The latest post on Mr JLR's blog Le Prolétariat universel is entitled "Game over".
At the top is a photomontage on which is written "Le palmarès des menteurs" ("The liars' prize list"). Around it are photos of the heads of Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon, Martinez... and a militant of the ICC! To make sure that the target is clear, the acronym "ICC" is written across the whole picture in capital letters. The image introduces a long text in which JLR spends his time calling the ICC liars. Liars worse than Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon, Martinez... if the photomontage is to be believed.
When unbridled irresponsibility leads to slander...
"Slander boldly, something always sticks" (Francis Bacon, after Plutarch).
JLR disagrees with the ICC's analysis of the social movement against pension reform. For the ICC, this movement is part of the international dynamic that began in Britain in June 2022, with a series of strikes and the "summer of anger": faced with the worsening of the global economic crisis, the working class in the central countries is beginning to raise its head and take up the struggle once again. In JLR's view, the series of demonstrations in France was nothing more than a trade union charade that led lifeless workers to yet another defeat. So be it. The ICC has never had any problem with this type of disagreement, and it could even be an opportunity for debate and the confrontation of positions. With arguments to back it up...
But no, JLR is not interested in debate and clarification; he prefers to make false accusations. In support of his argument, JLR issued what is supposed to be proof of the lies of the ICC: "In order to lie to itself about the so-called 'international awakening of the proletariat', it can even use a little lie, so ridiculous is it: 'It's no coincidence that the most popular slogan on placards was: “You give us 64, we'll give you May 68”'. Absolutely not, they'd copied a photo I'd taken of three young schoolgirls with their little placard, sitting on a pavement, to whom nobody was paying any attention".
Is that all?... Yes, that's all. To judge the ICC’s "little lie", all you have to do is type into any Internet search engine "Tu nous mets 64, on te re-Mai 68": hundreds of photos of demonstrators with this slogan on their placards will appear.
There is nothing "ridiculous" about JLR's unfounded accusations. With his photomontage, JLR associates an ICC militant with the crooks of the bourgeoisie. He equates communist militants with bourgeois leaders. Such comments, which are tantamount to slander, can only tend to put off those who are beginning to take an interest in revolutionary positions, communist organisations, and their debates.
Today, revolutionary forces are still limited. The few minorities looking for class positions are precious. They represent the future. Winning them over to the revolutionary camp, enabling them to organise themselves, to appropriate the principles and experience of the Communist Left is vital for the future of revolutionary organisations, for the future of the struggles of the proletariat, for the possibility of revolution. Nothing less.
And here we have JLR smearing the ICC without restraint, and, through it, the tradition of the whole Communist Left. In the end, there is no other concern here than his own little self, his own pleasure, within the political imagination he has created for himself.
It has to be said that JLR's hostility towards the ICC fluctuates widely. Sometimes he even writes words of praise for our organisation. Then, on another day, he covers it with muck and insults. An article on his blog about one of our public meetings in which he took part reads: "The best tribute to this meeting came from people I had invited directly: 'a meeting where we could express ourselves freely, unlike other political groups, and discuss issues that are excluded from the media'. There was also a touching comment from an old ICC supporter: ‘a place where you could escape the feeling of loneliness’". A few days later, he described the ICC as a "neo-Stalinist sect" or "a delusional sect alien to the proletariat".
There is absolutely no problem with JLR welcoming the positions and approaches of the ICC that he considers to be correct, while criticising those with which he disagrees. Quite the contrary! But that's not what this is about. Clearly, JLR's overall judgement of our organisation depends very much on his mood at the time. This is totally irresponsible behaviour.[1]
... and snitching
But irresponsibility can lead to the worst. JLR's blog is full of information about militants, some of whom he describes as "narcissistic perverts" or "crazy"... Everything from descriptions of couples and their relationships to details of their children... the lives of militants are laid bare without restraint.
And yet, on this same blog, you can read these comments: "Are the RG really going to take an interest in the maximalist movement again? [2] Not just through their masked incursions on the web?” But, as with everything else, this kind of thinking passes before it resumes again, and JLR is ranting the next day about the lives of others.
His irresponsibility and inconsistency led him to publish a photo of an ICC militant. Much to the delight of the RG and their "masked incursions into the web". By displaying the face of an ICC militant in this way, JLR is playing into the hands of the ICC's declared enemies and the bourgeoisie.
In fact, this kind of denunciation has even been permitted and encouraged by all those who use snitching as a weapon against the ICC in order to destroy it, in particular the ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ (now called the International Group of the Communist Left), for which it is even their speciality, their trademark[3]
The history of the workers’ movement shows that this type of snitching has always prepared and accompanied the repression of revolutionary organisations and their militants. The disclosure of sensitive information about them was a direct part of the repression aimed at destroying them, and formed the first stage. In January 1919, it was social democracy itself that took responsibility for the lies, slander and hate speech that led to the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Today, to carry out this work of undermining, to maintain suspicion of revolutionary organisations and even to breathe out the foul smell of pogroms, the bourgeoisie does not need to get involved directly, it can count on this parasitic mire, ready for anything, and free of charge. Without sharing this detestable goal, JLR finds himself on his blog, feeding this swamp by dint of irresponsibility and not thinking further than his navel.
The responsibility of the entire Communist Left to combat shameful behaviour
The question now facing revolutionary organisations and all those who share their positions and their struggle is: how can we fight against this disgraceful and destructive behaviour?
JLR's unfettered irresponsibility is encouraged by the entire parasitic milieu that wallows in slander and snitching. This parasitic environment can spread all the more easily because it encounters no obstacles, no barriers.
In the image of this rotting world, individuals and groups are proliferating who are ready for anything, including the lowest and most sordid attacks. The use of slander and, for some, the practice of snitching, are the disgusting embodiment of the hatred for the political organisation of the proletariat and the desire to destroy it, typical of parasitism. But the laissez-faire attitude of a large part of the groups of the Communist Left, the absence of any reaction year after year, slander after slander, snitch after snitch, facilitates this dirty work. By remaining silent, a large part of the revolutionary organisations is in reality offering a blank cheque, almost an encouragement to all this destructive behaviour.
To say nothing is not only to fail in the most elementary solidarity which should prevail between the historic groups of the Communist Left, it is also to allow our tradition and our principles to be dragged through the mud, it is to mortgage the future. Without a firm reaction in the face of calumny and snitching, without a visible and uncompromising defence of the principles of the Communist Left, without solidarity in action between revolutionary organisations[4], the whole putrid swamp of parasitism can only continue to develop, to disgust searching minorities and to destroy.
We also call on all our readers to respond, to take a stand and to fight against these actions, to work for proletarian solidarity and the defence of the principles of the revolutionary camp and of what constitutes its most precious weapon: the political organisation of the proletariat.
ICC, 19 June 2023
[1] "It's a tradition: the enemies of action, the cowards, the entrenched, the opportunists willingly pick up their weapons in the sewers! They use suspicion and slander to discredit revolutionaries" (Victor Serge).
[2] This is how JLR refers to the organisations of the Communist Left, in particular the ICC
[3] For a non-exhaustive list of the misdeeds of this group with its police methods, see for example on our site: "Attacking the ICC: the raison d'être of the IGCL [1]". We will be returning to the IFICC/IGCL in our press shortly.
[4] In 2002, the IBRP (now Internationalist Communist Tendency) and one of its supporters living in the United States (called AS) were attacked by the Los Angeles Workers Voice (LAWV). The IBRP denounced the LAWV for "resorting to slander" and quite rightly stated that such behaviour "prohibits any further discussion". The ICC immediately and publicly expressed its solidarity with the IBRP and also denounced the LAWV. The aim of our 2002 article, Defense of the revolutionary milieu [2] in Internationalism 122 was to defend both the IBRP and the sympathiser AS, and the honour of the whole Communist Left
On Friday 5 May, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that "Covid-19 is no longer a public health emergency of international concern" and pronounced "the return to normality".
With "at least 20 million deaths" according to the Director General of the WHO[1], the Covid-19 pandemic starkly revealed the decrepitude of global capitalism, as well as the carelessness and cynicism with which states and governments "managed" the situation. Faced with the dilapidation of healthcare systems around the world, the result of decades of economic crisis and massive attacks, the ruling class in every country had only lies, theft and the arbitrary imposition of "protective measures" such as drastic confinements straight out of the Middle Ages. And while the major powers were boasting in the Spring of 2021 that they had produced vaccines in record time, it remains true that no coherent, widespread vaccination policy has been put in place on a global scale.
"What's the point?" will be the response from government officials and international organisations. Because Covid-19 can now be considered "in the same way as we consider seasonal flu: a threat to health, a virus that will continue to kill, but one that does not disrupt our society or our hospital systems", as Michael Ryan, the WHO's head of emergency programmes, said several weeks ago. This statement alone illustrates the state of mind of the global bourgeoisie when faced with the macabre effects of capitalism. “Seasonal" Covid may well cause hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world every year, but as long as it "does not disrupt" the functioning of capitalist society, let's live with it! This is what all states and governments are now openly advocating: total indifference to the health of human populations, prioritising only the sole interests of the bourgeoisie. This class can only use the most perfidious and underhand methods to try to hide from the world that its own system is constantly plunging humanity into the abyss.
Quite different was the method employed by the soviets during the Russian Revolution, when the working class was forced to face the ravages of Spanish flu, typhus and cholera. We began to address this question in the International Review when we published an article on the evolution of the health situation in Soviet Russia in July 1919, a year after the creation of the Commissariat of Public Hygiene[2].
We extend our discussion here with a review of the book Health and Revolution written by a group of authors. While, as we shall see, the authors cannot help but end their studies with a thinly veiled plea for state capitalism, this little book has the merit of highlighting the central role played by the organised working class in facing up to the health challenges in the midst of the revolutionary process and in the face of the counter-revolutionary assaults led by the White armies and the great European capitalist powers, "And yet, in some of the most difficult material conditions imaginable, the method then used by the proletariat, our method, in every way opposed to that of the bourgeoisie today faced with the coronavirus pandemic, achieved results which, at the time, constituted a considerable step forward"[3].
So what was this method? In what way was it a considerable step forward and an invaluable experience for the future?
Faced with health emergencies and epidemics, the reaction of the working class organised in soviets
The day after the seizure of power, Russia found itself in a disastrous situation. Three years of war had wreaked havoc on society and exacerbated the scourges that were already well known: poverty, famine, shortages and the deterioration of health and transport infrastructures. But there were also numerous epidemics such as typhus, cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, and tuberculosis.
The revolution in Russia was already facing enormous challenges, especially as its rapid isolation had prevented it from gaining the support of the world proletariat. But as the book makes clear, the working class in Russia drew its strength from its collective and centralised organisation, since the soviets were at the heart of the takeover of health policy. As soon as the Winter Palace was taken, the revolutionary committee set up medical detachments in Petrograd and Moscow to help the wounded. These "first aiders of the insurrection" were initially made up of ambulance drivers, nurses and military nurses who had rallied to the Bolsheviks, as well as women workers who supported the doctors. The soviets then extended the detachments' prerogatives to cover all civilian health care. A major step forward was taken when the Soviet government set up a People's Commissariat for Health. From then on, the policy for dealing with both the victims of the war still in progress and epidemics was the task of the workers themselves.
Already we see that this universalised policy is already in stark contrast to the one implemented by the various states during the Covid-19 pandemic, which consisted of imposing on the population measures aimed above all at penalising capitalist production as little as possible. As the authors of the book point out, "there was never any question of taking measures that were nevertheless common sense, such as the massive production of medical equipment by governments or the lifting of patents on vaccines so that everyone could have access to them. Not only would this have cut into their profits, it would also have undermined the sacrosanct right of the bourgeoisie to use its capital as it pleases. This is yet another demonstration of the fact that the private property of capitalists always takes precedence over the interests of the community, and in this case, of humanity as a whole".
To combat epidemics, mobilisation and awareness-raising for all
While governments have not hesitated to make abundant use of lies "to conceal the shortages of masks, care workers, resuscitation beds and vaccines, and their responsibility in this situation", at no time has there been any question of mobilising the population in the fight against the pandemic, with governments preferring to impose health measures (confinement, wearing masks, etc.) by coercion.
The policy pursued by the "Soviet Republic" on the other hand was driven by an entirely different approach. In all the health battles it had to wage, the first step was to tell the population the truth: to explain as clearly as possible the state of the situation, the protective measures to be adopted, and the recommended organisational methods for dealing with the situation. But it was also a matter of calling for the mobilisation of the working masses. This was the case during the cholera epidemic that struck southern Russia, Moscow and Petrograd in the summer of 1918, the smallpox epidemic in 1919 and the Spanish flu that killed nearly three million people in Russia. This method, which relied on the support and participation of large sections of the population and the centralisation of policy by the Soviet government (through the Health Commissariat), was fully implemented during the typhoid epidemic between 1918 and 1919. As the authors point out, the experience of fighting the epidemic provided "the basis for a new health system based on action by the workers themselves, centralisation, free use and prevention".
After that, with the end of the civil war, significant progress was made in training medical staff, combating tuberculosis, treating addictions, combating prostitution, and improving maternity care. In short, the working class took charge of society, lifting it out of the "backward" conditions in which it had been vegetating.
Faced with the scourge of pandemics, there's nothing to expect from the state!
In the last part of this book, the authors show the extent to which health policy suffered a real regression under Stalinism. The degeneration of the revolution in Russia, expressed above all by the fusion of the party with the state and the total devitalisation of the soviets, gave rise to a new ruling class exploiting the working class under the form of a veritable state capitalism. As a result, the aim of health policy was no longer to contribute to the improvement and emancipation of the human condition, but to enable the state to exploit the workforce more and more. The introduction of "occupational medicine" to study the causes of certain illnesses and workers' ill-health, or to compile a list of pathologies, had no other objective than to enable greater productivity, and therefore greater exploitation of the working class. Similarly, the creation of crèches and childcare facilities for older children in the factories only served to further enchain the workers to their workplace and to the capitalist state.
However, infatuated with leftist catechisms, our group of authors cannot help but find in Stalinist barbarism residues of the revolutionary period: "The Soviet health system, which would last for several decades, was the envy of many [...]. In countries such as the People's Democracies in Eastern Europe and Cuba, which had not experienced a workers' revolution but were trying to overcome their backwardness in the medical and social fields, the Soviet health system was taken as a model. With its advantages, as we have seen, as well as its shortcomings: those of a society dominated and crushed by bureaucracy. But in spite of everything, and even if it never became a socialist health system, this health system long retained some of its popular, innovative and progressive features of a victorious workers' revolution".
The alleged medical prowess of the "Soviet economies" is more of a farce than a historical reality. In the USSR, as in all the satellite countries, people lacked everything. Both food and medicine. The authors here take up an old lie propagated by the scoundrels of the left and extreme left of capital, which consists of presenting a state such as Cuba as the pinnacle of good practice in medicine. The pandemic was a reminder of the real state of health in this other remnant of Stalinism. Even there, health workers had to cope with an influx of patients without sufficient medicine, oxygen, antigens, sanitary gel or syringes, etc.
Behind this nostalgic nod to the supposed survival of the advances of the October Revolution, via Stalinism, lies the credo of considering the USSR as a "degenerate workers' state", perverted by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Today, this error of Trotsky’s, taken up by organisations on the extreme left of capital such as Lutte Ouvrière in France, is used to maintain the illusion that a "well-managed" state could be a tool in the service of the general interest. But while the state may appear to be above social classes, it is always the expression of the domination of a given class in society. In capitalism, the state exists to facilitate the domination of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, since capitalism entered its period of decadence, the general trend towards state capitalism has been one of the dominant features of society. The pandemic has fully confirmed that state capitalism, defended tooth and nail by all the parties of the left and extreme left, is in no way a solution to the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, it is a clear expression of them, even if it can delay their effects at the cost of amplifying them in the long term! [4]
If it ever succeeds in overthrowing capitalism, the proletariat will have to lay the foundations of a communist society in a world ravaged by wars, climate and environmental disruption, and huge health problems. This gigantic task will not be carried out with the help of the state, but against it, with a view to its demise and disappearance.
Above all, this task will be the work of the working class itself, organised and aware of its goals. To achieve this, building on the experiences of the past, such as the October 1917 revolution, and knowing how to draw the main lessons from them remains an essential task if we are to build the society of the future!
Vincent, 7 May 2023
[1]At present the official death toll is 7 million
[2] Health Conservation in Soviet Russia [3], International Review 166
[3] ibid
[4] Report on the Covid-19 pandemic and the period of capitalist decomposition [4], International Review 165. See also Report on the pandemic and the development of decomposition, [5] International Review 167
On 23 March, after nine days of protests against pension reform in France, when the “black bloc” protesters reached Place de l'Opéra, in the heart of a wealthy district of the capital, clashes broke out between them and the police. Throughout the evening, the 24-hour television channels continually relayed scenes of smashed windows, vandalised shops and burning rubbish bins.
The next day, the same media broadcast the comments and pictures of frightened local residents and shopkeepers: "Everything was set on fire, my goods are destroyed... It's the first time I've experienced anything like this. Demonstrations don't usually happen here, so we didn't expect it", said the frightened manager of a newsagent’s shop. By deciding to end the demonstration in such a confined space in the heart of Paris, in the midst of building work, the Prefecture de Police and the government were setting the stage for violence to erupt. And they did so with the total approval of the unions, who at no point opposed this arrangement!
Macron and his clique revive the "party of fear" image
A week earlier, on March 16, the pension reform had been forcefully adopted using a constitutional device, Article 49.3. In the words of the opposition parties and the unions this was an "abuse of power" and "denial of democracy" and it did nothing to dampen anger and protest. On the contrary, demonstrations were taking place just about everywhere that evening. Orders were issued in Paris to brutally disperse the 5,000 people gathered on the Place de la Concorde who had posed no possible threat to "public order".
Every evening during the days that followed, demonstrations broke out in many towns, especially in the streets of Paris, without the endorsement of the unions. The gatherings had been calm until the situation degenerated into clashes between some of the demonstrators and the police. Videos and photos of burnt-out rubbish bins and public buildings were broadcast around the world, portraying the struggle being waged by the working class in France as nothing more than riots giving rise to chaos and anarchy. For his part, Macron and his ministers, far from wanting to calm things down, constantly added fuel to the fire by condemning demonstrators as "illegitimate mobs, spreading chaos and divisiveness”.
In spite of the risk of things getting out of control, this situation was broadly encouraged and exploited by the government and the forces of law and order so as to legitimise State terror, in the image of the famous Brigades de répression de l'action violente motorisée (BRAV-M), assaulting anyone who got in their way, even riding motorbikes over demonstrators who had been pushed to the ground. As usual, all the guardians of capitalist order (the media, commentators and intellectuals) tried to make people believe that it was a few bad cops out of control and that there were some "cock-ups". But the simultaneous repression throughout France was no accident. It was a totally deliberate policy on the part of the government and all the flag-bearers of the police state. The aim was simple and even classic:
- to draw the angriest young people into a sterile confrontation with the police;
- to frighten the majority of demonstrators and discourage them from taking to the streets;
- to prevent any possibility for discussion, by systematically disrupting the end of demonstrations, a time that is usually conducive to gatherings and debate;
- to make the movement unpopular by making people believe that any social struggle will automatically degenerate into blind violence and chaos, whereas the authorities would be the guarantors of order and peace.
So the state and its government played the "escalation of violence" card to the hilt. Confirmation of this strategy came straight from the mouth of a former grand servant of the bourgeois order, Jean-Louis Debré: "Why, for example, did they agree to let a demonstration end at Opéra, very close to the ministries and the Élysée Palace, knowing that the district is full of small streets? Why didn't they clean up and take away all the rubbish that day? It was as if they wanted things to get a bit out of hand. [...] To what extent is this government trying to have a repeat 1968, to make itself the embodiment public order in the face of disorder?”
These falsely naïve questions from someone who was Minister of the Interior at the time of the strike movement against pension reform in 1995 lift the rather thin veil covering the provocation fomented by the authorities. By organising disorder, Macron and his henchmen were banking on a shift in public opinion towards supporting social order and control.
The parallel drawn by Jean-Louis Debré with the May 68 movement also shows that this government has invented nothing new. Police provocations are normal and the "party of order" has a long history! During the May 68 movement, Gaullist militias or plainclothes police deliberately infiltrated demonstrations to "fan the flames" and scare the population. Agents provocateurs incited students to commit violent acts. The shocking images of cars set on fire, shop windows smashed and paving stones thrown at the CRS helped to stir up fear among the population and turn the tide of public opinion. The barricades and the violence were to become one of the elements in the recovery of the situation by the various forces of the bourgeoisie, the government and the unions, undermining the great sympathy that the students had initially won from the population as a whole and from the working class in particular.
In 2006, during the movement against the CPE, the French bourgeoisie used the same perfidious methods to sabotage the struggle. On several occasions, the state deliberately allowed gangs of "thugs" from the suburbs to come and "attack cops and smash windows". During the demonstration on 23 March 2006, it was even with the blessing of the police that the "thugs" attacked the demonstrators themselves, robbing and beating them senseless. But the students did manage to counter this trap by appointing delegations in several places to go and talk to young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods, in particular to explain to them that the students' struggle was also on behalf of these young people plunged into the despair of widespread unemployment and exclusion.[1]
Already, throughout the nineteenth century, the working class had experienced these vile and underhand methods of torpedoing and subduing the struggles. As Marx demonstrated in The 18 Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the terrible repression of the Parisian proletariat by Cavaignac's troops during the days of June 1848 had also contributed to frightening the bourgeois, the priest and the grocer, all of whom were ardently hoping for a return to order by any means necessary!
In the industrial areas of the United States at the end of the 19th century, employers set up private companies specialising in supplying strikebreakers, spies, provocateurs and even killers. The massacres that the latter perpetrated against the working class also made it possible to turn "opinion" in favour of a return to order. All this with the backing of the federal state.[2]
The spectre of the "ultra-left" prepares the repression of revolutionaries
The environmentalist protest against the mega-basin (giant reservoirs) project in Sainte-Soline on Saturday 25 March was another opportunity to use the strategy of escalating violence. On that day, several thousand people gathered in the open countryside, in the middle of large open fields, to protest against the installation of mega-basins intended to serve as water reserves for intensive agriculture. The situation quickly degenerated into a pitched battle between cops and demonstrators, with daylong filming by the 24-hour news channels. Two people were badly injured. But things could have turned out quite differently. What was the point of the gendarmes and police coming to confront thousands of people gathered in a field strewn with large swimming pools? No point at all! Except to light a new fuse so that the flame of violence could spread. Once again, the bourgeois grandee, Jean-Louis Debré, thought differently: "Why weren't the people searched beforehand? Was there a desire to allow a certain amount of disorder to take place, so as to better maintain order afterwards?”
That same evening, Darmanin was able to denounce the "extreme violence" and "terrorism" of the "ultra-left" for "attacking the cops". Just as he had done a few days earlier on the evening of the 23 March demonstration. Once again, there's nothing accidental about this campaign. The “ultra-left” is a concept foreign to the proletarian and revolutionary camp.[3] On the contrary, it's a catch-all term, coined by the bourgeoisie, allowing it to lump together the genuine revolutionary organisations of the Communist Left with modernist intellectuals, radical anarchists and, above all, "anti-State" groupings who advocate indiscriminate violence. The latter are infiltrated and manipulated by the cops. As a result, the “black blocs” and "zadistes”[4] are the useful idiots of the police state, enabling it to justify the strengthening of its legal and repressive armoury. This has happened quite recently with the approval of a decree authorising the use of camera-equipped drones during demonstrations.
But beyond that, the waving of the ultra-left rag serves above all to prepare the ground for the criminalisation of revolutionary organisations in the future. The bourgeoisie is more or less using the same methods used in the 1970s in the gigantic anti-terrorist campaigns following the Schleyer affair in Germany and the Aldo Moro affair in Italy, which served as a pretext for the state to strengthen its apparatus of control and repression against the working class. It was subsequently shown that the Baader gang and the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by the East German secret service, the Stasi, and the Italian state secret service respectively. In reality, these terrorist groups were nothing more than instruments of rivalry between bourgeois cliques.
Back in the 19th century, the bourgeoisie used the terrorist actions of the anarchists to reinforce its state terror against the working class. Take, for example, the "Lois Scélérate " passed by the French bourgeoisie following the terrorist attack by the anarchist Auguste Vaillant, who threw a bomb into the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893, injuring around forty people. This attack had been manipulated by the state itself. Vaillant had been contacted by an agent of the Ministry of the Interior who, posing as an anarchist, had lent him money and explained how to make a home-made bomb (with a pot and nails) that would be both loud and not too deadly.[5] It was also by the same means that the Prussian government succeeded in passing the anti-socialist laws in 1878, that drove Social Democracy in Germany underground.
In 1925, Victor Serge published What Every Revolutionary Should Know About Repression. This booklet, based on the archives of the Tsarist police (the Okhrana) which had fallen into the hands of the working class in the aftermath of the October Revolution, made it possible to inform the entire working class of the police methods and procedures that were used against revolutionaries for years. Serge also highlighted the close cooperation of all the police forces in Europe in spying on, provoking, slandering and repressing the revolutionary movement of the time. A century on, it would be naïve to think that these methods have been tucked away somewhere and forgotten about. On the contrary, the terror of the bourgeois state is going to be reproduced and perfected unceasingly and extended to all existing relationships within society.
The proletariat must learn from all its experiences of repression. It will have to remember that behind the democratic mask that the bourgeois state assumes on a daily basis hides the true face of a bloodthirsty executioner that is rudely awakened every time its order is threatened by all those exploited by it.
Vincent, 16 June 202
[1] See: "Theses on the spring 2006 students' movement in France [6]", International Review n° 125 (2006).
A propos du livre de Bourseiller "Histoire générale de l’ultra-gauche" : [7] Révolution internationale n° 344 (2004).
Nouvelles attaques contre la Gauche communiste: Bourseiller réinvente “la complexe histoire des Gauches communistes” (Partie 1) [8] Révolution Internationale n° 488 ;
Nouvelles attaques contre la Gauche communiste: Bourseiller invente une seconde fois “la complexe histoire des gauches communistes” (Partie 2) [9], RI 489 et 489 (2021
[4] Zadistes: groups who advocate the creation of “autonomous zones” (zone à défendre)
[5] Bernard Thomas, op.cit..
Once again, there was a shipwreck in the Mediterranean off the Italian island of Lampedusa on 22 June, with hundreds of people missing. This tragedy occurred just eight days after a boat sank off the coast of Greece. But what is presented as a simple news item is in reality an expression of the chaos caused by crisis-ridden capitalism.
The death of dozens of people in shipwrecks is becoming a recurring event. Most of these makeshift journeys start in North Africa, but many migrants today come from sub-Saharan Africa. The main countries of origin of the victims of this shipwreck were the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. The main reason for their departure is the worsening living conditions in their region of origin and the hope of a better future. Indeed, the bloody conflicts that are causing chaos in these countries are making the simple fact of living in these regions an ordeal. The same situation exists as a result of the civil wars in Sudan, Libya and Mali.
The multitude of armed conflicts that have been going on for decades, the instability of many states and governments, the growing influence of terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State, of various warlords, all have dramatic consequences for the population, forcing them to flee. And with climate change causing widespread environmental damage, there are even more factors that will push the inhabitants of these countries to flee this chaos, in particular the lack of water and the impact of droughts on agriculture.
The conflicts that have taken place in these countries are largely the result of the imperialist ambitions of the major powers, each seeking to defend its own sordid interests, while fueling widespread chaos and an increasingly uncontrollable situation on the continent.
The unbridled exploitation of natural resources by European, American, Russian and Chinese companies, the commercial and strategic ambitions of these same powers ready to do anything to maintain their influence and lay their hands on ports, construction sites and markets... all this is having disastrous consequences for the population. Consequences that the local bourgeoisie, corrupt to the core, couldn't care less about as long as they can continue to gorge themselves by staying in power at any cost.
The great powers are therefore experiencing, through uncontrollable waves of migration, the backlash of their own policies and interventions. As capitalism's room for manoeuvre in its quest for profit becomes ever smaller, the bourgeoisies of every country cannot be encumbered by "good feelings" and so have no choice but to get rid of what they perceive as a "problem" in an inhumane manner. The central countries have thus transformed themselves into veritable administrative and military fortresses: walls, barbed wire, concentration camps, police violence... This is illustrated by the recent operation in Mayotte in France, where for years the local authorities have encouraged hatred against Comorian migrants. But the main central countries cannot do all the dirty work themselves, so they also subcontract the task to other countries, such as Turkey.
Libya has become a tragic illustration of this reality. Following the intervention of the coalition of France, Great Britain and the United States against Gaddafi's regime, Libya has become a lawless zone, where the underworld, petty warlords and unspeakable barbarity reign. As a result, the country has become a gateway for many would-be immigrants to Europe. It is an exemplary and unscrupulous border guard for the European Union. The current recent civil wars in Libya have demonstrated the brutality of its rulers, which includes the widespread use of human trafficking. The testimony of one of the members of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, despite the fact that this initiative emanates from a den of thieves, is edifying in this respect: "The support provided by the EU to the Libyan coastguard in terms of push-backs and interceptions leads to violations of certain human rights. We cannot push people back to areas that are not safe, and clearly Libyan waters are not safe for migrants to embark"[1]. This situation has been going on for several years and shows the emptiness of the EU’s so-called progressive and humanist rhetoric.
Europe is far from being the only continent to show hypocrisy about its supposed humanism. The United States, defender of "democracy" and "civil liberties", is another striking example. Despite the hypocritical media campaign surrounding Donald Trump's "wall", there was in fact already a fence in certain parts of the Mexican border built by George Bush and Bill Clinton to regulate the number of illegal migrants. Before 2019, this barrier covered a large part of California and Arizona.
But we shouldn't fall into the trap of defending migrants' "rights". Refugee aid associations and the left wing of capital are perpetuating the illusion that the state can be reformed to take better account of their situation. It is for this reason that the media sometimes highlight organisations such as Amnesty International: these political groups exploit the legitimate indignation of a section of the population to draw them into sterile, piecemeal struggles. The five-year term of the "socialist" François Hollande demonstrated the real face of the “solidarity” that the state shows towards Roma or Africans.
Contrary to what these so-called humanists claim, it is futile to demand that the bourgeois state respect refugees. This is a mystification for the proletariat. For all states, the labour power of the working class is nothing but a commodity. And the well-being of the world's population is, in their minds, nothing but a lie, a mere veneer to ensure exploitation. The refugees are victims of the final phase of capitalism and the only way to stop this disaster is for proletarians to fight alongside their class brothers and sisters, whatever their origins.
Edgar, 2 July 2023
[1] "In Libya, the ordeal of migrants and refugees", Deutsche Welle (4 April 2023).
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17296/attacking-icc-raison-detre-igcl
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/122_lawv.html
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16984/health-conservation-soviet-russia
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16924/report-covid-19-pandemic-and-period-capitalist-decomposition
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17042/report-pandemic-and-development-decomposition
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students
[7] https://fr.internationalism.org/ri344/livre_ultra-gauche.htm
[8] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/10454/nouvelles-attaques-contre-gauche-communiste-bourseiller-reinvente-complexe-histoire
[9] https://fr.internationalism.org/content/10465/nouvelles-attaques-contre-gauche-communiste-bourseiller-invente-seconde-fois-complexe