The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund has warned of a "perfect storm" looming in the world economy. "The combination of the credit crunch and high oil prices could bring a big reduction in international trade from which no one would be immune". He also thought that projections for the prospects of the American and European economies were "too optimistic" and would have to be re-assessed downwards.
Among other forecasters Goldman Sachs have warned that the knock-on effects from the credit crunch crisis could plunge the US into recession. Others have suggested that the US is already in recession or at best facing a period of stagnation.
Following the outbreak of the credit crisis, the Federal Reserve saw little evidence of possible improvement, saying that "mortgage delinquencies are up significantly in many areas" and "home building is not expected to recover until next year".
Meanwhile the OECD has warned that stock markets around the world are set for a sharp decline. It thinks that the recent turmoil in share prices was just the "precursor of a more protracted downturn." This should come as no surprise because this year there have already been a series of mini-crashes on stock markets around the world, partly provoked by the weakness of the American economy.
In turn the weakness of the dollar has undermined the attempts of European businesses to export to the US. China is one country that relies enormously on the US market - its biggest export outlet - but the US economy is founded on debt, and therefore the Chinese economy is also effectively based on debt.
Despite all the propaganda, current growth in China and India is no more going to come to the rescue of the US and the rest of the world economy than did the Asian tigers or the dotcom bubble before that.
Ultimately the capitalists are relying on debt to a staggering extent. The movement of capital that results from this flight to debt is some twenty times more than the value of transactions in goods and profits. In the 19th century debt could be used to accelerate productive investments, for example in new markets, but in the epoch of glutted markets debt offers no solutions, only a postponement of the crises that are to come.
The current state of the economy is worse than the lurch of the crisis in 1987, 1995, 1997-8 and 2001. Ultimately it is worse than the situation in 1929. The bourgeoisie are aware of the way things are going. As Bill Gross, chief investment officer of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, said: "The U.S. hasn't faced a downturn like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The slump in the housing market and increases in household debt will have negative effects on consumption and future lending attitudes, which could bring us close to the zero line in terms of economic growth". Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers drew out further implications "When the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit the U.S. in September, 2007, the fallout was limited to the U.S. However, now it is likely to spread to other countries around the world, depressing the world economy as well as American economy."
The ruling class can resort to a number of state capitalist measures, and also try to deflect the effects of the crisis on to weaker economies, but it can't keep a lid on the pressure building up in the system for ever.
Among the measures undertaken by the bourgeoisie, many focus not so much on improvements in productivity but on cutting its costs. This can take many forms. For example, keeping increases in workers' wages beneath the rate of inflation benefits the capitalists, as does laying off staff so that fewer workers are doing the same work. Moving jobs to regions or countries where wages are lower, or moving workers who will accept lower wages to areas where wages are normally higher, or keeping workers on short-term contracts to avoid annual wage increases, all these measures also cut down on capitalists' outgoings.
With the role of the state being so fundamental to the management of modern capitalism, state expenditure is also a prime target for cuts in expenditure. Partly this is the same as elsewhere, making workers redundant and keeping tight control over workers' wages. But some of the services provided by the state are part of the social wage, that is, they're an essential part of the working class's attempt to survive, and cuts in the social wage, therefore, amount to attacks on working class living standards.
This is the reality of capitalism's economic crisis. Capital tries to increase workers' productivity, cuts wages, cuts jobs, and cuts services. These attacks can't be concealed forever with lies about the health of the economy. The ‘perfect storm' in the world economy has its impact on a working class that is not passively accepting everything that's being thrown at it. Since 2003 we have been witnessing increasing evidence of the return of the working class to struggle. The growing force of capitalism's economic crisis will add further fuel to these sparks of a massive working class response to a system in profound disarray. Car 30/11/07
At the time of writing, the huckster Richard Branson has made some sort of a bid for the bankrupt Northern Rock bank and despite the massive state intervention (estimated by some to eventually total some forty billion pounds) by the Bank of England, it is still not out of the woods. In fact if, as expected, house prices fall further, Northern Rock could be facing even bigger crises. At the same time, it's been officially confirmed that both Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley have suffered major losses over dodgy lending. Other effects of the so-called "sub-prime" crisis, all of them bad, are radiating out internationally: credit crunch, bankruptcies, unemployment, inflation and the real threat of a major recession.
In order to momentarily stem this crisis, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and, latterly, the Bank of England, have spent hundreds of billions on the market! These colossal sums injected by the various central banks alone bear witness to the breadth of the crisis and the real fears of the bourgeoisie
Today the ‘experts' and other hacks try once again to fill us with illusions that these convulsions are only a passing phase or a ‘salutary correction of excessive speculation'. Thus the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, in his latest quarterly report (November 07), while laying bare the depth of the crisis, talks of a swift recovery. King suggests that there's no great underlying problem and that growth will ‘bounce back' to a much healthier level of 3% in two years time. The White House talks about "the good fundamentals of the economy". The bourgeoisie are both kidding themselves and kidding us. In reality these shocks are the sign of new phase of the acceleration of the crisis, the most serious and deepest since the end of the 60s. And once again the working class will suffer terrible consequences.
In the media during the summer, when billions of dollars were going up in smoke, the bourgeois economists were saying it was "unprecedented". The crisis had apparently appeared out of the clear blue sky without warning. Lies! Stock market gains, rocketing house prices, and even growth, all that was built on sand and everyone knew it. Our organisation already affirmed last spring that the so-called good health of the economy resting only debt, was preparing for a bleak future: "In reality, it is a question of a real headlong rush, (into debt) which far from permitting a definitive solution to the contradictions of capitalism can only prepare for painful tomorrows and notably brutal slowdowns in its growth".[1] It's not a question of a premonition but of an analysis based on the history of capitalism. The present financial crisis is a major crisis of credit and debt. But this monstrous debt doesn't fall from the sky. It is the product of 40 years of the slow development of the world crisis.
In fact, since the 60s, capitalism itself has survived through the always growing recourse to debt. In 1967, the world economy began to slow down and since, decade after decade, growth is less and less. The only response of the bourgeoisie has been to maintain its system under perfusion, by injecting into it crazy sums of money in the form of credit and debt. The economic history of the last forty years forms a sort of infernal cycle: crisis... debt... more crisis... more debt... After the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 there was the open recession of 1991-1993, the Asian crisis of 1997-98 and the explosion of the Internet bubble of 2000-2002[2]. Each time these convulsions are more violent and the consequences more dramatic.
Today, the crisis is breaking out anew while debt reaches unimaginable levels. The total debt of the United States, the first world economic and military power, has gone from $630 billion in 1970 to $36,850 billion in 2003. And since then, the machine has got totally out of control. This debt is growing at a rate of $1.64 billion a day! These breathtaking figures show in a striking manner the fact that the present financial crisis is much more profound than those that preceded it.
For a decade this speculative madness has invaded all sectors of activity. As never before the overwhelming majority of capital cannot find sufficient outlets in the real economy (firms that produce products and goods). Quite naturally then, capital is thus oriented towards speculation pure and simple. Banks, building societies, more or less specialised societies of speculation in the placing of risks (the famous hedge funds) all take part in the gold rush to a supposed new El Dorado. Money and credit are thus rushed forth and the bourgeoisie seems to have only one obsession: debt and still more debt.
It's in this totally mad context that householders in the USA, but also in Britain, Spain and other countries, have been strongly encouraged to buy houses and flats without really having the means to do so. Financial houses are ready to lend money to workers' families on extremely low incomes with the sole guarantee of their home. The basic principles of these hypothecated loans is the following: when Mr. X wants to buy a house for $100,000, a lender, a bank for example, lends him the funds without reserve and without guarantee other than the security of the house. If Mr. X is in too much debt and can't repay his borrowing, the lender will take back the house, re-sell and recuperate its funds of $100,000. That's the sole guarantee of the bank. That's why it is mainly the hedge funds (specialists in the placing of risks) that have participated in these sub-primes. Workers can borrow more easily, thus more and more want to buy a house. Consequently house prices have risen (10% a year on average). These extremely low-paid workers have only debt as purchasing power; so they continue to get into more debt by hypothecating the rising value of their house. For example, Mr. X, seeing the value of his house rise to $120,000 can credit his purchases by hypothecating up to $20,000. Then the value goes up to $130,000! And he does it again... But it's not an endless process. On the one hand the working class becomes poorer (job cuts, wage freezes...). On the other, borrowing takes place at growing variable rates and month after month payments become higher and more difficult to make. The result is inexorable. When too many workers can't make their astronomical payments, the banks increase their requisitions of hypothecated homes, the crisis breaks out and the bubble bursts as is happening now. In fact there are too many houses for sale, prices are falling (they could fall 30% or more). It's perverse; the buying power of millions of families rests on the price of their house and thus on their capacity to get into debt and, for them, the house price falls mean bankruptcy. Thus as the value of Mr. X's house falls (to $110,000 say) the banks cannot recuperate their total lending of $150,000. Not only does Mr. X no longer have a home but also he must pay back the difference of $40,000, plus interest of course! The result in the US has been rapid[3]: more than 3 million households are out on the street this autumn.
At the same time, the hedge funds, lending under the sub-prime form, have themselves not hesitated to indebt themselves to banks and other credit organisations in order to speculate on real estate. The principle, quite simple, is to buy property and re-sell it some time later on a rising housing market. Thus the collapse of the housing bubble also means the bankruptcy of all these funds. In fact, even in recuperating the hypothecated houses and throwing millions onto the street, these organisations inherit houses that are worth hardly as much. By way of the domino effect, banks and other credit organisations are also hit. Imagine it! These institutions borrow the one from the other to the point of no longer knowing who owes what monies to whom! Each passing day we are told that this or that bank or credit organisation is on the edge of bankruptcy. Such is the case for the USA, Britain, Germany and certainly more to follow. It is now the whole credit and speculative sector that is in crisis and it's the working class who will pay the cost.
"A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there - it soon adds up to real money". So said one US senator, confirming that a financial crisis always becomes a crisis of the real economy. Even before the financial crisis of the summer, the economic specialists had slyly begun to revise economic forecasts for world growth downwards. In January 2007, the United Nations announced that it would fall back to 3.2% this year (after showing 3.8% in 2006 and 4.5% in 2005). But with the latest developments of the crisis, all these figures will be further revised downwards.
In fact, the profound crisis of credit inexorably means a brutal fall in activity for all businesses. Nobody can, or wants to lend money to business to invest. But the record gains that the latter sometimes show are in reality based in great part on massive indebtedness. The tap of credit shut, these businesses, for the most part, will be in a very bad position. The most striking example is the building sector. The housing bubble being based exclusively on risky lending means the number of constructions will fall in all the major countries. And the repercussions will go way beyond that: "in the United States, as borrowing against housing finances at least 80% of consumption, it's the whole of household demand that will be affected. American consumption will thus be cut by a point, a point-and-a-half; instead of growth of 3.5% next year, it may not pass 2%" (Patrick Artuis, La Tribune de l'Economie, 27.08.07). And here we are talking about the most optimistic scenario. Some economists are saying that US growth could come in at less than 1% and, evidently, this has a global importance. Europe's economy is profoundly linked to it. Further, the awaited slowdown of these two economies will have important repercussions on China and the whole of Asia. Europe and the USA represent 40% of Chinese exports! It is the whole of world growth that will slow down dramatically.
But there's another aggravating factor in the pipeline: the return of inflation. China's inflation rate has reached 6% and continues to grow month after month. This represents a tendency that will develop internationally, particularly in the sectors of raw materials and food. The latter is rising around 10% and the snowball effect means that it will affect the consumption of the working class and the great majority of the population and that again will rebound on businesses.
Since the 1960s, market falls and recessions have followed one another. Each time they become more brutal and profound. This latest episode will not break the rule as it represents a qualitative step, an unprecedented aggravation of the historic crisis of capitalism. It's the first time that all the economic indicators go into the red simultaneously: crisis of credit and consumption, colossal debt, recession and inflation! We are facing the worst recession for more than 40 years and major blows will fall on the working class. Only a united and solid struggle can face up to them. Tino/B November 2007
[1] Resolution on the international situation adopted by our last Congress and published in International Review no. 130 [2] .
[2] A new internet bubble is being inflated, again based mostly on fresh air. Google is now worth more than IBM, a company with eight times the revenue. Betters, speculators and Hedge Funds are getting involved on a bigger scale. All the problems of the 2000 .com bubble are being revisited at a higher level.
[3] See the November issue of Internationalism for more on the particulars of the US economy.
After less than 6 months the Brown government is on the rack. Its leader's reputation for competence and efficiency has plummeted, its ministers have been caught up in a series of cock-ups, and the Labour Party is under fire for sleaze and corruption. Obviously, you'd expect the opposition to take every advantage of each slip made by the government, but what's the truth about the problems facing Brown and Co?
The fuss over Labour fundraising and the various ways that donors found to get money into the party coffers is pretty modest in comparison to the record of John Major's Tory government. It also implies that dodgy financial dealing is somehow out of the ordinary for bourgeois political parties. Corruption is not exceptional but the rule. Lloyd George sold peerages, Tories under Major took cash for questions, Tony Blair's Labour took money for honours, and clearly every donor expects to get something for their investment. Why would Brown's regime be any different?
Discs containing 25 million personal records go missing and there are complaints about inefficiency. No one seems to care about the permanent inefficiency that's faced by workers when they're being dealt with by Job Centres, other government departments and local councils. As for confidential information getting into ‘the wrong hands', the hypocritical Labour government has broken all records for surveillance and intelligence-gathering. But evidently the state needs such material for its own purposes, not for the benefit of the population.
The British government does indeed have very real problems. These are not questions of efficiency or corruption, but stem from the international economic crisis, the position in which British imperialism finds itself and the threat of workers' struggles developing.
The run on Northern Rock was just one sign of the fragility of the economy, at a national and international level. According to the latest quarterly economic forecast from the British Chambers of Commerce the global credit crisis and the threats facing the international banking system mean that prospects for the British economy have to be significantly downgraded. A leading economist at Deutsche Bank is anticipating British growth rates to be at a rate lower than any since 1992.
The Bank of England's chief economist has warned of further problems for banks and other finance bodies in the aftermath of the credit crunch. He thought that the report of recent losses by banks could be just the tip of the iceberg and that financial markets will continue to be volatile for some time.
When the governor of the Bank of England spoke to the Treasury Select Committee he said that the economic outlook was "uncomfortable" and that the economic environment is "less benign". After he had given evidence that "The most likely outcome is for output growth to slow and inflation to rise" a BBC business editor said of his report that it was "enough to make grown men weep".
Despite the British bourgeoisie being the most skilful and intelligent in the world it has found itself dragged into the dead-end adventure of Iraq. A reduction in troops or a complete disengagement is only going to be seen as a humiliating retreat for British imperialism. Not only is it bogged down in Iraq, it is facing increasing difficulties in Afghanistan.
Gordon Brown is shifting from the blatantly pro-US policy of his predecessor (which was Blair's downfall) to a more independent position between Europe and the US. This doesn't mean an improvement in the position of British imperialism, as it only emphasises the fundamental contradictions of its position. In reality it can't operate independently; that's an opportunity only open to the American superpower. So the main prospect for the British bourgeoisie at the imperialist level is a loss of credibility and a worsening of the situation.
As far as the struggle of the working class goes, the economic situation in which workers find themselves is the basis for future struggles. Recently we've seen the defeat of the postal workers by the combined forces of the CWU and Royal Mail. But further back we've seen struggles in other sectors that show the working class's capacity to mount a united struggle and demonstrate the solidarity that is central to the development of workers' struggles. The threat of the working class is not immediate, but the British bourgeoisie's preparations at the ideological level and in building its apparatus of repression show that it is not blind to the potential of its class enemy.
The ruling class in Britain does face serious problems. However, the Labour government is broadly following the policies required by British capitalism, and the Tories are not offering anything markedly different. At present Cameron and his party are not being groomed for government, although it's only through an attention to the unfolding of the situation that it will be possible to identify when this changes.
The working class in Britain also faces serious problems - that of living in decaying capitalism and having to resist the attacks on its living and working standards. The more effectively it struggles, the bigger the real problems facing the British bourgeoisie.
Car 30/11/07
According to Lord West, Britain is already a world leader in anti-terrorism measures, "ahead of all countries in the world on the protection front". New measures proposed by the Labour government consolidate this position.
Security is to be stepped up at railway stations, ports and airports, with new security barriers, vehicle exclusion zones and blast resistant buildings. The security services, which had 2000 staff in 2001, will increase to more than 4000. There will be new police and deportation powers. A new UK border force with powers of arrest and detention will have 25,000 staff. Another 2000 will work in regional counter-terrorism units. 90 pieces of information will have to be provided to the security services for everyone flying to or from Britain. There will be propaganda against "extremist influences".
When Labour came to power you could only be detained for 4 days without charge, since then it has gone up to 28 days, the longest period of time in Europe, with the possibility that this will be doubled to eight weeks or more (Turkey, conducting a war against the Kurds in its South East, only allows seven and a half days).
In its existing ‘security' infrastructure Britain has more then 4 million CCTVs, the highest number per head anywhere in the world. A DNA database that will have 4.25 million people on it by the end of 2008 is the largest in the world. Official requests (from nearly 800 eligible bodies) for phone taps and email monitoring currently run at nearly 30,000 per month. Labour introduced control orders in 2005 that are used to put people under house arrest when there is not enough evidence to charge them.
The state puts forward a simple case for the strengthening of its apparatus of repression. The Director-General of the MI5 says that in this country there are 30 active groups and 200 other groups making 2000 people actually or potentially involved in terrorism. Lord West says that it will take 30 years to finally crush terrorism.
Yes, terrorism is a real concern for the ruling class, whether it's by disaffected individuals or by groups operating on behalf of hostile imperialisms. At that level anti-terrorism measures are just another part of an imperialist state's military provisions.
However, if you look through the range of measures introduced by governments over the years they are not just directed at its imperialist enemies (that lie behind ‘a tiny minority of violent extremists') but also at its class enemy: the working class and in particular its revolutionary militants.
The sheer volume of phone and email taps (some 400,000 in a recent 15-month period) is not just directed at MI5's 2000 ‘most wanted' but clearly a very wide range of people that the state feels the need to spy on. Or, to take the stop and search powers available under anti-terrorist legislation, only 1 out of every 400 searches results in an arrest (and an even smaller proportion lead to either a prosecution or conviction). The powers exist partly to gather information and partly to intimidate. Indeed, intimidation of individuals, social control, the monitoring of groups deemed a threat, are the focus of the state's security activity.
In the arguments between supporters of the government and civil liberties activists there has been a concentration on the extension of the period of detention without charge. In many ways this is academic as the government already has even more extensive powers if it chooses to declare a state of emergency. The state is effectively saying that it will have the powers normally used in wartime etc, without formally declaring hostilities. But also it doesn't actually need to cover everything it does with legislation. After all, the shoot-to-kill policy operated in Northern Ireland and at Stockwell tube station didn't require any legal sanction.
But why is Britain so far ahead in its preparation for repression? Is it because Labour has an ‘authoritarian reflex'? Or is there something particularly threatening in the current British situation?
No. That the British bourgeoisie is so advanced in its technological, legislative and ideological preparation shows the insight of this particular ruling class. While the struggle of the working class is in the final analysis a threat at an international level, each capitalist state has to prepare its own weapons at a national level. In Britain the state wants to undermine the possibility of future class confrontations, but also be prepared for the possibility of that sabotage failing. Other countries will follow Britain's example. Car 24/11/07
The revival of workers' struggles in 2003 has continued in many countries throughout 2007, and Britain has been no exception. The recent struggle of workers at Royal Mail showed both workers' militancy as well as the ability of the Communication Workers Union to sabotage the strike. When the union sold the pay deal they rather neglected to point out that it was effectively a pay cut. However, the unofficial strikes in Liverpool and South London showed that not all workers submitted to union diktats. And although workers did not entirely see what role the union had been playing, it was commonplace to view the final deal as at least a sell-out.
The CWU separated the question of pensions from the rest of the deal in order to sell it to postal workers. There was also a widespread idea, spread by union officials in the north, that it was only because of workers in the south that the deal got through, which both hid their responsibility for pushing the deal through and attempted to sow divisions among the posties.
In reality the new flexibility is one further step toward 76,000 lay-offs and local agreements that will push productivity and Royal Mail's agenda against the interests of workers.
But although it is impossible to see the deal as anything other than a defeat for postal workers, it is absolutely necessary to salute the solidarity action and moves towards the extension of the strike by the postal workers in the early stages of the struggle. And, at the end of the strike the wildcats in South London and Liverpool showed continuing combativity as workers clearly wanted to fight on.
The CWU countered workers' militancy by stopping picket lines and imposing a localism that kept each picket line separate and unconnected from each other.
One important feature of the strike lies in the parts of the movement that were unofficial, that is to say outside the control of the union. The perspective of such wildcat strikes is a positive sign for the future. Also the suspicion of the unions is slowly developing. At first workers thought the union was selling out. Then we saw workers say they were cancelling their union subs. Bit by bit workers are being compelled to understand that their struggles can only succeed if they're run by workers themselves and not by the unions. Car 2/12/07
According to our rulers, the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie is an outmoded idea. So when workers, fed up with the continuing attack on their living standards, engage in strikes or demonstrations to defend themselves, they are invariably portrayed as narrow-minded, backward looking, and above all selfish interest groups who just don't understand the need for ‘reforms' such as extending everyone's working life by 3 or 5 years, asking us to pay for medical costs on top of deductions from our wages that were already in place, or making way for new technology or the closure of entire industries in the name of making business leaner and meaner.
The recent series of struggles by workers and students in France have been presented in exactly this way, not only in France, but internationally. The new President Sarkozy, we are told, has decided to ‘take on the unions' in order to push through long-needed ‘reforms' of the French economy that will bring it in line with other western countries, which have already advanced further on the road towards a more modern, business-oriented, ‘neo-liberal' economic model. In particular, Sarkozy has targeted the ‘privileged' pension rights of certain key sectors like transport, gas and electricity workers, with the aim of pushing through a more equitable and affordable retirement system that will apply to everyone. The unions have responded in their usual conservative way by calling out the troops in defence of their entrenched privileges; and in the case of the strikes on public transport, the media have been able to pour out a veritable flood of abuse, accusing them of holding millions of transport users to ransom and thus further playing up divisions between different parts of the working population. On the international arena, this version of the recent movements in France has been given an added twist of spice by the idea that the addiction of certain elements of French society to strikes and street protests is proof of an equally conservative nostalgia for the barricades and France's tattered tradition of revolution.
On the other hand, the reality of what has been happening in France is offered by the selection of articles from our French-language press and website that we have translated here. The first is a general statement on the situation produced for a supplement that was distributed at the demonstrations and assemblies held by various sectors of the working class. It rejects the line that workers fighting attacks on pension schemes are ‘privileged': on the contrary, their fight is of concern to all workers, because the attack on ‘special' pension systems is merely the first prong of an even wider attack on all pensions and all workers' living and working conditions; indeed this offensive has been deliberately devised as a way of sowing divisions between the allegedly ‘privileged' sectors and the rest of the working class. The title of the article - ‘Against the government attacks, we all have to fight together!' - clearly puts forward what the proletarian response to these sordid manoeuvres has to be.
All three articles also make it clear that the real conflict going on in France is not between the Sarkozy government and the unions, but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; and that the unions, far from defending the needs of the latter, are in fact part of the bourgeoisie's strategy for controlling and dividing it. Playing on divisions between different union federations, keeping different sectors of workers separate ‘at the base', undermining the capacity of workers to discuss and take decisions through their own general assemblies, the articles provide some very concrete examples of the way that the trade unions line up against the workers in struggle.
At the same time, the articles show that, despite all the stratagems of the government and the unions, the seeds of class unity are gradually fermenting, putting forth small but significant shoots: the appearance of small groups of workers and students challenging the authority of the unions and leftists, the opening of general assemblies to workers from different sectors, a growing receptivity to the ideas of revolutionaries...
At the time of writing the dynamic of the class movement in France seems to be on the wane. Focus has temporarily shifted to the outburst of fury and violence in the Parisian ‘banlieux' following the killing of two immigrant teenagers in a collision with speeding cops, who are said to have run off and left the two boys to die. As in the country-wide explosion of 2005, these rebellions express the deep anger and frustration of a particularly oppressed sector of the proletariat, but the forms and methods they use - random violence directed not only against obvious symbols of state repression like police stations but also buses, schools, and other public buildings - do not offer a perspective for the building of class unity through self-organisation in the assemblies, discussion between different groups of workers, the raising of common demands, all the elements which we were beginning to see in the recent strike movement. The problem facing the working class is how to channel the rage in the ‘banlieux' towards this effort to build a new class unity in the face of capital and its state.
Amos 1.12.07
In the name of ‘a fairer society' Sarkozy and his billionaire buddies have the nerve to ask us to accept the suppression or alteration of ‘special pension regimes' and to make everyone work 40 years for their pension.
What the railway workers, the RATP employees, the gas and electrical workers are demanding was expressed clearly in their general assemblies: they don't want ‘privileges', they want 37 and half years for everyone!
If this attack on the ‘special pension regime' is allowed to go through, the workers know very well that tomorrow the state will ask us to pay 41 then 42 years of contributions in order to get a full pension - maybe even more, as in Italy (which will soon go over to a regime of retirement at 65) and even 67 as it is already in Germany or Denmark.
In the universities, this government has during the summer quietly adopted (with the complicity of the UNEF (French Student Union) and the Socialist Party) a law which will open the door to a two-speed university system: on the one hand a few ‘centres of excellence' reserved for the best-off students, and on the other hand a mass of sink universities which will prepare most of the young, those who come from poorer backgrounds, for their future role as unemployed or precarious workers.
In the public sector, the government is preparing to suppress 300,000 jobs between now and 2012, at a time when right now teachers are faced with overcrowded classrooms and increasing numbers of state employees are being forced to do more and more tasks and work longer and longer hours.
In the private sector, the job-cuts and lay-offs are falling like rain at a time when the Sarkozy government is concocting a reform of the Labour Code where the key-word is ‘flexi-security', which will make it even easier for the employers to throw us out onto the street.
On January 1 2008, we will have to pay new medical contributions which will be accompanied by increased prescription charges, raised hospital charges (brought in by the former minister Ralite, a member of the French Communist Party), a 90 euro charge on medical operations, etc.
Sarkozy asks us to ‘work more to earn more'. In fact what we're being asked is to work more and earn less. The dizzying fall in spending power is now being accompanied by an exorbitant increase in all basic foodstuffs: dairy, bread, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, fish, meat...
At the same time, rents are soaring: more and more proletarians today live in insecure or unhealthy housing conditions.
More and more proletarians, even those with a job, are sinking into poverty, are unable to afford decent food, housing and medical care. And they tell us: ‘it's not over'. The future they have in store for us, the attacks they are promising us are even worse. And this is because the French bourgeoisie is now trying to catch up with its rivals in other countries. With the aggravation of the crisis of capitalism, with the exacerbation of competition on the world market, you have to ‘be competitive'. That means stepping up the attack on the living and working conditions of the working class.
The anger and discontent that is being expressed today in the streets and in the workplaces can only spread because everywhere workers are faced with the need to respond to the same attacks.
Since 2003 the working class (which, according to the bourgeoisie, is an ‘outdated idea') has been displaying its will to resist, against the attacks on pensions in 2003 in France and Austria, against the reform of the health system, against lay-offs in the shipyards in Galicia Spain in 2006 or in the automobile sector in Andalusia last spring. Today their class brothers on the German railways are fighting for wage rises. In all these struggles, from Chile to Peru, from the textile workers of Egypt to the construction workers of Dubai, we are seeing the emergence of a deep feeling of class solidarity, which is pushing towards the extension of the struggle against a common exploitation. This same class solidarity raised its head in the students' movement against the CPE in the spring of 2006 and it is at the heart of the movement today. This is what the bourgeoisie fears more than anything else.
Going first of all for the special pension regimes in particular sectors like public transport (SNCF, RATP) and energy (EDF, GDF) can only bring derisory savings for the state. This is a purely strategic choice by the French bourgeoisie, aimed at dividing the working class.
The left and the unions are at root entirely in agreement with the government. They have always put forward the need for ‘reforms', in particular in the area of pensions. What's more it was the former Socialist Prime Minister Ricard who, at the beginning of the 1980s, produced the ‘White Paper' on pensions, which served as a canvas for all the attacks carried out by succeeding governments, left and right. The criticisms being made today by the left and the unions are only aimed at the form: they were not decided ‘democratically', there has not been enough ‘consultation'. What with the left being temporarily out of the game, the essential role of controlling the working class has fallen to the unions. The latter have divided up the work with the government, and among themselves, at all levels, with the aim of dividing and sabotaging the workers' response. The bourgeoisie must above all isolate the workers from the public transport sector, cut them off from the working class as a whole.
With this in mind, the ruling class has mobilised the whole of the media in order to discredit the strike and push the idea that other workers are being held hostage by an egotistical minority of privileged workers, making maximum use of the fact that the main sector concerned by the ‘special pension regimes' is public transport. It is counting on the unpopularity of a long transport strike, especially on the SNCF (traditionally the most combative sector in the strikes of winter 1986/7 and 1995) in order to set the ‘passengers' against the strikers.
Each union has played its role in the division and isolation of the struggles:
During this period, all the unions managed to get a quiet return to work at the EDF and GDF. On Wednesday 21st, soon after the demonstration, the six union federations negotiated the railway workers' future with a platform of specific demands.
Despite the government's desire to crush the workers' resistance, despite the numerous legal injunctions aimed at forcing a return to work, despite the complicity of the unions and their work of sabotage, not only has the workers' anger and militancy remained but there is also an emerging recognition of the need to unite the different struggles. For example in Rouen in 17 November, students at the faculty of Mont-Saint-Aignan went to find striking railway workers, shared a meal with them and took part in their general assembly as well as in a ‘free passage' operation on the motorway. Little by little we are seeing the germs of the idea of the need for a massive and united struggle of the whole working class against the inevitable increase in government attacks. For this to become a reality, workers must draw the lesson of union sabotage. In order to fight effectively, to extend the struggle, they can only count on their own forces. They have no choice but to take charge of their own struggles and unmask all the traps and divisive manoeuvres of the unions.
More than ever, the future lies with the development of the class struggle. Wm 18.11.07
As we have already shown in our press, the attacks being imposed on the transport, electricity and other workers around the ‘special pension regimes' are just the first stage of an assault on the conditions of the working class as a whole. Tomorrow, the pensions of all workers will be put into question. At the same time, the new medical charges are part of a wider attack on social benefits.
The students in struggle have shown that they understand this when they widened their demands, not only for the withdrawal of the law for the ‘reform' of the universities but also for the defence of the existing pension and medical agreements.
The spectre of the struggle against the CPE is reappearing and the unions, both ‘worker' and ‘student', are doing all they can to prevent a similar dynamic from developing, from opening a perspective for the struggle of the whole working class, not just in France but internationally.
We have already published on our website a number of examples of union sabotage during these struggles. Wherever our forces have allowed us to intervene, in the workers' assemblies and the universities, we have received a lot of sympathy and support from workers and students. Thus, in the south of the country, a group of young students[1] came to discuss with our comrades and gave us their own experience of the union sabotage of the struggle.
What the comrades experienced is very revealing about the contempt these so-called ‘workers' organisations' have for the movement. The only thing that counts for them is that it doesn't escape their control and become a really autonomous force which would allow the workers and students to build real solidarity and draw confidence from a common struggle.
We will cite the comrades who wrote to us: "Around 10 November, there were some major thefts at Mirail. Immediately, the administration threatened the AGET-FSE[2] that it would proceed to an administrative closure of the main buildings were not evacuated. We know that the term ‘administrative closure' is a euphemism for ‘sending in the CRS'.
Why did the administration threaten the union at this point? Because it knew that there was a conflict between the occupiers of one building ((l'Arche) and those of the main building. In one building there was the AGET-FSE and the JCR[3], and in the other the anarchists.
The AGET-FSE and the JCR organised an ‘extraordinary commission' to debate the question, in the absence of the anarchists. It was decided to liberate the building whose evacuation had been demanded by the administration, the one occupied by the anarchists!
But this ‘military' operation didn't go as planned. The AGET-FSE abandoned the JCR in the middle of the ‘strong-arm' operation. The anarchists resisted and the ‘putsch', as the anarchists described it, was a failure.
This attempted putsch did a lot of harm to the movement. The majority of he anarchists boycotted the struggle committee dominated by the AGET-FSE and the JCR. What's more, this coup was hidden from the general assembly".
And the comrades concluded: "if such manoeuvres are possible, it's because the commission are presented as something quite impersonal at the general assembly. The movement has a leadership and a well-organised one: it's the unions like the AGET-FSE, student SUD, political organisations like the JCR. There are numerous independents and anarchists. But this leadership is hidden from the general assembly through the hypocritical anonymity of the commissions, which are supposed to carry out the decisions taken by the assemblies!"
At the assembly we supported the proposal of these comrades to send the largest possible student delegation to the general assemblies of the rail workers. This proposal was voted for by the assembly. But the self-proclaimed presidium declared that it was not possible to go en masse to the railway workers GA on the pretext that there were many actions to be carried out simultaneously. In the end only three students got a mandate from the GA for this delegation: a militant of the AGET-FSE, a militant of the JCR and an ‘independent', as the comrades put it. They themselves offered to be in the delegation, but not being as well-known as the union figures, they had no chance of being mandated.
"All the same we went to the railway workers GA, on the one hand because we had been invited by comrades from the station, and on the other hand because we wanted to listen to the interventions of our delegates.
We were not able to hear them. We went to four of the general assemblies and we never saw them. We asked the comrades of the Sud Rail and others if they had seen them in other general assemblies. They hadn't. In other words, the student delegates, elected by the general assemblies, had not respected their mandate.
In the evening we went to the struggle committee to ask why our delegates hadn't been to the rail workers' assemblies. A member of the AGET-FSE answered that the delegates hadn't known where or when the assemblies were being held...
There was a precedent. On 18 October, I was sent as a student delegate to the rail workers' assemblies. There had been 5 other delegates. At the beginning of the assembly I was the only one there. Only two others arrived when the assembly was over.
At the second assembly, I was once again the only delegate present. No other delegate had respected his mandate. And at that time also they said it was because they didn't have the information!
Railway workers have been holding assemblies for over 8 days. We can't believe that organisations like AGET-FSE and the JCR are incapable of opening their address books and finding the telephone number of a trade union. We who are hardly organised managed to do it".
Caught red-handed in its intrigues, the AGET-FSE found nothing better to do than reproach the comrades for having acted on their own initiative and accusing them of falsely acting in the name of the student assemblies. But in fact the comrades went to the rail workers' assemblies in their own name. They were well received and were able to speak, proposing that the rail workers' should come to the student assemblies (which was done) and a joint leaflet should be distributed at the metro.
As the comrades said, "Whereas these actions were a success, concretising the rapprochement between rail workers and students, they reproached us for taking initiatives, for having gone over the head of the general assembly! By going to the general assembly we were just applying the decision voted some time before by the student assemblies: go to the workers. As communists, it is our duty to work with all our strength for the practical unity of the struggle!
Everything we did was done in full view and knowledge of the assembly. We hid nothing from it. Those who wanted to take part in our action did so, those who didn't want to didn't. We imposed nothing on the assembly. The only thing is that we were independent of the organisations which currently lead the movement".
The growing solidarity between workers and students, the fact that retired comrades who are not rail workers were able to speak at the rail workers assemblies, all this showed real advances in the struggle: the struggle of the rail workers is not just for themselves, it's part of a struggle of the whole working class, whether working, studying or retired. The unions can't accept this and do all they can to prevent such expressions of solidarity from spreading.
On 22 November, the comrades participated in the student demonstration, in the streets of Toulouse. Again, let them speak:
"At our general assembly, the students were called to participate at the general assembly at the Mediatheque, at 15.30, the place the rail workers, electricity workers and gas workers were assembling. Unfortunately the CGT thought it would be a good idea to change the time of the gathering and sabotage any attempt to hold a general assembly. Had it really been organised, and who by?
The CGT had not expected the students to arrive but they quickly barred the way. When university and high school students arrived we called on them to join the workers, but the official union stewards blocked us. On the other side, the CGT decided to move off, all the more because the workers were making friendly gestures to the students and asking them to join them. The student demonstration was kept 50 yards away from the workers' demonstration".
The strength of the struggle is the struggle itself. These few elements reported here shows how the movement begins to pose in practice the necessity for solidarity in the struggle between workers, students, pensioners... In continuity with struggles like the CPE in France, only the widest possible unity can enable us to constitute a balance of forces that can push back the bourgeoisie's austerity plans.
The bourgeoisie has the unions and the leftists there to prevent this from happening. It is an important victory for the working class when it recognises its real enemies, and there were small signs of this happening in this struggle. 30.11.07
[1] A member of this group calls himself a Trotskyist although not part of any organisation and they sign their writings: ‘some communists of the Marx, Lenin, Trotsky branch'.
[2] Student Union: Association Generale des Etudiants de Toulouse-Federation Syndicale Etudiante.
[3] Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire, youth wing of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire.
On Monday 19 November, in a large provincial town, a small group of students who had been to our last public meeting took a delegation of older politicised workers, members of the ICC, to two railway workers' general assemblies. Since the unions had taken care to divide up the assemblies into different sectors, our comrades split up to speak at the two assemblies: one of the station staff and one of the drivers.
In both assemblies, there was a very warm reception from the railway workers. In the station staff meeting, our comrade introduced himself by saying that he was not a rail worker, that he was a retired worker but that he had come to express his solidarity, adding that, if possible, he would like to speak in order to put forward his ideas about what solidarity means. The response of the railway workers who had welcomed him was to thank him for coming and to say "certainly you can speak".
The assembly began around 11.30 and finished around 12.30. In charge of the assembly was a whole raft of union representatives: FO, CFDT, CFTC, CGT, SUD... Each one made a speech reminding us of the demands of the movement, saying that it was necessary to establish a balance of forces "at a high level", presenting the negotiations that had recently been announced as a perspective for the struggle, insisting that the assemblies must decide - but all of this in a very sectional wrapping. Not only was this an assembly for a one sector, but also any concern about the situation of the students and the public employees was totally absent from their interventions. A union delegate even insisted that the perspective was to struggle "to win reforms" and not to fight all together, because the orientation of the unions was not to "revolutionise" everything. The CFDT representative said that the regional federation was not in agreement with the national leadership which had called for an end to the strike.
Following these speeches, a young railway worker went up to our comrade and said "you can speak if you want". The union speakers, understanding what was going on, said that it was necessary to wait a bit before allowing him to speak because first they had to move on to the vote to the renewal of the strike and then listen to proposals for action, which showed that, on the eve of the demonstration of 20 November, the union representatives were being forced to ‘jump on the bandwagon', whereas in the public sector workplaces they had made no call for a struggle in solidarity with the rail workers[1].
It was evident that the unions had no desire for this ‘minority' of students to make trouble by bringing their ‘box of ideas' (on the model of the movement against the CPE in spring 2006) to the rail workers' assembly, which they see as their private property. This kind of assembly, organised, run and sabotaged by the unions did not envisage and did not allow a real debate, a real exchange of ideas. And yet there was a real discontent and militancy. Of the 117 voting, 108 rail workers voted for renewing the strike
It was only after the vote that our retired comrade was able to come to the microphone. For the unions, proposals made by ‘external elements' are not there to be discussed by rail workers. Here is the content of his intervention:
"I am not a rail worker. I am retired. But I have come to express my solidarity with your struggle. Seen from the ‘outside', today, there are several struggles against the attacks hitting the workers' living and working conditions. You who are struggling for your pensions, the students, who are future workers, and who are struggling against a reform which will turn certain universities into ‘sink' universities, the public sector workers (such as those from National Education) are going to demonstrate tomorrow because their working conditions are becoming unbearable and a lot of jobs are going to be chopped. All these struggles are the same struggle for the defence of our living conditions. Just now I hear that we had to impose a balance of forces ‘at a high level'. I agree. But how do we do that? I think that we all have to fight together. It's because there was a lot of solidarity from the wage earners towards the students that, faced with massive demonstrations against the CPE, the government had to back down in the end. Tomorrow, we have to go in large numbers to the demonstration; but I also think that it would be good if there was one banner with something like ‘rail workers, students, public employees: all united in the struggle'. And then, at the end of the demo, instead of just going home or to the café, the rail workers need to discuss with the students, with the public employees, the public employees need to discuss with the students and the rail workers. We have to discuss among ourselves because that is the how we can start to build the unity we need. The only way to defend ourselves from the attacks is to build this unity". The intervention was warmly applauded.
Before the assembly had started, our comrade had discussed a little with the rail workers about the lies of the media. These lies are obvious to everyone, except the blind and the deaf (and the Liberte Cherie counter-demonstrators). At the end of the assembly, he was able to discuss again with a small group of young rail workers. He asked them "what do you think about having a common banner?" The response of one of them had been "at the base, most would be for it, but it's the federations who are against it".
You could hardly be clearer about the divisive role of the unions. Nevertheless, despite being opposed by the unions, the idea of unity and solidarity among all workers is gradually maturing.
In the other general assembly, the drivers' one, the welcome given to our comrades who accompanied the students was also very warm. They were able to intervene to defend the same orientation as our other comrade. The students were enthusiastic about the idea of a common banner. The interventions of the students and of our comrades were well received despite the fact that the train drivers still had the illusion that they could defend themselves effectively because they can block the traffic. However, it's the unity of the workers and not just ‘blocking' which constitutes the strength of the working class. This fetish for ‘blocking' is today the new ace in the pack of the unions aimed at preventing any real extension and unification of the struggles.
Since 18 October, the task of building class unity has come up against the divisive work of the unions. But, as this small group of students said in a discussion we had with them after the assembly: "The bourgeoisie's attacks on all sectors of the working class are so widespread that this can only facilitate the tendency towards the unity of the struggles".
This small group of students has understood very well that, as a student from the University of Censier in Paris said in 2006, "if we all fight alone, they will eat us all for breakfast". And it is because they didn't want their rail worker comrades to remain isolated and end up being beaten up by the militias of capital that they went looking for the solidarity of genuine communists (some of whom had been physically attacked by CGT union goons in the 70s and 80s). But it's true that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the CGT and the so-called Communist Party have become a lot more ‘democratic'. The students who had been able to unlock the door to the rail workers' assemblies (held in the prison of the union local) said to our comrades of the older generation: "it's great to have ‘parents' like you". This is at the very opposite pole to the ‘contesting' students of the late 60s who were so marked by the ‘generation gap' and who, in rebelling against their parents who had seen the terror of Nazism and Stalinism, came up with slogans like "put the older generation into concentration camps"[2].
The intervention of our comrades wasn't aimed at selling party cards and recruiting at any price, because the ICC, unlike the Trotskyists and other organisations of the ‘left', is not an organisation which takes part in the bourgeois electoral circus. Neither is its aim to ‘recuperate the movement', as some ‘anti-party' ideologues think.
As for those who continue to cry wolf and warn against Bolsheviks with knives between their teeth, we can only advise then to learn some real history and not just repeat the lies of bourgeois propaganda. The new generations of the working class, whether they are rail workers, or still students, are discovering the truth about real ‘democracy' and real solidarity, even if they still have illusions and can't by-pass the school of experience. The courage they are showing in beginning to challenge the directive of the union chiefs and bring alive the real culture of the working class shows that the future of humanity is still in their hands. GM, November 2007
[1] It's worth pointing out that, in many public sector workplaces (hospitals, ASSEDIC, etc) the union leaflets (especially by the CGT) calling for the strike and demonstration of 20 November arrived the day after the demo. In certain places, all leaflets on the present situation were removed from union notice boards. .
[2] Forty years later, it's not surprising that certain young people who have not aged well and have become zealous servants of the bourgeoisie now want to liquidate the ghosts of May 68 by gassing the students who want to dream a little, or locking then up in the jails of capital. But it is true that the edu-castrators who want to clean the windows of the universities while licking the boots of Monsieur Le Pen are a bit short on ideas.
In the last two issues of WR, we have been marking the 90th anniversary of the October revolution in Russia by recalling the massive scale and importance of the Russian revolution - the first time in history that the working class had taken political power on the level of an entire country, and the opening salvo in an international explosion of workers' uprisings that shook world capitalism to the core. In these articles we showed the huge leap in working class self-activity and consciousness in the months preceding the actual seizure of power. Today the October insurrection is almost uniformly dismissed by bourgeois historians (and, in their shadow, the ideologists of anarchism) as a mere coup d'etat or putsch carried out by the Bolshevik party for their own nefarious purposes. The article that follows (extracted from a longer article that first appeared in International Review 72 and available in full online here [7] ) reaffirms the real character of October. In continuity with the maturation of the class movement in the period that began in February 1917, the insurrection was anything but a putsch, and to this day remains the highest point that working class self-organisation has ever attained.
The situation of dual power which dominated the whole period from February to October was an unstable and dangerous time. Its excessive prolongation, due to neither class being able to impose itself, was above all damaging for the proletariat: if the impotence and chaos that marked this period accentuated the unpopularity of the ruling class, it at the same time exhausted and disorientated the working masses. They were getting drained in sterile struggles and all this began to alienate the sympathies of the intermediate classes towards the proletariat. This, therefore, demanded the taking of power through the insurrection to decant and decide the situation: "either the revolution must advance at a rapid, stormy and resolute tempo, breaking all barriers with an iron hand and place its goals ever farther ahead, or it will quite soon be thrown backwards behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by the counter-revolution" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution).
Insurrection is an art. It has to be carried out at a precise moment in the evolution of the revolutionary situation, neither too soon, which would cause it to fail, nor too late, which would mean an opportunity being missed, leaving the revolutionary movement to become a disintegrating victim of the counterrevolution.
At the beginning of September the bourgeoisie, through Kornilov, tried to carry out a coup - the signal for the bourgeoisie's final offensive to overthrow the Soviets and to fully restore its power.
The proletariat, with the massive cooperation of the soldiers, thwarted the bourgeoisie's plan and at the same time accelerated the decomposition of the army: soldiers in numerous regiments pronounced themselves in favour of the expulsion of officers and of the organisation of soldiers' councils - in short, they came out on the side of the revolution.
As we have previously seen, the renewal of the Soviets from the middle of August was clearly changing the balance of forces in favour of the proletariat. The defeat of the Kornilov coup accelerated this process.
From the middle of September a tide of resolutions calling for the taking of power flooded in from the local and regional Soviets (Kronstadt, Ekaterinoslav etc). The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region held on the 11-13th of October openly called for the insurrection. In Minsk the Regional Congress of Soviets decided to support the insurrection and to send troops of soldiers loyal to the revolution. On the 12th "Workers of one of the most revolutionary factories of the capital (the old Parviainen) made the following answer to the attacks of the bourgeoisie: ‘We declare that we will go into the street when we deem it advisable. We are not afraid of the approaching struggle, and we confidently believe that we will come off victorious'" (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol 3, ‘The Military Revolutionary Committee', page 91). On the 17th October the Petrograd Soldiers' Soviet decided that "The Petrograd garrison no longer recognises the Provisional Government. Our government is the Petrograd Soviet. We will only carry out the orders of the Petrograd Soviet issued through its Military Revolutionary Committee" (J Reed, Ten Days That Shook The World). The Vyborg district Soviet called a demonstration in support of this resolution, which sailors joined. A Moscow Liberal paper - quoted by Trotsky - described the atmosphere in the city thus: "In the districts, in the factories of Petrograd, Novsld, Obujov and Putilov, Bolshevik agitation for the insurrection has reached its highest level. The animated state of the workers is such that they are disposed to carry out demonstrations at any time".
The increase of peasants' revolts in September constituted another element in the maturation of the necessary conditions for the insurrection: "It would be sheer treachery to the peasants to allow the peasant revolts to be suppressed when we control the Soviets of both capitals. It would be to lose, and justly lose every ounce of the peasants' confidence. In the eyes of the peasants we would be putting ourselves on a level with the Lieberdans and other scoundrels" (Lenin, ‘The Crisis Has Matured', Selected Works, Vol. 2, page 348).
However, the international situation was the key factor for the revolution. Lenin made this clear in his letter to the Bolshevik comrades attending the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region (8-10-17): "Our revolution is passing through a highly critical period. This crisis coincides with the great crisis - the growth of the world socialist revolution and the struggle waged against it by world imperialism. A gigantic task is being presented to the responsible leaders of our party, and failure to perform it will involve the danger of a complete collapse of the internationalist proletarian movement. The situation is such that, in truth, delay would be fatal" (Lenin, SW, vol. 2, page 395). In another letter (1.10.17) Lenin made it clear that "The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets, they must take power at once. By so doing they will save the world revolution (for otherwise there is danger of a deal between the imperialists of all countries, who, after the shootings in Germany, will be more accommodating to each other and will unite against us), the Russian revolution (otherwise a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are) and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at the front" (Lenin, SW, vol. 2, page 391).
This understanding of the international responsibility of the Russian proletariat was not confined to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, many sectors of workers recognised it:
- on the 1st of May 1917, "throughout Russia, side by side with soldiers, prisoners of war were taking part in the processions under the same banners, sometimes singing the same song in different voices ... The Kadet minister Shingarev, during one of the Conferences with the trench delegates, defended the order of Guchkov against ‘unnecessary indulgence' towards prisoners of war... this remark did not meet with the slightest sympathy. The Conference decisively expressed itself in favour of relieving the conditions of the prisoners of war" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 2, pages 313, 269);
- "A soldier from the Romanian front, thin, tragical, and fierce cried: ‘Comrades! we are starving at the front, we are stiff from cold. We are dying for no reason. I ask the American comrades to carry word to America that the Russians will never give up their revolution until they die. We will hold the front with all our strength until the peoples of the world rise up and help us! Tell the American workers to rise and fight for the social revolution'" (J Reed, op cit, page 52).
The Kerensky government intended to disperse the most revolutionary regiments of Petrograd, Moscow, Vladimir, Reval etc. to the front or to remote regions in order to behead the struggle. At the same time, the Liberal and Menshevik press launched a campaign of calumnies against the soldiers, accusing them of "smugness" of "not giving their lives for the Motherland" etc. The workers of the capital responded immediately: numerous factory assemblies supported the soldiers, called for "all power to the Soviets" and passed resolutions calling for the arming of the workers.
In this atmosphere, the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on the 9th of October decided to create a Military Revolutionary Committee with the initial aim of controlling the government. However, it was soon transformed into the centre for the organisation of the insurrection. It regrouped representatives of the Petrograd Soviet, the Sailors' Soviet, the Finlandia region Soviet, the railway union, the congress of factory councils and the Red Guard.
The latter was a workers' body that was "formed for the first time during the 1905 revolution and was reborn during the March days of 1917, when there was a necessity for a force to maintain order in the city. In this period the Red Guard were armed and the Provisional Governments efforts to disarm them came to nothing. In each crisis that arose during the course of the revolution, detachments of the Red Guards appeared in the streets. They had no military training or organisation, but were overflowing with revolutionary enthusiasm" (J Reed, op cit).
On the foundations of this regroupment of class forces, the Military Revolutionary Committee (from now on referred to as the MRC) convoked a conference of regimental committees which on the 18th of October openly discussed the question of the insurrection. The majority of the committees, apart from 2 which were against and 2 that declared themselves neutral (there were another 5 regiments which did not agree with the Conference), pronounced in favour of the insurrection. Similarly the Conference passed a resolution in favour of the arming of the workers. This resolution was already being put into practice: en masse the workers went to the state arsenals and demand all the arms. When the government prohibited the handing over of arms, the workers and employees of the Peter and Paul Fortress (a reactionary bastion) decided to place themselves at the disposal of the MRC, and along with other arsenals organised the distribution of arms to the workers.
On the 21st of October the Conference of regimental committees adopted the following Resolution: "1) The garrison of Petrograd and its environs promises the RMC its full support in all its actions. 2) The garrison appeals to the Cossacks: we invite you to our meeting to-morrow. You are welcome, brother Cossacks! 3) The All-Russian Congress of Soviets must take power. The garrison promises to put all its forces at the disposal of the Congress. Rely upon us, authorised representatives of the power of the soldiers, workers and peasants, you can count on us. We are all at our posts to conquer or die" (Trotsky, op cit, vol. 3, page 108-109).
Here we have the characteristic features of a workers' insurrection: the creative initiative of the masses, straight forward and showing admirable organisation; discussions and debates which give rise to resolutions that synthesise the level of consciousness that the masses have reached; reliance on persuasion and conviction, as in the call to the Cossacks to abandon the government gang, or the passionate and dramatic meeting of the soldiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress which took place on the 23rd of October, where it was decided to obey no one but the MRC. These characteristic features are, above all, expressions of a movement for the emancipation of humanity, of the direct, passionate, creative initiative and leadership of the exploited masses.
The "Soviet day" on the 22nd of October, which was called by the Petrograd Soviet, definitively sealed the insurrection: in all the districts and factories meetings and assemblies took place all day, which overwhelmingly agreed on the slogans "down with Kerensky" and "all power to the Soviets". This was a gigantic act where workers, employees, soldiers, many Cossacks, women, and children openly united in their commitment to the insurrection.
It is not possible within the outline of this article to recount all of the details (we recommend reading Trotsky's and Reed's books, which we have mentioned). What we want to make clear is the massive, open and collective nature of the insurrection "The insurrection was thus set for a fixed date, the 25th of October. And this was not agreed on in some secret session, but openly and publicly, and the revolution was victoriously carried out on the 25th of October precisely (6th of November), as had been established beforehand. World history has known a great many revolts and revolutions, but could one find another insurrection by the oppressed class that had been openly and publicly set for a precise date and which had been triumphantly carried out on the day nominated beforehand. For this reason and various others, the November Revolution is unique and without comparison" (Trotsky, The November Revolution, 1919).
The Bolsheviks had clearly posed the question of the insurrection in the workers' and soldiers' assemblies from September; they occupied the most combative and decisive positions in the MRC and the Red Guard; it was they who swung the barracks where there were doubts or which were for the Provisional Government. This was done through convincing the soldiers: Trotsky's speech was crucial in bringing over the soldiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They also untiringly denounced the manoeuvres, accusations and traps of the Mensheviks, and struggled for the calling of the 2nd Congress of Soviets against the sabotage of the social traitors.
Nevertheless, it was not the Bolsheviks, but the whole proletariat of Petrograd who decided on and carried out the insurrection. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had repeatedly tried to delay the holding of the 2nd Congress of Soviets. It was through the pressure of the masses, the insistence of the Bolsheviks, the sending of thousands of telegrams from the local Soviets demanding its convocation, that finally obliged the CEC - the lair of the social traitors - to call it for the 25th.
"After the revolution of the 25th of October, the Mensheviks, and above all Martov, talked a lot about the seizure of power behind the Soviets' and workers' backs. It is hard to imagine a more shameless deformation of the facts. When the Soviets - in session - decided by a majority to call the 2nd Congress on the 25th of October, the Mensheviks said ‘you have decided the Revolution'; when in the Petrograd Soviet, by an overwhelming majority, we decided to refuse to allow the dispersal of the regiments away from the capital, the Mensheviks said: ‘This is the beginning of the revolution', when in the Petrograd Soviet we created the MRC the Mensheviks made it clear that ‘this is the organism of the armed insurrection'. But when the insurrection, which had been planned, created and ‘discovered' beforehand by this organ, exploded on the decisive day, the same Mensheviks cried: ‘a plot by conspirators has provoked a revolution behind the workers' backs!'" (Trotsky, ibid).
The proletariat provided itself with the means of force - the general arming of the workers, the formation of the MRC, the insurrection - in order that the Congress of Soviets could effectively take power. If the Congress of Soviets had decided "to take power" without first carrying out these measures such a decision would have been an empty gesture easily ripped apart by the revolution's enemies. It is not possible to see the insurrection as an isolated formal act: it has to be seen within the overall dynamic of the class and, concretely, within a process on the international level where the conditions for the revolution were developing, and within Russia where innumerable local Soviets were calling for the effective taking of power: the Petrograd, Moscow, Tula, the Urals, Siberia, Jukov Soviets simultaneously carried out the triumphant insurrection.
The Congress of Soviets took the definitive decision, completely confirming the validity of the initiative of the proletariat in Petrograd: "Based upon the will of the great majority of workers, soldiers, and peasants, based upon the triumphant uprising of the Petrograd working men and soldiers, the congress assumes power ... The congress resolves: that all local power shall be transferred to the Soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' Deputies, which must enforce revolutionary order". (J Reed, op cit) Adalen 5/10/92.
Since we wrote about Pakistan in the last edition of WR, Pervez Musharraf has ceremoniously handed over command of the Pakistani military to his protégé General Ashfaq Kayani (thereby meeting one of the key demands of the USA) and also allowed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to re-enter the country (after throwing him out at his last attempted return in September). It seems as though the good general has decided to play along and enter himself as a civilian candidate for the elections he has announced for January. Not a bit of it. Martial law has not been lifted. There are continual arrests, detentions and beatings of opposition supporters. There is still a heavy clampdown on all media outlets critical of the government. And the Pakistani Supreme Court has just been replaced with more favourable judges, after the last lot, and in particular the Chief Justice, began to be critical of the government. In short, not much has changed. The main reason for allowing Sharif back into the country - which was not specifically a US demand - seems to be that it is guaranteed that he will take votes away from Musharraf's main challenger, the other former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.
Musharraf will have undoubtedly noticed a less unambiguous support from the US sugar daddy. In a speech following his recent visit John Negroponte (US State department ‘trouble shooter') stated that he had confidence in the army and the institutions of Pakistan, that the US wanted a ‘relationship with the people'. He specifically no longer referred to Musharraf as the ‘indispensable ally' in the war on terror. All in all the US probably has come to the realisation that, with all the main factions of the bourgeoisie apart from the ‘extreme' Islamists being basically pro-American, they can hedge their bets for the forthcoming elections. The reality is that while the US can say they have confidence in the state and its institutions, it doesn't mean all that much.
The army, despite being the only force capable of holding the state together, doesn't even have control of the entire country: Pro-Taliban militants "...control substantial areas along the Afghan border. More worryingly, for the government, they have, in recent months, extended their control east and north. They have carried out deadly attacks in the capital, Islamabad, and the main garrison town, Rawalpindi. They have inflicted humiliating defeats on the army, capturing hundreds of soldiers this year" (BBC news). There is also the issue that, although Islamist militants are unlikely to militarily take over the country, there is a strong tendency (e.g. Algeria, Indonesia) for Islamist parties to do well electorally out of the corruption of the official ‘westernised' fractions. The nightmare scenario, one the USA would not allow, would be an Islamic state armed and primed with nuclear weapons.
And there are already massive pressures on Pakistan on the regional imperialist front, with China and India as neighbours on one side (with the unresolved issue of Kashmir waiting to burst forth bloodily) and no end in sight to the now nearly 5 years old war in Afghanistan, on the other. In short, whichever faction comes to power, there is an irresistible tendency towards the break-up of the state, towards increased violence and gangsterism. This is, in miniature, what is going on throughout the region generally: the daily barbarism in Iraq, the push by the Iranian bourgeoisie to develop their own nuclear arsenal, the fracturing of Lebanon, the squeezing of life out of the Palestinian people... Capitalism can ultimately offer no hope for ‘peace' between warring nations or a way out of the desperate poverty that the vast majority in this region endure. It is only in the struggles of the workers throughout the Middle East - in Israel, in Egypt, in Iran amongst others - a struggle whose basis is a solidarity between workers irrespective of religion, nationality or ethnicity, that the seeds of a challenge to this living nightmare can emerge. Graham 28/11/07
Two weeks since Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh the death toll has been estimated as at least 3,500, but the Bangladeshi Red Cross estimates that it could climb to 10,000. In any case the ruling class don't yet know. This is a disaster on an almost unimaginable scale: more than 2 million people displaced and without shelter, untold numbers left without food or water for days, among 5 million affected in all; people left to drag the corpses of their loved ones from the flood water; 600,000 tons of rice destroyed in the paddy fields and other agricultural and fishing production destroyed carrying the risk of increased malnutrition; the risk of water-borne diseases.
Yet it could have been so much worse. In 1991 a similar cyclone killed around 140,000, in 1970 a cyclone killed between 300,000 and half a million when it hit the city of Chittagong. This time the death toll has been reduced by the fact that Cyclone Sidr hit the South West, where there is more protection from mangrove swamp, and at low tide, so the 5 metre tidal wave was less than it would have been at high tide. Also the Cyclone Preparedness Programme warnings and shelters saved thousands of lives. But we shall not be joining those who praised the preparations. It's true that warnings were broadcast in the media and from the loudspeakers of mosques 3 days in advance, but this system does not rely not on the resources of the government-backed Bangladeshi Red Crescent, which has only 159 employees for the CPP, but on the 42,000 volunteers who carry out the warnings. Similarly, the 550 cyclone shelters are totally inadequate for the population at risk - for instance, FT.com reported that one village in Bagarat has shelters for 3,000 but a population of 27,000.
Bangladesh has always been subject to annual flooding and periodic cyclones, as a result of its geographical position as a low lying country of the Ganges Delta on the Gulf of Bengal. Yet capitalism bears the main responsibility for the death toll and misery resulting from this natural disaster. It is not just a question of the paltry resources put into the warning system compared to the need and to the vast resources put into weapons, but the very economic conditions that force millions to try and scratch a living in such dangerous conditions. Deforestation, soil erosion and poverty force the poor and landless peasants to live on and cultivate the most dangerous flood prone areas, putting millions in harm's way.
The cyclone has come at a very bad time for the economy with inflation at a 10 year high, 10% in July, and reduced demand for textiles which make up about 3 quarters of the country's exports. All this is set against a background of political instability, violence and corruption, with emergency law and a caretaker government taking over in January.
Seeing that the poorest in Bangladesh have no possibility to escape from the most dangerous low lying areas, the insufficiency of the cyclone shelters, the inadequacy of the immediate relief after the cyclone, there is little perspective for the victims to get the food, water and shelter they need nor for the longer term rehabilitation to help rebuild livelihoods destroyed by the floods. Global warming creates the perspective of more frequent and more powerful cyclones hitting the region.
There is no hope of relief for the poorest peasantry forced to farm such dangerous areas within capitalism. But we are also seeing developments in the struggle of the working class, for instance in Bangladesh we have recently seen very militant struggles by garment workers throughout the Dhaka Export Processing Zone, expressing solidarity, defending themselves against the police and the unions (see WR 308). This is fully part of the international development of working class struggles that is only at its beginning today. The hope for an end to capitalism, and all the misery it carries in its wake, lies in the existence and struggles of the working class, whose task is to dig the grave of capitalism. Alex 1.12.07
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/130/int-sit-resn
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/72/russ-revn-02
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1917-russian-revolution
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/144/pakistan
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/bangladesh