Immediately after the US Federal Reserve pushed JP Morgan Chase into an emergency salvage plan for Bear Stearns, Gordon Brown felt it necessary to reassure people in Britain with an article in the Sun (19/3/8). The Prime Minister wrote that "When a major bank in America has to be rescued over a weekend and billions are wiped off share markets across the world, I understand that people are worried about the future." In fact he also knew perfectly well that it's a longer experience of the economy that has got people worried "The British people know this is going to be a tough year. They are already feeling the pinch with their shopping and fuel bills."

Capitalism's Dance of Death

Yes, far from the propaganda about a decade of ‘prosperity' under Labour governments, people know that real inflation, on essentials like food and the energy utilities like gas and electricity, is way above the official figures, in the same way that real unemployment could be three or four times what government statistics proclaim. Take the example of higher petrol prices, which is not just an increased burden for individual motorists but has an impact on the cost of every commodity that's transported by petrol-driven vehicles. The reason that people are worried is because of their actual experience of prices going up, services being cut and jobs becoming more insecure.

Brown tries to be a calming voice by saying that the decisions that his government have taken "mean that we face this period of global uncertainty much better placed than other major economies". Yet this goes against the reality of a global economy in which each national capital is interlinked. You can't understand the collapse of Bear Stearns or Northern Rock without putting them and the ‘credit crunch' in the context of a crisis of the world economy. Recession in the US in particular has an impact across the world. In Japan for example any recovery in its economy is dependent on its ability to sell its exports to America, which isn't about to happen when the dollar's value is collapsing, and with a population already massively in debt and scraping around to pay off mortgages.

Forget all the talk about a "period of global uncertainty": what we are witnessing are the convulsions of a system in a chronic state of crisis, and capitalism can only buy fleeting moments of ‘health' by adopting measures such as the flight into further debt that can only worsen the prospects of the next catastrophic plunge.

American recession, not ‘if', but ‘how deep?'

The big question for the media in the US is whether the economy is in recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a respected group of several economists that provides answers to such questions, but only after it's had a protracted period of decline in activity as evidence it can examine. Other economists are prepared to announce a recession, but often only to minimise its significance. For example some point to recessions in 1991 and 2001 (the bursting of the dot.com bubble) and say that while the rate of job losses during them was typically 250,000 a month, they only lasted 8 months each.

The recently announced US unemployment figures seem to put a recession beyond doubt. They show job losses for the third month in a row, the 80,000 drop being the biggest since March 2003. 2.6 million jobs have gone from the manufacturing sector over the last two years. The New York Times (4/4/8) declared "The economy is suffering the effects of a housing collapse, a credit crunch and a financial system in turmoil. That is causing people and businesses to hunker down, crimping spending, capital investment and hiring. Those things in turn further weaken the economy in what has become a vicious cycle."

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has a longer term view: "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War." In reality the ruling class is looking back to the Crash of 1929 and the Depression of the 1930s to draw lessons for today.

For example, the Fed had to invoke emergency provisions from 1930s legislation in order get the bailout of Bear Stearns underway. Or, again, when US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled a review of the regulation of the financial sector - the biggest overhaul since the 1930s - it was welcomed as a response to the ‘credit crunch' and the turmoil on the markets. Paulson said it wasn't a response to the immediate situation but a long needed rectification. The actual measures give sweeping powers to the Federal Reserve and include the establishment of a new body to take over the role of the five existing banking regulators. As with other aspects of the proposals it amounts to a further strengthening of the role of state intervention in the economy. The state is the only force in capitalist society that can prevent the economy spiralling out of control.

With Bear Stearns, for example, this was not the first occasion that the Fed forced a bank into a shotgun wedding with a failing financial institution. A couple of months ago Bank of America Corp agreed to buy Countrywide Financial Corp, the largest mortgage lender in the US after encouragement from the Fed. The trouble with this policy is that many banks have credit problems of their own and others are already entangled in big takeovers. European banks have resisted the temptation to get involved, with one banker describing the process as like "catching a falling chainsaw". This is why the US taxpayer ends up footing the bill. As well as the thousands of Bear Stearns employees who will lose their jobs

The current crisis will not be limited to the financial sector, but will spread to the rest of the economy, having effects on trade, jobs and wages, not just in the US, but throughout the world. In America, like Britain, the real levels of unemployment and inflation are not revealed in official statistics. However, there are some fairly dramatic figures which do show how the working class in the US is already suffering from the crisis of the capitalist economy, beyond the numbers of repossessions, job cuts and rising prices. As the New York Times (31/3/8) described it: "Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s." This projection is from an official source, the Congressional Budget Office. What is not known is what proportion of the poor take up their entitlement - a maximum of $3 per person per day. The current US definition of poverty is an income of $21,500 (£10,750) for a family of four.

It will be worse in Britain

The measures adopted in Britain have been the same as in the US. The state intervened in Northern Rock, ploughing in £55bn, and still thousands of jobs will go. The British government has massively resorted to debt; its borrowing in February was the biggest for more than a decade and in the recent budget the public sector deficit was raised £7bn to £43bn. Personal indebtedness is at one of the highest levels in the world. The CBI suggests 11,000 jobs are under threat in the financial sector alone. In the budget prescription costs went up again and the Chancellor announced there would be further attacks on those on incapacity benefit.

These are the sort of measures that are familiar to workers in many countries, but here we are focusing on aspects of the crisis which will have a particularly devastating effect on the British economy.

For a start the financial sector in Britain is on a completely different scale to most other countries. Britain has seen a long-term decline in manufacturing, so that the financial sector, already centrally important for more than a century, has acquired a disproportionate weight in the British economy. As a result financial crises have a more serious effect on the rest of the economy.

Secondly, the housing bubble in Britain is bigger than elsewhere, with a much greater proportion of non-rented property and prices outrageously inflated. In America one of the signs of the recession is that house prices have fallen nationwide for the first time since the 1930s Depression. In Britain so far there have been only regional fluctuations; bearing in mind the hysteria from papers like the Mail and Express over the slightest hint of instability in the house market, they will surely become speechless with apoplexy if the US experience is repeated here. More importantly it will have an impact on many other parts of the economy

Thirdly, the effects of the economic crisis are already quite advanced in Britain. For example, at the very time that we're being encouraged to try and manage our debts, the Evening Standard (2/4/8) reports that, with mortgage approvals down 40% over the last year, "Homeowners have gone on a borrowing binge as cheap remortgaging deals dry up. Credit card debt went up by £350m and bank loans and overdrafts soared by £2bn in February. It was the highest monthly increase since records began in 1987, according to today's Bank of England figures." Of course this ‘binge' is not a matter of post-Christmas indulgence but a desperate attempt to pay household bills. Further evidence of this is shown in the number of people cutting down on their pension contributions. As Reuters reports "Britons have cut their pension contributions by almost half in the past year as prices rise and credit becomes harder to obtain. On average, people paying into private and company pension schemes have reduced their monthly contributions by 48.3 percent, according to research by Prudential [....] It also reveals that 55 percent of non-retired people are not contributing at all to private or company pension schemes." In a recent survey the vast majority of people admitted to financial worries and many have no idea how much longer they will be able to cope.

The link between crisis and class struggle

Internationally the economic crisis has taken a qualitative lurch. After years of lies about unprecedented growth the ruling class now has to admit there's a crisis. The only options open to capitalism lie in the intervention of the state and the resort to debt. We can't predict every detail of what's ahead, but we can see what's threatened. There's a huge build up of inflationary pressures, which is something that we didn't see in the 1930s. There's the threat of the collapse of whole sectors of some economies. And although the bourgeoisie of different states is capable of co-operating at some levels, every country still remains in competition with every other and is not going to bail out the failed enterprises of its rivals.

The increasingly simultaneous nature of the crisis internationally means that it's going to be less likely that the propagandists can point to possible ‘engines' that are going to drag the rest out of the mire: the limitations of what can be expected from India and China are being rapidly exposed.

We are witnessing struggles by the working class that are responses to similar attacks in different countries - on jobs, services, wages, prices and pensions. Because the crisis more and more shows the links between all economies, there is the possibility that workers can see their shared international interests, and understand that the capitalist economy cannot deliver the basic necessities of life. The working class is pushed into a fight for survival against the effects of capitalism's crisis.

Recently there have been significant struggles in Germany, typically against negotiations which amount to a direct attack on working class living and working standards, and waves of struggle in Greece, most recently against pension reforms. At the moment the media keeps such things quiet. In the future the working class will become aware not only of the bankruptcy of capitalism but of the need for a unified international class response. Car 4/4/8

The Treaty of Versailles stamped out British imperialism's most formidable competitor in the decades that preceded the war. The antagonism between Britain and Germany was at the centre of the tensions that led to the world conflict. But the threat of German expansionism was only kept in check at the cost of the growing domination of an even more formidable force: the USA, whose power of attraction was such that the centre of the world financial market was shifted from London to New York, while the US annexed many of Britain's markets in Latin America, and even drew Canada, the richest of the Commonwealth Dominions, into its orbit. American capital was able to do this not only because of the technical, organic superiority of its economy, but also because it was also able to exploit its prestige as the world's creditor.

The war also led to the rise of another force threatening British predominance in Asia: Japan, which, during the course of the conflict, actively pursued its penetration into the Asian continent and particularly into China, thus clearly posing the problem of the conquest of this market, which can only be resolved through the next world conflagration.

After redressing an economy profoundly shaken by the war, in 1924 Britain launched the struggle against the USA in order to re-conquer its global hegemony.

In spite of the degeneration of its productive apparatus, an evolution whose main characteristics we analysed in the previous article, British capital aimed to conserve intact the basis of its activity and its control, i.e. the vast network draining surplus value from the four corners of the globe, from which a parasitic bourgeoisie drew what it needed to maintain the most inept, idle existence. We have seen that the banks held the key to this universal organisation. Benefiting from the ‘failure' of the first Labour government, which had been unable to solve the problems posed by the industrial bourgeoisie, the banks, following the coming to power of Baldwin, launched a vast ‘deflationary' offensive in 1925, with the aim of revaluing the Pound. The return to the gold standard was decreed in April of the same year. The antagonism between industrial capital and finance capital, which in Britain remained much more tenacious than in Germany, France or the USA, for the reasons we have indicated, was settled for a long time to the advantage of the banks.

The effects of the deflationary policy on social relations were soon felt. In May 1926 the General Strike broke out like a thunderbolt. Lasting for 12 days and paralysing the whole of economic life, it threw the bourgeoisie into disarray. But capitalism's agents, the Citrines and Co in the TUC, alarmed by the magnificent display of proletarian solidarity in favour of the miners, dissipated the movement, abandoned the miners to their fate and left them to fight on desperately for another six months until they were totally defeated (the central issue behind their struggle had been the lengthening of the working day from 7 hours to 8). The deflationary policy, while improving the position of the Pound, weighed heavily on the productive apparatus and left British industry in an inferior position on the world market, where its competitors could sell on the basis of devalued currencies. We have already examined the striking fall in exports after 1925 and its effects on the level of production.

The collapse of industry came as no surprise when we know that, of the total volume of exports, manufactured goods made up 82% of trade with the colonies and 74% of those with countries outside the Empire. Let's add that, inversely, 2/3 of purchases were made up of food items and that these accounted for 40% of foreign imports.

An examination of the curve of external trade is interesting for two essential reasons: on the one hand, the movement of exports hides a considerable reduction in the weight of British industry on the world market; at the same time, the evolution of imports starkly reveals the parasitism of the British bourgeoisie.

The place of Britain's total trade in the global circuit of exchange has not ceased to fall since the last century: 27% in 1830, 15% in 1913, a decrease by almost a half. This was the price paid by British capitalism for having been the first to produce surplus value in large collective factories, and then seeing its privileges undermined by the extension of capitalist production to the whole world. The same can be said for the freight sector which represented a third of total trade in 1860 and stood at 9% in 1913. Here again the British merchant was losing ground.

Over a 20 year period, from 1891 to 1910, Britain only increased the volume of its trade by about 50%, whereas Germany's went up by 100%, the USA's by 75% and Japan's by 250%.

During the feverish and superficial period of economic revival after the war, overall British trade managed to keep the position it had held in 1913: 15% of world trade. But this was the last favourable period for industrial capital, which, benefiting from the general rise in prices, didn't significantly augment the volume of its exports.

The new political-economic orientation imposed by the bankers in 1924-25 was to wipe out the broad perspectives which had seemed to open up for industry. The reaction was not long in coming. And, in 1928-29, the extreme point of the fallacious and final phase of ‘prosperity' for world capitalism, we saw that while in relation to 1913 British exports had grown in value by 40% (which is explained by the rise in prices), in relation to 1924 they had fallen. Once the world crisis erupted, they fell much more rapidly than in France or Germany for example. Thus in 1931, expressed in gold Pounds, they were only a half of what they had been in 1929. But the dizzying fall in prices made it impossible to precisely measure the repercussions of such a decline on the productive apparatus. By measuring the fluctuations in the volume of exports from 1924 to 1931 we can see (especially with regard to manufactured goods) a 35% reduction, a proportion which reached almost 50% in the iron and steel industry.

But while such a decline in exports eloquently expressed the weakening of British imperialism's ability to realise on the world market the surplus value produced in the metropolis, it still doesn't show its entire depth. To do this you would also have to determine what strength this surplus value extorted from the British proletariat conferred on the bourgeoisie. An approximate way of arriving at this is to establish the percentage of exports against imports, which would thus express the buying power of the former with regard to the latter. Thus in 1913 80% of foreign purchases could have been covered by exports; in 1929, this was down to 65% and in 1931 it fell to 49%, which means that exports could only have paid for one half of the imports. In absolute figures the trade deficit trebled between 1913 and 1931. It is important to add that this figure is considerably attenuated by the fact that between 1924 and 1931 the price of imported materials fell by 50%, while those of exported goods fell by only 25%, thus improving the rate of exchange. Put in another way, in 1931, to cover a given quantity of imported commodities, you needed to export less goods than you did in 1924.

This is confirmed by the fact that the volume of imports grew by 17% between 1924 and 1931, whereas as we have seen the volume of exports plummeted by 35% in the same period. But here we can also see the insouciance of a rentier bourgeoisie, for whom the war seemed to be no more than a parenthesis and which in 1931, in the midst of the crisis, consumed 60% more foreign goods than in 1913, while three million workers had been ejected from the sphere of labour. A violent contrast typical of decaying capitalism.

A trade deficit that trebled in 20 years could hardly have been tolerated unless other factors served to restore a certain equilibrium. This counter-weight was provided by the surplus value produced outside the sphere of British capitalism properly speaking, in the colonies and the rest of the world, in the form of banking commissions, commercial ‘services' (freight etc) and revenue from exported capital.

After 1925, and in the period of the ‘stabilisation' of capitalism, which provided a relative security for the circulation of capital, these various forms of revenue increased considerably and in 1929 the increase reached 50% in relation to 1913. This margin was still not sufficient to counter-balance the fall in exports, and we saw the overall balance of payments, which had been in surplus to the tune of around £200 million before the war, transformed between 1924 and 1931 into a chronic deficit, averaging £400 million on average, except in 1929 when it was positive.

The banks still continued their policy of investment, which very rapidly exceeded the capacities of the capital market, which had been dried out by the persistent deficit in the balance of payments. The latter was only held in some kind of equilibrium thanks to a flow of foreign capital into the City of London, mainly short term placements which the bankers, owing to the lack of home-based capital, soon reinvested in more distant places like Central Europe and South America. Such a policy was well adapted to economic ‘liberalism' on a money market freed from all limitations, but was in diametric opposition to the tendency towards the closing of the economic hatches, towards the fragmenting of the world market into antagonistic ‘autonomous' economies.

The inevitable happened. On the one hand, the budget disequilibrium, the increase in floating debts, even an attempted revolt in the war fleet; on the other hand, the moratorium on debt decreed by failing debtor countries like Germany, Austria, and Argentina, were among the essential reasons leading to insecurity, panic, then the breakdown. The suspension of the gold standard was Britain's response to the massive withdrawal of capital. The resistance of the banks, however, did not reveal any fissures as was to be the case in the USA. The suppleness of the system permitted a remarkable adaptation, this time in favour of industry. But an essential point here was the fact that what had once been the cornerstone of the whole imperial edifice - Free Trade - definitively collapsed, and the Economist even went so far as to affirm that MacDonald's National Government, which took the path of protectionism and nationalism, had "signed the decree for the dissolution of the Empire".

British imperialism, faced with the depreciation of its currency, still thought that this necessity might give rise to some favourable possibilities for struggling on the world market and against American imperialism.

Certainly, an event like the crisis of 1931 could, more easily than in other countries, have had the effect of shaking the economy back to life, but British capitalism had entered the crisis of 1929 almost without any transition, since it merely prolonged the chronic depression which had been paralysing it for ten years. Furthermore, from 1929 to 1931, thanks to the free entry of foreign products, the more than 30% fall in world prices had considerably benefited the powerful buying capacity of the British market. The latter had not been severely disorganised and ‘industrial peace' had been maintained: a 5% fall in nominal wages did not really undermine the buying power of the workers, and this situation was to some extent analogous with the period of stagnation between 1885 and 1905, during which British capitalism, thanks to free trade, had benefited from the steep fall in world prices: the rise in real wages which resulted, and the maintenance of nominal wages contributed to the anaesthetising of the proletariat, to suppressing the least murmurs from the class.

The resort to protectionism provided capital with a unique historic opportunity to exploit an internal market which had been opened to the four winds for nearly a century. Here there was a perspective for a relative expansion of industrial and even agricultural production which the fall in the Pound helped to stimulate - on the one hand, as a universal currency, by exerting a downward pull on world prices, and consequently on the prices of raw materials needed for industry; and on the other hand, by enabling industry to increase its export capacities. The facts however soon gave the lie to all these bright hopes, at least with regard to exports, since the latter, far from increasing, barely managed to stay at the same volume while falling in value, under the joint impact of falling prices, the exacerbation of economic nationalism and the virulent competition from Japan which devaluated the Yen immediately after the devaluation of the Pound - the Yen was reduced by up to 40% of its value in gold whereas the Pound, on the eve of the American crisis of 1933, was only reduced by a third.

As for the internal market, even protected by tariffs, its ability to absorb the surplus from production remained very limited by its very nature - given that it is more or less a pure capitalist market, where the size of the buying power that doesn't derive from the capitalist sphere of production was limited to a very small layer of independent farmers and producers. The backward organisation of monopolies and finance capital also didn't permit a deep exploitation of the mass of consumers and made a rational policy of dumping rather difficult, all the more so because the enormous productive apparatus was disproportionate to the relative extent of the mass of consumers. British capitalism was still less aware of this structural weakness of the monopolies, which it proposed to eliminate through the development of cartels and industrial rationalisation. Meanwhile any increase in the use of its productive capacity could only be achieved by excluding foreign produced goods from the internal market; but these only represented 30% of imports. Purchases of iron, steel and machinery fell by half between 1931 and 1933, those of part-worked textiles by 4/5, while those of raw silk, supplying the luxury industries, grew by 50%.

At the same time, purchases of food products didn't significantly decrease since the devaluation of the currency weakened rather than strengthened the industry's position by provoking reactions by foreign exporters of these products.

On the world market, the retreat of the British economy continued. It turned out that the fall of the Pound didn't enable it to pierce the formidable line of defences erected by each imperialist economy. While in 1932 the volume of exports stayed at their 1931 level in value, they continued to fall behind, especially in the Far East, to the USA, Germany and the countries of the gold bloc. The failure of expansion assumed all the more importance in that the possibility of exploiting the advantages conferred by the fall of the Pound tended to disappear as internal prices, becoming detached from the world wide price falls, began to move upwards under the impact of protectionist tariffs.

Let's leave it to the partisans of ‘planning' and monetary manipulations as a means of ‘increasing the buying power of the workers' to refer to the British model and argue that a devaluation doesn't necessarily lead to a rise in prices: they are doing no more than constructing a stereotype, since although in Britain, immediately after the crisis of 1931, the rise in prices was not obvious, it was still verified by the fact that they stagnated in relation to the world-wide price fall.

Britain seeks to use the Empire as a shield against the crisis

In fact, the lack of new markets in the general crisis of capitalism forced British imperialism to orient itself towards other solutions if it didn't want to see its relative share of global surplus value diminishing. Hence its efforts towards a more rational exploitation of its colonial domain. Here the Ottawa accords of 1932 were an attempt to set up an imperial system of preferential tariffs which, while destined to be integrated into the general evolution of imperialist nationalism, was not able to set up a closed imperial economy, since this was an impossibility.

Developing metropolitan exports in the direction of the Empire and acquiring a monopoly over colonial raw materials: these were the two central objectives Britain was looking for at Ottawa. To what extent will the disintegrative and contradictory factors within the Empire, a product of its heterogeneous nature, prevent the realisation of this programme?

In the first place, the generalisation of tariffs came up against the economic needs of certain Dominions which are closely linked to other economies: Canada lives in the orbit of American capitalism, while Australia sells its wool to Japan on the condition of buying its coarse cotton goods and its silk; apart from these Dominions, India supplies Japan with cotton and buys it back as cloth. In the second place, the protectionism afforded to British agriculture is in conflict with the necessity to import the agricultural products of the colonies and elsewhere (e.g. Argentina), which in turn has repercussions on metropolitan exports.

In the third place, the preferential system constituted a threat to the motherland's extra-imperial outlets and the regulation of its loans, since it resulted in the devaluation of its currency, the basis for the buying power of its market.

In the fourth place, the capitalist nature of the Dominions and their growing industrialisation could only restrict the outlets for products manufactured in the motherland.

What is the definitive balance sheet of the Ottawa regime after only a year, together with two years of the ‘free' monetary regime?

Let's note first of all that Britain's trade balance with the Empire, which was positive in 1913, was 30% in deficit by 1931 and by 1934 this deficit had increased to 60%. On the other hand, the balance with the four Dominions and India, negative in 1913, became positive by 131% in 1931 and 134% in 1934.

As for the displacements towards Europe of a fraction of Britain's total trade between 1931 and 1934, this operated very clearly. In absolute figures, while imports from abroad (including those in transit) fell by 30%, those coming from the Empire tended to increase; exports to the Empire only fell by between 7 and 10% for sales abroad.

The need for British imperialism to prepare for war

In relative figures, the commodities coming from the Empire in 1913 were the equivalent to a quarter of total imports. In 1931 this figure stood at 28.8% and 36.9% in 1933. The relative part of exports to the Empire, which made up 32.9% in 1913, went to 41% in 1933.

From all the internal and external fluctuations of imperial trade, the following conclusions can be drawn.

The specific weight of intra-imperial trade in world trade increased after Ottawa. This was a positive result of considerable importance, even if a relative one, since the total volume of exchanges continued to contract. But imperial trade was the least hard hit. However, if we examine this result from the angle of the position of British imperialism concentrated in the metropolitan centres, it loses a lot of its value. In effect, the displacement of a part of world trade towards the Empire was essentially geared (not absolutely, but relatively) to British purchases from the Empire; and consequently, the inverse movement of colonial purchases from the metropolis was much less profound[1].

Furthermore, imperial tariffs favoured colonial exports to the metropolis to the detriment of those directed towards areas outside the Empire, but this only feebly stimulated British sales within the Empire.

The metropolitan market still remains a vast outlet for food products, raw materials and luxury goods; and it's not the growing pauperisation of the proletariat which contributes towards this, but the growing parasitism of the bourgeoisie, which up till now has managed to resist the extinction of its own industrial activity thanks to a mass of surplus value gathered throughout its huge imperial domain, and which to a large extent it has devoted to unproductive consumption.

Today it seems that for British imperialism it is no longer its coercive apparatus alone - whose relative importance has in any case diminished - which can maintain the indispensable cohesion of its system of domination. The power of its metropolitan market also represents a centripetal force capable of neutralising the tendencies towards disintegration at work in the Empire.

Not only can British capitalism ill-afford a reduction in the global volume of its profits which condition its buying power - on the contrary it must be in a position to increase them.

Between 1931 and 1933 it did manage to reduce the deficit in its balance of payments, thanks to an improvement in the trade balance; on the other hand revenues derived from exchange (freight, various services) and those from investments have continued to plummet in relation to 1931, and it is clear that the exacerbation of inter-imperialist antagonisms, the tensions in Asia, the stifling ambience in which international trade is taking place today, are elements which can only further exhaust these sources of surplus value. That is to say, those existing outside the direct control of the British bourgeoisie.

In the pre-war phase, the British bourgeoisie will have to return to the neglected problem of the development of its exports, all the more so because the trade balance has again got worse in the first nine months of 1934.

It is becoming clear that Ottawa cannot overcome the contradiction between, on the one hand, the necessity to expand industrial production in the motherland, and, on the other, the continual contraction of foreign markets since 1932, following the further reduction of world trade. For the first nine months of 1934, exports towards the Scandinavian countries and Argentina are in absolute regression, and towards the USA and Japan the decline is even more marked. Exports to Japan are hardly a third of what they were in 1929, while imports have remained at the 1929 level and even rose by 33% between 1933 and 1934. The fall in exports towards Scandinavia and Argentina is the ransom paid by the Sterling zone to the conversions of loans accorded by the City. We can also see that in the same period, in order to preserve its currency, Britain increased its purchases of foreign goods, especially from Europe.

Although British imperialism, because of its basic structure, needs to gear its activity towards the international arena, it is being pushed more and more towards nationalism, which is disarticulating the world economy. Faced with the deepening of imperialist antagonisms, whose nerve centre is Asia, it needs to develop its ability to compete. It needs to completely overhaul its archaic industrial apparatus and adapt the whole of its backward economy to the demands posed by the preparations for the next inter-imperialist war.

Because of this, the British proletariat, which has been gangrened by 50 years of ‘economism' and collaborationism, and whose powerful but short-lived outbreaks of struggle have not raised it to becoming conscious of its historic tasks, is going to face a rude awakening in the near future.

The absence of a revolutionary vanguard today makes us fearful that the leading clique of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, which has rallied to the imperialist policies of protectionism, will tomorrow succeed in dragging the British workers, and in their wake the workers of the colonies, into the abyss of imperialist war. We thus see confirmed the conclusions drawn recently by Information about the results of the last municipal elections: "the old and traditional wisdom of the British nation will persist. The basics of British policy will not change. Going in turn from Conservatism to Labourism is, for the British, the way to guarantee their greatness and ensure peace"! Mitchell

 

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[1] The most recent figures, for the first nine months of 1934 indicate an improvement in the coefficient of exchange between the Metropolis and the Empire in relation to 1933. But the general tendency we have noted remains.

 

The Chávez government - with the support of the opposition and unions- has unleashed repression against the workers of the Steel Zone of Venezuela who are struggling for their most basic necessities. Here we see the real Senor Chávez and his "socialism of the 21st century".

Here we are publishing a leaflet distributed by our comrades of Internacionalismo in Venezuela. We salute their effort to do this in very difficult conditions of repression and Chavist blackmail. We want to express our solidarity with the workers of the area and with our comrades and call on others to distribute and discuss this leaflet. The struggle of the proletariat is international and must confront all the forms of the bourgeois state, be they "liberal", open dictatorships or wearing the mask of "Socialism".

The bourgeois state of Chávez attacks the metal workers

After more than 13 months of discussion of their collective contract, the steel workers at Ternium-SIDOR have had enough. Indignant about the starvation wages they receive (near to the minimum salary, in one of the regions of Venezuela with the highest cost of living) and the deplorable working conditions that have lead to the deaths of 18 workers and left dozens ill from industrial illness over less than a decade, they have carried out several strikes against the firm's refusal to meet their demands about wages and working conditions.

Various parts of the media have echoed the firm's campaign of victimisation, claiming that their demands amount to more than the firm's annual sales. These lies form part of a "black out" of information, both from the opposition media and the official media, about the true causes of the metal workers' struggles. Since the 1990's these workers have been subjected to a policy of cuts in pay and working conditions, introduced through the programme of restructuring, that has led to their benefits being lower than other workers in the region. The metalworkers' struggle is about a decent level of living. They know that if they accept the company's terms and conditions[1] they will suffer more than two years of miserable increases in their wages and benefits, whilst the price of food and the cost of living increases by more than 30% annually, according to the none too reliable figures of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Another important demand of the movement is to make the contracted workers (who make up 75% of the workforce of 1,600) permanent, since this will give them better benefits. Thus, the struggle of the SIDOR workers is expressing the discontent and uncertainty that dominates the workers in the region and the whole country, faced with the endless increase in the price of food and cost of living generally, along with precarious working conditions.

Likewise, the metalworkers have had enough of the bickering between representatives of the company, government and unions. The latter in particular have progressively undermined the initial demands of the movement (the unions are now "demanding" 50 Bolivars a day, whereas at the beginning of negotiations it was 80). Having fulfilled all of the requirements for going on strike, they took part in the high level commission formed by the nefarious triumvirate. Whilst these gentlemen discussed behind the workers' backs, the workers themselves assembled at the steel work's doors and decided to carry out several stoppages, the most important of these being that of the 12th March for 80 hours which expressed the radicalisation of the movement. They did not have to wait long for the firm and the state to respond: on the 14th March the National Guard and police unleashed a furious repression, leaving more than 15 workers injured and 53 arrested. With this repressive action the Chávez government has unmasked itself in front of the workers: it cast aside its "workers" uniform and put on its true uniform, that of the defence of the interests of the national capital. It is not the first time that the "workers and socialist" state has attacked workers' struggle for their own demands: we only need to mention for example, the terrible repression meted out to oil workers last year who were struggling to improve their working conditions.

The SUTISS union is also part of the repression of the workers (despite union leaders suffering repression), since its role is to act as a fireman in the movement. It tries to put itself at the head of the movement whilst negotiating a reduction in the wage demand.

Referendum and nationalisation: new traps for the movement

Faced with the workers' intransigence, they have pulled another trick from up their sleeve: the holding of a referendum in order to consult each worker about their agreement or not with the firm's proposals. Promoted by the Chavist minister of Labour (a Trotskyist or ex-Trotskyist), the proposal has already received the agreement of the SUTISS, though with certain "conditions". Class instinct has led several workers to reject this trap, which is aimed at undermining the sovereign assemblies (where the real strength of the working class is expressed) by turning each worker into a "citizen", who will have to define himself for or against the firm and state in isolation by means of the ballot box!! Faced with this the workers need to affirm themselves through their sovereign assemblies.

Another trap used against the movement is the proposition by the unions and various "revolutionary" sectors of Chavism to renationalise SIDOR, which is mainly owned by Argentine capital (the Venezuelan state owns 20% of the shares). This campaign could be a disaster for the struggle, since the workers have no choice but to confront the capitalists, be they Argentine or Venezuelan state bureaucrats. Nationalisation does not mean the disappearance of exploitation; the state-boss, even with a "worker's" face, has no other option than to permanently try to attack workers' wages and working conditions. The left of capital presents the concentration of companies in the hands of the state as a quick way to "socialism", hiding one of the fundamental lessons of marxism: the state is the representative of the interests of each national bourgeoisie, and therefore the enemy of the proletariat. The Chavist bourgeoisie today is the head of the state which is seeking to increase the amount of surplus value it can gain, and in the name of "Bolivarian socialism" massively increases the level of precariousness of work through the missions and jointly managed companies (as happened with the workers of Invepal or Inveval).

These "Bolivarian revolutionaries" try to make the workers forget that for many years SIDOR was a state firm, and that they have had to struggle at various ties against the high rank bureaucrats of the state who administered it and their forces of repression, struggling for their own demands but also against the unions (the allies of capital in the factories). At the beginning of the 70's during the first Caldera government, this included burning down part of the installations of the CTV in Caracas in response to its anti-worker actions.

The state has been in the hands of the Chavists since 1999, but has not magically lost its capitalist character. All that has changed are its clothes, which now have a "socialist" colouring; but it is still a fundamental organ in the defence of the interests of capital against those of labour. The fact that Chávez presents himself as a "Sidorist" or a "worker" when it suits him should not confuse us about the class character of the Chavist government, which capital put in place in order to defend its system of exploitation as it sinks deeper and deeper into crisis. The workers are not so stupid as to believe these "revolutionaries" who put forwards the panacea of "re-nationalisation", but who live like bourgeois, earning salaries 30 times or more than the official minimum wage.

The only way to win: real workers' solidarity and solidarity with the population

The only way that this movement can succeed is through looking for solidarity. Initially with the contract workers, where the demand to make them permanent is one of the principle expressions of solidarity; but it is no less important to win the solidarity of workers in other branches of industry, at the regional or national level, since whether we work in the state sector or the private sector, we are all being hit by the blows of the economic crisis. It is also necessary to express solidarity with the population of Guayana, where the unemployed are affected by the high cost of living, and by the problems that the state cannot resolve, such as delinquency, housing, etc. However, this solidarity cannot be carried out through the unions, since they are the main organs for controlling the struggle, creating divisions between different industries and sectors, and in the last instance, complementing state repression; neither can solidarity with the local population be left in the hands of the social organisations created by the state, such as the communal councils. Solidarity must be "generated" by the workers themselves, through assemblies open to other workers.

The struggle of the metalworkers is our struggle, because they are fighting for a decent life, for the benefit of the whole of the proletariat. But the best benefit, apart for the momentary increase in the level of wages, resides in the development of consciousness of the strength that the proletariat has in its own hands, outside of the unions and the other institutions invented by the state in order to control social discontent.

The national bourgeoisie know that the situation in Guyana is intensely dangerous to its interests. The concentration of workers in this region and their experience of past struggles makes it very explosive, since at the same time there is a wider accumulation of labour and social discontent which has existed for some time due to the attacks on employment and workers' living conditions. In this sense, the so-called Metal Zone has a potential for transforming itself into a focal point for the workers' struggle in the country, as happened in the 60's and 70's.

The SIDOR workers have taken the only road possible for confronting the attacks of capital, that of the struggle. Spreading the fight to other branches of regional and national production, whilst looking for solidarity from the population as a whole: this is the road that will enable the Venezuelan proletariat to become part of an international movement for the overthrow capital and the creation of a real socialist society.

25.03.2008

Internacionalismo

Section in Venezuela of the International Communist Current

Web: www.internationalism.org [4]

Email: [email protected] [5]

 

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[1] An increase of 44 Bolivars divided up as follows: 20 initially, 10 more in 2009 and another 10 in 2010, with another 1.5% based on performance.

We have received from Ecuador a position about the military tensions with Colombia following the incursion of its troops onto Ecuadorian territory on the 1st March, when they attacked the FARC. We are publishing the complete text here along with our commentary in order to animate and contribute towards an internationalist discussion.

To all those who have no frontiers: to the proletariat of Ecuador and Colombia

At midnight on the 1st March, Colombian armed forces entered Ecuadorian territory, hunting down and killing more than 23 guerrillas, leaving three women injured; amongst the dead was the number 2 of the FARC. This act of war, killing and massacre has unleashed the "diplomatic crisis" between the two countries; but what is the fundamental cause? First of all, everyone knows that the FARC have been coming and going from Ecuadorian territory for some time. For example, the city of Lago Agrio, which according to the inhabitants has practically become "a resting place for guerrillas and paramilitaries", until now had not been a place of conflict. Is it not strange that the areas which the FARC has controlled for some time on Colombian territory have not been recaptured by the army of this country? Likewise is it not strange that there are Colombian and North American sectors that live from the good business of war and control of drug trafficking?

In order to fully understand this conflict it is necessary to see that it is inescapably linked to the enormous crisis of the international capitalist system. The first reaction to this crisis was the 1st World War, it then spread with the 2nd and the unending wars which have continued since, causing more death and destruction than the 1st and 2nd World Wars combined. This crisis has not been overcome and amongst those affected North America prominently stands out. The economy of this country has entered into a phase of crisis which is unprecedented in its history since its foundation; as often happens with the tricks put in place by capitalist interests, war is a means for trying to absorb this crisis through blood and fire. Therefore is it not strange to see the en bloc pronouncements of the left of capital in favour of so-called "national sovereignty", "territorial inviolability", etc? No, the reality is that the leftists do not represent the interests of the proletariat but the layers that oscillate between the top and the bottom of society. They are always flirting with the most sickening nationalist tendencies. Opposed to this the world proletariat has no fatherland or nation. Our sovereignty as individuals is daily trodden under foot by capitalism's oppression and exploitation. And there is the alarming, widespread worsening of poverty, unemployment, falling wages. Therefore we can have nothing to do with the slogans that divide up the unity of the world proletariat. For our Colombian brothers and sisters there is one enemy, the bourgeoisie of Uribe (President of Colombia) is the same as the bourgeoisie of Correa (President of Ecuador), but we need to clarify about some of the differences, such as the posture of the FARC.

The movement towards the right in the 1980's and spreading into the 1990's was a violent strategy for imposing certain mechanisms aimed at allowing capitalism to emerge from its crisis. However, what was called neo-liberalism did not work. More than that, it generated a process of crisis that produced large scale reactions by various sectors of society. These reactions dominated a number of "social movements" which had the aim of opposing the implementation of "neo-liberalism", i.e. the privatisation of everything and a process of the monopolisation of trade, production, circulation and services, in favour of the world's enormous capitalist emporiums. These social movements had nothing to do with "anti-capitalism"; rather they were the most moderate expressions of the logic of the capitalist system, and never put the system as such in doubt. The move towards the right in Latin America meant a process of accumulation for certain exclusive sections of the bourgeoisie, leaving many sectors of the same class on the outside, some of which ended up being ruined whilst others simply survived on the margin of profit that the market allowed. The ideology of these sectors was increasingly soaking into these social movements, with their speeches about "new democracy", "participation", "equality" etc. This led to these "progressive bourgeois" sectors setting themselves up as political reference points for many of the socially excluded sectors and turning themselves into governments characterised by nationalism, anti-imperialism, the socialisation of certain benefits for the population, the reactivation of the productive apparatus etc; all with the aim of consolidating a local and regional market that would allow these displaced sections of the bourgeoisie, to recuperate the process of accumulation. This could only mean control through the state, with Constitutional Assemblies as the main legal tool. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are living examples of this. In none of these countries will we encounter a proletarian process of organisation. Rather this is avoided at all costs, since for these sectors proletarian organisation is an anachronism. The dominant ideology is the same: bourgeois, with the qualification that this has not been designed by Washington, but by the intellectuals of the capitalist system, dressed up as socialists or progressives. These bourgeois nationalists and their "human face" are the norm in countries such as Ecuador, and Correa is a representative of this tendency.

For its part the extreme right, linked to the imperialist interests, faced with the fear of annihilation or being replaced by other bourgeois forces, has had to adopt an apocalyptic discourse, and arm itself with the best technology of assassination, without being able to resolve the conflicts that these horsemen of death have set in motion. However, this crisis is reaching its end. The wars in Iraq, Palestine, and throughout the Middle East, as well as in Colombia, have produced nothing other than ruin, and it is the same for sectors of the bourgeoisie such as Uribe. Certain sectors dominated by the left have taken advantage of this panorama and the lack of proletarian organisation in order to make pronouncements in the name of the proletariat.

The proletariat has never asked them to represent it; their liberation will be the work of their own hands, or it will not be. These supposed representatives of the proletariat are nothing but the most frightening, congealed forms of state capitalism, which is as rancid and rotten as the rest of the capitalist system

For this reason the petty-bourgeois interests of the FARC are not an alternative for the Colombian proletariat. To gain socialism nationally, in one country? This is already a failure. A boss who will be the emperor of the Colombian government until he dies? One party and those who do not agree with it to get a bullet? Putting all private means of production under the control of the state? The spirit of marxism has never been, nor ever will be, based on the falsification of revolutionary theory, through these supposed revolutionary initiatives.

"Workers of the world unite" is still as valid today and tomorrow as yesterday.

Our comments

We want to salute and support this rapid taking of position on events in the region, which is clearly situated on the proletariat's internationalist terrain. The text expresses the courage of these comrades, who faced with the orgy of nationalist declarations, and even the mobilisation of troops towards the frontier with Colombia, have responded with the defence of the interests of the working class, denouncing the calls for defence of the homeland from the government and the leftists.

Internationalism is the fundamental principle of the proletariat. Throughout the history of the workers' movement, its defence and has been a key element of the revolutionary struggle; rejecting it has been synonymous with betrayal. The Social Democratic parties who, faced with the First World War, supported the military initiatives of their respective national bourgeoisies, as much through pacifism in the abstract as defending war in the concrete, betrayed the cause of the proletariat and incorporated themselves into the ranks of the bourgeois state; afterwards these same parties massacred the revolutionary struggles, for example, in Germany. Following on from them, the Stalinist CP's and the Trotskyists (already without Trotsky), faced with the Second World War, lined up the workers behind the war in the name of the "defence of the USSR" and democratic anti-fascism.

The left fractions who remained loyal to internationalism responded to the treason of these currents by putting forwards the revolutionary programme during the worldwide wave of struggles between 1917 and 23. Placing themselves at the head of the proletarian insurgency against war and for the revolution, they formed the Communist International. Then, faced with the death of International, through its transformation into an instrument of the imperialist policy of the Stalinist state in the USSR, and the treason of the CPs, the communist left remained loyal to internationalism, denouncing both gangs in the Second World War and supplying the programmatic bases for a new revolutionary perspective, in particular by drawing up a critical balance sheet of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution.

Therefore it is not strange that today internationalism - and the search for references in the positions of the communist left - are a characteristic feature of those revolutionary elements which are emerging in different parts of the world.

The comrades in Ecuador have clearly inscribed themselves in the defence of internationalism: "Our sovereignty as individuals is daily trodden under foot by capitalism's oppression and exploitation. And there is the alarming, widespread worsening of poverty, unemployment, falling wages. Therefore we can have nothing to do with the slogans that divide up the unity of the world proletariat."

Confronted with the call to struggle against the proletariat in uniform of the enemy nation, the comrades call, as did Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1914, for turning their guns on the national bourgeoisie: "For our Colombian brothers and sisters there is one enemy, the bourgeoisie of Uribe (President of Colombia) is the same as the bourgeoisie of Correa (President of Ecuador)".

In this case, the defence of internationalism has the added merit that the countries that are claiming to have been attacked (Ecuador) or questioned (Venezuela) by the Uribe government (backed by the USA), present themselves as "peoples'" governments, as "the socialism of the 21st century", saying that workers have reason to support their initiatives against US imperialism. Faced with this, the comrades have clearly shown what the reality is: "In none of these countries will we encounter a proletarian process of organisation. Rather they are avoided at all costs, since for these sectors proletarian organisation is an anachronism. The dominant ideology is the same: bourgeois".

Elements for discussion

In the analysis that this text makes of these events, their underlying causes and consequences, there are some elements that we think provide material for a discussion, which are questions about which the present proletarian elements and groups can reflect.

Is war a solution to the capitalist crisis?

The first question to ask is whether imperialist war has an economic rationality and can it help capitalism in general, or some countries in particular, to offload and ameliorate the weight of the economic crisis[1]. The text by the comrades from Ecuador rightly states that the 1st and 2nd world wars and the localised imperialist conflicts since are the ultimate expressions of the crisis of the capitalist system. They then say:

"as often happens with the tricks put in place by capitalist interests, war is a means for trying to absorb this crisis through blood and fire"

To consider whether war can absorb the crisis, first of all it is necessary to see what war we are talking about, because for the workers' movement the wars of the 19th century, the 20th century and now are not the same. In the 19th century war was able to carry out the function of extending and consolidating the world market, thus pushing forward the development of the productive forces. Therefore revolutionaries supported some of the wars that expressed these potentialities. This is why Marx on behalf of the General Council of the 1st International wrote to president Lincoln, to show its support for the North faced with the South's war of secession from the USA in 1864, or favoured Germany at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870[2].

The wars of the 20th century, begun by the 1st World War, expressed another dynamic, the stagnation of capitalism, the fight to the death between the different national capitals for the world market. Thus, the attitude of revolutionaries faced with these wars, as we have already said, was to denounce them and to struggle for the transformation of imperialist war into class war. These wars are the expression of the endless crisis of capitalism, as the Communist International said. It saw the 1st World War as the opening of the period of capitalism's decadence, of wars and revolutions. They did not expresses the alleviation of the crisis, but a step deeper into the abyss.

This problem was posed in depth by the French Communist Left in its 1945 report on the international situation:

"In the epoch of ascendant capitalism, wars (whether national, colonial or of imperial conquest) represented an upwards movement that ripened, strengthened and enlarged the capitalist system. Capitalist production used war as a continuation by other means of its political economy. Each war was justified and paid its way by the opening of a new field for greater expansion, assuring further capitalist development.

"In the epoch of decadent capital, war, like peace, expresses this decadence and greatly accelerates it.

"It would be wrong to see war as negative by definition, as a destructive shackle on the development of society, as opposed to peace, which would then appear as the normal and positive course of development of production and society. This would be to introduce a moral concept into an objective, economically determined process.

"War was the indispensable means by which capital opened up the possibilities for further development, at a time when such possibilities existed and, could only be opened up through violence. In the same way, the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all of the possibilities of development, finds in modern imperialist war the expression of its collapse. War today can only engulf the productive forces in an abyss, and accumulate ruin upon ruin, in an ever-accelerating rhythm, without opening up any possibility for the external development of production.

"Under capitalism, there exists no fundamental opposition between war and peace, but there is a difference between ascendant and decadent phases of capitalist society (and in the relation of war to peace), in the respective phases,. While in the first phase, war had the function of assuring the expansion of the market, and so of the production of the means of consumption, in the second phase, production is essential geared to the means of destruction, ie to war. The decadence of capitalist society is expressed most strikingly in the fact that, while in the ascendant period, wars had the function of stimulating economic development, in the decadent period economic activity is essentially restricted to the pursuit of war.

"This does not mean that was has become the aim of capitalist production, since this remains the production of surplus value, but that war becomes the permanent way of life in decadent capitalism." ( ‘Report on the International Situation', Gauche Communiste de France, International Review 59 page 17).

These wars of the period of decadence do not express the development of the productive forces, but their pure destruction, beginning firstly with labour power, the proletariat killed at the front, and the workers in the rearguard targeted both whilst as work in the factory and in their houses by the bombers, let alone the destruction of the productive apparatus.

If in the 1870 war between Germany and France, the main winner was Germany, whose development meant that by the end of the 19th century it had become a world power, this did not mean that France was impeded in its very important industrial development in the last decades of the 19th century, as can be seen by the organisation of the Universal Expositions of 1878, 1889 and 1900 in Paris.

In the First World War, by contrast, a third of the male population was killed or seriously injured, while European production fell by 30%; and all of this despite the theatre of military operations being relatively small compared to the 2nd World War. In that war the number of dead war was nearly four times more, some 50 million, with the considerable growth of victims amongst the civilian population as a result of the bombing of cities such as Hiroshima or Dresden. Entire nations were laid waste, such as Germany, with all their infrastructure destroyed. Of the "victorious" countries, the USA was only spared from similar destruction because it was thousands of kilometres from the front, whilst the "USSR" paid for its "victory" with 20 million dead and important material destruction. This in turn contributed to the economic backwardness that was at the root of its collapse as a world power in 1989.

The proliferation of local wars following the 2nd World War, proxy conflicts between the antagonistic imperialist blocs in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, and Africa, confirmed this, as have the wars following the collapse of the Russian bloc and the consequent disintegration of the opposing bloc, where the different powers, great and small, have pursued their own interests through a policy of everyman for himself[3].

On the other hand, contrary to what Rosa Luxembourg affirmed in her book The Accumulation of Capital (and this is one of the few criticisms we have of this book), the production and sale of armaments cannot serve as the stimulus for economic development. Unlike any other product, be they means of production or consumption, which are incorporated into production as constant and variable capital (replacing the worn out means of production, or labour power), the consumption of armaments simply means their disappearance. Therefore they do not contribute to the accumulation of capital, but its destruction.

Does the left of capital represent the interests of the middle classes?

The comrades write:

"Therefore is it not strange to see the en bloc pronouncements of the left of capital in favour of so-called "national sovereignty", "territorial inviolability", etc? No, the reality is that the leftists do not represent the interests of the proletariat but the layers that oscillate between the top and the bottom of society. They are always flirting with the most sickening nationalist tendencies".

First of all, this clearly states that the left of capital does not represents the interests of the proletariat; but what are the consequences of saying that they represent the interests of the middle layers?

The attitude of the proletariat towards these layers cannot be the same as towards the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is the enemy against which it struggles: the proletariat has to destroy the bourgeois state, and it can not have confidence in any of its expressions without being dragged onto the bourgeois terrain.

However, the question of the middle layers is much more complicated. First of all we do not think that there are really any parties that represent the intermediate strata. In the decadence of capitalism parties[4] are expressions of the whole of the bourgeoisie and tend to identify themselves as clients of the different layers of the bourgeoisie, which use, develop and perpetuate the prejudices of the middle layers and the petty-bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

On the other hand, the intermediate layers do not form a homogeneous social body but are distinguished by numerous strata which often have opposing interests. There is a part of these layers that moves towards the bourgeoisie. However there are others that are being proletarianised and whose conditions are close to those of the proletariat.

This part is not the enemy of the proletariat, although they resist losing their privileges and pose all sorts of obstacles to the revolutionary programme. The dynamic of social relations is pushing these layers towards the proletariat. Faced with this, the proletariat has to display patience and show tolerance, in order to try and convince them and win them to the revolutionary cause.

Although in many cases it does not appear to be the direct vehicle of the bourgeois state, the left of capital is an expression of bourgeois ideology, of the bourgeois conception of the working class. Its integration into the bourgeois state is the fruit of its treason to the workers' cause and all the moral degradation, cowardice, resentment and falsehood that this carries with it.

Against this, the life of the proletariat is expressed by the search for clarity, frankness, fraternity and a willingness to discuss. Therefore we hope that these comments serve to contribute to the internationalist discussion that is emerging within the ranks of the proletariat today.

Comrades in Ecuador, please accept our warm support.

Communist greetings.

The ICC, 13.3.08.

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[1] On this question there are different concrete approaches. Some says that war allows the sale of the arms of the main producer countries (the great powers), which thus can counter-act the effects of the crisis; others says that the victorious countries can enjoy the economic benefits through taking slices of the economy of the defeated country, or the raw materials from its soil, etc. Both explanations have been raised in relation to the war in Iraq: Cheney and the Neo-Cons are the heads of military industries, and will thus amass profits, and the USA can have the oil from the Iraqi refineries. We are not going to enter into a discussion of these concrete questions here, but only take up the general analysis of imperialist war and crisis

 

[2] As Marx and Engels argued, the abolition of slavery, through the struggle of the North, meant a great impetus to the development of capitalism in the USA and at the world level; likewise, Germany's war against France could serve to push forward the formation of the German nation

[3] It is not the aim of this article to illustrate the destruction wrought by these wars, but to pose the general problem in order to stimulate the discussion. Those interested in concrete information about these military conflicts and there true "interests" can consult our pamphlet: Nation or Class, and the articles on our website through searching using the name of the conflict

[4] Here we are not talking about the party of the proletariat that is formed in the pre-revolutionary situation and on an international scale.

 

Five years after the USA, assisted by Britain and a few other countries, successfully invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam in only three weeks, nothing is going according to plan. Of course we can read about an improvement in the security situation following the troop surge, about the ‘Sahwa' or Awakening in which Sunni forces in Anbar are being turned against al-Qaida - provided they are supplied with weapons that they can use for whatever purpose in the future. But events on the ground have well and truly drowned out any celebration of the original victory.

The USA remains mired in Iraq, and their overall commander, General Petraeus, has persuaded the politicians that troop levels should remain at 130,000 rather than be cut by the end of the year. So much for the success of the surge. Britain has similarly shelved plans to cut its troops.

At the beginning of March President Ahmadinejad's visit to Iraq made Iran the first regional power to make a state visit since the US invasion in 2003. He came offering $1 billion in loans, as well as trade, and calls for the US to leave. Such a diplomatic advantage going to a leader of the ‘axis of evil' adds further evidence that all is not well for the Coalition forces.

At the end of the month the push by Iraqi President Al-Maliki against the Mahdi army, with US and British air support, ended in humiliating failure. Many of his own police and security forces refused to fight or even sided with Sadr, who was able to announce a ‘cease-fire' on his own terms. This event has given rise to claim and counter-claim. What is clear is that this push against criminal gangs was aimed at Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in Basra, which launched counter-offensives in Baghdad and elsewhere; and that despite al-Maliki's claims he would fight to the end the Iraqi administration was forced into some kind of negotiation in which Iran played a part.

US Ambassador Crocker claimed this showed the growing confidence of the Iraqi government "... in terms of decision, resolve and ability, they did it themselves and they got in the fight" (BBC news online). John McCain was much clearer "Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans... I am surprised he would take it on himself" (The Times 1.4.08). In other words this also shows the limits of US control of its puppet democracy.

Opportunity for USA's rivals

Nor should we see this as simply an Iranian victory. It is true that it has supplied some of the Mahdi army weapons, but Iran has much closer links to some of the militia who are less independent of the government, such as the Badr Brigades. Nevertheless, when the USA toppled Iraq this was of great interest to Iran. The neighbours were rival regional powers, each effectively cancelling out the other's ambitions. When the pro-western Shah was toppled, leaving the country in the hands of much less reliable Mullahs, the US used Iraq, under their ally Saddam Hussein, in a war lasting through the 1980s to weaken Iran. That was before the collapse of the USSR when the world was divided between US and Russian imperialist blocs, two fairly stable alliances lined up against each other, and America was simply defending its dominance in the area. When first the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR itself collapsed the USA was left as the only superpower, but its allies and clients in the ‘west' no longer needed its protection against the opposing bloc, and had to be convinced that there was a good reason not to go all out for their own interests even against America. That reason was Washington's enormous military superiority. Iraq now had a new use - as an American whipping boy to impose its authority over its allies and display its terrifying fire-power in the first Gulf war in 1991 and again in 2003.

In order to maintain its position the USA has been constrained to engage in repeated military adventures, and has needed to gain overwhelming victories, for as soon as it shows weakness other powers can see an opportunity to challenge its hegemony. Iran is a good example here: with the US bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, Tehran has the opportunity not just to arm rebel gangs in Iraq, or gain a minor diplomatic victory, but also to pursue its dream of obtaining nuclear weapons and rivalling Israel as a Middle Eastern power.

And there are far bigger fish involved. At the time of the first Gulf War under Bush Senior no-one dared to oppose the action, and powers such as Germany and Japan were made to pay for a war effort that was also aimed at warning them not to challenge America. By 2003 Germany and France were confident enough to oppose the second Gulf War openly. More recently there has been friction between the occupying powers in Afghanistan over the strategy to follow: the British trying to "reconcile" Taliban fighters as in Musa Qala, while the Americans "just want to kill them" (The Times 2.4.08).

Spreading chaos

All this manoeuvring, by both the US and its rivals, increases instability. In Iraq it is obvious: an unknown number of Iraqi civilians killed, probably in six figures, power cuts, and during the recent push against the Mahdi army a curfew in Baghdad that left the streets empty and the shops without any fresh fruit or vegetables, not to mention the factional disputes verging on civil war. The initial invasion, the arms supplied by Iran, Turkey's recent incursions in the North, all play their part.

But the chaos does not stop at the Iraqi border. As the US is seen to be faltering, its allies in the Middle East and beyond are also weakened: Israel has responded by attacking Lebanon and now Gaza to reinforce its position; Hamas and al Fatah are in open conflict; and further east Pakistan has been destabilised. A very, very dangerous situation in which Israel and Pakistan are already nuclear powers and Iran is on the way to being one.

Nationalism is part of the problem

There are always those who see something ‘revolutionary' in imperialist chaos. For instance Socialist Worker (issue 2095) claims "Basra uprising beats occupiers" and quotes the Association of Muslim Scholars calling for "all Iraqis to show unity and solidarity and prevent the threats against the people who oppose the occupation". But what is the basis for this opposition? As the article says "a popular nationalist movement led by the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr", ie, nationalism, religious and factional. This movement may use and channel the very real discontent at the killings, destruction and privations of the occupation, but it is fully integrated into the very system of imperialist relations that has caused the problem in the first place.

The working class, whether in Britain or Iraq or elsewhere, cannot afford to be taken in by illusions in nationalism from any country or faction, of whatever size. Our inspiration comes from the solidarity of workers defending their own living conditions from Egypt to the USA, Dubai to Germany. Alex 5.4.08

 

Protests over the Chinese state's brutal treatment of the population of Tibet have dogged the passage of the Olympic torch from the moment it was lit. They seem likely to reach a climax on June 21 when the flame reaches Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

In March demonstrations in Tibet turned to riots in which the Chinese government said that 19 died, the victims of Tibetan mobs, while the Tibetan government-in-exile say that 140 died, most of them victims of the security forces. There was also reporting of riots in other provinces that are home to significant Tibetan communities.

The Chinese blamed the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, for inciting violence. The Communist Party Secretary in Tibet said "The Dalai Lama is a wolf wrapped in a habit, a monster with human face and animal's heart." An article in the Guangming Daily declared that "The Dalai Lama and his supporters, representatives of the feudal serf owners of old Tibet, have never done anything good for the Tibetan people in the past 50 years". Leftist supporters of Chinese state repression denied that there was any ‘national liberation' struggle going on in the region, insisting that the ‘secessionists' were backed by America and that the Dalai Lama was a paid stooge of US intelligence, using the build up to the Beijing Olympics to undermine Chinese integrity and stability.

In opposition to this the Free Tibet Campaign says in a Fact Sheet that "China's invasion by 40,000 troops in 1950 was an act of unprovoked aggression. [...] Some 1.2 million Tibetans are estimated to have been killed by the Chinese since 1950 [...] The influx of Chinese nationals has destabilised the economy" and that there are now "5 to 5.5 million Chinese to 4.5 million Tibetans". Meanwhile "The Indian Government reports that are three nuclear missile sites, and an estimated 300,000 troops stationed on Tibetan territory". This campaign also has a lot of support from famous celebrities, from Richard Gere's speech at the 1993 Academy Awards to Harrison Ford, Sharon Stone, U2 and REM.

Alongside the liberals and celebrity Buddhists there are leftists who do see a struggle for national independence. "The riots and protests that have erupted in Tibet this week are the product of decades of national oppression" says Socialist Worker (22/3/8). The SWP is disappointed that "economic growth has passed by most Tibetans. Chinese people and other ethnic minorities have taken most of the new jobs created - which is one reason why they were targeted during the recent rioting." Such remarks seem reminiscent of the ‘they come over here and take our jobs' school of thought...

A number of these diverse propaganda points are actually confirmed by reality. There is no doubt that the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet has been a long chronicle of barbarism. It is equally true that the Lamaist regime they toppled was based on a centuries-old system of exploitation. And it is no less the case that any imperialist power seeking to curtail China's own growing imperialist ambitions will want to encourage secessionist or oppositional movements in the areas it controls. Whether the CIA pays the Dalai Lama is not the point. American imperialism has often played the human rights card to get at other imperialisms: look at the whole period of the Cold War when the regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe were the target of its campaigns. It is also significant that the Indian government keeps a close eye on Tibet, because of the threat of its regional rival, Chinese imperialism.

So during the French President's recent state visit, the reason that Brown didn't favour a boycott of the Olympics, while Sarkozy didn't rule it out, wasn't because one was more humanitarian than the other, but because of different approaches to the best way to defend imperialist interests. The defence of ‘human rights' and opposition to ‘national oppression' are standard weapons of the most bloodthirsty ruling class in history. When they talk of their desire for peace, watch out for their preparations for war. Car 5/4/8

Forty years ago on 22 March 1968, at Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris, there began one of the major episodes of international history since the Second World War; what the media and French politicians usually call the ‘events of 68.' In itself, what happened that day was nothing exceptional: protesting against the arrest of a student of the extreme left from Nanterre suspected of being involved in an attack against the American Express offices in Paris during violent demonstrations against the Vietnam War, 300 of his comrades held a meeting in an amphitheatre and 142 of them decided to occupy a room of the University Council in the administrative building overnight. It wasn't the first time that the students of Nanterre had demonstrated their discontent. Thus, just a year before at this university, we'd already seen a fight between students and police over the free movement of students in the university residence - allowed to the girls, but forbidden to the boys. On March 16 1967, an association of 500 residents, the ARCUN, decreed the abolition of the domestic rule that, amongst other things, treated the students, even the older ones (older than 21 at this time), as minors. Following which, on March 21 1967, on the demand of the administration, the police had surrounded the girls' residence with the plan of arresting 150 boys who were found there and who were barricaded in on the top floor of the building. But, the following morning, the police themselves had been encircled by several thousand students and had finally received the order to leave without touching the student barricades. But these incidents, as well as other demonstrations of student anger, notably against the ‘Fouchet Plan' for university reform in the autumn of 1967, were short-lived. March 22 1968 was something else entirely. A few weeks later, a succession of events led not only to the strongest student mobilisation since the war, but above all the biggest strike in the history of the international workers' movement: more than 9 million workers on strike for almost a month.

For communists, contrary to the majority of speeches that were already being dished out, it wasn't the student agitation, as massive and ‘radical' as it was, which constituted the major fact of the ‘events of 68' in France. It was rather the workers' strike which, by far, occupied this place and which took on a considerable historical significance. We are going to treat this question in the columns of our press in other articles. Here, we want to limit ourselves to examining the students' struggles of this time and to drawing out their significance.

From March 22 to May 13 1968

Before leaving, the 142 occupants of the Council room decided, so as to maintain and develop the agitation, to constitute the March 22 Movement (M22). It was an informal movement, composed at the beginning of Trotskyists of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire (LCR) and some anarchists (including Daniel Cohn-Bendit), joined at the end of April by the Maoists of the Union des Jeunesses Communistes Marxistes-Leniniste (UJCML), and which brought together over some weeks, more than 1,200 participants. The walls of the university were covered with posters and graffiti: "Professors, you are old and so is your culture", "Let us live", "Take your dreams for reality". The M22 announced a day of ‘university criticism' for March 29, following similar action from German students. The dean decided to close the university until April 1 but the agitation restarted when the university reopened. In front of 1000 students, Cohn-Bendit declared: "We refuse to be the future cadres of capitalist exploitation". The majority of teachers reacted in a conservative fashion: on April 22, 18 of them, including those of the "left", demanded "measures and means so that the agitators can be unmasked and sanctioned". The dean adopted a whole series of repressive measures, notably giving free rein to the police in the passages and paths of the campus, while the press was unleashed against the "madness", the "small groups" and the "anarchists". The French Communist Party fell into line: April 26, Pierre Juqin, a member of the Central Committee, held a meeting in Nanterre: "The agitators are preventing the sons of workers from passing their exams". He couldn't finish and had to flee. In Humanity of March 3, Georges Marchais, number 2 in the Communist Party, said in his turn: "These false revolutionaries must be energetically unmasked because objectively they serve the interests of Gaullist power and the great capitalist monopolies".

On the campus at Nanterre, scuffles became more and more frequent between the students of the extreme-left and fascist groups of the Occident group, coming from Paris to ‘beat up the Bolshies'. Faced with this situation the dean decided on May 2 to again close the university, which was ringed by the police. The students of Nanterre decided that the following day they would hold a meeting in the courtyard of the Sorbonne in order to protest against the closure of their university and the disciplinary proceedings against 8 members of the M22, including Cohn-Bendit.

There were only 300 at the meeting: the majority of students were actively preparing for their end of year exams. However, the government, which wanted to finish with the agitation, decided to strike a blow and occupy the Latin Quarter and encircle the Sorbonne with police. The police entered the university, something which hadn't happened for centuries. The students, who had fallen back into the Sorbonne, obtained assurance that they would be able to leave without hindrance but, while the girls were able to go freely, the boys were systematically led into the prison vans, from which they escaped. Rapidly, hundreds of students assembled on the square of the Sorbonne and insulted the police. Tear gas began to rain down: the area was taken but the students, more and more numerous now, began to harass the groups of police and their wagons. The confrontations continued for four hours during the evening: 72 police were wounded and 400 demonstrators arrested. The following days, police completely surrounded the approaches to the Sorbonne while four students were sent to prison. This policy of firmness, far from stopping the agitation, gave it a massive character. From Monday May 6, confrontations with the forces of the police deployed around the Sorbonne alternated with more and more sustained demonstrations called for by the M22, the UNEF and the SNESUP (union of head teachers) and regrouped up to 45,000 participants to the cries of "Sorbonne to the students", "cops out of the Latin Quarter" and above all "free our comrades". The students were joined by a growing number of schoolchildren, teachers, workers and unemployed. The processions quickly crossed over the Seine and covered the Champs-Elysees, close to the Presidential Palace. The Internationale reverberated under the Arc de Triomphe where one usually heard La Marseillasie or the Last Post. The demonstrators also prevailed in some towns of the provinces. The government wanted to give a token of good will by reopening the university of Nanterre on May 10. That evening, tens of thousands of demonstrators were to be found in the Latin Quarter in front of the police surrounding the Sorbonne. At 2100 hours, some demonstrators began to build barricades (there were about sixty of them). At midnight, a delegation of 3 teachers and 3 students (including Cohn-Bendit) was received by the rector of the Academie de Paris but, while agreeing to reopen the Sorbonne, he could make no promises about freeing the students arrested on May 3. At two in the morning, the CRS led the assault on the barricades after spraying copious amounts of tear gas. The confrontations were extremely violent provoking hundreds of wounded on both sides. More than 500 demonstrators were arrested. In the Latin Quarter, numerous inhabitants demonstrated their sympathies by welcoming demonstrators into their homes and throwing water onto the street in order to protect them from the tear gas and offensive grenades. All these events, and notably the witnesses to the brutality of the forces of repression, were being followed on the radio, minute by minute, by hundreds of thousands of people. At six in the morning, ‘order reigned' in a Latin Quarter that seemed to have been swept by a tornado.

On Saturday May 11, indignation was immense in Paris and the whole of France. Processions formed spontaneously throughout the country, regrouping not only students but also hundreds of thousands of demonstrators of all origins, notably many young workers or parents of students. Everywhere universities were occupied; in the streets and squares, people discussed and condemned the attitude of the forces of repression.

Faced with this situation, the Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, announced in the evening that from Monday May 13 the police would be withdrawn from the Latin Quarter, that the Sorbonne would be reopened and the imprisoned students would be freed.

The same day, all the centres of the trade unions, including the CGT (which up until then had only denounced the ‘leftist' students), and even some police unions, called for a strike and demonstrations for May 13, so as to protest against the repression and against the policy of the government.

On May 13, every town in the country saw the most important demonstrations since World War II. The working class was massively present at the side of the students. One of the most used slogans was: "Ten years, that's enough!" with reference to the date of May 13 1958 which had seen the return of De Gaulle to power. At the end of the demonstrations, practically all the universities were occupied, not only by the students but also by many young workers. Everywhere, anyone could speak. Discussions were not limited to questions about universities and repression. They began to confront all the social problems: conditions of work, exploitation, the future of society.

On May 14 discussions continued in many firms. After the immense demonstrations the day before, with the enthusiasm and feelings of strength that emanated from them, it was difficult to carry on as if nothing had happened. In Nantes, the workers of Sud-Aviation, carried along by the youngest workers, a spontaneous strike broke out and they decided to occupy the factory. The working class began to take up the reins.

The student movement world-wide

Given the connection of events which led to the immense mobilisation of 13 May 1968, it's clear that it wasn't so much the action of the students which was responsible for the breadth of the movement but rather the action of the authorities themselves that continued to pour oil on the fire before beating a sorry retreat. In fact, the student's struggles in France, before reaching the scale of May 68, were much less massive and profound than those in other countries, notably the United States and Germany.

It was in the biggest world power, the United States, that from 1964 witnessed the most massive and significant movements of this period. More precisely, it was in Berkeley University, North California, that student protest took on a massive character for the first time. The demands that initially mobilised the students came from the ‘free speech movement' in favour of free political expression (notably against the Vietnam War and racial segregation) in the surrounds of the university. At first the bourgeoisie reacted with extreme repression, notably by sending police against the ‘sit-in', a peaceful occupation of the premises, making 800 arrests. Finally, at the beginning of 1965, the university authorities authorised political activities in the university which went on to become one of the principal centres of student protest in the United States. At the same time, it was with the slogan of "cleaning up the disorder at Berkeley" that Ronald Reagan was, against all expectations, elected Governor of California at the end of 1965. The movement developed massively and radicalised in the years following, around protest about racial segregation, for the defence of women's rights and above all against the war in Vietnam. At the same time as young Americans, above all students, fled abroad in numbers in order to avoid being sent to Vietnam, the majority of universities in the country were affected by anti-war movements. At the same time, there were also outbursts in the black ghettos of the major towns (the proportion of young blacks among soldiers being sent to Vietnam was much higher than the national average). From April 23 to April 30, 1968, Columbia University in New York was occupied in protest against the contribution of its departments to the activities of the Pentagon and in solidarity with the inhabitants of the neighbouring black ghetto of Harlem. It was one of the peaks of student protest in the United States, which saw its most violent moments at the end of August in Chicago, with real riots at the Democratic Party Convention.

Many other countries saw student revolts during the course of this period.

Japan: from 1965, students demonstrated against the Vietnam War, notably under the leadership of the Zengakuren, which organised formidable fights against the police. In 1968, they launched the slogan: "let's transform the Kanda (the university quarter of Tokyo) into the Latin Quarter".

Although the student movement in Britain was not on the same scale as France or the US there were expressions of it as early as October 1966 at the London School of Economics where students protested against the new director because of his links with the racist regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa. The LSE continued to be affected by protests, for example in March 1967 there was a five-day sit-in against disciplinary action that led to an experimental ‘free university' copying American examples. In December 1967 there were sit-ins at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the Holborn College of Law and Commerce, both demanding student representations in the institutions decision-making process. In May and June 1968 there were occupations at Essex, Hornsey College of Art, Hull, Bristol and Keele leading to further protests in Croydon, Birmingham, Liverpool, Guildford, and the Royal College of Arts. The most spectacular demonstrations (which involved a whole range of different people and different causes) were a series around the Vietnam War: in March and October 67, in March 68 and in the most massive and celebrated demonstration in October 1968, all of which involved violent clashes with the police with hundreds of injuries and arrests outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, London.

Italy: students mobilised in March in numerous universities, and notably in Rome, against the Vietnam War and similarly against the policies of the university authorities.

Spain: in March, the university of Madrid was closed ‘indefinitely' faced with student agitation against the war in Vietnam and the Francoist regime.

Germany: student agitation was already developing from 1967 against the war in Vietnam and that increased the influence of the extreme-left SDS movement, coming out of a break with the young Social Democrats. The movement then radicalised and took a mass character with the attack in Berlin against the main leader of the extreme-left, Rudi Dutschke, committed by a youngster who had been wound up and influenced by the hysterical campaigns unleashed by the press of the magnate Axel Springer. For several weeks, before attention was turned towards France, the student movement in Germany was a reference point for all of the movements that touched the majority of countries in Europe.

This list is obviously far from exhaustive. Many countries on the periphery of capitalism were equally affected by student movements during the course of 1968 (Brazil and Turkey, amongst others). We should however mention what happened in Mexico at the end of the summer, when the government decided on the bloody suppression of student demonstrations (several dozen killed, possibly hundreds, on October 2 at the Place of Three-Cultures, Tlatlolco, Mexico) so the Olympic Games could take place ‘in peace' from October 12.

What characterises all of these movements is clear: above all, the rejection of the war in Vietnam. But whereas the Stalinist parties, allies of the Hanoi and Moscow regimes, would have logically been found at their head, as was the case with the anti-war movements around the Korean War in the early 1950s, it was nowhere the case here. On the contrary, these parties had practically no influence and, quite often, they were in complete opposition to these movements.

This is one of the characteristics of the student movements of the end of the 1960s, and it reveals their profound significance. We are going to examine this further in the next article. Fabienne 23/2/8

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

https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/April-24-leaflet.pdf [17]

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On 24 April 250,000 teachers will be staging a one day strike against the government's latest pay offer. They will be joined by further education lecturers, civil servants, and council workers. Marches and rallies will be held in a large number of cities.

There are certainly any number of reasons for taking action, not only in these sectors, but right across the working class:

• below-inflation pay offers
• rising prices for basic necessities like food and fuel
• increasing unemployment, not least the 6,500 jobs under threat at the newly nationalised Northern Rock
• attacks on pensions and other benefits
• spiralling personal debts
• decline in services like health and education

All these and many other attacks on workers' living standards are being supervised or directly imposed not just by individual employers but by the state, whether in its national or local guise. Faced with a mounting economic crisis that is clearly global in scope, the national state is revealing itself more and more as the only force capable of organising the response required by the capitalist system: reducing labour costs to compete for markets and preserve profits. Therefore the state steps in to bail out failing banks in Britain and the US, forces public sector workers to accept ‘pay restraint', introduces cuts in health, welfare and education (in other words, reductions in the social wage), introduces new laws reducing pensions and lengthening our working lives. And when economic competition gives way to military competition, as in the Balkans, Afghanistan or Iraq, it's the state which diverts vast amounts of social wealth into building weapons and waging war.

These polices are not the result of evil individuals or of particular governmental parties. Governments of the right or the left carry out the same basic policies. In North America the Bush government extols free enterprise and presides over an economy in which 28 million need food stamps to survive. In South America, Chavez denounces Bush, talks about ‘21st century socialism' - and dispatches squads of ‘Bolivarian revolutionaries' to suppress striking steel workers.

Faced with this centralised, statified attack on their living and working conditions, workers everywhere have the same interests: to resist wage cuts and job cuts, to react against inroads on their social benefits. But they cannot do this by fighting separately, sector by sector, workplace by workplace. Faced with the power of the capitalist state, they need to form a power of their own, based on their unity and solidarity across all divisions into trade, union, or nationality.

After years of dispersal and disarray, workers are only just beginning to rediscover in practice what unity and solidarity mean. They need to take every opportunity to turn these general principles into practical action. If the unions are calling for strikes and demonstrations around issues of direct concern to them, as on April 24, workers should respond as massively as possible - go to the mass meetings, join the marches, take part in the pickets, discuss and exchange ideas with workers from other sectors and workplace.

Workers' unity cannot be organised through the unions

But beware: the trade unions, who present themselves as the representatives of the workers, in reality serve to keep us divided.

This is nowhere clearer than in the education sector. The strike on 24 April involves the NUT members in primary and secondary education. It doesn't involve teachers in sixth form colleges who have ‘different' employers. Neither does it involve teachers from other unions, such as the NAS/UWT which says the issue isn't pay, but workload. Nor does it involve thousands of education workers who aren't teachers, such as learning support assistants, site staff, cleaners, caterers etc, even though they have plenty to be aggrieved about. And though the NUT seems to be talking tough today, when many of these educational support workers came out on strike in 2006, the NUT told its members to cross their picket lines.

The same story can be repeated in the civil service, in the local authorities, on the tubes and railways, and any number of other industries where workers are divided up into different categories and unions. The state in Britain has long made it illegal for those who work for different employers to strike in solidarity with each other. By keeping workers in the framework of these laws, the unions do the work of the state on the shop floor. The same goes for the laws that forbid workers to decide on strike action in mass meetings. Union ballot rigmaroles tie workers' hands behind their backs and prevent them from making decisions as a collective force.

It follows that if we are to become such a force, we have to start to take the struggle into our hands, and not leave it in the hands of the union ‘specialists'. Council workers in Birmingham voted in mass meetings to take part in the strikes around April 24. It's a good example to follow: we need to hold meetings in every workplace where all workers, from all unions or none, can take part and take the decisions. And we need to insist that decisions taken in mass meetings are binding, not dependent on ballots or private meetings of union officials.

Unity at the workplace is inseparable from building unity with workers from other workplaces and other industries, whether we do it through sending delegations to their meetings, by joining their picket lines, or gathering together at rallies and demonstrations.

Calling on all workers to assemble, strike and demonstrate together for common demands is, naturally, ‘illegal' in the face of a state which wants to outlaw real class solidarity. This may seem daunting at first, too big a step to take. But it's in the very act of taking matters into our hands and uniting with other workers that we develop the confidence and courage to take the struggle even further.

And given the bleak prospects offered by the world capitalist system - a future of crisis, war, and ecological disaster - there's no doubt that the struggle has to go further. It has to go from the defence of our basic living conditions to questioning and challenging this entire social order. Amos 5/4/8