To mark the 20th ‘anniversary’ of the September 11 attacks in New York, we draw our readers’ attention to our lead article from International Review 107, “New York and the world over: Capitalism sows death”. The article denounces the massacre of thousands of civilians, the majority of them proletarians, as an act of imperialist war, but at the same time exposes the hypocritical tears shed by the ruling class. As the article says, “The attack on New York was not an ‘attack on civilisation’, it was itself the expression of bourgeois ‘civilisation’”. The terrorist gang engaged in the destruction of the Twin Towers are petty assassins when we examine their action in the light of the gigantic death toll inflicted on the planet by all the legally recognised states over the past hundred or so years, in two world wars and countless local and regional conflicts since 1945

In this sense, 9/11 was in continuity with the bombing of Guernica, Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 30s and 40s, of Vietnam and Cambodia in the 60s and 70s. But it was also a clear sign that that decadent capitalism had entered a new and terminal phase, the true “inner disintegration” predicted by the Communist International in 1919. The opening of this new phase was marked by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989 and the resulting fragmentation of the US bloc, and would see capitalism’s inevitable drive towards imperialist conflict take on new and chaotic forms. This was symbolised in particular by the fact that (even if was less certain at the time the article was written) the attack was spearheaded by Al-Qaida, an Islamist faction which had been amply supported by the US in its efforts to end the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, but which had now turned round to bite the hand that fed it. The “New World Order” proclaimed by George Bush Senior after the fall the USSR rapidly proved itself to be a world of growing disorder, where former allies and subordinates of the US, from the developed states of Europe to second- and third-rate powers like Iran and Turkey, down to smaller warlords like Bin Laden, were more and more intent on pursuing their own imperialist agendas.

The article thus shows how the US was able to instrumentalise the attacks, not only to whip up nationalism at home – accompanied, as soon became evident, by a brutal reinforcement of state surveillance and repression, and embodied in the “Patriot Act” passed on 26.10.01– but also to launch its attack on Afghanistan, whose first steps were already noted at the time of writing (3.10.01). Afghanistan, of course, has long held a strategic place on the global imperialist chessboard, and the US had specific reasons for wanting to topple the Taliban regime with its close links to Al Qaida. But the overarching aim of the US invasion – followed two years later by the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – was to move towards what the “Neo-Cons” in the government of Bush Junior referred to as “Full Spectrum Dominance”. In other word, ensuring that the US remained the only “Super Power” by calling a halt to the growing chaos in imperialist relations and preventing the rise of any serious contender at the global level. The “War on Terror” was to be the ideological pretext for this offensive.

20 years later we can see that the plan didn’t go too well. The last US troops have had to leave Afghanistan and are on their way out of Iraq. The Taliban are back in power. Far from damming the tide of imperialist chaos, the US invasions became a factor in its acceleration. In Afghanistan, the early victory against the Taliban turned sour as the Islamists regrouped and, with the aid of other imperialist states, made sure that Afghanistan remained in a permanent state of civil war, characterised by bloody atrocities on both sides. In Iraq, dismantling the Saddam regime led both to the rise of ISIS and the reinforcement of Iranian ambitions in the region, fuelling the seemingly endless wars in Syria and Yemen. And on the planetary level, the advancing decomposition provided the background for the return in force of Russian imperialism, and above all for the rise of China as the USA’s main imperialist rival. The different strategies for “making America great again”, from the Neo-Cons to Trump, have been unable to reverse the inexorable decline of US power, and Biden, despite claiming that “America is back”, has now had to preside over America’s biggest humiliation since 9/11 itself.

In analysing the manner in which the US sought to “profit from the crime” of 9/11, the article shows the similarities between 9/11 and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, which was also utilised by the US state to mobilise the population, including reluctant sections of the ruling class, behind the USA’s entry into the Second World War. It cites well-documented evidence that the US state “allowed” the Japanese military to launch the attack, and tentatively advances the hypothesis that the US state, at some level, had the same “laissez faire” policy in the lead up to the Al-Qaida action, even if may not have been fully aware of the scale of destruction this would entail. This comparison is further elaborated in the article published in International Review 108, “Pearl Harbour 1941, Twin Towers 2001: Machiavellianism of the US bourgeoisie”. We will return to this question in another article, where we will discuss the difference between the marxist recognition of the bourgeoisie as the most Machiavellian class in history – naturally dismissed by the bourgeoisie itself as a form of “conspiracy theory” – and the current plethora of populist “conspiracy theories” which often take as an article of faith the idea that 9/11 was an “inside job”.

WR

Links to articles:

https://en.internationalism.org/ir/107_new_york.html [2]

https://en.internationalism.org/ir/108_machiavel.htm [3]

The global Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across all continents with all states unable to make a coordinated response. Indeed, the main events of the last two months confirm the deadly dynamic into which capitalism is plunging civilisation.

Recurring climate disasters

The summer of 2021 has been the hottest ever on record and been marked by the proliferation and accumulation of catastrophes in the four corners of the planet: large scale fires across several parts of the globe, torrential rains in China and India, flooding in the north-west of Europe, mudslides in Japan, deadly hurricanes and floods, extreme heat waves and droughts in the US, and a heat dome in Canada

The scale, frequency and simultaneity of the extreme effects of global warming have reached an unprecedented scale in recent months, literally ravaging vast areas, in most cases causing hundreds of deaths (most notably in developed countries like the United States, Germany and Belgium), and the resulting devastation has left millions of people in despair. In the midst of the catastrophe, the fact that the latest report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), published in early August 2021, is warning once again about the acceleration of climate change and the unprecedented increase in extreme weather events, is no surprise.

Although the media did widely report the IPCC's alarming conclusions, they were quick to play them down, indicating that the situation was not hopeless, since the supposed salvation of the planet lay, according to the report, in the implementation of a "green economy" and the cultivation of "eco-responsible" individual behaviour. Such lies and distortions have the goal of masking the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to cope with the situation brought about from the fact that "States and emergency services, suffering from decades of budget cuts, are disorganised and failing". (1)

But the chain of disasters of recent weeks is only a small glimpse of what awaits humanity in the years and decades ahead if the downward spiral into which capitalism in decomposition is plunging humanity is not brought to an end. This is all the more the case since other major world events are aggravating this endless chaos.

The Afghan chaos

The chaotic departure of the US army from Afghanistan after 20 years, and the return to power of the Taliban, is a further sign of the inability of the great powers to guarantee global stability, particularly in areas where tensions and rivalries between states are rampant. As we can already see, the return to power of a reactionary and delusional faction such as the Taliban in Afghanistan only adds to worldwide disorder and instability at all levels. Here again, the media has focused attention on the notorious return to power of the bloodthirsty Taliban. However, the cruelty and terror inflicted on the population by this clique, with its medieval and obscurantist ideas, hardly rivals the crimes which the "democratic" countries and their allies have been guilty of for decades, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

There is increasing impoverishment

In addition to these two major pieces of evidence of capitalist society rotting on its feet, there is the significant and clear worsening of the economic crisis, especially since the situation has been dramatically affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. While up to now "the effects of decomposition, the increase of every man for himself and the loss of control have mainly affected the superstructure of the capitalist system, they now are tending to have a direct impact on the economic base of the system and its capacity to manage economic jolts as it sinks into its historical crisis." (2)  Behind the false declarations of a "flourishing economic recovery", there are millions of people being laid off, evicted from their homes or unable to “see out the month”. The younger members of the working class are faced with atrocious job insecurity, with many having to resort to the support of charity from food banks. And with famine on the rise across Africa particularly, we are now seeing record numbers going hungry even in the United States.

Who can offer humanity a perspective?
The barbarity of war, the ecological disaster, the epidemics and the multiple economic and social disasters are not phenomena unrelated to each other.  In their development, their simultaneity, their interaction and their scale, they combine as evidence of "a system that is drifting towards a complete impasse with no future to offer to the majority of the world's population, except that of unthinkable barbarism". (3)

While the bourgeoisie never ceases to exploit all the atrocities and abominations of this period, aiming to terrorise and paralyse the working class and undermine its confidence that an alternative future is possible, it would be wrong to assume that "the game is up". For sure, the working class has still to overcome the profound retreat in its consciousness that has lasted for nearly three decades. However, it still remains objectively the only revolutionary class within capitalist society despite this; in other words, it's the only social force capable of guiding humanity on a different path from the catastrophic future offered by capitalism. Throughout these three decades, the proletariat has repeatedly shown its capacity to confront the bourgeois state by refusing to accept the degradation of its working and living conditions. Although these struggles been limited in their development, they are nonetheless a valuable learning experience for the future. The proletarian revolution is not a beautiful idea that will fall from the sky by the grace of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, it is a concrete, long and torturous struggle in which the working class will realise its revolutionary potential through the accumulation of experience and by learning the lessons of its defeats.

Indeed, the struggles against the attacks on working conditions form the privileged terrain on which the working class can organise itself through its own resources and thus develop the basis of its international solidarity. In a decaying capitalism, the future belongs to the working class more than ever!

Vincent, 2 September 2021

1) Capitalism is dragging humanity towards a planet-wide catastrophe | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [7]  (July 2021)

2) Report on the pandemic and the development of decomposition | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [8]

3) "Theses on Decomposition", International Review No. 107 [9], (4th quarter 2001).

Dates for online discussions:

Saturday October 16th for participants from Asia /Europe, starting at UK time 11.00am, and on Sunday October 17th for participants from Europe/USA, starting at UK time 6.00pm.

To prepare the discussion, we suggest that comrades read the resolution on the international situation from our 24th International Congress:

https://en.internationalism.org/content/17062/resolution-international-situation-adopted-24th-icc-congress [10]

We have also published a  Report on the pandemic and the development of decomposition [8]which offers additional material.

In our Report on the international class struggle to the 24th ICC Congress [11] we try to offer a detailed analysis of the present state of the class struggle.

Please write to us at [email protected] [12] to let us know if you want to attend, and which day suits you best.

While the Covid-19 crisis has persisted for almost two years with its heavy health, social, political and economic impact on most of the world's states, this has in no way moderated their imperialist appetites. The rise in tensions has been particularly marked in recent months by a clear exacerbation of the opposition between the USA and China, highlighted most recently by the so-called “Aukus” agreement between the US, Britain and Australia, and explicitly aimed at China.

Polarisation of tensions in the China Sea

The Biden administration is not only maintaining the aggressive economic measures against China implemented by Trump, but it has above all increased the pressure on the political level (defence of the rights of the Uighurs and Hong Kong, rapprochement with Taiwan with which it is currently negotiating a trade agreement, accusations of computer hacking) and also on the military level in the China Sea, and this in a rather spectacular way since the beginning of April:

- On 7 April, the US deployed an aircraft carrier group (the USS Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied by its flotilla) to the South China Sea and the missile destroyer USS John S. McCain transited the Taiwan Strait (located between China and Taiwan);

- On 11 May, American, French (the amphibious helicopter carrier Tonnerre and the frigate Surcouf), Japanese and Australian ships began joint military exercises (ARC21) in the East China Sea, the first of their kind in this strategic area, not far from the Senkaku, uninhabited islets administered by Japan in the East China Sea and claimed by Beijing, which calls them Diaoyu. Before these exercises, the French ships had taken part in the La Pérouse exercises in the Bay of Bengal with American, Australian and Japanese Indian ships. Then, the Tonnerre passed south of Taiwan to reach Japan, while the Surcouf also chose the Taiwan Strait;

- The French presence in Japan is to be followed in 2021 by that of the German frigate Hessen, with Berlin expressing in 2020 its wish to have a greater presence in the Indo-Pacific, and the archipelago will host the British naval air group Queen Elizabeth in 2022.

- In September, the US, Britain and Australia announced a new defence agreement, known as “Aukus”, centred round expanding these countries’ military presence in the seas around China. The three countries will share military intelligence and technological knowledge which will enable Australia to build nuclear power submarines. The Aukus pact constitutes a slap in the face for France, with Australia cancelling a billion-dollar contract with France to build a submarine fleet. Reacting with fury, France has withdrawn its ambassadors from the US and Australia [1]. China has denounced the pact as the start of a new Cold War, although it will no doubt be gratified by these new divisions among its western rivals.

China for its part has reacted furiously to these political and military pressures, particularly those concerning Taiwan:

- In early April, in response to the presence of the US fleet, the aircraft carrier Liaoning accompanied by 5 warships operated in the waters east of the “rebel island”. Taiwanese fighter jets had to take off in a hurry to repel the entry of fifteen Chinese planes into the identification zone of Taiwan's air defence;

- On 19 May, a Hong Kong-based think tank affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party released a study highlighting the fact that tensions in the Taiwan Strait had become so sharp that they indicate an “all-time high” risk of war between mainland China and Taiwan;

- on 15 June, in response to the NATO meeting marking some agreement between the US and the EU on the China issue, twenty-eight Chinese fighter jets entered the Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) of former Formosa, the largest incursion of People's Liberation Army (PLA) fighters and bombers ever recorded;

- in early July, the Chinese magazine Naval and Merchant Ships published a plan for a three-stage surprise attack on Taiwan, which would lead to a total defeat of the “rebel province's” armed forces. Finally, at the end of August, the annual report of the Taiwanese Ministry of Defence warned that China “can now combine digital operations of its army that would initially paralyse our air defences, sea command centres and counter-attack capabilities, posing a huge threat to us” [2]

Warnings, threats and intimidation have thus followed one another in recent months in the China Sea. They underline the growing pressure exerted by the US on China. In this context, the United States is doing everything possible to draw other Asian countries behind them, worried about Beijing's expansionist ambitions (“The ARC21 exercise is a means of dissuasion in the face of China's increasingly aggressive behaviour in the region”, says Takashi Kawakami, director of the Institute of International Studies at Takushoku University (Japan) [3]. The USA is thus trying to create a sort of Asian NATO, the QUAD, bringing together the United States, Japan, Australia and India. On the other hand, and in the same sense, Biden wants to revive NATO in order to involve European countries in his policy of pressure against China.

To complete the picture, the tensions between NATO and Russia should not be overlooked either: after the incident of the Ryanair flight hijacked and intercepted by Belarus to arrest a dissident who had taken refuge in Lithuania, there were the NATO manoeuvres in the Black Sea off the Ukraine in June, where a clash occurred between a British frigate and Russian ships, and, in September, joint manoeuvres between the Russian and Belarusian armies on the borders of Poland and the Baltic States.

These events confirm that rising imperialist tensions are generating polarisation between the US and China on the one hand and NATO and Russia on the other, which in turn is pushing China and Russia to strengthen their ties with each other in order to confront the US and NATO.

Decomposition generates instability

However, the “Kabul debacle” [4] underlines how the decomposition and persistent destabilisation accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis stimulate centrifugal forces and exacerbate the "every man for himself" attitude of the various imperialisms, thus constantly thwarting any stabilisation of alliances:

- The precipitous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, designed to concentrate military forces in the face of China, was carried out without consulting the allies, whereas Biden had promised a few months earlier at the G7 summit and at the NATO meeting that consultation and coordination would return; this withdrawal also means that the US is abandoning its allies on the ground (cf. the earlier dropping of the Kurds and the cooling of relations with Saudi Arabia) and can only reinforce the mistrust of countries such as India and South Korea towards an ally that is proving to be unreliable, as well as Europe's determination to create defence structures that are more independent of the US;

- On the other hand, the return to power of the Taliban constitutes a serious potential danger for Islamist infiltration into China (via the “Uighur problem”), especially since their allies, the Pakistani Taliban (the TTP), are engaged in a campaign of attacks against the “New Silk Road” construction sites, which has already led to the death of a dozen or so Chinese “cooperators”. This is prompting China to intensify its attempts to establish itself in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) to counter the danger. But these republics are traditionally part of the Russian sphere of influence, which increases the danger of confrontation with this 'strategic ally', with whom its long-term interests are fundamentally opposed anyway: the New Silk Road bypasses Russia and the latter is wary of China's growing economic hold on its Siberian territories;

- The chaos and the imperialist “every man for himself” in the world constantly accentuate the unpredictability of the positioning of the various states: the US is forced to keep up the pressure with regular aerial bombardments on Shiite militias harassing its forces in Iraq; the Russians have to play fireman in the armed confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, instigated by Turkey's imperialist self-interest; the spread of chaos in the Horn of Africa through the civil war in Ethiopia, with Sudan and Egypt supporting the Tigray region and Eritrea supporting the central Ethiopian government, is upsetting in particular the Chinese plans to use Ethiopia as a base for their “Belt and Road” project in North East Africa, and to this end they have installed a military base in Djibouti.

- The uncontrolled expansion of the pandemic linked to the generalisation of the Delta variant requires greater attention from states to the domestic situation, which may have an unpredictable impact on their imperialist policies. For example, the stagnation of vaccination in the USA, after an initial strong start, is causing a new wave of infection in the central and southern states. This leads to new coercive measures by the Biden administration, which in turn revives the recriminations of Trump's supporters. Similarly, in Russia, the government is faced with a resurgence of the epidemic, while vaccination is stalled and the population is extremely suspicious of Russian vaccines, leading the mayor of Moscow (where 15% of the population is vaccinated) to take measures making vaccination almost compulsory.

In China, where the government is counting on herd immunity before opening up the country, the worrying health situation requires constant attention. On the one hand, until this is achieved, China imposes strict lockdowns whenever infections are identified, and this severely hampers commercial activities. For example, last May, after some dockworkers in the port of Yantian became infected, the world's third largest container port was totally isolated for a week, with workers forced to quarantine themselves on site. Now again, entire regions are confined because of the spreading Delta variant, the strongest eruption since Wuhan in December 2019. Secondly, this quest for herd immunity has prompted a number of Chinese provinces and cities to impose heavy penalties on recalcitrants. These initiatives were widely criticised on Chinese social networks and were stopped by the government because they tended to “jeopardise national cohesion”. Finally, perhaps the most serious problem is the increasingly converging evidence about the limited effectiveness of Chinese vaccines.

In such a context, the rise of warlike tensions is inevitable. On the one hand, it indicates a certain polarisation, especially between the USA and China, underlined by a growing aggressiveness of the USA, which knows that, despite China's enormous investments in the modernisation of its armed forces, these cannot yet compete with the military power of the USA, especially in the air, at sea and in terms of its nuclear arsenal.

However, the chaos and the exacerbated “each for himself” constantly make any alliance unstable, stimulate imperialist appetites in all directions and push the major powers to avoid a direct confrontation between their armies, with a massive commitment of military personnel on the ground (“boots on the ground”), as illustrated by the withdrawal of US soldiers from Afghanistan. Instead, they have recourse to private military companies (Wagner organisation by the Russians, Blackwater/Academi by the USA, etc.) or to local militias to carry out actions on the ground: use of Syrian Sunni militias by Turkey in Libya and Azerbaijan, Kurdish militias by the USA in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah or Iraqi Shiite militias by Iran in Syria, Sudanese militias by Saudi Arabia in Yemen ....

The form that the expansion of these tensions is taking therefore heralds a multiplication of increasingly bloody and barbaric warlike confrontations in an environment marked by instability and chaos.

18.09.21/ R. Havanais

In the face of the looming ecological catastrophe, disquiet and indignation are immense, as shown by the “marches for the climate” in 2019, which mobilised millions of young people from many countries. New protests are now taking place in many countries. At the time, we showed that these marches were situated on a totally bourgeois terrain. This is why we invite our readers to read or re-read the international leaflet we distributed at the first marches of 2019, which remains fully valid.

For several months, we have been seeing an increase in climate disasters all over the planet: drought, gigantic fires, devastating rainfalls, mud slides, floods…While the victims of the environmental crisis can be counted in millions every year, even the most powerful states are showing themselves to be more and more powerless to prevent these catastrophes. The latest report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has confirmed that the disturbance of the climate is spiralling out of control.

In our press, we have regularly shown that the roots of global heating are to be sought in the very functioning of capitalism. Not only are climate catastrophes more and more numerous, destructive, and uncontrollable, but states, following years of budget cuts, are less and less able to protect the populations from their effects, as we saw recently in Germany, the US and China. The bourgeoisie can no longer deny the scale of the calamity, but it doesn’t stop explaining, above all via the ecologist parties, that governments can take vigorous measures in favour of the environment. All factions of the ruling class have their pet solutions: “green economy”, degrowth, local production etc. All these so-called solutions have a common point: capitalism can be reformed. But the hunt for profit, the pillage of natural resources, crazy overproduction of commodities are not “options” for capitalism, they are the sine qua non of its existence.

In the face of this looming catastrophe, disquiet and indignation are immense, as shown by the “marches for the climate” in 2019, which mobilised millions of young people from many countries. At the time, we nevertheless showed that these marches were situated on a totally bourgeois terrain: “citizens” were called on to put pressure on the bourgeoisie state, this monstrous machine whose reason for existing is to defend the very capitalist interests which lie at the origins of the unprecedented deterioration of the environment. In reality, the climate problem can only be resolved on a world scale; and capitalism, in which nations confront each other pitilessly on the global market, is incapable of providing a response. The grand environmental conferences in which each state cynically defends its sordid interests under the cover of defending the environment are a crying illustration of this.  The only class which can really show the meaning of internationalism and bring an end to the anarchy of production is the working class. The only solution to the environmental crisis is the society it bears within itself: communism.

After a year which has announced the catastrophes of the future, the ecological parties, Extinction Rebellion and the left wing of capital (Stalinists, Trotskyists, anarchists, social democrats etc) will try to push for all kinds of marches and protests around the question of the climate. This is a new initiative of the bourgeoisie to channel anger into the same political dead-ends: the dilution of the working class into the “people”, illusions about the ability of the “democratic state” to change things. This is why we invite our readers to read or re-read the international leaflet we distributed at the first marches of 2019, which remains fully valid.

Link to leaflet:

Capitalism threatens the planet and the survival of humanity: Only the struggle of the world proletariat can put an end to this threat | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [16]

In the past months (in particular in July and August) protests have been multiplying in various parts of the world in which voices against mandatory vaccination and health passes, which are judged to be “liberticidal”, were expressed in an anarchic and contradictory way. There have been demonstrations from Australia to Spain, from Canada to Kazakhstan, and with Europe as the centre stage. In France in particular the demonstrations took on mass proportions with tens of thousands of people coming onto the street seven weekends in a row. In many cases these demonstrations were a melting pot of individuals or families indignant about this or that governmental declaration or decision, isolated proletarians and, as in France, even the participation of political parties ranging from the extreme left of capital to the extreme right, as well as demonstrators claiming to be part of the Yellow Vest movement. It's hard not to get lost in such a formless magma.

These demonstrations were in no way an expression of proletarian struggle. On the contrary, they expressed a primary impulse of nationalism, with the presence of numerous national flags (France, Latvia, Italy, Slovakia), and of Christian fundamentalism, with the presence of wooden crosses (Greece) in the ranks of the protesters, extreme confusion, admission of impotence, disarray, and the dominant irrationality in the face of a health and social crisis which affects the whole capitalist world. This crystallisation around multifaceted claims that combine distrust of science with calls for the defence of “individual liberties” is indeed the talk of the media, where contradictory, divergent and sometimes far-fetched interests are weighed against governmental measures that are falsely presented as the expression of the defence of the common good in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the outbreak of a fourth wave of infection. As usual, everyone is called upon to position himself as a “citizen”, to choose his side, in the face of this or that health, political and social problem, taken in isolation, thus obscuring the responsibility of the capitalist system as a whole.

Even if a minority of proletarians, sickened by the attitude and the lies of those in power, participated in these demonstrations, they expressed above all a feeling of frustration, of impotent anger proper to the petty-bourgeois strata, and an absence of any perspective. In the US, Greece and Italy the unions, these bourgeois organs for controlling workers’ struggles, supported the protests. In Italy the six largest trade unions reacted to the fact that teachers need a Green Pass to teach at schools, calling it “a unilateral choice” and a “diktat”. In Turin, 650 employees went on strike calling the need for a Green Pass for restaurants discriminatory. In France unions even seized the opportunity to launch strikes.

In particular SUD-Santé and certain CGT federations, unions that present themselves as the most “radical”, seized the opportunity to launch a series of strike notices in different cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Bastia or regions (Hauts-de-France) to call on health workers to mobilise against the compulsory vaccine and demand the repeal of the health pass. Even among firefighters, where the same restrictive measures have been decreed, the autonomous “in-house” union had followed suit. All this in the name of the defence of “freedom of choice”, i.e. on the terrain of bourgeois law, which constitutes a real poison for the working class and its revolutionary perspective.

The extreme left organisations also took advantage of this to further disorientate the working class by feeding the confusion between workers’ demands and the defence of “citizens' rights”, by falsely presenting this movement as “a springboard for future workers’ struggles”. The bourgeoisie and its various political offices, especially those of the left and the far left, know how to use all available resources to spoil the workers’ reflection about the crisis, the ambient chaos, the negligence of the previous months, making full use of the decomposition of the whole capitalist system, explaining, with false airs of respectability, how the bourgeois state should organise the management of the crisis.

In reality, the worsening of the situation is a new expression, not only of the negligence of the bourgeoisie, but above all of the generalised impotence of all states for almost two years, incapable of pooling medical advances and expertise and the means to fight the pandemic. We have witnessed the unbridled competition of laboratories owned by different companies and the use of vaccines as an imperialist weapon by all states, all under the sign of the universal law of capitalist profit.

Why is there so much distrust of vaccines?

How could a part of the population not be afraid that we could be heading for a health scandal, a new edition of the Thalidomide affair, after almost two years of daily lies from the authorities? Governments have been decorating themselves shamelessly with claims to be basing themselves on a rational and scientific vision, when they often blatantly ignored the advice of scientists in the first waves of the pandemic, while at the same time manipulating the most opportunistic of them in the media, to justify the unjustifiable regarding the shortage of masks and sanitary protection at work or in transport. All these lies, government half-truths and lame justifications have obviously created a climate of suspicion in the population. But at the same time, the pandemic has been the occasion for a profusion of wild theories and delusional claims, not only on social networks where conspiracy theorists are most active, but also from the media and politicians themselves.

While billions of people have been vaccinated since the first tests were conducted, the rare “cases” of suspected (and rarely confirmed) dramatic side-effects are being blown out of proportion by pseudo-experts, in defiance of any scientific approach, when they are not simply invented from scratch. Yet Covid-19 has killed more than 4 million people worldwide, probably more... not vaccines! Covid-19 continues to mutate, infect and kill, especially in parts of the world too poor to afford a major vaccine campaign. It also continues to infect and weaken an increasingly young, unvaccinated population in core countries. Some people, however, still doubt the efficacy of vaccines, denouncing a supposed “lack of disinterested research” in the face of “new techniques” (which in fact are not new). Doubt and scepticism are scientific virtues, not irrational mistrust!

The irrational concerns that are more or less reflected in the claims of all vaccine opponents are also not new. Superstitious reticence towards scientific research was already expressed at the end of the 18th century when the first smallpox vaccines were being developed. Pasteur himself, when he discovered the rabies vaccine in 1885, had to deal with these “anti-vax” discourses. He was accused of mistreating animals and of inventing vaccines only to line his own pockets! Nearly a century and a half later, despite unprecedented progress in science and medicine, distrust remains in the most backward sectors of the ruling class and of the population. Today, conspiratorial irrationality even goes so far as to imagine possible genetic modification by RNA technology or political and medical manipulation for state control of the population via the inoculation of microchips during vaccination.

If these various obscurantist discourses resist scientific demonstration, it is because they adapt to each era and each context. But today, the dynamics of ideological decomposition in capitalist society, the feeling of powerlessness in the face of the crisis and the mounting chaos, are impacting on a more educated population and do nothing but rot the entire capacity for logical, scientific and political reasoning in a miasma of sometimes delirious reactionary conceptions and visions.

The bourgeoisie is no stranger to this process: not only have we seen politicians from the far right and even from the ranks of the traditional right propagating totally delusional ideas, but these aberrations have manifested themselves right up to the highest levels of the state. The cases of Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil are well known, but we have also seen the “progressive” Macron and his clique in France openly denigrating scientists or distorting their words in an attempt to justify their short-sighted policies, as when the head of state claimed to have been right alone against the epidemiologists.

The only freedom under capitalism is the freedom to exploit

In the demonstrations, the less irrational participants do not question vaccination but are opposed to the health pass, imposed initially on carers on pain of dismissal, and reject the disguised obligation to show a pass in order to engage in the most classic social activities such as going to the supermarket, a bar or the cinema.

However, these two realities, anti-vaccination and anti-health pass, coexist with very porous borders in common demonstrations where the same individualistic logic of defiance prevails, with an absence of collective concern about the continuation of the pandemic, its ravages that are still present and those to come. This is done in the name of the attack on “individual liberties”, a totally bourgeois terrain. This slogan for the defence of democratic freedoms is the crudest cover for the defence of the bourgeois state, the most anti-working class ground there is. The workers’ movement has repeatedly denounced this trap and affirmed that “as long as the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state”.[1]

The revolutionary perspective is the only alternative

The governments are taking advantage of the situation to turn people against each other, stirring up tensions and resentments. By multiplying propaganda campaigns, by more or less openly making all the individuals who harbour doubts and are afraid look like totally delusional “anti-vax conspirators”, the bourgeoisie has pushed a part of the vaccinated to see the opponents of vaccines as easy scapegoats who can be blamed for the new waves of contamination, clearing capitalism and the state of the utter irresponsibility which led to the dramatic situation of today. For the anti-vaxxers, their mobilisation against the “dictatorship” of governments is a pledge of responsibility to keep democracy alive and defend it, by denouncing the servile “sheeple” for putting up with the “liberticidal” laws of forced vaccination. These divisions are part of a disastrous logic of confrontation in which the real issue, the need to end capitalist chaos, disappears under a jumble of confusion and impotence.

The exasperation expressed in the “anti- compulsory vaccines” demonstrations takes the form of feelings of being subjected to the diktats of an arrogant government which has multiplied inconsistencies in the face of the pandemic, imposing repeated confinements after continually opening up too soon, boasting of a scientific approach while bourgeois negligence is uppermost. But protests of this kind can in no way lead to a development of consciousness in the proletariat of the irremediable impasse of the capitalist system.

This is essentially an impotent rage against governments that are seen to be the source of all the evils and perceived as bad, incompetent and inefficient managers of this system.

Faced with such a social and ideological quagmire, which the bourgeoisie feeds and stirs up on a daily basis, it will not be easy for the proletariat to react on its class terrain of solidarity to counter the real frontal attacks to come, attacks on its working and living conditions. Its class terrain is not that of the defence of the state, the defence of the national economy and the national flag. Its class autonomy in the struggle will have to be defended against all the forces of the state, in power or not, independently of the inter-classist movements or the false friends, generally of the left, who will try to divert its anger. The proletariat needs lucidity and confidence in its own forces to thwart all these traps.

Stopio, 13 August 2021

1 [17] Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917

No one doubts that the number of unemployed people in the world is increasing due to the slowdown in economic activity and the deepening of the crisis, further accelerated by Covid-19. In Mexico, according to official data, the number of unemployed increased by 117% after the pandemic, representing 2.43 million workers, of whom almost 57,000 have been out of work for more than a year. Workers have found themselves in a more fragile situation with the pandemic because of the daily danger of being exposed to the infection in transport and in the workplace, the uncertainty of losing their jobs due to the risk of bankruptcies and company closures, or the extra effort they now have to make with working from home, as it involves extra expenses to do their work.

However, in these circumstances, the current situation makes it more difficult for workers to protest for better living and working conditions. We have seen, for example, how in Mexico protests by health workers have taken place in many hospitals, but these have been very much in the minority and isolated due to the demands of the pandemic itself, which has not given nurses, doctors, auxiliaries , etc. enough rest to meet their basic requirements (they have suffered many deaths).[1] Thus, it is important to emphasise that the strike at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) clearly shows that the proletariat is not defeated, that it shows combativity, and that it has kept intact its capacity to fight for the defence of its living and working conditions, despite the many difficulties and obstacles in the current situation. The UNAM is the most important university in Mexico, with around 40,000 teachers at secondary, higher and postgraduate levels.

Most of them do not have a basic contract, so their contracts are renewed every year or even every semester. Since the pandemic, research activities have been reduced, but courses have not been stopped; they have been resumed online using the teachers themselves as resources, working from home, and of course with a considerable increase in workload to prepare course material and online assessment.

In addition to the increased workload due to working from home, hundreds of teachers suffered delays in receiving their salaries, being owed up to a year in arrears, so that in February 2021, teachers held meetings to discuss their situation, which led to a three-day work stoppage from 16 March onwards called by teachers from the Faculty of Science. The strike spread from 16 March to different faculties, schools and colleges at different levels of the UNAM, and during the course of the strike it took the form of an indefinite strike. By 3 May, some faculties and schools had partially resumed classes, but by 5 May at least 22 faculties were still on strike, but they were already tired, weary and despondent.

First workers’ strike using the internet

The particularity of this mobilisation is that most of the work stoppages and protests were organised through assemblies that were carried out by Zoom and gathered both students and teachers. However, the face-to-face rallies and demonstrations that took place in person had a very low turnout, such as the one on 25 March, which had around 500 demonstrators, and the one on 11 May, which had even fewer participants. This strike was initially organised outside of union control, so that teachers’ organisations began to be created, in which they defined a list of demands that expressed their needs and recognized that they were exploited:

 “We demand fair wages for teachers, a full salary, the payment of the salary that has not been paid for years, against job insecurity, the setting of a minimum wage for the teaching of various subjects, for the dignity of educational work.”

Despite the progress made in their recognition of themselves as exploited workers, it should be pointed out that these groups of teachers that have emerged have remained isolated from the start, each one confined to his or her own faculty, without establishing a relationship and connection with other faculties and schools of the UNAM itself, and even less so with other universities that have similar problems. This was the case in the “General Assembly of UNAM teachers and assistants”, held on 24 March 2021: when a teacher from another public university (UACM) reported similar problems suffered by education workers on their campus, his intervention was interrupted by the person acting as chairperson, with the argument:

“We have to limit ourselves to the problems in the UNAM, I understand that this problem seems to be quite important elsewhere, in the IPN, the UACM, the UAM, but now we have to stick to the issues related to the UNAM.”

When an assistant teacher protested against this sort of argument, the answer was once again categorically confirmed:

“Since last Saturday's assembly, we have agreed on this point [...] we cannot join the struggle at the IPN [...] Anyone who does not want to participate in the assembly under these conditions can leave now.”

The members of the various left-wing groups present, (Trotskyists, feminists...) and other supposed 'radicals', did not say a single word and calmly continued their participation in the assembly.

This is why these protests did not succeed in frightening the educational authorities, which began to pay the arrears in dribs and drabs, calculating them incorrectly and maintaining the arrears, but also ignoring other demands such as wage increases and the establishment of a basic wage, claiming that for these demands they only recognised the AAPAUNAM union (UNAM'S Autonomous Association of Academic Personnel), since it was the signatory of the collective agreement. This shows that if the three unions that were taking over the UNAM workers’ strike kept a low profile, it was because they were waiting for the most opportune moment to show themselves and justify their place in the sabotage of the strike: either as direct spokespersons for the authorities (with AAPAUNAM resuming its traditional conciliatory role), or as supposedly “critical” and “alternative” forces.

Taking advantage of the isolation in which discussions took place, the ideology of leftism[2]  also takes advantage of it to divert the discussions from the terrain of wage demands in defence of their living and working conditions by introducing the slogan of the “democratisation of the university” or to demand the dismissal of particular people at the top of the university hierarchy. Even the ideological campaign unleashed around the supposed change represented by the “4T” (4th transformation) government[3]  fulfils its objective of extending and deepening the confusion. For example, a group of teachers appealed to the state by repeatedly trying to present their demands at one of the daily "morning" press conferences of the President until, on 30 March, they succeeded in doing so, receiving the answer that it was an issue that could only be dealt with by the UNAM authorities.

Of course, this was an action that arose on the terrain of the working class. The action was triggered by direct attacks on teachers’ salaries that affected them immediately, and it is important because of the difficult situation caused by the pandemic. It is also important because it is one of the first virtual work stoppages, or perhaps one of the first in the world. The movement remained combative for a few weeks, focusing on economic demands, but gradually declined due to its isolation. This allowed the authorities to respond with a direct assault at the end of the semester, dismissing dozens of faculty and school teachers.

The weaknesses of the movement

The teachers’ strike did not overcome many of the obstacles faced by proletarian mobilisations and therefore showed many weaknesses, some arising from the particular long-standing difficulties of the proletariat in Mexico, and others caused by the situation resulting from the pandemic. The strike was very corporatist, there was no unity of the teachers, there was not enough solidarity to break down the administrative barriers that the bourgeoisie imposes on workers, to ensure the unity of the teachers regardless of their “category”. Nor was there any real unity among teachers at different levels of colleges, schools and faculties; each entity had its own assemblies and, as a result, demands and actions were dispersed and divided in countless ways.

Nor did the movement actively seek support from teachers in other schools, let alone other categories of workers. If there is no momentum towards the unity and extension of the movement, it will inevitably collapse in defeat. In addition, there was a lack of mass general assemblies and joint general assemblies to ensure control over the development of the movement. This division is also evident in the decisions about ending the strike. Every unit decided when it would do so, accelerating the dissipation of the emerging solidarity and proletarian unity that had achieved, while creating further division and resentment of some workers against others. The state and the bourgeoisie as a whole are very careful to ensure that strikes are carried out in a sectoral manner in order to avoid workers uniting, which is one of their main strengths and essential in achieving significant victories.

The prolonging of the strike, which in some schools has now lasted for three months (in these circumstances where there is a lack of unity and extension) has led to impotence and fatigue, forcing them to consider the resumption of work also in a dispersed manner, in a climate that favours the entry of the trade union structure (whether it is stamped pro-government, “critical” or “independent”) to consolidate control and confusion, opening the door to repression (with dismissals, as is already the case, as we have seen above) and to the actions of desperate minorities, consummating the defeat of the movement. Two fundamental lessons can be drawn from the great struggles of 1905 in Russia and in other countries, as well as from the whole historical experience of the workers' movement.[4]

These are: 1) The struggle must be led, organised and extended by the workers themselves, outside union control, through general assemblies and committees elected and revocable at any time. 2) The struggle is lost if it remains confined to the enterprise, the sector or the nation; on the contrary, it must be extended by breaking all the barriers that capital imposes and that bind it to capital. The path of proletarian struggle, which begins with economic demands for the ever-expanding unity of the working class, is the only one that can lead to a radical political and social transformation, to the world human community. We must continue to advance along this long and difficult path; it is the only one that can prevent the destruction of humanity, of which the Covid-19 pandemic is a warning sign.

Revolucion Mundial, publication of the ICC in Mexico (5 June 2021)