In the space of a few weeks, all over the planet, climate catastrophes have followed each other at an alarming rate. In the USA, in Pakistan, in Spain or in Canada, temperatures have neared 50 degrees centigrade. In northern India, unbearable heat has caused thousands of deaths. 800,000 hectares of forest in Siberia, one of the coldest regions in the world, have already gone up in smoke. In North America, the now traditional season of huge forest fires has already begun: more than 150,000 hectares have been on fire in British Columbia alone. In the south of Madagascar, an unprecedented drought has plunged 1.5 million people into famine. Hundreds of thousands of children are dying because there is nothing to eat, nothing to drink, while the world looks on in almost unanimous indifference. Kenya and several other African countries are going through the same dramatic situation.
But while part of the world is suffocating, deluges of rain are hitting Japan, China and Europe, provoking unprecedented floods and deadly mud slides. At the centre of Europe, particularly in Germany and Belgium, these floods have, at the time of writing, led to over 200 deaths and thousands injured. Thousands of houses, streets, entire villages and conglomerations have been carried away by the floods. In the west of Germany, roads, electricity and gas networks, railways and communications have been devastated. A number of road and railway bridges have collapsed. Never before has this region been hit by flooding on such a scale.
In China, in the town of Zhenzhou, capital of the central province of Henan and inhabited by 10 million people, in three days there was the equivalent of a whole year’s rainfall. Streets turned into rushing torrents, with frightening scenes of destruction and chaos: road surfaces breaking up, vehicles submerged…thousands of metro passengers were trapped in stations or tunnels, often with water up to their necks. 33 deaths and many injured; 200,000 evacuated. Supplies of water, electricity and food have been brutally interrupted. Damage to crops has cost millions. In the south of Henan, the dam containing the Guojiaju reservoir gave way and two others are threatened with collapse at any moment.
The conclusions of the draft report of the International Panel on Climate Change which was “leaked” to the press are chilling: “Life on Earth could recover from major climate change by evolving towards new species and creating new ecosystems. Humanity cannot”. For decades, scientists have been warning of the dangers of climate disturbances. We are right there now! It’s not just a matter of some species disappearing or of localised disasters. Cataclysm has now become permanent, and there is worse to come.
The negligence of the bourgeoisie faced with catastrophes
For a number of years now, heatwaves, fires, hurricanes and other forms of destruction have been multiplying. But while the inefficiency and incompetence of the poorest states in managing such disasters unfortunately come as no surprise, the growing inability of the big powers to deal with the situation is particularly revealing of the level of crisis into which capitalism is sinking. Not only are climatic phenomena becoming more and more devastating, numerous and uncontrollable, but the states and emergency services, after decades of budget cuts, are shown to be more and more disorganised and failing in their role.
The situation in Germany is a very clear expression of this tendency. Even though the European flood-warning system (EFAS) anticipated the floods of 14 and 15 July, “the warnings were not taken seriously and the preparations were insufficient”, as the hydrologist Hannah Cloke put it[1]. The central state basically got rid of warning systems by offloading them to the federal states, or even to local councils, without any standardised procedures or the means to work effectively. Result: while the electronic and telephone networks collapsed, making it impossible to warn the population and proceed with evacuations, the emergency services were reduced to switching on their sirens – that is when they were still working. Before reunification, West and East Germany had about 80,000 sirens; now there are only 15,000 in working order[2]. Lacking means of communication and coordination, the operations of the emergency services took place in the greatest disorder. In other words, austerity and bureaucratic incompetence made a large contribution to the fiasco!
But the responsibility of the bourgeoisie isn’t limited to failures in the emergency services. In these densely populated urban regions, the permeability of the soil has been considerably reduced, increasing the risks of flooding. For decades, in order to concentrate labour power and get a quick return on investment, the authorities have not hesitated to build numerous homes in flood-risk areas.
The bourgeoisie is powerless in the face of the climate disaster
A large section of the bourgeoisie cannot avoid admitting the link between global heating and the multiplication of catastrophes. In the midst of the ruins, the German chancellor solemnly declared “we must hurry. We are going to go much faster in the fight against climate change”[3]. Utter bullshit! Since the 1970s, international summits and conferences have been held nearly every year, with their lists of promises, objectives, commitments. Each time these “historic agreements” have proven to be pious wishes, while greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase year on year.
In the past, the bourgeoisie has been able to mobilise around immediate problems that have impacted on its economy. For example, it was able to drastically reduce the CFC gases responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. These gases were used in air conditioning systems, fridges and aerosols. This was indeed an important effort faced with the threat posed by the degradation of the ozone layer, but it never required a dramatic transformation of the apparatus of capitalist production. Carbon dioxide emissions pose an altogether different kind of problem.
Greenhouse gases are used to transport workers and commodities, to power factories. They are also made up of the methane produced by intensive farming, which also involves the widescale destruction of forests. In short, carbon dioxide emissions are at the heart of capitalist production: the concentration of labour power in immense cities, the anarchy of production, the exchange of commodities on a planetary scale, heavy industry…these are the reasons why the bourgeoisie is incapable of finding real solutions to the climate crisis. The search for profit, the massive overproduction of commodities, the pillage of natural resources – these are not an “option” for capitalism: they are the sine qua non of its existence. The bourgeoisie can only promote the growth of production with the aim of increasing the accumulation of capital, otherwise it would endanger its own interests and its profits faced with the exacerbation of globalised competition. The basis of this logic is “after me, the deluge!”. Extreme climate phenomena are no longer just impacting the populations of the poorest countries. They are now directly disrupting the apparatus of industrial and agricultural production in the central countries. The bourgeoisie is caught in the grip of insoluble contradictions.
No state is capable of radically transforming its apparatus of production without being driven back by competition from other countries. Chancellor Merkel may claim that it’s time to “hurry up”, but in truth the German government has never wanted to impose the strict environmental rules that get in the way of protecting strategic sectors like steel, chemicals or automobiles. Merkel has also succeeded in delaying the abandonment of coal production: the open cast exploitation of coal in the Rhineland and east Germany remains one of the biggest sources of pollution in Europe. In other words, the price for the strong competitive edge of the German economy is the unlimited destruction of the environment! The same implacable logic applies all over the planet: giving up carbon dioxide emissions or destroying its forests would be, for China or for any of the industrialised countries, shooting itself in the foot.
The “green economy” is an ideological mystification
Faced with this crying expression of the impasse of capitalism, the bourgeoisie is instrumentalising catastrophes the better to defend its system. In Germany, where the electoral campaign for the federal elections in September is at its height, the candidates vie with each other with proposals for fighting against climate disturbances. But all this is an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes! The “green economy”, which is supposed to create millions of jobs and allow for a “green growth”, in no way represents a way out for capital, either on the economic or the ecological level. For the bourgeoisie, the “green economy” above all has an ideological value, by spreading the idea that capitalism can be reformed. If new “ecological” sectors are emerging, such as solar panels, biofuels or electric vehicles, not only can they not serve as a locomotive for the whole economy given the limits on solvent markets, but their disastrous impact on the environment has already been shown: massive destruction of forests to extract rare minerals, deplorable state of recycling of batteries, intensive agriculture in the production of rapeseed, etc.
The “green economy” is also a favourite weapon against the working class, justifying lay-offs and the closure of factories, as we can see from the declaration of the green candidate Baerbock in the German elections: “We can only progressively eliminate fossil fuels (and the workers who go with them) if we have at our disposal one hundred percent renewable energy”[4]. It should be said that when it comes to lay-offs and the exploitation of labour power, the Greens already have plenty of experience, since for seven years they played an active part in the ignoble reforms of the Schröder government
The impotence of the bourgeoisie faced with the increasingly devastating impact of global heating at the human, social and economic level should not however lead us to fatalism. Certainly, caught in the contradictions of its own system, the bourgeoisie can only lead humanity to disaster. But the working class, through its struggle against exploitation and for the overthrow of capitalism, holds the solution to this obvious contradiction between, on the one hand the obsolescence of capitalist methods of production, the complete anarchy of the system resulting in generalised overproduction and the insane pillage of natural resources; and, on the other hand, the need for a rational method of production based on the needs of humanity and not the needs of the market. By freeing humanity from capitalist exploitation and the demands of profit, the proletariat will have the material possibility of carrying out a radical programme for the protection of the environment. The road is a very long one, but communism is more than ever a necessity!
EG, 23.7.21
[1] « Allemagne : après les inondations, premières tentatives d’explications [2] », Libération.fr (17 July 2021).
[2] « Warum warnten nicht überall Sirenen vor der Flut ? [3] », N-TV.de (19 July 2021).
[3] « Choquée par les dégâts “surréalistes”, Angela Merkel promet de reconstruire », LeMonde.fr (18 July 2021).
[4] 4 [4] « Klimaschutz fällt nicht vom Himmel, er muss auch gemacht werden [5] », Welt.de (22 July 2021).
The Biden administration, overturning the policy of Trump to some extent, has acted quickly but cautiously over the rapidly deteriorating internal war in Ethiopia, and more largely around the Horn of Africa, by appointing a retired diplomat, Jeffrey Feltman, as Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Feltman has been clear about the possible impact of problems facing the country and the region when he said: "Syria will look like child's play in comparison"[1]. Feltman has already toured the region and spoken to the regimes of Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt as well as the Ethiopian government. The Horn of Africa, a critical crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, is a vital, strategic area for imperialism and has attracted those such as France, Britain, Turkey (which has stated that it sees Ethiopia as its "open door" to Africa", FT, 17.1.2021, pay wall), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the EU, China and the US. The region has ports, raw materials and oil wells but it is largely rural and its main attraction for imperialism is its geographical and thus its strategic position on the imperialist chessboard. Though China follows, in a fashion, its policy of "non-interference", there is the danger that this region, with the interference of powers large and small, will descend into a greater free-for-all but, with military bases of US, France, Japan, China and others, close by in Djibouti, the situation contains the danger of larger-scale clashes.
Both the US and the EU saw the Ethiopian federal government of Abiy Ahmed as a regional policeman and strongman able to keep this fragmented country of over a hundred million people together and pacify the surrounding ones. The EU and the west couldn't find words warm enough to describe their confidence in the Ethiopian economy describing it as an "economic miracle" (BBC, 13.8.2015) along with their total support for Ahmed, awarding him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The words of European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, are instructive of the gap between delusion and reality when she said: “Ethiopia has given hope to a whole continent and beyond, showing that peace with one's neighbours, for the good of the people, is possible, when there is courage and vision. I am here today to show the European Union's full commitment to supporting Ethiopia and its people on their future path" (EU press release, 7.12.2019). The EU alone has directed nearly a $1 billion dollars of "development cooperation" towards Ethiopia in the last few years and the west has "invested" $9 billion overall with the IMF alone, making a massive $2 billion available. But because of its involvement in the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in the region of Tigray, the US and the G-7 began in April to impose punitive measures against the Ethiopian regime, using sanctions, pausing or stopping tranches of "aid"[2] with the risk of driving it closer to China or even turning to Russia. China already had a head start here with its "health diplomacy" (its vaccine programme - or "vaccine war" - has been integrated into this) on the continent, but particularly in Ethiopia which it sees as a hub for its "Belt and Road" soft power drive. On a much larger scale than that undertaken by "socialist" Cuba during the Cold War, China has successfully used health diplomacy as an adjunct to its imperialist drive in Africa (and elsewhere). In this respect it has stolen a march on the "old" western governments active in Africa, being particularly quick off the mark from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
China has described its policy towards Ethiopia as an example of its "stronger community of Sino-African destiny". For a number of years now it has been funding civilian and military projects in Ethiopia, the former including industrial parks (in which Britain amongst other was interested in becoming involved), hydro-powered dams, highways, railways (connected to the town and port of Djibouti - important for this land-locked country), metro system, skyscrapers, sports stadia, etc., while the latter has seen officers in the Ethiopian army being trained in China. China has also funded half of Ethiopia's debt and is underwriting the $4 billion for the construction of the "Grand Renaissance Ethiopian Dam" (GRED) on the Blue Nile, forty-five kilometres east of the border with Sudan. The dam, whose construction started in 2011 and is now starting to be filled, has raised tensions with Sudan but also with Egypt, with the US backing both countries, but the latter in particular. The US has been very vocal in supporting the Egyptians over this issue, with a regional commander of US forces going onto Egyptian television recently (reported on Channel 4 News, June 25) stating his total support - and thus the US administration's - for Egyptian moves to stop the project, even suggesting that the Egyptians were not acting aggressively enough in this respect. But the Ethiopian regime is resisting US pressure, and this is an expression of the historical weakening of US hegemony and the growth of the tendency of every man for himself in international relations.
All countries have their specificities but Ethiopia particularly stands out in Africa as being a country that has never been colonised, fighting toe-to-toe against attempts to do so. It has its own written history but, never having been through a classic bourgeois revolution, is less a unified nation state than a patchwork of clans, ethnic and religious groups - a real anomaly. But even as such it was an expression of a nascent form of African imperialism developing at the same time as it was throughout the industrialised world. This was expressed in Ethiopia under the reign of Menelik II, 1844-1913. Menelik set up a more co-ordinated and centralised state structure, using appointments rather than hereditary privilege. It had an efficient, well-trained and well-armed army strong enough to take and beat any would-be colonisers, particularly the Italians. Menelik's state oversaw the building of modern roads, bridges and set up a postal and telegraph system. It ruthlessly suppressed the slave trade and gave Ethiopia a sense of national identity, establishing a modern state in 1898. The Menelik Empire collapsed under the weight of global imperialist war. It was invaded and occupied by Mussolini's Italy in 1936 and then by Britain in 1941, with Emperor Haile Selassie compelled to turn to the RAF for support.
During the Cold War, with "national liberation" firmly on the imperialism's agenda and supported by leftism around the world, Russia threw the leftists into a spin by abruptly changing its support from Somalia to that of its adversary, Ethiopia in 1977. More disconcerting for the leftists was that the US did exactly the opposite, forcing them to switch sides as well. The "socialist" leader in place, Mengistu Haile Mariam, became Moscow's placeman and ruled with terror. There's never been much of a working class in Ethiopia and this is reflected in the weight of Mao-like Stalinism in the country with its emphasis on the peasantry. There was some working class, student and popular protests in the 1970's, though largely controlled and manipulated by the various leftist factions. Even so, the regime cracked down hard with its form of Stalinist terror and a whole range of Eastern Bloc troops from Bulgaria to Cuba were barracked on Ethiopian soil. But by the mid-1980's the reach of Russian imperialism was faltering badly under the blows of the economic crisis; military and economic support from Moscow to Addis Ababa was being severely curtailed as the Soviet Empire stumbled towards its collapse. In 1989, as an example of not very good timing, Mengistu declared Ethiopia a "Workers' State". Two years later he and his regime were gone, beaten by history and an alliance of 21 factions fighting together under the auspices of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which included a significant force of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) a "Marxist-Leninist" organisation whose pro-Albanian "national liberation struggle" was supported by many on the left wing of capital around the world. Both the Abiy Ahmed[3] faction and the TPLF ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018, during which time they fought a bitter war with the Maoist Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). Eritrea achieved "self- determination" in 1993 and is today ruled by the same dictator, His Excellency Isaias Afwerki, who according to Human Rights Watch presides over one of the most repressive regimes in the world.[4]
Imperialist turn-around in Tigray
The Tigray region is one of ten in Ethiopia based on ethnic divisions and, from a "national liberation" perspective, so popular with the left of capital to this day, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has provided important support to the state of Ethiopia, running its regional government for decades and beefing up its internal security forces which is a known strength of all these Stalinist gangs[5]. When he was part of the Ethiopian government, the leader of the TPLF, Debretsion Gebremichael, was very close to China, while there were also moves from the US and the west to curry favour with the TPLF.
As so often in the history of this region, with its jig-saw of ethnic and religious conflicts, adapted and inflamed by the needs of different imperialist powers, there has been a major turnaround in the forces involved. The reckoning between the Abiy and TPLF factions broke out into open warfare last November, when after months of feuding Abiy sent his army into northern Tigray in a major escalation of the conflict. The Ethiopian government turned for help towards its previous adversary, Afwerki's Eritrea, which sent its largely press-ganged and undetermined conscripted and half-starved army into Tigray to wreak havoc along with the warlords and militias of the Amhara Region Special Forces responsible for the ethnic cleansing and massacres in Tigray, November 2020. Despite the internet lock-down, many stories of massacres and atrocities by the Eritrean and other forces emerged. This had the effect attracting thousands to sign up on the Tigrayan side but this repressive "national liberation" regime itself has perpetrated its own massacres and atrocities throughout its own history up to and including the war today.
The war is unfolding as the media talk up the Ethiopian election, an obscene side-show at the best of times. Ahmed denies anyone is hungry[6]: "There is no hunger in Tigray" despite UN reports and a document from the US Agency for International Development saying that 900,000 people face immediate famine[7] with millions more in danger; this forced starvation by the government along with rape are deliberate weapons of war. The upshot today is a devastating and brutal war of each against all with an unknown number of deaths; fuelling famine and the flight of uncounted numbers of refugees, not least through the deliberate whipping-up of ethnic tensions and with a breakdown of the whole region into utter chaos and warlordism now on the cards.
Latest developments have seen a strong counter-offensive of Tigrayan forces which have regrouped under the umbrella of the Tigray Defence Forces, a composite of factions under the wing of the TPLF which themselves have opposing factions, warlords and interests. These "rebel" (BBC) forces have considerable heavy weaponry and fighting experience, shooting down an Ethiopian military C-130 transporter and retaking the regional capital of Mekelle[8]. Eritrean forces have mostly left the country having committed atrocity after atrocity with the Tigrayan forces now threatening to follow them into Eritrea, while Sudan, unnerved by neighbourhood events, has militarised part of its border with Ethiopia. The major powers are virtually helpless here and all NATO can do is mouth meaningless platitudes while setting up a liaison office with the African Union whose African base is in Addis Ababa. Both NATO, which has a number of troops on the ground, and the AU, do not possess the forces or the wherewithal to confront or control the growing destabilisation.
China's presence has for the moment met a set-back in this part of Africa[9]. It has invested heavily in Ethiopia and particularly in the Tigray region which it figured could be part of a hub for its Belt and (Silk) Road initiatives, but now it's a much riskier business for Chinese investment as the country and the region begins a descent into chaos and, possibly, wider military confrontations. All across Africa economic crisis and capitalist decomposition are advancing and extending and nowhere is this more the case than in the current war in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
Boxer, 9.7.21
[3] Abiy Ahmed was a politician who negotiated his way through the endless ethnic faction fights rising to the top from mid-2000 through the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
[5] Within the endless wars of secession, there are a number of these gangs including the Oromo Liberation Front, a split from that, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which attacked a Chinese-owned oil facility in Abole, Ethiopia close to the Somali border in 2007 killing dozens of Ethiopians and Chinese. There are others, with some going in and out of the Ethiopian government's designation of "terrorist". The likes of the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) have supported some of these various gangs at one time or another in the recent past talking about their "resistance to the Western-backed government", their "struggle against counter-revolutionary forces", and their "fight for reforms" in the region.
[6] Yahoo News, 26.6.2021
We publish here a letter from a close sympathiser expressing solidarity with the ICC’s struggle against parasitism and adventurism and for the defence of the Communist Left. The most important thing about this letter is that it points to the historical materialist method for approaching questions of behaviour, of slanders and maneuvres, which do such damage to the proletarian political milieu.
By drawing lessons from the history of the struggle of the workers’ movement, the ICC has been able to systematise how to distinguish between the real Communist Left and the fake 'communist left', which is basically composed of parasitic groups and adventurist elements.
Unlike other questions, this is not something that can be solved by intuition, common sense or as a private affair, or from innocently inhaling the ambient bourgeois ideology. The Communist Left must recover, maintain and develop the historical continuity and experience of coherent communist behaviour, of communist coherence in relations between militants and with the organisation as a whole. This is so that it can arm itself to combat the dangers of duplicity, and of the more indirect and less apparent dangers to the organisation of the political vanguard of the working class. Dangers which, with the advance of the decomposition of capitalism, become more and more acute.
A principle of the method of thinking at the core of the marxist method is that, to quote Marx: “one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself."[1] “While in everyday life every shopkeeper can distinguish very well between what someone claims to be and what he really is, our historiography has not yet achieved this trivial insight. It accepts without question what each epoch says and imagines about itself.”[2] That is, we cannot trust someone, or a group, simply because of what they claim to be (i.e., part of the Communist Left). Marxists cannot rely on this method, typical of the bourgeoisie, which expects the working class to believe word for word the promises and appearances which it is presented with, hijacking it with the games of idealism.
For marxists, on the contrary, “this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.”[3] In other words, only a method of historical and materialist thinking can confront this game of appearances.
We must therefore ask the following questions: where does the practice of a group or individual come from? What is the origin and development of this behaviour in history? Under the influence of which social tendency and from which class has it historically originated? We must discuss the lessons and past experiences of the workers’ movement in such situations, when we see behaviour such as, accusations of power struggles, denigrations, ambiguities, seeking alliances, cries for help, claiming to be the victim of abuse, etc. If we stay on the surface of a situation where the International Group of the Communist Left accuses the ICC of employing Stalinist methods, and the ICC denounces a destructive tendency towards the Communist Left on the part of the IGCL (and the IGCL also denounces something similar!) ... if we look at it on the face of it, the question looks like a puzzle worthy of a bourgeois court. This only benefits the parasites, the adventurers and the whole milieu of the false 'communist left' which reproduces the bourgeois ideology of appearances!
To prevent the devious imagination from dominating reality we must proceed:
The greatest difficulty in unmasking parasitism is that some of its most powerful actions are:
The history of the IGCL, and the same goes for Nuevo Curso and the adventurer Gaizka, is tucked away in a place that “nobody needs to know” and “is not overly important”, it does not need to be clarified or debated. We should blindly trust what they say they are. The case of the Nuevo Curso blog, which takes the form of a bourgeois newspaper, is particularly illustrative: it has had so many changes of image that were it not for the ICC following its development its real murky history would seem inaccessible (we are not talking here about the history that was created after the event). What to say about the adventurer Gaizka, who returned to a public ICC meeting in Madrid as if his adventurist relations and behaviour had not been discovered in the past by the ICC. Gaizka really knows his past, he has not forgotten it, and he has no interest in airing it: he cannot clean it up, because the same methods serve him in the present.
The IGCL is fleeing at all costs from the “fundamental divergences” that made them set up as a false fraction (we are not talking here either about the “divergences” that they realised they had after the event).
Consistent with what was said above about the historical method, we must arm ourselves with the need for proletarian ethical principles and organisational principles, which go beyond abstract political principles that can easily become mere appearances. We need to find these ethics in the history of our class and appropriate them in order to fight against ambiguity and duplicity. We must fight against the obvious situation, the obvious and undeniable fact that new elements approaching the Communist Left do not distinguish between different groups very well and may perceive the same rotten smell of bourgeois politics (which happened in the demoralisation of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional members in 2005, for example). The function for capitalism of the fake 'communist left' is that here too there is no clear distinction between the good, the bad and the ugly.
In relation to the proletarian ethic, we also have a series of facts which, in the whole of its history, characterise the IGCL as a group totally alien to the working class. Some of these behaviours, which are facts:
Before and after their exclusion they behaved like snitches:
The solution to the serious problems facing the Communist Left, aggravated by the lack of clarity in the face of parasitism and adventurism, cannot be to hide the dirty laundry under the bed, to dig a grave for the past, but to understand why it was dirty and to air it with debate on proletarian ethical principles, to clean up the truth. Not by forgetting, but by developing clear lessons for the struggle. The falsifications and ambiguity about history begin with a first step of hiding the dirty laundry as if it were something to be ashamed of (the other side of the logic of shame would be to present the mistakes as if they were an embarrassment...and thus enter the circle of shame, envy and revenge).
This opportunist attitude has been shown by the ICT[5], an organisation of the real Communist Left, which is in danger of gradually leading the Communist Left onto a terrain where it is difficult to distinguish real confusion and errors from deliberate acts of confusionism in which elements and groups with interests alien to the working class proliferate. For example, if the ICT does not fight clearly for the truth of the facts, elements outside the class can disguise themselves in an unclear terrain where there is no need to clarify such things.
With this letter I want to express my solidarity with the struggle of the ICC, and its struggle for the truth of the facts, the clarity of the tradition of the communist left, and proletarian ethics. I do so in response to the last two texts that you have sent me for discussion.
Fraternally,
Teivos, 10-4-2021
[1] Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
[2] The German Ideology
[3] Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
We've commemorated this year as the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. We must also celebrate the book of Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. The first edition of this book appeared in London on February 23, 1871, a few days before the working population of Paris transported to the heights of Montmartre, Buttes-Chartre and Belleville the cannons that Adolphe Thiers wanted to confiscate from them.
Scientific revolution and proletarian revolution
The proximity of these two events is much more political than chronological. In the second half of the nineteenth century, capitalism was in full expansion and revolutionising society on all levels, industrial, technology, social and scientific. Its work of progress was quite real but it was neither linear nor harmonious. Capitalism paved the way for gas and electricity, but it condemned the proletariat to atrocious suffering, carried out endless massacres in the colonies and pushed the separation of humanity from its being to the limits. Capitalism remained a society of want based entirely on the exploitation of man by man, but it allowed a gigantic development of the productive forces. In such a society, at least at its beginnings, science took massive steps. It contributed to the accumulation of knowledge and to the development of human culture; but also, very often, it made science the impotent hostage to the bourgeoisie which captures its discoveries and directs them not towards the satisfaction of human needs but towards profit and war, destruction and death. This is something that is evident today since the majority of scientific progress (the conquest of space, the internet, artificial intelligence for example) have only been possible through the imperatives of militarism and imperialism. As capitalism has gradually reached the end of its historic mission, the proletariat has become the guardian of the cultural and scientific heritage accumulated by the human species. Rosa Luxemburg wrote in this regard: "Socialism, which links the interests of the workers as a class to the development and to the future of humanity as a great, cultural fraternity, produces a particular affinity between proletarian struggle and the interests of culture as a whole, engendering the apparent contradictory and paradoxical phenomenon which makes the conscious proletariat today in all countries the most ardent, the most idealistic advocates of knowledge and art of this same bourgeois culture of which it is today the disinherited bastard"[1].
Certainly, marxism is not a science, but it is a scientific and militant theory which contributes to the development of materialism and progressively integrates scientific advances from its different domains. The reason is simple: having no property, no estate within capitalist society (contrary to that of the bourgeoisie within feudalism), the proletariat is obliged to develop its consciousness and its theory to the highest point. It is solely because it is potentially armed with its consciousness, its revolutionary theory (marxism), its unity, its own organisation and world revolutionary party that it can emancipate itself and, at the same time, deliver humanity from the prison of class society.
That is why the discoveries of Darwin, and science in general, are so important. In taking on the question of The Descent of Man, February 4, 1868,[2] Darwin passed to the second episode of the new Copernican revolution that was about to be realised. The first had begun at the return of his voyage around the world on H.M.S Beagle (1831-1836), when he wrote his first words in his Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species (1837). This intense work of reflection, the cataloguing of all the observations made during the course of the voyage and the reading of reference works, resulted in the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.
Assisted by a rigorously scientific approach, he demonstrated in this work that a genealogy of the living world existed, throughout which the generations of organisms followed one another by diversification. He thus discovered "descent with modification" and its motor-force, "natural selection". All organisms presented totally random variations. When it was necessary to displace and change from the milieu or when the milieu itself changed, advantageous variations were selected, leading to more numerous descendants for some individuals and a progressive elimination of others. In time this process resulted in the emergence of a new species which corresponded to a new stage of relative stability.
The theory of natural selection gave a boost to transformative ideas, which since Lamarck had been stuck in the impasse represented by the theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics. It was now possible to understand how each species, through the analysis of its history (its phylogeny), was the product of a previous species. It was possible to reach back, by rediscovering the common ancestors of several species, to the origins of life on Earth.
The step had thus been to lay a solid, scientific basis for transformation. But the second episode of this Copernican revolution was more important still. Since The Origin of Species, transformation generally became admissible and it was roughly understood that "man descended from apes" (or, more accurately, homo and the great apes came from a common ancestor). With The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin brought forward two major new scientific advances:
- The species homo belonged to a series of animals certainly, but its emergence was made without rupture. There was only a difference of degree and not of nature. There was no sudden "upsurge" but a process of emergence.
- With the emergence of humanity, the selection of the most able and the elimination of the least apt tended to trail off to the benefit of the weakest and the worst off. The fight for existence was replaced by the progressive development of sympathy and the mutual recognition of the other. Natural selection produced civilisation which merges with the emergence of the human species. It is characterised by the development of links of solidarity, of communal rationality and moral sentiments[3]. This evolution unified affectionate feelings and rationality, resulting in the growing institutionalisation of altruism, a significant mark of the progress of civilisation.
The reverse effect of evolution
These two inseparable results are explained by the fact that, as biological variations, social instincts, behaviours and rational capacities are also transmitted by descent. For Darwin, we are witnessing a passage of nature to civilisation, but without a rupture since natural selection, characterised by the elimination of the weakest, favours the social instincts which lead to the protection of the less able. There is the elimination of elimination. In order to account for this overthrow without rupture, Patrick Tort talks of a "reverse effect of evolution"[4]. Effectively, it allowed the understanding that the suppression of elimination is very much a consequence of natural selection itself: civilisation was selected as advantageous through an eliminatory selection[5].
When The Origin of Species appeared, protests from the dominant class, its religious and scientific luminaries, were of course extremely violent. However, the time was open to an acceptance of the theory of evolution. There had been the examples of artificial selection from farmers, growers and breeders and it seemed evident that there was a resemblance between some species, just as between parents and children coming from the parent, even if the action of natural selection and its consequences were not really immediately understood.
Marx and Engels enthusiastically welcomed the new theory. On December 19, 1860, Marx wrote to Engels: "It is in this book that the historical-natural basis of our conception is found". Once again, the proletariat finds an ally in the natural sciences in its fight to go beyond empirical, mechanical materialism. After the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848, The Origin of Species in 1859 again showed that modern materialism was up to the task of profoundly explaining the transformation process both in life and in society.
But for Marx and Engels however this favourable welcome gave way to a certain scepticism and then outright rejection. In June 18, 1862, Marx wrote to Engels: "It is remarkable to see how Darwin recognises among the animals and plants his own English society, with its division of labour, competition, its opening of new markets, its inventions and its Malthusian struggle for existence". This quid pro quo, this missed rendezvous between Marx and Darwin would have negative consequences for the theoretical development of marxism. Look at this example of the prolonged blindness of Plekhanov, written in 1907: "Many confuse the dialectic with the doctrine of evolution. The dialectic is, in fact, a doctrine of evolution. But it differs essentially from the vulgar 'theory of evolution', which mainly rests on the principle that neither nature, nor history makes leaps forward and that all the changes in the world only happen gradually. Hegel has already demonstrated that, understood as such, the doctrine of evolution is inconsistent and ridiculous"[6]. The consequences of this poor interpretation of Darwin are expressed by a rejection of continuity and a speculative conception of the "qualitative leap".
Marxism and Darwinism
The main cause of this blunder was the rapid growth, from 1859, of Social Darwinism in Britain, Germany and the world. Darwin waited ten years before publishing The Descent of Man in which he finally applied to man his theory of evolution. He was well aware that the publication of his anthropology would have an explosive effect, and he spent a lot of time replying to criticisms, refuting arguments; he oversaw the many re-editions, reviewed and completed The Origin of Species. Herbert Spencer profited by creating a synthetic philosophy of evolution, a new system inspired by liberalism which applied to man the principle of the fight for existence, the elimination of the weak, a principle that Darwin had clearly limited to the world of Flora and Fauna. Darwin was forced to delineate himself from Spencer and Malthus, but it was too late, and the fraudulent theory of "Social Darwinism" imposed itself everywhere. One of its most ardent defenders was Carl Vogt, an agent of Napoleon III who had slandered Marx and who took charge of the French translation of The Descent of Man[7].
Progressively, throughout the 1980's, then in 2009 on the occasion of the bi-centenary of Darwin's birth, we saw a (re) discovery of his real anthropology. The precariousness of the most disadvantaged layers within capitalism, competition and war, the growth of predatory male behaviour, could lead us to think that the selection of advantageous variations, the elimination of the less able and the fight for existence were still the dominant factors in human society. This is the basis of the success of a Social Darwinism that invites us to accept capitalism as a natural and beneficial fatality: by leaving the strong to progress to the detriment of the weak, the people and the nation can progress and impose itself and, in the last analysis, vanquish military and economic competition and increase the rate of exploitation of the proletariat.
Socialism or barbarism
But in reality things are quite different. Civilisation develops through a reversal. As we see with the explanation of the reverse effect of evolution, there is both continuity and discontinuity. If one describes the process which goes from eliminatory natural selection up to the anti-eliminatory tendency of affective and social solidarity that's supposed to prevail in any "civilised" society, then we must conclude, as Patrick Tort explains it, that the break is the product of humanity rather than the break producing humanity. For the first time a species is not forced to adapt itself to its surroundings (selection of the most able) but is capable of adapting its surroundings, of transformation by producing its means of existence.
Contrary to the stupidities repeated by the ecologists, it is not the human species itself which is destroying nature; its ‘domination’ of nature simply means that it doesn't find what to eat directly in nature, but that it produces its means of existence. It is not the human species that destroys nature but a specific method of production, capitalism, which attacks biodiversity and breaks the organic equilibrium between humanity and nature.
Marxists were misguided in thinking that the making of tools was a distinctive criterion for the species homo. But scientific research shows that most animal species (vertebrates, invertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, etc.) are perfectly capable of making or using tools and that the fundamental change with the appearance of the genus homo is the production of all life’s necessities.
The reconciliation between Darwin and Marx had finally become possible and the latter's first response was the right one. The idea discovered by the former was contained in the heart of the works of Marx. In The German Ideology for example, drawn up by Marx and Engels in 1846, a passage takes up the same description of the process as Darwin: "One can distinguish men from animals by consciousness, religion or by whatever else you want. They distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they start to produce their means of existence: they make a step here which is dictated by their physical existence. By producing their means of existence men indirectly produce their material life themselves".
Continuity in particular is recognised perfectly through the formula that "they make a step here which is dictated by their physical existence". Through the concept of the reversive effect, evolutionary continuity and the "qualitative leap" are also materialistically and dialectically reunified.
In creating civilisation, the human species doesn't rid itself of nature and biology. It is certain that, in phases of intense regression, barbarity and the elimination of the weakest distinctly reappears. But that is not the basis of human history. Civilisation has taken the form of a succession of modes of production finally resulting in capitalism in which the loss of mastery of the social forces created by man appears in all its dramatic breadth by turning them against humanity and against its biological and natural roots. In such conditions only the proletarian revolution can re-establish humanity’s mastery of its own becoming by overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and through creating a society which will be able to confront new biological, epidemiological and ecological problems that humanity will inevitably meet in the course of its voyage aboard its space-ship, planet Earth.
Theory versus nihilism
Darwinian anthropology, in which we have seen the unbroken link with the theory of modified descent by the means of natural selection, has been falsified, ignored and attacked from all sides, in particular by those who could not accept that man could lose his transcendental nature. And it continues to be attacked today, not only by the Creationists and religious fundamentalists but also by all the idealists who decree a separation between The Origin of Species, the scientific value of which they concede, and The Descent of Man which they present as a philosophical work, thus creating a so-called disconnection of Darwin between science and ideology.
In the present situation where the proletariat (and its revolutionary perspective) is momentarily absent from the social scene, the way is opened up for the rejection of science and all scientific theory.
In the seventeenth century, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, decreed that creation took place at the beginning of the night proceeding October 23 in the year 4004 B.C. There was even an intense debate about whether time began on the Saturday night or the Sunday morning. In the nineteenth century a majority of scientists were still defending the biblical legend that on the sixth day, man and domestic animals were created "according to its kind".
Today, conspiracy theories, absurd beliefs and scepticism towards science reflect the absence of perspective offered by existing society and appears as a return to obscure times. The fight of the working class against exploitation and the progressive affirmation of its revolutionary perspective will on the contrary be accompanied by a liberating development of consciousness and of the rational, coherent and scientific approach.
A. Elberg, June 20, 2021
[1] Rosa Luxemburg https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch05.htm [16]
[2] We finally have a rigorously scientific French translation led by Patrick Tort: La Filiation de l'homme et la Sélection liée au sexe (2013).
[4] Patrick Tort, The Darwin Effect (2008)
[5] See the long-time obscured but explicit passage of Chapter XXI: "However important it was, and still is..."
[6] Plekhanov, The Fundamental Questions of Marxism
[7] Anton Pannekoek, Patrick Tort, Darwinism and Marxism (2011)
There is an immortal line from the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, whose scenario is an international flying tournament in the year 1910. Robert Morley, playing the pompous newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley, tells us that “the problem with these international affairs is that they attract foreigners”. As communists, who reject any idea of loyalty to the nation, we would express it differently: the problem with international competitions is that they promote patriotism.
In the current spectacle of the European football championship, every game is preceded by fervent singing of the national anthem of the contending countries, while English nationalism goes one step further by roundly booing the German national anthem. Hardly surprising that, in the post-Brexit atmosphere of nostalgia for Empire, the successes of the England team are being treated in the media as a beacon of hope and national reconciliation, in contrast to the divisions sown by Brexit, and above all as consolation for the humiliations Britain is currently experiencing at the hands of the EU over Brexit regulations, the US over Northern Ireland, and Russia in the Black Sea.
None of this is new. In 1980, World Revolution number 32 contained an article on the Olympics of that year, which were blatantly being used as a vehicle for western bloc propaganda against its Russian imperialist rival following the latter’s invasion of Afghanistan. It reminded us, against the idea that “you should keep politics out of sport”, that “The rise of big international sporting competitions corresponded exactly with the development of that other form of international competition: imperialism. The modern Olympics began in the 1890s when world capitalism was beginning the long trek towards the first imperialist war. Ever since, these ‘highlights of the sporting calendar’ have provided the opportunity for real orgies of nationalism. Beneath all the talk of international cooperation through sport, the real face of capitalism has never been very far from the surface on these occasions. In 1936 the Olympics were a blatant advertisement for Nazism (and thus for its bourgeois mirror image, anti-fascism). In 1956, the Melbourne Olympics helped drown the noise of the western imperialists’ adventure at Suez and Russia’ brutal liquidation of the Hungarian workers’ uprising. In 1968, the Mexico Olympics were preceded by a mass slaughter of student protestors. In 1972, the Munich Olympics became part of the inter-imperialist struggle in the Middle East and of the European anti-terrorist campaign, following the blood-soaked Palestinian commando raid. The 1978 World Cup helped to bring respectability and fat profits to Argentina’s vicious military junta”.
What is a bit more up to date is the way that the opening ceremonies in the Euros also ask us to take sides in the battle between Woke and anti-Woke: should our players “Take the Knee” to demonstrate against racism in sport, or would we prefer them to “take a stand” against political correctness gone mad? Either way, like the flag waving and the national anthems, all this serves to deluge us with the dominant ideology. Both sides of this “culture war” - multiculturalism and diversity on the one hand, “free speech” and “saying what we all really think” on the other – have their corporate and state backing while presenting themselves as expressions of rebellion against oppression.
It’s a central feature of capitalism that all the collective efforts and skills of the producers are appropriated by the ruling class and become a force standing above and against them. The same can be said for the skills and collectivity that can make sport played well such an exhilarating activity to watch and take part in. In this society of alienation, the best of human potential and achievements are seized on by the reigning power to reinforce the grip of its pernicious ideology, to peddle its fake versions of community, and to justify the savage competition between nation states.
Amos, 4.7.21
For a more in-depth treatment of the issue of sport under capitalism, read the following articles:
The History of Sport Under Capitalism (Part II) - Sport in decadent capitalism (from 1914 to today) [20]
The History of Sport Under Capitalism (Part III) - Sport, nationalism and imperialism [21]
During our last two meetings in France, on 27 March and 12 June, one of the central themes was the revolutionary nature of the proletariat. In addition to the article which gave an account of these debates[1], we endeavoured to consider a more specific line of questions raised by the participants as well as in written contributions[2].
The article below takes up and extends a whole on-going reflection by integrating a good number of elements brought up by the discussion on the phenomenon of "uberisation". In addition to the insights provided, based in part on the contributions from the debates, the article below endeavours to place the issues in a historical framework by drawing on the foundations of marxism and the experience of the workers' movement. From our point of view, this effort should help to provide a political framework for further reflection and clarification. As such, the article is in our view more a contribution than a definitive answer to the questions raised.
In the 2000s, a new form of business emerged in the United States, driven in particular by the car and driver booking platform Uber. Other companies were quickly born or transformed on the basis of this model, a phenomenon that would soon be called "uberisation". Some see in this the capacity of capitalism to evolve in order to adapt to new technologies and make the most of them, while others are alarmed at the destruction that the model is wreaking on the contractual employment relationship, in other words, on wage employment.
For the ICC, there is no doubt that this model is an attempt to generate new and profitable activities by making good use of the means provided by the Internet and using it to achieve flexibility of work and the lowest possible costs. Today, we see these "new" workers every day, bicycle delivery drivers, cab drivers, etc.
However, these workers are not, strictly speaking, employees. They own at least part of their tool of the job (their bike, their car, etc.); they are not bound to their platform by an employment contract but sell it as a service. They generally have the official status of "independent entrepreneur". This raises fundamental questions: are these workers, whatever their economic condition, part of the working class? Can their struggles contribute to the effort of the working class to resist exploitation?
Uberised workers are part of the working class
At first glance, the proletarian character of these workers is fluid. On the one hand, young bicycle delivery drivers often only have this activity to survive. On the other hand, some cab drivers proudly display their big cars and openly dream of being "their own boss". The fact is that we are not faced with a "homogeneous" sector, as might be the case for railway workers, teachers, textile workers, etc. Beyond this real heterogeneity, we know that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being; it is their social being that determines their consciousness"[3]. The fact that a cab driver dreams of being a boss does not make him bourgeois or petty-bourgeois. He may be bourgeois or petty-bourgeois by virtue of his material conditions.
So are the self-employed workers on platforms materially bosses? To answer this question, we could base ourselves on the legal relationships that bind them to their platform. As we have explained, these workers are not employees, they sell a service as any craftsman does to his customers. The only difference here is that this sale is part of a triangular relationship between a service provider, a seller and a buyer, a relationship that can also be found in the transport sector (travel agencies), brokerage, etc. The worker therefore has no legal obligation to pay for the service.
The worker is therefore not legally dependent on the platform. He is legally free. However, legal relationships are not sufficient to analyse this type of relationship. In his examination of the birth and development of capitalism, Marx stresses the need to take into account the relations of production in the relationship between capital and labour. Within this framework, he identifies two historical phases: the formal domination of capital, and its real domination[4].
In the formal domination, we find the first capitalist concentrations, the manufactories, which precede the industrial era, particularly in the textile field. In this first evolution of the relations of production of capitalism, the workers remain more or less dependent on capital. Many of them still keep their tools and, from the raw material supplied by the capitalist, produce a product which they sell to the same capitalist. The best-known case concerns the textile sector, such as the Silesian weavers mentioned by Marx in 1844, or the first silk workers in Lyon. The latter owned their own loom and produced silk pieces for a manufacturer. They therefore worked "by the piece" or "to order".
This 'pre-capitalist' labour relationship is similar today, by analogy, to the relationship between the self-employed worker and his or her commissioning platform: the worker is not legally dependent on the capitalist but remains dependent on him or her economically. Marx outlines two characteristics of this relationship: "1. an economic relationship of domination and subordination, because the capitalist now consumes labour power, and thus supervises and directs it; 2. a great continuity and increased intensity of labour"[5].
In this context, too, the early textile workers were forced to work long hours to compete with other exploited workers in greater concentrations. How can we fail to see some of these characteristics in the Uber driver or delivery person or whatever? They have no other way of working than to wait for orders from their platform. There is no other way to increase their income than to increase their working time (for example, for a pizza delivery driver by multiplying his daily runs). The platform is therefore the sole authoriser, unlike a craftsman or a transport company, which can generate business outside the agencies or brokers. What is more, the economic dependence is total when we know that the platform bases its orders on algorithms that favour the most available and fastest workers and can "deactivate" a worker who does not give satisfaction. This is done by pushing competition to the extreme, with no regard for workers' health. Finally, it is the platform that takes most of the surplus value generated by the activity. The worker receives a fixed payment for each order.
We can therefore see that although the worker's submission to the platform is not based on a tangible legal link, this submission nevertheless takes all the forms of the platform in economic terms. It is therefore not disputable that these workers are part of the working class, although their exploitation is not enshrined in a wage contract.
Are uber-workers the new spearheads of the working class struggle?
The status of these workers also makes them very precarious and subjects them to super-exploitation. Along with the unemployed, they are undoubtedly among the proletarians most affected by the effects of the crisis of capitalism. It would therefore be tempting to think that this situation inflicted by capital is likely to develop in them a greater combativeness than in other fractions of the proletariat whose status would be more "protected". Moreover, this brutal confrontation with the effects of the economic crisis could lead them to understand more quickly than other sectors of the proletariat that capitalism has no way out for humanity. After all, didn't their predecessors, the silk workers or the Silesian weavers, lead what are considered the first "anti-capitalist" struggles in history?
However, while there is much that brings today's self-employed workers closer to those of the 19th century, there is also much that separates them. In the 19th century, this form of relationship between capital and labour prefigured the relationship that was to dominate capitalist production, i.e. the wage-earning system brought about by the development of mechanisation and industry. Today, uberisation is the result of the impasse of the economic crisis and the need to find 'new' forms of labour exploitation. In the 19th century, the silk workers, for example, were among the most skilled and therefore best paid workers in factories. Today, digital platform workers are among the most precarious of proletarians.
Furthermore, the development of the capitalist mode of production has led to an extreme division of labour within factories, made both possible and necessary by the development of machinery and technology. This division of labour causes a "mass socialisation of labour by capitalism". As Marx puts it, "the co-operative character of the labour process now becomes a technical necessity dictated by the nature of the means of labour itself"[6].
Thus, for two centuries capitalism has not ceased to develop a production based on associated labour, progressively destroying the relations of production based on the formal domination of capital over labour. Uberisation operates a reverse dynamic, atomising workers in relation to each other, putting them in brutal competition for the sale of a service.
Yet the associated character of labour in capitalism is a fundamental element of the identity of the working class, a character that allows proletarians to become aware that they suffer the same conditions of exploitation and therefore have the same interest in fighting it. In other words, associated labour is an essential determinant of the development of class consciousness and this determinant is sorely lacking among the self-employed.
The bourgeoisie tries to valorise this model by presenting the status of "self-employed" as a much "freer" status compared to wage labour and offering much more perspectives to develop one's own "business". This flexibility has, in fact, allowed the model to develop well in the United States, as it allowed the many workers who needed a second job to support themselves to synchronise more “freely” their main job with this side activity. The illusions of being able to get by on one's own has led to the petty-bourgeois individualist ideology taking root among these proletarians. This ideology is also expressed in the attempts to create self-managed delivery companies such as Coopcycle, which aim to be an "anarcho-communist" alternative to the market domination of large groups such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and others.
Such great precariousness has never been a factor favourable to the development of workers' combativeness and consciousness. This precariousness is accompanied by extreme insecurity and an exacerbation of competition between workers.
Moreover, because of the atomisation in which these workers find themselves within the sphere of production and their inexperience of the class struggle, their struggles remain very isolated. This also constitutes a serious handicap for linking up with the struggles of other sectors and building on the historical gains of the working class struggle.
The ICC has always defended that the vanguard of the proletariat is located in the countries where it has experienced the greatest development, acquired experience of associated labour, of struggles and their collective organisation, of its defeats and of the lessons that can be drawn from them. In this respect, this sector of "uber-workers" cannot play a leading role in the general struggle of the working class against the capitalist system. For all that, these workers are by no means lost to the class struggle. However, this role can only take place in a movement initiated by the most advanced and experienced fractions of the proletariat who, through the development of their conscious struggle, will succeed in rallying the whole class to their fight, even its weakest parts.
It is important that revolutionaries have a lucid analysis of the state of the working class and do not seek to console themselves with the present weaknesses of the proletariat through the hope that the proletariat will quickly overcome the difficulties that weigh on its combativity and consciousness. The decomposition of the capitalist system only accentuates the difficulties of the working class to reconquer its identity and to reconnect with its historical project. The whole working class is under the weight of the decomposition, but it is clear that its weakest parts remain much more vulnerable.
If the most precarious and isolated fractions of the proletariat can show a great combativity, they do not present, by themselves, a real threat to capital. Nothing in the current situation favours any change in this reality, on the contrary. It is clearly in these fractions that we must today classify the workers of digital transport or delivery platforms. The emergence of this fraction of the proletariat cannot displace the historical responsibility that continues to be entrusted to the most experienced fractions of the world proletariat.
Révolution Internationale, 29.6.21
[1] « Le prolétariat demeure l’ennemi et le fossoyeur du capital » [22], Révolution internationale n° 488
[2] Are “uberised” employees part of the working class? | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [23]
[3] Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy
[4] We analyse these concepts in response to false interpretations of their meaning in the proletarian political milieu in our series of articles “Understanding the decadence of capitalism”, Part 8: The 'real domination' of capitalism and the real confusions of the proletarian milieu | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [24]
[5] Marx Capital Vol 1, chapter 6
[6] Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 13
For British populists and Brexiteers, the nostalgic dreams of an Empire that covered a quarter of the land surface of the globe and where the sun never set, are turning into nightmares. The campaign for “Global Britain” will not be able to prevent this.
In 2021 the geopolitical landscape for the UK has fundamentally changed. Britain has lost much of its power. Its relations with the Continent, its position in NATO and its links with the Commonwealth, are all being challenged.
The relationship with the US at least gave the UK an influential role as an intermediary between Washington and Brussels. In cutting itself off from Europe the UK has shot itself in the foot. “We are no longer an irreplaceable bridge between Europe and America. We are now less relevant to them both.” (John Major)
In the Brexit negotiations the UK acted on the assumption that it shared an equal place on the world stage with other international powers. But Brexit has confirmed that the British bourgeoisie is deluded. With the conclusion of the negotiations with the EU it is now operating in a world dominated by the US, China and the EU, where it has isolated itself.
Under the present changed geopolitical conditions the UK will have to re-establish its political relations with the key countries in the world. It will have to fight its way to the diplomatic table, especially now the US administration is starting to re-energise its relationship with NATO, the UN and other multilateral organisations.
In March the British government initiated its strategy for “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”. This project sets out British ambitions for new commercial opportunities and pathways to global influence. But this refurbished version of the “Integrated Review of Security, Defence and Foreign Policy” from 2015 is not going to solve the UK's fundamental problems after leaving the EU.
Internal tensions and fractures in the U.K.
The decline of its position on the international arena has also led to growing conflicts within the UK itself, for instance with the devolved governments of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Brexit referendum of 2016 “gave a huge impulse to Scottish nationalism.” ("Populism leads to growing instability and fragmentation" [25]). Since then the calls for Scottish independence have become stronger by the year. At the beginning of 2021, 54 per cent of Scots supported an independent Scotland, which was 8 per cent more than in 2014. Recent opinion polls in key EU member states show that support is increasing for an independent Scotland becoming a member state of the EU.
Over the last decade the forces in Northern Ireland looking to break away from the UK have become stronger. The Northern Ireland Protocol only added fuel to the fire, by further isolating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. The growing tensions in the Six Counties are actually “pulling at the integrity of the British State itself” (ibid) and threaten to make the national fragmentation a reality. In the meantime, the US administration has warned Johnson not to violate the Protocol and to respect the Good Friday Agreement: the open border between the North and the South has to be protected.
In the political establishment in London tensions are also rising to the extent that competing ministers, political advisers and even family members are engaged in a sordid turf war. In the last two months, in an atmosphere of doubt, jealousy and suspicion, accusations between Johnson, Hancock and Cummings have flown back and forth. The last expression was “the heavy artillery against the government” brought about by Dominic Cummings in “a massive campaign on social media”. ("Bourgeois vendettas and the distortion of science" [26])
Class against class
These growing tensions and fractures within the UK and the ensuing struggles between bourgeois factions present great dangers for the working class. It presents “workers with a disorientating perspective” ("Populism leads to growing instability and fragmentation", ibid). But they must resist the pressure to support any of the bourgeois cliques. The ability of workers to resist these pressures can only be realised when they fight “as a class antagonistic to capital” (ibid). The only prospect is to struggle on a class terrain.
In the past months, workers in the UK and elsewhere have demonstrated that they still possess this ability, as was shown for instance by a recent wildcat strike by 30-40 workers at the Gateshead Amazon warehouse construction site. Workers there protested for two days against their sudden dismissal. Persistence and working class solidarity bore fruit, as all sacked workers were reinstated on the third day of the strike.
The same capacity was shown on 3 July when dozens of marches took place across Britain in protest against the government’s proposed 1% pay rise for NHS workers, which has been widely condemned by health workers.
Such small struggles may not be spectacular, but they are the seeds for the future autonomy of the working class against capital.
WR 4/7/21
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/flood_damage_germany.jpg
[2] https://www.liberation.fr/international/europe/inondations-le-nombre-de-morts-atteint-133-en-allemagne-153-en-europe-20210717_AAKJJWRYWZEGNJIQ3KKNNKBDQY/
[3] https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Warum-warnten-nicht-ueberall-Sirenen-vor-der-Flut-article22692234.html
[4] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/10514/inondations-secheresses-incendies-capitalisme-conduit-lhumanite-vers-cataclysme#sdfootnote4anc
[5] https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article232656933/Annalena-Baerbock-Klimaschutz-faellt-nicht-vom-Himmel.html
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/ethiopia-tigray-war-map-of-control_2020-11-18_passport-party.png
[7] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/26/u-s-africa-envoy-ethiopia-crisis-tigray-jeffrey-feltman-biden-diplomacy-horn-of-africa/
[8] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/pressure-from-us-eu-could-destabilize-ethiopia/2216638
[9] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/eritrea#
[10] https://time.com/6076167/famine-tigray/
[11] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/29/world/tigray-ethiopia
[12] https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/what-ethiopias-ethnic-unrest-means-for-china/
[13] https://igcl.org/Balance-y-perspectivas-del-23o
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17001/truth-revolutionary-factual-history-communist-left-correspondence-ict
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/darwin-charles-descent-b20137-28_0.jpg
[16] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch05.htm
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/04/darwin-and-the-descent-of-man
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/08_jun_js_flags_22.jpg
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201301/6055/history-sport-under-capitalism-part-i-sport-ascendant-phase-capitalism-1
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201301/6346/history-sport-under-capitalism-part-ii-sport-decadent-capitalism-1914-today
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201302/6420/history-sport-under-capitalism-part-iii-sport-nationalism-and-imperialism
[22] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/10455/reunion-publique-ligne-du-27-mars-2021-proletariat-demeure-lennemi-et-fossoyeur-du
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17027/are-uberised-employees-part-working-class
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/060_decadence_part08.html
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17035/populism-accelerates-instability-and-fragmentation
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17036/cummings-revelations-bourgeois-vendettas-and-distortion-science