Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq the country is in chaos. Following the destruction of the mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest Shia shrines, there was a whole series of reprisals, an increasing cycle of violence in which hundreds died. Media speculations on the ‘possibility’ of civil war are already behind the situation. The civil war has already begun and the dismemberment of Iraq looks increasingly likely. With the country falling apart, one way or another, no one is betting on the establishment of a stable government in Baghdad. The example of Afghanistan is there for all to see. The government’s authority doesn’t extend much outside Kabul and NATO troops aren’t going to be leaving for years.

US imperialism: the military response to chaos creates more chaos

The American government blames foreign terrorists for the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Every suicide bombing is denounced as another blow against an emerging democracy. But the US is faced with more than a handful of terrorists. It’s faced with a world-wide slide towards military chaos opened up by the disintegration of the old bloc system at the end of the 80s. In this new world disorder, there is little reason for other powers, big or small, to put themselves under US discipline, and every reason for each country to fight for its own particular interests in the dog-eat-dog world of decomposing capitalism.

The spectacular interventions of US imperialism since the first Gulf war in 1991 have all been aimed at re-imposing America’s global authority. Control of Middle East oil supplies is one aspect of this strategy. But a more fundamental aim is to prevent the rise of any new powers capable of standing up to the USA. This aim was restated by the Pentagon in the recently published four-yearly strategy review. It contained nothing surprising but was a reminder of what the US has in store. For a start, the phrase ‘war on terror’ is replaced by ‘The Long War’. This is how US imperialism sees the future situation panning out. The war strategy of the US, post 9/11 “may well be fought in dozens of other countries simultaneously and for many years to come.” They see an emphasis going from large-scale conventional military operations to highly mobile, rapid reaction forces.

But while the report talks of the need for “the US military to adopt unconventional and indirect approaches”, the overall goals remain familiar. They want to prevent the emergence of any serious rival on the imperialist stage. “It will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive capabilities that could enable regional hegemony against the US and friendly countries…to ensure that no foreign power can dictate the terms of regional or global security”. This means the US wants to call the shots at every level.

The current situation in Iraq shows how distant that aspiration is. Every time the USA uses its vast military power to try to impose its ‘order’, it stirs up violence, contention and hatred on a mounting scale. And not just from the terrorist followers of radical Islam, but from a growing list of imperialist powers from China and Russia to the very heart of old Europe.

This situation is historic and it makes no difference whether the US state is managed by Bush and his Neo-Conservative cronies or a ‘progressive’ Democrat like Clinton or Kerry. Neither is imperialism a sin of the US alone. We are living in an era in which all states are imperialist, not least those like France or Germany who opposed the US invasion of Iraq. Then they posed as peace-makers because it suited their own sordid national interests. Today they are rattling swords at Iran in pursuit of the same interests.  

A wide range of false alternatives

It’s not surprising that in a Ministry of Defence poll less than 1% of Iraqis thought that allied military intervention was helping their situation and 82% were strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops. With the drift into civil war, the whole Bush/Blair promise that the invasion would turn Iraq into a stable and prosperous democracy looks more and more like a fairytale. And as the death-toll rises among the Coalition troops, it’s equally no surprise that the popularity of the war ‘at home’ is also nose-diving. It is now routinely accepted that the war was launched on the basis of a huge lie (Saddam’s ever-elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction); and an increasing number of soldiers’ families have protested angrily that their sons have been sacrificed for nothing.

On March 18 there is a ‘global day of protest’ that’s “against the occupation of Iraq and new wars”. In Britain typical slogans are “Troops home from Iraq”, “Don’t attack Iran” and “No to Islamophobia”. Those who will be marching will have a number of motivations.

For a start, there will be those who are genuinely horrified at what’s been going on in the Middle East and at the idea of further conflicts to come. But the question is whether these demonstrations really challenge the capitalist war machine. The evidence of the series of protests that have taken place since the invasion of Afghanistan, and then Iraq, shows that pacifist parades are a perfectly acceptable part of capitalist society. Tony Blair says that peaceful and legal protest is one of the democratic rights most anticipated in Iraq. At any rate, even with a million and half people on the streets prior to the 2003 invasion, our ‘democratic leaders’ calmly went ahead with their military plans.

The slogan ‘troops out of Iraq’ also fails to pose the real questions. If the troops are not in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran, then they’re going to be in the US, Britain or Ireland, or, in the case of the US, in massive numbers inside the borders of their economic rivals, Germany and Japan. And when the US moves its troops it does so in pursuit of its imperialist interests. Recently, for example, US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, while admitting that the presence of 300,000 foreign troops in the Middle East, most of them American, was a “contributory factor” to instability in the region, insisted that the US “would not maintain any long-term bases in Iraq”. He also said that the US would have “sufficient forces to deter, and to protect partners and its key national interests”. So the US would retain “sufficient military capability” to attack Iran, for example. The USA’s network of bases is designed to enable action to be taken in any potential trouble spot. Likewise France is upgrading its nuclear arsenal, Britain will also be adding to both its nuclear and its conventional forces, and are we seriously to believe that the Iranian mullahs only want to develop nuclear energy for peaceful ends?

In sum, every capitalist state is arming itself to the teeth. The idea that the imperialist policies of capitalist states can be refashioned in a manner that is somehow less ‘military’ is entirely illusory. Whether great or small, states will use any means at their disposal to advance their interests. In the war of each against all, the bourgeoisie can only resort to force and terror.

Not every placard that will be seen on March 18 will be relying on the benevolence of the capitalist state. There will be others praising the virtues of the Iraqi ‘Resistance’ and telling us that it is ‘objectively anti-imperialist’. But the methods of the Resistance - suicide bombs in crowded markets, provocative attacks on religious sites, sectarian murders and reprisals - are in no way a challenge to the logic of imperialism. On the contrary, these are the typical methods of imperialist war in which the principal victims are always the exploited and the oppressed. And the methods are consistent with the goals: the establishment of an ‘independent Iraq’, able to pursue its own hegemonic ambitions in the region, just like the regime of Saddam Hussein or the ‘Islamic state’ in Iran. It makes no difference whether they want a ‘socialist’ Iraq or a Caliphate: all the disparate bourgeois forces that have set themselves against the US coalition want a state that will serve Iraq’s national, capitalist, and therefore imperialist interests.

Neither spreading pacifist illusions, nor openly siding with one imperialist camp against another, will halt new invasions and new wars. The barbarism in Iraq announces the future that capitalism has in store for all of us because, on a world scale, this is a social system in utter decay; a system which for the last hundred years has been dragging mankind through an absurd spiral of war and destruction. Even if ‘peace’ could somehow be imposed in Iraq, the virus of imperialist war would only break out somewhere else as long as its underlying causes have not been eradicated.

There is a real alternative: the international class struggle

But this harsh truth is not a message of despair. There is a social force that, when it makes its appearance, shows that it is the true negation of imperialist war. This force is the working class, which has no national interests to defend and nothing to gain from sacrificing itself in imperialist wars. It demonstrated this once and for all through the fraternisations, strikes and mutinies which put an end to the First World War. Likewise, it was the defeat of the proletarian revolutions of 1917-19 which allowed the bourgeoisie to dragoon the working class into the second world war. Today, the same basic reality is demonstrated by the war in Iraq. The great imperialist powers are unable to confront each other openly in a world war because the working class today is not defeated like it was in the 1930s. Despite the growing tensions between America and its principal imperialist rivals, the workers of Europe and America to not going to start slaughtering each other for their masters’ interests. So the antagonisms between the great capitalist powers are ‘deflected’ towards the weaker countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, where the working class is also weaker and less able to sabotage the war-plans of the bourgeoisie.

This places an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of the working class in the most powerful countries. It is their struggle in defence of their living standards which has the potential to paralyse the war-machine at its very heart – in New York, London, Paris or Berlin. This struggle, after a long period of reflux, is again raising its head in a series of strikes in which workers are rediscovering the basics of class solidarity. Today these movements (such as the wildcats of the Heathrow workers or the Belfast postal workers, or the New York transit strike) are small-scale, unspectacular, focused on immediate, defensive demands; but tomorrow they will be compelled to become more massive, more political and more offensive. This is the movement that will counter capitalism’s lurch towards barbarism with the proletarian perspective of communism.
WR 4/3/6

The bubble of the British economy is about to burst. It appeared to be in reasonable health from the mid-1990s. However, we have shown that this has been achieved by cutting labour costs and increasing working hours, and by the increase in private consumption based on a massive extension of individual debt, primarily through mortgage equity withdrawal and credit card debt. Britain’s total debt including mortgages is estimated at £1 trillion and worsening (see WR 283 and 284, ‘Britain can’t escape the world economic crisis’). However, as we showed in these articles, this can’t last and Britain can’t continue to ‘magic’ away the effects of the global economic crisis of capitalism. There is every sign that the downturn is now upon us and the perspective of increased attacks on workers’ living standards is coming more out into the open.

Britain’s trade deficit last year was £47.6 billion, 4% of GDP, making it “the highest ever in absolute terms”. This was compounded by the first annual deficit in oil of £670 million in 2005 (compared with a surplus of £1.7 billion in 2004) since the early days of North Sea Oil in 1979 and the trade deficit “will tend to get worse due to our increasing dependency on imported fuel” (Independent, 15.2.06).

Economic growth slowed during 2005 to between 1.6 and 1.7% which is the lowest since early 1993 and this is explained in part by the zero growth in hourly productivity per worker in the year to the third quarter of 2005 and output per worker increasing by only 0.4% over the same period, the slowest rate for 15 years. Business investment has been weak in the last 5 years compared with previously.

 The overall state of the British economy can only mean one thing for the working class, a massive attack on its living standards with more redundancies, cuts in pay and conditions including pensions, as well as bigger bills for gas, electricity, council tax, etc. One example of the job cuts was the announcement at the end of February by the telecoms company, Cable and Wireless, of 1,000 job cuts in the next three years.

Increasing unemployment

According to the ONS (Office of National Statistics) the rate of unemployment increased to 5.1% in the final quarter of 2005. The 108,000 people added to the list bring the official total of unemployed to 1.54 million. The real total is much larger. Since the early 1980s the unemployment statistics have been subject to serious ‘massaging’ with a lot of the long-term unemployed not registered as such but classified as unavailable for work and living on incapacity /disability benefit (there are 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit today compared with one million in the 1980s). As for the host of young people trying to enter the jobs market for the first time (who have to be 18 years to claim unemployment benefit anyway) as well as many long-term unemployed, they are not considered to be available for work as a consequence of being placed on various short-term training courses that offer little chance of employment.

Pensions

In recent issues of WR we have shown how the ruling class is attacking pensions under the rhetoric of ‘we can’t go on living beyond our means’, ending final salary schemes and proposing extending retirement age to 70 years (‘Pensions crisis shows capitalism has no future’ in WR 290, ‘Attacks on pensions: unions are part of the problem’ in WR 291). And the government is increasing the fear for public sector workers that they can’t expect their full pension entitlements: “The black hole in public sector pensions is almost four times larger than originally estimated, Whitehall accounts show. This follows a change in the way the Government works out the cost of its retirement schemes. Government documents show that since last year the amount of provision needed for public sector pensions has risen from £24.2 billion to £81 billion. Experts said that the increase showed that the public sector pensions bill is growing at an alarming rate.” (Daily Telegraph, 27.2.06)

Increased bills

As regards the energy bills workers are facing, five out of the six major energy suppliers have already increased their domestic prices in 2006. By the middle of February annual gas bills had increased by 13.55% according to uSwitch, the organisation that monitors energy prices, equivalent to £61.70 on an average bill. And this could get worse if the other companies follow British gas which has made the highest ever increase of 22%. This is said to be connected with the increased cost of oil and when the G8 ministers met recently they warned of “the threat to global economic growth posed by energy prices.” (Observer, 26.2.06). Alongside this, the new Council Tax bills (i.e. bills for services provided by the local state) are predicted to increase by double the rate of inflation this year.

Cuts in health

In the last issue of WR we also showed that despite the acclaimed government investment in the NHS, the Hospital Trusts were at breaking point as regards their finances. A recent Royal College of Nursing report further confirms this referring to Trusts having had to close wards and delay patient treatments to save money. 64 trusts are predicting deficits totalling £548 million at the half year stage. “To eliminate the overspending and pay back this debt, they would need to cut double that amount from next year’s budget.” (Guardian, 27.2.06). This can only mean dire consequences for staff and patients. Meanwhile in both hospitals and schools, the mechanisms of introducing ‘value for money’ (which means introducing the business ethic of ‘profitability’ and ‘competition’ and so worsening working conditions) are going ahead under the banner of Health and Education reforms.

Incapacity benefit

Another recent announcement concerned the fact that the government can’t anymore afford the large numbers of people collecting invalidity and disability benefits. It is going to re-brand incapacity benefit as ‘employment and support allowance’ with the intention of conducting rigorous medical assessments on claimants. “The government has unveiled its plans to reform incapacity benefit, which include the creation of a new unit to check on claimants to ensure they are still ill. Under the proposals, those who refuse to participate in back-to-work schemes would have their benefits cut. Incapacity benefit claimant Alan Dick, 49, from Cardonald in Glasgow, told the BBC Scotland news website of his concerns about some of the proposals.” (BBC website). These concerns relate to the fact that means-testing is now applied to claimants and the fact that there is a 12 weeks holding period during which adjustments to benefits are decided leaving claimants with problems in paying their bills while they await a decision. A recent government Green paper called the current system “an inhumane and outdated approach” for the brutal way benefits are withdrawn without a waiting period when someone fails an assessment. A Citizen’s Advice Bureau report was scathing about this too, and the fact that claimants were subject to the intimidation of having to go to appeal against assessment decisions when ultimately over 80% of these appeals were won.

The economic crisis is not a localised affair of British capitalism. It is global and all indications tell us that these convulsions will get much worse in the near future. Through tough measures put in place in the 1980s and 1990s, and continued till now, the British economy has given the appearance of being able to ride out the crisis. But this was only an illusion. British capitalism has to compete in the world market and the only way it can hope to defend its position is by brutally attacking workers’ living standards once again. This leaves the working class with no choice. It has to develop its combativity against the attacks and deepen its consciousness of the real nature of the capitalism. Only in this way will it be ultimately capable of developing and uniting its forces against a capitalist system that has for too long hindered humanity’s development.
Duffy 3.3.06

 

Belfast postal workers

Any news report from Northern Ireland automatically assumes that society there is rigidly divided a©long sectarian lines. In February a two-and-a-half-week-long unofficial strike by postal workers gave the lie to this as 800 Protestant and Catholic workers spontaneously came out against management bullying and harassment.

It started with a walk-out to prevent disciplinary action being taken against fellow workers – first at a mainly Protestant sorting office, then a mainly Catholic one.

The Communication Workers Union showed their true colours and opposed the strike. In Belfast a spokesman said “we repudiated the action and asked them to go back to work, pointing out that the action was illegal”. In Derry a local CWU official said that “under no circumstances” would there be a strike there so long as the strike was unofficial.

The workers showed that they didn’t need union permission to organise their struggle. A week into the strike they held a march that went up the Protestant Shankill Road and down the Catholic Falls Road. In many cases workers were going down streets that they’d never been down before. This was a real expression of workers’ unity, against the ruling class’s constant attempt to divide and rule.

However, the unions were not inactive. After two weeks there was a march from one of the picket lines to a rally at Belfast City Hall, where leftists provided placards, union and leftist speakers queued up to take their places on the platform, and a range of republican, leftist and loyalist groups honoured workers with their presence.

There have been other expressions of united struggle in Northern Ireland in recent years. But these have largely been limited to areas such as the health service, and did not spill out onto the streets. The open unity of Protestant and Catholic workers on the Belfast streets in this strike revived memories of the great unemployed demonstrations of 1932, where proletarians from both sides of the divide came together to fight cuts in the dole. But that was in a period of working class defeat, and today there is a much deeper potential for finally throwing aside the divisions that have for so long brought comfort to the capitalist order.

Socialist Worker proclaimed Royal Mail’s agreement to “an independent review of employee relations and industrial relations in Belfast” as a great victory for workers. If workers have any illusions in such a review it will hamper any future return to struggle. The great gain from the recent strike has been the experience of a united struggle undertaken outside the control of the unions. This gain is not just for the postal workers involved but for every worker inspired by this expression of class unity. 4/3/06

Cottam power workers

Unofficial action at Cottam power station, near Lincoln, has shown workers striking in protest at the wage levels imposed on Hungarian migrant workers.

Although the Hungarian workers were told not to discuss their wages and conditions with their fellow workers, they did, and discovered they had significantly worse wages; some paid half the rates of the British workers. They were also liable to be transferred anywhere in Europe at a moment’s notice.

One Hungarian worker actually paid for his own flight back to Britain to explain the situation to the British workers.

Initially 19 construction workers walked out. They have been joined by scaffolders, laggers, engineers, electricians and welders, making more than fifty now on strike. Some of the workers have been sacked.

Because no ballot was held the strike was illegal, and the GMB and Amicus unions are against the action. A regional organiser for the GMB said “he understood workers’ concerns” (Nottingham Evening Post 23/2/6) but “said the action needed to end”.

This local paper was not slow to contrast the behaviour of British and Hungarian workers. They dug up an academic to say that the UK workers had a “certain amount of honour” (ibid 25/2/6) in striking in solidarity with their fellow workers. In contrast, however, “the foreigners themselves have stayed at their posts throughout” (a scholarly claim somewhat undermined by pictures of Hungarian and British workers standing together on the picket lines).

 For the working class, recognising the shared interests of all workers, regardless of nationality or specific details of wages and conditions, is an important step if workers are going to struggle as a united class. Workers’ solidarity will never be understood by the capitalist ruling class.   4/3/06

We are publishing an account of our intervention in the SEAT workers’ struggle against redundancies. The central axis of this intervention was to support the beginning of an authentic workers’ struggle and to denounce the union sabotage of this expression of workers’ militancy and solidarity. We are publishing a report of what our organisation defended at the gates of the SEAT factories, at the assemblies, in the demonstrations, precisely to show the alternative to the false choice of either accepting what the unions organise, or remaining demoralised and feeling impotent. The idea that a revolutionary organisation is nothing but a club organising sterile and distant debates is also false. Our interventions at SEAT showed that our political positions, the fruit of the lessons of more than 200 years of workers’ struggles against exploitation, can and must be concretised as proposals and orientations to strengthen workers’ struggle, today and in the future, warning them against traps laid by their enemies. We went to the workers to say: “Hold assemblies to direct the struggle yourselves”, “Don’t let yourselves be divided”, “Don’t let your militancy be broken by mobilisations which weaken and isolate you, and through which those who want to betray you aim to regain your confidence”,…

So we have been saying, at the top of our voices, what a good number of SEAT workers of whatever sector and whatever country think but don’t dare express openly. And we will continue to do so because these are the bases of real workers’ struggle - on 23 December at SEAT, in the car industry in Germany in 2004, in Argentina a year earlier… It’s the only way for the exploited class to gain in solidarity, in strength, in self-confidence.

Here is what we put forward from the start of our intervention as expressed in our first communiqué, written in the beginning of January and from which we are taking certain extracts:

The intervention of the ICC in solidarity with the workers of SEAT

With our limited forces we mobilised to support the workers at SEAT. On Monday 2nd January, at 5:30 in the morning, the first day after the holiday, we went to the gates of SEAT to distribute our leaflet “To struggle we need to confront union sabotage”.[1] [4]

This was in continuity with our active presence in the struggle at SEAT: at the factory gates above all since October, in demonstrations afterwards (see our leaflet: ‘SEAT: To save the enterprise means redundancies and binning the contract. The response is workers’ struggle!’[2] [5]) and on 23 December when the spontaneous struggle broke out.

At the factory gates we found a group of workers sacked from SEAT. This showed a very positive initiative to avoid staying at home, to go to their class brothers who could, sooner or later, also become victims of redundancy. They chanted: “No to redundancy”, “Today it’s us, tomorrow it could be you”, they denounced the unions for signing the agreement for 660 redundancies. Unity is necessary, and this action went towards defending it. Workers made redundant must not remain isolated, they must firmly reject all measures to isolate and divide them, such as going to the tribunal to examine redundancies individually, case by case.

We supported the comrades’ slogans: REINTEGRATION OF REDUNDANT WORKERS! NO REDUNDANCIES! One idea that could be useful is to organise delegations to other factories, neighbourhoods, other workplaces, to raise the problem of redundancies at SEAT, demanding real solidarity: today for me, tomorrow for you. To struggle against redundancies at SEAT today is to develop the strength to struggle against future redundancies in other enterprises, other sectors. Many workers followed what their class brothers did at SEAT closely and felt inspired by their struggle.

Others join our intervention

We have received letters of support from comrades who wished to help us in our intervention of solidarity. Some comrades collaborated with us in distributing leaflets at factories and neighbourhoods. One comrade sent us the following position:

“Dear comrades, I have just received, today, 28 [December] your letter and leaflet on SEAT and want to respond, briefly, straight away:

The leaflet summarises, in my opinion, in depth, the events at SEAT. The analysis is perfectly correct, above all concerning the qualitative importance of the workers’ attempt to struggle autonomously by breaking the chains of the unions, and the rest of the state apparatus and employers who stand behind the unions. So I welcome your intervention, solidarise with its content and with the workers who, despite the union police, have gone on strike spontaneously, and that is truly significant. I think that the CGT[3] [6] has drawn on this balance of forces, strengthened by certain claims, given that illusions not only in the unions but also in trade unionism are collapsing among workers. To belong to a union does not even guarantee being included in the latest ‘social plan’. Workers will reflect on this aspect. It is necessary to denounce radical unionism most particularly, even proposing to workers that delegates should leave the enterprise committee and negotiation table etc. Signed, German.”

This mobilisation by our comrades is a source of great satisfaction and reinforces our determination to continue the struggle.

We took position on the ‘Letter’ that those made redundant from SEAT sent to the managing director:

Comrades,

First of all we want to express our unfailing solidarity and add our voice to your call for the “reintegration of redundant workers, no more redundancies” so it can be heard as loudly as possible.

Secondly, we propose: why not write a letter addressed to all workers? This was done by workers made redundant in the 1970s, a good tradition that we must take up again. A letter showing that the redundancies at SEAT are the latest of many others which happened previously: for example at Gearbox, or at Unidad Hermetica or in Papelera etc, and the announcement of many others at many other enterprises, SEAT included, as the managing director announced himself, with such hypocritical arrogance, once the shameful agreement of 15 December was signed. A letter to say that today it is you, but tomorrow it could perhaps be the turn of many others. A letter demanding solidarity, real solidarity: today for you, tomorrow for me, today for the comrades at SEAT in order that tomorrow they have the strength to face up to new redundancies. This solidarity could be shown in the calling of a demonstration in the centre of Barcelona where workers from all enterprises, no matter what sector, sex or nationality, could participate. A unitary demonstration to say clearly, to the bosses, the government and the two majority unions, that the workers have had enough, that they will not let themselves be attacked any more, a demonstration to feel in practice the power of the workers.

In your letter we find the idea “…leave SEAT [addressed to the MD] to continue to be what it always has been, a Spanish enterprise, truly competitive, with problems but without redundancies.” We live in a society where competition is the law. Nations are in competition to the death for their share of the world market. Hitler’s slogan “export or die” could be theirs. In the same way, enterprises are in ferocious competition in their branch of industry. In this competition there are states that gain and those that lose, enterprises which impose themselves at the expense of others. However, among those that win as much as those that lose, there are those who always lose: the workers and the majority of human beings. This applies to workers at the ‘winning’ firms - because to be competitive there must be lay offs, more short-term and precarious work, lower pay, working hours from hell, with things like ‘annualised hours’. And it applies to workers at the ‘losing’ firms - because when factories are closed, they lay off to keep their heads a little above water. Competition is at the basis of lay-offs, of casualisation, of the attack on our living conditions. We, the workers, like other human beings, need to eat, to have clothes, a roof over our heads, a worthwhile future for our children, necessities which we cannot make depend on the fact that Spain, or the enterprise, is competitive. Capitalism is a system where life is sacrificed to production, when the society to which workers aspire is a society where production is at the service of life. We must oppose their competition with our solidarity.

Greetings, comrades. Solidarity and struggle!”

In another article, “Lessons of the struggle at SEAT…”[4] [7], we argued that the unions have done all they can to slow down and avoid the real struggle since September, counting on the demobilisation of the Christmas holiday for the indignation and militancy of 23 December to be diluted. The CGT, which played ‘godfather’ to those who’d been laid off, arranged that only one meeting of SEAT workers should take place in the 10 days following 23 December. And yet it was a meeting a long way from the factory where only those laid off could participate. We went anyway; we distributed our leaflets, we discussed with those present, and we then wrote a second communiqué on our intervention which we summarise below.

The assembly on 3 January

This short text does not pretend to make an analysis but simply to provide information on how we continued our intervention in the situation that started with the redundancies at SEAT.

An assembly of those laid off from SEAT was called for 3 January. It was organised by the CGT and was seen in the following way: “The CGT has informed us yesterday that it will be those laid off who will attend the assembly and that they will decide what sort of action to take. Other comrades of the CGT or other unions and anti-capitalist organisations understand that we must be present outside the meeting, to show our support to these comrades and to show that, while it is they who must make this struggle, they are not alone… The majority of the comrades consulted thought that once the assembly had decided on the actions to be taken, we could show our solidarity” (Kaosenlared 2.1.06[5] [8]). On the Alasbarricadas one person signing “Cegetero” (CGT-ist) pointed out: “Warning: the SEAT assembly is not clear. On the poster in the heading and round the picture is written: against the lay offs at SEAT, come! But on the head of the new Rojo y negro[6] [9] it says : Assembly for those redundant from SEAT. In other words, those working at SEAT have not been called, but only those laid off. Further down it says that CGT members not belonging to SEAT will not be allowed in.”

It is necessary for workers to decide for themselves. That does not mean that they should not count on the participation, the help and support of other sectors. They should also recognise what organised militants can bring. The presence of other sectors of the working class is encouraging, it enables us to dare to undertake actions that we would not be capable of if we were isolated. Furthermore, the business of one sector of the working class is the business of the whole working class, because these are problems affecting the whole world: redundancy, casualisation, low wages, etc.

And here even SEAT workers who haven’t been laid off are not allowed in! What unity can develop in such conditions? And besides, even those union members from other branches and other enterprises are not authorised to enter.

The argument may appear very ‘democratic’: only those directly affected must decide. But can’t the workers judge which proposals are the best? Why must they be ‘protected from outside influence’?

This whole process can only lead to the isolation of those who have been made redundant, their separation from the rest of the working class, starting with their comrades at SEAT. This must lead them to a feeling of impotence, abandonment, and towards the idea so widespread in this individualistic and competitive society, according to which each must ‘do what he can’, to distrust the ‘rest of the world’ which ‘shouldn’t interfere’.

Our militants distributed our leaflet outside the hall, and in the various places where workers were meeting, to explain that the only possibility for developing the struggle was for all those laid off to go, together as a body, to the factory gates and explain to other workers (who may also suffer from unemployment tomorrow) that necessity for a common struggle with the objective of “Reintegration of those made redundant. No redundancies.” This was the point of departure for the 23 December strike and it’s the only way possible to continue the struggle.

How were the issues posed in the assembly? “In the second part there was a legal presentation of the situation and how, from a legal point of view, it was necessary to struggle to defend jobs” (post relating to the assembly on Kaosenlared 3.1.06). What does this mean? The best response was given by a comrade who signed himself “SEAT worker” in responding to this post: “And now the CGT holds an assembly and brings a lawyer (who must be paid, like everyone else, which is correct since lawyers also have to eat), accepts the conditions signed up to by the UGT and the CO[7] [10](even if they are bad), and advises us to put our names down for re-employment which, according to the CGT, isn’t possible. In this incoherence they want to make us swallow the poison. The only alternative is permanent mobilisation” (Kaosenlared 3.1.06).

What was proposed to the assembly was not to struggle together at all, but to save what you can! This was expressed very clearly, in capital letters, on an internet forum post: “FOR SHAME!!! THIS IS NOTHING BUT A MANIPULATION. MARRIED TO A REDUNDANT WORKER, I HAVE ONLY ONE THING TO SAY: SHAME ON ALL THE UNIONS, UGT, CCOO AND CGT. MY HUSBAND IS A MEMBER OF THE LATTER AND NOW HE IS IN THE STREET BECAUSE HE IS IN THE CGT. I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE ACTIONS FROM THE UNION, BECAUSE YESTERDAY’S MEETING SEEMED LIKE ONE MORE LIE. THE TRUTH IS THAT THERE ARE 660 PEOPLE IN THE STREET AND THE OTHERS ON THE INSIDE AND IT IS VERY EASY TO TALK FROM THE INSIDE, AND IT IS VERY SAD WHEN ONE THROWS SOMEONE OUT FOR SO-CALLED LACK OF ‘MULTISKILLING’ - LIES!!! AND NOW SEAT IS CALLING FOR JOB INTERVIEWS. IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THAT CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME? STOP PROFITING FROM LAY OFFS, STOP YOUR PUBLICITY AND REALLY STRUGGLE FOR THOSE IN THE STREET” (Kaosenlared 3.1.06).

This comrade is completely right when she says things loud and clear. Because, apart from the legal demands, what sort of mobilisation was proposed? The post quoted before says that “The third part was devoted to preparing the mobilisation; the discussion was profound and it was decided to continue on the 12 January, in the same place. The proposals were very varied, very stimulating and determined. They will be made public at the appropriate time” (Kaosenlared 3.1.06). In other words, nothing. Come back on 12 January. And if by chance you still want to do something “we decided to participate in the demonstration and day of action for European workers in the car industry to be held in Saragossa on 20 January”.

They tell us about pushing forward an alternative to the treacherous unionism of the CO and UGT. But is this really an “alternative”? Isn’t it just the same?

Workers must draw a clear lesson from this experience: no union is going to defend us, neither the yellow CO-UGT type nor the more or less pink CGT, nor any other. The only alternative is to organise the struggle ourselves with assemblies, committees and revocable delegates. If we leave our affairs in the hands of these ‘specialists’ we will be demobilised and defeated.

Our intervention, which made concrete proposals for the struggle, seems to have disturbed a small circle of unionists who advanced on one of our comrades, took our leaflets and threw them away saying that he had “sold out to the bosses”. Faced with the comrade’s calm, failing to fall for their provocation, they turned on another comrade. She didn’t fall for their little game and demanded their reasons for the disturbance and an explanation of how our leaflets, our propositions, showed that we have sold out to the bosses. In the end they preferred to slip away.

We are in total solidarity with out comrades and denounce this gross provocation. We are not going to back off, we are not scared. We are open to discussion with comrades who do not agree with out positions, but we respond firmly to all attempt at insult, slander, or those who want to shut us up[8] [11].

The January 3 ‘assembly’ was a mortal blow to the struggle. Those made redundant had been robbed of their real strength, that is to say the united mobilisation of workers against the redundancies. Instead they were dragged onto a merry-go-round of ‘actions’, more showy than effective, which would allow the CGT and its accomplices to present themselves as the champions of the struggle, when, in fact, they have devoted their time to sabotaging it. For that reason, our organisation decided not to intervene in the assembly called for the 12 January, really the definitive ‘liquidation’ of the struggle. The reasons are explained in a third communiqué:

Why we didn’t intervene in the “Assembly of the redundant” on 12 January?

We were at the demonstrations in November, we were with you on the 23 December when you were told of the 660 redundancies and you walked out spontaneously (no-one summoned you, no-one ‘organised’ you) in solidarity with those laid off and in revolt against the agreement signed by the UGT, the CO and the boss. *** We were present on 2 January to see if it was possible to continue the same dynamic of struggle. We also went to the 3 January assembly in a Hostafranchs[9] [12] local. The same week we went to the gates of the Zona Franca of Barcelona and Martorell[10] [13] to show our solidarity with you faced with the attack on your living conditions which affects us all, and to explain what, in our opinion, has made this hatchet job on the workers possible. We were present at all the concentrations and meetings where there could be any dynamic of collective workers’ struggle, with the aim of encouraging it as can be seen from our earlier communiqués. On the other hand, we do not want to become accomplices in a meeting whose aim is to reinforce the defeat and burial of the struggle imposed on 3 January.

Trade unionism acts in such a way that, when the workers’ militant strength is present, every excuse is made to delay the struggle, to dilute the militancy, to weaken it in the final analysis. When the struggle has ended, when the workers are defeated and feel the reality of their defeat, then the unions become ‘radical’, put forward ultra-combative proposals with the sole purpose, in reality, of increasing the workers’ demoralisation and humiliation.

On 23 December, there was an explosion of solidarity and militancy among workers against the 660 redundancies. What did the unions do? Don’t look to the UGT and CO, who had disappeared. But the CGT itself, which pretends to be ‘committed’ to the struggle against redundancies, could see nothing but the difficulties: stopping work is illegal, we can’t do anything till 3 January, and so on and so forth…

On 2 January there was still a mood of not knowing whether workers would take up what they left off on 23rd, or if, on the contrary, they would be weighed down by the Christmas demobilisation organised with the complicity of the unions which, evidently, were careful to call the very minimum of action during those days. And what did the workers at SEAT find? The CGT called a meeting, not at the factory gates, but in a neighbourhood of Barcelona. The unions affirmed that they are necessary for our struggle since they can ‘issue a call’, they have a local building, and organisational means for workers. At the time of the struggle at SEAT we saw, one more time, that the union apparatus is not at the disposal of the workers, but is there, above all, to impede the real struggle.

The 3 January assembly was a brutal blow. Those who’d been made laid off had to go to the offices of the enterprise to sign to acknowledge receipt of their redundancy notices. Meanwhile, the new call to unity would be… ten days later! On 12 January… And in that time? Nothing, not a thing, but the CGT presents all this with great cynicism, as “a strong mood in favour of struggle”.

From 3 to 12 January we went down the dead-end road to misery. On 12 January, one month after the agreement to throw 660 class brothers on the scarp heap was signed by the boss, the unions (CO and UGT) and the tripartite Catalan government[11] [14], with the support of the leftist organisations, they made a huge show of solidarity with those made redundant. They set up a Solidarity Committee for SEAT lay-offs: “united, open to networks, platforms, organisations, movements and social, union or citizen groups, with the aim of organising solidarity for the redundant SEAT workers, to mobilise for them to be re-employed and to oppose the bosses offensive which aims to make employment even more precarious and redundancies easier (posted on Kaosenlared). To this were added proposals for action that were as ridiculous as they were sterile, such as ‘actions’ against SEAT showrooms…

In short, to extinguish with all the means at their disposal all that might remain from the real, massive and united workers’ response, and to try and bury the real lessons of the struggle at SEAT. Workers can see from the 660 redundancy notices on 23 December that the ‘mobilisations’ (the demonstrations in November) to win public opinion did absolutely nothing. Well, now they propose a little more of the same. On 23 December or 2 January, workers were answerable to themselves, they could only count on themselves, on their struggle, on their class solidarity first of all. And now they want to sell them the same junk, adulterated with the mediation of citizens, political organisations and unions, to get them re-employed. And they have the nerve to pretend that they have been at the heart of the struggle of the workers at SEAT against the redundancies.

The difference between the workers’ struggle of the 23rd and the posturing of the Solidarity Committee is like the difference between night and day. The first is the authentic solidarity of workers towards their redundant class brothers, the second is a cynical joke against class solidarity.

For this reason we did not want to participate in this sham solidarity. Because we insist that real solidarity with those made redundant at SEAT consists of showing that workers can draw the real lessons of this defeat. These lessons will prepare us for new struggles, because we must have no illusions: redundancies will rain down in the textile industry, in the auto industry and, among others, in SEAT again; job insecurity is increased in the new ‘reform’ of work. We will have to struggle forcefully and above all against union sabotage.   ICC, 14.1.06

This year the Irish Republic is celebrating 90 years since the 1916 Easter Rising. With the passage of time, the way this event is marked has changed. Nowadays it is presented as the indispensable precondition for the pride and joy of today’s Irish bourgeoisie: the so-called Celtic Tiger. The ‘blood sacrifice’ of long dead Irish patriots, and not the merciless exploitation of the living labour of proletarians from all over the world, is being put forward as the secret of the high growth rates of the modern Irish economy.

But while the themes of this ritual commemoration change with the years, the basic idea propagated by the ruling class in Ireland remains the same. This idea is that national independence was the result of the unanimity of all classes, all the courageous and ‘rebel’ forces of Irish society. Above all, the bourgeois mythology of the Easter Rising sees it as a product of the unity between the nationalist and the workers’ movements, represented by the two leaders of the insurrection against British rule: Patrick Pearse at the head of the Irish Volunteers, and the radical socialist James Connolly who commanded the militia called the Irish Citizens Army.

In order to maintain this myth, it is regularly forgotten that there was one labour leader of the time who bitterly opposed the 1916 rising. This forgetfulness of the Irish bourgeoisie (including its radical Sinn Fein and ‘Marxist’ wings) is all the more striking, since that leader, Sean O’Casey, went on to become one of the most important dramatists of the 20th century. His most famous play, The Plough and the Stars, which today is generally accepted as being one of the great works of modern world literature, is a blistering denunciation of the Easter Rising. This play is a thorn in the flesh of the Irish bourgeoisie, because it recalls the historic truth that not only O’Casey, but the working class in Ireland refused to participate in or support the rising.

The Plough and the Stars

The Irish Citizens Army was a militia set up during the six month 1913 Dublin lockout to protect workers from the savagery of state repression against transport workers’ militancy. The ‘Plough and the Stars’ was the banner of the ICA. It was one of the workers’ movement’s most poetic flags. The plough represents the turning over of the soil of capitalist society by the class struggle, the patient work of planting the seeds of the future, but also the imperious need to harvest their fruits when they are ripe. As for the stars, they stand for the beauty and the loftiness of the goals and ideals of the workers’ movement.

O’Casey’s play of the same name is a furious indictment of the betrayal of these ideals through the participation of the ICA in the 1916 nationalist insurrection. While the fighting is going on in the city centre, the slum dwellers of Dublin are dying of poverty and consumption. O’Casey shows that there was nothing in the alleged high ideals of the nationalists which could morally uplift the workers and the poor. He shows how, on the other side of the street from the buildings occupied by the insurrectionists, the starving tenement dwellers appear, not in order to support them, but to plunder the shops.

To express his indignation, O’Casey employs a series of powerful images. The second act is set in a pub. Outside, the meeting is taking place, where, on October 25th 1915, the ICA allied itself with the Irish Volunteers. It is the moment of the betrayal of the Plough and the Stars. But this scene takes place out of sight of the workers in the pub. All we see and hear is the shadowy outline of the ‘voice in the window’ looming up as in a nightmare, like a ghost from the dead, imposing itself on the living. It is the voice of the nationalist leader Pearse, extolling the virtues of sacrificing blood for the cause of the nation. ‘Inside’ on stage, the workers are inflamed by this speech. The pub scene shows how the ruling class pulls the workers off their class terrain by obscuring their material reality and deadening their consciousness. While Pearse praises the heroism of patriotic blood spilling, the intoxication this causes among those in the pub leads to a series of brawls, a parody of capitalist competition. Far from opposing the barbarism of the First World War, during which it took place, O’Casey shows how the Easter Rising gave this barbarism another form. It became the first link in a chain of war and terror leading, in the early 1920s, from the Irish War of Independence against Britain, to the Civil War within the bourgeoisie of the new Irish Free State. These events, introducing new levels of savagery, announced much of what was to come during the 20th century, especially in the course of ‘national liberation struggles.’

Centre stage in this scene is the prostitute Rosie Redmond. The symbolism of this is unmistakable, since the Anglo-Irish literary revival of the time loved to depict Ireland or Gaelic nationalism as a woman (for instance in W.B.Yeats’ play Cathleen Ni Houlihan).

In Act Four, the men playing cards on the lid of the coffin of one of the slum dwellers are a metaphor for how the working people, by failing to fight for their own interests, become helpless pawns in the power struggles of alien forces. O’Casey’s characters are the victims, not the protagonists of history.

In February 1926 at the fourth performance of this play at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre there was a riot. The freshly installed ruling class immediately understood that the very foundations of the new state were being threatened by this demolition of the 1916 myth, the ‘crucifixion and resurrection’ of the Irish nation. In the fourth book of his autobiography, Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well, O’Casey was later to recall how he was abused by the widows of the 1916 rebels that night when leaving the theatre. One of them shouted: “I’d like you to know that there isn’t a prostitute in Ireland from one end of it to th’ other”.

The author emigrated to London a month after the riot. (Had he remained, he could have witnessed the public burning of Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of his play Juno and the Paycock in Limerick in 1930, three years before Nazi book burning began in Germany).

Long before, he had become a persona non grata in Dublin because of his position on the Easter Rising. Within the play itself, O’Casey ironically deals with his own public image. The character who puts forward the opinion of the author is a cowardly, dogmatic armchair tenement revolutionist called the Covey (a Dublin word for a smart alec, a know all). It‘s him who declares that the ICA has disgraced the Plough and the Stars by taking part in a middle class nationalist revolution, who terms the speech of Pearse “dope” and who criticises the British socialist soldier Stoddard for having abandoned internationalism in the face of the world war.

O’Casey and the workers’ movement

The play The Plough and the Stars is the crowning point of a remarkable transformation in the artistic development and in the world views of Sean O’Casey. At the beginning, he was the author of propaganda plays full of complex argumentation (in the style of his celebrated Dublin contemporary George Bernard Shaw), but generally considered to be of little artistic value. In the first half of the 1920s he produced, almost overnight, three great dramas, the so-called Dublin trilogy. These were historical plays of a contemporary nature, each dealing scathingly with a major event: The Shadow of a Gunman (the IRA war against British rule), Juno and the Paycock (the Irish Civil War), and The Plough and the Stars. Thereafter, his plays rarely attained the same artistic quality again. This puzzling development has led people to speak of ‘The O’Casey enigma’. Irish nationalists have tried to explain the relative decline of his creativity from the 1930s on through his emigration, as if he could not produce great art without having his ‘native soil’ under his feet. But soon after moving to London, O’Casey did write another powerful historical play, The Silver Tassie. It is based on his experience as a patient in a Dublin hospital (being treated for ailments which directly resulted from his poverty), where he shared rooms with many of the maimed victims of First World War then raging. It is a furious condemnation of imperialist war (which the state-subsidised Abbey Theatre refused to perform).

In reality, O’Casey’s flowering was possible because of the ideas which inspired him at the time – those brought forward by the upsurge of workers’ struggles on the eve of the First World War, and their confirmation through the proletarian revolt against the war, above all the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. He was one of the first to put the lives of working class people at the centre of world literature, showing the wealth and diversity of their personalities. He was perhaps the first to put the language of the tenements on the stage. He delighted in the magical fantasy, the irresistible rhythm and the baroque exaggerations of the Dublin slum dwellers, recognising how they used rhetoric in order to enrich their bleak lives and gain a sense of self dignity.

In this sense, his artistic development is inseparable from the changes in his general world view. At the onset, O’Casey was a fanatical Irish republican nationalist. Born into an educated, but poverty-stricken family, he had only three years of school education, and became an undernourished unskilled labourer. At the time, the infant mortality rate in Dublin was higher than in Moscow or Calcutta. Despite a serious eye ailment, he educated himself, becoming an avid reader of literature. At an early age, he became an activist in the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and other nationalist groupings. But because of his situation as a worker, it was almost inevitable that his artistic development would largely depend on the evolution of the socialist movement. It was the development of the proletarian struggle which brought his creative sensitivity to the surface, just as his later artistic decline was linked to the perversion of its principles with the defeat of the world revolution in the 1920s (O’Casey became an unapologetic Stalinist).

1913: Dress rehearsal for revolution

When O’Casey himself was eighteen, he was sacked for refusing to take off his cap while being paid his wages. In 1911, he was inspired by the great railway strike of the British proletariat. But what won him over to the workers’ movement was the great labour conflict in Dublin in 1913. For one thing, it coincided with the arrival (from Liverpool) of Jim Larkin, the leader of the 1913 movement. Larkin revealed to O’Casey that revolutionary socialism was something very different from a trade union mentality. In Larkin’s vision, the proletariat was fighting, not only for food and drink and shelter, but for true humanity, for access to music and nature, education and science, as indispensable moments towards a new world. As O’Casey would later write, Larkin “brought poetry into the workers’ fight for a better life”.

For O’Casey, this was a revelation. In Ireland at the time, to be Catholic was considered synonymous with being poor and Irish, Protestant with being rich and English. But O’Casey came from a Protestant background. The intensity of his original nationalism, the changing of his name (he was born John Casey) were probably motivated by feelings of guilt or inferiority. That all of this was of no importance, was an insight which he experienced as a liberation.

But of course it was also the bitterness of the 1913 conflict itself which transformed the outlook of Sean O’Casey. This was the nearest Irish society to date has come to an open class war between labour and capital. For the first time ever, there was an open split between the proletariat and Irish nationalism. In book 3 of his autobiography Drums under the Windows, O’Casey reminds us that the Irish Volunteers were “streaked with employers who had openly tried to starve the women and children of the workers, followed meekly by scabs and blacklegs from the lower elements among the workers themselves, and many of them saw in this agitation a plumrose path to good jobs, now held in Ireland by the younger sons of the English well-to-do.” As for that other major nationalist force in Ireland, the Catholic Church, its priests staged pitched battles to prevent children of locked out families being sent to England to be fed and taken care of by “pagan” i.e. socialist families. Drums under the Windows narrates how a married couple from a militant Catholic lay organisation came to the strike headquarters in Liberty Hall to appeal to the ‘religious faith’ of the workers. “Asked by Connolly if the Knight and his Dame would take five children into their home suite home, the pair were silent; asked if they would take two, they were still silent; and turning away to go out, before they could be asked if they would take one”.

It became clear that the only supporter of the Irish wage labourers was the international proletariat, in particular the English workers. Living reality had thus demonstrated that the old marxist formula no longer applied, according to which the English and the Irish workers could only act together in the perspective of national separation.

In a sense, Ireland, like the Russian Empire, had experienced in 1913 a kind of ‘1905’ of its own: a dress rehearsal for the proletarian revolution. Such pre-revolutionary battles are an essential part of the preparation for the struggle for power. This was well understood by the marxist Left in the period after the mass strikes and soviets in Russia in 1905. This is why Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek denounced the prevention of such ‘dress rehearsals’ by the Socialist Party in Germany at that time not only as cowardice, but as the beginning of betrayal.

But in Ireland, 1913 was not the prelude to socialist revolution. In this sense, its evolution resembled not that of the Russian Empire, but a specific part of it: Poland. The Polish proletariat had participated magnificently in the mass strikes of 1905. But in Poland, as in Ireland, when the moment was ripe for the world revolution, the workers were derailed by the establishment of a nation state.

O’Casey and Connolly on insurrection

As secretary of the Strikers Relief Committee in 1913, O’Casey had been in charge of the fund raising for the families of the workers locked out. After the defeat of the strike in January 1914, he was one of the first to propose a re-organisation of the workers’ self-defence militia, the ICA, on a permanent basis – and was elected honorary secretary of the new Army Council. Since open class conflicts were over for the moment, this policy only made sense in the perspective of the preparation for armed insurrection. The outbreak of imperialist world war the same year only confirmed this perspective.

But what was to be the nature of this insurrection: socialist or nationalist? The ICA was a proletarian militia. But its very name - Irish Citizens Army - reflected the dead weight of Irish nationalism, which the struggle of 1913 had only partly overcome. With the outbreak of the ‘Great War’, within the workers’s organisations there was a revival in the influence of radical nationalism.

The First World War, which ushered in the epoch of decadent capitalism, was a historical frontier at almost every level, including the psychological one. We can take the example of Patrick Pearse, the ‘commander in chief’ of the 1916 rising. Although an extreme patriot, he was known for the nobility of his character, and his progressive ideas about education. But after the world war broke out, he gave a series of public speeches which can only be described as insane. He became a nationalist in the fullest sense of the word, rejoicing in the sacrifice of the young lives of all the warring nations, claiming that this blood being spilt was like wine cleansing the soil of Europe.

It is significant that James Connolly was soon to fall for the spell of this atavistic vision of blood sacrifice. Connolly had always belonged to the left wing of the Socialist International. Born in Edinburgh into horrific poverty, with hardly any schooling, like O’Casey a self educated worker of considerable learning, he was a man of deep convictions and great personal courage. Nevertheless, the collapse of the International and the madness of the world war profoundly destabilised him. From 1915 on, he began to publicly announce a coming insurrection in the workers’ press, bringing the ICA militants out for military exercises such as the storming of public buildings under the eyes of the British authorities. In the end, it was Connolly who was urging the Irish Volunteers to no longer postpone the rising, saying that otherwise he would go ahead on his own with his 200 ICA ‘soldiers’.

Contemporary Irish historians, such as his latest biographer Donal Nevan, have gone to some pains to show that Connolly did not share the vision of Pearse of a blood sacrifice. They cite the series of articles on “Insurrection and Warfare” which Connolly wrote in 1915, as proof that he believed that the 1916 rising had a real chance of success. And indeed, this series represents an important contribution to the marxist study of military strategy. For instance, in his article on the Moscow insurrection of 1905, one of the points highlighted is that it was not militarily defeated, but “melted away as suddenly as it had taken form” as soon as it became clear that neither the workers in St. Petersburg nor the peasantry were following its lead. They melted into the protecting proletarian masses around them.

But in one of the controversies within the ICA between O’Casey and Connolly before 1916, the latter defended the opposite viewpoint. This concerned whether or not to purchase uniforms. Clearly, it was O’Casey who defended the proletarian standpoint of the Moscow insurrectionists, according to which the combatants avoid a lost cause battle in order to preserve their forces. “If we flaunt signs of what we are, and what we do, we’ll get it on the head and round the neck. As for a uniform – that would be the worst of all…Caught in a dangerous corner, there would be a chance in your workaday clothes. You could slip among the throng, carelessly, with few the wiser.” (Quoted in Drums under the Windows). Indeed, O’Casey challenged Connolly to a public debate, and submitted an article on the issue – which was never published.

The blood sacrifice of 1916

O’Casey resigned from the Irish Citizens Army after his motion was defeated forbidding double membership in the ICA and the Irish Volunteers. Soon after, Larkin left for the United States (where he participated in the founding of the Communist Party of America in 1919). From then on, O’Casey and Delia Larkin became increasingly isolated in their opposition to the course taken by Connolly. As O’Casey put it in his History of the Irish Citizens Army (1919) “Liberty Hall was no longer the Headquarters of the Irish Labour movement, but the centre of Irish national disaffection.”

The road to the 1916 Rising was now open. But this road was not followed by the Irish proletariat, which had launched itself into the defence of its class interests in face of the war. Some of the last articles Connolly wrote before his tragic death were devoted to this question. He refers to the strikes of the Dublin dockers, construction and gas workers, and to labour conflicts in Cork, Tralee, Sligo, Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) and other centres. He also writes about the great strike of the munitions workers in the Glasgow area. But Connolly never once appealed to the Irish workers to join the Easter Rising, or even to go on strike in sympathy. And when he led the occupation of the General Post Office on Easter Monday, the first thing he did was to turn out the employees there at gunpoint. He knew perfectly well that proletariat of Dublin, still furious about the 1913 events, would have nothing to do with a nationalist upheaval. And it was this attitude of the workers which was to give O’Casey the strength to write his great dramatic trilogy.

In the end, it was the symbolism of the blood sacrifice of 1916 which overpowered the autonomous workers movement in Ireland for years to come. For blood sacrifice it was. The previous day, the official leadership of the Irish Volunteers had publicly cancelled the rising, after the attempt to land German arms had failed (a detail which shows to what extent it was part of the international imperialist rivalries). The insurrection was carried through by a small minority against all the odds, in order to oblige the British authorities to execute its leaders. It was a modern version of the myth of crucifixion and resurrection, which is why it had to take place at Easter. It overpowered Connolly himself. We know from his private correspondence that Connolly was an atheist, although towards the outside he would sometimes denied this in order not to alienate the more religious layers of workers. But all the evidence indicates that he died as a devout Catholic.

It was through creating feelings of guilt towards the heroes allegedly left in the lurch that the class consciousness of the proletariat was deadened. As O’Casey put it: “They had helped God to rouse up Ireland: let the whole people answer for them now, for evermore.”

Why was O’Casey able to resist this? He was less of a theoretician than Connolly. Even on the national question, he was not necessarily clearer than those around him. But he felt profoundly attached to what he understood as the human dimension of the workers’ struggle, to the forces celebrating the dignity of mankind and the importance of life even in the face of death.

1916 announced much of what decadent capitalism had in store for society. Because it has led mankind into a dead end, capitalism has enforced the burden of the past weighing like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Because it alone holds the perspective of a future society, the revolutionary proletariat has no use for the glorification of guilt, sacrifice or death.

Dombrovski 1/3/6

The cartoons of Mohammed originally published in a Danish newspaper have not only provoked violent protests around the world. They have also been a dramatic illustration of the growing tensions between imperialist states.

A story of imperialist gangsters

On 30 September, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published two cartoons showing the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist bomber. In the weeks that followed the cartoons were published by numerous newspapers, including France-Soir. We know the result. Demonstrations, some of them very violent, broke out in numerous ‘Muslim’ countries. In Afghanistan, there were confrontations leading to serious injuries and deaths. In Nigeria, there were pogroms between the Muslim and Christian sectors of the population. How did a few cartoons give rise to such an outburst of hatred? How did a few drawings in a Danish paper stir up such an international storm?

At the beginning of October, this affair was limited to Denmark. Ambassadors from Muslim countries asked for an interview with the Danish prime Minister Fagh Rasmussen, who is close to the Jyllands-Posten. The PM refused to meet them and a delegation from the Muslim associations of Denmark made a tour of a number of capitals in the Muslim world, officially to draw the matter to public attention. It was this that led to demonstrations in Pakistan. In January, the demonstrations began throughout the ‘Muslim world’, especially in the Middle East. The protests very quickly took on a violent, anti-western character which cannot be explained simply by the offence caused by the cartoons. To understand the situation, we have to remember that since the Second World War this region of the world has been a continuous theatre of war and barbarism. Since the end of the 1980s, the tensions have become more and more explosive and uncontrollable. The irreversible destabilisation of the Muslim world, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, generally under the impact of military adventures by the great imperialist powers, above all the USA, is what today lies behind the rise of the most archaic religious radicalism among the population of these regions. The total impasse these countries have reached has strengthened the hand of the most retrograde factions of the bourgeoisie. This is the significance, for example, of the accession to power in Palestine of the Hamas movement. The same goes for the ascendancy of the ultra-conservative party led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Tensions between the powers of this region, and between these powers and the USA, have grown sharper and sharper. In this situation of chaotic confrontations and ideological regression, the various bourgeois cliques in this part of the world have leapt onto the cartoons bandwagon in order to advance their interests within this general imperialist free for all. Behind the apparently spontaneous demonstrations lies the organised presence of the various bourgeois factions, generally operating from inside the state machine. After the attacks on Danish embassies, Libya decided to close its embassy in Copenhagen. The Danish ambassador in Kuwait was summoned. The Syrian and Iraqi governments publicly announced that they were shocked. This goes well beyond the publication of a few cartoons in the western or Jordanian press. The cartoons have in fact become a weapon of war in the hands of the bourgeoisies of the Muslim world, responding to the increasingly aggressive imperialist policies pursued by the US, France, Germany and Britain. How can we fail to notice the connection between the use of these cartoons and the threats which the USA and France have made to Iran over its nuclear programme? The desperate populations of the Muslim countries are being cynically manipulated, and there is nothing spontaneous about the demonstrations that have taken place. They are the product of the policy of war, of hatred, of nationalist mobilisation being followed by all the bourgeoisies of the globe.

Since the September 11 attacks, the USA has posed as the champion of western values and the main enemy of Islamic terrorism. And yet we have seen the Bush administration being extremely ‘understanding’ over the reactions to the cartoons in Iran and elsewhere. Why? This has nothing to do with the defence of people’s rights to have their religious beliefs treated with respect, which is what we are told. The reality is much more cynical. The USA is very pleased to see rivals like France being dragged into a confrontation with a whole number of Arab and Muslim states. In a world of permanent warfare, of every man for himself, each capitalist state can only rejoice to see its rivals falling into a trap.

The position taken up by Hamas provides further illustration of this cynicism. Hamas, a party of religious radicalism and suicide bombing, has put itself forward as an honest broker in this affair! The head of its political bureau, Khaled Mechaal said that “the movement is ready to play a role in calming the situation between the Islamic world and the western countries as long as the latter agree to cease causing offence to the feelings of the Muslims” (Le Monde, 9.2.06). In order to gain official recognition on the international level, Hamas is ready to draw in its claws.

In the context of this free for all, where every bourgeois clique is stirring up hatred, all the propaganda about the freedom of the press or respect for religion can be seen for what it is: a vast fraud.

Freedom of the press and respect for religion: two poisons administered by the bourgeoisie

The Independent summed up the bourgeois ideological campaign very well when it wrote: “there is no doubt that the papers must have the right to publish drawings which some people find offensive”. This is the sacrosanct right to free expression which a whole part of the bourgeoisie is going on about today. The same paper goes on to say “in such a complex situation, it’s easy to take refuge in banal declarations about the rights of a free press. The most difficult thing is not settling what’s true and what’s false, but taking a decision which takes account of the rights of both sides. There is a right to free expression without any censorship. But there is also the right for Muslims to live in a pluralistic and secular society without feeling oppressed, threatened and insulted. Raised to a right above all others, this can become a mask for fanaticism”. The ideological trap which bourgeois democracy uses against the working class is clearly illustrated here. It has to choose between what is a right, freedom of expression, and a moral duty, the respect for other people’s beliefs. In any case, the proletariat is called to show moderation and understanding in this matter, to the benefit of its bourgeois masters. This is what Lenin wrote in the Theses on bourgeois democracy at the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919: “’Freedom of the press’ is another of the principal slogans of ‘pure democracy’. And here, too, the workers know — and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times —that this freedom is a deception because the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains—a rule that is manifested throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically—the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example”. And at that time Lenin and the communists were not yet acquainted with the vast ideological power of the radio and TV.

As for the other choice, respecting the beliefs of everyone, we only have to cite a phrase from Marx to know what communists think: “religion is the opium of the people”. All religions are an ideological poison, one of the numerous means used by the ruling class to block the development of class consciousness.

Freedom of the press is just the freedom of the bourgeoisie to cram its ideology into the heads of the workers! And respect for religion is the respect of the ruling class for everything that mystifies the proletariat!

It’s obvious that the spread of violent protests about the cartoons is not a matter of indifference for the proletariat. It is vital that the working class does not get drawn into the anti-western agitation sweeping the Muslim world. This is just an expression of the acceleration of chaos and makes the development of the class struggle more vital than ever. At the same time, the proletariat cannot fall for the false alternative offered in the west – the defence of the free press and secular democracy.

Faced with the irrationality of the whole of capitalist society, the proletariat must stand for the rationality of the class struggle, for the development of its consciousness and for the perspective of communism.   Tino 20.2.06

The ICC recently held a number of public interventions in Brazil, which we describe in this article. It was in fact three successive public meetings in three different towns (Salvador da Bahia, Vitoria da Conquista and Sao Paulo) and a presentation followed by a debate at the University of Vitoria da Conquista, on the occasion of the “2nd meeting of history students of the state of Bahia” (the theme of this meeting was: ‘Social struggles and their expressions in history’).

The theme of the public meetings was: ‘Faced with the mortal crisis of capitalism, the future belongs to the working class’, and the presentation at the University was on ‘The origins and essential characteristics of the international communist left‘.

Such an intervention in Brazil constitutes a first for the ICC; it was only possible thanks to the sterling initiatives of sympathisers there and to the collaboration with the Brazilian proletarian group by the name of “Workers Opposition” [1] [29] who were the organisers of the public meetings. For this first intervention in Brazil, the ICC chose the themes that allowed it, as much as possible, to express its historic vision of the necessity and possibility of the proletarian revolution. Thus, the common presentation to the three public meetings, which can be consulted on our website in Portuguese, developed the three following aspects in particular:

• like all systems of exploitation which preceded it, capitalism is not an eternal system;
• the hour of its overthrow by the proletariat, the only revolutionary class in society, struck a long time ago and if the latter is not up to its historic task, the situation will lead to the end of humanity;
• the perspective contained in the present situation is the development of the class struggle.

In one of the public meetings, in Salvador, following a presentation by the ICC, Workers’ Opposition made a presentation putting forward the fundamental need for organisation of the working class into workers’ councils for the overthrow of capitalism.

The presentation at the University was based essentially on the article on our website: ‘Left communism and the marxist tradition’ and was articulated around the following axes:

• what distinguishes the left fractions from other organisations claiming the name of marxism;
• the communist left has never been a unique current but was always constituted by different political expressions, corresponding to a whole historical effort of the working class with an aim of theoretical/political clarification;
• the contribution of the communist left to the development of the theoretical/political heritage of the proletariat is irreplaceable.

In order to give an account of these four events, we think it preferable not to treat them separately but rather report the main questions and preoccupations which were expressed and gave rise to some debates. Nevertheless, before that, we think it essential to bring out the importance of these meetings, both because of the numbers who took part in them and because of the animated and lively character of the debates, which each time continued beyond the allocated time.

A huge participation and a promising dynamism

Revolutionaries are sometimes surprised by the scale of the interest aroused by their positions, even though they have the highest confidence in the revolutionary capacities of their class. We must say that the breadth of participation in these meetings very pleasantly surprised us, as some of them outstripped the ordinary attendance at public meetings in towns where the ICC usually intervenes. In fact, close to a hundred people participated in the three public meetings. As to the meeting on the communist left at the University, it drew around 260 people in a large room for the whole of the first part of the debate. The meeting was extended by almost two hours with about 80 remaining when we had to close, before we were able to reply to all the interventions that had been made.

There were a number of circumstances that favoured such a big attendance. The first public appearance of an international revolutionary organisation that does not exist in Brazil is naturally likely to arouse a particular local interest. Further, the public meetings benefited from an effective publicity, taken in charge by Workers’ Opposition, on its own or else with the help of sympathisers, according to the venue. We can also point to a certain academic and not exclusively political interest that motivated some students and teachers from the University to participate in the debate on the history of the communist left: for reasons linked to the Universities’ rules, that this was announced as a presentation by a historian [2] [30]. It nevertheless more and more openly took the form of a political meeting presided over by the organisers of the debate, the Workers’ Opposition and the ICC, with a table presenting the press of the ICC at the entry to the room.

But more importantly, the success of our meetings can be put down to the existence in Brazil of a favourable hearing to a radical critique of society and of its democratic institutions. Particularly because the country is currently being run by the government of Lula, the ‘great workers’ leader’ of the left, whose name is indissolubly linked to the PT (Party of the Workers, founded in 1980) and the CUT (United Workers’ Centre, the main ‘independent’ union since the end of the dictatorship, founded in 1983). Today, the governmental alliance of Lula, the PT and the CUT must openly assume the role of spearheading the attacks against the working class. These attacks are required for the defence of Brazilian national capital on the international arena. A government or party of the right would have to implement the same measures, and they expose the real nature of these leaders as the enemies of the working class that they have always been. In Brazil, as in any other country, the response of the working class is still far from corresponding to the scale of the capitalist attacks. Nevertheless (and it’s here that the interest in the public meetings essentially resides), there also exists in this country a growing preoccupation about the future, and this is being shown in a revival of interest in an alternative to the present society.

Far from being received as dogmas, the analyses of the history of our class, the idea of a political struggle with a perspective of a future communist society, which we put forward in our presentations and interventions, aroused a lot of enthusiasm, a great deal of questioning, and sometimes also scepticism, but there were also clear expressions of sympathy that moved some to come up to us and explicitly say so at the end of meetings. Also to further pose questions that they hadn’t time to put during the meeting itself.

If the large audience at these meetings took us a little by surprise, it nevertheless confirmed the growing tendency of young people to ask questions about the future. This was underlined in one of the meetings, at Vitoria da Conquista, where more than half the participants were made up of the young or the very young.

The main discussions

We report below on the main questions posed to us and which allowed the whole richness of the debates. We can’t give the responses we made due to lack of space. However, we invite our readers who have access to the internet to log onto our site to find the essential elements of our replies ( www.internationalism.org [31] – at present this extended version is available in French, Spanish and Portuguese: offers to help with the English translation would be very welcome). We want to specify here however that certain of these responses were not undertaken by ourselves but by Workers’ Opposition. Nevertheless, as they corresponded to what we would have said, we fully endorse them. In other respects, this doesn’t mean that all the responses provided by the ICC or by the Workers’ Opposition were totally shared by both. The main discussions thus related to:

• the nature and role of the unions - on the organisation of the working class into workers’ councils and the role of revolutionaries;
• the Russian revolution, its degeneration and the weight of the counter-revolution;
• the role of the party and the international communist left;
• the class nature of Social Democratic parties, the ‘Communist’ parties and of the Trotskyist currents;
• the notion of decadence, and the phase of the decomposition of capitalism;
• the struggles of the oppressed and non-exploiting layers;
• the bourgeois nature of ‘Chavism’ and of ‘alternative worldism’;
• the revolutionary perspective.

The main questions raised on these themes were:

“How can we see a revolutionary perspective within a consumer society?”

“Doesn’t the anti-democratic nature of the revolution risk repelling the working class?”

“How can we make the world revolution while the proletariat in the United States supports its own bourgeoisie?”

“How can the unemployed be mobilised?”

“Isn’t the working class of today different from that which made the revolution in 1917?”

“Isn’t revolution an idea that has now been transcended?”

An experience to be followed up

 The ICC draws a very positive balance sheet of these four public interventions. As well as being a first for the ICC, simply by the fact that they took place in Brazil, this whole experience was one of the rare occasions where the ICC made a common intervention with another proletarian organisation [3] [32]. This in itself was a very positive feature of these interventions, both because of the quality of the collaboration with Workers’ Opposition and the because of the impact such a unified intervention had on the meetings. In effect, the fact that two distinct organisations, with differences and divergences existing between them, jointly addressed themselves to their class prefigured the capacity of different elements of the revolutionary avant-garde to work together for the defence of their common cause, the victory of the revolution. To this end, it was understood by both organisations that, in the interventions at public meetings, the priority would be given to question of the proletariat’s organisations of revolutionary struggle, the workers’ councils, and to the denunciation of the democratic and parliamentary mystifications and of the counter-revolutionary role of the unions. But it was equally understood between us that we wouldn’t try to hide different approaches concerning the explanation of such and such a situation; these differences were effectively expressed in the discussions. It was also agreed that these differences would be the object of a deepened debate between us, aimed at drawing out their implications.

For our part, we are eager to renew this experience. Once again, we thank our sympathisers for the quality of the support they gave us, and we salute Workers’ Opposition for its attitude of proletarian solidarity and openness.   ICC (2nd December 2005).

This article has already been published on this site here:

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