It only took one night for the thunder of guns and the howling of bombs to resound again in Ukraine, at the gates of the historical cradle of a now rotting capitalism. In a few weeks, this war of unprecedented scale and brutality will have devastated entire cities, thrown millions of women, children and old people onto the frozen roads of winter, sacrificing countless human lives on the altar of the Fatherland. Kharkiv, Sumy or Irpin are now in ruins. In the industrial port of Mariopol, which has been completely razed to the ground, the conflict has cost the lives of no less than 5,000 people, probably more. The devastation and horrors of this war are reminiscent of the terrifying images of Grozny, Fallujah or Aleppo. But where it has taken months, sometimes years, to reach such devastation, in Ukraine there has been no "murderous escalation": in barely a month, the belligerents have thrown all their forces into the carnage and devastated one of the largest countries in Europe!

War is a terrifying moment of truth for decadent capitalism: by exhibiting its machines of death, the bourgeoisie suddenly removes the hypocritical mask of civilisation, peace and compassion that it pretends to wear with unbearable arrogance, typical of ruling classes that have become anachronistic. It is pouring out a furious torrent of propaganda, all the better to conceal its real face – that of a mass murderer. How can one not be seized with horror at the sight of these poor Russian kids, conscripts of 19 or 20 years old, with their adolescent faces, transformed into killers, as in Bucha and in other recently abandoned areas? How can we not be indignant when Zelensky, the "servant of the people", shamelessly takes an entire population hostage by decreeing the "general mobilisation" of all men from 18 to 60 years old, henceforth forbidden to leave the country? How can one not be horrified by the bombed hospitals, by the terrified and starving civilians, by the summary executions, by the corpses buried in kindergartens and by the heart-rending cry of the orphans?

The war in Ukraine is an odious manifestation of capitalism's dizzying plunge into chaos and barbarism. A sinister picture is emerging before our eyes: for the past two years, the Covid pandemic has considerably accelerated this process, of which it is itself the monstrous product. (1) The IPCC is predicting cataclysms and irreversible climate change, further threatening humanity and biodiversity on a global scale. Major political crises are multiplying, as we saw after Trump's defeat in the United States; the spectre of terrorism hangs over society, as does the nuclear risk that this war has brought back to the fore. The simultaneity and accumulation of all these phenomena is not an unfortunate coincidence; on the contrary, it bears witness to the condemnation of murderous capitalism in the court of history.

If the Russian army has crossed the border, it is certainly not to defend the “Russian people” “besieged by the West”, nor to “help” the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who are victims of the “Nazification” of the Kiyiv government. Nor is the rain of bombs falling on Ukraine the product of the “delirium” of a “mad autocrat”, as the press repeats every time it is necessary to justify a massacre (2) and to conceal the fact that this conflict, like all the others, is first of all the manifestation of a decadent and militarised bourgeois society that has nothing left to offer to humanity but its destruction!

They don't care about the death and destruction, the chaos and instability on their borders: for Putin and his clique, it was necessary to defend the interests of Russian capital and its place in the world, both of which have been weakened by the West’s increasing advance into its traditional sphere of influence. The Russian bourgeoisie can present itself as a "victim" of NATO, but Putin has never hesitated, faced with the failure of his offensive, to carry out a dreadful campaign of scorched earth and massacres, exterminating everything in his path, including the Russian-speaking populations that he had supposedly come to protect!

Nor is there anything to expect from Zelensky and his entourage of corrupt politicians and oligarchs. This former comedian is now playing to perfection his role as an unscrupulous flatterer for the interests of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie. Through an intense nationalist campaign, he has succeeded in arming the population, sometimes by force, and in recruiting a whole pack of mercenaries and gunmen who have been elevated to the rank of "heroes of the nation". Zelensky is now touring Western capitals, addressing all the parliaments to beg for the delivery of more and more weapons and ammunition. As for the “heroic Ukrainian resistance”, it does what all the armies in the world do: it massacres, plunders and does not hesitate to beat or even execute prisoners!

All the democratic powers pretend to be indignant about the “war crimes” perpetrated by the Russian army. What hypocrisy! Throughout history, they have never stopped piling up corpses and ruins in the four corners of the world. While crying over the fate of the population victimised by the "Russian ogre", the Western powers deliver astronomical quantities of weapons of war, provide training and all the necessary intelligence for the attacks and bombings of the Ukrainian army, including the neo-Nazi Azov regiment!

Above all, by multiplying its provocations, the American bourgeoisie has done everything possible to push Moscow into a war that is lost in advance. For the US, the main thing is to bleed Russia dry and to have a free hand to break the hegemonic pretensions of China, the main target of US power. This war also allows the United States to contain and thwart the great Chinese imperialist project of the “New Silk Road”. To achieve its ends, the “great American democracy” did not hesitate to encourage a totally irrational and barbaric military adventure, and consequently increasing destabilisation and chaos in the vicinity of Western Europe.

The proletariat must not choose one side against the other! It has no homeland to defend and must fight nationalism and the chauvinist hysteria of the bourgeoisie everywhere! It must fight with its own weapons and methods against the war!

To fight against war, we must fight against capitalism

Today, the proletariat in Ukraine, crushed by more than 60 years of Stalinism, has suffered a major defeat and has allowed itself to be seduced by the sirens of nationalism. In Russia, even if the proletariat showed itself to be a bit more reticent, its inability to curb the warlike impulses of its bourgeoisie explains why the ruling clique was able to send 200,000 soldiers to the front without fearing any workers’ reactions.

In the main capitalist powers, in Western Europe and in the USA, the proletariat today has neither the strength nor the political capacity to oppose this conflict directly through its international solidarity and the struggle against the bourgeoisie in all countries. It is for the moment not in a position to fraternise and to enter into a massive struggle to stop the massacre.

However, although the current tide of propaganda with its attendant demonstrations risk leading it into the dead end of defending pro-Ukrainian nationalism or into the false alternative of pacifism, the proletariat of the Western countries, with its experience of class struggles and the shenanigans of the bourgeoisie, still remains the main antidote to the death spiral of the capitalist system. The Western bourgeoisie has been careful not to intervene directly in Ukraine because it knows that the working class will not accept the daily sacrifice of thousands of soldiers enlisted in military confrontations.

Although disoriented and still weakened by this war, the working class of the Western countries retains the potential to develop its resistance to the new sacrifices generated by the sanctions against the Russian economy and by the colossal increase of military budgets: galloping inflation, the rising cost of most of the products of everyday life and the acceleration of all the other attacks against its living and working conditions

Already, proletarians can and must oppose all the sacrifices demanded by the bourgeoisie. It is through its struggles that the proletariat will be able to create a balance of force against the ruling class and thus hold back its murderous arm! For the working class, producer of all wealth, is, in the long run, the only force in society capable of putting an end to war by taking the path of overthrowing capitalism.

This is, moreover, what history showed us when the proletariat rose up in Russia in 1917 and in Germany the following year, putting an end to the war in an immense revolutionary wave. And before that, as the World War raged on, revolutionaries stayed at their posts by intransigently defending the elementary principle of proletarian internationalism. It is now the responsibility of revolutionaries to pass on the experience of the workers' movement. In the face of war, their first responsibility is to speak with one voice, to firmly wave the flag of internationalism, the only one that can make the bourgeoisie tremble again!

ICC 4.4.22 

1) In China, the pandemic is making a strong comeback (as shown in Shanghai, in particular). It is also far from being under control in the rest of the world.

2) Of course, it is true that from Hitler to Assad, via Hussein, Milosevic, Gaddafi or Kim Jong-un, the “leaders” of the enemy class frequently suffer from serious psychological disorders.

We publish here the leaflet that the ICC began distributing from 28 February 2022. We have made an effort to make it accessible in the languages spoken where the ICC does not have any militants, and a certain number of contacts have helped us in this work. So it’s in no small measure thanks to the translations done by these contacts that the leaflet can be read in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Turkish, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Hindi, Farsi, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, Chinese, Hungarian, Finnish and Arab. For a certain number of these languages, the leaflet can be downloaded as a PDF from our site to assist those who want to print it and distribute it at meetings or demonstrations.

Europe has entered into war. It is not the first time since the second world butchery of 1939-45. At the beginning of the 1990s, war ravaged the former Yugoslavia, causing 140,000 deaths, with huge mass massacres of civilians, in the name of “ethnic cleansing” as in Srebrenica, in July 1995, where 8,000 men and teenagers were murdered in cold blood. The war that has just broken out with the offensive of the Russian armies against Ukraine is not as deadly for the moment, but no one knows yet how many victims it will ultimately claim. As of now, it is much larger in scale than the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Today, it is not militias or small states that are fighting each other. The current war is between the two largest states in Europe, with populations of 150 million and 45 million respectively, and with huge armies being deployed: 700,000 troops in Russia and over 250,000 in Ukraine.

Moreover, if the great powers had already been involved in the confrontations in the former Yugoslavia, it was in an indirect way, or by participating in “intervention forces”, under the aegis of the United Nations. Today, it is not only Ukraine that Russia is confronting, but all the Western countries grouped in NATO which, although they are not directly involved in the fighting, have taken significant economic sanctions against this country at the same time as they have begun to send arms to Ukraine.

Thus, the war that has just begun is a dramatic event of the utmost importance, first and foremost for Europe, but also for the whole world. It has already claimed thousands of lives among soldiers on both sides and among civilians. It has thrown hundreds of thousands of refugees onto the roads. It will cause further increases in the price of energy and cereals, which will lead to increased cold and hunger, while in most countries of the world, the exploited, the poorest, have already seen their living conditions collapse in the face of inflation. As always, it is the class that produces most of the social wealth, the working class, that will pay the highest price for the warlike actions of the masters of the world.

This war, this tragedy, cannot be separated from the whole world situation of the last two years: the pandemic, the worsening of the economic crisis, the multiplication of ecological catastrophes. It is a clear manifestation of a world sinking into barbarism.

The lies of war propaganda

Every war is accompanied by massive campaigns of lies. In order to make the population, and particularly the exploited class, accept the terrible sacrifices that are asked of them, the sacrifice of their lives for those who are sent to the front, the mourning of their mothers, their partners, their children, the terror of the civilian population, the deprivations and the worsening of exploitation, it is necessary to fill their heads with the ideology of the ruling class.

Putin's lies are crude, and mirror those of the Soviet regime in which he began his career as an officer in the KGB, the political police and spy organisation. He claims to be conducting a “special military operation” to help the people of Donbass who are victims of “genocide” and he forbids the media, on pain of sanctions, to use the word “war”. According to him, he wants to free Ukraine from the “Nazi regime” that rules it. It is true that the Russian-speaking populations of the East are being persecuted by Ukrainian nationalist militias, often nostalgic for the Nazi regime, but there is no genocide.

The lies of Western governments and media are usually more subtle. Not always: the United States and its allies, including the very “democratic” United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and... Ukraine (!) sold us the 2003 intervention in Iraq in the name of the - totally invented - threat of “weapons of mass destruction” in the hands of Saddam Hussein. An intervention that resulted in several hundred thousand deaths and two million refugees among the Iraqi population, and several tens of thousands killed among the coalition soldiers.

Today, the “democratic” leaders and the Western media are feeding us the fable of the fight between the “evil ogre” Putin and the “good little boy” Zelensky. We have known for a long time that Putin is a cynical criminal. Besides, he has the looks to match. Zelensky benefits from not having such a criminal record as Putin and from having been, before entering politics, a popular comic actor (with a large fortune in tax havens as a result). But his comedic talents have now allowed him to enter his new role of warlord with brio, a role which includes forbidding men between 18 and 60 from accompanying their families trying to take refuge abroad, and calling on Ukrainians to be killed for ‘the Fatherland’, i.e. for the interests of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and oligarchs. Because whatever the colour of the governing parties, whatever the tone of their speeches, all the national states are above all defenders of the interests of the exploiting class, of the national bourgeoisie, both against the exploited and against competition from other national bourgeoisies.

In all war propaganda, each state presents itself as the “victim of aggression” that must defend itself against the “aggressor”. But since all states are in reality brigands, it is pointless to ask which brigand fired first in a settlement of accounts. Today, Putin and Russia have fired first, but in the past, NATO, under US tutelage, has integrated into its ranks many countries which, before the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union, were dominated by Russia. By initiating the war, the brigand Putin aims to recover some of his country's past power, notably by preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.

In reality, since the beginning of the 20th century, permanent war, with all the terrible suffering it engenders, has become inseparable from the capitalist system, a system based on competition between companies and between states, where commercial warfare leads to armed warfare, where the worsening of its economic contradictions, of its crisis, stirs up ever more warlike conflicts. A system based on profit and the fierce exploitation of the producers, in which the workers are forced to pay in blood as well as in sweat.

Since 2015, global military spending has been rising sharply. This war has just brutally accelerated this process. As a symbol of this deadly spiral: Germany has started to deliver arms to Ukraine, a historic first since the Second World War; for the first time, the European Union is also financing the purchase and delivery of arms to Ukraine; and Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly threatened to use nuclear weapons to prove his determination and destructive capabilities.

How can we end war?

No one can predict exactly how the current war will develop, even though Russia has a much stronger army than Ukraine. Today, there are many demonstrations around the world, and in Russia itself, against Russia's intervention. But it is not these demonstrations that will put an end to the hostilities. History has shown that the only force that can put an end to capitalist war is the exploited class, the proletariat, the direct enemy of the bourgeois class. This was the case when the workers of Russia overthrew the bourgeois state in October 1917 and the workers and soldiers of Germany revolted in November 1918, forcing their government to sign the armistice. If Putin was able to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to be killed against Ukraine, if many Ukrainians today are ready to give their lives for the “defence of the Fatherland”, it is largely because in this part of the world the working class is particularly weak. The collapse in 1989 of the regimes that claimed to be “socialist” or “working class” dealt a very brutal blow to the world working class. This blow affected the workers who had fought hard from 1968 onwards and during the 1970s in countries like France, Italy and the United Kingdom, but even more so those in the so-called “socialist” countries, like those in Poland who fought massively and with great determination in August 1980, forcing the government to renounce repression and meet their demands.

It is not by demonstrating “for peace”, it is not by choosing to support one country against another that we can bring real solidarity to the victims of war, the civilian populations and the soldiers of both sides, proletarians in uniform transformed into cannon fodder. The only solidarity consists in denouncing ALL the capitalist states, ALL the parties that call for rallying behind this or that national flag, ALL those who lure us with the illusion of peace and “good relations” between peoples. And the only solidarity that can have a real impact is the development of massive and conscious workers’ struggles everywhere in the world. And in particular, these struggles must become conscious of the fact that they constitute a preparation for the overthrow of the system responsible for the wars and all the barbarity that increasingly threatens humanity: the capitalist system.

Today, the old slogans of the workers' movement, which appeared in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, are more than ever on the agenda: Workers have no fatherland! Workers of all countries, unite!

For the development of the class struggle of the international proletariat!

International Communist Current, 28.2.22

www.internationalism.org [42]

email: uk@internationalism.org [13]

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Public meetings

Come and discuss the ideas in this leaflet at one of the online public meetings the ICC will be holding over the next two weeks. In English: March 5 at 11am and on March 6 at 6pm (UK times). Write to our email for details.

New Introduction, 2 October 2024

Since this article was written, recent events, and in particular developments in the Middle East, clearly confirm the article’s prediction that we are seeing the growing escalation of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The war has already expanded to Yemen with Israeli strikes against Houthi-held ports and to Syria with an attack on Damascus. Israel's offensive against Hezbollah, which began with an ultra-sophisticated, and yet entirely barbaric operation concocted by Mossad in the heart of Beirut, simultaneously detonating nearly 500 pirated telephone pagers and walkie-talkie bombs, has been followed by intense aerial bombardment of the Lebanese capital, killing hundreds of people, including many children, injuring more than 1,800 civilians by 26 September, and forcing up to a million people to flee their homes. Reports indicate that a hundred thousand of these have been seeking refuge in Syria, which already contains numerous refugee camps where basic supplies are virtually non-existent.

On September 27, another coup for the Israeli state: the killing of Hezbollah’s supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah. These and other blows against Hezbollah clearly benefit the Netanyahu regime, which can boast of definite ‘victories’ in contrast to the deadly quagmire in Gaza.  Meanwhile, an Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon has already begun, with commando raids on Hezbollah bases, backed up by air power. The Israeli offensive has deprived Hezbollah of a considerable part of its current leadership, but it is a complete illusion to think that you can eliminate terrorism by wiping out a few commanders. The war in Lebanon will not have a quick and easy outcome for Israel, as it already discovered in 2006.

Hezbollah has vowed revenge and continues to call for the destruction of the State of Israel, while Tehran in turn launches a rain of ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in retaliation, which will once again provoke an escalation in Israel’s response. The two sides are using the current focus on the forthcoming American elections, their uncertain outcome and the proximity of this deadline, to intensify their provocative policies, turning a deaf ear to the injunctions of both the United States and the European Union who have called for an immediate ceasefire. The local powers are clearly rushing pell-mell into an escalating and irrational military situation that threatens to set the whole region on fire. At the same time, the conflict is revealing the contradictory stance of the US, which continues to pour weapons into Israel and supplies intelligence to some of its attacks, for example the Israeli raid on Yemen. Washington has an interest in the weakening of Iran and its allies in the region - which would also be a blow against Russia, since Iran is one of its main arms suppliers. Both the US and Britain have played a direct role in Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack (intelligence and anti-missile fire from the US Mediterranean fleet). But at the same time, Washington does not want the whole situation to spiral out of control; and Netanyahu’s growing defiance of US appeals is a further sign of the diminution of America’s authority on a global scale. 

To a lesser degree, but just as significantly, the war between Russia and Ukraine is becoming entrenched and bogged down. Zelensky has recently made a speech at the UN in an attempt to convince the ‘international community’ to support Ukraine more effectively, hypocritically presenting a ‘plan for peace’, when in fact he is admitting in a barely disguised way that it is a question of putting pressure on Moscow in order to ‘force Russia to make peace’ under the new conditions imposed by Ukraine. This only provoked a virulent reaction from Putin, who declared that ‘he would never accept peace under duress’ and reaffirmed that Moscow's conditions for a cease-fire were always the same: recognition of the regions conquered by Russia at the start of the war, and ruling out Ukraine's adherence to NATO. These terms are in turn totally unacceptable to Kiev. Moreover, Britain has dispatched long-distance Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, and seems to have changed its stance on allowing them to be used against targets inside Russia. If the US, Germany and others in the west give the green light to their use in Russia, this would constitute yet another step towards the abyss. In response, Putin has changed the protocol for the use of nuclear weapons, which now allows their ‘asymmetric’ use in the case of a threat to crucial installations on Russian soil, even by a non-nuclear power. As a result of all this, the prospect of reopening negotiations between the two main protagonists in the conflict is once again being buried. On the ground, on the other hand, the fighting and mutual destruction are not only intensifying but once again threatening to take an even more menacing turn with the resumption of bombing raids around the nuclear reactors at the Zaporizhzha power station, while each side blames the other for playing with fire.

These wars show that when it comes to playing with fire, the entire ruling class of this barbaric system is guilty as charged.

******************************************************************************************************************************

This summer, murderous tensions in Ukraine and the Middle East escalated in a destructive spiral whose outcome could not be clearer: nothing profitable will ever come out of these wars for any of the belligerents.

A never-ending escalation of war
The Russian army's advances in Eastern Ukraine have been met by new incursions, this time directly onto Russian soil, by the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region. A further step has been taken, threatening the population and the world with an extension of the conflict and an even deadlier confrontation. All the belligerents are caught up in an extremely dangerous spiral: Zelensky, for example, is just waiting to be able to strike Russia more deeply thanks to the European and American missiles he is receiving. And this only fuels the Kremlin's murderous headlong rush, with the strikes in Poltava adding 55 deaths to the endless list of victims.

For its part, Belarus is still a force that could play an active part in the conflict: with the Ukrainian raid on Kursk, this possibility has increased. On the common border between Belarus and Ukraine, the Lukashenko government has stationed a third of its army, and its June military exercises were a reminder that it has Russian nuclear weapons on its territory.

The same risk of extending the vicious cycle of war is present in Poland, which has once again expressed its concern by keeping its troops on alert. Although NATO, of which Poland is a member, has officially refused to send troops, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk spoke at the end of March of a “pre-war era”’.

In the Middle East, the daily ignominy in Gaza has been compounded by the Israeli army's offensive in the West Bank and its intervention in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah targets, in a totally irrational forward flight. The provocative assassination of the head of Hamas in Teheran has only led to his replacement by a new leader who is even more extremist and bloodthirsty, and has lit another fuse in the regional powder keg. All this, of course, has given Iran and its allies new pretexts for getting even more involved in the conflict, stepping up their crimes and provocations.

While the hypocritical ‘ceasefire’ talks were being held in Doha in mid-August, the massacres and destruction continued unabated. Netanyahu never ceases to torpedo any attempt at a diplomatic opening, the better to accentuate his scorched-earth policy, piling up corpses in an attempt to save his skin. Each side has done nothing but increase the carnage in order to influence the negotiations.
Netanyahu and Hamas, Putin and Zelensky, and the imperialist powers that actively support them - all these imperialist vultures are caught up in an unstoppable logic of endless and increasingly destructive confrontations. This only confirms that the war spiral of capitalism in full decomposition has lost all economic rationality and is tending to escape the control of its direct protagonists and all the imperialist powers involved.

Accelerating decomposition exacerbates conflicts
These conflicts illustrate the enormous weight of the decomposition of the capitalist system, the irreversible acceleration of which is increasingly threatening to destroy humanity: through their duration, through the political impasse they reveal, through their irrationality and their scorched-earth logic. If world war is not on the agenda, because of the generalised domination of every man for himself, the instability of alliances which now characterise international relations, the intensification and progressive extension of conflicts can only lead in the long term to ever more destruction and chaos.

The non-existence of imperialist blocs ready for world war (as were the Western bloc and the Eastern bloc during the Cold War) ultimately generates even more instability: as there is no longer a common enemy or bloc discipline, each faction now acts for its own objectives, which leads them more easily to confrontation in a struggle of each against all, hindering the action of others and making it increasingly difficult to control their policies.
It is because of this tendency that the United States, while maintaining its support for NATO, sees its own factions fighting over policy, both in Ukraine and in Gaza. While the Biden administration proposed maintaining aid to its allies, the Republicans sought to limit it, in Congress initially freezing $60 billion in support for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel, before finally giving in and agreeing to release them. These fractures are accentuating the United States' difficulty in imposing its hegemony on the world. It is losing more and more control over its policies and its authority over the protagonists in conflicts.

And it is in this context that the growing polarisation between the two great powers, China and the United States, is adding fuel to the fire. While the prospect of a full-scale war between these two powers is out of the question for the time being, tensions are constant and the risk of a regional confrontation over Taiwan is only increasing. China is continuing its military exercises near and around the island, continuing and stepping up its military provocations in the China Sea, albeit cautiously, and increasing its intimidation, particularly of the Philippines and Japan. The United States, very concerned, is raising its voice and reaffirming its support for its threatened allies, while also stepping up its provocations. The situation is becoming increasingly uncontrollable and unpredictable. The risk of new conflagrations is constantly increasing.

Proletarians remain the main victims
Proletarians are always the hardest hit, whether directly in the conflict zones or away from the frontlines as a result of the attacks linked to the war economy. In war zones, they are the victims of bombardments, suffer restrictions and have to endure terror, horrors and massacres. When they are not being exploited in factories, mines or offices, the bourgeoisie uses them as cannon fodder. In Ukraine, the government recruits any man between the ages of 25 and 60 at its own discretion, either directly by abduction or with the lure of a higher salary than that of a civilian job. In addition to compulsory enlistment, the bourgeoisie takes advantage of the workers' miserable conditions to pay for their blood and their lives. All this was only possible thanks to intense nationalist propaganda, vast ideological campaigns and state-planned conditioning: “War is methodical, organised, gigantic murder. In order to get normal men to carry out systematic murder, it is necessary [...] to produce an appropriate intoxication. This has always been the usual method used by belligerents. The bestiality of thought and feeling must correspond to the bestiality of practice; it must prepare and accompany it”[1].  This is why the working class in Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East is currently unable to react, and will find it very difficult to do so in the face of the  “intoxication”’ to which it is being subjected.

It is true that Netanyahu's government is increasingly unpopular, and the news of the latest Hamas killing of Israeli hostages has provoked huge demonstrations, as more and more Israelis recognise that the government's stated aim of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas are mutually contradictory. But the demonstrations, even when they demand a ceasefire, remain within the bounds of nationalism and bourgeois democracy and contain no momentum towards a proletarian response to the war.

The proletariat of the Western countries, through its experience of class struggle, particularly the sophisticated traps imposed by bourgeois domination, remains the principal antidote to the destructive spiral. Through his struggles against the effects of the war economy, both budget cuts and galloping inflation, it is laying the foundations for his future assaults on capitalism.

Tatlin/WH, 5 September 2024
 

Putin justifies the military build-up on the border with Ukraine by denouncing the “aggressive” intentions of NATO and western powers. The political and media mouthpieces in the western “democracies” call for standing firm against Russia’s “aggressive” threats to the sovereignty of the Ukraine, pointing to the intervention of Russian special forces to help “restore order” in Kazakhstan as further proof of Putin’s “empire building” (or rebuilding) ambitions.

These are the mutual accusation of capitalist, imperialist powers, and the position of our class, of the workers who “have no fatherland”, is to refuse to enter into these quarrels, still less to make any sacrifice, economic or physical, on behalf of their exploiters, whether American, European, Russian or Ukrainian.

But in order to expose the propaganda being poured out on both sides, the task of revolutionaries is not only to denounce all the lies they spew forth, but also to provide a coherent analysis, to dig down to the roots of this sharpening of inter-imperialist tensions.

Fall of the empires

Prior to 1989, Moscow stood at the head of the second world power, the leader of an entire imperialist bloc. Ukraine and many of the other “independent” republics that surround the Russian Federation were part of the USSR, the so-called “Soviet Union”. But in 1989-91, the culmination of a long economic and political crisis whose origins we have analysed elsewhere[1], the eastern bloc collapsed and the USSR itself was swept away in the tsunami.

One of the foremost means of this unprecedented victory for the US-led bloc was the policy of encircling the USSR, by forging an alliance with China, using Turkey as a missile base, seeking a “Pax Americana” throughout the Middle East. This was accompanied by an intense arms race which accelerated the bankruptcy of the USSR. The increasingly beleaguered Russian bloc tried to break the circle, notably by invading Afghanistan in 1979, but this move towards access to the “warm seas” backfired as Russian troops got bogged down in an unwinnable war against Islamist forces supported by the US and its allies. And at more or less the same time, the mass strikes of the working class in Poland showed the USSR’s rulers how little they could count on the workers in their own bloc in any further military adventures, above all in Europe itself.

The USA thus emerged as the one and only “superpower” and Bush Senior proclaimed the advent of a “New World Order” of peace, prosperity, and democracy, while US military strategists planned for “Full Spectrum Dominance” and the “New American Century”. But within a few years, the USA’s triumph proved to be hollow. With the common enemy to the East laid low, the western bloc itself began to splinter, and the principle of “every man for himself” more and more replaced the old bloc discipline – an expression, in international relations, of the dawn of a new and terminal phase in the long decline of the capitalist system. This process was graphically illustrated by the Balkans war in the early 90s, where the USA’s most “loyal” allies found themselves at odds, even supporting different factions in the bloody massacres that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The American response to this threat to its hegemony was to try to reassert its authority by calling on its overwhelming military superiority – with some success in the first Gulf War of 1991, but with much more negative results from the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Now it was the turn of the US to get its feet stuck in unwinnable conflicts with Islamist gangs. Instead of blocking the tendency towards every man for himself, these adventures accelerated the centrifugal tendencies throughout the strategically vital Middle East region. In particular the USA’s main enemy in the region - Iran – profited from the mess in neighbouring Iraq, advancing its pawns in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.

At the same time, this new world disorder created a space for China -which had already been benefitting from the massive western economic investments aimed at finding a way out of the economic recessions of the 70s and 80s – to emerge as a real imperialist rival to the US.

Russia’ imperialist revival

After a short period – the Yeltsin years – in which Russia seemed ready to sell itself to the highest bidder, Russian imperialism, steered by the ex-KGB man Putin, began to reassert itself, counting on its only real assets: the huge military machine inherited from the Cold War period, and its considerable energy reserves, especially in natural gas, which could be used to blackmail more energy-dependent countries. And even if could not directly confront its imperialist rivals, it could do its best to worsen divisions among them, notably through the judicious use of cyber warfare and black propaganda. An obvious example was its efforts to weaken the EU through supporting populist forces in the Brexit referendum, in France, Eastern Europe and so on. In the US its social media trolls supported the Trump candidacy, and as president Trump proved to be, to say the least, soft on Russian ambitions and actions – partly because Trump’s financial and possibly sexual escapades had opened himself up to Russian pressure, but also because there was a sizeable faction of the US bourgeoisie which was in favour of wooing Russia as a counter-weight to China.

Russia’s imperialist revival passed through a number of stages – domestically, by ending the Yeltsin sell-off and imposing a much tighter control over the national economy, but above all through military actions: in Chechnya, which from 1999 through the 2000s was pounded  to rubble as a warning against future attempts to secede from the Russian Federation; in Georgia in 2008, where Russian forces intervened in support of the secession of South Ossetia and to stymie Georgia’s move towards NATO; the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the culmination of a Russian reaction to the “Orange Revolution” in the Ukraine and the emergence of a pro-western government which sought membership of NATO; and in Syria, where Russian arms and forces have been decisive in preventing the fall of Assad and the possible loss of Russia’s naval base in Tartus. In the 1970s and 80s, the US had largely succeeded in driving Russian influence out of the Middle East (eg in Egypt, Afghanistan…). Now Russia has returned and it is the USA which has been pulling out. In many of these military actions Russia has enjoyed the open or tacit support of China – not because there are no imperialist divisions between the two countries, but because China has seen the benefit of policies which weaken the hold of the US.

America’s imperialist offensive has not gone away

However, despite Russia’s recovery and the many set-backs for the US, the latter has not given up all the gains it has made in the countries bordering Russia; in many ways the old policy of encirclement continues. The expansion of NATO has been the spearhead of this policy, drawing in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Slovenia – the majority of which were formerly part of the Russian bloc. All of this has taken place over the last two decades. So it’s hardly surprising that the Russian state feels threatened by the efforts to pull Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO. One of Putin’s key demands to “defuse” the Ukrainian crisis includes a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO and that foreign troops or weapons be removed from countries that joined NATO since 1997.  

In addition to which, the US has also given maximum backing to various “colour revolutions”, notably in the Ukraine, seeking to channel protests against economic misery and despotic pro-Russian rulers into support for pro-EU and pro-US political forces.

Russia thus remains essentially on the defensive in this situation. However, Moscow also knows that the US is facing major difficulties itself, preoccupied by the rise of China and anxious not to be engaged on too many fronts at the same time, as sharply illustrated by the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is thus a “good” moment for Putin to rattle the sabres and, as ever, this can help to reinforce his strong-man image at home, especially when his popularity has been waning in the wake of corruption scandals, increasingly repressive policies against opposition politicians and journalists, and the country’s mounting economic difficulties.

None of this means that Ukraine is an “innocent party” in this military build-up. Ukraine holds yearly joint military exercises with NATO allies and is one of 26 countries participating in NATO’s Defender-Europe 2021, the US Army-led military operations “to build readiness and interoperability between U.S., NATO and partner militaries” across Europe (See: “Defender-Europe 21 Fact Sheet”).

Kiev has taken steps to upgrade its military assets and equipment to meet NATO membership criteria. In June 2020, Ukraine even became a NATO “enhanced opportunity partner,” deepening cooperation with the military alliance.

In the beginning of 2021 Ukraine’s Foreign Minister announced that the National Security and Defence Council has approved a strategy aimed at retaking and reintegrating Crimea into the country. Zelensky’s administration sought “full Ukrainian sovereignty” over not just Crimea but that of the port city of Sevastopol as well.

War is capitalism’s way of life

Are we heading towards a direct conflict between Russia and the US over the Ukraine, even a third world war, as some of the more alarmist reports suggest?[2]

Neither the US or Russia are part of a stable military bloc which has the discipline to mobilise for a global war. And neither has an interest in an immediate, direct military clash. Despite the Ukraine’s considerable agricultural and industrial assets[3], invading and annexing the Ukraine has been compared to a python swallowing a cow: invading it might be one thing, holding onto it quite another. And as we have said, America has more pressing concerns on the imperialist front, hence Biden’s rather ineffectual warning that bad things will happen if Russia invades, and his commitment to high level diplomatic talks.

We should not forget, however, that a low-intensity conflict with Russian separatist forces in the east of the Ukraine has continued despite various cease-fire attempts. Even if Russia stops short of an outright invasion it may be pushed to step up its backing for such separatist forces, or nibbling away at Ukraine’s integrity as a state on other fronts. And even if the last thing the “west” wants is boots on the ground of Ukraine, it is not entirely powerless. It can continue to provide arms and training to the Ukrainian miliary, and it can also respond with some damaging economic measures against Russia, such as a full blocking of major Russian state banks and investment agencies, and new sanctions to include mining, metals, shipping and insurance[4].

The phase of decomposition which world capitalism entered thirty years ago is marked by chaotic military conflicts and a growing loss of control by the ruling class. Prior to this, during the Cold War, the major planetary powers suspended the nuclear Sword of Damocles over humanity’s head. It is still hanging there in a world which no longer obeys the diktats of coherent blocs, and where more countries than ever before are armed with weapons of mass destruction. In short, whatever, the “rational” calculations of the players on the imperialist chess-board, we cannot rule out sudden outbreaks, escalations, or dives into irrational destructiveness. War remains the way of life of this decadent system, and the fact that the powers-that-be are ready to gamble with the life of humanity and the planet itself is already a reason for condemning this system and fighting for a global human community which has consigned national states and borders to the museum of antiquities.

Amos

On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a "special operation" against Ukraine, intended as a Blitzkrieg[1] from the north and east, with the intention of changing the government in Kyiv and occupying the Donbas, Zaporijjia and Kherson. In response, the Ukrainian state declared the military mobilisation of the population and a democratic campaign was launched among the major Western powers to support the defence of Ukraine. All this suggested that this was just a "limited" operation, like the occupation of Crimea in 2014.

Today, on the other hand, the situation is more like what Rosa Luxemburg described at the beginning of her Junius Pamphlet on the First World War: “The trains full of reservists are no longer accompanied by virgins fainting from pure jubilation. They no longer greet the people from the windows of the train with joyous smiles… The cannon fodder loaded onto trains in August and September is moldering in the killing fields of Belgium, the Vosges, and Masurian Lakes where the profits are springing up like weeds… Cities become piles of ruins; villages become cemeteries; countries, deserts; populations are beggared; churches, horse stalls. Soiled, dishonoured, drenched in blood, covered in filth; this is what bourgeois society looks like, this is what it is".

The war in Ukraine displays all the characteristics of imperialist war in the decadence of capitalism, and in particular in its period of decomposition.

War tends to become permanent and thus expresses the tendency of war to become the way of life of capitalism.

Since the First World War (4 years), and especially after the Second World War (5 years), war has not ceased, causing far more death and destruction overall than in the two world wars: Korean War (3 years; although it was falsely halted by an armistice signifying a temporary suspension and not a termination of war); Vietnam (20 years); Iran-Iraq (8 years); Afghanistan (20 years); Iraq War (8 years); Angola War (13 years); 1st and 2nd Congo War (1 year and 5 years)... Today, there are an estimated 183 armed conflicts in the world since the end of the Second World War.

The war in Ukraine has been going on for almost two years[2] and is now in a state of stagnation following the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which can only be a prelude to further escalation. Indeed, since the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, the war in Donetsk has not ceased. But beyond that, through the clash between NATO's extension to Moscow's doorstep and the Russian Federation's resistance to this pressure, the confrontation is laying the foundations for persistent and escalating fighting: "Ukraine has built an impressive fighting force with tens of billions of dollars' worth of aid, extensive training, and intelligence support from the West. The Ukrainian armed forces will be able to hold at risk any areas under Russian occupation. Further, Kyiv will maintain the capability to strike Russia itself, as it has demonstrated consistently over the past year​. Of course, the Russian military will also have the capacity to threaten Ukrainian security. Although its armed forces have suffered significant casualties and equipment losses that will take years to recover from, they are still formidable. And as they demonstrate daily, even in their current sorry state, they can cause significant death and destruction for Ukrainian military forces and civilian alike".[3]

The war in Ukraine also confirms the trend towards greater direct involvement of the central countries of capitalism in imperialist warfare. Indeed, this war signifies the new return of war to Europe since 1945, already at work in the Balkan war of the 1990s. It also pits Europe's two largest countries against each other, including the world's second largest nuclear power.

What's more, this war directly involves the major European powers[4] and the United States, which are helping to finance it and send weapons and military training[5] . So it's hardly surprising that this war is raising the spectre of a world war:

"Before the Russian invasion, many believed that the wars between the great powers of the 21st century, if they were to take place, would not resemble those of the past. They would be fought with a new generation of advanced technologies, including autonomous weapons systems. They would take place in space and cyberspace; the presence of soldiers on the front lines would probably not matter much. Instead, the West had to admit that this was a new war between states on European soil, fought by large armies over territories of several square kilometres. And this is just one of the many ways in which the invasion of Russia is reminiscent of the two world wars. Like those wars, this one was fuelled by nationalism and unrealistic expectations of how easy it would be to overwhelm the enemy. Fighting took place both in civilian areas and on the front lines, ravaging towns and driving people from their homes. The war consumed enormous resources and the governments involved were forced to call on conscripts and, in the case of Russia, mercenaries. The conflict has led to a search for new and more lethal weapons, with the risk of dangerous escalation. This situation is also felt in many other countries".[6]

A total war

Another characteristic of wars in decadence (and all the more so in the current final phase of decomposition) is that they require the mobilisation of all the nation's resources and the enrolment of the entire population at the front or in the rear. The media insisted that in both Russia and Ukraine, while the war was going on at the front, life in the rear continued as normal in Moscow or Kyiv. This is only half the truth. It is true that, particularly in Russia, it was mainly Wagner mercenaries and the Kadyrovtsis who were sent to the front[7] , and that conscription has for the moment carefully avoided places where the proletariat is concentrated: "The Kremlin has had disproportionate recourse to recruiting soldiers from Russia's poorest regions, made up of a large population of ethnic minorities, including those from formerly rebellious republics such as Chechnya, and provinces such as Buryatia and Tuva. In Tuva, for example, one in every 3,300 adults died fighting in Ukraine (compared to Moscow, where the figure is 1 in every 480,000 adults)".[8]

It is also true that it is necessary, as far as possible, to maintain production: in Ukraine, for example, companies have the right to 'save' up to 50% of their managers and skilled workers from conscription (in return, they make it easier to recruit the other 50% by threatening them with dismissal) and that both governments have an interest in maintaining a semblance of 'normality' at the back.

But the war was above all a total war, with barbarity raging on the front lines and among the civilian population. From the very first day of the war, Zelenski forbade adult men of fighting age to leave the country, but this did not prevent hundreds of thousands of them from accompanying the 8 million Ukrainian refugees abroad and tens of thousands from fleeing the mobilisation clandestinely. In Russia too, since the partial mobilisation of September 2022, the government has been able to enlist any citizen of fighting age, which immediately led to around 700,000 men fleeing the country, and no doubt more later.

On the front line, "Western intelligence agencies have estimated that during some of the heaviest fighting, Russia has recorded an average of more than 800 deaths and injuries per day, and Ukrainian officials have acknowledged peaks of 200 to 500 casualties per day on the Ukrainian side. Russia has already lost more soldiers in this war than in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan".[9]

According to official American sources, in mid-August this year the New York Times estimated the number of dead, wounded and maimed in the war at around 500,000, including 70,000 dead and 120,000 seriously wounded on the Ukrainian side[10] , where more reliable data is available. According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops are being re-supplied by released convicts who have been blackmailed into going to war. The officers despised them and sent them to die on the front line without bothering about the wounded, let alone the dead.

As for the civilian population, since the first Russian assault, mass graves of murder and torture have been discovered in the suburbs of Kyiv, then in Bucha, with evidence of hundreds of summary executions and rapes of women and children, which have been exploited to the hilt in order to boost anti-Russian war propaganda. The incessant bombardments are destroying people's homes and basic infrastructure, and causing an incessant number of casualties. Entire towns, such as Mariupol, have been completely destroyed. The rain of missiles does not stop, not only on the eastern front, but also in Kyiv. Railway stations (Kramatorsk, April 2022), cafés and restaurants, hospitals, maternity wards, power stations and even nuclear power stations like Zaporijjia have been seriously threatened.

Every day, tens of thousands of shells are fired by both sides[11] , sowing terror and destruction when they explode, but also when they fail to explode, because they remain a threat that can continue to kill and maim. The cluster bombs supplied by the United States in recent months, as their name suggests, explode at the same time as they seed the whole area with explosives. Ukraine is now one of the countries with the most landmines in the world: anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, which explode when stepped on, but also when cars or buses carrying fleeing civilians pass by. Retreating Russian troops lay mines all over the place and set traps by leaving explosives on corpses in abandoned houses, and the Ukrainian army mines the front line to prevent the Russians from advancing. Mines are dropped by missiles or drones everywhere:

"Some 174,000 square kilometres of Ukraine are suspected of being contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance. This is an area the size of Florida, or around 30% of Ukrainian territory. This estimate takes into account areas occupied by Russia since its full-scale invasion, as well as areas reclaimed from the Kharkov region in the east to the outskirts of Kyiv, such as Bucha. According to Human Rights Watch, mines have been identified in 11 of Ukraine's 27 regions.”[12]

Not to mention the ecological consequences of the war, which we have already referred to: "Chemical factories were bombed in a particularly vulnerable country. Ukraine occupies 6% of European territory, but contains 35% of its biodiversity, with some 150 protected species and numerous wetlands".[13]

This is the image recently painted by journalists in Kryvyi Rih, a major industrial centre near Zaporijjia, the country's 7th largest city: "The queues outside the recruitment offices have disappeared. Today, everyone knows what the daily life of a soldier is like. It is no longer rare to see soldiers mutilated by the war on the outskirts of bus stations in medium-sized towns”.[14]

But the main victim of the war has been the working class. Workers' families were bombed in the rear and they were recruited from the factories to go to the front, subjected to blackmail for dismissal, rather like Russian convicts. What's more, once they were mobilised, they lost their wages, which they exchanged for the meagre monthly pay of 500 euros given to soldiers at the front. In addition, the state has abandoned insurance for the wounded and maimed. For those who remain at work, in July 2022 the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) approved the suspension of most of the laws governing the labour code, arbitrarily granting freedom to company management in wage negotiation and dismissal.

The economy at the service of war

In the imperialist wars of decadence (and also of course in its current final phase of decomposition), war is not at the service of the economy, unlike in the ascendant period of capitalist expansion in the 19th century, when colonial wars enabled the global expansion of capitalism, or when national wars provided a framework for capitalist development. In the present period, the economy is at the service of war[15] and this is confirmed by the war in Ukraine, starting with Russia.

In his end-of-year interview, Mr Putin boasted of a 3.5% increase in production in Russia, but this figure largely reflects the increase in war production:

"The Kremlin is throwing the household furniture out of the window by increasing its military budget by 68% between now and 2024. The defence industry is preparing to rapidly supply the front line. An investigation by the Ukrainian media outlet Skhemy, based on satellite observations, shows the construction or expansion of several key factories in the Russian military-industrial system. In the aerospace sector, these include the Gorbunov factory in Kazan (production of Tu-16, Tu-22 and TU-160 bombers), the Irkutsk factory (Su-30 fighters) and the Ekaterinburg factory (engines and gearboxes for Mi-24 and Ka-52 military helicopters). Others, specialising in mechanical engineering at Doubna (Kh-22, Kh-55 and Kh-101 missiles) and Kronstadt (Orion and Helios military drones), as well as Kalashnikov (ammunition for Zala, Lancet and Italmas marauders), have also developed their industrial facilities".[16]

According to official figures, the population's income has fallen by 10% over the last decade, and the country's economic situation is reminiscent of that of the Stalinist USSR at the time of the collapse of the Eastern bloc, of which economic stagnation and backwardness were precisely a major cause:

"The country's economy is stagnant, with few sources of value other than the extraction and export of natural resources. The whole system is riddled with corruption and dominated by state-owned or state-controlled enterprises, all of which are inefficient, and international sanctions limit access to capital and technology. Russia struggles to develop, retain and attract talent; the state underfunds scientific research and bureaucratic mismanagement hampers technological innovation. As a result, Russia lags far behind the US and China on most indicators of scientific and technological development. Military spending has stagnated over the past four years and the population is expected to shrink by ten million by 2050."[17]

The war also had a major impact on the economies of the major European powers. The United States used the war, which it helped to start, not only to "bleed" Russia and make it more difficult to form an alliance with China[18] , but also to impose on the European powers its policy of sanctions against the Russian Federation and its financing of the war in Ukraine.

Up to now, we have taken stock of almost two years of this war without differentiating between the characteristics of wars in decadence or of their final phase of decomposition; but at this stage, there is an important difference to point out, namely the tendency towards "every man for himself", the difficulty of the United States in imposing discipline on its allies and, at the same time, the impossibility for the latter to free themselves from American tutelage, and therefore the impossibility of consolidating an imperialist bloc. What the media call the "West", as opposed to the "Global South", is not a continuation of the American bloc confronting the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, but a game of dupes in which each side defends its interests against the others; it is nothing less than what is actually happening in the "Global South" too.

At the start of the war, France and Germany in particular tried to maintain a dialogue with Putin and to avoid the US policy of dragging the Kremlin into a war of attrition; but in the end they had to comply with sanctions and the financing of the war. In total, the amount spent by the EU on military aid to Ukraine alone is estimated at €5 billion. Macron had to go from claiming that NATO was "brain-dead" to contributing around €3 billion to finance the war and send arms to Ukraine, not without resistance, because its military aid ranks fifth, even behind Finland or Slovakia.

But it is undoubtedly for Germany that the sanctions and the war have had the greatest impact: “Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Europe imported 45% of its gas from Russia, with Germany particularly resistant to decades-long US warnings that such a dependence on a single ideologically hostile power was foolish. Duly, once the war started, Putin resorted to using gas supplies as a weapon of war. From June 2022, gas supplies through Nord Stream 1, the 745-mile pipeline from the Russian coast near St Petersburg to north-east Germany, were cut to 40% of normal. Russia first cited technical problems. By July, the supply had fallen further down to 20% with Gazprom blaming ‘routine maintenance and faulty equipment’. By late August, with gas prices spiraling, Nord Stream 1 was not transporting any gas at all.” [19] . Then there was the sabotage of NordStream 2, first politically by the EU, then by blowing it up[20] . Germany had to reorganise its energy sources, with threats of rationing. In retaliation, Scholz declared a Zitenwenden (change of era) in the country's security policy, meaning a policy of intensive rearmament. This policy is being followed by all EU countries, with a 30% increase in defence spending from February 2022.

For its part, the United States has spent around 250 billion dollars worldwide on armaments and financing the war, and the Biden administration is currently trying to save another 60 billion dollars at all costs. Nevertheless, the US government has benefited economically from the sanctions and energy cuts, which have enabled it to export its own resources.

At the international level, the blockade of grain exports from Ukraine (one of the world's four main grain producers) and of maritime traffic in the Black Sea have caused famines in Africa and, together with arms spending and other unproductive expenditure, have contributed to the rise in inflation, particularly in food prices. All this, in addition to the rise in energy prices and the considerable increase in military budgets, is being passed on to the workers in the form of sacrifices and a marked deterioration in their living conditions.

The irrationality of war in times of decomposition

Groups in the proletarian political milieu in the Bordigist (the various Internationalist Communist Parties) and Damenist (the Internationalist Communist Tendency) traditions defend the view that imperialist war allows the beginning of a new cycle of accumulation. However, at the end of the Second World War, the Gauche Communise de France, from which we descend, drew the conclusion that, in the decadence of capitalism, war only leads to the destruction of the productive forces:

"War was the indispensable means for capitalism to open up the possibilities of further development, at a time when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up by means of violence. In the same way, the collapse of the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all possibilities of development, finds in modern warfare, imperialist warfare, the expression of this collapse which, without opening up any possibilities of further development for production, merely engulfs the productive forces in the abyss and accumulates ruin upon ruin at an accelerating rate."[21]

And this war is full confirmation of that:

"Today, the war in Ukraine cannot have directly economic objectives. Neither for Russia, which launched hostilities on 24 February 2022, nor for the United States, which for more than two decades has taken advantage of Russia's weakening following the collapse of its empire in 1989 to push the extension of NATO right up to the borders of that country. If Russia succeeds in establishing its control over new parts of Ukraine, it will be faced with huge expenditure to rebuild the regions it is ravaging. What's more, in the long term, the economic sanctions being put in place by Western countries will further weaken Ukraine's already sluggish economy. On the Western side, these same sanctions will also have a considerable cost, not to mention the military aid to Ukraine, which already runs into tens of billions of dollars. In fact, the current war is yet another illustration of the ICC's analyses of the question of war in the period of decadence of capitalism, and more particularly in the phase of decomposition that constitutes the culmination of this decadence".[22]

Indeed, as Putin himself has just stated, "Ukraine is incapable of producing anything"; in fact, the Ukrainian economy was already very weak before the war. For example, after independence from the USSR in 1991, production fell by 60% and GNP per capita by 42%; with the exception of precisely the east - which is now the main theatre of war - Kyiv and the northern oblasts, the main production is agricultural. Today, infrastructure such as the Crimean bridge has been destroyed, entire towns are in ruins, and in some places that were major concentrations of workers, factories are now producing at only 25% of their capacity.

The situation in the energy production and supply sector is indicative of the state of the country. Four nuclear power stations have been shut down, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates the cost of destruction in this sector alone at 10 billion euros, which has plunged 12 million people into energy poverty: "Last winter, Ukraine suffered power cuts and heating cuts throughout the country. Hospitals were deprived of electricity or had to resort to their own generators. By April, Ukraine's electricity production capacity had been reduced by 51% compared to just before the Russian invasion, according to the UNDP".[23]

There is a shortage of basic manpower, particularly in technology and research, most of whose workers have fled the country or been conscripted to the front: "Many male professors and students have joined the army. Some 2,000 professors and researchers have been unable to continue their work. In some universities, 30% of professors have gone abroad or to the other side of the country. Sixty-three institutions are reporting a shortage of teaching staff".[24]

In these conditions, it is difficult to imagine a reconstruction which would initiate a new cycle of accumulation, and even less so in the perspective of a lasting installation of war in Ukraine. Imperialist war in the decadence of capitalism already presents, in itself, this aspect of permanent destruction as a way of life for capitalism; but in its phase of decomposition, and particularly in recent years, this irrationality takes on a higher, scorched-earth character on the part of the various imperialist parties.

In this war, Russia is destroying infrastructure and production and is in the process of exterminating the population of the territory it claims (the Donbass). While one of its main objectives was to prevent NATO's presence on its borders, on the one hand it has pushed Sweden and Finland to apply to join, and on the other, instead of Ukraine's "neutrality", it finds itself confronted with a militarised country armed to the teeth, equipped with the most modern technology supplied by all the NATO countries.

The United States, which pushed Putin to start the war in order to "bleed Russia dry" and weaken its possible alliance with China, is faced with the prospect of accepting a possible defeat by Ukraine (supported by NATO and primarily by the United States itself). This would mean weakening their image as the world's leading power in the eyes of their allies, or leading to an escalation of the war with unforeseeable consequences in the event of NATO's direct involvement in the conflict, or the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, instead of the war being a show of force that would have imposed discipline on all its rivals and second- and third-rate powers, the United States is faced with war in the Middle East, Israel's defiant attitude and the possibility of other regional powers such as Iran becoming involved in the conflict. And while it has so far been able to assert its interests in Europe, the various EU powers have embarked on an arms race that may one day enable them to resist these pressures. This situation is not lost on American analysts:

"A prolonged conflict would keep the risk of escalation - either Russia's use of nuclear weapons or a war between NATO and Russia - at a high level of alert. Ukraine would become completely dependent militarily and economically on Western support, which would ultimately pose budgetary problems for Western countries and readiness problems for their armies. The global economic consequences would persist and the US would be unable to devote its resources to other priorities, while Russia's dependence on China would increase. A long war would also weaken Russia, but the benefits do not outweigh the costs."[25]

On the battlefield itself, this tendency towards irrationality is expressed in the tendency to reproduce on a small scale sieges such as Stalingrad during the Second World War or Verdun during the First World War[26] , as in Bakhmut or Mariupol, where, on the pretext of the more or less strategic value of the place, systematic destruction was carried out, with the attendant loss of life and injuries (in Bakhmut, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands were seriously injured and over 50,000 killed).

The situation of the working class

The Ukrainian working class has been very weakened by the deindustrialisation that followed the disintegration of the USSR and by the weight of the ideological campaigns that sought to drag it into the struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie during the "Orange Revolution"[27] (2004), the Euromaidan protests (late 2013) and the Crimean war (2014). The February declaration of war was not fought by workers' mobilisations, but by the mass flight of refugees. Although there have recently been women's demonstrations in Kyiv calling for the return of soldiers from the front, and the Zelenski government is having serious difficulties recruiting soldiers, we should not expect a workers' response to the war.

As far as Russia is concerned, despite the information blackout, it seems that the proletariat in the main industrial concentrations is suffering less directly from conscription and bombing, but more and more from the intensification of exploitation and repression in the workplace, as well as from the loss of purchasing power. Its response to the situation remains an unknown for the moment; but what is clear from the evidence so far is that it will need some time to mature.

It is therefore inappropriate to expect the proletariat of either of the two countries concerned to respond in such a way as to put an end to the war.

On the other hand, the current struggles of the world proletariat in the main countries are not the product of a protest against the war either. The world proletariat was able to stop the First World War, but its revolutionary struggle in Russia and Germany was not directly the product of a response to the war, but of the development of its struggles for demands and its consciousness in the face of the collapse of capitalism. As soon as the German bourgeoisie succeeded in separating the struggle against the war from the revolutionary struggle at the rear, “peace” was used against the revolution.

Today, since the summer of anger in Great Britain[28] , workers in the main countries have begun a dynamic of struggles in defence of their living conditions, confirmed in particular by the struggles against pension reform in France and the struggles in the United States (in the automobile, health and education sectors, etc.). Struggles have developed despite the war in Ukraine, and the involvement of various countries in financing and sending weapons to the war is beginning to fuel reflection on the relationship between sacrifice and war within the proletariat.

Hic Rhodes, 29.12.2023

The diverse nature of the response of the anarchist organisations to the imperialist slaughter in Ukraine is quite predictable. From its inception, anarchism was marked by a profound revolt against capitalist exploitation, by a resistance to the proletarianisation of the artisan layers. Subsequently, leaving aside its role within the radical petty bourgeoisie, anarchism had an influence on parts of the proletariat, bringing with it a vision which tended to oscillate permanently between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Anarchism has thus always been divided into a whole series of tendencies, ranging from those who have become part of the left wing of capital, like those who joined the Republican government during the 1936-39 war in Spain, to those who clearly defended internationalist positions against imperialist war, such as Emma Goldman during World War One. Regarding the war in Ukraine, the response from anarchism is extremely dispersed – from open war mongers to calls for international solidarity and united action against the war. In crucial moments of history, notably revolutions and imperialist wars, authentically proletarian elements within anarchism have demarcated themselves from those who have been sucked into the « Sacred Union » and nationalism. Only the genuinely proletarian elements within anarchism have been capable of adopting an internationalist line and should be supported in their effort to defend it. As left communists, we clearly denounce the leftist or bourgeois positions, put forward by various anarchists, but at the same time we support the attempts of groups such as KRAS in Russia[1] [53] (whose statement we have already published on our website), Anarcho-syndicalist Initiative in Serbia[2] [53] and the Anarchist Communist Group in Britain[3] [53]  to intervene in the situation with a clear internationalist position.

From internationalism…

 The ACG (Anarchist Communist Group) took a basically internationalist stance from the beginning of the war (ACG website the 27th of February, “Take the side of the working class, not competing imperialist interests”). At the same time this statement contains a number of confused demands, such as the “disbandment of NATO”, and the “the mass occupying of Russian oligarchs’ property in Britain and their immediate conversion to social housing”. (What about the properties of Ukrainian oligarchs?) You could see the same immediatist vision in the statement of the ASI group in Belgrade, who, despite a certain clarity on the nature of what “peace” means in capitalism, declares: “Let’s turn capitalist wars into a workers’ revolution!” This call for revolutionary action is totally unrealistic given the low level of class struggle today. But these confusions do not cancel out the internationalist basics of these groups’ responses to the war.

A joint internationalist statement had already been published, signed by 17 groups around the Anarkismo Coordination, on the 25th of February, including the ACG. Here it states clearly, that “…our revolutionary and class duty dictates the organisation and strengthening of the internationalist, anti-war and anti-imperialist movement of the working class. The logic of more aggressive or more progressive imperialism is a logic that leads to the defeat of the working class. There can be no pro-people’s imperialist road. The interests of the working class cannot be identified with those of the capitalists and the imperialist powers.”[4] [53] On the ACG website there is also a strong denunciation of anarchist groups and publications defending nationalism, such as the Freedom group in London[5] [53].

… to openly bourgeois positions

But the statements of the different anarchist currents have to be read carefuly and critically. For example, the French-speaking section of the International  of Anarchist Federations, in a leaflet published the 24th of February, proclaimed: “We also call, all over the world, to fight against capitalism, nationalism and imperialism as well as the army which always push towards new wars”[6] [53]

At the same time, in the same International Anarchist Federation, we can see an open call for participation in the war: a call of support for the Resistance Committees in Ukraine, fighting for the “liberation” of the country. Different anarchist groups in uniform and armed football firms are presented as “freedom fighters” – often with reference to the Black Army of Makhno during the Civil War in Russia. So, there is a clear “gradient” in the anarchist milieu today: calls for internationalism, and at the same time a call for participation in this escalating conflict, as adjuncts of the Ukrainian army under the banner of the Resistance Committees[7] [53]. Also, anarchists from Belarus living in Ukraine are joining the forces of the Ukrainian state – another sign of the defeat and disorientation of the working class in the area.

Another, quite obvious, example of completely bourgeois positions is the statement of Russian anarchists in the group Anarchist Fighter: “…what is happening now in Ukraine goes beyond this simple formula, and the principle that every anarchist should fight for the defeat of their country in war” (our emphasis).They also argue that “The defeat of Russia, in the current situation, will increase the likelihood of people waking up, the same way that occurred in 1905 [when Russia’s military defeat by Japan led to an uprising in Russia], or in 1917 [when Russia’s problems in the First World War led to the Russian Revolution]—opening their eyes to what is happening in the country..

As for Ukraine, its victory will also pave the way for the strengthening of grassroots democracy—after all, if it is achieved, it will be only through popular self-organization, mutual assistance, and collective resistance. These should be the answer to the challenges that war throws at society.”[8] [53]

In the war of 1914-18 and subsequently, authentic internationalists like Lenin used the term “revolutionary defeatism” to insist that the class struggle must continue even if it meant the military defeat of your “own” country, but it went together with a clear denunciation of both rival camps. In the hands of the left wing of capital, whether it calls itself “Leninist” or anarchist, the call for the defeat of one country goes together with support for their imperialist rival, as is evidently the case with the Anarchist Fighter group. This has nothing whatsoever in common with proletarian internationalism.

Significant sectors of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, at the same time as referring to its strong antimilitarist tradition, have once again expressed their support for nationalist war – just as they did, together with Social Democracy at the beginning of the WW1. But the difference was, that while the Social Democrats betrayed their internationalist principles, the anarchists were following a certain logic, as we pointed out in our article on “Anarchism and Imperialist War” in 2009:

“The rallying to imperialist war and the bourgeoisie in 1914 by the majority of anarchists internationally was, on the contrary, not a false move but the logical conclusion of their anarchism, conforming to their essential political positions.

Thus, in 1914, it was in the name of anti-authoritarianism, because it was unthinkable ‘that one country could be violated by another’ (Letter to J.Grave), that Kropotkin justified his chauvinist position in favour of France. By basing their internationalism on ‘‘self-determination' and ‘the absolute right of any individual, any association, any commune, province, region, nation to decide themselves, to associate or not associate, to link up with whom they wanted and break their alliances'" (Daniel Guerin, Anarchism, Gallimard p.80) the anarchists merely reflected the divisions that capitalism imposed on the proletariat. This chauvinist position has its roots in the federalism that is found at the very basis of all anarchist conceptions. In arguing that the nation is a natural phenomenon, in defending the right of all nations to existence and to their free development, anarchism judges the sole danger in the existence of nations to be their propensity to give way to the ‘nationalism' instilled by the dominant class in order to separate the people one from the other. It is naturally led, in any imperialist war, to operate a distinction between aggressors/aggressed, oppressors/oppressed, etc, and thus to opt for the defence of the weakest, of rights that have been flouted, etc. This attempt to base the refusal to go to war on something other than the class positions of the proletariat leaves all sorts of latitude to justify support for one or the other belligerent parties. Concretely, that's to say, to choose one imperialist camp against another” [9] .

Today, the anarchist “family” is being torn apart by the fundamental contradiction between internationalism and support for imperialist war. Today, more than ever, the communist left must assume its responsibilities and act as a pole of reference and clarity against all this confusion. For the communist left, as part of the marxist tradition, proletarian internationalism is not based on abstract ideals such as liberty for individuals, regions or nations but on the real conditions of proletarian existence: “Internationalism is based on universal conditions imposed on the working class by capitalism at the world level - on the exploitation of its labour power, in every country and on every continent. It was in the name of such internationalism that the First International and the two Internationals that followed were born. Internationalism is based on the essential fact that the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat are international: beyond frontiers and military fronts, beyond ethnic origins and particular cultures, the proletariat finds its unity in the common struggle against its conditions of exploitation and for the abolition of wage labour, for communism” (ibid).

Edvin

[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17154/internationalist-statement... [54]. KRAS is affiliated to the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association (IWA/AIT)

The struggle against war can only be taken in hand by the working class through the struggle on its own class terrain and its international unification. Revolutionary organisations cannot wait for a massive mobilisation by the working class against the war: they must act as a determined spearhead in the defence of internationalism and point to the need for the overthrow of the system. This demands that the working class and its revolutionary organisations reappropriate the lessons and the attitudes of previous struggles against war. The experience of the Zimmerwald conference is enlightening in this respect.

Zimmerwald is a small town in Switzerland, and in September1915 it was host to a small conference: 38 delegates from 12 countries - all the internationalists transported there in a couple of taxis, as Trotsky joked.  And even among these few, only a small minority defended a really revolutionary position against the war. Only the Bolsheviks around Lenin and some of the other German groups stood for revolutionary methods and revolutionary goals: transformation of the imperialist war into civil war, the destruction of capitalism as the source of all wars. The other participants had a centrist position or even leaned strongly to the right.

The result of the fierce debates at Zimmerwald was a manifesto to the proletarians of the world which was in many ways a compromise between the left and the centre, since it did not take up the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary slogans. Nevertheless its ringing denunciation of the war and its call for class action against it still enabled it to articulate and politicise the anti-war sentiments that were growing among the mass of the working class.

The struggle for internationalism needs political organisation

The example of Zimmerwald demonstrates that, for revolutionaries, the struggle against war takes place at three distinct but interconnected levels:

• Propaganda and agitation: Revolutionaries did not wait until the class started moving: they started agitation against the war at the first day of hostilities, well before the class was able to  react. The regroupment of revolutionaries into political organisations enabled them to develop their propaganda and agitation through the medium of a regular press and mass-produced leaflets, and to speak in the workers’ assemblies and councils which arose later, not as individuals representing only themselves but on behalf of a definite political tendency within the class movement.  

• Organisational: the betrayal of the majority of the old parties demanded that the minority of internationalists had to work as an organised fraction, to work either for the expulsion of the traitors or, when this proved impossible, as it did in the majority of cases, to fight to win over the maximum number of healthy elements and to prepare the ground for a new party, a new International. This demanded a relentless battle against centrism and opportunism, against the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Thus the Zimmerwald left in particular was the driving force behind the formation of the Third International in 1919. In a situation of war or impending revolution, the heroism of individual militants like Luxemburg, Liebknecht, John Mclean or Sylvia Pankhurst was certainly vital, but could never be enough on its own. It could only have a real meaning in the context of collective organisation around a clear political programme;

• Theoretical: the necessity to understand the characteristics of the new epoch demands a patient work of theoretical elaboration, an ability to step back and reassess the whole situation in the light of the past and of the perspectives for the future. The work of Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemburg, Pannekoek and others enabled the re-emerging political movement of the class to understand that a new epoch had dawned, one in which the class struggle would take on new forms and new methods to achieve directly revolutionary objectives. There were considerable divergences on a number of questions, for example between Lenin and Luxemburg on national self-determination, but this did not prevent them from taking a common position against the war while continuing to debate as passionately and intensely as before.

We cannot go into more detail here, but encourage our readers to read the following articles:

https://en.internationalism.org/content/3154/zimmerwald-1915-1917-war-revolution [63]

https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201508/13354/zimmerwald-and-centrist-currents-political-organisations-proletari [64]

https://en.internationalism.org/wr/290_zimmerwald.html [65]

Unleashing the barbarism of war in Ukraine means that the whole world is threatened with its collateral "damage", in particular in the growth of poverty worldwide and through the mounting attacks on the living standards of the working class: increased exploitation, inflated prices and widespread unemployment.

In addition to the threats of possible nuclear strikes by Russia and the risk of radioactive gases escaping from Ukrainian nuclear power plants damaged by the fighting, measures are being taken or planned by a numerous countries in order to bring the Russian economy to its knees, which carries the risk of destabilising the world economy. Moreover, a tragic illustration of the current escalation of war, the notable tendency to increase military budgets (Germany has suddenly decided to double its budget), will constitute an additional factor in weakening the economies of the countries involved.

Towards a new global economic depression and renewed wars

The retaliation with economic sanctions against Russia is going to lead to shortages of raw materials in a large number of European countries and the loss of markets in Russia for some of them. The prices of raw materials will keep rising for a long time and, as a result, so will the prices of many other goods. The recession will affect the whole world, bringing with it widespread poverty and an increased exploitation of the working class.

This is no exaggeration, as is shown by the statements of German experts reassuring a "well-informed public" anxious to know what the future holds while also protecting the best interests of the bourgeoisie: "We are talking about a serious economic crisis in Germany and hence in Europe". "Business collapses and unemployment" would be on the horizon for a long time: "We are not talking about three days or three weeks", but rather "three years".[1] In this context, high energy prices sustained at a historic level would have consequences far beyond Germany and Europe and would affect the poor countries most of all. Ultimately, such a rise in energy prices could, it was said yesterday, "lead to the collapse of entire states in Asia, Africa and South America."[2]

The scale and the depth of the measures taken against Russia, despite their undeniable severity, do not in themselves explain the economic tsunami that will hit the world. The current level of the decline of the world economy, which is the product of a long process of a worsening of the global crisis of capitalism, must be taken into account. But it is on this question that the "experts" chose to remain silent, so as not to have to admit that the cause of the decline of world capitalism lies in its historical and insurmountable crisis, just as they are careful not to identify this war, like all those that have occurred since the First World War, as a product of decadent capitalism. Nor do they mention certain consequences of a new plunge of the economy into crisis and the accentuation of the trade war that is inseparable from it: a new worsening of imperialist tensions and a new headlong rush into armed conflict.[3] Following a similar defence of capitalism, some are worried about the very likely consequences of a severe shortage of basic foodstuffs, those produced in Ukraine previously, together with the resulting social unrest in a number of countries, without any obvious concern for the suffering of the starving populations.

A global economy overwhelmed by the accumulation of the contradictions of capitalism

The Covid pandemic had already exposed the growing vulnerability of the economy to the convergence of a number of unique factors in the period of capitalism's life since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the subsequent dissolution of both blocs.

In fact an increasingly short-term vision has led capitalism to sacrifice a certain number of imperative necessities for any system of exploitation - such as maintaining the health of those it exploits - to the demands of the crisis and of global economic competition. Thus, capitalism has done nothing to prevent the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is itself a pure social product given the way it has been transmitted from animals to humans and spread across the globe, even though scientists had warned of these dangers. Moreover, the deterioration of the health care systems which has taken place over the last 30 years has contributed to making the pandemic much more deadly. In the same way, the extent of the disaster and its repercussions on the economy have been further fuelled by the exacerbation of the "every man for himself" attitude at all levels of society (a characteristic of the current phase of decomposition of capitalism), thus aggravating the classic manifestations of competition and giving rise to incredible episodes such as the war for masks, respirators, vaccines, etc., not only between countries, but also between state and private services within the same country. Millions of people have died around the world, and the partial paralysis of economic activity and its disorganisation led to the worst depression since the Second World War in 2020.

By affecting the worldwide economy, the pandemic would also reveal new problems for capitalist production, such as the increased vulnerability of supply chains to various factors. Indeed, it only takes one link in the chain to be defective or inoperable due to disease, political instability or climatic disasters, for the final product to suffer a delay, sometimes a very significant one that is inconsistent with the requirements of the market. Thus, in some countries, a considerable number of cars could not be put on the market because they were immobilised on the assembly lines waiting for missing parts, in particular those delivered by Russia. Capitalism is thus confronted with the boomerang effect of the excessive "globalisation" of the economy that the bourgeoisie had progressively developed from the 1980s onwards, the aim being to improve the profitability of capital through the outsourcing of production and the employment of a much cheaper workforce.

Moreover, capitalism is increasingly confronted with disasters resulting from the effects of global warming (huge fires, rivers that violently burst their banks, extensive floods...) which, in an increasingly significant way, affect not only agricultural production but production as a whole. Capitalism is thus paying the price for the relentless exploitation and destruction of nature since 1945 (the impact of which became more widely perceptible from the 1970s onwards) through the heightened competition between the various capitals in the search for new and increasingly limited sources of profit. The picture we have just sketched is not a recent discovery, but the result of more than a hundred years of the decadence of capitalism, initiated by the First World War, during which this system had to deal repeatedly with the effects of the crisis of overproduction, which lies at the heart of all the contradictions of capitalism. This crisis was at the origin of all the recessions of this period: first the Great Depression of the 1930s and then, after a semblance of economic recovery during the 1950s and 1960s, which became known as the "Post war boom", the open crisis which appeared again at the end of the 1960s. Each of its expressions resulted in a more severe recession than the previous one: 1967, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1991, 2001, 2009. Each time, the economic system had to be revived by a resort to debt which, in an ever-increasing proportion, would only be repaid by resorting to new debt, and so on... So that each new open manifestation of the crisis is at the same time more devastating, while the means used to deal with it, debt, constitutes a growing threat to economic stability.

The slowdown in growth ten years after the financial crash of 2008 required a further boost to debt, while the fall in production in 2020 that was intended, as we have seen, to support the economy in the face of a set of "new" factors (pandemic, global warming, vulnerability of supply chains, etc.), contributed to a new record high in world debt, tending to disconnect it even more from the real economy (it jumped to 256% of the value of world GDP). This situation is not insignificant. It is a factor in the devaluation of currencies and therefore in the development of inflation. A long-term price explosion contains the risk of social unrest of various kinds (inter-classist movements and class struggle) and constitutes an impediment to world trade. This is why the bourgeoisie will increasingly be forced to perform a balancing act – which, although familiar to it, is becoming more and more perilous - in order to respond to two conflicting requirements:

• Raising interest rates to curb soaring inflation, which has the consequence of reducing the flow of credit;
• Sustaining an economy that cannot function without permanent injections of credit.

And this in a context tending towards economic stagnation combined with high inflation.

Moreover, such a situation is conducive to the bursting of speculative bubbles that can destabilise global business and trade (as in the real estate sector in the United States in 2008 and in China in 2021).

The lies of the bourgeoisie

Faced with each and every catastrophe in the world, whether it be war or the expressions of the economic crisis, the bourgeoisie always provides a panoply of spurious and diverse explanations which all have in common the fact that they place no blame on capitalism for the calamities plaguing humanity.

In 1973 (a year that was only a moment in the deepening of the open crisis that has since become more or less permanent) the development of unemployment and inflation was explained by the rise in the price of oil. However, the rise in oil prices is a by-product of capitalist trade and not of something that is external to this system [4].

The current situation is a new illustration of this rule. The war in Ukraine is blamed on authoritarian Russia and not on crisis ridden capitalism, as if Russia were not an integral part of world capitalism.

Faced with the prospects of a considerable worsening of the economic crisis, the bourgeoisie is preparing the ground to make the proletariat feel it should accept the terrible sacrifices that will be imposed on it, presenting them as the necessary consequence of the retaliatory measures against Russia. It has this well-prepared message: "the population can choose to turn down the heating or to reduce what it eats in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, because this is the price of the essential task of weakening Russia".

Since 1914, the working class has been through hell: either as the cannon fodder in two world wars and in the incessant and deadly regional conflicts; or as the victim of mass unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s; or being forced to roll up its sleeves to rebuild countries and economies ravaged by two world wars; or being thrown into the precariousness and poverty with each new recession since the return of the world economic crisis at the end of the 1960s.

With a new descent into economic crisis, and faced with the ever-growing threat of war, it would be a total disaster if the working class listened to the bourgeoisie's demands for sacrifice. Quite the contrary, it must profit from the contradictions of capitalism that are expressed by the war and the economic attacks so it can push forward the class struggle, consciously developing the perspective of overthrowing capitalism.

Silvio (March 26, 2022)

Notes:

[1] "Habeck: Examining ways to moderate energy prices", Sueddeutsche (8 March 2022)
[2] "U.S. puts an oil embargo on the agenda", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (8 March 2022).
[3] "Resolution on the international situation [67] ", International Review no. 63 (June 1990).
[4] Read our article, "The rise in oil prices: an effect not the cause of the crisis" [68] [2], International Review no. 19

Bourgeois society, rotten to the core, profoundly sick, once again vomits its filthy torrent of iron and fire. Each day the Ukrainian butchery displays its cortege of massive bombardments, ambushes, sieges, with columns of refugees fleeing by the million the constant fire of the belligerents.

In the midst of the flood of propaganda poured out by the governments of every country, two lies particularly stand out: the first presents Putin as a “mad dictator” readying himself to become the new Tsar of a reconstituted empire while getting his hands on the “riches of Ukraine”; the other attributes the main responsibility for the conflict to the “genocide” against the Russian-speaking populations of the Donbass whose lives the “heroic” Russian soldiers have come to save. The bourgeoisie always takes particular care to mask the real causes of war by draping them with ideological veils like “civilisation”, “democracy”, “human rights” and “international order”. But the real responsibility for the war lies with capitalism!

Another step towards chaos

Since the arrival of Putin to power in 2000, Russia has made important efforts to provide itself with a more modern army and to reconquer its influence in the Middle East, notably in Syria, but also in Africa with the sending of mercenaries to Libya, Central Africa and Mali, sowing more chaos. These last years it has not hesitated to launch a direct offensive in Georgia in 2008, then occupying the Crimea and Donbass in 2014, in order to try to restrict the decline of its sphere of influence at the risk of creating major instability on its frontiers. Following the US retreat from Afghanistan, Russia thought that it could profit from the weakening of the Americans in order to bring Ukraine into its sphere of influence, a territory essential to its position in Europe and the world, especially since Kyiv was threatening to link up with NATO.

Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, this is certainly not the first time that war has broken out on the European continent. The Balkans War in the early 1990’s and the conflict in Donbass in 2014 had already brought misfortune and desolation to the continent. But the war in Ukraine already has much more serious implications than the preceding conflicts, illustrating how the tide of chaos more and more approaches the main centres of capitalism.

Russia, one of the world’s main military powers is, in effect, directly and massively involved in the invasion of a country occupying a strategic position in Europe, up to the frontiers of the European Union. At the time of writing, Russia has already lost around 10,000 soldiers and many more have been wounded or have deserted. Some towns have been razed to the ground by a blitz of bombing. The number of civilian casualties is probably considerable. And this hardly a month into the war![1]

The region will henceforth see an enormous concentration of troops and advanced military material and equipment, with soldiers and mercenaries coming from all over the place, but also in Eastern Europe with the deployment of thousands of NATO soldiers and the mobilisation of the only ally of Putin, Belorussia. Several European states have decided to considerably increase their re-armament programmes to the first rank including the Baltic States, but also Germany which has doubled its “defence” budget.

For its part, Russia regularly threatens the world with reprisals and shamelessly brandishes its nuclear arsenal. The French Minister of Defence also warned Putin that he will have to face “nuclear powers”, before calming down to a much more “diplomatic” tone. Without even talking about a nuclear conflict, the risk of a major industrial accident is on the cards. Some ferocious fighting has already broken out at the nuclear facilities of Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia, where buildings (fortunately only administrative ones) have caught fire following bombardments.

To all this can be added a major migrant crisis in Europe itself. Millions of Ukrainians flee towards bordering countries in order to escape the war and forced conscription into Zelensky’s army. But taking account the growth of of populism in Europe and the sometimes explicit will of several states to cynically instrumentalise migrants for their imperialist ends (as we’ve recently seen on the Belorussian frontier or through the regular threats of Turkey against the European Union), in time this massive exodus could create serious tensions and instability.

In sum, the war in Ukraine carries a major risk of chaos, destabilisation and destruction at the international level. If this conflict doesn’t open up a still more bloody conflagration, it can only increase such dangers, with the risk of an uncontrolled “escalation” that could involve unimaginable consequences.

Is Russia alone responsible for the war?

If the Russian bourgeoisie has opened hostilities in order to defend its sordid imperialist interests, the propaganda presenting Ukraine and the western countries as victims of a “mad dictator” is a hypocritical masquerade. For months the American government has been warning of an imminent Russian attack, a clear provocation, while claiming that it wouldn’t put boots on Ukrainian soil.

Since the dislocation of the USSR, Russia has been continually threatened on it borders as much in Eastern Europe as in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The United States and the European powers have methodically pushed back at the Russian sphere of influence by integrating a number of eastern European countries of into the EU and NATO. This was also the significance of the eviction of the ex-President of Georgia, Shevardnadze, in 2003 at the time of the “Rose Revolutions” which brought an American clique to power. The same goes for the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 in Ukraine and all the conflicts which have followed between different factions of the local bourgeoisie. The active support of the Western powers for the pro-European opposition in Belorussia, the war in the High-Karabakh under the pressure of Turkey (a member of NATO) and the settling of accounts at the top of the Kazakh state have only accentuated the feeling of urgency within the Russian bourgeoisie.

Just as much for “Tsarist” as “Soviet” Russia, Ukraine has always represented a central stake in its foreign policy. For Moscow in fact Ukraine is the sole means for direct access to the Mediterranean. The annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 already followed this imperative of Russian imperialism, which is directly threatened by encirclement through regimes backed by the Americans for the most part. The will of the United States to draw Ukraine towards the West is thus seen by Putin and his clique as a real provocation. In this sense, even if the offensive of the Russian army seems totally irrational and doomed to failure from the beginning, it is for Moscow a desperate “power grab” destined to maintain its ranking as a world power.

Perfectly lucid about the situation in Russia, the American bourgeoisie, although divided on the question, did not fail to push Putin into action by multiplying these provocations. When Biden explicitly assured everyone that he would not intervene directly in Ukraine, he deliberately left a vacuum that Russia immediately used in the hope of stemming its decline on the international scene. This is not the first time that the United States has used such cold Machiavellianism to achieve its ends: already in 1990, Bush senior had pushed Saddam Hussein into a trap by claiming not to want to intervene to defend Kuwait. We know the rest…

It is still too early to predict the duration and extent of the already considerable destruction in Ukraine, but since the 1990s we have known about the massacres of Srebrenica, Grozny, Sarajevo, Fallujah and Aleppo. Anyone who starts a war is often doomed to get bogged down. In the 1980s, Russia paid a heavy price following the invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the implosion of the USSR. The United States has had its own fiascos, weakening it both militarily and economically. All these adventures ultimately ended, despite apparent initial victories, in bitter setbacks and considerably weakened the belligerents. Putin's Russia, if it doesn’t suddenly fall back after a humiliating defeat, will not escape the stalemate, even if it manages to seize the major Ukrainian cities.

All countries and all wars are imperialist

“A new imperialism threatens peace in the world”[2], “The Ukrainians have fought Russian imperialism for hundreds of years”[3].

“Russian imperialism”, the bourgeoisie says - as if Russia were the quintessence of imperialism in contrast to the helpless Ukrainian chick. In reality, since the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence, war and militarism have become fundamental characteristics of this system. All states, big or small, are imperialist; all wars, whether they claim to be “humanitarian”, “liberating” or “democratic”, are imperialist wars. This is what revolutionaries had already identified during the First World War: at the beginning of the 20th century, the world market was entirely divided into the preserves of the main capitalist nations. Faced with increased competition and the impossibility of loosening the grip of the contradictions of capitalism through new colonial or commercial conquests, national states built up gigantic arsenals and subjected the whole of economic and social life to the imperatives of war. It was in this context that the World War broke out in August 1914, a slaughter then unequaled in the history of humanity, a dazzling expression of a new "era of wars and revolutions".

Faced with fierce competition and the omnipresence of war in every nation, small or large, two phenomena have developed which constitute the major characteristics of the period of decadence: state capitalism and imperialist blocs. “State capitalism […] responds to the need for each country, with a view to confrontation with other nations, to obtain the maximum discipline within it from the different sectors of society, to reduce to the minimum clashes between classes but also between rival fractions of the dominant class, in order, in particular, to mobilise and control all of its economic potential. Likewise, the constitution of imperialist blocs corresponds to the need to impose a similar discipline between different national bourgeoisies in order to limit their reciprocal antagonisms and to bring them together for the supreme confrontation between the two military camps.” [4]The capitalist world was thus divided throughout the 20th century into rival blocs: Allies against Axis powers, Western bloc against Eastern bloc.

But with the collapse of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, the final phase of the decadence of capitalism began: the period of its generalised decomposition, [5]marked by the disappearance of imperialist blocs for more than 30 years. The relegation of the Russian “policeman” and, de facto, the dislocation of the American bloc, opened the way to a whole series of rivalries and local conflicts hitherto suppressed by the iron discipline of the blocs. This trend of every man for himself and increasing chaos has since been fully confirmed.

Since 1990, the only “superpower”, the United States, has tried to establish a minimum of order in the world and slow down the inevitable decline of its own leadership… by resorting to war. As the world had ceased to be divided into two disciplined imperialist camps, a country like Iraq thought it possible to lay hands on a former ally of the same bloc, Kuwait. The United States, at the head of a coalition of 35 countries, launched a murderous offensive intended to discourage any future temptation to imitate the actions of Saddam Hussein.

But the operation could in no way put an end to every man for himself on the imperialist level, a typical manifestation of the process of the decomposition of society. In the Balkan wars, the fierce rivalries between the powers of the former Western bloc were already exposed to broad daylight, in particular France, the United Kingdom and Germany which, in addition to the murderous American and Russian interventions, waged war through the means of the various belligerents in the former Yugoslavia. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, in turn, marked another significant step in the chaos striking at the heart of global capitalism. Leftist theories about American greed for oil profits being a major cause of these wars were fundamentally refuted by their staggering cost. It was above all in the context of the USA’s efforts to reassert its global authority that it had to unleash the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, in the name of "the war against terrorism".

America imperialism launched itself into a veritable headlong rush: during the second Gulf War, Germany, France and Russia were no longer content to just drag their feet behind Uncle Sam, they flatly refused to engage their soldiers. Above all, each of these operations only engendered such chaos and instability that the United States ended up getting bogged down, to the point of having to leave Afghanistan in a humiliating fashion 20 years later, leaving behind them a field of ruins in the hands of the very same Taliban they had come to depose, just as they had already had to abandon Iraq in the grip of an immense anarchy, destabilising the whole region, in particular neighboring Syria. In the period of decomposition, precisely by seeking to maintain its rank as the first world power, the United States became the main propagator of chaos.

The United States provokes chaos on the doorstep of one the principal centres of world capitalism

Today, the United States has undeniably scored points on the imperialist level, without even having to intervene directly. Russia, a long-time adversary, is engaged in an unwinnable war that will result, whatever the outcome, in major military and economic weakening. Already, the European Union and the United States have announced the way it’s going: according to the head of European diplomacy, it is a question of "devastating the Russian economy"... and so much the worse for the proletariat in Russia who will pay for all these retaliatory measures. Along with the Ukrainian proletariat, it is the first victim and the hostage of the unleashing of military barbarism!

The Americans have also regained control of NATO, which the French President recently announced was "brain dead", considerably strengthening their presence in the East and forcing the main European powers (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) to assume more of the economic burden of militarism for the defense of Europe's eastern borders. This is a policy that the United States has been trying to implement for several years, notably under the presidency of Trump, and now continued by Biden, in order to concentrate its force against its principal enemy: China.

For the Europeans, the situation represents a diplomatic defeat of the first order and a considerable loss of influence. The conflict fueled by the United States was not wanted by France and Germany which, because of their dependence on Russian gas and the market that this country represents for their own goods, had nothing to gain from this conflict. On the contrary, Europe will experience a further acceleration of the economic crisis under the impact of the war and the sanctions imposed on Russia. The Europeans therefore have had to line up behind the American shield after the diplomatic weakening caused by Trump's flippancy had made them hope for a strong comeback of the old continent onto the international scene.

Is the fact that the main European powers are forced to line up behind the United States the beginnings of the formation of a new imperialist bloc? The period of decomposition does not, in itself, prohibit the constitution of new blocs, although the weight of every man for himself considerably hampers this eventuality. Nevertheless, in this situation the irrational will of each state to defend its own imperialist interests is greatly reinforced. Germany has been dragging its feet somewhat in enforcing sanctions and continues to walk on eggshells over the question of further sanctions on the Russian gas exports on which it heavily depends. Moreover, it has not ceased, with France, to intervene by offering a diplomatic exit to Russia, which Washington is of course seeking to delay. Even Turkey and Israel are trying to offer their "good services" as intermediaries. Eventually, with the increase in their military spending, the major European powers could even seek to emancipate themselves from American tutelage, an ambition that Macron regularly defends through his “European defense” project. While the United States has undeniably scored points in the short term, each country therefore also tries to play its own cards, compromising the constitution of a bloc all the more easily since China, for its part, is unable to gather any significant powers behind it. The war is currently holding back China’s ability to defend its own interests and objectives.  

China is the ultimate objective of American strategy

However, the manoeuvres of the American bourgeoisie are not aimed solely or primarily at Russia. The confrontation between the United States and China today determines global imperialist relations. By creating a situation of chaos in Ukraine, Washington has above all sought to fetter China's advance towards Europe blocking, for a still indefinite period, the "silk roads" which were to pass through the countries of Europe from the east. After threatening China's sea lanes in the Indo-Pacific region with, among other things, the creation of the AUKUS alliance in 2021,[6] Biden has just created a huge divide in Europe, preventing China from transporting its goods by land.

The United States has also succeeded in showing China's impotence in playing the role of reliable partner on the international scene since it has no other choice but to support Russia in a very weak way. In this sense, the American offensive that we are witnessing is part of its more global strategy of containment of China.

Since the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and in the Middle East, the United States has become, as we’ve seen, the main factor of chaos in the world. So far, this trend has been confirmed first in the peripheral countries of capitalism, although the central countries have also suffered the consequences (terrorism, migration crises, etc.). But today, the first world power is creating chaos at the gates of one of the main centres of capitalism. This criminal strategy is led by “democrat” and “moderate” Joe Biden. His predecessor, Donald Trump, had a well-deserved reputation as a hothead, but it now seems obvious that to neutralise China, only the strategy differs: Trump wanted to negotiate agreements with Russia, Biden and the majority of the American bourgeoisie wanted it bled white. Putin and his clique of assassins are no better, just like Zelensky who does not hesitate to take an entire population hostage and sacrifice them as cannon fodder in the name of the defense of the fatherland. And what about the hypocritical European democracies which, while crying crocodile tears over the victims of war, deliver phenomenal quantities of military equipment?

From left to right, democratic or dictatorial, all countries, all bourgeoisies are leading us on a forced march towards chaos and barbarism! More than ever, the only alternative available to humanity is: socialism or barbarism!

EG, March 21, 2022

[1] For a comparison, the USSR lost 25,000 soldiers during the nine years of the terrible war which ravaged Afghanistan.

We are currently experiencing the most intense campaign of war propaganda since the Second World War – not only in Russia and Ukraine, but across the globe. It is therefore essential for all those who are seeking to respond to the drums of war with the message of proletarian internationalism to take any opportunity to come together for discussion and clarification, for mutual solidarity and support, and for the definition of serious revolutionary activity against the bourgeoisie’s war drive. This is why the ICC has been holding a series of online and physical public meetings in a number of languages – English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, German, Portuguese and Turkish, with the intention of holding further meetings in the near future.

In the space of this short article, we cannot attempt to summarise all the discussions that took place at these meetings, which were marked by a serious and fraternal atmosphere, a real desire to comprehend what is going on. Instead, we want to focus on some of the main questions and themes that emerged. We are also publishing on our website some contributions by sympathisers which provide their own view of the discussions and their dynamic[1].

The priority of internationalist principles

The first and probably the most vital theme of the meetings was a broad agreement that the fundamental principles of internationalism – no support for either imperialist camp, rejection of all pacifist illusions, affirmation of the international class struggle as the only force that can really oppose war – remain as valid as ever, despite the enormous ideological pressure, above all in western countries, to rally to the defence of “plucky little Ukraine” against the Russian bear. Some might respond that these are no more than banal generalisations, but they should by no means be taken for granted, and they are certainly not easy to put forward in the current climate where there are very few signs of any class opposition to the war. Internationalists have to recognise that they are, for now, swimming against the stream. In this sense they are in a similar situation to the revolutionaries who, in 1914, had the task of holding on to their principles in the face of the war hysteria that accompanied the early days and months of the First World War. But we can also take inspiration from the fact that the eventual reaction of the working class against the war would turn the general slogans of the internationalists into a guide to action aimed at the overthrow of the capitalist world order.

A second key element of the discussion – and one which was less widely shared – was the need to understand the gravity of the current war, which, following the Covid pandemic, provides further proof that capitalism in its epoch of decay is a growing threat to the very survival of humanity. Even if the war in Ukraine is not preparing the ground for the formation of new imperialist blocs that will take humanity into a third – and no doubt final – world war, it still expresses the intensification and extension of military barbarism which, combined with the destruction of nature and other manifestations of a system in agony, would in the end have the same result as a world war. In our view, the present war marks a significant step in the acceleration of capitalism’s decomposition, a process that contains the threat of overwhelming the proletariat before it is able to muster its forces for a conscious struggle against capital.   

The need for a coherent analysis

We will not elaborate here our reasons for rejecting the argument that we are seeing the reconstitution of stable military blocs. We will simply say that despite real tendencies towards a “bipolarisation” of imperialist antagonisms, we still consider that they are outweighed by the opposite tendency for each imperialist power to defend its own particular interests and resist being subordinated to a particular world power. But this latter tendency is synonymous with a growing lack of control by the ruling class, an increasingly irrational and unpredictable slide towards chaos, which in many ways is leading to a more perilous situation than the one in which the globe was “managed” by rival imperialist blocs, i.e. the so-called “Cold War”.

A number of comrades present at the meetings posed questions about this analysis; and some, for example members of the Communist Workers Organisation at the English-language meetings, were clearly opposed to our concept of the decomposition of the system. But there can be little doubt that a central component of a consistently internationalist position is the capacity to develop a coherent analysis of the situation, otherwise there is a danger of being disoriented by the rapidity and unpredictability of immediate events. And in contrast to the interpretation of the war by the comrades of Cahiers du Marxisme Vivant at one of the meetings in France, we don’t think that simple economic explanations, the hunt for profit in the short term, can explain the real origin and dynamic of imperialist conflict in an historic epoch when economic motives are increasingly dominated by military and strategic necessities. The ruinous costs of this war will provide additional evidence for this affirmation.

Equally important as an understanding of the source and direction of imperialist conflict is to make a sober analysis of the situation of the world working class and the perspectives for the class struggle. While there was a general agreement that the war campaign is inflicting serious blows against the consciousness of a working class which had already been suffering from a deep loss of confidence and self-awareness, some participants at the meeting tended towards the view that the working class was no longer an obstacle to war. Our response was that the working class cannot be treated as a homogeneous mass. It’s evident that the working class in Ukraine, which has been effectively drowned by the mobilisation for the “defence of the nation”, has suffered a real defeat. But it’s different in Russia where there is clearly widespread opposition to the war despite the brutal repression of any dissent, and in the Russian army where there are signs of demoralisation and even rebellion. But most important, the proletariat in the central western countries cannot be counted on to sacrifice itself either on the economic or the military level, and the ruling class of these countries has long been unable to use anything but professional soldiers for its military adventures. In the wake of the mass strikes in Poland in 1980, the ICC developed its critique of Lenin’s theory that the chain of world capitalism would break in its “weakest link” – in less developed countries on the model of Russia in 1917. Instead, we insisted that the more politically developed working class of western Europe would be key to the generalisation of the class struggle. In a future article, we will explain why we think this view remains valid today, despite the changes in the composition of the world proletariat that have subsequently taken place[2]

What is to be done?

The participants at the meeting shared a legitimate concern about the specific responsibility of revolutionaries in the face of this war. In the French and Spanish meetings this was the main focus of the discussion, but in our view a number of comrades veered towards an activist approach, overestimating the possibility of our internationalist slogans having an immediate impact on the course of events. To take the example of the call for fraternisation between proletarians in uniform: while it remains perfectly valid as a general perspective, without the development of a more general class movement such as we saw in the factories and streets in Russia and Germany in 1917-18, there is little chance of the combatants on both sides of this present war seeing each other as class comrades. And of course, genuine internationalists are such a small minority today that they cannot expect to have any immediate impact on the course of the class struggle in general.

Nevertheless, we don’t think that this means that revolutionaries are doomed to be a voice in the wilderness. Again, we must take our inspiration from figures like Lenin and Luxemburg in 1914 who understood the necessity to plant the flag of internationalism even when they were isolated from the mass of their class, to keep on fighting for principles in the face of the treason of former workers’ organisations, and to develop a profound analysis of the real causes of the war in the face of the alibis of the ruling class. Equally, we must follow the example of the Zimmerwald and other conferences which expressed the determination of the internationalists to come together and issue a common manifesto against the war, despite holding to different analyses and perspectives. In this sense we welcome the participation of other revolutionary organisations at these meetings, their contribution to the debate, and their willingness to consider our proposal for a joint statement of the communist left against the war[3] . We can only regret the subsequent decision by the CWO/ICT to reject our proposal, a problem we will have to come back to in a future article.

It was also important that, in answer to questions from comrades about what could be done in their particular locality or country, the ICC stressed the primacy of establishing and developing international contacts and activities, of integrating local and national specificities into a more global framework of analysis. Working on an international scale provides revolutionaries with a means to fight against isolation and the demoralisation that may result from it.

A major imperialist war can only underline the reality that revolutionary activity only makes sense in relation to revolutionary political organisations. As we wrote in our report on the structure and functioning of the revolutionary organisation, “The working class doesn't give rise to revolutionary militants but to revolutionary organisations: there is no direct relationship between the militants and the class”[4]. This highlights the responsibility of the organisations of the communist left in providing a framework, a militant reference point around which individual comrades can orient themselves. In turn the organisations can only be strengthened by the contributions and active support they receive from these comrades.

Amos

The conflict in Ukraine, involving one of the most important imperialist powers on the planet, is a dramatic reminder of the true nature of capitalism: a system whose contradictions inevitably lead to military confrontations and massacres of populations.

In order to fully understand the historical significance of this war, it is essential to place it in a coherent analytical framework. This is why we invite comrades to read or re-read:

Orientation text: Militarism and decomposition | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [69]

This text, first published in International Review 64, was written in 1990 as a contribution to understanding the significance of another war: the American-led Gulf war that followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.  It thus appeared after the disintegration of the eastern bloc but before the definitive break-up of the USSR. We are convinced that it remains an indispensable guide to understanding the increasingly irrational and chaotic nature of imperialist wars today. Faced with the bourgeoisie’s propaganda that the world was on the threshold of a “New World Order” of peace and prosperity, the text insisted that “in the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterized the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the mo­ment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a mini­mum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force”.

This scenario has been amply confirmed by the events of the past three decades. This does not mean that the text is an invariant key to predicting the future. The text itself begins by pointing out that while a solid framework is essential to understanding the evolution of events, it must be constantly tested in the light of that evolution, in order to see which aspects remain valid and which need to be revised. So, for example, while the text is perfectly correct in showing the inability of Germany to constitute the head of a new bloc against the USA, it does not foresee the revival of Russian imperialism or the meteoric rise of China as a world power.  But as we argue elsewhere, these developments became possible precisely because of the prevailing tendency of “every man for himself” that marks imperialist relations in the phase of decomposition. On the global context for understanding the rise of China, see in particular points 10-12 in Resolution on the International Situation (2019): Imperialist conflicts; life of the bourgeoisie, economic crisis | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) [75]

ICC Introduction

We are publishing a statement on the war in Ukraine by the KRAS, an anarcho-syndicalist group linked to the International Workers’ Association. We know that, in Russia, any protest at all against the war is being met with ferocious repression by the Russian state, so we salute the courage and conviction of the KRAS comrades in publishing this statement, which is clearly internationalist, denouncing both camps as imperialist and calling for working class struggle against the war.

Our solidarity with the KRAS comrades does not imply that we agree with all the contents of the statement, such as the demand for “an immediate end to hostilities” which seems to be a concession to the idea that the two bourgeois camps can make peace. Even if Russia pulls back from the invasion and bombardment of Ukraine, we have no doubt that hostilities will continue at a lower level, as they have been doing for the past 8 years. In this respect, the statement of the Serbian affiliate to the IWA, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative, is clearer in denouncing the pacifist illusions being spread by parts of the bourgeoisie: “Faced with the horrors of war, it is very easy to make a mistake and impotently call for peace. However, capitalist peace is not peace. Such "peace" is in fact a differently branded war against the working class. In this situation, a consistent anti-militarist position implies making direct efforts to stop the capitalist war, but at the same time taking control of the situation in the country, and radically changing the socio-economic system - that is, organized class warfare is needed”[1].

We should also point out that these two groups are part of an international anarchist network which is not at all homogenous in its reaction against the war. If for example you go to the web page of the British section, the Solidarity Federation, you will, at the time of writing, find nothing at all about the war, only accounts of local disputes and Solfed activities. The statement on the war by the section in France, the CNT, opposes the inhumanity of the war but makes no mention at all of the need for a response on a working class terrain[2].

The KRAS, by contrast, has a consistent record in defending a proletarian and internationalist position against the foul deeds of “its own” ruling class, and we have published a number of their statements in the past[3].

ICC     20 March 2022

KRAS-IWA against the War

NO WAR! STATEMENT OF THE IWA SECTION IN THE REGION OF RUSSIA

The war has begun.

What people were afraid of, what they warned about, what they did not want to believe in, but what was inevitable – happened. The ruling elites of Russia and Ukraine, instigated and provoked by world capital, greedy for power and bloated with billions stolen from the working people, came together in a deadly battle. Their thirst for profit and domination is now paid with blood by ordinary people - just like us.

The first shot was fired by the stronger, the more predatory and arrogant of the bandits – the Kremlin. But, as always happens in imperialist conflicts, behind the immediate cause lies a whole tangle of disgustingly stinking reasons: this is the international struggle for gas markets, and the desire of the authorities of all countries to divert the attention of the population from the tyranny of "sanitary" dictatorships, and the struggle of the ruling classes of the countries of the former Soviet Union for the division and redistribution of the "post-Soviet space", and larger-scale and global contradictions, and the struggle for world domination between NATO, led by the USA and China, challenging the old hegemon and fastening its "little brother" in the Kremlin to its chariot. Today these contradictions give rise to local wars. Tomorrow, they threaten to turn into a Third World Imperialist War.

Whatever “humanist”, nationalistic, militaristic, historical or any other rhetoric justifies the current conflict, behind it there are only the interests of those who have political, economic and military power. To us, working people, pensioners, students, it brings only suffering, blood and death. Bombing of peaceful cities, shelling, killing people have no justification.

We demand an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of all troops to the borders and lines that existed before the start of the war.

We call on the soldiers sent to fight not to shoot at each other, and even more so not to open fire on the civilian population.

We urge them to refuse en masse to carry out the criminal orders of their commanders.

STOP THIS WAR!

BAYONET TO THE GROUND!

We call on people in the rear on both sides of the front, the working people of Russia and Ukraine, not to support this war, not to help it - on the contrary, to resist it with all their might!

Don't go to war!

Not a single rouble, not a single hryvnia from our pockets for the war!

Strike against this war if you can!

Someday - when they have enough strength - the working people in Russia and Ukraine will demand the full responsibility from all presumptuous politicians and oligarchs who set us against each other.

We remember: NO WAR BETWEEN WORKING PEOPLE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE!

NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES!

PEACE TO HOUSES - WAR TO PALACES!

Section of the International Workers Association in the Russian Region  

26.2.22

KRAS-IWA against the War | International Workers Association (iwa-ait.org) [76]

Faced with the barbarity of war, the bourgeoisie has always used cynical lies to conceal the murderous responsibility of its own system. The war in Ukraine has not escaped the torrent of propaganda and the shameless instrumentalisation of the suffering it has generated. Not a day goes by without the mass exodus and distress of Ukrainian families fleeing the bombings being shown on all the television channels and front pages of all the newspapers, which are usually so discreet about the misfortunes that capitalism inflicts on humanity. The media have displayed endless images of traumatised Ukrainian children and victims of war.

Humanitarian mystification is a weapon of war

This propagandistic exploitation of the legitimate shock provoked by the atrocious images of bombardments, murder, and mass exile, the war in Ukraine has allowed the bourgeoisie of the democratic countries to recuperate a spontaneous surge of sympathy and compassion to orchestrate a gigantic “humanitarian” campaign around the “citizens’ initiatives” towards the Ukrainian refugees (and even around the ferocious repression of the Russian demonstrators and opponents of the war). They are making use of the distress and despair of the victims of the biggest exodus of populations since the end of the Second World War. Everywhere, “humanitarian corridors” and “citizens' networks” are being organised to help Ukrainian refugees, in order to justify the supply of an immense arsenal of death-dealing weapons intended to “defend a martyred people” from the “Russian ogre”. Even in small villages, collections, donations and all sorts of “initiatives” or performances in solidarity with Ukrainian refugees are organised and encouraged by the authorities.

Behind the tributes to the martyrdom of the “Ukrainian people”, there is the sordid exploitation of real impulses of generosity, exploited by states, all of them warmongers, who don't care about the tragic fate of a population held hostage between Russia's bombing and the forced “general mobilisation” of the Zelensky government. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the “Ukrainian people” serve above all as cannon fodder in a “patriotic struggle” against the invasion. The same cynicism explains why the Western bourgeoisie has cast a modest veil over the massacres perpetrated by the Ukrainian government, since 2014, in the Russian-speaking regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, where nearly 14,000 people have been killed in 8 years.

The so-called humanism of European states is a huge lie and a pure mystification. The effort to receive and help refugees is, for the most part, due to the initiative of the populations and in no way due to the states. It is undeniable that, since the outbreak of the war and from the very beginning of the exodus of families, there has been an enormous spontaneous surge of solidarity. There has been a profoundly human effort to bring relief, assistance and help, by offering shelter and providing meals to those suddenly plunged into distress and despair.

But this elementary solidarity is not enough. It is not the product of a collective mobilisation of proletarians on their class terrain. It comes from a sum of individual initiatives that the bourgeoisie never fails to recuperate, to exploit and to instrumentalise for its own benefit. Moreover, these reactions were immediately diverted onto the terrain of bourgeois propaganda to justify the war, to peddle the deadly poison of nationalism and to recreate a climate of Sacred Unity against “the infamous Russian invader”.

The democratic powers of Western Europe had no choice but to open their borders to Ukrainian refugees, unless they were to forcibly block hundreds of thousands of them inside the Ukrainian border. Then their entire anti-Russian war propaganda would collapse. Indeed, if they declare themselves ready to welcome the Ukrainians, it is to ideologically justify a war mobilisation and especially arms deliveries to Ukraine against “Putin's war crimes” and thus to defend their own national imperialist interests.

At the same time, these campaigns serve to conceal the fact that the responsibility for this dramatic situation lies with all states, with the logic of competition and imperialist rivalries that derive from the capitalist system itself. It is this system which has generated the multiple war zones, the impoverishment and mass exodus of populations, the mounting chaos and barbarism.

The odious cynicism of a class of scavengers

All the scavenger states are now shedding crocodile tears over the Ukrainian refugees they claim to welcome with open arms in the name of the so-called “right of asylum”. These fine promises to welcome refugees are nothing but smoke and mirrors. Everywhere, Western European states have introduced reception quotas for migrants fleeing misery, chaos and war. These barefoot refugees are not like the majority of Ukrainians, blond, blue-eyed Europeans; they are most often not Christians, but Muslims. They are sorted like cattle between “economic refugees”, who are totally undesirable, and “war refugees” or “political refugees”. We should therefore sort out the “good” and “bad” refugees...

All this with the blank check of the European Union and its major democracies. Such a selection process, such a difference in treatment is totally abject. In France, for example, less than two years ago, the Macron government sent its cops to forcibly dislodge migrant families who had set up their tents in the Place de la République in Paris; the cops beat up these undesirables and lacerated their tents with knives. Only recently, when Iraqi refugees were knocking on Europe’s door, used as leverage by the Belarusian state, they were smashed against the barbed wire of the Polish border by the armed robocops of the European Union. The “big democracies” were much less welcoming then, despite the very visible suffering of people dying of cold and hunger.

What is the reality behind the variable geometry of this false compassion, this so-called solidarity of states? The bourgeoisie has taken care in most of the “host” countries to create a “special status” for Ukrainians, totally distinct from that of other refugees, in order to create opposition and divisions among the population and the working class. In Belgium, for example, the government decided to give Ukrainians a status quite distinct from other war refugees. While the latter usually first have to undergo a severe screening and control in order to receive a possible authorisation to work in the “host” country, Ukrainian nationals are granted such authorisation straight away and also receive a much higher subsidy than others. Even the amount of their allowance is higher than the minimum wage of “local” employees... This filthy manoeuvre in the service of imperialist propaganda allows the government to create not only antagonism between Ukrainians and other refugees but also to create an additional factor of division, a climate of competition, within the working class[1].

A highly qualified minority of Ukrainian refugees will, to the delight of the bourgeoisie, be integrated into the economy of certain countries, such as Germany, where there is a significant shortage of this type of labour. For the others, the vast majority, their massive influx will pose major problems for the European bourgeoisie, which is incapable of absorbing them. Sooner or later, in the coming period, the vast majority of them will be exposed to the nauseating breath of populist ideology, serving as scapegoats for the social and economic problems that the entire bourgeoisie will then have an interest in highlighting.

Above all, workers must at all costs refuse to be lured by the siren songs of these humanitarian campaigns. They must avoid their ideological traps by categorically rejecting any unity with their exploiters in the face of war. But at the same time, they must fight to defend their own class interests in the face of intensified crisis and war attacks. Only through the international development of this struggle, beyond the borders and conflicts set up by the ruling class, will they be able to fully express their class solidarity with the refugees and all the victims of the growing barbarity of capitalism, offering them a very different perspective: a society liberated from the law of profit and the deadly dynamics of this system.

Wim, 03.04.2022

[1] Some countries, however, have been more “welcoming” than others. The British bourgeoisie in particular still erected all kinds of bureaucratic barriers to Ukrainian refugees entering the country. In another article, we will analyse the differences between the British bourgeoisie and its “friends” on the continent regarding the war in Ukraine.

Since its passage into the bourgeois camp, Trotskyism has never missed an opportunity to attack the consciousness of the working class by pushing proletarians to take the side of one imperialist camp against another during the conflicts that have followed one another since the Second World War. Their position in the face of the military chaos in Ukraine confirms this once again. These watchdogs of capitalism oscillate between openly warmongering positions, calling for support for one of the warring camps, and others, apparently more “subtle” and “radical”, but still justifying the continuation of barbaric militarism. The lies and mystifications of Trotskyism are a real poison for the working class, intended to disorientate it by posing as a form of Marxism!

The position of the Nouveau parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), in France belongs to the category of patent warmongers: “No to the war! Solidarity with the resistance of the Ukrainian people! [...] In situations like the one in Ukraine at the moment, as long as the bombing continues and as long as Russian troops are there, any abstract ‘pacifist’ position such as the call for ‘calm", ‘stop the violence’ or ‘ceasefire’, de facto sets the parties back to back and is tantamount to a denial of the rights of Ukrainians to defend themselves, including militarily.” It could not be clearer! This bourgeois group openly calls on proletarians to serve as martyrs for the defence of the Fatherland. In other words, for the defence of the national capital that feeds itself on their exploitation.

With the same contempt, but with greater subtlety and a perfidious double language, Lutte Ouvrière (LO), in the name of the defence of ‘internationalism’, pretends to condemn a war which “is being waged on the backs of the peoples” in order, in the final analysis, to call on the proletarians to be used as cannon fodder in the name of “resistance to imperialism” and the “the right of nations to self-determination” ... behind their national bourgeoisie. Its candidate in the French presidential election, Nathalie Arthaud, did not hesitate to urge “the workers” to defend the poor little Ukrainian state against “bureaucratic” Russia and “imperialist” America: “Putin, Biden, and the other leaders of the NATO countries are waging a war with the skin of the peoples for whom they share the same contempt”.

As if Zelensky and his clique of corrupt oligarchs were not themselves responsible for the dismemberment of the Ukrainian population and in particular of the working class, whose men are forced to fight for interests that are not their own. Le Mouvement Socialiste des Travailleurs (MTS), a South American member of the so-called Fourth International, denounces both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and NATO interference. But behind this supposedly internationalist position, we find this time the recognition of the “right of the people of Donbass to self-determination”, which is exactly the alibi put forward by Putin to invade Ukraine!

In the UK and the US, the Internationalist Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) develops an even more tricky position: in an article entitled “Revolutionary Defeatism and Proletarian Internationalism”, after recalling Lenin's already ambiguous position that “in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government” (what he calls “dual defeatism”), the IBT adds: “Dual defeatism does not apply when an imperialist country attacks a non-imperialist country in what is effectively a war of conquest. In such cases, Marxists not only call for the defeat of their own imperialist government but actively favor the military victory of the non-imperialist state.”[1]

It is thus enough to define Ukraine as a non-imperialist state and the choice is quickly made to push the proletarians to the massacre! It is true that the IBT exploits to the absurd a weakness in Lenin’s position on imperialism[2]. The error of the Bolsheviks and the Communist International, who lived directly through the transition from the ascendant period of capitalism to its decadent one, without having drawn all the implications, is understandable. But, after a century of wars of aggression by any country against any other (Iraq against Kuwait, Iran against Iraq, etc.), to peddle the same position is pure mystification!

The whole mystification is based on the bourgeois motto of “the right of the nations to self-determination”, making imperialism a struggle between the “great powers” alone. But, as Rosa Luxemburg stated as early as 1916 in The Crisis of Social Democracy: “Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will”. The so-called national defence struggles can no longer be part of the demands of the working class. On the contrary they are a real poison for its revolutionary struggle, a mystification aiming, under a revolutionary verbiage, at enrolling the proletarians under the flags of imperialism, whatever the camp they choose to support!

H., 27 March 2022

Stop the War Coalition (STWC), with Jeremy Corbyn as one of its most prominent supporters, presents itself as a movement aiming for peace and to end the war in Ukraine. But reality is far removed from its narrative.

I agree with the content of the ICC’s leaflet denouncing the war and with the articles ‘Ukraine: the worsening of military tensions in Eastern Europe’ and ‘The ruling class demands sacrifices on the altar of war’.

The strategy of the US to encircle and contain Russia by integrating into NATO the countries of the ex-Eastern bloc has fomented the war and Biden’s insistence that Russia was about to invade, and that the US could not intervene as Ukraine is not a NATO member, forced Putin’s hand. The consequences for Russia are economic ruin and getting bogged down in a permanent war for control of a zone that is economically and militarily vital to its interests. The move made by the US seems to be a sort of replay of the 1991-95 war in the Balkans to oblige bloc cohesion under its leadership (and we recall that the Balkans war began with huge divisions between the US and the other powers, even to the point of supporting different ‘nations’ and gangs. It took around 4 years for the US and NATO to impose some kind of cohesion).

In the current war, the US will be less effected by the economic fall-out and the move has succeeded in putting the European powers under pressure but, whereas in 1991 it was a last-ditch attempt to stop the Western bloc from falling apart, and it did produce at least the semblance of unity for a short time, now the divisions between the main powers are irrevocable: the US has obliged international condemnation of Russia but Germany and France continue to play their own diplomatic card, as does Turkey.

Therefore, it by no means represents the re-constitution of the old Western bloc against an Eastern bloc which is anyway no longer any more than Russia plus a few ‘Stans’. Russia and China are united in their opposition to the US and could possibly agree to dividing up spheres of influence, but they also have conflicting interests which means that they do not a have a solid alliance that could constitute a bloc. The perspective is for a generalised extension of war as each state wrestles against the others in defence of its own interests, making temporary and changing alliances. I do not think that the risk of an escalation of the situation should be underestimated as the ex-Warsaw Pact countries, who share the nationalist illusions and the hatred of Russian domination and are now NATO members, will push for intervention. Can NATO control them and their level of involvement? Can France and Germany have enough influence over Putin to convince him that they have a diplomatic ‘solution’ to the situation?

The ease with which Ukrainian workers and the population generally have been mobilised to be massacred in defence of the fatherland is horrifying. It confirms what the ICC has said in the discussion around the critique of the weak link. We see the damage done by the weight of Stalinism: the belief that the ‘democratic’ west can offer Ukraine a wealthier lifestyle and a valid alternative political system, the refusal of communism. We can expect these illusions to be shared by the populations of the other ex-Eastern bloc countries.

The situation is different in Russia because it requires the population to believe that the invasion is justified by the need to save ‘our Ukrainian brothers’ from fascism. The fact that Putin is exercising a rigid media censorship and repression against pacifist protesters shows that he has paid far too little attention to developing an ideology able to actively mobilise the population for war. Nor have there been any spontaneous pro-war demonstrations (if there had been, Putin would have publicised them). The pro-Putin rally/concert for the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea is difficult to assess. How many were present out of fear and how many were convinced? In the photos of workers outside enterprises spelling out the sign for victory, they look rather confused and coerced. The overall impression is that there isn’t massive support for the war but that the Russian workers are disoriented and don’t know how to respond. They would not accept being called up to fight and die for their country, but although there have been some strikes against non-payment of wages there have not to our knowledge been any strikes directly against the war or demonstrations on a proletarian terrain, and that is the only thing that could stop the war. As the war continues and news reaches Russian workers from friends and relations in Ukraine, there will surely be reflection on the real causes of the war. Could that be an aspect in the development of consciousness, or will it reinforce the sense of impotence? It probably depends on the international level of struggle.

There has been no reaction against the war on a proletarian basis in Western Europe either. Why?

The bourgeoisie has taken advantage of the disorientation of the proletariat, of its difficulty in feeling its identity as a potent class able to take the situation in hand, to launch a huge anti-war campaign on a rigorously reactionary terrain. It has covered all the bases: pacifism, defence of the poor victim against the powerful and bloody madman, humanitarian aid. The media coverage of the war produces anxiety, horror, indignation and above all, the need to DO something to alleviate the suffering and to combat our own sense of impotence; and the answer rings out; demonstrate, send donations, organise fund raising events for Ukraine, get in your van and drive to the border with food parcels or to bring refugees out, cut down on your use of (Russian) gas, display the Ukrainian flag. There’s no need to discuss the issues because it’s obvious which side is suffering and who is guilty. By pushing Russia to attack in such a blatant and destructive way, the bourgeoisie has also launched an attack against the consciousness of the working class internationally.

However, the fact that there is no question of calling for the population to support the sending of troops shows that the bourgeoisie is aware that the proletariat would not be willing to butcher and to be butchered in defence of the fatherland, and while the working class remains undefeated, it is bound to reflect on the world situation. In the coming period it will face even more brutal attacks on its living conditions – which will be blamed on the deadly duo, Covid and Putin – but it will be obliged to defend itself nevertheless and defending itself also means reflection for the proletariat. As it becomes increasingly obvious that war is a constant aspect of capitalism, it will be forced to reflect on why this is so; 3.5 million (so far) refugees fleeing, mostly women and children, separated from husbands and fathers who are fighting in a war that is not only destroying Ukraine but will also devastate the aggressor’s economy and worsen the economic crisis globally; all this because Putin is a madman? The question arises as to why the ‘civilised’, ‘democratic’, ‘powerful’ west is unable to unite to stop it.

I realise that the position of the ICC is that the crisis is the main ally of the proletariat in the development of its consciousness and that a revolutionary wave will not come out of war is it did in 1917, indeed the outbreak of a third world war would necessitate the defeat of the working class, but I do think that war is an important element pushing towards the development of consciousness in the longer term, because it shows starkly the irrationality and destructive nature of capitalism.

I welcome the ICC’s appeal for a statement by the groups of the Communist Left on the war. The working class is facing a dire situation, in the face of which it feels disoriented and impotent. It is a vital responsibility of the Communist Left to give an orientation on the fundamental points: no support to any imperialism; against pacifism; the working class, and only the working class, has a way out of this barbarity.

I welcome the agreement of the Istituto Onorato Damen with the appeal. I don’t agree with the Internationalist Communist Tendency’s affirmation that there is no basis for a common declaration. The proletarian organisations are united in defending the internationalist position on war: maybe the ICT feels that this is too little and too banal precisely because it is shared by all proletarian groups, but for the working class these basic points are by no means obvious, it needs its revolutionary minorities to affirm unitedly that there is a proletarian position on war.

Fraternally, Yvonne
21/03/2022

We are publishing here our response to a message from the Anti-Militarist Initiative[1], a network mainly based in eastern Europe, which is part of a wider questioning of capitalism’s war drive in the wake of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. A whole series of groups, most of them identifying with the anarchist tradition, have been issuing statements and calling for conferences to discuss “what is to be done” about the increasingly catastrophic perspectives opened up by these wars.

We welcome the fact that the AMI blog has published a number of the ICC’s articles on war and internationalism, including an interview with Marc Chirik on revolutionaries faced with the Second World War, and an article showing the profound divergences that the war in Ukraine has revealed within the anarchist “family”, between those seeking to take a clear internationalist stance and those openly advocating the defence of the Ukrainian state[2]. In our reply, we encourage the AMI to elaborate further on the discussions going on in their ranks, and at the same time argue for the need to develop a global analysis which situates these wars in a historical and global context. This alone can enable us to understand the perspectives offered by the capitalist system, and above all the real possibilities for the class struggle and the intervention of revolutionaries faced with imperialist war. Without such an analysis, it is easy to fall into a sterile activism which can only end in demoralisation given its inevitable failure to deliver any immediate results.

From the ICC to AMI

Dear comrades,

Sorry for the long delay in responding to you.

You mentioned in your last correspondence that you are discussing:

1) Analysis of escalating conflict in the Mid-East

2) How to organize practical actions against the capitalist wars

3) How to change the inter-imperialist conflicts into a revolutionary

class struggle

We would like to send you a few key points as a contribution to your debates.

1) Analysis of escalating conflict in the Mid-East

We have published several articles of analysis of the situation – in case you may not have seen them we put the URL links at the end of our reply.  

From these articles we can highlight a few points. 

The latest Mid-East war, which takes place at the same time as the war in Ukraine (which is soon reaching its third year) and rising tensions in the Caucasus and on the Balkans and elsewhere cannot be disconnected from the global confrontation between the US and China.

But while the US has faced several fiascos in the Middle East (Iraq-Syria-Afghanistan) and has decided to concentrate its forces on preventing China from becoming the world’s leading power (which would means toppling the US) the latest escalation in the Middle East comes somewhat as an “unwanted” war for the US.

In particular, the position of the US in the Middle East has been weakened by the way Israel has been proceeding (imposing the biggest ever exodus of the Gaza population and brutal retaliation through a scorched earth policy).

Also, the US has lured Russia into the war in Ukraine. Russia has been trying to reconquer its lost positions of the time of the existence of the two blocs. It can only do this militarily- as it had already shown through its fierce support to the Syrian regime. This Ukraine-Russia war is now posing increasing difficulties – because it has become a stagnating war, and supporting Ukraine has become increasingly unpopular in the US.

The rise of China has not only been through its enormous economic growth. This has always been accompanied by a long-term strategy of modernisation and expansion of its army; and its Silk Road projects reveal the scope of its ambitions, as well of course as its claim of wanting to integrate Taiwan into China and the policy of establishing a bigger presence in the South China Sea– all of which have been opposed by the Western countries. One project after the other aimed at counter-acting the Silk Road has been adopted by the EU, USA and India.

We can see there is a world-wide sharpening of tensions, engulfing more and more countries, and the latest Middle East war also shows an increasing loss of control by the US over its gendarme (Israel) in the region. With the unleashing of  the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War and its many proxy wars afterwards, militarism has become the mode of survival of the system and a real cancer eating at its heart.

This dynamic alone already shows that we cannot eradicate this cancer of militarism if the system is not overcome.

At the same time when the leading politicians and “experts” gathered in Dubai at the COP 28 conference, they showed that the ruling class is unable and largely unwilling to take the necessary measures to protect the planet. Leaving the destiny of our planet in the hands of the capitalist class means humanity is signing its death penalty – another urgent reason to overcome the capitalist system.

We will not go into the effects of the economic crisis, famine, the massive exodus of refugees we see in all continents, all of which are expressions of the same impasse that the system has driven humanity into.

In short: we cannot understand what is happening if we only look at one aspect, but we must see the totality and the interconnection between the different destructive components.

How do you see this link and this world-wide evolution? Can we understand events in one country by isolating them from the rest, or do we need to situate them in a global framework.?

What is your analysis? Which debates do you have amongst yourselves on this?

How do you see this link and this world-wide evolution? Can we understand events in one country by isolating them from the rest, or do we need to place this in a global framework?

We have also noticed that while several groups managed to take a clear position on the Ukraine-Russian war, rejecting support for both sides, a crystal-clear internationalist position against the war in Middle East has been avoided or much harder to take for some groups. One reason is that many groups still cling to the idea that there could be something progressive behind the formation of a Palestinian state. We defend the position of the Communist Left, which in continuity with the defence of internationalism at the time of the First World War also defended internationalism at the time of the Second, and against so-called national liberation struggles. The support for the formation of any new state in what the Third International called the “epoch of wars and revolutions” is a totally reactionary idea, only fostering more wars; we must stand for the abolition of all states. The survival of the planet – of humanity – cannot be assured by more states, but requires precisely the abolition of all states and the overcoming of all forms of nationalism.

This was the tradition of the Gauche Communiste de France and Marc Chirik, an interview with whom you published recently.

The question of “practical actions” against capitalist wars

We wish we could do something with an immediate effect against the war. Our indignation and outrage seeing the barbaric acts in Ukraine or in the Middle East understandably make us want to be able to stop the war machinery at once!

But we have to see that indignation is not enough and that it is not realistic to expect the working class to take immediate and decisive, efficient action against the war on a short-term basis. In order to be able to bring this and all the other wars to an end, we have to do nothing less than overthrow the system!

To understand the real scope of the challenge and the necessary solution we need to go back to history.

It is true that the insurrections and revolutions of the working class in 1905 or the First World War arose out of a reaction against the war. But the conditions of that war and those now are very different. In 1914-18 there was the mobilisation of millions of soldiers in the heartlands of capital; this is not the case now. The kind of weapons that were used in 1914-18 were  cannons, increasingly tanks, and also some air-raids and chemical weapons (gas). But in the trenches there was still very a much a fight of “rifle against rifle”. The war stagnated, got entrenched, and there was still the possibility of direct contact (shouting between the trenches). So there could be fraternisation in the trenches after some time.

All this is not the case today. The weapons (bullets, missiles, drones, bombs, planes etc) can travel long-distances, so that the soldiers do not even see the enemy.

In the First World War there was eventually a massive mobilisation by the soldiers - not just desertions. From 1915, step by step. there were more and more protests in the streets and in the factories, because the war meant the intensification of labour, militarisation, enforced “social peace” in the factories, and above all hunger.  Liebknecht gathered 60,000 workers in the Potsdam Square, and more and more street demos and wildcat strikes erupted – with the large numbers of women being drafted into the factories also playing an important role. The whole military front and the home front was breaking apart. In Russia, the workers began to fight against the officers and to fraternise; and there was also a reaction against the war by the many peasants who had been forcefully recruited. The human/social factor played a key role in the war machinery. Still from August 1914 until February 1917, then October 1917, three years of slaughter went by, and even the revolution in Russia could not yet stop the war on the other fronts. It was only in November 1918, with the outbreak of revolution in Germany, that things took a decisive turn to bring the World War to an end. The soldiers and marines of Kiel had been ordered to deliver the “last battle” against Britain, but the sailors realised that it would mean their deaths.  So they had to fight directly for their lives, for their survival. The combination of a beginning of fraternisation at the military front and the eruption of struggles at the home front forced the bourgeoisie in Germany to react.

These conditions do not exist today. More and more soldiers are recruited in Ukraine and Russia, and there has not yet been any significant class reaction against the war – even if there has been a massive exodus of men from Ukraine and much more from Russia to escape forced recruitment. A massive open resistance against the war in Russia has still to come. At the moment it seems that there is not yet any major food shortage, or collapse of the economy. It is a specificity of the Russian situation that the Russian economy has been so highly dependent on oil and gas exports, so the sanctions by the West/USA have forced Russia to sell more to other countries – which has helped Russia to win time and has helped the Putin regime to avoid imposing a massive economic attack on the working class. But this gain of time is not likely to last forever and the reaction of the working class in Russia, which would be a key factor in opposing the war, remains an unknown, unpredictable factor. The working class in Ukraine is confronted even more with an omnipresent nationalism. Any resistance against the war is likely to be crushed by the Zelensky regime.

This is why we have to look at the working class in the West. Because the working class in the West cannot be mobilised for the war directly, - most workers would refuse having to sacrifice their lives for the war – and because the NATO countries have carefully avoided putting boots on the ground because they know the working class and maybe other parts of the population in the West would not support this. Thus the West has above all delivered the whole arsenal of weapons necessary to prolonging the war.

Paradoxically enough, the reactions in the US in the Republican party are very revealing. There is a rising opposition to continuing financing the war in Ukraine, because they say this would be at the expense of the US economy. They also feel that the working class is not willing to sacrifice its lives and go hungry for the war in Ukraine.

Another factor has to be taken into consideration. In Russia in October 1917 the working class managed to overthrow a relatively weak and at that time still isolated bourgeoisie. The White counter-offensive with the civil war only began a year later.

But the German bourgeoisie was a much more experienced and more powerful bourgeoisie and they were able to bring the war to an end “overnight” in November 1918, when the sailors of Kiel began to move and soldiers and workers‘ councils began to be set up, taking the road of the Russian Revolution.

So the German proletariat was facing a much more cunning, intelligent bourgeoisie, which got the support from the other bourgeoisies as soon as the proletariat began to raise its head in Germany.

Today the working class faces an increasingly rotten, decomposed capitalist class, but despite their rottenness they are more determined than ever to unite their forces if their deadly enemy, the working class, raises its head. And they can also count on the trade unions, the left parties etc. to sabotage the workers‘ struggles. Thus an immediate dynamic towards a radicalisation of struggles against the war cannot yet be expected. 

How to change the inter-imperialist conflicts into a revolutionary class struggle?

Where does the key lie?

The key still lies in the hands of the working class.

We think that the workers in Britain, France, more recently in the USA, have begun to offer the proof. Driven by inflation or other strong attacks, the workers in many countries have begun to stand up and break a decades-long period of passivity and disorientation in the face of the unfolding of events. This is why we talk about a “rupture” in the class struggle[3].

And we think this capacity of the working class to defend its economic interest is the PRECONDITION for developing its strength, its self-confidence, through which the class can recognise itself, and understand clearly that there are two major classes opposing each other.

In this sense the economic defensive struggles are absolutely necessary. It is during these economic struggles, where the workers must learn to take the struggles into their own hands (which they have not done for a long time), where they must learn again to identify their real enemies (are these the migrants, the refugees – as all the populists and the right wing claim – or those who exploit them?) and their class brothers and sisters who can develop a class solidarity by uniting and taking up the struggles themselves.

And it’s through the economic defensive struggles the workers must again learn to discover that the problems are much more deeply rooted within the system and are not the fault of some rotten and greedy banker (as the Occupy Movement of 2011 tried to make us believe), and also that all the other threats to the survival of humanity are basically rooted in the system. So this process of politicisation needs the actual fire of the class struggle, but the discussions going on in different layers of the class can be propelled and catalysed by these open struggles.

Rosa Luxemburg insisted in November/December 1918 on the indispensability of much more pressure coming from the factories and economic struggles, once the “soldiers’ revolution” had the wind taken out of its sails by the decision of the bourgeoisie to end the war.

This has been the dynamic of the class struggle since 1905, when it became clear that political and economic struggles must merge together in one big stream: the mass strike.

And by coming together as a class through fighting for their economic interests, the working class can also block the destructive influence of all kind of divisive factors such as “identitarian” issues (around race, sexuality, etc). By being forced through its economic struggles to look for the solidarity of all other workers to oppose the state and be stronger than the capitalist class through the extension and  unification of the struggles, the working class can play the role of a magnet in society, offering a perspective to all those oppressed by capital- not by dissolving itself in an anonymous mass of individuals, but by acting as a united force against the ruling class.

If we insist on the need for the class to develop its economic struggles, it is not that we are running away from our responsibility towards the war. But it is the only way to develop an efficient response. To believe an immediate solution can be found through some kind of minority “action”  is a dead-end, and will ultimately demoralise those who take part in them.

It is indispensable to understand, as Pannekoek insisted in his famous book World Revolution and Communist Tactics of 1920, that the proletarian revolution is the first revolution in history which depends entirely on the collective, conscious and massive action of the working class. It cannot count on any other force than is own strength – its consciousness and its solidarity, its capacity for unification.

To create illusions about an easy and quick way out is misleading and demoralising. This is why we have rejected the Internationalist Communist Tendency’s scheme of setting up committees against the war. In our view these committees confuse the essentially political role that revolutionary organisations have to play in the face of imperialist wars. We have written several articles about this[4].

Shortly after the start of the Ukraine war, we also took position on this question in an article on Militarism and Decomposition, from which we quote here:

"8) In the past we have criticised the slogan of ‘revolutionary defeatism’. This slogan was put forward during the First World War, notably by Lenin, and was based on a fundamentally internationalist concern: the denunciation of the lies spread by the social-chauvinists who claimed that it was necessary for their country to gain a victory before allowing the proletarians of that country to engage in the struggle for socialism. In the face of these lies, the internationalists pointed out that it was not the victory of a country that favoured the struggle of the proletariat of that country against their bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, its defeat (as illustrated by the examples of the Paris Commune after the defeat by Prussia and of the 1905 Revolution following the failure of Russia’s war against Japan). Subsequently, this slogan of ‘revolutionary defeatism’ was interpreted as the wish of the proletariat of each country to see its own bourgeoisie defeated in order to favour the fight for its overthrow, which obviously turns its back on a true internationalism. In reality, Lenin himself (who in 1905 had hailed Russia's defeat by Japan) first of all put forward the slogan ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’ which constituted a concretisation of the amendment which, together with Rosa Luxemburg and Martov, he had presented and adopted at the Stuttgart Congress of the Socialist International in 1907: ‘In case war breaks out nevertheless [the socialist parties] have the duty to intercede to bring it to a prompt end and to use with all their strength the economic and political crisis created by the war to stir up the deepest popular strata and precipitate the fall of capitalist domination’.

The revolution in Russia in 1917 was a striking concretisation of the slogan ‘transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war’: the proletarians turned against their exploiters the weapons the latter had given them in order to massacre their class brothers in other countries. This being said, as we have seen above, even if it is not excluded that soldiers could still turn their weapons against their officers (during the Vietnam War, there were cases where American soldiers ‘accidentally’ shot their superiors or lobbed fragmentation bombs into the officer’s tents), such facts could only be of very limited scale and could not constitute in any way the basis of a revolutionary offensive. For this reason, in our propaganda, we should not only not put forward the slogan of "revolutionary defeatism" but also that of ‘turning the imperialist war into a civil war’.

More generally, it is the responsibility of the groups of the Communist Left to take stock of the position of revolutionaries in the face of war in the past by highlighting what remains valid (the defence of internationalist principles) and what is no longer valid (the ‘tactical’ slogans). In this sense, if the slogan of ‘turning the imperialist war into a civil war’ cannot henceforth constitute a realistic perspective, it is necessary on the other hand to underline the validity of the amendment adopted at the Stuttgart Congress in 1907 and particularly the idea that revolutionaries have the duty t'o use with all their strength the economic and political crisis created by the war to agitate the deepest popular strata and to precipitate the fall of capitalist domination’. This slogan is obviously not immediately feasible given the present weak situation of the proletariat, but it remains a beacon for communist intervention in the class"[5].

As to what this means for the role of revolutionaries, who are necessarily a small minority, we have tried to develop this in our Joint Declaration against the war and our Appeal to the groups of the Communist Left, which you may have seen[6].

We would be glad if you would let us know about the discussions in your ranks, and we are of course eager to discuss with you directly. If you have any material you recommend that we read – please send it to us.

Hoping that soon we will get a direct exchange off the ground.

Waiting for your answer...and once again sorry for a late response.

Communist Greetings

the ICC

10.12.2023

Selected texts

Capitalism leads to the destruction of humanity... Only the world revolution of the proletariat can put an end to it [87] International Review 169

Massacres and wars in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Azerbaijan... Capitalism sows death! How can we stop it? (international leaflet) [88]

The reality behind the bourgeois slogans [89], World Revolution 399

War in the Middle East: another step towards barbarism and global chaos [90]

Militarism and Decomposition (May 2022) [51]

Report on imperialist tensions [91], International Review 170

Following the publication of the Joint Declaration by groups of the Communist Left (International Communist Current, Internationalist Voice, and Istituto Onorato Damen)[1] [100], two public online meetings were held by these groups, one in Italian and one in English, to discuss and clarify the need for the Joint Declaration and the tasks of revolutionaries in the face of imperialist war and new world conditions. The meetings were held in a serious and cordial atmosphere; differences of opinion did not prevent a camaraderie or lively discussion. The significance of the Joint Declaration is that it follows the spirit of the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915, where revolutionaries were able to issue a joint internationalist declaration in the face of World War I. In the 1930s, on the other hand, Italian and Dutch left-wing communists opposed the Spanish War but were unable to issue a joint declaration. Similarly, during the Sino-Japanese War, World War II and the Korean War, internationalist communists failed to issue a joint statement. It is undeniable that today communist left groups do not have the influence that revolutionaries had in 1915. However, a common voice is necessary, not for its immediate consequences, but for the perspective of future battles. It is not possible to reflect the discussions of both sessions in a short article, but we want to give a summary of the topics discussed.

Italian-language meeting

In the Italian-language meeting, all participants, without exception, assessed the nature of war as imperialist and stressed the need to defend internationalism, that is, not to support any of the imperialist camps. Rejecting any pacifist illusions, they saw the working class and the class struggle as the only force capable of opposing the war. The participants, without exception, stressed the importance of the Joint Declaration. The participants believed that although the situation today is not comparable to that of 1915 and the revolutionaries do not have the influence they had on the working class in 1915, the spirit of the Zimmerwald conference, like a compass, is still valid today. The Zimmerwald conference is a reference for revolutionaries, to which they refer in their struggle against the imperialist war. Only one participant declared the reference to the Zimmerwald conference invalid, arguing that the currents that signed the joint declaration do not have the influence of Lenin or Luxemburg on the working class. Others responded that the importance of a joint declaration lies in a common voice of positions internationalists that the currents of the communist left had previously been unable to express in the face of the war.

The fact that other groups of the Communist Left refused to sign the joint declaration reflects the weakness of the proletarian political milieu. The majority of participants deplored the refusal of other left communist groups to refer to Lenin on the need for a common response, despite theoretical differences. In Zimmerwald, participants had differences of opinion and analysis, but this did not prevent them from making a statement in unison. The majority of participants disagreed with the reasons given by Internationalist Communist Tendency[2] [101] for not signing the joint statement. While some of the participants talked about continuing the discussion with ICT to encourage them to sign the joint statement or, at least, to develop joint action with them, others stressed that we should avoid getting into controversial discussions and move on without paying attention to others. In any case, all participants in the meeting shared the view that the No War But the Class War proposal drafted by the ICT represents a huge step backward from their own political tradition, effectively delegating to the working class in general the functions that the revolutionary vanguards should be performing instead.

The participants stressed that it is not possible to fight the war without fighting capitalism. After the war, inflation increased not only in the periphery of capitalism, but also in the metropolitan centers, and thus the cost of living for the proletariat increased, which means that the standard of living of the working class decreased. The living and working conditions of the working class, with the outbreak of the ongoing imperialist war, are bound to worsen, and may induce, in the more or less near future, the proletariat to retaliate against the continuous attacks launched by capital.

Another point of discussion stressed that the struggle of the proletariat can develop in a revolutionary direction only if it is based on the historical continuity of the positions of the Communist Left. Of course, this does not mean that only left communist groups can support these positions, but that they must serve as a point of reference to show the way forward. It was agreed during the discussion that it is the task of revolutionaries to work to build the future international and internationalist party of the proletariat, without which all eventual struggles of the working class will inevitably be doomed to defeat. And this is perspective of the declaration against imperialist war signed by the various adhering groups. 

Meeting in English

In the English-language session (in which the comrades of the IOD could not participate), as in the Italian-language session, participants unequivocally assessed the nature of the war as imperialist and, rejecting any peaceful illusions, they saw the working class and the class struggle as the only force that could counter the war. At the meeting, except for the ICT/CWO delegate, participants stressed the importance of the Joint Statement. One participant stated that although he did not fully agree with the Joint Statement, he still supported it. As in the Italian meeting, the participants, with the exception of the ICT/CWO delegate, also put forward that, although the situation today was not comparable to that of 1915 and that revolutionaries did not have the influence they had in the working class in 1915, the spirit of the Zimmerwald Conference has to act as a compass, which is still valid today, a reference point revolutionaries in the struggle against imperialist war.

At the meeting, the ICT (CWO) delegate had the opportunity to state their reasons for refusing to sign the joint statement. He put forward their reasons but their arguments not only did not convince the audience but also fuelled further discussions. The ICT/CWO representative stated that not signing the statement was not a matter of principle, but the ICT/CWO considered the criteria for those who should sign was too narrow. According to the comrade, they want to bring together those who agree with the No War but the Class War initiative. By signing the Joint Statement the ICT would be implicitly endorsing the ICC’s views on parasitism. They work with Controverses and International Group of the Communist Left, and the ICC does not; the ICC has labelled comrades who have been fighting for years as parasites. May be the ICT can pull them back into the Communist Left through the NWBCW.

Several participants who were former members of the ICC rejected the ICT/CWO representative's statement that every militant who leaves the ICC is labelled as a parasite, stating that they have never been deprived of any activity and that comrades of the ICC are always very open to discussion and solidarity. They emphasised that the problem of parasitism is related to behaviour that was not proletarian.

Some participants intervened with criticisms of the NWBCW initiative; however the presidium asked participants to postpone the discussion about NWBCW to the next public meeting. In the discussions, it was argued that the internationalists could not issue a joint statement in the face of the Spanish War, World War II, the Korean War, etc. Today the adoption of the Joint Statement was a blow to sectarianism in the proletarian political milieu and a step forward. At the beginning of the meeting, some comrades who had given credit to the ICT for refusing to sign the Joint Statement became convinced by the discussion of the necessity of the latter. A comrade said in the conclusions that he believed that the discussion was constructive, even if the differences between the ICC and the ICT were significant. These differences need to be articulated more and developed in common discussions. Another participant stated that although he disagreed with some of the CWO's positions, he was convinced that the Communist Left would not be able to carry out its historic tasks without the participation of groups such as the Bordigists or the ICT. According to him it is a pity that they did not understand the importance of this action on the Ukraine war.

The prevailing view at the meeting was that although only a minority of all the groups of the Communist Left signed the Joint Statement, the latter would still become a point of reference in the left communist tradition, to which other groups and militants could refer.

Internationalist Voice

Istituto Onorato Damen

International Communist Current

June 15, 2022

While Russia is continuously pouring carpets of bombs on Ukrainian cities, at the end of the G7 meeting, organised in the bucolic setting of the Bavarian Alps, on 28 June, the representatives of the great "democratic" powers chanted the words of Macron in chorus: “Russia cannot and must not win!”, eager to express their fake indignation about the horror of the fighting, the tens of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, the systematic destruction of entire cities, the execution of civilians, the irresponsible bombing of nuclear power stations, and the considerable economic consequences for the entire planet. By feigning fear, this band of cynics also sought to conceal the very real responsibility of the West in this massacre, in particular the destabilising action of the United States which, in its attempts to counter the decline of its world leadership, did not hesitate to stir up chaos and barbarism at the gates of the historic centre of capitalism.

The Ukraine trap set by US imperialism for Russian imperialism

Today the US and the other powers in the West present themselves as champions of peace, of democracy, and of poor innocent Ukraine faced with a shameful attack by the Russian ogre. If the horrors committed by Russian imperialism are more difficult to hide, neither the US nor Ukraine can be seen as “white knights”. On the contrary, they have played an active role in the unleashing and perpetuation of the massacre.

The Ukrainian bourgeoisie, corrupt to the bone, had already sabotaged the Minsk agreement of 2014, which implied, among other things a certain autonomy for the Donbass and the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine. Today it is acting in a particularly intransigent ‘fight to the end’ manner in the face of Russia; certain factions even envisage the reconquest of Crimea.

But US policy is far more hypocritical and calculating. In the early 1990s, the United States had “informally” promised Moscow that it would not take advantage of the implosion of the Eastern bloc to extend its influence to Russia's borders. However, it did not hesitate to integrate the former Eastern Bloc countries into its sphere of influence one by one, just as it did not hesitate to massively arm Taiwan and to support its attempts to distance itself from Beijing after promising to respect the 'one China' principle. The US policy towards Ukraine has nothing to do with the defence of the widow and the orphan or of democracy, nor with beautiful humanitarian principles that no country hesitates to smear in blood and mud for the defence of its sordid imperialist interests.

By challenging Putin to invade Ukraine (and pushing him to do so by making it clear that it would not intervene), by dragging him into a full-scale war, the US has, in a Machiavellian manoeuvre, momentarily scored important points in the imperialist arena, as the US strategy is above all aimed at countering the irretrievable decline of its world leadership.

The US bourgeoisie was thus able to restore NATO's control over the European imperialisms. While this organisation seemed to be in perdition, "brain dead" according to Macron, the war in Ukraine allowed a return to the forefront of this instrument of subordination of European imperialisms to US interests. Washington exploited the Russian invasion to call the protesting European "allies" to order: Germany, France and Italy were forced to break off their trade links with Russia and to hastily launch the military investments that the United States had been demanding for 20 years.

Similarly, the US is dealing decisive blows to Russia's military power. But behind Russia, the US is basically targeting China and putting it under pressure. The basic objective of the USA’s Machiavellian manoeuvre is to continue the containment of China, which began in the Pacific, by weakening the Russian-Chinese relationship. Russia's failures faced with US military aid to the Ukrainian army is a clear warning to Beijing. China has reacted in an embarrassed manner to the Russian invasion: while disapproving of the sanctions, Beijing avoids crossing the red line that would lead to American sanctions against China. Moreover, the Ukrainian conflict makes it possible to block a large area, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, which is indispensable for the deployment of the "New Silk Road", and this is undoubtedly a significant objective of the American manoeuvre.

US policy leads to intensified chaos and militarism

Regardless of which faction of the bourgeoisie is in government, since the beginning of the period of decomposition, the US, in its desire to defend its declining supremacy, has been the main force for the spread of chaos and warlike barbarism through its interventions and manoeuvres: it has created chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq and fostered the rise of both Al Qaeda and Daesh (Islamic State).

In the autumn of 2021, they consciously stirred up tensions with China over Taiwan in order to rally the other Asian powers behind them. Their policy in Ukraine is no different today, although their Machiavellian strategy allows them to present themselves as a peaceful nation opposing Russian aggression. With its overwhelming military supremacy, the US is fomenting warlike chaos as the most effective barrier against the challenge of China. But far from stabilising the world situation, this policy intensifies the barbarity of war and exacerbates imperialist confrontations on all sides, in a chaotic, unpredictable and particularly dangerous context.

By putting Russia on the ropes, Washington is intensifying the threat of chaos and war in Europe. The war in Ukraine is leading to increasingly calamitous losses for Russia. However, Putin cannot stop the hostilities at this stage because he needs trophies at all costs to justify the operation domestically and save what can be left of Russia's military prestige, without giving up on removing this highly strategic territory from American influence. On the other hand, the longer the war goes on, the more Russia's military power and economy will be eroded. The United States has no interest in encouraging a cessation of hostilities, even if it means cynically sacrificing the population in Ukraine. Under the present conditions, the carnage can only continue and the barbarity expand, probably for months or even years, and this in particularly bloody and dangerous forms, such as the threat posed by "tactical" nuclear weapons.

By restoring the yoke of NATO, the US is also exacerbating the imperialist ambitions and militarism of the European bourgeoisies. If the European countries were able to nourish the illusion after 1989 that they could conduct their imperialist policy based essentially on their economic assets, with the Trump presidency, and even more clearly with the aggressive policy of the Biden administration, based on the military superiority of the United States, which is now taking shape in Ukraine, they are becoming increasingly aware of their military dependence and therefore of the urgency of reinforcing their armament policy, even if, at first, they cannot distance themselves too clearly from NATO. Germany's decision to massively rearm, doubling its military budget, is a major imperialist development in the medium term because, since the Second World War, Germany had maintained only modest armed forces.

The dissensions within NATO are already appearing between an “intransigent” pole that wants to “bring Putin to his knees” (USA, Great Britain and Poland, Baltic countries) and a more “conciliatory” pole (“all this must end in negotiations”, “we must avoid humiliating Russia”). By increasing the pressure on China, the US bourgeoisie is also increasing the risk of new military confrontations. The Ukrainian crisis has dangerously destabilising consequences for the imperialist position of the main challenger to the US.

Beijing continues to pursue a policy of formal support for Putin without any compromising commitments, but the war is having a heavy impact on its “New Silk Road” and on contacts with the Central European countries that China had managed to seduce. This is happening at a time when the slowdown of its economy is becoming more and more apparent, with growth currently estimated at 4.5% of GDP. While the United States does not hesitate to accentuate these difficulties and to exploit them in its confrontation with Beijing, the situation exacerbates tensions within the Chinese bourgeoisie and accentuates the risk of an acceleration of confrontations on the economic and even military level.

The incalculable consequences of the war in Ukraine

The absence of any economic motivation for wars was obvious from the beginning of the decadence of capitalism: “War was the indispensable means by which capital opened up the possibilities for its further development, at a time when such possibilities existed and could only be opened up through violence. In the same way, the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all possibility of development, finds in modern imperialist war the expression of its collapse. War today can only engulf the productive forces in an abyss, and accumulate ruin upon ruin, in an ever-accelerating rhythm, without opening up any possibility for the external development of production.” [1]

The conflict in Ukraine is a vivid example of how war has not only lost its economic function, but how the rush to military chaos is increasingly reducing the strategic benefits of war. For example, Russia has embarked on a war in the name of defending Russian speakers, but it is massacring tens of thousands of civilians in predominantly Russian-speaking regions, while turning these cities and regions into ruins and suffering considerable material and infrastructural losses itself. If, at the end of this war, it captures the Donbass and South-East Ukraine, it will have conquered a field of ruins (the price of reconstruction is currently estimated at 750 billion euros) and a population that hates it. It will have suffered a significant strategic setback in terms of its great power ambitions.
As for the United States, in its policy of containment of China, it is being led to encourage a cynical “scorched earth” policy, leading to an immeasurable explosion of economic, political and military chaos. The irrationality of war has never been more apparent.

This tendency towards the increasing irrationality of military conflicts goes hand in hand with the increasing irresponsibility of the ruling factions coming to power, as illustrated by the adventure of Bush Junior and the “Neo-Cons” in Iraq in 2003, the policies of Trump from 2018 to 2021 or the faction around Putin in Russia. They express the exacerbation of militarism and the loss of control of the bourgeoisie over its political apparatus, which can lead to an adventurism that is fatal, in the long run, for these factions but, above all, perilous for humanity.

At the same time, the consequences of the war for the economic situation of many countries are dramatic. Russia is a major supplier of fertiliser and energy, Brazil depends on fertiliser for its crops. Ukraine is a major exporter of agricultural products, and prices of commodities such as wheat are likely to rise. States such as Egypt, Turkey, Tanzania or Mauritania are 100% dependent on Russian or Ukrainian wheat and are on the verge of a food crisis. Sri Lanka and Madagascar, already over-indebted, are bankrupt. According to the UN Secretary General, the Ukrainian crisis risks “pushing up to 1.7 billion people (more than one fifth of humanity) into poverty, destitution and hunger”. The economic and social consequences will be global and incalculable: impoverishment, misery, hunger...

The same is true of the ecological threats to the planet. The fighting in Ukraine, a country with Europe's third-largest nuclear fleet, in a region with an ageing industry, a legacy of the “Soviet” era, presents enormous risks of ecological and nuclear disasters. But more generally in Europe and in the world, while officially ‘clean, green energy transition’ remains the priority, the need to get rid of dependence on Russian fuels and to respond to soaring energy prices are already pushing the major economies to seek to revive the production of coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy. Germany, the Netherlands and France have already announced measures in this direction.

The unpredictability of the present confrontations, the possibilities of their sliding out of control, which are stronger than during the Cold War, mark the current phase of decomposition and constitute one of the particularly worrying dimensions of this acceleration of militarism. More than ever, the current war highlights the only alternative: “socialism or the destruction of humanity”. Instead of death and capitalist barbarism: socialism!
 

R. Havannais, 4 July 2022

The war in Ukraine continues to unleash its foul torrent of murder, destruction, rape and suffering, including on refugees trying to escape the fury of the belligerents. The daily images of unrestrained barbarity on the doorstep of Western Europe, the historic centre of capitalism, are so unbearable, so apocalyptic and massive; the stakes on a global scale are so colossal, if only because of the nuclear risks that the conflict poses to humanity, that it is clear that this war represents a remarkable worsening of the global chaos that directly involves and affects all the major imperialist powers.

If the war in Ukraine is the most central and caricatural expression of the dynamic of generalised decay into which capitalism is dragging the world, in particular because it is an event consciously unleashed by the bourgeoisie that will durably and seriously affect the whole of society, it is also part of a convergence of disasters and contradictions that the ruling class is increasingly unable to control:

• the Covid-19 pandemic is far from being under control, as evidenced by the massive and extremely brutal lock-downs in Beijing and Shanghai in China, and the explosion of new 'waves' due to new variants in Europe;
• the economic crisis is now combining inflation, the disorganisation of production chains and the ineluctable slide of the world economy towards recession, which had been momentarily contained by the record injection of subsidies by the Federal Reserve and the ECB;
• the number of refugees fleeing barbarism and misery in Africa, Syria, Libya, Latin America, Asia and now Europe has continued to rise dramatically;
• the inability of the bourgeoisie to achieve the objective of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5°C is so obvious that even the most optimistic propagandists no longer believe it is possible.

And we could add many more stigmata, such as the explosion of urban violence, individuals falling back on themselves in the face of poverty, the multiplication of delusional "conspiracy theories", corruption, etc.

The war in Ukraine, however, marks a new and enormous plunge into barbarism. In 1991, shortly after the fall of the USSR, in his speech to the nation on the Gulf War, Bush senior promised the advent of a "new world order"; the bourgeoisie sought to persuade the exploited that capitalism had definitively triumphed and bright days lay before us. 30 years later, the promises have vanished, confirming, every day a little more, the stakes that were clearly outlined by the 1st Congress of the Communist International in 1919: "A new epoch is born, the epoch of the breakdown of capital, its internal disintegration, the epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat...The old capitalist ‘order’ has ceased to function; its further existence is out of the question. The final outcome of the capitalist mode of production is chaos".

The war in Ukraine, a giant step into generalised barbarism and chaos

For those who expected a Blitzkrieg-like invasion, starting with the Russian bourgeoisie itself (or at least Putin's clique), as was the case with the Crimean offensive in 2014, these four months of war have shown, on the contrary, that the conflict is going to be a long one. The initial failure of the Russian invasion led to the systematic destruction of cities, such as Mariupol, Severodonetsk or now Lyssychansk, reminiscent of the annihilation of cities such as Grozny (Chechnya), Fallujah (Iraq) or Aleppo (Syria). During the Second World War, the destruction of cities became more and more massive and systematic even though the outcome of the conflict was certain: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, working-class cities in Germany.  In the current conflict, it took only a few weeks to see images of enormous destruction and razed cities.

Thus, contrary to those who claim that war would open up a new cycle of capitalist accumulation, thus signifying the possibility for capitalism to find a "solution" to the crisis, reality shows that war is only a destruction of productive forces, as the Communist Left of France already said in its Report on the International Situation in 1945: “War was the indispensable means for capitalism to open up possibilities for further development, at a time when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up by means of violence. Likewise, the collapse of the capitalist world having historically exhausted all the possibilities of development, finds in modern war, imperialist war, the expression of this collapse which, without opening up any possibility of further development for production, does nothing but to plunge the productive forces into the abyss and to accumulate ruins after ruins at an accelerated rate” . This destruction beginning with the working population itself. Initial estimates of casualties put the death toll in Ukraine at over 50,000, and the number of refugees at around 6 million; Zelensky speaks of 100 Ukrainian soldiers being killed each day and 500 wounded (most of them crippled). On the Russian side, the losses are higher than those of their entire campaign in Afghanistan. Factories, roads and hospitals are burnt to the ground. According to the Kiev Faculty of Economics, $4.5 billion worth of civilian infrastructure is destroyed every week.

The bombing and military occupation near Chernobyl led to fears of radioactive contamination, but the scale of the problem of war and its environmental impact goes far beyond that: "chemical plants were bombed in a particularly vulnerable country. Ukraine occupies 6% of Europe's territory, but contains 35% of its biodiversity, with some 150 protected species and many wetlands" (ANCRAGE). In general: “after the 1918 armistice, tens of tons of shells abandoned by the belligerents continue to release their chemical compounds in the subsoil of the Somme and the Meuse. Millions of mines scattered in Afghanistan or Nigeria permanently contaminate agricultural land and condemn the population to fear and misery, not to mention the atomic arsenal which represents an ecological threat unprecedented in the history of humanity.” Industrial war is the matrix of all pollution (Le coût écologique exorbitant des guerres, un impensé politique [108] - Le Monde)”.

The war’s impact on the economic crisis

As for the impact of the war on the economic crisis, if in the previous crisis of 2008 many workers lost their jobs and some their homes because they could not pay their mortgages, this war directly raises the prospect of famine in many parts of the world, and not only because of the interruption of trade in grain and seeds to the periphery: the threat of hunger directly concerns the most economically fragile populations in the US and other central countries. The bourgeoisie cannot continue to use debt to compensate for the decline in production that has worsened sharply since the pandemic, especially with sustained high inflation and the pressure of militarism brought on by the war in Ukraine. Biden, who had promised $30 billion in support for the economy, is now saying, like all the governments in Europe, that “the good times are over”.

Yet they have no qualms about increasing military spending exorbitantly (which will also keep inflation up). Macron has just declared that France has entered “a war economy”. In Germany, Scholz's social democratic government, with the participation of the Greens, has approved an additional budget of 100 billion euros for rearmament, a historic step not seen since the Second World War. Japan plans to increase its defence budget to 2% of GDP, making it the world's third largest military spender, behind only China, which has increased its spending by 4.7% since 2020 ($293 billion this year) and the US ($801 billion).

Another dimension of the war's impact on the economic crisis is the acceleration of the process of de-globalisation (even if the war itself is not the cause), primarily through the significant damage done to China's geostrategic military and commercial project, its “New Silk Road”. The pandemic had already greatly accelerated the disorganisation of world production and of the trend towards “relocalisation”, but the war has dealt a major new blow: trade routes across the Black Sea were severely disrupted and many companies were forced to leave Russia. The national bourgeoisies of the most de-industrialised countries are already presenting the trend towards relocation as an “opportunity” for employment and the national economy, but the World Trade Organisation has already warned of the dangers of such a process: the race to accumulate raw materials in each nation, far from reducing the insecurity of the economy, risks further disrupting supply chains and significantly slowing down world production. In sum, an increase in every man for himself at the economic level. One need only recall the acts of piracy that states engaged in during the “war of masks” to see this. All of this contributes to the logistical crisis of shortages, producing the apparent paradox that a crisis that originates in widespread overproduction creates shortages of goods. The consequences of the deepening crisis for the working class are already taking the form of the most brutal precariousness and redundancies due to company failures.

It is difficult to know what the state of the pandemic is in Russia and Ukraine. As in 1918 with the so-called “Spanish flu”, the war has certainly considerably worsened the ravages of the infection. However, it is not unreasonable to think that if the bourgeoisie was already unable to contain the pandemic before the war, as witnessed by the fiasco of the Sputnik vaccine, the situation has become totally uncontrollable with the deplorable hygienic conditions imposed by the war and the destruction of the health infrastructure. But the pandemic, although ultimately the product of the deterioration of the system and its sinking into decomposition (which heralds new pandemics in the future), is a phenomenon in the life of capitalism that the ruling class did not consciously decide to unleash. By contrast, war is the result of a conscious decision by the bourgeoisie, its only response to the collapse of capitalism!

The war in Ukraine is an imperialist war

As Rosa Luxemburg had already analysed during the First World War, in the decadence of capitalism, all countries are imperialist. Imperialism is the form taken by capitalism at a particular moment of its evolution, that of its decadence. Each national capital defends its interests tooth and nail on the world stage, even if they do not all have equivalent means at their disposal.

Bourgeois propaganda in Ukraine and in the West denounces the offensive and war crimes of the dictator Putin and, on the Russian side, the “Nazi threat” to Ukraine, just as in the First World War the Allied side called for enlistment against the militarism of the Kaiser, while the opposing camp claimed it was countering the expansionism of the Tsar. During the Second World War, each side also put forward its “legitimate” justifications: anti-fascism against Hitler or the defence of Germany against the crushing weight of war “reparations”.

The bourgeoisie also insists that Ukraine is a small country, a victim of the Russian bear. But behind Ukraine are NATO and the US, and Russia is also trying to seek support from China. As such, the war between Ukraine and Russia is part of a larger conflict between the USA and its declared challenger, China. At the root of the current war is the United States’ desire to reassert its world hegemony, which has been in decline since the collapse of the Stalinist bloc and, more recently, since Bush Jr.’s fiasco in Iraq in 2003 and the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Echoing the way that Bush (Senior) lured Saddam Hussein into a trap in 1991, the US government reported the mobilisation of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, but made it clear that if the threat of invasion were to occur, the US would not intervene, as in Crimea in 2014. For its part, the Russian government could not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, after the integration into the alliance of a large part of its historical sphere of influence (i.e. Poland, Hungary and the Baltic States). It therefore had no choice but to take the American bait with the initial idea of swift action to veto Ukraine's ambitions. However, US support for Zelensky and its pressure on NATO members to move in the same direction embroiled Russia in a longer than expected war of attrition.

The US government is thus trying to expose the weakness of Russian imperialism, which is not up to the standard of a major world power in the 21st century, and to exhaust it as much as possible. At the same time, the United States has succeeded in imposing its discipline on the European powers, especially in the face of the ambitions towards independence of French imperialism (Macron had declared that “NATO is brain-dead”) and Germany, which have had to absorb the decrease in Russian gas deliveries and the closure of the Russian market for their own goods following the sanctions, but also the cost of the rearmament decided under American pressure. But above all, behind the Ukrainian conflict, the US strategic objective is to weaken its main challenger, Chinese imperialism. The US has succeeded in making it difficult for China to support Russia, making the main Asian power appear an unreliable partner. In addition to also blocking off a very important region for the New Silk Road project, America has made a show of force and “international diplomatic strategy” that is a very explicit warning to Beijing.

In sum, the US has once again not hesitated to unleash a level of chaos that heralds even greater storms in the future, in order to defend its sordid imperialist interests and global leadership. The weakening of Russian imperialism, in the long run, could lead to the disintegration of Russia into various small nuclear-armed imperialisms. Similarly, the bringing of the European powers to heel actually leads to their rearmament, especially Germany, something which has not happened since its defeat in the Second World War. Xi Jinping is seeing his new Silk Roads threatened with blockage and its “strategic ally”, Russia, in deep trouble. The real victim of this war, however, is neither Ukraine, nor Russia, nor China, nor Europe, but the working class, which is being asked, in the West but also all over the world, to make immense sacrifices in the name of the war effort and, at the front, to make the supreme sacrifice of life itself.

The proletariat faced with the war in Ukraine

Since the “Orange Revolution” in 2004, the working class in Ukraine has been trained to take sides in the conflicts between factions of the bourgeoisie, and, since 2014, has been largely mobilised on the front against Russia. Today, workers are sent to the battlefield to serve as cannon fodder, while their families desperately flee the war when they are not slaughtered in cities, hospitals or train stations. The Ukrainian working class is today totally defeated and unable to give a class response to the situation, let alone raise the revolutionary perspective as in Russia or Germany in the First World War.

In Russia, contrary to the speculations of the international press, Putin has not succeeded in imposing a general mobilisation of the population for the war. The proletariat had already avoided being drawn directly into the defence of Russia in the nationalist conflicts that followed the break-up of the former USSR. But the fact that it could not play a conscious role in the collapse of Stalinism in 1990 and got carried away by the democratic campaigns about the “death of communism” weighs on the working class in all the Eastern countries, as the democratic illusions that appeared during the social movement in Poland in 1980 illustrated very clearly. In Russia, the weight of democratism weighs even more heavily now because of the propaganda of the bourgeois factions opposed to Putin's authoritarianism. If isolated minorities like the KRAS heroically defend an internationalist position against the two belligerent camps, the working class in Russia is not in a position to take the initiative of an anti-war struggle in the immediate situation either, although the concrete situation of the struggles, discussions and awareness of the workers in Russia remains to a large extent a mystery.

All this does not mean, however, that the world proletariat is defeated. Its main battalions in Western Europe, where the historical and recent experience of the main struggles against capitalism has accumulated, where its minorities defend and develop their revolutionary political programme, have not so far been dragged into the war. Here too, the anti-communist campaign has been a key factor in the decline in the combativity and consciousness of the proletariat, a loss of class identity; although since 2003 we have seen various occasional attempts to develop a combativity, and the emergence of politicised minorities (even if they remain very few in number).

However, the bourgeoisie of the central countries is leading a major ideological campaign to support the Ukrainian struggle against the dictator Putin, notably with the slogan: “Arms for Ukraine”. The combined effects of the fragility of the working class since 1990 and this campaign lead to demobilisation and a feeling of powerlessness in the face of the gravity of the situation. That's why we shouldn't expect an immediate working class reaction to the war in these countries either.

Even in the First World War, the workers' response that ended the war was the consequence of struggles in the factories at the rear against the misery and sacrifices imposed by the war. In the present situation too, the bourgeoisie is demanding sacrifices in the name of war, starting with energy savings and continuing with wage cuts and redundancies. The working class, especially in the central countries, will be forced to fight to defend its living conditions. It is in this struggle that the conditions for the proletariat to regain its identity and its revolutionary perspective will be forged. In the present situation, this struggle will have to lead to an understanding of the relationship between the sacrifices at the rear and the supreme sacrifice of life at the front.

The intervention of revolutionary groups (and the minorities around them) in the class is indispensable. In the First World War, the internationalist conference in Zimmerwald, censored and initially barely known to the class as a whole, represented a beacon for the world proletariat in the midst of the darkness of the battlefields. Although today the revolutionary groups are much less recognised in the class than they were then, and the situation is different (no generalised war and no defeat of the proletariat), the Zimmerwald method and the defence by the left fractions of the tradition and historical principles of the proletariat which social democracy had betrayed are still very relevant today. The defence of proletarian internationalism and of the heritage of the communist left is indeed the one called for by the "Joint Statement of the groups of the Communist Left" which we are publishing on our website and this International Review.

When Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv on 9 April it was clear that British imperialism was determined to increase its contribution to imperialist conflict in Ukraine. Alongside the declaration that "We are stepping up our own military and economic support and convening a global alliance" the UK is going to send 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems. This was on top of an additional £100 million worth of military equipment, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles, helmets, night-vision devices and body armour announced a day before. The further economic support took UK loan guarantees to £770m. None of this is on the scale of US or German assistance, but it prompted the Ukrainian president's office to say "The UK is the leader in defence support for Ukraine. The leader in the anti-war coalition. The leader in sanctions against the Russian aggressor."

This ties in with the number of times that Ukraine President Zelensky has acknowledged support from British imperialism. At the moment, in line with NATO policy, Britain draws the line at providing planes, tanks or ground troops, and they have not backed the idea of enforcing a no-fly zone. However, in the words of Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, Britain will be providing weapons to Ukraine so they can "fight every street with every piece of equipment we can get to them". Although this is all supposedly intended for "defensive purposes", and full details of military supplies have not always been provided (for "security reasons"), Britain is keen to provide much of the "lethal" weaponry that Ukraine has demanded.

Britain’s contribution to the encirclement of Russia

In the build-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, British imperialism, in its own right, and as part of NATO, played a full part in the moves against Russian imperialism. Since the break-up of the USSR Russia has been further threatened by the US and its European allies as they confront Russian influence by gradually integrating countries of eastern Europe into NATO and the EU. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council, for example, was established in 1991 to forge links between eastern European countries and members of NATO. The possibility of Ukraine becoming part of NATO would bring the US-dominated alliance right up to the Russian border. Defence and security links between Ukraine and members of NATO started soon after Ukrainian independence. Links with the West became closer after Russia's takeover of Crimea in 2014

British imperialism has been assisting the Ukrainian military in one way or another since 1991. This is not on the same scale as the US, but still in the same spirit of NATO backing for Ukrainian capitalism against their neighbour to the East. Whatever tendencies there have been for Britain to assert its independence from multinational alliances, Britain has remained a faithful member of NATO right from its foundation. However, while the British government wants to present itself as the loyal deputy of the US, this has not always been ratified by Washington. When President Biden came to Europe this spring, he refused to have a one-to-one meeting with Johnson, who was also excluded from other meetings. This diplomatic humiliation followed Germany’s dramatic announcement that it would be doubling its military budget. British imperialism wants to use the war to compensate for the damage done by Brexit, but its incompetence in managing the political game has left it relatively isolated, despite all the talk of “convening alliances”.

Labour is also a war party

While focussing on the Tory government, it would be wrong to give the impression that the British bourgeoise is divided over support for Ukraine. Of course, there are the criticisms over leading Tories' behaviour during the pandemic, but not only does the Labour Party back the Tory government to the hilt on the war in Ukraine, they boast of the role of Ernest Bevin and the Labour government in the foundation of NATO in 1949. The British bourgeoisie, across all the main political parties, has been united over the war in Ukraine. Whatever differences the left of the Labour party might harbour, these have been shelved for the duration under pressure from the Labour leadership. The only difference of any significance has been the criticism of the Tory government's treatment of Ukrainian refugees and the difficulties they have in getting past British bureaucracy, especially in comparison to the process in much of the rest of Europe where visa requirements have been widely waived.

If anything, the Labour Party has tried to prove itself more bellicose than the Tories, for example in wanting an increase in defence expenditure to be an item in Sunak's spring budget statement. The Chancellor declined the opportunity to raise military spending, but Labour said that they would support any future increases regardless. Shadow defence secretary John Healey gave an example of Labour's previous keenness to fuel British imperialism's war machine when he said “Ministers must respond to new threats to UK and European security, just as Labour in government did after the 9/11 terror attacks with the largest sustained increase in defence spending for two decades.”

In all the war propaganda we are thrown back to the lies of previous imperialist conflicts. In the First World War British imperialism, including the Labour Party, justified the slaughter of millions because of the aggressive attacks on 'plucky little Belgium'. Today support for the war in Ukraine is justified by the invasion of the Russian war machine. Britain wants to be a global player, but cannot fulfil this role. It can, however, contribute to the carnage in Ukraine. British imperialism's contribution to the massacres in Iraq, to the war in Afghanistan, to the current bombing of Yemen with British weapons sold to Saudi Arabia all show that British capitalism enthusiastically embraces the barbarity of imperialist war. Specifically, on the war in Yemen, it seems possible that the UK government could go ahead with a plan to designate the Houthi rebels as a terrorist group which could worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian situation, since importing food, medicines or fuel into Yemen would then be condemned as aiding terrorism. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been urging Britain to follow this policy. A deal with Saudi Arabia is certainly on the cards since the UK government has been trying to persuade them to increase oil supplies to compensate for a blockade on Russian oil.

The disruptive role of populism

One element that does distinguish the British bourgeoisie is the continuing influence of populism within the political apparatus. At a time when there is broadly a united bourgeoisie, populism inevitably tends to be divisive. For example, when Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was asked in February whether she would back anyone who wanted to volunteer to fight in Ukraine, she said "Absolutely, if people want to support that struggle, I would support them in doing that." This was in contrast to the advice on the Foreign Office website which said that those who travel to eastern Ukraine to “fight, or assist others engaged in the conflict” could be prosecuted on their return to the UK. Subsequently, Boris Johnson, other minsters, and the head of the defence staff confirmed that joining Zelensky's international legion against Russia is illegal.

Another intrusion of populism that had the potential to derail the unity of the bourgeoise was the speech of Boris Johnson where he characterised the war as being "between freedom and oppression", going on to say that “And I know that it’s the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. When the British people voted for Brexit … It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.” The row continued along predictable lines, (Labour saying it was "insulting to the Ukrainian people, … insulting to the British people" etc) but, even if it now seems to have blown over it is a reminder that populism remains a disruptive factor in British politics. You only have to look at the plan to deport illegal refugees 4000 miles away to Rwanda to see the degree to which irrationality and inhumanity are an integral part of the decision-making process of the British bourgeoisie's political apparatus. The inhuman nature of deportation is not new, what is new is the deportation by a Western European country to a distant African country with a repressive regime and poor infrastructure to receive them in already crowded camps.

Sanctions are a weapon of war and their main victim is the working class

The British bourgeoisie is also proud to participate in the sanctions imposed on Russia. Because of the role of finance in the British economy, it has the potential to make a serious contribution to this aspect of the conflict with Russia. In evidence given to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, there was discussion on what the impact would be on the Russian economy, looking at areas such as energy, banking, other financial services, and the so-called 'oligarchs'. There was agreement that it was wrong to focus on which member of the ultra-rich in Russia were sanctioned, as the purpose of sanctions was to affect the economy as a whole. In other words, they were well aware that the way that the Russian economy was being hit, with inflation, shortages, the devaluation of the rouble etc, would cause most economic pain to the poor, those on fixed incomes or low wages. As for the impact of sanctions closer to home, in Britain, the Committee concluded "It is not possible yet to quantify that cost. But we believe that, on the information currently available, it is most definitely a cost worth bearing in order to aid Ukraine in opposing Russian aggression. However, that cost, combined with the already present pressures in the UK on the cost of living, will impact the whole country, and will be felt particularly by low-income households."

The situation is therefore the same in Britain as in Russia: sanctions will have most effect on those on lower incomes.  The Labour Party is all in favour of this. On the day of the Russian invasion, Keir Starmer said "the British public have always been willing to make sacrifices to defend democracy on our continent, and we will again." Labour has been an integral part of British imperialism since the outbreak of the First World War, so it is entirely appropriate to hear them, more than a century later, giving reasons for the working class to make sacrifices to pay for the waging of imperialist conflict.

In response to growing reports of atrocities in Ukraine committed by the Russian army, Britain says they should be investigated as war crimes. But as we saw earlier, the past military exploits of British imperialism show that it is no stranger to the butchery of warfare. This is the class that talks of the 'fight for freedom' as it contemplates the use of various weapons of mass destruction. The militarism and hypocrisy of the British bourgeoisie is only one expression of capitalism as a global system that threatens the future of humanity. The coronavirus pandemic showed the acceleration of the decomposition of capitalism. The war in Ukraine confirms it.

Car, 18/4/22

In all wars, the classic and unavoidable weapons of states are those of mass propaganda, manipulation and disinformation. Since the First World War, the great democratic powers have been a veritable crucible for mind control, a laboratory for imposing the sacred National Unity, for persuading the population, in particular the proletariat, to support the war and consent to the sacrifices that go with it. Manipulating opinion remains the central objective of the ruling class to hide its crimes and prepare new ones.

The imperialist war in Ukraine is no exception to these ignoble enterprises of manipulation and propaganda. The democratic powers, especially in Western Europe, are the ones who have to provide the most subtle and elaborate propaganda in order to try to legitimise their bloody projects to a proletariat which has the greatest experience of struggle and one of the highest levels of education in the world[1].

Manipulation and propaganda around the conflict in Ukraine

On the eve of the conflict in Ukraine, as always, heads of state and governments vowed, hand on heart, to do everything to “preserve peace”. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine's border, Putin claimed to have no warlike intentions and spoke of mere “military manoeuvres”. He had also committed to a partial withdrawal of his troops before his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said he was “delighted” with the news. Even after the start of the invasion, Putin has never spoken of a “war”, a word that is totally prohibited in Russia, but of a “special operation”.

As for Joe Biden, who announced Putin's plans in advance, specifying that the United States would not intervene in the event of a conflict, thus giving the green light to the master of the Kremlin to throw his troops and his country into a trap, he appeared to the world as a man of peace, wishing, in his words, to “give diplomacy every chance”. 

Zelensky was also a champion of peace, a “peaceful victim”, courageous, determined and “full of heroism”. For example, in his speech to the French National Assembly on 23 March, he spoke to a crowd of members of parliament who had been won over and seduced in advance: “[...] How can we stop this war? How can we bring peace to Ukraine? [...] We must act together, put pressure on Russia together to seek peace.”

Behind the speeches about peace, the image of a small country as the victim of the invaders stirred emotions and the will to fight the unspeakable Putin. The trap of a “defensive war” was set from the start. Zelensky could then forcibly mobilise cannon fodder on Ukrainian soil, men aged 18 to 60, to “defend the homeland”, constantly begging “arms for Ukraine” to prove Western “solidarity”, shamelessly exploiting the distress of the refugees for purely political and warlike ends.

In 1914, similar ideological tricks had already been used by the Entente bloc against the Triple Alliance powers.

Germany was then considered as the only one “responsible” for the war because of its invasion of little Belgium, a country taken over by the “Krauts”, by a “barbarian horde”.

French President Poincaré, who had been frantically preparing for war behind the scenes with Russia and his British ally, was at the same time a champion of peace, as shown in his speech of 14 July 1915, in which, in the middle of the war, he said: “For many years our hard-working democracy had enjoyed the work of peace. It would have considered as a criminal, or as a fool, any man who would have dared to nourish bellicose projects”. The height of cynicism and hypocrisy! A few days later, on 19 July, in a speech in the Reichstag, the German Chancellor said practically the same thing: “We did not desire war, [...] it was peace that made us prosperous”. His misfortune had been to attack first!

Like a remake, in September 1939, the invasion of Poland was presented once again as the attack by a “wolf' against an “innocent lamb” and not as the result of a logic specific to capitalism and imperialism. The “wish for peace and “victimhood” are classics!

Even Hitler declared himself in favour of peace! In 1938 in Berlin, he declared to the French ambassador his desire that Franco-German relations should be “peaceful and good”. And the diplomat Von Ribenttrop often repeated that “the Führer does not want war”[2]. It was also in the name of “peace” and ‘anti-fascism’ that the proletariat was drawn into the war.

Since no one “wants war”, even though it is the way of life of decadent capitalism, each side must present it as the fault of the opponent. Thus, for Putin, the fault lies with the Ukrainian regime, made up of “Nazis”, “persecutors of Russian-speaking minorities” who are fighting “against freedom and democracy”. Of course, he castigates another “responsible” party, the NATO forces that have surrounded him for decades and that seek to “weaken Russia”.

The propaganda of Zelensky, and the Western govenments who support him militarily, makes things all the more pernicious and dangerous for the populations and the proletariat of the West, since the “peaceful Ukraine” appears well and truly as the one “strangled by the Russian ogre”. Indeed, among all the imperialist gangsters involved in this conflict, Putin is the one who drew first.

As soon as the war started, he went from being a persona non grata to a “bloodthirsty madman”. Demonisation (facilitated here by Putin's personality and his Stalinist background) is also a great classic of propaganda![3]

During the First World War, the German army and its soldiers were also presented as monsters, accused of raping, torturing and coldly slitting the throats of children[4].

The current war and its images, the exploitation of corpses lying on the ground, the pictures of devastated cities, the multiplication of international investigations into “war crimes”[5] committed by the Russian army, the almost total silence on the exactions of the Ukrainian army on the Western side, the accumulation of crude montages on the Russian side, all this accompanied by all the cyber-propaganda that fills the mind with smoke, testify to an intense and daily information war.

As a result, even if this war is considered worrying by the Western populations, a majority is insidiously led to support the sending of “weapons for Ukraine” in order to “teach the invader a lesson”. In other words: fuel the war and the massacres in the name of a “legitimate” and “defensive” response!

All states are imperialist

In this absurd, tragic, and barbaric adventure that has brutally struck Europe, the great Western democratic powers now play the beautiful role of prosecutor. They appear to be the “peace-lovers”, confronted with a sort of fait accompli that does not depend on their own will, but on that of one man, the cold, cynical, suicidal dictator Putin.

In reality, as Rosa Luxemburg already pointed out, all states, big or small, are real brigands who only act to defend their sordid imperialist interests, as our international leaflet also reminds us: “since the beginning of the 20th century, permanent war, with all the terrible suffering it engenders, has become inseparable from the capitalist system, a system based on competition between companies and between states, where commercial warfare leads to armed warfare, where the worsening of its economic contradictions, of its crisis, stirs up ever more warlike conflicts. A system based on profit and the fierce exploitation of the producers, in which the workers are forced to pay in blood as well as in sweat”[6].

Obviously, if the responsibility of Putin's rivals is more difficult to perceive behind the smokescreen of Western propaganda, it is no less present. The action of these imperialist powers within NATO, supplying arms to Ukraine in large quantities, fuelling a war that is becoming entrenched, amply demonstrates their responsibility in the irrational logic of militarism, and the massive planning of destruction. At the forefront of these gangsters, actors in the acceleration of disorder and chaos, the imperialist state led by Biden has moved in a very clever way. By trapping Russia and the Western European allies with his statements, implicitly giving Putin a green light, he expressed the Machiavellianism of his strategy.

The act of pushing the adversary to initiate hostilities himself is a classic ploy. This was already shown in Alfred Rosmer's comment on the First World War, when he quoted a former senator, Jacques Bardoux, on the provocations that led Germany to attack in 1914: “When is a war offensive or defensive? Epithets are open to a thousand interpretations. They are the expression of shifting and changing opinions. When a diplomat is clever, the war he provokes is never offensive. He seems to be defending himself when he really attacks”.[7]

Through the cordon sanitaire that NATO has built around Russia since the collapse of the USSR, through the desire to bring new countries like Finland and Sweden into the Alliance, the Biden administration, like its ad hoc and forced Western European allies, has the “appearance of defending itself when it really attacks”. That is its strength. But at the same time, this criminal enterprise is an expression of a more fundamental historical weakness, since the dynamics of militarism bring chaos, irrationality and destruction.

In fact, all the leaders of the imperialist powers who cry out in horror at Putin's abuses themselves have blood on their hands and end up further accelerating the deadly dynamics of world disorder. When the Second World War broke out, these same allied powers were by no means the "knights of freedom" they claimed to be, but barbaric actors of imperialism defending their own sordid interests: “the West did not intervene to destroy Nazism or to avert the threat of a totalitarian regime. It was the European balance that was at stake”[8]. In reality, this “European balance” was nothing more than the balance of power between imperialist gangsters.

Today, Europe is threatened with greater chaos in this vast scramble. Whatever they say, it is the great world powers that are at the forefront of all this. The same ones who in the past committed the worst exactions, always in the name of “good”. Think of the “strategic bombings” of 1943, when the Allies dropped carpets of incendiary bombs on the working-class districts of Dresden and Hamburg, killing at least 250,000 people. More recently, let's not forget that American forces razed entire cities like Falluja in Iraq in 2004.

Today, the atomic threat and the terrifying hype about nuclear weapons should not make us forget that those who first used them in Japan were appealing to the same values of “peace”, “freedom” and “democracy”. While they were in no way militarily cornered, these same thugs had seriously considered in the 1950s vitrifying Korea with nuclear weapons.

There is no room for illusions: decaying capitalism can only bring war and chaos, destruction, crisis, epidemics and ecological disaster. The proletariat must not forget the brainwashing it has undergone during all the wars of the past. Today, it must absolutely reject the siren songs of all the belligerents. If we let ourselves be tempted by their war-mongering propaganda, we may think that the arms supplies to Ukraine are a “solution”, even if unsatisfactory, because the proletariat is not able to stop the war immediately. However, far from sparing suffering, this option can only fuel the destructive forces for which both sides are responsible. But by drawing the lessons of the past, revolutionaries arm themselves to denounce the lies of the bourgeoisie in order to assist the proletariat to avoid being caught up in the lies of the ruling class and to develop its own class resistance against this murderous system.

WH, 11 June 2022

For more than four months now, war has been raging at the gates of Europe. Four months of this macabre spectacle with its thousands of victims, its millions of exiles, its scenes of destruction and desolation. Four months, then, since carnage and devastation made their grand return to Europe, accelerating the spiral of war into which capitalism is sinking. This odious manifestation of capitalism's plunge into chaos and barbarism is accompanied by the resurgence of the Covid pandemic, where a “seventh wave” is currently sweeping across Europe without the slightest sanitary measure being envisaged by the different states, with the bourgeoisie leaving the populations to their own fate. Similarly, the chain of heat waves, such as the one that hit India and Pakistan last March and April, are a reminder that the cataclysms linked to climate change are increasingly threatening humanity. The most extreme effects (heat waves, droughts, floods, tsunamis, etc.) are even becoming the norm and will soon make human life impossible in entire regions.

We could add many other aspects to this accumulation and the simultaneity of disasters which demonstrate only one thing: the accentuation of the putrefaction of capitalist society and the total incapacity of the ruling class to counteract this historical trend. These three major illustrations are enough to affirm that capitalism has become an obsolete mode of production, incapable of guaranteeing a future for humanity other than that of its own destruction.

Capitalism is war

Since the beginning of the 20th century, war has been inseparable from capitalist society. It is the precise result of the historic crisis of this mode of production, as the Gauche Communiste de France pointed out in the wake of the Second World War: “having historically exhausted all the possibilities of development, and finding in modern warfare, imperialist warfare, the expression of this collapse which [...] engulfs the productive forces in an abyss and accumulates ruin upon ruin at an accelerated pace”. But unlike climate disasters or the emergence of the pandemic, militarism and the proliferation of wars are the product of the deliberate action of the bourgeoisie, which is incapable of settling its imperialist rivalries other than by the resort to arms and spilling the blood of the exploited.

The war in Ukraine is no exception to this totally irrational logic[1] and even constitutes a deepening of militarism and its barbaric consequences, as shown by the scale of the fighting, the tens of thousands of deaths, the systematic destruction of entire cities, the execution of civilians, the irresponsible bombing of nuclear power stations and the considerable economic consequences for the entire planet. The explosion of the military budgets of all the states, and the adhesion of Sweden and Finland to the basket of crabs that is NATO, are in no way marks of the famous “If you want peace, prepare for war” so hypocritically peddled by the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, the swelling of military arsenals and, more generally, the accentuation of the war economy in all directions will only increase tensions between states and are already laying the foundations for future conflicts.

A considerable worsening of the economic crisis

While the world has been suffering for nearly three years from one of the most deadly pandemics in history, and while the economic crisis and the environmental disaster are worsening, all states are spending vast amounts on arms. More than ever, the economy is at the service of war, at the service of the unbridled production of tools of destruction without the slightest economic consistency. For a gun, a missile or a fighter plane does not generate any additional value and is a pure waste, a dead loss from the point of view of capital on a global scale. Therefore, the increase in arms production, the possible conversion of strategic sectors to the military industry, the indebtedness that all this will provoke and the decrease in investments in other sectors of the economy, will considerably alter world trade and further aggravate the economic and social conditions suffered by the exploited.

In addition, the direct effects of the war itself are already being felt by a large part of the world's population: exorbitant inflation, the total disorganisation of production and supply chains, measures of economic retaliation between rival states. All these consequences of the imperialist war are hitting the exploited all over the world hard, not least with the shortage of many essential goods. Faced with this catastrophic situation, the bourgeoisie has no other proposal than the endless ideology of sacrifice, like the European governments which, faced with Russian gas cuts, exhort the population to tighten their belts by practising “energy sobriety”, all in the name of a pseudo-solidarity with the Ukrainian people. This despicable propaganda relayed by the big energy companies shows all the perfidy and cynicism of the ruling class, which never gives up trying to make the working class pay for its crisis. But the lies of the ruling class pale in comparison with the harsh reality that billions of people suffer in their flesh on a daily basis. The proof is that the world has never been so hungry. Today, capitalism and its horrors are plunging more than 2 billion people into a food crisis and almost 400,000 million people are on the brink of starvation.

The future is in the hands of the proletariat

As we have affirmed on several occasions over the last few months, the proletariat, deprived of its class consciousness, is for the moment incapable of recognising itself as a social force that can oppose war and put forward a revolutionary perspective. Faced with inflation and shortages, revolts have thus broken out on a terrain of struggle totally alien to the methods and objectives of the proletariat, as in Sri Lanka where the anger of the population has been instrumentalised to oust the president in office, thus serving as a mass to be manoeuvred in the confrontations between bourgeois cliques. In Ecuador, thousands of “indigenous” people, grouped on ethnic bases and cut off from the struggle of the working class, have also set themselves the objective of overthrowing the ruling power... for the benefit of another bourgeois clique.

However, in recent weeks, the first glimmers of workers' reactions to the increasing exploitation in the workplace and the deterioration of living conditions, as a result of soaring prices, have been expressed in the heart of global capitalism. At the end of June, more than 50,000 railway workers in Britain were on strike to demand higher wages. In Germany, Spain and France, strikes also broke out in the air industry and railways, based on the same demands. If these defensive struggles remain for the moment very embryonic, isolated from each other and contained by the unions, who are deploying their arsenal of sabotage through division between different sectors, the fact remains that they illustrate a great deal of anger in the ranks of the workers as well as a potential for the development combativity in the period to come.

But above all, these movements fully demonstrate that the economic crisis remains the best ally of the proletariat, the most favourable terrain on which it can develop its solidarity and its international unity, and gradually recover its identity and the consciousness of its revolutionary potential. It is only through these long and tortuous struggles that it will be able to extricate humanity from capitalism’s spiral of destruction and thus show the way to communism.

More than ever the future belongs to the working class!

Vincent, 8 July 2022.

ICC Introduction

In March 2022 we published an initial statement on the war in Ukraine by the anarcho-syndicalist group KRAS in Russia, a courageous expression of internationalism opposed to both sides of this imperialist war [1]. We have also published an article on the incoherence of the anarchist response to the war, which includes genuine internationalist positions like those of KRAS, but also openly bourgeois statements in favour of the military defence of Ukraine, and even direct participation in the Ukrainian war effort by anarchist ‘militias’[2]. The Black Flag group in Ukraine, for example, has established its own platoon within the territorial defence forces set up by the Ukrainian state. And while talking about anarcho-communism in the future, it cannot hide its support for the nation right now: “thanks for support and for the fight for freedom in some Ukrainian battalions. Truth wins, so Ukraine will win”[3]. And within Russia itself, there are anarchists like the Anarchist Fighter group which claims to be against the Putin regime and even calls for the defeat of Russian imperialism in this war, but which also argues that “As for Ukraine, its victory will also pave the way for the strengthening of grassroots democracy—after all, if it is achieved, it will be only through popular self-organization, mutual assistance, and collective resistance”[4]. This is a shameless distortion of the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism” raised by Lenin in the First World War: when Lenin insisted on the need for class struggle against the Tsarist regime, even if it meant the military defeat of Russia, this never meant supporting the opposing camp led by German imperialism. Whereas the support for Ukrainian victory offered by these anarchists can only mean support for the NATO war machine.

The present statement by KRAS makes it clear that the “defencists” are wholly on the side of capitalist order. This includes some anarchists in Ukraine who equate the internationalism of the KRAS, its opposition to the nationalism of both camps, with support for the Putin regime and its brutal war. In reality, these elements, by publishing the names and addresses of KRAS militants, have directly exposed them to repression by the Russian security forces. We publish this new statement of KRAS as an elementary statement of solidarity with these comrades [5].

[1] internationalist-statement-inside-russia [54]

[2] internationalism-defence-nation [53]

[3] Libcom [111]

[4] nl.crimethinc.com/2022/02/26/ [61]

[5].The KRAS statement has also been published by other internationalists, notably the Communist Workers Organisation [112] and the Anarchist Communist Group [113]. By contrast, the section of the IWA in Britain, Solidarity Federation, don’t appear to have published the KRAS statement.

--

"Anarchists" who forget the principles. Statement by KRAS-IWA June 8, 2022

The section of the International Workers’ Association in the region of Russia calls for a boycott of provocateurs and informers who hide behind the name of “anarchists” and denounce the activists of our organization.

Our position against the war waged by the capitalist oligarchies for the repartition of the “post-Soviet space” is met with understanding and support from anarchist internationalists in Ukraine, Moldova and Lithuania, with whom we maintain contacts.

But from the very beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the so-called “anarchists”, who abandoned the traditional anarchist internationalist position of defeating all states and nations and who support one of the warring parties, launched a campaign of slander against our organization.

For example, former anarchists Anatoly Dubovik and Oleksandr Kolchenko living in Ukraine have published the names and addresses of our activists on the open Internet. The first of them wrote the corresponding text, and the second gave him his Facebook account for publication and approved it. The pretext was that our organization takes a consistent internationalist position and condemns both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism and the expansionist policy of the NATO bloc.

Messrs. Dubovik and Kolchenko tried shamelessly and impudently to slander our IWA section, without any reason trying to attribute to us a position in defence of the Kremlin. Besides, they admit that we are calling for both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers to refuse to fight.

The latter means that these fake anarchists, by publishing the addresses of anti-war activists located in Russia, are directly inciting Russian secret services and nationalist thugs against them, as opponents of the war, in order to deal with them with their hands! In the conditions of ongoing harassment, dismissals, threats and physical reprisals against anti-military-minded people in Russia, such actions are tantamount to a real denunciation with a direct indication of whom the repressive forces should turn their attention to.

Once again, the nationalists on both sides of the front line, following the logic of “who is not with us is against us”, are ready to jointly destroy their main opponents, internationalists who refuse to make a choice between warring state and bourgeois cliques between plague and cholera.

Anarchists all over the world should be aware of the shameful deeds of provocateurs-informers and once and for all refuse to have anything to do with them, forever throwing them out of the anarchist environment and sending them to their patrons and masters from the secret services and the secret police!

The statement was approved at a referendum of the members of the KRAS-IWA

The discussion at both meetings followed very similar lines and was equally positive, with several dozen comrades taking part over the two days. There was a clear unanimity from all on the defence of internationalism against all sides involved in the imperialist war in Ukraine and the denunciation of pacifist, “anti-war” demonstrations which historically and today are just another element denying and obscuring the integral relationship of capitalism to war. Comrades were equally clear that there was no “lesser evil” in this war. A number of the comrades of the Communist Workers Organisation took part in the meetings and were fully involved in the positive nature of the discussion and the defence of proletarian positions along with members, sympathisers and contacts of the ICC. Comrades’ positions were clear and succinct, reflecting their understanding of the seriousness of the situation.

1. All insisted on the gravity of the situation and the dangers that it poses for the working class. The population of Ukraine is today subject to the horrors of war: bombardments from rockets, tanks and artillery, displaced from their homes and mobilised and dragooned by their leaders into a suicidal “defence of our nation”; not because of a “mad man” but as a result of the ineluctable dynamics of disintegrating capitalism. While Russia trumpets its crude propaganda, the West spreads its equally blistering but more sophisticated kind, which also aims to induce a general terror, fear, guilt and impotence among populations with the working class aimed at in particular. The waves of refugees, fired upon by Russian forces and cynically manipulated by the west, are all part of this particular descent into capitalist barbarism where all workers are on the “front line”. In keeping with the development of decomposition, the situation is somewhat unpredictable (more on this below) but what is clear is that the war in and around Ukraine will drag on in one form or another, that it will have global consequences and marks a significant step in the further military chaos posed by a capitalism that no longer serves humanity but rather threatens its very existence.

The question of imperialist blocs was a feature of both discussions, with the ICC giving its position on their necessity for world war along with a decisive defeat of the proletariat. Initially the position of the CWO seemed to be that the war in Ukraine was a route to World War Three, but without ignoring the dangers and the evident barbarism and potential long-term nature of this war, the ICC defended its position that imperialist blocs were necessary for world war and these blocs did not exist today; rather the prevailing tendency that does exist – each for themselves in the relations between states - tends to continue to undermine them being set up. On the level of imperialism, the last three decades have seen the entrenchment and strengthening of these centrifugal tendencies as each nation tries to “look after number one”. Countries of the west may now be “united” in supporting Ukraine but all have made it clear that they won’t intervene as a bloc; in fact, there is no bloc unity necessary for world war. Germany and France have clear differences with the US and a day after NATO’s first resounding declarations, Britain fell out with the US over its continued access to Russian oil. In addition, many of the USA’s “faithful allies” in the Middle East are ambiguous: Saudi Arabia and the UAE initially expressed their neutrality at an OPEC Plus meeting, with 7 other members from Africa and Asia abstaining. After a few days the former two countries came into line and in the meantime Israel, Turkey and Kuwait mentioned Russia by name in a carefully calibrated statement emphasising peace and diplomacy; further revealing the underlying tensions, the OPEC+ meeting in early March (of which Russia is a member) took just minutes – with no mention of Ukraine - to say that no extra oil would be produced outside of the 2020 schedule, effectively turning down Biden’s plea to release more oil. On the Chinese side, the same centrifugal tendencies affect the possibilities of a Sino-Russian bloc and this has been demonstrated in various policies and instances where the two countries have shown very different imperialist interests. One comrade put forward the view that the ICC’s position on blocs and related issues was in danger of being schematic and inadequate for understanding the present situation, though this wasn’t entirely clear. But the ICC analysis has stood the test these last decades and has been an invaluable tool in understanding the whole period since the collapse of Russia and the concomitant dislocation of the Western Bloc in 1989; and from the same analysis the continuation of centrifugal tendencies will not mean any attenuation of military chaos and barbarism but, on the contrary, their exacerbation. One CWO comrade mooted the point that blocs weren’t necessary for world war to be unleashed, giving the example of the situation before the first two world wars when the contending alliances were formed very late, but this wasn’t really followed up; what is true is that imperialism continues even without blocs[1], that the absence of imperialist blocs will in no way reduce the tendency to brutal and generalising imperialist warfare over the longer term. The present war in Ukraine is a prime example of imperialism in decomposition; an aberration in further decay.

2. Throughout both meetings, concerns were expressed about the effect of the war on the working class: could it stop the war? Has it been weakened prior to the war? Could it take to the streets? Both meetings generally concluded that, despite some combativity in many sectors of the proletariat, the working class was already in a weakened condition due to the Covid pandemic (which is far from over), while already beset and disoriented by the furies of decomposition over three decades. The fundamental point about the working class, in this situation and others, defended by the ICC, is that its present condition is the result of the stalemate between the two classes, with neither able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other; it’s in this situation that capitalism rots on its feet. As comrades made clear, the working class as a whole is not being mobilised for war, and though it doesn’t possess the strength to stop the war in Ukraine it has been a major factor in braking capitalism’s tendency towards world war; and it looks unlikely that the proletariat of the west can be mobilised to fight a war (“boots on the ground”) against Russia. But in and around Ukraine things are grim for the working class along with the population as a whole. The working class in this region, which has a proud history of class struggle in the past, has been delivered a blow not least from its mobilisation for and subordination to Ukrainian nationalism, bolstered by the propaganda forces of the West in overdrive. There’s the differences between workers in the East and the West, with the centrality of the latter recalled by one comrade from a recent discussion on the “Theory of the Weakest Link”. The war has also weakened the working class in Russia, although its present quiescence – no doubt encouraged by strategic “bonuses”[2] from the Stalinist state - could change as the costs of the war hit home. In this situation of the generally accepted weakness of the working class, it is all the more necessary for revolutionaries to take a clear, united position on the war on which those present agreed. One comrade observed that we were very much fighting against the stream and the weight of the meetings agreed that we couldn’t and shouldn’t “wait” for the working class.

Comrades pointed out the way the unions were supporting Ukraine, mobilising in different countries and how these were putting themselves forward as defenders of the working class while taking up their role as defenders of democracy and the national interest. One comrade made the very important point about the link between the proletariat fighting the economic attacks of the bourgeoisie and confronting the wider question of imperialist war.

3. Both meetings showed once again that discussion is the life-blood of revolutionary activity, discussion that doesn’t go round in circles or fixate on secondary positions but takes place in order to adopt the clearest position that unites the Communist Left. We not only need to repeat the slogans of the workers’ movement in relation to war – as one comrade of the CWO put it – but even more so the practice of the clearest elements of the workers’ movement which was to come together, put secondary (but real) differences to one side and put a common position forward that is in the interests of the proletariat. This follows the tradition of Zimmerwald[3] (the “necessity to take the first step “, as Lenin put it), Basle and the tenacity and clarity on the relationship of capitalism to war from the Stuttgart Resolution of 1907[4], as well as the Third International and its clarity about the disintegration of capitalism. When the Left of the workers’ movement issued its statement of internationalism at Zimmerwald in 1915, the working class was tearing itself apart on the battlefields of Europe – it wasn’t a question of “waiting for the working class”.

While comrades were necessarily cautious, in part absorbing the gravity of the situation as it unfolded, the discussion was marked on both days by a concern to understand and reaffirm the basics, succinctness, care in interventions and a complete absence of waffle – in part due to the discipline of the Presidium and in part the self-discipline of all comrades present. Along with all comrades, the CWO ensured that the discussion overall was positive, with an agreement expressed on all the fundamentals important to the proletariat in this dramatic situation. It was somewhat jarring therefore when, in both meetings well into the development of the discussion, the CWO made one very short and one longer intervention saying that there was “no basis” for a common position; and though one comrade of the group agreed on a common statement, he said it should be ratified by the Internationalist Communist Tendency’s central organ[5]. Given that the majority of the comrades of the CWO, and their sincerity can’t be doubted, had helped clarify and push the discussion forward over a combined number of hours, this “no basis” for a common position (with little or no explanation) was a striking contradiction.

At the time of the meetings, the CWO had not rejected the appeal for a common position with the ICC and other groups of the Communist Left. This was the case up to and including their own zoom meeting recently, but in a recent article[6] following their meeting, the CWO appear to be avoiding the issue by putting forward a new version of the No War But The Class War group, already criticised by the ICC for its shaky foundations with ambiguous anarchist positions. These opportunist manoeuvres have already been criticised by the ICC for their failure to draw the lessons based on previous experiences and their attempts to build an alliance with anarchists whose defence of internationalism is diluted by deep ambiguities or concessions to leftist positions. The article also talks disparagingly about “paper declarations” (“essential though they are” – expressing another striking contradiction) and the need to break out of the “limited confines” of the Communist Left. The attempt in the meetings from the CWO to broaden the discussion onto what constitutes the Communist Left was a diversion from the need to produce a fundamental defence of the proletariat from the most conscious elements of the Communist Left. The overwhelming weight of both meetings supported a clear statement on the war from these elements and the hope is that this is not off the agenda; and if it is that there is a clear explanation from the CWO as to why this is the case.[7]

4. Throughout both meetings, particularly the second, the question of the unpredictability of capitalism kept cropping up. Quite correctly, because it is an element of the situation and the ICC’s analysis of decomposition factors in this phenomenon as consequential to it. But “unpredictability” can sometimes be fog-inducing, leading to ideas that “anything is possible”, which is not the case for marxism. If capitalism has become some degrees more unpredictable with its decomposition, it has always been a factor of its decadence, with the blind forces of capitalism often taking both the clearest revolutionary elements and parts of the bourgeoisie by surprise. The task of revolutionaries is not to predict precise events – that has a deterministic quality to it – but to lay out their understanding of the fundamentals of the general situation, the stakes and the line of march; and this has to be addressed to the working class as widely and clearly as possible.

I think in this respect the ICC and its sympathisers were late in understanding the dangerous developments on the Ukrainian border which have been deteriorating for some time. The noise around COP 26 covered increasing NATO aggression in Ukraine, the rumble of Russian tanks and artillery heading west and the increased bombings over the Russian-controlled enclaves with both sides killing civilians. We should have been on this quicker, not least because the aim is not to “predict” it, but to get a better understanding of a significant development of imperialism on the doorstep of Western Europe and what that means for the class struggle.

In conclusion I think that the meetings were very dynamic, and the contributions of all the elements present emphasised and supported the need to relegate secondary differences for the essentials. The comrades of the CWO fully contributed to the fruitful unfolding of the discussion which shouldn’t be surprising given its heritage and understanding of the situation. On the positive side internationalism was expressed with no ifs, buts or maybes. All comrades helped to push the discussion along (and clarify along the way), a discussion which was generally unambiguous and very much to the point. On reflection though and outside of the “heat” of the actual discussion – which was also underlined by the contradictions of its position - the decision of the CWO not to take part in an address by the Communist Left to the working class on the question of the war in Ukraine can only detract from this work and represents a failure of revolutionaries to face up to their tasks and responsibilities on the fundamentals of imperialist war.

Boxer, 5.4.22

If you try to flee with your family from the war zones in Ukraine, along with hundreds of thousands of others, you will be forcefully divided from your wife, your children and your elderly parents if you are a male between 18 and 60: you are now conscripted to fight the advancing Russian army. If you stay in the cities, you will be subjected to shelling and missiles, allegedly aimed at military targets, but always causing that “collateral damage” which we first heard about in the West’s glorious Gulf War of 1991 – residential blocs, schools and hospitals are destroyed and hundreds of civilians are killed. If you are a Russian soldier, you may have been told that the people of Ukraine would welcome you as a liberator, but you will pay in blood for believing that lie. This is the reality of imperialist war today, and the longer it continues, the bigger will be the toll in death and destruction. The Russian armed forces have shown that they are capable of razing whole cities to the ground, as they did in Chechnya and Syria. The western arms pouring into the Ukraine will magnify the devastation.

An age of darkness

In one of its recent articles on the war in Ukraine, the right wing British newspaper The Daily Telegraph ran the headline The world is sliding into a new Dark Age of poverty, irrationality and war (telegraph.co.uk) [116]

In other words, the fact that we are living in a global system that is sinking in its own decomposition is becoming increasingly hard to conceal. Whether it’s the impact of the global Covid pandemic, the latest dire predictions about the ecological disaster facing the planet, the growing poverty resulting from the economic crisis, the very evident threat posed by the sharpening of inter-imperialist conflicts, or the rise of political and religious forces fuelled by once-marginal apocalyptic legends and conspiracy theories, the Telegraph’s headline is no more or less than a description of reality – even if their opinion writers are hardly looking for the roots of all this in the contradictions of capitalism.

Ever since the collapse of the eastern bloc and the USSR in 1989-91, we have been arguing that a world social system that has already been obsolete since the beginning of the 20th century was entering into a new and final phase in its decline. Against the promise that the end of the “Cold War” would bring about a new world order of peace and prosperity, we insisted that this new phase would be marked by increasing disorder and escalating militarism. The wars in the Balkans in the early 90s, the Gulf war of 1991, the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the pulverisation of Syria, innumerable wars on the African continent, the rise of China as a world power and the revival of Russian imperialism have all confirmed this prognosis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a new step in this process, in which the end of the old bloc system has given rise to a frenzied struggle of each against all where formerly subordinate or weakened powers are claiming a new position for themselves in the imperialist pecking order.

The gravity of this new war in Europe

The significance of this new round of open warfare in the European continent cannot be downplayed. The Balkans war already marked the tendency for imperialist chaos to return from the more peripheral regions towards the heartlands of the system, but that was a war “inside” a disintegrating state in which the level of confrontation between major imperialist powers was much less direct. Today we are witnessing a European war between states, and a much more open confrontation between Russia and its western rivals. If the pandemic marked an acceleration of capitalist decomposition at several levels (social, health, ecological, etc), the war in Ukraine is a stark reminder that war has become the way of life of capitalism in its epoch of decadence, and that military tensions and conflicts are spreading and intensifying on a world-wide scale.

The rapidity of Russian’s advance into Ukraine took many well-informed experts by surprise, and we ourselves were unsure that it would come about so quickly and so massively[1]. We don’t think that this was because of any flaws in our basic framework of analysis. On the contrary, it flowed from a hesitation in fully applying this framework, which was already elaborated in the early 90s in certain key texts[2] where we argued that this new phase of decadence would be marked by increasingly chaotic, brutal, and irrational military conflicts. Irrational, that is, even from the point of view of capitalism itself[3]: whereas in its ascendant phase, wars, above all those which paved the way for colonial expansion, brought clear economic benefits for the victors, in the period of decadence war has assumed an increasingly destructive dynamic and the development of a more or less permanent war economy has been a huge drain on the productivity and profits of capital. Even up to the Second World War, however, there were still “winners” at the end of the conflict, in particular the USA and USSR. But in the current phase, wars launched by even the world’s “top” nations have proved to be fiascos at both the military and economic levels. The humiliating withdrawal of the US from Iraq and Afghanistan is clear evidence of this.

 In our previous article we pointed out that an invasion or occupation of Ukraine was likely to plunge Russia into a new version of the quagmire it encountered in Afghanistan in the 1980s – and which was a powerful factor in the downfall of the USSR itself. There are already signs that this is the prospect facing the invasion of Ukraine, which has met considerable armed resistance, is unpopular with large segments of Russian society including parts of the ruling class itself, and has provoked a series of retaliatory sanctions from Russia’s main rivals which will certainly deepen the material poverty facing the majority of Russia’s population. At the same time, the western powers are stoking up support for the Ukrainian armed forces, both ideologically and through the supply of weapons and military advice. But despite these predictable consequences, the pressures on Russian imperialism prior to the invasion were daily reducing the possibility that the mobilisation of its forces around Ukraine would stop at a mere show of force. In particular, the refusal of NATO to rule out its eventual expansion into Ukraine could not be tolerated by Putin’s regime, and its invasion has the clear aim of destroying much of Ukraine’s military infrastructure and installing a pro-Russian government. The irrationality of the whole project, linked to an almost messianic vision of restoring the old Russian empire, the strong possibility that it will sooner or later lead to a new fiasco, was never going to deter Putin and those around him from taking the gamble. 

Are we heading towards the formation of new imperialist blocs?

On the face of it, Russia is now faced with a “United Front” of the western democracies and a newly vigorous NATO, in which the US is clearly playing a leading role. The US stands to be the main beneficiary if Russia gets bogged down in an unwinnable war in Ukraine, and from the increased cohesion of NATO faced with the common threat of Russian expansionism. This cohesion, however, is fragile: right up to the invasion, both France and Germany were trying to play their own game, emphasising the need for a diplomatic solution and pursuing separate talks with Putin. The opening of hostilities has forced them both to retreat, agreeing on the implementation of sanctions, even when they will hurt their economies much more directly than the USA’s (the example of Germany putting a stop on the Russian energy supplies which it badly needs). But there are also moves being made towards the EU developing its own armed forces, and Germany’s decision to greatly increase its arms budget must also be viewed from this angle.  It’s also necessary to recall that the US bourgeoisie itself faces major divisions over its attitude towards Russian power: Biden and the Democrats tend to maintain the traditionally hostile approach towards Russia, but a large part of the Republican party has a very different attitude. Trump in particular could not hide his admiration for Putin’s “genius” when the invasion started…

If we are a long way away from a new US bloc being formed, the Russian adventure has also not marked a step towards the constitution of a Russian-Chinese bloc. Despite recently engaging in joint military exercises, and despite previous expressions of Chinese support for Russia over issues like Syria, on this occasion China has taken its distance from Russia, abstaining on the vote censuring Russia at the UN Security Council and presenting itself as an “honest broker” calling for a cessation of hostilities. And we know that despite sharing common interests in opposition to the US, Russia and China have their own divergencies, notably on the question of China’s “New Silk Road” project. Behind these differences lies Russia’s wariness of subordinating itself to China’s own expansionist ambitions. 

Other factors of instability are also playing out in this situation, notably the role played by Turkey, which has on some level been courting Russia in its efforts to upgrade its global status, but which at the same time has come into conflict with Russia over the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in Libya. Turkey has now threatened to block Russian warships accessing the Black Sea via the Dardanelles Straits, but here again this action will be calculated entirely on the basis of Turkish national interests.

But, as we wrote in our Resolution on the International Situation from the 24th ICC Congress, the fact that international imperialist relations are still marked by centrifugal tendencies “does not mean that we are living in an era of greater safety than in the period of the Cold War, haunted as it was by the threat of a nuclear Armageddon. On the contrary, if the phase of decomposition is marked by a growing loss of control by the bourgeoisie, this also applies to the vast means of destruction – nuclear, conventional, biological and chemical – that has been accumulated by the ruling class, and is now more widely distributed across a far greater number of nation states than in the previous period.  While we are not seeing a controlled march towards war led by disciplined military blocs, we cannot rule out the danger of unilateral military outbreaks or even grotesque accidents that would mark a further acceleration of the slide towards barbarism”[4].

Faced with the deafening international campaign to isolate Russia and the practical measures aimed at blocking its strategy in Ukraine, Putin has put his nuclear defences on high alert. This may only be a thinly-veiled threat at the moment, but the exploited of the world cannot afford to trust in the ultimate reasonableness of any part of the ruling class.

The ideological attack on the working class

To mobilise the population, and above all the working class, for war, the ruling class must launch an ideological attack alongside its bombs and artillery shells. In Russia, it seems that Putin has relied mainly on crude lies about the “Nazis and drug addicts” running Ukraine, and has not invested heavily in building up a national consensus around the war. This could prove to be a miscalculation, because there are rumblings of dissent within his own ruling circles, among intellectuals, and among wider layers of society. There have been a number of street demonstrations and around 6,000 people have been arrested for protesting against the war. There are also reports of demoralisation among a part of the troops sent to Ukraine. But so far there is little sign of a movement against the war based on the working class in Russia, which has been cut off from its revolutionary traditions by decades of Stalinism. In Ukraine itself, the situation facing the working class is even darker: faced with the horror of Russian invasion, the ruling class has to a large extent succeeded in mobilising the population for the defence of the “homeland”, with hundreds of thousands volunteering to resist the invaders with any weapon they can get their hands on. We should not forget that hundreds of thousands have also chosen the flee from the battle zones, but the call to fight for the bourgeois ideals of democracy and nation has certainly been heeded by sections of the proletariat who have thus dissolved themselves into the Ukrainian “people” where the reality of class division is forgotten. The majority of Ukrainian anarchists seem to be providing the extreme left wing of this popular front[5].

The capacity of the Russian and Ukrainian ruling classes to drag “their” workers to war shows that the international working class is not homogeneous. The situation is different in the main western countries, where for many decades now the bourgeoisie has been confronted with the unwillingness of the working class – despite all its difficulties and set-backs - to sacrifice itself at the altar of imperialist war. Faced with Russia’s increasingly belligerent stance, the ruling class in the West has carefully avoided putting “boots on the ground” and meeting the Kremlin’s adventure with direct military force. But this does not mean that our rulers are passively accepting the situation. On the contrary, we are witnessing the most coordinated ideological pro-war campaign seen for decades, the campaign for “solidarity with Ukraine against Russian aggression”. The press, from right to left, publicises and supports the pro-Ukraine demonstrations, lionising the “Ukrainian resistance” as the standard bearer of the West’s democratic ideals, now under threat from the madman in the Kremlin. And they are not hiding the fact that there will have to be sacrifices – not only because the sanctions against Russian energy supplies will add to the inflationary pressures which are already making it difficult for people to heat their homes, but also because, we are told, that if we want to defend “democracy”, we need to beef up our “defence” spending. As the liberal Observer’s Chief Political Commentator Andrew Rawnsley put it this week:

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disarmament that followed, the UK and its neighbours have mainly spent the ‘peace dividend’ on giving ageing populations better healthcare and pensions than they would otherwise have enjoyed. A reluctance to spend more on defence has continued even as China and Russia have become increasingly belligerent. Only a third of Nato’s 30 members are currently meeting the commitment to spend 2% of GDP on their armed forces. Germany, Italy and Spain fall very short of the target. 

Liberal democracies urgently need to rediscover the resolve to defend their values against tyranny that they displayed during the cold war. The autocrats in Moscow and Beijing believe that the west is divided, decadent and in decline. They have to be proved wrong. Otherwise, all the rhetoric about freedom is merely noise before defeat[6]”. It could hardly be more explicit: as Hitler put it, you can have guns, or you can have butter, but you can’t have both.

Just as the working class in a number of countries was showing signs of a new willingness to defend its living and working conditions[7], this massive ideological offensive by the ruling class, this call for sacrifice in the defence of democracy, will be a heavy blow against the potential for the development of class consciousness.  But growing evidence that capitalism lives by war can, in the long term, also be a factor in the emergence of an awareness that this whole system, east and west, is indeed “decadent and in decline”, that capitalist social relations must be uprooted from the Earth.

Faced with the current ideological assault, which aims to derail real indignation about the horror we are witnessing in Ukraine into support for imperialist war, the task of the internationalist minorities of the working class will not be an easy one. It begins with responding to all the lies of the ruling class and insisting that, far from sacrificing themselves for the defence of capitalism and its values, the working class must fight tooth and nail in defence of its own working and living conditions. At the same time, it means pointing out that it is through the development of these defensive struggles, and by reflecting as widely as possible on the experience of the proletarian combat, that the working class can renew its links with the revolutionary struggles of the past – above all the struggles of 1917-18 which forced the bourgeoisie to end the First World War. This is the only way to fight against imperialist wars and to prepare the way to ridding humanity of the source of war: the world capitalist order!

Amos

The development of the organisation of the working class

In the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx wrote of the working class "One element of success they possess - numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge". In this he summarised the fundamental requirements for the success of the proletariat's struggle. The primary task of the working class was stated equally succinctly: "To conquer political power has ... become the great duty of the working classes" (Inaugural Address).

From the time of its origin the proletariat struggled to defend its interests, initially in dispersed outbursts, but increasingly realising its strength through combination in unions and political organisations. This was its first task and was also the fundamental objective of the First International, within whose ranks many varied and opposing organisations took their place (see “The First International and the fight against sectarianism [124]”, International Review 84).

In the latter part of the century a very different situation arose. The economy grew with a vigour unseen before and the bourgeoisie grew richer. This situation tended to favour the struggle of the proletariat and it saw real improvements in its living conditions and political rights: "The proletariat affirmed itself as a social force within society, even outside moments of open struggle. The working class had a life of its own within society: there were the trade unions (which were 'schools of communism'), but also clubs where workers talked politics and 'workers' universities', where one might learn marxism as well as how to read and write (Rosa Luxemburg and Pannekoek were both teachers in the German social democracy); there were working class songs, and working class fetes where one sang, danced and talked of communism" (International Review 50 “Continuity of the proletariat's political organisations: The class nature of social democracy [125]”).

The social democratic parties and the trade unions were "the products and the instruments of the combats of this period" (ibid). Social democracy "only developed and organised a real movement that had existed well before it, and developed independently of it" (ibid). Thus the activity of the social democratic parties did not constitute a concession to the bourgeoisie, even if reformist tendencies emerged, but rather the activity necessary for the proletariat in this stage of its struggle (for a fuller account see the article in IR 50 quoted above). Practically, the strategy of the working class was expressed in the concept of the 'minimum' and 'maximum' programmes, the link between which Rosa Luxemburg explained: " ... the proletariat, through its experience of the trade union and political struggle, arrives at the conviction that its situation cannot be transformed from top to bottom by means of this struggle, and that the seizure of power is unavoidable" (quoted ibid).

Britain: birthplace of the working class movement

To what extent does the situation that existed in Britain fit in with the framework we have sketched?

Britain's position as the first industrial country gave it an economic advantage that lasted many decades. It also made it the birthplace of the workers' movement and, most importantly, of what Marx and Engels described as the first political party of the working class: Chartism. The Chartists represented the first conscious attempt by the working class to assert itself on the political terrain. They saw the struggle for universal suffrage as a means through which the working class could come to power, which was an expression of the immaturity of the struggle at that stage. However, Chartism was effectively finished after 1848 and, while the unions remained strong in Britain, they increasingly tended to turn towards reformism and did not spread far beyond the skilled workers. No independent political organisation arose to take the place of the Chartists and the working class movement became, in Engels' famous phrase, "the tail of the 'Great liberal Party'" ("A Working Men's Party", Collected works vol.24), its leaders "rascals", "in the pay of the bourgeoisie" (Engels to Sorge and Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht, Collected Works Vol.45).

The revival of the workers' movement

"After the cyclical crises of growth which had hit the system about every ten years between 1825 and 1873, for almost 30 years until 1900 capitalism experienced an almost interrupted prosperity" (IR 50). However, within this prosperity there were signs of major changes in the economy, notably in Britain where a slowdown of growth led to difficulties for the capitalists and hardship for parts of the working class. Engels traced this in some detail and concluded that Britain's industrial monopoly was ending with serious consequences for the working class. However, within this, he also perceived the development of conditions which would require the working class to take up the work of its Chartist forebears: "The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly the English working class have to a certain extent shared in the benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but even the great mass had at least a temporary share now and then. And that is the reason why since the dying-out of Owenism there has been no socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monopoly the English working class will lose that privileged position; it will find itself generally - the privileged and leading minority not excepted - on a level with its fellow workers abroad. And that is the reason why there will be Socialism again in England" (“England in 1845 and 1885”, Collected Works Vol.26). Engels sought to influence this revival with a series of articles in the Labour Standard in which he defended the importance of the unions, but also showed their limitations and argued for the creation of an independent working class party. A decade later, after watching the May Day celebration in London, he declared "on May 4, 1890, the English proletariat, rousing itself from forty years of hibernation, rejoined the movement of its class" (“May 4 in London”, Collected Works Vol.27).

New Unionism

The fundamental reason for this change lay in a resurgence of class struggle, marked especially by a series of successful strikes amongst unskilled workers. These strikes succeeded not only in increasing pay but also in significantly reducing the length of the working day. Engels attached particular importance to the participation of the workers of London's East End in these strikes: "If these downtrodden men, the dregs of the proletariat, these odds and ends of all trades, fighting every morning at the dock gates for an engagement, if they can combine and terrify by their resolution the mighty Dock Companies, truly then we need not despair of any section of the working class" (“Apropos of the London Dockers' Strike”, Collected Works Vol.26).

The New Unions that these workers created to wage their battles were heavily influenced by socialists like Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling and by members of the Social Democratic Federation such as Will Thorne and, as such, differed markedly from the old unions of skilled workers whose leaders were still tied to the Liberal Party.

The first marxist organisation: the SDF

At the start of the 1880s no significant revolutionary organisations existed in Britain. A few survivors of Chartism and Owenism continued to meet, small local groups of socialists came and went, while in London exiled revolutionaries from Germany and Austria regrouped and even managed to publish a weekly journal, Freiheit.

In 1881 a meeting of various radical groups, led to the foundation of the Democratic Federation under the direction of Henry Meyers Hyndman, who considered himself to be a socialist. The Federation gradually expanded and drew in new members, such as William Morris, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and Ernest Belfort Box who sought to push it further towards socialism. In 1884 these efforts led to the federation being renamed as the Social Democratic Federation.

The programme of the Federation called for "The socialisation of the Means of production, Distribution and Exchange, to be controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community, and the complete Emancipation of Labour from the domination of Capitalism and Landlordism, with the establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the sexes". Particular points called for reforms in working hours, in the employment of children, for free education and for a citizen army. A weekly newspaper, Justice, was launched and weekly public meetings held. Engels saw the former as opportunist, launched with neither sufficient financial or literary preparation and written by people "who take in hand the task of instructing the world about matters of which they themselves are ignorant..." (Engels to Laura Lafargue, Feb. 1884, Collected Works Vol.47). Above all Engels criticised the SDF for failing to understand or relate to the working class. This was exemplified in Hyndman's attitude to trade unions and strikes which he described as "varying forms of restless working class ignorance, or despairing revolts against endurable oppression... [which] do but serve to rivet the chains of economic slavery, possibly a trifle gilded, more firmly on their limbs" (quoted in F.J. Gould, Hyndman: Prophet of Socialism). That there is no recognition of the role of the trade unions in developing the consciousness and self organisation of the working class, which Engels had set out in the articles in the Labour Standard, reflects Hyndman's conception of the working class as an inert mass which might respond to events but which required the guidance of leaders like himself to achieve anything constructive. This was to be accomplished through propaganda and, above all, participation in elections.

Hyndman: an adventurer in the workers' movement

If other socialists of the time shared his schematism, Hyndman's efforts to manipulate the workers' movement to further his own career and, above all, to realise his place in history as 'the father of British socialism', marked him out as an adventurer.

Hyndman had previously been an entrepreneur, engaging in journalism in Australia, tourism in Polynesia and financial speculation in America. At the start of 1880 he was in Britain looking for a foothold in politics, promoting a `Tory-Radical' revival to Disraeli and standing as an independent Tory in the election of March that year, during which he declared his opposition to Irish home rule, his support for the colonies (“the special heritage of our working class” - Quoted in E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary) and for an increase in the size of the navy. He became 'converted' to marxism after reading Marx's Capital on a voyage to America following the failure of these efforts. On his return, he sought out Marx and, in Marx's words, "intruded himself into my house" (Marx to Sorge, December 1881, Collected Works Vol.46). At the launch of the Democratic Federation, the platform of the organisation, entitled "England for All" and written by Hyndman, was distributed to all the participants. Large parts of this were lifted from Capital without Marx's knowledge or consent and contained errors and imprecisions. Faced with Marx's criticism, Hyndman excused himself on the grounds that "Englishmen have a dread of being taught by a foreigner" and that "many have an horror of Socialism and that name" (Marx to Hyndman, July 1881, Collected Works Vol.46). Rebuffed by Marx, Hyndman tried to cultivate Engels, but the latter refused to have any contact until the situation with Marx had been settled and subsequently remained strongly critical of Hyndman. This attitude is often presented as one of personal animosity, stemming from Engels' defence of his friend. In reality it stemmed from a political analysis that both Marx and Engels shared. Marx summed up his view in the letter to Sorge we have already quoted: "All these amiable middle-class writers...have an itching to make money or name or political capital immediately out of any new thoughts they may have got at by any favourable windfall. Many evenings this fellow has pilfered from me, in order to take me out and learn in the easiest way". Engels, with the benefit of further knowledge in the ensuing years, was able to identify Hyndman quite precisely as a careerist and an adventurer (Engels to Bernstein, Dec. 1884, Collected Works Vol.47).

The birth of the Socialist League

From the outset there were tensions within the SDF, stemming largely from Hyndman's dictatorial manner, but also from differences over policy, particularly the exclusive focus on parliament and Hyndman's continuing nationalism.

The tensions broke into open struggle when Hyndman's manoeuvres in Scotland were uncovered. These included attempts to defame Andreas Scheu, one of Hyndman's most implacable opponents, and the sending of letters in the name of the Executive which were not sanctioned by the Executive and which actually went against its decisions. Hyndman also circulated gossip that Eleanor Marx and Laura Lafargue (Marx's second daughter) had plotted against him. At a meeting of the Executive the evidence against Hyndman was presented and a motion of censure was passed. The majority, which included Morris, Aveling, Eleanor Marx and Bax, then resigned from the Executive to form the Socialist League, stating that "since it seems to us impossible to heal this discord, we ... think it better in the interests of Socialism to cease to belong to the council" (Quoted, Thompson, op.cit). Engels gave two further reasons: the possibility that Hyndman would reverse the decision at a subsequent conference by packing it with fictitious delegates and "because the entire Federation was, after all, no better than a racket". However, the consequence was that Hyndman was left secure on the Executive and in control of the paper and all the branches of the SDF.

This placed the Socialist League in a weak position from the outset, but nonetheless it marked a significant advance on the SDF in a number of areas:

• it rejected all nationalism and Jingoism, declaring firmly the necessity of internationalism: "The Socialist League ... aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all civilization" (Manifesto of the Socialist League, in: Thompson, op.cit);
• it defended the active, conscious, participation of the working class in the revolution: "Discontent is not enough ... The discontented must know what they are aiming at_ [it] should be, not an ignorant, but an intelligent revolution" (William Morris, quoted Thompson op.cit);
• it took a more realistic view of the work ahead, publishing its paper, The Commonweal, monthly rather weekly: "At last they are going to operate modestly and in accordance with their powers, and not go on pretending that the English proletariat must instantly jump to it the moment the trumpet is sounded by a few literary converts to socialism" (Engels to Bernstein, Dec.1884, Collected Works Vo1.47).

However, the League was also marked by some important weaknesses, that sprang essentially from its failure to link the struggle for the revolution to the immediate demands of the working class. This had been the case with the SDF but, if anything, the Socialist League went further, eventually rejecting all reforms, and particularly participation in elections, in the name of a pure, untainted, revolution. In part this can be attributed to the disgust of the founders at the manoeuvres of Hyndman but, more fundamentally it reflected their isolation and lack of understanding of the working class. Engels pointed to this when he described Aveling, Bax and Morris as "three as unpractical men - two poets and a philosopher -as it is possible to find" (ibid).

The second part will look at the development of the SDF and the Socialist League in the late 1880s and their relationship to the wider working class movement.

North

First published in World Revolution 198 (October 1996)

In the first part of this occasional series (World Revolution 198) we examined the gradual revival of the workers movement in Britain in the early 1880s. We sought to place this in both the general context of the development of the international proletarian movement and the specific conditions prevailing in Britain.

The objective conditions for such a revival, as Engels showed, developed during the 1880s and manifested themselves in an upsurge of class struggle, particularly towards the end of the decade. However, the development of the subjective conditions, the creation of a proletarian organisation able to rally and lead the working class, proved much more difficult. Our article traced the emergence of the Social Democratic Federation in 1884 under the leadership of the adventurer Hyndman and showed how he manoeuvred to build up his position and to defeat those who opposed his dictatorial rule and jingoist attitudes. We ended with the secession of William Morris, Belfort Bax, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling to found the Socialist League at the end of 1884.

We will return to the evolution of the Socialist League in a subsequent part of the series, but in the present article we look more closely at the practice of the SDF in the second half of the 1880s and show how, under the direction of Hyndman, it worked time and again against the development of the working class movement, by strengthening the tendencies towards sectarianism and isolation and by discrediting socialism in the eyes of the working class.

What kind of organisation?

To understand the role played by the SDF, and Hyndman's faction particularly, it is necessary to begin by considering what sort of organisation the proletariat required to defend itself and advance its interests in the late 19th century. These are the criteria against which the role of the SDF must be judged.

The rapid development of capitalism in this period confronted the proletariat with a bourgeoisie that was tending to become stronger and more unified. To struggle effectively, the working class was required to reply in kind, forging an instrument with a clear programmatic and organisational basis, which recognised the link between the class's immediate struggles and its long term goal and which, crucially, saw itself as part of an international movement.

The Social Democratic parties and, above all, the Second International, were the proletariat's answer. These organisations were not imposed from outside the class as the bourgeoisie like to pretend but "only developed and organised a real movement that had existed well before it and developed independently of it. Then, as today, the question has always been the same: how to fight the situation of exploitation in which it finds itself” (International Review 50, “Continuity of the proletariat's political organisations: The class nature of the Social Democracy [125]”). Social Democracy was a weapon created by the proletariat to wage its struggles. It marked a crucial advance over the past in its adherence to marxism and rejection of anarchism, in the distinction it made between the unitary and political organisations of the class and in the setting out of the minimum and maximum programmes.

These gains did not arise spontaneously but were the fruit of hard and prolonged struggles within the workers movement, in which the main responsibility fell repeatedly to the left wing of the movement, first to win the advances and then to defend them against the forces of compromise and reformism which were stimulated by the seemingly limitless advance of capitalism and the reforms that this advance made possible.

The 1885 election: discrediting socialism

The British election of 1885 was the first since the Reform Act of 1884 which, while stopping far short of universal suffrage, considerably extended the vote and, in Engels' view, made it likely that a number of official labour leaders would get elected with the support of the Liberals. Engels felt that this would aid the development of the independent workers movement since these leaders would "quickly show themselves up for what they are" (Engels to Bebel, October 1885, Collected Works Vol.47).

The SDF put up three candidates, two in London and one in Nottingham. The expenses of those in London were paid for by the Tory Party following an agreement reached by Hyndman's clique behind the backs of the body of the SDF. The candidates were deliberately located in strong Liberal constituencies where they were doomed to fail and on polling day they received just 59 votes between them. When news of the deal leaked out, the Liberal press mounted a virulent campaign denouncing the SDF for accepting 'Tory Gold' and for doing the Tory Party's dirty work. Hyndman and his followers claimed that it was irrelevant who they took money from, but in a letter to Bernstein, Engels spelt out the consequences of Hyndman's action: "Hyndman, however, knew that to take money from the Tories would spell nothing less than irreparable moral ruin for the socialists in the eyes of the one and only class from which they could draw recruits, namely the great radical working masses" (Collected Works, Vol.47). Consequently, the hold of the Liberals over the working class was strengthened and the creation of an independent organisation set back.

Engels' criticism, although not his analysis, was shared by the Socialist League, whose executive passed a resolution declaring "That this meeting views with indignation the action of certain members of the Social Democratic Federation in trafficking the honour of the Socialist Party, and it desires to express its sympathy with that section of the Federation which repudiates the tactics of the disreputable gang concerned in the recent proceedings" (Quoted in Lee and Archibold Social Democracy in Britain). One leading member of the League, Adreas Scheu, denounced Hyndman as "a paid agent of the Tories (or liberal-reactionists) for the purpose of bringing Socialism into discredit with the masses" (Quoted in Thompson William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary).

Within the SDF itself, as the League's resolution noted, there was also strong criticism. One of the candidates claimed he had not been informed and wrote to the press denouncing the deal and "the middle class men of our movement" (quoted by Engels in a letter to Paul Lafargue, Collected Works Vol.47). Opposition was especially strong, amongst the provincial branches and, following the failure of an attempt to censure Hyndman at a meeting in London, a large number of militants resigned, including the entire Bristol and Nottingham branches.

Opposing strikes and promoting riots

Under Hyndman's influence, and despite the presence of a number of Trade Unionists, the SDF adopted a very critical, even hostile, attitude to the unions, telling workers that strikes were futile: "There is nothing in strikes themselves, whether for a rise of wages for all, or the enactment of a minimum wage for the lowest grades of labour in any industry, which can emancipate the propertyless workers or render them less dependent upon the owning and employing class... " (quoted in Gould Hyndman: Prophet of Socialism). In contrast, the SDF actively promoted marches and demonstrations of the unemployed, who were treated to revolutionary speeches and urged to pass unrealistic resolutions.

Shortly after the Tory Gold scandal, the SDF called a demonstration of the unemployed in Trafalgar square, nominally in opposition to a Tory 'Fair Trade' gathering in the same location. In reality, according to Karl Kautsky who observed the affair, the SDF demonstration was mainly composed of lumpen-proletarian elements, while most of the genuine workers were at the other meeting. After a number of 'revolutionary' speeches the SDF led their demonstration towards Hyde Park and as they passed through the wealthy streets of Pall Mall and Picadilly rioting broke out with windows smashed and shops ransacked. The SDF and, to a lesser extent, the Socialist League, saw the riot as positive. For the SDF it salvaged their 'revolutionary' credentials after the discredit of the Tory Gold scandal, while Morris commented that "any opposition to law and order is of use to us" (Thompson, op .cit.). Once again, it was Engels who grasped the real implications: "The absence of the police shows that the row was wanted, but that Hyndman and Co. fell into the trap is impardonable and brands them finally as not only helpless fools but also as scamps. They wanted to wash off the disgrace of their electoral manoeuvres and now they have done an irreparable damage to the movement here" (Engels to Laura Lafargue, Collected Works Vol.47). In a letter to Bebel he condemned the SDF for seeking to pre-empt the real development of the working class movement and compared them to anarchists. The ensuing trials for sedition against Hyndman and others were not seriously pursued and eventually came to nothing, but did much to increase Hyndman's standing amongst socialists and radicals.

The beginnings of a mass movement

Throughout 1886 and the winter of 1887 the SDF continued to orchestrate marches and demonstrations of the unemployed. These were frequently held outside London and were well organised. In the absence of any alternative, the SDF began to assume a leading role within parts of the working class.

In the first part of the year Engels had welcomed the lack of impact of the SDF and the Socialist League on the working class, but as the year passed he recognised the change in the situation. In August he wrote to Bebel "The Social Democratic Federation does at least have a programme and a certain amount of discipline, but no backing whatever from the masses" (Collected Works Vol.47). A month later he acknowledged that Hyndman had strengthened his position and by November was arguing that "Thanks to the stupidity of all its rivals and opponents, the Social Democratic Federation is beginning to become a power" (Engels to Laura Lafargue). This was manifested in further demonstrations of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square during that month, which this time passed off peacefully. The Government again gave a helping hand by first threatening to prevent the demonstrations by force and then backing down. Engels saw in these developments the beginnings of a movement in Britain, but he was very careful to state clearly what he meant: "The Social Democratic Federation is beginning to be something of a power, since the masses have absolutely no other organisation to which they can rally. The facts should therefore be recorded impartially, in particular the most important fact of all, namely that a genuinely socialist labour movement has come into being over here. But one must be very careful to draw a distinction between the masses and their temporary leaders" (Engels to Herman Schluter, Collected Works Vol.47). In short, Engels saw the development of the movement taking place in spite of the manoeuvres of Hyndman.

Against the international unity of the working class

Despite the scorching 'revolutionary' rhetoric of Hyndman's speeches, the SDF internationally allied itself with the reformist wing of the workers movement, since the revolutionary wing was decidedly marxist. In particular, the SDF worked with the Possibilists in France, who defended 'municipal socialism' against the marxist programme of the French Workers Party. In March 1886 Justice carried an article that described the Possibilists as the main socialist organisation in France, ignoring the creation of a workers group in the Chamber of Deputies a few months previously.

Hyndman's hostility to the creation of a marxist working class movement and his effective defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, reached a high point in his attempt to sabotage the founding of the Second International. In this he was aided by the French Possibilists who, having split the working class movement in France, hoped to do the same internationally.

In October 1887 the congress of the German Social Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for an international congress "But since around this time the Trade Unions had summoned the London Congress, the German party was prepared to drop its congress, on condition that it would be allowed to participate - simply to participate!", however "The conditions of participation formulated by the union committee amounted to the exclusion of all German delegates" (Engels/Bernstein The International Workers Congress of 1889). Paul Brousse, the leader of the Possibilists, with a number of others attended the conference and won its support for their proposal to hold an international congress in 1889, which would exclude the other French workers' parties.

Despite this the SPD and Engels initially maintained their efforts to bring together a single international congress. A conference at the Hague in February 1889 proposed conditions for a single congress but was boycotted by the Possibilists (while Engels criticised the failure to invite the SDF). The Possibilists then issued invitations to their congress while Hyndman publicly attacked the Hague Conference as "a sort of private caucus" which would repeat "the wretched intrigues that broke up the old international" (Justice quoted in Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx). These slanders made the stakes of the situation and the course of action clear to Engels, as he wrote in a letter to Sorge in June: "it is again the old split in the international that comes to light here, the old Battle of the Hague. The adversaries are the same, but the banner of the Anarchists has been replaced by the banner of the Possibilists... And the tactics are exactly the same. The manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation, obviously written by Brousse, is a new edition of the Sonvillier circular[1]" (Selected Correspondence).

Engels now pushed resolutely for a separate congress, working to win over the leaders of the SPD and transmit the lessons won with such difficulty in the struggle against Bakunin in the First International. In July the Marxist and Possibilist congresses were held in Paris. The former brought together 400 delegates from 20 countries while the latter regrouped a disparate gathering of Trade Unionists (a number of whom were drawn to the Marxist congress), Possibilists, Hyndman's clique and anarchists united solely by their opposition to marxism. The Marxist congress succeeded in resisting the attempts to disrupt it by the anarchists and ensured that the Second International was founded on the organisational advances made by the First.

Attempting to split the movement in Britain

Defeated at the international level, Hyndman nonetheless maintained his offensive against the unity of the working class movement by endeavouring to divide it in Britain. However, whereas in the past he had frequently been able to dominate the isolated and weak stirrings of the workers, he was now going against the rising tide of a movement that was gathering strength at home and drawing inspiration internationally.

Amongst a number of resolutions passed by the founding congress of the Second International, was one calling for international workers' demonstrations on May Day. This was enthusiastically supported by the Gas Workers and General Labourers Union which through a successful struggle to win the eight hour day for gas workers had gathered some 100,000 members. Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling had actively worked with the union and their achievement was such that Hyndman felt it necessary to publicly slander them with accusations of taking money from the union. The Union now called for a mass demonstration in Hyde Park, to be held not on May 1st but on Sunday 4th, since this would enable more workers to attend. This was opposed by the London Trade's Council, which represented the old conservative unionists who excluded the unskilled workers. The Council made common cause with the SDF and they sought to pre-empt the Gas Workers proposal by booking Hyde Park for the 4th with the aim of preventing a demonstration dominated by the radical working class and the marxists. However, Aveling pushed the authorities to allow the original demonstration so that on 4th May two rival demonstrations were held. The result was another defeat for Hyndman and his allies. Engels, who watched the demonstrations, wrote a vivid account which clearly draws out the significance of the event: "On the one side we find conservative workers, whose horizons do not extend beyond the wage labour-system, and next to them a feeble but power hungry socialist sect; on the other side,the great bulk of workers who had recently joined the movement and who want no more to do with the Manchesterism[2] of the old Trade Unions, preferring to win their complete emancipation themselves, with allies of their own choice, and not with those imposed by a tiny socialist clique (...) The grandchildren of the old Chartists are stepping into the front line. For eight years the broad masses have been moving into action, now here, now there. Socialist groups have emerged, but none has been able to transcend the bounds of a sect; agitators and would-be party leaders, mere speculators and careerists among them, they have remained officers without an army... The tremendous movement of the masses will put an end to all these little sects and little groupings by absorbing the men and showing the officers their proper places" (Collected Works Vol .27). As if to confirm this last point, Engels noted that three entire branches of the SDF took part in the marxist demonstration, rather than that organised by their leaders.

Some conclusions on Hyndman and the SDF

Engels' analysis of the socialist sects can be seen to be confirmed in the case of the SDF. From its formation and until the last years of the 1880s, the SDF maintained its position as the largest socialist organisation in Britain and so was able to place itself at the head of the working class movement when it began to grow. This was the time when Hyndman's manoeuvres were generally successful, both in maintaining his own dominance and in ensuring that the movement remained small enough for him to manipulate. This was why he allowed the Tory Gold scandal to discredit socialism in the eyes of the working masses and why he preferred to direct marches of the unemployed rather than participate in unionism and strikes.

The rise of a mass workers movement inevitably began to weaken Hyndman's position and the establishment of the Second International on a marxist foundation was a serious setback, not only for Hyndman but for all like him who thrived on the weakness and division of the proletariat. The May Day demonstration not only expressed the growth of the workers' movement in Britain, but was also testimony to the international nature of the proletariat, since the victory of 1889 at the international level paved the way for the victory of 1890 at the national level.

These defeats did not mean the end for Hyndman, on the contrary he continued to work against the unity of the workers movement, particularly by seeking to introduce the poison of nationalism into the socialist movement by waging a campaign against `Hohenzollen militarism' and for an increase in the British Navy, which we will return to later. Above all, the lasting legacy of Hyndman's domination of the SDF was to inculcate a purist, 'revolutionary', attitude amongst successive generations of working class militants, including many of those who opposed Hyndman. The British revolutionary movement was dogged by confusion and even opposition to trade unionism and the winning of immediate reforms, which contributed to a situation where the minimum and maximum programmes of the working class were embodied in separate and opposing organisations, to the severe detriment of both, and resulting in the long-term weakening of the workers movement in Britain.

How then are we to understand Hyndman and the SDF? In the first part we identified Hyndman as an adventurer who put his personal advancement above the movement he claimed to support. In fact, his actions went beyond his own self-interest since they also objectively coincided with the aims of the bourgeoisie which, time and again, has sought to destroy the revolutionary movement from within. Moreover, his contacts with the bourgeoisie, from his meeting with Disraeli in 1880 to the deal with the Tories in 1885 poses questions about his relationship to the state. While we are not in a position to give a definitive answer today, we can note that on more than one occasion his contemporaries accused him of being an agent of the bourgeoisie. Engels, for his part, showed that Hyndman stood in continuity with Bakunin, that beyond their differences they were united in hatred of marxism and opposition to the development of a revolutionary movement based on the principles of centralisation and internationalism. Both were parasites on the workers' movement, opposing their dictatorial authority, based on affinity, sectarianism and intrigue, to the collective, formalised functioning of the proletariat. Just as Engels drew on the experience of the First International[3] to arm the Second, so today revolutionaries have again to learn from the past in waging the continuing battle against political parasitism and all who would destroy the revolutionary organisation.

If we have identified Hyndman as being opposed to the advancement of the proletariat and hostile to marxism, what of the Federation as a whole? Can it be considered to be a proletarian organisation? The answer to this is yes, and it is Engels who gives us the reasons for such an answer: specifically in his insistence on distinguishing between the leadership and the body of the organisation and, more generally, in his analysis of how the dynamic of the working class can take hold of organisations and transform them. This was why he advised Bernstein at the end of 1887 to deal with the SDF differently than before, and why, in a letter to Sorge, he criticised those who only look at the surface and see "only confusion and personal squabbles" when "under the surface the movement is going on [and] is embracing ever wider sections" (Selected Correspondence).

While the origins of the SDF were in a plethora of largely non-proletarian groupings and while it never went beyond being a sect it would be a serious mistake to see just this. Despite its origins the SDF was a socialist organisation and, in many of its parts, firmly marxist, even if the leadership was equally firmly hostile to marxism. The proletarian life within the SDF was expressed in the collaboration of members, especially outside London, with other socialists and in their participation in the life and struggles of the class. The contradiction within the organisation resulted in recurring opposition to Hyndman and the regular formation and departure of left-wing minorities. It is to this opposition, and particularly one of its most significant expressions, the Socialist League, that we will turn in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 205 (June 1997)

Throughout the history of the Social Democratic Federation (see the second part of this series in World Revolution 205) opposition regularly developed to the policies and practices of the dominant Hyndman clique. At times this just resulted in the resignation of individual members - throughout its history many thousands passed through the SDF and it is clear that many of these were simply lost to the workers' cause. At other times organised left-wing factions emerged and were either expelled or left to found new organisations. In the 1880s the Socialist League and the lesser-known Socialist Union were formed, while in the first years of the 20th century the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Labour Party were created. These splits are often presented as the consequence of personality clashes with the dictatorial manner of Hyndman but, in reality, they were a response to the needs of the workers' movement at the time. Thus, if we have characterised these organisations as the left-wing of the movement, this does not imply that they were simply more 'radical' than the SDF. In the 1880s the prerequisite was to go beyond the narrow sectarianism of the SDF and build a mass workers movement. The Socialist Union, which left after the 'Tory Gold' scandal, placed its emphasis on constitutional means, particularly Parliament, to achieve this. In the 1900s the primary task had become the combat against the growth of opportunism within the Second International, with both the SPGB and SLP defending the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism against the illusions of reformism. If all of these organisations had serious weaknesses and confusions, it is nonetheless essential to grasp the dynamic underpinning them. Such a grasp makes it clear that the workers' movement in Britain was not something peculiar to this country, the product of its 'unique' history as we are so often told, but is irrefutably part of the international workers movement. In Germany, France and Russia it is possible to trace the same fundamental struggle to first go beyond the phase of sects and circles and then to defend the marxist and revolutionary nature of the workers' movement against opportunism and reformism. An examination of the history of the Socialist League, which is the focus of this third part of our series, of the struggles that took place within it and its ultimate collapse, confirms this analysis with precise detail.

The potential of the Socialist League

In August 1885, a few months after the foundation of the Socialist League, Engels wrote to Kautsky, "After the elections ... the basis for a socialist movement here will become broader and firmer. And therefore I am glad to see that the Hyndmanite movement will not take serious roots anywhere and that the simple, clumsy, wonderfully blundering, but sincere movement of the Socialist League is slowly and apparently surely gaining ground" (Collected Works Vol.47, p.320-1). At the start of the following year, in a letter to Sorge, after criticising the electoral manoeuvrings of the SDF, he concluded "but should it prove possible to educate within the Socialist League a nucleus with an understanding of theoretical matters, considerable progress will have been made towards the eruption, which cannot be long in coming, of a genuine mass movement" (ibid, p.394). This understanding of the potential arising from the evolution of the objective conditions is the fundamental reason why Engels gave his support to the creation of the Socialist League, giving advice to Morris, Bax and the Avelings, helping to write its draft constitution and contributing an article to Commonweal, the League's paper. In this last, he underlined that it was the deteriorating economic position of Britain that would lay the foundation for the revival of socialism, the implicit message in this being that socialists must work with this process, advancing with the workers and seeking to push them forwards, rather than seeking to impose a pure doctrine from outside.

The policy and organisation of the League

This strategy was clearly set out in the draft constitution, drawn up by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling with Engels' guidance, which called for participation in elections and support for trade unions and for other socialist bodies. The overriding aim was "to form a National and International Socialist Labour Party" (quoted in Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary p.381). This was adopted by the provisional council, formed immediately after the split, but then overthrown, with Morris' support, at the first conference of the League in July 1885 in favour of an anti-electoral position.

In a number of areas the League took important steps forward. At the programmatic level, the Manifesto of the Socialist League emphasised the revolutionary overthrow of society by a class conscious proletariat, rejecting "certain incomplete schemes of social reform", and firmly declaring its internationalism: “for us there are no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups of masters and fleecers whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands". At the organisational level, and in direct contrast to the SDF, the League's paper was seen as expressing the views and being under the control of the organisation: "the Editor and Sub-Editor [Morris and Edward Aveling respectively] ... are acting as delegates of the Socialist League, and under its direct control: any slip in principles, therefore, and misstatement of the aims or tactics of the League, are liable to correction from that body" (introduction to Commonweal issue 1, vol.1). At a more general level, the League generally adopted a marxist approach to history. This was seen most clearly in the series “Socialism from the Root up”, written jointly by Morris and Bax, and published in the Commonweal between May 1886 and May 1888. The greater part of the series was devoted to an exposition of 'scientific socialism', including a precis of the economic analysis of Capital.

However, the weaknesses which played a large part in the eventual disintegration of the League were also present. Programmatically it failed to grasp the link between the struggle for immediate reforms and the goal of revolution, rejecting all palliatives, and particularly participation in elections, in favour of "the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism". Organisationally, despite the existence of an Executive Council and the holding of annual conferences, the structure was very informal, with the branches retaining a high degree of autonomy.

The result was that the League stood apart from the workers own struggles. If it preached the importance of a general strike, it failed to grasp the potential within the actual strikes going on under its nose, being content with an all-purpose leaflet which told workers that a strike just over wages "will be useless as a means of permanently bettering your condition and a waste of time and energy, and will entail a large amount of suffering on yourselves, your wives and families in the meantime" (quoted Thompson, op.cit. p.435-6). A similar approach was adopted towards the electoral struggle, with another all-purpose leaflet simply calling on workers not to participate. Consequently, the League placed the greatest emphasis on education, Morris arguing that "Education towards Revolution seems to me to express in three words what our policy should be..." (“Our Policy”, Commonweal Vol.2, No.14). The members of the League devoted their efforts to spreading the word, by mouth and in print, participating in the free-speech struggles that marked the mid 1880s, often showing extraordinary levels of courage, commitment and self-sacrifice for the cause, but nonetheless failing to respond to the workers’ movement growing around them, even when the workers showed their willingness to move towards socialism, as during the miners strikes in Scotland in 1887 when workers attended meetings in their tens of thousands.

Marxism versus anarchism

The isolation of the League from the real life of the working class, despite the sincerity and efforts of very many of its members, stemmed from its failure to grasp the tasks of the period and to build an organisation capable of carrying them out. This failure was not inevitable but was, fundamentally, the result of the struggle between the marxist and anarchist factions within the League.

These factions were present from the start. The anarchists were headed by Joseph Lane and Frank Kitz, who emerged from the ultra-radical milieu in London in the late 1870s and founded the Labour Emancipation League in 1881. Its programme united various traditional radical and Chartist demands with calls for the collectivisation of the means of production, while its activity, which focused on its base in the East End of London, included a call for a rent strike. In the same year, at the invitation of Hyndman, it participated in the conference that founded the Democratic Federation, the forerunner of the SDF, seeking to "set them up with the most advanced programme we could force on them" (Lane, quoted in Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British Anarchists, p.25). The LEL affiliated to the SDF, but did not join in order to maintain its 'autonomy'. It took little part in the activities of the SDF until the split in 1884 when it sided with the seceders, although it had been asked to participate in the decisive-meeting by Hyndman who, presumably, thought he could rely on it a second time. Subsequently the LEL affiliated to the League. This time its members were to play a much more significant role, Lane and Kitz initially taking places on the provisional council and then on the Executive Council, where they formed the nucleus around which the anarchist faction developed within the League.

The marxist faction, which included Bax, Aveling, Morris and Eleanor Marx, suffered its first setback with the rejection of the draft constitution, although a proposal by Lane to transform the League into a federation of independent branches was defeated. Many of the faction, and Morris above all others, completely underestimated the danger posed by the anarchists and opened the door to their destructive influence. Only Eleanor Marx grasped the danger, writing to her sister Laura shortly after the establishment of the League "the Anarchists here will be our chief difficulty. We have many on our Council, and by and by it will be the devil to pay. Neither Morris, nor Bax nor any of our people know really what these Anarchists are: till they do find out is a hard struggle to make head against them - the more that many of our English men taken in by the foreign anarchists (half of whom I suspect to be police agents) are unquestionably the best men we have" (quoted in Tsuzuki The Life of Eleanor Marx, p.129). Her predictions were rapidly borne out. In April 1886 Engels wrote to Laura Lafargue "Here all is muddle. Bax and Morris are getting deeper and deeper into the hands of a few anarchist phraseurs, and write nonsense with increasing intensity" (Collected Works, Vol.47, p.438). In May Aveling resigned as Sub-editor of Commonweal (Bax replacing him) and shortly afterwards Eleanor Marx stopped writing her column of “International Notes”. By August Engels noted that "the League is going through a crisis" (Engels to Bebel, Collected Works Vol 47, p.471).

The struggle came to a head at the third conference in 1887 when the Marxists sought to overturn the anti-electoral and sectarian policy of the League. The main resolution, proposed by J.L Mahon, essentially reiterated the strategy of the draft constitution. It is possible that Engels helped to draft this resolution since, despite his reservations about the capacity of the League, he saw that the development of a broad workers' movement in Britain was imminent. During the preparation of the Conference the anarchists busily mobilised their forces whereas the Marxists were silent and inactive. At the Conference Morris played a decisive role, first seeking to put off a decision and then swinging behind the anarchists to defeat the Marxist resolution and restate the policy of abstention. Subsequently the Marxists attempted to work as a fraction within the League, establishing themselves in the Bloomsbury Branch and, paradoxically, within the Hoxton branch of the Labour Emancipation League, in which they were now in the majority. This work seems to have been done badly (the anarchists portraying it as a plot to stage a coup within the League) and at the fourth conference the attempt to change the League's policy resulted not only in defeat, but in the expulsion of the Bloomsbury Branch and the disaffiliation of the Hoxton LEL. Henceforth the League was in the hands of the anarchists.

Morris, although firmly declaring himself a marxist and opposed to anarchism, continued to underestimate the threat posed by the anarchists. At the founding conference of the Second International he joined with the others in the League delegation in protesting at the handling of the anarchists' attempt to disrupt the meeting. He also revealed his poor understanding of the organisation question in his report on the congress, when he concluded "such gatherings are not favourable for the dispatch of business and their real use is as demonstrations, and...it is better to organise them as such" (“Impressions of the Paris Congress II”, Commonweal, Vol.5, No.186). It was not until 1890 that he finally broke with the League and only in the few remaining years of his life that he began to grasp the dynamic of the real movement.

The anarchists gradually reduced the League to nothing, seeking to outdo each other in radical posturing, using Commonweal to advocate terrorism and assassination while breaking up the branches. If at this stage the presence of police spies and agents provocateurs became obvious (even to the anarchists), the decisive period was that of the confrontation between the marxists and anarchists. The potential of the League when it began ensured that the state paid close attention to it. We have seen already that Eleanor Marx suspected the presence of police agents amongst the foreign anarchists but, given the experience of the British state, it is impossible to rule out the likelihood that amongst the native anarchists was a smattering of state agents.

Towards the mass workers' movement

The degeneration of the Socialist League, as with the manoeuvrings of the SDF before it, prompted significant minorities to attempt to go beyond its limitations. This took various forms. Branches of the League, especially those in the provinces, developed links with other local socialist bodies, including the SDF, as well as with the trade unions. For example, in 1888 branches in Scotland supported the formation of the Scottish Labour Party. J.L Mahon, at one time Secretary of the League and stalwart of the anti-parliamentarians, changed his position and left the League to establish the Northern Socialist Federation and to work with the Scottish Land and Labour League, both organisations supporting participation in elections and unions. However, as we will see later in this series, many militants, in their eagerness to break from sectarianism, veered the other way and tended to see parliament as the only road to socialism, thereby succumbing to the arguments of reformism and opportunism. Again, this tendency arose from the objective situation, where the continuing expansion of capitalism enabled the workers movement to extract concessions from the bourgeoisie.

The promise of the Socialist League was not fulfilled. It failed to discharge the tasks demanded of it. However, along the way, through the struggle to spread the message to the class and through the confrontation with the anarchists a significant number of militants began to understand why and how to be part of the mass movement. The great weakness was that along the way much time and energy had been wasted. While the socialists were locked in their sects, the working class movement in Britain began to develop and leave them behind. This situation meant that the non-socialist and anti-socialist elements, with a helping hand from the state, had a disproportionate weight within the new movement. In the next part of our series we will look more closely at the beginnings of this movement, as a prelude to consideration of the place and role of the Independent Labour Party.

North

First published in World Revolution 208 (October 1997)

This series of articles began by outlining the resurgence of the working class movement in Britain at the end of the 1880s. It went on to deal with the particular roles of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League, concluding that both failed to respond to the needs of the proletariat (see WR 198, 205 & 208). In this fourth part, we return to a more detailed consideration of the revival of struggle in the 1880s and 1890s, to show why and how it developed and to draw out both what it shared with the international workers' movement and what distinguished it.

The balance of class forces

While no mass political movement was created in Britain in the decades following the defeat of Chartism, the working class, nonetheless, constituted a force within society. The fundamental reasons for this were the strength of trade unionism within the working class and the bourgeoisie's own understanding of the potential threat posed by the proletariat. These points were emphasised by Engels in 1881 in an article on the Trades Unions in The Labour Standard. "The Act of 1824 [which repealed the Combination Laws which had banned Trades Unions] rendered these organisations legal. From that day Labour became a power in England. The formerly helpless mass, divided against itself, was no longer so. To the strength given by union and common action was added the force of a well-filled exchequer - `resistance money', as our French brethren expressively call it" (Collected Works Vol.24, p.384). The unions became "a power which has to be taken into account by any Government of the ruling class" (ibid, p.386), winning not only economic concessions, such as the regulation of wages, hours and factory conditions, but also political reforms with the gradual extension of the vote. However, they failed to use these "new weapons". The majority of union leaders remained staunch liberals. Indeed, as Engels showed, it was the bourgeoisie, "which knows their strength better than they do" (ibid) who took the initiative, 'volunteering' the extension of the vote to parts of the working class. The bourgeoisie was quite clear about its aims in doing this: "every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the constitution" (Gladstone, quoted in Torr, Tom Mann and His Times). Thus, while the struggle for the franchise was an important aspect of the wider class struggle at this time, its acquisition was only a victory for the working class to the extent that it was consciously used as part of that wider struggle. Engels concluded the article in The Labour Standard by arguing that the unions' failure to use the franchise in this way meant that the working class had been "moving in the wrong groove" (op.cit).

The trade union struggle ensured that part of the working class shared in the advantages that flowed from Britain's economic supremacy but, as Engels repeatedly argued, the union struggle, by its nature, could not challenge the wages system itself. Furthermore, the very success of the unions fuelled illusions about the existence of common interests between the classes and helped create strong support for the Liberal Party within significant parts of the working class, thus ensuring that the political initiative lay more with the bourgeoisie than the proletariat. For this to change decisively there would have to be an equally decisive change in the objective conditions.

The start of the decline of British Capitalism

The early industrialisation of Britain gave it an advantage over all of its rivals that lasted for much of the 19th century. However, by the 1880s competitors such as France, Germany and America were threatening this monopoly. While their total productive capacity still lagged behind Britain at the start of the decade, its more rapid rate of increase indicated that this would not long remain the case. This sharpening of competition fuelled the growth of imperialism as each nation struggled to increase its share of the world market. The previously unexploited parts of the world, notably Africa and Asia, became the focus of intense rivalry in the last decades of the century.

In Britain, as Engels noted, the classical industrial cycle had begun to change with the periods of collapse lengthening and recovery becoming more difficult: "... what distinguishes the present period of depression, especially in cotton and iron is this, that it has now for some years outlasted its usual duration. There have been several attempts at a revival, several spurts; but in vain. If the epoch of actual collapse has been overcome, trade remains in a languid state, and the markets continue incapable to absorb the whole production" (“Iron and Cotton” published in Labour Standard 1881; Collected Works vol.24, p.411-2). There were depressions at the end of the 1870s and during the middle years of the 1880s (the Great Depression) while throughout there was a gradual decline in the rate of growth. These developments not only heralded the end of Britain's economic monopoly but were also the first signs of the end of the period of ascendancy of capitalism as a whole and the beginnings of its period of historical decline or decadence (see our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism [127]).

At the same time as these developments led to an increase of rivalry within the capitalist class, they also provoked an intensification of the struggle between the classes. The employers sought to protect their profits by increasing the exploitation of the working class, both by changes in working practices and attempts to keep down, or even cut, wages. By the turn of the century wages had ceased to increase and even moved into reverse. The recessions threw hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment and destitution, with rates reaching 12% in 1879 and 10% in 1885-6, before falling back to 3 % during the relative recovery of the later 1890s.

The proletariat was hit very hard by these developments and initially membership of the unions slumped, but from the latter half of the 1880s on its combativity gradually recovered, with significant strikes taking place in the mines in Northumberland and in the engineering industry in Bolton. These strikes were marked by an increasing bitterness, the employers forming national organisations to protect their interests and the state intervening in a number of strikes, such as Manningham Mills in 1890 when police broke up the strikers’ meetings. This increasingly direct confrontation between the classes eroded the illusions weighing on the working class and created the conditions for a politicisation of the proletariat's struggle.

The economic struggle

The most significant aspect of the economic struggles of this period was the mobilisation of the unskilled workers. In March 1889, agitation by the gasworkers in London, with regular demonstrations of several thousand and the enrolment of 20,000 workers in the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers, forced the employers to concede an 8 hour day and a pay rise. Later the same year the London dockers' strike generated massive solidarity, with the marches and demonstrations involving 100,000 workers. Official figures for the period show 119,000 workers involved in disputes in 1888, 360,000 in 1889 and 393,000 in 1890, rising to a peak of 634,000 in 1893, and remaining high for the rest of the century.

This historic movement of the working class is often subordinated to the story of 'new unionism' and its leaders which, while of great importance, can obscure the real significance of the movement. In the dock strike for example, previous attempts at unionisation by Ben Tillet had only limited success and the strike itself began amongst non-union workers who, while they subsequently turned to Tillet for assistance, formulated their demands independently, as had the gasworkers previously (see Mann Tom Mann 's Memoirs, pp 58 & 61). Furthermore, while a large number of new unions sprang up subsequently around the country, both they and the gains they won frequently proved unsustainable. The dockers had to accept a compromise (although achieving their main demand of 6d an hour and 8d overtime) and the Gasworkers were defeated in a strike at the end of 1889. Between 1892 and 1894, the new unions only comprised some 107,000 out of the total of 1,555,000 union members.

The real success of the struggles lay in the mobilisation of the working class, in the demands advanced and in the determination with which they were fought. The dockers stayed out for five weeks, sustained by the solidarity of the proletariat internationally. An act in keeping with the foundation of the Second International that same year.

That socialists, such as Eleanor Marx, Will Thorne and Tom Mann were able to play a leading role was primarily a consequence of the maturation of the class consciousness of the proletariat in Britain. It also reflected the capacity of these socialists to break with the sectarianism of the main socialist organisations (even though Thorne and Mann remained members of the SDF) and grasp where the real movement of the working class lay. This movement was not towards the immediate acceptance of socialism, to which many workers remained hostile, but away from domination by bourgeois ideology and politics and towards independent class organisation.

The political struggle

This dimension of the class struggle generally developed in a far more dispersed and hesitant manner than the economic struggles.

Although the SDF and the Socialist League were never more than sects, they did have a lasting impact in some parts of the country. The SDF particularly had a presence in parts of Scotland and above all in Lancashire, where the involvement of some of its members in a number of industrial disputes had left a legacy of branches in towns such as Salford, Blackburn and Rochdale. Some of these were far less sectarian than the parent organisation and worked readily with other socialist and labour organisations. The splits from the SDF (see part 3 [128] of this series) had produced organisations which, while generally short-lived, had left some traces. These organisations had tended to react strongly against the 'revolutionary' purism of the SDF, the Socialist Union, for example, adopted exclusively reformist and legalistic positions.

In 1888 the Scottish Labour Party had been formed in the wake of Keir Hardie's failure to be elected as an independent labour candidate in Mid Lanark. Although it sought to draw in socialists, much of its platform was composed of traditional radical liberal demands and, more significantly, it showed a continued willingness to negotiate with the Liberal party to obtain electoral deals. Despite this, the election and its aftermath indicated that the grip of the Liberal party was weakening, although it sought to respond by adopting a more radical programme at the 1891 election. In other parts of the country similar efforts to field independent labour candidates in local and national elections gradually gained support, Hardie being elected in the West Ham South constituency in 1891.

In various parts of Britain independent labour organisations emerged. Labour Unions were established in Bradford, Halifax, Hartlepool and Keighley, the founding resolution of the first declaring that "its objects should be to advance the interests of workingmen in whatever way it might from time to time be thought advisable...its operation should be carried on irrespective of the convenience of any political party" (quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.179). In Manchester a local Independent Labour Party was established in 1892, the fourth clause of its constitution stated "That all members of this party pledge themselves to abstain from voting for any candidate for election to any representative body who is in any way a nominee of the Liberal, Liberal-Unionist or Conservative parties" (quoted in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p.97). Other organisations included the Aberdare Socialist Society in South Wales and the Newcastle Labour Party.

Another important aspect was the growth of labour and socialist papers, such as the Labour Leader, Labour Elector, the Workman 's Times and Clarion at the national level, alongside a host of local or sectional papers, such as The Miner and the Yorkshire Factory Times. Even though many titles were short-lived and the motives of both proprietors and journalists were often questionable, they still expressed the forward movement of the proletariat. In 1892, the Workman 's Times, which was edited by Joseph Burgess, a long-time supporter of independent labour activity, launched an appeal for readers to send in their names to support the formation of an independent labour party. Over 2,000 replied and a number of branches were established, although without any national organisation.

Conclusions

The developments that we have sketched out are frequently presented as both uniquely 'British' (reflecting the 'common-sense' pragmatism of the British working class) and as simply the raw material of the ILP, which itself was but a preparation for the Labour Party, the inevitable destination of the working class. In reality, as we have repeatedly stressed, the working class movement in Britain was an integral part of the international movement although, as with each part, it was influenced by its particular situation.

In the first place, the international working class affirmed itself as a class with its own interests opposed to those of the ruling class. If this found its highest expressions in the great Social Democratic parties in countries like Germany and, above all, in the creation of the Second International, it could also be seen in the vibrancy of the proletariat's social life, in its clubs with their emphasis on education and in the proliferation of newspapers, journals and pamphlets. Engels repeatedly expressed confidence that this dynamic would rapidly lead the workers to socialism. Commenting on the strikes of 1889 he argued "Moreover, the people regard their immediate demands only as provisional although they themselves do not know as yet what final aim they are working for. But this dim idea is strongly enough rooted to make them choose only openly declared Socialists as their leaders. Like everyone else they will have to learn by their experiences and the consequences of their own mistakes. But as, unlike the old trade unions, they greet every suggestion of an identity of interest between Capital and Labour with scorn and ridicule, this will not take very long... " (Engels to Sorge December 1889, quoted Pelling op. cit). It was this dynamic which was expressed so forcibly in the massive May Day demonstration in London the following year and which prompted Engels to declare, "There can be no doubt that on May 4, 1890 the English working class joined the great international army" (“May 4 in London”, Collected Works vol. 27, p.66).

At the same time however, an opposite dynamic emerged, based on the very success of the unions and independent workers organisations in wrestling concessions from the ruling class. The bourgeoisie was able to grant these because of the immense continuing growth of capitalism. In the case of Britain, although it suffered from the loss of its monopoly position, it still remained immensely powerful and in the later 1890s enjoyed a period of prosperity in which the falling price of foodstuffs temporarily offset the decline in the rate of increase in workers' wages. This favoured not just a preoccupation with winning immediate reforms but also the development of an opportunist tendency which transformed this error into a political principle. This led eventually to the rejection of the class struggle, the abandonment of the revolutionary goal of the proletariat and, ultimately, to the defence of capitalism against the working class.

What particularly marked the situation in Britain was the existence of a number of factors which gave added weight to this tendency:

* Firstly, the weakness of the socialist movement in Britain, undermined organisationally by the parasitism of the dominant Hyndman clique in the SDF and the destruction of the Socialist League by the anarchists with aid from the state. The consequence was that, while Socialists played an active and significant part in the emerging movement, they did so in a dispersed and unorganised way that wasted much of their efforts. For many workers socialism was identified with the 'revolutionary' bluster of Justice (paper of the SDF) and the glorification of violence in Commonweal (paper of the Socialist League).

* The nature of the union movement in Britain gave an added weight to reformism. As we have seen, the traditional unions remained the dominant force, while the new unions were unable to sustain their original memberships and gradually moved towards the more traditional forms of organisation according to trade and level of skill.

* The activity of organisations such as the Fabian Society, which essentially advocated an opportunist and class-collaborationist policy and opposed marxism, gave a further push to reformism. Although the Fabian Society was small it was well organised and funded and the stupidities of the revolutionary sects gave it room in which to work.

* Lastly, the state itself worked actively against the working class movement. If its use of spies and agent-provocateurs was the most obvious aspect (and even here it was more skilled than its continental counterparts) the more dangerous was its ability to use concessions against the class struggle, particularly by playing the democratic card through the extension of the vote. This was underestimated throughout the workers movement, where the oppression of Bismarck in Germany and the Tsars in Russia was contrasted with the 'liberties' enjoyed in Britain. The weight of democratic illusions has remained a consistent weakness in the revolutionary movement in Britain.

However, it is essential to underline that the movement that came to life at the end of the 1880s and which flourished in the 1890s, was a genuine expression of the proletariat as a revolutionary class and that it had the potential to develop into the mass socialist organisation that Engels envisaged. Contrary to our bourgeois historians it was not pre-ordained that it would end in the Labour Party. The period which now began, and which lasted until the First World War, was one of an intense struggle for the creation of a mass workers party and against opportunism. It is the first part of this struggle, the founding years of the Independent Labour Party, that we will take up in the next article in this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 213 (April 1998)

During the 1890s, the mass workers' parties succeeded in gaining many reforms that improved the living conditions of the working class. While the struggle for such reforms was an important aspect of the class struggle in this period, the winning of reforms brought the danger of nurturing illusions in the possibility of capitalism peacefully evolving into socialism. However, the marxist foundation of most of these parties ensured that, within a minority at least, there was determined opposition to the growth of reformism and opportunism, exemplified by the efforts of Rosa Luxemburg in the German Social Democratic Party. The working class in Britain was confronted by the same situation but with the crucial difference that it sought to create a class party in the face of the reformist tide and without an organised marxist fraction.

Between the late 1880s and the early 1890s the working class in Britain took up the struggle against its exploiters in a decisive and frequently spectacular manner. The previous part 4 of this series [129] traced the development of this movement at both the economic and political level, noting that the latter was characterised above all by a tendency to break from the grip of the Liberal Party, which had traditionally been supported by the majority of working class voters, and to move towards independence. Engels hailed this development as the start of a dynamic that would lead the working class to socialism, brushing aside the pretensions and phrase-mongering of sects like the Social Democratic Federation and other assorted would-be leaders.

The founding of the Independent Labour Party in January 1893 marked an important stage in this dynamic with the working class creating an independent political force for the first time since the Chartists (see the article in WR 214). However, for this nascent organisation to really become an effective weapon in the struggle between the proletariat and the ruling class it had to continue to move forwards politically and organisationally and it was here that the new movement, composed mainly of young proletarians who were relatively inexperienced and politically unformed, immediately faced major difficulties. The preceding years had led to a situation where there was no organised marxist fraction outside the SDF (dominated by the Hyndman clique), leaving the field free to various species of reformism and especially the Fabian Society and the Trade Unions. The nucleus of theoretically-formed militants that Marx had once hoped would develop within the Socialist League had never appeared and those who claimed allegiance to marxism were dispersed in various organisations or were isolated individuals. Thus, the real question facing the working class was whether the dynamic could be deepened and the forces of reformism and opportunism, which were gathering strength throughout the international workers' movement, could be identified and combated, and a party built that was not just socialist but marxist.

In this part we will start by looking at the Fabians before going on to examine the foundation of the ILP and the struggle between the reformist and revolutionary tendencies in the workers' movement.

The Fabians: opposing marxism and the class war

The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 but its roots went back to a group called The Fellowship of the New Life, which was set up two years previously with the aim of establishing a Utopian community, although they could not decide between Bloomsbury and Peru for the location. The membership of the Fabians was originally exclusively composed of the petty bourgeoisie and included anarchists and psychical researchers. The writer Bernard Shaw was an early and influential member. While a number of workers subsequently joined the provincial branches (often combining it with membership of other groups like the SDF and Socialist League), the London leadership remained much the same, with the addition of government civil servants such as Sidney Webb, whom Shaw deliberately sought to recruit to counteract the 'mob'. Hostility to the working class and marxism lay at the heart of both their theoretical and political activity. In Fabian Essays in Socialism published in 1889, the labour theory of value was rejected in favour of the theory of 'final utility', while the analysis of surplus value was opposed with a spurious theory of rent. The role of the class struggle was ridiculed and belittled in order to deny the role of revolutions in history and to bolster the notion of evolution. The practical consequence of this was the strategy of 'permeating' the Liberal party and, thus, opposing the dynamic towards independence that was animating the working class at the time. Engels characterised the Fabians as "a clique of middle class 'Socialists' of diverse calibres from careerists to sentimental Socialists and philanthropists, united only by their fear of the threatening rule of the workers and doing all in their power to avert this danger by making their own leadership secure..." (Engels to Kautsky 1892, Selected Correspondence, p.423). He was equally scathing about their activity: "The means employed by the Fabian Society are just the same as those of the corrupt parliamentary politicians: money, intrigues and careerism. That is the English way… These people are immersed up to their necks in the intrigues of the Liberal party, hold party jobs, as for instance Sidney Webb, who in general is a genuine British politician. These gentry do everything that the workers have to be warned against" (ibid).

In the period leading up to the conference in Bradford that set up the ILP, the leadership of the Fabian Society attempted to block the dynamic. In 1891 Sidney Webb wrote in the Workmen’s Times, "the nature of an Englishman seems to be suited only to a political fight between two parties - the party of order and the party of progress" (Quoted in McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, p 246). Three months before the conference, when its preparation was actively underway, he wrote again: "What can we do but laugh at your folly... The only vital difference between the Fabian Society and the SDF is that the Fabian wants to grow the plums first and make the pies afterwards, whilst the Federation wants to make the pies first and find the plums afterwards. This is also the idea of the Independent Labour Party, which thus turns out to be nothing but an attempt to begin the SDF over again..." (Quoted in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p.114). This attack provoked a reply from within the Fabian Society by an anonymous individual who signed himself 'Marxian': "If the big guns of the Fabian Society would only spend a little time outside the Liberal club they might see how wrong are their assumptions" (Quoted in McBriar, op.cit. p.248). When it became clear that the ILP was to be founded despite their efforts, the London Fabian Society, which was composed of the 'big guns', agreed to participate only on condition that it could maintain its separate existence, a condition not requested by any of the provincial Fabian societies which took part. On the eve of the conference Shaw made a last effort when he told a meeting of the Fabian delegates that the foundation of a new party was premature.

The founding of the ILP: A step towards the class party

The Bradford Conference brought together some 120 delegates, the vast majority from the newly formed independent labour groups, but also including delegates from Trade Unions and Trades Councils, and from provincial branches of the Fabians and the SDF. The leadership of this last refused to participate in what it described as "another of the many attempts which have from time to time been made to head back the genuine Social-Democratic movement in Great Britain" (Justice, April 1893, quoted in Crick The History of the Social-Democratic Federation p .85). The London Fabians were only admitted by one vote following harsh criticism of their previous behaviour, including one motion moved by the Liverpool Fabian Society.

The conference voted to adopt the name Independent Labour Party over Socialist Labour Party, but then took as its objective "to secure the collective and communal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" (Quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.294). Its programme included the abolition of overtime, piecework and child labour, the limitation of the working day to 48 hours, support for the sick and elderly, the introduction of progressive income tax and support for "every proposal for extending electoral rights and democratising the system of Government" (Quoted ibid, p.297).

The party organised itself on a federal basis in order to accommodate the disparate groups at the conference, but the SDF and the London Fabians rejected even this, although most of the provincial Fabian societies immediately dissolved themselves into the ILP. It rejected a motion not to allow ILP members to join other organisations (Shaw specifically defending his membership of a Liberal Association), adopting instead the general statement that "no person opposed to the principles of the party shall be eligible for membership" (ibid p.298). In keeping with the federal principle it established a National Advisory Council rather than a more powerful central organ.

The fundamental achievement of the conference was that it drew together many of the disparate forces that had emerged within the working class in the preceding years. If its programme was largely restricted to immediate demands, and if its structure was tentative, the new organisation nonetheless marked a very significant moment in the life of the working class in Britain. From the spontaneous dynamic produced by the intensification of the class struggle, the proletariat had forged an instrument with the potential to impulse and deepen that dynamic in a conscious and organised manner. In short, it had laid the foundation for the class party.

The fundamental weakness of the new organisation was the absence of an organised marxist current within it. Edward Aveling was the most well-known marxist and he was not only relatively isolated, but increasingly distrusted by many in the movement due to his dubious personal behaviour.

Nonetheless Engels' initial assessment of the ILP was positive: "The Social Democratic Federation on the one hand and the Fabians on the other have, because of their sectarian attitude, not been able to absorb the rush towards Socialism in the provinces, so the formation of a third party was quite a good thing. But the rush has now become so great, especially in the industrial areas of the North, that the new party was already at this first Congress stronger than the Social Democratic Federation or the Fabians, if not stronger than the two together. And as the mass of the membership is certainly very good, as the centre of gravity lies in the provinces and not in London, the centre of intrigues, and as the main point of the programme is the same as ours, Aveling was right in joining and in accepting a seat on the Executive. If the petty private ambitions and the intrigues of the London would-be-greats are held somewhat in check here and its tactics do not turn out too wrongheaded, the Independent Labour Party may succeed in detaching the masses from the Social Democratic Federation and in the provinces from the Fabians too, thus forcing them to unite" (Selected Correspondence, p 428).

1893-95: The growth of reformism

In the first two years of its existence the ILP grew rapidly. By 1895 Keir Hardie claimed a membership of 35,000, although analysis of dues paid gives a figure of just under eleven thousand (Howell op.cit, p327-8). It also secured significant votes in various local elections and worked actively to provide relief to the rising numbers of unemployed.

However, this forward momentum did not go unopposed with both the Fabians and the TUC working actively against it.

The initial response of the Fabians seemed to be an acknowledgment of the validity of the decision to form the ILP. In November 1893 Shaw and Sidney Webb wrote an article, “To Your Tents, Oh Israel!”, which attacked the Liberal Party and declared support for independent Labour representation, provoking some Liberal members of the Fabian Society to resign. In reality it was a manoeuvre aimed at maintaining the influence of the Fabians, as Beatrice Webb acknowledged when she wrote of their "fear of being left behind" by the ILP (McBriar op.cit, p.250). Shaw for his part described it as a concession to "the more ardent spirits" in the Fabian Society (Pelling op.cit, p.147). It was followed by a proposal that the TUC establish a fund to support Labour candidates, but, in calling for support for all such candidates and for candidates to be selected by Trades Councils, which were controlled by the Unions, its real aim was to undermine the ILP.

The TUC adopted a more overtly hostile attitude. In response to the efforts of the ILP to develop a socialist bloc within the TUC, which had led to the passing of a motion to establish a fund to support independent Labour candidates, the TUC Parliamentary Committee proposed a number of measures to counter the influence of socialists. These included the introduction of card votes based on union membership, the exclusion of trades councils (where the ILP had a lot of representatives) and the restriction of participation to working trade unionists or union officials. These were passed by one vote in the committee and passed to the 1895 Congress, while the previous motion was allowed to lapse.

More generally, the ILP was confronted by the tide of reformism that was rising throughout the workers' movement, with the struggle for socialism being reduced to the winning of reforms or confused with the strengthening of the state. In Britain such illusions were spread by popular journalists such as Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion, whose book Merrie England, published in 1894, sold three-quarters of a million copies in its first year. It distinguished between 'Practical' socialism, which it presented as anything which strengthened the hand of the state (including the Post Office and compulsory education), and 'Ideal' socialism when money and exchange would be abolished, which was put off into the distant future. Socialism was presented as arising naturally out of capitalism: "Socialism will not come by means of a sudden coup. It will grow naturally out of our surroundings and will develop naturally and by degrees.... it is too late to ask when we are going to begin. We have begun… Nearly all law is more or less Socialistic, for nearly all law implies the right of the State to control individuals for the benefit of the nation." (Merrie England, 1908 edition, p.128). This was accompanied by a wide range of Clarion Clubs - cycling, camera, glee-singing and scouts - which dissipated the class's militant energy while sowing dangerous confusion.

The ILP itself was far from immune to the tide, not least in seeing elections as the primary area of its activity. Petty-bourgeois careerists also began to be drawn to it, such as Ramsey Macdonald who left his position as a paid Liberal Party agent when they refused to accept him as a candidate. At the second conference in 1894 Keir Hardie was elected president, grandly telling the ILP that he had now decided to give up his preference to work as a freelancer. Above all, no marxist grouping had yet developed. Aveling, who opposed Hardie, not only failed to be re-elected to the Administrative Council, but was actually expelled from the ILP in May 1894.

Engels was now far less confident of the capacity of the ILP to rise to the challenge: "The Independent Labour Party is extremely vague in its tactics, and its leader, Keir Hardie, is a super-cunning Scot, whose demagogic tricks cannot be trusted for a minute". However, he still asserted that "there are very good elements both in the Social Democratic Federation and in the Independent Labour Party, especially in the provinces, but they are scattered..." (Engels to Sorge, November 1894, Selected Correspondence p.449). A few months later he went further, writing that there was "nothing but sects and no party" but still insisting that "The socialist instinct is getting stronger and stronger amongst the masses" whilst pointing out that "so-called 'democracy' here is very much restricted by indirect barriers", such as the cost of political periodicals, the expense of contesting elections and the dominance of the existing parties (Engels to Hermann Schluter, January 1898. Selected Correspondence p.452).

Both tendencies could be seen at the second conference: on the one hand the changes in the membership of the NAC produced a lot of back-stage wheeling and dealing; on the other a number of measures were taken to strengthen the organisation. The federal structure was replaced by a unified one, a development which simply reflected reality, a draft constitution was prepared and a national Manifesto was adopted.

1895: Towards the next stage of the struggle

The election of 1895 gave an insight into what the ILP had accomplished in its first two years. Superficially it suffered a setback with no seats being gained and Hardie losing his. The Fabians celebrated this: "...the result is not altogether unsatisfactory... the field had to be cleared. . . the ILP has completed its suicide. . . So long as the ILP existed as an unknown force of irreconcilables, the more reasonable policy of permeation and levelling-up was utterly checkmated" Beatrice Webb quoted in McBriar op.cit, p.252).

However, in winning some 40,000 votes for the 28 candidates it ran (it should be recalled that the electorate was much smaller at this time) and in exposing in practice the hostility of the Liberal Party to Labour representation, it had affirmed the necessity and the fact of its existence as an independent political force. If it had not moved decisively towards becoming the class party, neither had it relapsed into a sect, contrary to Engels' comments. It still remained a vigorous expression of the advancing political life of the working class and was still the main arena in which the struggle between the different tendencies within the workers' movement in Britain was fought. In the years immediately following the election the focus of this struggle shifted to the issue of socialist unity. This will be the subject of the next part in our series.

North

First published in World Revolution 215 (June 1998)

The establishment of the Independent Labour Party in 1893 laid the foundation for the creation of a mass workers’ party in Britain. However, as we showed in the previous article (Part 5 [130], from World Revolution 215), the possibility of realising this potential was severely weakened by the absence of an organised marxist fraction that could provide a clear political analysis and orientation. This gave room for the forces of reformism, which were particularly strong amongst the leadership, to grow and push out many of the scattered marxist and revolutionary elements.

However, this did not mean the automatic triumph of reformism. On the contrary, the ensuing two decades, from 1895 to 1914, saw the working class in Britain struggle alongside its international brothers and sisters against the tide of revisionism and opportunism. Significantly, this struggle took place on two fronts which rarely seemed to relate to each other.

On the one hand, large parts of the workers’ movement were animated by an almost elemental striving towards unity, which manifested itself in major efforts in the late 1890s and 1900s. These, however, were marked both by confusion within the working class, stemming from its lack of political formation, and by the manoeuvres of many of its erstwhile leaders, allowing the right wing to push through its own version of unity.

On the other hand, the small minorities who constituted the left of the existing organisations, principally within the Social Democratic Federation, struggled to create the politically formed marxist minority required by the proletariat. But in doing so, they were deeply scarred by the sectarian legacy of the SDF.

The bourgeoisie benefited greatly from this situation and certainly contributed to it as much as it could, enticing the leaders with the pleasures and privileges of the ruling elite, and granting reforms to fuel the idea of a peaceful transformation of capitalism, whilst showing the occasional flash of steel and gunshot to the rebellious masses.

The dynamic of socialist unity

The goal of unity was a commonplace of the workers’ movement in this period. The Second International called on all socialist organisations to unite in a single party in each country. In Britain, the resurgence of the workers’ movement in the early 1890s began to sweep aside all the sectarian divisions that had riven the movement in the preceding decade. The foundation of the ILP represented a major step towards unity, since it was based on the unification of a whole range of new socialist organisations as well as branches of existing ones. The dynamic continued, with resolutions calling for the unification of all socialist organisations regularly being debated at the annual conference of the ILP. Notably, however, these were supported by the local branches of the ILP rather than the leadership, which became more dominated by the reformists with the disappearance of radical elements like Tom Mann (who had been secretary) and the leaders of the new unions. Over the next few years the National Administrative Council (NAC) became dominated by Hardie, MacDonald, John Bruce Glasier and Phillip Snowden, while its position within the party was strengthened at the expense of the rank and file. All of the ‘big four’, who were to take turns as party chairman up until 1909, had close links with the Fabian Society and were influenced by its politics of gradualism and class collaboration.

In February 1894, the second conference of the ILP voted down a resolution calling for amalgamation with the SDF. In July of that year Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion, who had advocated for the creation of the ILP, launched a campaign for socialist unity. This was opposed by the leaders of both the SDF and the ILP. Quelch for the SDF describing the ILP as “a sort of half way house” and demanding that all real socialists should join the SDF, while Hardie asserted that “As an organisation for uniting all the forces into a solid fighting phalanx the ILP fits the bill” (Quoted in Crick, The History of the Social Democratic Federation, p.86), although he subsequently proposed an annual conference of all socialist organisations, possibly in an attempt to stem the tide which saw many local ILP branches passing resolutions in favour of unity. The fourth ILP conference took up the idea of such a gathering of socialist organisations and passed a resolution instructing the NAC to issue invitations, but the proposal was rejected by the SDF annual conference.

The push for unity continued to move forwards nonetheless, with pressure coming from the branches of both the ILP and the SDF. In July 1897 an informal conference of the two organisations led to the creation of a joint committee to agree the details of unity. In the referendum that followed, the joint membership voted by 5,158 to 886 in favour of fusion. The leadership of the ILP immediately began a campaign against the result. Hardie, who at the informal conference had proposed the resolution which declared the union of the SDF and ILP was “in the interests of the socialist movement”, now wrote in the ILP News “It may be that there is something in the methods of propaganda, if not the principles of the SDF, that not only render it somewhat antipathetic to our members, but out of touch and harmony with the feelings and ideals of the mass of the people… It might be, therefore, that the introduction of its spirit and methods of attack would check rather than help forward our movement” (Crick, op.cit. p88-89). The NAC refused to accept the result on the grounds that the turnout had been too low and stated that the issue would have to be discussed again at the annual conference. This gave the leadership time to mount a campaign in favour of federation rather than fusion. At the conference, despite criticism and resistance from the floor, they openly manoeuvred to get the result they wanted, first denouncing the SDF and then proposing that the vote be taken again. The resolution on the NAC’s proposals was carefully worded so that delegates had to decide immediately for federation or to refer the matter back to the branches for the members to vote “whether they are in favour of a federation, or dissolution of the ILP, and fusion with the SDF” (Quoted in Howell, British workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.315. Our emphasis). However, it was indicative both of the domination of the leadership and of the political and organisational weakness of the pro-unity elements that their opposition went no further.

The Labour Representation Committee – a victory for the right wing

With the immediate threat of socialist unity blocked, the right wing of the British workers’ movement was able to realise its goal of labour unity, in which the trades unions would dominate.

The right wing was composed of a number of elements, most notably the leaders of the ILP, the trades unions and the Fabian Society.

Many of the leading members of the ILP persistently opposed marxism, which they tended to associate with Hyndman and the dominant faction of the SDF. At the founding conference Ben Tillett, one of the leaders of the London Dock’s strike of 1889, declared that “he thought English trades unionism was the best sort of socialism and labourism. He wished to capture the trade unionists of this country, a body of men well organised, who paid their money, and were socialists at their work every day and not merely on the platform… With his experience of unions he was glad to say that if there were fifty such red revolutionary parties as there was in Germany, he would sooner have the solid, progressive, matter-of-fact fighting trade unionism of England than all the harebrained chatterers and magpies of continental revolutionaries” (quoted in Wrigley “The ILP and the Second International” in James et al [eds] The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party, p299). Hardie had long campaigned for a ‘Labour Alliance’ and, despite the mythology of his commitment to socialism, was always ready to give prominence to his radical and liberal beliefs if it was likely to gain him more votes. The NAC pursued this while the struggle for unity was being waged, using the authority of the 1896 conference’s debates to contact the secretaries of the SDF, the Fabians and the TUC’s Parliamentary Committee. This last refused to act without approval from the TUC and the NAC’s first attempt to get a resolution proposed by a sympathetic union failed for technical reasons. After the defeat of the move for fusion, the NAC had no trouble in getting the 1899 Conference to pass a resolution “That the NAC use every means at its command, consistent with the constitution, to bring about joint action with the Trade Union, Co-operative and Socialist Societies in both Municipal and Parliamentary elections” (Howell, op.cit. p317). This allowed the ILP leaders to become involved in preparations leading up to the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and was used by the delegates to the conference to justify their opposition to attempts to commit the LRC to socialism since it did not specifically require them to do so.

The trade unions had shown their hostility to socialism frequently in the past, notably in the changes made to TUC rules at the 1895 Congress in order to exclude socialists (see part 5 [130] of this series, also in WR 215). The majority of union leaders continued to support the Liberals who in return allowed the election of a small number of ‘Lib-Lab’ MPs. The change in attitude that led a majority to support the foundation of the LRC can be attributed to two factors: the need to defend the unions against the attacks of the ruling class and the need to prevent the movement becoming too ‘extreme’.

The tide of class struggle that developed from the late 1880s to the early 1990s prompted the bourgeoisie to mount a counter-offensive. The employers in various industries established organisations to strengthen their fight against the unions through common action and financial assistance and the provision of blacklegs. Alongside this the courts passed a series of judgements to limit strike activity, initially by curtailing the activities of pickets, then going on to threaten unions’ funds. In this the employers in Britain received the active assistance of their American counterparts.

The politicisation of a considerable part of the working class, that went alongside the growth in combativity, also posed a threat to the union leadership. If the dynamic of socialist unity proved successful it might create a body that would challenge the unions’ authority, since this body would bring the political struggle to change, or even overthrow, capitalism to the fore, in place of the unions’ efforts to improve the economic position of the working class within capitalism. In the face of these threats the 1899 Congress passed a resolution calling on “all Co-operative, Socialistic, Trade Unions and other working class organisations” to send delegates to a conference “To devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of Labour members to the next Parliament” (quoted in Roberts The Trades Union Congress 1868-1921, p166).

The Fabian society had largely disappeared after the foundation of the ILP, being left with only a handful of branches and a few hundred members, but the consequence of this was to strengthen rather than weaken its influence in the workers’ movement. In the absence of a body capable of defending and deepening marxism (Hyndman’s grip on the SDF tending to ensure that it could make no coherent contribution), the Fabians effectively became the theoreticians of the movement in Britain. By 1897, some 75 Tracts had been published arguing for this or that reform (municipalisation of gas, the role of Parish Councils, reform of the poor law etc). Its lecturers now targeted socialist and labour organisations rather than radical and liberal bodies as previously. Following the defeat of the movement for socialist unity, the Fabians proposed a joint committee with the ILP to pool electoral experience. This became a permanent body bringing together leading figures from both organisations. The Fabians readily supported the creation of the LRC, since they had called for just such a party, dominated by the unions rather than socialists, in 1893.

The conference called by the TUC met in February 1900 with 129 delegates from the unions, the ILP, the SDF and the Fabians. A resolution moved by the SDF, calling for the creation of “a distinct party, based on the recognition of the class war and having for its ultimate object socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange” (quoted in Lee and Archibold Social Democracy in Britain, p158) was defeated, as was another by the TUC Parliamentary Committee which simply proposed a Labour Platform of “four or five planks embracing questions upon which the vast majority of workers in the country are agreed” (quoted in Roberts op.cit. p168). The conference adopted that proposed by Hardie which called for “a distinct Labour Group in Parliament who shall have their own whips and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any Party which for the time being, may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of Labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any Party opposing measures having an opposite tendency” (quoted in Pelling The origins of the Labour Party, 1880-1900, p209). An executive was created composed of seven trade unionists, two representatives from the ILP and the SDF and one from the Fabian Society. Much is made by bourgeois historians, such as Pelling, that socialists actually dominated this body, since some of the unions representatives were socialists. In reality it was the forces of reformism and opportunism that dominated.

The significance of the LRC

Contrary to the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the LRC did not constitute the inevitable destination of the working class in Britain, asserting its true national character of ‘realism’ and ‘pragmatism’ over the unrealistic posturing of the ‘continental revolutionaries’. But it was a real reflection of the powerful illusions that held sway over the majority of proletarians at this time, as well as the theoretical weaknesses of the proletarian political organisations of the day. We have repeatedly shown in this series that the working class movement in Britain was engaged in the same struggle and faced the same tasks as the proletariat throughout the developed capitalist world. We have gone on to show how this was affected by the particular circumstances of the movement in Britain, and most significantly by the absence of an organised marxist fraction.

The working class was pushed to struggle by the sharpening class antagonisms of the last decade of the 19th century, due both to the drawing to an end of capitalism’s period of ascendancy and, more particularly, to the erosion of Britain’s previous economic dominance. The working class in Britain already had a long history of struggle, having created first the chartists, then the unions and the creation of a mass revolutionary party was a real possibility. However, there were also tendencies that went in the other direction, arising from the legacy of Britain’s economic strength, which had allowed part of the working class to benefit, and from the weight of bourgeois ideology, which the skilled ruling class was learning to manipulate.

At the level of the political expressions of the working class, marxism was not able to implant itself in a coherent, organised and dynamic way. The pretensions of the SDF to be the true defenders of marxism tended to drive many workers away since, in the hands of people like Hyndman, it was reduced to an empty dogma and the resurgent working class was forced to look elsewhere for its political and theoretical weapons. The practical result was that instead of creating the mass party that the period required, in which the struggle for the minimum and maximum demands of the proletariat could be unified, the working class ended up rallying to a mass reformist party which could see no further than the minimum programme of immediate reforms and became increasingly hostile to the maximum programme of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. In turn, those elements which attempted to defend the maximum programme tended to completely reject the struggle for reforms, seeing this as simply a betrayal of socialism. The significance of the foundation of the LRC is above all that it consolidated the separation of the maximum and minimum aspects of the proletariat’s political programme in different organisations to the immense detriment of both parts. In the next part we will examine the development of the LRC and its transformation into the Labour Party.

North

First published in World Revolution 218 (October 1998)

The foundation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900 was a victory for the right wing of the workers’ movement in Britain and for the forces of opportunism generally. It was consolidated in the years leading up to the 1906 election when 29 LRC candidates were successful and the LRC was transformed into the Labour Party. While both the LRC and the Labour Party remained part of the workers’ movement throughout this period and beyond, it is possible to see the dynamic of class collaboration that ultimately led to Labour’s betrayal of the working class in 1914. Contrary to various myths, there was no socialist Golden Age for the Labour Party. Even when it was part of the workers’ movement, it was very far from being the class party that socialists in Britain had been fighting for.

The structure of the LRC

The LRC was composed of individual trade unions, the main workers’ political organisations – the ILP and the SDF – as well as the Fabian Society. Each kept their separate identity, standing their own candidates in elections (with the exception of the Fabians) and promoting their own platforms, although there was a fair amount of mutual support for each other’s campaigns. However, far from maintaining the accountability of these organisations to their members, this arrangement strengthened the control of the leaders. The Executive of the LRC was composed of representatives chosen by the constituent organisations, allowing the leaderships to appoint whoever they wanted and thus to exercise considerable control over the preparation of the list of candidates for any election. The annual conference was likewise composed and the only accountability was to the TUC, to which it was required to present an annual report.

This last point underlines the fact that, from the start, the LRC was essentially a tool of the unions. Not only did they compose the majority of the membership and of the Executive, but they also provided the funding, even if this was very modest at first, requiring the constituent organisations to use their own resources. This reluctance is explained by the mutual hostility that had frequently characterised relations between the unions and the socialist organisations (particularly the SDF).

The ILP leadership hailed the new organisation, its official organ proclaiming “The national combination for which we worked and prayed [has been] brought about. How long have we dreamt of the ‘United Democracy'” (quoted in Poirier. The advent of the Labour Party, p89). In this way the ILP leaders glossed over the struggle of the previous years on the question of unity (see part six of this series, “1894-1900: Socialist party or labour alliance?” [131], WR 218) in order to present the LRC as the true culmination of all past efforts, thereby helping to start the myth that the bourgeoisie maintains to this day. Ramsay MacDonald, one of the ruling clique of the ILP, was appointed secretary and, although he was not officially on the Executive, the structure of the LRC allowed him to exercise a great influence, since he was responsible for the production of pamphlets and leaflets as well as the organisation of meetings with trade unions and trade councils. MacDonald was openly hostile to revolutionary socialism and in 1902 wrote a book defending ‘evolutionary’ socialism (subsequently he edited the ‘Socialist Library’ of the ILP, which published Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism in 1909).

The Fabian Society greeted the LRC as the fulfilment of its own policy, hailing the founding resolution as “typically Fabian in its Possibilist attitude towards politics” (quoted ibid, p88). Their place in the Executive was taken by Edward Pease, the secretary of the Fabian Society, who was quite clear about the significance of the LRC: “The Socialist lions have lain down with the Trade Unionist lambs, and if either party be ‘inside’ it is certainly not the lambs!” (ibid). Although not publicly active, he played a central role in strengthening the LRC, in particular through the establishment of the Labour Member’s Maintenance Fund at the Third Annual Conference in 1903. The Fund was financed by a levy on union members and administered by the LRC. As one of the standard histories of the Fabian Society concludes: “The connection of the Society with the Party, though unspectacular, should not be minimised; while the Party was ‘growing for six years in obscurity’… the secretary of the Society in accordance with Fabian discipline, was doing his donkey-work in the shadows” (Cole, The Story of Fabian Socialism, p91). At the same time the Fabians continued to be the main publisher of ‘socialist’ literature, frequently giving away thousands of copies of various Tracts to targeted groups, such as County Councillors and Trade Union Secretaries.

The presence of the SDF might appear odd at first sight, given its taste for ‘revolutionary’ and ‘marxist’ rhetoric, but in practice, given the aim of the ruling Hyndman faction to dominate the workers’ movement, it found no difficulty in taking up an opportunist position when it thought this might be to its advantage. Its withdrawal eighteen months later had less to do with its failure to ensure that all LRC candidates were ‘socialists’, than its inability to dominate the new body and its need to defend itself from charges of opportunism being made by many elements on the left of the Federation.

In summary, the structure of the LRC removed control from the working class and put it in the hands of unaccountable leaders who preferred to work behind the scenes through the use of informal networks and influence. This tendency in many ways mirrored the political manoeuvring typical of the bourgeoisie.

The growth of the LRC

In 1901 only 41 of the 1,272 unions were affiliated to the LRC. The combined membership of these unions was 353,000. Two years later it had grown to 127 unions, representing half of the nearly 1.9 million union members. This included nearly all of the new unions founded in the 1880s and 1890s which did not have the historical attachment to the Liberal Party of the older ones.

The rapid increase in affiliation was driven by the continued counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie against the wave of class struggle that ended the 19th century. A series of legal judgements, most notably the Taff Vale case of 1901, sought to limit trade union activities by removing the legal protection for their funds. The main aim of the unions was to get a new Trade Union Act passed to reverse this situation.

The bourgeoisie supports the growth of opportunism

One of the main themes of the period from 1900 to 1906 was the cooperation between the LRC and the Liberal Party. For the LRC this was the consequence of the weight of reformist ideology, the continuing attachment of many to Liberalism and its exclusive focus on elections. In 1900, Hardie called directly on Liberals to support an ILP candidate, declaring that he would “vote straight on every Liberal measure” and support “every item of what [was] known as the Liberal programme” (Poirier op.cit. p176). This position was supported by MacDonald, who wrote in 1905 that “Socialism marks the growth of society not the uprising of a class” (ibid, p91). Such attitudes led directly to efforts to make deals with the Liberals in order to get measures passed and win seats in elections.

From its earliest days the Fabian Society had rejected the class struggle and sought to draw Liberalism and Socialism together. This was one of the aims in joining the LRC, as Pease himself recognised: “In 1903 it transformed itself into a Party,[1] and then began the somewhat strange anomaly that the Fabian Society as a whole was affiliated to the Labour Party, while some of its members were Liberal members of Parliament… The Labour Party itself never complained of the anomaly in the position of the Society or questioned its collective loyalty. And the Liberals in our Society never took any action hostile to the Labour Party or indeed…supported any of the proposals occasionally made that we disaffiliate from it” (Pease, History of the Fabian Society, p151). Concerning the 1906 election, Pease comments that of the 29 successful LRC candidates “Four… were members of the Fabian Society, and in addition three Fabians were successful as Liberals…” (ibid, p153). The real ‘anomaly’ of the Fabian Society was that it was a bourgeois organisation within the workers’ movement. The fact that many of its members were leading figures in that movement does not alter this: it is not possible for a proletarian organisation to straddle the class divide since the bourgeois element will always be dominant given that the bourgeoisie is the dominant class.

However, in the period after the formation of the LRC the decisive role was taken by the leaders of the Liberal Party who allowed the LRC to fight a number of elections unopposed. This is presented by the bourgeoisie as a defence of its party interests against the threat posed by the LRC. In reality it was a defence of the class interests of the whole bourgeoisie, even if some of the more backward elements could not comprehend it and occasionally insisted on standing Liberal candidates when it had been decided to withdraw them. The aim was quite simply to draw the workers’ movement onto the terrain of the bourgeoisie. If this was an implicit recognition of the potential of the threat posed by the working class, more importantly it was an explicit recognition that the current weakness of the movement in Britain gave the bourgeoisie an opportunity to try and destroy that potential. This was grasped by Herbert Gladstone, the Liberal Chief Whip, who wrote in 1903: “The Labour party, was, in fact, a new, vigorous political movement, directed to a certain side of politics but none the less it was political, and being political, it could not be separated from other parties whose sympathies ran concurrently with its own on most of the great political questions of the day” (quoted in Poirier, op.cit. p185).

The possibility of derailing the workers’ movement had perhaps first been glimpsed by the bourgeoisie during the Boer war when socialists and anti-war Liberals united on the ground of Liberal, not proletarian, opposition to the war (we will return to this question in the next part of this series). Towards the end of the war a number of attempts were made to formalise this co-operation. In 1900 the National Democratic League was formed but failed to win support from the ILP, SDF or Fabians. Another attempt in 1902 by J.A. Hobson, one of advocates of ‘new liberalism’, was supported by Hardie, but also did not succeed. The underlying reason for these failures was that a significant part of the working class, for all the democratic and reformist illusions that weighed on it, remained hostile to such overt attacks on its political independence. The response of the bourgeoisie and the opportunist leaders was to make a secret deal behind the backs of the workers.

The leading figures in this were MacDonald and Hardie for the LRC and Herbert Gladstone for the Liberals. After the election of 1900, when only two LRC candidates were elected (one of them being Hardie) Gladstone claimed that the Liberals had deliberately left Labour and Socialist candidates clear runs. This was repeated in some of the by-elections that followed and in 1902 Phillip Snowden received the public backing of 26 Liberal MPs and leading Liberal papers, such as the Manchester Guardian. Co-operation also developed on issues such as free trade, where LRC members and Liberals shared platforms and signed petitions together. The Manchester Guardian went so far as to argue that the ILP had taken up the traditional policies of Gladstonian liberalism. The ILP also received funding from Liberal supporters, notably £500 from George Cadbury to assist leading ILP figures including Hardie and Snowden. Cadbury was quite open in his aim, writing to Herbert Gladstone “I hope that any influence I may have acquired will be used to prevent the ILP from opposing Liberals” (quoted ibid, p127).

The deal eventually agreed, following a number of secret meetings, provided for some 30 LRC candidates to be given a clear run by Liberals at the next election.

The 1906 election

The election saw a massive revival of the Liberal Party who won with an overwhelming majority. All of the workers’ organisations that participated trimmed their sails to the prevailing wind of opportunism. The LRC’s manifesto managed to avoid mentioning socialism altogether, taking its stand on the question of the representation of labour in Parliament and the demand for the reversal of the Taff Vale judgement. The TUC’s manifesto went further, declaring that “For the past ten years monopoly has been unchecked, and a government which came into office to give old age pensions to the aged poor has impoverished the people to benefit the idle rich” (quoted ibid, p246). The ILP’s manifesto was restricted to a list of reforms and the SDF also proposed “a series of palliatives of the existing capitalist anarchy” (ibid).

Of the LRC candidates elected in England and Wales, all but three had been given clear runs. The election of 29 Labour MPs was widely seen as an event of significance. Though in appearance an expression of the growing influence of ‘organised labour’, its true significance was grasped by one of Herbert Gladstone’s allies in a letter to Gladstone: “All of the LRC men and all other Labour men we supported won except in Birmingham, Darlington, Liverpool and York… The only seats won by the LRC men where a liberal was also stood were seats to which Labour was entitled…” (ibid, p264).

In the next part of this series we will look at the position of the British workers’ movement on the questions of internationalism and war. Questions which are vital for fully understanding both the dangers of opportunism and the struggle against it.

North

First published in World Revolution 222 (March 1999)

Throughout this series we have sought to show that the working class movement in Britain has always been part of the international movement, confronted by the same fundamental issues and struggling towards the same goals. We have also shown the specific difficulties that set back its efforts to create a strong class party. In the next two parts we examine its understanding of internationalism and its relationship to the Second International.

The importance of internationalism

Internationalism is the bedrock of the working class movement. This is not a matter of sentiment but a practical necessity. Capitalism can only be overthrown and communism established on a global scale, and the struggle against the bourgeoisie can only be successful if the working class is united across national boundaries.

The foundation of the First International in 1864 was a decisive moment in this task. It sought above all to lay the foundations of the proletarian revolutionary organisation by overcoming the weight of petty-bourgeois and reformist ideology and sects. Its greatest achievement was the defeat of the attempt by Bakunin and his followers to sabotage this work (see the articles in International Review 84, 85 and 87).

The first task of the Second International was to reappropriate these lessons, a task in which Engels played a central role (see part 2 [132] of this series in WR 205). The main work of its first four congresses between 1889 and 1896 was to defeat the anarchists and establish itself on a firm marxist basis. Subsequently its congresses dealt with two fundamental questions that arose from the historical development of capitalism. On the one hand, the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, which grew from the illusions created by the last great expansionary thrusts of ascendant capitalism and, on the other, the attempt to oppose the threat of war that presaged capitalism’s slide into decadence.

The British working class movement took part in all of these struggles. Its organisations sent large delegations to all of the congresses and its delegates, including many of its leading figures, were active in the commissions, and in chairing sessions and proposing resolutions. However, while the likes of Hardie and Hyndman readily talked of fraternity and internationalism, behind those words lay not only confusion about the nature of internationalism but also hostility towards marxism and, especially in the case of Hyndman, a strong dose of nationalism and other bourgeois prejudices.

The understanding of internationalism

The subjective understanding of the meaning of internationalism within the political organisations in Britain was often very poor. Over and above any grand statements about peace and international brotherhood, the movement tended towards a localist and insular attitude that frequently slid into outright nationalism.

This was directly expressed by Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion newspaper and in books such as Merrie England and Britain for the British that sold in their thousands. He set out a reformist and nationalist version of socialism, arguing for example that Britain should produce all its own food as a safeguard against war and that socialism would reverse the decline in the country’s trading status.

The Independent Labour Party appeared more internationalist in attitude, its conferences in 1894, for instance, calling for “disarmament and universal peace” (quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party). In 1898 the ILP declared its opposition to conscription and a year later argued that peace could only be achieved when “the workers of all countries recognise their solidarity of interest and unite on a co-operative basis of production and exchange” (ibid). However, these sentiments had little or no practical consequences. The ILP remained focused on immediate and local issues and in the International opposed the exclusion of anarchists and sided with the revisionists. Some of its leading figures, such as Tom Mann, were more concerned with developing international trade union organisations.

Of all the organisations, the Social Democratic Federation seemed the most concerned with international matters. One third of the pamphlet announcing the formation of the SDF, England for All written by Hyndman dealt with foreign matters and Hyndman regularly attacked British colonial policy and called for workers to intervene. In 1886, in the face of possible military action between Germany and France over the Balkans, he called for international action by the working class if war broke out, effectively raising the possibility of revolution to prevent war. Similarly, in 1896, during the Fashoda incident, when Britain and France clashed in Africa, the SDF joined calls for working class unity made by Jean Jaures of the French Socialists. However, such arguments were totally contradicted by the SDF’s defence of the British navy. Following the Jameson Raid of 1896 an SDF manifesto supported “the adequate increase of our navy” (quoted in Tsuzuki H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism). During the Fashoda incident Hyndman argued for the maintenance of a large naval fleet, stating that “Such a fleet is a luxury for France: for us it is a necessity” (ibid).

These contradictions expressed the weight of bourgeois ideology within the working class movement in Britain. Events at the turn of the century began to increasingly highlight these contradictions and to indicate how opportunism could lead to the betrayal of the working class, as was to happen with such terrible consequences in 1914.

Opposing war: rhetoric and practice

From 1900 on, when the Paris Congress of the Second International discussed a resolution on militarism moved by Rosa Luxemburg, the question of war and the response of the workers’ movement steadily gained in importance as the tensions between the great powers intensified. In his last days Engels had warned of the danger of a generalised war arising from the acceleration of imperialist rivalries. Luxemburg’s resolution made the same analysis and called on the socialist movement to begin a struggle against militarism by pursuing the class struggle, voting against military expenditure and organising demonstrations and protests against militarism. The resolution was carried unanimously.

The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 had already tested such sentiments. Initially, the majority of organisations seen as part of the working class movement opposed the war, with even the Fabian Society discussing a resolution criticising it. The main exception was Robert Blatchford, who openly rallied to the side of the bourgeoisie and contributed to the wave of jingoism that affected much of the population. However, opposition to the war, even if sometimes determined, was fundamentally flawed because its lack of a marxist method rendered it incapable of making a class analysis. All of the opposition made serious concessions to the bourgeoisie.

This was inevitably the case with the Fabian Society since, as we have shown previously, it was a bourgeois organisation. Both the pro and anti war resolutions were framed in the interests of British imperialism. That opposing the war, after denouncing ‘imperialism’ nonetheless pledged “to support the expansion of Empire only in so far as that may be compatible with the expansion of that higher social organisation which this society was founded to promote” (quoted in McBriar Fabian Socialism and English Politics). After a pretence of equivocation, the Fabians sided with the ruling class and offered it advice on what to do after the war ended. The Paris Congress of 1900 censured these attitudes and several leading figures of the ILP resigned from the Fabian Society.

The leaders of both the ILP and the SDF attacked the war as a capitalist war. In 1900 Hardie wrote in the Labour Leader “The war is a capitalist war. The British merchant hopes to secure markets for his goods, the investor an outlay for his capital, the speculator more fools out of whom to make money and the mining companies cheaper labour and increased dividends” (Hughes (ed) Keir Hardie’s speeches and writings). In common with many radicals Hardie openly sympathised with the Boers, even presenting them as defending the interests of the working class: “President Kruger and his Government would not permit the introduction of this system of slavery [of bondage contracts] into the gold mines of Transvaal. He is also opposed to the mines being worked on Sunday…and…actually had introduced an Eight-Hours Bill for all workers […] As socialists our sympathies are bound to be with the Boers. Their Republican form of Government bespeaks freedom, and is thus hateful to tyrants, whilst their methods of production for use are much nearer our ideal than any form of exploitation for profit” (ibid). In their agitation the ILP worked very closely with radical Liberals opposed to the war and their arguments were fundamentally the same, focussing on the wickedness, greed and undemocratic practices of individual capitalists and administrators. Hardie, for example, revelled in denouncing Joseph Chamberlain as a dissolute drunkard.

The SDF denounced the war in similar terms to the ILP and some of its members, such as Bax, were as open as Hardie in their support for the Boers. However, Hyndman, not only took up the denunciation of individual capitalists but went even further from a class analysis by introducing a strong element of anti-Semitism. An editorial in Justice was entitled “The Jews’ war on the Transvaal” and presented both the British ruling class and its press as being controlled by “their masters, the capitalist Jews” (Baker, The Social Democratic Federation and the Boer War. Our History Pamphlet 59, Summer 1974). Hyndman was not alone in this, the ILP News declaring at one point “it is no exaggeration to say that the Jew financier controls the policy of Europe” (quoted in James op.cit.). As the war progressed Hyndman returned increasingly to the nationalism that underpinned his whole attitude to international affairs, writing in 1901 “I begin to doubt whether we shall win this South African War; whether in fact it will turn out the beginning of the downfall of the British empire” (quoted in Baker op.cit.). He declared his intention to withdraw from agitation against the war, writing in a letter to Justice that it was “a struggle between two burglars” and that “if I am going to agitate for the independence of anybody, it is for the independence of the splendid native tribes who are being crushed by the Boers and ourselves together” (quoted in Tsuzuki op.cit.). The SDF executive supporting this, stated in a resolution that continued opposition was “a waste of time and money” (ibid).

Both Hyndman’s anti-Semitism and his switch to supporting the war (the comments about supporting the native tribes being just rhetoric) provoked opposition from a minority within the SDF, leading eventually to splits and the temporary resignation of Hyndman from the Executive. We will return to this in the future.

Conclusion

The questions of internationalism and war are closely linked, with the latter providing the fiercest test of any revolutionary organisation’s understanding and capacity to defend the internationalist position.

None of the organisations of the working class in Britain clearly understood the question of internationalism. The SDF’s attitude, as to most issues, was fundamentally dictated by Hyndman’s personal ambitions to dominate the workers’ movement and his opposition to the formation of a real marxist revolutionary organisation. His radical language was used to hide the fact that his final loyalty was to the interests of the British bourgeoisie. England’s colonial policy was presented as an aberration rather than the inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism. The ILP, caught between the tendency to see internationalism as an ideal and the tendency to see it as an extension of trade unionism, was unable to recognise it an irreplaceable political and practical weapon in the proletariat’s struggle against its exploiters.

Confronted with war, neither organisation was capable of providing a class analysis. The opposition they mounted, for all the courage and spirit shown by individuals, actually contributed to the blurring of class lines. Further, if the majority of the working class movement was blind to the dangers of this situation, parts of the bourgeoisie were becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities it offered to them. The more intelligent parts of the ruling class were beginning to believe that accommodating the reformist wing of the workers’ movement could actually reinforce the capitalist system. It was this understanding that lay behind the secret deal between the Liberals and the Labour Representation Committee which allowed the latter to gain a number of seats in the 1906 election (see part 7 [133] of this series in WR 222).

In the next part of this series we will examine the participation of the British working class movement in the activities and debates of the Second International.

North

First published in World Revolution 225 (June 1999)

The previous part of this series, in WR 225, examined the understanding of internationalism by the working class movement in Britain, concluding that its response to the Boer War showed some serious weaknesses. We continue this work here by considering the role played by the British working class movement in the Second International in the years leading up to the admission of the Labour Party in 1908.

The struggle against anarchism and for a marxist international

In the second part of this series (WR 205) we described the attempt by Hyndman to sabotage the foundation of the Second International by working with the Possibilists and anarchists, an attempt Engels explicitly compared to the efforts of Bakunin in the First International. We also showed that William Morris, despite participating in the marxist congress, failed to grasp its significance and joined the protests against the exclusion of the anarchists (part 3 in WR 208).

Subsequently, the SDF joined the International and Hyndman took an active part in its debates, from its third congress onwards, including supporting the expulsion of the anarchists. In fact the SDF transformed itself into one of the strongest opponents of anarchists, voting to expel then from the SDF at its 1890 congress and beginning a campaign against them during the preparation of Zurich Congress of 1893, with the SDF paper Justice characterising them as “extreme reactionists” (Tsuzuki, H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism. Original Phd Thesis). At the congress itself and the subsequent one in London in 1896, the SDF actively supported the exclusion of the anarchists. At the latter Hyndman presided over the session that finally settled the debate and definitively excluded them, declaring in his speech “I yield to no man in toleration…but I denounce Anarchy. I denounce disorder, and I stand up for order and organisation of International Social Democracy” (Conference Record, quoted ibid).

This change of face did not mean that Hyndman had abandoned his efforts to dominate the workers’ movement but that rather, in the face of defeat in 1889, he had changed tactics. Thus in changing sides on anarchism he did not abandon his hostility to marxism but sought to distinguish between Social Democratic ‘authority’ and marxist ‘dictation’:“Such self-arrogated dictation…the Anarchists are quite right to protest and revolt against…But to confuse reasonable, necessary and democratically appointed authority with this objectionable, injurious and self-appointed dictation is foolish, and hinders the progress of Socialism generally” (Justice, June 1890, quoted ibid). His enmity towards Engels remained particularly sharp. When an Austrian socialist wrote a book about British Socialism, Justice described it as the first “honest endeavour on the part of a German resident to tell the truth…since January 1881” (quoted ibid). Years later Hyndman attacked The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State as “merely a rehash of Morgan’s doubtful theories with some questionable speculation of Engels’ own” (Justice, quoted in Jackson Solo Trumpet). Following Engels’ death in 1895 Hyndman attempted to move closer to the centre of the international movement by developing links with the German Social Democrats who had previously regarded him with suspicion. Hyndman had earlier shown his bourgeois colours by warning of the threat posed by Germany to British interests and calling for an expansion of the British navy. However, he succeeded in winning over Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the most respected figures in the workers’ movement, and the SPD paper Vorwarts described the SDF as “the solid kernel around which the mightily growing English Social Democracy will crystallise” (quoted in Tsuzuki op.cit). If these efforts did not give Hyndman the domination he wanted, they did contribute significantly to the SDF overcoming the defeat of 1889 and maintaining its position within the workers’ movement. However, an attempt by the SDF to organise a separate, purely ‘socialist’, congress alongside the London congress of 1896, which was presumably calculated by Hyndman to increase his influence (not least because the ILP would have been unlikely to attend such a congress) won no support from the International. An attempt to restrict the next congress to Social Democratic Parties was also defeated.

Many of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party and the TUC, who formed the majority of the British delegations, were resolutely opposed to marxism (see part 6 of this series ‘1894-1900: Socialist party or labour alliance?’, WR 218) and actively opposed the exclusion of the anarchists, although they tended to vote for resolutions which made acceptance of the political struggle a condition of participation. At the London Congress, Hardie and Mann spoke against their exclusion, Hardie arguing to the ILP delegation “It might be alleged that if they supported these people’s claims they were sympathising with Anarchists. For his part, he was more afraid of doing an unfair thing towards a body of Socialists with whom he did not see eye to eye, than he was of being called an Anarchist” (quoted in Wrigley ‘The ILP and the Second International: the Early Years, 1893-1905’ in James et al The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party). In fact Hardie and other ILP leaders associated themselves closely with the anarchists, not only breaking their mandates to vote against their exclusion but also speaking at a public meeting with the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta and Michel. The TUC elements, who had been given the main responsibility for organising the London Congress, supported this stance and had initially sought to transform the congress into an international trade union conference.

The struggle against revisionism

After the struggle to establish the International on a marxist basis, the congresses in 1900 in Paris and 1904 in Amsterdam were dominated by the fight to defend marxism as the revolutionary tool of the proletariat against the errors and betrayals of revisionism and reformism. If this arose first within the German Social Democracy, the same tendencies were seen throughout the workers’ movement: “fundamentally, reformism was the product of the pressures emanating from bourgeois society in a period of impressive economic growth and prosperity in which the perspective of capitalist collapse and the proletarian revolution seemed to be receding into a remote horizon. …Social democracy was gradually being transformed from an organ geared essentially towards a revolutionary future to one fixed on the present, on the gaining of immediate improvements in the working class’ living standards” (‘The revolutionary perspective obscured by Parliamentary illusions’ [134], IR 88).

At the Paris congress debates focused on the participation of the French socialist Millerand in the bourgeois government that included General Gallifet, who had led the massacre of the Communards in 1871. Kautsky attempted to reach a compromise by proposing a resolution that effectively opposed such participation in principle while accepting it in practice: “The entry of a single socialist into a bourgeois ministry cannot be considered as the normal beginning for winning political power: it can never be anything but a temporary and exceptional makeshift in an emergency situation” (quoted in Cole A history of socialist thought, Vol. III). The Bolshevik paper Iskra denounced this as an ‘india-rubber’ resolution, but at the congress it was carried by a majority of 29 to 9.

Of the British delegation, it was inevitable that the ILP, the Fabians and the Trade Unionists would support the resolution since their whole orientation was towards participation in and collaboration with the bourgeois parliament. However, the SDF also supported it, despite its publicised opposition to revisionism (Bax even called for Bernstein, the ‘architect’ of revisionism, to be tried before a ‘court of heresy’ and expelled), showing once again the reformism beneath its radical rhetoric: “We of the SDF have always acted upon the principle that Socialists are not only justified in entering into conflicts which arise from time to time between bourgeois parties, but that it is frequently their duty to do so in the interests of justice and humanity and in defence of such political liberties as we at present possess […] We held it to be the duty of French Socialists to support the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry against the clerico-military reaction” (Justice, September 1899, quoted in Tsuzuki, op.cit.). Under pressure from Liebknecht and the opposition provoked within parts of the SDF, Hyndman subsequently backtracked in an effort to maintain his leadership.

The Amsterdam Congress dealt directly with the question of revisionism, taking up a resolution passed at the SPD’s congress in Dresden in 1903 that explicitly condemned it: “The Revisionists wish to substitute for the conquest of political power through the overcoming of our enemies a policy of meeting the existing order of things half way” (quoted in Cole, op.cit.). An attempt to amend the resolution into a compromise acceptable to all was not supported and the Dresden resolution, with only minor changes, was passed by 25 to 5 with 12 abstentions.

On this occasion the British delegation divided, casting one for and one against. The ILP strongly opposed the resolution, Bruce Glasier opening a campaign against the ‘class war’ that was to last several years, one of whose aims was to isolate the SDF. Of the debate at the congress he commented: “all of the speakers, with the exception of Bebel, seemed to rant away at the phantom enemy ‘Capitalisme’ and I less than ever felt drawn to the typical ‘continental socialist’. Hyndman and Quelch as usual did the British serio-comic turn – nay I am wroth when I think of the ineptitude of it all” (quoted James et al, op.cit). The SDF given its previous opposition to revisionism and its stance as the defender of marxist orthodoxy, threw its support behind the resolution. That this also kept it in line with the majority of the Social Democracy, including Kautsky, was undoubtedly important in Hyndman’s calculations as well.

Opposing the tide of militarism

As we showed in the last part, the struggle against the rising tide of militarism began to preoccupy the International from the Paris Congress of 1900 onwards. At the Stuttgart Congress of 1907, the debate showed that the response to this question was intimately connected to the debate on revisionism, with the left of the International ensuring that the final resolution made clear that “the struggle must consist…not simply in replacing war by peace, but in replacing capitalism by socialism” (Lenin, “The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart”, Collected Works Vol.13). This resolution was adopted virtually unanimously. However, the length and complexity of the debate showed that there was a dangerous lack of understanding of the question. Four different resolutions were submitted, including one which advocated national defence if a country were attacked and another which called for a general strike and uprising if war were threatened. In general, the growing weight of the reformist vision of the peaceful transformation of capitalism, which had not been curtailed by the resolution of 1904, stood in open contradiction to the idea of the Stuttgart resolution that war was inherent to capitalism and peace required its forceful overthrow. The debate on colonialism also expressed the weight of bourgeois ideology with the proposed resolution ignoring the question of imperialism and arguing that under socialism colonial policy could play a civilising role, a view echoing that of the Fabians. This was only narrowly defeated, leading Lenin to conclude that “it revealed a negative feature in the European labour movement” (ibid, p77). The British delegation voted unanimously for the resolution on militarism but divided over the question of a ‘socialist’ foreign policy.

The affiliation of the Labour Party

The International’s understanding of the working class movement in Britain can be seen from the debate on the affiliation of the Labour Party that took place in the International Socialist Bureau in 1908. A small minority, but, significantly, one led by the SDF, opposed affiliation altogether unless the Labour Party explicitly recognised the class struggle. The main resolution, proposed by Kautsky, whilst acknowledging that the Labour Party did not so recognise the class struggle, nonetheless concluded that it should be admitted since “in practice the Labour Party conducts this struggle and adopts its standpoint, inasmuch as the Party is organised independently of the bourgeois parties” (quoted by Lenin in “Meeting of the International Socialist Bureau”, Collected Works Vol.15). Lenin, while supporting the admission of the Labour Party, opposed this formulation since “in practice the Labour Party is not really independent of the Liberals and does not pursue a fully independent class policy” and proposed that the grounds for affiliation should be amended to read “because it represents the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist workers’ party” (ibid). Lenin’s amendment was lost, but in recognising both the potential of the workers’ movement in Britain and the threat it still faced from the bourgeoisie and its own opportunist leaders, he recognised the continuing dilemma facing the working class’ movement; a dilemma that would become sharper in the following years.

Conclusion

The involvement of the workers’ movement in Britain in the Second International offered the possibility of a counter-weight to the prevalent insularity of the movement, but this opportunity was rarely grasped and instead it further revealed the weaknesses of the movement, which frequently aligned itself with the opportunists and reformists.

The response to the question of organisation revealed that the working class in this country still lacked a solid marxist foundation. In the ILP this incomprehension was a consequence of its reformism and opportunism, while within the SDF it was created by the parasitic manoeuvrings of the dominant Hyndman clique. The debate over revisionism showed the opportunism of both organisations. The leadership of the ILP were the natural allies of Bernstein and Jaures while the leadership of the SDF switched allegiance as and when they felt it would advance their interests. On militarism, the opposition to the Boer war had already exposed the weaknesses of the movement on this question, while Hyndman’s nationalism and anti-Semitism utterly contradicted the SDF’s support for the anti-militarist resolutions.

However, none of this meant that the working class movement in Britain was defeated and that the struggle for the class party was over. The growth of the Labour Party expressed, as Lenin recognised, the continued movement towards socialism of the British working class while the opportunism of the main organisations increasingly provoked opposition from their left wings. The task facing these minorities was how to maintain the combat against opportunism without isolating themselves from the mass working class movement, particularly faced with the massive development of the class struggle in the years leading up to the First World War. This was a task they shared with the whole of the left wing of social democracy. In the next part we begin to trace this effort by looking at the opposition that developed within the SDF in the first years of the century.

North

First published in World Revolution 226 (July/August 1999)

The struggle that took place within the international workers’ movement in the first years of the twentieth century can only be understood in its historical context. While the foundation of this struggle lay in the clash between the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement, the latter, in seeking to defend marxism, the necessity for revolution and the revolutionary potential of the working class, was also forced to confront a number of new questions that were being posed as capitalism moved into its period of decadence. These concerned the nature of the period, the form of the class struggle and, most importantly from the point of view of this series, the implications for the role and functioning of the revolutionary organisation. Both Lenin and Luxemburg devoted major works to the first, while the second was addressed through the debate on the mass strike and the lessons of the 1905 revolution in Russia. The most significant contribution on the third was made by the Bolsheviks who, in insisting on the need for a revolutionary organisation to be composed of committed and disciplined militants, moved towards the understanding that the era of the mass party, formed around the minimum programme, was coming to an end and that the organisation capable of struggling for the maximum programme, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, would necessarily regroup only a minority of the proletariat. The developments in the revolutionary movement in Britain in the first years of this century can only be properly understood in this context.

By the turn of the century the tendency towards a division in the movement in Britain between a mass reformist organisation, under the control of the right wing, and much smaller revolutionary currents, was becoming increasingly marked. This followed the defeat of attempts to unite the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation in the later 1890s by the leadership of these two organisations and was consolidated by the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and the Labour Party in 1906. One lasting consequence of this has been to reinforce the myth, actively peddled by the bourgeoisie, that the working class in Britain is inherently conservative and under the sway of illusions in bourgeois democracy. While this partly reflects the reality of the situation, resulting from the historic power of British capitalism, it ignores the equally important existence of a persistent revolutionary current within the working class of this country. Furthermore, as the dominance of British capitalism within the global market ebbed away under pressure from its younger rivals, the resurgence of the class struggle began to challenge the reformism and opportunism of the right wing and offered an historic opportunity to the left wing.

The left of the ILP and the SDF

In 1900 the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation were the two main socialist organisations in Britain, although they had recently seen a decline in membership. In both, the right wing dominated the leadership. However, both also contained a left wing struggling against this domination.

The defeat of the demands for unity greatly strengthened the grip of the right wing of the ILP. The leadership effectively rotated within a small group, consisting of professional politicians like MacDonald, Snowden and Hardie. Although they might refer to Marx, and even claim to be the embodiment of marxism, in practice they were anti-marxist, opposing the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in favour of manoeuvres and deals with the bourgeoisie to gain seats in Parliament. They controlled every aspect of the ILP, from its finances through to its congresses. The left wing, in contrast, was even more weak and fragmented than at the time of the unity negotiations, not least because a significant number of militants had left to join the SDF. They seem to have had no clear organisational form, their existence mainly being expressed through the resolutions calling for unity with the SDF that were still quite frequently sent to the ILP annual conference.

In contrast, the left wing of the SDF became highly organised, with its own meetings and publication. In part this reflected the greater weight of the left of the SDF since there was no organisation further left to which they could go, but it also arose in response to the strength of the leadership, which frequently used its position to expel troublesome elements. One of the tactics used to maintain this position was the reserving of half of the seats of the executive for London, where the Hyndman clique was based.

The left of the SDF itself included a number of different factions. The strongest was located in Scotland where there had been a growth in membership in the 1890s, leading to the creation of a Scottish District Council on which the left had a majority. Within London there were some elements who largely shared the critique developed by the grouping in Scotland and who subsequently shared the name ‘impossibilists’. Both groupings, but especially the one in Scotland, were influenced by the Socialist Labor Party in America, led by Daniel DeLeon, who strongly attacked the socialists he felt were compromising with capitalism. He advocated replacing the traditional craft unions with industrial unions that organised all workers in a particular industry rather than just one particular craft or skill. A second grouping in London centred around Andrew Rothstein and was particularly active in opposing the anti-Semitic analysis of the Boer war presented by Hyndman and others in Justice.

The critique of the left in the SDF

The two currents on the left of the SDF shared some positions, notably opposition to the official stance of the SDF on the Boer war, but they were sharply opposed on the direction the SDF should take. Rothstein argued that for the SDF to break from being a mere sect it had to be involved in the everyday struggles of the working class and emphasised the importance of the minimum programme alongside the maximum one: “Political and civil freedom, cheap justice, wide and sound education, aesthetic culture, and innumerable minor things which, despite our professed programmes, very frequently leave us indifferent, are of the utmost importance to the proletarian class and should concern us as much as its material wellbeing” (Social Democrat [theoretical journal of the SDF] 1900, quoted in Kendall, The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900-1921, p12).

The impossibilists, in contrast, attacked the SDF for making concessions to reformism. In the debate over the participation of socialists in a bourgeois government at the Paris Congress of the International, the only member of the British delegation to oppose the Kautsky resolution, which took a centrist position by rejecting participation in principle while allowing it in practice, was George Yates, a member of the Scottish District Council. The impossibilists linked this to an attack on the Hyndman clique, not only opposing their domination of the party, but also what they saw as the dissolute habits of the leadership. In seeking to defend the revolutionary goal they tended to play down the struggle for immediate reforms, a significant proportion opposing them altogether. One practical consequence was that they violently opposed any move towards unity with the ILP.

Linked to the critique of reformism was a critique of the ideology of ‘state socialism’, which associated an increase in the powers of the state with a move towards socialism. The Fabians were to the fore in this since they openly opposed the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, but it was prevalent also in the ILP and the SDF. After leaving the SDF, that fraction of the impossibilists who formed the Socialist Labour Party set out their definition of socialism: “By this we do not mean what is variously called ‘State Socialism’, ‘Public Ownership’ or ‘Municipalism’ – that is, the ownership of certain public utilities by a community in which capitalism is still dominant. A worker is as much exploited by a capitalist state or corporation as by a private employer… We insist upon the political overthrow of capitalism as a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the working class” (quoted in Challinor, The origins of British Bolshevism).

The struggle in the SDF

The struggle between the leadership of the SDF and its left wing was centred around the SDF’s annual conferences between 1901 and 1904. In 1901, the impossibilists opened the struggle with a resolution condemning the vote on the Kautsky resolution and a call for the organisation rather than Hyndman to control Justice. Both were lost but closer links were established between the impossibilists in London and Scotland. The fruits of this were seen at the conference in 1902 with the two groups meeting before the conference and working together during it. Although their specific resolutions were lost, particularly one calling for the formation of socialist trade unions, they increased their share of the vote (Challinor states that on average they got 40%) and won three places on the executive. Subsequently the impossibilists sought to further strengthen their position, establishing a liaison committee and launching their own paper, The Socialist.

The SDF leadership now moved against the left, taking advantage of the differences within it. In particular they had the support of the faction led by Rothstein who described the impossibilists as ‘traitors’. Amongst the impossibilists there were also tensions, both over political positions but also arising from personal animosity. Above all, there was a division between those who thought it necessary to form a new party and those who called for a continued struggle within the SDF. In particular, the issue of The Socialist prior to the 1903 conference contained a very strong attack on ‘the official SDF’ which had not been submitted to the London faction for their approval before publication.

The conference itself was held in London, the centre of the Hyndman clique (Hyndman himself had resigned from the executive in 1901 but his acolytes still controlled it; the move was purely formal). George Yates, the author of the article was expelled and the earlier expulsion of the Finsbury branch was confirmed. The impossibilists lost their seats on the executive and the new one gave itself powers to expel without appeal any individual or branch that opposed it.

At a joint meeting of the impossibilists after his expulsion, Yates called for the formation of a new party. The majority of the London impossibilists opposed this as premature but in May 1903 the Socialist Labour Party was founded. The result was that the left was now divided between the Rothstein faction, which had rallied to the leadership, the group which had formed the SLP and another still within the SDF. This last now had no chance of effectively combating the leadership and its leading militants were expelled at the 1904 conference. In June they formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Balance sheet of the struggle

The struggle that took place within the SDF in the first years of the century confirmed not only the existence of a left wing within the revolutionary movement in Britain, but also that it had a significant weight and was seeking to take up the questions posed to the working class by the new period that was opening up.

On the method of the class struggle, the SLP began to pose the need to go beyond the educational and parliamentary struggles that dominated the movement in Britain. However, while industrial unionism implied a criticism of reformism in the existing trade unions it did not open a perspective towards identifying the form of the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle in the way the experience of the soviets in the 1905 revolution did. Before long, the DeLeonist notion of industrial unionism became another sterile, sectarian dogma which discounted the real experience of the working class. Of the other parts of the left, Rothstein’s emphasis on relating to the actual struggles and concerns of the working class was essentially a restatement of a fundamental orientation of marxism in the face of its distortion by the leaders of the SDF and the ILP and the Fabians. The SPGB, for its part, quite rapidly made ‘education’ and elections their only spheres of activity. An early debate on the Trade Unions, whilst rightly seeing them as reformist, showed that they had failed to grasp the political aspect of economic struggles, in particular their role in the development of class consciousness.

On the question of the nature of the organisation, while Rothstein’s positions rightly defended the necessity for revolutionary organisations to relate to the actual state of the class struggle, this tended to still be within the framework of building a mass party. The SLP, and to a lesser extent the SPGB, recognised the necessity for revolutionary organisations to be disciplined and theoretically formed, but did so at the cost of a sectarian attitude towards the larger working class movement. Both organisations refused to work within the Second International and denounced the socialist parties of other countries as reformist, failing to see the struggles going on within them.

The question of how to struggle within an organisation was also posed. Rothstein’s strategy was to struggle within the SDF. If his criticism of the impossibilists was understandable given this, his readiness to defend the SDF, and even Hyndman personally, suggests a centrist position towards the struggle within the SDF. The SLP on the other hand split from the SDF prematurely, ignoring the advice of James Connolly who was a major influence on them. The SPGB showed a greater reluctance to abandon the SDF but were given no choice.

Overall, no single organisation was able to make a sufficient analysis of the weakness of the movement in Britain in their practice, let alone their theory. All of them carried a lot of baggage from the SDF. Rothstein refused to work with other parts of the left while the SLP and SPGB carried the sectarianism learnt within the SDF into the new organisations. In the years that followed these developments the working class in Britain mounted a strike wave of a size and seriousness unseen since the Chartists and showed once again the strength and potential of the British working class. It is to these developments and the challenge they posed to the working class movement that the next part in this series will turn.

North

First published in World Revolution 228 (October 1999)

From 1908 to 1914 the working class in Britain threw itself into an intense struggle against its exploiters, part of an international wave of struggles across Europe, which included the mass strike in Russia in 1905. The days lost through strike action reached a level never seen before and only surpassed by the General Strike in 1926. Even more significantly, these struggles saw the workers begin to wrest control from the union leaderships and move into open confrontation with the state.

Only the unleashing of the First World War curtailed this explosion of class anger and then only for the first two years of the war. With these strikes the working class in Britain answered the notion of its supposed passivity and conservatism and reaffirmed itself once again as an integral part of the international proletariat.

The decline of British capitalism

Underpinning this development were the changes in capitalism as it moved out of its period of ascendance into its decadence, and the specific form it took in Britain. In our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism [127], we show the extent to which the growth of production has slowed down in the period of decadence and go on to draw the economic and political consequences of this, not least the dramatic increase in imperialist rivalry leading to an escalation of war and the tendency for the living and working conditions of the proletariat to come under attack. Britain not only fully shared these tendencies but, as a consequence of its previous position as the most advanced capitalist state, tended to experience them sooner.

As early as the 1880s Engels had noted the relative decline of British capitalism. Between 1883 and 1914 Britain’s share of the global economy declined from 31.8% to 14.1%. After 1870, the economies of Britain’s two greatest rivals, the US and Germany, grew at about twice the rate that Britain’s did. One of the factors behind this was the flight of British capital abroad, leading to a reduction of investment in the domestic economy and a consequent decline in the growth of productivity (between 1856 and 1873 productivity grew at 1.3% per annum; between 1873 and 1913 this declined to 0.9% per annum). This only further stimulated the flight of capital so that in 1907 investment abroad exceeded investment at home.

For the working class the result was an increase in its level of exploitation as the bourgeoisie tried to make up for the decline in productivity. Rothstein, in From Chartism to Labourism, brings together a range of statistics to illustrate this situation. Real wages (i.e. wages in relation to prices), after steadily increasing from 1870, began to decline after 1907; fewer workers had to do more work; unemployment began to go up, reaching 7.8% in 1908; and industrial accidents increased.

The weight of reformism: the unions

The political situation also contributed to the context in which the class launched its struggles and was a significant factor in shaping the form they took. The Trade Unions were the dominant organisations of the working class in Britain throughout the second half of the 19th century. They were also strongholds of reformism and class collaboration. Their role in opposing the development of the class party of the proletariat has already been examined (see part 6 [131] in WR 218). The extent to which they had actually abandoned the class struggle can be seen in the relationships they developed with the employers and in aspects of their internal organisation.

In the latter part of the 19th century a number of mechanisms were established between workers, or rather between their union representatives, and the employers to regulate wages and disputes. In the mining industry the sliding scale linked wages directly to the cost of the coal produced. In 1893 the unions and employers in the cotton industry signed the Brooklands Agreement which established a conciliation board to settle disputes, again based on the fluctuations of the employers’ profits.

In 1896 the Conciliation Act encouraged the creation of conciliation boards, which brought employers and union leaders together to ‘settle’ disputes, with 282 coming into existence by 1910, increasing to 325 by 1913. The result was that the majority of disputes went before the boards: in 1909 1,997 disputes followed this course (of which 1,025 were resolved) while only 436 resulted in strikes or lockouts. In 1911 the Liberal Government enabled the state to intervene directly by setting up the ‘Industrial Council’ to resolve disputes that the conciliation boards could not settle.

The hostility of the union hierarchy to strike action was also expressed in the separation of strike funds from other funds, such as unemployment and sickness benefits, and the low level of the former. Strike funds were also invested, making it difficult to access them when needed.

Such open class collaboration was an advantage for the bourgeoisie not the workers since the unions won neither significant pay rises nor improvements in working conditions. While wages did increase between 1875 and 1900 the real reason for the improvement in living standards of the working class was the fall, of up to 50%, in the price of basic foodstuffs over the last 25 years of the century. Similarly, the eight hour day, which had been a goal of the workers’ movement since the time when the General Council of the First International was based in London, continued to elude many parts of the working class. Cotton workers, for example, saw a reduction of just one hour in their working week from 56.5 to 55.5 over the twenty years from 1886 to 1906.

In such a situation, where the unions could appear either unnecessary or ineffectual, it is no surprise that their growth slowed down and even, as in the first few years of the century, went into reverse (in 1900 there were just over two million union members, in 1904 this figure had declined by over 50,000, but thereafter it steadily increased as the wave of strikes developed).

The Labour Party

The election of 24 Labour MPs in 1906 was hailed by its leaders as a historic step forward. In reality, as we showed in part 7 [133] (WR 222), it was part of a conscious strategy by the most enlightened part of the British bourgeoisie to blunt the threat of socialism. The range of social measures passed in the first year of the new government continued this strategy by seeking to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of capitalism, such as the poverty commonly associate in old age, sickness and unemployment. All of these measures received the uncritical support of Labour, as did the annual budgets, including expenditure on the army and navy.

The same was true of the measure which had provoked the unions into supporting the LRC: the reversal of the Taff Vale decision, which had rendered union funds vulnerable to claims for damages from employers following industrial action. Although there was strong opposition from the more reactionary elements in the Liberal Party, as well as from the Conservative Party and much of the press, the legislation was passed virtually in the form desired by the unions. While bourgeois historians, such as Pelling in his History of British Trade Unions, suggest this was a factor behind the growth of militancy in the succeeding years, its actual purpose was precisely the opposite: to strengthen the unions’ hold over the workers.

Subsequently, support for the Labour Party began to decrease, opposition being expressed on the one hand by the return to the Liberal Party of many voters, resulting in a sharp reduction in the number of Labour MPs following the two General Election of 1910, and, on the other, by support for more clearly socialist candidates, the best example of this being the election of Victor Grayson in 1907 standing as a Socialist rather than a Labour candidate.

The class consciousness of the proletariat in Britain

The form taken by the workers’ movement in any given period fundamentally reflects the level of consciousness of the working class. If the leaderships of the unions and the Labour Party most clearly expressed the ideology of opportunism and reformism in the years covered by this series, they were able to do this because the working class allowed them to, because it shared the ideology. The roots of this lay in the material situation of the working class, in the fact that the great expansion of capitalism in the final decades of its ascendancy meant that the working class as a whole saw improvements in its living conditions. As Rothstein argues, the fact that in Britain this arose from the fall in the cost of foodstuffs, rather than from increases in pay won through the class struggle, particularly strengthened illusions in the beneficence of capitalism.

However, while this explains the dominant tendency within the working class in Britain, it is important to also recognise the existence of a counter-tendency. This was evident in the struggles of the late 1880s, leading to the creation of ‘new unions’ of unskilled workers; in the numbers participating in the May Day demonstrations of the 1880s; in the growth of socialist organisations in the same period; in the struggle for the unity of the SDF and ILP in the early 1890s; and in the fight against opportunism within the SDF at the turn of the century.

1908 to 1914: the escalation of the class struggle

The immediate cause of the strike wave lay in the steady increase of prices in the period from 1900 to 1914 and the attacks by the ruling class on wages and working conditions. While the first major strike did not break out until 1908, a number of developments in the years preceding expressed the changes beginning to take place within the working class. In 1905-6 a movement arose in the South Wales coalfields to organise the previously unorganised miners, through the use of force if necessary, in order to prepare for a confrontation with the owners. The demand for a minimum wage was also raised. In 1906 the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants called for an all-grades increase and recognition of the union. The membership also voted for strike action.

A detailed account of the development of the strike wave is outside the scope of this series and instead we will just highlight the major developments:

• 1907: Lockout of Belfast dockers following a dispute provoked by employers. Soldiers and police occupy part of the city, with fights leading to several deaths.
• 1908: Strike by cotton workers in response to employers’ demand to cut wages under the terms of a previous agreement. Compromise reached after 7 weeks which was effectively a defeat for the workers. Strike by engineers following the threat of a pay cut and against the advice of union leaders.
• 1909: Strike by ship workers, breaching the previous conciliation agreements, and leading to the resignation of the secretary of the union. Sporadic strikes continued and a further ‘general’ strike threatened even after the bosses and union leaders struck a deal.
• 1910: Strikes by miners in South Wales leading to fighting with the police and mobilisation of the army. Two strikers killed by troops. Union leaders refused to support the call for a general miners' strike and some had to be protected by police when visiting the coalfields. Syndicalists elected to union leadership. Refusal by cotton workers to accept reduction in pay under conciliation agreement, leading to the threat of a lockout. The government intervened to resolve the dispute.
• 1911: Strike by Transport Workers Federation uniting dockworkers in London. All transport in London stopped. The government initially threatened to send in troops before negotiating. Strike by railwaymen in Liverpool met by mobilisation of troops, street confrontations and the sending of two warships to the Mersey. Followed by a general strike on railways (although not complete). The government mobilised troops, but faced with the continuing strike by the South Wales miners and a growing movement for a general strike amongst all miners, it eventually forced the employers to agree to the workers demands.
• 1912: General strike of miners launched despite efforts of both the government and the union leaders to prevent it. However, the employers and government were well prepared with ample supplies of coal stockpiled and the strike was defeated after 7 weeks, the government passing a bill compelling the miners to accept a deal previously rejected.
• 1913: Dublin Transport Workers strike. Supported by workers in Britain but not by the union leadership, who manoeuvred to prevent support being given.
• 1913-14: Smaller strikes continue.

The outbreak of the war brought the strike wave to a halt. In the first seven months of the year there were 836 disputes involving 423,000 workers. In the following five months there were 137 disputes involving 23,000 workers. The ideological defeat inflicted on the working class by the open betrayal of the Labour Party and Social Democratic parties across Europe, with their support for imperialist war, disorientated workers. However, the working class was not beaten, which was shown most emphatically with the outbreak of the revolutionary wave in 1917.

Organisation and consciousness

Between 1910 and 1913 more than 10 million days were lost through industrial disputes every year. In 1912 this reached a peak of 38 million days. The strikes smashed through the opportunist policies and agreements of the union leaderships. Beneath the specific issues involved in each struggle ran two fundamental tendencies: towards the unification and politicisation of the class struggle.

Through its struggle the working class found again, as Marx had argued, that its only real weapons are its organisation and consciousness. The impact of these events on the development of socialist organisations and syndicalism in Britain will begin to be examined in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 230 (December/January 1999/2000)

The wave of class struggle that broke out between 1908 and the start of the First World War had a profound impact on the workers’ movement in Britain. Through the scale and militancy of the struggle the working class confronted not only the state but also the dominant trade union and political organisations of the workers’ movement. Their reformism, opportunism and class collaboration had fettered the class struggle for many years. Through their struggle the proletariat in Britain reasserted itself as a class, showing not only vigorous combativity but also a consciousness of its interests as a class.

The movement was marked by two main tendencies. The assertion of the necessity for militant industrial action, including the general strike on the one hand, and for unity on the other. These tendencies were also expressed in the wave of struggles in the late 1880s that led to the creation of the new unions and the ILP, were a corrective to the excessive focus on the parliamentary struggle, that marked both the ILP and the SDF, and to the sectarianism and division to which the movement had succumbed during the intervening decades. At its most fundamental the wave of struggle expressed again the potential of the proletariat in Britain to create a revolutionary class party.

The situation that actually developed became defined by the growth of syndicalism and by the creation of the British Socialist Party and it is these two aspects that will be examined in this and the next part of the series.

Syndicalism and Industrial Unionism

Syndicalism and industrial unionism both saw the trade unions as an instrument of the revolutionary struggle, rather than a means to win reforms from the ruling class and draw the working class together. While the terms have sometimes been used almost interchangeably, in reality, even though individuals moved between the two and there was some co-operation, they were divided on the question of political action and the strategy to adopt towards the existing unions. Syndicalism had its roots in developments within the trade union movement in France, in particular the foundation of the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) in 1895. It was strongly influenced by anarchism and rejected political action but worked within the existing unions. Industrial Unionism in contrast, which emerged in America under the influence of the Socialist Labor Party, supported political action while seeking to create new ‘industrial’ unions to replace the old ‘craft’ ones. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded in 1905 was an expression of this tendency, although following a split it later became anti-political. Industrial Unionism can be seen as a flawed attempt to respond to the new conditions being posed as capitalism moved from its period of ascendance into the period of decadence and the old trade union form became increasingly obsolete. It sought to provide an answer to the question of how to organise and to struggle in the new period, but the real answer was provided in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, in the mass strike and the soviet form of organisation.

The SLP and Industrial Unionism

While syndicalist ideas found some echo in Britain during the final decade of the 19th century, it was the ideas of industrial unionism that initially came to prominence and took organisational form. This was the result of the efforts of the Socialist Labour Party (see part 10 [135] of this series in WR 228). In its report to the 1907 Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, the SLP stated that it had been “the pioneer of revolutionary unionism in Britain” (Challinor, Origins of British Bolshevism, p54). From its foundation the SLP took up a very critical attitude towards the existing unions, identifying them as reformist and refusing to allow union officials to join. The creation of the IWW in the US was welcomed by the majority of the SLP, which voted at its fourth annual conference in 1906 to create an organisation to lay the basis for new unions in Britain. In the same year the SLP took an active part in a strike in Dundee which resulted not only in the workers gaining a pay rise of 5% but also in the formation of a new branch of the party. The Advocates of Industrial Unionism (AIU) was set up in August 1907. The SLP dominated the new organisation numerically but deliberately sought to have non-members in leading positions. In this sense the AIU was also an effort by the SLP to overcome divisions in the workers’ movement.

Although the SLP saw industrial unionism as only part of the struggle of the working class, it nonetheless argued that the revolutionary unions it hoped to create would not only be a means of fighting the revolution but would also be the foundation of the future socialist society: “Let us then organise industrially as well as politically for our class emancipation. Industrially to build up in the womb of capitalism the foundations of the future state of society… Politically to unseat the capitalist class from the power of government…” (The Socialist, quoted in Challinor op.cit. p88). Faced with the weight of the existing union structure however, the AIU decided that its militants should remain in the unions to spread the ideas of industrial unionism while also pushing for new unions when possible, a strategy which became known as dual unionism.

While most of the political organisations of the working class gave priority to parliamentary action, even dismissing strikes as irrelevant or counter-productive; some of their militants were influenced by industrial unionism. In the SPGB this led to a split, with the industrial unionists either leaving or being expelled. The SDF initially adopted a similar policy, although it was forced to relax as the numbers supporting industrial unionism grew as the strike wave went on. The ILP for its part took no such action, even though its leaders had no sympathy for industrial unionism. While the AIU itself remained small, with relatively few branches, it put a lot of effort into propaganda, in particular with the publication of a monthly paper The Industrial Unionist and the distribution of many pamphlets.

Many of the militants who joined the AIU were influenced by their experience of the recent strikes and the lack of support from the Labour Party (some of whose members introduced a Bill in 1911 to make strikes illegal unless 30 days notice was given), the ILP and the SDF were drawn towards the anti-parliamentary positions of syndicalism, while the policy of the SLP allowed them to assume control of the Executive of the AIU. The situation came to a head with the publication of an article in The Industrial Unionist that denounced the ballot as sterile and the parliamentary struggle as secondary to the industrial. While this did not actually amount to syndicalism it provoked a strong response from SLP members who formed the majority of the AIU’s membership. They refused to back the Executive, which resigned in May 1908. Others were expelled following the formation of a new Executive. The expelled members formed the Industrial League the same year, going on to reject the policy of dual unionism and gradually moving closer to syndicalism. In 1909 the AIU re-formed as the Industrial Workers of Great Britain but never became a significant organisation.

The Industrialist Syndicalist Education League

Syndicalist ideas were spread in Britain during the 1890s by a number of anarchists, with the anarchist paper Freedom occasionally reporting events in France. A number of short-lived periodicals, such as The General Strike and the Voice of Labour (Published once in 1904 and for the first nine months of 1907), promoted syndicalism and ‘direct action’. John Turner and Guy Aldred were leading figures in this movement, the latter having originally been a member of the SDF, and together they worked on the second Voice of Labour until they fell out. An organisation, confusingly called the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists was also founded by Turner in 1907 but collapsed too after a few months.

The publication in 1910 of the first issue of The Industrial Syndicalist, edited by Tom Mann, who had played a leading role in the strike movement of the late 1880s and subsequently in the ILP and then the SDF, marked the real beginning of syndicalism as a significant trend of the working class movement in Britain. Mann and his collaborator Guy Bowman drew support from a wide range of elements both within and outside the existing political organisations, including leading militants from the railways, transport workers and the South Wales coal fields who were at the forefront of the industrial struggle. In December 1910, a conference at Manchester launched the Industrial Syndicalist Education League. The founding resolution declared “That whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of effectively fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all workers on the basis of class – not trade or craft – and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of Syndicalism throughout the British Isles, with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry, including all labourers of every industry in the same organisation as the skilled workers” (The Industrial Syndicalist, no. 6).

The following year when he resigned from the SDF, Mann wrote “I find myself not in agreement with the party on the important matter of parliamentary action… I declare in favour of direct industrial organisation, not as a means, but as THE means whereby the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system and become the actual controllers of their own industrial and social destiny” (quoted in Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, p150). Although originally describing himself as non-political rather than anti-political, by 1912 he was arguing that “political action is of no use whatsoever” (quoted in Hinton British Syndicalism 1900-1945, p65).

The practice of the ISEL was to work within the existing trade unions, although it also contained dual unionists within its ranks. Many of its members were radical union officials, such as those in the Unofficial Reform Committee of the South Wales Miners Federation who produced The Miners Next Step in 1911. It also gave its support to the movement to amalgamate the existing unions, its militants within the building trades, for example, playing an active part in the Amalgamation Committee established within this industry.

The structure of the ISEL was initially very informal, its first AGM only being held in 1913. This, together with the lack of a clear statement of positions, was a deliberate policy of Mann’s to attract the widest possible range of supporters. The AGM followed two special conferences in 1912 and led to the creation of a more formal structure with local branches and an executive committee. Nonetheless, its aim remained to carry out “a campaign of education in the principles of syndicalism” (quoted in Hinton op.cit. p140). These steps were rapidly followed by a split following the growth of a largely anarchist section led by Bowman which had adopted the policy of dual unionism and called for the ISEL to be more revolutionary. The split led to the collapse of the ISEL. New organisations were subsequently set up, including a British section of the IWW, which defended dual unionism, and the Industrial Democracy League, which opposed it. In 1914 The Voice of Labour was launched as an openly anarcho-syndicalist publication, defending work in the existing unions while a rival anarchist publication, The Herald of Revolt, supported dual unionism.

The role of syndicalism and industrial unionism

Many of the militants in both the AIU/IWGB and the ISEL played an active and even leading part in the wave of industrial unrest. However, neither organisation played a role in the real evolution of the struggle. In the case of the ISEL this was because it did not seek to play such a role, the aim of Mann and most of its militants being to prompt the existing unions to take the lead, despite their domination by a conservative, class-collaborationist bureaucracy. In the case of the AIU/IWGB this was largely because it was too small to play such a role, not least because the policy of dual unionism won minimal support from the working class. Its most significant activity arose during a dispute at the Singer factory in Scotland where a branch of the IWGB was established. However, the defeat of the strike saw its militants dismissed and scattered, although many were later active in the struggles on the Clyde during the war.

Over and above these specific factors, both industrial unionism and syndicalism shared the same weakness of reducing or rejecting the political struggle. While the SLP specifically declared the necessity for the political struggle, its illusion that trade unionism could lay the foundation of the future socialist society and its concentration of efforts in the futile attempt to build new unions amounted to an obscuring of the true relationship between the industrial and political struggle. It failed to see clearly both that the essential value of the trade union struggle was the unification of the working class and that its own role was to contribute to the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat through its political clarity. The ISEL, in moving towards an increasingly anti-political stance, largely because it falsely equated political struggle solely with the parliamentary one, also moved towards an anti-organisational one and, ultimately, towards the sterility of anarchism.

While the growth of syndicalism and industrial unionism reflected the working class’ disillusionment with the Labour Party and the class collaboration of the trade unions, it did not contribute to the growth of the revolutionary potential of the working class but, on the contrary, to its weakening. We do not say this because, as the anarchists would claim, we believe that the working class needs a political organisation to tell it what to do, but because the nature and history of the working class show that its struggle is above all political. This is because its revolution is not about building up the new society within the old or creating the means to run this or that industry, or even taking over the economy as a whole, but because it is about taking power from the bourgeoisie and asserting its own class power. In this class war it needs to be organised and to know how to fight. The revolutionary class party is the weapon the working class itself forges in order to fight the bourgeoisie. In the next part of this series we will look at the effort the working class in Britain made in the years before the war to create such an organisation.

North

First published in World Revolution 232 (March 2000)

In the previous part [136] of this series, in WR 232, we began our examination of the impact of the wave of industrial unrest that swept across Britain in the years before the First World War by analysing the development of syndicalism and industrial unionism, showing how its militancy challenged the dominant reformism of the workers’ movement in Britain. In this part we continue this work by looking at the response of the main political organisations of the working class.

The defeat of the attempts to unite the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in the late 1890s and the creation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900, marked the victory of the right wing of the British working class movement (see part 6 [131] of this series in WR 218). However, it was not a permanent victory and did not mark the end of the dynamic towards unity on a socialist rather than a trade unionist basis. In particular, local branches of the ILP and SDF continued to work closely together, often with overlapping memberships. Resolutions calling for unification with the SDF were regularly proposed at the ILP’s annual conference but the leadership of the ILP was able to either avoid discussing the resolutions at all or to ensure that they were defeated. The leadership also attacked those pushing for unity and dismissed the SDF as a nonentity “out to revive its ebbing existence by engrafting itself upon the ILP” (ILP News, April 1902, quoted in Crick The History of the Social Democratic Federation). Despite such efforts, the minority supporting unity remained significant, the resolution to the 1906 conference receiving 58 votes for and 108 against.

The annual conferences of the SDF also saw regular calls for unity and, since they had the backing of Hyndman and the rest of the leadership, were passed every year between 1904 and 1911. In 1907, the SDF wrote to the ILP inviting them to nominate delegates to join a unity sub-committee it had set up. The ILP’s response to this request, and others that followed in 1909 and 1910, was to call on the SDF to rejoin the Labour Party (the Labour Representation Committee had changed its name to the Labour Party after the 1906 general election), which it had left in 1902, knowing this would be rejected. These developments, while showing that unity remained an issue, were unable to break through the manoeuvres of the leadership of the two organisations. The SDF’s proposals to the ILP and the condition imposed by the ILP were tactics in the struggle to dominate the workers’ movement. The ILP had taken over from the SDF as the largest organisation and in the 1906 election a considerable number of its candidates were elected (see part 7, WR 222). Hyndman was now coming to regret the hasty decision to leave the LRC, since this meant he had lost any real chance of election and he was keen to find a way to regain lost ground. One consequence of this was the decision in 1904 to allow local socialist societies to affiliate to the SDF.

In the second decade of the 20th century, as in the last decade of the 19th, it was the development of the class struggle that brought together and pushed forward the existing tendencies within the working class to create a powerful dynamic for socialist unity.

The impact of the industrial unrest

Faced with the strike wave of 1908 to 1914, the SDF and the ILP were unable to respond to the challenge posed to their traditional positions by the scale and militancy of the strikes and by the advance in the class consciousness of the proletariat.

The SDF, while giving platonic support to strikes once they had started, continued to dismiss them as useless. In 1903 Hyndman wrote in the SDF’s paper Justice: “We are opposed to strikes altogether. They never were a powerful weapon and now they are quite out of date” (quoted in Kendal, The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900 to 1921, p28). Faced with the mass strike of 1905 in Russia, the SDF failed to understand its role in developing the consciousness of the working class, arguing that if the working class was capable of organising such a strike then it was capable of taking hold of power without it. A similar view was put forward in 1907, as the first strikes on the railways heralded the onset of the strike wave: "we of the Social Democratic Party and Justice are opposed to strikes on principle... Political action is far safer, far better and less costly” (Ibid. The SDF took the name Social Democratic Party in 1906 but we have used the old name throughout this series to avoid confusion). The party’s official publication on the strikes of 1911 argued that “industrial struggles such as we have been passing through…inconvenience the general public…add to the bitterness felt…towards the working class by the middle and upper class…engender similar feeling among a considerable section of the public whose sympathies have hitherto been on the side of the men” (ibid, p29). The strike wave as a whole was seen as a massive waste of energy, which should have been spent getting candidates elected to parliament. This position ensured that the SDF did not benefit from the strikes as much as it should. While the first part of the strike wave saw a significant increase in membership, rising from 6,000 in 1907 to 17,000 in 1909, it fell over the next two years to somewhere between 8-12,000 (the figures for these years are imprecise).

The ILP remained preoccupied with parliament. In the two elections of 1910 the agreement reached in secret with the Liberals in 1906 again ensured that a significant number of Labour candidates were elected. While the ILP did not expel members who supported syndicalism or industrial unionism, as the SDF did, Snowden and MacDonald both wrote books attacking such views. The former, after arguing that Marx saw the transition to socialism as an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary act, dismissed the idea of a general strike as impractical since it was based on an assumption “of working class unity for which there is no support either in experience or probability” (Snowden, Socialism and Syndicalism, p235). While it remained the largest socialist organisation, it saw a decline in membership as the strike wave grew.

The dynamic of unity

Co-operation between militants and local branches of the SDF and ILP grew during this period. There was growing criticism of the existing leadership and, alongside this, a growth of independent local socialist organisations, often under the influence of the Clarion newspaper, edited by Blatchford, who had played a role in the previous push for unity.

In 1904 the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International passed a resolution calling on the socialist organisations in each country to unite in a single organisation. In the wake of this an International Socialist Council for Great Britain was established but it rapidly became another forum for the rivalry of the ILP and SDF. However, the International’s call found an echo amongst some socialists and the strike wave began to turn such efforts into a serious dynamic towards socialist unity. In the same year, the Derby Socialist Society called on the SDF to change its name to the British Socialist Party. In Bury the local branches of the ILP and SDF merged into the Bury Socialist Society. On a greater scale the following year saw a whole range of branches and small organisations come together in the South-East Federation of Socialist Societies, which set itself the goal of a United Socialist Party. However, these organisations were generally short-lived, not least because they faced determined opposition from the ILP. It was able to split the North-Eastern Socialist Federation and MacDonald announced his intention to do the same to the South Eastern Federation.

The tradition of Clarion Vans, touring the country to spread socialism, was also revived by Blatchford and the Clarion movement and was subsequently copied by the SDF.

The campaigns for unity

The election of Victor Grayson in 1907 as a ‘pure’ socialist, sympathetic to industrial unionism and socialist unity, in the face of opposition from the LRC and the ILP, was seen as a powerful expression of the new dynamic. He was also to play a pivotal role in changing the dynamic for unity into a definite campaign. Throughout 1908 Grayson toured Britain speaking at meetings, where he called for unity and a socialist policy. He was made political editor of the Clarion and received support from the SDF. In 1909 he launched a campaign with Hyndman and Blatchford, leading the ILP to cancel all his future speaking engagements. At the ILP conference that year he won support against the National Advisory Council, prompting its four leading figures, Hardie, Snowden, Glasier and MacDonald to resign in an attempt to put pressure on the conference. The opportunism of the ILP leaders came under increasing attack, a number of its leading members signing a manifesto entitled Let us Reform the Labour Party, while the membership began to decline (between 1909 and 1911 46 branches collapsed). The SDF leadership took the opportunity to join the campaign, its conference of April 1911 instructing the executive to call a national conference of unity. Grayson resigned from the ILP in August 1911 and launched a campaign calling for Socialist Representation Committees to be set up as a prelude to founding a British socialist party.

There were in effect two campaigns. That led by Grayson and Blatchford, largely through the pages of the Clarion, and that led by Hyndman through the SDF. While the Clarion campaign sought to create a new organisation on the basis of individual membership, the SDF sought to base it on the fusion of existing organisations, seeing in this a way to assert itself against the ILP. A number of Socialist Representation Committees were created, some through a fusion of SDF and ILP branches and others as new local organisations, while several prominent members of the ILP joined the campaign. Following his resignation from the ILP Grayson launched a speaking campaign to build momentum for a conference the following month.

The British Socialist Party

The Unity Conference of September 1911 that established the British Socialist Party (BSP) was hailed by Grayson and Hyndman as a historic moment in the development of the workers’ movement. It brought together SDF and ILP branches, Clarion Clubs, local Socialist Societies and other organisations with a total membership of about 35,000. The conference received greetings from continental Socialist Parties and from individuals, including Rosa Luxemburg. The new executive seemed to suggest that the SDF did not aim to dominate the new organisation, since only four of the ten members belonged to the Federation. The discussions on the role and aims of the BSP showed that many divisions remained. The founding resolution proposed by the SDF defined the socialist party as “the political expression of the working class movement” which “is not a reformist but a revolutionary party, which recognises that social freedom and equality can only be won by fighting the class war through to the finish” (quoted in Crick, op.cit. p241). The reference to the class war was opposed by a minority but supported by the majority. There were also disagreements over the question of reforms, with the party rejecting any such struggles, and over industrial unionism, with an amendment committing the BSP to “revolutionary industrial tactics” being defeated by 92 votes to 62 (Tsuzuki, H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism).

Despite Hyndman and Grayson’s claims, it rapidly became apparent that no real unification had been achieved because the vast majority of the ILP remained outside. Grayson claimed at the time that 30% of the ILP membership had joined the BSP. The ILP put the figure at just 5%. Certainly, in some areas, such as Lancashire, the ILP was greatly reduced, but in other parts of the country it was barely affected. Within the international socialist movement the new organisation was seen as a failure because it had not brought together the ILP and SDF into a single organisation, which was understood to be the only way to achieve the goal of a single united socialist party in Britain.

The splintering of the BSP

The BSP grew rapidly after its founding. At its official Founding Conference, in May 1912, it was reported that some 370 branches had been formed, with a total membership of about 40,000. In 1909 the SDF had claimed a membership of 17,000. However, even before then the new organisation had begun to break apart with growing conflict between the Clarion and SDF factions. Following the unity conference the rivalry between the Clarion-Grayson faction and the SDF meant that each maintained a separate office. The second meeting of the Provisional Executive Committee of the BSP decided to transfer the executive to the existing SDF office. Since the Unity Conference had also agreed that the SDF should maintain its separate existence until the Founding Conference, this meant that the SDF became the dominant force in the BSP. In short, Hyndman had out-manoeuvred Grayson. Although Grayson attacked the decision as exceeding the authority of the executive he did not attempt to organise any opposition to Hyndman, failing to attend the Founding Conference and ceasing any involvement by 1913.

The conference itself was marked by a new confrontation, this time between the SDF leadership and the supporters of syndicalism and industrial unionism. Initially it had seemed that the BSP would be able to respond to the industrial militancy of the proletariat. In November 1911, 50,000 copies of a Manifesto to the Railway Workers were distributed, followed at the start of 1912 by 150,000 copies of a manifesto to striking miners. The conference adopted a constitution that seemed to compromise between the different factions within the party, declaring as its methods both “the advocacy of industrial unionism of all workers” and also “the establishment of a militant Socialist Party in Parliament”. However, the debate at the conference showed that this masked a sharp division between the old leadership of the SDF, who wanted to keep the industrial and political struggles separate, and those sympathetic to industrial unionism who wanted to give a greater emphasis to the industrial struggles. Leonard Hall, one of the leading supporters of industrial unionism within the BSP, declared that “It was up to the British Socialist Party to declare identity with the new industrial movement” and that “industrial action and political action should be a case of plus not versus” (quoted Kendal op.cit p42). Quelch, Hyndmans’s closest ally, attacked this as a “gross impertinence” to the Trades Union Congress and an intervention by Hyndman helped to defeat the resolution proposed by Hall by 100 votes to 46.

Prior to the first Annual Conference Justice had already attacked syndicalism and industrial unionism as “A recrudescence of the parasitical anarchism which infected the socialist movement in this country some twenty years ago” (quoted in Crick, op.cit. p246).  Following the conference, Hyndman launched a direct campaign against the industrial unionists. In October the Executive issued a manifesto on Political Action and Direct Action which repeated the attacks on industrial unionism. Two members of the Executive, Hall and Smart not only stated that they had not signed the manifesto, but also claimed that it had been altered without their knowledge. Hall and Smart resigned from the Executive, neither attended the 1913 conference and Smart left the BSP with other supporters of industrial unionism, some of whom joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP).

Conclusion

The impact on the BSP was dramatic. By its second conference membership had collapsed to just over 15,000, less than the membership previously claimed by the SDF. In fact, by 1913, the potential which had existed, not only for uniting the socialist organisations but also for linking the political and industrial struggles into a coherent whole, had been destroyed. While the manoeuvres of Hyndman played a central role in this, in keeping with the parasitic and destructive role he had played within the workers’ movement for the last three decades, the fundamental reason was the overall state of the workers’ movement in Britain. This was a legacy of the past failures of the movement that we have traced in this series. These failures had led to a situation where the movement was defined on the one hand by the opportunism, reformism and class collaboration of the ILP and the Labour Party and, on the other, by the sectarianism of the SDF, which was perpetuated in the groups that split from it, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the SLP. When the working class launched its militant struggles to defend its interests, its efforts were also marked by a tendency to reject political action, embodied in the growth of syndicalism. One particular factor was the repeated failure of opposition elements to put up a fight against Hyndman. The SLP was a premature split. Grayson gave up when his personal ambitions were thwarted. The syndicalist and industrial unionist faction in the BSP similarly failed to struggle, possibly reflecting their own underestimation of the need for organisation. However, the opposition elements remained within the BSP, grouped particularly around Theodore Rothstein and Zelda Kahan, who defended an internationalist position against the militarism and chauvinism of the Hyndman leadership. They were to play a significant role as the First World War developed. It is to the war and its impact on the workers’ movement that we will turn in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 233 (April 2000)

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 was a decisive moment in history. Not only did it mark the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence but it was also the point at which large parts of the workers’ movement betrayed the working class and went over to the camp of the bourgeoisie. In country after country the social democratic parties and the trade unions, built up with so much struggle and sacrifice over the preceding decades, rallied to the national flag and called on the proletariat to sacrifice itself on the altar of capitalism. The final two parts of this series examine the response of the movement in Britain to the war.

The weakness of the workers’ movement in the face of war

The question of war has always been an important one for the working class, not least because the proletariat has been slaughtered time and again in the interests of the exploiters. Marx and Engels closely followed and analysed the military rivalries and wars of the ruling class. The First International actively followed both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Second International, faced with the rising tide of militarism that marked the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, repeatedly discussed the response of the working class to war at its international congresses (see parts 8 and 9 of this series in WR 225 and 226). The Stuttgart Congress of 1907 adopted a resolution that called on the working class “to use every effort to prevent war by all the means which seem to them most appropriate” and, if war were to break out “to intervene to bring it promptly to an end, and with all their energies to use the political and economic crisis created by the war to rouse the populace from its slumbers and to hasten the fall of capitalist domination”. A minority within the International, led by Jean Jaures and Keir Hardie argued for a general strike to prevent war. The majority, including figures like Bebel, Guesde and Plekhanov opposed this position as unrealistic. Trotsky, writing in 1914, argued that in war “the social democrats come face to face with the concentrated power of the government, backed by a powerful military machine” (quoted in Braunthal, History of the International 1914-1943, p4).

The main organisations of the British workers’ movement had a long involvement with the International but showed themselves to be confused and divided over the question of war. One part, under the leadership of Keir Hardie, supported the idea of general strikes as we saw above. Another part, led by H. M. Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and subsequently the British Socialist Party (BSP), and Robert Blatchford, editor of The Clarion, were ardent patriots who had long warned of the ‘threat’ posed by Germany. The smaller socialist organisations, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) were hostile to working with most other organisations, the International included, so played no part in the discussion. In fact, participation in the International often hid the reality that the international situation was not considered that important by the main workers organisations, the Labour Party and the trade unions. Thus, Hardie’s support for the use of the general strike to prevent mobilisation had no consequences for his actual practice of reformism and opportunism. The experience of the Boer war had already shown that the main workers’ organisations in Britain had no understanding of internationalism other than at the level of rhetoric and thus no ability to fight the tendency towards war by the only means possible: intensifying the class struggle. As we said in WR 225, these lessons were not lost on the British ruling class. The outbreak of the war was to show that the weaknesses evident at the start of the century had not just persisted but were actually deeper.

The Labour Party and the unions cross the class line

In the period leading up to the war both the socialist movement and the radical wing of the ruling class were loud in their opposition to war and to the foreign policy of the government. The 1912 Labour Party conference had denounced the policy of the Government as anti-German and, despite official denials, it was widely suspected that a secret deal guaranteeing British support for France had tied Britain into the Franco-Russian alliance. In late July 1914, as the crisis was reaching its climax, the British section of the International issued a manifesto under the names of Hardie and Glasier denouncing the threat of war and calling for mass demonstrations. These were held on 1st August in many of the major cities of Britain, with resolutions adopted calling on the government to make every effort for peace. This reflected the lack of any objective analysis behind the rhetoric. Very rapidly after the declaration of war the Labour Party and the unions gave it their open support. The class war was put on hold in order to give the imperialist war free rein.

Ramsay MacDonald, then leader of the Labour Party, after opposing the declaration of war in the House of Commons, resigned the leadership of the party to make way for the openly pro-war Henderson. However, in practice MacDonald, like the other ‘pacifist’ leaders of the Independent Labour Party, kept his principles pure by putting them aside for the duration: “…we cannot go back now, nor can we turn to the right or the left. We must go straight through. History will in due time apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory” (quoted in Tiltman, James Ramsay MacDonald, p96). Keir Hardie was even more explicit: “A nation at war must be united… With the boom of the enemy’s guns within earshot of the lads who have gone forth to fight their country’s battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home” (quoted in Cole and Postgate, The Common People, p507). MacDonald joined the recruiting campaign, as did the party’s only national organiser.

The trade unions did not respond immediately at the start of the war. In late August, the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC called for an end to strikes currently underway and for its constituent unions to ensure that any subsequent disputes should be settled by agreement. In fact, disputes were already sharply declining, from 100 at the start of August to about 20 at the end of the month. On 2 September the Parliamentary Committee published a manifesto supporting the war and welcoming the decision of Labour to support the recruitment campaign. The manifesto also indicated a willingness to accept conscription.

While their declarations of support for the war showed that these organisations had gone over to the ruling class, the full significance of this can only be understood by tracing subsequent developments that led to their integration into the state. This had been the aim of the most intelligent parts of the ruling class for many years. We have already shown how the leadership of the Liberal Party sought to draw the Labour Party towards the state by agreeing a secret deal to share out some seats (see part 7 in WR 222). Significant parts of the Fabian Society, in particular Sydney Webb, had worked assiduously towards this aim. The culmination of their efforts came after the war with the adoption of a new ‘socialist’ platform (containing the famous clause IV) drafted by Webb, and Labour’s transformation into the second party after the Tories as large numbers of Liberals changed allegiance.

The integration of the Labour Party into the state

The major role given to the Labour Party was not direct recruitment for the army but the containment of the working class by acting as its champion. One of the main vehicles for this in the first years of the war was the War Emergency National Workers’ Committee (WENWC) which was formed in the first few days of the war (arising in fact from a meeting originally called to organise opposition to the war). It included trade union leaders, members of the Labour Party, the ILP, the BSP and the Fabians. One of its features was that it included both ‘super-patriots’, like Hyndman and ‘opponents’ of the war as well as ‘sane patriots’ like Webb. This unity was its great strength; but it wasn’t a unity that protected the interests of the working class as it pretended in its public announcements, but a unity that protected the interests of the ruling class by containing working class concerns and anger. Its activities appear prosaic and even benign, being concerned with things like food and rent controls, rates of poor relief as well as individual cases of hardship. However, its first statement made it clear that it stood for a strengthening of the state: “The nation is at the beginning of a crisis which demands thorough and drastic action by the state and the municipalities” (quoted in Harrison, ‘The War Emergency Workers National Committee’, in Briggs and Saville, Essays in Labour History, p225). An attempt was made to hide this with a radical smokescreen calling for the ‘conscription of riches’.

As the war progressed and the state began to organise production and the workforce more effectively, the WENWC became less significant. In 1915 Henderson joined the coalition government as a Cabinet Minister. When Lloyd George came to power more Labour MPs joined the government, one union leader being the Minister of Labour and another MP Food Controller. Lloyd George was very clear about the importance of the ‘Labour Movement’ as a whole to the war: “Had Labour been hostile, the war could not have been carried on very effectively. Had Labour been lukewarm, victory would have been secured with increased and increasing difficulty” (quoted in Williams, Fifty Years March, p230).

The integration of the unions

The trade unions strongly supported the war throughout its duration. At the 1915 TUC Conference a resolution in support of the war was passed with only seven votes against. In 1916 it opposed the call for an International Labour Conference because it included socialists from ‘enemy’ countries. More significantly still, it actively supported measures to control the working class and increase the level of exploitation.

From 1915 on the unions worked with the Committee on Production appointed by the government. The Committee made recommendations to relax trade practices and was also given powers to arbitrate in disputes in order to prevent industrial action. This led to the Treasury Agreement of March 1915 when the unions agreed to suspend industrial action for the duration of the war and to take measures to increase output. The unions and government were cautious in the implementation of the Agreement in order not to anger the workers. The decision by the government some months later to make the terms compulsory through the introduction of the Munitions of War Act allowed the unions to maintain the notion that they were independent representatives of the interests of their members. The government prepared the ground with a campaign attacking workers for impeding production. In reality the National Labour Advisory Council, which had been set up to mediate between government and unions, and included trade unionists amongst it members, was asked by the government to draft the Bill. The Act prohibited strikes and lockouts unless 21 days notice had been given. It also established ‘controlled’ workplaces; here workers could only leave if granted a certificate allowing them to do so.

As the war progressed and opposition and working class militancy grew, the unions joined in the campaigns promising a bright future. The TUC participated in the work of the Committee on Reconstruction, giving its support to the Whitley Report that proposed measures to increase state control, such as the establishment of Joint Industrial Councils and the regulation of wages in certain industries.

A victory for the bourgeoisie

1914 marked the point at which the Labour Party and the trade unions joined the bourgeoisie. However, the dynamic had existed before 1914 and continued afterwards. The bourgeoisie had long worked to corrupt individual union and Labour leaders but now it was the organisations themselves that they captured. These developments were not the result of the betrayals of the leaders but expressed the conscious transformation of instruments created by the working class into weapons to oppress them. Ultimately, they were a consequence of the change in historic period. The ascendancy of the Labour Party after 1918 and its ‘conversion’ to socialism were a consequence of its change in class character. Similarly, the extension of the vote that followed the war was not a step forward for the working class but a reflection of the new reality that bourgeois democracy could no longer be of any use to the working class but was a great deal of use to the bourgeoisie. Working class interests could now only be defended outside of and against both the unions and the Labour Party.

The outbreak of war did not, nonetheless, mark the death of the working class movement in Britain. Revolutionary voices were still raised, both from within organisations that were part of the Labour Party (it was not possible to join the Labour Party as an individual member at this point) and from those opposed to it. This political struggle will be examined in the final part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 236 (July/August 2000)

The previous, penultimate part [137] of this series (WR 236) began an examination of the response of the workers’ movement in Britain to the First World War with an account of the betrayal of the working class by the Labour Party and the unions. These organisations, in calling on workers to die for capitalism, crossed the class line into the camp of the bourgeoisie and became the enemies of the working class. This next, and final, part of the series considers the response of the other political organisations of the working class to the outbreak of war.

Lenin’s analysis of the workers’ movement

In 1917 Lenin published the pamphlet The tasks of the proletariat in our revolution which included an analysis of the response of the international working class movement to the war. He identified three distinct trends within the movement:

• Firstly, the ‘social chauvinists’ who supported the war in the name of ‘defence of the fatherland’. These comprised “the majority of the official leaders of the official Social-Democratic Parties in all countries” (Lenin on Britain, p282). Lenin was unequivocal in his judgement: “These people are our class enemies. They have gone over to the bourgeoisie” (ibid).
• Secondly, the ‘Centre’, which “consists of people who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true internationalists” (ibid).
• Thirdly, the ‘true internationalists’ whose “distinctive feature is its complete break with both social-chauvinism and ‘Centrism’, and its gallant revolutionary struggle against its own imperialist government and its own imperialist bourgeoisie. Its principle is ‘Our chief enemy is at home’” (p284).

Above all, Lenin insisted that this analysis was dynamic, that it was based on the actions not the words of individuals or organisations: “It is not a question of shades of opinion, which certainly exist even amongst the lefts. It is a question of trend. The thing is that it is not easy to be an internationalist in deed during a terrible imperialist war […] Those who confine themselves to ‘demanding’ that bourgeois governments should conclude peace or ‘ascertain the will of the people for peace’, etc, are actually slipping into reforms. For, objectively, the problem of war can only be solved in a revolutionary way” (p286). It is this method that underpins the analysis that follows.

British Socialist Party

The social-chauvinist and internationalist trends were sharply opposed in the British Socialist Party (BSP), leading eventually to a split. In this the war only brought to a head tensions that had existed in the BSP from its creation and which had already done much to destroy its potential to act as the pole of regroupment for the revolutionary forces of the working class in Britain (see part 13 of this series in WR 233).

One constant source of tension was Hyndman’s nationalism and jingoism, which had led him to call for Britain to increase its navy in order to counter the ‘German menace’. He was not alone in such views, being joined not only by his clique in the leadership of the BSP (and prior to that the Social Democratic Federation) but also by Robert Blatchford, editor of The Clarion newspaper and author of several books on ‘socialism’. Opposition came to a head at the 1911 conference of the SDF and again at the first conference of the BSP in 1912. At the 1912 conference Hyndman lost control of the Executive and in December that year the Executive passed a resolution denouncing German and British imperialism and rejecting any calls for increased military spending. However, the internationalists failed to push home their advantage, the resolution was suspended at the following executive meeting and a compromise voted at the conference of May 1913, which also saw the Hyndman clique regain control of the Executive. This did not bring the struggles in the BSP to an end; instead they began to focus again on the issue of control of the party with Petroff and Maclean leading attempts to overturn Hyndman’s domination.

However, the outbreak of war revealed the extent of the internationalists’ failure. On 12 August Justice published a manifesto, War, the Workers and Social Democracy that supported the war and merely called on the government to ease the lot of the working class. In September, the Executive declared that “the party naturally desires to see the prosecution of the war to a successful issue” (Justice, 17/09/14, quoted in Kendall The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900-21, p88) and called on party members to participate in the recruitment campaign. This statement was adopted by the whole Executive, including FC Fairchaild who had previously been part of the internationalist opposition and Albert Inkpin who had close links to it. The hesitations of the internationalist opposition allowed Hyndman to take the initiative and win over, for the time being, the centrist tendency represented by Fairchild and Inkpin.

However, a true internationalist position was taken by some elements within the BSP. Many branches demanded the statement in favour of recruiting be withdrawn. The lead was taken by the Glasgow branch, of which John Maclean was the most prominent member. Its response to the declaration of war was to take the offensive, not only in holding public meetings in the city, but also sending one of its militants to speak to workers in the munitions factories. Maclean replied to the Executive’s manifesto with a letter to Justice in which he declared “Our first business is to hate the British capitalist system that, with ‘business as usual’, means the continued robbery of the workers” (quoted in Milton, John Maclean, p81). He went on to argue that a war between Britain and Germany was an inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism and had been prepared for by the ruling class of both countries.

The Glasgow branch intervened at many levels. It maintained an active and uncompromising propaganda against the war, not only continuing its main weekly public meetings, where it drew together anti-war elements from other organisation, such as the ILP, but also producing its own paper, the Vanguard, to counter the jingoism of Justice. It also continued to run a series of classes in marxism and related matters to educate new militants. It participated in the immediate struggles of the working class, such as the campaign to ensure the maintenance of dependants of soldiers. More significantly, it was actively involved, alongside militants of the Socialist Labour Party and the ILP, in the first expressions of industrial unrest that were eventually to escalate throughout the Clyde. Within the BSP, it participated in the struggle against the domination of Hyndman, working with elements in London where other opposition elements were regrouped around Fairchild and Joseph Fineberg, although these elements still maintained a centrist position on the war itself.

The Independent Labour Party

At the start of the war the ILP produced a manifesto in which it disassociated itself from the war without actually opposing it: “out of the darkness and depth we hail our working class comrades in every land. Across the roar of the guns, we send sympathy and greetings to the German Socialists…They are no enemies of ours, but faithful friends…In tears and blood and bitterness, the greater Democracy will be born. With steadfast faith we greet the future” (quoted in Dowse Left in the Centre, p20). Within the party a number of different positions were taken but, unlike the BSP, these did not come into open conflict. This lack of conflict within the ILP was not an expression of strength but of weakness, of its attempts to mediate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the name of unity. This was exemplified by the likes of MacDonald and Keir Hardie who, as we showed in the previous part of this series, mouthed pacifist phrases whilst supporting recruitment and calling for victory. MacDonald actually became a leading figure of the opposition and toured the country making speeches calling for a negotiated peace. He repeatedly had his meetings broken up and was subject to a campaign of abuse in the press.

Dowse, in his history of the ILP, argues that as well as a minority openly in favour of the war, there were four different opposition strands, ranging from Christian pacifist to socialist. The latter recognised that the war was capitalist but failed to draw the conclusions that the only way to oppose it was through revolutionary struggle. A tendency common to all of the strands within was to attach themselves to other organisations. MacDonald and his faction worked closely with various bourgeois liberal organisations, such as the Union of Democratic Control, which campaigned for a negotiated peace and greater democratic control over foreign policy, and the National Council for Civil Liberties. Participation in the UDC was very widespread in the ILP with the two organisations, especially at the higher levels, increasingly having common membership. Other elements in the party, including those like Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway who recognised the war as capitalist, were drawn towards pacifism, participating in the formation of the No-Conscription Fellowship in November 1914 which supported conscientious objectors and worked closely with the Quaker movement. Of 1,191 people tried for conscientious objection, 805 were members of the ILP. The War Emergency Workers National Committee also drew many elements into an inter-classist body whose aim was to ameliorate the situation of the working class without actually opposing the war.

The organisations described above pulled the ILP towards the right and the bourgeoisie. In other areas, notably Scotland where the tradition of the ILP was already more radical, working class militancy and the example of organisations like the SLP and BSP, pulled it towards the left. ILP anti-war militants took part in public meetings organised by the BSP in Glasgow. Its militants were also active within the rent strikes and the campaign against the dilution of labour in the shipyards of the Clyde, although some leading elements, like John Wheatley and David Kirkwood, seem to have played a questionable role in brokering compromises between the sides.

The Socialist Labour Party

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) became one of the most determined and active opponents of the war. In September 1914 it declared in its paper The Socialist: “Our attitude is neither pro-German not pro-British, but anti-capitalist and all that it stands for in every nation of the world. The capitalist class of all nations are our real enemies, and it is against them that we direct all our attacks” (quoted in Challinor The Origins of British Bolshevism, p125).

However, the outbreak of the war seems to have caused some divisions and serious confusion in the party. Tom Bell, a militant of the SLP, describes three different positions: “The first line led by MacManus and myself, was definite, open hostility to the war; the second led by…John W Muir, was that in the event of invasion we should be prepared for National Defence; the third line was to look upon war with an academic interest, as an event of world importance that would hasten the inevitable collapse of capitalism!” (Bell, Pioneering Days, p102). Bell goes on to argue that the impact of events rapidly united the party around the first position of open hostility. By January 1915 The Socialist was arguing that “As revolutionary socialists, we are bound to make the most of whatever opportunities present themselves for carrying our revolutionary principles into effect, and this war, involving as it does the working class of the leading countries in Europe in common disaster, may prove a blessing in disguise by providing them with the opportunity of throwing off the yoke of their common oppressor” (quoted Challinor, op.cit. p126). They argued that the army contained many revolutionaries forged by the struggles of the previous years and called on the working class to enlist in order to receive training and arms to use against their exploiters in the class war. In practice its militants stayed out of the army, avoiding conscription when it came in so that they could defend their organisation and participate in the struggle at home. The SLP maintained its propaganda work, despite attacks on its militants selling papers and attempts to disrupt its meetings. Its militants also played an important part in the industrial unrest than began to build in the Clydeside from early 1915 on. When conscription was introduced many went on the run, joining those from other organisations in the ‘flying corps’, in order to continue the struggle.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

The SPGB is unique in that the start of the war produced no divisions in its ranks. From the first it was unequivocal in its denunciation of the war which it described as “this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class”. It declared that “no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood” and concluded “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism” (quoted in Perrin, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, p43-4). Subsequent issues of their paper, the Socialist Standard, reiterated and developed this position. They denounced the campaign about atrocities committed by the Germans, pointing out that Britain and its allies were every bit as brutal in their treatment of native peoples and the working class. They showed that the war arose from the economic rivalries of the great capitalist powers and that victory for Britain would not mean more jobs for the working class. They denounced all the religious cant from the Ministers and Priests and exposed the pressure being put on working class men to enlist. Against the recruitment campaign they called on the working class to “Enlist in the army of the Social Revolution. Your OWN class needs you…” (Socialist Standard, October 1914).

However, the force of the SPGB’s words was not matched by its actions. Its opposition to the war remained at the general level, the articles appearing every month made no attempt to analyse the development of the situation, either at the front or at home. Its advice to the working class was not to defend itself or struggle directly against the war, but “stay at home and think” (ibid). In keeping with this, alongside articles on the war, they maintained general educational articles, such as the series on ‘The purpose and method of colonisation’. Their press and their public meetings were their principle activities. The Socialist Standard was allowed to publish throughout the war but their public meetings, like those of other socialist organisations, were regularly attacked. As early as November 1914 they announced a reduction in the number of meetings and in January 1915 their complete suspension. They rejected the idea of struggling to maintain them, arguing that “We have been told that we should have gone on in defiance of the powers that be till we went down in a blaze of fireworks. Our view however was one dictated by our avowed principles. We have always held that supreme power is in the hands of those who control the political machine. The most we could hope for by going on was to prove our contentions by acting in opposition to them” (quoted in Perrin, op.cit. p50). Little effort seems to have been made to compensate for this by increasing sales of literature; no pamphlets were published during the war and there is reference to only one leaflet being produced in the books on the party. The SPGB, while opposing its members enlisting, placed responsibility on the individual. A number registered as conscientious objectors while others went on the run. When conscription was introduced some members were allowed to go because of their financial situation.

This quiescent attitude at a time when revolutionaries had a duty to struggle in every way possible prevented the SPGB from participating in the internationalist trend in the First World War, a failing which it continued in World War Two.

Entering a new period

The outbreak of war in August 1914 ruthlessly exposed the real state of the workers’ movement in Britain. The immediate acquiescence of the majority of the working class to the war and the demands of the state, showed not just the weight of bourgeois ideology on it but also the failure of the revolutionary movement to effectively combat that ideology. This failure fundamentally expressed the influence of bourgeois ideology within the workers’ movement itself but also the legacy of past failures to create a revolutionary party and the consequent sectarianism and dispersal of revolutionary forces. The betrayal of the working class by the mass organisations, the Labour Party and the Unions, and by elements in most other organisations was the practical result.

This did not mean that revolutionary voices were completely extinguished but those that were raised were not only extremely weak and isolated but also deeply confused and threatened by the weight of the prevailing ideology. There was a tendency still to make concessions to the bourgeoisie by compromising what was said or done.

The struggle for the class party was not ended by the war, but when it was renewed it was in a new historical period framed by capitalism’s entry into its decadence and driven by the development of the revolutionary wave.

North

First published in World Revolution 237 (September 2000)