The massive protests by farmers in India against the laws of the Modi government, which took place between November 2020 and February 2021, have not gone unnoticed. They have gained wide support and expressions of solidarity from all over the world. Climate activist Greta Thunberg in Sweden, singer Rihanna, actress Susan Sarandon, YouTuber and comedian Lilly Singh, American climate activist Jamie Marglin, US lawyer and activist Meena Harris (the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris) in the U.S. have backed the protesting farmers in posts on social media.

Expressions of support were not restricted to famous people. The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing more than 105 million workers who live and work in 130 countries, expressed its solidarity with the farmers’ struggle. Trade unions in the UK, Canada, Italy, South Korea, etc. announced that it stood firmly in support of the hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers. More than 50 international organisations from 25 countries have said to be in solidarity with the farmer’s movement and urged the Modi government to repeal the three farm laws.

If so many individuals and organisations around the world have expressed their solidarity with the farmers’ protests in India, the biggest protest movement since its independence in 1947, should the organisations of the Communist Left not express their solidarity too with the protests? Il Partito (India; Between Peasant Protests and Workers’ Strikes [2]) and Le Prolétaire (Pandemic, Economic Crisis and Class Struggles in India [3]), two organisations of the Communist Left, have already published an article on the movement and both have not pledged their support to the movement, and they are right. In the following article we will explain why communist organisations should not plead support for the farmers’ movement in India.

The recent farmers’ protests were a reaction to the laws, passed in September 2020 by the Modi government, aimed at the deregulation of the agricultural sector and liberalisation of the prices. These new laws target in particular the “Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee” (mandis) and the “Minimum Support Price” system (MSP), fixed by the government. They were introduced at the start of the “Green Revolution” (See also: Kirsty Hawthorn, The Green Revolution in India [4]) since the 1960s, a policy destined to promote large-scale industrial agriculture, enabling India to become a nation close to self-sufficiency in food.

Via a guaranteed procurement and government-mandated floor prices, the aim of these laws was to give the famers financial support in a few, well-endowed districts of the states Punjab, Haryana and the western part of the state Uttar Pradesh, enabling them to use high-yielding seeds and chemical fertilisers and, since the “Green Revolution” technology required lots of water, the construction and maintenance of extensive irrigation systems.

1. State protectionism against the crisis of overproduction

Since the independence of 1948 farmers have been considered to be the backbone of Indian society. The post-independence Indian policy remained attached to agrarianism and ruralism, with ceaseless eulogies to the farmer as the food provider, and was reflected in an approach that privileged the farmers over urban dwellers. Even to-day, 70 per cent of the Indian population still lives in the countryside while 58 per cent of the total workforce depends on agriculture and allied activities. The agricultural sector remained highly privileged and subsidised for tens of years. But this slowly started to change from the beginning of the 1990’s.

In 1991 India experienced a foreign exchange crisis that led to three rapid downgrades of its credit rating within the short space of a year, which made the World Bank write in its Memorandum that: “India’s creditworthiness has declined to the point where international sources of commercial credit have been cut off”. (Cited in: Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington D.C. [5]) India had little choice but to accept the IMF-World Bank prescriptions for ‘structural adjustment’. This year marked the start of India’s neoliberal era and the creation of the conditions for foreign products and investments to penetrate its domestic market.

The neo-liberal policy, which started in the 1980s and increased considerably after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, aimed to reduce the cost of production in the central countries of capitalism by improving productivity and through outsourcing. Since the wages in countries like India were only a fraction of the wages in the central countries, whole parts of production were exported to these low pay countries. They were compelled to open up to this neoliberal expansion. Key instruments in this opening up and in the development of the international dimension of neoliberalism were institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and the IMF.

The end of the autarkic model of the Eastern Bloc countries cleared the way for this neo-liberal era and a new breath of economic expansion. “This expansion had a number of underlying elements: the technological developments that allowed a much faster circulation of capital and a reorganisation of global industrial networks; a more directly economic dimension, in which capital was able to penetrate new extra-capitalist areas and make use of much cheaper labour power, while at the same time making gigantic profits through the swelling of the financial sector; and also a social element, since the break-up of industrial concentrations in the “old” capitalist countries, driven by the hunt for new sources of profit, also had the effect of atomising centres of class militancy.” (Trade Wars: The obsolescence of the nation state [6])

In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was compelled to shift hundreds of millions of dollars out of agriculture. The structural adjustment programme, which resulted in the shift of more than 400 million dollars from the countryside into cities, led to the dismantling of its state-owned seed supply system, reduction of subsidies and the running down of public agriculture institutions, while offering incentives for the growing of cash crops.

On top of that, the Uruguay round in the 1990s, which was heavily contested by India, obliged the country to liberalise its trade regulations and to open up for foreign direct investments. While several sectors of the Indian economy were subjected to liberalisation, the deregulation of agriculture met much more resistance.

According to the Indian ruling class, the agricultural sector was not able to compete on the world market as it remained vulnerable in terms of “low level of commercialisation of agriculture, low productivity, weak market orientation, preponderance of small and marginal uneconomical operational landholdings, lack of infrastructure, dependence on monsoon, susceptibility to natural calamities, and dependence of a very large percentage of population on agriculture for their livelihood etc.” (Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, [7]Negotiations on WTO agreement on agriculture [8]; G/AG/NG/W/102; 15-01-2001)

India stubbornly refused the further opening up of agriculture. For example, in a 2003 publication, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture stated that the Indian government was determined to continue to use tariffs and subsidies to protect its agricultural sector, which was diametrically opposed to the rules of the WTO. When Modi came into power, in 2014, this policy of state subvention of agriculture was still not drastically reduced and continued almost unabated. After world agricultural prices fell in 2017, the government even increased import duties on a wide range of agricultural goods.

Thus, after the 1990’s India continued to remain highly protective of its agricultural sector, upholding “minimum support prices for produce, the shielding off from international competition, state-regulated mechanisms for local trade in agricultural commodities and special provisions for those classified as ‘essential’ commodities.” (Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Jostein Jakobsen og Alf Nilsen, Liberalising Indian Agriculture [9]; 16-10-2020) India had been singled out by the WTO as a kind of troublemaker because of its overly protectionist policy about agricultural and food products.

2. Years of crisis in Indian agriculture: growing misery for the small and marginal farmers

Nonetheless India’s farming has been facing a crisis for the last 20 years. This crisis developed to a large extent owing to the rising cost of pesticides, fertilisers, seeds as well as wage labour because of a shift in the cropping pattern from staple crop to cash crops, necessitated by the increased liberalisation. At the same time the agricultural sector was confronted with a growing number of smallholders, who in many cases not even owned the land, but rented it from a large farmer. During the last three decades, the number of smallholder farmers increased by 77 per cent from about 66 million in 1980-1981 to 117 million in 2010-2011. They now account for about 85 per cent of all the landholdings in India, compared to 75 per cent in 1980-1981.

After 20 years and more the side-effects of industrial agriculture began to affect yields in a negative way. The “Green Revolution” brought about richer yields, but the quality of soil began to deteriorate, because of

• “overuse of fertilisers and its damage to soil health, decreasing the nutritional value of the crops;
• “the massive use of GM/GE ‘hybrid seeds’ posing a direct threat to bio-diversity [since] the soil is getting more and more polluted or even totally poisoned.” (What lies behind rise in global food prices? [10]; World Revolution no.316, July / August 2008)

In addition to the problems resulting from the massive use of chemical pesticides, high water consumption and the general impact of global warming, the high investment, required for these crops, were not offset by either the MSP, offered by the government, or prices available in the market.

As a consequence of these worsening conditions farmers’ debts to banks and private money lenders were mounting considerably. In 1991 the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) found indebtedness among 26% of farmers; in 2003 this was increased to 48.6% farmer households, while in 2012-2013 already 52% of India's agricultural households were indebted. On an average, the amount of debt per farmer household was 12,585 rupees in 2003, and increased by nearly 4 times to reach 47,000 rupees per agricultural household in 2012-2013. In 2018 it even reached an average of 74,000 rupees per household. In the regional state of Punjab the marginalised and smaller farmers have six times more debt than the big farmers.

For reasons of a dawning fiscal disaster, due to the unstoppable growth of agricultural subsidies, between 2012 and 2014 and still before Modi came into power, India effectively reduced the subsidy on agriculture and food security by $3 billion dollars.

Gradual and piecemeal opening of the agrarian economy was implemented, together with the reduction of public subsidies for agriculture. Therefore “in roughly half of India’s States and Union territories, agricultural reforms that allow private markets have already been carried out [which]reduced input subsidies, deregulated the seed sector for foreign direct investments, facilitated privatised banking interests within agriculture and, not least, shifted towards private sector research and development.” (Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Jostein Jakobsen og Alf Nilsen, Liberalising Indian Agriculture [9]; 16-10-2020)

Nonetheless Indian agriculture’s crisis continued to worsen, with the period since 2011-2012 seeing increased costs of production, depressed prices for farm produce, and a growing indebtedness. Year after year farmers faced a severe income squeeze and less and less means to make investments in agrarian infrastructure and machinery. Among farm households in 2016, 53.4 per cent were below the poverty line; only 47 per cent of their income was derived from farming; monthly median incomes were just 1,600 rupees ($25).

In1912 Rosa Luxemburg wrote that in the India of the 19th century “Every day another plot of land fell under the hammer; individual members withdrew from the family unit, and the peasants got into debt and lost their land.” As a consequence of the colonial policy carried out by the British occupation “over large areas the peasants in their masses were turned into impoverished small tenants with a short-term lease”. (The Accumulation of Capital [11]) In 2020, under the same remorseless process of capitalisation of agriculture, every year nearly a million farmers leave farming while 15,000 of them commit suicide.

The federal government could not be left behind and had to follow the overall policy of that the regional state governments had started, which was to implement agrarian “reforms” in the area of the former “Green Revolution”: Punjab, Haryana and the western part of the state Uttar Pradesh. On 18 December 2020, addressing a Kisan Sammelan (Farmer Conference) in Madhya Pradesh by video conferencing, Narendra Modi declared: “We are compelled to do things which should have been done 25-30 years ago”.

3. Modi’s laws attack the richer farmers and the middlemen

With the new farm laws of the Modi government, the limitations regarding the financial interactions between farmers and “external” buyers, outside the rural field, will be lifted. The use of the “mandis” is no longer obligatory and any buyer can purchase agricultural produce directly from the farmers. Since for trade outside the state-run markets no duties will be imposed and there will be no transport costs for the farmer, this will be an incentive to prioritise this kind of trade. Even if it is not ended formally, in practice it means the beginning of the dismantling of the system of guaranteed prices for wheat and unmilled rice (paddy).

Who benefits the most from the old system of price regulation and state run markets for government procurement? Who are the most endangered by the new laws of the Modi government? Which class of farmers has the most to lose when the new laws are implemented?

“As the government procurement is concentrated at a few centres, it requires farmers to have transport facilities to reach the procurement centres, usually located far away from villages. Therefore, [how] small it wouldn’t make sense for farmers with limited amounts of produce to take their produce to these markets. Furthermore, a high proportion of farmers are not aware of the MSP and whether it is higher/lower than the prevailing market prices. Therefore only the larger farmers are able to benefit from the MSP and government procurement.” (Dr. Richa Govil and Dr. Ashok Sircar, Explainer MSP (Minimum Support Price) and Government Procurement [12]; Azim Premji University, April 2018)

For a long time the farmers have sold their crops by means of government-regulated wholesale markets across the country. These “mandis” are run by committees made up of farmers, often large land-owners, and traders or “commission agents” who act as middlemen for brokering sales, organising storage and transport, and even financing deals. Of all the farmers only 6 per cent actually receive guaranteed price support for their crops. A survey undertaken by Punjab Agriculture University has confirmed that 94 per cent of the government subsidies are being used by big and medium farmers, leaving the smaller farmers sidelined.

On top of that these rich farmers, who have a large marketable surplus and pocket a bulk of MSP, manipulate small and marginal farmers, engaging in predatory lending practices to their poorer neighbours, further squeezing them dry. “Very often rich farmers and Kulaks take on the role of commission agents and intermediary traders; they also take on the role of usurers and moneylenders, and purchase farm produce from the lower middle and poor peasants at prices much lower than the MSP and earn profit by selling these products at remunerative prices and also through commissions.” (Abhinav, The Three Farm Ordinances, Present Farmers’ Movement and the Working Class; [13] Red Polemique; 08-01-2021)

Thus, these laws of the Modi government are actually not meant to be a frontal attack on the small farmers, but mainly to sideline the layer of larger farmers, the money lenders and middlemen, who now function as mediator between the small famers and the “mandis”. In India, the agrarian reforms of the “Green Revolution” have developed “a class of ‘kulaks', middle peasants who have grown rich and form a social buffer in the countryside between the great landlords and the smallholders”. (Notes on the peasant question [14]; International Review no. 24 - 1st quarter 1981) The agricultural laws will finish off the monopoly of this new class of farmers formed by the “Green Revolution”.

This new step in liberalisation and deregulation also permit big food corporations to penetrate the agrarian market in these northern states of the country, to deal directly with the very small farmers, of whom 85% has only two hectare land or less. In the near future these laws will not essentially change conditions for the small farmers. Today India’s poorest farmers are forced to sell their crops at discounted prices to their richer neighbours and in the future they might have to sell it at discounted prices to the corporate agrarian food business. But under the yoke of the big food corporations the process of ruination of the small farmers will probably accelerate.  

Deals with the big food companies may include contract farming, involving the corporate buyer specifying the quality required and the price, with the farmer agreeing to deliver the agreed quantity at a future date. In the logic of this evolution the perspective for the small farmers would be first to become bonded labourers of these big companies and finally to be evicted from their land.

4. The farmers are not a class and were not united in the protests

It is certain that the recent farmers’ protests were the largest and most massive in the history of India since its independence in 1947.

But who took part in these protests? Undoubtedly the biggest part of the protesters consisted of small and marginal farmers and many of them were rural wage labourers. But that doesn’t mean that it was a working class movement (in which the focus was on the demands of the agrarian wage labourers), or even an interclassist movement (in which these wage labourers put forward their own specific demands). The farmers’ protests were spearheaded by the class of richer farmers-cum-commission agents, the Indian version of Kulaks, and in the demands the entire focus was on repealing the three farm laws.

“Unlike the sociologists, who talk indiscriminately of the peasantry as a unified social class, Marxists have always demonstrated its heterogeneity. (…) The peasantry as such does not exist; there is rather, on the one hand a rural proletariat, and on the other hand, various social types of ‘farmer’, from the great landed proprietor to the jobless.” (“Notes on the peasant question [14]”, International Review no. 24 - 1st quarter 1981)

It is not true that the farmers and the agrarian wage labourers in the North-Western states of India have all the same interests, and that they were united behind the demands of the farmers’ organisations which organised the protests. Most of the farmers’ unions, brought together under the umbrella of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), are dominated by richer farmers and their paid servants, and the objectives of the farmers’ movement were shaped above all by the interests of this group. 

Left and extreme left organisations, such as Friends of the Earth International [15], Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières [16], Communist Workers International (CWI) [17], The Fourth International [18], Socialist Worker in the UK [19], , etc., presenting the movement as a genuine famers movement, in which rural wage labourers fought shoulder to shoulder with the farmers, don’t tell the whole story. Since the farmers’ unions, who organized the protests, are led by better-off farmers there are strong connections to the political establishment. Behind the protests, and which is typical for a bourgeois movement, all kind of political, sectorial, regionalist and even religious pressure groups pulled at the strings and determined the course of the movement and the demands put forward.

The working class in India is weak and is held in a stranglehold by the unions, but there is nonetheless a great deal of anger among the workers, given the harshness of the attacks on large sections of the population. Since a big part of the (migrant) workers still has strong links with the countryside, there was broad sympathy among the Indian proletariat for the farmers’ movement and its demands. Moreover, the impoverishment affects not only the farmers, but all the non-exploiting classes. In solidarity with the farmers’ protests a “strike” was reported of 50,000 public sector employees in Punjab who participated in a ‘sick-out.’

However, for the working class these protests are not something it should welcome or even to show solidarity with. They do not contain the potential to put the capitalist mode of production into question, and thus seek a solution within the structures of the present society. But in the decadence of capitalism the problems of the farmers cannot be solved in capitalism, even not by a “farmers’ revolution”. A solution to the problems of the rural population, especially in these countries, can only brought about in the framework of a worldwide proletarian revolution.

2021-04-10, Dennis

In recent articles[1] we have argued that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests are situated on a completely bourgeois terrain, concretised in vague demands such as “equal rights” and “fair treatment”, or more specific ones like “defunding the police”. In no way was this protest able, or even aiming, to put into question capitalist relations of production, which ensure that the subordination and oppression of the “other” is one of the pillars of capitalist rule.

But does this mean that the working class can offer no alternative to the layers in capitalist society who are subjected to particularly violent forms of oppression? On the contrary, throughout its history, the working class, in the United States as well as in other parts of the world, has shown its ability to take significant steps to overcome the barrier of ethnic division on the condition that it fights on its class terrain and with its own proletarian perspectives.

One of the first moments of real workers’ solidarity with an ethnic minority took place in 1892 in New Orleans, where three unions demanded better working conditions. The “New Orleans Board of Trade” tried to divide the workers along racial lines, by inviting the two majority white workers’ unions for negotiations while dismissing the majority black workers’ union. In answer to this manoeuvre by the Board the three unions called for a joint strike that was followed unanimously.

Another important moment was the organised defence of the working class in Russia against anti-Semitic pogroms in October 1905, in the year of the first revolution in Russia. In that month the so-called Black Hundreds, organised gangs supported by the Czarist secret police, killed thousands of people and maimed as many as ten thousand in 100 towns throughout the entire country. In response to these brutal slaughters, the Soviet of Petrograd made an appeal to the workers in the country to take up arms and defend the workers’ districts from further pogromist assaults.  

Another heroic example of working class solidarity took place in February 1941 in the Netherlands, 80 years ago. The immediate cause was the kidnapping of 425 Jewish men in Amsterdam and their deportation to a concentration camp in Germany. This first raid in the Netherlands on a persecuted and terrorised part of the population provoked strong indignation among the workers in Amsterdam and in the surrounding cities. The attack on the Jews was felt as an attack on the whole proletarian population of Amsterdam. Indignation won out over fear. The response was: strike!

In the Netherlands the Jewish people were not seen as outsiders. Above all in Amsterdam, where the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people lived, they were considered as an integral part of the population. Moreover, Amsterdam had the largest Jewish proletariat on the Western European continent, only comparable to that in London after the Russian pogroms. The orientation of a significant part of this Jewish proletariat was towards the workers’ movement and around the turn of the century many of them turned to socialism. In the first half of the 20th century several of these proletarians would play an important role in the Dutch workers’ organisations.

As the article linked to below (an extract from our book The Dutch-German Communist Left[2]) shows, in the weeks before the strike, an internationalist group, the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front (MLL Front) had already clearly expressed its position with regard to the atrocities of the fascist gangs and appealed to the workers to defend themselves. “In all working-class districts, defence troops will have to be formed. The defence against the brutal violence of the National Socialist bandits must be organised. But the workers will also have to use their economic power. The disgraceful acts of the fascists must be answered by mass strikes.” (Spartacus no. 2, mid February 1941; cited by Marx Perthus, Henk Sneevliet)

The strike that broke out on Tuesday 25 February was a unique demonstration of solidarity with the persecuted Jewish people. It was completely under control of the workers and the bourgeoisie had no chance to use it for its own warlike purposes, as it did with the railway strike in 1944. The strike was not aimed at the liberation of the Netherlands from the German occupation. The MLL Front did not hold the position that the strike was aimed at sabotaging the German war machine or aligning itself with the national Resistance. It was meant to be a statement of the working class, a demonstration of its force and therefore limited in duration. After two days the workers closed ranks and ended the strike.

In the middle of the barbarism of World War Two and in a context of historical defeat of the working class, this strike could not lead to a general mobilisation of the working class in Holland or to working class reactions in the rest of Europe, but it still had an international political significance, reaching far beyond the borders of the Netherlands. The workers’ resistance, in February 1941, against the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, shows us that the proletarian class is not in the least helpless or condemned to inaction when particular ethnic groups are scapegoated and subsequently become victims of pogroms or even genocide.

The MLL Front understood this very well. It thus wholeheartedly supported the strike as an expression of genuine proletarian indignation about the harassment of the Jewish people, men, women and children alike. For the MLL Front, the strike against anti-Jewish brutality was unconditionally linked to the general struggle against the entire capitalist system. The Dutch February strike of 1941 has shown that, in order to defend persecuted ethnics groups, the working class must remain on its own terrain and must not allow itself to be drawn onto the bourgeois terrain, as happened with the BLM protests for instance.

The working class terrain is where solidarity is not constrained by the divisions capitalism has imposed on society and where it becomes really universal. Proletarian solidarity is by definition the expression of a class whose autonomous struggle is destined to develop a fundamental alternative to capitalism. In as far as it announces the nature of the society it is fighting for, it is able to embrace and integrate the solidarity of the whole of humanity. This is what makes the proletarian solidarity and the 1941 February strike in the Netherlands so significant for us today.

The article can be found here: Dutch and German Communist Left [21], Chapter 10, 1939-1942 [22], 4 - The strike of February 1941 and its political consequences [23] (internationalism.org)

ICC, April 2021

 

The region now occupied by the modern Turkish state has always been a crossroads of the world, an area where all roads, peoples and influences collide. This has, in general, been very positive for the development of humanity. Today however many global influences and collisions are taking place in and around Turkey that are not at all positive and rather express the impasse of capitalism and the threat that it poses not just for the population of Turkey and the region but for the whole of humanity. Although the putrescence of a decomposing capitalism is today clearly visible in the major powers, it is a global phenomenon that exists within and applies to all states. In fact, it is particularly expressed in Turkey today which has now become a collision point for all the contradictions of a dying capitalism; a place where the expressions of decomposition show an innate tendency for a self-destruction which is affecting and will affect every country on earth. The general tendencies presently at work in Turkey are the same as those in every capitalist state and these can only intensify given the ineluctable development of the insoluble economic crisis of capitalism. The chaos, militarism and instability hitting Turkey are harbingers for the future of capitalism and, right now, very dangerous for the Middle Eastern cauldron that Turkey is a part of.

The Turkish economy is bankrupt and its prospects dire; it is desperate for foreign investment and, with weakened prospects of attracting it, anxious to avoid accepting it from China. The living conditions of the working class, including the health system it relies on, are being constantly attacked in an atmosphere where many expressions of unease are met with brutal force and repression. Turkey is highly militarised and its imperialist ambitions, its external military forays wider afield, have more than a touch of insanity about them, reflecting the grandiose "vision" of the Turkish ruling clique, its pretensions to being a major player on the world stage. The adventures of Turkish imperialism near and far, pining for a glorious past which never existed, can only bring more problems as Turkey makes more enemies abroad, while at home its involvement in increasingly senseless wars demand greater sacrifices from the working class. The Turkish state appears superficially strong, but its whole edifice is built on sand; undermined by its weakening economy, growing political divisions, and a certain loss of control by the previously relatively strong ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), have forced it to rely on the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to win the crucial 2017 election, the 2018 referendum and to keep it in power today. A further element in growing instability - a world-wide phenomenon but particularly expressed in Turkey and the Middle East - has been the dramatic rise of refugees and displaced peoples due to the spread of war and militarism in the region. But the Turkish state has instrumentalised this abject misery to its advantage by using these masses not only for cheap and precarious labour within Turkey - particularly the Syrian refugees - but also as threat against Europe in order to extort money, from Germany mainly: the threat being that it will unleash this flood of refugees on western Europe if it doesn’t get its way.

Like everywhere else the Turkish state is actively involved in the destruction of the environment, underlined by schemes to fuel growth by using up natural resources, extensive mining and de-forestation for example, or vanity/imperialist projects such as the proposal to build a canal from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara (a project first put forward 500 years ago by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent), a proposal which President Erdogan himself called "crazy" in 2011[1]. The projected cost of the canal is at least ten billion dollars, and there are also plans fora new ten billion dollar airport and cargo hub along with a new motorway. These are in part projects to celebrate the Turkish Republic's hundred-year anniversary in 2023 in a frenzy of nationalism. There's not only massive de-forestation but real threats to Turkey's water supply coming from the Istanbul canal project, as pointed out by the government's own assessors.

These are just some of the elements expressing how Turkey is an illustration of the decomposition of capitalism. For decades now Turkey has been particularly buffeted by the economic, military, political and social turbulence unleashed by the collapse of the relatively stable imperialist blocs in 1989, opening up a new and more dangerous era of capitalist dog-eat-dog; and now the latest scourge of decomposing capitalism - the Covid-19 pandemic - this way comes.

The Covid-19 pandemic

All the existing negative elements, particularly the economy, are exacerbated by this long-predicted pandemic, and many new problems and troubles have been created. The ruling class has also shown its contempt for "unprofitable" human life, particularly when it thought at first that there was a "silver-lining" to this passing "flu-like illness" in that many of the old and sick would be eliminated, freeing the state from the expensive burden of caring for those who were beyond exploitation[2]; in some of the major capitals of the world, the wealthiest countries on Earth, this tendency of getting rid of useless human liabilities was generously encouraged by states through their criminal negligence and not least through their nationally-adapted ideology of "herd immunity" long before there was any sign of a vaccine. And then, as the pandemic took its natural course, it dawned on the bourgeoisie and its states - something that had been flagged up before by various agencies, including the US intelligence services - that a pandemic of this kind not only severely disrupts the capitalist economy but can easily become an existential threat to it.

In the first months of the pandemic, it appeared that Turkey was doing quite well, closing schools, universities and the leisure industries quickly; congregational prayers were banned in mosques and its testing system seemed to be working efficiently. But much of this was carefully orchestrated propaganda by the Erdogan regime, arguing that the world was jealous of Turkey's achievements. But even in the early period of the pandemic, the New York Times was finding deaths far higher than the official figures[3]. The Wikipedia entry for "Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey" looks like it was written by a committee of AKP hacks with a gun to their heads: everything has been just great; Turkey's robust health system has coped outstandingly - much better than others - and it remains on top of the situation. Other countries (some of its closest imperialist rivals) are castigated for not acting quickly enough, unlike Turkey. The entry is dotted with examples of how Turkey is one of those countries at the leading edge of the fight against the virus. None of its figures can be believed and the entry looks like a textbook example of Stalinist propaganda.

The reality is that Turkey concealed the true extent of this crisis for months in order to protect the economy, and the blatant lies of the state (like everywhere else) encouraged the spread of the virus. The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) said, just before the year's end, that the government had in reality "lost control of the situation"[4].

Doctors in Turkey have been directly threatened by the state for disputing its virus figures and pointing out the parlous state of its hospitals and health services, along with the lack of protective equipment. Erdogan's governmental coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), called for the Turkish Medical Association to be outlawed and its leadership arrested[5]. Like everywhere else, Turkey is using the pandemic in order to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state and bear down on the working class in particular. Contrary to the nauseating Wikipedia report, the London-based Totalanalysis has been monitoring cases of Covid-19 from many countries and published its Covid Data Transparency Index, in which Turkey is ranked 97th out of a 100, followed by Serbia, Turkmenistan and North Korea. A final obscenity relating to the pandemic (with surely many more to follow) and the weaponising of vaccinations is the way that, in common with profiting from the misery of refugees, the Turkish state looks to have laid the grounds for exchanging some of its Uighur refugees for doses of the Chinese Sinovac treatment - three million doses up front with more to follow if all goes to plan[6]. To date, daily infection rates are rising along with daily deaths and the overall death rate is currently something over 30,000.

The war economy, militarism and Turkish imperialism

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a braggart and rabble-rouser who is well-suited to his role as leader of the Turkish state. He has been going on for years about Turkish achievements, Turkey's glorious past and its future destiny as a great power[7] and this will only intensify coming up to the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic by Ataturk. Erdogan has posed as the defender of Muslims everywhere, playing a religious card that's a cover for Turkey's imperialist ambitions[8]. It's quite possible that with the end of the bloc system, the weakening of the US in the Middle East, and the intensified tendency towards each against all, Erdogan feels that Turkey's time has finally come. During the last couple of decades of greater chaos and instability on the world arena, Erdogan - a master of the forked-tongue - has played all sorts of games with the Americans, the EU and Russians, using his cards to optimum effect. But in the past, Erdogan has also been batted around the imperialist chessboard by the major powers: his "vision" for Turkish imperialism plays into a feeling of "Turkish resentment" and has hardened accordingly. This resentment was all the more real for the Turkish state when its leader narrowly escaped a death squad and was chased by missile-laden F-16's in the failed 2016 coup. But the imperialist grievances and appetites of the Turkish state can’t be reduced to the reactions of one man, and Erdogan's "vision" is turning into a devastating material reality of militarism and war generating militarism and war wider afield.

Turkey is a prime example of capitalist decomposition, expressing itself in particular at the imperialist level. Its old ambitions have been revived by the turn in capitalism's crisis and it has developed a policy of stretching its tentacles near and far. Underlining the problematic nature of its relationship with Russia, it has made recent agreements with Ukraine, including the sales of arms, such as the successful Bayraktar TB2 combat drone that it has used to confront Russian forces in Libya. Turkey has supported Ukraine against Russia's annexation in the Crimea[9]. Turkish-Ukrainian relations have been warming for several years but have reached a new high at a time of tensions over the Russian-Ukraine border. Erdogan has modestly put himself forward as "peacemaker" but this could lead to a major increase in tensions and militarism around the Black Sea.

Ankara at the centre of its "Afro-Eurasian" vision

Turkey has moved into Africa militarily after using its no less imperialist "soft power” in order to pave its way. It has extended its influence in the Persian Gulf with the establishment of a large military base in Qatar, while maintaining a balancing act with the other Gulf powers of Saudi and the UAE. Ankara has recently made overtures towards the latter two countries - including going into joint production of drones with the Saudi regime - as well as talking about restoring diplomatic and intelligence ties with Egypt[10]. While some warm words have also recently gone back and forth with Tel Aviv, Turkey's balancing act can only become more problematic as instability and each for themselves dominates further.

Turkey has spread and strengthened its influence to the republics of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, where it sees China as a direct threat and rival. And it rushed to provide arms to its ally Azerbaijan prior to its 44-day war with Armenia last year, particularly its armed drones which overwhelmed the Armenian forces and which it has itself used in military operations in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Israel was also involved in supporting Azerbaijan, which it sees as a buffer against Iran, but it was Turkish weaponry and proxy fighters, supplied to its "antagonistic" Shia partner, that routed the Armenian forces. Turkey's "Asia Anew Initiative", one of the indicators of Turkish imperialist interests, aims to reinforce relations with the Turkic states of Asia. Since 2003, Turkey has established 17 new missions, five embassies and 12 consulates in Asian countries. China, for its part, is interested in, but also wary of, Turkey and has tended to be more open to the other counties in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. But because of Turkey's geo-strategic position, its influence on the Turkic states and China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI), Wang Yi, Chinese Foreign Minister, had warm words for Turkey on his recent early April trip around the Middle East.

Over the last decade Turkey has become much more implanted in Africa, particularly East Africa, leading it to describe itself as an "Afro-Eurasian state", completing a potential three-pronged military expansion. From 12 embassies scattered across the continent in 2009, it has risen to 42 a decade later, with more in the offing, and sub-Saharan trade increased from one billion dollars to nearly eight times that roughly over the same period[11]. Ankara's largest military base is in Somalia where its forces train local troops; other recipients of Turkey's "bilateral" assistance are Sudan, Niger, Djibouti (where China's first overseas military base was established 3 years ago), Chad and Guinea. Turkey has played up the idea that its intentions are not colonial but "brotherly" towards Africa. There has been some neo-Ottoman rhetoric to its propaganda, given the links between the old empire and East Africa, but Turkish "aid" and projects have been generally welcomed by the local bourgeoisies. Despite France’s problems in the region, and China’s efforts to take advantage, Turkey is also rivalling countries like Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as China, in this burgeoning imperialist arena.

Turkey’s move into Africa directly confronts the diplomatic, business and educational enterprises of US-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, once ally and now arch-enemy of Erdogan. Gulen's Hizmet educational system is global but particularly strong in Africa where it tends to provide a cheaper alternative to French schools for the children of the elites. Turkey's "brotherly" mask has tended to give way to its rank authoritarianism when demanding that African states close down the Gulen "terrorist" network. Like military bases and "boots on the ground", the ongoing investment in the “soft power” surge of Turkey in Africa and elsewhere, involving schools, health facilities, NGO's, etc., greatly adds to the cost of an unsustainable war economy.

It's in the central Mediterranean however, NATO's southern flank, that the imperialist free-for-all, with Turkey at the centre, really hots up, posing sharper dangers from increasing tensions and conflicts, exacerbated by Ankara's push to be a greater regional power. Fighting over war-torn Libya like vultures, Turkey and Qatar backed the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) while the opposing faction, the Libyan National Army (LNA) has been militarily and financially backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and actively supported by France. Since the shaky cease-fire October last, many thousands of foreign troops and mercenaries remain in the country including pro-Ankara Syrian forces, threatening the fragile "peace" and the UN's "transition" programme. Turkey's support for the GNA, with arms (particularly drones) and fighters, helped shift the balance in Libya and allowed the GNA to take control of key areas. Its agreement with the GNA included Turkey's access to "demarcated" waters in the Eastern Mediterranean for exploration and drilling[12] for oil and gas, but these waters are disputed by Greece, Egypt and Cyprus (in fact Crete and Cyprus sit inside Turkish-claimed waters); and the above countries, as well as Israel, have excluded Turkey from their East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF). This in turn has prompted Turkey to label them - along with France - an "alliance of evil" which was damaging Libya's "hope for democracy". While these pipeline schemes are cheaper than shipping oil and gas, they look very dodgy propositions economically and are prone to the political instability that haunts the Middle East. But Turkey is fighting for the right to access what it calls its "blue homeland" in order to gain more energy autonomy, and for this reason it is in Libya for the long haul, using it as a springboard for access to the waters of the central Mediterranean and a stronger implantation in this vital area. Turkey and the head of the new interim Libyan government, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, have just (April 13) re-affirmed the 2019 maritime agreement[13] that has angered other states, while Turkey has promised the Libyan government 150,000 Covid-19 vaccines, a Covid-19 hospital in Tripoli and Ankara's support for a reconstruction of the Libyan military.

The Russian/Turkish gas pipeline, Turkstream, was opened by presidents Putin and Erdogan in January 2020 but it relies on this heavily qualified "partnership". The project was halted by Putin following the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet by Turkey on the Turkish-Syrian border in 2014 and reinstated after Ankara's effusive apology. The EU's reliance on Turkey regarding refugees means that its diplomatic efforts in regulating the issues over these waters, and the relationship between NATO members Turkey and Greece, look to be extremely difficult. There is a real risk here for Turkey in that in over-stretching itself it gets out of its depth and provokes more serious confrontations; being active on so many fronts and making so many enemies reveals an irrationality that is typical of capitalist decomposition.

Difficult relations with NATO and Russia bring further dangers and destabilisation

Up to 1989 Turkey, with its large and modern army, was a pillar of the Western Bloc, despite a confrontation with fellow NATO member Greece in 1974 that presaged some of the problems that emerged on a far greater scale with the implosion of the Warsaw Pact at the end of the 80's. Up until this time Turkey was a lynchpin of US Middle Eastern, Eurasian and Eastern European policies. But the opening of Pandora's Box in 1989 changed the situation dramatically for the worse for all major and secondary powers in the Middle East and beyond. The discipline that kept the Western Bloc together shattered as the cement that held the bloc together, never having a durable quality, turned to dust with the "New World Order" of the early 90's. Turkey was immediately at odds with the US over the first Gulf War, the USA's failed attempt to cohere the fragmenting ex-bloc under its auspices. The purchase by NATO member Turkey of the Russian air defence system, the S-400 in 2019, laid the rupture bare because the system cannot be integrated into NATO's military framework. In response the US forbade the transfer of its F-35 fighter jet, the details of which could be available to Turkish-based Russian trainers of the S-400 system. The situation is further complicated by the fact that 937 separate parts of the F-35 have started to be manufactured in Turkey[14] with at least one plane already delivered.

Turkey is thus riven between Russia and a crisis-ridden NATO, with a certain antagonism towards the "West" and moving onto a dangerous field of cooperation with Russia. All the old contradictions and ambitions of Turkey were re-ignited by the 89 collapse and have been flaring up ever since, posing more intractable problems in a situation of increasing centrifugal tendencies. Turkey's present relations with Russia, as some of the examples above show, are neither straightforward or definitive, but are based upon contingent common interests which are wide open to disputes and conflicts. And while Trump threatened to destroy the Turkish economy if it went "off-limits" in Syria, Putin also threatened it after its SU-24 jet was shot down over Syria in November 2015, adding that it was "a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists". Some of the coming problems in the relationship with Russia are mentioned above: the existing threat of closing the Bosphorus straits to the Russian navy and the potential threat of allowing US warships to use its proposed new canal which would, with a warming of relations with Ukraine, be a significant threat to Russia. In Syria, Russia has also hit Turkish-supported militias in their fight against Russian-backed Syrian forces in north-west Syria: in October 2020 a military training camp was hit by Russian forces, killing dozens of militia and wounding many. More recently Turkish-backed forces in the same area were hit by a barrage of missiles loaded with cluster bombs, reportedly fired by a Russian warship in the Black Sea. The devastation was widespread, adding to the ongoing grief of the civilian population.

The "Kurdish question"

If the whole Middle East is a can of worms, then there is another formidable can of worms inside the can:  the question of the Kurds. Apart from the half-hearted conciliatory moves of Turkey towards the Kurds last decade, the real fear of Turkey is focused on the autonomous Kurdish zones operating in Syria and Iraq. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK - recognised by the US as a "terrorist organisation") and its Syrian branch, the Democratic Union Party with its YPG Peoples' Protection Units, are, in part, consolidating themselves on Syrian territory. This provoked the 2019 Turkish military operation "Peace Spring" crossing into Syria with allied Syrian factions in order to push them back. The US arming of the Kurds with sophisticated and sensitive weaponry[15] in order to fight Isis went beyond the Kurdish "cannon-fodder" used by both the Iranians and the Americans against Isis. Kurdish YPG commando units (Yekineyen) were kitted out with the same high-tech equipment used by US Special Forces (the Pentagon is not allowed to transfer this equipment to any other forces, but the CIA can and did).

In mid-October 2019, Trump gave the order for US troops to stand aside, effectively allowing Turkish forces to enter north-east Syria and take on the Kurdish forces that went from prized and primed US allies to hunted "terrorists" from one day to the next in yet another Kurdish "betrayal" by the West. What's important about the original arming of the Kurds by the US is that first of all it immediately exposes the weakness and desperation of Uncle Sam, which is part of a long-term weakening of US leadership resulting from decomposition. It infuriated the Turks and compelled them to take advantage of this weakness, adding to the general tendencies of chaos, instability and war in the region. At the same time the fragmentation and re-disposition of Kurdish forces led to some of the YPG units and their Yekineyen fighters joining the Syrian army, probably complete with their "sensitive " equipment, and providing the butcher Assad with more up-to-date tools of his trade.

Turkey's war in Iraq has ramped up against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan in and around the Zagros mountain range, where Turkish combat drones and fighter jets have caused further devastation in relentless attacks. Kurdish nationalism has always been part of imperialism[16] and after decades of being used as cannon-fodder by both global and regional powers, and constantly "betrayed" by them, the Kurds developed a saying that "only the mountains are our friends". But here in their redoubts, along with the civilian population, the mountains have turned into their prison and tombs. The general instability provoked by the deteriorating situation has also led to inter-Kurdish fighting in northern Iraq.

When the leaders talk of peace…

Since the beginning of the year, in what seems to be a change of emphasis, Turkey has been making overtures to its rivals, with Erdogan calling himself and President Macron "peace-makers" (there's never been so much talk about "peace" amid so many wars); it has opened diplomatic talks with Egypt, had warm words for the UAE and opened up joint military developments with Saudi Arabia. It has boosted its existing military agreements with Ukraine with its "Black Sea Shield" programme which covers a broad range of operations including aerospace engines and missile technology[17]. On April 9 the Turkish Ministry of Defence posted its congratulations on NATO's 72nd anniversary saying that "we are stronger together". In January Erdogan, addressing EU ambassadors, said "we are ready to put our relations back on track"; in February, directly to the US, Erdogan emphasised "our common interests". And on March 24, he told the AKP Congress, closer to reality, "we will continue to shape our relations with every country". There can be no predictions about what this means for the future, but it is clear that Turkey is advancing on many fronts into very dangerous territories in a situation of growing imperialist tensions and instability which the actions of Turkey will only aggravate. "... it is clear that Ankara's policy is a major contributor to the spread of militarism and chaos and a major factor in extending instability and conflict to a region that stretches from the Sahel to Afghanistan. In short, the idea of stabilising the region, curbing imperialist ambitions across the board is a pure figment of the imagination and the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, which is hitting the region hard, will only add fuel to the war, barbarism and chaos"[18].

Economic crisis, militarism and war is the only perspective for decomposing capitalism

On the economy, the main global finance bodies are united in seeing the prospects for the Turkish economy as grim and Erdogan's handling of it as "unorthodox"[19]. He has just sacked his third Central Bank governor in 2 years while trying to manipulate the dollar/lira relationship through a form of trickery. At the moment Turkey's Central Bank owes tens of billions of dollars to Turkey's banks, leaving the former with a big hole in its balance-sheet (in the recent past Turkish banks have been heavily involved in sanction-busting, particularly its Halkbank). The lira fell 15% after the third Central Bank governor was sacked and replaced with an AKP appointee, leaving Turkish companies with dollar debts struggling. Orthodox economics says that higher interest rates are needed to combat inflation, but Erdogan has set his face against this, partly because "... the Anatolian export-oriented manufacturers who are an increasingly important part of (Erdogan's) political base" (Borzou Daragahi, Independent, March 24, 1921) are adversely affected by them; so Erdogan's short-term irrationality prevails over the general health of the Turkish economy. Once again the "risk-taker" Erdogan's latest "crazy" scheme has blown up in his face, leaving his country's economy in very serious trouble. Inflation, which has risen for the sixth consecutive month and now officially stands at just under 16%, means that workers and the poor will pay more for daily, basic items, while official unemployment rose to 13.4% in January and youth unemployment (15-24) was up to nearly 27%, with both figures likely being underestimations. Turkey's foreign currency reserves are low and falling. After the misery left by the 2008 economic crisis and new economic misery from the pandemic, there is more suffering to come for the working class, particularly as the war economy, which is already draining the coffers of state, intensifies.

Desperate political manoeuvres show the weakness of the ruling clique as attacks on the working class intensify

Despite the appearance and trappings of a strong state, the ruling AKP is weakening under the pressures. Around the end of 2019 there were splits in the party as the economic miracle was fading and unpopularity was setting in even among its supporters. Former Prime Minister and AKP chairman, Ahmet Davutoglu, was a major resignation; Ali Babacan, former head of economics and credited with presiding over Turkey's unparalleled growth also left the governing body. These are small numbers but under the AKP's new system (designed to strengthen the AKP) every vote is essential. Erdogan's margin of political manoeuvre is thus becoming more limited and it is a weakness of the ruling class that it has to rely on the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in its "popular alliance" to win elections and stay in power. Discontent with the AKP is growing generally but particularly within its voting core and support in the polls for Erdogan. is falling. The second-largest party in the country, the Republican People's Party (CHP), the main opposition since 2002, has also been losing support, not least due to its complicity with the AKP's manoeuvres and repression.

The same day in March that the AKP removed its latest Central Bank governor, the Turkish authorities began a lawsuit to disband the leftist, Kurdish-led People's Democratic Party (HDP - the third largest party), accusing it of being linked to the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). Just a few days later, showing the frenetic and desperate nature of the continuing campaign, Ankara announced that it would withdraw from the 2011 Istanbul Convention on violence against women, saying that the scheme looked to "normalise homosexuality" and didn't fit in with Turkey's "social and family values". It was a ploy against what was an empty declaration, a diversion to prop up the AKP's hard core, but like some eastern European and many African countries, it also shows the incitement to violence and the baseness and brutality of bourgeois thought. The withdrawal inevitably gave rise to a number of counter demonstrations which had the effect of hardening support for the AKP from the faithful and which were also a lesson in division, containing no proletarian perspective.

The deterioration of the living conditions of the working class and the necessity for its response

Suffering from the war economy, the proletariat is hit from all sides. We've seen the chasm between the state's propaganda and the reality of a health service that was already deteriorating before the appearance of the pandemic. Like many other countries, health tourism is on the up in Turkey but like many other countries this is no indication of the availability and robustness of the healthcare system; on the contrary it is a sign of its restriction, increasing privatisations and up-front payments, making it a further concern for the working class and the great majority who are denied services and sent to the back of an ever-lengthening queue. And that's those that are eligible which many are not; graduating students, for example, have no health insurance.

A further brutal and frontal attack on the workers comes with the sinister-sounding workplace Code-29. Code-29 has been used a legal get-out from the ban on dismissing workers during the pandemic. But again, these attacks on the working class predate the pandemic and the latter will be an excuse for further attacks. Code-29 has existed since 2018 and it says that a worker can be sacked for showing "behaviours that do not comply with the rules and ethics and goodwill". It has been used extensively by the bosses and the workers hit by it are not entitled to severance pay, notice and unemployment benefit; their access to healthcare could also be problematic. Women workers face added problems from Code-29, being subjected to enquiries "about what they get up to at work", while the Code talks unashamedly about "immoral conduct"; it’s a repressive and humiliating form of pressure. This particular attack on women workers again panders to the AKP's conservative base; it is a sop to it, in a similar way to the rejection on the Convention against violence against women. But nearly half-a-million workers have been sacked under Code-29 in the last three years[20] and, as the state knows, more important than the numbers is the fear factor that it spreads. Shifts have been increased from 8 to 12 hours, overtime made compulsory (if it's paid at all), while bosses have cancelled buses picking up workers, making them virtual prisoners in the factories. But fighting Code-29 alone or trying to make it more palatable is a game that the trade unions play with their campaigns fixating on particular issues.

Despite some very targeted welfare "reforms", implemented more for propaganda purposes than anything else, the working class is being attacked from all sides. Inflation and unemployment are rampant and the state has nothing but an illusory nationalism and brutal repression to offer the proletariat. Given the closeness of the official trade unions to the ruling party, it's not surprising that workers are turning towards independent unions in order to protect themselves, but this is an error as far as the needs of their struggle go. With the official unions being discredited, the function of independent unions is to contain the struggle within the union framework and then undermine it. Whether or not these unions are outlawed by the state, and whether or not elements of the state attack them, the function of these union structures remains precisely the same: to keep the union framework alive and keep the class struggle within the boundaries of the state and illusory reform[21]. In recent years we've seen the appearance of independent unions in China, Vietnam, South Africa, Egypt and Iran, and it was the independent union Solidarnosc in Poland 1981 that turned a significant struggle of the working class into a movement to restructure Polish capital.

Times were tough for the working class before the pandemic and now they are even tougher. Prior to Covid-19 the working class was tentatively beginning a response to the gathering assaults on its living conditions by capitalism, but this was halted by a pandemic that constituted a direct challenge to the health and life of the working class. Nevertheless, even in these circumstances, there have been expressions of struggles in defence of proletarian conditions across the globe. But the conditions for struggle are not propitious in the circumstances of the virus, given the needs for workers to come together and organise. What this re-emphasises is the need for divisions played up by the state, like those set up between Turkish, Kurdish and Syrian workers, to be overcome and for trade union control, "independent" or not, to be replaced by self-organisation and workers' assemblies taking control of their own struggles. The ubiquitous lock-downs of the present only add to the difficulties of the class struggle alongside the inhibiting factor of further attacks, no less in Turkey than anywhere else. But "... the capacity of the working class to respond to the crisis of the system has by no means disappeared; and this implies that sooner or later we will see significant reactions to the onslaught of capital. In the meantime, revolutionaries have a great deal of work to do in fertilising the fragile green shoots of consciousness already visible in small minorities across the world - products of a deeper undercurrent of awareness that the present system of production is profoundly and irreversibly bankrupt"[22].

 

Baboon, 18.4.21

Under the slogan “Kill the Bill”, recent weeks have seen thousands of mainly young people in various cities in England and Wales taking to the streets to protest against the implementation of the 307-page “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill”, which will hand the police and the Home Secretary greater powers to crack down on protests. While the bill in question does not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, even there people gathered in public places to express their solidarity with the protests in the England and Wales. In certain places, as happened twice in Bristol, the protests led to violent confrontations with the police.

The proposed legislation intends to give the police in the U.K. more power to deal with "static protests" such as "sit-ins", to impose start and finish times on protests, as well as "maximum noise limits"; to intervene in a protest where noise is impacting those around it – all of which will make it easier to convict protestors. Under this proposed legislation a protester can face a fine of £2,500 and ten years in prison for not following police restrictions over how to conduct a protest. The rules set out in the bill can even be applied to a demonstration of just one person.

This bill is another harsh attack on the means of the non-exploiting population in Wales and England to defend their living conditions. The capitalist state is more and more reclaiming public spaces, while access to these spaces is essential for the workers to come together in order to unify their struggle with workers in other companies and plants. [1] The limitations on going out onto the street and the increased police surveillance were temporary measures introduced during the pandemic, but this bill intends to give certain of these limitations a permanent character. As we have seen before in history: temporary measures decided in face of particular circumstances are not reversed once conditions have “returned to normal”.

The trap of democratic and human rights

And now in 2021 we are witnessing a bourgeoisie that is virtually incapable of offering any viable perspective, leading to a growing gap between the bourgeois state and society, which was precisely the condition for the emergence of populism. [2] At the same time several parts of the political apparatus within the western democracies are substantially gangrened by corruption, discredited and even hated. Decades of attacks against living and working conditions have left deep traces in the working class. In the UK itself "Factional interest, short-term political and personal gain, and naked corruption are replacing the defence of the national interest.” (Johnson government: a policy of vandalism [41] ; World Revolution 387 - Autumn 2020)

The new repressive measures being prepared by the Johnson government do not exist in isolation and have not come about by chance. In reaction to the weakening of its political and ideological weapons, the new regulations of the Johnson government are part of a more general policy of the western bourgeoisie, and intend to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. The growing loss of ideological control forces the bourgeoisie to take refuge to a more rigid state control, and to refine its instruments of intimidation. The massive attacks on the living conditions of the working class, which undoubtedly lie ahead of us, compel the bourgeoisie to prepare for all possible reactions, especially by the working class.

Anarchists come to the aid of democracy

In contrast to the statement published (apparently without any criticism) on the website of the Anarchist Federation (AF), “#KillTheBill: Joint Statement on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill From XR, BLM Local groups, RAAH and more” [3], the new step taken by the Johnson government in the direction of an increased state repression, does not yet make the U.K. a full-blown police state. It is one of the most experienced ruling classes in the world and very skilled in hiding its political domination behind the democratic facade with its parliamentary elections and so-called equal rights for all British citizens. And there is no reason to change this policy since the fundaments of this democracy are not being publicly challenged, either by another faction of the bourgeoisie or by the working class.

The UK is not an open dictatorship, but the British state is certainly an authoritarian and repressive state, just as any state, whether it is “more democratic” or more “totalitarian”. But in both cases, it presents itself as an instrument of protection of society, as it has done in the past year by holding back the extreme social chaos that would arise if the pandemic was allowed to go unchecked. The denunciation by the statement of “the creation of an authoritarian police state” is rather confusing, because it leaves us with various questions:

• what is the difference between an “authoritarian police state” and a “non-authoritarian police state”;
• what if the protesters do succeed in blocking the creation of a police state, is this state no longer authoritarian?

But there is more to say about the statement published by the AF. The appeal to #UniteForHumanRights and “to fight to protect the fundamental human rights”, is an open call for bourgeois demands. For human rights derives from “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which is a bourgeois declaration approved by the United Nations in 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War. The Soviet Union abstained from voting this Human Rights Declaration, and with reason, because it was almost immediately used by the Western bloc to wage a 40 years’ Cold War against the Stalinist regimes, undeniably as inhuman as the countries of the Western Bloc.

The slogan “#SaveOurDemocracies” is another dangerous mystification, because it makes an appeal for us to identify with and defend the mystification of democratic rights. In the name of “the will of the people” it actually calls for a popular front of all democratic forces. But in the 1930’s it was the Popular Front in France that used the state machine is to smash the workers, to imprison hundreds of workers for holding meetings and strikes and to prepare for war by military and industrial conscription of millions of workers. This policy was clearly denounced at the time in the leaflet “France in Revolt [42]”, distributed by the Anarchist Federation of Britain

It may be that the AF has jettisoned any kind of class analysis, but the Anarchist Communist Group, which split from the AF in 2018, has not, and thus it writes that “we must resist this bill together, as a class”. But for the rest the article of the ACG remains rather vague about what this means in the concrete conditions of the class struggle today. After this the ACG writes “It’ll mean calling for and organising local meetings and demonstrations”. Is this an appeal to the working class to defend the democratic rights allegedly granted by the class which exploits it? And if it is an appeal for real working class struggle, where are the specific working class demands?

While claiming to defend the essential role of the working class struggle, the ACG seems to have “forgotten” the specific nature of this class, why it is the class antagonistic to capital and therefore the only force in capitalism able to lay the groundwork for an alternative society without repression and exploitation. The working class is a class of wage labourers, including those who are temporarily unemployed, which depend for their livelihood on the selling of their labour power. And its force, its organisation and consciousness, is precisely based on its position as an associated class in the production process.

The ACG wants a class struggle against the new repressive state measures, but in doing that it completely ignores what makes the working class the only force capable of “overthrowing capitalism, abolishing the State, getting rid of exploitation, hierarchies and oppressions, and halting the destruction of the environment”(What is the ACG? [43]); in other words: its class autonomy. [4] Without this class autonomy, without the struggle on a proletarian terrain for authentic class demands, the working class is no more than a sum of individual citizens, an amorphous mass of protesting people at best. Therefore any call to the workers to fight against the new repressive legislation, which is not based on clear class demands, can only serve to disarm the working class.

Within capitalism the working class has no rights

The protests against the new law, and the energetic commitment of the people fighting against its approval, show one thing in particular: the great illusions in the democracy in general and the democracy of the UK in particular. In fact, the appeal by the protesters to “our democracies”, to “the right to protest”, to “human rights”, rights that that the ruling class supposedly tries “to take away from us”, only shows that the main instrument of the bourgeoisie to rule British society is indeed the illusion of democracy, even if it needs police surveillance and state organised violence (which we saw clearly displayed at the vigil for Sarah Everard and the Bristol Kill the Bill protest) as an additional tool. But the need for the bourgeoisie to use its repressive instruments as a last resort makes the democratic mystification no less dangerous.

Democracy is a very refined instrument of social control and no less totalitarian than a full-blown dictatorship. The western democracies “maintain the whole apparatus, from the media to the police, required to impose a grip on society that hides its totalitarianism behind a veil of ‘freedom’.” (International Review no. 62 - Editorial [44]; 1990) The strength of western democracies is precisely located in their ability to hide the fact that its rule is not only as ruthless and effective as any dictatorship, but is actually better organised. In 1919 Lenin had already pointed to the great lie of democracy and showed that “in reality terror and a bourgeois dictatorship rule the most democratic republic” and that “shouting in defence of ‘democracy in general’ is actually defence of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as exploiters.” (Theses on bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship [45])

There is no fundamental difference between the protests against the new bill and the protest against the lockdown: in both cases the protesters reclaim their “freedom” as citizens. In the case of the protest against the new bill they demand the “right” to protest “freely” and in the case of the protest against the lockdown they demand the “right” to move “feely”. But in both cases the demands do not put into question the capitalist system and the authority of the state. This is completely different from the struggle of the working class. And certainly since capitalism entered its period of decadence this class can no longer fight for “democratic demands”, even if certain sectors still have illusions and may get drawn into the defence of such demands. Within capitalism only the ruling class has rights and the workers have no other right than to sell their labour power and to be exploited.

The protests of the past three weeks in the U.K. will not force the bourgeoisie to back down, even if the bourgeoisie gives the impression that it is ready to listen to “the will of the people” and to make some changes in the original draft of the bill. This is a manoeuvre intended to bind the protesters even more to the authority of the state. The present bill is actually not a frontal attack on the protests groups like Extinction Rebellion, but against the future protests that may irrupt when the austerity will be imposed on the working class to claw back the huge debts incurred during the pandemic. This actual legislation is a first step in the preparation of the ruling class to confront its main enemy, the working class, in the battles that will inevitably emerge in the period ahead.

Dennis, April 202 

Notes:

[1] The strength of the working class struggle is shown when workers of all sectors and companies come together “en masse”, in places where it is possible to have debates, where it can decide on the course of the struggle and the road it has to take. But the majority of workers recognise that massive gatherings, open to everyone who wants to reinforce the struggle, are too dangerous under the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. “But as soon as the pandemic is behind us, we will have to occupy the streets again, occupy all public spaces to discuss the means of the struggle and resist the austerity plans that the ruling class will seek to impose on us.”(La bourgeoisie profite de la pandémie de Covid-19 pour attaquer la classe ouvrière! [46]; Révolution Internationale no. 487)

[2] Since the traditional political parties have been substantially discredited in the eyes of the working class, there is a direct link between the rise of populism and the discrediting of the party political establishment. “The roots of populism in Europe and the USA are in the first instance a result of the historical weakening of the traditional government parties, which have been discredited by decades of attacks against living and working conditions, by unbearable levels of chronic mass unemployment, by the cynicism, hypocrisy and corruption of numerous political and economic spheres, and by their incapacity to offer the masses the illusion of a better future.” (Presidential campaign in France: populism and anti-populism, two expressions of capitalism’s dead-end [47]; ICConline April 2017 [48])

[3] #Kill The Bill: Joint Statement on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill From XR, BLM local groups, RAAH and more - Extinction Rebellion UK [49] : “This is an open statement written by a coalition of UK organisations, groups & social movements of all ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, sexualities, faiths, abilities, ages and social standings, who have united to challenge the UK government”. 

[4] The class autonomy of the proletariat means its independence from the other classes of society, its ability to give a political orientation to all the other non-exploiting strata. This class independence of the proletariat constitutes an INDISPENSIBLE CONDITION for its revolutionary action aiming, in the long run, at the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a classless society and thus without exploitation of man by man. (Balance sheet of the public meetings on the “Yellow Vest” movement [50]; ICConline – 2020s) 

 

The article below was recently published by the ICC's French section. If the details of violence among young people relate to that country, they are not a French specificity, as is clear from many recent examples in the UK. In Reading, in January, four boys and a girl, all aged 13 or 14 were arrested for murder after a 13-year-old boy was stabbed to death. In Haringey, a student who had gone to help friends after a mobile phone was stolen was stabbed to death and 5 teenagers have been charged. In Islington, a 15-year-old who was going to a chip shop was fatally stabbed and a 17-year-old has been charged with his murder. These are all characteristic of this putrefying world. In the same way, it is on a global scale that the solution to the tragedy that capitalism is inflicting on humanity and its youth on a daily basis can be found: the overthrow of the capitalist system, which is incapable of offering any perspectives to young people except unemployment, brutal death on the street corner, under the blows of gangs or cops, or as a consequence of the anti-social and deadly behaviour of other young people, which are a pure reflection of the world in which we live.

Since February, there have been multiple violent incidents among young people. Brawls, attacks, killings... the horror hits the young generation head on.

In Paris, on 15 February, Yuriy, a 15-year-old, was beaten and his skull smashed with a hammer by eleven young people aged 15 to 18. Even when he lay motionless on the ground, they continued to hit him. In Essonne, on 22 February, a 14-year-old girl was stabbed in the stomach during a brawl between two gangs. Six juveniles aged 13 to 16 were arrested. The next day, 23 February, also in Essonne, two gangs clashed: the 'big' ones (16-17 years old) 'supervised' a fight between the 'little' ones (12-15 years old) ... until one of them was surrounded and pulled out a knife... A 14-year-old schoolboy died, another 13-year-old went to hospital in a serious condition, stabbed in the throat. In Bondy, on 26 February, a young 15-year-old boxer called Aymen was killed when he was shot. The perpetrators were two brothers, aged 17 and 27. In Argenteuil, on 8 March, a 14-year-old called Alisha was trapped by two 15-year-olds: she was beaten up and thrown into the Seine while barely conscious. The contrast between the youth of the protagonists and the barbarity of the acts is shocking.

The press and politicians have all tried to exploit these tragedies. They accuse, in no particular order, 'irresponsible families', 'brutal immigrants', 'Muslims', the 'laxness of the legal system', 'lack of police funding'... and propose as a solution to punish the parents, to deport foreigners, to increase police numbers and to toughen laws against juveniles. The government is going to play this repressive card with the reform of the justice system as it affects young people, which is going to lead to quicker verdicts and heavier sentences. In other words, they are all preparing us for an even more violent and inhumane society.

In reality, youth pay the price for the rotting of the whole social body: 'no future' is a gangrene that is gradually gaining a hold throughout society. While the bourgeoisie is no longer able to mobilise society behind any perspective, and while the proletariat is not putting forward its own revolutionary perspective, society decomposes on its feet[1] and social relations disintegrate: increased individualism, nihilism, destruction of family ties, every man for himself, fear of the other, are all proliferating; blind violence, hatred, the spirit of revenge and self-destruction become the norm (on television, in films, through music, games). This outpouring of barbarism between children for totally futile and irrational reasons is the expression of a society without a future, which is breaking down, oppressing and suffocating us. In more and more parts of the world, this violence between young people has become a daily occurrence, whether it takes the form of gang rivalries or shootings in schools.

Today, the bourgeoisie has no future to offer to humanity. Only the class struggle can put an end to this dynamic. Only class solidarity, all generations combined, can light the way towards the revolutionary perspective and put an end to inhuman and deadly capitalism.

Ginette, March 24, 2021