Extinction Rebellion (XR) will be organising another “mass protest” in London in May. Taking part in this action, or supporting it, will be many who argue that, while XR, like the cycle of school climate strikes, is a sign that people are ready to act against the looming environmental disaster, it does not go far enough. There will be Trotskyists like the Socialist Workers’ Party insisting that XR needs to understand that the threat to the planet comes from capitalism’s insatiable search for profit. We won’t deal with them now because, like all Trotskyists, Stalinists or social democrats, the SWP believe that you can get rid of capitalism through the existing state taking over the economy – in sum, through nationalising the insatiable search for profit. This disqualifies them from lecturing us about the need to overthrow capitalism.

But there are others, such as the anarchists, whose claim to be opposed to capitalism can be taken more seriously, because some of them at least talk about the destruction of the capitalist state, the abolition of wage labour and the need for communism. And generally speaking, they make a more thorough-going criticism of the aims and tactics of XR. They find it especially hard to stomach XR’s efforts to establish friendly relations with the police and their tactic of encouraging members to seek arrest. The London anarchist paper Rebel City puts it like this: “XR’s main tactic involves people voluntarily getting arrested to put moral pressure on government to act. But it’s a pipe-dream to think we can reverse climate change without the dismantling of capitalism as a world-exploiting system. You can’t have some nice democratic non-ecocidal market economy: reversal of the climate cataclysm means overthrowing the classes that profit from it”[1].

Perfectly true. And we can also find some well-researched anarchist investigations into XR’s shady relationship with the police, business and the upper echelons of the state: at a recent meeting of the Anarchist Communist Group in London, a member of the Green Anti-capitalist Front provided some very telling information about links between the security services and some of the elements involved in setting up XR.

And yet the majority of anarchists continue to argue that it is necessary and possible to work inside organisations like XR. The GAF member talked about the need to work inside XR’s local groups because a lot of its members are indeed posing questions about the relationship between capitalism and environmental destruction. The Rebel City article says that “Extinction Rebellion has inherited the split nature of green movements; one half reliant on moral blackmail, class blind, focused on one issue without seeing how it is vitally linked to the whole social and economic structure, naïve towards the enforcers and controllers of those structures. Many others, however, have learned to understand the connections and build links that transcend them. So these issues are being debated within XR; the people involved are changing and adapting in response to reality and experience….XR’s potential is obvious, but will it fizzle out, outgrow the liberal illusions of leading voices? It’s yet to be seen (and fought for from within)”.

 XR claims to be a non-hierarchical, “holocratic” organisation and many of the anarchists involved in it think that this makes it possible to “fight from within” in order to transform it.

The libertarian collective, Out of the Woods, which has done its homework on the dangerous and illusion-spreading tactic of “voluntarily seeking arrest”[2], has also made an interesting exposure of XR’s claim to be non-hierarchical, showing that those who have tried to challenge its semi-hidden hierarchy have been given short shrift by the leadership. And this seems to lead Out of the Woods to a clear conclusion: “In the first part of this critique we stated that we would not encourage people to get involved in XR and we stand by this call…. Those hostile to XR’s tactics and strategy are often encouraged to join the movement, taking advantage of its ‘holocratic’ structure to change it for the better. Our hope is that this essay has made clear just how difficult - if not impossible and potentially counterproductive - this will be. XR’s ‘holocracy’ reproduces informal and oppressive power structures, and actively works against serious changes. It has permitted occasional critiques of XR’s leadership, but not in a way which prompts serious questioning of power structures”[3].

But the strength of this position is undermined in the same text. Out of concern “not to do a disservice to those fighting internally, against great odds, to improve it”, they seem to include a very big “maybe”: “Perhaps we should not be too hasty in writing off these struggles as futile, however. If XR’s ‘success’ is indeed in part due to a lack of historical memory of radical struggle in the UK then these internal struggles within it may prove invaluable in the long run, even if they do not achieve their laudable aims in the short run. Many people are experiencing activism for the first time in XR and whilst we feel comradely-but-forceful critique from outside the movement is important, there is potential for groups within XR to make substantive pedagogical contributions in this context. We have all been involved in struggles that were imperfect or, sometimes, downright wrongheaded. We do not come into this world perfect activists. The experience of many in XR may prepare them for other struggles that are still to come”. And therefore: even though the chances of this are “slim”, “were they to be successful XR would be a wholly transformed organisation”.

The underlying problem here is a lack of a class analysis - a kind of original sin of anarchism, which has always tended to express the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie or other intermediate strata rather than that of the working class. XR – like the trade unions or the Labour party – is fundamentally hierarchical because it is a bourgeois organisation, linked directly to the capitalist state, and thus incapable of being “transformed” into something that serves the class struggle. Its function – like the New Green Deal or the Youth for Climate campaign - is to recuperate genuine concerns about the future of the planet and to steer them away from questioning capitalism. By its very nature it is going to attract people who are seeking alternatives to the current system – just like the Labour Party or the Trotskyist groups – but it can only exhaust and distort their search for a new society. Consequently revolutionaries – who must certainly relate to such individuals – can only call on those who want to get rid of capitalism to make a complete break with XR, and the sooner the better.

And the answer does not lie in trying to devise “independent” campaigns around the question of the environment. The GAF, for example, advocates protest actions alongside the blockades organised by XR, but not warning the police in advance[4]. But this kind of “direct action” not only “indirectly” strengthens XR but also conveys the idea that you can struggle against capitalism by organising protests by small minorities cut off from the struggle of the only force that can really oppose capital: the proletarian class struggle.

The Anarchist Communist Group, on the other hand is more concerned with the need to relate the problem of the environment to the workers’ struggle, and thinks it has found the answer in launching a campaign for free transport in the cities, which they think can unite transport users and transport workers in a common fight. Although this sounds like one of those Trotskyist “transitional demands” which are aimed at seducing workers into unconsciously raising demands that capitalism is unable to grant, the ACG argue that it is quite realisable:

“Public transport should be free because it is a public good. It is something that everyone has to use, like the health service. And, if any form of car has major disadvantages for people and the planet, then public transport is the answer and needs to be supported with funds. This is not an idealistic or impossible demand, even in the current capitalist system. It is a question of building an effective movement which forces changes in policy. Many places already have free transport, such as Luxemburg which made all public transport free earlier this year”.[5]

In fact, capitalism provides nothing for free. The health service certainly is not free – it’s paid for out of the taxes imposed on the working class, or more generally by the surplus value sucked out of our labour. And capitalism in crisis will have no alternative than to reduce all social benefits while at the same time making them more expensive.

The ACG, like most anarchists, also suffers from the illusion that mass movements can be “built” by the patient organising or ingenious campaigning of those committed to social change. But as Rosa Luxemburg explained over a hundred years ago, such notions were already being refuted by the real movement of the working class, which, above all in this epoch of history, has an uneven and explosive character which cannot be planned in advance until it has reached a very high level of self-organisation and political awareness. The task of revolutionaries is to participate in this real class struggle and to indicate ways that it can reach the level of a conscious assault on capitalism. And this difficult but necessary process is the only way that the working class can integrate the problem of “ecocide” into the fight to overthrow capitalist exploitation. 

Amos 15.2.20

In the December 2019 general election, the Labour Party got its lowest number of seats in the House of Commons since 1935. The inquest into this fourth successive defeat continues, in the Labour Party and beyond. Some point to the suspicion towards party leader Corbyn, along with the publicity over anti-Semitism. Others acknowledged Labour’s confusing position over Brexit. On the sociological level, research showed that the Conservatives had greater support than Labour in all socio-economic groups including all the bourgeoisie’s categories for the working class. From the latter point of view Labour had lost support from those who had been “left behind”. The bottom line is that Labour has lost out again in a situation of electoral instability

In the 2015 general election UKIP got nearly 4 million votes. In 2017 Labour got 3.5 million votes more than it did in 2015. In 2019 Labour got 2.6 million less than 2017, losing votes to the Tories, Liberals and Scottish National Party. In these fluctuations it seems that 2017 was maybe just a blip in a longer term decline for the Labour Party.

There were specific aspects of the 2019 election which should be taken into account. The theme of the election was basically the Tory appeal to Get Brexit Done. But there had to be enough agreement from the other parties for Boris Johnson to be able to call an election. Labour effectively agreed to the election, despite the opinion polls correctly suggesting that they were in a poor position. The parliamentary paralysis was broken and the Conservatives have a comfortable majority of 80. Having noted this, it is necessary to look beyond the British specificities for an international and historical context.

Labour Party is no exception

In a report for the ICC’s 23rd Congress in early 2019 we saw that, internationally, “the past few years have been characterised by an irreversible trend towards the decline of the Socialist parties”. While left-wing parties played their role in the 1970s and 1980s against the waves of workers’ struggles (when a period of the left in power was generally succeeded by one of the left in opposition) they have also played other roles for capitalism. For example “in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, Socialist or social democratic parties were deployed in the front line to counter the first effects of decomposition on the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus (cf. Blair, Schröder, Zapatero, Hollande). As a consequence, they suffered not only from the disillusionment in the major democratic parties ... but they are also particularly identified with the failed political system. Thus the tendency towards decline seems irreversible: the Socialist Party has disappeared in Italy, is threatened with extinction in France, Holland and Greece and is in deep crisis in Germany, Spain or Belgium. Only the Labour Party in Britain seems to be escaping this trend at the present time”.

It would now appear that Labour is not escaping this trend after all. In the quoted report we wrote “It is possible that the Labour Party could profit from the Conservative Party’s difficulties in managing the populist groundswell around Brexit, when, should the Tory Party implode, the bourgeoisie will have to turn to it for help”. The Tory party expelled a number of MPs during the course of 2019, but it did not implode; in fact it gradually increased its support from the moment Johnson replaced May, going on to a convincing victory in the election. Tensions remain in Conservative ranks, but Labour is not currently in a position to benefit from this.

There have been various trends to the left of the social democratic parties that have emerged in recent years and have played their role for the bourgeoisie - Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, “La France Insoumise”, the Democratic Socialist current in the Democratic Party in the USA. Like these groups, some of which were a direct response to outbreaks of class struggle (Podemos in particular after the Indignados movement in Spain) Corbynism did offer something to soak up questioning of the status quo and divert discontent into the Labour Party. But a Corbyn-dominated Labour Party now seems to be offering even less protection from the general weakening of the social democratic parties – perhaps because despite its radical rhetoric, Corbynism was above all more an attempt to revive “Old Labour” than invent something new.

To understand the present situation of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie it is important to see that, in contrast to the 1970s and 80s, when the bourgeoisie was able to marshal its political forces, with the decomposition of capitalism there is a tendency to lose control of the political apparatus.

The emergence of populism has had different impacts in different countries. In the UK we saw the growth of UKIP, the 2016 Referendum, the replacement of UKIP by the Brexit Party, and the Conservative Party more and more taking on populist ideas. With the government of Boris Johnson this has continued, not only in relation to Brexit, but also with big spending plans that are aimed at appealing to those who would otherwise be ‘natural Labour voters’. In this context the Tories have stolen some of Labour’s clothes, and it’s not obvious what function Labour is now going to have. It has been a central party of the bourgeoisie for more than a century, but it’s not clear how Labour can now best serve the political needs of the capitalist class. In the absence of another left-wing alternative in Britain, it will continue to produce the ritual denunciations appropriate to a party in opposition and pose as an unconvincing government-in-waiting. 

Divisions in the Labour Party are likely to further undermine its ability to take on a coherent role for the bourgeoisie. There is no point in idle speculation, but the examples from other countries in Europe show what can happen to socialist/social democratic parties. In Scotland, Labour was the dominant party for decades, as recently as 2001 holding 56 out of 72 seats in parliament. In 2015 and 2019 it only had one. 

Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, introducing a report on the 2019 election, gave an idea of what the bourgeoisie thinks of the weakening of the Labour Party. “The country needs a strong opposition... Moreover, at its best, the Labour Party has been a great force for decency, speaking up for people throughout the country and ensuring nobody is forgotten. We need it to reclaim that role.”  The democratic apparatus is one of the most important weapons that the bourgeoisie has against the development of workers’ consciousness of the reality of capitalist exploitation. The British bourgeoisie has been one of the most experienced and effective in deploying that apparatus, with Labour playing a key part, whether in opposition or government. The diminished effectiveness of the Labour Party shows that, despite the end of the parliamentary paralysis, British capitalism still has difficulties in regaining control of its machinery of mass deception.

Car 15/2/20

 

The election of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, with a large majority, which meant the end of the parliamentary logjam and brought the UK’s formal departure from the EU on 31 January, would appear to mark a decisive break from the political crisis that has engulfed the British ruling class over the past few years. The political paralysis was ended by a simple process: Labour and the other opposition parties agreed to the holding of an election, the Tories campaigned round the basic theme of “Get Brexit Done”, the electorate trooped into the polling booths, and, fed up with years of arguments over Brexit, delivered an unambiguous majority for the Conservatives, despite their presiding over the last decade of austerity.

British capitalism has left the EU but the social contradictions that generated the deep political crisis of the ruling class over the past few years have not evaporated. Internationally, over 50 years of deepening economic contradictions and crises have led to a situation of acute economic tensions between the main capitalist powers. The US, China, and the EU are all locked into deepening trade wars. The US faced with its competitors and its own lack of competitiveness is desperately seeking to use any means to undermine its rivals. At the imperialist level the collapse of the Eastern Bloc has not led to a New World Order but bloody chaos as the declining US superpower desperately seeks to impose itself on its rivals. The social stalemate between the bourgeoisie and proletariat means that the economic, social and political contradictions of a dying capitalism are daily exacerbated. This situation of advancing decomposition has also made it increasingly difficult for the bourgeoisie to maintain control of its political apparatus

Out of the bowels of this rotting system has emerged populism. This is the expression of despair, frustration, and the anger generated by capitalism’s crisis that the existing political parties seem to have no response to, and the populists are able to exploit and manipulate. The populist politicians have big uncosted spending plans for the national economy, but mostly offer scapegoating, of immigrants, Islam, and the EU, and also the ‘elite’ that has ignored the needs of the ‘native’ population.

An ideological assault on the proletariat

Johnson’s victory will not solve the problems of British capitalism, but it marked the culmination of an ideological assault on the working class where everything was reduced to the question of leaving or remaining in the EU, of a deal or no deal, of a soft or hard Brexit. All of these questions were supposedly either ‘solved’ with the referendum of 2016, or conclusively solved with the 2019 general election.

The bourgeoisie wants to convince the working class that voting really matters, that it can have a ‘voice’ in bourgeois democracy. Johnson’s courting of parts of the working class in the North and Midlands is meant to reinforce this illusion. The working class appears to be back in fashion with the main parties after years of seeking to prove it no longer really existed whilst brutally attacking it.

The Tory Party under Theresa May was getting nowhere in parliament and declining in the polls, but, as soon as Johnson took over, the polling figures for the Tories started climbing and continued to climb up to the election. The election was not won by the Tories but by a combination of Labour’s contradictory and incomprehensible policies, and by the opportunism of Johnson and those around him, particularly Dominic Cummings his chief advisor. Without Johnson the Tory party would not have won. The British bourgeoisie has been reduced to relying upon a political chancer who shamelessly mobilised populist sentiments in order to further his rise to power. There was no other politician who had the necessary lack of scruples to wage the bitter factional struggle within the Conservative Party and then during the election campaign.

Johnson and Cummings framed the political conflict as ‘parliament against the people’, with Eton and Oxford educated Johnson as the figurehead of ‘the people’. The prorogation of parliament, the battles in the courts, the provocative statements of Johnson and his backers, all created an atmosphere of crisis and confrontation, of division between leave and remain, between the supposed ‘elite’ and those ‘left behind’.

This atmosphere was kept up during the election. The Tory party brazenly issued false and manipulated videos of their opponents, set up false websites, etc. The shamelessness of Johnson’s lying reached such a level that during a TV debate the audience laughed when he talked about trust. All of these tactics had been learnt from Trump and other populist campaigns.

Johnson, while using the tactics developed by Trump, is not simply the British Trump. He is not a newcomer to the Tory party. He grew up within the ‘establishment’ but, much like Trump, he has shown no scruples and ridden the populist tide, and, like Trump, he has used an established party to satisfy personal ambitions. Like Trump, he also understands that his lying, provocative statements will not damage his standing with parts of the population.

A further similarity is the tendency to ride roughshod over long-standing traditions and impose a more dictatorial form of rule. Johnson’s February ministerial reshuffle, in which Chancellor Sajid Javid was compelled to resign, showed that, with the control of special advisers, Johnson/Cummings will try to keep tight control of the executive, and also that there will be no rigid fiscal controls by the Treasury. This will open the door to a populist version of big-spending Keynesianism, illustrated by schemes like HS2, that will supposedly benefit the North and other more deprived areas.

However, Johnson is not Trump’s man in Britain (that’s Farage) and he and his team are aware of the bitter price that the bourgeoisie had to pay for getting too close to US imperialism in the early 2000s. The dispute between Trump and Johnson over the use of Huawei in the UK technical infrastructure is one example of the real divisions between the UK and the US. On the other hand, the Americans are aware of the UK’s weakened position when in search of trade deals, which make British capitalism vulnerable to US demands. And with the EU talking tough as it enters post-Brexit trade talks, there is  still the possibility that Britain will be faced with the consequences of a no-deal, which would further weaken Britain’s economic standing in the face of a looming world recession.

Possibility of the break-up of the UK

The integrity of the British state has been put into question by the Brexit fiasco. The Scottish National Party has dominated the Scottish Parliament since 2011 and Scottish elections to the UK parliament since 2015. The SNP took Tory, Labour and Lib Dem seats in the 2019 election. The very size of the Tory victory in England and Wales has reinforced the ambitions of the SNP, who prosper by denouncing the rule of Johnson, the caricature of a typical English toff. Preventing the break-up of the UK, which is implied by the drive for Scottish independence, is going to be a challenge for the British bourgeoisie. With Johnson’s history of open disdain for Scottish independence, there is every prospect of growing conflict between London and Edinburgh

Even before the election there was an accentuation of tensions in Northern Ireland. Unlike May, Johnson had no deal with the Democratic Unionist Party. Indeed, in order to remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement with the EU (which means there will be an effective border between Britain and Northern Ireland) the DUP were not just ignored but thrown under a bus.  The DUP had kept the Tory party in power after 2017, but dismissed by Johnson in order to get a deal. Northern Ireland is now in a situation of half in, half out of the EU. This will further fuel the tendencies toward the break-up of the UK.

The cohesion of the political apparatus in danger

The latest electoral defeat for the Labour Party has opened up the prospect of its fragmentation. In other European countries ‘Socialist’ parties have been in a process of decline, but in Britain the rise of Corbyn produced a growth of the party, and in the 2017 election produced an outcome that was better than generally expected. But now the very much reduced circumstances of the Labour Party might begin to make it irrelevant as an opposition and, with no prospects of a return to government, the opportunity for further conflict within the party. The danger for the ruling class is that Labour might tear itself apart when it is still required to play a role in the democratic pantomime.

Meanwhile, with the size of the Tory majority, and with a large number of MPs with no government role, the possibility of divisions within the Conservative Party turning into renewed conflicts cannot be discounted. The parliamentary jam has been cleared, but that gives space for the eruption of underlying divisions. The likelihood of further economic decline for Britain outside the EU means that the political apparatus will have an important role to play against any response from the working class.

As things stand, in 2019 the working class was drawn into the charade of parliamentary elections again, with all sides saying that it was a crucial election, the most important in a generation etc. At this level it was a success for the forces of bourgeois democracy. However, the strains and tensions within the political apparatus show that the problems for the bourgeoisie in controlling the situation have not diminished. The current British Prime Minister is an unpredictable chancer whose line of march can’t be easily gauged; the main political parties are still riven with divisions; the main opposition party is a shadow of its former self, and the break-up of the United Kingdom is not a far-fetched fantasy. ‘Global’ Britain has plenty of political problems ahead. 

Sam 16/2/20

Saturday 7 March 2020

2.30-5.30pm

May Day Rooms

88 Fleet Street

London EC4Y 1DH

After years of retreat in the class struggle, and of a sustained capitalist offensive centred round ideologies either denying the existence of the working class or claiming that it is hopelessly divided between “native and immigrant” or the “left behind”  and those supposedly part of the “urban elite”; after a series of social revolts in which the working class has been drowned in a mass of “citizens”, most notably the Yellow Vest protests in France, we can begin to grasp the importance of the recent strike movement in the same country, principally involving railway workers, health workers and other parts of the public sector. This was a movement which was undoubtedly a response to a direct attack on workers’ living conditions – the so-called “Pension Reforms” demanded by the Macron government. It was centred on the workplaces where the working class is most obviously a living social force, but at the same time, there was a very strong push towards solidarity between the different sectors. There were also some signs – especially among the railway workers – of a capacity to take action outside the trade unions, even if the unions retained an overall control over the movement.

The significance of this movement was above all that it gives us a glimpse of how the working class can regain its sense of being a class – as some of the banners on the strike demonstrations proclaimed, “We exist”, “We are here”. It is the response of workers to the attacks of capital demanded by the remorseless economic crisis which will enable them to recover their class identity, an indispensable basis for the development of a revolutionary consciousness, the recognition that the working class is not only collectively exploited by capital, but also that it is the only force in society that can offer a real alternative to capitalism.

Website: www. internationalism.org

email: [email protected] [8]

 

The emergence of this new virus and the reaction of the bourgeoisie shows how the development of the productive forces has come up against the death and destruction caused by capitalism. So while China has become the world’s second economic power it has been laid low by a viral epidemic, and while medical science forges ahead capitalism cannot protect its population from disease, any more than it can from economic crisis or war or pollution.

Covid-19 is one of a number of new infectious diseases that have emerged, particularly in the last 50 years, including HIV (AIDS), Ebola, SARS, MERS, Lassa fever, Zika. Like so many new diseases Covid-19 is an animal virus infection that has jumped species to infect people and spread, a result of the changed conditions brought about by capitalism in this period. We have increasingly global supply chains and urbanisation; for the first time in history the majority of the world population lives in cities, often with the population crowded together and inadequate infrastructure for hygiene. And as in China there are many workers not just concentrated in cities but in crowded factory dormitories, eg Foxconn’s workers live 8 to a room. Alongside this is the use of bushmeat, and in Wuhan an illegal wildlife market is thought to be the source of the new infection. In addition the destruction of the natural environment and the effects of climate change are driving more and more animals into cities in search of food. Crowded cities are a potential breeding ground for epidemics as Wuhan shows, and the increased international connections a means to transmit them abroad.

These conditions are the result of the decadent capitalist system being driven to disrupt and pollute every last corner of the planet in order to cope with its crisis of overproduction. The destructive impact of this global expansion was clearly demonstrated by the First World War, which marked the beginning of this epoch of decline.  At the end of the war came the deadly Spanish flu pandemic that is estimated to have infected about a third of the world population and killed over 50 million people in three phases. The death rate was linked to the conditions of imperialist war including hunger and malnutrition, poor hygiene, and the movement of sick soldiers from the trenches which bred a more deadly virus for the second wave.

In the more recent period we can see that HIV has killed 32 million, mainly in Africa, and has now become endemic. Despite the medical advances that have turned HIV from a killer to a chronic disease, AIDS killed 770,000 in 2018 due to lack of access to care.[1] Many other diseases that medical science can prevent are continuing to cause illness and death. We hear about the measles cases in the USA, perhaps in Samoa, and the importance of immunisation to prevent its transmission. But the media are silent on the nearly 300,000 measles cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the deaths of nearly 6,000 children[2], where the woeful heath care facilities are also trying to cope with Ebola. These deaths are of no great interest to the ruling class because unlike the swine flu pandemic in 2009 or the current Covid-19 epidemic in China they do not threaten its production and profits to the same extent. But capitalism is responsible for the conditions that give rise to these epidemics: in this case, an unstable country, the result of the carve up of Africa by imperialist powers, constantly ravaged by fighting over its natural resources (gold, diamonds, oil and cobalt) which has claimed millions of lives. 50% of DRC exports go to China. It is a particularly graphic example of what we mean by the decomposition of capitalism, the period in which the ruling class does not have sufficient control to carry out its cold blooded response to the crisis, a new world war, because the working class is not defeated, but equally the working class has not the strength to take its struggle to a level that can threaten capitalism. It was announced by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc, and is characterised, among other things, by chaotic localised wars.[3]

The persistence of polio is also directly related to decomposition, when fighting or fundamentalism prevents immunisation, with health workers being murdered by jihadists, for instance in Pakistan. Any publicity about this is totally hypocritical. The great powers which condemn this are perfectly willing to use irregular and terrorist fighters – as the west used the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Russians in the 1980s and since then in many other conflicts. In fact the rise of terrorism is a feature of imperialist conflict in the period of decomposition.

Meanwhile, rather than spend on health or education, global defence spending in 2019 was 4% up on 2018. For the US and China it was more than 6% up and for Germany more than 9%. To give an idea of the bourgeoisie’s chilling priorities, while the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) budget in the US was cut from $10.8 billion in 2010 to $6.6 billion in 2020, the US has just passed a rearmament budget of $738 billion. China’s annual defence budget is estimated at $250 billion. The WHO had a budget of only $5.1 billion in 2016-2017.

Lies and irrationality

There are many diseases causing more deaths than Covid-19 at present, yet the bourgeoisie are taking this seriously as a threat, as they do every new disease that may become a pandemic and may therefore cause increased threats to their productivity and profits, for instance through increased sickness absence – something we see with this new virus in China, as well as causing threats to human health and life. There are many aspects of the disease that can contribute to its pandemic potential – infectivity, the nature of the disease. It is also important that it has arisen in a large city of 11 million inhabitants in a country that is well connected internationally for trade and tourism, and this makes it harder to contain the spread of the virus. Harder to contain than if it had arisen, like Ebola, in Africa with far less opportunities for foreign travel, or if it had arisen in 2003, like the SARS epidemic, when China’s economy and connections were smaller.

Much of the initial response to this new virus by the Chinese state was criminally negligent and unscrupulous. While they had already got preliminary genetic data on 26 December indicating a SARS-like virus, the Chinese authorities were harassing Dr Li Wenliang for warning of the danger on 30 December. At the same time they were warning the WHO about the virus. Nevertheless the authorities in Wuhan continued to suppress information about the epidemic, holding an enormous communal meal and a Lunar New Year dance on the 18 and 19 January, pretending it did not pass from person to person, before locking down the city on 23 January when 5 million people, almost half the population, had already left for the New Year holiday.

All this has given rise to enormous anger in the population, enraged that the government should conceal the disease from the public and make a doctor sign a false confession for ‘spreading rumours’ for warning about it. This has engendered a campaign for free speech within China. Media and politicians in western countries have echoed this campaign with sermons about the benefits of democracy and free speech. However, we should not think for a moment that our own ruling class have any greater moral scruples about lying and covering up information when it suits them, even if it puts human life at risk. Drug companies suppress clinical trials that put their profits at risk, even when this means failing to warn that certain antidepressants have an increased suicide risk for teenagers and young adults (see Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, a whole book about such dishonesty). And the US and UK governments infamously lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Chinese state was  completely  cold blooded  in putting its concern to maintain its authority above concern for health and life of the population, a result of its rigid hierarchical Stalinist bureaucracy, which has led it to cover up the start of an epidemic when timely action was needed to reduce and slow the spread of the virus. This shows the brutality of the regime which takes little account of human life, but also its irrationality as taking timely action in response to the epidemic would not only have saved lives, but also it would have saved much of the loss we can expect to the economy and much of the damage to China’s prestige as a growing power in the world with its ambitious Belt and Road initiative.  This irrationality of China’s regime in its response to the epidemic is linked to its paranoia about any loss of power or control, a paranoia shown in its big labour and ‘re-education’ camps for Uighurs and others, in its fondness for facial recognition technology and in its Social Credit system for keeping the population in line. To preserve its authority it dare not admit any dangers or problems.

Repressive quarantine measures

Quarantining a city of 11 million by shutting all transport links and putting in place road blocks is a first. To do so after half the population has been allowed to leave makes matters worse. Building two new hospitals to take 2,600 extra patients in 10 days is an impressive piece of propaganda, and even an impressive feat of prefabricated engineering (even if they weren’t ready when claimed). But it did not provide the equipment or doctors and nurses needed – even with army medics and volunteers from other regions. Hospitals in Wuhan have been overwhelmed, as have quarantine centres equipped with 10,000 beds. Sick people with coronavirus cannot get into quarantine centres let alone hospital. Patients with other conditions, including cancer, cannot get hospital treatment as all the beds are full. Sick and dying patients in quarantine centres have no nursing care. Quarantine centres have hundreds crowded together in beds or on mattresses on the floor wearing small paper masks of doubtful value, with inadequate toilet and washing facilities, sometimes portable toilets and showers outside. It is quite clear that anyone entering a quarantine centre without Covid-19 will soon get it. Those suspected of carrying the virus have been forcibly taken to quarantine centres – one disabled boy starved to death after the relatives he relied on were taken. It is as much a police exercise as a health measure.

Herding people together in quarantine centres which can only become centres for passing on the virus is reminiscent of the hospitals for the poor until the 19th Century in Europe which were also sources of infection, for instance increasing maternal mortality from puerperal fever from the 17th to the 19th Centuries before the need for hygiene was understood.

Equipment is lacking, including protective clothing for hospital staff; doctors and nurses are working extremely long hours, all of which makes them more vulnerable to illness. 1700 of them have been infected and 6 have died.

Inaccurate monitoring of the disease

In these circumstances it is clear that there will be many patients dying who might have been saved with adequate medical care. Covid-19 appears to have more than double the mortality in Wuhan than elsewhere because of this. However, whether or not the Chinese authorities are continuing to lie about the numbers infected, the figures are suspect because not all the cases can be confirmed. Hence a spike in the number of cases reported in Wuhan on 11 February when those diagnosed clinically – without a test – were included, bringing the total recorded cases to over 60,000.

It is not only in China that disease figures are likely to be inaccurate. Unlike Singapore, a rich country with numerous connections which has been preparing for an epidemic since SARS in 2003, many other poorer countries are not prepared. “Any country that has significant travel back and forth with China and hasn’t found cases should be concerned” says a Harvard professor of epidemiology.[4] Indonesia, for instance, evacuated 238 citizens from Wuhan and quarantined them for two weeks but did not test them for the disease because it is too expensive. More to the point, what about China’s African trade and clients for the New Silk Road? There will be many places without the health infrastructure to diagnose and care for patients with the virus.

What is impressive is that the new virus was sequenced by 12 January. Following on from that the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) which was set up in 2017 after the west African Ebola outbreak has been working towards a vaccine, in the hope that this can be ready if Covid-19 spreads, and particularly if it becomes a seasonal disease like flu. In fact as we write this article work on the vaccine is under way, using a new method based on gene sequencing, which is safer than working with a deadly virus, and has already expedited production of vaccines for Zika, Ebola, SARS and MERS. Of course it will require testing for safety and effectiveness before it can be used, and this will take time.

However, this striking potential for the productive forces is not the end of the story. There is a lack of factories to produce sufficient vaccine, and since with the risk of pandemic governments will not export vaccine until they have stockpiled enough for their own use “citing national defence or security”[5] CETI needs to plan for it to be manufactured in several sites.

Effects on the economy

China’s economy has ground to a halt as it has gone into lockdown to contain the new virus. In response it is pushing money into the economy, the banking regulator is relaxing rules on bad debt. However, China is now responsible for 16% of global GDP, 4 times greater than in 2003 at the time of the SARS epidemic which cut 1% off its GDP for the year. Its economy is much more integrated into global supply chains than it was 17 years ago. This has already forced Hyundai to close car plants in South Korea, Nissan to close one in Japan and Fiat-Chrysler to warn it may shut some European production. Smartphone production could be down up to 10% this year. Textiles (China produces 40% of global exports), furniture, and pharmaceuticals could all be hit. As will tourism. And China now accounts for nearly 20% of global mining imports, and is trying to cancel deliveries of oil, gas and coal it doesn’t need. Shares in US firms with high exposure to Chinese sales are underperforming by 5%. Coming with its trade war with the US not resolved, this is bad timing – for China and the global economy.

In the longer term this may make China look a less reliable trading partner for multinational companies to invest in. It certainly makes it look less a powerful trading partner and imperialist backer for its clients on the New Silk Road. It may depend on how quickly it can get its economy back to normal.

Whatever happens with this new Covid-19 virus, whether it becomes a new pandemic, or whether it dies out like SARS, or becomes established as a new seasonal respiratory virus, this new disease is yet another warning that capitalism has become a danger to humanity, and to life on this planet. The enormous capacity for the productive forces, including medical science, to protect us from disease comes up against the murderous search for profit, the herding of an ever larger proportion of the population into huge cities, with all the risks for new epidemics. The risk of capitalism does not end here, there are also the risks of pollution, ecological destruction and increasingly chaotic imperialist wars. 

Alex, 15.2.20

 

With the assassination of Qaseem Soleimani and nine other associates, including bosses of Iran’s powerful military groups, the Popular Mobilisation Units and Kata’ib Hezbollah on January 3 2020, Trump sent a signal, entirely consistent with his presidency, that all “convention” was out of the window and no-one was safe in this tense stand-off between the USA and Iran. Hassan Nasrallah, president of Hezbollah in Lebanon and firm ally of Iran, probably a little nervous in the hours after the attack, took to the airwaves to call on Tehran not to make any sudden response and, for “US troops to leave Iraq”. A day later, despite noise from some “hard-liners” within the regime that were quickly silenced, that was the official position of the Islamic Republic whose ruling elite signalled the details of their “retribution” to the Americans through Iraqi conduits. Despite being hyped-up in a general media campaign, there wasn’t any great possibility of a regional conflagration through an exchange of missiles (the use of US troops was not likely either) and there was even less possibility of a Third World War, despite the sensationalist headlines in some parts of the bourgeois press. Why we think that this wasn’t the case and why this means no attenuation in the spread of military barbarism we will return to below. In the meantime, the removal of Soleimani has dealt a blow to Iranian imperialism, but it’s never about one man and it remains to be seen just how grievous this blow is to the Islamic Republic; whether this further undermines it following the recent protests (quelled but not disappeared); or whether it strengthens Iranian nationalism and its base. Whatever the case Soleimani, over the decades, had already done a great deal towards the extension of Iranian imperialism throughout the Middle East and into sub-Saharan Africa.

Qaseem Soleimani: the butcher’s butcher

The Quds (“Jerusalem”) force and associated units, which Soleimani rose up through from the1980’s and took control of about 15 years ago, were responsible for the internal repression of struggling and protesting Iranian workers and others in 1999, ten years after that in 2009 and again a decade later, in 2019/2020. They were responsible for the many deaths of Iraqi protesters around the latter time and it was these forces which unleashed a pitiless repression against anti-Assad protesters after 2012, virtually saving the Syrian butcher and his tottering regime. Soleimani wasn’t a Shi’ite fanatic but an important representative of Iranian imperialism. He was an ally of the Russians but he was no Russian stooge He was also allied, at different moments, with the Americans, and with Kurds, Alawites, Maronites, Sunni, anyone in fact who would further his cause. He has even used al-Qaida against the Americans - for which Iran received its own “blow-back”. It’s no wonder that Soleimani was held in such high regard by the faction-riven Iranian regime[1] and why he was anointed a “living martyr” by Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

Iran and particularly the Soleimani elements were never puppets or pawns of Russia acting on Moscow’s orders. It wasn’t the case recently and after the fall of the Shah, which took place in 1979 when the blocs still existed, Iran has tended to go its own way. The Mullah’s regime was something of a wild card, presaging in some ways the collapse of the blocs and the ensuing imperialist free-for-all.  But, if anything, while he was directly and indirectly responsible for many US deaths, Soleimani remained willing to work with the Americans; and there is no doubt that even after President George W. Bush targeted Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil” in 2002, American diplomatic and military arms played a significant role in building up and consolidating the Quds and associated Iranian forces in Iraq.  Even if relations became more complicated later, after Saddam’s fall, the Iraqi governing council was essentially set up by the Americans and Iranians, given that the US had no alternative but to tolerate the rise of the Shi’ite parties after Saddam’s overthrow.

After the Twin Towers atrocity in 2001 and a certain “reaching-out” by Iran, career ambassador and senior State Department official Ryan Crocker and his team, regularly met[2] Iranian officials including Soleimani in order to discuss their common enemies: al-Qaida and the Taliban. Even after Bush’s Neo-Con inspired rant ended the official meetings (and the official rapprochement), Iranian-US contacts were kept up in the years that followed. The game that Soleimani developed was to carry on talking to the Americans, making concessions here, doing favours there, while continuing to pressure the US and kill and harass American troops and their allies. The release of diplomatic cables by Wikileaks shows that Soleimani was in touch with US General David Petraeus, Commander-General of forces in Iraq around 2008. It was in this unprecedented development of asymmetric warfare - a general factor of capitalist decomposition that includes terrorism - that the Iranian commander lured the US into a trap that would be sprung largely with the facilities and space provided by the Americans themselves. At this time there were over a hundred-thousand US troops in Iraq and every one of them was a target. The Iranians used them and then subjected to constant violence and psychological pressure which contributed to the gradual withdrawal of US troops; and while this may have pleased the Russians the driving force behind it was Iranian imperialism.

Trump declared himself the victor over Isis recently but if one man was responsible for the defeat of Isis (along with US logistics, Russian air-power and Kurdish ground troops) it was Soleimani and his forces. In the battle against Isis, US and Iranian high commands worked very closely together, with Iran sometimes calling the shots. The battle over Isis-held Amarili, a Shi’ite Turkmen town in Iraq, saw combined air and ground attacks involving both forces in what was a significant defeat for the Islamic State and a major victory for the US/Iranian coalition. In this respect, Soleimani could also lean on the Russians and the Kurds with some pressure; once again, it shows the relative independence of Iranian imperialism.

The Hit

Taken from the “extreme” end of the spectrum of possible US responses to continuing Iranian aggression, the hit against Iran/Soleimani was directed by Trump in true Mafia style. The President, who was calm and lucid throughout the whole episode, clearly laid his cards on the table, was open about those up his sleeve, and the Iranians, understandably, folded. There was no interest in a missile exchange, no interest from Iran in suffering further, greater losses and no interest whatsoever from Trump in getting engaged in a wider war. Nor was there any interest at all from China and Russia in getting involved in war in the Middle East over Iran, the consequences of which were obvious. All the wars of imperialism are fundamentally irrational but a wounded, possibly leaderless Iran would have been a dangerous development for all the imperialist vultures, creating an unstable black-hole sucking in all sorts of elements (including a partly resurgent Isis) and aggravating further the centrifugal tendencies already at work.

Nevertheless, the USA’s general policy of turning up the heat on Iran will certainly result in further instability in the region. Even though National Security Advisor John Bolton’s gone, Trump is still surrounded by anti-Iranian “hawks”.  The letter to the Iraqi government from US Iraqi overlord General W. H. Seely, acceding to the former’s request to withdraw all US troops, shows the confusion that reigned in the upper echelons of the US military. The Germans and the French were openly scornful of the action and Britain, which desperately needs Trump on side, joined the EU’s criticism. None of them have much to gain from the USA further exacerbating the chaos in the Middle East.

New blocs not on the agenda

The relationship between Russia and Iran, highlighted by recent events, is worth a brief, closer look, particularly in relation to the ICC’s general analysis of decomposition and the perspective raised by the Internationalist Communist Tendency, who talk of the potential for a bloc-wide world war led by Russia which, according to the ICT’s position can’t stand by and “watch” (the US assassinations) and it can’t allow Iran to be attacked “with impunity”[3]. Not only can Russia “allow” this, it facilitates attacks on Iranian forces in Syria by Israel and is not averse to attacking Iranian positions in Syria using its own forces. The overriding tendency is not towards the “coherence” of a bloc-wide world war but one of each against all and the development of military barbarism which is just as dangerous for the working class and humanity - if not more so.

In his comments after the US attacks Putin did not mention the name “Soleimani” once and his muted criticism of the attack reflected the view of the Kremlin as a whole, which left it to its media to play up the question of “the aggression of US imperialism”. Russia’s historical relations with Iran have left deep scars and its relatively recent relations have been ambiguous to say the least; but Soleimani’s death does present Russian imperialism with a chance to further strengthen its grip in Syria and, possibly, in Iraq.

Although his role was exaggerated somewhat by Tehran, Soleimani worked very closely with the Russians in Syria as an ally. But we have also seen that he has worked very closely with the US high command in both Syria and Iraq. The recent strategy of Soleimani and the IRGC (Quds and other militias) has been to strengthen the role of Iran in Syria in order to further its reach; opposed to this, the Russian aim is to strengthen the Assad regime and thus its own position. Rather than pushing for a wider confrontation over US attacks on Iran, the Russians may not be too unhappy about the outcome of these US attacks; and if there was one world leader that would have been informed of the drone attacks beforehand by Trump, it would have been Putin.

Under the leadership of Soleimani, the IRGC has been buying vast tracts of land and buildings around Homs and Damascus which are being turned into Iranian enclaves. There are clear tensions here that are split three ways and Russia does not see eye to eye with Iran over Syria. Russia could have protected Iranian forces in Syria from attacks by Israel by simply keeping its newly-installed S-300 missile system deployed but, in collusion with the Israeli state, it regularly allows Israeli war planes to enter Syrian air-space, unleash their weapons against Iranian positions and get out again. Iran has repeatedly expressed its anger at Russia over this but the latter just ignores it. Russia has also let Israel know that it might be able to help reduce Iran’s weapons supplies through Damascus, a card it holds over Iran, and it’s not above confronting Iranian forces in the country directly - as it did in Deera Province when it routed the Iranian-backed Fourth Division. And along with Israel, Russia has recently developed ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, all of them no allies of Iran.

None of these things point to any sort of bloc coherence with Russia, or with Russia “having” to respond to US attacks on Iranian interests in the way the ICT envisages and none of it prevents Russia posing as a “protector” of Iran and using its “assets” which have proved very useful to it in Syria. And with Turkey very much in the mix, upsetting everyone with its drive for the so-called New Ottoman Empire, which has recently led to direct confrontations between Turkey and the Syrian army around Idlib, we are not seeing the development of a drive towards unified military blocs. Rather we see the war of each against all and centrifugal tendencies dominating. Without going into to the myriad divergences between the different powers over different regions, now the “Great Game” in the Middle East resembles even more what was described by one British diplomat a while ago: “a nine-sided game of chess with no rules”.

The collapse of the two bloc system and the rise of the “New World Disorder”

From the early 1950’s to the late 1980’s, World War III was a distinct possibility. The two imperialist blocs existed, the world more or less carved up between them and tensions were rising everywhere, particularly around key flashpoints. But throughout the period 1968-89, when the return of the open world economic crisis “logically” implied a new march towards war, the proletariat’s dogged insistence on fighting for its own class interests staved off any mobilisation for an imperialist conflagration. Today though, with the complete absence of unified imperialist blocs, with no prospect of them on the horizon and, possibly, their disappearance for good, the bourgeoisie is not forced to confront and mobilise the proletariat in this way. And this is the result of capitalism’s own inability to impose and cohere the discipline necessary for major blocs to fight a world war. Instead of that there are all sorts of centrifugal tendencies at work, dog-eat-dog, fragmentation, ‘Us first against the others’ and instability. The formation of blocs is not at the root of imperialism - it’s the other way round, and the consequence of 1989 is that imperialism now takes on a different, but no less dangerous form in keeping with the general decay and decomposition of the entire capitalist system. World-war-fighting imperialist blocs are a consequence of decadent capitalism, but the fragmentation of this particular form and its elimination, certainly for the foreseeable future, is significant of capitalism’s further decay and the consequences of the Pandora’s Box that opened up in 1989.

The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, was one of the most spectacular “peace-time” expressions of the crisis and decomposition of the entire capitalist system. Overnight, world war was off the agenda. The implosion of the eastern bloc and all its structures had its reverberations in the west where, almost immediately, bloc ties became loosened. Despite the deafening campaigns about the “death of communism” and the “victory of capitalism”, it didn’t take long - two years - for the reality of the “New World Order” to assert itself. Soon after the USA’s doomed attempt to prevent the fragmentation of its own bloc via the coalition that fought the first Gulf War in 1991, war broke out in Yugoslavia 1992, the first outright war in Europe since 1945. A brutal, bestial conflict, targeting civilians in ways reminiscent of World War II; it was stirred up initially by Germany, which expressed the tendency for bloc indiscipline and then descended into hell with almost every major power backing their own factions and joining in. And it’s been downhill in the expanding zones of war and militarism ever since, with the Middle East and Africa prime examples.

More problems for the proletarian perspective but its tasks remain the same

It’s certainly true that since the downfall of the USSR, Russian imperialism has rationalised and re-armed, once again emerging as a major player on the world arena. Even more importantly, China has appeared as the major challenger to US hegemony, demonstrating that that a tendency towards bipolarisation between the most powerful imperialist states still exists. Furthermore, it is above all the rise of China which, already under Obama, led to the USA declaring Asia to be the new pivot and the containment of China its main priority; this was the real meaning behind Obama’s policy of disengagement from large parts of the Middle East, which the Trump regime has taken even further. But neither the mounting rivalry between US and China, or the tensions between Russia and the US, should be confused with the actual formation of blocs, which is being continually undermined by the dominant tendency towards fragmentation. This tendency has been illustrated very clearly not only by the incredible military chaos in the Middle East but also by threats to the unity of the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, NATO and a whole host of “international” organisations and the protocols and agreements that they are based upon.

None of this makes the struggle of the working class any easier, more difficult in fact, but it does make it all the more essential for its future and the future of humanity. The united proletariat remains the only possible force able to confront and eventually overturn the unimaginable perspective that capitalism has in store for us. And, from our point of view, it doesn’t really matter if we are blown up by explosives, poisoned to death or fried by climate change. In the meantime, as recent developments in the class struggle have tentatively indicated, the working class, as an exploited class, has the potential to fight, to organise itself, to set up its assemblies for consolidating and spreading its combats against being locked up by the unions, isolated as “citizens” and trapped behind corporatism and national borders.

We would be lying if we did not lay out the serious and difficult challenges facing the working class by these developments of capitalism, developments that can only facilitate further decay and barbarity. But despite the retreat and demoralisation of the last few decades, the working class has historically been and remains the only possible social force that can offer humanity a way out of the nightmare of moribund capitalism.  
 

Baboon, 4.2.20

 

From beginning to end the movement against the pensions ‘reform’ has been under the control of the unions. There are those that call for strikes, those that have picked and organised days of action, those that have run rare general assemblies. And these are the ones leading us to defeat. We can’t be naive, the government and the unions have been working together for two years... in order to prepare the ground for this reform and make it happen!

Faced with the danger of a resurgence of class struggle...

The government had to provide itself with certain guarantees so that this wide-scale attack, announced by Macron in 2017 as a real “Big Bang”, did not provoke a massive response from the whole of the working class. Edouard Philippe, French Prime Minister, was backed up by the collaboration of his “social partners”, i.e., the unions, in order to sabotage the inevitable explosion of anger among the workers.

This general attack against the whole working class could only unleash a wave of indignation and spontaneous anger in one particularly combative sector: transport. For the rail workers “enough is enough”: after being at the forefront of class movements these last years, notably with the “go-slow” of 2018 against the degradation of their working conditions, against their re-grading, these workers obtained nothing. The attack on their pensions could only strengthen their willingness to take up the struggle again even more determinedly with the slogan “Now that’s enough! We won’t let this happen!” The combativity in the transport sector risked an uncontrollable explosion with the danger that the general attack against pensions would spread a general anger amongst the whole working class.

The ruling class has many means for “taking the pulse” of social discontent (in a country where Macron, “President of the Rich” has become the man most detested by the majority of the population): opinion polls, police-work to assess the “at-risk” sectors, and in the first place the working class. But the most important “social thermometer” is the union apparatus, which is much more efficient than opinion poll sociologists or police functionaries. In fact this apparatus is the instrument par excellence for keeping the exploited corralled in the service of capitalism’s interests. The union apparatus of the capitalist state has had almost a century’s experience. It is particularly sensitive to the state of mind of the workers, to their willingness and capacity to fight against the bourgeoisie. It’s these forces surrounding the working class who are permanently responsible for warning the bosses and the government of the danger represented by the class struggle. Meetings and periodic consultations between the union leaders and the bosses or the government also serve this warning system: they elaborate together, hand-in-hand, the best strategy to allow government and bosses to carry out their attacks with the maximum effect against the working class.

The unions have understood perfectly well that the working class in France was no longer disposed to keep its head down and unflinchingly take new attacks. The ruling class equally knows that the working class today hasn’t the least illusions in the “light at the end of the tunnel”: all workers are now conscious that “it will get worse and worse” and there will be no other choice than to fight in defence of their living conditions and a future for their children. Thus the popularity of the movement of the Gilets Jaunes a year ago against the cost of living and misery, was a good indication of the anger grinding away in the entrails of society: 80% of the population supported, understood or had sympathy with this anti-Macron tsunami (even if the working class couldn’t recognise itself in the methods of protest[1] of this inter-classist movement initiated by a petty-bourgeoisie being strangled by fuel taxes). In the last two years the bourgeoisie has seen a real growth of workers’ combativity. The tenacity of the hospital workers and postal workers, on strike for over a month, was another indication. The multiplication of struggles in the distribution sector, bus drivers and aviation was another.

Faced with the accumulation of the discontent of the exploited, the French bourgeoisie thus had to accompany the application of the pension reform with a “fire-wall” in order to channel, lock up, divide and exhaust the inevitable response of the proletariat.

... government and unions manoeuvre together!

Hated among the demonstrators today for “stabbing us in the back”, the CDFT and UNSA have played their role perfectly as “responsible and reformist unions”. It was a real piece of theatre[2]:

- Act I: the CDFT put together a text with the government over two years by affirming that it wanted a “just and equal” universal system but refused the notion of an “age pivot”(part of a points system for receiving a full pension or partial pension), a real provocation from the government having the aim of focusing all the anger on this point and thus turn attention away from the real subject, the general attack against pensions.

- Act II: On December 11, the government officially announced... with a drum roll... that the age pivot would finally be in the reform: the CDFT reacted because a “red line” had been crossed and it re-joined the “union front” and the whole media was occupied by the “age pivot or not” debate; a great drama made out of nothing.

- Act III: Friday January 10, finally, a big surprise. At Matignon, the government pulls back on the “age pivot”; the CDFT and UNSA cry victory and leave the movement.

People leave with “a points-based pension system” in their pockets, that’s to say more years of work and a reduced pension.

Twenty-five years ago, the Juppé government used some elements of the same strategy: make a general attack against the class (in this case the reform of social security which meant restricted access to healthcare for all) and a specific attack against one particular sector (the reform of the rail worker’s retirement deal, which imposed another 8 years work on them!). After a month of strikes, with the ultra-combative railworkers at its head, Juppé retreated and the unions cried victory, insisting that the status quo for the rail workers had been maintained. This sector, a real “locomotive” of social protest, returned to work and in doing so sounded the end of the movement for all. Thus the government could keep its social security reform.

This old manoeuvre functions less well today. No-one has cried victory apart from the CDFT and UNSA. Everyone has denounced the trap for what it is: humbug! A strategy aimed to sugar the pill. Even in the press the secret was open and stale.

If then, despite their determination, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators stopped fighting little by little without the government withdrawing its general attack against pensions, it’s because the attack was wider and more complex. Alongside the “reformist” unions, the “radical” CGT, FO and Solidaires (an alliance of “radical” unions) played their role in isolating and exhausting the strikers. Taking account of the level of anger and the combativity of our class this programme took longer than foreseen. It needed all the know-how of these specialists in sabotaging the struggle in order to achieve their aims.

September

After the return to work from the holidays, the campaign on the pension reforms was officially launched with FO, Solidaires and the CGT using any means available. How? They did so by calling a multiplication of sectoral days of action; everyone in their box, with specific strikes and specific claims. “Look after number one, the unions for everyone”. The aim was to exhaust the existing struggles before launching a wider and more controlled movement.

However, this organised dispersion was greatly criticised. In the demonstrations you could find many workers who expressed their discontent faced with the divisions: they wanted the unions together because “we are all in the same boat, we have to fight together”. The announcement on September 20 of a large, unified demonstration for December 5 responded to this push. Here again, nothing is left to chance: the date is chosen because it’s sufficiently far away (more than two months) to enable the crumbling and exhaustion of the strikes to continue. They are also just before the Christmas and New Year period liable to make any transport blockages unpopular and isolate the most combative workers.

October

During October and November, the “radical” unions continued their work of undermining the movement through isolated and sectoral strikes. While in many sectors the worker’s anger was palpable, the unions were wary of calling for open gatherings in general assemblies unifying firms and the sectors among them, through sending massive delegations to discuss and spread the strike. Nothing like that! Just isolated strikes and actions while having to wait for the promise of the great December 5 demonstration. But this strategy of exhaustion and demoralisation turned out once again to be insufficient. The working class continued to push and combativity was mounting.

On October 16, rail workers suddenly stopped work following an accident on the line in the Ardennes. Spontaneously, through telephones, they warn each other and thus spread the strike through parts of the SNCF. The workers at Ile-de-France were particularly combative. RER (suburban and rapid transport system) lines were blocked. The unions jumped on the bandwagon and took over the strike demanding “pension rights”. In other words, they hobbled the movement that was already underway. The bourgeoisie had no stomach for this sign of workers’ autonomy and the dynamic of taking the movement in hand and extending it, to the point that government and bosses denounced the illegality of this “wildcat strike” and threatened reprisals against the strikers. This allowed the unions to definitively take control of the situation by putting themselves up as the protectors of the strikers and defenders of the right to strike. During October, a number of wildcat strikes affected the SNCF, notably in the maintenance centre at Chatillon where, without union say-so, 200 out of 700 workers stood up against measures being introduced to worsen their working conditions, measures which were quickly withdrawn so as to stop the strike in its tracks and thus avoid spreading its ideas to other workers.[3]

November

Thus the unions have been warned and they had to become more combative in order to harness the movement. On November 9, the CGT joined UNSA-railways[4] and Sud/Solidaires, in calling for the strike on December 5. It announced that this action would also be undertaken at SNCF. Then the CFDT-railways announced it would also be part of the movement[5].

But behind this “union front” and speeches about unifying all sectors, in the corridors they continued their dirty work of undermining and division. Their sabotage of the unity of the movement in the hospital sector is particularly characteristic: since March, the unions and their “inter-emergency ward collective” undertook ultra-corporatist actions, separating the struggle of the emergency workers from all the other hospital services. But under the growing pressure of the will “to fight together” they changed their tune and called for two “unitary” demonstrations, November 14 and 30... unifying the hospitals! The unions did this to better separate this struggle from the general movement against pension reform in the name of the “the specificities of the hospitals” (and all the better to divide them). This decision of the unions caused a row within the general assembly of the hospital workers and a number of them mobilised for the December 5 demonstration all the same.

December

At the time of the great December demonstrations, the need for solidarity between sectors and generations, to fight together, is taken up in the slogans blasted out by the loud-speakers mounted on union lorries. For what? Nothing. Just repeat the slogans endlessly at each day of action. But concretely, each sector is called to march behind their union, sometimes marked out, cut off from the others, cordoned off by and surrounded by union “security”. There was no great meeting to discuss at the end of the demonstration whereas a number of workers had suggested it. The unions and the cops dispersed the crowds. Time was getting on, the transports must leave...

Mid-December, the striking rail workers of the SNCF and RATP understood that if they remained isolated the movement was destined to defeat. What did the unions do? They organised a joke of extension: some CGT representatives went to meet some other CGT representatives at another firm.

At the Saturday demonstration, officially organised by the unions so as to allow workers from the private sector to participate in the movement, the CGT, FO and Solidaires made no effort towards mobilising other workers. On the contrary, all their speeches focused on the courage of the railworkers “who were fighting for us all” and on the strength of the blockade of this sector (suggesting that other workers were impotent) and the necessity of support in ... filling up the collection boxes of solidarity organised above all by the CGT in place of the active solidarity of workers in the struggle and extension of the movement (even if it was understandable that everyone felt the need to help the rail workers financially because they were losing a month’s wages!). Throughout December, the unions cultivated a strike by proxy!

Thus, alone in their “unlimited” strike, the rail workers were encouraged to hold on whatever the cost, during the 15 days of the holiday with the slogan: no Christmas truce!

January

Here again, while the media denounced “the taking hostage of families who simply wanted to come together for Christmas”, these two weeks of “truce” during which the rail workers fought alone weren’t enough to exhaust the anger and the general combativity, nor did it make the strike “unpopular”.

January 9, the new slew of multi-sectoral demonstrations once again saw hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging the streets and still determinedly refusing the reform.

January 10, Philippe negotiated with the unions and announced “a constructive dialogue going forward”, promising to ask President Macron the next day if it was possible to withdraw the “age pivot”. All the unions saluted this great victory for the CFDT and UNSA, this small step forward for the CGT, FO and Solidaires, showing that the government had begun to retreat under the pressure of the street and the strikers of the transport sector.

The next day, another demonstration: Saturday January 11 in Marseille, the unions organised some entertainment at the end of the demonstration in order to make it impossible for any discussion to take place. In Paris they left the way clear for the police to use their tear gas, once again dispersing the throng and beating up some of the demonstrators. The unions don’t want discussion between workers. But above all, the turnout for the day was clearly much lower, the trains began to take to the rails again, fatigue was making itself felt, the ambience among the smaller crowds was less combative. The final blow could now be dealt: Prime Minister Philippe announced the withdrawal of the “age pivot”... temporarily. The timing was perfect.

The unions call for extension... of the defeat!

Now that the movement was running out of steam, when the striking rail workers were running out of money, when they were going back to work bit by bit, what did the “radical” unions do? They now called for the extension of the movement which was going into a reflux, haranguing the private sector to “take up the reins”, denouncing the “cowardice of the strike by proxy”! You only had to listen to Monsieur Melenchon (leader of the left-wing Parti France Insoumise) on January 9 on all the TV channels telling us “the strikes by proxy started well, now everyone should get going!”

Now, the unions can only talk about “sovereign general assemblies”, trying to make us think that only the former are the spokespeople of the workers and that if some continue to exhaust themselves in carrying on striking alone, they can do nothing: “it’s the GA and the base who decides if the rail workers want to lose more days of wages” (so said the boss of the CGT, Philippe Martinez on the television).

Now, they multiply the actions in order to demonstrate that the workers don’t want to strengthen and generalise the movement and in this way they put the defeat down to the workers! There were no less than 3 days of action in one week: January 14, 15 and 16, which the unions have called whereas the rail workers are gradually going back to work.

Now, the leader of the CGT, Monsieur Martinez, echoed Melenchon in denouncing police violence... violence which had been going on for months. And this while the unions up to now have allowed workers to be beaten up and dispersed at the end of demonstrations with tear-gas, without a word or any sort of protest. Melenchon now calls for the resignation of the Paris police boss so that the unions could say that they were against the repression of the strikers.

Now, the unions are playing the game of negotiating with the government in order to “take the hardship and the drudgery of work into account”, a new stage for the corporatist fragmentation of the movement when everyone is working under pressure and exploitation means hardship for everyone! This “aspect of negotiations” is seriously under consideration with a single objective: divide workers and even put them in competition in negotiations that are lost in advance, branch by branch, in order to determine if this job produces more hardship than the other. The “union front” will doubtless look good when they try to find out whether the CGT-railworkers and the CFDT-Carrefour workers have the most “hardship”.

The unions pulled the same trick at the time of the rail workers’ strike of winter 1986 by calling for the extension of the strike at the end of the movement, when the workers began to return to work[6]. In fact what these social firefighters are trying to do is extend and strengthen the defeat of the class. The aim is to give guarantees to government so that this reform can pass through parliament without difficulty (thus allowing the government to put through other attacks)!

No, the working class will not be made to feel guilty by the unions!

No, those who go back to work are not strike-breakers!

No, the sectors which haven’t joined the struggle do not lack courage and solidarity!

It’s the unions, hand-in-hand with the government who have planned and organised this defeat!

It’s the unions, hand-in-hand with the government, who have prevented all possible unity and all real extension of the movement!

The working class on the other hand must be conscious of what it has done. After ten years of weakness, following a long, exhausting and impotent movement called by the unions, in 2010, the workers have begun to raise their heads, to try to unite and to recognise each other as part of the same class. These last months have been animated by the development of solidarity between sectors and between generations!

Here’s where the victory of the movement lies, because the real gain of the struggle is the struggle itself where workers from all jobs, all generations finally come together in the same street combat against a ‘reform’ which is an attack against all the exploited! And this is what the government and the unions will try to wipe out in the weeks and months to come.

We must come together to debate, discuss, draw the lessons in order not to forget them and, at the time of tomorrow’s struggles be still more numerous and stronger by beginning to understand and to thwart the unions, these professionals ... of defeat. They will always be the last rampart of the state for the defence of capitalist order!

Lea, January 14, 2020

Translated from Revolution Internationale 480

Sudan is a country that has been ruined by over 40 years of “civil” wars in which the big imperialist powers have been involved from the start. The various armed conflicts have left over two million dead in South Sudan and Darfur, and led to a general impoverishment which has given rise to numerous hunger revolts against the military and Islamist regimes which have succeeded each other since “independence”.

Beginning in December 2018, Sudan has been shaken by a powerful social movement composed of strikes and massive demonstrations which have been violently repressed by the Islamo-military regime, resulting in hundreds dead and thousand imprisoned or “disappeared”. At the start the movement was spontaneous with a massive presence of workers and the poor: “people want bread (the price of which was tripled on 18 December), fuel, cash, medicines… as long as the petty bourgeoisie that was not interested in politics could prosper or just survive, the frustrations of the poorest layers of society were not enough to launch a big protest movement. But the economic paralysis obliged the white collar workers to line up with other workers in the food queues”[1]. In fact, massive strikes broke out again and again, paralysing the main cogs of the economy and administration, to the point where the military/state bodies dumped their great leader, Omar Al Bashir, in order to placate the “streets”. At the beginning this was a movement initiated by the working class which has a numerical weight in a country where the oil sector is a significant part of the economy, which came out onto the streets against the degradation of its living conditions.

However, a part of the bourgeoisie was very quickly able to exploit the weaknesses of this movement. In a country where the proletariat remains very isolated, has little experience of the traps lying in wait for it, the bourgeoisie did not have much difficulty in derailing this movement onto the terrain of settling scores between various factions vying for control of the state. The “democratic” forces around the Association of Professionals of Sudan (APS) were able to contain and channel the movement by calling for “the transfer of power to a transitional civil government in which the army would participate”. The social movement was rapidly taken over by bourgeois organisations whose primary aim was the installation of a “democratic government” that would do a better job of managing national capital. “In October 2016, a nucleus was formed around the grouping of three entities: The Central Committee of the Doctors, the Network of Journalists and the Democratic Alliance of Lawyers. At the end of 2018, the APS sealed the union of fifteen professional bodies which supported the demonstrators who had come onto the streets on 19 December to protest against the high cost of living, the day after a decision to triple the price of bread. Very quickly demands linked to the economic crisis and the fall in purchasing power evolved into calls for the fall of the regime”[2]. This Association also managed to federate all the opposition parties into a collation ranging from the Republican Party to the Stalinists and including the Islamists and certain armed groups.

The social movement thus became the open expression of a purely statist and bourgeois orientation, for which the working class would soon pay a price. Last August, a technocratic “transitional” government was named under the leadership of an executive organ composed of six civilians and six military leaders. When we know that the army leaders who had carried out the bloody repression against the demonstrations (between 180 and 250 deaths in less than six months) have maintained the same posts in the repressive apparatus (defence and interior) in the new “transitional” government, there can be no room for illusions about the ending of the poverty and killings suffered by the working class and the oppressed strata.

As for the hypocritical concert of applause from the media and all the big sharks who welcomed the so-called “change of regime”, like Macron who rushed to announce “unconditional support for the democratic transition” following a meeting with the new president Abdalla Hamdok on 30 September. We should not be fooled: the population faces more poverty and more massacres.

What’s more, Sudan is under the influence of a whole number of imperialist powers (especially those in the Gulf) which the regime depends on to survive: “In Sudan, the head of the Military Council of Transition (MCT) got the ‘green light’ from Saudi Arabia and its regional allies to launch the repression against the demonstrators who had for several weeks (since 6 April) been camping out in front of military HQ in Khartoum – this was underlined by a Sudanese military expert. According to this specialist who wants to remain anonymous, the destruction of the protest camp on 3 June had been discussed during the recent visit of general Abdul Fattah Al Bourhan, the leader of the MCT to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. And according to an Algerian-Sudanese analyst, on 21 April, Ryad and Abu Dhabi announced that they would pour 3 billion dollars into Sudan. They wouldn’t have done this without getting something in return. What they expected was not democracy but the preservation of their economic interests”[3].

Obviously, the intervention of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in Sudan can’t be explained by purely economic interests, but also, and above all, by their desire for hegemony in the face of their imperialist rivals. Sudan participates directly in the slaughter in Yemen, with 14,000 soldiers at the disposal of the murderous Saudi regime. We should also recall that the same coalitions of murderers are confronting each other in Sudan, Libya and Syria for the same reasons, i.e. the preservation of their sordid capitalist and imperialist interests.

Amina, November 2019

For years now the ruling class has been telling us that the working class does not exist, that we live in a “post-industrial” society, or that we are all “citizens” of democracy, or that we are just part of the “people”.  Or that the working class is hopelessly divided between those of us who are “native”, “white”, or “left behind” and those who are either supposed to be part of an “urban elite” or who are compelled to become immigrants and asylum seekers.

This ideological assault has been based on real, material factors: the defeat of important workers’ struggles in the 70s and 80s, the break-up and re-location of traditional centres of working class militancy, especially in western Europe and the USA, the re-organisation of working conditions aimed at persuading us that we are all “self-employed” today, and the growing tendency for capitalist society to fragment into a war of each against all at every level. Furthermore, the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989-91, the so-called “death of communism”, gave a tremendous boost to the idea that the class struggle is a thing of the past, and that, if it does exist, it can only offer the perspective of a society even more repressive and poverty-stricken than the one we are already facing. The fact that what collapsed in the east was really a highly statified form of capitalism was, of course, entirely buried in this torrent of lies.

A torrent aimed at hiding the simple truth: that the working class will exist as long as capitalism exists, and because capitalism is by definition a global system the working class is by definition an international exploited class which in every country has the same interest in resisting its exploitation.

It has proved extremely difficult for the working class to emerge from the reflux in its struggles that began at the end of the 80s, and during these decades, the very sense of belonging to a world-wide class has to a large extent been lost. But the class struggle never entirely disappears. It often goes underground, but that doesn’t mean that workers have stopped thinking, or feeling angry about the continuing attack on their living and working conditions, or reflecting on the increasingly catastrophic state of the capitalist world order. And from time to time, the struggle flares up again, reminding us of the prediction of the Communist Manifesto, that “society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”. In France in 2006, the students, now increasingly the workers of tomorrow, led a struggle against the “First Employment Contract” or CPE which was a direct attempt by the government to drastically reduce job security for those starting work. They held general assemblies in the universities to organise their movement and appealed for the solidarity of the employed workers, the workers of all generations, and the marginalised proletarians of the “banlieu”, the ghettoised outer suburbs. The government, haunted by the memories of May 68 in France, of a generalised strike movement, backed down and withdrew the CPE. In 2011, the “Indignados” in Spain were largely made up of young proletarians and their indignation was directed against the lack of any prospects exacerbated by the 2008 “financial crisis”. They too came together in mass assemblies, this time in the city squares, where debates were held not only about the immediate methods of the struggle but also about the nature of the society we are living in and the possibilities of an alternative.

The Indignados’ struggle, for all its importance, suffered from a key weakness: it was not able to make effective links to the workplaces, to the employed working class, and it was thus vulnerable to the myth that it was really a struggle of the “citizens” for a more responsive form of bourgeois democracy. And indeed, in the past year, as the economic crisis of capitalism continues to deepen, we have seen a succession of social revolts in which the working class has been drowned in the mass of the people, movements which have further distanced workers from their specific class interests.

In the central countries, the clearest example of such an “interclassist” movement was the Yellow Vests in France. Many workers took part in the Yellow Vest protests as individuals, but it was led by small entrepreneurs and dominated by their demands (such as the reduction of taxes on fuel). Above all, it was entirely comfortable with presenting itself as a movement of French citizens, parading under the national flag and demanding “more democracy” (as well as raising openly nationalist demands for the limitation of immigration).

The Yellow Vest movement, breaking out in a country which has so often been the theatre of radical proletarian movements, was a measure of the disorientation of the working class and posed a further threat to its capacity to recover its class identity.

But it is precisely here that we can begin to grasp the importance of the recent strike movement in France, principally involving railway workers, health workers and other parts of the public sector. This was a movement which was undoubtedly a response to a direct attack on workers’ living conditions – the so-called “Pension Reforms” demanded by the Macron government. It was centred on the workplaces where the working class is most obviously a living social force, but at the same time, there was a very strong push towards solidarity between the different sectors. There were also some signs – especially among the railway workers – of a capacity to take action outside the trade unions, even if, as we explain in the article “Government and unions hand in hand to implement the pension ‘reform’”, the unions retained an overall control over the movement.

The significance of this movement was above all that it gives us a glimpse of how the working class can regain its sense of being a class – as some of the banners on the strike demonstrations proclaimed, “We exist”, “We are here”. It is the response of workers to the attacks of capital demanded by the remorseless economic crisis which will enable them to recover their class identity, an indispensable basis for the development of a revolutionary consciousness, the recognition that the working class is not only collectively exploited by capital, but also that it is the only force in society that can offer a real alternative to capital, a new society where the exploitation of labour power, like previous forms of slavery, has been banished once and for all. 

Amos, 16.2.20

Before the tidal wave of the Covid-19 crisis swept across the planet, the struggles of the working class in France, Finland, the US and elsewhere were indications of a new mood in the proletariat, of an unwillingness to bow down before the demands imposed by a mounting economic crisis. In France in particular, we could discern signs of a recovery of class identity that has been eroded by decades of capitalist decomposition, by the rise of a populist current which falsifies the real divisions in society and which, in France, has taken to the streets wearing a Yellow Vest.

In this sense, the Covid-19 pandemic could not have come at a worse time for the struggle of the proletariat: just as it begins to pour onto the streets, to come together in demonstrations to resist economic attacks whose origins in the capitalist crisis are hard to conceal, the majority of the working class has had little choice but to retreat back to the individual household, to avoid any large gatherings, to “self-isolate” under the watching eye of a fully-empowered state apparatus which has been able to issue loud calls for “national unity” in the face of an invisible enemy which – we are told -  does not discriminate between rich and poor, boss and worker.

The difficulties facing the working class are real and profound, and we will examine them further in this article. But what is in some ways remarkable is the fact that, despite the omnipresent fear of contagion, despite the apparent omnipotence of the capitalist state, the signs of class combativity that we saw in the winter have not simply evaporated but, in an initial phase and faced with the shocking negligence and unpreparedness of the bourgeoisie, we have seen very widespread defensive movements of the working class. Workers across the world have refused to go like “lambs to the slaughter” but have waged a determined struggle in defence of their health, their very lives, demanding adequate safety measures or the closing down of enterprises which are not engaged in essential production (such as car plants).

The main characteristics of these struggles are as follows.

They have taken place on a global scale, given the global nature of the pandemic, but one of their most important elements is that they have been more evident in the capitalist heartlands, particularly in the countries which have been hit hardest by the disease : in Italy, for example, the Internationalist Communist Tendency mentions spontaneous strikes in Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and Puglia[1]. It was the Italian factory workers in particular who first raised the slogan “we are not lambs to the slaughter”. In Spain, strikes at Mercedes, FIAT, Balay domestic appliances; workers at Telepizza, on strike against victimisation of workers who did not want to risk their lives delivering pizzas, and further protests by delivery workers in Madrid. Perhaps most important of all – not least because it challenges the image of an American working class that has rallied uncritically behind the demagogy of Donald Trump -  there have been widespread struggles in the USA: strikes at FIAT in Indiana, Warren Trucks, by bus drivers in Detroit and Birmingham Alabama, in ports, restaurants, in food distribution, sanitation, construction; strikes at Amazon (which has been hit by strikes in quite a few other countries as well), Whole Foods, Instacart, Walmart, FedEx, etc. We have also seen a large number of rent strikes in the US. This is a form of struggle which, while not automatically involving proletarians, is also by no means alien to the traditions of the class (we could cite, for example, the Glasgow rent strikes that were an integral part of the workers’ struggles during World War One, or the Merseyside rent strike in 1972 which accompanied the first international wave of struggles after 1968). And in the US in particular there is a real threat of eviction hanging over many of the “locked down” sectors of the working class.

In France and Britain, such movements have been less widespread, but we have seen unofficial walk-outs by postal workers and by builders, warehouse workers and bin collectors in Britain and, in France, strikes at the Saint Nazaire shipyards. Amazon in Lille and Montelimar, at ID logistics... In Latin America, examples include Chile (Coca Cola), port workers in Argentina and Brazil, packers in Venezuela. In Mexico, “Strikes have spread across the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, which borders El Paso, Texas, involving hundreds of maquiladora workers demanding the closure of non-essential factories, which have been kept open despite the growing death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, including 13 employees at the US-owned Lear car seat plant. The strikes… follow similar actions by workers at the border cities of Matamoros, Mexicali, Reynosa and Tijuana”[2] . In Turkey, protest strikes at the Sarar textile factory (against the advice of the unions), Galataport shipyard, and by post and telegraph workers. In Australia, strikes by port and distribution workers. The list could easily be extended.

A number of the strikes have been spontaneous, such as in Italy, in the US car plants and Amazon centres, and the unions have been widely criticised and sometimes frontally opposed for their open collaboration with management. According to an article on libcom, which provides a broad panorama on recent struggles in the US[3]: “Workers at Fiat Chrysler’s Sterling Heights (SHAP) and Jefferson North (JNAP) assembly plants in Metro Detroit took matters into their own hands last night and this morning and forced a shutdown of production to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The work stoppages began at Sterling Heights last night, only hours after the United Auto Workers and the Detroit automakers reached a rotten deal [20] to keep plants open and operating during the global pandemic…The same day, scores of workers at the Lear Seating plant in Hammond, Indiana refused to work, forcing the shutdown of the parts factory and the nearby Chicago Assembly Plant”. The article also contains an interview with an autoworker:

“The UAW should be actually fighting for us to get off of work. The union and the company care more about making trucks than about everybody’s health. I feel like they aren’t going to do anything unless we take action. We have got to band together. They can’t fire us all”.

These movements are on a basic class terrain: around working conditions (demand for adequate safety equipment) but also sick pay, unpaid wages, against sanctions against workers who refused to work in unsafe conditions, etc. They show a refusal of sacrifice which is in continuity with the capacity of the class to resist the drive towards war, an underlying factor in the world situation since the revival of class struggles in 1968.

Health workers, although they have shown an extraordinary sense of responsibility which is an element of proletarian solidarity, have also voiced their discontent with their conditions, their anger with the hypocritical appeals and praise by governments, even if this has mainly taken the form of individual protests and statements[4]; but there have been collective actions, including strikes,  in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea, and demonstrations by nurses in New York.

The pandemic crisis as a blow to the class struggle

But 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. Thus the struggles that we have seen have necessarily been limited either to “essential” workers who are fighting for safer working conditions – and these categories are bound to remain a minority of the class, however vital their role -  or by workers who very early on have questioned whether their work was really necessary, such as the autoworkers in Italy and the US; and thus their central demand was to be sent home (on company or state pay rather than being made redundant, as many have). But this demand, however necessary, could only involve a kind of tactical retreat in the struggle, rather than its intensification or extension. There have been attempts – eg among the Amazon workers in the US – to hold struggle meetings online, to picket while observing safe distances, and so on, but there is no avoiding the fact that conditions of isolation and shut down pose a huge barrier to any immediate development of the struggle.

And in conditions of isolation it is harder to resist the gigantic barrage of propaganda and ideological obfuscation.

Hymns to national unity are being sung by the media every day, based on the idea that the virus is an enemy which does not discriminate: in the UK the fact that Boris Johnson and Prince Charles were infected by the virus is presented as the proof of this[5]. The reference to war, the spirit of the “blitz” during World War 2 (itself the product of a major propaganda exercise aimed at hiding any social discontent) is incessant in the UK, notably with the plaudits given to a 100 year old air force veteran who raised millions for the NHS by completing 100 lengths of his large garden. In France, Macron has also presented himself as a war leader; in the US, Trump has been at pains to define Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus”, diverting attention from his administration’s woeful handling of the crisis and playing on the habitual theme of “America First”. Everywhere – including in the Schengen area of the European Union - the closing of borders has been highlighted as the best means to contain the contagion. Governments of national unity have been formed where apparently insoluble division once reigned (as in Belgium), or opposition parties become more than ever “loyal” to the national “war effort”.

The appeal to nationalism goes hand in with the portrayal of the state as the only force that can protect the citizens, whether through the vigorous enforcement of the lock down or in its kinder, gentler guise as the provider of aid to those in need, whether the trillions being handed out to maintain laid off workers as well as the self-employed whose businesses have had to close, or the health services administered by the state. In Britain, the “National Health Service” has long been a sacred icon of almost the whole bourgeoisie, but above all of the left which sees it as its special achievement, since it was introduced by the post-war Labour government which presents it as somehow outside the capitalist commodification of existence, despite the evil encroachments of private entrepreneurs. This vaunting of the NHS and similar institutions are supported by the weekly rituals of applause and the incessant praising of the health workers as heroes, above all by the same politicians who have been instrumental in running the health services into the ground in the last decade and more.

According to the left wing Labour politician Michael Foot, Britain was never closer to socialism than during the Second World War, and today, when the state has to set aside concerns about immediate profitability to keep society together, the old illusion that “we are all socialists today” (which was an idea commonly expressed by the ruling class during the revolutionary wave after 1917) has been given a new lease of life by massive spending sprees being imposed on governments by the Covid-19 crisis. The influential leftist philosopher Slavo Zizek, in an interview on Youtube titled “Communism or barbarism”[6], seems to imply that the bourgeoisie itself is now being obliged to treat money as a mere accounting mechanism, a form of labour time voucher, totally detached from actual value. In sum, the barbarians are becoming communists. In reality, the increasing separation of money from value is the sign of the complete exhaustion of the capitalist social relation and thus the necessity for communism, but the flouting of the laws of the market by the bourgeois state is anything but a step towards a higher mode of production: it is the last rampart of this decaying order. And it is the function of capitalism’s left wing above all to conceal this from the working class, to divert it from its own path, which demands breaking out of the grip of the state and preparing its revolutionary destruction.

But in the age of populism the left does not have a monopoly on fake criticisms of the system. The undoubted reality that the state will everywhere use this crisis to ramp up its surveillance and control of the population – and thus the reality of a ruling class which ceaselessly “conspires” to maintain its class rule – is giving rise to a new crop of “conspiracy theories”, according to which the real danger of Covid-19 is dismissed or denied outright: it is a “Scamdemic” backed by a sinister cabal of globalists to impose their agenda of “One World Government”. And these theories, which are particularly influential in the US, are not limited to cyber space. The Trump faction in the US has been stirring the pot, claiming that there is evidence that Covid-19 escaped from a Wuhan laboratory – even if the US intelligence services have already ruled this out. China has responded with similar accusations against the US. There have also been large protests in the US demanding a return to work and an ending of the lock-down, egged on by Trump and often inspired by the ambient conspiracy theories (as well as by religious fantasies: the disease is real, but we can beat it with the power of prayer). There have also been some racist attacks on people from the far east, identified as being responsible for the virus. There is no doubt that such ideologies affect parts of the working class, particularly those who are not getting any kind of financial support from employers or the state, but the back-to-work demonstrations in the US seem to have been led mainly by petty bourgeois elements anxious to get their businesses running again.  As we have seen, many workers have fought to go in the opposite direction!

This vast ideological offensive reinforces the objective atomisation, imposed by the lock-down, the fear that anyone outside your household could be a source of illness and death. And the fact that the lock-down will probably last for some time, that there will be no return to normal and that there may be further periods of confinement if the disease goes through a second wave, will tend to exacerbate the difficulties facing the working class. And we cannot afford to forget that these difficulties did not begin with the lock-down, but have a long history behind them, above all since the onset of the period of decomposition after 1989, which has seen a profound retreat both in combativity and consciousness, a growing loss of class identity, an exacerbation of the tendency towards “each for themselves” at every level. Thus the pandemic, as a clear product of the process of decomposition, marks a new stage in the process, an intensification of all its most characteristic elements[7].

The necessity for political reflection and debate

Nevertheless, the Covid-19 crisis has also focused attention on the political dimension to an unprecedented degree: daily conversation as well as the incessant chatter of the media is almost entirely centred  on the pandemic and the lock-down, the response of the governments, the plight of the health and other “essential” workers and the problems of day to day survival for a large part of the population as a whole. No doubt the market of ideas has to a large extent been cornered by the various forms of the dominant ideology, but there are still corners where a significant minority can pose fundamental questions about the nature of this society. The question of what is “essential” in social life, of who does the most vital work and yet is paid so miserably for it, the negligence of governments, the absurdity of national divisions in the face of a global pandemic, of what kind of world will we live in post-Covid: these are issues that cannot be completely hidden or diverted. And people are not entirely atomised: the locked in are using social media, internet forums, video or audio conferencing not only to continue wage labour or keep in touch with family and friends, but also to discuss the situation and ask questions about its real significance. Physically (if at the required social distance…) meeting residents from the apartment block or neighbourhood can also become an arena for discussion, even if we shouldn’t confuse the weekly ritual of applause with real solidarity or local mutual aid groups with struggling against the system.

In France, a slogan that became popular was “capitalism is the virus, revolution is the vaccine”. In other words, minorities of the class are taking discussion and reflection to their logical conclusion. The “vanguard” of this process  is made up of those elements, some of them very young, who have clearly understood that capitalism is totally bankrupt and that the only alternative for humanity is the world proletarian revolution – in other words, by those who are moving towards communist positions, and thus the tradition of the communist left. The appearance of this generation of people “in research” for communism poses the existing groups of the communist left with an immense responsibility in the process of constructing a communist organisation which will be able to play a role in the future struggles of the proletariat.

The defensive struggles we have seen in the early stage of the pandemic, the process of reflection which has been going on during the lock-down, are indications of the intact potential of the class struggle, which may also be “locked down” for a  considerable period but which in the longer term could mature to the point where it can express itself openly. The inability to re-integrate large numbers of those laid off at the height of the crisis, the necessity for the bourgeoisie to claw back the “gifts” it has been handing out in the interests of social stability, the new round of austerity which the ruling class will be obliged to impose: this will certainly be the reality of the next stage of the Covid-19 story, which is simultaneously a story of capitalism’s historic economic crisis and its advancing decomposition. A story too of sharpening imperialist tensions, as various powers seek to use the Covid-19 crisis to further disrupt the global pecking order: in particular, there may be a new offensive by Chinese capitalism aimed at challenging the USA as the world’s leading power. In any case, Trump’s attempts to blame the pandemic on China already heralds an increasingly aggressive attitude on the part of the US. Workers will be asked to make sacrifices to “reconstruct” the post-Covid world, and to defend the national economy against the threat from the outside.

Again we must caution against any immediatism here. A probable danger – given the current weakness in class identity and the growing misery affecting all layers of the world population -  will be that the response to further attacks on living standards could take the form of inter-class, “popular” revolts in which workers don’t appear as a distinct class with their own methods and demands.  We saw a wave of such revolts prior to the lock-down and, even during the lock-down, they have already reappeared in the Lebanon and elsewhere, highlighting the fact that this kind of reaction is a particular problem in the more “peripheral” regions of the capitalist system. A recent UN report warned that parts of the world, especially in Africa and in war-ravaged countries like Yemen and Afghanistan, will experience famines of “biblical proportions” as a result of the pandemic crisis, and this will also tend to increase the danger of desperate reactions which offer no perspective[8].

We also know that massive unemployment can, in an initial period, tend to paralyse the working class: the bourgeoisie can use it to discipline those at work and to create divisions between employed and unemployed, and it is in any case intrinsically harder to fight the closure of enterprises than it is to resist attacks on wages and conditions. And we know that, in periods of open economic crisis, the bourgeoisie will always look for alibis which get the capitalist system off the hook: in the early 70s, it was the “oil crisis”; in 2008 “the greedy bankers”. Today, if you’ve lost the job, it will be blamed on the virus. But these excuses are needed precisely because the economic crisis, and in particular mass unemployment, is an indictment of the capitalist mode of production, whose laws, in the end, prevent it from feeding its slaves.

More than ever, revolutionaries must be patient.  As the Communist Manifesto puts it, communists are distinguished by their ability to understand “the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement”. The mass struggles of our class, their generalisation and politicisation, is a process that develops over a long period and goes through many advances and retreats. But we are not merely engaging in wish-fulfilment when we insist, as we do at the end of our international leaflet on the pandemic, that the “future belongs to the class struggle”[9].

Amos

In Britain, the round-the-clock propaganda of the bourgeoisie about the Covid-19 pandemic has a number of themes, but none so repeated, and untrue, as "We are all in this together", "We're all in the same boat". Prime Minister Boris Johnson has even gone so far as to reject a cornerstone of Thatcherism and say "One thing I think the coronavirus crisis has already proved is that there really is such a thing as society." In reality, while anyone can get the virus, including Johnson, and the Health Secretary, and the Chief Medical Officer, and Prince Charles, class society continues, and the crisis impacts on the health service, on the political life of the bourgeoisie, on the economy, and on the proletariat in profound, but different ways.

The pandemic is a disaster for the economy, it will further deepen the disorientation of the working class and worsens its conditions, and has stimulated propaganda for national unity, which the bourgeoise will try and run with as it blames everything on Covid-19. The one thing that they should not be allowed to get away with is the responsibility of the ruling class for letting the coronavirus rip through the population. There are no reliable statistics because there has been so little testing done; far more people will have been affected than the official figures show. But responsibility lies with the bourgeoisie, as already there are predictions that Britain will have the greatest number of deaths in Europe, despite having advance warning when the death toll was mounting in China, Iran, Italy and Spain.

The health crisis was predicted

The health service has not been able to cope with the developing crisis. Back in January the medical journal The Lancet said “Preparedness plans should be readied for deployment at short notice, including securing supply chains of pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment, hospital supplies and the necessary human resources to deal with the consequences of a global outbreak of this magnitude.”(20/1/20). This was not done and the Lancet's editor attacked this failure "It failed, in part, because ministers didn’t follow WHO’s advice to ‘test, test, test’ every suspected case. They didn’t isolate and quarantine. They didn’t contact trace. These basic principles of public health and infectious disease control were ignored, for reasons that remain opaque. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS.” And as for the measures that were put in place “This plan, agreed far too late in the course of the outbreak, has left the NHS wholly unprepared for the surge of severely and critically ill patients that will soon come” (27/3/20).

The failings of the NHS are not new. Over the last 30 years the number of hospital beds has gone down from 299,000 to 142,000. Germany has 621 hospital beds per 100,000 people where Britain has 228 beds per 100,000. Germany has 28,000 intensive care beds - soon set to double - compared with Britain’s 4,100. In Britain one in eight nursing posts is vacant. Among developed countries Britain is second lowest of all developed countries for doctors and nurses per head of population—2.8 and 7.9 per 1,000.

One question that is asked over and over is "How come Germany can test 500,000 a week but the UK can't even do 10,000 a day?". There is a growing storm over this as it becomes more and more clear how ill-prepared the health service is. Also, the question of personal protective equipment has become a major concern for health and social care workers. It's not only the lack of provision but the downgrading of the level of PPE to be worn when nursing Covid patients. Initially the NHS was using PPE recommended by the WHO but then changed to their own criteria which has led to a widespread distrust. There's also the scandal of the PPE that was sent by Britain to China early on in the outbreak, despite supplies in Britain being seriously limited.

And the conversion of exhibition centres in London and Birmingham to become temporary hospitals, the return of retired health workers, along with the volunteers who will perform non-medical tasks, only goes to show the holes in the NHS

The NHS's lack of readiness was known about well in advance. In 2016 the government ran a 3-day exercise (Exercise Cygnus) to see how prepared hospitals, health authorities and other various government bodies would be seven weeks into dealing with a novel respiratory flu pandemic. The NHS failed the test and the report was never published. The Daily Telegraph (28/3/20) described the results of the exercise: "The peak of the epidemic had not yet arrived but local resilience forums, hospitals and mortuaries across the country were already being overwhelmed. There was not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for the nation's doctors and nurses. The NHS was about to 'fall over' due to a shortage of ventilators and critical care beds. Morgues were set to overflow, and it had become terrifyingly evident that the government’s emergency messaging was not getting traction with the public." Among the reasons given for not publishing the report was that the results were "too terrifying" and there were "national security" concerns.

Among the gaps identified were the shortage of intensive care beds and of personal protective equipment, but government austerity measures prevented any action. Although the report has not been published, its implications were taken on by a number of bodies, for example it appears that, if NHS senior management are unable to work, the military will be brought on to coordinate the healthcare system. As the NHS becomes more and more stretched both military and volunteer resources are already being used as it struggles to cope. It also needs to be said that it is not just the NHS that is being stretched, the whole system of social care is being tested severely. The fact that the number of deaths in care homes has been massively underestimated is a reminder that it is not just the NHS but a whole range of institutions that are at breaking point.

After letting it happen, the bourgeoisie was helpless in response

While the ruling class of most countries responded in similar ways to the growing pandemic, Britain, while not behaving like Trump in the US, or Bolsonaro in Brazil, was different. As an article in the Observer (15 March 2020) put it: “Rather than learning from other countries and following the WHO advice, which comes from experts with decades of experience in tackling outbreaks across the world, the UK has decided to follow its own path. This seems to accept that the virus is unstoppable and will probably become an annual, seasonal infection. The plan, as explained by the chief science adviser, is to work towards ‘herd immunity’, which is to have the majority of the population contract the virus, develop antibodies and then become immune to it."

This was the idea, linked to the government’s Brexit ideology, that Britain could go it alone, with its own experts, ignoring WHO guidelines. In particular this idea that Covid-19 could be let loose, and a "herd immunity" would develop among those who survived, would be at the expense of those who would die. This utterly cynical approach would supposedly protect the economy and, if a lot of pensioners were to die, then, "too bad". Whether those last two words were ever uttered, they certainly summarised the attitude of those in government. The government, guided by its chosen experts, had a policy of the survival of the fittest, which would be a death sentence for the most vulnerable, the old, the overweight and those with underlying medical conditions. In February Johnson had criticised "bizarre autarkic rhetoric" and defended "the right of the populations of the Earth to buy and sell freely among each other". However, after an Imperial College report suggested that the government's policy would mean 250,000 dead, the government retreated from this position. On 16 March Johnson appeared on television saying that all non-essential contact with others should stop and that people should now stay at home. The fact that some close to the government were then saying that fewer than 20,000 deaths would be “a very good result” for the UK shows how the bourgeoisie was still playing with people's lives as though it was all some macabre sport.

Critics of government policy have attributed this to the specific negligence of the Tories, without any recognition that the response of the bourgeoisie internationally has been inadequate and overwhelmed, regardless of what has been said in praise of Germany, South Korea etc. As time has gone on the British state's response has more come to resemble that of other countries. However, populism still has its influence. For example, the UK was in negotiations with the EU to buy 8,000 ventilators, but walked away because (said a spokesman for the Prime Minster) the UK is "no longer a member" and is "making our own efforts". Later the EU was blamed for a "communication problem". The implications of this will soon be seen. For the old or those with pre-existing conditions, the approach of the bourgeoisie, in the light of the backlog in ventilator production, will be to treat the young and leave the rest. 

Many of those same critics of undoubted government complicity and arrogance during the current crisis invite us to focus ire on the newly elected Tory government, as well as its right-wing predecessors. This ignores the historic and continuing role of 'Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition’, the Labour Party, in reducing ‘public services’, for example by vastly expanding the Private Finance Initiative policy which saw an estimated £80 billion drained from NHS resources between 1997-2010, accounting for up to one sixth of local health authority (Trust) budgets and leaving debts to be paid up until 2050.

For all the past antagonism from Johnson/Cummings towards the civil service it is clear that the role of the state has been accepted in this time of crisis, in the measures that have been adopted. The slogan "Protect the NHS" has been touted at the same time as blaming 'selfish individuals' for stockpiling food, hand sanitiser, or toilet rolls, or going to work if it's not essential, or going too far for exercise. In the spirit of the wartime campaign against the black market, the attacks on petty profiteering will distract from the real culprits - the capitalist class.

One foreign import that the British bourgeoise has supported is the round of applause for health workers. This has been taken on and institutionalised for 8 pm every Thursday. It costs nothing and adds to the "Protect the NHS" campaign. But what is the NHS that is being protected? Its inadequacy has been exposed from the start. The unprotected staff are treated with contempt, the shortage of ventilators, PPE, testing etc all show how limited a service the NHS is capable of providing. The fact that the government had to appeal for volunteers shows the enormous gaps in the NHS. When 750,000 people responded to the call this was greeted in the popular press with praise for their humanity: "A people's army of kindness" "a nation of heroes" "An army of kindhearts". For the volunteers it is no doubt an expression of a desire to help out in a time of need. In practice, the need to draw on the resources of the army and masses of volunteers shows that it's the myth of the NHS that's being protected. There are no heroes, only a seriously overstretched workforce that is compelled to work in hopelessly inadequate conditions

While in other countries the imagery of war has been employed, in Britain the spirit of the Blitz during the Second World War is evoked. The UK is under attack from an invisible enemy and everyone is supposed to be 'doing their bit'. Whether in the NHS or volunteering or undertaking some other essential work or just staying at home, we're all supposed to be pulling together … behind the bourgeoise that is responsible for thousands of tragedies. 

The state rushes to the rescue of the economy

With the closing of all non-essential operations and people told to stay at home, all sorts of businesses are faced with going bust, and workers are faced with unemployment and trying to claim benefits, pay the rent, and keep up payments on debts already accumulated. Predictions for the increase in unemployment include Nomura's of 8 percent which suggests an additional 1.4 million, making a total of 2.75 million by June.

As for GDP Nomura suggests it will crash by 13.5 percent, others are looking at a 15 per cent decline. The government has allocated the huge sum of £266 billion this year to tackle all eventualities stemming from Covid-19. This could mean borrowing at least £200 billion and that rate UK debt could reach £2 trillion within 12 months, something the March 11 budget had not expected to happen until 2025. This level of borrowing, equivalent to 9 per cent of GDP, would wipe out almost all the debt reductions from the last decade of austerity.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has speculated that the UK economy could shrink by 35% this spring, with unemployment at 10%, and, with public borrowing rising at the fastest rates since the Second World War, debt to grow beyond 100% of GDP. The deepest recession in more than 300 years has been predicted.

The Bank of England has cut interest rates twice to a marginal rate of 0.1%. The Bank's quantitative easing programme, which basically means printing money to stimulate the economy, has been extended to £645 billion.

State intervention in the economy is not some sort of 'left turn' as claimed by the leftists, but capitalism's inevitable response to each twist of the economic crisis. Among the measures the government has taken are:

- The government will cover 80 percent of employers’ wage bills in order to keep employees, up to £2,500 per month.

- Similar arrangements for the self-employed

- VAT invoices worth £30 billion to be deferred

- £7 billion increase in welfare benefits

- £1 billion increase in housing assistance to help tenants;

- A budget stimulus of £30 billion, including £2 billion directly for the fight against coronaviruses, with more money for the NHS

- Government-backed loan guarantees worth £330 billion, or 15% of GDP

- £20 billion package for business, including 12 months leave for all businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality industries, and cash grants up to £25,000 for small businesses;

- Three-month mortgage leave for homeowners;

- Three-month ban on evictions of tenants.

This is just the start. The Johnson government had already begun a spending regime that had not been costed; now a whole raft of measures is being added. The economy is taking a big hit, with no concern for where the money will come from. What is certain is that the working class will have to pay the bill. Whatever form they take; the austerity measures of the last 10 years will seem insignificant in comparison. But whereas previous attacks could be blamed on 'the bankers' and 'neo-liberalism', future attacks will be put down to the impact of the pandemic.

Condition of the working class

It should be said that work – and exploitation - hasn’t actually ceased in GB. Hospitals and care homes have become like factories facing speed-ups in demand for their services. Public transport bus drivers have been notable victims of the virus and hauliers continue to bring in supplies. Food and clothing distribution centres have seen protests against insufficient protection. Defence workers – on the Clyde and elsewhere – have been asked to return to ‘sanitised’ work stations with only 2-metre ‘distancing tape’ for protection in the name of ‘national security’ while supermarket staff have been hailed as ‘proud patriotic proletarians’ doing their bit for Queen and country.

However from the point of view of immediate survival, many millions more workers have little alternative than to go along with the instruction for everyone, except for 'essential workers', to stay at home, and, when out, to practice 'social distancing'. But at the same time these conditions function as a great barrier to the development of any open resistance to the system. This enforced atomisation for millions goes along with the heroification of those who work in the NHS. While association is part of the condition of the working class, currently a great part of the work force is stuck at home subject to the 24-hour media propaganda. We're constantly told that it's all the fault of a coronavirus, not something that stems from the decomposition of a mode of production that's been in decline for more than a century.

Workers are likely, understandably, to be preoccupied with their immediate interests. Should I travel? Where can I get food? How do I keep distance between me and others who might be carriers? If laid off, where's money going to come from?

Universal Credit is the benefit to apply for, but applications have overwhelmed the DWP. In a fortnight 950,000 workers applied for UC. Workers have rung the DWP up to 100 times without being able to speak to anyone. The vast majority failed to get through because of the volume attempting the same thing. And for those who do succeed there's a wait of at least five weeks.

In surveys 1.5 million adults say they cannot get enough food, and 3 million say they have had to borrow money because of a change of circumstances brought on by the crisis.

Everything that flows from the shutdown and social distancing will – for the time being - make it harder for workers to develop a collective response. It will increase a feeling of atomisation and create a real barrier to a sense of class identity. Instead, we are being turned into an army of individual, applicants for credit from the capitalist state.

All these basic concerns of workers are likely to come first, before reflecting on the nature of the social crisis or the need to overthrow capitalism. And the leftists still exist to contribute to the disorientation of the working class. The SWP, for instance, criticises Corbyn, Labour and the TUC for expressing their agreement with government measures while demanding that the state "take over essential services from private bosses to make sure people get what they need". There is also the attempt to identify individuals as being responsible, as in Alan Thornett (Socialist Resistance) who said the "The depth and severity of the crisis we are about to face in Britain was made in Westminster by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings". Others have called for the resignation of the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. Looking for a culprit amongst the ruling class – as if the replacement of some of these 'leaders' would change anything – only serves to detract from a reflection on the underlying crisis of capitalism as a world system.

The head of the International Red Cross has said that as millions have either seen a fall in their income or are reliant on state benefits, that "civil unrest" is “weeks” away. He said that unrest is about to “explode at any moment” as the largest cities across Europe are struggling with either no or low incomes due to the pandemic. “This is a social bomb that can explode at any moment, because they don’t have any way to have an income.” “In the most difficult neighbourhoods of the biggest cities I am afraid that in a few weeks we will have social problems."  In Britain, there have been some disputes over workers' safety, notably wildcats by postal workers concerned about safety in Scotland and both northern and southern England [1] while binmen in Kent threatened strike action over similar concerns. But to our knowledge these actions are not on the scale of the strikes that have been witnessed in Italy, Spain, or the USA for example. And we should be aware that 'social unrest', particularly because of the characteristics of the period of social decomposition, could take any form, not necessarily that of workers' struggle on a class terrain.

On the other hand, we are seeing a certain amount of reflection on the situation. While the squabbles among the bourgeoisie continue over who is to be blamed for shortages, the state of the NHS, or changing government policy, there is a searching minority that understands that capitalism as a system lies at the basis of the pandemic, and is open to discussion on the nature of capitalism and beyond. The issue of the pandemic is something that can't be avoided as every aspect of social life has been affected and profound questions have been raised about the reality of capitalist society. And this reflection goes together with a great deal of anger over the way that workers have been treated, old people left to die, health workers left unprotected. There is the prospect that these elements could combine in future struggles. For the moment the need for discussion is paramount - not, at present, face-to-face, but in online forums and channels. Capitalism is exposed for what it is, and tries to cover itself with lies. Workers can develop the capacity to see through the propaganda and realise that only the working class can halt capitalism's passage to annihilation.

Barrow, 19 April 2020

[1] https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Going-Postal-spring-2020.pdf [30]

A close sympathiser of the ICC responds to an attack on our organisation by the so-called "International Group of the Communist Left"

Because of the importance and seriousness of the matter, the ICC has published an appeal for the defence of the proletarian milieu [1] against the activities of an element engaged in a very harmful activity and who systematically refused to clarify his behaviour. A few days after the ICC had published its appeal - in English, French, German and Spanish (at least, to my knowledge) - the “International Group of the Communist Left” (formerly the “Internal Fraction of the ICC”) published a statement in defence of this element [2] and, above all, as an attack on the ICC [3].

As an expression of solidarity, I will give my comments on certain passages of the declaration of the IGCL:

“The same is true of its only ’political’ reproach: Nuevo Curso has not responded to criticism, including ours, of its historical reference to the Trotskyist Left Opposition of the 1930s. But what authority can the ICC have in this matter, when it stubbornly refuses to respond publicly to those, of which we are also a part, who point to its successive and grave abandonments of Marxist principles?”

This is the logic of an ‘eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. According to the IGCL, the ICC doesn’t have the right to demand a reply from Nuevo Curso, because the ICC itself does not publicly respond to the IGCL, or others whose name it does not even mention. To begin with, it is a big lie that the ICC has not replied to the IGCL (and you can check this on the ICC’s website [4]), and finally, this ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ is a principle completely alien to the working class. It would be very important if elements of the proletarian milieu would call for a debate on certain issues, even if in the logic of their internal approach they, for the time being, refuse to respond to others.

“As we pointed out last summer: "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. It does not matter for the ICC that the GCCF is opposed to this position, the very fact it has succeeded in getting them to accept a meeting on this theme, instead of political issues related to the Communist Left’s experience and programmatic lessons, is already in itself a trap for new forces without experience."

The ICC sought to discuss this important issue as a matter of priority in order to clarify a major divergence with the GCCF (without even omitting "political issues related to the Communist Left’s experience and programmatic lessons", as if there would be any contradiction between the two! This is precisely one of the questions raised by this group!). According to the ICC, the GCCF’s close contact with parasitism is a major threat to the group. The ICC seeks to encourage discussion and clarification, and if the GCCF expressed a disagreement it is not something negative that closes the debate once and for all.

The ICC did not ‘make the GCCF accept’ anything, they decided to accept in principle the discussion and finally closed it. The ICC has neither the means nor the intention to force acceptance or to confuse the debate, but sought to continue it in order to achieve the greatest clarity [5]. The IGCL treats the elements of the GCCF as if they are followers without their own will, without courage or responsibility to be consistent in the defence of their position. This is the ambiguity to which those groups who are in close contact with parasitism expose themselves.

On the other hand, how can a group, which presents itself as "consistent with itself", use a concept with which it disagrees: "a parasitic attack - to use its own words"? This can only be a childish recourse to the playground principle of “he who says it, is it!”. This falls within the typical parasitic dynamic of accusing others of following their own logic, and projecting onto others what they do themselves. They even say it in the most sophisticated ways, accusing the ICC of the same thing. Perhaps some elements do so in a conscious way, and others are prisoners of the vicious circle of the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for tooth’ logic. It is important to get out of this circle of easy and unfounded accusations in order to distinguish them from serious and well-founded  allegations in defence of the proletarian milieu from slander.

In this whole smokescreen of accusations, everything could look the same. The ICC, however, does not deny the need for a serious, rigorous, well-founded and courageous denunciation, in defence of the milieu, and declares that this is a serious matter not to be taken lightly and that it needs discretion and a thorough investigation. This is not something new for the ICC but comes from the tradition of the working class (against Vogt, Lassalle, Schweitzer, the Alliance of Bakunin, etc.) and it is not a tool to crush people, but to clarify the attitudes that belong to the working class and those that do not, and to seriously investigate elements with a sinister behaviour, in defence of the milieu. The ICC also seeks to distinguish between this approach and the approach of slander and defamation. They are two things that are not part of a vague confusing unity but quite opposite to each other.

The elements of the proletarian political milieu must seek to clarify what is behind this attack by the IGCL not through the method of prejudicial contempt, but through analysis and the search for clarity. Not by taking its words out of context, but by the greatest possible clarity and the careful reading of its text in contrast to the document of the ICC and its overall activity. As well as following the rest of the texts published by the ICC on the IGCL or the IFICC, and those published by the both these groups on the ICC.

This is the only way we can deal with the confusion and the bamboozling in the milieu. Rigour and seriousness are most necessary. This methodical rigour and seriousness leads, in my opinion, to a clear denunciation of this kind of parasitic activity, and to distinguish what is part of the proletarian milieu and what, although it may claim the opposite for other reasons, is not. The search for clarity is fundamental, and this is indispensable for the working class. The ICC does not seek to distort the words of either the parasitic groups or the bourgeoisie.

“It is hard to see what interest the SP and the Spanish state would have in creating from scratch a group like Nuevo Curso whose denunciation of the capitalist character of the SP itself is systematic. And which, on the other hand, has played an active role in the emergence and international regrouping of new revolutionary and communist forces, particularly on the American continent.”

The ICC has never said that the PSOE has created Nuevo Curso. Anyone who reads the ICC article can see it. Therefore, this is a lie [6]. It is not that the IGCL is confused or unable to distinguish things. The IGCL has no other reason for existing than attacking the ICC. Here it puts forward the idea that everyone who talks about bringing together revolutionary forces must themselves be revolutionary. It is against the nature of the IGCL to accept that there are groups that, while denouncing the capitalist system, do not belong to the working class, even if they claim to do so, such as the Alliance of Bakunin, or the IGCL itself and to seek clarity in this respect. Instead they put everything in the same bag, to create a camouflage for itself.

The superficiality with which they defend Nuevo Curso (even though it is not NC, but Gaizka who is the main axis of the investigations of the ICC document) could equally be used even to defend leftism (even though NC is neither part of leftism nor of the Communist Left). What happens then? It doesn’t care in the least whether this element is honourable or not. Finding the tools to investigate and understand would help to clear up the smokescreen of confusion behind which the IGCL hides itself. The IGCL adds, with great hypocrisy, that to speak about specific individuals is to enter into “psychology of individual behaviour” and that this is by definition a “nauseating and destructive” area where it is impossible to verify anything. Once again the IGCL attacks the working class by preventing it from identifying non-proletarian behaviour and by instilling a great fear about seeking to understand individual behaviour.

In addition, ICC also clearly alerts “those involved in the Nuevo Curso blog who do so in good faith”. The aim of the ICC is to bring these elements back into the proletarian camp with the greatest possible clarity and quality, not to destroy, overthrow or demolish proletarian organisations, as the IGCL claims. In its denunciation of parasitism, the ICC offers a positive perspective.

“Did it not issue an internal resolution calling for the destruction of the ICT (ex-IBRP) at its 16th Congress in 2005? Today it is Nuevo Curso’s turn.”

The IGCL does not provide links to the texts of the ICC on the internet, citing only those parts that are convenient to them and taken out of context. They even want to interfere in the last ICC Congress [7] but, to begin with, they are totally wrong that the ICC rejects the class struggle. They neither understand nor seek to understand the theory of the historical course; they simply use it as a stick to beat the ICC.

Furthermore, they make allusion to and distort the internal affairs of the ICC since 2005! But the IGCL, formerly the IFICC, was excluded from the ICC in 2003. How would they have got hold of these documents? And they claim that the ICC called for the destruction of the ICT! [8] In this context, I ask, as a supporter of the ICC and as a member of the Communist Left, the ICT to show its solidarity with the ICC in the name of the defence of the proletarian milieu.

I will not elaborate further on the document, which must be analysed in depth. My intention is to express as soon as possible my solidarity with the ICC.

Fraternally,

TV / 2020.02.19

Notes

[1] [31] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16802/who-who-nuevo-curso [32]

[2] [33] More than defending this element, the GIGC claims to defend the Nuevo Curso group, seeking to present Gaizka as a kind of bugbear conjured up by the ICC. Its accusations of “personalising the political issues” actually serve to disguise the individual and to hide them behind the group, while distorting and misrepresenting the arguments of the ICC. The GIGC has of course no interest in theorising a distinction between, on the one hand, the rigorous investigation of the honour of individuals suspected of being adventurers in order to defend the proletarian milieu and personal attacks on the other hand. However, it had no scruples in practising, against the ICC, what it now claims to denounce, by revealing the names of militants it sought to discredit. (See: “The real ‘political disagreements’ of the friends of Jonas”: https://en.internationalism.org/262_infraction.htm [34]) The ICC has seriously investigated the individual Gaizka by giving him the opportunity to explain himself several times. If he would be honest and considered the ICC's investigations to be a mistake, it would be his responsibility to clarify his more than suspicious activity, as well as his refusal to explain himself in the past.

[3] [35] https://igcl.org/New-ICC-Attack-against-the [36]

[4] [37] It has replied to the attacks of the IGCL, although it has of course not entered into its game by treating it as a group of the Communist Left. Nevertheless, it has defended itself against their attacks by responding to its slanders and misrepresentations since it created its fake internal fraction of the ICC. One need only type ‘ificc’ or ‘igcl’ in the search engine of the English ICC website to see that the ICC has not ignored the IGCL, but has sought the most profound clarity concerning its behaviour.

[5] [38] The ICC, and here one can see the maturity of the resolutions of the last 23rd Congress, understands that the struggle against parasitism is one of the fundamental political struggles in this period of decomposition. This phenomenon is nothing out of the ordinary in bourgeois society; it is far from being a foreign body to it.  Faced with this, it is necessary to struggle for the defence of the organisation against groups that pretend to be part of the proletarian political milieu (with diverse, heterogeneous origins) but whose collective activity (in spite of including contradictory elements) is aimed at destroying the real revolutionary organisations as covertly as possible; not necessarily with continuous frontal attacks that would expose themselves. Their origin is not necessarily that of paid bourgeois agents, as the IGCL tends to misrepresent in order to turn the ICC into a bugbear (although it is a good breeding ground for the infiltration of such elements, as well as for political adventurers, and ambitious declassed elements who do not feel recognised by present-day society). Distinguishing these groups from genuine revolutionary organisations is a matter to be addressed methodically and rigorously, seeking clarity and discussion with searching elements for whom it is difficult to go beyond appearances. It is important to distinguish, for example, parasitism from both leftism on the one hand and the swamp on the other, or from searching elements, since the actual confusion within them could be confused with the use and spread of such confusion for their own purposes. The tools to make this distinction are fundamental and are not an ICC invention.

[6] The deformation is very clear for anyone who has read the two texts. The ICC argues that “he is the main animator of Nuevo Curso”, and that today Gaizka aims to “create Nuevo Curso as a ‘historic link’ with the so-called ‘Spanish Communist Left’”, but at no point does it say that the PSOE created NC. The fact that an individual was in regular contact with the high functionaries of the bourgeoisie (alternating with elements of the right as well) at the same time as he was in contact with the ICC, and was the main animator of NC, does not necessarily mean that the bourgeoisie created this group

[7] “In particular the one from its last congress which liquidated the fundamental and central principle of marxism that the class struggle is the motor force of history”: “the general dynamic of capitalist society… is no longer determined by the balance of forces between classes.” (Resolution on the international situation, 23rd ICC Congress)

[8] For the ICC, the ICT is an organisation of the communist left! There may have been an internal debate on the ICT at that time (but surely not in the terms advanced by the IGCL!), but if that had been in a resolution of the ICC, it would have been published. Or are we talking about a quote taken out of context? We don’t know. I don’t know anything about this internal debate, fictional or real, or about its content. What is clear is the malicious nature of the IGCL, which makes the ICC document the equivalent of a secret and internal plot against the ICT: so the question is, why does the IGCL seek to break the necessary solidarity between the two organisations?

There are many articles and programmes that detail the inadequacy of the NHS preparation for the current pandemic. Panorama (BBC documentary) told us that the stock of personal protective equipment (PPE) contained no gowns, the Kings Fund (a think tank on the UK health service) how few doctors, nurses, hospital and intensive care beds there are in the UK compared to other developed countries, the Economist how in April the testing for the coronavirus in the UK stood somewhere between the USA and Ecuador.

At the same time we are called on, not just to applaud the NHS once a week, but to love it, to identify with it as our institution, as a model for health services everywhere. But the real NHS is an institution of the capitalist state which sends its employees to look after infectious patients without the necessary PPE, deports elderly patients from hospitals to care homes without testing for Covid during this crisis. The real NHS which for years before this crisis has habituated us to long waits in casualty and interminable waiting lists for surgery.  

This coronavirus pandemic has shown up the inadequacies and failures of all health services under the capitalist system. Despite the very real differences in their resources, or lack of resources, the degree of organisation by the state and the degree of involvement of private firms, they are all based on two essential aspects of capitalism: the nation state and the need to extract as much value from those who work in the sector for as little money as they can get away with.

“Protect the NHS”… from patients

In mid March hospitals were ordered to discharge 15,000 mainly elderly patients, either sending them home, or parking them in care homes, to free up beds needed for the Covid-19 patients. The NHS coped at the expense of these patients, and the care home residents and staff who caught coronavirus from them: thousands died of it.[1] It is not as if the world had not been warned of the need to prepare for a pandemic, the WHO, virologists and epidemiologists having been watching for pandemics for decades. It is not as if the British government had not been warned of the degree of unpreparedness for a pandemic in Exercise Cygnus in 2016 which showed the NHS was unable to cope, and was therefore never published as too frightening.[2]

Throughout the history of the NHS there has been constant pressure on the resources available. In 1949 the NHS had 10.2 hospital beds per 1000 of population, essentially what was taken over from the voluntary hospitals, by 1976 it had fallen to 8.3 per 1000.[3] In this time antibiotics had made a great difference and the old TB and fever wards could be largely closed. However beds have continued to be lost so that by 2017 there were only 2.5 per 1000 population with acute and general beds having fallen 34% since 1987/88. More to the point bed occupancy has risen from 87.1% in 2010/11 to 90.2% in 2018/19, regularly going over 95% in the winter, which is a dangerous level, as the Kings Fund shows: “Arguably, NHS hospitals have never been under greater strain than they are today. Population growth, combined with an increasing proportion of older people more likely to need health care, is driving greater demand for NHS hospital treatment ... The NHS is only now coming to the end of a prolonged funding squeeze and is in the midst of a staffing crisis. Adult social care has seen staffing and demand pressures rise and is still waiting for the fundamental financing reform it urgently needs. Current levels of occupancy mean the average hospital in England is at risk of being unable to effectively manage patient flow leaving it vulnerable to fluctuations in demand.”[4] One result of this austerity has been the well-publicised number of  deaths above the average for the time of year, which to date have reached nearly 60,000, particularly in hospitals and care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For international comparisons, Sweden with a similarly low level of hospital beds at 2.2 per 1000, has also been able to protect its health service at the expense of care homes, with half the deaths of those over 70 in care homes. Germany’s health service is better resourced, 8 beds per 1000, but still subject to austerity cuts. The fall in the number of hospital beds is an international tendency.

“Protect the NHS” … from foreigners

A "child presented with leukaemia required intensive care treatment and to start chemotherapy. … Hospital unwilling to start chemotherapy until deposit funds provided therefore treatment delayed". For those reaching retirement age, especially those working in the health service, this is exactly the sort of thing we were told would never happen here with the NHS. This is what happened in the USA with private medicine. Let’s read on: "case needed to be reviewed by a specialist centre to determine treatment options, but they refused to see her as ‘not eligible for NHS care’…”[5] And it is not only foreign children who have been denied treatment. Part of the Windrush scandal[6] was that we saw a number of patients denied treatment when they could not prove they had a right to it, even after living in the country since childhood – and even if they had life threatening conditions.

These days we hear more about the ‘need’ to protect the NHS from “health tourism”. This xenophobic campaign does not just date to Boris Johnson’s populism, nor to Theresa May’s “hostile environment” for migrants:  we can see the same arguments put forward by the last Labour government when home secretary Jack Straw castigated “bogus asylum seekers” who might be coming here and using ‘our’ public services.

However, the ruling class are having a little difficulty with their propaganda about protecting the NHS from these ‘health tourists’ who keep taking NHS resources, when so many of them are in fact working in health or social care and putting their lives at risk in the NHS. The surcharge for migrant workers is due to increase from £400 to £624 in October and until the recent government U-turn on the issue, the many immigrant health and social care workers would have had to pay it with only medics excluded.

In fact the NHS, and the welfare state more generally, was never a “free gift” nor a reform won by the workers. Its aim was “to secure income for subsistence on condition of service and contribution and in order to make and keep men fit for service” in the words of Beveridge[7]. To keep workers fit for work, or for military service.

Capitalism is based on the nation state, and in this global pandemic which affects the whole world, each state, each national health service, is scrabbling in a spirit of ‘every man for himself’ against every other for PPE, for resources, for testing. The USA is threatening the WHO to withdraw funds. Several countries have accused China of industrial espionage into work on a vaccine. Instead of the cooperation needed to face a global threat, to produce a vaccine, each nation protects its health service, its profits, its imperialist interests. The limited cooperation they have managed in the past is giving way to national self-interest – to the detriment of their ability to limit the danger of this pandemic.

“Protect the NHS” … at the expense of health and social care workers

A survey by the Royal College of Nursing found that the vast majority of nursing and midwifery staff felt they and their families were at risk because of their jobs, and that if redeployed they were not adequately trained. More than half worked beyond their contracted hours and the majority did not expect any overtime payment for this.[8] Meanwhile government spokespeople were lying about the availability of PPE and testing, and calling on the population to applaud on Thursday evenings and put up rainbows in our windows to support the NHS – the very NHS that is neglecting the safety of nurses and other workers in the face of a deadly infection! Like soldiers on the front line, like cannon fodder! In fact Belgium threatened to conscript health workers, much to their indignation.

This is not just some aberration during the pandemic but the way health services, just like any other capitalist concern, treat their employees. There has been an increase in the intensity of work in hospitals, with the number of beds having halved, while the number of patients treated increased. There are increasing vacancies for qualified nurses, with the gap plugged by support staff such as health care assistants. This has been worsened since 2016 with a drop in the number of nurses from the EU coming to the UK. In these circumstances there is always a moral blackmail on health workers to “go the extra mile” for patient care. It all adds up to an increase in exploitation, just as we see in every health service worldwide and in every sector of the economy.

Solidarity with health workers doesn’t come through weekly applause for their employer, but through proletarian solidarity, solidarity with them as exploited workers whose interests conflict with the NHS, and whose struggle for better pay and conditions is inevitably a struggle against their employer, the capitalist state.

Nationalised or privatised, the NHS is still a capitalist institution

Those on the left would have us protect the NHS from privatisation, or even claim that a nationalised health service is somehow socialist. This is a left wing version of the lie that it is “our NHS” because it is run by the state. We are talking about an institution of the capitalist state: “The wage itself has been integrated into the state. Fixing wages at their capitalist value has devolved upon the state organs. Part of the workers’ wages is directly levied and administered by the state. Thus the state ‘takes charge’ of the life of the worker, controls his health (as part of the struggle against absenteeism) and directs his leisure (for purposes of ideological repression)”[9]. So the state takes charge of part of the wage for maintaining the health of workers, and employers do not have to pay health insurance, in the same way that the state pays a part of wages through universal credit or housing benefit so that capitalists can pay lower wages. Nationalised or privatised, health workers are exploited by capital, either through the state for the benefit of the national capital as a whole, or through a company which sells its services to an insurer or the state. This is why state and privatised health services carry out the same policies, above all the same policies of exploitation.

One advantage of a privatised health service for the state is that it is directly subject to the laws of the market, and so can go bankrupt, because there is no government there to bail it out. This is why everywhere there have been moves to make hospitals and other health care institutions keep strictly to their budgets and put services out to tender particularly since the 1980s, under the Thatcher government and in the Blair years. Because the British bourgeoisie relies so much on the ideology of the NHS it has put a lot of emphasis on state control of what should be done – and also what should not be prescribed or carried out because it is not ‘cost effective’. As we note in an article on the response of the German health service “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 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”.

While in the summer of 2019 the countries of Europe sweltered under a heat wave, another country suffered from it also with potentially much more dangerous consequences: on July 30 the temperature on the east coast of Greenland hit a record high of 25 degrees Celsius. Scientists from around the world reacted with indignation faced with the breadth of the catastrophe: "When we go back over several decades, it's better to be sitting down before looking at the results because we are fearful of the speed of change (...) It's also something that affects the whole of Greenland not just the hottest parts of the south"[1]. More than half of Greenland's ice-cap is now reduced to slush. The consequences are immediately preoccupying for the indigenous people; rivers are swelling so much from the melted snow that they have already destroyed several bridges. This situation will become normal in the future as climate experts are forecasting more and more similar developments.

The consequences are enormous and not just at the climatic level: the retreat of the pack-ice, which is becoming permanent, allows all maritime countries to look at exploiting the situation on several levels: access to new natural resources, to new strategic regions and to new commercial routes. The bourgeoisie is thus exploiting the catastrophes that its system has brought about, increasing still more the risks to the environment.

New grounds for the pillage of natural resources

The Arctic is rich in different natural resources which up to now have been frozen in the ice, presenting difficulties of exploitation and the relative disinterest of the maritime powers for this frozen and inhospitable region. All this has evidently changed with climatic heating and the frenetic race by the major powers for accessible mineral resources which are becoming rarer or constitute assets in the economic and industrial war: metals such as zinc, copper, tin, lead, nickel, gold, uranium, diamonds, rare-earth, gas and oil, all are here in the Arctic and that would provide the possibility of exercising a monopoly. The Kara Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, holds as much oil as Saudi Arabia and a US study has put 13% of oil reserves and 30% of the world's gas reserves in this region.

All the speeches from the media about safeguarding the environment, the necessary changes in "the way we live and consume" (but nothing about production!) and the indispensable individual "examination of one's own conscience" regarding one's "carbon footprint" and over-consumption are perfectly hypocritical faced with this reality: the bourgeoisie looks for profit everywhere, in the climate disaster unfolding in front of our eyes as in all the rest! If it is possible to exploit (even over-exploit) the melting of the Arctic glaciers in a profitable fashion it will do so and that's only one facet of the problem: as soon as there is the exploitation of natural resources, the inherent risks (pollution, accidents, increased destruction of the environment that collides with local people and destroys their way of life) can only follow, as a representative of the Inuit people said:  "Our culture and our way of life are being attacked. The animals, the birds and the fish on which we depend for our survival are more and more under pressure. We are concerned for our food security"[2].

While making workers feel guilty for their "irresponsibility" faced with the climate catastrophe, each national bourgeoisie is organising themselves to draw a profit from it or, better still, draw some strategic advantages.

"New commercial opportunities"

The Arctic is not only a source of potential raw materials; it is also coveted because the melting glaciers allow the opening up of new sea routes, potentially much shorter and thus more profitable than those existing. Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State and ex-director of the CIA, noted that "the regular retreat of the ice-pack opens up new routes for passage and offers new commercial opportunities"[3]. While denying all climatic change, this worthy representative of the American bourgeoisie unashamedly vows to profit from it! And the US is not the only shark swimming in these waters: altogether six countries are directly concerned (Canada, USA, Russia, Denmark, Norway and Iceland) and a certain number of others are certainly interested in the question.

In the first rank we find China, observer to the Arctic Council, which has underlined its interest in a route which will allow it to reach the Atlantic ports without having to go around Africa or go through the Panama Canal; it also invested some 90 billion dollars here between 2012 and 2017, according to Pompeo, and has sent specialised ships in order to try out the new route. Russia is evidently highly interested by the possibility of the unrestricted use of its Arctic ports in open waters, contrary to the ports that it usually uses (apart from Murmansk), which would allow it to closely monitor this new sea route. Norway, Canada, Denmark, who are directly concerned, are evidently actively manoeuvring around their interest in the region. But other powers are looking to get their feet in the door, for example France, which has the status of Arctic Council observer and which has set up the post of an "ambassador to the Poles" given a little while ago to Segolene Royal, who follows on from Michel Rocard. France regularly takes part in NATO exercises in the region.

This interest of diverse powers is affirmed by a very militaristic declaration by the United States, again in the words of Mike Pompeo: "We are entering a new era of strategic engagement in the Arctic, with new threats for the Arctic and its resources, and for all of our interests in this region". According to him, the Arctic passage "could reduce the times of journeys between Asia and the West by about twenty days". He wants the Arctic route to become the "Suez Canal and the Panama of the twenty-first century". As we understand the weight of the Panama Canal for US imperialism, the interest shown in the "North-west passage" takes on a practically historic importance. And we also understand while the US openly tries to exclude China from the Arctic Council!

Beyond the sea routes, global warming opens up the possibilities of making terrestrial routes a long-term practicality, opening the door to the installation of numerous important infrastructures, and consequently the possibilities of easier access to these areas that are normally impossible to work in for three-quarters of the year. This would allow for a better economic exploitation and an opening up of the regions, while lowering the cost of living for the local residents. For example the Canadian government has launched a number of such projects over the years.

"Boot-prints in the snow"

In the logic of imperialism, these developments can only bring an increased military presence in this region where, since the Cold War, few soldiers have been stationed, but where now each power involved has to defend their well-understood interests by baring their military fangs. Pompeo has been clear: "The region has become a space for world power and competition", which here involves a growing presence of the armies of Uncle Sam, adding that "Russia is already leaving its boot-prints in the snow". Denouncing the multiple military provocations of Russia, its blocking of the GPS network, its air incursions into areas it has kept away from up to now and its regular maritime manoeuvres, the countries of NATO have responded: Iceland has re-opened its base on Keflavik to GIs, while Norway has opened up its Grøtsund deep-water port to US and British nuclear submarines, and its Bodo aerodrome is regularly used by fighter aircraft for their various exercises in which the countries of NATO participate...

On its side Russia has reactivated its Siberian bases, abandoned since the Cold War, while renovating its old fleet of ice-breakers. Pompeo's remarks do not lack an element of truth...

These imperialist developments have also given rise to a rather droll event. Trump's suggestion about buying Greenland from Denmark is not quite absurd and casts a light on the very voracious appetites of the imperialist powers in the area. Although this vast region, four times the size of France and covered with the largest glacier in the world, costs the Danish state dear, it is quite unimaginable for Copenhagen to give up such a potentially lucrative outpost as Greenland. The United States, which has always guaranteed the defence of this large island since the Second World War, already tried to buy it in 1946; but that came up against all the imperialist logic of capitalism. Situated in the Arctic, rich in numerous unexploited natural resources, strategically well-placed with a route around the American continent to the north and thus so vital for the USA’s security that it occupied Greenland militarily from 1940, the territory has numerous qualities from an imperialist point of view, and others can be added: not only is the port of Thule in very deep waters and can thus accommodate very large civilian or military vessels, but the lay of the airport allows whatever apparatuses to be unloaded. Moreover, the Exclusive Economic Zone of Greenland allows the state to exploit all resources which are found inside this zone up to 200 nautical miles around the territory. As a bonus, Greenland is associated to the European Union because of Denmark's guardianship which increases its points of interest... Trump’s own interest in this territory is far from being absurd from the logic of imperialism, much more so when global warming offers unprecedented perspectives to anyone who controls it!

Capitalism has habituated us to the idea of profiting from anything, which is what this most dynamic system of production does. But to take profits by aggravating a major global threat to the ecosystem, that it itself has provoked and which puts the future of humanity into question, in the same way as its criminal deforestation of the Amazon, shows to what point this system is decomposing and has no viable future to offer humanity. This is what the ICC said in 1990 in its "Theses on Decomposition":

“The scale and the proliferation of all these economic and social calamities, which spring generally speaking from the decadence of the system itself, reveals the fact that this system is trapped in a complete dead-end, and has no future to propose to the greater part of the world population other than a growing and unimaginable barbarity. This is a system where economic policy, research, investment are all conducted to the detriment of humanity’s future, and even to the detriment of the system itself."

The future that's in store for the Arctic that we show above is one that capitalism holds for the entire human species: over-exploitation and the transformation of the environment into an unbearable hell, a search for profit which means selling off the future, military barbarism, everything is here! The alternative to this for humanity is the one proposed by the Third International a hundred years ago: socialism or barbarism, the destruction of this system that has no future, or the slow destruction of humanity. 

H.D. April 24, 2020

The Covid-19 crisis and the lockdown have not made the class struggle disappear: we have already referred to workers’ strikes demanding proper safety equipment and working conditions in a number of countries, and we will be coming back to this in future articles. There is no denying however that the lock-down creates particularly difficult conditions for the development of the open, massive struggle. But we also know that we are going to be faced with unprecedented attacks on our living standards, and we have to prepare our response. This necessarily entails drawing the lessons of previous struggles, and this is the aim of the article we publish here, written by our section in France, which examines the important strikes of railway workers, health workers and others last autumn and winter.

"Today's vanquished, will be tomorrow's victors. They will learn from their defeat."[1]
"Revolution is the sole form of 'war' (...) in which the final victory can be achieved only by a series of 'defeats'! What does the whole history of modern revolutions and of socialism show us? The first flaring up of the class struggle in Europe ended in defeat. The 1831 revolt of the silk-weavers in Lyon, ended in a heavy defeat. The Chartist Movement in England also ended in defeat. The rising of the proletariat in Paris in June 1848 ended in an overwhelming defeat. The Paris Commune ended in a terrible defeat. The whole road to socialism (as far as revolutionary struggles are concerned) is paved with defeats, pure and simple. And yet this same history leads irresistibly, step by step, to ultimate victory! Where would we be today without the 'defeats', from which we have drawn historical experience, understanding, power and idealism!
Today (...) we stand upon these very defeats, none of which we could have done without, each of which is part of our strength and our clarity of purpose (...) These inevitable defeats virtually pile guarantee upon guarantee of the future success of the final goal. To be sure there is one condition! We have to analyse the circumstances of each respective defeat."[2]

Yes, the strikes and demonstrations in the autumn of 2019 and the winter of 2020 ended in defeat. Pension "reform" is now behind us. But the ties that were forged during this struggle, the experience that was gained and the development of consciousness are all victories. There are many lessons we can draw from this drawn-out social movement to prepare for the future struggles. To be able to do so, we need to come together, to discuss and to write our analysis of it. This article is intended as a contribution towards this work of collective reflection.

The working class recovers its combativity

To understand the importance and significance of the movement against the pensions' "reform" in France, we have to situate it in the context of the class struggle of the recent decades. From 1968 to the end of the 1980s, the struggle of the proletariat developed internationally: May '68 in France, the Hot Autumn of Italy in 1969, the highly combative strikes in Britain throughout the 1970s, the massive strike in Poland in 1980, etc. For nearly twenty years, workers would accumulate a vast experience from their involvement in struggle, from mass meetings and general assemblies and through extending their struggles and, above all, by witnessing the trade unions constantly sabotaging all attempts by the workers to take the struggle into their own hands.

However, this generation was not able to politicise the movement. If the working class's commitment to the struggle showed its strength, its reflection on the nature of capitalism and the state, its capacity for self-organisation remained weak. In this context, the collapse of the Eastern bloc, fraudulently presented as the "bankruptcy of communism", inflicted a terrible shock to class consciousness. Through this iniquitous lie, the barbarism of Stalinism - in reality a caricature of state capitalism - was made to appear as the inevitable outcome to the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie could thus declare the "end of History"[3] and the disappearance of the working class. So, with its self-confidence low, and made to feel ashamed of its history, the working class gradually, throughout the 1990s, lost all memory of its past struggles and experiences. At the global level, our class experienced a major retreat in consciousness and combativity across this decade, to the extent of denying its own existence which lead to the proletariat losing its class identity.

But, of course, there is no brake on History, regardless of the hopes and declarations of the bourgeoisie. The economic crisis continued to worsen and hence living and working conditions deteriorated along with it. This intolerable situation gave rise to a growing anger that transformed into combativity, particularly inside the national education systems of France and Austria in 2003. The mood went beyond confrontation and there was a real reflection on the future of capitalism, particularly on the future of global capitalism. It helps explain why organisations like ATTAC developed the theory of anti-globalism (which would become "another world is possible"). Although limited in scope, this broad social confrontation signalled an end to the retreat of the 1990s. Once again, the working class had expressed a level of combativity and from this its consciousness developed, if only weakly.

Three years later, in 2006, a new generation appeared on the scene. Faced with a new governmental attack, with the manufacture of an even more precarious status for young workers starting work (le Contrat Première Embauche, the CPE), the students facing this insecurity reacted, they organised themselves in general assemblies that were open to all and extended the struggle by calling for solidarity from all sectors and all generations ("Young lardons, old croutons: all in the same salad!" was chanted repeatedly). The French bourgeoisie was worried at the dynamic of extension of the struggle and it was this that made it suddenly withdraw the CPE (renamed "Contrat Poubelle Embauche" or "Rubbish Hiring Contract").

However, the development of the struggle of the proletariat is not linear. In 2010, the proletariat would suffer a hard blow. Having been mobilised weekly for sterile protests over a 10-month period by the unions, several million demonstrators from this movement were left exhausted and discouraged and with a deep-rooted sense of powerlessness. The defeat it inflicted stamped its mark on the whole decade from 2010 onward when the social atmosphere was characterised by apathy, despondency and resignation.

Again we would see that the forces at work underlying society had not gone away, particularly the global economic crisis, which leads to unemployment, precariousness and poverty... but also anger and reflection. This is what the movement against the pensions' "reform" at the end of 2019 heralded: the re-emergence of workers' combativity! Through the months of mobilisation, the weeks of strikes and the demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands of people together, this struggle revealed the proletariat's desire to fight back and signalled the end of a long period marked by workers' bowed heads and a class retreat. It gave a glimpse of a future in which the proletariat would once again refuse to accept the bourgeoisie's unceasing attacks without giving a response. It is therefore all the more crucial to learn the lessons of this movement in order to prepare for the future.

Solidarity

In the struggle, the workers once again demonstrated the characteristic solidarity of our class. If the bourgeoisie tried to promote the cause of every man for himself, based on division and competition, by opposing railway workers (said to be "privileged") to the other workers, the old against the young (using the infamous "grandfather clause", for example), strikers versus non-strikers and wage earners who do "hard" work against those who, supposedly, have "cushy jobs", etc., the working class responded by all staying together, by supporting the railway workers, by keeping alive the old rallying cry: "One for all and all for one" and by fighting to defend their future and that of the new generations of workers who are faced with entering the labour market… The slogan "we choose to all fight together" is indicative of the glue that has bound the workers together in struggle: solidarity, the fundamental condition behind the social power of our class.

This power and this spirit was evident in all the demonstrations. On the marches, the mood of solidarity made the demonstrators feel proud, and even joyful. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why, at the end of the movement, far from being downcast by the "defeat" (the formal adoption of the "reform"), the working class emerged stronger and better. This realisation of this fraternity inside the struggle must be cherished and cultivated for the struggles of the future.

Strength in numbers

The shouts of "All together" that were heard on the marches showed an awareness of the need to unite all sectors, both private and public and to mobilise en masse against the government to overturn the balance of forces.

The was a valuable lesson of this movement. One sector alone, no matter how determined it may be, or how crucial a rôle in the national economy, no matter the "power" for disruption to the economy, can defeat the bourgeoisie and the state on its own, as the unions would imply. On the contrary, by pushing the railway workers of the SNCF and the RATP into the leading role, a trap was laid by the government colluding with the unions. The railworkers would be responsible for the struggle on their own, which would reduce the struggle overall to a protest action and an isolated and disarmed strike.

Yet, these workers were instinctively suspicious of this trap without being fully aware of the reason. On the marches, a need was felt everywhere to unite across sectors, to be a force in numbers and there were calls to mobilise and not to leave the railway workers alone and to have the private sector more involved... This growing realisation that to be strong meant being strong in numbers, that the struggle needed to be widespread, will be a key lesson for the future.

So, how can we succeed the next time in developing a massive struggle? How can all sectors be brought into the movement? The answer is found in the past experience of the working class, because it has previously demonstrated this capacity to extend the struggle geographically. One of the most impressive examples of this dynamic of extension and unity is undoubtedly the movement that took place in Poland in the summer of 1980:

"Facing news of price rises, the workers' response spread throughout the country, passing increasingly from town to town, city to city, and not along the channels of the business or industrial sectors. Triggered on 14th August by the strike at the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard when a single worker was sacked, the movement spread inside 24 hours to the whole city and in a few days to the whole industrial region around the same common demands: wage increases and improved social benefits, no Saturday working, a guarantee of no reprisals against the strikers as well as the abolition of the official trade unions... The day after the strike began at the Lenin Shipyard, the news spread across the city. The tram workers stopped work in solidarity but they also decided to keep the trams still running that connected the three major industrial zones of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot. They were vital for spreading the news of the strike and would be a means of communication between the struggling factories throughout the month of the strike. On the same day the strike began at the "Paris Commune" shipyard in Gdynia and spread to almost all the shipyards in the basin, but also to the ports and various companies in the region. The two large Lenin and "Paris Commune" shipyards became meeting places for the strikers, where regular meetings were held, bringing thousands of workers from different factories together.
The organisation of the strike was established on the same basis, the same principles, by which it was extended. The assemblies of strikers from the different factories and sectors elected strike committees and sent delegates to the "inter-factory strike committee" (MKS), which drew up a list of the joint demands. All the strikers' assemblies were informed daily of the discussions and the progress of the negotiations by their delegates who travelled back and forth between their workplaces and the MKS, which was based at the Lenin Shipyard.
The attempts to sow divisions by the government, which wanted to negotiate factory by factory and thereby get a return to work sector by sector, came up against this close-knit and united block. Thus, when the government very quickly agreed to the wage increase for workers at the Gdynia Shipyard and a return to work, and some hesitant delegates seemed ready to accept, the delegates from the other factories objected and called for the movement to continue until all the demands, from all the striking factories, were met. Some new delegates would be elected by the strikers.

In the days that followed, the example set by Gdansk would spread to the various regions of Poland. The signal for the mass strike had been received. The subsequent balance of power imposed by the workers was unprecedented since the struggles of the 1920s and would force the bourgeoisie to submit, an outcome no workers' struggle in the world since then has ever achieved. What's more, it was a vital experience for workers to live through and an unassailable acquisition of the international proletariat showing the potential power of the working class when it is truly united".[4]

One passage from this quotation is particularly worthy of our attention: "The tram workers stopped work in solidarity but at the same time, they also decided to keep the trams running that connected the three large industrial zones of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot. They were vital for spreading the news of the strike, and were a means of communication between the struggling factories throughout the month of strike". This is the exact opposite of what the trade unions organised during the movement against the pensions' "reform" in France: the trains didn't move, especially on the demonstration days. Some people would point to this aberration on the marches, insisting to the contrary that trains should run to Paris and the big cities to allow as many employees, pensioners, precarious students and the unemployed as possible to assemble. A retired demonstrator in Paris even said to us "I don't understand why the trains aren't free to allow us to come here; we have done that in the 1980s". This anecdote raises some profound questions about class identity and workers' memory, about the development of consciousness and the nature of the trade unions.

Class identity

By choosing to fight "en masse", by expressing solidarity across sectors and between generations, these proletarians have begun to recover their class identity. They show an understanding that in confronting the government, the state, the bourgeoisie, it is necessary to be many, to unite, and it is necessary to create a mass movement. One question to be answered remains: who should unite? Who are "We"? One answer: the working class. Admittedly, this realisation has not yet spread to the whole of our class, but it is germinating. Thus, in the demonstrations, many demonstrators sang "We're here to salute the workers and for a better world!" In various discussions, you could hear "The working class exists! It's right here!" or "We want a general strike like that in May '68".

This unfolding renewal of class identity in the proletariat inside the struggle fully supports the analysis we made in 2003, when the working class was returning to the path of struggle after the long retreat of the 1990s:
- "The current attacks constitute the basis of a slow maturing of the conditions for the massive struggles that are necessary for the working class to recover its identity. Little by little, they will dispel all the illusions in the possibility of reforming the system. It is the action of the masses themselves that will make possible the re-emergence of the consciousness of being an exploited class that bears within it a different historical perspective for society".
- "The importance of struggles today is that they can be the crucible for the development of class consciousness. The basic issue at stake – the recovery of class identity – is an extremely modest one. But behind class identity, there is the question of class solidarity – the only alternative to the mad competitive bourgeois logic of each for himself. Behind class identity there is the possibility of reappropriating the lessons of past struggles, and reactivating the collective memory of the proletariat".[5]

Class consciousness

The "constitution of the proletariat as a class", as the Manifesto of the Communist Party says, is inseparable from the development of class consciousness. Forced to struggle by the blows of the world economic crisis, the proletariat in France has, indeed, begun in this movement to develop its class consciousness. To feel part of a whole that is determined to stick together and unite in a common struggle, but also to recognise the enemy that is organised in defence of its own interests, or, again, to recognise the escalating degradation of living and working conditions, of the lack of a future for the whole of humanity under this system of exploitation (and what better indicator of the bleak future promised by capitalism than this broad attack on the pensions' system?); these characteristics are all vital elements expressing the  development of class consciousness.

One example to show the significance of this is that in the demonstrations at the end of December, a lot of discussions compared the attack on pensions to the fires that were raging across Australia at the time. And the connection? This would have seemed preposterous, even crazy, to almost everyone, just a few months earlier. But there, in the struggle, the demonstrators felt that the "reforms" that are destroying living and working conditions in France and the lack of human and material means to contain the fires in Australia were in fact facets of the same underlying problem. Therein lies the germ of an understanding of what capitalism is: a rotting system of exploitation that is driving the whole of humanity to its doom in the name of profit.

Clearly, it is just a beginning of the process for the working class, this movement is one step on "the road the working class must travel to affirm its own revolutionary perspective [which] won't be straight forward, [which indeed] is going to be long, tortuous, difficult and strewn with pitfalls and traps that its enemy will use against it".

In fact, there is one major obstacle where this movement has demonstrated the working class's total lack of consciousness and that it has not recovered its memory of what it experienced throughout the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s: the trap of the trade unions.

The role of the unions

This movement was led from beginning to the end by the trade unions. They led the class to defeat. Totally aware of the combative state of mind of the working class, they were careful in proposing forms of struggles that allowed them to take the lead of the movement and to very clearly keep the workers under their control. They manoeuvred so they could eventually exhaust the movement and sabotage any real unity, and thus lead it to defeat:

-  to respond to the surge in workers' combativity, the unions organised multiple struggles that were isolated from each other. While officially taking up the call for "everyone struggling together", they organised the "extension"... of defeat! They did not stop calling for struggles on the ground, in the localities, sector by sector, taking care not to mobilise inside the big private companies. The "inter-emergency" para-union collective even refused to join the inter-professional demonstrations planned for December on the pretext of not "submerging their specific demands within the other demands".

- in response to the need felt by the workers to debate, the trade unions organised many general assemblies – the so-called the "inter-professional" - completely controlled and manipulated (including by the leftists) where it was difficult and futile to speak out.[6]

To-prevent the development of the active solidarity of the workers in the struggle, they introduced solidarity funds all around to help the railway workers (and other strikers) "to hang on"... alone. The success of these collections is the mark of the popularity of the movement, that it was supported throughout the working class. But it was the trade unions (especially the CGT) that set up this financial solidarity, who initiated, organised and supervised it, in order to make it a substitute for real active solidarity through the direct extension of the struggle. By means of these solidarity funds, the unions pushed the working class into the "symbolic strike", leaving the railway workers alone to lose nearly two months' wages.

To summarise the trade union tactics that have emerged in recent months: when faced with this explosion of combativity, they have gone along with the working class, espousing the needs of the struggle to be able to undermine it and to make people believe that the government's "social partners" are defending the interests of the working class through its ability to organise the struggle and demonstrations.

The working class has not been able to expose this sabotage, as it has been unable to take its struggles into its own hands, to organise sovereign and autonomous general assemblies itself, as well as the geographical extension of the movement by sending massive delegations, step by step, from factory to factory (the hospitals, for example, are often the largest "factory" in the area). This weakness stems from the loss of class identity, the loss of proletarian memory since the 1990s. The confrontation with the trade unions (and trade unionism in general) cannot arise without the cumulative experience of the manoeuvres and sabotage of the struggle. Trade unions are, along with bourgeois democracy, the last ramparts of the capitalist state. It is only in a long process and a series of massive struggles marked by defeats that the working class will gradually develop its consciousness. Confrontation with the trade unions can only take place at a more advanced stage of the struggle.

For the time being, therefore, the working class still lacks the self-confidence to go beyond the trade union framework. It still has many illusions about democracy and bourgeois legality. The road leading to the perspective of revolutionary confrontations is therefore still very long and strewn with pitfalls. But this in no way detracts from the fact that the recent movement in France is, precisely, a first step on this very long road. On the contrary, the very difficult historical context makes any manifestation of a will to struggle and any expression of solidarity particularly significant and revealing of what is happening deep within the core of our class.

Interclassism

One trap, perhaps even more pernicious, that awaits the future struggles is the dead end of interclassism.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, the international media highlighted the "Yellow Vests" social protest movement in France.[7] This interclassist movement threatened the proletariat's loss of class identity even further, diluting the workers within the "people", thus putting them in the grip of petty-bourgeois ideology, with its nationalism, the Tricolour, the Marseillaise, its illusions about democracy and its calls to be heard by "the authorities", etc. This danger will continue to loom large in the coming years. That said, the movement against pension reform has shown another way forward. The proletariat refused to be mixed up with the "Yellow Vests" who wanted to front the demonstrations with the French flag. On several occasions as they marched, the sounds of the Marseillaise from a handful of "Yellow Vests" were drowned out by sound of the Internationale. In fact, on the contrary, the "Yellow Vests" found themselves diluted inside the demonstrations and behind the proletarian slogans and the proletarian methods of struggle.

Another example of this process indicating the strength of this movement was the lawyers' strike. Also hit hard by the reforms, many lawyers participated on the marches in their black robes. Moreover, hundreds of them hung their gowns on the gates of the ministries and the courts. These strange and dramatic images made the headlines. Obviously, they had joined the movement with their confusions and illusions about the Law, Justice and the Republic. But the important fact is " they joined". Unlike the "Yellow Vests" movement, it was not the petty-bourgeoisie that gave colour and tone to the struggle. On the contrary, the anger of the lawyers is that of certain strata of the petty-bourgeoisie who are increasingly affected by proletarianisation and who joined the proletarian struggle only temporarily. This process shows the general and historical tendency that Marx and Engels described in the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848. It heralds the dynamic of the struggles of the future when the proletariat, in the course of its revolutionary activity, will be at the forefront of the confrontation with capitalism by offering a perspective for the whole of society, thus drawing more and more layers of society into its struggle:

- "The small-scale tradespeople, shop-keepers and retired tradesmen, handicraftsmen and peasants, the whole lower echelon of the middle classes, all these sink gradually into the proletariat; partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried out, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population"  (...)

- "The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shop-keeper, the artisan, the peasant, all fight against the bourgeoisie to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are not therefore revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat".

The road leading to the victory of the revolution is still very long. The movement of 2019-2020, with the return of workers' combativity and the end to the paralysis on the social terrain over the last ten years, is just the start. To go further, the working class has to go back, to look at where it comes from, to reappropriate the lessons of its past struggles: Poland: 1980, Italy: 1968, Germany: 1919-1921, Russia: 1905 and 1917, France:1848 and 1871, and many others. The history of the workers' movement is rich in struggles and forms a long, continuous chain right up until the present.

To reappropriate its own history, buried under the mounds of lies of the bourgeoisie, the working class must cultivate debate and develop committees and circles... and patience, because, as Luxemburg explained, being directly confronted with the bankruptcy of this society it is made increasingly difficult to enter into the struggle. Not only does impoverishment make the cost of a strike difficult to bear, but the global economic crisis reveals directly the magnitude of the stakes. However, “Proletarian revolutions (...) constantly retreat before the sheer immensity of their own goals until they are eventually faced with a situation that makes it impossible to turn back.”[8] Hence the development of struggles is slowed down and it becomes more tortuous

But eventually, the same world economic crisis and the attacks on our living and working conditions that come with it, will inexorably lead to the outbreak of new struggles. It is in this process of development of the economic struggles against the impoverishment and the general degradation of all its living conditions that the working class will be able to develop its consciousness and politicise its struggles in confrontation with the bourgeois state and, ultimately, to affirm itself as a revolutionary class.
 

Pawel, 13 March 2020
 

Trump v Biden: the false choices of capitalist democracy.

Capitalism, the system of production which dominates the planet and every country on it, is sinking into an advanced state of decay. A century of decline is reaching its ultimate stages, threatening the survival of humanity with a spiral of insane wars, economic depression, ecological disasters and devastating pandemics.

Every nation state on Earth is committed to maintaining this dying system. Every government, whether clothed in democratic or dictatorial garb, whether openly pro-capitalist or falsely “socialist”, exists to defend the true goals of capital: the expansion of profit at the expense of the only possible future for our species, a worldwide community where production has only one aim - the satisfaction of human need.

Therefore the choice of which party or president takes the reins of government is a false choice that cannot turn capitalist civilisation away from the path towards catastrophe. This applies to the coming US elections as much as to any other electoral circus.

Trump is not the workers’ friend…

It is clear to many that Trump is an avowed defender of everything that is rotten about capitalism: from his denials of the reality of Covid-19 and of climate change, to his apologies for police brutality in the name of law and order, to his dog-whistle appeals to racism and the extreme right, to his disgusting personal treatment of the women who come into his sights. But the fact that he is, in the words of his former legal hit-man Michael Cohen, “a liar, a con-man and a racist” doesn’t prevent important factions of the capitalist class from backing him because his policies of overt economic nationalism and deregulation of environmental and health services serve to increase their profits.

At the last election Trump conned many American workers into believing that “America First” protectionism would save their jobs and revive traditional industries. But even before the Covid crisis the world economy - including China - was already heading for a new recession and the economic consequences of the pandemic are going to be even more brutal. Protectionism is an illusion because no economy can cut itself off from the remorseless laws of the world market.

…but neither are the Democrats

According to Trump, Joe Biden threatens to turn America into a “socialist utopia”, because he’s a mere puppet in the hands of the “radical left” personified by the likes of Bernie Sanders and the “Squad” around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and others.

In reality, Biden was chosen as the Democratic candidate because he represents the continuation of the mainstream Democratic polices of Obama and Clinton, which have much in common with those of Trump: the “pivot to the East” to confront Chinese imperialism was begun under Obama, who was also known as the “deporter in chief” because of his ruthless approach to “illegal” immigrants. Of course the Democrats have their differences with Trump: they are more closely linked to the military and security establishment which is deeply suspicious of Trump's fawning approach to Putin’s Russia, and they are embarrassed by his reckless breaking of international treaties and alliances because it undermines the USA’s diplomatic credibility. But these are differences over the best strategy for American imperialism. Likewise, they object to Trump’s scant respect for the norms of “democracy” because they know how important the democratic illusion is to the preservation of social order. That’s the real reason they – and important representatives of the military – opposed Trump’s threat to use federal troops against protesters in various US cities.

The Democratic Party has never been anything more than the alternative party of US capitalism. It’s true that recently there has been a growth of groupings like the Democratic Socialist Alliance and advocates of the Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter and the various forms of identity politics in or around the official party. But this “radical left” offers only a more left-wing version of state-run capitalism, which all factions of the ruling class – including the right and the fanatics of free enterprise – are obliged to adhere to in a world ravaged by crisis and war. None of the policies of the left question the existence of the nation state, production for profit, the wages system –which are the essence of capitalism and the source of its insoluble contradictions. This is why, for example, the plans for a Green New Deal won’t halt the capitalist destruction of nature, which has its source in capitalism’s insatiable drive to accumulate. 

The working class holds the key to the future

No capitalist politician or party can offer a way out of the crisis of their system. The world’s future lies in the hands of the class which produces everything we need to live, which is exploited by capital in every country, and which everywhere has the same interests: to unite in defence of its working and living conditions, to develop the self-organisation and consciousness needed to confront the capitalist system and put forward its own historic solution: authentic socialism, or as Marx preferred to call it, communism, where humanity will at last be free of the state, borders and wage slavery.

This may seem to be a very distant prospect. In its day to day existence the working class is divided in a thousand different ways: in the competition for jobs, by national borders, by gender, and by “race”, above all in a country like the US with its poisonous legacy of slavery and racism.

But the working class is also the class of association, which is compelled to work collectively, and to defend itself collectively. When it raises its head, it tends to overcome the divisions in its ranks because it has no choice if it is avoid defeat. Racism and nationalism are perhaps the most potent tools for dividing workers, but they can and must be overcome if the class struggle is to move forward. When the Covid-19 pandemic first struck, US workers reacted against being forced to work without protection in car plants, hospitals, supermarkets or warehouses; and every worker, “white” “black”, “Latino” or other stood shoulder to shoulder on the picket lines.

Such moments of unity run counter to the “classic” expressions of racial division – to white supremacy and the fascist movements which are oozing out of the rotting body of capitalism. But they also go in a different direction from the Black Lives Matter mobilisations which put race above class and which have been totally instrumentalised by the Democrats, by major business interests, by a significant part of the state itself. Struggles based on race cannot lead to the unification of the working class: parts of the ruling class are happy to “take the knee” and give their blessing to BLM because they know it can be used to hide the fundamental reality of capitalism as a society based on the exploitation of one class by another.

The working class in the US faces a huge ideological onslaught in the lead-up to the elections, with politicians and media superstars proclaiming far and wide that its only hope lies in the vote – when its real power lies not in the polling booth but in linking up across workplaces, in general assemblies open to all workers, in uniting on the street around class demands. It is also faced with the real danger of being drawn into violent conflicts between armed “militias”, as we have seen in some of the recent BLM protests. The danger of a “civil war” on a completely bourgeois terrain could grow even sharper in the wake of the election, especially if Trump refuses to recognise the result. This only emphasises the need for workers to refuse the siren calls of right and left, to reject the false choices of the democratic supermarket and come together around their own class interests.

 

Amos, 26.9.20

 

Since this article was written the US elections face an added factor of instability: Trump’s infection by Covid 19.

Boris Johnson’s penchant for double-think reached new heights in September. In defence of the Internal Market Bill to Parliament he tried to justify taking legal powers that would break national and international law and turned reality on its head: “As we debate this matter the EU has not taken that particular revolver off the table. And I hope they will do so and that we can reach a Canada-style free trade agreement as well. Indeed it is such an extraordinary threat and it seems so incredible the EU can do this, that we are not taking powers in this bill to neutralise that threat, but obviously reserve the right to do so if these threats persist”.

The Withdrawal Agreement (the so-called revolver) is the exact same weapon he armed himself with during the 2019 general election, claiming it was an “oven ready” deal that would “get Brexit done!”. During its passage through parliament 20 Tory MPs were thrown out of the parliamentary Party for voting against it. The government has even spent months and millions of pounds setting up the infrastructure for putting in place the internal trading border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK: the provision that the government now says was unacceptable.

Britain’s contribution to breaking up the old international order

Hardline Brexiters claimed that tabling the Internal Market Bill was a display of British pluck, a refusal to be bossed around by the EU, and an example of “taking back control”. For those parts of the bourgeoisie opposed to Brexit it was another expression of the total irresponsibility of the government. All five living Prime Ministers spoke out against it. Even some long-term Brexiters such as Norman Lamont and Michael Howard found that this brazen threat to break international law was a bridge too far.

The government’s resort to such a desperate act, which amounts to holding a gun to its own head, expresses the further weakening of the whole of the British bourgeoisie. Only a few years ago the British bourgeoisie was a symbol of intelligence and experience; now it is reduced to threatening to inflict long-term damage on its international political, economic, military relations in order to somehow intimidate its European rivals.

The bourgeoisie has no hesitation in disregarding the law, but to do this so blatantly is not at all an expression of strength. Johnson is not the first Prime Minister to openly break international law. The US invasion of Iraqi in 2003, with the support of the Blair government, was declared illegal. Then as now, such an open flouting of international law was an act of weakness. The US had to try and impose its imperialist dominance after years of decline. Blair supported the action in the hope of improving the standing of British imperialism. The Johnson government’s threat to break international, and even national, law marks a qualitative acceleration of its decline.

Brexit is a humiliating experience for the British ruling class. For all its centuries of experience of ruling an Empire, and then boxing above its weight internationally even when the Empire had collapsed, it failed to contain its Brexit-supporting factions. A minority of the ruling class was able to use the growth of populist sentiment within the population, faced with decades of economic decline and a government that promised much but actually delivered even worse conditions – in a context exacerbated by the migration crisis of the mid-2010s - to win the recklessly called referendum. German imperialism’s growing domination of the EU weakened the influence of Britain; and this along with the economic impact of the 2009 economic crisis promoted support for Brexit within parts of the bourgeoisie. Since the referendum a political crisis marked by bitter factional struggles around Brexit has paralysed the bourgeoisie. The appeal to populism in the referendum and in last year’s election produced results for a faction of the bourgeoisie, but it has also deepened divisions within capitalism’s political apparatus.

‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ - leaders will emerge that fit the political moment. Johnson is the perfect expression of the moment. A politician whose only political ambition was to become Prime Minister. Beyond his ambition, and his image as a political buffoon (the opposite of the series of managerial types who had been previously been Prime Minister: Blair, Cameron, May) and a period as Mayor of London, he has no other political qualities. His adoption of populist demands such as Brexit had nothing to do with any principles but corresponded to his own personal goals, not necessarily in line with the interests of the national capital.

His government is formed by those loyal to him and the Brexit project, not for their political or administrative abilities. These second-rate politicians are dominated by Dominic Cummings along with other special advisors who have no party loyalty and an open disdain for parliament, including the Tory Party. They see the norms and structures of bourgeois rule as obstacles to their project to return to a fantasy world of Britain as a buccaneering free market world leader, and rival to the EU. Central to this aim is a concentration of control in the hands of a small faction, in order to bypass the restraints imposed on government by Parliament and the Civil Service - a system based on centuries of experience.

Rather than political cohesion and authority, British capitalism’s governing team is defined by its chaotic political vandalism. The impact of this vandalism on the traditional procedures of the Establishment has been clear in the pandemic. The incompetence of the government and its chaotic response to the health crisis has led to tens of thousands of extra deaths.

The government’s imposition of more centralised control, political and economically, is an attempt to try and contain this damaging loss of control. The collapse of the old imperialist blocs let loose imperialist, economic and political tensions that had been held in check by the threat of the other bloc. Today we are witnessing the acceleration of this process through the breaking up of the imperialist, economic and financial structures of the old bloc. Both internationally and within each nation state, the inevitable factional tensions within the bourgeoisie have been set free. The fear of the Russian bloc has gone, whilst at the same time the norms of the political apparatus are being cast aside. Instead of the usual jockeying between factions through long-agreed conventions, there is cage fighting.

The bloodletting in the Tory party around Brexit and the pandemic, or in the Labour Party around Corbyn’s leadership, are examples of these conflicts. Factional interest, short-term political and personal gain, and naked corruption are replacing the defence of the national interest.

Economic decline accelerated by the pandemic and Brexit

The Internal Market Bill is a provocation based on illusions about the EU being intimidated, on the idea that if Trump can threaten to rip up deals the Johnson government can too, and on a short-term political vision that the UK is too much of an important market for others not to make trade deals with it. All of which is fuelled by a fanatical believe in Brexit’s ability to breathe life into the UK’s economy. The contrary will be the case. Britain’s economy has already shrunk by a fifth this year owing to the coronavirus pandemic. A report from the London School of Economics warns that “the most immediate and visible impact of a no deal with the EU will be seen at the border, with risks of queues and shortages of food”. On top of this, “the total cost to the UK economy over the longer term will be two to three times as large as that implied by the Bank of England’s forecast for the impact of COVID-19.” The cumulative effect of the Covid crisis, a No Deal Brexit and the increasing internal chaos will be devastating. International confidence in the probity of the government has been severely damaged. Trade deals will be more difficult to negotiate and will be to the disadvantage of British capitalism: distrust of perfidious Albion will escalate.

The government’s inability to provide any coherent policy around Brexit or the pandemic (apart from the initial funds provided by the Chancellor) is frightening not only the more coherent parts of the ruling class but former supporters. What gives them nightmares most of all is that this increasingly chaotic mess is the best they could come up with given that Brexit has already profoundly undermined its political coherence. 

Phil, 3.10.20

 

British patriots have been singing “Britannia rules the waves” since the 18th century. But in 2020 the situation has completely changed: the waves of the pandemic, of divisions within the bourgeoisie, of the international trade war, and imperialist tensions all wash over British capitalism. With the decision to opt for Brexit and turn away from the EU, by far its largest trading partner, and by the absence of any real alternative options, the UK is sailing without a map or compass and is completely at the mercy of the waves.

As we have written in many previous articles, since the Second World War the UK has lost its status as an imperialist power of the first rank[1] while membership of the European Union did not mean a recovery of the status that the British bourgeoisie desperately longed for. Isolated, weakened and divided, the UK is faced today with several serious challenges which it will have to face between now and 2021.

The irresponsible ‘return to normality’ … before a return to semi-lockdown

Test, track and trace. This was the mantra for the UK government for fighting the coronavirus, easing the lockdown restrictions and returning the country to ‘normal’ conditions. Both the app and the manual contact tracing are part of the larger strategy to contain the virus. However, up to now, all the experiments with the app have failed and massive testing has not been followed up by a rigorous contact and tracing operation. Shortages in human contact tracers and a permanently overwhelmed system - it has been completely inadequate.

Moreover, the number of infected people that are prepared to cooperate with the NHS to trace the source of the infection has fallen well below the level of what is needed. This is certainly linked to decreased confidence in the government, especially after May when chief adviser Dominic Cummings spectacularly broke lockdown rules and travelled hundreds of miles away from London. The inclination to comply with government instructions was seriously undermined by this. After six months the government has not yet succeeded in implementing an effective strategy against the virus and has to resort to on/off local lockdown measures, rule of six, bars closing at 10 pm etc.

On 2 September infections were on the rise and the R factor in the UK stood at 0.9-1.1, which is a risky figure to ‘return to normal’. The government nevertheless decided that restrictions should be eased and workers pushed to get back to the workplace. But this decision was met with resistance by local authorities in Northwest England who were faced with a new rise in Covid-19 cases. At the last minute it was decided to keep the local lockdown rules in place after all, which signified yet another U-turn by the government, aggravating the chaos and showing the lack of control of the pandemic.

The completely irresponsible strategy of the government became apparent on 22 September when the UK recorded nearly 5000 new lab-tested cases of coronavirus, the highest daily spike in infections since May 7, and Johnson’s government was forced to abandon its campaign to ‘reopen the economy’. Between mid-August and mid-September the situation seriously worsened as the number of daily virus infections quadrupled and the R factor rose from 1.1 to 1.4. The appeal by the government to return to work in early September had been a big ‘adventure’ with a lot of casualties. The growth of a second wave of infection appears to be a direct result of the failed attempt to ‘return to normal’.

The endangering of public health for sordid economic interest, along with the overall incompetence of the government’s response to the pandemic, which has cost already at least 60,000 deaths (taking the excess deaths estimate) - these are striking expression of the decline of the capitalist state’s ability to manage society.

On a collision course with the European Union

In September the UK and the EU had their eighth round of negotiations with zero result. Both sides have entrenched themselves and do not intend to budge an inch, while accusing each other of sabotaging the talks.

After the Withdrawal Agreement was concluded in October 2019, and signed on 24 January 2020, it opened up a transition period in which negotiations could start on the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. They agreed a broad ‘economic partnership’ between them, with a ‘level’ playing field’ in terms of trade and for ‘open and fair’ competition. This agreement was approved in parliament with all Tories voting in favour. The ink on the agreement had barely dried when the campaign started against certain clauses in the Withdrawal Agreement which supposedly infringed on UK sovereignty.

A notable moment in the campaign came in July when a report by the Centre for Brexit Policy (CBP) warned that the Withdrawal Agreement could jeopardise Britain’s freedom from Brussels’ control since it contains “poison pills” which will undermine British sovereignty and could leave the country with a debt of £165 billion. The CPB report advised Boris Johnson to renegotiate the agreement. At the beginning of August the European Research Group insisted that the closing deal with the EU should include revisions to the Withdrawal Arrangement. This was followed by a statement from ex-Tory Leader Iain Duncan Smith, leaving no doubt whatsoever about the intentions of hardline Brexiters toward an eventual deal with Europe. “We became a sovereign country earlier this year and the EU must start treating us as such.” The populist agenda is still being followed, regardless of its impact on relations with the EU.

The UK now calls, in the words of chief negotiator David Frost, for “sovereign control over our own laws, borders and waters” which includes the Irish Sea, as laid down in “The UK’s Approach to the Northern Ireland Protocol”. This document simply denies the fact that, according to the Withdrawal Agreement, the Irish Sea will become the EU’s external border, since, post-Brexit, Northern Ireland would continue following European customs rules.

Negotiations with the EU look doomed to fail and as the end of the year approaches the no-deal option becomes even more likely. Frost “is ‘in complete lockstep’ with Mr Johnson’s view that the UK doesn’t have something to worry from no-deal”. But the failure to reach an agreement with the EU will certainly provoke heightened tensions in the UK, disruptions to the closely integrated all-Ireland economy, and an increase in tensions between the UK and the Irish Republic. A no-deal Brexit will lead to a hard border between the South and Northern Ireland, creating an extremely complex and explosive situation.

Increasing disputes and clashes between England and Scotland

Despite an initially shared approach, in the course of the lockdown Scottish policy began to differ from England, leading to great internal differences in a way not seen before. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, increased the fissure between Edinburgh and London by refusing to ease lockdown measures, when Boris Johnson first announced his plan for a gradual ‘return to normality’. From that moment on the different parts of the UK followed four separate ‘roadmaps’ out of the lockdown, with different rules for everything from working to schooling to shopping. Crossing the UK’s internal borders has become a constant cause of confusion…

At the end of June, a petition signed by several thousand people in Scotland called on Edinburgh to close the border as a precaution. Sturgeon replied that there was “no plan” for such a measure, but was prepared to “consider all possible options”. Her declaration that she did not rule out quarantine measures on other British citizens coming to Scotland provoked huge protests.

Johnson rejected the idea of quarantine for visitors to Scotland coming from other parts of the UK. He said it was “deeply irresponsible, damaging and divisive talk” and that there was no such a thing as “a border between Scotland and England” as he dismissed any move towards an independent Scotland or a new Scottish referendum.

When Johnson visited Scotland in July, he said that the “sheer might of our Union” had helped to protect Scotland and saved 900,000 jobs in Scotland during the pandemic. Since he did not meet with Sturgeon, she replied to him in a tweet saying that “one of the key arguments for independence is the ability of Scotland to take our own decisions, rather than having our future decided by politicians we didn’t vote for, taking us down a path we haven’t chosen.”

Another cause of tension is the intention of the UK government to refuse any say to the other parts of the UK in industrial subsidies and to deny any jurisdiction over state aid policy once the Brexit transition period expires, as laid down in the UK Internal Market Bill. As Scotland is keen to remain aligned with EU rules, it puts the country on another collision course with the government in London. Sturgeon called the idea of the UK government a “direct assault on devolution” and that “if the Tories want to further boost support for independence, this is the way to do it”.

Both Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated the longstanding tensions within the UK and seriously put the Union under threat. As John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, put it “While Brexit has degraded the British governments reputation for competency and sound judgement, managing coronavirus has built up the Scottish government’s.” All recent polls since early June have shown a majority of people in Scotland backing independence. If this trend continues it will further contribute to the growing chaos in the whole Union.

U-turns and Tory splits

The Johnson government is heading for the Guinness Book of Records for the number of U-turns it has made since May of this year. One of the most remarkable U-turns concerned the A-level grades for students which took place in August. At first Johnson said that the algorithm statistical model, used to determine the exam results, was “robust” and “dependable”. But a few days after the exams the government had to withdraw its decision and grant students the A-level grades that teachers had predicted for them.

The government’s increasing loss of control of the political game means that it has no choice other than to impose a greater centralisation and to tighten political control of various state institutions. At the same time Cummings’ wants to ‘shake up the civil service’. When Frost was named as chief Brexit negotiator, this turned the civil service post into a political appointment. When he was subsequently chosen as National Security Adviser this took it a step further.

Both nominations were met with resistance from within the Tory Party and beyond. The most open dissatisfaction was expressed by Theresa May. She made no attempt to hide her anger. The decision of the government to replace a civil servant with a political appointment made her furious. The Johnson government had chosen “a political appointee with no proven expertise in national security”.

A more recent example was the election of the chairmanship of the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee where Julian Lewis won out over the government’s preferred candidate. After his election he was thrown out of the Tory parliamentary party for ‘colluding’ with Labour and the SNP to get the job. Almost immediately the same Intelligence Committee decided to release a report on Russian interference in the Referendum and the general British election of 2016, a release that Johnson’s government had desperately tried to prevent for months.

Social dislocation in Global Britain

The perspective for the situation in the coming months was sketched out in the Independent (13/7/20): “Four years on from the referendum with endless debates about customs arrangements and at least three campaigns to ‘Get Ready for Brexit’, Britain still isn’t prepared… for the changes soon to come from Brexit. (….) The cumulative economic dislocations of Covid-19 and Brexit will be unprecedented, and will test the fabric of society and the Union to the very limit.”

What does all this mean for the working class? Workers must be prepared for increasing chaos, in which the fabric of society is tested to the very limit while the Johnson government loses its grip. At the same time we can expect an avalanche of measures varying from bankruptcies, to job losses, to an onslaught of attacks on salaries and benefits.  As the second wave is underway, workers must be prepared for a further spreading of the virus because of the lack of precautionary measures and the growing pressure by the state to return to the workplace - alternating with temporary and partial lockdowns

Such a situation will be a real test of solidarity in the working class. In the past months the class has expressed its solidarity with the ‘heroes’ of the NHS, but in the coming period that will not be enough. For the struggle in the defence of its living conditions to be effective and not to get drowned in growing social dislocation, it has to unify its forces

August 8th and subsequent weekends throughout the month saw thousands of UK health workers take to the streets of major towns and cities protesting angrily against low pay, high tuition fees, increased and open-ended workloads and shift hours, lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) against the spread of Covid-19, systemic under-funding and the government’s presentation of their ‘heroic sacrifice’ as a deadly burden happily shouldered.

In previous periods, such expressions of militancy by groups of workers attempting to defend their living and working conditions may have appeared routine, ‘par for the course’. However, in the context where workers are showing small signs of emerging from a global retreat in combativity and consciousness in recent decades (1) – and in particular, against the backdrop of the ‘national unity’ demanded by governments in the face of the Covid crisis – these expressions of class struggle are noteworthy.

Largely organised at local level by nurses, care home workers and other health sector staff but coordinated and corralled by union committees and Labour Party fringe groups, staff spoke at dozens of demonstrations including Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow of the stress induced watching colleagues and patients die (over 540 health care staff at this point had perished), of not knowing if they were themselves infected or transmitting disease to their families; of the struggle to survive facing training debts of up to £60,000 or even £90,000 and of trying to live on real wages which in many cases had fallen 20% over the last decade, despite strikes by 50,000 junior doctors in 2016 and a three year pay ‘deal’ for other staff in 2018.

Above all they were and remain furious to have been excluded from pay ‘rewards’ granted in July by the government to some 900,000 ‘key’ public sector workers including members of the armed forces, civil servants, elements of the judiciary and senior doctors for their part in the ‘battle’ against Covid, but ignoring nurses and care workers. We’ll return to this aspect below.

The ad-hoc nature of the protests – the fact workers didn’t wait for ‘their’ unions to give voice to the evident anger – was further emphasised by parades of largely home-made placards bearing statements such as : “Heroes to 0%” (ie: heroes to zeroes) , “Claps don't pay the bills,” “Pay NHS a fair wage - you owe us”, “Some cuts don't heal,” “Stop clapping start talking” and “A nurse is for life, not just for Covid19.” The protests – 100 workers in Cambridge, 100 in Bournemouth, 2000 in London and so on around the country – attracted predominantly young workers who’d never demonstrated or entered a proletarian struggle before,  together with a few ‘old hands’ reaching the end of their service who wanted to show solidarity with colleagues facing increasingly intolerable pressures. Mostly, they’d used social media such as Facebook groups of health workers with titles like NHS workers say NO! To public sector pay inequality, which claims 80,000 Facebook members, NHS Pay 15 which demands a 15% pay rise (a call echoed at an August 26 demonstration by workers from Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals in London), and Nurses United UK, in order to rally support. Union banners were largely notable by their absence, although there was no shortage of ‘radical’ political groups arguing that demonstrators should aim to make the unions ‘fight better’. Such ideas are likely to have an echo because, as far as we know, none of the ad hoc groups directly challenged the unions or trade unionism.

Rejecting social peace and sacrifice

For months, health workers have been lectured about how they were part of a ‘national effort’ - including army units and the recruitment of thousands of ‘volunteers’ (at a time of increasing ‘zero hours’ contracts and the spectre of mass unemployment!) – putting their lives on the ‘front line’ of the ‘war against Covid’, doing ‘whatever it takes’. That appeared to include working endless overtime, forgoing holidays and instructions about PPE (or the lack of it) which changed from day to day. So the angry demonstrations, albeit on a small and limited scale, showed a real resistance to the state’s pressure to work longer for less ‘for the national good’.  They attenuated the attempt to invoke the ‘war-time spirit’ of ‘we’re all in it together’. In doing so, they mirrored the struggles by millions of others around the world attempting to collectively oppose the increasing exploitation - and often, repression - demanded by capital. Some examples:

• On the African continent, health workers’ strikes have been documented in, among other countries, Kenya, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, with protests in Lesotho and Malawi. “South Africa has seen by far the largest number of strikes and walkouts, where the government plans to cut nurses’ wages as part of a broader plan to cut the public sector wage bill before turning to the IMF for a loan.” (2)  Striking nurses have been threatened with ‘disciplinary’ actions with some themselves hospitalised by rubber bullets and stun grenades;
• In India, in June and July, staff at two hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, protested against a lack of PPE and the dismissal of 84 colleagues for raising safety concerns. These were a prelude to August’s two-day nationwide strike embracing at least 21 states and an estimated 3.5 million workers from different sectors of the economy, spearheaded by some 600,000 members of the all-women Accredited Social Health Activists, “workers who travel to low-income, rural areas to provide essential health care” … (3)
• In California, USA, “hospital revenue has fallen more than a third since the beginning of the pandemic, and the losses have forced health care workers to take pay cuts or even furloughs to compensate in some cases.” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 20). A strike by 700 health care workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital protesting an inadequate supply of protective gear, benefit cuts and “unsafe staffing levels” was just one regional reaction.

Indeed, “In at least 31 of the countries surveyed by Amnesty International, researchers recorded reports of strikes, threatened strikes, or protests, by health and essential workers as a result of unsafe working conditions. In many countries, such actions were met with reprisals from authorities,” (4)

• In Russia, doctors complaining about a lack of PPE were charged under ‘fake news’ laws and faced fines and/or dismissal;
• In Malaysia, “police dispersed a peaceful picket against a hospital cleaning services company ... and charged five health care workers for “unauthorised gathering”;
•  In Egypt, “nine health care workers… were arbitrarily detained between March and June on vague and overly broad charges of ‘spreading false news’ and ‘terrorism’.

Manoeuvres Against the Working Class

But outright reprisals and repression are not the main means used by the ruling class to impose their ‘states of emergency’ on the working class. In the old centres of capitalism – in Europe, the US and elsewhere – the general tendency is a political game of divide and rule, aimed one way or another at making health workers a ‘special case’, at sowing divisions between them and at dividing them from their class brothers and sisters in other industries.

• In Belgium, ‘Emergency Powers Decree No 14’ envisaged forcing private and state health and other employees into unpaid overtime without time off in lieu. These clauses were dropped after opposition from angry workers but it was the trade unions which strengthened themselves by taking over the fight, threatening strikes which never materialised, while all other conditions of work continued to deteriorate;
• In France the recently trumpeted ‘Ségur de la Santé’ plan to ‘reward’ health sector workers in fact divides private from public staff, envisages a decrease in rest times between shifts and is a further step in the dismantling of responsibilities shouldered by the state regarding health provisions; (5)  
• In the UK, the above-mentioned pay award was an evident kick in the teeth for nurses but it also had the intended effect of dividing junior from senior doctors, nurses from other public sector workers, etc.

The tendency to see the health sector as the be all and end all of the struggle – the curse of corporatism which crippled the miners’ and steel strikes in the UK in the 1980s – is one real weakness expressed by the August protests in the UK, even if one meeting raised a chant of “the firemen deserve a pay rise too”.  Another is the inclination to blame the Tory Party for ‘privatising the health service’ when in fact all parties everywhere have for decades been paring down to the barest minimum the health services provided to ensure the expanded reproduction of capital and the labour power required for this purpose. It was the last Labour government’s embrace and expansion of the Private Finance Initiative which truly put the ‘NHS up for sale’ and eroded workers’ conditions.

The militancy shown in the UK (6) and elsewhere over the summer is in marked contrast to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and uncertainty generated by the Covid crisis and the mass layoffs and lockdowns which ensued, factors which reinforced the pre-existing lack of confidence in the class. The struggles provided a welcome reminder that the working class has not been crushed by exhaustion nor the siren songs of self-sacrifice. The necessary politicisation of that struggle - the recognition of what historically the working class is and what it can and must become – remains to be re-appropriated by the majority of the proletariat.

RF,  10/9/2020

(1) See “Report on the class struggle: Formation, loss and re-conquest of proletarian class identity” https://en.internationalism.org/content/16707/report-class-struggle-formation-loss-and-re-conquest-proletarian-class-identity [27]

(2) World Socialist Website, July 7, 2020, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/17/afri-j17.html [52]

(3) Workers’ World, August 13 https://www.workers.org/2020/08/50567/ [53]

(4) https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/health-workers-rights-covid-report/ [54]

(5) See Révolution Internationale, https://fr.internationalism.org/content/10227/segur-sante-nouveau-coup-porte-a-classe-ouvriere [55]

(6) Other sectors in struggle during the spring and summer included university lecturers and bitter protests by British Airways employees with thousands sacked and others re-hired on lower wages and inferior terms and conditions. For further coverage of worker’s strikes and resistance earlier in the Pandemic, see “Despite All Obstacles  the Class Struggle Forges Its Future”, https://en.internationalism.org/content/16855/covid-19-despite-all-obstacles-class-struggle-forges-its-future [56]

Draped in nationalist flags

Since the victory of Alexander Lukashenko in the presidential election of August 9 2020, a victory linked to massive fraud and intimidation, the population has come out onto the street, following calls from the opposition. Tens of thousands, waving the national flag, have been protesting against the regime and demanding “free elections”. Before the election, the main opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had already been attracting large crowds to her meetings. Shortly after the election results were announced, the trade unions linked to the opposition called for a general strike. As with the demonstrations, strikes have spread across the country, even hitting emblematic plants like Bel AZ (mining machinery) and MTZ (tractors). The “last dictator in Europe”, in power for a quarter of a century, has been brutally repressing the demonstrations, multiplying arrests and beatings (some of which have led to deaths).

Lukashenko, the leader of a country under Russian influence after the implosion of the USSR, is today under siege. Thirty years ago the regimes of eastern Europe collapsed one after the other, a striking expression of the disarray of the state apparatus lyingly called “Soviet”, and of the bankruptcy of its imperialist strategy. But the regime in Belarus has remained in power, mainly through ferocious repression. The fact that the last vestige of Stalinism in Eastern Europe is today being shaken shows that an anachronism is on the verge of coming to end under the repeated blows of the same process of disintegration of imperialist alliances which led to the disappearance of the Eastern bloc. Once again a country in a strategic situation as far as Russia is concerned is hoping to move closer to the West, and this is generating ever more chaos, in the image of the current dislocation of Ukraine[1].

The pro-western opposition, led by Tsikhanouskaya, has made use of the calamitous economic situation (mass unemployment, growing job insecurity, etc) and the government’s disastrous management of the Covid pandemic, to bring the population into the street and call for strikes. But the working class has nothing to gain by allowing itself to be dragged into conflicts between factions of the Belarus bourgeoisie, each one supported by imperialist vultures ready to swoop on their prey.

On the contrary!  All the so-called “revolutions” to win freedom from “communism” or the Russian big brother have ended up with democratic regimes which are no less bourgeois, regimes of exploitation which, under the whip of the crisis, have made the conditions of the exploited even worse. All the so-called revolutions in favour of democracy have been the theatre of particularly cynical imperialist manoeuvres: when it was not the western bloc using its pawns to weaken the opposing camp, it was the USSR pushing the leaders to move aside in order to hold on to its influence, as in 1989 when the “socialist” Ceausescu was pushed out to make a way for a pro-Russian clique. In 2004, long after the explosion of the USSR, the “Orange Revolution” broke out in Ukraine, bringing to power profoundly corrupt pro-western elements like the apparatchik Viktor Yushchenko and the “gas princess” Yulia Tymoshenko. The “Orange Revolution” led to a civil war, Russian military intervention, the fragmentation of the country and general chaos and poverty. Today, these countries are mostly run by authoritarian regimes presiding over deplorable living conditions and massive unemployment.

In Belarus, the pro-European bourgeoisie is also using the population as a makeweight for manoeuvering against the existing government. On 14 August, having fled to Lithuania, Tsikhanouskaya announced the creation of a “Coordinating Council” to ensure a peaceful transfer of power and the holding of new elections. For the democratic wing of the bourgeoisie, it’s all about removing Lukashenko from power and lulling the working class with the promise of elections. But elections hold nothing for the working class, whether they are carried out according to “international norms” (as demanded by the Coordinating Council) or are openly fraudulent, they remain a pure mystification, whose only function is to reduce the proletariat to powerlessness. In the end, it’s the bourgeoisie and its class interests which win them. The contradictions of capitalism don’t go away; the exploitation of the workers, poverty and war don’t vanish simply because the bourgeoisie has organised “free elections”.

You only have to look at the pedigree of the “praesidium” of the coordinating council to recognise this. Apart from Tsikhanouskaya who has been rushing to make contact with the western chancelleries to back her “revolution”, the most visible personality is none other than Svetlana Alexievitch, formerly a very disciplined writer under Brezhnev and a member of the official Union of Soviet Writers, who conveniently changed her tune and denounced the “reds”, which won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. The council also includes lawyers, a trade unionist (leader of the MTZ strike committee) a former minister (Pavel Latushko, another one who has felt the wind changing) and a leader of the Belarus Christian Democratic Party, an organisation of fanatical homophobes. 

But aren’t strikes taking place in the factories? Strike committees and general assemblies – isn’t that the proof that we are witnessing a proletarian movement? This is the argument put forward by the left parties, the Trotskyists in particular?[2] But it’s not enough for workers to be present in a mobilisation to make it a movement of the working class. In reality, the strikes were entirely piloted by the trade unions, in particular the Belarus Congress of Democratic Unions whose goal, concerned with the “future of the country”, is to ensure “a rapid transfer of power” and to “help the country emerge from its acute political crisis”[3]. It was the unions, guard dogs of capital, who called the assemblies and pushed the strikes with the sole aim of forcing Lukashenko to step down. The Belarus Congress of Democratic Unions is also linked to many international trade union organisations (International Trade Union Confederation, International Labour Organisation) and benefits from the long experience of these union bodies in controlling the working class and sabotaging its struggles.

These strikes are neither a “step forward” towards nor the premise for a class movement. This is a rotten terrain which disarms the proletariat on all levels, which delivers it with hands tied to the bourgeoisie. Apart from the illusions it is sowing in Belarus itself, the ruling class is also using it everywhere in the world to make workers think that bourgeois democracy is the highest goal of politics.

The working class cannot choose one bourgeois camp against another, it cannot allow itself to be dragged behind the unions or the most “democratic” of bourgeois parties. The attacks against the living and working conditions launched by the Lukashenko regime are the same that democratic governments are imposing across the world. Capitalism is a system in crisis which has nothing more to offer humanity.

The only alternative to capitalism’s slide into barbarism is the world proletarian revolution which is the only route to a truly communist society. But the road that leads to it is long, difficult and tortuous. The working class can only set out on this road by fighting for its own demands, especially against the austerity policies of the state, so that it can arm itself with the experience of confronting the bourgeoisie and the obstacles it constantly puts in its path, such as trade unionism and the defence of democracy. It’s vital for the proletariat to draw the lessons from these struggles if it is to recover its class identity and prepare the ground for future revolutionary struggles.

But to move in this direction, it is also indispensable for the class to re-appropriate the lessons of past struggles, such as the ones in Poland in 1980.

40 years ago, a strike that began at the Gdansk shipyards spread like wildfire across the whole country. The general assemblies were really massive and sovereign. The negotiations with the Jaruzelski government were held in public and not in secret state alcoves. The mass strike was ultimately defeated by the “free and democratic” trade union Solidarnosc which led the workers into the maws of repression. After the fall of the eastern bloc, the first “free” election (and generous American finance) brought the Solidarnosc leader, Lech Walesa, to the presidency of the country. Under his government, austerity policies multiplied.

Democratic or authoritarian, left wing or right wing, all factions of the bourgeoisie are reactionary, even when they are led by an apparently sympathetic teacher of English. Today in Belarus, like yesterday in Poland, the exploited have nothing to gain from supposedly free elections! With Tsikhanouskaya or Lukashenko, it’s the same capitalist exploitation!

EG, 31.8.20

The huge exploision in Beirut

On 4 August 2020, in the port of Beirut, a stockpile of 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded, causing one of the biggest industrial disasters in the history of capitalism.

Capitalism's latest criminal act

To date, 190 officially dead, dozens missing and more than 6,000 injured, some very seriously. According to specialists from Sheffield University, this explosion would be the equivalent to a tenth of the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima ... The material damage was enormous: imagine a crater 120m in diameter and 43m deep! Hospitals, like the Saint-Georges Hospital, were badly damaged, even completely destroyed.

Looking back on the unfolding of events, we can see that the reality far exceeds the fiction of a Netflix series: in 2013, a Russian ship, the Rhosus, sailing under a Moldovan flag of convenience, was taking 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate from Batumi in Georgia to Mozambique. Due to technical problems, this waste-carrying vessel with its explosive cargo had to make a stop in Beirut. After inspection, the Lebanese port authorities did not allow the ship to go to sea. In 2014, the nitrate was unloaded and then stored in a warehouse at the port. The owner abandoned both the ship (refusing to pay for repairs) and the sailors. Obviously, they were no longer being paid and were prohibited from disembarking. Moreover, they did not comply. The story does not end there: subsequently, customs officers warned six times about the danger of this explosive stockpile.

But their recommendations were in vain and nobody wanted to take a decision. Seven years of judicial, administrative and political meandering followed, which led to the disaster of 4 August 2020. The immediate consequences of the explosion were dramatic: the port and much of the city were wiped off the map. Much infrastructure was destroyed and economic activity severely damaged. The scenes on the streets were reminiscent of the battlefield. Almost 300,000 people were left homeless, without running water, and 100,000 children were displaced. The humanitarian stakes are considerable, as the port of Beirut handles 60% of Lebanon's imports, including 80% of its foodstuffs, the food security of the population has been seriously jeopardised.

Before the disaster, Lebanon was already going through a dramatic social and health crisis (due to the inadequacy of the hospital system: lack of medicines, overflowing hospitals, exodus of medical personnel, ...) Under these conditions, and with the rapid spread of Covid-19, the health system was already no longer able to meet the medical needs of the population: it should be noted that lockdown was imposed again on August 21, 2020 … except for sectors affected by the devastation! Such decisions speak volumes about the cynicism and incompetence of the Lebanese “government”.

But what the ruling class tends to present as a simple industrial accident (another one!) is in reality yet another tragic episode in the life of capitalism driven by the permanent search for profit and by the reduction of the costs of production to a minimum. This logic, in which human life is irrelevant, is at the root of the proliferation of catastrophes of this sort all over the world. Industrial history is littered with what the media discreetly presents as “accidents” whose frequency and scale continue to grow as capitalism sinks into its historical crisis and today into its phase of decomposition. It is enough, among the immense number of catastrophes, to mention some notable ones to get an idea of ​​their monstrosity:

- On 10 July 1976, the factory of a Swiss firm, located in Seveso, 20 km from Milan, suffered a tragic fate: the sudden increase in pressure in one of the reactors blew a safety valve and caused an explosion of extremely harmful herbicides. Dioxin was a chemical agent in Agent Orange that was widely used by the US military in villages throughout the country during the war in Vietnam! It is therefore easy to understand that the authorities have minimized the toxicity of this product while planning, among other health measures, “therapeutic abortions” ...

- On 3 December 1984, in Bhopal in India, at the Union Carbide pesticide plant, owned by a subsidiary of an American corporation, there was a highly toxic gas leak: 30,000 dead, between 200,000 and 300,000 sick in a city of 800,000 inhabitants, permanently contaminated.

- On 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl power plant 96 km from Kiev in Ukraine (then a “socialist” republic of the USSR) exploded and left the region unfit for human life. The number of deaths due to exposure to radioactivity is estimated at several thousand. In April 2020, fires in a forest near the power station increased radioactivity 16 times compared to “normal” But everything was “under control” according to local authorities.

- On 21 September 2001, in the AZF factory in Toulouse, a subsidiary in France of Total-Fina: an explosion of a stock of ammonium nitrate caused 30 deaths and 2,000 injuries: the cause of the explosion was, as in Beirut, the storage of this highly toxic product without any protection and very close to a large city.

- On 12 August 2015, in the port of Tianjin in China, 140 km north of Beijing: a sodium cyanide leak caused an explosion and fire at a warehouse: 173 died, according to the figures provided by the Chinese authorities, more than 700 people were injured or infected, thousands were made homeless, in a devastated area with a radius of several kilometres.

- On 12 August 2018, the Genoa Bridge in Italy collapsed: 43 died. We soon found out that the monitoring sensors had not worked for several years ... However, two years later, the authorities inaugurated a new bridge with a great fanfare (without the presence of affected families who refused to participate in this despicable ceremony).

- On 26 September 26, 2019, in the river port of Rouen, the American Lubrizol plant, similar to that at Seveso, caught fire and a subsequent explosion caused a huge toxic cloud affecting an area with a radius of more than 50 km. The authorities denied the toxicity of the fumes so that they could restart business as quickly as possible. Residents’ protests and the setting up of monitoring committees had no effect on decisions, and the “post-Lubrizol” plan (as the authorities called it) looks surprisingly like “pre-Lubrizol”. Capitalism is allowed to continue its work of destruction.

This list is unfortunately not exhaustive. But all of these disasters, brought about by the wilful neglect of bourgeois states and the capitalist class, remind us that capitalism can only survive in a landscape littered with rubble and corpses.

Lebanon, a country eaten away by decomposition

Today, Beirut is added to the roll call of “accidents”.

The local authorities were aware of the danger of this cargo and the scale of the disaster can only be explained by negligence, naked greed, and corruption at all levels of the completely rotten Lebanese state. This country survives only by attracting foreign capital with interest rates of up to 20%. The Beirut disaster was not due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances. It took place in a country totally ravaged by fifty years of war in the Middle East, by widespread corruption, by political and sectarian cliques. The decomposition that has ravaged this country for decades, has led the desperate population to want to find “democratic solutions” and so, since 2018, waves of impotent anger have been expressed through an interclassist movement entirely dominated by bourgeois demands. This has only grown since the disaster.

You could draw a parallel with the situation of the neighbouring state of Israel, also confronted with demonstrations of popular revolts on a bourgeois "democratic" terrain against the political power in place, its corruption, its disastrous economic and military policy, against the backdrop of the handling of the equally calamitous Covid-19 pandemic.

The restrictions that were imposed in Lebanon in October 2019 were drastic: you can't withdraw wages from the bank, you can't withdraw currency, there's no access to the most basic medical care. The Lebanese pound has lost over 78% of its value, 45% of the population lives below the poverty line, and 35% of the workforce is unemployed. The daily life of the population becomes unbearable: for example, more than 20 electricity cuts per day. It's easy to appreciate the suffering and the anger of the population against this extreme precariousness.

A wave of protests led in October 2019 to the resignation of the government. The next cabinet, headed by Hassan Diab, was equally marked by corruption and incompetence. All this triggered a new wave of demonstrations in June. Nothing changed. The Lebanese state has been mired for decades in a system of corruption in which the banking system (fuelled by foreign funds, including powerful regional sponsors) plagues the entire economy and inexorably sinks the country into decomposition.

The international community is an accomplice

As always, the same scenario arises: the international bourgeoisie sympathises, sends some assistance, and promises aid. But capitalist life continues its same frantic race for profit, exacerbating the geopolitical rivalries that fuel growing chaos. Under the guise of solidarity and humanitarian aid, it is the stampede of cynical imperialist vultures (be it the great powers or the second rank regional powers) rushing to “help” Lebanon in order to defend their own sordid interests.

And in the foreground of this swarm of grim predators, we find France. The eagerness of Macron (the only head of state to date to have visited the scene of the disaster) led to a first visit to Lebanon in which he told the Lebanese government the conditions for French aid in reconstruction … because the French State intends to regain a preponderant place in the region after having practically been ejected from it in recent years. This is why Macron said that “France will never let go of Lebanon”. On 28 August 2020, in a press conference, he said: “If we let go of Lebanon…, there will be civil war”. To support the imperialist scope of such a declaration, during his visit on 1 September 2020 Macron first of all boasted by commemorating the centenary of the creation of Greater Lebanon (at the instigation of France) then spoke with the various Lebanese political factions to get them to promise to create a transitional government in the next fifteen days.

During the course of the French President's stay hundreds of residents took to the streets to let it be known that they weren't fooled. At the end of the day, Macron was more threatening: “At the end of October I will convoke an international conference in Paris and if nothing has been done, I will tell the international community that we cannot be there for aid.” Such statements say a lot about the fraternal intentions of the French bourgeoisie! The new Prime Minister Adib, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Mikati (first in the camp of Hezbollah camp and then in the opposing side of Hariri) perfectly embodies the type of “change” expected by the old General Aoun who, overnight, understood that “the time has come to change policy” and called on the different political factions to come to an agreement to proclaim “a secular state, as demanded by the Lebanese youth” ... It would almost be a great melodrama if the situation was not so serious.

For the moment, the country is mired in an unprecedented crisis and the explosion of 4 August constitutes a new climax of the decomposition of the state with the impact of corruption and incompetence of the various political parties, financed by rich external sponsors. With this new scenario, the Lebanese bourgeois cliques are only trying to buy time and each is trying to keep its position in the face of growing chaos.

This terrible event reminds us once again that the “accidents” of capitalism are so many permanent threats against humanity. The only guarantee of security for the future lies in the constitution of a truly human international community, namely a society where man and his environment are at the heart of all concerns and decisions. Before that, it will be necessary to sweep away the rubble of this rotten and murderous capitalist society. This is our programme, our struggle. In 1915, Karl Liebknecht said: “The enemies of the people are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – we counter this with the solution: Learn everything, don’t forget anything!”

Adjish (2 September 2020)

The mass strike in Poland 1980: Lessons for the future

"Forty years ago, in the summer of 1980, the working class in Poland made the whole world tremble. A massive strike movement was spreading across the country: several hundred thousand workers launched wildcat strikes in the different towns; it shook the ruling class in Poland and those in other countries".

That was forty years ago, but this "massive strike movement" pointed a finger to the future. These inevitable struggles that the working class would have to wage and the many lessons it would learn from this great experience are invaluable: taking control of its struggles,  self-organisation, elected and  revocable  delegates, the extension of the movement, workers' solidarity, the general assemblies and broadcasting the debates over loudspeakers... this is what the workers' struggle in Poland was like: a struggle against the attacks on their living conditions, against the increase in meat prices and for wage increases. The organisation of this strike movement demonstrated what the working class is capable of. Poland 1980 was one of the great experiences of the workers' movement which shows our class that it can and must have confidence in itself, that its strength comes from being united and organised.

This movement also showed what the ruling class is capable of, the sophisticated traps it can set for those it exploits and the degree to which the bourgeoisies from all sides are ready to work together to crush the working class. The response that was mounted against the class struggle demonstrated once more the strength and Machiavellianism of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie. In the East and in the West, all possible forces were used to extinguish this dangerous fire and prevent it from spreading, especially to East Germany.

What happened in Poland in 1980?

The 1980 movement did not appear as a bolt from out the blue. On the contrary, the international situation was marked by the recovery of the class struggle since May 1968 in France. Even if the presence of the Iron Curtain limited any interaction between the struggles of the working class in the West and in the East, the same dynamic was at work either side. Hence, the 1970s in Poland were characterised by a strong development of combativity and reflection.

In the 1970s, forced by the economic crisis and the weakness of its state capitalism, the Polish government attacked the workers' living conditions: horrific increases in food prices were accompanied by food shortages, while Poland was continuing to export potatoes to France. "In the winter of 1970-71, the Baltic shipyard workers went on strike against the increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs. Initially, the Stalinist regime reacted with fierce repression of the demonstrations which resulted in several hundred deaths, particularly in Gdansk. However, the strikes did not stop. Finally, party leader Gomulka, was removed and replaced by a more ‘sympathetic’ figure, Gierek. The latter spoke for 8 hours with the Szczecin shipyard workers before convincing them to return to work. Not surprisingly, he then betrayed the promises he made to them at that time. In 1976, new brutal economic attacks provoked strikes in several cities, notably in Radom and Ursus. The repression left many dozens dead."

It was in this context and in the face of the worsening economic crisis that the Polish bourgeoisie decided to impose another increase in the price of meat by almost 60% in July 1980. The attack was direct, without the ideological coating that the Western bourgeoisies are capable of. It was characteristic of the brutal Stalinist methods of the regime and totally inappropriate in the face of a combative proletariat. The decisions of the Polish bourgeoisie would only provoke the workers' reaction. Based on the experience in the 1970s, "the workers of Tczew near Gdansk and those of Ursus in the suburbs of Warsaw went on strike. In Ursus, general assemblies were held, a strike committee was elected and common demands were raised. In the following days, the strikes continued to spread: Warsaw, Lodz, Gdansk, etc. The government then tried to prevent any further extension of the movement by making rapid concessions such as wage increases. In mid-July, the workers in Lublin, an important railway junction, went on strike. Lublin was located on the train line connecting Russia with East Germany. In 1980, it was a vital line for conveying Russian troops from East Germany. The demands of the workers were: no repression against the striking workers, withdrawal of the police from the factories, wage increases and free trade union elections". The movement spread, attempts to stop and divide it failed: the mass strike was underway. Within two months, Poland was paralysed. The situation was too explosive for the government to suppress. In addition, the danger was not confined within the Polish borders. In the coal-mining region of Ostrava in Czechoslovakia, and in the Romanian mining regions, in Russia at Togliattigrad, miners and workers were following the same path. "In the countries of Western Europe, if there were no strikes in direct solidarity with the struggles of the Polish workers, workers in many countries took up the slogans of their class brothers in Poland. In Turin, in September 1980, we could hear workers chanting: ‘Gdansk shows us the way’."

Faced with this danger of extension, the bourgeoisies of the world worked together to crush the movement. On the one hand, the movement had to be   isolated and on the other it had to be misrepresented. The borders with East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union were quickly closed. The international bourgeoisies worked hand in hand to shut down and isolate the movement: the Polish government feigned a radical distancing towards the USSR, the Soviet government threatened the workers by moving tanks to the border and Western Europe financed and advised Solidarnosc while international propaganda rallied behind Solidarnosc as a heroic, free and independent  trade union.

This alliance of the various Western bourgeoisies with the Polish bourgeoisie proved fatal for the Polish mass movement. And it is for this reason that, contrary to the theory of the weakest link, the future revolution can only start from the central countries: "As long as the important movements of the class only affect countries on the periphery of capitalism (as was the case for Poland) and even if the local bourgeoisie is completely overwhelmed, the Holy Alliance of all the bourgeoisies of the world, led by the most powerful ones, will be able to establish a cordon sanitaire both economically and politically, ideologically and even militarily around the proletarian sectors concerned.. It is only at the moment that the proletarian struggle strikes the economic and political heart of the capitalist system:

- that the establishment of an economic cordon sanitaire will have become impossible, because it will be the richest economies that are affected,

- that the establishment of a political cordon sanitaire will no longer have any effect because it will be the most developed proletariat that will confront the most powerful bourgeoisie, only then will this struggle give the signal for the world revolutionary conflagration."

Illusions in democracy and trade unions: the weakness of the working class in Poland

The main weapon of the bourgeoisie would be the Solidarnosc trade union itself. Called on to playthe role of the "left-wing" of capital, a role it would perform "clandestinely" from 1982 onward, it diverted the struggle onto the nationalist terrain, serving the workers up to defeat and to repression. This trade union came out of the KOR (the Committee for the Defence of Workers') that emerged after the repressions of 1976 and was comprised of the intellectuals of the democratic opposition fighting for the legalisation of independent trade unions. It would have 15 of its members incorporated in the MKS (the inter-factory strike committee).

While "there was no trade union influence in the summer of 1980 at the start of the movement, the members of the "free trade union" would act to undermine the struggle. While initially negotiations were conducted openly, after a while it was claimed that "experts" were needed to work through the details of negotiations with the government. It became increasingly difficult for the workers to follow the negotiations, let alone participate in them, as the loudspeakers transmitting the negotiations had stopped working due to ‘technical’" problems. The work of sabotage had begun. The original political and economic demands (including wage demands) were diverted towards the unions' interests rather than those of the workers, with the recognition of independent unions to the fore. On August 31, the Gdansk Agreement, embodying the democratic and trade union illusions, signed the death knell of the mass strike. "Because the workers understood that the official trade unions were an integral part of the state, most of them now believed that the newly founded Solidarnosc trade union, with ten million workers, was incorruptible and would defend their interests. They had no familiarity with the experience of the workers in the West who had been confronted for decades with ‘free’ unions"."

Solidarnosc would perfectly assume its role as the fire-fighter of capitalism and extinguish the workers' combativity. "Democratic illusions were the ideal breeding ground for the bourgeoisie and its trade union Solidarnosc to carry out their anti-working class policy and unleash the repression.( ...) In the autumn of 1980, when the workers went on strike again to protest the Gdansk Agreement, having realised that even with a ‘free’ trade union on their side, their material situation had worsened, Solidarity was already beginning to show its true face. Once the mass strikes had ended, Walesa, as the leader, travelled all around in an army helicopter to call on the workers to urgently stop their strikes, saying ‘we don't need any more strikes because they are pushing our country into the abyss, we have to calm down’. Whenever possible, he seized the initiative from the workers, preventing them from launching new strikes." For a whole year, Solidarnosc did the job of undermining and preparing the ground for repression.

The Polish government “re-established order” during the night of 12-13 December 1981 and a “state of war” was declared:  communication channels were closed down, mass arrests took place, tanks moved into Warsaw, and military checkpoints were erected across the country. "While no workers were beaten or killed in the summer of 1980 because of self-organisation and extension of the struggles, and because there was no union supervision over the workers, in December 1981 more than 1,200 workers were murdered and tens of thousands were imprisoned or driven into exile". The living conditions that would follow were worse than those imposed at the beginning of July 1980. During 1982, the combativity did not disappear, but it would be suppressed under the blows of a fierce repression coupled with the continual sabotage of Solidarnosc, leaving the Polish working class impoverished and forced into exile to sell its labour power.

The lessons of the summer of 1980

Despite this defeat, the experience of this workers' movement is invaluable. It was the highest point of an international wave of struggles and it provided an illustration of the fact that the class struggle is the only force that can compel the bourgeoisie to suspend its imperialist rivalries. The military action of the USSR in Afghanistan, which it invaded in 1979, was halted by the actions of the undefeated proletariat in the Eastern bloc. This clearly showed the power of the working class. This is what we need to reclaim:

"In the summer of 1980, the workers took the initiative in the struggle. Not waiting for instructions from on high, they marched together and held assemblies to decide for themselves the place and time of their struggles. Joint demands were put forward in the mass assemblies. A strike committee was formed. In the beginning, economic demands were to the fore. The workers were determined. They did not want to suffer a repetition of the bloody crushing suffered by the struggle in 1970 and 1976. In the industrial centre of Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot, an inter-factory strike committee (MKS) was formed; it was composed of 400 members (two delegates per enterprise). In the second half of August, some 800 to 1,000 delegates would meet. Every day general assemblies were held at the Lenin Shipyards. Loudspeakers were installed to allow everyone to follow the discussions of the strike committees and the negotiations with government representatives. At that time there were even microphones installed outside the MKS meeting room so that the workers present in the general assemblies could intervene directly in the MKS discussions. In the evenings, the delegates - most of them provided with cassettes with recordings of the debates - returned to their workplaces and presented the discussions and the situation in ‘their’ factory general assembly, returning their mandate to it. These were the means by which as many workers as possible could participate in the struggle. Delegates had to return their mandate, were revocable at any time. and the general assemblies were always sovereign. All these practices were totally opposed to union practices. Meanwhile, after the workers of Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot united, the movement spread to other cities. To sabotage communications between workers, the government cut the telephone lines on 16 August. Immediately, the workers threatened to extend their movement even further if the government did not restore the lines . The government backtracked. The general assembly then decided to set up a workers’ militia. It was collectively decided to ban alcohol as consumption was widespread. The workers understood the need for clear heads in their confrontation with the government. When the government threatened a crackdown in Gdansk, the railway workers in Lublin declared: ‘If the workers in Gdansk are physically attacked and if even one of them is harmed, we will paralyse the [strategically most important] railway line between Russia and East Germany’. In almost all major cities, the workers were mobilised. More than half a million of them understood that they were the only effective force in the country capable of opposing the government and that this strength came from:

- the rapid extension of the movement in contrast with what happened in 1970 and 1976 when it was worn down in violent confrontations;

- the self-organisation, that is the ability of the workers to take their own initiatives instead of trusting the unions;

- the general assemblies uniting their forces, controling the movement and providing the greatest possible mass participation in the negotiations with the government that was visible to all.

In fact the extension of the movement was the best weapon of solidarity; the workers did not just make pronouncements, they took the initiative in the struggles themselves. This dynamic made possible a change in the balance of forces. As long as the workers were struggling in such a massive and united way, the government was unable to carry out any repression".

Poland 1980 was one of the great historical experiences of the workers' movement, an experience that the proletariat must reappropriate in preparing its future struggles so that it will have confidence in its strength and its ability to organise itself, knowing how to develop solidarity but also being aware of the traps that the bourgeoisie is able to set, especially with the trade unions.

---

All the quotations come from the article: “Poland (August 1980): 40 years ago, the world proletariat repeated the experience of the mass strike” Révolution Internationale n°483 (July-August 2020)

The ICC has published numerous articles about the struggles in Poland. The following, from our International Review, are available online in English:

International Review 23

The capitalist crisis in the Eastern bloc [60].

Mass strikes in Poland 1980: The proletariat opens a new breach [61]

 

International Review 24

In the light of the events in Poland, the role of revolutionaries [62]

The international dimension of the workers’ struggles [63]

International Review 27

Notes on the mass strike [64]

One year of workers’ struggles in Poland [65]

International Review 28

State of war in Poland: the working class against the world bourgeoisie [66]

International Review 29

After the repression in Poland: perspectives for the world class struggle [67]

Note on the ICC’s intervention towards the mass strikes

During these events, as well as numerous articles in its press, the ICC also distributed three international leaflets, two of them translated into Polish.

The first, dated 6 September 1980, described the massive struggles of the summer, highlighting the power of the movement, its generalisation and self-organisation, denouncing trade unionism and insisting that the workers have no country. It was distributed in about ten countries.

The second leaflet, dated 10 March 1981, was distributed internationally but also translated into Polish and distributed in Poland by a delegation of comrades. It denounced the so-called “socialist” nature of the eastern bloc countries, putting forward an internationalist standpoint and exposing the activities of the different bourgeoisies and of the trade unions

The third leaflet was edited immediately after the proclamation of the “state of war” and denounced the ferocious repression, expressed our solidarity with the Polish workers and the necessity for solidarity from the working class internationally, while rejecting all the false responses of the world bourgeoisie. Comrades were able to distribute it to Polish residents in Paris and New York and to Polish sailors in the port of New York.

The delegation in Poland, after a number of discussions with Polish workers, was able to see for itself the scale of the illusions weighing on the proletariat, making it difficult for them to face up to the historic situation they faced – illusions above all in Solidarnosc and its promises of democracy and prosperity. 

 

Faced with the growing health catastrophe, the bourgeoisie in many countries had no alternative than to lock-down nearly four billion people, more than half of the world's population. If this was made necessary by the incapacity of the capitalist states and their health systems to limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus in any other way, the main and real concern for the bourgeoisie was to protect its economy as much as possible and to keep the fall in profits to a minimum. For this reason, the ruling class had given serious consideration to letting the virus spread through the entire population, with a plan to shield and protect the most vulnerable groups, believing that the rest of the population could emerge with limited fatalities. But there was a great risk that the spread of the virus could get out of control and that the entire economy would be plunged into a downturn. The large majority of countries therefore chose the 'tactic' of lock-down, that is to say that since no other health response was available, they chose to return to the practices of the Middle Ages, isolating, marginalising, and confining to close quarters the 'virus victims', but this time on a global scale.

The compulsory lock-down of large parts of the world's population, most of which lives in insecure, cramped and unsanitary conditions, in dangerous overcrowded megacities of several million people, has only further exacerbated their very difficult living conditions.

It is the wage-earning, exploited class that has been, and therefore remains, the hardest hit by the consequences of lock-down. In underdeveloped areas such as Africa, Latin America and Asia, the living conditions of tens of millions of workers were already unbearable and the lock-down has only made things worse.

The general isolation, the limitations on social interaction, the overcrowded homes and the restrictions on movement and travel have caused serious damage to the health of the population, in particular, affecting its mental health.

In these conditions, the trauma of confinement among the exploited class is out of proportion with what the bourgeois class may have lived through in its spacious residences equipped with all the necessary material comforts. The confinement has therefore further highlighted the scandalous and appalling inequality of a society divided into social classes.

Social and collective life increasingly at risk

Contrary to what the bourgeoisie wants us to believe, we are not all equal when facing life's dramas, just as we are not all equal in the face of the consequences of the lock-down. In capitalist society, the proletarians always pay the most heavily and physically for the tragedies generated by this rotting system. Within the exploited class, the weakest or those who have become 'useless' and 'unwanted' in the eyes of capitalism are the first to suffer the consequences of its inhumanity and barbarism.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in 1912 in The Night Shelter: “Every year thousands of proletarian human beings sink from the normal living conditions of the working class into the night of misery. They fall silently, like sediment, into the depths of society. Worn out, useless elements, from which capital can no longer squeeze one more drop, human waste, swept away by an iron broom”. In addition to material poverty, rotting capitalism continues to develop the marginalisation and atomisation of individuals, with the destruction of family relations, the exclusion of the elderly and mental torment... it sows misfortune in the name of free enterprise, that is, with the obligation to work and be exploited to be able to live.

In its blind rage capitalism sacrifices the life and health of the exploited on the sacred altar of profit, destroying all human bonds within the working class and especially the emotional ties of solidarity. When this ruling class hypocritically talks about protecting the weakest and the oldest among us, or the least privileged children, it lies shamelessly. We are seeing the consequences of the policy of running down and dismantling services that provide a minimum of security to the working class, and this has to be covered up by massive ideological campaigns. They would have us believe that, during the pandemic the state will take care of the most vulnerable, when, in fact, the state itself is responsible for all the social, mental and health distress caused by the pandemic.

Older people discarded from society

In care homes across the world, the human drama is unending. At first it was shrouded in silence by the bourgeois state, but it became news when the sordid unfolding reality could no longer be hidden. Already more than 10,000 deaths have been recorded officially in the French homes. In Spain, where as many as 16,000 deaths were recorded last May, hundreds of corpses were found inside these establishments, lying on their beds and abandoned for days. Similar dramas took place in many other countries, reminding us of how, for capitalism, the 'old' are little more than superfluous mouths to feed, best removed from society as death awaits them.

This is not to ignore all those others who died alone in their own homes, abandoned to their fate. The lack of protection against the virus in care homes and proper support for the elderly, along with staff shortages, has produced a real carnage for which the bourgeoisie, in all its well-known cynicism and proven negligence, is solely responsible.

In these 'end-of-life' establishments, these millions of people (700,000 in France alone), extremely vulnerable and with no adequate protection, are an easy prey for the virus.

Thus, and even with restrictions applied to the rest of the population, it was necessary for the elderly to be confined, isolated and locked in their rooms. All contact with the outside with their family, relatives or still able-bodied friends living outside was forbidden. Just as in orphanages, prisons, refugee camps, migrant detention centres and other juvenile detention centres, retirement homes are hotspots for the spread of contamination, especially since these people are often already weak from age or illness.

But the unfolding human drama does not stop there. In addition to the consequences of the pandemic itself, these human beings who it is claimed are isolated 'for their own good' are thus condemned to a bleak despair, cut off from all connection with their loved ones, and diagnosed as victims of 'old age depression'. What capitalist society inflicts on them can only make them feel a deep sense of abandonment and loneliness, totally losing interest in life and even in identity. It is certain that in addition to all those who die from the pandemic, there are also those who simply let themselves die from grief and loneliness.

This context sees families witness the brutality of this society, since attempts to bring comfort and support to their loved ones have been punished with fines, such as the person who dared to defy the prohibition by traveling nearly 300 kilometres to visit the bedside of his father at the end of his life, or the woman who came to say hello to her husband, residing in a care home, from the street next door to the care home!

As we can see, during this period of lock-down the state succeeded in enforcing the social lock-down quite insensitively, with little concern for the social ties vital to everyday life and especially for those who are the most disadvantaged.

Conversely, by claiming to serve 'the needs of everyone', by posing as the Good Samaritan concerned with protecting the health of the weakest, the state has exercised an odious policy of control and extensive coercion over society, going so far as banning, and then restricting, the presence of families at funeral ceremonies, with the police refusing people access to the cemeteries. Since death is a commodity in this society like any other, in times of pandemic it can be very profitable; a funeral company in France will charge as much as 250 euros to families to assemble for fifteen minutes in front of the coffin in the Halles de Rungis, an enormous wholesale food market near Paris.

Students, the other victims of capitalist lock-down

Students are noted for the precariousness of their conditions. Many of these future proletarians survive on odd jobs, which just allow them to continue their studies. Living away from their families, they can experience acute loneliness, more than is understood, but most of all a profound insecurity, with no guarantees of what the future holds. The lock-down has only worsened these living conditions. For some years, suicides among students have been on the increase. In France, for example, a few months ago, in desperation a student tried to set himself on fire outside the Centre Régional des Œuvres Universitaires et Scolaires at a University in Lyon. The decrease in odd jobs, the general shut-down, the material and physical impossibility of visiting their families, have become a reality.

Distressed phone calls to psychological support centres have never been so numerous. And this will only increase as in several countries, including the most developed (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, etc), faced with the inability of the  authorities to protect the health of the students, the state has decided not to reopen a large number of universities at the beginning of the academic year and to replace lecture-room courses with online courses or video-conferencing. Students will now be obliged to remain isolated in small rooms all day long, behind their computers with no direct physical contact at all. This is another step in the social isolation and atomisation of individual members of society.

Therefore, while the bourgeois state has effectively removed large numbers of the elderly from society, it does not treat its future proletarians much better.  A large number of them are facing a bleak future of unemployment and a greater precariousness as the economic crisis accelerates and worsens.

The rise of violence against women and children

For many weeks, or indeed several months, the media has been exerting a lot of pressure on us with: 'Stay home, act responsibly, protect yourself and others!' Of course, anyone not following these guidelines was accused of being irresponsible, endangering the health and lives if other people. So all those people not seen as 'model citizens', were accused of spreading the virus.

In fact, the lock-down was closely adhered to. Most of the population understood there was no other choice and that it was necessary to self-shield to protect themselves. However, in terms of how the lock-down affects all other areas of life, bourgeois ideology spreads the fantasy of equal rights. The ruling class pretends not to see the poverty or dire housing conditions in which the vast majority of the working class, the most vulnerable and the unemployed, live. Whole families have to live in cramped small rooms morning and night. Once again, profit and market forces rule over quality of housing.

If violence against children and women is unfortunately not a new phenomenon, in these locked-down conditions, it has increased significantly. As the state's only interest is 'saving the economy', it has little to offer terrified people who are fearing for their lives, except to propose they ring the emergency number for the social services, which has little capacity to cope with the tide of violence.

As a consequence, all over the world, domestic violence has mushroomed, rising by 30% in France where police call-outs to domestic violence cases have risen by 48%. In Europe, calls to emergency services have increased by 60%. In Tunisia, attacks against women have increased five-fold. In India, the number of domestic violence cases has doubled. In Brazil, reported cases of domestic violence have increased by 40 to 50 percent. In Mexico, calls to violent incidents there increased by 60% during quarantine with an additional 200 cases of femicide. More than 900 women are reported missing in Peru…

Nonetheless, for the bourgeoisie these human disasters are nothing more than numbers or percentages on paper, which they will quickly forget about. After decades of cut-backs to health services, the social services sector for child protection, for the prevention of violence against women and all the services for the protection of the weakest or the most disadvantaged, have simply been underfunded.

What is the real scale of suffering and how much physical and mental damage is being hidden at the end of the day? How many cases of distress, depression and attempted suicide have accumulated due to these conditions of lock-down and confinement?

The severe lock-down measures and the restrictions on social activity imposed on the populations, alongside the workers sent to work in workplaces as virtual 'virus fodder' to 'save the economy' thus being at risk of contamination along with their colleagues, has highlighted the impersonal and abstract nature of social relations under capitalism.

With the virus continuing to spread on several continents, and showing a significant upturn in several European countries where a second wave is underway, the media have started to target and stigmatise young people, calling them 'irresponsible' towards their elders and the general population, because they have gathered in large groups after weeks of isolation; it aims to arouse more ideological division between generations. If, of course, all precautions must be taken, these gatherings testify to a thirst for social bonds, a desire to meet with family, friends and relatives after months of solitude and psychological isolation.

However, these young people only express a vital need of the human species, that of socialised living. Pointing to them as the cause of the virus’ rapid new growth in Europe, as the media have been doing for several weeks, demonstrates even more the brutality and inhumanity of bourgeois society.

In times of crisis capitalism reveals its true face

The bourgeoisie wants to present itself as a class at the helm of a society that benefits everyone, a society where everyone has their place and where everyone has their opportunity. But when a health, economic and social crisis of this magnitude strikes, the veil slips and the unblushing monstrous face of this system of exploitation emerges; a system in which life is a commodity that deserves attention and support only if it is deemed to be profitable, and then on the condition that it does not cost too much. With the economic crisis, with the sinking of this society into an ever-greater inhumanity and chaos, increasingly irresponsible and deadly policies are imposed on life itself. To listen to this class of liars, its media and others who churn out its ideology, the world in the future will no longer be like the one before.

Today, we are made to believe that in the future 'there will be better health services', that 'there will be masks and tests', that 'the world will be more united', that 'we will take care of the elderly in the care homes', that 'loneliness will at an end', that 'we will not repeat the same mistakes again', etc. These hypocritical tall tales are just as unreliable as at the time of the First World War when the bourgeoisie proclaimed with a hand on the heart that this would be 'the very last time!' or 'never again!' The Second World War was close behind with a renewal of widespread barbarism. Thus, it is true, the world after will not be like the one before: it will be even worse! The promises of the bourgeoisie are only convincing to those who want to believe in them, but the proletarian class can no longer be under any illusion about the world of suffering and nightmares that the bourgeoisie has in store for society.

Sam, 2 May 2020

World-wide there have more than 100 million cases of Covid-19, with a death toll of at least 2 million and still rising. This is the impact of the pandemic at the human level, with overwhelmed hospitals, lives on hold during lockdown, people in isolation and greater poverty, the whole uncertainty of the situation, even with the arrival of the vaccines, and the unpredictability and incompetence of many governments' policies.

For capitalism the effect of the health crisis is keenly felt at the level of the economy. The IMF has estimated that the global economy shrank by 4.4% in 2020 and that the decline was the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. While this is a blow for capitalism internationally, it has also had a massive effect on the working class. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated that workers world-wide have lost as much as £2.7 trillion in earnings.

While every major country has been affected, the crisis has not had a uniform impact. The UK for example, with more than 100,000 deaths, has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the world and, throughout 2020, the shadow of Brexit hung over the economy, with negotiations continuing for months until the British bourgeoisie finally broke the “shackles” of the EU at the start of 2021. The combination of pandemic and Brexit is hitting a country that already had one of the weakest recoveries from the 2008 financial crisis.

Recession, deficit and unemployment.

Measured by the fluctuations of GDP the British economy is probably already in a double-dip recession, its first since the 1970s. In the second quarter of the current financial year British GDP fell 19%, the biggest fall in history. Even after some months of growth it is currently estimated that the economy is still 8.5% below its pre-pandemic level. The IMF estimates a 10% contraction in the UK economy for last year, the largest decline of any of the G7. Whatever the final measure, it's not been since the Great Frost of 1709, when Britain's GDP dropped by 13% (and did not fully recover for another 10 years) that the economy has experienced anything similar.

As for government debt, the figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that UK government borrowing was the highest ever for December as spending went up in response to the coronavirus and a fall in tax receipts. "Borrowing reached £34.1bn last month, about £28bn more than the same month a year ago. The increase took the government’s budget deficit … to nearly £271bn for the first nine months of the financial year, a rise of more than £212bn compared with the same period last year. The Office for Budget Responsibility … has estimated borrowing will hit £394bn by the end of the financial year in March, which would be the highest peacetime deficit in history. Borrowing is already higher than during the worst of the 2008 financial crisis.… December’s borrowing pushed the national debt – the sum total of every deficit – to £2.1tn at the end of December, or about 99.4% of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest debt ratio since 1962."  (Guardian 22/1/21).

In 2019, the IMF already pointed out that the level of corporate debt in the UK was so high that almost 40% of it would not be able to survive in the event of a recession just half as deep as 2007-2008. During this Covid-19 crisis hospitality has been particularly badly affected and there are warnings that tens of thousands of pubs, restaurants, bars and hotels could disappear. Apart from furlough the government has adopted various measures and implemented various schemes to keep businesses afloat. Like any other state capitalist measures (generally supported by the left and leftists as “socialist”), sooner or later someone will have to pay, and that means the working class in the first place. If for example, Covid-19 rescue schemes are wound up it could mean that some 1.8 million firms in the UK are at risk of insolvency, 336,000 of them at high risk of going bust. Whenever furlough is removed there is no saying which industries will be capable of reviving.

Before the government's U-turn in December to extend furlough there were a record number of redundancies, with around 370,000 people made redundant in the period August-October 2020 alone. Predictions of hundreds of thousands of jobs being at risk with the end of furlough are common.

Since November 2020 the number of jobs on furlough has doubled to about 5 million. These 5 million are not currently employed. The predictions for the period after the furlough scheme is wound down is that unemployment will peak at 7.5%, 2.6 million people. In February 2020, before the advent of the pandemic, the official unemployment figure was 4%. According these official figures the unemployment rate rose to 5% in the three months to the end of November 2020, representing more than 1.7 million people –the highest level since August 2016. But the real figures for unemployment are much higher than the official figures indicate. At least 300,000 out-of-work people are estimated not to appear in the figures (even though other evidence points to their existence), and many have given up claiming to be unemployed because of discouragement. Of those not benefitting from the furlough scheme millions are struggling to get by on Universal Credit. So, when you read that unemployment in the UK has reached the highest level for more than four years, it's certainly much higher.

Brexit means more taxes and barriers to trade

Even before the final deal was concluded between Britain and the EU in December the thousands of lorries stranded in Kent were a telling foretaste that Brexit would not mean frictionless trade. As 2021 began businesses were reporting hold-ups to supplies and customers complained of extra customs duties, Value Added Tax (VAT) and other additional charges on things they had bought from within the EU. There might initially be a no-tariff agreement with the EU but there are significant non-tariff barriers to trade with the EU. The leader of the Liberal Democrats said "This is the only trade deal in history that erects trade barriers, not remove them. It leaves Britain with a trade border both in the North Sea/English Channel and the Irish Sea. It means an end to frictionless trade with the EU and requires a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy and numerous joint committees to oversee its functioning". When the deal was done there were hardly any measures agreed to reduce the need for customs checks and control.

On top of that, the agreed deal does not include services, which account for 80% of the UK economy, with 12% going to the EU. All we know is that negotiations will continue. This shows that the government's celebration of a 'great' deal is delusional as none of the outstanding problems will be easily managed and resolved in the short term.

According to the analysis of Moody's (the credit ratings agency), the Christmas Eve deal is skewed in the EU’s favour.

The British government’s estimate suggests that, with the agreed deal between the EU and the UK, output will only be 5% lower in 15 years [73]. Economists at Citigroup however think that the UK economy will produce 2% to 2.5% less in 2021 than if it hadn’t left the EU and if had extended its links with the EU. In general, they expect the UK to be at least in a better position than it would have been under a 'hard Brexit' - in which the UK and EU would have used World Trade Organisation rules for trade. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its turn has offered a more pessimistic outlook. It predicts that the British economy will grow by 3.5% less than if Britain had stayed in the EU.

One thing that optimistic forecasters are agreed upon is the idea that the UK economy will begin to recover once the vaccines are widely available. But with trade becoming costlier and tied up in “red tape”, with immigration decreasing, the impact of Brexit will have deep and prolonged effects and will reveal all the weaknesses of British capitalism. Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford, said “Brexit is like death by a thousand cuts.” In comparison “Covid is like being hit three times by a baseball bat. In the long run Brexit is seen as far worse.”

The economic consequences of the pandemic are far-reaching, but the negative effects of Brexit will continue for the foreseeable future. Together they pose enormous problems for the bourgeoisie and the working class. Both are products of the period of decomposition, which is not a positive factor for either class. In the future we can expect the ruling class to mount an attack on the living conditions of the exploited class. A unified, conscious struggle in response, based around immediate defensive demands but opening up a perspective beyond them, is the only positive prospect for the working class

Car 28/1/21

The past year has been marked, once again, by a series of disasters, including a global pandemic that has so far claimed more than 2 million lives and has meant a significant deepening of the economic crisis of capitalism, plunging millions of people into misery and precariousness. The year 2021 has only just begun, but it was immediately marked by a new event of historic significance: the assault on the Capitol by fanatical Trumpist hordes. These two events are not separated from each other. On the contrary, for the ICC, they both reveal an intensification of social decomposition, the ultimate phase of the decadence of capitalism. This public meeting will therefore be an opportunity to put forward this analytical framework, to identify its relevance but also to question it through the prism of the facts and the historical evolution of capitalist society.

In order to prepare this meeting, participants can already refer to the following text:

"Theses on decomposition" (International Review n° 107, 4th semester 2001). Theses on decomposition | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [12]

This is part of a series of virtual public meetings being held internationally by the ICC. The meeting for English-speaking comrades will be held at two different times: 10am (UK time) on Saturday 13 February, and 6pm (UK time) on Sunday the 14th February. The Saturday meeting time should be easier for comrades in Asia and Australasia, the Sunday for comrades in Europe and North America.

If you are interested in taking part, please write to us at [email protected] [8] and we will let you know how to gain access to the meeting. Please indicate which day suits you best.

The British Conservative government's disastrously incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, its incoherent undertaking of the Brexit negotiations, its U-turns over the health crisis, the economic crisis and growing conflicts with the EU, have not been met with an oppositional onslaught by the Labour Party. The British bourgeoisie has been losing control of its political apparatus and one of Labour's historic roles is to pose as an alternative to a government that has pursued populist policies that have undermined the effective functioning of British state capitalism. It has largely failed to take up the task.

Certainly, Starmer has declared that Labour is a pro-American party, its foreign affairs spokesperson has said that President Biden is an inspiration, and the shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, has made a major speech in which she contrasted at length Labour's commitment to being a responsible government, with sensible fiscal policies, and the importance of establishing a "resilient" economy, as opposed to the irresponsibility of the Tories. However, the divisions within Labour's ranks have grown with a wave of expulsions and suspensions as the pro- and anti-Corbyn factions come into conflict.

When Labour massively lost the 2019 election it started an inquest into the reasons for the defeat, looking for someone to blame. Its incoherence over Brexit, the row over anti-Semitism, and its neglect of traditionally Labour-voting areas were all cited. It wasn't until April that it decided to replace Corbyn by Starmer. One of his earliest attempts to stamp his authority on the party came with the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey for negative remarks she had made about the Israeli state. Far from trying to avoid conflict over the question of anti-Semitism, Starmer accepted the report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which investigated anti-Semitism in the party, in its entirety, and made it clear that no criticisms of its conclusions would be allowed. Corbyn was suspended from the party for expressing reservations. He has been reinstated to the party, but not to the parliamentary fraction. The Labour Party leadership then banned local parties from passing any motions of solidarity with Corbyn, although this has not stopped the protests about the treatment of the ex-leader and those who have been expelled. Corbyn is now going to establish a Project for Peace and Justice, a faction that will defend the policies that Starmer is trying to distance himself from. The divisions within the Labour Party mirror the divisions throughout the British bourgeoisie. Similarly, with the unions, some have rallied to Starmer, and some have remained loyal to Corbyn.

Johnson won the 2019 election with his promise to Get Brexit Done. In the year that followed, the negotiations with the EU stumbled on with the prospect of no deal resulting. After many Tory concessions, and the sacking of Dominic Cummings, who was considered to be an obstacle to an agreement, a deal was finally agreed on Christmas Eve. When it came to a parliamentary vote Starmer insisted that Labour MPs support the deal, while voicing some limited criticisms. 36 Labour MPs abstained and one voted against. Because of the feebleness of the opposition, it was no surprise that, as the first opinion polls of 2021 appeared, that Labour and the Tories were neck and neck, despite a year of government incompetence, U-turns and irresponsibility.

At a time when social decomposition is accelerating and with the bourgeoisie's loss of control of its political apparatus. Labour is riven with divisions and is not presenting itself as a coherent opposition, despite Starmer's attempts to appear as a figure of sanity against the chaos of Johnson's government. As the Labour purges continue, groups like the Socialist Workers Party are saying that people should leave Labour, while other groups, embedded in the party, continue their perpetual work to stop Labour's 'drift to the right'.

Labour, once a party of the working class, changed camp and performed an important role for British capitalism during the First World War when it supported British imperialism and was part of the recruitment drive to enlist workers for the slaughter. When the Labour Party adopted its constitution in 1918, its famous Clause IV confirmed its commitment to the management of British state capitalism. Whether in government or opposition and regardless of whether its leader has come from right or left of the party, it has continued to play an essential role in the British bourgeoisie's political apparatus. In opposition it can pose as an alternative to the government, in government it pursues policies appropriate to the needs of capitalism. When the Labour Party is divided, the working class has no interest in supporting it, and revolutionaries warn workers not to support any of the squabbling factions. Instead, it is necessary to show how Labour acts against the interests of the working class and expose its role in the service of capital.

Back in the 1970s and 80s the bourgeoisie was able to deploy its parties in response to, or in anticipation of the struggles of the working class. With the decomposition of capitalism over the last 30 years, there has been a strong tendency for capital to lose control of its political machinery. In recent years, across Europe, as an expression of this tendency, we have seen many social democratic parties in decline and/or disarray. In Britain we are not only seeing the chaotic approach of the government but also a social democratic opposition which, because of its divisions, is having the greatest difficulty in fulfilling the role required of it by capital.

Car 28/1/21

The living conditions of agricultural workers

Following the introduction of the agrarian Reform implemented by the military government at the end of the 1960s[1], in the mid-1990s there began a process of transferring the ownership of land into the hands of a number of bourgeois industrial companies, which have, since then, dedicated it to the lucrative business of exporting fruit and vegetables to the North American and European markets. The largest companies are located in the north (La Libertad, Lambayeque, Ancash) and in the south (Ica) of Lima, and these agrarian capitalists currently own almost half a million hectares of land and water in those areas, and enjoy rich financial incentives and tax breaks granted by successive governments.

Peruvian agribusiness has become the poster child and flagship of the Peruvian economy (traditionally monopolised by mining) and it now generates the biggest profits with the help of financial incentives and juicy tax breaks from the state. The workers who toil in these factories and on the land are migrants from the surrounding villages, and with the boom in the agricultural sector, the demand for labour increased. So many workers were hired that the bourgeoisie talked about Ica being a “model region with full employment”, a kind of economic showcase that the rest of the country should aim to copy. However, such propaganda from the state and the agrobusiness corporations could not hide the oppressive conditions of exploitation of the agricultural workers.

These workers are paid poverty wages of 39 soles (12 euros) or less per day; no CTS support[2] or bonuses; there is continued pressure and blackmail to boost productivity and production quotas and long working days that last from 3.00am until late at night; they work under a burning hot sun and the work is physically demanding and harmful to health; they suffer mistreatment by foremen who bark orders at them and are made to work in silence to prevent them from supporting and showing solidarity to each other. With the increased demand for labour power, even children are hired for the harvests and, of course, the threat of dismissal or loss of pay hangs over them if any complaints are raised against these miserable working conditions.

The agrarian strike in the current Peruvian political situation

Since the departure of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at the end of 2017, four presidents to date have passed through Congress. The penultimate one was in position for just a week. In addition, the current “transitional government”, which has not yet completed its first month in office, has already had three interior ministers. The corruption that spreads uncontrolled like a cancer eating away at bourgeois institutions is “denounced” continually in the media, and is little more than an aggravated expression of the historical phase of decomposition of the capitalist system[3] . And all the while, as this unfolded, the profits of big Peruvian capital continued to increase, reaching levels that ensured their rich financiers had no reason to give a thought to the unfolding pandemic.

However, as the situation dragged on, it evolved: to the economic and social impact of the pandemic and the failure to introduce new health measures to stem the tide of the contagion was added the war of the bourgeois factions in Congress ending in the departure of former president Martin Vizcarra. These conditions provided to the final straw that broke the camel's back. An explosion of social outrage culminated on 14 November with the death of two young people and there was increased pressure on the government leaders, who would have, if needed, not hesitated to take more lives. It was in this atmosphere of protest and resistance that the agrarian strike emerged. All the indications were that they chose this moment to raise their demands as things were already coming to the boil. Moreover, although the capitalist system is mired in the economic crisis and the Peruvian bourgeoisie does not escape its effects, it has been able, to date, to keep some control over the social situation.

It is true that one of the dominant tendencies of decomposing capitalism is for the bourgeoisie to lose control over its political apparatus; however, the bourgeoisie was quick to see that it could end up in a similar situation to that as in other countries, such as Chile [4] .So, the inflexible attitude taken under the short-lived government of Merino, gave way to a government of a more “conciliatory” kind, one more “attentive to the demands of the people”. Yet, instead of proposing a Constituent Assembly or a reform of the Constitution, as an immediate palliative, the idea put forward was to wait until the next year's elections, to let the “transitional government” complete its business successfully. So, right now, this government is selling the lie that the workers’ demands will be listened to and that there will be some recompense for the injustices committed.

Some evidence of this is in the repeal of the Agricultural Promotion Law and, in order to prevent social unrest led by the workers, the Congress gave its approval to refunds to contributions to the pension system (ONP), it passed a law to formalise collective taxes, as well as taking the decision to remove parliamentary immunity, a bourgeois political approach that emerged long before the arrival of the pandemic. There are other events in addition, such as the National Police reforms and the retirement of some of the police high command. This seems to indicate that the faction of the bourgeoisie which is now at the head of the state, and some of the parties in the Congress, are focusing their efforts on pursuing a populist strategy, in order to achieve successful participation and support for a new power structure in 2021's elections. This shows that the bourgeois factions have been able to momentarily set aside their differences and act in a coordinated manner when the workers make their presence felt and the bourgeoisie's economic interests and profits are threatened.

It also shows that their ideological weaponry and deceptions are not exhausted and that the workers must avoid falling into their traps, believing their promises. We must be aware that, in the end, the ruling class will not be able to resolve the serious social problems nor can it stop exploiting the proletariat; nor will it be able to avoid confrontations within its own ranks, as each faction will continue to defend its own privileges and power tooth and nail. Only the united organised action of the workers, putting into practice the methods of struggle fundamental to the workers’ movement, will put an end to this nightmare of decomposing capitalism.

The workers' strike was fully on a class terrain

We can state that, unlike the citizen mobilisation in Lima, this strike of the workers of the agro-industrial enterprises had a clear class basis. The proletariat shows its strength and capabilities when it struggles directly against exploitation. The workers of Ica began by protesting against the unbearable and tormenting working conditions and they halted work and went on to the Pan-American Highway to make their voices heard.

The strengths:

- The strike is the main weapon of the workers’ struggle. This was understood by the workers on the various estates and in the companies when they organised a widespread stoppage and took their action onto the road. Likewise, the workers led the struggle directly with no intermediaries; giving form to various forms of self-organisation such as picket lines and communal fund raising. Inside Ica, the absence of trade unions meant there was no possibility of the strikers being subject to manoeuvres to deflect or derail the struggle as is practised by trade unionism.

- There was a strong class identity and a call to other workers to show solidarity and participate in the struggle. We heard things such as “We, the workers, produce the wealth so 'they' can line their pockets”; or “down with exploitation”, “we want a pay increase”, etc. This is in total contrast to the citizen’s mobilisations in Lima two weeks earlier, for example. All the workers’ demands and banners displayed slogans AGAINST CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION. There were no pro-democracy calls for “a new constitution”, “Citizen's rights” or “Defend our fatherland” during the 5 days of workers’ struggle.

And despite the short duration of the strike, the workers of Ica received solidarity from their class brothers in the valleys of Moche and Viru in the North, who, in turn, came out on strike in their area where a heavy deployment of police led to one worker being killed.

The weaknesses:

- Despite the strong organised class instinct that marked the strike, the weaknesses that the world proletariat face today could also been seen in this struggle. For example, there were legalist and democratist illusions, a belief that the repeal of the Agrarian Promotion Law was a “victory” when in reality legal measures can never change the objective situation of capitalist wage labour and the class exploitation by the bourgeois state. Workers were not aware of this. The strike was not able to go beyond the stage of demands, which is a necessary first stage but not enough, which only highlights the current difficulties facing the international working class in the context of the serious problems that face the whole of oppressed humanity.

- There were some expressions of nationalism, with Peruvian flags on some of the barricades, but very few in comparison with those displayed in the patriotic orgy of the “citizen's marches” in Lima.

Although these protests in the agricultural sector have the same political and social context, one of conflicts between the different factions of the bourgeoisie and the social and economic background of the pandemic, they are different from those that took place in the days around November 14. They have nothing at all to do with the hapless lament of the citizen’s movement and the resentment of a petty bourgeoisie who feel squeezed and threatened by the crisis, and see themselves sliding deeper and deeper into poverty, like the other exploited strata that rest their hopes on an impossible “moral renewal” of the degenerate political elite.

The struggle of the proletariat is the antithesis of the whining of the whole body of journalists, intellectuals and politicians, who demand strong institutions “to restore order”, to suppress any demonstration of protest or rebellion of the population, by force of arms. Nor does its struggle resemble the desperate and sterile actions of terrorism or putschism, the methods favoured by the fanatical voluntarism of petty-bourgeois ideologies, that also imagines them imposing their own interests and taking control of the state to continue exploiting the workers. In the end, the final goal of the proletariat is to destroy the capitalist system, with all its institutions, not to change one executioner for another, one management for another, which would leave intact the machinery that perpetuates social misery and threatens the very existence of humanity.

State repression was not long in coming

At the time of writing, the agrarian workers have renewed their actions, this time to demand that the Congress throws out legislation proposing a new labour law. They blockaded the South Pan-American Highway for one day because their demands for a wage increase of 45% of the monthly salary that is 73 soles (23 euros) per day excluding bonuses and CTS were rejected. The strategy of the bourgeoisie is to draw the struggle into a bureaucratic labyrinth, until it is exhausted and the workers demoralised; and this is a well-used trick to lessen the impact of the workers’ initiative that will find the trade unions as willing accomplices.

While there has been some degree of self-organisation, there have also been weaknesses. There is a great determination to struggle, but there have been no assemblies and/or a strike committee to centralise the struggle. The negotiations have been entrusted to “leaders” and they have passively sat back and put things on hold for 15 days. When they heard that the Congress had not approved their demand for a wage increase, the workers immediately went out to ask why they were being cheated and they went back on strike.

The workers are now also calling for the dismissal of the current President and in the scuffles with the police, 26 policemen were injured. In response the Ministry of the Interior demanded that demonstrators clear the road and they were warned of a possible “iron fist” response. In an act of provocation some infiltrators set an ambulance on fire in order to lay the blame on the protesters, part of a strategy, encouraged by the media, to turn the population at large against the protesters. Finally, the Sagasti government did unleash a brutal repression against the workers, smothering the communities in the surrounding areas in tear gas, even using firearms against the demonstrators and inflicting injuries; helicopters and tanks were used in support of a huge contingent of police and military forces that had no hesitation in unleashing their fury against a defenceless population, accusing them of not being demonstrators but “vandals” who want to damage vehicles and attack the properties of big businesses.

The agricultural companies suspended their operations, calling for the “restoration of public order, security and free passage” in La Libertad and Ica, saying that the firms will remain closed “until the rule of law is restored”. These actions were aimed, firstly, at portraying the protest as chaotic, disastrous and pointless, to demonise it, and secondly, to divide the workers, using blackmail, by saying that the stoppages would mean a loss of income and employment for 100,000 workers. Not content with this, the big companies have tried to offload all the resentment that the workers feel for the exploitation they suffer onto other, smaller companies, saying that “many workers in the countryside have had their rights violated for many years by fraudulent companies”[5] , with which they aim to deflect attention from their own direct responsibility for the precariousness of workers’ wages and living conditions, which is so hypocritical, since they fail to mention that they reduce their own cost of production from the contracts they give to these small intermediary companies.

One of the central aspects of the bourgeoisie’s strategy is to focus its effort to keep the workers entangled in the democratic circus [6], under the illusion that the state is not the apparatus for the domination by the capitalists over the working class but more a kind of arbiter, a neutral power overseeing the classes which can be pressurised and made to intercede and adopt laws granting benefits and wage increases to the workers.

Of course this perspective is one cultivated by all the organisations of the left of the capital, such as the agricultural federations and trade unions and the NGOs such as CONVEAGRO (Convención Nacional del Agro Peruano), the CGTP (Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú), left-wing members of the Congress and some leaders of the struggling workers themselves who, like firemen, are negotiating with the employers and the Ministry of Labour with the concern to not to do too much harm to the profits of the agro-industrial bourgeoisie, keeping down the wage increase to 54 soles (17 euro), which then has caused discontented workers to take to the streets in Ica and the northern valleys once more. The workers sensed that a fresh swindle was in the pipeline, cooked up at these high levels of the negotiations and that they were being “deceived”, without clearly understanding that these “leaders” that claim to negotiate in their name are also part of the exploiting class.

Although the workers cannot give up their struggle for demands, this is a moment for them to discuss and draw some lessons. They have to understand that they cannot win if they are not able to go beyond this level when the struggle will only be trapped in the dead end of legal chicanery and respect for the Constitution. The real liberation of the workers will arise when they are able to bring down the bourgeois order, with its laws, its constitutions and its unions, thus heralding a real transformation that will also free humanity from this decomposing social system.

Internacionalismo; Section in Peru of the International Communist Current 24/12/2020

 

Colored National Labor Union Convention, 1869

The campaign around “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) has led many people to look for references in the history of the struggle against the oppression of and violence against black people. Among the most well-known black activist are Marcus Garvey, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King. But communists do not base their political orientation on activists fighting for equal rights within capitalism. For communists the goal of the struggle lies beyond the limits of the present mode of production. The real abolition of all forms of racial oppression can only be achieved through the fight of the international working class for communism. The crucial question is: what does that mean concretely, except for the fact that communists reject the anti-racist campaigns, which look for answers in the framework of bourgeois politics?

In order to be able to respond to this question we have to base ourselves on the theoretical achievements of marxism. Therefore we must examine how the political vanguard pf the workers’ movement conducted the theoretical-political combat with regard to the “Negro question” in the history the U.S. Why the U.S.?  Because in the U.S. from the first days the workers’ movement faced the biggest obstacles to the unification of its struggle because of the racial ideology which had systematically presented black people as inferior to white people.

Against this background the workers’ movement in the U.S., throughout its history, has been challenged with working out a clear position on this question, and with taking the necessary steps to integrating black workers into the struggle of the whole working class. The first step was made in the second half of the 19th century, beginning with the “American Workers League” (AWL); the second step was made after 1901 by the “Socialist Party of America” (SPA); and the third was made by the different communist organisations after the founding of the Third International, to begin with the “Communist Party of the USA” (CPUSA).

On the basis of a critical examination of these theoretical-political positions, acquired in the course of the history of the marxist movement in the U.S., this short series intends to make a thorough critique of the positions of more recent political expressions of the workers’ movement, in particular those of the Trotskyist Left Opposition of the 1930s.

The marxist position on slavery in the U.S.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels emphasized that as long as oppression exists anywhere in the world, nobody will be free: “Now-a-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class (the bourgeoisie) without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction and class struggles." (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto)

The first proletarian organisation in the U.S.A. to recognise that the abolition of slavery was a precondition for the emancipation of wage labour was the “American Workers’ League” (AWL), founded in 1852. One of its most prominent members was Joseph Weydemeyer [79]. At a meeting of the AWL, on 1 March 1854, his [79] proposed resolution was passed with the following sentence: “Whereas, this [Nebraska] bill authorizes the further extension of slavery, we have protested, do now protest and shall continue to protest most emphatically against both white and black slavery” (Karl Obermann, Joseph Weydemeye, Pioneer of American Socialism; https://www.redstarpublishers.org/Weydemeyer.pdf [80])

In 1863, one year before the founding of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), workers in Great Britain expressed their support for the abolition of the slavery, as they rallied in London and Lancashire and drafted letters and other declarations of support for the Union side in the American Civil War. Under the slogan “all for one, and one for all” they remained steadfast in their support for the struggle against the any government “founded on human slavery”. The meeting in London, which was attended by 3000 workers, passed a resolution declaring that “the cause of labour and liberty is one all over the world”.

Nearly twenty years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto Marx repeated, in different words, his position on the impossibility of freedom for all if some are still oppressed. In his letter to François Lafargue he wrote that with regard to the “Negro question” “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded”. (12 November 1866) This idea became the inspiration for one of the most famous ideas of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) in the expression of its solidarity with the oppressed in the world, in particular with the black slaves in the New World: as long as the labour of the Negroes is so shamefully exploited, that of the whites will never be emancipated either.

Marx and Engels stressed the “revolutionising” influence of the American Civil War on the development of the workers’ movement in the US. Even if they did not characterize it as a revolutionary war, they believed that it really advanced the cause of the working class, and opened the perspective for a united struggle of the workers, black and white alike. “In the States themselves, an independent working class movement, looked upon with an evil eye by your old parties and their professional politicians, has since that date sprung into life”. (“IWMA: Address to the nation labor union of the United States”; May 12, 1869; https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1869/us-labor.htm [81])

Chattel slavery in the “New World”

Slavery existed already in the U.S. before the first ship with black slaves arrived in 1619. Under British colonial rule “so-called ‘persistent rogues’ were banished to ‘parts beyond the seas’, which meant that tens of thousands of men, women and children (…) were simply rounded up and shipped off to work in the tobacco fields of Virginia, where many were worked to death or tortured if they tried to escape. The largest single group were convicts; (…) who could be granted royal mercy in exchange for transportation to the colonies.” (“Notes on the early class struggle in America - Part I”; https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201303/6529/notes-early-... [82])

Just like the white slaves, the first black people to arrive in U.S. were indentured slaves - persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years. But in less than one hundred years after the arrival of the first 20 blacks, the British colonial rule inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery. Chattel slaves were not thought of as people, but as objects, as property, like livestock. This system was much worse than the slave systems that normally existed in previous centuries. The final stage of the establishment of chattel slavery in all the British colonies was concluded in 1750.

Under the specific conditions of chattel slavery “The methods the bourgeoisie used to control its growing black slave army [were] refined into a system of much greater and more sophisticated barbarity, specifically designed to ensure the slaves’ psychological destruction, demeaning, degrading and humiliating them in every way to prevent them from identifying with their own interests against their exploiters. (“Notes on the early class struggle in America - Part I”; https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201303/6529/notes-early-... [82])

While chattel slavery was generalised in the course of the seventeenth century, Marx linked the introduction of chattel slavery to the development of the cotton industry on a massive scale. “Whilst the cotton industry introduced child slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.” (Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter XXXI: “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”)

Chattel slavery was mainly introduced where the labour done was relatively simple, but extremely labour-intensive, requiring field hands to spend long hours bending over plants under the blazing hot sun. It was most common on plantations based on the large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. Systems of labour, such as the gang system (continuous work at the same pace throughout the day), were to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision.

But the economics of slavery could only exist for centuries by means of a whole culture of control with political, social, and ideological formulations to hold dominance over the enslaved blacks and to keep the indentured whites in line. To accomplish the subjugation of the slaves to the system of chattel slavery the slave-owner used “the discipline of hard labor, the breakup of the slave family, the lulling effects of religion (…), the creation of disunity among slaves by separating them into field slaves and more privileged house slaves, and finally the power of law and the immediate power of the overseer to invoke whipping, burning, mutilation, and death.” (Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States; Chapter 2: “Drawing the Color Line”; https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncolorline.html [83])

The ideological justification of black chattel slavery

Given the fact that the black Africans were subjugated by the white Europeans, the most obvious culture of control was along colour-oriented lines. “Slavery could survive”, wrote Winthrop Jordan, “only if the Negro were a man set apart; he simply had to be different if slavery were to exist at all”. (Cited by: Harold M. Baron; “The Demand for Black Labor: Historical Notes on the Political Economy of Racism”; https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:89216/pdf/ [84]) “New World” slavery thus wedded skin colour to class in ways never seen before.

Slavery in the ancient and the early medieval world was not based on racial but on religious distinctions.

The shift from religion to colour as justification emerged in European thinking after 1450, beginning with the Spanish and Portuguese. As late as the 17th century, slavery in North America still did not automatically mean black slavery since there were also 100.000s indentured white slaves deported to the U.S. It was only in 1680s and 1690s that the British began to specify that Africans were doomed to a slave existence because of their colour. For this cause they no longer emphasised their religion and begin to call themselves white, emphasising division by colour.

To justify the forcible enslavement of Africans in the “New World”, racism - the ideology that marked people as inferior by observable differences such as skin colour - was fashioned. “Pre-existing derogatory imagery of darkness, barbarism, and heathenism”, wrote Winthrop Jordan, “was adapted to formulate the psychology and doctrines of modern racism.” (Cited by: Harold M. Baron, “The Demand for Black Labor, Historical Notes on the Political Economy of Racism”; https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:89216/pdf/ [84]) And with one purpose only: the debasement and the dehumanisation of black people. Black people had to be seen as inferior to white people and so deserved to be slaves. The colour of their skin became a brand that kept them, and all of their children, enslaved for generations.

At the end of the 18th century, when voices for the abolition of slavery began to be raised, pseudo-scientific racism was even called upon to justify chattel slavery of black people. One of these voices was Thomas Jefferson, slave owner and the third president of the U.S. He called for science to determine the obvious “supremacy” of the white people, which was regarded as “an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States [85]) The stronger the forces voices for abolition, the more the Southern white ruling class deliberately fostered race hatred to prevent poor whites from identifying with black slaves.

The system of repression was thus not only physical, but also psychological. In the South, white wage slaves were pushed to see themselves as superior to chattel slaves while they were co-opted into policing the slave system. The black slaves on the other hand “were impressed again and again with the idea of their own inferiority to ‘know their place’, to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interest with the master’s, destroying their own individual needs”. (Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States; Chapter 2: “Drawing the Color Line”; https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncolorline.html [83])

The emotional and physical traumas of slavery were devastating. Generations of slavery had deprived the black people of their identity, their own language and their traditional way of life. Most often they didn’t know their date of birth and their own name. Instead they identified with and were given the name of their slave-owner. The consequences of this dehumanisation were not remedied overnight with the abolition of slavery on 1 January 1863. The legacy of race-based chattel slavery produced distinct trauma over many generations of black people in the U.S.

Segregation as a form of neo-slavery of the black people

Despite the victory of the Union over the Confederation of the South, the Civil War did not mean the end of the exploitation, oppression and terrorising of black people in the Southern States. For when slavery officially was abolished - by the Thirteenth Amendment of Lincoln - various forms of “neo-slavery” ("Slavery by Another Name") and forced labour continued across the United States and its territories.

One of these forms was convict labour, taking the place of slavery with shocking force. A new set of laws, called the Black Codes, made it possible to criminalise previously legal activity for African Americans, such as violating the prohibition of vagrancy. After being arrested, they were compelled to work without pay for the same white slave plantation owners, in the coalmines of Alabama, or in the famous “chain gangs” for the development of massive road projects. They were also forced to function as strike-breakers in the Alabama coal miners’ strike of 1894.

After the Civil War black people were subjected to what was known as the Jim Crow laws, a brutal system of segregation and discrimination. Under these laws, black people were still treated as second class citizens just as under the regime of “Apartheid” in South Africa. Whites could beat, rob, or even kill black people at will for minor infractions, which they actually did on a large scale. Under Jim Crow the reign of terror was firmly established with the widespread evolution of white supremacist militias, such as the KKK. The South became a prison-like landscape wherein surveillance, punishment, and policing forced the black body into a constant state of furtiveness and fugitivity.

“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. (“Slavery and racism, tools of capitalist exploitation”; https://en.internationalism.org/content/16886/slavery-and-racism-tools-capitalist-exploitation [86]). Actually the situation of the black people under segregation was just as precarious as under the regime of enslavement. Racism and the rejection of others is a characteristic of all class societies, but in the case of the U.S. it is embedded in the bowels of society.

The workers’ organisations fighting the segregation of black workers

It is clear that the working class in the U.S. faced great obstacles in its struggle for unity. In 1935 W.E.B Du Bois would write that “The theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.” (Du Bois; “Black Reconstruction in America”; Cited in: A History of Reconstruction after the Civil War; 4 May 2019; https://brewminate.com/a-history-of-reconstruction-after-the-civil-war/ [87])

The first attempt after the Civil War to close the gap between the white and the black workers came from Friedrich Adolph Sorge after the founding of the Central Committee of the North American section of the International Workingmen’s Association in December 1870. The American sections of the IWA defended the principle of racial equality, allowed black workers to participate in their rallies and set up a special committee to organize black workers into trade unions. In September 1871 the New York Section of the IWA organized a demonstration of 20,000 workers, including a company of black workers, supporting the combatants of the Paris Commune and demanding an eight-hour day.

In 1866 the first national union federation, the “National Labour Union” (NLU), was organised. Its founding convention unanimously urged the organisation of all workers into the unions: "all workingmen be included within its rank, without regard to race or nationality". The second convention, in 1867, already decided to integrate the demand for the abolition of the system of convict labour. The NLU gained the admiration of Karl Marx and after harsh debates it actually accepted black unions in 1869, but only in the form of separate unions that could be affiliated with the NLU.

In 1869 the African Americans, who were denied full access to the NLU, came together to form the Colored National Labor Union (CNLU). The CNLU welcomed all workers no matter what race, gender, or occupation. Isaac Myers, who was appointed as their president, stated that the CNLU was a “safeguard for the colored man”. And about the segregated groups he said: "for real success separate organization is not the real answers. The white and colored must come together and work together. (…) The day has passed for the establishment of organizations based upon color."  (https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/3931900 [88])

In the end, as both the CNLU and the NLU began to decline, they paved the way for the “Knights of Labor”.

The “Knights of Labour” became a mass organisation in 1881 (after developing from a “secret society” founded in 1869). Intended to overcome the limitations of craft unions, the organization was designed to include all those who toiled with their hands. Under the slogan, “an injury to one is the concern of all”, it unfurled the banner of workers’ unity and aspired to unite all wage-earners into a single organisation regardless of skill, race, or sex. The Knights organised tens of thousands of black workers, although not without a struggle against segregation within the organisation. Thus, it had to tolerate the segregation of assemblies in the South.

With these first efforts the unification of the struggle between the black and the white workers was still far from being achieved.

In the second part we will take a closer look at the theoretical and political struggle that took place in the political parties of the proletariat in the first two decades of the 20th century and how these parties, in particular the Socialist Party of America, were able to enrich and deepen the acquisitions developed since the AWL of Weydemeyer.

Dennis 23.1.21

As 2020 draws to a close, the health crisis continues inexorably. As we have already affirmed, our organisation continues its intervention towards the proletariat and its most politicised minorities. Indeed, we must fight against the isolation and atomisation imposed on us by the bourgeoisie with lockdown measures and curfews. We therefore held an online meeting on 21 November 2020, following on from an earlier one that took place on 17 October. There were fourteen people present at the earlier meeting, who were very keen for the discussion to continue. In the November meeting there were 22 people present and participating in the discussion. The willingness to discuss with the ICC, to clarify and understand the evolution of the global and historical situation was thus confirmed by the growing number of participants. The dynamic of the discussion also strongly confirmed this willingness to discuss.

The participants' questions, queries, analyses, and points of view were not very different from those raised in the October meeting. However, the interventions showed that their concerns were addressed in a more in-depth and well-argued manner than during the previous meeting.

A very dynamic start to the discussion

The discussion began with two interventions on struggles in the health sector and on the lockdown, with a comrade putting forward the idea that only one third of the French support it. The same comrade also put forward the idea that it might not be in the interest of the working class to support the lockdown because it does not reduce poverty: “The lockdown makes us poor. It strengthens the police state. And there would be no possibility of seeing the correlation between the number of deaths and the lockdown”. Some participants replied that all the national bourgeoisies were forced to resort to the lockdown, which corresponds to measures against the epidemic worthy of the Middle Ages. Negligence, growing irresponsibility, an inability to manage the immediate situation on the part of the capitalist state were all elements that several participants pointed out.

The ICC intervened to state that the global situation was going through an acceleration of social decomposition and an economic crisis of a very serious and historically far-reaching nature. We reiterated that the pandemic and the lockdown are consequences of the decomposition that has deepened brutally and violently. The whole of society is dramatically affected: the economic crisis, the life of the bourgeoisie, and the dynamics of the class struggle.

Therefore, a first part of the discussion focused on what the phase of decomposition of capitalism is. Many speakers supported this fundamental analysis of the ICC to characterise the historical period that has been underway for more than thirty years. Some comrades wanted to know why class societies in history had also experienced elements of decomposition, but not a phase of decomposition as in capitalism. These fundamental questions about the decadence and decomposition of capitalism are extremely important for the future of humanity and the historical struggle of the proletariat.

Understanding why this phase of decomposition is at the heart of decaying capitalist society was therefore an integral part of the discussion. The harmful and destructive effects on society were addressed against the background of the development of the pandemic and the responses of the bourgeoisie to the global health crisis and the major economic crisis that lies ahead. Several interventions showed the growing irrationality that is hitting the bourgeois class, especially in the health sector. They also identified the rise of “each against all” in the economic and trade war that is looming.

The central questions posed during this meeting

The question of the spectacular rise of “each against all” led to serious questions and interventions focussed on the following themes:

- Can capitalism go beyond the national framework?

- What is the significance of the questioning of multilateralism?

- What role does populism play in the tendency to disengage, particularly on the economic level?

- Does the increasing loss of control by capitalist states mean a weakening of state capitalism?

- What does the increased repression by capitalist states mean?

- What level of economic crisis will we experience? How will it affect the life and struggle of the proletariat?

The questions and interventions of the participants on these subjects were within the framework of the phase of decomposition of capitalism and completely in line with the efforts of revolutionaries to understand the development of the historical situation. We clearly supported these types of political concerns. Indeed, all the interventions were concerned with the gravity of the evolution of the world situation. And in the first place about the consequences of this aggravation of the situation for the class struggle. Faced with the consequences of the aggravation of the harmful effects of decomposition, precarious and mass unemployment looming on the horizon, how will the proletariat be able to react? The ICC did not have the time to answer all these questions during the meeting.

However, as we developed in our interventions, an in-depth reflection on these subjects, is in continuity with the October meeting. On state capitalism, we emphasised that it did not develop in the ascendant period of capitalism, but only in its period of decadence. This tendency to the development of state capitalism has imposed itself on the whole bourgeois class all over the world. To understand why and in what forms this tendency could only be reinforced throughout the decadence of capitalism is a very important question for the future of the class struggle, its minorities and its revolutionary organisations. The capitalist state is the means par excellence to preserve the domination of the bourgeois class over all the strata of society and in particular over the working class.

The entry of capitalism into its period of decadence becomes an obstacle to the possible, necessary and harmonious development of human civilisation. The state must then inevitably take over the entire life of society in an increasingly totalitarian manner. The survival of capitalism itself is at stake. For example, as the crises of capitalism in the twentieth century have shown, it is the state that has provided the means to ensure that capitalism does not become paralysed. Likewise, the capitalist state is the permanent but also ultimate bulwark against any attempt at a revolutionary challenge to capitalist society. This is seen in the current historical situation with the reinforcement of the means of coercion and repression by the capitalist state.

One comrade intervened to show, above all, that in the face of the epidemic and the economic crisis, “we leave the power to the state over our lives... we must try to wake people up... the danger of the virus is very low... Something is being hidden from us”. This echoed another intervention which emphasised that power is in the hands of the big pharmaceutical companies. It is true that the bourgeois class is a class of liars. Marx had stressed that part of the dominant ideology, conveyed by the bourgeois class and its states, is the maintenance of its class rule. The bourgeoisie is undoubtedly the most machiavellian class of all the ruling classes in history.

But, in our view, these interventions require a deepening of the following questions: What is capitalism? What is the bourgeois state? What is state capitalism? It is normal that young elements in search of proletarian positions need to appropriate these fundamental questions from the heritage of the workers’ movement. The ICC intervened to explain that the institutions that capitalism gradually acquired after the end of the Second World War and during the period called “globalisation” allowed the bourgeoisie to defer the development of the internal contradictions of the capitalist economy.

But the bourgeoisie has not been able to remove an impassable barrier for capitalism: the barrier of the nation-state. The international cooperation and other institutions that capitalism set up after World War II to limit as much as possible the fierce competition and permanent trade war have certainly been able to curb their most destructive effects until today. But the effects of the brutal acceleration of decomposition and the global economic crisis are now calling into question this capacity with all the effects this will have on the living conditions of the working class.

Another participant stated that: “workers could refuse the lockdown”. Another replied that “the working class had no choice. If they had the choice, they wouldn't go on buses, subways, sources of viruses... It’s the state that has an interest in having proletarians go to work, even in these conditions. The proletarians are simply obliged to go there in order to live”. The working class lives in conditions imposed on it by the exploiting class and its state. It is only on its class terrain, through struggles defending its own interests and oriented towards the perspective of communist revolution, that the proletariat can oppose the bourgeoisie.

How does the working class defend itself as an exploited class? How can it assert itself concretely as a revolutionary class on which the future of humanity depends? It will be necessary in future public meetings to return to the great historical struggles of the workers' movement such as the Paris Commune in 1871, the 1917 revolution in Russia or, closer to home, the biggest workers’ strike in France in May 1968.

On the immediate situation several speakers asked the question: where is the class struggle? One participant pointed out that, despite the worsening of the pandemic, “the working class has not been fooled”. For another participant, “the CGT [a French union confederation] has played its role in diverting the interests of the working class”. Finally, another intervention stressed that “on 18 November there was a strike at the Ministry of National Education. In the hospital sector strikes took place too”. For this comrade, movements have arisen, but they cannot develop at the moment. On the current dynamics of the class struggle, despite the concerns present in the discussion, this very important aspect could not be sufficiently developed, for lack of time.

We need to return to these issues in subsequent discussions. We call on all those who wish to do so to read our numerous articles on our website and in the printed press. It is obvious that we should not underestimate the profound impact of the acceleration of decomposition on the working class. Likewise, it is essential to be able to analyse and understand the general dynamics of the class struggle in the present historical period. These are all concerns and points of view that we propose to discuss in our next sessions.

The November meeting involved a very rich discussion with a collective dynamic of debate, despite the fact that it took place online. The willingness and ability of the participants to listen and respond to each other with seriousness and responsibility must be underlined. At the end of the meeting, the participants stated that they were very satisfied with the discussion. All of them expressed their willingness to continue it.

A number of comrades explicitly wished to develop the debate on the following themes:

- How can we distinguish the period of decadence of capitalism from its ultimate phase which is decomposition?

- Why do nations use state capitalism?

- Can capitalism go beyond the national framework?

- How can we understand the tendency to strengthen state totalitarianism and the tendency for the bourgeois class to lose control?

- How serious is the global economic crisis today and what are its repercussions in the life of the working class?

- To what extent does the brutal acceleration of the decomposition of capitalism affect the working class?

The ICC welcomes the concerns of the participants during the meeting. We have begun to develop the analyses of the ICC on the central issues addressed. However, as requested by the participants, the ICC will ensure that we continue the discussion on these themes during our next sessions.

We also encourage all our readers to send us letters expressing their questions, analyses and queries on all subjects of concern to them. We will publish these letters from readers, together with our response if necessary, so that the debate can also continue through the press.

The ICC warmly thanks all the participants who animated the November meeting and will tell them the date of the next one.

 

Albin 28 December 2020

 

The outbreak of an imperialist war has always been a test for those who claim to be on the side of the world working class against capitalism. In 1914 it clearly separated those “socialists”, and “anarchists” who rallied to the defence of their own ruling class from those who, even at the price of isolation and repression, held firm to the principle that the workers have no fatherland. 

At the same time, while these lines of demarcation were very clear, there was also a “centre”, a “swamp” made up of elements who were, for diverse reasons, unable to take up an unequivocal position for or against the war – either because they were using empty phrases about peace and justice to hide their own drift towards accommodation with capitalism, or because they were making sincere if confused efforts to head in the opposite direction – i.e. towards the proletarian camp.   

In the reactions to the current conflict in Israel/Palestine, we can see similar patterns. In the main cities of Europe and the US, we have seen numerous demonstrations calling on us to choose one camp against the other: mainly those brandishing Palestinian flags and supported by an array of liberals, social democrats, Trotskyists, Islamists, and others. These marches had the function of channelling real indignation provoked by the brutal Israeli onslaught against Gaza into the service of a wider imperialist conflict. The slogans “Free Palestine” and “We are all Hamas” not only declare their support for nationalist gangs aiming to establish a new capitalist state, but also coincide with the imperialist aims of Iran, Qatar, Russia and China. Opposing them were smaller groups of diehard Zionists for whom Israel can do no wrong and who, if they criticise US policy in the Middle East, merely demand even more blatant US support for Israel’s imperialist expansion. In both cases, these were pro-war mobilisations.

But there are also those who reject these rallies in the name of working class internationalism. For example, the website libcom.org provides a space for those – mainly, but not only, groups or individuals who label themselves “class struggle anarchists” – who argue against support for national liberation struggles or the setting up of new bourgeois states. An examination of the thread “Jerusalem and Gaza”[1] provides samples of the range of groups and opinions which say that they do not identify with either camp in the conflict. Or rather, it reveals that among those who lay claim to the internationalist position on this and similar wars, there is again a “centre”, a marshy ground in which proletarian positions are mixed up with concessions to the dominant ideology, and thus to justifications for imperialist war.

Today most of the political currents who composed this “centre” in the First World War have either disappeared or made their final peace with the bourgeoisie, many of them returning to the social democratic parties which had by the early 20s clearly become adjuncts of the capitalist state. In today’s conditions, the various anarchist groups and tendencies are the most common denizens of the swamp: at one end, openly merging with the left wing of capital, at the other, defending definite internationalist positions. This was clearly shown in the reaction of the anarchists to the war in Israel/Palestine.

On the one hand, you have anarchist organisations which are almost indistinguishable from the Trotskyists. The article from our section in France identifies the Organisation Communiste Libertaire as an example of this kind of anarcho-leftism: “Faced with the outburst of violence orchestrated by an Israeli regime in the midst of a political crisis, led by a Netanyahu at the end of his rope and ready to sacrifice the Palestinians to ensure his continuity in power, timid condemnations (or worse, statements that place Israelis and Palestinians back to back) are not enough. International law must be applied. It could not be clearer!”[2] . An edifying example of anarchists appealing to the fiction of “international law”!

On the libcom thread, the statement from a number of “anarchist communist groups” in Oceania takes a similar stance. While claiming to denounce nationalism it calls on us to take sides with a “Palestinian resistance” which is somehow outside it. “Israel’s occupation is a naked form of colonial oppression, and its Palestinian victims have every right to resist it by whatever means that are in accord with the final goal of liberation. (...) There is no grey area, there are no two equal sides at war. The Palestinian masses are resisting oppression.”[3] At the end of the leaflet, there is an appeal for people to participate in a series of “Free Palestine” demos being organised across Australia.

In the US, the Workers Solidarity Alliance also speaks with two tongues: on the one hand: “We support a vision of Jewish and Palestinian workers, peasants, and oppressed people questioning and ultimately breaking with supremacist, nationalist, and militaristic imaginaries and ideologies, and coming together [89] in joint struggle [90] to overcome power, privilege, and hatred by building mutual aid, inter-communal solidarity, and collective self-management”. And in the next sentence it says: “externally, we welcome U.S. workers supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [91] against Israel, and publicly protesting against the ongoing violence in Occupied Palestine”. Campaigns to boycott this or that state follow the same logic of “sanctions” imposed by one state against another for flouting “international law” or “human rights”.

The choices made by the promoters of such campaigns are significant in themselves. For example, the Syrian regime of Assad, backed by Russia, is directly responsible for the most horrifying massacre of the Syrian population, but you will never find leftists organising marches to denounce this carnage – some Trotskyist groups even see Assad as an anti-imperialist force. Israel, on the other hand, is routinely defined by the left wing of capital as a state which has no right to exist – as if, from the point of view of the working class, any capitalist state has a “legitimate” right to enforce its exploitation and oppression.

In contrast, the thread also contains statements from the CNT-FAI (UK affiliate, the Solidarity Federation) and from its Russian affiliate, the KRAS, which avoid this call to take sides in the conflict and defend the basics of an internationalist response. The KRAS (whose statements against war in the Caucasus we have published in the past) say that the problems in Israel/Palestine “are generated by the interests of power and property of the rulers and capitalists of all sides, and can only be eliminated together with them - eliminated by joint struggle and, ultimately, by the social revolution of Jewish and Arab workers, ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.

The path to this decision is difficult and long. Too much despair, too fresh the smell of spilled blood, the minds of ordinary people are too much poisoned by Israeli (Zionist) and Arab nationalisms, emotions are too raging today. But there is no other road to peace in the long-suffering region, and there cannot be….

NO WAR! NO TO NATIONALISM, MILITARISM AND RELIGIOUS FANATISM FROM ALL SIDES!

NEITHER ISRAEL, NOR PALESTINE, BUT A JOINT CLASS STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING PEOPLE IN REGION!”

The statement of the Anarchist Communist Group in the UK is also relatively clear on the rejection of national solutions:

“Because a solution to the conflict can ultimately only be a common, classless and stateless society in which people of different religious (and non-religious) and ethnic backgrounds can coexist peacefully. And the way to achieve this can only be through class struggle, with workers uniting on both sides to improve their situation and thereby overcoming long-held resentments. It is the task of the anarchist and libertarian communist movement to push for exactly this”.[4]

The idea of the Palestinian “resistance” – an open window to the betrayal of internationalism

As it happens, the libcom thread was not started by an anarchist, but by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This group, a semi-fossilised survivor from the days when the Second International was a proletarian organisation, maintains its profound illusions in a “parliamentary road” to socialism, but it has never supported capitalist wars or nationalist struggles. The original poster, ajjohnstone, links to the official SPGB blog which makes a telling critique not only of Zionism but also of Palestinian nationalism: “It is easy to see why the poverty-stricken in the Palestinian refugee camps might view the promise of Palestinian self-government as an answer. Sadly, like the Zionists, Palestinians have fallen for a dangerous myth about the past; in their case, the myth that Palestine belonged to them. It was no such thing: most Palestinians struggled along on tiny plots of land, under the weight of massive debts, exploited by a class of landlords. Palestine did not belong to the Palestinians, any more than modern Israel belongs to working-class Israelis.  In 1930, the average rural family in Palestine was in debt to the tune of £P27, which was approximately such a family’s yearly income. On 1936 figures, one-fifth of one per cent of the population owned a quarter of the land! Clearly pre-Israeli Palestine did not belong to the Palestinian peasants: in 1948 they were driven off land which was not theirs.

 They have yet to realise it, but the workers of the region regardless of the national boundaries where they now live — have an identity of interest.  Let’s hope that they come to recognise their common interests and reject the nationalism and religious bigotry that engender false divisions, violence and racial hatred. When it comes to the nationalist and religious fervour, there is nothing at all with which we as socialists can identify, for both are abstractions that have imbued the workers of the region with a false consciousness that prevents them identifying their real class interests”[5].

At the same time, this comrade’s posts on the libcom thread, having chased Palestinian nationalism out of the door, seem to let it back through the window through the idea that the demonstrations and riots by Palestinians inside Israel during the conflict constitute a “resistance” movement which offers a hopeful sign for the future. The comrade talks about “the significant development of Palestinian-Israelis now participating more fully in the resistance. After all, it is the apartheid-like laws being applied in Sheikh Jarrah and attacks on the main mosque that triggered the present unrest.. If such Palestinian-Israeli anti-discrimination movement grows and begin to exert the political power outside of the Knesset, I can only view it as a positive turn of events to undermine the influence of the Zionist ruling ideology”[6]. It’s true that many young Palestinians came out onto the street in reaction to the attempted evictions of Arab families in East Jerusalem, or to pogroms by the Zionist extreme right, but given the complete lack of any proletarian response to the war within Israel/Palestine, given the long history of nationalist divisions stoked up by almost continuous warfare, these mobilisations only sharpened ethnic clashes and the pogrom atmosphere inside Israel, and were openly aligned with the military response of Hamas from the Gaza Strip. In no sense do they offer the basis for a future unification of the Arab and Jewish workers against their exploiters.

This dangerous window was also opened by a group like the ACG, whose confusions on the “legitimacy” of the Zionist state we criticised in a previous article[7]. In this case, the ACG sees something positive in the fact that the Palestinian demonstrations and “general strike” were organised by rank and file committees in the neighbourhoods rather than the traditional Palestinian organisations. “The Palestinian masses need to be self-organised and outside of the control of Hamas or the PLO factions – to some extent, this is already happening…” The ACG then quotes from 927 Magazine [92]. “An extraordinary feature of the demonstrations is that they are primarily being organized not by political parties or figures, but by young Palestinian activists, neighborhood committees, and grassroots collectives”

This revives memories of the dominant anarchist reaction to the war in Spain in the 1930s, when the fact that industries and farms were “self-managed” by the workers led anarchists to see a revolution in progress, when the reality was that these structures were entirely integrated into the “anti-fascist” war effort – an imperialist conflict on both sides which prepared the ground for the war of 1939-45.

In contrast to these ambiguous attitudes, the positions of the groups of the communist left linked to on the thread – the ICC[8] and the ICT[9] - are unequivocal. Whereas few anarchist groups have any real concept of imperialism, both organisations of the communist left denounce the imperialist manoeuvres in the region as well as the war-machines of Israel and Hamas, which can only serve their own or others’ imperialist aims. The ICT statement begins with the slogan “neither Israel nor Palestine” and recognises, like the ICC article, that the pogrom atmosphere exists on both sides of the sectarian divide: “The Israel government’s solution is to let fascist groups like ‘La Familia’ rampage through Arab quarters of towns like Lod shouting ‘Death to Arabs’…The Arab youth have fought back and attacked Jewish targets. They echo the call of the fascists by shouting ‘Death to Jews’, a call which has brought the emotionally charged accusation of ‘pogrom’ from the Israeli press. But there are now pogroms on both sides of this ‘communal violence’”.

There is also a statement by the Angry Workers of the World, a “workerist” or “autonomist” group which is rather clear in its internationalist stance and provides a lucid rebuttal of any illusions in the mobilisations in the Palestinian neighbourhoods, and the general strike in particular:

“the general strike called on 18th May … was lauded by leftists the world over who hadn’t examined its real contents. The mere phrase ‘general strike’ was, for them, enough to demonstrate that a genuine working class action had taken place. But the strike itself was called ‘from above’ and interclassist to the core: While mass numbers of workers did strike (only 150 out of 65,000 construction workers came in, 5000 cleaning workers and 10% of bus drivers were absent, etc.) it was also widely embraced by middle class professionals. It was first called by the Higher Monitoring Committee, the de facto representative of the Arab middle class in Israel, and was enthusiastically taken up by Fatah and Hamas, who ordered their own public sector workers to join in. These parties were not interested in the building of working class power, in fact they have always actively opposed it. The great success of the strike, all its leaders and reporters agreed, was the demonstration of the unity of the ‘Palestinian people,’ but it also had the deeper aim of binding the working class tighter to the bourgeois institutions leading it”[10]. 

It is noted on the thread that the statements of the ICT and the AWW seem to have stirred a great deal of online abuse and hatred. But internationalists don’t denounce capitalist wars to be popular. Both in 1914-18 and 1939-45 the internationalist minority who remained firm on their principles faced repression by the state and persecution by nationalist thugs. The defence of internationalism is not judged by its immediate results but by its capacity to provide an orientation which can be taken up in future by movements which really do constitute a proletarian resistance to capitalist war. Thus those who stood against the dark tide of chauvinism in 1914, like the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists, were preparing the ground for the revolutionary working class uprisings of 1917-18.

Amos

 

Israel's military strikes in response to Hamas, its so-called targeted bombardment of the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip, has provoked hundreds of thousands of people around the world into joining massive demonstrations denouncing the deluge of fire from the Zionist "colonialist oppressor" state launched against the "oppressed Palestinian masses". These demonstrations took place in most European countries, in the United States as well as in Canada, but also in Turkey, Tunisia, Libya and even in Iraq, as well as in Bangladesh, Kenya, Jordan and Japan.

These mobilisations give vent to real indignation about all this barbarism. But they are manipulated in the most shameless way by the bourgeoisie. These are demonstrations which call for a false solidarity on a terrain which is not internationalist and proletarian. On the contrary, this is the terrain of bourgeois nationalism which feeds all imperialist confrontations.

Solidarity with the proletarians in Palestine and Israel does not mean defending a bourgeois camp!

For all the Western governments, led by the United States, even if the denunciation of the war or the bombardments is repeated over and over again, calling on Israel to “show restraint”, the defence of the State of Israel remains a constant in the face of Hamas and its rockets striking Israeli territory indiscriminately. As always, the same crocodile tears are shed in the face of the atrocities of a conflict that has been going on since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people, particularly in the Palestinian territories.

For all the left-wing forces that have called for demonstrations all over the world, the “No to the massacre!” slogan is above all an opportunity, once again, to call for support for the “just Palestinian cause against Israel’s war crimes”! Clearly, behind this "determination" to denounce the war, everywhere in the world, the whole left and the extreme left are calling on the exploited to join a camp, that of Palestinian nationalism, against the oppression of the Palestinian masses by Israeli imperialism. This terrain is that of capital, that of the confrontation between Israeli, Palestinian, European, Iranian and American imperialist powers. All these confrontations, from the backstage of diplomacy to open military offensives, can only lead to Palestinian and Israeli proletarians paying the price in blood to the imperialist Moloch.

Hamas, a bourgeois organisation...

That Israel is a bourgeois military power of the first rank, without any qualms in its domination of territories occupied for decades, despising and provoking permanently a Palestinian population under the yoke, is only too evident. By imposing systematic colonisation and shamelessly expelling Palestinian families, as most recently in East Jerusalem, the spark which lit the fuse, the Zionist state is once again demonstrating its criminal barbarity and its unscrupulous policy towards the Palestinians as well as towards its own Israeli Arab nationals.

But what about the Palestinian bourgeois factions of the PLO, Fatah, Hezbollah or Hamas? What about the jockeying for position between these different factions to regain political legitimacy and to present themselves as the essential interlocutors between the Palestinians and Israel? The most polite bourgeois experts themselves note that the Hamas strategy of firing rockets into Israel, thus fuelling the IDF's response, is clearly a tactic for discussions and negotiations with Israel for vulgar imperialist interests.

... and so are the leftist organisations!

But for the extreme left of capital, the Trotskyists of Lutte Ouvrière (LO) for example, the analysis is much more specious. Thus, even if LO, using as always a falsely radical language, affirms that “The Israeli and Palestinian leaders are leading their peoples into a bloody impasse, with the complicity of the imperialist powers", it hastens, in order to insidiously justify supporting one side (the "weaker" one facing the "stronger" one), to add this: "To place the two sides back to back, while a supposedly democratic and hyper-armed state is bent on destroying an already devastated territory, is to accept the law of the strongest. And above all, it is to turn one's back on the Palestinians' thousand times legitimate revolt! If the Palestinians have the Israeli state as their enemy, they have Hamas as their adversary”.

The libertarian organisations are not to be outdone and are adding another layer. For the Organisation Communiste Libertaire (OCL), “Faced with the outburst of violence orchestrated by an Israeli regime in the midst of a political crisis, led by a Netanyahu at the end of his rope and ready to sacrifice the Palestinians to ensure his continuity in power, timid condemnations (or worse, statements that place Israelis and Palestinians back to back) are not enough. International law must be applied. It could not be clearer!”

This kind of spin calling for “international law” and describing one of these barbaric camps as “the enemy” and the other as “the adversary” or even as a “friend”, clearly expresses their open defence of one imperialist camp against another. The nationalist logic of all the leftist parties is not only expressed in their calls for a false solidarity via the demonstrations, it continues by calling on the working class to struggle, to strike, “to demand together the end of imperialism and the right to self-determination of the Palestinians”, that is to say to divert a workers’ weapon of struggle against the working class itself. Thus we saw the Italian dockers of the port of Livorno refusing to load a ship with arms and explosives bound for Israel. While this action may appear to be what the working class should be doing in the face of war, in reality the unions and the bourgeois left have entirely driven this action with the avowed aim of supporting the "Palestinian cause".

Proletarians have no homeland!

Nationalist ideology is the very antithesis of the proletarian terrain, of the uncompromising defence of internationalism which asserts the solidarity of all the exploited of the whole world. It was exactly the same logic used by social democracy when it betrayed the working class in 1914: rejection of proletarian internationalism and a chauvinistic call for proletarian participation in the First World War against “German militarism” for some, or “Russian autocracy” for others. The 20th century was thus a century of the most atrocious wars in human history. None of them ever served the interests of the workers. The latter were always called upon to be killed by the millions for the interests of their exploiters, in the name of the defence of “the fatherland”, “civilization”, “democracy”, or even “the socialist fatherland” (as some presented the USSR of Stalin and the Gulag).

Since then, all the Trotskyists and official anarchists have continued in the same logic: during the Spanish war, the Second World War, the Algerian war, Vietnam, and many others... In this case, during the multiple conflicts which have ravaged the Middle East for more than 50 years, they have systematically called on the proletarians to fight for the “satisfaction of all the national and democratic rights of the Palestinians” and to allow for a “just solution” to the conflict. As if the decomposition of the capitalist world, its growing chaos every day, its warlike barbarism at all levels, the growing militarism of the great powers and the regional second-raters, all imperialists, could lead to a "just solution"! In this region of the world, which has been plagued by war for decades, as in every war episode throughout the world, there can be no solution within the framework of capitalism!

Where are the interests of the working class, in Israel, Jewish or Arab, in Palestine, in other countries of the world? The Jewish workers exploited in Israel by Jewish bosses, the Palestinian workers exploited by Jewish or Arab bosses experience the same working conditions and have the same enemy: capitalism. Just like the workers of the whole world!

Faced with the warlike madness suffered for decades by the Israeli and Palestinian workers, the proletariat of the “great democracies” must not take the side of one camp against another. The best solidarity they can give them is certainly not to encourage their nationalist illusions but to develop the fight against the capitalist system responsible for all wars. Faced with the growing chaos in the Middle East, the working class can only create a world of peace by overthrowing capitalism through the international struggle of the proletariat.

Against nationalism, against the wars your exploiters want to drag you into:

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Alfred, 7 June 2021.

 

After 15 months of the countries of the G7 trying to push the impact of the pandemic onto each other and their weaker rivals, after millions of deaths from coronavirus, after unprecedented political chaos in the US culminating in the invasion of the Capitol, along with the accelerating climate crisis, worsening international tensions, and the further lurches in the world economy, the G7 Summit, held in Cornwall in June, gave a façade of unity and resolve among imperialist rivals. Behind this charade the G7 is still a thieves' kitchen. The fact that China, the world's second largest economy, was not invited to the Summit, speaks volumes about the depth of tensions between the competing powers. The G7 countries are locked in a life-and-death struggle to carve-up and ravage the planet in a desperate attempt to find and control the vital raw materials for the ‘green economy’. The only thing that's changed for the G7 is that the replacement of Trump with Biden means the US has rejoined the united campaign of feigned concern for nature and humanity in an attempt to pull the wool over workers’ eyes.

One thing that undermined this pretend unity was the UK government's continuation of the war with the EU over sausages, nuggets and other chilled meats crossing the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland. The row over the Brexit Agreement threatened to expose the hollow nature of all the G7 bonhomie. Boris Johnson chose to ignore Biden's explicit warnings issued before the meeting with the UK's attempt to use the Summit to threaten to rip up of the Northern Ireland Protocol if a petulant British government did not get its own way. That this recalled Trump’s antics was no accident. Britain has become the eye of the populist storm amongst the major powers.

Growing tensions with the devolved governments

In the United States the more intelligent factions of the bourgeoisie have, for the moment, managed to remove Trump from power. In Britain similar factions have proved unable to impose a similar measure of control over its political apparatus. Instead of the 2016 Referendum stemming the populist tide it opened the floodgates. The whole political apparatus was paralysed in the struggle over Brexit. This crisis gave birth to the Johnson government, led by a politician hated by much of his own party for his lying, irresponsibility and ready inclination to treachery. The Labour Party under Keir Starmer has spiralled into a cycle of electoral defeats and internecine warfare, leaving the ruling class with no real alternative party, at this stage, to replace or act as a constraint on Johnson.

The cost of this government was clear with its initial incompetent response to Covid. At a much deeper and profound level, the British bourgeoisie's loss of control of its own political game is threatening to accelerate the tensions pulling at the integrity of the British state itself. This is shown in the increasing weight of the Scottish National Party and its calls for independence, and the growing threats of Northern Ireland breaking away or being thrown into violent turmoil due to Brexit.

Before the May local elections, one of the main mouthpieces of the anti-populist factions of the bourgeoisie, The Economist, issued this ominous warning:

“Breaking up a country should never be done lightly, because it is a painful process politically, economically and emotionally. Ask the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis or the Serbs, and other former citizens of Yugoslavia. Few splits happen as peacefully and easily as that of the Czechs and Slovaks. Though it seems inconceivable that the citizens of today’s UK would start murdering each other, that is exactly what they did during the Northern Ireland Troubles that ended less than a quarter of a century ago” (The Economist, 17-23 April 2021).

Civil war is not on the agenda, but the dynamic of fragmentation is very real. This is clear in Scotland. The disastrous effort to stem populism with the Brexit referendum not only opened the gates to populism and its infection of the Tory Party but gave a huge impulse to Scottish nationalism. The nationalist fire has been further fuelled by the Johnson government's provocative statements opposing independence, and by its handling of the pandemic. The prospect of no imminent change of the ruling team in London provides more ammunition to the SNP. Johnson is so toxic in Scotland that his own party banned him from electioneering there because his presence would have increased support for the SNP.

Brexit also exposed a profound problem for the British state in relation to Northern Ireland: its lack of full control over one of its own regions. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, imposed on British imperialism by US imperialism, was based on the understanding that the UK would continue being part of the EU. It gave British capitalism’s rivals in the EU an influence within its own territory: they supplied money and were the final arbiter in disputes between the British state and the various forces of Irish nationalism. Among them, Sinn Fein, and, above all, its armed wing, the IRA, welcomed the Agreement because it gave them a share of political power in the North, and left its control of nationalist areas untouched. The unionist bourgeoisie (and its paramilitaries) was forced to share power, and the British state was faced with its rivals, the US, Germany, France and the Irish Republic encroaching on its control of part of its own territory.

Brexit has opened up this wound in the side of the British state, leaving it even more exposed to its rivals' interference. The British bourgeoisie was held over a barrel by the EU from the beginning of Brexit negotiations. Unless they agreed to Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union until a full trade deal could be agreed, a hard border would be imposed, which would have threatened to reignite the troubles. This was at the heart of Teresa May's famous Irish Backstop. Johnson and the hardline Brexiters torpedoed this, but were then faced with the same problem and were forced to sign an even worse deal.

In this Johnson had recklessly betrayed the Democratic Unionist Party and the rest of the unionist forces in Northern Ireland. When the DUP backed his leadership bid in 2018, he told them no Prime Minister could sign a deal to erect a sea border between Northern Ireland and the mainland. So, when Johnson signed the Protocol it sabotaged the DUP's political influence, undermined its credibility with the loyalist factions, including paramilitaries, and increased tensions within the DUP. This has led to the ousting of Arlene Foster as First Minister, the brief leadership of Edwin Poots, and his replacement by Jeffery Donaldson

This sense of being sold down the river by the British state has already led to riots by loyalists, and the loyalist marching season over the summer could give rise to flashpoints and the possibility of wider violence. Loyalist paramilitaries have issued warnings about attacking trade between the South and the North, because they see this year's increase in trade between the Irish Republic Ireland and Northern Ireland as a step towards unification.

In May, the Brexit minister and the Northern Ireland secretary had talks with loyalist paramilitaries and may have encouraged their threats of violence against EU customs officials at Northern Irish ports. But they are playing with fire. The paramilitaries do not trust the government and feel increasingly isolated.

The Irish nationalist bourgeoisie has been emboldened by the obvious weakness of the British state and the weakening of the unionist parties. The Good Friday Agreement contains the possibility of a referendum on unification with the South. The integration of a population of armed and very angry Loyalist paramilitaries into its territory would place the Irish state in the same situation as the British. However, the growing irrationality and chaos in society could lead nationalists in the North to demand a referendum and open up a whole new can of worms.

Dangerous developments for the working class

The ridiculous posturing of the Johnson government over the export of chilled meats from Britain to Northern Ireland sums up just how weakened and humiliated the British ruling class has been by Brexit. It has been reduced to threatening to tear up an international treaty in order to be allowed by rivals to move sausages in its own territory. Johnson may have been very inept in the way he tried at the G7 Summit to upstage Biden over this issue, but no matter which faction was in power they would be faced with the same dilemma: risk reigniting the Northern Ireland powder keg by breaking the Protocol, or accept the interference of imperialist rivals within national borders.

The irreconcilable contradictions of this situation will generate massive tensions. Given the political irresponsibility and short-termism that characterises the measures of the Johnson government, the possibility of this situation getting out of hand is very real. It could lead to the unification of Ireland. It could ignite a new cycle of sectarian terror and warfare in Northern Ireland, and this could overflow to the British mainland.

The proletariat in Britain is in a difficult situation. The accelerating centrifugal forces which express the depth of the economic crisis and the bourgeoisie’s increasing loss of control over its political life present workers with a disorientating perspective. Among the major nations, only the proletariat in Spain is confronted with similar pressures leading to national fragmentation. The ability of the working class to resist these pressures depends upon it putting forward its class interests, as a class antagonistic to capital: solidarity as a class across all divisions against the growing attacks of capitalism, understanding that the capitalist system is our enemy and not workers of other nationalities, recognising the need to spread strikes beyond boundaries of sector, industry or region are the only means to overcome these growing pressures. Only by understanding that it is an autonomous social force that contains the unique revolutionary alternative to capitalism can the proletariat eventually overthrow the system spewing forth all these divisions.

Phil 30/6/21

The resignation of Health Secretary Matt Hancock after breaking rules that he had himself formulated, the revelations of connections to board members at the Department of Health, and the use of private mail accounts and WhatsApp communication all show the hypocritical disregard for the code of conduct in the political apparatus in the UK. The range of attacks instigated by Boris Johnson’s former advisor Dominic Cummings are further signs of the decomposing political life of the bourgeoisie. Cummings' revenge in a vendetta from a so-called 'outsider' against 'the establishment' is another illustration of the impact of populism on British politics.

Since Johnson sacked him last November, Dominic Cummings has made all sorts of efforts to scandalise his former boss. At the end of May, he brought in the heavy artillery against the government when giving testimony to an inquiry by two Commons committees. Cummings, himself accused of being an advocate of the policy of 'herd immunity' at the beginning of the pandemic – until his famous trip to Durham, when he changed position on the lockdown – has launched a massive campaign on social media, accusing the government of incompetence and not acting fast enough in implementing the lockdowns in March and, later, in September. Cummings reports a meeting where Johnson said that he would rather "let the bodies pile high in their thousands" than impose another lockdown. The latest Cummings blog posted on the Substack platform, an essay of more than 7000 words, revealed classified mailings and protocols that show the incompetence of Hancock and the rest of the government. This has been further spun by outbursts by Cummings on Twitter.

Whatever motives Cummings may have for his vendetta with Johnson, this 'revelation' of the policy of herd immunity is nothing that surprises us: neither the handling of the elderly, moving to the care homes without being tested for the virus, nor the lack of PPE for the staff of the NHS. As we have written previously in the ICC press, the bourgeoisie has showed both cynicism and a criminal negligence of the effects of the SARS-Cov-2 virus since its beginning. The modelling based on the earlier experience of influenza viruses was not applicable and therefore, the idea of a quick spread through the population and the development of a supposed 'herd immunity' in a matter of months was soon abandoned – although scientists, both in the UK and in Sweden, where a policy of “soft lockdown” was adopted, were still advocating this concept at the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, they deny it now. “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.” (ICC online 1 May 2020)

Herd immunity is not a 'policy': it is an epidemiological concept. Normally, herd immunity, or when an infection gets endemic, is a process that can take generations.  The only other way to develop widespread immunity is through mass vaccinations. In March last year, the world population was as naïve to the virus as the indigenous people of Hispaniola when the Spanish conquistadores exposed them to measles. The assumption that SARS-Cov-2 would behave like an ordinary influenza virus was a fatal mistake for the different modellers, as the prognosis for 'herd immunity by September 2020' clearly showed. But is this the 'fault' of the experts, the scientists, the mathematicians that tried to model the scenario? Biological systems are notoriously unpredictable, but the chaotic handling of coronavirus by the different governments only exacerbated the situation. Scientists were taken hostage: basically, they were told that if one conclusion doesn’t work, you have to find another that suits the policy decided. In some mathematical models made by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team (ICCRT), the different parameters were changed afterwards to fit the desired conclusion that lockdown was the best option (Nature, Spring 2020).

Scientists working under the yoke of capitalism must comply with the short-sighted considerations determined by the chaotic policy of the bourgeoisie. The fast development and collaboration in the development of vaccines shows the potential of science, but the full power of scientific research and development can only be realised in a communist society.

Erik 1 July 2021

In the first part of this series we sketched out the first steps of the workers’ movement in dealing with the aftermath of a 350 years history of the enslavement of African Americans in the United States. From the American Workers’ League to the Knights of Labor, the first organisations of the working class tried to integrate black workers into their ranks. Free black people existed already before the legal abolition of slavery, but, in 1863, four to five million more African Americans were freed, and a small number started to look for work as wage labourers.

In this part we will examine how the political parties of the proletariat at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century took up the political defence of the interests of black workers in the mines, the factories and in agriculture. Although African Americans were only one of the many “nationalities” (next to the Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese, etc.) they were subjected to a special regime, where the culture of slavery persisted, in particular through the so-called Jim Crow codes, a racial caste system based on the segregation of black and white people.

In order to make a correct assessment of the evolution of the political positions in the American workers’ movement in respect of this system of racism, it is necessary to understand that, until the First World War, capitalism had a period of ascendance where real improvements for the working class were still on the agenda. In this period the workers movement throughout the world fought for a shorter working day, for the right to organise in trade unions, the right to vote, the abolition of child labour, etc. In the US the stakes of the struggle were the same as elsewhere, but there was one additional demand to be raised and that was the abolition of the system of two classes of workers, in particular the division between white and black workers.

The Socialist Labour Party on the position of the black worker

After the disappearance of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) was founded in 1876, primarily comprised of German immigrants. At the end of 1877 Peter H. Clark became the first black worker elected to the national leadership of the SLP. And in 1879 the SLP adopted a platform in which advocated political equality “without regard to creed, race or sex”, and appealed to working people, “regardless of color”, to unite against the southern landlords and the northern capitalists.

Although the SLP formally supported equality for people of colour, it did not give the struggle for the emancipation of black workers much weight. When Daniel De Leon became the main leader of the SLP, in 1891, this tendency was only reinforced. The early writings of De Leon were almost free of any reference to the struggles and hardships of the black people.

For Daniel De Leon “there was no such thing as a race or “Negro question” . . . there was only a social, a labor question, and no racial or religious question so far as the Socialist and labor movements were concerned”[1]. In those years De Leon had a very blinkered view. Though correctly denying the assertion that the black workers were fundamentally different human beings or even inferior, he didn't see that marxism had every interest in fighting the institutionalised segregation of white and black workers.

In the Platform of June 1896 the Party had taken up various demands that were also put forward in the programs of social democratic parties throughout the rest of the world. “Reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the progress of production; equalization of women's wages with those of men where equal service is performed; school education of all children under 14 years of age to be compulsory, gratuitous and accessible to all by public assistance in meals, clothing, books, etc.”[2] But the platform had no specific demands relating to black workers.

It was only in the first years of the 20th century that De Leon publicly formulated his position about black workers, recognising “a special division in the ranks of labor”. (…) “In no economic respect is he different from his fellow wage slaves of other races. Yet by reason of his race, which long was identified with serfdom, the rays of the social question reached his mind through such broken prisms that they are refracted into all the colors of the rainbow, preventing him from appreciating the white light of the question”[3].

From that moment De Leon fought in a determined way against racism and for class solidarity. For instance, when Van Koll from Holland advocated the restriction of the immigration of “inferior” races at the Amsterdam Congress in August 1904, De Leon reacted furiously: “Socialism knows not such insulting, iniquitous distinctions as ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ races among the proletariat. It is for capitalism to fan the fires of such sentiments in its scheme to keep the proletariat divided.”[4]

The Socialist Party of America and the “Negro Resolution”

The SLP was not the only marxist organisation at the beginning of the 20th century. The other party was the Socialist Party of America (SPA), formed by a merger between the Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the SLP that had split from the main organisation in 1899. At its founding Convention the SPA adopted a very important “Negro Resolution” which was meant “to invite the Negro to membership and fellowship with us in the world movement for economic emancipation by which equal liberty and opportunity shall be ensured to every man and fraternity”. And, more significantly, it recognised that “The Negroes of the United States, because of their long training in slavery and but recent emancipation therefrom, occupy a peculiar position in the working class and in society at large.”[5]

This resolution was a big step forward for the workers’ movement in the defence of the interests of the black exploited population and for their integration in the organised workers’ movement. In 1901 only 15 per cent of African Americans worked as wage labourers. Nevertheless it was an important document, because for the first time in the history of the workers’ movement in the US a political party of the proletariat had adopted a resolution in which it proclaimed loud and clear “to the Negro worker the identity of his interests and struggles with the interests and struggles of the workers of all lands, without regard to race, or color, or sectional lines”[6].

The resolution also clearly defined the stakes of the debate within the SPA, between the right wing that said that black people belonged to a lower race and were inferior to white people, and those who declared that the interests of the black worker were identical with those of the working class as a whole. However, the main struggle was against the centrist position of Eugene Debs, a member of the party leadership, who advocated the fight for economic freedom for black workers (the abolition of wage labour), but said that as long as this was not achieved any social equality would be impossible.

In the years that followed, the “Negro resolution” was the subject of a bitter struggle within the SPA against the centre that actually defended the right wing against the criticisms of the left. In this struggle the issue was not putting “race before class” or “class before race”, as is often suggested by modern leftists, but the need to fight for better living conditions of black workers, when capitalism still played a historically progressive role. In order to make any unified struggle between white and black workers possible, it was of the utmost necessity to overcome the deep divisions between them.

In November 1902 Debs wrote the first article on the “Negro resolution”, which was published in the International Socialist Review (ISR). The article started with a paragraph that recalls the famous words of Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy about the cotton industry: “As a matter of fact the industrial supremacy of the South before the [civil] war would not have been possible without the Negro, and the South of today would totally collapse without his labor. The whole world is under obligation to the Negro, and that the white heel is still upon the black neck is simply proof that the world is not yet civilized.”[7]

In the article Debs distanced himself also from any racial argument in defining the place of the black worker in the workers’ movement in the US: “In capitalism the Negro question is a grave one and will grow more threatening as the contradictions and complications of capitalist society multiply, but this need not worry us. Let them settle the Negro question in their way, if they can. (…) As a social party we receive the Negro and all other races upon absolutely equal terms. We are the party of the working class, the whole working class, and we will not suffer ourselves to be divided by any specious appeal to race prejudice.” [8]

In fact, Debs did not really defend the “Negro resolution” but limited himself to some simple statements such as “The class struggle is colorless.” and that there is “no Negro question outside of the labor question”[9]. At the end of his article Debs even expressed “the hope that the next convention may repeal the resolutions on the ‘Negro question" with the argument that “The Negro does not need them and they serve to increase rather than diminish the necessity for explanation.”[10]  He even advocated stopping any further debate on the “Negro resolution” since the SPA had “nothing special to offer the Negro” anyway.[11]

In Debs’ view the SPA was not to succumb to the temptations of the bourgeois parties who were trying to win over African Americans for their cause by promising them social equality. He disavowed the call for equal rights for black workers such as equal opportunities for work, education and cultural activities. He systematically evaded the issue of the wretched social position of the black workers as corollary of their past as chattel slaves, by pointing to the future of socialism: “The Negro, given economic freedom, will not ask the white man any social favors; and the burning question of ‘social equality’ will disappear like mist before the sunrise.”[12]

By reducing racism to a mere reflection of class exploitation, and arguing that everything would be solved with the abolition of wage labour, Debs actually defended in a more sophisticated way the same position as the right wing in the SPA, while upholding the extraordinary obstacles for the unification of the struggle between the white and the black workers. It was only the left wing in the party who defended - in line with the “Negro resolution” - the idea that as a long as black workers were seen as second-class workers there could be no question of the unification of the American working class. Debs’ position would become the subject of severe criticism in later years.

The Industrial Workers of the World in support of the “Negro resolution”

In the meantime, in June 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in Chicago with representatives of 43 groups. In a period of major strikes internationally (the revolution in Russia of 1905 for instance) and in the US, the convention was a festival of combativity. The IWW came out in support of the “Negro Resolution” of the SPA, when its Preamble openly rejected not only the organisation in craft unions in favour of industrial unionism, but also racist segregation, declaring itself in favour of organising every race and creed. Its welcome to all workers into the same organisation, with a special emphasis on the mostly unskilled black workers, was its most important contribution to the labour movement.

In the first five years of its existence however the IWW accomplished little in organising black workers. At the beginning of 1910 it therefore made a determined effort to recruit more of them. A massive educational campaign was launched to convince black workers that “There is only one labor organization in the U.S. that admits the colored worker on a footing of absolute equality with the white - the IWW (…) In the IWW the colored worker, man or woman, is on an equal footing with every other worker. He has the same voice in determining the policies of the organization, and his interests are protected as zealously as those of any other member.”[13]

The campaign had a certain success, as the IWW was able to recruit large numbers of black dockers along the Atlantic coast waterfronts and timber workers in Texas and Louisiana. As we've previously said: “Within the U.S., the IWW pioneered in bridging the gap between immigrant and native-born, English speaking workers in the U.S., and welcomed blacks into the organization on an equal basis with white workers, at a time when racial segregation and discrimination was rampant in society at large and when most American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions denied admission to blacks.”[14] 

The critique of the neglect of the “Negro question” in the SPA

In the early years of the 20th century the majority of African Americans were still facing many forms of neo-slavery such as indentured servitude, convict labour and sharecropping. Because of segregation even freed black workers were condemned to inferior treatment and lived on the fringes of society (unemployment was highest among black workers). Most blacks were disenfranchised by changes in state law across the South, which raised huge barriers to voter registration. The mass of black people still living in the South, were, forty years later, treated as though the slaves of 1863 had still not been 'freed'.

On top of that, black workers were often portrayed as scabs because of their role as strike breakers in industrial conflicts. “The years immediately following the turn of the century marked the dramatic emergence of African Americans as a formidable strikebreaking force. (…) Northern corporations recruited ‘armies’ of African Americans, largely from the Deep South and border cities, to break the national packinghouse strike in 1904 and the Chicago teamsters’ strike of 1905”[15].

Starting in February 1908 SPA member I.M. Rubinow, under the pseudonym I.M. Robbins, wrote a series of 15 articles in the ISR on the “The Economic Aspects of the Negro Problem”, with the aim of shaking up the “rigid, cast-iron conception of the great doctrine of economic interpretation” in the party[16]. In his series, Rubinow took on Debs himself.

In his last contribution of June 1910 he criticised the centrist wing in the party for making unambiguous statements about “the full enjoyment of the product of his labor” once socialism was achieved, but completely neglecting the daily practice of disenfranchisement and the slave-like existence of black workers. These statements of Debs sounded very radical, but did not address the fight for the improvement of the daily conditions of black workers. Rubinow defended the view that the Party should not only strive for economic equality, but also for political and social justice in its broadest sense, if it wanted to truly work towards a socialist future.

He observed that the existence of socialism would not be the cure-all of racial prejudice. “The connection between race justice and socialism [is] not self-evident. (…) A special appeal to the Negro is necessary, for the special grievances which he suffers. (…)  The Socialist Party must take a definite attitude on the Negro problem (…). And this attitude must include, if it is to be logical and honest, a clear, unmistakable demand for the entire abolition of all legal restriction of the rights of the Negro.”[17]

In defending the “Negro resolution” Rubinow followed in the footsteps of Marx and De Leon, since he was also convinced that as long as black skin was still branded, the obstacles to the emancipation of labour in the white skin would be insurmountable. Therefore, he insisted that the SPA should make “an earnest and energetic effort to convince the American labor movement, as expressed in labor and trade unions, that in resisting the economic and civic growth of the Negro it is simply building obstructions in its way.”[18]

The “Negro resolution” left no doubt about the theoretical positions of the SPA. But examining the basic texts and official statements of the party since 1901, Rubinow came to the conclusion that the word “Negro” failed to appear in either platform: in that of 1904 and much more so in the platform of 1908. He pointed to a serious weakness in the policy of the SPA. He stressed that the failure to give the “Negro question” a central place, at least since the contributions of Debs in the ISR, made the famous resolution a dead letter.

This tendency to neglect the “Negro resolution” and to formulate specific demands for black workers was affirmed again in the 1912 platform of the SPA. This platform had taken up a point on the abolition of child labour, but not on the abolition of convict labour and other forms of semi-slavery, which is inconsistent, since there is no fundamental difference between the two. In both cases there is question of an inhuman subjection of a particular group of workers to the rules of capitalism.

The reason for the neglect of the “Negro resolution” by the SPA leadership was the growth of opportunism, the fear that campaigning for “equal rights” for about ten per cent of the US population would alienate the growing number of members and voters of the Party. This opportunism was clearly shown when the right wing in the party wanted to adopt a report that opposed the immigration of non-whites (from China and Japan), while favouring immigrants from “civilised” Europe. It was clear that Rubinow’s critique did not gain adherents in the leadership, it was only defended by a small left wing minority and among some black socialists such as Hubert Harrison and, to a lesser extent, W.E.B. Du Bois.

The theoretical contribution of Afro-American socialist militants

Until 1910 the discussion on the position and the role of the black workers in the papers of the SPA was entirely conducted by non-black socialists, with the articles of Rubinow as the last ones published in the ISR. Given the lack of further theoretical elaboration, black militants in the SPA, from 1910 onwards, began to develop and propagate their analysis of the “Negro question”, with more attention to the African American part of the American population.

W.E.B. Du Bois became a member of the SPA in 1910, but his position towards socialism was highly ambiguous. While a member of the SPA for about two years, he remained a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a bourgeois civil rights organisation, in which he edited the monthly magazine The Crisis. During his membership of the SPA he was hardly engaged in the theoretical struggle on the position of the Afro-American workers.

After leaving the SPA in 1913, he wrote “Socialism and the Negro Problem” in which he criticized the SPA for not taking seriously the fight for the equality of the black workers. According to Du Bois the party put off the solution for the structural subordination of the coloured people to the distant future: “The general attitude of thinking members of the party has been this: we must not turn aside from the great objects of socialism to take up this issue of the American Negro; let the question wait; when the objects of socialism are achieved, this problem will be settled along with other problems.”[19]

Hubert Harrison was not the same as Du Bois. He was a radical black militant, whose aim was not just fighting against the repression of the African Americans but against the exploitation of the working class, with special attention to the conditions of black workers. Harrison therefore turned to the SPA in 1911. After joining, he immediately started to champion the cause of black workers within the party and to challenge the leadership. Soon he became the leading black theoretician in New York and a prominent supporter of the IWW. Likewise, in opposition to the leadership, Harrison saw socialism not as a matter of reform but as a matter of revolution.

Moreover, he defended the view that the workers’ movement should speak to the particular concerns of African Americans. “The mission of the Socialist Party is to free the working class from exploitation, and since the Negro is the most ruthlessly exploited working class group in America, the duty of the party to champion his cause is as clear as day.”[20] He repeatedly pointed to the policy of the IWW, organising thousands of black and white timber workers in “mixed” Louisiana locals in 1911. This type of unionism, he observed, “wants Negroes - not because its promoters love Negroes - but because they realize they cannot win if any of the working class is left out.”[21]

In his articles in the New York Call Harrison added a new dimension to the marxist position on racism. While underlining the class nature of racism, he developed the idea that racism is not a mere reflection of class exploitation. In "The Negro and Socialism I", written in November 1911, Harrison rightly explained that certain forms of racism, while originating in class oppression, still took on a life of their own, not directly reducible to class or economic considerations. “Systems of racial oppression had their own histories much as the class struggle and the system of production have theirs”[22].

Although racism cannot exist without class exploitation, ideology is relatively independent from the material base that gives rise to it. Despite the fact that the original material conditions under slavery that gave rise to racism had already been transformed, racism as an ideology did not die away:

• After the abolition of slavery, racist ideology served to conceal the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour and to divide the working class by setting black and white workers against each other.
• Since the former slave-owners feared that the freed slaves might threaten their economic and political pre-eminence, the absence of a legal racial oppression was compensated by the establishment of an equally racist system, imposed by the Jim Crow laws.

Harrison’s lack of confidence in the capacities of the working class to overcome the racial divide remained his main weakness. While recognising the force of the working class he was never really convinced that class exploitation is at the root of racism. Instead, he continued to oscillate between class struggle and race struggle. A few years later Harrisons’ waverings on this question came into broad daylight when he adopted a position in which the “race question” took the upper hand. He emphasised that a new leadership would not emerge from the working class, but from the black masses. It was only in the logic of his evolution that Harrison became the principal editor of the Negro World, the publication of the bourgeois Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Marcus Garvey.

In 1915 the theoretical clarification of the “Negro question”, which the workers’ movement in the US had reached - not, incidentally, set down in any official document of the SPA – was that

• the structural subordination of the African Americans in the US, even after the official abolition of slavery, was determined by fundamental class antagonisms;
• the ruling class used the racial differences between white and black people to divide the working class, for instance by using black workers as scabs;
• the particular fight for equal rights for black workers, above all in education and employment, was of fundamental importance to prevent the employers from driving a wedge between black and white workers;
• in order to take decisive steps towards the emancipation of the working class in the US there was only one way and that was the united fight of all workers, regardless of the colour of their skin or their nationality.
• and, even then, racism as an ideology will not disappear automatically, but will persist for some time in the minds of workers as an exploited class. As Marx wrote: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”[23].

In the third part of this series, we will take a closer look at how the later political organisations of the proletariat tried to develop and deepen the political-theoretical positions of the SPA on the “Negro question” in a period that had fundamentally changed. For their political struggle against racism had to take place in the context of decadence, when reforms were no longer possible and only one goal remained: the unification of the struggles of all workers, regardless of race or nationality, in the fight for a world revolution. This is the framework in which we shall examine how far they succeeded in their task on the basis of the positions of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA) and, in a later period, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), with C.L.R. James as one of the most important theoreticians in this field.

 

Dennis, 15 May 2021

 

Appendix Solidarity between black and white workers

 

"On Thursday [July 5, 1906] New York was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of white union men striking to compel a company of contractors to recognize the Afro-American members of the union.

The Cecelia Asphalt Paving company, which has the contract for paving the square around Cooper Union, began by filling the places of the Afro-American pavers and rammersmen with Irish and Germans. Immediately Mr. James S. Wallace, the Afro-American agent of the International Union of Pavers and Rammersmen, reported to the officers of the union that his men were not getting a square deal.

“Then we’ll call out all of our union members,” replied the officers; and in a short while nearly all the white workmen laid down their tools.

The superintendent of the company hustled to the spot post-haste and tried to persuade the white men to go back to work.

“Beat it,” replied they, “unless you give us a written guarantee to recognize all the members of our union, black as well as white.”

“I’ll give you the letter tomorrow at 10 o’clock,” conceded the contractor.

“Then we’ll go back to work tomorrow at 10 o’clock,” said the union men.

The next day the letter was forthcoming, and all the men triumphantly went back to their tools. "[24]

 

"Dramatic examples of Southern inter-racial union organising in this period came in the coal mines. In Birmingham, Alabama, the United Mineworkers (UMW) maintained blacks and whites to launch a strike in 1908. To be sure, union leaders organised blacks and whites in separate locals, bowed to segregation and denied that the strike would bring ‘social equality’ for black and white miners. Coal operators whipped up a racist frenzy in the Birmingham press and tried to use blacks as strike breakers. Nevertheless, black miners aligned themselves with whites in the armed battles with company guards and strike breakers that have always characterised coal strikes in the US. In “Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class and Community Conflict 1780–1980” R.L. Lewis tells that “the attention of the entire white power structure, and the white populace generally, was focused on black strikers who were violating social norms by assuming a militant stance within a bi-racial working-class organisation ... Furthermore, that these black unionists were ‘conspiring’ with white unionists presented the explosive possibility of a class uprising.” [25]

 

"During a 1910 strike by the Brotherhood of Timberworkers (BTW), the lumber operators’ association tried to use blacks as strike breakers and baited the BTW for violating the norms of Southern society with its 50 percent black membership.

“These association tactics, more than any other factors, drove the BTW’s leaders to preach integration with Negroes and affiliation with the IWW ... Hence, they advised the black worker: ‘The BTW ... takes the Negro and protects him and his family along with the white wage worker and his family on an industrial basis.’ To the white worker they proclaimed: ‘As far as we, the workers of the South, are concerned, the only ‘supremacy’ and ‘equality’ they [the employers] have ever granted us is the supremacy of misery and the equality of rags ... No longer will we allow the Southern oligarchy to divide and weaken us on lines or race, craft, religion, and nationality.’”

The strike ultimately led to the BTW’s affiliation to the IWW. Wobbly leader Bill Haywood and the white Southern IWW leader Covington Hall convinced BTW’s members to hold an integrated mass meeting at the union’s 1912 convention in Alexandria, Louisiana. This inter-racial solidarity prevailed in an even more bitter strike the next year."[26]

 

"In the morning of 11 November 1912, 1,200 union men struck against the American Lumber Company [for firing fifteen union men] and the Brotherhood of Timber Workers began the last battle. Phineas Eastman, a Wobbly who helped to organize black workers, claimed that racial solidarity in the Brotherhood reached its strongest point at Merryville [Louisiana]. "Although not one of the fifteen men fired by the company was a Negro", he wrote, "our colored fellow workers showed their solidarity by walking out with their white comrades and no amount of persuasion or injection of the old race prejudice could induce them to turn scab or traitor". In the first months of the struggle at Merryville, the workers held their own; they even formed a communal organization (Hall called it the "first American Soviet") that attracted considerable attention in radical circles throughout the country. In the strike’s third month, after the mill had reopened with "scab" labour, the corporation mobilized its community power to crush what was left of the Union. On 16 February I913, the Merryville Good Citizens’ League struck. Organized by the "leading citizens" in the town, led by the company doctor and staffed by Santa Fe gunmen, the League destroyed the Union headquarters, attacked and "deported" several Wobblies, and burned the soup kitchen staffed by female BTW members."[27]

 

A reader wrote:

“How can the ICC maintain that capitalism is a decadent system since 1914 when there has been such enormous growth in the capitalist system since then?”

We have been asked this question many times, in different ways: what about the enormous growth after World War Two? What about the enormous growth of China in the last few decades? Doesn’t all this argue against the idea that capitalism is a system in decline, in decay, in decadence?

We think that these questions are wrongly posed, but that it is important to answer them precisely because they are posed so often and so widely.

In order to do this, let’s look at a rather significant passage in Marx’s Grundrisse[1]:

“… Thus, while capital must on one side strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market, it strives on the other side to annihilate this space with time, i.e. to reduce to a minimum the time spent in motion from one place to another. The more developed the capital, therefore, the more extensive the market over which it circulates, which forms the spatial orbit of its circulation, the more does it strive simultaneously for an even greater extension of the market and for greater annihilation of space by time…..There appears here the universalising tendency of capital, which distinguishes it from all previous stages of production. Although limited by its very nature, it strives towards the universal development of the forces of production, and thus becomes the presupposition of a new mode of production, which is founded not on the development of the forces of production for the purpose of reproducing or at most expanding a given condition, but where the free, unobstructed, progressive and universal development of the forces of production is itself the presupposition of society and hence of its reproduction; where advance beyond the point of departure is the only presupposition. This tendency – which capital possesses, but which at the same time, since capital is a limited form of production, contradicts it and hence drives it towards dissolution – distinguishes capital from all earlier modes of production, and at the same time contains this element, that capital is posited as a mere point of transition”

This passage can of course be interpreted in different ways, and the Grundrisse was anything but a finished work. But in our view, this is a magnificent anticipation of the point at which capitalism becomes a decadent system. First, Marx insists on the drive of capital to conquer the entire planet, and it does so through a formidable development of the productive forces, in this case its increasing capacity to transport goods as fast as possible from one end of the Earth to the other. This dynamism, this potential for very rapid extension and technological development, distinguishes capital from previous modes of production, which tended to be more static and more isolated to particular regions of the globe. This universalising tendency of capital also necessarily creates a world proletariat, an international revolutionary class, and is thus a vital precondition if human society is to attain a qualitatively new stage in its history. As Marx puts it in a different section of the same chapter of Grundrisse:

“It will be shown later that the most extreme form of alienation, wherein labour appears in the relation of capital and wage labour, and labour, productive activity appears in relation to its own conditions and its own product, is a necessary point of transition – and therefore already contains in itself, in a still only inverted form, turned on its head, the dissolution of all limited presuppositions of production, and moreover creates and produces the unconditional presuppositions of production, and therewith the full material conditions for the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual.”[2]

Thus, for Marx, in so far as capital develops the productive forces to the point where global communist production and distribution becomes possible, its supplanting of previous modes of production, though brutal and ruthless, can be seen as the mark of an ascending or progressive social system. But once it reaches this point, the further “development of the productive forces” must take on an entirely different meaning, in which wealth is no longer measured in stolen time, but in free time; no longer in monetary terms, or the piling up constant capital, or the abstractions of “value”, but as the development of the creative capacities of each individual in association with others.

But this is not just a question of looking at the history of capital beyond a certain point and lamenting that things could have been so much better. Marx also argues that this culminating moment is precisely the point at which the contradictory manner in which capital universalises itself “drives it towards dissolution”. Historical evolution since the beginning of the 20th century has made it clearer what form this process of “dissolution” takes: from this point onwards, capital could no longer continue to develop the forces of production without unleashing a spiral of destruction, a succession of world economic crises, global wars, and, as has become increasingly evident over the last few decades, the devastation of the natural environment. We can even say that as long as capital continues to grow, to accumulate, in an epoch where it has become obsolete, the more this very growth increases the danger that it will destroy humanity and end any possibility of a communist future. This is evident when we look at the perfection of military production which has become such a central part of the capitalist economy in the last century and more. It is equally obvious when we see the ecological consequences of capitalist expansion into the very last corners of the planet. We also need to recognise that the very means used to continue growth in an era in which the economic crisis has tended to become permanent attest to the obsolescence of the system. This is the case in particular with the resort to gargantuan infusions of debt to create a kind of artificial market. Capital grows by flouting its own laws.

This is what we think Marx is getting at when he continues the first passage we cited by stating: “The highest development of this basis itself (the flower into which it transforms itself; but it is always this basis, this plant as flower; hence wilting after the flowering and as consequence of the flowering) is the point at which it is itself worked out, developed, into the form in which it is compatible with the highest development of the forces of production, hence also the richest development of the individuals. As soon as this point is reached, the further development appears as decay, and the new development begins from a new basis”.

China’s growth over the past few decades is a classic illustration of this “development as decay”: managed by a ruthless totalitarian state apparatus; financed by astronomical levels of debt, protected by a vast army and an array of nuclear weapons, building new industrial centres and megacities at a terrible cost to the environment, both local and global: we can confidently say that these are all the hallmarks of a decadent system.

Why 1914 as the definitive turning point? Let’s recall that this is not the ICC’s retrospective conclusion, but the position adopted by the revolutionaries who formed the Communist International, and who recognised that capitalism had indeed entered its epoch of “inner disintegration”, the epoch of wars and revolutions. The 1914-18 war showed that capitalism was being driven inexorably towards imperialist wars of increasing ferocity, confronting humanity with the alternative between socialism and barbarism.  And the response of the international working class from 1917 onwards demonstrated that the new epoch was indeed the epoch of the “communist revolution of the proletariat” (Platform of the Communist International, March 1919).

Again, let’s stress, the war did not signify that capitalism had run out of all further possibilities of expansion. In 1913, in her book The Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxemburg pointed out that capital still directly dominated only a small part of the planet, and that objectively speaking there would still be many remnants of the pre-capitalist milieu to absorb and new markets to conquer.  But she also insisted that there is no purely economic collapse of the system. “The more ruthlessly capital sets about the destruction of non-capitalist strata, at home and in the outside world, the more it lowers the standard of living for the workers as a whole, the greater also is the change in the day-to-day history of capital. It becomes a string of political and social disasters and convulsions, and under these conditions, punctuated by periodical economic catastrophes or crises, accumulation can go on no longer. But even before this natural economic impasse of capital’s own creating is properly reached it becomes a necessity for the international working class to revolt against the rule of capital”. (Accumulation of Capital, chapter 32).

In summary: we have always rejected the idea that capitalism can only be in decline or decadence once there has been a complete halt in the development of the productive forces[3]. Even in the descending epochs of slavery and feudalism, there could be significant moments and centres of growth, not least the cancerous growth of the state power, swollen to monstrous proportions in order to attempt to hold down the contradictions tearing society apart. But these remained societies where the crisis of the economy took the form of underproduction, in contrast to capitalism where the crisis appears as a crisis of overproduction (or, what amounts to the same thing in the end, a crisis of overaccumulation). Less than any previous mode of production can capitalism cease “revolutionising” the productive forces. But revolutionaries who lay claim to a scientific method must be capable of recognising the point at which the perspective of communism unites the realms of possibility and of necessity; in other words, when the existing forces of production are turned more and more into forces of destruction[4], and when humanity can only maintain itself if it carries out a fundamental change in the social relations of production, so that the development of the productive forces now coincides with “the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual.”

Amos

Annex on China

China is a very good example of the relative increase in wealth, and of the enormous destructive forces set in motion to achieve this relative wealth.

• China is believed to be “the world’s most prolific executioner” (Amnesty International), executing thousands of people every year. Every year it executes more people than the rest of the world combined.

• It is estimated that there are more than a thousand internment camps in Xinjiang, and that in these camps there are up to 1.5 million people detained and subjected to forced labour.

• The People’s Republic of China is the world’s leading annual emitter of greenhouse gases and mercury. Since 2000, more than 30 million people have died from air pollution in China, according to New Scientist.

• Poverty: 600 million Chinese people still subsist on the equivalent of $5.50 US a day.

• Ruthless exploitation of the workforce: extremely long hours, physical punishment, fines and non-payment of wages are among the abuses suffered by millions of Chinese workers.

• China has a long history of industrial accidents, ranging from factory explosions and mudslides to mine collapses.

A whole article could be added about the huge weight of the military sector in China and the degree which its growth has been fuelled by debt.

A global pandemic that has killed millions and which is very far from over; a spiral of climate catastrophes – wildfires, droughts, floods -  with the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting that the world faces the real threat of a runaway acceleration of global warming; three, four, or five sided wars from Afghanistan to Africa, and sharpening tensions between the two most powerful imperialist states, the USA and China; a world economy which was already locked in a near permanent crisis since the end of the 1960s and is now further convulsed by the pandemic and the lock-downs, resulting in rising inflation and an apparently paradoxical combination of unemployment and labour shortages. Little wonder that apocalyptic moods have become more and more widespread, whether expressed in overtly religious terms through the rise of Islamic, Christian and other fundamentalisms or through a variety of dystopian science fiction visions of Earth’s future.

At one level, such visions are part of the growth of nihilism and despair, or express the vain hope of overcoming despondency by returning to a past that never existed, or escaping into a “New Heaven and a New Earth” (Revelation 21:1) given to the faithful by powers outside ourselves and outside of nature.  But these ideologies are also a distorting mirror reflecting what is really happening in present day civilisation.

In the past, prophesies of the “Last Days” became widespread above all in periods of the decline of an entire mode of production, as during the decadence of Rome or the waning of the Middle Ages. The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, with its symbolism of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, actually points to the essential characteristics of a society in its terminal phase: led by Death, the other horsemen are War, Pestilence, and Famine – the last one carrying a scale which shows that the price of bread has become prohibitive for the poor. And in the long downward slide, both ancient slave society and feudalism were indeed devastated by incessant wars between factions of the ruling class, by plagues such as the Black Death, by famine and – even if these were not fully commodified systems like capitalism – by inflation and the devaluation of the currency[1].

It’s not hard to see that the Four Horsemen are abroad again. In a way, they are interbreeding. War gives rise to famine, as in Yemen and Ethiopia. The destruction of nature gives rise to new plagues like Covid, and also threatens terrible famines and wars over dwindling resources. And all of these spectres react back on the underlying contradictions of capitalist accumulation, intensifying the global economic crisis to a degree not seen since the 1930s.

The “end of the world” foreseen in ancient and mediaeval apocalypses really signalled the end of a particular mode of production, which was to be replaced by a new mode of production, a new form of class rule. But capitalism is the last class society, and its headlong drive towards the abyss faces humanity with the single alternative: communist revolution or the destruction of humanity. Capitalism is the most dynamic, the most productive, but also the most destructive system in history, and with its terrifying nuclear arsenals and its inability to curb the devastation of the natural environment, capitalism can truly bring about the end of the world, of the human species and perhaps all life on the planet.

Capitalism cannot be controlled

Some parts of the ruling class retreat into denial: Covid is just a little flu (Bolsanaro), climate change is a Chinese hoax (Trump). Its more intelligent factions see the danger: hence the enormous sums sacrificed in the lock-downs and pumped into the race for vaccines; hence the numerous international conferences on climate change, like COP26 due to be held in Glasgow in November, where few will openly dispute the grim scenarios that will be presented to them by the report of the IPCC.

And within the population as a whole, there is a growing concern about these problems, even if, for the moment, the danger posed by war and militarism has been eclipsed by the threat of Covid and climate change. But the protests organised by organisations like Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Youth for Climate are a dead end because they can never go beyond demanding that the governments of the world start acting sensibly, put aside their differences, and come up with a serious global plan.

But the governments, the world’s states, the ruling class, are themselves only expressions of the capitalist system, and they cannot abolish the laws which drive towards war and ecological destruction. As in the days of the Roman Emperors and the Absolute Monarchies, the decadence of capitalism is also marked by a grotesque hypotrophy of the state machine, aimed at submitting the laws of capitalist competition to some level of control (as well as repressing all those who question its rule). But in the end capital cannot be controlled. By definition it is a power which, though created by human hands, stands above and against human needs. By definition, it is an essentially anarchic social relation which can only thrive through competition for the highest profit. And the state machines which some see as holding the answer to the world’s problems have been swollen to their present size above all by the need to compete with other states on the world market, both at the economic and the military levels. Capitalism can never become an “international community”, and in the terminal phase of its decline the tendency towards disintegration, towards every man for himself, towards chaos, can only get stronger.

In 1919, the platform of the Communist International insisted that the world imperialist war of 1914-18 announced capitalism’s entry into the “epoch of the breakdown of capital, its internal disintegration, the epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat”. But it also emphasised that “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. The proletariat has to establish real order - communist order”.

The capitalist apocalypse is not inevitable . Bourgeois society has unleashed the productive forces that could be transformed and put to use in order to realise the age-old dream of a true human community and a new reconciliation with nature. While previous class societies foundered on crises of underproduction, capitalism suffers from a crisis of overproduction, an absurdity which points to the possibility of overcoming scarcity and thus eliminating once and for all the exploitation of one class by another. And in the proletariat, the international working class, it has created the “productive force” which has a material interest in the creation of a society without classes.

There is an immense gap between the present state of the working class, which has largely forgotten its own existence as a force antagonistic to capital, and the revolutionary class movement which gave birth to the October revolution of 1917 and the Communist International, the most advanced political expression of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. The only way to bridge this gap lies in the capacity of the working class to struggle in defence of its own material interests. In this sense, of all the horsemen of capitalist doom, it is the economic crisis and the resulting attacks on workers’ living and working conditions which contains the possibility of compelling the proletariat to unite in defence of its own class demands, to recognise its common interests, and to develop the perspective of overthrowing its enemy.

Amos. 9.10.21

For some time now the Tory government has been presenting itself as the “People’s Government”, committed to a programme of “levelling up”, of improving the lot of those sectors of the working class who have been “left behind” by an economic crisis which is blamed not on the capitalist system but on “globalisation” (as if there could be a capitalism which didn’t seek to globalise itself) and its most visible institutional forms, mainly of course the European Union.

This populist world view is being revealed in all its poverty and mendacity by the very measures being taken by the government to face up to an economic crisis which has been severely aggravated by the impact of the Covid pandemic.

Social benefits, wage levels, and job security are all under attack. As always, the bourgeoisie has no choice but to make the exploited pay for the crisis of its social system.

The end of the furlough and cuts in the social wage

The furlough system introduced during the first lockdown was scrapped at the end of September and replaced by the Job Support Scheme (JSS). At the end of the scheme, nearly a million workers (down from a peak of nearly nine million in May 2020) still relied on furlough, so this meant that they were set to lose their jobs. Under the new JSS, employers are to pay for hours worked, but only 5% for hours not worked, with the government paying 75% of wages for unworked hours. This means that workers who retain their jobs (for how long?), but with a 25% wage cut, still face a 20% cut in overall wages.

It is important to note that although the government provided a furlough subsidy, this was beneficial primarily to ensure that firms could stay open. The new scheme amounts to a direct attack on the living standards of the working class in the coming winter months. It spells poverty for working class families and their children.

The Universal Credit (UC) system was introduced by Iain Duncan Smith in 2016 to ‘streamline’ the benefit system, which meant the effective abolition of some benefits and a capped UC. If you claimed UC, then you were cut off from other benefits. The introduction of UC in itself was already a reduction in the social wage. 

The government decision to cut the £20 Covid furlough subsidy and return to the basic £118 a week UC payment on 6 October means a further massive assault on the lowest paid workers and claimants. It will cost as many as 6 million families £1,502 a year. Planned rises in income tax, national insurance and the UC taper mean that claimants receive only 37 pence for every £1 earned – as little as £2.24 per hour. As a result, someone working full time on the minimum wage would have to work an extra day’s work a week to make up the shortfall, according to the Resolution Foundation, pushing 800,000 low paid and unemployed workers below the poverty line. An illustration of this fall in living standards: before the period of the pandemic 700,000 people in Britain were using food banks. In 2021 approximately 2.5 million people used a food bank in the United Kingdom.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said the figures “underline the scale of the challenge we’re facing”, adding: “I want to reassure anyone that is worried about the coming winter months that we will continue to support those affected”. But even a number of senior Conservatives have not been “reassured” by Sunak’s promise, warning that the cut will immediately undermine Johnson’s pledge to “level up” the country – a sinister claim repeated after his reshuffle at the beginning of September and repeated just on the eve of the Tory Party Conference. A potential backbench revolt has forced some senior Tory ex-ministers to look at other options but plans to tweak the UC taper means that the planned £6 billion cut would only be reduced to £5 billion.

Wages getting cheaper….

"More than 2 million UK employees earned less than the statutory minimum wage in April [2020] because the lowest paid were the most likely to be furloughed. The annual survey of pay and earnings by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) gives a stark illustration of the immediate impact the first Coronavirus lockdown has had on living standards, choking off growth in private sector pay and hitting young, part-time workers in particular. Average annual pay for full-time employees — a measure that was largely unaffected by the pandemic — was £31,461 in the tax year to April 2020, 3.6 per cent higher than the previous year, the ONS said. But in April 2020 during the first lockdown when 8.8m were furloughed, and many more were working reduced hours; average weekly pay across all jobs was 0.9 per cent lower than a year earlier after adjusting for inflation." (Financial Times 3/11/20). There is also a lock on the Public Sector pay rises of 1% which specifically affects health workers and care workers, the much clapped “lockdown heroes”. This means that even before the pandemic took its devastating effects the attacks were already underway.

 …Prices getting steeper

The combination of product shortages, labour shortages and energy price rises, coming on top of gigantic state debts incurred during the pandemic, will combine to push inflation above 4% for the first time since 2013, according to the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. In March of this year, the rate stood at 0.7% but now it has been raised to 4.7%. Interest rates remain at an all-time low of 0.1%, but even a small rise could be ruinous for millions of people – the average debt burden per household is £62,705, according to The Money Charity. This will further reduce the spending power of workers and their ability to borrow money in response.

Unemployment and shortage of labour power

Demand for workers is at a record high, with 223,000 new job ads posted in the week ending 19 September, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. But even with labour shortages, there is likely to be a mismatch between any newly unemployed people and their skills for available jobs. The opening for jobs has mainly been in the transport industry (50,000 lorry drivers are needed), or in the low paid food industries or crop picking in the South East. This may seem to contradict the perspective of growing unemployment created by the Covid-19 crisis, but if we look at the devastation wrought on the UK and the world economy, we can see a persistent trend with many firms going bust and furloughed enterprises in particular going to the wall.

Unemployment reached 5.1 per cent in the three months to December 2020 - the highest figure for five years. If we look at the figures for 2020, we can see that unemployment is an important manifestation of this crisis. “The UK unemployment rate rose to 4.8 per cent in the three months to September, driven by the largest quarterly number of redundancies on record, official data showed on Tuesday. The figures reflect a wave of job cuts made by employers as they prepared for the phasing out of the government’s furlough scheme.” (Financial Times, 10.11.2020).

In January 2021 2.6 million people were either claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or Universal Credit because they were looking for work. The figure in March 2020 was 1.4 million.

More than a third of all claims ever made for UC have been made during the pandemic. And things will get worse; those aged 25 to 34 face the biggest risk of losing their jobs. In the three months to November 2020, people in that age group had a redundancy rate of 16.2 per 1,000 - a fivefold increase on the same period a year earlier.

Overall, some 1.72 million were officially jobless, also the highest level in five years. And this is while the furlough scheme is still in place. The ending of the furlough scheme will put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.

No choice but to fight

The coming winter months of 2021-22 will see the possibility of a new outbreak of a Covid variant. But, with or without a new lockdown, the attacks on workers’ living and working conditions will undoubtedly increase. This is an international problem for the working class and Britain is not an exception[1]: indeed, the plunge in living standards in Britain will be even more marked given the specific impact of Brexit and the increasingly obvious incompetence of a government mired in populist delusions.  

For many years now we have seen a significant retreat in workers’ struggles, in particular from the very low paid, the most vulnerable sectors of the working class. However, these past months have seen struggles in the Uber transport and delivery industries, in the postal sector, in the universities and elsewhere. Although small and generally isolated from each other, they might represent a beginning of the wider and deeper struggle of the class in defence of its living conditions in the face of a system which has no future to offer us. In this struggle the class can only count on its own forces.

M & A 7/10/21

[1] See the Report on the Economic Crisis from the ICC’s 24th Congress

The withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, agreed by President Trump and confirmed by Biden, demonstrated the further decline of the world's only remaining superpower. US imperialism, following the exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, can no longer pose as the world's cop, militarily intervening at will to defend its strategic interests. While this has global implications, it also demonstrates the further decline in the position of British imperialism. In Afghanistan the UK was completely entangled with the US invasion of 2001. Twenty years later the failure of the US is also a disastrous failure for the UK.

As Boris Johnson admitted in the parliamentary debate after the fall of Kabul:

"In view of the American decision to withdraw, we came up against this hard reality that since 2009, America has deployed 98% of all weapons released from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan and, at the peak of the operation, when there were 132,000 troops on the ground, 90,000 of them were American. The West could not continue this US-led mission—a mission conceived and executed in support and defence of America—without American logistics, without US air power and without American might."

Ever since the Blair government agreed to join Bush's coalition, the British ruling class has claimed that it was defending specific British interests in the region. The stated intentions of Operation Enduring Freedom were to destroy terrorist camps that the Taliban had allowed to flourish in Afghanistan, and to capture or kill leading members of Al-Qaeda. In practice the US wanted to mobilise other western countries as part of the attempts to contain growing chaos in the world, but they were only partially successful. The days of mobilising against the threat from the Russian bloc were long over. Britain wanted to show itself as the best lieutenant to the US, in contrast to countries like France and Germany. But when it came to the killing of Osama bin Laden, that was done by the US alone. Britain did have a military presence in the region, but had to follow US policy, with no influence on Uncle Sam's strategic goals. But none of the big powers is able to deal with the effects of decomposition through military means. This applies to the US despite its military budget being greater than the next 10 countries' military spending combined. In Afghanistan this meant that when the US realised that it was time to leave, Britain had no choice but to follow with its tail between its legs, even if, as we can see from Johnson’s rather bitter speech, it did its best to pin the blame for the debacle on the Americans.

In Germany the debate within the bourgeoisie, following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, concentrated on solidifying European alliances in the light of the unreliability of American imperialism. In Britain politicians have tried to take up the idea of Global Britain, of somehow being able to masquerade as a major power, able to act independently of the EU, following Brexit, and independently of the US. However, as a Conservative MP pointed out "The fall of Kabul, like Suez, has shown that the UK may not be able to operate autonomously without US involvement. It may be that our foreign policy is decided as much in Washington as it is in London."

The idea of Global Britain is a myth that has no basis in the military or economic strength of British imperialism. The reference to Suez is appropriate. In 1956 the US put used its whole propaganda machine and economic pressure to force Britain and France to stop their attack on Egypt.[1] If this confirmed that these old colonial powers had been reduced to a second-rate status, then the retreat from first Iraq and now Afghanistan is a further major step in the descending status of British imperialism.

Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair has written of his opposition to the withdrawal, and attempted to draw out the consequences:  "For Britain, out of Europe and suffering the end of the Afghanistan mission by our greatest ally with little or no consultation, we have serious reflection to do. We don’t see it yet. But we are at risk of relegation to the second division of global powers". This is not only an overestimation of Britain's existing position, it is a classic example of denial, of an unwillingness to grasp the real state of imperialist relations in the world. Following the Second World War Britain already had a reduced status as, in the Cold War period of great imperialist blocs, there were only two superpowers, the US and the USSR.

Blair thinks that the UK-US should have stayed in Afghanistan, but you can see so many examples of the impotence of the British position. Just look at the attempt to organise the evacuation of refugees from Kabul who had British connections. It was obvious that without the US this was impossible. Moreover, thousands were left behind. The so-called "special relationship" between Britain and the US was always enormously one sided, involving the overwhelming domination by the latter of the former. While some right-wing figures in the US still champion the importance of the UK-US alliance, Joe Biden has shown no taste for honouring it, leaving Britain out of intelligence, consultation, and any influence.

Aukus agreement confirms UK’s subordinate role

The recently-agreed Aukus agreement[2], while infuriating French imperialism, will not be on equal terms between the US, Australia and the UK. For Britain this was demonstrated when Boris Johnson went to the States in September. Not only did he fail to come away with a trade deal, but Biden made it very clear that the US was not going to tolerate any interference with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland. The Aukus agreement is, however, confirmation of the US's turn toward the growing threat of Chinese imperialism. As we put it in the recent resolution on the International Situation from the ICC's 24th Congress "there is no doubt that the growing confrontation between the US and China tends to take centre stage. The new administration has thus demonstrated its commitment to the 'tilt to the east' (now supported by the Tory government in Britain) which was already a central axis of Obama’s foreign policy."

In the imperialist situation "The chaotic departure of the US army from Afghanistan after 20 years, and the return to power of the Taliban, is a further sign of the inability of the great powers to guarantee global stability, particularly in areas where tensions and rivalries between states are rampant." While the US has "now become the main vector of the chaos and instability which marks the phase of capitalist decomposition",[3] the UK has vain hopes of being able to act as an independent force. It is no longer part of Europe and it can't rely on the US. The idea of a Global Britain is completely delusional, a façade behind which the UK desperately attempts to hold onto its position against the cutthroat rivalries of competing imperialist powers.

Car 6/10/21

Long queues snaking into petrol stations, drivers fighting with each other, the government dumping the responsibility on others and Europe taunting the UK with schadenfreude. But the closure or drying out of a large number of petrol stations is only the most glaring tip of the iceberg. For supply is faltering in several sectors. With restaurants closing as they cannot be supplied, with shelves in supermarkets remaining half-empty, with abattoirs that cannot process meat because of shortages of carbon dioxide[1], large parts of the country have been paralysed.

The government blames the pandemic, as testing for thousands of new HGV drivers had to be suspended over the past year and a half. But it also points to the haulage industry, which does not offer sufficiently attractive working conditions. The Labour Party blames the fuel chaos on Boris Johnson’s failure to prepare for the consequences of Brexit. “The Government has reduced the country to chaos as we track from crisis to crisis.” But what is the truth and how far is all this an inbuilt manifestation of the capitalist mode of production?

The mass desertion of lorry drivers

If there is a general agreement that the failures in supply[2] are caused by the lack of lorry drivers, this shortage is not a new phenomenon and not limited to the UK[3]. The numbers of British drivers qualified to drive HGVs have been in decline in the UK for at least five years. Many of those who passed their test choose not to drive commercial HGV vehicles or left the job within a couple of years[4]. So, in the heady days before Covid or Brexit, the UK was already lacking around 75,000 drivers.

On the whole the present shortages on the British labour market, in particular in the food and hospitality industries, are mainly due to Brexit [5]. For the sake of simplicity, the mainstream media attribute the present shortage of lorry drivers to the Covid pandemic and an exodus of foreign workers following Britain's definitive exit from the EU. But the shortage in the haulage industry was already significant before Covid or Brexit, so it can’t be blamed only on the virus or on the return of drivers to the Continent.

Even if the figures do not all tell exactly the same story, it is certain that since the start of the pandemic about 15,000 new candidates for the haulage industry have not been able to do the HGV driver test (and not 40,000 as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tried to make us believe). It is also certain that between 15,000 and 20,000 European truckers have not returned to the UK up till now. But the main bulk of the shortages are due to the huge amount of (mostly elderly) drivers who retired from this work between spring 2020 and September 2021: in total nearly 50,000.

This has more or less been confirmed by the Road Haulage Association (RHA), which stated that the shortage of lorry drivers is also due to the retirement of drivers and low wages. Its statement is closer to the truth than the explanations about Brexit and the pandemic, because the sector is well-known for its harsh working conditions and relatively low salaries. Mark Seddon, former media adviser to the President of the United Nations General Assembly, expressed it bluntly: the haulage industry is characterised by “endemic low salaries, long hours, and bad working conditions”.

The profession of lorry driver in the UK is very demanding and pressurised: drivers are responsible for the roadworthiness of the vehicle, its cleanliness, for understanding the ever-changing tachograph laws, weight limits, emission restrictions, for loading and unloading the cargo, for securing the cargo safely. Moreover, they have to put up with the very worst of living conditions. With Britain among Europe’s worst countries for traffic jams, the working hours are very long, while conditions can be rough: living away and sleeping in your lorry, eating in lay-bys, bad food, no place to exercise. The stress, strain and long working hours are rewarded with low wages

Didn’t workers protest against these pitiful working conditions? Hardly. In August there was a wavering strike by several hundred lorry drivers and in September one by Argos truck drivers in Rochdale. But the last national lorry drivers’ strike took place on January 1979, during the “Winter of Discontent”. This fact is already revealing about the state of the haulage sector: instead of organising strikes, drivers have mainly gone for individual “solutions” and are deserting the haulage industry in massive quantities. [6]

Crisis management

In June of this year the Road Haulage Association wrote to Boris Johnson, warning that the country was around 100,000 drivers short. On 20 July 2021 the government announced a package of measures to help tackle the HGV driver shortage, which was immediately criticised by the sector as it would only bear fruit in a year's time. Since then nothing happened until the shortage showed itself in broad daylight in September. While the government loudly denies that the haulage sector is in crisis, the proposed solutions have all the characteristics of a short-term and chaotic approach:

• After the UK had fought for years to close borders to foreigners and finally chose Brexit, it is now compelled to offer temporary visas to 5,000 or even 10,000 foreign fuel tanker and food lorry drivers.
• The Ministry of Defence has prepared 150 qualified military drivers to deliver fuel - and has another 150 personnel ready to support them, which is nothing more than a poor publicity stunt.
• Former HGV drivers are encouraged to return to the profession in a rather desperate-looking letter, signed by Baroness Vere of Norbiton, the Minister for Roads, Buses and Places, together with two representatives of the logistic and haulage sector.
• Ministers called on 40,000 retired HGV licence holders to return to work to help refill petrol stations and deliver supplies to supermarkets. This is unlikely to get many positive responses.

The anarchy of capitalist production

In the international arena the UK can only compete by the super-exploitation of at least a million low-paid foreign workers. But since these are no longer available it is not only facing a shortage of nearly 100,000 lorry drivers but also 500,000 unfilled vacancies in the agricultural and food industry. At the same time 2.5 million workers in the UK are unemployed, and millions more underemployed, struggling on part-time wages. This is the anarchy of capitalist production, which inevitably leads to disharmony and fractures between the different sectors of the economy.

The solution proposed by the various leftist organisations, “as empty shelves make headlines in the UK”, is unchanged: “a democratically planned economy” on the national level.  (Global supply chain chaos & the need for a rationally planned economy [132], The Socialist Party, section in Ireland of the ISA)

But this fairy tale of the national planned economy brings no solution to the anarchy of the market. Planning by the national state or under “democratic” control of the workers organised in unions, does not eliminate private capitalist appropriation and competition since this is itself co-determined by the world market, and by the changing requirements of imperialist competition. This kind of state capitalism only brings mutual competition onto a higher level: instead of the competition between various private companies and sectors comes the trade war between imperialist states. We know only too well what such an economic war leads to…

 

Dennis, 9.10.21

The hasty retreat of US and other western forces from Afghanistan is a stark manifestation of capitalism’s inability to offer anything but increasing barbarism. The summer of 2021 has already seen an acceleration of inter-linked events which show that the planet is already on fire: the outbreak of heatwaves and of uncontrollable fires from the west coast of the USA to Siberia, floods, the continuing ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic dislocation it has caused. All of this is “a revelation of the level of putrefaction reached during the 30 last years" [1]. As marxists, our role is not merely to comment on this growing chaos but to analyse its roots, which lie in the historical crisis of capitalism, and to show the perspectives for the working class and the whole of humanity.

The historic background to the events in Afghanistan

The Taliban are presented as the enemies of civilisation, a danger to human rights and the rights of women in particular. They are certainly brutal and are driven by a vision that harks back to the worst aspects of the Middle Ages. However, they are not some rare exception to the times we are living in. They are the product of a reactionary social system: decadent capitalism. In particular their rise is a manifestation of decomposition, the final stage of capitalism’s decadence.

The second half of the 70s saw an escalation of the Cold War between the US and Russian imperialist blocs, with the US placing cruise missiles in Western Europe and forcing the USSR to engage in an arms race it could less and less afford. However, in 1979 one of the pillars of the western bloc in the Middle East, Iran, collapsed into chaos. All attempts by intelligent fractions of the bourgeoisie to impose order failed and the most backward elements of the clergy took advantage of this chaos to come to power. The new regime broke from the western bloc but also refused to join the Russian bloc. Iran has an extensive border with Russia and had thus acted as a key player in the west’s strategy of encircling the USSR. Now it had become a loose cannon in the region. This new disorder encouraged the USSR to invade Afghanistan when the West tried to overthrow the pro-Russian regime that it had managed to install in Kabul in 1978. By invading Afghanistan, Russia had hoped that at a later stage it would also be able to gain access to the Indian ocean.

In Afghanistan we now witnessed a terrible explosion of military barbarity. The USSR unleashed the full might of its arsenal on the Mujahedin (“freedom fighters”) and the population in general. On the other side the US bloc armed, financed and trained the Mujahedin and the Afghan warlords opposed to the Russians. These included many Islamic fundamentalists and also a growing influx of jihadis from across the world. These “freedom fighters” were taught all the arts of terror and warfare by the US and its allies. This war for “freedom” killed between 500,000 and 2 million people and left the country devastated. It was also the birthplace of a more global form of Islamic terrorism, typified by the rise of Bin Laden and Al-Qaida.

At the same time the US pushed Iraq into an eight-year long war against Iran, in which around 1.4 million were slaughtered. While Russia exhausted itself in Afghanistan, which contributed strongly to the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, and Iran and Iraq were being drawn into the spiral of war, the dynamic in the region showed that the point of departure, Iran’s transformation into a “rogue” state, was one of the first indications that the deepening contradictions of capitalism were starting to undermine the ability of the major powers to impose their authority in different regions of the planet. Behind this tendency lay something deeper: the inability of the ruling class to impose its solution to the crisis of the system – another world war – on a world working class which had shown its unwillingness to sacrifice itself on behalf of capitalism in a series of struggles between 1968 and the late 80s, without, however, being able to put forward a revolutionary alternative to the system. In short, an impasse between the two major classes determined capitalism’s entry into its final phase, the phase of decomposition, characterised, at the imperialist level, by the end of the two-bloc system and the acceleration of “every man for himself”

Afghanistan at the heart of the imperialist free for all

In the 1990s, after the departure of the Russians from Afghanistan, the victorious warlords turned on each other, using all the weapons and knowledge of war given to them by the West for control of the ruins. Wholesale slaughter, destruction and mass rape destroyed what little social cohesion was left by the war.

The social impact of this war was not confined to Afghanistan. The plague of heroin addiction that exploded from the 1980s onwards, bringing misery and death throughout the world, was one of the direct consequences of the war. The West encouraged the opposition to the Taliban to cultivate opium in order to finance the fighting.

The ruthless religious fanaticism of the Taliban was thus a product of decades of barbarity. They were also manipulated by Pakistan, in order to try and impose some form of order on its doorstep.

The US invasion in 2001, launched with the excuse of getting rid of Al-Qaida and the Taliban, along with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, were attempts by US imperialism to impose its authority faced with the consequences of its decline. It tried to get other powers, especially the Europeans, to act in response to the attack on one of its members. Apart from the UK, all the other powers were lukewarm. Indeed, Germany had already set out a new “independent” path in the early 90s, by supporting the secession of Croatia which in turn provoked the horrible slaughter in the Balkans. In the next two decades, America’s rivals became further emboldened as they watched the US getting embroiled in unwinnable wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The attempt of the USA to assert its dominance as the sole remaining superpower would more and more reveal the veritable decline of America’s imperialist ‘leadership’; and far from succeeding in imposing a monolithic order on the rest of the planet, the USA had now become the main vector of the chaos and instability which marks the phase of capitalist decomposition.

Biden’s Realpolitik in continuity with Trump’s

The policy of withdrawing from Afghanistan is a clear example of realpolitik. The US has to free itself of these expensive and debilitating wars in order to concentrate its resources on reinforcing its efforts to contain and undermine China and Russia. The Biden administration has shown itself to be no less cynical in the pursuit of US ambitions than Trump.

At the same time, the conditions of the US withdrawal have meant that the message of the Biden administration, “America is Back” - that America is a reliable ally - has been dealt a serious blow. In the long-term the administration is probably relying on the fear of China to force countries like Japan, South Korea, and Australia into cooperating with the US “pivot to the east”, aimed at containing China in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the region.

It would be a mistake to conclude from this that the US has simply walked away from the Middle East and Central Asia. Biden has made clear the US will pursue an “Over the Horizon” policy in relation to terrorist threats (in other words, through air strikes). This means that it will use its military bases around the world, its navy and air-force to inflict destruction on states in these regions if they endanger the US. This threat is also related to the increasingly chaotic situation in Africa, where failed states such as Somalia could be joined by Ethiopia as it is ravaged by civil war, with its neighbours supporting either side. This list will grow longer as Islamic terrorist groups in Nigeria, Chad, and elsewhere are emboldened by the victory of the Taliban to step up their campaigns.

If the withdrawal from Afghanistan is motivated by the need to focus on the danger posed by the rise of China and the revival of Russia as world powers, its limitations seem obvious, even offering Chinese and Russian imperialism a way into Afghanistan itself. China has already invested massively in its New Silk Road project in Afghanistan and both states have begun diplomatic relations with the Taliban. But neither of these states can rise above an increasingly contradictory world disorder. The wave of instability spreading across Africa, the Middle East (the collapse of the Lebanese economy being the most recent), Central Asia and the Far East (Myanmar in particular) is as much a danger to China and Russia as the US. They are fully aware that Afghanistan has no real functioning state and that the Taliban will not be able to build one. The threat to the new government from the warlords is well known. Parts of the Northern Alliance have already said they will not accept the government, and ISIS, which has also been involved in Afghanistan, considers the Taliban to be apostates because they are prepared to make deals with the infidel West. Parts of Afghanistan’s old ruling class may seek to work with the Taliban, and many foreign governments are opening up channels, but this is because they are terrified of the county descending again into warlordism and chaos which will spill over into the whole region.

 The victory of the Taliban can only encourage the Uyghurs Islamic terrorists that are active in China, even if the Taliban did not support them. Russian imperialism knows the bitter cost of entanglement in Afghanistan and can see that the victory of the Taliban will provide a new impetus to the fundamentalist groups in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, states that form a buffer between the two countries. It will take advantage of this threat to strengthen its military influence on these states and elsewhere, but it can see that even the might of the US war machine could not crush such an insurgency if the latter gets enough support from other states.

The US was unable to defeat the Taliban and establish a cohesive state. It has withdrawn in the knowledge that while it has had to suffer a real humiliation, it has left a timebomb of instability in its wake. Russia and China now have to seek to contain this chaos. Any idea that capitalism can bring stability and some form of future to this region is a pure illusion.

Barbarism with a humanitarian face

The US, Britain and all the other powers have used the Taliban bogeyman to hide the terror and destruction they have inflicted on the population of Afghanistan over the past 40 years. The US-backed mujahidin slaughtered, raped, tortured and pillaged as much as the Russians. As with the Taliban they waged terror campaigns in the urban centres controlled by the Russians. However, this was carefully hidden from view by the West. It has been the same over the last 20 years. The terrible brutality of the Taliban has been highlighted in the Western media, whilst news of the causalities, killings, rapes and torture inflicted by the “democratic” government and its backers was cynically swept under the carpet. Somehow the blowing to pieces of young and old, women and men, by the shells, bombs and bullets of the government backed by the ‘democratic’, ‘human rights’ loving US and UK are not worth mentioning. In fact, even the full extent of the terror the Taliban has inflicted has not been reported. It is seen as being not ‘news-worthy’ unless it could help to justify the war.

The parliaments of Europe have echoed US and British politicians in bewailing the terrible fate of women and others in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The same politicians have imposed immigration laws that have led thousands of desperate refugees, including many Afghans, to risk their lives try to cross the Mediterranean or the Channel. Where is their wailing for the thousands who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years? What concern do they show for those refugees forced to live in little better than concentration camps in Turkey or Jordan (financed by the EU and Britain) or sold in the slave markets of Libya? These bourgeois mouthpieces that condemn the Taliban for its inhumanity are encouraging the construction of a wall of steel and concrete around Eastern Europe to stop the movement of refugees. The stench of hypocrisy is almost overwhelming.

The proletariat is the only force able to put an end to this hell

The vista of war, pandemic, economic crisis and climate change is indeed fearful. This is why the ruling class fills its media with them. It wants the proletariat to be subdued, to cower in fear from the grim reality of this rotting social system. They want us to be like children clutching onto the skirts of the ruling class and its state. The great difficulties the proletariat has had in the struggle to defend its interests over the last 30 years allow this fear to take a greater hold. The idea that the proletariat is the only force able to offer a future, a completely new society, can appear absurd. But the proletariat is the revolutionary class and three decades of retreat has not eradicated this, even if the length and depth of this retreat does make it harder for the international working class to regain confidence in its ability to resist the growing attacks on its economic conditions. But is only through these struggles that the working class can re-develop its strength. As Rosa Luxemburg said the proletariat is the only class that develops its consciousness through the experience of defeats. There is no guarantee the proletariat will be able to live up to its historical responsibility to offer a future to the rest of humanity. This certainly will not take place if the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities succumb to the crushing atmosphere of despair and hopelessness promoted by our class enemy. The proletariat can only carry out its revolutionary role by looking the grim reality of decomposing capitalism in the face and by refusing to accept the attacks on its economic and social conditions, replacing isolation and helplessness with solidarity, organisation and growing class consciousness.

ICC 22-08-2021

20 years ago, in 2001, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted a document from the Global Scenario Group, convened by the Stockholm Environmental Institute, outlining three possible scenarios for humanity’s future resulting from the climate crisis:

“The GSG framework includes three broad classes of scenarios for scanning the future: ‘Conventional Worlds’, ‘Barbarisation’ and ‘Great Transition’ – with variants within each class. All are compatible with current patterns and trends, but have very different implications for society and the environment in the 21st century… In ‘Conventional Worlds’ scenarios, global society develops gradually from current patterns and dominant tendencies, with development driven primarily by rapidly growing markets as developing countries converge towards the development model of advanced industrial (‘developed’) countries. In ‘Barbarisation’ scenarios, environmental and social tensions spawned by conventional development are not resolved, humanitarian norms weaken, and the world becomes more authoritarian or more anarchic. ‘Great Transitions’ explore visionary solutions to the sustainability challenge, which portray the ascendancy of new values, lifestyles and institutions”. from p. 140 of the 2001 IPCC, Working Group 3 report on mitigation

In 2021, following or accompanied by unprecedented heatwaves from Canada to Siberia, floods in northern Europe and China, droughts and wildfires in California, new signs of Arctic ice melting, the first part of the IPCC report, the part which concentrates on the scientific analysis of climate trends, has made it plain that the “conventional” continuation of capitalist accumulation is driving us towards “barbarisation”. With an eye of the October-November COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, the report argues forcefully that without drastic and concerted global action to reduce emissions over the next few decades, it will not be possible to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a threshold seen as necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Not only that: the report refers to a series of “planetary boundaries” or tipping points which could see an uncontrollable acceleration of planetary heating, rendering large parts of the Earth incapable of sustaining human life. According to many of the experts who are cited in the report, four of these boundaries have already been crossed, notably at the level of climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable agricultural methods, with several more, such as the acidification of the oceans, plastic pollution and ozone depletion, threatening to result in mutually-reinforcing spirals with the other factors[1].

The report also makes it perfectly clear that these dangers derive above all from “human intervention” (which, in essence, means the production and extension of capital) and not from natural processes such as solar activity or volcanic eruptions, explanations which are often the last resort of the increasingly discredited climate change deniers.

The part of the report dealing with possible ways out of the crisis has not been published yet, but from all previous reports we know that, however much it may talk about “transitions” to a new economic model which will cease pumping out greenhouse gases at totally unsustainable levels, the “Intergovernmental Panel” has no other answer than to appeal to governments, i.e. the capitalist states, to come to their senses, work together, and agree on radical changes to the operation of their economies. In other words, the capitalist mode of production, whose remorseless drive for profit is at the very heart of the crisis, must become something which it can never be: a unified community where productive activity is regulated not by the demands of the market but by what human beings need to live.

That’s not to say that capitalist institutions are totally oblivious to the dangers posed by climate change. The proliferation of international climate conferences and the very existence of the IPCC is testimony to that. As the resulting catastrophes become more and more frequent, it is evident that this will have enormous costs: economic, of course, through the destruction of homes, agriculture, and infrastructure, but also social: spreading impoverishment, increasing number of refugees in flight from devastated regions, and so on. And all but the most deluded politicians and bureaucrats understand that this will place huge burdens on the coffers of the state, as the Covid pandemic (which is also linked to the environmental crisis) has clearly shown. And individual capitalist enterprises are also responding: virtually every business now parades its green credentials and its commitment to new, sustainable models. The car industry is a case in point: aware that the internal combustion engine (and the oil industry) is a major source of greenhouse emissions, nearly all the major car manufacturers are switching to electric cars over the next decade. But what they can’t do is stop competing with each other to sell as many of their “green cars” as possible, even if the production of electrical cars has its own significant ecological consequences - most notably due to the extraction of the raw materials, such as lithium, needed to produce car batteries, which is based on massive mining projects and the further development of global transport networks. The same applies at the level of national economies. Already the COP conference is anticipating considerable difficulty in persuading “developing” economies like Russia, China and India to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels in order to reduce emissions. And they resist such pressures for perfectly logical capitalist reasons: because it would severely reduce their competitive edge in a world already glutted with commodities.

The world is no longer big enough for capitalism

Since the days of the Communist Manifesto, marxists have insisted that capitalism is driven by its crises of overproduction and the search for new markets to “conquer the earth”, to become a world-wide system, and that this “universalising tendency” creates the possibility of a new society in which human need, the full development of the individual, becomes the goal of all social activity. But at the same time, this very tendency also contains the seeds of the dissolution, the self-destruction of capital, and thus the imperious necessity for a transition to a new human community, to communism[2]. And at the time of the First World War, marxists such as Bukharin and Luxemburg showed more concretely how this threat of self-destruction would play out: the more capitalism became global, the more it would be consumed in deadly military competition between imperialist nations bent on carving out fresh sources of raw materials, cheaper labour power, and new outlets for their production.

But although Marx, Engels and others could see early on that the capitalist system was poisoning the air and exhausting the soil, they could not have seen all the ecological consequences of a world in which capital had penetrated almost every region in the four directions, subordinating the entire Earth to its rampant urbanisation and its toxic methods of production and distribution. Capitalist expansion, motivated by the economic contradictions contained in the relationship between capital and wage labour, has pushed to the extreme the alienation of humanity from nature. Just as there is a limit to capitalism’s ability to realise the surplus value it extracts from the workers, so the profit-driven spoliation of the Earth’s natural resources creates a new obstacle to the capacity of capitalism to feed its slaves and perpetuate its reign. The world is no longer big enough for capitalism. And far from making the capitalist states see reason and work together for the good of the planet, the depletion of resources and the consequences of climate change will tend to further exacerbate military rivalries in a world where every state seeks to save itself in the face of the catastrophe. The capitalist state, whether openly despotic or covered with the veneer of democracy, can only apply the laws of capital which are the source of the profound threats facing the future of humanity.

Capitalism, if it is allowed to continue, can only plunge the world into accelerating “barbarisation”. The only “transition” that can prevent this is the transition to communism, which in turn cannot be the product of appeals to governments, voting for “green” parties or protesting as “concerned citizens”. This transition can only be taken in hand through the common, international struggle of the exploited class, the proletariat, which will most often be the first victim of the climate crisis as it is already in the case of the economic crisis. The workers’ struggle in the face of attacks on its living conditions alone contains the seeds of a generalised revolutionary movement that will call capitalism to account for all the miseries it is inflicting on the human species and the planet which sustains it.

Amos

USA: the struggle of the workers’ movement against slavery and racism (Part 3)

1920s-1930s: the Communist Parties and the Left Opposition

In part two of this series on the proletarian struggle against racism in the U.S., we examined the different positions in the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and in the Socialist Party of America (SPA). Central in this struggle stood the “Negro Resolution”, ratified at the Founding Congress of the SPA in 1901. Different locals (sections) of this party made serious attempts to fight for the interests of the workers, regardless of the colour of their skin. But in general, the leadership of the Party remained dismissive of any full integration of black workers into the party

In the third part of this series, we will take a closer look at how the later political organisations of the proletariat tried to further clarify the political-theoretical position on the “Negro question”. This had to be done in a period that had fundamentally changed, because capitalism had entered its period of decadence, in which lasting improvements were no longer possible. Every demand of the working class ran up against the objective limits of capitalism. The stakes of the proletarian struggle had risen to the point where every substantial demand faced the ruthless reaction of the bourgeois state.

Therefore, and in contrast to the period of ascendance when demands for “democratic rights” were still backed by progressive fractions of the bourgeoisie, any struggle for specific rights of the black workers had become counterproductive, since it was immediately exploited by the ruling class to put one sector of the working class against the other and to crush any resistance. Any struggle was doomed in advance if it was not based on the unification of the struggle of black and white workers. After the First World War the fight for “equal rights” for black people was no longer part of the programme of the workers’ movement. In the new conditions the only perspective was the massive struggle of all workers, regardless of their colour or nationality.

This was the historical context in which we shall examine how far the political organisations of the proletariat, from the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 onwards, succeeded in deepening their comprehension of the “Negro question” and the way to overcome the divisions that still existed on a large scale between black and the white workers. We will examine in particular the positions of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) and the Communist International (Comintern), Max Shachtman of the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA) and C.L.R. James of the Trotskyist Workers’ Party (WP).

The Comintern and the “national-revolutionary” struggle

The newly founded Communist Party of America (CPA), one of the two Communist parties formed in the USA,[1] had a clause in its programme concerning African Americans: “The Negro problem is a political and economic problem. The racial oppression of the Negro is simply the expression of his economic bondage and oppression, each intensifying the other. This complicates the Negro problem, but does not alter its proletarian character. The Communist Party will carry on agitation among the Negro workers to unite them with all class conscious workers.”[2]

But this statement posed a methodological problem, because it was not based on a radical critique of the positions developed in the SPA. It seemed to be more a declaration than a political position based on a profound conviction within the party. This was shown already in the discussion on the Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of the Communist International (the Comintern.) When Louis C. Fraina, the representative of the CPA at the Congress, intervened in this discussion he completely ignored the clause in the party programme and the need for a proletarian approach to the “Negro question”.

Nonetheless the discussion was very interesting from the point of view of the Communist Parties in the US. Because in his Theses Lenin singled out the population of Ireland and black people in America as examples of the national and colonial question: “All Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies.”[3] Thus for the first time in the history of the workers’ movement black people in the US were compared with oppressed populations elsewhere in the world.

The other Communist Party in the US, the Communist Labor Party (CLP), had delegated John Reed to the Congress. Although his party had no section in its programme on the “Negro question”, he made a clear intervention, approaching the subject from the point of view of the interests of working class: “The only correct policy for the American communists towards the Negroes is to regard them above all as workers. The agricultural workers and the small farmers of the South pose (…) the same tasks as those we have in respect to the white rural proletariat. Communist propaganda can be carried out among the Negroes who are employed as industrial workers in the North.”[4] In reply to the Draft Theses he also said that African Americans cannot be considered as a nation, like the other populations in the world, since they had never posed demands for national independence.  

But his intervention also left room for false interpretations. Reed was right that, in the end, it is “the social revolution of the proletariat which will not only liberate all workers from servitude but is also the only way to free the enslaved Negro people.”[5] But in this same intervention, instead of emphasising the necessity of the unification of the black and white workers in a joint struggle against their exploitation, he referred to “the Negro movement” that put forward its own demands. He spoke about the “Negro movement” as if it was a class movement, when black people were a population composed of different classes and not one class, the proletariat.

The example of African Americans and the Irish did not appear in the final version of the Theses. But it was clear that the objective of the Comintern was to call upon black people, like other oppressed nations, to ally with “their” national bourgeoisie in a so-called “national-revolutionary” struggle for their liberation from oppression by imperialism. This idea of forming an alliance with the national bourgeoisie raised criticism from at least two non-American delegates at the Congress: Sultan-Zade of the Communist Party of Iran, and Serrati of the Italian Socialist Party.

Both emphasised that at all times the working class must preserve its independence from its exploiters, the so-called “revolutionary nationalists”. Both criticised alliances between the Communist Parties and the supposedly 'revolutionary' bourgeois parties in the backward countries. “Such alliances can only lead to the weakening of proletarian class consciousness [and] run the danger of losing its class position and its class orientation”[6]; in the end this policy drives “the masses into the arms of the counter-revolution. The task is to create and maintain a purely communist movement in opposition to the bourgeois-democratic one.”[7]

Even if they (Serrati and Sultan-Zade) were completely right to oppose the centrist nature of the Draft Theses, the intervention of Serrati also expressed a certain ambiguity regarding the national struggle against the oppression of colonial populations, when he said that this struggle for national liberation can be revolutionary if the working class takes the lead. Here is not the place to enter into detail on this particular struggle in capitalist decadence, but at the time communists were far from homogeneous on this point. The only comrades who clearly denounced the struggle for national liberation were Rosa Luxemburg in The National Question [141] (1909) and Anton Pannekoek in Class Struggle and Nation [142] (1912).[8]

The CPUSA and the struggle for “equal rights”

The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), which was founded in 1921 as a merger between the CLP and the CPA, also had a relevant section in its programme. Under the heading “The Race Problem” it clearly explained the “Negro question” from the point of view of the proletariat: “The interests of the Negro workers are identical with those of the white. It will seek to end the policy of discrimination followed by organized labor [AFL]. Its task will be to destroy altogether the barrier of race discrimination that has been used to keep apart the black and white workers, and weld them into a solid union of revolutionary forces for the overthrow of their common enemy.”[9]

An important point was the position that “the interests of the Negro workers are identical with those of the white” as well as the statement that the task will be to “weld them into a solid union of revolutionary forces for the overthrow of their common enemy”. But the paragraph also contained the same error as expressed in John Reed’s speech at the Second Congress of the Comintern. It did not take into account the changed conditions in decadence, when it made an appeal “to support the Negroes (…) in their fight for economic, political, and social equality”.[10]

As Lenin put forward in his Draft Theses, presented at the Second Congress, “Under the guise of the equality of the individual in general, bourgeois democracy proclaims the formal or legal equality of the property-owner and the proletarian, the exploiter and the exploited, thereby grossly deceiving the oppressed classes.”[11] Thus, instead of strengthening the struggle of the working class, such a demand increases confusion and division among workers and distracts them from the fight for their proletarian goals.

The struggle for economic, political and social equality for black workers was part of the proletarian struggle in the period of capitalism's ascendance. But in the period of decadence such demands can no longer function as a reference point for the mobilisation of the proletariat. In the age of “socialism or barbarism” the goal of the proletarian struggle is not determined by the demand for equal rights. Equal rights or not, oppression and class exploitation continue as the essential conditions of the working class. Moreover, every democratic campaign undermines the attempts of the workers to struggle as an independent force on their own class terrain.

The call for equal rights for black people is not based on a class perspective, but on the interests of a heterogeneous group of people with more or less the same colour, in which members of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the working class are supposed to struggle side by side. The black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that a struggle for equality in the framework of the existing state does not put into question the capitalist system, where one class lives on the unpaid labour of the other. Such a campaign only blurs class antagonisms and confuses workers in their struggle against the exploitation of their labour power.

The Comintern and the “right of Negroes to self-determination”

In January 1921 the Comintern published a first position on the “Negro question” in “An Appeal of the Executive Committee of the Communist International to the Working Class of North and South America”. In this appeal it explained that “The Negro is exploited as a race and also economically - but this in no way alters the fact that the Negro problem constitutes a phase of the social problem, it only invests this problem with a peculiar form. The militant mood of the Negro must attain expression through the proletarian revolution and not independently of it. (…) The toiling Negro must everywhere (…) be joined together with the proletariat and be convinced that his racial struggle must fuse itself with the revolutionary struggles of labor against capital.”[12]

In the same way as John Reed, this Appeal considered the “Negro question” as a particular form of the exploitation of the working class. According to the Appeal the toiling Negroes belong to the working class and as such their struggle must be integrated in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. However, the Appeal still contains certain ambiguities, such as the expression that “his racial struggle must fuse with the revolutionary struggles of labor”. Even if all people in this struggle are workers, racial struggle takes place on the bourgeois terrain for equal rights and therefore it cannot fuse with the workers’ struggle, and certainly not on an equal footing.

The Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922 was the first to adopt a special resolution on the “Negro question”. This resolution contained no new points and was mainly based on the anti-imperialist position adopted at the Second Congress as laid down in the Theses on the national and colonial question [143]. Only this time, black people in the U.S. were assigned a highly dubious vanguard role. “The American Negro, by reason of his higher education and culture and his greater aptitude for leadership, and because of the urgency of the issues in America, will furnish the leadership for the Negro race.”[13]

At the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, in 1924, the focus was on the self-determination of American black people. But John Pepper, a Hungarian-born delegate from the US, said that the African Americans had no interest in self-determination, as John Reed had already said before him. Fort-Whiteman, another delegate from the U.S., agreed but stressed that black people in the U.S. had to be organised in “a specialised way”. Dmitri Manuilsky, from the Programme Commission also rejected the idea of self-determination for African Americans with the argument that, in the US, it “cannot solve all national questions with its extraordinary mixed population”[14]

The Sixth Congress of the Comintern, in 1928, raised the question of self-determination again, referring to Lenin’s book The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, written in 1914. And this emphasis on self-determination did not happen by accident, because in 1926 the Bolshevik Party had already adopted “socialism in one country” as official state policy. At this Congress the Comintern ratified this position, which marked its death as the political vanguard of the world proletariat. After “socialism in one country” was adopted as a realistic option, the fight for the establishment of a “socialist” nation for black people in the US was a logical consequence.

What was new was the fact that now the Comintern considered the “Negro struggle” not only as an expression of national liberation, but also as an expression of the efforts of black people to free themselves from the deep-rooted racist prejudice that condemned them as inferior creatures. “The Negro race everywhere is an oppressed race. Whether it is a minority (U.S.A., etc.) majority (South Africa) or inhabits a so-called independent state (Liberia, etc.), the Negroes are oppressed by imperialism. Thus, a common tie of interest is established for the revolutionary struggle of race and national liberation from imperialist domination of the Negroes in various parts of the world.”[15]

In this framework the tasks defined for the CPUSA were the following: “While continuing and intensifying the struggle under the slogan of full social and political equality for the Negroes, which much remain the central slogan of our Party for work among the masses, the Party must come out unreservedly for the right of Negroes to national self-determination in the Southern States.”[16] This resolution had not yet mentioned a specific area for this independent nation of African Americans. But the 1930 Comintern resolution explicitly mentioned the so-called “Black Belt [144]”, a region in the South-East of the US with a large black population.

In its strategy towards the struggle of African Americans, the Comintern seemed to consider the US more or less as a world in miniature, with a semi-colonial rule in the South and the oppressing imperialist rule in the North. Invoking the Theses on the national and colonial question [143] of the Second Congresses, the CPUSA was therefore called upon to give direction to the ‘national-revolutionary’ struggle for the self-determination of the toiling black masses in the South against the landowners, and to organise massive support for this struggle among the workers in the other parts of the U.S.

The CPUSA was thus ordered by the Comintern to fight for a separate nation for African Americans. In the party and even in the leadership of the party there was a considerable resistance and many members had to be won over to this policy. But this opposition to the Comintern resolution was not openly expressed. The critique would be expressed some years later by Max Shachtman, one of the militants expelled from the CPUSA because of his critique of the theory of “socialism in one country”.

Trotsky’s defence of “national self-determination”

What was the position of Trotsky, who had not taken part in the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, on the strategy decided by the Comintern on the situation of black people in the US?

In 1923 Trotsky had already explained his position on the “Negro question” in a letter to Claude MacKay, who was present at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern. “In North America the matter is further complicated by the abominable obtuseness and caste presumption of the privileged upper strata of the working class itself, who refuse to recognize fellow-workers and fighting comrades in the Negroes.”[17] This concept was reminiscent of Lenin's idea of the “labour aristocracy”, whereby the U.S. was divided into an “advantaged western proletariat” and a “disadvantaged black population”, and where the former supposedly benefited from the fruits of the super-exploitation of the latter.

In 1933 Trotsky even defended the position that, in their relation to black people, the white workers in the US are fully part of the oppressive system. In his discussion with Swabeck and Weisbord he therefore argued in favour of the “democratic” demand for self-determination as the only way that the black people could free themselves from semi-slavery: “Negroes are a race and not a nation”, but they can become a nation since “the suppression of the Negroes pushes them toward a political and national unity”.[18] He rejected the struggle for equal political, economic and social rights as being a liberal demand.

We agree that the demand for social, political and economic equality is a liberal demand. Such a demand lacks a clear proletarian class basis, and since the working class is the only revolutionary class in capitalism this demand can never put into question the rule of capital, which is the source of the oppression of black people. But what were the arguments of Trotsky for rejecting this demand? Actually, he gave only one argument and this was that black people can much easier be misled by such a liberal demand than by what he called the democratic demand for self-determination. But even with this argument to hand we remain in the dark, since Trotsky gave no further explanation for his defence of self-determination in his discussion with the members of the US Trotskyist groups.

In order to acquaint ourselves with the Trotsky’s other arguments in support of self-determination for black people in the U.S. we have to go back to his History of the Russian Revolution, which he had finished only one year before his discussion with Swabeck and Weisbord. In this book he unconditionally defended Lenin’s position: “Lenin early learned the inevitability of this development of centrifugal national movements in Russia, and for many years stubbornly fought – most particularly against Rosa Luxemburg – for that famous paragraph 9 of the old party programme which formulated the right of nations to self-determination – that is, to complete separation as states.”[19]

When Trotsky pleaded for the self-determination of the “Negro people” he must have been convinced that centrifugal forces in the U.S. were getting stronger, and that an independent African American nation was the only solution. He did recognise that this demand could undermine the unification of the struggle and separate: “the colored workers from the white,” in cases where “common actions existed between the white and the colored workers”, and “the class fraternization had already become a fact”. But, as he said, since this is not the case in the US and since “the white workers in relation to the Negroes are the oppressors” the demand for self-determination “would undoubtedly mean a greater progress”.[20]

The thesis on “the rights of nations to self-determination” was already highly ambiguous in the year that Lenin wrote his book. And not long after its publication it was criticised within the Bolshevik Party. Like the argument that Serrati would develop at the Second Congress of the Comintern, this criticism denounced unification with bourgeois’ forces in the oppressed nations: “‘Partial’ tasks of the ‘liberation of nations’ within the limits of capitalist society diverts proletarian forces from the true solution of the problem and unites them with the forces of the bourgeoisie of the corresponding national groups”.[21] In this debate Lenin had to admit that the proletariat could give no guarantees, and that self-determination for one nation could easily lead to conflict with another.

Trotsky had rejected the criticisms of the position of Lenin as he did with the criticism of the political practice of the Bolshevik Party in the revolution by Rosa Luxemburg. While the Bolsheviks expected that the policy of secession would turn the new-born nations into allies of the Russian “semi-state” “we have witnessed the opposite spectacle. One after another, these ‘nations’ used their freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian revolution as its mortal enemy, and under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself”. [22]

The Trotsky of the 1930s seems to have swept all these critiques under the carpet of his concept of “permanent revolution”, which was his deus ex machina against all the counter-revolutionary forces that emerged as a result of the “self-determination of nations”.

Trotsky actually made a caricature of Lenin’s thesis, as he mechanically applied it to the situation of the US in the 1930s, where the conditions were completely different from the years 1917-1923 in Russia and Europe, when the international proletariat had unleashed a massive revolutionary wave. For Lenin the right to self-determination was an “occasional” policy, depending on the particular conditions of the moment; in the hands of Trotsky it turned into “a constant rule, and the possibility of the proletariat finding support in the national struggles of colonial countries was transformed into unconditional support by the proletariat of national and nationalist struggles.”[23]

In the revolutionary wave the international proletariat was a source of inspiration for millions of oppressed people in the world. The fact that the proletariat in the central countries was shaking the capitalist system also set in motion various oppressed layers in the countries on the periphery of capitalism. For Lenin, it was only in these specific conditions, and not in the US of the 1930s, that “the proletariat, concentrated in the most developed capitalist countries could find, in its assault on the capitalist world, support in the underdeveloped countries, which has been exposed to the oppression of the major powers”.[24] Since these oppressed layers were not able to develop a perspective on their own, they needed the leadership of the proletariat if they wanted to be freed from the oppression by the colonial powers or even from oppression altogether.

Critique of the slogan of “national self-determination”

In 1931 the Trotskyist Communist League of Struggle (CLS) had already adopted a point on “The struggle for Negro emancipation” in its general platform published in its journal Class struggle [145]. In this point it rejected the theory that the Negroes were a nation and that they should fight for national independence. In 1933 this criticism was further developed by Max Shachtman, a member of the Communist League of America (CLA), in his book Communism and the Negro. On the basis of Kautsky’s definition of a nation, as formulated in his letter to the Seventh Congress of the Bund (31August1906), Shachtman examined in his book whether black people in the US did fit such a definition.

In his study he came to the conclusion that the black population were not a nation. The black people of America possessed no common culture or language of their own; no separate religion and institutions, which demarcated them as a distinct nationality and as having a separate national culture. And even the caste status of black people, a consequence of his previous state of chattel slavery, did not place them in the category of a nation. Moreover, as other marxists had already stated before him: African Americans had never posed demands for self-determination.

Against the idea of the “Black Belt [144]” he argued that African Americans have no historically defined frontiers: they were spread across the US and their distribution over different parts of the country was constantly shifting. Moreover, economic and political development caused great migrations from the rural South towards the industrial centres in the North. Black people “have never felt a national attachment to this particular section of the country as the Irishman feels for Ireland, the Pole for Poland, the Catalan for Catalonia.”[25]

The conclusion of his examination was that there was no basis whatsoever for self-determination of the Negro people as a separate nation in the “Black Belt [144]”. According to Shachtman the slogan of self-determination was even dangerous for the struggle of the American working class: “The Stalinists have introduced radical change in the communist position on the Negro question, which is just as radically wrong and guaranteed to produce the most harmful results in the fight to liberate not only the American Negro but the whole American working class.”[26] In the end Shachtman rejected not only the “Black Belt [144]” and black nationalism, but also the idea of black people having their own independent fighting organisations.

If we are in agreement with the arguments of Shachtman against the positions of the Comintern and Trotsky, on self-determination, we must also note that his criticism did not go to the roots, because he did not argue against the constitution of new nations as such. For a new nation, even if it is constituted by an oppressed national minority, such as the black people in the U.S., cannot and will never be a real community of all oppressed people, workers and poor farmers alike. Under the conditions of decadent capitalism, every nation state is imperialist and will immediately turn itself, not only against rival nations, but also against the most oppressed parts of the population and against the working class in particular.

Already in the period of the ascendance of capitalism nations were never a unified social body. They contained insuperable property divisions that, like its wider social divisions, had to be managed and often by means of state violence. Nevertheless, Marx and Engels supported the struggle for national independence, but only if it brought the struggle of the working class for its emancipation closer. But in the period of decadence any national unity comes under enormous pressure by the aggravation of its inner contradictions. This tendency compels the national bourgeoisie to increase its grip on society by the development of a state totalitarian rule, whether “democratic” or “dictatorial”.

C.L.R. James and his incomplete break with Trotskyism

Five years after the publication of the book by Max Shachtman C.L.R. James arrived in the U.S. and gave a new impetus to the discussion on the “Negro question” in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). He published dozens of articles and discussed with Trotsky on the issue in April 1939. Raising more or less the same objections as Max Shachtman did in his book in 1933, in this discussion he did not present himself as a protagonist of self-determination for black people. He considered “the idea of separating as a step backward so far as a socialist society is concerned”.[27]

His most important and most elaborated contribution on the “Negro question” was written four years later, in 1943, when he had broken with the SWP after a disagreement on the proletarian nature of the Russian state and on the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union, which led the majority of Trotskyists to support the Allied imperialist camp. Defending an internationalist position during the Second World War, he became a member of the Workers’ Party [28]. In this contribution, “The Historical Development of the Negro in the United States”, he explains his position on “the developing relation of the Negro struggle to the general struggles of the proletariat as the leader of the oppressed classes in American society”.

In his analysis of the perspectives for the struggle of the Negroes, C.L.R. James explicitly referred to Lenin’s The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up [146] (1916), in particular to chapter 10, “The Irish rebellion of 1916”, and showed the implications for the struggle of black people in the U.S. In this text James found “a very concrete illustration of the applicability of the method to environments and classes superficially diverse but organically similar”.[29] Paraphrasing what Lenin had written about the Irish rebellion, which was “capable of going to the lengths of insurrection and street fighting”, James wrote inter alia that

• “Within the United States the socialist revolution will ultimately consist of a series of battles in which the discontented classes, groups and elements of all types will participate in their own way and form a contributory force to the great culminating struggles which will be led by the proletariat.

• In the United States social revolution is impossible without the independent mass struggles of the Negroes, whatever the prejudices, the reactionary fantasies, the weaknesses and errors of these struggles.
• Blows delivered by an oppressed national minority, so entangled in the social structure of the United States as the Negroes, possess a political significance of greater importance in this country than a blow delivered by any other section of the population except the organized proletariat itself.”[30]

The merit of his contribution was that he pulled the struggle of black people out of the mire of the “Black Belt” and put it again in the centre of the American capitalist society. “The Negroes do not constitute a nation”, but their problems have “become the problem of a national minority”.[31] He defended, although not without any ambiguity, the position that the struggle and the organisation of black people should take place under the direction of the proletariat and that the struggle of organised labour (which means the unions) would be decisive for the fight against their status as second-class citizens.

C.L.R. James never openly criticised Trotsky or Lenin, and also in this case he referred to Lenin’s contribution without making a critical analysis. Basing his analysis on Lenin’s contribution to the workers’ movement and marxism, he did not take into account the positions of Trotsky and Radek, who had already expressed strong reserves regarding any working class support to the Irish rebellion. And they were right, because when Ireland became independent in 1921, the new nation state did anything but join the fight of the oppressed against imperialism. Instead, it took help from British imperialism against the incipient social revolution. Thus Lenin’s method in 1916 had proven not to be the right one, as was also demonstrated two years later in Russia.

Another weak point in Lenin’s text was his emphasis on the importance of the struggle for “democratic rights” for black people as an end in itself. For James it was “absolutely impossible for the Negroes to gain equality under American capitalism”. Therefore, he was convinced that the struggle of the African Americans for “democratic rights” brought them “almost immediately face to face with capital and the state” and from there he concluded that: “in the United States today this struggle is a direct part of the struggle for socialism.”[32]

But his conclusion was too hasty, because a confrontation with the state does not automatically mean a confrontation with capitalist society. Just like farmers’ protests, protests by black people as such, even when they come up against state repression, do not carry within them the seeds of another society. Moreover C.L.R. James had not read or understood Lenin properly. As we already demonstrated earlier in this article, Lenin did not support the struggle for equal rights as an end in itself. For him this struggle was inseparably linked to the struggle for socialism: “The real meaning of the demand for equality consists in its being a demand for the abolition of classes.”[33]

As we showed earlier, the struggle for “democratic rights” is a trap for the working class, because it distracts the workers from the proletarian terrain into the fight for an equal place in bourgeois society, which is the terrain of the ruling class. Some black people were already part of the ruling class in the 19th century and many more became part of it in the 20th century.

The demand for “democratic rights” obscures the fact that capitalist society is divided into classes and disarms the working class in face of exploitation and oppression by the ruling class. In this false approach, all black people, whatever the class they belong to, working class, middle class or ruling class, are called upon to join forces in one and the same struggle, drowning the black workers in an amorphous mass of black people. This makes that “the demand for ‘democratic rights’ is in general an excellent way of drowning class demands and preventing the proletariat from affirming its class identity”.[34]

Only the working class struggle can abolish all oppression

At the time of the Second World War the workers’ movement still had no unambiguous and clear-cut position on how to intervene towards the resistance of black people against particular oppression and structural prejudice. The theoretical clarification of this issue from the point of view of the proletariat appeared to be a difficult task. It has shown to be more difficult than the elaboration of a position on the struggle against the oppression of women, which was much earlier recognised as being part of the working class struggle. Nonetheless we can draw some conclusions – if in a negative sense - from the theoretical efforts, undertaken in the 20 years between the Second Congress of the Comintern and C.L.R. James’ 1943 article.

Under the conditions of decadent capitalism:

• The demand for “equal rights” as an end in itself was not a class demand and was turned against the working class, against white as well as black workers.
• The notion of self-determination for black people in the “Black Belt [144]” proved to be a complete misjudgement: any movement for national liberation is destined to be counter-revolutionary.
• The fight of the African American people for their particular interests (as a distinctive race) is just as inimical to the working class struggle as any nationalist struggle.
• Assigning black people in the US, of whom 75% still lived under appalling conditions in the South, a vanguard role in the struggle against colonial oppression, as the Comintern did in 1922, was completely at odds with the marxist view that only the international struggle of the working class can provide a perspective for all the world’s oppressed strata.

In contrast to the Trotskyist current, the Communist Left was able to clarify the national question in general and therefore it was strongly opposed to any struggle for national liberation. But none of the Left Communist currents in the 1930s were able to develop a clear position on the “Negro Question” in the US. They didn’t even write about it, except Mattick, who had emigrated to the U.S. In an article, written in 1932, he gave an overview of the history of the oppression of the black people in the U.S. and drew the conclusion that “this Negro problem will not cease to be a problem until socialist harmony takes hold in society. The liberation of the Negroes is only possible with the liberation of labour”, but he failed to make any critique of the Comintern’s slogan of self-determination of the Comintern.[35]

As long as capitalism exists, racism will exist. And only the conquest of political power by the proletariat creates the conditions for its gradual disappearance. In that sense Mattick was right.

The campaign for “equal rights” has resulted in the legal lifting of discrimination and segregation of black people. But changing legal regulations does not mean that things on the ground have necessarily changed, since laws are are unable to change people’s minds. Those who are convinced that African Americans are inferior, and that the intermixing of the races must be banned, simply find new ways to discriminate, including restrictive housing covenants, stiff loan requirements, and new barriers to voting, etc. By these means black people in the US are still subjected to all kinds of restrictions and particular forms of oppression.

Black people experience in a particular way the general oppression to which the working class is subjected. The latter embodies all forms of oppression by capitalism; its mode of existence is the synthesis of humanity’s oppression under capitalism. The struggle of the working class against oppression by the capitalist state is therefore the midwife to the abolition of all oppression. No form of oppression under capitalism can be abolished outside the context of the struggle of the working class for its emancipation. Therefore, black proletarians in the US can only do away with oppression by joining and supporting the struggle of all workers, whether white or black, against capitalist rule.

 

Dennis, October 2021

 

In all countries, in all sectors, the working class is facing an unbearable degradation of its living and working conditions. All governments, whether of the right or the left, traditional or populist, are imposing one attack after the other as the world economic crisis goes from bad to worse.

Despite the fear generated by an oppressive health crisis, the working class is beginning to react. In recent months, in the USA, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea, in Spain, France and Britain, struggles have broken out. These are not massive movements: the strikes and demonstrations are still weak and dispersed. Even so, the ruling class is keeping a wary eye on them, conscious of the widespread, rumbling anger.

How are we to face up to the attacks of the ruling class? Are we to remain isolated and divided, everyone in ‘their own’ firm or sector? That’s a guarantee of powerlessness. So how can we develop a united, massive struggle?

Towards a brutal degradation of living and working conditions

Prices are soaring, particularly for basic necessities: food, energy, transport...In 2021 inflation was already higher than after the financial crisis of 2008. In the USA, it has reached 6.8%, the highest in 40 years. In Europe, in recent months, energy costs have jumped by 26%! Behind these figures, the concrete reality is more and more people struggling to feed themselves, to find accommodation, to keep warm, to travel. World-wide, food prices have risen by 28%, directly threatening more than a billion people with malnutrition in the poorest countries, above all in Africa and Asia.

The deepening economic crisis leads to increasingly bitter competition between states. To maintain profits, the answer is always the same, everywhere, in all sectors, private as well as public: reduce staff, impose speed ups, cut budgets, including spending on workers’ health and safety. In January, in France, masses of teachers came out onto the streets to protest against shocking working conditions. They are living in a daily capitalist hell because of a lack of staff and material. In the demonstrations a profoundly justified slogan was on their banners: “What’s happening to us goes back to way before Covid!”

What’s being inflicted on health workers shows this very clearly. The pandemic has merely shone a light on a lack of medicines, care workers, nurses, beds, masks, protective clothing, oxygen…everything! The chaos and exhaustion reigning in the hospitals since the beginning of the pandemic is nothing less than the result of the vicious cuts made by all governments, in all countries, for decades. To the point where the World Health Organisation was obliged, in its latest report, to ring the alarm bells: “Over half of needs are not being met. Across the world there is a lack of 900,000 midwives and 6 million nurses…this already existing scarcity has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the pressures on overworked staff”. In many poor countries, a large part of the population has not been able to access the vaccines for the simple reason that capitalism is based on the hunt for profit.

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The working class is not just made up of industrial workers: it includes all the wage labourers, part time and precarious workers, unemployed, many students, retired workers…

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So, yes, “What’s happening to us goes back to way before Covid!”. The pandemic is the product of a dying capitalism whose insurmountable crisis it is making worse. Not only is this system showing its powerlessness and disorganisation in the face of a pandemic which has already claimed 10 million lives, especially among the exploited and the poor, but it will continue to degrade our living and working conditions, it will continue to increase redundancies and precarious jobs, to pressure and impoverish workers. Under the weight of its contradictions, it will continue to be caught up in endless imperialist wars, to provoke new ecological catastrophes – all of which will provoke further chaos, conflicts, and even worse pandemics. This system of exploitation has nothing to offer humanity but suffering and poverty.

Only the struggle of the working class is the bearer of another perspective, that of communism: a society without class, without nations, without wars, where all forms oppression will be abolished. The only perspective is the world communist revolution

A growing anger and militancy

In 2020, all around the world, a lead curtain came down: repeated lock-downs, emergency hospitalisations and millions of deaths. After the revival of workers’ militancy that we saw in several countries during 2019, particularly with the fight against the pension ‘reforms’ in France, workers’ struggles came to a brutal halt. But today, once again, anger is rising and a fighting spirit is gaining ground:

• In the USA, a series of strikes hit industrial groups like Kellogs, John Deere, PepsiCo, but also the health sector and private clinics, as in New York;
• In Iran, this summer, workers from more than 70 sites in the oil sector came out on strike against low wages and the high cost of living. Something not seen for 42 years!
• In South Korea, the unions had to organise a general strike for more social benefits, against precarious jobs and unequal wages;
• In Italy, there have been a number of days of action against lay-offs and the suppression of the minimum wage;
• In Germany, the public services union felt obliged, faced with a growing mobilisation, to brandish the threat of strikes to obtain wage increases;
• In Spain, in Cadiz, the metal workers mobilised against an average wage cut of 200 euros a month. Pubic employees in Catalonia demonstrated against the intolerable resort to temporary work (over 300,000 state employees have precarious jobs). Struggles took place in the railways in Majorca, at Vestas, Unicaja, among the metal workers of Alicante, in different hospitals, all of them against redundancies;
• In France, the same kind of discontent has been expressed by strikes or demonstrations in transport, recycling, education;
• The same in Britain where we have seen strikes and other actions in the universities, by recycling workers, in public transport, health and other sectors.

Prepare the struggles ahead

All these struggles are important because they show that the working class is not ready to accept all the sacrifices which the bourgeoisie is trying to impose on it. But we also have to recognise the weaknesses of our class. All these actions have been controlled by the unions who everywhere divide and isolate workers with sectional demands, containing and sabotaging the struggles. In Cadiz, the unions tried to trap the workers in localism, in a “citizens movement” to “save Cadiz”, as if the interests of the working class lie in the defence of regional or national concerns and not in linking up with their class brothers and sisters across sectors and frontiers! The workers have also found it hard to organise themselves, to take control of the struggles, to come together in sovereign general assemblies and fight against the divisions imposed by the unions.

A further danger facing the working class is giving up the defence of class demands by joining up with movements that have nothing to do with its own interests and methods of struggle. We saw this with the “Yellow Vests” in France or, more recently, in China, when the collapse of the housing giant Evergrande (a spectacular symbol of China’s massive indebtedness), which mainly provoked protests by ruined small property owners. In Kazakhstan, massive strikes in the energy sector were in the end derailed into a “people’s” revolt without any perspective and quickly got caught up in conflicts between bourgeois cliques vying for power. Each time that workers dilute themselves in the “people” as “citizens” demanding that the capitalist state “changes things”, they condemn themselves to powerlessness.

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The movement against the CPE: an inspiration for future struggles

In 2006, in France, the bourgeoisie was forced to withdraw its attack in the face of a massive struggle which threatened to extend to other sectors

At the time, the students, many of them part-time workers, rose up against a ‘reform’ known as the Contrat Première Embauche (First Employment Contract) or CPE, opening the door to underpaid and superexploited jobs. They rejected isolation, division, sectional demands.

Against the unions, they opened up their general assemblies to all categories of workers and the retired. They understood that the fight against precarious jobs for the young was a symbol of the struggle against job insecurity for everyone.

Gaining solidarity between sectors and generations, this movement, demonstration after demonstration, grew in breadth. It was this dynamic towards unity which scared the bourgeoisie and forced it to withdraw the CPE.

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In order to prepare the struggle, we must, wherever we can, get together to discuss and draw the lessons of past struggles. It is vital to put forward methods of struggle which express the strength of the working class, and which, at certain moments in history, have shaken the bourgeoisie and its system:

• The search for support and solidarity beyond “my” sector, town, region or country;
• The widest possible discussion about the needs of the struggle, in no matter what firm, sector or country;
• The autonomous organisation of the struggle, above all through general assemblies that don’t leave control in the hands of the unions or other organs of bourgeois containment.

Prepare for the united and autonomous struggles of tomorrow!

International Communist Current, January 2022

We are giving out this leaflet in all the countries where our militant forces are present. Those who agree with the content of this article could download it from the attached pdf and distribute it as best they can. On the first weekend of March we are organising online public meetings in English where we will discuss the crisis of the system, the class struggle and the role of revolutionaries. If you want to join in the discussion, write to us at [email protected] [8] or follow our website at www.internationalism.org [170].

On the weekend of March 5/6 2022, the ICC will be organising online public meetings around the theme:

Faced with deepening capitalist barbarism and the return of workers’ struggles, what is the role of revolutionaries?

The meetings will be held on the morning of Saturday 5th March, to make it easier for comrades in Asia to take part, and the early evening of Sunday the 6th, so that comrades in the US can attend. For further details, write to us at [email protected] [8].

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In autumn 2021 the ICC organised public meetings worldwide on the theme “The worsening dissolution of capitalism: its dangers for humanity and the responsibility of the proletariat”. In the introduction to the discussion the following points were raised: the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Covid pandemic and the consequences of the changing climate.

The articles below are a first response to some of the issues and disagreements raised by the discussion at these meetings

Why does the ICC defend the validity of the concept of decomposition of capitalism? [171]

Polêmica sobre a realidade da fase atual de decomposição do capitalismo [172]

After a serious setback in the struggle during the first year of the Covid pandemic, workers in Europe, the US and elsewhere[1], are beginning to react to the attacks on wages and working conditions. While the pandemic is peaking at new heights with the appearance of the Omicron variant, workers are facing even more severe attacks on their living standards through rising inflation and increasing energy costs.

In the UK, we have seen outbreaks of small but significant strikes during the autumn. Beginning in September with strikes of Uber delivery workers, strikes have continued in different sectors: health workers in nursing homes of SAGE, refuse workers in Glasgow, university staff on a national level. And strikes are continuing: distribution workers, tube workers in London, transport workers in the North West and Yorkshire, workers in the car industry, in supermarkets, food production and distribution.

Today all sectors of the working class in the UK - from traditional sectors like car workers to civil servants and university employees – are facing the same attacks on their living standards. As we have pointed out in our Resolution of the International Situation from last summer: “The working class is paying a heavy tribute to the crisis. First because it is most directly exposed to the pandemic and is the principal victim of the spread of infection, and secondly because the downward dive in the economy is unleashing the most serious attacks since the Great Depression, at all levels of working and living conditions, although not all will be affected in the same way.” [2]

The pandemic has, both directly and indirectly, created an apparently paradoxical situation: unemployment in some sectors together with a shortage of labour in others, combined with increased poverty because of rising prices. The result of two years of rescue packages, of “helicopter money” spread by all national bourgeoisies, desperately trying to save the economy from the worst effects of the pandemic - mainly through printing money - has led to a drastic rise in inflation throughout the world, and to higher costs for basic needs such as food and electricity. Moreover workers face a continuous lowering of their income, through restructuration and increasing precariousness.

The first new expressions of working class combativity, as we have seen in various parts of the world, are clearly illustrated by what is happening in the UK. In a growing number of sectors, workers’ discontent is being fuelled by pay cuts and worsening living conditions. It shows that the class is beginning to assert itself on its own terrain, not being immersed in the general chaos of the pandemic, the increasingly erratic behaviour of the ruling class, and the bourgeois terrain of “peoples” protests against lockdown measures.

Unions will only lead the struggles to defeat

Unions have systematically sabotaged protests and other workers' actions, either by dispersing them in time, or by concluding agreements with the bosses even before strikes were due to take place. They have consistently forced striking workers to go back to work with cuts in wages and worse working conditions.

We saw this already in April 2021 when unions ended a six-week long strike at British Gas, where workers had to accept a wage cut of 15% or get sacked. In May, an eleven-week strike in Manchester bus garages was ended by the unions after a deal that meant unpaid meal breaks and reduced sick-pay. Workers at Douwe Egberts in Oxford had to accept an annual wage cut of £9,000 after the unions declared that this would prevent the factory being moved to another country. At British Telecom in July, the Communication Workers Union agreed to a cut of 13,000 jobs.

Over the autumn, the Unison union called for strikes to defend the state funded health sector, the NHS – instead of fighting for workers’ demands. Unions have been quick to stop potential strikes and walk-outs by concluding agreements that mean downright pay cuts. In public transport, twenty different disputes all over Britain at Stagecoach have been settled by the Unite union, leading to wage deals that were not enough to compensate for inflation. The same with distribution workers before Christmas, where the unions blocked strike action from thousands of workers at the big distribution centres for the large supermarket chains, to settle a payment deal below the inflation rate. For the moment, the RMT union, organising London tube workers, is the only example where the union has reached a deal which is matching the expected inflation – after threatening chaos in the London Underground in December.

The increase in trade union activity, whose role is to exhaust the workers’ combativity through separate and isolated actions, is a sign that the ruling class is taking into account the rise in working class militancy, knowing that the attacks today are only the harbinger of unprecedented attacks in the years to come. Up to now the bourgeoisie in the main countries has not launched massive austerity programmes, but it will certainly have to.

The unions are the watchdogs of the ruling class in the proletariat and have been so since the beginning of the last century. The true nature of the unions is shown both through their attempts to divide the class and through their attempts to stop the strikes and actions through quick deals with the bosses. This is their basic function, and all the various leftist arguments that blame this or that treacherous union leader are nothing but a way to strengthen union ideology, a real trap for the proletariat. They attempt to radicalise this union ideology through criticising the union leadership or calling on the workers to form rank and file committees, a classic strategy of mobilising radicalised workers behind union banners, deployed since the 1980s.

Rising inflation can be a unifying factor in the working class

"Even before the pandemic struck, British workers had suffered the worst decade for real wage growth since the Napoleonic wars. While 2022 will stand out for a particularly sharp hit to living standards, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons incomes will barely budge up until 2026. This means an unprecedented hit to earnings spanning two decades, and will leave household incomes 42% lower than would have been the case if wages had risen at pre-2008 financial crisis rates."[3]

The Observer (8/1/22), cited a university employee who took part in the three-day action in the beginning of December, saying that “there hasn’t been a pay award above inflation since Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.” This is the reality, for more than a decade, for all sectors of the working class.

At 5.4% the official level of inflation in the UK is at its highest level in almost 30 years. The Bank of England expects it to rise to 6% by April, with some analysts predicting 7% if billions aren't poured in to the energy sector to cap rocketing heating costs. The Retail Price Index is already running at 7.5%.

The article in The Observer also cites an economist: “Until a few weeks ago, the incomes expert Ken Mulkearn was convinced a spike in inflation would pass without much reaction from Britain’s 32 million-strong workforce. (…)  ‘Now I’m not so sure. There are signs rising prices are having an impact.’” The representatives of the ruling class have also noticed the rising discontent in the working class.  They know the effects of rising inflation on the social powder keg.

Workers must fight against isolation

The more prominent actions of the unions are a clear sign that the ruling class is aware of the potential danger of working class struggle. The unions are present everywhere to prevent struggles from developing and extending to other workers. The actual task of the unions is focussed on the isolation and derailment of the struggles into dead-ends.

But the struggles must not remain isolated, sector by sector! All parts of the working class are under attack, and this demands a unified response! The struggle that took place in Cadiz in Spain is an important example for all workers: an attempt to spread their strike to other sectors and industries[4]. The only way for the working class to struggle on its own terrain is to fight isolation, which the unions are enforcing.

Despite the fact that the unions still have a tight control of the situation, the recent struggles in the UK are a sign that the working class still maintains reserves of combativity. As in other parts of the world, its defensive struggle of to-day contains the seeds of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism of tomorrow.

Edvin, 25/1/22

While the rest of Britain was subject to the strictest of lockdown restrictions, the Prime Minister and those close to him were partying behind closed doors or in the garden at 10 Downing Street. Johnson has apologised for or excused the hypocrisy over the parties - including an unprecedented apology to the Queen for parties held the night before her husband's funeral - but the media frenzy has continued. Several Tory MPs and many leading Scottish Conservatives have called for Johnson's resignation on the grounds that he is not "fit for office". Internationally, the evidence of corruption and dishonesty within the political apparatus is a further humiliation for the British bourgeoisie. While deception and scandals are normal in bourgeois politics, in the most developed countries, only in the US, where divisions are notably violent, is there a greater loss of control of the political game.

Initially it was not clear what would be the result of the appointment of Sue Grey from the Cabinet Office to look into the circumstances of the parties. Would there be a cover-up or would her report conclude that rules had been broken and the ministerial code had been flouted, and heads would have to roll? Publication of the expected report was delayed because the Metropolitan Police had been called in to see if any offences had been committed. The undertaking of a criminal investigation is a clear escalation in the seriousness of the situation. Part of the bourgeois state is obviously concerned about something that is more than just a conflict between political factions. The fact that the police then asked for the Sue Grey report not to include references to anything that they were investigating only adds to the mess. At the time of writing the Grey report had still not appeared and is the subject of much speculation on what it will mean for Johnson.

Despite the evidence of problems faced by the bourgeoisie, the ruling class has still been able to use the scandal against the working class. In continuity with the perpetual campaign over the benefits of capitalist democracy, the contrast is made between the so-called 'great traditions' of parliamentary functioning and the lies and manoeuvres of a corrupt regime. Being drawn into this false choice between bourgeois political models is an obstacle to workers understanding that the existing state, whatever its form, can only serve the interests of capitalist exploitation.

The predictable consequences of Johnson's election

After the 2019 general election, in WR 385, we showed that Johnson might have delivered Brexit, but the way was open for further and greater problems ahead. "The British bourgeoisie has been reduced to relying upon a political chancer who shamelessly mobilised populist sentiments in order to further his rise to power. There was no other politician who had the necessary lack of scruples to wage the bitter factional struggle within the Conservative Party and then during the election campaign. […] The strains and tensions within the political apparatus show that the problems for the bourgeoisie in controlling the situation have not diminished. The current British Prime Minister is an unpredictable chancer whose line of march can’t be easily gauged … Britain has plenty of political problems ahead."

Johnson managed to hold the Tory party together for a certain period, but at the cost of generating new tensions and divisions further down the line. What would happen on his departure is a leap into the unknown. In the battle between the different factions there have been threats to MPs who gained seats in previously Labour areas in 2019. They have been forcefully reminded they owe their place in Parliament to Johnson's victory. If he goes, they are told, then they are also on the way out. Lacking any principles, they cling on to Johnson regardless of any considerations of policy.

In the eyes of political commentators, accustomed to putting everything in personalised terms, the continuing storms in parliamentary politics are all down to the personality of the Prime Minister. He was sacked by The Times for making up a quote, he was sacked by Tory leader Michael Howard for lying about an extramarital affair: lying is his standard response to any difficult situation. In reality, the difficulties that the bourgeoisie has in controlling its political apparatus are not due to particular personalities but are problems that typify the phase of capitalism's social decomposition. The British bourgeoisie, one of the most experienced in the world, used to have a reputation for stability in its political life and its ability to cope with potential political upsets. In recent years, from the referendum over EU membership in 2016, through the troubled premiership of Theresa May, to the elevation of Johnson and the farce of negotiations with the EU, there has been a wealth of evidence of the bourgeoisie's increasing loss of control of its political life.

When under attack over 'partygate' it was not surprising that Johnson introduced a number of populist policies in an attempt to appeal to potentially wavering Tory MPs. The police, crime, sentencing and courts bill was already underway, giving the police a significant extension to their powers to stop or constrain protest. In addition to this was an announcement that armed forces would take charge of deterring migrant boat crossings in the English Channel. Then there was the announcement that the BBC licence fee would be frozen for two years, and probably abolished in 2027 - sparking a false debate round the BBC as a service 'admired around the world'. The Levelling Up department continues to receive publicity, but it will have no new funds to implement any new proposals.

The most important announcement to please the populist wing of the Tory party concerned the end of most Covid restrictions introduced to combat the Omicron variant. Mask-wearing on public transport, in shops and schools, will no longer be compulsory, working from home is no longer advised, vaccine certificates will be dropped, and self-isolation for people with coronavirus will stop in March (or possibly earlier). All this comes at a time when the infection rate is still high and deaths are currently rising. Overall, since the beginning of the pandemic, Britain has had the greatest number of infections in Europe, and (with the exception of Russia) the greatest number of deaths. The possibility of a future Covid wave counts for nothing when there's a need to firm up support for Johnson within the Tory Party.

The possible break-up of the UK

The splits within the main political parties (which includes the divisions in the Labour Party) are not the only expressions of the bourgeoisie losing control. The UK might be out of the EU, but the impasse over Northern Ireland's trading arrangements still remains unresolved. The EU is trying to achieve a solution by the end of February because that's when campaigning will start before elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Meanwhile Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has indicated that the UK is ready to take unilateral action that would suspend the customs checks on goods moving to the six counties. On top of this, the latest opinion polls show that Sinn Féin are on course to become the largest party in Northern Ireland, which means they would have the post of First Minister; but neither of the two main Unionist parties has confirmed whether they would be prepared to be in a coalition with SF. Without a coalition there can't be an Executive. Whether struggling with the EU or trying to deal with the parties in Northern Ireland, the British government is facing forces threatening the unity of the state. When you add in the continuing pressures coming from Scotland, which now look like including the Scottish Conservatives, you can see that the forces of fragmentation are intensifying.

One element that was put forward by Boris Johnson as part of a 'solution' to the possible break-up of the United Kingdom was a bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland, which Johnson thought could be done for "about £15bn". The results of a feasibility study (itself costing nearly £900,000) estimated that a bridge would cost £335bn and a tunnel around £209bn, taking nearly 30 years from planning to completion. The report concluded that it would be "impossible to justify" as "the benefits could not possibly outweigh the costs".

While the cracks in the political apparatus of the ruling class get wider, the material situation facing workers continues to deteriorate. Inflation is growing and reaching levels not seen in 30 years, and this is on top of more than a decade of austerity since 2008.

The working class needs to be aware that no faction of the bourgeoisie, whether populist or not, will defend anything except the interests of the ruling capitalist class. Whether Johnson is removed from office or not, the divisions within the Tory Party, and throughout the bourgeoisie will continue. Its mounting political disorganisation will remain a factor in the situation, but workers will gain nothing by being persuaded to take sides in the battle between factions of the bourgeoisie. While living standards decline Britain has the highest defence expenditure in Europe and, in the confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, the Tories have placed themselves firmly on the side of the US and NATO and are supported in that by the Labour Party. This is a class that can only offer the degradation of living conditions and the risk of imperialist war

Car, 29.1.22

“Capitalist society, in the final phase of decline, is giving birth to a whole variety of "identity crises". The atomisation inherent in the system of generalised commodity production is reaching new levels, and this applies both to social life as a whole and to the reactions against the increasing misery and oppression spawned by the system. On the one hand, groups and individuals suffering from particular oppressions are encouraged to mobilise as particular groups to fight their oppressions – as women, as gays, as transgender people, as ethnic minorities and so on - and not infrequently compete with each other directly, as with the current confrontation between transgender activists and certain branches of feminism.  These manifestations of "identity politics" are at the same time co-opted by the left wing of the bourgeoisie, all the way up to its most distinguished academics and most powerful political echelons (as with the Democratic Party in the USA).

Meanwhile, the right wing of the bourgeoisie, while superficially decrying the rise of identity politics, rises up in defence of its own form of identity-seeking: the search for the Real Men threatened by the spectre of feminism, the nostalgia for the glories of the White Race facing displacement by foreign hordes.

The quest for these partial, and sometimes entirely fictitious identities and communities, is a measure of mankind’s self-estrangement in a historic epoch in which a universal human community is both possible and necessary for the survival of the species. And above all, like other manifestations of social decomposition, it is the product of the loss of the one identity whose affirmation can lead to the creation of such a community, also known as communism: the class identity of the proletariat”[1].

Four years ago, the sterile competition between different identities claiming the prize of being the most oppressed category led to a crisis in the anarchist milieu in the UK. A clash between transgender activists and a particular brand of feminism at the London Anarchist Bookfair was the last straw for the group that had been organising these large gatherings for some years: they announced that they would not be organising any more bookfairs and this once annual event has never really recovered. At the same time, there was a polarisation between those sections of the anarchist milieu more favourable to various forms of identity politics and those who call themselves “class struggle anarchists”. The main anarchist grouping in the UK, the Anarchist Federation, went through a split and the “class struggle” wing set up the Anarchist Communist Group, which seems to have grown and become more active than the AF[2].

Thus, the ACG was born out of reaction against the increasing drift towards identity politics among anarchists, and it is therefore appropriate that among a number of pamphlets produced by the group, they have now published The Politics of Division: an Engagement with Identity Politics[3].

The attempt to affirm a class perspective runs counter to the dominant atmosphere of social decomposition in which the proletariat is suffering directly from the numerous divisions imposed on it by bourgeois society. And this process of fragmentation is being accelerated by the growth of identity politics. In this sense, the ACG’s pamphlet provides some evidence of a proletarian current within the great sea of confusion that characterises the anarchist milieu, which has always included petty bourgeois and openly capitalist political tendencies as well as some healthier proletarian and internationalist elements[4].

In particular, the pamphlet argues that identity politics obscures the search for the root cause of all particular oppressions and thus obstructs the development of a movement which calls capitalism itself into question:

“Identity politics is more than fighting one’s own oppression. It can be defined as moving from experiencing the often horrendous consequences of social difference to then identifying with that oppressed group and giving that group essential characteristics that then differentiate from other groups who are equally exploited and oppressed. Instead of seeing the oppression as part of a wider system -capitalism – the focus is on the discrimination and oppression experienced by one group” (p6-7)

Against this focus on different identities and oppressions, the pamphlet insists that only a class analysis can cut through all the divisions in society, divisions which are used by the ruling class to prevent the working class from grasping its real position in society:

“Class is the fundamental division in our society, not because it is more important in terms of affecting people’s lives than oppressions such as racism or sexism, bit because it is the one thing that united us into a potential revolutionary movement for an anarchist communist society. The vast majority of people are in the working class – they do not own the means of production and are forced to sell their labour to survive. We need to abolish the ruling class – whatever their gender, ethnicity, age sexuality” (p14)

This passage is followed shortly afterwards by a section headed “Identity politics leads to cross-class alliances” and points out that “if people feel they have more in common with others ‘like them’ – in other words, Black, women, trans, disabled etc, than with other members of the working class then you end up with alliances across class and co-option of the struggle by the ruling class.” (p15)

There are also valid points made about the censoriousness of “woke” culture as a means of suppressing real debate, and how “hierarchies of privilege” - competing claims about who is the most oppressed, or the most privileged – further reinforce divisions and play on feelings of guilt, even verging on a kind of biological determinism in which some groups – white males in particular – are incapable of ever understanding the real experience of other “identities”. The example is given of “white people who paraded their shame at their privilege at BLM demonstrations in the summer of 2020, lining up to cry on podiums in parks across the world.” (p19). This focus on guilt and personal responsibility is rightly rejected as a barrier to discovering the real possibilities of uniting against a common, historic oppressor – capital.

Out through the door, in through the window

But alongside the above-mentioned points, with which we agree, the pamphlet contains certain key weaknesses, which show that the ACG’s break with identity politics is only partial[5], and even acts as a ‘left’ cover for it.

In the section “Alternatives: fighting capitalism and oppressions”, where the ACG seeks to elaborate their positive perspectives, they suddenly pull a rabbit out of the hat in the form of “the self-organisation of oppressed groups into autonomous groups, that still have a link to the general working class movement. Others in the working class can show practical solidarity, furthering the self-activity and empowerment of these groups. This is an alternative to identity politics as well as to a class reductivist approach.” (p22). In response to the criticism (by “many left organisations”[6]…) that the separate autonomous organisation of specific groups “is diversionary and contrary to a class politics analysis”, they claim that “we are clear there is a difference between identity politics on the one hand and autonomous organisation on the other. The first focuses on the oppression of the group; the latter recognises that there is no anti-capitalist perspective that may see other workers as the enemy”.

But this argument is anything but clear, and it is not helped by the absence of any concrete example of such autonomous groups who, while being composed of one particular gender or ethnicity or other identity, adopt a class-based, genuinely anti-capitalist perspective and are not part of a “cross-class alliance” campaigning for legal or other changes.

It’s perfectly true that there can be proletarian struggles which are initially composed of, say, women or black people – but precisely because such a struggle is on a class terrain it must seek to widen towards and include all workers. Two examples: the February revolution in Russia which began with women demonstrating against bread shortages rapidly developed into a mass strike involving the majority of the working class. More recently, the textile workers’ strike in Mahalla, Egypt, in 2007, began with women workers marching through the plant calling on their male co-workers to join their struggle, and this action made it possible to call into question the traditional gender hierarchies of Egyptian society.

What other kinds of groups could the ACG be referring to? Political discussion circles, or groups of combative workers who get together to draw lessons of the past struggles and prepare for future conflicts? Again, such groups may begin with workers from a particular gender or ethnicity, just as they may originate in a particular trade or sector. They may initiate discussions about racism and sexism at the workplace or in society in general, but if they are part of a proletarian dynamic, they will conclude that the only way to fight sexual, racial or other divisions and prejudices within the class is for all workers to unite around their common interests. Freezing such expressions along gender, racial or other lines would become a new barrier to this perspective. Being really “anti-capitalist” means from the very beginning aiming to go beyond all divisions in the class, however difficult that may be.

And if they are talking about political organisations, we see no role whatsoever for having separate groups for women, trans, black people…This was already an issue posed in the Russian social democracy where Lenin and others argued against an “autonomous” organisation for Jewish revolutionaries (the Bund). It remains a basic principle for any communist organisation that membership is based solely on agreement with its platform and organisational rules, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, sexuality or other division.

• The ACG want to avoid “class reductivism”, but first we have to recognise that this term is already an ideological weapon of the theorists of intersectionality and identity politics, who, while arguing that that you can’t reduce everything to class (which is true, but banal) then seek to portray class as just one oppression among many, and workers as just one identity among others. Defending the position that class is the most fundamental division in this society involves:
•  a thorough-going theoretical critique of all these ideas, which have become the official ideology of large parts of academia. Although the ACG’s pamphlet pose a few general questions about identity in a broader human perspective, we are convinced that anarchism does not provide us with the analytical tools needed for this work, and that the marxist historical method is the only one that can really clarify the origins of all the various oppressions and divisions that have hampered the human species for millennia;
• a clear denunciation of the practical consequence of identity politics: the division of the working class in the service of the bourgeoisie.

Thus, for communists, the task is not an “engagement”, even veiled, with identity politics, but an open combat against it.

Amos

 

Raya Dunayevska with Charles Denby (part of the News and Letters group) and Etehl Dunbar, who contributed to Denby's book Indignant Heart. There are extracts from the book on libcom Testimony of a black worker - Charles Denby (libcom.org) [181]

The third article of the series on the struggle of the workers’ movement against slavery and racism in the USA was concluded with the words: “The Communist Left was able to clarify the national question in general and therefore it was strongly opposed to any struggle for national liberation. But none of the Left Communist currents in the 1930s were able to develop a clear position on the ‘Negro Question’ in the US.” Despite all the efforts in the previous forty years, “At the time of the Second World War the workers’ movement still had no unambiguous and clear-cut position on how to intervene towards the resistance of black people against particular oppression and structural prejudice.”

The political organisations of the working class were thus not very well prepared to face the protests in the framework of the Civil Rights Movement between 1955 and 1963 or the extremely violent urban riots in the second half of the 1960s.

The first steps towards desegregation

Before World War II not much had changed with regard to racial discrimination at the local and state levels.  African-Americans were still barred from classrooms and bathrooms, from theatres and train cars, from juries and legislatures in many parts of the USA.

But before the involvement of the US in World War II Roosevelt signed an order in which he reaffirmed the policy “that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defence industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin” [1].  In the army segregation was still maintained. But as a result of a massive loss of soldiers the US army was forced to integrate African-Americans to fight alongside its regular units. Black soldiers were thus offered equal opportunities for sacrifice in World War II!

After the war this situation could not be reversed. Hence, President Truman ordered the complete desegregation of the US army in 1948. These decisions by Roosevelt and Truman - prompted by the needs of the war economy – also set in motion a push to end segregation in American society as a whole.

In the Northern States, at least, colour lines began to crumble

- in the world of entertainment: On the Town, a Broadway production created by Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins of 1944, had an integrated cast with white, black and Asian players;

- in public transport: in 1946 Irene Morgan, riding on a Greyhound bus that had set out from Virginia, refused to give her seat up to a white passenger. Her case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in her favour;

- in professional sports:  in 1947 the Brooklyn Dodgers added the first black basketball player to its white team, which was the signal for African-Americans to participate in the major professional sports;

- in education: Gregory Swanson became the first black student to attend the Virginia Law School in 1950. His case laid the foundation for desegregation at the University of Virginia.

The Civil Rights Movement

How did the existing political organisations of the proletariat respond to these developments? The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had betrayed proletarian internationalism by siding with the USSR and the Allies during World War II and thus had become a clear enemy of the working class. Together with the Workers’ Socialist Party (WSP)[2] the Workers’ Party (WP) of Shachtman, which included the Johnson-Forest Tendency (C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya), was the only organisation who remained loyal to the cause of the proletariat by denouncing both imperialist camps, which it considered as deadly enemies of the proletariat. 

After World War II the Johnson-Forest tendency, having left the WP and after a second short stay in the SWP, in 1951 started the Correspondence Publishing Committee (CPC) with a newspaper known as Correspondence. [182] In the meantime (in 1949) the WP had changed its name to the Independent Socialist League (ISL), but continued the publication of The New International [183].  And, as their new names indicate, both tendencies had started to downplay (relativise) their role as a vanguard of the proletarian struggle.

In 1955 Raya Dunayevskaya broke with the CPC and with C.L.R. James and founded the News and Letters Committees (N&L) with News &Letters as their publication. Because of the incomplete break with Trotskyism N&L “brought with them considerable political baggage: a bourgeois position on the national question (support for self-determination and national liberation); a bourgeois position on the union question; workerist confusions on membership and organization; a confusion on the class nature of ‘mass’ movements; a penchant for tail­ing after the ‘masses’ in struggle.” (“News & Letters, A sad story of degeneration”, Internationalism 35, 1982)

N&L were created exactly six months before the protest that was considered as the start of the so-called Civil Rights Movement (CRM): the famous Bus Boycott in Montgomery Alabama.

During this first large-scale protest against segregated seating in Montgomery, African-Americans refused to ride city buses. The protest started at 5 December and the black leaders organised in the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), with Martin Luther King as its president, decided to continue the boycott until the city had met its demands. After a whole year of the boycott, on 20 December 1956 the demands were finally met.

A second important moment in this phase of the CRM was the organisation of so-called “sit-ins” in 1960 and the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The “sit-in campaigns” of 1960 consisted of black people occupying segregated restaurants until one was served. It started in Greensboro, North Carolina, when some 300 students joined the protest, sparking a movement of similar “sit-ins” by thousands of students at segregated establishments all over de country.

A third and last important moment of protest of the CRM was the “Walk to Freedom” March in Detroit on 23 June and the “Jobs and Freedom” March on Washington on 28 August 1963. Both marches, the greatest mobilisations against black segregation and deprivation ever in the history of the US, drew in a quarter of a million participants. The demonstration in Washington took place just one day after the death of W.E.B. DuBois.

After these massive demonstrations in 1963 the protests against the structural subordination of the black people took on a different turn, with a current influenced by a form of Islam (Nation of Islam), riots in several cities (Detroit, Watts, Newark), and black groups organised in armed units (Black Panthers).

News & Letters Committees

All the protests of the CRM were wholeheartedly supported by N&L. “NEWS & LETTERS COMMITTEES have participated in every phase of activity and struggle from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the March on Washington. (…) The massiveness of the resistance, the many sidedness of the demands for the Freedom NOW movement, the tremendous surge, courage and reason of this movement as against the barbarism of the Bull Connors [3] with their hounds, hoses and murders have totally changed the objective situation in the United States” [4].

Did N&L support these protests without any reserves and any critique? No! N&L tried to encourage and defend the self-activity of the masses against the attempts of the leaders to contain it. They systematically denounced not only the leadership of the unions but also the Negro leaders for their cooperation with the establishment - the government and the management - and of being on the side of the status quo and not on the side of radical change.

In an article of January 1956 they pointed to the widening gap between the black leaders and the lower ranks of the movement. On the leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) they wrote for instance that they are “lawyers, politicians, politically inclined ministers and professional organizational men. Their passion of the leadership of the NAACP for human justice has been dulled by political ambition for election and appointments. The so-called Negro leaders are [therefore] trying to stifle any direct action on the part of the Negro masses [5].

In a statement of September 1963 the National Editorial Board of N&L concluded that the labour leaders “have neither helped upgrade Negro workers nor accorded them leading union posts commensurate with numbers or skill, nor have they done anything to enable the white rank-and-file to participate in the Negro struggle as an integral part of their common continuing struggle against management.” In its turn “The Negro leadership is listening more to Kennedy's civil rights measures than to the full aspirations of the mass movement” [6].

For N&L the CRM, or in any case its Freedom Now offspring, had the potential to be revolutionary, to challenge capitalist rule and to become “central to the global struggle for a new society”[7]. But the movement did not fulfil its promises, for it “combined reason and activity only to the extent of the immediate demands of desegregation, and not to the ultimate of total freedom from class society”[8], a flaw that N&L attributed to the “conservative” policy of the union and black leaders. In other words N&L criticised the CRM for remaining within the confines of the capitalist system, while all conditions were supposedly there to go beyond them.

N&L would have been able to take a much clearer position if they had paid more attention to the lessons of the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 and other working class uprisings, such as the one in Hungary 1956. In the case of the latter uprising they had already written that “the Hungarian soldiers have joined the workers who form the leading core of the revolution”[9]. In other words: “the decisive force of the revolution remained” not youth as such, not women in general, not any other layer in society, but the working class organised in “the Workers’ Councils” [10].

While the workers’ councils were key to the mass uprising in Hungary, such workers’ councils were completely absent from the struggle against the oppression and segregation of black people in the USA; and yet N&L talked without any reluctance about the “ever-expanding Negro revolution” that was now facing a “White counter-revolution”[11].

All in all the position of N&L was radical in words, but did not go to the roots, because it did not seriously consider what it means that the working class is the only revolutionary class in capitalist society. N&L paid lip service to the working class as the agent of social revolution, but in practice they were acting to fragment the working class into a series of social categories which were by their very nature composed of different and even antagonistic social classes. This is the reason for their slide towards the view that the grassroots protests of black people (not even the black workers!) was a potentially revolutionary struggle, appealing to the Freedom Now movement to “be expanded and deepened so that it leads to the total reconstruction of society on new human beginnings”[12].

In fact N&L’s position was dangerous for the proletarian struggle, because in their attempt to contribute to the lifting of the colour line, they blurred the class line, the fundamental contradiction between the working class and the ruling class. In 1848 Marx had already emphasised the importance of the working class fighting for its autonomy as a class; even in a period when it was still possible to support the bourgeois revolution against feudalism, it was still vital for the workers to avoid being submerged in the demands and organisations of other classes and strata.  

The struggle for equal or civil rights takes place entirely on the terrain of bourgeois democracy. This is not the terrain of the working class, and in the epoch of capitalist decadence it has lost all progressive content. Participation in such bourgeois mobilisations not only undermines the proletariat’s consciousness of itself as a class but also weakens its capacity to organise itself as an autonomous force, and ultimately to fight for a fundamental change of the existing mode of production which can lay the foundations of another society that is really free of oppression and segregation. And N&L have never been able to understand this[13].

In the next article we intend to explain our position on the riots against police violence that took place in the second half of the 1960s. These riots were the most serious and widespread in the history of the USA: in more than 750 riots, 228 people were killed and more than 10,000 injured. The aim of the article is to respond to the views put forward by the Bordigist groups about these riots and to Bordiga’s thesis that “this sudden tearing away of the veil of legal fictions and democratic hypocrisy [is] a harbinger of victory”[14].

Dennis, 2021-12-27

At the beginning of January, Kazakhstan was the scene of violent demonstrations and riots following the removal of restrictions on the price of gas, a major resource for the economic life of the country and the daily lives of the population. The increase in the price of gas was added to the increase in the price of food and many basic commodities, generating immense anger.

A working class under attack but very fragile

Faced with this considerable deterioration in living conditions, the working class was initially in the forefront. In many industrial, mining and gas workers’ centres, strikes broke out to demand wage increases. The social response spread like wildfire throughout the country, with massive demonstrations that immediately confronted the forces of repression, seeing a number of police agents switch sides and join the demonstrators.

The reality of working class discontent in Kazakhstan is not new: already in 2011, in Zhanaozen, a region rich in oil resources, fourteen workers were killed during the repression of a demonstration during a strike against working conditions and low wages. The movement then spread to the large city of Aktau, on the Caspian Sea, before spreading to the rest of the country.

In recent weeks, the repression has been even more ferocious. Dozens, if not hundreds, of demonstrators have been shot by the forces of order. The Kazakh government, headed by President Tokayev, has not been too fussy about calling in the Russian army to quell the ‘terrorist’ rebellion, openly announcing that he had “given the order to shoot to kill without warning”.

Workers are therefore present in this deteriorating social situation. But have they been able, in this confrontation with the authorities, to develop their struggle on a real class terrain, as an autonomous force? Is the violence in the street the expression of the struggle of the working class or that of a popular violence, of a general discontent of the population in which the working class is diluted?

Very quickly, the initial demands against inflation were diverted towards democratic demands, against corruption, against the regime in power, with anti-Tokayev riots in most of the country’s big cities. This popular revolt, in which the workers were mixed up with the petty-bourgeoisie (businesses choking with inflation, anti-Tokayev self-employed, etc.), was very easily used in a conflict between Kazakh bourgeois cliques; in other words, they were used by the clan around former president Nazarbayev.

In spite of the very real workers’ strikes, the proletariat of this country has no major experience of autonomous struggle. It is permanently subjected to a dictatorial iron fist and strong democratic, nationalist and sometimes religious illusions. It has easily allowed itself to be dragged onto a bourgeois terrain where it cannot defend its own class interests, its own demands; where it can only be drowned, used, subjected to bourgeois interests which are totally foreign to it.

Bourgeois rivalries at the heart of the chaos

In Kazakhstan, the denunciation by the authorities of international “terrorists” or “bandits” ready to commit all kinds of acts of violence during the demonstrations did not hide the internal rivalries raging within the bourgeoisie and which the proletariat is still paying for with its blood today. Former president Nazarbayev, who resigned in 2019 but still effectively kept control, particularly of its repressive forces such as the National Security Committee (NSC), clearly used and manipulated the demonstrations to react to the ambitions of the new president Tokayev, who wants to increase his influence in the country and to emancipate himself from the Nazarbayev clan that had installed him in power.

Nazarbayev mobilised his supporters within the police and the army, his ‘private army’, to undermine Tokayev's power. This is how police officers were ordered to allow chaos to develop, to the point that some of them even joined the ranks of the demonstrators in an attempt to weaken the opposing camp, which also explains the assaults on government buildings or the Almaty airport. President Tokayev's clique obviously reacted: the director of the NSC was sacked, arrested and imprisoned, and Karim Massimov, who was very close to Nazarbayev, a former prime minister and former head of the intelligence services, was arrested on suspicion of high treason. This is the clear confirmation of an internal battle within the bourgeoisie where all tricks are allowed, where the workers serve as cannon fodder for the opposing cliques.

In concrete terms, we are far from a situation where the forces of bourgeois repression are about to collapse, opening the way for the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist state! On the contrary, it is nothing more or less than the ambitions of one bourgeois clan against another! Today, even if the Tokayev clan has been able to regain control of the situation on a heap of corpses, summary executions, thousands of wounded and multiple arrests, nothing has been substantially settled, neither in Kazakhstan nor in the whole region where imperialist tensions are multiple and growing.

Kazakhstan remains an imperialist issue

In this situation of political decomposition, Tokayev had no other choice than to ask for help from outside, particularly from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)[1], a cover for Russian imperialism, which is aiming to renew its former domination and which reacted immediately by sending equipment and a contingent of 3,000 men to support the repression. The CSTO, for its part, sent only a hundred men, an expression of the mistrust of the other states towards this ‘partnership’' with Moscow. By intervening directly, and moreover at the request of Tokayev, Russian imperialism is not hiding its will to defend its influence over the areas that used to be part of the USSR, whereas since the fall of the USSR most of these zones have been, as in Kazakhstan, the object of a “strategic partnership” with the United States. They are also strongly coveted by Turkey (a member of NATO), and above all, more recently, by China.

China welcomed this repression and the restoration of Kazakh order! Beijing needs the Kazakh regime as an important link in its international investment programme in the “New Silk Road”, and therefore needs social calm, even if it means being on the same wavelength as Moscow for the moment. Beijing also needs the Kazakh regime’s support, at least implicitly, for its repressive policy towards the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang.

As for the European Union (EU) and the United States, supposedly “very bruised by the fact that there have been so many victims”, they each call for a “peaceful resolution” of this crisis, condemning the violence in a token and hypocritical manner. The reason why the major “democratic” powers are reacting so platonically is that Kazakhstan does not appear to be a priority target of US imperialist ambitions. Moreover, within the EU there are major divisions over the attitude to be adopted towards Russia.

In the end, rival imperialist interests are in the DNA of this rotting capitalism, the priority for all these barbaric sharks, all preparing their weapons for the next episodes of confrontation: they all have their share of responsibility for the massacres and are directly the major source of the ongoing chaos.

The working class has nothing to gain from the conflict between bourgeois gangs

If the working class in Kazakhstan has tried to express its anger, because of the weakness of its consciousness, its lack of experience, it has not been able to resist, let alone represent an obstacle to the struggles for influence and the confrontations between rival cliques within the Kazakh bourgeoisie, as well as to the rivalries between all the imperialist sharks, be they Russian, Turkish, Chinese, European or American. Despite the savage repression and bloodshed, workers’ anger has obviously not disappeared and new episodes of protest in the face of the crisis and repression are to be expected.

But in the current state of things, despite the important strike movements, these moments of direct confrontation with the forces of repression are not a springboard for the development of autonomous struggle and the defence of working class interests. On the contrary, it has everything to lose in such a quagmire where its economic demands are sterilised by the democratic, nationalist demands used by bourgeois factions who are prepared to do whatever is necessary to look after their interests. These democratic illusions are, moreover, a trap that will not go away, given that the national opposition forces with a “democratic” face are still in the process of formation and are seeking visibility and credibility for the future, as is the case in Belarus.

The Kazakh working class alone is, unfortunately, very exposed and vulnerable to this kind of ideological pressure. Even if it doesn't have the strength at the moment, the proletariat of the central countries, that has a proven experience of such nationalist and democratic mystifications, can show the way towards workers fighting on a terrain favourable to calling capitalist exploitation into question, and to rejecting slogans that have no other logic than the conservation of social order. The future of the workers’ struggles, which are again beginning to appear all over the world, depends on the vital impulse of the class struggle in the central countries.

Stopio, 20/1/22

[1] This 'partnership' involves Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia

 

No one will have been surprised that Boris Johnson finally announced his resignation. Over a couple of days nearly sixty members of government left, a record in British parliamentary history. But the essential problem is not Johnson, but the fact that the Conservative Party has been increasingly eaten away by populism[1]. Although Johnson pushed it further than anyone else, he was in effect no more than a caricature of populism’s hold within the party.

The fall of Johnson shows us three things:

- Populism “in power” has only a limited durability. The ideology of xenophobia and irrationality, the incoherence and vandalism at the level of economic policy as well as its contempt for liberal elites and their traditional values at the political level, necessarily came up against hard reality: the negative economic consequences of Brexit, the drastic rise of food and energy prices, as well as the sinking credibility of democratic institutions, which populism has further exacerbated.

 - The populist phenomenon, and behind it the decomposition of the political apparatus, cannot be definitively overcome by the British bourgeoisie. Any new Tory leader is tainted by their complicity in the shambles of the Johnson government. Moreover, Johnson’s theme of victimhood, the myth of the stab in the back by the “parliamentary herd” and treacherous governmental colleagues who have subverted the will of the people, remains an important reference point for the continued existence of populism.

- The bourgeoisie were also worried about Johnson’s ability to face up to the increase in the resistance of the working class with the cost-of-living crisis and his inability to sell sacrifices to the working class.

Whoever becomes the next Tory leader, these problems will not go away, because the British bourgeoisie as a whole has no solution to increasing global instability; to the economic crisis sharpened by the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and Brexit; to Britain’s damaged imperialist reputation and the danger of the United Kingdom itself falling apart[2].

Dennis 21/7/22

[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17035/populism-accelerates-insta... [194]

The turmoil around the fall of Johnson is in stark contrast to the unity of the British ruling class in its policy towards the war in Ukraine. The main political parties are united behind the government’s belligerent support for US imperialism’s proxy war. You cannot get a cigarette paper between them when it comes to sending arms, acting as the US’s most loyal ally, and making German and French imperialism look weak in their support for the Ukrainian war effort. Johnson’s fronting of the state’s efforts to strengthen ties with the US, to increase British influence in Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries, is the one thing he has not been criticised for. The new Tory leader will continue with the same policy. They all understand that British imperialism must use the war to try to overcome the loss of international standing it has suffered due to Brexit and the fiascos around its role in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Johnson and his Foreign Secretary Liz Truss believed they were the inheritors of Thatcher’s role as the USA’s loyal lieutenant. Johnson boasted that Brexit allowed Britain to take up its ‘natural and historical’ role as a leader of free trade and democracy. Britain’s partnership with the US in preparing and perpetuating the war have appeared to confirm this.

The idea of British imperialism as the second-in-command of a new Western Bloc is an underlying theme in the media. But today’s historic conditions are very different from those of the Cold War. The collapse of the bloc system in 1989 marked the exhaustion of the conditions that sustained the two blocs. The USSR’s fall led to the disintegration of the Western bloc. The absence of the Russian bear opened up an imperialist free-for-all. This is something the more intelligent mouthpieces of British imperialism understood very well. In early 1990 Charles Powell, Margaret Thatcher’s Private Secretary, wrote to her: “We shall have won the Cold War. But instead of being the dawn of a new, peaceful era, we shall find the next decade altogether more complex, with a multiplicity of dangers and threats” (Margaret Thatcher: the Authorized Biography. vol 3, Charles Moore. page 508). Thatcher firmly agreed with this assessment.

The re-unification of German imperialism was a great concern for the UK given the historical rivalry between Britain and Germany. Thatcher’s public airing of these concerns was openly rebuked by President Bush, who insisted that the UK supported German unification (‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’ as the Mafia say). The British ruling class learnt a bitter lesson: the US no longer viewed it as all that ‘special.’ From now on the UK had to defend its own interests by using its position in the EU to act as a bridge for the US, but also by playing off the EU against the US, which meant much more subtle manoeuvring against Germany. Thatcher could not do this, so she was cast aside.

The pros and cons of being close to US imperialism

Implementing the necessary strategy suffered many set-backs. The Blair government’s backing for America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was disastrous for its reputation. A standing further undermined by the close relations between the May and Johnson governments with President Trump. The UK’s rapid flight from Afghanistan showed that standing too close to the US weakened the position of the UK. At the same time its ability to confront its rivals from within the EU has disappeared. The political turmoil around Brexit and its consequences has seriously damaged British imperialism’s reputation.

On the other hand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a potential opportunity for the British ruling class. The US and Britain’s carefully choreographed build-up of pressure on Russia, deliberately exposing its plans to invade Ukraine, showed a partial renewal of the old alliance and the strength of their intelligence services. Britain’s prominent role in sending arms, in intelligence sharing, and its general hard line towards Russia has been contrasted to the hesitations in the EU, especially France and Germany.

The British bourgeoisie has signed up to the USA’s containment of China. On a global level China is the US’s main rival and an important competitor to the UK. The war in Ukraine has severed the close links between German imperialism and Moscow, as well as blocking the expansion of China’s Silk Road into Europe, which would have increased the EU’s access to the Chinese market. British imperialism can only benefit if Germany’s important links with China have been weakened. The EU, particularly France and Germany, is its main rival, so USA’s weakening of them through the war is to Britain’s benefit.

German imperialism’s rapid rearmament in the short-term puts pressure on Russia, but in the long-term a rearmed Germany is a challenge to British imperialism. The UK’s signing of defence agreements with Sweden and Finland, along with its increased military presence in Eastern European states, is aimed at Russia, but also has the longer term aim of containing Germany on its Northern and Eastern flanks. Britain also hopes that its support for the Eastern European states will weaken their willingness to back the EU in its opposition to Britain’s efforts to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The cynicism of the bourgeoisie’s ideological use of the barbarity unfolding in Ukraine to further its own sordid imperialist ambitions is matched by its efforts to bury its own recent bloody past. The reduction of Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘failed’ states, the death of tens of thousands in both wars, the destruction of Mosul, Falluja, Raqqa, the use of torture (Abu Ghraib, etc), renditions, assassinations, Guantanamo Bay – none of this is being mentioned today. Nor is the fact that the UK has passed a law limiting the ability of the International Criminal Court to prosecute British troops for war crimes.

Britain as the oligarchs’ financial haven

With the same cynicism over the past 30 years, the British state has done all it can to encourage those who it now hypocritically condemns to pour money into the British economy. British imperialism’s main think tank (Chatham House) has warned about the reputational danger of this: “it should not be forgotten that the contradictions of the past decade are glaring, and that the role of London as the centre of global money - and reputation-laundering – particularly helping Russians who are close to Vladimir Putin – should be a source of shame.

Chatham House’s recent kleptocracy report highlights the extent to which UK politicians – especially the ruling Conservatives – have benefited from Russian money, and how strenuous efforts were made to delay then play down two critical parliamentary reports on ‘Londongrad’. And despite several high-profile poisonings on British soil and repeated cyberattacks, not a single figure close to Putin was sanctioned by the UK until after the Ukraine invasion.” (“UK’s Strong Ukraine Support Hides a Less Glorious Past”. Chathamhouse.org [196])

The Northern Ireland conundrum

British imperialism, for all its posturing, is confronted with a profound problem: Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Protocol, the product of the Brexit negotiations, not only established a border between the mainland and the North running down the Irish Sea, but above all showed Britain’s historic weakness. The only way it could get a deal was via the humiliation of leaving itself exposed to the influence of the EU and the US. Break the protocol and the EU could walk away from any form of deal. Jettisoning the Protocol will also undermine the Good Friday Agreement, and thus the US-brokered peace. The war makes the situation even more difficult because the last thing the US wants is its most loyal ally breaking international law when the US claims to be defending it; and a political crisis between the UK and EU would shatter the illusion of anti-Russian unity. If the US cannot stop its main ally provoking others in the “alliance for democracy”, why would those states submit to the US?

The UK hopes that its support for America’s policy on the Ukraine war will soften US ire if it rips up the Protocol. The fact that the government has placed the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill before parliament in the middle of the war shows the fundamental contradiction of its position: it cannot break free from the hold its EU rivals have over it through the Protocol without breaking international law and thus endangering its influence with the US:

“…the frictions associated with exiting the European Single Market and Customs Union will only come fully into play in 2022, and these could reawaken political tensions between the UK and the EU at a time when the Russia-Ukraine crisis demands close collaboration amongst European allies.

A first priority, therefore, should be to leverage the shared determination to confront Russian aggression in order to rebuild UK-EU relations…The UK could link its thinking on plans to upgrade NATO Strategic Concept with the EU’s new commitments to strengthen Europe’s defence capabilities. This would lessen the risks of the UK being sidelined by closer US-EU cooperation across a range of transatlantic priorities, including digital trade and technology governance” (“Global Britain in a Divided World.” Chathamhouse.org [196]).

Britain does have better military collaboration with European powers through NATO, but these are not sufficient to counter the tensions generated by Brexit, which are having an impact on its ability to be a regional power.

The fact that the US’s main ally is a source of instability highlights the fragility of the US’s control of the situation. Its means of imposing itself on its ‘allies’ is to create a vortex of chaos on their borders. At the same time, its ‘right hand man’ is threatening to deliberately generate even more chaos in the ‘alliance’, provoking greater political tensions by picking a fight with precisely those countries the US wants to bring into line! This could have the result of not only destabilising part of its own territory (Northern Ireland) but also spreading this instability into Eire, an important US ally in the EU. This is a situation the US has said it will not allow.

Johnson epitomised the profound instability of the situation of British imperialism. He may be on the way out, but the insoluble historical contradictions behind this instability remain and will worsen.

Phil 18/7/22

In response to the murderous war in Ukraine, the ICC has repeatedly stressed the need for a common response by the most coherent expression of proletarian internationalism – the communist left – in order to create a clear pole of reference for all those seeking to oppose imperialist war on a class basis.

Although the appeal for a joint statement, and the text that came out of it, was received positively by three groups[1], the Bordigist groups more or less ignored our call, while the Internationalist Communist Tendency, while stating that they were in principle in favour of such joint statements by internationalists, have rejected our appeal for reasons that in our view remain unclear: disagreements in analysis were mentioned earlier on, then divergent views on what constitutes the authentic communist left and a rejection of our conception of parasitism seemed to come to the fore. We will take up these arguments elsewhere; here we aim to focus on the ICT’s alternative proposal, which is to push for the formation of local/national “No War but the Class War” groups, which they see as the starting point for an internationalist action against the war on a much wider scale than a common statement signed by the groups of the communist left.

When we examine the text of the first appeal to set up No War but the Class War groups in response to the Ukraine war [2], published by Liverpool NWCW, we can say that it is clearly internationalist, opposing both imperialist camps, rejecting pacifist illusions, and insisting that capitalism’s descent into military barbarism can only be halted by the revolutionary struggle of the working class.  We think however that there is a definite element of immediatism in the text, in the following paragraph: “The scattered anti-war actions that have been reported so far – protests in Russia, soldiers disobeying their orders in Ukraine, refusals to handle shipments by dockers in the UK and Italy, sabotage by railway workers in Belarus – need to take on the working class perspective to be truly anti-war, lest they get instrumentalised by one side or the other. Support for Russia or Ukraine in this conflict means support for war. The only way to end this nightmare is for workers to fraternise across borders and bring down the war machine”.

The statement is correct to point out that isolated protests against the war can be recuperated by various bourgeois factions or ideologies. But the impression is given that the working class, in its present situation, whether in the war zone or in the more central capitalist countries, might be able to develop a revolutionary perspective in the short term and “bring down the war machine” to end this present war. And behind this lies another ambiguity: that the formation of NWCW groups could be a moment towards this sudden leap from the present state of disorientation in the working class to a full-blown reaction against capital. If we examine the involvement of the Communist Workers’ Organisation, the UK affiliate of the ICT, in previous NWCW projects, there is clear evidence that such illusions do exist among these comrades.

We will soon be publishing a more developed analysis of the perspectives of the class struggle in this phase of accelerating barbarism, explaining why we don’t think that a mass movement of the working class directly against this war is a realistic possibility. The ICT might respond by saying that the NWCW appeal is mainly aimed at regrouping all those minorities who defend internationalist positions and not at sparking off any kind of mass movement. But even at this level, a real understanding of the nature of the NWCW project is required in order to avoid errors of an opportunist character, in which the unique coherence of the communist left is lost in a labyrinth of confusion strongly influenced by anarchist or even leftist ideas.

The aim of this present article is therefore to critically examine the history of the NWCW idea in order to draw the clearest possible lessons for our current intervention. This dimension is entirely lacking from the ICT’s proposal. In 2018, when the CWO made a similar appeal and set up a series of meetings under the NWCW banner with the Anarchist Communist Group and one or two other anarchist formations, we explained at one of these meetings why we could not accept their invitation to “join” this group. The principal reason was that this new formation had been brought together without any attempt to understand the mainly negative lessons of previous efforts to set up NWCW groups. This failure to carry out a critical examination of the experience was repeated when the group simply disappeared without any public explanation by the CWO or the ACG.

Regarding the ICT’s most recent foray into this project, we have specifically invited the comrades to participate in our most recent public meetings on the war in Ukraine and to provide their assessment of the evolution of the NWCW project so far. Unfortunately, the comrades did not attend these meetings and an opportunity to take the debate forward was lost. Nevertheless, we offer this examination of the background and history of the NWCW idea as our own contribution to advancing the debate.

No War but the Class War groups: a brief history

The idea of creating NWCW groups first emerged from the anarchist milieu in Britain. To our knowledge the first attempt to set up such a group was in response to the first Gulf War in 1991. But it was with the formation of new NWCW groups in response to the war in ex-Yugoslavia and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 that we were able to gain a direct experience of the composition and dynamics of this initiative.

Our decision to participate in the meetings organised by these groups, mainly in London, was based on our recognition of the ‘swamp-like’ nature of anarchism, which comprises a series of a tendencies going from outright bourgeois leftism to genuine internationalism. In our view, these new NWCW groups, while indeed being extremely heterogeneous, did contain elements who were seeking a proletarian alternative to the “Stop the War” mobilisations organised by the left of capital.

Our intervention towards these groups was based on the following objectives:

• Clarifying the principles of proletarian internationalism and the need for a sharp demarcation from the left of capital and pacifism
• Focusing on political debate and clarification against activist tendencies which, in practice, meant dissolving into the Stop the War demonstrations
• Despite accusations that our approach, emphasising the primacy of political discussion, was purely “monastic” or “inactivist”, that we were only interested in discussion for discussion’s sake, we made some definite proposals for action, in particular the possibility of calling an “internationalist meeting” in Trafalgar Square at the end of the big Stop the War march in November 2001. This would be in direct opposition to the leftist speeches coming from the STW platform. This proposal was partly acted on – not by NWCW as such, but by the ICC and the CWO…[3] . We will return to the significance of this later.

The CWO gets involved

In 2002, the CWO also intervened in this process, particularly in Sheffield where it played a central role in the formation of a new NWCW group – one which took up positions close to and even indistinguishable from those of the communist left. In our article “Revolutionary Intervention and the Iraq war” in WR 264, which aimed to draw a balance sheet of our intervention towards NWCW, we welcomed this fact, but we also criticised the CWO’s overestimation of the potential for the NWCW network, particularly its main group in London, to act as a kind of organising centre for proletarian opposition to the war, linking up with some of small expressions of class struggle that were taking place in parallel to the “anti-war” movement[4].

Against this idea, our article made it clear that “we never thought that NWCW was a harbinger of a resurgence of class struggle or a definite class political movement that we had ‘joined’. It could at most be a reference point for a very small minority that were asking questions about capitalist militarism and the elitist and pacifist frauds that accompany it. And this was why we defended its -albeit limited – class positions against the reactionary attacks of leftists like Workers Power (in WR 250) and insisted from the beginning on the importance of the group as a forum for discussion and warned against the tendencies to ‘direct action’ and to closing the group to revolutionary organisations” .

For the same reasons, in another article “In defence of discussion groups” in WR 250, we explained our differences with the CWO on the question of “intermediaries” between the class and the revolutionary organisation. We had always opposed the idea, developed by the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (today the ICT’s Italian affiliate) and later taken up by the CWO, of “factory groups”, defined as “instruments of the party” for gaining an implantation of in the class and even for “organising” its struggles. We saw this as a regression to the notion of factory cells as the basis for the political organisation, advocated by the Communist International in the phase of “Bolshevisation” in the 1920s and strongly opposed by the communist left in Italy. The later evolution of the factory group idea into the call for territorial groups and then anti-war groups changed the form but not really the content. The CWO’s idea that NWCW could become an organising centre for class resistance against the war betrayed a similar misunderstanding of how class consciousness develops in the period of capitalist decadence. Certainly, alongside the political organisation per se there is a tendency towards the formation of more informal groups, whether emerging out of workplace struggles or opposition to capitalist war, but such groups – which are not part of the communist political organisation -  remain expressions of a minority seeking to clarify itself and spread this clarity within the class, and cannot substitute themselves for or claim to be the organisers of more general movements in the class, a point on which, in our view, the ICT remains ambiguous[5].

Manoeuvres against the communist left

Although there were a number of fruitful discussions in the early phases of the NWCW groups, it became clear that, as an expression of anarchism, NWCW was subject to all sorts of contradictory pressures – a real search for internationalist positions and practices, but also the influence of leftism and of what we call parasitism, groups and elements motivated essentially by the will to isolate and even destroy authentic revolutionary currents. Such elements had a growing weight in both phases of the NWCW groupings. In 1999 the ICC was excluded (albeit by a narrow margin) from participating in the group on the grounds that we were Leninist, dogmatic, dominated meetings etc[6]; and the main elements pushing for this exclusion were those such as Juan McIver and “Luther Blisset” who have produced two extremely slanderous pamphlets denouncing the ICC as a paranoid Stalinist cult, as small-time burglars, etc.

In 2002, we saw another round of manoeuvres against the communist left, this time spearheaded by K, an element close to Luther Blisset.  In RP 27 the CWO itself talks about the irresponsible role of K and his “circle of friends” within NWCW, after K had done his best to exclude both the Sheffield group and the ICC from NCWC meetings. This time the mechanism eventually used was not a “democratic” vote as in 1999 but a behind-the-scenes decision to hold closed meetings, with the venues and times being withheld from the ICC and the Sheffield group.

What does this show? That in an environment dominated by anarchism the groups of the communist left have to wage a hard battle against the destructive and even bourgeois tendencies that will inevitably be present and will always push in a negative direction. It should be an elementary response of the groups of the communist left to stand together against the manouevres of those who seek to exclude them from participating in the temporary, heterogeneous formations produced by the attempt to fight against the dominant ideology. The CWO’s own experience in 2002 should remind them that such dangers are real. We should add that groups who claim to be part of the communist left but who act in a similarly destructive way deserve the label of “political parasitism” and should not be given the freedom of the city by the genuine groups of the communist left.

The charge that the ICC’s attitude towards intervention during these episodes was “monastic” was made by the CWO in their article in RP 27, referring to a demonstration that took place in September 2002. But prior to a previous big demonstration which was to take place in November 2001, the CWO had written to us supporting our proposal for a distinct internationalist meeting in Trafalgar Square, and at the march itself there actually was a fruitful cooperation between the two groups. As our article in WR 264 said, we had overestimated the potential of the NWCW group to organise a large-scale oppositional meeting in Trafalgar Square, since most (though not all) of its participants preferred marching with an “Anti-Capitalist Bloc” which had little if anything to distinguish itself from the Stop the War organisers. But if there was a small meeting at the end it was mainly due to the initiative of the ICC and the CWO, supported by a few members of NWCW, to hand over our megaphones to those willing to advocate an internationalist alternative to the leftists on the main platform. Further evidence that the best way to assist those outside the communist left to approach a clear internationalist position and practice is for the groups of the communist left to act together.

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Returning to the current NWCW project, in a recent article on a NWCW meeting in Glasgow, the ICT claims that the project is meeting with considerable success: “The first group was formed in Liverpool a few weeks ago and since then their message has been picked up by comrades across the world going from Korea, via Turkey, Brazil, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, Canada to the United States as well as other places”

We are not in a position to evaluate the real substance of these groups and initiatives. The impression we get from the groups which we know something about is that they are mainly “duplicates” of the ICT or its affiliates. In this sense, they are hardly an advance on the groups that appeared in the 1990s and 2000s, which for all their confusions, at least expressed a certain movement coming from elements seeking an internationalist alternative to leftism and pacifism. But we will have to return to this question in a future article, and we continue to call on the ICT to make a contribution to the discussion.

Amos, July 2022

 

 

Despite Covid, despite the war in Ukraine, despite the toxic divisions stirred up by Brexit, the working class in Britain, as in many other parts of the world, is still ready to fight in defence of its living standards. And, in the long run, this is the only road leading away from capitalism’s headlong rush towards self-destruction.

The “cost of living crisis” has become an active factor in workers’ resistance. The world economic crisis didn’t begin with Covid or the war in Ukraine. It has been building up for decades (remember the “oil crisis” of the 70s and the “financial crash” of 2008?). But these more recent expressions of the slide into barbarism have certainly accelerated global economic instability, and within that, Britain’s specific economic decline – and they have only partly hidden the additional and increasingly disastrous impact of Brexit at this level. The surge in inflation - now officially running at 9.1% and expected to rise to 11% later this year- is having a direct impact on the ability of “ordinary working families” (i.e. the working class) to heat their homes, drive to work, and put food on the table.

For many workers, spiralling prices and pay offers well below the rate of inflation have been the last straw after years of attacks on wages, jobs and social benefits, and there has been a whole series of strikes in important sectors, most notably on the railways. 40,000 rail workers - signallers, maintenance and train staff - belonging to the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport union) held three strikes in June and plan further strikes on 27 July, 18 and 20 August – the first nationwide strike in Britain on the railways for about 25 years.

5,500 train drivers belonging to a different union, ASLEF will also strike on 30 July at eight rail companies. There will be smaller strikes at other companies before that. In the North West of England, bus drivers have been on strike following a pay dispute with Arriva. 

There are also planned strikes in the communications sector. 40,000 British Telecom workers will strike on 29 July and 1 August. Royal Mail workers are to strike between 20 and 22 July. This could involve 115,000 workers.

Following unions’ rejection of employers’ pay offers in the airlines, this summer could see widespread stoppages at airports both in Britain and other European countries.

In education, there has been a number of struggles in the universities and FE colleges, while the National Education Union and the National Union of Teachers are calling for “industrial action” in the Autumn if negotiations fail. And following a government pay offer of around 5% (or under) for health workers, teachers and other public sector workers, “health unions angrily denounced the NHS pay rises as a ‘betrayal’ and ‘a kick in the teeth’, and warned stoppages could be on the horizon”[1].

These disputes are part of a more general rise in workers’ militancy. The GMB union, which has a strong presence among local council employees, reported that the number of disputes from October 2021 to March 2022 was seven times the level in the same period in 2019-20; the Unite union, one of the main public sector unions, claimed a four-fold rise in disputes.

The significance of these strikes

These struggles are not a direct working class response to the capitalist war in Ukraine. But having been told that “we are all in together” in the fight against Covid and that we must all be ready to make sacrifices to defend Ukraine and the West from Russian aggression, it is of no small significance that workers are not ready to give up the defence of their own class interests in the name of national unity. And if we look beyond Britain, we can see that the combativity of the working class has been straining at the leash in numerous countries. In 2019, just before the pandemic hit, there were important strike movements in France, and even during the lock-downs – especially at the beginning – workers in numerous sectors, including the “heroes” of the health services – took collective action against being forced to work without any real means of protection against the virus. As the lockdowns came to an end, there were more outbreaks of class struggle in the US, Iran, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere, prompting us to publish an article entitled “Struggles in the United States, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea... Neither the pandemic nor the economic crisis have broken the combativity of the proletariat!”[2]

If we compare these movements against intensified exploitation to the situation of the working class in Ukraine, which has been almost entirely subjugated to the national war effort, we can see them as evidence that, while the workers of Ukraine are experiencing a real defeat, this does not apply to the working class globally, and in particular to its most experienced fractions in western Europe, who are not willing to sacrifice their material class needs to the idol of the national interest, still less to be marched off to war on behalf of the capitalist class.

It may be objected that all these struggles are limited to the economic level and that they are not leading the working class, in the short term at least, to develop a political alternative to the historic dead-end reached by capitalist society. But in a situation where, for reasons we have analysed elsewhere[3], the working class has largely lost any sense of itself as a distinct social force, struggles in response to the economic crisis and its accompanying attacks provide an indispensable starting point for the working class to recover its own identity, above all when large numbers of workers in different sectors are striking for essentially the same economic demands. And the recovery of class identity necessarily contains a vital political dimension[4] as it tends to highlight the scenario predicted by the Communist Manifesto in 1848: “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.

The response of the ruling class and their trade unions

The formation of the working class into a unified force confronting the bourgeoisie is, of course, a long way off, and we have no intention of downplaying the immense obstacles which stand in the way of such an outcome – above all because the accelerating decomposition of bourgeois society itself threatens to drag the working class in its wake, to inflict this dying system’s own hatreds and divisions (national, racial, sexual, religious, etc) on the body of the proletariat. At the same time, even though the bourgeoisie itself is more and more divided, increasingly losing control of its own system, and its political machinery in particular, it is still capable of developing strategies and manoeuvres to prevent the unification of its mortal enemy, the working class.

In response to the strikes in Britain, the populist Tory government, which has claimed to be the “real party of the workers”(!), is for the moment not launching a frontal attack against the strikes but mainly adopting a more conciliatory, wait and see posture, even if the Transport minister Grant Schapps has said the rail strikers’ demands are unreasonable. It admits there is a “cost of living crisis” which it portrays as temporary, needing hard choices in order to be overcome. It is also offering token support to the poorest workers of a few hundred pounds in July and in the Autumn. More recently it has offered to increase the 2% public sector pay rise to 5%, i.e., it is offering a wage cut of approximately 5% instead of 8%.

The more serious vehicles of the bourgeois media, notably papers like the Guardian and Observer, but also the BBC, have talked a lot about the “strike wave”, even exaggerating it and predicting a “summer of discontent”, a return to the class struggle of the 70s. Numerous articles have been published showing the legitimacy of the rail strikers’ demands, in particular heaping praise on RMT leader Mick Lynch for his intelligent and articulate defence of these demands faced with hostile questioning from other parts of the media[5]. There have also been a number of surveys published showing that the rail strikes have enjoyed a considerable level of public support. This is in marked contrast to previous transport strikes where the media have focused largely on the “misery” inflicted on commuters by the “selfish demands” of the unions. True, a tabloid like The Sun can still proclaim that “This week’s rail strikes are what happens when Marxist thugs high on ‘class war’ fantasies try to weaponize the public’s economic woes to bring down an elected Government they despise” (20.6.22), but such inflammatory rhetoric also serves to radicalise the image of the unions.

Since in the past the bourgeoisie has always been careful to hide news of escalating movements that have developed outside of official control, this constant and often favourable publicity for the strikes points to an attempt by the ruling class to anticipate and thus dissipate a more dangerous development of the class movement. And an early sign that the unions were playing their part in this division of labour, that they are doing their job of keeping the class struggle under control, was the calling of a big TUC demonstration “against the cost of living crisis” in London on June 18th.

In addition,

• the unions have ensured that the strikes strictly obey the very tight legal restrictions in place today
• The list of strikes above shows that despite the fact that it touches important sectors of the working class, only parts of these sectors are actually striking.
• the strikes are spread out over different days
• care seems to have been taken to ensure that the strikes of different sectors occur on different days of the calendar.
• the strikes, according to the unions, are ultimately directed against the Tory Government, not against the ruling class as a whole. The final goal is the election of a Labour Government.
• This “anti-Tory” mystification is reinforced by “far left” groups like the Socialist Workers Party. While the leftists criticise Keir Starmer for not supporting the strikes and for disciplining Labour MPs for making an appearance on picket lines, their propaganda is constantly aimed at the need to “kick out the Tories” and install a Labour government with a more radical leadership (like Corbyn, for example). And if they call for the unification of strikes, this is to take place through the trade unions acting together. In sum, the leftists’ role is to prevent the working class from breaking out of the grip of the Labour party and the unions.

What we are seeing today in Britain is only a hint of what the working class needs to do if it is to forge itself into a unified and conscious power capable of confronting and overthrowing the rule of capital. It also reminds us of the cynicism and cunning of a ruling apparatus which is not restricted to the Tories but includes the whole “Labour movement” - from Starmer to the unions and the far left. But identifying the obstacles to the class struggle, exposing its real enemies, is a necessary part of releasing the immense potential revealed by the immediate resistance of the exploited class.

Amos 21/7/22

 

For the last three years, we have been witnessing a simultaneity and an aggravation of the different crises and catastrophes which are accelerating the decay of capitalist society: war, economic crisis, ecological crisis, pandemic... This has reached the point where the threat of the annihilation of the human species has become more serious and concrete than ever.

The Covid-19 pandemic, the eighth wave of which is currently underway, constituted, from early 2020, a new stage in the sinking of society into the final phase of its decadence, that of its decomposition. It crystallises, in fact, a whole series of factors of chaos which until then seemed to have no link between them[1].The negligence of the ruling class was more clearly revealed everywhere with the collapse of health systems (lack of masks, beds and carers) being crucially responsible for the global death toll, which reached between 15 and 20 million. The pandemic even had a lasting impact on global production chains, increasing shortages and inflation. It also revealed the increased difficulties of the bourgeoisie in organising a coordinated response to both the pandemic and the crisis.

The war in Ukraine is already festering like a cancer at the gates of Europe and is a further step in the accelerated decay of society, above all through the exacerbation of militarism on a global scale. The profound disorder in the East and the Caucasus, the air strikes threatening to damage the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the repeated threats to use nuclear weapons[2], the disastrous leakage of Nord Stream gas pipelines into the Baltic as a result of probable acts of war, Putin's adventurist "partial" mobilisation turning into a fiasco, the terrifying risks of escalation by a desperate Russian regime, all point to an apocalyptic capitalist future across the globe. Now, the bottomless pit of military spending that preceded and further accompanies the war in Ukraine and the tensions in the Pacific, as well as the abysmal indebtedness of states crumbling under the weight of the war economy, are accelerating the plunge into global economic crisis.

The crisis, combined with catastrophic global warming, is already plunging millions of people into malnutrition, not only in Ukraine but in many parts of the world; shortages are multiplying and inflation is condemning a large part of the working class to poverty. The "sacrifices" demanded by the bourgeoisie already presage much worse to come. The militarism that is growing wildly before our eyes embodies the irrationality of a capitalism that can only lead to ruin and bloody chaos. This is highlighted above all by the United States, whose desire to preserve its rank as the world's leading power requires the continuous reinforcement of its military superiority; but this project can only be realised at the cost of ever more chaos and destabilisation. Myriad disasters of all kinds, increasingly frequent, interact and feed off each other more intensely, forming a veritable destructive spiral. The last few months have considerably reinforced this apocalyptic trajectory, both through the intensification of war and its devastation and through the spectacular evolution of the manifestations of climate change[3].  In addition to the destruction, the scorched earth policies and the massacres, the forced exoduses of millions, agricultural production is being curtailed on a global scale, access to water is becoming scarce, shortages and famines are multiplying, and large parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable as the result of all kinds of pollution. The resources that are being depleted tend to be transformed almost exclusively and unscrupulously into strategic weapons, such as gas or wheat, and are given over to a veritable plundering and unbridled haggling, the outcome of which is still military confrontation and human suffering.

 This tragedy did not happen by chance. It is the product of the irremediable bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production and the blind action of a bourgeoisie which has no future to offer. A mode of production that has been undermined for more than a hundred years by its contradictions and historical limits, and that for the last thirty years has been wallowing in its own decomposition. The world is now plunging even more rapidly into a process of accelerating fragmentation and destruction, into an immense chaos. The bourgeoisie is powerless to offer a viable perspective, increasingly divided, unable to cooperate at a minimum level as it did even a decade ago at its global anti-crisis summits. It remains uninspired, trapped by its own blinkers and greed, undermined by the centrifugal forces of a growing every man for himself. The victory in Italy of Georgia Meloni's "post-fascist" far-right party is a further example of a worsening tendency for the bourgeoisie to lose control over its political apparatus. Increasingly, the ruling class finds itself governed by cliques of unscrupulous thugs, more dangerous and irresponsible than ever.

The only answer is the class struggle of the proletariat
The bourgeoisie remains determined to accentuate exploitation, to make the proletariat pay for its insoluble crisis and its wars. However, it will now have to take more account of the class struggle. While the acceleration of decomposition with the pandemic had been a brake on the development of the combativity that was expressed, for example, in France in the winter of 2019-2020, and although struggles were greatly reduced after the invasion of Ukraine, they never totally disappeared. Last winter, strikes broke out in Spain and the US. This very summer, Germany also experienced walkouts. But above all, in the face of the crisis, unemployment and the return of inflation, the scale of workers' mobilisation in the United Kingdom constitutes a real break with the previous social situation in Britain, a return of combativity at the international level. It has initiated a real change of mindset. These strikes constitute a new event of historical dimensions. Indeed, after almost forty years of virtual stagnation in Britain, highly symbolic strikes multiplied there from June onwards, setting in motion new generations of workers ready to raise their heads and fight for their dignity, serving as an encouragement for other future movements. Despite the international ideological campaign that accompanied the royal funeral, the Liverpool dockers, who had been defeated in the 1990s, announced new mobilisations. The unions are already taking the lead and becoming more radical, playing their role as saboteurs and dividers. Even if this movement will necessarily experience a decline, it is already a victory because of its exemplary nature. Of course there is a long road ahead for the international struggle before the proletariat can recover its class identity and defend its own revolutionary perspective in a determined way. Its path is strewn with pitfalls. The risks of deviating from its own class terrain by diluting itself in cross-class struggles with the beleaguered petty-bourgeoisie, in petty-bourgeois or bourgeois movements such as those around feminism or anti-racism, are not without serious dangers, especially in the countries of the periphery. Thus, in Iran, an immense upsurge of anger against the regime of the Mullahs following the murder of Mahsa Amini has been driven onto the bourgeois terrain of democratic demands, where the working class is being diluted into the "Iranian people" rather than fighting for its own class demands. In Russia, despite the multiplication of demonstrations crying "No to war!", and the expressions of anger among conscripts being sent to the front without arms or food, the situation remains confused, with opposition to the military mobilisation taking a more individual than collective form. Negative proof that it is only the working class that can provide a perspective to all the oppressed - and that, in the absence of a class response, the bourgeoisie will be able to occupy the social terrain. But in a more global way, the conditions for a development of international class struggles in the face of the coming attacks, notably because of the development of inflation, unemployment and extreme precariousness, open the possibility of creating the conditions necessary for the affirmation of the communist perspective, in particular in the central countries of capitalism, where the proletariat is the most experienced and has long come up against the most sophisticated traps of the bourgeoisie. The new decade leaves open the possibility of such a historical affirmation of the proletariat, even if time is no longer on its side in view of the devastation generated by capitalism. This decade, which began with both workers' struggles and the acceleration of barbarism and chaos, will most likely convince the working class more deeply that the only historical alternative remains: communist revolution or destruction of humanity!

WH, 28 September 2022

 

Capitalism is more and more being strangled by a whole series of contradictions inherent in its way of existing, which are now inter-acting and mutually reinforcing each other, threatening society at unheard of levels of scale and frequency.

In the face of these calamities, the bourgeoisie has always had the concern to discount and discredit any explanation which raise the question of the responsibility of the system itself. The goal of the ruling class is to hide from the working class the real cause of wars, world disorder, climate change, pandemics, the world economic crisis.

Overproduction and the falling rate of profit show the historic limits of capitalism

Overproduction was identified by Marx as being at the origin of the cyclical crises of capitalism in the 19th century[1]. The Communist Manifesto already proclaimed in 1848 that “in these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production”. Nevertheless, in the ascendant period of capitalism, this contradiction acted as a factor in the expansion of capitalism across the globe through the search for markets to serve as outlets for the production of the industrialised powers.

By contrast, in its period of decadence, overproduction is at the root of the economic impasse marked by the great world depression of the 1930s, by the succession of deeper and deeper recessions which have followed each other since the end of the 1960s, but also by the dizzying development of militarism, since “faced with a total economic impasse, with the failure of the most brutal economic ‘remedies', the only choice open to the bourgeoisie is that of a forward flight with other means - themselves increasingly illusory - which can only be military means.”[2] Tragic illustrations of this impasse: two world wars and, since the first, an almost uninterrupted series of local wars between states.

The cause of overproduction was shown by Marx in the Communist Manifesto. Pushed by competition to enlarge itself more and more on pain of death, production permanently tends to become excessive, not in relation to the real needs of human beings, but in relation to the buying power of the waged or unemployed proletarians. The proletarians only constitute an outlet for capitalist production so long as the reproduction of their labour power makes it necessary[3]. To pay the workers above this necessity would certainly reduce overproduction but would also stand in the way of the accumulation of the surplus value extracted from wage labour.

There is no solution to overproduction inside capitalism. It can only be eliminated by the abolition of wage labour, which means establishing a society without exploitation. Questions and misunderstandings about this have been expressed in our public meetings and meetings for contacts. For one comrade, overproduction could be lessened or even eliminated under the influence of other “inverse” contradictions that result in a scarcity of certain commodities. In reality, while shortages are affecting certain sectors of world production, for example due to gaps in supply chains, other sectors continue, in essence, to be affected by overproduction.

If the wheels of the world economy are not gripped all the time by the permanent and growing tendency towards overproduction, it’s because the bourgeoisie has resorted massively to non-reimbursed debt in order to create demand, leading to the accumulation of a colossal global debt which hangs like Damocles’ sword over the world economy.

The tendency towards the falling rate of profit, also identified by Marx, presents itself as a supplementary barrier to accumulation. Faced with the exacerbation of competition and in order to keep their enterprises alive, the capitalists are forced to produce more cheaply. To this end they have to increase productivity by using more and more machinery in the process of production (raising the organic composition of capital). The result is that each commodity produced in this way contains proportionately less living labour (the part of the workers’ labour not paid for by the capitalist), and thus less surplus value. Nevertheless, the effects of the falling rate of profit can be compensated by various factors, in particular augmenting the volume of production[4]. But this in turn comes up, as with overproduction, against the insufficiency of markets. While the falling rate of profit did not appear right away in the life of capitalism as an absolute barrier to accumulation, it’s because there were still outlets existing in society, initially real ones and later increasingly based on the growth of world debt, allowing it to be offset. In the present context, it is yoked dangerously to overproduction.

The soaring unproductive expenses generated by state capitalism and rising rates of inflation

With the outbreak of the First World War, capitalism entered into a new period in its life, its decadence, where social contradictions imposed the setting up of state capitalism, charged with maintaining the cohesion of society in the face of these contradictions, in particular:

• War or the threat of war which implies the development of militarism and thus of military expenses
• The development of the class struggle, but also the growth of crime and gangsterism, which makes it necessary to set up various repressive bodies (police, courts, etc)

These kinds of state capitalist expenses are totally unproductive and, far from contributing to accumulation, constitute a sterilisation of capital. Here again incomprehension has been expressed about the production and sale of arms, which are seen as part of the accumulation process and thus confer a certain rationality on war. In fact, the idea that the sale of such commodities implies the realisation of surplus value is rejected by marxism. To be convinced of this, you only have to refer to Marx: “A large part of the annual product, the part consumed as income and no longer re-entering production afresh as a means of production…This kind of productive labour produces use values, is objectified in products, which are only destined for unproductive consumption. These products have in reality, as articles, no use value for the reproduction process.”[5](our emphasis). In this category are all the luxury articles destined for the bourgeoisie as well as arms, since arms obviously do not re-enter the production process as means of production.

Since the beginning of the 20th century unproductive expenses have continued to grow, especially military expenses, and the present war in Ukraine have given them a further impetus.

Inflation

Inflation should not be confused with another phenomenon in the life of capitalism, the rising price of certain commodities resulting from a lack of supply. The latter phenomenon has taken on a particular significance due to the war in Ukraine which has affected the supply of an important amount of agricultural products. This is already aggravating poverty and hunger on a world scale.

By definition, inflation is not one of the contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production, as is the case for overproduction for example. Nevertheless, it is a permanent element in the period of capitalist decadence and has a major impact on the economy. Like the lack of supply, it expresses itself in rising prices but it is the consequence of the weight of unproductive expenses in society, whose cost has repercussions for the commodities being produced: “Today, in the price of each commodity, alongside profits and the cost of labour power and of constant capital used in production, there is a greater and greater involvement of expenses which are indispensable to its being sold on a more and more saturated market (from the salaries of those engaged in marketing to the amount set aside to pay the police, functionaries and soldiers of the producer country). In the value of each object, the part which embodies labour time necessary for its production becomes smaller and smaller in relation to the part embodying human labour imposed by the system’s survival. The tendency for the weight of these unproductive expenses to annihilate the gains of labour productivity manifests itself in the constant rise in commodity prices”[6].

Finally, another factor in inflation is the result of the devaluation of money which accompanies the uncontrolled expansion in global debt, which today is nearing 260% of world production.

The ecological crisis

If the bourgeoisie has thrown itself so avidly on natural resources by incorporating them into the productive forces, it’s because they present the peculiarity of being “free” for capitalism.

However polluting, murderous and exploitative capitalism was in its ascendant period as it was conquering the world, this was nothing compared to the infernal spiral of the destruction of nature since the First World War, the consequence of ferocious economic and military competition. The destruction of the environment has thus reached new levels, as capitalist enterprises, private or public, have increased pollution and the pillage of the resources of the planet to unprecedented levels. What’s more, wars and militarism have made their own contribution to pollution and destruction of the natural environment[7]. In the second half of the 20th century there has been a new dimension in the disaster that capitalism is storing up for humanity: the development of climate change which threatens the very existence of our species. Its causes are economic, and, in turn, so are its consequences.

Climate change is having a greater and greater impact on the life of human beings and the on the economy: monstrous fires, violent and extensive flooding, heatwaves, drought, violent storms… increasingly affecting not only agricultural production but also industrial production and human habitats, thus more and more punishing the capitalist economy.

Such a threat can only be removed through the overthrow of capitalism. But on this point there exists the idea that you can’t rule out the bourgeoisie being able to avoid the climate disaster by installing new “clean” technologies. There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie is still capable of making considerable advances in this domain, even decisive ones. But against this, it is totally incapable of unifying itself on a world scale in order to put such technological advances into practice.

It's not the first time in history that such illusions in the bourgeoisie have been put forward. In a certain way they took the form in the theory of “super-imperialism” developed by Kautsky in particular on the eve of the First World War and purporting to show that the great powers could come to an agreement among themselves in order to establish a shared, peaceful domination over the world. Such a conception was obviously one of the spearheads of the pacifist lie, aiming to make workers believe that you could put an end to wars without needing to destroy capitalism. Kautsky’s view ignored the deadly competition between capitalist powers. It also ignored the fact that the highest possible level of unification between the different national fractions of the world bourgeoisie is precisely that of the nation, making them incapable of setting up a really supranational political authority and organisation of society.

Reality is quite the opposite to the illusion of a bourgeoisie capable of avoiding the climate disaster. What we are seeing is the persistence and even aggravation of total irrationality and irresponsibility in the face of climate change, expressed not only by the unleashing of new imperialist conflicts like the war in Ukraine (catastrophic for the human beings but also for the planet) but also through lesser, but still significant, aberrations like the running of Bitcoin, which requires a consumption of energy equivalent to that of all of Switzerland’s activities[8].

The consequences of capitalism’s entry into the final phase of decadence, the phase of decomposition

Decomposition corresponds to the final phase of capitalism’s life, initiated by a deadlock between the two main antagonistic classes, neither of them able to bring its own solution to the historic crisis of capitalism. The deepening of the economic crisis thus determines the phenomenon of society rotting on its feet. This affects the whole of social life, in particular through the development of the tendency towards “every man for himself” in all social relations, and in particular within the bourgeoisie. This was illustrated very clearly during the Covid epidemic, notably through two examples:

• The inability to coordinate and centralise research for a vaccine and to establish the planned production and distribution of vaccines for the whole planet;
• The gangster behaviour of certain industrialised countries, stealing medical material destined for a neighbouring country on the tarmac of an airport.

Thus, while the roots of decomposition lie in the economic crisis, we have seen since 2020 that the latter is itself being increasingly affected by the most severe manifestations of decomposition. Thus, the course of the economic crisis has been aggravated by the development of every man for himself in all domains, but especially in the relations between the great powers. Such a situation cannot but act a major handicap to setting up concerted economic policies in response to the next recession.

The risk of chain reactions in the economic sphere

The reality of such threats is reflected in the declarations in July 2022 of the head economist of the IMF, who can hardly be suspected of trying to throw oil on the fire: “It may well be that we are on the eve of a world recession only two years after the last one”[9] (our emphasis).

In fact, “it is certain” that the situation is much more alarming than it was two years ago. The conjunction of a whole number of phenomena is there to support the prediction of major disturbances at the economic level and, as a result, well beyond it:

• all the contradictions of capitalism examined in this article – reduction of solvent markets, frenzied race to increase productivity, intensification of global trade war – are being exacerbated.
• Capitalism is facing the near certainty of having to fork out major new expenses: everywhere in the world, particularly in Western Europe, the acceleration of militarism is generating a powerful rise in unproductive expenditure. Similarly, aging infrastructures have been forgotten for decades in state budgets, which in turn makes society even more fragile, demanding enormous expenses to deal with perfectly predictable phenomena, as we saw with the Covid pandemic.
• There are various possible detonators of an economic cataclysm, like the property sector crisis in China (which is at the origin of zero growth in this economy in the second trimester of 2022[10]), where bankruptcies like that of Evergrande may not be limited to this country but could have heavy international repercussions, such is the fragility of the world economy; the surge of inflation, as well as deeply affecting the lives of the exploited, and thus the working class in particular, poses other political problems for the bourgeoisie. An uncontrolled inflation is a fetter on a world commerce already affected by imperialist tensions. To the point where, faced with the seemingly ineluctable prospect of a rise in interest rates in a certain number of industrialised countries, recession seems inevitable. A menace whose gravity the bourgeoisie doesn’t seem able to admit since it would take place in the context of an already deteriorating economic situation, thus exacerbating the trend towards every man for himself and in some cases open hostility between the main powers.

Today, after more than a century of capitalist decadence, we can see how visionary were the words of the Communist International about the “internal disintegration” of world capitalism which will not disappear on its own but will drag humanity into barbarism if the proletariat doesn’t put an end to it. The hour has come for the proletariat to again react as a class in response to the apocalypse that capital is preparing for us. There is still time for that.

Silvio 5.10.22

As soon as the “period of mourning” for the Queen came to a close, with its deafening hymns to national unity, over 500 dockers in Liverpool confirmed that they were going on strike, followed straight away by the dockers in Felixstowe who had already been out on strike in the weeks prior to the Queen’s death. Planned strikes on the railways, postponed by the unions “out of respect for the Queen”, are to go ahead, and will be accompanied by further strikes in the post, on the buses, on the underground. Other disputes, involving council refuse workers, construction workers, Amazon warehouse staff, and others rumble on. Education workers and others are also being balloted. The “summer of anger” looks like turning into a hot autumn and perhaps another “Winter of Discontent” as workers face spiralling prices and miniscule wage increases.

Meanwhile, the liberal/left wing press has denounced the Truss government’s “mini-budget”, which ostentatiously removed limits on bankers’ bonuses and offered tax cuts which will clearly benefit the very rich, as a declaration of class war by the Truss government. And that of course is correct: the ruling class is constantly at war with those it exploits, and in times of crisis above all is forced to lower the living standards of the exploited, whether it does it crudely and openly or in a more subtle, step-by-step approach.  But that’s because the class war is not some ideological deformation, a choice adopted by our rulers. It is the fundamental reality of this social system, which can only live and “grow” in the soil of the exploited labour of the majority.

And what the strikes this summer and autumn have shown is that the exploited class is taking the first steps towards fighting the class war on its own terrain and for its own needs.

Significance of the revival of class struggle in Britain

We have written elsewhere[1]about the international significance of the current struggles in Britain, as a sign that the working class has not disappeared, has not been engulfed by the accelerated disintegration of the capitalist system – and thus as a kind of appeal to the world working class to respond to the onslaught on their working and living conditions by returning to the path of struggle.

The capitalist system first took roots in Britain, and in the period of rising capitalism in the 19th century the working class in Britain was, at certain moments, in the forefront of the workers’ movement internationally. It was in Britain that the workers first formed trade unions to defend themselves against brutal levels of exploitation, and later a political party, the Chartists, which sought to put forward the independent interests of the class in parliament and society as a whole.

The unions and parties which the workers created have long since become cogs in the capitalist system, but the militant spirit of the working class did not die with them, whether we are talking about Red Clydeside in 1919, the General Strike of 1926, or, in the late 1960s and 70s, the waves of struggle which marked the emergence of the working class from the long counter-revolution which descended on the international working class from the late 1920s on.

It was to counter the militancy of the working class in Britain that the bourgeoisie, led by the Thatcher government but with the full support of the world ruling class, launched a major counter-offensive. This took its most evident form in the defeat of the year-long miner’s strike, which opened the door not only to the closure of the pits but to the dismantling of whole sectors of British industry. But dockers too suffered from important defeats in 1989 and again 1995-98.

The process of “deindustrialisation” had its economic motivations – in particular the search for higher rates of profit in the “emerging” economies – but it is no accident that it also dispersed some of the most combative sectors of the working class, not only the miners but also the workers in the shipyards, in the steel and car plants, on the docks and so on, while the new measures of “privatisation” also ensured that important sectors like the railway workers no longer faced a single state boss but several, and could thus be more easily divided.

All this was accompanied by a new ideological offensive, based around the theme that the class war was over, the class struggle was consigned to the history books. And with the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989-91, this campaign took wings across the world, insisting even more forcefully that the working class was dead and that any idea that it could change the present system could only end in failure. The “death of communism”[2], we were told, meant the end of any hope there could be an alternative to capitalism.

The collapse of the eastern bloc marked the entry of capitalism into a new, final phase of its decadence, marked by growing fragmentation and chaos at all levels. Again, this process hit the working class in Britain with particular severity, sharpening social atomisation, feeding the rise of urban gangs, nourishing divisions between different ethnic groups, emphasising new “identities” to replace class identity and thus class solidarity. In the last decade or so all these divisions have been further exacerbated by the campaign around Brexit and the stoking of the so-called “Culture Wars” by both right and left wings of the bourgeoisie.

The working class in Britain has thus found it particularly hard to recover from the set-backs of the 1980s and the 1990s.   But today, despite this long retreat, despite all the divisions, the working class is once again raising its head, and in many cases it is the “traditionally” militant sectors, those with a long history of past battles – rail, docks, buses, post – who are providing a lead which can be followed by other sectors which may be more numerous but don’t always have the same history of class struggle: education, health, distribution, and so on. The economic crisis, and above all the surge in inflation, poses the objective need for all workers to fight together, and in doing so, to recover the sense of belonging to a class with its own independent interests and, ultimately, with its own alternative for the future of society. And while these struggles are not directly pitting themselves against the capitalist drive towards war or openly denouncing the appeals for sacrifice on behalf of the conflict between NATO and Russian imperialism, the very fact that they are taking place in the face of such appeals is evidence that the working class, above all in the central countries of the system, is not ready to sacrifice itself on the altar of capitalist war.

Union strikes and “wildcat” initiatives

Most of the strikes in the key sectors have been well controlled by the trade unions, who have carried out their role for capitalism by keeping the strikes isolated from each other (just as they did with the miners and other sectors in the 1980s), spreading them out on different days, even among workers in different parts of the transport system (rail, tube, buses…), and often restricted to one or two days of strike with notice given long in advance. But a sign of the underlying combativity of the workers is the prominent role being played by left-wing union leaders. Mick Lynch of the RMT (the main rail union) has been most in view, and he has been widely praised for his ability to answer hostile questions in media interviews. For example, he has replied to the media charge that the rail strikes were being waged on behalf of a privileged sector, insisting that his members are fighting because all workers were under attack and need to struggle together. The general secretary of the Unite union, Sharon Graham, has distanced herself from Labour’s mealy-mouthed attitude to strikes and has gone over the head of her own bureaucrats to set up “Combine Committees” bringing together union representatives from different sectors (refuse, warehouses, hospitality etc). We should not be surprised if, as the struggles continue into autumn and winter, we hear more appeals to working class unity and more common actions, demonstrations and so on. For leftist groups like the Socialist Workers’ Party this is offered as proof that the rank and file can force the leaders to fight if they put enough pressure on them, but for communists who understand that the unions have become state organs, the radicalisation of the unions obeys the need to adapt to the class movement in order to retain control over it.

We should also note that the fighting spirit of the workers has also expressed itself in unofficial actions, even wildcat strikes, in a range of different sectors. In their article Wildcat Strikes in the UK: Getting Ready for a Hot Autumn [215],  the Communist Workers Organisation made a (non-exhaustive) list of the following examples:

“10 May: some 100 refuse collectors in Welwyn Hatfield walked out in protest against a manager accused of sexism, racism and bullying.11 May: some 300 construction workers at a refinery in Hull went on strike because of wage payments being delayed or incomplete.17 May: over a thousand offshore oil workers in the North Sea walked out across 19 rigs demanding their wages match inflation.27 July: some 100 workers at a food plant in Bury walked out in response to not being allowed proper breaks at work.3 August: hundreds of Amazon workers at various sites in Tilbury, Rugeley, Coventry, Bristol, Dartford and Coalville have staged walkouts and slowdowns in response to a pay “rise” of only 35p more per hour.10 August: hundreds of contract workers, including scaffolders and maintenance workers, at refineries, chemical plants and other facilities in Teesside, Grangemouth, Pembroke, Fife, Fawley and Drax walked out in a fight over pay, picketing motorists entering and leaving the facilities”.[3]

The CWO followed up this article by publishing the appeal of the Offshore Oil and Gas Workers Strike Committee, which explains why they are launching a “wildcat” without waiting for a union ballot[4]:

“Our unions say they haven't got the numbers currently to ballot for strike. We say that's rubbish as the whole North Sea are absolutely livid about our treatment.
The wildcat strikes that are being talked about and planned are a result of years of inaction from the unions and our employers and have made us feel like we can only get things done by taking things into our own hands.
We have went through the whole due process when it comes to raising our grievance. We used the proper channels but feel we are being led down the garden path.
The whole of the UK is up in arms about the cost of living. We are no different”[5].

This strike was denounced by the RMT, Unite and the GMB who said in a joint letter that “Our concern is that unofficial action risks everything. Some operators on the old infrastructure will use industrial unrest to justify early decommissioning and all we’ll get is more redundancies. Others will see a divided workforce and will exploit that.”

The actions at Amazon are also interesting, because the majority of workers took strike action without being part of a union at all. The “workerist” group Notes from Below have published accounts from some of the workers involved in the strikes, this one from Amazon’s “Fulfilment Centre” in Coventry:

“We worked through the entire Covid pandemic, including the lockdowns. We’ve been waiting for information about this pay rise since April with everyone expecting at least £2 extra per hour. However, management announced on Wednesday that we were only going to get a 50p rise per hour.

We only planned to go on strike two hours before it actually happened. We had seen the strikes at Tilbury and Rugeley fulfilment centres on TikTok during our break time, and it inspired us to strike. We watched those videos at 11am, and started spreading the idea of a walkout through word of mouth around the warehouse. By 1pm, we had over 300 people who walked out and stopped working. At the beginning, we had no help with the strikes from any trade unions. We organised it all ourselves. However, after we walked out, GMB made some contact with us about joining the union and giving us advice”[6].

This account sheds light on a number of issues: an element in the current upsurge of class anger is the fact that numerous sectors - health, recycling, transport, distribution etc -who were told during the pandemic that their work was essential, and that they were heroes for carrying on, are now being rewarded with insulting wage increases. It also shows the capacity for workers to take strike action without any union “assistance”, as described in more detail in an account from the first Amazon wildcat[7]. 

But it also shows that the trade unions are always ready to step in an “organise” the workers for their own good. If it’s not an official union like the GMB (which calls itself “a union for all workers”), as in this case, then there are a number of “rank and file”, semi-syndicalist organisations like the United Voices of the World and the IWGB (The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain) who have specialised in recruiting the more precarious sectors hitherto ignored by the main union bodies. And we should not forget that the lowest level of the official unions, shop stewards or local organisers, can also set up pseudo-independent strike committees and coordinations that are not genuine expressions of strikers’ mass meetings and seek to act as the final bulwark of the trade unions.

The unions, and the basic ideology of trade unionism, have a very long history in Britain and it will take a long time and many confrontations with union sabotage before workers are able to develop autonomous forms of organisation on a massive scale – in particular, sovereign general assemblies where workers can debate and make their decisions about the way to extend and unite their struggles. And it is also likely that the new “anti-union” measures announced by the Truss government will help to reinforce the idea that the unions really do belong to the workers and need to be defended, even though the unions have become very adept at policing and normalising previous anti-strike legislation (ballots, limits on secondary pickets, etc).

Nonetheless, we can see in some of these recent examples that the authentic class tradition of deciding actions at general meetings, of organising mass pickets and calling directly on other workplaces to join the struggle, has by no means vanished from the collective memory of the working class in Britain and still exists in embryonic form.  The present wave of strikes is an essential preparation for the struggles of the future to reach the much-needed levels of self-organisation that will enable the workers to unify their struggles.

Amos

 

 

The strike wave in Britain continues. Transport, health, docks, education, local councils, Amazon – more and more workers are determined to fight for their most basic demands faced with surging prices, benefit cuts, deteriorating working conditions, precarious employment…For decades, the class struggle has been in retreat despite a relentless onslaught on our living standards. But there are now clear signs of a revival, and what’s happening in Britain can serve as an encouragement to workers everywhere: right now the workers in France are responding to the rising cost of living with a series of strikes and demonstrations in different sectors. The class struggle is international because the capitalist system that exploits us is a world system, and everywhere on the planet it is in deep crisis. And no matter which party holds the reins of government, they are all forced to make the working class pay for the crisis.

The ICC invites you to attend a public meeting from 2-5pm on Saturday, 12 November 2022. Please note the recent change of venue

Lucas Arms 245A Grays Inn Rd, London WC1X 8QY

 

We will present our analysis of the current world situation and the significance of the current strike movement. We hope that this will stimulate a wide-ranging discussion around questions such as:

• How can we unite our forces as a class? Do the trade unions unite us – or divide us into different categories, each fighting in our own corner?
• How can workers really control their own struggles?
• Are our enemies just the Tories, or all the parties of the ruling class?
• What is the long-term perspective for our struggle faced with a world system which can only offer us poverty, war, and ecological catastrophe?

Come to the meeting and help develop the discussion.

Read our international leaflet on the importance of the strikes in Britain: A summer of anger in Britain: The ruling class demands further sacrifices, the response of the working class is to fight! [216]

Write to us: [email protected] [8], or BM Box 869, London WC1N 

As Russian troops poured into Ukraine, President Biden, in his speech on February 24, stated that “Putin has committed an attack against the very principles which protect world peace.” The world is thus confronted with the tragedy of a new war due to the due to the madness of a single man. This propaganda, presenting Ukraine and the "Westerners” as victims working only for "peace", is a lie.

In reality, this murderous conflict is a pure product of the contradictions of a capitalist world in crisis, of a society rotting on its feet and subject to the reign of militarism. The current war, like all wars in the decadence of capitalism, is the result of a permanent imperialist balance of power, affecting all the protagonists, small or large, whether they are directly or indirectly involved in this conflict[1]. In the cynical struggle within this planetary bucket of crabs, the United States is, as the only superpower, at the forefront of the barbarism, not hesitating to propagate chaos and misery to defend its sordid interests and to slow down the inevitable decline of its leadership.

Maintaining NATO, the Gulf War: the bringing to heel of the ex-allies after the Cold War

After the Cold War, in parallel with their desire to keep a grip on its former allies in the Western bloc, the United States never abandoned their strategy of absorbing the countries that had been part of the bloc led by the USSR. Thus, as early as 15 February 1991, the Visegrad Group was formed, composed of former Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia), in order to promote their integration into NATO and Europe. Such pressure led the European powers to express their great concern not to "humiliate Russia". This tone already revealed a latent challenge towards the United States.

While the collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolically announced the end of the Cold War, a new war, the first Gulf War, initiated by the United States[2], would foreshadow the chaos of the century to come. Far from being a "war for oil", it was a question of American power, following the bankruptcy of the common enemy (the USSR), putting pressure directly on its most powerful ex-allies, in order to keep them under its yoke by dragging them into this barbaric military adventure.

As the world had ceased to be divided into two disciplined imperialist camps, a country like Iraq thought it possible to take over a former ally of the same bloc, Kuwait. The United States, at the head of a coalition of 35 countries, launched a deadly offensive aimed at discouraging any future temptation to imitate the actions of Saddam Hussein.

Thus, the operation "Desert Storm", undertaken by an "international coalition" against Iraq, was in reality an exercise of American imperialism intended to "bring to heel" their former allies who might challenge its leadership, by asserting itself as the only "world policeman". All this at the cost of several hundred thousand deaths.

Of course, the victory of President Bush Sr, which promised "peace, prosperity and democracy" would not sustain the illusion for very long. The apparent stability, won at the price of iron and blood, was momentary, confirming the United States as the "world's policeman", but containing the seeds of growing contradictions and tensions.

Yugoslavia: a permanent struggle against the decline of American leadership

If the Gulf War had momentarily stifled the first attempts at open opposition to the American policy, they were then expressed soon after, notably with the conflict in the former Yugoslavia (from 1991 to 2001). In the early 1990s, the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, pushing and supporting the independence of Croatia and Slovenia in order to give Germany access to the Mediterranean, was in direct opposition to the American power, but also to the interests of France and the United Kingdom. Through its bold initiatives, Germany initiated the process that would lead to the explosion of Yugoslavia.

Faced with the open challenge to their authority, the United States did not stand idle. As early as the summer of 1995, it launched a vast counter offensive, relying on its major asset: military power. The United States got its own armed force, the Implementation Force (IFOR) by ousting the UN and European troops, thus showing its overwhelming superiority and its impressive logistics. This demonstration of force, diplomatically piloted under the authority of Bill Clinton, compelled the Europeans, in November 1995, to sign the Dayton Agreement. Here again, the conflict left thousands of victims.

Of course, these agreements, signed under conditions imposed by the United States, through the pressure of arms and of an aggressive diplomacy, playing especially on the divisions between the European states, continued to be sabotaged by these same states. Germany, for example, never stopped putting the brakes on the wheels of the United States in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia, and it also favoured diplomatic rapprochements that tended to anger Washington, concretised especially by its links with the Turkish and Iranian chancelleries.

Even in the Middle East, a traditional preserve of Uncle Sam, European rivals have gradually been able to hinder the American policy. Such a challenge also reached the United States' most loyal lieutenants, starting with Israel, especially after Netanyahu took power in 1996, when the White House was banking on Labour’s Shimon Peres. Likewise, Saudi Arabia more and more openly displayed its resistance to American diktats in the region.

Successive setbacks for Uncle Sam arrived only a few months after its successful counter-offensive in the former Yugoslavia. In all the strategic zones of the planet, American interests were thwarted more and more. Faced with the growing development of every man for himself, the ICC wrote:

"In some respects, even if the United States, thanks to its economic and financial power, a strength that the leader of the Eastern bloc never had, a parallel can be drawn between the current situation of the United States and that of the situation of the defunct USSR in the days of the Eastern bloc. Like the USSR, they have nothing to preserve their domination but the repeated use of brute force and this always expresses a historic weakness. This exacerbation of the ‘every man for himself’ and the impasse in which the ‘world policeman’ finds itself is but a reflection of the historical impasse of the capitalist mode of production. In this context, the imperialist tensions between the great powers can only escalate, bringing destruction and death on ever larger areas of the planet and further aggravate the appalling chaos which is already the lot of entire continents"[3]. 

Afghanistan, Iraq: The United States' headlong rush into chaos

At the dawn of the new century, what we declared in the mid-1990s had largely been confirmed. The United States was even to be hit for the first time in its history on its own soil during the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York. The horrific and symbolic collapse of the Twin Towers marked a new dimension in the development of capitalist horror and chaos. But these attacks also represented for the United States an excellent opportunity to defend its imperialist interests with a rush to war. Here again, American policy was going to engage more and more in massive retaliation and murderous military operations to try to attempt to maintain its authority, in the name of the "fight against terrorism". The administration of George W. Bush Junior's, with its armed forces, quickly launched air strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, an undertaking supported at the time by its former allies.

But very quickly, the new crusade envisaged by Washington, in Iraq, against the "Axis of Evil", was to be the object of virulent and growing criticism. In 2003, encouraging the propagation of false information about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction”, in order to rally the support of his population and that of his former partners, the United States found itself increasingly isolated in its new war operation[4]. France, this time, openly defied the United States, even using its right of veto in the UN Security Council.

Supposed to eliminate terrorism and halt the decline of American leadership, this new show of force instead opened a Pandora’s Box, and the attacks that were to follow over the world could only underline the irrationality of these military undertakings which, in reality, fed this same infernal spiral, increasing the contestation, chaos and barbarism.

The United States also continued its determined policy towards the East, with the trips of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to promote “change" and "democracy". Her work would bear fruit. By 2003, American imperialism was clearly advancing its pawns in the Caucasus by supporting the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, which was to precipitate the ousting of the pro-Russian Shevardnadze and replaced him with a pro-American clique. The "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 was also part of the same strategy. Russia's centrepiece, Ukraine was already in the grip of political tensions. With respect to the "Orange Revolution" of 2004, like that of 2014, the major issue was not about a so-called "struggle for democracy", but a strategic objective in the games of NATO and the great powers to gain influence[5].

But massive military force and the growing use of arms would not enable American imperialism to eradicate the challenge to their leadership. Far from ensuring "peace and prosperity", the United States has become bogged down in all the major strategic points that it sought to stabilise and defend for its own benefit.

The American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 further accentuated the development of every man for himself, the same year that the civil war in Syria contributed to the explosion of chaos in a region of the world that had become totally uncontrollable. The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has also been accompanied by an irresolvable disorder, bringing the Taliban to power. Each of these operations, designed to impose the "order" of the Pax Americana, has only reinforced the chaos and barbarism, forcing the United States to continue its military rampages.

"Strategic pivot" towards Asia, war in Ukraine: a new stage in world-wide chaos

These failures alone are not the reason for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan[6]. Indeed, in 2011, matching words with actions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the adoption of a "strategic pivot to Asia". Far from a supposed "disengagement" from world affairs, this political orientation of Barack Obama's mandate was taken forward by Donald Trump with the slogan "America First". While, in the past, China occupied a secondary position in the world arena, it has gradually taken on the character of a true challenger, worrying and threatening more and more openly an American bourgeoisie which is determined to maintain its status as world leader. Faced with the rise in power of China, the objective was clearly announced: "to place Asia at the heart of American policy," which the faction around Joe Biden has had to pursue and strengthen. But far from having "deserted" the other major hot spots, this repositioning gave a new breath of life to American imperialism. The impression of "disengagement” led some of the USA’s rivals to embark on imperialist ventures of their own, where Uncle Sam was no longer present. Many, like Russia, are paying a high price for this underestimation! By sending its troops forth in a ridiculous military invasion of Ukraine, Russia was planning to weaken the chokehold which is now suffocating it more and more. It thus fell into a trap set by the American bourgeoisie[7]. In reality, the American disengagement from Afghanistan corresponds to a global vision, a longer term view, dictated by the desire to contain China, which has become a major imperialist power threatening its vital interests. As a result, the current offensive of the United States, through the pressure it is exerting on European countries, through Ukraine’s spectacular counter-offensive following from the sophisticated logistical and material support, or the maintenance of diplomatic pressure on Iran (regarding the nuclear programme) and on the African continent with the trips of its chief diplomat Antony Blinken in the face of the appetites of Russia and China, are all part of America’s fight against the historical decline of its leadership.

By thwarting China's "silk roads" to Europe through the war in Ukraine and by further control of the maritime routes of the South Pacific, the United States has succeeded, for the time being, in forcing China to expand its ambitions only by land and within a limited sphere. Aware that China is far from being able to match its military power, the United States aims to capitalise on this weakness, to maintain the pressure and even to allow itself to engage in provocations like the very political and symbolic trip to Taiwan by Democrat Nancy Pelosi. This unprecedented affront, revealing China's relative powerlessness, may be repeated in the future, perhaps pushing Beijing into dangerous military adventures.

From these developments linked to the efforts of American imperialism, we may draw some lessons:

- far from being based on rational factors or even on the simple search for immediate economic profit, the motive for the action of American imperialism, like that of all the other great powers, is to defend its position in a world that is becoming more and more chaotic, thus reinforcing the grip of chaos and destruction;

- in order to ensure this increasingly irrational objective, the United States does not hesitate to sow chaos in Europe, as we can see with the trap set for Russia, the sophisticated weapons and military aid it is giving to Ukraine to keep the war going in order to exhaust its Russian rival;

- to defend its position, the only reliable force is plain to see: that of arms. This is what is shown by Uncle Sam’s whole journey in recent decades, in which it has become the spearhead of militarism, every man for himself and warlike chaos. Already, we are experiencing the greatest chaos in the history of human societies.

In its ultimate phase of decomposition, capitalism plunges the world into barbarism and leads inexorably towards mass devastation. This terrible situation and the horror brought to everyday life show us how much is at stake and how much responsibility the world working class bears. Today, the survival of the human species is at stake.

WE

In the first half of 2022, as in so many of the previous years, the planet was plagued by numerous wildfires in France, Morocco, South Korea, Turkey and Argentina; catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, India, South Africa, Madagascar and Brazil; tropical storms in the Philippines and Mozambique, Cuba and Florida, unprecedented heat waves in India and Pakistan. The increase of temperature has considerably exacerbated the risk of extreme weather disasters. The scale of destruction it implies is terrifying: it reveals the acceleration of the decomposition of capitalism.

One of the most devastating natural disasters of 2022 occurred in Pakistan. In the first half of 2022 the country was hit by an unprecedented heat wave with temperatures of more than 50°C while in the second half of 2022, only some months later, a third of the country was flooded and made the situation completely catastrophic. In Jacobabad, a city with 200,000 inhabitants, temperatures first reached more than 49°C, and then all streets were inundated. Pakistan is known for its vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events. This year thousands of people have died in Pakistan, 1,400 from the floods alone. Many of the flood-hit areas are receiving the barest minimum of support from the authorities. But then, capitalism is not interested in saving human lives.

The disastrous effects of rising temperatures

The planet has never been hotter. Since 1880 Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.08°C per decade, but since 1981 the rate of warming is more than twice that: 0.18°C per decade. Averaged across land and ocean, the 2021 surface temperature was 1.04°C warmer than the last two decades of the 19th century. According to the National Centres for Environmental Information (NCEI) 9 of the 10 warmest years occurred since 2005, and the five warmest years on record all occurred since 2015. NASA confirmed this observation and found that 2010-2019 was the hottest decade ever recorded. US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) discovered that greenhouse gas pollution trapped 49% more heat in the atmosphere in 2021 than they did in 1990.

But what is the relationship between rising temperatures and the ever-increasing perturbations and extremes in weather conditions? There is not an irrefutable proof that a tornado or flood in a certain part of the world is caused by rising temperatures. But in the past 30 years the number of climate-related disasters has tripled and this increase in quantity becomes a circumstantial support for the hypothesis that the major part of the weather disasters is caused by global warming - and, in the last instance, by irresponsible and destructive “human intervention”. With a probability bordering on certainty, scientists can therefore determine that the warming of the atmosphere, the ocean and the land is at the root of the majority of the ever more devastating “natural” disasters.

The increase of air and water temperatures leads to rising sea levels and the massive melting of the icecaps, to supercharged storms and higher wind speeds, prolonged heat waves and more intense droughts, heavy downpours and massive flooding, making more and more parts of the planet uninhabitable. And as direct consequences of these crisis-ridden conditions we saw that:

• between 2011 and 2020 the attendant destruction around the globe totalled approximately $2.5 trillion, up almost 50 percent from the 2001-2010 figure;
• since 2008 every year more than 20 million people were forced from their homes, a number that increased year after year, reaching 30.7 million in 2020 alone;
• from 1970 to 2019 there were more than 11,000 reported disasters attributed to natural hazards globally, with more than two million registered deaths.

The destruction of nature by mankind has a very long history, but in previous societies this destruction was so limited that nature was able to recover from it. But within capitalism that changed dramatically: it developed productive forces which were able to change the face of nature in whole regions in a relatively short time. During the industrial revolution, for instance, the exploitation of copper and coal mines led to the destruction of large forests in South Wales (Great Britain) within a couple of decades, changing the landscape forever.

But man cannot make such profound changes to nature with impunity. “At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people. (…) For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us” [1]. Today, or rather in the last few decades, we can see how nature, after 140 years of ruthless plundering by capital, is beginning to “take its revenge” on a global scale. The processes set in motion by the destruction of nature hits back at society like a boomerang in the form of a rapid increase in natural disasters with long-lasting and increasingly devastating effects.

Global warming is inherent to the capitalist mode of production

Under capitalist conditions each unit of capital must accumulate and expand under the spur of competition with other capitals. It has to produce as efficiently as possible, with the highest productivity and the lowest possible cost. Every activity of capital is constantly aimed at the growth of profit and the increase of the exploitation of nature: labour power, soil, raw materials, etc. Profitability is the beginning and the end of every capitalist enterprise.

Within capitalism the aim is not the creation of more useful products (“use values”), but the widening of commodity production for the sake of profit. Capital has made the increasing volume of production, the expansion of the market and the reproduction of value on an enlarged scale, as an end in itself. And the more capital has accumulated, the more is it able to accumulate. Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake, that is what characterises capitalism. The eternal continuation of each production cycle on an ever-larger scale becomes, in the end, in the period of decadence of capitalism, a completely irrational and even destructive logic.

For capital nature is a “free gift”, it has no price for except, for the discovery and extraction, it has no cost. From the capitalist point of view, nature is a storehouse of raw materials that can be plundered to its heart’s content. Therefore, in the accounts of capitalist companies, all costs are precisely noted (transport, machines, labour, etc.), but not the damage caused to nature by capitalist production process. Sometimes damage to nature is restored, but most of the time not by the company that caused it.

In the period of the decadence of capitalism, and in particular because of the needs of the war economy, each national state is obliged to strengthen its grip on society and to subject more and more parts of economic life to its direct control. State capitalism became the dominant characteristic and has more and more imprisoned private capital in its straitjacket. Today the entirety of capital in a nation is concentrated around the state apparatus. In this way the merciless competition between private companies is for the great part absorbed by and turned into the cutthroat competition between the nation states.

What has this to do with the problem of global warming? It means that the main decisions in the struggle against global warming do not depend on the decisions of private capitals, but on the policy of national states. And the balance-sheet of the policy of the national states in protecting the climate is not positive. On the contrary, in the period of the imperialist blocs, until 1989, when the nations were under the yoke of the bloc leader and compelled to work together, the bourgeoisie already proved to be incapable to do anything substantial to prevent the further destruction of nature. But in the present phase of decomposition of capitalism, when the cohesion of the blocs no longer exists and the relations between the nations are dominated by “each for himself”, increasing centrifugal forces and growing military chaos, things only have become worse: any effort to decide a joint policy to safeguard the climate from warming and to prevent ever more dramatic weather disasters have become illusory. Nowadays all tendencies point towards an increasing political chaos in which any attempt to build a global consensus between nation states, even when they present themselves as “socialist”, the dream of the leftist factions of the bourgeoisie, is doomed to fail. And all the international conferences for the “protection” of nature over the last thirty year testify to this failure.

The destruction of nature to the point that it can no longer really recover, is directly linked to capitalism. Capitalism is absolutely unable to change the economic laws (the urge to expand, to concentrate and to make more profits) that are responsible for the ever-increasing damage to nature. Bourgeois society shows itself “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”[2]. Rising temperatures and global warming are inherent to the capitalist mode of production.

This means that in order to stop this catastrophic dynamic it is necessary to get rid of the capitalist mode of production.

It is not necessary here to dwell on the numerous bleak but realistic forecasts or on the various doom-laden scenarios that await us if the rise in temperature is not halted. There is plenty of material on the internet, in magazines and books and of course on our website, for example the article The world on the eve of an environmental catastrophe [210] (International Review no. 135) However there is one thing which should be mentioned, and that is the fact that we are fast approaching the point of no return. We are dangerously close to the emergence of “feedback effects”, where carbon and methane emissions from defrosting peat lands and the arctic permafrost, which can warm the atmosphere 20 times more than carbon, increase so rapidly as to be unstoppable, causing global warming to continue even if all human emissions were to stop.

Climate change and war

The war industry is highly polluting. It is estimated that the emissions from armies, and the industries that supply them, are responsible for about 5% of global emissions, more than air and shipping combined. The US military alone emits more greenhouse gases per year than countries like Spain, Portugal or Sweden, and as much as the yearly emission of 257 million cars. The Cost of War Research Project in Boston calculated that the emissions for all US military operations from 2001 to 2017 are estimated to be about 766 million metric tons of CO2.

In February 2022 the US Army released its first climate strategy (ACS), which aims to slash its emissions in half by 2030, for instance by electrifying its combat and non-tactical vehicles, by powering its bases with carbon-free electricity and by developing clean global supply chains.

For an institution that regularly releases tens of thousands of kilotons of carbon dioxide a year and that is responsible for the most poisonous environmental contamination through materials such as Agent Orange, rocket fuel, and toxic fire-fighting foam, this plan is utterly hypocritical. It is a perfect illustration of the green washing campaign of the US Army: completely inadequate, and wholly diversionary.

Militarism continues to poison the planet and to contribute to global warming. The impact of the war in Ukraine on the environment is already disastrous. There is evidence of severe air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the intense and permanent battles. Russian missiles attacked a number of oil and gas facilities in Ukraine. The resulting fires gave rise to heavy emissions. In the first five weeks of the war already alone 36 Russian attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure were recorded, leading to prolonged fires releasing soot particulates, methane and carbon into the atmosphere. The Ukraine army struck back and set oil infrastructure ablaze on the Russian side.

And that is not all. Both sides do not hesitate to use the nuclear power plant of Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe, as a target for their military clashes. The four high-voltage lines, which must supply the plant with offside power to run its safety and cooling system, etc., are systematically cut by shelling. Thus the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said at 9 September that the risk of a nuclear accident at the power plant has “significantly increased”. Any further destruction of the infrastructure around the power plant could already have immense consequences, even a nuclear disaster on the scale of Fukushima.

Western European countries have agreed to get rid of fossil fuels from Russia. Wouter De Vriendt of the Green Party spoke in the Belgian parliament about a great opportunity “to get rid of fossil fuels”. But the reality is completely different. The war in Ukraine will not mean a breakthrough in the conversion to cleaner energy. Russian gas and oil will be replaced by fossil fuels, some of which are even more polluting, such as shale gas mining and lignite mining. Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands hypocritically announced the lifting of restrictions on fossil-fuel power plants and have extended the lives of a dozen coal plants that were scheduled to close by 2030. In fact, the Western countries are using the war in Ukraine as an alibi to strengthen their own fossil energy industry.

“Degrowth”: a false solution for increasing climate disasters

The word degrowth was formulated for the first time in 1972 when André Gorz posed the question about the relation between growth and capitalism. The degrowth movement itself started about 30 years later. In 2002, the French magazine “Silence” published a special issue on the topic of degrowth, which received lots of public attention. The first international degrowth conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity took place in Paris in 2008. This gave a real impetus to the movement and thereafter several important publications were issued.

There is no one clearly defined degrowth ideology. One point that is endorsed by the whole movement is that there are limits to growth and so its aim to replace quantitative growth by qualitative growth or development. Degrowth, we are told, can be done in many ways, but common suggestions are to stop the production of useless consumer goods, of the goods with built-in obsolescence or goods that cannot be repaired, to phase out fossil fuels, to replace private transport by public transport, dismantling the arms industry and the military-industrial complex, etc.

These suggestions make much sense in themselves. The question is whether they could ever be carried out in the framework of capitalism. They are “based on a very accurate observation: in the capitalist system, production is not carried out to meet the needs of humanity but for profit, and in so doing not only does it not generate well-being (far from it) but also destroys the planet. The solution, for the proponents of degrowth, is therefore to consume better and less. [But ] the theory of degrowth only touches on one part of the problem and in a superficial way; it does not get to the heart of the matter”[3].

Within the ecological movement there are also currents who have understood this, arguing that capitalism is causing the climate crisis and that “any true alternative to this perverse and destructive dynamic needs to be radical - that is, must deal with the roots of the problem: the capitalist system. (…) Ecosocialist degrowth is one such alternative”[4]. Of course, we agree that capitalism cannot solve the problem of global warming; because it is inherent to the logic of its system. Thus, capitalism itself has to be abolished.

But the actual proposals by these “ecosocialists” to create the necessary conditions for the abolition of capitalism are far from radical. While arguing for the “social appropriation of the main means of (re)production”[5], we remain completely in the dark about who should appropriate these means of (re)production. The people, as is suggested? But in class society, the “people” as a category does not exist, or only as an abstraction. And it is impossible to attribute the means of production to an abstraction. The only conclusion that remains is that they are to be taken over by the state, whose destruction the “ecosocialists” do not envision.

Thus, the formulation that “the main decisions on the priorities of production and consumption will be decided by people themselves” is mainly a cover-up for the fundamental democratic leanings of the authors, which do not go beyond the confines of the capitalist mode of production. Despite its “radical” language, the ideology of ecosocialism is an excellent instrument for guiding genuine concerns about the climate crisis away from the need for a fundamental change in social relations into the dead-end of the impossible reform of the existing order.

But worse, the idea of “degrowth” under a state capitalist regime can also function as an ideological justification for further attacks on the living conditions of the workers. It could be used to appeal to workers to reduce their consumption on behalf of state-run “pro-environment” policies. In the end it would only mean more austerity.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. It is a moribund system of exploitation and it is taking humanity into the abyss with it. Therefore, any real fight against the further destruction of nature will be impossible as long as capitalism rules the planet. The real change in the relationship between man and nature can only start to take effect under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The balance between man and nature “can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature”[6].

Dennis, October 2022

 

The resignation of Liz Truss after 44 days as Prime Minister is just the latest in an unprecedented and chaotic sequence of events in British politics since the Brexit referendum of 2016, and there is no sign that things are going to miraculously settle down into some sort of constitutional normality. At the time of writing, a new leadership contest is underway: Rishi Sunik may be favourite to win, but the return of Boris Johnson is also a possibility – a clear expression of a party which is running out of options and could be on the verge of a historic split. But the “Tory crisis” is really an expression of a much deeper political crisis within the ruling class as a whole, of a decomposing system in which the bourgeoisie everywhere is increasingly losing control over its own political life.

44 days of political mayhem

Truss became Prime Minister on 6 September and proceeded to remove from ministerial roles anyone who had opposed her in the leadership election against Rishi Sunak. On 23 September Kwasi Kwarteng announced a series of tax reducing measures that had not been costed or run by the Office for Budget Responsibility. This had an instant dramatic impact on the value of the pound, on interest rates, pension funds, government bonds, and the availability of mortgages. At the Tory Party Conference in early October Truss labelled all opponents of her economic policies as being part of an “Anti-growth Coalition”. As if there was any faction of the ruling class that has no interest in the accumulation of capital and in the strengthening of the national economy – it’s just that there are differences in the bourgeoisie on the means to achieve this.

On 14 October Kwarteng was ordered back from an IMF meeting in the US to be sacked (for doing what had been agreed with Truss) and replaced by Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. On 17 October Hunt announced the scrapping of nearly all the measures announced in the mini-budget devised by Truss. A plan for £45bn of unfunded tax cuts underwent a £32bn reversal, and, in the name of stability and balancing the books, there will be “eye-watering” spending cuts to come; the planned two-year energy price cap will only last until next April, and they’ve so far found only about half of the £70bn fiscal black hole.

Yes, the Truss government proved itself particularly incompetent in not understanding what would be the effect of their policies, but the political and economic crisis convulsing British capitalism has a global context and historic roots that go beyond the ineptitude of a particular administration.

Social decomposition and the loss of political control

Historically the British bourgeoisie used to be able to make appropriate adjustments in its political apparatus to cope with all situations – whether changes in the economy, at the imperialist level, or in relation to the class struggle. The last three decades of social decomposition have shown how the bourgeoisie has increasingly lost control of its political apparatus, not least due to the growing influence of populism in one of its main parties. The first signs of this became obvious in 2016, with Cameron’s blunder in holding a referendum on membership of the EU, in a failed attempt to counter the influence of UKIP-style populism on the Tory Party.  Since the Brexit decision we have seen May and the negotiations over leaving the EU, then Johnson and “getting Brexit done” which meant accepting an agreement that it was soon clear they had every intention of challenging. Johnson’s leaving was messy as he departed implying that he had been the victim of a stab in the back; there are still many Tories who are now openly in favour of returning Boris to power. The advent of Truss, who emerged from a limited pool of candidates, all of whom were tainted by their involvement in the Johnson government, might have been a turn away from big-spending “levelling up” populism, but it involved the adoption of free market fantasies à la Thatcher that further damaged the image of the Tory party as a safe manager of the British economy. The one element where there was continuity between Johnson and Truss was the ability to make U-turns without any shame.

A long-standing economic crisis

Truss and, before her, Johnson, blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February for the rise in inflation, and specifically the increase in energy costs. Yet energy firms were already going bust in late 2021, and inflation in the UK (currently growing faster than any of the G7) was already taking off during 2021, and had reached 5.4% by the end of December 2021, before subsequently going into double figures (with much food inflation significantly higher). This was the highest rate since 1982, with predictions of more to come. With energy costs specifically, electricity prices rose by 54% and gas prices by 95.7% in the year to September. But the economic crisis of British capitalism is not just the product of the war or the pandemic or because of Brexit. In reality, Britain’s economic supremacy in the world was already being challenged by rising powers like the US and Germany in the latter part of the 19th century, and the century since World War I has been a story of Britain’s continuing descent to the status of a third-rate power. This long descent has accelerated in the final phase of capitalism’s decadence: the rise of populism and the Brexit fiasco are a classic product of this phase, and while they are certainly an exacerbating factor in the UK’s economic and political turmoil, they are not the underlying cause, which can only be sought in the irresolvable contradictions of capitalism as a world system.  

This is important to understand because it serves as a warning to the working class that a change of ruling team will not do away with the growing threat of pauperisation.  The choices made by different ruling teams do not include any benign alternatives. As the resolution on the international situation from the ICC’s 24th Congress puts it: “policy changes cannot rescue the world economy from oscillating between the twin dangers of inflation and deflation, new credit crunches and currency crises, all leading to brutal recessions.” Where Truss initially wanted to take on “Treasury orthodoxy” which led to panics in the market, massive increases in debt, pressure on inflation, and attacks on the conditions of life of the working class, Hunt’s embrace of Treasury orthodoxy, in the latest of many government U-turns, means the reassertion of an austerity regime, without the pretence of wealth “trickling down”. It will involve reductions in public spending and tax increases. In short, further attacks on living standards.

As things stand, the policy of the Treasury means cutting government expenditure, while the Bank of England, having tried to deal with government recklessness, will still be trying to limit inflation, which commentators are pointing to as the route to a deeper and more prolonged recession.

Cracks in the “United” Kingdom

Another area of continuity was in making the SNP and Scottish independence look as though they were viable possibilities. In contrast to the Johnson and Truss governments, the SNP in Scotland has performed within the normal boundaries of bourgeois respectability, always able to blame London for economic problems or carelessness over the pandemic. The break-up of the United Kingdom used to seem an impossible aspiration of eccentric nationalists, but the SNP is now able to present independence (and rejoining the EU) as an inviting alternative to rule by English populists and extremists. At the same time the question of the status of Northern Ireland is unresolved with the final Brexit deal leaving the British bourgeoisie trapped between the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP has dug in its heels over the Northern Ireland Protocol, but the British government’s current position is that it would have no option but to call an election if the DUP does not return to power-sharing by 28 October. As the DUP was overtaken by Sinn Fein as the largest party at the last elections in May, it might be reluctant to repeat the experience. Meanwhile there is pressure on Britain from both the EU and the US not to do anything to disturb the present fragile situation around Northern Ireland.

With the war in Ukraine British imperialism remains Zelensky’s biggest supporter in Europe in terms of both arms and rhetoric supplied. This makes demands on British finances, and Truss’s previous commitment to significantly increase the defence budget is not necessarily going to be upheld, although it should always be remembered that militarism is at the core of the survival of the national capital, and war is no longer a rational factor in terms of economic or even strategic gains.

The British bourgeoisie faces a combative working class

On another front, the British bourgeoisie has to deal with the struggles of the working class.

The struggles of the summer did not die out with the coming of autumn and, while, at the moment, the control of the unions is limiting the extent of the struggles, what is already a break with years of passivity could still go further. In response to this there has been government talk of strengthening legislation against strikes and protests. All bourgeois factions will use repression in one form or another, but the attempt to push through provocative political and economic measures at a time when the class struggle is developing is another expression of the particular incompetence of the Truss government.  On the other hand, despite this growing loss of control of the political apparatus by the bourgeoisie, we should not underestimate the capacity of the different factions to respond to developments in the class struggle, in particular through a division of labour between a “hardnosed” government and increasingly radical-sounding trade unions. At the same time, the opposition parties, led by Labour, are redoubling their calls for a general election, which is another tried and tested means to sabotage the class struggle

However, the objective conditions for the sharpening of class conflict are maturing every day. Capitalism cannot avoid attacking the living and working conditions of the exploited class, whether in the form of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, or cuts in government spending - which in practice means attacks on benefits, pensions, and services from any government funded body, from the health service to education to housing to public transport. The bourgeoisie can only offer austerity, and there is no alternative beyond this that can be honestly offered by parties in opposition, whatever Labour or the SNP might promise.

In defending itself from mounting assaults on its living standards, the working class cannot gain anything from the widening divisions among its class enemy: at this stage in the class conflict, they are more likely to be used to strengthen divisions within the working class itself (the clash between the supporters and opponents of Brexit, or the so-called “Culture Wars”, have precisely this impact on the workers’ awareness of themselves as a class with common interests). The development of the class struggle depends on workers beginning to see that there’s nothing to salvage from capitalism and that their resistance needs to develop the perspective of the overthrow of this rotting system

Car, 22/10/22

In Britain since June the cry has echoed from strike to strike:

"Enough is enough!"

This massive movement, dubbed the "Summer of Anger", has become the Autumn of Anger, and then the Winter of Anger.

The wave of strikes in the UK is a symbol of workers' combativity that is developing all over the world:

- In Spain, where doctors and paediatricians in the Madrid area went on strike at the end of November, as did the airline and rail sectors in December. Further strikes in the health sector are planned for January in many regions.

- In Germany, where soaring prices are causing employers to fear the consequences of an unprecedented energy crisis. The large metal and electrical industries underwent a series of slowdowns in November.

- In Italy, a strike by air traffic controllers in mid-October was added to that of EasyJet pilots. The government even had to ban all strikes on public holidays.

- In Belgium, where national strikes were called on 9 November and 16 December.

- In Greece, where a demonstration in Athens in November brought together tens of thousands of workers from the private sector, shouting "The cost of living is unbearable".

- In France, where, in recent months, there have been successive strikes in public transport and hospitals

- In Portugal, where workers are demanding a minimum wage of 800 euros, compared to the current 705. On 18 November, the civil service was on strike. In December, there were strikes across the transport sector.

- In the United States, the House of Representatives intervened to break an industrial dispute and avoid a rail freight strike. In January, thousands of nurses struck in New York.

The list would be endless because, in reality, there is everywhere a multitude of small strikes, isolated from each other, in different businesses and in the public sector. Because everywhere, in every country, in every sector, living and working conditions are deteriorating, everywhere there are soaring prices and poverty wages, everywhere there is precariousness and flexibility, everywhere there are hellish work rates and not enough workers, everywhere there is a terrible deterioration in housing conditions, particularly for young people.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals have become the symbol of this daily reality for all workers: being understaffed and overexploited, to the point of exhaustion, for a wage that can no longer pay the bills.

The extended wave of strikes that has since June been hitting the UK, a country where the proletariat seemed resigned to its fate since the Thatcher years, expresses a real break, a change of attitude within the working class, not only in the UK, but internationally. These struggles show that in the face of the deepening crisis, the exploited are no longer prepared to be pushed around.

With inflation at over 11% and the announcement of an austerity budget by the Sunak government, there have been strikes in almost every sector: Transport (trains, buses, tube, airports) and health, Royal Mail postal workers, civil servants in Defra, Amazon employees, school workers in Scotland, North Sea oil workers... The scale of the mobilisation of health workers has not been seen in this country for over a century! And teachers are expected to strike from February.

In France, the government has also decided to impose a new "reform" making the legal age of retirement later. The aim is simple: to save money by squeezing the working class like a lemon, all the way to the cemetery. In concrete terms, it will mean working old, sick, exhausted or leaving with a reduced and miserable pension. Often, moreover, redundancy will cut the knot in this dilemma before the fateful age.

The attacks on our living conditions will not stop. The global economic crisis will continue to worsen. In order to get by in the international arena of the market and competition, every bourgeoisie in every country will impose increasingly unbearable living and working conditions on the working class, invoking "solidarity with Ukraine" or "the future of the national economy".

This is even more true with the development of the war economy. An increasing proportion of labour and other resources is directed to the war economy. In Ukraine, but also in Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, Mali, Niger, Congo, etc., this means bombs, bullets and death! Elsewhere, it means fear, inflation and accelerated work rates. Every government is calling for "sacrifices"!

Faced with a capitalist system which plunges humanity into misery and war, into competition and division, it is up to the working class (wage-earners in all sectors, in all nations, unemployed or working, with or without qualifications, working or retired...) to put forward another perspective. By refusing these "sacrifices", by developing a massive united struggle, it can show that another world is possible.

Divided, we are weak

Divided, we lose.

For months, in all countries and in all sectors, there have been strikes. But they have been isolated from each other. Everyone in their own strike, in their own factory, their depot, their business, their part of the public sector. There is no real link between these struggles, even when it would be just a matter of crossing the street for the strikers from the hospital to meet those from the school or the supermarket opposite. Sometimes this division borders on the ridiculous when, in the same business, strikes are divided by corporation, or team, or unit. You have to imagine office workers on strike at different times to technical staff, or those on the first floor on strike on their own without any connection to those on the second floor. Sometimes this is what actually happens!

The dispersal of strikes, locking everyone in their own corner, plays the game of the bourgeoisie - it weakens us, reduces us to impotence, it exhausts us and leads us to defeat.

That's why the bourgeoisie puts so much energy into maintaining it. In all countries, the same strategy: governments divide. They pretend to support this or that sector to better attack the others. They highlight one sector, or even one company, by making promises that they will never keep, in order to conceal the onslaught of attacks that is taking place everywhere else. In order to better divide, they provide limited support to one group and reduce the rights of all the others. Branch by branch and company by company negotiations are the rule everywhere.

In France, the announcement of the pension reform, which will affect the entire working class, is accompanied by a deafening media "debate" on the unfairness of the reform for this or that section of the population. It should be made fairer by acknowledging the particular qualifications of apprentices, certain manual workers, women... Always the same trap!

Workers must take the struggle into their own hands

Why is there this division? Is it only government propaganda and manoeuvres that succeed in dividing us in this way, keeping the strikes and struggles of the working class separate from each other?

The feeling that we are all in the same boat is growing. The idea that a massive united struggle with widespread solidarity can change the balance of forces between the classes is becoming clearer. So why do we see divisions between workers over many months in every country and in every sector?

In the UK, striking workers traditionally picket outside their place of work. For several months, organised pickets have not been far apart, sometimes taking place only a day apart, sometimes struggles have happened at the same time but with the pickets separated by a few hundred metres but with no attempt to link up together. All on strike, but stranded on the picket line. Without fighting this dispersion, without developing a real unity in the struggle, this could exhaust our fighting spirit. In recent weeks the deadlock and the danger that this situation presents has become more evident. Those workers who have been on 'rolling strikes' over the last six months could now be feeling weary and powerless.

However, on several picket lines we have visited, workers expressed to us their feeling of being involved in a much broader struggle than just with their employer, their department, their sector. There is a growing sense of needing to struggle together.

But for months, in all countries, in all sectors, it is the unions that have been organising all these fragmented struggles. The unions decide the strategy that divides and isolates, and advocates that negotiations take place branch by branch, sector by sector. The unions choose to set out specific demands and the unions warn, above all, that "we will dilute our own struggle if we make common demands".

And yet, the unions have become aware that anger is growing, that it risks overflowing and breaking the barriers that they have built between and within the private sector and public sector. They know that the idea of "a common struggle" is maturing inside the class.

That's why, for example in the UK, unions are starting to talk about joint actions across sectors, which they had been very careful to avoid until now, and the words "unity" and "solidarity" are beginning to appear in their speeches. They won't stop dividing workers, but in order to continue to do so, they are taking up the concerns of the class. In this way they keep control over the direction of struggles.

In France, faced with an attack on the class with the announcement of the pension reforms, the unions displayed their unity and their resolve; they called for big street demonstrations and for engagement with the government. They have demanded that this reform must not pass, that millions of people must reject it.

So much for the rhetoric and the promises. But what is the reality? To explain this, we only need to recall the movement that fought against Macron's pension reform bill of 2019-2020. Faced with the rise in combativity and the growth of solidarity across the generations, the unions used this same strategy, advocating the "convergence of struggles", creating an illusory unitary movement, where demonstrators were called by sector and by company, not all mixed in together, but one behind the other. The trade union banners and the union stewards divided the marchers by sector, by company and by plant. Above all, there were no discussions and no meetings. The message at the end: "Disperse with your usual co-workers and go home, until the next time". The sound system was on full blast to make sure that workers couldn’t hear each other because what really makes the bourgeoisie tremble is when workers take their struggles into their own hands, when they organise themselves, when they start to meet up, to debate... to become a class in struggle!

In the UK and in France, as elsewhere, to affect the balance of forces that will enable us to resist the constant attacks on our living and working conditions, which tomorrow will become even more violent, we must, wherever we can, come together to debate and put forward those methods of struggle that unify and strengthen the working class and have allowed it, at certain moments in its history, to shake the bourgeoisie and its system:

- in the search to broaden support and solidarity beyond the workplace, the company, the institution, the sector of activity, indeed city, region and country;

- in workers’ self organisation of the struggle, particularly through general assemblies, without surrendering control to the so-called struggle "specialists”, the unions, and to their organisation;

- through the widest possible discussion on the general needs of the struggle, on the lessons to be learned from past struggles and also from their defeats, because there will be defeats ahead, but the greatest defeat arises from not reacting to the attacks. The entry into struggle is the first victory of the exploited.

In 1985, under Thatcher, British miners fought for a whole year, with immense courage and determination, but the forces of the state and the unions isolated them and they were rendered powerless and locked in their sector; their defeat was one for the whole working class. We must learn from our mistakes. It is vital that the weaknesses that have undermined the working class for decades, and that have marked a succession of defeats, are now overcome, specifically the trap of corporatism and the illusion that trade unions are working class organs. The self organisation of the struggle, its broad unity and solidarity, are indispensable ingredients in the preparation of tomorrow's struggles!

For this, we must recognise ourselves as members of the one same class, a class united by its solidarity in struggle: the working class. Today's struggles are indispensable not only in defending ourselves against attacks but also in recovering our class identity on a global scale, preparing the eventual overthrow of this bankrupt system that is synonymous with deprivation and disasters of all kinds.

Capitalism has no solution: either to the destruction of the planet, nor to continual war, nor to unemployment, nor to precariousness of work, nor to pauperisation. Only the struggle of the world working class supported by all the oppressed and exploited of the world can open the way to an alternative, that of communism.

The strikes in the UK and the demonstrations in France, are a call to struggle for proletarians across the world.

International Communist Current [233], 12 January 2023

 

"Enough is enough" was the cry heard during the first day of mobilisation on 19 January against the pension "reform". This "enough is enough" can only echo the "Enough is enough" that has been spreading since June in Britain, strike after strike.

For several months now, inflation has been reaching levels not seen in decades around the world. Everywhere in the world, the increase in the price of products and basic goods, such as food, gas, electricity or housing, is hitting the exploited hard, and an ever-larger proportion of them can no longer afford to live decently, even in the most developed countries. The accelerated deterioration of the economic situation can only lead to increasingly difficult and even miserable living conditions for millions of people.

The anger of more than a million demonstrators in France was therefore a clear expression, beyond the issue of the pension reform alone, of a more general frustration, and the reality of the return of the combativity of the exploited in many countries in the face of the increase in the cost of living, the deterioration of working conditions and precariousness. The massiveness of this first day of mobilisation only confirms the change of mind that is taking place on an international scale, the signal for which was given by the working class strikes in the UK since last summer.

Pension reform is a necessity for the bourgeoisie

Why, then, is the French bourgeoisie undertaking such an attack on the working class? The delay of the French bourgeoisie in "reforming" the pension system for several years remains a major weakness vis-à-vis the competing bourgeoisies. This need increases all the more as the intensification of the war economy imposes an inexorable intensification of the exploitation of labour power. [1] After failing a first time in 2019, Macron and his clique are making this new attempt a stake in their credibility, a proof of their ability to play their full role in defending the interests of national capital.

First planned for the summer of 2023, then advanced to the end of 2022 and then postponed to January 2023, the government chose what it considered to be the best moment to carry out this attack, knowing that it can still count on the multiple "tariff shields" that allow it to partially cushion the shock of the crisis.

If the bourgeoisie was determined to strike another blow on pensions and to impose longer working hours, it also knows that the previous attempt, in 2019-2020, ended in massive protests for almost two months. And although the anger and combative spirit expressed then was stopped short by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, this was not experienced as a "defeat" in the eyes of the working class. On the contrary, in the meantime, the anger and the will to fight remained intact. This new attack on pensions in France therefore had every chance of mobilising a large part of the working class in the streets and on strike. And it did! It is, in fact, a direct and even harder attack, and it affects the whole working class.

Therefore, although the bourgeoisie is well aware of this situation, and especially of the combativity expressed on an international scale (across the Channel and elsewhere), the success of the attack could prove more delicate than expected. This is why, for months, meetings between the government and the unions have been taking place, in order to work out the most effective strategy to adapt and respond to a foreseeable reaction by the workers.

Faced with division, let's fight back with unity and solidarity

After the well-attended inter-professional demonstration of 29 September, the unions have not stopped holding one day of strikes after another, sector by sector. During the autumn, the concerted action of the government, the left and far-left parties as well as the unions, had no other aim than to weaken and prevent as much as possible, for as long as possible, any real unity, any solidarity in the different sectors of the working class. This was, for example, the case in October 2022, at the time of the strike in the refineries: by praising the merits of a real negotiation, the "social partners", chief saboteurs of the struggles, allowed the state to appear as a responsible arbitrator in front of the bosses, and the CGT and FO to be presented by the media as determined, radical, inflexible, and therefore credible for the struggle... whereas these agencies are themselves state organs, perfectly institutionalised. [2]

While the possibility of solidarity in the struggle is becoming more and more apparent, the unions have the organisation of the movements under their control, and they scatter and separate into innumerable corporations, sectors and specific demands, thus playing on all possible divisions to hinder the struggles and stop their development.

This will to thwart any class impetus was verified during the strike of the SNCF controllers last December. Faced with the stoppage of work by more than half of the controllers, the unions did everything to bring the movement to an end as quickly as possible. This led to negotiations with SNCF management and the satisfaction of some of the demands, in order to lift the strike notice for the New Year's Day weekend. The unions thus worked to prevent any attempt at autonomous struggle. We had seen the same thing in 1986 in the struggle at the SNCF where the birth of coordinations independent of the trade union centres had led the CGT to create, at the very beginning of the movement, "anti-strike" pickets, physically opposing the strikers, only to change tack later on. These coordinations, however "radical" they were, could not overcome a narrow corporatism, like that of the train drivers at the time, and this was firmly supported by the Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvrière. Today, despite a certain mistrust of the union leadership, the weight of corporatism has kept the controllers and railway workers very vulnerable to other, more "radical", more "unofficial" forms of unionism, such as the "Collectif National des Agents du Service Commercial Train" (CNASCT), but which is just as corporatist.

Since 10 January, the date of the announcement of the pension reform, on all the television and radio platforms, the trade unions took turns to call for "everyone to take to the streets", trumpeting "trade union unity", the supposed symbol of their will to repel the attack. In reality, these were the unmistakable signs of their will to contain the anger that was to be expressed in the streets. Thus, alongside their misleading speeches, the unions had undertaken a whole work of fragmentation of struggles:

- Call for a strike and a specific mobilisation of an important sector of the working class, education... but on 17 January, that is to say two days before the day of action of the 19th, to better demobilise this sector on that day!

- Strike called in hospitals from 10 January…

- Strike at the RATP on 13 January...

- Strike in the oil sector at the end of January, then at the beginning of February...

- A "black day" organised in Parisian public transport for the day of 19 January, called by the unions, to prevent many people from going to the demonstrations.

After that, the trade union sound systems had no problem shouting a hypocritical "All together, all together" on 19 January!

In addition, on the same television and radio programmes, there was a deafening "debate" on the unfairness of the reform for this or that category of the population. It should be made fairer by better integrating the particular profiles of apprentices, certain manual workers, women, taking better account of long careers, etc. In short, it's always the same trap, to push everyone to look out for their own situation, while only highlighting the fate of the most disadvantaged "categories" in the face of this attack!

But in the end, all these counter-fires, set up during the last three weeks, did not work. And the combativity expressed by one to two million demonstrators is now forcing the unions to adapt to the situation. Hence the postponement of the next day of mobilisation from 26 to 31 January. If the "social partners" of the bourgeoisie justify this change by the necessity "to build a lasting movement", in reality, it's a question of giving themselves time in order to pursue the enterprise of division and sabotage of the struggle. Moreover, since 20 January, they have hastened to call on the "bases to get organised" by launching calls for totally sterile methods of struggle such as "going in front of a prefecture to make a noise", "cutting off the power to the offices of the deputies" or "going to demonstrate one's bad mood in front of them". All this without forgetting to isolate the sectors from each other by calling, for example, for a one-day strike in the refineries on 26 January. So many gesticulations that only aim to organise dispersion, to exhaust and weaken the balance of forces between now and 31 January. There is no doubt that mobilisations sector by sector will also multiply between now and then.

Workers must take the struggle into their own hands

How, in contrast to this preventive sabotage of struggles, can we create a balance of forces that will enable us to resist the attacks on living and working conditions?

- By seeking support and solidarity beyond one's corporation, one's company, one's sector of activity, one's city, one's region, one's country.

- By organising autonomously, particularly through general assemblies, without leaving control to the unions.

- By the widest possible discussion on the general needs of the struggle, on the lessons to be learned from the fights and also from the defeats. Because there will be defeats, but the greatest defeat would be to suffer the attacks without reacting.

The entry into struggle is the first victory of the exploited. Autonomy, solidarity and unity are the indispensable milestones in the preparation of tomorrow's struggles. For the current struggles are not only expressions of resistance against the deterioration of living and working conditions. They are also the only way to regain the consciousness of belonging to one and the same class. They form the main furrow through which the proletariat can glimpse an alternative to capitalist society: communism.

Stopio, 21 January 2023

[1] Like his foreign counterparts, Macron has just announced a considerable increase in the budgets allocated to armaments.

[2] See "Strikes in the French refineries and elsewhere... Solidarity in the struggle is the strength of our class", [234] Révolution internationale No. 495.

The war in Ukraine is getting bogged down in barbarism, an irrational and infernal spiral where death and ruins are piling up. The "high intensity" war has taken hold in Europe, giving a colossal boost to all the damage that has already struck the world before it. Militarism and imperialist tensions are increasing, as we have seen, for example, between China and the US last summer over Taiwan, with the corollary of increasing global chaos.

War accentuates the fragmentation and disorganisation of world production and trade; it fuels inflation and generates new shortages. The economic crisis, also aggravated by the increase in military expenditure, has led to new trade wars between every country, to the point where certain strategic decisions, such as the adoption by the United States of a $369 billion programme designed to attract business, was interpreted by its European rivals as a veritable "act of war", a situation which made them fear the massive de-industrialisation of the Old Continent. Everywhere, shortages are threatening vital sectors such as energy or medicines, and even certain foodstuffs.

The deepening of the crisis is itself contributing to the increased plundering of resources and, ultimately, to the multiplication of "natural" and industrial disasters. Fires that have devasted entire regions, droughts and record temperatures, floods and other extreme climatic phenomena have all worsened the state of society as a whole.

At the same time, the Covid pandemic has spread with the Omicron variant. It poses the threat of further mutations from China, where millions of infected people and hundreds of thousands of additional victims are evidence of the worsening of the already dire conditions of an economy in crisis, further damaging depleted health systems.

The year 2022 is not just a dramatic confirmation of these dynamics and miasma, a mere annus horribilis. It marks a further step in the deadly trajectory of capitalism. Society is sinking deeper and faster into chaos at all levels and no one can believe the rhetoric of the ruling class, asking for more belt tightening for a more than hypothetical "better future".

In reality, the logic that generates the disasters combined in a real spiral of destruction comes from the crisis and the historical limits of the capitalist mode of production and not from "bad leaders" or from "neoliberal mismanagement", so much denounced by the left-wing parties of the bourgeoisie. It is the product of the contradictions of capitalism which, like all modes of production of the past, is a transitory system, now obsolete. It is through its irreversible decline that capitalism plunges humanity further into the abyss. After having plunged the African continent and the Middle East into chaos and barbarism, the decomposition of capitalism is now brutally striking the most powerful countries on the planet.

With no perspective or solution other than to see its own system sink into barbarism, the bourgeoisie only generates despair and the idea of “every man for himself”, turning inward and fortifying its borders, pushing for the rejection of migrants, castigating "super-profits" to better justify and make people accept exploitation and growing pauperisation. The populist demonstrations, mirroring these rotten ideologies typical of the period of decomposition of capitalism, pushed Trump's fanatical supporters to violently enter the Capitol two years ago, with only vandalism as an outlet. More recently, the vindictive gangs of supporters of Bolsonaro also attached government premises, leaving in the background the spectre of a civil war with incalculable consequences.

Faced with these scourges, which make the world unbearable to live in and the ruling class nervous, only the working class can offer a perspective by developing its struggles against the attacks of capital and against this world in ruins. Thus, the recent demonstrations and strikes around the world, after years of apathy, have been a reminder that class struggle is still a necessity. In the UK, with the continuing strike wave, those in the US and Europe that have taken place in many sectors, the huge demonstrations that mobilised between one and two million people on 19 January in France against the pension reform, all these movements show the way to take confidence in our own forces and try to recover, in the long term, a lost class identity.[1]

However, this arduous struggle is already strewn with pitfalls. The proletariat must be wary of its false friends, the unions and the left and far-left parties of the bourgeoisie, state forces whose role is to contain and sabotage the struggles.

The long road of the class response highlights, moreover, the particular responsibility of the most experienced and concentrated fraction of the world proletariat, that of the working class bastions of Western Europe. The working class will only be able to assert itself on the basis of this historical experience, that of an autonomous struggle, on a firm class terrain. It must not allow itself to be drawn into sterile movements, without perspective and dangerous for its unity and its consciousness. On the contrary, it must be wary of "popular" revolts or inter-classist struggles which drown the interests of the proletariat in the "people of the nation" and hand it over hand and foot to the settling of scores between fractions of the bourgeoisie. The working class must turn away from movements like those in Iran, China this autumn and Peru more recently, movements in which proletarians find themselves trapped on the terrain of the bourgeoisie: the defence of bourgeois democracy or struggles around feminism, i.e. demanding that the ruling class kindly "reform" its rotten system. While these movements may express legitimate anger, such as the intolerable situation of women in Iran, they nonetheless drag workers behind petty-bourgeois ideologies or behind some bourgeois clique, thus diverting the proletariat from its autonomous struggles, an essential aspect of the development of class consciousness.

Revolutionaries have an enormous responsibility here and an indispensable role in warning the working class of these many pitfalls and dangers. They must defend the future that belongs only to the class struggle and its specific methods of combat. Let's come together! Let's take charge of our struggles through collective discussions and initiatives! Let’s defend our own class autonomy! Proletarians of all countries, unite!

 

WH, 19 January 2023

 

We publish below an extract from a letter sent by one of our readers, Robert, after an online meeting he attended, followed by our reply.

… Concerning the struggles of proletarians: should revolutionaries denounce the struggles of proletarians who make mistakes, use methods that are not their own, or just criticise them? Because in my opinion, there is a difference between denouncing and criticising. Denounce means to point out as guilty. To publicly report dishonest, immoral or illegitimate practices. To condemn: "to declare (someone) guilty", "to blame something", "to close, prevent", "forbid". Criticize: "capable of discernment, judgement", "separate", "choose", "decide", "sift".

If we look at these three definitions, in my opinion, we must condemn and denounce the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organisations that mislead the proletariat. But we must criticise a movement led by proletarians by offering more clarification, with the aim of removing it from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence. If we denounce a proletarian struggle, we denounce it to whom? To the police, to the justice system? The state in general? Or denounce proletarians to other proletarians? For example, denouncing black proletarians, on the pretext that their movement is framed by bourgeois organisations, to white proletarians? To tell white proletarians that you have to support your black brothers but on a class basis? Or tell them no, it's an interclass movement, you have to denounce it? To criticise is to go through a struggle to see its strengths and weaknesses.

Let's see what Marx says about this, and I stress that I learned this phrase from the ICC, to criticise the PCInt, and I think it is right. Marx says: "Hence, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism, and from identifying our criticism with them. In that case we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.”

When Marx says that we don't say: "Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle ". This means, in my opinion, that Marx does not denounce or even condemn the struggles of the proletarians, even if the proletarians are wrong. But Marx adds: "We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to." This means, in my opinion, that revolutionaries must critique the struggles of proletarians and make sure that they are oriented towards class goals, towards the final goal which is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

For partial struggles and the role of revolutionaries: "No more than one judges an individual by the idea he has of himself, one cannot judge such an epoch of upheaval by its self-consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained by the contradictions of material life, by the conflict that exists between the social productive forces and the relations of production" (Karl Marx). What I understood from this sentence is that revolutionaries must not limit themselves to the outward appearance of struggles, but must look for the causes that push proletarians to engage in interclassist struggles. For the meaning that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organisations and proletarians give to slogans is not the same. When proletarians speak of liberty, equality and fraternity, they mean dignity, bread, peace... Even if the words are ambiguous.

Robert

ICC response

To begin with, we would like to welcome the letter from the comrade who wished to continue the debate and bring other arguments to those developed in the discussion at the meeting. We can only encourage this type of initiative and it is in this context that we are responding to the comrade.

The questions raised by the comrade are of great importance: it is a question of determining how revolutionaries should orient their intervention in the face of protest movements of all kinds. The first thing we have to emphasise here is the question of class terrain.

Capitalist society offers a considerable number of possibilities for indignation, anger and protest, so innumerable are the horrors, violence and misery that it generates. This leads to a whole series of scattered movements in which proletarians, refusing to accept all these expressions of barbarism without flinching, can find themselves. It also happens that proletarians, sincerely indignant, support and participate in movements demanding rights and legislation for oppressed categories (women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, etc.). But these are real traps set by the bourgeoisie, very often by its left-wing groups and parties, which instrumentalise the obvious disgust caused, for example, by the situation of African Americans in the United States or violence against women. These proletarians therefore find themselves trapped in fragmented movements, and consequently enlisted behind purely bourgeois demands.

Two examples can illustrate these situations. Many proletarians are worried about the future of the planet in the face of global warming and the increase in so-called "natural" disasters. But by getting involved in struggles for improved action by the state towards nature, these workers ally themselves with all layers of society in the illusion that improvements within capitalism are possible. They thus miss the only effective fight to save the planet: the fight for the destruction of capitalism! A fight that only the working class can lead.

In the same way, police violence in many developed countries, some of it highly publicised, has deeply outraged many proletarians. But by going to fight for laws and procedures to guarantee police behaviour that is more "respectful of individual rights", workers simply put themselves at the mercy of the bourgeoisie and its state, forgetting that police forces are always the military wing of the bourgeois state in the repression of the proletariat's struggles, as the history of the workers' movement has shown on many occasions.

We cannot therefore characterise a movement by the sociological fact that proletarians participate in it. As individuals, proletarians are potentially sensitive to all causes and represent nothing in terms of social force. The only social force capable of fighting capitalism is the working class, and this class is not the simple sum of the individuals who compose it, it is not a sociological entity which exists only through the individuals who compose it. The working class exists through its economic and political dimensions within capitalism, through its struggle against the exploitation of its labour power through wage labour. In other words, as an exploited and revolutionary class. It finds its strength in its history, its struggles, its international character. Consequently, it is as a collective force, whose bond is international class solidarity, that it can truly establish a balance of forces against the bourgeoisie.

Similarly, revolutionaries are not missionaries who intervene with proletarian individuals to save them from the dominant ideology, as this would be impossible anyway, as no individual can resist the steamroller of the dominant ideology alone. Revolutionaries are the most determined and conscious part of the working class. They represent an organised force whose task is to develop class consciousness and allow the proletariat to take the path of confrontation with capitalism.

In this framework, the intervention of revolutionaries can only be understood as addressing the working class as such. It's when the working class struggles as a class that it can best hear and assimilate what revolutionaries have to say to it, notably denouncing the traps that the bourgeoisie sets for it to lead it to defeat. But also to remind it of the tools and methods it has developed throughout its history to fight its battles, in particular the fact that only its conscious unity and autonomy can preserve it from the traps of the bourgeoisie and establish a balance of forces in its favour.

Therefore, we have to characterise a movement first of all by its demands and its methods of struggle. This does not mean waiting patiently for a "pure" movement, but it does mean identifying two things that are necessary to orientate the intervention:

- on what terrain is the struggle situated?

- in a movement, is it the working class that is mobilised or individuals who are undifferentiated and mixed up with other social strata in society?

At present, the vast majority of workers' struggles are organised by the unions. The latter, in accordance with their function within the state, are constantly dividing the proletarians in order to lead the working class to defeat. If the unions put themselves at the head of struggles, it's because the bourgeoisie sees the awakening of anger and combativity. Thus, during strikes or in demonstrations, demands that belong to the working class, such as better pay or better working conditions, are taken up by the unions. It's by taking up demands that belong to the working class that the unions manage to present themselves as the experts in the struggle and to keep control of it. It is therefore up to revolutionaries to denounce these practices of sabotage and to defend the self-organisation of the class through sovereign general assemblies. In short, as the comrade says, it is a question of "orienting" struggles towards "class goals" and above all "towards the final goal" which is communism.

When, on the other hand, movements are situated on an inter-classist, or even downright bourgeois, terrain, what should revolutionaries do? They must warn the working class against the temptation to find a short cut to developing its struggle and its consciousness. This does not mean, as the comrade thinks, that we "denounce" or attack the individual proletarians who participate in it. What we denounce are the practices that lead to dead ends, the demands that do not belong to the class terrain of the proletariat. It's not like the rebuke of a head teacher, it's the only means we have to make disoriented workers aware that the cause they believe to be just (demanding rights from the bourgeoisie) is in fact a trap which ultimately leads them to defend capitalism (often in the wake of the petty bourgeoisie). We also know that these movements, not being situated on a class terrain, do not allow the working class to be present as a class, because it finds itself drowned or diluted, without any autonomous strength. Our intervention towards the proletarians directly involved is all the more inaudible, incomprehensible. This means that we have to assume that we are going against the tide, because revolutionaries have the serious task of trying to guide the working class towards the most favourable path for the development of its consciousness without ever losing sight of the goal of revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, the denunciation of this type of movement does not exempt revolutionaries from reflecting on the reasons why a more or less significant number of workers participate in these movements. This is notably what the ICC did in its analysis of the "yellow vests" movement in France.

Of course, the working class is not a disembodied entity, nor is it a homogeneous being. It is criss-crossed by currents, movements, debates, reflections and struggles. Within it and at each period, the propaganda of revolutionaries has a more or less important echo on a more or less extended part of the class. This is why our intervention must be conceived on a collective, class basis and not on an individual one. The level of consciousness of the working class at a given moment is not the sum of the individual consciousnesses that make it up, but the result of this permanent effervescence of reflection and debate which has allowed, sometimes in a few weeks, as in 1905 and 1917 in Russia, illiterate workers with no interest in politics, to create the conditions for an insurrection and to invent the methods for the exercise of power by the proletariat by creating workers' councils.

It's not an exact science, but a methodology to determine the class nature of a movement and to orient the intervention of revolutionaries within it. But starting from the individual is, on the other hand, a dead end because the individual on the political level does not exist in capitalism. To defend the contrary would be to deny the real conditions of capitalist production and to give credence to the democratic ideology which, starting from the votes of individuals in the polling booth, builds the myth of the "will of the people".

What is most important is to start, on the contrary, from the historical and international dimension of the proletariat, to detect in each struggle the way in which the working class fits into this framework, to measure the extent it is able to develop its struggle by defending its own interests. It is a question of taking stock of the development of combativity, of the search for solidarity and unity.

GD, 11 November 2022

Almost a year of war in Ukraine... Russia is well and truly bogged down and trapped.[1] Sucked in to the cycle of militarism, faced with a surprisingly well-prepared Ukrainian army, and Western powers that had not anticipated the timing but knew the aims of the cornered Kremlin, beleaguered Russian imperialism embarked on a suicidal "special" adventure. Today it finds itself stunned and very much weakened by this conflict which could only drag it under the wreckage.

A scorched earth policy

The thinly veiled aim of the US and NATO, by skilfully pushing Moscow into the trap, was to break the fragile link between Russia and China, to weaken and further isolate Putin on the international scene. All this at the cost of a scorched earth policy in which the Western powers are clearly complicit, arming and pushing their Ukrainian ally into bloody resistance, set for a chaos with unpredictable and potentially disastrous consequences. From July onwards, Russian troops have marked time, showing signs of weakening, unable to make progress against the Ukrainian army reinforced by artillery whose sophisticated weapons come largely from Western allies. The Russian army's failures were further accentuated in September when Ukrainian troops achieved a spectacular victory in the province of Kharkiv and to the north of Sloviansk. This surprising turnaround was confirmed as soon as the Ukrainian army captured Kherson, a city declared "forever Russian" only a month earlier by Putin and then abandoned without resistance.

Today, the toll of this terrible war is horrifying. By the beginning of December, 200,000 people had been killed or wounded by the warring factions. 40,000 civilians have died in Ukraine and refugees number nearly 8 million.[2] Sadly, soldiers and civilians will still be condemned to further mourning, other sufferings, physical and psychological violence from both sides: deportation, torture, rape, summary execution, indiscriminate bombing (particularly with highly lethal cluster bombs). Added to this is misery, hunger and cold on a daily basis, the terror spawned by the Ukrainian state, its national coalition, with its controls, the police checkpoints carried out by its zealous minions.

Desperately trying to break the morale of the Ukrainian people, the Russian army is stepping up its violence and bombings, already having deprived the population of heating, water and electricity for the winter. Ukraine has become a mass grave and wasteland, a concentration of hatreds. A city like Mariupol, for example, 90% razed to the ground, is a tragic symbol of this. Entire civilian neighbourhoods, thousands of schools, hundreds of hospitals and factories are damaged or destroyed in many cities, such as the capital Kyiv, but also Lviv, Dnipro and Ternopil, in retaliation for the destruction of the Crimean Bridge. The destruction is such that it would cost at least $350 billion to rebuild the whole country.[3] The Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, has even suggested $750 billion. But this patriotic zeal and the estimation of such figures will not prevent the resulting ruins and corpses!

A powerful accelerator of the decomposition of capitalism

While the Covid 19 pandemic has been devastating the world economy for the past two years, which was already showing signs of being in the red, the war in Ukraine is giving a huge boost to global stagnation, forcefully and qualitatively accentuating all the phenomena of the decomposition of the capitalist system by precipitating them into a really destructive vortex. A direct impact on the world situation that is already manifesting itself at different levels in a totally unprecedented bleak scenario. In the first place, by the sudden surge in world inflation linked not only to colossal indebtedness and a financial crisis, but also and above all to the explosion in military expenditure for this conflict and future "high intensity" fighting. In addition to industrial bankruptcies in Russia, there is the jump in state-specific spending since the beginning of the war, military and civilian budgets in support of Ukraine have become a financial black hole: "Between 24 February and 3 August, at least 84.2 billion euros were spent by forty-one, mainly Western, countries.” The United States alone paid out €44.5 billion (one third of Ukraine’s GDP in 2020).[4] Of course, this does not stop poverty from exploding in this war-torn country, going from 2 to 21% of the population. Such a situation necessitates attacks on all workers, generating a growing pauperisation that is taking hold everywhere, even in the richest countries of the globe. Foodstuffs, like the energy that is essential for everyday life, have sometimes become unaffordable, real weapons of war between thugs with contempt for the populations that have to struggle to feed and heat themselves. For example, wheat harvests in Ukraine, where prices have been exploding, have been deliberately destroyed by the Russian army. The world market is becoming more fragmented, in a crisis that affects trade and the very basis of production.

The crisis and the war are also fuelling the climate and environmental catastrophe. The impact is already visible in Ukraine. Military vehicles, bombing of civilian and industrial buildings, arson, have generated very serious pollution: high emissions of CO2, asbestos, heavy metals and other toxic products. Rivers, like the Ikva, are heavily polluted, contaminated with ammonia. Flora and fauna are very seriously affected: "900 protected natural areas in Ukraine have been affected by Russia's military activities, i.e. about 30% of the country's total protected areas". And "almost a third of Ukraine's crops may be unusable after the war".[5] The scandal of the sabotage of Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea alone reveals that: "the infrastructure released about 70,000 tonnes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, equivalent to the emissions of Paris for one year"[6]. The threat of a nuclear disaster from the shelling of both sides in Zaporizhzhia further darkens this grim picture, yet it is far from complete.

The unleashing of militarism and chaos

Even if, in general, the military can demonstrate undeniable expertise, the acknowledged capability of capitalist states, even if they are able to score diplomatic points at this or that moment with ingenious global visions to defend their own interests, all their most rational calculations are at the service of narrow interests, marked by a mode of production in its death throes, where the logic of profit and the economy are swallowed up by the senseless needs of war. This totally irrational spiral of military barbarism coldly planned by capitalist states is perfectly illustrated by the intentions surrounding the war in Ukraine. It fully confirms the absence of any possible economic motivation or advantage: "the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all possibility of development, finds in modern imperialist war the expression of its collapse, which can only engulf the productive forces in any abyss, and accumulate ruin upon ruin in an ever accelerating rhythm, without opening up any possibility of the outward development of production". [7]

Thus, it is now abundantly clear that "the war in Ukraine vividly illustrates how war has lost not only any economic function but even its strategic advantages: Russia has embarked on a war in the name of defending Russian speakers, but it is massacring tens of thousands of civilians in predominantly Russian-speaking regions while turning these cities and regions into ruins and suffering considerable material and infrastructural losses itself. If, at the end of this war, it captures the Donbass and south-eastern Ukraine, it will have conquered a wasteland, a population that hates it and suffered a consequent strategic setback in terms of its great power ambitions. As for the United States, in its policy of targeting China, it is led here to pursue (literally even) a "scorched earth" policy, with no economic or strategic gains other than an immeasurable explosion of economic, political and military chaos. The irrationality of war has never been more apparent."[8] In the face of Russia's military debacle, there have been discrete diplomatic signals that have been interpreted as Putin's willingness to possibly 'negotiate'. Similarly, in the West, primarily in the United States, there are concerns about the outcome of a conflict that could possibly lead to the unwanted handling of a catastrophic Russian implosion. But whatever the intentions or policies of the various parties, whatever the duration of this war, the outcome of which we do not yet know, or the ravages to come, one thing is certain: the dynamics of the acceleration of every man for himself and of chaos and militarism will only be exacerbated. Capitalism is indeed leading humanity towards its downfall and even its destruction. Only the world revolution of the proletariat will be able to put an end to the insanity of capital which is now taking on the appearance of the Apocalypse. 

 

(WH 20 December 2022)

 

 

Blank sheets of paper symbolise the demand for "free speech" and other democratic illusions

The deteriorating health crisis and the sharp economic downturn in China have led to an explosion of popular discontent, but also to the emergence of major working class movements. After the protests of thousands of buyers duped by the bursting of the property bubble and the collapse of various large developers (such as the Evergrande Group), the continued mass confinement of hundreds of thousands of people in all parts of China, with the appalling deterioration of living conditions that it implies, was the spark that ignited the conflagration.

First there was the death on 18 September 2022 of 27 people in a quarantine bus in the Guizhou region, then the massive protests by 200,000 workers at the huge factory of the Taiwanese giant Foxconn that assembles Apple's iPhones, protesting against inhumane confinement and non-payment of wages, and the death in a fire in Urumqui (Xinjiang) of 10 people because confinement conditions prevented firefighters from acting. Following these protests, demonstrations broke out in Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai. In China's economic capital, a large crowd gathered on Sunday 27 November to shout "Xi Jinping resign! CCP resign!".

The different mobilisations across the country are characterised by the following aspects:

- these mobilisations took place in a large number of Chinese cities; however, the media only report "hundreds" of people, which suggests that, in the face of repression and police threats, there is indeed a great deal of unrest, but that participation in the demonstrations is still relatively limited;

- they are a mixture of genuine workers' actions, for example at Foxconn, where there were clear wage demands and a fight against inhumane working conditions, and student or citizen mobilisations protesting against the outrageous confinement measures and demanding an end to controls and censorship;

- the dynamic that dominates and unifies these gatherings is not that of a massive development of mobilisation and workers' solidarity, but that of the rejection of the Stalinist regime and the defence of a democratic alternative, in continuity with the riots in Hong Kong in 2019 or those in Beijing in 1989.

We must therefore note that the perspective opened up by this sudden explosion of demonstrations is not that of a development of workers' struggles but rather that of a mobilisation on the bourgeois terrain of struggle for democratic reforms (even if occasional exceptions exist). Admittedly, these movements pose serious problems for the Chinese bourgeoisie: in the greatest haste, the latter was obliged to abandon in a few days the "zero Covid" policy that it maintained against all odds. However, they do not in any way present a perspective for the proletariat. On the contrary, the proletariat risks being diverted from its class terrain and engulfed either in a desperate citizen's movement against the Stalinist party and for democratic reforms, or in a struggle between bourgeois factions within the CCP.

While keeping a sense of proportion, we can say that the situation of the Chinese workers is comparable to what has been happening for several months in Iran, where the murder of a young girl by the morality police has provoked a tidal wave of riots, demonstrations and also numerous workers' strikes. Despite the very combative character of the Iranian working class, the dissolution of the workers' struggles into the popular movement against the religious autocracy and for democratic reforms is an imminent and constant threat. In fact, the use of proletarians as a mass of manoeuvre in the struggle between bourgeois factions (democrats, "enlightened" religious leaders, regional parties) or even between imperialisms (Kurdish, Turkish, Arab...) is a mortal danger and it is the responsibility of revolutionaries to warn the class about it.

Now, it is basically the same danger of dissolution of its struggles in popular revolts that the working class in China is facing. It is therefore important first of all to warn the Chinese workers against the siren songs of popular revolts for more democracy, but also and above all to arm them against "the idea that ‘anything is possible at any moment, in any place', as soon as sharp class confrontations arise at the peripheries of cap­italism; this idea is based on an identification between combativity and the maturation of class consciousness". [1]

In China, all the elements of the situation point to the beginning of a destabilisation of the regime. Even if the state momentarily manages to bring the situation back to normal, the fuse of new protests will remain lit. In this context, even if the Chinese proletariat develops its combativity and acquires a weight in the situation, its terrible political backwardness and its vulnerability to democratic mystifications constitute a considerable obstacle. Therefore, it is necessary to be clear about the prospects for the working class there: "The ICC rejects the naively egalitarian conception which holds that any country can be the point of departure for the revolutionary dynamic. This conception is based on the anarchist belief that, given the example of the revolu­tionary general strike, all countries could simultaneously initiate a revolutionary process.” [2]

In fact, despite its combativity, the working class in China, as in Iran or in other parts of the world, will have difficulty in strengthening its struggles on its class terrain and developing its consciousness as long as the proletariat of the Western countries does not show the way. For if all fractions of the world proletariat can and must make their contribution to the struggle against capitalism, those in Western Europe, through their experience of struggle but also of the democratic and trade union mystifications of the bourgeoisie, have a key importance for the revolutionary process. This only underlines the decisive responsibility of the Western European proletariat.

R.H., 14 January 2023

[1] ‘Resolution on the critique of the theory of the weakest link’ [237], International Review n°37 (1984).

[2] Ibid.

 

While many observers claimed two years ago that China was the big winner in the Covid crisis, recent events underline that it is instead confronted with the persistence of the pandemic, a significant slowdown in economic growth, the property bubble, major obstacles to the development of the "New Silk Road", strong imperialist pressure from the US: in short the prospect of major turbulence.

China's inability to control the health crisis
Since the end of 2019, China has been suffering from a pandemic crisis that has largely paralysed its population and its economy. For the past three years, the "zero Covid" policy advocated by President Xi has led to huge and interminable confinements, as in November 2022, when no less than 412 million Chinese were locked up under terrible conditions in various regions of China, often for several months. By claiming that China would be the first to tame the pandemic through its "zero Covid" policy, Xi and the CCP rejected international anti-Covid strategies and medical research. As a result, they have found themselves stuck in an economically and socially catastrophic logic, with no real alternative: Chinese vaccines are largely ineffective, the hospital system is unable to absorb the wave of infections resulting from a less restrictive policy (Cuba has four times as many doctors and hospital beds per capita as China), especially since the corruption of the political administration in the provinces makes it impossible to obtain reliable data on the evolution of the pandemic (a tendency to disguise the figures to avoid political disgrace)

The Chinese authorities are therefore up against a brick wall. Faced with an exploding social protest against the horrific inhumanity of mass confinement, they abruptly abandoned the "zero Covid" policy without being able to propose the slightest alternative: without significant levels of acquired immunity, without effective vaccines and lacking sufficient stocks of drugs, without a policy of vaccinating the most vulnerable, without a hospital system capable of absorbing the shock, the inevitable catastrophe did indeed take place: sick people are queuing up to get into overcrowded hospitals and corpses are piling up in front of overcrowded crematoria, tens of thousands of people are dying at home, morgues are overflowing with corpses, the authorities are totally overwhelmed and unable to cope with the tidal wave: projections foresee 1.7 million deaths and tens of millions of people heavily affected by the current explosion of the virus.

Aggressive US pressure adds to economic difficulties

For several years, China has been under intense economic and military pressure from the United States, both directly in Taiwan and through the formation of the AUKUS alliance, but also indirectly in Ukraine. Indeed, the longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more damage China suffers through the collapse of its main partner on the imperialist scene, Russia, but above all through the disruption of the European routes of the "New Silk Road" project.

On the other hand, the explosion of chaos and every man for himself, intensified by the aggressive policy of the United States, also weighs heavily, as shown by the plunge of Ethiopia, one of China's main pivots in Africa, into civil war. Plans to expand the "New Silk Road" are also in trouble because of the deepening economic crisis: almost 60% of the debt owed to China is now owed by countries in financial difficulty, up from just 5% in 2010. In addition, economic pressure from the United States is intensifying, in particular with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips in USA Act, decrees that subject exports of technology products from various Chinese technology firms (e.g. Huawei) to the United States to heavy restrictions through protectionist tariffs, sanctions against unfair competition, but above all the blocking of technology transfer and research.

Repeated lockdowns and then the tsunami of infections leading to chaos in the health system, the property bubble and the blocking of various "Silk Road" routes by armed conflicts or the surrounding chaos have caused a very sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy. Growth in the first half of this year was 2.5%, making this year's 5% target unattainable. For the first time in thirty years, China's economic growth will be lower than that of other Asian countries. Large technology and business companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and iQiyi have laid off between 10 and 30% of their staff. Young people are feeling the pinch, with an estimated 20% unemployment rate among university students looking for work.

The "neo-Stalinist" model of the Chinese bourgeoisie in great difficulty

Faced with economic and health difficulties, Xi Jinping's policy had been to return to the classic recipes of Stalinism:

- economically, since the administration of Deng Xiao Ping, the Chinese bourgeoisie had created a fragile and complex mechanism to maintain an all-powerful single party cohabiting with a private bourgeoisie, stimulated directly by the state. Now, "by the end of 2021, Deng Xiaoping's era of reform and openness is clearly over, replaced by a new statist economic orthodoxy”[1] The dominant faction behind Xi Jinping is thus tending to reinforce absolute state control over the economy and to close the prospect of economic renewal and the relative opening of the economy to private capital.

- on the social front, with the "zero Covid" policy, Xi not only ensured ruthless state control over the population, but also imposed this control on regional and local authorities, which had proved unreliable and ineffective at the beginning of the pandemic. As recently as the autumn, he sent central state police units to Shanghai to impose order on local authorities that were liberalising control measures.

However, while the policy of the Chinese state since 1989 has been to avoid at all costs any large-scale social turbulence, the flight of buyers scared by the difficulties and bankruptcies of the property giants, but above all the widespread demonstrations and riots in many Chinese cities, expressing the population's exasperation with the "zero Covid" policy, have given Xi and his supporters cold sweats. The regime was forced to back down in great haste in the face of the rumbling social unrest and to abandon in a few days the policy it had maintained for three years against all criticisms. Today, the limits of Xi Jinping's policy, a return to the classic recipes of Stalinism, are apparent at all levels: health, economic and social, while the man who imposed it, the same Xi Jinping, has just been re-elected for a third term after complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between factions within the CCP.

In conclusion, it appears today that if Chinese state capitalism was able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by its passage from the "Soviet" bloc to the American bloc in the 1970s, by the implosion of the "Soviet" bloc and the globalisation of the economy advocated by the United States and the main Western powers, the congenital weaknesses of its Stalinist-type state structure are now a major handicap in the face of the economic, health and social problems facing the country and the aggressive pressure of US imperialism it is under.

The situation in China is one of the most characteristic expressions of the "whirlwind effect" of the concatenation and combination of crises that mark the 20s of the 21st century. This 'whirlwind' of upheaval and destabilisation is putting heavy pressure not only on Xi and his supporters within the CCP, but more generally on China's imperialist policy. A destabilisation of Chinese capitalism would have unpredictable consequences for global capitalism.

R. Havanais, 15 January 2023

[1] "Foreign Affairs", reprinted by Courrier international n° 1674.

After decades of attacks and a retreat in the class struggle, the strikes that erupted in Britain last June are demonstrating a clear change of mood inside the working class: "Enough is enough!"  Moreover, the huge demonstrations against the pension reform in France and the multiplication of strikes and demonstrations all over the world confirm the reality of a real rupture, with workers refusing to put up with the current barrage of attacks any longer. Faced with inflation, redundancies, "reforms", precarious work, and the  continuous degradation of living and working conditions, the working class is making its response.

The working class is regaining its fighting spirit internationally
In France, thinking it would bury the movement quickly, the bourgeoisie is facing a widespread mobilisation and a deep and lasting anger.
In Spain massive mobilisations continue to take place against the collapse of the health care system and the worsening of working conditions, with struggles and strikes across different sectors.
In Germany, public sector workers and postal workers are demanding pay increases. The transport sector has been paralysed by a “mega streik” and the situation is becoming more serious in the wake of ongoing negotiations between the employers and the IG Metall union, which is having to contain a growing anger.
In Greece, the working class has expressed its indignation in an explosive way following a railway accident that cost the lives of 57 people, revealing the shortages of funding and personnel and the cynicism of the government that wanted to absolve itself of the responsibility for massive and deadly budget cuts and place the blame on a station master.

In Denmark, strikes and demonstrations broke out against the abolition of a public holiday in order to finance the increase in the military budget for the war effort in Ukraine.

As these social conflicts are so widespread and present on all continents, a much longer list could have been compiled.

Gradually, the division between exploiters and exploited, which the bourgeoisie had claimed to be obsolete, is becoming visible to the workers, even if it is still quite embryonic. The deepening economic crisis, in an increasingly fractured world, is producing a more and more brutal exploitation of labour power; and, in response, the struggles are promoting solidarity and reflection. Faced with working conditions whose clear injustices have become simply unbearable, workers, whether in the public or private sector, blue or white collar, behind a cash register or a desk, in the factory or on the dole, are beginning to recognise themselves as victims of the same system, sharing a common destiny in struggle. In short, workers are taking their first steps towards recognising themselves as a social class, the working class, without yet being really conscious of it.

Better still: proletarians are starting to reach out to each other across borders, as we saw with the strike of workers in a Belgian refinery in solidarity with workers in France, or the strike of the "Mobilier national" in France, before the (postponed) visit of Charles III to Versailles, in solidarity with “the English workers who have been on strike for weeks for wage increases”. Through these still very embryonic expressions of solidarity, the workers began to recognise themselves as an international class: we are all in the same boat!

But if many countries on all continents are affected by this profound wave, it is still unevenly spread, with very different levels of mobilisation and consciousness. The current situation is in fact fully confirming the distinction that must be made, politically and qualitatively, between the old proletariat of the central countries, notably Western Europe, and that of its class brothers and sisters in the countries of the periphery. As we've seen in China or Iran, the lack of historical experience of the struggle, the presence of more important intermediate social layers, and the more marked weight of democratic mystifications, puts the workers in the latter regions more as risk of becoming submerged within the anger of petty-bourgeois and highly pauperised intermediate layers, or even of getting embroiled behind a bourgeois faction, exposing themselves to repression, as the situation in Peru has shown. [1]

If the struggles are leading to a slow re-emergence of class identity, it's in Western Europe that this is most clearly on a class terrain where we are seeing a greater development of consciousness, certainly still weak, but more advanced in its slogans and methods of struggle. Here the maturation of consciousness is taking the form of the emergence of minorities in search of proletarian political positions and in the reflection which is growing more widely within the working masses.

The proletariat is thus taking its first steps in a movement of resistance against the growing barbarism and the brutal attacks of capital. Whatever the immediate results of this or that struggle, whether victories (always provisional as long as capitalism has not been overthrown) or failures, the working class is today opening the way for other struggles all across the world. Spurred on by the deepening crisis of capitalism and its disastrous consequences, the working class in struggle is leading the way!

A race to the bottom as capitalism plunges into crisis and chaos
The historical responsibility of the revolutionary class in the face of the dangers that the capitalist system poses to the whole of humanity (climate change, war, nuclear threats, pandemics, extreme pauperisation...) is becoming more urgent and dramatic. The capitalist world is plunging into an increasingly bloody chaos, and this process is not only accelerating sharply, but is now visible for all to see [2]

Already one year of war and massacres in Ukraine! This barbaric and destructive conflict continues with endless fighting, as shown by the deadly mobilisation around Bakhmut, testimony to a tragic stalemate. By accumulating ruins at the gates of Europe, this conflict has already succeeded in surpassing the human losses of the "Red Army" soldiers killed during the ten-year war in Afghanistan (from 1979 to 1989). For both sides, estimates already put the death toll at at least 300,000! [3] The murderous insanity in Ukraine reveals the ugly face of decadent capitalism, in which militarism permeates every fibre of its being.

After the terrible seismic shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, against a background of chaos, crisis of overproduction, shortages and massive indebtedness, this war in Ukraine has only reinforced the worst effects of the decomposition of the capitalist mode of production, leading to a phenomenal acceleration of the putrefaction of society.
War and militarism, the climate crisis, disasters of all kinds, the disorganisation of the world economy, the rise of the most irrational ideologies, the collapse of state structures for health care, education and transport... this cascade of catastrophic phenomena seems not only to be dramatically worsening, but also to be sustaining itself, pushing the one against the other into a kind of deadly "whirlwind", to the point of threatening civilisation with outright destruction.

Recent events only further confirm this dynamic: war also accentuates the already deep economic crisis. In addition to high inflation, fuelled by the arms race, there has been further turbulence in the banking sector in Europe and the United States, marked by the failure of banks including the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in California and the rescue of Credit Suisse in a forced takeover by UBS. The spectre of a financial crisis once again hangs over the world; all this against a backdrop of heightened global disorder, unbridled competition, and merciless trade wars that push states into adopting policies with no foreseeable outcomes, precipitating fragmentation and disasters, not least the ones linked to global warming. [4] These disasters can only lead to further convulsions and a headlong rush into crisis, with unpredictable consequences.

While the working class is returning to the terrain of the class struggle, the capitalist system can only plunge society into bankruptcy and destruction if it is not overthrown by the working class. These two poles of the historical situation will now collide with and confront each other much more in the years to come. This evolution, in spite of its complex dynamics will, in the long run, reveal more clearly the only possible historical alternative: communism or the destruction of humanity!

WH, 5 April 2023


[1] See our article on the situation in Peru, https://en.internationalism.org/content/17326/peru-dead-end-protests-and... [245]

[2] Including to the bourgeoisie who, in the "Global Risks Report" for the last Davos forum, exposed in a very lucid way the catastrophe towards which capitalism is dragging humanity.
[3] The UN has even revealed the facts about summary executions in both camps.
[4] At the end of March, in Spain, new "typical summer" fires have already forced the evacuation of 1500 people!

The Windsor framework is a post-Brexit legal agreement made by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on February 27 this year, ostensibly over trade relations between the mainland and Northern Ireland. The deal, which has been affirmed by the Council of the European Union and accepted by a 515-29 vote in Parliament, was recommended by Sunak as “Safeguarding sovereignty for the people of Northern Ireland” In fact it is the opposite which is the case as the agreement significantly strengthens US imperialism’s long-term aim for a “United Ireland”. The deal contains lots of minute detail about the movement of goods between the mainland and Northern Ireland and protections for the EU’s Single Market. It also includes giving sops to the Unionists in the form of a “Stormont brake” which, by political necessity, is a virtually incomprehensible procedure very unlikely to be used. The agreement will replace the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill 2022/23, a “cunning wheeze” of the Johnson clique aimed at unilaterally and illegally overriding the Northern Ireland Protocol divorce agreement made by the EU and the UK in 2019, the purpose of which was to stabilise the American-imposed Good Friday Agreement (GFA) signed in 1998 by Britain and Ireland, an agreement voted against only by Unionists[1].

Since the beginnings of capitalist decadence around the outset of the 1900s and its expression of full-blown, global imperialism – the permanence of war and preparation for war – the American ruling class has had its eyes set on and its policies directed towards Irish reunification. From that time, and still today, the policy of the United States in regard to Britain was first to overtake it as the major world power by dint of its imperialist and economic force and then to dismantle the British Empire piece by piece while appropriating to itself monies, gold, businesses, trade routes, influences, armies, territories and islands that once belonged to Britain. In true Mafia style it’s the most loyal lieutenants that the Godfather bleeds the most. Thus the real “special relationship” between America and Britain is one of imperialist force and, in general, the “Irish question” has reflected that trend during most of the 20 the century.

US influence over Ireland, or “Shamrock Diplomacy” as it’s called, mostly by the British media, is now playing a significant role in post-Brexit US/British relations, including threats by the former to block any further trade deal between the two. The Irish-American lobby in Washington has never been so strong and so powerfully used by the American state.

US pressure for a united Ireland, reflecting its role as the new superpower, began in 1917, just after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany, and reached a high point in a full-floor discussion in Congress, March 1919, calling on the US delegation at the Versailles peace talks to “make Irish self-determination an urgent matter”.[2] Ireland’s 1920’s/30’s neutrality, and its flirtation with the Nazis, made things difficult for the US but by the 1970’s and 1980’s the US was coming out in the open over its support for Irish nationalism, along with covert discussions going on with the IRA. And in the latter years, Brexit, which has immeasurably weakened the British state, has resulted in a manipulated groundswell of US agreement to defend the1998 GFA. In the meantime, an Anglo-US trade deal is ruled out by both Democrat and Republican elements. But it is the Democrats in particular that see Brexit and its proponents as a maverick attempt to undermine US “order”.

Early in June 2021, The Times reported that the US administration had reprimanded Britain over its row with the EU regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol, saying that it was “inflaming tensions”.[3] According to the report the US administration issued a rare demarche against the UK, which in diplomatic terms is the equivalent of a hefty kick up the arse signalling further intent; subsequent US denials about this can be taken with a pinch of salt. Partly in response to this, and after Sinn Fein won the most seats in the May 2022 election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Unionist DUP[4] upped the ante: it refused to accept the vote and shut down the Assembly in protest about the direction the talks on the Protocol were taking. This stymied a working Northern Ireland Assembly, which is essential for US plans. Since then and up to today, despite the power-sharing GFA, Northern Ireland has been under direct rule from Westminster, a situation that is clearly unacceptable to the US which sees a working Assembly as a vehicle towards a united Ireland; and herein lies the tussle between the US and Britain, and definitely not in the movement of sausages from Barnsley to Belfast.

Brexit further weakens British imperialism

It was the election of the Truss faction to government[5] that gave the US administration the perfect excuse to act swiftly and decisively on the Irish Question. Rishi Sunak, a Fulbright and Stanford scholar, employed by Goldman Sachs in America, and a United States citizen while he was Britain’s Chancellor, was the administration’s preferred candidate for Prime Minister after the greatly distrusted Boris Johnson was deposed. And in her turn Truss and her clique had to go and go they rapidly did on the back of what was effectively political and financially driven regime-change engineered by the ruling Democratic Party through the American-dominated IMF. It was a bloodless “coup”, resulting in the shedding of only a few tears and a big financial hit.

Trying to “take back control” through Brexit, i.e., the UK making its own way despite the demands of the American state and the EU, has been a disaster for Britain. It is a result of this declining power being buffeted by the storms of capitalist decomposition and this is firmly evidenced in the rise to power of both the populist and irrational Johnson and Truss cliques. The “trade deals” made by Britain in its new Brexit “freedom” has been one-sided and costly for it, reflecting the weakness of the UK’s negotiating position. And all the while the high-cost, low-wage British Isles, less and less able to deliver sufficient health care and floundering in its own sewage, is being circled by rival sharks and hovering vultures – and these are just its allies.

On the back of this weakness the US government has taken advantage of the situation to push home its agenda over Ireland. The Biden administration has certainly had many important issues and events to manoeuvre and manage over the last couple of years but, throughout this period, Ireland is one that it has brought to the fore with some political vigour. Despite the problems that Biden has had, his government has been on something of an unexpected roll recently and a subtly stage-managed trip to Ireland to move the “Peace Process” further forward will do the Democrats and Biden no harm in the run-up to the 2024 election. The danger from this is that the Pax Americana imposed by the US everywhere tends to bring in its wake even more chaos and instability, and Ireland will probably be no exception to this rule. However, it looks like Biden’s trip to celebrate 25 years of the GFA will go ahead (the US secret services have been reconnoitring in Ireland weeks before the British government’s invitation) and the appointment of Joe Kennedy III as “peace envoy”, from the dynasty that has always supported Irish reunification, send a clear message of US intent.

The instability at the imperialist level has reverberated throughout the domestic situation and impacted on the political apparatus of the British bourgeoisie, which has played the “Orange Card” once again; and the DUP, a minority of a minority in Northern Ireland, has obliged with its “No surrender!” line and its threats to take months to consider the framework. DUP boss Sir Jeffry Donaldson has said that it “fell short of what his party could accept, while Downing Street has said that it wants to give the DUP the time that it needs to come to a conclusion. The DUP appears in no hurry despite Biden’s statement that this move is “an essential step” (Reuters, 27.2.23). This creates more problems for Sunak: can the British government continue to be complicit in the sabotage of the Northern Ireland Assembly in the face of the US offensive? Will it have to confront the DUP and override its veto? How will it get it back into the Stormont Assembly? When advocating the deal, Sunak gushed that it put Northern Ireland in a position that was “most exciting ... unbelievably special ... unique in the entire world ... privileged access to the EU single market (Daily Business, 14 March). This statement of the benefits of the EU has raised some eyebrows, not only among political elements in Scotland and Wales; it has also caused further dissent and disquiet among the ranks of Tory MPs, particularly those that were already railing against the deal. All this shows the wider stakes involved in this political minefield for the British government.

The attack by paramilitaries on a senior policeman in Omagh at the end of February, probably by the dissident Republicans of the “New IRA” does, although a relatively isolated event, show the potential for what’s going on beneath the surface in this still militarised society that has been in effect a battleground for the imperialist rivalries of America and Britain for some time. And it also demonstrates that the de facto opposition to the Windsor framework is comprised of the Tory right, Ulster Unionism, and dissident Republicans. Against this, and in the face of the upcoming celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the GFA, and if everything goes to plan for the Americans, the working class in Ireland can expect to be inundated with a wave of pro-American Irish nationalism. And against this, it is important for the working class to retain the memory of its strikes and actions over the decades that have broken out of the sectarian prison, most lately exemplified by the massive 2019 Northern Ireland nurses’ and health-workers’ strike which cut right across the religious divide and involved workers as workers fighting for their own interests.

Baboon, 26.3.23

"An increasingly violent mobilisation" (The Times), "a fire that fascinates and destroys" (El Pais), "Fire in front of Bordeaux town hall" (Der Spiegel).

The clashes between black bloc groups and the police in the demonstrations against pension reform made the headlines in many newspapers in Europe and elsewhere. Similarly, the foreign media also relayed videos of burning rubbish bins, broken windows, projectiles or grenades thrown, skilfully made to look like a real apocalypse. While the movement against pension reform in France has been blacked out until now, the foreign media has suddenly woken up from its torpor to completely distort what has been happening in the streets of all French cities since the middle of January.

Reducing the social movement to destructive riots, which are in fact very minor and marginal, has always been the exercise that the media relish in trying to discredit the struggle. The echo of the struggle in France against the pension reform among the working class in Italy, the UK or Germany has only accentuated the zeal of the bourgeoisie to convey these big lies.

The struggle against pension reform: a mere riot?

Very far from the few gatherings of "arsonists" (of rubbish bins), millions of people have been marching, week after week, in lively demonstrations, determined to fight and to push back this attack. The government's activation on 16 March of Article 49.3 of the Constitution, allowing the adoption of the law without a vote of the deputies, followed, a few days later, by a contemptuous intervention by Macron comparing the demonstrators to "thugs" similar to the hateful and vociferous troops of Trump or Bolsonaro, have even further strengthened the anger and the will to make the government back down.

On the ninth day of mobilisation on 23 March, between 2 and 3 million people gathered. Employees, pensioners, unemployed, high school and university students ... Everyone was in the streets to shout out their continuing refusal to be exploited until the age of 64. The indiscriminate acts of violence by a few hundred members of black blocs, which are broadcast on the news and relayed internationally, have absolutely nothing to do with the very nature of this movement.

These sterile and useless acts serve precisely as a pretext for the CRS, BRAV-M and other guardians of "order" for the exploiters to inflict repression and make terror reign. All this is done with the aim of dissuading workers from joining the demonstrations and preventing rallies and discussions.

For all that, the strategy of sapping the movement through violence, knowingly orchestrated by the government, has not paid off for the moment. The massiveness and determination of the demonstrators over the next two days even led parts of the global bourgeoisie, through the Council of Europe or the UN, to warn Macron and his government against the "excessive use of violence", as the death of one demonstrator could have a resounding impact on the whole proletariat in Western Europe.

Thus, despite the provocations, the multiple traps set by the government, the unions and all the other forces of the bourgeoisie, the struggle in France continues! The massiveness, combativity and solidarity remain intact. This is a matter of concern for parts of the French bourgeoisie who, faced with the isolation and the intransigence of Macron and his government, are resolutely seeking a way out[1].

An international movement of struggles

The scale of this movement is such that it is inspiring workers in several countries. In Italy, we ask ourselves why "nobody lifted a finger" when the retirement age was increased to 67 in 2011? Why didn't we refuse to be further exploited as workers in France are doing today? Striking transport workers in Germany have openly claimed to be inspired by the movement in France. The same was true in the UK and the Czech Republic, also in relation to pensions. Thus, far from being a specificity of "Gallic intractability", the struggle against the pension reform actively participates in the development of the combativity and the reflection of the working class at the international level.

Why is this so? Because it is the whole working class in the world that is affected by inflation, government attacks, the degradation of living conditions, the intensification of exploitation in the workplace.

This is why the "enough is enough" chanted in the UK for months by workers in many sectors, the "ça suffit!" of demonstrators in France, the reaction of workers in Greece following a railway accident[2] are all part of the same international movement of anger and discontent: Spain, Germany, Greece, South Korea, Mexico, China, Italy ... everywhere strikes and demonstrations, everywhere the same struggle to defend themselves against the worst effects of the crisis of capitalism.

As the international echo of the struggle in France shows, an embryo of links between workers that goes beyond borders is gradually emerging. These reflexes of solidarity are the exact opposite of the capitalist world divided into competing nations and constantly praising the cult of the fatherland! On the contrary, they recall the rallying cry of the working class since 1848, that of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels: "Proletarians have no homeland! Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

Thus, the current struggles are the most favourable ground for the realisation that "we are all in the same boat", as the demonstrators in Greece recently insisted. Even if it is still a very fragile and confused process, all these struggles allow us to become aware little by little that it is possible to fight as a united and collective force, as a class, as the world working class!

If combativity and massiveness alone have not been able to make the bourgeoisie back down, the mere fact of experiencing collective struggle, of measuring the deadlocks, of confronting the traps set by the bourgeoisie and of being able to reflect on them in order to draw lessons from them is already a victory and an additional step for future struggles: "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers"[3].

How to extend and develop the struggle?

Every week, in the marches, slogans are expressed such as "You say 64, we'll give you 68 again", "March 2023 is the new May 68". Similarly, the struggle against the CPE in 2006 is on everyone's mind[4]. These experiences from the history of the working class are very precious for the development of struggles. They form a compass allowing the class to find the path of extension and unity of the struggle.

In 1968, the proletariat in France forced the government and the unions to agree on higher wages through massive walkouts and the spread of general assemblies in factories and other workplaces.

In 1969 and 1972, the miners in the UK also managed to create a balance of power favourable to the working class by being able to break out of the corporatist logic through the extension of the struggle: by the dozens and hundreds, they had gone to the ports, steelworks, coal depots, power stations, to blockade them and convince the workers there to join them in the struggle. This method, which became famous as "flying pickets", expressed the collective strength, solidarity and unity of the working class.

In 1980, the working class in Poland shook the bourgeoisie in all countries by gathering in huge general assemblies and electing strike committees (the MKS), deciding on demands and actions of struggle, with the constant concern to expand the struggle.

In 2006, it was the general assemblies organised by the students and open to all (workers, unemployed, pensioners...) that were the lungs of a struggle which, faced with its dynamic extension, forced the Chirac government to withdraw the First Employment Contract (CPE).

All these movements show that the working class can push back the attacks and make the ruling class back down as soon as it is really able to take control of its struggles in order to extend them and unify them on the basis of common demands and means of action.

The media blackout on the massive scale of the struggle in France, like the ultra-publicised demonisation of minority violence, aims precisely at preventing the proletariat from reconnecting with this past, allowing it to become aware of its strength. That's why today, the development of real places of debate, such as sovereign general assemblies open to all, must be defended as a means of action, as the means par excellence to reflect on how to develop and unify struggles. The reappropriation of the lessons of past struggles is a fundamental milestone in this process and, more broadly, in the recovery of the consciousness of belonging to one and the same class, carrying within itself the strength to overthrow the capitalist order.

Vincent, 7 April 2023

Faced with the determination of the workers in France, the bourgeoisie is coming up with all kinds of tricks and traps: shameful provocations by the government, false hopes in an “institutional” way out or “social dialogue” … from left to right, the bourgeoisie does all it can to drive the struggle into a dead-end. In recent weeks, it’s been the overt violence of the police that has been put to maximum use and relayed across the world by the media.

Police violence and provocations are classical methods for maintaining order. After vainly counting on workers becoming exhausted by repeatedly losing a day’s pay, Macron and his government are now instrumentalising the blind and sterile violence of the black blocs. This allows them to deliberately orchestrate a whole enterprise of police provocation and repression against all the demonstrators and striking workers.

For example: at the demonstrations of 28 March, everything was done to make sure the marches turned into massive and violent confrontations with the forces of order. First of all there were the verbal provocations by Macron, which portrayed the demonstrators as a horde of thugs. Then, shocking videos and recordings inundated social media, showing cops assaulting, intimidating and humiliating demonstrators, especially the youngest ones. Finally, a number of these young people found themselves in a life-threatening situation at Saint-Soline, wounded by weapons of war, after which the emergency services were forbidden by the local authorities to step in and help. These provocations were intolerable and there was a huge risk that feelings towards the forces of order would not stop at slogans like “everyone hates the police!” but would turn into chaotic street battles and burning barricades.

However, on 28 March, the demonstrations remained calm: anger was growing from the beginning to the end of the marches but there were only a few skirmishes involving a small number of people. The same thing, but even more calm, on 6 April. The working class didn’t fall into the trap!

Because it is indeed a trap: the bourgeoisie has done all it can to exacerbate the anger of those taking part in the social movement, allowing its cops to act with impunity and to make it known that they can: there will be no sanctions against them, no suspensions, said a cynical and arrogant Minister of the Interior, whose haughtiness could only be rivalled at the Elysée! The message was clear: next time it will be worse. Next time it will be war and you have been warned!

The demonstrators could have been frightened by all this, parents might have kept their kids – students, school pupils – at home and the bourgeoisie could have bragged about a movement “on the decline”. Some of the demonstrators might have been dragged into direct clashes with the police and the bourgeoisie would have had a good opportunity to say that any social movement always ends up in destruction and chaos, and that only the state and its police can guarantee peace and safety.

The bourgeoisie is however not content to impose terror and push towards sterile confrontations. It has another very effective and dangerous weapon in its hands, thanks to its democratic ideology and its trade unions. The latter present themselves as the responsible ones, as guarantors of peaceful demonstrations and effective struggles. In reality, not only do they collaborate with the authorities and the cops in preparing the demonstrations, they themselves act as stewards, organising the demos in such a way that they are separated from each other, split up by sector, profession, category, each one behind its own banner, contained by the unions with their sound systems in order to prevent any real discussion or any initiatives not orchestrated by them. The other side of this coin is provided by the left parties and the bourgeois media who try to inject more ideological poison into the workers’ heads – aimed at making us think that the unions really do defend the workers, but also that there could exist a “police at the service of the people”, respectful of the rule of law, acting within the framework of "irreproachable ethics". These are lies. The unions, like the police, are state organs. They are fundamentally servants of this organ whose role is to be the spearhead of the defence of capitalist order and exploitation.

The class struggle has nothing to do with the blind, minority violence which has been expressed in some confrontations with the forces of repression, any more than it can maintain any illusions in a supposedly more humane and democratic capitalism.

The strength of the working class resides in its collective, massive struggle, the soil in which can grow the consciousness of being a revolutionary class, capable of imposing a real balance of force against the ruling class. It’s not about burning dustbins or chasing a pack of CRS down the street. The bourgeoisie is well aware of this and this is why it seeks by all available means to prevent workers from developing this understanding by provoking reactions of blind anger which serve to blow off steam and which it is perfectly capable of manipulating in its own interests.

Vincent, 10.4.23

“… as long as capitalism exists, there will be workers’ struggles. This was the case in the ascendant phase of capitalism. And also in the period of decadence (from about 1914 onwards) and this was true even during the period of counter-revolution. And even in the COVID period there were workers' struggles, there were strikes in Italy, in the US, etc... So I ask myself: Are strikes in themselves, however positive, an indication of a general revival of the workers' struggle? Can't strikes sometimes be an expression of despair, of doubt? … What are the criteria for determining that a particular workers' struggle represents a genuine renewal of workers' struggle, a struggle that offers a perspective?" (C)

The point raised by the comrade is crucial for the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle: how to identify the meaning of a struggle, "a struggle that offers a perspective"? Certainly, there are no absolute criteria for determining whether a particular strike represents "a general renewal of workers' struggle". However, one should beware of a purely empirical appreciation of such a movement, because in many cases appearances can be deceptive. To grasp its real significance, the analysis must go beyond superficial characteristics and start from a framework of evaluation that takes into account:

- First, the characteristics of the historical period in which it takes place: expansion or decline of capitalism, certainly. But, more importantly in today's decadent capitalism, is it a period characterised by a global tendency towards counter-revolution or, on the contrary, by the opening of a course towards important class confrontations?

- Then, the appreciation of the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in a particular historical period: what is the dynamic of the class struggle at the level of its extension, unification or politicisation? What is the impact of the manoeuvres and ideological obstacles put in place by the bourgeoisie?

Such a framework enables us to evaluate the development of the subjective factor within the class.

Class struggle and historical period

In the present period of capitalist decadence, the general course towards defeat or, on the contrary, towards a strengthening of the proletarian movement, is a crucial reference point for evaluating the potentialities of a particular struggle, however radical it may appear at first sight. It makes it possible to take into account the level of consciousness in  the mass of workers, beyond simple combativity or even the number of workers involved in the struggle.  

Some historical examples demonstrate this. In May-June 1936, an immense wave of strikes and factory occupations swept across France: two and a half million workers from all sectors, private and public, and from all industries and services, launched themselves into struggle, so that Trotsky wrote on 9 June 1936 that "the French revolution has begun".  In reality, the proletariat was about to be enrolled behind the bourgeois ideology of anti-fascism - an ideology which was to lead it to defeat and war. This movement was situated in a general dynamic of struggle which was unfavourable.

After the defeat of the German Revolution and other massive movements in Western Europe, after the victory of Stalinism in Russia, the counter-revolution triumphed and class consciousness suffered a deep retreat among proletarians. Therefore, despite temporary gains such as wage increases, the 40-hour week and paid holidays, the 1936 movement quickly turned into a nationalist anthem and support for the Popular Front government, which would lead to a mobilisation of workers in preparation for the world war.

On 23 October 1956, students and young workers organised a demonstration in Budapest to express their solidarity with a workers' uprising that had been bloodily repressed in Poznan in Poland. On the 25th, workers from all the industrial centres of Hungary joined the protests, went on strike and spontaneously formed workers' councils: a spectacular development which seemed to herald the beginning of a proletarian revolution. However, in the 1950s and 1960s, the proletariat, atomised by the Second World War, still remained globally mobilised behind the democratic or Stalinist ruling class. So, after the first mobilisations, the bourgeoisie was able to take advantage of the democratic illusions which undermined the workers' consciousness. It was thus able to control the movement. On the 27th it installed a "progressive" government led by Imre Nagy, which immediately launched a counter-offensive by dismantling the hated security police, promising democratic reforms and calling for the restoration of order. Soon the workers' councils, awash with illusions, expressed their support for the Nagy government by deciding to end the strikes and resume work.

When the strike movement of May 68 broke out in France, the historical conditions had radically changed. Its soil was fertilised by the first signs of the return of the historical crisis of capitalism, and the movement was initiated by a new generation of workers, who had not been subjected to the horrible events of the counter-revolution. This context allowed the proletariat to throw aside the dead weight of Stalinism and to seek to renew links with its past experience, to become aware of the need to struggle at the historic level. While it was the biggest strike in the history of the international workers’ movement, involving at least 8 million workers, the media and bourgeois intellectuals downplayed its importance and emphasised the student revolt.

The less spectacular appearance of the strike wave in fact masked an event of the utmost importance, which marked the end of the period of counter-revolution, heralded the historic resurgence of the class struggle on a global scale over the next two decades, expressed a real development of consciousness and aroused massive interest in a broad milieu for the writings of militants of the revolutionary workers’ movement.

The balance of forces between the classes

With the numerous struggles in the aftermath of the May 1968 movement, which opened a dynamic towards decisive class confrontations, a process of developing consciousness, the balance of forces was initially in favour of the proletariat; and this was highlighted when the workers in Poland posed the question of the open politicisation of the struggle, involving a confrontation with the bourgeois state.

However, the working class, particularly in the core countries of capitalism, failed to take up the question in the 1980s by raising its consciousness to a new level.. Despite numerous struggles, it was not able to go beyond the trade union framework and raise its struggle to the level of an open class-on-class confrontation, thus losing its advantage in the balance of forces with the bourgeoisie, even if its combativity prevented the latter from imposing its solution to the crisis - world war.

This contradictory situation finally led to a dead end, since neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat succeeded in imposing their perspective. After the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the ideological campaign on the "death of communism" and the "final victory of democracy", as well as the opening of the phase of decomposition with an accelerated rotting of society, led to an ebb of the class struggle, provoking a retreat in consciousness within the class, a balance of forces that was more clearly unfavourable to the proletariat: "the decomposition of capitalism has profoundly affected the essential dimensions of the class struggle: collective action, solidarity, the need for organisation, the relations which underlie all life in society and which are increasingly breaking down, confidence in the future and in one's own forces, consciousness, lucidity, coherence and unity of thought, the taste for theory." [1]

It’s true that the ICC had a certain  tendency to underestimate the extent of this ebb and to prematurely predict, as in 2003, the end of the retreat of the workers' struggle: proletarian movements were held back first by a growing hold of the unions in the 1990s, more generally by the deleterious effects of individualism and every man for himself or by their dissolution into popular and interclass revolts, as during the "Arab Spring" in 2010-11 or with the "Yellow Vest" movement in 2018-19.

Demonstrations of proletarian resistance against the pressure of decomposition did arise during these years, such as the anti-CPE movement in 2006 in France or the Indignados movement in Spain (2011), but they could not mark the end of the deep retreat insofar as they were not powerful enough, and above all not conscious enough, to impose an alternative on a class terrain in the face of the effects of decomposition.

“Enough is Enough!”

In contrast to previous decades, the current wave of struggle, which began in the UK, marks a significant break with the previous thirty years. Beyond the immediate expressions, the context in which these struggles are developing highlights their deeper significance:

- despite the pressure of decomposition stimulating the search for individual solutions or interclassist and populist revolts;

- despite the two-year Covid pandemic, which has made it more difficult for workers to come together for the struggle;

- despite the current "vortex" effect of capitalist decomposition (pandemic, ecological catastrophe, economic disruption, etc.), within which the war in Ukraine in particular tends to amplify the powerlessness in the face of growing barbarism,

workers have come to the conclusion that "enough is enough" and that the only way to put an end to it is to mobilise on their class terrain to defend their living and working conditions. In fact, the expansion of this wave can only be understood as the result of a change in the workers' state of mind,  as the result of a long process of subterranean maturation within the class, of disillusionment and disengagement with the main themes of bourgeois ideology.

In particular, it is especially significant that the British working class was in the vanguard of this rupture:

- even though the defeat of the miners' strike in 1984-85 dealt it a severe blow and weighed on its combativity and consciousness in recent decades,

- even though the intensive populist Brexit campaign had created deep divisions in its ranks between "remainers" and "leavers" (pro and anti-EU),

the proletariat in Britain, under the pressure of the widespread impact of the economic crisis and the heavy damage to its living conditions, has raised its head and resolutely engaged in the struggle.

Like May '68 (but in a different context), the current international movement expresses  the beginnings of a process of in-depth reflection, of a tendency towards the recovery of class identity. It marks a break with a long period of retreat, characterised by disorientation, by a reduction of class consciousness and by workers' struggles often being completely isolated from each other. Despite their weaknesses, the very simultaneity of the current struggles (in most of Western Europe, but also in Korea or the US) underlines once again the reality that, for a struggle to be successful, it must develop into a common and united movement throughout the class. The current wave shows not only a development of combativity but also a return of workers' confidence in their own strength as a class and a deepening reflection, even if we are only at the beginning of this process.

Through examples from the history of the workers' movement, we wanted to show:

• the importance for revolutionaries to analyse precisely the context of the workers' struggle in order to assess the level of consciousness in the class;
• that a superficial look at strikes can be misleading and lead to a wrong assessment and ultimately to a wrong orientation of the intervention of revolutionary organisations.

As Lenin wrote: “Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action. Marx and Engels always said, rightly ridiculing the mere memorising and repetition of ‘formulas’, that at best are capable only of marking out general tasks, which are necessarily modifiable by the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period of the historical process."

Dennis, 24 February 2023

[1] How can the proletariat overthrow capitalism? [253], International Review no. 168 (2022)

More than a year already of appalling carnage; hundreds of thousands of soldiers massacred on both sides; more than a year of indiscriminate bombings and executions, murdering tens of thousands of civilians; more than a year of systematic destruction turning the country into a gigantic field of ruins, while the displaced populations number in the millions; more than a year of huge budgets sunk into this butchery on both sides (Russia is now committing about 50% of its state budget to the war, while the hypothetical reconstruction of the ruined Ukraine would require more than 400 billion dollars). And this tragedy is far from over.

In terms of imperialist confrontations, the outbreak of the war in Ukraine was also an important qualitative step in the sinking of capitalist society into war and militarism. It is true that since 1989, various warlike ventures have shaken the planet (the wars in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria...), but these had never involved a confrontation between major imperialist powers. The Ukrainian conflict is the first military confrontation of this magnitude between states to take place on Europe's doorstep since 1940-45. It involves the two largest countries in Europe, one of which has nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and the other is supported financially and militarily by NATO, and has the potential to result in a catastrophe for humanity.

Beyond the indignation and disgust provoked by this large-scale carnage, it is the responsibility of revolutionaries not to limit themselves to general and abstract condemnations, but to draw the main lessons of the Ukrainian conflict in order to understand the dynamics of imperialist confrontations and to warn the workers about the exacerbation of chaos and the intensification of military barbarity.

Offensive of US imperialism exacerbates chaos
While Russia invaded Ukraine, a major lesson of this year of war is undoubtedly that behind the protagonists on the battlefield, US imperialism is on the offensive.

Faced with the decline of its hegemony, the US has been pursuing an aggressive policy to defend its interests since the 1990s, especially towards the former leader of the rival bloc, Russia. Despite the commitment made after the disintegration of the USSR not to enlarge NATO, the Americans have integrated all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact into this alliance. In 2014, the 'Orange Revolution' replaced the pro-Russian regime in Ukraine with a pro-Western government and a popular revolt threatened the pro-Russian regime in Belarus a few years later. Putin's regime responded to this strategy of encirclement by employing its military strength, the remnant of its past as a bloc leader. After Putin's 2014 takeover of Crimea and Donbass, the US began arming Ukraine and training its military to use more sophisticated weapons. When Russia deployed its army to Ukraine's borders, they tightened the trap by claiming that Putin would invade Ukraine while assuring that they themselves would not intervene on the ground. By means of this strategy of encircling and suffocating Russia, the United States has pulled off a masterstroke that has a much more ambitious goal than simply halting Russian ambitions:

- As of now, the war in Ukraine leads to a clear weakening of Moscow's remaining military power and a lowering of its imperialist ambitions. It also demonstrates the absolute superiority of US military technology, which is the basis for the "miracle" of "little Ukraine" pushing back the "Russian bear";
- The conflict also allowed them to tighten the screws within NATO, as European countries were forced to fall in line with the American position, especially France and Germany, which were developing their own policies towards Russia and ignoring NATO, which French President Macron considered to be “brain dead” until two years ago;
- The primary objective of the Americans in teaching Russia a lesson was undoubtedly an unequivocal warning to their main challenger, China. For the past ten years, the United States has been defending its leadership against the rise of the Chinese challenger: first, during the Trump presidency, through an open trade war; but now the Biden administration has stepped up the pressure militarily (the tensions around Taiwan). Thus, the conflict in Ukraine has weakened China's only important military ally and is putting a strain on the New Silk Road project, one axis of which passed through Ukraine.
While a polarisation of imperialist tensions has gradually emerged between the US and China, this is the product of a systematic policy pursued by the dominant imperialist power, the US, in an attempt to halt the irreversible decline of its leadership. After Bush senior's war against Iraq, Bush junior's polarisation against the "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea), the US offensive today aims to prevent any emergence of major challengers. Thirty years of such a policy have not brought any discipline and order to imperialist relations. On the contrary, it has exacerbated every man for himself, chaos and barbarism. The United States is today a major vehicle for the terrifying expansion of military confrontations.

The intensification of every man for himself and of tensions
Contrary to superficial journalistic statements, the development of events shows that the conflict in Ukraine has by no means led to a "rationalisation" of the contradictions. In addition to the major imperialisms, which are under pressure from the US offensive, the explosion of a multiplicity of ambitions and rivalries accentuates the chaotic and irrational character of imperialist relations.
The accentuation of the American pressure on the other major imperialisms can only push them to react:
- For Russian imperialism, it is a question of survival because it is already obvious that, whatever the outcome of the conflict, Russia will emerge clearly diminished from the adventure which has exposed its military and economic limits. It is militarily exhausted, having lost two hundred thousand soldiers, especially among its most experienced elite units, as well as a large quantity of tanks, planes and modern helicopters. It is economically weakened by the enormous costs of the war and the collapse of the economy caused by Western sanctions. While the Putin faction is trying by all means to keep power, tensions are arising within the Russian bourgeoisie, especially with the more nationalistic fractions or certain "warlords" (eg Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries). These unfavourable military and unstable political conditions could even lead Russia to resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

- The European bourgeoisies, especially France and Germany, had urged Putin not to go to war and were even prepared, as Boris Johnson's indiscretions revealed, to endorse a limited attack in scale and time to replace the regime in Kiev. Faced with the failure of the Russian forces and the unexpected resistance of the Ukrainians, Macron and Scholz had to sheepishly adhere to the US-led NATO position. However, there is no question of submitting to US policy and abandoning their own imperialist interests, as illustrated by the recent trips of Scholz and Macron to Beijing. Moreover, both countries have sharply increased their military budgets with a view to a massive reequipment of their armed forces (a doubling for Germany, i.e. 107 billion euros). These initiatives have also raised tensions in the Franco-German couple, particularly over the development of joint arms programmes and over the EU's economic policy.
- China has positioned itself very cautiously in relation to the Ukrainian conflict, in the face of the difficulties of its Russian "ally" and the thinly veiled threats of the United States towards it. For the Chinese bourgeoisie, the lesson is bitter: the war in Ukraine has shown that any global imperialist ambitions are illusory in the absence of a military and economic force capable of competing with the US superpower. Today, China, which does not yet have armed forces equal to its economic expansion, is vulnerable to American pressure and to the surrounding war chaos. Of course, the Chinese bourgeoisie is not giving up its imperialist ambitions, in particular the reconquest of Taiwan, but it can only make progress in the long term, by avoiding giving in to the numerous American provocations ("spy" balloons, banning of the TikTok application...) and by carrying out a broad diplomatic charm offensive aimed at avoiding any international isolation: reception in Beijing of a large number of heads of state, Iranian-Saudi rapprochement sponsored by China, proposal of a plan to stop the fighting in Ukraine. ..

On the other hand, the imperialist every man for himself is causing an explosion in the number of potential conflict zones. In Europe, the pressure on Germany is leading to dissension with France and the EU has reacted with anger to the protectionism of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, seen as a real declaration of war on European exports to the US. In Central Asia, the decline of Russian power goes hand in hand with a rapid expansion of the influence of other powers, such as China, Turkey, Iran or the US in the former Soviet republics. In the Far East, the risk of conflict persists between China on the one hand and India (with regular border clashes) or Japan (which is massively rearming), not to mention the tensions between India and Pakistan and the recurrent ones between the two Koreas. In the Middle East, the weakening of Russia, the internal destabilization of important protagonists such as Iran (popular revolts, struggles between factions and imperialist pressures) or Turkey (disastrous economic situation) will have a major impact on imperialist relations. Finally, in Africa, while the energy and food crisis and war tensions are raging in various regions (Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Western Sahara), aggressive competition between imperialist vultures is stimulating destabilisation and chaos.

Explosion of the irrationality of militarism
A year of war in Ukraine has underlined above all that capitalist decomposition accentuates one of the most pernicious aspects of war in the epoch of decadence: its irrationality. The effects of militarism are, in fact, becoming ever more unpredictable and disastrous, regardless of initial ambitions:

- the United States fought both Gulf Wars, as well as the war in Afghanistan, to maintain its leadership on the planet, but in all these cases the result was an explosion of chaos and instability, as well as streams of refugees;

- whatever the objectives of the many imperialist vultures (Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, American or European) who intervened in the horrific Syrian or Libyan civil wars, they inherited a country in ruins, fragmented and divided into clans, with millions of refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries or to the industrialised countries.
The war in Ukraine is an exemplary confirmation of this: whatever the geostrategic objectives of Russian or American imperialism, the result is a devastated country (Ukraine), an economically and militarily ruined country (Russia), an even more tense and chaotic imperialist situation in the world, and still millions of refugees.

The increasing irrationality of warfare implies a terrifying expansion of military barbarity across the globe. In this context, ad hoc alliances can be formed around particular objectives. For example, Turkey, a member of NATO, is adopting a policy of neutrality towards Russia in Ukraine, hoping to use this to ally itself with Russia in Syria against the US-backed Kurdish militias.

However, and contrary to bourgeois propaganda, the Ukrainian conflict does not lead to a regrouping of imperialisms into blocs, and therefore does not open the dynamics towards a third world war, but rather towards a terrifying expansion of bloody chaos: important imperialist powers such as India, South Africa, Brazil and even Saudi Arabia clearly retain their autonomy from the protagonists; the bond between China and Russia has not tightened, on the contrary; and while the US is using the war to impose its views within NATO, member countries such as Turkey or Hungary are openly going it alone while Germany and France are trying in all sorts of ways to develop their own policies. Moreover, the leader of a potential bloc must be able to generate trust among the member countries and guarantee the security of its allies. China, however, has been very cautious in its support for its Russian ally. As for the United States, after Trump's "America First" approach, which had chilled the "allies", Biden is basically pursuing the same policy: he is making them pay a high energy price for the boycott of the Russian economy, whereas the United States is self-sufficient in this area, and the "anti-China" laws will hit European imports hard. It is precisely this lack of security guarantees that led Saudi Arabia to conclude an agreement with China and Iran. Finally, as a major obstacle to a dynamic towards a third world war, the proletariat is not defeated and ideologically mobilised in the service of the nation in the central industrialised countries, as illustrated by the current struggles in various European countries. An ideological weapon capable of mobilising the proletariat, such as fascism and anti-fascism in the 1930s, does not exist today.

The war in Ukraine is stirring up the other dimensions of the "polycrisis
The situation is all the more delicate because the "Ukrainian crisis" does not appear as an isolated phenomenon but as one of the manifestations of this "polycrisis"[1], the accumulation and interaction of health, economic, ecological, food and war crises, which characterises the twenties of the 21st century. And the war in Ukraine constitutes in this context a real multiplier and intensifier of barbarism and chaos at the global level:

“The aggregation and interaction of these destructive phenomena produces a 'vortex effect' (…) it is important to stress the driving force of war, as an action deliberately pursued and planned for by capitalist states.”[2] In fact, the war in Ukraine and its economic repercussions have favoured rebounds of Covid (as in China), accentuated the rise in inflation and recession in various regions of the world, provoked a food and energy crisis, caused a setback in climate policies (nuclear and even coal-fired power stations are back in operation) and led to a new influx of refugees. Not to mention the ever-present risk of bombing nuclear power plants, as still seen around the Zaporizhzhia site, or the use of chemical, bacteriological or nuclear weapons.

In short, one year of war in Ukraine highlights how it has intensified the "great rearmament of the world", symbolised by the massive military investments of the two great losers of the Second World War, Japan, which has committed 320 billion dollars to its army in 5 years, the biggest armament effort since 1945, and above all Germany, which is also increasing its defence budget.

As an obviously deliberate product of the ruling class, the carnage in Ukraine clearly illustrates the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. However, the feelings of impotence and horror generated by the war do not favour the development of a proletarian opposition to the conflict today. On the other hand, the significant worsening of the economic crisis, and the attacks against workers which directly result from it, is pushing the latter to mobilise on their class terrain to defend their living conditions. In this dynamic of renewed struggles, warlike barbarism will eventually constitute a source of awareness of the bankruptcy of the system, which today is still limited to small minorities of the class.

R. Havanais, 25 March 2023

After ten months of strikes in many sectors, the ruling class, both on the European continent and overseas, can no longer hide the fact that the working class in Britain has raised its head. The bourgeois media, which were initially reticent in their reporting, must now admit that the strikes have broken all records: not only in the number of workers and sectors involved, but also in their development into a full-blown strike wave. [1]
The Internationalist Communist Tendency, through its affiliate in the UK, the Communist Workers’ Organisation, a group of the communist left, has taken position on the movements in a number of articles and leaflets. It generally defends class positions, insisting that capitalism has no way out of its deepening crisis and is obliged to intensify its attack on the workers, that the latter must escape from the union prison if they are to overcome the divisions and that this means taking the organisation of the struggle into their own hands.

From a gross overestimation to a haughty disdain for struggles
But it is not enough to propose abstract positions interspersed with random analyses. Revolutionary organisations have a responsibility to accurately assess the relationship of forces and the context in which the struggles take place in order to present concrete perspectives for the dynamics of the movement. In this respect, the ICT's analysis of the significance of these struggles is highly contradictory and reveals an inconsistent framework for understanding the relationship of forces between classes.
The first expressions of struggle in the UK initially aroused some enthusiasm in the ICT: “the frontal assaults on labour are provoking the beginnings of a new resistance (…) after decades of class retreat” and “in the current wave of wildcat actions we already see the possibility of going beyond both the Union framework and the Legal framework of the capitalist state” [2]. But then the ICT's enthusiasm cooled significantly: “We are still far from the level of militancy of the 1970s”while in early 2023 it estimated that “the danger of ‘money militancy’ looms large: isolated sections of workers exhausting themselves through quite draining strikes fighting over what amounts to crumbs”[3].  The ICT refers here to its position on the struggles of the 1970s, “the 1970s when each sector of workers divided by the unions chased ever greater percentages for a wage rise. This not only did not lead to a questioning of the wages system but even reinforced it”[4]. But surprise, in one of its most recent articles, the ICT again gets carried away: “On the first of February, 2023, was the biggest strike day for over a decade. This is just the beginning of a strike wave”[5].

Apart from the fact that the bourgeoisie itself had noted this long before the ICT, we would like to understand the ICT's overall assessment of the struggles in the UK: do they indicate “the beginning of a of strike wave” or just isolated sections of workers exhausting themselves through quite draining strikes”? Does this movement constitute “the beginnings of a new resistance (…) after decades of class retreat” or has it only “lead to a questioning of the wages system but even reinforced it”?
 

The absence of an analysis based on an international perspective
Since the summer of 2022, the expansion of workers' struggles in Britain has inspired similar movements in other countries. As a result, a correct assessment of the current wave in the UK is impossible if it is disconnected from the evolution of the class struggle at the international level. Yet the ICT almost exclusively views the struggles through British glasses: the seven articles produced on the strikes in Britain lack reference to the struggles developing elsewhere. It is as if each national sector of the working class was waging its own struggle and the global struggle was merely a sum of national struggles rather than the expression of a single dynamic.

Certainly, the ICT writes about struggles in other parts of the capitalist world, but it does not see the importance of the movement in the UK as an expression of a global international tendency of the proletariat to break with the previous period of low combativity and lack of self-confidence. It knows that the struggles in the UK and France are taking place on a proletarian terrain, but it fails to grasp, in practice, the common ground shared by these two fractions of the working class.
The ICT's distorted view of the international dimension of the proletarian struggle is clearly illustrated, for example, in the article on the 2015 telecom workers’ struggle in Spain, in which it writes that “there are concrete possibilities here for international extension of the struggle as Teleafonica operates in 5 countries” [6] , when in fact the real and immediate need of the striking workers is to get in direct contact with the workers involved in the struggle “in the nearest factory, hospital, school, administration”[7]. On the other hand, this kind of "international" sectoral extension of the struggle only reinforces corporatism within the working class and tends to undermine its international unification.

The failure of the ICT to understand the historical context
To appreciate the significance of a particular class movement, it is essential to place it in a more historical and global context. Thus, for the ICC, the current struggles are important because they mark a break with a period of retreat that goes back to the late 1980s and the implosion of the " Communist" bloc, but also because they confirm that this retreat was not equivalent to the kind of global historical defeat that the working class experienced after the crushing of its first revolutionary assault, between 1917 and 1923, a period that the international resurgence of struggles in 1968 brought to a close.
But on these questions, the ICT confirms its inconsistency. Ten years ago, it stated bluntly that we were still living in a counter-revolutionary period: “The fragmentation and dispersal of the class (…)  has reduced the working class capacity to fight back and the continuing refrain that there is no alternative to capitalism are all evidence that the class still has not reversed the heavy defeat of the 1920s”[8]. However, in 2016-2017, it cautiously maintained that “currently the class is slowly recovering from decades of retreat and restructuring” [9]. But the ICT quickly withdrew this analysis to assert that “we are still fighting to redress the balance which we have seen as one of retreat for 40 years”[10].

The clearest evidence of the ICT's failure to grasp the overall historical context is the fact that its underestimation of the significance of the current struggles goes hand in hand with the high energy it invests in its ‘No War But The Class War’ campaign, which rests on the illusion that the working class is already capable of waging a direct anti-war struggle, without realising that such an expectation is completely inconsistent with its idea that the proletariat is still labouring under the weight of a historic defeat.
 

A lack of understanding how consciousness develops in the class
Although the ICT is fairly consistent in its denunciation of union divisions, we know that it tends to fall into the trap of rank-and-file unionism, when the latter uses more radical language which can include raising the banner of ‘strike committees’ that in fact in fact represent an adaptation of union structures in order to maintain their control over workers. For the ICT, these union bodies can be a step forward, as shown by the example of the Bus Workers Combine set up by 'Unite': according to the ICT this is “an attempt to coordinate the struggle for improved pay and conditions across different depots. Different groups of workers uniting their struggles is incredibly important, and is our best chance of success” [11].
This opportunist attitude towards rank-and-file unionism is linked to the ICT's confusion about the relationship between economic and political struggle. The notion of ‘money militancy’ (see quote above in the article) actually expresses a devaluation of economic struggles, an underestimation of their implicitly political dimension.
For the ICC, the struggle on the economic terrain is an essential and unavoidable dimension, forging the weapons of tomorrow's revolutionary assault. In other words, any proletarian struggle “is simultaneously for immediate demands and it is revolutionary. Making demands, resisting capitalist exploitation, is the basis and the engine of the revolutionary action undertaken by the class. […] In the history of the workers’ movement there is not a single proletarian revolutionary struggle which was not a struggle for demands at the same time. And how could it be otherwise, since it is the revolutionary struggle of a class, of a group of men who are characterized by their economic position and united by their common material situation?”[12].

For the ICT, on the contrary, “the economic struggle arises, produces what it can produce on the level of demands, and then declines without leaving a political trace. That is unless there is an intervention by the revolutionary party”[13]. Thus, the workers are not able to politicise their struggle and this can only be done through the intervention of the "party", which functions here as the deus ex machina necessary to overcome the opposition between the two dimensions of the struggle.
In short, in the face of the movements in Britain but also all over Europe, it is particularly worrying that an organisation which claims to give orientations for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is incapable of appreciating these struggles in their historical context and of apprehending their international dimension. But for the ICT, this responsibility does not seem to be necessary since "the party" will appear, like Superman, to solve everything with a wave of its magic wand!

D.&R.12.4.23

Notes 

 

[1] Some examples:

• “Les syndicats mènent leurs plus grandes grèves depuis trente ans”(Le Monde)
• “The UK is experiencing historic strikes” (Washington Post)

2 Wildcat Strikes in the UK: Getting Ready for a Hot Autumn [215].

3 Notes on the UK Strike Wave [255].

4 Unions - Whose Side Are They On? [256]

5 Unite the Strikes [257]

6 Spanish Telecom Workers on All-Out Strike [258]. [259]

7 International leaflet of the ICC: UK, France, Spain, Germany, Mexico, China... Everywhere the same question: How to develop the struggle? How to make governments back down? [260]

8 Cleishbotham (2.9.11) Forum of the ICT, ICC theses on decomposition [261].

9 A Crisis of the Entire System [262], Summer 2017

10 Cleishbotham, February 2019, ICT Forum: The Party, Fractions and Periodisation [263]

11 Two Comments on Recent Bus Strikes in the UK [264]

12 Why the proletariat is the revolutionary class: Critical notes on the article 'Leçons de la lutte des ouvriers anglais' in Révolution Internationale no 9 [265]

13 The Question of Consciousness: A Basis for Discussion [266]

On numerous occasions, when climate or industrial catastrophes have left many victims, the ICC has systematically denounced the crocodile tears of the governments, of political or economic high-ups who always invoke chance or human error, the “irresponsibility” of this or that technician, wage-earner or structure in charge of local maintenance, or the “unpredictability” of climatic episodes…

Each time, in the face of such disasters – floods, mudslides, gigantic forest fires, the collapse of bridges, as in Genoa, factory fires (and such events have accelerated in recent years), the cynicism and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie knows no limits. It always seeks to point out a scapegoat, to find a convenient explanation to justify the unjustifiable, to make us forget who is really responsible: the representatives and defenders of a dying capitalist system, which seeps death and destruction from every pore, all over the world.

Today, in Greece, following the headlong collision between two trains, the government and railway companies have tried to put the blame on an inexperienced station master who made a fatal error, which he himself has admitted to.

But the difference with other equally dramatic accidents, including the huge fires in Greece in 2018 and 2021 which left dozens dead, the shock and pain of the population provoked by the death of the 57 victims of the rail crash have not stopped at solemn homages under the auspices of the bourgeois state, and they were not aimed at the station master judged “guilty” by the government and the prime minister Mitsotakis.

Rejecting the idea that this was something unavoidable, the immense anger and indignation of a major part of the population, above all the working class, exploded into the streets, in Athens, in Thessalonica, in the workplaces and in demonstrations held by tens of thousands of people, in spontaneous strikes by railway workers, with a call to stop work on 8 March in a large number of public and private sectors, from health to education, to sailors, metro workers, students…something not seen for over ten years.

As in Britain over the last 9 months, as in France today in reaction to the pensions “reform”, the working class in Greece is also crying “enough is enough!”.

Faced with decaying public services, with over ten years of austerity plans, the street has replied to the powers that be by a slogan heard at all the gatherings: “This was not human error, it was not an accident, it was a crime!” “Down with this government of murderers!” “Mitsotakis, minister of crime!”. The apologies issued by Mitsotakis after his first lamentable statements about the station master’s “human error” were just seen as a further provocation, following which over 12,000 people took to the streets.

The working class in Greece is expressing its solidarity with all the victims of capitalist exploitation, declaring its refusal to pay for the crisis, its rejection of repeated austerity plans and of the prolongation of years at work, as in France; its unwillingness to die in transport systems which have become death traps, owing to a lack of personnel, disrepair in the infrastructure, wrecked buses and trains, obsolete or non-existent safety systems, scarcity of material… “This train accident is just a drop in the ocean. Nothing works in Greece. Education, health, public transport, everything is in ruins. This government has done nothing to redress this intolerable situation in the public sector, but it has spent money on the police and the army!” (a Greek school teacher).

This is the daily reality of the capitalist system, of the worsening of our living and working conditions all over the world!

The massive combativity of the working class in Greece today can be added to that of the proletariat in France, in Britain, which has already been fighting for months, in struggles which express an enormous anger and determination.

Indignation at the hypocrisy of the state, faced with the frenzied search for profit in all enterprises, whether private or not, expresses the same anger, the same solidarity, the same refusal to bow down and pay with your life for the putrefaction of the capitalist system.

It’s the same class “reflex” we are seeing in Greece, in continuity with other massive expressions of anger in the face of the economic crisis and the ineptitude of the state. And here again, it’s years since we have seen this level of militancy.

This “reflex” of solidarity in the workers’ ranks is a break from years of apathy and retreat. A highly eloquent example: during the strike day on 8 March, the striking public transport workers decided to keep the bus and metro running for a few hours, so that people could take part in the demonstrations!  This is how the struggle can spread solidarity and increase the scale of mobilisations, unlike the “blockades” proposed by the unions in France.

The bourgeoisie in Greece, which was initially taken aback by the massive rection of the workers, has of course tried to put limits on the mobilisation and on the process of  reflection: it is shouting about corruption, cronyism, the retreat of a “law-based” state, about the austerity imposed by Europe, and it is calling for massive participation in the forthcoming legislative elections. Everything to mask the reality of the decomposition of the capitalist world and its responsibility for the disasters it engenders, in Greece as everywhere else.

But whatever the outcome of this massive movement of solidarity, it is already a victory, a further step in the renewal of class struggle on an international scale.

Stopio, 10.3.23

 

Almost a year has passed since the strikes in the UK started. During the course of that year workers in Britain have reminded the world of their position at the birth of the workers’ movement, in the 1840s with the Chartists, the first political party of the working class, and later, with their leading role in the foundation of the First International. In the past 10 months workers in Britain have upheld that tradition and put themselves at the head of a new phase in workers’ struggle internationally.

The strike wave heralds an international resurgence

The strike wave began only a few months after the start of the war in Ukraine, with its deafening campaign about the defence of democracy; but the ICC has always been confident in the capacity of the world working class, and was convinced that its fighting potential had not evaporated, and that it would, one day, return to the path of struggle – which is what happened in 2022. It’s the first time since the 1980s that the working class in Britain has clearly left its mark on the social situation.

The defeat of the miners’ strike in 1985, the dismantling of much heavy industry and of centres of class struggle like the mines and docks, the campaign about the ‘death of Communism’ after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, all these had for years confused and disorientated the working class in Britain. Any sense of class identity had virtually disappeared. This situation weighed heavily on the working class and reduced struggles to a historically low level. But this changed in 2022 with what the bourgeois media called the ‘Summer of Discontent’.

In the face of record-breaking inflation, workers embarked on struggles against the ‘cost-of-living crisis’. This was in spite of all the negative effects of the acceleration of social decomposition, a period marked by ‘each for himself’, despair, nihilism, the rejection of rational thought, the proliferation of violent crime, and most recently by the imperialist free-for-all exploding in the war in Ukraine. But none of this deterred workers in Britain from launching strikes, walkouts, demonstrations and other protests as part of a class-wide resistance against the attacks of the ruling class.

In 2022 more than 2.5 million working days were lost to strike action, more than any year since the end of the 1980s. The massive character of the struggles shows that what is taking place is not limited to a particular sector, or to the workers of a certain region, but is a struggle of the whole working class. The strikes demonstrate that decaying capitalism, as it exists in the UK today, no longer offers any perspective apart from growing poverty and the absolute degradation of living conditions. In the face of this worsening situation, the working class was no longer willing to accept it; and starting from the conviction that only by struggling together could gains be made, it developed the first expressions of collective action, of solidarity between different sectors, between “blue collar” and “white collar” workers, and between the different generations.

The strike wave also shows the first fledgling signs of a class regaining confidence in its own strength, and of a recovery of class identity among workers who are beginning to recognise that their struggle is part of a class movement that goes beyond disputes with individual employers. And if the present struggles are a direct response to the rising cost of living, they are also the product of three decades of maturation in the working class, of a new step in the loss of illusions in the capitalist system.

Sabotage by the unions and the leftists

The bourgeoisie had not been passively waiting for the resumption of the struggles. In anticipation of a revival of working class combativity, it took precautions, for example with the emergence in 2021 of new, more militant union leaders, such as Mick Lynch and Sharon Graham, among others. These new leaders had to try to win the confidence of workers after years of anti-working class measures implemented with the help of the unions.

From the moment the strikes began in June 2022, the British bourgeoisie (government, opposition, unions, etc.) mobilised all its forces and set up different obstacles to the struggles in order to avoid the coming together of striking workers beyond their own sector, their own region, their own company or their own office. Union-controlled pickets were used as barriers separating workers from one another. As we have pointed out “Sending pickets to other workplaces and sectors and asking them to join the struggle, is illegal ‘secondary picketing’”[1] The unions’ separation of workers was pushed to the extreme when pickets were sometimes less than a hundred metres apart and workers did not take the initiative to come together to unify their struggle. All strikes, walkouts and work stoppages were kept “isolated from each other. Everyone in their own strike, in their own factory, their depot, their business, their part of the public sector. There is no real link between these struggles, even when it would be just a matter of crossing the street for the strikers from the hospital to meet those from the school or the supermarket opposite”[2]

The bourgeoisie also made full use of the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales. The unions divided the struggle up between those in Scotland and those in England or between Wales and England. A good example was that of the Scottish government offering the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) a better pay deal than was offered in England and Wales. During the negotiations with the Scottish government, the RCN ‘paused’ the strikes, leaving nurses Scotland in a state of limbo, whilst nurses in England and Wales were on strike.

The left wing of the bourgeoisie has also been able to recuperate discontent in the class by pushing it towards the defence of public services. The day of protest on 11 March, for example, organised by SOS NHS, a coalition of more than 40 groups and some unions, mobilised thousands of workers from the health sector under the slogans “This is a national emergency” and “Act now to save our NHS”. The fight for better pay and working conditions of heath care workers was turned into a call for Labour "to reinstate the NHS as a fully public service”, as Cat Hobbs, one of the organisers, said in her speech[3].

In the last few months of the strike wave the call to unite the different struggles has become stronger, and unions have been compelled to create new organs, bringing together members of different unions, to mobilise and coordinate action at a rank-and-file level. Socialist Appeal were among those leftists who immediately supported this new union strategy and pleaded for “cross-union strike committees that can respond to the call to mobilise and coordinate action at a rank-and-file level”[4] between different striking sectors of the working class.

Emerging protests by union members

As the strike wave advanced there have been several protests against proposed wage deals, organised by rank-and-file union organisations, in particular among university workers and healthcare workers. In these two sectors we saw clear signs of a reaction against the readiness of the unions to make agreements with the bosses or the government.

A first example was the protest of 100 university workers who, after a call by the UCU Solidarity Movement, staged a demonstration outside the London headquarters of their own union (17 March 2023). Angry at a so-called “sell-out” by the union executive of their hard-fought dispute over attacks on their pay and pensions by their employers, they held up signs reading “no capitulation”.

A second example is the protest of the healthcare workers against of the deal proposed by the National Health Service (NHS) and the unions. A cross-union group called NHS Workers Say No organised online calls, which were joined by hundreds of health workers from all the main unions. It also issued a special bulletin, sent out to thousands of members of all the unions involved, in which it called on workers by #VoteReject to say no to the pay deal[5].

A third example is from former senior members of the RCN who started a petition to hold a vote of no confidence in the RCN leadership. The intention of the petition was to enable members of the RCN to protest at the proposed pay deal and to force an extraordinary general meeting on the union leadership.

All these three examples show a growing questioning, and profound dissatisfaction with what the union leadership had done – but all within the framework of the unions.

However, the leadership of the National Education Union (NEU) was forewarned by the protests raised after the settlement for the healthcare workers and the university staff, and advised its members to vote against the wage deal it had reached with the Department of Education. The result was that the pay offer was rejected by 98% of the union members with new strikes on the horizon.

Ongoing reflection within the class

As we have seen for months in the UK, strikes are accompanied by discussion, which is a real and natural phenomenon during a strike wave. There can be no workers’ struggle without discussion. “One of the big topics of debate on the picket lines, the demonstrations, and meetings afterwards was what will happen next”[6] After the demonstration of 15 March intense discussions took place among members of the UCU around the next steps to take, with the result that a planned pause in the strikes was reversed.

After months of experiencing the unions’ divisive strategy, we can see an embryonic although confused process of reflection. At the same time workers also start to pose more fundamental questions such as “why are we still losing money in useless recurrent one day strikes?”; “are the unions simply just going to agree to a shit deal in the end, despite our struggle?” and, above all, “how do we get a struggle that unites all workers”.

But unions do all they can to prevent this questioning taking place. In response to the discontent exhibited by university workers in the UCU, Socialist Worker (9 February) proclaimed “To win, workers must keep making their voices heard and seize control of their disputes. Workers in Liverpool have organised a city-wide strike committee—four branches—after picketing next Tuesday. Strikers everywhere should hold strike committees. They can be a crucial space, involving people beyond existing union structures, for debate and activity to take forward the strikes”. This might seem very radical, especially the bit about “beyond existing union structures”, but these proposed committees are still “union structures”, new formations in the union framework, formed because of the perceived inadequacy of the existing structure.

The preparation of future struggles

At the moment, following the acceptance of deals by unions in the rail and postal sectors in particular, the strike wave is showing some signs of decline, but that does not mean that the workers are defeated or that combativity in the class has diminished. On the contrary: together with strikes that still continue (health, civil service, education…) or restart we can see other expressions of struggle such as the growing protests against the union deals alongside a deeper reflection in the class. The latter is important in the attempt to find answers for the dilemmas that workers have been posed with in their struggles.

Leftist groups try to keep the activities of the workers within the union framework of course, and therefore tell them that they have to organise cross-union initiatives, on a rank-and-file level. This, it is claimed, would be a step forward in the struggle. But this is not the case. On the contrary, it is an outright trap. Such proposals tie workers even more to the unions, an apparatus of the bourgeois state embedded in the working class with no other purpose than to sabotage the class struggle from within.

Collective reflection and confrontation with the unions are a necessary phase in the creation of the best conditions for future struggles, which are inevitable, since, for the working class as a whole, the present strike wave has not brought any solution for the problems it is facing. But such activity cannot take place within the unions, which will do everything to sterilise reflection in the class and to sabotage any attempt to put criticism of the unions into practice.

Those militant minorities who recognise the need for the struggle to break out of the current divisions, and thus to be controlled directly by the workers, need to group together regardless of what sector they work in - both to discuss the lessons of the strikes so far and to spread their understanding more widely. In particular, it is vital to call for mass meetings, general assemblies open to all workers, where we can make decisions about how to sustain and extend the struggle, and where we can elect genuine strike committees responsible to the assemblies, not to the union machinery.  

 

Dennis, 17 April 2023

 

The last few months have confirmed the brutal acceleration in the decomposition of the capitalist mode of production, with the multiplication of tragedies that have struck the world, particularly as a result of the war in Ukraine. Ongoing destruction, such as that at the Kakhovka dam, and the actions of the Wagner group in Russia, halfway between rebellion and abortive putsch, are fuelling further destabilisation and chaos.

Increased chaos and destruction

Now on the brink of implosion, despite the "return to calm" in Rostov and Moscow following surreal negotiations, Putin's clique has been severely weakened. In the long term, other warlords are bound to add to the worrying instability of Russia as a nuclear power, sowing chaos beyond the borders of Europe and, at the end of the day, possibly leading to the break-up of the Russian Federation itself. Following on from the collapse of the USSR in 1990, this is a new phase in the process of dragging Russia's proletariat into deadly confrontations. This latest disastrous episode highlights more clearly the growing dangers posed to the world by the deadly dynamic of decaying capitalism. A destructive dynamic that continues to grow.
The war in Ukraine is fuelling other dramatic events on a global scale:

- This conflict is accelerating the mass impoverishment of the proletariat, including in the richest countries, which are financing the war and the armaments pouring into Ukraine. Access to food, heating and decent housing have become increasingly difficult for a growing proportion of the working class, particularly the most precarious.

- The war is also one of the factors considerably worsening environmental degradation, directly through large-scale destruction (the Kakhovka dam, explosions at arms depots and factories, etc.), and indirectly through the increased reluctance of the governments involved in this war to take the slightest action against climate change, which is jeopardising their haemorrhaging economies, driven by a growing need for armaments.

Large-scale destruction, the loss of human life on the battlefields and the terror of populations left to fend for themselves, whether in conflict zones or 'peace zones', are taking a long-lasting hold. The number of refugees fleeing conflict zones or zones that have simply become unliveable is reaching record figures. People are being transformed into living spectres who languish in inhuman camps, prey to mafia networks and the brutality of governments. Others collide with barbed wire walls or drown by the thousands in waters around the world. With the increasing bunkerisation of "democratic" borders, corpses continue to wash up or disappear into the abyss.

While pandemics continue to threaten, and governments are proving less and less capable of coping with the ever-increasing number of disasters, the unprecedented droughts of spring are now giving way to monstrous fires, as in Canada, where Montreal has become the most polluted city in the world. In other parts of the world, catastrophic floods have recently hit Nepal and Chile. Record temperatures are already exposing populations to deadly heatstroke (as in Asia and Latin America). With cyclones and storms piling up south of the United States, the summer period augurs even worse.
All these ills are part of a spiral linked to the bankrupt capitalist mode of production, part of a rotten society in which producers are driven into poverty and increasingly exposed to death, prey to worries but also, and above all, to legitimate anger.

The living breath of the class struggle

This anger is all the more profound because the economic crisis, amplified by inflation, is a powerful stimulus for the development of class struggle. As witnessed by the continuing attacks on the working class in all countries, the economic crisis is preparing the ground for new responses from the proletariat. The development of massive struggles in Great Britain has indeed initiated a phenomenon of "rupture", a profound change of state of mind and a new surge of combativity within the world working class. This dynamic was confirmed by struggles just about everywhere in the world, and above all by the major demonstrations against pension reform in France. Rediscovering our own class identity in the struggle, getting back in touch with our own fighting methods, is only the first step, fragile though it may be, but it is fundamental for the future.

While strikes are still going on in the United Kingdom, the end of the demonstrations in France in no way signifies despondency or a feeling of defeat. On the contrary, the anger that is still present is fuelling reflection among working-class minorities on how to continue this fight. If we need to draw the first lessons today, it's that we need to prepare the new struggles to come and face up to all the obstacles and difficulties that stand in the way, in particular the risks of engaging in sterile violence, such as that of confrontation with the forces of law and order, which a section of the precarious youth engaged in during the spectacular riots in France, and which are radically opposed to the proletariat's methods of struggle. Another danger is the disappearance of the struggle of the working class onto the terrain of the bourgeoisie, that of the "defence of democracy" against "fascism" and "authoritarian excesses" or the obtaining of illusory "rights" for this or that minority.

Faced with the enormous global challenges and the increasingly palpable threat of the destruction of humanity by capitalism, this necessary first step by the working class is not enough. The proletariat will have to develop its consciousness well beyond what it was able to produce during the great strikes of May 68 in France and everywhere else in the world, well beyond the mass strike it was able to engage in Poland in 1980.

The central role of revolutionary organisations
Revolutionary organisations play an essential role in this context. They have the political weapons to make it possible to enrich workers' memory, to defend the revolutionary perspective and an internationalist point of view in workers' struggles in the face of nationalist propaganda and the reactionary policies of the bourgeoisie. On the basis of solid traditions, those of the Communist Left, revolutionary organisations have the responsibility of keeping alive and passing on a method, the method of marxism, to defend the principles of the proletarian struggle.

In the face of confusion and doubts, in the face of ideological campaigns which hinder the development of consciousness in the working class, this struggle inherited from the traditions of the workers' movement must make it possible to identify concrete perspectives and to defend uncompromisingly the principles and methods of workers' struggles. Starting with proletarian internationalism in the face of the war in Ukraine and all the militarist propaganda.

In the face of insidious ideological campaigns on the theme of the "defence of democracy", in the face of the ideological exploitation of the indignation aroused by the methods of Putin and Prigozhin, in the face of the ideological exploitation of the recent riots and the despicable behaviour of the police, vigilance and the fight for proletarian class consciousness must tread a difficult path. But there is no other way forward. The future struggles of the proletariat must therefore gradually become politicised in order to take on, in a clear, united and conscious way, the goal of the world revolution: a revolution destined to overthrow capitalism and establish a society without class or war.
 

WH, 8 July

 

After more than a year of the biggest wave of strikes in Britain for decades, it’s a good moment to reflect about what we have achieved, what we have not achieved, and what obstacles have stood in the way of our struggles.  

The main gain of these struggles has been the struggle itself - breaking from years of passivity and retreat, insisting that the working class has not gone away and is ready to resist the mounting attacks on our living standards.  The sheer length of the strike wave is proof of the determination of the workers not to make more sacrifices “in the national interest”.  And the example of workers fighting back in Britain has been an inspiration to workers in other European countries who face similar attacks. In France, for example, demonstrating workers took up the slogan “enough is enough” in their mobilisations against government pension “reforms”.

Some workers have won pay awards after months of struggle. But with inflation officially still running at over 7%, the 6.5% to the teachers or the 5% to most NHS workers means that we are still running to catch up.

And what is most striking about these awards is the fact that they have been negotiated sector by sector, even within the same branch of the economy and the same workplace. In the hospitals, for example, ambulance and nurses’ unions have accepted the new offer, while radiographers and junior doctors are still holding out, still going on strike. It’s the same story in education: the main school teacher’s union has accepted the pay deal (although a number of local branches have rejected it), while university teachers are heading towards new strikes in the autumn. And in transport, the RMT recently suspended strikes on the London underground while maintaining strikes on national rail networks, with ASLEF announcing industrial action “short of a strike”. 

These divisions are not new. They repeat the pattern of the different strikes over the last year. You belong to a different union, so you come out on strike on a different day from your colleagues. In hospitals, schools, transport depots, instead of meeting together to raise common demands, instead of continuing the fight until all the demands are met, we are limited to voting as individuals in union ballots about whether to come out on strike and whether to accept the pay deal offered to our particular group of workers. The result: a whole series of separate strikes, on different days, with different demands, and almost no common demonstrations, even though all workers are facing the same assault on their living and working conditions. Our picket lines, one of the few places where we can come together and discuss about the progress of the struggle, are reduced to mere symbols, able only to appeal to colleagues in the same union to join them, rather than going out to appeal to workers in the next depot, factory, or hospital to unite in a common struggle. 

These divisions are not accidental. They are enforced by the ‘official’ state, with its laws against deciding on strike action in workers’ meetings and against “secondary picketing”, but also by the “unofficial” state – the trade unions, who administer the prison of these laws and maintain the fragmentation between different groups of workers according to trade, skill, or job specification.

And so, although this last year has shown that all workers are under attack, and that there is a will to resist among growing layers of our class, we are profoundly weakened by all the divisions imposed on us, blocked in the effort to form ourselves into a massive force that can challenge the exploiting class.

If we are to create this force, we will need to question the whole framework imposed by employers and unions alike. Against their rules about when we can go on strike or take any other actions, we need to gather in general assemblies where we make our own decisions, not as isolated individuals but collectively. Instead of submitting to the laws about secondary pickets, we need to send big delegations to other workplaces to call for a joint struggle, for strikes and demonstrations that bring us all out together.

The dying system which dominates the planet, capitalism, is not going to offer us a better future. It can only demand further sacrifices, further acceptance of misery and destruction. We, the working class, have a different future to offer, and the fight to defend ourselves today lays the ground for a deeper and wider fight to create a new society for the whole of humanity.

Amos 29/7/23

 

 During the strike wave of the past year the organisations of the extreme left of capital (Trotskyists etc) have been everywhere. They have intervened on the shop floor, at picket lines, in demonstrations, and union meetings in order to raise their slogans, sell their press, and distribute their leaflets. And they always claim to be defending the interests of workers against the government, the bosses, the political establishment and, sometimes, even the union leaders. Should we take them at their word?

To answer this question we will take a look at the practice of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It is possibly the largest, and certainly the most important leftist organisation in the UK, and has built up decades of experience since it was founded in the Labour Party in 1950 as the Socialist Review Group, before becoming the International Socialists in 1962, and renamed the Socialist Workers Party in 1976. It does not openly refer to itself as Trotskyist anymore, but it is solidly in the Trotskyist tradition.

What you can read about the strikes in Britain in the various publications of the SWP is sometimes quite ‘radical’ and might well catch off guard people who are interested in discovering something from a working class perspective. At a very early stage in the strike wave it published two articles on the mass strike (the first on 2/7/22, the second on 27/8/22) and “what workers building the fightback today can learn from this”. The mass strike in 1905 in Russia showed how “this workers’ economic struggle can develop into a political struggle” and how this “is a key component of a modern revolution”. In another article, also at an early stage in the strike wave (11/9/22), the SWP underlined that workers’ democracy such as “strike committees and self-activity are key”, just as happened in 1917 in Russia where “workers began to organise into workers’ councils - or soviets. Soviets showed workers’ ability to build and carry out revolutions for themselves”.

Were these articles really meant to call on the workers to develop a mass strike, to establish real workers’ self-organisation and to engage in a political combat against the bourgeois state, as happened in 1905-1917 in Russia? The answer is no, the SWP will never fight for these goals because, as we have said in earlier articles, fundamentally “the SWP is a capitalist organisation”[1] (…) “Its basic loyalty will always be to British capitalism”[2].The following examples demonstrate this.

Reinforcing the trade unions

A concern the SWP put forward in the course of the strike wave was “Let’s recruit, organise and keep new members in militant unions”, criticising the unions for mainly providing services to individual members. The SWP's appeal was far from a fundamental criticism of the trade unions as it did not seek to expose their nature as part of the bourgeois state. The SWP criticised the unions for the fact that, if they would not become more militant, they might lose control of the most radical expressions of the movement. Behind the criticisms of the SWP was a call to the unions to radicalise their language and reinforce their impact on the struggles.

The SWP holds the position that the unions are organisations of the working class, which is a deception: although they used to be organisations of the working class over a century ago, they are not any more, as has already been amply demonstrated by revolutionary organisations in the past.

With the onset of the 20th century the conditions for workers’ struggle had fundamentally changed, and in the revolution in Russia in 1905 and in 1917 the newly discovered forms of the workers’ struggle was no longer the trade union but the mass strike and the workers’ councils. The above-mentioned articles of the SWP themselves show that the role of the unions in these revolutions was insignificant. In the German revolution the unions played an openly counter-revolutionary role, something which brought Anton Pannekoek in 1920 to the conclusion that “in the epoch of imperialism, the trade unions have become enormous confederations which manifest the same developmental tendencies as the bourgeois state in an earlier period”[3]. And this statement has since been amply confirmed after the Second World War by the positions of the different political organisations of the Communist Left: Gauche Communiste de France, Partito Comunista Internazionalista, the ICC itself.

Unions use pickets to divide workers

A second theme taken up by the SWP has been on the role of the picket lines, showing that they can be “a place where rank and file union members get a chance to ­organise themselves and plan how to make their strike more effective - and ultimately, wrestle control of their dispute away from the union leaders.”

Picketing in front of the factory or office where you work is aimed at persuading the workers entering the workplace to join the strike. But in the UK the official picket line is restricted by a whole set of rules that have to be overseen by a union representative. It prevents, even prohibits workers from expressing their solidarity with the struggle of workers in other workplaces. Moreover, it outlaws “flying pickets”, delegations of workers moving from one workplace to another in order to persuade the workers at other locations to join the strike. The union picket line has in fact turned from a weapon of the workers to extend the struggle into an instrument of the unions to put up boundaries between striking workers. But for the SWP this is not a problem, for “pickets can also help grow the union.”

For revolutionaries the picket lines are nevertheless a chance for workers to come together, but not just “chanting, singing and dancing their way through strike days”. The picket line is an opportunity to discuss, certainly when many more than 6 workers are gathered. Being together in front of the workplace, the first task is to question the legal restrictions these picket lines are subjected to. Because they prevent the extension of the struggle and the search for solidarity at other workplaces. It is of the utmost importance that workers break out of this union cordon and prepare the organisation of real general assemblies.

The need for real workers’ self-organisation

A third preoccupation of the SWP has been the formation of strike committees. It even devoted a whole article specifically to this phenomenon, to which a whole range of properties are attributed, ranging from “spreading the decisions of the union leaders” to going “beyond the existing union structure discussing, running and taking forward a strike”. But the SWP drowns the proletarian nature of the strike committee in a multitude of functions, of which some lead directly:

*into the framework of the unions by advocating a criticism of the union bureaucracy: “Debate and raise criticism of the lead from the top”; “to put pressure on the union leaders”.

*and others onto the bourgeois terrain of the defence of single issue campaigns: “strike committees can kick off discussion about climate change or anti-racism or trans rights”.

A genuine strike committee is not a self-proclaimed group of workers, not the basis for building a rank and file trade union movement, and is not there to spread the decisions of the union leaders. A genuine strike committee is completely independent from the unions. It represents the striking workers between two general assemblies and is only accountable to the workers that elected it. One of the clearest examples of such a strike committee was created in 1980 when “the proletariat in Poland went into action outside and against the unions, creating its own organs of struggle, the MKS -- strike committees based on general assemblies and their elected, revocable delegates”[4].

By propagating strike committees, even outside the union structure, the SWP are claiming to defend a ‘radical’ position. When strike committees popped up in union branches at the universities and in the education sector in February of this year, the SWP gave them full attention, presenting them as being “important in allowing ordinary union members to take the initiative”. These strike committees were not a threat for the unions, which were able to coop them up in corporatist ideology, namely in the specificities of one’s own sector or trade.

But faced with the “unofficial” strike of the North Sea oil and gas workers in September of last year the Offshore Oil and Gas Workers Strike Committee (OOGWSC), which organised this strike, was only mentioned in passing. But this committee was not created in a union branch, and its activities took place independently from the unions. In International Socialism 177 (January 2023) the SWP say that the OOGWSC “should not yet be seen as a permanent body of militants with deep roots”, but of course that is what the SWP wants: permanent bodies, that function like rank and file unions.

Why did the SWP write articles on the mass strike, workers’ councils and the proletarian revolution? The answer is that it aimed to get ahead of a real fermentation in the class, to show that it was prepared to go very far in its support of workers’ demands. This was its way to be able to channel the most radical expression of workers’ combativity and to keep them within the boundaries of the unions. It’s telling that since the publication of these three articles, between July and September 2022, the SWP has not written again with one word on the lessons to be drawn from this historical experience in Russia for the strike wave in the UK. Its daily propaganda was mainly limited to expressing its support for the union policy, “critical” of course. The “radical” language in the first months was only meant to take the wind out of the sails of the most radical expressions in this strike wave and to empty their potential towards a self-activity independent from the unions.

Dennis, 2023-06-29

 

 

 

 

Last May, the ICC held public meetings in various countries on the theme: "Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China... Going beyond 1968!" The aim was to gain a better understanding of the political, global and historical significance of these struggles, the prospects they offer, but also the major weaknesses that the working class will have to overcome if it is to develop the economic and political dimensions of its struggle. The active engagement in the debates that took place is one illustration of the slow maturation of consciousness in depth that is taking place within the global working class, and which is particularly evident in the small minorities coming from a new generation. In this way, they are gradually reconnecting with the experience of the workers' movement and the Communist Left.

With the confrontation of different positions in these meetings, the desire for clarification was evident. Thus, in the responses to the analysis of the ICC, support, nuances, doubts and questionings, even disagreements, were expressed. The purpose of this article is to give some details of these exchanges in order to promote further debate.

 

The link with May 68

In the face of the growing chaos of the capitalist mode of production, its dramatic and destructive nature demonstrated by the war in Ukraine and the prospect of the deepening slide into the economic crisis, the interventions generally accepted the fundamental reality that over the last year there has been a widespread development of working class struggles internationally to combat the unsufferable attacks on living conditions.

Some participants drew parallels between the current situation and that of May '68.[1] In 1968, the return of unemployment (albeit at a much lower level than today) heralded the end of the period known as the "post war boom" with the reappearance of the open crisis, a new period of recession, then recovery followed by deeper recession. Today, the brutal deepening of the economic crisis and the resurgence of inflation are undoubtedly the mainspring of working class mobilisation. Some comrades pointed to the fact that what May 68 and the current period had in common was the eruption of large scale working class mobilisations. A comrade in Britain stated that "the main difference with '68 is the current depth of the economic crisis".

Another comrade reaffirmed that "May 68 had opened a new phase after the counter-revolution". Indeed, following the failure of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s and the dead weight of Stalinism that followed the defeat of the world proletariat, May '68 heralded the re-emergence of the working class internationally. In Paris, a comrade described the subjective conditions of the working class struggle in '68 and today as follows:

 "The reference to May '68 is valid. That event coincided with the arrival of a new generation of the working class who, unlike their parents, had not been subjected to the ideological pressure of the counter-revolution and, in particular, the overbearing influence of Stalinism. Today, it has required a new generation to shake off the ideology of the 'death of communism'". Remarkably, those participants in Brazil accepted, almost “as a given”, that the proletariat in the Western Europe countries, those workers at the heart of the capitalist system, were playing a vanguard role in the mobilisation of the struggles internationally. A comrade in Britain commented that "the current struggles are important. They represent the possibility of a real renewal of the class struggle".

But in this same intervention, and in others elsewhere, particularly in Brazil, the comrade was concerned about "the weakness of the working class" and "the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and its ability to retain control, especially through the unions".

 

Misunderstandings of the period following 1989
Indeed, some of the contributions did try to find similarities between May 68 and the current period, while others contrasted the two situations. However, beyond finding analogies and differences between these two historical moments, all of them found difficulty in understanding what is meant by a "rupture" in the context of the class struggle, in both 1968 and today.

In 1968, the recovery of the struggles of the world working class put an end to half a century of counter-revolution, the result of a profound physical and ideological defeat of the proletariat following the crushing of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. The rupture of 2022, heralded by the mobilisation of the proletariat in the United Kingdom, signalled a revival of a working class struggle which had not suffered a crushing physical defeat comparable to what led to the world counter-revolution but which has, on the other hand, suffered the full force of the bourgeois campaigns on the "death of communism" and on the "disappearance of the working class", etc. in the wake of the collapse of the imperialist blocs in 1989.

Over the last thirty years, the world working class, disorientated and having lost its class identity, has shown itself incapable of mobilising in response to the attacks imposed on it. It is only after this long period of relentless, widespread and increasingly unbearable attacks that the working class has been able to mobilise itself on a scale not seen for decades (since 1985 for workers in the UK), making a clear rupture with the situation that had prevailed internationally since 1990. Because the working class as a whole had not been defeated during thirty years, a process of reflection was developing within it (the subterranean maturation of consciousness) leading to a growing loss of illusions about the future that capitalism has in store and also to the certainty that the situation can only get worse. In this way the anger has been growing and this was clear in the attitude of the strikers in Britain, who insisted that "enough is enough".

The dynamics of the last thirty years had not been fully understood and the discussion gave rise to various erroneous interpretations. For example, a comrade in Toulouse spoke of a "continuity" in the struggle over these thirty years, marked by victories and defeats, in particular the mobilisation against the CPE (2006), against the Sarkozy-Fillon pension reform (2010) and also the Indignados movement (2011). But precisely during this period, there was no such continuity (where current struggles echoed past struggles), as the working class was not able to link together in its collective memory these infrequent new experiences.

It's the same with the notion of a "qualitative leap" used by some comrades, particularly in Brazil, to characterise the eruption of the struggles in Britain and France. Such a conception, which in general tends to reduce consciousness to a simple product or reflection of the immediate struggle itself, plays down all the other dimensions of the process through which consciousness develops. The idea of a "qualitative leap" can only be detrimental by implying that the working class has suddenly overcome many of its weaknesses.

On the other hand, some interventions in Mexico tended to effectively dilute the proletariat's struggle by diverting it into areas such as environmentalist campaigns or feminism and have been rightly criticised. In fact, the ideology which underpins them, and which itself leads to a loss of class identity, presents a clear threat to the autonomous struggle of the proletariat, which provides the only course possible for solving society's problems by bringing an end to capitalism's existence.

 

The broad scale and the maturation in the current struggles
While those participating in the meetings acknowledged the reality of the scale of the current struggles, it has to be said that, in general, they were unable accept their importance as a fundamental element of the qualitative rupture. Millions of workers concentrated in a few countries of Western Europe have mobilised despite the cost to them financially, and they are struggling in solidarity with their comrades to refuse the misery that capitalism wants to inflict on them through exploitation and division; that itself constitutes a considerable victory.

Some comrades were critical of what they saw as the ICC's overestimation of the movement. Thus, for example, such comments were heard in Britain and France:

- “I find the ICC is overestimating the sequence of the struggle. I don't understand the method of subterrainean maturation. There's an association of ideas here, it's not massive, we're just referring to active minorities".

-“It's true that at the end of the demonstrations there were discussions, of course, but there were no strikes! Without a strike, the movement has stalled. The problem is that the weapon of the proletariat is the general strike.[2] In May 68, there was a general strike, but that hasn't been the case here [...]. I don't want to tarnish the picture, but amplifying the depth of the movement [as the ICC is doing], I'm not sure is going to help".

In this case, we seem to have forgotten that when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers in France took to the streets to demonstrate, they were on strike!

In several places (in Nantes in France, in Brazil...) some participants tried to temper the reality of the rupture in the class struggle put forward by the ICC with the fact that the unions had not been called into question. Some participants in Nantes countered this objection with the following analysis: "Admittedly, the unions have not been called into question, there has been no self-organisation, but discontent remains very strong and permanent, even if there is no new spectacular struggle. Because you have to look at where the class is coming from, it's coming out of a period of thirty years of difficulties. In fact, there has been no political defeat. The class is gathering its forces to go further". To this we can add that in France (but not only there), the bourgeoisie had anticipated workers' anger and the unions had done everything possible to avoid being challenged by the workers. Faced with the need and the will of the workers in struggle to unite across categories and corporations, the unions were able to impose their leadership by maintaining, from start to finish, the broadest possible united trade union front, "fiercely opposed" to the pension reform.

 

What method to understand the rupture?

While some interventions tended to look for "proof" and "facts" to try to convince others or themselves of the reality of the "rupture", other comrades tried to illustrate the change in the situation through the ability of "experienced unions" (in France, in particular) to "stick with the movement", with "calls for unity" by using "the trap of the Intersyndicale". In the same vein, these comrades highlighted the collusion of various factions of the bourgeoisie in isolating certain centres of struggle by means of a carefully measured blackout: "Why does the bourgeoisie black out the strikes happening abroad? The bourgeoisie knows its class enemy very well. This is yet another indication of our maturation. We need to have a global, international vision". Some comrades quite rightly stressed that we should not focus on any one element in isolation, but that it was preferable to "see a pattern of evidence and to know how to interpret it", referring in this sense to the approach of Marx, but also that of Lenin, who "had the ability to perceive changes in the political outlook of the proletariat".

Each time, in an attempt to clarify matters, the ICC tried to go further by defending the valid concept of "subterranean maturation", of a rupture with the past and not that of a "qualitative leap". Above all, the ICC has insisted on broadening the scope of the issues and posing them methodically, as illustrated by one of its presentations in Paris: "several presentations highlighted discussions that we hadn't taken up for years. What do we do with this? How do we analyse it? Are we putting it into a broader, global context? Instead of looking at things through a microscope, we need to step back and look through a telescope; in other words, take a historical and international approach. We are in a period where capitalism is leading humanity to its ruin. The working class has the potential to fight and to engage in the struggle, to be able to make a revolution. Internationally, over the last three decades, we have seen a decline in struggles and a retreat in consciousness. The class has lost consciousness of itself, of its identity. But last summer there was a huge movement in Britain, the likes of which we hadn't seen for forty years! Was it just in Britain? It showed that something was changing profoundly on a global scale. That's why we said something was changing. We saw the capacity to fight back confronted with the worsening economic crisis. We saw struggles in many countries. This is the background to the confirmation of the fight against pension reform in France. We've seen three months of struggles and a fighting spirit. On the other hand, we're starting to see slogans, a reflection that we haven't seen since the 1980s. There's a general feeling of discontent, an attempt to learn from history. That's what's behind the slogan ‘You want 64 (pension reform), we'll give you 68’[...]. There's a tendency to reappropriate the past, as with the reflection on the CPE experience of 2006, despite the fact that little was heard of it immediately afterwards. Why has this resurfaced? There are other questions from a minority like how to make a revolution. Some people are reflecting on 'what is communism?'. There is a class effort. It's not just a question of whether pension reform is a pass or fail. We have to learn the lessons. How can we go further? How can we fight back? That's what's at stake".

We must recognise therefore, as a fundamental lesson, the need to take account of the international and historical context in our analyses: an acceleration in the decomposition of capitalist society, its destructive "whirlwind effect", the seriousness and danger of the present war, and at the same time the brutal acceleration of the economic crisis, with inflation as a powerful spur to the class struggle. We must also recognise that by fighting on its own class terrain, on a massive scale, the proletariat can begin to gain confidence in its own strength, and can acquire a growing consciousness of the need to spread the struggle beyond companies and borders. These struggles today are a first victory for our class.

 

WH, 26 June 2023

[1] It should be noted that most of these meetings took place on a symbolic date, the anniversary of the massive demonstrations of 13 May 1968 in France. In this connection, we recommend to our readers our article: “1968 and the revolutionary perspective”, published in two parts in International Review no 133: (May 68 and the revolutionary perspective, Part 1: The student movement around the world in the 1960s) and no 134: May 68 and the revolutionary perspective, Part 2: End of the counter-revolution and the historic return of the world proletariat

“The ACG, Angry Workers, Plan C, and Communist Workers Organisation will discuss recent and forthcoming strikes in the UK and elsewhere. Plenty of time for q[uestions] and a[nswers] and discussion.”

This was how the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) announced its public meeting of 12 May this year. The meeting aimed to “push the idea of grassroots organisations against the machinations of the union bureaucrats, who are hindering and obstructing strike action both here in the UK and abroad”.[1]

 

Who are the organisations cooperating in this meeting?

The ACG split from the Anarchist Federation (AF) five years ago on the question of the identity politics, in an attempt to put more emphasis on the authentic working class struggle. It took a basically internationalist stance against the war in Ukraine, although with clear weaknesses[2]. 

The Angry Workers of the World (AWW) is a more “workerist” group which began in West London, very close to the anarchist milieu in its ideas and methods. A year after the start of the Ukraine war, the group had still not formulated a collective position on it.  And despite a recent discussion on revolutionary defeatism, it still does not defend an unambiguously internationalist position[3].

Plan C is an overtly leftist organisation even without a particular ideology, typifying itself as experimental and non-dogmatic. On June 25, 2022 it held a meeting in “solidarity with the Ukrainian working class” (and not the Russian working class!), with speakers and a film about anarchists in Ukraine helping out neighbours and supporting the fighting soldiers

Finally, the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) is an organisation of the revolutionary milieu affiliated to the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) and has defended a clear internationalist position against the war.

 

The ICC banned from London ACG meetings

In October 2022, prior to a meeting of the ACG in London, the ICC received an email from the group which said: “If the ICC is thinking of coming along to tonight's public meeting, please think again as we have decided that your attendance would be detrimental”. We wrote back, asking the ACG for an explanation. But we received no reply.

As soon as we arrived at the ACG meeting on May 12, we were recognised as the ICC, and were ordered out of the meeting. We protested against this, reminding the ACG that it had been excluded from the Anarchist Bookfair last autumn because it opposes the war in Ukraine. We also rejected the excuse that the ICC “talks too much”, since our practice is to respect rules of the organisation hosting the meeting. Our objections were ignored, and we had no choice but to give out our leaflets and display our press outside.

We don’t know what motivated the ACG to organise public discussions with a leftist group like Plan C, but if it thinks that this will strengthen its capacity to defend proletarian positions, it is mistaken. Many examples from the history of the workers’ movement demonstrate that joint activity between a bourgeois organisation and a proletarian organisation (or in this case, an organisation seeking to orient itself around proletarian positions) is ultimately always to the detriment of the latter.

The clearest example of this was the CNT, which had been a revolutionary organisation of the proletariat and even considered applying for membership of the Comintern. But in the course of the 1920s it started to collaborate ever more with bourgeois political organisations, until it decided in 1936 to participate in the governments of both the Catalan Generalitat and the Madrid Republic. This turn was not an accident, since during WWII the CNT in France, gripped by anti-fascism, fought in the official armies of the ‘Liberation’ against German occupation. The CNT had definitively turned into a bourgeois organisation[4].

And today, the ACG is quite happy to hold a meeting together with those who have proved themselves incapable of taking a clear and collectively agreed internationalist stance, like the AWW, and, even more seriously, with a group like Plan C, which has shown itself to be in the camp of the bourgeoisie.

And at the same time the ACG excludes from its meeting an organisation which, just like the ACG itself, defends proletarian internationalism and the perspective of communism. How does the ACG explain this inconsistency?

Another inconsistency of the ACG is the fact that it formulates publicly a standpoint on the class struggle, but does not want to confront it in a public debate with that of the ICC, even though their position on this question is far from antagonistic to that of the ICC, as we see for instance in the following quote from an ACG article: “As more and more workers are forced by necessity to take industrial action, it becomes ever more necessary to create new forms of organisation. These should enable effective and unified struggle, bypassing the union bureaucrats and going beyond the trade unions”. [5] As everyone reading our press can see, this position is close to that of the ICC, although it is probably defended with different arguments. But a public discussion would show which arguments are the clearest. So, the questions are: why does the ACG avoid a political confrontation with the ICC and why does it think that a debate on the class struggle with the ICC is counterproductive for the development of a proletarian perspective?

 

The betrayal of the proletarian principle of solidarity by the CWO

The CWO is part of the same milieu of the revolutionary organisations of the Communist Left as the ICC. This milieu is founded on certain principles, which all organisations should respect. One of these principles is that an attack on one organisation is an attack on the whole Communist Left. Thus when one group in this milieu is attacked, boycotted or excluded, all organisations are under attack and should react as a unified whole. Because each attack on a revolutionary organisation contains a threat for the historic process of the construction of the party.

So, the ICC gave its full support when the Bordigist International Communist Party came under attack after it had published the booklet Auschwitz or the Grand Alibi. In 2015 it published a Statement of solidarity with the ICT [277] when the militants of this organisation were targeted by former members of the ICT’s section in Italy. But what is the response of the CWO in the case of the ICC being banned from the public meeting of the ACG? The ICC had already written to the CWO on 8 November last year asking for its position on this issue, but never received a reply.

When comrades of the CWO came to a public meeting of the ICC following the initial ban by the ACG, we asked them to take position on the incident, but instead of doing so the comrades avoided the question, explaining why they thought the ACG had done this, what ACG members may have said to them about it, as if they were its apologists. But the ACG can speak for itself and the CWO has the duty to take a clear position.

The comrade who represented the CWO at this recent ACG meeting explained on his arrival that he did not know that the ICC had been ordered out of the meeting, nor did he know that the CWO was mentioned in the advertisement for the meeting as one of the participating groups. Did he realise that he was participating in a debate with an overtly leftist organisation? Ignorance is a bad argument to hide behind, but in the meantime, he had been informed by the ICC about its exclusion from the meeting and yet he took no clear stand.

It is clear, after the CWO has opened the door to parasitic groups and snitches, such as via the Paris No War But The Class War committee[6], it now opens the door to organisations openly defending bourgeois positions, such as Plan C. But revolutionary organisations cannot engage in a public discussion on the class struggle with organisations that do not defend an internationalist position. Such organisations are essentially hostile to the historic interests of the working class. But the CWO, wanting to have it both ways, does not have the guts to openly come out and say that it is it is seeking rapprochement with an “undogmatic” leftist group like Plan C, instead of expressing its solidarity or cooperating with the ICC.

In its policy of “openness” the CWO doesn’t want the ICC to be witness to its “romance” with anarchist or leftist groups. Therefore, it is ready to sweep the principle of solidarity within the Communist Left under the carpet and refuses to condemn the banning of the ICC by the ACG.

In the end, the CWO has demonstrated that it is giving up the principle of defending other organisations of the Communist Left against attacks from outside. “But no proletarian organisation can ignore this elementary necessity [of solidarity] without paying a very heavy price”.[7]

 

ICC, 2023-07-14

While the bourgeoisie and its media never cease to conceal the historic bankruptcy of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, when it brings together the world's major leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos and talks to itself, cannot avoid a certain lucidity. The conclusions of the general report submitted to the Forum are particularly revealing from this point of view. “The first years of this decade have heralded a particularly disruptive period in human history. The return to a ‘new normal’ following the COVID-19 pandemic was quickly disrupted by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, ushering in a fresh series of crises in food and energy – triggering problems that decades of progress had sought to solve.

As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of ‘older’ risks – inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare – which few of this generation’s business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced. These are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalization, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions in an ever-shrinking window for transition to a 1.5°C world. Together, these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come.

The next decade will be characterized by environmental and societal crises, driven by underlying geopolitical and economic trends. ‘Cost-of-living crisis’ is ranked as the most severe global risk over the next two years, peaking in the short term. ‘Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse’ is viewed as one of the fastest deteriorating global risks over the next decade, and all six environmental risks feature in the top 10 risks over the next 10 years. Nine risks are featured in the top 10 rankings over both the short and the long term, including ‘Geoeconomic confrontation’ and ‘Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarisation’, alongside two new entrants to the top rankings: ‘Widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity’ and ‘Large-scale involuntary migration’.” [1]

This long quote is not from an ICC publication. It is the fruit of the work of one of the most highly regarded think tanks among the world’s leading political and economic leaders. In fact, these observations are largely in line with the text adopted by the ICC in October 2022 on the acceleration of capitalist decomposition:

“The 20s of the 21st century are shaping up to be one of the most turbulent periods in history, and indescribable disasters and suffering are already mounting up. It began with the Covid-19 pandemic (which is still out there) and a war in the heart of Europe which has lasted for more than nine months and whose outcome no one can foresee. Capitalism has entered into a phase of serious difficulties on all fronts. Behind this accumulation and entanglement of convulsions lies the threat of the destruction of humanity. […]

Following the sudden outbreak of the Covid pandemic, we identified four characteristics of the phase of decomposition:

- The increased severity of its effects[…].

- the irruption of the effects of decomposition at the economic level […].

- The growing interaction of its effects, which aggravates the contradictions of capitalism to a level never reached before […].

- The growing presence of its effects in the central countries […].

2022 provided a striking illustration of these four characteristics, with:

- The outbreak of war in Ukraine.

- The appearance of unprecedented waves of refugees.

- The continuation of the pandemic with health systems on the verge of collapse.

- A growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie over its political apparatus; the crisis in the UK was a spectacular manifestation of this.

- An agricultural crisis with a shortage of many food products in a context of widespread overproduction, which is a relatively new phenomenon in more than a century of decadence.

- The terrifying famines that are affecting more and more countries.

The aggregation and interaction of these destructive phenomena produces a 'vortex effect' that concentrates, catalyses and multiplies each of its partial effects, causing even more destructive devastation. […] This ‘vortex effect’ expresses a qualitative change, the consequences of which will become increasingly evident in the coming period.” [2]

In reality, it was not just by a few months that the ICC's analysis preceded that of the most informed experts in the dominant class, but by several decades, since the findings set out in this text are simply a striking confirmation of the forecasts we had already put forward at the end of the 1980s, notably in our "Theses on decomposition".
The “vortex” (or whirlwind) effect referred to in our text, highlights the fact that all it takes for one of these phenomena to worsen for partial crises to be transformed into a whirlwind of catastrophes.

The Global Risks Report says it all when it talks about the dynamic leading to what the bourgeoisie calls a “polycrisis”. “Concurrent shocks, deeply interconnected risks and eroding resilience are giving rise to the risk of polycrises – where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part. Eroding geopolitical cooperation will have ripple effects across the global risks landscape over the medium term, including contributing to a potential polycrisis of interrelated environmental, geopolitical and socioeconomic risks relating to the supply of and demand for natural resources. The report describes four potential futures centred around food, water and metals and mineral shortages, all of which could spark a humanitarian as well as an ecological crisis – from water wars and famines to continued overexploitation of ecological resources and a slowdown in climate mitigation and adaption.” The Global Risks Report's very precise description of the “interconnectivity of global risks” is basically, without really being aware of it, the process that is leading to total barbarism and the destruction of humanity.

Identifying the causes of the "whirlwind” of crises

Bourgeois experts, on the other hand, abandon this objectivity when they try to explain the origin of these "risks". Although they do not set themselves this objective, we can deduce from the references they present that the roots of the cataclysms lie in inadequate decision-making. The solutions they propose are based on naive optimism, hoping for “significant policy change or investment”, a happy collaboration between states and between states and private capital.

Entangled in a bourgeois vision of the historical situation, the Global Risks Report fails to understand that the phenomena it manages to describe are the result of the very existence of capitalism, and that war, ecological destruction and economic crisis have no solution in this system. Although from its inception capitalism was a system based on human exploitation, on the depredation and destruction of nature, capitalism was a factor of political and social development at the time of its rise (mainly in the XIXᵉ century). But like any mode of production, it eventually reached its phase of decadence, a phase in which the development of the productive forces increasingly came into opposition with the relations of production that constrained them. It is no coincidence that the First World War initiated the process of decadence of the system, since militarism and war now define the economic and political life of the bourgeoisie.

Recognising capitalism's decadence, the revolutionaries of the Third International defined it in their programmatic platform as “The epoch of the disintegration of capitalism, of its internal collapse. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat”. In this way, decadence represents the material conditions that make social revolution possible.

More than 100 years after this tipping point, the impasse in which capitalism finds itself, and the appalling barbarity and massive destruction it wreaks, are more and more obvious to humanity every day.

Since the implosion of the Soviet bloc in 1989, the internal contradictions that characterised the decadent phase of capitalism have really broken out, highlighting the rottenness of the system. This new period, that of the decomposition of capitalism, is marked by a process of increasing atomisation and dislocation, which has become the determining factor in the evolution of society, bringing together and aggravating destructive phenomena and exposing the danger that capitalism represents for humanity.

These destructive trends have not only become more pronounced, but have also appeared in tandem and, above all, have interacted with each other. Thus, at the beginning of the decomposition phase, the various states could intervene and isolate the effects, so that each catastrophe occurred without being linked to the others.

The pandemic and above all the war in Ukraine marked a qualitative change in decomposition, not only because their effects were global and led to millions dying or being displaced, but also because they had an aggravating impact on conflicts in various fields: they highlighted the bourgeoisie's inability to contain disasters in a coordinated way and its irrationality, they paralysed the economy, accelerated the health crisis, sharpened commercial and imperialist rivalries, etc. 

It is precisely this interaction of the contradictions of decadent capitalism, moving forward in a whirlwind, that appears to be the major characteristic of this phase of decomposition. It is in the history of the decadence of the capitalist system that we can situate the foundations of current events and understand why the 20s of the 21st century are shaping up to be “one of the most turbulent periods in history”.

The capitalist mode of production is not eternal, any more than the modes of production that preceded it. Like the modes of production of the past, it is destined to be replaced (if it does not destroy humanity before then) by another, superior mode of production corresponding to the development of the productive forces that it made possible at a given moment in its history. A mode of production that will abolish the commodity relations at the heart of capitalism's historical crisis, where there will no longer be room for a privileged class living off the exploitation of the producers.

The communist alternative to the barbarity of rotting capitalism

While the bourgeoisie, with all its teams of specialists, can describe phenomena, it cannot fundamentally understand them, let alone provide a solution. The only class that can offer an alternative to its barbarism is the proletariat, the exploited class within capitalism, which has no privileges to defend. What's more, the proletariat is also the class that is bearing the full brunt of the attacks on its working and living conditions as a direct result of the pressure of the crisis, accentuated by all the manifestations of decomposition.

Despite all the attacks suffered in recent decades, two conditions enable workers to maintain themselves as a historic force capable of confronting capital: the first is that the proletariat is not defeated and maintains its fighting spirit. The second is precisely the deepening of the economic crisis, which lays bare the root causes of all the barbarity that weighs on society, thus enabling the proletariat to become aware of the need to radically change the system and no longer merely seek illusory improvements in certain aspects of it.

Precisely at the present time, under the impetus of the economic crisis, the proletariat has begun to develop its struggles, as shown by the mobilisations in Europe. Since the summer of 2022, the working class in Great Britain has taken to the streets to defend its living conditions. The same combativeness was then expressed in mobilisations in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and in the United States. From this point of view, the decade that is beginning also expresses a break with the passivity and disorientation that the proletariat has weighed on it for decades.

The combativeness now being expressed in Europe underlines the fact that a process of maturation has begun, moving towards the reconquest of a genuine class identity and self-confidence at an international level. This process is the soil on which the historic struggle of the working class against the barbarity of capitalism in putrefaction can blossom, the basis for the revolutionary perspective.

 

MA, 15 May 2023
 

 

 

Notes

[1] The Global Risks Report  presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 2023).
[2] The acceleration of capitalist decomposition poses the clear possibility of the destruction of humanity [254], International Review 169 (2022)
 

On 23 and 24 June last - just as it was facing the counteroffensive by Ukraine - one of the most powerful states and armies on the planet were threatened by the Wagner Group, a private commando army made up of mercenaries linked to Putin’s own entourage. A whole military division, headed by Prigozhin, headed towards Moscow without encountering any obstacles. Situations like this, which seem absurd, are being repeated more and more as the putrefaction of capitalism accelerates. It is precisely the war in Ukraine that has become an accelerator of decomposition, spreading instability and chaos throughout the world.

The US, by setting the trap which pushed Russia into war with the overall aim of weakening China, is acting like a sorcerer's apprentice: it initially calculated that it could have some control over the conflict; now it turns out that it is unable to control its longer-term consequences. This compares with the "wars on terror" that justified the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). Here again, the United States, in trying to maintain its world leadership, ended up provoking chaos in the Middle East. Although it initially succeeded in bringing the region under its control to a certain extent, and in dragging the reluctant European powers on board, the whole process fostered an even greater and irreversible destabilisation and chaos. [1]

Wagner's rebellion, although quickly curtailed, highlighted the fragilities of the Russian state, which threaten to lead to a political fragmentation, affecting not only the Russian bourgeoisie, but also leading the world to levels of great instability. What’s more, we are now seeing characters like Prigozhin enter the scene, ready to vie for control of power and, of course, of nuclear weapons.

 

Russia, a bomb that threatens to explode
The implosion of the Eastern bloc in the early 1990s confirmed that capitalism was entering its phase of decomposition, characterised by global disorder and a struggle of "each against all". The main cause of this collapse was the pressure of a dual economic and political failure of the Stalinist system in the context of an accelerating and deepening crisis of capitalism worldwide. The collapse of the USSR then led to brutal outbreaks of separatist nationalism throughout its territory.

After the thwarted coup d'état in mid-1991, this process went even further out of control, forcing the Western powers, mainly the USA, to try to contain the avalanche that was coming at them and that threatened to spill over the borders of the former USSR. These powers offered food aid, debt financing facilities, etc. This "aid" was not, of course, done out of altruism but, as always, was based on imperialist calculations aimed at benefitting from the new geopolitical configuration. Today, Russia is once again at the centre of convulsions, but this time in the context of a worsening situation and under much more serious and unpredictable circumstances.

The 30 years of deepening decomposition have increased the tendency for US hegemony to decline, which has exacerbated the imperialist ambitions of all the other countries, in particular reviving Russia's ambition to regain an important place in the imperialist constellation.

Now the Ukraine war is accelerating decomposition. The prolongation of the war is weakening Russia’s forces and undermining the unity of the bourgeoisie around the state, a process threatening to reach explosive levels. A year before the Wagner mutiny, we warned that the "special operation" on Ukraine risks "constituting a second profound destabilisation after the fragmentation resulting from the implosion of its bloc (1989-1992): on the military level it will probably lose its rank as the number 2 world army; its economy is already weakened and will fall into more and more trouble [... and] internal tensions between factions of the Russian bourgeoisie can only intensify, [...] Some members of the leading faction (cf. Medvedev) are already warning of the consequences: a possible collapse of the Russian Federation and the rise of diverse mini-Russias with unpredictable leaders holding nuclear arms” [2].

At the beginning of the war, the bourgeoisie seemed unified around Putin as the representative of the state, but as the conflict dragged on, rivalries and disputes between groups began to emerge. In January 2023, certain events were already foreshadowing tensions in the military leadership, as Sergei Surovikin, who commanded the Russian troops in Ukraine, was dismissed.

In the context of decomposition, any pretext can trigger rivalries, which soon became explosive. In this sense, the mutiny led by Prigozhin, although it may have appeared as a small fissure, quickly grew, showing the fragile unity within the power structure and the inability of the state to contain the dynamic towards chaos. Vladimir Gelman, a Russian professor and analyst, following the behaviour of the different sectors during Prigozhin's so-called "March for Justice", notes that while the military caravan did not receive open support from any military or civilian sector, neither did Putin: "nobody came out in support of him. Neither mayors nor regional leaders came out (...) they did not take any political steps...". This waiting to see which way the winds were blowing exposes the vigilance and caution displayed by different bourgeoisie groups in a context where mistrust and the clash of interests have increased. If people like Lukashenko offered himself as a negotiator with Prigozhin, it was to prevent the war from shifting to Belarus through a possible incursion of the "Kalinoŭski Regiment" formed by opponents of Lukashenko's government who are fighting on the Ukrainian side.

 

Decomposition is advancing and accelerating all over the world.

The bourgeoisies of the major powers have themselves expressed their fears of a breakdown of the Russian state. During the crisis between the Wagner group and the Russian army, "American officials were paying special attention to Russia's nuclear arsenal, nervous about the instability of a country with the power to annihilate most of the planet...". [3] If we look at their statements on the events, there is no doubt that the bourgeoisie as a whole is concerned about the difficulties of the Russian state as expressed by the Prigozhin mutiny. They all agree that there is great division and fragility in the state apparatus. Zelensky, president of Ukraine, was the first to say that Putin is weak and his government is "crumbling". Antoni Blinken, US Secretary of State, while saying, "It's too early to tell how this is going to end", assesses that there are "real fissures" in Putin's government, which distract and divide Russia and make it difficult for it to "pursue aggression against Ukraine". Even Trump, who has presented himself as a "friend" of Russia, claims that "Putin is somewhat weakened" and calls on the US government to take advantage of this to negotiate a ceasefire. China alone avoids expressing a perception of Putin's government's weakness and presents the Wagner mutiny as an "internal affair". The casualness with which it assesses events is more than a diplomatic act and in reality hides concerns about the effect that a weakening of Russia on its borders would have, and even more so if the break-up of the Russian Federation, so far its main ally, were to occur.

For his part, Putin claims that he is maintaining the unity and strength of the Federation, though he is trying to win the loyalty of the various organs of repression by promising more weapons and better salaries. But will this be enough to eliminate the divisions in the military structure and the low morale of the troops?

What is becoming increasingly clear is that as the war in Ukraine drags on, chaos and barbarism will spread and deepen, directly affecting Russia, but since it is “the largest and one of the most heavily armed states in the world [... its destabilisation] would have unforeseeable consequences for the whole world” [4].

Possible consequences of a prolonged war could be:

- widening of the cracks within the bourgeoisie, leading to the outbreak of a civil war, with the population as a whole and particularly the working class serving as cannon fodder;

- erratic and irresponsible actions on the part of the group in power headed by Putin, who, seeing himself cornered, could make use of the nuclear arsenal... For the time being, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory from 7 or 8 July;

-The emergence of irrational cliques vying for power, which would have a large stock of nuclear weapons at hand, ready to wield them at full blast in order to better position themselves in the new power set-up. The actions of the Wagner group are a clear illustration of this risk. Moreover, there are chilling precedents in this regard, for example, with the threat to bomb the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world, menacing humanity with the very real danger of nuclear catastrophe in the middle of Europe. But the war madness is not exclusive to one side of the bourgeoisie: the US has just supplied Ukraine with cluster bombs, which spread by the thousands, killing on the spot and lying dormant for decades.

Whatever initiatives are taken, they will lead to catastrophes for the world. As we stated at the end of 2022, the 20s of the 21st century are turning out to be the most turbulent in history, with an accumulation of disasters and suffering for humanity (pandemics, famines, environmental disasters...), which are out of control and raise the question of its survival as a species. But as it turns out, war, an intentional and planned action by the capitalist state is, without doubt, the main trigger of barbarism and chaos.

As for the international repercussions, although we cannot hazard a guess as the situation is highly unpredictable, there are already some indications that important countries in Eastern Europe are calculating how they can take advantage of this situation to advance their own imperialist trump cards, as in the case of Poland: the Ukraine war has given Poland a greater strategic importance for the USA, which has allowed it to strengthen its military forces with the provision of armaments by NATO, including advanced technology tanks (in anticipation of the accommodation of the Wagner group in Belarus [5]). This military build-up has gone hand in hand with the revival of Poland’s old imperialist dreams of extending its influence in eastern Europe.  [6]

 

Only the working class has a solution to the capitalist destruction.
In all these clashes between bourgeois groups, they do not stop spitting their venom against the working class. With their feints, military demonstrations and declarations, all the gangs of the ruling class seek to show their strength to the opponent, but also to sow fear and confusion among the workers. Each faction participating in the war tries to show itself as a victim or defender of freedom, in order to dominate and control the reactions of the exploited and to use them as real cannon fodder on the war fronts, or to subject them to immobility and passivity, accepting the increase of exploitation and the degradation of living conditions in the name of the "fatherland". In particular, taking advantage of the war in Ukraine and specifically the Wagner mutiny, the bourgeoisie is reinforcing its discourse on democracy and the fight against autocracy, trying at all costs to hide the fact that its rotten system, built on exploitation, misery and war, can only offer destruction and chaos. The prolongation of its existence endangers the very life of this planet, and the war in Ukraine, with all its dangerous destructive consequences, shows that this threat is growing.

In the face of capitalist barbarism, the only social force capable of stopping it is the proletariat.

Let us not forget that, "the first world war was not ended by diplomatic negotiations or by the conquests of this or that imperialism, IT WAS ENDED BY THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY UPRISING OF THE PROLETARIAT” [7].

T / RR, 12-07-2023

 

 

1. Imperialist interests behind the Afghan ‘mission’ [285], World Revolution n° 327

2. The significance and impact of the war in Ukraine [225], International Review n° 168

3. Un motín en Rusia ofrece pistas sobre el poder de Putin [286] (Russian mutiny offers clues about Putin's power)

4. The acceleration of capitalist decomposition poses the clear possibility of the destruction of humanity [254], International Review n° 169

5. Polonia enciende las alertas en la frontera por la presencia del Grupo Wagner en Bielorrusia y pidió ayuda a la Unión Europea [287]. (Poland raises warnings about the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus and appeals to the European Union for help.)

6.  See: Polonia quiere anexionarse tres regiones del oeste de Ucrania cuando se negocie la paz [288] (Poland wants to annex three regions in western Ukraine when peace is negotiated. )

7. Third Manifesto of the ICC [289], ICConline March 2023

 

 

 

The tragic death of young Nahel in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, murdered by a policeman, set off a firestorm. Immediately, riots broke out in towns and cities across France against this despicable injustice.
 

The terror of the bourgeois state 
As can be seen from the video that immediately circulated on social networks, Nahel was shot in cold blood at point-blank range for a simple refusal to obey. This murder follows a long list of people killed and injured by the police, mostly with impunity.

There has been a real proliferation of spot checks, shameless discrimination and the systematic harassment of young people whose skin colour is a little too "dark". A whole section of the population, often poor and sometimes marginalised, can no longer stand the constant racism to which they are subjected, the arrogant and humiliating behaviour of many cops, or the hate speech they hear morning and night on television and the Internet. The disgusting press release from the Alliance police union declaring itself to be "at war" with "pests" and "savage hordes" illustrates this unbearable reality.

But the vile xenophobic overtones of many cops also allow all the defenders of "democracy" and the "rule of law" to mask the increasingly obvious terror and violence meted out by the entire bourgeois state and its police. Nahel's murder testifies to the growing power of state violence, a thinly veiled desire to terrorise and repress in the face of the inexorable crisis of capitalism, the inevitable reactions of the working class, and the risks of social explosion (riots, looting, etc.) which will continue to multiply in the future.

While this violence is embodied in an ordinary way by the subjugation of the exploited in their workplaces, by the constant humiliations inflicted on the unemployed and all the victims of capitalism, it is also expressed in the increasingly violent behaviour of a significant part of the police, the justice system and the entire repressive arsenal of the state, whether on a daily basis in the "neighbourhoods" or against social movements.

Since the 2017 law, which eased the conditions under which the police can use firearms, the number of murders has increased fivefold. Since this law was adopted by a left-wing government, that of Hollande, the police have been trigger-happy! At the same time, the repression of social movements has steadily increased in recent years, as evidenced by the yellow vest movement with a multitude of people stabbed, maimed or injured. More recently, the fight against pension reform saw a terrible outburst by the police, symbolised by the numerous attacks by the BRAV-M special police unit. Opponents of the Sainte-Soline mega-camps and illegal immigrants expelled from Mayotte have also been subjected to ultra-violent repression. The UN even condemned "the lack of restraint in the use of force", but also the "criminalising rhetoric" of the French state. And with good reason! France has one of the most extensive and dangerous police arsenals in Europe. The increasing use of rocket-propelled grenades, tear gas and riot guns, and the use of anti-riot tanks, etc., tend to transform social movements into veritable scenes of war, against people whom the authorities no longer hesitate to label shamelessly as "criminals" or "terrorists".

The recent riots were once again an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to exercise ferocious repression, sending in 45,000 police officers, elite BRI and RAID units, gendarmerie armoured cars, surveillance drones, riot tanks, water cannons, helicopters... In 2005, the riots in the suburbs lasted three weeks because the bourgeoisie tried to calm things down by avoiding another death. Today, the bourgeoisie must immediately impose itself by force and prevent the situation from getting out of hand. Faced with riots that are far more violent and widespread than in 2005, it is striking with tenfold force.

The more the situation deteriorates, the more the state, in France as everywhere else in the world, is forced to react with force. But the use of physical and legal violence (1) paradoxically accentuates the disorder and barbarism that the bourgeoisie is trying to contain. By unleashing its dogs on the most disadvantaged sections of the population, and by multiplying the hateful and racist rhetoric at the highest levels of government and in the media, the bourgeoisie has created the conditions for a huge explosion of anger and blind violence. In the future, it is certain that the brutal repression of the riots that have shaken France in recent days will also lead to more violence and more chaos. Macron's government has merely put a lid on a fire that will continue to smoulder.

 

A revolt without perspective
Nahel's murder was the final straw. A huge wave of anger exploded simultaneously across France and as far afield as Belgium and Switzerland. Violent clashes with the police broke out everywhere, particularly in the major urban centres around Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Everywhere, public buildings, shops, street furniture, buses, trams and many vehicles were destroyed by uncontrollable rioters, some as young as 13 or 14 years old. Fires ravaged shopping centres, town halls and police stations, as well as schools, gymnasiums and libraries. Shops and supermarkets were quickly looted, sometimes for clothes, sometimes for food.

The riots were an expression of genuine hatred for the humiliating behaviour of the cops, their constant violence, their sense of impunity. But how can we explain the scale of the violence and the extent of the chaos, when the government initially played up the indignation following Nahel's murder and promised exemplary penalties?

The tragic death of a teenager was the trigger for these riots, a spark, but it was the deepening crisis of capitalism and all its consequences for the most precarious and rejected populations that were the real cause and fuel for the revolt, the source of a deep malaise that eventually exploded. Contrary to the cheap statements made by Macron and his clique, who blame video games for intoxicating young people, or parents who should give their kids "two slaps in the face", young people in the suburbs, who are already victims of chronic discrimination, are being hit hard by the crisis, by growing marginalisation, by extreme impoverishment. Falling back on their individual resources they are sometimes led to resort to trafficking of all kinds. This is the result of abandonment and a lack of prospects.

But far from the violence being organised and aware of its aims, the riots have expressed the blind rage of young people without a compass, acting out of desperation and without perspective. The first suburban riots in France took place around the start of the decomposing phase of capitalism: from the 1979 riots in Vaux-en-velin, near Lyon, to the current ones. As we have pointed out in the past, what all riots have in common is that they are an "expression of despair and the no-future it engenders, manifested in their utter absurdity. Such was the case with the riots in the French suburbs in November 2005 [...]. The fact that it was their own families, neighbours or close friends who were the main victims of the depredations reveals the totally blind, desperate and suicidal nature of this type of riot. In fact, it was the cars of workers living in these neighbourhoods that were set on fire, schools or gymnasiums used by their brothers, sisters or neighbours' children that were destroyed. And it was precisely because of the absurdity of these riots that the bourgeoisie was able to use them and turn them against the working class". (2)

Unlike in 2005, when the riots were relatively confined to the suburbs, such as Clichy-sous-bois, the riots of early summer 2023 are now affecting hitherto protected city centres and even small provincial towns that were previously spared, such as Amboise, Pithivier and Bourges, which have been vandalised. The exacerbation of tensions and the deep despair of those involved have only increased and amplified this phenomenon.

 

Riots, a danger for the proletariat
Contrary to everything that the parties on the left of capital, led by the Trotskyists of the NPA and the anarchists, may claim, riots are not a favourable terrain for class struggle, nor an expression of it, but quite the contrary, a real danger. The bourgeoisie can all the more easily exploit the image of chaos conveyed by riots because they always make proletarians the collateral victims:

- through the damage and destruction caused, which affects the young people themselves and their neighbours;

- by the stigmatisation of the residents of the “banlieus" as "savages" responsible for all the ills of society;

- by increasing repression, which found a golden opportunity to step up its fight against all social movements, and particularly against workers' struggles.

The riots are therefore an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to unleash a whole barrage of propaganda to further cut the working class off from the young inhabitants of the banlieus in revolt. As in 2005, "the excessive media coverage allowed the ruling class to push as many working-class people in working-class neighbourhoods as possible to see the young rioters not as victims of capitalism in crisis, but as 'thugs'. They could only undermine any reaction of solidarity on the part of the working class towards these young people". (3)

It's easy for the bourgeoisie and the media to manipulate events by conflating the riots with the workers' struggle, the indiscriminate and gratuitous violence and sterile clashes with the cops with the conscious and organised class struggle. By criminalising one, it can unleash ever more violence against the other! It's no coincidence that, during the movement against pension reform, the images played over and over again on TV channels around the world were scenes of clashes with the police, violence and rubbish bin fires. The aim was to make a link between these two expressions of social struggle, which were radically different in nature, in an attempt to convey the idea that both express a dangerous disorder. The aim was to erase and prevent workers from learning the lessons of their own struggles, and to sabotage the process of reflection on the question of class identity. The riots in France were the perfect opportunity to reinforce this confusion.

The working class has its own methods of struggle which are radically opposed to riots and simple urban revolts. The class struggle has absolutely nothing to do with indiscriminate destruction and violence, arson, revenge and looting that offer no prospects and no tomorrow.
Although they may coordinate via social networks, their rioting is immediate and purely individual, guided by the instinct of mob movements, with no other aim than revenge and destruction. The struggle of the working class is the antithesis of these practices. On the contrary, it is a class whose immediate struggles are part of a tradition, part of a conscious, organised project to overthrow capitalist society on a global scale. In this sense, the working class must take care not to allow itself to be drawn into the rotten terrain of riots, onto the slope of blind and gratuitous violence, and even less into sterile confrontations with the forces of law and order, which only serve to justify repression.

Unlike riots, which strengthen the armed wing of the state, workers' struggles, when they are united and ascendant, make it possible to roll back repression. In May 1968, for example, in the face of the repression of the students, the massive movements and unity of the workers made it possible to limit and roll back the violence of the cops. In the same way, when Polish workers mobilised throughout the country in 1980 in less than 48 hours, their unity and self-organisation protected them from the extreme brutality of the "socialist" state. It was only when they put their fight back into the hands of the Solidarnosc trade union, when the latter took control of the struggle, so that the workers were divided and deprived of the leadership of the struggle, that the repression struck so savagely.

The working class must remain wary of the danger posed by indiscriminate violence, putting forward its own class violence, the only violence that can lead to a future.

 

WH, 3 July 2023

 

[1] After the police crackdown, the thousands of young people arrested received very heavy sentences in summary trials.

[2] "What's the difference between the hunger riots and the riots in the suburbs?", Quelle différence entre les émeutes de la faim et les émeutes des banlieues ? [291], Révolution Internationale no. 394 (October 2008).

[3] Ibid.

 

After more than 30 years of retreat, the revival of workers' struggles in Britain has been closely followed by workers in other Western European countries. It indicates a rupture, a change in the dynamics of the class struggle at the international level and a renewal of a class perspective. It shows that the proletariat has not been defeated at the historical level and that it is once again beginning to resist the growing attacks on its living conditions, drawing attention to the inhuman situation endured by all the exploited in the world.  The working class in the USA has also suffered from attacks on its living and working conditions, with increased workloads and reduced purchasing power.

Strikes in the USA: a confirmation of the international dimension of the class struggle

Faced with worsening working and living conditions, the proletariat in the United States has also demonstrated that it is not willing to accept further attacks arising from the economic crisis. In 2021 a large number of struggles had already taken place in what was called Striketober (from "strike" and "October")[1];  there were 346 strikes by workers in various sectors, with the workers in the health sector prominent, demanding improved wages and better working conditions. In October, 4.3 million American workers were already mobilised. These struggles continued into 2022 when struggles re-emerged in Europe.  385 strikes were recorded, escalating in October once again, one month before the mid-term elections.

In the health sector, the scale of mobilisation has reached historic levels.

Some of the most important strikes in 2022 were in the health sector, raising common demands for increased wages, improved benefits and increased staffing levels (a single worker is now being asked to do the work of what was previously done by several workers and overtime has become compulsory). They are also demanding more protection against dangerous conditions for patients and staff, like those caused by the pandemic. As an example, more than 55,000 social service workers in Los Angeles voted to strike on 6 May, and 15,000 nurses in Minnesota and Wisconsin on 12-15 September staged what is believed to be the largest-ever strike of private sector nurses.

Demonstrations and similar demands have continued in this sector, with more than 17,000 nurses involved in January 2023, with 7,000 in Manhattan and the Bronx hospitals in New York going on strike, rejecting the improved offer of the employers who ignored placards declaring: "workers are exhausted and burned out". The fact that the unions prevented nurses in other hospitals from showing their solidarity weakened the 9-12 January strike and finally they were forced to accept the same raise granted to other hospitals and returned to work.

The demand for strike action by US railworkers threatens to disrupt economic activity

The call for strike action on the railways threatened to spread across the country, severely affecting the production and distribution networks and impacting the national economy less than two months before the mid-term elections. More than 115,000 railway workers from various companies were demanding strike action on 16 September 2022.

The working conditions in this sector have worsened as the major rail companies have cut nearly a third of their workforce; 45,000 workers have been made redundant in the last six years. They have also aggressively cut costs, running fewer but longer trains with a reduced workforce and with harsher working conditions with train drivers and conductors working shifts that can last for up to 24 hours and with workers effectively denied time off for medical appointments or to cope with family problems by being penalised financially. The train derailment in Ohio on 3 February, resulting in large quantities of highly toxic and carcinogenic vinyl chloride going up in flames, put thousands of people's lives in danger, including railworkers, and shows the deadly irresponsibility of the railroad companies that increase the length and load of trains for higher profits

The strike threat came after 3 years of conflict during which companies made record profits by imposing harsher working conditions forcing many workers to resign[2]. When the White House proposed that "the tensions needed resolving without jeopardising the economy or undermining Democrat support among working people", the unions cooperated fully. President Biden had already averted the strike in July by imposing a "cooling-off period", which expired on 9 September with workers still wanting action. Then, in negotiations on 15 September, Biden again intervened by forming a "Presidential Emergency Board" and blackmailed the workers into not taking strike action because of 'the damage it would cause to everyone'. The unions cooperated to prevent strike action by granting time to the US House of Representatives and Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, to enact a new law within the space of two days, on 30 November, that would prevent strike disruption to the rail network. In other words, it was not only the intervention of Democrat Biden, but above all the union sabotage of the struggle and its control over the workers which ensured that the living and working conditions of railworkers would only worsen

The struggles unite in the face of attacks from the bosses, the government and the sabotage of the unions

We must draw lessons from current and past struggles and use them in future struggles as discontent continues to grow in different sectors such as education. On 14 November 2022, what has been called "the largest of academic strikes in the United States", involving 48,000 teachers, led to a five weeks stoppage and a demand for higher wages and improved working conditions at the University of California, one of the largest public educational institutions in the United States and home to 280,000 students from all over the world. The strike was called by assistant professors, postdoctoral academics and researchers. Researchers and postdoctoral academics had reached a tentative agreement in early December that improved their contract situation but then both groups agreed to continue the strike until there was a resolution for the assistant professors, the most vulnerable group and the one with the heaviest workloads. This show of solidarity is an important lesson for workers everywhere.

A few months later, 65,000 school employees and state school teachers staged the largest strike in the United States since 2019. Tens of thousands joined the picket lines and held a massive demonstration on 21 March 2023; it was the first of three days of an extended citywide strike across Los Angeles. Workers serving 420,000 elementary and special education students also struck demanding improved wages and a reduction to workloads. It was the lowest paid workers (canteen and office workers, drivers, janitors and special education assistants) who triggered the strike. They were joined by thousands of teachers, showing their solidarity and unity, an essential factor in the development of the struggles.

In the same dynamic and for the first time in Rutgers University's 257-year history, 9,000 workers serving 67,000 students, went on strike on 10 April. Teachers, researchers, physicians and graduate students at campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden demanded wage increases, equal pay for associate lecturers, as well as demanding an end to semester-only contracts. In an email these workers said: "We are moved & motivated by the huge show of active support from members, students, co-workers and partners in the community. TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG & WE WILL WIN a #FairContractNow [292]! #RUOnSTRIKE [293]”.

The strikes continue. About 11,500 film and TV scriptwriters at Hollywood studios began their first strike in 16 years on 1 May for wage increases and for a pension plan and health insurance. They were joined by 160,000 actors who called for a strike on 13 June, not having done so since 1980, and they will be joined by screenwriters for the first time in more than 60 years[3].  Also, in early May, 600 Metropolitan Transit System bus drivers began strike action and demonstrations demanding higher wages and improved working conditions. Several routes throughout San Diego County were affected. And on 2 June, 15,000 workers at 41 hotels in Southern California and in Arizona began a 3-day strike and are threatening more strikes to achieve their demands. There are also 459,000 UPS workers (involved in parcel delivery) who are preparing for a possible strike on 1 August.

It is important to learn lessons from other struggles around the world.

The proletariat must unite and develop its consciousness of the need to overthrow the capitalist system and build a world community without borders or other divisions.

The economic crisis is forcing workers around the world to defend its living and working conditions and to confront the unions. The working class in the US is increasing its consciousness of its exploited conditions, but it needs to unify its struggles and reflect on past experiences and lessons arising from the mobilisations by the proletariat in Europe.

The recent struggles in Britain and France have reminded us that: "We must take the control of our struggles into our own hands"; "We must come together to discuss and draw the lessons of past struggles. The methods of struggle should express the strength of the working class, those which, at certain moments in history, have shaken the bourgeoisie and its system, namely:

- Extending support and solidarity beyond sector, town, region or country;

- Holding the widest possible discussion about the needs of the struggle;

- Taking back control of the struggle through general assemblies away from the control of the unions or other bourgeois organisations, to prepare for the united and autonomous struggles of tomorrow! " [4].

Faced with capitalist barbarism, the working class must renew its struggles worldwide in defence of its living standards by acquiring the lessons of its past defeats.

 

Yosjaz 12/07/2023

Since Saturday, a deluge of fire and steel has been raining down on the people living in Israel and Gaza. On one side, Hamas. On the other, the Israeli army. In the middle, civilians being bombed, shot, executed and taken hostage. Thousands have already died.

All over the world, the bourgeoisie is calling on us to choose sides. For the Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Or for the Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism. Each denounces the barbarity of the other to justify war. The Israeli state has been oppressing the Palestinian people for decades, with blockades, harassment, checkpoints and humiliation, so revenge would be legitimate. Palestinian organisations have been killing innocent people with knife attacks and bombings. Each side calls for the blood of the other to be spilled.

This deadly logic is the logic of imperialist war! It is our exploiters and their states who are always waging a merciless war in defence of their own interests. And it is we, the working class, the exploited, who always pay the price, with our lives.

For us, proletarians, there is no side to choose, we have no homeland, no nation to defend! On either side of the border, we are class brothers and sisters! Neither Israel, nor Palestine!

There is no end to war in the Middle East
The twentieth century was a century of wars, the most atrocious wars in human history, and none of them served the interests of the workers. The latter were always called upon to go and be killed in their millions for the interests of their exploiters, in the name of the defence of "the fatherland", "civilisation", "democracy", even "the socialist fatherland" (as some presented the USSR of Stalin and the gulag).

Today, there is a new war in the Middle East. On both sides, the ruling cliques are calling on the exploited to "defend the homeland", whether Jewish or Palestinian. The Jewish workers who in Israel are exploited by Jewish capitalists, the Palestinian workers who are exploited by Jewish capitalists or by Arab capitalists (and often much more ferociously than by Jewish capitalists since, in Palestinian companies, labour law is still that of the former Ottoman Empire).

Jewish workers have already paid a heavy price for the war madness of the bourgeoisie in the five wars they have suffered since 1948. As soon as they emerged from the concentration camps and ghettos of a Europe ravaged by world war, the grandparents of those who today wear the uniform of the Tsahal (Israel Defence Forces) were drawn into the war between Israel and the Arab countries. Then their parents paid the price in blood in the wars of '67, '73 and '82. These soldiers are not hideous brutes whose only thought is to kill Palestinian children. They are young conscripts, mostly workers, dying in fear and disgust, who are forced to act as police and whose heads are filled with propaganda about the "barbarity" of the Arabs.

Palestinian workers, too, have already paid a terrible price in blood. Driven from their homes in 1948 by the war waged by their leaders, they have spent most of their lives in concentration camps, conscripted as teenagers into Fatah, the PFLP or Hamas militias.

The biggest massacres of Palestinians were not carried out by the armies of Israel, but by those of the countries where they were parked, such as Jordan and Lebanon: in September 1970 ("Black September") "Little King" Hussein exterminated them en masse, to the point where some of them took refuge in Israel to escape death. In September 1982, Arab militias (admittedly Christian and allied to Israel) massacred them in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut.
 

Nationalism and religion, poisons for the exploited
Today, in the name of the "Palestinian homeland", Arab workers are once again being mobilised against the Israelis, the majority of whom are Israeli workers, just as the latter are being asked to be killed in defence of the "promised land".

Nationalist propaganda flows disgustingly from both sides, mind-numbing propaganda designed to turn human beings into ferocious beasts. The Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies have been stirring it up for more than half a century. Israeli and Arab workers have constantly been told that they must defend the land of their ancestors. For the former, the systematic militarisation of society has developed a psychosis of encirclement in order to turn them into "good soldiers". For the latter, the desire was ingrained to do battle with Israel in order to find a home. And to do this, the leaders of the Arab countries in which they were refugees kept them for decades in concentration camps, in unbearable living conditions.

Nationalism is one of the worst ideologies invented by the bourgeoisie. It is the ideology that allows it to mask the antagonism between exploiters and exploited, to unite them all behind the same flag, for which the exploited will be killed in the service of the exploiters, in the defence of the interests and privileges of the ruling class.

To crown it all, to this war is added the poison of religious propaganda, the kind that creates the most demented fanaticism. Jews are called upon to defend the Wailing Wall of Solomon's Temple with their blood. Muslims must give their lives for the Mosque of Omar and the holy places of Islam. What is happening today in Israel and Palestine clearly confirms that religion is "the opium of the people", as the revolutionaries of the 19th century put it. The purpose of religion is to console the exploited and oppressed. Those for whom life on earth is hell are told that they will be happy after their death provided they know how to earn their salvation. And this salvation is exchanged for sacrifice, submission, even giving up their lives in the service of "holy war".

The fact that, at the beginning of the 21st century, ideologies and superstitions dating back to antiquity or the Middle Ages are still widely used to lead human beings to sacrifice their lives speaks volumes about the state of barbarism into which the Middle East, along with many other parts of the world, is sinking.

The great powers are responsible for the war
It is the leaders of the great powers who have created the hellish situation in which the exploited people of this region are dying in their thousands today. It was the European bourgeoisie, and particularly the British bourgeoisie with its "Balfour Declaration" of 1917, which, in order to divide and conquer, allowed the creation of a "Jewish home" in Palestine, thus promoting the chauvinist utopias of Zionism. It was these same bourgeoisies who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, which they had just won, arranged for hundreds of thousands of Central European Jews to be transported to Palestine after leaving the camps or wandering far from their region of origin. This meant that they did not have to take them in at home.

It was these same bourgeoisies, first the British and French, then the American bourgeoisie, who armed the State of Israel to the teeth in order to give it the role of spearhead of the Western bloc in this region during the Cold War, while the USSR, for its part, armed its Arab allies as much as possible. Without these great "sponsors", the wars of 1956, 67, 73 and 82 could not have taken place.

Today, the bourgeoisies of Lebanon, Iran and probably Russia are arming and pushing Hamas. The United States has just sent its largest aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean and has announced new arms deliveries to Israel. In fact, all the major powers are participating more or less directly in this war and these massacres!

This new war threatens to hurl the entire Middle East into chaos! This is not the umpteenth bloody confrontation to plunge this corner of the world into mourning. The sheer scale of the killings indicates that the barbarity has reached a new level: young people dancing at a festival mowed down with machine guns, women and children executed in the street at point-blank range, with no other objective than to satisfy a desire for blind revenge, a carpet of bombs to annihilate an entire population, two million people in Gaza deprived of everything, water, electricity, gas, food... There is no military logic to all these atrocities, to all these crimes! Both sides are wallowing in the most appalling and irrational murderous fury!

But there is something even more serious: this Pandora's box will never close again. As with Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, there will be no turning back, no "return to peace". Capitalism is dragging ever larger sections of humanity into war, death and the decomposition of society. The war in Ukraine has already been going on for almost two years and is bogged down in endless carnage. Massacres are also underway in Nagorno-Karabakh. And there is already a threat of a new war between the nations of the former Yugoslavia. Capitalism is war!

To put an end to war, capitalism must be overthrown.
The workers of all countries must refuse to take sides with one bourgeois camp or another. In particular, they must refuse to be fooled by the rhetoric of the parties which claim to be working class, the parties of the left and extreme left, which ask them to show "solidarity with the Palestinian masses" in their quest for their right to a "homeland". The Palestinian homeland will never be anything but a bourgeois state at the service of the exploiting class and oppressing these same masses, with cops and prisons. The solidarity of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries does not go to the "Palestinians" just as it does not go to the "Israelis", among whom there are exploiters and exploited. It goes to the workers and unemployed of Israel and Palestine (who, moreover, have already led struggles against their exploiters despite all the brainwashing they have been subjected to), just as it goes to the workers of all the other countries of the world. The best solidarity they can offer is certainly not to encourage their nationalist illusions.

This solidarity means above all developing their fight against the capitalist system responsible for all the wars, a fight against their own bourgeoisie.

The working class will have to win peace by overthrowing capitalism on a global scale, and today this means developing its struggles on a class terrain, against the increasingly harsh economic attacks levelled at it by a system in insurmountable crisis.

Against nationalism, against the wars your exploiters want to drag you into:
Workers of all countries, unite!

ICC, 9 October 2023

“We have to say that enough is enough! Not just us, but the entire working class of this country has to say, at some point, that enough is enough” (Littlejohn, maintenance supervisor in the skilled trades at Ford’s Buffalo stamping plant in the United States).

This American worker sums up in one sentence what is ripening in the consciousness of the entire working class, in every country. A year ago, the "Summer of Rage" broke out in the United Kingdom. By chanting "Enough is enough", British workers sounded the call to take up the fight again after more than thirty years of stagnation and resignation.

This call was heard beyond borders. From Greece to Mexico, strikes and demonstrations against the same intolerable deterioration in our living and working conditions continued throughout the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.

In mid-winter in France, a further step was taken: proletarians took up the idea that "enough is enough". But instead of multiplying local and corporatist struggles, isolated from each other, they were able to gather in their millions in the streets. To the necessary fighting spirit they added the force of massive numbers. And now it is in the United States that workers are trying to carry the torch of struggle a little further.

In the United States, a new step forward for class struggle
A veritable media blackout surrounds the social movement that is currently setting the world's leading economic power ablaze. And with good reason: in a country ravaged for decades by poverty, violence, drugs, racism, fear and individualism, these struggles show that a completely different path is possible.

At the heart of all these strikes shines a genuine surge of workers' solidarity: "We've all had enough: the temps have had enough, long-serving employees like me have had enough... because these temps are our children, our neighbours, our friends" (the same New York employee). This is how the workers stick together, between generations: the "old" are not on strike just for themselves, but above all for the "young" who are suffering even worse working conditions and even lower wages.

A sense of solidarity is gradually growing in the working class as we realise that we are "all in this together": "All these groups are not just separate movements, but a collective rallying cry: we are a city of workers - blue-collar and white-collar, union and non-union, immigrant and native-born" (Los Angeles Times).

The current strikes in the United States are bringing together far more than just the sectors involved. "The Stellantis complex in Toledo, Ohio, was abuzz with cheers and horns at the start of the strike" (The Wall Street Journal). "Horns support strikers outside the carmaker's plant in Wayne, Michigan" (The Guardian).

The current wave of strikes is of historic importance:
- scriptwriters and actors in Hollywood fought together for the first time in 63 years;
- private nurses in Minnesota and Wisconsin have staged the biggest strike in their history;
- Los Angeles municipal workers went on strike for the first time in 40 years;
- workers from the "Big Three" (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler) led an unprecedented joint struggle;
- Kaiser Permanente workers, on strike in several states, led the largest demonstration ever organised in the health sector.

We could also add the many strikes in recent weeks at Starbucks, Amazon and McDonald's, in aviation and railway factories, or the one that has gradually spread to all hotels in California... all these workers are fighting for a decent wage in the face of galloping inflation that is reducing them to poverty.

With all these strikes, the American proletariat is showing that it is also possible for workers in the private sector to fight. In Europe, until now, it has been mainly public sector workers who have mobilised, the fear of losing their jobs being a decisive brake for employees in private companies. But faced with increasingly unbearable conditions of exploitation, we are all going to be forced to fight. The future belongs to the class struggle in all sectors, together and united!

Faced with division, let's unite our struggles!
Anger is rising again in Europe, Asia and Oceania. China, Korea and Australia have also been experiencing a succession of strikes since the summer. In Greece, at the end of September, a social movement brought together the transport, education and health sectors to protest against a proposed labour reform designed to make employment more flexible. October 13 marks the return of demonstrations in France, on the issue of wages. In Spain too, a wind of anger is beginning to blow: on 17 and 19 October, strikes in the private education sector; on 24 October, a strike in the public education sector; on 25 October, a strike by the entire Basque public sector; on 28 October, a demonstration by pensioners, etc. Faced with these forecasts of struggles, the Spanish press is beginning to anticipate "another hot autumn".

This list not only indicates the growing level of discontent and combativeness of our class. It also reveals our movement's greatest current weakness: despite growing solidarity, our struggles remain separate from each other. Our strikes may take place at the same time, we may even be side by side, sometimes on the streets, but we are not really fighting together. We are not united, we are not organised as a single social force, in a single struggle.

The current wave of strikes in the United States is another flagrant demonstration of this. When the movement was launched in the "Big Three" auto plants, the strike was limited to three "designated" plants: Wentzville (Missouri) for GM, Toledo (Ohio) for Chrysler, and Wayne (Michigan) for Ford. These three plants are separated by thousands of miles, making it impossible for the workers to get together and fight as one.

Why were they so scattered? Who organised this fragmentation? Who officially supervises these workers? Who organises the social movements? Who are the "specialists in struggle", the legal representatives of the workers? The trade unions! All over the world, they are scattering the workers' response.

It was the UAW, one of the main unions in the United States, that "designated" these three factories! It is the UAW which, while falsely calling the movement "strong, united and massive", is deliberately limiting the strike to only 10% of the unionised workforce, while all the workers are loudly proclaiming their desire to go on strike. When the Mack Truck (Volvo trucks) workers tried to join the "Big Three" in their struggle, what did the unions do? They rushed to sign an agreement to end the strike! In Hollywood, when the actors' and scriptwriters' strike had been going on for months, a management/union agreement was signed at the same time as the car workers joined the strike.

Even in France, during demonstrations which bring millions of people together in the streets, the unions divide up the processions by having "their" union members march grouped by corporation, not together but one behind the other, preventing any gathering or discussion.

In the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, in Spain, in Greece, in Australia and in every other country, if we are to stop this organised division, if we are to be truly united, if we are to be able to reach out to each other, to pull each other along, to extend our movement, we must wrest control of the struggles from the hands of the unions. These are our struggles, the struggles of the whole working class!

Wherever we can, we must come together in open, massive, autonomous general assemblies, which really decide how the movement is run. General assemblies in which we discuss as broadly as possible the general needs of the struggle and the most unifying demands. General assemblies from which we can set off in mass delegations to meet our class brothers and sisters, the workers in the nearest factory, hospital, school or administration.

Behind every strike looms the hydra of revolution
In the face of impoverishment, in the face of global warming, in the face of police violence, in the face of racism, in the face of violence against women... in recent years there have been other types of reaction: the "Yellow vests" demonstrations in France, ecological rallies like "Youth for Climate", protests for equality like "Black Lives Matter" or "MeToo", or cries of rage like during the riots in the United States, France or the United Kingdom.

But all these actions are aimed at imposing a fairer, more equitable, more humane and greener form of capitalism. That's why all these reactions are so easy for governments and the bourgeoisie to exploit, and they have no hesitation in supporting all these "citizens' movements". What's more, the unions and all the politicians are doing everything they can to limit workers' demands to the strict framework of capitalism, by emphasising the need for a better distribution of wealth between employers and employees. "Now that industry is recovering, [workers] should share in the profits" even Biden declared, the first American President to have found himself on a picket line.

But by fighting against the effects of the economic crisis, against the attacks orchestrated by the States, against the sacrifices imposed by the development of the war economy, the proletariat is rising up, not as citizens demanding "rights" and "justice", but as the exploited against their exploiters and, ultimately, as a class against the system itself. This is why the international dynamic of the working class struggle carries within it the seeds of a fundamental challenge to the whole of capitalism.
In Greece, during the day of action on 21 September against labour reform, demonstrators made the link between this attack and the "natural" disasters which ravaged the country this summer. On the one hand, capitalism is destroying the planet, polluting, exacerbating global warming, deforesting, concreting, drying out the land and causing floods and fires. On the other, it is doing away with the jobs that used to look after nature and protect people, and prefers to build warplanes rather than Canadairs, i.e.firefighting planes

As well as fighting against the deterioration in its living and working conditions, the working class is engaged in a much broader reflection on this system and its future. A few months ago, in demonstrations in France, we began to see signs rejecting the war in Ukraine, refusing to tighten our belts in the name of this war economy: "No money for war, no money for weapons, money for wages, money for pensions".

The economic crisis, the ecological crisis and the barbarity of war are all symptoms of the deadly dynamic of global capitalism. The deluge of bombs and bullets raining down on the people of Israel and Gaza as we write these lines, while the massacres in Ukraine continue, is yet another illustration of the downward spiral into which capitalism is driving society, threatening the lives of all humanity!

The growing number of strikes shows that two worlds are clashing: the bourgeois world of competition and barbarity, and the working class world of solidarity and hope. This is the profound meaning of our current and future struggles: the promise of another future, without exploitation or social classes, without war or borders, without destruction of the planet or the quest for profit.
 

International Communist Current, 8 October 2023

While the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are attracting the attention of newspapers around the world, in the background there is always the confrontation between the two major powers of today, the United States and, facing them, their main challenger, China, which is intensifying in an increasingly open and violent way. Within the American bourgeoisie, the main factions are united in the view that China must at all costs be prevented from strengthening its position as a world power with ambitions to dethrone the United States: "The USA’s reaction to its own decline and the rise of China has not been to withdraw from global affairs, on the contrary. The US has launched its own offensive aimed at restricting China’s advance, from Obama’s ‘pivot to the East’ through Trump’s focus on trade war, to the more directly military approach of Biden (provocations around Taiwan, downing of Chinese spy-balloons, the formation of AUKUS, the new US base in the Philippines, etc). The aim of this offensive is to build a fire-wall around China, blocking its capacity to develop as a world power." (Resolution on the International Situation, 25th ICC Congress [299], point 4, International Review 170, 2023).

The Chinese bourgeoisie under pressure from the US offensive

Militarily, despite an impressive build-up of its armaments over the last decade or so, China is still largely inferior to the United States and is therefore developing a long-term strategy aimed at laying the global economic foundations for its rise to imperialist power. In short, what China needs is time, and that is precisely what Uncle Sam is absolutely unwilling to give it.

The United States has greatly weakened Beijing's "strategic ally", Russia, which it has trapped in an increasingly destructive war in Ukraine. China has understood the Americans' warning message and has reacted cautiously, as it does not want to be subjected to sanctions that would make its economic situation even more complicated. The spread of the war chaos and the accumulation of debts by the states involved have led to stagnation, or even blockage, of its pharaonic imperialist project, the New Silk Road, which is another factor putting China in difficulty. On the other hand, the trade war, initiated under the Trump administration and intensified by Biden, is exerting a suffocating pressure on the Chinese economy: we need only think of the ban on Huawei using Google's systems and the customs duties on Chinese aluminium, or the ban on American investors investing in China in the development and production of microprocessors and the pressure on "allied" states not to export to China machines that can be used to manufacture microchips.

On the military front, the United States has fine-tuned its blockade of the Chinese coastline, thereby stepping up the pressure on China. In August, a mutual defence treaty was signed at Camp David between Japan, South Korea and the United States. Biden reiterated the United States' commitment to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack and is providing massive arms supplies. Lastly, China's aggressive attitude in the China Sea has enabled the Americans to strengthen their ties with the Philippines and Vietnam, in particular through Biden's visit to Hanoi in September to propose a "strategic alliance" to a country with which American military companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing already have major economic links. If we add to this the US bases on the islands of Okinawa and Guam, it is clear that the American advance is increasingly limiting China's ambitions in terms of maritime routes. Finally, QUAD (Japan, India, the United States and Australia), a "mutual defence" group aiming to make the Indo-Pacific a place of "peace and prosperity" (sic!), declared at its recent meeting in Hiroshima in May: "We strongly oppose destabilisation or unilateral actions to change the status quo by force or coercion". While there is no mention of China and its threats against Taiwan, the message is nevertheless unambiguous.

All-out reactions from the Chinese bourgeoisie

Faced with such a situation, Beijing is obliged to react, but the hypocritical mix of provocation and diplomacy on the part of the Americans (they have sent 13 delegations to Beijing over the last 3 months with the aim of "negotiating") is leading China to react in different directions.

On the one hand, its military actions towards Taiwan are becoming increasingly threatening: China is stepping up military exercises in the Taiwan Strait to give credence to the idea that a possible invasion is being prepared, and it is also building artificial islands on controversial reefs in the China Sea to house new military bases, with the particular aim of controlling an area where 60% of the world's naval trade passes through. It is also stepping up the arms race to strengthen its military apparatus, particularly its war fleet. Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe declared: "If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs and to the bitter end. It's the only option".

China's aggression is not only directed at the United States, but also at its neighbours: Beijing is embroiled in a territorial dispute with India that regularly leads to armed clashes; China's reaction to Japan's discharge of radiation-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean is another example of the acrimony in relations between the two nations, the former having banned Japanese seafood products from entering its territory, given that the Japanese fishing industry is very important to the Japanese economy. On the economic front, China has also taken retaliatory measures against the United States, for example, by deciding at the beginning of September to ban the use of iPhones in its public services. While this immediately caused Apple to lose $200 billion on the stock market, the irrationality of the measure is highlighted by the fact that China is the main manufacturer of these mobile phones and that Apple may have to hire Chinese workers as a result.

On the other hand, China has embarked on a large-scale diplomatic operation aimed at showing that it is a "force for peace" and that it is the Americans who are pursuing a policy of war: it was the architect of the spectacular reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and has even offered its good offices for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. At the recent BRICS meeting in South Africa, Xi Jinping pushed for the expansion of the BRICS by proposing 6 new members and the creation of a common currency; while the latter proposal met with hostility from India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina were included as new members. This Chinese policy reveals its growing influence in the Middle East. In the absence of a military capability to rival that of the United States, China is mainly using "financial credit diplomacy" to gain influence in the world. However, this weapon carries many risks. For example, the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka is preventing China from cancelling Pakistan's debt for the time being, given the risk of the repayment problem spreading.

Xi Jinping's absence from the G20 meeting in New Delhi in September was a first for the Chinese president, who had always attended meetings of this group of countries, and clearly illustrates the dilemma in which China finds itself: On the one hand, Xi wanted to show that he no longer wishes to recognise the world order dictated by the United States and resulting from the Second World War; but fundamentally, his absence is an admission of weakness in the face of American aggression in the Indo-Pacific, the strengthening of relations between the United States and Modi's India, and his own economic and political difficulties.

Faced with the American offensive, China is manoeuvring to gain time, but the Americans are not prepared to give it. American provocations and their policy of containment are increasing, aiming to strangle the Chinese dragon. This can only accentuate the unpredictability of the situation and the risk of irrational reactions that will multiply warlike confrontations and intensify the chaos.

Fo & HR, 9.10.23

This article was written before the terrible events in Derna, Libya, after floods stirred up by Storm Daniel swept through ill-maintained dams on the Wadi Derna and caused unimaginable levels of destruction. Over 11,000 are known to have died, thousands more are missing and those left in the ruins face starvation and disease. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the growing impact of climate change and capitalism’s total inability to build a “dam” against it, as the article below clearly shows.  

The year 2023 is demonstrating once again the scale of the environmental disaster into which the bourgeoisie is dragging all of humanity. The devastating forest fires in Canada and Hawaii, the floods in Asia, the shortages of drinking water in Uruguay and Africa, the devastating storms in the United States, the irretrievable melting of the glaciers... all these "natural disasters" are directly linked to global warming.

A disaster on a global scale
Not only is global warming real, it is accelerating at a dizzying and catastrophic rate. July 2023 was the hottest month on record for the planet. The month of August has seen the hottest day on record ever for this period. Forecasters are predicting that 2024 could well exceed these woeful records. The collapse of the system of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, an essential regulator of the planet's climate, could, if confirmed, drastically alter the Earth's climate and considerably weaken the human species in the space of a few decades; it's a new threat yet to be confirmed, but one that could be added to all those already hanging over humanity!

The bourgeoisie can no longer deny this reality, even though it has deliberately sought to reduce or even conceal the risks for many years in order to protect its profits![1] But the acceleration and accentuation of the consequences of climate change means they can no longer hide the truth: the global climate is heading for a catastrophic situation that will make more and more areas of the planet uninhabitable. Apart from totally irrational "climate sceptics" like Trump and the European far right, the most "responsible" heads of state are all promising, hand on heart, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to develop a more environmentally-friendly economy. Of course, these commitments are never met, or fall far short of what's at stake, or are utterly laughable (banning plastic straws, sales receipts, etc.).
Consequently, the bourgeoisie is having to change its tune and to start preparing us all to face the unthinkable by introducing measures of "adaptation". The latest comments, but certainly not the last, are from France's new health minister, Aurélien Rousseaux, who, faced with a new heatwave that hit half the country in August, had nothing better to say than: "We have to get used to living with these extremely high temperatures". Needless to say, as with the case of the past and future pandemics, the bourgeoisie is showing unspeakable incompetence and is not seriously preparing for the catastrophe. Behind these so-called "adaptations", the ruling class is above all preparing people for austerity and shortages of supplies in the name of adjusting to "environmental requirements".

The bourgeoisie has no solution to the environmental crisis
Under the pretext of "adapting" to increasingly unsustainable climatic conditions, the bourgeoisie is starting to reshape its economy... but certainly not to preserve the planet! Several countries are planning to reactivate coal-fired power stations or (like France) are unscrupulously tampering with quotas to avoid shutting them down! The French government is very close to authorising new oil drilling in the Gironde, symbolically located at the place where the forests were ravaged last year! States are fighting to avoid putting excessive constraints on their economies, and are using the environment as an imperialist weapon to vilify each other's inaction, to protect their own markets and try to weaken their competitors with, for example, high-profile lawsuits against competing car manufacturers for infringing environmental rules... As a result, the European law on the protection of nature, adopted on 12 July, contains a provision introducing an economic safeguard clause: if the economy suffers as a result of misconceived measures set out in the law, these should be cancelled! For capital, there should be no constraints on the expansion and intensification of its economy. Environmental destruction has to take second place.

At the same time, preventive measures are not being taken, with the obvious risk of accelerating the scale of disasters. The fires in Hawaii, for example, were uncontrollable because the electric power lines were still not buried underground and the risk of overhead lines spreading the fires led the authorities to cut off the electricity, which immediately disconnected the pumps supplying the firefighters' hoses with water. In Asia, the lack of medicines to combat malaria and dysentery played a large part in worsening the human toll of the floods. In Uruguay, with a drop in the capacity to supply enough drinking water to people's taps, it was replaced with salt water! In Mayotte, a French overseas territory, no provision was made to deal with a drought depriving the population of drinking water.

Protecting the environment is not profitable...
This is not a matter of "choice" or "lack of political will", but the very logic of capitalist accumulation, which forbids any questioning of the ultra-polluting dynamics of bourgeois society. For it is capitalism that is responsible for these problems; it is capitalism that forces every capitalist to produce more and more, and at lower cost, even if this production leads to more pollution and health hazards. Capitalism needs to sell. And that's all there is to it! An anarchic and short-term approach. In fact, it's suicidal. Selling is not about satisfying human needs, it's about profiting from market demands.

It is therefore pointless and self-deceiving to imagine that this system is capable of suddenly inventing a long-term vision and a reasoned organisation; it is not capable of this and never will be. The fierce competition that distinguishes it may have been a powerful engine of progress for the productive forces from its inception, but when it reached the limits of solvent demand, in other words of the markets, this fierce competition transformed itself into a machine of war: economic war, military war, for world domination at any cost, including the very cost of destroying the environment.

Today, the research and development of the productive apparatus are much more about servicing the military sector than protecting the environment and meeting human needs. Global military spending now exceeds 2,000 billion dollars and has never been so high since the end of the Cold War. This spending is a complete waste, its sole aim that of destroying and killing or, at best, leaves machinery rusting away in some hangar. They deploy thousands of brains in order to destroy and spread chaos and death. The acceleration of imperialist tensions since the end of the Cold War shows very clearly that this trend is still far from having reached its peak.
 

Only communism can offer humanity a future
Saving the planet will not be achieved through "frugality" or "degrowth", which amounts to nothing more than an admission of impotence, or even a fantasy of a return to a pre-capitalist society. No, saving the planet will require the conscious abolition of the capitalist economy and its now obsolete relations of production, and the construction of a society capable of producing for human needs in a way that is both rational and respectful of the whole environment. Only the proletariat can bring an end to capitalism, because it is the only social force with the bulk of the world's production apparatus in its hands; a force that , at the same time, suffers from the impact of the crisis and exploitation and therefore has no interest in the perpetuation of this system.

Time is clearly no longer on our side and capitalism could, in due course, considerably threaten the existence of civilisation, if not humanity as a whole. But human and material resources do exist to reorganise production on a global scale in a way that respects the environment and human life and this while the untapped possibilities of science and technology are still immense.

Only the proletariat, once it has seized power on a world scale, will be able to free the productive forces from the capitalist constraints that shackle them. Only the proletariat is capable of conceiving, deciding and implementing, on an international scale, a policy that will free this world from the laws of profit and rebuild a society on the ruins that capitalism is bequeathing to humanity. By putting an end to the capitalist competition that contaminates the world, it will free the productive forces from the domination of the military sphere, which is directing all human ingenuity towards the work of destruction. It would also free them from the permanent waste of capitalist production: useless and polluting overproduction, programmed obsolescence, unproductive expenditure linked to mass unemployment, industrial espionage, etc. Finally, it will be able to raise human consciousness and the human spirit by developing an education that is no longer geared towards immediate profit, but towards human emancipation and a harmonious relationship with nature.  As Engels wrote in “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man”: We  “by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”.

 

Guy, 28 August 2023

Tensions are reaching boiling point everywhere because of the horribly violent clashes between the Hamas regime in Gaza and the state of Israel. An atmosphere of hysteria is being stirred up in both camps. As revenge for the terror attack by Hamas, on one level, armed Jewish settlers on the West Bank have already killed five Palestinians in this first week of the war, while the Israeli military masses to obliterate Gaza. In such an oppressive atmosphere it is very difficult to follow the internationalist path that refuses to choose one or the other side. It requires courage to publicly defend a consistent proletarian perspective.

But fortunately there are some internationalist voices making themselves heard. Even if we do not share all the positions developed in their articles, they are a light in the darkness of the present barbarism unleashed by the international bourgeoisie.

Among these voices there are two other organisations of the communist left. The first one is the Internationalist Communist Tendency with the statement “The Latest Butchery in the Middle East is Part of the March to Generalised War [300]”. The second one is Il Partito Comunista with the article “War in Gaza, Against the imperialist warfare, for the revolutionary class warfare [301]”.

But there are also at least two anarchist groups that have published an internationalist position against the atrocities committed by capitalism in the Middle East. The first one is the Anarchist Communist Group that has published the article “Neither Israel nor Hamas! [302]” The other article is by the Anarcom Network called “Neither one State nor two States!  No ‘State’ will end the slaughter of our Class!” [303]

So, despite the deafening campaign by the governments of the USA, the UK and others, and of the bourgeois left to support the “Palestinian cause”, several organisations in Europe and North America have remained loyal to the internationalist principles of the world proletariat.

We will come back to some of the positions adopted by the different groups in due course.

WR 14.10.23

Since 2020, there has been one coup d'état after another in West and Central Africa, from Guinea to Gabon, via Mali, Burkina-Faso and Niger. Not to mention the "constitutional coups" that have also taken place in the Ivory Coast and Chad.

An increasingly unstable region

In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the corrupt and bloodthirsty regimes supported by France have been overthrown by (equally corrupt and bloodthirsty) military factions, to the cheers of crowds fed up with being starved to death by unscrupulous predators and their Western accomplices. But the demonstrators are deluding themselves: neither the coup plotters nor the candidates lining up to replace France in its traditional zone of influence (the Wagner group, China, etc.) are concerned about the fate of the population. On the contrary, these putsches are the expression of an accelerated destabilisation of the region and promise only ever greater misery.

The Sahel region, in which Niger occupies a central place, is characterised by growing instability, caused in particular by the acute economic distress of the populations, the deterioration of the security situation, the rapid increase in the population, the massive displacement of migrants (4.1 million displaced persons in 2022 alone) and the terrible degradation of the environment.

The Sahel region as a whole is experiencing a devastating upsurge in attacks by Islamic armed groups, which take advantage of porous and extensive borders. Over the last five years, in the central Sahel, the number of security incidents has increased sixfold and the number of deaths by almost eightfold. These terrorist groups regularly attack state institutions, target communities and block urban centres by cutting off roads and supply lines. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are among the ten countries most affected by terrorism.

According to the State Fragility Index, the Sahel countries are among the 25 most fragile states in the world. Most of these governments are unable to control their territory. In Burkina Faso, for example, armed Islamist groups control up to 40% of the territory. Despite the Wagner group's "support" for the Malian government, Islamic State (IS) has doubled its territory in that country in the space of a year.

An expression of growing chaos

After Mali and Burkina Faso, French imperialism was forced to evacuate Niger with arms and baggage, to the booing of demonstrators. Niger was considered a "safe country", relied on by various imperialist powers, in particular France and the United States, to protect their interests: "Niger, which neighbours Libya, has since become an important geopolitical location for its mineral wealth, including uranium and oil, and for the passage of migrants to Europe [...]. The Niger army seemed to be more attractive and more combative to the Americans, who installed two drone air bases in Niamey and Agadez, which has provided information to forces acting under ‘Operation Barkhane’ (a French-led anti-insurgency operation), but not to the Sahelian states themselves" (1).

But, contrary to what the bourgeois press may claim, this coup d'état (like those which recently preceded it in Mali and Burkina Faso) is not a simple reversal of alliances such as we saw during the Cold War, with the coup plotters now preferring to deal with Russia or China rather than Western countries. In reality, it is the expression of a sharp acceleration in the decomposition of bourgeois society, which is tending to sweep the weakest links in capitalism into absolute chaos.

Far from an imperialist reorientation in favour of a new "partner", we are instead seeing totally irresponsible bourgeois factions taking advantage of the destabilisation of governments and the fragility of states to "try their luck". They adopt any rhetoric that will enable them to gain power and are ready to ally themselves with whoever is in a position to support them at the time. In Niger, the putsch was carried out openly against the former colonial power, with the support of Mali, Burkina-Faso and the relative support of the Wagner group, Russia's weapon for stirring up chaos. But no one can rule out the possibility that the junta in power will back down and end up negotiating with France.

Every man for himself increases the chaos

Today, the major imperialist powers are concerned not with the fate of the people or the maintenance of "democratically elected" governments (what a huge joke!) but with the consequences of coups d'état for the defence of their own sordid interests. In Gabon, for example, the coup plotters pushed Ali Bongo, a great defender of French interests, out of office, without calling into question the enormous French influence in the country. This coup was therefore described by the Western press as an "adjustment" and did not arouse any "strong emotion" from the Quai d'Orsay (the French foreign affairs ministry). In Niger, on the other hand, the coup plotters were threatened with economic sanctions and military intervention.

But the reactions of the big imperialist sharks also took place in a context where every man for himself reigns. Paris immediately tried to organise a military intervention, but once again demonstrated its powerlessness. Macron tried to flex his muscles by claiming to be "intractable" and "inflexible" on the "return to legality", even though everything indicates that he does not have the means to do enforce his claims: "France is pushing ECOWAS to intervene, along with its ally in this affair, Nigeria. But it is also trying to get its European partners on board. The problem is that the Germans are not convinced of the benefits of intervention, and neither are the Italians, who have not forgotten France's tragic mistakes in Libya. As for the United States, it wants to hold on to its positions in Niger" (2) Meanwhile, "French diplomats and military officers bitterly point to the 'murky game in Niger' being played by Washington, which did not even use the term 'coup d'état' [...] an American general replied: 'From Niger we are fighting against the influence and pressure of Russia, via Wagner, and China. And against international terrorism in the Sahel’." (3)

The chaos in Niger is so extreme, and the inability of the West to act in concert so glaring, that it is forcing even the imperialist powers to review their positions on the ground so as not to lose too many feathers. This is true of Washington, which sees Niger as a central pawn in its fight against the influence of China and Russia in the region, but is not sure it can count on the putschists.

To put it plainly: "In Niger, the West is not in a position to support an invasion, even one led by regional states that are themselves in need of domestic legitimacy. These states would in any case be seen to be acting under the leadership of the West" (4) Above all, "the West" no doubt remembers its disastrous military intervention in Libya in 2011, one of the consequences of which was the spread of "jihadist terrorism" throughout the Sahel and the collapse of a state in a situation that is still inextricable.

All the imperialists present in the Sahel are therefore repositioning themselves to better defend their interests, even if it means accelerating chaos and accentuating imperialist turbulence.

Amina, 25 september2023

 

1 "Niger: toute la région plonge dans le chaos", Courrier International n° 1710 (10 August 2023).

2 Le Canard enchaîné (16 August 2023).

3 Le Canard enchaîné (23 August 2023).

4 "Niger : “Il est temps de rompre avec la pratique du paternalisme envers les Africains… ", Le Monde (20 August 2023).

Over the past year, major workers' struggles have erupted in the core countries of global capitalism and around the world. This series of strikes began in the UK in the summer of 2022, and workers in many other countries have since taken up the struggle: France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Korea... Everywhere, the working class is raising its head in the face of the considerable deterioration in living and working conditions, the dizzying rise in prices, systematic insecurity and mass unemployment, caused by the accentuation of economic destabilisation, ecological constraints and the intensification of militarism linked to the barbaric war in Ukraine.

A wave of struggle unprecedented for three decades
For three decades, the world has not seen such a wave of simultaneous struggle in so many countries, or over such a long period. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 and the campaigns about the supposed "death of communism" had provoked a deep ebb in the class struggle at the world level. This major event, the implosion of the Stalinist imperialist bloc and of one of the world's two greatest powers, the USSR, was the most spectacular expression of capitalism's entry into a new and even more destructive phase of its decadence, that of its decomposition[1]. The rotting of society on its feet, with its growing violence and chaos at all levels, the nihilistic and desperate atmosphere, the tendency towards social atomisation ... all this in turn had a very negative impact on the class struggle. We have thus witnessed a considerable weakening of combativeness compared to the previous period, beginning in 1968. The resignation that hit the working class in Britain for more than three decades, a proletariat with a long experience of struggle, illustrates the reality of this retreat. Faced with attacks from the bourgeoisie, extremely brutal "reforms", massive de-industrialisation and a considerable fall in living standards, the country's workers have not seen any significant mobilisation since the stinging defeat inflicted on the miners by Thatcher in 1985.

While the working class has occasionally shown signs of combativeness and tried to reappropriate its weapons of struggle (the fight against the Contrat de Premier Emploi (CPE) in France in 2006, the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011, the first mobilisation against pension reform in France in 2019), proving that it had by no means been taken off the stage of history, its mobilisations have largely remained without a follow up, incapable of re-launching a more global movement. Why was this? Because not only did the workers lose their fighting spirit over the years, they also suffered a profound decline in class consciousness in their ranks, which they had fought so hard to acquire in the 1970s and 1980s. Workers had largely forgotten the lessons of their struggles, their confrontations with the unions, the traps set by the "democratic" state, losing their self-confidence, their ability to unite, to fight en masse... They had even largely forgotten their identity as a class antagonistic to the bourgeoisie and carrying its own revolutionary perspective. In this logic, communism seemed well and truly dead with the horrors of Stalinism, and the working class seemed to no longer exist.

A break in the dynamic of class struggle
And yet, faced with the considerable acceleration of the process of decomposition[2] since the global pandemic of Covid-19, and even more so with the massacres of the war in Ukraine and the chain reactions that this has provoked on the economic, ecological, social and political levels, the working class is raising its head everywhere, taking up the fight and refusing to accept sacrifices in the name of the so-called "common good". Is this a coincidence? A one-off epidermal reaction to the attacks of the bourgeoisie? No! the slogan "Enough is enough!" in this context of widespread destabilisation of the capitalist system clearly illustrates that a real change of mindset is taking place within the class. All these expressions of combativeness are part of a new situation that is opening up for the class struggle, a new phase that breaks with the passivity, disorientation and despair of the last three decades.

The simultaneous eruption of struggles over the past year did not come out of nowhere. They are the product of a whole process of reflection in the class through a series of previous trial-and-error attempts. Already, during the first mobilisation in France against pension "reform" at the end of 2019, the ICC had identified the expression of a strong need for solidarity between generations and different sectors. This movement had also been accompanied by other workers' struggles around the world, in the United States as well as in Finland, but had died out in the face of the explosion of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Similarly, in October 2021, strikes broke out in the United States in various sectors, but the momentum of the struggle was interrupted, this time by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, which initially paralysed workers, particularly in Europe.

This long process of trial and error and maturation led from the summer of 2022 onwards to a determined reaction by workers on their own class terrain in the face of the attacks arising from the destabilisation of capitalism. The British workers have opened a new period in the international workers' struggle, in what has been called the "summer of anger". The slogan "enough is enough" was elevated to the symbol of the entire proletarian struggle in the United Kingdom. This slogan did not express specific demands to be met, but a profound revolt against the conditions of exploitation. It showed that the workers were no longer prepared to swallow pathetic compromises, but were ready to continue the struggle with determination. The British workers' movement is particularly symbolic in that it is the first time since 1985 that this sector of the working class has taken centre stage. And as inflation and crisis intensified around the world, greatly exacerbated by the Ukrainian conflict and the intensification of the war economy, health workers in Spain and the United States also went on the offensive, followed by a wave of strikes in the Netherlands, a "megastreik" of transport workers in Germany, more than 100 strikes against wage arrears and redundancies in China, a strike and demonstrations after a terrible train crash in Greece, teachers demanding higher wages and better working conditions in Portugal, 100. 000 civil servants demanding higher wages in Canada, and above all, a massive movement of the proletariat in France against pension reform.

The highly significant nature of these mobilisations against capitalist austerity also lies in the fact that, in the long term, they also include opposition to war. Indeed, if the direct mobilisation of workers against the war was illusory, the ICC had already pointed out in February 2022 that the workers' reaction would manifest itself in resistance to attacks on their purchasing power, which would result from the intensification and interconnection of crises and disasters, and that it would also run counter to campaigns calling for the acceptance of sacrifices to support the "heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people". This is also what the struggles of the past year bear the seeds of, even if workers are not yet fully aware of it: the refusal to sacrifice more and more for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal to make sacrifices for the national economy and for the war effort, the refusal to accept the logic of this system which is leading humanity towards an increasingly catastrophic situation.

We need to fight united and in solidarity!
In these struggles, the idea that "we're all in the same boat" began to emerge in the minds of workers. On the picket lines in the UK, strikers told us that they felt they were fighting for something bigger than the corporatist demands of the unions. The banner "For all of us" under which the strike took place in Germany on 27 March is particularly significant of the general feeling developing in the class: "we are all fighting for each other".  But it was in France that the need to fight as one was most clearly expressed. The unions did try to divide and rot the movement in the trap of the "strike by proxy" behind supposedly "strategic" sectors (like energy or rubbish collection) to "bring France to a standstill". But the workers did not fall into the trap en masse, and remained determined to fight together.

During the thirteen days of mobilisation in France, the ICC distributed over 150,000 leaflets: interest in what was happening in the UK and elsewhere never waned. For some demonstrators, the link with the situation in the UK seemed obvious: "it's the same everywhere, in every country". It was no coincidence that the unions at the "Mobilier national" had to take charge of strike action during the (cancelled) visit of Charles III to Paris in the name of "solidarity with British workers". In spite of the inflexibility of the government in France, in spite of the failures to make the bourgeoisie back down or to really obtain better wages in Great Britain or elsewhere, the greatest victory of the workers is the struggle itself and the awareness, undoubtedly still in its infancy and very confused, that we form a single force, that we are all exploited people who, atomised, each in their own corner, can do nothing against capital but who, united in the struggle, can become the greatest social force in history.

Admittedly, workers have still not regained confidence in their own strength, in their ability to take the struggle into their own hands. The unions everywhere kept control of the movements, speaking a more combative language to better sterilise the need for unity, while maintaining a rigid separation between the different sectors. In Great Britain, workers remained isolated behind the picket lines of their companies, although the unions were forced to organise a few parodies of supposedly "unitary" demonstrations. Similarly, in France, when workers came together in gigantic demonstrations, it was always under the absolute control of the unions, who kept workers huddled behind the banners of their companies and sectors. Overall, corporatist confinement remained a constant in most struggles.

During the strikes, the bourgeoisie, particularly its left-wing factions, continued to pour out their ideological campaigns around ecology, anti-racism, the defence of democracy and so on, designed to keep anger and indignation on the illusory terrain of bourgeois "rights" and to divide the exploited between white people and people of colour, men and women, young and old... In France, in the midst of the movement against pension reform, we saw the development of both environmentalist campaigns around the development of "mega-pools" and democratic campaigns against police repression. Although the majority of workers' struggles have remained on a class terrain, i.e. the defence of workers' material conditions in the face of inflation, redundancies, government austerity measures, etc., the danger posed by these ideologies to the working class remains considerable.

Preparing for tomorrow's struggles
Struggles have diminished in several countries at the moment, but this does not mean that workers are discouraged or defeated. The wave of strikes in the UK continued for a whole year, while the demonstrations in France lasted for five months, despite the fact that the vast majority of workers were aware from the start that the bourgeoisie would not give in to their demands immediately. Week after week in the Netherlands, month after month in France and for a whole year in the UK, workers refused to throw in the towel. These workers' mobilisations have clearly shown that workers are determined not to accept any further deterioration in their living conditions. Despite all the lies of the ruling class, the crisis is not going to stop: the cost of housing, heating and food is not going to stop rising, redundancies and insecure contracts are going to continue to abound, governments will continue their attacks...

Unquestionably, this new dynamic of struggle is only at its very beginning and, for the working class, "All its historical difficulties persist, its capacity to organise its own struggles and even more so to become aware of its revolutionary project are still very far away, but the growing combativity in the face of the brutal blows dealt by the bourgeoisie to living and working conditions is the fertile ground on which the proletariat can rediscover its class identity, become aware again of what it is, of its strength when it struggles, when it shows solidarity and develops its unity. It's a process, a struggle that is resuming after years of passivity, a potential that the current strikes suggest."[3]. No one knows where or when significant new struggles will arise. But it is certain that the working class will have to continue to fight everywhere!

Millions of us fighting, feeling the collective strength of our class as we stand shoulder to shoulder in the streets - that's essential, but it's by no means enough. The French government backed down in 2006, during the struggle against the CPE, not because there were more students and young people on precarious contracts in the streets, but because they had taken control of the movement from the unions, through sovereign, massive general assemblies, open to all. These assemblies were not places where workers were confined to their own sector or company, but places from which massive delegations set off for the nearest companies in order to actively seek solidarity. Today, the inability of the working class to take the struggle actively in hand by seeking to extend it to all sectors is the reason why the bourgeoisie has not retreated. However, reclaiming its identity has enabled the working class to begin to reclaim its past. In the marches in France, references to May '68 and to the 2006 struggle against the CPE have multiplied. What happened in '68? How did we get the government to back down in 2006? In a minority of the class, a process of reflection is underway, which is an essential means of learning the lessons of the past year's movements and preparing for future struggles that will have to go even further than those of 1968 in France or those of 1980 in Poland.

Just as the recent struggles are the product of a process of the subterranean maturation that has been developing for some time, so the efforts of a minority to learn the lessons of the recent struggles will bear fruit in the wider struggles that lie ahead. Workers will recognise that the separation of struggles imposed by the unions can only be overcome if they rediscover autonomous forms of organisation such as general assemblies and elected strike committees, and if they take the initiative to extend the struggle beyond all corporatist divisions.

A & D, 13 August 2023
________________________________________
[1] Cf. “Theses on decomposition [12]”; (May 1990)", International Review n°107 (2001).
[2] See "Update of the Theses on Decomposition (2023) [304]", International Review n°170 (2023).
[3] “Report on class struggle for the 25th ICC congress [305]”, International Review n°170 (2023).
 

 

 

Our comrade Antonio left us this spring, on the eve of the 25th International Congress of the ICC. He was one of the old founding militants of Révolution Internationale (RI - the French section of the ICC) still present in the organisation. The Congress paid a first tribute to him, highlighting "his courage and modesty", both in his personal life and as a militant.

The influence of May 68 and the Communist Left

In 1965, like other students at the University of Madrid who were concerned by the development of workers' struggles in Asturias, he began to involve himself in politics in a context where the class point of view had to find its way through the ambient confusion of the siren songs of the "democratic opposition" to the regime. Antonio distrusted the PCE (Spanish Communist Party) because of its Stalinism, but he also had to learn to distrust the discourse of the handful of Trotskyist and Maoist groups that emerged at that time and which, although appearing more open and "left" than the PCE, were merely a more radical version of the left of capital and just as counter-revolutionary. This interest in revolutionary positions led to his emigration to France, where he arrived in Toulouse in 1967.

His cultural preoccupations - at the time he was doing Spanish-language theatre - were ones he would never abandon, even if they often had to give way to family or political constraints. In the atmosphere of political effervescence, reflection and discussion before 1968, and especially during the events of that year, he found answers to the questions he was asking himself. In this context, he was able from the outset to adopt a genuinely internationalist perspective, interested in the historical experience of the proletariat while avoiding the trap of being locked into an 'immigrant' approach fixed on the situation and history of the country of origin.

As he himself says, the first discussion in France that helped him to break away from the leftist atmosphere in Madrid was the one he had with some of the founding members of Révolution Internationale on the imperialist nature of the Vietnam war, on the necessary defence of proletarian internationalism and workers' solidarity, and this in opposition to the idea of a "revolutionary war" defended by the Trotskyites and Maoists.

He later met Marc Chirik (MC) at a meeting in 1968 with the other founding members of Révolution Internationale and some situationist "militants". MC defended the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution of 1917, the reality of the working class as the revolutionary subject of history and the need for revolutionary organisation. That same year, he also took part in the meeting which approved the first platform of Révolution Internationale, based on the political principles of Internationalismo which MC had inherited from the Gauche Communiste de France and then passed on.

He returned to France in 1969, at a time when the initial core of Révolution Internationale was dwindling in strength as a result of a number of resignations, but also because most of the militants from Toulouse had moved to the capital.

Behind a facade that might appear hesitant, Antonio was driven by a deep commitment and militant conviction…

Although he later said, "I was not a militant", referring to the 1968 period, he returned to full activity in Révolution Internationale in 1970, then in 1972 took part in the regroupment with the Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils de Marseille and the Clermont Ferrand group, from which emerged the 2nd platform of RI as a political group with a territorial base seeking international contacts. In 1975, he took part in the first ICC Congress and remained a militant for the rest of his life. At a time when the class struggle movement in Spain was at its height and the state was speeding up its policy of "democratic transition", the publication of Acción Proletaria (AP) in Spain could no longer be guaranteed.

To deal with this, the ICC decided at its first international congress to maintain regular publication of AP, producing the paper in France and then smuggling it into Spain in the last days of Francoism. His collaboration on this publication was particularly appreciated at the time because of his ability to analyse the democratic manoeuvres of the "transition" in Spain in detail, and to denounce them in depth. Because of his mastery of two languages - he was a Spanish teacher in France - from 1975 he was also involved in the Spanish-language production of the International Review. The comrade always placed the fulfilment of these responsibilities in an international and historical perspective.

In order to organise and systematise Spanish-language intervention and the search for contacts in the Spanish-speaking world, the newly-formed ICC took the initiative of appointing a Spanish Language Commission with Antonio as a member. As a result, Antonio regularly took part in trips to Spain and discussions with contacts, bringing his conviction and assimilation of CCI positions. The comrades who travelled with him were able to appreciate his great sympathy, his vast encyclopaedic knowledge and above all his humour. We'll come back to that!

Antonio took part in virtually all the ICC's international Congresses, where he was part of remarkably efficient simultaneous translation teams - so much so that scientists who had been invited to a Congress session were impressed by the quality of the work. But they were also surprised by Antonio's comments during the breaks, intended to enlighten fellow members of the Spanish, Mexican or Venezuelan delegations on parts of the speech they had misunderstood, .... but they were also surprised by Antonio's use of the microphone to make jokes.

Unwavering loyalty to the organisation and the cause, in the most varied of circumstances
In the difficult moments of the organisation's struggle against the circle spirit and for the party spirit, Antonio always chose to defend the organisation. Although he had a natural tendency to form bonds of affinity with comrades, he never allowed himself to be blindly carried away by "defending his friends" against the organisational principles of the ICC. And when some of them left the organisation with resentments towards it, Antonio maintained his loyalty to the CCI even if this meant distancing himself personally from his former friends.

Antonio's 'Antonionades'

While acknowledging some of his mistakes or negligence, occasional lack of attention or involvement, the comrade often categorised them as his 'Antonionades'. In fact, this category was broad enough to include sketches in which the comrade liked to play the 'clown' for the amusement of us all.

So often, at festive gatherings such as new year, our comrade was able to show off his good humour, never caustic but often teasing, subtle and friendly towards his comrades. Indeed, his repertoire included a number of improvised sketches featuring friends and colleagues from the organisation. In the service of his 'art', he knew how to exploit the subtleties and pitfalls of the French and Spanish languages - sometimes even Occitan. As a result, he could spend hours hosting friendly get-togethers with his comrades and sharing his good humour.

But the 'Antonionade' could also manifest itself in completely different situations, which had nothing festive about them and reflected a particular boldness in our comrade.

For example, in the 1980s while leafleting campaign the docks in Marseille - a citadel for the CGT guardians of capitalist order – an ICC team quickly came up against a patrol of CGT "heavyweights" who wanted to get us out of the way. At times like these, the aim is to hold out as long as possible in order to distribute as many leaflets as possible, which is no easy task, especially when only a trickle of people are allowed in. And Antonio laughed, to everyone's amazement, "ah but I can't give up, I have a mandate that I have to fulfil. I've got to finish this distribution!”

The stunned effect this produced in the ranks of the union squad enabled us to gain precious minutes of  time for the distribution, at the end of which the flow of dockworkers entering the workplace protected us from intimidation.
Nevertheless, his militant life was not made up of Antonionades alone, as shown by his regular involvement in the life of the organisation and the fact that it is the same Antonio who was involved in an episode defending a demonstration against attempts by the cops to break into it to take away a young man who had been guilty of spray painting a wall. On this occasion, the cops were thwarted[1].

In his professional life, some of his 'antonionades' were pure humour, as reported and illustrated by one of his university colleagues who came to his funeral and who also emphasised the extent to which Antonio respected his students: one day, when the students seemed not to be listening to his lecture, chatting amongst themselves in the lecture hall, Antonio made no particular remark but interrupted himself. The surprised students stopped their chatter, wondering what was going on. Then Antonio spoke again, telling them: "Today, I feel like I'm in a bar in Spain. In bars in Spain, the TV is on all the time, but nobody watches it or listens to it. But if someone does turn it off, there's always someone there to say, 'Who turned the TV off? Today I'm the bar's TV". What tact and pedagogy!

Antonio, a loving father and companion, committed in the face of adversity

He first had a daughter who has always supported his militancy and maintained political sympathy with the ICC. His second child was born with a severe physical and intellectual disability. In order to be able to communicate with him, Antonio learnt sign language and was always careful to ensure that his son's disability did not keep him away from everything and everyone. And, together, the family succeeded! Not least because of Antonio's unwavering commitment. Our comrade's commitment to his family was even greater when his partner became seriously ill. For years, they fought side by side against a cancer that she finally succumbed to, exhausted by the battle.

The tension between Antonio's personal and militant responsibilities was stretched to the limit on many occasions. As he said himself, he was several times on the point of abandoning the political struggle but, in the end, he kept his loyalty to himself, his family and the organisation, directing his life and the care of his family on the basis of what was his passion and conviction: communist militancy.

We would like to add here that the life of this comrade, who managed to maintain his militancy for more than half a century (from 1968 to 2023) against all kinds of pressures, is an example of what we must pass on to the new generation of militants.

Although for long periods he was forced to reduce his militant involvement, in recent years he had been able to rediscover the flame of that passion by taking part in joint meetings with comrades from AP (Spain), RI (France) and Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), and getting involved in organisational responsibilities.

Another of our comrade's paradoxes, or an expression of his great modesty or lack of self-confidence: on several occasions he told comrades that he found it difficult to internalise the meaning of our concept of "putting militancy at the centre of our lives". Yet that's what he managed to do throughout his life!

Antonio's last "Antonionade".
Shortly after the death of his partner, Antonio had a heart attack which he dealt with on his own by going to A&E in the middle of the night. A day later, he emerged with his arteries unblocked and ready for use again. It turned out that he had other heart problems, which were subsequently treated and not considered critical, but which may nevertheless have been the cause of his sudden death a short time later. When we urged him to keep us more regularly informed about his state of health, he replied that, in his home village, some people who said "I'll keep you informed" really meant "I'll keep you out of the loop". Another Antonionade! The last one.

Even if the comrade was concerned not to 'disturb' others, he was nevertheless perfectly aware - and had already proved it - of the social and political need to call on the organisation and its militants whenever necessary. In fact, he kept us regularly informed about his health.

However, we were all surprised by his "hasty departure". Farewell comrade and friend.
On the other hand, we were not surprised by the large number of people who attended our comrade's funeral, including some of his former colleagues, who gave touching, but not surprising, testimonies about Antonio's great respect for his students.

The ICC will be organising a political tribute to our comrade Antonio in the coming months. Comrades wishing to take part should write to the ICC and we will inform them of the date and venue.

ICC 8.8.23

As the most advanced part of the working class, revolutionaries have a responsibility to intervene in struggles. But unlike the leftists and the excitable elements of the petty-bourgeoisie who see the spectre of social revolution behind "everything that moves", revolutionaries, in order to carry out a coherent intervention, must have a compass, a method learnt from marxism, based on the experiences of the history of the workers' movement over nearly two centuries. It is precisely this method which alone enables them to understand and intervene in the struggles of the working class with a historical and long-term vision, so as not to fall into the trap of impatience, of waiting for immediate results and finding themselves trailing in the wake of the organisations of the extreme left of capital or of rank and file unionism.

So, in the summer of 2022, the ICC analysed the outbreak of struggles in Britain not as a simple local event but as a phenomenon of international and historical significance. The resumption of workers' struggles, on a scale not seen in the UK since the 1980s, marked a real break in the dynamic of class struggle. Faced with such an event, the ICC decided to produce an international leaflet in which we affirmed that the massive strikes in the UK were "a call to struggle for proletarians everywhere".

This was fully confirmed in the months that followed, when, as well as continuing struggles in many sectors in the UK, strikes and demonstrations broke out in several European countries and on other continents. For the most part, these too were on a scale not seen since the late 1980s, confirming a real return of workers' fighting spirit after several decades of stagnation on a global scale.

During the autumn of 2022, the ICC took part in demonstrations and picket lines. The section of the ICC in Britain took part in 8 picket lines, mainly in London and Exeter, distributing several hundred leaflets. It also took part in the London Anarchist Book Fair. The ICC was also present at the cross-industry day of action in France on 29 September 2022.

During the discussions on demonstrations and at the picket lines, we defended the international dimension of the attacks and therefore the need for everyone to fight together, acting in a unified way and avoiding getting bogged down in local struggles, within one's own company or sector.

At the same time, the ICC regularly published articles in its press (website, papers, International Review) highlighting the openly proletarian terrain of these various struggles, but above all their historical significance, by emphasising that they formed a real springboard for reclaiming class identity.

The outbreak of the struggle against pensions reform in France in January gave new impetus to this dynamic of international struggles. Almost every week for nearly 6 months, millions of workers took to the streets to oppose a vile attack by the bourgeois state. During the 13 days of demonstrations, both in Paris and in the provinces, the ICC mobilised all its forces, rallying its supporters around it, to disseminate its press as widely as possible, distributing nearly 130,000 leaflets and dozens of newspapers.

The quality of the intervention depended on the ability of the ICC to adapt to the evolution of the class’s response on an international level, but also to the more specific evolution of the struggle in France. This is why the ICC has produced both leaflets with an international scope and more "territorial" leaflets when necessary. This was done in order to respond as effectively as possible to the needs of the movement, not only in France, but above all on an international level, since struggles broke out during the same period in many countries, and in which the ICC was also able to intervene. To varying degrees, this was the case in Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Mexico.

What, then, were the main themes defended in the demonstrations, both through leaflets and territorial papers and during discussions?

-  In January 2023, a new international leaflet entitled “How can we fight together in a massive united movement?” highlighted the need to counter the work of division undertaken by the unions by developing solidarity beyond one's corporation, company, sector, town, region or country.

- Subsequently, while continuing to defend the same necessity, the ICC placed at the heart of its intervention the defence of self-organisation and methods of struggle that would create a balance of forces with the bourgeois state. The leaflet of 2 February "It’s not enough to come out in large numbers, we have to take control of our struggles!" and the third international leaflet “Everywhere the same question: How to develop the struggle? How to make governments back down?", was a response to this concern, which was being expressed more and more over the weeks, particularly in the discussions we had in demonstrations. In particular, we defended the need to create forums for discussion such as sovereign mass meetings open to all.

- Despite their many weaknesses, all these struggles did indeed express an attempt to create a collective force, united in solidarity, not as isolated individuals but as an exploited class confronting its exploiter.

The echoes of the struggle in France among British and German workers fully illustrated this.

So, one of the responsibilities of revolutionaries is precisely to contribute to the development of this effort to recover class identity. That's why we've always stressed the need to reappropriate the experience and history of the working class. Especially since this concern was spontaneously expressed in the struggle in France through the slogan “You give us 64, we'll give you May 68” brandished in every march from the beginning to the end of the movement. Or in the resurgence of the memory of the struggle against the CPE in 2006.

The leaflet “How did we win in 2006?” defended the experience of sovereign general assemblies, which had contributed to the movement's expansion and ultimately led to the government's retreat. A few weeks later, the fourth international leaflet, "Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China…. We have to go further than in 1968!", extended this effort, but above all made it possible to defend more explicitly the historic challenge of the resumption of workers' struggles and the challenge it posed: the overthrow of capitalism and the victory of the proletarian revolution for the survival of humanity.

Overall, our various leaflets were always well received, the headlines often hitting the mark, and provoking reactions from demonstrators: "Yes, we're all in the same boat!", "Yes, we must all fight together!", "I've come from Germany and there are struggles there too!", "We're from Italy, and we've come to demonstrate with the French workers", "I was there in May '68, we must do the same thing again!", "Oh yes, we must indeed make the revolution!” These were the most significant reactions to the many discussions we were able to have. Of course, they remain a minority, and sometimes confused, but they express the effort of reflection that is taking place in the depths of the working class to recognise itself as a class, to take the struggle into its own hands and to develop the struggle that will enable the working class to take the road to revolution.

It was this historic dynamic at work that we highlighted in the leaflet taking stock of the struggle against pension reform on the last day of demonstrations on 6 June, when the desire to fight and struggle continued unabated. On several occasions, demonstrators agreed with the title of the leaflet, even telling us “We’ve lost a battle, but we haven't lost the war". So yes, "the fight is well and truly ahead of us!”

Our intervention was also accompanied by the distribution of hundreds of copies of the Third Manifesto of the ICC[1] which, faced with the ever more deadly and destructive spiral of capitalist society, defends tooth and nail that the future of humanity is in the hands of the working class. We believe that it is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations to explain to the working class, as clearly as possible, the historical conditions in which its struggle is taking place and what is at stake.

With the same approach, the ICC also organised two series of public meetings on the international class struggle in a number of countries. The first was on the theme: "We are not alone in mobilising... There are workers' struggles in many countries!” The second: “Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China"… We need to go further than 1968!”[2].

These meetings were driven by a clear desire for clarification through a confrontation of the different positions involved. They were real proletarian debates where support, nuances, doubts and questioning, and even disagreements with the ICC’s positions were expressed. This active participation in the debates is an illustration of the slow maturation of consciousness which is taking place in depth within the world working class, and which is particularly evident among small minorities, often belonging to a new generation who are gradually renewing their links with the experience of the workers' movement and the Communist Left.

By intervening actively in the demonstrations, as well as in our web and paper press, the ICC has fully fulfilled its political responsibilities within the working class. The fruits of this intervention have been seen in the fact that new elements seeking class positions have made contact with the ICC and some have even come to take part in our public meetings.

While since last June, the momentum that began in the summer of 2022 in the United Kingdom seems to have reached a kind of "pause", the outbreak of strikes in the automobile sector in the United States clearly shows that the dynamic of struggle is continuing. For the ICC, these economic struggles are the privileged terrain for the class to develop its reflection and consciousness. It is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations to participate fully in these struggles in order to bring to maturity this vital effort for the development of the revolutionary struggle.

 

Vincent, 1 October 2023.

 

Cities completely devastated, hospitals in total collapse, crowds of civilians wandering the streets under the bombs, without water, food or electricity, families everywhere crying for their dead, children haggardly searching for their mothers under the ruins, others mercilessly torn apart... This terrifying apocalyptic landscape is not that of Warsaw or Hiroshima after six years of world war, nor that of Sarajevo after four years of siege. This is the landscape of "21st century capitalism", the streets of Gaza, Rafah and Khan Yunis after just three months of conflict.

Three months! It took just two short months to raze Gaza to the ground, take tens of thousands of lives and throw millions more onto roads that lead nowhere! And not just by anyone! By "the only democracy in the Near and Middle East", by the State of Israel, an ally of the great Western "democracies", which claims to be the sole repository of the memory of the Holocaust.

For decades, revolutionaries have been crying out: “Capitalism is gradually plunging humanity into barbarism and chaos!”  Here we are... Down with the masks! Capitalism is showing its true face and the future it has in store for all humanity!

A giant step into barbarism

What is happening today in the Middle East is not just another episode in the long series of outbreaks of violence that have tragically punctuated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. The current conflict has nothing to do with the old "logic" of confrontation between the USSR and the United States. On the contrary, it represents a further step in the drive of global capitalism towards chaos, the proliferation of uncontrollable convulsions and the spread of ever more conflicts.

The level of barbarity on the scale of Gaza is perhaps even worse than the extraordinary violence of the Ukrainian conflict. All the wars of decadence have resulted in mass slaughter and gigantic destruction. But even the greatest murderers of the twentieth century, the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Churchills and the Eisenhowers, only engaged in the worst horrors after several years of war, multiplying the "justifications" for turning entire cities into heaps of ashes. Yet it is striking to note the extent to which the streets of Gaza already bear a striking resemblance to the ruined landscapes at the end of the Second World War. This whole clique of barbarians has been swept along by the scorched earth logic that now dominates imperialist conflicts.

What strategic advantage could Hamas possibly have gained by sending a thousand assassins to massacre civilians, if not to ignite the fuse and expose itself to its own destruction? What are Iran or Israel hoping to achieve, then, if not to sow chaos among their rivals, chaos that will inevitably come back to hit them like a boomerang? Neither state has anything to gain from this hopeless conflict. Israeli society could be profoundly destabilised by the war, threatened for decades to come by a generation of Palestinians bent on revenge. As for Iran, while it stands to gain the most from the situation, this can only be a Pyrrhic victory! Because if the United States fails to curb the indiscriminate unleashing of military barbarity, Iran is exposed to harsh reprisals against its positions in Lebanon and Syria, and even to destructive attacks on its own territory. And all this at the risk of destabilising ever larger regions of the planet, with shortages, famines, millions of displaced people, increased risks of attacks, confrontations between communities...

Even if the United States is trying to prevent the situation from getting out of hand, the risk of a generalised conflagration in the Middle East is not negligible. Because, far from obeying the "bloc discipline" that prevailed until the collapse of the USSR, all the local players are ready to pull the trigger.

The first thing that stands out is that Israel has acted alone, arousing the anger and open criticism of the Biden administration. Netanyahu has taken advantage of the weakening of American leadership to try to crush the Palestinian bourgeoisie and destroy Iran's allies, thereby opposing the "two-state solution" promoted by the United States. The indiscipline of Israel, which is more concerned with its own immediate interests, is a huge blow to Washington's efforts to prevent the destabilisation of the region.

After three months of atrocities, it’s more and more obvious that the war between Israel and Hamas will have dramatic global consequences: on the economic level, with the semi-closure of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a world commercial hub now being hit by Houthi rockets and drones, or on the humanitarian level with several million people forced into exile.

Above all, the recent clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, like the American and British strikes in Yemen, already risk opening up a new front with Iran and its allies. Such an extension of the conflict would be another step in Washington’s loss of control over the world situation: obliged to support its Israeli ally, this would be a new blow to its policy of encircling China and supporting Ukraine, with all the dangers of escalation hanging over these regions.

The war in Gaza like the war in Ukraine shows that the bourgeoisie has no solution to war. It has become totally powerless to control the spiral of chaos and barbarism which capitalism is inflicting on the whole of humanity.

Who can end war?

The proletariat in Gaza has been crushed. The proletariat in Israel, stunned by the Hamas attack, has allowed itself to be taken in by nationalist and war propaganda. In the main bastions of the proletariat, particularly in Europe, if the working class is not ready to sacrifice itself directly in the trenches, it is still incapable of rising up directly against the imperialist war, on the terrain of proletarian internationalism.

So is all lost?... No! The bourgeoisie has demanded enormous sacrifices to fuel the war machine in Ukraine. In the face of the crisis and despite the propaganda, the proletariat rose up against the economic consequences of this conflict, against inflation and austerity. Admittedly, the working class still finds it difficult to make the link between militarism and the economic crisis, but it has indeed refused to make sacrifices: in the United Kingdom with a year of mobilisations, in France against pension reform, in the United States against inflation and job insecurity.

While the Ukrainian conflict drags on, the Israeli-Palestinian war rages, and the bourgeoisie redoubles its efforts to fill the heads of the exploited with its despicable nationalist propaganda, the working class is still fighting! Recently, Canada has seen a historic movement of struggle. Unprecedented struggles, with expressions of solidarity, are taking place in the Scandinavian countries. The working class is not dead!

Through its struggles, the proletariat is also finding out what true class solidarity is. In the face of war, workers' solidarity is not with the “Palestinians” or the “Israelis”. It is with the workers of Palestine and Israel, as it is with the workers of the whole world. Solidarity with the victims of the massacres certainly does not mean maintaining the nationalist mystifications which have led workers to place themselves behind a gun and a bourgeois clique. Workers' solidarity means above all developing the fight against the capitalist system responsible for all wars.

Revolutionary struggle cannot come about with a snap of the fingers. Today, it can only come about through the development of workers' struggles against the increasingly harsh economic attacks by the bourgeoisie. Today's struggles pave the way for tomorrow's revolution!

EG, 8 January 2023

Internecine conflict between the different factions of the Tory party continues, whether fighting over covid, economic growth, or sending refugees to Rwanda. The populism embraced by parts of the party will not be discarded, an expression of the loss of control by the British bourgeoisie of its political apparatus. The ruling class is worried about the state of the Conservative Party, which was once such a reliable element in British capitalism’s political apparatus. This is not just a ‘Tory crisis’, it's an impasse that is part of a much deeper, global political crisis of the ruling class, which will continue regardless of who wins the next general election.

It’s in this context that the Labour Party is trying to present itself as a responsible team able to manage British capitalism effectively. On finances it’s very cautious on making expensive promises, saying it would not “turn on the spending taps”. On refugees and asylum seekers, Starmer says that immigration and small boat crossings are"matters of serious public concern" and Labour would “bring order to the border”. With British imperialism’s support for Ukraine and Israel, Starmer has lined Labour up with the Tories, and guaranteed that there will be no cuts in military spending. At the beginning of 2023, after Sunak announced his five goals (the “peoples’ priorities”), Starmer responded with five “missions”: there were no contradictions between the two lists. When Starmer defended Thatcher as a leader who brought about"meaningful change", it was ironic, as, whatever Labour promises in its election manifesto, no actual change of any significance is envisaged.

For some on the left, whether inside or out of the Labour Party, this is a massive betrayal orchestrated by Starmer. This of course implies that everything was fine under Corbyn, an equally devout supporter of state capitalism. Some Trotskyists seem, superficially, to have more thoroughgoing critiques.  The Socialist Workers Party says “the problem isn’t just one leader. It’s a condemnation of a whole method that is centred on parliament. The answer is not the long slog inside Labour but a total break from it. For those left in Labour, it’d be right to conclude that it’s time to look elsewhere for change.” (Socialist Worker 4/12/23). Yet, for decades the SWP called for a vote for Labour, and, as an example of its method, in its analysis of the 2017 election, said that Corbyn had offered a “progressive and internationalist” alternative, who had campaigned on a“left wing anti-austerity manifesto” (International Socialism 155). Examples of this so-called “internationalism” can be found in Corbyn’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah in wars in the Middle East, or support by the SWP for Iran in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Other Trotskyists see Labour’s ‘betrayal’ in the advent of Blair’s New Labour, or the expulsion of the Militant tendency in the 1990s. In reality the transformation of social democratic parties took place more than a century ago.

When Social Democracy went over to the side of capital

Before the First World War, in the Congresses of the Second International, the Socialist Parties proposed the international solidarity of the working class against the drive to war by imperialism, right up to the Manifesto of the Basel Congress of 1912. But, when war broke out in 1914, most of the Socialist/Social Democratic parties rushed to the support of their ruling classes, joined in recruitment for the imperialist massacre, and took their places in capitalist governments. This betrayal of the working class marked the end of social democracy as a political current of the working class, but the confirmation of its utility for the bourgeoisie. This was not just in time of war, but as much in times of workers’ resurgence: the example of the role of the SPD in crushing the German revolution immediately comes to mind. The Labour party in Britain was no exception to this trend. From the Cabinet table to the unions on the shop floor, Labour and the unions have played an essential role for the bourgeoisie. It was precisely because of its continuing role in contact with the working class that it was able to tell how workers responded to the policies of the bourgeoisie, and to sell and manage capitalism with a more radical language than the Liberals or Conservatives.

This functioning of the Labour Party as an integral part of the political apparatus of the state has continued in both government and opposition. In coalition during the Second World War, in government after 1945, reorganising public services, enforcing austerity, trying to pursue the needs of British imperialism, or, during the 1950s, a time of a brief economic stability, preparing for future crises, Labour played a number of roles for British capitalism. This applied during the governments of Wilson/Callaghan or Blair/Brown, or in periods of opposition where it provided illusions of future alternatives and reinforced its relations with the unions.

The parliamentary procession of changing governments is not just a matter of teams automatically taking their turn in Downing Street. While the Tories have been wracked by inter-factional conflict, a clear expression of the divisions worsened by decomposition, Labour has also shown itself not to be immune to serious divisions. After the removal of Corbyn, Starmer has done his best to secure his position and bring ‘responsible’ positions to the fore. This has not been a bloodless matter; MPs like Corbyn and Diane Abbott have remained members of the Labour Party, but have lost the parliamentary whip. Alongside existing divisions, like the row over antisemitism in the Labour Party, the response of Starmer to the war between Israel and Hamas has shown that Labour is far from a united party. Councillors have resigned from the party; frontbenchers have also resigned from the shadow cabinet so that they can express their opposition to Starmer’s policy; MPs have voted for a ceasefire in the conflict in the Middle East (against official policy) and there’s a continuing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the direction that Starmer is taking the party. On economic policy there’s unhappiness with the prospects of the purse strings not being loosened, and with the perceived slackening of commitment to previous ‘green’ promises.

False Labour ‘alternatives’

The divisions within the Labour Party, like those of the Tories, show the political difficulties the bourgeoisie has in a period of growing decomposition. But the bourgeoisie isn’t only concerned with the economic crisis and the accumulation of capital, not only preoccupied with ongoing imperialist conflict, and the preparation for future wars: it also has to deal with the struggles of the working class, and specifically the break with the previous period of passivity, starting with the struggles that began in Britain in the summer of 2022. This presents Labour with a number of problems. On one hand, they can criticise the Tory government’s economic policies, and its responses to a period of strikes and protests, but they also have to appear to be offering something different. Labour’s quest for a reputation for fiscal responsibility doesn’t offer anything to a militant working class.This is a further source of divisions within the Labour Party, between those who want to pose as the workers’ friend, and those who want to balance the books.

Labour is not alone in trying to undermine the class struggle by providing false alternatives to the working class. While there are limitations to what Labour can present, the unions and the leftists can give reasons to support Labour as a ‘lesser evil’, or even to pose supposedly radical alternatives. Union leaders like Mick Lynch, Mick Whelan, and Sharon Graham have already said that it’s not a matter of relying on Labour to fight against the Tories’ recent ‘anti-union’ legislation (the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023), it might be necessary to break the law. But whether giving reasons to support Labour, or reasons to get lost in the defence of unions, or, like some leftists, campaigning for various alternative political causes or parties, the unions and leftists still function as an important part of the political system of the bourgeoisie, as institutions functioning against the immediate and historic struggles of the working class.

Car 15/12/23

The 28th annual United Nations climate conference, held in Dubai at the end of November 2023, ended after two weeks of meetings with a new agreement that supposedly urges countries to (very) gradually phase out fossil fuels, accelerate "ongoing actions" to achieve "carbon neutrality". And all this in a "fair, orderly and equitable" way ... by 2050. Après moi, le déluge! – capitalism’s cynical catchphrase.

The President of COP 28, Sultan Al Jaber, who is Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology in the United Arab Emirates and CEO of the oil company ADNOC, praised the agreement, which was approved by delegations from nearly 200 countries. "For the first time, our agreement makes reference to fossil fuels", he said. According to him, it is a "historic package" of measures that provides a "solid plan" for keeping within reach the goal of limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

What a grim farce! While world leaders have hailed the agreement as an important step towards ending the use of fossil fuels, experts are critical, to say the least: the resolution contains very helpful loopholes that offer the oil industry many ways out, relying on unproven and unsafe technologies. It would be naïve to expect anything else from the summit organisers. The leaders of this region of the Middle East, known as the Eldorado for all mafias and the massive laundering of money from drugs, arms and anything else you can think of[1], are, like their counterparts the world over, well versed in petty arrangements and the exploitation of "legal limitations". While they present themselves as the promoters of the energy transition, concerned about the climate, they live off fossil fuels and obviously never stop promoting them.

The assessment of each state's progress in reducing emissions imposed since the supposedly binding COP 21 in Paris in 2015 to limit the increase in global temperature by 2030, comes up against the depressing reality of the capitalist system. Today, fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil) still account for 82% of total energy supplies! Instead of falling, global emissions are rising: by 6% in 2021 and by 0.9% in 2022.[2]

This demonstrates once again that these international summits are incapable of having the slightest impact on global warming and its catastrophic consequences for humanity, and that they are in fact nothing more than talking shops designed to reassure people that "something is being done" and that there is no longer any option but to get used to it. The year 2023 illustrates this dramatically, with violent storms and widespread flooding from China to Europe and North Africa, devastating forest fires in North America, southern Europe and Hawaii, and drought in large parts of North America, Europe and Africa.

"Not only is global warming real, it is accelerating at a dizzying and catastrophic rate. July 2023 was the hottest month on record for the planet. The month of August has seen the hottest day on record ever for this period. Forecasters are predicting that 2024 could well exceed these woeful records.”[3] Fears are growing that the planet is approaching a series of "tipping points" where environmental damage will spiral out of control and lead to new levels of destruction.

Global warming, combined with more direct manifestations of environmental destruction such as deforestation and the pollution of land and sea by chemical, plastic and other wastes, is already threatening countless animal and plant species with extinction.

The same bourgeoisie that claims, at these conferences, to be looking for "global solutions to global problems" is itself involved in ruthless economic competition that is the first major obstacle to any real international cooperation against climate change. And in capitalism’s phase of decomposition, national competition is increasingly taking the form of chaotic, destructive and hyper-polluting rivalries and military confrontations. The ecological crisis is therefore not just approaching a series of 'tipping points' that will exacerbate and accelerate its consequences, but is part of a series of interacting phenomena that are leading humanity ever more rapidly towards the abyss.

Saving the planet and humanity will not come from a bourgeoisie which, by its very nature, is trapped in a logic that rules out any questioning of capitalist accumulation, its thirst for profit and its apocalyptic dynamic. For it is capitalism that is responsible for these disturbances; it is its laws that force every capitalist to produce more and more at lower cost. In capitalism, everything has to be sold. And that's all there is to it! An anarchic, short-term approach. In fact, it's suicidal!

 

Louis, 29 December 2023

 

Scandinavia is witnessing a wave of strikes on a scale not seen since the late 1970s. At the end of October, the US car manufacturer Tesla – Elon Musk’s electric car enterprise - refused to sign collective agreements with the Swedish IF Metall union, guaranteeing a minimum wage. A strike was declared in the company’s 10 repair workshops. It was followed by expressions of solidarity by postal workers, who blocked all mail bound for Tesla's workshops, by dockers in four Swedish ports, who joined the strike on 6 November, and by electricians who refused to carry out maintenance work on electrical charging points. At the beginning of November, faced with the risk of a strike for wage increases at the Karna bank, the unions and bosses rushed out a collective agreement.

The conflict with Tesla has also rapidly taken on an international dimension, with solidarity actions in ports to the company's repair workshops in Denmark and Norway, and at the Tesla factories in Germany.  

There had already been signs heralding this outbreak of workers’ militancy. In April, 2023 a wildcat strike broke out among public transport workers in Stockholm, which lasted for four days. This is significant as it was the first wildcat strike for decades in Sweden. Workers struck against the worsening conditions, and despite the fact that the strike was limited to one part of public transport, the train drivers, there were strike meetings open to other workers. Also, the workers were supported by fund-raising and expressions of solidarity on social media. Unlike the present ongoing Tesla strike, this strike was not publicised, unless newspapers reported on the “chaos” it created.

Part of an international movement

With the exception of the transport wildcat in April, all these strikes since October have been tightly controlled by the unions. But this does not alter the fact that this movement can only be understood as part of a world-wide revival of class struggle in reaction to capitalism’s dire economic situation, and above all to the inflationary pressures behind the “cost of living crisis”, which is now also affecting workers in the Scandinavian countries famous for their “quality of life” and wide-ranging welfare services. The unions in Scandinavia have had plenty of warnings from the upsurge of struggles in other countries (Britain, France, USA, and now Canada), and their mobilisations and “solidarity actions” are part of a policy aimed at derailing a real development of consciousness in the working class. What concerns bosses and unions alike is the return of a genuine sense of solidarity within and between sectors of the class, and even across national borders, and thus the beginnings of a recovery of class identity, the awareness that workers in all sectors and countries are part of a class exploited by capital and facing similar attacks on its living standards.

Equally significant is the fact that struggles occur at all today in Sweden, which is on the verge of joining NATO, which contributes significant resources to the arming of Ukraine, and where propaganda around the war with Russia is virtually incessant. In January two top defence officials warned that Swedes must prepare for the possibility of war: “Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin told a defence conference ‘there could be war in Sweden’. His message was then backed up by military commander-in-chief Gen Micael Byden, who said all Swedes should prepare mentally for the possibility”[1].

And yet despite the bourgeoisie’s attempts to whip up war fever, workers have put their own living standards first. This does not mean that the workers are reacting directly to the threat of war, but their willingness to fight on their own terrain against the impact of the economic crisis is the basis for a future development of consciousness about the link between economic crisis and war, and thus about the need to confront capitalism as a whole system of plunder and destruction.

The bourgeois slogans of the unions

It remains the case that these advances in class consciousness are very fragile and, as ever, the trade unions are there to block and distort them. The main slogan of the unions has been the “defence of the Swedish model” of collective agreement between unions and bosses.

For over five years, IF Metall has been calling for collective agreements for the workers on the existing Tesla workshops in Sweden. Tesla has refused, categorically, which left IF Metall with little alternative but to call the strike on 27 October. The conflict was from the start highly coordinated by the unions. On the 7th of November, the Transport Workers' Union and Harbour Workers’ Union joined the conflict and blocked all ports in Sweden where Tesla cars are loaded and unloaded. During November, several official trade unions announced sympathy measures: the Electricians' Union, the Painters' Union, the Government Employees' Association and others. Important customers of Tesla, such as Stockholm Taxi, announced that they will no longer buy their cars unless Tesla signs a collective agreement, and that "The Swedish model with collective agreements is an important principle that must be defended".

News about the blockade was publicised daily in the Swedish media, as well as continuous updates on the conflict. As the strike continued, this media interest was not limited to Sweden, since prestigious bourgeois publications like The Economist, Financial Times and The Guardian followed it closely, as well as representatives of the EU, who described the “Swedish Model” as part of “Social Europe” against “US anti-union policies”. Throughout, the spotlight on the personality of Elon Musk as an exceptionally ruthless billionaire has been used to divert attention from the reality that all capitalists need to increase their attacks on workers’ wages and conditions. Even better for stoking up nationalism is the fact that this particular attack is being spearheaded by an American company.

The other face of the “collective agreement” ideology is the promotion of divisions between unionised and non-unionised workers. In the Tesla strike, workers who were not unionised, continued working, which led IF Metall to set up picket lines outside the workshops, accusing these non-unionised workers of being “scabs”.

Union methods lead to defeat

Today, a few days into the new year, the strike is still ongoing, with no prospects of an outcome, since Elon Musk and Tesla refuse to negotiate. Some unionised workers have gone back to work, risking exclusion from IF Metall, and also being labeled “scabs” in the leftist press. Since the beginning of December last year, no news has appeared on the strike. Portrayed originally as a struggle between David and Goliath, the media interest seems to have vanished.

Today, the top officials of IF Metall have no intention of calling for solidarity from other workers in the same sector. The Tesla workers are locked into a dynamic of defeat, which the current campaigns on “scabs” bears witness to.

In the face of the sacrifices that will be increasingly demanded of them in the name of the national economy and the defence of the country, workers need to come to their own collective agreement: the agreement to gather together and make decisions in general assemblies that are not controlled by the unions, to spread their struggles to other enterprises and sectors whether unionised or not, and whether inside or outside the rules of the “Swedish model”.

Eriksson and Amos, January 2024

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Addendum: What is the “Swedish model”?

The expression “the Swedish Model” has often been used to describe the Swedish welfare state generally, but originally it meant a very strict regulation of conflicts on the labour market. In the 1930s, strikes were commonplace in Sweden and the Social Democratic government, who had come to power in 1932, did not want to intervene, but turned to LO (the Swedish central union apparatus, like the TUC in Britain) to stop this. In 1938, LO signed a historic agreement with the employers’ federation, the SAF, where it was stated that central negotiations should be held, union by union, where no unions should take advantage but follow a maximum limit of wages. In this way, the state was guaranteed a stable economy without needing to intervene to keep the wages down (very practical for the Social Democratic state apparatus). In this agreement, it was stipulated that no industrial action was allowed during an agreement period. In effect, this was a ban on strikes that effectively was in action until the wildcat strikes began to appear in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Swedish Model means in reality “peace on the labour market” and a ban on strikes – so of course the trade union and the bourgeoisie in general support this!

To have a collective agreement at a certain workplace means that workers are guaranteed limited working hours, holidays and overtime payment as well as insurance and unemployment benefits, which in Sweden are regulated by the unions. It is therefore a part of the general welfare system. Having no collective agreement means in this case that, except for the general benefits and insurances, Tesla decides about your wage through their own premium system and you must sign a confidentiality contract before you start working (one worker was sacked because his wife posted on X/Twitter about the conditions at his workplace).

Of course, these conditions are appalling, but it is a profound illusion to think that union legality and “collective agreements” can really protect workers from the assaults of a capitalist class which is being driven to the wall by the world economic crisis and the growing weight of the war economy. Furthermore, the unions’ link to the wider state machinery means that they are themselves part of these assaults. IF Metall, the strongest and most influential union in Sweden, has a history of close connections with the Social Democratic state apparatus. Stefan Löfvén, the former Swedish PM, honed his leadership credentials as an IF Metall chairman when he managed to cut down the wage demands in the central agreement just after the financial crisis in 2008, declaring that workers must be “responsible” in the face of the crisis.

“Enough is enough!” The same feelings of revolt, anger and frustration have spread within the ranks of the working class from Britain to the United States, with similar expressions in France and the Scandinavian countries along the way. Widespread attacks on our living and working conditions, and the brutal, arrogant and cynical attitude of governments and employers, have only strengthened our fighting spirit and our determination to continue the struggle. This same mood is strong in Quebec, Canada, where 565,000 public sector workers employed by the federal government (15% of the active population) came out on strike en masse when faced with rising prices and deterioration in their working conditions. Increasingly many proletarians in capitalism's central countries, as in the United States, find themselves being plunged into poverty.

Strikes by public sector workers in Canada have been underway for over a month and are further confirmation of the revival of working class struggle internationally. It's over fifty years since the last strike on this scale which was in April, 1972, when Quebec was paralysed with factories and mines occupied by strikers.

Today's strikes are a significant extension to the wave of struggles in the United States that affected the car industry in particular, with the UAW (United Autoworkers Union) finally signing an agreement with the management at Ford, Stellantis and GM, between October 25 and 30, which was considered a clear "victory" and was able to bring an end to more than a month of strike action.

On a broader level, it confirms the 'rupture' with thirty years of retreat and passivity as referred to in the "Reports and Resolutions of the 25th ICC Congress"[1] , where we explain how the revival of workers' combativity in numerous countries at the vital economic centres of capitalism, was a major historical event.

Workers’ solidarity and combativity

A powerful wave of anger, determination and outrage was evident in the strikes where the public sector mobilised en masse in Quebec, expressing the very strong combativity of the working class there, and the continuing international revival of working-class struggles, particularly in North America, following on from the car industry strikes in the United States.

The provocative and arrogant attitude of the federal government gave rise to increased attacks on teachers and health care workers alike, increasing their job insecurity and by making already intolerable working conditions even worse. The number of teachers who have resigned has doubled in the last four years (more than 4,000!), at a time when there is a crying shortage of teachers in Quebec's public schools, with classes having been closed down for one month for one million pupils. This massive response has reached across all levels of the teaching profession (primary, secondary and higher education), as well as school transport, day-care centres and administrative staff.

The same frustration is being expressed in Health and Social Services, with the threat of a “major reform” hanging over the health system. Living and working conditions are under attack from the bourgeoisie here too. The federal government plans to further increase the number of independent and private clinics that will require increased staff mobility and flexibility and the need to accept voluntary relocations according to departmental needs, meaning more redundancies and existing staff facing an increased burden of already exhausting individual tasks and unpaid overtime. As one lab technician put it: "We already work like dogs on weekends, holidays and nights. And they tell us it's not enough.”

In this situation, the government has been intransigent, contemptuous and totally cynical, offering to negotiate on further wage increases only in exchange for the workers agreeing to increased and more widespread flexibility, with deliberate intentions of letting negotiations drag on. This is demonstrated by the hard line taken by both Premier François Legault and Sonia Le Bel, who is President of the Public Finance Council.

However, the anger and mass mobilisation has already succeeded in breaking with the tendency toward individual despondency and the kind of profound demoralisation that existed previously.

This ongoing situation has both aroused and inspired a wave of mutual support and solidarity. In the case of the teachers, for example, a support group has been set up on social networks to help unpaid strikers on the picket lines with donations of food and clothing. The strikes, including those in the private sector, continue to enjoy the sympathy and support of 70% of the population. In addition, the number, frequency and scale of the mobilisations have demonstrated the great determination of the strikers to not given in.

The bourgeoisie sabotages the struggle and divides workers

The trade unions had already consciously taken in hand the leadership so as to be able to channel the anger and to exert control over the movement to disperse and divide it.  The teachers' union (Fédération autonome de l'enseignement (FAE)) called on its 66,000 members to come out on an indefinite strike from 13 November, while the four main trade union confederations that make up the "Common Front" in the public sector, representing 420,000 employees, only called for sporadic strikes from November 21 to 23, then from December 8 to 14. For its part, the health workers union (Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé) called on its 80,000 members to stop work on November 6, 8, 9, 23 and 24, then from December 11 to 14. Some of the organisations had promised tougher strike action if negotiations with the government were unsuccessful, but they were stalling for time in order to delay this eventuality until after the festive season!

At the same time, the government had a trump card up its sleeve with which it was able to exploit to the full in its attempt to defuse this combativity and to stir up divisions and competition: it conducted negotiations with each sector in turn and also separately with each national trade union, and it was able to rely on the work of undermining, dividing and controlling the struggles by the various unions. Thus, as early as 20 December, part of the "Common Front" in education began to fracture, with the FSE-FSQ expressing its desire to conclude a separate agreement with the government and the Treasury Commission. At the same time, the most "radical" fraction of strikers behind the FAE, which was on indefinite strike, was engaging in spectacular minority "commando operations" such as blocking access to the ports of Montreal and Quebec City, before it finally reached an agreement of its own, that put an end to the teachers' strike on 28 December. In this way, the unions and the Quebec government managed to find a solution through specific measures to improve salaries and pensions on a case-by-case basis, as well as to limit overcrowding in the classrooms. On the other hand, no agreement has apparently yet been reached in the nursing sector, which seems to demonstrate a tactic of 'divide and rule' with this particularly combative sector having to continue striking on its own. The possibility of further strikes in other sectors in the near future, given the depth of discontent cannot be ruled out.

Continuing maturation of working class consciousness

Despite the actual limitations and the warning it contains concerning the real dangers facing the development of future struggles, letting the struggle get trapped in the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and those of the unions, the public sector strike in Quebec illustrates most of all the potential of the international revival of workers’ combativity and determination, in a broader context of unfolding struggles and maturing workers' consciousness in the central countries of capitalism. Above all, it reaffirms the clear capacity of the working class to develop its struggles in response to the blows of the global crisis and the all-out attacks by the bourgeoisie and its governments, no matter whether left or right wing, the expression of a dying and decaying capitalist world. These struggles are a major step forward for the working class on the road to the recovery of its class identity and its consciousness.

In the face of all the propaganda and the shower of lies spewed out since 1989 about the supposed bankruptcy or death of communism, these struggles demonstrate that the working class has not gone away and more than ever constitutes the only class with a revolutionary perspective for the overthrow of capitalism and a future for humanity, that will overturn the inexorable sinking of capitalist society into a sea of misery, chaos, generalised war and barbarism.

 

GD, 4 January, 2024

Milei has become president of Argentina using an ultra-right-wing rhetoric, despite the fact that two years ago he and his political party were completely unknown. This is another example of a populist party emerging within the accelerated decomposition of capitalism and characterised by the bourgeoisie's loss of control of its political game, as seen primarily in the most developed countries. The rise of populist or rightist parties has been confirmed by recent examples in Europe such as the electoral success of Gert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in Holland and that of Georgi Meloni and the Brothers of Italy who now lead the coalition government in Italy. This phenomenon has spread from the central countries but has also affected the peripheral countries for several years. The mystification of populism in the working class is rooted in a sense of not being listened to by the elites and a belief that ‘global forces’ and ‘alien outsiders’ pose a threat to the national interest, all of which constitutes a barrier to development of class consciousness.

"There is no alternative", "... they left us no choice..." are phrases used by Milei in his inaugural speech, in which he announced plans for the series of attacks he has prepared against the exploited. The deepening economic crisis and the long chain of right-wing and left-wing governments, despite claiming to be 'cleaning up' the Argentine economy, have actually made things worse. This has meant that all confidence in the traditional parties of the bourgeoisie has been lost. Neither the Peronists, whether on the left or the right, nor the Radicals, nor the formation of electoral alliances, made restoring confidence in the traditional, institutionalised state political parties possible. This situation opened the door to the emergence of a messianic leader like Milei from the populist right-wing, who, although patronised by certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, was not in a position where he could count on the support of the entire bourgeois class or claim to exercise total control over the state.

Some sectors of the bourgeoisie did indeed get behind him at the beginning of his election campaign, seeking to benefit from his unbalanced personality, his outbursts and his economic measures based on the sanctity of the market and a staunch defence of private property. Then a larger part of the ruling class became concerned and tried to curtail his ascent, but without success. Since what has been established as the dominant trend in the current phase of decomposition is the bourgeoisie's loss of control over its own political strategy, this made it possible for a figure like Milei to "sneak in" as head of the government, with a team, described by Mauricio Macri as "immature and lacking experience without real resources and easily manipulated", so that, immediately in the first round, they tried to "soften him up" by accompanying and mentoring him with experienced members of the traditional political "elite" that he claimed to reject...

The arrival of a populist party in government certainly poses a problem for the Argentine bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie is nevertheless using this against the workers. The working class will be the main target of Milei's famous chainsaw.

The bourgeoisie has lost control of its political game

In riding the populist wave, Milei has upset the electoral machinery that was established between two coalitions, the centre-left wing of the Peronists led by the Kirchner husband and wife team, and the centre-right Peronist faction led by Mauricio Macri. This competition between two bourgeois factions, which dates back to 2015, had tried to restore new life to the stale two-party system that gravitated around Peronism and anti-Peronism. But the exhaustion of the traditional parties and their coalitions was clear to see, because at the moment that this process was repeating itself, with a 12-year centre-left Peronist government being replaced with a centre-right government headed by Macri, which then failed to manage the economy effectively, it was replaced at an early stage by a centre-left Peronist coalition.

This is what led certain sectors of the bourgeoisie to back Milei, who was vehemently opposed to this already worn-out and discredited political system, describing it as a "political caste" that had, moreover, been implicated in corruption scandals for years, as was the case with the Kirchner and Macri governments. This is why, in order to limit the development of political uncertainty, the need to employ figures from the ranks of the "privileged elite", those whom Milei says he despises, has been impressed upon Milei, forcing him to give the key positions in the government portfolios to people such as Patricia Bullrich at the Ministry of the Interior and Luis Caputo at the Ministry of the Economy.

The worsening economic crisis has provided fertile ground for Milei's rise

Another factor that has aggravated the conflicts within the Argentine bourgeoisie, and contributed to the splits within traditional parties, has been the worsening of the economic crisis. The measures adopted by the Kirchnerist governments and by Macri's right-wing government, in their attempt to clean up the economic system, had significantly contributed to the rise in inflation. Public spending and the resort to credit, which they thought would stimulate and re-balance the economy, ended up being a liability, and although the bourgeoisie and its state had already transferred the main bulk of the consequences of the worsening crisis onto the backs of the workers, this did not prevent discontent developing within the bourgeoisie itself.

But the bourgeoisie is not alone in having cause for concern with these developments. There are sections of the working class who have let themselves to be ensnared by the radical populist right-wing rhetoric which, with its attacks on past governments' records, has led these workers into having illusions and false hopes of sweeping improvements, as the answer to the despair and nihilism that is rife within society.

The growing impoverishment of the Argentine population, whose wages are being eroded daily by accelerating inflation, has led to despair among a large mass of the exploited (especially the young), who, in the context of the loss of class identity, have ended up falling into the trap set by Milei's promises.

But with only a few weeks having gone by since Milei assumed power and with the economic blows and the threats they face being implemented, it is becoming clear to the workers that the bourgeoisie, no matter which party is at the head of the government, and no matter how outrageous its rhetoric, has no solution to offer in the face of the capitalist crisis. The only thing it can provide is greater exploitation, greater hardship and more repression.

Neither state ownership nor the free market offer a solution for workers

The choice betweeen a greater state intervention in the economy or the liberalisation of the market are old arguments used by the bourgeoisie when explaining the direction of its economic policies, but they are a pure mystification, because whether it is with a greater share of state ownership or through private capital, the bourgeoisie is always looking to the conditions which will allow it to continue its exploitation in the most profitable way it can find. For a worker, it makes no difference whether his exploitation is managed by private capital or by the state.

Engels has already explained that: "the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State ownership, does not alter the capitalist nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, for its part, is also no more than an organisation created by bourgeois society (…) The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine - the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital.” [1] The danger presented by Milei does not, therefore, come from the threat of privatisation or the loss of "national sovereignty" that would be a consequence of adopting the US dollar as its currency as some leftwingers claim. As we are seeing, Milei's chainsaw is directed towards crushing the workers by adopting measures that will enable him to achieve his real objective: defending the profits and interests of the national capital by launching the most brutal attacks on workers' living conditions.

Reducing the deficit and "choosing" to dollarise the currency and remove the central bank, while giving full rein to market forces, will entail a large dose of austerity, which will quickly paralyse production and cause an increase in prices and tariffs. This will mean a steep rise in inflation, further degrading purchasing power and the value of pensions, all in the name of "protecting the national economy".

The ideological campaign of the Argentine ruling class against the workers

Populism, as a general phenomenon of capitalist society, “springs from within an element present in most advanced countries, the profound loss of confidence in the ‘elites’  (…) due to their inability to restore health to the economy and stem the steady rise in unemployment and poverty” This revolt against the political leaders "(…) can in no way lead to an alternative perspective to capitalism". [2]

In this sense, it directly affects the working class, because the populist campaigns of hatred and resentment against the "establishment" are looking for a scapegoat to try and explain what is "not working", thereby masking the fact that it is the capitalist system as a whole that is responsible and not this or that personality or political party. For the workers, there is nothing to celebrate in the bourgeoisie's  frenzy around the celebration of 40 years of democratic elections in the country since 1983 after the end of military dictatorship, or in the fact that since the massive "protest vote" in the last election (56% of the total, the highest in 4 decades) against the traditional parties, there is now an "outsider" at the head of government since 10 December 2023. Alternating the parties in power in an electoral democracy is certainly a trap for workers, making them believe that their vote is what decides changes in government and public policy; but the "punitive vote" is nothing more than an offer to “get revenge”, which merely keeps them bound to the ideology of democracy.

If there is no difference between the Kirchnerists and Macri's supporters when it comes to defending national capital and targeting the workers, it is clear that Milei has taken charge of the government precisely to continue this defence by attacking the working and living conditions of the working class; he has also demonised workers by naming the "beneficiaries" of state welfare benefits as accomplices in the crisis, in other words scapegoats whom he describes as lazy, profiteers and thieves.

In short, if the phenomena of decomposition such as populism affects its political game, the bourgeoisie still has the means to use its effects against the working class, for example by reinforcing the myth of democracy, with its alternating governments based on the illusory power of the vote, etc.

What can the working class do in the face of the attacks of the Milei government?

Milei's entire election campaign was based on his being a "libertarian", a critic of the traditional political elites, who had succeeded in frightening the "establishment", and therefore offering an alternative. But as soon as he took office, he began a head-on attack of the working class, which are reminiscent of the "shock measures" widely used by the dictatorial regimes in Latin America in the 1980s.

The old bourgeois recipe of alternating carrot and stick also means there are measures that are claimed to "improve social welfare". For example, the new government has announced a 50% increase in the amounts granted for programmes such as "universal child support" and the "credit card for food", which are in fact crumbs that are sprinkled around to appear to be "more caring", but which are also used as an instrument of control, with the threat of taking them away from anyone who is involved in street protests.

This “anti-piquetero” policy, " is a counterpart to the proposed plan, announced by the Minister of the Interior Patricia Bullrich, to crack down hard on demonstrations, making those people taking part in strikes and demonstrations pay the costs of the police operation! Furthermore, these fines will be imposed on parents who bring their young children with them on the demonstrations. What arrogance and contempt the bourgeoisie has for the exploited and oppressed class!

For our part, we are convinced of the fact that the Argentine workers, who have a historic tradition of struggle, will be pushed to fight back in the face of attacks on their living conditions. A glimpse of what workers are capable of was evident on the night of 20 December. Following Milei's televised presentation of his "Decree of Necessity and Urgency" (DNU), which, among other aspects, set out "the deregulation of the economy" and the ban on strikes, in many places in Buenos Aires as well as in the provinces, large crowds of workers spontaneously gathered in the streets banging on pots and pans, and hundreds of them in the capital marched to the parliament to protest.

Such responses, even if they are still quite weak, are important in highlighting the workers' discontent. They reflect a recognition of the need to break the chains of their illusions in the promises of the government, to show that they will not readily sacrifice themselves to further pauperisation.

The proletariat in Argentina must learn from the experience of the recent mobilisations of its class brothers and sisters in Europe and the United States. These mass mobilisations show that the working class "... by fighting against the effects of the economic crisis, against the attacks orchestrated by the States, against the sacrifices imposed by the development of the war economy, that the proletariat is rising up, not as citizens demanding "rights" and "justice", but as the exploited against their exploiters and, ultimately, as a class against the system itself. This is why the international dynamic of the working class struggle carries within it the seeds of a fundamental challenge to the whole of capitalism". [3].

JRT (7 January 2024)

 

[1] In order to assess the scale of the burden that public spending and debt have become, we can relate them to GDP, bearing in mind that public spending represents 40% of GDP and that the level of debt, from 2018 to the present day, is evolving within a range of between 80% and 100% of this GDP. It should be added that these credits have hardly had a positive effect for the capitalists, who have created numerous fictitious companies to pretend they need capital investment, enabling them to acquire "cheap" dollars and shelter them in other countries. The outgoing government of Alberto Fernandez is presenting the bill according to which, of the $45 billion in credits obtained by Macri from the IMF, around 90% ended up being squandered in this way.

[2] Report on the impact of the decomposition on the political life of the bourgeoisie (23rd ICC Congress) [314], Internatonal Review no. 164, 2020.

[3] “Strikes and demonstrations in the United States, Spain, Greece, France... How can we develop and unite our struggles?” [315] World Revolution no. 398

 

Reader’s letter

Faced with the growing danger of opportunism within the proletarian camp, the ICC has intervened on numerous occasions in its press[1] and has organised several discussions with its contacts and close sympathisers. While at first sight this struggle may seem anecdotal or secondary, the history of the workers' movement, since the determined battles of Marx and Engels (already described as "parochial quarrels" at the time), has amply demonstrated that this is not the case. You only have to look at how the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT), an organisation of the Communist Left, can wallow in the illusory quest for influence in the working class at any price to be convinced of this: the ICT prefers to renounce the defence of the fundamental political principles of the workers' movement (in particular, the serious defence of internationalism) and jeopardise the revolutionary perspective, in the hope of winning a handful of militants.

Nor has the ICC hesitated to defend the revolutionary camp tooth and nail in the face of the complacency and “openness” of organisations of the Communist Left towards petty snitches (like the IGCL, the “International Group of the Communist Left”)) or parasitic groups and individuals. Parasitism, and the inability of revolutionaries to oppose it rigorously, has always been a scourge in the history of the workers’ movement, as the struggle of the First International against Bakunin's manoeuvres already showed. The raison d'être of the parasitic movement, full of semi-intellectuals with over-inflated egos, is to hinder clarification between the real revolutionary organisations and their fight against capitalist society.

That is why we warmly welcome the letter below from one of our contacts in support of this struggle.

ICC

 

Letter from Osvaldo

Dear comrades,

In continuity with my criticism and rejection, through my previous statements, of the various forms of parasitism that have been undermining the proletarian political camp for years, today I also express my broadest condemnation of parasitism and my full solidarity with the ICC.

But, at the same time as making this declaration, I want to issue a warning to the organisations that are still part of the proletarian political camp: beware of opportunism, another irrepressible scourge of the workers' movement and in particular of its avant-gardes. For it insidiously opens the door not only to the renunciation of proletarian principles which distinguish this same camp (to the point of leading it to betrayal, see for example the case of German social democracy on the eve of the First World War), but also to adventurism, and worse still, as the ICC report rightly says, to giving parasitism an entry ticket to the communist left. This can lead to a really pernicious contagion of the proletarian political camp, endangering its survival, without which there will be no party tomorrow, the indispensable organ for leading the proletarian revolution to victory.

And in this respect, I want to denounce the parasites and spies of the GIGC who, as shameless liars, in addition to other unfounded accusations duly denied by the ICC - documents in hand - through its press and in public meetings, take the liberty of attacking the latter by attributing to it non-existent councilist weaknesses, precisely on the conception of the party, thereby giving a wink to the other formations of the proletarian political camp. Now, there can be and there are differences on the conception of the party between, for example, the ICC and the ICT or the Bordigist groups, and these can and must be discussed fraternally and publicly with the different groups, precisely in continuity with the tradition which the communist left has bequeathed to us. Instead, we find the comrades of the ICT collaborating with, and even accepting into their ranks, unworthy and dangerous elements like those of the IGCL. This is setting a bad example to the milieu, especially concerning the importance and necessity of its existence for elements who are evolving towards class positions (see the NWBCW committee meeting in Paris[2]). Unfortunately, I fear that the opportunism of the ICT is leading it into a dangerous drift, which threatens both its survival as a group belonging to the proletarian political camp and that of the camp as a whole.

I therefore fully agree with your presentation and will fight relentlessly against opportunism, adventurism and parasitism.

Osvaldo, 15-11-2023

 

The uncompromising defence of internationalism and its age-old watchword: "The workers have no homeland", is more than ever the key to the proletariat's struggle, a class barrier between the working class and the bourgeoisie.

Many groups on the left of the bourgeoisie's political apparatus, Trotskyist, anarchist, Maoist, etc, have for decades prided themselves on being the defenders of the interests of working class in its struggle against capitalism. While the death toll in the war between Israel and Hamas continues to rise, their pseudo-internationalism has once more proven to be nothing more than a bluff and a sham! As the IDF answers the limitless savagery of Hamas with a deluge of fire, all of their political positions are directed towards the same result: to push the workers into taking sides, supporting one imperialist camp against another. Put simply, they are nothing more than the stooges of nationalism.

Trotskyism is nationalism, always and forever!

Some leftists around the world have had no hesitation in glorifying the despicable acts of Hamas after their savage attack on 7 October. The French neo-Maoists of the Ligue de la Jeunesse Révolutionnaire (LJR) headlined: "The deluge of Al Aqsa is a glorious beacon in the night of imperialism". The height of war-mongering ignominy! The same goes for the Spanish Trotskyist group El Militant-Izquierda Revolucionaria, which had no hesitation in triumphantly brandishing the "right of the Palestinian people to arm itself in self-defence" in order to show its support for the atrocities committed by Hamas, which is a band of gangsters and murderers! It's the same in Great Britain, where the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party shamelessly issued its war cry: "the Palestinian people have every right to respond, as they see fit, to the violence of the Israeli state".

But behind this coterie of shameless warmongers, other leftist groups, in a perfect division of the ideological dirty work, have promoted much more devious forms of nationalism.

In some other Trotskyist groups, the language is a little more subtle but the logic is the same. Behind the "resolutely internationalist" slogans of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), the defence of one imperialist camp against another is unwavering. They persist with their putrid nationalism: "for decades (as the LCR did before it ), the NPA has defended the case that, like other peoples of the world, the Palestinians have national and democratic rights, recognised by the UN". These "rights" are those of the nation and its state (whether democratic or not), expressions par excellence of the dictatorship of the ruling class, which for well over fifty years has foisted this ideology on the Palestinian proletariat and the population in general, with the aim of recruiting them as cannon fodder for its imperialist ambitions.

Palestinian nationalism, whether it presents itself as "marxist", "secular" or "Islamist", has always put itself at the service of the imperialist forces at work in the region. Hamas is, in fact, a clique at the head of a state, a faction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie which exploits and imposes its dictatorship on the population of Gaza, on the Palestinian proletariat. It treats its workers just like any other capitalist regime. One of the greatest ironies of this nightmare is that Hamas largely owes its existence to Israel, which initially encouraged its development as a counterweight to the PLO.

Defenders of barbarism... but democratically!

Révolution Permanente (RP), an organisation that split from the NPA and which is now developing links with other Trotskyist groups in Europe, such as Klasse gegen Klasse in Germany, is back with another layer of staggeringly outrageous misinformation: "Hamas's adventurism, atrocities and massacres against civilians are the height of the impasse it represents for the Palestinian cause, because it has no real social and democratic programme [...]. And yet Hamas, unlike Daesh and Al Qaeda, has a popular base, even though the absence of elections and any democratic framework [...] makes it impossible to measure exactly the degree of support for Hamas in Gaza and elsewhere in the territories".

What shameless hypocrisy to get people to accept the unacceptable and justify the barbaric massacres of Hamas! Popular support? Would Hamas' atrocities be more legitimate if they had been sanctioned by elections? Was it on the basis of its "popular support" that in September 2006, a few months after it came to power, massive strikes and demonstrations were organised, demanding that the Hamas government settle several months' unpaid wages?

This is a fine illustration of democratic mystification! Under cover of a "critical" discourse, the war-mongers of the NPA use the "democratic label" to better justify the massacres perpetrated by the soldiers of an imperialist camp. The ignominy of Trotskyist propaganda knows no bounds and often turns into something unsustainable. But the savagery and atrocities of this conflict are such that they sometimes embarrass some of these groups, leading them into distancing themselves a little from what their "comrades" are saying.

Such expressions of radical contortion are to be found in one of the most devious of Trotskyist groups, an expert in doublespeak and evasions, the inimitable French Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvrière (LO), which recently published an article highly critical of the NPA and Révolution Permanente. LO criticises them for an overly outrageous nationalist discourse that fails to perceive "the class and bourgeois nature of Hamas, and its nationalist and reactionary policy [...]. To describe Hamas as the 'main organisation of the Palestinian resistance' is a misuse of language, not to say a con".

What’s going on?! So LO is ready to denounce the barbarity of all bourgeois factions and abandon its logic of defending "national liberation struggles"?... Surely not! "If some of the Palestinian masses trust Hamas, it certainly doesn't trust them [...] Hamas acts and makes decisions beyond the control of the Palestinian population and the poorest. Its methods are not designed to enable those in revolt to become conscious of their power, to organise themselves and to have a political education. The attack on 7 October was launched by its leadership without any control or discussion". Clearly, the undemocratic savagery of Hamas has "disappointed" LO, nothing less!

Ah, if only "democratic discussions" had taken place before 7 October to plan the Hamas attack, the atrocities might have had a more presentable profile, according to LO. In the realm of the sordid, the "subtle", Lutte Ouvrière dethrones the most outrageous Trotskyist groups to sell its own nationalist and war-mongering garbage.

What is the perspective for the working class according to Trotskyism?

Let's hear from Révolution Permanente once more: "In future, we must not think of the mobilisation against the war, the struggle for Palestinian national liberation and the perspective of proletarian revolution as separate paths. On the contrary, they can and must support each other". At least that has the merit of being clear!

Not only must the Palestinian proletariat continue to serve as cannon fodder for the nationalist cause of its bourgeoisie, but more broadly the proletarian struggle must "sustain" and nourish the national liberation struggles. The Trotskyists' shoddy internationalism had been thrown out of the window a long time ago, but now they are openly assuming their role as recruiting sergeants for the national cause.

Whatever the convoluted contortions of the Trotskyist organisations, they remain unwavering recruiters for the bourgeoisie in its national confrontations.

During the Second World War, Trotskyism definitively passed into the camp of the bourgeoisie by contributing to the enlistment of the proletariat in the war against fascism. Since then, these bourgeois groups have methodically incited workers throughout the world to choose one imperialist camp against another. During the Cold War, they confirmed their unconditional support for the USSR and its so-called "national liberation struggles" (Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.) against the United States. During the war in Iraq, they determined that the "right side" was... "the side of the Iraqi people against the Anglo-American aggressors"!

More recently, several Trotskyist groups have repeatedly denounced "Putin's Russia" in the war in Ukraine, calling on the "Ukrainian people" to be resigned to being massacred in the trenches. Other Trotskyist groups, like LO, faithful to its dogma of a Russia that is not imperialist, do not hesitate to subtly support Putin by suggesting that the only imperialism worth denouncing is that of NATO and Biden.

Trotskyism, because it is a bourgeois ideology, inevitably pushes the working class into the arms of so-called national liberation struggles - in reality, the defence of one imperialist camp against another, the camp of the "victim" against the "aggressors", the camp of democracy against fascism, the camp of the "poor countries" against the "rich countries", previously the camp of the "Soviet socialist fatherland" against Western imperialism, etc.

There is no solution to the endless bloodshed in the Middle East and throughout the world outside the international class struggle and the world proletarian revolution. All forms of nationalism, all its defenders, including the most radical, are the mortal enemies of the working class and its revolutionary perspective.

Stopio, 5 December 2023

 

"Destroy Hamas?"

The Israeli government has announced that the aim of its devastating bombing campaign and land invasion of Gaza is the destruction of Hamas, and that it is not targeting civilians but the infrastructure and command centres of Hamas. But “collaterally” killing thousands of civilian men, women and children is certainly the best way to recruit more converts to the so-called “Palestinian Resistance”, even if it may regroup and rename itself, fired by a growing desire for revenge, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or Israel itself.

A spokesman for the Israeli government, Avi Dichter, agricultural minister and former Shin Beth (intelligence service) member, possibly in an unguarded moment, provided a better insight into the real aims of the Israeli onslaught: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”[1]

In the Nakba or catastrophe of 1948, over 700,000 Palestinian refugees fled the territory designated as Israel, “stimulated” to leave by terrorist atrocities by Zionist militia (most famously the slaughter at Deir Yassin by the Stern gang) and further encouraged by triumphalist proclamation from the invading Arab states, who promised that the refugees would return following their imminent military victory. The Arab armies were defeated and the refugees were never allowed back; hundreds of thousands have remained in miserable conditions in refugee camps ever since. In short, the Nakba was the ethnic cleansing of Israel, so the Gaza Nakba would be the expulsion of the vast majority of its inhabitants, fleeing death, destruction and a permanent blockade. Such a “solution” reflects the total lack of any long-term perspective held by the present Israeli government, since it could only be a prelude to further instability and wars. But the cruel policies of the Netanyahu government merely reflect a deeper reality: that the ruling class in all countries, the guardians of a dying capitalist world order, has no perspective to offer humanity, and is being more and more drawn in to an irrational and suicidal spiral of destruction. NATO’s attempt to bleed Russia dry in the war in Ukraine, and Russia’s desperate efforts to annex the eastern reaches of that country, are proof that this spiral does not spare the biggest powers on the planet.

"Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea?"

 Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in demonstrations across the world denouncing the devastation of Gaza and calling for a ceasefire. No doubt that many, perhaps the majority, are motivated by genuine indignation against this merciless bombardment, which has claimed around 16,000 victims, and left many more wounded or homeless. But despite this, the truth is that they are taking part in pro-war demonstrations, where the guiding slogan, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” could only be achieved through the military destruction of Israel and the massive slaughter and expulsion of Israeli Jews – a Nakba in reverse. And on its ruins, an Islamic Palestine on the model of Iran[2]? The indiscriminate massacre carried out by Hamas on 7 October, almost never condemned and even openly celebrated on these demonstrations, has clarified the real methods and aims of the “Resistance”

The impossibility of a “free Palestine” also reflects a deeper reality, again expressing the advancing decay of this system: the impossibility of all so-called “national liberation” struggles and nationalist movements being anything more than an adjunct to the bloody rivalry of imperialist powers large and small for control of the planet.

Humanity will only be free when the capitalist prison of the nation state has been dismantled and it lives in a world community without exploitation and without national borders.   

"Israel and Palestine, two nations living in peace?"

There are those who do indeed condemn both the decimation of Gaza and the Hamas atrocities. Some are engaged in dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians despite the growing wall of hatred created by this war. They put their hopes in a “political solution” in which local and global powers will sit down and come to a workable agreement, in particular the idea of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a newly formed Palestinian state.

But appealing to the good will of imperialist states has never stopped wars and neither could a more “liberal” Israel or a future Palestinian state escape the drive towards war and imperialism, from which as Rosa Luxemburg explained in 1915, “no nation can hold aloof”. As we say in our international leaflet:

“History has shown that the only force that can put an end to capitalist war is the exploited class, the proletariat, the direct enemy of the bourgeois class. This was the case when the workers of Russia overthrew the bourgeois state in October 1917 and the workers and soldiers of Germany revolted in November 1918: these great movements of struggle by the proletariat forced the governments to sign the armistice. This is what put an end to the First World War: the strength of the revolutionary proletariat! The working class will have to win real and definitive peace everywhere by overthrowing capitalism on a world scale”[3].

Whatever their good intentions, those who fall for the slogans of pacifism are spreading illusions in the inherently violent nature of the present system of exploitation. The road to a world human community lies through the class struggle in all countries, and this struggle is necessarily obliged to develop the means to defend itself from the assaults of a ruling class which will fight to the death to defend its privileges. Pacifist illusions disarm the working class ideologically and materially.

Faced with the cacophony of delusions and false slogans generated by all capitalist wars, the principle of proletarian internationalism, the solidarity of the exploited across the world, remains our only defence, the only basis for understanding how to respond.

Amos, December 2023

Faced with the explosion of barbarity in Gaza, both sides and their supporters around the world are blaming each other for the crimes.

For some, Israel is waging a "dirty war" (as if there were such a thing as a clean one...) that even the UN and its very cautious Secretary General have had to denounce, going so far as to speak of "a serious risk of genocide". Some on the left of capital do not even hesitate to support the despicable atrocities of Hamas, painted as an "act of resistance" against "Israeli colonialism", which is claimed to be solely responsible for the conflict.

For its part, the Israeli government justifies the carnage by claiming to be avenging the victims of 7 October and preventing Hamas terrorists from again attacking the "security of the Jewish state". So much for the thousands of innocent victims! Never mind the "human shields" of 6 years! Never mind the ruined hospitals, schools and homes! Israel's security is worth a massacre!

Everywhere, we hear the sirens of nationalism defending a state that is supposedly the victim of the other. But what kind of deluded mind imagines that the Gazan bourgeoisie, thirsting for money and blood, is better than Netanyahu's clique of the corrupt and the fanatical?

"We're not defending Hamas, we're defending the right of the ‘Palestinian people’ to self-determination", all the leftist coterie at the head of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations sing, no doubt hoping, with this kind of ideological pirouette, to make us forget that "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" is only a formula designed to conceal the defence of what must be called the State of Gaza! The interests of proletarians in Palestine, Israel or any other country in the world should in no way be confused with those of their bourgeoisie and their state. To be convinced of this, we need only recall how Hamas bloodily repressed the 2019 demonstrations against poverty. The Palestinian homeland will never be anything but a bourgeois state at the service of the exploiting class! A "liberated" Gaza Strip would mean nothing more than consolidating the odious regime of Hamas or any other faction of the Gazan bourgeoisie.

"But the struggle of a colonised country for its liberation undermines the imperialism of the colonising states", counter-attacked some Trotskyists and what remained of the Stalinists, without laughing. What a crude lie! Hamas's attack is part of an imperialist logic that goes far beyond its own interests. Iran helped to ignite the fuse by arming Hamas. It is trying to spread chaos among its rivals, especially Israel, by multiplying provocations and incidents in the region: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shia militias in Syria and Iraq... "all the parties in the region have their hands on the trigger", as the Iranian Foreign Minister said at the end of October. However weak it may be in the face of the power of the Israeli military, Hamas, like every national bourgeoisie since capitalism entered its period of decadence, can in no way magically escape the imperialist ties which govern all international relations. Supporting the Palestinian state means siding with the imperialist interests of Khamenei, Nasrallah and even Putin, who is rubbing his hands over the conflict.

But then the inimitable pacifists appear on the scene to complete the nationalist straitjacket in which the bourgeoisie is trying to trap the working class: "We don't support either side! We demand an immediate ceasefire!” The most naïve no doubt imagine that the accelerated plunge of capitalism into barbarism is due to the lack of "good will" on the part of the murderers at the head of the states, or even to a "failure of democracy". The clever ones know perfectly well what sordid interests they are defending. This is the case, for example, with President Biden, supplier of cluster munitions to Ukraine, horrified by the "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza. It has to be said that Israel took Uncle Sam by surprise, opening up a new and potentially explosive front that the United States could have done without. If Biden has raised his voice to Netanyahu, it is not to "preserve world peace", but to better focus his efforts and military forces on his rival China in the Pacific, and on the latter’s burdensome Russian ally in Ukraine.

There is therefore nothing to hope for from "peace" under the rule of capitalism, any more than after the victory of one side or another. The bourgeoisie has no solution to war!

EG, 16 December 2023

The bloody attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall on 22 March, Putin's cold cynicism in Ukraine, the murderous hardline of the Netanyahu government's mass slaughter and starvation of civilians... all this confirms that the capitalist system is bankrupt, that bourgeois society is well and truly being sucked into a vortex of destruction and widespread chaos. And this process can only accelerate, as in the frightening unravelling of the Middle East, where the risk of a catastrophic direct confrontation between two regional powers, Israel and Iran, is immense.

The ICC has repeatedly highlighted the historical dynamic of chaos that has reigned over capitalist society since the disappearance of the blocs and the inevitable weakening of American leadership on the planet. Discipline between "allies" is now tending to disappear, and the sordid imperialist interests of the major and minor powers are running riot. Even a US ally like Israel, which depends entirely on US protection, has the freedom to do as it pleases, to step up its provocations, such as the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and to unleash chaos in the region that Washington is trying as best it can to curb. As for Iran, it has been adding fuel to the fire since the start of the war in Gaza (through Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis) and has just taken the confrontation a step further by launching a massive air attack directly against Israel. Despite the desperate attempts of the United States to contain the flare-up, developments in the Middle East confirm the continuing decline of its power over the world and risk dragging the region towards a generalised conflagration.

The bourgeoisie can do nothing about the deadly dynamics of its system. The chronic economic crisis, ecological disasters and wars are the ugly face of the decomposition of capitalism, the rotting on its feet of a society based on an obsolete mode of production, shaped by the exploitation of labour power, competition between all against all and war, and which now has nothing to offer but terror, suffering and death. More and more parts of the world are becoming unliveable for their populations, like Haiti in the grip of chaos, abandoned to criminal gangs, or like many states in Africa and Latin America, opened up to widespread corruption, warlords, mafias, and drug traffickers.

US elections, a source of increased instability

The epicentre of this downward spiral lies at the very heart of capitalism, first and foremost in the world's leading power, the United States. After escalating the chaos of recent decades by trying to impose its role as the world's policeman (in Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular), the US is using every means to counter its irreversible decline, and is not hesitating to trample underfoot its former "allies", now rivals.

The implementation of this policy is also exacerbating tensions within the American bourgeoisie itself, as can be seen from the clashes that are already marking the campaign leading up to November's presidential election. These tensions are fuelling the instability of the American political apparatus, which is becoming increasingly fragmented and polarised, not only by the divisions between Republicans and Democrats, but also and above all by the growing rifts within each of the two rival camps. For the moment, the populist Trump is emerging as the favourite, despite all the attempts to incapacitate him. In fact, the groundswell of populism remains deeply entrenched in American politics, as is also clearly evident in several European countries.

This situation plunges not only the American bourgeoisie into uncertainty but also those in high places throughout the world, as they cannot determine in advance what Washington's position will be on the burning issues affecting world geopolitics. These clashes between factions within the American bourgeoisie (from Trump's inflammatory statements to the political deadlock in Congress over military support for Ukraine) are a major accelerator of imperialist instability.

Bloody deepening of imperialist each against all

Domestic disorder is undermining the credibility and authority of the United States itself, which is also increasingly undermined by a chaotic international situation. This instability is encouraging its major rivals and secondary powers even more: it is bolstering Putin's irrational claims and galvanising Zelensky’s deadly logic of war to the end, and stimulating the war fever of Netanyahu, Iran and its terrorist affiliates. And while China is avoiding any immediate response to Washington's provocations and pressure, it is stepping up its own pressure on Taiwan and the Philippines and looking more openly at the longer-term possibility of strengthening its status as a challenger to Uncle Sam.

The growing aggressiveness of the imperialist sharks, large and small, who are trying to exploit the clashes between bourgeois cliques in the United States, in no way means that they will be spared internal tensions. Putin is caught between the butchery in the Donbass and the terrorist campaigns of Islamic State, whose forces are infiltrating from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, a threat that the ruling clan and its secret services had failed to neutralise despite warnings from various foreign secret services. In China, Xi is faced with a stagnant economy, the destabilisation of the "Silk Roads" project due to the prevailing chaos, and internal tensions within the apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. Israel's headlong rush is the product of fierce confrontations between the hardline nationalist cliques in power and other factions of the bourgeoisie, as well as the struggle for political survival of Netanyahu, who has been on trial since 2020.

The current instability of US policy is also worrying European bourgeoisies and is tending to accentuate the divisions within the EU itself over the policy to adopt in the face of pressure from NATO and the United States. As a result, the quarrels within the "Franco-German couple", already constrained in a "forced marriage", are intensifying.

The future of humanity does not lie in the ballot box

Faced with the sinking of society into barbarism, the proletariat can expect nothing from the forthcoming presidential elections in America, or indeed from any of the other elections to come. Whatever the outcome of the Presidential election in the United States, it will in no way reverse the trend towards chaos, war and the fragmentation of the world, and the working class will suffer more than ever the consequences of capitalist exploitation. Elections are only important to spread the illusion among the working class that it can influence the course of events by making the "right choice", whereas the electoral circus is nothing more than conflict between bourgeois cliques which are competing ever more sharply for power. Contrary to the lies spread by the Democrats, and in particular by leftist groups, comparing a "progressive" or "lesser evil" camp of Biden to the "absolute evil" of Trump, the proletariat will have to counter the "democratic" discourse, refuse the electoral trap and wage its autonomous class struggle.

As for the bourgeois factions in the US, they are only fighting over the most effective and least costly strategy for perpetuating the American supremacy that they all agree they want to maintain by any means, whatever the consequences for humanity and the planet. Attack Iran militarily or weaken it through an economic blockade? Increase the pressure on Russia to the point of it imploding, or feed the war of attrition? Or threaten the security of its European "allies"? Whatever the answers, they will always be part of the logic of war, and its financing will always demand new sacrifices from workers. In short, whichever faction wins the elections, the result will be further instability, new massacres and a scorched earth policy.

The proletariat must continue its class struggle

In the face of this unspeakable barbarity, in the face of the promise of widespread chaos, the proletariat represents the only possible alternative to save the human race from a destruction determined by the murderous dynamic of a decadent capitalist system. The working class has returned to its struggle, and its revolutionary potential remains intact. It is still able, in the long term, to affirm its perspective and its communist project.

It is for this struggle that we must fight as a class, rejecting from now on the logic of war and sacrifice. The bourgeois rhetoric that presents war as a "necessity" in the name of preserving peace is a disgusting lie! The real culprit is the capitalist system!

EKA, 18 April 2024

Governments are raining down attacks on the working class. Big cuts are being made to state benefits, such as for the unemployed and pensioners, and unemployment is on the rise. Public services are lacking the necessary resources and there is a general lack of support for both the public and private sectors with a shortage of medicines in places. Millions of working class families, even those still "lucky" enough to have jobs, are struggling to make ends meet. Many are having to go hungry because of the increased cost of food, heating, rents, mortgages and petrol for cars. The gas and electricity bills are soaring too. More and more people are having to rely on the charity of Food Banks. And what image could be more damning than that of many hundreds of homeless individuals forced to sleep on the streets of Europe's major capitals and across the major towns and cities of the world’s most developed countries, some even freezing to death.

In the last four years, we have witnessed a succession of dramatic events: the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the massacres in Gaza, the climate catastrophe... This whirlwind of catastrophes has deepened the capitalist crisis and fueled chaos on a global scale[1].  The future that capitalism has in store for us could not be clearer: the worsening economic crisis will only accelerate the threat to humanity. But the economic crisis can provide some benefits too, since it provides the platform and stimulus for working class to develop its fightback and take forward a struggle that can lead to the overthrow of this  bankrupt system!

The proletariat will not succumb to the attacks on its living standards

Faced with such high stakes and with the inexorable and terrifying collapse of bourgeois society, the working class is not resigned to accept a future of pauperisation. For almost two years now, despite the wars and the war-mongering, the struggles of the working class have been widespread and on a massive scale. In many countries, these struggles have often been considered to be "historic" in terms of the number of strikers and demonstrators, but also in terms of the determination of workers to fight for their dignity and living conditions. This is a real turn around after decades of passivity and resignation[2]

In the summer of 2022, the proletariat in Britain began its fightback against the crisis. Month after month, workers went on strike and demonstrated in the streets, demanding better wages and more dignified working conditions, something not seen for three decades! At the beginning of 2023, with strikes spreading in different corners of the world, the proletariat in France mobilised en masse against the government's proposed pension reform. Millions of people, across all sectors and generations, took to the streets determined to fight back together. Then, in the autumn, workers in the United States embarked on one of the most large-scale wave of strikes in that country's history, notably in the automobile sector, which was followed by a public sector movement in Quebec, also described as historic.

More recently, in a country presented as a "social model", the workers at the Tesla factories in Sweden went on strike, followed by actions of solidarity by postal workers who blocked all mail bound for the workshops of the company run by billionaire clown Elon Musk. Dockers in turn blocked four ports and electricians refused to carry out maintenance work on electric vehicle charging points.

In Northern Ireland in January, the largest workers' strike in the region's history also brought together hundreds of thousands of workers, particularly in the public sector, demanding payment of the wages they were owed.

An unbroken fighting spirit

Even today, while war is still raging in Ukraine and Gaza, workers' strikes and demonstrations are continuing to spread around the world, particularly in Europe.

In Germany, Europe's largest economy, railway workers launched a massive historic week-long strike at the end of January. This is the latest in a long series of strikes against extended working hours and for higher wages. In the coming months, the rail network could be affected by indefinite strikes. In the country renowned for "social dialogue", strikes have been unfolding for months in many sectors: strikes in the steel industry, the civil service, transport, health, refuse collection, etc. On January 30, a national rally of 5,000 doctors took place in Hanover. On February 1st, eleven of the country's airports were affected by a strike by security staff, while 90,000 bus, tram and metro drivers also stopped work. 10,000 retail workers were also on strike in mid-February and Lufthansa ground staff were called out on strike on 20 February...

This strike movement, in terms of its broad scale and duration, is also unprecedented in a country renowned for the enormous administrative obstacles erected in the face of every social movement, and the cordon of steel imposed by trade unions that has long enabled the bourgeoisie to impose austerity plans and "reforms" without the working class really reacting. Despite the difficulties in breaking free from the corporatist straitjacket and mobilising "all together", the struggles in Germany are of immense importance and symbolic significance. They are taking place in the heart of a major industrial geographical region, in the country that was the epicentre of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s and the tragic theatre of a long period of counter-revolution. The current movement is clearly part of the international revival of the class struggle.

However, this workers' combativity is not confined to Germany. In Finland, a country with little tradition of industrial strike action, a "historic strike" took place for 48 hours at the beginning of February. Even more recently, dockers paralysed port activity in this country for four days between February 18 and 21. Up to 300,000 people were on strike to oppose the law to “reform workers' rights”. In Turkey, tens of thousands of steelworkers mobilised for months to demand pay rises at a time of rocketing prices. In Belgium, it was the non-commercial sector that went on strike and demonstrated in Brussels on January 31. In Spain, the United Kingdom, France and Greece, strikes continue in many sectors. The bourgeoisie is maintaining a deafening media blackout on these struggles, because it is well aware of the growing discontent among workers and the danger posed by broadcasting reports of such mobilisations.

The old mole is still burrowing

But the breakthrough we are witnessing is not only linked to the massive and simultaneous nature of the mobilisations. The proletariat is beginning to recognise itself again as a social force and to rediscover its identity. Despite all the illusions and confusion, on placards and in discussions, statements that "we are workers" and "we are all in the same boat" could be seen being expressed ..... These were by no means empty words! Because behind these words, solidarity is very real: solidarity between generations, first of all, as we saw very clearly in France when pensioners took to the streets en masse to support "the young"; then between sectors, as in the United States with the honking car horns outside the striking factories or in Scandinavia in defence of Tesla workers.

There were even embryonic expressions of international solidarity. The Mobilier National in France went on strike in solidarity with the cultural workers on strike in Great Britain. Refineries in Belgium went on strike in support of the mobilisation in France, while small demonstrations multiplied around the world to denounce the ferocious repression of the French state. In Italy, while many sectors have been mobilising for several months, bus, tram and metro drivers went on strike on 24 January: in the wake of the movement against pension reform in France, the workers said they wanted to carry out mobilisations "just like in France", demonstrating the links that workers are beginning to recognise across borders and the desire to learn the lessons of previous movements.

The proletariat is also starting to reappropriate its experience of struggles. In Britain, the so-called "summer of anger" explicitly referred to the major strikes of the "winter of discontent" in 1978-1979. In the French demonstrations, references to May '68 and the fight against the CPE in 2006 featured on placards at the same time as the beginnings of a reflection on these movements. And all this at a time when the state is imposing restrictions and continuing to legitimise and justify the war.

Of course, we are still a long way from a massive and profound return of class consciousness. Of course, all these expressions of solidarity and reflection are riddled with confusion and illusions, easily subverted by the bourgeoisie's complementary bodies, the unions and the left-wing parties. But do the revolutionaries who are watching all this from the balcony, scratching their heads[3] , appreciate the shift that is taking place compared to previous decades, decades of silence, resignation, rejection of the very idea of the working class and complete obliviousness of that experience?

The bourgeoisie is still able to take advantage of the immense weaknesses of the working class

While these struggles clearly demonstrate that the working class is not defeated and remains the only social force capable of confronting the bourgeoisie, its fight is far from over. It still suffers from immense weaknesses and illusions, which are cruelly illustrated by the current movements. Until now, the unions have succeeded in controlling the struggles as a whole, keeping them within a very corporatist framework, as can be seen today in France and Germany, while favouring, when necessary, a semblance of unity and radicalism, like the "Common Front" of Canadian unions or the movement in Finland.

During the movement against pension reform in France, many workers, wary of the endless days of mobilisation by the unions, began to ask themselves questions about how to fight, how to unite, how to get the government to back down... but nowhere was the class able to challenge the unions for the leadership of the struggle through sovereign general assemblies, nor was it able to break with the corporatist logic imposed by the unions.

The bourgeoisie is also deploying all its ideological weaponry to undermine the consciousness that is beginning to mature in the heads of the workers. While it remains silent about the massive strikes by the working class, it has of course been very outspoken about the farmers' movement. In Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Spain, etc., the bourgeoisie has once again been able to count on its left-wing parties to extol the merits of methods of struggle that are the antithesis of those of the proletariat and to explain that "the workers' movement must profit from this opportunity"[4]. At a time when the proletariat is timidly beginning to rediscover its class identity, the bourgeoisie is ideologically exploiting the farmers' struggle with a media offensive designed to sabotage the process of the continuing reflection and so deflect attention away from the many workers' strikes.

Nor does it spare any effort to try hitching the working class to the bandwagon of bourgeois democracy. In Europe as in America, the putrefication of its system is giving rise to political aberrations such as Trump in the United States, Milei in Argentina, the Rassemblement National in France, Alternative für Deutschland, Fratelli d'Italia and others.  In response, the bourgeoisie, or at least its factions least corrupted by capitalist decomposition, while seeking to limit the influence of the far-right parties,  are eager to exploit the influence they have over and against the working class. In Germany, in particular, more than a million people took to the streets in various cities, in response to calls from parties on the left and the right, to protest against the far right. Their aim, once more, is to maintain  democratic illusions and prevent the proletariat from waging its historic struggle against the bourgeois state.

One thing is certain, however, is that in the heat of current and future struggles, the working class will gradually find the political weaponry to defend itself against the traps set by the bourgeoisie which will therefore allow it eventually to open the course towards the communist revolution.

 

EG, 20 February 2024