No one will have been surprised that Boris Johnson finally announced his resignation. Over a couple of days nearly sixty members of government left, a record in British parliamentary history. But the essential problem is not Johnson, but the fact that the Conservative Party has been increasingly eaten away by populism[1]. Although Johnson pushed it further than anyone else, he was in effect no more than a caricature of populism’s hold within the party.

The fall of Johnson shows us three things:

- Populism “in power” has only a limited durability. The ideology of xenophobia and irrationality, the incoherence and vandalism at the level of economic policy as well as its contempt for liberal elites and their traditional values at the political level, necessarily came up against hard reality: the negative economic consequences of Brexit, the drastic rise of food and energy prices, as well as the sinking credibility of democratic institutions, which populism has further exacerbated.

 - The populist phenomenon, and behind it the decomposition of the political apparatus, cannot be definitively overcome by the British bourgeoisie. Any new Tory leader is tainted by their complicity in the shambles of the Johnson government. Moreover, Johnson’s theme of victimhood, the myth of the stab in the back by the “parliamentary herd” and treacherous governmental colleagues who have subverted the will of the people, remains an important reference point for the continued existence of populism.

- The bourgeoisie were also worried about Johnson’s ability to face up to the increase in the resistance of the working class with the cost-of-living crisis and his inability to sell sacrifices to the working class.

Whoever becomes the next Tory leader, these problems will not go away, because the British bourgeoisie as a whole has no solution to increasing global instability; to the economic crisis sharpened by the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and Brexit; to Britain’s damaged imperialist reputation and the danger of the United Kingdom itself falling apart[2].

Dennis 21/7/22

[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17035/populism-accelerates-insta... [1]

The turmoil around the fall of Johnson is in stark contrast to the unity of the British ruling class in its policy towards the war in Ukraine. The main political parties are united behind the government’s belligerent support for US imperialism’s proxy war. You cannot get a cigarette paper between them when it comes to sending arms, acting as the US’s most loyal ally, and making German and French imperialism look weak in their support for the Ukrainian war effort. Johnson’s fronting of the state’s efforts to strengthen ties with the US, to increase British influence in Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries, is the one thing he has not been criticised for. The new Tory leader will continue with the same policy. They all understand that British imperialism must use the war to try to overcome the loss of international standing it has suffered due to Brexit and the fiascos around its role in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Johnson and his Foreign Secretary Liz Truss believed they were the inheritors of Thatcher’s role as the USA’s loyal lieutenant. Johnson boasted that Brexit allowed Britain to take up its ‘natural and historical’ role as a leader of free trade and democracy. Britain’s partnership with the US in preparing and perpetuating the war have appeared to confirm this.

The idea of British imperialism as the second-in-command of a new Western Bloc is an underlying theme in the media. But today’s historic conditions are very different from those of the Cold War. The collapse of the bloc system in 1989 marked the exhaustion of the conditions that sustained the two blocs. The USSR’s fall led to the disintegration of the Western bloc. The absence of the Russian bear opened up an imperialist free-for-all. This is something the more intelligent mouthpieces of British imperialism understood very well. In early 1990 Charles Powell, Margaret Thatcher’s Private Secretary, wrote to her: “We shall have won the Cold War. But instead of being the dawn of a new, peaceful era, we shall find the next decade altogether more complex, with a multiplicity of dangers and threats” (Margaret Thatcher: the Authorized Biography. vol 3, Charles Moore. page 508). Thatcher firmly agreed with this assessment.

The re-unification of German imperialism was a great concern for the UK given the historical rivalry between Britain and Germany. Thatcher’s public airing of these concerns was openly rebuked by President Bush, who insisted that the UK supported German unification (‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’ as the Mafia say). The British ruling class learnt a bitter lesson: the US no longer viewed it as all that ‘special.’ From now on the UK had to defend its own interests by using its position in the EU to act as a bridge for the US, but also by playing off the EU against the US, which meant much more subtle manoeuvring against Germany. Thatcher could not do this, so she was cast aside.

The pros and cons of being close to US imperialism

Implementing the necessary strategy suffered many set-backs. The Blair government’s backing for America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was disastrous for its reputation. A standing further undermined by the close relations between the May and Johnson governments with President Trump. The UK’s rapid flight from Afghanistan showed that standing too close to the US weakened the position of the UK. At the same time its ability to confront its rivals from within the EU has disappeared. The political turmoil around Brexit and its consequences has seriously damaged British imperialism’s reputation.

On the other hand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a potential opportunity for the British ruling class. The US and Britain’s carefully choreographed build-up of pressure on Russia, deliberately exposing its plans to invade Ukraine, showed a partial renewal of the old alliance and the strength of their intelligence services. Britain’s prominent role in sending arms, in intelligence sharing, and its general hard line towards Russia has been contrasted to the hesitations in the EU, especially France and Germany.

The British bourgeoisie has signed up to the USA’s containment of China. On a global level China is the US’s main rival and an important competitor to the UK. The war in Ukraine has severed the close links between German imperialism and Moscow, as well as blocking the expansion of China’s Silk Road into Europe, which would have increased the EU’s access to the Chinese market. British imperialism can only benefit if Germany’s important links with China have been weakened. The EU, particularly France and Germany, is its main rival, so USA’s weakening of them through the war is to Britain’s benefit.

German imperialism’s rapid rearmament in the short-term puts pressure on Russia, but in the long-term a rearmed Germany is a challenge to British imperialism. The UK’s signing of defence agreements with Sweden and Finland, along with its increased military presence in Eastern European states, is aimed at Russia, but also has the longer term aim of containing Germany on its Northern and Eastern flanks. Britain also hopes that its support for the Eastern European states will weaken their willingness to back the EU in its opposition to Britain’s efforts to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The cynicism of the bourgeoisie’s ideological use of the barbarity unfolding in Ukraine to further its own sordid imperialist ambitions is matched by its efforts to bury its own recent bloody past. The reduction of Iraq and Afghanistan to ‘failed’ states, the death of tens of thousands in both wars, the destruction of Mosul, Falluja, Raqqa, the use of torture (Abu Ghraib, etc), renditions, assassinations, Guantanamo Bay – none of this is being mentioned today. Nor is the fact that the UK has passed a law limiting the ability of the International Criminal Court to prosecute British troops for war crimes.

Britain as the oligarchs’ financial haven

With the same cynicism over the past 30 years, the British state has done all it can to encourage those who it now hypocritically condemns to pour money into the British economy. British imperialism’s main think tank (Chatham House) has warned about the reputational danger of this: “it should not be forgotten that the contradictions of the past decade are glaring, and that the role of London as the centre of global money - and reputation-laundering – particularly helping Russians who are close to Vladimir Putin – should be a source of shame.

Chatham House’s recent kleptocracy report highlights the extent to which UK politicians – especially the ruling Conservatives – have benefited from Russian money, and how strenuous efforts were made to delay then play down two critical parliamentary reports on ‘Londongrad’. And despite several high-profile poisonings on British soil and repeated cyberattacks, not a single figure close to Putin was sanctioned by the UK until after the Ukraine invasion.” (“UK’s Strong Ukraine Support Hides a Less Glorious Past”. Chathamhouse.org [3])

The Northern Ireland conundrum

British imperialism, for all its posturing, is confronted with a profound problem: Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Protocol, the product of the Brexit negotiations, not only established a border between the mainland and the North running down the Irish Sea, but above all showed Britain’s historic weakness. The only way it could get a deal was via the humiliation of leaving itself exposed to the influence of the EU and the US. Break the protocol and the EU could walk away from any form of deal. Jettisoning the Protocol will also undermine the Good Friday Agreement, and thus the US-brokered peace. The war makes the situation even more difficult because the last thing the US wants is its most loyal ally breaking international law when the US claims to be defending it; and a political crisis between the UK and EU would shatter the illusion of anti-Russian unity. If the US cannot stop its main ally provoking others in the “alliance for democracy”, why would those states submit to the US?

The UK hopes that its support for America’s policy on the Ukraine war will soften US ire if it rips up the Protocol. The fact that the government has placed the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill before parliament in the middle of the war shows the fundamental contradiction of its position: it cannot break free from the hold its EU rivals have over it through the Protocol without breaking international law and thus endangering its influence with the US:

“…the frictions associated with exiting the European Single Market and Customs Union will only come fully into play in 2022, and these could reawaken political tensions between the UK and the EU at a time when the Russia-Ukraine crisis demands close collaboration amongst European allies.

A first priority, therefore, should be to leverage the shared determination to confront Russian aggression in order to rebuild UK-EU relations…The UK could link its thinking on plans to upgrade NATO Strategic Concept with the EU’s new commitments to strengthen Europe’s defence capabilities. This would lessen the risks of the UK being sidelined by closer US-EU cooperation across a range of transatlantic priorities, including digital trade and technology governance” (“Global Britain in a Divided World.” Chathamhouse.org [3]).

Britain does have better military collaboration with European powers through NATO, but these are not sufficient to counter the tensions generated by Brexit, which are having an impact on its ability to be a regional power.

The fact that the US’s main ally is a source of instability highlights the fragility of the US’s control of the situation. Its means of imposing itself on its ‘allies’ is to create a vortex of chaos on their borders. At the same time, its ‘right hand man’ is threatening to deliberately generate even more chaos in the ‘alliance’, provoking greater political tensions by picking a fight with precisely those countries the US wants to bring into line! This could have the result of not only destabilising part of its own territory (Northern Ireland) but also spreading this instability into Eire, an important US ally in the EU. This is a situation the US has said it will not allow.

Johnson epitomised the profound instability of the situation of British imperialism. He may be on the way out, but the insoluble historical contradictions behind this instability remain and will worsen.

Phil 18/7/22

In response to the murderous war in Ukraine, the ICC has repeatedly stressed the need for a common response by the most coherent expression of proletarian internationalism – the communist left – in order to create a clear pole of reference for all those seeking to oppose imperialist war on a class basis.

Although the appeal for a joint statement, and the text that came out of it, was received positively by three groups[1], the Bordigist groups more or less ignored our call, while the Internationalist Communist Tendency, while stating that they were in principle in favour of such joint statements by internationalists, have rejected our appeal for reasons that in our view remain unclear: disagreements in analysis were mentioned earlier on, then divergent views on what constitutes the authentic communist left and a rejection of our conception of parasitism seemed to come to the fore. We will take up these arguments elsewhere; here we aim to focus on the ICT’s alternative proposal, which is to push for the formation of local/national “No War but the Class War” groups, which they see as the starting point for an internationalist action against the war on a much wider scale than a common statement signed by the groups of the communist left.

When we examine the text of the first appeal to set up No War but the Class War groups in response to the Ukraine war [2], published by Liverpool NWCW, we can say that it is clearly internationalist, opposing both imperialist camps, rejecting pacifist illusions, and insisting that capitalism’s descent into military barbarism can only be halted by the revolutionary struggle of the working class.  We think however that there is a definite element of immediatism in the text, in the following paragraph: “The scattered anti-war actions that have been reported so far – protests in Russia, soldiers disobeying their orders in Ukraine, refusals to handle shipments by dockers in the UK and Italy, sabotage by railway workers in Belarus – need to take on the working class perspective to be truly anti-war, lest they get instrumentalised by one side or the other. Support for Russia or Ukraine in this conflict means support for war. The only way to end this nightmare is for workers to fraternise across borders and bring down the war machine”.

The statement is correct to point out that isolated protests against the war can be recuperated by various bourgeois factions or ideologies. But the impression is given that the working class, in its present situation, whether in the war zone or in the more central capitalist countries, might be able to develop a revolutionary perspective in the short term and “bring down the war machine” to end this present war. And behind this lies another ambiguity: that the formation of NWCW groups could be a moment towards this sudden leap from the present state of disorientation in the working class to a full-blown reaction against capital. If we examine the involvement of the Communist Workers’ Organisation, the UK affiliate of the ICT, in previous NWCW projects, there is clear evidence that such illusions do exist among these comrades.

We will soon be publishing a more developed analysis of the perspectives of the class struggle in this phase of accelerating barbarism, explaining why we don’t think that a mass movement of the working class directly against this war is a realistic possibility. The ICT might respond by saying that the NWCW appeal is mainly aimed at regrouping all those minorities who defend internationalist positions and not at sparking off any kind of mass movement. But even at this level, a real understanding of the nature of the NWCW project is required in order to avoid errors of an opportunist character, in which the unique coherence of the communist left is lost in a labyrinth of confusion strongly influenced by anarchist or even leftist ideas.

The aim of this present article is therefore to critically examine the history of the NWCW idea in order to draw the clearest possible lessons for our current intervention. This dimension is entirely lacking from the ICT’s proposal. In 2018, when the CWO made a similar appeal and set up a series of meetings under the NWCW banner with the Anarchist Communist Group and one or two other anarchist formations, we explained at one of these meetings why we could not accept their invitation to “join” this group. The principal reason was that this new formation had been brought together without any attempt to understand the mainly negative lessons of previous efforts to set up NWCW groups. This failure to carry out a critical examination of the experience was repeated when the group simply disappeared without any public explanation by the CWO or the ACG.

Regarding the ICT’s most recent foray into this project, we have specifically invited the comrades to participate in our most recent public meetings on the war in Ukraine and to provide their assessment of the evolution of the NWCW project so far. Unfortunately, the comrades did not attend these meetings and an opportunity to take the debate forward was lost. Nevertheless, we offer this examination of the background and history of the NWCW idea as our own contribution to advancing the debate.

No War but the Class War groups: a brief history

The idea of creating NWCW groups first emerged from the anarchist milieu in Britain. To our knowledge the first attempt to set up such a group was in response to the first Gulf War in 1991. But it was with the formation of new NWCW groups in response to the war in ex-Yugoslavia and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 that we were able to gain a direct experience of the composition and dynamics of this initiative.

Our decision to participate in the meetings organised by these groups, mainly in London, was based on our recognition of the ‘swamp-like’ nature of anarchism, which comprises a series of a tendencies going from outright bourgeois leftism to genuine internationalism. In our view, these new NWCW groups, while indeed being extremely heterogeneous, did contain elements who were seeking a proletarian alternative to the “Stop the War” mobilisations organised by the left of capital.

Our intervention towards these groups was based on the following objectives:

• Clarifying the principles of proletarian internationalism and the need for a sharp demarcation from the left of capital and pacifism
• Focusing on political debate and clarification against activist tendencies which, in practice, meant dissolving into the Stop the War demonstrations
• Despite accusations that our approach, emphasising the primacy of political discussion, was purely “monastic” or “inactivist”, that we were only interested in discussion for discussion’s sake, we made some definite proposals for action, in particular the possibility of calling an “internationalist meeting” in Trafalgar Square at the end of the big Stop the War march in November 2001. This would be in direct opposition to the leftist speeches coming from the STW platform. This proposal was partly acted on – not by NWCW as such, but by the ICC and the CWO…[3] . We will return to the significance of this later.

The CWO gets involved

In 2002, the CWO also intervened in this process, particularly in Sheffield where it played a central role in the formation of a new NWCW group – one which took up positions close to and even indistinguishable from those of the communist left. In our article “Revolutionary Intervention and the Iraq war” in WR 264, which aimed to draw a balance sheet of our intervention towards NWCW, we welcomed this fact, but we also criticised the CWO’s overestimation of the potential for the NWCW network, particularly its main group in London, to act as a kind of organising centre for proletarian opposition to the war, linking up with some of small expressions of class struggle that were taking place in parallel to the “anti-war” movement[4].

Against this idea, our article made it clear that “we never thought that NWCW was a harbinger of a resurgence of class struggle or a definite class political movement that we had ‘joined’. It could at most be a reference point for a very small minority that were asking questions about capitalist militarism and the elitist and pacifist frauds that accompany it. And this was why we defended its -albeit limited – class positions against the reactionary attacks of leftists like Workers Power (in WR 250) and insisted from the beginning on the importance of the group as a forum for discussion and warned against the tendencies to ‘direct action’ and to closing the group to revolutionary organisations” .

For the same reasons, in another article “In defence of discussion groups” in WR 250, we explained our differences with the CWO on the question of “intermediaries” between the class and the revolutionary organisation. We had always opposed the idea, developed by the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (today the ICT’s Italian affiliate) and later taken up by the CWO, of “factory groups”, defined as “instruments of the party” for gaining an implantation of in the class and even for “organising” its struggles. We saw this as a regression to the notion of factory cells as the basis for the political organisation, advocated by the Communist International in the phase of “Bolshevisation” in the 1920s and strongly opposed by the communist left in Italy. The later evolution of the factory group idea into the call for territorial groups and then anti-war groups changed the form but not really the content. The CWO’s idea that NWCW could become an organising centre for class resistance against the war betrayed a similar misunderstanding of how class consciousness develops in the period of capitalist decadence. Certainly, alongside the political organisation per se there is a tendency towards the formation of more informal groups, whether emerging out of workplace struggles or opposition to capitalist war, but such groups – which are not part of the communist political organisation -  remain expressions of a minority seeking to clarify itself and spread this clarity within the class, and cannot substitute themselves for or claim to be the organisers of more general movements in the class, a point on which, in our view, the ICT remains ambiguous[5].

Manoeuvres against the communist left

Although there were a number of fruitful discussions in the early phases of the NWCW groups, it became clear that, as an expression of anarchism, NWCW was subject to all sorts of contradictory pressures – a real search for internationalist positions and practices, but also the influence of leftism and of what we call parasitism, groups and elements motivated essentially by the will to isolate and even destroy authentic revolutionary currents. Such elements had a growing weight in both phases of the NWCW groupings. In 1999 the ICC was excluded (albeit by a narrow margin) from participating in the group on the grounds that we were Leninist, dogmatic, dominated meetings etc[6]; and the main elements pushing for this exclusion were those such as Juan McIver and “Luther Blisset” who have produced two extremely slanderous pamphlets denouncing the ICC as a paranoid Stalinist cult, as small-time burglars, etc.

In 2002, we saw another round of manoeuvres against the communist left, this time spearheaded by K, an element close to Luther Blisset.  In RP 27 the CWO itself talks about the irresponsible role of K and his “circle of friends” within NWCW, after K had done his best to exclude both the Sheffield group and the ICC from NCWC meetings. This time the mechanism eventually used was not a “democratic” vote as in 1999 but a behind-the-scenes decision to hold closed meetings, with the venues and times being withheld from the ICC and the Sheffield group.

What does this show? That in an environment dominated by anarchism the groups of the communist left have to wage a hard battle against the destructive and even bourgeois tendencies that will inevitably be present and will always push in a negative direction. It should be an elementary response of the groups of the communist left to stand together against the manouevres of those who seek to exclude them from participating in the temporary, heterogeneous formations produced by the attempt to fight against the dominant ideology. The CWO’s own experience in 2002 should remind them that such dangers are real. We should add that groups who claim to be part of the communist left but who act in a similarly destructive way deserve the label of “political parasitism” and should not be given the freedom of the city by the genuine groups of the communist left.

The charge that the ICC’s attitude towards intervention during these episodes was “monastic” was made by the CWO in their article in RP 27, referring to a demonstration that took place in September 2002. But prior to a previous big demonstration which was to take place in November 2001, the CWO had written to us supporting our proposal for a distinct internationalist meeting in Trafalgar Square, and at the march itself there actually was a fruitful cooperation between the two groups. As our article in WR 264 said, we had overestimated the potential of the NWCW group to organise a large-scale oppositional meeting in Trafalgar Square, since most (though not all) of its participants preferred marching with an “Anti-Capitalist Bloc” which had little if anything to distinguish itself from the Stop the War organisers. But if there was a small meeting at the end it was mainly due to the initiative of the ICC and the CWO, supported by a few members of NWCW, to hand over our megaphones to those willing to advocate an internationalist alternative to the leftists on the main platform. Further evidence that the best way to assist those outside the communist left to approach a clear internationalist position and practice is for the groups of the communist left to act together.

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

Returning to the current NWCW project, in a recent article on a NWCW meeting in Glasgow, the ICT claims that the project is meeting with considerable success: “The first group was formed in Liverpool a few weeks ago and since then their message has been picked up by comrades across the world going from Korea, via Turkey, Brazil, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, Canada to the United States as well as other places”

We are not in a position to evaluate the real substance of these groups and initiatives. The impression we get from the groups which we know something about is that they are mainly “duplicates” of the ICT or its affiliates. In this sense, they are hardly an advance on the groups that appeared in the 1990s and 2000s, which for all their confusions, at least expressed a certain movement coming from elements seeking an internationalist alternative to leftism and pacifism. But we will have to return to this question in a future article, and we continue to call on the ICT to make a contribution to the discussion.

Amos, July 2022

 

 

Despite Covid, despite the war in Ukraine, despite the toxic divisions stirred up by Brexit, the working class in Britain, as in many other parts of the world, is still ready to fight in defence of its living standards. And, in the long run, this is the only road leading away from capitalism’s headlong rush towards self-destruction.

The “cost of living crisis” has become an active factor in workers’ resistance. The world economic crisis didn’t begin with Covid or the war in Ukraine. It has been building up for decades (remember the “oil crisis” of the 70s and the “financial crash” of 2008?). But these more recent expressions of the slide into barbarism have certainly accelerated global economic instability, and within that, Britain’s specific economic decline – and they have only partly hidden the additional and increasingly disastrous impact of Brexit at this level. The surge in inflation - now officially running at 9.1% and expected to rise to 11% later this year- is having a direct impact on the ability of “ordinary working families” (i.e. the working class) to heat their homes, drive to work, and put food on the table.

For many workers, spiralling prices and pay offers well below the rate of inflation have been the last straw after years of attacks on wages, jobs and social benefits, and there has been a whole series of strikes in important sectors, most notably on the railways. 40,000 rail workers - signallers, maintenance and train staff - belonging to the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport union) held three strikes in June and plan further strikes on 27 July, 18 and 20 August – the first nationwide strike in Britain on the railways for about 25 years.

5,500 train drivers belonging to a different union, ASLEF will also strike on 30 July at eight rail companies. There will be smaller strikes at other companies before that. In the North West of England, bus drivers have been on strike following a pay dispute with Arriva. 

There are also planned strikes in the communications sector. 40,000 British Telecom workers will strike on 29 July and 1 August. Royal Mail workers are to strike between 20 and 22 July. This could involve 115,000 workers.

Following unions’ rejection of employers’ pay offers in the airlines, this summer could see widespread stoppages at airports both in Britain and other European countries.

In education, there has been a number of struggles in the universities and FE colleges, while the National Education Union and the National Union of Teachers are calling for “industrial action” in the Autumn if negotiations fail. And following a government pay offer of around 5% (or under) for health workers, teachers and other public sector workers, “health unions angrily denounced the NHS pay rises as a ‘betrayal’ and ‘a kick in the teeth’, and warned stoppages could be on the horizon”[1].

These disputes are part of a more general rise in workers’ militancy. The GMB union, which has a strong presence among local council employees, reported that the number of disputes from October 2021 to March 2022 was seven times the level in the same period in 2019-20; the Unite union, one of the main public sector unions, claimed a four-fold rise in disputes.

The significance of these strikes

These struggles are not a direct working class response to the capitalist war in Ukraine. But having been told that “we are all in together” in the fight against Covid and that we must all be ready to make sacrifices to defend Ukraine and the West from Russian aggression, it is of no small significance that workers are not ready to give up the defence of their own class interests in the name of national unity. And if we look beyond Britain, we can see that the combativity of the working class has been straining at the leash in numerous countries. In 2019, just before the pandemic hit, there were important strike movements in France, and even during the lock-downs – especially at the beginning – workers in numerous sectors, including the “heroes” of the health services – took collective action against being forced to work without any real means of protection against the virus. As the lockdowns came to an end, there were more outbreaks of class struggle in the US, Iran, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere, prompting us to publish an article entitled “Struggles in the United States, in Iran, in Italy, in Korea... Neither the pandemic nor the economic crisis have broken the combativity of the proletariat!”[2]

If we compare these movements against intensified exploitation to the situation of the working class in Ukraine, which has been almost entirely subjugated to the national war effort, we can see them as evidence that, while the workers of Ukraine are experiencing a real defeat, this does not apply to the working class globally, and in particular to its most experienced fractions in western Europe, who are not willing to sacrifice their material class needs to the idol of the national interest, still less to be marched off to war on behalf of the capitalist class.

It may be objected that all these struggles are limited to the economic level and that they are not leading the working class, in the short term at least, to develop a political alternative to the historic dead-end reached by capitalist society. But in a situation where, for reasons we have analysed elsewhere[3], the working class has largely lost any sense of itself as a distinct social force, struggles in response to the economic crisis and its accompanying attacks provide an indispensable starting point for the working class to recover its own identity, above all when large numbers of workers in different sectors are striking for essentially the same economic demands. And the recovery of class identity necessarily contains a vital political dimension[4] as it tends to highlight the scenario predicted by the Communist Manifesto in 1848: “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.

The response of the ruling class and their trade unions

The formation of the working class into a unified force confronting the bourgeoisie is, of course, a long way off, and we have no intention of downplaying the immense obstacles which stand in the way of such an outcome – above all because the accelerating decomposition of bourgeois society itself threatens to drag the working class in its wake, to inflict this dying system’s own hatreds and divisions (national, racial, sexual, religious, etc) on the body of the proletariat. At the same time, even though the bourgeoisie itself is more and more divided, increasingly losing control of its own system, and its political machinery in particular, it is still capable of developing strategies and manoeuvres to prevent the unification of its mortal enemy, the working class.

In response to the strikes in Britain, the populist Tory government, which has claimed to be the “real party of the workers”(!), is for the moment not launching a frontal attack against the strikes but mainly adopting a more conciliatory, wait and see posture, even if the Transport minister Grant Schapps has said the rail strikers’ demands are unreasonable. It admits there is a “cost of living crisis” which it portrays as temporary, needing hard choices in order to be overcome. It is also offering token support to the poorest workers of a few hundred pounds in July and in the Autumn. More recently it has offered to increase the 2% public sector pay rise to 5%, i.e., it is offering a wage cut of approximately 5% instead of 8%.

The more serious vehicles of the bourgeois media, notably papers like the Guardian and Observer, but also the BBC, have talked a lot about the “strike wave”, even exaggerating it and predicting a “summer of discontent”, a return to the class struggle of the 70s. Numerous articles have been published showing the legitimacy of the rail strikers’ demands, in particular heaping praise on RMT leader Mick Lynch for his intelligent and articulate defence of these demands faced with hostile questioning from other parts of the media[5]. There have also been a number of surveys published showing that the rail strikes have enjoyed a considerable level of public support. This is in marked contrast to previous transport strikes where the media have focused largely on the “misery” inflicted on commuters by the “selfish demands” of the unions. True, a tabloid like The Sun can still proclaim that “This week’s rail strikes are what happens when Marxist thugs high on ‘class war’ fantasies try to weaponize the public’s economic woes to bring down an elected Government they despise” (20.6.22), but such inflammatory rhetoric also serves to radicalise the image of the unions.

Since in the past the bourgeoisie has always been careful to hide news of escalating movements that have developed outside of official control, this constant and often favourable publicity for the strikes points to an attempt by the ruling class to anticipate and thus dissipate a more dangerous development of the class movement. And an early sign that the unions were playing their part in this division of labour, that they are doing their job of keeping the class struggle under control, was the calling of a big TUC demonstration “against the cost of living crisis” in London on June 18th.

In addition,

• the unions have ensured that the strikes strictly obey the very tight legal restrictions in place today
• The list of strikes above shows that despite the fact that it touches important sectors of the working class, only parts of these sectors are actually striking.
• the strikes are spread out over different days
• care seems to have been taken to ensure that the strikes of different sectors occur on different days of the calendar.
• the strikes, according to the unions, are ultimately directed against the Tory Government, not against the ruling class as a whole. The final goal is the election of a Labour Government.
• This “anti-Tory” mystification is reinforced by “far left” groups like the Socialist Workers Party. While the leftists criticise Keir Starmer for not supporting the strikes and for disciplining Labour MPs for making an appearance on picket lines, their propaganda is constantly aimed at the need to “kick out the Tories” and install a Labour government with a more radical leadership (like Corbyn, for example). And if they call for the unification of strikes, this is to take place through the trade unions acting together. In sum, the leftists’ role is to prevent the working class from breaking out of the grip of the Labour party and the unions.

What we are seeing today in Britain is only a hint of what the working class needs to do if it is to forge itself into a unified and conscious power capable of confronting and overthrowing the rule of capital. It also reminds us of the cynicism and cunning of a ruling apparatus which is not restricted to the Tories but includes the whole “Labour movement” - from Starmer to the unions and the far left. But identifying the obstacles to the class struggle, exposing its real enemies, is a necessary part of releasing the immense potential revealed by the immediate resistance of the exploited class.

Amos 21/7/22