The recent "candlelight demonstrations" in South Korea, against the newly elected government's decision to allow the import of beef from the United States (banned some years ago over fears of BSE), reached enormous proportions in June, with up to one million people on the streets of Seoul. Clearly, there is more to these demonstrations than a concern for public health, however real this may be. The general degradation of workers' living conditions, with full-time permanent work contracts being increasingly replaced by precarious and part-time working is a world wide phenomenon that has struck Korean workers hard. The newly installed government of Myung-bak Lee has moreover shown itself particularly arrogant and heavy-handed in launching a series of attacks on workers' livelihoods and living conditions. In addition, the Free Trade Agreement signed with the USA in 2007, by eliminating tariffs on agricultural imports from the US, is an immediate threat to the very existence of Korea's small farmers and peasants. The fact that this agreement has been signed by an openly "liberal", "pro-capitalist" government (Myung-bak Lee is an ex-CEO of Hyundai) has inevitably boosted a tendency towards anti-Americanism, which is itself merely a form of nationalism.
The article which we are publishing below has been sent to us by a comrade of the "Left Communist Group" (LCG), previously known as the "Socialist Political Alliance" which our readers will remember organised the Marxist Conference held in October 2006 in Seoul and Ulsan. We strongly welcome this article, for several reasons.
Firstly, as we have said on several occasions, the specific historical experience of the workers' struggles in Korea, added to the weight of the very real difficulties of language and the inaccessibility of texts from the workers' movement in the rest of the world not only on the working class in general, but also on those militants who are working to develop an internationalist perspective in this period of renewed class struggle. The effort by the LCG comrades to develop an internationalist perspective both on these events and on South Korea's history during the last 30 years, and above all to place these within the international context of the world wide class struggle, is thus of critical importance in our view. The fate of the class struggle, the fate of the communist revolution, will not be decided in Korea any more than in any other one country. The development of an internationalist viewpoint in this article is thus something to be strongly saluted.
Secondly, the article shows clearly the danger of the workers' action being "dissolved into street festivals or bourgeois politics" and failing to establish itself on a class basis where the independent action of the working class is able to give a clear lead to the other non-exploiting strata in society. This problem, again, is by no means unique to South Korea. And we want to emphasise our agreement with the LCG comrade when he says that "Even the June Struggles of 1987 were to be a painful historical experience of surrender through achieving direct voting, an illusion of bourgeois democracy and dropping the masses' explosive demands for struggles". Contrary to what we are often told, the struggle for bourgeois democracy does not open up opportunities for the struggle and organisation of the working class. The history of South Korea, as of other countries subjected to military dictatorship like Brazil, shows that precisely the opposite is the case. The establishment of democracy has allowed the flourishing of the bureaucratised trades unions which have since proven to be the first saboteurs of the class struggle.
Thirdly, the article is quite right to pose the question of what lay behind the illusion in June 1987 "that the way which the bourgeois politicians chose would be the very way toward political democratization". In fact the different classes involved in the struggles during the 1980s had different goals, whether or not they were wholly conscious of the fact. For the purely democratic, national opposition to the military dictatorship, the establishment of a democratic government in South Korea is indeed the limit of its - bourgeois - aspirations, however much the reality represented by Myung-bak Lee may disappoint the sweet dreams of 1987! The goal of the working class, however, is not just the destruction of a military dictatorship but of the whole "state capitalist system" - and this is something that can only be done world wide. The fact, as the article points out, that "there was no revolutionary political force which would be together with and give orientations to the struggles" was not a Korean problem but an international problem, a local expression of the fact that the proletariat world wide has been as yet unable to develop a new International - whose existence would in itself be the expression of a development of a revolutionary struggle and consciousness within the class as a whole, world wide. It is our firm conviction that developing ties and common work among internationalists today, however insignificant this may appear in its immediate results, will be critical to the proletariat's ability to create a new International in the future.
Fourthly, in terms of the immediate perspectives of the struggle, we want to highlight the following points.
We agree entirely on the need for workers not only to organise at shop floor level but also to avoid being imprisoned in factory occupations and to make as much use as possible of street demonstrations to develop class solidarity and spread the movement. We agree also with the need for the workers to raise demands that are general to the class as a whole and avoid the trap - typical of trades union manoeuvres - of allowing specific demands, factory by factory or trade by trade, to splinter the movement.
We strongly agree also with the idea that the workers should "at the candlelight meetings (...) prepare actively places to discuss with one another and argue that the pains of workers reside not only in the health or educational problems but are related also to the entire living conditions of workers". The development of discussion groups and circles is a vital need both for workers to gain confidence in themselves and their own ability to organise independently, and to gain a broader political and international vision of their own activity.
Having said all this, there are also several points of disagreement which we think need to be submitted for debate, in South Korea and more generally in the internationalist movement.
The first of these, is the idea which seems to be expressed in the article's final paragraphs that there are separate tasks for "organised" (i.e. unionised) and "unorganised" (often precarious) workers. This is not, as we have said before, by any means a purely Korean problem. We are aware that the organisation of precarious workers is a major preoccupation for comrades in Korea today. In fact, a major difficulty for the working class world wide today is precisely how to confront the divisions created by the ruling class and maintained by the unions between permanent and precarious workers? The precondition for the movement to gain in strength is for precarious and permanent workers to recognise their common interests and to struggle together, in mass meetings open to all workers. The last way to set about this is for unionised and non-unionised workers to perpetuate these divisions and organise separately, still less to try to set up separate unions for precarious workers which will do nothing more than introduce yet another division in the class struggle.
The second point we want to emphasise is the absolute incompatibility between the workers' struggles and national struggles. We have had some difficulty with the translation of the sentence according to which "Through the general demands for the defence of living conditions of the working class even pure patriotism represented by Tae-gk-gi and Ae-guk-ga, the Korean national flag and anthem, could possibly be welded together and transformed into demands of the class". It is possible that we have translated this idea misleadingly, in which case we hope that the LCG comrades will correct us. However we want to state clearly and unambiguously here that it is absolutely impossible to "weld together and transform" patriotic demands into working class demands. Nationalism - patriotism - and internationalism are polar opposites: they express the interests of society's two main antagonistic classes and only one of them can be victorious over the other.
A final point, which would take too long to develop here, is the whole question of the struggle for "autonomous and democratic unions", which was certainly an important element in the struggles of Korean workers during the 1970s and 80s. In our view, the idea that it is possible to create such unions is an illusion - natural and understandable under the conditions prevailing at the time, but an illusion nonetheless. We think that militants in Korea need to ask themselves the question how it is that 20 years of struggle for "democratic and autonomous unions" has led to the creation of nothing but the bureaucratised unions, saboteurs of the class struggle, that the workers are facing today in Korea and the world over. To do so they need to draw not only on the experience of the class in Korea, but also on the experience of workers in other countries, notably in Poland after the massive strikes of 1980. For our part, we will do our best to participate positively in this debate.
ICC, July 2008
PS: After sending the comrades of LCG our presentation we received the following reply. We hope to publish the continuation of this correspondence as soon as possible.
Dear comrades of the ICC
We deeply appreciate your English translation of our article. Concerning your introductory remarks, especially the second point on patriotism, we think there should be more clarification and explanation about the sentence you disagree. That means the possibility of transforming the attitudes of petit-bourgeois participants in the candlelight demonstrations towards bourgeois democracy into working class-based interests.
Demonstrations are continuing more than 70 days now. Demands and slogans are extending to opposition to neo-liberal policies of Lee government and fundamental issues of capitalism itself (...) We recognized the changing attitudes of petit-bourgeois participants toward class interests during one and half month. We expect the candlelight demonstrations persist until the clash between the mass and Lee government develop more violent mass movement. After observing the ongoing process of that movement, we will discuss the evaluation of the whole process.
Warmest communist greetings, LCG
Korea, 14th June, 2008.
Let's develop it into the great July, August, September workers' struggles, following the first ones in July, August, and September in 1987!!!
Let's heat this summer with the struggles of the working class which overcome the bourgeois democratic struggles
On the street of the 4.19 struggle in 1960, of the June struggle in 1987 and of the June 2008
With thousands of people demonstrating near the entrance of the Blue House I was on the street from 11 o'clock PM on May 31st to 6 o'clock AM on June 1st. I had participated already in many demonstrations but the experience at that time made me reflect on our history of the previous 50 years. It became also a measuring point for the orientation of the necessary gigantic struggles of the Korean working class in the future. On 19th April 1960 I had marched as an 18 years old high school student with other demonstrating people to Kyungmudae, the presidential residence at that time, shouting for the destruction of the dictatorship of president Seongman Lee. I was a Marxist teaching in the university when the streets struggles of June 1987 took place. After 48 years since my first demonstration I stood as a socialist activist all night long with the masses shouting for the retreat of the present president Myungbak Lee.
The candle light mass meeting on May 31st differed from the previous ones in some points: the organized participation not only of thousands of university students but also the workers of the public sector; the participation of the precarious workers including the E-land trade union of precarious workers; the unified slogan of the meeting, "Myungbak Lee, retreat!" after such previous slogans as USA]!" and "negotiations are void!". The persistent attempt to break through and withdraw the announcement [of the beef contract with the toward the Blue House, the presidential residence enabled the demonstrating people to have control over that area near the House for 8 hours.
Incredibly 100 days after the start of the Lee government, a real capitalist one, the demonstrating masses are shouting on the streets for "the retreat of Myungbak Lee". The more incredible is the diversity and initiative of the masses engaged in the demonstrations. But that experience gave me also a precious chance to recognize the limits of the streets struggles and of the political struggles against bourgeois political power, which has not changed for almost 50 years.
The slogans of the April 19th Struggles in 1960, of the June Struggle in 1987 and of the struggles in June 2008 are the same ones: "destroy dictatorship!" and "government, retreat!". They contain the following demands: the destruction of Lee Sungman government which manipulated elections; the change of the indirect voting system into a direct one; and the retreat of president Lee who is responsible to sign up the beef contract without gathering and considering the public opinions. All of the demands are elementary ones considering whether the government keeps the formality and procedures of the bourgeois democracy. Of course the demand of the masses in the candlelight protest is not limited only to the bourgeois democratic procedures. Health matters, the interests of stock farming capital in the USA, and class inequality related to meat consumption are connected in a complicated manner. But it is also real, that the people remain with such viewpoints as the nationalist one focusing only on the problem of the sovereignty, the humanist one considering it as only a problem of health, and the democratic one with the emphasis on the communication problem.
The heat of candlelight may come down, if the Lee government grants the masses decisive measures to relieve life including re-negotiation of the beef contract. These are the very fundamental limits of the street struggles of the masses from various social strata.
Further, another limit of the bourgeois democratic struggles concentrated on the streets struggles is the fact that it is not based thoroughly on the class struggle on the level of the place of production. The April 19th revolution mainly made by the student movements enabled the bourgeois political forces to rise to power. But those revolutionary forces without being led by the working class were condemned to be deprived of power by force by the generals of the May 16th coup d'état. Even the June Struggles of 1987 were to be a painful historical experience of surrender through achieving direct voting, an illusion of bourgeois democracy and dropping the masses' explosive demands for struggles. This surrender was sealed with the deceptive June 29th declaration.
The candlelight protests too, which began in May and are still heating in June, are not based on the working class struggle on the workplaces. Even though hundreds of thousands of people of the masses express their demands in various ways, it is very possible for these expressions to be dissolved into streets festivals or bourgeois politics as long as they are contained in the form of shaking the Korean flag and singing "the first act of the constitution" or the songs from the 1980' movements. For the very reason we are now at an important turning point where we should instead of turning our history backward to 20 years or even 50 years ago overcome the limits of the June Struggles in 1987 and revive the sprits of the great July, August, September working class struggles.
The government of the Democratic Party following the retreated Lee Sung-man government under the influence of the April 19th struggles was to be replaced by the Park Joeng-hee military fascist regime after the May 16th coup d'état. The regime led the Korean capitalist development into a developmental dictatorship. Such a military fascism was not a phenomenon unique in Korea but one of strategies for the accumulation of capital in the third world in the process of the capitalist reorganization of the world. During 60's the accumulation of capital was made mainly in the export industries and those needing a high degree of concentration of labour force. The representative examples were textile and electronics and the other axis consisted in developing very polluting industry such as fertilizers, chemicals and oil refineries. The strategy of the Park regime for the economic development, the so called ‘miracle of the Han river' was based on the anti-working class strategy with the bloody exploitation and suppression of the working class. The class suffered from the long working time of 12 - 16 hours and inhumane working conditions. But the number of workers was doubled from 2 million in 1960 to 4 million in 1971.
Even under the repression against of workers' movements trade unions were built in Chung-Gye Clothing, Won-Pung wool spinning, and Dong-Il wool weaving etc. They became a base for the pro-democracy workers' movements in 1970's, in which female workers played a key role.
Like the general tendency of the process of the state capitalist development the priority was changed in the Korean capitalist development from light industries to heavy industries increasing the ratio of production sectors in the industry from 43.9% in 1972 to 55.2% in 1978. Even under deadly exploitation und repression male workers in heavy industry developed strong struggles against their exploitation: the workers struggle in Han-Jin trade and the burning of KAL by 400 workers in September 1971; the struggle of 2,500 workers of Hyundae Heavy Industry in Ulsan in September 1974; the struggles of mine workers in Sabuk, of Dong-Guk Steel Works and of In-Choen Iron Works in April 1980; the strike struggle of Daewoo Motors in 1985 and the great struggle of workers in July, August and September in 1987. The number of workers strikes increased strongly from 130 in 1969 to 1656 in 1971, and then 666 in 1974. Under the influence of You-Sin regime the working class struggles of 1970's could not avoid having reformist and trade unionist limits of struggling only for the increase of wages or the improvement of working conditions.
Under conditions of the world crisis after the oil shock in the middle of 1970's the Korean economy grew more and more slowly since 1978 with the sinking capacity utilisation rates of plants and big price increases. Against such situations workers developed struggles for the improvement of working conditions, the payment of delayed wages, the construction of the democratic trade unions and the democratizing of trade unions. After the protest movement in Kwang-Ju in 1980 the number of workers' strikes was 2.168, ten times bigger than that of 1979. Even under the government of Choen Du-Whan such struggles as Taxi drivers struggle in Daegu and the successful struggle of Daewoo Apparel workers for the construction of trade unions in 1984 appeared continuously and were followed by the Gu-Ro allied strike. It was the first solidarity strike of workers in the same area and marked a new turning point in the local solidarity strike.
Historically no revolution has ever been successful without the class struggle - never only with the struggles of the citizens and the masses. When we speak of the year of 1987, we speak of the triumph of bourgeois democracy which had been repressed under military fascism. The slogan, "destroy military dictatorship!", for which many sacrificed their lives, did not mean just to achieve political democracy through direct voting rights. Rather, it implied the possibility of destroying the very basis of the military dictatorship, that is, the state capitalist system which had permitted the birth of the immense [number] of working class However, it was not aware enough that even the bourgeois democratic procedure could be accomplished only when the working class would play a key role as the subject to cut the chains of terrible exploitation and repression. The street struggles with the political reforms for bourgeois election preceded to find themselves at their highest point in the June Protest Struggle. So despite of their explosive combativity the meetings and demonstrations on the streets all over the country in June 1987 were condemned to get absorbed overnight in the scene of bourgeois elections. An illusion was dominant that the way which the bourgeois politicians chose would be the very way toward political democratization.
Through out the history of the class struggle we know that only when the economical struggles of the working class precede political struggles then the letter can achieve their goals really. In fact the June Protest Struggle as a nationalist movement led by petit bourgeoisie was very limited from the point of view of the class. It is also true that the struggle didn't open a revolutionary way led by the working class toward the destruction of the capitalist system. But it opened a political space to the class and planted the confidence in and hope of struggles.
From July to September in 1987 there was a big wave of strikes all over the country with 40 strikes per day totalling a number of 3.327 strikes. Striking workers amounted to 1,22 million: 37% of 3.33million workers hired in small or middle-size companies with more than 10 employees and 75,5% of workers in large companies with more than 1000 employees. The number of strikes during these three months was more than twice higher than the sum of strikes during the preceding 10 years. In 55% of companies which had experienced strikes at that time trade unions were built. All over the country a total of 1.162 trade unions were built and the popularisation of autonomous and democratic trade unions took place.
Such a great struggle of workers was an inevitable product of the capitalist development in Korea. Regarding subjects of struggles there was a characteristic change from female workers employed in the small or middle-size companies of the light industries to male workers employed in the large companies of heavy chemical industries. Their demands included the humane dealing with workers, the increase of wages, and the achievement of democratic trade unions. In these struggles workers went on ‘illegal strikes' through occupying and sitting in their workplaces without paying attention to legitimate procedures mentioned in the labour law and developed powerful street struggles. Further, workers during these struggles established the general assembly democracy in which decisions were made in participation of normal workers as members of trade unions and according to their decisions. However there was no revolutionary political force which would be together with and give orientations to the struggles. But also the gains of the June Protest Struggle were condemned to be stolen by the bourgeois political forces. So the struggle failed in rising to a higher level only to be disarmed by capital and state power.
As we have seen above, the street struggles which have appeared and the demands put forward for the achievement of bourgeois democracy in the April 19th struggle in 1960, the June struggle in 1987 and in the struggle in June 2008 are very similar and have the same structure: They appeared at first as bourgeois political struggles which precede the massive struggles of the working class at workplaces. And they enabled the replacement of a bourgeois government by the other, through which the seizing power by the rising working class was to be delayed. The class was to be subjected to the bourgeoisie in the capitalist system which was developing to a higher level than the previous one. After the April 19th ended up as an uncompleted revolution because of the May 15th coup d'état, and then the June Protest Struggle in 1987 enabled the conservative political forces of the bourgeoisie to keep power over workers for more than 20 years, now we are witnessing once again unexpected street struggles of the masses.
Despite of all these similarities now in 2008 we can see the explosive potential of the class struggle in totally different objective and subjective political situations.
Firstly, the present political situation is different from that of the 40 year long history of the underdeveloped countries or the third world countries with a priority of achieving bourgeois democracy. Now it is the period just around the corner of the big crisis facing the destructive danger of the decadent capitalism. The worldwide working class including Korean workers is becoming victim of a terrible repression and exploitation, subjected to barbarism. A little bit lagging behind but with some remaining achievements of struggles for the advancement of bourgeois nationalism the Korean society had to confront head-on a government with the capitalist, Myungbak Lee as the president. Now Korean society has separated from nationalism and radical nationalism which had diluted the class struggle between capital und labour and entered into the historical period for struggles for the survival and victory of the working class. The price increase of raw materials including oil, the explosive price rises, the weakness of the dollar, the bubble of real estates etc are symptoms of the crisis of the world capitalism. The privatization of the public sectors, the rationalization of structures, the polarisation between classes represent the last, desperate attempts of capital to retrieve the fall of profit rate. From this point of view the present political situation concerning the beef import problem is not a simple agenda. But it is a complicated political situation, in which the general crisis of capitalism influences in a determining manner all spheres of the life of workers.
Secondly, in fact the masses participating in the candlelight meetings can be regarded neither as a clearly defined proletarian subject nor as a petit bourgeois one. The students of middle school and high school or university students are future workers produced by Korean capitalism. The petit bourgeoisie of the self-employed which are discontent with the president Myungbak Lee in a wide sense can be included in the reserve troops of the unemployed. It is highly possible for the demands of the masses of the candlelight meetings to be combined with the demands for survival of the working class. Their street struggles have already pushed the Lee government into the corner and been achieving some concessions. Through the general demands for the defence of living conditions of the working class even pure patriotism represented by Tae-gk-gi and Ae-guk-ga, the Korean national flag and anthem , could possibly be welded together and transformed into demands of the class.
What is then in this political situation to be done by the working class and socialists?
First, all of the organized workers must not only organize from shop floor level at their workplaces up to the struggle of a general strike against capital and all measures of the state which devastate workers' life but they must also make the general strike successful which is already planned by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and other trade unions. With the occupation of the workplaces the general strike struggle must paralyse the capitalist production and circulation as well as make itself wide spread amongst the unorganized workers and develop through powerful street struggles into an offensive mass struggle.
Second, all of the unorganized workers, unemployed workers, precarious workers and future workers including students must with the demands of the class at workplaces actively take part in the candlelight meetings. And at the candlelight meetings they must prepare actively places to discuss with one another and argue that the pains of workers reside not only in the health or educational problems but are related also to the entire living conditions of workers. Together with the organized workers struggling on the streets after the general strike they must raise the demands of the class at workplaces up to the demands of the whole class.
Third, in order that a general strike and the working class and struggles of the masses can be realized powerfully from root basis up, all socialists must devote themselves fully in propagating and agitating contradictions of capitalism and socialist perspectives and alternatives for the overcoming of the capitalist system. Reminding themselves of the historical lessons which we drew from the problems caused by the absence of political centre for leading the class struggle, they also should not neglect to get prepared to build a minimum leading centre for struggles.
We must do our best to make the struggles of this summer 2008 be such an example to the worldwide working class as the 68' revolution in France or the "hot summer" of 1969 in Italy. Let's criticize in front of the masses the limits of the bourgeoisie trying to make the summer struggle in 2008 turn back to the June struggle in 1987 thoroughly. Let's declare proudly to the working class in the world that confronting and struggling against capitalism and capitalist governments is a duty of the working class for the opening of the new world of the emancipated labour.
OSC
"Through press and parliament, television and trade union apparatus, all factions of the bourgeoisie are screaming with one voice: the lorry drivers, sewerage workers, ‘public sector' employees, Leyland car workers, dockers and dustmen are endangering the health of the ailing British economy with their strikes and militant actions...Just like the lorry drivers in Belgium and Holland, oil workers in Iran, steelworkers in Germany, miners in America and China, or the unemployed steelworkers in the North of France, the workers in Britain are answering the onslaught of capitalism world-wide crisis by refusing to bow before the ‘national interest', and are instead putting their own class interests first".
This sound very familiar: the resurgence of the international struggle of the working class - see our article One class, one struggle [3] for a summary of the recent development of international struggles - along with the government calling on workers to accept sacrifices in their pay and conditions for the good of the economy. Clearly today is not the same as 30 years ago: then the economic crisis had only been developing for 10 years; now it has been ravaging capitalist society for 40 years and the working class has another 30 years of experience. However, just as the lorry drivers then refused to accept the government's call to prostrate themselves on the alter of the national economy today the Shell workers have struggled against similar calls.
As the article shows the 1978 strike was characterised by its wildcat beginnings and widespread solidarity. The Shell delivery drivers' strike did not start as a wildcat, but it has been characterised by expressions of solidarity from drivers in other companies, including what would appear a fairly widespread response by drivers in several delivery firms in Scotland faced with the disciplining of 11 drivers who refused to cross picket lines.
On Monday 16th June the BBC Website reported that: "Tanker drivers from different companies have ended their protest outside the Grangemouth fuel depot on the final day of a four-day walkout by Shell drivers.
The action came after 11 drivers employed by Scottish Fuels were reportedly suspended for refusing to cross the picket line". No more details were given but it is clear that the potential for an escalation of the strike influenced the unions' and bosses' decision to put an early end to the struggle.
Today the media and politicians hold up the Winter of Discontent as a threat to the workers: 'your strikes in the 70's led to Thatcher's savage attacks'. But for the working class we have to take inspiration from these struggles and the workers' refusal to accept the capitalist logic that they should bear the brunt of the crisis. As the last 30 years have clearly demonstrated at the cost of millions of jobs and deteriorating living and working conditions, if we accept sacrifices today the capitalist state will be back demanding even more tomorrow. We have no choice but to struggle to defend our living and working conditions
Phil (July 2008)
Through press and parliament, television and trade union apparatus, all factions of the bourgeoisie are screaming with one voice: the lorry drivers, sewerage workers, ‘public sector' employees, Leyland car workers, dockers and dustmen are endangering the health of the ailing British economy with their strikes and militant actions.
Just like the lorry drivers in Belgium and Holland, oil workers in Iran, steelworkers in Germany, miners in America and China, or the unemployed steelworkers in the North of France, the workers in Britain are answering the onslaught of capitalism1s world-wide crisis by refusing to bow before the ‘national interest', and are instead putting their own class interests first.
We salute these 'wreckers' of the capitalist system!
The crisis is not of our making and it won't go away if we stop struggling. It's not the working class which stands to benefit from the division of the world into arbitrary nation states, which viciously compete for an ever-shrinking slice of the world market: a competition which inevitably leads to even greater recession, depression and finally world war, like those wars of 1914 and 1939. The increasing rivalry between capitalist nation states and the misery it brings to the sick and elderly, to the vast majority of society, can only take place at the expense of the proletariat. It's workers' wages and living standards which are depressed in order that countries can make their commodities cheaper and their war machines more effective. So when workers refuse to accept austerity and instead strike for their own demands, when they weaken the ability of nation states to wage competition and war, they offer a way out of the barbarism into which the ruling class has plunged humanity over the past six decades.
Through our struggles we learn that workers, in fact, collectively produce the world's wealth and objectively control its production and distribution. The strike by 35,000 lorry drivers demonstrated the power we have to bring the capitalist state to its knees and the potential power and ability we have to replace this rotten system with our own re-organisation of the world to the benefit of all. But through our struggles, we also learn that this will be a long and arduous process, fraught with many traps and pitfalls. The lorry drivers' strike demonstrated this as well.
We can see exactly who our enemies are when the Tories and the CBI bay for our blood, when the army breaks our strikes (as it did the firemens1 and the tanker drivers in Northern Ireland). But the Labour Government didn't call a State of Emergency when faced by the defiant lorry drivers. Is this because it is a workers' government? No! Callaghan said it quite openly: why call in the army and make us fight even harder when the trade unions could break the strike more effectively? When the trade unions can ensure--against the wishes of the workers--that the state continues to get its essential supplies; when the trade unions limit our effective picketing, apologise for our strikes, stop them spreading, and falsify our demands.
The lorry drivers didn't wait for official union 'permission' to defend their living standards when faced with what was in effect a wage-cutting offer from the bosses, but swept out on unofficial strike which, through their militancy and class solidarity, quickly spread throughout the entire country. Their determination to use their class strength was reflected in the militant use of mass, flying pickets which ensured that the strike was effective, and in their calls to other sectors of the class such as the dockers to support the struggle. The pickets spread not merely to lorry-haulage firms, but to ports, factories were supplies were normally delivered and even, in some cases, to entire towns, which were ringed by determined workers. Yet while many strikers recognised the need to organise their own actions, free from the dictates of the union bosses, and oblivious to the hysterical reaction from the state's press, they didn't recognise that this apparatus extended directly into their ranks via the shop stewards-vital cogs in the state machine.
At first the union bureaucrats ignored the strike, hoping it would soon peter out without strike pay, and left it to the shop stewards to keep a tight reign on things. And sure enough, everywhere the pickets went there was a shop steward insisting that he should control the strike, that the workers' action had no effectiveness unless it was kept within the trade union cage. So the first thing that went by the board was the drivers' ability to control their strike, to ignore the divisions between 'private' drivers, state drivers, 'hire and reward' drivers, and between drivers and other sectors of the working class. The second thing that went out the window was the demand for less working hours. "Not realistic" said the stewards, reminding drivers to keep within the bounds of what the state considered permissible, to consider the state's needs and not their own. But this was just the start.
When it became clear to the bourgeoisie that merely limiting, containing and controlling the strike was not enough-that it had to be sabotaged and ended-the stewards called for the strike to be made official. That is, they demanded the help of the rest of the state to crush the strike, despite the fact that many drivers recognised they were better off 'on their own', and opposed this move. Transport and General Workers Union boss,
Moss Evans, laid it on the line when he said the strike was being made official in order to control, and then end it, as quickly as possible. So that the state should function smoothly, so that the strike should be ineffective, the stewards and full-time officials worked hand-in-glove. They devised and imposed 'rules1 about who should picket and where. Along with the rest of the state, they said workers should only picket firms "directly involved11 and thus helped invent the concept of "secondary pickets11 which were outside the law. Who ever heard about 'secondary1 pickets before this strike? But along with the rest of the bourgeoisie, the unions went along with--and were at the head of-this attempt to control one of the workers1 most effective weapons.
Then the stewards and officials joined hands with the government directly, in the so-called Emergency Committees, to draw up a list of supplies and goods that could by-pass the pickets and prevent the country grinding to a halt. From No.10 Downing Street, to the local stewards, a direct link was forged with the sole aim of rendering the strike useless and defending the national interest. To add insult to injury, lorry drivers were invited to participate in the 'enforcement1 of these supply codes-the destruction of their own strike--in the name of workers' democracy and participation in the struggle, demands so beloved by the Trotskyists and other Left apologists of capital. Again many drivers fought against these attacks, tearing-up union-signed 'dispensations', and refusing to let the goods go through. Finally, the stewards broke the unity of the strike by negotiating with each local region separately, setting drivers who had 'won' a settlement against those who hadn't, and sowing immense confusion about the aims and future of the strike.
The lessons are clear. The unions and Labour Government worked together--just as they did to impose the social contract--in order to defuse and defeat the strike as quickly as possible. It was the drivers' militancy and class initiative that forced the Government to give ground on the wage claim- driving another nail in the coffin of the 5%-while the unions worked against the strike right from the start. That's why the Labour Party won't heed Margaret Thatcher's stupid calls to curb the power of the unions. For Labour knows that strong unions are essential for controlling the working class.
The mass, permanent organs of struggle (the unions) that workers fought to build last century when capital could afford to give real reforms have in this period of crisis become fetters, barriers to the advancement of workers. As the crisis becomes deeper, the unions have even less chance to hide the fact. In the 1974 miners' strike, stewards could put themselves forward as the most militant workers, the highest flying pickets, in order to gain control over the angry workers and to lead them back to the promised land of a Labour Government, and the austerity of the social contract. But today, Labour is already in power and has once again demonstrated its anti-working class nature. With the economy even worse off, stewards must act even more to halt our struggles; they can afford to show us even less of the leash.
The unions divide the class and ensure that our anger is spent, not fighting collectively, but by allowing the Ford workers, the Vauxhall workers, the bakery workers, health service workers, steelmen and miners to take on the state one-by-one. This is a recipe for defeat and demoralisation. Meanwhile, the whole bourgeoisie, from right to left, screams at us that unions are our organisations-that steward-controlled committees which function to save the national capital are in fact workers' Soviets. These are lies!
Workers Soviets or councils, regrouping workers irrespective of trade or pay, private or public sector, cannot grow out of organs of the bourgeois state, like the trade unions. They are the form which workers will use to clarify how best to struggle against the state, and they are the means--the real power in the land-to enforce this struggle.
Such organs will only grow out of struggles which are controlled and spread by workers themselves, with elected and revocable delegates responsible to the mass of workers, not to the unions and the state. The lorry drivers' strike shows not just the possibility of such autonomous struggles, but the real pressing need for them.
KT (Winter 1978)
Once again, the Caucasus is ablaze. At the very moment that Bush and Putin were sampling little cakes in Beijing and standing side by side at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, that supposed symbol of peace and reconciliation between peoples, the Georgian president Saakashvili, the protégé of the White House, and the Russian bourgeoisie were sending their troops to carry out terrible massacres against the population in Georgia/South Ossetia. This war has seen a new round of ‘ethnic cleansing' on both sides and it is difficult to estimate the number of victims, but it seems to be in the thousands and a large part of them are civilians.
Each camp accuses the other of being the warmonger or claims that it was forced to act because its back was against the wall. The local population, whether of Russian, Ossetian, Abkhazian or Georgian origin, whose towns and villages have been bombed, burned, pillaged and destroyed has become the hostage of all the bourgeois nationalist factions; all of them face the same massacres and atrocities. The workers cannot choose between their exploiters. They need to carry on fighting for their own class interests and reject all nationalist and warmongering slogans, whether it's "defend our Russian brothers in the Caucasus" or "defend the people who have confidence in Russian aid" or "God save the territorial integrity of Georgia"...all these slogans only serve the interests of one capitalist gang or the other, who are all looking for cannon-fodder.
Responding to a series of provocations by the Russian bourgeoisie and its separatist factions in Ossetia, the Georgian president Saakashvili thought he could act with impunity by mounting a brutal invasion of the tiny province of South Ossetia on the night of 7-8th August, sending in Georgian troops supported by aircraft and destroying the town of Tskhinvali, the 'capital' of the pro-Russian separatist province.
While Russia sent in the militias it controls in the other focus of separatism in Georgia, Abkhazia, taking over the Kodori gorge, Russian forces replied directly and ferociously by intensively bombing several Georgian towns (including the port of Poti and its naval base on the Black Sea which was reduced to ruins, and above all Gori, the majority of whose inhabitants had to flee following massive air-raids). Russian tanks quickly occupied a third of Georgian territory, even threatening the capital as Russian armoured vehicles advanced to within a few dozen kilometres of Tbilisi. Several days after a cease-fire was signed there has been no sign of Russian troops pulling back. There were scenes of horror and murder on both sides. Practically the whole population of Tskhinvali and its surrounding area (30,000 refugees) were forced to flee the combat zone. Throughout the country, the number of terrified refugees, deprived of everything, rose to 115,000 (the majority of them from Gori) according to the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees.
This conflict has been brewing for a long time. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, regions infested by smugglers and traffickers of all kinds, are self-proclaimed pro-Russian republics in which Russia has exerted permanent control. For nearly 20 years, since Georgia's declaration of independence, they have been the theatre of all sorts of pressure, conflicts and killings. The use of Russian minorities in Georgia to justify an aggressive imperialist policy is reminiscent of the policies of Germany, not only in the period of Nazism (the episode of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia) but throughout the 20th century. As a specialist in Le Monde put it on 10th August, "South Ossetia is neither a country nor a regime. It is a mixed company formed by Russian generals and Ossetian bandits to make money out of the conflict with Georgia".
Resorting to extreme nationalism and military adventurism has always been a favourite way for the bourgeoisie to regulate internal problems. Although the Georgian president was triumphantly elected by 95% of the population in the wake of the "Rose Revolution" in the autumn of 2003 against the old "Soviet" leader Shevardnadze, he had problems getting re-elected at the beginning of 2008 despite the active support of the USA, having been discredited by his record of fraud and his autocratic way of ruling. This unconditional partisan of Washington took over a state which from its creation in 1991 had been a bridgehead for the USA's New World Order under Bush Senior. This probably led him to overestimate the support he could count on from the western powers in this latest adventure, especially the USA. For its part, Putin's Russia laid a trap into which Saakashvili fell head first, providing Moscow with an opportunity to flex its muscles and restore its authority in the Caucasus (which has been a real thorn in Russian's side for a long time); but this was essentially in response to the encirclement of Russia by NATO forces, which has been a reality since 1991. This encirclement reached an unacceptable level for Russia with the recent requests of Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO. And above all, Russia cannot tolerate the anti-missile shield due to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic. Not without reason, Moscow sees these installations as being aimed not at Iran but at itself. Russia has taken advantage of the fact that the White House, whose military forces are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, has its hands tied at the moment, and has launched this counter-offensive in the Caucasus, not that long after re-establishing - at considerable cost - its authority in the atrocious, murderous wars in Chechnya.
But the responsibility for this war doesn't only lie with the most direct protagonists. All the imperialist powers who are today shedding hypocritical tears about the fate of Georgia have blood on their hands, whether it's the USA in its two wars in the Gulf, or France with the role it played in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, or Germany which triggered the terrible war in the Balkans in 1992.
The masks are falling! It's clear that the end of the Cold War and of the old blocs has not brought any sign of an ‘era of peace and stability' in the world, whether we are looking at Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans or the Caucasus. The dismantling of the old Stalinist empire has only resulted in unleashing new imperialist appetites and a growing military chaos. Georgia has been a major strategic prize which has led many forces to court it over the last few years. Formerly a mere transit corridor for Russian oil from the Volga and the Urals in the Stalinist period, the Black Sea after 1989 became the royal road for exploiting the wealth of the Caspian sea. In the middle of this zone, Georgia has become a major crossroads for Caspian Sea oil and gas from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; since 2005, it has been traversed by 1,800 km of the BTC oil pipeline built under the direct patronage of the Americans and linking the Azeri port of Baku to the Turkish terminal at Ceyhan, passing through Tbilisi. This pipeline has by-passed Russia in transporting oil from the Caspian. For Moscow, there is the imminent threat of seeing Central Asia, which concentrates 5% of world reserves of oil and gas, emerge as an alternative to Russia in supplying Europe with gas. All the more so because the European Union is dreaming of building a 330 km gas pipeline, baptised Nabucco, parallel to the BTC oil pipeline and directly linking the gas fields of Iran and Azerbaijan to Europe via Turkey. Meanwhile Russia, whose new president Medvedev is a former boss of Gazprom, is planning to respond by setting up a gigantic rival project which will reach Europe via the Black Sea, at an estimated cost of 20 billion dollars.
The two former bloc leaders, Russia and the USA, are once again facing each other off, but in a context of inter-imperialist relations very different from the period of the Cold War when the discipline of the blocs could be relied on. At the time, we were always being told that the conflict between these two blocs was above all the expression of an ideological struggle: the struggle of the forces of freedom and democracy against totalitarianism, identified with communism. Today, we can see how much those who promised ‘a new era of peace and stability' were trying to fool us, and it is clearer than ever that the confrontation between these powers is no more than a bestial struggle for sordid imperialist interests.
Today, relations between nations are dominated by ‘every man for himself'. The ‘cease-fire' in Georgia has simply codified the victory of the Kremlin's masters and Russia's military superiority. It means a humiliating semi-capitulation by Georgia, whose territorial integrity is no longer certain, to the conditions dictated by Moscow. The parody of a ‘peace-keeping force' in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, exclusively made up of Russian troops, amounts to an official recognition of the permanent implantation of Russian occupying forces in Georgian territory. Russia has taken advantage of its military advantage to re-install itself in Georgia to the great chagrin of the ‘international community'.
This is a new and shattering reversal for Georgia's patron, the American bourgeoisie. Although Georgia has paid a heavy tribute for its allegiance to the US (a 2,000 strong contingent sent to Iraq and Afghanistan), Uncle Sam has in return given it no more than moral support and verbal condemnations of Russia, without lifting a finger to defend it. The most significant aspect of this weakening is that the White House has no plan to offer as an alternative to this ‘ceasefire' and has had no choice but to swallow the European ‘peace plan': worse still, this is a plan whose conditions have been dictated by Russia itself. Even more humiliating is that Condoleezza Rice had to go to Georgia to get the Georgian president to sign it. This speaks volumes about America's impotence and the decline of the world's leading power. This new proof of its decline can only further discredit it in the eyes of the world and is a real worry to states that are counting on its support like Poland and Ukraine.
While the USA displays its powerlessness, Europe is showing how far ‘every man for himself' has gone. Faced with the paralysis of the Americans, ‘European diplomacy' went into action. But it is significant that it was the French president Sarkozy who was the mouthpiece for this as the acting president of the European Union, although most of the time he speaks only for himself, devoid of any coherence and a champion of short-term navigation on the international scene. Once again, Sarkozy has rushed in to have his say in the conflict in order to get some reflected glory. But the famous ‘French peace plan' (he wasn't able to keep up the illusion that this was a big national or European diplomatic success) is just a ridiculous simulacrum which hardly hides the fact that its conditions have simply been imposed by Russia.
Europe can draw little profit from this situation because its positions and interests are so diametrically opposed. How could there be an ounce of unity in its ranks, with Poland and the Baltic states, viscerally anti-Russian, being fervent defenders of Georgia, while Germany, opposed to US efforts to control the region, is one of the most resolute opponents of Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO? Although Angela Merkel has made a spectacular volte-face in assuring the Georgian president of its support, it's because she was forced to do this because of the growing unpopularity of Russia, acting in Georgia as though it was conquered territory. The point remains that Europe looks like a free-for-all with France trying to be the Lone Ranger, at the same time trying to square the circle by offering its good services to Putin, and with Britain quickly rallying to the defence of Georgia in order to oppose its main rival Germany.
As for the benefits drawn by Russia itself, they remain very limited. Certainly it is strengthening its imperialist position in the short term, not only in the Caucasus but on the world scene. The Russian fleet is master of the region's seas and threatens all other shipping. But although it is tightening up its immediate position in the Caucasus, this military victory won't be enough to dissuade the USA from setting up its anti-missile shield on European soil: on the contrary, it is pushing the White House to accelerate the project, as can be seen by the accord recently signed with Poland to install the shield on Polish soil. In revenge the joint chief of the Russian military command has threatened Poland, saying it would be the first target of a nuclear attack.
Russian imperialism is less interested in the independence or annexation of South Ossetia or Abkhazia than in finding itself in a position of strength for the negotiations about the future of Georgia. But at root, its war-like aggressiveness and the huge military means it has set in motion in Georgia are reviving the old fears of its imperialist rivals and it is diplomatically more isolated than ever.
No power can hope to be able to control the situation and the shifting and changing alliances we are now seeing are the expression of a dangerous destabilisation of imperialist relations.
What's not in doubt is the fact all the powers, large and small, are trying to play a role in the diplomatic game in a region of the world which concentrates major geo-strategic interests. All the powers are responsible for this situation. With the oil and gas of the Caspian and the existence of a number of Turkish-speaking countries in Central Asia, the vital interests of Turkey and Iran are also involved in this region, but in fact the whole world is implicated. It's all the easier to use people as cannon fodder in the Caucasus because this region is a multi-ethnic mosaic: for example, the Ossetians have an Iranian origin... It's easy for this or that power to stoke up the fires of nationalism when things are so fragmented. Russia's past as an oppressive power also weighs heavily in the balance. All this prefigures more serious and more widespread imperialist tensions in the future: we have seen the disquiet of the Baltic states and especially Ukraine, which with its nuclear arsenal is a military power of a very different stature than Georgia.
This war increases the risk of destabilising the region but has inevitable consequences on the global balance of imperialist forces. The ‘peace plan' is just sand in the eyes and contains all the ingredients of a new military escalation in the future, threatening to set light to a whole series of powder-kegs from the Caucasus to the Middle East.
We are seeing a growing number of inflammable situations in a number of areas of the planet: Caucasus, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Middle East, etc. Not only have the imperialist powers once again shown their inability to solve the problems behind these situations - their actions only serve to make the conflicts even more explosive. This demonstrates once again that capitalism has nothing to offer except military barbarism and massacres which make hostages of a growing part of the world's population. The sinister dance now going on in Georgia is only one part of the monstrous witches' Sabbath that capitalism is inflicting on the world.
It's not by demanding more democracy, more respect for human rights, or even getting the imperialist bandits to stick to their international agreements, that this situation can be brought to an end. The only way to end war is to end capitalism. And this can only come about through the struggle of the working class. The only allies of the workers are other workers, across all frontiers and nationalist fronts. The only way for the workers of the world to show their solidarity towards their class brothers and sisters, whether they are Russian, Georgian, Ossetian or Abkhazian, or towards the victims of all the wars which infest the planet, is to unite their forces and develop their struggles towards the overthrow of this system. Against the murderous nationalism of the bourgeoisie, their only rallying cry can be the Communist Manifesto's "Workers have no county! Workers of the world, unite!"
ICC, 17/08/08.
This is why we give our full support to the essential parts of this statement.
We want however to say that the slogans addressed to the soldiers at the end of document (disobeying officers' orders, turning their guns against them, etc), while perfectly correct from a historical point of view (they were put in practice in the Russian revolution of 1917 and the German revolution of 1918) cannot be an immediate possibility, since there does not exist, either in the region or on the international scale, sufficient force or maturity in the struggle of the working class. In the present context, an attitude of this type by the soldiers would expose them to the worst kind of repression without being able to count on the solidarity of their class brothers.
This said, we salute the comrades of the KRAS for their intransigent defence of internationalism and the political courage they have shown for some years in particularly difficult conditions, with regard both to police repression and the weight of the mystifications, especially nationalist ones, which continue to weigh on the consciousness of the workers of Russia, a result of the Stalinist counter-revolution which reigned there for decades. We have made a few minor corrections to the English of the original version as published on www.libcom.org [10]
The eruption of military actions between Georgia and South Ossetia threatens to develop into a large-scale war between Georgia supported by NATO on the one hand, and the Russian state on the other. Thousands of people have already been killed and wounded - principally, peaceful inhabitants; whole cities and settlements have been wiped out. Society has been flooded with muddy streams of a nationalist and chauvinist hysteria.
As always and everywhere in conflicts between states, there is not and cannot be a righteous side in this new Caucasian war - there are only the guilty. The embers which have been fanned for years now have caused a military fire. The Saakashvili regime in Georgia keeps two thirds of the population in poverty, and the greater internal discontent in the country this causes, the more it desires to find a way out from the deadlock in the form of a ‘small victorious war' in the hope that it can write everything off. The government of Russia is full of determination to keep its hegemony in the Caucasus. Today they pretend to be the defender of the weak, but their hypocrisy is abundantly clear: in fact, Saakashvili only repeats what the Putinist soldiery did in Chechnya 9 years ago. Ruling circles of both Ossetias and Abkhazia aspire to strengthen their role as exclusive allies of Russia in the region, and at the same time to rally the impoverished population around the tested torches of the ‘national idea' and ‘saving the people'. Leaders of the USA, the European states and NATO, on the other hand, wish to weaken the influence of their Russian rivals in the Caucasus as much as possible to ensure control over fuel resources and their transportation. Thus, we became witnesses and victims of the next coil of the world struggle for power, oil and gas.
This fight does not bring to working people - Georgians, Ossetians, Abkhasians or Russians - anything, except for blood and tears, incalculable disasters and deprivation. We express our deep sympathy to the friends and relatives of the victims, to the people who have been left without a roof over their head and without any means of subsistence as a result of this war.
We shouldn't fall under the influence of nationalist demagogy which demands unity with ‘our' government, flying the flag of ‘defending the homeland'. The main enemy of the ordinary people is not their impoverished brothers and sisters on the other side of the border or of other nationalities. Their enemies are the rulers and bosses of all kinds, presidents and ministers, businessmen and generals, those who generate wars for the sake of multiplying power and riches. We call on the working people in Russia, the Ossetias, Abkhazia and Georgia to reject the bait of nationalism and patriotism and to turn the anger on rulers and the rich on both sides of the border.
Russian, Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian soldiers! Do not obey the orders of your commanders! Turn your weapons against those who sent you to war! Do not shoot the soldiers of your ‘opponents' - fraternise with them: a bayonet in the ground!
Working people in the rear! Sabotage military efforts, leave to go to meetings and demonstrations against the war, organise yourselves and strike against it!
No to the war and to its organizers - rulers and rich men! Yes to solidarity of working people across borders and the front lines!
Federation of Education, Science and Technical Workers, CRAS-IWA
(August 2008)
In the first part of our article on May 68 in Germany [12] we showed that behind the movement we could see a broader movement of a new generation for an alternative to capitalism. The rejection of the war in Vietnam, the refusal to submit without any resistance to the needs of capital, the rising hope for a new society- all these were important factors which motivated a lot of young people, students and workers, to articulate their protest. But as strong as the hope for a new society had been, the disappointment and perplexity when this first wave of protest receded in the summer of 1968 were no less strong.
Whereas in France the mass strike of the workers had given rise to a feeling of solidarity, of cohesion amongst workers and students in their struggle against the government, the workers in Germany had not yet appeared massively on stage in spring 1968. Following a wave of protests against the assassination attempt on the famous student leader Rudi Dutschke in April, and after the demonstrations against the adoption of the emergency law in summer 1968, the student-dominated movement ebbed away. Unlike France, the students in Germany were not immediately replaced as the spearhead of the struggles by the working class. Only after the September strikes in 1969 did the working class in Germany enter onto the stage on a more massive scale.
Hundreds of thousands of young people looked for a point of reference, an orientation and a lever for overcoming this society. It was a tragedy of history that this young generation, amongst whom many had started to see themselves as opponents of the capitalist systems, was recuperated and their initial movement of protests rendered harmless. We want to try to explain why this happened.
Even though the working class in France had staged the biggest strike in history in May 1968, this first massive reaction of the working class was not yet able to brush aside all the doubts about the working class which had prevailed for years.
Possibly even more than Paris for France, Berlin was the centre of the students protests in Germany. Not the city of Berlin as it is today, the capital of Germany, but the enclave of West Berlin in the middle of East Germany. Many protagonists of the time were driven by vague ideas such as establishing some sort of council republic in West Berlin which would be a step towards transforming both East as well as West Germany.
But how unrealistic this idea was can be seen by looking at the special situation of the enclave in the cold war of the time, since it was in a certain sense a microcosm of the difficulties facing the resurgence of the class struggle. On the one hand West Berlin was a central stage for the leftists. Being a resident of West Berlin meant that you were exempted from military conscription. On the other hand the ‘west sectors' of Berlin had always been centres of anti-communism, which still drew on the romance of the Berlin air-lift. Above all, nowhere else in the ‘western world' was the inhumane face of Stalinism so well known through people's own experience. In such an atmosphere the use of words such as ‘socialism' and ‘communism' coming from the mouth of a student provoked a deep suspicion especially among older workers. Unlike in France, in West Berlin the students were met not so much with sympathy or indifference but with hostility. As a result, the first wave of protestors felt profoundly insecure.
Therefore it is understandable that many of them started to look for alternative revolutionary forces - outside of Germany, even outside of the industrial countries. This reaction was in no way specific to Germany but it developed a specific form in Germany.
1968/69 was also the peak of the protest movement against the war in Vietnam, involving hundreds of thousands of young people around the world. Forms of "anti-imperialist" nationalism, such "Black Power" in the USA, were mistakenly presented as a part of international solidarity and even as "revolutionary class struggle". This helps us to understand the paradox that a movement which initially was directed against Stalinism partially turned again towards Stalinism. Because the first appearance of the working class had not yet pulled so many people into its orbit, many young people became receptive towards ideas which were a real perversion of their original motivations. The influence of leftist organisations would have a disastrous and destructive effect, with a high number of the victims of these organisations coming from the younger generation.
For the leaders of the movement of 1967-68 some sort of revolution seemed to be around the corner. But when the expected quick transformation failed to happen, they had to admit that their forces had been too weak to bring this about. The idea occurred to them to found ‘the' revolutionary party - almost as a sort of panacea. As such the idea was not wrong. Revolutionaries have to join forces and to organise in order to have a maximum impact. The problem was that they were cut off from the historical experience of the working class due to the social democratic, Stalinist and fascist counter-revolution which had lasted for decades. They knew neither what a proletarian party was nor how and when it should be founded. Instead they saw the party as a kind of church, a missionary movement, which would 'convert' bourgeoisified workers to socialism. Moreover the strong weight of the petty bourgeoisie had a considerable impact on the students. Rather like Mao in China during the Cultural Revolution - they thought - they wanted to ‘purge' the workers of their ‘embourgeoisement'. Rudi Dutschke and other leaders of the time described how at the beginning of the movement revolutionary students and young workers met and established contact in the youth centres of West Berlin, and how the young workers afterwards refused to take part in this sectarian turn, alien to this world.
This disorientation of the new generation was also exploited by the leftist groups, which were commonly called ‘K-groups' (Kommunist groups) that were spreading at the time. The large and varied number of leftist groups on the rise in Germany - there were dozens of organisations, from Trotskyists and Maoists to ‘spontaneists' - acted like a gigantic catch-all for the political sterilisation of the younger generation.
Even though in Germany after 1968 more than half a dozen Trotskyists groups cropped up, these groups attracted fewer people in Germany than in France, mainly because the working class in Germany had hardly made its reappearance. Trotskyism is not less bourgeois than Maoism. But since it originated in a proletarian opposition to Stalinism, the working class is more in its focus than with the Maoists, which displays a certain peasant romanticism.
In Germany it was above all the Maoist groups that flourished. At the end of 1968/69 the KPD/Marxist-Leninist Party was founded; in West Berlin, in 1971 another KPD was founded as a rival to that party. In 1971 as well the Communist League (KB) was founded in northern Germany; in 1973 the KBW (Communist League, West Germany) was set up in Bremen. These groups succeeded in attracting several tens of thousands of young people. The Maoist groups reflected a phenomenon which had taken a special form in Germany. Because in Germany many young people reproached the older generation for being responsible for the crimes of Nazism and in general for World War II, Maoism could benefit from this guilt complex. Moreover, Maoism acted as an organiser and fervent propagator of the ‘peoples' wars'. Maoism claimed to be the defender of the oppressed peasants of the Third World and wanted to mobilise them in wars of ‘national liberation' against the USA. Since peasants were considered to be the main revolutionary force in society, Maoism acted as an agent recruiting cannon fodder for war.
However, the fact that contempt for their own fathers drew them into an idealisation of the new leaders (Mao, Uncle Ho, Che, Enver Hoxha) did not disturb the supporters of Maoist groups very much, because this corresponded to the need of a part of that generation to "look up to someone", to search for a "model", even a "father figure" in order to replace the rejected older generation. Maoism had given birth to such monstrosities as the Cultural Revolution - in the mid 1960s in China, millions of workers and people who were considered to belong to the "intelligentsia" or who had some sort of higher qualification were sent to the countryside in order to learn from the peasants. All this meant a terrible humiliation and debasement. Maoism also distinguished itself by a particularly repulsive rejection of any kind of theoretical approach. Its distinguishing feature was the cult of leaders and the parroting of slogans with a Mao-bible in hand.
Moreover, the Maoists revived the "Proletcult" (iconisation of the blue collar worker) as propagated by Stalinism in the 1920s. The slogan was to go and work in factories in order to learn from the workers and to set up a vanguard organisation. This was other side of the coin of reproaching the working class for being "embourgeoisified".
Whereas beforehand many young people had started to deal with history and theoretical questions, now the K-groups did all they could with the help of "schools of Marxism" to destroy the thirst for theoretical deepening by perverting the relationship between theory and practice. The dogmatism of the leftists would have disastrous consequences.
On the one hand the K-groups drove their members into frenzied activism and on the other hand they indoctrinated them with so-called courses on Marxist theory. Thus after 1968 tends of thousands of youth saw their initial opposition to the system being distorted and recruited for activities which in reality contributed to maintaining capitalism. It was hard to resist this sectarian pressure. Finally, many young people were driven away from politics altogether and felt nauseated by it. According to estimates some 60,000-100,000 young people in West Germany were involved in some way or other with leftist groups in Germany. We have to view them as victims recruited by the leftists for a bourgeois policy and as people who got "burnt" by these groups.
It was one of the paradoxes of the history of the time that the "official" Stalinists, who fought openly against the revolutionary aspirations of 1968, were still able to seize the opportunity in order to establish a certain presence in Germany. In spring 1969 the German Communist Party (DKP) was founded, which was composed to some extent of members of the KPD who had been banned in the early 1950s. In the early 1970s this party - including its many sub-branches - had some 30,000 members. One reason for the increased membership was that many of its members believed that the party, which was supported and financed by East Germany, would be able to act as a counter-weight to the West German state; and they also believed that the support for Moscow would strengthen an "anti-imperialist" position against the USA. After an initial rejection of the totalitarian and Stalinist societies in Eastern Europe by the young generation, we now had the paradox that a part of them were being recuperated by the arch-Stalinist DKP.
Moreover, the very few left communist voices which existed at the time, were viciously opposed by the different leftist groups. For example if someone denounced the "national liberation" movements as proxy wars between the imperialist block and if you propagated the class struggle on all sides, i.e. if you defended a resolute internationalist stand, or if you spoke up against antifascism and called World War II a war of bandits on both sides you not only violated a taboo but came up against the combined hostility of all the leftists.
Even though they were not exposed in the same way to the influence of the leftists, a very heterogeneous milieu of 'spontaneists', also developed its activities: squatting in empty houses; campaigning for kinder gardens or against nuclear power plants. This meant that a large part of the young generation became involved in partial struggles. The perspective flowing from these struggles and the consequences of these activities was that their perception of capitalism became very limited and was reduced to one partial aspect instead of seeing the inter-related nature of these problems within the capitalist system. Later these partial movements were a fertile breeding ground for the activities of the Green Party, which via a number of projects for ecological reform had a strong impact on many young people, and this led to the integration of many of them into state run "reform projects".
Another dead end which part of the searching generation of the time ran into was terrorism. Driven by a mixture of hatred and indignation about the system - prisoners of their own impatience and the belief that exemplary actions could "shake the masses" - these elements were drawn into violent attacks against representatives of the system, but they were also infiltrated by state provocateurs using them for the sordid interests of the government. From March 1969 the first small bombs started circulating, distributed by agent provocateurs. In West Berlin on November 9th 1969 there was the first attack against a Jewish Centre: for some members of these movements this was part of the struggle against Zionism as a new form of fascism. Receptive to manipulation, parts of this movement were turned into propagandists for the national liberation movements (often Palestinian terrorists), which were ready to train them in their military camps and which demanded a total submission and discipline. In May 1970 the Red Army Fraction (RAF) was founded; "Revolutionary Cells" started their activities after 1973. Their number of supporters and sympathisers seems to have been quite big - the underground paper Agit 883 claimed to have printed 10,000-12,000 copies a week. However, for capitalism and the state, these people were never the lethal danger that they had hoped to be. Instead the state used their activities to justify the strengthening of its repressive apparatus.
In the mid 1960s the long post war boom, praised as an economic miracle, drew to an end. Slowly the crisis started reappearing. Because the boom had come to an end unexpectedly, the first symptoms of the crisis were not yet so explosive and brutal, and there were still many illusions that an energetic intervention by the State would allow the economy to be kick-started again. Drawing on these illusions the SPD started promising that with the help of Keynesian measures (massive state expenditure through debts etc.) the crisis could still be brought under control. The SPD put this slogan at the centre of its electoral campaign. The hopes of many were placed in the "helping hand" of the state, led by social democracy. Moreover, the first austerity cuts of the capitalists, in comparison to today's austerity cuts were still quite "soft". These circumstances also help us to understand that the protests were seen by one current of the movement of the time as a rejection of the society of "abundance" (an idea spread by the Situationists)[1]. All this helps to explain a certain delay in the unfolding of the class struggle in Germany and it contributed to the fact that the working class in Germany was still somehow "slumbering" until September 1969. In addition, the state could still offer many "reforms" - in particular after the SPD took over the leading role in the social-liberal government formed in autumn 1969 - and pump money into the economy. The welfare state, which was still expanding heavily at the time, helped to tie a lot of students (many of whom received government grants) and workers to the state, and so their resistance against the state was broken down.
On a political level in 1969 the SPD was campaigning for participation in the upcoming elections. Whereas previously the protest movement had placed the emphasis of its activities on "extra-parliamentary opposition", social democracy managed to drag a considerable part of the young generation to the polls. As in 1918/19, 50 years later social democracy was helping to cushion social tensions. The SPD still had a strong influence at the time, managing to increase its membership by 300,000 (amongst them many young people) between 1969 and 1972. Many saw the SPD as a vehicle for the "march through the institutions" (entryism into State institutions). For many, participation in its youth branch, JUSO, in reality meant the beginning of a career in the state apparatus.
40 years after the events of 1968 an international comparison shows that apart from France these events received a lot of media coverage in Germany as well. If the media have dealt so intensively with these events, it is because something is smouldering in this society. Even if those who took part in the movement at the time and who in the meantime have made a big career in the state apparatus or elsewhere, feel ashamed of their activities or want to stay silent about them, those who at the time aimed at a new society, free of exploitation, can see themselves confirmed that their original project still remains valid and still needs to be implemented. The whole tragedy of the events was that because of the historical weakness of the working class in Germany at the time, the construction of a revolutionary counter-pole was particularly difficult. The young generation, which had started the movement, was quickly sterilised and their attempts neutralised.
Today a new generation is beginning to put the fundamentals of this society into question. Since 1968 society has sunk into a much deeper crisis and more open barbarism. Those who participated in 68 and who have not been recuperated by the system, many of whom are already at retirement age, have every reason and also the possibility to offer assistance to the young generation today and to join this struggle for the overthrow of capitalism. It is a struggle which must encompass all generations. In 68 the generational ‘conflict' had very big consequences. Now it would be a double tragedy for the elder generation if it did not succeed in supporting the present young generation in its struggle.
In a third part we will deal in particular with the unfolding of the September strikes in 1969. TW, 11/7/08.
[1] Proletarianisation amongst students was not yet as advanced at the time. In comparison to that period the proportion of working class children amongst students is much higher today. While at the time petty-bourgeois and bourgeois influence were still bigger, today proletarian conditions of existence prevail amongst students. At the time almost unknown, now almost all students are confronted with youth unemployment, unemployment amongst their parents, pauperisation, the prospects of a job with precarious working conditions etc. While at the time many could hope for a career through their job, today most fear unemployment and insecure working conditions.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/korea
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/candlelight-demonstrations
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/may/one-class-one-struggle
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/winter-discontent-1978
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/georgia
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/saakashvili
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-georgia
[10] http://www.libcom.org
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/revolutionary-syndicalism
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/june/Germany-1968
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/may-68-germany
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/504/may-68
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/rudi-dutschke