During the summer there was no break for the class struggle. In Britain, strikes by postal workers, on the London underground and in the public sector expressed a growing discontent within the working class. In the post office 50,000 jobs have gone in recent years and now another 40,000 are threatened. On the tube, following the collapse of Metronet, there are threats to both jobs and conditions. These are the reasons workers struggle: to fight against attacks on their working and living conditions.

There will be no let up in these attacks because of the state of the capitalist economy. Its crisis is worsening and compelling the ruling class everywhere to do everything to cut costs, regardless of its impact on workers.

The economic crisis is international and so is the struggle of the working class.

In the last issue of WR, for example, we recorded how in South Africa in June the working class mounted the biggest strike there since the end of apartheid in 1994. During July and August the struggles continued. There was an unofficial strike in Durban during the building of one of the stadiums for the 2010 World Cup. There have been strikes by car workers, by miners, in a range of manufacturing industries, by health workers and metal workers. Many petrol stations were closed down as a result of a strike in the fuel sector. At two platinum mines 3250 workers were dismissed following an unofficial strike in which workers from one company came out in solidarity with those from another (the unions subsequently helping one of the companies recruit to replace those sacked). In a series of actions in July there were strikes in the six tyre-manufacturing plants of Dunlop, Goodyear, Bridgestone and Continental.

These are only some representative examples of the development of recent workers' struggles in South Africa. The scale might not be typical, but they are definitely part of the international recovery of the class struggle that has been underway since 2003.

Earlier on this year (WR 302, 304) we wrote about the wave of illegal strikes that swept a number of sectors of Egyptian industry. For a country that is supposed to be one of the economic success stories of the Middle East, there is a remarkable amount of enduring discontent and already a developing understanding of the need for class solidarity across the divisions of trade and enterprise. There were also attempts to crush the movement by force.

In Latin America struggles have also been developing. In Mexico it was reported that strikes had hit 3715 enterprises in the first 6 months of this year, the highest figure in 15 years. In Peru during the spring there was an indefinite nation-wide strike of coal miners - the first in 20 years. This was followed soon afterwards by a nation-wide teachers' strike. In Argentina during May and June, Buenos Aires metro workers held general assemblies and organised a strike against a pay ‘deal' concocted by their own union. In Brazil in March this year 120 air traffic controllers, in reaction to the dangerous state of air travel in the country and the threat to imprison 16 of their number for striking, stopped work, paralysing 49 of the country's 67 airports. This action was particularly remarkable because this sector is mostly subject to military discipline. The workers nevertheless resisted the intense pressure of the state up to and including denigration by the supposed friend of the workers - President Lula himself. The warnings by the controllers about safety in Brazilian airports were tragically confirmed in July by the disaster at Sao Paulo airport that cost nearly 200 lives.

Also in Brazil, for several weeks in June, a widespread strike movement affected the steel sector, the public sector, and universities - the most important class movement in this country since 1986.

Workers are also struggling in the richest countries

Of course a cynic might say that it's inevitable that in the ‘developing' world, where the poorest countries have lost out to the major powers of Europe, Japan and the US, it's easy to see why workers will struggle, while questioning the tendency of the struggle to develop in the countries with the strongest economies. It would be mistaken to view the situation in this way. Just a glance at the most recent examples of the class struggle in Europe gives us plenty of demonstrations of the direction things are going.

In early July at Oostakker in Belgium, there was an unofficial strike at a Volvo factory during a pay dispute, with workers walking out while the unions continued ‘negotiations' for an improved offer. Also in Belgium at the Opel plant in Antwerp there has been a whole series of strikes and protests (many of them unofficial) against the massive loss of jobs that will result from a major re-organisation.

In Spain, during April, there was a demonstration of 40,000 workers from all the enterprises in the Bay of Cadiz, expressing their solidarity in struggle with those sacked at Delphi. In May there was an even bigger movement that mobilised workers from other provinces of Andalusia. This movement of solidarity was result of the active search for support by the Delphi workers, of their families and notably their wives who organised in a collective to win the widest possible solidarity.

At about the same time spontaneous walkouts, outside of union control, took place at Airbus plants in several European countries to protest against the company's austerity plan. These strikes often involved young workers, a new generation that has already played a very active part in these struggles. In Nantes and Saint-Nazaire in France there was a real will to develop active solidarity with the striking production workers of Toulouse.

In Germany there was a series of strikes over six weeks by 50,000 Telecom workers. There have also been numerous wildcat strikes by Italian airport workers and others.

And the USA has not been immune from struggle, despite its continuing reputation for having the highest productivity in the world. As it says in a major article in Internationalism 143 (publication of our section in the US) "The working class in the US has been totally part of this resurgence. As in other countries workers in the US have been pushed by the relentless attacks on their working and living conditions by a capitalist system mired in a permanent economic crisis, to defend themselves and leave behind the period of disorientation characteristic of the decade of the 90's. As we have pointed out in our press the high point of this trend was the three-day strike by New York City transit workers over the holiday season in December 2005. However this was not an isolated incident but rather the clearest manifestation of a tendency of the class to come back to the path of the struggle as seen in the grocery worker' struggle in California in 2004 and the struggles at Boeing, North West Airlines and Philadelphia transit in 2005. This same tendency to return to the path of the struggle continued in 2006, as expressed in particular by the two-week teachers' wildcat strike in Detroit in September and the walkout by more than 12,000 workers at 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber plants in the US and Canada in October of the same year."

The article also reminds us of the central characteristics of the current phase of the class struggle:

"The emergence of a new generation of workers facing for the first time its class enemy.

The posing of the question of class solidarity both within the class as a whole and between the generations of workers.

The recovery of the historic methods and forms of struggle of the working class - mass assemblies, the mass strike.

A growing consciousness of the stakes contained in the present historical situation."

The ruling class responds with violence, threats and lies

We cannot talk about the struggle of the working class without looking at the response of the bosses, the bourgeoisie, and the capitalist states, all intensely alive to the threat of the class struggle. And here there are some differences between the responses in different countries.

In Guinea, for example, during January and February there was a strike movement that gripped the whole country in a struggle against starvation wages and food price inflation. Against this movement there was bloody repression that left over 100 people dead. In Mozambique, in July there was an unofficial strike of 4000 cane cutters. When security guards fired on their picket line one died and others were seriously hurt. In South Africa police recently fired rubber bullets at a picket line at a platinum mine. In Korea, throughout a series of sit-ins at an E.Land hypermarket chain over several weeks, there have been a number of attacks by thousands of riot police to drag workers away, often beating them up. Repression is a basic response from the ruling class to workers' struggles.

In the face of all the propaganda about the Chinese economic ‘miracle', it is important to remember that this has been accompanied by workers' struggles and that the Chinese bourgeoisie often resorts to violence. A recent report from libcom for example reports: "800 striking miners at the Tanjiashan Coal Mine in Hubei Province fought hired security guards for two hours last week after they attempted to break a six day strike. Radio Free Asia reported that the security guards set about the workers and in the ensuing clash at least one worker and one security guard died."

Apart from straightforward violent repression, there are other ways in which the state attacks workers and their struggles. For example, in Zimbabwe, because of sky-high inflation, Mugabe's government has introduced a freeze on salaries, wages, rents, service charges, prices and school fees. According to Reuters "More than 7,500 business people have been arrested and fined for breaching price controls" and Mugabe "has accused some businesses of raising prices as part of what he calls a Western plot to oust him". So, while wages are frozen, and real inflation continues in the informal economy regardless of the official cost of commodities, Mugabe makes a show of ‘curbing' those who raise prices and says the whole thing is nothing to do with the state of the economy but is a all a plot by foreigners, thereby fuelling anti-working class nationalism.

This might sound crude, but the bourgeoisies of the most developed nations are quite capable of making direct threats or resorting to blackmail. In France, for example the election of Sarkozy has brought in a campaign for the country to change its ways and follow the ruthless approach of Anglo-American capitalism. Or, in the US, General Motors and Ford, both wanting to massively cut costs, have threatened that production could easily be moved from the US to somewhere like Mexico or Thailand, where workers are paid significantly less.

But while repression shows the true face of capitalism, and thinly veiled threats can still be quite brutal in their implications, they are not the only weapons our exploiters have at their disposal. Most dangerous of all are the slogans of the left and the unions. They speak openly of struggle, but in union campaigns. They say that we must fight, but for something like nationalisations. This summer's strikes by postal workers showed what we all have to face. The left and the unions shouted about the dangers of privatisation, yet all the attacks have been undertaken by the nationalised Royal Mail. In the event of an election they will be vehemently against the Tories getting back, which effectively means agreeing to the return of the Labour government of the last ten years. And as the crisis-ridden reality of the economy becomes impossible to hide they will all demand increasing state intervention in every aspect of social life.

When we look to the best of the struggles since 2003, we can see that the working class is only strong when it fights for its own interests, with its own methods, and for its own goals. Whether facing open state violence, or the more subtle sabotage of the left and unions inside the struggle, the necessity remains for the workers to organise themselves as a social force in its own right, independent from the unions and parties which are no more than agents of the capitalist state.

WR 6/9/7 (Based partly on an article in International Review 130)

In response to the recent postal dispute and the looming conflicts in other parts of the public sector, a number of people involved in the libcom.org discussion forum, most of them public sector workers, have produced a bulletin - Dispatch - putting forward the need for the postal workers to control the struggle and link up with other sectors. We think that this is a significant development, whatever the outcome of the postal dispute which has been ‘suspended' by the unions.

The article that follows was posted on our website in August as a contribution to the discussion about this initiative. The response from the main animators of the group was largely positive, agreeing with some of our criticisms of the bulletin, in particular the need to give greater emphasis to the call for mass meetings to control the struggle. The discussion on the bulletin can be found on this thread on libcom.org [5] (and the PDF copy of the bulletin is attached to this article). Some of the posts, although sharing most of our views on the need for independence from the trade unions, expressed the view that the ICC was reading too much into this initiative - that it was basically no more or less than an effort by a small group of politicised elements and didn't represent any wider trend towards the formation of workers' groups or struggle committees. It's true that the bulletin came out towards the end of (this phase of) the postal dispute and, as a result, its intervention in the strike was posed mainly at the level of its potential. It remains to be seen whether this kind of initiative can play a significant part in future class movements. But given that we are entering a period of revival in the class struggle, we should certainly not dismiss the possibility that an initiative like Dispatch could act as a real focus for a considerable number of elements (whether ‘politicos' or ‘militant workers'- in fact the distinction is far from absolute) who want to get together to discuss how the struggle can break through the union blockade, and to actively contribute towards this happening.

---

 

Workers' groups in the recent history of the workers' movement

 

During the widespread strikes and class movements of the 1970s and 1980s, one sign of a real development of class consciousness - of an awareness within the working class that it is a distinct social force that needs to struggle for its own interests against those of capitalism - was the appearance in a whole number of countries of groups of militant workers who came together to actively influence the direction of the struggle. In general, these workers' groups or ‘struggle committees' were a response to the growing realisation that the ‘official' representatives of the workers - the trade unions - were not representing them at all, and that to take the struggle forward it was necessary to organise independently.

In some cases, especially in the ‘70s, these groupings were the residue of previous movements where the workers had elected strike committees and other coordinating bodies during the course of the struggle. Very often these groupings started with the misconception that it was possible to keep these organs alive in the absence of general assemblies and the active mobilisation of the workers, and that the militant workers' group could put itself forward as a rival form of representation to the union. Invariably these efforts failed, very often ending up with the militants becoming a new kind of trade union, acting ‘on behalf' of the workers and stifling their initiative. This was the case with many of the ‘base committees' in Italy for example.[1]

In the ‘80s, on the other hand, many of the workers' groups that appeared in and across different sectors (e.g. among health workers, education and postal workers in France and the UK) avoided this error. Rather than seeing themselves as a rival trade union, they understood that they were only a minority, and that their essential role was to act on the more general class movement. Depending on whether or not that movement was latent or open, rising or retreating, they could play a positive role by:

• acting as a focus for discussion about the lessons of past struggles and the prospects for future ones,
• reating links between militant workers in different sectors,
• intervening as a group in the workplace, in mass meetings, strikes and demonstrations,
• producing leaflets and bulletins advocating the most effective methods for the struggle.

These methods can be summarised as: self-organisation and extension. Self-organisation means that struggles are controlled by the workers' themselves, primarily through general assemblies and commissions elected by and responsible to the assemblies. Extension means spreading the struggle beyond a particular workplace or sector, going directly to other workers and calling them to express their solidarity, above all by adopting common demands and joining the movement.

History moves on - forms of discussion develop

During the long retreat in class struggle in the ‘90s, there was not much sign of such struggle committees. But since around 2003, we have seen a general revival in the international class struggle, sometimes taking the form of massive protests against attacks on jobs, conditions, pensions, etc, sometimes of expressions of solidarity between different groups of workers, sometimes of wildcat strikes, sometimes of general assemblies like those last year in the anti-CPE movement in France and the steelworkers' struggle in Vigo, Spain. In these circumstances, we can expect to see the re-emergence of militant minorities of workers seeking to push the movement towards higher levels of autonomy and unity.

Another development since the ‘80s has been the spectacular growth of the internet as a means of communication. Conceived as an adjunct to the war economy, and hailed as a miraculous new opportunity for finding new commercial outlets, the internet has also brought advantages for the proletarian movement, making it possible to develop all kinds of contacts that were closed off or extremely difficult and time-consuming in the past. The appearance of internet discussion forums like libcom.org, where there is a continual discussion of themes and problems relevant to the class struggle, is a clear example[2], but its appearance obeys something more than a technological breakthrough. Rather it is one expression of a new generation of proletarians which - not unlike the ‘generation of 68' - is seeking to renew its links with the revolutionary traditions of the past and to contribute to the emerging class struggle.

‘Dispatch' opens up possibilities for a much wider intervention

Given this background, it is not surprising that we are now seeing the formation of a group, comparable to the struggle committees of the ‘80s, which has been formed by elements active in the libcom.org [6] discussion forum. During the current postal strike in Britain, we saw the first edition of a two-sided bulletin/leaflet called Dispatch, subtitled ‘Public pay dispute - information for action'[3]. It announces itself as the product of "a group of workers who are interested in discussing and co-ordinating a response to the ongoing public sector pay disputes. We believe the key to winning is to unite the disputes, fight together and for workers ourselves to control the struggle. We work in several different sectors, including the postal service, NHS, education and local government and all use the website libcom.org".

The bulletin contains a number of different short items: information and advise about the work-to-rule that is accompanying the strike; information about wildcat strikes in the postal service during the course of the ‘official' dispute; information about incipient or current struggles in the rest of the public sector as well as in the private sector; dates of the union's programme for ‘rolling strikes'; a call for workers to discuss the strike online and at mass meetings; and a longer piece by a postal worker reflecting on the prospects for the struggle.

In our opinion, the appearance of this group is a very positive and promising development. It opens up possibilities for a much wider intervention, because numerous elements who post on libcom.org, but who are not necessarily directly involved in the bulletin, have expressed support for its aims and have offered to help distribute it in their towns or sectors. It creates a focus for debate about concrete struggles and the role of militant workers within them, and also for common activity and direct physical discussion among groups and individuals who share the basic aims of the bulletin.

We would not expect a bulletin of this nature to have the same level of political coherence as a communist political organisation, and in any case if it is to function as a focus for debate it is important that it remains open to different points of view. Nonetheless we can make certain criticisms of the way the ideas in the bulletin are presented. The title Dispatch and the logo of a postal worker give the impression that this is something specifically for postal workers, when the stated aims of the bulletin are wider than that (although we have been informed that the title and logo will both change when the bulletin concentrates on other sectors). There is a small item about the need for mass meetings, but we think this is not given anything like the weight it deserves. Instead the ‘lead' article is about the work-to-rule and the need to maintain it, but as we have already seen, if workers do not pose the question of ‘who controls the struggle?', they will have little protection from the kind of union manoeuvres which resulted in the suspension of the strike by the CWU the moment it felt that the local wildcats were becoming a threat to its ‘management' of the dispute. The emphasis on the work-to-rule also serves to downplay the central importance of the struggle spreading beyond the postal sector if it is to have any real impact on the plans of the bourgeoisie.

These are offered as constructive criticisms; in any case, this is necessarily an experimental process and requires a very wide-ranging debate about the best way to present the bulletin and develop its role. This discussion will obviously continue online, but we also think it would be particularly helpful to develop the discussion through physical meetings. We think that the group could think of calling such a meeting in the near future. They are also more than welcome to make use of our next public forum in London, which will concentrate on the current struggles in Britain and elsewhere.

WR, 18/08/07.

---

[1] The lessons of this period were analysed in more detail in the article ‘The organisation of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle (workers' groups, nuclei, circles, committees) [7]' in International Review 21.

[2] It is also interesting to note the appearance of the royalmailchat.co.uk forum where postal workers themselves have been discussing the recent industrial action, while on YouTube they have been posting videos and songs about the dispute. See www.youtube.com/CWUposties [8]. The working class is increasingly using the internet to express its creativity.

[3] See https://libcom.org/article/dispatch-1-royal-mail-strikes-august-2007 [9]

For weeks now the financial markets have been in turmoil and equity prices have fallen steeply. Bourses across the world have taken big hits, but it's not just private equity that's been affected. All the major banks have been affected by losses and bad debts and, at the time of writing, the problems are spreading from ‘leveraged (credit based) buy-outs‘', hedge funds (obscure and complex gambling based on debt) into high-grade corporate bonds normally seen as ‘safe havens'. There is a long way for this particular phase of the economic crisis to go yet. For the last ten or twenty years, workers in all the richest capitalist countries have been told how well, how strong, how resilient the economy is. What's happening? Why have billions been wiped off stock market values? Why are the major national banks injecting hundreds of billions into their national economies (with amounts described as "unprecedented" in The Guardian)? Where have these sudden problems come from? These problems are neither sudden nor transitory but are rather systemic to a capitalism in decay and have been so for over a century now. They don't show a ‘strong economy‘', even a ‘liberal economy‘', but a crisis of the state capitalist economy.

Over a month ago, the bourgeoisie told us, with the matey economic language and personalities that they use on such occasions, that the problem was "sub-prime lending in the US housing market", that is to say, the riskier end of mortgage lending to people with poor credit ratings. Then it was that equity markets were overvalued - an element of obvious truth in both cases. Two weeks later, and the scribblers were telling us what a good thing it all was; it was ‘positive‘' that dodgy lending had been curtailed, the fall in the market was ‘a necessary correction‘' and now we can get back to normal. The International Monetary Fund, equally whistling in the dark, said last month that the crisis was "manageable" and that "the fundamentals supporting global growth remain in place"(The Guardian 15/8/7). There's nothing so stupid as a bourgeois economist[1], because they are the spokespeople of an economic system that is fundamentally irrational and fundamentally bankrupt.

Here in Britain, Gordon Brown has been elected Prime Minister on the back of a so-called ‘strong economy‘', but Britain, like all economies, is subject to the crisis of endebtment. Sub-prime borrowing in the UK has grown 28% in recent years and is measured in tens of billions of pounds. Insolvencies are up 25% and house repossessions are at an eight year high. Over the last 10 years, UK debt - mortgages, overdrafts and credit cards - has risen to up £1345 billion pounds. That figure is now sailing past GDP, and bear in mind that GDP itself is not all real production, but includes such amounts as payments for the police, prison officers, armed forces and other such parasitic elements of the unproductive sector. And also bear in mind that 85% of this amount, £1.15 trillion, of British debt is secured against property prices, which themselves are part of a fictitious bubble. Such amounts make the UKLtd. "technically bankrupt", according to Stephan Gifford, Grant Thorton's chief economist (Guardian, 23/8/7).

Sub-prime borrowing or stock markets are not the cause of this crisis - they are just particular and secondary expressions of it. They tried to tell us similar lies in the 2001/2 recession which was supposed to be due to 9/11, whereas economic activity was severely weakening a year before with the collapse of the speculative IT bubble[2]. And likewise for the five major previous recessions going back to the mid 1960s, which were all supposed to have specific, particular, external causes. But all six recessions have a common cause, as symptoms of the fundamental crisis of capitalism - its overproduction, relative to what can be purchased, its lack of solvent markets - and all six recessions have tended to be longer and deeper than the previous one (see ‘The descent into the abyss‘', International Review no. 121, Spring, 2005). In the same article we read how the US economy, the world's economic locomotive, lives on credit from the rest of the world because the countries that receive an excess of dollars from their trade surpluses with the USA invest them on the money markets. Gross US debt to the rest of the world has increased by a factor of 4 from 1980 to 2003, and the net debt of the US to the rest of the world has gone from negative in 1985 to a positive (negative for the US economy) of 40% in the same period. The expansion of credit and debt, a deliberate policy of state capitalism from the mid-eighties, has only increased the fragility and fundamental weakness of the capitalist economy overall and has become essential for the day-to-day running of capitalism. But the bourgeoisie are not omnipotent and in control of their economy; capitalism is a blind and irrational economic system. The best that the bourgeoisie can do is try to manage the deepening crisis, to attenuate its worst effects; and this is becoming increasingly difficult with vast amounts of fictitious capital washing around the system, much of it hidden from view. This task is made even more difficult as each nation state tries to protect its position at the trough or spoil it for others. Thus we have already seen tensions mounting between the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England over current ‘interventions'. Overall, this particular expression of the economic crisis, this ‘turmoil', is pointing to a new recession and the consequences for the world economy - including the ‘economic miracles' of China and India - are dire. This is not ‘the same old thing' and then ‘we can get back to normal', as the bourgeoisie tell us. On the contrary, the working class will suffer. Across the industrial world hundreds of thousands of workers and their families are already losing their homes (and still have a lifetime's debt). Pensions funds will be hard hit, factories will close and jobs will be lost, prices will rise, as will taxes, and the social wage will be cut further and faster. And everywhere, absolute pauperisation will increase.

While the last 30 years has seen a massive and unsustainable swelling of credit and debt - and this in itself shows the extension and also the weakening of state capitalism. The recourse to fictitious capital has long been a policy of capitalism in crisis. Trotsky, who himself was very clear about the decadence of the capitalist mode of production early on last century, wrote in the ‘Report on the economic crisis' to the Third Congress of the Communist International: "Capitalism as an economic system is, you know, full of contradictions. During the war years these contradictions have reached monstrous proportions. To obtain the resources required for war, the state resorted primarily to two measures: first, issuance of paper money; second, flotation of loans. Thus an ever-increasing amount of the so-called ‘valuable paper‘' (securities) entered into circulation, as the means whereby the state pumped real material values out of the country in order to destroy them in the war. The greater the sums expended by the state, i.e. the more real values it destroyed, the larger the amount of pseudo-wealth, of fictitious values accumulated in the country. State-loan paper has piled up mountain-high. Superficially it might seem that a country had grown extremely rich, but in reality the ground was being cut under the economic foundation, shaking it apart, bringing it to the verge of collapse. State debts have climbed to approximately 1,000 billion gold marks, which adds up to 62% of the present national wealth of the belligerent countries. Before the war, the world total of paper and credit money approximated 28 billion gold marks, today the amount is between 220 and 280 billion, i.e. ten times as much. And this of course, does not include Russia, for we are discussing only the capitalist world. All this applies primarily, if not exclusively, to European countries, mainly continental Europe.... Becoming encased in every-thicker layers of paper values, or what is known as fictitious capital. This fictitious capital-paper currency, treasury notes, war bonds, bank notes and so on - represent either mementoes of deceased capital or expectations of capital yet to come. But at the present time they are in no way commensurate to genuine existing capital. However, they function as capital and as money and this tends to give an incredibly distorted picture of society and modern economy as a whole. The poorer this economy becomes all the richer is the image reflected by this mirror of fictitious capital. At the same time, the creation of this fictitious capital signifies, as we shall see, that the classes share in different ways in the distribution of the gradually constricting national income and wealth. National income, too, has become constricted, but not to the same extent as the national wealth. The explanation for this is quite simple: the candle of capitalist economy was being burnt at both ends".

Trotsky's point, whatever the ups and downs of the present ‘turmoil' in the financial markets, shows the fundamental problems of the flight of decaying capitalism into debt, credit and ‘funny money', and it applies in spades to the ‘richest' countries in the world today. These tendencies of credit and debt themselves could for a while alleviate the immediate problems of the restricted market but, used in the larger and larger doses they have been, they can only become poisonous. Capitalism is no longer a positive, expanding system which can continue to always put off its contradictions to a higher level. The capitalist economy cannot continue to ‘burn the candle at both ends'. Baboon, 26.8.7

---

[1] Undoubtedly there are high level bourgeois who are fully aware of the real depths of the crisis and others whose task it is to obscure this from the working class.

 

[2] Enron, one of the biggest corporations in the US and the world, collapsed well before the Twin Towers.

 

In the pages of World Revolution we frequently refer to the attacks of the ruling class, often giving figures for the latest redundancies or the impact of the budget and other government measures. However, the true situation of the working class can only really be seen by taking a broader and longer look. This article aims to contribute to this by using official figures and a number of reports by business and voluntary organisations to try to delineate what some aspects of life are like for the working class today. Such information certainly has its flaws but it has always been important for revolutionaries to do what they can to understand the real conditions of life for the working class.

Employment and unemployment

The headline figures proclaimed by the state are that the number in work is higher than ever, hitting 28.8 million in 2005, with rises in the overall employment rate for both men and women, and that unemployment remains low at 4.7% (Labour Market Review 2006, Office for National Statistics). However, when considered in more detail these figures show that there have been substantial changes in the pattern of employment in Britain over the last 30 years and that these have been at the expense of the working class. In 1978 manufacturing accounted for 28% of jobs; by 2005 this had more than halved to 12%. In contrast services grew from 61% to 82% of jobs over the same period (ibid). For many this has been a shift from well-paid, permanent, full-time jobs to part-time, temporary jobs paid near to the minimum wage.

The gender composition of the workforce has also changed significantly with the decline of the employment rate of males from over 90% in 1971 to under 80% in 2005 being matched by the rise in female employment from about 56% to 70%, leaving the total employment rate stable at around 75% (ibid). However significant this may be in social terms, in economic terms it has reduced the cost of labour to the employer since women's pay is still only 87% of men's on average. Women make up the greatest proportion of those who earn less than £6.50 an hour, with 30% of all female workers in this bracket (Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2006, Joseph Rowntree Foundation).

Over the last 35 years unemployment has climbed and fallen. At the start of 1971 the rate was 3.9%. It rose to 12.1% in the first half of 1984, fell back at the end of the decade only to rise still further by the early 1990s before falling to 4.7% in late 2005. The various tricks used to hide the real level of unemployment, notably by changing the way unemployment is counted, have been covered many times even in the mainstream media. In order to address this Labour began to use a second measure based on the Labour Force Survey alongside the discredited claimant count. The new measure is usually higher than the old.

Another way of looking at this issue is to use the overall rates of employment and economic inactivity.

The overall level of employment went up slightly during this period but has remained stable at around 75% for the last four or five years and is currently at a similar level to 1971. The overall economic inactivity rate has remained relatively stable at around 21-22% over the last few years but the composition has changed. In 1971 male inactivity was 4.9%. By 2005 it had increased to 16.6%. Female inactivity has gone from 40.6% in 1971 to 26.4% by 2005. The reasons for economic inactivity have also changed, with a decline in the number looking after the family from over 36% to 29.5%. In 2005, 26.8% or 2.1m were inactive due to long term sickness. Amongst males long term sickness was main reason, accounting for 38% in total but 60% of those aged 35-49 and 52% of those aged 50-64. The inactivity rate of young people has increased because more are remaining in education although there has also been a rise amongst 16-17 year olds not in education, 28.1% of whom were economically inactive in 2005.

For some time the government has been attempting to increase the numbers in work, in part by manipulating the tax and benefit system to create ‘incentives' for the economically inactive to become active. One particular target has been the disabled where there has been a range of initiatives to get them into work: between 1998 and 2005 the number of people with a long term disability who are economically inactive, fell by four percentage points to 45.5%

Employment as a whole is becoming less secure, with the idea of a job for life an increasingly distant memory. The official figure for measuring the number leaving jobs, euphemistically called the job ‘separation' rate, is calculated by taking all of those who have lost a job in the last three months and dividing that number by the number of those who said they were in employment for more than three months, plus those who had separated from a paid job. This produces a figure that seems unrelated to the total actually in work. Thus, in 2004/5 the rate moved between just over 4% to 2.5%. In 2005 there were 30.8m jobs (of which 26.7m were employees) and 4.564m ‘separations', which means that 14.8% of all those in work or 17% of employed workers were ‘separated' from their jobs. This is a fairly high turnover rate, even accepting that some of these are individual choices to change jobs rather than just being made redundant (Labour Market Review 2006, ONS).

This is supported by a recent study of private firms, which found that between 1997 and 2005 job creation averaged 15.2% while job destruction averaged14.5%. This equated to 53,000 jobs being created each week and 51,000 destroyed. In services the rates were 16.4% and 14.8% respectively and in manufacturing 11% and 13.5%. (‘Job creation, job destruction and the role of small firms: firm-level evidence for the UK', Hijzen, Upward and Wright, 2007, GEP Centre, University of Nottingham). As well as illustrating the shift in employment from manufacturing to service industries these figures also suggest that on average workers can expect to change jobs about every 6 or 7 years. Once out of work finding another job is not straightforward for many. In 1998-9 43.9% of those made redundant found work within three months; in 2005-6 this had increased slightly to 46.7%. This still implies that over 50% remain unemployed for more than 3 months (Labour Market Review 2006, ONS).

Working hours and pay

The official figures also show a continued decline in the average number of hours worked. More than half of the workforce now work between 31 and 45 hours a week. The number working over 45 hours a week has dropped from 25.7% in 1995 to 20.9% in 2005. However this is not the whole picture. Amongst the self-employed, 34% work over 45 hours a week. The number of self-employed has grown in recent years to form 13% of the workforce. Most of this increase is in small businesses of just one or two people, suggesting that a proportion at least have been compelled to turn to this in the absence of other employment. Secondly, the current official figures are silent about the amount of overtime worked. A report from the Department of Trade and Industry in 2003 showed that there had been a significant increase in the amount of unpaid overtime worked: between 1988 and 1998: from 25.2% to 40.6% of males working fulltime and from 27% to 57% of females working fulltime (Working long hours: A review of the evidence Vol.1, DTI November 2003). The number working part time has also increased over recent years from 21% in 1984 to 26% in 2004. 44% of women and 11% of men work part time (Labour Market Review 2006, ONS). This may partly explain the reduction in the average number of hours worked.

In 2005/6 the average, or mean income was £443. However, half of the population lives on £362 or less per week. This later figure is the known as the median income and is the point that separates the population into two equal groups - half earn less and half earn more. This is an important measure because it is less affected by the income growth of the rich. Thus, while mean income grew by 2.3% during Labour's first term in office, median income grew by 2.0% during the same period. Since then both measures have slowed to 1.3% and 1.0% respectively (Poverty and Inequality in the UK 2007, Institute for Fiscal Studies). The August inflation report from the Bank of England states that growth in real income (the rate of increase of income less rises in prices and taxes) "was weak in 2007 Q1, continuing the trend seen in recent quarters". The report does not give exact figures but the accompanying chart suggests this may have declined to around 0.5% a year or less over the last three years and that at some points in 2006 it dipped below zero.

Debt

Debt, and personal debt in particular, is the motor that keeps the economy going. Despite all of the concern expressed it is essential for British capitalism that the working class keeps spending. This is why ever more risky loans continue to be given. The consequences of this have already been seen in the US with the turmoil flowing from the crisis in the sub-prime loan market. In Britain loans have been given based on ever greater multiples of annual earnings, leading to increasing difficulties in repayments, despite the fact that interest rates are less than half what they were during the last such crisis in the mid 1990s.

Personal debt has grown dramatically in Britain over the last decade reaching £1,355bn at the end of July, a rise of over 10% in one year (these figures and those that follow, unless otherwise specified, are taken from Credit Action "Debt facts and figures", September 2007). Household debt now stands at 160% of annual household income (Bank of England). In 1997 it was 105%. According to Credit Action, the current figure is the highest ever recorded and the highest in the developed world. It is made up of lending on homes, so-called ‘secured' lending, and consumer credit lending. The first is £1,140bn, having increased by 11% in a year and the other £214bn, having increased by 5.3%. Excluding mortgages average household debt is £8,856; including mortgages it is £56,000.

The results of this are wide ranging. 26,956 people went bankrupt or made an Individual Voluntary Arrangement in England and Wales in the second quarter of 2007, an increase of 4.2% on a year ago. 14,000 properties were repossessed in the first half of 2007, 30% more than the year before. In the first quarter of the year there were 247,187 consumer debt related county court judgements, the highest since 1997. 8.2m adults are in serious debt and 2.1m are struggling with repayments. Millions more miss payments on bills, are in arrears or have permanent overdrafts.

At the same time credit continues to be given out hand over fist with banks and building societies loaning some £1bn a day. Savings have continued to drop with only 46% saving regularly. 27% have no savings; 25% have less than £3,000.

Poverty

According to the official figures poverty has declined throughout the years of Labour government, until last year when the number went up by between 400 and 600 thousand. The standard measure of poverty is 60% of median income, which, using the 2005-6 figures, amounts to £217 a week. In 1996-7 14 million people, 25.3% of the population lived in poverty; in 2005-6 this was 12.7 million or 21.6 % (Poverty and Inequality in the UK 2007, Institute for Fiscal Studies).

The reduction in child poverty has been one of the government's most publicised aims with some 700,000 claimed to have been lifted out of poverty since Labour came to power. However, as we argued in WR 305, "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".

The impact of government policies to reduce poverty have been more marked amongst pensioners than any other group, with the number living in poverty reducing from 29.1% of pensioners to 17% since 1996/7 (this is based on income after housing costs, if measured before housing costs the figures are 24.6% and 20.8%, respectively). This still leaves 1.8m pensioners living in poverty. A recent study argues that this decline is unlikely to continue over the next decade and could reverse (IFS, 2007 Pensioner poverty over the next decade: what role for tax and benefit reform?). Looking further ahead, the reduction in the quality of pensions suggests that this rate will rise again as final salary pensions disappear and the relative value of the state pension declines from 16% of average earnings in 2005 to 6% in 2050 (OECD United Kingdom Economic Survey, 2005). Many workers will struggle to make up this shortfall with 9 million already judged to be making inadequate provision (ibid). A recent report shows that 54% of the FTSE 100 companies have closed their defined benefits scheme (this is another term for final salary pensions) to new employees and overall 81% of organisations have closed their schemes to new employees, the majority switching to the less-generous defined contribution scheme. The future continues to look uncertain, despite the fact that pension funds overall returned to credit last year after many years of deficit (Lane, Clark and Peacock, Accounting for pensions 2007). The number of people in final salary pension schemes has declined by 500,000 since 2004 to 27.5m (Credit Action). The real situation faced by older workers is revealed in the fact that every winter tens of thousands more older people die than at other times of the year. Although the number has fallen from the 1950s the decline since the early 1970s has been much slower with fairly frequent increases to over 40,000.

Outside these groups things have been worse "Poverty rates increased dramatically during the 1980s, more slowly in the early 1990s and then stabilised or fell from the mid 1990s. But the latest year of data puts an end to the eight-year decline in relative poverty: between 2004-05 and 2005-06 relative poverty rose by 1.1 percentage points (AHC) and 0.6 percentage points (BHC. Both of these increases are statistically significant..." (IFS). The poorer you were the worse things seem to be since the number of those in severe poverty - defined as less than 40% of median income - has increased, albeit only slightly, during this period. For those on benefits the picture is worse again with the ‘Jobseekers' allowance dropping from 39% of median income in 1996-97 to 31% by 2005-6 (AHC) (ibid).

Insecurity and stress

The consequence of all of this is to create a world of uncertainty and fear, leading to physical and mental health problems. Many people worry constantly about money; it is the major cause of stress reported to the Samaritans. The Citizens Advice service has seen 15% more people with debt problems than a year ago, dealing with 1.4 million problems in the past year. 89% of those with debts report worrying about them ‘most' or ‘all' of the time and a majority said their health had been affected with three in five saying they had received treatment, medication or counselling as a result (Credit Action and A Helping Hand, Legal Services Research Centre, ND).

All of the factors that have created this situation continue to develop: exploitation in work, poverty outside, stress and fear for the future everywhere. This is the reality of life under capitalism today. This is the future for us all so long as capitalism continues. This is the material situation that can cause individuals to despair but provokes the working class to resist attacks on it through its collective struggle, not just in Britain but all round the world. It is also stirring workers, particularly the younger generation, to question what sort of future capitalism has in store for humanity. When these two aspects of the class struggle, against the attacks and against the ideological justification for capitalism, go hand in hand then the situation is truly pregnant with danger for the ruling class and hope for humanity.

North, 6/9/07

In addition to the climatic volatility (creating victims of the most terrible monsoons for a century in India, Bangladesh and China; floods in Britain; drought in the south and east of Europe), this summer has been marked by several catastrophes: the railway accident releasing toxic substances in Ukraine, the earthquake in Japan causing a crack in a nuclear reactor, a deadly air disaster in Brazil, the collapse of a bridge in the USA. All these different kinds of tragic catastrophe are becoming more frequent. Yet they have the same fundamental causes. The media present these calamities as separate things, telling us that they are the result of a series of coincidences, which is a disgusting lie. The primary responsibility for these disasters lies with the capitalist system in its lunatic race for profits. This requires it to produce and sell as cheaply as possible, leading to the dilapidation of the infrastructure till it becomes dangerous, to permanently overusing machines, to renewing materials, to making economies in personnel, to the overexploitation of resources, without the least concern for the risks to the environment and above all with total contempt for human life on the whole planet.

A toxic mode of production

In the west of Ukrainian close to the Polish border, in the region of Lviv, a train transporting 15 tanks of inflammable and very toxic yellow phosphorus was derailed on 16 July. The pressure valves were broken on the dilapidated tanks which should have been withdrawn from service five years ago. 6 tank-wagons full of phosphorus for the manufacture of fertiliser were smashed open releasing a toxic cloud that covered 86 square kilometres, in an area where over 11,000 people live. 16,000 people were medically examined and 184 of them hospitalised for phosphorus poisoning, some of them remaining for more than 3 weeks. In spite of the pollution of earth and air there was no evacuation organised and this was left to the initiative of the residents of the region: people were assured that the substance has dispersed without further damage to the atmosphere, and the emergency ministry spokesman on regional radio was eager to give assurances that the ‘situation is under control' and that there was no danger... These words were soon refuted by reality: phosphorus residues spontaneously burst into flames on contact with the air on 3 August, making the population run from the new risk to their respiratory tracts and life threatening lesions. We get an idea of the extent of the risk faced all the time from the fact that in the Ukraine alone about 50 million tons of merchandise are transported by rail every year, of which 70% consists of dangerous substances such as chlorine, nitrogen, ammonia and oil products. On the 3 August, in the same region of Lviv, a locomotive hit three tanker wagons full of petrol, causing a fire in the vicinity of a refinery and a paint factory. A week earlier, in the same station, another train was derailed and collided with unused wagons.

In Japan, on 16 July, in the Niigata region in the north west, there was an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale. With 9 dead and a thousand injured, and more than 500 individual homes and 300 buildings destroyed, it was far from causing the same level of destruction as the Kobe quake on 17 January 1995 (6,400 dead, 40,000 injured, 200,000 homes destroyed), but it caused a fire in an electric transformer of the largest nuclear power plant in the world, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) made no announcement for several hours after a leak of 1,200 litres of contaminated water, after having at first affirmed that the shock had not had any effect on the plant and after having denied any crack in the reactor. According to the Kyodo press agency, a hundred or so casks of contaminated waste were knocked over and their contents spilled. The Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety has recorded at least 67 anomalies in the functioning of the reactor. Tepco and a competitor have already admitted concealing several accidents some months ago. The Japanese government has however continued to assert that the leak has no consequences for the environment and some ‘scientific meetings' have been at pains to reassure us that there is no risk of human contamination.

"I believe that nuclear reactors can only work with the confidence of the population"' as the prime minister Shinzo Abe cynically declared to journalists. "Personally I think that a nuclear power station is the safest place in an earthquake" added an eminent professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and specialist in nuclear power[1].

Thirteen other nuclear facilities are under construction and the Japanese authorities have no intention of giving up an energy that supplies 30 to 40% of the country's electricity. However, the government has had to take the decision to close the power station for an unspecified time (at least a year) and the IAEA is inspecting it.

The risk is not limited to Japan, nor to seismic shocks. At the end of June there was a fire in a nuclear power plant in north Germany (at Krummel in Schleswig-Holstein, close to Hamburg), set off by a pump failure in the water surrounding the reactor, and a series of faults in the automatic fire extinguishers in the reactor. This launched a new round of polemics on the future of nuclear power. The spectre of a new Chernobyl is everywhere[2].

A recent World Bank study reported that there are 350-400,000 premature deaths in China due to air pollution (and 30,000 of them are children). Another 300,000 are dying due to the poor quality of ventilation in buildings, workshops and factories (without counting those due to working conditions or handling dangerous materials). In the countryside poor water quality is responsible for 60,000 deaths a year.

Capitalism is a catastrophe for humanity

On the 1 August a bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. About 50 vehicles toppled into the river 20 metres below: 5 dead, 79 injured, a dozen missing. This 160 metre bridge of steel and concrete, with an eight lane road across it, constructed 40 years ago, had been inspected in 2005 and 2006 but no structural defect had been found. It was, however, classed as in need of repair since 2005[3]. Repairs on the metal framework were underway at the time of the event during the evening rush hour, without any decision to interrupt the flow of traffic. According to the local transport authority 200,000 vehicles cross this bridge every day and a school bus carrying about 60 children only just escaped the tragedy[4].

The country has 756 bridges with a similar steel structure, of which at least 27% are thought to be in an equally alarming state as the one that collapsed.

The law of profit, of immediate returns, the heightened competition between states, is a permanent threat both now and for the future of the world. Those who sing the praises of the progress of civilisation have become like the sorcerer's apprentice, the high priests in a dance of death, a ghastly black mass around the altar of decadent capitalism which, with total contempt for human life, delivers its wage slaves up to sacrificial rituals more absurd and barbaric than the cruellest societies in history.

The news has given us another example in a different domain. On 17 July in Brazil, a TAM airbus overshot the wet runway of Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport, in the heart of a residential area, sweeping across a very busy avenue before hitting a fuel station and cargo terminal belonging to TAM, causing a fire. At least 207 were killed, the biggest air catastrophe in Brazil's history[5].

Brazil's airport personnel have been protesting against the deterioration in their working conditions for several years: a quasi-absence of aeroplane checks due to financial economies, use of the cheapest fuel for refuelling, equipment not replaced, ever denser air traffic going along with a policy of reducing the number of mechanics and air traffic controllers to get the maximum profit.

The inquiry at Sao Paulo revealed a multitude of anomalies: the runway had been notoriously dangerous for some years, safety conditions were not fulfilled with a landing strip that was too short and traffic too dense.

It had been resurfaced the previous month but the work had not been finished, and the runway had been put back into service at the end of June without the drainage channels to remove rainwater being completed. Many had denounced the premature reopening for purely commercial reasons. Four similar accidents (uncontrolled skidding on the runway) had already occurred in recent months. At the time of the landing the sun was entirely blotted out by heavy rain. And the day before the accident the government had refused to close the runway as demanded by the air traffic controllers at the airport. Further, the TAM plane was missing one of its two pressure inverters, which allow the aircraft to slow down on landing. Globo TV even claimed that this equipment had been withdrawn after a fault the previous week and that the plane had difficulty braking on the same runway the day before the accident. A video showed that the plane had accelerated after touching down close to the marker for the limit of the runway for landing, which may mean that the pilot tried to take off again realising that he could not stop in time.

A representative of the airline gave assurances that the plane was airworthy even in the absence of two pressure inverters. However an identical breakdown killed 99 people at the same airport in 1996.

"The government is obviously trying to convince public opinion that the runway at Congonhas is not the cause. They want to do everything to blame the pilot", was the reaction of the president of the pilots' association.

Evidently. Less than 15 days after the catastrophe at Congonhas the official inquiry attempted to throw the blame for the accident onto the pilot[6].

Faced with such dangers and against such working conditions the Brazilian air traffic controllers of Curitiba, Manaos and Salvador went on strike, spontaneously, on 30 March last. They addressed a prophetic message to all workers in a Manifesto before paralysing the service, embarking on a hunger strike and occupation to put pressure on the authorities of the Aeronautic Command, the military organ responsible for air traffic control in Brazil: "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..." (WR 305). There had already been a collision between a Boeing and another plane at the end of September 2006 in Mato Grosso, which killed 154 passengers. The controllers had already carried out several stoppages to protest against the accusations of the government and military authorities that they were responsible. In their Manifesto the workers defended themselves against these slanders: "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 at the government and military command's response, which included imprisoning some of the controllers. This Manifesto and the strike also denounced all the hypocrisy of the whole Brazilian bourgeoisie and its responsibility for the crisis of air transport, from the left which is in government today to the right. The bourgeoisie also tried to hide the role of the unfettered competition between airlines, the policy of reducing costs, the overselling of tickets, the crowding of airspace, the increase in the number of flights, compelling the air traffic controllers and aeroplane pilots to work in extreme conditions.

The conditions are even worse today. Six months after the accident at Congonhas Airport, a power cut and breakdown in the emergency generators paralysed the Amazon air traffic control centre again, leading to the cancellation of 10% of flights over Brazil and forcing the controllers to work in the most precarious conditions once again.

Only the working class, through its struggles, can expose and fight against the real culprit behind all these tragedies: the capitalist system. Wim 10.8.07

---

[1] It is however true that Japan is the state whose nuclear power stations are by far the best equipped to withstand earthquakes. In a country like France for example where some power stations are built near fault lines (Alsace, PACA...) without the least earthquake protection we can only imagine the horror that could be caused by an earth tremor...

[2] We have not forgotten that reactor number 4 in the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded on 26 April 1986. Radioactive material was deposited all around, causing thyroid cancer, particularly in large areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. We were also asked to believe that the radioactive fallout stopped at the frontiers, under the protection of the anticyclone over the Azores; otherwise it would have swept across the whole of Europe from East to West. The official death toll from Chernobyl varies between 50,000 and 150,000, yet the former secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, admitted afterwards that at least 7 million people had been affected by this catastrophe.

About 50 operatives were given the job of collecting highly radioactive debris from the roof and immediate surroundings in the first days after the catastrophe. Each operative had only 90 seconds to carry out the task. In this time he was exposed to extremely high levels of radiation and received only scant protection from derisory safety equipment, principally designed to prevent the inhalation of radioactive dust. Many of these front line workers developed cancers and died in the following years.

It is estimated that 350,000 decontamination operatives or ‘liquidators', from the army, factory workers, local police and firemen, participated at the start of the work of confining and decontaminating the radioactive debris in the period 1986-7. Nearly 240,000 of these ‘liquidators', who took turns every 5 minutes, received the highest doses of radiation when they carried out the vital work of limiting the effects of radioactivity in a 30 kilometre zone around the explosion. Following this the number of liquidators listed topped 600,000. The concrete foundations under the heart of the reactor threatened to collapse. So tens of thousands of miners were brought from around Moscow and Donbass to tunnel under the reactor to dig out a cave. A cooling coil of helium was installed to cool the foundations. The miners worked in very difficult conditions due to the heat and the massive radiation. Their sacrifice was in vain, since the cooling circuit was never installed and was finally replaced by a concrete sarcophagus over the top. For several years cracks have appeared in the sarcophagus, but neither the Ukraine nor Russia nor any other authority wants to take responsibility for the new risks, nor above all for the enormous cost of the necessary work... We are told that this tragedy was an exception due to the backwardness of the eastern countries and their technology, to the lack of maintenance inherited from the Stalinist era, and that the nuclear reactors of more modern states do not run such a risk. The fissure in the Japanese reactor and before that the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States show the contrary. The same risk exists everywhere.

[3] A similar study found about 60 structures defective and at high risk in a country such as France.

[4] In the same period other ‘accidents' whose consequences would have been much more dramatic were only just prevented. On the 18 July an underground gas pipe exploded in New York in the heart of Manhattan, at Lexington and 41st Street, close to Grand Central Station, causing great panic (due to the force and violence of the explosion people feared a new terrorist attack reviving the nightmare of 11 September 2001). One person died of a heart attack and about 30 others were injured. The 60 cm diameter pipe, installed in 1924, exploded due to the heat. The mayor expressed the fear of a release of asbestos. New York is full of aging underground pipes and several dozen have exploded in the city over the last twenty years.

On 29 July there was a fire on a Parisian metro train on one of the busiest lines of the network. 150 passengers stuck underground were poisoned by the noxious fumes within one of the compartments. 35 were taken to hospital. A fire in a completely worn out brake-block on a carriage was the cause of the incident. The consequences could have been much worse if it had not taken place on a Sunday morning when it is least crowded.

This gives an indication of the dangers which the world's populations are constantly exposed to.

[5] This is not the first time that a plane has crashed in a city centre, into a building, a road or a residential area (without being able to point to a terrorist attack). The list is long: in Venezuela on 16 March 1969 a DC9 crashed into a shanty town with 163 dead and about a hundred injured. For Europe it is enough to remember two similar accidents: in October 1992 a Boeing 747 crashed into two buildings in the workers district of Amsterdam: 53 dead. The effect is similar to bombardment: buildings ripped apart, a sea of fire, flames 30 metres high transforming the victims into living torches or crushing them under tons of concrete and steel.

On 25th July 2000 a Concorde (celebrated as the most beautiful and technologically advanced aircraft) en route to New York crashed into a Gonesse hotel in the Oise Valley two minutes after taking off from Roissy Airport. The 109 passengers on board were killed as well as 4 hotel employees. The inquiry revealed that a wheel had been damaged during take-off by a metal strip that had fallen onto the runway from another plane. The debris from the tyre caused a rupture in a fuel tank where the fire started.

[6] The theory of ‘human error' itself in such a case is not at all surprising given the responsibility and the working conditions in which pilots are constrained to work, since they must carry out a long return journey on the same day or with a single hour for rest, the time taken for refuelling.

This year was the UK's wettest ever recorded summer. In June and July there were a number of exceptional floods throughout the country. In one day, on June 25, an entire month's rain fell on some parts of Britain. In Sheffield the drainage system was rapidly overwhelmed, causing flash flooding. The Ulley reservoir was full to almost breaking point. The authorities closed the M1 motorway near Sheffield, fearing that it would be washed away.

Another major cloudburst occurred on July 20. The rainfall led to flooding in the South Midlands. The rivers Severn and Thames burst their banks. Thousands of homes and businesses were flooded. Electricity sub stations and water treatment plants were overwhelmed. Many people in Gloucestershire were without water and electricity for several days. Emergency water supplies were delivered to the effected areas, but these quickly ran out and some were reported as vandalised.

The media looked back to the last great floods. In March 1947 Britain had been through an exceptionally cold winter with snowfall greater than anyone could remember. The great thaw began with an inch of rain in a few hours that could not be absorbed by the icy ground. The snow began to melt and continued over the next few weeks. Floods were widespread as the accumulation of ice and snow turned to water. The floods of 1947 affected more people over a larger area, but, unlike 1947, the 2007 floods were in the middle of summer and the flood water came almost solely from heavy rainfall.

Radio phone-ins had a full range of responses. Some wished to show their solidarity with the victims and called for the government to help them out financially. Others were less generous, suggesting uninsured householders only had themselves to blame. The uninsured were often characterised as being greedy individuals who were happy to spend money on luxuries like satellite television and four wheel drive cars, but lacked the prudence to insure their homes. This had echoes of the morality of the workhouse; the bourgeoisie dividing the victims in capitalist society between the ‘deserving' and ‘undeserving poor'.

The government's policy of promoting mass housebuilding while ignoring the dangers of building on flood plains was generally criticised. For example a tenant farmer in Staffordshire, whose livestock was drowned in the floods, complained that he will have to leave his land in a few years to make way for new houses. While acknowledging the problem, the government has said it has no intention of changing its plans.

The extreme weather in the UK is not an isolated event. In August the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) produced a press release on record extreme weather in 2007. It recorded that the Indian sub-continent had experienced double the monsoon depressions in June and July leading to major floods, displacing 10 million people and killing 500. The Arabian Sea experienced its first ever recorded cyclone in June. Germany had the wettest May recorded. Mozambique suffered severe flooding in February. The river Nile was flooded in Sudan in June. The Maldives were swamped by waves between 3 and 4.5 meters high in May. In May Uruguay had its worst flooding since 1959. In June, July and August south-eastern Europe experienced extreme heat waves; Bulgaria recorded a temperature record of 45° C. Russia recorded its highest temperature for May. Europe experienced its warmest ever April. The southern hemisphere had an exceptionally cold winter. In South America some regions experienced rare snow falls. In Argentina temperatures reached as low as -22°C. In June South Africa experienced its first significant snow since 1981. Many European countries recorded their warmest Januarys. The WMO were keen to make the links between the projections of more extreme weather and climate change and the events experienced this year.

Extreme weather has continued since. North Korea has called for international relief aid after 300,000 people were made homeless through flooding. 300 are dead or missing, 46,580 homes, 400 commercial plants and 20 mines were flooded. China has had extensive flooding, destroying large areas of land and homes. Deadly flooding is an annual problem for those living on reclaimed farmland on China's flood plains. On 18 August AFP reported that 172 miners were trapped underground by flooding. The director of the mine said they had a slim chance of survival. 14 miners were rescued from another mine the day before. 69 were rescued on 1 August. China has the most dangerous mines in the world with 4700 killed in 2006.

Scientists say that no one event can be linked to global warming. The science of global warming is about averages over long periods. It is easy to dismiss any event as being a ‘natural' occurrence, and nothing to do with human-induced climate change, if looked at in isolation. The evidence suggests otherwise and we are faced with a long term problem with global warming. The bourgeoisie are unable to make capitalism green. To maintain growth is a matter of life and death for the system, even when that system threatens to destroy humanity. Even the deaths and homelessness caused by the recent worldwide flooding will not change a thing. Capitalism's mastery of nature is like mastering a violin with a sledge hammer. Ash 7/9/7

Fires aren’t unusual in the summer months in Greece. But this year the area devastated was ten times the average affected over the last 50 years. More than 60 people died in the fires at the end of August that caught the media’s appetite for sensational images. There were the accounts of people trapped in mountain villages surrounded by fire, the tragedy of the 9 people who died when a car crashed into a fire engine causing a fatal blazing traffic jam, the pictures of burnt-out villages, and the bodies lying in fields, houses, cars and among smouldering trees.

This was the third serious outbreak of fires across Greece this summer. Many other countries in Europe also suffered during a heat wave that touched 40, 45 degrees at times. The focus of media coverage was on two things: how had the fires started and what was the Greek government doing about it?

In hot weather fires do start easily in the right conditions. Lightning, for example, is not uncommon in SE Europe, and the Greeks are among the heaviest smokers in the world. But the media blamed arsonists. The finger was pointed at people acting in the pay of property developers who stood to gain from the availability of newly deforested land. In addition to the profit motive, an FBI profiler cited revenge, excitement, vandalism, extremism, or cover for another crime as the main motives for arson. All this is possible, but it hardly explains the general conditions which might have made it possible for a few greedy firms or damaged individuals to cause so much devastation.

As for the Greek government, it deployed thousands of fire fighters, fire engines and soldiers. They appealed for fire fighters and planes from other countries. They did as much as any government, whether of the right or the left, was likely to. Inevitably there were criticisms of the government having done ‘too little, too late’. In the pages of Socialist Worker you could read how they thought “the government’s policies … contributed to the spread of the fire”. No doubt they did in some respects, but the same would be true of PASOK, the left alternative currently in opposition in Greece. Yet the left always says that there is no problem the capitalist state can’t solve.

The reality is quite different. Fundamentally, the fires in Greece started and spread as a result of two phenomena that capitalism cannot control. Firstly, the bourgeoisie has no control over the climate change that lies behind the increasing temperatures in the Mediterranean (and elsewhere) that turn forests into potential kindling. In the face of global warming there is a need for a global response. However, the capitalist class can’t act at an international level because it is divided into ruthlessly competing imperialist states.

Secondly, whether we’re looking at the psychology of those employed by property developers, or those who seek excitement through seeing massive destruction by fire, the ruling class has no answers for such alienated behaviour, as it has no means for nurturing basic human solidarity

At the level of the individual, capitalism won’t stop being a society that breeds greed, heartlessness, desperation and despair, any more than, at the level of the environment, it can reverse the process of ecological destruction. Car 6/9/7

The summer of 2007 has once again been marked by the worsening of military chaos and horror in many parts of the world. While the situation has momentarily eased in Lebanon (with the exception of the slaughter in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp after a long stand-off between the army and Islamists), in Afghanistan there has been a sharp rise in the fighting and in terrorist attacks by the Taliban. The massacre in Iraq meanwhile has continued unabated. Dozens are killed every day, both in armed conflicts and suicide bombings, most of them aimed at a defenceless population. This insane violence has spread all over the country in an increasingly uncontrolled way. 500 people from the Yezidi community[1] were killed in four successive bomb outrages in August, while the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have all been under attack. In July alone 1650 Iraqi civilians were killed and the figures for August will probably be worse.

Since 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a direct result of the war and its aftermath. The population is hungry, deprived of medical care; electricity and even water are luxuries. Baghdad has been transformed into a collection of walled ghettoes, splitting families in half, and run by all kinds of contending gangs.

More than two million people have been displaced throughout the country in the attempt to flee the killing; the same number has left the country for the same reason.

As for the American army, officially there have been over 3000 deaths; some sources put it as high as 10,000, not counting the growing number of suicides (in 2006 it stood at 100) and there are rumours of revolt in the ranks.

This is the immediate heritage of the Bush administration's grand war against terrorism. According to recent polls, 58% of Americans now think the war was a mistake.

A new acceleration of global chaos

The USA's anti-terrorist crusade has been a total failure and has left Washington in a real impasse. The various options it can envisage today are all unfavourable. Bush has been unable to set up an Iraqi government that has a minimum of credibility and which does not function as the simple expression of dissensions between Shiites and Sunnis. The representatives of this government have diverted half the weapons granted to the Iraqi authorities by the Pentagon over the last three years into the arsenals of their respective cliques. Not to mention a police force that frequently provides suicide-bombers with access to the American military camps. So much for the reliability of the people the US has put in power in Iraq. Thus, if the US forces stay in Iraq, this will change nothing and will provoke more anti-war sentiment in the US. On the other hand, if they leave, pulling out 150,000 men over several months, it could be very costly to the US army in terms of loss of personnel, and could open the way to an even greater explosion of violence, with Iran waiting at the gates. This is unlikely to be offset by the 90 men which the UN is rushing to Iraq, in place of the 65 already there!

However, the perspective of a partial withdrawal at least has already been adopted by the Bush administration, despite its criticisms of the recent British pull-out from the centre of Basra. This is why, in order to counter the hegemonic ambitions of Tehran, the US is trying to build up an alliance of pro-American Arab states by offering to strengthen their military apparatus: 20 billion dollars spent on ultra-sophisticated weapons for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates over the last ten years, and 13 billion for Egypt over the same period. And Israel has demanded its own compensation, because it hardly wants to see any reduction in its military superiority in the region. This has amounted to 30 billion dollars worth of arms - a 25% increase in US military supplies to the Israeli government.

We thus see the US piling up the arms stocks in a region which is already highly volatile. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it's supplying a country which has even been suspected of supporting Sunni terrorists in Iraq, including Al Qaida. In a world where ‘every man for himself' is already the rule, the response by the world's leading power can only be to aggravate the chaos even more.

The race for nuclear weapons

On a more general scale, since the end of 2006 we have seen a feverish growth in the arms race. And acquiring nuclear weapons has become top of the list for a number of states. This is hardly a surprise. The North Korean nuclear tests at the beginning of 2006, the repeated purchases of Russian nuclear technology and missiles by Iran over the last year or more, the ambitions of a country like Brazil to revive its nuclear programme, were all signs that a whole number of countries are no longer content to rely on some great power's ‘nuclear umbrella' but want to have the weapons themselves.

The US itself has played a big part in this race. Following the destruction in January 2007 of a US weather satellite by a Chinese missile - an event which highlighted the USA's potential weakness in directing aerial, naval and terrestrial warfare from a distance - the American response has been to reinforce its anti-missile shield at the very gates of Russia. The latter has responded with the vague threat of targeting European cities and the more concrete one of installing missiles in Kaliningrad on the Baltic, just between Poland and Lithuania, and very close to the American shield.

But the race for nuclear weaponry is not restricted to the major powers. In fact we are seeing a nuclearised belt stretching from the Middle East to the Far East, from Israel to North Korea via Pakistan, India and China, all of it topped off by Russia's arsenal. In short, an atomic powder-keg, located in regions which are already the theatre of all sorts of tensions and open conflicts. A sword of Damocles hangs over our heads and it will not be lifted by nuclear non-proliferation treaties which are not worth the paper they are written on. Only the massive development of workers' struggles and the overthrow of capitalism will bring an end to the threat of war and provide humanity with a future.

Mulan Based on an article in Revolution Internationale 382, September 2007.

---

[1] The Yezidis are a religious community seen as heretical by orthodox Sunni Islam. A lot of them are Kurds.

 

"It's an old story, we've all got stories like this, you want out but there are certain formalities, certain annihilations that need to be concluded, a white flag won't help. You can accept all the Soviet peace plans you'd like, it's too late, the spokesperson says, ‘Meaningless', ‘An outrage,' says the President, he promises more war ‘with undiminished intensity', leaving Kuwait is irrelevant, you are slaughtered on the highway home, where are your Scuds now? You are bumper to bumper and slaughtered with impunity, it's you versus the whole electromagnetic spectrum, and you are slaughtered until the slaughter stops" (J. Sacco, Diary of a Defeatist).

Nobody knows for sure how many were slaughtered on the road from Kuwait back into Iraq in one infamous instance of the Gulf War of 1991; tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe? A press-ganged conscript Iraqi army fleeing bumper to bumper with civilian men, women and children. Then the British and American jetfighters arrived, circled, and the slaughter began. Bombs, rockets, cannon, all the latest weaponry. Those that tried to leave the road were followed, targeted and carbonised - just like those who stayed on it. The bourgeoisie chortled about ‘the turkey shoot' and privately viewed the videos. "260,000 Iraqi troops are no longer a factor"; "The gates are closed and there is no way out of here"; "The only question is how high we're going to roll up the score" (US military briefings). The totally subservient media, who up until then had deliberately exaggerated Saddam Hussein's threat, talked about Iraqi ‘baby killers' and spread the lies about the ‘clean war', ‘surgical strikes' and ‘smart bombs', showed virtually no pictures of the massacre. A British army spokesman, asked about casualties from one reporter brave enough to ask a salient question, refused to answer on the grounds that he didn't want to get into "the pornography of war". Such was the reality of the USA's ‘new world order' of peace and prosperity announced only one year earlier.

It's quite usual today to hear politicians and even High Court judges(1) attempting to counter the excuses of suicide bombers and murderous jihadists who plead that ‘you (the West) started it', with the argument that that 9.11.2001 came before the Gulf War of 2003. The essence of their argument is therefore: ‘you (the jihadists) started it'. Without in any way taking up the anti-American cause of religious fundamentalism (as many leftists do) we can say that the Gulf War of 1991, while initially a victory for the USA's ‘new world order', was a significant moment in the downward spiral of militarism and decomposition that we find ourselves in today. While this is particularly the case in and around the Middle East it is also manifested in the suicide bombings and attacks that threaten every major town, city and resort and the civilians that live, work and holiday within them.

Saddam Hussein, described in the press in the run up to the war as ‘the new Hitler', had, up until 1990, been the USA's and Britain's policemen in the area (just like the ‘old' Hitler had been their policemen in central Europe some six decades before). It was particularly important for the western bloc to rely on him, while ignoring his ‘excesses', such as the gassing of the Kurds and his murderous oppression of the Shias, in the situation of the Cold War where Russian imperialism was trying to make inroads into the Middle East. Thus Saddam was armed and bankrolled by the British state as well as all the other major players of the western bloc. After the implosion of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989, it was necessary for the US to make a terrible and impressive example of its determination to maintain its leadership over its erstwhile ‘allies' in order to keep them in line and prevent challenges arising from any imperialist rival, the most obvious candidate being Germany and a possible European-based bloc. Saddam's Iraqi regime was perfect; a brutal third-rate gangster, located in a vital geo-strategic area with, as the western press didn't stop reporting in its warlike, patriotic fervour, ‘the fourth largest army in the world'. To this end Saddam was suckered into his invasion of Kuwait on August 2 1990, not least through the complicity of the US administration by way of its ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspin(2).

All the necessary ‘dodgy dossiers' appeared in 1990, just as they did under Blair and Bush thirteen years later: ‘terrifying weapons capable of being delivered to the civilised world'; ‘chemical weapons' (yes, but supplied by Britain and Germany); ‘purchases of enriched uranium' (a fiction) a ‘super cannon' (again, the parts supplied by Britain), and so on, in order to justify the military build-up and the terrible response. From late 1990 to early 1991 the US put in the Gulf 6 aircraft carriers and 600,000 troops. More than 2000 daily sorties were flown over Kuwait and Iraq, dropping 7 tonne fuel air bombs, napalm, and cluster bombs; uranium tipped shells were fired by artillery. Cruise missiles and 1200kg shells were fired from warships and Stealth bombers dropped their deadly loads. More explosives were dropped on Kuwait and Iraq in one month than was dropped on Germany in the whole of World War II. And all the time the supine media talked about the clean, victimless war, reinforcing the already existing confusion and disorientation of the working class ‘at home' resulting from the collapse of the Russian bloc and the bourgeoisie's campaign about the end of communism and the victory of liberal capitalism.

The US and Britain contemptuously brushed the Russian ‘peace plan' aside in the run-up to the war and the US rallied a mostly unwilling coalition of some 30 countries. Britain, basing itself on its historical experience of global gangsterdom, was right behind the US. France, Italy, Spain, China and Saudi Arabia were more or less reluctantly drawn in and Germany and Japan were presented with the bill by the US administration. Any potential bloc rivalry to US imperialism was nipped in the bud, and the prospect of any sort of unified European bloc was shown to be a hollow sham.

So the crusade of America and Britain against the populations of the Middle East, and the subsequent development of this particular phase of imperialist terrorism and suicide bombings, didn't begin with the Gulf War of 2003 but with the Gulf War of 1991. And the development of the terror bombing of civilians didn't begin with Islamic fundamentalism. It was demonstrated with murderous force with the carpet bombing of Bagdad and the ‘Turkey Shoot' on the road out of Kuwait. This aerial slaughter of civilians was itself a development of imperialism in decadence, and well before the terror bombing of Germany during World War II, British ‘war hero', Sir Arthur ‘Bomber' Harris, had been involved in dropping chemical bombs from aeroplanes onto Kurdish civilians in order to defend the interests of British imperialism in Iraq. US General Curtis LeMay sums up the attitude of the bourgeoisie in a nutshell: "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people. You are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders"(3). These words and sentiments of LeMay are strikingly similar to those on the videotaped message that the suicide bomber Siddiq Khan made before he and his fellow murderers unleashed their bombs in London on 7/7/05. The slaughter of civilians is the rationality and practice of imperialism from its highest generals to its lowliest footsoldiers. The only difference being a matter of scale.

In a subsequent article we will look at how the American and British bourgeoisies left Saddam intact and then encouraged the Kurds and Shias to rise up against his regime at the end of the 1991, while they stood by and watched him slaughter them.

Baboon 7/9/7

Notes

(1) Mr. Justice Fulford at the trial of the 21.7.2006 would-be suicide bombers (The Times, 12.7.2007)

(2) Le Monde Diplomatique May 1991

(3) Michael Sherry The Rise of American Air Power Yale University Press, 1987.

In an article on its recent International Congress the ICC saluted the appearance of a newly emerging generation of revolutionaries (see WR 306). Whether being engaged in online discussions on various web forums, receiving correspondence from people who've never contacted us before, discussing with new groups, or meeting people at meetings and demonstrations who have never come across the communist left before, we are finding ourselves in contact with a growing number of people who have fundamental questions about the nature of capitalist society and want to discuss the way to establish an alternative. Since we published our book on communism (Not a nice idea but a material necessity), with the whole range of subjects dealt with in its pages, there has been discussion on many aspects of the areas it touches. To develop this discussion, and because of our generally positive view of the potential of the current period, we decided to hold an invitation-only meeting to discuss some of the questions raised in the book. While it took place on one of the few warm weekends this summer, that did not diminish the enthusiasm of the participants, who came from across the country, as well as from Spain, Switzerland and Turkey (represented by a comrade of the group Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol). Some of these comrades are very close to the ICC (including some ex-members), some well acquainted with the positions of the ICC, one was from the Midland Discussion Forum and others maybe not so close to the ICC but interested in our approach and wanting to discuss seriously.

Communism is not a utopia

Non-ICC members prepared the presentations to the two sessions of the meeting, and they both did an excellent job in getting over the basics of difficult subjects. We started with the question ‘Is communism a utopia?' We were prepared for a wide-ranging discussion on such a broad theme, but most of the contributions could be seen as answers to the question ‘How do we get communism?'

For example, what is the role of revolutionaries? Are they organisers of the working class? Do they teach the working class the nature of capitalism and how it can be overthrown? Are the Trotskyists right to say that the crisis of humanity is characterised by the crisis of the leadership of the proletariat? Or, as the ICC understands it, is the role of revolutionaries to participate in the struggles of the working class, in the development of its self-organisation, and in the discussions that are integral to the process of clarification within the class and in the development of class consciousness and solidarity?

Revolutionaries identify the nature of the historic period; they try to grasp the material situation in which the working class finds itself and in which its struggle must develop. But, although the activity of revolutionary minorities has an absolutely essential role to play, it cannot substitute for the conscious mass activity of the working class as a whole. In leftism we find a current that not only denies workers' self-activity and tries to enrol it behind the forces of the bourgeoisie (we referred to the example of Trotskyism's support for the Allies in World War II), but also poses as the saviour of the working class and its struggle.

On a related subject we discussed the problems facing the class today. For example, while we can talk about workers' capacity to become conscious of their situation and the perspective it opens up for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, at the moment we have to be clear in understanding that the consciousness within the working class of what's at stake is very much behind what the historic situation demands. Similarly, while revolutionaries should not be dismissive of what they have achieved, they must be well aware of what is demanded of them by the struggles and discussions within the working class.

Also, we have to be aware of the difficulties facing the working class in relating to other non-exploiting social strata. In western Europe, where there is such a preponderance of those who work for wages paid by bourgeois big and small, it could be easy to forget the situation that prevails in so much of the rest of the world. In most of the so-called underdeveloped countries, not only are there landless and landowning peasants, there are also millions in the most precarious of situations, living hand to mouth by whatever means they can find. And, in many of the big cities in these regions, there are many extremely deprived neighbourhoods where wage-labourers live side by side with those who could be described as being part of the ‘informal' economy, living through crime, begging, scams, barter or through any arrangement that might possibly seem to work. The working class, even when sharing the same living conditions as other strata, faces capital and its state in a different relationship, as a force that can overthrow capitalism. But for this very reason its struggles can also inspire others, by example and by the force of persuasive argument in discussion, of the communist perspective.

The state cannot bring about socialism

The second session of discussion was started off by a thorough presentation on the role of the state, how it can't usher in socialism, and why it has to be destroyed by the revolutionary struggle.

We very soon moved to looking at the nature of the illusions within the ranks of the working class. With the force of the campaign around Chavez as the bringer of socialism to Venezuela, it is not surprising if some workers have been taken in by the propaganda around the state capitalist measures introduced there. However, the view that many workers have of the state is as a provider of some sort of ‘protection' from the worst excesses of capitalism. This goes along with the idea that democracy can be made to work in the interests of the working class. In the discussion we looked at things like education and the NHS. The services provided by the NHS (paid for through a lifetime of National Insurance contributions) are part of the social wage that workers depend on in times of illness. The whole bureaucratic apparatus of the NHS is, like any other part of the capitalist state, part of the means used by the ruling class to maintain its position against the interests of the working class. Ultimately workers need the social wage, but not the state institution.

Later we discussed the role of revolutionaries in the face of war. This was not in relation to current conflicts, or the major wars of the twentieth century, but through looking at Marx and Engels and their response to the American Civil War of 1861-65 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. For the ICC, these conflicts took place in a period when it was not possible to denounce every act of the bourgeoisie as reactionary. For example, Marx, and the workers' movement of the time, supported the North against the slave owning states of the US South, even though it affected cotton supplies that were still essential for the mills in the north of England. Opposition to slavery went hand in hand with support for the forces of the North as this would mean the development of capitalist America.

With the Franco-Prussia War Marx insisted on the working class being always conscious of its own interests. The position of Marx and Engels was one of opposition to France when it went on the offensive against Germany. As soon as it was no longer a matter of defence against attack they changed their position, because the situation had changed.

In each example we can only understand the intervention of revolutionaries if we see the historical framework in which they were acting. To fail to do this would be like saying that the English Revolution of the 17th century or the French Revolution of the late 18th had no significance for the workers because they were conflicts between exploiting classes. Marxists were not unaware of the class nature of belligerents during the wars of the 19th century but they put these events in the context of a capitalist mode of production that was still developing across the face of the globe.

To the next meeting

Throughout this day of discussion there was a very good spirit. Although there were a number of differences these were approached in an open and comradely manner. All who were there shared a serious commitment to the process of clarification. We asked for the response of participants at the end of the meeting - these were all enthusiastic. Already, in informal discussions after the meeting, there were suggestions as to what future subjects could be discussed. It's too early to say at this stage, as we want to get some more feedback from the participants, although one definite possibility is the lessons of the Russian revolution and the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Given the success of this day of discussion, we would like to repeat it and widen it in the future: comrades interested in participating in the next one should write to us. We will also be publishing the presentations and summaries of the discussion on our website in the near future.

ICC August 2007

What do the following have in common: a former Labour MP and local mayor; celebrity academic Germaine Greer, author of feminist classic The Female Eunuch; and the Ethiopian ambassador to London?

They were all speakers at a recent event to celebrate the life of Sylvia Pankhurst as a "crusader, artist and feminist"!

The Sylvia Pankhurst Festival held on 8 July included a series of talks and an exhibition in the Essex suburb of Woodford Green, where she lived for over 30 years. Members of Pankhurst's close family were also present, including her son, Doctor Richard Pankhurst, and the speakers included the local author of a recent biography (Shirley Harrison, Sylvia Pankhurst, a Maverick Life 1882-1960), and others with personal stories of her life.

Over the last 10 years or so there has been an effort by the left of the bourgeoisie to appropriate Pankhurst and gain official recognition for her, as a pioneer of the vote for women, an anti-fascist, anti-colonialist and indefatigable campaigner for world peace. There has even been a campaign, supported by Labour baronesses and former union bosses in the House of Lords, to erect a statue of her outside the Houses of Parliament (!). The holding of the Festival has to be seen in this context.

During her long political life, of course, Sylvia Pankhurst was all of these things (she died in 1960 in Ethiopia, and was given a full state funeral by her friend Emperor Haile Selassie), which is why the left can appropriate her in the first place. But they can only do this by suppressing or distorting her experience as a proletarian revolutionary, and in particular her defence of left-wing communist positions against parliamentarism and the Labour Party in the period from 1917 to 1924.

The Festival's speakers, while referring to her support for the Russian revolution, her visit to Moscow to attend the Third International and meet with Lenin, and her eventual expulsion from the British Communist Party, were coy about the positions she defended in this significant period of her life, preferring instead to praise her "contributions to human rights and campaigning for peace". Germaine Greer's presentation was at least more radical in language, pointing to the ‘limitations' of the women's movement and of the struggle for the vote, and arguing passionately that Pankhurst deserved to be more than a footnote to history. But Pankhurst the left-wing communist was still notable for her absence.

So not surprisingly, when it came to a debate on Pankhurst's legacy, the presence of the ICC at this event was very much as the ghost at the feast. A WR sympathiser intervened to affirm that Pankhurst was indeed not a footnote to history, as shown by the existence today of communist organisations like the ICC, and the modest contribution it has published on the history of the British Communist Left which contains some of her writings. To the re-emerging revolutionary minorities in the period after May '68, the re-discovery of the positions defended by the left-wing communists and of their criticisms of the Bolsheviks was crucial in re-forging the link with the past struggles of the working class. In Britain, for example, the revolutionary ex-shop stewards of the Workers' Voice group on Merseyside in the 1970s re-published many texts by Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers' Dreadnought group, bringing them to the attention of a whole new generation of revolutionaries for the first time.

Finding herself unexpectedly in the face of living rather than dead revolutionaries, Greer swiftly backtracked, remarking that, yes well, of course back in the 1970s we all thought there was going to be a revolution, but capitalism won, didn't it? Thus she added to the bourgeoisie's lies about the ‘end of communism' (and in so doing consigned Pankhurst's own struggle for communism to the dustbin). Asked a question from the floor about whether there were any regimes today that Pankhurst would see as progressive, Greer warmly wished Sylvia was alive so that they could both go to ... Cuba! (If Sylvia came back as a left communist she would not be impressed with the state capitalist regime that is Fidel's island paradise). In response we pointed out that even in 1920 Pankhurst had been critical of the Bolshevik regime in Russia, and although we can never know what positions she would defend today, the real lasting value of Pankhurst's politics was her intransigent defence of the need for the working class to abolish the institutions of the capitalist state.

To the bourgeoisie, Sylvia Pankhurst is to be remembered as a feminist, a leftist or a liberal. To the proletariat, while not disguising the facts of her abandonment of revolutionary politics and subsequent betrayals, she is someone who, under the influence of the class struggle, broke with bourgeois politics and was won over to communism; greeting the Russian revolution as a practical hope for abolishing capitalism and creating a better world, she threw in her lot with the proletarian cause and for a period of her life gave to it all her energies and commitment - despite brutal treatment by the same democratic state that now tries to appropriate her to its own, alien cause. Thanks to the stubborn determination of Pankhurst and other, less well known working class militants (many of them women), the weak but authentic voice of left-wing communist opposition was heard in this country, leaving behind a body of writing that was to become a source of strength and learning for a new generation of revolutionaries fifty years later, of which the ICC remains an organisational expression today. This is the real legacy of Sylvia Pankhurst; this is the legacy communists defend today; and this is why we say to the left and liberal servants of the bourgeoisie: hands off Sylvia Pankhurst!

MH August 2007

We are publishing a leaflet by a close contact of the ICC about the student movement in Venezuela. It was produced by the comrade at the height of the movement and distributed at a student assembly held on the 22 June in one of the lecture halls of the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

We share the comrade's viewpoint, particularly the perspective posed by the movement: "It is towards the proletariat that the assembles organised by the young today throughout the country have to direct themselves, it is through discussion of the revolutionary potential of this class that the young will find the means to strengthen their movement, to orientate their struggle in the only direction that makes sense: that of the struggle of the working class against all the social inequalities of the capitalist system".

It is two months since the student movement began, and we can see that there has been a loss of impetus compared to the first few weeks. This has been brought about by the joint action of the forces of the bourgeoisie in power and in opposition, who have made it impossible to prevent the movement being identified as one more part of the opposition. In order to do this the student leaders linked with one or the other gang have been mobilised. The danger is that not only this student movement, but any social movement in Venezuela that tries to place itself outside of the strait-jacket of the political polarisation imposed by Chavistas and the opposition, will end up getting caught up in just such a trap.

Nevertheless, despite the actions of the opposition and the government, the student movement has not finished, but it is rather ‘in recess' during the holiday period. The conditions that gave birth to it, the growth in poverty, criminality, the high cost of living, etc, not only continue but are becoming increasingly unbearable.

We have also seen the slow beginnings of the mobilisation of the workers on their own class terrain: the oil workers (accused by the government of being oppositionists) have carried out several protests against the laying off of more than 1000 drilling workers and delays in the discussion of collective contracts; public sector employees have also being pushing for a discussion of the collective contracts, delayed for a year; transport workers have threatened a general strike due to the daily killings of drivers and assaults on passengers, etc...The workers' discontent is such that the official unions, for example the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores and the oil sector unions, have had to begin to ‘oppose' the government, as a way of channelling workers' discontent.

This corroborates what we said in our article that analysed the student movement [17] that it is an expression of the social discontent that exists in Venezuelan society. Thus it will not be necessary to have a ‘hot autumn' for the bourgeois hoax that is Chavismo's ‘Socialism for the 21st century' to start to be exposed. ICC, 20/8/07

 

---

Rebellion of the innocents or the implosion of ideology?

 

The youth protests that have flowered on the political and social scene of this country in the last few weeks, whose main protagonists have been university students (private and autonomous), as well as students of the education sector, have been an important political movement. Though burdened with certain demands (defence of the freedom of expression and protests against the closure of RCTV), this movement has opened the floodgates of an interesting scenario where, from now on, the working class can develop its struggle against the representatives of the capitalist system.

We will begin by making some things clear: we have to salute the spontaneity, the calmness and strength that this movement has shown since the beginning. This clearly place it outside of the influence of the antagonistic political factions that buttress Venezuelan capitalism and which have dominated the political scene over the last 8 years.

We need to look at the shape of these factions of capitalism. On one side is the faction that defends the liberal orientation of capitalism and which includes elements of the ‘critical left', remnants of Stalinism who used to flirt with Chavismo and who today are against it, as is the case with MAS, BR, Douglas Bravo, Pablo Medina, etc. Cohabiting with them we find recalcitrant factions of the right: the residue of COPEI, the Church, Primero Justicia, retired military men, along with the Centre Right with the Social Democrats around AD, Alianza Popular, Un Nuevo Tiempo etc, and a union fraction tinged by various orientations. All of these good gentlemen declare opposition to the regime controlled by Chavismo.

On the other side, we find the state capitalist model as the alternative to the crisis of capitalism. Those in this faction nestle under a posture of recalcitrant nationalism, tinged by an ideology based on Bolivarianism and militarism. It is important to highlight the theoretical framework that serves as the support of this movement. This is made up of the counter-revolutionary traditions of Stalinism, the guerrillas movement of the 60's, the experience of the ‘heroic Cuban revolution', which today is caricatured in the snobbery of Chávez's anti-imperialism. This rag bag of ideologies are the foul-smelling leftovers of Trotskyism, anarchism, Gramsci-ite pedagogy of the oppressed, mystifications about Afro roots and nativism, liberation theology and evangelism, Guevarism, Islamism etc. All this ideological vomit is the preamble to the piece of nonsense that is called ‘the socialism of the 21st century'.

These two capitalist factions have used different methods in order to try and capture the youth movement which today is shaking the homeland of the god Bolivar. The first, the petty-bourgeois and whining opposition, is trying to ride the crest of the wave, using the defence of freedom of expression and RCTV as its slogan, but the youth put a break on this by telling them that there was no room for them in this movement, and that this movement has nothing in common with their reaction or methods of struggle.

The second, at the beginning was panicked. Chávez in a livid and threatening speech on national TV told the parents of the children to reprimand and control them. As this drivel didn't work, they then resorted to summarily condemning them as the pawns of imperialism, as enemies of the motherland, as little bourgeois from the private universities who received counter-revolutionary instructions over the internet from the Empire. What bollocks! These obscenities are clearly not working; they are the product of a whole reactionary culture that is part of the theoretical repository of the ideologies of ‘Socialism for the 21st century.' Nor is the advice that Chávez desperately asked for at the enclave held in Cuba, called by the mummifed Fidel and the cocky Daniel Ortega. This wretched person was brought to Caracas by Chávez in order to besmirch the students who were looking for a political space within the class struggle.

The fear and cowardice of the regime was made clear in the pathetic attitude adopted by Madame Cilia Flores and Chávez himself when they furiously scolded the young who had left the environs of the National Assembly after fulfilling their mission of rejecting, through the right of reply, the shabby and slanderous accusations of the cretins of the Chavist parliament, thus again clearly demonstrating their independence. This was also demonstrated when they were ambushed in the concourse of the Parliament by Chávez and the ‘heroes' of the student section of Chavismo who tried to trap them. These actions show the wearing out of their accusation about the young being agents of imperialism and coup plotters.

We can see that the militant forces of reaction, Chavismo as much as the opposition, have not been able to shackle the movement of the young.

The prison in which the young have been confined is precisely the one that is dearest to them: the universities. The university, as a status institution, is the organism where all of the ideological justifications for the fundamental social and economic relations of capitalism are refined. The confrontation between the autonomous and private universities boils down to an antagonism about two visions, Chavismo's Gramscian vision of what education ought to be, particularly what must be imparted in the universities and, on the other side, the traditional conception. This is nothing more than a turf war between gangsters over how the universities will serve to impose their liberal or state capitalist conceptions. The demonstrations called by the rectors of the autonomous and private universities was a manoeuvre whose aim was, in the first place, to engrave in the minds of the young the bourgeois slogans of freedom of opinion and expression, and the defence of the instrument par excellence for capitalism's stupefying of society: television. Another aim was to tie them to the broken-down car of the defence of university autonomy. The universities have shown themselves to be the ideal instrument for drawing the young away from the direction that their movement instinctively takes towards the class struggles, towards contact with the only class that has a revolutionary historical perspective: the working class. It is towards the proletariat that the assembles organised by the young today throughout the country have to direct themselves, it is through discussion of the revolutionary potential of this class that the young will find the means to strengthen their movement, to orientate their struggle in the only direction that makes sense: that of the struggle of the working class against all the social inequalities of the capitalist system; the struggle for the destruction of the state at whose head we find either Chávez or the liberal bourgeoisie. In short, the direction towards real socialism, the classless, communist society.

We are En La Barricada

e-mail: [email protected] [18]