"Enough is enough". This cry has reverberated from one strike to the next over the last few weeks in the UK. This massive movement, dubbed "The Summer of Discontent", referring back to the "Winter of Discontent" in 1979, has involved workers in more and more sectors each day: the railways, the London Underground, British Telecom, the Post Office, the dockworkers in Felixstowe (a key port in the south east of Britain), refuse workers and bus drivers across various parts of the country, those at Amazon, etc. Today it's transport workers, tomorrow it may be the health workers and teachers.

All the reporters and commentators are referring to this as the biggest working class action in Britain for decades; only the huge strikes of 1979 produced a bigger and more widespread movement. Action on this scale in a country as large as Britain is not only significant locally, it is an event of international significance, a message to the exploited of every country.

With attacks on the living standards of all those exploited, the class struggle is only answer

Decade on decade, as in other developed countries, successive British governments have relentlessly attacked living and working conditions with one consequence: to make those conditions more precarious and flexible in order to improve national competitiveness and profit. These attacks have reached such a level in recent years that infant mortality in Britain has had "an unprecedented increase since 2014" (according to the medical journal BJM Open[1]).

This is why the current surge in inflation is a real tsunami. With a 10.1% year-on-year price increase in July, 13% expected in October, 18% in January, the damage is devastating. The NHS has warned that "Many people could be forced to choose between skipping meals to be able to heat their homes, or having to live in the cold and damp instead". With gas and electricity prices rising by 54% on April 1st and 78% on October 1st, the situation is effectively untenable.

The extent of the mobilisation of the British workers today is finally a match for the attacks they are facing, when in recent decades, suffering from the setbacks of the Thatcher years, they did not have the strength to respond.

In the past, British workers have been among the most militant in the world. The "Winter of Discontent" of 1979, based on the tally of strike days recorded, was the most massive movement in any country after May 1968 in France, even greater than in the "Hot Autumn" of 1969 in Italy. The Thatcher government managed to suppress its enormous combativity in a lasting way by inflicting a series of bitter defeats on the workers, particularly during the miners' strike in 1985. This defeat marked a turning point with a prolonged decline of workers' combativity in the UK; it even heralded the general decline of workers' combativity across the world. Five years later, in 1990, with the collapse of the USSR, fraudulently described as a "socialist" regime, and the no less false announcement of the "death of communism" and the "definitive triumph of capitalism", a knock-out punch was landed on workers worldwide. Since then, deprived of a perspective, their confidence and class identity eroded, the workers in Britain, more severely than anywhere else, have suffered from the attacks of successive governments without being able to really fight back.

But, in the face of the bourgeoisie's attacks, anger has been building up and today, the working class in Britain is showing that it is once again prepared to fight for its dignity, to reject the sacrifices that are constantly demanded by capital. Furthermore, it is indicative of an international dynamic: last winter, strikes started to appear in Spain and the US; this summer, Germany and Belgium also experienced walkouts; and now, commentators are predicting "an explosive social situation" in France and Italy in the coming months. It is not possible to predict where and when the workers' combativity will re-emerge on a massive scale in the near future, but one thing is certain: the scale of the current workers' mobilisation in Britain is a significant historical event. The days of passivity and submission are past. The new generations of workers are raising their heads.

The class struggle in the face of imperialist war

The importance of this movement is not just the fact that it is putting an end to a long period of passivity. These struggles are developing at a time when the world is confronted with a large-scale imperialist war, a war which pits Russia against Ukraine on the ground but which has a global impact with, in particular, a mobilisation of NATO member countries. A commitment in weapons but also at the economic, diplomatic and ideological levels. In the Western countries, the governments are calling for sacrifices to "defend freedom and democracy". In concrete terms, this means that the proletarians of these countries must tighten their belts even more to "show their solidarity with Ukraine" - in fact with the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and the ruling class of the Western countries.

The governments have unashamedly justified their economic attacks by using the catastrophe of global warming and the risks of energy and food shortages ("the worst food crisis ever" according to the UN Secretary General). They call for "sobriety" and declare the end of "abundance" (to use the iniquitous words of French President Macron). But at the same time they are strengthening their war economy: global military spending reached $2,113 trillion in 2021! While the UK is among the top five states in military spending, since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, every country in the world has accelerated its arms race, including Germany, a first since 1945!

Governments are now calling for "sacrifices to fight inflation". This is a sinister joke when all they are doing is making it worse by escalating their spending on war. This is the future that capitalism and its competing national bourgeoisies are promising: more wars, more exploitation, more destruction, more misery.

Furthermore, this is what the workers’ strikes in Britain point to, even if the workers are not always fully conscious of it: the refusal to sacrifice more and more for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal to sacrifice for the national economy and for the war effort, the refusal to accept the logic of this system which leads humanity towards catastrophe and, ultimately, to its destruction. The alternatives are clear: socialism or the destruction of humanity.

The need to avoid the traps of the bourgeoisie

The workers’ ability to take this stand is all the more significant given that the working class in the UK has been bludgeoned in recent years by populist ideology, which sets the exploited against each other, divides them into ‘natives’ and 'foreigners', blacks and whites, men and women, to the point of making them believe that the insular retreat into Brexit could be a solution to their problems.

But there are other, far more pernicious and dangerous traps set by the bourgeoisie in the path of the working class struggles.

The vast majority of the current strikes have been called by the trade unions, who present themselves as the most effective body for organising the struggle and defending the exploited. The unions are most effective, yes, but only in defending the bourgeoisie and organising the defeat of the working class.

It's enough to remember to what extent Thatcher's victory was made possible thanks to the sabotage of the unions. In March 1984, when 20,000 job cuts were abruptly announced in the coal industry, the miners' reaction was immediate: on the first day of the strike, 100 pits out of 184 were closed down. But a union corset of steel would quickly encircle strikers. The railway workers' and seamens' unions gave token support to the strike. The powerful dockers' union was reduced to making two late calls for strike action. The TUC (the national congress of trade unions) refused to support the strike. The electricians' and steelworkers' unions opposed it. In short, the unions actively sabotaged any possibility of a common struggle. But above all, the miners' union, the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers), completed this dirty work by restricting the miners to futile pitched battles with police in the attempt to prevent the movement of coal from the coking depots (this lasted for more than a year!). Thanks to this union sabotage, to these sterile and endless confrontations with the police, the repression of the strike was carried out with intense violence. This defeat would be a defeat for the whole working class.

If today, in the UK, these same unions use a radical language and pretend to be advocating solidarity between the various sectors, even brandishing the threat of a general strike, it's because they are alive to the concerns of the working class and they want to take charge of what drives the workers, their anger, their combativity and their feeling that we have to fight together, so that they are better able to sterilise and divert this dynamic. In reality, on the ground, they are orchestrating the strikes separately; behind the unitary slogan of higher wages for all, the different sectors are locked up in and separated in corporatist negotiations; above all, they take great care to avoid any real discussions between the workers from the different sectors. There are no real cross-industry general assemblies anywhere. So don't be fooled when Liz Truss, the front-runner to replace Boris Johnson, says she "won't let Britain be held to ransom by militant trade unionists" if she becomes Prime Minister. She is simply following in the footsteps of her role model, Margaret Thatcher; she is giving credibility to the unions by presenting them as the most combative representatives of the workers in order to better, together, lead the working class to defeat.

In France, in 2019, faced with the rise of combativity and the outburst of solidarity between the generations, the unions had already used the same stratagem by advocating the "convergence of struggles", a substitute for a unitary movement, where the demonstrators who marched in the street were grouped by sector and by company.

In the UK, as elsewhere, in order to build a balance of forces that will enable us to resist the relentless attacks on our living and working conditions, which will become even more violent tomorrow, we must, wherever we can, come together to debate and put forward the methods of struggle that have made the working class strong and enabled it, at certain moments in its history, to shake the bourgeoisie and its system, through:

- searching for support and solidarity beyond “our” factory, "our" company, "our" sector of activity, "our" town, "our" region, "our" country;

- the autonomous organisation of the workers' struggles, in particular through general assemblies, and preventing the control of the struggle by the unions, the "so-called specialists" in the organisation of workers' struggles;

- developing the widest possible discussion on the general needs of the struggle, on the positive lessons to be drawn from past struggles - including the defeats, because there will be defeats, but the greatest defeat is to suffer attacks without reacting to them; the entry into struggle is the first victory of the exploited.

If the return of widespread strikes in the UK marks the return of the combativity of the world proletariat, it is also vital that the weaknesses which signalled its defeat in 1985 are overcome: corporatism and illusions in the trade unions. The autonomy of the struggle, its unity and solidarity are the indispensable yardsticks in the preparation for tomorrow's struggles!

And for that, we have to recognise ourselves as members of the same class, a class whose struggle is united by solidarity: the working class. Today's struggles are indispensable not only because the working class is defending itself against the attacks but also because they point the way to the recovery of class identity worldwide, to preparing the overthrow of this capitalist system, which can only bring us impoverishment and catastrophes of all kinds.

There are no solutions within capitalism: neither to the destruction of the planet, nor to wars, nor to unemployment, nor to precariousness, nor to poverty. Only the struggle of the world proletariat together supported by all the oppressed and exploited of the world can open the way to the alternative.

The massive strikes in Britain are a call to action for proletarians everywhere

International Communist Current, 27 August 2022

In our article on the extreme confusion reigning in the anarchist milieu in response to the war in Ukraine[1] we showed that “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.”

The same kind of political conflict has also been revealed in the group Angry Workers of the World, which can best be described as a “workerist” group in the tradition of Italian operaisimo, not exactly anarchist but very close to the anarchist milieu in its ideas and methods[2]. As with much of the anarchist milieu, we would place the AWW in what Lenin referred to as the political “marsh”, an unstable zone of transition which includes elements on their way towards proletarian positions on the one hand, and others heading towards the camp of capital on the other, with all kinds of confused positions in between.

In WR 389 we recognised that, in opposition to the left wing of capital, as well as to confusions about the “resistance” in Palestinian neighbourhoods put forward by groups like the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Anarchist Communist Group,  the AWW’s statement on the war, was “rather clear in its internationalist stance and provides a lucid rebuttal of any illusions in the mobilisations in the Palestinian neighbourhoods, and the general strike in particular”[3]. But the Ukraine war poses a sterner text for internationalists and it almost immediately provoked sharp divergencies within the AWW, ranging from an open defence of the Ukrainian state (what we call “defencism”) to attempts to maintain internationalist principles and thus to denounce both sides in this imperialist war. The debate, carried out in public on their website, is difficult to follow because few of the contributions to this discussion are signed, and they are scattered around the site; at the same time the arguments in favour of defencism are somewhat convoluted and contradictory, while those broadly in favour of internationalism are by no means free from concessions to leftism and pacifism.

The confused and confusing nature of the debate is recognised in the contribution by KIT, which puts forward the least confused defence of internationalist principles, and is also the only article to be signed:

“To date we have presented a confused picture to our ‘periphery’ who follow the site. If they were expecting a single centrally engineered ‘party line’ then they will have been disappointed and need to look elsewhere, as perhaps they should already have been doing. On the other hand, we have chosen not to make clear to the readers what we are saying/doing collectively or whether there are positions held by different strands. The reality is that, for whatever reason, we are content to publish a series of unascribed articles giving different angles. Militants who relate to us are invited to ‘pay their money and make their choice’”[4].

This is not the place to develop all our criticisms of the AWW's conception of organisation. But they do see themselves at some level as a political organisation and in other debates have shocked out-and-out anarchists by talking about the need for something like a party in a pre-revolutionary situation. But if a political organisation can’t take a clear, collective position (what KIT disparagingly calls a “a party line”) on a vital question like the war in Ukraine, it’s hard to see what is the point of claiming to be a political organisation at all, i.e. one that is more than a loose collection of individuals and which aims to offer a specific level of clarity on the most important issues facing the class struggle. By the same token, a political organisation can and must publish its internal divergencies when they have reached a certain level of clarity, but the very least it can do in such circumstances is to make it clear who is writing, through the signing of contributions (obviously pseudonyms should be used); and if a position represents that of the organisation or only the comrade that signed the article. By contrast, the AWW’s way of presenting this debate seems tailor-made to obscure lines of disagreement, to avoid direct political confrontation and thus the possibility of real clarification; and this avoidance of confrontation is profoundly linked to the AWW’s semi-anarchist approach to the organisation question.

In our view, the war in Ukraine has thus highlighted the deep flaws in the entire organisational approach of the AWW. But in this article, we will focus on the content of the arguments being put forward, above all because they reflect wider discussions going on in the more politicised layers of the working class.

Defending Ukraine: class war in a ‘national’ shell?

The openly defencist position was developed in particular by the author of the following articles:

1. ‘No war but the-class war’. Not a very useful slogan [3]
2. ‘On dogmatism’ - In relation to the war in Ukraine [4]

In the first article, the author writes:

“I want to go back over our experience in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to show that many of the people who started with ‘no war but the class war’ ended up either totally irrelevant to the working class or even worse, on the side of reaction, because of their inability to understand the working class kernel wrapped up in a ‘national flag’ shell.

The problem is that all inter-imperialist wars always contain within them the war between classes. In each situation, militants have to try to understand how these two different wars are overlaid – and this can be very difficult in situations where the working class has no clear voice of its own.

And trying to unravel these two wars is necessary, not just to write nice ‘analysis’, but to know what to do as a working class militant. 

I read many pieces at present which ask the question, what should workers in Ukraine do, and then proceed to give them advice. I’m not saying thinking about this is forbidden, but it seems back to front. The Ukrainian worker has made his or her decision, maybe to get out, maybe to stay and fight. Our question, first and foremost, is, what are we going to do in response to their decisions? But the answer to this is inevitably dependent on the first question – where is the class war within the inter-imperialist war?

No war but the class war, without real investigation, is meaningless”.

The writer then goes on to argue that “within the imperialist war” in the Balkans, the class war expressed itself in a kind of working class “Commune” in Tuzla, where there was little or no support for the ethnic divisions that were being used to tear ex-Yugoslavia apart, and which thus became a haven for refugees from different ethnic groups. Despite the fact that this opposition to ethnic cleansing was, on the surface, carried out under the banner of a multi-ethnic Bosnia, the fact that the citizens of Tuzla included a strong component of miners and other sectors of the industrial working class is cited to show that this was a real expression of the class war, which made it possible to organise a column of “workers’ aid” to the city, in which the author took part. They go on to say: “After the war we produced a book, a record of our efforts and we called it ‘Taking Sides against ethnic cleansing’.  We took sides, while all around us in the UK and Europe people who were guided by ‘No war but the class war’ did nothing but issue sermons about not taking sides and the unity of the working class – empty, meaningless nonsense”. And, while warning that “the situation in Bosnia in the 1990s was different from Ukraine, and you cannot simply transfer our experience of the one on the other”, the conclusion is in fact that you do have to take sides and support the “popular resistance” in Ukraine, in the name of following the “the real movement”. This is shown very clearly in the second article:

“the reality is that the Russian invasion was not met by a coherent working class movement, not anywhere (and it’s curious how the ‘left’ preachers somehow demand/expect Ukrainian workers to act as a coherent class when in the west they themselves are unable to play any significant part in organising a coherent working class movement to fight for its own rights, let alone acting against the invasion).

So what else could most Ukrainian workers do – faced with an invasion that they knew would lead to a brutal and savage occupation (see life in the occupied Donbas)? Yes, some chose to leave, many had already done so – and we should support them too, but most people both couldn’t and wouldn’t….

…Many workers in Ukraine took up arms. Thousands of Ukrainians living in the west went back to fight, and, yes, some left, mostly women and children. But for those who stayed, because there is no significant workers’ movement, they saw no other way but to fight as part of the bourgeois army… For me Ukrainian workers’ resistance to Russian invasion was in their own interest even though they have to fight within the army of the bourgeoisie and increasingly within strategies dictated by the US...”.[5]

Some light on the myth of “popular resistance”, but dimmed by activism

Some of these arguments were answered by the author who published three articles:

1. Fragments of a debate amongst angryworkers on the war Ukraine [5]
2. On the question of ‘armed-resistance’ - more-thoughts on our discussion about the war in Ukraine [6]
3. Working class independence and the war in Ukraine – Thoughts after 100-days of carnage [7]

In answering the argument about “what else can the workers do…”, there is a passage in the third article that stands out:

“There are situations where the subjective and collective development of local workers has been undermined to a degree where they feel compelled to act to the detriment of their longer-term interests as a class.  But then, it is not all about the ‘subjective factor’. Local workers in Ukraine might have the best intentions to fight ‘for their freedom’ and ‘self-organise’, but the global constellation of forces will leave them no scope to escape and remain independent on a militaristic and nationalistic spiral of death. Should we patronise them and ‘support their efforts’, despite the fact that we think that their ‘blossom of emancipation’ will be drenched in blood?”

However, despite this spark of clarity, and despite the warning that “While initially the question ‘what would you do if you were in Ukraine’ was productive, it also quickly turned into a bit of a depoliticised dead-end. What can you do if there is no working class movement on the ground?”[6],the author is not able to criticise the essentially activist approach of the AWW, the search for immediate solutions which ends up blurring class lines. This is most evident in the blatant involvement of the AWW in fronts that include pacifist groups and organisations of the left wing of capital.

Opposition to all forms of pacifism is part of the ABC of revolutionary internationalism. But the author has no objection to the fact that, in their quest for “getting rooted” in the “real movement”, the AWW has “signed up to the call by the Transnational Social Strike Platform as a minimum, though somewhat pacifist, platform of common action, and hope to collaborate practically”[7].

The ICC was present at a recent meeting in which the AWW shared a platform not only with the TSS but also Plan C, some pro-Ukraine activists, and the Trotskyist Group Workers’ Liberty which calls for workers’ militias to volunteer for the war in Ukraine, along the lines of the International Brigades in Spain in the 1930s – a practice which both the Italian and Dutch Communist Left attacked at the time as a means of enrolling the working class in the course towards the second imperialist world war.

The author is also open about the AWW’s relationship with the leftist site People and Nature, even if they are critical of an article (Ukraine: the sources of danger of a wider war [8]) which presents the war in Ukraine “as a war between unequal sides and tactically supports the continuation of arms supply for Ukraine and the fact that western activists fight against the Russian army”. The author of this article, SP, a well-known Trotskyist writer, is described as a “close comrade”.

We don’t intend to dissect these articles in detail, but we should note that they contain other ambiguities and contradictions, notably around the key question of whether revolutionaries should be “in favour” of the defeat of Russia, which is in reality another route to the defence of Ukraine. So, on the one hand, the author criticises “a certain strand of ‘objective progressivism’ within the left that also reverberates within Angry Workers”. The writer seemingly rejects the argument which is summarised as follows “The defeat of the Russian state will objectively be better for the wider working class. The EU is better than a backward dictatorship. Being part of an advanced economic block with a wider range of democratic rights benefits the possibility for the working class to fight future struggles. In the absence of revolution workers should attach themselves to the capitalist block that provides a better foundation for future struggles”. But this critique then appears to be flatly contradicted in the same article, when the writer also says that “Even from a broader political point of view, we could say that the best possible outcome of the war both for the local and international working class is the defeat of the Russian state as the immediate aggressor, the fall of Putin”.[8]

Finally, the author also seems to accept without question a central idea of the article which rejects the “No War but the Class War” position, i.e. that in Tuzla in the 1990s there was indeed a “workers’ third position”, a working class Commune, even if the article argues that no such proletarian alternative has emerged in the Ukraine war.

A clearer internationalist stance, but the real critique of activism is missing

The writer who signs himself KIT has previously been part of the communist left and his article still shows some significant elements of this tradition, notably when he argues that the revolutionary organisation has to be capable of swimming against the stream when the conditions of the class struggle demand it:

“We talk with working class people to better understand the class’s ‘real movement’. To make meaningful use of those conversations into a better understanding of the class struggle a degree of synthesis takes place with other material including previous analyses and frameworks. Why return to such ‘ABC’? We need to understand why the ‘pro-revolutionary minority’ sometimes needs to stand ‘against the stream’ when the majority of our class comrades, even those most directly involved, interpret the world differently and choose different courses of action. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

The article is rather lucid in refuting the idea of a class war within the national war in Ukraine:

“It is abundantly clear that it would be impossible for any TDF (Territorial Defence Forces) unit to act independently on behalf of working people or minorities. We have already seen the standard ruling class attitude during such a period of militarisation – ‘ensure security and order’ and ‘combat subversive activities’. Any move that contravened the war effort would result in the unit being disarmed and dispersed at the very least. In all probability military execution would be the class punishment. It is clear that the Ukrainian war effort depends on the flow of arms, logistical support, training, cyber warfare and finance from NATO via their member states including those in EU and UK. It is unthinkable that those channels would flow if the end recipients were liable to be beyond the control of the local militarised state.

There is also another misleading fantasy that has been peddled around the possible outcome of militants actively supporting the military conflict. Even when the ‘Ukrainian defencists’ concede that militants joining TSF (Télécoms Sans Frontières??) have temporarily backed away from class struggle an argument has emerged that their presence in such forces sows the seeds for the future social revolution. In fact there is no historic precedent pointing to the likelihood of such an outcome”[9].

The last point is then backed up by some historical examples which show that the partisan movements which appeared towards the end of World War Two were entirely implicated in the imperialist fronts and contained no potential for being transformed into instruments of social revolution.

But, as with the previous author we mentioned, KIT seems to have no critique of the AWW’s involvement inthe Transnational Social Strike group, judging in particular by his intervention at an online meeting called by the Communist Workers’ Organisation/Internationalist Communist Tendency soon after the beginning of the war, where he called for internationalists to get involved in this pacifist front. And participating in such fronts opens yet another door to the abandonment of class positions.

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

At the end of our article on internationalism and the conflict in Israel/Palestine, we also noted that the internationalist statements of the ICT and the AWW “seem to have stirred a great deal of online abuse and hatred. But internationalists don’t denounce capitalist wars to be popular. Both in 1914-18 and 1939-45 the internationalist minority who remained firm on their principles faced repression by the state and persecution by nationalist thugs. The defence of internationalism is not judged by its immediate results but by its capacity to provide an orientation which can be taken up in future by movements which really do constitute a proletarian resistance to capitalist war. Thus, those who stood against the dark tide of chauvinism in 1914, like the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists, were preparing the ground for the revolutionary working class uprisings of 1917-18”.

In our view, clarity on the fundamental principles of internationalism also requires clarity on the role of the revolutionary political organisation. In a future article, we will have to return to the link between the AWW’s conception of itself as an organisation and the profound divisions and confusions, and even open betrayals, that have appeared in its ranks in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

Amos

The death of Queen Elizabeth IInd has been the signal for the whole bourgeoisie to whip itself into a frenzy of propaganda, repeating again and again the importance of “duty, sacrifice and resilience” in the “service” of national unity, whether it be out of the mouth of the most right-wing Tory politician or the most left-wing trade union leader, whether from the pages of the reactionary Daily Mail or the liberal Guardian. The Church of England, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the local vicar, has been singing the same tune. Almost everyone in the public eye, everyone who has some privileged connection to the ruling class or wants to have such - academics, novelists, historians, artists, actors, sportsmen, newspaper columnists - are adding their own little contribution to this 10-day long carnival of grief, and in so doing revealing that they are not as independent-minded as they pretend, but lackeys just as much as the liveried flunkeys of the royal family.

But this avalanche of propaganda has a salutary lesson for class conscious workers: despite all its many secondary divisions and conflicts, all parts of the ruling class and state apparatus, left and right, liberal and populist, royalist and trade unionist, unite as one in face of the defence of the nation in which the working class has no stake or interest.

The use of this campaign as a club to beat the working class was highlighted soon after the Queen’s death was announced, when three trade unions involved in the current wave of strikes in Britain – the RMT (rail), the CWU (post) and the TSSA (transport) - announced that they would be suspending planned strike action during the period of national mourning. As the “radical” leader of the RMT, Mick Lynch put it put it: “RMT joins the whole nation in paying its respects to Queen Elizabeth. The planned railway strike action on 15 and 17 September is suspended. We express our deepest condolences to her family, friends and the country.”

The TUC, the leadership of all the trade unions, has postponed its Congress, when it was going to pretend to coordinate the strikes, to October or November.

Respect for national unity in times of crisis has been the hallmark of the unions since 1914 when they served to recruit workers for the imperialist battlegrounds, so this “suspension” of the class struggle is in no way an exception.

Likewise, the Labour Party, from the right to the left, has always sworn its allegiance to the constitutional monarch. The left-wing former leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn - who was avidly supported by the Trotskyists and other leftists - declared that in 2017 that “the abolition of the monarchy was not on his agenda”, and he reappeared a few days ago to attend one of the official tributes to the Queen.

The bourgeoisie never misses the chance to benefit from a crisis and is hoping that the hymns and sermons, the processions, the gun salutes, the moving tributes, will instill, in a combative working class, the importance of giving up everything for the national interest, that is, for profits and imperialist wars.

And while the ruling class seeks to use this campaign to hide the class divisions upon which this society is founded, it also aims to paper over some of the deep cracks in its own imperialist position - cracks amplified by the rise of populism and the Brexit disaster, which threatens the existence of the United Kingdom itself. No accident that, faced with the threat of Scottish independence and the disintegration of Britain’s relationship with Norther Ireland, the somber ceremonies of the week of mourning began with the parade the Queen’s coffin through the streets of Edinburgh, and that the first task of the new King was to visit Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland.

But what of the world bourgeoisie, that is the ruling class of those nations in deadly competition with Britain, why are they also joining in this masquerade of mourning and flying their own flags at half-mast? Even Vladimir Putin has sent his condolences.

The answer is that the Queen not only represented national continuity, stability and longevity for the British ruling class, but also for world capitalism as a whole, for every bourgeoisie faced with its class enemy, the proletariat. She and the British royal family was the human, relatable facade of bourgeois order everywhere, obscuring but silently justifying colonial atrocities, imperialist carnage, devastating economic crisis, the exploitation and the pauperisation of the working masses everywhere in the name of unity and service to the “community of nations”.

In a time when world capitalism is collapsing, the reign of Queen Elizabeth was used to symbolise the pretence of fundamental bourgeois order and continuity, the illusion that the present mode of production could continue through thick and thin. But her death in turn is symbolic of the reality of the worsening instability of world capitalism, of the avalanche of catastrophe at all levels.

Feudal remnants in the service of capitalism

When the British bourgeoisie came to power during the English revolution, King Charles 1st, representative and defender of the absolute monarchy, was beheaded in 1649 by the revolutionary parliamentarians. But the ascendant British bourgeoisie subsequently realised that its rule could not be maintained and stabilised through a completely new state machine. The monarchy had to be brought back, along with the long established diplomatic, political and military experience of the aristocracy, but this time limited constitutionally and subservient to bourgeois parliament.

If the bourgeois state rules in the interests of the capitalist ruling class, it nevertheless has to appear as the representative of the whole population, and to pretend that it has always been there since the dawn of time, rather than, as in reality, coming to power relatively recently through a violent revolution. The state must therefore appear as elevated above the interests of the rival classes, in order to prevent society tearing itself apart. The exploiters and war-mongers must not appear as such to the exploited and butchered but ultimately as a family, as flesh and blood, with human feelings, just like you and me[1]. This is where the preservation of feudal institutions, like the monarchy, have had their importance because in capitalist society, where “callous cash payment” rules, wage slavery can be assuaged by the illusion that even they, the exploited, are part of a national family. 

The constitutional monarchy of Britain has been perfecting this facade of patriarchal unity for over three centuries. But the contradictions of world capitalism are reaching the level at which even the facades are threadbare. The fawning commentators on the demise of Queen Elizabeth IInd recognise that her heirs will not be able to replicate the illusions of her reign. The new King, who as Prince of Wales was always prone to meddling in politics, has never been popular with certain parts of the bourgeoisie and will thus find it much harder to pose as a symbol of unity above political divisions.

The present carnival of national unity occurs when the inter-capitalist carnage in Ukraine, in which imperialist Britain is an enthusiastic player, has revealed the hypocrisy and anachronism of all national defence and patriotic pride. The future lies with a class with no national interests, an international class: the world proletariat.

Como

 

In preparing for the general election in Brazil, the bourgeoisie has been intensifying its democratic propaganda, highlighting the duel between Lula, representing the democratic face of the left, and the current president Bolsonaro, a sort of South American Trump, a caricature of right wing populism.

The arguments presented by the political parties and the candidates in the race to win votes boil down to this: elections are the moment when the “citizens” are faced with a choice, upon which depends the evolution of society and thus their future living conditions. Thanks to democracy, each citizen has the possibility of playing a part in the great decisions of society. The vote is an instrument of political and social transformation, which will define the future of the country.

But this is not the reality, since society is divided into social classes whose interests are completely antagonistic. One of them, the bourgeoisie, exerts its rule over the whole of society thanks to its wealth and, through the state, over every democratic institution – the media, the electoral system, etc. It can always impose its order, its ideas and its propaganda on the exploited in general and the working class in particular. And the working class is the only class which, through its struggles, can challenge the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and do away with its system of exploitation.

Capitalism, the system of production which dominates the planet and every country, is sinking into an advanced state of decomposition. A century of decline has reached its last phase, threatening the survival of humanity through a spiral of insane wars, economic depression, ecological catastrophes and devastating pandemics.

All the nation states on the planet are trying to keep this dying system alive. Every government, whether democratic or dictatorial, openly pro-capitalist or falsely “socialist”, exists to defend the real interests of capital: the growth of profit at the expense of the only possible future for our species, a world community where production has only one aim – the satisfaction of human needs.

But, we are told, in Brazil this time, it’s different. To re-elect Bolsonaro – or to provide him with an advantage by not voting – end up approving all the policies he has carried out over the past four years.

It’s true that Bolsonaro, like Trump, is a declared advocate of everything that is rotten in capitalism: intensified exploitation, the “reform” of working conditions and pensions, austerity measures which have meant sweeping cuts in education, health, etc. But he is not just a classic defender of capitalism, he is a caricature of populism: his denial of the reality of Covid 19 and climate change, his encouragement of police brutality in the name of law and order, his appeals to racism and the extreme right, his repulsive personal behaviour, his homophobia and misogyny…But the fact that he is a crook and a racist has not prevented important factions of the capitalist class from supporting him, because his policies of cutting environmental and health services have served to increase their profits.

If, as is more likely, Lula is elected, it won’t be to improve the situation of the working class, but to be more effective than Bolsonaro in the defence of the national capital, which is always done to the detriment of the interests of the working class.

For the left of capital, the election of Lula is the primary task, first to get Bolsonaro out of the presidential palace, then to defend democracy. To this end Lula’s Workers’ Party has built up a grand coalition of the left, which even includes parties of the centre right.

The greatest clarity on what Bolsonaro and Lula represent is all the more necessary because Bolsonaro’s threats not to accept the verdict of the ballot box – as was the case with Trump – could lead to violent confrontations between factions of the bourgeoisie, even an attempted coup d’Etat. If that happens, it is extremely important for the future of the class struggle in Brazil that no part of the proletariat allows itself to be enlisted in the defence of either of the opposing camps. Both are enemies of the proletariat but Lula, supported by the parties of the left of capital, is more able to deceive the working class. That’s an added reason for putting no trust in him.  

ICC

 

 

Presentation to two online meetings about the war in the Ukraine and the resulting social situation, held in the English language early in September 2022.

 

To begin this presentation, we would first like to go over the causes of this war, which we have already developed in our previous public meetings and in our press:

- the United States wants to maintain and revive its role as the leading power in the world;

- this is why they tricked Russia into invading Ukraine, saying that in case of invasion they would not intervene;

-following the invasion, they have unleashed a campaign to support Ukraine by forcing European countries to line up behind them;

- the immediate objective is to weaken Russia significantly, both militarily and economically, and to do this they are counting on a long war, which will exhaust Russia on both counts;

- in this way, they also weaken China by weakening its most important ally, and issue a warning to China about what it can expect in case of an invasion of Taiwan (the US having said that it would defend Taiwan's independence);

- finally, they forced European countries to fall in line behind them, which is not exactly the ambition of these countries (notably France and Germany).

Today, after 6 months of war, it appears that none of this has been put into question: the war continues, and it is highly likely that it will continue for many more months, if not years. Indeed, Russia cannot end it without signing its own death warrant as a major player on the international scene. And even if it succeeded in gaining total control of the Donbass, it would have to maintain a strong military presence there to face the "partisan" war that the Ukraine, with the help of the USA, would wage against it. The US, on the other hand, has an interest in the continuation of the war in order to go as far as possible in its objective of bleeding Russia dry. On the Russian side as well as on the US side, the cost, the material damage, the deaths and the devastation do not matter: the war must go on to the end.

The recent NATO summit (which announced the will to intervene all over the world); the provocation towards China through Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan; the assassination of the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul; Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia: all this confirms this will of the USA to impose itself as the only global power, whatever the cost.

This war therefore fully confirms the framework of analysis that the workers' movement has developed on war in decadence, and which the ICC, in continuity with this, has developed on war in the final phase of decadence, the phase of decomposition:

- there is no longer any economic rationality for war, on the contrary. In the ascendancy of capitalism, if there could be wars without a dominant economic aim (i.e. with mainly political aims), most of them were aimed at expanding the control of wealth and markets. In decadence, war itself has more and more become an economic aberration. Because beyond the horrific direct effects of military operations, this war has important repercussions on the global economy: the acceleration of the recession, the increase in inflation, and the growing difficulties in maintaining the globalisation that had allowed for a certain level of economic growth. It has consequences on the social level, with the famines it causes due to the lack of cereals on the market, with the wave of refugees  fleeing directly from the war or its economic consequences, environmental consequences, with the ecological destruction in Ukraine (not to mention the danger of nuclear accidents with the bombing of areas containing nuclear power stations);  finally, because it implies a race to increase military expenditure (Germany adding 100 billion to its military budget, France, Italy and Japan increasing their budgets), and therefore a development of the war economy, i.e. the tendency to subject the economy to the demands of war;

- war in decadence and decomposition is thus marked by total irrationality: no party to the war and no power involved will gain anything from it, on the contrary. All that will be left of Ukraine is a wasteland and the enormous expenses incurred will be irrecoverable. Even if there were markets to be recovered, shale gas to be sold, how many years, decades, centuries even, would it take for the profits to compensate for the expenses incurred in the war? Western aid to Ukraine now amounts to more than 75 billion dollars, and counting!

- finally, the fundamental characteristic of imperialist relations in the phase of decomposition is verified here again: the development of every man for himself. Beyond the immediate success obtained by the USA, its will to remain the only leader of the world is and will be challenged not only by China and Russia, but also by its current "allies" who do not want to give up defending their own interests on the imperialist level. Turkey is already doing so in an open way, but also the increase in military spending by Germany, France, and perhaps Japan, are a clear sign that these countries are not giving up their own ambitions, which means an exacerbation of imperialist tensions. Today, the alignment of the great European powers behind the United States is a forced, conjunctural alliance, which has not at all extinguished the will of each of these countries to take their place on the imperialist scene.

This war is part of a series of phenomena: the warlike tensions all over the world, the pandemic, climate change, uncontrollable fires and the strong nuclear threat contained in this war... these phenomena are not isolated and conjunctural, they express the fact that capitalism is in a specific period of its decadence, a further stage marked by the general decomposition of society which carries within it the threat of the annihilation of humanity. The only future that capitalism promises to humanity is one of chaos, misery, famine and despair. And ultimately, extinction.

This is what is at stake in the current historical situation, and revolutionaries have the duty to make the proletariat see this. We have tried to do this with our web and paper press, with an international leaflet distributed in all the countries where it was possible, with physical and online public meetings and with the appeal to the proletarian political milieu that gave rise to the Joint Declaration of three groups of the internationalist milieu, available in our press.

The response of the working class

But it would be illusory to think that the proletariat can, today, fully hear our calls and respond on its own class terrain to the war (which would mean developing the revolution).

First of all, because war is not a favourable terrain for the working class. We see this with the Ukrainian proletariat, which is suffering the worst consequences of the war, because it has suffered a major political defeat, being dragged behind the bourgeoisie in the "defence of the fatherland". It is also a clear confirmation that the proletariat of the peripheral countries is not the best equipped to resist the weight of the nationalist, democratic and warlike ideology of the bourgeoisie.

Thus, the Russian proletariat has not managed to oppose the war either: even if it has not been totally dragged behind its own bourgeoisie, it does not have enough strength to actively demonstrate its hostility to the war.

And finally, even if the proletariat of the Western countries is the one that has the greatest potential to oppose the war, the war also brought a moment of paralysis, in addition to the impact of the pandemic, which had interrupted the tendency towards the revival of combativity shown by the struggle against the pension reform in France and the strikes in different countries (USA, Italy, Iran, Spain).

Even today, the situation shows that the main ally of the working class in its historical struggle is the crisis. And the war in Ukraine, which follows the Covid pandemic, is producing devastating effects at this level: inflation, an economy turned towards war which requires increases in productivity, an ever-increasing debt etc. The bourgeoisie will have no choice but to attack the working class and is already preparing for it. The working class of these countries, already under enormous pressure to pay the bill for the pandemic, already directly affected by inflation, will suffer massive new attacks.

But the proletariat of the Western countries is not defeated, it is not ready to accept the sacrifices that the economic crisis of capital imposes on it (and obviously even less the sacrifices that a war directly involving these countries would imply). It had shown this before the pandemic, it had shown this at the end of 2021, it is beginning to show this again through a series of strikes and demonstrations that are developing in several countries, some of them unprecedented in their scale for several years, which show that the accumulated anger is beginning to be transformed into a will to struggle.

These strikes and demonstrations have developed in several countries: the United States, Spain, last autumn and winter, France, Germany, Belgium this summer, and in others they are expected: France, Italy. A hot autumn is being prepared everywhere.

But first it is the working class in Britain that is telling us that the working class is beginning to react with determination to the consequences of the crisis. This massive movement called "The Summer of Discontent", in reference to the "Winter of Discontent" of 1979, involves workers in more and more sectors every day: the trains, then the London Underground, British Telecom, the Post Office, the dockers of Felixstowe (a vital port in Britain), the dustmen and bus drivers in different parts of the country, Amazon, etc. Today transport workers, tomorrow health workers and teachers.

All the journalists and commentators note that this is the biggest working class movement in this country for decades; you have to go back to the huge strikes of 1979 to find a bigger and more massive movement. A movement of this scale in a country as important as the UK is not a "local" event, as we said in our leaflet published at the end of August, it is an event of international significance, a message to the exploited of all countries.

These strikes are a response to decades of attack, and decades of apathy on the part of the British working class, which was not only paying for the disarray that hit the working class worldwide with the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the "death of communism" campaigns that followed it, but also the heavy defeat of the miners in the mid-1980s. In particular they are a response to the loss of purchasing power caused by inflation and wage stagnation. Today's struggles are indispensable not only to defend ourselves against the attacks but also to regain our class identity on a global scale, to prepare the overthrow of this system, which is synonymous with misery and catastrophes of all kinds.

All over the world, the working class is living in a situation where inflation is eroding its purchasing power, where it is suffering from floods and droughts caused by climate change, the casualisation of work, etc. Today, the proletarians of the Western countries are being asked by their governments for new sacrifices, to cope with inflation and the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, while they increase military spending for their imperialist ambitions. This is also what the proletarian strikes in the UK bear the seeds of, even if the workers are not always fully aware of it: the refusal to sacrifice more and more for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal to make sacrifices for the national economy and for the war effort, the refusal to accept the logic of this system which is leading humanity towards catastrophe and, ultimately, to its destruction.

If the current struggles in the UK herald this revival of combativity and all the potential that this contains, we must not forget all the obstacles and traps that stand in front of the class and that the bourgeoisie puts forward to prevent the development of this potential.

On the ideological level, with:

- nationalist ideological hype to support one side against another, under the banner of the "defence of democracy" against "autocracies";

- pacifist ideology in the face of destruction and death;

On the level of the struggles themselves:

- the danger of interclassist struggles (the crisis also affects petty-bourgeois layers);

- the sabotaging action of the left-wing parties and above all of the trade unions. The great majority of the current strikes have been called by the trade unions, which thus present themselves as indispensable for organising the struggle and defending the exploited. The unions are indispensable, yes, but for the defence of bourgeois order and for organising the defeat of the working class. We know that the unions mobilise to prevent the class from fighting autonomously, their task being precisely to control and sabotage the workers' combativity. By taking the lead, these servants of the bourgeois state aim to avoid being overwhelmed by the workers' anger.

Today we must avoid the danger of getting carried away and falling into activism. We must be clear that the working class does not have the immediate capacity to end the war. It is a slow and bumpy process that will involve confrontation with trade union sabotage, with the impossibility of the bourgeoisie to concede significant improvements to the living conditions of the proletarians, and also with the repression of the bourgeois state. It is through this process that the proletariat will be able to advance in its consciousness.  And, increasingly, faced with all the different manifestations of the bankruptcy of the system (and thus also with the question of war), the proletariat will be obliged to reflect on the necessity for a head-on confrontation with capitalism. 

Revolutionaries have an essential role to play in this process, by denouncing the war, by highlighting the central responsibility of capitalism in the situation and its consequences, by insisting on the necessity for the working class to oppose the sacrifices imposed by the ruling class .

What the workers' movement declared in 1907 at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International remains totally relevant: "revolutionaries have the duty to use with all their strength the economic and political crisis created by the war to stir up the deepest popular strata and to hasten the downfall of capitalist rule", Proletarian internationalism is a principle which must be defended without concession: "no support for one side or another, proletarians have no fatherland".

This slogan must permeate our intervention from today, without any illusion about its immediate impact within a profoundly disoriented proletariat, but without the slightest doubt about the fact that the alternative today remains "socialism or the destruction of humanity" and that there is no force other than the working class that is capable of stopping capitalism’s plunge into chaos and barbarism.

 

ICC, September 2022

In July, the ICC received a contribution that gives an appreciation of the online meeting on the war in Ukraine and the responsibilities of revolutionaries of 2 July 2022. We wholeheartedly welcome this contribution which gives a very good picture one of the most important disagreements that were raised during this meeting: whether the war in Ukraine is a prelude to a new world war or only another significant step in the generalisation of local and regional imperialist wars, a generalisation that is not less dangerous and barbaric than a world war. The contribution develops two points: the evolution of the class struggle since the 1980s and the formation of imperialist blocs. We agree with most of the arguments developed in the contribution. There are only some points in the contribution that we think need some clarification

• “The collapse of the bloc system…made it harder for workers to understand the highpoint of the struggles in Poland 1980 as part of the international proletarian struggle and not as a fight for bourgeois democratic rights.” The bourgeoisie used the collapse of the Eastern Bloc to erase any memory of an alternative for capitalism and the experience of the struggles in Poland 1980 had certainly become part of the fight for this alternative. But the working class had failed to apply the main lessons from the Polish experience (the need to politicise) during its struggles in the countries of Western Europe, something that could already been noticed in the course of the 1980s and not only with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
• “Russia fell into the very trap that the US used against Saddam Hussein and Putin didn’t see it coming.” We don’t know if Putin didn’t see that he was trapped, but in the logic of the imperialist confrontations this would not have made much difference, because Russia had no other choice. It had to start the war, because not attacking Ukraine would also have meant defeat, not in the short run but in the long run.
• “Russia can hardly be seen by the major powers as a menace from which they must defend themselves by accepting the dominance of the US.” This is not true, since Russia is a nuclear power of the first order, with a military apparatus more sophisticated than China. Therefore Russia remains, in the context of the irrationality and the unpredictability of the present situation, a threat for several countries in Eastern Europe and even for major countries in Central Europe such as Germany, with nuclear missiles ranging 2.000 miles and further.

 

Some points on the online English language discussion about the war in Ukraine of 02/07/2022

I very much welcome the discussion which was stimulating and animated by a desire to understand what the social alternative of Socialism or Barbarism means in the present situation.

It was generally agreed by the participants that the tendency towards the proliferation of imperialist wars, and the war in Ukraine in particular, represents an acceleration of capitalist society towards barbarism but there were disagreements on whether the period is one of chaos in which the bourgeois class has less and less control over the direction of society or whether there is a tendency towards the formation of blocs in preparation for a third world war.

One position defended was that the ICC’s analysis fails to take account of the fact that the situation of decomposition has changed since the 1990s, when the Eastern bloc collapsed under the weight of the economic crisis and the failure of either of the dominant classes in society to impose their ‘solution’ to it; that is, world imperialist war or the proletarian revolution. According to this position, important struggles took place in the 1980s – in the UK and Poland - which did not lead to decisive confrontations raising the perspective of the proletarian revolution. Since then, 30 years have passed without the working class having been able to impose its alternative; in addition the composition of the proletariat has changed (the number of computer technicians has greatly increased, whereas the number of workers concentrated in large factories is greatly diminished). The proletariat has therefore been defeated. At the same time the US is strengthening NATO - the addition of Sweden and Norway as members - it is also reinforcing the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue QUAD), Russia is reappearing on the imperialist world stage, the fear of which acts as a cement to cohere the bloc around the US, as it did in olden times. China is being pushed into the arms of Russia, these two powers together are immense and as a bloc would account for most of the Eurasian land mass.

This vision raises several questions:

1. How to assess whether the working class is defeated.

The collapse of the Eastern bloc interrupted the tendency for the working class to spread its struggle and to take control of it against the sabotage of the unions because its revolutionary role must perforce be a conscious one; it must understand the capitalist world in which it is exploited in order to realise its historic task. The collapse of the bloc system that had been the framework for imperialist rivalries for almost 40 years was a dramatic change which was used by the bourgeoisie to reinforce the idea that the western ‘democratic’ way was invincible and made it harder for workers to understand the highpoint of the struggles in Poland 1980 as part of the international proletarian struggle and not as a fight for bourgeois democratic rights.

Moreover, in the last 30 years the class has been besieged by the nihilism, despair, sense of no future, atomisation exuded by capitalism in decomposition and now it has also been hit by the pandemic and by the war in Ukraine. It has not yet managed to raise its struggle to the level achieved in the 1980s. This shows how difficult is the process towards revolutionary consciousness and it’s true that the longer the blockage continues the more dangerous is the situation for the proletariat, but I don’t think that there’s a time-out; I don’t think we can say that, if it hasn’t done it in 30 years, then it will never do it. The essence of the proletariat as a revolutionary class is its consciousness; it is obliged to reflect on the worsening of its conditions of existence and its causes, it is obliged to look for a solution, the old mole continues his work even if we can’t immediately see the evidence for this. The reluctance of the bourgeoisies outside of the Ukraine to conscript workers into a fighting force to further their imperialist cravings, shows that they, at least, fear the reaction of the class.

The riots taking place in countries such as Sri Lanka, Peru or the general transport strike in Tunisia show that inflation and the absence of basic necessities are making life increasingly intolerable for workers and obliging a response. They are taking place in the peripheral countries, tend to be inter-classist or placatable with regime change so we can’t over-estimate them, but they do show that it becomes increasingly impossible to live in the old way and that workers will not take that lying down. If we are not yet seeing major strikes in the heartlands of capital, it is partly because conditions are worse in the peripheries but may also be because the more experienced sectors of the class are aware that there is a lot at stake and embarking on struggle is not to be taken lightly. The enormous price rises and shortages that we are about to experience will oblige a reaction.

 

1. What has 30 years of decomposition meant for the bourgeoisie?

It isn’t only the proletariat that has suffered the effects of 30 years of decomposition, it has taken its toll on the bourgeoisie as well. Would it be able to get its act together even if the proletariat were to be defeated? It is finding it increasingly difficult to palliate the economic crisis, this leads to conflicts within the national bourgeoisies about how to manage an unmanageable situation and results in inconsistency and confusion in its policies. It leads to increasingly bitter trade wars as each nation tries to fleece the rest in its desperation: imperialist conflicts proliferate as each national bourgeoisie tries to improve its geo-political position at the expense of an economy already weighed down by debt.

The bourgeoisie is not able to simply turn the clock back 30 years and return to the good old two-bloc system that acted as a container for imperialist rivalries.

Russia is no longer convincing either as a bloc leader or as a menace to cement NATO together under US hegemony. The great empire of Catherine the Great, the great leader of the Warsaw Pact countries, fell into the very trap that the US used against Saddam Hussein and Putin didn’t see it coming! Doesn’t say a lot for his understanding of diplomacy. The Russian military are finding it extremely difficult to bring little old Ukraine to heel because Putin disastrously misunderstood the military balance of forces between the two countries. Now that Russia is embroiled in a long term, economically disastrous war, it can hardly be seen by the major powers as a menace from which they must defend themselves by accepting the dominance of the US.

So where does this leave a supposed Russia-China bloc? Russia no longer has the force to act as bloc leader, but it certainly wouldn’t accept Chinese hegemony and China is trying not to give enthusiastic support for Russia over Ukraine because it realises that the US is setting a trap for it. Moreover, what would be the ideology holding such a bloc together?

How much control does the US really have over other NATO members? Trump wanted to pull the US out of it and go it alone, Biden wants to use NATO to put the European powers under pressure. That would seem to indicate serious differences within the US bourgeoisie about how to dominate the imperialist situation and the use of NATO to accomplish this. There’s a possibility that a subsequent administration could revert to Trump’s position, which doesn’t make for a dependable basis on which to build a bloc; to do this there must at least be a level of trust, continuity, and a clear policy around which to bargain. Sweden and Norway think it’s worth their while to have the protection of being NATO members, but would it defend them in the case of an attack?

 

1. If the proletariat is defeated and the bourgeoisie is preparing for a third world war how does this affect how revolutionaries see their role?

Following the defeat of the first revolutionary wave, the communist minorities did all in their power to maintain in safety a revolutionary nucleus who would draw the lessons of the proletariat’s defeat and keep alive the communist programme in readiness for the re-emergence of the struggle. That is not possible today in the period of capitalist decomposition; if the working class is unable to carry out its historic role, humanity will not survive. The only alternative to fighting for the proletarian revolution would be to just give up and watch capitalism destroy humanity. We must put all our weight on the scales that tip towards the proletarian transformation of society, don’t we?

 

Fraternally, Yvonne

We publish here a response from an ICC sympathiser in Belgium to the correspondence among groups of the communist left regarding the joint statement on the Ukraine war signed by several groups[1]. We invite further reactions from comrades to this initiative, which, though modest, has a significance that goes beyond the immediate moment.

ICC, September 2022

I fully welcome the publication of the correspondence concerning the joint declaration of some groups of the Communist Left on the war in Ukraine.
It would have been good if it had been published sooner, which would probably have prevented a number of misunderstandings among contacts of the ICC and other internationalists.
However, I can well understand that the publication of the correspondence was not done sooner in order to enable other groups to participate in the ICC initiative at a later date.
I must say that by reading this correspondence I have gained a better understanding of the intentions of the ICC and I have also got to know and appreciate some groups better.
This applies:

1. To the "Istituto Onorato Damen":
Earlier I judged this group rather negatively. I remain very critical of this group, but I find its response to the proposal of the ICC very mature and constructive.

2. To the “Internationalist Communist Tendency”. Despite their rejection from the beginning of this ICC proposal (this becomes more and more clear in the course of the correspondence) and despite the fact that they do not or hardly answer the questions and remarks of the ICC, they have taken the effort to repeatedly respond in detail to the ICC.

Therefore, the correspondence is very enlightening about the positions and the attitude of ICC and ICT.

3. In connection with the group "Internationalist Communist Perspective"(South Korea):
From the correspondence I understand that the ICC is not by definition negative towards signing the Joint Declaration with the ICC and others, at the same time as supporting the "No War But The Class War" initiative launched by the ICT or a part of it. See the letter of the ICC to the ICT of 29 April 2022:

"Your letter brings up the ICT motivation behind the No War but the Class War appeal.
Whatever the merits of this appeal - we agree with its underlying internationalist principles - or weaknesses, it was, and is, perfectly possible for the ICT to also sign the joint statement which contains the same internationalist principles. The Korean group, Internationalist Communist Perspective, has proved this option in practice."

4. The various so-called "International Communist Parties" persist in their gross error of thinking that they are alone in the world, alone with the right positions towards the whole world, the evil world.

Most of them simply do not answer and one of them (Il Programma) answers :
"Dear friends,
Now is not the time for talk, but for putting into practice the unchanged and unchanging directives of revolutionary preparation...".
The predecessors whose "unchanged and unchanging directives of revolutionary preparation" they intend to continue were surely great talkers, writers and drafters of statements.
See Marx and Engels with the Communist Correspondence Society, the "Arbeiterbildungsvereinen" in several countries, the Communist League and the International Workingmen's Association (1st International), see also and even more Lenin with the "Iskra", "What is to be done?"...and especially his "April Theses" from 1917 in which he, going against the attitude of a large part of the Bolsheviks at that time, said :
"In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war. ..." (Thesis 1) and "...our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses." (Thesis 4)
Also notable is the addressing of the ICC as "Dear friends", where all the others address the ICC at least as "Comrades", even the anarchists of the KRAS.

Perhaps, after a more thorough re-reading of the whole correspondence, there will be a follow-up to these remarks on this interesting and important correspondence between groups of the proletarian political milieu.

C.

 

 

ICC Introduction

We are publishing a statement from the comrades of Internationalist Voice about the murder of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who “died in custody” after being arrested by the “morality police” of the Islamic State in Iran. This grim event has sparked off a wave of protest throughout Iran, by men as well as women, who are driven not only by anger against the regime’s disgusting treatment of women, but also by growing impoverishment and the shameless corruption of this “holy” capitalist state. But the statement also contains a warning that amorphous street protests can be manipulated by the “democratic” forces of capital, and insists that only the struggle of the working class can offer a perspective in the face of all forms of exploitation and oppression.

 

The death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman killed by agents of the Islamic bourgeoisie working for the Guidance Patrol or morality police, has provoked a wave of anger and hatred of the brutality of the Islamic bourgeoisie. Because of its ideological superstructure, the Islamic bourgeoisie not only exerts class oppression but also sexual oppression of women, especially working-class women, who are exploited, harassed, insulted and abused, etc., in society and the workplace. As a result, they find themselves in an even lower position than working-class men.

Mahsa and others like her are dying, and these crimes continue to occur – but not because the Islamic police are omnipotent; on the contrary, they keep happening because the working class does not come forward as a social class to stamp out these atrocities. During the labour protests in the autumn of 2018, Ahvaz steel workers on their way to protest in the Naderi streets found themselves confronted by anti-riot police armed to the teeth. But this show of force could not stop the advance of the protesting workers, quite the opposite: the line of anti-riot police disintegrated in front of the raging and united flood of steelworkers. The anti-riot police had to flee, and the workers marched onwards resolutely. This victory is one of the most beautiful, spectacular and inspirational examples of workers’ power.

Surrounded by anti-riot police in the centre of the city of Shush, the striking workers’ chants of “Bread, work, freedom, council administration” resounded, sending shivers down the spine of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, also surrounded by anti-riot police, Bakhshi continued to use a loudspeaker to repeat the slogan firmly so that the message would ring out, loud and clear, telling the anti-riot police – whose salaries are paid from our wages – that neither threats nor imprisonment will hold us back.

All forms of bourgeoisie have reacted to Mahsa’s death – from right to left; from the White House to Reza Pahlavi (former crown prince); from Karubi (former president candidate) to Amini (Kurdistan’s sharia ruler); from Remini (Hollywood actor) to Gogosh (a singer); from Kurdish nationalism to the radical phrases of the left of capital. They have become defenders of human rights and have condemned the “Islamic regime”. For them, Mahsa’s blood is only in line with their anti-regime propaganda. The suppressed anger, the beaten anger and protest of the working masses and the lower strata of the society are supposed to be channelled into the democratic and anti-regime channel so that the working people would be like a black army of anti-regime struggles in order to ensure that the working class cannot raise its head as a social class, to be the flag bearer and the leader of the class struggles.

Only the working class, through its class struggle, can fight against twofold oppression in society and provide a horizon. Only the working class, through its class struggle, can fight against twofold oppression in society and provide a horizon. As long as the working people are not fighting using their class identity and their class agenda, and not using their struggle to become flag bearers for the working class, we will witness such events in society.

The best way to honour the memory of Mahsa and Mahsas everywhere is to fight the system that she became a victim of: the dirty, barbaric, brutal system of capitalism.

M. Jahangiry 19 September 2022

E-mail: [email protected] [16]

Homepage: www.internationalistvoice.org [17]