The central reality of the society we live in – a society that, with various secondary differences, dominates every country on the planet today – is the conflict between the small minority which controls and profits from the creation of wealth, and the actual creators of that wealth. The conflict between the capitalist class and the working class, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Everyday we are told the opposite of this simple truth. We are brought up to believe that what really defines us is something else: nationality for example. We are told that we belong to this or that ‘nation’ and that our interests, hopes and fears lie with the achievements of that nation, whether on the football pitch, the marketplace, or the battlefield. Or we are taught to accept that what really unites us with some, and divides us from others, is our religion, our adherence to a particular set of beliefs about God or the afterlife.

We are certainly not told that we live in a society based on the exploitation of one class by another; that while the exploiters may engage in perpetual competition with each other to establish who is the biggest boss of all, the exploited have no interest whatever in competing with each other, and every interest in uniting their forces across all national or religious divisions. Instead, our ears are battered with the argument that this whole idea of class is out of date, something from the 19th century, irrelevant for today. Especially since the collapse of the so-called ‘Communist’ regimes in 1989: that supposedly proved that class conflict was a thing of the past. Most outdated of all was the quaint notion that class struggle could lead to the replacement of capitalist society by a new and higher form of social life.

We can’t be surprised if the ruling class likes to argue that there’s no such thing as class conflict, that the British, or the French, the Chinese, Muslims, Jews or Christians form a true community regardless of wealth or class. Because as long as the exploited are fooled by this lie, they will not be able to stand up for their own interests, and will more willingly sacrifice themselves for the economic profit or military glory of their masters. Indeed, in the period that followed the collapse of the eastern bloc (which wasn’t communist at all, but a particularly fragile part of the world capitalist system), this lie was proclaimed so loudly that it had a visible effect on the ability of the workers to struggle for their most basic economic demands.

A new period of class confrontations

Today, however, that situation is coming to an end. The explosion of struggles in France in the spring showed that a new generation of the working class is waking up to the reality of capitalist society. Although it was centred round the students, it was without doubt a working class movement.

This was true both of its demands and its forms of organisation. The movement arose as a response to an attack on the whole working class - a new law (the CPE) officially abolishing job security for all workers under 26. The students raised the demand for the repeal of this law as a means of uniting all workers in a common struggle. They therefore appealed to the waged workers and the unemployed to join the movement by participating in their general assemblies and demonstrations. The growing threat that the movement would spread throughout the French working class was the major reason why the government decided to back down and scrap the law. Behind the demand for the abolition of the CPE lay the fundamental principle of working class solidarity.

But the proletarian nature of this movement was also clearly expressed through its forms of organisation, in particular the general assemblies held in the university faculties. Not only did these assemblies use the classic methods of working class self-organisation – elected and revocable delegates, commissions responsible to assemblies – they also opened themselves out to the working class as a whole, inviting university employees, parents, pensioners and others to take part in the mass meetings and contribute to their discussions. The assemblies not only became the organisational lungs of the movement, they also became a living focus for the development of class consciousness, of a deeper understanding of the goals and perspectives of the movement. 

The events in France were not an isolated phenomenon. They were preceded by a whole series of struggles which, in different countries and in different ways, showed the same capacity of workers to recapture the methods of struggle that really belong to them:

- solidarity across the generations, as in the New York transit strike last December, where workers argued that their struggle against attacks on pensions was also a struggle for future workers;

- solidarity across divisions of sect or sector, as in the Belfast postal strike where workers openly defied the taboo on unity between Catholic and Protestant workers, or the Heathrow strike last summer where baggage handlers and others walked out in support of sacked catering workers;

- spontaneous strikes which don’t get bogged down in the union rigmarole of ballots and cooling-off periods, as in the Belfast post, Heathrow, and recent movements by car workers against redundancies at SEAT in Spain and Vauxhall in Merseyside;

- massive and simultaneous movements in which workers from different sectors begin to forge links of mutual solidarity, as in the strike wave in Argentina last year.

These trends have also continued after the movement in France:

- in Vigo, Spain, where thousands of metal workers from different factories held common general assemblies in the streets and invited workers from other sectors to take part in them;

- in Bangladesh, where tens of thousands of textile workers took part in a vast and militant response to bloody repression by the state. Massive demonstrations toured the factory districts calling on more and more workers to join the movement.

These are only the most significant of many other examples. And there is every likelihood that there will be many more in the period ahead.

Towards the mass strike

In May 1968 the strike of ten million workers in France launched a wave of class struggles which rapidly spread across the globe. It marked the emergence of a new generation of proletarians that had not been cowed by the dark period of counter-revolution and world war which followed the defeat of the great revolutionary movements of 1917-23. It was the response of this new generation to the first effects of the capitalist economic crisis, which had been hidden by the reconstruction period after the Second World War.

In the years that followed, there were further international waves of class conflict, which saw workers making important strides towards the unification and self-organisation of their struggles, especially during the mass strikes in Poland in 1980.    

This whole period of rising class struggle posed many fundamental questions about the means and methods of the class struggle, but the movement did not reach the stage where it could offer a political, revolutionary, alternative to the growing barbarism of capitalist society. The collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 was followed by a period of retreat and disarray in the working class.

The struggles in France this year, and all the other important movements which preceded and followed it, show that once again a new generation of the working class is beating on the doors of history. This generation has not been brought up in the demoralising atmosphere of the ‘death of communism’, and at the same time it is increasingly aware of the grim future capitalist society has in store for it: job insecurity, dwindling health, pension and unemployment benefits, mounting state repression, the decomposition of social ties, endless war, and the threat of ecological breakdown.

The gradual collapse of the entire capitalist system is 40 years more advanced than it was at the end of the 1960s. As the deepening crisis intersects with the rise of a new, combative generation of proletarians, all the conditions are coming together for the outbreak of enormous class confrontations at the very heart of the capitalist world order - for the development of the mass strike, and, beyond that, of the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system.  WR 1.7.06

On June 2nd 250 police, some armed and wearing chemical protection suits, smashed their way into a house in Forest Gate in London, shot one man, beat him and his brother up and arrested them under the Terrorism Act 2000. A week later both were released without charge. The family returned to a home emptied and ripped apart. On the day of the raid the police claimed they were acting “in response to specific intelligence”. The media echoed this with talk of various chemical and biological weapons and spread the lie that one brother had shot the other. The Assistant Police Commissioner for London apologised “for the hurt we have caused in tackling the terrorist threat in the UK” but justified their actions on the grounds that “The police now have to take appropriate precautions to protect themselves, the public, and those inside the premises…during anti-terror operations”.

This was not the only ‘anti-terrorist’ operation during June. On the 6th a man was arrested at Manchester Airport. On the 7th a 16 year old was arrested in Yorkshire. On the 19th and 20th the police and MI6 arrested another 4 in London. On the 26th 250 police staged raids across Bolton and arrested two more. Of these eight only two have so far been charged with terrorist offences. Nothing has been heard of the others. Home Office figures show that of the 895 people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 before 30 September 2005, just 23 were subsequently convicted of terrorism offences.

For the ruling class such things are the price paid for our ‘freedom’. In the wake of the Forest Gate shooting an un-named ‘counter-terrorism official’ asserted “There are dozens of mass casualty attacks being planned against…the UK and when we have what we believe is genuine intelligence that life is at risk, we have to act” (Observer, 11/6/06). Home Secretary John Reid claimed that “The police are acting in the best interests of the whole community in order to protect the whole community and they therefore deserve the support of the whole community in doing what is often a very hazardous and dangerous job…” Tony Blair echoed this: “I retain complete confidence in our police and our security services in tackling the terrorist threat we face. I don’t want them to be under any inhibition at all in going after those people who are engaged in terrorism. We have to, as a country, stand behind them and give them understanding in the very difficult work they do”.

The strengthening of the state

The bombings in London last July show that terrorism poses a real threat to people in this country. They also showed that, as ever, it is the working class that pays the price.

According to the ruling class such attacks are something alien to society and the anti-terrorism measures and the strengthening of the state’s repressive powers are a reluctant but necessary response to this unprovoked evil. In reality terrorism and anti-terrorism are a product of the development of capitalism, springing from the ever-increasing imperialist tensions that drive every state and would-be state into a war of each against all. It is well known that many of today’s terrorist groups were nurtured by the very states now reinforcing their repressive forces in the name of the ‘war on terror’. Britain was so involved in this that its rivals sardonically renamed London ‘Londonistan’.

In fact the measures taken in the name of anti-terrorism are merely a particular expression of the general tendency towards the strengthening of the state and its repressive apparatus that has been a feature of the last century. All of these measures are intended to enhance the ability of the ruling class to wage war: whether that be imperialist war against other powers or the class war against the proletariat.

The First World War was a decisive stage in the strengthening of the state. In the name of the war to defend ‘our’ way of life and our ‘freedoms’ the state took unprecedented powers to itself to control the economy and industry and, in particular, the working class. For example, legislation was passed in 1915 that allowed workers to leave their job only if their employer gave permission.

The Russian Revolution led to repressive measures aimed directly against the revolutionary working class, such as the Emergency Powers Act of 1920, which allowed a state of emergency to be declared should there be attempts to interfere with the supply of food, water and fuel etc (see ‘The state arms itself against future class battles’ in WR 284).

From the 1970s on Northern Ireland became a testing ground for new measures of repression, such as internment without trial: “Between 1971 and ’75 more than 2000 people were interned without trial by the state in Northern Ireland. Picked up without having any charges laid, or knowing when they were going to be released, detainees were subject to all sorts of treatments…Apart from prolonged sessions of oppressive questioning, serious threats, wrist bending, chokings and beatings, there were instances of internees being forced to run naked over broken glass and being thrown, tied and hooded, out of helicopters a few feet above the ground” (‘A short history of British torture’, WR 290). In recent years the extent of the state’s active involvement in terrorism, with agents in both republican and loyalist groups, has become clearer.

New Labour reinforces the state

The Labour Party has always been fully behind these developments, despite the posture of opposition it sometimes adopts. New Labour has been no exception, perhaps other than in the level of its hypocrisy. Its 1997 election manifesto made a song and dance about ‘human rights’, promising to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. This was followed by an ever-growing range of anti-terrorism measures. After the bombings in London last July Blair declared, “Let no one be in any doubt. The rules of the game are changing”. A recent report by Amnesty International shows just how much the state has been strengthened.

-               The Terrorism Act 2000 made a vague definition of terrorism as being “the use or threat of action where the action is designed to influence the government or advance a political, religious or ideological cause” (United Kingdom. Human rights: a broken promise, p.9-10).

-               The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 “considerably extended the powers of the state. It provided for the forfeiture of terrorist property and freezing orders for terrorist assets and funds. It gave police greater powers to identify terrorist suspects in areas such as fingerprinting and photographing. It also introduced vague offences, such as having ‘links’ with a member of an ‘international terrorist group’” (ibid, p.14). This legislation also allowed suspects to be detained indefinitely without trial and on the basis of secret evidence.

-               The same legislation also allowed evidence obtained by torture to be used in trials. The then Foreign Secretary defended this on the grounds that “…you never get intelligence which says, ‘here is intelligence and by the way we conducted this under torture’…It does not follow that if it is extracted under torture, it is automatically untrue” (ibid, p.18).

-               The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 introduced Control Orders in place of unlimited detention without trial, which had been ruled illegal. These orders may restrict suspects to their own homes, limit their means of communication, control the people they have contact with, and permit searches at any time. “Thus under the PTA 2005, the UK authorities have, in effect, retained the power to order indefinite deprivation of liberty without charge or trial on the basis of secret intelligence” with the added advantage that “only now this power applies to UK and foreign nationals alike” (ibid, p.24).

Against terrorism and anti-terrorism

While Amnesty International is concerned that these measures undermine the rule of law, for us this is not the question. The law is merely a smokescreen to hide the fact that the bourgeoisie’s rule is always based on its position as the exploiting class; a position ultimately based on violence. Anti-terrorism is merely the latest trick to justify and defend the dictatorship of the ruling class. The measures taken today serve to cow and manipulate the fear that has been instilled into people. They are used to draw people behind the state against the ‘enemy’. The truth is that terror springs from the very heart of rotting capitalism. The war on terror has merely spread terror. Terrorism and anti-terrorism are two sides of the same coin. The bourgeoisie has no interest in protecting the working class as it has shown in war after war. And when the working class dares to raise its hand against capitalism, when it tries to defend itself, the mask soon slips. During the miners’ strike in Britain in the 1980s workers were prevented from moving about the country, their homes were raided, their families harassed while hundreds were beaten up and imprisoned. To Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, they were the “enemy within”. The working class is always the enemy within because they are the only force that can really threaten the position of the ruling class. So, in the end, all of the repressive forces of the state are aimed against it. Already the current anti-terrorism laws have been used against protestors. We can be in no doubt that when the working class struggles the full range of powers will be turned against it. However, the only real defence against the rise of terrorism and the repressive response of the state is the class struggle. This is the only real ‘war on terror’ because this is the only way that the terror of capitalism can be ended.  1/7/06 North

In an article in the last issue of WR on the recent struggle at Vauxhall, we pointed out the escalation in redundancies in Britain both in the private and public sector:

“This spontaneous rejection of the threat of lay-offs has to be seen in a wider context. It came within days of the announcement of up to 2,000 lay-offs at Orange mobile phones, another 500 health workers being laid off – this time by Gloucestershire’s three Primary Care Trusts with the closure of community hospitals – and the dismissal of 6,000 telecommunications workers at NTL.”

The Evening Standard (1/6/06) shed some interesting light on the question of the redundancies in the health service:

“A flagship London hospital is making up to 150 staff redundant.

Thousands of posts have been cut nationally as the financial crisis deepens but today’s announcement is understood to be the first time a trust has said current staff will lose their jobs.

As more than 13,000 posts have been axed across the NHS, government officials and ministers have consistently argued these figures mean reductions in agency staff, not real job losses.

Now that the first trust has announced actual redundancies after making all other possible cutbacks, it is feared others will follow.”

The extension of precarious contract working is one the great achievements of the ‘Brownian miracle’ that has given Britain an apparently better economic performance over the last few years than many of its European competitors – something much trumpeted by the British bourgeoisie, while things were going well. It is ironic that once things begin to unwind the same British bourgeoisie can discover that these contract jobs are not ‘real’ jobs after all, and use that as an excuse for saying nothing serious is happening. Effectively, in this argument, the 13,000 workers who have lost what to them, at least, must have seemed like real employment, are not even real people. They are consigned to social non-existence just like millions of unemployed people who are not counted as unemployed. This is how the bourgeoisie have maintained the illusion that the economy is working at full stretch even though vast numbers are consigned permanently to the social scrap heap.

Despite the dismissive public attitude of the bourgeoisie they are aware that they are in a very difficult situation and that with the deepening of the crisis they are faced with hard choices. Brown has already announced what is in effect an incomes policy for the public sector, putting a ceiling on pay increases. Even spending on defence is coming under review. Of course this is not a moral issue. The problem for the British bourgeoisie is that if they continue to spend so much on defence projects (new aircraft, new aircraft carriers, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on) then they run the risk of doing serious damage to the economy.

This is all very reminiscent of the 1960s. Then, as now, the Labour party had to manage a fundamental downward shift in the economy, due to the inescapable contradictions of the crisis. The key difference is that the crisis has developed for forty years and the contradictions are much more acute.  Hardin 1/7/06

As ASDA and the GMB union squared up for a five-day strike affecting 24 distribution depots you could have believed that they were sworn enemies. ASDA threatened an injunction against a strike called after a ballot with “irregularities”. Meanwhile the GMB and its leftist supporters were drawing attention to the habits of Wal-Mart, ASDA’s US parent company, denouncing the attacks of the multinational, insisting that it was a fundamental “battle for union rights” and that, in the words of GMB leader Paul Kenny, workers “have been subjected to unprecedented interference and propaganda”.

It’s true about the propaganda. The GMB and ASDA set up a phoney fight when all along they’d agreed an outcome. Workers were angry at unpaid bonus payments and changed work practices that increased workloads all round. For the GMB the central issue was establishing national union bargaining against the imposition of local deals by ASDA. Back in April, in Kenney’s words, at “one of the most constructive meetings that I have had in two decades” ASDA and the GMB “agreed an action plan to work together to form a National Joint Council for distribution”.

So, when, after a meeting run by the TUC, the strike was called off on 29 June, the day before it was supposed to start, it was hardly a surprise. Kenney hailed an agreement that “heralds a new fresh approach to representation and bargaining” because “issues beneficial to the growth of the company and the economic benefit of its employees will be dealt with through the new National Joint Council”.

The union is happy that it now formally has access to all depots, the facilities it wants and permission to recruit. ASDA said all along that it wasn’t anti-union and was clearly happy with the final agreement. There is no gain for workers. The ‘growth of the company’ and the ‘benefit of its employees’ are not compatible. Companies get rich by exploiting their workers and ripping off their customers. It’s not because Wal-Mart is based in the US or because workers are not in unions. The working class is exploited by the capitalist class and their different interests bring them into conflict. Unions pose as workers’ friends while doing everything to divert, undermine or recuperate workers’ will to struggle. It need hardly be added that the agreement between the GMB and ASDA “based on mutual trust and understanding” does not tackle questions of pay and conditions.

The Communication Workers Union is playing similar games in the Post Office. The employer has imposed a pay deal and banned a workplace ballot. The union has denounced attempts at creeping privatisation. New working practices have been introduced by the Post Office with the help of the CWU. There are threats of a strike, but only to ensure a continuing prominent role for the union.

The leftists have not been slow to criticise the union. CWU General Secretary Billy Hayes once had a ‘militant’ reputation, but now goes on, like the employer, about ‘unfair’ competition because “Latvia Post can deliver in Lewisham but Royal Mail cannot set up in Latvia.” The CWU ‘bureaucracy’ is accused of ‘selling out’ every struggle and trying to strangle every unofficial action. The implication is that there can be a proper ‘fighting’ unionism that would somehow be different. It can be different in rhetoric, but not in its function. Unions are part of capitalism’s line of defence. For the working class to defend its interests it needs to struggle outside of the control of the unions. Don’t be taken in by union propaganda, it can only lead to defeat. 

30/6/6Car

Revolutionary organisations of the proletariat have the responsibility to make a clear and determined intervention in the struggles of the working class. They are also responsible for giving an account in their press of the intervention they have made. Because the ICC was able to identify the proletarian nature of the movement of students against the CPE rapidly, it was able to take part in this first struggle led by the new generation of the working class.

We were present in the demonstrations called and organised by the unions from the 7th February, despite the students’ holidays, in Paris and in the provinces. When we were selling our press many university and school students who were looking for a perspective, came to discuss with our militants and showed a real interest and a real sympathy for our publications.

But we were able to take part in the movement against the CPE above all from the beginning of March. On Saturday 4 March our militants were present at the meeting of the national coordination. The following week we intervened in the massive general assemblies (GA) which were held in all the universities and we were able to see that the question of the search for solidarity was at the heart of the discussions.

Starting from this question of solidarity (which the ICC has identified as one of the principal characteristics of the present dynamic of the class struggle in all countries), we intervened in the movement, producing two leaflets and a supplement to our monthly paper (‘Salute to the new generation of the working class’). All our press was widely distributed in the universities, in workplaces and at demonstrations. In addition, as in the majority of the countries where the ICC has a political presence, our organisation held two public meetings: the first, given the nature of the media black-out, on the nature and content of the debates unfolding in the general assemblies; the second, held at the end of the movement, had the aim of drawing the main lessons of this formidable experience of the young generation in order to draw the perspectives for the struggles of the working class.

The ICC’s struggle against the media black-out

Faced with the black-out and vile ideological manipulation by the ruling class and its media, it is our first responsibility to fight the reign of silence and lies. We immediately published our leaflets and articles on our website in three languages in order to re-establish the TRUTH in the face of the false information relayed by the bourgeoisie internationally. The press and TV, in every country, has shown an unending profusion of images of confrontation between ‘wreckers’ and the CRS. Nowhere has any of the media mentioned the massive general assemblies, the richness of their debates, their permanent attitude of solidarity. The ‘blockers’ were presented as hostage takers or ‘wreckers’ most of the time.

The international propaganda of the democratic bourgeoisie wallows in lies, falsification, disinformation, poisoning efforts to understand what is going on. At the time of the Russian revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks were universally depicted as fiends with a knife between their teeth.

It is in large part thanks to the press of real revolutionary organisations, and especially the ICC, that proletarians looking for real answers in numerous countries were able to discover the truth about the movement in France.

Our intervention in the universities…

Thanks to the students’ spirit of openness, and to their ingenious initiative in putting out a “suggestion box” where all workers could put their proposals, ICC militants were able to intervene directly in the GA, first in Paris (especially in the faculties of Censier, Jussieu and Tolbiac), then in the other provincial universities. As soon as we went to the doors of the lecture theatres, as workers (paid or retired) and parents of students in struggle, to give our solidarity to the movement, we were welcomed with open arms. It was the students themselves who suggested that we speak in the GA, to give them our experience as workers and contribute our ‘ideas’. In all the universities where we were able to speak in front of assemblies of several hundred students, the concrete proposals we made were listened to with great interest and put to a vote and adopted. So, for example, on the 15 March at Censier, we proposed a motion that was welcomed and adopted by the majority. This motion called on the students in the GA to take charge of the direct and immediate extension of the struggle to the paid workers. It proposed that a leaflet to this effect be widely distributed, especially in the stations of the Paris suburbs. In the provincial universities (especially in Toulouse and Tours) our comrades intervened in the same way, proposing that demonstrations be organised to go to the enterprises, offices and hospitals, and that leaflets should be distributed in these demonstrations calling on workers to join the students’ struggle.

Our interventions in general assemblies have not had such an echo since May 68. The concrete proposals we made in all the GA where we intervened, with the aim of extending the movement to workers, were taken up by students and applied (even if saboteurs from the unions and leftists developed all sorts of manoeuvres to recuperate our motions in order to keep control of the movement, for example by making them disappear ‘discretely’ after the GA by drowning them in a multitude of proposals for superficial ‘actions’).

However, the students succeeded in partially thwarting these manoeuvres. The ‘ideas’ that the ICC has always put forward in workers’ struggles, for more than a quarter of a century, were put into practice by the students: they went to look for the active solidarity of workers by distributing leaflets appealing for solidarity and by sending massive delegations to the nearest workplaces (especially in the stations at Rennes, Aix or Paris). Above all the students understood very quickly that “if we remain isolated we will be eaten alive” (as one student at Paris-Censier put it). The movement was able to push back the bourgeoisie thanks to this dynamic to extend the movement to the whole working class, born from the openness of the general assemblies.

One of the proposals that we made, that of organising GA between students and striking university personnel, was also taken up (especially at Paris-Censier). However, the weak mobilisation of workers in the national education sector (which has not yet recovered from the defeat suffered in 2003) did not allow them to overcome their hesitations. The workers in this sector have not been in a position to join the students massively and put themselves at the head of the movement. Only a very small minority of lecturers has spoken in the GA to support the students in struggle. And it is necessary to recognise that where we have been able to intervene, according to our limited strength, the most courageous lecturers, the most solid with the students, those most convinced of the need to widen the movement to the workers in all enterprises immediately (without waiting for union directives) were essentially the militants of the ICC. [1] [5]

Evidently, as soon as our proposals started to win a majority, and our comrades were identified as ICC militants, the unions and leftists started to spread all sorts of rumours in order to cause distrust, to retake control of the situation in the universities, and above all prevent those looking for a clear revolutionary perspective from coming towards the positions of the communist left. [2] [6]

In the universities where our militants were presented as members of the ICC straight away we saw a classic manoeuvre to sabotage the openness of the GA to ‘outside elements’. So, at the Toulouse-Rangueil faculty (where the ‘national coordination’ was situated), our comrades who presented themselves at the door of the GA as ICC militants were forbidden from speaking by the praesidium controlled by the Trotskyists of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire (youth organisation of the LCR of Krivine and Besancenot).

On the other hand, at the Mirail faculty, the interventions of one of our comrades who teaches in the university were welcomed enthusiastically. At the request of the students he made a presentation on the movement of May 68, explaining our analysis of the historic significance of the movement.

… and in the ‘coordination’ meetings

We also intervened in the meetings of the ‘national coordination’ on several occasions. On 4th March the ICC went to the entrance to the ‘coordination’ meeting which was held in Paris to distribute our press (which was welcomed by a large number of students) and attempted to intervene within the assembly. After two hours of debate the GA voted on the principle of allowing ‘outside observers’ into the hall, but without speaking rights.

However, faced with these politicians’ manoeuvres to close the GA and prevent us from speaking, numerous discussions took place among the students. It was essentially the non-union students, who did not belong to any political organisation, who were most determined to unmask the sabotaging manoeuvres of the UNEF and the leftists. At Paris-Censier the students decided to allow ‘outside elements’ to speak and to open the GA to workers who came to solidarise with their movement.

So our comrades, parents of students in struggle, were able to intervene in the 8 March meeting of the ‘Francilienne coordination’ to defend the necessity to widen the struggle by going to look for the solidarity of workers (especially in the public sector such as the SNCF, hospitals and post).

At the end of the movement we saw the manoeuvres of the politicos in the ‘coordination’ (infiltrated by the whole ‘broad church’ of the left, from the Socialist Party to the Trotskyists, who viewed the students as fair game and the universities as a hunting ground) to sabotage the dynamic of openness at the meeting of the ‘national coordination’ held a Lyon, just before the official withdrawal of the CPE, on 8 and 9 April. Not being able to keep ICC militants out of the meeting completely, without discrediting themselves in the eyes of the students, the ‘leaders’ of the ‘coordination’ succeeded in voting through the denial of speaking rights to … ‘outside observers’! This assembly of delegates (who, for the most part, had come without any clear mandate from their universities) was a real fiasco: for 2 days the specialists in sabotage made the delegations of students vote on what they must put to the vote! Many students left sickened by this ‘national coordination’ meeting and turned again to the orientations we had put before the GA. They showed great maturity, courage and remarkable intelligence in voting for the lifting of the blockade of the universities after the withdrawal of the CPE, in order to avoid falling into the trap of ‘commando actions’ and the rotting away of the movement through dead-end acts of violence.

The impact of our press in the demonstrations

As we have always said, our press is our main means of intervention in the working class. We were able to distribute our press massively in the demonstrations (several thousand copies).

The ICC was present at all the demonstrations from 7 February in Paris, Toulouse, Tours, Lyon, Marseille, Lille and Grenoble. Our leaflets, like our paper and supplement, were warmly welcomed by many students, school students, workers and pensioners.

At the demonstration on 18 March many groups of students came to our stall to show us their sympathy. Some of them asked if they could stick our leaflets up at the bus stops. Others took our leaflets away to distribute around them. Others took photos or filmed our publications. A small group of students even said: “it’s fantastic to see your publications in all these languages: evidently you are the only real internationalists”. Others came several times to thank us for the ICC’s support for the students “in making our movement and our GA known about in other countries” in the face of the lies hawked by they media. It is precisely because of this evident sympathy that the Stalinist bigwigs and the union stewards didn’t dare attack us as they had at the 7 March demonstration.

In the whole history of the ICC, our intervention in a class movement has never had such an impact. We have never had so many discussions with so many demonstrators of all generations, and especially among the young looking for a historic perspective.

It is obvious that the ICC press was a real reference point in the demonstrations, among a stream of leaflets by tiny groups (leftist and anarchistic), each one more ‘radical’ than the next, and which grew like mushrooms on the streets of the capital as in most of the large provincial cities.

The sympathy shown to us by a large number of students and workers who were mobilised in the demonstrations encourages us to continue our activities with great determination. If today we can draw a very positive balance sheet of the echo of our intervention in the movement against the CPE, it’s not to congratulate ourselves. It is because the opening of the new generation to revolutionary ideas is a sign of the maturation of consciousness within the working class.

Just as our intervention contributed to developing the confidence of the young generation in their own strength, the enthusiasm it aroused cannot fail to strengthen our own confidence in the historic potential of the working class.

In spite of the democratic, unionist and reformist illusions that still weigh very heavily on the consciousness of the young generations, their spirit of openness to revolutionary ideas, their will to reflect and debate, show the great maturity and depth of this movement, its enormous promise for the future.

Sofiane, June ‘06.

At the end of June the misery of life for people living in the Gaza Strip got worse than ever as Israeli armed forces struck again. Already suffering from shortages, and no strangers to sieges, bombings, blockades and incursions, they were invaded by Israel, supposedly in an attempt to rescue 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by the armed wing of Hamas.

In a major escalation of the situation, Israel’s offensive involved the bombing of major roads, bridges, and the area’s only power plant. The attack on the latter not only brought power cuts but severely affected water supplies and sewerage that are dependent on electricity. Repairs will take six months. Gaza was sealed off: no food, bottled water or fuel allowed in. The navy has been patrolling the coast and preventing fishing boats from going out.

Israeli planes jetting across the territory create sonic booms that sound like explosions. 180 miles away they buzzed one of Syrian President Assad’s palaces. Meanwhile they’ve arrested 8 Hamas cabinet ministers, 64 MPs and dozens of officials while bombing other targets such as the Palestinian interior ministry, training camps, arms storage facilities and sites used to fire rockets at Israel.

Internationally Israel has been condemned for its ‘excessive’ response. In Britain an initial official statement condemned the attacks as examples of collective punishment, that is to say, in terms of the Geneva Convention, as war crimes. Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went as far as calling for “restraint”. Some think it’s understandable that Israel would want to ‘stand up to terrorism’, while others caution Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, that he doesn’t have to prove that he can be as brutal as his predecessor Ariel Sharon.

The UN warn about the dangers of a humanitarian crisis, but it is just another of the bodies that has been an accomplice in the permanent crisis that has convulsed the Middle East throughout the last 90 years.

With the exception of the Hamas figures that have been detained, the victims of Israel’s attacks are the 1.4 million people (800,000 living in eight refugee camps) in the Gaza Strip. They are people that have been driven from their homes in a series of wars that go as far back as the mass expulsions that accompanied the establishment of Israel in 1948. After Cpl Gilad’s kidnap the Rafah crossing with Egypt, in southern Gaza was closed. A hole was blown in the border wall, but Palestinian forces prevented people from escaping. Gaza is one big prison camp, its warders the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all the rest of the nationalists mobilised for imperialist war and social peace.

The way out of this hell-hole

Many people will be suspicious of the sympathy from leading figures in the US state, as American imperialism’s support for Israel is well known. Major European powers such as Britain, France and Germany are quicker to condemn Israel, but this is rather transparently in defence of their own imperialist strategies in the Middle East. But, even if it’s possible to see the corruption of Fatah and the terrorism of Hamas, some people still reason that it’s necessary to ‘support the oppressed’ against Israel, the US or whatever imperialist power stands in the way of Palestinian ‘national liberation’. It’s like the situation in Iraq. Sure, it’s reasoned, suicide bombing and random attacks on civilians are out of the question (except for the more bloodthirsty leftists who say that suicide bombings are the only weapons the dispossessed have), but isn’t there something positive in supporting the Iraqi ‘resistance’?

The only way to get an answer to such questions is to understand the forces at play. Why, to start with, does Israel respond in such a brutal way on the flimsy pretext of caring for a young soldier? The recently-revealed possibility that Hamas might be prepared to ‘recognise’ Israel at some future time is not what Israel wanted to hear. They are agreed to a ‘two state’ solution in the area, but only if the other state is subordinate to them and in no way a potential threat. Hamas, at present, only sees ‘two states’ as a step to one unified Palestinian state. There is no way that Israel could accept any steps down that road. The invasion of Gaza is partly to intimidate and partly to debilitate Hamas. It’s also a severe attack on the Palestinian population, demonstrating what will happen if there is continuing support for Hamas.

But why the intensity of antagonism between the Israeli state and the Palestinian proto state? That can only be understood in the framework of nation states worldwide. Every capitalist state is not just in economic competition with every other but needs to ensure that it has the military means to defend its interests. Every state is imperialist because no country can act outside of the context of a constricted world market. In that international context it comes up against other powers big and small. In the Middle East in particular there are not just rival neighbours and the various guerrilla forces that they sponsor, but also the highly interested intervention of the major powers. No state can feel comfortable in the face of its neighbours’ and others’ ambitions.

It might be a cliché to see Israel as a small (if well-armed) country surrounded by deadly rivals, but that’s basically the situation for every national capital. In the case of the various Palestinian factions their ambition is to establish their own capitalist state, and that too would be imperialist. This has nothing to do with the struggle of the oppressed. No national struggle can escape capitalism’s global framework. Nationalism is the terrain of the oppressor, not the oppressed. The struggles for Palestinian ‘liberation’ or the Iraqi ‘resistance’ are as imperialist as the foreign policies of the US, Germany, France or Britain.

At present, for all its economic and military strength, the position of US imperialism is weakening. Where once it could impose the order of a Pax Americana, it is now faced with growing military chaos. It’s clear, for example, that it wants to confront Iran, but given the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is currently unable to open up yet another theatre of war. Those who argue in favour of supporting the ‘resistance’ groups in Palestine and Iraq say that this proves that their activities are weakening imperialism. But if US domination is growing weaker, its imperialist rivals can only benefit. Furthermore, the very demise of US power will oblige it to strike back even more savagely in future.

It is impossible to oppose imperialism without confronting its roots in the global capitalist system. And capitalism can only be uprooted by the struggle of the working class in all countries.  Car 30/6/6

The recent struggles in France against the attacks of the state are of profound significance for the working class. Not only do such struggles demonstrate positive lessons for workers, they also expose those that pretend to defend workers’ interests. Such pretenders include the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (GCI - Internationalist Communist Group in English) who produced a leaflet that directly attacks the autonomous struggle of the working class and, backhandedly, defends the attempted union sabotage of it. A comprehensive response to the GCI’s leaflet can be found on the ICC’s website here [11].

The GCI was a split from the ICC in 1979 on the basis of personal resentments and half-formed divergences. These individuals rapidly headed towards full-blown parasitism [1] [12] and even leftism. The GCI says that it condemns parliament, the bourgeois left, etc., but under the pretext of its ‘radical’ positions it is ready to support openly nationalist groups; and, though it denounces the trade unions with one breath, with the other the GCI supports trade unionist methods against the real methods of working class struggle. Thus, the GCI has seen models for proletarian struggle in the Shining Path Maoists in Peru and the nationalist guerrillas of El Salvador. Today it has gone even further, proclaiming that there is a hidden proletarian core to the terrorist actions of the ‘resistance’ in Iraq [2] [13].

The ICC text on the website points out the very positive nature of the struggle initiated by proletarian youth in France against the attacks of the state: “But what is fundamental, what has taken on a historic profundity, what comes out of these combats, are the lessons: how to struggle, how to organise general assemblies and demonstrations, how to discuss, why and how we must look for solidarity…”.

In the face of the self-organisation of the general assemblies shown in France, their elected and revocable delegates, the organised search for solidarity and the active solidarity of layers of the working class (including revolutionaries), the avoidance of the traps of the unions and police, the GCI say: “Break with the democretinism of the general assemblies, spit on the elected and revocable delegates”. Contempt for the workers’ struggles could hardly be more open.

The struggles in France carried many of the characteristics and perspectives of the mass strike, as the website of the ICC notes: “The mass strike, with general assemblies and their elected and revocable delegates, is the form that workers’ struggle take in the period of the decadence of capitalism. It is the form that guarantees the direct, massive and unified participation of the working class in its struggles. This is what we have to put forward”. What does the GCI put forward in its leaflet?

- “Fight the dictatorship of the economy” - using examples of inter-classist or frankly bourgeois movements in Argentina, Bolivia and Iraq.

- “General strike… against the unions” - when the general strike slogan is used by unions against the extension of workers’ struggles and the development of the mass strike.

- “Block traffic…” - something halfa- dozen self-employed, English hauliers could do, taking their cue from divisive trade union “actions”.

A world away, a class away from the “sterile confrontations” that the parasitic GCI sees in events in France, lies the dramatic reaffirmation of a working class perspective.

Ed 26/6/06  

The years 1930 to 1939 saw the bourgeoisie preparing for war on the ashes of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. All over the world, the working class had been beaten, defeated, caught up in the cogs of capitalism, which had dragged it from defending its own class interests by means of the false choice between fascism and democracy, subjecting it to the nationalist hysteria which led inexorably towards war.

At the same time, following the death of the Communist International, sanctioned by its proclamation of ‘Socialism in One Country’, the majority of working class organisations had degenerated, gone over to the bourgeois camp or fallen apart. The ‘Communist Parties’ had become transmission belts for the ‘defence of the Socialist fatherland’ and the Stalinist counter-revolution. The only voices raised against this tide and holding firmly to class positions (such as Bilan, the review of the Italian Communist Left in exile between 1933 and 1938) came from a tiny minority of revolutionaries.

The left subordinates the proletariat to the bourgeois state

In Spain there was still a fraction of the world proletariat which had not yet been crushed, because the country had stayed out of the First World War and avoided revolutionary confrontations in the post-war period. Spain was now to be at the heart of a vast manoeuvre by the bourgeoisie, which had a common interest in diverting the working class from its own terrain and pulling it into a purely military and imperialist conflict.

Because of its geopolitical situation at the gates of Europe, facing the Mediterranean and Africa on one side and the Atlantic on the other, Spain was an ideal focus for the imperialist tensions which had been sharpened by the economic crisis. This was especially true for German and Italian imperialism, which were seeking to gain a stronger presence in the Mediterranean and accelerate the drive towards war.

Furthermore, the archaic structures of the country, which had been profoundly shaken by the world economic crisis, offered a favourable soil for derailing the working class. The myth of a ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’, to be carried out by the workers, had been used for some time to range them behind the alternative of ‘Republic vs Monarchy’, which in turn gave rise to the choice between anti-fascism and fascism.

After the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, which had been set up in 1923 and which benefited from the active collaboration of the Socialist trade union, the UGT, the Spanish bourgeoisie arrived at the ‘Pact of San Sebastian’ in 1930, supported by the two main unions, the UGT and the CNT – the latter being dominated by the anarchists.  This Pact laid down the bases for a ‘Republican alternative’ to the monarchy. Then, on 14 April 1931, King Alphonso XIII was forced to abdicate by the threat of a railway strike, and the Republic was proclaimed. At the elections a Socialist-Republican coalition was swept to power. The new government soon revealed its anti-working class nature. Violent repression was meted out to the strike movements provoked by the rapid rise in unemployment and in prices. Hundreds of workers were killed or wounded, notably in January 1933 at Casas Viejas in Andalucia. The ‘Socialist’ Azana had issued the order; “no wounded, no prisoners, shoot them in the guts!”.

This bloody repression against workers’ struggles in the name of democracy, and which was to go on for several years, enabled the forces of the right to organise themselves and led to the exhaustion of the government coalition. In 1933, elections gave a majority to the right. A section of the Socialist party, which had been largely discredited through its involvement in the repression, used the opportunity to shift to the left.

The preparation of an imperialist war front necessitated the muzzling of a working class which was still fighting for its interests. This was the real meaning of the activity of the left wing political organisations. In April-May 1934 the strike movement took on a new breadth. The metal workers of Barcelona, the railway workers and above all the building workers of Madrid launched very hard struggles. In the face of these struggles, all the propaganda of the left and the extreme left was axed around anti-fascism, with the aim of drawing the workers into a ‘united front of all the democrats’.

In 1934-35, the workers were subjected to a huge ideological barrage around the new elections, with the goal of setting up a Popular Front to face up to the ‘fascist danger’.

In October 1934, pushed by the forces of the left, the workers of the Asturias fell into the trap of a suicidal confrontation with the bourgeois state. Their uprising, and their heroic resistance in the mining zones and the industrial belt of Oviedo and Gijon, was completely isolated by the Socialist party and the UGT, which made sure that the struggle did not spread to the rest of Spain, in particular to Madrid. The government deployed 30,000 troops with tanks and planes to crush the Asturias workers, and unleashed a wave of repression across the country.

The Popular Front leads the workers into a massacre

On 15 January 1935, the electoral alliance of the Popular Front was signed by all the organisations of the left, including the semi-Trotskyists of the POUM. The anarcho-syndicalist leaders of the CNT/FAI suspended their ‘anti-electoral principles’ with a complicit silence, which amounted to support for this enterprise. In February 1936 the first Popular Front government was elected. As a new strike wave developed, the government issued appeals for calm, demanding that the workers cease their strikes, saying that they were playing the game of fascism. The Spanish Communist Party went so far as to say that “the bosses are provoking and encouraging strikes for political reasons of sabotage”. In Madrid, where a general strike broke out on 1 June, the CNT prevented any direct confrontation with the state by launching its famous slogan of self-management. This self-management was to shut the workers up inside ‘their’ factories or villages, notably in Catalonia and Aragon.

Now feeling the moment had come, the military forces led by Franco from Morocco issued their ‘Pronuncimento’. Franco had cut his teeth as a general serving the Socialist-dominated Republic.

The workers’ response was immediate: on 19 July 1936, the workers of Barcelona came out on strike against Franco’s uprising, going en masse to the barracks to disarm this attempt, without worrying about orders to the contrary from the Popular Front government. Uniting the struggle for economic demands with the political struggle, the workers held back Franco’s murderous hand. It was at this point that the Popular Front appealed for calm: “the government gives orders, the Popular Front obeys”. These slogans were followed elsewhere. In Seville for example, where the workers followed the government’s orders to wait, they were slaughtered by the army.

The forces of the left of capital then threw all their energies into dragooning the workers behind the Popular Front1.

In 24 hours, the government which had been negotiating with the Francoist troops and cooperating in the massacre of the workers gave way to the Giral government, which was more ‘left wing’, more ‘antifascist’, and which put itself at the head of the workers’ uprising in order to orient it solely towards a confrontation with Franco on the military terrain. The workers were only given arms to be sent to the fronts against Franco’s troops, away from their class home ground. Even more deviously, the bourgeoisie set the trap of the so-called ‘disappearance of the Republican capitalist state’, when in fact the latter was hiding behind a pseudo-workers’ government which served to drag workers into the Sacred Union against Franco through organs like the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias and the Central Council of the Economy. This illusion of a kind of ‘dual power’ placed the workers in the hands of their butchers. The bloody massacres which then took place in Aragon, Oviedo and Madrid were the result of the criminal manoeuvres of the left and Republican wing of the bourgeoisie, which succeeded in stifling the workers’ reaction of 19 July. From then on, hundreds of thousands of workers were enrolled in the antifascist militias of the anarchists and poumists and sent off to be cut to pieces on the imperialist front.

Having abandoned its class terrain, the proletariat was subjected to the horrors of war and to a savage of superexploitation in the name of the anti-fascist war economy: wage cuts, inflation, rationing, militarisation of labour, lengthening of the working day.

In May 1937 the proletariat of Barcelona rose up again, but this time in desperation, and was crushed by the Popular Front government led by the Spanish Communist Party and its Catalan wing the PSUC; the Francoist troops deliberately halted their advance to allow the Stalinists to deal with the workers.

“On 19 July 1936, the workers of Barcelona, BAREHANDED, smashed the attack by Franco’s battalions which were ARMED TO THE TEETH. On 4 May 1937, the same workers, NOW EQUIPPED WITH WEAPONS, suffered many more dead than in July when they had to block Franco; and it was the anti-fascist government – now including the anarchists and indirectly supported by the POUM – which unleashed the scum of the forces of repression against the workers” (Bilan 1938, in the manifesto ‘Bullets, machine guns, prison: this is the response of the Popular Front to the workers of Barcelona’).

In this terrible tragedy all the so-called working class organisations not only showed that they had been integrated into the bourgeois state, but actively participated in crushing the proletariat: some, like the PCE and PSUC, the PSOE and the UGT directly took on the role of parties of bourgeois order by assassinating the workers; others, like the CNT, the FAI and the POUM, by persuading the workers to leave their class terrain in the name of the anti-fascist front, threw them into the arms of their assassins and into the imperialist carnage. The presence of anarchist ministers in the Catalan government, then in Caballero’s central government was a powerful factor in the Popular Front’s ability to mystify the workers. The anarchists played a key role in deceiving the workers about the class nature of the Popular Front: “Both on the level of principles and by conviction, the CNT has always been anti-state and the enemy of any form of government. But circumstances have changed the nature of the Spanish government and of the state. Today the government, as an instrument of controlling the state organs, has ceased to be a force of oppression against the working class, just as the state has ceased to be an organ that divides society into classes. Both oppress the people less now that the members of the CNT are intervening within them” (CNT minister Federica Montseny, 4.11.1936).

All the leading organs of the CNT declared a ferocious war against those rare currents, such as the Friends of Durruti group, which, even in a deeply confused way, were struggling to defend revolutionary positions. Elements from such currents were sent to the most exposed parts of the front or delivered over to the prisons of the Republican police.

The events in Spain made it clear who was really on the side of the workers and who was not. Democrats, ‘Socialists’, ‘Communists’ and even ‘anarchists’ ranged themselves alongside the bourgeois state and the national capital.  

The war in Spain continued until 1939, resulting in the victory of Franco; it was at the same moment that the other fractions of the world proletariat, vanquished by the counter-revolution, began in turn to serve as cannon-fodder in a new world imperialist massacre. CB    

Originally published in Revolution Internationale 258, July-August 1996  

1 The capacity of the Spanish bourgeoisie to adapt in the face of the workers’ struggle can be illustrated by the political trajectory of Largo Caballero: president of the UGT union since 1914, Socialist member of parliament, he became a state adviser to the dictator Primo de Rivera then labour minister in the first Republican coalition between 1931 and 1933. He then became one of the main architects of the Popular Front before arriving at the ‘leftist’ positions which allowed him to become the head of government between September 36 and May 37. 

 The following is an extract from a much longer article on the events of July 19, 1936 written by Bilan, which can be found here: ir/006_bilan36_july19.html [18]

---

When the capitalist attack came in the form of Franco’s uprising, neither the POUM nor the CNT even dreamed of calling the workers to go out into the streets. They organized delegations to go to Companys for arms. On 19 July the workers came out spontaneously – by calling for a general strike the CUT and UGT were simply acknowledging a de facto state of affairs.

Since Companys, Giral, and their ilk were immediately regarded as allies of the proletariat, as the people who could supply the keys to the arms depot, it was quite natural that when the workers crushed the army and took up arms no one would think for a moment of posing the problem of the destruction of the state which, with Com­panys at its head, remained intact. From then on an attempt was made to spread the utopian idea that it is possible to make the revolution by expropriating factories and taking over land without touching the capitalist state, not even its banking ‘system.

The constitution of the Central Committee of the militias gave the impression that a period of proletarian power had begun; while the setting up of the Central Council of the Economy gave rise to the illusion that the proletariat was now managing its own econ­omy.

However, far from being organs of dual power, these organs had a capitalist nature and function. Instead of constituting a base for the unification of the proletarian struggle – for posing the question of power – they were from the beginning organs of col­laboration with the capitalist state.

In Barcelona the Central Committee of the militias was a conglomeration of workers’ and bourgeois parties and trade unions; not an organ of the soviet type arising spontan­eously on a class basis and capable of pro­viding a focus for the development of prole­tarian consciousness. The Central Committee was connected to the Generalidad and disap­peared with the passing of a simple decree when the new government of Catalonia was formed in October.

The Central Committee of the militias repre­sented a superb weapon of capitalism for leading the workers out of their towns and localities to fight on the territorial fronts where they are being ruthlessly mas­sacred.

The deployment of 3300 British troops, mainly from the 16th Air Assault Brigade, in the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan has been given the usual government and media spin. They will supposedly bring the resurgent Taliban under control, enforce law and order, and reduce opium production. We are reassuringly told by the BBC that the Taliban “operate in small groups of 10 to 20 although they can collect up to 70 fighters for bigger attacks”. Thus, ‘our boys’ should be able to bring the ‘benefits’ of democracy to the poorest province of Afghanistan. This is the same government that told us everything was going to be fine in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.

Bordering Pakistan the area is a focal point for the machinations of the sub-continent’s two main imperialist powers: India and Pakistan. “Afghanistan has become the new battleground for the 59-year proxy war between India and Pakistan; Afghan anger at the Pakistanis is returned in kind, as Islamabad accuses Kabul of allowing Indian spies access to Pakistan’s western border, while Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad are accused of funding an insurgency in Baluchistan province. In turning a blind eye to the Taliban, Pakistan is pressuring Karzai, America and Nato to accede to its demands” (Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Afghanistan, Daily Telegraph 30/5/06). The destabilisation of the province accentuates the instability of the whole country.

A country whose US puppet government has only tentative control of the capital and few other cities is coming under increasing pressure from a multitude of opposing forces. Such fragility is another demonstration that the US might be the only super power but it cannot even impose its order on a land of war-ravaged rubble. The US’s only answer to growing chaos is naked military barbarity.

This spring the US launched its largest military offensive in the country since the invasion of 2001. This military onslaught saw thousands of US troops sweeping through the region carrying out search and destroy missions against the Taliban, backed by the B-52s and other jets that fly permanently over Afghanistan so they can be called in for air strikes at any time. This military sledgehammer has brought levels of destruction not known since the height of the civil war in the early 1990s. “Over 500 Afghans have been killed in the past six weeks in the south where some 6,000 US, Canadian and British troops under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are battling the Taliban. Afghans remember that a similar death rate in 1992-93, amidst civil war, heralded the arrival of the Taliban who promised peace and security” (‘Afghanistan and its Future’, Ahmed Rashid. 26/6/06. www.eurasianet.org [19])

The outcome of this orgy of destruction? “’Our research shows that the local perception is that the only ones showing any real understanding for the people of Helmand and responding to their needs are the insurgent groups, notably the Taliban,’ said Emmanuel Reinert, Executive Director of The Senlis Council. ‘The Coalition troops are increasingly perceived as the invader and less and less as people who are there to help.’”(Report by the Security and Development Policy group).

The offensive was intended to show Pakistan and the other countries in the area that are questioning its domination what the US is prepared to do to maintain its hold over any area it deems important. It knows dropping laser guided weaponry on mud huts is ‘overkill’, but brutal destruction of parts of the Taliban sends a message to those who are backing them or thinking of going the same way.

This is a warning that goes beyond India and Pakistan, to Russia and China. As the US has looked weaker and weaker in Iraq the central Asian republics have begun to move towards Russia and China and they have taken full advantage; “Russia and China are working on making sure that America and Nato surrender all their remaining toeholds in Central” (Rashid, Daily Telegraph 30/5/06)

It was also a warning to Iran not to retaliate against any US attack. “Iran is spending large sums out of its windfall oil income in buying support among disaffected and disillusioned Afghan warlords. The day America or Israel attacks Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, these Afghans will be unleashed on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, opening a new front quite separate from the Taliban insurgency” (ibid)

British imperialism understands this objective and that its role is to continue trying to impose order in the area. They are not happy that they have to take over a region that is so hostile to the US and its allies, and where the strength of the Taliban is growing. The BBC talks about small bands of unpopular Taliban, but, according to Paul Roger, (Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University) “In early 2005, these units were regularly composed of groups of up to a hundred. That alone suggested a much greater degree of organisation and logistic support than would be expected from a sporadic insurgency; but, in 2006, the Taliban are fighting in groups of around 400 “ (‘Afghanistan’s new war season’, 22/6/06, www.opendemocracy.org [20].). This has led to the Taliban now controlling many parts of the region with ‘popular support’.

The British forces have shown that their much-publicised ‘hearts and minds’ method of occupation is a front for the same sort of overwhelming force as the US uses. On the 27th June, two members of the Special Boat Services were killed in an ambush when then tried to capture two leaders of the local Taliban. “105mm light artillery and air support from British Harrier jets, Apache attack helicopters and American A-10 “warthog” low-flying jets” (The Guardian 28/6/06) were deployed. This turned into a day-long battle, as have other conflicts in the area. These battles have taken place in villages where civilians must have been killed in the cross fire or by the destructive fire power of the air cover, but as in Iraq, the British and the US don’t report civilian deaths, even under pressure.

The politicians may not call it a war, but that is what it is, and it looks like it could become another quagmire like Iraq. The Taliban have already been sending personnel to Iraq in order to learn the techniques of the insurgents. This is an interesting reversal of roles, as, in the 1980s and 90s it was Afghanistan that was the source of radicalised and war-hardened fundamentalists, now Iraq is the supplier. There are plenty of regional powers who are willing to back the Taliban, just as the US and UK did in the 1990s. This can only pour more fuel on the fire

Growing imperialist conflict in the area could see British imperialism bogged down for years. “The British realise they are in for a long fight ... They realise that the timetable of three years, laid down by Tony Blair, to turn things round in Helmand and the south is way too optimistic. A plan for commitment for 10 or even 15 years would be more realistic, some suggest” (The Guardian 30/6/06). The US will be quite happy about this because it will curb perfidious Albion’s ability to get up to mischief. The British bourgeoisie understands this but also know they have no option, unless they want to make an open break with the US. This would undermine its ability to play a role, based on its good relations with the US, where it plays the US off against Europe. No one knows how many economically conscripted workers or the poor and dispossessed of Afghanistan will be killed or wounded in this operation, but suffer they will, in order to keep the British ruling class’s bloody snout in the imperialist trough. The call from leading generals for the government to provide more planes and helicopters for the mission is just the latest evidence of this.   Phil 1/7/6