The explosion of anger and revolt by the present generation of proletarianised young people in Greece is not at all an isolated or particular phenomenon. It has its roots in the world crisis of capitalism and the confrontation between these proletarians and the violent repression which has unmasked the real nature of the bourgeoisie and its state terror. It is in direct continuity with the mobilisation of the younger generation on a class basis against the CPE law in France in 2006 and the LRU ‘reform' of the universities in 2007, when the students from universities and high schools saw themselves above all as proletarians rebelling against their future conditions of exploitation. The whole of the bourgeoisie in the main European countries has understood all this very well and has confessed its fears of the contagious spread of similar social explosions with the deepening of the crisis. It is significant, for example, that the bourgeoisie in France has just taken a step back by suddenly suspending its programme of ‘reform' for the high schools. Furthermore, the international character of the protests and the militancy among university students and above all high school students has already been expressed very strongly.

In Italy, there were massive demonstrations on 25 October and 14 November behind the slogan "we don't want to pay for the crisis" against the Geimini decree, which is being challenged because it involves budgetary cuts in the education sector, resulting in the non-renewal of the contracts of 87,000 temporary teachers and of 45,000 teachers in the ABA (the main IT services company) and in reduced public funding for the universities.

In Germany, on 12 November, 120,000 high school students came out onto the streets [1] of the main cities in the country, with slogans like "capitalism is crisis" in Berlin, where they besieged the provincial parliament. The same in Hanover.

In Spain, on 13 November, hundreds of thousands of students demonstrated in over 70 towns against the new European directives (the Bolgona directives) for the reform of higher education and universities, spreading the privatisation of the faculties and increasing the number of training courses in the enterprises.  

Many of them see their own reflection in the struggle of the Greek students. There have been solidarity demonstrations and rallies in a number of countries following the repression inflicted on the Greek students - some of these solidarity demonstrations also faced more or less brutal repression.  

The scale of this mobilisation against the same kinds of measures by the state is not at all surprising. The reform of the education system being undertaken on a European level is part of an attempt to habituate young working class generations to a restricted future and the generalisation of precarious employment or the dole.

The refusal, the revolt of the new educated proletarian generation faced with this wall of unemployment, this ocean of uncertainty reserved for them by capitalism in crisis is also generating sympathy from proletarians of all generations.   

Violence by a minority or massive struggle against exploitation and state terror?

The media, which are the servants of the lying propaganda of capital, have constantly tried to deform the reality of what's been happening in Greece since the murder by police bullet of 15 year old Alexis Andreas Grigoropoulos on 6 December. They have presented the confrontations with the police as the action of a handful of anarchists and ultra-left students coming from well to do backgrounds, or of marginalised wreckers. They have broadcast endless images of violent clashes with the police and put across the image of young hooded rioters smashing the windows of boutiques and banks or pillaging stores.   

This the same method of falsifying reality we saw during the anti-CPE mobilisation in 2006 in France, which was identified with the riots on the city outskirts the year before. We saw the same gross method used against the students fighting the LRU in 2007 in France - they were accused of being "terrorists" and "Khmer Rouge"!

But if the heart of the ‘troubles' took place in the Greek ‘Latin Quarter' of Exarchia, it is difficult to make this lie stick today: how could this uprising be the work of a few wreckers or anarchists when it spread like wildfire to all the main cities of the country and to the Greek islands of Chios and Samos and even to the most touristy cities like Corfu or Heraklion in Crete?

The reasons for the anger

All the conditions were there for a the discontent of a whole mass of young proletarians, full of disquiet about their future, to explode in Greece, which is a concentrated expression of the dead-end into which capitalism is steering the present generation: when those who are called the "600 euro generation" enter into working life, they have the feeling of being ripped off. Most of the students have to get paid work in order to survive and continue their studies, most of it unofficial and underpaid jobs; even when the jobs are slightly better paid, part of their labour remains undeclared and this reduces their access to social benefits. They are generally deprived of social security; overtime hours are not paid and often they are unable to leave the family home until they are 35, since they don't earn enough to pay for a roof over their heads. 23% of the unemployed in Greece are young people (the official unemployment rate for 15-24 year olds is 25.2%) as an article published in France indicates: "these students don't feel in any way protected; the police shoot at them, education traps them, work passes them by, the government lies to them". The unemployment of the young and their difficulties in entering the world of work has thus created a general climate of unease, of anger and generalised insecurity. The world economic crisis is going to bring on new waves of massive redundancies. In 2009, 100,000 job-cuts are predicted in Greece, which would mean a 5% increase in unemployment. At the same time, 40% of workers earn less than 1,100 Euros net, and Greece has the highest rate of workers on the poverty line out of the 27 EU states: 14%.   

It's not only the students who have come out onto the streets, but also poorly paid teachers and many other wage earners facing the same problems, the same poverty, and animated by the same spirit of revolt. The brutal repression against the movement, whose most dramatic episode was the murder of that 15 year old, has only amplified and generalised feelings of solidarity and social discontent. As one student puts it, many parents of pupils have been deeply shocked and angered: "Our parents have found out that their children can die like that in the street, to a cop's bullet". They are becoming aware that they live in a decaying society where their children won't have the same standard of living as them. During the many demonstrations, they have witnessed the violent beatings, the strong-arm arrests, the firing of real bullets and the heavy hand of the riot police (the MAT). 

The occupiers of the Polytechnic School, the central focus of the student protest, have denounced state terror, but we find this same anger against the brutality of the repression in slogans such as "bullets for young people, money for the banks". Even more clearly, a participant in the movement declare: "We have no jobs, no money, a state that is bankrupt with the crisis, and the only response to all that is to give guns to the police"

This anger is not new: the Greek students were already mobilising in June 2006 against the reform of the universities, the privatisation of which will result in the exclusion of the least well off students. The population had also expressed its anger with government incompetence at the time of the forest fires in the summer of 2007, which left 67 dead: the government has still not paid any compensation to the many victims who lost houses or goods. But it was above the wage-earners who mobilised massively against the reform of the pension system at the beginning of 2008 with two days of widely followed general strikes in two months, and demonstrations of over a million people against the suppression of pensions for the most vulnerable professions and the threat to the right of workers to claim retirement at 50.

Faced with the workers' anger, the general strike of 10 December controlled by the trade unions was aimed at putting a damper on the movement; meanwhile the opposition, with the Socialist and Communist parties to the fore, called for the resignation of the present government and the holding of elections. This has not succeeded in channelling the anger and bringing the movement to a halt, despite the multiple manoeuvres of the left parties and the unions to block the dynamic towards the extension of the struggle, and despite the efforts of the whole bourgeoisie to isolate the young people from the other generations and the working class as a whole by pushing them into sterile confrontations with the police. Throughout these days and nights, the clashes have been incessant: violent charges by the police wielding batons and using tear gas, beatings and arrests in huge numbers.

The young generation of workers expresses most clearly the feeling of disillusionment and disgust with the utterly corrupt political apparatus. Since the end of the war, three families have shared power, with the Caramanlis dynasty for the right and the Papandreou dynasty for the left taking it in turns to run the country, involving themselves in all kinds of scandals. The conservatives came to power in 2004 after a period in which the Socialists were up to their neck in intrigues. Many of the protestors see the political and trade union apparatus as totally discredited: "The fetishism of money has taken over society. The young people want a break with this society without soul or vision". Today, with the development of the crisis, this generation of proletarians has not only developed a consciousness of capitalist exploitation, which it feels in its very bones, but also a consciousness of the necessity for a collective struggle, by spontaneously putting forward class methods and class solidarity. Instead of sinking into despair, it draws its confidence in itself from the sense of being the bearer of a different future, spending all its energy in rising up against the rotting society around them. The demonstrators thus proudly say of their movement: "we are an image of the future in the face of the sombre image of the past". If the situation today is very reminiscent of May 1968, the awareness of what's at stake goes well beyond it.

The radicalisation of the movement

On 16 December, the students managed to take over part of the government TV station NET and unfurled banners on screen saying "Stop watching the telly - everyone onto the streets!", and launched an appeal; "the state is killing. Your silence arms them. Occupation of all public buildings!" The HQ of the anti-riot police in Athens was attacked and one of their patrol wagons was burned. These actions were quickly denounced by the government as "an attempt to overturn democracy", and also condemned by the Greek Communist Party, the KKE. On 17 December, the building which houses the main trade union confederation of the country, the GEEE, in Athens, was occupied by proletarians who called themselves "insurgent workers" and invited all proletarians to make this a place for general assemblies open to all wage earners, students and unemployed (see their declaration on our site [2] ). They hung a huge banner on the Acropolis called for a mass demonstration the next day. That evening, fifty odd union bureaucrats and heavies tried to get the HQ back under their control but they ran away when student reinforcements chanting ‘solidarity', the majority of them anarchists, came from the University of Economics, which had also been occupied and transformed into a place for meetings and discussions open to all workers. The association of Albanian immigrants, among others, distributed a text proclaiming their solidarity with the movement, entitled "these days are ours as well!". There were repeated calls for an indefinite general strike from the 18th onwards. The unions were forced to call a three hour strike in the public sector on that day. 

On the morning of the 18th, another high school student, 16, taking part in a sit-in near his school in a suburb of Athens, was wounded by a bullet. On the same day, several radio and TV stations were occupied by demonstrators, notably in Tripoli, Chania and Thessalonika. The building of the chamber of commerce was occupied in Patras and there were new clashes with the police. The huge demonstration in Athens was violently repressed: for the first time, new types of weapons were used by the anti-riot forces: paralysing gas and deafening grenades. A leaflet against state terror was signed "Girls in revolt" and circulated in the University of Economics. The movement began to perceive, in a confused way, its own geographical limits: this is why it welcomed with enthusiasm the demonstrations of international solidarity that have taken place in France, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Montreal or New York and declared "this support is very important to  us". The occupiers of the Polytechnic School called for an "international day of mobilisation against state murder" on 20 December; but to overcome the isolation of this proletarian uprising in Greece, the only way forward is the development of solidarity and of class struggle on an international scale.  

Iannis (19 December) 

 

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As we put this article online we have learned that massive general assemblies are being held in the universities in Greece and that in these debates the students are comparing this movement to may 68 in France. We invite our readers to keep looking at our site which will aim to keep up with the evolution of the situation. They should also follow in particular the coverage on www.libcom.org [3]

                       

We have just received the declaration below, originally posted on libcom by a comrade from Greece. While we don't know the background to these events they seem to us sufficiently important to be given the widest possible distribution. GSEE (General Confederation of Greek Workers) is the national trade union in Greece.

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DECLARATION: We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us

We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive tv-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighborhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obligations to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in struggle.

WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF GSEE

• To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.
• To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers", "hooligans" or some other fairy tale, while on the tv-screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and Worldwide leads to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a "natural phenomenon".
• To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstration, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.
• To open up this space for the first time -as a continuation of the social opening created by the insurrection itself-, a space that has been built by our contributions, a space from which we were excluded. For all these years we trusted our fate on saviours of every kind, and we end up losing our dignity. As workers we have to start assuming our responsibilities, and to stop assigning our hopes to wise leaders or "able" representatives. We have to acquire a voice of our own, to meet up, to talk, to decide, and to act. Against the generalized attack we endure. The creation of collective "grassroot" resistances is the only way.
• To propagate the idea of self-organization and solidarity in working places, struggle committees and collective grassroot procedures, abolishing the bureaucrat trade unionists.

All these years we gulp the misery, the pandering, the violence in work. We became accustomed to counting the crippled and our dead - the so-called "labor accidents". We became accustomed to ingore the migrants -our class brothers- getting killed. We are tired living with the anxiety of securing a wage, revenue stamps, and a pension that now feels like a distant dream.
As we struggle not to abandon our life in the hands of the bosses and the trade union representatives, likewise we will not abandon no arrested insurgent in the hands of the state and the juridical mechanism.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE DETAINED
NO CHARGE TO THE ARRESTED
SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS' GENERAL STRIKE
WORKERS' ASSEMBLY IN THE "LIBERATED" BUILDING OF GSEE
Wendesday, 17 December 2008, 18:00
General Assembly of Insurgent Workers

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The banner hanging from the occupied building reads as follows: 

From labor "accidents"
to the murders in cold blood
State - Capital kill
No persecution
Immediate release
of the arrested
GENERAL STRIKE
Workers' self-organization
will become the bosses' grave
General Assembly of Insurgent Workers

 

During the summer of 2008, the ICC held two well-attended public meetings on the west coast, one in Los Angeles (July 19th) and in San Francisco-Oakland (July 26th). Both forums were only possible thanks to the local help of comrades sympathetic towards the ICC, who provided the meeting places and arranged local publicity. We are extremely thankful for this help. Both discussions were on "May ‘68 and the Resurgence of the Working Class Struggles Worldwide."

1. The ICC Public Forum in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, the Public Forum was held at the ‘South California Peoples' Library'[1]. There were two presentations, the first by a local militant who drew up an assessment of 30 years of anarchist activism in the US, and the second by the ICC on the international impact of May ‘68 and the subsequent workers' struggles worldwide, heralding the ending of the counterrevolutionary period.

A lively discussion followed about the shared characteristic of both presentations to distance themselves from the violence provoked by the forces of state repression. It was argued that in the end the anarchist and black liberation movements in the past were extremely vulnerable to getting consumed by these violent temptations, ultimately wasting militant energies and resources in paying for costly legal defenses and fundraising.  In many instances violent incidents and actions involved were not acts of class violence by the proletariat, but were acts initiated by adventurists, provocateurs, or petty bourgeois individualists. Instead of effectively fighting the system by  linking the social problems to the struggle of the working class,  these movements dissipated militant energies, burnt comrades out, sent people to jail, without being able to construct organizations that can help to develop revolutionary perspectives.

One of the participants recalled how some years ago in Los Angeles, during an anti-globalization demonstration, protesters were prepared to attack the CNN studios, when he suddenly saw cops deploying their forces. He instantly realized it was a trap and helped to disband and saved a lot of innocent people from getting arrested. For him, this decision was a turning point, it made him reflect about the ineffectiveness of the violent confrontations. It made him think about breaking out of this self created ghetto mentality that frequently characterizes certain anarchist groups. But for some years he did not know how to do it, until he came across ICC analysis which seemed to contain more perspectives for the struggles. Linked to this was a discussion of the nihilist orientation, which isolates the generations and drives them to  dead-end partial struggles instead of bringing the generations together in their attempts to destroy capitalist exploitation, as was done by the French student movement in 2006, which invited unemployed workers, pensioners and urban and suburban youth to their daily general assemblies.

Linked to the first[2] and the second presentation[3] we also discussed the present struggles and their parallels and differences with May ‘68:  the development of a new period of struggles since 2003 and the importance of solidarity in those movements (i.e., NYC transit strike with demands concerning the future generation, etc), and the reemergence of consciousness through the development of discussion circles all over the world.[4] The ICC said it stimulates the life of discussion circles because the current historic period more than ever needs theoretical deepening and reflection within the working class. This is in sharp contrast to the leftists who suck the life out of these discussion circles in their role as the extreme left of the state capitalist apparatus in blocking the development of genuine class consciousness.

These political questions became even clearer in the clash of ideas with a Trotskyist sympathizer. At the end of the discussion someone invited the others to attend the first meeting of a newly created discussion circle in LA, an initiative that was welcomed by other participants[5].

2. The Public Forum of the ICC in San Francisco-Oakland

A week later another Public Forum was held at the Niebyl-Proctor Library[6] in Oakland, the area where there had been a historically significant wildcat strike just after the war in 1946.[7] Although it was a holiday period a wide range of the political milieu of the Bay Area showed up for debate, as was observed by one of the participants: "I did a headcount at one point and there were more like 25 people -- coming from a fairly wide variety of political perspectives which were: left communist, council communist, Marxist humanist, pro-situ, post-left anarchist, conventional leftist ( the rest must've been out electioneering) (...). Despite an infamous Bay Area crank claiming that there are no left communists in the Bay Area, close to a dozen of the people at the event would describe themselves as such. And several other local left communists didn't attend because they were  away on their summer holiday".

We received also some feedback from the same comrade about the presentation and the open discussion:"The presentation was quite good and flowed from an account of the working class upsurge in '68 through subsequent struggles to the radical possibilities for working class self-activity today. I agreed with nearly everything, but my only reservation is that I don't share the presenters version of decadence theory. Other than that, it was great fodder for discussion. And the discussion was equally spirited, comradely and interesting. With the exception of the very few very brief conspiracies of a fascist threat, most comments were insightful and affirmative of radical possibilities in the present. All in all a worthwhile forum".[8]

Although we cannot reflect the whole richness and variety of subjects that were brought up in the discussion, we would like to highlight some of the major points that were debated.

a) The Link between students' and workers' struggles

There was first a questioning of the role of the students in 1968 and today. Out of the discussion came a general agreement on the petit bourgeois character of the student revolt in the 1960s and its incapacity to join the workers movement in the US. Especially in the US as one participant said: "we had more free time than now and were much more implicated in the ‘civil rights' movement", which was in fact a democratic campaign and reinforced the illusions in the capitalist system.  In contrast, today many more students have been proletarianized, i.e. many have to combine study and work and are therefore capable of linking their struggles to the working class. In 2006 in France the student movement invited unemployed, pensioners and urban jobless youth to their assemblies; in 2006  in Chile and in 2007 in Venezuela they confronted the ‘left icons' of the bourgeois state (Bachelet and Chavez). This social context of proletarianization and the increased role of women in the struggle helped the movement avoid the trap of the ‘heroic' violence of the 1960s, and on the contrary helped to extend their movement towards the working class and the older generations.

b) How to characterize the workers' strike wave of the 1960's?

Another discussion focused on how to judge the strike wave that broke out in the 1960's. According to a comrade from ‘News & Letters', the 1956 uprising in Hungary was more ‘radical' than that in 1968, because it posed the ‘question of the content of socialism'. In the discussion we underlined the difference between ‘radical' and isolated uprisings during a period of counter-revolution, such as 1956, and the waves of struggles in after 1968 period, with their influence on each other, reaching a high point with the mass strike in Poland in 1980. All these struggles had in common the features of struggles in decadence (ever since 1902 in Holland, 1903 in Belgium and 1905 in Russia, as described by R. Luxemburg): spontaneous strikes, general assemblies, chosen strike committees, confrontations with unions, etc. These struggles spread all over the globe - in industrialized countries of both the western and eastern blocs, but also in the Third World like China, Mozambique, Angola, Algeria, Zimbabwe were they confronted the new ‘national liberation regimes', demystifying their so called ‘socialist character'.

c) How to Interpret the Economic Crisis?

There was an important contribution on "the falling rate of profit as the cause of the crisis and the margin of maneuver of the ruling class, installing the misery little by little in order not to put its system in danger. So slowly we are getting used to a miserable life affected by desindustrialization and globalization and its terrible exploitation in India and China".

The ICC pointed out that two factors were involved in causing the economic crisis: falling rate of profit, but also saturation of markets. Mass unemployment in the industrialized world, terrible exploitation in newly industrialized countries and the threat of mounting destruction of the planet make the overthrow of capitalism an absolute necessity, but it can only be accomplished by a class conscious proletariat, that has to seize political power before it can start to destroy the laws of capitalist production and  wage labor.

There was also some discussion on how to interpret the boom in China and its capacity to contain social unrest (even if there are violent outbursts, the social unrest does not yet threaten the system as such, and can derail many struggles there into anti-corruption fights).

d) Other questions and perspectives

A comrade who described herself as a council communist raised the question of the ‘usefulness of demands.' In response, it was argued that demands were the first necessary step in the struggle towards putting into question wage labor and the capitalist mode of production. In this effort the stakes are high and the proletariat has to face a treacherous enemy - the unions (its former class organs). The ICC emphasized the positive and hopeful features of the  class struggle since 2003, underlining in its very demands and actions the need for solidarity and open debate within the proletariat. Another comrade mentioned was the upsurge of discussion circles all over the globe: the tip of the iceberg in the emergence of a new generation of future proletarian revolutionaries. It is particularly important for the older generation of working class revolutionaries to pass the torch to this new generation with sufficient skill and patience and to be open to learning from the new generation as well.

This led to a discussion of the urgent  need for a ‘culture of debate', the need to end the period of monolithism so strong in 1968 ("I am right and you are totally wrong"), to deepen the question of ‘ethics' and ‘solidarity'[9] for the proletarian struggle.

Towards the end of the meeting, someone brought up the existence of difficulties and personal clashes between comrades [there had been in the past some members of the discussion circle in San Francisco accusing others in an inappropriate and unworthy manner]. The ICC responded that this is a real problem we have to address: we all bear the scars of the capitalist system's exploitation and dehumanization.  We have to learn to become more human and understanding of each other, to show more empathy and solidarity. In this sense we can learn from the younger generation. ‘The teachers must also be taught'. An appeal was made towards the younger comrades to learn from the recent events and bridge the gap between the generations.

At the end the ICC publications of ‘Internationalism' and ‘International Review' and some ICC pamphlets and books were passed through the room.[10]  

We want to thank the Niebyl Proctor Library and the members of the local discussion circle for their fraternal help and hope they continue their efforts to deepen their revolutionary understanding of how to fight this barbaric capitalist exploitation system. For us it was a boost to see so many comrades participate in a proletarian debate.

JZ, November 2008

 

 

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[1] https://www.socallib.org/ [8]

[2] "... so I decided to leave the ghetto and look for a possibility to reach a wider perspective and came across the positions of the ICC, who has widened my scoop in the analysis of the world situation and defend internationalist approach for the workers' movement".

[3] "... I had the privilege to hear a communist spread the gospel according to Marx without reverting to Stalinist dogmatic lines. I was impressed with the down to earth non preachy style of presentation".

[4] References were made to the Orientation Texts of the ICC on ‘Solidarity & Confidence' Part 1 [9] and Part 2 [10]  and on ‘Marxism and Ethics [11]'

[5] For more information try to find out via : www.garyrumor.com [12]

[6] marxistlibr.org [13]

[7] One of the assistants had just organized a very interesting guiding tour about this major post war event in California the day before.

[8] Both quoted from the letter of H, July 30th .

[9] Reference was made to the Orientation texts published by the ICC on these subjects.

[10] There were also 2 others publications: ‘Out to the Wide' and ‘News & Letters'.

The factory occupation by 240 employees of the Republic Window and Door factory in Chicago, Illinois for six days in early December was the most dramatic episode in US working class history in recent memory. Even the afterglow of the Obama electoral euphoria and its sweet promises of "change" couldn't prevent the angry workers from turning to the class struggle to resist the worsening economic crisis and the growing attacks on their standard of living.

In light of the media campaigns that have celebrated and glorified the sit-in in Chicago, it is critically important for revolutionaries and class conscious militants to be clear on the meaning and significance of these events,. The New York Times exemplified this media blitz with a headline that declared "labor victory comes amid signs of growing discontent as layoffs spread." The Times further stated that the Republic workers "had become national symbols of worker discontent amid the layoffs sweeping the country."[1]  But the Times only got the story half right. Yes, the struggle demonstrated growing working class militancy in resisting the wave of layoffs that have culminated in more than 1.7 million workers being added to the rolls of the unemployed or underemployed in the last 11 months. But it was no "victory," not by a long shot, no matter how much the politicians, leftists, and the media celebrate what the workers supposedly "won."

The militancy of the workers is clear. According to media reports, the idea for the factory occupation originated with a factory union organizer after workers became suspicious when the company began removing machinery and equipment from the factory. (Unknown to the workers at the time the company had made the decision to shut down the factory and set up operations as Echo Windows LLC in Red Oak, Iowa, where wages and production costs are much lower.) On Dec 2nd the company announced that all workers would be laid off in three days with no severance pay and no pay for accrued vacation. Then they announced that medical insurance would be cut off. The workers responded with a unanimous decision to takeover the factory, potentially risking arrest for trespassing and holding control over the company's inventory of window frames.   

Workers organized their occupation in shifts, maintained order and sanitary conditions, banned alcohol and drugs, and immediately began to attract media attention. When rank and file workers spoke to the media they made clear that their struggle was a fight against layoffs and for their jobs and their ability to support their families. One worker said, "I worked here 30 years and I have to fight to feed my family." Another complained that his wife was about to give birth to their third child, but now there was no medical insurance. In a situation reminiscent of the working class support for the NYC transit workers struggle in 2005, the working class in Chicago and around the country responded with a strong display of solidarity, in the face of growing difficulties confronted by workers everywhere. People came to the factory with food and money to donate; everyone understood that this was round one in the fight against layoffs.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union (UE), a small (35,000 members nationwide), independent, non-AFL-CIO union that had been thrown out of the mainstream labor movement at the height of the cold war because of the union's links to the Stalinist Communist Party, quickly moved to derail the workers away from a struggle against layoffs onto the terrain of bourgeois legality. Instead of opposing the layoffs and the closing of the factory, the union demanded company compliance with a national law which mandates that the workers receive severance and accrued vacation pay in cases of plant closings - approximately $3,500 per worker. Left-wing and mainstream political celebrities, like Rev. Jesse Jackson and local congressmen and city aldermen, quickly jumped on the bandwagon, visited the occupied factory and voiced their support for the severance and vacation pay. Political leaders urged the local cops not to arrest the workers for fear of provoking a more widespread movement. Even President-elect Obama endorsed the factory workers struggle for the money that was "due" them.

After six days, this is precisely the "victory" that is being celebrated by the left and by the media: the banks funding the company reorganization plan have agreed to make sure the workers will get their $3,500 severance/vacation packages. While it's true that getting the money is better than nothing, the money won't last long and then the workers will be unemployed and without medical benefits. The workers who occupied the plant had made it very clear that what they wanted was to keep their jobs. But the derailment of workers' struggles is the key role that unions play for modern state capitalism. The principal job of the unions is to short circuit any possibility of politicization and generalization of workers' struggles, to block workers coming to a conscious understanding that capitalism has no future to offer.

What happened in Chicago strongly parallels what happened in the auto factory sit-down strikes of the 1930s. In those days the workers were fighting for wage increases and improved working conditions, but the United Auto Workers sidetracked the struggle into a fight for union recognition. In the 1970's, young workers employed by the Western Electric division of the Bell System sought to resist massive layoffs, only to be told that the union was prepared to fight for their severance and vacation monies to be paid in separate checks in order to minimize the tax bite. It's easy for the unions to "win" these masquerade victories, which in the end still leave the workers jobless and facing a disastrous future. This is not just an American phenomenon. Recent struggles involving factory occupations and severance payments have occurred in China as well, as the economic worsens.

The media and leftist glorification of factory occupations is yet another aspect of the defeat. True, factory occupations clearly reflect militancy and combativeness: a willingness for workers to resist and resort to "illegal" actions. However, the historical experience of the working class, dating back to the factory occupation movement in Italy in the 1920's and in France in 1968, demonstrates these occupations are a trap and have never been a good weapon for the class struggle. The critical weapon for the working class is to spread struggles to other workplaces and to other industries, to generalize struggles as much as possible, by sending delegations to other workplaces, by organizing mass meetings and demonstrations to draw all workers into the struggle. This transforms solidarity from passive "support" or sympathy or financial contributions, into an active solidarity of joint struggle. Factory occupations allow unions, as agents of the ruling class, to lock up the most militant workers in the plants, to isolate them from other workers, and thereby keep them from serving as active catalysts to spread the struggle outside union control.

Clearly there is an immense solidarity for the Chicago workers. But for the working class solidarity is the understanding that all workers, whatever the specificities of their job situation, share the same condition, the same fate, and the same way out.  We don't care what's "legal" or what's ‘fair' for the bosses. We care what's in the workers' interest, and this is that there are no more layoffs, no more throwing people out in the streets. Rather than stay locked up in their factory, it would have been better for the Republic workers to march from factory to factory in the Chicago area, to send delegations to other workplaces calling on workers to join the struggle, to demand no more layoffs, no more factory shutdowns. A struggle like that will never be hailed or celebrated by the mass media, the unions, the left politicians, or the president-Elect. It would denounced as a threat to capitalist order. The terrible state the working class finds itself in today makes it necessary to reject any idea of a "honeymoon" with the incoming Obama regime, any illusion that anything "good" can come from the new administration and requires a return to the class struggle.

 

J. Grevin, Dec. 15, 2008

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/us/13factory.html [15]

With the economic crisis now ravaging the planet, on 15 November there was a grand international meeting, which at the time was billed as a summit to 'change the world' and bring about a radical transformation in the rules by which capitalism operates. This extraordinary summit was attended by the members of the G8 (Germany, France, USA, Japan, Canada, Italy, Britain and Russia) plus South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey. It was supposed to create the bases for a new kind of capitalism, not only healthier but also more humane.

Back in September, when the world's stock markets were being swept by a real gale of panic, all the great and the good, Bush, Merkel, etc, announced with great ceremony the calling of a major international conference. Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France and of the European Union, even made a ‘radical' speech at the UN on 23 September, calling for a a ‘regulated' and ‘moralised' capitalism, even going so far as to demand the ‘re-founding' of capitalism.

This meeting has now taken place. The result? Nothing, or next to it. Even the international press has been obliged to recognise that the mountain gave birth to a mole hill. Evidently, no one was seriously expecting it to produce a more humane capitalism. Such a thing doesn't exist and the world leaders talk about it like parents talk to their children about Father Christmas. But even from the point of view of the struggle against the economic crisis, the results of this conference were particularly thin. Here are the conclusions, in the rather incomprehensible jargon of the initiated:

• - limiting the "pro-cyclical effects" of the current regulations for financial markets
• - aligning compatible norms on a world scale, particularly "for complex financial products"
• - making "derivative markets" more transparent so as to reduce "systemic risks"
• - improving "compensation practices"
• - evaluating the mandate, modes of governance and resource needs of international financial institutions
• - defining those institutions which have a "systemic importance" and whose collapse would threaten the entire world financial system, thus demanding coordinated action to prevent their failure

In short, playing at in-house fireman by supporting key financial institutions and the strategic sectors of the economy. Nothing that hasn't been done already.

The bourgeoisie isn't repeating the errors of 1929...but is still unable to get out of the crisis

Still, one thing should be recognised. It's true that today, unlike in 1929 (when the world's major states initially failed to react and allowed whole swathes of the economy to go to the wall), all the bourgeoisies of the world have rapidly mobilised themselves. By pumping in billions and billions of dollars, they are trying to save vital sectors like banks and large-scale industry...and, to this end, they have got together, tried to plug the most alarming gaps, tried to act in concert whereas in 1929 they did exactly the opposite (pulling in different directions, resorting to frenzied protectionism, closing their frontiers to foreign commodities, all of which served to aggravate the world crisis). It is this international mobilisation which has allowed them to prevent the brutal collapse of the financial system and the failure of the biggest banks, which has been the major fear of the economists in the last few months.

But while they have avoided the failure of the banking sector in particular, no real solution, no perspective for a lasting recovery, could have emerged from all the discussions that have taken place over these months, whether at the G7, the G8, or the G20.

The bourgeoisie is powerless. It can't regulate the historic crisis of its system because it is affected by a mortal disease: overproduction. This is why capitalism, which has been a system in decline for almost a century, is plagued by irreversible convulsions and has dragged humanity through a whole series of wars (the two world wars being the most powerful expression of this) and economic crises. The result of the G20 is a visible demonstration of this powerlessness: as the crisis rages, as famine threatens whole sectors of humanity, as unemployment and poverty explode in the world's most developed countries, all that the great powers of the planet can do is to vote for vague and abstract resolutions in favour of "stricter rules and better control over speculators and bankers". Even more ridiculous, these decisions by the G20 are not even applicable straight away but have to be discussed by a commission of experts whose conclusions will be discussed again on...April 30, 2009! Nothing can be hoped for from these summits.

The economists can prattle on about a second New Deal or a new Bretton Woods, but they are incapable of understanding what is really happening. A second New Deal? But the use of credit which, under Roosevelt's presidency in the USA, launched a policy of great public works between 1933 and 1938 and got the economy on the move again, has already been tried ten times over in the last few decades. States, companies, households are already staggering under the weight of unbearable and growing debt. No, there will not be a second New Deal! What about a new Bretton Woods then? In 1944, the setting up of an international financial system based on the dollar made it possible to stabilise exchange and make it more fluid, an essential basis for economic growth. But today there is no superpower in a position to stabilise world trade: on the contrary, we are witnessing the discrediting of the USA and its dwindling capacity to play the role of locomotive to the world economy. What's more, at the G20 all the other powers challenged American dominance, beginning with France and its spokesman Nicolas Sarkozy. And there is no new power on the horizon capable of playing this role, certainly not the so-called European Union, which is scored through by conflicts for the defence of entirely contradictory national interests. No, there will be no new Bretton Woods. At most there will be mini-measures to limit the damage. All of which will do no more than spread out the crisis over time and prepare the ground for even bleaker tomorrows.

Towards brutal impoverishment

The bad news about the economy and the redundancy plans raining down everywhere already enable us to see what these tomorrows will be like. All the international institutions, one after the other, foresee recession in 2009. According to the OECD, the Euro zone is going to see its level of activity fall by 0.5%. Britain will be harder hit, with predictions of -1.3%, and its economy will carry on diving the year after. For the USA, the Federal Reserve Bank predicts a negative growth of -0.2%, but Nouriel Roubini, the economist who is the most listened to on Wall Street because his predictions about the deterioration of the world economy over the past two years have been so spot on, thinks that it is perfectly feasible to envisage a nightmare scenario with a contraction of around 5% in the next two years, 2009 and 2010!

We don't know if this will be the case and it's useless to speculate, but the simple fact that one of the most reputable economists on the planet envisages such a catastrophic scenario reveals the disquiet of the bourgeoisie and the real gravity of the situation.

At the level of redundancies, the massacre in the banking sector continues. Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the world, has just announced the elimination of 50,000 jobs when it has already slashed 23,000 since the beginning of 2008! Compared to this disaster, the recent announcement of 3200 job cuts at Goldman Sachs and 10% of the jobs at Morgan Stanley almost passed unnoticed. Let's recall that the financial sector had already destroyed more than 150,000 jobs since January 2008.

Another sector which has been hit really hard is automobiles. In France, Renault, the country's main car manufacturer, quite simply stopped production in November; no more cars are coming out of the plants, and that's on to of the fact that its assembly lines have already been running at 54% of their capacity in Europe[1]. PSA Peugeot-Citroen have just announced 3350 job cuts and new measures of technical unemployment.

But within the automobile sector, it's again the USA which offers the most alarming news: the famous Big Three of Detroit (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) are on the verge of bankruptcy. If the US state doesn't keep them afloat, 2.3 to 3million jobs, many of them in supply and components, will be directly threatened. And in such a case, the workers laid off will not only lose their jobs but also their medical insurance and their pensions! Even if, as seems likely, the American state will pull a finance plan out of its pocket, there will still be very violent reorganisation in the months ahead, involving many lay-offs.

The result of all these attacks will evidently be a huge surge of poverty. In France, ‘Secours Populaire announced in September that there had been a near 10% increase in people living from soup kitchens, with the young being especially affected.

The prospect is not for a more human or moral capitalism as all the liars assembled in the G7, G8 or G20 would have us believe, but a capitalism that is more barbaric than ever, spreading hunger and misery in its wake.

In the face of the crisis and capitalist attacks, there is only one way forward: the development of the class struggle.  

Pawel 12.11.08

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[1] This example shows the whole absurdity of the capitalist economy. On the one hand, the development of poverty, on the other hand factories operating at half capacity. The reason for this is simple: capitalism does not produce for human need but to sell and realise a profit. If a part of humanity doesn't have the wherewithal to pay, it can just starve. The capitalists prefer to close their factories and destroy unsold commodities than to give them away.

A. Economic crisis

Holding this congress in the midst of the credit crunch financial crisis there is absolutely no shortage of material about the state of the economy in Britain today. In this discussion it is essential to step back and take a long view of the economic crisis internationally and historically. Many bourgeois commentators in fact ask us to step back from predicting appalling consequences on the basis of the latest figure for stock market falls or whatever, show us a graph of some economic indicator over the last 10 years or so showing a fall in 2002, and think they have a convincing argument for the underlying health of the real economy. In fact when we take the long view it is not to pacify fears by pointing out that we survived the bursting of the dot.com bubble, but to place the recent events within the 40 year development of the crisis since the end of the 1960s (‘30 years of the open crisis of capitalism' IR 96,97,99), marked by an international slowing of growth rates decade on decade, increased unemployment, constant resort to debt and speculation as well as a series of recessions and the collapse of several bubbles. And this open crisis is a part of the history of capitalist decadence, the period in which it can only maintain itself through constant crises and convulsions - so today's economic crisis follows that of the 1930s, has the same root causes and is in fact a new expression of the same contradictions, which is why the bourgeoisie have been able to learn from it. "Since it entered into its period of decadence, capitalism has had to temper [its characteristics of ‘every man for himself' and the ‘war of each against all'] through the massive intervention of the state into the economy, put in place during the First World War and reactivated in the 1930s, notably through fascist or Keynesian policies. This intervention by the state was completed, in the wake of the Second World War, by the setting up of international organs such as the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, and finally the European Economic Community ... in order to prevent the system's economic contradictions leading to a general disaster such as we saw with ‘Black Thursday' in 1929" (‘Resolution on the international situation' in IR 130).

The bases for the rates of growth that the bourgeoisie were so proud of two years ago were not new, but a continuation of a policy used to prevent the saturation of the world market from stifling the world economy. "They can be summed up as growing debt. At the present moment, the main ‘locomotive' of world growth is constituted by the enormous debts of the American economy, both at the level of its state budget and of its balance of trade. In reality, we are seeing a real forward flight which far from bringing a definitive solution to the contradictions of capitalism, can only pave the way to even more painful tomorrows, in particular through a brutal slow-down in growth, of which we have had many examples in the past 30 years. Right now, the threat to the housing boom in the US, which has been one of the motors of the US economy, and which raises the danger of catastrophic bank failures, is causing considerable disquiet amongst the economists" (‘Resolution on the international situation' from the ICC International Congress in May 2007, IR 130). The effects of the bursting of the housing bubble are already clearly more profound than the end of the dot.com bubble because it deeply affects capitalism's most important financial institutions.

The characteristics of the British economy

The once mighty workshop of the world in the 19th Century had been overtaken in industrial production by the USA and Germany by the early 20th Century. The article on the decline of British imperialism published in Bilan in 1934-5 (and reprinted in WR 312, 313) gives important depth to our understanding of the national situation. It shows how a decadent ruling class no longer able to dominate the world economically resorted to a parasitic existence, drawing surplus value from its empire around the globe while its industry declined relative to its competitors, particularly in the productivity it was able to achieve with outdated constant capital (for example at that stage British textile industries had 4 looms per man while Japan had 8 per man). Bilan drew out the specificities of British banking capital that contributed to this decline: "the process of the fusion of industrial and banking capital was never pushed so far in Britain... This lag, while it can explain the relative stagnation of the productive forces, can itself be explained by the existence for nearly a century of a highly centralised productive apparatus...and which allowed it to make use of credit for its expansion. The structural particularities of finance capital constitute both a weakness and a strength: a weakness, because, due to its intimate links with the mechanisms of world trade, it suffered form their perturbations; a strength because, cut off from production, it retains a greater elasticity of action in periods of crisis."

London is a major financial centre, and finance is a major part of the service industries that employ 80% of the workforce producing 75% of GDP. Of the 23% of GDP from industrial production, 10% is from primary energy production (gas, oil and the run down coal industry), which is unusually high for a developed country. A lot of industry was lost in the 1970s and 1980s particularly coal, steel and shipbuilding. The development from industry towards services and particularly banking has only increased since the last official recession in the early 1990s. After 10 years of industrial stagnation and recession, services are even more predominant. Between 2000 and 2005 banking assets increased by 75% largely based on housing. Assets of British banks are greater than GDP and their foreign liabilities a significant part of UK foreign liabilities.

 

 

 

 

Two years ago we characterised the British bourgeoisie's response to the crisis as one which had allowed it to keep its growth rates ahead of many of its European rivals by managing the crisis in spite of poor growth, rising inflation and hidden unemployment. The bourgeoisie had been unable to address low productivity and was therefore relying on increasing the absolute exploitation of the working class. But the British state had been particularly effective in defending the economy: "The Labour government has sought to manage the economy through the adoption of counter-cyclical policies. It has increased state spending to counter the global recession in the short-term, and to smooth out the decline in the long term." (‘Resolution on the British situation', WR 302). Government debt was 42% of GDP and clearly not balancing out the deficit over an economic cycle, as claimed through manipulation of the figures. Personal debt had risen 25% in 2 years to £1.25 trillion - and by summer 2007 was up to £1.35 trillion, more than GDP of £1.33 trillion. However, any expectation that the housing market, on which this debt bubble was based, could be managed to achieve a soft landing proved misplaced.

Overall the ‘health' of the British economy was based on spiralling government and personal debt on the one hand, and attacks on the working class on the other. In particular the British bourgeoisie had managed to bring in many attacks on benefits, health services and pensions ahead of many other European countries.

Return to nationalisations

The expressions of the credit crunch in Britain are only one part of the events going on internationally. In a year we have gone from the first run on a bank for over a hundred years, and the government's reluctance to encourage ‘moral hazard' by rescuing banks that lent unwisely, through the bail-out of Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley, to £500 billion being made available to the banks. In short, a complete turn about. Even when the government has been trying not to spend the state's money it has been directly involved, as with Gordon Brown arranging a shotgun marriage between Lloyds and HBOS.

This rescue so far amounts to £387bn, consisting of £250bn bank debt guarantee, £100bn short term loans, and £37bn direct injection of capital into banks. It is comparable in size to both the US Paulson plan of $700bn, and total UK public spending of £618bn, particularly when you add in £119bn for Northern Rock and £14bn for Bradford and Bingley. Not to worry: "the bailout is capital, not current spending. It is not like the schools' budget to which it has been absurdly compared. It is simply a recomposition of government assets... If you borrow to acquire an asset, you have that asset to set against your borrowing and the net position is as before" - so says a comedy double act of Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot in The Times 21.10.08. The various capital injection plans around the world produced only a small temporary rise in the stock markets, which have continued to fall.

Nationalisation is, of course, not new; bank nationalisation today, just like nationalisation in the 1940s, allowed the state to take over and run, or run down, ailing industries in the interests of the national economy as a whole. The policy of state control of the economy was first noticed by revolutionaries in the First World War as a way of mobilising the resources of the economy for the conflict. It was reintroduced in the 1930s with the New Deal, Stalinism, Fascism etc, and then built up for the Second World War. The post-war Labour government nationalised health, railways, steel and coal with much ‘socialist' ideology but the resources of the state were needed to invest in a thoroughly rundown infrastructure. Similar rescues took place from time to time as necessary, for example British Leyland. The privatisations under Thatcher was a different state policy and could not really reverse the tendency to state capitalism nor, despite claims about monetary policy, to deficit spending which was still extremely high in the early 1990s.

This brings us to the question of what it means for the state to take responsibility for backing up the banks. It is clear what it would mean for the state to refuse - a run on the bank like Northern Rock last year; in such situations credit seizes up and the economy falls into slump and depression much like the 1930s. The rescue has no hope of preventing recession here any more than anywhere else - unemployment is already rising sharply, Brown and the governor of the Bank of England have now joined the Chancellor Alistair Darling in admitting we are heading into recession. The bailout does aim to keep the economy moving. But what does it mean economically for the state to even partially guarantee banks with assets way above GDP? If we look internationally we can already see that this policy is not available to countries which have particularly small economies in relation to bank debts, Iceland being a prime example. It is at the very least bound to increase inflationary pressures.

It may also have social consequences as the state takes on much more overt responsibility for direct attacks on the working class.

The international aspect

In the wake of this rescue plan, Gordon Brown has been bestriding the world stage, meeting George Bush and gaining the approval of EU leaders. It seems that the British plan to partially nationalise banks, rather than agree to buy toxic assets as in the US plan, and to try to spend their way out of recession, was the only game in town. Certainly we should not forget that London remains a vital financial centre whose bourgeoisie has a wealth of experience. The crisis has also seen efforts to co-ordinate on an international scale, such as the round the world lowering of central bank interest rates in October, numerous meetings - EU, G7, Asia-Europe, meeting called by Bush, etc.

However these meetings, even while they express its need for a degree of cooperation to keep trade going, never escape the expression of conflict, any more than the various GATT rounds could. And capitalism's beggar my neighbour attitude has also come into the open at times, even if it remains secondary for the present time: for instance in Europe we have seen governments competing on guaranteeing bank deposits, which is potentially important for drawing deposits away from banks in neighbouring countries that may seem risky by comparison; and Britain's use of anti-terror laws to freeze Icelandic assets in the face of its banking collapses, which has led to much protest. As the bourgeoisie have learned so much from the 1930s depression, and particularly the danger of protectionism and shutting down world trade in the wake of huge stock market falls, this is likely to remain a secondary tendency to be avoided at all costs - but we should not rule out the possibility that international coordination will not be successful.

Perspective of depression

The British economy, like the rest of the world, is descending into a recession. The latest quarter showed a fall in GDP of 0.5% affecting all areas of the economy: business services and finance down 0.4%, hotels and restaurants 1.7%, manufacture 1%, construction 0.8% and transport 0.6%. And this is only the beginning. The way the banking crisis has built inexorably over more than a year, the depth of stock market falls and the level of instability, the way it has affected every part of the globe, and the way the first signs of recession are affecting every area of the economy, all point to this being a long sustained and deep recession.

The early stages of this crisis have seen inflation growing steadily till the Consumer Price Index has risen to 5.2%. This has been partly driven by food and fuel prices, and the cost of mortgages, but is not limited to any particular items. The current fall in the price of oil, that OPEC has been unable to prevent, will not be enough to reverse inflationary pressures. In fact they are going to get worse as governments around the world cut interest rates and pour in borrowed money to try and stabilise their economies. We have the perspective of the return of stagflation, the combination of recession and inflation, as we saw in the 1970s.

The working class will have to pay

Whenever we look at the attacks we have to bear in mind what has already been lost. Unemployment of about 1,000,000 became normal in the 1920s (see the Bilan articles), lasted until the war, and returned to those levels at the end of the 1970s. Although it has officially come back down to around 1 million officially since the early 1990s it is common knowledge that this has been achieved only by manipulation of statistics and not in reality.

So when we see the highest rise in jobless for 17 years, from 5.2 to 5.7% and 1.79 million, when we hear predictions of 2 million unemployed by the end of the year and another million by the end of next year, we know that the figure is much higher - we are talking 1980s or 1930s levels.

Over the last year inflation has brought about an across-the-board pay cut with many basic foods, fuel, housing costs up much more than official inflation, which is in turn more than average pay increases. The perspective is for this to get worse. And it will inevitably result in more home repossessions.

Over the last 40 years we can see what else the working class has lost: most final salary pension schemes; benefits much harder to get; not only are student grants gone, but they also pay tuition fees; many hospitals and beds... This year we also saw the abolition of the 10p tax band.

Even before the economy is in official recession we can see poverty among children and pensioners has started to rise again.

The government has promised efforts to reduce the effects of the recession by increased spending, but this will delay and not prevent the attacks which must have a profound effect on not just working class living standards but also on the development of class struggle and the consciousness of what perspective capitalism has in store for humanity.

B. Class struggle

"The situation of capitalism can only be understood at the global level, since it is only by grasping its totality that its real nature and dynamic can be seen. Thus it is a mistake to expect to see every aspect of capitalism expressed equally in the situation of any particular nation state. Britain does not show the devastation of the economic crisis seen elsewhere any more than it bears the direct scars of war and nor has it seen class struggle on the scale witnessed elsewhere. Nonetheless it is part of the international dynamic and the particular developments in this country contribute to the overall dynamic." (‘Resolution on the British situation' WR 301 and 302). When examining the class struggle it is particularly important to look at the global level in order to understand the context and significance of each development.

In looking at the developments in the struggle of an undefeated working class in response to constant attacks on its living standards we see the development towards decisive class confrontations, the slow and tortuous development towards the mass strike. The most important developments in this are qualitative. We know that there were many very large strikes in the 1930s, in a period in which the working class was defeated, which the unions used to deepen the ideological defeat and help prepare the conditions for war. Since 1968 there have been some massive strikes on a very militant basis - from 1968 in France, the Hot Autumn in Italy in 1969, Poland in 1970, 76 and most importantly 1980, the miners' strike in Britain in 1984... These huge strikes on a very militant class basis are an extremely important reference point for workers today. However we also know that the working class in this period was not able to develop the level of consciousness demanded. Obviously decisive class confrontations, the mass strike, require a quantitative development: they are massive, but the developments in consciousness that prepare this can also go on underground, hidden from view in periods of apparent quiet. The growing interest in the politics of the communist left in a very tiny minority of the working class is one aspect of this.

The ICC has drawn out the characteristics of these qualitative developments today: "they are more and more incorporating the question of solidarity. This is vitally important because it constitutes par excellence the antidote to the ‘every man for himself' attitude typical of social decomposition, and above all because it is at the heart of the world proletariat's capacity not only to develop its present struggles but also to overthrow capitalism". The effects of the long crisis have had an impact: "nearly four decade of open crisis and attacks on working class living conditions, notably the rise of unemployment and precarious work, have swept aside illusions that ‘tomorrow things will be better': the older generations of workers as well as the new ones are much more conscious of the fact that ‘tomorrow things will be worse'." And so "Today it is not the possibility of revolution which is the main food for the process of reflection but, in view of the catastrophic perspectives which capitalism has in store for us, its necessity" (All three quotations from the ‘Resolution on the international situation' in IR 130).

Two years ago we noted a development in the class struggle in Britain. We remarked that the strengths of the bourgeoisie in Britain which had impeded the development of the class struggle, particularly the strength of the unions, the slow introduction of attacks and the ideological weight of the Labour government, were having much less impact and there was a growing combativity. In particular there had been some small but highly significant struggles expressing solidarity, such as the BA workers who struck in solidarity with Gate Gourmet workers in August 2005, right in the middle of all the propaganda about terrorism. This and several other small struggles had gone outside the control of the unions. There had been a large scale strike by local government workers which, while carefully controlled by the unions, seemed to have a more militant spirit.

The working class, however, was still facing the very experienced unions, who had started to distance themselves from the Labour government to better control the workers.

The last two years

Discontent in the working class has been much wider than class struggle, inevitably. And there has been a lot to be unhappy about. For instance in spring 2007 there was widespread discontent in the NHS, like many other sectors, not just about the below inflation pay rises, 2.5% for nurses, or its staging, but also because of the government's tightening of financial controls, leading to the loss of 20,000 jobs in hospital trusts and to newly qualified nurses, physiotherapists and others finding it harder to get jobs. Pension funds had lost £5 billion a year thanks to a ‘simplification' of tax, to add to the difficulty pensions funds were in throughout the world. This was when we heard the first announcement of the loss of the 10p tax band, which came into force this April at such great cost to most workers that the government had to take measures to limit its effects. It is also the period that saw the sub-prime crisis break in August last year, followed by the run on Northern Rock, the credit crunch and now the financial meltdown we are in the middle of. This must give rise to both attacks and to reflection in the working class that will continue for some time.

Expressions of solidarity

All class struggle, all strike action, is an expression of solidarity among the workers involved. Given the situation of decadent capitalism, the increasing attacks affecting the whole class, the unity the ruling class shows against any workers' struggle, the need for solidarity and struggle to spread beyond the immediate dispute is posed in every struggle.

The question of solidarity was posed in the postal workers' dispute in the wildcat solidarity actions that continued throughout the struggle from summer to autumn last year. Huge discontent was expressed in the vote for strike action in May - 77% in favour in a turnout of two thirds in the CWU ballot. The issues were the below inflation pay offer, and even more importantly the ‘modernisation' plan to cut jobs and worsen conditions. But the union was able to keep a degree of control over the situation to the extent that they continued negotiation, expressed the need to try and prevent strike action, and then called 2 one-day strikes in July; they were very successful in selling the idea that token strike action would force the Royal Mail to negotiate.

However CWU control was not so complete, as was shown by the unofficial strikes that accompanied the official CWU limited strikes. In August 13 drivers refused to cross the picket line and were suspended, prompting a mass walk-out in Glasgow, quickly spreading to Motherwell and the rest of Scotland. Wildcats spread to Liverpool, where it was supported by Polish agency workers, Newcastle, Hartlepool, Chester, Bristol. At its height there were wildcats involving more than 1400 workers in 30 offices. It seemed that the CWU suspended the strike in the summer in order to break the unofficial strike movement - but they must have been bitterly disappointed to see the wildcats start up again in the autumn. At any rate they ended the strike very precipitately without any announcement of the deal until after the strike was ended. This showed great militancy and solidarity, but with the exception of Scotland it was confined to local areas. Union control prevented the struggle generalising to all categories of Royal Mail workers and to workers in other sectors.

In June this year 641 Shell oil tanker drivers struck for 4 days over pay, with workers from other haulage firms showing solidarity by refusing to cross picket lines: 15 BP drivers at Stanlow in Cheshire, drivers from every company supplying fuel in Devon and Cornwall, drivers from Wincanton, a large haulage firm, joined Shell drivers on protests in Cardiff, Plymouth and Avonmouth. "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 drives and potentially other workers into the struggle... Not surprisingly the bosses and unions moved rapidly to stop this by reinstating the suspended workers" (WR 316).

These examples of class solidarity are particularly important in revealing the potential that exists in the class struggle today. They are totally illegal, and therefore show the force of the movement. They are taking place on a larger scale than the examples of solidarity we were discussing 2 years ago (Heathrow strike, Cottam, Polish agency workers in Leicester); they are taking place in a context of very similar attacks on workers in all sectors of the economy, and in the context of developing international struggle in which solidarity has been a very important factor - from the solidarity shown in the struggle against the CPE in France, Vigo in Spain, Opel and others in Germany, Egypt, Bangladesh, New York transit etc. There is also the work that the unions needed to put in to keep control of the situation.

Union perversion of solidarity

In the postal workers' and Shell oil tanker drivers' strikes we saw the unions having a degree of control to delay and limit the struggle, but not to prevent unofficial solidarity action during the struggle. CWU and Unite used similar tactics: ending the struggles very suddenly, declaring victory when little or nothing had been added to the original offer, delaying the announcement of what the deal entailed. The CWU deferred negotiation on the so-called modernisation attacks to local offices after the return to work.

Their other major tactic is always to try and keep workers tied up within the limits of not just legality but of corporation, sector, job and union membership. Inevitably this leads to calling on workers to support their employer - the CWU added to their call for negotiation a demand for "An urgent government review of the damaging impact of competition on Royal Mail..."

A similar union perversion of the idea of solidarity was also shown when in March 2007 workers at the Airbus Broughton and Bristol plants took unofficial strike action in response to the threat of 1600 job losses, out of 10,000 announced by the firm in Europe as a whole. Workers faced union opposition to their action, but the unions also called for their version of solidarity - a Europe wide day of action and solidarity - calling for a better plan for Airbus, to make it more profitable, to make it more competitive with Boeing (which was cutting 7,000 jobs at the same time). In other words, unions perverted the notion of solidarity between workers into workers' solidarity for the boss within the company.

On 24 April this year we had what leftists described as ‘fightback Thursday' to unite workers in education and civil service. The unions put strict limits on their call for unity: schoolteachers but not other workers in schools, not teachers in sixth form colleges, teachers in the NUT but not the NAS-UWT... with demonstrations that tended to isolate teachers from other workers. The same tactic was used in the council workers' strike, involving 300,000, in July with a lot of small demonstrations.

While the unions have been keeping workers divided, the tendency to large scale union mergers has continued with Unite joining with the United Steelworkers of America to form Workers Uniting. This will not overcome each union's fundamental loyalty to the economy of the country in which it operates, nor prevent their support of protectionism, but it will give them a fig leaf of ‘internationalism' all the better to keep workers divided on national lines.

The unions have also continued their policy of distancing themselves from the Labour government, essential to maintain the trust of the workers they claim to represent while forcing through attacks and keeping the workers' response limited.

Development of consciousness

During the postal workers' strike we saw not only the development of the online rank and filist Royal Mail Chat, an opening where workers could discuss their struggle online, but the much more significant Dispatch which was not limited to any one sector, and on a much clearer basis "a group of workers who are interested in discussing and co-ordinating a response to the ongoing public sector pay disputes. We believe they key to winning is to unite the disputes, fight together and for workers themselves to control the struggle. We work in several different sectors, including the postal service, NHS, education and local government and all use the website libcom.org". It re-emerged in response to the public sector strikes this year with a new name, Tea Break (see WR 317) trying to draw the lessons of the defeats of 2007 and the role of the unions in dispersing the struggles.

This initiative plays a similar role to the development of groups of militant workers who came together in the 1970s and 1980s to try and influence the course of struggles, an expression of the development in consciousness. Some saw themselves as being a rival trade union, but others avoided this error, "they understood that they were only a minority, and that their essential role was to act in the more general class movement. Depending on whether or not that movement was latent or open, rising or retreating, they could play a positive role by:

• - acting as a focus for discussion about the lessons of past struggle and the prospect for future ones,
• - creating links between militant workers in different sectors,
• - intervening as a group in the workplace, in mass meetings, strikes and demonstrations,
• - producing leaflets and bulletins advocating the most effective methods for the struggle" (WR 307).

The emergence of this group is a very encouraging sign of the development of consciousness going on at the present time. Its presence online allows it to reach many workers and more to participate. But it will be a weakness if it is limited to an online network.

Revolutionary intervention

"It is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations, and the ICC in particular, to be an active part in the process of reflection that is already going on within the class, not only by intervening actively in the struggles when they start to develop but also in stimulating the groups and elements who are seeking to join the struggle" (‘Resolution on the international situation' in IR 130).

WR has participated in this work by articles on Dispatch/Tea Break, participation in online discussion, articles in WR (which have formed the basis for this section of the report). For particular events in the class struggle we have intervened with leaflets (to the postal workers, council workers, teachers). We have often found the latter form of intervention has been particularly difficult, at least in part due to the strength of the union hold. On one level this is a purely practical difficulty - in strikes where the workers are kept separated on small pickets, small demonstrations. But it is also due to difficulties in developing the discussion with workers - for example at the start of the postal workers' strike the certainty many workers had that they only to show their militancy in token strikes to force the Royal Mail to negotiate a better deal. It will be important to address this difficulty.

Perspective

What is the effect of the current economic crisis on the development of the class struggle today? It is quite clear that the financial crisis is already feeding into the economy as a whole, with increased unemployment, reduced living standards caused by inflation, and wages pegged well below price rises. This is already happening; we have to be prepared for attacks to accelerate, and this is bound to have an impact on the developing class struggle. However it would be a mistake to expect the development of the class struggle to follow the development of the crisis and attacks in any mechanical fashion. First of all the government is already turning its attention to attempting to control the economic fallout, measures which will not prevent a slump but may mean it develops more slowly, not just big bank rescues but also measures to ensure some small businesses either survive or take longer to go bust, slowing the development of unemployment a little; as well as to limit the immediate effects on workers, such as schemes to allow those who can no longer afford their mortgages to stay on as tenants, at least for the time being. We have no doubt about the severity of the attacks that are coming, but we should not forget the strength and intelligence of the British bourgeoisie at this level. In the UK they are ably assisted by the unions who are very experienced in ‘negotiating' to bring in attacks as well as in dividing up the workers' response and limiting it to safe token actions even when there is a real groundswell of militancy.

But the most important factor to take into account is the dynamic of the development of the class struggle itself. In The Mass Strike Rosa Luxemburg analyses the development of the dynamic of the movement in this way: "The January mass strike was without doubt carried through under the immediate influence of the gigantic general strike which in December 1904 broke out in the Caucasus, in Baku, and for a long time kept the whole of Russia in suspense. The events of December in Baku were on their part only the last and powerful ramification of those tremendous mass strikes which, like a periodical earthquake, shook the whole of south Russia, and whose prologue was the mass strike in Batum in the Caucasus in March 1902...". At the same time she went on to look at the immediate economic or other causes of each strike movement. This is the method the ICC has emulated in analysing the international waves of class struggle from 1968 to the collapse of the Russian bloc, looking at the international significance of each movement and of its developments and defeats. We have used the same method in analysing the developments of the revival of struggle since 2003, particularly looking at the development of the sense of class identity and of expressions of solidarity in struggles. It is this development of the international class struggle from one strike movement to the next that makes the use of revolutionary publications to overcome the bourgeoisie's blackout of important movements so vitally important.

We must also remember that the worsening economic crisis, while it makes struggle more essential, also makes it more difficult, and the growth of unemployment which is only just beginning today will only emphasise that difficulty: "the use of the strike weapon is much more difficult today mainly because of the weight of unemployment which acts as a basis for blackmailing the workers, and also because the latter are more and more aware that the bourgeoisie has a rapidly reducing margin of manoeuvre for satisfying their demands.

However, this last aspect of the situation is not just a factor in making the workers hesitate about entering into massive struggles. It also bears with it the possibility of a profound development of consciousness about the definitive bankruptcy of capitalism, which is a precondition for understanding the need to overthrow it. To a certain extent, even if it's in a very confused way, the scale of what's at stake in the class struggle, which is nothing less than the communist revolution, is what is making the working class hesitate to launch itself into such struggles." (‘Resolution on the international situation' in IR 130).

C. British imperialism

The main feature of the development of imperialist conflicts today is a growing chaos, unstable alliances and with the USA, the world cop, only able to impose its discipline through its huge military superiority. In doing so it has itself been one of the major factors in instability. "Today in Iraq the US bourgeoisie is facing a real impasse. On the one hand, both from the strictly military standpoint and from the economic and political point of view, it doesn't have the means to recruit a force that would eventually allow it to ‘re-establish order'. On the other hand, it can't simply withdraw from Iraq without openly admitting the total failure of its policies and opening the door to the desolation of Iraq and an even greater destabilisation of the entire region" (‘Resolution on the international situation', IR 130). Alongside and as a consequence of the difficulties faced by the US as it finds itself mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, various second rank and regional powers are starting to flex their muscles and stir things up.

The resolution on the British situation from WR's 17th congress two years ago noted the great difficulties facing British imperialism. Faced with the offensive launched following the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001 Britain aligned itself more closely with the US. This was not an abandonment of the more independent strategy it took up following the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, in which it tried to steer a course between the US and Europe, playing one off against the other, as it did for instance in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but an attempt to apply this independent strategy in the new situation under the impact of the storm whipped up by the US. Britain joined the US in Afghanistan and Iraq and found itself sharing in the impasse in these two theatres of conflict, causing disquiet in the military. The July 7th London bombings in 2005 had only emphasised Britain's failure - it had laid itself open to attack, and while it could use the events to strengthen its repressive apparatus, it gained nothing on the imperialist level. This was followed up by Blair's humiliation over the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, when he tried to present himself as a player, only to suffer the humiliation of waiting for a call that never came - Britain was just a complete irrelevance in the situation.

Two years ago the resolution on the British situation told us: "Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc the ICC has argued that British imperialism is caught in a contradiction it cannot resolve. In seeking to play an independent role and to continue to punch above its weight, it must play the US off against Europe, but more and more the reality has been that it is caught between these powers. We have seen this contradiction sharpening... it has provoked a deep division within the ruling class...there is a recognition that the imperialist strategy has to change but there is an absence of any well-defined plan." And it asked; "Will it be possible to forge a new imperialist strategy in the wake of the failure not just of London's independent policy but also of Washington's post-9/11 offensive?"

A change at the top, but still stuck in the same quagmire

Blair handed over to Brown 18 months ago in May 07. While this handover was expected from before the 2005 election, it is common knowledge that he was forced from office sooner than he intended. Pressure had been put on him to go, chiefly through the loans for peerages scandal in which ministers were arrested and the prime minister questioned by police; but pressure was also applied with open criticism of government strategy by the head of the armed forces in 2006, by criticism of informal cabinet decision-making and cronyism in the Butler report. Despite all his good service to the bourgeoisie for 10 years Blair's foreign policy failures and excessively close relationship to the US led to his removal. "...Mr Blair's room for pragmatic manoeuvre in foreign affairs was limited by his partnership with George Bush... his insistence on seeing problems of the Middle East in purely Manichean terms - as a global struggle between Good and Evil, between Western Civilisation and apocalyptic terrorism does not lend itself to good policy-making. Stabilisation in Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israel's occupation of Palestine - these are problems that require separate treatment" was a typical comment in the Observer 29.4.07. As an aside, we can see that it is not only the British bourgeoisie that noticed Blair's closeness to Bush - since he left office he has been rewarded with the role of Middle East Envoy and a lucrative post teaching at a US university.

The change in foreign policy was illustrated by the appointment of David Milliband, a critic of Blair's policy on Lebanon, as foreign secretary; Shirley Williams, who had opposed the Iraq war as an advisor; and another critic, Mallach Brown, as minister for Africa. Mallach Brown's appointment was described as "inauspicious" by John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN.

Labour was brought in to defend British interests more independently than the Tory government: "Labour's huge victory, and the humiliation of many of the Eurosceptics, confirms that the most influential fractions of British capitalism have no intention of going back to the old alliance wit the USA" (WR 204, May 1997). After 2001, Britain's closeness to the USA was a result not so much of Blair's relationship with Bush as of its weakness as a declining power in the face of the pressures from America's ‘war on terror'. Indeed, steering a path between the US and Europe will only get harder whoever is in no 10. "Even though Blair has gone it is not possible to put the clock back. Britain's weakened power has been exposed and there is no basis yet for overcoming the divisions this produced in the bourgeoisie. Certainly the ruling class will try to respond to this situation and there may be some shifts in policy ahead of us but there is no way back to Britain's former standing" (WR 306).

Defeat in Basra

When Blair announced a partial military withdrawal from Basra in February 07 there was no disguising that this was a defeat: "By March-April 2007, renewed political tensions once more threatened to destabilise the city, and relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds. Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by the militias..." (‘Where is Iraq going? Lessons from Basra', June 07, International Crisis Group). And "Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, asserts that British forces lost control of the situation in and around Basra by the second half of 2005" (The Independent 23.2.07). Britain now has what Brown describes as an ‘overwatch role', completely powerless but unable to leave altogether. In March this year, when the Iraqi Army got into difficulties in its push against the Madhi Army in Basra, it called on the US to send troops, ignoring the British troops holed up nearby.

Britain's humiliating weakness was only emphasised when 15 UK naval personnel were detained by Iran in March 07. Blair could only bluster about the crisis moving to a ‘different phase', but it was clear that Iran was in control of this situation.

A further humiliation came in October with a Times interview with the Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki in which he said it was time for British troops to leave and criticised the deal they made last year with the Mahdi Army.

Rise of Iran

Iran has gained from the US ‘war on terror' in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular the invasion of Iraq "removed Tehran's traditional enemy from the region, while the US reliance on Shia clerics empowered Iran's allies inside Iraq. The US now confronts a greatly strengthened Iran because of its own actions" (Le Monde Diplomatique Feb 07). "Furthermore, the increasing boldness of Iran over its preparations for obtaining nuclear weapons is a direct consequence of the US falling into a quagmire in Iraq, which for the moment prevents a similar massive use of troops elsewhere" (‘Resolution on the international situation', IR 130).

This has been particularly uncomfortable for British imperialism with its troops holed up in Southern Iraq where Iran has greatest influence. The SAS has joined the USA's conflict with and incursions into Iran to protect its troops.

Afghanistan

NATO troops in Afghanistan are also bogged down in a quagmire. Even the UK commander in Helmand has warned we should not expect a decisive victory and there have been calls in the US for a troop surge. It is a country disintegrating into chaos, which is spreading into Pakistan. The Taliban operate out of Pakistan, which is seeing increased incursions by the USA.

Essentially the British bourgeoisie has been unable to extricate itself from the disaster of its close relationship to the USA and still finds itself bogged down in unsuccessful military adventures. Its weaknesses have been exposed, severely damaging its ability to ‘punch above its weight' in an effort to defend its interests world wide. In other conflict zones Britain is also shown to be impotent. For instance whatever support Britain may give to the opposition in Zimbabwe, its old colony, it is hardly an important player in this situation with South Africa negotiating the (failed) compromise. Similarly, Brown could bluster over the war between Russia and Georgia that Russia's actions have ‘real consequences', but this only showed Britain's powerlessness. The perspective is for things to get worse for British imperialism, both because it is embroiled in situations of growing chaos that it cannot control, and because its forces are overstretched. While the economic crisis sharpens imperialist tensions and conflicts, the ruling class is faced with an undefeated working class that it has not prepared for the level of sacrifice needed to significantly increase its military capacity. At the same time the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are another example of the perspective capitalism has in store - more military chaos, more barbarity.

D. Life of the bourgeoisie

Two years ago the Resolution on the British Situation asked "Will it be possible to contain the divisions within the ruling class?" Blair was still in office, but the bourgeoisie had made it clear he had to go, piling on unprecedented pressure: the loans for peerages scandal had led to police questioning of ministers under caution and even the PM had answered questions. Their real problems with Blair had little to do with a bit of sleaze, which is normal anyway, but the fact the government had got too close to the USA and the informalism and cronyism criticised in the Butler report, both of which robbed foreign policy of sufficient flexibility. Nevertheless at the level of attacks on the working class, the bourgeoisie could be well pleased with the efforts of their outgoing prime minister - pressure on the unemployed to limit costs of benefits, longer hours for some, more insecure and part time work for others, etc. Brown became PM without even a leadership election to great media acclaim and for the first 5 or 6 months could do no wrong. When the media started the campaign about Brown the incompetent ditherer after the party conference season last year, this had none of the bite of the campaign to persuade Blair to resign and played more a role of smokescreen to divert attention from the worsening economic situation in the credit crunch. Brown had the role of scapegoat for the crisis, as well as being responsible for bringing in attacks on the working class - it didn't matter how unpopular this was making him, several commentators told him, as he had no hope of winning an election. It also allowed the media to start playing up the opposition leader, David Cameron, as a credible choice for a future government.

That this was largely a temporary campaign seems to be confirmed by the way the bourgeoisie have started to rally round the Brown government over the last 6 weeks or so as the true seriousness of the present financial crisis and of the recession can no longer be hidden. We have had cross party support for the bailout plan, and the media have played up the prime minister's role in pushing forward the international response to the crisis. We will have to watch the development of the scandals that break out, such as that going on now around Oleg Deripaska. The chronically scandal prone Peter Mandelson has been brought back into the government because his close ties and experience with business will be useful in responding to the crisis, but the scandal about this Russian oligarch affects the Tory shadow chancellor as least as much. For the moment then, the bourgeoisie have an administration that has done what it can to pull back from its previously too close association with the US, and even if this policy has limited success they are cohering, for the moment, in the face of the financial crisis.

E. Decomposition

Decomposition affects every aspect of life in capitalist society, from the increasingly chaotic shifting imperialist alliances and military barbarism, to cronyism in government. Its use by the bourgeoisie is obvious in so many campaigns asking us to look for scapegoats for every ill capitalism foists on the working class, with blame falling to immigrants particularly, but also bad teachers, bad doctors, chavs, and the obese. The pervading sense of ‘every man for himself' through society is a constant weight on the working class, something that has to be fought to develop solidarity and a sense of class identify in every struggle.

However, the most noted and most tragic expression of decomposition is the increase in knife and gun crime among teenagers. A UNICEF report has condemned Britain as a bleak place for children, where many live in fear of crime and violence, the worst among developed countries. If it is particularly bad in Britain it is a response to the future without hope that capitalism offers: "the world that young people are growing up in, with the violence of nation against nation, gang against gang, individuals against each other. Seemingly random pointless violence is a pure product of decomposing capitalism" (WR 311). This cannot be solved by either repression or education, but will no doubt continue to be used in a campaign of fear to try and encourage a feeling of dependence on the state and acceptance of repressive measures.

Conclusion

We find ourselves analysing the British situation today after a year of the developing credit crunch and at the very beginning of a recession that even the chancellor predicts will be long and deep. This poses difficult questions for the bourgeoisie as it tries to keep the banking system afloat with unprecedented rescue packages and stabilise the economy. At the same time it is totally bogged down in failing military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the USA which continue to drain resources. In spite of a policy of trying to spend its way out of the crisis, with money it has to borrow, the working class will be made to pay for the crisis.

This gives the working class with much to reflect on about the future capitalism has in store for humanity. The working class remains undefeated and able to respond to the crisis. Nevertheless the fear of unemployment, the understanding that the crisis leaves the ruling class a reducing margin of manoeuvre to satisfy its demands makes it harder to enter into struggle. At the same time the crisis is posing the question of what is at stake in the class struggle today, the necessity to overthrow capitalism and make the communist revolution.

WR 26.10.08

We are publishing here a leaflet from Brazil, produced jointly by the ICC and the Workers Opposition group (OPOP) and distributed on 20 October in the general assemblies of bank employees.

The Brazilian bourgeoisie, faced with movements escaping its control (in fact, escaping the control of the unions) is using its repressive apparatus, the police, in a grotesque manner in order to intimidate the workers. In Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, it violently repressed a demonstration by bank employees on 16 October, using tear gas and rubber bullets, injuring around ten people. As if the repression carried out that morning wasn't enough, on the same day and in the same town, the 13th march of the 'Sem'[1], about 10,000 strong, was also the target of police repression, with a number of resulting injuries.

Before that, the bank bosses and the government itself had already attempted to take measures against the current strike of bank employees by persecuting and dismissing leaders in order to contain the development of the movement.

The necessity for class solidarity

It has to be stressed that the struggle of the bank employees goes beyond classic economic demands because the essential demand is for all employees to be treated equally. The banks, and above all the Federal banks, have created a huge gulf between the situation of long-standing employees and those who were taken on since 1998, when certain 'advantages' won in the struggle were clawed back. Much more than a simple demand for economic recompense, this is an important gesture of solidarity between workers, since it is not possible to accept being treated differently, as though some of us were inferior. We all do the same work, in the same centres and we are all subject to the same pressures.

It also needs to be very clear that all our 'advantages' are the fruit of the struggle: if some of us benefit from them, then we all need to benefit, regardless of when we were taken on. In the same way, this struggle is trying to win back what has been taken away, this time from all of us, such as the monthly bonuses, etc. All these economic gains were the product of our resistance struggles, but they were then annulled by the bosses with the complicity of their 'partners', the trade unions.

We all want better working conditions, an end to moral harassment, the end of targets for sales and services imposed by the banks: all this has led to so much illness among bank workers. We will say it again: we don't want to be treated differently from one another. We cannot accept the amputation of our 'advantages' which are the product of our struggles and not presents from the bosses, whether public or private.

The demand for the same conditions of work and remuneration for all those who are currently employed is an act of solidarity between different generations of workers in this sector. It is this same solidarity which we have to prove in acts with all those who are victims of state repression. We can only join together with all those fighting against being crushed by the needs of capitalism in crisis, with all those that the bourgeoisie has repressed or aims to repress because they are involved in struggles.

These struggles, and the whole problem of state repression, are not questions that concern only the bank employees, but all workers, with or without jobs. 

ICC/OPOP 10/08 

---

[1]Sem= Portuguese for 'without'. In other words movements which involve different categories excluded from society, The Landless Movement, the Roofless Movement, the Workless Movement. As the name indicates, the latter is made up essentially of unemployed proletarians. The Roofless Movement regroups elements from different non-exploiting strata, who come together to organise squats. The Landless Movement is also made up of different non-exploiting strata, mainly town dwellers organised within this structure to occupy land in the countryside with the idea of putting it under cultivation. This structure is solidly controlled by the state, especially since Lula first became head of state. 

The crisis - what's happening and why? What does it mean for us today and how can we be prepared for future struggles?

These and related questions were the topical programme for a day school held in Brighton on Saturday 29th November, organised by some of the people involved with Aufheben and local anarchist and community activists. These are the impressions of one of the ICC sympathisers who took part.

The event was well attended with around 50 people, including members of the Solidarity Federation and ICC members and sympathisers, indicating a real interest in discussion and learning in the broad proletarian milieu generally. As one participant put it: "I haven't seen that spectrum of people in one place since the anti-war movement in 2003".

The sessions for the day included an explanation of the credit crunch and the crisis of the banking system; an attempt to relate the current financial crisis to the crisis of capitalist accumulation and its relationship to the class struggle using key Marxist terms; an historical overview of the capitalist crisis of the 1970s and its implications for the current crisis, and a look at recent workers' struggles around the world, including Germany, China and Argentina, and the potential for future struggles.

This was an ambitious programme, and in the event it proved too much to pack into the time available with only short question and answer slots at the end of each session and frustratingly little opportunity at the end for opening up the discussion to all those present to debate they key issues.

This wasn't simply a practical problem, however. Although some presentations used Marxist terms to offer an analysis of the crisis, there was no collective framework for the discussion, with presenters free to offer their eclectic viewpoints (including one that appeared to suggest there was a revolutionary struggle taking place in Iceland against the IMF). Nor was there any attempt to sum up the main points of the day's discussions or put forward any perspective for future work or discussion.

Inevitably some presentations were more interesting than others. The one on the crisis of the 1970s was particularly thoughtful, offering a broader historical perspective. Without mentioning capitalist decadence it proposed that we are now seeing the‘decomposition'of the capitalist‘solutions'to the crisis of the 1970s. To quote from the speakers' handout:

"...with what appears to be the unraveling of a shape of capitalism that has dominated the last 30 years, we are reminded again of the crisis of the 70s and the waves of struggles that ensued from the late 60s through to the early 80s ... the supposed liberalisation that emerged from the crisis of the 70s, and which was often predictably presented as the finally achieved solution to running a stable and growing economy, itself appears to be unraveling."

Despite such insights, however, one of the unanswered questions of the day was whether ultimately we are seeing today a cyclical crisis of the capitalist system, in other words essentially a crisis of growth, or whether in fact we are seeing a crisis of a system in its death throes. Without answering this basic question, we cannot be clear about the questions of strategy and tactics for todays and future struggles.

The fact that elements at the day school were moving close to an analysis of capitalist decadence is significant, and there were, but this milieu is loath to accept the basic Marxist position on the decadence of capitalism - don't mention the 'd-word' - and as a result we can say that despite some interventions from the floor arguing that capitalism is a bankrupt system, the general flavour of the presentations underestimated the seriousness of the current situation and its historical significance.

The ICC members and symapthisers present made several interventions to highlight what for us are the most important basic points about the current economic crisis and the lessons of past struggles for today. The meeting was very open to these interventions, and also to the ICC's leaflet on the crisis, although it was frustrating that there was little opportunity offered to engage in further debate and discussion. While there are opportunities for such discussion online in the libcom discussion forums, there is no substitute for face-to-face discussion in order to clarify and develop ideas.

There was no real 'conclusion' or summary of the day, no attempt to try and draw together points of agreement, points raised for future discussion etc. It tends to feel like"ok, we've come together, had a discussion, listened to several different points of view - away you go now till next time".

A practical challenge today is to promote and strengthen a culture of debate

Practically, we would suggest that there should definitely be future meetings to pursue the main themes of this one, that future meetings should ensure adequate time and opportunity for discussion, and that the organisers should delegate responsibility for the summarising of the key points of the discussion,

Some participants wanted to highlight the local dimension of the global crisis, how the crisis will hit employment in Brighton. We would emphasise the importance of such meetings and discussions for the working class as a whole: they are part of a process of reflection and express an urge to clarify on an international scale.

libcom.org/forums/announcements/day-school-crisis-brighton-sat-29th-nov-17112008 [33]

On Wednesday the 12th of November 120.000 school kids took to the streets in Berlin, Cologne, Hannover, Munich, Trier and many other German cities. They protested against increasing examination stress, the shortage of teachers, the resulting cancelling of lessons etc. In other words, they protested against the intolerable conditions in the schools. Their protest threw the light of truth on the grand speeches of politicians about how much they value education; on the different "educational offensives" they announce in response to the miserable "marks" their system has been given in the "Pisa" quality assessments, where they pose unceasingly with the kids in front of the camera. The school school students have brought to the fore the best qualities which characterise this young generation: The radicalism of their criticism, their lack of respect for the hallowed institutions of the ruling class, the audacity of their actions.

You can find enough shortcomings of these protests if you want. The party atmosphere of the demonstrations has been pointed to, or the fact that the sparks of insubordination only rarely spread to the teachers and students. You can complain that this movement did not organise itself, that the protests were called by official and semi official pupil representation structures or private initiatives such as "Break Through the Education Blockage". But all such grumbling misses the essential point of these protests, which are far from being a mere footnote of the class struggle.

These actions are part and parcel of the struggles of the working class as a whole, not least of the international protest movement of contemporary school students and students, which began with the protest movements of these sectors against the "CPE" legislation in France in the spring of 2006. France and Chile 2006, Italy and Spain in the autumn of 2008, and now Germany as well. Everywhere the young generation is returning to the scene of struggle against the worsening of the living, working and learning conditions. It is even placing itself in the forefront of the workers' struggle.

It is striking that, in all of these movements the school students have played a particularly active role. In Germany the school students have even assumed a vanguard role. They were the driving force behind the protests, and not the students, among whom to a great extent passivity had crept in. The latter had worn themselves out in recent years in the aftermath of protests against the introduction of university fees, which, under the direction of leftist groups, dispersed themselves in activism and boycott actions.

What is also striking is the grim determination with which the protesting school students expressed their indignation. Two episodes express this powerfully. In Berlin, thousands of school students briefly occupied the venerable Humboldt University, hanging flags and slogans out the windows such as: "Capitalism is the crisis".

What happened in Hannover was even more spectacular. There, the protests broke through the police ban mile around the provincial parliament of Lower Saxony, besieged the "holy house of democracy" and even tried to storm it. This resulted in scuffles with the uniformed representatives of the state, in the course of which some of the school students made the unpleasant acquaintance of state repression.

It is enough to imagine that the workers of the nearby Volkswagen plants might follow this example in order to begin to sense the explosive potential of such proceedings. As far as we are aware, this is the first time in the post war German Federal Republic that the working class undertook such an action. It was left to the school students of Hannover - as wage labourers of the future, part of the working class - to be the first to directly attack the parliament as the symbol of domination in western capitalism, without bothering in the least about the unspeakable character of this breaking of taboo's in the eyes of the ruling class. Congratulations!

Indeed, the present world wide movements of school students and students distinguish themselves from their predecessors in the 1960's and 1970's through the progressive loss of illusions in relation to bourgeois mystifications, through their soberness regarding the system and its perspectives. What is at issue today is no longer having your own pupil representation, but basics of life, concrete material demands which capitalism is less and less able to fulfil. The advanced stage of the crisis is lending the present pupil and student actions a much more radical character than that of the 1960s and 70s.

The present youth movements also distinguish themselves from the "no future" generation of the 1980s. Already the simple fact that the present generation increasingly defends itself collectively, that it raises concrete demands, is a sign of anything but resignation. Those who struggle have not yet lost hope for the future.

Weltrevolution 26.11.2008