The ‘financial crisis' is the top story in the bourgeois media. Wall to wall coverage helps to obscure the international movement of the working class which alone can provide a solution to the crisis.

The International Labour Organisation has said that in industrialised countries wages will fall 0.5% during 2009. Based on past research the Global Wage Report 2008/9 shows that for each 1% drop in GDP per capita average wages fall by 1.55%. Recessions hit workers hardest. The Director General of the ILO admitted that "For the world's 1.5 billion wage-earners, difficult times lie ahead." In particular "Slow or negative economic growth, combined with highly volatile food and energy prices, will erode the real wages of many workers, particularly the low-wage and poorer households." In addition the ILO predicts that that the global financial crisis will make at least 20 million more people unemployed. Already, in November the US economy lost 533,000 jobs, the biggest monthly job loss since 1974; and at the time of writing the ‘Big Three' car companies in the US, Ford, GM and Chrysler are on the verge of collapse and have gone cap in hand to Washington, desperate for the government to bail them out. In Britain, unemployment figures for November were the worst for 11 years. The same story could be told all over the world.

For the working class the crisis arrived a long time before banks started collapsing and stock markets panicked. Workers have already been struggling against the impact of the economic crisis throughout the last five years. These struggles are not yet massive, but they are already significant, facing the manoeuvres of the unions and repression from the state.

Who controls the struggle?

In Italy government plans to cut more than 130,000 jobs in the education sector (two thirds of them actual teaching posts) led to a wave of protests for several weeks in October and November. There were hundreds of occupations of schools and universities, hundreds of demonstrations, all sorts of meetings, and lecturers taking their lessons into public places, open to all. Despite government accusations that this was all a left-wing plot, the protests were mostly not run by traditional opposition parties. Occupations involved both teachers and pupils. Demonstrations attracted parents, teachers, pupils, students and other workers. At the end of October there was a massive demonstration in Rome. Even allowing for the exaggerations of demo organisers (they claimed more then a million were on the street) this attracted hundreds of thousands from a whole range of sectors.

Alongside the protests were strikes in other sectors, both private and public; in particular, in early November, a one-day national transport strike that affected trains, buses and metros. There have also been unofficial strikes by Alitalia staff. As an article in the International Herald Tribune (11/11/8) said of unrest at the bankrupt airline: "The unions themselves dissociated themselves from the strike." It also quoted an academic airline analyst: "My feeling is that these wildcat strikes are semi-spontaneous and the results of a small minority, which seems to point to the fact that the various unions have increasingly diminished control over their members." Here's a frank acknowledgement that a) the unions' function is to control workers, not fight for them and b) increasingly they're finding it difficult to do this job. This describes a situation that's not unique to Italy, but has worldwide relevance.

Unions sell the crisis

600,000 engineering workers were involved in a series of rolling strikes, demonstrations and rallies in Germany in early November. With different actions in different places or in different companies on different days, this divided workers' energies and undermined the possibility of a united struggle. It was organised that way by the IGMetall union as part of its strategy before negotiations with employers that would affect 3.6 million workers. IGMetall threatened an all-out strike to back up an 8 percent pay demand, but in the end settled for an 18-month deal that give a 2.1% rise from February followed by another 2.1% from May. Having limited the potential of workers' struggles in the first place "Berthold Huber, IG Metall general secretary, said the result was ‘fair' given the ‘historically difficult situation'" (Financial Times 12/11/8). The plea for workers to make sacrifices for capitalism's ‘difficult situation' will surely soon wear thin through repetition.

Echoing the protests in Italy, in mid-November school students walked out of classes and 100,000 joined protest demonstrations in over 40 German cities. The anger at the conditions in which they work (overcrowded classes, not enough teachers, the intense pressure of exams etc) shows that the education system has not yet succeeded in preparing them to passively accept their future conditions when they will be working for wages.

Struggles across Europe

During October there was a wave of strikes in Greece. It culminated in a nationwide one-day strike that involved the public sector, transport etc, as well as hundreds of thousands of workers from the private sector. Still dominated by the unions, the demands ranged from those that directly affected workers (pay, pensions) to issues that the ruling class builds campaigns around, like privatisation and opposition to government bail-outs of the main banks. It is noteworthy that there was also a general strike of shop workers - the day after. Yet again the unions divide and rule

There was also a wave of school occupations, some 300 across Greece during October. The government challenged the occupations' legality and arrested students involved in demonstrations. Similar protests have been going on since new legislation was introduced in 2005.

In France during November there was a 4-day strike on Air France, and a national 36-hour rail strike.

During October there was a nationwide strike in Belgium affecting a number of sectors protesting over rising prices.

China is no exception

There was once foolish speculation that the Chinese economy could rescue the rest of world capitalism, or at least withstand the deepening crisis. In reality, such an export-led economy was bound to suffer when its customers started cutting back. Far from remaining aloof from the financial crisis, in mid-November "China unveiled a huge fiscal stimulus package designed to prevent its economy from slumping next year" (Financial Times 10/11/8). This involved a massive package of projects aimed at increasing domestic demand in the face of declining exports. With a value of nearly a fifth of Chinese GDP it rivals the measures introduced by states in Europe and the US.

In October the Financial Times (29/10/8) had already reported that "Signs are growing that China's economy could be cooling quicker than expected, with a string of big industrial companies announcing production cuts over the past week." This, in turn, should be put in the context of the official statistics for the first half of the year that admitted at least 67,000 factory closures. This could easily be in six-figures by the end of the year. With millions having left the country for the cities no wonder the Chinese Minister of Human Resources and Social Security said the employment situation in China is "grim."

This is the real state of the economy and there have already been extensive responses.

"China has told police to ensure stability amid the global financial crisis after thousands of people attacked police and government offices in a northwestern city in unrest triggered by a plan to resettle residents. After decades of solid economic growth, China is battling an unknown as falling demand for its products triggers factory closures, sparks protests and raises fears of popular unrest." There have already been "labour protests in the country's major export regions, where thousands of factories have closed in recent months, prompting fears the global financial crisis could stir wider popular unrest (Reuters 19/11/8)."

Today in China there are protests against rising prices and unemployment. With future job losses already forecast in their millions it is easy to see why the Chinese state is concerned about the prospects for social stability. The fact that the police are its weapon of choice shows that Chinese capitalism doesn't expect to have an economic answer to the effects of the global crisis, and will have to resort, as usual, to repression against workers' struggles. That doesn't preclude the possibility that the ruling class there will allow a certain development of ‘independent' trade unions, since the latter would be far more effective at absorbing social discontent than the official unions.

The crisis of capitalism is worldwide. But so is the response of the working class. What is needed above all is for workers to become conscious of the real dimension and significance of their struggles, because they contain the seeds of a global challenge to this tottering social order.  

Car 6/12/8

Around the end of November, a number of desperate and traumatised Congolese refugees, fleeing this way and then that from rebel forces on one side and government troops on the other, turned on the soldiers of the UN and began stoning and abusing them. The hapless troops of Monuc (their French acronym), supposed to be there to protect civilians from the conflict, are poorly paid, ill-equipped, untrained for such a mission and, if previous UN ‘peacekeeping' missions are anything to go by, some of the 17,000 troops probably don't even know where they are, let alone what they are supposed to be doing there. The killing fields of the Great Lakes region of Africa are symbolic of the ‘humanitarianism' of the ruling class and the fact that the United Nations is not just well meaning and useless, but part of the cynical murders and genocides that are more and more a feature of decomposing capitalism.

All the relief agencies in the region of the Congo agree that it's the worst conflict since World War Two: over 6 million dead, around 1500 a day dying for the last 15 years, half of them children; 1.5 million refugees and displaced; hundreds of thousands of rapes; shocking atrocities including forced cannibalism and overwhelming insecurity and stress for the great mass of the poor. If anything should engage what's called the international community, surely it's this? Don't bet on it. What the international community, i.e., each of the major powers, is engaged in is a gigantic whitewash in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the working class about their involvement in stirring up this conflict and using ethnic divisions and hatreds in the Congo; and for this the United Nations is their weapon of choice.

There's plenty of raw materials in this region to attract the various armed gangs and the major imperialist states of Britain, France, the USA, South Africa and latterly China: timber, diamonds, coltan, copper, gold and so on. But the main stakes in and around the Great Lakes of the Democratic Republic of Congo are strategic. Its size is massive and nine countries share its borders, and this is the reason why these major countries have unleashed no holds barred warfare through their direct involvement and through their respective cliques over the last fifteen years. The very gangsters that are making war are the ones that are running the United Nations and sending in their shambolic so-called peacekeeping forces as part of their imperialist rivalries.

France, Britain and the USA have been involved in fomenting this war since it began with the massacres in Rwanda (a country now backed by Britain and generally accepted to be behind the current military developments) in 1994. Since then, despite all the pious talks and the ‘never agains', various UN initiatives have only been a cover for particular imperialist attempts to move their pawns forward; for example the early 2002 initiative by South Africa was in fact dependent on the US in its rivalry with French imperialism. Similarly the recent moves by France and Britain through the UN (foreign ministers Kouchner and Miliband) are aimed at strengthening their respective countries' positions. The 3000 extra troops that both have proposed (and won't deliver) would be totally inadequate to protect civilians.

Across the globe, the UN is involved in imperialist massacres

It's not only around the Democratic Republic of Congo that the UN, with its legal cover and its ideology of humanitarianism, is designed to mystify the role of the great powers in their war of each against all. The same is true of Sudan and the ongoing horrors of Darfur. In Afghanistan the ‘humanitarianism' of the UN is a crime against humanity. Lording it up over the local populations the UN is known here as the ‘Toyota Taliban'. For two years from 1992 in ex-Yugoslavia, Germany, France, Russia, Britain and America acted under the aegis of the UN and Nato, calling for peace while defending their own imperialist interests and giving both overt and covert assistance to their local gangsters. Thus Britain and France, as UN peacekeepers, helped enforce the murderous Serbian siege of Sarajevo. The massacre of Srebrencia included the complicity of UN forces on the ground, notably Dutch troops and British SAS ‘observers'. Either could have called in an immediate air strike to prevent the massacre but didn't. The upper echelons of the UN knew what was going on but was more concerned with their own infighting and positioning of their pawns. The whole war, tripped initially by Germany, was at least a three-way fight between German, American and Russian, French and British imperialisms using their local pawns while claiming their humanitarianism and desire for peace.

The Gulf War of 1991 was similarly carried out under the sinister diplomatic farce of the authority of the UN. The "coalition" against Saddam was a façade of unity in order to fool the working class about the ‘defence of human rights' against ‘evil dictators'. This US-led display of imperialist might was designed to its assert its right to do and go wherever it pleased in a world where it was it was the only superpower. The UN itself was a battleground for unleashing the 2003 Gulf War, with the US paying only lip service to its resolutions, with Germany and France using United Nation legality in order to stymie US ‘unilateralism', and Britain stuck in the middle before eventually aligning itself (for its own imperialist interests) with the US under the guise of UN legality. The bombing of the UN's HQ in Baghdad in August 2003, which largely represented French interests, served the diplomatic and military interests of the US. And although the latter had to maintain some concern for the ‘international community', this did not stop it exposing the UN's ‘oil for food' programme as gangrened with corruption, going to the very top of the organisation and affecting the Secretary General's office.

How could an organisation representing the filth of the earth not be corrupt? The United Nations is not just useless and ineffectual but rotten to the core and an ideological weapon against the working class with its legalism and false humanitarianism. It is also a weapon for the ruling classes in their imperialist manoeuvres against their rivals. Following its nature, its forces on the ground are increasingly involved in racketeering, prostitution, drug running, sex trafficking and child abuse. Its higher level echelons are secretive and self-serving. Its appointments at this level are on a ‘who you know' basis with diplomats appointing themselves, presidents' cousins, government loyalists, spies, hacks and the like. In 1920, Lenin called the precursor to the UN, the League of Nations, "a den of thieves in which everyone is trying to grab what they can at their neighbours expense". This is even more so today. There can be no ‘United Nations' because, increasingly with the New World Order of capitalist decomposition, we are in the imperialist world of the war of each against all.   

Baboon, 29.11.08

"Through press and parliament, television and trade union apparatus, all factions of the bourgeoisie are screaming with one voice: the lorry drivers, sewerage workers, ‘public sector' employees, Leyland car workers, dockers and dustmen are endangering the health of the ailing British economy with their strikes and militant actions.

It's true!

Just like the lorry drivers in Belgium, oil workers in Iran, steelworkers in Germany, miners in America and China, or the unemployed steelworkers in the north of France, the workers in Britain are answering the onslaught of capitalism's world-wide crisis by refusing to bow down before the ‘national interest', and are instead putting their own class interests first.

We salute these ‘wreckers' of the capitalist system!" (WR 22, February 1979)

Introduction

Thirty years ago the working class in Britain launched a wave of militant strikes against crisis-ridden British capital in what became known as the ‘winter of discontent'. At its height this strike wave involved over 1.5 million workers in the largest work stoppage since the 1926 General Strike, and threatened to get out of the control of the trade unions; there was widespread use of the police as scabs and the army was put on standby.

For the British bourgeoisie, the ‘winter of discontent' has become a stark warning of what happens when ‘selfish' workers are allowed to fight for their own interests. Its propaganda about ‘the dead left unburied' and images of rubbish piled in the streets are wheeled out whenever trade unions make militant noises about pay claims.

For revolutionaries on the other hand, the ‘winter of discontent' shows very clearly that the working class can and must respond to the capitalist crisis; and that when it does, it will find itself facing not just individual employers but the full strength of the capitalist state apparatus. And above all it shows that when they wage their own struggle, the workers will confront the trade unions at all levels as an implacable enemy, forcing them to go beyond and against the unions and take control of the struggle themselves.

The ICC's section in Britain intervened actively in this strike wave, and this article draws heavily on the leaflets produced and articles appearing in World Revolution at the time.

The historical context of the ‘winter of discontent'

The winter of discontent was first and foremost part of an international wave of workers' struggles that shook the capitalist heartlands in the late 1970s. The key significance of these struggles was that they were primarily directed against the left and the unions.

After its right-wing factions proved poorly equipped to deal with the upsurge of class struggle in 1968-74, the bourgeoisie had made more and more use of its left-wing parties and of the trade unions in government, for example in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Britain, France, and West Germany. But after four years of implementing austerity measures, these left teams were becoming more and more exposed.

By the late 1970s the stakes were also getting higher for both classes. It was becoming clear to many workers that the capitalist crisis was here to stay: the bourgeoisie's economic ‘solutions' had been exposed as worthless and growing numbers of workers were refusing to go on accepting austerity measures which offered them nothing but a continual decline in living standards.

After 1974, the focus of class confrontation had shifted from the advanced centres of capital to the regions of the periphery. Throughout 1978 violent explosions of class struggle continued to occur in Tunisia, Peru, Brazil, India, and above all in Iran, but in the most decisive centres of world capital the proletariat also began to flex its muscles:

-in the USA, the militancy of a coal miners' strike inspired a rash of strikes throughout the summer on the railways, among municipal workers, papermill workers and in other sectors;

-in West Germany, strikes by printers, dockers and steelworkers shattered the Federal Republic's post-war image as a land free of social conflict;

-in Italy, the hospital sector was shaken by strikes which openly proclaimed their anti-union character;

-in France, elections were followed by a series of strikes in the car industry and among municipal workers. In Caen and Longwy demonstrating steel workers clashed violently with the police, and the unions and leftists did not hesitate in denouncing ‘irresponsible elements acting against the wishes of the unions' for daring to shatter the calm of the union-controlled demonstrations.

The resurgence of the class struggle in Britain

With less and less room for manoeuvre, economically and politically, the bourgeoisie increasingly needed to impose harsher austerity measures. Having picked off some of the weaker sectors of the working class and slashed the living standards of the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalist state had no option but to move in to attack the heart of the working class - the industrial proletariat.

In Britain, a Labour government had been working closely with the trade unions to impose austerity on the working class since 1974. Pressure was mounting from the working class for pay rises to catch up with inflation, which at its height in 1975 had reached over 26%. In an attempt to head off growing workers' anger, the TGWU union put in a claim for a 30% pay rise, and nationally the TUC took up a more militant pose against a further phase of pay limits. But the unions had lost a lot of credibility with the workers due to their collaboration with the government and their actions in isolating and undermining strikes. 

In the winter of 1978 the Labour government introduced a 5% limit on wage increases. The TUC rejected this and called for a return to ‘free collective bargaining' between unions and employers, so the unions could be given the job of policing wage cuts, agreeing productivity rises, ending restrictive practices, imposing no strike clauses and job flexibility, etc.

In September 1978, after they rejected a pay offer within the 5% limit, the Ford car workers became a test case to see how far the capitalist state could go in imposing the cuts demanded by the deepening crisis. If Labour succeeded in holding the Ford workers to the 5%, it could use this as an exemplary lesson to the rest of the class in the coming round of public sector pay claims; if the unions managed to break through the limit they would get a facelift and capital would get the money back through increased productivity ... with the whole package presented as a victory for the workers.

WR described the workers' reaction:

 "On Thursday 22 September, the toolmakers at Ford Halewood heard about the management's offer of 5% ... They packed up their tools and walked out. On Friday morning, 9,000 other Ford workers joined them; by Friday night it was 18,000 and soon after the weekend it was 57,000, following mass meetings at plants all over the country. All this with still one month to go on the last wages contract with its ‘no strike' clause." (WR 20, October 1978).

The Ford workers' action was unofficial. They were demanding a 25% pay increase and a 35 hour working week. The union ran to catch up and take control, making the strike official on 5 October. After negotiations between the union and the employers a 17% pay increase was agreed, but the shortening of hours was dropped. On the union's recommendation the workers returned to work on 22 November. 

There were also strikes at this time at other major industrial employers including Mackies, Reynalds, SU carburettors and Bathgate.

At the beginning of January 1979, fuel tanker drivers began an unofficial strike, after BP and Esso tanker drivers banned overtime in order to support a 40% pay increase.  Thousands of petrol stations were shut. Militant use of flying pickets ensured that the strike was effective, calling on other sectors of workers like the dockers to support the struggle. Picketing spread to refineries, ports, factories and even in some cases to entire towns which were ringed by determined workers. In Northern Ireland a state of emergency was declared and army called in. Again, the unions had to run to catch up. After just less than a month, with supplies transported by road brought to a virtual standstill, the drivers accepted a 20% pay deal.

In the weeks during and after the lorry drivers' strike, public sector workers, including low paid workers like gravediggers, also took strike action over pay. Several strikes of engine drivers and railway workers began, demanding 20% and a new bonus scheme. On 22 January a ‘day of action' organised by public sector unions saw mass demonstrations in many cities and 1.5 million workers out: the largest individual day's strike action since the 1926 general strike. Following the day of action many workers remained out on strike indefinitely. Some traditionally non-militant sectors of workers like the nurses and ambulance drivers also took action demanding pay increases.

By mid-February after weeks of negotiation the strikes officially came to an end with an agreement between the Labour government and the TUC. But many strikes did not end immediately and the strike wave only declined by the end of February, after a total of 29,474 million working days had been lost to strike action.

The trade unions: spearhead of the capitalist state's response

In its response to the strike wave, the bourgeoisie made selective use of repression, using the police and soldiers as scab labour, and putting the army on standby for use against the lorry drivers. Moves to strengthen anti-picketing laws were also put in hand. A relentless propaganda campaign was also orchestrated against the strikers, with all the media spreading the lie that the strikers were against the population, and against other workers, a selfish minority seeking to destroy the livelihoods of millions, and happy to watch the old and sick rot and die... As WR pointed out at the time, to create these lies, the bourgeoisie had only to describe its own attitude to society; in fact it was the capitalist state that was deliberately deflecting the effects of the strikes on to the population in order to mobilise opposition to the strikers.

But in the face of such strong militancy, it was the trade unions which acted as the spearhead against the workers' struggles. The unions had two aims: to maintain the isolation of different sectors from each other to prevent the strike wave generalising, and to curb the effects of the picketing to limit its extension. In the lorry drivers' strike, for example, regional emergency committees and patrols of union officials did their utmost to blunt the picketing.

Within the union apparatus a typical division of labour was revealed: the shop stewards were busy on the front-line trying to dampen the militancy of the strikes, while the higher echelons of the union machine attempted to tie down the struggles in a web of ‘negotiations' and agreements with the government and employers ... including a ‘code of conduct' for the class struggle! WR described how the shop stewards in particular helped to sabotage the Ford workers' action after the first spontaneous walk out:

"On the following Tuesday, the AUEW moved in to make the strike official for its 8,000 members, while the other unions dragged their feet. But although the union leadership took a bit of time to move in and take control of the situation, they had no need to worry. Their guard dogs on the shop floor - the shop stewards - had been quick off the mark. After the mass meetings called to back the walkout against the 5%, pickets were set up and everyone else went home. The whole momentum of the action was stopped like a billiard ball dropping into a pocket - the unions' pocket." (WR 20, October 1978).

The real lessons of the ‘winter of discontent'

For the British bourgeoisie, the resurgence of class struggle in 1978-79 showed the need for a new strategy that involved putting the Labour Party into opposition.

For the working class, the real lesson of the ‘winter of discontent' was that workers must spread their strikes across sectors and call on other workers to join the struggle, creating their own general assemblies and strike committees to coordinate the struggle outside of union control, including that of the shop stewards.

The defiance demonstrated by the working class in the ‘winter of discontent' amply reaffirmed the tendency towards self-consciousness and self-organisation within the proletariat's struggle. Despite a strong attachment to the trade unions as ‘their' organisations, the strike wave of 1978-9 revealed the increasing capacity of the British workers to challenge the unions' grip and take control of the struggle themselves, as shown in:

-the lorry drivers' so-called ‘secondary picketing' and their numerous refusals to acknowledge union dispensations

-the ambulance drivers' rejections of their stewards' calls to provide emergency cover

-the public sector workers' refusals to return to work after the union-organised ‘day of action'.

Above all, the strike wave in Britain in the winter of 1978-79 showed the real power of the working class to paralyse capitalism, and its potential to pose an alternative to a crisis-torn, decaying mode of production, as WR highlighted at the time:

"In the present wave of class struggle, the immense power of the working class is becoming an ever-more tangible reality. In Britain, the militancy of the lorry drivers' pickets threatened to bring the economy to a grinding halt in a few weeks: and it was the unions which saved the day for capital with their open attacks on the extension of the struggle. The frenzied response of the British bourgeoisie to these strikes was, in large measure, an expression of the real fear that the power of the working class instils in its class enemy. The present round of ‘industrial anarchy' proves beyond a doubt that only the working class has the capacity to paralyse the bourgeoisie and forestall its murderous designs." (WR 22, February 1979).

Thirty years on, while the threat of a third world war is not the same as it was in the 1970s, capitalism's ‘murderous designs' on the planet are even more apparent. And the need for the proletariat to exercise its power to paralyse capitalism is even greater. In the battles to come, the trade unions everywhere will once again be called upon to save the day for capital. The working class will need to draw the lessons of its past experience and take its struggle outside of and against the unions, and into its own hands.  

MH 26/11/8

The first article in this series (WR 319) examined the beginning of the revolution in Germany in November 1918. In this second part, we look at how the ruling class used its most powerful weapons - not only armed repression, but also the ideological campaigns of the former workers' party, the SPD, to inflict a major defeat on the revolutionary movement. 

When it made its insurrection in November 1918 the working class forced the bourgeoisie in Germany to end the war. In order to sabotage the radicalisation of the movement and prevent a repeat of the ‘Russian events' the capitalist class used the SPD within the struggles as a spearhead against the working class. Thanks to a particularly effective policy of sabotage the SPD, with the help of the unions, did all it could to sap the strength of the workers' councils.

In the face of the explosive develop­ment of the movement with soldiers' mutinying everywhere and going over to the side of the insurrectionary workers, the bourgeoisie could not possibly envis­age an immediate policy of repression. It had first to act politically against the working class and then go on to obtain a military victory.

However the preparations for military action were made from the very begin­ning. It was not the right wing parties of the bourgeoisie which organised this re­pression but rather the one that still passed for ‘the great Party of the proletariat', the SPD, and it did so in tight collabora­tion with the army. It was these famous democrats who went into action as capitalism's last line of defence. They were the ones who turned out to be the most effective rampart of capital. The SPD began by systematically setting up commando units as the companies of regular troops infected by the ‘virus of the workers' struggles' were less and less inclined to follow the bourgeois govern­ment. These companies of volunteers, privileged with special pay, would act as auxiliaries for the repression.

The military provocations of 6 & 24 December 1918

Just one month after the start of the struggles the SPD ordered the police to enter by force the offices of Spartakus' newspaper, Die Rote Fahne. Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and other Spartakists, but also members of the Berlin Executive Council, were arrested. At the same time troops loyal to the government attacked a demonstration of soldiers who had been demobilised or had deserted; fourteen demonstrators were killed. In response several factories went on strike on 7 December; general assemblies were held everywhere in the factories. For the first time on 8 December there was a demonstration of workers and armed soldiers in which more that 150,000 participated. In the towns of the Ruhr, like Mülheim, workers and soldiers arrested some industrialists.

Confronted with these provocations from the government, the revolutionaries did not push for an immediate insurrec­tion but called for the massive mobilisa­tion of the workers. The Spartakists made the analysis that the conditions were not yet ripe for the overthrow of the bour­geois government, particularly in so far as the capacities of the working class were concerned.

The national Congress of the councils that took place in the middle of December 1918 showed that this was in fact the case and the bourgeoisie profited from the situation. The delegates to this Congress decided to submit their deci­sions to a National Assembly that was to be elected. At the same time a Central Council (Zentralrat) was set up that was composed exclusively of members of the SPD who pretended to speak in the name of the workers' councils and the soldiers in Germany. The bourgeoisie realised that they could use this political weakness of the working class by unleashing an­other military provocation following the Congress: on 24 December the com­mando units and the governmental troop went onto the offensive. Eleven sailors and several soldiers were killed. Once more there was great indignation among the workers. Those of the Daimler mo­tor company and several other Berlin factories formed a Red Guard. On 25 December powerful demonstrations took place in response to this attack. The government was forced to retreat. Now that the governing team was being in­creasingly discredited, the USPD, which up to then had participated in it along with the SPD, withdrew.

The bourgeoisie did not give way how­ever. It continued to push for the disarmament of the proletariat which was still armed in Berlin and it made preparations to deliver it up to the decisive blow.

The SPD calls for death to the Communists

In order to set the population against the class movement, the SPD became the mouthpiece of a powerful campaign of slander against the revolutionaries and even went so far as to call for death to the Spartakists in particular.

At the end of December the Spartakus group left the USPD and joined with the IKD to form the KPD. And so the working class possessed a Communist Party that was born in the heat of the movement and which was the target of attacks from the SPD, the main defender of capital.

For the KPD the activity of as large a number as possible of the working masses was indispensable if this tactic of capital was to be opposed. "After the initial phase of the revolution, that of the essen­tially political struggle, there opens up a phase of strengthened, intensified and mainly economic struggle." (Rosa Luxemburg at the founding Congress of the KPD). The SPD government "won't approach the lively flames of the eco­nomic class struggle"(ibid). That is why capital, with the SPD at its head, did all it could to prevent any extension of the struggles on this terrain by provoking premature armed uprisings of the work­ers and then repressing them. They needed to weaken the movement at its centre, Berlin, in the early days in order to then go on to attack the rest of the working class.

The trap of the premature insurrection in Berlin

In January the bourgeoisie reorganised its troops stationed in Berlin. In all they had more than 80,000 soldiers throughout the City, of which 10,000 were storm troops. At the beginning of the month they launched another provocation against the workers in order to disperse them militarily. On 4 January the prefect of police in Berlin, Eichhorn, who had been nominated by the workers in November, was relieved of his functions by the bourgeois government. This was seen as an attack by the working class. In the evening of 4 January the Revolutionäre Obleute held a meeting which Liebknecht and Pieck attended in the name of the newly formed KPD.

The KPD, Revolutionäre Obleute and USPD called for a protest gathering for Sunday 5 January. About 150,000 work­ers attended following a demonstration in front of the prefecture of police. On the evening of 5 January some of the dem­onstrators occupied the offices of the SPD paper, Vorwärts, and other pub­lishing houses. These actions were prob­ably incited by agents provocateurs, at any rate they took place without the knowledge or approval of the committee.

But the conditions were not ripe for overthrowing the government and the KPD made this clear in a leaflet put out at the beginning of January:

"If the Berlin workers dissolve the National Assembly today, if they throw the Ebert-Scheidemanns in prison while the workers of the Ruhr, Upper Silesia and the agricultural workers on the lands east of the Elba remain calm, tomorrow the capitalists will be able to starve out Berlin. The offensive of the working class against the bourgeoisie, the battle for the workers' and soldiers' councils to take power must be the work of all working people throughout the Reich. Only the struggle of the workers of town and country, everywhere and permanently, accelerating and growing until it becomes a powerful wave that spreads resound­ingly over the whole of Germany, only a wave initiated by the victims of exploita­tion and oppression and covering the whole country can explode the capitalist government, disperse the National As­sembly and build on the ruins the power of the working class which will lead the proletariat to complete victory in the ultimate struggle against the bourgeoisie. (...)

Workers, male and female, soldiers and sailors! Call assemblies everywhere and make it clear to the masses that the National Assembly is a bluff. In every workshop, in every military unit, in every town take a look at and check whether your workers' and soldiers' council has really been elected, whether it doesn't contain representatives of the capitalist system, traitors to the working class such as Scheidemann's men, or inconsistent and oscillating elements such as the Inde­pendents." It follows from this analy­sis that the KPD saw clearly that the overthrow of the capitalist class was not yet immediately possible and that the insurrection wasn't yet on the agenda.

After the huge mass demonstration on 5 January another meeting of the Obleute was held the same evening, at­tended by delegates from the KPD and the USPD as well as representatives of the garrison troops. Carried away by the powerful demonstration that day, those present elected a Revolutionary Committee of 52 members led by Ledebour as president, Scholze for the Revolutionäre Obleute and Karl Liebknecht for the KPD. They decided on a general strike and another demonstra­tion for the following day, 6 January.

The Revolutionary Committee distributed a leaflet calling for insurrection: "Fight for the power of the revo­lutionary proletariat! Down with the Ebert-Scheidemann government!"

Soldiers came to declare their solidar­ity with the Revolutionary Committee. A delega­tion of soldiers declared that they would take the side of the revolution as soon as the bankruptcy of the current Ebert-Scheidemann government was declared. At that, Liebknecht for the KPD, Scholze for the Obleute signed a decree declaring that it was bankrupt and that government affairs would be taken in hand by the Revolutionary Com­mittee. On 6 January about 500,000 people demonstrated in the street. Dem­onstrations and gatherings took place in every sector of the city; the workers of Greater Berlin demanded their weapons back. The KPD demanded the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the counter-revolutionaries. Although the Revolutionary Committee had produced the slo­gan "Down with the government" it took no serious initiative to carry out this orientation. In the factories no combat troops were organised, no attempt was made to take the affairs of the state in hand and paralyse the old govern­ment. Not only did the Revolutionary Committee have no plan of action but on the 6 January the navy forced it to leave its headquarters.

The mass of demonstrating workers awaited directions in the streets while their leaders were disabled. Although the proletarian leadership held back, hesi­tated, had no plan of action, the SPD-led government for its part rapidly got over the shock caused by this initial workers' offensive. Help came to rally round it on all sides. The SPD called for strikes and supporting demonstrations in favour of the government. A bitter and perfidious campaign was launched against the com­munists.

The SPD and its accomplices were thus preparing to massacre the revolu­tionaries of the KPD in the name of the revolution and the proletariat's interests. With the basest duplicity, it called on councils to stand behind the government in acting against what it called "armed gangs". The SPD even supplied a mili­tary section, which received weapons from the barracks, and Noske was placed at the head of the forces of repression with the words: "We need a bloodhound, I will not draw back from such a responsibil­ity."

By 6 January, isolated skirmishes were taking place. While the government massed its troops around Berlin, on the evening of the 6th the Executive of the Berlin councils was in session. Domi­nated by the SPD and the USPD, it proposed that there should be nego­tiations between the Revolutionäre Obleute and the government, for whose overthrow the Revolutionary Com­mittee had just been calling. The Execu­tive played the ‘conciliator', by propos­ing to reconcile the irreconcilable. This attitude confused the workers, and espe­cially the soldiers who were already hesi­tant. The sailors thus decided to adopt a policy of ‘neutrality'. In a situation of direct class confrontation, any indecision can rapidly lead the working class to lose confidence in its own capacities, and to adopt a suspicious attitude towards its own political organisations. By playing this card, the SPD helped to weaken the proletariat dramatically. At the same time, it used agents provocateurs (as was proven later) to push the workers into a confron­tation.

Faced with this situation, the KPD leadership, unlike the Revolutionary Committee, had a very clear posi­tion: based on the analysis of the situation made at its founding Congress, it consid­ered the insurrection to be premature.

The KPD thus called on the work­ers first and foremost to strengthen the councils by developing the struggle on their own class terrain, in the factories, and by getting rid of Ebert, Scheidemann, and Co. By intensifying their pressure through the councils, they could give the movement a new impetus, and then launch into the battle for the seizure of political power.

On the same day, Luxemburg and Jogiches violently criticised the slogan of immediate overthrow of the govern­ment put forward by the Revolutionary Committee, but also and above all the fact that the latter had shown itself, by its hesitant and even capitulationist attitude, incapable of directing the class movement. In particu­lar, they reproached Liebknecht for act­ing on his own authority, letting himself be carried away by his enthusiasm and impatience, instead of referring to the Party leadership, and basing himself on the KPD's programme and analyses.

This situation shows that it was neither the programme nor the political analysis that were lacking, but the Party's ability as an organisation, to fulfil its role as the proletariat's political leadership. Founded only a few days before, the KPD had not the influence in the class, much less the solidity and organisational cohesion of the Bolshevik party one year earlier in Russia. The Communist Party's immaturity in Germany was at the heart of the dispersal in its ranks, which was to weigh heavily and dramatically in the events that followed.

In the night of 8/9 January, the government troops went on the attack. The Revolutionary Committee, which had still not correctly analysed the balance of forces, called for action against the government: "General strike! To arms! There is no choice! We must fight to the last man!" Many workers answered the call but once again they waited in vain for precise instructions from the Committee. In fact, nothing was done to organise the masses, to push for fraternisation between the revolutionary workers and the troops... And so the government's troops entered Berlin, and for several days engaged in violent street fighting with armed workers. Many were killed or wounded in scattered confrontations in different parts of the city. On 13 January, the USPD declared the general strike at an end, and on 15 January Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were assassinated by the thugs of the Social-Democrat regime! The SPD's criminal campaign "Kill Liebknecht!" thus ended in a success for the bourgeoisie. The KPD was deprived of its most important leaders

The KPD did not have the strength to hold the movement back, as the Bolsheviks had done in July 1917. In the words of Ernst, the new Social-Democratic chief of police who replaced the ousted Eichhorn: "Any success for the Spartakus people was out of the question from the start, since by our preparation we had forced them to strike prematurely. Their cards were uncovered sooner they wished, and that is why we were able to combat them".

Following this military success, the bourgeoisie immediately understood that it should build on its advantage. It launched a bloody wave of repression in which thousands of Berlin workers and commu­nists were assassinated, tortured, and thrown into prison. The murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were no ex­ception, but revealed the bourgeoisie's vile determination to eliminate its mortal en­emies: the revolutionaries.

On 19th January, ‘democracy' tri­umphed: elections were held for the Na­tional Assembly. Under the pressure of the workers' struggles, the government in the meantime had transferred its sittings to Weimar. The Weimar Republic was established on the corpses of thou­sands of workers.

Insurrection is based on the revolutionary élan of the masses

At its founding Congress, the KPD held that the class was not yet ripe for insurrection. After the movement initially dominated by the soldiers, a new impetus based on the factories, mass assemblies, and demonstrations was vital. This was a precondition for the class to gain, through its movement, greater strength and greater self-confidence. It was a condition for the revolution to be more than the affair of just a minority, or of a few desperate or impatient elements, but based on the revolutionary élan of the great majority of workers.

Moreover, in January the workers' councils did not exercise a real dual power, in that the SPD had succeeded in sabotaging them from within. As we showed in WR 319, the coun­cils' National Congress held in mid-De­cember had been a victory for the bour­geoisie, and unfortunately nothing new had come to stimulate the councils since then. The KPD's appreciation of the class movement and the balance of forces was perfectly lucid and realistic.

Some think that it is the party that takes power. But then, we would have to ex­plain how a revolutionary organisation, no matter how strong, could do so when the great majority of the working class has not yet sufficiently developed its class consciousness, is hesitant and oscillating, and has not yet been able to create work­ers' councils with enough strength to oppose the bourgeois regime. Such a position completely misunderstands the fundamental characteristics of the prole­tarian revolution, and of the insurrection, which Lenin was the first to point out: "the insurrection must be based, not on a plot, not on a party, but on the vanguard class". Even in October 1917, the Bol­sheviks were particularly concerned that it should be the Petrograd Soviet that took power, not the Bolshevik Party.

The proletarian insurrection cannot be ‘decreed from on high'. On the contrary, it is a conscious action of the masses, which must first develop their initiative, and achieve a mastery of their own strug­gles. Only on this basis will the directives and orientations given by the councils and the party be followed.

The proletarian insurrection cannot be a putsch, as the bourgeois ideologues try to make us believe. It is the work of the entire working class. To shake off capi­talism's yoke, the will of a few, even the class's clearest and most determined ele­ments, is not enough: "the insurgent pro­letariat can only count on its numbers, its cohesion, its cadres, and its general staff' (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolu­tion, "The Art of Insurrection").

In January, the working class in Ger­many had not yet reached this level of maturity. (To be continued)

(This is a shortened version of an article published in International Review 83, 1995)

The article published in WR320 is section A of the Report on the British situation fo the 18th WR congress. The whole of this report (which also covers the class struggle, British imperialism and the political problems of the British ruling class) can be found here in ICC Online [12] .

The horrific attacks on people in Mumbai, at a hospital, in a café and hotels, at a Jewish centre, and at random bystanders in a railway station, was soon headlined "India's 9/11" across the world.

Since the USA used the 9/11 atrocities to justify its own military barbarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, this comparison had a definite significance: it contains the implicit threat that India's status as ‘victim' would be used to justify putting pressure on, or even renewing conflict with, Pakistan. Not only had the US already warned India of potential attacks, but Indian intelligence had, on a number of occasions, in its own right, advised of the possibility of attacks on Mumbai. There has been the suggestion that the Indian state let the attacks go ahead in order to justify future aggression - which also bears comparison to the US state's behaviour in September 2001.

On the other hand, if it's looking for pretexts for war, the Indian state can already point to a number of other bomb attacks on a number of Indian cities in the last six months, including New Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Guwahati; and, so far this year, more than 400 have died from such attacks. Terrorism in Mumbai is therefore just the latest, if most dramatic, expression of a conflict between India and Pakistan that has continued, in one form or another, since before independence from Britain. In particular India and Pakistan fought over Kashmir in 1947, 1965, 1971 and, again, following Indian air attacks on Muslim insurgents in May 1999. After the latter there were continuing incidents for some years, including the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 in which 14 people died. This led to the 2002 mobilisation of the armed forces of both nuclear powers to face each other at their frontier, on the brink of all-out war.

The conflict has not only been undertaken by the ‘official' armed forces of each country but also by terrorist groups often set up by the secret services of each state. In particular the ISI (the Pakistan secret services) set up Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed initially to operate in Kashmir; and, although the Pakistani state formally outlawed these groups in 2002, they still act in a way that is approved by important factions of the Pakistani ruling class. It was not surprising that the Indian state (and the world's media) accused these groups of responsibility for the Mumbai attacks. Whoever was responsible for the attacks was definitely acting in continuity with the history of brutality and barbarity that has marked the conflict.

The United States is not a disinterested party to events. One of Barack Obama's foreign policy priorities (in continuity with Bush and Defense Secretary Gates, whom Obama is retaining) is the offensive against forces fighting in Afghanistan that are based in Pakistan. Needing Pakistan's assistance in the ‘war against terror', Washington doesn't want Pakistani forces abandoning their current positions to go to the Kashmir border. Anything that worsens relations between Pakistan and India undermines US strategy in the area. It's also difficult for the US to hold India back, as the Indian ruling class can point out that the US itself has hardly been restrained with its attacks on al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Some commentators have suggested that India will not attack Pakistan as it would strengthen the position of the army within that very brittle state, and that there is at least some possibility of dialogue with the Pakistani ruling class in its current configuration. Others have insisted that all-out imperialist conflict is inevitable, sooner or later, and that things are already out of the control of Indian and Pakistani policy-makers.

One thing that is certain is the danger inherent in the situation. Both countries have nuclear weapons. Both have armed forces that are already mobilised, not only for Kashmir: Pakistan fighting in its North-West and in Balochistan, and India in Nagaland and in a number of states against the Naxalite insurgency. Most importantly, both countries have links with more powerful imperialisms: India in a developing alliance with the US and Pakistan with a long-standing anti-Indian understanding with China.

Maybe, at this stage, India and Pakistan, with the US lurking in the background, will be able to contain the impulse toward open military conflict, but the imperialist drive to war is fundamental to capitalism, and, in this instance, potentially threatens to convulse one of the most populous regions in the world. The attacks in Mumbai were dreadful enough, the potential massacre that capitalism has in store when it unleashes its full armoury of destruction confirms it as a system of social organisation which ultimately has only oblivion to offer humanity. 

Car 5/12/8

From a working class point of view denouncing the terrorist attacks on people in Mumbai and the repression of the Indian state is the absolute ABC of class politics. Our comrades in India (Communist Internationalist, statement here in ICC Online [19] ) have not only done that but also insisted that the working class can not "take sides in intensifying conflict between the Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisie". To oppose the division of the working class and reject support for any imperialism is a fundamental responsibility for revolutionaries.

In contrast to this internationalist approach the Socialist Workers Party has made it very clear which side of the Indo-Pakistan conflict it supports.

In a "Statement on Mumbai attacks" (27/11/8, online only) it says its "appalled" by the attacks and "offers its condolences to the families of all those who have been killed or injured". But it doesn't have a word to say against the killers or whoever might be behind them. It focuses exclusively on "the actions of the Indian state", in particular "its vicious repression in Kashmir" ("Indian armed forces have been pounding the disputed territory of Kashmir with mortars, shells and missiles for decades") and "its support for the US-led ‘war on terror'".

The fact that one imperialist nuclear power, India, confronts another, Pakistan, is ignored. So although "India and Pakistan have been to war four times since 1947" ("War threats will only fuel terror" (2/12/8)) the SWP can't bring itself to mention the extent of Pakistani military activity, its victims and its imperialist allies (which include the US in some contexts). In a country where divisions of caste, class, religion and ethnicity are among the most complex in the world, it chooses "the widespread discrimination against Muslims in India" as key to the situation. It uses this to justify ‘Islamic' terrorism even though of the "factors [that] could have motivated the terror attacks in Mumbai" the most likely is "the longstanding conflict between India and Pakistan over the state of Kashmir."

While it takes sides in imperialist and religious conflicts it has the cheek to say:  "Mumbai has seen terrible carnage over decades as politicians manipulate religious and ethnic divisions for their own ends. The hope must be that the city's working class will be strong enough to resist any attempt to repeat the cycle of violence."

Politicians do manipulate religious and ethnic divisions. The example of the SWP comes to mind. It says the "escalation of war in the region will increase the grievances that led to the carnage in Mumbai and make further terror attacks more likely." So, when there's an "escalation of war", presumably, in the SWP's view, caused by Indian imperialism, then it's to be expected that Pakistani imperialism (in whatever form, official or illegal, nuclear or terrorist) will have "grievances".

Hopefully the working class will be strong enough to resist leftists who try to sell them ideas of a ‘lesser evil.' According to the SWP ("What's behind the Mumbai attacks?" (2/12/8)) the "story of the workers' movement in India is full of examples of Hindus and Muslims uniting against their bosses, the government and Hindu chauvinist gangs." Why only "Hindu chauvinist gangs"? Is this the only other force that workers will come up against apart from the bosses and the government? Muslim workers, for example, face constant propaganda that they should not see themselves as workers but as Muslims, with a loyalty to Muslim states and those military forces who say they are fighting a holy war in defence of Islam. It's unlikely that Muslim workers will have illusions in the "Hindu chauvinist gangs" that savagely attack them. However, illusions in sacrificing yourself for an Islamic jihad are all too common among such workers.

The SWP is one of the main elements in the Stop The War Campaign. Yet far from wanting to stop wars it finds a side to support in every conflict. In the 1960s and 70s it supported North Vietnam, as backed by Russian imperialism, against South Vietnam backed by the US. In the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s it supported Iran. During Israel's battles with Hezbollah in the Lebanon in 2006 it handed out placards proclaiming ‘we are all Hezbollah'. Today it is preparing to justify critical support for Pakistan or its ‘Mujahidin' in any future imperialist conflict with India.

The SWP has been working hard to recruit among disaffected Muslim youth through front groups like Respect and Stop the War. In reality, it is only providing a ‘left' cover for a much bigger recruitment drive - the one waged by capitalist states in their incessant imperialist rivalries.    

Car 4/12/8