Five years ago the world experienced a terrible turning point, representing at once change and continuity: the attacks against the World Trade Center in the world metropolis New York. The attacks that killed thousands of innocent people, marked a new stage in capitalism’s capacity to kill.

With the downfall of the Eastern bloc in 1989, with state leaders proclaiming a new era of peace, the old Western concept of the communist enemy had to be replaced. However, ever since 9/11 the ruling class has been successful in creating a new concept of an enemy that appears to correspond to the capitalist reality of war since 1989: the war against terror. This is a very hazy term and has the advantage that it can be used in theory against any imperialist enemy. This ideology echoes the fact that today each imperialist goes it alone – no matter whether they are big or small imperialists.

Is a terrorist act of violence such as 9/11 to be justified? Can you justify war on terror? Is there such a thing as a just war?

For some time now humanity has been looking for answers. This struggle for understanding is particularly vital for the working class to be able to consciously change the world and shape the future. In our search for answers we can also gain insights and help from art and literature.

The attacks of 9/11 also shook the young New Yorker author Jonathan Safran Foer. His novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close tries to digest the incomprehensible artistically – and does much more.

The novel takes us into the world of Oskar Schell, a 9 year old boy from New York. For him, 9/11 is “the worst day”. It is the day his dad died in one of the Twin Towers. At first he is in a state of numbness. This traumatic experience makes it impossible for him to communicate his feelings with the living. His senses are fixed on the world of the dead, the world that is now that of his dad. The day Oskar finds a key in a vase, belonging to his father, with the name “Black” on it, marks the starting point of an 8 month odyssey across New York to solve the mystery of the key. The key is a metaphor for his now ongoing confrontation with his war trauma. The search for the mystery behind the key is in fact the pursuit of the path back into life. The search through New York puts Oskar in touch with numerous people and he begins to realise how many lonely human beings there are. He develops a feeling of responsibility and solidarity towards them. The conversations with these somehow familiar strangers begin to constitute a bridge leading him, but not only him, back to the living. He is thus able to cope with this terrible loss. In the end he and his mum come closer again.

The story has numerous parallels that are by no means accidental. It is not just about the military attack of 9/11 but also about the night the German city of Dresden was bombed to rubble. Oskar’s grandparents, still in their teens in 1945, are war victims from Dresden. That night they lost everything: love, their families, their homes and even their attachment to life. They belong to the lost generation of the Second World War. To the very end they are unable to deal with their traumatic experiences of war. While the grandmother keeps thinking that she’s blind, the grandfather becomes mute. They let the dust pile up on their shoulders and cannot find a way back into a life and the future.

It is interesting to note that the Jewish author Foer writes about the German Schell family as war victims (the grandmother’s father hid a Jew from the Nazis in Dresden). This fact alone conveys an important message. The story makes clear that all such wars are dreadful and not justifiable, and that the normal people are always the ones who suffer most. As the grandfather says: “The end of the suffering does not justify the suffering.” Through placing itself unconditionally on the side of the victims of imperialist war, the novel unmistakably puts into question the story about the ‘just’ and ‘benevolent’ wars constantly put forward by the capitalist powers. In particular, the justification of World War II by the anti-fascist allies is questioned. During a TV interview, Foer spoke about his indignation in relation to the way in which Islamic terrorism justifies the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in the World Trade Center by referring to the crimes of the American State. Pondering on this question, he suddenly realised that the US state used exactly the same inhuman logic in order to justify the butchering of the civilian population in Dresden and Hiroshima. Through taking sides for the cause of humanity, Foer, who is no politician, comes into contradiction with the logic of capitalism and its anti-fascist ideology. In an article devoted to his novel, the celebrated New York Review of Books accused him of putting the victims of fascism on the same level as the victims of ant-fascism during the Second World War. As if the unconditional solidarity with the victims would be the crime here, and not the massacres committed by all the capitalist powers! This novel is not about being guilty or not guilty. Instead, it is a fervent plea for the human dignity which is trampled on by every imperialist war.

While Oskar is still searching for an explanation for the inexplicable, he shows his shocked fellow pupils and his teacher an interview with a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima in 1945 by the US-army. The survivor remembers how his daughter died in his arms crying: “I don’t want to die.” Her father: “That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have any war anymore.”

Although the novel rightly draws various parallels between the generations, there is a significant distinction made between them. While the generation of the grandparents senses that it is a lost generation, little Oskar is a representative of a new, undefeated generation. His grandparents, who grew up when the proletarian revolution had been crushed – as in Germany – thus opening the path to world war and to fascism - are unable to free themselves from the war trauma of the past. Today’s new generation, as opposed to the past, is firstly not defeated and secondly ready to learn from the older generations. It is significant that Oskar can only overcome his sorrow with the help of his grandparents and an elderly neighbour. He is able to assume his role as a son and to carry forward the positive things which his father represented. Oskar is able to approach them and finally speak about his innermost feelings and fears. Here we find on the literary level an ability which we recently saw at its best on the social level during the protests of the students in France: the insight and the capacity to learn from the experience of the older generations (unlike the generation of 1968).

Oskar thus solves the mystery of the key. Even though the key does not directly have anything to do with his dad, this search reveals that one can only develop enough energy and joy for life in a collective manner including all generations. Only through love of life, solidarity and humanity can the proletariat develop a communist perspective for the whole of humanity- a society without terrible war crimes such as 9/11 or the bombings of Dresden! Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a plea for humanity which in reality can only be defended against the logic of capitalism and through the revolutionary proletariat.  

Lizzy 9/11/6 (from Weltrevolution 138 [1])

The conflicts following the elections in Mexico - promoted and financed by fractions of the bourgeoisie - have given rise to a flurry of speculation. Here we will deal with the one peddled with gusto by radical leftism (the many Trotskyist groups), which wants to convince us that there is a revolutionary situation in Mexico, with soviets, a state of dual-power characteristic of a proletarian revolution, on the brink of the workers taking power. It is lamentable that this is NOT the case, but by affirming these illusions they are making the situation even more confusing and pushing the workers to have hope in actions that are beyond their control: actions which are really controlled by the bourgeoisie.

Let us begin with a quote from a Trotskyist publication, The Militant [1]: "The unprecedented collapse of the state apparatus is one of the clearest symptoms that we are at the door of a openly revolutionary process. The most important element is the combativity of the masses and the will to take this fight to the end. All that is missing is the determination to channel this fight towards the seizure of power by the workers and the total destruction of the apparatus of the bourgeois state. It is for this reason that the program, strategy and tactics of the National Democratic Convention (CND in Spanish) will determinate for the future of the movement." 

It is necessary to clarify that the development of an enormous struggle, with great combativity or will, does not necessarily mean that it is has a clear awareness of what it is doing or where it is going. Combativity and consciousness are not necessarily united in the development of struggles, which is why many such struggles can end in a mess with little perspective. The unity between combativity and consciousness is a function of the degree to which the worldwide revolutionary situation begins to appear on the horizon. The revolution will be first of all a conscious effort. But in addition, it is necessary to see how the "will to fight" is put under the direction of a fraction of the bourgeoisie, because the CND is a defender of democracy, the State, which - of course - does not question the dictatorship of capital.

The workers and the non-exploiting masses are caught up in the enormous illusions of the electoral circus and thus have great difficulties in finding the course to take, to decide where to go. For this reason when The Militant affirms that "we are at the door of a revolutionary process" they are seeking to create a false spirit amongst the workers in order to disarm them, to hand control over them to the fraction of the bourgeoisie which 'represents' the workers: the PRD and the CND.

A similar situation of confusion also surrounds the events that have happened in Oaxaca. The demand to re-zone the area occupied by the teachers of Oaxaca was buried after the 14th of June 2006 under the pretext that the central enemy was the governor. Nevertheless, the demand for the removal of governor Ulises Ruiz - which unites social sectors like the natives, retailers and the petty-bourgeoisie - only dilutes the demands for the defence of the living conditions of the workers. Furthermore, it fosters the vain hope that a change of personnel or civil servants can change their miserable living conditions. Without a doubt, the workers present in the APPO[2] - in spite of being pre-occupied with the desperate actions of the middle classes that have congregated under its umbrella - have shown a sincere mood and determination to fight. However, this force is turned aside and weakened.

Another Trotskyist group - the Workers' League for Socialism-Counter Current (LIT-CC) - in its periodical Workers' Strategy nº 53 (16-09-2006) also plays its tune of confusion. While it firmly denounces the PRD it ends up pouring water on the bourgeoisie's mill: "...the combination of a strong crisis at the heights of power, the existence of a democratic movement of the masses and the commune of Oaxaca, opens a pre-revolutionary situation, which can be the beginning of the second Mexican revolution, workers' and socialist."

Let us leave for another occasion the denunciation of the "Mexican revolution". Here, our central concern is to demonstrate that the famous premise of Lenin that characterises a revolutionary situation, as being when "those above can no longer govern" has absolutely nothing to do with the situation in Oaxaca. Indeed, there is here a process of radicalisation taking place, but one that is marked by desperate actions, whose only objective is the removal of Ulises Ruiz from office. In this sense, to refer to the "Commune of Oaxaca" sounds like a demagogic phrase that has two objectives. First, it confuses the workers because it is totally outside reality: the manifestations are dominated by a mass in which the proletariat is submerged as much in the objectives as the decisions made. Second, because the Paris Commune bequeathed a great lesson to the workers' movement that marxism has always defended: the state machine is not to be "conquered" but to be destroyed from top to bottom. To demand the removal of Ulises Ruiz is very far from considering the "destruction" of the state. For these reasons, to say that Oaxaca has a "Commune" is not simple a historical imprecision: it is a treacherous means to give a proletarian colour to a movement that is completely outside the terrain of the working class.

For another Trotskyist group - Germinal (in Spain) - the APPO is "possibly the embryo of a workers' state[3], the most developed organism of a soviet nature seen for many decades on the whole planet" (document of the 13-09-06). This affirmation is not only exaggerated but false. It is not an error made 'in ignorance', but a bad-intentioned deformation so that the workers think they are seeing a soviet where there is really an inter-classist front. A soviet or a workers' council is an organisation that develops in a pre-revolutionary or directly revolutionary period. In them all workers participate. Its assemblies are the life and soul of the insurrection. Their delegates are elected and revocable. In the APPO the well-known 'leaders' are close to the existing structures of power, such as Rogelio Pensamiento, known for his relations with the PRI; the ex-deputy of PRD, Flavio Sosa; or the SNTE unionist, Wheel Pacheco, who himself received "economic support" for a long time from the same government of Ulises Ruiz. But in addition, if we look at the composition of the "soviet" we can see that, as the first act of the APPO stated, it is made up of 79 social organisations, 5 unions and 10 representatives of schools and parents. Such an amalgam allows the expression of everything except the independence and autonomy of the proletariat.

This "soviet" or "commune" of which the Trotskyists speak, which doesn't, in its practice or decisions, worry about the good march of capitalist business, is applauded by this same Germinal group because: "its own municipal police has been created", and which, "on the 3rd of September approved to summon the construction of popular assemblies in all the states of Mexico. It decided: (...) to contemplate decrees for the reactivation of the economy, citizen security, cleaning and improvement of the city, for urban and suburban transport, to attract tourism and promote harmonic co-existence." These are the facts that they put forward to affirm that this body is "the most developed organism of a soviet nature seen for many decades on the whole planet". That is to say, the pure and simple defence of a better economic, political and social operation of capitalism!

The discontent in Oaxaca is real. The teachers are in misery like millions of their class brothers in the rest of the country and the world, but this discontent has been turned aside and put under, for that reason the APPO does not show what should be done, but rather what should not be imitated. The autonomy of the proletariat continues to be a problem in search of a solution.

Marsan. 10-10-06.

(Translated from Revolución Mundial nº 95, Noviembre-Diciembre 2006)

https://es.internationalism.org/rm/2006/95_siturev [3]

See also: 'Oaxaca, Mexico: Unions Derail Teachers' Strike [4]'.

In Spanish, ‘Oaxaca: La lucha en defensa de la democracia o por el cambio de funcionarios, un camino falso para los trabajadores’

https://es.internationalism.org/rm/2006/94_oaxaca [5]