Things are looking good for working people, according to the government. Wages have risen, unemployment remains low, poverty is falling, waiting lists for hospital treatment are down, there are more doctors and nurses and standards of education keep on rising. Yes, they admit, there are social problems with unruly children, street crime and immigration, but overall things did get better under New Labour. However, if you step back from the hailstorm of statistics, all is not what it seems.

The NHS: not as healthy as it looks

Health is a good place to start because the government has trumpeted this as its big success. The statistics look impressive: between 1994 and 2004 we got 42% more doctors and 24% more nurses (Staffing and Human resources in the NHS, Reform, 2006), and waiting times for many operations are now counted in weeks rather than months or years. Yet increasingly there are stories of nurses being unable to find jobs, of hospitals asking nurses to work for a day without pay or to accept pay below the minimum wage. The reorganisation of pay scales over the last few years, far from standardising responsibilities and pay nationally as it was purported to do, has led to further inequality and confusion. Recent surveys have found that in work nurses are experiencing such high levels of stress that they are forced out of work or end up suffering from physical or mental ill-health, while outside growing numbers have to rely on charity handouts to get by. It is now suggested that over the next few years improvements in productivity will lead to a 10% reduction in the NHS workforce with pay increasingly being linked to ‘results’ (ibid). It is hardly surprising then that the plan to hold public sector pay increases down to 2% has not gone down too well.

Poverty and wages

A second area where Labour claims success is in reducing child poverty. Again the figures look good: 700,000 children have been lifted out of poverty since 1996/7. However, not only does this mean that some 2.4 million, or 19% of children still live in poverty; it also only takes the situation back to where it was in the mid-1980s, which itself was above the level seen in the 1960s and 70s (Office for National Statistics). Many of those ‘lifted out of poverty’ have gone from being just under the poverty line to just over it: the statistics look good but real life is much the same for those enduring poverty or near-poverty (Poverty: the facts, Child Poverty Action Group, 2001).

Similarly, for all the rhetoric of social justice, wage inequality has risen under Labour (after falling under John Major’s Tory administration). There is a particular gap between skilled and unskilled workers. This means that the latest figure for wage rises of 4.5% does not give the whole picture. In the first place, it includes bonuses, which very many workers never get a hint of. This brings the overall level down to 3.7%, with the private sector at 3.8% and the public sector at 3.1%, which is below the current rate of inflation. Secondly, the figures are skewed because they include salaries and bonuses paid to the very rich. The average weekly income stands at £445 but half of the population lives on £363 or less (Poverty and Inequality in the UK 2007, Institute for Fiscal Studies).

Rising exploitation…

This picture is itself only part of a global picture that has seen workers’ pay fall significantly as a percentage of national income over the last 30 years while profits have increased. This is starkly evident in the US where their pay has fallen by 4% since 2001, while businesses have all but doubled their share of the national income from 7% to 13%. At the same time productivity has increased by 15% (Economist 14/9/06).

In Britain, while there does not seem to have been the same direct fall in wages, the number of hours worked has been rising since the mid-1980s. At the same time, work has become less secure in Britain and America, as short-term and temporary jobs replace permanent ones. In both countries it is the working class that is paying for the apparent economic prosperity. In short, New Labour’s rosy picture is based on the increased exploitation of the working class, many of whom now face years more in work only to be followed by a retirement into poverty. Coupled with the continued growth of personal debt, this results in a growing sense of insecurity and the loss of any vision that things could be different.

…and growing anger

The working class is assailed from all sides by claims of things getting better and better. Its experience to the contrary is simply dismissed as a failure of understanding or a mistaken perception. Indeed, the ruling class always complains that the exploited are not suitably grateful for the generous and selfless efforts made on their behalf. It can be difficult to resist this nonsense since it rains down on us day and night. However, over the last few years there have been signs of growing anger and of a refusal to passively accept things as they are. This is reflected in the increasingly frequent warnings of industrial action, even though these are largely confined to one day strikes and threats of what might happen.

At the end of March, for example, defence and passport workers staged a one-day strike while other civil servants voted to take action short of a strike. A few weeks later 95% of the representatives of the Royal College of Nurses voted in support of the principle of taking industrial action, overturning its longstanding no-strike principle. At the end of April, college lecturers in Northern Ireland took action while 113,000 civil servants staged a one-day strike. At the end of May the Royal College of Midwives followed the RCN in voting to consider balloting for industrial action, while the National Union of Teachers called for a 10% pay rise. The postal workers’ union has held a ballot which resulted in a large majority in favour of industrial action over pay, and Mark Serwotka, leader of the Public and Commercial Services union, warned of a “summer of discontent” (Guardian, 17/5/07).

Last year saw the third greatest number of days lost in industrial action over the last decade: 754,500 days in all, involving 713,000 workers in 158 disputes. The number involved was the second largest of the last decade although this is still nowhere near the level seen in the 70s and 80s, and the actions that have taken place mainly remain firmly within the framework set by the unions.

However, now and again the anger breaks out and ignites in struggles run by the workers with the unions left behind calling for restraint. This was the case with the initial response to the redundancies at Airbus (see the April issue of World Revolution) and with the strike at Heathrow in support of the workers at Gate Gourmet in 2005 (see WR 287). A particularly important feature of some struggles is the support between groups of workers, overcoming racial divisions as at Heathrow or religious ones, as was the case with the postal workers of Northern Ireland some time ago.

We do not fool ourselves that such actions are enough to turn the tide and stop the attacks of the ruling class, but what they do is set out another vision of the world, a vision of unity, solidarity and support that runs completely counter to the division, isolation and selfishness that the ruling class gives us. What the working class offers in these struggles is a different view of the world; a different perception. But it is more than a perception: it is a potential that the working class is capable of making real. It is this that really frightens the ruling class. For us it is a cause for hope. WR 9/6/07

 

This article is available as a leaflet here to download and distribute:

https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/postal-leaflet.pdf [3]

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The result of the ballot held by the Communication Workers Union – over 77% in favour of industrial action in a two-thirds turn-out – is an indication that there is a great deal of anger amongst postal workers about the latest attack on their pay and conditions: a 2.5% pay offer which is well under the rate of inflation, and plans for ‘modernising’ Royal Mail which will mean job cuts and deteriorating conditions at work.

Despite top level negotiations, the first one-day national strike has now been called.

Many militant workers feel that a series of one-day strikes is a not going to be very effective and that the best alternative is to demand an all-out, indefinite strike. But the tactics and methods of the struggle is something that workers themselves need to debate. The ballot system, in fact the whole hierarchical union structure, does not allow such a debate to take place, still less does it enable the workers to make and carry out their own decisions. In virtually every struggle in the post office in recent years, workers have ignored the official union procedures and voted in mass meetings to come out on strike. Such mass meetings need to be held again now, to discuss the best means for waging this struggle, and to coordinate directly with other workplaces.

Obviously any action in the Royal Mail needs to involve as many postal workers as possible, regardless of workplace or category. But the strength of any movement of the working class does not reside in its ability to hold out for as long as possible against the bosses, who will always have the support of the rest of the ruling class, their media and their state. It resides above all in the ability of the struggle to spread, to become a mass struggle that builds a balance of forces against the bosses and the state.

It is not only postal workers who face attacks on their pay and conditions. There is growing discontent in the NHS, in the civil service, in education, in the Airbus factories, in transport and many other sectors. Postal workers discussing industrial action should also discuss how to make links with other sectors, how to win their solidarity, how to act together. And here again they cannot rely on the unions. They need to go directly to other workplaces and sectors, sending delegations to the nearest factory, hospital or school, holding joint meetings, raising common demands. These are the methods of struggle that alone can make our exploiters think twice about exploiting us even harder than they are already. And they are also the methods that allow us to seriously pose the question of how we can do away with exploitation altogether, and reorganise society in the interests of the vast majority of humanity.

World Revolution 24/6/7

The growing tensions between Russia and the US have come out into the open. The media talk is of a new Cold War, with Putin responding to US ‘Star Wars’ plans by threatening to point his nuclear missiles at the heart of Europe. But if anything, the situation is more dangerous than it was in the period between 1945 and 1989 when the two superpowers held us in the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction.

‘Communism’ collapses; imperialism continues

According to the official ideology of the old US bloc, the world was a dangerous place in the Cold War period because the Soviet Union was an aggressive power aiming to spread the tyranny of ‘Communism’ across the globe. It was thus reasoned that when the USSR and its bloc imploded at the end of the 1980s, we would automatically enter a new era of peace, and Russia could join the fold of the democratic nations, enjoying the fruits of free enterprise and free elections.

It is hardly necessary to argue that the ‘New World Order’ promised by Bush Senior at that time has been exposed as a total and utter lie. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the world has been more unstable, more chaotic, more infected by war and genocide than at any time since the 1939-45 World War.

One prediction that did, at first, appear to have some substance was the idea that the new ‘post-Communist’ Russia could become a reliable ally of the USA. Even before the USSR was officially disbanded, it made little or no attempt to stand in the way of the USA’s first great military adventure of the new period, the Gulf War of 1991. And when the fraction around Boris Yeltsin came to power in the newly-formed Russian Federation, it seemed to be in indecent haste to open Russia up to foreign investment by selling off whole chunks of the state-owned sector to ‘private’ investors. Many of these were home-based cronies of Yeltsin and Co – this was the period which saw the rise of the Russian oligarchs (like Roman Abramovitch) who made vast fortunes by getting their hands on Russia’s potentially lucrative energy industries. But Russia’s gates were also opened to a mass of foreign investment vultures, and the ensuing wholesale pillaging of Russia’s economy led to mass unemployment, a drastic plunge in living standards and a dangerously fragile national economy, as revealed in the collapse of the Russian currency in 1998.

These developments threatened to totally undermine Russia’s status as an imperialist power, which had already been knocked down several pegs by the collapse of the USSR and its bloc. This is something that no bourgeoisie can accept. Russia made this clear with its brutal campaigns in Chechnya after 1994: by crushing the Chechen independence movement with such overwhelming force, it was issuing a clear statement that it was not prepared to tolerate any further fragmentation of the Russian Federation. The ‘western’ powers largely turned a blind eye to the devastation of Grozny and other atrocious massacres in Chechnya, because they saw little benefit in the entire Russian Federation, with its intact arsenal of nuclear weapons, fragmenting into a patchwork of unviable fiefdoms. But an imperialist power can never be content with ensuring order within its own borders. Russia’s long-standing alliance with Serbia led to confrontation with other imperialist powers during the series of wars in ex-Yugoslavia – with Germany which backed Croatia, and with the US which switched its patronage to Bosnia and then used NATO to push ahead with the bombing of Serbia. ‘Post-Communist’ Russia thus showed that it was pursuing the same imperialist policies in the Balkans as Czarist and ‘Communist’ Russia.

The accession to power of ex-KGB leader Putin in 2000 marked a significant turning point, both in domestic and foreign policy. At home it marked a return to a much more centralised direction of the economy accompanied by an increasingly ruthless attitude towards internal political opposition. The assassination of former spy Litvinenko in Britain was only one in a series of politically motivated murders that have in all probability been carried out on behalf of the Putin regime. At the economic level, curbs were put on the power of the oligarchs (symbolised by the imprisoning of oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky for fraud and tax evasion, and the exile of Boris Berezovsky, who gained fame by apparently calling for the revolutionary overthrow of the Putin government) and the vital energy industries were restored to state direction.

Centralised control over the oil and gas industries were essential not just to protect the Russian economy from international competition but also to put a formidable weapon in the hands of the state in its relation with other powers. This was demonstrated very graphically in 2006 when Russia sought to put pressure on Ukraine by cutting off its supplies of gas, and the same threat can be brandished at western European countries which have become increasingly dependent on Russian energy supplies (and indeed were already affected when Russia shut off the gas to Ukraine).

Towards new confrontations

All this demonstrates, once again, Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis that imperialism is not the policy of any particular state, but the necessary mode of survival of every state in the present epoch. It is not determined by ideology, but by the fundamental economic and strategic interests of national capitalisms engaged in a life or death struggle on the world arena.

Putin’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy is thus the inevitable product of the needs of Russian capitalism. But it is determined as much by the aggressive policies of its rivals as by its own internal dynamic. The increasingly bellicose stance of US imperialism in recent years, above all since the announcement of the ‘war on terror’ in 2001, has further aggravated Russia’s tendency to throw its weight around in foreign affairs. The USA’s attempt to impose its hegemony in the Middle East was seen, rightly, as part of a strategy to encircle Europe and Russia through its control of this key geo-strategic region; and Russia’s fears of encirclement were made even more concrete when a number of Russia’s former satellite states were admitted into NATO. They are now to be used as bases for the USA’s anti-missile defence system, with the ludicrous justification that this has been established on Russia’s borders to counter the threat from rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

In The Guardian recently there have been some anguished comment articles in the centre pages, by Martin Jacques and Simon Jenkins, lamenting the fact that the Russians are being pushed into a corner by the belligerent behaviour of the west and the White House in particular. Jenkins worries that the revival of the open conflict with Russia is a growing danger to the future of the world, and that it is almost being hidden by the smoke and dust generated by the ‘war on terror’. Jacques, while accepting that Russia is not entirely innocent either, sagely warns that “Russia is not about to change, and we must find a Modus Vivendi that respects what it is and recognises its legitimate interests” (5/6/07).

There is no doubt that the sharpening conflict between Russia and the US (and with Britain, which has used the Litvinenko affair to yap at Putin’s ‘authoritarian’ regime) is a very dangerous development. In many ways it is more dangerous than the Cold War because the overall line-up of imperialist forces is much less stable and containable than it was during the period of the two blocs. Alliances are forged on a temporary basis – such as between Russia, France and Germany over the invasion of Iraq, or between Russia and China as a counter-weight to the US and Japan – but they can easily disintegrate into open hostility between the allies of the day before. Without the discipline of the old bloc system, these hostilities can much more easily spin out of control.

Martin Jacques, a former guru of the so-called Communist Party, offers his expert advice to the bourgeoisie: why don’t we all try to get along. This is pure mystification, pretending that it is possible for imperialist cut-throats the world over to be reasonable and considerate towards each other. Above all, it is posed entirely as a problem for the ruling class. From the proletarian standpoint, all states and all ruling classes, east and west, are the enemy. The only Modus Vivendi we are interested in discovering is the one with the workers of Russia, who have the same class interests as we do, the same need to struggle against the capitalist drive towards war. Amos 8/6/7

 

It is now 40 years since the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel gained a great deal of territory. The media coverage of this anniversary has had little choice but to register the almost unending conflicts that have come in the wake of that war. Indeed, these conflicts had already been sustained for 20 or 30 years before then, and have continued ever since. Sometimes the focus has been Lebanon, the theatre of conflict between Israel and Syria, as well as the US and France. Most prominently Iraq has had wars with Iran and the US. And in Israel/Palestine there has been no let-up in the combat between Israel and the Palestinian factions, with all their various backers.

What is significant about the current situation, however, is that there are a number of areas simultaneously in a state of armed conflict, an accelerating decline into chaos across the region.

Iraq and Turkey

In Iraq a report last month from Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) was not the first body to warn that “Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation”, that “the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in large parts of the country, as a range of local civil wars and insurgencies are fought” (BBC 17 May).The BBC described the report as “unremittingly bleak”. The report accuses each of Iraq’s major neighbouring states - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - of having reasons “for seeing the instability there continue, and each uses different methods to influence developments”.

It is not unusual to see the names of Iran and Saudi Arabia as regional backers of factions throughout the Middle East, but the name of Turkey is often omitted from the imperialist powers that have interests in the area, interests they are prepared to defend by the most brutal military means. Recently there has been a build up of armed forces (tanks, aircraft and troops) on Turkey’s border with Iraq. There is growing speculation that they might be about to invade Iraq, under the pretext of attacking the Kurdish separatists operating across the border. The US was concerned enough to send fighter planes into Turkish airspace as a means of warning against any action. At the time of writing the BBC was reporting the shelling of areas of northern Iraq by the Turkish army.

The US is obviously worried about every aspect of the situation in Iraq. 30,000 extra US troops will be arriving in June; Bush has signed off an additional $100bn for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (on top of the estimated cost per day to the US of $300m); and the situation only gets worse, with the killings, the massive displacement of people (including 2 million refugees who’ve fled the country) and the continuing damage to the infrastructure. With a new atrocity everyday it’s understandable that polls in the US show massive majorities thinking that things are going badly and that the US should have stayed out of Iraq.

Gaza and the West Bank

In Gaza, the Mecca ‘peace’ accords between Hamas and Fatah, which gave both factions a share in running the Palestinian Authority, has already been disrupted by a renewal of armed clashes between the two gangs. Meanwhile Israel has been conducting a campaign of airstrikes, threatening all Hamas members as legitimate targets. This is a foretaste of any future ‘two states’ ‘solution’. For the Palestinian factions such an outcome would be an opportunity to run a state that, with the backing of outside powers, can challenge Israel. For Israel it would only be acceptable if it guaranteed its effective domination over Gaza and the West Bank. In all these confrontations, the Palestinian and Israeli populations are just pawns in others’ vicious games.

Lebanon

The situation in the Lebanon has always been complex. Or rather, regardless of the complexities, there is always suffering for the exploited and oppressed, regardless of where they live. The Lebanese government is currently cracking down on Fatah al Islam, a small al-Qaida type group based in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp near Tripoli. It has said quite bluntly that the group of 150 to 200 militants should surrender or be crushed. This incident is part of a much wider inter-imperialist conflict ravaging the country. If you look at the Israeli attack on Lebanon last year, the massive Saudi financial support to the Lebanese central banks and the education sector, the money from Iran channelled through Hizbollah into ‘aid’ schemes in the Lebanon, the ambitions of Syria, which has been ejected from Lebanon but has not renounced its interests in it, then it becomes clear that the situation in the Lebanon is being aggravated by the same regional powers that are trying to influence the situation in Iraq.

The Lebanese government has said that Fatah al Islam is backed by Syria, and its origins do seem to lie in a more openly pro-Syrian group, Hamas Intifada. There are, however, also coherent arguments that it is one of the local creations of the US secret services, since the latter could benefit from the emergence of a Sunni brand of terrorism to counter the Shiite Hezbollah and its Iranian backers.

Whatever the truth, the situation in the Lebanon is only pointing one way. Yet again the Lebanese government will be shown to be not up to the basic tasks required of a state, and outside intervention will be ‘justified’. Already both the US and France have rushed to offer their support for the government in its fight against terrorism. But these two great powers, both currently involved in the UN ‘Peacekeeping’ force in the Lebanon, only appear to be on the same side. In reality their interests are fundamentally antagonistic: the US succeeded in kicking France out of the Lebanon during the wars of the 70s and 80s, and France is doing everything it can to worm its way back, which will certainly involve undermining US attempts to stabilise Lebanon under its hegemony. As with Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, the only prospect is an increasingly militarised, chaotic situation, and the global ‘Peacekeepers’ are more responsible for this than anyone. Car 9/6/7

Between 1850 and 1880 British workers fought for, and won, real gains from the capitalist system: rises in real earnings, improvements in working conditions, reductions in the working day, and electoral and trade union rights. But these gains were won at a price; whereas in the previous period reforms had been wrested from the bourgeoisie only on the threat of violent insurrection, now these improvements were won largely through peaceful struggles led by the trade unions and political alliances with parliamentary factions of the bourgeoisie, which encouraged illusions in the eternal correctness of such methods and the absence of a need for a revolutionary struggle in Britain. The leadership which emerged in this period was deeply penetrated by bourgeois notions of legality and peaceful change, and pursued policies of conciliation and class collaboration which were to become characteristic of British trade unionism long before capitalism finally entered into its decadence at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The revival of class struggle and the growth of trade unionism

Except for two brief intervals, the whole period from 1850 to 1870 was one of continuous growth for British capital and this enormous economic power enabled the bourgeoisie to grant substantial concessions to the working class.

The working class emerged from the defeat of Chartism and again began to advance its own class interests, and after a relatively short reflux, the 1860s saw a revival of struggles, with many hard-fought strikes and protracted lock-outs in the cotton, engineering, building and mining industries over higher wages, shorter hours and the right to organise. There was an enormous growth of trade union organisation in this period, leading up to the formation of the national Trades Union Congress in 1868. The ‘New Model’ trade unions, which represented the skilled sectors of the working class, not only engaged in struggles for limits to the length of the working day and improvements in conditions, but also became active in political campaigns to extend the vote to the working class.

But the leadership that emerged from these political struggles preferred to win influence in the corridors of bourgeois power and support for strikes and political agitation was sacrificed for fear of alienating ‘public opinion’, in favour of conciliatory policies towards industrial struggles and collaboration with the bourgeoisie.

The nature of the trade unions as permanent mass organisations within bourgeois society, created bureaucratic tendencies right from the beginning. As early as 1850, British trade unions were establishing their own national headquarters with full-time staff, and the dues of the relatively well-paid skilled workers created substantial funds which appeared to justify a cautious approach by the leadership, as William Allen of the engineers explained in evidence to the 1867 Royal Commission on Trade Unions:

“...I should say that the members are generally are decidedly opposed to strikes, and that the fact of our having a large accumulated fund tends to encourage that feeling amongst them. They wish to conserve what they have got...the man who has not got a shilling in his pocket has not much to be afraid of, but with a large fund such as we possess, we are led to be exceedingly careful not to expend it wastefully, and we believe that all strikes are a complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workmen but also the employers.” (Frow and Katanka, 1868: Year of the unions).

It was obviously in the bourgeoisie’s interests to encourage the growth of such ideas as an effective means of tying the working class to the interests of the national capital, and Engels himself remarked that, after the failure of Chartism and the victory of free trade policies:

“Trades Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself, were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions, and as useful means of spreading sound economic doctrines amongst the workers. Even strikes, than which nothing had been more nefarious up to 1848, were now gradually found out to be occasionally very useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves, at their own time.” (Engels, Condition of the working class in England).

Once the British bourgeoisie had learned the basic lesson that granting reforms would not lead to the immediate collapse of production (on the contrary, rises in workers’ wages could actually provide a stimulus to further growth), it began to adopt a more sophisticated strategy, judiciously granting economic and political reforms (including most of the radical aims of Chartism) to avert potentially dangerous class explosions and, more subtly, encouraging the emergence of a ‘respectable’ leadership from the skilled, trade-unionised working class which could safely be incorporated into bourgeois society while the great mass of the proletariat - the so-called ‘dangerous class’ of the unskilled, unorganised and unemployed - was kept in social quarantine.

The consolidation of reformist ideology in the leadership of the trade unions is clearly shown in the creation of a national organisation around the London Trades Council. This was a co-ordinating body which had its origins in the London builders’ strikes of the 1860s, but became dominated by a small bureaucratic clique of craft trade union leaders - later nicknamed the ‘Junta’ - who soon assumed leadership of the whole movement. The ‘Junta’ bought its seat at the bourgeoisie’s table by convincing the Royal Commission on Trades Unions that trade unions were not at all intended as weapons to wage the class war, and that, on the contrary, their leaders were the firmest opponents of militant class struggle. Robert Applegarth, for example, disarmingly described the carpenters’ union as a mere friendly society for the mutual support of its members and boasted how the leadership had refused to support workers in Manchester who in 1866 struck (successfully, as it happens) for higher wages and shorter hours (Frow and Katanka).

Nor was the ‘Junta’ by any means an isolated phenomenon; in many ways the reformist leadership was personified by Alexander MacDonald of the miners’ union, who was leader of the faction which favoured influencing parliament and public opinion rather than supporting the class struggle. MacDonald encouraged a policy of conciliation, which in 1874 led his union to accept wage reductions after an unofficial strike in Durham. He was a leading figure in the early trade union movement, sitting on the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC, and in 1874 he became one of the first two working class ‘Lib-Lab’ MPs, taking his seat in parliament as a Liberal.

Reactions against reformism

But there were those within the workers’ movement who opposed these conservative and sometimes openly reactionary policies: the ‘Junta’ faced open opposition from many provincial union leaders, and from a militant section led by George Potter of the London building trades which called for tactics of active solidarity and direct action. In 1866 Potter also formed the London Working Men’s Association, which included former Chartists, to fight for working class representation in Parliament along more militant lines.

More significantly, this period also saw the first reactions by the union ‘rank and file’ against the policies of their leaders. In 1871, the opposition of the engineering union to a five month-long struggle of engineers and miners for wage increases and a nine-hour working day resulted in the formation of dissident trade unions.

The reformist trade union leadership was able to consolidate its control over the organised working class in this period, primarily due to the apparent success of their methods in securing real economic and political benefits; extension of the franchise, legalisation of trade unions, as well as real wage rises for at least the skilled workers. This, in a period of relative prosperity, made it very difficult for the few, isolated revolutionaries to develop an influence in the working class, let alone build an alternative leadership.

The bourgeoisie, of course, did what it could to encourage this state of affairs. Certainly the Royal Commission on Trade Unions (1867) was an important mechanism in establishing the influence of the reformist trade union leaders within the state apparatus. In fact the whole campaign over legal recognition for the trade unions was used as a cover to further isolate those workers prepared to take violent action in defence of their interests, and to consolidate the position of the most respectable and pacifist faction in the leadership of the movement. The Commission itself was originally set up to investigate acts of sabotage against non-union workers - acts which the trade union leadership were keen to condemn in order to prove their respectable credentials. By the late 1860s, as we have seen, the whole question of legal recognition for the unions was very much a formality; but just as legislation was being proposed, various legal threats suddenly appeared which had the effect of rallying all of the opposing factions in the trade unions behind the existing leadership. Potter, for example, dropped his opposition and called for conciliation with the Junta. Legal recognition of the trade unions did not therefore represent an unequivocal victory for the working class; it also signified a consolidation of reformism in the workers’ movement.

Conclusions

The economic ‘take-off’ of British capital in the middle of the nineteenth century provided fertile ground for the growth of reformist ideas and methods of struggle in the working class. The early rise of reformism was also facilitated by the perceived failure of five decades of violent, semi-insurrectionary struggles to win any immediate gains.

The appearance of tendencies even in the 1850s for the trade unions to become politically conservative, bureaucratic organisations, with leaders who (all too literally in some cases) ‘sold out’ to the bourgeoisie, served as a warning to the entire proletariat of the dangers posed by reformism and opportunism.

Reformism represents the influence of bourgeois ideology within the working class; an abandonment of long-term revolutionary goals in return for short-term advantage; an accommodation to the laws of capital. It was an ever-present danger in a period when capitalism was still clearly capable of granting reforms, and where revolution was not yet on the historical agenda. The trade unions, established as permanent organs of the class, and engaged in day to day negotiations with capital about the price of labour power and amelioration in the workers’ conditions, inevitably risked acting as transmission belts for bourgeois ideology in general and reformist ideas in particular. The narrow craft base of the ‘New Model’ unions, and the ability of the skilled workers to make real gains in a period of growth, made all these tendencies particularly acute.

However, it is important to keep these tendencies in a proper historical context. First of all, the gains made by the working class in this period were not granted willingly but fought for every inch of the way: “...only against its will, and under the pressure of the masses, did the English parliament give up the laws against strikes and trade unions.” (Marx, Capital, Vol. 1). Secondly, the benefits of any improvements obtained were offset by the influx of unemployed, immigration from the country and new machinery replacing jobs. Fewer slumps meant more steady employment, with shorter hours and better conditions, but this was not reflected in higher real wages and it was not until the early 1870s that there was any large general advance in wage rates, measured in purchasing power, and this was enjoyed for but a few years before the coming of the great depression. Thirdly, many of the improvements tended to be restricted to the minority of skilled workers: “...even under the unparalleled commercial and industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1868”, the working class underwent “great misery”; “the great bulk” at best experiencing only a temporary improvement in their conditions (Engels, op. cit.).

In this historical period, given the condition of the great mass of the working class, it was still absolutely necessary to struggle for reforms such as the limitation of the working day, as a precondition for the further development of the class struggle. It is also important to remember that even after the legal recognition of trade unions in the early 1870s, trade unionised workers were only a small minority of the class in Britain - around half a million in 1873 out of at least 18 million manual workers. Vast sectors of the working class were still virtually unorganised. On the political terrain, the working class in Britain won only partial suffrage in 1867.

The necessity for the working class to struggle for reforms did not imply a struggle to reform the capitalist system. It was not an end in itself, but a means of building the proletariat’s forces, in preparation for its final overthrow of capitalism. With the First International, Marx argued strongly that it was necessary for the trade unions to become organising centres for the day to day struggle between capital and labour, and to aid any social movement tending towards the emancipation of the working class, while on the parliamentary terrain, it was the duty of the class to struggle for universal suffrage and to use its vast majority in the population to turn the institutions of parliamentary democracy against the bourgeoisie.

It’s true that such formulations contain ambiguities about the possibility of the proletariat winning power through parliament. It’s also true that Marx sometimes exaggerated the revolutionary potentialities of the trade unions. But Marx never ceased to emphasise that the emancipation of the working class “...can only proceed from a revolutionary action of the class of producers - the proletariat - organised in an independent political party.” (“Introduction to the programme of the French Workers’ Party”, The First International and After).

Above all, the struggle of the working class in the era of reforms was a struggle to organise itself as a class, independently of the bourgeoisie. This was the struggle Marx fought in the First International. But despite all the theoretical and organisational advances made by the International, the working class in the most powerful country of capitalism remained under the sway of reformists in its trade unions. An independent party - a revolutionary leadership capable of intervening in the workers’ everyday struggles - remained to be built. MH 06/07

The other articles in this series can be found here [8] .

Revelations that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan received £30 million a quarter from BAE over a ten year period (that’s more than £1 billion coughed up by the British taxpayer), with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence, didn’t cause Tony Blair any ethical problems. Last year he suspended an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office into the Tornado aircraft deal on the grounds that Saudi Arabia could end co-operation on intelligence and security matters. This time round he says “I don’t believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country”, the loss of jobs from a business that employs 37,000 people and generates £13 billion in sales.

Whatever it takes the arms trade must go on, as no capitalist state will ever hesitate to use military force against its rivals or its citizens. Whether it needs Export Credit Guarantees to help poorer countries get the weapons they want, or bungs to princes in oil-rich kingdoms, nothing will get in the way of the arms dealers’ industry of mass destruction. Blair’s blatant defence of the bribery and corruption of BAE, already under investigation in six countries, is a fitting symbol of the last ten years of Labour rule. Car 9.6.07

It’s back to harsh reality for the working class after months of an intense barrage of propaganda pushing them towards the ballot box, with glittering illusions about ‘a change’, ‘a break’ through the election. And for what? The Sarkozy government has taken office and set to work, and the bourgeoisie does not even need to wait for the legislature to announce the future which they have in store for workers: attacks and ever more attacks. It’s not only the programme of the ‘uncomplicated right’, it is the defence of the interests, pure and simple, of the whole national bourgeoisie, which the PS (Parti Socialiste) candidate would also have applied. The presence of renegades from the left and the centre within the governing team shows that there is really nothing substantial between their different programmes, all defend the interests of the national capital.

The ruling class has a real advantage in this situation with an overtly rightwing government, benefiting from a large majority at all levels of the state apparatus, able to use the language of truth without any detours or rhetorical flourishes.

A deluge of massive attacks against the working class

So the government can increase the speed and severity of its attacks. It has already announced an informative calendar of them:

· Introducing the non reimbursement for acts of medical care by social services until the end of the year. Furthermore, it has already announced that it is necessary to prepare for “other sacrifices” to fill the 2 billion Euro “hole” in the social security budget.

· Encouragement to take out mortgages with tax relief on the interest will push households further into debt and push the price of construction and interest rates higher still, making the housing problem more dramatic. A larger and larger part of the working class will be thrown into the streets or not be able to find decent housing.

· The third attack front is the single work contract (contrat de travail unique) known as “flexisecurity”. This allows the simplification of redundancy procedures making it easier to impose extra work on proletarians, with extra hours paid as normal time as much as possible. In any case, this overtime will not count for redundancy nor for pensions. This contract will also allow a growing blackmail of all workers, constrained not only to go from one workplace to another but also from one job to another at less pay, under the threat of redundancy. The growth in working hours, in productivity, an enormous pressure on wages, the permanent threat of redundancy – this is what is in store for the working class in the coming months.

· The objective is also to reduce the official unemployment statistics to 5% with part time, precarious work, as well as imposing compulsory work in order to continue to obtain dole money, with the right to it lost in case of refusal.

· The government has clearly announced its intention to make cuts in the civil service. Plans for redundancies and job losses will continue to rain down.

· The maintenance of ‘minimum service’ in transport until the end of the year aims to prevent a massive strike in this key sector such as that by rail workers which frightened the bourgeoisie in the winter of 1986/87. The most obvious aim of this project is to pass the law just before the end of the special retirement arrangements due in early 2008, which is particularly targeting the SNCF and RATP (French railways). It is a question of diffusing the most militant sectors which were also the spearhead of the strikes and demonstrations in the public services in 1995 against the Juppé plan which had exactly the same aim of stopping the special pension arrangements.

This is just a prelude to the attack on the retirement age for all which will be “reviewed” and corrected as a whole with the aim of raising it to 67 as is proposed in Britain and Germany.

All this is, not surprisingly, accompanied by the immediate reinforcement of the state’s repressive apparatus: immediately after the election the deportation of illegal immigrants was taken up with great zeal; one of the first measures of the new parliament will be to fix minimum penalties for repeat offenders.

The ‘Sarkozy era’ is being prepared for the great growth in social inequality that was already apparent in the policies of Reagan in the US or even more in those of Thatcher in Britain during the 1980s.

The response to government attacks is not the vote but the development of the class struggle

Workers, and in particular the younger generation, have recently been influenced by the ideological barrage from the left and the extreme left exploiting their fear of Sarkozy (since he crystallises their anxiety about the future) to swamp them in illusions about the elections and the democratic mystification. But they must not panic in the face of the loss of these illusions. Their conviction that capitalism has no future to offer them can only be strengthened.

The young generations of workers have already shown their capacity to oppose the bourgeoisie’s attacks effectively and get them withdrawn, with the struggle against the CPE in France last year. They made clear that this attack was an attack against all proletarians. They sought to bring to life truly proletarian methods of struggle in the universities, although not always fully conscious of this: general assemblies that were open, not only to their teachers and education employees but to workers, employed and unemployed; nomination of elected delegates who could be recalled at any time by the assemblies; interventions or leaflets calling on paid workers to join their struggle. Proletarians must take up this experience again which shows that the development of the class struggle is the only realistic response to the attacks of this system which condemns all workers to increasing exploitation and poverty. The development of these struggles depends on the capacity to affirm the unity and solidarity of all workers beyond the factory, the enterprise, the sector or national frontiers.

Unions are key to the bourgeoisie’s sabotage of the development of the workers’ fight-back

The government is preparing the blows it has in store for us by engaging in a broad “preliminary policy of social dialogue” with the unions. What does this mean? That the latter are closely associated with the government in order to make us take the medicine. We can already see how this has been started. All the union leaders (Le Duigou or Maryse Dumas for the CGT, Mailly for FO and Chereque for the CFDT) have appeared on the TV to declare “we are ready for dialogue and negotiation”. On leaving the Elysée Palace they have welcomed the government’s ‘positive climate for cooperation’ – and with good reason!. While they proclaim their ‘intransigence’ in respect of the ‘principle’ of the ‘right to strike’, they are already driving home the idea that in practice, for instance over the ‘service minimum’, ‘problems should be examined case by case, branch by branch’. They are well and truly on the same wavelength as the Sarkozy government which is only engaging in this parody of ‘dialogue’ in order to prevent a united mobilisation of all those faced with its attacks and so to allow the unions to divide workers sector by sector.

The bourgeoisie fears workers’ reaction to all these attacks. In fact it is hitting the whole working class. The question of the development of the greatest unity and active solidarity in its response is posed more clearly than ever.

This is why the unions are called on to play such an important and prominent role, assigned to them by the whole bourgeoisie, in order to sabotage the struggles.

Government and unions have a division of labour to prevent the workers’ mobilisation that, if it gives rise to a struggle might, for example, draw other workers and other sectors to follow this example.

Faced with struggles the state can count on the unions to do everything, to carry out their manoeuvres, to empty them of any expression of workers’ solidarity by keeping their reactions within the confines of the corporatist framework of the enterprise, as at Alcatel, Airbus or in the car industry.

We should remember how, in 2003, the unions brought about the defeat of the general mobilisation against the ‘pensions reform’ by organising the isolation of the education sector.

In the months to come we will see how the ‘iron man’ Sarkozy is not the only enemy of the working class. There is no doubt that his role is to attack the working class in the overt defence of the interests of the national capital. The more dangerous enemies are the false friends, the unions, who permanently sabotage our struggles and lead us to defeat in order to allow the government and bosses to push through their attacks. W 1.6.07 (from Revolution Internationale no 380)

Suddenly everyone wants us to have an extra holiday. In January last year Gordon Brown proposed a day for Britain to celebrate its national identity when everyone could express a “united shared sense of purpose” and “embrace the Union flag”. Indeed “All the United Kingdom should honour it. Not ignore it. We should assert that the Union flag is a flag for tolerance and inclusion”. A national day would commemorate Britishness and show Labour as a modern patriotic party. Left wing singer Billy Bragg said that “the thing that binds us together is our civic identity which is Britishness”.

More recently TUC boss Brendan Barber proposed a Community Day to be held at the end of October, “to celebrate our shared values as a nation”. This was followed by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne who want a day to “celebrate what we’re proudest of in this country” in a “citizenship revolution”. Immigrants will have to earn points before they can become citizens, young people will get citizens’ packs when they hit 18 telling them what is expected of adults. We are all encouraged to celebrate civic values and our British heritage, show a debt of gratitude to war veterans who helped defend The British Empire, and be prepared for an annual State of the Nation speech from the Prime Minister, like those delivered by the President in the US.

This orgy of nationalism is also sustained in Gordon Brown’s demand for “British workers for British jobs” and Margaret Hodge’s call for council homes to be given to indigenous Brits before immigrants. These Labour bigwigs say that they don’t want to be outflanked by the arguments of the British National Party and need to show that they are as patriotic as anyone else, and have a tough approach on immigration.

No one should have any doubt about Labour’s nationalist credentials. In the world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45 Labour rallied to the flag and, with the help of the unions, played an essential part in recruiting for the war effort and in maintaining social order at home. The Blair government, like every other Labour government since the first in 1924, has made the national interests of British capitalism its priority at every turn. Figures like Churchill and Thatcher might have been more obviously belligerent and jingoistic, but Labour has deployed a whole range of rhetoric devoted to exactly the same national cause, using humanitarianism, anti-totalitarianism and the defence of democracy in its intervention in ex-Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Take all the talk of ‘community’ and ‘shared values’. Its constant repetition is designed to instil the idea that somehow, we’re all, whether poor or rich, unemployed or millionaire, homeless or stately home owner, still linked by some common thread, by some inscrutable Britishness. It would certainly suit the ruling class if workers bought into this idea wholesale, if they accepted the nation as the fundamental unit of society. However, when workers enter into struggle they find that their interests are in conflict with their exploiters, with the capitalist state, and that there are no ‘shared values’ when police are attacking a picket line or demonstration. On the contrary, far from there being some mysterious British identity, when workers begin to develop a sense of class identity they begin to appreciate that they are part of an international class that can ultimately only defend its interests on an international level. Where the capitalist class values anything that will assist it in its endless competition of each against all, workers value anything that can contribute to the development of consciousness, organisation and solidarity. Nationalism, whether from the left or right, is a virulent enemy of the working class. Car 8/6/7

So the generosity of the G8 countries has not lived up to the commitments made at Gleneagles, but the promises to double aid to Africa by 2010 have been reiterated. Real money was promised for tackling HIV, TB and malaria, but this is not just for Africa and there is no evidence that this is new money. Promises cost nothing, but they are good spin. It is no wonder that celebrity campaigners like Sir Bob Geldof and Bono are making a fuss.

Can aid from the richest capitalist nations answer the needs of some of the world’s poorest populations in Africa and elsewhere? Can capitalism, through aid, trade or any other measure, actually solve the problems of starvation, disease and poverty? To listen to the G8, Geldof and Bono you would think so. But to answer this question we need to understand how Africa got into the state it is in today, to look at how capitalism has destroyed the pre-capitalist systems as it came in contact with them.

When the capitalist nations of Europe engaged in the scramble for Africa they were not looking to give aid, but to make a profit. And the populations they found there were not waiting for a food handout, nor for a charity to teach them to fish or farm or hunt, but producing for themselves according to the development of their economies and cultures at the time. These were destroyed by new settlements, by force, but above all by trade, by cheap mass produced goods that put many small scale producers out of business.

However, the destruction of traditional subsistence economies has accelerated from the middle of the 20th Century, sometimes through imposing single cash crops (ground nuts in Ghana, cotton, coffee…), sometimes through imperialist war or disease, sometimes through development aid which becomes an enormous debt that the population has to repay (and that will only be written off when it is clear it can never be paid back). But behind all these destructive influences is capitalism’s ruthless need to exploit every last market and source of raw materials, and to carve up the world into spheres of strategic interest.

As a result millions have been forced off the land, into shanty towns, into refugee camps and feeding stations, into fleeing to the more industrialised countries of Europe. Starvation and disease are the results of capitalist development in Africa today. Aid, even if it can help a few individuals, cannot reverse this tide.

Capitalism, as a system for producing and distributing the means of existence, has long since ceased to be of any positive benefit to humanity. This is why a revolution is needed, the fundamental reorganisation of society in accordance with human need, not the inhuman needs of the market. Alex 9.6.07

There are increasing signs of a world-wide revival of the class struggle. In the last issue of World Revolution we wrote about the wave of strikes that has swept across Egypt in recent months, where workers have shown a very high level of class solidarity. In May/June we have seen, among other things: Buenos Aires metro workers holding general assemblies and organising a strike against a pay deal agreed by their own union; new spontaneous walk-outs in three Airbus plants in Germany against the threatened job cuts (these follow similar strikes at Airbus France); further wildcats by Italian airport workers, Canadian transport workers, and a whole number of sectors in Zimbabwe, where workers are demanding pay rises in the face of a level of inflation that means nothing short of starvation.

Here we are publishing accounts of recent strikes by miners in Peru, written by an ICC sympathiser there, and of the air traffic controllers’ strike in Brazil, which also reveals significant developments in class consciousness. And although this strike seems to have been defeated, it is now being followed by a major wave of strikes and occupations, the biggest since 1986, involving metal workers, public sector workers, universities and other sectors. To keep up with the situation we have begun a blog on our Portuguese site (enter via https://en.internationalism.org/node/2162 [12] ). We will do our best to keep our English language readers informed about these developments.

"We have reached the limits of human endurance, we are in no fit condition to maintain this service, which is of great importance to this country, given the way we are managed and treated. WE HAVE NO CONFIDENCE IN OUR EQUIPMENT, OR IN THOSE WHO MANAGE US! We are working with rifles pointed at us.." This is how the air traffic controllers([1]) of Brasilia, Curitiba, Manaos and Salvador, dramatically expressed themselves in a Manifesto([2]), before paralysing the services from midday Friday 30 March, by calling a hunger strike and shutting themselves into their workplaces, in order to put pressure on the Aeronautical Command, the military organ responsible for air traffic control in Brazil. At 14.00, at the end of the morning shift at CINDACTA-1 (Centro Integrado de Defense Aérea y Control de Tráfico Aéreo) in Brasilia, which controls 80% of air traffic in the country and employs 120 controllers, the controllers decided to occupy their workplaces in order to continue their movement. Faced with the repressive measures of Aeronautical Command, which ordered the arrest of 16 controllers and threatened "to apply regulations" and imprison the "mutineers", at 18.50 the controllers decided to spread the movement to other control centres. This paralysed 49 of the 67 airports in the country. At 0.30 on Saturday 31st the strike was suspended, after the government revoked the orders to imprison the strikers and agreed to meet their demands; principally taking the air traffic control service out of military control.

Solidarity is the foundation of the struggle

Following the collision of two planes at Mato Grosso, in western central Brazil on 29 September, which left 154 dead, the controllers have carried out various "folded arms" actions against the accusations of the government and military authorities which tried to make them take the blame.

In their Manifesto, the workers defend themselves against these lies: "Six months after the collision there have been no positive signs about the difficulties faced by the air traffic controllers. On the contrary, they have got worse. As if these technical-work difficulties are not bad enough, we are also accused of being saboteurs, in order to try to cover up the faults in the management of the system...".

The strike expressed the air traffic controllers' indignation faced with the response of the government and the High Command; "the repression of the military high command against the Sergeant air traffic controllers has generated such a dissatisfaction that we are not going to remain silent faced with such injustice and the impunity of those truly responsible for this chaos".

This strike has exposed the hypocrisy of the whole of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and its involvement in the crisis of air transport: this applies to today's left 2government as well as to those of the right. They denounce the incapacity of the Lula government and its efforts to hide the long-term deterioration of the air traffic control system - which began before it came to power - and the uncontrollable growth of competition between the airlines, the policy of cutting costs, the over selling of tickets and the increase in the number of flights, leading to the air traffic control system working in extreme conditions. As for Lula he is also responsible, since he has not put in place the necessary operational measures that would benefit the whole of the system. Instead he has given priority to investing in the Grupo Transportes Especiales (GTE), which deals with the Presidential Airbus and flights for the highest reaches of the government, civil and military hierarchy.

The workers' action has put the cat amongst the pigeons. It has made public a situation that has been either hidden or distorted in order that workers in this sector, passengers and the general population did not know what was happening. In this way this strike, short but with a wide impact, is an expression of the air traffic controllers' solidarity with other workers of the sector and with the population which could be affected by air accidents. It shows that the proletariat, through its conscious, political and organised combats, has the capacity to carry out struggles against capital in favour of labour and the whole of society, that it has the means to overcome the impotence and frustration that the bourgeoisie condemns us to.

Government and unions surprised by workers' action

The government and unions were surprised and overwhelmed by these events. The aeronautics authorities believed that the controllers would back down faced with the threat of imprisonment and the application of military discipline. However, these measures only served to radicalise the movement. Faced with the radicalisation of a movement that could have had unpredictable consequences, Lula himself had to intervene (he was on his comfortable Airbus going to meet his colleague Bush), making full use of his past experience as the ‘social fireman' of the workers' struggles, an expertise eagerly gained as a union leader in the ABC of Sao Paulo. It was not because of his democratic credentials or being a ‘worker president' that Lula was able to force the High Command of the Brazilian Air force to negotiate with the strikers, but because of his profound experience as a trade unionist, that is as an agent of the capitalist state amongst the workers. He understood that the workers were determined to take the struggle to its ultimate consequences; that this expression of workers' anger could spread like wildfire. Thus it was vital to undermine this movement.

The unions and associations did nothing to sustain the struggling workers. The Sindicato Nacional dos Tabalhadores de Proteção ao Vôo (SNTPV) which organised the civilian controllers, was forced to publish the Manifesto on its website. It's President Jorge Botelho tried to divide the controllers by declaring that "the Manifesto has only been signed by the military controllers", therefore the civilian controllers joined the strike despite the opposition of the union. As for the other unions in this sector, controlled by the PT (Workers' Party), they were careful not to make any statements that could have made things difficult for their supreme leader on his trip to Washington.

The movement however did come up against illusions and traps. The Manifesto expressed certain illusions that the workers had about the government's ‘democratic opening' and ‘transparency': "Brazil is living through hitherto unknown moments of democracy and transparency with the recovery of ethical values and respect in public life". The workers are still dazzled by the Left's beautiful words. This is the Left of capital, and as such makes use of the hypocrisy of the capitalist class; as well as sustaining the political and ideological machinery of bourgeois democracy though which the bourgeoisie maintains the dictatorship of capital against labour.

Lost illusions

A few days after the strike, the government denied the validity of the agreement signed by its representatives and the strikers, which accepted their demands. In a furious press and public announcement President Lula accused the controllers of being "irresponsible" and "traitors" for not having shown respect for institutions and the military hierarchy: "People have to know that in a democratic regimen, it is fundamental to respect institutions and the hierarchy" (Folha Online, 5/4/07). This announcement opened the way to open repression, reinforcing the bourgeoisie's military's intentions to punish and incarcerate the most combative elements (those who at the beginning of the movement had reacted to the imprisoning of 18 controllers). The negotiations that Lula had demanded were only a ruse to exhaust the movement and win time.

We should not be in the least surprised because governments, whether of the right or left, along with the unions, are nothing but tools used by the bourgeoisie to serve the interests of the ruling class. The proletariat, in Brazil as well as elsewhere, have learnt to their cost that having trust in so-called civil liberties, the promises of the bosses and governments, allows the bourgeoisie not only to combat their struggles, and leaves them disarmed faced with the state's offensives and the whole panoply of repression, reprisals, lay-offs and violence.

Perspectives

The explosion of the controllers struggle has shown that neither bayonets nor the unions (whether controlled by the right or the left) can prevent proletarian struggle. This struggle demonstrated that if the left, under orders from Lula, has been able to contain the workers struggles, they have not disappeared. Despite the anti-working class actions of the PT and the CUT, the Brazilian proletariat is still alive and kicking. In this situation the labour ‘reforms' put forwards by the Lula government cannot fail to provoke reactions from the Brazilian proletariat[3].

In order to gain its real aims, the proletariat has to draw the lessons of its struggles, of the struggles of the whole class. It must criticise its illusions about the capacity of class society to offer a way out of the degradation of its living conditions The air traffic controllers strike has demonstrated that the strength of the proletariat is not only quantitative but also qualitative. The controllers, despite numbering no more than 3,000, have been able to confront the largest state in Latin America thanks to their high level of solidarity, to their organisation and their politicisation, and because they had the implicit support of important sectors of the working class. ICC 04/04/07

 

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[1] The great majority of Brazilian air traffic are military personal with the rank of sergeant. Of 2289 controllers, only 154 are civilians.

 

[2] The complete text of the controllers manifesto can be read on the website of the "Sincicato Nacional dos Trabalhadores de Proteção ao Vôo" (SNTPV), which organises only the civilian air traffic controllers. The union, despite not offering support for the struggle, was forced to publish the manifesto due to the movement's strength.

 

[3] The government has ‘reformed' legislation in relation to labour and the unions, under the pretext of ‘jobs creation'. These ‘reforms' do nothing but make work more flexible, and increase the casualisation of the Brazilian proletariat in order to greatly benefit national capital.

 

The miner’s strike in Peru is a fact. The miners that work for the Chinese company Shougang began their strike three weeks ago. The struggle has spread to all the mining centres in the country. Inevitably, for the moment, the unions have carried out their reactionary role, especially the union at the countries largest mine: Yanacocha (a gold mine in Cajaqmarca in the North of Peru, which generates $800 to $1000 million a year). This union held isolated discussions with the company and did not call a strike. Similarly, at Oroya the unions were denounced by the press for working. It clearly wanted to break the minimum unity since the Mining Federation had said that 33 union sites were on strike.

At Chimbote, where the peasant and unemployed struggle had been going for some weeks, the Sider Peru company was totally paralysed. Wives marched with the miners, along with much of the city’s population. In the city of Ilo streets were blockaded, in Cerro de Pasco 15 miners were arrested for stoning the local headquarters of the regional government.

The press carried out its reactionary role by saying that the strike was a failure. Acting as the mouthpiece of the state, the means of disinformation, along with the Minister of Mines (Pinilla) said that only 5,700 miners out of a total of 120,000 were on strike. The Mining Federation said that 22,000 were on strike.

At the Casapalca mine, on the Sierra de Lima, the miners detained the mining engineers who had threatened to sack them if they abandoned their posts. The Minister Pinilla declared the strike illegal because it had been called four days before it began, rather than the 5 that the law called for. There are a lot of temporary workers in the mines and the minister warned that those miners who did not return to work on the Thursday would be made unemployed.

Another aspect of this struggle was the involvement of the miners employed by sub-contracting companies. A miner employed directly by a company earns $23 a day, whilst a miner subcontracted to the mines, by one of these companies, earns $9 a day. An advertisement by a miner’s wife pointed out that President Alan García had promised in his election speeches to get rid of the sub-contractors.

On the other hand, a news programme showed a demoralised Shougang miner saying that three weeks had passed and he was not able to eat. The tears of the miner telling of his misery and that of his family which had to stay in the provinces could demoralise other miners on strike. Some students of the University of San Marcos in Lima showed solidarity with the miners and took some food for the ‘communal kitchens’, the latter is a common practice in all strikes (teachers, nurses, workers etc). Food is shared amongst families there, whilst exchanging experiences and evaluating the day’s struggle.

On the other hand, the government presented the privatisation of the Michiquillay mine in Cajamarca, whose initial price was $47 million but ended up being sold off for more than $400 million, as another demoralising blow.

This indefinite national strike, the first in 20 years, has not paralysed this sector.

A comrade in Lima 30/04/07.

The events of July 1917 in Petrograd, known as the ‘July days’, represent one of the most striking episodes of the Russian revolution. In a situation of particular ferment among the working class, it fell to the Bolshevik party to see how to prevent the revolutionary process ending in a tragic defeat as the result of a premature confrontation provoked by the bourgeoisie. The lessons of these events re­main vital for the proletariat to this day.

The February insurrection had led to a situation of dual power: on the one hand the working class, organised in soviets of work­ers’ and soldiers’ deputies, and on the other hand, the bourgeoisie, represented by the Provisional Government and supported by the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary ‘con­ciliators’, particularly within the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. The more the revolution developed, the more untenable this situation became.

The ascent of the revolution

At the beginning of the revolutionary process, the workers had been full of illusions about the false promises of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary demagogues: ‘peace’, ‘solv­ing the agrarian problem’, the 8-hour day etc. But soon, especially in Petrograd, they began to see that the Soviet Executive Committee was not responding to their demands at all. On the contrary, it was becoming clear that it was acting as a shield for the objectives of the Provisional Government, which were first and foremost the re-establishment of order at the front and at the rear in order to be able to carry on the imperialist war. In its most radical bastion of Petrograd, the working class began to feel more and more that it had been duped and betrayed by the very people it had entrusted with the leadership of its councils. In a confused manner, the more advanced workers began to pose the real question: who is really exerting power, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?

The radicalisation of the workers, their growing awareness of what was at stake, got underway in mid-April, following a provocative note by the liberal minister Miliukov which reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to continuing the war. Already exasperated by all sorts of deprivations, the workers and soldiers responded immediately with spontaneous demonstrations and massive assemblies in the neighbourhoods and the factories. On 20 April, a gigantic demonstration forced Miliukov to resign. The bourgeoisie was forced to take a temporary step backwards in its war plans. The Bolsheviks were very active within this proletarian upsurge and their influence on the workers was growing. The radicalisation of the proletariat was taking place around the slogan put forward by Lenin in his April Theses: “All power to the soviets”. Throughout May, this slogan inspired more and more workers, while the Bolshevik party came to be seen more and more as the only party that was really on the side of the working class. All over Russia, the revolutionary fer­ment was expressed in a frenetic development of working class organisation. In Petrograd the factory committees were already domi­nated by the Bolsheviks. In June, the political agitation continued, culminating in a giant demonstration on the 18th. Originally called by the Mensheviks and the Soviet Executive to support the Provisional Government, who were just about to launch a new military offensive, it rebounded on the ‘conciliators’. The immense majority of the demonstration followed Bolshevik slogans: “Down with the offensive!”, “Down with the capitalist minis­ters!”, “All power to the soviets!”

The Bolsheviks avoid the trap of a premature confrontation

When the news of the failure of the military offensive reached the capital, it fanned the revolutionary flames, but the news had not yet reached the rest of this huge country. In order to deal with this very taut situation, the bour­geoisie attempted to provoke a premature revolt in Petrograd, to crush the workers and the Bolsheviks, and then to blame the failure of the military offensive on the proletariat of the capital, claiming that it had given a ‘stab in the back’ to the frontline troops.

Such a manoeuvre was made possible by the fact that the conditions for revolution had not yet fully matured. Although discontent was rising among workers and soldiers all over the country, it had not yet reached the same depth as it had in Petrograd. The peasants still had confidence in the Provisional Government. Among the workers themselves, including those in Petrograd, the most widespread idea was not that the workers would take power themselves, but would compel the ‘socialist’ leaders to ‘really take power’ into their hands. It was certain that if the revolution and the Bolshevik party had been crushed in Petrograd, the proletariat in the whole of Russia would soon have been defeated.

Petrograd was in a state of extreme turbulence. The machine-gunners, who alongside the Kronstadt sailors were the advanced guard of the revolution within the armed forces, wanted to act immediately. Striking workers were going to all the regiments calling on them to hold meetings and come out onto the streets. In this context, the bourgeoisie carried out a certain number of well-timed measures aimed at provoking revolt in the capital. The Cadet party decided to withdraw its four ministers from the government, in order to push the workers and soldiers to call for an immediate transfer of power to the soviets: the refusal of the Mensheviks and SRs to support the slogan “all power to the soviets” had been justified by the ‘need’ to collaborate with the ‘demo­cratic bourgeoisie’, but now this excuse no longer had any sense. At the same time, the government threatened to send the most revolutionary regiments of the capital to the front. In a few hours, the proletariat of Petrograd rose up, armed itself and rallied around the slogan “all power to the soviets”. However, at the 18 June demonstration the Bolsheviks had already warned the workers against any premature action. Considering that it was not possible to stop this new movement, they decided to put themselves at its head, supporting it, but arguing that the armed demonstration of 500,000 armed work­ers and soldiers should have an “organised and peaceful character”. That very evening, the workers understood that the momentary impasse they were in made it impossible to take power straight away. The next day, following the directives of the Bolsheviks, they stayed at home. At this point ‘fresh’ troops arrived in Petrograd to prop up the government and its Menshevik and SR aco­lytes. In order to vaccinate them against Bolshevism, they were welcomed by rifle fire. This was the work of provocateurs armed by the bourgeoisie but it was attributed to the Bolsheviks. The repression then began. The hunt for Bolsheviks was underway. It was accompanied by a campaign accusing the Bolsheviks of being agents of Germany. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders had to go into hiding, Trotsky and others were arrested. “The blow struck at the masses and the party in July was very considerable, but it was not a decisive blow. The victims were counted by tens and not by tens of thousands. The working class issued from this trial, not headless and not bled to death. It fully preserved its fighting cadres, and these cadres had learned much” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, ‘Could the Bolsheviks have seized the power in July?’ [15]).

The lessons of July 1917

The events of July are a ringing refutation of the bourgeoisie’s current ideological cam­paigns which present the October revolution as a Bolshevik plot against the ‘young democ­racy’ installed by the February uprising, and against the ‘democratic’ parties the latter had put in power - Cadets, Mensheviks, and SRs. In the July Days, the real plotters were these same ‘democratic’ parties, who had con­spired to the hilt with the most reactionary sectors of the Russian bourgeoisie, and with the bourgeoisie of other imperialist countries, in an attempt to inflict a decisive and bloody defeat on the working class.

July 1917 thus proves that the working class must overcome all its illusions in those former workers’ parties who have gone over to the enemy. Such illusions weighed heavily on the class during the July Days. But this experience also definitively showed that the Mensheviks and the SRs had gone over to the counter­revolution. In mid-July, Lenin was already clearly drawing this lesson: “After July 4, the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, working hand in glove with the monarchists and the Black Hundreds, secured the support of the petty-bourgeois Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, partly by intimidating them, and handed over real state power to the Cavaignacs, the military gang, who are shooting insubordi­nate soldiers at the front and smashing the Bolsheviks in Petrograd.” (‘On Slogans’ [16]).

History shows that the provocation of prema­ture confrontations is a tried and tested part of the bourgeoisie’s arsenal against the working class. In 1919 and 1921 in Germany, this tactic led to bloody repression against the proletariat. If the Russian revolution is the only real example of a case where the working class has been able to avoid such a trap, it was above all because the Bolshevik party was able to play a decisive role as the political leadership of the class.

The Bolshevik party was convinced that it had the responsibility of permanently analys­ing the balance of forces between the two opposing classes, as a basis for intervening correctly at every moment in the development of the struggle. It knew that it was vital to study the nature, the strategy and tactics of the enemy class if it was to be able to understand and deal with its manoeuvres. It was impregnated with the marxist understanding that the revolution­ary seizure of power is a kind of art or science and it was perfectly aware that an inopportune insurrection would be just as fatal as the failure of a seizure of power carried out at the right moment. The party’s profound confidence in the proletariat and in marxism, its ability to base itself on their historic strength, allowed it to make a firm stand against the illusions of the workers. These capacities also allowed it to resist the pressure of the anarchists and what Trotsky called “the occasional interpreters of the indignation of the masses” who, guided by their petty bourgeois impatience, were agitating for immediate action.

But what was also decisive in the July Days was the profound confidence of the workers themselves in their class party, since this made it possible for the latter to intervene and act as a political leadership even when it was clear that it did not share the masses illusions or immediate aims.

The Bolsheviks faced up to the repression which followed these events without falling into any illusions in democracy, and while fighting tooth and nail against the slanders aimed at them. Today, 90 years on, the bourgeoisie hasn’t changed its nature - on the contrary it has become even more experienced and cynical. The current campaigns against the communist left are based on the same logic as those launched in July 1917 against the Bolsheviks. Then, the bourgeoisie tried to get workers to believe that since the Bolsheviks refused to support the Entente, they must be on the side of Germany. Today, it is trying to give credit to the idea that since the communist left refused to support the ‘anti-fascist’ imperialist camp in the Second World War, it is because it and its present successors are pro-Nazi. Today’s revolutionaries, who tend to underestimate the significance of such campaigns, have to understand that they are designed to prepare future pogroms. They have much to learn from the experience of the Bolsheviks who, after the July Days, moved heaven and earth to defend their reputation within the working class.

During these decisive days, the action of the Bolshevik party allowed the ascending revolution to overcome the traps laid by the bourgeoisie. Only three months before, the party had been in profound disarray concerning the tasks facing the working class. But, by re-appropriating the marxist method, by learning from its own experience and the experience of the class in movement, it was more and more able to play the role of political leadership demanded of it. Thus, the July Days prepared the class and its party for the insurrection of October.

KB

(First published in WR 206. One of a series of articles on the Russian Revolution, the previous one, on the April Theses was in WR 303 [17] )

This book can be purchased directly from the ICC [19] or on Amazon.co.uk [20]

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The article that follows is based on the presentations given to ICC public forums in London and Birmingham

The ICC has just published a new book. Communism, not a nice idea but a material necessity. It’s the first volume of a collection of articles that we started publishing as a series in the early 1990s.

Responding to the barrage on the ‘death of communism’

At that time, and for some time after, you couldn’t move without coming across another book, article or TV programme on the ‘death of communism’. As communists we had two important things to explain. Firstly there was the basic question: what sort of societies had existed in Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe. In the west they were called communist, in the east socialist, and most of the leftists said they were some variety of workers’ state. This was a fairly straightforward thing to explain. It was clear that the regimes in Eastern Europe were repressive and militarised – western propaganda not only said that all the time, it happened to be true. What the ICC and other groups of the communist left were able to show was that the ruling class in every country in the eastern bloc exploited the working class, based itself on the value created by the working class, that the states in the east were capitalist, were apparatuses used by a capitalist class, just as throughout the rest of the world. It was also necessary to show that these states were imperialist in their appetites, as was shown in the Second World War, in Korea and Vietnam where the USSR backed the regimes in the north, in the Warsaw pact interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, throughout the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere in the world. In the words of the old Solidarity group, the free world wasn’t free and the communist not communist.

That was the easy thing to show – but it still left something else to explain. If what existed in Eastern Europe wasn’t communism then what was communism? The basic refrain was that communism was a nice idea but it wouldn’t work in practice, it went against selfish human nature – Russia proved that. The series of articles on communism has tried to trace the history of the debates within the workers’ movement about the meaning of communism and the means to achieve it. The first volume is mainly devoted to the 19th century. A second volume will deal with the period from the mass strikes of 1905 to the end of the revolutionary wave after the First World War. A third volume is underway.

From primitive communism to class society

The first thing to recognise is that for most of human history - however far back you measure it - there has not been exploitation, there has not been class society. There have been small bands of hunter-gatherers without property and therefore no basis for the establishment of classes based on property. Not only that. If you look at humanity’s emergence from the animal world it was not based on being physically powerful or a natural predator – the earliest hominids were probably just scavengers. But how did they not only survive, but actually succeed so dramatically? It was as a social animal, working together, in hunting, foraging, exploring, in tool making, in the development of language and above all of consciousness. Emerging humanity was a social creature, absolutely dependent – in a life or death sense – on being able to rely on others, on maintaining relations of trust, of solidarity, of communication within small communities. By considering such questions, the book on communism touches on what it is to be human, anticipating a number of the themes currently being discussed in the ICC around the question of ethics (see the orientation text in International Reviews 127 and 128). In particular, the book devotes a lot of space to the problem of man’s alienation and thus to how alienation can be overcome in a truly human society.

The period before the emergence of inequality and exploitation is known as primitive communism by marxists, and its basic characteristics are recognised by all serious paleo-anthropologists. We don’t idolise this period, seeing clearly its limitations. We can also see the advances made with the development of agriculture, the beginnings of a social surplus and the gains – both material and theoretical – made in class societies – whether Asiatic, slave or feudal. Class society is, therefore – in terms of the history of humanity – relatively recent. If agriculture is only ten thousand years old, class society later and the first states not appearing until maybe five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia and then Egypt and China – it’s clear that a lot of the things we are told are innate in human nature are actually the product of particular phases of historic development. To this we can add that as far as we are aware from written history, there have also been those who imagined an end to class society, an end to the state, throughout much of the history of class society. However, typically this took religious forms, or was at the level of a dream with no real conception of how society could actually change.

It’s in the beginning of capitalist production and the emergence of the proletariat that we begin to see critiques which link the suffering within class society with the possibilities of a future classless society. In the peasant wars in Germany in the early 16th century, with Winstanley and the Diggers and similar groups in the English Revolution in the 17th century, with Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals in the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, we see the beginnings of ideas that link social revolt with the possibilities of a new society not based on property.

But it’s with the increasing dominance of capitalist society in the 19th century that we see the contributions of those who – although described as ‘utopian’ – had insights which subsequent revolutionaries were able to build on. Saint-Simon saw the French Revolution as a war between classes. Fourier was a trenchant critic of bourgeois hypocrisy, who also described periods of historical development, and who saw a future society where labour had become passionate enjoyment. Robert Owen looked for an alternative to capitalist exploitation, and participated in the early attempts of the working class to organise itself. However, the one thing that these critics lacked was any sense of the significance of the working class and its struggles. This is where the contributions of Marx and Engels have their unique importance.

The emergence of marxist communism

The word socialism dates from the 1830s, communism from the early 1840s. The reason these terms emerged and became known rapidly in a number of languages was because there were people posing the possibility of a new society. What made Marx distinct in a milieu that was alive with various forms of social criticism? It’s certainly right to see French politics, German philosophy and English economics as important elements in the marxist theory of communist revolution. French politics, in terms of the view of society as made up of conflicting classes. German philosophy, in building on the method of Hegel. English economics, with some of the understanding of how the capitalist economy functions, in particular the central role of the working class in the creation of value. All these are important aspects in the development of marxism. But what’s most important is the link between the working class and the possibility of communism. Marx identified the working class as the only revolutionary class within capitalism, but it is also an exploited class. At the heart of the capitalist economy, the working class is the only class capable of overthrowing the exploiting bourgeoisie, but because it is an exploited class it has no new exploitative relations of production to introduce. A society created by the working class is going to be based on the relations of association, the links of solidarity that are intrinsic to the proletariat, a class whose only weapons are its consciousness and its self-organisation.

So although there were in the 19th century many socialist, communist, anarchist, mutualist, collectivist currents, it was only marxism that was really able to pose fundamental questions and also give coherent answers.

Lessons of the class struggle

In 1848 there were revolts across Europe. More radical or democratic factions came to power or at least influence. But instead of proving to be allies of the working class they turned out to be just another face of bourgeois order, intent on imposing order on the working class as soon as they became part of the state. This showed that the working class had to fight for its independence, to struggle for its own demands, developing its own political programme and organisations and never surrendering its weapons to capitalist governments. The basic question of class autonomy is relevant to the immediate defensive struggles of the working class as well as the historic struggle for communism.

With the defeat of the working class after 1848 Marx identified the importance of the material situation in which workers found themselves. If capitalism was still developing, growing, flourishing, then revolution was not on the agenda. Workers could expect decades of defeat. However, he anticipated the eventual permanent crisis of the capitalist system, and with that crisis the potentially revolutionary struggle of the working class. It’s only with the decadence of the capitalist mode of production that revolution becomes a real material possibility. In this context, the book looks at Marx’s differences with the anarchists and others, who saw revolution primarily a question of will, possible at any moment regardless of the objective conditions.

Another key area in which marxism made a vital contribution was in the study of capital. This might seem a very dry or obscure subject but it provides essential theoretical underpinnings in the struggle for communism. For a start, the understanding of the ascendance and decadence of past modes of production is easy to identify historically, but understanding capitalism’s development and the contradictions that it can’t overcome is vital if the working class is to be fully conscious of the system it has to destroy. But also in examining commodity production, and, in particular, understanding the labour theory of value, it’s possible to see both the nature of the current society and the potential and essential characteristics of a future society not based on exploitation, competition and the struggle of each against all.

But of all the events in the 19th century that helped in the development of the theory of the communist revolution the Paris Commune of 1871 was probably the most important. Precisely because of the way that the false view of communism identifies it with the power of the state, Marx’s understanding of what happened with the first workers’ government can’t be underestimated. Far from being a movement for state control Marx saw that workers couldn’t just take over the existing state but had to destroy it. Not only that, they had to organise to ensure their domination over society, to stop the organisation of counter-revolutionary forces, to establish, in the phrase most characteristic of marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx and Engels also developed an understanding, taken up by others later, of the distinction between reform and revolution. They lived in a time when the bourgeoisie could concede lasting reforms, but Marx and Engels never lost sight of the nature of the state or the revolutionary goal.

The social democratic parties and the Second International contained many revolutionary currents and their contributions on the meaning of socialism, and in particular the views of militants like William Morris and August Bebel on general social questions such as the oppression of women, the environment and the transformation of work are examined in the book. But the tragedy of social democracy was that it increasingly fell under the influence of those who came to see reforms and a place in parliament as being just about the sum total of the socialist movement. All this is dealt with in the book.

This volume covers the period prior to the 1905 revolution in Russia. It shows theoretical developments in the 19th century, in the light of social change, in the light of the experience of the working class. It tries to get to the core of the marxist contribution to the workers’ movement.

It’s worth saying at this stage that there are of course other currents that have a different approach to the marxist contributions from the 19th century. The Bordigist groups of the Italian Left claim that marxism has been unvarying since the Communist Manifesto of 1848. They completely deny the profound developments made by the workers’ movement since and also the change in capitalism from a developing mode of production to a system in decay. As a footnote the Socialist Party of Great Britain claim to be a long-term thorough-going marxist current, but they deny point blank that the working class has to destroy the state and say the tools of capitalist oppression can be used by socialists

This book, like those we have published on the Italian, German-Dutch, Russian and British Communist Left, and like the two volumes to come, is a contribution to discussion within the workers’ movement, among those who want to participate in a class movement that can destroy capitalism. That discussion can take place in the pages of journals, in online forums, but also right here. Barrow 12/5/7