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

https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr316-united-struggle-needed.pdf [1]

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Hundreds of thousands of council workers are striking on 16 and 17 July demanding a 6% pay rise, following the example of teachers and civil servants on 24 April, and Shell tanker drivers last month. They will undoubtedly be followed by other workers, with signs of discontent among health service workers, civil servants and shop workers.

Price rises leave workers no choice but struggle. The last 5 years – years in which the economy was supposed to be doing so well – have left the average household 15% worse off, according to a new report by Ernst and Young, with energy bills up 110%, housing costs up 45%, petrol up 29% since 2003. We are now faced with a dramatic worsening in the situation since the housing bubble started to burst last year. It is the very basics of food, fuel and housing where prices are rising fastest. In the last year 4 million households have been forced to resort to expensive short term loans or credit cards to pay their mortgages, and defaults and repossessions are likely to exceed those of the early 1990s before long.

Recession is going hand in hand with inflation. The service sector, which accounts for about 80% of jobs, shrank in May; jobs are going in the financial and construction industries. In early July 2000 construction jobs went in 48 hours and Barratt announced 1,000 redundancies or 15% of the workforce. Official unemployment went up to 1.64 million, 5.3%, in April but it is common knowledge that this fails to take account of millions forced to claim incapacity benefit, or off benefits altogether.

Meanwhile, the rate of growth in earnings has not just failed to keep pace with inflation – it has slowed right down. This is exactly what the ruling class want. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has said that employees should not respond to the loss of spending power by demanding pay increases as that would fuel inflation. We are told that we mustn’t return to the stagflation and wage demands of the 1970s. In other words, workers should pay for the crisis, because stagflation is here whether or not we struggle for increased pay.

Much has been made of the poor handling of the situation by the Brown government but the economic crisis is not just something for Britain, it’s worldwide; and it’s not just Brown or King who will try and force us to accept cuts in our living standards. This is the role of the whole state machine, and not just in this country but internationally as all workers from the USA to China, France to Venezuela, face the same attacks.

How can we fight back?

All workers have the same interest in resisting attacks on living and working conditions, but faced with a centralised attack by the state it is impossible to do so if we remain divided sector by sector. It’s the same fight whether we look at postal workers last year, teachers on April 24, Shell tanker drivers last month or council workers this time. Workers recognise this every time they show solidarity. Council workers in Birmingham voted in mass meetings to support the April 24 demonstrations and strikes. In the postal workers’ strike van drivers refused to cross picket lines, and there were wildcat strikes to defend them when they were disciplined. Similarly drivers from other companies refused to cross the Shell tanker drivers’ picket lines. This solidarity so worried both bosses and unions that they negotiated a hasty deal in both cases.

Yet the struggles are weakened by being divided up. When the teachers and civil servants struck on April 24 it was billed as ‘fight-back Thursday’ for the whole public sector, but even in schools the workers remained divided – NUT members divided from NAS members, teachers in sixth form colleges divided from teachers in other schools, teachers striking in April, other workers in the same schools striking in July. We can only respond to this by refusing to be bound by union divisions, by showing solidarity on the picket lines as in the postal and tanker drivers’ strikes, and by discussing with other workers.

Workers in France showed the same tendency to struggle together last November when rail-workers and students went and spoke in each others’ meetings, even if the unions didn’t like it, and demonstrated together. And in 2006 it was the fact that students were starting to get together with workers that persuaded the French government to withdraw the CPE, an attack on young workers’ working conditions. Back in 1980 Polish workers went on a mass strike in response to price rises, all workers together, shutting down the country, and forcing a withdrawal of the price rises, even if they had to be brought in more slowly later on.

Solidarity cannot be organised through the unions

From The Times to The Socialist papers are speculating on a summer of discontent. Unite has joined Unison in calling its council workers out on strike, adding another 40,000 to the 600,000 who will stop work. The PCS union has sent a letter of solidarity. Unison has talked of reopening the NHS 3 year pay deal in new circumstances, and PCS is calling for a similar deal in the Department of Work and Pensions. Doesn’t this seem to show union militancy? And what about Unite’s merger with the American steelworkers’ union? Doesn’t that show that unions can organise international solidarity better than any ordinary workers on their own?

This all shows that unions are aware of discontent within the working class and the need to respond to it, but they do this in order to control struggle and not to encourage it. This time round the NUT will tell teachers to cross picket lines of learning support, cleaning and catering staff, just as Unison expected its members to cross picket lines in April. As for the PCS letter of solidarity, it is an illusion, a substitute for the real solidarity that the state has made illegal by outlawing workers striking in support of others making similar demands of other employers. The unions keep workers divided by enforcing these laws on the shop floor. The international union merger will not escape this logic, will not do anything to unite workers internationally.

Workers can only develop the force to resist the attacks on them if they unite with other workers, first and foremost by coming together across all divisions of union or job, to discuss how to resist the attacks on them. This means taking the struggle into our own hands, and not leaving it to the union ‘specialists’, so all workers can participate in deciding how to run the struggle. It also means uniting with other workers struggling against the same attacks in other workplaces and industries by sending delegations to other mass meetings or picket lines or demonstrations. Although this is illegal, and seems a huge step, it is the only way workers can have the strength to defend themselves, and to take the struggle further.

This is the only perspective that will enable us to really defend our living standards, and to develop the confidence to question the future that the capitalist system, with its economic crisis, its wars and its ecological disasters, has in store for us.

International Communist Current, 5.7.08

At the beginning of June, 641 Shell tanker drivers struck for four days to increase their pay levels. This strike occupied the media headlines for several days, and some petrol stations ran out of fuel. It was settled with a 14% increase over two years (9% this year and 5% next). The Unite union and media made a lot of noise about the size of this award but it was only 0.7% more than the original offer (7.3% this year and 6% next). This strike, though only involving a few hundred workers and being resolved quickly, was an important expression of the developing wave of class struggle.

From the beginning of the strike workers from other haulage firms expressed their solidarity though respecting the picket lines or joining in their protests "Last night striking drivers at the Stanlow refinery in Cheshire were joined by about 15 BP drivers who refused to start work.

In Plymouth, union leaders said the strike action had been joined by drivers from every company and fuel supplies in Devon and Cornwall could start to run dry by tonight. Up to 25% of BP's petrol deliveries are believed to have been impeded, and some drivers for Wincanton, a firm which distributes fuel to 3,700 Total and Chevron filling stations, have refused to work out of solidarity with the strikers.

The Wincanton (a large haulage firm) drivers joined Shell drivers in protests at Cardiff, Plymouth and Avonmouth, leaving tankers stranded behind picket lines." (The Guardian, 14.6.08).

This solidarity took on a new dimension on the third day of the strike (16th June), when workers from other haulage firms joined the Shell workers picketing the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland in protest at the suspension of 11 Scottish Fuel drivers for refusing to cross picket lines. This was potentially a very explosive situation, given that the struggle was taking on a demand beyond those of the Shell tanker drivers - the defence of workers from Scottish Fuels. A demand that if not resolved could have drawn in more and more drivers and potentially other workers into the struggle. The Grangemouth refinery workers had struck in April over pensions, the first strike for 73 years and would have been aware of what was happening at the gates. Not surprisingly the bosses and unions moved rapidly to stop this by reinstating the suspended workers. Unite dismissed the workers' determined defence of their comrades as a "misunderstanding". For the working class it was an example of the power of proletarian solidarity.

It should not be forgotten that such action is illegal, as was that by the Wincanton and other workers who joined the struggle. However, we did not hear a word about this in the media. Why? They did not want to highlight the fact these workers were not only showing solidarity but also were not intimidated by laws brought in to stop such expressions of solidarity. Such defiance could inspire other workers.

So-called independent drivers, those with their own rigs or hired as sub-contractors, also showed solidarity by not crossing picket lines. This was no easy action for them because they could lose money, possibly contracts and future sub-contracting work. Most of these drivers are former employed drivers or see no real difference between themselves and Shell and other drivers, and were willing to put solidarity first, despite the risks.

This solidarity by other workers meant that Unite was not able to keep the Shell drivers isolated from the rest of the class with their ‘own' demands against ‘their' boss. Instead other drivers saw the Shell drivers' strike as part of their common struggle because they are under the same attacks. It also threatened to explode into wider solidarity movements as the situation at Grangemouth showed. Thus, despite the unions and bosses stitching together a deal little different to the one the workers had rejected, the Shell and other workers came away from the struggle with a greater sense of their own ability to struggle and above all of the importance of solidarity. In this sense it was an invaluable gain for the whole working class.  Phil  4.7.08

On 12 June 2008 the European Union was once again thrown into crisis with the Irish electorate rejecting the Treaty of Lisbon in a referendum. The Treaty was itself a recycled version of the European Constitution which French and Dutch voters had rejected in similar referendums in 2005. The apparent paralysis at the heart of the EU is symptomatic of the increasing pressure on the bourgeoisie as they attempt to deal with the remorseless decline of the capitalist system.

The stakes for the Irish bourgeoisie

As a relatively minor player on the world stage, it is difficult to appreciate that the Republic of Ireland has an imperialist orientation. Like all minor powers, it tends to be at the mercy of the larger states and its choices generally run along the lines of which imperialist gangster it will seek protection from. Ireland’s official policy of ‘neutrality’ is an effort to avoid the worst ravages of imperialist conflict but in practice Ireland has always been more ‘neutral’ towards some powers than others.

This basic strategy of playing one power against the other is demonstrated clearly in World War II, when Ireland discreetly supported Britain against Germany. Today, Ireland’s policy in Europe springs from the same fundamental interests. Too weak to compete either militarily or economically against the rest of the world, the Irish bourgeoisie can only pursue its interests in ‘partnership’ with other powers. For these reasons, preserving the EU is a priority for the Irish bourgeoisie and accordingly, the majority campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote.

However, like all bourgeoisies, there is a minority that dreams of a more ‘independent’ line, or which would prefer closer ties with the US than with Europe. The nationalists of Sinn Fein are the classic representatives of this tendency but they were also accompanied by the lobby group Libertas that has connections with the US military. There are fears among some factions of the American bourgeoisie that the Lisbon treaty (which foresees the appearance of a common European defence policy) will undermine NATO.

Democracy: A trap for workers

The No-vote is unquestionably an embarrassment for the Irish bourgeoisie but what should the attitude to workers be towards such spectacles?

Democracy in modern capitalism is an enormous deception aimed at the working masses. Today, no matter which capitalist is in power, the slow collapse of the system forces all of them to attack the working class. Because of this, workers gain no benefit from backing this or that faction vying for power. The real interest of workers is to fight for their own class demands and ultimately to eliminate the rule of the entire bourgeoisie and seize power for themselves, through their own organs – the workers’ councils. Participation in the electoral circus is at best a waste of time, but more importantly it is an instrument that binds the working class to the capitalist state by serving up the illusion that workers really do have some kind of choice in this society.

It is true that referendums are not about choosing a government, but the fundamental framework in which they operate is the same. The questions they pose inevitably demand workers choose between the views of one capitalist faction or another. They offer no means by which the working class can express its own political interests in contradistinction to those of their exploiters.

The Workers Solidarity Movement: anarchists in the circus

One of several groups to support the ‘no’ campaign in the Referendum is the anarchist Workers Solidarity Movement Their leaflet (https://www.wsm.ie/voteno [5]) called for workers to “Vote No – Organise For Real Social Change”. The leaflet states “this treaty asks us to support changes in the EU to make money transfers and trade relations between them easier. Why should we give them the thumbs up when they couldn’t care less about us? Vote ‘No’ to their restructuring. But a vote ‘No’ is worth little on its own if things are not changed at home. The EU must change but so too must Irish society”. The leaflet goes on to say “through its commitment to liberalisation, this treaty is endorsing the passing of more of our public services in to private hands. This is robbery. It is maintaining, reinforcing, and expanding the undemocratic structures of Ireland today on to a European level”.

Why, indeed, should workers endorse the policies of the Irish bourgeoisie or the wider EU? The WSM’s endorsement of the ‘no’ campaign effectively means  they are “giving the thumbs up” to another faction of the bourgeoisie, the Euro-sceptics. What does the working class have in common with the nationalist Sinn Fein or the arms dealers of Libertas, apparently backed by the US military? Nothing! They are enemies of the working class and the proletariat has no more interest in supporting them than it does the majority of the bourgeoisie who favour the treaty. And because workers have no interest in supporting either side there is nothing to be gained by voting in this or any other referendum or election.

As for public services, they may currently be part of the state, but that state is a capitalist state: the executive committee of the ruling class.  Transferring them to private hands (i.e. another capitalist) certainly isn’t equivalent to ‘robbery’ against the working class. This is because the working class does not own these so-called ‘public services’. To paraphrase Marx, you cannot take from the proletariat what it does not have! This is simply a transfer of ownership from one part of the bourgeoisie to another. Now, undoubtedly, privatisation is usually accompanied with attacks on working conditions – as is the case with a transfer from private to state hands. Workers should certainly fight these attacks but not by getting involved in arguments about which capitalist should own what company or service!

Lastly, the talk about changing ‘Irish society’ reveals the incipient nationalism behind the WSM’s vision. The workers’ struggle does not aim to change the society of any one nation. Workers have no country – their struggle will abolish ‘Irish society’ along with all national societies as part of the creation of a global, integrated human society.

The WSM makes the same fundamental arguments as the Trotskyists on these questions: state capitalism is nicer than private capitalism, ‘national’ capitalism better than ‘global’ capitalism, etc. They also perpetuate the myth that workers have some sort of say in capitalist society either through state ownership or the democratic circus.

Certainly, workers should “organise for real social change”. But they must organise themselves in struggle, not through the ballot box, and defend their real interests against the whole bourgeoisie, not lining up with this or that faction of it.  DG 2/7/8   

Calling for a no-vote alongside the defenders of ‘Irish independence' is not the only example of the WSM's nationalist tendencies. They also support so-called ‘anti-imperialist' struggles (which in Ireland means tailending Republicanism) and even for the nationalisation of Ireland's natural resources. Even though they argue that this is just a tactic and that their ultimate goal is social revolution, the latter still has a very Irish tinge to it: "The WSM believes that the natural resources of Ireland should be ultimately collectively owned and managed by the population of Ireland. This can only come about through a social revolution abolishing capitalism and the state".  So even after a social revolution the "population of Ireland" will still be a collective proprietor. So much for a world without borders. Meanwhile, however:

"The WSM believes that a natural resources campaign, if broad based, could be a positive step forward in the long-term project of building a radical social movement and indeed in the short-term as it will supplement Shell to Sea.

The WSM endorses the idea of a campaign if it incorporates the following points

a) The Natural Resources of Ireland (oil, gas, wind/wave power, water) should not be owned or controlled by business interests.
b) These resources should be used for the benefit of all of the people in Ireland.
c) These resources must be used in a sustainable way, so that future generations and the environment of Ireland are not put at risk.
d) The acceptance of direct action as a legitimate tactic.

e) The campaign is organised on a democratic and delegate basis.

f) The campaign is not set up as a rival or competitor to Shell to Sea.

g) Within its first year it is capable of being more than a small publicity campaign."
‘Perspectives of the WSM' updated November 2007: https://www.wsm.ie/story/454 [8]

There could hardly be a more evident expression of ‘anarcho-Trotskyism' - anarchism as a thin disguise for the politics of the capitalist left.   Amos 5/7/8

When Labour pushed through the legislation extending detention without charge from 28 to 42 days, the air was full of the usual talk about basic freedoms and the preservation of civil liberties that has accompanied counter-terrorist bills over the years. Conservative MP David Davis decided that all the propaganda about habeas corpus, Magna Carta and the rest could do with more sustained exposure and resigned so he could fight a by-election on the question.

Initially there was speculation that he'd got a screw loose, but pretty soon a wide range of figures, from right to left, rallied round in his defence. The fascist BNP said it would not stand in the election as it agreed with what Mr Davis said about changing the detention law. The Libdems and many Labour MPs said they backed him on this particular matter. Left-winger Tony Benn supported Davis, who returned the compliment by praising one of Benn's speeches as "astonishingly wise and insightful".

A Trotskyist group, the Socialist Equality Party, is also standing in the by-election. Fully participating in the electoral circus, they claim to be different to the other parties. They say (all quotes from World Socialist Web Site) that "None of the official parties can genuinely defend democratic rights", which means they all have the same goals, but reckon that they're the ones for the job. They denounce Labour's "attempts to justify the overturning of the historic foundations of British law" and insist that "The cornerstone of democracy is the safeguarding of the individual citizen from arbitrary action by the state". None of these remarks would sound strange coming from the mouths of Davis or any of his supporters.

In the pages of World Revolution we have over the years covered the various repressive measures brought into law by the capitalist state. However, we've also tried to get over the fact that the legislation will not only be used against the ‘terrorist' threat, but also against the working class and revolutionary militants; and that this strengthening of the state is inevitably justified by a propaganda barrage about democracy and freedom. The ruling class uses this ideological cover to try and obscure the real nature of the state that imposes all the repressive measures.

You can read about the extent of CCTV surveillance, the DNA database, or the latest repressive laws in the pages of WR, or from David Davis or the SEP. The difference is that the SEP, like Davis and Benn, says "This latest measure stands at the apex of a mountain of anti-democratic legislation", whereas the marxist approach of the ICC shows that repression and democracy go hand in hand as weapons against the working class. The historic foundations of British law are based on the defence of the interests of the ruling class. When the Romans ruled Britain the law defended the interests of a slave-owning class, not of the slaves. In feudal times the law defended the interests of the lords and king, not the serfs and villeins. In capitalism bourgeois law serves the interests of the ruling bourgeoisie, not the working class.

There are certainly different ideological weapons used to buttress the rule of particular classes. Feudalism used the church and religion where modern capitalism uses the media and democracy, but they are both forms of class rule. There is, however, a key difference between feudalism, within which the bourgeoisie could gradually develop as an exploiting class until it was in position to dominate the state and overhaul it for its own purposes, and capitalism, where the working class is an exploited class and, rather than taking over the state of its exploiters, will have to destroy it.

Democracy and repressive law are not capitalism's only weapons. The history of Northern Ireland, for example, shows what the state is capable of. Internment, interrogation using sensory deprivation techniques and other methods that prefigured the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the manipulation of terrorist groups and a shoot-to-kill policy were all used by British democracy. The Stockwell shooting of 2005 shows that the British mainland is not going to be immune to the repressive armoury developed on the other side of the Irish Sea.

David Davis, a supporter of the previous 28-day detention rule, may not sound very convincing to everyone as an opponent of 42. More to the point, the whole campaign over rights and freedoms is a smokescreen to hide the shared interests of government and opposition, of Right and Left. When the working class struggles it finds the law against it at every turn. By law you can't stage a spontaneous demonstration, as you have to give the police at least 6 days advance notice. If you strike in solidarity with workers in a different sector of the economy, or in a different company, it's illegal. The destruction of capitalist rule is also not approved of in bourgeois law. Don't trust anyone who asks you to fight over changes to the law rather than the defence of working class interests. Those interests certainly include the fight against repression, but the working class has its own methods in the struggle against arrests, deportations, or other forms of state violence.  Car 30/6/8

The announcement of a ‘merger' between the British Unite union and the United Steelworkers of America to form the "world's first global union", a 3-million strong Workers Uniting, was accompanied by extravagant claims. "This union is crucial for challenging the growing power of global capital," declared Leo W. Gerard, president of the USW, a union that already has members in Canada and the Caribbean: "Globalisation has given financiers license to exploit workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in the developed world. Only global solidarity among workers can overcome this sort of global exploitation wherever it occurs."

"Our mission is to advance the interests of millions of workers throughout the world," proclaimed Derek Simpson from Unite, "The political and economic power of multinational companies is formidable. They are able to play one nation's workers off against another to maximise profits. They do the same with governments, hence the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us. With this agreement, we can finally begin the process of closing that gap."

The two unions have already cooperated on trying to save jobs, not only in the US and Britain but also in Canada and Ireland. "The new union plans to set up operations in Colombia to help protect union members there from violence, in Liberia to aid rubber workers, and in India to help impoverished shipbuilding workers" (New York Times 3/7/8). They are encouraging unions from Poland to Australia to join them.

The media has been unsurprisingly cynical about the motivations behind the deal. Union membership has declined enormously since the 1970s and size is equated with influence. Unite itself was formed from the merger of the T&GWU and Amicus, which, in its turn, was the amalgamation of a whole range of unions. As for the USW's membership, only 20% are in the steel industry, with the rest in a variety of sectors such as mining, oil, paper, health care and security. Bigger is supposed to be more impressive.

More interestingly, some commentators have pointed to the protectionist tradition in American unions. The USW campaigned for a complete ban on steel imports that was supported by President Bush and led to a ban on British steel being exported to America. Other unions in the US were furious at a Pentagon contract given to a European consortium led by Airbus for refuelling tankers, and are still fighting for Boeing to get the job.

When it comes down to it, unions, regardless of any ‘internationalist' rhetoric, are national entities, acting in a national framework. Richard Hyman, professor of industrial relations at the London School of Economics was quoted in the New Statesman (2/7/8) as saying that unions "represent distinctive, national interests. In many industries, there is an underlying international competition in terms of investment and so on. If one is then trying to bargain, competing interests will come to the fore." Therefore each union's fundamental loyalty is to the economy of the country in which they function.

 Protectionism is not only alive in the US; it's a widespread and growing tendency. Whenever jobs are outsourced or relocated, unions don't talk of workers internationally, just of those in the country where they operate. When British industry suffers through global competition, British unions stick up for it.

Unions internationally against the class struggle

But it's not just nationalist loyalty that belies the ‘internationalist' rhetoric. What's more important is the way that unions in every country behave in the face of workers' struggles. Whenever you hear of an ‘unofficial' or ‘wildcat' strike you know it's not been sanctioned by the union but also that it's probably been actively opposed. It's not difficult to see why unofficial strikes happen in countries like Vietnam (where there have been hundreds of illegal strikes this year) or Egypt (where there's been a strike movement throughout the last 18 months) because the unions there are so obviously bureaucratic and part of the state. But the example of Poland in 1980-81 shows that when workers go beyond the official unions, even in a massive movement, they can still be taken in by illusions in ‘free trade unions'. Solidarnosc was the main force to undermine the workers' struggle before the imposition of martial rule in December 1981.

Workers Uniting talk of helping rubber workers in Liberia. American unions have already done more then enough there. Rubber is very important for the Liberian economy, and Firestone (now a subsidiary of Bridgestone) is Liberia's largest employer. During a strike in 2006 angry workers took over the offices of the Firestone Agriculture Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL), holding a meeting to change the union leadership. In April 2007, during a strike in which police attacked and arrested strikers, workers set up roadblocks. They were attacked by the police and United Nations forces. After fighting broke out, tear gas was used to disperse the workers. Further strikes, during which workers were beaten, intimidated and several killed, led to an election (‘observed' by the USW and the AFL-CIO union federation) in which the FAWUL was transformed from being a ‘company' union to a ‘free union'. Initially this was not accepted by the management, but after strikes, beatings, firings and appeals to the Liberian Supreme Court, the union was finally recognised by the company. And what have workers gained? The leader of another Liberian union said how grateful they were for the intervention of the USW and AFL-CIO. Yes, now they will be relying on the big unions that are used to working hand in glove with big corporations. Because of that, in the fight between Firestone and its employees, workers have temporarily lost the initiative.

And the thousands of workers killed in Colombia, or the steelworkers of India can also only expect union activity to undermine and sabotage their struggles.

In contrast, the ruling class knows very well how much it needs the unions. French President Sarkozy wrote in Le Monde (April 18) "I would like to pay my respects to the trade unions.... One cannot govern a country without responsible trade union forces." Currently the French bourgeoisie (like many others) is concerned that unions are being increasingly discredited. A presidential adviser told Le Monde that they wanted to prevent "a weakening of the trade unions and the appearance of uncontrolled movements".

Workers most definitely have the greatest need for the international unity of their struggles, but this can only come from appreciating the united interests of workers across the globe, interests that go against the states and corporations that so much rely on the work of the unions. The reason that the USW and Unite have tried to make out they're ‘tackling global capital' is to give themselves some credibility with the working class. It is fitting that the deal is going to finally be signed off in Las Vegas, the home of many tacky shows with gangsters working behind the scenes.

The workers of the world can unite, but only if they overcome the union obstacle and take struggles into their own hands.   Car 5/7/8

 

In the majority of the numerous books and television programmes on May 1968 that have occupied the media recently, the international character of the student movement that affected France during the course of this month has been underlined. Everyone knows, as we've also underlined in our preceding articles[1], that the students in France were not the first to mobilise massively; that they had, in a manner of speaking, ‘jumped on the bandwagon' of a movement that began in the American universities in Autumn 1964. From the United States, this movement affected the majority of the western countries, and in Germany 1967 it went through its most spectacular developments, making the students of this country the reference point for other European countries. However, the same journalists or historians who are happy to underline the international breadth of student protest in the 60s in general don't say a word about the workers' struggles that unfolded all over the world during this period. Evidently, they couldn't simply ignore the immense strike that was so obviously the most important aspect of the ‘events' of 68 in France: it would be difficult for them to blot out the greatest strike in the history of the workers' movement. But, if they talk about it, this movement of the proletariat is seen as a sort of ‘French exception'.

In reality, and perhaps even more than the student movement, the movement of the working class in France was an integral part of an international movement and one can only really understand it in this international context. That's what we are going to bring out, among other things, in the present article.

France was no exception

It's true that in May 68 in France there existed a situation that wasn't found in any other country, except in a very marginal fashion: a massive movement of the working class developing from a student mobilisation. It is clear that the student mobilisation, the repression that it suffered - and which fed it - and the final retreat of the government after the ‘night of the barricades' of May 10/11, played a role, not only in unleashing the movement, but also in the breadth of the workers' strike. That said, if the proletariat of France entered such a movement, it was surely not ‘to do the same as the students', but because of the profound and generalised discontent that existed within the class, and also because it had the political strength to engage in the fight.

This fact is not in general hidden in the books and TV programmes dealing with May 68: it's often recalled that, from 1967, workers undertook important struggles, the characteristics of which broke with those of the preceding period. In particular, whereas the very limited strikes and union days of action did not arouse any great enthusiasm, we saw some very hard, very determined struggles facing a violent repression from the bosses and the state, and with the unions being outflanked on several occasions. Thus, from the beginning of 1967, important confrontations occurred at Bordeaux (the Dassault aviation factory), at Besançon and in the Lyonnaise region (occupation and strike at Rhoda, strike at Berliet leading to a lock-out and to the occupation of the factory by the CRS), in the mines of Lorraine, in the naval dockyards of Saint-Nazaire (which was paralysed by a general strike on April 11).

It was in Caen, Normandy, that the working class engaged in one of the most important combats before May 68. On January 20 1968, the unions at Saviem (trucking) launched the order for an hour-and-a-half strike; but the workers, judging this action insufficient, spontaneously struck on the 23rd. Two days later, at four in the morning, the CRS dispersed the strike picket, allowing the management and ‘scabs' to enter the factory. The strikers decided to go to the town centre where workers from other factories also on strike joined them. At eight in the morning, 5000 people peacefully converged on the central square: the police charged them brutally, even firing on them. On January 26, workers from all sectors of the town (including teachers) as well as numerous students, demonstrated their solidarity: a meeting in the central square brought together 7,000 people by 6 o'clock. At the end of the meeting the police charged in order to evacuate the square but were surprised by the resistance of the workers. The confrontations lasted through the night; there were 200 wounded and dozens of arrests. Six young demonstrators, all workers, got prison sentences of 15 days to 3 months. But far from the working class retreating, this repression only provoked the extension of the struggle: January 30 saw 15,000 on strike in Caen. On February 2nd, the authorities and the bosses were obliged to retreat, calling off the repression and increasing wages by 3 to 4%. The following day, work restarted but, under the impulsion of the younger workers, walkouts continued at Saviem for a month.

Saint-Nazaire in April 67 and Caen in January 68 were not the only towns to be hit by general strikes of the whole working population. It was also the case with towns of lesser importance such as Redon in March and Honfleur in April. These massive strikes of all the exploited of one town prefigured what would happen in mid-May in the whole country.

You couldn't say that the storm of May 1968 had broken out from a clear, blue sky. The student movement had set the land on fire, but it was ready to burst into flames.

Obviously the ‘specialists', notably the sociologists, tried to show the causes of this French ‘exception'. They talked in particular about the raised tempo of industrial development of France during the 1960s, transforming this old agricultural country into a modern industrial power. This fact explained the presence and the role of an important number of young workers in the factories who were often ill-adjusted. These young workers, frequently coming from a rural milieu, weren't unionised and found the barracks discipline of the factory difficult. They also generally received derisory wages even when they had professional certificates. This situation helps us to understand why it was the youngest sectors of the working class who were the first to engage in combat, and equally why the majority of the important movements that preceded May 68 took place in the west of France, a rural region relatively lately industrialised. However, these explanations by the sociologists fail to explain why it wasn't only the young workers that entered into struggle in May 68 but the very great majority of the working class of all ages.

The international significance of the May 68 strike in France

In fact, behind a movement of such breadth and depth as May 68, there were much more profound causes that went beyond, very far beyond, the framework of France. If the whole of the working class of this country launched itself into a general strike, it's because all its sectors had begun to be hit by the economic crisis which, in 1968, was only at its inception, a crisis that wasn't ‘French' but of the whole capitalist world. It's the effects in France of this world economic crisis (growth of unemployment, freezing of wages, intensification of production targets and attacks on social security) that to a large extent explains the workers' combativity in this country from 1967:

"In all the industrial countries of Europe and the USA, unemployment is developing and the economic prospects are becoming gloomy. Britain, despite a multiplication of measures to safeguard equilibrium, was finally forced to devalue of the pound in 1967, dragging along behind it devaluations in a whole series of countries. The Wilson government proclaimed a programme of exceptional austerity: massive reductions of public spending... wage freeze, reduction of consumption and imports, efforts to increase exports. On January 1st 1968, it was the turn of Johnson (US president) to raise the alarm and announce indispensably severe measures in order to safeguard economic equilibrium. In March, a financial crisis of the dollar broke out. The economic press became more pessimistic each day, more and more evoking the spectre of the 1929 crisis (...) May 1968 appears in all its significance for having been one of the most important reactions of the mass of workers against a deteriorating situation in the world economy" (Revolution Internationale [old series] no. 2, Spring 1969).

In fact, particular circumstances saw the proletariat in France leading the first widespread battle against the growing attacks launched by capitalism in crisis. But, quite quickly, other national sectors of the working class entered the struggle in their turn. From the same causes come the same effects.

At the other end of the world, in Argentina, May 1969, there took place what is remembered as the ‘Cordobazo'. On May 29, following a whole series of mobilisations in the workers' districts against the violent attacks and repression by the military junta, the workers of Cordoba had completely overrun the forces of the police and the army (even though they were equipped with tanks) and were masters of the town (the second largest in the country). The state was only able to ‘re-establish order' the following day thanks to massive troop deployments.

In Italy, at the same time, there was a movement of workers' struggles, the most important since the Second World War. Strikes began to multiply at Fiat in Turin, first of all in the principle factory of the town, Fiat-Mirafiori, spreading to other factories of the group in Turin and the surrounding areas. On July 3 1969, at the time of a union day of action against an increase in rents, workers' processions, joined by those of students, converged toward the Mirafiori factory. Violent scuffles broke out with the police. They lasted practically the whole night and spread to other areas of the town.

From the end of August, when the workers returned from holidays, strikes took off again at Fiat, but also at Pirelli (tyres) in Milan and in many other firms.

However, the Italian bourgeoisie, learning from the experience of May 68, wasn't taken aback as the French bourgeoisie was a year earlier. It was absolutely necessary for it to prevent the profound social discontent from turning into a generalised conflagration. It's for that reason that its union apparatus took advantage of the expiry of collective contracts, notably in steel, chemicals and building, in order to develop its manoeuvres aimed at dispersing the struggles and fixing the workers on the objective of a ‘good contract' in their respective sectors. The unions used the tactic of so-called ‘linked' strikes: one day metal workers on strike, another for chemical workers, yet another for those in building. Some ‘general strikes' were called but by province or even by town, against the cost of living and the raising of rents. At the level of the workplace, the unions advocated rolling strikes, one factory after another, with the pretext of causing as much damage as possible to the bosses with the least cost to the workers. At the same time, the unions did what was necessary to take control of a base that tended to escape them: whereas, in many firms, the workers, discontented with traditional union structures, elected workshop delegates, these latter were institutionalised under the form of ‘factory councils' presented as ‘rank and file organs' of a unitary trade union that the three confederations, CGIL, CISL and UIL said they wanted to construct together. After several months in which the workers' combativity exhausted itself in a succession of ‘days of action' by sectors and ‘general strikes' by province or town, collective contracts of sectors were signed successively between the beginning of November and the end of December. And it was a little before the signature of the last contract, the most important since it concerned the private steel sector, the avant-garde of the movement, that a bomb exploded on November 12 in a bank in Milan, killing 16 people. The attack was attributed to anarchists (one of them, Guiseppe Pinelli, died in the custody of the Milanese police) but it was learned much later that it could be traced to certain sectors of the state apparatus. The secret structures of the bourgeois state had lent a strong hand to the unions in order to sow confusion in the ranks of the working class at the same time as strengthening the means of state repression.

The proletariat of Italy wasn't alone in mobilising during autumn 69. On a lesser, but still significant scale, German workers came into struggle when in September wildcat strikes broke out against the signing of agreements by the unions for ‘wage moderation'. The workers were supposed to be ‘realistic' faced with the degradation of the German economy, which, despite the post-war ‘miracle', wasn't spared the difficulties of world capitalism that had started to develop after 1967 (the year that the German economy saw its first recession since the war).

This awakening of the proletariat in Germany, even if it was quite tentative, had a particular significance. On one hand, this was the most important and most concentrated sector of the working class in Europe. But above all, this proletariat had in the past, and will have in the future, a position of prime importance within the world working class. It was in Germany that the fate of the international revolutionary wave was played out, which, from October 1917 in Russia had threatened capitalist domination throughout the world. The defeat suffered by the German workers during their revolutionary attempts between 1918 and 1923 opened the door to the most terrible counter-revolution of its history. And it was where the revolution went furthest, Russia and Germany, that this counter-revolution took the deepest and most barbarous forms: Stalinism and Nazism.

The immense strike of May 68 in France, then the Hot Autumn in Italy, gave proof that the world proletariat was coming out of this period of counter-revolution. It was confirmed by the German workers' struggle of September 1969, and on a still more significant scale, by the struggle of the Polish workers on the Baltic during winter 1970-71, which obliged the authorities, after a brutal initial repression (300 deaths), to step back and abandon the price increases of basic goods that had provoked the workers' anger. The Stalinist regimes constituted the purest incarnation of the counter-revolution: it was in the name of ‘socialism' and of the ‘interests of the working class' that the latter suffered the worst terrors of all. The ‘hot' winter of the Polish workers proved that here, where the counter-revolution maintained its heaviest weight, i.e. in the ‘socialist' regimes, the class struggle was back on the agenda.

We can't enumerate all the workers' struggles that, after 1968, confirmed this fundamental change of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat at a world level. We will only give two examples, those of Spain and Britain.

In Spain, despite the ferocious repression exercised by the Francoist regime, workers' combativity expressed itself in a massive fashion during the year 1974. The town of Pamplona, in Navarre, saw a number of strike days per worker higher than that of the French workers of 1968. All industrial regions were hit (Madrid, Asturias, Basque Country) but it was in the immense workers' concentrations of Barcelona that strikes took their greatest extension, touching all the firms in the region, with exemplary manifestations of workers' solidarity (often, a strike unfolded in one factory solely in solidarity with the workers of other factories).

The example of the proletariat in Britain is equally very significant since this was the oldest proletariat in the world. Throughout the 1970s, it led massive conflicts against exploitation (with 29 million strike days in 1979, workers in Britain are in second place statistically behind workers in France in 1968). This combativity even obliged the British bourgeoisie to twice change Prime Minister: in April 1976 (Callaghan replaced Wilson) and, at the beginning of 1979 (Callaghan was toppled by Parliament).

Thus, the fundamental historical significance of May 1968 is neither found in ‘French specificities', nor in the student revolt, nor in a ‘moral revolution' that we are told about today. It is in the emergence of the world proletariat from the counter-revolution and its entry into a new historic period of confrontations against capitalist order. In this period, proletarian political currents, that previously had been eliminated or reduced to silence by the counter-revolution, began to develop - including the ICC.

That is what we will look at in the next article.   Fabienne (1/6/8)

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[1]  ‘May 68: the student movement in France and the world' (1 and 2), ‘May 68: the awakening of the working class', respectively in numbers 313, 314 and 315 of World Revolution.

 

May 68 was the high point of situationism, a current that combined a critique of the ‘spectacle' of capitalist culture with a certain number of revolutionary political positions. Slogans/graffiti of the hour, such as ‘under the pavement, the beach' and ‘all power to the imagination', caught the atmosphere of the May events, the feeling of sudden liberation from the deadening routine and atomisation of capitalist society, and they clearly reflected the influence of situationist ideas, as did the widespread call for action committees outside the unions and the occupation of the factories and universities. The situationists were by no means the only revolutionary current involved in formulating and disseminating those proposals, and their actual impact has almost certainly been exaggerated by themselves and their descendents, but no one can deny that this was their hour of glory.

However, situationism has been in decline ever since, even if it still has still left many remnants and retrospective admirers. The Situationist International itself was dissolved in 1972. Today situationism as a current of thought is largely kept alive by individual ‘pro-situs' who seem to be characterised above all by their total incapacity to work with other apparently like-minded individuals.

The ‘1968 and all that event' in London on May 10 this year, organised by a mixed bag of leftists and anarchists, gave us at least two examples of the survival of situationist discourse.

Outside Conway Hall was a stall manned by a member of the Principia Dialectica group/website. He was giving out a leaflet denouncing the whole event, entitled ‘Let the Dead Bury their Dead':

"If you go inside you will see a corpse, and mummies embalming this corpse. We were kindly invited to this mass but we have refused to take part. However we are here - outside, as their bad conscience".

The situationists have always been good at denunciations. Who can forget their ‘Shake in your shoes bureaucrats - the international power of the workers' councils will soon wipe you out' telegram to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1968?

But Principia Dialectica's stance on 10 May was not based on any effort to draw a class line against those representatives of the counter-revolution who were certainly involved in organising this event. Their main criticism was that the participants were nostalgic for an idealised past, dreaming vainly of remaking Russia 1917 or Spain 1936. And while they see the SI as the most advanced group in the movement of May 68, they insist that that it is necessary to go beyond the SI "which had based its cause on the revolutionary Subject of history", in other words the working class:

"It is easy to be done with the corpses that May 68 has already ridiculed and who today act as guarantors of the ‘spirit of May' (from the good democrat Left to the ex-Maoists, and right up to the anarchists). It is more difficult to be done with the May 68 which lives still, although fossilised: the one that says never work ever. It is even more difficult, in fact, because this old critique still shines. But let's repeat it, it shines with the light of dead stars. Never work ever: to really be done with work, one must be rid of the idea of the proletariat as revolutionary subject of history. The class struggle is an integral part of the capitalist dynamic: it is not a matter of a struggle between the dominant class and the revolutionary class, but between different interests (although differently powerful) within capitalism".

‘Never work ever' was always the Situationists' most stupid slogan, the one that revealed most clearly the ingredient of petty bourgeois artistic elitism that helped to make up the situationist pie. Dialectica Principia have gone a step further, elevating this lumpen-aristocratic boast into the basis for a definite abandonment of the notion of the class struggle and the proletarian revolution.

A healthier expression of the attempt to find what remains relevant in situationism today could be found at the meeting on surrealism and situationism in the May 68 events. Introduced in an amiable if stream of consciousness style by one of the event organisers, the meeting gave rise to various interesting threads of discussion that could not be followed up for lack of time.

The presentation showed, among other things, that the situationists were strongly influenced by the surrealists of the 1920s and 30s. This seemed to be rather hard to accept for one member of the audience, who argued that Andre Breton, one of the leading surrealists, was an ‘authoritarian' and indeed a Stalinist. One of the ICC comrades present at the meeting attempted to set the record straight on this: Breton and the majority of the surrealists were quite consistent opponents of Stalinism, siding with Trotsky and the Left Opposition at a time when the latter was not the real corpse that Trotskyism is today; and at least one of the surrealists, Benjamin Peret developed political positions that went well beyond Trotskyism (towards the positions of the communist left, in fact).

Concerning the ‘legacy' of situationism, we pointed out that in 1968 the situationists, influenced by the politics of Castoriadis and the Socialisme ou Barbarie group, interpreted the explosion of May 1968 as definite proof that the revolution of our times will not, as ‘traditional' Marxists had always argued, be precipitated by an economic crisis, but by a revolt against the boredom and alienation of the capitalist spectacle. After 40 years of deepening economic crisis, such a view is no longer tenable, and it points to a fatal flaw in the situationists' theoretical arsenal.

This provoked a number of responses from people who argued that the situationist critique of the spectacle was more relevant than ever in the epoch of reality TV and the cult of the celebrity. The meeting ended at this point, so we can only reply to this here: it's certainly true that capitalist culture has more and more a become an arid spectacle to be passively consumed by the masses, and that it functions as a means of social control, diverting our discontents into false communities and irrational mythologies. However, just as Rome in its decline resorted to ‘bread and circuses' to keep the plebs and proles in their place, so the rottenness of capitalist culture today is an expression of something rotten at the very basis of society, of the fact that capitalist social relations have become a fundamental obstacle to the realisation of humanity's needs. Without this materialist analysis of the foundations of social life, cultural critiques are doomed to remain one-sided and can end up as little more than ephemeral intellectual fashions.   Amos 30/6/08

The Labour Party and the leftists who support them constantly express their concern about the rise of the BNP, racism and the plight of immigrants. Anti-racism and anti-fascism are strong and enduring features of capitalist democracy and, as such, con-tricks on the working class.

One of the most racist organisations of the capitalist state, as ‘institutionally racist' as the police force, is the Labour Party. "British jobs for British people" is the war cry of Prime Minister Brown. Talk of the ‘white working class' is used by Labour to Party outdo the BNP. The Labour Party crows about being tough on immigrants and shows it has nothing to learn from the BNP.

Just recently France and Britain jointly rejected proposals for a general amnesty for illegal immigrants. For the British state it would ‘send out the wrong signal'. In France they organised a partial amnesty promising papers for residence, which turned out to be a cynical trap. The paperless migrant workers that came forward were jailed and deported, with only a few receiving any sort of residential security. Campaigns round amnesties always fall into the framework of the ruling class.

In Britain, illegal immigrants are characterised as ‘spongers', job-stealers and linked to terrorism. There have been small but significant fights by elements of the working class against the policy of terror and forced expulsion towards immigrants by the British state.

On the so-called ‘sink estate' of Kingsway, Glasgow, the residents welcomed immigrants from Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria, Congo and Uganda amongst others, saying that the immigrants brought a completely different and positive atmosphere to the demoralised community (Guardian 13.6.8). After watching Home Office thugs coming to remove immigrant families before dawn and one man jumping out of the window to escape them, a retired shop worker said "It was like watching the Gestapo - men with armour going into a flat with battering rams. I've never seen people living in fear like it" (Ibid). She got together with other residents of the estate organising daily dawn patrols, hassling the immigration vans with the large crowds that formed, setting up codes warning the immigrants and helping them escape or hiding them in their homes. Virtually the whole estate was involved and they kept this up for two years, forcing the Home Office to abandon its forced removals. Those involved in the struggle pointed out the positive effects it had on them. According to the newspaper similar events have taken place in predominantly working class communities in Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol and elsewhere, where there has been a general welcome, solidarity and organised fights for immigrants against the repressive forces of the state.

There is always the danger of these structures for defence being integrated into the state apparatus, or into in a campaign that just wants to change the law on deportations. But the basic issue here, against all the vitriol and hatred from the ruling class, is the demonstration of basic working class solidarity.  

Baboon, 23/6/8

The number of British soldiers killed in the intervention in Afghanistan has passed the 110 mark. The figure for Iraq is more than 175. The government says that these deaths are not in vain and the army is fighting for a good cause - to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cleary, the government felt that this needed to be underlined, because the military interventions do appear to be futile.

At the beginning the intervention in Afghanistan did not appear not to be headed towards a quagmire, because the Taliban, very sensibly, simply ran away rather than trying to face the full force of American military might. However, the influence of the Kabul ‘government' does not extend far into Afghanistan - and the relations of the government to its ostensible political allies in some parts of the country can be fraught with difficulties. The US and Britain have been unable to make headway, for instance, in controlling the production of the opium poppy - the basis of the international heroin trade. And there are large regions of the country that are not under the control of the US, Britain or the Kabul government at all - it is in those regions that the fighting is concentrated.

However, the principal objective of the military intervention in Afghanistan is not to create a stable society - though it would certainly ease the difficulties of the occupying powers if they could. All the countries involved are there because of the strategic significance of the territory of Afghanistan. They are there for the same reasons the British invaded Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. Control of Afghanistan is critical to the control of Asia, just as control of Iraq is critical to control of the Gulf. Even the French bourgeoisie have, after making a major re-appraisal of their strategic posture, decided that they should be involved in Afghanistan. This is surprising considering their previous attitude to American adventures in the region.

So there is every reason to take the British bourgeoisie seriously when they say they are going to stay in Afghanistan despite the difficulties of the fighting. But there is a real problem facing the British bourgeoisie and that is that the perspective of ‘great power' interventions in the third world is becoming more and more expensive at a time of increased economic stringency. With 4000 troops in Iraq and soon more than 8000 in Afghanistan, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup has said that the armed forces are "stretched beyond the capabilities we have" and "We are not structured or resourced to do two of these things on this scale on an enduring basis but we have been doing it on an enduring basis for years." This follows Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, who has been saying that Britain should withdraw from Iraq since he was appointed in 2006. He has also said "I want an army in five years time and ten years time. Don't let's break it on this one". When the coffers of the state treasury are empty, it is difficult to maintain commitments like the presence in Afghanistan and Iraq

The British bourgeoisie have a long record of being forced to cut back on military commitments because of economic constraints. They had to leave Greece after the Second World War, for example, and ask the Americans to step in. They had to retreat from ‘East of Suez' because of economic difficulties in the 1960s. The economic difficulties of the present phase of the economic crisis are certainly no less severe. Overseas military interventions greatly exacerbate economic problems. The British bourgeoisie will be confronted with difficult choices of priorities and will have to further review their capacity to maintain costly overseas adventures in the face of a rapidly deteriorating economic situation.   Hardin 5/7/8

Price rises of 30-50% of food prices and energy in industrial countries are confronting many workers, in particular the unemployed and ‘working poor', with problems of making ends meet. But the doubling or so of basic food stuffs in the peripheral countries poses a deadlier threat. Since more than one billion people live with less than $1 a day, and since many of them have to spend up to 90% of their income on food, such a tremendous rise of food prices immediately threatens them with starvation.

This catastrophic, life-threatening situation has led to a series of hunger revolts and strikes with demands for higher wages etc. At the time of writing there have been revolts in a whole series of countries: in Egypt, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Cameroon, Morocco Mozambique, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Yemen, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, Mexico and Peru, Argentine, Honduras, Haiti.

How are we to understand the causes of this situation?

The fear of starvation has been a nightmare which has accompanied - and spurred on - the ascent of humanity from its beginnings. The root cause of this danger has always been the relative primitiveness of the productive forces of society. The famines which periodically afflicted pre-capitalist societies were the result of an insufficient understanding and mastery of the laws of nature. Ever since society has been divided into classes, the exploited and the poor have been the main victims of this backwardness and the fragility of human existence flowing from it. Today, however, where  hundreds of millions of human beings are threatened by starvation, it becomes increasingly clear that the root cause of hunger today lies in the backwardness, not of science and technology, but of our social organisation. Even the representatives of the official institutions of the ruling order are obliged to admit that the present crisis is ‘man made'. During its ascendant period, capitalism, despite all the misery it caused, believed itself to be capable, in the long run, of liberating humanity from the scourge of famine. This belief was based on the capitalism's ability - indeed its imperious need as a system of competition - constantly to revolutionise the forces of production. In the years that followed World War II, it pointed to the successes of modern agriculture, to the development of the welfare state, to the industrialisation of new regions of the planet, to the raising of life expectancy in many countries, as proofs that, in the end, it would win the ‘battle against hunger' declared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. In recent times, it has claimed, through the economic development of countries like China or India, to have saved several hundreds of millions from the clutches of starvation. And even now, it would have us believe that soaring prices world wide are the product of economic progress, of the new wealth which has been created in the emerging countries, of the new craving of the masses for hamburgers and yoghurt. But even if this were the case, we would have to ask ourselves about the sense of an economic system which is able to nourish some only at the price of condemning others to death, the losers of the competitive struggle for existence.

But in reality, the exploding hunger in the world today is not even the result of such a despicable ‘progress'. What we see is the spread of starvation in the most backward regions of the world and in the ‘emerging countries'. Across the world, the myth that capitalism could banish the spectre of hunger is being exposed as a wretched lie. What is true is that capitalism has created material and social preconditions for such a victory. In doing so, capitalism itself has become the main obstacle to such a progress. The mass protests against hunger in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the past months reveal to the world that the causes of famine are not natural but social.

The many one-sided explanations of the ruling class

The politicians and experts of the ruling class have put forward a series of explanations for the present dramatic situation. These include the economic ‘boom' in parts of Asia, the development of ‘bio-fuels', ecological disasters and climate change, the ruining of agrarian subsistence economy in many ‘underdeveloped' countries, a speculative run on foodstuffs, the limitations on agricultural production imposed in order to prop up food prices etc. All of these explanations contain a grain of truth. None of them, taken in isolation, explain anything at all. They are at best symptoms which, taken as a whole, indicate the root causes of the problem. The bourgeoisie will always lie, even to itself, about its crises. But what is striking today is the degree to which governments and experts are themselves incapable of understanding what is going on, or of reacting with any semblance of coherence. The helplessness of the apparently almighty ruling class becomes increasingly clear. The partial ‘explanations' of the bourgeoisie, apart from being the cynical expression of rival particular interests, only go to hide the responsibility of the capitalist system for the present catastrophe. In particular, none of these arguments, and not even all of them taken together, can explain the two main characteristics of the present crisis: its profoundness, and the sudden brutality of its present acceleration.

Depth of the capitalist crisis

Whereas in the past hundreds of millions of Chinese only had very little to eat, now there is a bigger consumption of meat, dairy products and wheat. Growing demand for more meat and milk means cattle and poultry feed crops take over agricultural lands, feeding far fewer mouths from the same acreage. This is the main explanation put forward by many fractions of the bourgeoisie. This proletarianisation of a part of the peasant masses, which has radically transformed their way of life, and integrated them into the world market, is assumed by the ruling class to be identical with a great improvement of their condition. But what remains to be explained is how this improvement, this lifting of millions out of the clutches of starvation, itself in turn has led to its opposite.

Bio-fuels. Replacing petrol by wheat, corn, palm oil, etc. has indeed led to dramatic shortages of food staples. According to a recent World Bank report, the switch to bio-fuels, especially in the USA, has pushed food prices up by 75% (Guardian, 4.7.08). Not only is the pollution balance sheet of bio-fuels negative (recent research shows that bio-fuels increase air pollution by discharging more harmful particles than normal fuel, not to mention the fact that some bio-fuels need almost as much oil as energy input as the energy they produce), but their global ecological and economic consequences are disastrous for the whole of humanity. Such a change of cultivation of wheat, corn/maize, palm oil etc. for production of energy instead of for food is a typical expression of capitalist blindness and destructiveness. It is driven in part by a futile attempt to cope with rising oil prices, and in part - especially for the United States - by the hope of reducing its dependence on imported oil in order to protect its security interests as an imperialist power.

Export subsidies and protectionism. On the one hand there is agricultural overproduction in some countries and a permanent export offensive; at the same time other countries can no longer feed themselves. Competition and protectionism in agriculture have meant that as with any other commodity in the economy, more productive farmers in industrial countries must export (often with government subsidies) large parts of their crops to ‘Third World' countries and ruin the local peasantry - increasing the exodus from the country to the city, swelling international waves of refugees and leading to the abandonment of land formerly used for agriculture. In Africa for example many local farmers have been ruined by European chicken or beef exports. Mexico no longer produces enough food staples to feed its population. The country has to spend more than $10 billion annually on food imports. ‘Left' propagandists of the ruling class, but also many well meaning but misguided or badly informed people, have called for a return to subsistence farming in the ‘peripheral' countries, and the abolition of agricultural export subsidies and protection of their own markets by the old capitalist countries. What these arguments fail to take into consideration is that capitalism, from the outset, lives and expands through the integration of subsistence farmers into the world market, meaning their ruin and their - often violent - separation from the land, from their means of production. The recovery of the land for the producers is only possible as part of a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself. This will mean nothing less than the overcoming of private property of production for the market and of the antagonism between city and country, the progressive dissolution of the monstrous mega-cities through a world wide and planned return of hundreds of millions of people to the countryside: not the old countryside of rural isolation and backwardness, but a countryside newly invigorated by its integration with the cities and with a world wide human culture.

While the bourgeois media list these above mentioned factors, they try to prevent the unmasking of the deeper root causes. In reality we are witnessing not least the combined, accumulated consequences of the long-term effects of the pollution of the environment and the deeply destructive tendencies of capitalism in agriculture.

 

Capitalist destructiveness in agriculture and the environment

 

Several destructive tendencies have become undeniable. Due to the pressure of competition traditional farming practices have receded and farmers have become dependent on chemical fertilisers, pesticides and artificial irrigation. The International Rice Research Institute warns that the sustainability of rice farming in Asia is threatened by overuse of fertilisers and its damage to soil health. By now some 40% of agricultural products are the result of irrigation; 75% of the drinking water available on the earth is used by agriculture for this purpose. Planting Alfalfa in California, citrus fruits in Israel, cotton around the Aral Lake in the former Soviet Union, wheat in Saudi Arabia or in Yemen, i.e. planting crops in areas which do not provide the natural condition for their growth, means an enormous waste of water in agriculture.

The massive use of GM/GE ‘hybrid seeds' poses a direct threat to bio-diversity; while in many areas of the world, the soil is getting more and more polluted or even totally poisoned. In China 10% of the land area is contaminated and 120,000 peasants die each year from cancers caused by soil pollution. One result of the exhaustion of soil through the ruthless drive for productivity is the fact that in the Netherlands, the agricultural powerhouse in Europe, foodstuffs have an extremely low nutritional value.

And global warming means that with each 1°C increase in temperature, rice, wheat and corn yields could drop 10%. Recent heat waves in Australia have led to a severe crop damage and drought. First findings show that increased temperatures threaten the capacity for survival of many plants or reduce their nutritional value.

Thus a new danger is cropping up - which mankind might have imagined was a nightmare of the past. The combined effects of climate-determined drought and floods and its consequences on agriculture, continuous destruction and reduction of usable soil, pollution and over-fishing of the oceans will lead to scarcity of food. Since 1984 world grain production, for example, has failed to keep pace with world population growth. In the space of 20 years it's fallen from 343kgs per person to 303kgs. (Carnegie Department of Global Ecology in Stanford)

The folly of the system means that capitalism is compelled to be an over-producer of almost all goods while at the same time it creates a scarcity of food staples by destroying the very basis in nature of the conditions of their growth. The very roots of this absurdity can be found in capitalist production: "Large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever decreasing minimum and confronts it with an ever growing industrial population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of this is a squandering of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country" (Marx, Capital: Vol. III. Part VI)

Brutal acceleration of the crisis

Since the collapse of the housing speculation in the USA and other countries (Britain, Spain etc.) many hedge-funds or other investors look for alternative possibilities of placing their money. Agricultural crops have become the latest target of speculation. The cynical calculation of speculation in times of severe crisis: foodstuffs are a ‘safe bet', since they are the last thing which people can afford to do without! Billions of speculative dollars have already been placed in agricultural companies. These colossal speculative sums have certainly speeded up the price hikes in agricultural products, but they are not the actual root cause. We can assume even if the speculation ceased, price rises of agricultural products will continue.

Nevertheless, this insight into the role of speculation (which is a red herring if taken in isolation) gives us a clue about the real interconnections in the contemporary world economy. In reality, there is a direct connection between the ‘property crisis' and the earthquake taking place in world finance, and the food price explosion. The world recession of 1929, the most brutal in the history of capitalism to date, was accompanied by a dramatic fall in prices. The pauperisation of the working masses at the time was linked to the fact that wages, in the context of mass unemployment, fell even more dramatically than other prices. Today on the contrary, the world wide recession tendencies which are becoming manifest are accompanied by a general surge of inflation. The soaring prices of foodstuffs are the spearhead of this development, intricately linked to the rising cost of energy, transport and so on. The recent churning of hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy by governments in order to prop up the failing bank and finance systems has probably contributed more than any other factor to the recent world wide inflation spiral.

The present day sharpening of the world wide and historic crisis of world capitalism turns out to be a many headed hydra. Alongside the monstrous property and finance crisis which continues to smoulder at the heart of capitalism, there has already appeared a second monster in the form of soaring prices and starvation. And who can tell which others may soon follow? For the moment, the ruling class still appears stunned and somewhat helpless. Its day to day reactions reveal the attempt to increase state control over the economy and to coordinate policy internationally, but also the sharpening of competition between the capitalist nations. The soothing words of policy makers are aimed at disguising from the world, and even from themselves, the feeling of progressively losing any control over what is happening to their system. A development which confronts the ruling class with a twofold danger: that of the destabilisation of entire countries or even continents in a spiral of chaos, and the danger, in the longer term, of a revolutionary upheaval that puts capitalism itself into question. ICC (Updated 5/7/8)

A longer version of this article appears on ICC Online [20] .

In the first part of this article (see WR 315 and the ICC website [23] ), we tried to understand what the current economic crisis represents. We saw that it was only a particularly serious episode in the long agony of decadent capitalism. We showed that, in order to survive, capitalism has had to resort to a kind of drug: debt to capitalism is what heroin is to an addict. The drug of debt has made sure that capitalism has managed to stay standing, albeit leaning on the arm of the state, whether ‘neo-liberal' or ‘socialist'. The drug gives it moments of euphoria where it feels that it is living in the best of all possible worlds, but more and more frequently it is plunged into periods of convulsion and crisis, such as the one we entered in August 2007. As the dose increases, the drug has less and less effect on the addict. He needs a bigger and bigger dose to achieve a high that gets weaker and weaker. This is what has happened to capitalism today! But two questions remain: how, concretely, has debt supported the economy for 40 years while at the same time preparing the ground for new and more violent crises? And, above all, is there a way out of the crisis?

In the 1970s, debt ravaged the countries of the ‘third world' which had been lent masses of money in order to become outlets for the commodities of the main industrialised countries. The dream didn't last long: in 1982, Mexico, then Argentina, for example, were on the verge of bankruptcy. A route had been closed for capitalism. What was to be the new way forward? The US plunged itself into debt! From 1985, having been the world's creditor, the USA bit by bit became the most indebted country in the world. With such a manoeuvre, capitalism assured its survival, but in doing so it undermined the economic bases of the world's leading power. This strategy was shown to be untenable by the convulsions of 1987 and 1991. Since then, the world economy has geared itself towards what has been called ‘relocation' or ‘globalisation': to relieve the high production costs which were smothering the main economies, entire swathes of production were displaced towards the famous Asian ‘Tigers' and ‘Dragons'. But once again the powerful shocks of 1997-8, the famous ‘Asian crisis', resulted in the collapse of all the economies which were being presented as proof of capitalist prosperity. Only China succeeded in staying afloat thanks in large part to the miserable wages paid to its workers. China has now become a direct competitor with the main capitalist countries. The dizzying rise of China gives the appearance of ‘resolving' one of the main contradictions of the world economy - the weight of unsustainable production costs - but in doing so it took competition onto even more unbearable levels.

In the last few years, capitalism has managed to give itself a semblance of ‘prosperity' thanks to the vast property speculation in the USA, Britain, Spain and about 40 other countries. The ‘brick' boom is a crying expression of the aberrant level that this system has reached. The aim of building all these houses was not to give shelter to people - the number of homeless has gone up and up of late, especially in the US! The aim was nothing more than speculation on property. In Dubai, the desert has been sown with skyscrapers with no other purpose than to satisfy the thirst of international investors, greedy for profits made by buying housing and selling them three months later. In Spain, the coastal regions which were not yet overcrowded have been covered with holiday home developments, skyscrapers and golf courses. All this to fill the pockets of a minority, while the majority of these buildings remained conspicuously empty. One of the consequences of this speculative madness is that housing has become inaccessible to the majority of working class families. Millions of people have had to take out loans that can go on for 50 years, or sink huge amounts of money into the bottomless pit of rent. Hundreds of thousands of young couples are forced to live in sublet slums or crammed together with their parents. Today the bubble has burst and a fragile economy, where everything was held together with the sticking plaster of speculation, of accounting frauds and payments adjourned into some promised future, is experiencing the most violent convulsions.

Capitalism's only response: push the effects of its crisis onto the working class

Ten years ago, an article entitled ‘Thirty years of the open crisis of capitalism' (see ICC online) drew up a balance sheet of this continuous plunge into debt:

"This intervention by the state to go with the crisis, adapting to it in order to slow it down and if possible delay its effects, has allowed the big industrialised powers to avoid a brutal collapse, a general debacle of the economic apparatus. It is has not however been a solution to the crisis nor has it been able to overcome its most acute effects, such as unemployment and inflation. Thirty years of this policy of palliatives has only allowed a kind of accompanied descent towards the bottom of the abyss, a planned fall whose only real result is to prolong the domination of this system with its procession of suffering, uncertainty an despair for the working class and the immense majority of the world population. For its part, the working class of the big industrial centres has been subjected to a systematic policy of continuing and gradual attacks on its buying power, its living conditions, its jobs, its very survival. As for the great majority of the world population, those who eke out a miserable living on the vast periphery around the vital centres of capitalism, it is subjected to barbarism, famine and death on such a level that we can talk about the greatest genocide that humanity has ever known".

And the balance sheet of these past 40 years is indeed horrifying. In the 1960s, the majority of workers, even those in the less rich countries, had a more or less secure job; today the dominant tendency everywhere is towards job insecurity. For more than 20 years, the real wages in the richest countries have fallen continuously. And in the poorest countries, the average wage remains extremely low, even for the majority of the workers who are the ‘beneficiaries' of the ‘Chinese miracle'. Unemployment has become chronic. The best that states can do is to make it less socially visible. The bourgeoisie has succeeded in getting the unemployed to feel their situation as a shameful one: in the official discourse, the unemployed are idle losers, incapable of taking advantage of the wonderful possibilities of employment supposedly being offered to them. And what about retirement pensions? The older generation still at work (50-60 year olds) is seeing its future pensions melting away like snow in the sun. Their pensions will be much reduced in comparison to their parents' and many of them understand that they will have to continue with casual work or odd jobs after they are 60 or 65 if they are going to manage. And it's guaranteed that young people today won't even get a pension.

If humanity is to live, capitalism must die

These catastrophic perspectives have been with us for 40 years. But capitalism has an extraordinary capacity to sow illusions and to make people believe that the famous cycle of ‘boom and bust' is an eternal one. But today the ability of the capitalist state to ‘go with' the crisis through all sorts of palliatives is being seriously weakened. The new downward plunge we are seeing today will be even more abrupt and brutal than the previous ones. The attack against the proletariat and humanity as a whole will be even crueller and more destructive: a proliferation of imperialist wars, attacks on wages, increasing job-insecurity and unemployment, the intensification of poverty. In all countries, the governments are appealing for calm and claim that they have the answers, that they can get the economic machine moving again. And everywhere, the opposition parties play their own role in this deception, attributing the disaster to the poor management of the party in power and promising a ‘new kind of politics'.

Let's not be taken in! The experience of the last few months is highly instructive: the governments of the world, of all types and colours, armed with their legions of financial gurus and experts, have tried all kinds of potions to ‘get out of the crisis'. We can say without hesitation that they are all doomed to fail. The proletariat, the workers of the entire world, cannot have any confidence in them. We can only have confidence in our own strength! We have to develop our experience of struggle, of solidarity, of debate, acquiring the consciousness and will needed to destroy capitalism, which has become an obstacle to the survival of humanity. The slogan of the Communist International in 1919 is more relevant than ever today: "if humanity is to live, capitalism must die!"

Translated from Accion Proletaria, the ICC paper in Spain, 23/1/08