Britain has long typified the different periods of the evolution of the world capitalist system. No more so than today where, among the major industrial powers, it illustrates the long-drawn out deterioration of the system in its final phase of decomposition, and reveals the acceleration of this decline over the last few years.
At the level of economic decline, of imperialist convulsions, political chaos, the disinvestment in infrastructure, Britain has been in the forefront of the downward slide and in 2022 it was strongly engaged in arming and financing the war in Ukraine. And when war broke out in Israel/Gaza in October 2023, Britain wasted no time in sending military forces to the Eastern Mediterranean.
But in 2022, the British working class, the oldest section of the global working class, reminded the world that within the mounting ruins of capitalist society there remains an alternative perspective: the destruction of capitalism and the construction of a communist society. The class struggle, which had been in retreat for three decades, still has the potential to disrupt capitalism’s message of ‘no future’.
It is vitally important to understand the significance of the struggles of the working class in Britain which broke out last year, affecting many sectors (post, rail, health, education….), and playing an important part in struggles across the globe, including Europe, particularly the movement against pension reform in France, in the USA which has its own summer of anger in 2023, a year after the summer of discontent in the UK, and Asia (South Korea, China, Japan). Struggles taking place on the proletarian terrain of defence of living standards and working conditions which have been under attack for decades and now are coming up against the high inflation rates and the ‘cost of living crisis’; taking place in spite of the propaganda around the need for sacrifice for the Ukraine war, or divisions for instance created around Brexit between Leavers and Remainers. These struggles show the emergence of a new generation of workers able to break with three decades of passivity and so point towards the proletarian perspective of putting an end to decomposing capitalism. Consequently, while on the one hand the situation in Britain can only worsen in all aspects of the vicious circle of decomposition, on the other hand the slow development of workers’ struggles on the proletarian terrain of defence of its living standards show that the class is not ready to sacrifice itself on the altar of imperialist adventures.
1. The ‘whirlwind’ effect
The international situation is characterised by imperialist war in Ukraine and the Middle East with its aggravation of the economic crisis, the prospect of hunger across large parts of Africa, and of the ecological crisis. This is only one aspect of the whirlwind effect, in which all the different expressions of capitalist crisis and decomposition no longer merely run in parallel lines, but directly exacerbate each other. Faced with which the bourgeoisie has increasing difficulty controlling its political game, with the growth of populism and of deep divisions in its ranks. Britain is implicated in every aspect of these disasters and threats:
2. The weakness of British imperialism
The economic failure of Brexit and “global Britain” is mirrored at the imperialist level. British imperialism in fact benefitted momentarily from its exit from the EU by being able to act as the greatest friend and supplier of Ukraine, and most raucous enemy of the Russian invasion, amongst the European powers. But the economic consequences of this support and posturing are not viable long term. Britain can’t afford it and the USA’s objective over Ukraine, as elsewhere, is not only to weaken its enemies but also its “allies”, including Britain.
After nearly two years there is no sign of any resolution to the war in Ukraine on the battlefield or through negotiation. This ongoing death and destruction may help the US to weaken its allies, including Britain, as well as Russia, but it hinders America in concentrating its efforts on China.
The rush to send a Royal Navy task force and surveillance aircraft to the Eastern Mediterranean in response to the war of Israel-Gaza, a mere footnote compared to the two US aircraft carriers sent, and equally unsustainable in the long term, also shows the decline of British imperialism.
This predicament for British imperialism is a continuation of the problem it has faced since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, which opened up a period of every man for himself at the global imperialist level. British imperialism no longer benefitted from its attempts to continue its role as special ally of the US as it did during the Cold War. Its participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended up in military humiliations. At the same time the attempts by Britain to play an independent imperialist role, as in the war in ex-Yugoslavia, brought counter attacks from US imperialism, as in the latter’s support for Irish Republicanism in the mid-1990s.
Not only is Britain facing reverses and humiliations on the world arena, its attempt to assert its power against its rivals has brought problems for the integrity of the United Kingdom itself. Brexit has increased the calls for Scottish Independence, while both the US and European powers supported the rights of the Irish Republic against the attempt of Westminster to ignore the Northern Ireland Protocol, one of the articles of the Brexit agreement with the EU. Coupled with the growing power of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, this means that Britain is going to have to fight strenuously in the coming period merely to prevent the fragmentation of the kingdom. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation shortly before a financial scandal hit her party illustrates this fight.
3. The economy
The decline of the British economy has to be understood in the international framework.
“The main zones of the world economy are already in recession or about to sink into it. … The historical gravity of the present crisis marks an advanced point in the process of the “internal disintegration” of world capitalism, announced by the Communist International in 1919, and which flows from the general context of the terminal phase of decadence, whose main tendencies are:
We are witnessing the coincidence of different expressions of the economic crisis, and above all their interaction in the dynamics of its development: thus, high inflation requires the raising of interest rates; this, in turn provokes recession, itself a source of the financial crisis, leading to new injections of liquidity, thus even more debt, which is already astronomical, and is a further factor of inflation.... All this demonstrates the bankruptcy of this system and its inability to offer a perspective to humanity.” International situation resolution (International Review 170) [1]
The British economy is being particularly badly hit today, reaching new historic lows. British capitalism already presaged the end of the post-war reconstruction period in 1967 with the devaluation of the pound sterling. It suffered badly from the 2008 financial crash and recession, then reeled again when Britain departed from the European Union. The economy was further battered when the Covid pandemic plunged world capitalism into the worst recession since the Second World War. The phenomenal costs of imperialist war in Europe with the support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion have accentuated the crisis, especially in Britain.
The historically uncompetitive British economy has been further hit by the political dislocation of a bourgeoisie divided over Europe and infected with populism. This saw three short-lived prime ministers after Cameron resigned following the 2016 Brexit referendum, before settling on the present one, Rishi Sunak, in an effort to stabilise the political situation. Nevertheless, populism and its attendant divisions still weigh heavily on the economy.
Brexit was a self-inflicted economic wound of historic proportions, limiting Britain’s access to the large single market. The pound sterling lost 10% of its value as a result. The decision was an expression of the growth of a populist trend in the political apparatus. This reached its nadir with the Liz Truss government, an extension of the Brexit disaster, with its radical free market policies and the fantasy of “global Britain” causing havoc in the global markets.
The economy is still suffering the effects of these populist measures, and others such as Sunak’s retreat on phasing out petrol cars, creating uncertainty for business, or anti-immigration policies that keep out much-needed labour. The government has run out of money for HS2, schools are collapsing due to ageing concrete, a rundown water system discharges raw sewage into rivers, and a local authority the size of Birmingham has gone bankrupt. These are the effects of decomposition on the infrastructure and the economy.
4. The attacks
The bourgeoisie has no option but to continue draconian attacks on the working class. The British working class over the last decade had already seen a relentless deterioration of its living standards, through cuts in the social wage - health and social services, housing, pensions, reduction in claimant payments - and a slow deterioration of the purchasing power of wages for those still in employment. But in the last few years, with the sharp rise in inflation, the effective wage cuts have been much sharper. Fuel prices rose sharply last year, food price inflation fell to 13.6% in August from a peak of 19.2% in March, the highest for 45 years, with overall inflation (CPIH) down to 6.3% from over 10% at its peak.
As increasing numbers of workers cannot afford housing, heating and food and more and more rely on food banks. The bourgeoisie talks of “fuel poverty” and “food poverty” and “housing poverty”, as if the inability to afford adequate heating, housing or food were not simply poverty. Such terms won’t hide the tendency for capitalism to pauperise the proletariat.
5. The rupture
As we say in the Theses on decomposition, "the inexorable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism constitutes the essential stimulus of the struggle and of the awareness of the class, the very condition of its capacity to resist the ideological poison of the rotting of society. Indeed, as much as the proletariat cannot find a ground for class unity in partial struggles against the effects of decomposition, its struggle against the direct effects of the crisis itself constitutes the basis for the development of its strength and its class unity."
The present upsurge in struggle fully confirms this perspective. They are a direct response to the deepening economic crisis and not an explicit reaction against the war in Ukraine by the majority of workers, even if a minority is already posing the question of the link between economic crisis and war. And yet the refusal of the working class to accept economic sacrifices despite all the war propaganda is profoundly significant and contains the seeds of a future conscious struggle against war and all the effects of capitalist decomposition. In the same way, the mass strikes of the Polish workers in August 1980 constituted the response of the working class to the intensification of imperialist antagonisms inaugurated by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
The British working class was a major force in the worldwide resurgence of class struggle after 1968 and the following two decades. It played, as it still does, a bridge from the European to the American working class. But it suffered a major reversal in the defeat of the miners’ strike and then the printers’ strike in 1984-86. With the defeat of the militant coal miners in 1985, a major sector of the working class was effectively wiped out: its numbers were reduced from 190,000 to 5,000, and so this sector could no longer play, as it had previously, the role of reference point for the whole British working class.
With the additional blow that came with the huge ideological campaigns at the time of the collapse of the Eastern bloc, plus the divisive, terrifying and disorienting effects of the general decomposition of the system, the retreat of the working class in Britain over the past 30 years has exemplified the difficulties of the world proletariat in this period.
Particularly in the period leading up to and following the Brexit referendum, the bourgeoisie was able to use its divisions over Europe to divide the population, including the working class.
So the revival of class struggle is no automatic response to a particular level of attacks. Attacks have been going on for decades and we need to understand what made the present fall in living standards insupportable, what made workers raise the slogan “Enough is enough!” after decades of passivity? Similarly, what made it clear that with these price rises, with this fall in real wages, “we are all in the same boat” – in other words, what has facilitated the real recovery of class identity that we are now witnessing? Here we need to understand that entering into this struggle, breaking with decades of passivity, was also the result of the subterranean maturation of consciousness: “in the broadest layers of the class, it takes the form of a growing contradiction between the historic being, the real needs of the class, and the workers' superficial adherence to bourgeois ideas. This clash may for a long time remain largely unadmitted, buried or repressed, or it may begin to surface in the negative form of disillusionment with, and disengagement from, the principal themes of bourgeois ideology;” (International Review 43, quoted in Report on the class struggle, IR 170 [2]). The experience of the attacks over many years, the emergence of a new generation of workers less resigned to putting up with them, has given rise to a growing feeling of discontent, and to a process of reflection in those “broad layers” of the class, culminating in the open outbreak of the struggle in the summer of 2022.
Since summer 2022 many sectors of workers have been struggling – postal workers, BT, rail, bus, school teachers, university teachers, workers at Amazon, healthworkers…. This situation where workers in Britain all face falling real wages with high inflation, and where there is a broad strike movement by workers in response, cries out for the unification of the struggle. Yet the strikes have been divided from each other by many means. Sometimes by using devolution, as when the Royal College of Nursing settled the nurses pay claim for a different offer in Scotland. More often the divisions are initiated and imposed by the trade unions: the Communication Workers Union kept their members working for BT and those working for the Royal Mail completely separate despite their struggles going on at the same time; ambulance workers were divided up between three unions, Unite, Unison and GMB, striking on different days or different times on the same day. In this way the unions robbed pickets of their role of calling on workers to join the strike since this was not allowed for those not in the same union. Some large RCN pickets looked very impressive, but they were kept under tight control and not allowed to call on other workers to join the strike.
Despite this tight control and the divisions imposed, there was no denying that different sectors of workers were fighting the same battles, that it made no sense to keep them divided. Also, there were questions raised about how to struggle effectively, how to make the government or bosses withdraw attacks without being worn down by on-off one or two day strikes. These questions were posed, but could not be answered yet, and in particular there was a real hesitation about going against the union framework by breaking the law on secondary picketing, i.e. going to other workers and calling on them to join the fight.
In order to successfully advance the strikes the working class will have to spread them outside of corporatist union control, and take them into its own hands through assemblies and strike committees, and confront at least in practice the prison of electoral, legal and national interests. This poses the necessity for further reflection in the working class.
It is also essential to place the struggle in Britain in its international context as part of a development of struggles, including Europe, USA and Asia. Struggles that started in Britain a year ago have been a beacon for workers in the English-speaking world, including the USA, as well as having an impact on the movement in Europe, notably the struggle against pension reform in France.
Right now there are fewer strikes going on in Britain, as there are fewer struggles in France, while the centre of the resistance of the working class has moved to the USA. With strikes continuing in a number of sectors in Britain, there is no sign of a defeat. But nor have workers found the way to force the ruling class to restore living standards eroded by inflation. The greatest gain of the struggles is the struggle itself, the experience of fighting together as workers, as part of the working class, and of the way the unions undermine that struggle. It is vital that workers continue reflecting on their own experience of struggle and workers’ experiences in other parts of the international class, which constitutes another vital aspect of the subterranean maturation of consciousness: “in a more restricted sector of the class, among workers who fundamentally remain on a proletarian terrain, it takes the form of a reflection on past struggles, more or less formal discussions on the struggles to come, the emergence of combative nuclei in the factories and among the unemployed. In recent times, the most dramatic demonstration of this aspect of the phenomenon of subterranean maturation was provided by the mass strikes in Poland 1980, in which the methods of struggle used by the workers showed that there had been a real assimilation of many of the lessons of the struggles of 1956, 1970 and 1976” (International Review 43, quoted in Report on the class struggle, IR 170 [2]).
6. The radicalisation of the unions in preparation for the class struggle and the role of the leftists
The tight union control of the struggles in Britain should not lead us to underestimate their significance in the break from three decades of passivity. Whether the unions control the struggles or whether the working class is able to take its struggle into its own hands is the result of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. The wave of struggles that started in 1968, marking the end of the counter-revolution, caught the bourgeoisie by surprise, allowing a large number of wildcat strikes to take place. Today, by contrast, the bourgeoisie is much better prepared. The unions have been watching the development of anger in the working class over the years and adopting a more radical language. Mick Lynch, who has been putting forward a very left face, announcing that “the working class is back”, was put in place as general secretary of the RMT union in 2021. In the same year Sharon Graham became general secretary of Unite, which has now become much more critical of the Labour Party, while still backing it financially.
This radicalisation of the trade unions in preparation for the present strike wave was in fact the main obstacle to the development of the latter. It has allowed the unions to go to the head of the movement and keep the different sectors isolated from each other, with the ultimate aim of wearing out the movement and preventing the development of a class front. The express aim of the trade unions is the election of a Labour Government as the solution to the strikers’ grievances, not the widening of the struggle. The cause of the upsurge in workers’ struggles would be, according to the unions, the failure of Tory government policies and the failure of the bosses of each industry to negotiate fairly with the unions and redistribute their enormous profits to the workers.
The leftists (Trotskyists, Labour left etc) have focused mainly on the base of the unions, where they have the most influence. Their propaganda calls for the linking up of the struggles but without breaking their corporatist framework, and criticise even the radical union leaders, who they nevertheless support, for respecting the legal framework for strike action. Their objective is also to bring down “Tory rule” and, contrary to the laws of capitalism, reduce profits in favour of wages. They also want a Labour government, but “pledged to socialist policies”.
A constant refrain from the unions and the left is the question of “anti-union laws”, last year around legislation changing the conditions of strike ballots, and more recently insisting on the preservation of “minimum levels of service” during public sector strikes. Far from being “anti-union” such legislation helps the unions to keep workers from escaping the corporatist prison of their struggles, as we can see with older legislation against secondary picketing. This sort of legislation provides the bourgeoisie with a constant campaign around ‘the democratic right to strike’, and with the Labour Party promising to repeal the “minimum levels of service” legislation it is also an ideal ruse to try to turn strikers into participants in next year’s electoral campaign.
While the traditional union methods of strike-breaking have retained all their strength, those obstacles associated with the decomposition of capitalism, refracted through bourgeois and interclass movements against the ecological crisis, against racism and sexism, campaigns for or against “woke” in the “culture wars”, have also been pushed forward, containing the danger of submerging the class struggle and class identity into a morass of popular protest..The mobilisations in support of “Free Palestine” are a further obstacle to the re-emerging sense of class identity; more generally, the war in the Middle East is a potent source of division and hatred within the population.
7. The political line-up of the bourgeoisie
The convulsions at the level of the political apparatus of the state are also a factor of derailing and obscuring the underlying class antagonisms that define the situation. Unlike the radicalisation of the unions and the efforts of the left, these convulsions and divisions do not derive from the Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie but from its loss of control of its political game in the context of decomposition. However, as the Brexit campaign showed in 2016, this in no way limits its capacity to confuse and derail the working class.
Britain was famous for the longevity and stability of its state institutions, the experience of its politicians, diplomats and administrators. Now the disruption within these institutions - the monarchy, the ministries, the cabinet, parliament and its parties, the judiciary - have become a striking example of the decomposition of the bourgeoisies’ political apparatus worldwide.
As indicated earlier, populism has caused ongoing damage to the economy, through Brexit and through increasing instability (see section 3).
Brexit was accompanied by the transformation of the centuries old Tory Party into a populist shambles that relegated experienced politicians to the sidelines and brought ambitious, doctrinaire mediocrities into governmental positions, who then proceeded to disrupt the competence of the ministries that they headed. The rapid succession of Tory prime ministers since 2016 testifies to the uncertainty at the political helm.
However, the need of the state to preserve some of its democratic credibility, and the reality of the re-emergence of the class struggle, obliges an important part of the political apparatus to defend “traditional dignity and values of governmental office” against this trend, and pull back if possible from the most reckless decisions. The Sunak government, despite the influence of populism, has modified aspects of the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to get round some of the contradictions of Brexit, and rejoined the European Horizon project, without being able to overcome the drain on the economy. King Charles has been dispatched to France and Germany as an ambassador to show Britain’s remnants of dignity. Finally, the sacking of Suella Braverman and the appointment of Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary is a further expression of this attempt to limit the growing populist virus in the party, but its future direction and stability remains profoundly uncertain, not least because the same virus is an international reality, most obviously in the American ruling class.
The division in the state between the populists and the more classical liberals expresses the deterioration of the political game of bourgeoisie that is increasingly losing its margin of manoeuvre. However, faced with the working class the whole bourgeoisie is very much aware that it has to use these divisions to divide its class enemy. The conflict between the madness of populism and the return to democratic sanity is the great false alternative that will continue to be played out daily in front of the population in order to hide the real problem of the inevitable collapse of capitalism as a whole, and to present it as a national problem.
At present the opposition Labour Party, under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, is adopting the role of responsible and honourable centrist and electable alternative to the right-wing extremism of the Tory Government. A first step has been to eject the “hard left” from the party. Starmer models himself on Tony Blair as he waves the Union Jack and sings the national anthem. Like Blair he has announced that if elected next year he has ruled out tax increases or unfunded spending. He has also announced he intends to renegotiate with the EU in order to improve trade and relations while not openly reversing any Brexit decisions.
Starmer intends to turn Labour from a “party of protest into a party of government” and is currently ahead in the polls, although the recent by-election successes which made this prospect more plausible have been tarnished somewhat by the impact of the war in the Middle East, where Starmer’s tail-ending of the UK government and the US has provoked deep divisions within a party that had been touting its new unity in contrast to the factionalism dominating the Tories. .
However, the Labour Party retains the means to head dramatically leftward as the trade unions and their leftist camp followers can wield significant power in the party when the sabotage of the class struggle requires it. The British bourgeoisie has made very good use of a hard right in power and a radical left in opposition to face up to a resurgent working class, as it did with great success in the Thatcher years, and the bourgeoisie may still opt to continue this line-up. However, if necessary the trade unions and their leftist camp followers can play a left wing oppositional role towards a Labour government if the bourgeoisie needs this to face a resurgence of class struggle with Labour in office.
8. Our responsibility
The responsibilities of revolutionary organisations depend on the historic situation, today characterised by decomposition and by a working class that has not suffered a historical defeat, the former threatening the destruction of humanity, and the latter holding open the perspective of the communist revolution. This demands that our analysis follow the both these poles of the situation today, and in particular remains awake to the development of the class struggle. Our intervention, particularly our press, must draw the lessons of the class struggle as well as denouncing the bourgeoisie’s manoeuvres against it, particularly through the unions and the left. And it must highlight the worsening of decomposition, pointing to the necessity for the communist revolution to avoid the destruction of humanity. None of this can be done without a revolutionary organisation able to defend proletarian principles of functioning.
December 2023
Cities completely devastated, hospitals in total collapse, crowds of civilians wandering the streets under the bombs, without water, food or electricity, families everywhere crying for their dead, children haggardly searching for their mothers under the ruins, others mercilessly torn apart... This terrifying apocalyptic landscape is not that of Warsaw or Hiroshima after six years of world war, nor that of Sarajevo after four years of siege. This is the landscape of "21st century capitalism", the streets of Gaza, Rafah and Khan Yunis after just two months of conflict.
Two months! It took just two short months to raze Gaza to the ground, take tens of thousands of lives and throw millions more onto roads that lead nowhere! And not just by anyone! By "the only democracy in the Near and Middle East", by the State of Israel, an ally of the great Western "democracies", which claims to be the sole repository of the memory of the Holocaust.
For decades, revolutionaries have been crying out: “Capitalism is gradually plunging humanity into barbarism and chaos!” Here we are... Down with the masks! Capitalism is showing its true face and the future it has in store for all humanity!
Neither Israel nor Palestine!
Faced with such an outburst of barbarity, both sides and their supporters around the world are blaming each other for the crimes.
For some, Israel is waging a "dirty war" (as if there were such a thing as a clean one...) that even the UN and its very cautious Secretary General have had to denounce, going so far as to speak of "a serious risk of genocide". Some on the left of capital do not even hesitate to support the despicable atrocities of Hamas, painted as an "act of resistance" against "Israeli colonialism", which is claimed to be solely responsible for the conflict.
For its part, the Israeli government justifies the carnage by claiming to be avenging the victims of 7 October and preventing Hamas terrorists from again attacking the "security of the Jewish state". So much for the thousands of innocent victims! Never mind the "human shields" of 6 years! Never mind the ruined hospitals, schools and homes! Israel's security is worth a massacre!
Everywhere, we hear the sirens of nationalism defending a state that is supposedly the victim of the other. But what kind of deluded mind imagines that the Gazan bourgeoisie, thirsting for money and blood, is better than Netanyahu's clique of the corrupt and the fanatical?
"We're not defending Hamas, we're defending the right of the ‘Palestinian people’ to self-determination", all the leftist coterie at the head of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations sing, no doubt hoping, with this kind of ideological pirouette, to make us forget that "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" is only a formula designed to conceal the defence of what must be called the State of Gaza! The interests of proletarians in Palestine, Israel or any other country in the world should in no way be confused with those of their bourgeoisie and their state. To be convinced of this, we need only recall how Hamas bloodily repressed the 2019 demonstrations against poverty. The Palestinian homeland will never be anything but a bourgeois state at the service of the exploiting class! A "liberated" Gaza Strip would mean nothing more than consolidating the odious regime of Hamas or any other faction of the Gazan bourgeoisie.
"But the struggle of a colonised country for its liberation undermines the imperialism of the colonising states", counter-attacked some Trotskyists and what remained of the Stalinists, without laughing. What a crude lie! Hamas's attack is part of an imperialist logic that goes far beyond its own interests. Iran helped to ignite the fuse by arming Hamas. It is trying to spread chaos among its rivals, especially Israel, by multiplying provocations and incidents in the region: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shia militias in Syria and Iraq... "all the parties in the region have their hands on the trigger", as the Iranian Foreign Minister said at the end of October. However weak it may be in the face of the power of the Israeli military, Hamas, like every national bourgeoisie since capitalism entered its period of decadence, can in no way magically escape the imperialist ties which govern all international relations. Supporting the Palestinian state means siding with the imperialist interests of Khamenei, Nasrallah and even Putin, who is rubbing his hands over the conflict.
But then the inimitable pacifists appear on the scene to complete the nationalist straitjacket in which the bourgeoisie is trying to trap the working class: "We don't support either side! We demand an immediate ceasefire!” The most naïve no doubt imagine that the accelerated plunge of capitalism into barbarism is due to the lack of "good will" on the part of the murderers at the head of the states, or even to a "failure of democracy". The clever ones know perfectly well what sordid interests they are defending. This is the case, for example, with President Biden, supplier of cluster munitions to Ukraine, horrified by the "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza. It has to be said that Israel took Uncle Sam by surprise, opening up a new and potentially explosive front that the United States could have done without. If Biden has raised his voice to Netanyahu, it is not to "preserve world peace", but to better focus his efforts and military forces on his rival China in the Pacific, and on the latter’s burdensome Russian ally in Ukraine.
There is therefore nothing to hope for from "peace" under the rule of capitalism, any more than after the victory of one side or another. The bourgeoisie has no solution to war!
A giant step into barbarism
What is happening today in the Middle East is not just another episode in the long series of outbreaks of violence that have tragically punctuated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. The current conflict has nothing to do with the old "logic" of confrontation between the USSR and the United States. On the contrary, it represents a further step in the drive of global capitalism towards chaos, the proliferation of uncontrollable convulsions and the spread of ever more conflicts.
The level of barbarity on the scale of Gaza is perhaps even worse than the extraordinary violence of the Ukrainian conflict. All the wars of decadence have resulted in mass slaughter and gigantic destruction. But even the greatest murderers of the twentieth century, the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Churchills and the Eisenhowers, only engaged in the worst horrors after several years of war, multiplying the "justifications" for turning entire cities into heaps of ashes. Yet it is striking to note the extent to which the streets of Gaza already bear a striking resemblance to the ruined landscapes at the end of the Second World War. This whole clique of barbarians has been swept along by the scorched earth logic that now dominates imperialist conflicts.
What strategic advantage could Hamas possibly have gained by sending a thousand assassins to massacre civilians, if not to ignite the fuse and expose itself to its own destruction? What are Iran or Israel hoping to achieve, then, if not to sow chaos among their rivals, chaos that will inevitably come back to hit them like a boomerang? Neither state has anything to gain from this hopeless conflict. Israeli society could be profoundly destabilised by the war, threatened for decades to come by a generation of Palestinians bent on revenge. As for Iran, while it stands to gain the most from the situation, this can only be a Pyrrhic victory! Because if the United States fails to curb the indiscriminate unleashing of military barbarity, Iran is exposed to harsh reprisals against its positions in Lebanon and Syria, and even to destructive attacks on its own territory. And all this at the risk of destabilising ever larger regions of the planet, with shortages, famines, millions of displaced people, increased risks of attacks, confrontations between communities...
Even if the United States is trying to prevent the situation from getting out of hand, the risk of a generalised conflagration in the Middle East is not negligible. Because, far from obeying the "bloc discipline" that prevailed until the collapse of the USSR, all the local players are ready to pull the trigger. The first thing that stands out is that Israel has acted alone, arousing the anger and open criticism of the Biden administration. Netanyahu has taken advantage of the weakening of American leadership to try to crush the Palestinian bourgeoisie and destroy Iran's allies, thereby opposing the "two-state solution" promoted by the United States. The indiscipline of Israel, which is more concerned with its own immediate interests, is a huge blow to Washington's efforts to prevent the destabilisation of the region, particularly through the rapprochement between Israel, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries. Above all, the conflict risks opening up a new front, with Iran and its allies waiting in ambush, likely to further weaken American leadership.
Who can end war?
The proletariat in Gaza has been crushed. The proletariat in Israel, stunned by the Hamas attack, has allowed itself to be taken in by nationalist and war propaganda. In the main bastions of the proletariat, particularly in Europe, if the working class is not ready to sacrifice itself directly in the trenches, it is still incapable of rising up directly against the imperialist war, on the terrain of proletarian internationalism.
So is all lost?... No! The bourgeoisie has demanded enormous sacrifices to fuel the war machine in Ukraine. In the face of the crisis and despite the propaganda, the proletariat rose up against the economic consequences of this conflict, against inflation and austerity. Admittedly, the working class still finds it difficult to make the link between militarism and the economic crisis, but it has indeed refused to make sacrifices: in the United Kingdom with a year of mobilisations, in France against pension reform, in the United States against inflation...
While the Ukrainian conflict drags on, the Israeli-Palestinian war rages on, and the bourgeoisie redoubles its efforts to fill the heads of the exploited with its despicable nationalist propaganda, the working class is still fighting! Recently, Canada has seen a historic movement of struggle. Unprecedented struggles, with expressions of solidarity, are taking place in the Scandinavian countries.
The working class is not dead! Through its struggles, the proletariat is also finding out what true class solidarity is. In the face of war, workers' solidarity is not with the “Palestinians” or the “Israelis”. It is with the workers of Palestine and Israel, as it is with the workers of the whole world. Solidarity with the victims of the massacres certainly does not mean maintaining the nationalist mystifications which have led workers to place themselves behind a gun and a bourgeois clique. Workers' solidarity means above all developing the fight against the capitalist system responsible for all wars.
Revolutionary struggle cannot come about with a snap of the fingers. Today, it can only come about through the development of workers' struggles against the increasingly harsh economic attacks by the bourgeoisie. Today's struggles pave the way for tomorrow's revolution!
EG, 16 December 2023
Born in Bavaria in 1923, of Jewish origin, the young Heinz Alfred Kissinger was forced to migrate with his family to the United States to escape Nazism. Becoming "Henry", he was granted American nationality in 1943, enlisted as a soldier in the ranks of military intelligence and joined counter-espionage services. Returning to America at the end of the war, he pursued brilliant studies at Harvard University, teaching political science and specialising in international relations. His career as a diplomat took on a truly global dimension during the Nixon era. Throughout the Cold War, he became a key figure at the head of the Western bloc against the USSR.
Behind his "dark side", the face of imperialism
In keeping with his rank and services to the American nation, a shower of tributes came from major governments to honour the departed diplomat. Biden praised his "fierce intellect”, Xi Jinping the "legendary diplomat", Scholz a "great diplomat", Macron a "giant of history", and so on.
In supposed opposition to this consensus, the controversial figure was the subject of "criticism" by left-wing parties, leftists and several media, condemning the "dark side" of his character. Undoubtedly, from the moment he entered the White House as National Security Adviser in 1969, and then as Secretary of State in 1973, Kissinger inspired little sympathy, to the point where Nixon, highly suspicious, decided to bug his phone. A common practice that would cause scandal later and cost him his job in the Watergate affair.[1]. Kissinger himself used the same methods against his own staff, who also disliked this tireless manipulator, known for his authoritarianism, coldness, lies, and total lack of scruples. In short, a profile typical of all the great representatives of the bourgeoisie and other defenders of capitalism. But by focusing almost exclusively on Kissinger's personality, this propaganda masked the fact that the decisions he had taken, which were indeed criminal, were above all part of the brutal logic of imperialism and therefore of the capitalist system.
None of this detracts from the responsibility of Kissinger and Nixon for their abuses, but it does point to the inevitably barbaric policies of a decadent system that led to two world wars and antagonistic imperialist blocs that even threatened to engulf humanity in a nuclear apocalypse. It is only in this context that we can understand the major crimes that were actually committed during the Cold War as a result of decisions taken at the very top of the American State.
And this was indeed the case with the massive terror bombings of Cambodia, which began in the greatest secrecy in 1969 in the face of threats from North Vietnamese troops. The United States dropped 540,000 tonnes of bombs, causing a deluge of fire that killed between 50,000 and 150,000 civilians. Declassified transcripts prove that Kissinger did indeed pass on the bombing orders to General Alexander Haig: "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia [...] It's an order, it has to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?" Cambodia, which had become the most heavily bombed country in history, sank into a barbarity that helped bring the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's bloody regime to power.
These crimes were not just the product of a decision by an unscrupulous individual. It was a planned policy, based on the strategy of terror, designed to counter the enemy bloc: the USSR. Such an approach in no way contradicts the policy of "détente", which is itself based on the principle of a "balance of terror". The doctrine of "nuclear deterrence", defended by the entire Western camp, was therefore not limited to the scheming Kissinger[2].
Taking advantage of the growing split between the USSR and China at the end of the 1960s to promote "détente" and also distancing himself from the Ostpolitik of German Chancellor Willy Brandt[3], Kissinger firmly defended the continuity of the same "containment" strategy initiated by President Truman after the Second World War. Here too, the policy of "détente" was discreetly exerting pressure designed to further isolate the USSR. A meticulous and systematic secret policy, in which Kissinger had been the main player and a fine negotiator, was successful for the Western camp. At the same time, thanks to numerous discreet contacts with Chinese minister Zhou Enlai, his policy made Nixon's trip to Beijing possible in 1972. It was a policy that was to bear fruit when China officially joined the Western camp.
Following the Treaty of Paris, the next year, which led to talks in the Middle East and the end of the Vietnam War, Kissinger was to receive ... the Nobel Peace Prize! Naturally, this caused an outcry which even led to the resignation of two members of the Nobel Prize[4].
To loosen the stranglehold of this very skilful American offensive, the Soviet bloc retaliated with attempts to destabilise it by trying to counter the increased pressure from the Western bloc. In this context, the election of the "socialist" Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 was perceived as a real threat to Washington. Allende's assassination and the putsch that brought General Pinochet to power were, to say the least, greatly facilitated (if not executed) by the CIA and US policy. The American counter-offensive did indeed use terror. The proof is that it turned a blind eye to the torture and summary executions of the new Chilean regime and many others. Kissinger's role and authority over the CIA, and their support for numerous dictatorships, made the 1970s and 1980s "dark years" in this respect.
The Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie
Kissinger's "realpolitik" was in fact that of the entire Western bloc. Using cunning and seduction, lies, concealment, manipulation and violence, it has helped to orchestrate numerous coups d'état and organise massive bombings of civilians, thereby fostering the breeding ground for ethnic cleansing and massacres. All in the name of "democracy".
What is most despicable is the bourgeoisie's ability today to use its own past crimes to feed democratic propaganda in order to mystify the working class by trying to cover up its own system of exploitation, of mass destruction, and massacres. “In order to perpetuate its rule over the working class, it's vital for the bourgeoisie to maintain the democratic mystification, and it has used the definitive bankruptcy of Stalinism to reinforce this fiction. Against the lie of a so-called difference between 'democracy' and 'totalitarianism', the whole history of decadent capitalism shows us that democracy is just as stained with blood as totalitarianism, and that its victims can be counted in millions.
The proletariat must remember that when it comes to defending class interests or sordid imperialist appetites, the 'democratic' bourgeoisie has never hesitated to support the most ferocious dictators. Let's not forget that Blum, Churchill and company called Stalin 'Mister' and feted him as the 'man of Liberation'! More recently, let's recall the support given to Saddam Hussein and Ceausescu by the likes of De Gaulle and Giscard. The working class must take on board the fact that, whether yesterday, today or tomorrow, democracy has never been anything but the hypocritical mask behind which the bourgeoisie hides the hideous face of its class dictatorship, the better to enslave the working class and bring it to its knees."[5]
Henry Kissinger was a typical representative of the bourgeois class, radically separating morality from politics - as he put it: "a country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security". Until the end of his official career in 1977 and well beyond, Kissinger would continue to influence American political life, as demonstrated by his open support for Reagan and his advice to Bush Jr. and many others. Last July, at the age of 100, he was still influential and even able to travel. He was received by Xi Jinping in person in Beijing, just a few months before his death.
WH, 10 December 2023
[1] Watergate led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
[2] In order to sow the seeds of fear among the "Soviets", Kissinger cleverly suggested that Nixon might be "unpredictable", i.e. ready to use the atomic bomb at any moment. In short, a division of labour in which Kissinger came across as the "good guy" and Nixon as the "dangerous bad guy".
[3] Brandt’s policy of normalising relations with the USSR was viewed with suspicion by the Americans.
[4] American satirical singer Tom Lehrer said that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize". Françoise Giroud spoke of a "Nobel Prize for black humour".
[5] "Let Us Remember: The massacres and crimes of the 'Great Democracies' [3]", International Review 66 (1991)
From 23 October to 15 November, over more than three weeks, garment workers in Bangladesh were struggling for an increase of the minimum pay rate. The last time such a demand was raised was five years ago. In the meantime, conditions have become dire for many of the sector’s 4.4 million workers, who have been hard hit by soaring prices of food, house rents, and costs of education and healthcare. Many of the garment workers were finding it difficult to make ends meet, forced to figure out merely how to survive. The strike was the most important workers’ struggle in Bangladesh in more than a decade.
Working conditions in the garment sector
Workers in the garment industry have an important place in the Bangladesh economy. The garment industry accounts for 80 per cent of Bangladesh's total export earnings. They are an important reference point for the working class in that country. But nonetheless both their working and living conditions are downright miserable.
In 2012, fires at the Tazreen textile factory led to 110 deaths. Then in 2013, in one of the worst industrial disasters ever, 1,135 people were killed the infamous collapse of Rana Plaza, shining a spotlight on the extremely abusive conditions in the garment industry. Furthermore, from November 2012 to March 2018, there were still 5000 incidents with 3,875 injuries and 1,303 deaths. Thereafter the number of accidents has diminished, but even in 2023 safety standards are still disregarded, as was demonstrated on 1 May when 16 workers were hospitalised with severe burns following an explosion.
The workers often work long hours and have little time between shifts. Sometimes they work for up to 18 hours per day, arriving early in the morning and leaving past midnight. Workers have very little workspace, sitting in small chairs that stress their backs and necks, and they have to work in cramped and unsafe areas. They face an elevated risk of illness because of completely inadequate sanitary conditions, poor hygiene practices and congested conditions. Moreover, workers can be physically assaulted for failing to meet output volumes targets. Women, 58 percent of the workforce, are often subjected to sexual harassment.
A new report of the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), published in May 2023, has shown that garment workers in Bangladesh are experiencing alarming nutritional deficiency rates which is clearly connected to the low minimum wage. According to a survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), 43% of textile workers suffer from malnutrition; 78% are forced to buy food on credit; 82% of the workers are unable to pay for healthcare; 85% live in shanty towns and 87% cannot send their children to school. These workers need at least 23,000 taka ($209) per month to stay above the poverty line [1].
In response to these gruesome working conditions workers have demonstrated their combativity on a number of occasions in the past decade:
The strike of 2023
In the previous decade Bangladesh had relatively high economic growth, low inflation, and good foreign exchange reserves. Exports jumped from $14.66 billion in 2011 to $33.1 billion in 2019. But economic pressure has come from new high global commodity prices, high imported inflation, and supply chain disruptions. Inflation in Bangladesh reached nearly 10 percent this year and the taka has depreciated by around 30 per cent against the US dollar since the beginning of 2022. Foreign reserves have fallen about 20 per cent this year, which forced the government to take the multibillion-dollar IMF loan.
In the face of these conditions, on October 23, Bangladeshi workers from hundreds of plants in Mirpur, Narayanganj, Ashulia, Savar and Gazipur came out on strike demanding a living wage higher than the offered 10.000 taka ($90) per month. The proposed increased wage offer of 25 per cent was seen as an outrage and protests spread to the capital Dhaka, sparking mass demonstrations with tens of thousands on the streets, leading to the suspension of production in hundreds of the 3500 factories.
There are almost no reports about the first week of the strike, from 23 to 29 October, but there are signs that workers tried to extend the struggle to more garment factories. But these attempts were obstructed by the employers and the forces of repression. Factory owners prevented the trade unions from speaking to the workers by intimidating and threatening its officials and members. At one point groups of workers went to a factory where the workers were not allowed to leave. They called on them to join the demonstrations. At another moment thousands of workers attempted to block strike breakers entering a factory. In both cases they were met with violent assaults by the industrial police.
After two weeks of strike action, massive demonstrations and the inevitable clashes with the police, the tri-partite Minimum Wage Board (MWB), a government-appointed panel, promised to improve the original wage offer. Under the instructions of the trade unions, the workers agreed to go back to work on Wednesday 6 November. But when they heard about an improved monthly minimum wage of only 12,500 taka (£90) to start from 1 December, the struggle resumed and the protests escalated. The proposal was far below the 23,000 taka a month workers needed to keep their families from starvation.
But in the following week the workers were not able to develop enough pressure to force the government and the employers to meet their demands. The only clear response of the ruling class came from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, threatening the workers that they should “work with the pay rise they already received or return to their village”. So on 15 November the strike ended more or less in a defeat for the workers who did not get everything they had demanded: ie a pay rise of 300 per cent. Instead they got a pay raise of only 56.25 per cent, which is far too low to meet their daily nutritional needs.
In order to sabotage the struggle and to beat the workers the ruling class used different instruments
Weakness of the struggle
As revolutionaries we should not shy away from exposing the weaknesses of the strike. And then we are faced with the massive destruction that took place during the strike, where about 70 factories suffered damage, two were burned down and many were ransacked. But it is not clear what was done by the working class and what was done by lumpenproletarian elements or even criminal gangs. But it is undeniable and cannot be excluded that, as an expression of impatience or even desperation groups of workers have been tempted to destructive actions such as attacking buildings or buses, looting factories, etc [3]. And this tendency comes to the fore especially when the extension of the struggle clashes with its limits and remains isolated from the class as a whole. In such circumstances minorities of workers often think that they can make a breakthrough with destructive actions of blind violence. And this tendency becomes stronger as daily living conditions are more appalling and workers receive neither a wage nor strike pay during the strike.
But destruction, as a form of blind violence, is in contrast to class violence, because the raison d’etre of the working class struggle is to do away with all random violence. In working class violence the defence of the strike and its perspective, end and means, are intrinsically connected. To achieve a given end, the only means that are appropriate are those that serve and reinforce the road to that end.
Lessons of the struggles
Leftist organisations and trade union organisations internationally[4] have organised ‘solidarity’ with the workers struggle in Bangladesh. Through these actions they try to confuse the workers by advocating international ‘solidarity’ between unions rather than between workers; by presenting campaigns to put pressure on the brands to pay more for the clothes produced as the way to express solidarity with the garment workers. Against this, the working class must bring forward its own lessons, which can enrich the struggles of the world working class. In particular it must emphasise that strike of the garment workers in Bangladesh:
Dn and Rr 11/12/23
[1] Bangladesh : la grève des ouvriers du textile jette une lumière crue sur leurs conditions de vie [4]
[2] Blockades of the BNP even intertwined with blockades of the garment workers, as happened on Tuesday 31 October when the blockades of opposition parties occurred amid the blockades of the garment workers.
[3] Articles in leftist publications do not criticise the destruction carried out by workers. They present any form of violence by the workers as an expression of its combativity and resilience.
[4] International Confederation of Labour; World Federation of Trade Unions; the German trade union Ver.di. See in particular: Textilarbeiterinnen in Bangladesch kämpfen für eine Anhebung des Mindestlohns um mehr als 200 % und fordern internationale Unterstützung [5] on Labournet Germany.
Below we are publishing a letter from a reader who calls himself Tibor, and our reply. We cannot deal with all the points raised by this very detailed text here, as we do not consider our reply brings an end to the debate. Quite the opposite, we encourage all our readers, and Tibor himself, to use this initial response to continue the discussion, either with more letters or in our public meetings and open meetings.
Dear comrades,
This is how Friedrich Engels described the beer riots in Bavaria in early May 1844: “The working men assembled in large masses, paraded through the streets, assailed the public houses, smashing the windows, breaking the furniture, and destroying everything in their reach, in order to take revenge for the enhanced price of their favourite drink […] If the people once know they can frighten the government out of their taxing system, they will soon learn that it will be as easy to frighten them as far as regards more serious matters.” (My emphasis, Tibor). It could thus appear, a priori, that an acquisition of this revolutionary heritage is the authentic marxist stance on riots. In reality, this is not the case. Thus, in the event of the June 2023 riots in France following the murder of young Nahel by the police, the organisations of the communist left defended positions that were at times radically opposed. Some organisations have welcomed the movement, while stating more or less strongly its obvious limits, other groups, such as the ICC to which this letter is addressed, have not hesitated in denouncing the dead end of "mindless violence". These major differences show that, far from being self-evident, the question of riots needs to be the subject of clarification and confrontation. This is the aim of my letter.
Are the riots in the suburbs on the terrain of the working class?
Contrary to the claims of the extreme left of capital, it's wrong to see "anything that happens" as automatically "red", or, expressed less caricaturally, not every social movement is automatically an expression of the working class struggle. To decide whether or not a movement is located on the terrain of the working class, it's important to proceed methodically and to address a number of questions. Broadly speaking, marxists have several ways of identifying the class nature of a movement: the social composition of the participants; the methods and means employed in the struggle; the class nature of the demands. Once these points have been considered, as I shall do in the remainder of this letter, it is still important to place this analysis in a dynamic and historical perspective, which I will do next.
Causes and social composition of the riots
Let's start with the social composition of the rioters. A priori, nobody denies that the majority of the rioters belong to the working class. Indeed, it would be a clear misunderstanding of the situation in the French suburbs to deny that the majority of their inhabitants belong to the working class. When they are not facing unemployment and poverty, these proletarians work for large logistics platforms (like Amazon) or in fictitious self-entrepreneurships designed to conceal the wage form of exploitation (Uber, Deliveroo, etc.). For any materialist concerned with identifying the economic and social causes that ultimately produce these riots, it is obvious that these reactions can be explained on the one hand by the fact that this fraction of the working class is subjected to constant exploitation, characterised in particular by greater poverty, higher unemployment or the absence of the usual provisions (i.e., public services). On the other hand, they are also the product of unrestrained state repression, with humiliation, racial profiling, murder and state-sponsored racism promoted by the police and the judiciary. These riots are therefore a direct reaction to class exploitation and repression, which every revolutionary should welcome as a break with the status quo and a refusal by a fraction of the working class to continue accepting unbearable living and working conditions. As for arguments that see the young rioters as the embodiment of the underclass with its hoodlums and other miscreants, these don't stand up to analysis insofar as it's precisely in the neighbourhoods controlled by drug dealers where nothing has happened, since these criminal groups don't want their "business" disturbed with the threat posed by these riots. Furthermore, the dealers themselves have occasionally acted to stop the riots. While the ICC seems well aware of the working class social composition of the rioters and the social and economic causes of their struggle, it doesn't see what's positive in refusing to put up with the continued class violence (even when it is hailing, correctly, the many slogans like "enough is enough" and "too much is too much" associated with other social movements across the world).
The methods and the means of struggle
It is clear, however, that the causes and social composition of a movement are not sufficient to confirm its class nature. This brings us to the question of the methods of struggle. And this is clearly the crux of my disagreement with the ICC's analysis. The ICC's thesis is expressed as follows: riots are a danger to the working class. We've already mentioned that Engels supported the riot as a form of struggle in 1844. Many proletarian groups have defended similar positions. One example among many is the Third Camp group OCR during the Second World War, which lists anti-police struggles and riots as proletarian political struggles. In contrast to these traditional and historical positions, the ICC article states: "The working class has its own methods of struggle, which are radically opposed to riots and basic urban revolts. Class struggle has absolutely nothing to do with indiscriminate destruction and violence, arson, feelings of revenge and looting that offer no perspective." As a counterpoint, let's quote Friedrich Engels' article again: The working men assembled in large masses, paraded through the streets, assailed the public houses, smashing the windows, breaking the furniture, and destroying everything in their reach, in order to take revenge for the enhanced price of their favourite drink [...]The police, being, as everywhere, obnoxious to the people, were severely beaten and ill-treated by the rioters." This alone proves that on this issue, the ICC is revising the marxist acceptance of violence, rejecting spontaneous, uncontrolled violence on principle. It's the opposite, marxists, far from denouncing violence like any vulgar bourgeois or like the leftist group Lutte Ouvrière (NB: the ICC likes to reject any criticism of its positions on riots as being in every respect similar to that of leftist groups, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, etc. Then how does it explain that its denunciation of the indiscriminate, hopeless violence of the riots is the same, word for word, as the leftist group Lutte Ouvrière?), marxists are defending the same perspective as Marx when he wrote in the 1850 Address to the Communist League: “Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction” (my emphasis, Tibor). Note that in the ICC sentence, the notion of "revenge" is opposed to class struggle, whereas in Marx, it is not only tolerated but must also be organised by communist revolutionaries. What these examples show is that the ICC breaks with the marxist analysis of class violence, refusing, for idealistic and metaphysical reasons, to support violence when it is spontaneous or a minority action, and even if it is a part of the class that resorts to it. At a more fundamental level, the ICC revises marxism in the relationship between violence and consciousness. It believes that a conscious struggle will be the least violent possible. Conversely, a violent struggle will testify to the weakness of the working class. This is in total opposition to the support for class terror of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Miasnikov or indeed Bordiga. Class struggle is, as Marx put it, borrowing a phrase from Georges Sand, "Combat or Death: Bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is always posed."
Therefore, spontaneous, minority forms of violence, far from being dead-ends, bear witness to an awareness, however embryonic, of this reality. It is a source of support for the future struggle of the working class. The ICC's main criticism of this argument is that violence contributes to the division of the proletariat, when the aim of class struggle is to seek ever greater unity. Clearly, this is a new dogmatic and metaphysical position of the ICC. Unity is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end, which is to contribute to the working class awareness that it has interests of its own, which radically oppose those of the bourgeoisie, thus necessitating a final offensive against the bourgeoisie and for the establishment of communism. Defending unity as a dogma at every moment of the struggle is a dangerous mistake. During a revolutionary episode, unity is not an initial given, but only a medium to long-term perspective. This is due to the heterogeneity of class consciousness within the proletariat. An example will suffice to illustrate this point: in the autumn of 1918, during the German revolution, Karl Liebknecht's strategic and tactical positions were bound to divide the proletariat into a conscious vanguard and a rear-guard that remained on bourgeois terrain. It was precisely the Social Democrats who denounced Liebknecht as a divider and championed unity. With its metaphysical calls for unity, the ICC would therefore have been on the SPD's side. Fortunately, it is too revolutionary to allow itself to be mystified by its own theoretical errors. What this example illustrates, then, is that it is a mistake to expect every struggle to contribute to unity. If unity remains a perspective, it cannot be achieved at the start of a movement, and revolutionaries have absolutely nothing to fear from breaking unity if it benefits the class struggle, as it does with the use of violence.
The class nature of demands
Finally, the last dimension to study is that of the demands, and whether or not they are class-based. This is where the weakness of the riots lies. The clarity of the demands and perspectives expressed by a movement is the product of the consciousness manifested by that movement. In this case, it is undeniable that this class consciousness was only embryonic, and that the participants were not aware of belonging to a social class with common interests, namely the proletariat. This was made abundantly clear by the fact that, in addition to class violence (against the police, town halls, prefectures, shopping malls, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state), the rioters also attacked their own class, whether physically, by attacking prostitutes (no doubt for reasons of puritanism completely alien to the working class), or materially, by attacking cars (belonging to proletarians! ), schools and hospitals - public services which, though merely palliative, are nonetheless useful for the daily lives of the vast majority of the proletariat. The ICC is therefore right to assert that these struggles do not contribute to the unification of the proletariat. But two points need to be made immediately. Contrary to its claim that the riots are condemned by a majority of the proletariat in the suburbs, the evidence tends to show that the older generation supports the youths in revolt. Nevertheless, these are only some of the testimonies, and it is absolutely impossible for revolutionaries to scientifically assess the degree of support for or rejection of the riots among the proletariat in the suburbs. The second point to make is that, even if it's obvious that the bourgeoisie is doing and will do everything in its power to divide the proletariat by highlighting the violence to limit these struggles and provoke the indignation of the rest of the working class, the task of revolutionaries, rather than crying with the wolves and mingling their cries with those of the bourgeoisie and some workers, is rather to refuse this division and to use their propaganda to show that all these proletarians, whether they take part in the riots or condemn them, contaminated by the false propaganda of the bourgeois media, belong to one and the same class and have common interests. It's this task that the ICC abandons when it merely denounces the riots.
An analysis comparing the struggle against pension reform and the riots in terms of consciousness
Ultimately, what is the level of consciousness of these struggles? First of all, it's important to place these struggles in their historical dynamic. They are emerging in the wake of decades of declining class consciousness on a global scale (since at least the 1980s and the many defeats suffered by the proletariat). It would be absurd (and the ICC agrees) to criticise current struggles for not being on a par with the consciousness of the 1970s, let alone the 1920s. Yet, while the ICC agrees with this for the economic struggles, it rejects this argument for the riots and simply denounces the lack of consciousness. On the contrary, a comparative analysis of the struggles against pension reform and the riots paints an altogether different picture, far more dialectical and anti-schematic, than that of the ICC. This is what I propose to do in concluding this letter.
Being conscious of being a proletarian implies three things: 1) consciousness of belonging to one and the same exploited class with common interests; 2) consciousness of having interests that are antagonistic and radically opposed to those of the bourgeoisie; 3) consciousness of the need to self-organise outside any bourgeois framework. However, in terms of these three criteria, each of these two movements is the mirror image of the other. Thus, the struggle against pension reform is to be welcomed for its massiveness and its tendency to unify the proletariat as a whole, irrespective of occupation, age, gender, etc. (even if localist and corporatist dead ends have been encouraged by the unions, and the proletariat has not yet been able to oppose them). This is a salutary starting point for future struggles. On the other hand, the other two dimensions have been sorely lacking. Union leadership, which was maintained from the beginning to the end of the movement, led to the organisation of light-hearted, legalistic marches and demonstrations in which hatred of the bourgeoisie and understanding the need for a radical, violent struggle against the class enemy were completely lacking. Similarly, there were never any expressions of self-organisation, which was one of the main reasons for the movement's defeat. Once more these limitations were unavoidable in the current historical phase but they should be criticised if the proletariat is to learn the lessons of defeat and move forward.
If we now look at the riots in terms of these same three criteria, we see that self-organisation is also absent, not in that this movement is organised by the bourgeoisie (unions, leftists) but insofar as it is not organised at all. But where unity was the strength of the movement against pension reform, the weakness of the riots is in its absence. As a result of the actions of the bourgeoisie and the weakness of consciousness within the class, the rioters were pitted against the rest of the proletariat, and this division between proletarians was never called into question (including by the ICC). Finally, whereas the dimension of understanding the need to struggle against the bourgeoisie, the hatred of the enemy, was very much present in the riots, it was absent in the struggle against pension reform.
To conclude, then, it's not a question (as it was with another reader's letter, whose concerns were quite similar to the current ones) of asking which of these two movements is the more radical, nor is it a question of taking one of these two movements as a model and the other as the embodiment of all the dead-ends and pitfalls of the bourgeoisie. Rather, within the framework of a dialectical analysis, attentive to the necessarily contradictory nature of social phenomena, it is a matter of identifying both the signs of an awakening of consciousness within the working class and the expressions of the class's still extremely significant weaknesses in its struggle against the bourgeoisie. This revolutionary task is clearly lacking in the ICC's analysis.
Tibor
First of all, we would like to welcome this letter for several reasons:
- With this text, Tibor is participating in the debate revolutionaries need to have, confronting different arguments, in order to arrive at the most clear and correct positions possible.
- The comrade has made a real theoretical effort to set out the different positions at stake and to base his critique on the history of the workers' movement.
- Understanding the real nature of the riots and their impact on the working class is definitely a very important question for the future.
Tibor's charge against the ICC's position on the suburban riots in France is serious: "the ICC is revising the marxist acceptance of violence"; "like any vulgar bourgeois or like the leftist group Lutte ouvrière"; "for idealistic and metaphysical reasons"; "this is a new dogmatic and metaphysical position of the ICC"; "the ICC would therefore have been on the side of the SPD"...
We will respond to these criticisms later. But the most important thing here is to underline the context in which Tibor makes these criticisms: “Some organisations have welcomed the movement, while stating more or less strongly its obvious limits, other groups, such as the ICC to which this letter is addressed, have not hesitated in denouncing the dead end of ‘mindless’ violence". These major differences show that, far from being self-evident, the question of riots needs to be the subject of clarification and confrontation. This is the aim of my letter.” "Fortunately, [the ICC] is too revolutionary to allow itself to be mystified by its own theoretical errors". In other words, Comrade Tibor sees this debate as taking place within the proletarian political milieu, within the revolutionary camp. And it's in this context that we'll also respond, in a way that's both fraternal and uncompromising.
How should we read the classic texts of Marxism?
Let's start directly with what may appear to be the most solid foundation of our comrade's proofs: his historical quotations.
By quoting Engels and then Marx, Tibor claims to prove that "the ICC is revising the Marxist acceptance of violence". But the historical approach requires an understanding of the writings in their context, their combats, and their evolution.
When Engels describes the Munich beer riots, it was 1844, Germany was still Prussia, King Ludwig I was ruling, and feudalism was clinging to power against the onslaught of the emerging bourgeoisie. The proletarian movement was still immature, and its struggles mostly consisted of pushing as far as possible the advances of the revolutionary bourgeoisie against reactionary feudalism. The June 1848 insurrection in France had not yet taken place. However, it was this movement that brought into sharp focus for the first time the class divisions and the autonomous force of the proletariat capable of standing up directly to the bourgeois republic: "the first great battle was fought between the two classes that divide modern society"[1]. Four years earlier, in 1844, over and above the immaturity and limitations of the movement at the time, Engels hailed the revolt of two thousand workers and the realisation of their collective strength as a small step forward.
As for Marx's quote from 1850, Engels almost makes a misreading. The "popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings" that had to be "tolerated" consisted, in this case, of the democratic petty-bourgeoisie "carrying out [the] present terroristic phrases" in the context of the German bourgeoisie's struggle against the monarchy and its palaces. The text also repeatedly stresses the need for the proletariat to "organise" itself, and to "centralise" its struggle as much as possible: “the workers must be armed and organised. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organise themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.”
This is the reality of the movement at the time, its context and its aims. What does this have to do with today's riots? Does the comrade really believe that this summer's riots made the working class aware that it could "frighten the government" and teach it "that it's just as easy to frighten it for more serious matters"?
Does the comrade now see the gulf between the recent riots crushed in less than a week by police repression and the class struggles of the mid-nineteenth century, years that allowed Marx and Engels to set the goal of "proceeding immediately to the workers' own organisation and arming"?
Let's continue. Because in reality, Marx and Engels' revolutionary action is the exact opposite of what Tibor thinks he finds in a few misunderstood sentences. In The Conditions of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, Engels outlines the development of the working class revolt: “The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole. (…) The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority.”
Neither Marx nor Engels saw violence and law-breaking as revolutionary in themselves, and were prepared to criticise actions that went against the development of working class struggle, even when they appeared spectacular and provocative. Thus, in 1886, Engels sharply attacked the activity of the Social Democratic Federation and its organisation of a demonstration by the unemployed which, while passing through Pall Mall and other wealthy parts of London on its way to Hyde Park, attacked stores and looted wine stores. Engels argued that few workers had taken part, that most of those involved were "looking for a lark, some of them already merry” and that the unemployed who participated “mostly the types who do not want to work anyhow, hawkers, loafers, police spies, thugs”. The absence of the police was “so conspicuous that it was not only us who believed it to have been intentional”. Whatever one might think of some of Engels’ language his essential criticism that “These socialist gentleman [i.e. the leaders of the SDF] are determined to conjure up overnight a movement which, here as elsewhere, necessarily calls for years of work” is valid, revolution is not the product of spectacle, manipulation, or looting.
Isn't approaching history ex nihilo, by fixing a few sentences, taking them from out of context, and making them say what you want them to say, as religious people do with their verses, rather a "dogmatic", "idealistic" and "metaphysical" approach?[2]
Today's suburban riots are a danger for the class struggle to come
On these shaky historical foundations, comrade Tibor erects the load-bearing walls of his argument. In his view, given the current weakness of the proletariat's struggle, its illusions about the state, democracy and so on, the rioters' "hatred" of cops and law enforcement is a step in the right direction:
- "It is rather a question, within the framework of a dialectical analysis, attentive to apprehending the necessarily contradictory nature of social phenomena, of identifying both the signs of an awakening of consciousness within the working class and the manifestations of the still extremely important weaknesses of the class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie".
- “... the dimension of understanding the necessary struggle against the bourgeoisie, the hatred of the enemy, was very much present in the riots, whereas it was absent from the struggle against pension reform".
To verify this "dialectical" and indeed "contradictory" analysis, let's start with the comrade's own description of these famous riots: "the last dimension to study is that of the demands, and whether or not they are class-based. This is where the weakness of the riots lies. [...] This was made abundantly clear by the fact that, in addition to class violence (against the police, town halls, prefectures, shopping malls, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state), the rioters also attacked their own class, whether physically, by attacking prostitutes (no doubt for reasons of puritanism completely alien to the working class), or materially, by attacking cars (belonging to proletarians!), schools and hospitals - public services which, though merely palliative, are nonetheless useful for the daily lives of the vast majority of the proletariat.”
We agree with the comrade: being able to get around, even if only to go to work, to take care of oneself, to learn to read and write, is still “useful for the daily life of the vast majority of the proletariat". But can the comrade seriously assert that attacking prostitutes, burning down neighbours' cars, buses, schools, hospitals ... how is this comparable to the violent actions of the proletariat in the 1850s?
The comrade is right about one thing: the majority of rioters are working class children. In fact, he quite rightly describes the reality of the suburbs: “it would be a clear misunderstanding of the situation in the French suburbs to deny that the majority of their inhabitants belong to the working class. When they are not facing unemployment and poverty, these proletarians work for large logistics platforms (like Amazon) or in fictitious self-entrepreneurships designed to conceal the wage form of exploitation (Uber, Deliveroo, etc.)” And the rioters are the most crushed, rejected, and excluded part of this precarious working class. The comrade sees this as proof of the working class nature of their violent outbursts. In reality, precisely because of the absence even today of a workers' movement powerful enough to draw into its wake the weakest parts of the class and all strata of society, marginalised working class youth can only sink into nihilism, blind violence, hatred and destruction. This is the reality highlighted by burnt-out cars, buses and schools. An explosion of anger turned against the working class itself.
Yes, but they also burned "shopping malls", "the embodiment of capitalism", as Comrade Tibor protests. There's a misunderstanding here between the romanticism of the comrade who sees these riots from afar and the rioters themselves. Indeed, stores have been looted and shopping malls set on fire. But for the rioters, it wasn't about attacking capitalism and its symbols. Quite the contrary! These attacks reflect the domination of commodity culture rather than a challenge to it. The notion of "proletarian shopping", developed by some, may seem opposed to bourgeois laws and morality, but it is alien to the proletarian framework of collective action to defend common interests. The individual acquisition of commodities never really escapes the most basic premises of capitalist property. At best, such individual appropriation may enable the individual and his relatives to survive a little better than before. That's understandable, but it's by no means a threat to bourgeois domination, or even a hint of a threat.
There's still what the comrade calls "class violence": "against the police, town halls, prefectures, prisons and other embodiments of capitalism and the repressive bourgeois state". This is no longer a simple misunderstanding; it is pure blindness. These riots can't even be compared with the ideology of the black blocs, who really do believe they are attacking capitalism by attacking its symbols. During the riots, young people threw fireworks at police stations and rocks at cops, with no other stimulus than their rage at incessant checks, daily harassment, humiliating violence, habitual racism and sometimes murder, ignominiously called "bravado". It's an explosion of impotent anger. The comrade knows this argument, and he thinks he answers it by saying: “…what is the level of consciousness of these struggles? First of all, it's important to place these struggles in their historical dynamic. They are emerging in the wake of decades of declining class consciousness on a global scale (since at least the 1980s and the many defeats suffered by the proletariat). It would be absurd (and the ICC agrees) to criticise current struggles for not being on a par with the consciousness of the 1970s, let alone the 1920s. Yet, while the ICC agrees with this for the economic struggles, it rejects this argument for the riots and simply denounces the lack of consciousness. On the contrary, a comparative analysis of the struggles against pension reform and the riots paints an altogether different picture, far more dialectical and anti-schematic, than that of the ICC.” Guy Debord often asserted that dialectics could break bricks, but we still doubt Comrade Tibor's use of them in the riot context.
In these few lines, there's a misunderstanding, that of the radical difference in nature between the social movement against pensions and riots. By demonstrating, by gathering in the streets in their hundreds of thousands, by beginning to recognise themselves as workers, by perceiving the strength of being united, the workers are fighting on their class terrain. Whatever their level of consciousness, their struggle provides food for thought and organisation. This dynamic approach is essential. Dialectics is movement. Where does the riot lead? Where do these nights of 14-17 year-olds going out to loot stores and confront highly-armed police lead? To a development of working class consciousness? To a strengthening of its ability to organise? Absolutely not. Riots lead to destruction and chaos. They are the opposite of the perspective offered by the proletariat's struggle.
Moreover, we can already see how these riots evolve decade after decade. 2005 in France, 2011 in England, 2023 again in France... the trend is towards more and more violence and looting. They are affecting ever wider swathes of young people, no longer confined simply to the suburbs, but also touching small provincial towns faced with exploding unemployment and no future. And on the other side, the police are increasingly armed and deadly.
To convince himself of the difference in nature between these two types of movement, the comrade should look at what the bourgeoisie says about them. What the "class enemy" says and does is always instructive. On an international scale, riots are always hyper-publicised. Newspapers are full of shocking images, and it's up to the journalist to show the highest flame. In 2005, the headline in the United States was "Paris is burning". Has the bourgeoisie become suicidal by displaying such fine proof of "hatred of the class enemy"? Or is it foolish to publicise struggles that represent an advance for the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat? Another hypothesis is perhaps more credible: the bourgeoisie publicises riots because the destruction they cause supports its propaganda, spreading the idea that all revolt is destruction: that all violence leads to chaos. By accentuating fear, the bourgeoisie takes advantage of riots to encourage people to retreat, to be atomised, to reinforce the feeling of powerlessness and, ultimately, to present the state as the guarantor of order and protection.
On the other hand, when a social movement develops, a blackout is the rule. Information is released in dribs and drabs. What do we know about the current strikes in the United States? Nothing, apart from the fact that Biden and Trump went to visit the strikers. What images were broadcast during the social movement in France? Burning garbage cans! Black blocs clashing with rows of riot police! When millions of demonstrators gather, the media turn their spotlight on ten burning garbage cans and fifty black-clad youths hurling cobblestones! In 2006, during the movement against the CPE in France, when thousands of insecure students gathered in general assemblies and drew more and more workers, the unemployed and pensioners onto the streets, the internationally renowned Times newspaper ran the headline: "Riots"! Shouldn't this also give the comrade pause for thought?
For Tibor, confronting the police directly, attacking police stations and other public buildings, is a step towards recognising the "class enemy". But isn't this precisely the trap the bourgeoisie set for the working class during the last movement in France? By ordering its cops to provoke and incite, what was it looking for if not for the demonstrations to degenerate into fruitless violence? To frighten people, to discourage them from gathering in the streets, to prevent any discussion or development of consciousness.
It's a classic trap. Already, in May 1968, the first to throw paving stones to draw the most combative behind them into a hopeless fight with the CRS were the infiltrators, the traitors, the informers. Because this type of confrontation with the cops doesn't serve the working class, it serves the ruling class! The history of the workers' movement teaches us that the best reaction to this trap is the exact opposite of futile confrontation, the exact opposite of the lure of the riot. By not giving in to provocation during the movement against pension reform in France, workers have followed in a long proletarian tradition.
As we wrote back in 2006: "Students and young people in struggle have no illusions about the role of the so-called 'forces of order'. They are the ‘militias of capital’ (as the students chanted), defending the privileges of the bourgeois class rather than the interests of the ‘population’. [...] However, some of those who had come to lend a hand to their comrades locked inside the Sorbonne did try to argue with the riot police [...]. Those who tried to talk to the riot police were not naive. On the contrary, they showed maturity and consciousness. They know that behind their shields and truncheons, these men armed to the teeth are also human beings, fathers whose children are also going to be hit by the CPE. And that's what the students said to the riot police, some of whom replied that they had no choice but to obey.”[3]
This is what Trotsky wrote about confronting the Cossacks, "those age-old subduers and punishers" [4], in 1917: “But the Cossacks constantly, though without ferocity, kept charging the crowd. (…) The mass of demonstrators would part to let them through and close up again. There was no fear in the crowd. ‘The Cossacks promise not to shoot,’ passed from mouth to mouth. Apparently some of the workers had talks with individual Cossacks. (…) Individual Cossacks began to reply to the workers’ questions and even to enter into momentary conversations with them. (…) A worker-Bolshevik, Kayurov, one of the authentic leaders in those days, relates how at one place, within sight of a detachment of Cossacks, the demonstrators scattered under the whips of the mounted police, and how he, Kayurov, and several workers with him, instead of following the fugitives, took off their caps and approached the Cossacks with the words: ‘Brothers-Cossacks, help the workers in a struggle for their peaceable demands; you see how the Pharaohs treat us, hungry workers. Help us!’ This consciously humble manner, those caps in their hands - what an accurate psychological calculation! Inimitable gesture! The whole history of street fights and revolutionary victories swarms with such improvisations.”
In reality, behind this disagreement over the nature of the riots lies a deeper one: what class violence is. We can't develop this point here. We encourage our readers to dig deeper into the question and come and debate it with us, in writing or at our public meetings.
Our position is summarised in our article Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence [6][5], available on our website. We'll confine ourselves here to a single quotation: "To go on repeating the tautology that ‘violence equals violence’; to go on demonstrating that all classes use violence; to go on showing that this violence is essentially the same, is as intelligent as seeing an identity between the act of a surgeon performing a caesarean section to bring new life into the world and the act of a murderer killing his victim by plunging a knife into his stomach, simply because both use similar instruments – knives - on the same object - the stomach - and because both use an apparently similar technique in opening up the stomach. The most important thing is not to go on shouting, ‘Violence, violence’, but to underline the differences. To show as clearly as possible why and how the violence of the proletariat is different from the terror and terrorism of other classes."
To overthrow capitalism and build a truly global human community, the working class will be obliged, in the future, to defend itself also by violence against the terror of the capitalist state and all the auxiliary forces of its repressive apparatus, but the class violence of the proletariat has absolutely nothing to do with the methods of the riots in the suburbs.
In the years to come, capitalism will continue to plunge into economic crisis, war, ecological devastation and barbarism. Two types of movement will develop: on the one hand, reactions of despair and outbursts of nihilistic violence; on the other, social movements on the terrain of the working class, with all its weaknesses, but carrying solidarity, discussion and hope.
If, for revolutionaries, all the reactions of the oppressed, all the cries of pain and revolt, attract sympathy, true solidarity is that which points out the pitfalls and dead-ends, that which participates in the development of working class consciousness, its organisation and its revolutionary perspective.
The collective effort to clarify the situation must continue, because in the long term, this is a vital question for the struggle of the working class, and therefore for all humanity.
Pawel, 3 October 2023
[2] As for the historical support the comrade hopes to find in the OCR ("One example among many is the Third Camp group OCR during the Second World War, which lists anti-police struggles and riots as proletarian political struggles"), it's a support that slips away and then trips Tibor up. Let's just recall what our ancestors in Internationalisme wrote in August 1946 on this subject: on the OCR "They have unfortunately kept this taste for agitation for its own sake, agitation in a vacuum, and have made this the very basis of their existence as a group [...]They see the failure of the CR simply as the result of a certain precipitousness while in fact the whole operation was artificial and heterogeneous from the start, grouping militants together around a vague and inconsistent programme of action." (The task of the hour: formation of the party or formation of cadres [8]; Reprint from Internationalisme no.12
[3] Les CRS à la Sorbonne : Non à la répression des enfants de la classe ouvrière ! [9]" (Leaflet of 2006).
[4] History of the Russian Revolution [10] (1931).
[5] Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence [6] International Review 14 (1978)
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17360/resolution-international-situation-25th-icc-congress#_ftnref3
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17362/report-class-struggle-25th-icc-congress#_ftnref10
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3478/let-us-remember-massacres-and-crimes-great-democracies
[4] https://www.force-ouvriere.fr/bangladesh-la-greve-des-ouvriers-du-textile-jette-une-lumiere?lang=fr
[5] https://www.labournet.de/internationales/bangladesch/arbeitskaempfe-bangladesch/textilarbeiterinnen-in-bangladesch-kaempfen-fuer-eine-anhebung-des-mindestlohns-um-mehr-als-200-und-fordern-internationale-unterstuetzung/
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/014_terror.html
[7] https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi6ieOqg5aCAxVX3AIHHbGYBsUQFnoECBwQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marxists.org%2Farchive%2Fmarx%2Fworks%2F1850%2Fclass-struggles-france%2Findex.htm&usg=AOvVaw1aKT0rleFHhgHkUBKnpQFG&opi=89978449
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/content/3124/task-hour-formation-party-or-formation-cadres
[9] https://fr.internationalism.org/icconline/2006/sorbonne
[10] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/download/hrr-vol1.pdf