Thousands of migrants trapped for several weeks at the Polish border, abandoned to their fate in wet and frozen forests, without food or water. Families wandering in the middle of nowhere, forced to drink water from the surrounding swamps, sleeping on the ground in sub-zero temperatures. Exhausted, often sick, exiles beaten up by Belarusian army troops who knowingly led them to the European Union (EU) borders. Hysterical Polish authorities who do not hesitate to send women, children, the disabled and the elderly back into the woods and to beat up those who try to cross the barbed wire fences that have been illegally deployed all along the border. This sad spectacle is unfortunately reminiscent of many others, just as revolting. But the instrumentalisation of migrants for openly imperialistic purposes adds the colour of the most shameless cynicism to this distressing picture.

Hostages of sordid imperialist rivalries

The sudden presence of migrants in this hostile region, a route rarely used by refugees, is not accidental: the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in open conflict with the EU since his disputed re-election in August 2020, has encouraged and even organised the transport of migrants by offering them an illusory way out to Europe, and has thrown them towards the Polish border. Charters are even reportedly being chartered to Minsk to transport the would-be exiles.

For Lukashenko and his clique, migrants are merely a bargaining chip in response to Western sanctions and pressure. Moreover, as soon as the negotiations with the EU and Russia began, the Belarusian government sent a few hundred migrants back to square one, on a "voluntary" basis (what a euphemism!), as a sign of “good faith”. So much for the deaths! So much for the trauma! So much for the dashed hopes!

The use of refugees in the context of imperialist rivalries has developed spectacularly in recent years, taking advantage of a context in which the richest states have become veritable fortresses and are wallowing in the most xenophobic rhetoric every day. We have recently seen Turkey threaten to open the floodgates to emigration at the Greek border, or Morocco at the Spanish border, each time playing “migratory blackmail” in order to defend their sordid national interests. Even France, in the context of post-Brexit tensions, is suggesting, more or less subtly, that it might leave the UK to deal with Calais migrants on its own. It is also likely that behind the Belarusian refugees, Putin's Russia is advancing its pawns.

The hypocrisy and cruelty of the “democratic” states

« The Poles are doing a very important service to the whole of Europe,” said Horst Seehofer, the German Minister of the Interior. And what a service it is! Poland and its populist government did not hesitate to deploy thousands of soldiers at the border and to explicitly threaten refugees: “If you cross this border, we will use force. We will not hesitate”. 1 At least the message is clear and the intimidation has been administered with zeal: tear gas thrown at hungry and exhausted people, regular beatings, no care given to the sick...

The EU, which claims to be so intransigent about the “respect for human dignity”, also turned a blind eye when Poland arrogated to itself, on 14 October, in defiance of “international conventions”, the “right” to systematically turn back migrants to Belarus without checking whether the asylum applications were valid, even according to the narrow rules of bourgeois legality. The bourgeoisie has thus equipped itself with a regulatory and legal arsenal that is totally unfavourable to migrants and it does not hesitate to cheat its own rules when the need arises!

The same applies to the walls against migrants. When the UK wanted to re-establish a border in Northern Ireland, the bourgeoisie took offence at such “peace-threatening” boldness, “reminiscent of the worst hours of the Cold War”. When Lithuania and Poland decided to build thousands of kilometres of barbed wire fences, this was called “protecting European borders” and “doing a very important service”...

Poland's populist government, after being roundly reviled for its anti-abortion measures and Eurosceptic statements, is suddenly in the spotlight. This crisis is a real boon for Poland’s image with its “European partners”. Clearly, if the Polish state is doing such a great “service”, it is because it is doing the dirty work of the other EU states without a second thought.

Let us remember that the “great democracies” of Europe, when they do not themselves park asylum seekers in abject concentration camps, such as Moria in Greece, subcontract the “management of migratory flows” to regimes that are well known for their “respect for human dignity”: Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco or Libya, where the worst kind of slave traders still operate under the benevolent eye (and purse) of the European Union! On the other side of the Atlantic, President Biden, who was supposed to break with his predecessor's disgusting migration policy, is proving to be just as brutal: since September, his administration has been “evacuating” thousands of migrants to a Haitian hell, nearly 14,000 according to the American media.

The “democratic” states can always present themselves as the guarantors of “human dignity”, but the reality shows that they do not attach any more importance to it than the more “authoritarian” regimes. For both, only their cold interests in the imperialist arena count.

The “right of asylum”: a tool for building walls against migrants

It is up to the parties of the left of capital, from ecologists to Trotskyites, to brandish an equally hypocritical semblance of indignation. In Poland and other European countries, small demonstrations, led by leftists, have been held to demand the application of “international law” and the reception of refugees in the name of the “right of asylum”.

Yet bourgeois law, with its international conventions and “human rights”, is quite comfortable with the inhumane physical and regulatory barriers erected against migrants: the “right to asylum” is applied piecemeal according to ultra-selective criteria, and in the face of Poland’s abuses, which are indeed incompatible with the Geneva Convention, European states need only look the other way.

By “fighting for the application of refugee rights”, NGOs and leftist organisations are in fact abandoning migrants to the gallows trees of the administration, exposing them to permanent policing and the equally impassable wall of bureaucracy. There is nothing to hope for in bourgeois law, which only expresses the sinister interests of the ruling class and its barbarism. The “sorting centres”, the coast guards pushing back the fragile boats of migrants (as Frontex does), the innumerable walls, the subsidies to countries that regularly use torture, all this exists in the strict respect of “law”.

The only answer to the crimes of the bourgeoisie against migrants is the international solidarity of all proletarians. This is the method that the workers' movement has always defended: when the International Working Men's Association was founded in 1864, it already had to oppose speeches accusing immigrants of driving down wages. In the face of this nationalist reflex, it affirmed on the contrary “that the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists”. Then as now, it is not the migrants who are attacking our living conditions, but capital.

EG, 21 November 2021

Notes

 

1 [2]« Faute de politique d’accueil commune, l’Europe déstabilisée par la Biélorussie », Mediapart (11 novembre 2021).

 

 

The ICC has published an article on the recent signs of a renewed fighting spirit in the working class in a number of countries: Struggles in the United States, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea... Neither the pandemic nor the economic crisis have broken the combativity of the proletariat! [4] The struggles in the US are particularly important, and this contribution from a close sympathizer there aims to examine them in more detail.

Spurred on by the conditions imposed by the pandemic, the steady erosion of working class living and working standards in the United States have transformed over the last two years into an outright assault by the bourgeoisie. Whether they were tossed to the jaws of America’s dysfunctional unemployment insurance system, or forced to continue their work, risking the health of themselves and their families, as it was deemed necessary or “essential” to be carried on, workers have faced a constant onslaught since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. All of this while the capitalists attempt to force workers to march to the arrhythmic beating of their drums: some factions rallying behind conspiracy theories touted by the populist right as it devolves into fringe militias and online pseudo-communities based around the deluded lies which spread so quickly throughout social media, others taking advantage of the need for safety and caution in order to bolster the already overinflated security state. The only perspective which the bourgeoisie can put forward in this time of crisis is one tinged with a helplessness which can only be a reflection of the helplessness of the capitalist system wracked with convulsions as it writhes in the agony of its crisis of senility, the crisis of decomposition: “you, the essential workers, will keep our society afloat!” In its attempt to invigorate an already overworked and underpaid working class with a “work ethic”, i.e.mobilizing those essential sectors of the economy to produce nonstop to keep the capitalists’ heads above water, the bourgeoisie can’t hide a fundamental truth about the society it has built: the collective strength of the working class remains the power which keeps the gears turning, the water which spins the wheel, the fuel which feeds the fire. However, much to the surprise of the bourgeoisie, the working class has taken this to heart and is now showing precisely what it means to be at the center of the economy.

Carpenters confront both bosses and unions

“Striketober”, so named for the massive explosions of strikes which occurred in October, has given way to an equally combative November as workers across the country are taking action and refusing to work under degrading conditions for inhuman pay. Even before October, the latter half of this year has seen the development of strikes across the country – most notably in the plants of Frito Lay and Nabisco, while in September a strike by carpenters in Washington set the stage for the ongoing struggles which we are following closely as they continue to spring up across every sector of the economy. The Washington carpenters faced an assault on two fronts, as many workers often do – they faced an attack by both the bosses and the unions.  While the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC) presented contracts to the workers with concession after concession, filling every page with the desires of the bosses’ General Contractors Association (GCA). But there was a widespread discontent within the workforce and when the carpenters were presented with a tentative agreement in which the demands of union members were not met, an overwhelming majority of UBC workers voted down the agreement and went on strike until an agreement which would be approved could be put forward. Much to the dismay of both the employers and the union leadership, the workers held the line and voted down five tentative agreements before the international leadership of the UBC involved themselves: claiming fraud and interference, the national leadership of the union took complete control of the local branch[1] which was the source of so much trouble, and the strike finally came to an end when the final agreement presented to the workers was narrowly approved.

This doesn’t mean that the workers had escaped the union prison. Much of their militancy was channelled through a rank and file trade unionist formation, the Peter J. McGuire Group, named after the UBC’s socialist founder[2]. The group was entirely committed to working inside the union framework: according to its chairman, the Peter J. McGuire group has “promoted the right kind of leadership for the Carpenters Union”[3]. It is also worth noting that the group banned from its Facebook page writers from the World Socialist Website - a leftist group which, somewhat unusually, specialises in radical sounding criticisms of the unions[4].  

In many ways, the stage was set for the experience of “Striketober” and its continuation into the present moment. Though the carpenters in Washington are back to work, the lessons of their struggle present an important perspective for the current struggles which are going on at this moment. The carpenters of the UBC faced opposition not only from the representatives of the capitalists, but from their own supposed “representatives” in the union as well! While the communist left has known of the danger presented by unions for quite some time, the lessons which formed and continue to confirm the analysis that unions are state organs which serve to restrain the workers must be generalized and emphasized in order to understand the difficulties which the “Striketober” struggles face today. This is one of the most important aspects in the ongoing wave of struggle. As an example of this, as well as to examine the second aspect which echoes in many of the present struggles, we must look to the struggles of the John Deere agricultural equipment workers in the Midwest.

John Deere: Workers oppose the divisive “Two-Tier” system

The workers of John Deere are “represented” by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which some may recognize from the beginning of the pandemic when it maneuvered with the bosses of car plants in Michigan to keep workers in the factories with minimal protection at best. Now, the UAW and John Deere are working together to expand the tiered system of wages and benefits which was established in 1997. It was in that year that workers of John Deere were split based on their year of hire; workers who were hired after 1997 would be part of a second tier of workers, which entailed a reduced wage compared to those hired earlier and the elimination of many benefits available to the pre-1997 workforce, such as post-retirement healthcare. This year the UAW presented its membership with a contract which would create a third tier of workers, with wages dropping even lower amongst them and with the further elimination of benefits, including their pensions. This was quickly shot down by the union membership, and the John Deere workers of roughly 11 factories and 3 distribution centers, from Iowa to Georgia, Illinois to Colorado, have been on strike ever since; refusing to degrade their future colleagues they have voted no on several tentative agreements brought to them by Deere and the UAW during the course of their strike. Here again, we see the workers of John Deere struggling against a joint offensive of their bosses and the workers’ own union! The workers are forced to stand tall on their own – but just because they are “on their own” does not indicate an isolation or weakening of the struggle. It is, rather, a positive development that the workers are prepared to reject the advice of the union and insist on maintaining their own demands. This is a trend in many of the battles being waged by the working class, in which the unions are trailing behind an increasingly combative class which is awakening labor militancy across the country (and the world for that matter). In fact, autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan, who are also members of the UAW, expressed solidarity with the striking John Deere workers[5] [5]. It is clear to see that John Deere workers are not alone in the struggle against the maneuvers of the union, nor are they alone in fighting the system of tiered labor imposed on them by the bosses and unions.

Kellogg’s: signs of solidarity between the generations

The struggle against the two-tier system of wages and benefits is also prevalent in the strike of the workers of Kellogg’s, as their union, the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) is allowing the further expansion of a two-tier system which was approved in the last contract with the cereal makers – it should be noted that it is the BCTGM union which “represents” the Nabisco and Frito Lay workers who were on strike earlier this year, citing absurdly long work weeks (sometimes up to 70 hours) with no overtime pay. The lower tier of wages which was negotiated in the last contract was to be capped at 30% of the workforce – a weak check against this divisive policy, but a check nonetheless. Kellogg’s is seeking to raise this cap, and to allow more workers to be hired into this lower tier. The workers have seen this as a clear attack not just on future colleagues, but their present coworkers as well – allowing Kellogg’s to lift this cap could very well open up the path to further denigration of the current workforce and a fall in the standard of living for these workers. On top of this is another issue: workers are only ever growing older. As the workers of the higher tier retire or seek employment elsewhere, slowly but surely it will be the lower tier which dominates and eventually makes up the whole of the workforce. There can be no doubt about it: this is a system of not only dividing workers but one of keeping them in an ever-increasing state of precariousness. This is evident not only in the struggles of Striketober, in which the workers are actively identifying this as an attack on their existence and putting up a serious resistance to it, but in the labor regulations which have shaped the division of labor in the United States in the phase of decadent capital for decades – the system of tiered labor created by automation and the New Deal.

Workers face divisions old and new

The policies implemented throughout the 1930’s which made up the New Deal provided secure union jobs with pensions and benefits in manufacturing and transportation, the sectors of the economy where the intensification of productivity was entirely possible on an enormous scale – thus setting the scene for the massive improvement in the living standards of manufacturing workers compared to their pre-Great Depression standards which would result from the period of post-war reconstruction. In spite of these policies setting up workers in these industries for success over the next few decades, there was an enormous section of the American workforce which was missing from these improvements: workers in the service sector. While the service sector was hardly negligible in the 1930’s, it would experience a massive growth in the decades to come due to the widespread implementation of computer-assisted labor-saving technologies throughout heavy industry – automation was set to shock the labor market and stimulate the growth of the service sector in a way that would set the stage for the current state of labor and the economy in our present day. As author Jason Smith puts it in his Smart Machines and Service Work, due to the rapid implementation of automation, “factories that had been roiled by worker unrest were expanding production at unprecedented rates, and with far fewer workers.”[6] [6] As such, manufacturing shed jobs and workers found themselves tossed into unemployment with no option other than to sell their labor for cheap in the service sector. Because of the dominant presence of the unions, it was often workers who were unaffiliated with any union who could be most easily laid off – and in the landscape of America’s labor economy, this often meant black workers. Around this time, as well, women began entering the labor market in a more significant manner than previously, spurred on by the second wave of feminism’s slogans of “jobs for women”. The jobs they often found were in the swelling service sector, finding work in “clerical and business services, in healthcare, education, and retail”[7] [7].

We should keep in mind that the service sector’s lack of legal protections and regulations meant that, overall, workers in service occupations were paid far less and received far fewer benefits on average than their counterparts in manufacturing. Hence the creation of a two-tier system in the general labor economy as a whole, not merely in the union contracts which workers are struggling against today. The way in which this division of the class took place conveniently split workers along the lines of race and gender; the ideological hangover of chattel slavery, the racist image of the “subservient” black worker was upheld by their entry into service sector jobs while the patriarchal image of the “submissive” woman was also confirmed by their employment. As such, capital had divided the working class in such a way that previous prejudices could be affirmed by reality so long as no worker should dare to look beyond the surface. The predominantly white and male manufacturing workers could easily be separated from their black and female counterparts, while movements for racial and gender equality would separate workers from the class struggle and lead them into dead-end identity struggles which cannot find an emancipatory answer to the issues of race and gender in capitalist society. Meanwhile the workers of the manufacturing sector, which has been shrinking for decades now, find themselves downwardly mobile, and this too expresses itself through another version of the impasse of identity struggles; rather than finding solidarity with those in the service industries as it increasingly becomes the only avenue for employment in many places across the country, they shrink back into their white identity and feel they must defend their social standing from the minorities, the migrants, the feminists, and the “elite” (which, in most cases, only refers to wealthy Democrats). This fuels the flame of populism which has swept the United States since the 2016 election cycle and continues to shape the stances of the Republican party for the time being.

This split, however, is not an unbridgeable gap – in fact, it is in the struggles of today that an answer to these divisions can be found. Not only are workers struggling in manufacturing, but also in the service sector. Similar to the strikes described above, healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities along the west coast were set to strike against a two-tier deal; unions have stepped in at the last minute with a deal, which still lacked many of the workers’ demands, in order to avert the strike. Not only have nurses been quelled[8] [8], but so too have Kaiser pharmacists[9] [9] who were set to strike starting November 15th. Another strike which was crushed by union representation was film and television production crew members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) who were set to strike until a tentative agreement was put forward and ratified in spite of a majority rejecting the deal[10] [10]. This goes to show that outside of the traditional industrial landscape, there is an increasing indignation and demand for better living and working standards coming from the workers themselves, while unions run to catch up and weigh these workers down. Workers who have hitherto not been unionized have also been forced to take action – following the example of school bus drivers in Cumberland County, North Carolina who have been staging “sick outs” in protest of their unlivable wages[11] [11], cafeteria workers in nearby Wake County have taken to using the same tactic[12] [12] for much of the same reason.

Unions aim to preempt workers’ militancy

All of this goes to show that the combativity of workers across the country is reverberating: strikes stimulate workers who are facing similar conditions and breed more strikes. However, the working class still faces many obstacles which come with the pandemic, the period of capitalist decadence more generally, and its phase of decomposition. One of these, as mentioned briefly above, is the issue of the trade unions which serve the capitalist state in the period of decadence. While they struggle to contain many of the ongoing struggles, they have intervened to prevent strike action in many other cases. It should be noted that not only do unions pose a direct threat, but an indirect threat as well; the UAW is currently set to vote on measures which would “democratize” the union, making their elections direct as opposed to the current delegate system. While the implementation of this may seem to be a victory for the rank and file, it also puts forward an illusion which may serve to derail future struggles: the identification of the rank and file with the union itself, the illusion that the union belongs to the workers. The ICC has written previously on the character of the unions in decadent capitalism[13] [13], so I will not go into this further.

“Identity Politics”: a crucial divide in the working class

Yet another threat faces the working class: the interclassist struggles and partial identity struggles which have reared their ugly heads over the past few years. Particularly in the United States, the previous year’s summer of Black Lives Matter action which had its basis in the very real indignation and specific issues of black people in America found its footing on a bourgeois terrain and raised a slogan which comes nowhere close to the heart of the issue, the slogan “defund the police”. Democrats have done their best to gesture vaguely toward creating a policy which would do just this, only to immediately reverse course; even reduced to such slogans and promotion of Democratic policy, the simple, liberal demand which echoed across the BLM marches finds its echo dampened. Should the current class struggles develop further, as struggling workers find themselves uniting across lines of plant, company, and industry, the very real material inequality of black workers will be an issue which the working class will have to answer on its own terrain, with no concessions to any bourgeois movement. One last obstacle is the isolated actions which have been taking place in the form of mass resignation from employment. The labor market remains tight as more and more workers are quitting their jobs, often sharing their final texts to their supervisors on social media in a show of solidarity with all those who may be considering doing the same. While this may put the capitalists in a tight spot, the isolating nature of individual resignation avoids the question of self-organization altogether, and the shared experiences of workers cannot be expressed so clearly through social media, no matter how far texts shared in solidarity may reach.

In spite of these obstacles, however, the working class today still seems to be moving tentatively forward. The minor defeats it has experienced do not seem to be putting the brakes on the momentum of the working class, and more and more workers are finding themselves with no option but to strike for a better life by the day. We cannot but express great satisfaction at this refusal of the workers to take the degradation of their lives lying down, and we must clearly emphasize that only by uniting can these struggles be taken further and further, perhaps eventually coming to a point where it must pose very significant political questions. It is a clear demonstration in the united action across many plants, such as at John Deere, that it is only through further extension of struggle can momentum be kept up. Such extension requires the intervention of communist militants in order to provide a political perspective, especially as the struggle may develop to cross borders within and beyond the United States – the working class worldwide, despite the enormous difficulties it faces, has shown that it is not defeated, that it still contains a potential to fight back and to take its struggles forward. While we may observe this phenomenon with great enthusiasm, it is also imperative that we participate in these struggles so that we may assist the working class in realizing its strength and its historic task: the abolition of class society.

Noah L, 11/16/2021, updated January 20, 2022

[1] Oakland Socialist, November 24, 2021 [14]

[2] In the 1870s, McGuire was also a founding member of the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, a Lassallean [15] socialist organization that proposed to achieve socialism through organization of a socialist party and the organization of trade unions

[3] Oakland Socialist, November 24, 2021 [14]

[4] The “Peter J. McGuire” Facebook group bans WSWS writers - World Socialist Web Site [16] [1] The “Peter J. McGuire” Facebook group bans WSWS writers - World Socialist Web Site [16]. According to the WSWS, they were banned because an article they wrote criticising the Peter J McGuire group for trying to force the union bosses to act in a more militant manner: “The article was widely circulated among striking carpenters and no doubt triggered a debate about the call by the WSWS to form rank-and-file strike committees not to appeal to union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party, but to mobilize broader sections of the working class to strengthen the strike. Rather than allow such an important debate, the administrators of the group decided to censor criticism of their false orientation”. We have no illusions about the leftist character of the WSWS but the Peter J McGuire Group’s reaction to these slogans is further proof that the latter is entirely part of the repressive apparatus of the trade unions.

[5] [17]World Socialist Website, November 11, 2021 [18]

[6] [19]Jason E. Smith, Smart Machines and Service Work, pp. 8, 2020, Reaktion Books.

[7] [20]Ibid. pp. 30

[8] [21]World Socialist Website November 14, 2021 [22]

[9] [23]Yahoo News, November 14, 2021 [24]

[10] [25]World Socialist Website, November 16, 2021 [26]

[11] [27]CBS Local Cumberland Country News: School Bus Drivers out for living wage [28] (Unavailable in Europe/GB)

[12] [29]ABC Channel 11 Eyewitness News, November 16, 2021 [30]

[13] [31]ICC Pamphlet: Unions Against The Working Class - The Unions in Decadent Capitalism [32]

 

Today, a series of strikes in the United States, led by disgruntled workers, is shaking large parts of the country. This movement called “striketober” has mobilised thousands of workers who are denounce unbearable working conditions, physical and psychological fatigue, the outrageous increase in profits, including during the pandemic, made by employers of industrial groups like Kellog's, John Deere, PepsiCo or in the health sector and private clinics, as in New York, for example. It is difficult to count the exact number of strikes because the federal government only counts those involving more than a thousand employees. The fact that the working class can react and show combativity in a country that is now at the centre of the global decomposition process is a sign that the proletariat is not defeated.

For almost two years, a lead blanket had been falling over the working class all over the world with the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the repeated episodes of lockdown, emergency hospitalisations and millions of deaths. All over the world, the working class was the victim of the generalised negligence of the bourgeoisie, of the decay of overburdened health services subjected to the demands of profitability. The pressures of day-to-day life and fears for tomorrow reinforced an already strong feeling of vulnerability in the ranks of the workers, accentuating the tendency to withdraw into one’s shell. After the revival of combativity that had been expressed in several countries during 2019 and at the beginning of 2020, the social confrontations came to a sudden halt. If the movement against the pension reform in France had shown a new dynamism in social conflicts, the Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a powerful stifler.

But in the midst of the pandemic, struggles on the terrain of the working class were nevertheless able to emerge here and there, in Spain, Italy, France, through sporadic movements already expressing a relative capacity to react in the face of unbearable working conditions, particularly in the face of the increased exploitation and cynicism of the bourgeoisie in sectors such as health care, transport or trade. However, the isolation imposed by the deadly virus and the climate of terror conveyed by the bourgeoisie prevented these struggles from putting forward a real alternative to the degradation of living conditions.

Worse, these expressions of discontent with hellish and health-threatening working conditions, workers’ refusal to go to work without masks and protection, were presented by the bourgeoisie as selfish, irresponsible demands and above all as guilty of undermining the social and economic unity of the nation in its fight against the health crisis.

A fragile but real awakening of workers’ combativity

After years in which the American population has been under the thumb of an all-powerful state, of being fed by the populist lies of Donald Trump, who wanted to be the champion of full employment, and by the Democratic spiel of the “new Roosevelt”, Joe Biden, thousands of workers are gradually creating the conditions to form a collective force that they had once forgotten, slowly rediscovering confidence in their own strength. They have been openly rejecting the despicable “two-tier pay system” ([1]), thus demonstrating a solidarity between generations, with the majority of experienced and “protected” workers fighting alongside their young colleagues who work in much more precarious conditions.

Even if these strikes are very well supervised by the unions (which have, moreover, allowed the bourgeoisie to present these mobilisations as the “great revival” of the unions in the United States), we have seen some signs of questioning of the agreements signed by different unions. This protest is embryonic and the working class is still far from a direct and conscious confrontation with these watchdogs of the bourgeois state. But it is a very real sign of combativity.

Some might think that these struggles in the US are the exception that proves the rule: they are not! Other struggles have emerged in recent weeks and months:

• In Iran, this summer, strikes in the oil sector against low wages and high living costs saw workers from more than 70 sites participate in the movement. This was the first time this had happened in the 42 years since the advent of the Islamic republic. Other sectors also supported the strikers;
• In Korea, a general strike had to be organised by the unions in October for social benefits, against precariousness and unequal wages;

• In Italy, last September and October, there were numerous days of action, strikes and calls for a general strike against redundancies, and also against the discussions between the Italian General Confederation of Labour, the government and the employers for a “social pact” to get out of Covid. In short: for easier dismissals and the abolition of the minimum wage;
• In Germany, the public services union Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft feels obliged to threaten strikes in an attempt to obtain wage increases.
• In Britain strikes are underway or have been voted by refuse workers, university staff, transport workers and others.

Inflation will worsen living conditions

If you listen to all the bourgeois economists, the current inflation that is pushing up the prices of energy and basic goods, thus draining purchasing power, in the US, France, the UK or Germany, is only a cyclical product of the “economic recovery”.

According to the economic experts, the surge in inflation is linked to “specific aspects”, such as bottlenecks in maritime or road transport, to the “overheating” in the recovery of industrial production, particularly the spectacular increase in fuel and gas prices. In this view it’s just a passing moment while the whole process of economic production regains its balance. Everything is done to reassure us and justify a “necessary” inflationary process... which is nevertheless likely to last.

The resort to “helicopter” money, the hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, yen or yuan that the states have printed and poured out without counting the cost, for months, to deal with the economic and social consequences of the pandemic and avoid widespread chaos, has only weakened the value of currencies and is pushing a chronic inflationary process. There will be a price to pay, and the working class is in the front line of these attacks.

Even if there has not yet been a direct and massive reaction against this attack, inflation can serve as a powerful factor of development and unification of struggles: the increase in the prices of basic necessities, gas, bread, electricity, etc. can only directly degrade the living conditions of all workers, whether they work in the public or private sector, whether they are active, unemployed or retired. Being hungry and cold will be major elements in triggering future social movements, including in the core countries of capitalism.

The governments of the world are proceeding with caution. Although they have not yet imposed formal austerity programmes but, on the contrary, have massively injected millions and millions of dollars, yen and euros into the economy, they know that it is absolutely necessary to revive activity and that a social time bomb is ticking away.

While the governments thought they would quickly end all Covid-related support measures and “normalise” the accounts as soon as possible, Biden (to avoid social disaster) has thus put in place a “historic plan” for intervention that will “create millions of jobs, grow the economy, invest in our nation and our people”. ([2]) You'd think you were dreaming! The same is true in Spain, where the socialist Pedro Sanchez is implementing a massive plan of 248 billion euros of all-out social spending, to the great displeasure of a part of the bourgeoisie that does not know how the bill will be paid. In France, too, behind all the hoopla and electoral rhetoric for the 2022 presidential election, the government is trying to anticipate social discontent with “energy vouchers” and an “inflation allowance” for millions of taxpayers.

Major difficulties and pitfalls to overcome

But recognising and highlighting the capacity of the proletariat to react must not lead to euphoria and the illusion that a royal road is opening up for the workers’ struggle. Because of the difficulty of the working class to recognise itself as an exploited class and to become aware of its revolutionary role, the path to significant struggles that open the way to a revolutionary period is still a very long one.

In these conditions the confrontation remains fragile, poorly organised, largely controlled by the unions, those state organs specialised in sabotaging struggles and which accentuate corporatism and division.

In Italy, for example, the initial demands and the combativity of the last struggles have been diverted by the unions and the Italian leftists towards a dangerous impasse: the rotten slogan of “the first mass industrial strike in Europe against the health pass” that the Italian government has imposed on all the workers.

Similarly, while some sectors are strongly affected by the crisis, closures, restructuring and increased work rates, other sectors are confronted with a lack of manpower and/or a one-off production boom (as in freight transport where there is a shortage of hundreds of thousands of drivers in Europe). This situation contains a danger of division within the class through sectional demands that the unions will not hesitate to exploit or to stir up.

Let's add to that the calls of the “radical” left of capital to mobilise ourselves on bourgeois terrain: against the far right and the “fascists” responsible for violence in demonstrations or in favour of the “citizens’ marches” for the climate... This is one more expression of the vulnerability of proletarians to the discourses of the far left, which is capable of using any means to deviate the struggle onto a non-proletarian terrain, notably that of interclassism

Similarly, if inflation can act as a factor of unification of struggles, it also affects the petty-bourgeoisie, with the increase in the price of petrol and taxes, elements which had moreover given rise to the emergence of the interclassist movement of the “Yellow Vests” in France. The current context remains, in fact, conducive to the occurrence of “popular” revolts in which proletarian demands remain buried in the sterile and reactionary preoccupations of the small bosses, themselves hit hard by the crisis. This is, for example, the case in China where the collapse of the real estate giant Evergrande symbolises in a very spectacular way the reality of an over-indebted, fragile China, but which leads to the protest of small owners who have been robbed of their savings or properties.

Interclassist struggles are a real trap and do not allow the working class to assert its own demands, its own combativity, its own autonomy, its own historical perspective. The rotting of capitalist society, increased by the pandemic, weighs and will continue to weigh on the working class, which is still facing great difficulties.

Only the united struggle of all proletarians can offer a perspective

Absenteeism at work, chains of resignations, the refusal to return to work for very low wages, have not stopped growing in recent months. But these are individual reactions that are more a reflection of an (illusory) attempt to escape from capitalist exploitation than to face it through a collective struggle with class comrades. The bourgeoisie does not hesitate to exploit this weakness in order to denigrate and make these “resigners”, these “demanding” workers feel guilty by making them directly “responsible” for the lack of staff in hospitals or restaurants, for example! In other words, to sow more division in the workers' ranks.

Despite all these difficulties, these pitfalls, this last period has opened a breach and clearly confirms that the working class is capable of asserting itself on its own terrain.

The development of class consciousness depends on this renewal of combativity, and this is still a long road full of pitfalls. Revolutionaries must welcome and support these struggles, but their primary responsibility is to fight as best they can for their extension, for their politicisation, which is necessary to keep the revolutionary perspective alive. This implies being able to recognise their limits and weaknesses by firmly denouncing the traps set for them by the bourgeoisie and the illusions that threaten them, wherever they come from.

Stopio, 3 November 2021

"Just one hundred years ago, on 4 September 1921, the Parti Communiste Belge was founded" announced CARCOB/Communist Archives in an e-mail in September. Why revisit this anniversary, this milestone in the history of the workers' movement in Belgium? Marxism is not a dead, unchanging theory. It is a living method, a way of confronting reality from the point of view of the working class. In this framework, a continuous struggle must be waged to defend marxist theory against the slide towards bourgeois positions, to deepen it, to analyse correctly the new experiences of the class struggle. It is in the light of this fact that we must learn from the struggle for the foundation of the PCB and its subsequent degeneration, that we must defend the marxist approach against bourgeois lies, such as the idea that the party was founded on September 4, 1921, when in reality it was constituted as early as November 1920.

We republish here an article from the ICC’s publication in Belgium, Internationalisme, (no. 188, 1993) which traces the general framework of the history of the PCB. We will return in later articles in more detail to the different phases of its existence: the struggle for the foundation of the PCB after the betrayal of social democracy, the struggle against the growing opportunism within it and its definitive passage into the bourgeois camp at the beginning of the Second World War.

By voting for the war credits, the opportunist wing of the social democratic parties passed into the bourgeois camp in 1914. It chose the national defence of the bourgeois state and betrayed proletarian internationalism. It signed the death warrant of the Second International. But the currents of the marxist left continued for some years to fight against the degeneration of these parties. They tried to uphold marxist positions and to regroup as many healthy elements as possible, first within and then next to the old party, to form new parties, the Communist parties, and a new International, the Third.

It was a hard blow to see that social democracy, which in some countries like Germany had become a powerful proletarian organisation, was slipping from the hands of the workers as a weapon of struggle. It was also difficult to make a complete and conclusive analysis of all that had changed since the beginning of the 20th century in the conditions of the class struggle. In her Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxemburg had set out the general framework of analysis: capitalism had entered its phase of decadence. But it was the Bolsheviks and the abstentionist (anti-parliamentarian) fraction of the Italian PSI who went furthest in terms of political consequences. The Bolsheviks were the clearest on the most burning issue of the moment, the world war. While everyone, from pacifists to "minority socialists", called for peace, they instead called for "the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war". Out of the war was to come the revolution. And this was not only confirmed in Russia in 1917, but in a revolutionary wave that swept across the world until 1927 (China).

The consequences of the entry into the period of "wars and revolutions" were synthesised in the positions on which the Communist International was founded in 1919: reforms are no longer possible, proletarian revolution is the order of the day everywhere. Parliamentarianism, trade unionism, fronts with bourgeois fractions, all this was valid in the previous period, that of the ascendancy of capitalism, but was now outdated. A mass party, such as social democracy, was no longer adapted to the new period in which the conviction and political clarity of a small vanguard is decisive.

Foundation of the PCB: defence of marxism against the opportunism of social democracy

The Parti Ouvrier Belge (POB), a section of the Second International, had always been very conciliatory towards the bourgeoisie, despite the fact that it was precisely in Belgium that, at the beginning of the 20th century, the first radical mass strikes had taken place, heralding the new type of struggles that would later be developed in Russia in 1905 and 1917. Nevertheless, during the First World War, from 1916 onwards, groups to the left of the POB also arose in Belgium. In the Young Socialist Guards in Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Liège, Charleroi, resistance to the war was the first motive, but very quickly the Russian revolution became for them the beacon towards which they oriented themselves. Gradually, they arrived at marxist positions and tried to regroup. In 1920, the PCB was founded. It defended the positions of the second congress of the CI, except at the level of parliamentarism, where the CI, despite the resistance of the West European parties, had already taken a step backwards. The PCB remained fervently anti-parliamentary.

There was also a minority of hesitating elements within the POB, the "minority socialists" grouped in the "Friends of the Exploited". During the war, they had only insisted on holding a "peace conference" with the German social democrats in Stockholm (i.e. trying to revive the corpse of the Second International). They were not very enthusiastic about the Russian revolution. Their criticism of the social democratic leaders was radical in tone, but in practice they proposed nothing in their place. They actually wanted to return to the pre-war programme of the POB, the Quaregnon programme (15 July 1894). They were typical centrists: radical criticism of the leaders coupled with plugging the gaps in social democracy, always under the pretext of "not losing contact with the masses". In 1921, they finally agreed to break with the POB. But because they considered the existing PCB to be sectarian, not a party for mass action but a grouping of 4 or 5 propaganda groups, more anarchist than communist, they founded a second Communist Party.

As the revolution was still awaited in countries outside Russia and, after the defeats in Germany, Italy and Hungary, the CI increasingly questioned the 'radical' positions of its first congress. It advocated fusion with the left of social democracy. In Belgium, too, the merger of the two parties took place in 1921, in which the radical, marxist positions of the first PCB were swept under the carpet. As the CI deviated towards opportunist positions and the Russian revolution became mired in its own isolation, the old "Friends of the Exploited" became more and more enthusiastic, while the marxists became more and more critical about the evolution of the Russian situation.

The fractions of the communist left: making a marxist assessment of the degeneration of the Russian revolution

Devastating choices had to be made because the world revolution was overdue: peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk, war communism, the "New Economic Policy". In the context of the isolation of the revolution, the Bolshevik party more and more substituted itself for the class and merged with the state, a process that led to the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising in 1921. The CI also began to play an increasingly dubious role in workers' uprisings in other countries (putschist actions of the KPD in Germany resulting in bloodshed, alliances with the bourgeoisie of the "oppressed peoples"). These developments gave rise to a continuous discussion, both among the RCP itself and in the other parties of the Comintern. Opposition groups were formed against the positions and decisions which the RCP, as a "state party", was forced to take and which would lead to its Stalinisation. In 1921, opposition groups in Russia were banned. The Dutch and German left-wing communists (KAPD) were excluded from the CI. They laid the blame for all the mistakes made in Russia at the feet of the Bolshevik party. The most extreme expressions of the German left (precursors of the "councilist" current) would reject the party as a useless evil (which was certainly not the position of the KAPD at the first congress of the CI). They went so far in their criticism that they rejected the Russian revolution as non-proletarian. In 1922, Gorter and co. founded the stillborn Communist Workers' International (KAI).

Just as in the other communist parties, Russia was at the centre of discussions in the PCB. The marxist current in the PCB respected party discipline and even disapproved of the publication of "unofficial" texts of the Russian Opposition (around Trotsky, and his "Lessons of October"). The PCB limited itself to asking for "more information" from Moscow.

It was only at the beginning of 1928, when Trotsky and his friends had already been excluded from the Russian party and the Comintern had definitively abandoned proletarian internationalism with the theory of "socialism in one country", that the debate on Russia was opened in the Belgian party. In the name of the marxist minority, War van Overstraeten demonstrated the rightward shift of the Russian party: in the Chinese revolution (where the communists and revolutionary workers of the Shanghai Commune in 1927 had been handed over by the CI to the bloody repression of the nationalist Kuomintang), in the struggle against the kulaks or rich peasants in Russia, but above all in the idea of "socialism in one country". He called for the reintegration of oppositionists into the Russian party, but continued to oppose fractional activity. His report was rejected and, one after the other, the leaders of the minority were expelled from the party.

The opposition regrouped outside the PCB and wondered what to do: form a second party (which implied that the old party was no longer working class and that Russia was no longer under proletarian rule), work for the recovery of the PCB by asking to be reinstated, or form a fraction of the party? The Belgian opposition was much less clear on this question than the Italian Fraction which published Bilan from 1933. Unlike the groups which founded a new party or even a new International in a hurry, the Italian left always proceeded methodically. While the International was not dead, and there was still a breath of life in it, it continued to work towards it. Its conception of organisation was a unitary one; for it, a split was an evil that must be avoided, so as not to disperse the forces that tend towards a centralised international organisation. Only when the death of the International was assured did it envisage constituting itself as an autonomous body. The constitution of the party is achieved first by founding the fraction of the old party which maintains its old revolutionary programme, and only in revolutionary upheavals does it proclaim itself a party. It is the task of the fraction to draw up a balance sheet of the revolutionary experiences of the post-war period without prejudice in order to prepare the class for new confrontations.

In 1935, Bilan came to the conclusion "That in 1933, with the death of the Third International, the phase in which the possibility of the regeneration of the CI was posed thanks to the victory of the proletarian revolution in a sector of capitalism (...) was definitively closed.  That the centrist parties, still organically linked to the corpse of the Third International, are already operating in the concert of the counter-revolution" and that “the Left Fraction affirms closed the phase envisaged in 1928, as regards a possible regeneration of the parties and the CI (...). "(Report no. 18, April-May 1935)

Trotsky's International Left Opposition lost interest in the objective which the Italian Fraction gave itself, to make a thorough assessment of the failure of the revolutionary wave. Deep divergences soon appeared in the opposition: on the question of the party (regeneration or new party), on the characterisation of the regime in Russia (proletarian or state capitalist), on the attitude towards the rise of fascism in Germany. Both the Belgian and the Italian left were confronted with Trotsky's refusal to discuss with them. The Charleroi federation (with Lesoil) left the Belgian opposition before the conclusion of the debate on the imperialist nature (or otherwise) of the Russian policy towards China (the attack by the Red Army which wanted to seize the Manchurian railway in 1929), and it joined Trotsky's International Left Opposition. Those who remained (with Hennaut) formed in 1932 the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes which formed a working community with the Bilan group in Belgium.

The main divergence between the two organisations was on the question of fascism. For Bilan, there was no fundamental opposition between bourgeois democracy and fascism. On the contrary: the worst product of fascism is precisely anti-fascism, an analysis confirmed in 1936 by the period of the Popular Front in France: "Under the sign of the Popular Front, 'democracy' has achieved the same result as 'fascism': the crushing of the proletariat (...) to prepare a second world war” (Bilan no. 29, March-April 36).

The dramatic events of the war in Spain led to a split in the two organisations. The majority of Bilan considered that Spain was the prelude to a second world war and called for revolutionary defeatism. The majority of the LCI called on the workers to fight against Franco and then to sweep away the remains of the Republican government and take power themselves. Patiently, Bilan criticised the LCI for claiming to be able to "go beyond the anti-fascist phase to the stage of socialism", while Bilan wrote: "for us it is a question of negating the programme of anti-fascism, because without this negation the struggle for socialism becomes impossible" (Bilan no. 39, Jan-Feb 1939). The minority of the LCI (with Mitchell) founded in April 1937 the Belgian Fraction of the International Communist Left, on the same positions as the Italian Fraction.

The PCB becomes a party of national capital

From 1933 onwards, anti-fascism was the central mystification of the PCB, with which it made a significant contribution to the mobilisation of the workers for the Second World War and to the dampening down of workers' struggles "so as not to play the fascist card". Unlike the POB, the PCB managed to keep the insurrectional struggles of 1935 and 1936 under control on behalf of the bourgeoisie. For a short time, during the German-Russian non-aggression pact, the PCB advocated Belgian neutrality, but otherwise it was, before and during the war (in the resistance), a fierce defender of national capital. After the war, it was repaid with a few ministerial posts.

Since then, in the few places where it could still exert an influence on the workers (port of Antwerp, Walloon mines and steel industry), it continued, in the trade unions and on the left of the PSB (Belgian Socialist Party), to be the faithful defender of the interests of the Belgian bourgeoisie by maintaining control over strike actions. In countries like France or Italy, where social democracy is weaker, the Communist Party had the opportunity to show clearly that it is not only the "fifth column" of Moscow imperialism, but in the first place a reliable faction of the national bourgeoisie (as the "historical compromise" in Italy or the "Common Front" in France have shown).

Since 1933 at the latest, the PCB has been the party of the Stalinist counter-revolution. Although it had a majority in 1928 in Belgium, the opposition could not conquer the party. The torch of the "October 17 party" passed into the hands of the International Communist Left. And its successors will create the party of the revolution again tomorrow.

Internationalisme