be given grants on an extensive scale” (Lenin, Collected Works, vol.28, p.48.). The Programme of the Russian Communist Party, adopted in March 1919, set out a series of measures, the majority of which were aimed at overcoming the country’s previous backwardness. It proposed free education for all children up to the age of 17, the provision of food, clothing, footwear and educational materials by the state, the creation of crèches and nurseries to reduce the workload on women and a range of measures for the education of adult workers and peasants. Lenin also argued that education was an important aspect of the struggle to increase production.

One of Lenin’s repeated concerns was to transform the educational system and, in particular, to overcome opposition from teachers and other educationalists. In 1918 Lenin talked of teachers being “slow in making up their minds to work with the Soviet Government” (ibid, vol.27, p.445). The following year he told a conference of the teachers’ union that “I think that now the vast majority of teachers will quite sincerely come over to the side of the government of working and exploited people in the struggle for the socialist revolution” (ibid, vol.28, p.407). By 1920 he spoke of solving “the cultural and educational problem” in “five to ten years” (ibid, vol.30, p.379). At the same time however, he was also warning about the slow pace of the campaign against illiteracy. As the revolutionary wave weakened the situation got worse. By 1922 Lenin was complaining that “five years after the proletariat captured political power, the young people in the proletariat’s state schools and universities are taught (or rather corrupted) by the old bourgeois scientists using the old bourgeois junk” (ibid, vol.33, p.246). As the counter-revolution gathered pace the education system increasingly reverted back to the bourgeois form.

Education and the creation of communism

Unlike the bourgeoisie, communists do not pretend that education is neutral, standing above the clash of class interests. In capitalism education defends the class interests of the exploiters. After the proletarian revolution it will defend the class interests of the exploited in the struggle for communism.

The political role of education was set out bluntly in the Programme of the Russian Communist Party. This called for the transformation of the school “so that from being an organ for maintaining the class domination of the bourgeoisie, it shall become an organ for the complete abolition of the division of society into classes, an organ for the communist regeneration of society…the school must not be merely a means for the conveyance of the principles of communism generally, but a means for the conveyance of the ideology and of the organisation and educational influence of the proletariat to the semi-proletarian strata of the working masses to the end that there shall ultimately be educated a new generation capable of establishing communism” (Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, p.444). At the heart of the programme was the proposal for a “unified labour school…with instruction in the native tongue, co-education, absolutely secular education… an instruction in which theory shall be closely linked with socially productive labour, an instruction which shall produce a many-sided development of the members of communist society”. This echoed Marx’s ideas about education, while the commentary on the Programme contained in the ABC of Communism recalled his description of the realisation of individual potential in communist society: “Every citizen in such a society must be acquainted with the elements, at least, of all crafts. In communist society there will be no closed corporations, no stereotyped guilds, no petrified specialist groups. The most brilliant man of science must also be skilled in manual labour… play should gradually pass into work by an imperceptible transition, so that the child learns from the very outset to look upon labour, not as a disagreeable necessity or as a punishment, but as a natural and spontaneous expression of faculty.” (ibid, p.288. For a fuller discussion of the Programme of the Russian Communist Part see International Review 95).

The same understanding of the political nature of education led revolutionaries of the time, such as the Dutch International Communist Group (GIK), to see the re-introduction of authoritarian regulations in the schools as a sign of the advance of the counter-revolution (see the text of the GIK reprinted in International Review 105).

That the Russian revolution was unable to even begin to translate this aspiration into reality does not in any way lessen its validity. If the proletariat seizes power again it will also take up again the struggle to transform education courageously attempted by the Bolsheviks.

Revolutionaries and education today

If one reads the platforms and manifestos of revolutionary groups today, such as the ICC and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP), no mention will be found of education. This is fundamentally because the demand for education is no longer a revolutionary or even a radical demand since education is essential for bourgeois society today. This applies both to the most developed countries and the least. The limitation of education in the latter stems fundamentally from their weak position within the global economy, even if the lack of education contributes to that weakness in turn.

The ABC of Communism remains a useful starting point for understanding the role of education in capitalism: “In bourgeois society the school has three principal tasks to fulfil. Firstly, it inspires the coming generation of workers with devotion and respect for the capitalist regime. Secondly, it creates from the young of the ruling classes ‘cultured’ controllers of the working population. Thirdly, it assists capitalist production in the application of sciences to technique, thus increasing capitalist profits” (op.cit., p.279). However, important developments mean that this analysis has to be brought up to date. The Bolsheviks’ programme was drawn up at the dawn of the period of revolutions and just after capitalism had entered its period of decadence. Revolutionaries had only drawn out some of the implications of state capitalism, and their analyses were marked by the positions of the previous period. In addition, the Bolsheviks were influenced by the backward nature of education in Russia, where some supporters of tsarism “considered popular ignorance to be the main prop of the autocracy” (ibid, p.280, fn). The explains the failure of the ABC to see that as well as preparing new workers ideologically, bourgeois education also aims to prepare them practically to serve the needs of capitalism and that, in order to do so it must open the doors of secondary and higher education to the working class. The point concerning the close relationship between industry and the education establishment is still true. If anything, this has become even closer, with industry funding much of the research undertaken in universities and paying for many professorial chairs. Above all, what remains valid is the recognition that bourgeois education reflects the class interests of the bourgeoisie.

This analysis does not mean revolutionaries ‘reject education’. But there are certain ideas in the field of education which have to be fought.

Firstly, we reject the call of the leftists to defend state education. It promotes the illusion that the capitalist state could be made to offer a real education to the working class. It is worth recalling the position of Marx and Engels, when they were in the Communist League, that the demand for education is a democratic, not a communist, demand. Today capitalism can give nothing because of the constant threats of a permanent economic crisis. Communists should not join the bourgeoisie in trying to fool the working class that capitalism can meet its needs.

Secondly, we oppose the rejection of education and the identification of teachers as ‘part of the bourgeoisie’. The disaffection of growing numbers of children may be an understandable response to a society that offers no future, but it is an expression of despair that offers no perspective. Ignorance is not revolutionary and history has shown that it is the ally of reaction. The idea that teachers are not part of the working class is quite widespread. For example, in the 80s the British journal Wildcat described teachers as ‘soft cops’ and opposed their strike action. More recently, the Anarchist Federation criticised striking school students in France who called for more teachers, making the same argument as Wildcat: “Did you ever hear of an action by prisoners whose aim was more wardens?” (Organise! 50, Winter ‘98-’99). The fact that teachers are part of an education system that spreads the ideology of the bourgeoisie does not exclude them from the working class. Like all workers, all they have to sell is their labour power. One of the consequences of the spread of education is that teachers are no longer part of the petty-bourgeoisie, but have become proletarians. To be consistent, ‘revolutionaries’ such as Wildcat and the AF, should also exclude workers in the media and publishing industries since they also help to spread bourgeois ideology. Equally, the fact that teachers often have illusions in bourgeois society and advance reactionary demands does not exclude them from the working class, any more than it excludes the Rover car workers who marched behind Union Jacks in Birmingham. The fact is that the working class exists in capitalism and, through its labour, reproduces it day in and day out. The working class has no choice but to live the contradictions of capitalism. To pretend that it can be exploited by capital but untainted by capitalist ideology, is to reject the basic social reality in which all workers find themselves.

Thirdly, we reject the idea of opting out of education, either to send children to ‘alternative’ schools or to indulge in ‘home-teaching’. These are not an option for the working class. They have nothing to do with the attempts by the Chartists and Owenites in the 19th century to establish their own schools, since these were part of the infancy of the workers’ movement when many such utopian ideas flourished. They were left behind as the movement developed and it was understood that capitalism had to be confronted and overthrown. Today, all such efforts are a retreat from the necessary confrontation with capitalist society rather than an honest attempt to go beyond it.

Just as the working class needs health care, so it needs education. It has no choice but to use the health care and education that it can get from the bourgeoisie. This does not require the working class to defend the NHS and the education system any more than requires workers in the car industry to defend Rover, or Ford or BMW. It is not through campaigns to ‘Save the NHS’ or ‘Defend state education’ that it will succeed but through the exercise of its collective strength against the capitalist state. A proletarian revolution will lay the basis for a communist society way beyond the limitations of the bourgeois world. This will require a fundamental reorganisation of education in the post-revolutionary period of transition to a truly human community.

North 14/5/01

The massive protests by farmers in India against the laws of the Modi government, which took place between November 2020 and February 2021, have not gone unnoticed. They have gained wide support and expressions of solidarity from all over the world. Climate activist Greta Thunberg in Sweden, singer Rihanna, actress Susan Sarandon, YouTuber and comedian Lilly Singh, American climate activist Jamie Marglin, US lawyer and activist Meena Harris (the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris) in the U.S. have backed the protesting farmers in posts on social media.

Expressions of support were not restricted to famous people. The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing more than 105 million workers who live and work in 130 countries, expressed its solidarity with the farmers’ struggle. Trade unions in the UK, Canada, Italy, South Korea, etc. announced that it stood firmly in support of the hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers. More than 50 international organisations from 25 countries have said to be in solidarity with the farmer’s movement and urged the Modi government to repeal the three farm laws.

If so many individuals and organisations around the world have expressed their solidarity with the farmers’ protests in India, the biggest protest movement since its independence in 1947, should the organisations of the Communist Left not express their solidarity too with the protests? Il Partito (India; Between Peasant Protests and Workers’ Strikes [255]) and Le Prolétaire (Pandemic, Economic Crisis and Class Struggles in India [256]), two organisations of the Communist Left, have already published an article on the movement and both have not pledged their support to the movement, and they are right. In the following article we will explain why communist organisations should not plead support for the farmers’ movement in India.

The recent farmers’ protests were a reaction to the laws, passed in September 2020 by the Modi government, aimed at the deregulation of the agricultural sector and liberalisation of the prices. These new laws target in particular the “Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee” (mandis) and the “Minimum Support Price” system (MSP), fixed by the government. They were introduced at the start of the “Green Revolution” (See also: Kirsty Hawthorn, The Green Revolution in India [257]) since the 1960s, a policy destined to promote large-scale industrial agriculture, enabling India to become a nation close to self-sufficiency in food.

Via a guaranteed procurement and government-mandated floor prices, the aim of these laws was to give the famers financial support in a few, well-endowed districts of the states Punjab, Haryana and the western part of the state Uttar Pradesh, enabling them to use high-yielding seeds and chemical fertilisers and, since the “Green Revolution” technology required lots of water, the construction and maintenance of extensive irrigation systems.

1. State protectionism against the crisis of overproduction

Since the independence of 1948 farmers have been considered to be the backbone of Indian society. The post-independence Indian policy remained attached to agrarianism and ruralism, with ceaseless eulogies to the farmer as the food provider, and was reflected in an approach that privileged the farmers over urban dwellers. Even to-day, 70 per cent of the Indian population still lives in the countryside while 58 per cent of the total workforce depends on agriculture and allied activities. The agricultural sector remained highly privileged and subsidised for tens of years. But this slowly started to change from the beginning of the 1990’s.

In 1991 India experienced a foreign exchange crisis that led to three rapid downgrades of its credit rating within the short space of a year, which made the World Bank write in its Memorandum that: “India’s creditworthiness has declined to the point where international sources of commercial credit have been cut off”. (Cited in: Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington D.C. [258]) India had little choice but to accept the IMF-World Bank prescriptions for ‘structural adjustment’. This year marked the start of India’s neoliberal era and the creation of the conditions for foreign products and investments to penetrate its domestic market.

The neo-liberal policy, which started in the 1980s and increased considerably after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, aimed to reduce the cost of production in the central countries of capitalism by improving productivity and through outsourcing. Since the wages in countries like India were only a fraction of the wages in the central countries, whole parts of production were exported to these low pay countries. They were compelled to open up to this neoliberal expansion. Key instruments in this opening up and in the development of the international dimension of neoliberalism were institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and the IMF.

The end of the autarkic model of the Eastern Bloc countries cleared the way for this neo-liberal era and a new breath of economic expansion. “This expansion had a number of underlying elements: the technological developments that allowed a much faster circulation of capital and a reorganisation of global industrial networks; a more directly economic dimension, in which capital was able to penetrate new extra-capitalist areas and make use of much cheaper labour power, while at the same time making gigantic profits through the swelling of the financial sector; and also a social element, since the break-up of industrial concentrations in the “old” capitalist countries, driven by the hunt for new sources of profit, also had the effect of atomising centres of class militancy.” (Trade Wars: The obsolescence of the nation state [259])

In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was compelled to shift hundreds of millions of dollars out of agriculture. The structural adjustment programme, which resulted in the shift of more than 400 million dollars from the countryside into cities, led to the dismantling of its state-owned seed supply system, reduction of subsidies and the running down of public agriculture institutions, while offering incentives for the growing of cash crops.

On top of that, the Uruguay round in the 1990s, which was heavily contested by India, obliged the country to liberalise its trade regulations and to open up for foreign direct investments. While several sectors of the Indian economy were subjected to liberalisation, the deregulation of agriculture met much more resistance.

According to the Indian ruling class, the agricultural sector was not able to compete on the world market as it remained vulnerable in terms of “low level of commercialisation of agriculture, low productivity, weak market orientation, preponderance of small and marginal uneconomical operational landholdings, lack of infrastructure, dependence on monsoon, susceptibility to natural calamities, and dependence of a very large percentage of population on agriculture for their livelihood etc.” (Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, [260]Negotiations on WTO agreement on agriculture [261]; G/AG/NG/W/102; 15-01-2001)

India stubbornly refused the further opening up of agriculture. For example, in a 2003 publication, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture stated that the Indian government was determined to continue to use tariffs and subsidies to protect its agricultural sector, which was diametrically opposed to the rules of the WTO. When Modi came into power, in 2014, this policy of state subvention of agriculture was still not drastically reduced and continued almost unabated. After world agricultural prices fell in 2017, the government even increased import duties on a wide range of agricultural goods.

Thus, after the 1990’s India continued to remain highly protective of its agricultural sector, upholding “minimum support prices for produce, the shielding off from international competition, state-regulated mechanisms for local trade in agricultural commodities and special provisions for those classified as ‘essential’ commodities.” (Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Jostein Jakobsen og Alf Nilsen, Liberalising Indian Agriculture [262]; 16-10-2020) India had been singled out by the WTO as a kind of troublemaker because of its overly protectionist policy about agricultural and food products.

2. Years of crisis in Indian agriculture: growing misery for the small and marginal farmers

Nonetheless India’s farming has been facing a crisis for the last 20 years. This crisis developed to a large extent owing to the rising cost of pesticides, fertilisers, seeds as well as wage labour because of a shift in the cropping pattern from staple crop to cash crops, necessitated by the increased liberalisation. At the same time the agricultural sector was confronted with a growing number of smallholders, who in many cases not even owned the land, but rented it from a large farmer. During the last three decades, the number of smallholder farmers increased by 77 per cent from about 66 million in 1980-1981 to 117 million in 2010-2011. They now account for about 85 per cent of all the landholdings in India, compared to 75 per cent in 1980-1981.

After 20 years and more the side-effects of industrial agriculture began to affect yields in a negative way. The “Green Revolution” brought about richer yields, but the quality of soil began to deteriorate, because of

• “overuse of fertilisers and its damage to soil health, decreasing the nutritional value of the crops;
• “the massive use of GM/GE ‘hybrid seeds’ posing a direct threat to bio-diversity [since] the soil is getting more and more polluted or even totally poisoned.” (What lies behind rise in global food prices? [263]; World Revolution no.316, July / August 2008)

In addition to the problems resulting from the massive use of chemical pesticides, high water consumption and the general impact of global warming, the high investment, required for these crops, were not offset by either the MSP, offered by the government, or prices available in the market.

As a consequence of these worsening conditions farmers’ debts to banks and private money lenders were mounting considerably. In 1991 the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) found indebtedness among 26% of farmers; in 2003 this was increased to 48.6% farmer households, while in 2012-2013 already 52% of India's agricultural households were indebted. On an average, the amount of debt per farmer household was 12,585 rupees in 2003, and increased by nearly 4 times to reach 47,000 rupees per agricultural household in 2012-2013. In 2018 it even reached an average of 74,000 rupees per household. In the regional state of Punjab the marginalised and smaller farmers have six times more debt than the big farmers.

For reasons of a dawning fiscal disaster, due to the unstoppable growth of agricultural subsidies, between 2012 and 2014 and still before Modi came into power, India effectively reduced the subsidy on agriculture and food security by $3 billion dollars.

Gradual and piecemeal opening of the agrarian economy was implemented, together with the reduction of public subsidies for agriculture. Therefore “in roughly half of India’s States and Union territories, agricultural reforms that allow private markets have already been carried out [which]reduced input subsidies, deregulated the seed sector for foreign direct investments, facilitated privatised banking interests within agriculture and, not least, shifted towards private sector research and development.” (Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Jostein Jakobsen og Alf Nilsen, Liberalising Indian Agriculture [262]; 16-10-2020)

Nonetheless Indian agriculture’s crisis continued to worsen, with the period since 2011-2012 seeing increased costs of production, depressed prices for farm produce, and a growing indebtedness. Year after year farmers faced a severe income squeeze and less and less means to make investments in agrarian infrastructure and machinery. Among farm households in 2016, 53.4 per cent were below the poverty line; only 47 per cent of their income was derived from farming; monthly median incomes were just 1,600 rupees ($25).

In1912 Rosa Luxemburg wrote that in the India of the 19th century “Every day another plot of land fell under the hammer; individual members withdrew from the family unit, and the peasants got into debt and lost their land.” As a consequence of the colonial policy carried out by the British occupation “over large areas the peasants in their masses were turned into impoverished small tenants with a short-term lease”. (The Accumulation of Capital [264]) In 2020, under the same remorseless process of capitalisation of agriculture, every year nearly a million farmers leave farming while 15,000 of them commit suicide.

The federal government could not be left behind and had to follow the overall policy of that the regional state governments had started, which was to implement agrarian “reforms” in the area of the former “Green Revolution”: Punjab, Haryana and the western part of the state Uttar Pradesh. On 18 December 2020, addressing a Kisan Sammelan (Farmer Conference) in Madhya Pradesh by video conferencing, Narendra Modi declared: “We are compelled to do things which should have been done 25-30 years ago”.

3. Modi’s laws attack the richer farmers and the middlemen

With the new farm laws of the Modi government, the limitations regarding the financial interactions between farmers and “external” buyers, outside the rural field, will be lifted. The use of the “mandis” is no longer obligatory and any buyer can purchase agricultural produce directly from the farmers. Since for trade outside the state-run markets no duties will be imposed and there will be no transport costs for the farmer, this will be an incentive to prioritise this kind of trade. Even if it is not ended formally, in practice it means the beginning of the dismantling of the system of guaranteed prices for wheat and unmilled rice (paddy).

Who benefits the most from the old system of price regulation and state run markets for government procurement? Who are the most endangered by the new laws of the Modi government? Which class of farmers has the most to lose when the new laws are implemented?

“As the government procurement is concentrated at a few centres, it requires farmers to have transport facilities to reach the procurement centres, usually located far away from villages. Therefore, [how] small it wouldn’t make sense for farmers with limited amounts of produce to take their produce to these markets. Furthermore, a high proportion of farmers are not aware of the MSP and whether it is higher/lower than the prevailing market prices. Therefore only the larger farmers are able to benefit from the MSP and government procurement.” (Dr. Richa Govil and Dr. Ashok Sircar, Explainer MSP (Minimum Support Price) and Government Procurement [265]; Azim Premji University, April 2018)

For a long time the farmers have sold their crops by means of government-regulated wholesale markets across the country. These “mandis” are run by committees made up of farmers, often large land-owners, and traders or “commission agents” who act as middlemen for brokering sales, organising storage and transport, and even financing deals. Of all the farmers only 6 per cent actually receive guaranteed price support for their crops. A survey undertaken by Punjab Agriculture University has confirmed that 94 per cent of the government subsidies are being used by big and medium farmers, leaving the smaller farmers sidelined.

On top of that these rich farmers, who have a large marketable surplus and pocket a bulk of MSP, manipulate small and marginal farmers, engaging in predatory lending practices to their poorer neighbours, further squeezing them dry. “Very often rich farmers and Kulaks take on the role of commission agents and intermediary traders; they also take on the role of usurers and moneylenders, and purchase farm produce from the lower middle and poor peasants at prices much lower than the MSP and earn profit by selling these products at remunerative prices and also through commissions.” (Abhinav, The Three Farm Ordinances, Present Farmers’ Movement and the Working Class; [266] Red Polemique; 08-01-2021)

Thus, these laws of the Modi government are actually not meant to be a frontal attack on the small farmers, but mainly to sideline the layer of larger farmers, the money lenders and middlemen, who now function as mediator between the small famers and the “mandis”. In India, the agrarian reforms of the “Green Revolution” have developed “a class of ‘kulaks', middle peasants who have grown rich and form a social buffer in the countryside between the great landlords and the smallholders”. (Notes on the peasant question [267]; International Review no. 24 - 1st quarter 1981) The agricultural laws will finish off the monopoly of this new class of farmers formed by the “Green Revolution”.

This new step in liberalisation and deregulation also permit big food corporations to penetrate the agrarian market in these northern states of the country, to deal directly with the very small farmers, of whom 85% has only two hectare land or less. In the near future these laws will not essentially change conditions for the small farmers. Today India’s poorest farmers are forced to sell their crops at discounted prices to their richer neighbours and in the future they might have to sell it at discounted prices to the corporate agrarian food business. But under the yoke of the big food corporations the process of ruination of the small farmers will probably accelerate.  

Deals with the big food companies may include contract farming, involving the corporate buyer specifying the quality required and the price, with the farmer agreeing to deliver the agreed quantity at a future date. In the logic of this evolution the perspective for the small farmers would be first to become bonded labourers of these big companies and finally to be evicted from their land.

4. The farmers are not a class and were not united in the protests

It is certain that the recent farmers’ protests were the largest and most massive in the history of India since its independence in 1947.

But who took part in these protests? Undoubtedly the biggest part of the protesters consisted of small and marginal farmers and many of them were rural wage labourers. But that doesn’t mean that it was a working class movement (in which the focus was on the demands of the agrarian wage labourers), or even an interclassist movement (in which these wage labourers put forward their own specific demands). The farmers’ protests were spearheaded by the class of richer farmers-cum-commission agents, the Indian version of Kulaks, and in the demands the entire focus was on repealing the three farm laws.

“Unlike the sociologists, who talk indiscriminately of the peasantry as a unified social class, Marxists have always demonstrated its heterogeneity. (…) The peasantry as such does not exist; there is rather, on the one hand a rural proletariat, and on the other hand, various social types of ‘farmer’, from the great landed proprietor to the jobless.” (“Notes on the peasant question [267]”, International Review no. 24 - 1st quarter 1981)

It is not true that the farmers and the agrarian wage labourers in the North-Western states of India have all the same interests, and that they were united behind the demands of the farmers’ organisations which organised the protests. Most of the farmers’ unions, brought together under the umbrella of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), are dominated by richer farmers and their paid servants, and the objectives of the farmers’ movement were shaped above all by the interests of this group. 

Left and extreme left organisations, such as Friends of the Earth International [268], Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières [269], Communist Workers International (CWI) [270], The Fourth International [271], Socialist Worker in the UK [272], , etc., presenting the movement as a genuine famers movement, in which rural wage labourers fought shoulder to shoulder with the farmers, don’t tell the whole story. Since the farmers’ unions, who organized the protests, are led by better-off farmers there are strong connections to the political establishment. Behind the protests, and which is typical for a bourgeois movement, all kind of political, sectorial, regionalist and even religious pressure groups pulled at the strings and determined the course of the movement and the demands put forward.

The working class in India is weak and is held in a stranglehold by the unions, but there is nonetheless a great deal of anger among the workers, given the harshness of the attacks on large sections of the population. Since a big part of the (migrant) workers still has strong links with the countryside, there was broad sympathy among the Indian proletariat for the farmers’ movement and its demands. Moreover, the impoverishment affects not only the farmers, but all the non-exploiting classes. In solidarity with the farmers’ protests a “strike” was reported of 50,000 public sector employees in Punjab who participated in a ‘sick-out.’

However, for the working class these protests are not something it should welcome or even to show solidarity with. They do not contain the potential to put the capitalist mode of production into question, and thus seek a solution within the structures of the present society. But in the decadence of capitalism the problems of the farmers cannot be solved in capitalism, even not by a “farmers’ revolution”. A solution to the problems of the rural population, especially in these countries, can only brought about in the framework of a worldwide proletarian revolution.

2021-04-10, Dennis

In recent articles[1] we have argued that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests are situated on a completely bourgeois terrain, concretised in vague demands such as “equal rights” and “fair treatment”, or more specific ones like “defunding the police”. In no way was this protest able, or even aiming, to put into question capitalist relations of production, which ensure that the subordination and oppression of the “other” is one of the pillars of capitalist rule.

But does this mean that the working class can offer no alternative to the layers in capitalist society who are subjected to particularly violent forms of oppression? On the contrary, throughout its history, the working class, in the United States as well as in other parts of the world, has shown its ability to take significant steps to overcome the barrier of ethnic division on the condition that it fights on its class terrain and with its own proletarian perspectives.

One of the first moments of real workers’ solidarity with an ethnic minority took place in 1892 in New Orleans, where three unions demanded better working conditions. The “New Orleans Board of Trade” tried to divide the workers along racial lines, by inviting the two majority white workers’ unions for negotiations while dismissing the majority black workers’ union. In answer to this manoeuvre by the Board the three unions called for a joint strike that was followed unanimously.

Another important moment was the organised defence of the working class in Russia against anti-Semitic pogroms in October 1905, in the year of the first revolution in Russia. In that month the so-called Black Hundreds, organised gangs supported by the Czarist secret police, killed thousands of people and maimed as many as ten thousand in 100 towns throughout the entire country. In response to these brutal slaughters, the Soviet of Petrograd made an appeal to the workers in the country to take up arms and defend the workers’ districts from further pogromist assaults.  

Another heroic example of working class solidarity took place in February 1941 in the Netherlands, 80 years ago. The immediate cause was the kidnapping of 425 Jewish men in Amsterdam and their deportation to a concentration camp in Germany. This first raid in the Netherlands on a persecuted and terrorised part of the population provoked strong indignation among the workers in Amsterdam and in the surrounding cities. The attack on the Jews was felt as an attack on the whole proletarian population of Amsterdam. Indignation won out over fear. The response was: strike!

In the Netherlands the Jewish people were not seen as outsiders. Above all in Amsterdam, where the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people lived, they were considered as an integral part of the population. Moreover, Amsterdam had the largest Jewish proletariat on the Western European continent, only comparable to that in London after the Russian pogroms. The orientation of a significant part of this Jewish proletariat was towards the workers’ movement and around the turn of the century many of them turned to socialism. In the first half of the 20th century several of these proletarians would play an important role in the Dutch workers’ organisations.

As the article linked to below (an extract from our book The Dutch-German Communist Left[2]) shows, in the weeks before the strike, an internationalist group, the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front (MLL Front) had already clearly expressed its position with regard to the atrocities of the fascist gangs and appealed to the workers to defend themselves. “In all working-class districts, defence troops will have to be formed. The defence against the brutal violence of the National Socialist bandits must be organised. But the workers will also have to use their economic power. The disgraceful acts of the fascists must be answered by mass strikes.” (Spartacus no. 2, mid February 1941; cited by Marx Perthus, Henk Sneevliet)

The strike that broke out on Tuesday 25 February was a unique demonstration of solidarity with the persecuted Jewish people. It was completely under control of the workers and the bourgeoisie had no chance to use it for its own warlike purposes, as it did with the railway strike in 1944. The strike was not aimed at the liberation of the Netherlands from the German occupation. The MLL Front did not hold the position that the strike was aimed at sabotaging the German war machine or aligning itself with the national Resistance. It was meant to be a statement of the working class, a demonstration of its force and therefore limited in duration. After two days the workers closed ranks and ended the strike.

In the middle of the barbarism of World War Two and in a context of historical defeat of the working class, this strike could not lead to a general mobilisation of the working class in Holland or to working class reactions in the rest of Europe, but it still had an international political significance, reaching far beyond the borders of the Netherlands. The workers’ resistance, in February 1941, against the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, shows us that the proletarian class is not in the least helpless or condemned to inaction when particular ethnic groups are scapegoated and subsequently become victims of pogroms or even genocide.

The MLL Front understood this very well. It thus wholeheartedly supported the strike as an expression of genuine proletarian indignation about the harassment of the Jewish people, men, women and children alike. For the MLL Front, the strike against anti-Jewish brutality was unconditionally linked to the general struggle against the entire capitalist system. The Dutch February strike of 1941 has shown that, in order to defend persecuted ethnics groups, the working class must remain on its own terrain and must not allow itself to be drawn onto the bourgeois terrain, as happened with the BLM protests for instance.

The working class terrain is where solidarity is not constrained by the divisions capitalism has imposed on society and where it becomes really universal. Proletarian solidarity is by definition the expression of a class whose autonomous struggle is destined to develop a fundamental alternative to capitalism. In as far as it announces the nature of the society it is fighting for, it is able to embrace and integrate the solidarity of the whole of humanity. This is what makes the proletarian solidarity and the 1941 February strike in the Netherlands so significant for us today.

The article can be found here: Dutch and German Communist Left [274], Chapter 10, 1939-1942 [275], 4 - The strike of February 1941 and its political consequences [276] (internationalism.org)

ICC, April 2021

 

The region now occupied by the modern Turkish state has always been a crossroads of the world, an area where all roads, peoples and influences collide. This has, in general, been very positive for the development of humanity. Today however many global influences and collisions are taking place in and around Turkey that are not at all positive and rather express the impasse of capitalism and the threat that it poses not just for the population of Turkey and the region but for the whole of humanity. Although the putrescence of a decomposing capitalism is today clearly visible in the major powers, it is a global phenomenon that exists within and applies to all states. In fact, it is particularly expressed in Turkey today which has now become a collision point for all the contradictions of a dying capitalism; a place where the expressions of decomposition show an innate tendency for a self-destruction which is affecting and will affect every country on earth. The general tendencies presently at work in Turkey are the same as those in every capitalist state and these can only intensify given the ineluctable development of the insoluble economic crisis of capitalism. The chaos, militarism and instability hitting Turkey are harbingers for the future of capitalism and, right now, very dangerous for the Middle Eastern cauldron that Turkey is a part of.

The Turkish economy is bankrupt and its prospects dire; it is desperate for foreign investment and, with weakened prospects of attracting it, anxious to avoid accepting it from China. The living conditions of the working class, including the health system it relies on, are being constantly attacked in an atmosphere where many expressions of unease are met with brutal force and repression. Turkey is highly militarised and its imperialist ambitions, its external military forays wider afield, have more than a touch of insanity about them, reflecting the grandiose "vision" of the Turkish ruling clique, its pretensions to being a major player on the world stage. The adventures of Turkish imperialism near and far, pining for a glorious past which never existed, can only bring more problems as Turkey makes more enemies abroad, while at home its involvement in increasingly senseless wars demand greater sacrifices from the working class. The Turkish state appears superficially strong, but its whole edifice is built on sand; undermined by its weakening economy, growing political divisions, and a certain loss of control by the previously relatively strong ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), have forced it to rely on the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to win the crucial 2017 election, the 2018 referendum and to keep it in power today. A further element in growing instability - a world-wide phenomenon but particularly expressed in Turkey and the Middle East - has been the dramatic rise of refugees and displaced peoples due to the spread of war and militarism in the region. But the Turkish state has instrumentalised this abject misery to its advantage by using these masses not only for cheap and precarious labour within Turkey - particularly the Syrian refugees - but also as threat against Europe in order to extort money, from Germany mainly: the threat being that it will unleash this flood of refugees on western Europe if it doesn’t get its way.

Like everywhere else the Turkish state is actively involved in the destruction of the environment, underlined by schemes to fuel growth by using up natural resources, extensive mining and de-forestation for example, or vanity/imperialist projects such as the proposal to build a canal from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara (a project first put forward 500 years ago by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent), a proposal which President Erdogan himself called "crazy" in 2011[1]. The projected cost of the canal is at least ten billion dollars, and there are also plans fora new ten billion dollar airport and cargo hub along with a new motorway. These are in part projects to celebrate the Turkish Republic's hundred-year anniversary in 2023 in a frenzy of nationalism. There's not only massive de-forestation but real threats to Turkey's water supply coming from the Istanbul canal project, as pointed out by the government's own assessors.

These are just some of the elements expressing how Turkey is an illustration of the decomposition of capitalism. For decades now Turkey has been particularly buffeted by the economic, military, political and social turbulence unleashed by the collapse of the relatively stable imperialist blocs in 1989, opening up a new and more dangerous era of capitalist dog-eat-dog; and now the latest scourge of decomposing capitalism - the Covid-19 pandemic - this way comes.

The Covid-19 pandemic

All the existing negative elements, particularly the economy, are exacerbated by this long-predicted pandemic, and many new problems and troubles have been created. The ruling class has also shown its contempt for "unprofitable" human life, particularly when it thought at first that there was a "silver-lining" to this passing "flu-like illness" in that many of the old and sick would be eliminated, freeing the state from the expensive burden of caring for those who were beyond exploitation[2]; in some of the major capitals of the world, the wealthiest countries on Earth, this tendency of getting rid of useless human liabilities was generously encouraged by states through their criminal negligence and not least through their nationally-adapted ideology of "herd immunity" long before there was any sign of a vaccine. And then, as the pandemic took its natural course, it dawned on the bourgeoisie and its states - something that had been flagged up before by various agencies, including the US intelligence services - that a pandemic of this kind not only severely disrupts the capitalist economy but can easily become an existential threat to it.

In the first months of the pandemic, it appeared that Turkey was doing quite well, closing schools, universities and the leisure industries quickly; congregational prayers were banned in mosques and its testing system seemed to be working efficiently. But much of this was carefully orchestrated propaganda by the Erdogan regime, arguing that the world was jealous of Turkey's achievements. But even in the early period of the pandemic, the New York Times was finding deaths far higher than the official figures[3]. The Wikipedia entry for "Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey" looks like it was written by a committee of AKP hacks with a gun to their heads: everything has been just great; Turkey's robust health system has coped outstandingly - much better than others - and it remains on top of the situation. Other countries (some of its closest imperialist rivals) are castigated for not acting quickly enough, unlike Turkey. The entry is dotted with examples of how Turkey is one of those countries at the leading edge of the fight against the virus. None of its figures can be believed and the entry looks like a textbook example of Stalinist propaganda.

The reality is that Turkey concealed the true extent of this crisis for months in order to protect the economy, and the blatant lies of the state (like everywhere else) encouraged the spread of the virus. The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) said, just before the year's end, that the government had in reality "lost control of the situation"[4].

Doctors in Turkey have been directly threatened by the state for disputing its virus figures and pointing out the parlous state of its hospitals and health services, along with the lack of protective equipment. Erdogan's governmental coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), called for the Turkish Medical Association to be outlawed and its leadership arrested[5]. Like everywhere else, Turkey is using the pandemic in order to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state and bear down on the working class in particular. Contrary to the nauseating Wikipedia report, the London-based Totalanalysis has been monitoring cases of Covid-19 from many countries and published its Covid Data Transparency Index, in which Turkey is ranked 97th out of a 100, followed by Serbia, Turkmenistan and North Korea. A final obscenity relating to the pandemic (with surely many more to follow) and the weaponising of vaccinations is the way that, in common with profiting from the misery of refugees, the Turkish state looks to have laid the grounds for exchanging some of its Uighur refugees for doses of the Chinese Sinovac treatment - three million doses up front with more to follow if all goes to plan[6]. To date, daily infection rates are rising along with daily deaths and the overall death rate is currently something over 30,000.

The war economy, militarism and Turkish imperialism

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a braggart and rabble-rouser who is well-suited to his role as leader of the Turkish state. He has been going on for years about Turkish achievements, Turkey's glorious past and its future destiny as a great power[7] and this will only intensify coming up to the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic by Ataturk. Erdogan has posed as the defender of Muslims everywhere, playing a religious card that's a cover for Turkey's imperialist ambitions[8]. It's quite possible that with the end of the bloc system, the weakening of the US in the Middle East, and the intensified tendency towards each against all, Erdogan feels that Turkey's time has finally come. During the last couple of decades of greater chaos and instability on the world arena, Erdogan - a master of the forked-tongue - has played all sorts of games with the Americans, the EU and Russians, using his cards to optimum effect. But in the past, Erdogan has also been batted around the imperialist chessboard by the major powers: his "vision" for Turkish imperialism plays into a feeling of "Turkish resentment" and has hardened accordingly. This resentment was all the more real for the Turkish state when its leader narrowly escaped a death squad and was chased by missile-laden F-16's in the failed 2016 coup. But the imperialist grievances and appetites of the Turkish state can’t be reduced to the reactions of one man, and Erdogan's "vision" is turning into a devastating material reality of militarism and war generating militarism and war wider afield.

Turkey is a prime example of capitalist decomposition, expressing itself in particular at the imperialist level. Its old ambitions have been revived by the turn in capitalism's crisis and it has developed a policy of stretching its tentacles near and far. Underlining the problematic nature of its relationship with Russia, it has made recent agreements with Ukraine, including the sales of arms, such as the successful Bayraktar TB2 combat drone that it has used to confront Russian forces in Libya. Turkey has supported Ukraine against Russia's annexation in the Crimea[9]. Turkish-Ukrainian relations have been warming for several years but have reached a new high at a time of tensions over the Russian-Ukraine border. Erdogan has modestly put himself forward as "peacemaker" but this could lead to a major increase in tensions and militarism around the Black Sea.

Ankara at the centre of its "Afro-Eurasian" vision

Turkey has moved into Africa militarily after using its no less imperialist "soft power” in order to pave its way. It has extended its influence in the Persian Gulf with the establishment of a large military base in Qatar, while maintaining a balancing act with the other Gulf powers of Saudi and the UAE. Ankara has recently made overtures towards the latter two countries - including going into joint production of drones with the Saudi regime - as well as talking about restoring diplomatic and intelligence ties with Egypt[10]. While some warm words have also recently gone back and forth with Tel Aviv, Turkey's balancing act can only become more problematic as instability and each for themselves dominates further.

Turkey has spread and strengthened its influence to the republics of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, where it sees China as a direct threat and rival. And it rushed to provide arms to its ally Azerbaijan prior to its 44-day war with Armenia last year, particularly its armed drones which overwhelmed the Armenian forces and which it has itself used in military operations in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Israel was also involved in supporting Azerbaijan, which it sees as a buffer against Iran, but it was Turkish weaponry and proxy fighters, supplied to its "antagonistic" Shia partner, that routed the Armenian forces. Turkey's "Asia Anew Initiative", one of the indicators of Turkish imperialist interests, aims to reinforce relations with the Turkic states of Asia. Since 2003, Turkey has established 17 new missions, five embassies and 12 consulates in Asian countries. China, for its part, is interested in, but also wary of, Turkey and has tended to be more open to the other counties in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. But because of Turkey's geo-strategic position, its influence on the Turkic states and China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI), Wang Yi, Chinese Foreign Minister, had warm words for Turkey on his recent early April trip around the Middle East.

Over the last decade Turkey has become much more implanted in Africa, particularly East Africa, leading it to describe itself as an "Afro-Eurasian state", completing a potential three-pronged military expansion. From 12 embassies scattered across the continent in 2009, it has risen to 42 a decade later, with more in the offing, and sub-Saharan trade increased from one billion dollars to nearly eight times that roughly over the same period[11]. Ankara's largest military base is in Somalia where its forces train local troops; other recipients of Turkey's "bilateral" assistance are Sudan, Niger, Djibouti (where China's first overseas military base was established 3 years ago), Chad and Guinea. Turkey has played up the idea that its intentions are not colonial but "brotherly" towards Africa. There has been some neo-Ottoman rhetoric to its propaganda, given the links between the old empire and East Africa, but Turkish "aid" and projects have been generally welcomed by the local bourgeoisies. Despite France’s problems in the region, and China’s efforts to take advantage, Turkey is also rivalling countries like Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as China, in this burgeoning imperialist arena.

Turkey’s move into Africa directly confronts the diplomatic, business and educational enterprises of US-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, once ally and now arch-enemy of Erdogan. Gulen's Hizmet educational system is global but particularly strong in Africa where it tends to provide a cheaper alternative to French schools for the children of the elites. Turkey's "brotherly" mask has tended to give way to its rank authoritarianism when demanding that African states close down the Gulen "terrorist" network. Like military bases and "boots on the ground", the ongoing investment in the “soft power” surge of Turkey in Africa and elsewhere, involving schools, health facilities, NGO's, etc., greatly adds to the cost of an unsustainable war economy.

It's in the central Mediterranean however, NATO's southern flank, that the imperialist free-for-all, with Turkey at the centre, really hots up, posing sharper dangers from increasing tensions and conflicts, exacerbated by Ankara's push to be a greater regional power. Fighting over war-torn Libya like vultures, Turkey and Qatar backed the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) while the opposing faction, the Libyan National Army (LNA) has been militarily and financially backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and actively supported by France. Since the shaky cease-fire October last, many thousands of foreign troops and mercenaries remain in the country including pro-Ankara Syrian forces, threatening the fragile "peace" and the UN's "transition" programme. Turkey's support for the GNA, with arms (particularly drones) and fighters, helped shift the balance in Libya and allowed the GNA to take control of key areas. Its agreement with the GNA included Turkey's access to "demarcated" waters in the Eastern Mediterranean for exploration and drilling[12] for oil and gas, but these waters are disputed by Greece, Egypt and Cyprus (in fact Crete and Cyprus sit inside Turkish-claimed waters); and the above countries, as well as Israel, have excluded Turkey from their East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF). This in turn has prompted Turkey to label them - along with France - an "alliance of evil" which was damaging Libya's "hope for democracy". While these pipeline schemes are cheaper than shipping oil and gas, they look very dodgy propositions economically and are prone to the political instability that haunts the Middle East. But Turkey is fighting for the right to access what it calls its "blue homeland" in order to gain more energy autonomy, and for this reason it is in Libya for the long haul, using it as a springboard for access to the waters of the central Mediterranean and a stronger implantation in this vital area. Turkey and the head of the new interim Libyan government, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, have just (April 13) re-affirmed the 2019 maritime agreement[13] that has angered other states, while Turkey has promised the Libyan government 150,000 Covid-19 vaccines, a Covid-19 hospital in Tripoli and Ankara's support for a reconstruction of the Libyan military.

The Russian/Turkish gas pipeline, Turkstream, was opened by presidents Putin and Erdogan in January 2020 but it relies on this heavily qualified "partnership". The project was halted by Putin following the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet by Turkey on the Turkish-Syrian border in 2014 and reinstated after Ankara's effusive apology. The EU's reliance on Turkey regarding refugees means that its diplomatic efforts in regulating the issues over these waters, and the relationship between NATO members Turkey and Greece, look to be extremely difficult. There is a real risk here for Turkey in that in over-stretching itself it gets out of its depth and provokes more serious confrontations; being active on so many fronts and making so many enemies reveals an irrationality that is typical of capitalist decomposition.

Difficult relations with NATO and Russia bring further dangers and destabilisation

Up to 1989 Turkey, with its large and modern army, was a pillar of the Western Bloc, despite a confrontation with fellow NATO member Greece in 1974 that presaged some of the problems that emerged on a far greater scale with the implosion of the Warsaw Pact at the end of the 80's. Up until this time Turkey was a lynchpin of US Middle Eastern, Eurasian and Eastern European policies. But the opening of Pandora's Box in 1989 changed the situation dramatically for the worse for all major and secondary powers in the Middle East and beyond. The discipline that kept the Western Bloc together shattered as the cement that held the bloc together, never having a durable quality, turned to dust with the "New World Order" of the early 90's. Turkey was immediately at odds with the US over the first Gulf War, the USA's failed attempt to cohere the fragmenting ex-bloc under its auspices. The purchase by NATO member Turkey of the Russian air defence system, the S-400 in 2019, laid the rupture bare because the system cannot be integrated into NATO's military framework. In response the US forbade the transfer of its F-35 fighter jet, the details of which could be available to Turkish-based Russian trainers of the S-400 system. The situation is further complicated by the fact that 937 separate parts of the F-35 have started to be manufactured in Turkey[14] with at least one plane already delivered.

Turkey is thus riven between Russia and a crisis-ridden NATO, with a certain antagonism towards the "West" and moving onto a dangerous field of cooperation with Russia. All the old contradictions and ambitions of Turkey were re-ignited by the 89 collapse and have been flaring up ever since, posing more intractable problems in a situation of increasing centrifugal tendencies. Turkey's present relations with Russia, as some of the examples above show, are neither straightforward or definitive, but are based upon contingent common interests which are wide open to disputes and conflicts. And while Trump threatened to destroy the Turkish economy if it went "off-limits" in Syria, Putin also threatened it after its SU-24 jet was shot down over Syria in November 2015, adding that it was "a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists". Some of the coming problems in the relationship with Russia are mentioned above: the existing threat of closing the Bosphorus straits to the Russian navy and the potential threat of allowing US warships to use its proposed new canal which would, with a warming of relations with Ukraine, be a significant threat to Russia. In Syria, Russia has also hit Turkish-supported militias in their fight against Russian-backed Syrian forces in north-west Syria: in October 2020 a military training camp was hit by Russian forces, killing dozens of militia and wounding many. More recently Turkish-backed forces in the same area were hit by a barrage of missiles loaded with cluster bombs, reportedly fired by a Russian warship in the Black Sea. The devastation was widespread, adding to the ongoing grief of the civilian population.

The "Kurdish question"

If the whole Middle East is a can of worms, then there is another formidable can of worms inside the can:  the question of the Kurds. Apart from the half-hearted conciliatory moves of Turkey towards the Kurds last decade, the real fear of Turkey is focused on the autonomous Kurdish zones operating in Syria and Iraq. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK - recognised by the US as a "terrorist organisation") and its Syrian branch, the Democratic Union Party with its YPG Peoples' Protection Units, are, in part, consolidating themselves on Syrian territory. This provoked the 2019 Turkish military operation "Peace Spring" crossing into Syria with allied Syrian factions in order to push them back. The US arming of the Kurds with sophisticated and sensitive weaponry[15] in order to fight Isis went beyond the Kurdish "cannon-fodder" used by both the Iranians and the Americans against Isis. Kurdish YPG commando units (Yekineyen) were kitted out with the same high-tech equipment used by US Special Forces (the Pentagon is not allowed to transfer this equipment to any other forces, but the CIA can and did).

In mid-October 2019, Trump gave the order for US troops to stand aside, effectively allowing Turkish forces to enter north-east Syria and take on the Kurdish forces that went from prized and primed US allies to hunted "terrorists" from one day to the next in yet another Kurdish "betrayal" by the West. What's important about the original arming of the Kurds by the US is that first of all it immediately exposes the weakness and desperation of Uncle Sam, which is part of a long-term weakening of US leadership resulting from decomposition. It infuriated the Turks and compelled them to take advantage of this weakness, adding to the general tendencies of chaos, instability and war in the region. At the same time the fragmentation and re-disposition of Kurdish forces led to some of the YPG units and their Yekineyen fighters joining the Syrian army, probably complete with their "sensitive " equipment, and providing the butcher Assad with more up-to-date tools of his trade.

Turkey's war in Iraq has ramped up against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan in and around the Zagros mountain range, where Turkish combat drones and fighter jets have caused further devastation in relentless attacks. Kurdish nationalism has always been part of imperialism[16] and after decades of being used as cannon-fodder by both global and regional powers, and constantly "betrayed" by them, the Kurds developed a saying that "only the mountains are our friends". But here in their redoubts, along with the civilian population, the mountains have turned into their prison and tombs. The general instability provoked by the deteriorating situation has also led to inter-Kurdish fighting in northern Iraq.

When the leaders talk of peace…

Since the beginning of the year, in what seems to be a change of emphasis, Turkey has been making overtures to its rivals, with Erdogan calling himself and President Macron "peace-makers" (there's never been so much talk about "peace" amid so many wars); it has opened diplomatic talks with Egypt, had warm words for the UAE and opened up joint military developments with Saudi Arabia. It has boosted its existing military agreements with Ukraine with its "Black Sea Shield" programme which covers a broad range of operations including aerospace engines and missile technology[17]. On April 9 the Turkish Ministry of Defence posted its congratulations on NATO's 72nd anniversary saying that "we are stronger together". In January Erdogan, addressing EU ambassadors, said "we are ready to put our relations back on track"; in February, directly to the US, Erdogan emphasised "our common interests". And on March 24, he told the AKP Congress, closer to reality, "we will continue to shape our relations with every country". There can be no predictions about what this means for the future, but it is clear that Turkey is advancing on many fronts into very dangerous territories in a situation of growing imperialist tensions and instability which the actions of Turkey will only aggravate. "... it is clear that Ankara's policy is a major contributor to the spread of militarism and chaos and a major factor in extending instability and conflict to a region that stretches from the Sahel to Afghanistan. In short, the idea of stabilising the region, curbing imperialist ambitions across the board is a pure figment of the imagination and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, which is hitting the region hard, will only add fuel to the war, barbarism and chaos"[18].

Economic crisis, militarism and war is the only perspective for decomposing capitalism

On the economy, the main global finance bodies are united in seeing the prospects for the Turkish economy as grim and Erdogan's handling of it as "unorthodox"[19]. He has just sacked his third Central Bank governor in 2 years while trying to manipulate the dollar/lira relationship through a form of trickery. At the moment Turkey's Central Bank owes tens of billions of dollars to Turkey's banks, leaving the former with a big hole in its balance-sheet (in the recent past Turkish banks have been heavily involved in sanction-busting, particularly its Halkbank). The lira fell 15% after the third Central Bank governor was sacked and replaced with an AKP appointee, leaving Turkish companies with dollar debts struggling. Orthodox economics says that higher interest rates are needed to combat inflation, but Erdogan has set his face against this, partly because "... the Anatolian export-oriented manufacturers who are an increasingly important part of (Erdogan's) political base" (Borzou Daragahi, Independent, March 24, 1921) are adversely affected by them; so Erdogan's short-term irrationality prevails over the general health of the Turkish economy. Once again the "risk-taker" Erdogan's latest "crazy" scheme has blown up in his face, leaving his country's economy in very serious trouble. Inflation, which has risen for the sixth consecutive month and now officially stands at just under 16%, means that workers and the poor will pay more for daily, basic items, while official unemployment rose to 13.4% in January and youth unemployment (15-24) was up to nearly 27%, with both figures likely being underestimations. Turkey's foreign currency reserves are low and falling. After the misery left by the 2008 economic crisis and new economic misery from the pandemic, there is more suffering to come for the working class, particularly as the war economy, which is already draining the coffers of state, intensifies.

Desperate political manoeuvres show the weakness of the ruling clique as attacks on the working class intensify

Despite the appearance and trappings of a strong state, the ruling AKP is weakening under the pressures. Around the end of 2019 there were splits in the party as the economic miracle was fading and unpopularity was setting in even among its supporters. Former Prime Minister and AKP chairman, Ahmet Davutoglu, was a major resignation; Ali Babacan, former head of economics and credited with presiding over Turkey's unparalleled growth also left the governing body. These are small numbers but under the AKP's new system (designed to strengthen the AKP) every vote is essential. Erdogan's margin of political manoeuvre is thus becoming more limited and it is a weakness of the ruling class that it has to rely on the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in its "popular alliance" to win elections and stay in power. Discontent with the AKP is growing generally but particularly within its voting core and support in the polls for Erdogan. is falling. The second-largest party in the country, the Republican People's Party (CHP), the main opposition since 2002, has also been losing support, not least due to its complicity with the AKP's manoeuvres and repression.

The same day in March that the AKP removed its latest Central Bank governor, the Turkish authorities began a lawsuit to disband the leftist, Kurdish-led People's Democratic Party (HDP - the third largest party), accusing it of being linked to the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). Just a few days later, showing the frenetic and desperate nature of the continuing campaign, Ankara announced that it would withdraw from the 2011 Istanbul Convention on violence against women, saying that the scheme looked to "normalise homosexuality" and didn't fit in with Turkey's "social and family values". It was a ploy against what was an empty declaration, a diversion to prop up the AKP's hard core, but like some eastern European and many African countries, it also shows the incitement to violence and the baseness and brutality of bourgeois thought. The withdrawal inevitably gave rise to a number of counter demonstrations which had the effect of hardening support for the AKP from the faithful and which were also a lesson in division, containing no proletarian perspective.

The deterioration of the living conditions of the working class and the necessity for its response

Suffering from the war economy, the proletariat is hit from all sides. We've seen the chasm between the state's propaganda and the reality of a health service that was already deteriorating before the appearance of the pandemic. Like many other countries, health tourism is on the up in Turkey but like many other countries this is no indication of the availability and robustness of the healthcare system; on the contrary it is a sign of its restriction, increasing privatisations and up-front payments, making it a further concern for the working class and the great majority who are denied services and sent to the back of an ever-lengthening queue. And that's those that are eligible which many are not; graduating students, for example, have no health insurance.

A further brutal and frontal attack on the workers comes with the sinister-sounding workplace Code-29. Code-29 has been used a legal get-out from the ban on dismissing workers during the pandemic. But again, these attacks on the working class predate the pandemic and the latter will be an excuse for further attacks. Code-29 has existed since 2018 and it says that a worker can be sacked for showing "behaviours that do not comply with the rules and ethics and goodwill". It has been used extensively by the bosses and the workers hit by it are not entitled to severance pay, notice and unemployment benefit; their access to healthcare could also be problematic. Women workers face added problems from Code-29, being subjected to enquiries "about what they get up to at work", while the Code talks unashamedly about "immoral conduct"; it’s a repressive and humiliating form of pressure. This particular attack on women workers again panders to the AKP's conservative base; it is a sop to it, in a similar way to the rejection on the Convention against violence against women. But nearly half-a-million workers have been sacked under Code-29 in the last three years[20] and, as the state knows, more important than the numbers is the fear factor that it spreads. Shifts have been increased from 8 to 12 hours, overtime made compulsory (if it's paid at all), while bosses have cancelled buses picking up workers, making them virtual prisoners in the factories. But fighting Code-29 alone or trying to make it more palatable is a game that the trade unions play with their campaigns fixating on particular issues.

Despite some very targeted welfare "reforms", implemented more for propaganda purposes than anything else, the working class is being attacked from all sides. Inflation and unemployment are rampant and the state has nothing but an illusory nationalism and brutal repression to offer the proletariat. Given the closeness of the official trade unions to the ruling party, it's not surprising that workers are turning towards independent unions in order to protect themselves, but this is an error as far as the needs of their struggle go. With the official unions being discredited, the function of independent unions is to contain the struggle within the union framework and then undermine it. Whether or not these unions are outlawed by the state, and whether or not elements of the state attack them, the function of these union structures remains precisely the same: to keep the union framework alive and keep the class struggle within the boundaries of the state and illusory reform[21]. In recent years we've seen the appearance of independent unions in China, Vietnam, South Africa, Egypt and Iran, and it was the independent union Solidarnosc in Poland 1981 that turned a significant struggle of the working class into a movement to restructure Polish capital.

Times were tough for the working class before the pandemic and now they are even tougher. Prior to Covid-19 the working class was tentatively beginning a response to the gathering assaults on its living conditions by capitalism, but this was halted by a pandemic that constituted a direct challenge to the health and life of the working class. Nevertheless, even in these circumstances, there have been expressions of struggles in defence of proletarian conditions across the globe. But the conditions for struggle are not propitious in the circumstances of the virus, given the needs for workers to come together and organise. What this re-emphasises is the need for divisions played up by the state, like those set up between Turkish, Kurdish and Syrian workers, to be overcome and for trade union control, "independent" or not, to be replaced by self-organisation and workers' assemblies taking control of their own struggles. The ubiquitous lock-downs of the present only add to the difficulties of the class struggle alongside the inhibiting factor of further attacks, no less in Turkey than anywhere else. But "... the capacity of the working class to respond to the crisis of the system has by no means disappeared; and this implies that sooner or later we will see significant reactions to the onslaught of capital. In the meantime, revolutionaries have a great deal of work to do in fertilising the fragile green shoots of consciousness already visible in small minorities across the world - products of a deeper undercurrent of awareness that the present system of production is profoundly and irreversibly bankrupt"[22].

 

Baboon, 18.4.21

Under the slogan “Kill the Bill”, recent weeks have seen thousands of mainly young people in various cities in England and Wales taking to the streets to protest against the implementation of the 307-page “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill”, which will hand the police and the Home Secretary greater powers to crack down on protests. While the bill in question does not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, even there people gathered in public places to express their solidarity with the protests in the England and Wales. In certain places, as happened twice in Bristol, the protests led to violent confrontations with the police.

The proposed legislation intends to give the police in the U.K. more power to deal with "static protests" such as "sit-ins", to impose start and finish times on protests, as well as "maximum noise limits"; to intervene in a protest where noise is impacting those around it – all of which will make it easier to convict protestors. Under this proposed legislation a protester can face a fine of £2,500 and ten years in prison for not following police restrictions over how to conduct a protest. The rules set out in the bill can even be applied to a demonstration of just one person.

This bill is another harsh attack on the means of the non-exploiting population in Wales and England to defend their living conditions. The capitalist state is more and more reclaiming public spaces, while access to these spaces is essential for the workers to come together in order to unify their struggle with workers in other companies and plants. [1] The limitations on going out onto the street and the increased police surveillance were temporary measures introduced during the pandemic, but this bill intends to give certain of these limitations a permanent character. As we have seen before in history: temporary measures decided in face of particular circumstances are not reversed once conditions have “returned to normal”.

The trap of democratic and human rights

And now in 2021 we are witnessing a bourgeoisie that is virtually incapable of offering any viable perspective, leading to a growing gap between the bourgeois state and society, which was precisely the condition for the emergence of populism. [2] At the same time several parts of the political apparatus within the western democracies are substantially gangrened by corruption, discredited and even hated. Decades of attacks against living and working conditions have left deep traces in the working class. In the UK itself "Factional interest, short-term political and personal gain, and naked corruption are replacing the defence of the national interest.” (Johnson government: a policy of vandalism [293] ; World Revolution 387 - Autumn 2020)

The new repressive measures being prepared by the Johnson government do not exist in isolation and have not come about by chance. In reaction to the weakening of its political and ideological weapons, the new regulations of the Johnson government are part of a more general policy of the western bourgeoisie, and intend to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. The growing loss of ideological control forces the bourgeoisie to take refuge to a more rigid state control, and to refine its instruments of intimidation. The massive attacks on the living conditions of the working class, which undoubtedly lie ahead of us, compel the bourgeoisie to prepare for all possible reactions, especially by the working class.

Anarchists come to the aid of democracy

In contrast to the statement published (apparently without any criticism) on the website of the Anarchist Federation (AF), “#KillTheBill: Joint Statement on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill From XR, BLM Local groups, RAAH and more” [3], the new step taken by the Johnson government in the direction of an increased state repression, does not yet make the U.K. a full-blown police state. It is one of the most experienced ruling classes in the world and very skilled in hiding its political domination behind the democratic facade with its parliamentary elections and so-called equal rights for all British citizens. And there is no reason to change this policy since the fundaments of this democracy are not being publicly challenged, either by another faction of the bourgeoisie or by the working class.

The UK is not an open dictatorship, but the British state is certainly an authoritarian and repressive state, just as any state, whether it is “more democratic” or more “totalitarian”. But in both cases, it presents itself as an instrument of protection of society, as it has done in the past year by holding back the extreme social chaos that would arise if the pandemic was allowed to go unchecked. The denunciation by the statement of “the creation of an authoritarian police state” is rather confusing, because it leaves us with various questions:

• what is the difference between an “authoritarian police state” and a “non-authoritarian police state”;
• what if the protesters do succeed in blocking the creation of a police state, is this state no longer authoritarian?

But there is more to say about the statement published by the AF. The appeal to #UniteForHumanRights and “to fight to protect the fundamental human rights”, is an open call for bourgeois demands. For human rights derives from “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which is a bourgeois declaration approved by the United Nations in 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War. The Soviet Union abstained from voting this Human Rights Declaration, and with reason, because it was almost immediately used by the Western bloc to wage a 40 years’ Cold War against the Stalinist regimes, undeniably as inhuman as the countries of the Western Bloc.

The slogan “#SaveOurDemocracies” is another dangerous mystification, because it makes an appeal for us to identify with and defend the mystification of democratic rights. In the name of “the will of the people” it actually calls for a popular front of all democratic forces. But in the 1930’s it was the Popular Front in France that used the state machine is to smash the workers, to imprison hundreds of workers for holding meetings and strikes and to prepare for war by military and industrial conscription of millions of workers. This policy was clearly denounced at the time in the leaflet “France in Revolt [294]”, distributed by the Anarchist Federation of Britain

It may be that the AF has jettisoned any kind of class analysis, but the Anarchist Communist Group, which split from the AF in 2018, has not, and thus it writes that “we must resist this bill together, as a class”. But for the rest the article of the ACG remains rather vague about what this means in the concrete conditions of the class struggle today. After this the ACG writes “It’ll mean calling for and organising local meetings and demonstrations”. Is this an appeal to the working class to defend the democratic rights allegedly granted by the class which exploits it? And if it is an appeal for real working class struggle, where are the specific working class demands?

While claiming to defend the essential role of the working class struggle, the ACG seems to have “forgotten” the specific nature of this class, why it is the class antagonistic to capital and therefore the only force in capitalism able to lay the groundwork for an alternative society without repression and exploitation. The working class is a class of wage labourers, including those who are temporarily unemployed, which depend for their livelihood on the selling of their labour power. And its force, its organisation and consciousness, is precisely based on its position as an associated class in the production process.

The ACG wants a class struggle against the new repressive state measures, but in doing that it completely ignores what makes the working class the only force capable of “overthrowing capitalism, abolishing the State, getting rid of exploitation, hierarchies and oppressions, and halting the destruction of the environment”(What is the ACG? [295]); in other words: its class autonomy. [4] Without this class autonomy, without the struggle on a proletarian terrain for authentic class demands, the working class is no more than a sum of individual citizens, an amorphous mass of protesting people at best. Therefore any call to the workers to fight against the new repressive legislation, which is not based on clear class demands, can only serve to disarm the working class.

Within capitalism the working class has no rights

The protests against the new law, and the energetic commitment of the people fighting against its approval, show one thing in particular: the great illusions in the democracy in general and the democracy of the UK in particular. In fact, the appeal by the protesters to “our democracies”, to “the right to protest”, to “human rights”, rights that that the ruling class supposedly tries “to take away from us”, only shows that the main instrument of the bourgeoisie to rule British society is indeed the illusion of democracy, even if it needs police surveillance and state organised violence (which we saw clearly displayed at the vigil for Sarah Everard and the Bristol Kill the Bill protest) as an additional tool. But the need for the bourgeoisie to use its repressive instruments as a last resort makes the democratic mystification no less dangerous.

Democracy is a very refined instrument of social control and no less totalitarian than a full-blown dictatorship. The western democracies “maintain the whole apparatus, from the media to the police, required to impose a grip on society that hides its totalitarianism behind a veil of ‘freedom’.” (International Review no. 62 - Editorial [296]; 1990) The strength of western democracies is precisely located in their ability to hide the fact that its rule is not only as ruthless and effective as any dictatorship, but is actually better organised. In 1919 Lenin had already pointed to the great lie of democracy and showed that “in reality terror and a bourgeois dictatorship rule the most democratic republic” and that “shouting in defence of ‘democracy in general’ is actually defence of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as exploiters.” (Theses on bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship [297])

There is no fundamental difference between the protests against the new bill and the protest against the lockdown: in both cases the protesters reclaim their “freedom” as citizens. In the case of the protest against the new bill they demand the “right” to protest “freely” and in the case of the protest against the lockdown they demand the “right” to move “feely”. But in both cases the demands do not put into question the capitalist system and the authority of the state. This is completely different from the struggle of the working class. And certainly since capitalism entered its period of decadence this class can no longer fight for “democratic demands”, even if certain sectors still have illusions and may get drawn into the defence of such demands. Within capitalism only the ruling class has rights and the workers have no other right than to sell their labour power and to be exploited.

The protests of the past three weeks in the U.K. will not force the bourgeoisie to back down, even if the bourgeoisie gives the impression that it is ready to listen to “the will of the people” and to make some changes in the original draft of the bill. This is a manoeuvre intended to bind the protesters even more to the authority of the state. The present bill is actually not a frontal attack on the protests groups like Extinction Rebellion, but against the future protests that may irrupt when the austerity will be imposed on the working class to claw back the huge debts incurred during the pandemic. This actual legislation is a first step in the preparation of the ruling class to confront its main enemy, the working class, in the battles that will inevitably emerge in the period ahead.

Dennis, April 202 

Notes:

[1] The strength of the working class struggle is shown when workers of all sectors and companies come together “en masse”, in places where it is possible to have debates, where it can decide on the course of the struggle and the road it has to take. But the majority of workers recognise that massive gatherings, open to everyone who wants to reinforce the struggle, are too dangerous under the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. “But as soon as the pandemic is behind us, we will have to occupy the streets again, occupy all public spaces to discuss the means of the struggle and resist the austerity plans that the ruling class will seek to impose on us.”(La bourgeoisie profite de la pandémie de Covid-19 pour attaquer la classe ouvrière! [298]; Révolution Internationale no. 487)

[2] Since the traditional political parties have been substantially discredited in the eyes of the working class, there is a direct link between the rise of populism and the discrediting of the party political establishment. “The roots of populism in Europe and the USA are in the first instance a result of the historical weakening of the traditional government parties, which have been discredited by decades of attacks against living and working conditions, by unbearable levels of chronic mass unemployment, by the cynicism, hypocrisy and corruption of numerous political and economic spheres, and by their incapacity to offer the masses the illusion of a better future.” (Presidential campaign in France: populism and anti-populism, two expressions of capitalism’s dead-end [299]; ICConline April 2017 [300])

[3] #Kill The Bill: Joint Statement on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill From XR, BLM local groups, RAAH and more - Extinction Rebellion UK [301] : “This is an open statement written by a coalition of UK organisations, groups & social movements of all ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, sexualities, faiths, abilities, ages and social standings, who have united to challenge the UK government”. 

[4] The class autonomy of the proletariat means its independence from the other classes of society, its ability to give a political orientation to all the other non-exploiting strata. This class independence of the proletariat constitutes an INDISPENSIBLE CONDITION for its revolutionary action aiming, in the long run, at the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a classless society and thus without exploitation of man by man. (Balance sheet of the public meetings on the “Yellow Vest” movement [302]; ICConline – 2020s) 

 

The article below was recently published by the ICC's French section. If the details of violence among young people relate to that country, they are not a French specificity, as is clear from many recent examples in the UK. In Reading, in January, four boys and a girl, all aged 13 or 14 were arrested for murder after a 13-year-old boy was stabbed to death. In Haringey, a student who had gone to help friends after a mobile phone was stolen was stabbed to death and 5 teenagers have been charged. In Islington, a 15-year-old who was going to a chip shop was fatally stabbed and a 17-year-old has been charged with his murder. These are all characteristic of this putrefying world. In the same way, it is on a global scale that the solution to the tragedy that capitalism is inflicting on humanity and its youth on a daily basis can be found: the overthrow of the capitalist system, which is incapable of offering any perspectives to young people except unemployment, brutal death on the street corner, under the blows of gangs or cops, or as a consequence of the anti-social and deadly behaviour of other young people, which are a pure reflection of the world in which we live.

Since February, there have been multiple violent incidents among young people. Brawls, attacks, killings... the horror hits the young generation head on.

In Paris, on 15 February, Yuriy, a 15-year-old, was beaten and his skull smashed with a hammer by eleven young people aged 15 to 18. Even when he lay motionless on the ground, they continued to hit him. In Essonne, on 22 February, a 14-year-old girl was stabbed in the stomach during a brawl between two gangs. Six juveniles aged 13 to 16 were arrested. The next day, 23 February, also in Essonne, two gangs clashed: the 'big' ones (16-17 years old) 'supervised' a fight between the 'little' ones (12-15 years old) ... until one of them was surrounded and pulled out a knife... A 14-year-old schoolboy died, another 13-year-old went to hospital in a serious condition, stabbed in the throat. In Bondy, on 26 February, a young 15-year-old boxer called Aymen was killed when he was shot. The perpetrators were two brothers, aged 17 and 27. In Argenteuil, on 8 March, a 14-year-old called Alisha was trapped by two 15-year-olds: she was beaten up and thrown into the Seine while barely conscious. The contrast between the youth of the protagonists and the barbarity of the acts is shocking.

The press and politicians have all tried to exploit these tragedies. They accuse, in no particular order, 'irresponsible families', 'brutal immigrants', 'Muslims', the 'laxness of the legal system', 'lack of police funding'... and propose as a solution to punish the parents, to deport foreigners, to increase police numbers and to toughen laws against juveniles. The government is going to play this repressive card with the reform of the justice system as it affects young people, which is going to lead to quicker verdicts and heavier sentences. In other words, they are all preparing us for an even more violent and inhumane society.

In reality, youth pay the price for the rotting of the whole social body: 'no future' is a gangrene that is gradually gaining a hold throughout society. While the bourgeoisie is no longer able to mobilise society behind any perspective, and while the proletariat is not putting forward its own revolutionary perspective, society decomposes on its feet[1] and social relations disintegrate: increased individualism, nihilism, destruction of family ties, every man for himself, fear of the other, are all proliferating; blind violence, hatred, the spirit of revenge and self-destruction become the norm (on television, in films, through music, games). This outpouring of barbarism between children for totally futile and irrational reasons is the expression of a society without a future, which is breaking down, oppressing and suffocating us. In more and more parts of the world, this violence between young people has become a daily occurrence, whether it takes the form of gang rivalries or shootings in schools.

Today, the bourgeoisie has no future to offer to humanity. Only the class struggle can put an end to this dynamic. Only class solidarity, all generations combined, can light the way towards the revolutionary perspective and put an end to inhuman and deadly capitalism.

Ginette, March 24, 2021

Poster of May 68 against state repression

In recent months, in public meetings and online forums, there have been criticisms and misinterpretations of our positions regarding the state measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic: lockdowns, curfews, bans on gatherings on public places, and compulsory vaccination for essential professions. Some of the critics have even concluded that the ICC in fact supports these measures of the state. The aim of this article is to respond to these critiques, both by reaffirming our opposition to the current anti-lockdown protests and by explaining the difference between the so-called “protective measures” of the bourgeois state and the precautions we recommend to communist militants and the working class.

In the past year the policy of the bourgeois state, in its attempt to counter the spread of the pandemic, has given rise to different campaigns and protests. Some of these campaigns plead for the abolition of the measures altogether, others for more human measures, and others even for a tightening of the measures.[1]

The first campaign is well-known. Behind slogans such as “against the violation of our rights”; “we want our freedom back”, “tyranny versus freedom”, “down with the mask”, numerous demonstrations have taken place in the past months, in various countries, to protest against the lockdown measures. In the framework of the so-called “Worldwide Rally for Freedom” the weekend of 20-21 March 2021 saw protests in some 40 countries in Europe and beyond.[2] These rallies were often characterised by an anti-elite rage and in certain cases even led to vandalism, nihilist riots, massively violating the imposed restrictions. In Holland there were even attacks on testing stations and hospitals.

A second campaign has taken place in French Canada, where demonstrations are organised under the slogan “Ensemble pour les mesures sanitaires et solidaires – Non au couvre-feu”. In a statement, the organisers denounce the curfew of the government as “an attack on our freedom and on our relations and aspirations of solidarity”. They think that the curfew further marginalises vulnerable communities, like homeless people, sex workers, drug users, and non-status workers. The protesters, who reject a police solution to the health crisis, “refuse the dichotomy between blind obedience to the government and the silly manipulations of conspiracy theorists.”[3]

In its political combat against the policy of the state in response to the pandemic, the ICC has - in several articles - denounced the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and its complete neglect of the health of the population. Despite the lockdown measures the bourgeoisie “continues its negligence, which it masks by trying to make us feel guilty, by making us bear the blame for the infections, for the exhaustion of the care workers who are victims of the "irresponsible behaviour" of individuals. (…) The state imposes curfews as early as 6pm or lockdowns at weekends, while proletarians are openly allowed to infect themselves in the workplace or on public transport.”[4]

One organisation of the proletarian political milieu even goes a step further and tells us that the essential motivation for the lockdown measures is to prepare for economic attacks in the future. “The proletarians are confined, not to protect their health, but to impose a discipline that will be necessary in the face of the next economic and social measures that are planned to be applied.”[5] But even if the bourgeoisie does not hesitate to make a virtue out of necessity and will not fail to use the opportunity to prepare for future confrontations with the working class, the main goal of the lockdown is not to discipline the proletariat but to block the spread of the virus, which for the moment poses a greater threat to the economy and social cohesion.

The danger of “partial” struggles

In the past year the ICC has not supported any of the protests against obligatory lockdown put into place by the state in an attempt to block the rampant spread of the Covid-19 virus. The reason for this is that these protests remain completely on the surface and do not touch the roots of the capitalist mode of production, which has brought the bourgeois state into existence with the function of defending the capitalist system. The ICC opposes the aims, methods and slogans of the current protests which, however radical they sometimes may seem, call on us to defend certain “rights” as citizens within capitalist society. Such a position is the subject of a special point in our platform.

 “It is wrong to think that it is possible to contribute to the revolution by organising specific struggles around partial problems, such as racism, the position of women, pollution, sexuality, and other aspects of daily life. The struggle against the economic foundations of the system contains within it the struggle against all the super-structural aspects of capitalist society, but this is not true the other way around.”[6] These “partial” struggles are incapable of attacking the root of the problem, i.e. exploitation of one class by another, in the form of capitalist wage slavery.[7]

The working class has nothing to gain from reclaiming “our freedom as citizens”, which has supposedly been taken away from us by the “authoritarian” restrictions of the bourgeois state. It has also nothing to gain from demands for “social justice” and for “our rights”. Such protests do not open the prospect of a solution, which can only gain momentum in and through the struggle for the proletarian perspective. On the contrary, “By their very content ‘partial’ struggles, far from reinforcing the vital autonomy of the proletariat, tend on the contrary to dilute it into a mass of confused categories (races, sexes, youth, etc.) which can only be totally impotent in the face of history”.[8]

“Partial” struggles increase the division and the confusion within the class and therefore represent a dangerous trap for its struggle. They will inevitably lead into the dead-end of calling for a more “democratic” and a more “human” society, which is and will remain a class society, based on repression and exploitation. And from experience we know that “bourgeois governments and political parties have learned to recuperate and use them to good effect in the preservation of the social order”.[9]

The most important examples in recent years of the “recuperation” of such protests by the bourgeoisie were the “Youth4Climate” and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which pulled in many young people, often young proletarians.

The ICC has not supported the demand, put forward during the BLM protests, that the police should be “defunded”. As we already explained in a previous article, the call to defund the police or even to abolish the police altogether is, on the one hand, “completely unrealistic inside this society: it is akin to the capitalist state voluntarily dissolving itself. On the other hand, it spreads illusions in the possibility of reforming the existing state in the interest of the exploited and the oppressed – when its very function is to keep them under control in the interests of the dominant class.”[10]

The same applies to the demands to lift the lockdown measures. We agree that these measures are contradictory and doubly coercive since they confine the workers in their free time, but oblige many of them to go to work, when it is obvious that most infections occur at the workplace. Even if we don’t say that they are essentially aimed at controlling the working class, as Le Prolétaire claims, we agree that despite the measures the exploited class is the main victim of the pandemic. Nonetheless we don’t support demands to put an end to these measures. Demands to lift the lockdown cannot contribute to the development of the proletariat’s class consciousness, its combativity and its solidarity. On the contrary: they only raise obstructions against such a development and have no other perspective than reinforcing illusions in bourgeois rule, whether democratic or openly despotic.

Moreover most of the anti-lockdown protests, with their outright demand for the abolition of all the state’s measures against the pandemic, don’t offer any viable perspective other than a further spread of the virus, and thereby show the completely irrational considerations behind these protests. They frequently claim that the virus is just a hoax, something intended to deceive or defraud, but this is more and more refuted every day by the millions of people worldwide who have died and still will die from Covid-19. In a recently published article[11], we denounced the irrational theories and apocalyptic ideologies behind these protest and the danger they pose, not only for the health of the people, but also for the class consciousness of the proletariat.

The state is repressive by nature

Since Marx wrote The Civil War in France, the position of the revolutionaries about the state has been quite clear: the bourgeois state, as the expression of the dictatorship of the ruling class, has to be destroyed in the course of the proletarian revolution. For “in reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy”.[12] That’s why the ICC supports any proletarian struggle against attacks by the state, as it did for instance during the struggle in France in 2006 against the CPE (First Employment Contract - a new law designed to increase the casualisation of the workforce and especially of new employees) In this particular case, the students’ movement, by threatening to extend to the employed sectors, obliged the government to withdraw the CPE. This was an expression of proletarian resistance to a direct attack by the bourgeois state, and it did not concern itself with taking the legal or electoral path to persuade the government to change its mind.

But the current anti-lock down protests take place on a completely bourgeois terrain and in no way open the door to a movement that can really challenge the legitimacy of the bourgeois state. On the contrary, their alternative to the lockdown and similar measures is simply to call for a more liberal or “laisser faire” policy, often connected to the electoral game between different bourgeois factions.

Throughout its existence, the ICC has warned the class against the risk of being drawn onto the bourgeois terrain. The historical phase of decomposition only multiplies these risks, not least because it has been marked by a serious loss of class identity, of the proletariat’s awareness of itself as a distinct social force, making the working class more vulnerable to being dragged into all kinds of protests which take it away from the defence of its own interests and dilute it in a vague mass of citizens or a myriad of competing “identities”. Faced with the increasing dangers for the proletarian struggle, and to show the class the way to fight for its safety, the task of the hour for revolutionaries is to affirm proletarian solidarity and class autonomy.

The struggles of the past year, in particular at the beginning of the pandemic, have shown that the working class does not limit its struggle to economic demands. In the spring of 2020 workers in various countries went on strike, not demanding better payment, but better safety measures against the virus. History has also given several examples of the workers coming out on strike against the repression of the state.[13] And in contrast to the protests of the past year, these workers had no illusions in the bourgeois state and did not demand for legal changes in order to make the state less “authoritarian” and “more friendly” to its citizens. During their fights against state repression the workers relied completely on the strength of their autonomous action as a class.

The fight for our safety

As we wrote in the summer of last year “this proletarian sense of responsibility, which also prompts millions to follow the rules of self-isolation, shows that the majority of the working class accepts the reality of this disease, even in country like the US which is the ‘heartland’ of various forms of denialism about the pandemic”.[14] Since the publication of this article the class struggle has continued, although on a lower level. But in nearly all its struggles the rules of social distancing, and in the bigger mobilisations the use of protective clothing (PPE), were respected.

If the ICC doesn’t support the measures of the bourgeois state, this does not mean that it completely neglects the necessary precautions to protect its militants against the danger of the virus. It follows the example of the working class. The policy of the ICC is to listen to the science and the science tells us that, as long as there is no other solution, social distancing (including PPE) is the best protection against infection by Covid-19.

If the ICC respects this scientific advice, such advice is not swallowed blindly; on the contrary it must always be critically evaluated. As revolutionaries we are wary of any form of applied science under capitalist conditions since we know how it is utilised; the most striking example being the war industry of course. But also science used for commercial purposes is something that has to be approached with the necessary suspicion. The first and main goal of the pharmaceutical industry is to make profit, even if it is at the cost of the health of the population. But this isn’t a reason to distrust science as such.

The Covid-19 pandemic has faced revolutionaries with an extraordinary situation. The bourgeois state is an enemy of the communist movement and the virus is an enemy of human life. But if the ICC follows the advice about social distancing and the use of PPE, this doesn’t mean it is supporting the state and the ban on protests, which will inevitably be used against any attempt by workers to come together on a class basis, whether to demand adequate safety measures at work or to fight the wage reductions and lay-offs that will accompany the lockdown and its aftermath. The ICC is fully aware that the only alternative to the measures of the bourgeois state is the struggle for a fundamentally new society, the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the elimination of capitalist exploitation.

Dennis, 13 May 2021

 

In the first part of the reply to this reader's letter[1], we responded to the criticisms made by comrade D. to the "Report on the Question of the Historical Course", adopted at the 23rd ICC Congress and published in International Review 164. In this second part, we would like to deal with another question raised by the comrade in his letter: that of the possible prospect of a generalised nuclear war.

The conditions for the outbreak of a generalised war

Comrade D. states in his letter that "the question of war is not at all excluded by the theory of decomposition which replaces the theory of the historical course".

Apart from the fact that the ruling class has not been able since 1989 to reconstitute new imperialist blocs, the comrade forgets that the second condition for the outbreak of a new world war is the ability of the bourgeoisie to mobilise the proletariat behind national flags, especially in the core countries of capitalism. This is by no means the case today. As we have always said, a proletariat which is not prepared to accept the sacrifices imposed by the worsening economic crisis is not prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of its life on the battlefields. After the long counter-revolutionary period which had notably allowed the states to send millions of proletarians to their deaths under the flags of fascism and anti-fascism during the Second World War, the working class returned to the stage of history at the end of the 1960s (May '68 in France, the hot autumn in Italy, etc.).

The bourgeoisie had been prevented from unleashing a third planetary butchery during the Cold War because it was not in a position to mobilise a proletariat which, although it was not able to develop its struggles onto a revolutionary level, was at the same time very combative and absolutely not willing to be killed or to massacre its class brothers. In spite of all the difficulties that the working class has encountered, since 1989, in developing massive struggles, the historical situation is still open. As the proletariat has not suffered a decisive and definitive defeat, the worsening of the economic crisis can only push it to fight tooth and nail to defend its living conditions, as we have seen again recently with the movement against the pension reform in France during the winter of 2019-2020. And in its capacity to resist the attacks of capital, we have also seen a tendency to seek solidarity in the struggle between all sectors and all generations. Of course, this does not mean that the bourgeoisie can never again inflict a historic and decisive defeat on the working class. But, as we stated in our "Theses on Decomposition" (International Review 107), social decomposition can destroy any capacity of the working class to overthrow capitalism and lead to the destruction of humanity and the planet.

Towards a reconstitution of the imperialist blocs?

To support his analysis of the current potential for a large-scale military conflict, Comrade D. says: "Apart from the question of long-range nuclear weapons, there is at the moment one country that does not need to have constituted a united and perfectly held and supported bloc in order to launch itself into a war which, if not global, will not be confined to a theatre of operation limited in time and space (like the two wars against Saddam Hussein). This country is of course the United States, which has the economic power, the military supremacy and the basis for intervention all over the world. For a war with battles in different parts of the world, occurring simultaneously and over a fairly long period of time (several years), it is enough for another power, which constitutes vassal states through foreign trade and economic investments, to acquire military bases abroad in these vassal states, to start building aircraft carriers and generally an efficient and numerous navy, so that at a certain point the risk of generalised conflict becomes a definite probability. That country already exists, it is China, which may soon, thanks to the Covid-19 epidemic, overtake the US in global economic terms."

It is true that the strategic battle for a "new world order" is concentrated around the opposition between these two superpowers. China, with its vast "Silk Road" programme, aims to establish itself as a leading economic power by 2030-50 and to have a "world-class army capable of winning any modern war" by 2050. Such ambitions are causing a general destabilisation of power relations and since 2013 has been prompting the US to try to contain the rise of this threatening Chinese power. The US response, which began with Obama (and has been taken up and amplified by Trump), represents a turning point in US policy. The defence of its interests as a national state is now tied up with the tendency towards every man for himself which dominates imperialist relations: the United States is moving from the role of policeman of the world order to that of the main propagator of every man for himself, challenging the very same world order established since 1945 under its aegis. On the other hand, the idea implied by what the comrade says is that there is a tendency towards bipolarisation, since on the one hand the European countries, within the framework of NATO, would take the side of the United States, while China, not only could rely on its vassal states but would have a major ally, Russia.

However, the emergence of China itself is a product of the phase of decomposition, in which the tendency towards bipolarisation is being undermined by the every man for himself attitude of each imperialist power. Similarly, there is a big difference between the development of this trend and a concrete process leading to the formation of new blocs. The increasingly aggressive attitudes of the two major poles tend to undermine rather than strengthen this process. China is deeply distrusted by all its neighbours, including Russia, which often aligns itself with China only to defend its immediate interests (as it does in Syria), but is terrified of being subordinated to China because of the latter's economic power, and remains one of the fiercest opponents of Beijing's "Silk Road" project. America, meanwhile, has been actively dismantling virtually all the old bloc structures that it had previously used to preserve its "new world order" and which helped resist the "every man for himself" shifts in international relations. It increasingly treats its NATO allies as enemies, and in general has become one of the main actors in aggravating the chaotic character of current imperialist relations.

Is a nuclear war conceivable in the present period?

Finally, by excluding one of the essential conditions for the outbreak of a new world war (the necessity of the ideological mobilisation of the proletariat), comrade D. advances another hypothesis. He refers to articles in the bourgeois press (L'Observateur and Le Canard enchaîné) to assert that a nuclear war is quite possible, especially between the United States and China (which has become an industrial and imperialist power facing the first world power).

As we have always argued, imperialism has its own dynamic and is an integral part of the way of life of capitalism in its period of decadence. And as Jaurès said, "Capitalism carries war with it like the cloud carries the storm". No economic power can compete with others, and assert itself on the world stage, without developing ever more sophisticated weapons. The trade war between states is therefore always accompanied by an exacerbation of imperialist tensions. While it is true that nuclear weapons are no longer just a means of "deterrence" as they were during the "Cold War", today the arms race is a means of blackmail and bargaining between the nuclear-armed states. The exacerbation of imperialist tensions does not always lead to a direct conflagration, as we saw, for example, in 2017 with the military tensions between the United States and North Korea (which gave rise to alarmist discourse in the bourgeois press). After several months of negotiations, this conflict ended (at least momentarily) with warm embraces between Trump and North Korean president Kim Jong-un

The more the bourgeoisie is cornered by the bankruptcy of its system and the acceleration of the trade war, the more each power seeks to advance its pawns in the global imperialist arena for the control of strategic positions against its adversaries. As capitalism sinks into social decomposition, the bourgeoisie appears more and more as a suicidal class. Uncontrolled outbreaks on the imperialist level cannot be excluded in the future, if the proletariat does not take up the challenge posed by the gravity of the historical situation. But for the moment, the prospect of a nuclear conflagration between China and the US is not on the agenda. Moreover, what would be gained by the two powers dropping massive nuclear bombs on their rival's soil? The destruction would be so great that no troops from the victorious country could be sent to occupy the ruins.

We have always rejected the vision of a "press-button" war where the bourgeoisie could unleash a global nuclear cataclysm at the push of a button, without any need for the proletariat to be enlisted. The ruling class is not completely stupid, even if irresponsible and completely insane heads of state can come to power on a short-term basis. It is not a question of underestimating the danger of imperialist tensions between the great nuclear powers like China and the United States, nor of totally ruling out the prospect of a conflagration between these two powers in the future, but of measuring the catastrophic repercussions at the world level: none of the belligerent powers could benefit from it. Contrary to the alarmist speeches of certain media and the predictions of geopoliticians, we must beware of playing Nostradamus. If the dynamics of imperialism (the outcome of which we cannot predict today) lead to such a situation, the origin will be found in the loss of total control by the ruling class over its decaying system. We are not there yet and must beware of crying "Wolf!" too quickly.

Revolutionaries must not give in to the social atmosphere of "no future". On the contrary, they must remain confident in the future, in the capacity of the proletariat and its younger generations to overthrow capitalism before it destroys the planet and humanity. By abandoning today our past analysis of the "historical course", we do not have, as comrade D. thinks, a "pessimistic" vision of the future. We still count on the possibility of generalised class confrontations that enable the proletariat to recover and affirm its revolutionary perspective. Contrary to what our reader says, we have never “announced” the defeat of the proletariat in advance.

Sofiane

“The Labour party has lost touch with the working class”. This is the lament from those on the left who are desperate for Labour to regain credibility as a party that could seriously contend for government office, following a series of humiliating electoral defeats, the latest being the by-election in Hartlepool, the first time Labour has lost this seat since it was created as a constituency in 1974.

From the right, however, this is not a lament, but a gloating proclamation of victory. The Conservative Party, we are told, is now the party of the working people of Britain. The Conservatives alone are the ones giving voice to the real concerns of the “left behind”, the “white working class”, or just “hardworking ordinary people”. The Tories’ election success in the last two years has to a large extent been based on their ability to win over large numbers of working class voters who in the past have been solidly Labour: the so-called Red Wall[1].

There’s no doubt that Labour, along with many other social democratic parties in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, etc) has been increasingly pushed to the edge of the electoral field. This has notably been the case since the rise of populism in many countries – whether organised in specifically populist parties like Rassemblement National in France, La Liga in Italy, Vox in Spain, UKIP in Britain, or through the traditional parties borrowing the slogans and attitudes of the populists, as with the Tories in Britain or the Republicans in the US. Today it’s the populists who make the loudest noise in denouncing the “established elites” in political life, combining right wing memes (immigration, crime, anti-“woke” stances on issues like race and gender) with a kind of neo-Keynesianism which is not afraid to spend big on the welfare of the “national community”. This is exemplified by the huge sums doled out by the Tory government on the furlough schemes during the lock-down and on backing research into and production of Covid-19 vaccines.

The capacity of the populists to present themselves as the true representatives of the working class is symbolic of the loss of class identity over the last few decades, a key element in the increasing difficulty of the working class to fight for its own interests in the face of a crisis-ridden system. We have written about this problem at greater length elsewhere[2], but very briefly we can say that this loss of class identity is the result both of enormous ideological campaigns (especially those around the so-called “collapse of communism” after 1989) and material changes in the organisation of global production. These elements have combined to reinforce the idea that the working class has either disappeared or is limited to those who work in traditional industries, while those who work for a wage in many of the new sectors (communication, services, etc), especially in the big cities, are labelled as essentially “middle class”. The real unity of interests between these different parts of the working class is hidden behind a smokescreen of false choices, typified by the campaigns around Brexit, which pitted the “urban elites” who tended to be pro-EU and the Red Wall voters who bought into Johnson’s slogan “get Brexit done”.

Labour’s fudge over Brexit, which Corbyn expressed in the most caricatured manner [3] expressed the inability of the party to appeal to these different sectors of the working class, in general becoming increasingly identified with the falsely named urban elite or middle class.

For opinion writers in left newspapers like The Guardian, the key question therefore is how to find policies that can attract both Labour’s new clientele and its errant former supporters. They tend to be critical of Starmer’s negative approach of harping on about Tory failures over the pandemic or about the “same old Tory sleaze” over scandals like David Cameron’s informal lobbying of government ministers, and the saga about who paid for the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat in Downing Street. They want Labour to come up with positive policies that combine a green economy and job-creation without ditching “progressive” cultural and social attitudes, while recognising sadly that the Tories, for the moment, are making the running in promises about “levelling up” and overcoming the grotesque social inequalities laid bare by the pandemic and the lockdowns. 

Election defeats for the Labour Party are not defeats for the working class

Contrary to those who want to find a winning formula for Labour, whether back to Blair, back to Corbyn, or forward with some new alchemical concoction, we think that the question has to be posed in completely different terms. If being “in touch” with the working class means that you are actually one of its organised expressions, then the Labour Party “lost touch” with the working class when it transformed itself into a fully functioning cog in the machinery of capitalism.

In the second half of the 19th century, genuine socialists (we, like Marx, prefer the term communists) worked to build large workers’ parties, which, along with the trade unions, were part of the process through which the working class established itself as a distinct social force inside capitalism. A force which could fight for reforms within an expanding capitalist system, and at the same time develop the perspective of a socialist society that would begin a whole new stage in human history. But precisely because capitalism was in its period of triumphant expansion and ascent, inside the workers’ parties (such as the Social Democratic Party in Germany, and the organisations that would eventually come together in the Labour Party in the first years of the 20th century) there was a growing divide between those who understood that this new society would become not only a possibility but a vital necessity, and those who thought that capitalism could go on forever, improving the lot of the workers and perhaps even, bit by bit, transform itself into socialism. In fact, when the Labour Party was formed, there was no mention of socialism in its programme: “the movement is everything, the goal nothing”, as Eduard Bernstein, the leading spokesman for the reformists in the SPD, put it. Unlike other social democratic parties, the Labour Party never even defended the goal, the “maximum programme” of socialist revolution.

This crucial debate was settled by the events of 1914. The carnage of the imperialist war demonstrated that the choice facing humanity was not between reform or revolution, but between revolution or barbarism. Capitalism, entering its epoch of decadence, would become an increasing threat to the very survival of humanity. And the Russian revolution of 1917, followed by revolutionary movements in other countries, confirmed that the only way that capitalism’s drive towards destruction could be halted was through proletarian revolution: the destruction of the bourgeois state by the international power of the workers’ councils.

Confronted with this epochal change, the Labour Party – together with the majorities in the other social democratic parties and the trade unions – made its choice. Faced with the imperialist war, Labour capitulated to patriotism and played its role as “recruiting sergeant” for the slaughter. And faced with the threat of revolution after 1917 – which also had its echo in Britain – the watchword was: man the barricades, but on the side of the capitalist state. Faced with widespread sympathy for the Russian revolution, and some very militant workers’ struggles, such as the strike on “Red Clydeside” in 1919, the Labour Party adopted demagogic slogans which aimed to absorb or derail the revolutionary aspirations growing within the working class. The famous “Clause Four”, calling for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, was adopted in 1918 and was evidence of Labour’s fake conversion to socialism, in reality a commitment to state capitalism as the last rampart of capitalist social relations.

Within a few years, in 1924, the Labour Party confirmed that it had been fully integrated into the capitalist system by assuming the reins of government, as predicted in 1920 by Sylvia Pankhurst: “The British Labour Party, like the social patriotic organisations of other countries, will in the natural development of society, inevitably come into power. It is for the Communists to build up the forces that will overthrow the social patriots, and in this country we must not delay or falter in that work”[4]. And she added, reflecting her opposition to the views of Lenin and the leadership of the Communist International, “we must not dissipate our energy in adding to the strength of the Labour party; its rise to power is inevitable. We must concentrate on making a Communist movement that will vanquish it”. In sum, against the idea - still propagated by Trotskyists and other leftists today, that we can enter the Labour Party in order to transform it from the inside, or at least win over a substantial minority of it to the revolution – history has demonstrated that you cannot change the nature of a party which has gone over to the enemy class. You can only work for a class movement which will recognise the need to destroy it as an essential component of the capitalist state.

In government or in opposition, a party of capital

Subsequent events have further reinforced this conclusion. The defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 opened the door to the second world imperialist war. And again, the Labour Party displayed its recruiting sergeant’s stripes, above all with its ideology of a “people’s war against fascism” (echoed by the Stalinist “Communist” Parties and the majority of the Trotskyists). At the end of the war, in order to defuse any possibility of a revival of the proletarian discontent that had followed the 1914-18 massacre, it was the Labour Party that again came to power to implement the state capitalist measures aimed at keeping the working class on board with the existing system – above all, the introduction of the NHS in 1948.

Again, in the years after 1968, faced with a new economic crisis and a new wave of workers’ struggles, the Labour Party fitted in very nicely with the bourgeoisie’s political responses to the proletarian danger: first the strategy of offering the workers the bright prospect of returning the left to power; then, obliged to deal with workers’ anger against the attacks on their conditions launched by the governing Labour Party (as in the Winter of Discontent in 1979), in a kind of division of roles between Thatcher’s Tories – with the right in power implementing brutal attacks on jobs, and the Labour power in opposition presenting a purely bourgeois political alternative. The strategies changed, but the aim of keeping the class struggle under control remained.

Since 1989, we have been going through a long phase of retreat in the class struggle, a period of growing social fragmentation in which the divisions within the ruling class have grown increasingly brutal and chaotic. In this context, Labour’s role for the bourgeoisie has become increasingly mixed up and confused. Its primary role is no longer that of derailing rising workers’ struggles, and it has got more and more caught up in the internal divisions of the ruling class, as we can see from the scars inflicted on it by the Brexit fiasco.

It’s quite possible that in a future resurgence of the class struggle, there will be a new impetus to present Labour as a real workers’ party, as a force for socialism, but whatever policies it adopts, whether “Starmerite” respectability or “Corbynite” radicalism, it will not change the class nature of the Labour Party. The working class will have to break with the capitalist Labour Party in a fully conscious way, not on the bourgeois terrain of elections, but by fighting for its own demands and its own political perspective: the perspective of the destruction of the state and the transformation of society from the bottom to the top.

Amos 16 May 2021

 

This is not the first time that Hamas or other Islamic jihadists have rained rocket fire on civilian targets in Israeli cities, killing without discrimination: among the first victims were an Israeli Arab father and daughter in Lod, blown up in their car. Nor is the first time that Israeli armed forces have responded with devastating air raids and artillery fire, targeting Hamas leaders and weapons but also inflicting a civilian death toll in Gaza’s crowded buildings and streets dozens of times higher than anything “achieved” by Hamas rockets. Nor is it the first time that Israel has been on the verge of a military invasion of the Gaza strip, which cannot fail to result in further death, homelessness and trauma for Palestinian families. We saw all this before in 2009 and 2014.

But it is the first time that such a major military effort has been accompanied in a number of Israeli cities by a wave of violent clashes between Israeli Jews and Arabs. These are essentially pogroms: right wing gangs brandishing the Star of David and screaming “Death to the Arabs”, hunting for Arabs to beat up and murder; and at the same time attacks on Jews and synagogues set alight by crowds “inspired” by Islamism and Palestinian nationalism. Sinister and ironic memories of the Black Hundreds in Tsarist Russia or Kristallnacht in the Germany of 1938!

Provoking war and pogroms

The Israeli government under Netanyahu has to a large extent sown the seeds of this noxious development: through new laws reinforcing the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, and through the policy of annexing the whole of Jerusalem as its capital. This latter is essentially a declaration that the “Two State Solution” for the Israel/Palestine conflict is dead and buried, and that the military occupation of the West Bank is now a permanent fact of life. The immediate spark for the riots by Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem – the threat to expel Arab residents from East Jerusalem and replace them by Jewish settlers - flowed from this whole strategy of military occupation and ethnic cleansing.

The “democracies” of Europe and the US weep their usual crocodile tears at the escalation of military conflict and civil disorder (and even Netanyahu has called for an end to the street violence by Jews and Arabs alike). But the US under Trump had already sanctioned Israel’s openly annexationist policies, part of a wider imperialist project of bringing together Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in an alliance against Iran (but also against great powers like Russia and China). And if Biden has taken some distance from Trump’s uncritical embrace of the Saudi regime, for example, his first concern in the current crisis has been to insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself”, because the Zionist state, for all its aspirations to playing its own game in the Middle East, remains a key component of US strategy in the region.  

But the Israeli state is not alone in acting as a provocateur. Hamas responded to the repression of the Jerusalem riots by launching a continuous salvo of rockets against civilian targets in Israel, knowing full well that this would bring fire from the skies on the unprotected population of Gaza. It has also been doing its utmost to encourage the ethnic violence inside Israel.

It is a characteristic of war in the epoch of capitalist decline that the first victims are the civil populations, above all the working class and the oppressed. Both Israel and Hamas are acting in the barbaric logic of imperialist war.

Faced with imperialist war, revolutionaries have always called for the international solidarity of the exploited against all capitalist states and proto-states. This remains the only possible barrier to a descent into war and barbarism.

But the ruling classes in the Middle East have, along with their more powerful imperialist backers, long stoked the flames of division and hatred. There were pogroms against Jewish settlers in Palestine in 1936, stirred up by a Palestinian political leadership that was seeking to ally itself with Nazi Germany against the dominant power in the region, Great Britain. But these were dwarfed by the massive ethnic cleansing of the Arab population that accompanied the 1948 “War of Independence”, creating the intractable Palestinian refugee problem which has been systematically instrumentalised by the Arab regimes. A succession of wars between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, Israeli incursions against Hamas and Hezbollah, the transformation Gaza into a vast prison – all this has deepened hatred between Arab and Jew to the point where it appears as nothing more than “common sense” on both sides of the divide. Against all this, examples of solidarity between Arab and Jewish workers in struggle are extremely rare, while organised political expressions of internationalism on both sides have been more or less non-existent.

The danger of an uncontrolled spiral of violence

There are further contingent elements in the provocative actions of the Israeli state. Netanyahu, the acting Prime Minister, has been unable to form a government after a series of inconclusive general elections, and still faces a number of corruption charges. He could certainly benefit from playing the strong man in this new national crisis. But there are deeper tendencies at work which could escape the control of those trying to benefit from the current mess.

The big Arab-Israeli wars of the 60s and 70s were fought in the context of the two imperialist blocs that dominated the planet: Israel backed by the USA, the Arab states supported by the USSR. But since the break-up of the bloc system at the end of the 80s, the innate drive towards imperialist war in decadent capitalism has taken a much more chaotic and potentially uncontrolled form. The Middle East in particular has become the stamping ground of a number of regional powers whose interests do not necessarily coincide with the schemes of the world powers: Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia…These powers are already heavily involved in the bloody conflicts ravaging the region: Iran uses its pawn Hizbollah in the multi-sided conflict in Syria, and Saudi Arabia has been deeply enmeshed in the war in Yemen against Iran’s Houthi allies. Turkey has carried its war against the Kurdish peshmergas into Syria and Iraq (while also sustaining a military intervention in war-torn Libya) As well as reducing whole countries to ruin and starvation, these wars contain a real risk of spiralling out of control and spreading the destruction across the Middle East.

This mounting chaos at the military level is one expression of the global decomposition of the capitalist system. Another and closely related element is played out at the social and political level, through the intensification of confrontations between bourgeois political factions, of tensions between ethnic and religious groups, of pogroms against minorities. This is a global trend, typified, for example, in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar and China, the sharpening of the racial divide in the USA. As we have seen, the ethnic divisions in Israel/Palestine have a long history, but they are being aggravated by the whole atmosphere of despair and hopelessness generated by the seemingly irresolvable “Palestinian problem”.  And while pogroms are often unleashed as instruments of state policy, in today’s conditions they can escalate beyond the aims of state agencies and accelerate a general slide into social breakdown. The fact that this is beginning to happen in a highly militarised state like Israel is a sign that the attempts of totalitarian state capitalism to hold back the process of social disintegration can end up aggravating it even more.

Wars and pogroms are the future that capitalism offers us everywhere if the international working class does not rediscover its own interests and its own future, which is the communist revolution. If the proletarians of the Middle East are, for now, too overwhelmed by massacres and ethnic divisions, it is up to the central fractions of the world proletariat to return to the path of struggle, the only path that leads out of the nightmare of this putrefying social order.

Amos, May 14, 2021

We are publishing below two letters from ICC sympathisers aimed at continuing the reflection that arose in a meeting in France on 15 May 2020 on the subject of the nature and composition of the working class. During this discussion some participants questioned what affect “uberisation” of work had on the composition of the working class. In other words, do the “uberised” employees belong to the working class? We welcome the comrades’ efforts of reflection and their willingness to express their concerns. The letters from the comrades make two contributions to this debate which will be continued at other ICC meetings. The ICC is committed to developing its position on this subject and we will publish further material in our press dealing with it.

Contribution to the reflection on: “what is the working class? who is part of the working class?” (L.)

Generally speaking, the conditions of production of wealth have not changed since the 19th century, when capitalism appeared in the Western countries (for Great Britain, in the 18th century). The working class is still the class that produces all the wealth and will continue to exist as long as surplus value is produced. Marx's definition specifies that the working class does not own the means of production, it only has its labour power to produce surplus value, in an associated manner, in exchange for a wage. However, in the 19th century, the proletariat was mainly concentrated in the primary (extraction and exploitation of natural resources) and secondary (transformation of basic materials into goods) sectors. Workers worked alongside each other and they could easily interact and organise themselves.

Following the ascendance of capitalism, the composition of the proletariat has changed linked to the development of other sectors. The tertiary sector, which included public servants (in French “fonctionnaires”) in charge of administering and organising the life of society, now includes many more workers, who participate in the valorisation of commodities, are paid a minimum wage and no longer have any hope of easily climbing the social ladder; this is the case in the Post Office sector (which includes fewer and fewer workers with public servant status), in Education, in Health Care, in Public Transport (where the status of public servant is also disappearing).

The bourgeoisie is always looking for “undercover” ways to further squeeze the working class: Britain has introduced a policy of “fire and re-hire”, which allows employers to terminate existing contracts of employment and replace them with much less “beneficial” contracts for the workers. An article on the situation in the UK [1] mentions this new devious practice, used by Tesco, British Telecom, British Gas and bus companies. It was also in Britain that the status of the self-employed “worker” was first introduced, in working for Uber, Deliveroo and other mail delivery companies, parcel delivery companies, etc.

At the last meeting, it was quite right to defend the working class affiliation of these “independent” workers. Even if they don't work in an associated way, they participate in the valorisation of the commodity labour power, by delivering meals to workers, transporting parcels, cleaning offices, etc.

Struggles have also taken place in Britain, in different sectors, involving temporary agency workers: “In March 2021, 150 porters, cleaners, switchboard operators and catering staff employed at Cumberland County Hospital by the equipment company Mitie, led a first day of action through the union, Unison, over a failure to pay them overtime...”

Today, there are fewer and fewer industrial workers, machinery having replaced them, but the technicians who operate and maintain the machines are workers, since they also participate in the production of value.

As capitalism has spread throughout the world, there are fewer and fewer small farms and now they are amalgamated into large agricultural companies managed on an industrial basis; these (farm) workers are part of the working class.

The working class has always been heterogeneous but the workers in peripheral countries do not have the historical experience of workers in central countries and are more likely to be influenced by the democratic sirens that divert their struggle into the trade union or into participation in elections.

So, the struggles of the workers in the central countries will be decisive in giving a lead to the workers from around the world in the development of a pre-revolutionary situation.

People from other classes can join the working class struggle by supporting revolutionary groups and by being convinced that only communist revolution can bring a viable future for humanity.

Experience has shown that occupying factories is no longer an effective means of struggle and that there is no power in being confined to the factory. On the contrary, the extension of the struggle and communications with other sectors is what empowers the struggle. The last movement against pension reform in France, for example, saw a wide range of sectors converge in the streets, including the public and private sectors, temporary workers, those on fixed-term contracts, lawyers and the unemployed. Even if some workers do not work in an associated manner inside the big companies, the attack on the pension system was (and can be in future) a powerful unifying factor.

In conclusion, today, in the epoch of the decomposition of capitalism, all the workers traditionally associated producers of surplus value, in the factories but also the temporary workers, workers in primary and secondary education, basic administrative staff, those in precarious jobs: self-employed workers who work in isolation but can be drawn into large (class) movements, all those who participate in the valorisation of the commodity to one degree or another, are part of the working class. The bourgeoisie does everything it can to prevent the workers from being "together" and tries to divide them, but the common interest of the workers, the struggle to defend wages, pensions, sick pay, working hours, holidays, resisting lay-offs, in short opposing the increase in exploitation, inexorably unites them.

L, 19/05/2021

Reader's letter from comrade Patche

At the last ICC meeting (Saturday 15 May), some comrades raised the question of the nature of the working class in a society where a phenomenon described as “uberisation” (named after the company Uber, a pioneer of this sector) in what is called “the gig economy” has taken root over the last decade or so. It is important to ask whether these new workers belong to the proletariat or whether they come from classes outside the proletariat that belong to the petty bourgeoisie, because the answer to this question has important consequences, particularly political ones. It determines whether or not we should defend these workers based on whether they are on a working class terrain or on a terrain outside the working class.

According to the ICC, in its Resolution on the Balance of Forces between the Classes (2019), “The increase in unemployment and precariousness has also highlighted the phenomenon of the "Uberisation" of work. By using an internet platform to find a job, Uberisation disguises the sale of labour power to a boss as a form of ‘individual enterprise’, while reinforcing the impoverishment and precariousness of these ‘entrepreneurs’. The ‘Uberisation’ of individual work is a key factor in enforcing atomisation, and increasing the difficulty of going on strike, because the self-exploitation of these workers considerably hinders their ability to fight collectively and develop solidarity against capitalist exploitation.”

Several points are important in this resolution. First of all, it states that Uberisation “disguises the sale of labour power to a boss”. According to the ICC, this form of self-employment is just a legal artifice. Moreover, in Great Britain, the Supreme Court has decided to reclassify Uber drivers as employees, thus showing that even the legal organs of the bourgeois state are not fooled by such a charade. If Uber workers are not considered as self-employed and, on the other hand, they sell their labour power to a boss, can't they be considered as belonging to the working class? The rest of the resolution is less clear on this question.

It argues that “the ‘Uberisation’ of individual work is a key factor in enforcing atomisation and increasing the difficulty of going on strike” and it “considerably hinders their ability to fight collectively” against capitalist exploitation. It is undeniable that the nature of the task carried out, which differs according to the service provided, though the main ones are delivering meals or working as a driver- as well as the mystified belief that Uber workers are their own bosses and answerable to no one but themselves - play a role in atomising the class and breaking the necessary solidarity between workers. Let's remember that for Marx capitalism, through the concentration and centralisation of capital, results in associated labour which, in the end, reinforces the class consciousness of workers who are collectively confronted with the same reality of savage exploitation. This is fundamentally what distinguishes the proletariat from the small peasantry, which is also exploited, but dispersed across the land, preventing it from forming bonds of solidarity.

But if Uber workers are atomised and dispersed and if it is extremely difficult for them to form solidarity links and lead collective struggles or strikes, are they not still a part of the working class, the proletariat? The fact that they are in the rearguard of the working class because of their precarious working conditions, does not mean that we should then deny these workers their status as exploited proletarians, separated from the means of production and condemned to sell their labour power to subsist, which is the definition of the proletarian according to Marx. The modalities of their exploitation could moreover be compared to that of piecework wages analysed by Marx in Book 1 of Capital (in chapter 21), the profitability of their task being calculated not in hours of work but in the number of tasks carried out, further increasing the competition between workers, each one seeking to accomplish as many tasks as possible in the course of the day.

Just before concluding, it is important to look at the real combativeness or otherwise of the Uberised workers. As we have said, their atomisation, the competition in this modern form of piecework, is constantly undermining solidarity between these workers. Yet in several places around the world we have seen spontaneous forms of struggle emerge without the creation or participation of any unions, the instruments of collaboration with the bourgeois state and defence of the capitalist mode of production. In Los Angeles, Uber workers spontaneously went on strike to fight against their working conditions. This is also the case in other countries and with other (gig economy) companies, in Italy, the UK, etc. It is true that these workers sometimes form unions or seek support from existing unions. Communist must reject these dead ends, arguing instead for the specific instruments of the class struggle, notably the wildcat strike, that rejects any union involvement. But such mistakes do not warrant placing the “uberised workers” outside the proletariat, and locating them with the petty-bourgeoisie.

In recent years, the quantity of precarious jobs has increased and the working class is the victim of this process, and the “Uberisation” of the workers is one of the expressions. To say that the Uberised workers do not belong to the proletariat because of their atomisation, their difficulties in placing themselves on the terrain of the working class, necessitates a deep and serious discussion based on a Marxist analysis. It is only through pursuing a polemical but fraternal debate that the working class is able to avoid the traps set by the bourgeoisie and its ideologues and to advance the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of the proletariat.

Fraternal greetings, Patche

We are publishing below an article by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The interest of this article, written in the midst of the counter-revolution and the march towards the Second World War, is that it highlights the historical continuity between the Commune of 1871 and the October Revolution of 1917. The article illustrates both the proletarian character of these two revolutionary experiences, their international scope and the tragedy of their defeat. Above all, it highlights, in the face of false friends and the chauvinist politics of the "popular fronts", that the proletariat must learn from its experiences, knowing, as Rosa Luxemburg underlined, that it is from "defeat to defeat" that the struggle of the proletariat progresses in order to assert and develop its revolutionary consciousness.

Between the Paris of the glorious Commune of 1871 and the Paris of the Popular Front there is an abyss that no phraseology can hide. The one embraced the workers of the whole world, the other saw the French proletariat dragged through the mud of treason. We want, to use the profound words of Karl Marx, "the Paris of the workers in 1871, the Paris of the Commune" to be "celebrated as the harbinger of a new society" and not as a simple 'national' episode, a moment in the defence of the fatherland, of the struggle against the 'Prussian' as the lackeys of the Popular Front will inevitably want to present it.

Certainly, the historical circumstances in which it arose could make such ideas possible. After all Marx did write: "Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly. The French workers must perform their duties as citizens". But when, in March 1871, the Commune appeared, it was Marx who first brought out its profound internationalist character by writing: "If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a workers' government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labour, emphatically international.” 

The importance of the Commune lies in the fact that it was able to overcome the prejudices of the time, inevitable in the phase of the formation of capitalist states, in order to assert itself, not as the representative of the "Nation" or that of the democratic republic ("in reality," wrote Engels in his 1891 preface to Marx’s The Civil War in France, "the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, … in a democratic republic no less than in a monarchy"), but that of the world proletariat. Marx rightly wrote: " Its true secret was this: It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour”.

It is this historical significance of the Parisian workers' insurrection, brilliantly drawn out by Marx in the heat of the events themselves, which has remained, and which gave it the colossal importance it had for the development of the workers' movement. It was the appearance of "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour". It's not surprising that, until 1914, the international movement lived on the heroic memory of the Commune, fed on it, but also came to blur its real meaning with the triumph of opportunism.

The French bourgeoisie, aided by Bismarck, was to crush the Commune with iron and fire. In the conditions of economic and social development of the time the Commune could have had no prospects. It was only after many years that the bourgeoisie, aided by opportunism, succeeded in blurring the immense significance of this event for the working class. In 1917, it appeared that only the Russian Bolsheviks had learned from the school of the Commune, that only they had understood its significance and through its critique had enabled them to deal with the problems of insurrection. Without the Commune, the October 1917 revolution would not have been possible. Here, it was one of those historical moments when "a desperate struggle of the masses, even for a hopeless cause, is essential for the further schooling of these masses and their training for future struggles" (Lenin), a first fruit of a bloody experience, a concrete step towards the world revolution.

The Commune was great and will remain so because the Parisian workers allowed themselves to be buried under its rubble rather than capitulate. No threat from Thiers, no violence could overcome their heroism. It took the massacres of May 1871 of Père-Lachaise to restore order and the triumph of the bourgeoisie. And even the opportunists of the Second International, who deliberately rejected the lessons of the Commune, had to bow to its heroism. Before the war, the Socialist parties had to glorify the Commune in order to better dismiss its historical lessons. But this attitude entailed a fundamental contradiction in that it made the Paris insurgents a permanent focus of international revolutionary struggle where genuine Marxists came to learn.

The Russian Commune of 1917 did not have this glorious fate. Its transformation into a centre of counter-revolution, its disintegration under the weight of world capitalism, has made it an element of repulsion whose lessons are very difficult to draw out. The Soviets for the worker no longer mean a step forward in relation to the Commune, but a step backwards. Instead of perishing under its own rubble, facing the bourgeoisie, the Soviets crushed the proletariat. Today its flag is that of imperialist war. But in the same way as there would have been no October 1917 without the Commune of 1871, there is no possibility of a triumphant revolution without the tragic end of the Russian revolution.

What does it matter, after all, if the Commune serves the chauvinistic hype of the Popular Front, if Russia has become a powerful instrument for the preparation of imperialist war? It is the destiny of the great events of history to be used in the interests of the perpetuation of capitalism, as soon as they have ceased to be a threat to its domination. The only thing that nobody in the world can erase from the Commune is its character as a forerunner in the liberation of the working class. The only thing that remains of the Russian Soviets is the gigantic experience of running a proletarian state[1] in the name and on behalf of the world proletariat.

The revival of revolutionary struggles must recall the political bases of these events. The historical forms do not matter: Commune or Soviet (rather Commune than Soviet[2]), the world proletariat will not be able to repeat the historical errors of either one, because, as Marx put it so well, it has "no ideals to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant". We do not have to oppose a utopian and abstract ideal to these two historical experiences, to get lost in an empty enthusiasm or a sentimental repulsion, but to draw "the elements of the new society" from the historical phase in which the Russian revolution fell, as Lenin did with the Commune. As the Hungarian Commune of 1919 clearly shows, among other things, you inevitably see the repetition of errors, of failures, which, because of the existence of a previous experience, undermine the struggle of the proletariat for many years.

The workers cannot "repeat" in the course of their emancipatory struggle, but must innovate, precisely because they are the revolutionary class in present-day society. The inevitable defeats that occur along the way are then only stimulants, valuable experiences that determine, later on, the victorious development of the struggle. On the other hand, if we were to repeat tomorrow even one of the errors of the Russian revolution, we would jeopardise, for a long time, the destiny of the proletariat, which would become convinced that it has nothing more to try.

Let us therefore, while the proletariat is being beaten in all countries, allow the traitors to falsify the scope of the Commune. Let Russia follow its course. But let us take care to preserve the lessons of these two experiences, to prepare the new weapons for tomorrow's revolution, to solve what the Russian revolution failed to do, because if "The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence" (Marx, The Civil War in France), the merit of the Russian revolution was to have tackled the problems of the management of a proletarian economy in conjunction with the workers' movement of all countries and on the front of the world revolution. The "great act" of the Commune ended in massacres, the management of the Russian state ended with "socialism in one country". We know today that it is better that the next revolutions end like the Paris Commune than in the shame of betrayal. But we are working, not with the prospect of defeat, but with the will to prepare the conditions for victory.

There have been two Communes. Long live the Communes of the world proletariat.

Bilan no 29 (March-April 1936)

In the space of a few weeks, all over the planet, climate catastrophes have followed each other at an alarming rate. In the USA, in Pakistan, in Spain or in Canada, temperatures have neared 50 degrees centigrade. In northern India, unbearable heat has caused thousands of deaths. 800,000 hectares of forest in Siberia, one of the coldest regions in the world, have already gone up in smoke. In North America, the now traditional season of huge forest fires has already begun: more than 150,000 hectares have been on fire in British Columbia alone. In the south of Madagascar, an unprecedented drought has plunged 1.5 million people into famine. Hundreds of thousands of children are dying because there is nothing to eat, nothing to drink, while the world looks on in almost unanimous indifference. Kenya and several other African countries are going through the same dramatic situation.

But while part of the world is suffocating, deluges of rain are hitting Japan, China and Europe, provoking unprecedented floods and deadly mud slides. At the centre of Europe, particularly in Germany and Belgium, these floods have, at the time of writing, led to over 200 deaths and thousands injured. Thousands of houses, streets, entire villages and conglomerations have been carried away by the floods. In the west of Germany, roads, electricity and gas networks, railways and communications have been devastated. A number of road and railway bridges have collapsed. Never before has this region been hit by flooding on such a scale.

In China, in the town of Zhenzhou, capital of the central province of Henan and inhabited by 10 million people, in three days there was the equivalent of a whole year’s rainfall. Streets turned into rushing torrents, with frightening scenes of destruction and chaos: road surfaces breaking up, vehicles submerged…thousands of metro passengers were trapped in stations or tunnels, often with water up to their necks. 33 deaths and many injured; 200,000 evacuated. Supplies of water, electricity and food have been brutally interrupted. Damage to crops has cost millions. In the south of Henan, the dam containing the Guojiaju reservoir gave way and two others are threatened with collapse at any moment.

The conclusions of the draft report of the International Panel on Climate Change which was “leaked” to the press are chilling: “Life on Earth could recover from major climate change by evolving towards new species and creating new ecosystems. Humanity cannot”. For decades, scientists have been warning of the dangers of climate disturbances. We are right there now! It’s not just a matter of some species disappearing or of localised disasters. Cataclysm has now become permanent, and there is worse to come.

The negligence of the bourgeoisie faced with catastrophes

For a number of years now, heatwaves, fires, hurricanes and other forms of destruction have been multiplying. But while the inefficiency and incompetence of the poorest states in managing such disasters unfortunately come as no surprise, the growing inability of the big powers to deal with the situation is particularly revealing of the level of crisis into which capitalism is sinking. Not only are climatic phenomena becoming more and more devastating, numerous and uncontrollable, but the states and emergency services, after decades of budget cuts, are shown to be more and more disorganised and failing in their role.

The situation in Germany is a very clear expression of this tendency. Even though the European flood-warning system (EFAS) anticipated the floods of 14 and 15 July, “the warnings were not taken seriously and the preparations were insufficient”, as the hydrologist Hannah Cloke put it[1]. The central state basically got rid of warning systems by offloading them to the federal states, or even to local councils, without any standardised procedures or the means to work effectively. Result: while the electronic and telephone networks collapsed, making it impossible to warn the population and proceed with evacuations, the emergency services were reduced to switching on their sirens – that is when they were still working. Before reunification, West and East Germany had about 80,000 sirens; now there are only 15,000 in working order[2]. Lacking means of communication and coordination, the operations of the emergency services took place in the greatest disorder. In other words, austerity and bureaucratic incompetence made a large contribution to the fiasco!

But the responsibility of the bourgeoisie isn’t limited to failures in the emergency services. In these densely populated urban regions, the permeability of the soil has been considerably reduced, increasing the risks of flooding. For decades, in order to concentrate labour power and get a quick return on investment, the authorities have not hesitated to build numerous homes in flood-risk areas.

The bourgeoisie is powerless in the face of the climate disaster

A large section of the bourgeoisie cannot avoid admitting the link between global heating and the multiplication of catastrophes. In the midst of the ruins, the German chancellor solemnly declared “we must hurry. We are going to go much faster in the fight against climate change”[3]. Utter bullshit! Since the 1970s, international summits and conferences have been held nearly every year, with their lists of promises, objectives, commitments. Each time these “historic agreements” have proven to be pious wishes, while greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase year on year.

In the past, the bourgeoisie has been able to mobilise around immediate problems that have impacted on its economy. For example, it was able to drastically reduce the CFC gases responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. These gases were used in air conditioning systems, fridges and aerosols. This was indeed an important effort faced with the threat posed by the degradation of the ozone layer, but it never required a dramatic transformation of the apparatus of capitalist production. Carbon dioxide emissions pose an altogether different kind of problem.

Greenhouse gases are used to transport workers and commodities, to power factories. They are also made up of the methane produced by intensive farming, which also involves the widescale destruction of forests. In short, carbon dioxide emissions are at the heart of capitalist production: the concentration of labour power in immense cities, the anarchy of production, the exchange of commodities on a planetary scale, heavy industry…these are the reasons why the bourgeoisie is incapable of finding real solutions to the climate crisis. The search for profit, the massive overproduction of commodities, the pillage of natural resources – these are not an “option” for capitalism: they are the sine qua non of its existence. The bourgeoisie can only promote the growth of production with the aim of increasing the accumulation of capital, otherwise it would endanger its own interests and its profits faced with the exacerbation of globalised competition. The basis of this logic is “after me, the deluge!”. Extreme climate phenomena are no longer just impacting the populations of the poorest countries. They are now directly disrupting the apparatus of industrial and agricultural production in the central countries. The bourgeoisie is caught in the grip of insoluble contradictions.

No state is capable of radically transforming its apparatus of production without being driven back by competition from other countries. Chancellor Merkel may claim that it’s time to “hurry up”, but in truth the German government has never wanted to impose the strict environmental rules that get in the way of protecting strategic sectors like steel, chemicals or automobiles. Merkel has also succeeded in delaying the abandonment of coal production: the open cast exploitation of coal in the Rhineland and east Germany remains one of the biggest sources of pollution in Europe. In other words, the price for the strong competitive edge of the German economy is the unlimited destruction of the environment! The same implacable logic applies all over the planet: giving up carbon dioxide emissions or destroying its forests would be, for China or for any of the industrialised countries, shooting itself in the foot.

The “green economy” is an ideological mystification

Faced with this crying expression of the impasse of capitalism, the bourgeoisie is instrumentalising catastrophes the better to defend its system. In Germany, where the electoral campaign for the federal elections in September is at its height, the candidates vie with each other with proposals for fighting against climate disturbances. But all this is an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes! The “green economy”, which is supposed to create millions of jobs and allow for a “green growth”, in no way represents a way out for capital, either on the economic or the ecological level. For the bourgeoisie, the “green economy” above all has an ideological value, by spreading the idea that capitalism can be reformed. If new “ecological” sectors are emerging, such as solar panels, biofuels or electric vehicles, not only can they not serve as a locomotive for the whole economy given the limits on solvent markets, but their disastrous impact on the environment has already been shown: massive destruction of forests to extract rare minerals, deplorable state of recycling of batteries, intensive agriculture in the production of rapeseed, etc.

The “green economy” is also a favourite weapon against the working class, justifying lay-offs and the closure of factories, as we can see from the declaration of the green candidate Baerbock in the German elections: “We can only progressively eliminate fossil fuels (and the workers who go with them) if we have at our disposal one hundred percent renewable energy”[4]. It should be said that when it comes to lay-offs and the exploitation of labour power, the Greens already have plenty of experience, since for seven years they played an active part in the ignoble reforms of the Schröder government

The impotence of the bourgeoisie faced with the increasingly devastating impact of global heating at the human, social and economic level should not however lead us to fatalism. Certainly, caught in the contradictions of its own system, the bourgeoisie can only lead humanity to disaster. But the working class, through its struggle against exploitation and for the overthrow of capitalism, holds the solution to this obvious contradiction between, on the one hand the obsolescence of capitalist methods of production, the complete anarchy of the system resulting in generalised overproduction and the insane pillage of natural resources; and, on the other hand, the need for a rational method of production based on the needs of humanity and not the needs of the market. By freeing humanity from capitalist exploitation and the demands of profit, the proletariat will have the material possibility of carrying out a radical programme for the protection of the environment. The road is a very long one, but communism is more than ever a necessity!

EG, 23.7.21

The Biden administration, overturning the policy of Trump to some extent, has acted quickly but cautiously over the rapidly deteriorating internal war in Ethiopia, and more largely around the Horn of Africa, by appointing a retired diplomat, Jeffrey Feltman, as Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Feltman has been clear about the possible impact of problems facing the country and the region when he said: "Syria will look like child's play in comparison"[1]. Feltman has already toured the region and spoken to the regimes of Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt as well as the Ethiopian government. The Horn of Africa, a critical crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, is a vital, strategic area for imperialism and has attracted those such as France, Britain, Turkey (which has stated that it sees Ethiopia as its "open door" to Africa", FT, 17.1.2021, pay wall), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the EU, China and the US. The region has ports, raw materials and oil wells but it is largely rural and its main attraction for imperialism is its geographical and thus its strategic position on the imperialist chessboard. Though China follows, in a fashion, its policy of "non-interference", there is the danger that this region, with the interference of powers large and small, will descend into a greater free-for-all but, with military bases of US, France, Japan, China and others, close by in Djibouti, the situation contains the danger of larger-scale clashes.

Both the US and the EU saw the Ethiopian federal government of Abiy Ahmed as a regional policeman and strongman able to keep this fragmented country of over a hundred million people together and pacify the surrounding ones. The EU and the west couldn't find words warm enough to describe their confidence in the Ethiopian economy describing it as an "economic miracle" (BBC, 13.8.2015) along with their total support for Ahmed, awarding him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The words of European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, are instructive of the gap between delusion and reality when she said: “Ethiopia has given hope to a whole continent and beyond, showing that peace with one's neighbours, for the good of the people, is possible, when there is courage and vision. I am here today to show the European Union's full commitment to supporting Ethiopia and its people on their future path" (EU press release, 7.12.2019). The EU alone has directed nearly a $1 billion dollars of "development cooperation" towards Ethiopia in the last few years and the west has "invested" $9 billion overall with the IMF alone, making a massive $2 billion available. But because of its involvement in the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in the region of Tigray, the US and the G-7 began in April to impose punitive measures against the Ethiopian regime, using sanctions, pausing or stopping tranches of "aid"[2] with the risk of driving it closer to China or even turning to Russia. China already had a head start here with its "health diplomacy" (its vaccine programme - or "vaccine war" - has been integrated into this) on the continent, but particularly in Ethiopia which it sees as a hub for its "Belt and Road" soft power drive. On a much larger scale than that undertaken by "socialist" Cuba during the Cold War, China has successfully used health diplomacy as an adjunct to its imperialist drive in Africa (and elsewhere). In this respect it has stolen a march on the "old" western governments active in Africa, being particularly quick off the mark from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

China has described its policy towards Ethiopia as an example of its "stronger community of Sino-African destiny". For a number of years now it has been funding civilian and military projects in Ethiopia, the former including industrial parks (in which Britain amongst other was interested in becoming involved), hydro-powered dams, highways, railways (connected to the town and port of Djibouti - important for this land-locked country), metro system, skyscrapers, sports stadia, etc., while the latter has seen officers in the Ethiopian army being trained in China. China has also funded half of Ethiopia's debt and is underwriting the $4 billion for the construction of the "Grand Renaissance Ethiopian Dam" (GRED) on the Blue Nile, forty-five kilometres east of the border with Sudan. The dam, whose construction started in 2011 and is now starting to be filled, has raised tensions with Sudan but also with Egypt, with the US backing both countries, but the latter in particular. The US has been very vocal in supporting the Egyptians over this issue, with a regional commander of US forces going onto Egyptian television recently (reported on Channel 4 News, June 25) stating his total support - and thus the US administration's - for Egyptian moves to stop the project, even suggesting that the Egyptians were not acting aggressively enough in this respect. But the Ethiopian regime is resisting US pressure, and this is an expression of the historical weakening of US hegemony and the growth of the tendency of every man for himself in international relations.

All countries have their specificities but Ethiopia particularly stands out in Africa as being a country that has never been colonised, fighting toe-to-toe against attempts to do so. It has its own written history but, never having been through a classic bourgeois revolution, is less a unified nation state than a patchwork of clans, ethnic and religious groups - a real anomaly. But even as such it was an expression of a nascent form of African imperialism developing at the same time as it was throughout the industrialised world. This was expressed in Ethiopia under the reign of Menelik II, 1844-1913. Menelik set up a more co-ordinated and centralised state structure, using appointments rather than hereditary privilege. It had an efficient, well-trained and well-armed army strong enough to take and beat any would-be colonisers, particularly the Italians. Menelik's state oversaw the building of modern roads, bridges and set up a postal and telegraph system. It ruthlessly suppressed the slave trade and gave Ethiopia a sense of national identity, establishing a modern state in 1898. The Menelik Empire collapsed under the weight of global imperialist war. It was invaded and occupied by Mussolini's Italy in 1936 and then by Britain in 1941, with Emperor Haile Selassie compelled to turn to the RAF for support.

During the Cold War, with "national liberation" firmly on the imperialism's agenda and supported by leftism around the world, Russia threw the leftists into a spin by abruptly changing its support from Somalia to that of its adversary, Ethiopia in 1977. More disconcerting for the leftists was that the US did exactly the opposite, forcing them to switch sides as well. The "socialist" leader in place, Mengistu Haile Mariam, became Moscow's placeman and ruled with terror. There's never been much of a working class in Ethiopia and this is reflected in the weight of Mao-like Stalinism in the country with its emphasis on the peasantry. There was some working class, student and popular protests in the 1970's, though largely controlled and manipulated by the various leftist factions. Even so, the regime cracked down hard with its form of Stalinist terror and a whole range of Eastern Bloc troops from Bulgaria to Cuba were barracked on Ethiopian soil. But by the mid-1980's the reach of Russian imperialism was faltering badly under the blows of the economic crisis; military and economic support from Moscow to Addis Ababa was being severely curtailed as the Soviet Empire stumbled towards its collapse. In 1989, as an example of not very good timing, Mengistu declared Ethiopia a "Workers' State". Two years later he and his regime were gone, beaten by history and an alliance of 21 factions fighting together under the auspices of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which included a significant force of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) a "Marxist-Leninist" organisation whose pro-Albanian "national liberation struggle" was supported by many on the left wing of capital around the world. Both the Abiy Ahmed[3] faction and the TPLF ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018, during which time they fought a bitter war with the Maoist Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Eritrea achieved "self- determination" in 1993 and is today ruled by the same dictator, His Excellency Isaias Afwerki, who according to Human Rights Watch presides over one of the most repressive regimes in the world.[4]

Imperialist turn-around in Tigray

The Tigray region is one of ten in Ethiopia based on ethnic divisions and, from a "national liberation" perspective, so popular with the left of capital to this day, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has provided important support to the state of Ethiopia, running its regional government for decades and beefing up its internal security forces which is a known strength of all these Stalinist gangs[5]. When he was part of the Ethiopian government, the leader of the TPLF, Debretsion Gebremichael, was very close to China, while there were also moves from the US and the west to curry favour with the TPLF.

As so often in the history of this region, with its jig-saw of ethnic and religious conflicts, adapted and inflamed by the needs of different imperialist powers, there has been a major turnaround in the forces involved. The reckoning between the Abiy and TPLF factions broke out into open warfare last November, when after months of feuding Abiy sent his army into northern Tigray in a major escalation of the conflict. The Ethiopian government turned for help towards its previous adversary, Afwerki's Eritrea, which sent its largely press-ganged and undetermined conscripted and half-starved army into Tigray to wreak havoc along with the warlords and militias of the Amhara Region Special Forces responsible for the ethnic cleansing and massacres in Tigray, November 2020. Despite the internet lock-down, many stories of massacres and atrocities by the Eritrean and other forces emerged. This had the effect attracting thousands to sign up on the Tigrayan side but this repressive "national liberation" regime itself has perpetrated its own massacres and atrocities throughout its own history up to and including the war today.   

The war is unfolding as the media talk up the Ethiopian election, an obscene side-show at the best of times. Ahmed denies anyone is hungry[6]: "There is no hunger in Tigray" despite UN reports and a document from the US Agency for International Development saying that 900,000 people face immediate famine[7] with millions more in danger; this forced starvation by the government along with rape are deliberate weapons of war. The upshot today is a devastating and brutal war of each against all with an unknown number of deaths; fuelling famine and the flight of uncounted numbers of refugees, not least through the deliberate whipping-up of ethnic tensions and with a breakdown of the whole region into utter chaos and warlordism now on the cards.

Latest developments have seen a strong counter-offensive of Tigrayan forces which have regrouped under the umbrella of the Tigray Defence Forces, a composite of factions under the wing of the TPLF which themselves have opposing factions, warlords and interests. These "rebel" (BBC) forces have considerable heavy weaponry and fighting experience, shooting down an Ethiopian military C-130 transporter and retaking the regional capital of Mekelle[8]. Eritrean forces have mostly left the country having committed atrocity after atrocity with the Tigrayan forces now threatening to follow them into Eritrea, while Sudan, unnerved by neighbourhood events, has militarised part of its border with Ethiopia. The major powers are virtually helpless here and all NATO can do is mouth meaningless platitudes while setting up a liaison office with the African Union whose African base is in Addis Ababa. Both NATO, which has a number of troops on the ground, and the AU, do not possess the forces or the wherewithal to confront or control the growing destabilisation.

China's presence has for the moment met a set-back in this part of Africa[9]. It has invested heavily in Ethiopia and particularly in the Tigray region which it figured could be part of a hub for its Belt and (Silk) Road initiatives, but now it's a much riskier business for Chinese investment as the country and the region begins a descent into chaos and, possibly, wider military confrontations. All across Africa economic crisis and capitalist decomposition are advancing and extending and nowhere is this more the case than in the current war in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

Boxer, 9.7.21

We publish here a letter from a close sympathiser expressing solidarity with the ICC’s struggle against parasitism and adventurism and for the defence of the Communist Left. The most important thing about this letter is that it points to the historical materialist method for approaching questions of behaviour, of slanders and maneuvres, which do such damage to the proletarian political milieu. 

By drawing lessons from the history of the struggle of the workers’ movement, the ICC has been able to systematise how to distinguish between the real Communist Left and the fake 'communist left', which is basically composed of parasitic groups and adventurist elements.

Unlike other questions, this is not something that can be solved by intuition, common sense or as a private affair, or from innocently inhaling the ambient bourgeois ideology. The Communist Left must recover, maintain and develop the historical continuity and experience of coherent communist behaviour, of communist coherence in relations between militants and with the organisation as a whole. This is so that it can arm itself to combat the dangers of duplicity, and of the more indirect and less apparent dangers to the organisation of the political vanguard of the working class. Dangers which, with the advance of the decomposition of capitalism, become more and more acute.

A principle of the method of thinking at the core of the marxist method is that, to quote Marx: “one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself."[1] “While in everyday life every shopkeeper can distinguish very well between what someone claims to be and what he really is, our historiography has not yet achieved this trivial insight. It accepts without question what each epoch says and imagines about itself.”[2] That is, we cannot trust someone, or a group, simply because of what they claim to be (i.e., part of the Communist Left). Marxists cannot rely on this method, typical of the bourgeoisie, which expects the working class to believe word for word the promises and appearances which it is presented with, hijacking it with the games of idealism.

For marxists, on the contrary, “this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.”[3] In other words, only a method of historical and materialist thinking can confront this game of appearances.

We must therefore ask the following questions: where does the practice of a group or individual come from? What is the origin and development of this behaviour in history? Under the influence of which social tendency and from which class has it historically originated? We must discuss the lessons and past experiences of the workers’ movement in such situations, when we see behaviour such as, accusations of power struggles, denigrations, ambiguities, seeking alliances, cries for help, claiming to be the victim of abuse, etc. If we stay on the surface of a situation where the International Group of the Communist Left accuses the ICC of employing Stalinist methods, and the ICC denounces a destructive tendency towards the Communist Left on the part of the IGCL (and the IGCL also denounces something similar!) ... if we look at it on the face of it, the question looks like a puzzle worthy of a bourgeois court. This only benefits the parasites, the adventurers and the whole milieu of the false 'communist left' which reproduces the bourgeois ideology of appearances!

To prevent the devious imagination from dominating reality we must proceed:

• By appropriating the experience of the working class in similar historical situations. For example, in the fight of the First International against the so-called “International Alliance of Socialist Democracy” (Bakunin's Alliance), or in the fight against the figures of Lassalle or Schweitzer, to understand the behaviour of these groups and elements and what they correspond to.
• To proceed with a profound investigation to unravel the facts of the past and to establish the truth of the facts in the Communist Left, on the basis of the lessons that each revolutionary organisation in the milieu can draw from them. That the whole Communist Left fights for this is the strength that keeps the truth of the facts from being lost like Trotsky disappearing from the proletarian revolution in Stalinist historiography.
• To analyse the historical practice of those who claim to be part of the Communist Left, its reputation and its origins, not looking at every little dispute in an immediatist way, where the texts that are produced are analysed in the abstract, as testimonies where the important thing is that a culprit is finally found for every little battle.

The greatest difficulty in unmasking parasitism is that some of its most powerful actions are:

• To attack and accuse in the spirit of its own logic. For example, when Bakunin’s Alliance failed in its struggle for power in the First International, it projected its own logic onto a supposedly authoritarian and dictatorial International. Thus, the IGCL parasites also say, despite rejecting the theory of parasitism as a supposed “poison for the communist left” that “the ICC is now launching a genuine parasitic attack – to use its own words – on these forces, particularly the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction, trying to convince them to discuss parasitism as a priority”. Moreover, the ICC would have a so-called “satellite in parasitism, Internationalist Voice”. And, to cap it all “if the notion of parasitism had any political value, then the ICC of the 21st Century, and particularly of today, would be its most dangerous expression and incarnation.”[4] In short, for the IGCL the notion of parasitism has no political value and is only poison for the Communist Left, but at the same time the ICC is presented as the most dangerous parasite.
• The camouflage in ambiguity, confusion, where all the actors seem to be shooting the same movie.
• Awakening the ghosts of the past: miserably exploiting the traumas of the Stalinist counter-revolution in a sentimentalist way.

The history of the IGCL, and the same goes for Nuevo Curso and the adventurer Gaizka, is tucked away in a place that “nobody needs to know” and “is not overly important”, it does not need to be clarified or debated. We should blindly trust what they say they are. The case of the Nuevo Curso blog, which takes the form of a bourgeois newspaper, is particularly illustrative: it has had so many changes of image that were it not for the ICC following its development its real murky history would seem inaccessible (we are not talking here about the history that was created after the event). What to say about the adventurer Gaizka, who returned to a public ICC meeting in Madrid as if his adventurist relations and behaviour had not been discovered in the past by the ICC. Gaizka really knows his past, he has not forgotten it, and he has no interest in airing it: he cannot clean it up, because the same methods serve him in the present.

The IGCL is fleeing at all costs from the “fundamental divergences” that made them set up as a false fraction (we are not talking here either about the “divergences” that they realised they had after the event).

Consistent with what was said above about the historical method, we must arm ourselves with the need for proletarian ethical principles and organisational principles, which go beyond abstract political principles that can easily become mere appearances. We need to find these ethics in the history of our class and appropriate them in order to fight against ambiguity and duplicity. We must fight against the obvious situation, the obvious and undeniable fact that new elements approaching the Communist Left do not distinguish between different groups very well and may perceive the same rotten smell of bourgeois politics (which happened in the demoralisation of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional members in 2005, for example). The function for capitalism of the fake 'communist left' is that here too there is no clear distinction between the good, the bad and the ugly.

In relation to the proletarian ethic, we also have a series of facts which, in the whole of its history, characterise the IGCL as a group totally alien to the working class. Some of these behaviours, which are facts:

• When they were an “organisation within the organisation”:

• The refusal to pay dues
• Refusal to defend their behaviour when it was criticised
• The holding of secret meetings

Before and after their exclusion they behaved like snitches:

• Inside, they circulated rumours that a comrade was a police agent
• After their exclusion, they indirectly implied that there was a mole in the ICC, as internal ICC information magically reached them (they have never said how), which they made public, including family relations between militants and the real initials of some militants.
• Making the date of an ICC conference in Mexico public

• Spreading irrelevant information such as “the ICC is renting a luxury room” which can only have the purpose of attacking the ICC by saying “look, the ICC is rich and wasteful”.
• Theft of material
• Talking about Marc Chirik as if he had been a guru, or a king with heirs
• Announcing that a particular individual is running the ICC
• Saying that the Communist Left's tradition of seeking the truth of the facts is “spreading mistrust”.
• Attitude of the seller and intimidation: To insist on sending your bulletin despite protests, both to ICC militants and to the contacts whose addresses you stole. What would it be for? Among other things, to make the contacts flee from this intimidating atmosphere.
• Ridiculous lies, for example, that the ICC “hides its internal problems”. When it is clear that it is the only organisation currently openly drawing lessons from such problems.

The solution to the serious problems facing the Communist Left, aggravated by the lack of clarity in the face of parasitism and adventurism, cannot be to hide the dirty laundry under the bed, to dig a grave for the past, but to understand why it was dirty and to air it with debate on proletarian ethical principles, to clean up the truth. Not by forgetting, but by developing clear lessons for the struggle. The falsifications and ambiguity about history begin with a first step of hiding the dirty laundry as if it were something to be ashamed of (the other side of the logic of shame would be to present the mistakes as if they were an embarrassment...and thus enter the circle of shame, envy and revenge).

This opportunist attitude has been shown by the ICT[5], an organisation of the real Communist Left, which is in danger of gradually leading the Communist Left onto a terrain where it is difficult to distinguish real confusion and errors from deliberate acts of confusionism in which elements and groups with interests alien to the working class proliferate. For example, if the ICT does not fight clearly for the truth of the facts, elements outside the class can disguise themselves in an unclear terrain where there is no need to clarify such things.

With this letter I want to express my solidarity with the struggle of the ICC, and its struggle for the truth of the facts, the clarity of the tradition of the communist left, and proletarian ethics. I do so in response to the last two texts that you have sent me for discussion.

Fraternally,

Teivos, 10-4-2021

We've commemorated this year as the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. We must also celebrate the book of Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. The first edition of this book appeared in London on February 23, 1871, a few days before the working population of Paris transported to the heights of Montmartre, Buttes-Chartre and Belleville the cannons that Adolphe Thiers wanted to confiscate from them.

Scientific revolution and proletarian revolution

The proximity of these two events is much more political than chronological. In the second half of the nineteenth century, capitalism was in full expansion and revolutionising society on all levels, industrial, technology, social and scientific. Its work of progress was quite real but it was neither linear nor harmonious. Capitalism paved the way for gas and electricity, but it condemned the proletariat to atrocious suffering, carried out endless massacres in the colonies and pushed the separation of humanity from its being to the limits. Capitalism remained a society of want based entirely on the exploitation of man by man, but it allowed a gigantic development of the productive forces. In such a society, at least at its beginnings, science took massive steps. It contributed to the accumulation of knowledge and to the development of human culture; but also, very often, it made science the impotent hostage to the bourgeoisie which captures its discoveries and directs them not towards the satisfaction of human needs but towards profit and war, destruction and death. This is something that is evident today since the majority of scientific progress (the conquest of space, the internet, artificial intelligence for example) have only been possible through the imperatives of militarism and imperialism. As capitalism has gradually reached the end of its historic mission, the proletariat has become the guardian of the cultural and scientific heritage accumulated by the human species. Rosa Luxemburg wrote in this regard: "Socialism, which links the interests of the workers as a class to the development and to the future of humanity as a great, cultural fraternity, produces a particular affinity between proletarian struggle and the interests of culture as a whole, engendering the apparent contradictory and paradoxical phenomenon which makes the conscious proletariat today in all countries the most ardent, the most idealistic advocates of knowledge and art of this same bourgeois culture of which it is today the disinherited bastard"[1].

Certainly, marxism is not a science, but it is a scientific and militant theory which contributes to the development of materialism and progressively integrates scientific advances from its different domains. The reason is simple: having no property, no estate within capitalist society (contrary to that of the bourgeoisie within feudalism), the proletariat is obliged to develop its consciousness and its theory to the highest point. It is solely because it is potentially armed with its consciousness, its revolutionary theory (marxism), its unity, its own organisation and world revolutionary party that it can emancipate itself and, at the same time, deliver humanity from the prison of class society.

That is why the discoveries of Darwin, and science in general, are so important. In taking on the question of The Descent of Man, February 4, 1868,[2] Darwin passed to the second episode of the new Copernican revolution that was about to be realised. The first had begun at the return of his voyage around the world on H.M.S Beagle (1831-1836), when he wrote his first words in his Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species (1837). This intense work of reflection, the cataloguing of all the observations made during the course of the voyage and the reading of reference works, resulted in the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.

Assisted by a rigorously scientific approach, he demonstrated in this work that a genealogy of the living world existed, throughout which the generations of organisms followed one another by diversification. He thus discovered "descent with modification" and its motor-force, "natural selection". All organisms presented totally random variations. When it was necessary to displace and change from the milieu or when the milieu itself changed, advantageous variations were selected, leading to more numerous descendants for some individuals and a progressive elimination of others. In time this process resulted in the emergence of a new species which corresponded to a new stage of relative stability.

The theory of natural selection gave a boost to transformative ideas, which since Lamarck had been stuck in the impasse represented by the theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics. It was now possible to understand how each species, through the analysis of its history (its phylogeny), was the product of a previous species. It was possible to reach back, by rediscovering the common ancestors of several species, to the origins of life on Earth.

The step had thus been to lay a solid, scientific basis for transformation. But the second episode of this Copernican revolution was more important still. Since The Origin of Species, transformation generally became admissible and it was roughly understood that "man descended from apes" (or, more accurately, homo and the great apes came from a common ancestor). With The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin brought forward two major new scientific advances:

 - The species homo belonged to a series of animals certainly, but its emergence was made without rupture. There was only a difference of degree and not of nature. There was no sudden "upsurge" but a process of emergence.

- With the emergence of humanity, the selection of the most able and the elimination of the least apt tended to trail off to the benefit of the weakest and the worst off. The fight for existence was replaced by the progressive development of sympathy and the mutual recognition of the other. Natural selection produced civilisation which merges with the emergence of the human species. It is characterised by the development of links of solidarity, of communal rationality and moral sentiments[3]. This evolution unified affectionate feelings and rationality, resulting in the growing institutionalisation of altruism, a significant mark of the progress of civilisation.

The reverse effect of evolution

These two inseparable results are explained by the fact that, as biological variations, social instincts, behaviours and rational capacities are also transmitted by descent. For Darwin, we are witnessing a passage of nature to civilisation, but without a rupture since natural selection, characterised by the elimination of the weakest, favours the social instincts which lead to the protection of the less able. There is the elimination of elimination. In order to account for this overthrow without rupture, Patrick Tort talks of a "reverse effect of evolution"[4]. Effectively, it allowed the understanding that the suppression of elimination is very much a consequence of natural selection itself: civilisation was selected as advantageous through an eliminatory selection[5].

When The Origin of Species appeared, protests from the dominant class, its religious and scientific luminaries, were of course extremely violent. However, the time was open to an acceptance of the theory of evolution. There had been the examples of artificial selection from farmers, growers and breeders and it seemed evident that there was a resemblance between some species, just as between parents and children coming from the parent, even if the action of natural selection and its consequences were not really immediately understood.

Marx and Engels enthusiastically welcomed the new theory. On December 19, 1860, Marx wrote to Engels: "It is in this book that the historical-natural basis of our conception is found". Once again, the proletariat finds an ally in the natural sciences in its fight to go beyond empirical, mechanical materialism. After the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848, The Origin of Species in 1859 again showed that modern materialism was up to the task of profoundly explaining the transformation process both in life and in society.

But for Marx and Engels however this favourable welcome gave way to a certain scepticism and then outright rejection. In June 18, 1862, Marx wrote to Engels: "It is remarkable to see how Darwin recognises among the animals and plants his own English society, with its division of labour, competition, its opening of new markets, its inventions and its Malthusian struggle for existence". This quid pro quo, this missed rendezvous between Marx and Darwin would have negative consequences for the theoretical development of marxism. Look at this example of the prolonged blindness of Plekhanov, written in 1907: "Many confuse the dialectic with the doctrine of evolution. The dialectic is, in fact, a doctrine of evolution. But it differs essentially from the vulgar 'theory of evolution', which mainly rests on the principle that neither nature, nor history makes leaps forward and that all the changes in the world only happen gradually. Hegel has already demonstrated that, understood as such, the doctrine of evolution is inconsistent and ridiculous"[6]. The consequences of this poor interpretation of Darwin are expressed by a rejection of continuity and a speculative conception of the "qualitative leap".

Marxism and Darwinism

The main cause of this blunder was the rapid growth, from 1859, of Social Darwinism in Britain, Germany and the world. Darwin waited ten years before publishing The Descent of Man in which he finally applied to man his theory of evolution. He was well aware that the publication of his anthropology would have an explosive effect, and he spent a lot of time replying to criticisms, refuting arguments; he oversaw the many re-editions, reviewed and completed The Origin of Species. Herbert Spencer profited by creating a synthetic philosophy of evolution, a new system inspired by liberalism which applied to man the principle of the fight for existence, the elimination of the weak, a principle that Darwin had clearly limited to the world of Flora and Fauna. Darwin was forced to delineate himself from Spencer and Malthus, but it was too late, and the fraudulent theory of "Social Darwinism" imposed itself everywhere. One of its most ardent defenders was Carl Vogt, an agent of Napoleon III who had slandered Marx and who took charge of the French translation of The Descent of Man[7].

Progressively, throughout the 1980's, then in 2009 on the occasion of the bi-centenary of Darwin's birth, we saw a (re) discovery of his real anthropology. The precariousness of the most disadvantaged layers within capitalism, competition and war, the growth of predatory male behaviour, could lead us to think that the selection of advantageous variations, the elimination of the less able and the fight for existence were still the dominant factors in human society. This is the basis of the success of a Social Darwinism that invites us to accept capitalism as a natural and beneficial fatality: by leaving the strong to progress to the detriment of the weak, the people and the nation can progress and impose itself and, in the last analysis, vanquish military and economic competition and increase the rate of exploitation of the proletariat.

Socialism or barbarism

But in reality things are quite different. Civilisation develops through a reversal. As we see with the explanation of the reverse effect of evolution, there is both continuity and discontinuity. If one describes the process which goes from eliminatory natural selection up to the anti-eliminatory tendency of affective and social solidarity that's supposed to prevail in any "civilised" society, then we must conclude, as Patrick Tort explains it, that the break is the product of humanity rather than the break producing humanity. For the first time a species is not forced to adapt itself to its surroundings (selection of the most able) but is capable of adapting its surroundings, of transformation by producing its means of existence.

Contrary to the stupidities repeated by the ecologists, it is not the human species itself which is destroying nature; its ‘domination’ of nature simply means that it doesn't find what to eat directly in nature, but that it produces its means of existence. It is not the human species that destroys nature but a specific method of production, capitalism, which attacks biodiversity and breaks the organic equilibrium between humanity and nature.

Marxists were misguided in thinking that the making of tools was a distinctive criterion for the species homo. But scientific research shows that most animal species (vertebrates, invertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, etc.) are perfectly capable of making or using tools and that the fundamental change with the appearance of the genus homo is the production of all life’s necessities.

The reconciliation between Darwin and Marx had finally become possible and the latter's first response was the right one. The idea discovered by the former was contained in the heart of the works of Marx. In The German Ideology for example, drawn up by Marx and Engels in 1846, a passage takes up the same description of the process as Darwin: "One can distinguish men from animals by consciousness, religion or by whatever else you want. They distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they start to produce their means of existence: they make a step here which is dictated by their physical existence. By producing their means of existence men indirectly produce their material life themselves".

Continuity in particular is recognised perfectly through the formula that "they make a step here which is dictated by their physical existence". Through the concept of the reversive effect, evolutionary continuity and the "qualitative leap" are also materialistically and dialectically reunified.

In creating civilisation, the human species doesn't rid itself of nature and biology. It is certain that, in phases of intense regression, barbarity and the elimination of the weakest distinctly reappears. But that is not the basis of human history. Civilisation has taken the form of a succession of modes of production finally resulting in capitalism in which the loss of mastery of the social forces created by man appears in all its dramatic breadth by turning them against humanity and against its biological and natural roots. In such conditions only the proletarian revolution can re-establish humanity’s mastery of its own becoming by overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and through creating a society which will be able to confront new biological, epidemiological and ecological problems that humanity will inevitably meet in the course of its voyage aboard its space-ship, planet Earth. 

Theory versus nihilism

Darwinian anthropology, in which we have seen the unbroken link with the theory of modified descent by the means of natural selection, has been falsified, ignored and attacked from all sides, in particular by those who could not accept that man could lose his transcendental nature. And it continues to be attacked today, not only by the Creationists and religious fundamentalists but also by all the idealists who decree a separation between The Origin of Species, the scientific value of which they concede, and The Descent of Man which they present as a philosophical work, thus creating a so-called disconnection of Darwin between science and ideology.

In the present situation where the proletariat (and its revolutionary perspective) is momentarily absent from the social scene, the way is opened up for the rejection of science and all scientific theory.

In the seventeenth century, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, decreed that creation took place at the beginning of the night proceeding October 23 in the year 4004 B.C. There was even an intense debate about whether time began on the Saturday night or the Sunday morning. In the nineteenth century a majority of scientists were still defending the biblical legend that on the sixth day, man and domestic animals were created "according to its kind".

Today, conspiracy theories, absurd beliefs and scepticism towards science reflect the absence of perspective offered by existing society and appears as a return to obscure times. The fight of the working class against exploitation and the progressive affirmation of its revolutionary perspective will on the contrary be accompanied by a liberating development of consciousness and of the rational, coherent and scientific approach.

A. Elberg, June 20, 2021