We publish below a position paper by one of our sympathisers on the No War But The Class War committee meeting in Paris on 2 December[1]. We welcome this contribution and generally support the political content of this text. In our view, it highlights two essential aspects that we would like to emphasise:

- the first, the totally artificial character of the NWBTCW committee, with no relation to the reality of a supposed reaction to the war within the working class: "Unless you consider that the struggles of last year in England, the one which is currently taking place in France, etc. are struggles which are frontally and above all consciously opposed to the war, the formation of such committees does not emanate from a movement of the class."
- the second, the fact that such an opportunist initiative only accentuates the confusion with regard to leftism and anarchism: "The ex-nihilo creation of heterogeneous structures called afterwards ‘struggle committees’, by calling on all leftists and anarchists of good will, seems to be an unsuitable framework for proletarian politics".

As the comrade rightly points out, this NWBTCW committee is ultimately nothing less than a "sham based on tacit compromises".
ICC
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I am not going to give a point-by-point summary of the meeting here, but I will only focus on what I thought was the most important.
I am not going to get into the controversy about the historical significance of the war in Ukraine, which was supposed to be the first part of the discussion at the meeting, with the ICT on the one hand seeing this war as a step towards the generalisation of global inter-imperialist war and the ICC saying that this is not yet on the agenda and that the conditions have not yet been met.
I will focus on what the NWBTCW is and the politics of creating such a committee in the face of war.
After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine last year, two organisations of the communist left proposed two different initiatives. On the one hand, the ICC, together with the Istituto Onorato Damen and Internationalist Voice, initiated a joint statement by the groups of the communist left, while on the other hand the Internationalist Communist Tendency called for the creation of NWBTCW committees.
I come back to this divergence because it underlies the second part of the discussion that took place at the committee meeting, namely what is this committee, what is its purpose, etc.
The presidium then drew an opposition between an abstract internationalism (that of the ICC) on the one hand, and a concrete initiative on the other.
So the presidium laid claim to being concrete: "you see comrades, the problem with this joint declaration of the groups of the communist left is that it is valid at all times and in all places". In contrast to this,  the NWBTCW struggle committees are initiatives which will allow the minorities who participate in them to adapt, to bend to the different situations, to the different contexts in order to better respond to the current situation.
To deal with this point, we need to see what a struggle committee is: it emanates either from a massive class struggle or from a struggle in one of its parts, bringing together particularly combative elements who feel the need to unite in order to act and reflect and pursue the struggle. Forming first (most often) on the basis of the enterprise or the sector, they can expand as the struggle goes on. The appearance of struggle committees is never to be neglected and corresponds to a step forward in the maturation of class consciousness. Proletarians meeting together can talk about past failures and the reasons for them, and ask themselves the question of how to organise themselves and in what framework. It is therefore essential for organised revolutionaries to support the creation of such committees and to intervene in them.
By its nature, the conditions of its formation, a committee is politically heterogeneous and sensitive to the manoeuvres and sabotage of leftists or trade unionists. The task of the revolutionaries of the communist left is to give the proletarians in these committees the tools to oppose their political enemies, the leftists.

So what about here? Unless you consider this past year's struggles in England, the current one in France, etc. to be struggles that oppose the war head-on and above all consciously, the formation of such committees does not emanate from a class movement.

Artificial seems to be the right word to describe this type of initiative
In this artificial committee, the groups will struggle side by side with clearly leftist elements (thus political enemies). Here we see a manoeuvre that wants to make the ICC look sectarian, picking and choosing what is a real struggle and what isn’t. However, if in a struggle it happens that committees are created, in these committees the revolutionaries of the communist left intervene not to march with the leftists but to fight them. How can they fight them when they are going to form a committee along with them which, moreover, is not based on any clear anti-war movement of the class. This is a mistake: here the revolutionaries disarm themselves from the start and will not be able to guide the participants against the various leftists and anarchists.
For example, what came out of this meeting was a clear immediatism and activism, which was to be expected, but it will be impossible for the ICT to oppose it when it is bathed in it, maintaining and sustaining the illusion that there could be anti-war class actions to popularise and generalise in the short term.
There is also the danger of making participants believe in minority initiatives that will not actually advance class consciousness one inch while exposing them to bourgeois state repression.
This activism also block the development of consciousness  among young and inexperienced elements who are looking for class positions; it prevents them from being drawn towards the communist left (unless they consider the communist left to be "a handful of nobodies" as a member of the presidium put it). This type of committee is a de facto decoy, since it maintains for obviously opportunistic reasons the vagueness on essential questions and positions and is not without conveying the old trap of substitutionism, privileging spectacular actions right now.

The artificial creation of a "committee" which puts on the same level the left communist organisations and various anarchist, leftist, Trotskyist and trade unionist elements, while laying down conditions of membership that are too broad and too vague, and trying to ensure the survival of the committee to act against the war, means that none of the tricky questions will be clarified for fear of putting this or that participating group in an awkward position. This is what an Italian from the last century called an "alliance without principles".
I can give some quick examples: at no time did the presidium feel the need to clarify for the good understanding of the inexperienced participants, the political definition of leftism, the class boundary that separates them from the communist left; the presidium did not reply to the illusions of the participants about the situation in Iran that some saw as the beginning of a revolution while it is not even a class movement; when the fact of organising in the trade unions was evoked, the presidium did not recall the position of the communist left on the trade unions and their role, which would have been, in the light of struggles past and in preparation, much more instructive for everyone.

How can we believe afterwards that it will be possible to lead a fight against these same leftists within the committee? You might as well ask a puma to cut its claws and remove its fangs before sinking them into the back of the grizzly's neck. You don't have to be a soothsayer, prophet or Levite to say this, but simply be a marxist and avoid giving the critical assessment of two decades of NWBTCW policy as "sometimes it works, sometimes not".
These two proposals - the joint declaration and the formation of committees - correspond to two ways of doing politics and they are not equal.

Revolutionaries are guided by their duty towards the class, that of giving it the means to go towards political clarity, which translates for example into preventing the most conscious or most combative proletarians (those for example who respond to the calls of the left communist organisations) from wandering into dead-ends, calls for action that have no relation to the slow but real movement of consciousness in the class. The activism, the immediatism and the various errors from which this committee suffers are not due to chance but to the poison of opportunism. The creation ex-nihilo of heterogeneous structures called afterwards "struggle committee", calling on all leftists and anarchists of good will, seems to be an unsuitable framework for proletarian politics.
The moral here could be summarised as follows: "the class hesitates, let's push it... nowhere".
Which is what this committee really is, a sham based on tacit compromises and fuzzy principles, which exists simply to intervene and above all to show that you are intervening.
Fraternally,
An active sympathiser of the ICC and the communist left

The protests that began on 7 December, after the departure of Pedro Castillo's government, have continued; and as a result of the violence unleashed, the Peruvian Public Prosecutor's Office indicated that, as of 20 January, 55 people had died and more than 1,200 had been injured. Similarly, there are still 78 road blockades and protest actions in 28 provinces, especially in the south of the country. On 15 January, the regions of Puno, Cusco, Lima and Callao were declared to be in a state of emergency for a period of 30 calendar days. The current government of Dina Boluarte remains firm in its decision to take an "iron fist" to the protests and to initiate judicial investigations with the support of the police intelligence apparatus, in an attempt to avoid a scenario similar to that experienced in recent years in countries such as Chile and Colombia. On the other hand, the demonstrators are demanding the release of former president Pedro Castillo (whom they see as the victim of a coup d'état), the resignation of Dina Boluarte, early elections and the holding of a referendum to approve the start of a constitutional process.

In December last year, we published an article online in which we stated the following: "The popular revolts that are rising up as organised actions of the opposing factions of the bourgeois right and left are an expression of the desperation of these same factions to maintain or regain control of the state [giving rise to a polarisation that] has permeated society, with all its burden of confusion and ideological poisoning. An example of this are the demands for the ‘closure of the congress’, ‘they must all go’, ‘new elections’, ‘new constitution’, which are nothing more than democratic demands, which only seek to maintain the status quo of the bourgeois state. These demands have nothing to do with the interests of the working class and its historical project. On the contrary, they can only confine it within this society of exploitation and social classes. They serve to divert workers from their immediate demands based on the defence of their living conditions, which also provide a necessary experience of struggle for the political maturation of their forces. [...] Although we do not doubt that there are elements of the working class involved in these popular revolts who try to express their indignation at the decadence of the political class, they do so on a terrain that is not their own, where the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie impose their democratic banners, in order to keep intact the society of exploitation and the defence of their own interests of profit and gain thanks to the ferocious exploitation of the workers' labour power. These elements of the working class and other non-exploiting strata are being swept along by the irrational and putrefying violence produced by a system that no longer has anything more to offer humanity." [1]

Methods alien to the proletariat

It is necessary to insist that these protests have led in some regions of the country to revolts and bloody confrontations on a bourgeois terrain, where the workers are led to carry the banners of the petty bourgeoisie, becoming atomised and involved in a confrontation that is outside their class terrain. Moreover, in these revolts we have seen attitudes more akin to those of the lumpenproletariat, like the burning of buildings, companies, mines, attacks on buses, ambulances, the charging of tolls (extortion on the occupied roads) and what is worse, the attack on many workers like health workers, mine workers and agro-industrial workers, who had their belongings stolen or their physical integrity attacked because they did not want to join the revolt.

Beyond the indignation and social resentment that has historically existed in Peru's southern provinces, such as Huancavelica, considered by the Chamber of Commerce to be the second poorest (41. 2%), followed by regions like Puno and Ayacucho [2], and the fact that leftist ideology has cultivated the narrative of the right of the poorest to rebel, of the rights of the native peoples, or of the peasants to land, what seems to be at the heart of this whole situation are the aspirations, so far frustrated, that sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, urban and rural, thought possible to fulfil once Pedro Castillo came to power.

The Peruvian big bourgeoisie which controls economic activities such as food, banking, construction, mining, tourism, materials, fuel, education, among others, with annual revenues in the billions of dollars and investments in a large part of South America, Europe and the USA [3], also maintains political control, with strong party representation in Congress, as well as having deep roots in the state apparatus.

That is why, at some points in this confrontation, it has been presented as a struggle of the "resource-rich but poor South" against the "corrupt, exclusionary and centralist" bourgeoisie of Lima. The appropriation of the great natural and material resources by the Lima bourgeoisie is another of the issues that have long underpinned the discourse of the protagonists of these mobilisations.

The sectors of the petty bourgeoisie that are driving these actions of road blockades, mobilisations and marches in the provinces and from some of these areas towards Lima, have been supported by associations of small traders, peasant federations, trade unions, regional governors, university authorities, provincial bar associations, ronderos (remnants of the so-called autonomous peasant patrols active in the 1980s) and student unions, largely permeated by leftist ideology, combined with nationalist and regionalist ideas which reflect the particular interests of these groups: at the end of the day, all these ideologies work in defence of national capital.

According to estimates by the National Institute of Statistics and Information (INEI), in the year 2021, 25.9% of the Peruvian population was living in poverty (8.5 million people), and 4.1% in extreme poverty (1. 3 million people). In these figures, the poor are considered to be that part of the population that has a monthly capacity to acquire a basket of goods and services of less than 378 soles (US$97), while extreme poverty refers to those whose capacity is less than 201 soles (US$52). [4] To this must be added the economic impact of the years of the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently of the war in Ukraine. It is clear that the world economic crisis is hitting the national bourgeoisie as a whole, but most severely the most vulnerable sectors of the productive apparatus, not to mention the informal sector.

These mobilisations are a desperate action by those sectors who have been driven to their knees by the progressive deterioration of the economy, and who have aspired to a greater political participation in the state apparatus, in order to safeguard the particular interests of this or that social category or region. They have taken advantage of the general impoverishment to whip up the scarecrow of “social exclusion” for reasons of race or region of origin, while denouncing "democracy only for the few". The National Intelligence Directorate (DINI) and the Ministry of the Interior have stated that these mobilisations "are financed by illegal mining, drug trafficking and other agents seeking to sow fear". It also denounces political and trade union organisations, such as Movadef, Fenate and factions of Sendero Luminoso, Central Única de Rondas Campesinas, SUTEP, as well as the Federación Regional de Productores Agrarios y Medio Ambiente (Regional Federation of Agrarian Producers and the Environment). [5]

For their part, the sectors of the traditional bourgeoisie and their parties have also taken advantage of the situation, waving the banner of the anti-communist struggle, so that "terrorism will not be repeated in the country", which has given them the perfect excuse to unleash repression and state terror, killing two birds with one stone, by also criminalising protest and presenting any social demand as vandalism. Dina Boluarte's government deployed 11,000 police officers to control the demonstrations in this city, and on 21 January, it intervened in the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the main public university in the country, using a large police contingent, knocking down the main gate with a tank, also using drones and helicopters, arresting approximately 200 people, many of them demonstrators who had come from other regions and were staying overnight in that institution, sending a clear message to the student sector, which it accused of preparing terrorist actions. But as far as the working class is involved, it makes little difference whether the protests are being organised by the leftists and the petty bourgeois organisations, or whether they are being financed by illegal bourgeois gangs: the working class needs to defend its independent interests in the face of decomposing capitalism in all its forms.

Strengthening nationalism

Another way in which the various factions of the bourgeoisie attack the proletariat ideologically is through a campaign in which nationalism, the defence of democracy and the nation are exalted. This reflects another dimension of the political crisis, such as the actions in which geopolitical competition in the region is evident. On 23 January, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry issued a communiqué rejecting statements by Bolivian President Luis Arce, in which he expressed his “support for the Peruvian people's struggle to recover their democracy and to elect a government that represents them”. [6] It should be remembered that the president of Peru's Council of Ministers accused Evo Morales of “encouraging insurrection [...] and of bringing projectiles into Peru from Bolivia”. Pedro Castillo's intention to favour Evo Morales on the issue of access to the sea were rejected by the Peruvian right and supported by other left-wing governments in the region. This situation led the Peruvian government to prevent Evo Morales and eight Bolivian officials from entering the country.

Similarly, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry rejected the statements made by the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro [7], regarding the events that took place on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. One of the issues that most concerned the factions of the Peruvian right wing was the relationship with other left-wing governments in the region, although Castillo apparently did not have time to concretise strategies or concrete actions with them, which could have affected the interests historically shared by the American and Peruvian bourgeoisie. This interest was ratified by the US ambassador, Lisa Kenna, who reiterated "her country's full support for Peru's democratic institutions and the actions of the constitutional government to stabilise the social situation". In the Peruvian case, it should not be forgotten that both the Pacific War with Chile (1879-1884), in which it lost the coastal province of Tarapacá, as well as the Cenepa War (1995), over border delimitation (Cenepa river basin), continue to be milestones or references of a historical narrative aimed at strengthening nationalism.

In short, the current reality shows that the Peruvian bourgeoisie, like others on the right and left in the region, has not been afraid to order repression and maintain its interests in any way it can, sending a clear message to stimulate fear in the ranks of the proletariat. It is difficult to know if these demonstrations and road blockades will last longer, but what is clear is that the Peruvian bourgeoisie seems to have convinced itself that the only way to achieve a certain political stability and control of the situation will be through the application of "legitimate violence" by the state against the population and the purging of its political apparatus of government.

This is typical of the behaviour of the entire world bourgeoisie applied during the decadence of capitalism, and it is being maintained and deepened in the present phase of decomposition. As we stated in our December 2022 article: “What is happening in Peru at the moment is not an expression or reaction of the workers, it is not the class struggle. What is happening in Peru is a struggle for purely bourgeois interests, where one of the two opposing factions of the bourgeoisie will finally take control of the state in order to continue the exploitation of the workers. The terrorism exercised by the bourgeoisies on both sides continues to cost human lives. The methods used – arson and indiscriminate violence - are opposed to those through which the working class will overthrow capitalism, based on the ability to build an organisation that can incorporate the rest of the non-exploiting layers into its programme of political and social transformation. The terror of the actions of both sides of the bourgeoisie in this revolt constitutes an attack on the consciousness of the working class.” [8]

Internacialismo, Section in Peru of the International Communist Current
February 2023

NOTES:

[1] “Peru: the working class finds itself in the crossfire of warring bourgeois factions”. [3] December 2022.

[2] Los departamentos más pobres a nivel multidimensional y su avance en la ejecución de inversión pública [4]

[3] Durand, F. (2017). Los doce apóstoles de la democracia peruana. Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

[4] INEI (2022). Poverty affected 25.9% of the country's population in 2021 [5].

[5] “Who are the alleged inciters identified by DINI in the protests in Peru to create chaos and violence?” [6]

[6] Chancellery delivered a note of protest to the Bolivian ambassador for statements made by President Luis Arce [7]

[7] Government expresses "energetic protest" at "interference" by President Gustavo Petro (El Comercio headline).

[8] Ibidem: See footnote 1.

A series of articles explaining that the campaign to defend the NHS is a campaign to defend the capitalist state, not the working class

On March 11 there is an ‘SOS NHS demonstration’ which claims to both “defend the NHS” and “support the strikes”. But is it possible to do both at the same time? We say “no”, firstly because of the nature of the workers’ struggles going on in Britain today, which are continuing the ‘summer of discontent’ that started 9 months ago, but also the struggles going on in France, with large demonstrations against pension reform, and more widely in Europe and the Americas. Secondly, because the National Health Service was never a reform won by the working class, but on the contrary part of the wave of nationalisations in the 1940s and 1950s that grew out of the state control of the economy for World War 2, as we show in the articles we are highlighting in this dossier.

All workers are facing the same price rises, particularly for food and fuel, often with the need to use food banks or choose between heating and eating, because they are seeing their real wages fall. This is what lies behind the strikes going on in Britain since last summer. Yet everywhere we see the struggles divided up, between different industries, between different occupations in the same industry, and between members of different unions in the same workforce, as with ambulance workers divided between Unison, Unite and GMB unions striking at different times. The idea that “This is now a fight to save the NHS itself” as Sharon Graham, Unite General Secretary said last November, or that it is “a fight not only for pay and working conditions, but also for the very survival of the NHS” (Counterfire), is another way of cutting health workers off from other workers struggling for the same things. It is not a separate fight from that of teachers, transport workers, civil servants, university workers, it is the same fight. Nurses, physiotherapists, ambulance workers, junior doctors need to fight for their pay and working conditions regardless of whether or not the state will fund the NHS sufficiently to cut waiting times for treatment or ambulances. And for that expressions of support must go beyond “plenty of honks and cheers of support could be heard from the public” (Counterfire) and become part of “a dynamic of extension of the struggle” together with all workers in struggle, as we say in our latest international leaflet [8].

Not everyone repeats the same false memories of “We remember when our NHS was the best healthcare system in the world” (keep our NHS public [9]). Remember the long history of waiting lists, the dilapidated  surgeries! As the articles we are highlighting here show, the NHS was not any kind of ‘socialist’ reform won through the election of the Labour Party in 1945, but a plan arising from the WW2 coalition government with the idea of keeping workers “fit for service”, particularly military service. So it is no surprise that cost cutting and “productivity” measures have been applied to health services by Labour as well as Tory governments. So when Socialist Worker tell us “Big strikes in the NHS will get the Tories on the back foot” they play the same game of dividing up the struggle, separating out the healthworkers as a special case, and spreading the same old story that Tories attack the NHS more than Labour.

Nor is the NHS simply its employees, as pickets shouting “we are the NHS” think. Certainly, the NHS could not exist without its workers, any more than any other capitalist concern could. They are exploited by the NHS. It is true that the NHS has no shareholders, but it is part of the state that keeps workers healthy enough to be exploited by the British capitalist class as a whole, and therefore the workers in it contribute to the production of capitalist profit. We are NOT the NHS, our interests are opposed to the interests of the capitalist class and its state, of which the NHS is a part.

The NHS is not a reform for workers to defend [10] World Revolution no.303, April 2007 [11]

 Debate on Libcom on the NHS: How do we defend the social wage? [12] World Revolution no.304, May 2007 [13]

70 years of the NHS: Beware the capitalist state bearing gifts [14] World Revolution no. 381, Autumn 2018 [15]

Solidarity with health workers – against their employer, the capitalist NHS [16] World Revolution 386 - Summer 2020 [17]

The ICC’s section in France has published this leaflet in response to the latest developments in the fight against the government’s pension “reforms”

"It’ll take more than 49.3[1] to make us bend!

Faced with the announcement of the immediate adoption of the pension reform, the reaction was lightning fast. Everywhere in France, anger exploded. In the city centres, workers, pensioners, unemployed people, young future employees, we gathered by the thousands to shout our refusal to be exploited until the age of 64, in unbearable working conditions, and to end up with a miserable pension. "Eruption", "rage", "conflagration" were the words of the foreign press. The images of the crowd growing hour after hour on the Place de la Concorde in Paris went around the world.

The message is clear:
- We will not accept any more sacrifices!
- We will no longer bend our backs under the orders of the bourgeoisie!
- We are finding our way back to the struggle!
- We are the working class!

The development of our struggles worries the bourgeoisie

Since the beginning, some political figures, from Hollande to Bayrou, have warned Macron about the "timing" of the reform: "it's not the right time", "there are risks of social fracture". And they were right!

This attack has provoked a social movement of a magnitude not seen for decades. Strikes are multiplying and, above all, demonstrations are bringing millions of us together in the streets. Thanks to this struggle, we are beginning to understand who this "We" is! A social, international force that produces everything and must fight in unity and solidarity: the working class! "Either we fight together, or we will end up sleeping in the street!" This is what was clearly expressed last Thursday in the demonstration in support of the Ivry garbage collectors that the police came to dislodge: together we are stronger!

And these solidarity reflexes do not only arise in France. In many countries, strikes and social movements are on the increase. In the United Kingdom in the face of inflation, in Spain in the face of the collapse of the health system, in South Korea in the face of longer working hours ... everywhere, the working class is fighting back.

In Greece, a train accident took place three weeks ago: 57 dead. The bourgeoisie obviously wanted to blame a worker. The signalman on duty was thrown in jail. But the working class immediately understood the scam. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to denounce the real cause of this deadly accident: the lack of staff and the dilapidation of the infrastructure. Since then, the anger has not subsided. On the contrary, the struggle is growing and broadening: with cries of "no more low wages", "we’re fed up". Or again: "we can't work like decent people since the crisis, but at least don't kill us!”

Our movement against the pension reform is participating in this development of the combativity and the reflection of our class at the world level. Our movement shows that we are capable of fighting massively and of making the bourgeoisie tremble. Already, all the political specialists are announcing that it will be very complicated for Macron to push through new reforms and major attacks by the end of his five-year term.

The bourgeoisie is aware of this problem. It is therefore setting traps for us, diverting us from the methods of struggle that cement us and make us strong, trying to send us into dead ends.

More democracy?

Since the announcement of 49.3, the left-wing parties and the unions have been pushing us to defend "parliamentary life" in the face of Macron's manoeuvres and "denial of democracy".

But decades of "representative democracy" have definitively proven one thing: from the right to the left, from the most moderate to the most radical, once in power, they all carry out the same attacks and renege on their promises. Worse, calls for new elections are the most devious of traps. It has no other function than to cut the proletariat off from its collective strength. The elections reduce us to the state of atomised "citizens" facing the steamroller of bourgeois propaganda. The polling booth is aptly named! "Defending parliament", "hoping for elections" ... they try to make us believe that another capitalism is possible, a more human, a fairer and even, why not, a more ecological capitalism. All that is needed is for it to be well governed. This is a lie! Capitalism is a system of exploitation that is now decadent and is gradually dragging all of humanity towards ever greater misery and war, destruction and chaos. The only programme of the bourgeoisie, whatever its political colour, whatever mask it wears, is always: more exploitation!

Bourgeois democracy is the hypocritical mask of capitalist dictatorship!

Blocking the economy?

Faced with the "deafness" of the government, the idea is growing that the only way to "make ourselves heard" is to block the economy. It is based on the growing understanding of the central role of the working class in society: through our combined labour, we produce all the wealth. The Paris dustmen's strike demonstrates this vividly: without their activity, the city becomes unliveable in a few days.

But the left and the unions are turning this idea into a dead end. They are pushing for blockade actions, each in your own corporation, each in your own workplace. This leaves strikers isolated in their corners, separated from other workers, deprived of our main strength: unity and solidarity in struggle.

In the UK, strikers have been reduced to impotence for almost ten months despite their anger and determination, because they are divided into "pickets", each one blocking in his or her workplace. The historic defeat of the English miners during the 1984-85 struggle against Thatcher was already the result of this same trap: pushed by the unions, they had wanted to block the economy by provoking a coal shortage. They had held out for more than a year and had emerged exhausted, crushed and demoralised. Their defeat was a defeat for the whole working class in Britain!

Smash everything?

Some of the demonstrators are even starting to say that they need to move on to harder modes of action: "I'm not violent at all, but here we feel that we need to do something to make the government react". The example of the Yellow Vests is increasingly put forward. A certain sympathy for the ransacking actions of the black blocs is spreading.

To think that the bourgeois state and its immense repressive apparatus (police, army, secret services, etc.) could be frightened in the slightest by burning rubbish bins and broken windows is illusory. These are just mosquito bites on an elephant's skin. On the other hand, all these actions of "hyper-radical" appearance are perfectly exploited by the bourgeoisie to break ... the collective strength of the movement:

- By highlighting the slightest broken window, the media scare a whole part of the workers who would like to join the demonstrations.
- By systematically provoking incidents, the forces of order gas, disperse and thus prevent any possibility of gathering and discussion at the end of the demonstration.
The minority violent action of the “casseurs” is, in fact, exactly the opposite of what really makes the strength of our class.

Our strength is solidarity, massive struggle and reflection on its lessons!

In the last few days, the newspapers have indicated the possibility of a "CPE scenario". In 2006, the government was forced to withdraw its Contrat Première Embauche (First Job Contract), which was going to plunge young people into even greater insecurity. At the time, the bourgeoisie was frightened by the growing scale of the protest, which was beginning to go beyond the youth movement, the precarious students and young workers, to extend to other sectors, with unitary and united slogans: " old cucumbers, young tomatoes, it’s the same salad!”

This capacity to extend the movement was the result of debates in real sovereign general assemblies open to all. These assemblies were the lungs of the movement and constantly sought, not to lock themselves up in the universities or in the workplaces in the spirit of a besieged citadel, to block them at all costs, but to extend the struggle, with massive delegations to neighbouring companies. This is what made the bourgeoisie back down! This is what made our movement strong! These are the lessons that we must reappropriate today!

The strength of our class lies in our unity, our class consciousness, our capacity to develop our solidarity and thus to extend the movement to all sectors. This is the spur that must guide our struggles.

In the struggle, we can only rely on ourselves! Not on the politicians, not on the unions! It is the working class and its struggle that carries an alternative: the overthrow of capitalism by proletarian revolution!

Today, it is still difficult to gather in general assemblies, to organise ourselves. Yet this is the only way. These assemblies must be places where we really decide on the direction of the movement, where we feel united and confident in our collective strength, where we can adopt together more and more unifying demands and go out in massive delegations to meet our class brothers and sisters in the nearest factories, hospitals, schools, shops, administrations.

Today or tomorrow, the struggles will continue, because capitalism is sinking into crisis and because the proletariat has no other choice. That's why, all over the world, the workers are entering into struggle.

The bourgeoisie will continue its attacks: inflation, lay-offs, precariousness, shortages ... Faced with this deterioration in living and working conditions, the international working class will take up the road of struggle in ever greater numbers.

So, wherever we can, in the streets, after and before the demonstrations, on the picket lines, in the cafés and in the workplaces, we must meet, debate, learn the lessons of past struggles, in order to develop our current struggles and prepare for future ones.

The future belongs to the class struggle!

International Communist Current, 20 March 2023

War, pandemic, ecological disaster, economic chaos, famine: in the opening years of the 2020s, all these products of a decaying system have been intensifying and acting on each other, leaving little doubt that capitalism is spiralling towards destruction. But in opposition to the sense of doom and hopelessness pervading society, in June 2022, the world’s oldest proletariat ignited the fire of international class struggle. Instead of cowering before this growing chaos, the proletariat began to shake itself free of decades of disorientation. A common slogan has been heard in Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, Germany; “enough is enough. We can’t take anymore”. The proletarian giant has bestirred itself. Its collective struggle and solidarity, its determination not to sacrifice itself, are the antithesis of the increasing turmoil of capitalism. They have opened up a new period of the class struggle.

In order to explain these historical events, we held three public meetings in English at the beginning of the year.

The meetings were attended by comrades from around the globe. The discussion addressed the historical meaning of the acceleration of barbarism and the proletariat’s rupture with the deep retreat that, with some exceptional moments, lasted from 1989 to 2022.

In this article we will concentrate on the meaning of this rupture.

There was broad agreement with the ICC’s analysis of the depth and impact of the multiple crises. The discussion of the struggles raised important questions. How will the struggle break out of their isolation from each other? How will the struggles transform themselves from the defensive to the offensive? Is the ICC saying the way is now open to revolution? In this article we will take up these questions.

The upsurge of struggles since last June has largely consisted of isolated struggles. Britain is a good example. Despite the number of different sectors involved there has not been a real coming together of the struggles. The dividing up of the struggles is not just between sectors but also within them. There are three rail unions, each holding their own strike days. In the health sector, the Royal Collage of Nurses has even split up its own strikes; only about one third of its members have been out at one time. The majority of health workers are not involved. We also see this strategy in other countries.

Faced with these divisions, a concern was raised; “I think that the struggle of the working class are rising all over the world. That’s a positive sign but there is isolation between the struggles. Struggles are spreading but there is an opposing picture. Struggles close together but they are isolated and this is significant.” (M)

The dispersal of the struggles is indeed a serious weakness. The marxist method means looking beyond each of these particular weaknesses, placing them in their historical context. It is only in this framework that the true historical depth of the struggles can be revealed. 

Advances and retreats in the class struggle

This explosion of struggles has a similar historical significance to the events of 1968. May 68, and the huge upsurge in struggles that followed in many countries, erupted after 50 years of counter-revolution that prevailed after the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-27. This period was marked by the physical and ideological crushing of the proletariat: its deepest point was World War Two. Today’s struggles come after 30 years of a deep historical retreat by the international proletariat, precipitated by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the onset of a new and final phase in capitalism’s decline – the phase of decomposition. In these years the proletariat has suffered massive ideological attacks. Initially around the “defeat of communism” and all the lies that went with it: the end of the class struggle, the victory of capitalism, the triumph of democracy. Then aggravated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of terrorism, the growing refugee crisis. The nurturing of scapegoating and hatred by the main capitalist states that accompanied these military adventures fed the emergence of a torrent of populism and its by-product, anti-populism. Both these ideologies seek to divide the working class and undermine its awareness of itself as a class through the politics of competing identities: national, racial, sexual etc. In recent years there have been the ecological campaigns, the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine. These ideological offensives have had a profound impact on the proletariat.

The international bourgeoisie was initially surprised by the depth and extent of the struggles from 1968. However, it soon developed strategies against the struggles, culminating in the crushing of the British miners in 1985. This year-long grinding down of one of the most militant fractions of the world’s oldest proletariat was an attack on the whole working class: if the miners could not win, how can we? In the period after this defeat, there was an ebbing of struggles, despite important movements between 1986 and 1988. The working class was already on the back foot and in a situation of a growing loss of confidence in its ability to struggle when it was hit by the historical earthquake of 1989.

The ability of the proletariat to defend its class interests through the upsurge of struggles last year clearly marks a profound victory for the proletariat. It is shaking itself free of the heavy chains of the retreat and disorientation of the past decades. This has happened at a moment in which capitalism’s headlong rush towards catastrophe is becoming more and more evident, demonstrating that the proletariat bears a potential revolutionary alternative. This is why we call this moment a rupture: the social terrain has been changed.

The proletariat has not suddenly decided it has to struggle. There has been a whole process of experience and reflection over the past decades of the reflux. The class may have lost confidence in itself but it is still the revolutionary class. It may have been forced into a retreat but it had not been physically and ideological crushed in mass confrontations with the state. It has experienced the ideological campaigns, suffered endless attacks on wages, working and living conditions. It has also tried to struggle: the movement against the CPE in France 2006, the Vigo metal workers and the Indignados in Spain in 2011 are the main examples. But these struggles were unable to lessen the impact of the ideological campaigns on its self-confidence, its awareness of itself as a distinct social force. In the 2010s the struggles reached historical lows, under the increasing weight of populism and anti-populism. The proletariat, however, has experienced the reality of the lies of the populists and the ‘established elites’, particularly faced with the pandemic. All of this has led to a widespread reflection which exploded into struggle faced with the brutal attacks caused by the impact of the pandemic and war. The international slogan “enough is enough” is the manifestation of this process.

What is the meaning and potential of the new period in the class struggle?

A comrade asked about the implications of this analysis: “You seem to be saying that this is a crucial moment of the class struggle, in the light of the descent into barbarism. In the light of the current struggles, you seem to be saying that this has a particular significance, are you actually saying that these struggles can develop into a new wave of struggles (the third, with the first coming after the first world war and the second in the 1960s, defeated by the end of the 1980s)? Are you saying that if the present struggles can’t develop into a third and final wave, into a revolutionary wave, then capitalism will triumph? This is not clear not to me” (MH)

We are convinced that the rupture has opened up a new period in the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The ruling class is no longer confronted with a disorientated and passive proletariat. It is now having to grapple with an international proletariat that is refusing to sacrifice itself in the interests of capital. Will this take form of a “third wave”? We do not know.

We are not in the same situation as1968-89; the world is not divided into blocs, capitalism is 30 years into its final phase, the proletariat is confronted with the possibility that the ecological crisis could irreversibly destroy the natural environment; there is the acceleration of militarism and the danger of wars that resort to nuclear weapons. Before 1989 the proletariat’s struggle could hold back the threat of a Third World War; today no matter how much the proletariat develops its struggle the capitalist system will continue its decent into barbarism. Even if the proletariat manages to overthrow capitalism internationally, it could be faced with irreparable damage to the environment and a vast pile of ruins created by capitalist wars. But we do know that the proletariat has opened up the potential to develop its struggle towards creating the conditions for the overthrow of capitalism.

The proletariat’s ability to cast off the weight of decades of deep retreat demonstrates that it has not suffered a historical defeat comparable to what it went through in the 1920s and 1930s. Far from being the submissive victims of bourgeois ideology and agreeing to sacrifice itself on the altar of war and the “national interest”, the proletariat is defending its own interests. It is doing this in the unprecedented conditions of the acceleration of capitalism’s barbarism. This shows that it is still a potent social force. It it is not cowed or broken and it is still able to draw on its experience and reflection over the past 30 years.

How will the class go from the economic to the political struggle?

Another comrade asked:

“Qualitative escalation - how does the working class go from defence of immediate economic interests to politicisation - is it size, response of ruling class, role of revolutionaries? Just want to pose the question of the potential change to active resistance to war and to capitalism itself, only possible response to the war itself” (Intervention of Albert)

We think it is an error to oppose the economic to the political struggle. They are two dimensions of the same struggle, not stages the class has to progress through in a linear, mechanical way.

The present struggles illustrate this. By defending its working and living conditions the proletariat is rejecting the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns. It is posing its collective struggle against the atomisation, nihilism, scapegoating and hatred that typify decomposing capitalism. At present the vast majority of workers are not conscious that this is what they are doing, but objectively they are. This is laying the basis for the future more conscious recognition of the revolutionary content of the class struggle.

In order to defend its economic interests, the proletariat has to confront the last bulwark of the capitalist state, the trade unions. This is one of the great political challenges facing the class. To break with the unions means breaking with a powerful capitalist ideology: with the idea that “the unions are the working class”. This will not happen overnight but through learning the lessons of repeated defeats imposed by the capitalist state and its unions.

The comrade’s concern is: when will the proletariat become conscious of this political and economic nature of its struggle? The present struggles are a manifestation of this process. We are seeing new generations of workers, with no experience of strikes, joyously entering into the struggle, along with the older generations of workers who experienced the retreat and the struggles of 1968-89. We have already seen the unions in the UK having to try to present themselves as organising the coming together of the struggles, in response to the class’s growing anger about the uselessness of isolated struggles. On the picket lines and demonstrations in the UK there is no polarisation around race, sex, nationality or how you voted, rather there is a common struggle. If they are to push back the attacks, workers will have to confront and overcome the obstacles in the way of the extension and unification of the movement. In the coming period there will be many defeats but these will be rich in lessons invaluable to the future development of the struggle.

The role of the revolutionary organisation

There is also the important role of revolutionaries which the comrade asked about. This is a fundamental question. As we say in our Platform: As an emanation of the class, a manifestation of the process by which it becomes conscious, revolutionaries can only exist as such by becoming an active factor in this process. To accomplish this task in an indissoluble way, the revolutionary organisation:

• participates in all the struggles of the class in which its members distinguish themselves by being the most determined and combative fighters;
• intervenes in these struggles always stressing the general interests of the class and the final goals of the movement; and the final goals of the movement;
• as an integral part of this intervention, constantly dedicates itself to the work of theoretical clarification and reflection which alone will allow its general activity to be based on the whole past experience of the class and on the future perspectives crystallised through such theoretical work.”

In order to carry out this role, in response to the rupture in the class struggle, the ICC has issued and distributed four international leaflets since June 2003, held numerous public meetings in various countries, devoted the pages of its press and website to the theoretical work of understanding the full historical meaning of the period opened up by this rupture.

As an internationally centralised organisation, the ICC has carried out this intervention in as many countries as possible. Our forces are limited, but we are determined to carry out our role, with every ounce of our ability.

To this end we will continue to hold regular public meetings where the questions facing the proletariat and its organisations can be discussed.

We may have only been able to take up two of the questions raised at the public meeting, but they are vital questions. Unless we understand the profound historical meaning of the proletariat’s ability to break free from the heavy chains of the last three decades, we cannot fully understand the potential of the period opening up. We cannot predict whether the proletariat will be able to develop sufficient class consciousness to pose the overthrow of this rotting system. Nevertheless, we are convinced that it has taken the first steps towards such an outcome. As a communist organisation we are committed to do all we can to fulfil our historical responsibilities to the proletariat in its struggle.

We call on readers to attend our public meetings, write to us, help distribute our press and leaflets, to take an active part in the proletariat’s struggle for self-emancipation.

Phil

General strikes and giant demonstrations on 7 March in France, 8 March in Italy, 11 March in the UK. Everywhere, the anger is growing and spreading.

In the UK, a historic strike wave has been going on for nine months. After having suffered decades of austerity without flinching, the proletariat in Britain no longer accepts the sacrifices. "Enough is enough". In France, it's the increase in the retirement age that has lit the powder keg. Demonstrations brought millions of people to the streets. "Not one year more, not one euro less". In Spain, huge rallies were held against the collapse of the health care system, and strikes broke out in many sectors (cleaning, transport, IT, etc.). "La indignación llega de lejos / Indignation comes from afar," the newspapers said. In Germany, strangled by inflation, public sector workers and their postal colleagues went on strike for pay rises, something "never before seen in Germany". In Denmark, strikes and demonstrations broke out against the abolition of a public holiday in order to finance the increase in the military budget. In Portugal, teachers, railway workers and health care workers are also protesting against low wages and the cost of living. The Netherlands, Denmark, the United States, Canada, Mexico, China... the same strikes against the same unbearable and undignified living conditions: "The real hardship: not being able to heat, eat, look after yourself, drive!

 

The return of the working class

This simultaneity of struggles across all these countries is no accident. It confirms a real change of spirit within our class. After thirty years of resignation and despondency, through our struggles we are saying: "We are not going to take this anymore. We can and we must fight".

This return of working class combativity allows us to stand together, to show solidarity in the struggle, to feel proud, dignified and united in our fight. A very simple but extremely valuable idea is germinating in our heads: we are all in the same boat!

Employees in white coats, blue coats or ties, the unemployed, precarious students, pensioners, from all sectors, public and private, we are all beginning to recognise ourselves as a social force united by the same conditions of exploitation. We suffer the same exploitation, the same crisis of capitalism, the same attacks on our living and working conditions. We are involved in the same struggle. We are the working class.

"Workers stand together", shout the strikers in the UK. "Either we fight together, or we'll end up sleeping in the street", confirmed the demonstrators in France.

 

Can we win?

Some past struggles show that it is possible to make a government back down, to slow down its attacks.

In 1968, the proletariat in France united by taking control of its struggles. Following the huge demonstrations of 13 May to protest against the police repression suffered by the students, the walkouts and general assemblies spread like wildfire in the factories and all the workplaces to end up, with its 9 million strikers, in the biggest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. Faced with this dynamic of extension and unity of the workers' struggle, the government and the unions rushed to sign an agreement on a general wage increase in order to stop the movement.

In 1980, in Poland, faced with the increase in food prices, the strikers took the struggle even further by gathering in huge general assemblies, by deciding themselves on the demands and actions, and above all by having the constant concern to extend the struggle. Faced with this show of strength, it was not just the Polish bourgeoisie that trembled, but the bourgeoisie of all countries.

In 2006, in France, after only a few weeks of mobilisation, the government withdrew its "Contrat Première Embauche". Why was this? What frightened the bourgeoisie so much that it backed down so quickly? The precarious students organised massive general assemblies in the universities, open to workers, the unemployed and pensioners, and put forward a unifying slogan: the fight against casualisation and unemployment. These assemblies were the lungs of the movement, where debates were held and decisions were taken. The result: every weekend, the demonstrations brought together more and more sectors. Waged and retired workers joined the students under the slogan: "Young lardons, old croutons, all in the same salad". The French bourgeoisie and the government, faced with this tendency to unify the movement, had no choice but to withdraw the CPE.

All these movements have in common a dynamic of extension of the struggle thanks to the workers themselves taking control of it!

Today, whether we are waged workers, the unemployed, pensioners, precarious students, we still lack confidence in ourselves, in our collective strength, to dare to take direct control of our struggles. But there is no other way. All the "actions" proposed by the unions lead to defeat. Pickets, strikes, demonstrations, blocking the economy... it doesn't matter as long as these actions remain under their control. If the unions change the form of their actions according to the circumstances, it's always to better maintain the same substance: to divide and isolate the sectors from each other so that we don't debate and decide for ourselves how to conduct the struggle.

For nine months in the UK, what have the unions been doing? They have been scattering the workers' response: every day, a different sector on strike. Each one in its corner, each one on its separate picket line. No mass meetings, no collective debate, no real unity in the struggle. This is not an error of strategy but a deliberate division.

How in 1984-85 did the Thatcher government manage to break the back of the working class in the UK? Through the dirty work of the unions who isolated the miners from their class brothers and sisters in other sectors. They locked them into a long and sterile strike. For more than a year, the miners shut down the pits under the banner of "blocking the economy". Alone and powerless, the strikers went to the end of their strength and courage. And their defeat was the defeat of the whole working class! The workers of the UK are only now, thirty years later, raising their heads. This defeat is therefore a costly lesson that the world proletariat must not forget.

Only by gathering in open, massive and autonomous general assemblies, really deciding on the conduct of the movement, can we wage a united and spreading struggle, carried forward by solidarity between all sectors, all generations. Assemblies in which we feel united and confident in our collective strength, in which we can adopt increasingly unifying demands. General assemblies which can form massive delegations to meet our class brothers and sisters, the workers in the nearest factory, hospital, school, administration.

 

The real victory is the struggle itself

"Can we win?” The answer is yes, sometimes if, and only if, we take our struggles into our own hands. We can stop the attacks momentarily, make a government back down.

But the truth is that the global economic crisis will push whole sections of the proletariat into poverty. To get by in the international arena of the market and competition, every bourgeoisie in every country, whether its government is left, right or centre, traditional or populist, is going to impose increasingly intolerable living and working conditions.

The truth is that with the development of the war economy in the four corners of the planet, the "sacrifices" demanded by the bourgeoisie will be more and more unbearable.

The truth is that the imperialist confrontation between nations, all nations, is a spiral of destruction and bloody chaos that can lead all humanity to its destruction. Every day in Ukraine a torrent of human beings, sometimes 16 or 18 year olds, are being mowed down by abominable instruments of death, whether Russian or western.

The truth is that simple epidemics of flu or bronchiolitis are now bringing exhausted health systems to their knees.

The truth is that capitalism will continue to ravage the planet and wreak havoc with the climate, causing devastating floods, droughts and fires.

The truth is that millions of people will continue to flee war, famine, climate catastrophe, or all three, only to run into the barbed wire walls of other countries, or drown into the sea.

So the question arises: what is the point of fighting against low wages, against the lack of personnel, against this or that “reform”? Because our struggles carry the hope of another world, without class or exploitation, without war or borders.

The real victory is the struggle itself. The simple fact of entering the struggle, of developing our solidarity, is already a victory. By fighting together, by refusing resignation, we prepare the struggles of tomorrow and we create little by little, despite the inevitable defeats, the conditions for a new world.

Our solidarity in struggle is the antithesis of the deadly competition of this system, divided into rival companies and nations.

Our solidarity between generations is the antithesis of the no-future and the destructive spiral of this system.

Our struggle symbolises the refusal to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of militarism and war.

The struggle of the working class is immediately a challenge to the very foundations of capitalism and exploitation.

Every strike carries within it the seeds of revolution.

The future belongs to the class struggle!

International Communist Current (25 February 2023)

 

For current and future struggles, we must regroup, debate, learn lessons

Wherever possible, we must gather together, discuss, and reappropriate the lessons of the past, in order to prepare the autonomous struggle of the whole working class. At work, in the demonstrations, on the blockades, on the pickets, we need to debate and reflect on how the working class can take its struggles into its own hands, how it can organise itself in autonomous general assemblies, how it can extend a movement.

Public meetings

It is also in this spirit that we are organising public meetings in a number of countries. The next one in the UK is on the 1st April at 3pm, at The Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Rd, London WC1X 8QY. It will also be possible to participate in this meeting online - to do so write to [email protected] [20] from the UK. Elsewhere, write to [email protected] [21] and we will send the link. The dates and places of our meetings are available on our website: en.internationalism.org.

Come and discuss!

These days there are very few active discussions in the “Recent Discussions” section of  libcom.org [22] But one that has provoked a lot of controversy is an article called “British anarchism succumbs to war fever”[1] by Albatross, which opens up with a salvo against the anarchists who are calling for participation on the Ukrainian side in the imperialist conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Albatross poses the question: “how is it that today the anarchist movement in Britain (and elsewhere) is supporting one nation's military against another, ideologically justifying and materially provisioning the Ukrainian war effort? Are we seeing something altogether new that would lead us to question and revise our principles? No. We are seeing the same tragedy brought upon the people of the region as we have seen time after time. Our anti-militarist, internationalist, and revolutionary perspective is as vital as ever. At this present stage, the struggle for liberation is caught in the no-man's-land between imperialist invasion on the one side, and national defence (backed by an opposing imperialism) on the other. To seek purpose in either trench would be just more fuel in the furnace of capitalist warfare; it would mean allegiance to the state against anarchy”.

Albatross cites a number of examples of this anarchist war fever, for example: “From Ukraine to Scotland to Western Sahara to Palestine to Tatarstan, we stand with the people resisting imperialism,” proclaims Darya Rustamova in the pages of Freedom, an article reprinted by the Anarchist Federation. He also quotes the editorial of the AF’s magazine Organise, no 96, which proclaims that “Anarchists have taken to defence of their homeland”. Against both statements, Albatross rightly poses the question “Who are ‘the people’? By what means are they resisting? To what end?”, and to the second quote asks “What homeland do anarchists have? The ‘homeland’ is a sentimental notion of the nation-state in which a person is born” and which is used to justify the policy of “national defence”. He also contrasts this with an article published in 2009 by the AF which was much clearer in rejecting support for any nationalism, “including that of ‘oppressed nations’”[2]

Albatross goes on to demonstrate that the idea that in Ukraine there is some kind of autonomous popular resistance to the invader is delusional: all the so-called independent anarchist fighting units have been completely incorporated into the official state army, in some cases operating alongside the openly fascist units led by the Azov Brigade. And by extension, support for the Ukrainian state also involves support for the imperialist alliance which backs it with arms and propaganda – for NATO: “In our own context, the war fever that has overcome British anarchism will likely lead to support for British military intervention (through military aid and technical support, if not actual combat involvement) and, by extension, NATO imperialism. It is through such means that Ukraine will be able to defeat Russia. Given that NATO members are currently hesitant to escalate into direct conflict between nuclear powers, some anarchists find themselves in the absurd position of being more eager for the generalisation of imperialist war than their own ruling classes”.

As in our initial article about the anarchist response to the war, Albatross makes it clear that some parts of the anarchist movement have taken a clearly internationalist position against both camps in the war,  citing various groups of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers’ Aassociation in Russia (the KRAS) , Poland, Serbia and Slovakia, as well as the Assembly group in Ukraine itself, and adding that “Some anarchists in Britain have taken this course of working class internationalism – such as the Anarchist Communist Group [23], Liverpool Solidarity Federation, and AnarCom Network [24] – but they are a minority”.

Finally, Albatross points out that the Freedom group has also given a platform in its press to one of the elements involved in the doxing of the comrades of the KRAS (whose statement about this police-like behaviour we also published on our website[3]). Names and addresses of KRAS comrades were published online by some pro-Ukraine anarchists, effectively opening these comrades up to state repression.

Furore on libcom

“The war between nations, then, must be transformed into open class struggle. This begins when workers reject the social truce within their ‘own’ nation, and organise on a class basis against the people who oppress and exploit them every day”.

This basic internationalist position put forward in the text by Albatross got the following response from a poster called Machnette:

“Sounds a lot like genocide appeasement to me. Perfect example of somebody who would allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I'm glad that the aid (ie from the western powers – WR) is shooting down the bombs, clearing the mines and ending the crimes of the occupation ASAP. Is this some great victory for the class struggle? Who says it is? It's about saving lives!
When there's lives on the line, ideological purity is a luxury that is paid for with the blood of the innocent … We don't have the right to dictate dogma to our comrades when they ask for a lifeline under the threat of literal genocide!”

In another post Machnette writes

We can talk shit all we like about the IRA, or the Taliban not meeting our ideological standards, but what we cannot deny is that they had a right to oppose their respective occupations.

And in order to back the anarchist groups that are supporting Ukraine, Machnette announces that “I started funding Organise! magazine yesterday. If this has upset you guys that badly, it must be doing something really right”.

The majority of posts on the thread (by Battlescarred of the ACG, Lone Drone, Sherbu-kteer, Djybas of the Internationalist Communist Tendency and others) reject all of Machnette’s arguments in support of Ukraine and its NATO allies, not to mention the implied support for the “anti-imperialist” IRA and the Taliban[4]. Battlescarred also provides further information about the doxing of KRAS, following attempts on the Russian anarchist Avtonom website to exonerate the anarcho-snitches[5].

Concessions to the war fever

Having given credit where it is due, we think it’s necessary to remark that there are some rather dangerous chinks in the internationalist armour worn by Albatross. This became clear following a post by Steven, a long-standing member of the libcom collective, who says that while “this article makes a lot of good and important points, and is coming from a good place … I think there is a major problem with it”. And this problem is the idea that revolutionaries in Ukraine should focus on anti-militarism, in other words, opposing the Ukrainian war machine. Steven goes on: “Ukraine is a corrupt social democracy. But anarchists and revolutionaries are pretty free to agitate as they see fit (given the current exception of pro-Russian left parties at the moment). In Russia of course the situation is very different. Anarchists, anti-fascists and revolutionaries are frequently arrested, tortured by security forces, murdered by fascists and other right-wing extremists, jailed for long periods etc. Given that, I don't really feel I can criticise Ukrainian anarchists who choose to join the armed fight against the Russian invasion. Because this isn't just a matter of the nationality of your ruler, it's about whether you can live free, or be tortured, thrown in jail or killed”.

This is a clear concession to those who openly advocate joining the armed “resistance”. Lurking behind it is the classic leftist rejoinder in defence of anti-fascist fronts: “what do you do when the fascists are marching down your street and trashing your house?”. It’s never posed in political, class terms, just in terms of individual survival. Of course, as individuals faced with an immediate threat, you may be forced into all kinds of actions: running away, picking up a gun to defend yourself and your family, or being conscripted into a bourgeois army. But it’s not the same for a proletarian political organisation, a collective body whose reason for existence is to provide a clear "line of march" to the working class as a whole. And on that basis we must firmly denounce the arguments of those Ukrainian anarchists who make a deliberate political choice to join the armed fight against the Russian invasion, and openly call on others to opt for this choice as an example of anarchism in action.

The reply to this by Albatross seems completely contradictory:

“Going back to the original point, while I agree with the gist of what you're saying, I don't think anti-militarism in the specific sense is irrelevant to Ukrainians just because their nation is the invaded side. While Ukrainians are suffering from bombings and in some areas brutal occupation, many are also suffering from conscription, martial law, closed borders, etc. There is the propaganda image of the Ukrainian nation totally united in a war until victory or death, and then there is the reality that there are many people who have no desire to kill and die for their country, but who are forced to do so, being stopped at the border, subpoenaed on the street, punished for desertion, etc ... I don't judge the choices of individuals in such a situation, but I do think it is legitimate to criticise the political project of anarchist movements as expressed by, for example, The Resistance Committee and the Solidarity Collectives. I am more or less in agreement with the rest of your comment”.

Albatross seems to be unaware that there really is a fundamental disagreement with Steven here, because the whole thrust of the latter’s post is that it undermines criticism of the Ukrainian anarcho-patriots, and by implication all those outside Ukraine who support and advocate their position.

Steven defends himself by saying that he is in favour of class actions like the wildcat strikes by Ukrainian miners and health workers which have taken place during the war. At the same time, he comes back with a question for Albatross: “A clarification question for you then, appreciate that you bring up the example of anti-war sabotage in Russia which has been beautiful to see. But would you advocate that kind of sabotage against the Ukrainian military as well? Because I would not, because that would essentially just assist the Russian invasion”

To this Djybas rightly replies: “The question needs turning on its head. When talking about class struggle, we're talking about elemental social forces not calculated individual acts. If workers in any of the warring states took up the class struggle, and by doing so began to undermine the war effort in any way, would Steven and others, in their political capacity, be telling them to ‘go back to work because you're assisting the enemy’? And do remember - in times of crisis and war, opposition to any attacks on working class conditions is seen by the ruling class as a threat to national unity (so even civilian protests or opposition to restrictions on the right to strike, which you provide as positive examples, very quickly becomes ‘undermining the war effort’ according to war propaganda)”

We can add: despite Steven’s illusions in freedom to agitate in Ukraine, are we really to believe that political groups openly defending internationalist positions in Ukraine won’t also be accused of “undermining the war effort” and subjected to state repression?

A major problem…with anarchism

One of the most interesting remarks in this thread comes from Sherbu-kteer:

 “I can understand now why left-communists place so much emphasis on internationalism during WWII as an essential part of communist politics. It revealed the same thing that is being revealed now: that the perspective of most of the left has not gone beyond searching for the lesser-evil capitalists and supporting them once they think they've found them. Once again,”.

This reminds us that anarchist participation in imperialist war did not begin with the Ukraine war. There is of course the example of Kropotkin in 1914, whose followers earned the title of “anarcho-trenchists” by advocating support for French democracy against German autocracy with arguments that are very close to those of today’s pro-war apologists. Most of today’s anarchists would probably argue that they reject Kropotkin’s stance. Very few of them would admit that the majority of anarchists failed the next two major tests by imperialist war: the war in Spain 1936-9 and the Second World War. Again, most anarchists today would condemn the CNT representatives who joined regional and central government in Spain to help direct the war effort. But the idea that there was a proletarian revolution taking place “alongside” the inter-capitalist conflict in Spain led even the best anarchist groups, like the Friends of Durruti, to compromise on the question of supporting the war effort. It’s not insignificant that in his article in reply to Albatross, Wayne Price[6] also uses a quote from the Friends’ pamphlet “Towards a Fresh Revolution”:
“There must be no collaboration with capitalism….Class struggle is no obstacle to workers continuing at present to fight on in the battlefields and working in the war industries….Revolutionary workers must not shoulder official posts, nor establish themselves in the ministries. For as long as the war lasts, collaboration is permissible—on the battlefield, in the trenches, on the parapets, and in productive labour in the rearguard.”

Against this centrist position, the Italian Communist Left insisted that the smallest strike in the “rearguard” would be a step forward for the Spanish workers and a blow against the imperialist war – a position vindicated by the Barcelona uprising of May 1937 (in which, it should be said, the Friends of Durruti took part on the workers’ side of the barricades, against the Republican government and its Stalinist and CNT agents).

And in the Second World War, the groups of the communist left were again totally opposed to those anarchists who advocated participation in the anti-fascist Resistance and even flew the black and red flag in the armoured cars that led the “Liberation” of Paris. By this time the number of anarchists who took a more or less clear internationalist position against the war had been reduced to a small handful (such as the group around Voline in France and the War Commentary group around Marie-Louise Berneri in Britain).

At the beginning of his article, Albatross says that, in opposition to the phony declarations by parts of the ruling class, lamenting that war is a terrible thing, “Anarchism cuts right through such mystification. We say it as we see it: the workers of different nations are sent to slaughter each other in the interests of their rulers. Anti-militarism is a core principle of anarchism”.

But where can we find this creature called anarchism? Where are the principles of anarchism encoded as clear programmatic positions? The truth is that anarchism has always been an extremely heterogenous political phenomenon, encompassing communists and individualists, those in favour of national liberation struggles and those opposed to them – and those who have opposed imperialist wars and those who have supported them. The same problem exists today, as we can see by comparing the AF with the ACG, for example. Or by looking at the Anarkismo website which contains an international statement against the war, signed by the ACG, with the pro-war article by Wayne Price. Battlescarred also points out that the AF is part of the International of Anarchist Federations which has issued statements denouncing the war on both sides. Contrary to the idea of a general family of anarchism which shares universal principles, anarchism “in general” can only be a kind of swamp containing bourgeois, petty bourgeois and proletarian elements.

But can’t the same thing be said about marxism? Doesn’t it also include Stalinists and Trotskyist cheerleaders in every imperialist war and left communists opposed to all such wars? The difference is that the communist left has always based its definition of the marxist “camp” on historical experience and adherence or not to clearly formulated programmes. We don’t define Stalinists and Trotskyists as marxists just because they use this label for themselves, but on their real practice, most importantly when faced with key questions like war and revolution, which has shown them to be part of the capitalist political apparatus.

The key problem with the anarchist world view is that it did not originate from such a rigorous class analysis and did not base itself on the materialist view of history, which means that from the start its “principles” were based on abstractions like opposition to all authority. If we take the anarchist “principle” regarding national liberation, for example, we can see where this lack of method can lead us. Thus, in his defence of the fight for “national freedom” in Ukraine, Wayne Price is happy to quote this from Bakunin: “Nationality…denotes the inalienable right of individuals, groups, associations and regions to their own way of life. And this way of life is the product of a long historical development. That is why I will always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities struggling to liberate themselves from the oppression of the state.” (Bakunin On Anarchism, S. Dolgoff, Ed. 1980; Black Rose).

For Bakunin, the principles of anarchism are thus founded on the “inalienable rights” of individuals, regions, or nationalities. In contrast to this approach, Marx and Engels always used the criteria of class interests: they had no doubt that struggles for national liberation were bourgeois struggles, but some of them could be supported by the working class if they served the development of a still progressive capitalist system. But these conditions radically changed with the onset of capitalism’s decadence and in this epoch all national struggles have become reactionary, fundamentally anti-working class.  

It's true that other anarchist currents, such as the anarcho-syndicalists, have tended to be more consistent in basing their positions on the interests of the working class. But this only emphasises that there are no “universal principles” of a “true anarchism”.

The idea of the inalienable rights of the individual goes back to the very origins of anarchism in the most radical wing of the petty bourgeoisie. This is one of the reasons why even those currents who see themselves as communists and part of the workers’ movement generally have a great difficulty in distinguishing collective class movements such as strikes from individual acts of despair. Thus, Steven finds “acts of anti-war sabotage” in Russia (though not Ukraine) beautiful to see, and libcom publishes numerous accounts of actions like the firebombing of recruitment centres in Russia by this or that individual (a lot of these accounts were originally put out by the Assembly group, which, while it seems to have opposed the enlistment of other Ukrainian anarchists into the war effort, does not seem very clear about what would constitute a class resistance to the war).

We can understand the anger and frustration which leads individuals to take such actions, but they do not provide any perspective for the working class, any more the “exemplary deeds” of certain anarchists in the late 19th century served to spark off a wider class movement.

As Sherbu-kteer put it above, “the consistent internationalists are in the minority, and they have to fight harder than ever to have their voices heard by demoralised working-classes that are dominated by nationalism and war fever”. The fact that there is little or no direct class resistance to this war, either in Russia, or even more clearly in Ukraine where the workers are indeed dominated by nationalism and war fever, does not mean that internationalists have nothing to say. We do whatever we can to spread the internationalist message, not only to make our voices heard today, but to lay down markers for the future when the international working class will pose the question of war much more openly and decisively.

Amos

 

From Britain to France, Spain, Portugal and Holland and many other countries, workers’ struggles are multiplying, responding to the effects of inflation, the intensification of the war economy and frontal attacks by the bourgeoisie on living and working conditions.

What is the significance of these struggles? What is their potential? How is the ruling class dealing with them? How can the working class take the struggle forward?

Come and discuss all these questions at a public meeting organised by the ICC:

Saturday 1 April, 3-6pm

The Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Rd, London WC1X 8QY.

It will also be possible to participate in this meeting online - to do so write to [email protected] [20] from the UK. Elsewhere, write to [email protected] [21] and we will send the link.