The International Monetary Fund, in its 2009 World Economic Outlook, expects continuing decline in all the most advanced economies.

It does predict growth in countries such as India and China, but, overall, in the words of its chief economist, "We now expect the global economy to come to a virtual halt." Declaring that the outlook is worse than at any time since the Second World War can seem rather abstract. The International Labour Organisation (a UN agency) is very concrete in its latest forecasts. Last October it forecast that 22 million jobs would be lost worldwide in 2009. In January it revised that figure, saying that globally as many as 51 million workers could lose their jobs this year. It's a simple calculation to work out that means, on average, nearly a million people every week finding themselves out of work.

There are no exceptions. In the US nearly 600,000 lost their jobs in January. That's 2 million in the last 3 months, 4 million in the last year. In China, during the last year, 15.3% of their 130 million migrant workers left the coastal manufacturing areas to return to rural homes. To that figure of 20 million should be added all the workers who have stayed in the cities to search for work. The Chinese ruling class continues to warn of the possibility of social unrest, and recently has added the danger of ‘violence' as another potential outcome of the economic situation.

No workers' job is safe; and even when they have work, wages are being cut and working conditions worsened.

But workers around the world are showing their unwillingness to accept these attacks: there are daily strikes and demonstrations in China; at the end of January 2.5 million workers in France struck in protest about unemployment; students and young workers in Italy, France, Germany and above all Greece have been out on the streets demonstrating their rage against a society which offers them no future. The anger expressed by the wildcat strikes in Britain's refineries and power stations is not specific to the UK but part of an international response to the deepening economic disaster.

The ruling class knows perfectly well that the working class has not been passive in response to the attacks brought about by the economic crisis. As the Daily Telegraph (23/1/9) put it: "Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece and Iceland have all faced social unrest and rioting as unemployment soars and as many European countries have been forced to impose severe cuts to government spending. A senior EU source has told The Daily Telegraph that a March summit of European leaders will examine the increasing unrest as unemployment rises across Europe and cuts to social programmes bite."

The news that our exploiters are co-ordinating their response to our struggles is an important reminder that, whatever the immediate causes of our combats, we have to organise and extend our struggles, drawing in other workers, discussing the means and the goals of our struggle, if we are going to create a power capable of confronting capitalism and all its forces.

WR 7/2/9

The wave of unofficial strikes sparked by the struggle of construction and maintenance workers at the Lindsey refinery has been one of the most important workers' struggles in Britain in the last 20 years.

Thousands of construction workers on other refinery and power station sites walked out in solidarity. Mass meetings were organised and held on a regular basis. Unemployed construction, steel, dock and other workers joined the pickets and demonstrations outside various power stations and refineries. Workers were not in the least bothered about the illegal nature of their actions as they expressed their solidarity for striking comrades, their anger at the rising tide of unemployment and at the government's inability to do anything about it. When 200 Polish construction workers joined the struggle, it reached its highest moment by directly challenging the nationalism that had surrounded the movement at the beginning.

The laying off of 300 sub-contracted workers on the Lindsey oil refinery site, the proposal that another subcontractor be hired using 300 Italian and Portuguese workers (whose labour came cheaper because their conditions were inferior), and the announcement that no workers from Britain would be used on this contract ignited a powder keg of discontent amongst construction workers. For years there has been an increasing use of contract construction workers from abroad, usually on lower wages and worse conditions, with the direct result of accentuating competition between workers for jobs, driving down all workers' wages and conditions. This, combined with the wave of lay-offs in the construction industry and elsewhere due to the recession, generated the profound militancy that found expression in these struggles.

From the beginning this movement was faced with a fundamental question, not only for the strikers involved today but for the whole working class now and in the future: is it possible to fight against unemployment and other attacks by identifying ourselves as ‘British workers' and turning against ‘foreign workers', or do we need to see ourselves as workers with common interests with all other workers, no matter where they come from? This a profoundly political question and one which this movement had to address.

From the beginning the struggle appeared to be dominated by nationalism. There were pictures on the news of workers with home-made banners proclaiming "British Jobs for British Workers" and more professional union banners emblazoned with the same slogan. Union officials were more or less openly defending the slogan; the media talked about a struggle against foreign workers and found workers who shared this opinion. This movement of wildcat strikes could potentially have become swamped in nationalism and turned into a defeat for the working class, with worker pitted against worker, with workers en masse defending nationalist rallying cries and calling for the jobs to be given to ‘British' workers with the Italian and Portuguese workers losing their jobs. The ability of the entire working class to struggle would have been weakened and the ability of the ruling class to attack and divide the class strengthened.

The media coverage (and what some of the workers were saying) made it easy to believe that the demands of the Lindsey workers were "British Jobs for British Workers". They weren't. The demands discussed and voted on by a mass meeting did not have this slogan or hostility towards foreign workers in them. Funny how the media missed this! They expressed illusions in the unions' ability to stop the bosses playing worker off against worker, but not overt nationalism. The general impression created by the media however was one of the strikers being against foreign workers.

The persistent weight of nationalism

Nationalism is integral to capitalist ideology. Each national capitalist class can only survive by competing with their rivals economically and militarily. Their culture, media, education, their entertainment and sports industries, spread this poison all the time in order to try and tie the working class to the nation. The working class cannot escape being affected by this ideology. But what is crucially important about this movement is that it saw the weight of nationalism being challenged as workers grappled with the question in the struggle to defend their basic material interests.

The nationalist slogan "British Jobs for British Workers", stolen from the British National Party by Gordon Brown, generated a lot of unease amongst the strikers and the class. Many strikers made it clear that they were not racists nor did they support the BNP, whose attempts to intervene in the struggle led to them being largely chased away by the workers.

Besides rejecting the BNP many workers interviewed on the television were obviously trying to think about what their struggle meant. They were not against foreign workers, they had worked abroad themselves, but they were unemployed or they wanted their children to have work so they felt jobs should go to ‘British' workers first. Such views still end up seeing ‘British' and ‘foreign' workers as not having a common interest and is thus a prisoner to nationalism, but they were a clear sign that a process of reflection was taking place.

On the other hand, other workers definitely underlined the common interests between workers and said that all they wanted was the chance for all workers to find work. "I was laid off as a stevedore two weeks ago. I've worked in Cardiff and Barry Docks for 11 years and I've come here today hoping that we can shake the government up. I think the whole country should go on strike as we're losing all British industry. But I've got nothing against foreign workers. I can't blame them for going where the work is." (Guardian On-line 20/1/2009).There were also workers who argued that nationalism was a real danger. A worker employed abroad warned, on a construction workers' webforum, about the bosses using national divisions "The corporate media that have stirred up the nationalist elements will then turn on you, showing the demonstrators in the worst light possible. Game over. The last thing the bosses and the government want is for British workers to unite with workers from overseas. They think they can keep fooling us into fighting each other over jobs. It will send a shiver up their spineless backs when we don't"; and in another post he linked the struggle to those in France and Greece and the need for international links : "The massive protests in France and Greece are just a precursor for what is to come. Ever thought of contacting and building links with those workers and strengthening a Europe wide protest against workers getting the shaft? Sounds like a better option than having the real guilty parties, that cabal of bosses, union leadership sell-outs, and New Labour continuing to take advantage of the working class" (Thebearfacts.org). Workers from other sectors also intervened on this forum to oppose nationalist slogans.

The discussion amongst those involved in the strike, and within the class in general, over the question of the nationalist slogans reached a new phase on 3 February when 200 workers from Poland joined 400 other workers in a wildcat strike in support of the Lindsey workers, at Langage power station construction site in Plymouth. The media did their best to hide this act of international solidarity: the local BBC TV did not mention this and nationally it was hardly mentioned at all.

The solidarity of these Polish workers was particularly important because last year they had been involved in a similar struggle. 18 workers were laid off and other workers walked out in solidarity, including the Polish workers. The union tried to make it a struggle against the presence of foreign labour, but the presence of the striking Polish workers completely undermined this.

The Langage workers thus launched this new struggle with some awareness of how the unions had used nationalism to try and divide workers. The day after they walked out a handmade banner appeared at the Lindsey mass meeting proclaiming "Langage Power Station - Polish Workers Join Strike: Solidarity", which would imply either that one or more Polish workers had made the 7 hour journey to get there, or that a worker from Lindsey wanted to highlight their action.

At the same time a banner appeared at the Lindsey picket calling on the Italian workers to join the strike - it was written in English and Italian - and it was reported that some workers were carrying posters proclaiming "Workers of the world unite!" (Guardian 5/2/9). In short we were seeing the beginnings of a conscious effort by some workers to put forward a genuine proletarian internationalism, a step which can only lead to even more reflection and discussion within the class.

All this posed the question of the struggle going onto a new level, one which would directly challenge the campaign to present it as a nationalist backlash. The example of the Polish workers conjured up the prospect of thousands of other workers from abroad joining the struggle on the biggest construction sites in Britain, such as the Olympic sites in East London. There was also the danger that the media would not be able to hide the internationalist slogans. This would have broken through the nationalist barrier the bourgeoisie had tried to set up between the struggling workers and the rest of the class. It is no surprise that the struggle was so rapidly resolved. In the course of 24 hours the unions, bosses and government went from saying it would take days if not weeks to resolve the strike, to settling it with the promise of an extra 102 jobs that "British" workers could apply for. This was a settlement most of the strikers appeared to be happy with because it did not mean any job losses for the Italian and Portuguese workers, but as one striker said, "why should we have to struggle just to get work?"

In the course of a week we saw the most widespread wildcat strikes in decades, workers holding mass meetings and taking illegal solidarity action without a moment's hesitation. A struggle that could have been drowned in nationalism began to call this poison into question. That does not mean that the danger of nationalism has gone: it is a permanent danger, but this movement has provided future struggles with important lessons to draw on. The sight of the banners proclaiming "Workers of the world unite" on a supposedly nationalist picket line can only worry the ruling class about what is to come.  

Phil 7/2/9

This part of our series on the German Revolution of 1918-19 takes up the events of the mass strike which began to engulf the whole of Germany before, during and above all after the bloody and tragic events of the so-called ‘Spartakus Week' at the beginning of January 1919 in Berlin. The latter defeat in the capital squandered the potential for the unification of the revolutionary forces which these mass strikes revealed. Thus, the decapitation of the movement in Berlin, including the murdering of revolutionary leaders such as Luxemburg and Liebknecht, proved to be the fatal turning point towards defeat.

Revolutionary mass strike, January-March 1919.

In a famous article published in the Rote Fahne November 27 1918 entitled "The Acheron in Motion" Rosa Luxemburg announced the beginning of a new phase in the revolution: that of the mass strike. This was soon confirmed in a resounding manner. The material situation of the population did not improve with the end of the war. The contrary was the case. Inflation, redundancies and mass unemployment, short term work and falling real wages created new misery for millions of workers and state functionaries, but also for large layers of the middle classes. Increasingly, material misery, but also bitter disappointment with the results of the November Revolution, obliged the masses to defend themselves. Their empty stomachs were a powerful argument against the alleged benefits of the new bourgeois democracy. Successive strike waves rolled across the country above all in the first quarter of 1919. Far beyond the traditional centres of the organised socialist movement like Berlin, the coastal ports or the concentrations of the engineering and high technology sectors, politically less experienced parts of the proletariat were swept into the revolutionary process. These included what Rosa Luxemburg in her Mass Strike pamphlet of 1906 had called the "helot layers" These were particularly downtrodden sectors of the class, who had hardly benefited from socialist education, and who as such were often looked down on by pre-war Social Democratic and trade unions functionaries. Rosa Luxemburg had predicted that they would play a leading role in a future struggle for socialism.

And now, there they were. For instance the millions of miners, metal and textile workers in the industrial districts of the lower Rhine and Westphalia. There, the defensive workers' struggles were immediately confronted with a brutal alliance of the employers and their armed factory guards, the trade unions and the Freikorps. Out of these first confrontations crystallised two main demands of the strike movement, formulated at a conference of delegates from the whole region at the beginning of February in Essen: all power to the workers' and soldiers' councils! Socialisation of the factories and mines!

The situation escalated when the military tried to disarm and dismantle the solders' councils, sending 30.000 Freikorps to occupy the Ruhr. On February 14 the workers' and soldiers' councils called for a general strike and armed resistance. The determination of the mobilisation of the workers was in some areas so great that the white mercenary army did not even dare to attack. The indignation against the SPD, which openly supported the military and denounced the strike, was indescribable. To such an extent that on February 25 the councils - supported by the Communist delegates - decided to end the strike.  Unfortunately at just that very moment it was beginning in central Germany! The leadership was afraid that the workers would flood the mines or attack Social Democratic workers.[1] In fact, the workers demonstrated a high degree of discipline, with a large minority respecting the call to return to work -although not agreeing with it.

A second, gigantic mass strike broke out towards the end of March, lasting several weeks despite the repression of the Freikorps.

"It soon became clear that the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union leaders had lost their influence over the masses. The power of the revolutionary movement of the months of February and March did not lie in the possession and use of military arms, but in the possibility of taking away the economic foundation of the bourgeois-socialist government through paralysing the most important areas of production (...) The enormous military mobilisation, the arming of the bourgeoisie, the brutality of the military, could not break this power, could not force the striking workers back to work."[2]

The second great centre of the mass strike was the region known as central Germany (Mitteldeutschland). There, the strike movement exploded in mid-February, not only in response to pauperisation and repression, but also in solidarity with the victims of repression in Berlin and with the strikes on the Rhine and Ruhr. As in the latter region, the movement drew its strength from being led by the workers' and soldiers' councils, where the Social Democrats were fast losing influence.

But whereas in the Ruhr area the employees in heavy industry dominated, here the movement engulfed not only miners, but almost every profession and branch of industry. For the first time since the beginning of the revolution, the railway workers joined in. This was of particular significance. One of the first measures of the Ebert government at the end of the war was to substantially increase wages on the railways. The bourgeoisie needed to ‘neutralise' this sector in order to be able to move its counter-revolutionary brigades from one end of Germany to the other. Now, for the first time, this possibility was put in question.

"Enraged to the point of madness"

No less significant was that the soldiers in the garrisons came out in support of the strikers. The National Assembly, which had fled from the Berlin workers, went to Weimar to hold its constitutive parliamentary session. It arrived in a midst of acute class struggle and a hostile soldiery, having to meet behind an artillery and machine gun barrier.

The selective occupation of cities by Freikorps provoked street fighting in Halle, Merseburg and Zeitz, explosions of the masses "enraged to the point of madness" as Richard Müller put it. As on the Ruhr, these military actions were unable to break the strike movement.

The call of the factory delegates for a general strike on February 24 was to reveal another enormously significant development. It was supported unanimously by all the delegates, including those from the SPD. In other words: Social Democracy was losing its control even over its own membership.

"From the very onset the strike spread to a maximum degree. A further intensification was not possible, unless through an armed insurrection, which the strikers rejected, and which appeared pointless. The only way to make the strike more effective would be through the workers in Berlin." (Müller, ibid. p146).

It was thus that the workers summoned the proletariat of Berlin to join, indeed to lead the movement which was flaming in central Germany and on Rhine and Ruhr.

And the workers of Berlin responded, as best they could, despite the defeat they had just suffered. There, the centre of gravity had been transformed from the streets to the mass assemblies. The debates which took place in the plants, offices and barracks produced a continuous shrinking of the influence of the SPD and the number of its delegates  in the workers councils. The attempts of Noske's Party to disarm the soldiers and liquidate their organisations only accelerated this process. A general assembly of the workers' councils in Berlin on February 28 called on the whole proletariat to defend its organisations and to prepare for struggle. The attempt of the SPD to prevent this resolution was foiled by its own delegates.

This assembly re-elected its action committee. The SPD lost its majority. At the next elections to this organ, April 19th, the KPD had almost as many delegates elected as the SPD. In the Berlin councils, the tide was turning in favour of the revolution.[3]

Realising that the proletariat could only triumph if led by a united, centralised organisation, mass agitation began in Berlin for the re-election of the workers' and soldiers' councils in the whole country, and for the calling of a new national congress of this organisation. Despite the hysterical opposition of the government and the SPD to this proposal, the soldiers' councils began to declare themselves in favour of this proposal. The Social Democrats played for time, fully aware of the practical difficulties of the hour in realising such plans.

But the movement in Berlin was confronted with another, very pressing question: The call for support from the workers in central Germany. The general assembly of the workers' councils of Berlin met on March 3 to decide on this question. The SPD, knowing that the nightmare of the January Week still haunted the proletariat of the capital, was determined to prevent a general strike. And indeed the workers hesitated at first. The revolutionaries, agitating for solidarity with central Germany, gradually turned the tide. Delegations from all the main plants of the city were sent to the assembly of the councils to inform it that the mass assemblies at the work places had already decided to down tools. It became clear that there, the Communists and Left Independents now had the majority of workers behind them.

The trauma of January

In Berlin too, the general strike was almost total. Work continued only in those plants which had been designated to do so by the workers' councils (fire brigade, water, electricity and gas supplies, health, food production). The SPD and its mouthpiece Vorwärts immediately denounced the strike, calling on those delegates who were party members to do likewise. The result: these delegates now declared themselves against the position of their own party. Moreover, the printers, who, under strong Social Democratic influence, had been among the few professions which had not joined the strike front, now did so - in protest against the attitude of the SPD. In this way, an important part of the hate campaigning of the counter-revolution was silenced.

Despite all these signs of ripening, the trauma of January proved fatal. The general strike in Berlin came too late, just when it was ending in central Germany. Even worse: The Communists, traumatised indeed by the January defeat, refused to participate in the strike leadership alongside Social Democrats. The unity of the strike front began to decompose. Division and demoralisation spread.

This was the moment for the Freikorps to invade Berlin. Drawing lessons from the January events, the workers' assembled in the factories instead of the streets. But instead of immediately attacking the workers, the Freikorps marched first against the garrisons and the soldiers' councils, to begin with against those regiments which had participated in suppressing the workers in January; those who enjoyed the least sympathy of the working population. Only afterwards did it turn on the proletariat. As in January, there were summary executions on the streets, revolutionaries were murdered (among them Leo Jogiches), corpses flung into the river Spree.  This time, the white terror was even more horrific than in January, claiming well over a thousand lives. The workers district of Lichtenberg, to the east of the city centre, was bombed by the air force.

Concerning the January-March struggles, Richard Müller wrote: "This was the most gigantic uprising of the German proletariat, of the workers, employees, civil servants and even parts of the petty bourgeois middle classes, on a scale never previously reached, and thereafter only once more attained, during the Kapp Putsch. The popular masses stood in general strike not only in the regions of Germany focused on here: in Saxony, in Baden and Bavaria, everywhere the waves of social revolution pounded against the walls of the capitalist production and property order. The working masses were striding along the path of the continuation of the political transformation of November 1918." (Müller ibid p161)

However:

"The curse of the January action still weighed on the revolutionary movement. Its pointless beginning and its tragic consequences were tearing the workers of Berlin asunder, so it took weeks of dogged work to render them capable of re-entering the struggle. If the January putsch had not taken place, the Berlin proletariat would have been able to come to the assistance of the combatants in Rhineland-Westphalia and in central Germany in good time. The revolution would have successfully been continued, and the new Germany would have been given a quite different political and economic face" (ibid p154).

This poses the question of whether the revolution could have triumphed, that we will return to in our next article.

Steinklopfer 7/2/09

A more complete version of this article appears in International Review 136 and is now online under the title ‘90 years ago: Revolution in Germany, Civil War, 1918-19' [7]

---

[1]1 On February 22 communist workers in Mülheim on the Ruhr attacked a public meeting of the SPD with machine guns.

[2] R.Müller History of the German Revolution: Civil War in Germany Vol. 3. P. 141, 142.

[3]3 In the first weeks of the revolution, the USP and the Spartakusbund, between them, only had a quarter of all delegates behind them. The SPD dominated massively. The party membership of the delegates voted in Berlin at the beginning of 1919 was as follows: February 28: USPD 305; SPD 271; KPD 99; Democrats:95.

April 19: USPD 312; SPD 164; KPD 103; Democrats 73. It should be noted that the KPD during this period could only operate in clandestinity, and that a considerable number of the USPD delegates in reality sympathised with the Communists and were soon to join their ranks.

Faced with the avalanche of attacks now raining down on the working class - unemployment, cuts in services, police repression - we are seeing the beginnings of a very widespread response from those under attack.

The December outbreak of open rebellion by students, workers and the unemployed all over Greece following a police murder was the most spectacular expression of this response, but it was preceded or accompanied by other revolts by young people in Italy, France, Germany, Lithuania and elsewhere.

One of the clearest signs that these were indeed movements of the working class and not a series of headless riots was the tendency towards self-organisation which they brought to the surface. In Greece, where the official trade union organisation, the GSEE, openly sided with the regime against the protestors, ‘insurgent workers' occupied the union HQ in Athens and turned it into a centre for holding general assemblies open to all students, workers, and unemployed. This is how the occupiers explained the reasons for their action:

We decided to occupy the building of GSEE

• To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point for 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 treat as a "natural phenomenon".
• To unmask the shameful role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection - and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union apparatus that has supported it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labour power for crumbs, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the scheduled strikers' demonstration, stopping short at the organisation of a brief gathering in Syntagma Square, making sure at the same time that 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 union bureaucracies"

 

The practise of using occupations as a basis for holding general assemblies was by no means restricted to this example. Following a vicious acid attack on a cleaning worker employed by the Athens metro, both the offices of the Athens metro and the local union HQ in Thessaloniki were taken over and used as a base for assemblies. The assembly held in the union building declared:

"Today we are occupying the HQ of the trade unions of Thessaloniki to oppose the oppression which takes the form of murder and terrorism against the workers...We appeal to all the workers to join this common struggle...the assembly, open to all occupying the union office, people coming from different political milieus, trade union members, students, immigrants and comrades from abroad adopted this join decision;

To continue the occupation;

To organise rallies in solidarity with Konstantina Kuneva

To organise actions to spread information and to raise awareness around the city

To organise a concert in the city centre to collect money for Konstantina".

This assembly made its opposition to the official trade unions very clear: "Nowhere in the platform of the trade unions is there any reference to the causes of inequality, poverty and hierarchical structures in society...The general confederations and the trade union centres in Greece are an intrinsic part of the regime in power; their rank and file members must turn their back on them and work towards the creation of an autonomous pole of struggle directed by themselves...if the workers take their struggles into their own hands and break with the logic of being represented by the bosses' accomplices, they will rediscover their confidence and thousands of them will fill the streets in the next round of strikes. The state and its thugs are murdering people.

Self-organisation! Struggles for social self-defence! Solidarity with immigrant workers and Konstanitina Kuneva".

The Athens Polytechnic, symbolic centre of pitched battles against the police state of the Colonels in 1973, was used in the same way: occupation and the holding of open assemblies, which insisted that decisions about the conduct of the struggle (including when to make a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming state force) would be in their hands:

"The general assembly and the assembly alone will decide if and when we leave the university...the crucial point is that it's the people occupying the building and not the police who decide on the moment to quit.

By bringing the occupation of the Polytechnic School to an end after 18 days, we send our warmest solidarity to everyone who has been part of this revolt in different ways, not only in Greece but also in many countries of Europe, America, Asia and Oceania. For all those we have met and with whom we are going to stay together, fighting for the liberation of the prisoners of this revolt, and for its continuation until the world social liberation"

The closing words also show the internationalist spirit of the movement, which saw immigrant and Greek-born workers, students and unemployed fighting side by side, and which saw itself as part of a much wider international response to the open crisis of global capitalist society.

The idea of assemblies as an alternative to the dead hand of the trade unions also appeared on a smaller scale during a recent struggle by mental health workers in Alicante in Spain1. This mobilisation was provoked by the non-payment of wages by the local public authorities. The workers involved got together with patients and their families and organised in general assemblies which were not restricted to those most directly involved but were open to all workers. This was a direct consequence of the workers' rejection of any narrow, sectionalist attitude. As they put it in their leaflet: "We don't think that this struggle is ours alone. Our situation is the product of a situation of general crisis and bankruptcy on an international scale, as well as of the poor management of the public administration in particular. All of this is part of the general attack on the living conditions of the workers and the population in general".

We are publishing here a series of documents voted by the general assembly of AFEMA (Alicante Family Association for the Mentally Ill) workers:

For a general assembly on 27 November

We, the workers of AFEMA, have entered into struggle to defend our living conditions and for free, decent services

We know that this situation is a general problem for the whole working class which every day sees its living conditions under attack. We think that the only solution lies in the unity and extension of our struggles so that they become one combat. This is why we are calling for a general assembly of workers

We propose the following agenda, while remaining open to your proposals:

-            presentation and sharing of the particular situations of each enterprise or each comrade;

-            analysis of the general situation;

-            proposals for joint solidarity actions;

-            permanence of the assembly as a space for workers to come together;

-            etc

We hope to meet everyone on Thursday 27 November at 18.30 at the Loyola Centre

This assembly is open, we invite you to extend it to all workers and comrades

Platform of workers from the social and health services

NB: although this invitation has been sent to diverse political and trade union organisations, our approach is a unitary one, we see the working class as a whole which has to act together according to what's needed. This is why we think it is not the place for a confrontation of organisations or for the exposition of particular programmes.

 

 

Leaflet distributed by the workers

The administrations attack the rights of mental health users and workers

 

The users (people with mental health problems and their families) and the workers of AFEMA are also experiencing the crisis. Because of the disastrous management of mental health services by the public authorities for years, our situation today is frankly very difficult.

Like other associations, AFEMA is an NGO which runs publically subsidised services and centres. These are services for people with disabilities. The administrations have never paid much, they pay late and poorly, but today the situation has become scandalous.

The delays in payment and the absence of subsidies are threatening the existence of the already meagre resources allocated to these people, just as they threaten the workers with the loss of their jobs. We are already having a hard time getting our wages on a regular basis, with all the problems that leads to.

We have therefore decided to mobilise ourselves. We don't think that this struggle is ours alone. Our situation is the product of a situation of general crisis and bankruptcy on an international scale, as well as of the poor management of the public administration in particular. All of this is part of the general attack on the living conditions of the workers and the population in general.

This is why we think that our struggle is the struggle of everyone:

-            because of the danger of the disappearance of the social and health services needed by the population;

-            because of the repeated attacks on the living conditions of the workers

Poster drawn up by the workers

 

Users without resources, workers without wages!

Users and workers of AFEMA in struggle for decent and free services!

The administrations are no longer paying us and are neglecting the health services.

The users and their families are in danger of finding themselves without any resources.

We, the workers, aren't getting our wages and we are at risk of losing our jobs.

For a free, decent service for people with mental health problems.

For the rights of the workers and users of mental health services.

Support our mobilisations!

Wednesday the 19th at 19.00:

Information meeting open to members, families, friends, workers, professionals... Loyola Centre

meeting room

Friday 21 at 11.00:

Protest demonstration in front of the PROP building of the Rambla (Alicante)

Friday 28th

Demonstration in Valencia (to be confirmed)

Association of families and mental health patients in Alicante

Platform of workers from the social and health services

 

1. Since the 1970s there have been numerous examples of Spanish workers organising in general assemblies. In 1976 the workers of Vittoria, during a general strike, not only formed assemblies in the various workplaces but also elected a delegate assembly which more or less took over the running of the town. In Alicante itself, in 1977, a large movement of workers in the shoe industry also adopted this form of organisation, in open opposition to the trade unions: see https://libcom.org/history/reflections-shoe-industry-strike-assembly-movement-alicante-1977 [10]; and in Vigo in 2006 the steel workers held massive public assemblies to bring together the workers from a number of small steel factories and to open their struggle to other sectors of the working class: see https://en.internationalism.org/wr/295_vigo [11]

WR 7/2/09

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory) there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but as there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing."

John Maynard Keynes (General Theory (1936) bk. 3, ch. 1)

The IMF has declared that, of all the most developed economies, Britain's will be hit hardest by the recession.

This has provoked a backlash from some commentators, who are piqued at this evaluation of the adaptive capacities of the British economy. The IMF is probably correct, but at least one point that the commentators have made is true. Whereas the German bourgeoisie, for instance, are apt to admonish the undisciplined behaviour of countries, like Britain, that run a permanent deficit, the commentators point out that one's man's deficit is another man's surplus, so the German surplus is dependent on the lack of discipline of countries that buy goods without actually bothering to pay for them - or rather, that buy on credit.

The German economy is suffering from the contraction of global demand. Even more dramatic is the case of Japan. The main exporting companies in Japan are posting financial results that are unprecedented. Gordon Brown is right to insist that the crisis is global, that the fate of all countries is interconnected. But the IMF has noted the dependence of the British economy on the financial sector and judges that this will be enough to put Britain at or near the bottom of the league of performance of the major economies during the economic downturn.

We must put this in the context of the world economy because Britain no longer has the power to dictate to the rest of the world as it did for much of the nineteenth century. If London's capital markets were not used by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, if they did not perform any function for the bourgeoisie in other countries, then they could not still have the importance that they do at an international level. Therefore the question of the role of finance capital cannot be considered in isolation from the general features of the world economy. The most important point to understand is that the activities conducted by the bourgeoisie at the financial level, however exotic and fanciful some of the ‘products' of this ‘industry' may be, are part of the bourgeoisie's response to the ever-deepening crisis of decadent capitalism.

Finance manipulations: consequence not cause of the crisis of capital

Our article on the crisis in International Review 136 (now on ICConline) [16] points out that the explanations provided by the bourgeoisie for the present economic debacle lack historical depth and, by and large, get the explanation of the crisis back to front. In the typical media presentation we are told that the crisis began as a financial crisis (caused by the excesses of bankers over the last decade or so) and is spreading out into the general economy, causing a slump in demand and lay-offs in manufacturing and areas of the service sector that are not directly connected to the financial sector.

This is true in an empirical sense but it masks the fact that the crisis is fundamentally a crisis of overproduction - a form of crisis unknown to modes of production previous to capitalism. The excesses that have occurred in the sphere of finance are a response to this problem, not its fundamental cause. Although we can see how, in the end, the financial crisis can exacerbate the speed of the open crisis once it appears.

The constant extension of credit, overseen and approved of by the state, is based on the recycling of an excess of capital in money form generated above all by the states that are in surplus - China being the most famous example. It seems perverse for the Chinese to basically give back to the Americans a great part of the money they make from selling goods to America in the first place, thus financing a growth in the standard of living in the US (for the upper echelons of the population). But unless the surplus capital is recycled in some way, the debtor nations - like the US and Britain - would have no way to purchase yet more goods from the countries in surplus.

The addiction to finance capital

In the past both the US and Britain have been the dominant manufacturing countries in the world - in the case of Britain that is a long way back, but it is a key part of its history. It is precisely because of this history that the US and Britain have developed the most sophisticated financial sectors. Finance capital in both the US and Britain had, at a certain point of development, to assume a key role in the world economy and to develop mechanisms to allow the full development of international trade and investment.

As a result of this, both the US and Britain tend to act as beacons for the international economy - and this is typically reflected in the financial sphere. A very important example of this was the end of the years of economic expansion after the Second World War. This is the period that some continental commentators call the 30 Glorious Years, although the term has little currency in the Anglo-Saxon countries These years, though very successful in the terms of the bourgeoisie, were not really that ‘glorious', since they required a permanent intervention by the state apparatus to push along the economic expansion. Neither did they last for 30 years. Although relative prosperity did continue into the 70s, the end of the boom years was signalled quite precisely by the run on the British pound in the late sixties and by the US being forced off the gold standard in 1971. It is quite usual that the end of a period of economic history that appears stable on the surface is signalled by phenomena at the financial level. And it is also to be expected that the US and British economies would show the strain first since they have the leading role in international finance.

In the articles ‘Evolution of British imperialism' which we have recently reprinted from Bilan, the publication of the Italian communist left in the 1930s (see WR 312 [17], 313 [18]). it is shown that the weight of the financial sector in Britain was pivotal to the way the British bourgeoisie responded to the expression of the capitalist crisis after the First World War. In 1925 the British bourgeoisie took the decision to favour the financial sector over the needs of the relatively uncompetitive manufacturing sector of the economy:

"Benefiting from the ‘failure' of the first Labour government, which had been unable to solve the problems posed by the industrial bourgeoisie, the banks, following the coming to power of Baldwin, launched a vast ‘deflationary' offensive in 1925, with the aim of revaluing the Pound. The return to the gold standard was decreed in April of the same year. The antagonism between industrial capital and finance capital, which in Britain remained much more tenacious than in Germany, France or the USA, for the reasons we have indicated, was settled for a long time to the advantage of the banks."

The bourgeoisie in Britain has a great difficulty in envisioning economic solutions that do not give a preponderant weight to the financial sector.

In the period after the Second World War the British bourgeoisie tried to resuscitate the competitiveness of its manufacturing sector but failed, so it has had to resort for several decades now to relying on the financial sector and the services it offers to international capital as a source of profits to try and balance its books with the rest of the world (i.e. to finance its trade deficit).

What Bilan did not anticipate was that the US, having become the dominant power in the world, would eventually be forced into the same position. Bilan thought that this development of the priority of the finance sector in Britain was simply a manifestation of Britain's relative industrial decline. The British bourgeoisie are described as parasitic and accused of enjoying an inept and idle existence. There is nothing to disagree with here, fundamentally. But there is another, more serious insight in another passage:

"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 suffers from their perturbations; a strength because, cut off from production, it retains a greater elasticity of action in periods of crisis."

The essence of the present period of the world crisis could hardly be better expressed. The Financial Times recently ran an article commenting on the latest conference at Davos. It observed that although the assembled leaders spent their time in denunciations of the US and its ‘inept' financiers for allowing the current situation to develop, they were also looking to the US to find the necessary ‘elasticity' to re-launch the world economy and revive the demand that would allow Germany, Japan and China to pour forth more products from their very efficient industrial systems. In reality that means a further plunge into the abyss of credit and fictitious capital which can only intensify the contradictions of the world economy. 

Hardin 5/2/9

This article is already available on-line here [21]

Within four days of his inauguration speech Barack Obama had authorised the bombing of targets in Pakistan. He had already advocated such attacks before US started the latest phase of its military campaign last July. Following an inaugural speech, in which he unambiguously declared to America's enemies "We will defeat you", he sanctioned the launching of missiles from Predator drones on two targets in Waziristan in which 22 people died. He has warned the US public that there will be an increase in American military casualties as he steps up actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. US military strength in Afghanistan will be doubled to 60,000.

For Obama to confirm his commitment to the military core of American imperialism at the start of his reign is a warning to the rest of the world. For all that he spoke of ‘change' in his campaign, there is clear continuity with the Bush regime. America will continue to use its military power to defend its interests. In this the only thing that makes the US exceptional is the scale it can operate on. Every single capitalist state resorts to force to defend the interests of its ruling class. Whether it's Iran or North Korea developing missiles, China building an aircraft carrier, the Sri Lanka army sweeping across the north of the country, or any of the many factions fighting in the DR Congo, Sudan or Somalia - capitalism means war.  

Car 6/2/9

The ICC's section in Britain held its 18th Congress in November 2008.  Coincidentally the Congress was held on the same weekend as the G20 meeting in Washington, where the number one item on the agenda was also the world economic crisis: the credit crunch of 2007 was accelerating into the worst recession in decades, Iceland's banks had just collapsed and the governments of the most powerful countries, especially Britain and the USA, were organising huge rescue packages for theirs.

This open and profound crisis, unlike the Depression in the 1930s, is being experienced by an undefeated generation of proletarians, and in the last few years there have been clear signs of a working class response in the shape of strikes and demonstrations all over the world, while a tiny but growing politicised minority is advancing towards a communist understanding of the bleak perspective capitalism has to offer us today. Like the small furry animals scurrying about for food during the last days of the dinosaurs, these seemingly insignificant efforts have the potential for momentous developments in the future, in particular the development of class consciousness and its spread within the working class which is so vital for future revolutionary struggles. Today we can see a growth of discussion circles and small internationalist groups around the world from the Americas to the Philippines, as well as in countries where the ICC already has a presence. The ICC has responded to this new situation by taking up an old tradition of the workers' movement and inviting new internationalist groups to its last international congress and the congresses of our French section (see IR 130 and WR 318), and sympathisers to the congresses and national meetings of our other territorial sections. WR is no exception and our Congress last November benefited from the presence of 5 close sympathisers invited to the first day when we discussed general political questions, in addition to the delegations from other sections of the organisation, making it a real international meeting.

Our first discussion took up the activities of the organisation at an international level, in particular the discussions with internationalist groups emerging all over the world and the prospects for the expansion of the ICC into new regions. This discussion also covered the main discussions going on inside the ICC and the way we are approaching them. Readers can see expressions of the debate on the post war boom in IR 133 and 135, and our orientation texts on ethics and marxism in IR 127 and 128 and on the culture of debate in IR 131. There was agreement that more of these discussions need to be opened up outside the organisation.

In the discussion of the international situation we looked closely at the economic crisis, which has caused such panic in the bourgeoisie. Does the situation of Iceland mean there is a potential for the collapse of secondary countries? What is meant by the idea of the ‘collapse of capitalism' in general? The discussion affirmed that open crisis today cannot be seen in itself but has to be understood as the latest stage in a long dawn-out, historic crisis of capitalism. When we came to discuss the national situation, comrades drew on the contribution from Bilan in the 1930s (reprinted in WR 312 and 313) to show how British capitalism's reliance on finance capital increases its vulnerability to the crisis (this was at a time when the bourgeois media was still claiming that the country was in a relatively good position to face the recession).

 Obama's election, only a couple of weeks before the Congress, was recognised as a short-term victory for the ruling class, strengthening illusions in ‘change' and mobilising previously disaffected layers of the working class into the democratic circus. The new face that Obama gives to US imperialism is also an advantage at a time when the crisis is set to further intensify imperialist tensions.

Sympathisers' contributions were a real enrichment of all these discussions. Eddie's letter (see below), giving his comments on the Congress, show that it has also stimulated a lot of reflection in all the participants, both inside and outside the organisation.

 On the second day, the Congress looked at how to strengthen the organisation so that it can be up to the demands of the situation. In order to respond to the developments in the class struggle and the new groups and individuals wanting to find out about left communist positions, we have to deepen our own discussions and improve the centralisation both of our internal life and our external activities. Since centralisation is, as Bordiga says, a principle for the workers' movement it can only be strengthened in practise through a better understanding of its theoretical foundations.

WR 6/2/9

"I was very impressed with the depth of both discussions" (NM)

KT, a former member of the ICC, said we "can't overstress the importance of the ICC and within it of WR. It's been nearly two decades since I was at a congress. The situation has changed but also the organisation, the depth of references and the fraternal spirit, the desire to bring out differences in a spirit of inquiry. I wish the Congress success for the rest of its work".

 DG said: "First I would like to thank the ICC for inviting us to the Congress. This demonstrates that there is a real will to open itself up to the outside. The debates I have seen in the International Review are also examples of this. There has been a change in the organisation. This is having a definite effect on contacts, but also on those who are against the ICC... One of my old colleagues told me he has been reading the Decadence pamphlet online. He is making the effort... He thinks we need more accessible texts. This poses a challenge to the ICC."

Eddie wrote to us shortly after the congress:

"Dear Comrades,

I appreciated being invited to the Congress and welcome its very positive work. Through the discussions I got a sense of the challenges ahead for the class struggle in all its aspects and the necessity particularly for revolutionaries to remain patient and maintain a level course within deepening and wider activities. There were many elements raised in discussions, disagreements confronted openly, but mainly I thought nuances in understanding the development of the situation; how the crisis develops, how that relates to a proletarian response.

The importance of Britain as an experienced capitalist nation is and will be a factor in the development of the class struggle and this further underlines the role of the British section of the ICC.

The meeting and its preparation showed that there are many elements to the development of the economic crisis and a class response, a response that has to be seen first and foremost internationally, both within the two elements themselves and in relation to each other. There's no mechanical relationship between crisis and response and there are many possibilities. The sequence and speed of events are unpredictable and necessarily relative. But the expression of the crisis over this last year has been dramatic, fundamental and shaken the bourgeoisie to the core. I think, on a scale of things, that this is a more important development than 1989, in that its contradictions are being expressed in the citadels of capitalism around the same time...  What is clear is that the effects of the unfolding crisis on the working class are already profound. It appeared to me a couple of weeks ago that the bourgeoisie, at its highest levels, was afraid that the whole system, banks - including all accounts, trade, payments, bills, etc, was about to implode and collapse. That wouldn't have been useful for a deep working class response. But the expression and direction of the crisis and the bourgeoisie's overall lack of control over capitalism's contradictions (attenuated somewhat by state capitalism) indicates that events are unfolding at a more profound level: wage and social wage cuts, loss of housing, jobs, pensions being completely undermined, the very concept of a future under capitalism has to be posed more starkly for the working class..."

DG made some comments on the culture of debate in a discussion a few weeks later:

"Many comrades have read Lenin, who was often very withering, and this approach turns off the new generation. When I first wrote to the ICC it was about the polemic with the IBRP on the 1980s. The political content was spot on, but the tone was very negative. The reply to Aufheben is the same. There seems to be a change in tone [in the] Open Letter to the IBRP or the letter to Loren Goldner...There can be some organisations that look stable but internally are rotten (such as the German Social Democratic Party before 1914), whereas the Bolsheviks had many debates and divergences. It makes you wonder how they managed to lead a revolution! The discussions in the Bolsheviks showed the connection between discussions in the class and those in the party. It's similar to the ICC. When the class was quiescent the ICC was static. Now there is discussion within the class, this is reflected in the organisation. It shows the proletarian character of the ICC."

WR 7/2/09

Comrades of the ICC and World Revolution in particular want to express our sorrow that an old comrade of the left communist Workers' Voice group of the early 70s - Graeme Imray (whom contributors to Libcom may know by his pseudonym, Dave Graham) died, aged 58, at the end of 2008 after a short illness. We very much regret the passing of a comrade who was closely involved in the discussions between the international tendency that was the fore-runner of the ICC and the Liverpool-based Workers' Voice. We send our sincere condolences to his partner and his two sons. We remember Graeme with some affection, even though politically our paths diverged rather drastically, resulting in a 30-year separation between us. We nonetheless understand that Graeme was a militant of our class and indeed made a real contribution to the passing on of left communist positions, not least the reproduction of texts from the German Left and from the Workers' Dreadnought of Sylvia Pankhurst which were such a feature of the political evolution of Workers' Voice.

Graeme was indeed an expression of the wave of militants that appeared after 1968, passionate about participating in the struggles of our class, especially from 1972 onwards. Graeme attended the LSE in the late sixties and was radicalised by this experience. He also worked in the DHSS and helped to set up a London based Claimants' Union under the pseudonym "Sunshine Supermouth" in the early days of WV. Graeme moved on to work on the railways in the North West as a booking clerk and was a constant contributor to the Workers' Voice magazine, often under the pseudonym A Moss. WV' s development of communist positions, especially on the basis of their direct experience of the unions and the shop stewards' movement, was an important reference point for the whole international milieu and still bear reading today. They put "the flesh and bones" of reality on the discussions that were taking place, particularly during the international conferences (the phrase was used by a WV comrade writing a report of one of these conferences).

Most importantly it was Graeme's search for the clarity of the communist left that propelled him and WV to search out and discuss with the international milieu at that time. Graeme, along with another comrade of WV, travelled extensively on the continent to seek out and discuss with groups such as Daad en Gedacht, meeting and being very impressed by the Dutch council communist Cajo Brendel. WV as a group also relied heavily on Graeme's ability to translate from French and German to understand the development of the internationalist milieu.

Graeme made many contributions in the series of international conferences set up by the US group Internationalism. Although these conferences resulted in groups like Internationalism, Revolution Internationale and World Revolution moving closer together and forming the ICC, Workers' Voice followed a different trajectory. Despite a short-lived fusion with Revolutionary Perspectives to form the Communist Workers' Organisation in 1975, the Liverpool group soon split away and dissolved into local activity, influenced by councilist ideas which expressed a distrust of the project of forming a centralised revolutionary organisation. Graeme did not abandon political activity however, and was in contact with groups like the Anarchist Federation and the councilist group Subversion in the 80s and 90s. In particular, he played an active role in the long-running dockers' strike of the mid-90s. A detailed analysis of this dispute, written by Graeme, can be found at libcom.org/library/dockworkers-disputer-dave-graham-1 [28]. In our view, Graeme's immersion in the support campaign around this struggle represented a retreat from the clarity about ‘rank and file' trade unionism which he had reached in the 70s, but the article is nonetheless a serious contribution to the debate about the significance of this and similar long-drawn out strikes.

Graeme worked for many years as a teacher in Liverpool and the comments published on his school's website after his death show that he was an inspiring teacher who was extremely well-liked and respected by his colleagues and pupils.

The ICC certainly has profound differences with the direction that many comrades from the old Workers Voice took after our initial discussions, in particular on the question of working within a union framework (see also our obituary for comrade Chad, another old comrade of WV) but we remember our own and we salute the memory of an internationalist communist - comrade Graeme.

Melmoth 7/2/09 

Gaza is still being bombed and the Hamas rockets are still being fired, showing that nothing has been solved by this brutal, one-sided war: over 1300 dead, mostly civilians and foot-soldiers, thousands more wounded and traumatised; over 20,000 houses partly or totally destroyed.

The Israeli Blitzkrieg also destroyed the remaining weak infrastructure, power, water and sewage plants as well as 35-60% of the remaining agricultural industry. The latter was already extremely weak from over two years of economic siege by Israel and its buffer zone being extended into Gaza by up to a kilometre. Livestock, orchards, schools, offices, factories bombed and bulldozed; and in a fair summing up of the Israeli action, phosphorus bombs deliberately dropped on pallets of UN relief food in order that it would burn for days. "An eye for an eyelash", in the words of Avi Shlaim, ex-Israeli soldier and now professor of international relations at Oxford University. And after all this death, destruction and contamination Hamas still proclaims a "victory", while Palestinians remain in misery and squalor, denied any rebuilding materials by the Israeli blockade.

The rationale, if one can call it that, for Israel to unleash its dogs of war on Gaza, is that civilians allowed Hamas into government and they must pay the price for it. This is the same argument used by the 7/7 London suicide bombers, terrorists everywhere, states like Sri Lanka at the moment and by the British and American states to justify the bombing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the death toll in Gaza is nothing compared to the millions of Africans killed around the Great Lakes during the last 16 years through inter-imperialist war, the pictures of the suffering in Gaza bring home the horrors of the capitalist drive to war, the breakdown of the Geneva Convention, so-called ‘humanitarianism' and UN ‘protection', and the fact that, entirely contrary to the sickening hypocrisy and spin, civilians are the targets. What it also brings home is the complete lie about peace talks, these only being a prelude to ever more wars, barbarity and disintegration.

Imperialist manoeuvres behind the war

This war arose from a deliberate provocation by Israel, planned way back in the early part of last year when it set up its sinister National Information Directorate, and implemented by its breaking of the cease-fire that Hamas had observed since last June. The Israeli state could have cut a deal with Hamas (it did, but broke it) in order to stop the rockets, but it has not only maintained an impoverished ghetto, an open-air prison in Gaza - it even stepped up its three year blockade after the June 2008 Egyptian-backed cease-fire, further decreasing supplies of food, fuel, water treatment and sanitation, medical supplies and chances of work, thus increasing the influence of the Hamas clique with its ideology of ‘resistance'.

Before Obama took over the US presidency, Israel wanted to weaken Hamas (and therefore its backers Syria and Iran) before the new administration was in place and adopting a different, more multilateral approach. More than this, the war has to be put in the context of the development of imperialism in this region. The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 was presented as a step towards peace. But this retreat was nothing but a strategy for Israeli imperialism, giving up this tiny unstrategic territory and the expense of protecting its few settlers while it prepares for wider warfare. Israel destroyed everything before it left Gaza and left Hamas and Fatah to fight over the remains. The more important stake for Israeli imperialism, the front line with Syria and Iran, is much more the West Bank. Here the British, as imperialist allies of Israel, have been at the forefront in building up the repressive forces of Fatah through training, funding, arms and its "special services" developed from its experiences in Ireland and elsewhere. Britain's military and diplomatic activity helps secure the West Bank against any possible Hamas intrusion, and thus the growing influence of Iran and Syria. In practice this means backing the development of a ‘Greater Israel.

Peace is not a prospect

The prospects for even an uneasy peace in the region are grim to non-existent. Iran has underlined its nuclear ambitions with a successful satellite launch. Obama has already shown that he will intensify the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan and have mainly military ‘solutions' to instability in the Middle East. Diplomatic moves around Middle East are equally unpromising. The proposed Egyptian cease-fire for Gaza was ignored by Israel and the US. At the Arab League meeting on January 19 there were reports that Egypt and Saudi Arabia fell out with each other and the Saudi delegation even fell out with itself. Tehran has been strengthened by this war, as has the whole of the so-called ‘resistance'.

Israel's destruction of Gaza has been openly supported by the new US administration. US imperialism needs its Israeli ally more than ever now. Arabic-speaking George Mitchell, who sorted out US interests in Ireland, has been sent to the region. There is speculation on whether he will talk to Hamas. Beyond the speculation is the certainty that the misery of the Palestinian masses will continue and that war is always imminent. Long before the Israeli state existed the Middle East was a battleground for the major, rival imperialisms,like the Balkans, a running sore. This can only get worse.  

Baboon 4/2/9

Those attending the demonstrations against the recent massacres in Gaza, because they wanted to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people or with humanity in general, needed more than a warm coat, hat and scarf to participate. A strong constitution was also required to stomach what turned out to be an orgy of nationalism.

Alongside bloodied dolls and gory photos depicting the murdered children of Gaza, banners equating Nazism with Israel, and chants in defence of Hamas and the Palestinian ‘state' were flags, thousands of them, big and small, representing every bourgeois faction involved in the conflict and many that aren't. Even the Union Jack was present on banners proclaiming ‘Brits for Palestine'.

Despite the bourgeoisie's claims about the supposed diversity and humanitarianism of these demos, these displays of nationalism show that demonstrations like these are never the peace rallies they claim to be. They are a call to arms, a rallying point in defence of the nation state and against the working class organising for its own interests.

Nowhere is the pro-war stance clearer than with the leftist groups that never fail to choose one imperialist camp over another. Such groups offer their ‘unique' insights on the struggle, all of which, effectively, mean the defence of the ‘lesser evil'. Workers are required to choose a side and support, sometimes ‘critically', sometimes not, the ‘oppressed' against the ‘oppressor'.

For the Spartacist League this requires some Orwellian doublethink: "it is vital for the international proletariat to stand for the military defence of Hamas against Israel without giving that reactionary Islamic fundamentalist outfit any political support" (Workers Vanguard No 928). The SWP are less convoluted in their support for Hamas: "resistance to occupation and to collective punishment is not a crime - it is a right. Hamas was democratically elected and is the voice of an oppressed people" (Socialist Worker No 2135).

Even those on the left who say that there is no national solution to the conflict echo the same basic sentiments. The Socialist Equality Party may recognise that the solution to the conflict "is inseparably bound up with the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism all over the world" but still state that "it is necessary to defend Hamas against the assassination of its leaders and the vilification of its supporters as terrorists" (wsws.org).

Leftist groups distort the real meaning of internationalism. Solidarity with the dispossessed around the world doesn't mean supporting the weaker nation against the stronger. It means rejecting the myth of the lesser evil and developing the class struggle against all nations, all exploiters, big and small. This is why, although still a minority, internationalists must continue to be present at these demonstrations to defend a real perspective for the future, a communist perspective that goes beyond the stifling bonds of the nation.  

Kino 5/2/9

This article is available as a leaflet here [38] to download and distribute.

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The walk-outs and demonstrations by workers in oil refineries and power stations over the question of unemployment show the depth of anger in the working class faced with the tidal wave of redundancies brought about by the economic crisis.

This wave of lay-offs and short-time working is not confined to Britain but is engulfing the globe. From the USA to China, from western Europe to Russia, no workers' job is safe; and even when they have work, wages are being cut and working conditions worsened.

But workers around the world are showing their unwillingness to accept these attacks: there are daily strikes and demonstrations in China; at the end of January 2.5 million workers in France struck in protest about unemployment; students and young workers in Italy, France, Germany and above all Greece have been out on the streets demonstrating their rage against a society which offers them no future. The anger of the workers in the refineries is not specific to Britain but part of an international response to the deepening economic disaster.

Nationalism leads to a dead-end

However, the main slogan raised in the energy strikes  -  "British jobs for British workers" -  can only lead the workers into a complete dead end.

The threat to the jobs of workers in the power industry or anywhere else does not come from a ship-load of Italian and Portuguese workers who are being used by a network of British, US, and Italian firms to cheapen labour costs. Capitalism doesn't give a jot about the nationality of those it exploits. It only cares about how much profit it can extract from them. But it is more than happy when workers are set against each other, when they are divided up into competing national groups. The idea of "British jobs for British workers" is directly opposed to the ability of workers to defend themselves. This is because they can only stand up for their interests if their struggles extend as widely as possible and bring all workers, regardless of nationality, into a common resistance against their exploiters. Workers in the UK have no interests in common with British bosses and the British state and everything in common with so-called ‘foreign' workers, who face the same threat of unemployment and poverty because the crisis of capitalism is a world-wide crisis. 

Trade unions peddle the nationalist delusion

The main force pushing the nationalist delusion in this conflict has been the Unite and GMB trade unions who have taken up Gordon Brown's slogan - itself filched from the British National Party - and placed it at the centre of the movement. This is not the first time the unions have tried to peddle the "British jobs for British workers" line. Last year building workers on a construction site at a power plant in Plymouth were laid off by the contractor. Other workers walked out in solidarity with their comrades. The union tried to argue that workers from Poland on the site were taking "British" jobs. This rang very hollow when these Polish workers joined the strike. The union which had protested so loudly about British workers being laid off then made a deal with the bosses to get the striking workers back to work and to leave the laid-off workers unemployed.

The media have also played a big part in spreading the nationalist message. Normally they are very quiet when workers take unofficial action or engage in illegal solidarity strikes, but they have been giving maximum publicity to this conflict, constantly focussing on the "British" placards and slogans.

Although there's no denying that the workers in the oil refineries and power stations have swallowed the nationalist bait to some extent, reality is much more complex, as can be seen from this statement by an unemployed worker protesting outside a Welsh power station: "I was laid off as a stevedore two weeks ago. I've worked in Cardiff and Barry Docks for 11 years and I've come here today hoping that we can shake the government up. I think the whole country should go on strike as we're losing all British industry. But I've got nothing against foreign workers. I can't blame them for going where the work is." (The Guardian On-line 20.1.2009). Other workers in the industry have themselves made the point that thousands of oil and construction workers from Britain are currently working abroad. 

The future is the international class struggle

In the face of an economic crisis of devastating proportions, it is not surprising that workers will find it difficult to find the most effective way of defending themselves. The energy workers have shown a real desire to organise themselves, spread the struggle and demonstrate in support of comrades in other plants and other parts of the country, but the nationalist slogan they have adopted is going to be used against the whole working class and its ability to unite. 

The ruling class has no solution to this crisis, a crisis of overproduction which has been gathering pace for decades. It can no longer conjure it away with further injections of credit - the resulting mountain of debt is obviously part of the problem. And closing each country up behind protectionist barriers - which is the logic of "British jobs for British workers" - was already shown in the 1930s to be a way of sharpening competition between nation states and dragging workers off to war.

The working class has no immediate or local solutions to the economic catastrophe. But it can defend itself against the attempts of capitalism to make it pay for the crisis. And by uniting in self-defence, across all divisions and borders, it can start to discover that it has a historic answer to the collapse of capitalism: an international revolution and a new world society based on human solidarity and not capitalist profit.   

International Communist Current 31.1.09

The avalanche of unemployment across the world is unprecedented since the 1930s Depression.

In the USA, unemployment has officially gone up to 8.1%, the highest level since 1983. In the UK it's gone up to 6.3%. In France and Spain recently there have been some of the highest monthly increases since records began: Spain now has the highest rate of unemployment in the EU - 13.9% or 3.2 million. In former economic powerhouses the picture is no different. In Germany the jobless rate is 7.8%; in Japan (which has already been in recession for some years) the unemployment rate jumped to 4.4% last November, the biggest increase for almost 42 years. In ‘booming' China, the official rate is very similar, 4.2%.

These bland figures don't tell us that much in themselves:

- in terms of the real number of unemployed. In Britain, the official number of unemployed is around 1.9 million, but it is well known that these are ‘massaged' figures which deliberately fail to tell us about all the workers who have simply given up looking for work; those who are taking sick benefits rather than the dole; those who are forced to take precarious and low paid jobs, sometimes more than one at a time...

- or in terms of the real, day-to-day sufferings of the unemployed and their families, and the brutal increases in exploitation that all this implies for those ‘privileged' enough to keep their jobs.

We are facing a global unemployment pandemic, and the prognosis, as more and more of the bourgeoisie's economic experts admit, is not one of a short ‘downturn' followed by a booming job market, but of a long, painful slide into an economic slump comparable in scale to that of the 1930s.

Is resistance futile?

Faced with the factory, shop or office simply shutting its doors, fighting back seems, at first sight, to be hopeless. And when you're thrown onto the dole, you can get demoralised by the sense of isolation and the daily grind of finding enough to live on.

Is there any solution, or are we facing the prospect of becoming a desperate mass like the ancient ‘proletariat' of Rome, which was kept alive by state handouts of bread and kept diverted by state-sponsored circuses?

Is the class struggle going to be undermined by the economic crisis itself?

Some argue that it is pointless to expect a reaction from a working class that is anyway losing its sense of identity and its traditions of struggle. They say that the best we can hope for is a more effective policy from the ruling class: a Keynesian ‘New Deal' based on state intervention, or, if you listen to extreme left groups like the Trotskyists, a more radical programme of nationalisations spiced up with a bit of ‘workers' control'.

Crisis brings clarity

But the crisis and the surge in unemployment don't only bring despair and hopelessness. They also bring clarity: they undermine all the bourgeoisie's propaganda about how well capitalism functions and how, if we just work hard enough or save carefully enough, we can have everything we need. We've worked, we've saved, we've made sacrifices, sometimes even accepting wage cuts to keep the firm going, like the £50 a week cut accepted at construction equipment firm JCB last October when they went on a four-day week. Yet the plants still close, and the companies go under.

The crisis also makes a mockery of all the claims that this or that country is doing well and even offers a way out of the crisis. For years we have been told that the ‘leaner, meaner' British economy is stronger than it has ever been, and now we are finding out that its policy of deindustrialisation and reliance on the financial sector is making it one of the world's most vulnerable economies faced with the current financial storms. We were also told that the Chinese and Indian economies, with their ferocious rates of exploitation, could operate as the locomotives pulling the world economy out of the mire. And now we learn that they too are sinking, which is hardly surprising that their economies are geared to cheap exports to the west, which is the epicentre of the world recession. 

And above all, the crisis demonstrates that the capitalist system, which has for so long arrogantly claimed to be the only one that could possibly work, does not work at all, that producing for the market brings with it the saturation of the market, that producing for profit brings about a fall in the rate of profit, that the whole anarchic mess can no longer serve the needs of humanity. Because there is no reason for people to be thrown out of work, for factories to close, for welfare services to be cut, except that these measures are dictated by production for profit rather than production for need. The crisis therefore can provide the most powerful evidence that a new society is both possible and vitally necessary if human beings are to feed, clothe and house themselves and live a really human life.

From self-defence to revolution

But this new society will not simply drop out of the clouds. We are not talking about a new religion of change from on high, whether that change comes from God or Barack Obama. We are talking about a change that needs to be fought for, organised for, a change that requires an open challenge to the present world system and those who run it - in short, a social revolution.

A social revolution can only be made by those ‘below', those who have least to gain from the preservation of the existing order. But those below will never advance towards making a revolution unless they forge themselves into a force that is capable of defending itself today, of fighting against every encroachment made by the capitalist system - every factory closure, every benefit cut, every wage reduction, every attempt of the bosses and the state to repress this resistance and victimise those who take part in it. 

How can we fight back?

Only by starting from the fundamental proletarian principle that an attack on one is an attack on all. To fight against all these attacks, it is necessary to build up a balance of forces in our favour; and this can only be done if we try to spread our struggles as widely as possible. If one workplace closes, or hundreds of workers are cut from its workforce, those faced with losing their jobs need to appeal to those still at work or working in nearby or linked workplaces and draw them into the struggle, arguing that ‘if it's us today, it will be you tomorrow'. If the workers remain isolated outside the gates of the workplace in question, or even if they occupy it and just sit tight, their isolation will eventually wear them down. But if they spread the response to other workers, if they organise mass meetings and demonstrations, they can force the bosses and the state to take notice, and sometimes to shelve their redundancy plans or moderate their attacks. We caught a clear glimpse of the ability of the working class to do this in the recent oil refinery strikes. Ignoring all the rigmarole of the trade union/legal rule book, hundreds of workers walked out on the spot in solidarity with other strikers, held mass pickets and discussed in general meetings where decisions about the conduct of the strikes were taken.

Neither are the unemployed condemned to remain locked up at home. In the 1930s and again in the 1980s, unemployed workers formed their own committees to oppose evictions, to demand increased benefits, and to join in with the struggles of the employed workers. In the oil refinery strikes, many unemployed construction workers joined the pickets and mass meetings. In Greece at the end of last year, employed and unemployed workers fought side by side in the street demonstrations, and occupied public buildings (including the headquarters of the official trade union federation) to call for general assemblies open to all proletarians.

Of course there is no cast-iron guarantee that such struggles will win their demands; and in any case, sooner rather than later the pressure of the crisis will force the ruling class to renew and increase their attacks. But it is through such struggles that the working class can reassert its dignity, rediscover its identity, become more and more conscious of its power - a power that can both paralyse the machinery of capitalism and create the foundations for a new society where everyone can work together for the satisfaction of humanity's needs.  

WR 7/3/9

As the wave of unofficial solidarity strikes spread from the Lindsey oil refinery to other refineries, power stations, gas and electricity plants, a gas terminal, steel and chemical works, the media ensured that the ‘British jobs for British workers' slogan was mentioned at every opportunity, regardless of the fact that it wasn't actually one of the workers' demands.

This wasn't a nationalist movement but one of the most important working class struggles in recent years. However, the weight of nationalist illusions was undeniable, and it was essential for revolutionaries to oppose these illusions without any compromise. Indeed it's only internationalists that can mount an effective opposition to nationalism, in particular through the defence of international working class unity.

Leftists who denounced the strikes

Groups of the so-called ‘revolutionary' left, in particular the Trotskyists, are in no position to criticise nationalism with their defence of national ‘liberation', nationalisation and, fundamentally, plans for national capital. Yet, hypocritically, but unsurprisingly, some leftist groups insisted that the short-lived movement only had a nationalist dynamic. Workers Vanguard (13/2/9) headlined "Down with reactionary strikes against foreign workers!" Workers Power (February 2009) "unreservedly" opposed the strikes ("No to the nationalist strikes!") The World Socialist Web Site (2/2/9) agreed, "British unions back reactionary strikes against foreign workers."

The WSWS cited as evidence the British National Party hailing the action as "a great day for British nationalism." It is unambiguous on where it thinks workers should focus their attention: "The primary and over-riding concern of working people everywhere must be to oppose the spread of nationalism, chauvinism and racism."

These particular leftist groups also blamed the unions for their role in recent events. WV said "The responsibility for this social-chauvinist crusade lies with the Labourite leadership of the Unite and GMB trade unions." For the WSWS "legitimate grievances and fears" were "being manipulated by the union bureaucracy for the most reactionary ends". WP thought "The unions should have been giving a militant lead over the last year."

Yet despite these criticisms, and all the other evidence of how the unions act against workers' struggles, the leftists still proposed the unions as the guardian of workers' interests. "Unions must defend immigrant workers!" demanded WV. WP thought that the TUC and the big unions could launch "a militant campaign to defend every job" and call "a nationwide general strike and mass demonstration". At Lindsey the shop stewards said that workers should keep to the law on strikes. The workers ignored this advice and walked out. They have first hand experience of the unions' attitude to striking workers.

In this respect it's useful to turn to the approach of the Socialist Workers Party. It issued many warnings about the strikes without formally stating its opposition. Saying "these strikes are based around the wrong slogans and target the wrong people" (30/1/9 online only) it declared that "Those who urge on these strikes are playing with fire." Having warned of the threat posed by right-wing ideas it said that "everyone should be organising in a united way to pressure the union leaders to fight. And if the union leaders won't fight then workers will have to organise the resistance themselves."

The logic of this is hard to follow. If workers are organising themselves, why would they need to put pressure on union leaders? To do what? The illegal, unofficial strikes showed what workers are prepared to do without getting union approval. A subsequent Socialist Worker article (7/2/9) acknowledged that the strikes "have shown that unofficial strike action is an effective way to fight" but asked the reader to consider "how effective it would have been if trade unions had led such walkouts." In general the answer to such a consideration is ‘much less effective' and ‘doomed to failure'.

The SWP, like the other groups already mentioned, poses as the partisan of struggle out of the control of the ‘bureaucratic' unions, only to defend the union struggle as the only viable prospect. It's like Workers Power describing the strikes as the "first sign of a militant fightback against the effects of the recession" and "workers' first serious rebellion in this new period of conflict" ... while admitting it's against them.

Beware of leftist ‘supporters'

While the strikes' opponents portrayed them as motivated by nationalism, their ‘supporters' put everything in the framework of the trade unions. The Socialist Party is particularly interesting in this respect because one of its members, Keith Gibson, was on the Lindsey strike committee.

In an editorial in The Socialist (4/2/9) it said "No workers' movement is ‘chemically pure'. Elements of confusion, and even some reactionary ideas, can exist, and have done in these strikes. However, fundamentally this struggle is aimed against the ‘race to the bottom', at maintaining trade union-organised conditions and wages on these huge building sites." An SP leaflet said that the slogan of the struggle should be "Trade union jobs, pay and conditions for all workers".

Millions of workers who are in jobs where the pay and conditions have been agreed by the unions will know what this means in practice. The ‘negotiations' between unions and employers establish the conditions of workers' exploitation and the level of their wages. It is because of such conditions that workers struggle in the first place. Yet the SP trumpets the unions as the only force that can safeguard workers' interests.

Some of the specific demands of the Lindsey strike committee had initially been put forward by the SP. The SP wanted all workers to be covered by a national agreement, which obviously would boost the role of the union. It wanted "all immigrant labour to be unionised", that is, to extend the level of union control. It was for "union-controlled registering of unemployed and local skilled union members". Apart from smuggling in the idea of ‘local' workers, the SP claimed that "What the Lindsey strikers were demanding quite correctly is a form of pre-entry closed shop. That means that if the contractors on site need more labour then they have to go to the union for this labour from its unemployed register. In other words you have to be in the union to be on the register." This obviously strengthens the role of the union, but does nothing for workers and their struggles.

The SP made great claims about what the shop stewards will now be able to do. "In a major breakthrough, part of the deal allows for the shop stewards to check that the jobs filled by the Italian and Portuguese workers are on the same conditions as the local workers." In addition "Built into the deal is that the shop stewards on the site will be able to keep the Italian company in check by regular liaison meetings." Far from being kept ‘in check', companies that have ‘regular liaison meetings' with union officials (at any level) are more aware of what's going on in the workforce and therefore more able (in conjunction with the unions) to cope with expressions of discontent and undermine the potential of any struggle.

The SP claims to have been an indispensable part of the recent movement. It knows that others "dismissed the strike as reactionary, racist or xenophobic", but says that "If the Socialist Party had not participated actively in the dispute, there were dangers that such attitudes could have gained strength." In a meeting where Keith Gibson spoke, according to a report by the commune (14/2/9), he apparently said that "there were nationalist elements in the movement - arising spontaneously from the vacuum of union direction." This is a familiar refrain, the implication that ‘spontaneously' workers are ‘nationalist' and that they need leftists and unions to prevent them from going astray. In reality the initial strike and the strikes in solidarity showed what workers can do when they don't put their faith in the unions or their leftist supporters.   

Car 28/2/9

The media is currently dominated by the campaign about incompetent bankers and their undeserved bonuses, on the one hand, and the beginning of ‘quantitative easing' on the other.

The fact that the bourgeoisie seems incapable of hiring people who actually know how to run banks is not an irrelevance and, indeed, has intrinsic interest as an expression of the crisis. However, the main reason for the concentration on the remuneration of undeserving bankers is to distract from the seriously bad news that is accumulating about the world economy, and to give the impression that the state has a workable strategy for dealing with the credit crisis and the recession.

Here we will reverse the order of approach. We will look first at the seriously bad news on the economic front, and that will give us a correct framework within which to discuss the phenomenon of errant bankers and to address the question of ‘quantitative easing'.

International dimension of the crisis

The world economy continues to deteriorate at great speed. For example, in the last month, the recognition by the bourgeoisie that the Asian economies, in particular China and India, are completely caught up in the downward spiral. At one time the bourgeoisie were putting forward the idea that the Asian economies would ‘decouple' from the western economies, in the hope that the dynamic built up there in the previous decade would carry on and offset, to some extent, the decline in the western economies. The bourgeoisie abandoned that rather hopeful vision some time ago, but they still thought that there would be some independent economic life in Asia in the sense that trade between the Asian nations would hold up. Since that appears not to be happening the bourgeoisie have been forced to the realisation that much of this trade was the logistics of manufacturing (Korea, say, supplying parts to China or Japan) where the ultimate destination of the goods was the western market. Overall the speed of contraction of world trade has taken the bourgeoisie by surprise. They are right to think that this is of exceptional importance, since it provides the most direct measure of the speed and scale of contraction of the global economy.

Response of the British bourgeoisie

The British bourgeoisie have a particularly acute sense of the fact that the performance of their own economy is tied to the performance of the world economy because of the economic history of Britain, with its overdeveloped financial sector (we explored this in the last issue of the paper [50]). This is reflected in Mr. Brown's search for a united response from the ‘world community' and his focus on his recent visit to the US and on the upcoming G20 summit. The G20 meeting will include many more countries in the discussions than the usual meetings of the G8 countries.

The world bourgeoisie have, up to now, experienced considerable success in managing the economic crisis that started in the late 60s and was clearly apparent by the mid 70s. However, they have only been managing the crisis, not overcoming it - despite, for instance, Mr. Brown's affirmations over the last decade of the ‘end to boom and bust'. The bourgeoisie now have to face the reality of the situation rather more squarely. It is predicted now that the British economy will contract by perhaps 5% this year and 2% more during 2010, and firms of all types and descriptions are battening down the hatches, reducing their expectations, trying to clean up their balance sheets and laying off workers. There are a very few counter-examples, such as fast food firms, but these examples are understood to be an expression of the recession rather than going in the opposite direction.

Furthermore the Bank of England seems to accept the very negative evaluations being given of the prospects for the recession and has finally initiated a policy of ‘quantitative easing' (printing money). Some of the bourgeoisie's experts have been saying for some time that the Bank should take this route and would have been happier to see it happen earlier. On the other hand many experts are not at all confident that the process will do anything to rectify the situation since the Bank of Japan has pursued the same policy for a sustained period without it having much appreciable effect. And the open printing of money always brings with it the real threat of devaluing the currency and unleashing powerful inflationary tendencies.

Mass unemployment - a fundamental sign of the crisis

The recession will accentuate phenomena that are already clearly established as the result of the long term decline that has taken place since the end of the post-war period of relative prosperity and sustained growth. Most important is the phenomenon of mass unemployment that was hardly dented even by the superficial success of the 10 year period prior to the credit crunch. The bourgeoisie like to blame this either on the unemployed themselves or the ineffectiveness of their own bureaucratic schemes for dealing with the situation. The one thing that they will not do is accept (at least in public statements) that unemployment is an expression of economic reality.

For example, the London Evening Standard on February 20th summarised an article originally written for The Times:

"A devastating critique of Labour's flagship New Deal for the unemployed has branded it an ‘expensive failure'.

Frank Field, the Labour MP and former minister for welfare reform, said the jobs scheme and related tax credits had cost £75 billion since 1997 yet failed, even at the height of the boom, to produce results.

‘The results are derisory', he said, adding that in a decade the number of people doing no work had fallen just 400,000 from 5.7 million. Yet at the same time the number or young people not in work or education had actually gone up. Labour's New Deal incorporates a series of schemes that compel the unemployed to take training, work places or community work...

The Labour veteran said that only a third of young people held a job for more than 13 weeks after being on the New Deal - even during the boom. The rest returned to living on benefits....

Many youngsters would stay on benefits for life unless the system was reformed, said Mr Field. ‘The recession calls for a totally new programme of welfare reform', he said."

Since the recession will add hundreds of thousands and probably millions to the total of the unemployed it is difficult to see how a ‘programme' can be set up that will deal with the situation, given the balance sheet drawn up by Mr Field of the operation of the New Deal scheme during the so-called ‘boom' period. What he really shows is that we are in a period in which the bourgeoisie can only speak of ‘boom' periods at the expense of ‘overlooking' uncomfortable realities like the real scale of unemployment. And, having shown the futility of such schemes, he can only put forward as a ‘solution' ‘a totally new programme of welfare reform' - in other words another austerity ‘initiative'.

Whether or not prominent members of the bourgeoisie can convince themselves that such schemes can somehow miraculously ‘deal with' the phenomenon of unemployment, the reality is that unemployment is a fundamental expression of the crisis.

Marx noted this in the mid-19th century. In Capital (Volume 1, Chapter 25), he wrote:

"The life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, overproduction, crisis and stagnation. The uncertainty and instability to which machinery subjects the employment, and consequently the conditions of existence, of the operatives, become normal, owing to these periodic changes of the industrial cycle."

So it is nothing new in itself that the lives of the workers - or ‘operatives' - are afflicted by unemployment. But Marx was writing in a period when the industrial cycle - Brown's ‘boom and bust' - was a reality: crises of overproduction were alleviated by what Marx called "expanding the outlying fields of production", penetrating into new economic regions of the globe, and during the resulting phase of growth the army of the unemployed could be considerably reduced. This has not been the case for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Great Depression of the 1930s and the subsequent world war, the long drawn-out crisis since the late 60s, the menace of a new depression today, all reveal a tendency for the crisis to become permanent and to push capitalism towards disaster and self-destruction. This is why so many young people, as Mr. Field's exposition so eloquently says, have extremely little expectation of ever becoming ‘operatives'.

Errant bankers are an expression of capitalist decomposition

As we said in our last article, the financial manoeuvrings of the bourgeoisie that have characterised the last decade are not the cause of the crisis but part of the bourgeoisie's response to the growing bankruptcy of capitalism. Since the crisis is so deep and has gone on so long, the fabric of capitalist society is collapsing. This is expressed at the highest levels of the bourgeois class, and the behaviour of the financial engineers of various hues (including bankers, certainly) is an expression of this. It has now become very tangible, given that the crisis in finance and banking have in the end assuredly deepened the crisis of the ‘real economy', that the expedients taken up by the bourgeoisie to ameliorate the crisis rebound with ever greater certainty on the heads of the bourgeoisie themselves. But there is also an irrational element here which is characteristic of a society in decomposition. It lies in the fact that that the bankers (in particular) have ceased to have any sense of responsibility to the institutions that they serve. That may not seem perverse, since these institutions are not laudable. But their own futures were bound up with the future of the institutions they served. Very many of them are being laid off in the current cut backs in the banks and other institutions. Such a fundamental failure to have regard to the future consequences of their actions speaks of a class that has a basic difficulty seeing any future for itself or society at all. That does, of course, correspond to the actual situation.

However, the bourgeoisie as a whole will never simply give up the fight to preserve its class rule or just take the money and run like some of the banking fraternity. The ‘greedy bankers' can provide a last service to their class by acting the part of a recognisable scapegoat that people can blame for the crisis, obstructing any deeper investigation of the real contradictions that lie behind the crisis and encouraging the belief in false solutions like a more moral, more responsible, better regulated, more state-controlled form of capitalism.  

Hardin 5/3/9

The British government has been embarrassed by revelations that it has used ‘torture by proxy'. It was alleged that part of the UK's secret service, MI5, was involved in questioning suspects while they were being tortured by the secret services of Pakistan and the United States.

Binyam Mohamed was held without trial for six years, four of them in Guantanamo Bay. He says that the only evidence against him was obtained through torture. He alleges that he was tortured and interrogated in Pakistan, in Morocco (by the CIA) and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, including being beaten and scalded and having his penis slashed with a scalpel. He says that MI5 supplied the CIA with questions and details of his life in the UK that was used in his interrogation process. He eventually ended up in Guantanamo Bay from where he has just been released, after a five-week hunger strike. Medical examinations show that he has endured long periods of physical and mental torture. Central to Binyam Mohammed's case are secret documents that show Britain was involved in his interrogation. The high court ruled that the documents could not be released because they would compromise national security. The basis of this possible breach of national security is that the USA would cease to co-operate with the UK government if it releases this information. This is embarrassing for Britain, which claims not to do this sort of thing.

The UK government was further embarrassed by a report from the US group Human Rights Watch. This report reveals that MI5 were helping the Pakistani secret service with their interrogations too. MI5 agents would ask questions of detainees and the Pakistani secret services would do the torturing. Not at the same time, for legal reasons, of course. The report gives details of ten Britons who they say were tortured in Pakistan and questioned by MI5. The report says that the events weren't just the result of ‘rogue agents' but occurred over a seven-year period with many different interrogators.

British democracy is no stranger to using torture. In "A short history of British torture [58]" (WR 290) we described how Britain used torture on a large scale in Northern Ireland, Malaya and Kenya. But torture isn't just for the history books. The British government claims to be against the use of torture now, but their concern for the victims of torture is only for public consumption. If the law doesn't allow it to carry out torture in its own name then it can bypass that by asking a friend to do it instead.

The press and human rights groups' answer to torture is the observance of national and international law. Human Rights Watch is calling for an end to legal loopholes and has asked the UK government to put pressure on the Pakistani government to end torture. This seems unlikely if you read their World report 2008: "The United States and United Kingdom, the key external actors in Pakistan, remain focused on counterterrorism in their dealings with Pakistan, subordinating all other issues. The US, working closely with Pakistan's notoriously abusive Inter-Services Intelligence agency, has had a direct role in ‘disappearances' of counterterrorism suspects." The truth is that when it comes to defending their national interests all capitalist states, ‘democratic' or openly dictatorial, will use any means they deem necessary.  

Embla 28/2/9

"President Obama has inherited a tougher foreign policy inbox than any president has faced since Harry Truman; establishing priorities among dozens of conflicts and crises requires new understanding of the most critical regions, the most salient issues within them, and the issues ripest for new direction", so says the Carnegie Endowment website introducing a series of articles on ‘Foreign Policy for the Next President'.

The mess faced by US imperialism is well known: its military bogged down and stretched in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability spreading into Pakistan, the difficulty it faces with Iran and Syria, and last but not least the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The mess Obama faces

Israel's invasion of Gaza just before Obama took over the reins of power have left the population faced with an even more devastated strip of land and a tighter blockade. The invasion was no doubt timed to take place while Bush, whose support could be counted on, was still president,  but under Obama the US continues to be closely allied to Israel and he kept very quiet while the slaughter was going on. Israel's inconclusive election added another complication to the divisions between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian prime minister Fayyad promised to step down in favour of a government of national unity, but this will remain an empty gesture unless one can be formed, and this is by no means a certainty with two factions that came to blows only two years ago. Despite the widespread anti-Americanism in Arab populations, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have no love for Hamas since it is backed by Iran, which is not only Shiite but also pursuing a determined policy to become the major regional power, and to arm itself with nuclear weapons in line with its ambitions.

Iraq, which was overcome so quickly in 2003, remains unstable whatever the small effects of the troop surge. With 10% of world oil production coming from the Kurdish north, and with Iran having a great influence in the Shiite South, the country is still threatening to fall apart. Obama has announced the "draw down" of troops with the aim of leaving by 2010 (although up to 30,000 will remain), showing the USA's inability to impose its control over the situation.

Afghanistan is occupied by an international force, with the US at its head and providing the vast majority of the troops, but they control little more than Kabul and its environs - or as Major Morley,  formerly of the British SAS, said of Helmand Province: "we are kidding ourselves if we think our influence goes beyond 500 metres of our security bases... We are not holding the ground." And instability threatens to overtake Pakistan, with the well-known links between the ISI security force and the Taliban, who have taken over the Swat Valley in agreement with the government. And in reaction to US bombing of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies - an action denounced by Islamic militants with a banner proclaiming "Bombing on tribes, Obama's first gift to Pakistan" -  Pakistan's Prime Minister has emphasised his determination to defend the country's territorial integrity.

The USA's difficulty maintaining its status as sole superpower

After the collapse of the USSR the USA was left riding high as the world's sole remaining superpower. It has suffered a significant decline in the 20 years since. We have only to compare its ability to cajole all the world's major powers into supporting, or at least bankrolling, it in the first Gulf war in 1991, with the open opposition of France and Germany when it invaded Iraq in 2003; or contrast America's strategy in the early 1990s, openly defined as one aimed at preventing the emergence of any global or regional power that would challenge its imperialist hegemony, and the reality today when we have seen a whole series of powers challenge the US.

Already by the early 1990s Germany had made a bid for influence in the Balkans, provoking the war that raged there for most of the decade by  supporting Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia. Around the same time, France was challenging the US in Africa, leading to the barbaric wars in Rwanda and Zaire/Congo. Today the US is facing further challenges.

Iranian imperialism's growing strength is a clear illustration of the difficulties faced by the US. Pushed by the threat of losing its global authority into massive displays of force like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, these acts of global bullying have actually strengthened hostility to America all over the world, but especially in the "Muslim" countries, with Tehran bidding against al Qaida and others for the ideological leadership of Islamic anti-Americanism. On top of which, the military overthrow of Iran's local rivals, Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, has given Iran the space to expand.

Today the USA is also faced with the defiant attitude of a revived Russia, which it almost directly confronted over the war in Georgia,  and the rise of China as an imperialist power. The latter's growing economic strength has given it the appetite and means to challenge for influence in Asia where Pakistan is a long term ally, and it is also establishing client states around it in Africa (Sudan, Congo, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Zambia). Even worse, it supports the pariah, "terrorist" states Syria, Iran and North Korea.

It is true that the USA remains the greatest military power by some considerable margin - China, despite its growth and ambition, has a military budget of a little more than a tenth of the USA's ($58.3bn compared with $547bn for the US) and slightly behind Britain's. Nevertheless even America's military resources are finite, and it cannot fight every conflict at once, particularly with a working class that has not been defeated and is not willing to sacrifice itself for the nation's imperialist adventures.

Obama's policy: adjusting to a changed situation

Faced with this weakening of American leadership, where it has to negotiate with North Korea and recognise China as a player in Asia, where its policies are contested by all and sundry, including its previously loyal allies, there is a need for an adjustment in policy to better defend its interests.

First of all, Obama has made Afghanistan and Pakistan the centre of his policy objectives. This is a very important strategic area with Iran to the West, the Caucasus and Russia to the North, China and India to the East. This will not be easy as the USA will have to withdraw from Iraq, taking the risk of letting it fall apart, in order to concentrate on Afghanistan. 17,000 more US troops will be sent to Afghanistan. And Obama has been a hawk in relation to Pakistan since he announced during the election campaign his intention to bomb and invade this ‘ally' in the war on terror whenever necessary. Iran is the second priority, and here again Obama has been among the most aggressive in his rhetoric - nothing, certainly not the military option - will be taken off the table.

The other policy change is a diplomatic offensive. The USA has found itself increasingly isolated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is no longer going to try and go it alone in the ‘war on terror'. Secretary of state Hilary Clinton has been sent on a tour of Asia, including Japan, Indonesia, China, and the Middle East for a ‘peace' conference in Egypt. Vice president Joe Biden announced in Munich that the US would have a new policy of listening. The Bush administration allowed the US to become dangerously isolated on a whole number of issues and the Obama team has a great deal of diplomatic damage to undo. Unfortunately, the basic need of US imperialism - to remain the world's only superpower - prevent it from ever really giving up the loneliness of power.

No let up in the growth of military barbarism

In the current situation the USA, while it remains the only military superpower, is facing greater and greater challenges from more and more directions. None of the actual or potential challengers, France, Germany, China, Iran.... has anywhere near the financial or military strength to take over the role of leader of an alliance, of an imperialist bloc to rival Washington. Nor does the USA have the strength or resources to prevent and destroy these challenges. In other words we can expect no peace, no hope, in American or any other foreign policy. On the contrary, each and every power needs to destabilise its rivals and will use any means at its disposal: short term alliances, wars, terrorism. In brief, we can see more death, more chaos, in all the areas of conflict throughout the globe. This is the expression of the decomposition of capitalist society on the level of imperialism.

The working class remains a barrier to world war because it is undefeated, but is unable to prevent the increasing barbaric conflicts around the globe until it takes its struggle to a higher level and is able to put an end to the whole capitalist system.

Alex 7/3/09

Two items appeared on the news on 17 February: one from Reuters on the worldwide increase in antisemitism as a result of Israel's offensive in Gaza and the onset of the global economic recession; and a Guardian article about a leaked document from the Home Office which envisages reclassifying extremists in a way that would officially define thousands of Muslims as potential terrorist recruits.

"Several countries have reported an increase in anti-Semitism during Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza which ended with a January 18 truce with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

France's main Jewish association CRIF recorded more than 100 attacks in January, up from 20 to 25 a month in the previous two years.

Some 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Britain in the four weeks after fighting began in Gaza, compared with 541 incidents over the whole of last year, a charity that protects the Jewish community was reported last week as saying.

In Venezuela, armed men vandalised the Tiferet synagogue in January while Turkey's centuries-old Jewish community said it was alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel's Gaza assault."

And in addition:

"A survey by the Anti-Defamation League published last week found that stereotypes about Jewish power in business still held strong in Europe.

The poll of 3,500 people in Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and Britain found 31 percent blamed Jews in the financial industry for the global economic crisis".

The economic crisis is the product of the inbuilt contradictions of capitalism. But capital is an impersonal force and the laws of the capitalist economy, at first sight, seem so hard to understand. Isn't it much easier to look around for some actual persons to blame, someone identifiable? And the mainstream media certainly encourage such a way of looking at things, with their endless scandals about the role of sinister speculators and greedy bankers in the credit crunch. But it's not such a step to go from greedy bankers to the Jews. ‘We all know' that most Jews are rich and are masters of financial skulduggery ever since they started lending money at interest....

Thus one of the mainstays of reactionary thought from the Middle Ages to the Nazi concentration camps comes creeping back to a Europe that is seeing the downfall of all its propaganda about prosperity and progress. What Trotsky said about fascism in general applies in equal measure to one of its habitual components - anti-Jewish racism:

"Fascism has opened up the depth of society for politics....Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing up from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the psychology of National Socialism" ("What is National socialism", 1933).

There is of course a new gloss on this old rubbish: the enemy is not the Jews, it's the Zionists. Look what Israel is doing in Gaza, look what it did in Lebanon in 2006, look at how it terrorised hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into fleeing from Palestine during the war of 1948...All of which is true. But it is also true that ‘anti-Zionism' is often a thin cover for the old antisemitism. The ‘powerful Zionist lobby' in the US that unduly influences US foreign policy can easily become the secret Jewish cabal that controls the world or the ‘Zionist Occupation Government' dreamed up by America's extreme right-wing militiamen. But the left wing (of capitalism) is no bulwark against antisemitism either. On marches against Israel's atrocities in Gaza the Trotskyists tell us to support Hamas because it is leading the ‘resistance' against the Israeli state. But Hamas has the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a Czarist forgery purporting to reveal Jewish plans for world domination - enshrined in its constitution. A local branch of the Socialist Workers Party, eager to win Muslim youth to its popular fronts, recently brought out a leaflet which tells us that the Nazis exterminated gays, disabled people and trade unionists, but somehow forgets to mention the Jews...even an Italian anarchist group came under fire for talking about the "the powerful US Jewish economic lobby" in the US (see https://libcom.org/forums/theory/does-libcom-support-aryanization-22122008 [69]). Whether the extreme left is openly antisemitic or not, its inbred nationalism and its flirtation with Islamic radicalism certainly make it incapable of fighting against the renewal of anti-Jewish hatred.

Democratic Islamophobia

The link between the revival of antisemitism and the development of Islamic extremism is also evident in Europe: many of the attacks on Jews in Europe are not the work of the traditional fascists but of young Muslims fired up by Bin Laden's tirades against Crusaders and Jews and enraged by what they see happening under the auspices of  a ‘Jewish state' in the Middle East.

For people like Ed Husain, who chronicled his involvement with and eventual break from Islamic extremism in his book The Islamist, the violent, fascist element in jihadist Islam is enough to justify defending the democratic state and calling on it to step up vigilance against Islamic extremism. "Violent extremism is produced by Islamist extremism and it's only right to get into the root causes." (Guardian 17 February)

He's referring to his support for the approach contained in a new strategy for dealing with Islamic radicalism, Contest 2 as it is known in Whitehall. The strategy is still only in draft form and has reportedly stirred up a good deal of controversy among politicians, civil servants and the ‘intelligence community', since some have recognised that it will only serve to further alienate Muslims. According to Contest 2,

"people would be considered as extremists if:

• They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.

• They promote Sharia law.

• They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.

• They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.

• They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Contest 2 would widen the definition of extremists to those who hold views that clash with what the government defines as shared British values. Those who advocate the wider definition say hardline Islamist interpretation of the Qur'an leads to views that are the root cause of the terrorism threat Britain faces" (ibid).

So while radical Muslims find ready scapegoats in the Jews, the democratic state finds an excellent scapegoat in the radical Muslims, stretching the definition of extremism so wide that it could encompass not only thousands of Muslims but all those who find themselves politically at odds with ‘British values' by opposing its wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, or by daring to suggest that parliamentary democracy is a hollow fraud.

The rise of Judaeophobia and Islamophobia are both expressions of the extreme putrefaction of capitalist society and its real ‘values'. But they cannot be opposed by the liberal wing of capitalism, which aligns itself with the democratic state and its cynical use of anti-Islamic prejudices, nor by the pseudo-revolutionary left which has chosen sides in the imperialist conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere and is acting as a cheerleader for Islamic gangs which are open advocates of anti-Jewish myths. The only standpoint which can really oppose both sets of prejudice is the standpoint of proletarian internationalism, which rejects support for any national state or would-be state and insists on the common interest of all the exploited, whether they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Arab, European or Asian...  

Amos 4/3/7

Introduction 2009

It is 30 years since the so-called ‘Iranian Revolution'. Below we have reprinted a statement that was put out across the ICC press in response to the powerful propaganda that filled the pages of the left and right wing media at the time. It ridicules the notion that some kind of bourgeois or bourgeois democratic revolution had taken place.

It refers to the fact that the autocratic regime of the Shah, who had been installed by the US as a reliable puppet of the western bloc, had sewn the seeds of his own downfall with his brutal repression of all opposition and dissent towards his regime. When the proletariat came to the head of the popular rebellion against him and the state was effectively paralysed, it fell to the Islamic opposition, itself a victim of the Shah's terror, to take a secure grip on the reins of government and gradually restore bourgeois order.

As the text affirms, the struggle of the Iranian working class was a significant demonstration at the time that the working class in the peripheral countries was awakening to the struggle. Indeed it was part of a wave of struggles that was soon to be followed in the heartlands with strikes by public sector workers (‘winter of discontent' in Britain) and by steelworkers' strikes in France and Britain, and not much later by the mass strike in Poland.

In Iran though it wasn't long before the Islamic regime began expelling or eliminating all opposition to itself in the same manner as the Shah. The religious fanaticism of the Mullahs became a tool for imposing state terror via its re-organised secret police and ‘revolutionary guards'.

The hatred for the Shah was transferred onto his main backer the USA after his departure, and the US embassy was occupied by young students inspired by the popular uprising that preceded the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile. It took some time and a botched US ‘rescue mission' before satisfactory terms could be finalised for the release of the Ambassador and his staff. But Iran had definitely quit the American orbit, and this was a major setback for the US bloc. This led to the policy of arming to the teeth another major client in the region, Iraq, and goading it into waging war with Iran. This war would last for 10 years and saw a million killed in circumstances reminiscent of the 1914-18 world war. Owing of its comparative military weakness compared to Iraq, and suffering a much heavier death-toll than its opponent, Iran resorted to conscripting a generation of children to serve in its army. Farcically, Iran claimed a great victory when the war was finally over.

More recently, the massive instability inflicted on the region by the US invasion and 5 year-long occupation of Iraq, has actually worked in Iran's favour. With Iraq in turmoil, Iran has been able to recover its position as a leading imperialist power in the region and is developing the capacity to stand up to Israel. It is with this objective that  it has been developing the technology for nuclear weapons. In the circumstances, the US has been unable to do little about it other than stamp its feet. With Russian imperialism newly revived today and assisting Iran with this project, President Obama is said to have sent a letter to the Russian leadership, offering to withdraw the military shield being installed in Poland in return for Russia exercising restraint over Iran.  The content of this letter was subsequently denied but it does show the extent of the threat that the US recognises from a resurgent Iranian imperialism.

Alongside this, it is worth mentioning that the Iranian proletariat, having suffered so heavily under this bourgeois religious regime, is still nonetheless beginning to re-emerge into the light of day and participate in the developing resurgence of international struggles. With the deepening economic crisis, the Iranian proletariat will be forced into further struggles to defend its living standards, and to rediscover the revolutionary proletarian traditions that stretch back to the authentic revolutionary period of 1917-23.

WR 7/3/9

---

ICC Statement

After several months of rioting, of strikes, of powerless attempts by the Shah's government to suppress popular discontent through a bloody campaign of massive repression, a new governmental team, previously excluded from the official political arena when it wasn't rotting in prison or exile, has assumed responsibility for conducting the affairs of Iranian capitalism. The breadth of the convulsions suffered by Iranian society, provoking the spectacular and brutal change in the ruling apparatus; the important position occupied by this country in the strategic needs of the world's most powerful imperialist bloc - a factor of gravest concern for the bloc; the wide-ranging international scope of the events in Iran, more for what they are a sign of, than for their consequences; and finally, but most importantly, the part taken by the proletariat in these events, necessitate drawing a certain number of lessons for the struggle of the world proletariat.

1. Contrary to what is claimed in some quarters, whether in the liberal or Bordigist press, there has been no ‘revolution' in Iran, neither a ‘democratic', ‘Islamic', nor ‘Cossack' revolution. The Shah was no more a representative of some sort of ‘feudalism', vanquished by the ‘progressive' forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini, than is the Queen of England or the Emperor Bokassa the First. The main cause of the breach between the monarchy and the Shi'ite hierarchy, by an irony of history, was the agrarian reform undertaken by the monarchy, which harmed the landed property interests of the Mosque. In fact, the new leaders of Iran don't represent any type of ‘progressive' or ‘radical bourgeois' force, either at a political or an economic level. What bourgeois revolution in the past was made in the name of ‘religious tradition', or represented nothing more than a change of clothing for the regime? What revolutionary character is there in the ‘nationalisation' of the oil industry - an industry already nationalised in any case?

What the so-called Iranian revolution does illustrate is the fact that, in decadent capitalism, throughout the world, the time of the bourgeois or democratic revolution of whatever form has long since passed. There no longer exists any country (or ‘area') in the world, no matter how backward in its development, where the tasks posed to society are the same tasks as those accomplished in 1789.

2. If the Iranian events confirm that the conditions for the bourgeois democratic revolution exist nowhere in the world today, and certainly not in the underdeveloped countries, they also illustrate equally well that in such countries the army constitutes the only force in society capable of guaranteeing a minimum of unity - to the benefit of the national capital. Immediately upon taking power, the Bazargan-Khomeini regime was obliged to appeal to the very force that only a few weeks earlier had been the main support of the Shah. And the execution of certain generals, done in an attempt to calm the anger of the masses, will change nothing about the reality of how the army has been left intact; both the army as an institution and the military hierarchy. As in all countries where the capitalist state cannot root its power in a strong, historically developed, economic base; where the ruling class doesn't have at its disposal juridical institutions and a political apparatus flexible enough to contain within the confines of ‘legality' and ‘democracy' the conflicts which tear it apart and throw all strata of society into turmoil, developments in Iran underline a fundamental lesson in regard to the army. Since it represents the hierarchical, centralised violence of social relations based on exploitation and oppression, and expresses the entire tendency in decadent capitalism toward the militarisation of society, the army constitutes, in a practically constant fashion, the only guarantee of the survival and stability of the bourgeois regime, whether it calls itself ‘popular', ‘Islamic', or ‘revolutionary'.

3. Once again, the events in Iran serve to demonstrate that the only revolution on the agenda today, in the backward countries as much as in the rest of the world, is the proletarian revolution. In opposition to the legend so often upheld by those who have a stake in maintaining it, the events in Iran have decisively proven not only that the proletariat exists in the backward countries, but that it is equally capable of mobilising itself in a combative way and on its own class terrain as the proletariat in the advanced countries. Coming in the wake of workers' struggles in different countries in Latin America, Tunisia, Egypt, etc... the strikes of the Iranian workers were the major, political element leading to the overthrow of the Shah's regime. Despite the mass mobilisations, when the ‘popular' movement - regrouping almost all the oppressed strata in Iran - began to exhaust itself, the entry into the struggle of the Iranian proletariat at the beginning of October 1978, most notably in the oil sector, not only refuelled the agitation, but posed a virtually insolvable problem for the national capital, in the absence of a replacement being found for the old governmental team. Repression was enough to cause the retreat of the small merchants, the students and those without work, but it proved a powerless weapon of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the economic paralysis provoked by the strikes of the workers. Thus, even in a country where it is numerically weak, the proletariat in Iran showed what an essential strength it has in society, owing to its position at the heart of capitalist production.

4. The events in Iran, while reaffirming the fundamental strength of the proletariat, also demonstrated that the proletariat is the only force in society able to oppose itself to the one solution capitalism has for its crisis, the solution of imperialist war. Indeed, because Iran occupies an essential position in the military deployment of the western bloc, it has become the recipient of great attention on the part of the bloc. And the difficulties created by the movement of the class, not only for the national capital, but also for the essential war preparations of the imperialist bloc, makes it obvious why the action of the proletariat today constitutes, as it did in the past, the only obstacle, but a decisive obstacle, standing in the way of the bourgeoisie pursing its own course toward imperialist war.

5.The decisive position occupied by the proletariat in the events in Iran poses an essential problem which must be resolved by the class if it is to carry out the communist revolution successfully. This problem centres on the relationship of the proletariat to all the other non-exploiting strata in society, particularly those without work. What these events demonstrate is the following:

- despite their large numbers, these strata by themselves do not possess any real strength in society;

- much more than the proletariat, such strata are open to different forms of mystification and capitalist control, including the most out-dated, such as religion;

- but in as much as the crisis also hits the working class at the same time as it assaults these strata with the increasing violence, they can be a force in the struggle against capitalism, provided the proletariat can, and does, place itself at the head of the struggle.

Faced with all the attempts of the bourgeoisie to channel their discontent into a hopeless impasse, the objective of the proletariat in dealing with these strata is to make clear to them that none of the ‘solutions' proposed by capitalism to end their misery will bring them any relief. That it is only by following in the wake of the revolutionary class that they can satisfy their aspirations, not as particular - historically condemned - strata, but as members of society. Such a political perspective presupposes the organisational and political autonomy of the proletariat, which means, in other words, the rejection by the proletariat of all political ‘alliances' with these strata. It is not by placing its weight behind their specific demands that the proletariat will draw these strata behind it. On the contrary, history has shown that they tend to follow the most dynamic force in society. Therefore, only the decisive affirmation of its own revolutionary goals will allow the proletariat to attain its objective of drawing them behind its struggle, initially by splitting apart those sectors of the other strata closest to the ruling class from those closest to itself.

6. If there has been no bourgeois revolution in Iran, neither has there been a proletarian revolution. Despite its indisputable combativity, the working class has not asserted its real autonomy. It has not vied for power with the bourgeoisie, nor has it set up its own unitary organisations of struggle - the workers' councils. And it is here that another lesson of the events in Iran can be found. Despite the weaknesses of the proletariat, numerical as well as organisational and political, which allow the bourgeoisie today to retain overall control, nonetheless the struggle of the workers has had a decisive influence on the evolution of the world political situation. The events in Iran are in this sense a prefiguration of the future. After a period of eclipse following the wave of class struggle which took place between 1968 and 1973, today the workers' struggle is tending more and more to assert itself, and to generalise. The working class progressively occupies the front of the political stage in society, to the detriment of all the internal contradictions wracking the capitalist class (its economic and political crises, the military reinforcement of the blocs). But for the proletariat in Iran, as for the proletariat in all the underdeveloped countries, the problem could only be posed, not resolved. Only the action of the entire world proletariat in the strongest countries will resolve the problem, by generalising the assault on capitalism and destroying the whole system.

ICC 17/2/79

This is an extract from our "Left Wing of the Turkish Communist Party" pamphlet. It is not available online. Copies can be purchased for £4.

The Comintern's theses on the national question put forward the idea that ‘national liberation' movements should be supported and nations' right to self determination should be recognised. On the other hand, even if it had some influence, there was no need for the Comintern to pressure the Turkish Communist Party to accept the decision. The majority at the Congress, just like the majority who participated in the Peoples' Congress of the East, had not managed to break from nationalist ideology and some of them had feelings towards Westerners that were arguably quite racist. Following the Congress, the militants in Constantinople started crossing to Anatolia while Mustafa Suphi, Ethem Nejat and the founding cadres of the TKP called "the 15" had quite enthusiastically started to exchange letters with Mustafa Kemal in order to go to Ankara.

Unfortunately, the naïve calculations made at the TKP Congress were not going to fit the ruthless reality. Indeed the central bourgeois government did not intend to give any movement other than itself the opportunity to live. First of all, on 5th January 1921, the Islamic-Bolshevik nationalist gangs who aided communists in Anatolia were disbanded and the gang leaders had to escape and get out of the country. On 19th January 1921, lots of self-proclaimed communists, leftists in the parliament, as well as militants of the Communist Party in Anatolia ... were arrested, and were condemned by the "Independence Tribunals", a sort of revolutionary court of the nationalist movement, to 15 years imprisonment with forced labour for their efforts to "weaken the feelings for the defence of the fatherland". Sherif Manatov, a revolutionary who had played an important part in the organisation of communists in Anatolia was deported. Manatov returned to the Soviet Union where he was to be murdered sometime afterwards.

Finally on the night of 28-29 January, the 15 founding leaders of the TKP who had naively come to Turkey despite everything that had happened, were brutally murdered on the orders of Mustafa Kemal, who had shown a true example of bourgeois hypocrisy in order to pull "the 15" to where he could reach them, on the boat they had boarded in Trabzon in order to escape from the reactionaries who had attacked them. The Kemalist bourgeoisie had aimed to get rid of all those who called themselves communists with this attack. [...]

Even before the foundation of the united TKP, one of the important militants of the Anatolian TKP, Sherif Manatov, had warned Mustafa Suphi of what Kemal planned to do personally and had said he couldn't trust bourgeois politicians. Another important figure from the Anatolian TKP, Salih Hacioğlu, had said that "Mustafa Kemal is a dictator; he doesn't allow anyone to do anything. A Bolshevik who was sent from Odessa to do organisational work among workers was caught by the police in İnebolu, was tortured despite saying ‘I'm a Bolshevik' and was eventually tortured to death".The interesting part was that these observations of Salih Hacioğlu were reported a few days before the Founding Congress of the TKP and in this report it was explained that it would be suicide to cross to Anatolia openly and all together. And after the attacks took place, the Comintern did nothing but ignore them.

WR 9/3/09 

This article is adapted from the article in International Review 136 available here [7]

Now the G20 London Summit is over, what is the message that the rulers of the earth want us to take from this ‘historic meeting'?

First and foremost: that the world's leaders and the states they represent can deal with the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist system.  As Gordon Brown put it on April 2: "This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words, but with a plan for global recovery".

But this G20 ‘world' is founded on competition for markets. One capitalist can only prosper at the expense of another, and the same goes for capitalist nations. Of course they have common interests: they all need to cooperate when it comes to keeping the wage slaves in line, and they are also reluctant to let whole nation states go to the wall, even when they are their competitors, because they are also markets for their goods or debtors. But they can't all realise their profits in an endless round of selling to each other, and this is why they are afflicted with the curse of overproduction - the clogging up of the market which leads to waves of bankruptcies, the collapse of industries and the pandemic of unemployment.

The present crisis of overproduction has its roots not, as the economic experts claim, in any kind of temporary ‘imbalance' in the world economy, but in the basic social relations of capitalism, where the great mass of the population are by definition the producers of a ‘surplus' value which can only be realised through a constant extension of the market. No longer able to expand into what Marx called "the outlying fields of production" and conquer new markets outside itself, capitalism for decades has dealt with this problem by replacing real markets with the artificial market of debt. Today's ‘credit crunch' has starkly demonstrated the limitations of that remedy, which has now become a poison eating at the very heart of the economy.

Brown's ‘plan for world recovery' is in reality a plan for the same kind of false recovery we have seen so often over the past 40 years - a recovery based on the bubble of credit.

The state can't save us

Of course, we are told, we can't just let things go on as they have done over the last few decades. Left to itself, the ‘free market' will lead to a devastating slump like it did in the 1930s and as it is threatening to do now. So what we need is a lot more state intervention: to prevent the greed of bankers and speculators getting out of control, to find (or just plain print) the funds needed to stimulate the economy, and to step in and nationalise banks and other key economic sectors when all else fails. This is the new ‘Keynesianism' which is being presented as the solution to the failures of ‘neo-liberalism'. 

What we are not told is that ‘neo-liberalism' - with its emphasis on introducing direct competition into every corner of the economy, on privatisation, on the ‘free' movement of capital into areas of the globe where labour power could be exploited at far lower costs - was conceived as an answer to the failure of ‘Keynesianism' at the end of the post-war boom in the 70s, when the world economy began sinking into the mire of ‘stagflation' - recession combined with spiralling inflation.

We are also not told that neo-liberalism - including its most recent brilliant invention, the ‘housing boom' - was from the very beginning a policy decided on and coordinated by the state. So all the failed economic policies of the past 40 years, Keynesian or neo-liberal, are failures of state-directed capitalism.

How could it be otherwise? The state, as Engels pointed out way back in the 1880s, is no more than the ideal, collective capitalist. Its function is not to do away with capitalist relations, but to preserve them at all costs. If the contradictions of the world economy lie in the fundamental social relations of capitalism, the capitalist state can do no more than try to stave off the effects of these contradictions.

Capitalism can never put people first

The mainstream press is trying very hard to convince us that we need to put our faith in the good intentions of the world leaders. They have talked above all about the politics of ‘change' embodied by Barack Obama and his lovely wife, but in France and Germany Sarkozy and Merkel have been playing to the gallery as politicians ready to stand up to American power and the ‘irresponsible' fiscal fiddling of the Anglo-Saxons.

But this ideological paint job is not without its bare patches. It can hardly go unnoticed, for example, that the G20 is a club of the world's most powerful economies and that it may not, as a result, be overly concerned with the effects of its decisions on the world's poorest populations. One of the G20's decisions was to boost the role of the International Monetary Fund in world economic affairs - the very same IMF which has developed such a fearsome reputation for imposing draconian austerity in return for shoring up the world's weakest economies. Similarly, in the face of ever more pessimistic forecasts of looming ecological disaster, it was noticeable how climate change figured in the decisions of the world's leaders as no more than an afterthought.

So who has the job of painting over these bare patches? That is the role of the left - the people who organise big demonstrations calling on the world leaders to "put people first". Thus the coalition of unions, left wing groups, environmental, religious and charitable associations, anti-poverty campaigners and others who called the national demonstration on 28 March demanded "a transparent and accountable process for reforming the international financial system" which will "require the consultation of all governments, parliaments, trade unions and civil society, with the United Nations playing a key role". They claim that "these recommendations provide an integrated package to help world leaders chart a path out of recession", and can open the way to "a new system that seeks to make the economy work for people and the planet", with "democratic governance of the economy", "decent jobs and public services for all", a "green economy" and so on and so forth.

These political forces in no way challenge the falsehood that the capitalist state can steer us out of the very catastrophe it has led us into. They merely claim that by mobilising people ‘from below', we can put enough pressure on the state to make it implement truly democratic, human, and ecological policies that will benefit mankind and the planet. In other words, they peddle illusions and encourage us to channel our energies into campaigning for the reform of an unreformable and doomed social system.

Resistance is not futile

Another message issued loud and clear at the G20 talks: resistance is futile. Of course, the official line goes, we respect people's right to protest peacefully and democratically. We even understand why people are angry about those greedy bankers. But step outside the bounds of acceptable protest and you're nicked, or more precisely, ‘kettled' by well-trained and well-armed police troops who will keep you hemmed in for hours regardless of whether you are an anarchist in a black mask or an elderly or disabled person badly in need of the toilet. The use of these tactics on the first day of the G20 talks in London was a deliberate display of state repression, aimed at discouraging the social discontent and revolt that the bourgeoisie knows full well is on the horizon in all countries.

Not that trashing a bank in the context of a set-piece demo (as we saw on 1 April in London) already constitutes that revolt. But the signs of genuine and massive social unrest are plain enough to see when you look at the recent waves of rebellions by students, teachers, unemployed and many others which swept through Europe recently, culminating in the Greek December; at the oil refineries wildcats in Britain; at factory occupations against redundancies in France, Waterford, Belfast, Basildon and Enfield; at mass strikes in Egypt, Bangladesh, or the Antilles; at the hunger riots in dozens of countries. The signs are also to be discerned in the growing number of young people discussing revolutionary ideas on the internet, forming discussing circles, questioning the false solutions offered by the mainstream media and the ‘left', opening up debates with communist organisations....All these are the green shoots of revolution which are being nurtured by the crisis of capitalism all over the planet.

Resistance is not futile. Resisting capitalism's economic attacks and political repression, resisting its ideological toxins, is the only starting point for a real movement to change the world.

WR 4/3/9

The occupation of the Visteon car part plants in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon at the beginning of April is a small but important sign that workers are not prepared to lie down and accept the mauling that capitalism in crisis is inflicting on their jobs and living conditions.

The striking thing about these occupations is, first, that workers responded very rapidly to the announcement of redundancies on the worst possible terms (minimal redundancy payments and no guarantees of last week's wages being paid...), occupying the plant in Belfast and almost immediately afterwards in Enfield and Basildon. Although the Basildon occupation seems to have ended, the workers have stayed outside the plant to voice their anger.

Secondly, there is a very strong feeling of solidarity behind these actions and a real desire to extend the struggle. The occupation in Belfast encouraged the Enfield workers to follow their example. An Enfield worker put it simply: "the workers in Ireland occupied - so we thought, now it's our turn to do something." (Socialist Worker online, 4/4/9). Because the plants used to be owned by Ford and many workers are still working under Ford contracts, the occupying workers straight away talked about sending delegations to Ford plants in Dagenham and Southampton. Workers from other sectors also came to the three plants to show their support, and there was a demonstration outside the Enfield plant where all were welcome.

The main aim of the occupations was not to set up a new company ‘under workers' management' but to put pressure on the bosses to either improve the redundancy deal or withdraw it and find some way of keeping the plant going. The discussions about extending the struggle to Ford were motivated by the same concern.

Occupations can become a trap for workers if they end up shut up inside rather than trying to spread the struggle outwards. The Visteon occupations, even though they are still under union control and face considerable obstacles and difficulties, indicate that we are entering a period where the search for class-wide solidarity more and more becomes a central element in every struggle.  

Amos 4/4/9

The killing of two soldiers and a policeman in Northern Ireland in early March was only news to the extent that the shootings were ‘successful'. Since the new power-sharing government was established in May 2007 there have been a number of attacks on the security forces by ‘dissident' republicans.

The Independent Monitoring Commission has reported a more concentrated period of attacks than at any time since 2004. Previously shot policemen have survived, and there have also been parcel bombs, booby-trapped bombs under cars, a landmine attack, and a roadside bomb that are among 20 gun and bomb attacks on police and army that have marked the last 16 months of ‘peace' in Northern Ireland.

This is obviously not at the levels of violence of the 1970s or 80s, but it underlines the inherent tension in the situation. There are, apparently only a limited number of ‘dissident' republicans, but, as Irish history has shown, small groupings also play their part. Gangs like the Real or Continuity IRA assert their ‘rebel' credentials, but their capitalist programme of Irish nationalism, and the degree to which such groups are penetrated and manipulated by state security forces, make them players (if mainly as pawns) with the other bourgeois forces that face each other in Ireland.

The relationship between Irish nationalist and pro-British forces is not one of peace but truce. While there was almost complete unity across the political spectrum in opposition to the March killings, talk of Ireland "staring into the abyss" was typical. In Northern Ireland there is a form of apartheid, of separate development of the two ‘communities', where most people live in areas that are overwhelmingly of a single religion. The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, but in Belfast there are 83 walls left in place to keep the population divided.

A few days after the killings there were rallies ("peace vigils") in Belfast, Newry, Derry, Lisburn, Downpatrick and Craigavon in which the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) played a prominent part together with the politicians. An ICTU spokesman said that the people of Northern Ireland "want only peace and absolutely no return to violence of any kind". A return to military violence depends on the actions of the paramilitaries and the official forces of state repression.

But that is not the only violence that capitalism has to offer, there is also the force of its economic crisis, from which Northern Ireland is not immune. As a recent Bloomberg item reported (18/3) "Unemployment has soared by 76 per cent over the last year, the biggest annual increase in at least 38 years. Politicians' efforts to rebuild Northern Ireland's economy after more than three decades of violence have been hampered by the first global recession since World War II." Mid-Ulster has been particularly badly hit with claimant totals in Cookstown, Dungannon and Magherafelt going up 149%, 161% and 186% respectively. These are only small towns but they are the three largest increases in the UK over the last year.

At the end of March/beginning of April job losses were announced at telecoms company Nortel, engineers FG Wilson, Ford subcontractor Visteon and nearly 1000 jobs at the Bombardier aerospace company. That's about 2% of Northern Irish manufacturing gone in a single week. Workers replied by occupying the Visteon factory in west Belfast, an action that almost immediately spread to Enfield and Basildon in England.

In the same week, in Belfast and Derry, three men were shot in the legs in traditional punishment attacks.

Anger at the effects of the economic crisis

The economy of the Irish Republic, once touted as the ‘Celtic Tiger', is also not immune from the global crisis. It was the first country of the eurozone to go into recession in 2008, and every prediction for 2009 is quickly revised to acknowledge a rapidly worsening situation. In the last three months of 2008 the Irish economy shrank by 7.5% in comparison with the same 2007 period. The construction industry has been particularly badly hit with a 24% drop in output. The current official forecast of a 6.9% contraction in the economy this year is very optimistic. Unemployment, already at 11% is forecast to average over 14% next year. The Irish Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, said, "Ireland is facing a very difficult recession, somewhat worse than the rest of the world."

As Reuters (25/3/9) reported "Even at the targeted 9.5 percent of GDP this year, Ireland's budget deficit is the worst in the euro zone. This marks a stunning reversal of fortune for the former ‘Celtic Tiger' economy which has been hit by a double whammy of a global recession and the bursting of a local property bubble." The Irish government has not hesitated to try and get the working class to pay for the crisis, "More than two decades of peaceful industrial relations were ruptured last month when [Irish Prime Minister] Cowen pushed ahead with a public sector pay freeze and a pension levy."

On 22 February there was the biggest of a series of demonstrations with more than 100,000 showing their anger on the streets of Dublin. ICTU, which operates on both sides of the border, played a major part in the organisation of the demo, which is to be expected, as it is, in its own words, the "largest civic society organisation on the island of Ireland". That doesn't diminish the very real depth of feeling among those who were protesting.

Leftists and unions in Ireland made much of the 7-week occupation by workers of the Waterford Wedgwood crystal factory in Kilbarry. Workers from the occupation led the 22 February demonstration. The unions tried to get a new owner for the business. There were many donations of money and food. The main furnace was maintained to ensure that the factory was viable. In the end a private equity firm took over. The only guarantee is that for six months 110 full time and 50 part-time jobs will be retained, where once 700 worked.

Occupations raise certain difficulties. At its best the occupation of a factory can be a moment in the extension of the struggle other workers. At its worst it can mean the death of the struggle, isolated in one location and/or just concerned with the running of a capitalist enterprise. For the working class the extension of the struggle to other workers in different sectors of the economy is one of the means for strengthening its sense of its own power and force in society.

As elsewhere, the trade unions undermine, derail and sabotage struggles. In addition to the ICTU examples, the Irish SWP have pointed out how union leaders "left 13,000 CPSU members to strike alone. SIPTU and IMPACT even sent out letters to members to tell them - wrongly - that solidarity action was illegal." Far from being exceptional, this is just a more obvious example of how unions stand against moves toward workers' solidarity.

Economic crisis is the key

With the deepening of the crisis the attacks of the Irish bourgeoisie are multiplying. There is to be the second emergency budget in six months on 7 April. The Irish central bank want it to include massive cuts in public spending (that is, cuts in the wages of those who work in the public sector, and cuts in benefits), and others want to include increases in taxation, in particular on those whose wages have previously been too low to be taxed. Lenihan says, "Everybody will have to pay something." In opposition to this a nationwide strike was planned for March 30. However, a few days before this was due to happen, ICTU called it off, with the prospect of entering into talks with the government. Taoiseach Brian Cowen "said he saw ‘considerable merits' in the many aspects of the 10-point plan for economic recovery drawn up by ICTU" (Irish Times 25/3/9).

North and South the effects of the economic crisis hold the key to the situation. If the bourgeoisie gains the upper hand it will be able to impose its austerity regime in the Republic, and in the North there will be little to prevent it using sectarian conflict to carve up and weaken any working class response to its attacks. And even when sectarian conflict runs counter to some of the bourgeoisie's more ‘rational' policies, the economic crisis threatens to sharpen the decomposition of capitalist society, with its tendency towards gangsterisation and irrational, fratricidal violence.

On the other hand, if the working class reacts to the economic crisis with its own demands and methods, we will no doubt see expressions of the counter-tendency, the one that leads it to breaking through the sectarian divide. This is something which has appeared in many past workers' struggles, most notably the 2006 post office strike where workers from both sides of the divide very consciously held a joint march through traditional Protestant and Catholic areas.

Put in another way, these tendencies point to the two mutually antagonistic historical alternatives facing the working class in Ireland. They are the same as those facing the class everywhere: capitalist barbarism on the one hand, class struggle and socialism on the other.  

Car 3/4/9

The response to protests against the G20 on 1 April has drawn criticism of the police tactic of ‘kettling', forcing demonstrators, and anyone else in the area, into a confined space and keeping them there for hours without food, water or toilet facilities. This is not a new tactic and its use has to be seen in the context not just of the whole repressive arsenal wielded by the democratic state, but also of its ideological campaigns.

First of all such a response to the demonstrations on 1 April, a form of collective punishment, was wholly out of proportion to the protests. Some RBS windows were broken, following a sustained media campaign to blame the bankers for all our woes, hardly a great threat to British capital. But the response was in line with the media build-up to the G20 - the great importance of the meeting to provide an international response to the recession on the one hand, the danger from violent protests on the other. The arrest of 5 people in Plymouth with imitation weapons and "some politically sensitive material" (according to the police) linked to the forthcoming protests, was given big publicity, as was anyone wanting to talk up the possibility of a fight with the police. The presence of Obama, the publicity given to the bigger demonstration on Sat 28th March (which passed without incident but had been built up with headlines like the Evening Standard's "100,000 plot to take over London") all added to the general hysteria. All this publicity to intimidate protesters, and make it appear that the only alternatives if you don't like the system are a harmless protest, or equally impotent violence.

When the demonstrators outside the Bank of England were finally released at 8pm they were let out one by one, photographed and had to give their names and addresses. This will all be kept on a police database along with all the other information the state keeps. In this Britain leads the world: "The UK's database is the largest of any country: 5.2% of the UK population is on the database compared with 0.5% in the USA. The database has expanded significantly over the last five years. By the end of 2005 over 3.4 million DNA profiles were held on the database" boasts the Home Office website, and the number of profiles held has increased to over 4 million, including 500,000 who have never been charged and 39,000 children. Other databases include ‘ContactPoint', on all children in England, ‘ONSET' for the Home Office to predict which children will offend in future, the ‘communications database' which will monitor all itemised phone calls, emails, mobile phone locations... The list is too long for a short article. In any case, the state spends £16 billion a year on IT and tolerates a huge failure rate in these projects - only 30% succeed - showing the priority it gives to collecting information to use when it wishes to in the future.

This information is all held by the same democratic state that has the Terrorism Act on its statute books, complete with 28 day detention without charge. The same one that co-operates in the torture of its citizens and residents, when it deems it not politic to carry it out itself (see ‘Britain asks its friends to do its dirty work' [114]in WR 322 and ‘A short history of British torture' [58]in WR 290). We should therefore neither be surprised at a particularly repressive response to demonstrators, nor lulled into any sense of security when they are not making obvious use of the information they have collected.

For the bourgeoisie's media this is all a question of human rights or a proportionate response. We are permitted to read critical pieces showing that individual police were spoiling for a fight just as much as any protester; the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has written a report criticising the majority of government databases for breaking data protection laws. However the way the state views all these ‘rights' was made very clear by the House of Lords after a claim for compensation for a previous ‘kettling' in May 2001: "There is room, even in the case of fundamental rights as to whose application no restriction or limitation is permitted by the Convention, for a pragmatic approach..." (quoted in The Guardian 2.4.09). This could not be clearer - no matter how fundamental, unrestricted or unlimited any right is claimed to be, for the ruling class it is nothing but a pragmatic question whether to honour it or to arrest, ‘kettle', torture, or shoot a suspect on the underground. In fact there is no contradiction between democracy and repression working hand in hand for the defence of the capitalist system and its state.  

Alex 4/4/9

As economic crisis wracks the globe, the international bourgeoisie seems to be on the ropes.

It's true that the massive injections of credit into the money markets, the equally massive budget deficits and now the latest round of ‘quantitative easing' has enabled the bourgeoisie to prevent a total implosion of the financial system in most of the central countries. But none of this has actually resolved the underlying crisis. The bourgeoisie now accepts that the world is facing its most brutal recession since the end of World War II. According to some commentators, over 40% of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the ‘credit crunch'. Countries such as Japan and Germany are suffering massive collapses in exports (-49.4% and -20.7% for the year respectively) and industrial production (-10% and -22.8% for the year respectively) at a rate rivalling the Great Depression. Much of Eastern Europe is threatened with outright disaster on the scale of Iceland, and Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain are not far behind. The ‘emerging markets' that shone as beacons only last year are also beginning to show the strain - China's lay-offs alone number tens of millions - as these economies are caught up in the same tsunami as the rest of the world. Both the OECD and the IMF are now predicting the world economy as a whole will contract this year - a phenomenon unprecedented since the end of World War II.

Capitalism exists as a global economic system and the crisis is no less global. But the world economy is also divided into disinct economic units locked in brutal competition for resources, markets and profit. The highest synthesis the bourgeoisie can reach is the nation state. In decadent capitalism unfettered competition only exacerbates the crisis and the threat to the entire system. In the 1930s, the bourgeoisie responded to global crisis by a series of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which only made the crisis worse until some nations attempted to resolve their domestic crisis by stealing the spoils from other capitalist states. This was the underlying cause of World War II.

After the war, the bourgeoisie concentrated its efforts on trying to forge a united front to tackle the crisis on a more global level. Economic policy was co-ordinated through the bloc-system and the development of international instruments such as the OECD, IMF and World Bank. Forums such as the World Trade Organisation have allowed the ruthless competition endemic to capitalism to be pursued according to ‘rules' that prevent the situation degenerating into total chaos. The G20 is another such body, a forum allowing the most powerful states to discuss economic issues together.

Capitalism is bankrupt

The circumstances of the latest G20 meeting are historically unprecedented. After 40 years, since the end of the post-war boom, all the policies which the bourgeoisie have used to systematically manage (or delay) crises are on the brink of failure. The main mechanism for maintaining demand in the face of massive over-production - ever-increasing amounts of credit - has now left the economy in a similar situation to a patient who has overused antibiotics: the effectiveness of any counter-measures have been reduced to virtually zero. Credit has become part of the problem: the whole of the system is now, literally, bankrupt.

Faced with this prognosis, the bourgeoisie is trying desperately to marshal a response that can finally end the crisis and return to the elusive path to ‘growth'. But the bourgeoisie is faced with the unpleasant question: what do they do now? Some parts of the bourgeoisie bewail the loss of the manufacturing base in Europe; and talk about ‘rebalancing' the economy, expanding manufacturing and ending the addiction to credit. Can this lead the way to a new economic Eldorado? Hardly! Although the financial powers (especially the US and UK) have been the epicentre of the crisis, the major manufacturers (Germany, China and especially Japan) are confronting dislocations every bit as profound as the ‘profligate' countries. This is because it was only the massive liabilities of the debtor countries which provided a market for the exporting countries in the first place. All the current-account surpluses and foreign-currency reserves of the manufacturing powers have turned out to be just as illusory as the so-called ‘wealth' generated by the property bubble.

Because the vast quantities of credit poured into the system have failed to produce acceptable results, the bourgeoisie is now trying to up the dosage to even more massive levels. The US wants to co-ordinate this on an international scale and has been pressuring Europe to join in a global fiscal stimulus. This met with some resistance at the beginning of the G20. The weaker members of the eurozone are already facing bankruptcy and would probably have suffered a currency collapse were it not for the Euro. Germany, the most powerful economic engine of the EU, was, along with France, very vocal in its opposition to excessive stimulation of the world economy. Ironically, after accusing the UK of "irresponsible Keynesianism", the German bourgeoisie has already pushed through measures even bigger than those of its British rival. Britain's national debt was already dangerously high before the crisis exploded. It's now at such levels that it threatens the country's sovereign AAA rating. The latest auction of British state debt failed to shift all the bonds on offer.

No real recovery

In the end the world leaders came up with a deal in which some of the French-German proposals - such as stronger controls over hedge funds and tax havens - were exchanged for a trillion dollar injection into the world economy. Gordon Brown immediately proclaimed that this amounted to "a plan for global recovery". In reality, this is just a rejigging of the same failed policies whose limitations have been so exposed by the world crisis.

Whichever way the bourgeoisie turns, it is confronted with the ever-growing contradictions of decadent capitalism. As their united efforts become increasingly ineffective, the temptations of "each to their own" will become harder to resist. France has already tied state aid for car manufacturers to conditions on keeping investment within the country. Obediently, Renault has begun to shift production back to France, announcing the closure of a factory in Slovenia. Other European powers blather about the dangers of protectionism, but it's clear they've had the same thought.

It may still be possible for the ruling class to maintain a united front against the economic storm but the obstacles against this are increasing. It may also be possible for them to squeeze some kind of economic ‘recovery' out of the wreckage of the world economy - but this can only delay the inevitable. For the working class, the results will be largely the same: a vicious assault on jobs, wages and living conditions that will make the last 40 years look like an oasis of prosperity. There is only one answer to this irreversible decline: world revolution!  

Ishamael 21/3/09

The reports that have accompanied the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen are worse than ever. They show that the worst case scenarios on predicted global warming are being realised with predictions of the destruction of 85% of the Amazon Rainforest and warnings that the climate could reach tipping point. Once again, the national/competitive logic of capital drives in the opposite direction of even the ‘best intentions' of the bourgeoisie. The economic crisis, though reducing the level of production, will bring further strains on the ecology of each country as it strives to remain competitive. Even the recommendations of the world's experts on climate change are trapped within the framework of capitalism.

The Congress, held in March, aimed to provide an update to the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC produced its last report in 2007.  The Congress takes place in the run-up to the 15th United Nations Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention (COP-15), also to be held in Copenhagen, in December.

During the Congress a report by the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre predicted the biggest danger to the Amazon rainforest was from global temperature rises, not logging. "It found that a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels, widely considered the best case global warming scenario and the target for ambitious international plans to curb emissions, would still see 20-40% of the Amazon die off within 100 years. A 3C rise would see 75% of the forest destroyed by drought over the following century, while a 4C rise would kill 85%." (‘Amazon could shrink by 85% due to climate change, scientists say', guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 March 2009).

The destruction of the rainforest could lead to a "positive feedback situation", a vicious circle in which the release of CO2 stored in the forests adds to the effects of climate change, further destroying rainforests. The Congress concluded that there was an increasing risk of abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts. 

At the end of the conference the scientists gave their 6 key messages to politicians ahead of COP-15.

1. The worst case scenarios of climate change, projected by the IPCC, are being realised.

2. Modest changes to the climate can have big effects on the poor.

3. Action needs to be taken rapidly to avoid "dangerous climate change"

4. The negative effects of climate change will be felt unequally. The poorest, future generations and wildlife will be affected the most

5. Ways already exist to effectively counter climate change.

6. We need to remove barriers to change like subsidies, vested interests, weak institutions and ineffective governance.

Why the bourgeoisie isn't listening

What are the chances the politicians will listen and act on their recommendations? Given the enormity of the findings, can't the politicians put their differences aside for the good of humanity?

While we can applaud the efforts of scientists throughout the world to understand the climate and the man-made causes of climate change, there is one factor missing from the scientist's equations: the capitalist system itself.

The fundamental forces driving the capitalist system alienate man from nature. Capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the proletariat; it is a system that requires expansion to survive and it is a system that, though global, cannot go beyond competing nation states in its organisation.

The fact that climate change will affect the poor more than the rich will not jolt the bourgeoisie into action. The bourgeoisie's contempt for the exploited is visible in the abject poverty of millions throughout the world. Attempts by the working class to defend and improve its conditions of existence have been frequently violently suppressed. Even the laws introduced to improve public health in the 19th century were spurred not by the condition of the working class, but by the realisation that the rich were vulnerable to the diseases caused by insanitary conditions in the cities.

The Congress concluded that methods already exist to counter climate change. However, the proposed green economic measures are described in purely capitalist terms: new green jobs in new green growth industries, cost savings from not having to deal with health problems and environmental destruction, etc.  Maybe capitalism can survive in a sustainable way? Maybe exploitation of the working class can continue without destroying the environment? The green lobby serves this tasty carrot up for inspection by the world's leaders, but so far they have declined the offer. Fundamentally, maintaining the environment is a cost to the capitalist system like maintaining the health of the working population. It is a sum that is diverted from re-investment in capital. The US government were unimpressed in 2007 when the IPCC announced that efforts to counter climate change would ‘only' cost between 0.2 - 3.0% of annual GDP.

The state cannot protect the planet

One of the myths of the left and the green movement is that the failure to act on important environmental and social issues is caused by a weakening of the state apparatus. That a strengthening of international institutions governing greenhouse emissions would lead to a reversal of the catastrophic situation we now face. The truth about the state is that it operates to defend the bourgeoisie's overall national interests. When the governments of each country face each other over the negotiating table they face each other as imperialist rivals. This can be seen in the negotiations over greenhouse reductions. When Britain reduced its traditional industrial base at the end of the 20th century it was able to promise greater reductions on CO2 emissions than some of its major rivals. This was a typical ploy, not based on any serious concern for the state of the planet.

And when George Bush wouldn't sign any agreement on climate change that didn't include ‘developing nations', it was in defence of US imperialist interests.

The current negotiations leading up to COP-15 are no different. While the US points to the fact that China has greater CO2 emissions than any other country. China points to the west saying that it consumes most of the products that it produces. "‘As one of the developing countries, we are at the low end of the production line for the global economy. We produce products and these products are consumed by other countries... This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers, not the producers', said Li, who serves in China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission. He added that between 15% and 25% of all the country's global warming emissions resulted from manufacturing exports." (‘Consuming nations should pay for carbon dioxide emissions, not manufacturing countries, says China', guardian.co.uk, 17/3/9).

The same article points to the fact that European nations have tried to get around emissions targets by offsetting their pollution through carbon trading with ‘developing nations'.  Promises the EU have made to give money to ‘developing countries' in order to help them introduce cleaner technologies have been put on hold until countries like China and India give greater commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even the way emissions are calculated is open to contestation.

No state can afford to be generous in a cut-throat global market, especially in the current economic crisis. The talks in Copenhagen in December are being held against the background of the biggest economic crisis in the history of capitalism. Reaching a deal that undermines economic recovery would be an offset too far.  

Hugin  4/4/9

"The new tyrants which have driven out the old are in all things so bad or worse than the old tyrants were, only they have, or pretend to have, a better faith and a new form of tyranny." (Anon, Tyranipocrit Discovered, 1649) 

ICC Preface

The year 1649, a full circle of 360 years ago, saw two momentous events in the class struggle. On the one hand, the English bourgeoisie, led by parliament and the forces around Oliver Cromwell, took the unprecedented step of executing King Charles I and instituting a republic. Though the English republic was shortlived, its proclamation was a powerful statement of the political victory of the rising bourgeoisie over the decaying feudal aristocracy and its monarchical form of government.

In April of that same year, however, another, apparently marginal development showed that the rule of the bourgeoisie, which was only just consolidating itself, was also fated to be a passing moment in history. Inspired by the communist ideas of Gerrard Winstanley, William Everard and others, a group of ‘True Levellers' or ‘Diggers' began cultivating the waste land of St George's Hill in Surrey. Soon to be followed by similar groups elsewhere in the shires of England, the True Levellers took on this name because while the radical party of the Levellers had demanded an extension of political democracy well beyond the limits that Cromwell was prepared to tolerate, Winstanley and his comrades considered that the essentially political revolution that had just taken place would only institute a new form of oppression and exploitation unless private property was abolished and the earth became a common treasury for all mankind. Like Babeuf and others on the extreme left of the French revolution over a hundred years later, they thus prefigured the revolution of the proletariat and the perspective of replacing capitalism with communism.

The article that follows, written by a close sympathiser of the ICC, examines the economic and social background to the English revolution. A further article will look in more detail at the radical political and intellectual developments which the revolution brought into existence.

Introduction

The class struggles most commonly known as the ‘English Civil War' (1642-1651) constitute one of the earliest and most decisive episodes in the epoch of bourgeois revolutions that gave rise to modern capitalist society. The outcome of these struggles - which included military, political and religious conflicts throughout the British Isles, as well as three separate civil wars and the temporary replacement of the English monarchy with a republic - was a decisive victory for the ascendant capitalist class, removing the barriers to capital's unfettered growth and ensuring the supremacy of its interests within the state. So decisive was this victory that in 1660 the monarchy could safely be restored without undermining any of capital's fundamental gains.

But the Restoration was also necessary to try to put the lid back on the Pandora's box of class struggle. As only a small minority in feudal society, the bourgeoisie was forced to mobilise other oppressed classes and strata in order to wage its military struggle against the monarchy. But the demands of the oppressed and exploited for a share in capital's victory and for more radical political, economic and religious change went far beyond the bourgeoisie's own very limited objectives and posed a serious threat to the new capitalist order. In the rapids of revolution, with the breakdown of traditional methods of social control and repression, there was a brief but spectacular flowering of radical ideas, sects and movements, in which the most politically advanced minorities of the exploited masses boldly challenged the basis of the bourgeoisie's power in the existence of private property, and fought to articulate an alternative political programme based on common ownership and the abolition of class society.

The struggles of the exploited in the English civil war were eventually defeated by the new bourgeois republic through a judicious use of lies and repression, and having thus ensured capital's ‘peaceful' advance for over a hundred years, the English bourgeoisie tried hard to expunge the very idea of violent revolution from its history; to this day it prefers to celebrate the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution' of 1688 that merely settled the arrangements for the efficient running of the capitalist state.

The class struggles in mid-17th century in Britain were thus a formative experience for both the rising bourgeoisie and the embryonic proletariat, and are still a source of valuable lessons today; not least because they show how from the moment of its birth the proletariat has struggled to become conscious of its own interests as a revolutionary class within capitalism and fought to create a classless, communist society.

This article examines how the conditions for the bourgeois revolution in England matured within decaying feudal society.

The expropriation of the English peasantry and the painful birth of the proletariat

The massive class confrontations of the 1640s in the British Isles were only the culmination of class struggles within decaying feudal society over the previous three centuries.

By the 14th century the foundations of the feudal system had been undermined throughout western Europe, creating the conditions for the emergence of a new mode of production. The first signs of capitalist production appeared as early as the 14th and 15th centuries in the city states of Italy, followed in the 16th century by the Netherlands provinces of the Spanish empire. In England serfdom disappeared in practice by the last part of the 14th century, hastened by the Black Death which created a scarcity of labour and made land freely available, loosening feudal controls over tenants. The immense majority of the population then became free peasant proprietors, albeit still under feudal trappings.

For capitalist accumulation to take place it was first necessary for a supply of workers to exist, free to sell their labour power to those who owned the means of production. Such a labour supply did not exist in feudalism, so it was first necessary to forcibly tear these free peasant proprietors from their ownership of any means of subsistence, along with the minimal guarantees of existence afforded by remaining feudal arrangements. The history of the rise of capitalism, therefore, is nothing less than the history of the expropriation of the peasantry and their ejection onto the labour market as "free, unprotected and rightless proletarians".(1) For Marx, England demonstrated this brutal process in its classic form.

Apart from a brief time after the Black Death when wages were high, the history of the English peasantry in the three centuries leading up to the civil war was one of progressively worsening conditions. To profit from the rising price of wool in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the feudal lords, with the connivance of the bourgeoisie and the support of the state, dissolved their bands of feudal retainers and drove the peasantry from the land, enclosing common lands to transform arable land into sheep walks. This process was redoubled in the wake of the Reformation of the 16th century when the monarchy plundered the lands of the Catholic church and dissolved the monasteries, throwing many thousands more onto the labour market.

But this new class of landless labourers, excluded from the ownership of their land and able to subsist only by the sale of their labour power, could not possibly be absorbed by existing capitalist production. Thousands robbed of their mode of life were turned out onto the road, forced to migrate to the expanding towns and cities where growing populations meant that labour was cheap and wages low.(2) From the moment of its birth, the proletariat not only experienced the brutal degradation of its living conditions, but was treated as a most dangerous threat to feudal society, provoking a raft of vicious legislation designed to punish the dispossessed for the ‘crime' of their own dispossession: "Thus were the agricultural folk, firstly forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage labour."(3)

This forced transformation of the peasantry into a class of landless wage labourers was not without its story of resistance; in the period following the Black Death, revolt smouldered beneath the surface of decaying feudal society throughout western Europe, periodically breaking out into open rebellions like those of the textile workers in Italy and Flanders in 1378 and 1379, and in Paris in 1382. There were a number of local uprisings in England in the same period, including the great peasants' revolt of 1381, which was provoked by attempts to collect a poll tax, although its main demand was for the abolition of serfdom against the attempts of the feudal nobility to reassert control over the peasantry and to restrict the wages and mobility of landless wage-labourers. This insurrection displayed a high level of organisation, with two armies converging on London, drawing in the urban population and spreading to the north and east of England before being crushed.

Such revolts were typically defensive in their demands, opposing attacks on what were perceived as traditional communal rights and seeking to return to a lost, often romanticised past. In England this took the form of demanding a return to ‘true English freedom' that supposedly existed before the Norman Conquest, and the call for a struggle of ‘freeborn Englishmen' against ‘alien tyranny' was an enduring theme of English radical thought.(4) Often there was also a strain of what Engels called ‘peasant-plebeian heresy', expressing demands which went far beyond the bourgeoisie's own opposition to the feudal church to demand the restoration of ancient Christian equality among the classes:

"To make the nobility equal to the peasant, the patricians and the privileged middle-class equal to the plebeians, to abolish serfdom, ground rents, taxes, privileges, and at least the most flagrant differences of property - these were demands put forth with more or less definiteness and regarded as naturally emanating from the ancient Christian doctrine."(5)

There had always been a strain of popular anti-clericalism and religious mysticism in England. The Lollard movement, which began as a middle class reform movement in the mid-14th century, contained a strongly subversive peasant-plebeian element, and the Lollard preacher John Ball played a leading part in the 1381 uprising, preaching a sermon which included the famous question that has echoed down the centuries: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" (i.e. ‘when Adam dug, and Eve spun, where then were the nobility?'). Because the propertyless masses were outside of feudal and even embryonic bourgeois society, their heresies tended to throw into question private property itself, anticipating at least in visionary form a future society without classes. John Ball was reported to have preached that: "things cannot go right in England and never will, until goods are held in common and there are no more villeins and gentlefolk, but we are all one and the same."(6)

Lollard preacher John Ball played a leading part in the 1381 uprising, preaching a sermon which included the famous question that has echoed down the centuries: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" (i.e. ‘when Adam dug, and Eve spun, where then were the nobility?'). Here it is reproduced by William Morris.

After the 1381 revolt was put down, popular resistance in England went underground, although Lollard ideas remained influential despite measures to suppress them. In fact, accusations of Lollardy or Anabaptism tended to be made loosely against any expression of religious or political dissent. Class tensions remained very close to the surface of feudal society in this period, exacerbated by acute economic hardship, and further uprisings occurred, this time more explicitly against land enclosures, in the mid-16th and early 17th centuries.

 

 

 

Ultimately the revolts of the peasantry in decaying feudal society were limited by the historical conditions in which they took place. The peasantry was not a revolutionary class bearing new relations of production; on the contrary it was doomed to disappear with the remorseless advance of capitalism, and its agonising transformation into a class of wage labourers was still underway. But by the 16th century we can distinguish the first struggles of the emerging proletariat, expressed in a communist vision whose highest point of clarity was to be found in the programme of Thomas Münzer and his party in the German Peasant Wars. This vision, spread by German refugees fleeing persecution, took root among the propertyless masses in the British Isles.

The rise of the bourgeoisie and its political struggle against the feudal state

If the first precondition for capitalist accumulation to take place was a supply of ‘free' labour robbed of any means of production of its own, the second was the existence of a class who owned money and the means of production, and who were hungry to increase the value of the capital they had appropriated by buying the labour power of others. This new class was based on two main kinds of capital: agricultural and industrial.

In the 15th century, some feudal landowners in England began to use their land for profit, getting rid of their bands of useless feudal retainers and employing wage labourers. By enclosing the common lands and applying improved methods of cultivation to raise productivity, they revolutionised agricultural production; which also had the effect of further impoverishing the great mass of the agricultural population. With the rise in prices for agricultural products, these landowners or gentry were transformed into a wealthy class of agricultural capitalists.

Industrial capital grew outside of the restrictions of the feudal towns and guilds, accelerated by the destruction of rural domestic industry which created a new home market, supplied by the forced migration of proletarians to the expanding towns and cities. Prices rose rapidly during the 16th century, enriching the new class of merchants and middlemen who were the agents of this growth: the burghers or bourgeoisie. From a relatively backward European economy exporting raw materials, England turned into a manufacturer and exporter of finished goods to the continent, and following the discovery of America and the opening up of the world market, English pirates and merchants began to plunder the New World and to penetrate India, Russia and the Middle East, funded by the new money-markets of the City of London.

This bourgeoisie was an ambitious and energetic class, aware that it was the bearer of a new, dynamic society and supremely confident of its ultimate victory. Initially it was able to consolidate its position in feudal society without an open confrontation with the state, using its economic power to constantly revolutionise production and undermine outmoded social relations. But at every turn it found its advance blocked by the feudal institutions and laws that defended these relations: landowners keen to enclose more common land found themselves thwarted by the ‘commission for depopulation'; manufacturers seeking to maximise profits by reducing wages were prevented by ‘orders-in-council', and merchants and industrialists found their expansion into new markets blocked by the crown's monopolies. If it attempted to evade the crown's decrees, the bourgeoisie faced prosecution in its courts, and it was subject to arbitrary taxes like ‘ship money' to fund the crown's foreign adventures in which it had no say. Clearly, if it was to realise its destiny as a dominant class, the bourgeoisie had to remove all these obstacles to capital's advance and assert the supremacy of its own interests within the state.

This inevitably meant a struggle against the power of the monarchy that lay at the centre of the whole oppressive system of state control. Under the Tudors and Stuarts (1485-1649), the English monarchy tried to place itself in the driving seat of the new productive forces, concentrating power in its own hands at the expense of the already weakened nobility, while at the same time attempting to erect barriers against capitalist development. In this way, the monarchy was for a time able to breathe life into a system on the verge of collapse, but by hastening the decline of the nobility the monarchy destroyed its principal ally against the bourgeoisie, thus ensuring its own ultimate downfall, while its centralising measures provided the necessary foundations of the modern capitalist nation state. To the extent that it helped to destroy vestiges of feudalism and further reduce the power of the nobility, the bourgeoisie was for a time prepared to tolerate the monarchy's centralising role, while conducting its own struggle for supremacy as a long drawn out campaign rather than in a direct assault, with the overall aim of transferring effective power to Parliament.

At a deeper level, the bourgeoisie found its advance impeded by the conservative ideology that underpinned the largely static feudal order, enforce by an authoritarian church that interfered in every aspect of social and economic life. At a time, for example, when the bourgeoisie was fighting to establish the absolute right of an individual to dispose of their private property as they saw fit, the institutions of the feudal state asserted that this right must be subordinated to medieval conceptions of social obligation and to the needs of the Crown. What the bourgeoisie required was a transformation in religious and philosophical thought that would sanction its own activity and justify the division of society into classes.

The 16th century saw important developments in philosophical method and scientific enquiry which only served to undermine the authority of the feudal Church and provide a powerful rationale for capitalist development. The growth of the productive forces itself led to great advances in exploration, astronomy, medicine and mathematics, and promoted the growth of secular and humanist ideas. In the sphere of religious thought, the Protestant Reformation also signified the decay of feudalism and the weakening grip of the church on social and economic life. While the religious conflicts of 15th and 16th century Europe certainly had an independent and complex life of their own, we can say that Protestantism as a movement represented an adaptation of religious thought to the new mode of production. It preached the pursuit of economic self-interest rather than social obligation, and the virtues of individual responsibility, self-discipline, hard work and thrift, thus providing a perfect rationale for the bourgeoisie's pursuit of profit. The bourgeoisie's adoption of this ethic as a vehicle to advance its own interests helped weld it into a disciplined force determined to carry through a political revolution against the old order, with the Puritan movement in particular acting as the ideological vanguard of the bourgeois revolution in England.

Capital also demanded an army of labour whose members were both submissive to authority and unquestioning of their position in the new order; or at the very least unable to effectively protest. This required new, more effective forms of ideological control over the proletariat and again, with its repressive insistence on discipline, hard work and self-denial, the bourgeoisie found in Protestantism the perfect rationale for imposing this control. The Protestant ethic also set itself firmly against medieval conceptions of charity for the poor, believing poverty to be the result not of circumstance but of moral failing, thus sanctioning the division of society into classes as Divine Will and amply justifying repressive measures against ‘idle' proletarians.

Ideologically armed, the bourgeoisie was still only a very small minority within feudal society and needed to mobilise the support of other classes and strata in order give it the necessary weight in its political struggle against the forces of the monarchy. It was not possible for the bourgeoisie to mobilise other classes and strata around economic and political grievances alone; above all it was by exploiting the widespread religious conflicts of the period. The very real persecution of Puritanism by the authoritarian Church enabled the bourgeoisie to present its own political struggle against the monarchy as a popular struggle for free expression and religious toleration, and by exaggerating the threat of Catholic plots and whipping up widespread fear of ‘popery', at certain crucial moments it was able to rally large sections of the population whose material interests would otherwise have allied them with the Crown.

Given that religious differences broadly reflected the uneven development of capitalism, their exploitation inevitably emphasised the nationalist character of the English bourgeoisie's struggle against the monarchy. Support for the Reformation was strongest in the economically advanced south and east of England, and in the Scottish Lowlands, while the reaction against it came largely from the north and west, Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, where the influence of feudal and pre-capitalist societies still dominated.(7) The threat - both real and exaggerated - of an alliance between the monarchy and the forces of Catholic disaffection, and fear of foreign intervention by its French and Spanish rivals, was to play a powerful role in determining the English bourgeoisie's policy at crucial moments during the civil war. In a deeper sense, these nationalist conflicts were an integral part of the bourgeois revolution, and specifically of the English bourgeoisie's struggle for supremacy in the British Isles with the aim of establishing itself as a leading economic power on the world stage.

Conclusion

By the end of the 16th century the conditions for the bourgeois revolution were maturing in western and northern Europe. In 1588, following a popular uprising against the feudal absolutist Spanish monarchy, the bourgeoisie in the Netherlands successfully established an independent republic. In England, capitalist accumulation was well established and the rising capitalist class was advancing on all fronts. But it had not yet achieved a definitive victory: the feudal state still defended outmoded feudal relations and obstructed the advance of capital; the monarchy remained reluctant to concede political power to the men of property, and the archaic social doctrines of feudalism defended by an authoritarian church lingered to impede the growth of the productive forces. The immediate aim of the bourgeoisie was to force the monarchy to give up power to its representatives in parliament and remove these barriers to capital's further expansion.

The same forces that created the conditions for the bourgeois revolution also gave birth to a new class of landless wage labourers, the forerunner of the industrial proletariat. This class was still at a very early stage of its formation, but it constituted a significant weight within society and was capable of intervening in the class struggle to defend its own interests. From all its experience of suppressing the class struggle in decaying feudal society - the peasants' revolts of the 14th century, the peasant-plebeian heresies of Lollardy and Anabaptism, uprisings against enclosures in the 16th century - the ruling class as a whole was well aware of this threat from below, and consequently of the need for the skilful use of propaganda and lies, and repression when necessary, in order to prevent the political struggle between the forces of the monarchy and the bourgeoisie from becoming a far more dangerous popular movement.  

MH 31/3/9

see also

Lessons of the English Revolution (Part 2): The response of the exploited [129]

Lessons of the English revolution (part 3): The revolutionary movement of the exploited (1647-49) [130]

Endnotes

1 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, Pelican, 1978, p.876.

2 By 1642 London was the largest city in Western Europe. This was despite the fact that the death rate was higher than the birth rate; in other words its growth as a metropolis was only possible because it acted like a demographic drain, sucking in thousands of newly created proletarians from the rest of Britain and Ireland, who died in their droves. This hints at the agony hidden behind the phenomenon of ‘the expansion of the towns and cities'.

3 Marx, Capital, vol 1, Pelican, 1978, p.899. Bourgeois historians generally ignore the expropriation of the English peasantry or hide it in plain sight among a mass of other phenomena. One recent historian who does refer to it, correctly identifying it as part of the same brutal process as the better-known ‘Highland Clearances', does so only in order to deplore its damaging effect on ‘the national consciousness' and ‘sense of British nationality' (Norman Davies, Europe, A History, Oxford University Press, p.632).

4 The leaders of the 1381 revolt stated that they recognised only ‘the law of Winchester' - probably a reference to the era of the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great- and would pay no tax ‘save the 15ths which their fathers and forebears knew and accepted.' In East Anglia there were demands for a return to ‘county kings' that had last existed in the 7th century (Paul Johnson, A History of the English People, Weidenfeld and Nicholson,1985, pp.143-4).

5 Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany [131]).

6 In the Chronicles of Jean Froissart, Penguin, 1968, p.212. See also Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, revised edition, OUP US, 1970, pp.198-204.

7 In northern and western England there was a series of uprisings against the Reformation in the 16th century, including the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, the 1549 Cornishmen's Revolt and the 1569 Rising of Northern Earls, all of which ended in defeat. Ireland also saw a series of revolts. On the other hand, Robert Kett's 1549 rebellion in Norfolk represented frustration with the slow pace of change. In the Lowlands of Scotland, where English influence was strongest, the Reformation resulted in the establishment of a form of Calvinism (Presbyterianism) as the official religion, although economically the region remained a feudal society within the separate kingdom of Scotland.

On the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike in Britain there have been plenty of reminiscences in the media: televised reunions between police and strikers, pictures, news items, all wrapped up in a general message of what a shame it all was, how the miners were led by ‘extremists' or, on the other hand, how the Thatcher government, ‘took on the unions' and defeated them.

In addition to this obscuring of the real lessons of the miners' strike, topping them even, comes Arthur Scargill. "Now, for the first time, the then president of the NUM writes his account of the most divisive and bitter industrial dispute in living memory" (The Guardian 7/3/9).

Before we turn our attention to Scargill's account of events, the first thing we want to do is to situate the miners' strike in Britain in the international context of the class struggle. The mass strike in Poland of 1980 had suffered a major set back, not least through an alliance of Russia, Britain and the United States and the Solidarnosc trade union - but within a year or two workers were once again fighting back against the austerity measures being imposed by the ruling class across the planet. The strikes in Britain were part of a wave affecting Italy, Germany, Belgium, the US, France, Holland and others. The strike by the miners, because of the stakes, numbers and the militancy involved, became a focal point for the world's working class. The ground had been laid and the stakes were high. In fact, in 1981, 50,000 miners came out on wildcat strike against a plan to shut 50 pits and get rid of 30,000 jobs. It was in this wave that Scargill's Yorkshire NUM did its utmost to keep its miners working and there was no talk from him about ‘class war' and ‘struggle', earning for him instead the labels of "scab" and "traitor" from the pickets and, on occasions, the need for a police escort. Prior to the 1981 movement, the miners were involved in struggles from 1972-74 which were very positive, again part of an international wave, and indeed their struggles go back through the century in a constant fight against attacks where both Labour and Tory governments have cut miners' wages and tens of thousands of jobs with the acquiescence of the NUM.

Another point to emphasise about the 1984 strike is the development of the self-organisation of the workers which, in the first weeks of the strike, took both the unions and the police by surprise, and this despite the repression prepared by the police on the one hand, and the division of miners into different areas and regions as set up by the NUM on the other. From the first day of the strike it was the workers who took the initiative to call other miners out. The NUM were running to keep up and it called for an all-out strike over pit closures - in Yorkshire only. The flying pickets were particularly successful in calling other miners out, not through intimidation or force but by discussion and argument. By the end of the first week the NUM was trying to cut down on the mass picketing, bringing it in line with NUM general policy. And while the government quietly announced improved redundancy payments, the NUM announced that there would be no strike pay. By the second week the militant minority had brought out over half the miners and Harworth pit in Nottinghamshire was closed down by 300 Yorkshire pickets despite the massive police presence and against NUM instructions. In South Wales, where the majority of pits had already voted against joining the strike, the miners came out in response to the actions of flying pickets from Yorkshire. The initial vote not to strike was something of a parochial revenge against Yorkshire for not joining the South Wales strike and movement a couple of years earlier (something that Scargill was abused for by the miners, but more importantly, was due to the divisive regional set up of the NUM). This therefore showed the ability of the workers to discuss contentious issues, clarify them and take action. In the first weeks of the strike, miners were moving around in numbers very effectively, organised and in some cases armed for self-protection against the police; and they were bringing out other miners with no hint of violent confrontation. The left wing NUM official, Henry Richardson, appealed for the pickets to withdraw. Police and their coaches were pelted with bricks and stones; a High Court injunction against the NUM was ignored by the miners; the Yorkshire NUM leader, Jack Taylor, moaned that the union had never condoned violence, and Scargill said: "I want to take the heat out of the situation". Despite many deep illusions persisting with workers about the unions, the initial movements of the miners in those first weeks, despite the NUM's attempts to cripple them and the state to intimidate them, showed that the lessons of the period internationally, the self-organisation and extension of the struggle, had to a verifiable extent been assimilated and put into effective action by the miners. Not only were other pits and NUM areas targeted by the pickets and brought out, but the flying pickets called out a larger number of miners by focussing their attention on areas where there wasn't such a massive police presence such as there was in Nottingham. And not only were the attempts at active solidarity aimed at other miners, but pickets early on in the strike went to power station workers, rail workers and seamen, with many of these initiatives tending to go beyond or against their union's instructions. In the face of this the bourgeoisie was not passive. A massive, organised police force occupied areas of South Yorkshire and Nottingham, implementing a programme of cordoning off whole areas, intimidation and provocations, while the media developed a campaign about miner fighting miner and the need for democracy. But it was the efforts of the NUM and Scargill that fatally undermined the strike. At the same time as the state was organising its forces, Scargill and the NUM set up a campaign around the demand to "stop foreign coal" and other corporatist and nationalist slogans similar to that of the recent BNP, Labour Party and trade union campaign around "British jobs for British workers".

Scargill's Guardian article is typical of the memoirs of smug bourgeois politicians: slippery and very selective, anxious to prove that he was right all along if only everyone had listened to him. Having learned of the National Coal Board's plans to shut 95 pits and cut a hundred thousand jobs, he says: "It became clear that the union would have to take action, but of a type that would win maximum support and have a unifying effect". The actions of Scargill and his NUM were tailored to have the opposite effect to "maximum support and unification". To build on his previous scabbing over strikes, Scargill, now NUM president, brought in an overtime ban in November 1983 of which he is very proud, saying that it had "an extraordinary impact". Its impact was to give plenty of notice to the Coal Board, allowing it time to manoeuvre, to build up, maintain and move coal stocks; it also allowed time for the government to prepare its forces of repression. Over this 5-month period miners' wages were effectively cut by 20% a week, reducing their capacity to build up sustenance for the strike (particularly with no strike pay). Along with his fixation on the slogan "Block Foreign Coal" - workers' solidarity replaced by nationalism - Scargill's overtime ban hobbled the miners from the beginning, the very point where a wildcat strike can be most effective. Like all trade union rule books, the NUM's reinforced the possibilities of machinations, confusion and bureaucracy, areas in which Scargill was an expert. Such a rule book favoured the manoeuvres and manipulations of the ‘leadership', as with Rule 41 permitting "areas to take official strike action if authorised by our national executive committee" as Scargill puts it. The question wasn't a national ballot for a strike or not, but the extension and self-organisation of the struggle versus the union's bureaucratic rule book and its division into antagonistic areas and fiefdoms of union bosses and cliques.

Within the framework of its defence of Britain's coal industry and the nationalism that goes with it, the NUM directed miners into set piece wars of attrition that flowed directly from its overtime ban, especially the concentration on coal stocks and Nottinghamshire at the expense of widening the struggle. Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire was set up by Scargill for mass picketing and in fact it became a focal point, a fixation of forces where the miners felt the force of the law. It was a trap that diverted the miners away from spreading the struggle. The ex-president criticises other areas of the NUM for not supporting him over Orgreave (by not sending more pickets) and for dispensations given to steel works. But this area-based union with its rule book was a nest of vipers, each looking after their own interests and manoeuvring against the others. Scargill compares Orgreave to "Saltley coke depot in Birmingham in 1972 - a turning point after which that strike was soon settled". What he doesn't say is that the main reason it was "settled" in '72 was because the miners' picket was joined by one hundred thousand engineers from Birmingham (and other workers), threatening to take the movement away from the NUM's control completely and onto a new level of struggle that the state was quick to see. Another dead-end, another pointless and energy-sapping point of fixation, was the set up with the Nottinghamshire NUM and the emphasis on picketing out those pits still working. The fixation on this heavily policed area (that the miners had avoided when spreading their struggle under their own initiative) was to the detriment of the self-organisation and extension of the struggle to other workers - the only chance it had of succeeding. Scargill raises the question of not calling a national ballot saying that: "The real reason that NUM areas such as Nottinghamshire, South Derbyshire and Leicester wanted a national strike ballot was that they wanted the strike called off... Three years earlier in 1981, there had been no ballot when miners' unofficial strike action - involving Notts miners - had caused Thatcher to retreat from mass closures..." What he doesn't say is how ridiculous he would have looked going for a ballot when the majority of militant miners had already voted with their feet and their actions. And he doesn't say that it didn't prevent him calling for a ballot for his Yorkshire NUM in 1981/2 when miners elsewhere were wildcatting against a wage cut; something many miners remembered.

Scargill in his post-25 year justification not only criticises other NUM areas but the steel unions, the electrical union, the Labour Party, the TUC, the T&GWU, the rail unions and the Nacods safety deputies' union. All of them were certainly looking after their own interests and some of them were doing their own secret deals with the Thatcher government. Just like the NUM they all had their own agendas and "rule books" to follow and just like the NUM all these unions were fully integrated into the state apparatus. He says, "at the very point of victory we were betrayed". But the lesson of the 1984 miners' strike for the working class today is that all unions, with their rule books, their bureaucracy, sectional and corporatist set ups, and relations with the Labour Party, are part of the state and work against the self-organisation and extension of struggles under the control of workers themselves.  

Baboon. 31/3/9

On Saturday April 15, 1989, at an FA cup tie between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, 96 football fans were killed at Hillsborough stadium, Sheffield. The oldest victim was 67, the youngest a ten year old, the cousin of a then eight year old Steven Gerrard. This slaughter not only showed the contempt of the football authorities, the media and the police for the working class; it also showed that for the state, its police force is not there to protect and safeguard the masses, but has been perfected to repress them. Hillsborough occurred just five years after the police had brutally attacked the miners and their supporters and eighteen years before the 7/7 London bombings, where the police were shown incapable of carrying out the most basic care of the victims and giving the simplest first aid.

In a disgusting travesty in the aftermath of Hillsborough, the Sun, on police information, accused the fans of hooliganism, stealing from and urinating on the dead and the dying. But in reality the fans were the real heroes, immediately improvising and assisting. And people that get crushed to death expel the contents of their bladders. Earlier in the miners' strike, the media showed its ‘objectivity' with the BBC reversing the footage of the armed police attack on unarmed strikers at Orgreave, presenting the workers as ‘starting it' and therefore responsible for their own injuries.

Twenty minutes before kick-off at Hillsborough police monitored the Leppings Lane crush on CCTV. They did nothing while people were crushed to death standing up or as barriers gave way. Police patrolling feet away on the pitch seemed helpless at best, ignorant and abusive at worst, putting the crush down to hooliganism. Although the police eventually opened a gate to let people on to the pitch (the match had started and Beardsley nearly scored for Liverpool on 4 minutes - luckily he didn't, because the resulting celebrations might have made the situation even worse) the police response was still one of castigating ‘hooliganism'. With the match stopped and ambulances arriving at the stadium from everywhere, the police refused to let them in, telling them that there was still fighting. Forty four ambulances and over eighty trained staff were kept outside by the police while the wounded inside were left to die as the traumatised fans did what they could to help. One ambulance driver, Tony Edwards (himself traumatised by the event) drove through the police lines to the Leppings Lane end. He said (Observer, 15/3/9): "... There was no fighting. The survivors were deciding who the priority was and who we should deal with. The police weren't". Despite his willingness and first hand insight, Edwards wasn't called to the Taylor Enquiry, or Whitewash as it should be more accurately known.

 The Enquiry had fine words for the football supporters, as more recently did the Sun in its ‘tribute'. There's more of this spew to come from the bourgeoisie. But all the sickening hypocrisy cannot hide the facts that the police as agents of the state are there to repress and keep down the working class, not to assist or help it. The disgusting events of Hillsborough show this clearly.

Baboon 25/3/9

Barack Obama, even before he was elected, stated his intention to bomb deep into Pakistan.

"They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." (Guardian 1/8/8) "Mr Obama ... said President George Bush had chosen the wrong battlefield in Iraq and should have concentrated on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said he would not hesitate to use force to destroy those who posed a threat to the United States, and if the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, would not act, he would." (ibid, 4/8/8)

President Musharraf resigned last August and since then we have witnessed a qualitative deterioration in the national security situation. Musharraf was followed by the husband of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, the notoriously corrupt Asif Zardari. The attacks on Mumbai last November (see "The terrorist slaughter in Mumbai" and "Growing tensions between India ad Pakistan fuel terrorist attacks" on our website) marked a further escalation of imperialist tensions. India was clear about who it blamed for the attacks. Pakistan, for its part, suffered its own attacks when a group of militants attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team, injuring many and killing at least 6 soldiers.

More recently, a police training academy in Lahore was attacked and briefly taken over by militants charging their way in with guns and grenades. At least 12 people were killed and there followed an 8-hour stand off before the police regained control. This demonstrates the knock-on effects of US bombing in the border regions: "A suspected US drone today fired two missiles at a hideout allegedly linked to a Taliban leader who has threatened to attack Washington. The air strike killed 12 people and wounded several others, officials said. The attack came a day after the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore. Mehsud said the attack was retaliation for US missile strikes on alleged militant bases on the Afghan border."(Guardian 1/4/9).

The cumulative effect of this situation has led Islamabad to concede the implementation of sharia law in the Swat area. This shows the weakening of the Pakistan state when it has to make concessions to another form of law within its own boundaries. In addition to this the publicity over the video of a young woman's public flogging has been used as part of the campaign to justify future attacks on Pakistan.

Links between state and terrorists

One of the key problems faced by the Pakistani government in tackling the Taliban is the deep rooted links between the Pakistani security agency, the ISI, and some of the jihadist elements. These connections were forged in the heat of the confrontations between the American and Russian blocs, particularly during the 1980s as the Americans funded the creation of a huge jihadist force in Afghanistan: the Mujahadin. Many of these fighters, after the defeat of the USSR went on to form the basis for the Taliban. There has never been a clean break between the Pakistani army and the jihadists. Any attempts at a break were destined to failure as the army is, in the last analysis, the sole force capable of holding the state together.

After the Mumbai attacks, then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stated that "all of Pakistan's institutions should be facing the same way" - meaning that the government had to get to grips with the rogue elements inside the ISI. Despite the gigantic propaganda campaign about Obama, bringing ‘change we can believe in' he is in almost perfect continuity with George Bush Jnr - in the same way that the latter implemented the policy  for the invasion of Afghanistan concocted by Bill Clinton.

As for the Taliban, the name has become a catch-all for a variety of forces. There are those who want to overthrow the government and install the kind of rule previously seen in Afghanistan. Many of these elements criss cross the border regions variously fighting in Afghanistan or Pakistan as required.

There are also the tribal groups that have never accepted any kind of rule from Islamabad, especially in the Baluchistan/Waziristan regions. Then there are the increasing numbers of desperate and beleaguered peoples who have no hope of education or work and whose children often end up in the clutches of the religious schools, the madrassas. There is no shortage of people to recruit from - as there are over 1 million internally displaced people in Pakistan. Overall, it has been estimated that there are currently 1.5 million children in madrassas where, in the main, they are only taught Koranic verse. It is in these schools that the Taliban make their suicide recruitment drives, assisted by the fact that every US air strike has a tendency to kill innocent civilians and therefore create a real hatred and desire for revenge which the Taliban can exploit. The steady stream of killings and attacks have mounted up for the army; in the last 5 years 1500 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in fighting with the various insurgency forces.

What perspectives?

There is an accelerating slide into chaos. The US has a real fear of the consequences of a collapse of the civil administration. In particular there is the question of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The US has belligerently asserted that it would invade to secure the bases, if it felt it served its interests. Any invasion would be extremely provocative and drastically worsen the social situation.

There is also the question of relations between Pakistan and India, already at straining point before the Mumbai attacks, after which many factions openly called for the bombing of Pakistan. Any attack on Pakistan would necessarily drag China (a key Pakistani backer) and thus also the US into the fray with disastrous consequences for the region.

Against this tendency there is only the potential of the struggle of the international working class. In particular, in the region, we have seen the waves of struggles in Bangladesh, posing a real proletarian alternative to the catastrophe of decrepit capitalism.  

Graham 1/4/9

We are publishing the common statement of position adopted by 7 groups or organisations from 8 Latin American[1] countries which draws together the work of a recently held internationalist meeting[2].

This meeting, which was been planned for a year, was made possible by the emergence of these groups, the great majority of which (apart from the OPOP - the Workers' Opposition group from Brazil - and the ICC) did not exist 3 years ago. Secondly, this meeting would not have been possible without the existence of a common will on the part of all those who participated to break out of isolation and develop a common work[3].

The basis of this work was the participants' agreement with the criteria - put forward in the statement - that delineate the proletarian camp from that of the bourgeoisie.

The primary activity of this meeting was necessarily to have a political discussion to bring out the agreements and disagreements that exist between the participants, and to elaborate a framework for future discussion that would make it possible to further clarify these disagreements.

We warmly salute this meeting's ability to carry out important discussions about the present situation of the international class struggle and the nature of the present crisis that is rocking capitalism. We are confident that the continuation of this debate will lead to fruitful conclusions[4].

We are conscious that this meeting represents a small step along the road towards the construction of an international pole of reference whose existence, public debates and interventions, will be able to orientate the comrades, collectives and groups which are emerging around the world and seeking an internationalist, proletarian answer to the increasingly grave situation that capitalism is imposing on humanity.

For comrades with experience of the past - for example the International Conferences of the Communist Left held 30 years ago[5] - this conference represents an overcoming of certain weaknesses that these conferences exhibited. Whilst those conferences were incapable of adopting a common position on the grave threat posed by the Afghanistan war, today the statement unanimously adopted by the participants clearly defends proletarian positions faced with the crisis of capitalism.

In particular we want to highlight the statement's firm denunciation of capitalism's "left"  alternatives that are all the rage on the American continent and which are spreading illusions internationally. From the Obama phenomenon in the United States to Patagonia in Argentina the continent is being covered by governments claiming to defend the poor, the workers, the marginal and presenting themselves as the guardians of a "social", "human" capitalism, or in the case of the most "radical" versions - Chávez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador - pretending to represent nothing less than a "socialism of the 21st century".

To us it is of the greatest importance that, faced with these tricks, a united, fraternal and collective internationalist pole is emerging which opens the way for discussing and formulating positions concerning international solidarity, the intransigent struggle of the class, and the struggle for the world revolution, confronted with these "new prophets" of state capitalism, nationalism, and the perpetuation of exploitation.   ICC 26/4/09

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Here we publish the common position adopted by the internationalist meeting. In the near future we will be publishing the contributions of the different participants in preparation for the meeting and also a synthesis of the discussions that took place during the meeting.

Common Position

The struggle for authentic communism, that is to say, for a society without class, poverty and war, is generating a growing interest amongst minorities throughout the world. As testimony to this in March 2009, at the initiative of the International Communist Current and the Oposição Operaria (OPOP), there took place in Latin America a Meeting of Internationalist Discussion in which different groups, circles and individual comrades from the continent participated and which clearly based itself upon internationalist and proletarian positions. Along with the ICC and OPOP, the following groups participated:

• Grupo de Lucha Proletaria (Peru)
• Anarres (Brazil)
• Liga por la Emancipación de la Clase Obrera (Costa Rica and Nicaragua)
• Núcleo de Discusión Internacionalista de la República Dominicana
• Grupo de Discusión Internacionalista de Ecuador

Likewise comrades from Peru and Brazil also participated in the work of this meeting. Comrades from other countries had expressed their intention of also participating but were not able to due to material or administrative reasons. All of the participants recognised that the criteria used were the continuation of those used for the conference of the groups of the communist left in the 1970s and 1980s:

1. Defence of the proletarian character of the October 1917 revolution and the Communist International, while submitting this experience to a critical balance-sheet which can guide new revolutionary attempts by the proletariat.

2. Unreservedly rejecting the idea that today there any socialist regimes in the world or workers' governments, even if they are called "degenerated"; likewise rejecting any form of state capitalism, such as those that dress themselves up in the ideology of "socialism of the 21st century".

3. Denunciation of the Socialist and Communist parties and their acolytes as parties of capital.

4. Categorically rejecting bourgeois democracy, the use of parliament and the electoral process as weapons with which the bourgeoisie have contained and diverted proletarian struggles through getting them to choose between democracy and dictatorship, fascism and anti-fascism.

5. The defence of the necessity for internationalist revolutionaries to move towards the formation of an international organisation of the proletarian vanguard, the indispensable arm for the victory of the proletarian revolution.

6. The defence of the role of the workers' councils as organs of proletarian power, as well as of the autonomy of the working class in relation to the other classes and layers of society.

The agenda for the discussions was as follows:

1. The role of the proletariat and its present situation; the balance of forces between the classes

2. The situation of capitalism (within which the present struggles will develop), and a more general reflection on the concept of the decadence of capitalism and/or the structural crisis of capitalism

3.The growing ecological catastrophe brought about by the system. Although it was not possible to discuss this point due to the lack of time, it was agreed to carry out this discussion through the internet.

On the first point, examples from Latin America were used in order to illustrate the analysis of the present state of the class struggle. However the concern of the majority of interventions was to see them as part of the wider international struggle of the proletariat. Within this, the meeting agreed to insist on denouncing the different ‘left' governments now in charge of many of the countries of Latin America as mortal enemies of the proletariat and its struggle. It also denounced all those who support these government even if critically. Similarly, the meeting condemned the criminalisation of the workers' struggles by these governments and insisted that the working class cannot allow itself to have any illusions about legal or democratic methods, that it can only have confidence in its own autonomous struggle. This condemnation particularly applies to the following governments:

• Kirchner in Argentina,
• Morales in Bolivia,
• Lula in Brazil,
• Correa in Ecuador
• Ortega in Nicaragua
• and particularly Chávez in Venezuela whose so-called "Socialism of the 21st century" is nothing but a huge lie aimed at preventing and repressing the proletarian struggle in that country and mystifying workers in other countries.

On point 2, all the participants were agreed upon the gravity of the present crisis of capitalism, the necessity to develop a more profound understanding of it from a theoretical and historical perspective. They concluded by agreeing on the following points;

• the holding of the meeting was an expression of the present tendency towards the development of the class struggle and of revolutionary consciousness within the proletariat at the international level;
• the present considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism cannot but further reinforce this tendency for the workers' struggle to develop, making it all the more necessary to defend revolutionary positions within the proletariat.

In this sense, all the participants believe that it is necessary to continue the work expressed by the holding of this meeting with the aim of constituting an active presence in the struggle of the international proletariat.

More concretely, as the first step in this effort, we have decided upon the following:

- the opening of an internet site in Spanish and Portuguese under the collective responsibility of the participating groups in the meeting. Similarly the possibility of publishing a pamphlet in Spanish based on the content of the internet site was posed;

- the publication on this site of: the present statement of position (which will also be published on the sites of the participating groups); the contributions that prepared this meeting; a synthesis of the minutes of the different discussions that took place; all the contributions of the groups and elements who were present as well as those of all the other groups and comrades who recognise the principles and concerns that animated the meeting.

Amongst these concerns, the meeting especially underlined the necessity for an open and fraternal debate between revolutionaries and the rejection of all forms of sectarianism.

 

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[1] Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela

 

[2] Those who participated were OPOP, ICC, LECO (Liga por la Emancipacion de la Clase Obrera, Costa Rica - Nicaragua), Anarres (Brazil), GLP (Grupo de Lucha Proletaria, Peru), Grupo de Discusion Internacionalista de Ecuador, Nucleo de Discusion Internacionalista de la Republica Dominicana, as well as individual comrades.

 

[3] We have already noted the effervescence in Latin America in our article on the two new sections of the ICC [171] in Turkey and the Philippines.

 

[4] One of the decisions made by the meeting was to create an internet forum where common positions and discussion will be published. See: en.internationalism.org/forum [172]

 

[5] For example see, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/122_conferences [173]

 

The day after Alistair Darling's Budget speech the front page of the Daily Telegraph declared a "Return to class war" because of the increased income tax for those earning more than £150,000. Andrew Lloyd Webber described it as a "Somali piratestyle raid" on "wealth creators", but the Treasury forecasts that 69% of those eligible would find ways not to pay, and the rich will also be getting improved tax relief on their pension contributions.

In the real class war the government is determined that the working class will pay for capitalism's economic crisis. There will be billions of pounds worth of public spending cuts, billions cut in ‘efficiency savings' that will affect those working in the public sector and those who rely on state-funded services. Writers in the Labour-supporting Guardian were united on how bad things are going to be. Polly Toynbee said "These will be harsher cuts than any in memory - yes, worse even than in the Thatcher 1980s." Larry Elliot agreed that there will be "A squeeze on public spending even more severe than during the Thatcher years." Patrick Butler traced out the future: "The real pain, however, starts in 2011, when the next three-year spending period starts. ... Things may look tight now ...but for public services the really hard times are yet to come." David Cameron has confirmed that the Conservatives will continue the programme of public sector cuts and preside over an "age of austerity" (and the abolition of the new 50p top rate of tax would not be a big priority for them).

Darling predicted a shrinking in the British economy of 3.5% this year and growth of 1.25% in 2010. The IMF thinks that the recession in the UK would be "quite severe" and that there will be a 4.1% contraction this year and a further 0.4% next. The OECD agreed that Darling was too upbeat but Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight thought that "While the OECD projections make depressing reading, we suspect they may even be a little on the optimistic side."

Within 48 hours of the Budget Darling's figures were shown to be out. He had underestimated the contraction of the British economy in the first three months of the year which officially amounted to a 1.9% fall in GDP, the fastest shrinkage in 30 years.

Other figures which might well prove to be out are those for the national debt. After all the attempts to ‘stimulate' the economy this has already reached 51% of GDP. Darling predicts this could reach nearly 80% by 2013-14. Meanwhile public spending will decline from 48% now to 39% by 2017-18. This will include more than £10 billion off the health budget and spending on infrastructure down from £44 to £22bn by 2013-14. Whatever the exact figures turn out to be, it's the working class that will have to pay.

An international capitalist crisis

The Labour government has been quick to point out that the crisis is global, and that predictions for the US, Japan, Germany and the eurozone are even worse. This is no cause for comfort, as the accelerating decline in trade will have a universal impact. The IMF predicts that the global recession is likely to be "unusually severe and long-lasting" and the recovery sluggish, resulting in ‘developing' countries being further starved of resources. It says that the world economy will experience the largest contraction since the Depression and will "enter deeply negative territory" later this year. It thinks the human consequences of the crisis could be "devastating". This is  far from doom-mongering as it finds 65% of the word's countries already in recession and others on the way. There are hardly any major economies among the exceptions, as the IMF sees the world economy as being trapped in a "corrosive global feedback loop"

While some commentators already see signs of bounce-back in the economy, the IMF sees "worrisome parallels" between the current global crisis and the Great Depression. Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF, suggests that "Rather than a V-shaped recovery, at the global level we may be looking at something more like an L-shape; we go down and we stay down" (New York Times 16/4/9).

The global perspective is for cuts in public services and massive unemployment. As for the income of those in work, a recent survey by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that 70% of firms planned to freeze or cut wages this year.

Not just an economic crisis

Beyond the immediate impact of the deepening economic crisis it will tend to accelerate the drive of all countries, big or small, toward further military confrontation. In particular, competition over natural resources will increasingly take place in the military rather than the business arena. In turn, the drive to war will put further stress on already vulnerable economies.

Against this situation there is only one force with the capacity to challenge and ultimately overthrow capitalism, and that's the working class. As individuals, if you're told you're being made redundant, or your home is being repossessed, it can feel like a crushing blow. However, the strength of the working class lies in its capacity for collective action.

In recent years we have seen much evidence of workers' militancy. There has been the appearance of general assemblies in some of the movements, large scale strikes in places like Egypt and Bangladesh, and wildcats outside the control of the unions. In Britain, this year, the struggle of the Visteon workers and the earlier wildcats around the oil refineries' dispute have shown both militancy and the search for solidarity. It's in such struggles that we can see the seeds for the development of future, more extensive, more powerful movements.  

WR 2/5/9

The ruling class is well aware that the perspective of a deepening economic crisis opens up the possibility of growing social unrest and rising levels of class struggle. Accordingly it is  preparing its repressive apparatus: the police, surveillance, intelligence and the legal system.

The economic results from the recent G20 meeting in London, pathetic as they were, were completely drowned out with police lies and violence, attacks on demonstrators, death and injuries meted out by the state, in short terror on the streets of the capital and growing state surveillance and control under the guise of ‘anti-terrorism'. It has become well established for the bourgeoisie to use state terror against anyone who questions capitalism or any organisation that potentially poses it a problem or potential threat. Apart from the infamous killing of Ian Tomlinson, there were other elements that showed concerted action by the police at demonstrations. At an anti-capitalist camp prior to the G20, the 70 injuries reportedly suffered by police turned out to be insect bites, headaches, sitting too long in one place, etc, while the protesters were robbed, assaulted, hassled and abused by the forces of bourgeois order.

The Climate Camp protest at Bishopsgate around the G20 was attacked by the police with organised, nasty violence once the cameras left. The press said ‘random violence' but there was nothing random about it. And since the G20, comes the news that anti-nuclear, Greenpeace and other ecological protesters have been offered bribes to inform on their fellow protesters and it can be guessed, as this is usually the next stage from police informers, to then act as provocateurs.

A man sauntering home from work to watch the football becomes a murder victim of state repression: the post-mortems, the slurs, the cover up even more sickening with its echoes of the murder, lies, cover up and slandering of Jean Charles de Menezes. Again, the risible attempts of the state's ‘independent' police commission that immediately came to the aid of the police with an almost non-existent veneer of ‘investigation' and whose only aim was to stifle the truth coming out.

Both these incidents showed the role of the media, the press and TV, as expressions of the state's propaganda, lies and repression. The BBC night time news never even mentioned that a man had been killed on the demonstration. They all (with one significant exception that we'll look at below) portrayed the event as the police helping a sick man while being attacked by a hysterical mob; "foaming at the mouth", "packs", as the Sun put it.

Obviously the police knew what happened; they were filming everywhere. Rather, the tenor of the media coverage was how wonderful the police were, how they didn't injure many, didn't use tear gas or hoses, etc. Just as the press parroted the lies and propaganda of the state over the war in Iraq and WMD, so too it toed the line here. Channel 4 News, which prides itself on being erudite and investigative, didn't report the police attack on its film crew and reporters, at the same time as Ian Tomlinson was on the floor dying in front of them, until seven days later. The same news teams repeated the police propaganda that Ian Tomlinson was a "drinker" and had "health problems". This was the modus operandi after the Jean Charles de Menezes killing when police briefed for 24 hours that he was an ‘Islamist terrorist' and then it was suggested that he brought it on himself, he had taken cocaine, he had been involved in a rape (there was a ‘witness'!). On Saturday April 4, the City of London police released their own account of a pathologist's report, which highlighted Ian Tomlinson's heart attack, but not the injuries or the blood in his abdomen.

The police have always been like this

Concocted evidence and concocted statements, violence, corruption and repression are nothing new to the police. This is their role for the state and completely overrides the humanity of individual police officers shown here and there. 90 years ago, within a wave of rising class struggle, the police in Britain were involved in trade unionism and the militant strike of 1918. This strike was used by the state to ‘cleanse the police of militancy' and, as the syndicalist and revolutionary militant J.T. Murphy says in his book Preparing For Power, was used "... to proceed with measures for its re-organisation as a more ‘loyal' body... beginning the process which has culminated in the Trenchard measures of 1933 for the transformation of the police into a ‘class' proof militarized arm of the state".

Since then the police have been cosseted, separated from the working class, well paid and well equipped as an arm of repression. They also work with the state's other arm, its media, in promoting state repression through show trials. The Birmingham Six is an obvious case, high profile criminal cases like Colin Stagg and Barry George who had to pay for the clinical assassination of the BBC's own Princess Di. And despite the massive resources available to them, they're not much good at solving crime: the ‘Yorkshire Ripper', the Soham children's murder, where the killer led them a merry dance in front of the cameras (and the police family liaison officer was a paedophile); and the recent scandal of the ‘Black Cab Rapist', while rape convictions have remained at 5% for years.

The police are a political force

There's also the history of police violence against strikes, demonstrations, protests and minorities. At a demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1968, peaceful protesters were charged and attacked in Grosvenor Square by mounted police. In 1974, at a demonstration against the National Front in Red Lion Square, London, Kevin Gately died amid very suspicious police activity. Five years later, the Special Patrol Group, forerunner of today's Tactical Support Group, were heavily implicated in the death of Blair Peach in another anti-racist demonstration at Southall. In the 1980s there were the attacks against strikers and their supporters at Wapping, and the particularly brutal attacks against miners and their families in 1984. To this can be added the criminal negligence involving the police in the deaths of dozens of people at Hillsborough in 1989 as well as the police brutality at Notting Hill in the early 90s.

The Economist reports that: "No policeman has been convicted of murder or manslaughter for a death following police contact, though there have been 400 such deaths in the past ten years alone". There have been 204 fatalities in police custody between 2002 and 2004 according to the New Statesman (20/4/9) and the same issue reports that there have been 174 deaths of black men and women since the late 70s involving the police with zero arrests. There have been cases of a man shot by police for carrying a small pistol type lighter (he was black), a chair leg (someone thought he was Irish), a stark naked suspect surprised in bed, and the completely innocent Forest Gate ‘terrorist' suspect (child pornography was later ‘found' on his computer). The state allows its police to get away with murder.

Police under New Labour

But since the mid-90s and the election of New Labour (and it is not a coincidence), the bourgeoisie has become more intelligent about its crisis, more ruthless in preparing its repression overall and its forces of war against the working class and its militant minorities. The G20, recent events and surrounding issues, show a qualitative step in the role of the forces of repression. The police, the media were wound up for a battle, to sow terror and fear against anyone wanting to question, even in the most innocent way, the failures of capitalism. The ‘kettling' described in the previous World Revolution was a mass arrest sanctioned by the state in order to spread terror and get information on those demonstrating. This ‘psyching up' by the police was no accident or conspiracy, because this is how the state organises and how it will increasingly organise in order to protect itself, the ruling class and its privileges.

Accompanying the expressions of brute force, the dogs and the cosh by police at the G20 (shields and van doors were also used to inflict injuries), has been a whole raft of laws, legislation and surveillance in order to bolster the role of state repression. All this has been strengthened by New Labour over the last 12 years. Tony Blair said in 2004: "We asked the police what powers they wanted, and gave them to them". And Gordon Brown declared, in his usual convoluted way, in December 2007 when the police threatened a strike: "I am the last person to want to be in a position where we didn't give the police what they wanted".

The latest proposals from the Home Office, costed by them at two billion, is for police to have access to all telephone, e-mail and inter-active computer links. According to the Home Secretary, this has been watered down from even more outlandish proposals in order "to protect personal freedom". Personal freedom is a mirage under state capitalism as we are increasingly tracked and recorded at work, at home, at meetings, on the roads and streets - everywhere. The state's budget, technologies, databases and personnel for ever increasing surveillance and intimidation is growing by leaps and bounds. Britain leads the world in social control, in implementing repression and intimidation and the police have been given carte blanche for interpreting legislation as they wish and the judiciary and the media has obliged.

The anti-terrorism measures supposedly aimed at an extremist terrorist minority, are in fact aimed at a far wider range of the population. Even the ‘anti-terrorism' of the state is suspect. Remember the ‘ricin plot' where there was no ricin, the ‘arsenic on the tube' case that involved neither arsenic nor the tube, the ‘bomb factory' that consisted of a cheap kitchen table and a small cabinet that looked like it came off a skip. Added to this can be the recent ‘bomb plot' on shopping centre and night club targets in the north-west of England, foiled in Hollywood-style filmed arrests that involved neither a bomb nor the targets that the police had already briefed to a compliant media and parroted by the Prime Minister. All those involved have now been released without charge.

Not only overt repression

Another element exposed by the G20 demonstration itself is the futility of walking into the police trap and the futility of the balaclava clad violence that is very likely to involve police provocateurs. The bluff from various expressions of leftism about ‘taking on the police' had all the resonance of Hamas threatening to destroy the Israeli army. There is a great importance to street demonstrations, particularly in the capital city and it is essential that more and more workers, students, unemployed, etc., join them. Clowns threatening violence play right into the state's hands and the trap is sprung.

But repression by itself is not enough. Even the Tsarist police under Prince Sviatopolk-Mirskii at the turn of the 20th century realised this and his concerns that repression can just as easily be counter-productive has been echoed by some British police officials today. On May 10 and 11, 1968, overt police repression turned a fairly important strike in France into the biggest mass strike in history.

In Britain, there is a growing concern and awareness of the role of the police, the government and the state. The solemn 20th Hillsborough anniversary was turned into an angry, vocal demonstration at Anfield by tens of thousands when a government minister attempted to speak. The role of the police in London has caused wide concern, discussion and outrage and not just among protesters. Muslims and Asians everywhere are disturbed and angry about the role of the police and the state. Black people and youth have their own stories. Workers at Lindsey came up against the forces of repression but the police were careful.

Anger is building up so it's necessary to have a spout on the kettle, a trip mechanism, a cut off. For the bourgeoisie the Guardian newspaper, amongst others, has been fulfilling this important role: ‘investigating', ‘bringing to light evidence', acting as an ‘opposition', the ‘democratic voice of the people'. All this because the bourgeoisie is well aware that repression alone can be counter-productive - it's no good if Britain today looks like East Germany in the Cold War - and only works effectively when it goes hand in hand with the ideology of democracy. Accompanying the Guardian is the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie: Liberty, the Rowntree foundation, civil liberties and human rights organisations coming up with their various democratic ideas insisitng that ‘the police should be protecting everyone'; ‘proportionate response'; ‘police must abide by the law and put their house in order'; ‘right of peaceful protest' and so on.

Repression and surveillance can and will be used against the working class and its organisations. But it's the idea of democracy and possible reforms of the capitalist system and its deepening economic crisis that is more dangerous than the overt repression of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has its oppositional forces in place already and these, leftism and trade unionism, along with their nationalism, are no less repressive forces than the police and more important to the bourgeoisie politically in the longer term.   

Baboon. 29/4/9

Swine flu, which has killed an undetermined number of people in Mexico (the original death toll of over 150 looks as if it will be revised down on testing) and one child in the USA, has now spread to Europe, Israel and New Zealand, leading to speculation that it may be the cause of a new pandemic. Despite official denials that they could be the original source of the disease, over 400 residents of La Gloria have suffered from flu since early February, which they blame on a large industrial pig farm partly owned by American conglomerate Smithfield Foods. Even if another source is found, this highlights the horrendous polluted conditions such agribusiness causes, with the foul stench, swarms of flies and respiratory infections.

In this period of decomposing capitalism we see more new diseases caused by the relentless search for profit, particularly when it sits cheek by jowl with grinding poverty. Combine that with increased travel and transport and there is the potential for the rapid global spread of epidemics.

There have been three flu pandemics in the 20th Century, and in 1919 just after the First World War it was particularly deadly. Whether or not Mexican swine flu causes a new pandemic, we have to ask why the media and politicians are making so much of it at this stage. They are spreading panic when the extent of the threat is not yet clear. Right now the greatest danger to human life is not pandemic flu but the economic crisis - remember last year's food riots round the world. Recently we have been asked to focus our attention on almost anything else - MPs' expenses, bankers' pensions, injustice to Gurkhas... but now the risk of pandemic flu has come along it has great advantages for capital. It appears to be a natural disaster, and politicians can portray themselves as caring, preparing the response to protect us from this danger. When they make such claims, remember how many hospital beds we have lost over the last few decades, the efficiency savings in the NHS, and just how much that will undermine the response to any health emergency. 

Alex  2.5.09

The struggle by 600 workers laid off from Visteon on 31st March, originally without any pay or benefits, has attracted both interest and solidarity by many other workers, as shown by the translation of their leaflet into 6 other languages and the appearance of workers from other sectors and even other countries at their occupations and pickets.

One reason is undoubtedly indignation at the calculated and brutal manner of the sacking by the bosses - hiving off part of the Ford conglomerate to cut their losses and responsibility for redundancy payments, several years of seeking other sources of supply, and announcing the redundancies in a 6 minute meeting as the factory shuts. However, the question of how to respond to redundancies is also a hot topic for the working class today, with unemployment officially over 2 million here in Britain, and shooting up to 17% in Spain, up more than 60,000 in France in March, with new redundancies announced every day - 21,000 jobs to go in General Motors this year, and so on. 

Solidarity as workers or consumers?

The workers at Visteon made important efforts to avoid being isolated in their factories from the first days of the occupations.  The occupations started in the Belfast plant and spread to the Enfield and Basildon factories the next day. Although the workers have been ousted from Enfield with the threat of legal action and from Basildon by threat of massive police violence, they remain picketing outside. At the beginning of the occupation it was a focus for solidarity as supporters were welcomed into the Enfield plant.

But the struggle could not achieve anything if it remained isolated in or outside these factories. As a worker from Basildon said, "This is not just our battle. It has a knock-on effect for workers at other firms and people in the same boat as us" (Socialist Worker 25/4/09), and this understanding led them to send a delegation to London Metropolitan University where many job losses are planned. The search for solidarity has also included leafleting of Ford plants, the work of the Ford Visteon Workers' Support Group. A demonstration of support in Belfast was accompanied by a 1 hour strike by bus drivers, and rallies outside Enfield on Saturday morning provide an opportunity to both express solidarity and discuss the struggle. Suggestions were made - have you been to this or that Ford plant? The question of our collective strength was raised, are we strong as workers or as consumers? How to put pressure on Ford and Visteon?

The focus for the day of action on 25th April was leafleting Ford showrooms, trying to pose a collective strength as consumers against a multinational that is perfectly happy riding out a loss of $1.4 billion in the first quarter of this year.

With the aim of getting their redundancy payments and keeping their pensions the workers are also trying to put pressure on Fords and Visteon by calling on workers to black Visteon products. In this typical union framework, Southampton was thought less important because production there has been run down to almost nothing, although going there would show exactly the same concern as going to London Met: the need to get together with other workers who face the same threats. So how does solidarity action work? Can it, for instance, hit the bosses in their pocket? With car production in Britain down by more than 50% due to the economic crisis this hardly seems likely. But workers' solidarity does work. What the ruling class fear above all is strikes spreading. The French state withdrew the CPE when the students were getting more and more support from workers and they feared the struggle would spread. More recently, and closer to home, the Lindsey refinery strike was suddenly brought to an end with 101 new jobs offered, when the workers had shown that they could not only spread the struggle rapidly, but that a minority were putting in question the divisions imposed on them by calling on Italian workers to join the struggle and welcoming the participation of Polish workers at Langage. And for Visteon, we can see that because it has become a focus for solidarity the Visteon parent company have been more willing to give a little ground.

Unite's role in ending the Enfield occupation

Until the start of negotiations, Unite's main role had been in persuading the workers to leave the Enfield plant. It participated in a three pronged attack that effectively undermined the occupation. Legal manipulation and threats were made against the occupation and particularly the convenor was threatened with jail. Once the union became involved in the legal proceedings an undertaking was given that only Unite members would be on the premises - all those who had come to show solidarity and discuss with the workers had to leave, so that it was no longer so easy for the occupation to be the focus of a search for solidarity and more likely to shut them up in isolation. Then workers had to leave to sign on at the job centre. On 9th April Unite asked the workers to leave in order to fulfil their promise to the Court with the promise of a nebulous deal and negotiation, an offer that turned out to be worthless. Ret Marut's post on libcom.org sums it up very well: "Early on in the occupation, when it was mentioned that the union might pressure an end to the occupation against workers' wishes, a couple of workers replied ‘ah, but we are the union', as if the workers' collective voice could control the union structure. But once negotiations were organised by officials - on the other side of the world - and the whole process becomes remote and secret from the workers in the hands of specialists, they become dependent... on what they are told".

What has the struggle gained?

Victory has been announced more than once, for instance when the US parent company agreed to negotiations this was described as a "bosses climb down" by Workers Power April 2009, but the employers' offer at the time was nothing but the legal minimum they were expecting to get from the government anyway. At the time of writing Unite is recommending an improved deal. "They have offered a generous redundancy payment, but unfortunately they are still walking away from the pension" according to Unite spokesman Roger Madison. According to the Financial Times those who were employed by Ford get 52 weeks pay plus 5.2%, and those who were not get 10 times the minimum redundancy pay. While we wait for the full details to be put to the workers at all three sites, if they accept it they have won a small increase in redundancy payment, but at the expense of both jobs and pensions. Nevertheless this is one gain of the struggle. But the first and lasting victory of the struggle is the struggle itself. It has shown that workers will not take layoffs, loss of redundancy payments and pensions, and the contemptuous way they were sacked, without a fight. It is one more experience of struggle, of the attempt to break out of isolation and seek solidarity. 

Alex  2/5/09

"There have been difficult times along the way, but British troops have made an outstanding contribution to laying the ground for a stable and increasingly prosperous Basra - part of a stable, secure and prosperous Iraq"(Independent, 1/4/9). Thus spoke Gordon Brown as British troops formally handed control of Basra over to the Americans.

Brown's optimistic assessment was echoed by various military spokesmen and fellow politicians. However, Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard of 30/4/9 sounded a note of caution: "while it is quite true that over the past year the security of Basra has vastly improved, that has almost nothing to do with Britain. The turning point, last spring, was an Iraqi and American military offensive, Charge of the Knights, in which we took virtually no part. Until then, Basra had been controlled by Iranian-backed fundamentalist militias, enforcing head-scarves on women and destroying video shops, as British troops looked on from their fortified base at the airport.

What prompted Charge of the Knights was the Iraqi government's horrified realisation that Britain had secretly signed what was in effect a surrender agreement with the militias to hand Basra over to them, in return for a promise that they would stop attacking us. Part of the deal was that British troops would no longer enter the city...."

Of course, both Gilligan's and Brown's balance-sheets leave aside the problem of whether there is any real long term trend towards stability and prosperity in Iraq. A recent upsurge in murderous suicide bombings, both in the Kurdish north and Baghdad, puts into question the idea that the US troop surge is having a profound impact on the ‘security situation' in the country; and there are also signs that the US strategy of incorporating former insurgents into the anti-al Qaida ‘Awakening' militias is turning sour given the failure of the Iraqi regime to integrate these militias into its military/police apparatus.  

Gilligan however does make a telling point: the British withdrawal from Basra is not at all an example of ‘a job well done' but of yet another retreat by declining British imperialism.

Britain is perpetually caught between the desire to maintain a world role at a military level and the fact of its declining economic power. This has been true ever since the First World War, which brought an end to Britain's capacity to maintain itself as a first rate military power, despite the fact that it was a victor of the war. The full implications of this were not fully apparent in the inter-war period, because Britain still had access to the residual power of its previous world role. The Empire was still formally intact; and in particular the Indian army was still at the disposal of the British bourgeoisie and the policing of the Middle East was greatly assisted by the resources available from India.

The Second World War put an end to Britain's capacity to maintain its world role. There have been many episodes since the Second World War to demonstrate this. The British had to pull out of Greece in the 1940s and allow the US to take over. In 1956 they had to bow to American pressure and bring an end to their military adventure alongside Israel and France against Nasser's Egypt. At the end of the 1960s they again had to accept the inevitable and withdraw most of their presence east of the Suez Canal. Even so, despite announcing a general withdrawal from east of Suez, they actually maintained a military presence in the Gulf, with the agreement of some of the small powers there.

For the future, the British are intent on staying the course in Afghanistan. But the accelerating economic crisis is making it very difficult for them to continue to afford all the implications of their military policy. They are supposed to be buying two very expensive aircraft carriers and their accompanying aircraft. These purchases were aimed at being able to carry out a a policy of increased global intervention. But the dramatic deepening of the world economic crisis is bound to result in a re-evaluation of the affordability of these ambitions. BAe Systems say they are closing three factories, with the loss of 500 jobs because of the ‘downturn' in the overall commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the 1930s the war economy was able to expand because capitalism only had to deal with a defeated working class. The situation is not the same today. The working class is responding to the deepening of the crisis and has the potential to overthrow this crisis-ridden system.  

Hardin 2/5/9

Amongst the many anniversaries that will be celebrated in 2009, there is one that the media and historians will not talk about other than briefly and then only with the conscious aim of distorting its significance. In March 1919 the founding Congress of the Communist International was held.

The anniversary of the foundation of the Communist International is there to remind the bourgeoisie of 2009 that the class struggle is a reality of today's crisis-ridden capitalism, that the proletariat exists as both an exploited and a revolutionary class; it heralds the end of the bourgeoisie itself.

THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY WAVE IN 1919

The CI's foundation awakes unpleasant memories for the whole capitalist class and its zealous servants. In particular, it reminds them of their fright at the end of World War I, faced with the mounting and apparently unavoidable tide of the international revolutionary wave: the victorious proletarian revolution in Russia in October 1917; mutinies in the trenches; the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm and the hurried signature of an armistice in the face of mutinies and the revolt of the working masses in Germany; then the insurrection of German workers; the creation along Russian lines of republics of workers' councils in Bavaria and Hungary; the beginning of strikes among the working masses in Britain and Italy; mutinies in the fleet and army in France, as well as among some British military units refusing to intervene against Soviet Russia....

Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the British Government at the time, best expressed the international bourgeoisie's alarm at the power of the Russian workers' soviets when he declared in January 1919 that if he were to try to send a thousand British troops to help occupy Russia, the troops would mutiny, and that if a military occupation were undertaken against the Bolsheviks, England would become Bolshevik and there would be a soviet in London: "The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt amongst the workmen against pre-war conditions. The whole existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other" (quoted in E.H.Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, Vol 3, p.135).

We know today that the CI's foundation was the high point of the revolutionary wave which extended from 1917 until at least 1923, throughout the world, from Europe to Asia (China), and to the ‘new' world from Canada (Winnipeg) and the USA (Seattle) to Latin America. This revolutionary wave was the international proletariat's answer to World War I, to 4 years of imperialist war amongst the capitalist states to divide the world up between them. The attitude towards the imperialist war of the different parties and individual militants of social-democracy, the 2nd International swallowed up by the war in 1914, was to determine what attitude they would adopt faced with the revolution and the Communist International.

"The Communist International was formed after the conclusion of the imperialist war of 1914-18, in which the imperialist bourgeoisie of the different countries sacrificed 20 million lives. ‘Remember the imperialist war!' These are the first words addressed by the Communist International to every working man and woman; wherever they live and whatever language they speak. Remember that because of the existence of capitalist society a handful of imperialists were able to force the workers of the different countries for four long years to cut each other's throats. Remember that the war of the bourgeoisie conjured up in Europe and throughout the world the most frightful famine and the most appalling misery. Remember that without the overthrow of capitalism the repetition of such robber wars is not only possible but inevitable" (Statutes of the Communist International, adopted at the 2nd Congress, in Jane Degras, The Communist International 1919-43: Documents)

THE CONTINUITY OF THE 2ND INTERNATIONAL WITH THE CI

The 2nd international and the question of the imperialist war

In the Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx set out one of the essential principles of the proletariat's struggle against capitalism: "The workers have no country". This principle did not mean that workers should take no interest in the national question, but on the contrary that they should define their positions and attitudes on the subject, and on the question of national wars, as a function of their own historical struggle. The question of war and the attitude of the proletariat were always at the centre of the debates of the 1st International (1864-73), as it was in those of the 2nd (1889-1914). During most of the 19th century, the proletariat could not remain indifferent to the wars of national emancipation against feudal and monarchic reaction, and especially against Russian tsarism.

Within the 2nd International the marxists, with Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg in the forefront, were able to recognise the change in the period of capitalism's life that occurred at the dawn of the 20th century. The capitalist mode of production had reached its apogee, and reigned over the entire planet. Here began the period of "imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism", as Lenin put it. In this period the coming European war would be an imperialist and world war between capitalist nations over the distribution of colonies and spheres of influence. It was essentially the left wing of the 2nd International which led the combat to arm the International and the proletariat in this new situation, against the opportunist wing, which was abandoning day by day the principles of the proletarian struggle. A vital moment in this struggle was the 1907 Congress of the International in Stuttgart, where Rosa Luxemburg, drawing the lessons of the experience of the 1905 mass strike in Russia, linked the question of imperialist war to those of the mass strike and the proletarian revolution:

"I have asked to speak in the name of the Russian and Polish delegations to remind you that on this point [the mass strike in Russia and the war, ed.] we must draw the lesson of the great Russian revolution [ie of 1905, ed.]... The Russian revolution did not only arise as a result of the war; it also put an end to the war; without it, Tsarism would undoubtedly have continued the war" (Rosa Luxemburg, quoted in BD Wolfe, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin).

The left carried the adoption of the vitally important amendment to the Congress resolution, presented by Luxemburg and Lenin: "Should a war break out nonetheless, the socialists have the duty to work to bring it to an end as rapidly as possible, and to use by every means the economic and political crisis provoked by the war to waken the people and so to hasten the downfall of capitalist domination" (quoted in the Resolution on the Socialist currents and the Berne conference, at the First Congress of the CI).

In 1912, the 2nd International's Basel Congress reaffirmed this position against the growing menace of imperialist war in Europe: "Let the bourgeois governments not forget that the Franco-Prussian war gave birth to the revolutionary insurrection of the Commune, and that the Russo-Japanese war set in motion the revolutionary forces in Russia. In the eyes of the proletarians, it is criminal to massacre themselves for the benefit of capitalist profit, dynastic rivalry, and the flourishing of diplomatic treaties" (ibid).

The betrayal and death of the 2nd international

4 August 1914 marked the outbreak of the First World War. Riddled with opportunism, swept away in the flood of chauvinism and war fever, the 2nd International broke up and died in shame: its principal parties (above all the French and German social-democratic parties and the British Labour party, in the hands of the opportunists), voted for war credits, called for the ‘defence of the fatherland', and a ‘holy alliance' with the bourgeoisie against ‘foreign invasion'; in France, they were even rewarded with ministerial positions for having given up the class struggle. They received a theoretical support from the ‘centre' (ie between the International's left and right wings), when Kautsky, who had been called the ‘pope of marxism', distinguished between war and the class struggle, declaring the latter possible only ‘in peacetime'.... and so of course impossible ‘for the duration'.

"For the class-conscious workers (...) by the collapse of the  International they understand the glaring disloyalty of the majority of the official Social-Democratic parties to their convictions, to the most solemn declarations made in speeches at the Stuttgart and Basel International Congresses, in the resolutions of these congresses, etc" (Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International, 1915)

Only a few parties stood up to the storm: essentially the Italian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Russian parties. Elsewhere, isolated militants or groups, usually from the Left, such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch ‘Tribunists' around Gorter and Pannekoek, remained faithful to proletarian internationalism and the class struggle and tried to regroup.

The death of the 2nd International was a heavy defeat for the proletariat, which it paid for in blood in the trenches. Many revolutionary workers were to die in the slaughter. For the ‘revolutionary social-democrats', it meant the loss of their international organisation, which would have to be rebuilt:

"The 2nd International is dead, defeated by opportunism. Down with opportunism, and long live the 3rd International, rid not only of deserters (...) but also of opportunism!" (Lenin, Situation and Tasks of the Socialist International, 1/10/1914)

The conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal: steps towards the construction of the Communist International

In September 1915, the ‘International Socialist Conference of Zimmerwald' was held. It was to be followed in April 1916 by a second conference at Kienthal, also in Switzerland. Despite the difficult conditions of war and repression, delegates from 11 countries took part, including Germany, Italy, Russia and France.

Zimmerwald recognised the war as imperialist. The majority of the conference refused to denounce the opportunist right of the social-democratic parties which had gone over to the camp of the ‘holy alliance', or to envisage splitting with them. This centrist majority was pacifist, defending the slogan of ‘peace'.

United behind the representatives of the Bolshevik fraction, Lenin and Zinoviev, the ‘Zimmerwald Left', defended the necessity of a split, and for the construction of the 3rd International. Against pacifism, they declared that "the struggle for peace without revolutionary action is a hollow and deceitful phrase" (Lenin), and opposed centrism with the slogan of "transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. This slogan, precisely, is indicated in the resolutions of Stuttgart and Basel" (Lenin).

Although the Left gained in strength from one Conference to the next, it was unable to convince the other delegates, and remained in the minority. Nonetheless, its evaluation was positive: "The second Zimmerwald Conference (Kienthal) is undoubtedly a step forward. (...) What then should we do tomorrow? Tomorrow, we must continue the struggle for our solution, for revolutionary social-democracy, for the 3rd International! Zimmerwald and Kienthal have shown that our road is the right one" (Zinoviev, 10/6/1916).

The meeting between the lefts of different countries, and their common combat, made possible the constitution of the "first nucleus of the 3rd International in formation", as Zinoviev recognised in March 1918.

The proletariat carries out the resolutions of the Stuttgart and Basel congresses

The 1917 proletarian revolution in Russia opened a revolutionary wave throughout Europe. The proletarian threat convinced the international bourgeoisie to bring the imperialist carnage to an end. Lenin's slogan became a reality: the Russian, then the international proletariat transformed the imperialist war into a civil war. Thus the proletariat honoured the Left of the 2nd International, by applying the famous Stuttgart resolution.

The war had definitively thrust the opportunist right of the social-democratic parties into the camp of the bourgeoisie. The revolutionary wave put the pacifists of the centre up against the wall, and was to thrust many of them in their turn, especially the leaders such as Kautsky, into the bourgeois camp. The International no longer existed. The new parties formed by splits from social-democracy began to adopt the name of ‘Communist Party'.

The revolutionary wave encouraged and demanded the constitution of the world party of the proletariat: the 3rd International.

The formation of the CI: its continuity in politics and principles with the 2nd international

The new International, which adopted the name of the Communist International, was thus formed in March 1919 on the basis of an organic split with the right wing of the parties of the defunct 2nd International. It did not, however, reject its principles or its contributions.

"Sweeping aside the half-heartedness, lies and corruption of the outlived official Socialist parties, we Communists, united in the 3rd International, consider ourselves the direct continuators of the heroic endeavours and martyrdom of a long line of revolutionary generations from Babeuf to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

If the 1st International presaged the future course of development and indicated its paths; if the 2nd International gathered and organised millions of workers; then the 3rd International is the International of open mass action, the International of revolutionary realisation, the International of the deed" (Manifesto of the Communist International)

The currents, the fractions, the traditions and the positions which formed the basis of the CI, were developed and defended by the Left within the 2nd International. "Experience proves that only in a regroupment selected from the historical milieu - the 2nd International - in which the pre-war proletariat developed could the proletarian struggle against the imperialist war be pushed to its extreme conclusion, for only this group was able to formulate an advanced programme for the proletarian revolution, and so to lay the foundations for a new proletarian movement" (Bilan (theoretical bulletin of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left), no. 34, August 1936, p.1128).

Over and above individuals such as Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, or even groups and fractions of the social-democratic parties like the Bolsheviks, the German, Dutch, and Italian lefts etc, there is a political and organic continuity between the left of the 2nd International and of Zimmerwald, and the 3rd International. The first Congress of the new International was called on the initiative of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (previously the Workers' Social Democratic Party of Russia (Bolsheviks), which was part of the 2nd International) and the German Communist Party (ex-Spartacus League). The Bolsheviks were the driving force behind the Zimmerwald Left. The latter, a true organic and political link between the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, drew up a balance-sheet of its past combats as the left wing of the 2nd International, and set out the needs of the day:

"The conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal were important at a time when it was necessary to unite all those proletarian elements determined in one way or another to protest against the imperialist butchery. (...) The Zimmerwald group has had its day. All that was truly revolutionary in the Zimmerwald goes over to and joins the Communist International" (Declaration of the Participants at Zimmerwald).

We insist strongly on the continuity between the two Internationals. As we have seen on the organic level, the CI did not appear out of the blue. The same is true of its programme and its political principles. Not to recognise the historical link between the two means succumbing to an anarchist inability to understand how history works, or to a mechanistic spontaneism which sees the CI as solely the product of the revolutionary movement of the working masses.

Without recognising this continuity, it is impossible to understand why and how the CI breaks with the 2nd International. For although there is a continuity between the two, expressed amongst other things in the Stuttgart resolution, there is also a rupture. A rupture concretised in the CI's political programme, in its political positions and in its organisational and militant practice as the ‘world communist party'. A rupture in facts, by the use of armed and bloody repression: against the proletariat and the Bolsheviks in Russia by the Kerensky government, with the participation of the Mensheviks and the SR's, both members of the 2nd International; against the proletariat and the KPD in Germany by the Social-Democratic government of Noske-Scheidemann.

Without recognising this ‘break within a continuity', it is also impossible to understand the degeneration of the CI during the 1920's and the combat conducted within it, then outside it during the 30's following their exclusion, by the fractions of the ‘Italian', ‘German' and ‘Dutch' Communist Lefts, to name only the most important. Today's communist groups and the positions they defend are the product of these left fractions, of their defence of communist principles and their work in carrying out a critical reappraisal of the CI and the 1917-23 revolutionary wave. Without recognising the heritage of the 2nd International, which is the political heritage of the proletariat, it is impossible to understand the foundations of the CI's positions, nor the validity of some of the most important of them today, nor the contributions of the fractions during the 1930's. In other words, it means being incapable of defending revolutionary positions today, consistently and with assurance and determination.

THE CI'S BREAK WITH THE 2ND INTERNATIONAL

The CI's political programme

At the end of January 1919, Trotsky drew up the ‘Letter of invitation' to the CI's founding Congress, which determined the political principles that the new organisation aimed to adopt. In fact, this letter is the proposed ‘Platform of the Communist International', and sums it up well. It is based on the programmes of the two main communist parties: "In our opinion the new international should be based on the recognition of the following propositions, put forward here as a platform and worked out on the basis of the programme of the Spartakusbund in Germany and of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Russia" (Degras, op cit)

In fact, the Spartakusbund no longer existed since the foundation of the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) on 29th December 1918. The KPD had just lost its two principal leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, assassinated by social-democracy during the terrible repression of the Berlin proletariat in January 1919. Thus at the very moment of its foundation, the CI suffered, along with the international proletariat, its first defeat. Two months before it was constituted, the CI lost two leaders whose prestige, strength, and theoretical abilities were comparable to those of Lenin and Trotsky. It was Rosa Luxemburg who had most developed, in her writings at the end of the previous century, the point that was to become the keystone of the 3rd International's political programme.

Capitalism's irreversible historical decline

For Rosa Luxemburg, it was clear that the war of 1914 had opened up the capitalist mode of production's period of decadence. After the imperialist slaughter, this position could no longer be contested: "Matters have reached such a pitch that today mankind is faced with two alternatives: it may perish amid chaos; or it may find salvation in socialism" (Speech on the Programme at the founding congress of the KPD).

This position was reaffirmed vigorously by the International:

"1. The present epoch is the epoch of the collapse and disintegration of the entire capitalist world system, which will drag the whole of European civilisation down with it if capitalism with its insoluble contradictions is not destroyed" (Letter of Invitation, in Degras, op cit).

"A new epoch is born! The epoch of the dissolution of capitalism, of its inner disintegration. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat" (Platform of the CI, ibid).

The political implications of the epoch of capitalist decadence

For all those who stand on the terrain of the Communist International, the decline of capitalism has consequences for the living conditions and struggle of the proletariat. Contrary to the ideas of the pacifist centre, those of Kautsky for example, the end of the war could not mean a return to the life and programme of the pre-war period. This was one point of rupture between the dead 2nd and the 3rd International: "One thing is certain, the World War is a turning point for the world. (...) The conditions of our struggle, and we ourselves, have been radically altered by the World War" (Luxemburg, The Crisis of Social Democracy, known as the Junius Pamphlet, 1915)

The opening of the period of capitalist society's decline marked by the imperialist war, meant new conditions of life and struggle for the international proletariat. It was heralded by the 1905 mass strike in Russia, and the emergence for the first time of a new form of unitary organisation of the working masses, the soviets. Luxemburg (in Mass Strike, Party and Unions, 1906) and Trotsky (in his book  1905) drew the essential lessons of these mass movements. With Luxemburg, the whole of the left led the debate within the 2nd International on the mass strike, and the political battle against the opportunism of the trade union and Social-Democratic party leaderships, against their vision of a peaceful and gradual evolution towards socialism. Breaking with social-democratic practice, the CI declared: "The basic methods of struggle are mass actions of the proletariat right up to open armed conflict with the political power of capital" (Letter of Invitation in Degras, op cit).

The revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat

The action of the working masses leads to confrontation with the bourgeois state. The CI's most precious contribution is on the revolutionary proletariat's attitude to the state. Breaking with social-democracy's ‘reformism', renewing the marxist method and the lessons of the historical experiences of the Paris Commune, Russia 1905, and above all the insurrection of October 1917 with the destruction of the capitalist state in Russia and the exercise of power by the workers' councils, the CI declared itself clearly and without any ambiguity for the destruction of the bourgeois state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the working masses organised in the workers' councils.

"2. The task of the proletariat is now to seize power immediately. The seizure of state power means the destruction of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie and the organisation of a new proletarian apparatus of power.

3. This new apparatus of power should embody the dictatorship of the working class, and in some places also of the rural semi-proletariat, the village poor (...) Its concrete form is given in the regime of the Soviets or of similar organs..

4. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be the lever for the immediate expropriation of capital and for the abolition of private property in the means of production and their transformation into national property" (ibid).

This question was an essential one for the Congress, which was to adopt the ‘Theses on bourgeois democracy and the proletarian dictatorship' presented by Lenin.

The theses on bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat

The Theses begin by denouncing the false opposition between democracy and dictatorship. "For in no civilised capitalist country is there ‘democracy in the abstract', there is only bourgeois democracy" (ibid). The Paris Commune had demonstrated the dictatorial character of bourgeois democracy. In capitalism, defending ‘pure' democracy in fact means defending bourgeois democracy, which is the form par excellence of the dictatorship of capital. What freedom of meeting, or of the press is there for workers?

"‘Freedom of the press' is another leading watchword of ‘pure democracy'. But the workers know.... that this freedom is deceptive so long as the best printing works and the biggest paper supplies are in capitalist hands, and so long as capital retains its power over the press, a power which throughout the world is expressed more clearly, sharply, and cynically, the more developed the democracy and the republican regime, as for example in America. To win real equality and real democracy for the working masses, for the workers and peasants, the capitalists must first be deprived of the possibility of getting writers in their service, of buying up publishing houses and bribing newspapers. And for that it is necessary to throw off the yoke of capital, to overthrow the exploiters and to crush their resistance" (Theses, ibid).

After the experience of the war and the revolution, to demand and defend pure democracy, as do the Kautskyists, is a crime against the proletariat, the Theses continue. In the interests of the different imperialisms, of a minority of capitalists, millions of men were massacred in the trenches, and the ‘military dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' has been set up in every country, democratic or not. Bourgeois democracy assassinated Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg once they had been arrested and imprisoned by a social-democratic government.

"In such a state of affairs the dictatorship of the proletariat is not merely wholly justified as a means of overwhelming the exploiters and overcoming their resistance, but quite essential for the mass of workers as their only protection against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is getting ready for new wars.

The fundamental difference between the proletarian dictatorship and the dictatorship of other classes (...) consists in this, that (...) the dictatorship of the proletariat is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is of the minority of the population, the large landowners and capitalists. (...)

And in fact the forms taken by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which have already been worked out, that is, the Soviet power in Russia, the workers' councils in Germany, the shop stewards' committees, and other analogues of Soviet institutions in other countries, all these make a reality of democratic rights and privileges for the working classes, that is for the overwhelming majority of the population; they mean that it becomes really possible to use these rights and privileges in a way and on a scale that was never even approximately possible in the best democratic bourgeois republic" (ibid).

Only the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale can destroy capitalism, abolish classes, and ensure the passage to communism.

"The abolition of state power is the goal of all socialists, including and above all Marx. Unless this goal is reached, true democracy, that is, equality and freedom, is not attainable. But only Soviet and proletarian democracy leads in fact to this goal, for it begins at once to prepare for the complete withering away of any kind of state by drawing the mass organisations of the working people into constant and unrestricted participation in state administration" (ibid).

The question of the state was a crucial one, at a moment when the revolutionary wave was unfurling in Europe and the bourgeoisie in all countries was waging civil war against the proletariat in Russia, when the antagonism between capital and labour, between bourgeoisie and proletariat, had reached its most extreme and most dramatic point. The need to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia and the extension of the revolution, ie the power of the Soviets, internationally to Europe was posed concretely for revolutionaries: for or against the state of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia and the revolutionary wave. ‘For' meant joining the Communist International, and breaking organically and politically with the social-democracy. ‘Against' meant defending the bourgeois state, and choosing definitively the camp of the counter-revolution. For the centrist currents that hesitated between the two, it meant break-up and disappearance. Revolutionary periods do not leave any room for the timid policies of the ‘middle ground'.

TODAY AND TOMORROW: CONTINUING THE WORK OF THE CI

The change in period revealed definitively by the 1914-18 war determines the break between the political positions of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. We have seen this on the question of the state. Capitalism's decline, and its consequences for the proletariat's conditions of life and struggle posed a whole series of new problems: was it still possible to take part in elections and make use of parliament? With the appearance of the workers' councils, were the trade unions that had taken part in the ‘holy alliance' with the capitalists still working class organisations? What attitude should be adopted towards national liberation struggles in the epoch of imperialist wars?

The CI was unable to answer these new questions. It was formed more than a year after October 1917, two months after the proletariat's first defeat in Berlin. The years that followed were marked by the defeat and ebb of the international revolutionary wave, and so by the growing isolation of the proletariat in Russia. This isolation was the determining reason behind the degeneration of the state of the proletarian dictatorship. These events left the CI incapable of resisting the development of opportunism. In its turn, it died.

To draw up a balance sheet of the CI, obviously we must recognise it as the International Communist Party that it was. For those who see it only as a bourgeois organisation, because of its eventual degeneration, it is impossible to draw up a balance sheet, or to extract any lessons from its experience. Trotskyism lays claim uncritically to the first 4 Congresses. It never saw that where the 1st Congress broke with the 2nd International, the following congresses marked a retreat: in opposition to the split with the social-democracy accomplished by the 1st Congress, the 3rd proposed to make an alliance with it in the ‘United Front'. After having recognised its definitive passage into the bourgeois camp, the CI rehabilitated social-democracy at the 3rd Congress. This policy of alliance with the social-democratic parties was to lead Trotskyism in the 1930s to adopt the policy of ‘entrism', ie entering these same parties in direct defiance of the very principles of the 1st Congress. This policy of alliance, or of capitulation as Lenin would have said, was to precipitate the Trotskyist current into the counter-revolution, with its support for the bourgeois republican government in the Spanish civil war and then its participation in the imperialist Second World War, in betrayal of Zimmerwald and the International.

Already in the 1920s, a new left was created within the CI to try to struggle against this degeneration: in particular, the Italian, Dutch, and German Lefts. These left fractions, which were excluded during the 1920s, continued their political combat to ensure the continuity between the dying CI and the ‘party of tomorrow', by subjecting the CI and the revolutionary wave to a critical reappraisal. It is not for nothing that the review of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left during the 1930's was called Bilan (‘the balance sheet').

In continuity with the International's principles, these groups criticised the weaknesses in its break with the 2nd International. Their unsung efforts, in the deepest night of the counter-revolution during the 1930's and the second imperialist war, have made possible the resurgence and existence of communist groups today which, while they have no organic continuity with the CI, ensure its political continuity. The positions worked out and defended by these groups answer the problems raised within the CI by the new period of capitalist decadence.

It is therefore on the basis of the critical reappraisal carried out by the ‘Fractions of the Communist Left' that the CI lives today, and will live in the World Communist Party of tomorrow.

Today, in the face of growing exploitation and poverty, the proletariat must adopt the same positions as the Zimmerwald Left:

No holy alliance with the bourgeoisie in the economic war!

No sacrifices to save the national economy!

Long live the class struggle!

Transform the economic war into a civil war!

In the face of economic catastrophe, in the face of social decomposition, in the face of the perspective of imperialist war, the historic alternative is the same today as it was in 1919: the destruction of capitalism and the installation of the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat, or the destruction of humanity. Socialism or barbarism.

The future belongs to communism.

RL (Republished from IR57 2nd quarter 1989)

This presentation was based on rough notes so this short written version won't correspond exactly to what was said at the meeting, which was attended by representatives of the Midlands Discussion Forum, the Exeter Discussion Group, the Commune, the ICC, the Communist Workers' Organisation, Internationalist Perspective, former members of the Communist Bulletin Group and others. An assessment of the significance of this meeting will be published at a later date.

We want to begin with a few words about the significance of the moment in which this meeting is taking place, and which the holding of the meeting gives us the opportunity to explore further.

There seems to be a strong level of agreement here that this crisis cannot be understood as just another ‘bust' in a never-ending cycle of boom and bust but it has historic roots, going back not only to the end of the period of post-war prosperity but to the beginnings of the 20th century and beyond. There are certainly differences in our understanding of the roots of this crisis but there is a general recognition that these roots must be sought in the fundamental contradictions inherent in the accumulation of capital. There is also a recognition that this crisis will not spontaneously right itself but will push capitalism further along the road towards war and self-destruction, even if, again, there are different approaches to the role that war plays for capital in this era. There has been little disagreement with the CWO's affirmation that this is in fact the worst crisis in the entire history of capitalism.

The recognition of the gravity of this stage in the crisis has certainly been a factor pushing the elements here to pose the question of the responsibility of revolutionaries. But there is another, closely linked factor: the fact that this deepening of the crisis is confronting a working class which, after a long period of retreat, is showing clear signs of developing its will to fight and its consciousness. Despite all the difficulties the proletariat has faced since it reappeared on the historical scene in 1968 - the long drawn out nature of the crisis and the bourgeoisie's capacity to ‘manage' it, allowing it to create periods of apparent ‘boom'; the difficulties of the struggle developing a political perspective, which is linked to the isolation and tiny impact of revolutionary groupings; the break-up of whole concentrations of once militant and experienced sectors of the working class; the huge ideological campaigns of the ruling class, in particular the campaigns about the death of communism and the end of the class struggle after 1989 - despite all these and other very real problems, which resulted in a long retreat in the class struggle during the 1990s, we can say with confidence that the working class today is not in the same defeated condition it was in the 1930s.

The signs of class revival are not hard to read: the movement against the CPE in France in 2006 and other struggles by proletarianised youth around the world, most spectacularly the revolt in Greece at the end of 2008; the appearance of general assemblies in these and other movements, such as that of the steelworkers of Vigo in 2006; the development of mass strike movements in countries like Egypt and Bangladesh; the clear search for solidarity in many struggles - in Britain, for example, the wildcats at BA, the oil refinery strikes; the Belfast Visteon occupation which not only spread immediately to Visteon plants around London but also became a focus for strong feelings of solidarity from other workers. In all these various developments, we see the germs of the future mass strike movement mentioned in the CWO's presentation.

But this development in the class struggle is also expressed in a search for political clarity. In some cases this is directly linked to the struggle - such as the interesting example from the FIAT Pomigliano, Italy, mentioned by the CWO comrade, or in Greece where a minority explicitly denounced the role of the official trade unions and called for general assemblies. But it's also expressed by the appearance of discussion circles, internet forums, and minorities adopting internationalist positions and in a number of cases moving very quickly towards the ideas of the communist left. Like the revolt of proletarianised youth, these developments are to a large extent the expression of a new generation. This is evident, for example, with the most active elements in the libcom.org internet forum but also with many of the people approaching the ICC and/or left communist positions, as we have seen in Europe, Latin America, Australia, the US, Turkey, the Philippines....

These developments, like the appearance of a whole new generation of revolutionaries after 1968, emphasise the necessity for debate and regroupment. They open up the overall perspective for the construction of a world communist party.

Alongside the appearance of this new generation, we can see from today's meeting that there has also been a raising of questions among those who have been around for a long time, among the ‘old gits' who have maintained their activity come what may or who are only now wiping away the sand from a long sleep.

The ICC has always been in favour of debate, joint work among revolutionaries, and the regroupment of communist currents. In the early seventies we called for international conferences to bring together the products of the resurgence of class struggle; at the end of that decade we welcomed the initiative of Battaglia Comunista to begin a cycle of conferences of the communist left, and we have always regretted the breakdown of this attempt. Today we are devoting a large part of our resources to meeting the challenge raised by the new generation, engaging in debate in numerous circles and internet forums, forming new sections, while at the same time working closely with other groups where the possibility exists, as for example with our joint interventions with the Workers' Opposition group in Brazil.

But we have also always insisted that joint work and regroupment must be on a clear and principled basis, based on real programmatic agreement, and that less directly programmatic issues such as the way revolutionaries behave, their mode of organisation, the need for relations of trust and solidarity between them, the problem of sectarianism etc are political questions in their own right and cannot be ignored in any serious process of discussion and regroupment. It is also evident to everyone here that over the past decades there have been a number of traumatic experiences - whether the failure of the international conferences or the splits in existing groups - which have created a great deal of anger and bitterness. In our view, these traumas cannot be overcome simply by agreeing to ‘put it all behind us' This doesn't work either in the psychology of individuals or in the political sphere: to really go forward, the past has to be confronted and understood in depth. This meeting cannot give rise to any flashy but premature initiatives but it can be the beginning of a process of contact and discussion which can bear positive fruit in the future.

WR 4/5/9

No-one can fail to be moved at the plight of people in Northern Sri Lanka as the government army advances on the Tamil Tigers.

In London this January an estimated 100,000 people attended a rally to protest against the Sri Lankan government's military offence against the remaining stronghold of the Tamil Tigers. In April there was another demonstration on a similar scale and a vigil has been held with one participant going on hunger strike as part of an attempt to persuade the British government to intervene.

In Sri Lanka itself the Tamil Tigers have been driven into an enclave in the north-eastern coast of the country, their efforts to create a separate state apparently near defeat. The last few months have been defined by the brutality and barbarism of the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers, whose callous disregard for human life and suffering has only been matched by their cynicism in blatantly contradicting reality. The Tigers deny holding 150,000 people in the enclave as a human shield and shooting those who attempt to escape; they deny forcing children to fight and of firing from within civilian crowds; the government denies using aircraft and heavy artillery to rain indiscriminate destruction on those trapped inside, and also denies of depriving them of food and water. By the end of April, according to the UN, some 6,500 people had been killed, including several hundred children, while many thousands have been injured, overwhelming the few medical centres still functioning. A week previously thousands escaped the clutches of the Tigers after government forces opened a breach in the enclave, only to fall into the clutches of the army and to be immediately thrown into detention camps. The Tigers have called for a truce and, as things got worse, declared a unilateral ceasefire but insisted on keeping their weapons and continuing the ‘liberation' struggle. The government declared it had stopped using heavy weapons and then carried on using them within its self-proclaimed ‘no-fire' zone. With the scent of victory in its nostrils and blood dripping from its hands, the government rejected the Tigers' ceasefire and called for unconditional surrender.

Nationalism in Ceylon and Sri Lanka

The events of the last few months are wholly in keeping not only with the history of the Tamil Tigers' struggle for ‘national liberation' but with the history of the state in Sri Lanka. As in many countries around the world, the last decades of colonial rule in Ceylon (as the country was then known) saw the rise of nationalist movements expressing  the aspirations of the emerging indigenous bourgeoisie. The British imperialists, who controlled the country, showed their usual skill in using the existing structures and divisions in the country to strengthen their rule, such as by managing the balance of Sinhalese (the dominant ethnic group in the country) and Tamil representatives in the Ceylon Legislative Council in the 1920s. At the same time the British tended to favour Tamils when filling administrative posts because a larger proportion were English speaking.

After independence was granted in 1948 the Sinhalese bourgeoisie dominated the new parliament and introduced legislation that discriminated against and disenfranchised the Tamils. With fluctuations under different governments this has been a theme in Sri Lanka that has united the left and right, Buddhist monks and supposedly ‘marxist' revolutionaries. There have been intermittent anti-Tamil riots as well as the deportation of many thousands of Tamils who came from India. The two armed uprisings in the early 1970s and mid 1980 by the alleged ‘revolutionaries' of the Sinalese JVP (Peoples Liberation Front), for all their anti-capitalist rhetoric, were more notable for their racism and nationalism. While these uprisings were ruthlessly crushed by the state with many thousands killed, and while they showed the fragility of the Sri Lankan state and its propensity to violence, the members of the JVP were reabsorbed some years later and took their seats in parliament.

The Tamil nationalist movement also has its roots in the dying years of colonialism. It was born a movement of the bourgeoisie and has remained so, whether constitutional and non-violent or ‘revolutionary' and violent. The Tamil Tigers (or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam, to give the organisation's full name) emerged from the failure of its non-violent predecessors to gain any significant or lasting power in the country. The Tigers were formed in 1975 and spent much of their first years murdering and torturing their rival Tamil groups until they had supremacy. In 1983, following the massacre of hundreds if not thousands of Tamils in anti-Tamil riots, the Tigers launched an offensive that eventually saw them gain control over large areas of the northern and eastern coastal regions with the establishment of proto-government institutions such as taxation and policing. The Tigers became notorious for their ruthlessness and brutality: they have persistently forced children to fight, were one of the first organisations to use suicide bombers and had no qualms about harming civilians, on one occasion shutting off the water supply to tens of thousands of people. In 1995 they adopted a policy of ethnic cleansing by driving out Sinhalese villagers on the border of the area they controlled. The following year, faced with a counter-offensive from the government that took control of the city of Jaffna, they drove a substantial part of the population into the countryside with them. In all, the ‘liberation struggle' over the last 30 years is estimated to have cost in excess of 70,000 lives.

The current government offensive began in 2006, following the collapse of the most recent talks between the two sides. The government was aided by information from a former senior commander of the Tigers whose defection also seems to have reduced the number of new recruits to the Tigers. The result was that the government began to push the Tigers back; and from January of this year it gradually captured all of their strongholds, forcing them to retreat to the enclave in which they and the civilians held with them are now being massacred.

The imperialist framework

In the early years after independence Sri Lanka was firmly within India's sphere of influence. It did not then have a significant role in the rivalry between the main imperialist powers but, given its closeness to India's southern shore, it always could pose a threat either in the hands of an external power or as a result of internal instability. There have been population movements between the countries resulting in numerous links, in particular between the Tamils in Sri Lanka and those in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.

Although India's aim has been to maintain the stability and integrity of the country and it has intervened to do this in different ways over the years, in the late 1970s it gave support to some of the Tamil separatist groups. This was in part to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government, which was possibly looking to develop links with powers that India disproved of, and in part as an alternative and counter-balance to the Tigers, presumably because the effectiveness of the latter threatened to destabilise Sri Lanka. In 1987 India intervened directly to stop a government offensive against Jaffna, which was then held by the Tigers, and to try and impose a settlement. A ‘peace-keeping' force was sent to the country but it fairly rapidly became engaged in fights with the Tigers and matched them in the brutality of its ‘counter-insurgency' methods. India once again promoted other Tamil groups as an alternative to the Tigers. The latter then agreed to a ceasefire and Indian troops withdrew in March 1990. However, a year later a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed the Prime Minister of India Rajiv Ghandi and India retaliated by outlawing the Tigers.

Alongside the influence of India the intervention of Chinese imperialism has become crucial. The Chinese state is currently building a massive $1 billion port on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. It will be used as a refuelling and docking station for its navy as one of a number of ports protecting its oil supplies from Saudi Arabia. It will also be invaluable to have such a resource at the southern tip of India, as part of its strategy against a major regional rival. Ever since March 2007, when Sri Lanka agreed to the Chinese plan, "China has given it all the aid, arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers" (Times 2/5/9).

Indeed, a spokesman for the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi has suggested that "China's arms sales have been the decisive factor in ending the military stalemate" (ibid). Indian security sources have suggested that "Since 2007 China has encouraged Pakistan to sell weapons to Sri Lanka and to train Sri Lankan pilots to fly .. Chinese fighters".

This can't all be dismissed as Indian propaganda as "China has also provided crucial diplomatic support in the UN Security Council, blocking efforts to put Sri Lanka on the Agenda" (ibid).

A victory for the Sri Lankan state will not only, therefore, result in the imposition and reinforcement of repression in the north of the country, it will have the effect of further exacerbating tensions between India and China. In contemporary capitalism there is never an end to war, each ‘victory' is only another step towards the next war, never towards any lasting peace.  

North 1/5/09

Gordon Brown is in trouble. Backbenchers organised in the ‘Hotmail conspiracy' are calling on him to go. One after the other, cabinet ministers have been deserting him in the middle of local and EU elections, with some - like Hazel Blears - transparently acting in revenge for Brown's criticisms over her involvement in the MPs' expenses saga. Pensions Secretary James Purnell, quitting on 4 June, echoed the call for Brown to step down. The papers are full of articles about Brown's weaknesses: he's a ditherer, he doesn't know how to smile, he's caught between New Labour's love affair with business and Old Labour's reliance on the state...

The Labour party is in trouble. A disastrous performance in the local elections, having taken the majority of the flack over the expenses scandal, and being the party saddled with managing the state during the worst economic crisis since the 30s, and on top of that still wounded by the shrapnel of the Iraq war...

The British parliamentary system is in trouble. MPs of all major parties caught red-handed over their expenses and yet appearing to get away with fiddles that would bring the police to the door if you were an unemployed worker accused of comparable misdeeds. Parliament is seen as a talking shop divested of any real power by the executive apparatus, as an outmoded gentleman's club, with MPs seen as party robots incapable of responding to the feelings of their electors...

Capitalist politics in decomposition

All this turmoil in the world of official politics is the expression of a deeper malaise. Capitalist society is rotting on its feet and offers no perspective for the future. The ruling bourgeoisie increasingly resembles a bunch of petty gangsters out for number one. The Hazel Blears episode is typical of this ‘each for themselves' attitude which is quite prepared to put the desire for personal revenge or ambition above loyalty to party or nation. There is a profound tendency for bourgeois political structures to disintegrate: in many of the weakest countries of the planet, this results in civil wars and ‘failed states'. In the more advanced ones, conflict between individuals, clans and factions is not yet so openly violent but no less relentless. In such a situation, it is becoming more and more difficult for the bourgeoisie - even one as sophisticated as the British ruling class - to keep control of its political game.    

Campaigns to strengthen the democratic charade

But even when it's shaken by the decomposition of its social and political institutions, the bourgeoisie is not about to throw in the towel. It is still capable of coming up with political strategies aimed at hiding the bankruptcy of its system from those who least benefit from it. Above all, it can devise all kinds of false solutions which stop people looking for the real problems.

The Prime Minister has no charisma, he's a liability for the next election? Get rid of him then - a decision that seems to have already been taken by a growing element within the Labour Party.

The party in power is tainted with corruption and failed policies? Let's have an election and get the opposition in. Or if you think the major parties are all tarred with same brush, why not try a protest vote and put a cross next to one of the smaller parties (not the BNP of course)?

But perhaps the problem really does go deeper. Perhaps there are some fundamental flaws in ‘our' political system and we need what The Guardian is enthusiastically calling ‘a New Politics'. Let's have a robust, nationwide dialogue about how to reinvigorate democracy: maybe we need a written constitution, or proportional representation, or to get rid of the Lords, even the monarchy, devolve power to the regions and to local councils. We need to make the executive more responsive to parliament and MPs more accountable to their constituents.

In short: we need to reform the existing democratic state. Because what the ruling class does not want is any questioning of the underlying article of the democratic faith: the sacred belief that the people rule, even though, in reality, the people are divided into classes with irreconcilable interests.

In truth, the role of democracy is not to let us ‘have a say' in how society is run. Rather it is to disguise the dictatorship of the capitalist class. It is this class and this class only that ‘has a say' and it organises its rule through the power of the state. Democracy simply serves to present this state power to the working class with an egalitarian gloss. But whoever is elected to manage the state has to defend the national capital, increase profits and improve competitiveness on the world market. It can only do this by the continued ruthless application of state control over all areas of the economy, whether this is overt (as in the case of Stalinism and Fascism) or concealed but just as extensive (as in the case of neo-liberalism).

In a period where the economic crisis is the driving force in the development of society, this state will have no choice but to attack the working class. The attacks that are carried out against the working class by the bourgeoisie and its state are not the product of bad leadership, or the wrong party being in power. They are the products of the inexorable economic crisis which has no solution within the capitalist framework. In other words, whoever the workers elect will immediately exercise state power to defend the economy - and it will be the working class that has to pay.

Neither can this fundamental reality be altered by reforming the existing state apparatus with schemes to make it more responsive to the popular will. This is why Marx said, concerning the Paris Commune: "I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent." (Marx to Dr Kugelmann, "Concerning the Paris Commune", 1871.)

Today the "Continent" is the whole planet. The most democratic parliamentary forms of government have shown themselves to be entirely subordinate to capital and cannot be taken over by the exploited to be wielded in their own interests. The revolution that is needed to overthrow moribund capitalism will be obliged to dismantle the bourgeois state from top to bottom. And the resistance struggles of today that pave the way for the revolution of the future will have to organise themselves outside and against the organisms of the state, including the most democratic ones.  

WR 5/6/9

The campaigns about the state of Britain's parliamentary democracy are not only designed to hide the fact that real political power is concentrated elsewhere. It also serves to distract attention from the deepening economic crisis.

While the media have been convulsed with concern over the Westminster circus, events in the real world of the capitalist economy have continued to show the inexorable worsening of the crisis. There is occasionally talk of the green shoots of the recovery being visible or that there might be signs of the beginning of the end of the recession. But you can't help thinking that if there was any confidence behind these tentative thoughts they'd been shouting them from the rooftops.

More reliably, during May the Bank of England was reported to be worried the "UK's banking system is heading for a third wave of crisis that could snuff out fragile signs of recovery in the economy" (Financial Times 8/5/9). Accordingly they pumped another £50 billion into the economy, ignoring recent buoyancy on the stock market. The brute figures, the statistics of how we live, are still getting worse.

The official figures for average wage levels have fallen for the first time in at least 45 years. Workers have been accepting pay cuts rather than lose their jobs. Unemployment rose for the last reported quarter at the highest rate since 1981. The number of people who lost their jobs in March was the biggest in the post-war period. It's not just limited to the private sector as councils are already making cuts that will grow as government policies take effect. The possibility of 3 or 4 million officially unemployed in the UK in the coming period seems more and more feasible.

The latest attacks on living and working conditions follows a previous period in which things were already going down a one-way street. As The Guardian (8/5/9) reported "Britain under Gordon Brown is a more unequal country than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s, after the incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election. Deprivation and inequality in the UK rose for a third successive year in 2007-08"

While the papers have been feeding on the carcases of shamed or discarded politicians, the impact of the economic crisis has continued to be felt. In mid-May BT announced that it would be cutting the jobs of 15,000 workers, 10% of its workforce, making 30,000 over a two-year period. When the front pages are full of chatter about moats and duck islands there's not so much space for that sort of news

There's also the importance of the bankruptcy of General Motors. GM bought Vauxhall in 1925 and so for more than 80 years the British branch has not been immune to the fluctuations of the US economy. With tens of thousands of GM jobs lost in the US it is obviously a very worrying time for the more than 5000 Vauxhall workers at Ellesmere Port and Luton. Either one or both plants could close, and remarks about ‘restructuring' from Peter Mandelson indicate that jobs are bound to go, but he doesn't yet know how many.

The froth over MPs and elections will sooner or later be replaced by the next campaign from the bourgeoisie, as interest in Britain's Got Talent is replaced by the latest series of Big Brother. The ruling class will even make a spectacle out of its own corruption, anything to divert the attention of the working class from the effects of capitalism's economic crisis.

WR 4/6/9

The revelations about MPs expenses have confirmed what a lot of people suspected. Whether our representatives are cheating or just bending the rules it certainly looks like the Westminster porkers have their snouts in the trough. Although this should come as no surprise, many people are still angry and indignant about the whole affair. In a time of deep economic crisis, where jobs, wage levels and pensions are directly under threat, seeing our ‘political leaders' lining their pockets at every opportunity can only reinforce distrust in the whole parliamentary process. 

On the other hand, there has been a tendency in the media to exaggerate the scale of the political difficulties this has caused for the ruling class. The Telegraph - which has certainly boosted sales by leading the charge in the exposure of the MPs' dodgy claims - saw the resignation of the Speaker as "Only the start of a very British revolution". A commentator on The Times (28/5/9) made comparisons with the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and declared that "the ruling class regards us with contempt. .... Meanwhile, we must fight their wars, fill their castles with food and pay the taxes they impose."

On the far left, we have had a similar level of hyperbole. World Socialist Web Site (18/5/9) identifies a real process but gives an overblown account of what it has led to: "Changes in mass consciousness happen suddenly and unexpectedly. The processes that bring them about have taken place over a long period of time and in a subterranean fashion. But eventually they break out onto the surface of social life, producing an overnight change in the way that the majority of people across many classes and social layers view the world. In the course of the past week, Britain has experienced just such a change in consciousness as a wave of anger has erupted over the question of allowances granted to Members of Parliament."

Recognising that politicians are on the make does not in itself represent a qualitative advance in class consciousness. Disillusionment with dominant bourgeois ideals is a necessary moment towards genuine class consciousness, but in the absence of an active class movement it can end up in a passive form of cynicism. And at the same time, the bourgeoisie and its media are working very hard to limit the damage such scandals cause - in this case, for example, advising us not to throw the baby out with the bath water because many MPs work hard for their constituents. And if you think that the current bunch is bad then, we are told, fascists or doctrinaire socialists would be a whole lot worse.

What is dangerous about this line of thought is that it poses the possibility of a ‘cleaner', less corrupt, more democratic government. Right, left or centre can all pose as new brooms to sweep away the old order. But whatever colour the state dresses itself in there will still be the same economic crisis and the same attack on working class living standards.

Class consciousness is not just a negative reaction to what the exploiting class is up to. It is also based on an active sense that it is necessary and possible to struggle collectively in defence of our own class interests. It goes together with a growing self-confidence and in the final analysis it requires a perspective and a programme for a fundamental change in the structure of society. For a real revolution to take place, anger with politicians and parliament must transform itself into a clear will to fight for a radically different way of organising social life. 

Car  6/6/9   

In the lead up to the local and European elections, great play has been made of the threat posed by the British National Party. A few weeks before the elections, archbishops and bishops of the Anglican church made a direct appeal to boycott the BNP. In the furore over MPs' expenses, we were told in numerous articles and TV broadcasts that the big danger in people becoming cynical about the main parties is that they will turn to the BNP in protest. And indeed, the BNP have raised their visibility in this campaign with party political broadcasts and much media coverage of how a win in the Euro elections would provide funds to expand their future campaigns. At the time of writing, results for the European elections are not yet available, but in the local elections the BNP gained seats on some county councils for the first time, and this success could well be repeated in the European parliament.

It is also true that the BNP represent a particularly odious form of racism, above all because their relatively respectable electoral image is only a thin veneer over the fact that their members and supporters are still directly involved in more traditional fascist practices: violent intimidation of political opponents and physical attacks on ethnic, religious and other minorities. But they are far from alone in that regard! It is not the BNP that have run endless media campaigns about the evils of immigration while simultaneously exploiting immigrant labour under the most appalling conditions. Nor is it the BNP that are ruthlessly stepping up border controls, putting asylum seekers in virtual prison camps and expatriating workers who have lived here since childhood, including hundreds of AIDS patients that are being forcibly returned to Africa. And nor was it the BNP that dragged cancer patient Ama Sumani from her hospital bed in order to deport her. All that was organised and carried out by the very legal, democratic and multicultural British state.

The BNP is simply a minor cog in a capitalist political machine that is racist to the core. If its racism is more obvious that other fractions of the bourgeoisie it also allows it to serve as a distraction from the far more widespread and dangerous activities of the mainstream parties.

And when it comes to campaigning in the EU elections on the basis of out and out nationalism, the left is not be outdone by the right. Take No2EU, a coalition initiated by the RMT union, supported by various leftist groups, and supposedly opposing the EU from the standpoint of defending workers' rights. No2EU serves up its own brand of nationalist policies with statements like "defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain" and "repatriate democratic powers to EU member states". Under the cover of standing up for all workers, they defend an insular, localist vision of workers' rights: "to ferry workers across Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform is an environmental, economic and social nonsense". What they are really demanding is the right of indigenous workers to be exploited by an independent British capitalism.

Despite the differences in packaging, the underlying ideological themes of all the parties are the same: they accept the framework of capitalist nation states and reduce workers to quarrelling with each other over who has the right to be exploited where. Against this, communists have to raise the old slogan of the workers' movement: the workers have no country! 

Ishmael 6/6/09

Twenty years ago, seven weeks of demonstrations that took place in more than 400 Chinese towns and cities met with brutal repression from the Chinese state, not only in Beijing, but also in a series of operations across the country. The repression in Tiananmen Square on the night of 3-4 June 1989, in which hundreds (or possibly thousands) of people were killed was condemned internationally. "President Bush denounced China for using military force against its own people and implied that the action could damage relations between Washington and Beijing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain said she was ‘appalled by the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed people.' The French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, said he was ‘dismayed by the bloody repression' of ‘an unarmed crowd of demonstrators.' The West German Foreign Ministry urged China ‘to return to its universally welcomed policies of reform and openness." (New York Times, 5 June 1989). President Bush announced reprisals against China, including the suspension of arms sales.

In the period since there has been no let up in the criticism of China's ‘human rights record'. However, this high-sounding ‘humanitarianism' is utterly hypocritical. We can expect more of it in October with the sixtieth anniversary of Mao declaring the People's Republic of China.

Look back at the ‘condemnations.' The regime that the US sold arms to had not suddenly been transformed one day in June. The reason the US sold arms to China was part of an overall strategy during the period of the Cold War - supporting China as another force pitted against the USSR. And the ‘universally welcomed policies of reform' had done nothing to disturb the dictatorship of the Chinese capitalist state and the exploitation and repression of the working class.

Last year, at the Beijing Olympics, Bush Junior went through the usual criticisms of China but praised the economy as being "good for the Chinese people" and Chinese purchasing power as "good for the world". This is the true face of capitalism - it cares nothing for ‘human rights' and everything for business.

It was, therefore, entirely appropriate for US Treasury Secretary Geithner to be in Beijing on 1-2 June 2009, just before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square repression, calling for closer ties with China. He was a "gracious guest". He told students: "Our engagement should be conducted with mutual respect for the traditions, values and interests of China and the United States" and "We each have an obligation to ensure that our policies and actions promote the health and stability of the global economy and financial system." In turn his hosts expressed their confidence in the various measures taken by the US government to deal with the recession.

There are clearly many differences between China and the US, and many parts of the world where they could at some point be in military conflict. However, when it comes to the preservation of the world capitalist system, they are united.

For the working class in China, the world capitalist crisis is having an impact with growing unemployment and the mass migration of millions. Official Chinese figures for 58,000 ‘mass incidents' (any strike, demonstration involving more than 25 people) for the first three months of 2009 show that workers are increasingly responding to the attacks of the Chinese state. For the whole of 2008 there were 120,000 ‘mass incidents'. The ruling class in the US and China want ‘stability' for the world economy. The working class has to struggle against the order that its masters want to impose.  

Car 3/6/09

"The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you." With these words President Obama spoken finished his ‘historic' 4 June Cairo speech and supposedly drew a clear line between his policy towards the Middle East and that of the previous administration. However, behind the rhetoric Obama confronts the same fundamental problem as the Bush regime: 20 years of the decline of American leadership since the end of the Cold War. As this extract from the International Situation Resolution recently adopted at our 18th International Congress demonstrates, the Obama regime is caught up in the same bloody imperialist logic as his predecessor.

...The end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the eastern bloc, which Reagan had presented as the ‘Evil Empire', were supposed to put an end to the different military conflicts brought about by the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs since 1947. Faced with this mystification about the possibility of peace under capitalism, marxism has always underlined the impossibility for bourgeois states to go beyond their economic and military rivalries, especially in the period of decadence. This is why we were able to write, back in January 1990, that "The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and the coming disappearance of the bloc between the American gendarme and its former ‘partners', is going to open the door to a whole series of more local rivalries. These rivalries and confrontations cannot, in the present circumstances, degenerate into a world conflict...On the other hand, because of the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the presence of the blocs, these conflicts threaten to become more violent and more numerous, in particular, of course, in zones where the proletariat is weakest" (IR 61, "After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilisation and chaos"). The world scene soon confirmed this analysis, notably with the first Gulf War in January 1991 and the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the autumn of the same year. Since then, there has been no let up in bloody and barbaric conflicts. We cannot enumerate all of them but we can note in particular:

 - the continuation of the war in ex-Yugoslavia, which saw, under the aegis of NATO, the direct involvement of the USA and the main European powers in 1999;

 - the two wars in Chechnya

 - the numerous wars that have continually ravaged the African continent (Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Sudan, etc);

 - the military operations by Israel in Lebanon and, most recently, in Gaza;

 - the war in Afghanistan, which is still going on;

 - the war in Iraq in 2003 whose consequences continue to weigh dramatically on this country, but also on the initiator of the war, the USA.

The direction and implications of US policy have long been analysed by the ICC:

"the spectre of world war no longer haunts the planet, but at the same time, we have seen the unchaining of imperialist antagonisms and local wars directly implicating the great powers, in particular the most powerful of them all, the USA. The USA, which for decades has been the ‘world cop', has had to try to carry on and strengthen this role in the face of the ‘new world disorder' which came out of the end of the Cold War. But while it has certainly taken this role to heart, it hasn't at all been done with the aim of contributing to the stability of the planet but fundamentally to conserve its global leadership, which has been more and more put into question by the fact that there is no longer the cement which held each of the two imperialist blocs together - the threat from the rival bloc. In the definitive absence of the ‘Soviet threat', the only way the American power could impose its discipline was to rely on its main strength, its huge superiority at the military level. But in doing so, the imperialist policy of the USA has become one of the main factors in global instability." (Resolution on the international situation, 17th Congress of the ICC, point 7 [192])

The arrival of the Democrat Barak Obama to the head of the world's leading power has given rise to all kinds of illusions about a possible change in the strategic orientations of the USA, a change opening up an ‘era of peace'. One of the bases for these illusions resides in the fact that Obama was one of the few US senators to vote against the military intervention in Iraq in 2003, and that unlike his Republican rival McCain he has committed himself to a withdrawal of US armed forces from Iraq. However, these illusions have quickly come up against reality. In particular, if Obama has envisaged a US withdrawal from Iraq, it is in order to reinforce its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Furthermore, the continuity in US military policy is well illustrated by the fact that the new administration brought Gates, who had been nominated by Bush, back to the post of Secretary of Defence.

In reality, the new orientation of American diplomacy in no way calls into question the framework outlined above. Its objective is still the reconquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future imperialist interventions by its military, which is currently spaced too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theater of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, as the ICC has often underlined, there are two different options within the bourgeoisie for pursuing this goal:

 - the option represented by the Democratic Party which is trying as much as possible to associate other powers to this project;

 - the majority option among the Republicans, which consists of taking the initiative for military offensives and imposing itself on other powers at whatever cost.

The first option was taken up by Clinton at the end of the 90s in ex-Yugoslavia, where the US managed to get the the main powers of western Europe, in particular Germany and France, to cooperate in the NATO bombing of Serbia to force it to abandon Kosovo.

The second option was typically the one used in unleashing the Iraq war in 2003, which took place against the very determined opposition of Germany and France, this time in conjunction with Russia within the UN Security Council.

However, neither of these options has been capable of reversing the weakening of US leadership. The policy of forcing things through, illustrated during the two terms of Bush Junior, has resulted not only in the chaos in Iraq, which is nowhere near being overcome, but also to the growing isolation of American diplomacy, illustrated in particular by the fact that certain countries that supported the US in 2003, such as Spain and Italy, have jumped ship from the Iraq adventure (not to mention the more discreet way Gordon Brown and the British government have taken their distance from the unconditional support that Tony Blair gave to the Iraq adventure). For its part, the policy of ‘cooperation' favoured by the Democrats does not really ensure the loyalty of the powers that the US is trying to associate with its military enterprises, particularly because it gives these powers a wider margin of manoeuvre to push forward their own interests

Today, for example, the Obama administration has decided to adopt a more conciliatory policy towards Iran and a firmer one towards Israel, two orientations which go in the same direction as most of the countries of the European Union, especially Germany and France, two countries who are aiming to recover some of their former influence in Iraq and Iran. Having said this, this orientation will not make it possible to prevent the emergence of major conflicts of interest between these two countries and the US, notably in the sphere of eastern Europe (where Germany is trying to preserve its ‘privileged' relations with Russia) or Africa (where the two factions subjecting Congo to a reign of blood and fire have the support of the US and France respectively).

More generally, the disappearance of the division of the world into two great blocs has opened the door to the ambitions of second level imperialisms who are serving to further destabilise the international situation. This is the case, for example, with Iran whose aim is to gain a dominant position in the Middle East under the banner of resistance to the American ‘Great Satan' and of the fight against Israel. With much more considerable means, China aims to extend its influence to other continents, particularly in Africa where its growing economic presence is the basis for a diplomatic and military presence, as is already the case in the war in Sudan.

Thus the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas. We also have to consider whether the instability provoked by the considerable aggravation of the crisis in a whole series of countries in the periphery will not result in an intensification of confrontations between military cliques within these countries, with, as ever, the participation of different imperialist powers. Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the warlike policies of their predecessors, as we can see in Afghanistan for example, a policy which is synonymous with growing military barbarism.

ICC 31/5/9

On 24 May North Korea issued a statement that it had carried out a second nuclear test. "It claimed the latest device, which was detonated underground in the north-east of the country, was more powerful than its previous nuclear test in 2006. Unconfirmed South Korean reports say Pyongyang has also test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles. The incident has provoked widespread international condemnation, and will surely lead to the further isolation of the totalitarian state." (BBC website 25 May 2009)

In response to this, there has been widespread condemnation from the ‘international community' with the USA, which currently has an estimated 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, stating it would initiate patrols in the seas around the North. The response of Pyongyang to this was to state that if any of its ships were to be boarded by South Korean troops it would regard this as an act of aggression and respond with a huge military strike. What's behind this latest display of force?

In April of this year North Korea also faced widespread criticism to the launch of a missile, which it claimed was aimed at putting a satellite into space. This was disbelieved and seen as an attempt to test-fire missiles with long range capabilities. Behind this belligerence is an attempt by the North to strengthen its hand given two recent developments: the election of a new American President, and the failing health of its current leader Kim Jong-Ill. Undoubtedly North Korea, along with many other states, is testing the new President to see what reaction will be forthcoming from Washington. In continuity with the past, predictably Washington has come out in strong support of South Korea. It would seem highly unlikely, given the American troop presence in the South, that North Korea could seriously envisage any real kind of invasion or attack on the South, provoking as it would a massive response from the USA and a resultant obliteration of the North. Although North Korea has one of the biggest armies in the world, currently estimated at over 1.1 million personnel, its equipment dates from the Soviet era and would be completely ineffectual against US air power.

Much more likely is the idea of a strategy aimed at hardening their negotiating position. The fact that a country could test-fire nuclear weapons and also missiles to give a ‘show of force' in itself shows the kind of insane pitch that capitalism has reached. There always remains the possibility that things could get out of control, not only because of the particular irrationality of the Stalinist clique in charge of North Korea, but because of the fragile and uncertain nature of imperialist relations on a global scale.

One key aspect will be the attitude of North Korea's main backer, China, to these events. At the moment it seems that the Chinese, while reaffirming traditional ties of friendship with Pyongyang, are being unusually critical of the latest tests, no doubt fearing that they will lead to further instability in a region in which it is trying to impose its own form of ‘order'.  North Korea is a vital security buffer for China, and also a vital part of any strategic ‘encirclement' the USA may envisage against China.. North Korea's economy is already in a deep hole, with reports of massive malnutrition directly linked to the regime's inordinate investment in arms. If North Korea should provoke any local military conflicts or if the regime should collapse,  China would be immediately faced with the chaotic consequences, so its present cautious stance is understandable.  But it is equally possible that China could be pulled via its alliance with Pyongyang into regional conflicts as a result of North Korea's adventurism and the inevitability of a response by South Korea and the US.  

Graham 1/6/9

In the anarchist milieu today, notably in France and Russia, we are seeing a number of elements attempting to distinguish themselves from the nationalist approach contained in the defence of regionalism, ‘ethnic identity' and national liberation struggles, questions that are often characteristic of the weaknesses of this milieu. The catastrophic course of capitalist society obliges all those who passionately desire to take part in the social revolution to seriously examine the perspectives facing the proletariat - not only the prospects for the class struggle but also the development of the barbarity of imperialist war on almost every continent.

For the proletariat, faced with imperialist war, the only attitude that corresponds to its interests is the rejection of any participation in one or the other camps involved and the denunciation of all the bourgeois forces that appeal to the proletariat, under some pretext or the other, to give their lives for one of these capitalist camps. In the context of imperialist war, the working class must put forward the sole perspective possible: the development of conscious and intransigent struggle with the ultimate aim of overthrowing capitalism. In this sense, the question of internationalism constitutes the decisive criterion for an organisation or current being in the camp of the proletariat.

Internationalism is based on universal conditions imposed on the working class by capitalism at the world level - on the exploitation of its labour power, in every country and on every continent. It was in the name of such internationalism that the First International and the two Internationals that followed were born. Internationalism is based on the essential fact that the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat are international: beyond frontiers and military fronts, beyond ethnic origins and particular cultures, the proletariat finds its unity in the common struggle against its conditions of exploitation and for the abolition of wage labour, for communism.

But generally, for anarchism, internationalism is more tied up with its abstract ‘principles' such as anti-authoritarianism, liberty, the rejection of any power, anti-statism, etc., than to a clear conception that this internationalism constitutes a class frontier that distinguishes the camp of capital from the camp of the proletariat. That's why, as we'll see, the history of anarchism is subject to permanent oscillations between decisive internationalist positions and positions that are humanist, pacifist, sterile or outright warmongering.

In this series of articles, we will try to understand why, at each major imperialist moment - such as the two world wars - the majority of the anarchist milieu, on the one hand, was unable to defend the interests of our class and allowed itself to be gripped by bourgeois nationalism, whereas, on the other hand, a small minority succeeded in defending proletarian internationalism.

The betrayal of internationalism by Social-Democracy and anarchism in 1914

The outbreak of the First World War witnessed the shameful collapse of the Socialist International. The great majority of its parties submitted to capital, declared a union with each respective national bourgeoisie and led the mobilisation of the proletariat for imperialist war. Similarly, the main components of the anarchist movement spoke of going to war for the profit of the bourgeois state. Kropotkin, Tcherkesoff and Jean Grave were the most eager defenders of France: "Don't let these heinous conquerors wipe out the Latin civilisation and the French people again... Don't let them impose on Europe a century of militarism" (Letter of Kropotkin to J.Grave 2 September1914). It was in the name of the defence of democracy against Prussian militarism that they supported the Sacred Union: "German aggression was a threat - executed - not only against our hopes for emancipation but against all human evolution. That's why we, anarchists, we, anti-militarists, we enemies of war, we passionate partisans for peace and fraternity between peoples, we line up on the side of the resistance and we have not thought of separating our fate from that of the rest of the population" (Manifesto of Sixteen (the number of signatories) 28 February 1916). In France, the anarcho-syndicalist CGT threw into the bin its own resolutions that called on it organise the general strike in case of war, transforming itself into a hysterical purveyor of cannon fodder for imperialist butchery: "against the force of arms, against Germanic militarism, we must save the democratic and revolutionary tradition of France", "go without regret comrade workers when you are called to the frontiers to defend French soil."(La Bataille Syndicaliste, organ of the CNT, August 1914). In Italy, some anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist groups launched the ‘fasci' "against barbarity, German militarism and perfidious Roman and Austrian Catholicism".

However, this convergence of the majority of Social Democracy and anarchism in favour of supporting imperialist war and the bourgeois state showed fundamentally different dynamics.

The position of Social Democracy in 1914 faced with war constituted a betrayal of marxism, the theory of the international and revolutionary proletariat and of its principle that the workers had no country. The rallying to imperialist war and the bourgeoisie in 1914 by the majority of anarchists internationally was, on the contrary, not a false move but the logical conclusion of their anarchism, conforming to their essential political positions.

Thus, in 1914, it was in the name of anti-authoritarianism, because it was unthinkable "that one country could be violated by another" (Letter to J.Grave), that Kropotkin justified his chauvinist position in favour of France. By basing their internationalism on "‘self-determination' and ‘the absolute right of any individual, any association, any commune, province, region, nation to decide themselves, to associate or not associate, to link up with whom they wanted and break their alliances'"(Daniel Guerin, Anarchism Idees Gallimard p.80) the anarchists merely reflected the divisions that capitalism imposed on the proletariat. This chauvinist position has its roots in the federalism that is found at the very basis of all anarchist conceptions. In arguing that the nation is a natural phenomenon, in defending the right of all nations to existence and to their free development, anarchism judges the sole danger in the existence of nations to be their propensity to give way to the ‘nationalism' instilled by the dominant class in order to separate the people one from the other. It is naturally led, in any imperialist war, to operate a distinction between aggressors/aggressed, oppressors/oppressed, etc, and thus to opt for the defence of the weakest, of rights that have been flouted, etc. This attempt to base the refusal to go to war on something other than the class positions of the proletariat leaves all sorts of latitude to justify support for one or the other belligerent parties. Concretely, that's to say, to choose one imperialist camp against another.

Loyalty to internationalist principles affirmed by the Zimmerwald movement and the development of class struggle

However, some anarchists succeeded in affirming a really internationalist position. A minority of 35 militants (including A. Berkman, E. Goldman, E. Malatesta, D. Neiuwenhuis) published a manifesto against war (February 1915). "It is naive and puerile, after having multiple causes and occasions for conflicts, to try to establish the responsibility of such and such a government. There is no possible distinction between offensive and defensive war (...) No belligerent has the right to claim civilisation, as none has the right to declare itself in a state of legitimate defence (...) Whatever form it's dressed up in, the state is just organised oppression for the profit of a privileged minority. The present conflict illustrates this in a striking fashion. All forms of the state are currently engaged in the war: absolutism with Russia, absolutism mitigated with parliamentarism with Germany, the state reigning over people of quite different races with Austria, the constitutional democratic regime with Britain, and the democratic republican regime with France (...) The role of anarchists wherever they are or whatever situation in which they find themselves, in the present tragedy, is to continue to proclaim that there is only one war of liberation: that which in every country is led by the oppressed against the oppressors, by the exploited against the exploiters"(The Anarchist International and War, February 1915). The capacity to maintain class positions was clearer among mass proletarian organisations which, in reaction to the progressive abandonment of any revolutionary perspective by Social Democracy before the war, were part of the revolutionary syndicalist current. In Spain, A. Lorenzo, an old militant of the First International and founding member the CNT, immediately denounced the betrayal by German Social Democracy, the French CGT and the British unions for "having sacrificed their ideas on the altars of their respective countries, by denying the fundamentally international character of the social problem". In November 1914, another manifesto signed by anarchist groups, some unions and workers' societies all over Spain developed the same ideas: denunciation of the war, denunciation of the two rival gangs, necessitating a peace that "could only be guaranteed by the social revolution" (See ‘The CNT faced with war and revolution (1914-19) [195]', International Review 129, and the rest of our series on the history of the CNT in IRs 128-122). The reaction was weakest among the anarcho-syndicalists most heavily handicapped by the weight of anarchist ideology. But from the betrayal of the CGT, a minority opposed to war came together in the small group La Vie Ouvriere of Monatte and Rosmer (See ‘Anarcho-syndicalism faces a change in epoch: the CGT up to 1914 [196]' International Review 120). The nebulous anarchist milieu was split between anarcho-patriots and internationalists. After 1915, the recovery of struggle by the proletariat and the repercussions of the slogan for transforming the imperialist war into civil war, launched by the socialist conferences opposed to the war at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, meant the anarchists could anchor their opposition to the war in the class struggle.

In Hungary after 1914, it was militant anarchists who headed the movement against imperialist war. Among them, Ilona Duczynska and Tivadar Lukacs introduced and propagandised the Zimmerwald Manifesto. Under the impulsion of the internationalist conference, the Galilee Circle, founded in 1908, and composed of a mixture of anarchists, socialists excluded from Social Democracy and some pacifists, became radicalised through a process of decantation. It went from anti-militarism and anti-clericism to socialism, from an activity as a discussion circle to a more determined propagandist activity against the war and active intervention in the openly fermenting workers' struggles. Its defeatist leaflets were signed "A Group of Hungarian Socialists Affiliated to Zimmerwald".

In Spain, the struggle against war was the central activity of the CNT, linked to the enthusiastic support of the workers' struggle that grew from the end of 1915. It demonstrated a clear will for discussion and was fully open to the positions of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, which were welcomed with enthusiasm. It discussed and collaborated with socialist minority groups in Spain that opposed the war. There was a great effort of reflection to try to understand the causes of the war and the means to struggle against it. It supported the positions of the Zimmerwald Left and made it known that it wanted: "along with all the workers, the war to be ended by the uprising of the proletariat in the belligerent countries" (‘Sobre la paz dos criterios' (‘Two criteria on peace') Solidaridad Obrera, June 1917).

October 1917, the beacon of the proletarian revolution

The outbreak of the Russian revolution stirred up an enormous enthusiasm. The revolutionary movement of the working class and the victorious insurrection of October 1917 led the proletarian currents of anarchism to identify with it explicitly. The most fruitful contribution of the anarchists to the revolutionary process in Russia was concretised by their collaboration with the Bolsheviks. Internationally, the political convergence of the internationalist anarchists with communism and the Bolsheviks was further strengthened.

Within the CNT, October was seen as a veritable triumph of the proletariat. Tierra y Libertad considered that "anarchist ideas have triumphed" (7 November 1917) and that the Bolshevik regime is "guided by the anarchist spirit of maximalism"(21 November1917). Solidaridad Obrera affirmed that: "the Russians show us the road to follow." The Manifesto of the CNT said: "Look at Russia, look at Germany. Let's imitate these champions of the proletarian revolution."

Among the Hungarian anarchist militants, October 1917 led to more clearly oriented action against war. So as to support the proletarian movement in all its ferment, the Revolutionary Socialist Circle was founded in 1918 from the Galilee Circle. It was essentially composed of libertarians, which regrouped some currents from marxism as well as anarchism.

In this phase, the trajectory of Tibor Szamuely is exemplary of the contribution from a good part of the anarchist milieu that was attached to the cause of the proletariat. Szamuely was, during his life, a dyed in the wool anarchist. Mobilised on the Russian front, taken prisoner in 1915, he made links with the Bolsheviks after February 1917. He helped set up a communist group of proletarian prisoners of war and, during the summer of 1918, participated in the combats of the Red Army against the Whites in the Urals. Faced with the development of a pre-revolutionary situation, he returned to Hungary in November 1918 and became an ardent defender of the creation of a communist party that was capable of giving a lead to the action of the masses and regrouping the most revolutionary elements. The recognition of the imperious needs of the class struggle and of the revolution led the anarchist militants to overcome their aversion to any form of political organisation and any prejudices about the exercise of political power by the proletariat. The Constituent Congress of the Communist Party took place at the end of November 1918 and the anarchists, among whom were O. Korvin and K. Krausz, editor of the anarchist daily Tarsadalmi Forrdalo. The Congress adopted a programme defending the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The HCP "got to work straightaway setting up the power of the Councils" (R.Bardy: 1919, La Commune de Budapest, Ed La Tete de Feuilles, 1972, p.60). In the revolutionary movement, from March 1919, Szamuely took up numerous responsibilities including that of Commissar of Military Affairs which organised the fight against counter-revolutionary activities. Some anarchists, veteran mutineers of Cattaro (1918), formed its shock brigade under the leadership of Cserny within the Red Army. It was renowned in the defence of Budapest for defeating the sudden Franco-Serbian attack against the capital and in the support given to the short-lived Slovak Republic of Councils in May 1919. Because of their firm commitment to the proletarian revolution, they were known as "Lenin's Boys".

In Russia, at the time of the White offensive against Petrograd (October 1919), the anarchists demonstrated their loyalty towards the revolution despite their disagreements with the Bolsheviks. "The Anarchist Federation of Petrograd, lacking in militants having given the best of its forces to the many fronts and to the Communist Bolshevik Party, finds itself in these serious times (...) entirely at the side of the Party" (Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution).

Calling into question anarchist dogmas

The experience of the world war, then of the revolution, confronted all revolutionaries with the need to make a complete revision of the ideas and means of action that had existed before the war. But this change wasn't posed in the same terms for everyone. Faced with world war, the left of Social Democracy, the communists (Bolsheviks and Spartacists at their head) maintained an intransigent internationalism. They were able to understand that the overthrow of the capitalist system by the proletariat, which was the only way to eradicate the barbarity of war from the surface of the Earth, was now on the historical agenda, and it was this that enabled them to embody the will of the working masses. They were able to assume the tasks of the hour by fundamentally situating themselves in continuity with their previous programme. They recognised that this war inaugurated the phase of the decadence of capitalism, implying that the final aim of the proletarian movement, communism, the ‘maximum programme' of Social Democracy, henceforth constituted the immediate objective to aim for.

It went quite differently for the anarchists. For those that only saw the ‘peoples', it was necessary first of all to establish their rejection of war and their internationalism on something other than the idealistic rhetoric of anarchism and adopt the class positions of the proletariat in order to remain faithful to the cause of the social revolution. It was by opening up to the positions developed by the communists (through the internationalist conferences against the war) that they were able to strengthen their combat against capitalism, and notably to surmount the apoliticism and the refusal of any political struggle typical of the conceptions inspired by anarchism. Thus within the CNT, the reception of Lenin's book State and Revolution aroused a very attentive study, leading to the conclusion that the text "established an integral bridge between Marxism and anarchism".

By leaving to one side the prism of mistrust for politics and anti-authoritarianism, the capacity of anarchism to understand the practice of the working class itself in its opposition to war and in the revolutionary process in Russia and Germany, allowed them to adopt a consistently internationalist attitude. In its 1919 Congress, the CNT expressed its support for the Russian revolution and recognised the dictatorship of the proletariat. It underlined the identity between the principles and the ideas of the CNT and those embodied by this revolution, and discussed its adhesion to the Communist International. Also, as a result of participation in the Munich Republic of Councils, 1919, the German anarchist E. Muhsam declared that "the theoretical and practical theses of Lenin on the accomplishment of the revolution and of the communist tasks of the proletariat have given a new base to our action (...) There are no longer any insurmountable obstacles to a unification of the international proletariat in its entirety. The anarchist communists have had, it is true, to give way on the most important point of disagreement between the two great tendencies of socialism: they had to renounce the negative attitude of Bakunin towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and yield on this point to the opinion of Marx. The unity of the revolutionary proletariat is necessary and must not be delayed. The only organisation capable of realising this is the German Communist Party" (Letter from E.Muhsam to the Communist International (September 1919), Communist Bulletin 22 July 1920).

Within the anarchist milieu numerous elements were sincerely committed to the social revolution and devoted themselves to rejoining the combat of the working class. Historic experience shows that each time the anarchists have adopted valid revolutionary positions it is by basing themselves on the experience and real movement of the working class and by working together with communists in order to draw out the lessons of this experience.  

Scott 11/5/9

see also

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War [197]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 3): From the end of the Second World War to the end of the counter-revolution [198]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [199]

 

ICC Intro

The first part of this article (in WR 323 [203]) by a close sympathiser of the ICC, examined the conditions for the bourgeois revolution in Britain and the lessons of the class struggle within decaying feudal society. This part looks in more detail at the political development of the class struggle in the early period of the English civil war leading to the formation of the Leveller movement.

Introduction

From the start of the English civil war in 1642 the ruling class on both sides was acutely aware of the threat posed by the common people, and of the need for the skilful use of propaganda, lies, and repression to prevent the conflict between parliament and the monarchy from becoming a far more dangerous class struggle.

The majority of the landowning aristocracy sided with the king as the natural protector of its privileges, but the final formation of a royalist party was motivated as much by fear that a popular struggle led by parliament would lead to a threat to the whole existing order of society as by a desire to preserve the constitutional position of the monarchy. The coalition of interests in the parliamentary camp was equally conscious of the dangers involved in mobilising the common people, who it considered a threat equal to that of the royalist forces.

The objective of the bourgeoisie was to force the monarchy to concede political power to its representatives in parliament and to remove the barriers to capital's further expansion. The monarchy was understandably reluctant to lose its privileged position within the state, and despite extended attempts at a compromise, the bourgeoisie was finally forced to accept the need for a military confrontation. The first English civil war (1642-46) was initially an indecisive affair, partly due to poor organisation and strategy, but also to the continued desire of the bourgeoisie to find a compromise with the king that would avert a greater threat to private property.

Control of parliament and its army at this time was in the hands of the ‘Presbyterians' - the conservative City of London financial capitalists and those sections of the landed aristocracy opposed to the king - for whom any decisive victory against the monarchy would risk endangering their own interests. Opposition developed rapidly led by the ‘Independents' - the manufacturers, merchants and smaller capitalist gentry - who not only demanded a more determined war effort but also opposed the Presbyterians' attempts to establish a centralised religious regime, raising demands for religious freedom that gained them wider popular support.

By 1645 the Independents were strong enough to force out the Presbyterian military leadership and reorganise the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell, whose victory at the battle of Naseby effectively ended any military threat to parliament's supremacy. From this point on the English civil war was mainly a struggle for power between the different factions within the parliamentary camp, but above all it was a fight by the ‘men of property' to suppress the growing threat of an organised and politically conscious revolutionary movement from below.

The response of the exploited to the war

For the poor peasants and landless wage labourers the burning issues were not the constitutional controversies fought over by royalists and parliamentarians, but poverty, unemployment and the destruction of their livelihoods. The whole period from the 1620s to the 1650s was one of extreme hardship for the exploited: in 1639-40 the English economy entered into a deep depression; political instability in 1641 and 1642 exacerbated already worsening conditions, and the final outbreak of war brought about a general collapse of the economic life of the country. Prices of food and other vital commodities rose steeply, both armies freely plundered, and the poor bore the huge burden of additional taxation imposed to finance the war efforts of both sides.

The 1640s saw a continuation of the struggles of the previous decades, with widespread riots against enclosures in many parts of the country. In the towns there were riots of apprentices, and as early as 1640 London was the scene of frequent ‘traitorous and riotous assemblies' and of ‘base people tumultuously assembled'.[1] Some of these struggles were directed at particularly hated royalist landowners, which the bourgeoisie tried to channel into support for parliament, and some violence was targeted at ‘papists and malignants', promoted by anti-catholic propaganda campaigns and scare stories of ‘papist plots'. But despite this the bourgeoisie remained very wary of encouraging the struggles of the exploited and above all conscious of the potential threat to its own interests: in 1642 Pym, the bourgeoisie's great parliamentary leader, warned the House of Lords against the dangers of "tumults and insurrections of the meaner sort of people", adding ominously that "what they cannot buy...they will take."[2]

The ‘tumults' continued with little interruption during 1642 and 1643 despite attempts to suppress them, and petitions to parliament expressed the fear - and threat - that the dire need of the people would drive them to more violent and desperate action.

There was little popular support for the war, and the peasants and labourers, artisans and apprentices, who formed the bulk of both armies mostly fought only when conscripted. As the supply of volunteers dried up and desertions grew, the ruling class was forced to make strenuous efforts to whip up enthusiasm through the use of religious propaganda. This initially had some success, but both sides and especially parliament increasingly had to resort to forced service (‘impressment'), which provoked serious resistance. The reorganisation of the parliamentary army under Independent leadership led to the creation of the ‘New Model Army'; a disciplined and highly motivated force which enjoyed freedom of discussion among the rank and file and became a hothouse of radical and dissenting views.

With the breakdown of press censorship and traditional methods of social control there was a tremendous explosion of debate and discussion, with a vast number of pamphlets and leaflets suddenly made available to the masses. In response to deepening misery, and as yet lacking the political language in which to express their needs and demands, the common people turned to religious mysticism, and there was a remarkable flowering of millenarian sects after 1640, which signalled an awakening of class consciousness. Although there was no explicit challenge to the existing order in the sects' pronouncements at this stage, their emphasis on the equality of all human beings, and their closeness to the radical traditions of the Lollards and Anabaptists (see WR 323), was enough to immediately alarm the ruling class.

As economic conditions worsened, the grievances and demands of the common people became sharper and more concrete. There was a growing recognition in petitions and pamphlets that the interests dominating parliament were waging war for their own interests and that parliament had deceived and lied to those it claimed to represent:

"We trusted you with our estates and you have rob'd, plundered and undon us; we trusted you with our freedomes and you have loaded us with slavery and bondage, we trusted you with our lives and by you we are slaughtered and muther'd every day. . . . You have fought for our liberties and have taken them from us. You have fought for the gospell and you have spoyl'd the Church, you have fought for our goods and you have em and you have fought to destroye the kingdom and you have done it...."[3]

There was a renewed and more intense outburst of religious sectarian activity in 1646 that indicated a deepening of class consciousness, partly of necessity in response to the increasingly hysterical political attacks of the ruling class. But more significantly some radicals on the left wing of the Independents began to deepen their critique of the Presbyterian-dominated parliament and to develop rationalist and materialist arguments for political reform.

The radicalisation of the petite bourgeoisie and the formation of the Leveller party

In the absence of support for the war among the common people, the bourgeoisie's main allies were the petite bourgeoisie; the independent small producers, shopkeepers and tradesmen who shared many of its economic grievances against the monarchy, and particularly the Puritan elements who acted as an ideological vanguard against the king under the banner of religious freedom. But, hard hit by the collapse of trade and disillusioned with parliament, some elements of the ‘middle sort' began to question in whose interests the war was being fought.

Largely in response to increasing repression a radical tendency cohered around John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and others. Influenced by the arguments of the bourgeoisie's own political theorists, these radical writers asserted that the people were the source of all political power, and that parliament should therefore be directly answerable to the people who elected it, and protect the inalienable rights and liberties of all ‘freeborn Englishmen'.[4] They also expounded the myth of the ‘Norman yoke', which maintained that the English were a conquered people who had been deprived of their rights and liberties by the Norman conquest and held ever since in bondage by tyrannical usurpers.[5] Following the unprecedented popular campaigns against Lilburne's imprisonment in July 1646, this radical tendency was transformed into a mass movement, known from the accusation of its enemies as the ‘Levellers'.[6]

The Levellers in effect became the third party of the English revolution after the Presbyterians and Independents. They had a national presence, with their own weekly newspaper - significantly called The Moderate - to co-ordinate their activities, and were well organised. By 1648 they were established at ward and parish level in their City of London stronghold, with regular meetings of supporters and organisers, including women activists. The Levellers pioneered the use of mass political propaganda techniques, agitated inside the parliamentary army where they gained a significant influence, and sent their militants to intervene across the country.

Leveller manifestos and statements called for the dissolution of the current House of Commons, the abolition of the House of Lords, religious toleration, freedom of the press, equality before the law and the ending of trade monopolies. However, the movement was politically heterogeneous. The leaders were radical democrats who defended the right of every individual to private property and consistently denied that they believed in common ownership or the ‘levelling' of estates, as their enemies claimed.[7] The Leveller programme expressed the interests of the ‘middle sort' in society, voicing their economic grievances and calling for parliamentary and legal reforms that would defend the security of their property, but even this programme went beyond the limited objectives of the bourgeoisie faced with the threat from the class struggle. There also appears to have been a ‘centre' of the Leveller movement around Walwyn and others who were more sympathetic to the goal of common ownership, and there was certainly a left wing closer to the needs and demands of the landless wage labourers and poor peasants which under the influence of the class struggle gave rise to the ‘True Levellers' or Diggers who defended a communist vision.[8]

The conditions mature for a revolutionary movement

By the end of the first civil war in 1646 the bourgeoisie had achieved its main objectives: the monarchy had been militarily defeated; many of the obstacles to capital's advance had been swept away, and state power was in the hands of the capitalist class. But it now found itself confronted by those classes who had suffered acute hardship during the war, whose taxes had financed parliament's war effort, and who were now demanding their share in the fruits of victory. In particular it was confronted by a highly organised and politically conscious army of peasants and labourers that it had itself mobilised, but which was now putting forward its own militant demands. To concede these demands would risk further opening the floodgates of class struggle and threaten the foundations of the new capitalist order. Instead, the bourgeoisie attempted to remove the specific threat by disbanding the army, which only had the effect of uniting the movement and confirming to the common people that the victory achieved was not their victory.

Between 1647 and 1649 the deepening class consciousness of the exploited and oppressed classes was transformed into a revolutionary movement that developed simultaneously in the army, in London and in many areas throughout the country, which for several years seriously threatened to push the bourgeoisie's revolution far beyond the point its originators wanted and to challenge the foundations on which the bourgeoisie was attempting to stabilise the state.

The third part of this article will examine the development of this revolutionary movement from 1647 and the lessons of its defeat, focusing on the achievements of its most advanced political minorities.  

MH 19/5/9

see also

The conditions for the bourgeois revolution in Britain: the class struggle within decaying feudal society [203]

Lessons of the English revolution (part 3): The revolutionary movement of the exploited (1647-49) [130]

 

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[1] David Petegorsky, Left-wing democracy in the English civil war, Sandpiper, 1999, p.69. This article draws extensively on Petegorsky's clear Marxist analysis of the civil war, first published in 1940.

[2] Petegorsky, p.70.

[3] The generall complaint of the most oppressed, distressed commons of England complaining to and crying out upon the tyranny of the perpetuall parliament at Westminster (1645), quoted in Petegorsky, p.74.

[4] See Walwyn's England's Lamentable Slaverie, October 1645.

[5] See A Remonstrance of many thousand citizens by Richard Overton and William Walwyn, July 1646.

[6] The term ‘leveller' was first used in the Midlands revolt of 1607 to refer to those who levelled hedges during enclosure riots. Lilburne preferred the name ‘agitator', but the majority of the leadership eventually accepted the popular label.

[7] Which is why the political legacy of the Levellers has been claimed by the libertarian right as well as the ‘democratic socialist left'. Lilburne was the most consistent in rejecting the accusation of ‘levelling' but other leaders notably Walwyn appear to have been more sympathetic.

[8] Marx considered the Levellers as one of the first examples of a "truly active communist party" in the bourgeois revolutions (Moralising criticism and critical morality). It has been unconvincingly claimed he was really referring to the True Levellers or Diggers (eg. Marxists Internet Archive). But it should be clear from this article that the Levellers were not an organised party of the working class, which was still at an early stage of its formation, and were unable to provide revolutionary leadership to the radical petite bourgeoisie. It is unlikely Marx was referring to the Diggers, who were more correctly a small communist fraction that came out of the Leveller ‘party', and were probably unknown to him at the time.

We are publishing here a statement by Revolución Mundial, the ICC's section in Mexico, about the outbreak of swine flu which began in that country. After the first weeks of panic and doom-mongering, the new strain of flu almost disappeared from the headlines.

But even if the danger of a pandemic was exaggerated and if the bourgeoisie made good use of that exaggeration, the disease is real and a number of extremely serious cases have occurred recently in Britain (more than in the rest of Europe in fact). The statement tries to place the outbreak in a more general historical context and shows that capitalism in its advancing decay can only continue to generate diseases and other disasters. 

The bourgeoisie lives with an obsession: how to obtain the maximum profit. It is for this reason that the general norm for all governments is to reduce any cost that doesn't bring them an immediate profit or which seems to them to be useless. The one aim is to cheapen the price of labour power. The statistics of the International Labour Organisation, part of the UN, show that every year around the world there are 270 million industrial accidents. Result: 2,160,000 workers die. The collapse of the Pasta de Conchos mine[1], which left 65 miners dead, was just one of many ‘accidents' which workers are subjected to because the attempt to reduce costs leads to a reduction in basic safety measures. And often it's also the case with the ‘natural disasters' such as floods and earthquakes which leave so many victims among the workers because the mass of wage-earners live in such precarious housing conditions.

Millions of workers and their families are crammed into urban concentrations with little hope of escape. In these dangerous conditions, natural incidents such as earthquakes or a flood can become a tragedy of vast proportions which destroys thousands of human lives. And it's no better when it comes to explosions like the one that took place in 1984 in the San Juanico area of Mexico City. The technical and architectural advances which could offer better protection against all such phenomena are not even considered when it comes to the areas inhabited by the working class.

The same goes for everything to do with health costs. Here we can see that a direct diminution of the social wage has very grave consequences because the resurgence of diseases that were thought to have been wiped out or prevented from becoming epidemics, such as the various types of flu, find their principal victims among the workers and their families. Wars, ‘accidents' and epidemics are not inevitable disasters that we can only resign ourselves to. It's the capitalist system which is today preventing us from confronting these problems.

The decadence of this system as expressed through epidemics, war and poverty

The rise of capitalism as the dominant mode of production was accompanied by the ascent of science and technology to sustain the exploitation of the proletariat and in this way to revolutionise the productive forces. By freeing itself from the control of religion and its dogma science reached unprecedented heights. With regard to health and medicine, unlimited possibilities opened up in the fight against diseases which had produced huge death tolls since ancient times. The objective of the bourgeoisie was obviously not to improve the lives of the exploited through applied science. But it did have an interest in extending its benefits, since the development of the productive process required a certain level of health among the workers so that they could keep up with their work. In addition, when the bourgeoisie took steps to protect itself, it was also obliged to some extent to allow the results of science and technology to improve the lives of the workers as well. Friedrich Engels described this situation thus: "Again, the repeated visitations of cholera, typhus, smallpox, and other epidemics have shown the British bourgeois the urgent necessity of sanitation in his towns and cities, if he wishes to save himself and family from falling victims to such diseases" (Condition of the Working Class in England, preface to the second German edition, 1892).

But also and above all the struggles of the working class for the improvement of its living and working conditions forced the bourgeoisie not only to concede wage increases, but also to bring in more general improvements in its conditions of existence.

The struggle waged by the bourgeoisie against the old systems of production and thought was what made it a revolutionary and progressive force. Because marxism recognised this, it can affirm today that once the development of the productive forces had reached its limits and capitalism had extended its rule to the entire planet, the progressive nature of capital disappeared completely; henceforward a system which had brought so much to humanity became decadent and destructive. This senile phase of the system came to the surface in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War. This butchery showed that capitalism was now being sustained by the sacrifice of 20 million human beings. And in 1918, as soon as the war came to an end, the epidemic of so-called ‘Spanish flu' killed between 40 and 100 million people according to different estimates. We know today that apart from the virulent nature of the virus that caused this flu, the speed of its extension and the high mortality rates it provoked in Europe were closely linked to the ravages of war, which had left the population exhausted and terribly weakened, and in a situation where the bulk of medical resources had been poured into the war effort. The flu appeared in the last year of the war and the national bourgeoisies of the belligerent countries (led, it seems, by the American contingent) forbade any talk about it and above all ensured that medical resources would not be diverted towards dealing with the flu. In Spain, a neutral country, the health services were the first and initially the only ones to talk about the pandemic. This is how the flu got its name. A name that is too long but more accurate would be ‘the flu that complemented the world-wide massacre'. 

The system of production and the political relations within the bourgeoisie have ensured that capitalism is now synonymous with war, contamination and destruction, where the most impressive scientific discoveries have often been sterilised by the way this decaying system operates. In former times, science was subjected to religious obscurantism and now it's the interests of capital which prevent it from being used properly in the service of humanity. It is increasingly evident that the present system has become a threat to humanity's survival. It may seem paradoxical that one expression of this is the fact that diseases like malaria, dengue fever and tuberculosis, which once appeared to have been eradicated, have come back in force in recent decades. 

The flu in Mexico: a product of capitalist decadence

Only an understanding of what the decadence of this system means can explain why there is a permanent danger of epidemics like the one we are now seeing in Mexico. The internet is packed with the most mythical and exaggerated theories about this epidemic, expressing the widespread distrust of the official version which stresses that this is a ‘natural process' linked to the life cycles of the virus and to chance, which obviously doesn't help us to understand what's going on. It's also no surprise that the left wing of capital and its trade unions (the SME for example) are doing all they can to hide the real problem by seeking the origins of the epidemic in the perverse actions of a particular individual or country, claiming for example that the epidemic spreading through Mexico was deliberately created by the USA, or that it's all just a publicity stunt to cover up secret financial and commercial deals by the government. These kinds of explanations, which may look very radical, simply defend the idea that there could be a more patriotic and human capitalism if only the activities of certain predatory states were kept under control, if the correct policies were carried out and if we were governed by honest and well-intentioned people.

But the origins of these threats to life on our planet are not to be found in a plot. They are the product of the very development of capitalism. The frenetic search for profit and an increasingly vicious capitalist competition can only lead to stifling levels of exploitation where living and working conditions are severely affected; what's more, with this desperate quest to reduce costs, increasingly noxious and polluting methods are being used. This is true both for industrial production and for agriculture and cattle-rearing, both for the countries that are highly industrialised and for the ones which are not, even if the effects of capitalism's destructive tendencies are more dramatic in the latter.

An example of this is the conditions of cattle-rearing: abuse of steroids and antibiotics (to accelerate growth), overcrowding of animals with a very high levels of waste which is thrown away without due concern for hygiene, exacerbating the danger of contamination. It is this form of production which has led to scandals like Mad Cow Disease and the various forms of flu.

To this we should add the attacks on health services and the lack of preventative measures which facilitate the spread of viruses. We can see this clearly in Mexico with the relentless dismantling of the Mexican social security system and its health centres, which are in general the only ones that workers have access to. There have been government reports about the danger of epidemics since 2006 (cf the journal Proceso no, 1695, 26.4.09), where it was argued that a virus known as ‘A type flu' could infect cheap poultry and livestock, mutate and attack humans. Reports were written, projects drawn up, but it all remained a dead letter for lack of any funds.

The appearance of this flu epidemic in Mexico has again exposed the precariousness of the conditions in which the working class lives: the aggravated levels of exploitation and unbearable poverty are the perfect soil for the germination of disease.

Capitalism engenders epidemics, and the workers suffer the consequences

Newspaper investigations have shown that the effects of the virus were known about by 16 April and that the government waited seven days before sounding the alarm. The announcement of the existence of ‘swine flu' in Mexico on the night of 23 April was clearly not the beginning of the problem but the aggravation of everything that the working class has to put up with in capitalism. Despite the confused and doctored figures provided by the Ministry of Health regarding the number of people the virus has killed or made ill, the real balance sheet is not hard to draw up: the only victims of this epidemic are the workers and their families. It is the wage-slaves and their families who have died from this disease; it is they who have been expected to drag themselves from one hospital to another, often having to wait for care in overcrowded corridors where precious time is wasted and where the needed anti-viral drugs are often not available. While the official announcements tried to present the epidemic as something that was under control, the working class population cruelly experienced the lack of medical services, of medicine and preventative measures. It was also the workers in the health service (doctors and nurses) who now had to face even more dangerous and intensive working conditions, which led the medical interns at the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases to demonstrate and denounce this situation on 27 April; and despite the fact that this was a short and small mobilisation, the press covered it up.

The way this epidemic has been dealt with in the first weeks is very significant: the bourgeoisie and its state have argued that this is a matter of ‘security' which calls for national unity. But while the workers are exposed to contagion because they are obliged to use transport systems like the metro or the bus where there is a massive human concentration, the bourgeoisie protects itself in an appropriate manner with a single concern: how to justify the wage reductions that the bosses will have to impose to make up for the losses resulting from the obligatory closure of certain workplaces, especially restaurants and hotels.

Campaigns of panic, another anti-working class virus

There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie, in mid-April, was surprised by the appearance of a mutant virus for which it had no vaccine. It panicked and took a number of hurried decisions which served only to spread the panic among the whole population. At the beginning the ruling class was caught up in the panic, but very quickly it began to use it against the workers. On the one hand it used it to give the government an image of strength and efficiency; on the other, spreading fear encouraged individualism and an atmosphere of generalised suspicion where everyone saw the person next to them as a possible source of contagion, the exact opposite of the solidarity that could arise among the exploited. We can thus understand why the Secretary of State for Health, Cordóba Villalobos, justified (and thus encouraged) the aggressions which residents of Mexico City were subjected to in other regions of the country after they were accused of being ‘infected'. This high state official said that these were natural expressions of the ‘human condition'. The bourgeoisie lives in fear of solidarity among the workers and it is quite capable of using this affair to counter it by encouraging chauvinism and localism. It is this same nationalist strategy which capital uses in China, Argentina or Cuba to justify stringent controls over who enters or leaves its territories.

The class in power, by launching its campaign of fear, is trying to make the working class see itself as powerless and to accept the state as its only saviour. This is why the antidote to these campaigns of fear is serious reflection among the workers, enabling them to understand that as long as capitalism is alive, the only thing we can expect is more exploitation, more poverty, more disease and premature deaths. Today more than ever it is an urgent necessity to put an end to capitalism.  

RM May 2009

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[1] 65 miners died in 2006 in this mine in the state of Coahuila in Mexico. This ‘industrial accident' was in fact a capitalist crime, the tragic consequence of the exhausting work paid at $60 a week and of safety conditions worthy of mining in the epoch of slavery. See the articles in Revolución Mundial, 91 [205] and 92 [206]

The young generation of the working class faces some of the worst attacks on its living standards, shows the tendency to search for solidarity with other workers, to organise itself in assemblies. Recent student struggles in France and Barcelona reinforce the lessons of struggles in Greece last December and against the CPE in France three years ago.

Young working class people can have few illusions in the future capitalism offers them, even before the recession, with the highest rates of unemployment, and no certainty of any kind of job even after university. Higher education for the working class is no privilege, a world away from the well endowed elite universities (in France the grandes ecoles) usually paid for by minimum wage work in abominable conditions, such as fast food restaurants. Small wonder we have seen students struggling in France, Italy, Germany and Spain recently, as well as Greece.

In France students, and those working in higher education, have been struggling against the so-called ‘law on autonomy of universities' or LRU, which aims to divert even more resources to the grandes ecoles and away form the ‘sink' universities. There were already struggles against this in November 2007 (see World Revolution 310 [208]) when students sought to link with railworkers also on strike at the time. Students struggling this spring could call on the experience of those struggles, as well as the successful struggle against the CPE three years ago and the struggles in Greece last winter, with all the experience of demonstrations, of barricading universities, of assemblies as well as how they responded to repression. It is not always obvious what lessons to draw from these experiences, what can be taken from previous struggles and used today and tomorrow, and what are tactics that can become a trap if repeated in a different context. There is no recipe for the class struggle, no easy formula. What is always key to the strength of the working class is unity, the greatest possible solidarity within the whole working class. The withdrawal of the CPE was fundamentally due to ruling class fear of the growing solidarity for the students from the rest of the working class in France. This same solidarity among students, workers and unemployed was behind the strength of the movement in Greece last December (see International Review 136 [209]).

One big united assembly or lots of little ones?

One of the students at Caen sent us a letter describing the struggles which give us much to think about. "At the start of the mobilisation there was a will to act in the most effective way. As well as the large number of demonstrators in the street there was a general assembly of the university uniting the teaching and caretaking staff as well as the students, undoubtedly drawing the lessons of the struggle against the CPE, which immediately decided in favour of opening its doors to all in spite of the vigorous opposition of the student union. Many participated in the day of action on 29 January, organised by the national unions, in this spirit of unity and extension. That evening an assembly, officially of education workers, was held at the university. This marked the peak of the movement..." The unions needed to avoid a situation like November 2007 when students and railworkers came together in their struggles before the next day of action on 19 March.

"In this context, faced with the risk of being overtaken by the struggle, the unions unfortunately accelerated their efforts to divide us which finally reached levels of absurdity rarely seen. Several days were enough for them to set up a myriad of ‘general' assemblies separating the teachers from the caretaking staff, from the students, so recently united in the same assembly. Each faculty organised its own little assembly, often on the same day as the others..." These sad little assemblies had to call the real general assembly the "general general assembly", and under union influence the ‘arts and media' assembly would denounce those studying biology and vice versa, using all the stereotypes that capitalist society imposes on us. It became harder to discuss as leftists repeated the same slogans, making it hard for speakers who wanted to widen the discussion, and finally ended the discussion by sending everyone out to blockade the university: "While paralysing a university can be the summit of a mobilisation and encourage meetings, it becomes truly poisonous when the ‘pro-blockages' involve much too few and are not valid in such circumstances when the questions implied are particularly sensitive, causing division and taking attention away from more basic objectives". In fact the students were divided up in all sorts of continuous demonstrations in front of all sorts of bourgeois institutions, town hall, museum etc.

"However, despite the damaging activity of the unions, there were very promising signs of students taking up the weapons of proletarian struggle. For example, several faculty assemblies opposed the division and dissolved themselves in recalling the sovereignty of the general assembly and the need for unity. Similarly students made many attempts to meet workers on strike against lay-offs at the Valeo factory... in vain, unhappily, to the extent that they were only able to meet a union delegation that came between the students and the workers".

Rather than get involved in useless actions our reader took the most constructive possible action in the circumstances, by participating in a discussion circle formed in opposition to the union direction of the struggle.

The importance of solidarity

Spanish students are struggling against the ‘Bologna Process', which will allow wealthier students greater access to study abroad. During this struggle students in Barcelona have shown that however preoccupied they have to be with the difficulties of their own situation, they cannot avoid thinking about the future capitalism offers to the whole working class - including their parents and neighbours - as well their own precarious hope of finding a job at the end of their studies. They are also very indignant at the repression of young people by the Mossos d'Escuadra (Catalan regional police) controlled by the regional government left coalition (socialists, Catalan nationalists, former Stalinists) consisting of beatings, violent arrests and evictions.

If they remain locked in a ‘university struggle' they would be isolated to face all the manoeuvres and repression the regional government could impose on them. As they attempted to extend their struggle to teachers, workers in other sectors, school students, their strength grew, making the government hesitate. They played a full part in a 30,000 strong teachers' demonstration in Barcelona on 18 March, where they were fully integrated and not a separate contingent.

After their occupation of the university was ended violently by the police and the violence continued in the evening with numerous arrests and 60 of the 5,000 protesters injured, the students reacted by organising a demonstration of solidarity. The Catalan government was forced to make excuses and there were resignations in the ministry of the interior. Since then they have continued to hold assemblies, strikes and occupations, meet groups who support them, debating and exchanging information with other universities which have shown solidarity, such as Madrid and Valencia.

They distributed a leaflet affirming "we are not delinquents, not rebels without a cause, nor are we cannon fodder for the mossos and bureaucrats", and they remain determined "thanks to a large student movement, since unity is strength... not only to push back capital's attacks..." but also for "a just, tolerant and free society of solidarity" for "we feel we have sufficient capacity to change the reality we are living in" ("Some reflections... on the events of 18 March in Barcelona", leaflet distributed in the demonstration on 26 March). This demonstration relied on the solidarity of those who also recognise that things are getting worse every day without any perspective of improvement, on their comrades, the teachers, on all those who share their preoccupations, on all those who know that they are tomorrow's workers.

The regional government, meanwhile, prepared for the demonstration by building up the fear of violent confrontations, much as the British ruling class did in preparation for the demonstrations around the G20, with the mossos ready for "every eventuality" and an intense media campaign to prepare for violence.

The students and others remained firm on the demonstration, despite their trepidation, and when they found their route blocked by the mossos took the initiative to refuse this provocation and take another direction. Unlike a union procession, this showed the demonstrators talking, discussing, choosing their own slogans, and it grew with students, their parents, other workers of all ages ending up 10,000 strong.

Perspectives for class struggle

The severe recession we are living through will face workers of all ages and in all parts of the world with attacks, with the need to defend themselves. The struggles we report in this article are only one small part of those going on all over the world today, including massive struggles in countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt. And we can be sure that increasing numbers of workers will enter struggle in the period to come as they digest the shocking reality of the economic situation that at present makes them hesitate.

The students' struggles hold a promise for the future. First of all, we see that the younger generation are not prepared to accept the future capitalism has in store for them, they will not put up with it without a fight. Secondly, they are not simply a response to attacks on them, but these students are seeing their struggles in the context of all the attacks (pensions, unemployment, etc) that make up not just their future but the condition of the working class as a whole. With this there is a tendency to seek solidarity - with other students, with others working in the universities where they are studying and with workers in other sectors - and to do so, when not diverted from this by the unions, by the most effective methods of open assemblies, demonstrations where all can meet in the street, and direct contact with others in strike.

When the working class can fight united across all sectors not only does it gain great strength, it can also pose an alternative, the only possible alternative, to the barbarity of capitalism.

Alex 5/6/09

Every time someone says the recession is ‘bottoming out' and economic recovery is on the horizon there's a report or set of figures to contradict them.

Even those with the most rose-tinted spectacles admit that the British economy in particular is in bad and still declining health.

For example, the Office for National Statistics had to revise downwards its figures for the drop in output in January to March this year, which showed the biggest quarterly drop since 1958. The rate for the year at 4.9% is the biggest since comparable records began in 1948. The ONS also now admits that the recession started in at least the second quarter of 2008, months earlier than previously claimed.

Meanwhile the OECD has also revised its forecasts for the decline in British output in 2009 which at 4.7% will be the biggest year on year fall since 1945. The OECD predicts a deficit of 14% of GDP, which means that Britain will be further in the red than any other major developed country. Because of the size of the deficit the OECD thinks that any further stimulus to the economy would only make things worse. No wonder the Daily Telegraph (25/6/9) headlined "OECD pours cold water on Britain's green shoots."

More cuts to come

The number of unemployed in Britain is officially already at the highest level since July 1997 and continues to get worse, with no interruption to the flow of redundancies being announced. Corus are getting rid of 2000 jobs. Lloyds are getting rid of another 2100, making 7000 from the banking group since January. As the list gets longer the Labour and Tory parties only argue about how extensive cuts in public expenditure should be.

Economist John Philpott of the CIPD (BBC 16/6/9) has sketched out what future cuts will mean: "The public sector has yet to feel the full impact of the recession, and the resultant bloodbath in the public finances." The impact of this is clear to him. "As a result the coming era of public sector austerity might not only witness large scale job cuts, but also an ongoing ‘workplace guerrilla war' marked by waves of major public sector strikes and regular bouts of unrest"

 

Workers fight and spread the struggle

There's no need to wait for future austerity in Britain to see the working class struggle. Following the wave of wildcat strikes earlier in the year focussed on the Lindsey oil refinery there was further struggle during June after 51 workers were sacked. During the following days there was a wave of solidarity actions. Then, a week later, after Total dismissed 647 workers the struggle spread still further. There were unofficial strikes at oil refineries, power stations, nuclear power stations and various other plants. These strikes involved thousands of workers at more than 30 sites across the country from Wales to Scotland, from Somerset, Oxfordshire, Kent and Essex to Yorkshire and Cumbria.

These strikes were not sanctioned by the unions. Indeed the GMB tried to get those on strike at Longannet power station in Scotland back to work, but the workers ignored the union. Ultimately, it was by taking their own initiatives and through the solidarity actions of thousands of workers that those dismissed were all reinstated, and those who had taken illegal solidarity actions were not victimised.

The BBC's employment correspondent Martin Shankelman (29/6/9) made a neat summary of the situation.

"The wider significance of the strike cannot be ignored.

This was a dispute which ran outside the law and still succeeded. The strikers did not wait for a ballot to walk out, nor did they observe the legal obligation to notify the employers of their withdrawal of labour.

Instead they just downed tools and left, to be rapidly followed by colleagues at other sites around the UK who also went on strike in sympathy, taking secondary action, which may well have been outside the law as well.

Union leaders could not even get involved with the organisation of the strikes, for fear of legal reprisals. ... Wildcat strikes are back on the agenda."

Workers' solidarity opposed by the ruling class

It will surprise no one to hear that Downing Street condemned the strikes. So did a not so independent-minded editorial-writer in the Independent (20/6/9). Under a heading "The wrong way to strike" you could read that "the manner in which these workers are venting their frustrations is doing them no favours at all. By walking out without holding a strike ballot, they instantly broke the law and ceded Total the moral high ground." While praising Total's ‘morality' the writer maintained that "the monster of arrogant and bullying labour militancy is just as unpopular in the broader country as it was when the state moved to suppress it three decades ago".

The Independent's welcome for state repression against expressions of workers' solidarity is fairly mainstream for bourgeois thought. More insidious is the threat from the Left which poses as the friend of the workers.

The main leftist groups all saluted the victory of the strikers, and yet when you examine their perspectives for the future you see them setting traps for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party in an online article (26/6/9) titled "Victory at Lindsey shows how to fight" showed that their ideas on how to fight go against the recent experience of thousands of militant workers. For the SWP "An important step in the fightback is to win the construction national ballot for action in the GMB and Unite unions. Everyone should join a union and get involved in the ballot."

Groups like the SWP want to get workers back in the union way of thinking, even though workers have been discovering that if they want to express their class solidarity it is necessary to fight outside the union and legal framework.

If workers are beginning to understand that they can't trust the unions and that they have to take struggles into their own hands, then that will be one of the greatest gains from the recent strikes, not just for the workers involved, but for all workers who are beginning to see that self-organisation is the only way for the class struggle.

Car 3/7/9

Following the recent elections in which the Labour vote plumbed new depths and the British National Party sensationally won two seats in the European parliament the Socialist Workers Party (9/6/9) addressed an "open letter to the left."

The SWP is worried about the Nazis, concerned about a possible Conservative government, and anxious that the revelations of MPs' corruption have put people off voting Labour. It thinks that there should be a "single, united left alternative" and that the left should "urgently start a debate" in advance of the next general election. Accordingly it is "prepared to help initiate" a conference "of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election."

The ‘open letter' has proved very popular among leftists. The Weekly Worker (11/6/9) welcomed the initiative, although it thought the SWP would have to "publicly account for the disastrous mistakes of the past." Workers Power (10/6/9) also welcomed the proposal: "The dangerous reality is that the fascists have formed a party while the socialists have not. All the socialist groups in Britain are propaganda societies, not parties." The Alliance for Workers Liberty (10/6/9) welcomed the letter and said it was in line with their "call for a new Socialist Alliance". The Socialist Party of England and Wales (24/6/9) (that used to be Militant) took a dim view of the SWP's idea in the light of its previous experience. But they were still able to say to their comrades that "if you have reassessed and changed your methods, and are now willing to work together with others towards the creation of ‘a socialist alternative' for the general election, we will of course welcome this."

Leftist unity ... against the working class

Apart from all the various quibbles and nitpicking the one thing that already unites the leftist groups is their commitment to basically the same approach, the same politics. For example, in its letter the SWP ask how it would be possible to ask workers to vote for people like Pat McFadden the man who is "pushing through the privatisation of the post office." All the leftists oppose privatisation, that is to say they defend nationalisation, defend the Royal Mail - the very body that militant postal workers have been fighting for years.

The SWP say that "If Cameron is elected he will attempt to drive through policies of austerity at the expense of the vast majority of the British people". This is quite clearly the case, except it ignores the most obvious reality that a Conservative government will be in complete continuity with the current Labour government. Yet the leftists warn about the Right being worse than the Left and of course the BNP is the worst of all. From the point of view of the working class it is necessary to remember that the massacre of jobs and all the other attacks on our living standards during the last 12 years have been under a Labour government, not under Tories or Nazis.

The leftists also agree that capitalist elections can be used to present a ‘left wing alternative.' The past experience of the Socialist Alliance and Respect show that they always try to give capitalist democracy some credibility, while putting forward their idea on how best to run British capitalism.

Workers Power said of the groups of the left "in a sense we are factions of a party that is yet to be built." They all have their factional differences, but at one level they are in agreement, on the need to strengthen state capitalism, on the need to defend the unions that help keep the working class divided. In an article in the same issue of Socialist Worker as its ‘open letter' the SWP says that the Labour Party has "abandoned ordinary people and gone on the offensive against them". This is true to the extent that from the time of the First World War the parties of social democracy lined up with the capitalist class, recruited for the war effort, imposed labour discipline throughout the conflict and have been serving their national capitals ever since. The impression given by the leftists is that the Labour Party was somehow acceptable until quite recently. That is to say, the Labour Party was OK when its rhetoric was left of centre.

Filling a gap in the political spectrum

What the leftists in Britain are doing when they respond positively to the SWP's appeal is similar to a process that's already underway elsewhere in Europe. In Germany with the Linkspartei and in France with the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste we have seen new parties created to fill a gap on the left. With the world wide imposition of austerity measures there is a great potential for a response from the working class. The bourgeoisie internationally knows that it has to have political forces that can present a false alternative in the face of workers' struggle, and that its current line-ups are not all up to the job.

A party like the Labour Party could once pose as ‘socialist' or at least parade a set of left-wingers. Now they don't even pretend to be a party of the working class. As for the leftists, in many countries they are mere shadows of what they were in the 1970s and 80s. Whatever comes of the SWP's latest project it shows that at least some on the left are aware of the function they need to fulfil for capitalism. The working class should not be taken in by this latest attempt at a makeover.  

Car 24/6/9

One of the groups to welcome the SWP's ‘open letter' was The Commune, a group that split from the AWL last year. On its website you will find, among other things, material from the Dutch and German Communist Left. At their meetings there is an openness of approach which is very different from what you're likely to come across in a typical leftist meeting.

However, their response to the SWP's latest idea shows what tradition they are still attached to. They say "We welcome the spirit of the Open Letter, and would be interested to participate in discussions concerning left unity in general, or a conference in particular." While they do have their criticisms these are thoroughly constructive. They think the way the Socialist Alliance came together is a good example to follow. They say it is similar to the NPA in France, a group the character of which "is all to play for."

An article on the European elections looks at the number of votes cast for left-wing parties and says "we get the surprisingly high tally of 340,000, which makes you think about what might have been achieved had the left got its act together over the last ten years". Basically they want the Left to get its act together and they see themselves as part of that process, with, incidentally, getting votes in elections as a target worth aiming at.

They often talk of "communism from below" and "emancipatory communism", but as long as they think that they are part of the ‘left' these words will have little real meaning.

Car 24/6/9

We're publishing a letter from a sympathiser about the current efforts of leftist groups like the Socialist Workers Party to form a new electoral alliance, above all to combat the rise of the BNP.

We agree entirely with the essential point made in the letter. Elections and parliament have long ceased to be an arena in which the working class can express its interests, and the groups of the ‘extreme left', by trying to inject new life into these institutions, provide further proof that they are actually the extreme left of capitalism's political machinery. In this sense, while these organisations certainly recruit many naïve and well-intentioned people, the organisations as such are not being "naïve" in pursuing such policies: they are simply carrying out their function for capital.   

Dear ICC Comrades

After reading in June's issue of World Revolution 'Euro elections: nationalism of left and right [215]' there is one point I thought I would make regarding the response from some of Britain's leftist parties. Following on from the poor showing in both the Euro elections as well as the local elections not only in Britain but across Europe of Social Democratic and leftist parties, combined with the resurgence of far right and fascist parties it appears that leftist parties in Britain have been thrown into some sort of panic.  For instance in Britain on the respective websites of Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party of Great Britain and Workers Power there has been a call for a campaign to establish a new workers' party to replace the British Labour Party.  The thinking behind the call appears to be that there is a vacuum on the left which allows the right especially the fascists to grow both electorally as well as in membership.  These organisations seem to believe that the reason for such growth of far right and fascist parties such as the BNP is that they are able to appeal to the anger and discontent felt by workers especially in the present economic crisis.  To neutralise such a threat leftists argue that the creation of a new independent mass working class party will act as some sort of antidote to the fascist menace.   
What surprises me about such a call is that as workers are beginning to turn away from voting Marxists should be encouraging such abstention while at the same time appealing to the independent political activity of workers as workers rather than be flailing around on a doomed project of trying to resurrect parliamentary politics.  Not only is such a project doomed to fail as the trade unions are not suicidal minded to cut their links with Labour. 
The leftists are also unable to see that the bourgeoisie, of any country, is unable to fund the social wage that they were able to do during the post war period leading up to the late 1970's.  This refusal to fund a social wage to the same extent as the 1970's has little to do with their lack of compassion rather that in today's period of capitalist decomposition they are simply unable to fund a social wage due to the depth of the capitalist crisis.
This situation of capitalist crisis on a global scale means that the task of Marxist revolutionaries is to both clarify the consciousness of workers to go beyond a reformist perspective and to participate with workers in their struggles while arguing for forms of organisation such as workers' councils, general workers' assemblies etc. This form of participation combines and demands from Marxist revolutionaries both theoretical as well as practical clarity.  This means that to demand a new mass workers party that is committed to participating in parliamentary struggles is naive in the extreme and highlights the inability of these organisations to give political leadership to the working class.
Comradely Yours

D   4/7/9

The June strike movement by construction and maintenance workers on 30 energy industry construction sites across Britain, demanding the reinstatement of their 640 sacked comrades at Lindsey oil refinery, Lincolnshire, demonstrated the collective strength of workers' solidarity.

These unofficial strikes, called in many cases by workers' mass meetings, forced the Total oil company to withdraw the sackings. They also won the jobs back for the 51 construction workers whose redundancies sparked a walkout by 1200 other workers on the site, in turn leading to Total's provocative sacking of hundreds of strikers. At a time when workers are being told they can do nothing about the rising tide of unemployment, this solidarity movement will remind the class of its potential strength.

This struggle's foundation in solidarity gave it a much firmer foundation than the smaller strike movement around Lindsey at the beginning of the year, when it seemed to many that the issue behind the strike was the reactionary slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers', an idea that can only sow divisions within the working class. The evident display of class solidarity with the sacked workers gave the June strike a clearer echo throughout the whole working class.

As it happens, despite the undoubted weight of nationalism, the January struggle already contained important positive aspects: solidarity strikes, mass meetings, the emergence of a move towards breaking divisions between ‘British' and ‘foreign' workers. These characteristics enabled the struggle to force the bosses to back down, and their expression in a wider, more dynamic manner this time have done so again.

Solidarity: the collective power of the working class

"No matter what happens in the coming days this struggle has demonstrated that workers do not have to accept attacks; that they can resist. More than that, they have seen that the only way we can defend ourselves is by defending each other." (‘Construction workers at the centre of the class struggle', ICC online) [218]We wrote this during the first weekend of the movement; by the end of the next week all the workers had been reinstated. 

The ruling class were faced with a strike wave spreading out across some of the most vital energy construction sites in the UK. Construction work at oil and gas refineries, power stations including the Sellafield nuclear power complex, oil terminals, petrochemical construction sites, was brought to a halt as workers held mass meetings and walked out. 900 workers struck at Sellafield nuclear power complex, 1,100 at the Ensus biofuels site at Wilton, Teesside.  Four hundred staff walked out at two LNG plants in West Wales, including the vital terminal facility at South Hook. There were walk outs by construction and maintenance  workers at Longannet power station, Fife in Scotland, Aberthaw power station, South Wales, by 200 contractors at Aberthaw power station in West Wales, maintenance workers at the Shell Stanlow Refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire,  contractors at Drax and Eggborough power stations near Selby, North Yorkshire, Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset, the Coryton oil refinery in Essex and the Isle of Grain in Kent. Some of these strikes only lasted a day or two; others stayed out as long as their Lindsey comrades were still sacked.

As in January the struggle also gained support from ‘foreign' workers. Polish workers joined the strike at Drax power station.

The courage of such actions should not be underestimated. The construction sector is being very badly hit by the recession. These workers work for contracting companies and are faced with moving around the country looking for work, and these companies are known to keep blacklists of militant workers. Such solidarity actions are illegal  and thus they could not only be arrested but also lose their jobs for breaking the law. These workers risked a great deal in order to defend their comrades.

The spreading of the struggle

This movement was spread not only by word of mouth but also by the Lindsey strikers sending  flying pickets to call other workers out. Again, completely illegal, but the workers understood the vital necessity to spread this struggle. Such pickets mean that discussions can take place between the strikers and other workers, breaking down barriers that the media and unions try to erect. We can only speculate, but it is feasible that the experience of the media's gross distortion of their previous struggle led the Lindsey workers to want to explain their struggle directly. Whatever the reason these flying pickets expressed a determination to spread the struggle

Mass meetings

In contrast to the beginning of the year the media did not show much of the mass meetings at Lindsey. Then they showed the meetings because of the presence of Union Jacks and the ‘British Jobs for British Workers' banners, and they could always find a striker to defend this reactionary slogan. This time they had no interest in showing workers discussing how to spread their struggle, welcoming the solidarity of their comrades. There were one or two nationalist banners and Union Jacks, but the question of solidarity pushed these into the background.

It was not only at Lindsey that there were mass meetings. Other sites held them before coming out. A very interesting example is Sellafield. At the beginning of the second week, 22 June, the unions at the complex called a mass meeting and after it the workers walked out. The next day the union called off the strike, without a mass meeting. On the Wednesday some workers held their own meeting. "I thought it was only right to have a meeting that involved people - so we held a meeting and voted to stay out. Over 100 walked out that day, then we were joined by another 100. There was a mass meeting set for Friday morning and I think the site would have been all out again but by that point Lindsey had won." (a striker quoted on socialistworker.co.uk 30/6/9).

Mass meetings are vital to the struggle because they enable workers to collectively discuss the action they need to decide on. In this way there is a conscious solidarity about the course of action agreed upon. It is thus no wonder that it is illegal for such meetings to decide to strike. According to the law there has to be a secret ballot before any strike, that is to say, no collective discussions about the actions to be taken.

The unions try to contain the struggle

The active solidarity shown by this movement challenged the unions' ability to maintain its control of the workers. The Lindsey workers did not wait for the unions and their secret ballots to walk out in support of the 51 laid-off workers. Nor did their comrades at Drax and Eggborough, Ratcliffe and West Burton in Nottinghamshire, Fiddlers Ferry, Aberthaw and the contractors at a BP refinery near Hull who walked out when they heard about the 51 lay-offs and the strike in their support. The defence of their comrades was their prime concern. The unions were left running to catch up with a movement that was bursting out of its prison of rules, laws and divisions between unions. We are not saying that these workers clearly saw the unions as a prison or wanted to organise outside of its bars,. However, their desire to express solidarity meant they had to act illegally and outside of the union rules.

How did the unions respond? Rapidly.

Firstly, the Lindsey shop stewards played their role. Shop stewards are the militant face of the unions. The shop stewards committee seemed to transform itself into a strike committee and co-opt additional members. The workers were prepared to place their trust in the strike committee. Thus, while not being willing to put trust in the union leaders, the  workers were willing to give the stewards control of the strike. These stewards certainly helped to spread the struggle, but always within the union framework. The idea was that spreading the struggle would put pressure on the union leaders to stand up to the bosses, strengthen their negotiating hand, give them some ‘back bone'. As for the mass meetings, they were also seen as a means of putting pressure on the union hierarchy while they negotiated, since they could reject any deal they might come up with.

At the same time, the union leadership, after initially calling on the workers to go back, ‘backed' the strike as soon as Total sacked the 640 strikers. They understood that this action would lead to a much wider extension of the struggle. To take the head of this movement the leaders of the GMB and UNITE immediately sought negotiations with Total, thus focusing the movement on the success of their talks.

Between them then the stewards and the leadership managed to contain the movement within the union confines. That said, if Total had not backed down, the unions would have had difficulty in continuing to keep a lid on the struggle. As the Sellafield striker said, if the settlement had not been reached the whole construction site would have met and joined the 200 workers already defying the unions' call to stay at work. The unions and the rest of the ruling class knew they were riding a tiger and the only way to tame it was by caving in.

The potential for the struggle to come

This dramatic and victorious solidarity movement has demonstrated to the working class in Britain and internationally that active solidarity through spreading the struggle is the only way to push back the attacks. Although it only involved a few thousand workers, its extension across the country, the involvement of Polish workers, the use of mass meetings, the tendency to defy union orders, the reappearance of flying pickets after 25 years, and above all the determination to defend your comrades are indications of the potential for the future struggles. This struggle also demonstrates that far from being passive compared to workers in France or Italy, the proletariat in Britain is fully part of the international upsurge in struggles. Workers around the world will take great strength from this movement. No matter where you live, it is not often that you see the bosses cave in so completely to working class resistance.

The solidarity of this struggle has also severely dented the image of construction workers as backward nationalists propagated by the media after the January strike. This will open up the potential for other sectors to follow their example.  

Phil 4/7/7

In the build up to the Second World War, following the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s, the Russian revolution had been strangled by isolation and was then finished off by the world bourgeoisie and Stalinism. The counter-revolution, the crushing of the world proletariat, had triumphed. In this context, anarchism underwent a fateful step in its evolution.

In every country, pushed inexorably on to the road to militarism by the blind laws of capitalism, the bourgeoisie prepared for war, whether in the fascist or democratic states, or in the Stalinist USSR. The impasse of the economic crisis left them no other option than this forward lunge into a second world holocaust. It was this forward march to war, the real mode of life in decadent capitalism, which gave rise to fascism. It imposed itself in the countries where the working class had suffered a profound defeat in order to subdue it and batter it, where it was no longer necessary to maintain democratic institutions whose function was to mystify the proletariat. Fascism was the most apt form of capitalism to accomplish the preparations needed for the accelerated march towards war.

The ideological dragooning for imperialist war behind fascism or Nazism, or behind the Stalinist myth of the ‘socialist fatherland', was obtained through the most open and dreadful terror. But in the ‘democratic' countries, in order to mobilise workers who hadn't suffered from the crushing of revolutionary movements, it was necessary for the bourgeoisie to use a particular mystification: anti-fascism. Claiming to offer workers a way of protecting themselves from the horrors of fascism was the means used to enrol them as cannon fodder in the war, in the service of one imperialist camp against another. In order to achieve this aim, the bourgeoisie, notably in France and Spain, provided itself with ‘popular fronts' led by the left parties.

Anarchism gripped by anti-fascism

Unlike the cry of proletarian internationalism that rallied the working class to put an end to the barbarity of the First World War through the proletarian revolution, anti-fascism has never been a means for the proletariat to defend its class interests. On the contrary, it's a vehicle for delivering it up to the democratic bourgeoisie bound hand and foot. The situation of counter-revolution, the defeat of the proletariat which meant that there was no possibility of a revolutionary upsurge at that time, did not mean calling into question the fundamental principles of proletarian internationalism faced with the Second World War. There was no camp to choose. It was a fight against the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie both of the fascist camp and the democratic camp.

A prisoner of its tendency to defend ‘liberty' against ‘authoritarianism', anarchism capitulated in the face of anti-fascism. Before the war, the different currents of anarchism were among the principal animators of anti-fascism. These led the great majority of anarchists to firmly take the side of the Allies in the Second World War. Deprived of any class criteria based upon the real social relationship that reigns in capitalist society, anarchism was led to completely submit itself to the defence of democracy, a particularly pernicious form of the dictatorship of capital. Some who had been internationalists in 1914, such as Rudolf Rocker, defended participating in imperialist war in 1940, arguing that contrary to 1914, there now existed two radically different systems and that the struggle against fascism justified support for the democratic states. This approach induced a great number of anarchists to physically participate in the war, in the first place in the un-uniformed imperialist armies of the resistance.[1]

In France, "from the beginning of the war (the CNT group of the Vidal network in the Pyrenees) put itself at the disposal of the Resistance and worked actively with the Intelligence Service and the Central Bureau of Information and Action (BCRA) of de Gaulle, but also with the Sabot network and the group Combat (...) Lacking a national resistance organisation, anarchists seemed few in number though they were very much present. All the same, let's quote the maquis of the Barrage de l'Aigle (...) in the high circles of the reconstruction of the CNT in exile and one of the most active maquis of the resistance. This maquis is practically 100% confederal, like the maquis of Bort-les-Orgues. Generally, the maquis of the Massive Centrale has large numbers of Spanish anarchists (...)"[2] "Present in the maquis in the south of France, in the groups FFI, FTP, MUR or in the autonomous groups (the Libertad battalion in le Cantal, the maquis Bidon 5 in Ariege, in the Languedoc-Roussillon) (...) [the anarchists], continued in their hundreds the fight that they had undertaken against Spanish fascism."[3] The ‘Libertad' battalion "liberated the Lot and Cahors (...) At Foix, it was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT-FAI maquis that liberated the town on August 19."[4]

It was the same picture in Italy. When they surrendered to the Allies on September 8 1943, the  centre and northern regions remained in the hands of the Germans and the fascist republic of Salo. "The anarchists immediately threw themselves into the armed struggle, establishing autonomous formations when it was possible (Carrara, Genoa, Milan), or in the majority of cases joining up with other formations such the ‘Matteotti' Socialist brigade, the Communist ‘Garibaldi' Brigade or the ‘Giustizia e Liberta units of the Party of Action."[5] In numerous places, the libertarians joined with the National Liberation Committee that brought together a large spectrum of anti-fascist parties or organised Groups of Patriotic Action [sic]. There were numerous anarchists in the 28th Garibaldi Brigade which liberated Ravenna.

"In Genoa, anarchist combat groups operated under the names of the ‘Pisacane' Brigade, the ‘Malatesta' formation, the SAP-FCL, the Sestri Ponente SAP-FCL and the Arenzano Anarchist Action Squads. The attempt to set up a ‘United Front' with all anti-fascist forces failed due to the Communists' attempts to impose their own hegemony. Furthermore, anarchists had their own representation only in the outlying CLN ‘s and this obliged them to engage in the armed struggle while relying on their own devices. Activities were promoted by the Libertarian Communist Federation (FCL) and by the underground anarcho-syndicalist union the USI which had just resurfaced in the factories....

Anarchists founded the ‘Malatesta' and ‘Bruzzi' brigades, amounting to 1300 partisans: these operated under the aegis of the ‘Matteotti' formation and played a primary role in the liberation of Milan".[6]

The example of Bulgaria, where after the invasion by the USSR in 1941, the Bulgarian CP organised "some maquis in which numerous anarchists participated"[7] or again, the anarchist anti-Japanese guerrillas in Korea 1920-30, attest to the general character of the participation of the anarchists in imperialist war.

And many of them wouldn't be put off by wearing the uniforms of the imperialist democratic armies: "The Spanish libertarians (...) participated in their thousands in the resistance to Nazism and some of them went into the Free French battalions, fighting into Germany".[8] "Some comrades enrolled into the fighting regiments of the Foreign Legion and found themselves in the front lines of combat."[9] "They were sometimes assigned to north Africa, sometimes to black Africa (Chad, Cameroon). Others rallied to the French Liberation Forces of 1940. They joined up with columns of General Leclerc." (...) More than 60% Spanish, the famous 2nd D.B. included a good number of anarcho-syndicalists, so much so that one of their companies "is entirely composed of Spanish anarchists." The armoured vehicles ‘Ascaso', ‘Durruti', ‘Casas Viejas', "were the first to enter the capital on August 24 1944" at the time of the liberation of Paris[10] and to raise the tricolour on the Hotel de Ville!

A war-mongering position in continuity with that taken in Spain, 1936

The attitude of the anarchists during the Second World War came directly from their position in the ‘rehearsal' of the war in Spain. The latter crudely showed the real role played by anarchism in what was neither "a class war", nor a "revolution" but a war between two factions of the Spanish bourgeoisie which unfolded into a world imperialist conflict.

In July 1936, the CNT, by virtue of an anti-fascist pact sealed with the parties of the Popular Front, gave its support to the Republican government in order to turn the reaction of the Spanish proletariat to the coup d'etat of Franco towards anti-fascism.[11] The CNT diverted a social, economic and political struggle of the proletariat against all of the forces of the bourgeoisie towards a military confrontation solely against Franco, sending the workers to be massacred in the anti-fascist militias for interests that were not their own.

The participation of the libertarians in the bourgeois Republican government in Catalonia and Madrid illustrates the evolution of the CNT towards support of the bourgeois state. "After the first victory and seeing a long and enormously important war looming up, we understood that the time had not yet come to consider the functions of government, of the government apparatus, as terminated. Similarly, the war necessitates an adequate apparatus to lead it to a good end - the army, it's also necessary to have an organ of coordination, of centralisation of all the resources and energies of the country, that's to say the mechanisms of a state (...) So much that during the war, we must act in the bloody struggle and we must intervene in government. In effect, the latter must be a government of war. (...) We think that the war is the priority, that it's necessary to win this war as a preliminary condition to any new condition..."[12] When the workers of Barcelona rose up in May 1937, the CNT were complicit in the repression by the Popular Front and the government of Catalonia (in which they participated), while the Francoists momentarily suspended their hostilities in order to allow the parties of the left to wipe out the uprising.

Through its support for total war, through the militarisation of the proletariat with the help of the anarchist collectives and the anti-fascist militias, through the proclamation of the Union Sacrée with bourgeois republicanism and the banning of strikes, the CNT participated in dragooning the proletariat into a war that took on a clear imperialist character with the engagement of the democracies and the USSR on the republican side and Germany and Italy on the side of the fascists. "At present, this isn't a civil war that we are undertaking, but a war against the invaders: Moors, Germans, Italians. It is not a party, an organisation, a theory that's in danger. It's the existence of Spain itself, of a country that wants to be master of its own destiny and which is running the risk of disappearing."[13] The nationalism of the CNT led it to explicitly appeal for world war in order to save the ‘Spanish nation': "Free Spain will do its duty. Faced with this heroic attitude, what will the democracies do? There are grounds for hoping that the inevitable will not be long in happening. The provocative and crass attitude of Germany is already becoming insupportable. (...) Everyone knows that, in the end, the democracies will have to intervene with their squadrons and their armies to bar the way to these insane hordes..."[14]

The abandonment of the interests of the proletariat and the attitude of the CNT towards imperialist war produced animated oppositions in the anarchist camp (Berneri, Durruti). But their inability to break with the position that war went hand in hand with revolution made them victims of the policy of the defeat and dragooning of the proletariat. Thus, those who tried to struggle against the war and for the revolution were incapable of finding a point of departure for really revolutionary struggle, which would have meant calling for workers and peasants (dragooned into the two camps, Republican and Francoist) to desert, to turn their guns on their officers, to return to the rear and fight through strikes, through demonstrations on a class terrain against capitalism as a whole.

Small internationalist glimmers

However, when world war broke out, against the outbreak of anti-fascist war-mongering, some voices from anarchism were raised that rejected the terrain of anti-fascism and affirmed the only really revolutionary position, that of internationalism. Thus in 1939, in Britain, the Glasgow Anarchist-Communist Federation declared that: "The present struggle opposes rival imperialisms for the protection of secular interests. The workers of every country belong to the oppressed class and have nothing in common with the interests and aspirations of the dominant class. Their front line isn't the Maginot Line; there they would be demoralised and killed, while their masters amassed their fraudulent gains."[15] In the south of France, the miniscule group around Voline[16] developed an intervention against the war on a clear internationalist basis: "The present conflict is the work of the powers of money of each nation, powers who live exclusively and internationally on the exploitation of man by man (...) The state leaders, the military chiefs of all colours and shades, go from one camp to the other, tear up treaties, sign others, serve the Republic here, the Dictatorship there, collaborate with those military adversaries of yesterday, and vice-versa and back again (...) the people, they pay the piper: they're mobilised for democracies, against democracies, for the fascists, against the fascists. But whether in Africa, Asia or Europe, it's the masses who pay the cost of these ‘contradictory experiences' and who get their bodies smashed in (...) It's not a question of only fighting against Hitlerien fascism, but against all fascisms, against all tyrannies, whether of the right, left or centre, whether royal, democratic or social, because no tyranny will emancipate labour, neither liberate the world, nor organise humanity on a really new basis."[17] This position clearly makes these anarchists an expression of the working class. Here again, when such a clarity is reached, it's by taking up the class positions of the proletariat.

But the hard test of isolation from other remaining internationalist groups and from the class in the conditions of the triumph of the counter-revolution, including the enormous pressure of anti-fascism ("we had daily confrontations with other anti-fascists. Should we associate with them or remain against the current? The question was often agonising on the ground.")[18] soon extinguished this spark. The death of Voline (September 1945), the incapacity of the anarchists to draw the lessons from their experiences, led the elements of his group to return to the fold of the CNT, to momentary adhesion to its anti-fascist committees and, finally, to participating in the reconstruction of the FAI on a completely bourgeois political basis.

What is the political result for militant anarchist workers?

From an examination of the history of anarchism faced with two world wars, we can underline a series of conclusions:

- Not only did anarchism demonstrate its inability to offer a viable alternative and revolutionary perspective to the working class but it constituted a direct means of mobilising the working class for imperialist war. In 1936-37, the capitulation of anarchism faced with the anti-fascist mystification and with bourgeois democracy, seen as a ‘lesser evil' in relation to fascism, was a way for capitalism to enlarge the front of political forces agitating for war, including the anarchists. After the First World War, the war in Spain constituted the second decisive act for anarchism, sealing its evolution towards supporting a capitalist state. This submission to bourgeois democracy was shown in the integration of the official currents of anarchism into the political forces of the capitalist state. Thus, following this process, from 1914 to the war in Spain 1936-37, official anarchism became an ideology for the defence of order and state capitalism.

- In the second place, it's important to say that the anarchist movement can't be reduced to its official currents and remains a very heterogeneous milieu. Throughout its time, a part of this milieu has sincerely aspired to the revolution and socialism, expressing a real will to finish with capitalism and exploitation. These militants have effectively placed themselves on the terrain of the working class when they affirmed their internationalism and dedicated themselves to joining its revolutionary combat. But doing this fundamentally depends on a process of decantation whose sense and breadth depends on the rapport de forces between the fundamental classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

This decantation could well come to nothing or even go towards the bourgeoisie as in the black years of the counter-revolution of the 1940s. There, deprived of the compass of the class struggle of the proletariat and of the oxygen of discussion and debate with the revolutionary minorities it produces, elements trying to defend class principles were often trapped in the intrinsic contradictions of anarchism.

Anarchism could be orientated towards the working class when the latter affirmed itself as a revolutionary force. Thus, it's really the revolutionary movement of the working class, the rise of the world revolution and the proletarian insurrection in Russia (with the destruction of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie by the Soviets and the unilateral halt to the engagement in imperialist war by the Russian proletariat and the Bolsheviks), which allowed those remaining internationalist anarchists to adopt a consistently internationalist attitude in 1914-18. They then joined up with the historic movement of the working class by approaching the communist movement coming out of the left of Social Democracy and opposed to the war: the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists. It was these marxist currents who were the most capable of putting forward the sole viable, realistic alternative: the transformation of imperialist war into civil war and the world proletarian revolution.  

Scott 27/5/9

see also

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 1): Anarchists faced with the First World War [219]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 3): From the end of the Second World War to the end of the counter-revolution [198]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [199]

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[1]  The allegiances of anarchism went towards different fractions of the dominant class: some militants, seduced by the Charter of Labour, or pacifists restored by the armistice, collaborated in the National Revolution programme of Petain and his Vichy government, as in the case of Louis Loreal, or ended up in the official structures of the French state, such as P. Besnard.

[2]  The Spanish Anarchists and the Resistance, in L'Affranchi no.14, Spring/summer 1997, on CNT-AIT.info.

[3]  E. Sarboni, 1944: The black dossiers of resistance, Perpignan, Ed. Du CES, 1984.

[4]  The Spanish Anarchists and the Resistance, in L'Affranchi no. 14, Spring/summer 1997, on CNT-AIT.info.

[5]  1943-45: Anarchist Partisans in the Italian Resistance, on libcom.org

[6]  1943-45: Anarchist Partisans in the Italian Resistance, on libcom.org.

[7]  Postface to Max Nettlau, History of Anarchism, p. 281.

[8]  E. Sarbone, 1944: The black dossiers of resistance, Perpignan, Ed. Du CES, 1984

[9]  Pepito Rossell, In the resistance, the support of the libertarian movement.

[10]  Le Monde diplomatique, August 2004.

[11]  On the trajectory of the CNT, read our series in the International Review, notably the articles: ‘The failure of anarchism to prevent the integration of the CNT into the bourgeois state (1931-34)';' Anti-fascism, the road to betrayal by the CNT (1934-36)'.

[12]  D.A. de Santillan, in Solidaridad Obrera, April 16 1937.

[13]  D.A. de Santillan, in Solidaridad Obrera April 21 1937.

[14]  Solidaridad Obrera, January 6 1937, quoted by La Révolution Prolétarienne no. 238, January 1937.

[15]  Quoted b P. Hempel, A bas la guerre, p. 210.

[16]  Vsevolod Mikahilovitch Eichenbaum - Voline (1882-1945), was a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party during the revolution of 1905 and participated in the foundation of the St. Petersburg Soviet. Imprisoned, he escaped and got to France in 1907 where he became an anarchist. In 1915, threatened with imprisonment by the French government for his opposition to the war, he fled to the United States. In 1917, he returned to Russia where he militated among the anarcho-syndicalists. Consequently, Voline made contact with the Makhnovist movement and became head of the culture and education section of the insurrectional army and then became president of its military, insurrectional Council in 1919. Arrested several times, he left Russia after 1920 and sought refuge in Germany. Returning to France, he edited, on the Spanish CNT's request, its paper in the French language. In 1940, in Marseille, he finished The Unknown Revolution. Hardship and the terrible material conditions of clandestinity affected his health and he died of tuberculosis in Paris, 1945.

[17]  Extract from the leaflet: To all workers..., 1943.

[18]  Anarchists and the resistance, CIRA, p. 33.

At the beginning of June, the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, published the report ‘Reducing the risks of catastrophe; world balance sheet 2009'. This document highlights the growing risk to the environment posed by global warming and by anarchic urbanisation in certain regions of the world.

Between 1975 and 2008, 8,866 natural catastrophes killed 2,284,000 people around the world. The number of victims of floods or storms has in the past 30 years gone from 740 million to 2.5. billion people. In 2008, more than 300 natural catastrophes led to 236,000 deaths and directly affected more than 200 million people. All this according to the figures published by the UN, which in a big display of international solidarity is calling on all governments to struggle more effectively against the "underlying" risks of these events. "We all know that the poor and the developing countries are the ones who suffer the most from catastrophes and three quarters of those who die as a result of floods lived in three Asian countries: Bangladesh, China and India" writes Ban Ki-moon.

Moreover, while the Arab countries are presently suffering less from the effects of these disasters, the rise in sea levels poses a direct and short-term threat to Bahrain, Egypt and Djibouti. And the other Arab countries which aren't threatened by the sea are threatened by drought.

The ecological and economic impact of climate change is already killing people in large numbers. A report made public by the ‘World Humanitarian Forum', a foundation whose president is the former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, re-evaluates the effects of climate change. Because it's not only a very serious threat for the future, with 250 million ‘climate refugees' predicted by 2050, but also a major contemporary crisis which is already killing 300,000 people a year around the world.

More than half of the 300,000 deaths are the result of malnutrition. Then come the health problems, because global warming serves to propagate numerous diseases. Thus, 10 million new cases of malaria, resulting in 55,000 deaths, have been identified. These victims join the 3 million people who die each year from this disease. Here again the populations of the poorer countries are the most affected because they are the last to have access to the necessary medicines.

The rise in temperatures attested by all serious scientists has a direct impact on agricultural yields and access to water, and this again hits the poor first and foremost. The severe degradation of the environment and the resulting turmoil for the climate (floods, storms, cyclones, etc) directly affect at least 325 million people, or a 20th of the world's population.

The experts who consider that these figures are going to double over the next 20 years are anticipating the most grave humanitarian crisis in human history.

In the face of this expected catastrophe, what is the bourgeoisie really doing? The OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development), an organism which is habituated to facile optimism and a ‘things will be better tomorrow' approach, has had to admit that at least a third of development aid programmes are not working, while the World Humanitarian Forum estimates that to cancel out the most sombre predictions, you would have to spend 100 times more than the money actually allotted to dealing with the problems.    

Result: the new projections contained in the Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society now predict a 5.25% rise in temperature by the year 2100, with a probability rating of 90%. This would raise sea levels by nearly a metre!

In 2003, the same study, but based on less developed techniques, only predicted an average rise of 2.4%. The difference between the two calculations shows the extent to which the ruling class, while trying to draw up models for the future voyages of its ship, is actually sailing blind. However much it calls on states to put plans of action into place, the irrational logic of its system can only push it towards destruction.

Thus, although new post-Kyoto negotiations have been opened up by the UN, a report by Christian Aid estimates that 182 million human beings in Africa will die between now and 2100 as a direct result of climate change.

Faced with this perspective, and faced with its inability to deal with the problem, the bourgeoisie is resorting to making the population and the workers in particular feel guilty about it. We are told over and over again that global warming is the result of our life-styles in the developed countries. Calculations made by scientists appointed by capitalism show us that a Westerner consumes 11 times more energy than an inhabitant of the South, and that half of the world's emissions of CO2 derive from the countries of the North (24% of the world total by the US, 10% for the eurozone). Thus, the workers of the developed countries should stay poor or become poor in order to conserve the planet; and instead of thinking about fighting against their exploiters, should brush their teeth in the same water they use for washing up or use the same bathwater ten times over. We know that the situation many of us live in is a luxurious one compared to what billions of people have to put up with around the world. But this is precisely what is so disgusting about the propaganda of the bourgeoisie: they want the misery and horror faced by the majority of the world's population to be inflicted on everyone.

The exploited class has no choice but to fight for its interests, because it is this struggle alone which can save the planet by putting an end to a system which has become a veritable social disaster for the human race!  

Damien 27/6/9

An advanced warning of possible future cuts in education has been provided by the decision to get rid of 1600 learner places in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at Tower Hamlets College, resulting in 60 teachers losing their jobs. Similar cuts are proposed at St Paul's Way Community School in the same borough. Staff have protested against these attacks at a demonstration on 27 June and at a public meeting on 1 July, with strike action planned a week later. We are publishing a critical account of the public meeting, written by a comrade who works in this sector.   

I attended the meeting on Wednesday evening. It started at about 5.15pm and at 6.45 they finally asked if anyone else (i.e. anyone who hadn't already been approved to speak) wanted to say something in the meeting.

It was bad enough having to listen to NUT officials (and one member of the NUT executive) spouting on about the need for solidarity and collective action, given the anti-worker history of the NUT, it was something else to have to listen to the political advisor to George Galloway spouting on about how George would have been there but for being in Gaza to help organise humanitarian aid for the Palestinians...

It was clear that there is a real sense of anger amongst the workers about what is happening in their respective places of work and so the unions, in a spirit of solidarity have organised 2 one day strikes... on separate days! Two sets of teachers in the same borough striking over job cuts on different days - this is the real face of the union ‘solidarity' - division and pathetic one day actions.

I said that there was a need to discuss with colleagues at the workplace, not to get narrowed down into just the ESOL department, but to see these as the first of many cuts that are to come. It is important also to have meetings with colleagues which are not separated by union membership, as this is one of the main ways of dividing up the workers.

Also, in response to the idea a few others put forward, I stated that returning to local authority control (as opposed to Trust School status) was no different - in fact the government is in the process of abolishing the Learning and Skills Council (the current body which controls funding for schools) and returning Schools back to Local Education Authority control - and it is these local organs of the state that are going to institute the next rounds of cuts in the public sector.

It says something about this kind of meeting that there was no real discussion of any kind. That's the normal mode of operating for leftists - they don't see collective meetings as a place where workers can discuss and make actual decisions on actions, just a place for workers to come and be told what the ‘official' (i.e. union) line is.  

Miles 4/7/9

All over the planet, the working class is being subjected to increasingly unbearable levels of exploitation and poverty. And in the countries which the bourgeoisie hypocritically calls ‘developing economies' the workers are treated as no more than cattle.

But for several years, these wage slaves have been resisting more and more. In Egypt, in Dubai or in Vietnam, revolts have been brewing and sporadically exploding, each time involving tens of thousands of workers.

The existence of these struggles is hardly known about in the rest of the world, or totally ignored. The bourgeois media operate a complete black-out: hardly anything gets through about these immense strikes or the terrible repression meted out to militant workers.

The press has been no less silent about the recent massive struggles in Bangladesh and China.

In Bangladesh: textile workers in struggle

The textile workers of Bangladesh have a grim record: the lowest wages in the world: $0.22 an hour. In India, where most of the population lives in the most utter deprivation, wages are twice as high ($0.44 an hour). And yet the situation in Bangladesh has been getting worse: in certain factories, even these miserable wages are not being paid out!

So after months of suffering and sacrifice, the massive and violent reaction of the workers was in proportion to this inhuman treatment. On 10 May, in the Rupashi pullover-making factory in Narayanganj (a port city at the centre of the country's textile industry) the workers' anger exploded and they physically assaulted their boss. "The next day, the workers of Rupashi went to work and found the factory closed and bolted. The workers then decided to go in procession to the other factories in the town shouting slogans against exploitation. Thousands of other workers left their workplaces to join them. There were clashes with the factory security guards. The violence spread like wildfire: 20,000 workers trashed and burned dozens of textile factories and bales of cotton" (‘Des Nouvelles du Front', dndf.org).

In 2006 thousands of workers' revolts hit certain industrial sites. But this time, the workers were acting even more massively and violently. They didn't hesitate to sweep aside all the security fences around their factories to come together and confront the army, which resulted in some very bloody street battles. These sites are almost like labour camps, surrounded by barbed wire fences and permanently protected by armed guards. By attacking the factories and the army, these 20,000 workers were driven by the desire both to destroy the machines that are used to torture them and to risk their lives confronting their jailers.

In China too, workers fight the effects of the crisis

For the last 15 years China has been presented as a new capitalist El Dorado. To believe the highly qualified liars of political economy, the Middle Kingdom is being spared by the economic crisis. Even better, China will help to lead the world economy out of the recession! Obviously the truth is somewhere else, and here also the working class is the first victim of the crisis. For example  "in Daqing alone, 88,000 employees have been laid off in the last two years" (ibid. Daqing is a town of one million inhabitants in the province of Heilongjiang). In the country as a whole, around 30 million migrant workers have lost their jobs since last year.

But bit by bit combativity is growing, Despite the pitiless repression handed out by the Chinese Communist Party, the workers are less and less prepared to be trated like animals. Since the beginning of March, "thousands of workers in the North East of China demonstrated their discontent in the street, demanding payment of their benefits and the liberation of their representatives[1]. Demonstrations took place in the towns of Daqing and Liaoyang, at the heart of the industrial basin of Manchuria, which has been hard hit by the economic crisis. Around these towns, the state industries directly or indirectly employ nine out of ten people. But the output of these heavy industrial plants is falling and unemployment is growing. When it was announced that heating allowances would be stopped and that there would no longer be any social security for workers who had been laid off, thousands of Daqing workers, up to 30,000 of them, came out onto the streets every day since the beginning of March. They gathered in the square of the ‘Man of Iron', the name of a legendary hero of the proletariat in the 1960s. They camped out in front of the HQ of Petro China, the state company which employs them. ‘We are the men of iron' they shouted under the windows of their bosses. In Liaoyang, similar motives pushed the workers to brave the cold and the sandstorms, tens of thousands protesting in front of local government HQ." (ibid) 

This wave of struggle is typical of the general rise of militancy in the Chinese working class in the face of the economic crisis. "in the course of the first three months of the year, as job cuts and the forced return of migrants to their region of origin shot up, China saw 58,000 ‘mass incidents'. The government itself has talked about strikes, street demonstrations and blockades and other forms of popular struggle. These figures come from the agencies charged with surveying political stability in continental China, situated in Hong Kong. If this tendency continues throughout the year, 2009 will break all previous records with more than 230,000 of these ‘mass incidents' compared to 120,000 in 2008 and 90,000 in 2006" (ibid)

From Vietnam to Dubai, from China to Bangladesh, we are seeing increasingly massive and violent struggles, The question posed here is: what is the future of these struggles? To answer this, we have to see them as part of an international process, of the gradual return of the proletariat to the terrain of the class struggle all over the world.

In the ‘developing' countries, the militancy of the workers, the massive nature of the strikes, and the courage of the workers in the face of ferocious repression can and should inspire the workers of all countries.

But the despair which pushes them, as in Bangladesh, to smash up a factory or confront the forces of repression with no other perspective than to die in a bloodbath, also shows the extent to which these workers need the struggle of the workers in the central countries, in Europe and the USA, to appropriate the long experience of the oldest battalions of the world proletariat.

For these struggles to have an echo, for the fighting spirit of the workers to encourage others, it is vital to beak through the wall of silence imposed by the bourgeoisie and give maximum international publicity to every important struggle.  

Map 1/7/9

---

[1] These ‘representatives' are usually elements that the Chinese state has pointed to as the most militant workers and who have been thrown in prison as a result. Given the lack of information, we don't know to what extent these ‘representatives' are actually recognised by the majority of workers in struggle.

In Iran, one of the Islamic regime's first responses to the massive demonstrations that followed the rigged election result was to send its Basij militia thugs into Tehran university, to beat and murder selected students as an example to the rest.

In France, during the most recent student mobilisations against the ‘reform' of higher education (aimed at sharpening divisions between elite universities and the rest), more than one occupied campus was raided by police armed with dogs and intent on preventing the students from holding political debates in the lecture theatres.

In Greece, during the December revolt, university campuses, particularly the Athens Polytechnic School, were used as a basis for general assemblies open to students, workers and the unemployed. The police were again used to break up the occupations and thus strike a blow against the efforts of the revolt to become conscious of its goals and methods.

In a number of these cases, there were clear signs of complicity between the police and the university authorities.

Iran, of course, is a rigid theocracy, and the French and the Greek police have a long history of violence against social dissent. But surely things are different in liberal Britain, with its tradition of independent universities and of tolerance towards unorthodox thinkers?

Perhaps not.

In June students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London occupied the college after heavily tooled up immigration officers carried out a raid to identify, arrest and in some cases deport immigrant cleaning workers who had not long ago been involved in strike action. Here again the police acted in tandem with the university authorities:

"Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an ‘emergency staff meeting' at 6.30am on Friday (June 12).

This was used as a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space in which the immigration officers were hiding to arrest them.

More than 40 officers were dressed in full riot gear and aggressively undertook interrogations and then escorted them to the detention centre. Neither legal representation nor union support were present due to the secrecy surrounding the action. Many were unable to communicate let alone fully understand what was taking place due to the denial of interpreters.

SOAS management were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them" (from the press release issued by occupying students https://libcom.org/forums/announcements/support-soas-occupation-cleaners-risk-deportation-russell-square-london-430 [225]).

At the University of East London, professor of anthropology Chris Knight has been suspended from his job and faces the sack for ‘gross misconduct'. This was mainly because he went ahead with an ‘alternative G20 summit' at the campus (though in the grounds, not inside the building as originally planned) after the university authorities had cancelled it at the last minute. It will be recalled that, in the period leading up to the G20 summit in London, the media and the police were concocting a campaign of hysteria about the threat of violence in the capital - a threat which they themselves brought to fulfilment with a display of hysterical violence which led to the ‘kettling' of hundreds of demonstrators and the death of bystander Ian Tomlinson. No doubt the university authorities were fearful that the UEL campus would operate as a head quarters for the anti-G20 demonstrations. The papers meanwhile said little about the primary cause of Knight's suspension and gave maximum publicity to Knight's jokes about bankers being hanged from lamp-posts, claiming that this was the real reason for his suspension. 

We don't think that the alternative summit, largely made up of leftists like Tony Benn and Lindsay German, offered a revolutionary alternative to the G20, nor are we in agreement with Knight's focus on the ‘street theatre' style of protest and other political ideas (anarchist or Trotskyist) he has espoused. But that does not stop us from denouncing UEL's complicity with the forces of repression, just as we condemn SOAS for unleashing the immigration narks on their own cleaning staff.

Visitors to our website know that we have initiated a discussion around Chris Knight's ideas about the origins of human culture (https://en.internationalism.org/2008/10/Chris-Knight [226]). He is a stimulating and original thinker who is not afraid to step outside the confines of academic orthodoxy. By suspending him, and refusing to host the ‘alternative summit', UEL is setting an ominous precedent: in a time of growing economic and social crisis, unorthodox lines of thought will not be permitted.

This kind of intellectual Stalinism, along with the cow-towing of universities to the demands of the police, needs to be opposed at each step of the way; but the best method for reviving the universities as true centres of learning is the one favoured by the Greek and French students who threw the campus gates open and organised their general assemblies so that everyone with an interest in resisting capitalism could take part in a genuine culture of proletarian debate.  

Amos 26/6/9

The result of Iran's presidential election on 12 June set off a torrent of protests, with up to 2 million people on the streets.

After threats, arrests, beatings and torture, the street demonstrations have given way to night time roof-top protests, shouting "Death to the dictator" and "Allah-u-Akbar". Not since 1979, when the Shah was forced out of the country, have we seen such a level of protest, bringing to the surface the mounting popular discontent with the Islamic regime.

The level of repression tells us much. The regime held off attacking the initial and largest protests. Having come into being when protests and strikes undermined the Shah's rule, the rulers of the Islamic Republic were well aware of the danger of making martyrs of the demonstrators. But the following week the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued threats against the demonstrations at Friday prayers, and this has been followed by lethal attacks on protesters by the various repressive forces, the Basiji militia, the Revolutionary Guard, elite riot police and snipers (the death of Neda Agha Soltan, which was broadcast around the world, seems to have been the work of a sniper). There have been arrests of hundreds if not thousands, and the whole country has been electronically isolated - no email or texts could get in or out. Now there is a disgusting campaign calling on citizens to inform on neighbours, friends, brothers, sisters... anyone who might have taken part in the demonstrations. It takes real courage to show even the slightest opposition in Iran.

Divisions in the regime

The regime has not only turned on the ordinary demonstrators, but also threatened the rival presidential candidate Mousavi, warning him not to stir up protests, and briefly arrested the children of Rafsanjani, former president and known as Khomeini's side-kick after 1979. In short, there are deep divisions inside the Iranian ruling class. The ‘reformers' are currently riding the wave of the popular protests, but they are the hardliners of the 1980s and steeped in the Islamic Republic. They clearly have nothing to offer the population in general or the working class in particular except more of the same capitalist exploitation. But they clearly think they have something to offer Iranian capitalism. Although Rafsanjani has remained silent he "supports greater opening to the West, privatising parts of the economy and granting more power to elected institutions" according to the International Herald Tribune 23/6/9, and is trying to broker a compromise within the ruling class, part of his role on the Expediency Council.

Meanwhile when Mousavi states that "Protesting against lies and fraud is your right", he is not just fighting his own corner, but doing a service for the whole Iranian bourgeoisie. While they may not have wanted to unleash such a visible expression of the discontent in the country, Mousavi is working to keep it focused on the election result and taking sides on the divisions in the ruling elite, which is a complete dead end.

Where is the working class?

The repression has not put an end to the discontent, even if the massive street demonstrations have come to an end for the moment. However, without a significant struggle of the working class it will not be possible to put up any effective resistance to the repression. The militant Iran Khodro car plant went on strike against the repression - something the workers have experienced themselves in the wake of their own struggles. A union statement from Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company, which supports none of the presidential candidates but supports the protests, may give an indication of the mood among workers - against the repression, critical of both ruling class factions, but with illusions in democracy. Despite this, and the general strike called for 26th June, workers have not generally played a part in these events as a class, although they have undoubtedly been involved individually.

We should not forget the role of the class struggle 30 years ago. Strikes, particularly in the oil industry, played a crucial role in undermining the Shah's ability to rule: "when the ‘popular' movement - regrouping almost all the oppressed strata in Iran - began to exhaust itself, the entry into the struggle of the Iranian proletariat at the beginning of October 1978, most notably in the oil sector, not only refuelled the agitation, but posed a virtually insolvable problem for the national capital, in the absence of a replacement being found for the old governmental team. Repression was enough to cause the retreat of the small merchants, the students and those without work, but it proved a powerless weapon of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the economic paralysis provoked by the strikes of the workers. Thus, even in a country where it is numerically weak, the proletariat in Iran showed what an essential strength it has in society, owing to its position at the heart of capitalist production" (ICC statement, reprinted in WR 322 [229]). This strike movement was not an Iranian event so much as an important chapter in an international strike wave that also included the ‘winter or discontent' in Britain, dock strikes in Holland, steel strikes in France, all of this culminating in the mass strike in Poland in 1980.

We have no doubt that the working class in Iran will participate in the present development of the international class struggle alongside its class brothers in Egypt, Dubai, Bangladesh and China as well as in Europe and the Americas. When it does so on a class basis, for its own interests, it will be able to offer a real perspective to the wider popular anger that has been so evident in recent weeks. The perspective that is required is not just that of getting rid of the current Iranian president, or the Islamic regime, but of the whole capitalist system.  

Alex 4/7/9

Britain's role in meddling in Iranian politics in the past is well documented, such as its part in overthrowing the elected government in 1953 alongside the USA. At the same time no brutal, corrupt and hated regime anywhere in the world will ever admit to the existence of any discontent that has not been stirred up by outside forces. We cannot rely on what the politicians from either Britain or Iran tell us but must look at whose interests are served by any particular event.

It is clearly in Khamenei's and Ahmadinejad's interests to use longstanding and widespread distrust of Britain's imperialist history to portray the protests as serving outside interests and so try to undermine their legitimacy and popularity. The expulsion of two diplomats, the refusal to renew a BBC reporter's visa and the arrest of Embassy staff can all help in this.

Of course, the Islamic regime came to power after the fall of the Shah whose reign had been assured by previous regime change engineered by the USA and Britain, and these powers  obviously want to undermine it. Their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken out or weakened some of Iran's most important rivals, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, increasing its weight as a regional power to rival Israel with or without nuclear weapons, and this is clearly a problem for US strategy. They have to do something about Iran.

The sabre-rattling of the Bush administration, which defined Iran as part of the ‘Axis of Evil', has been replaced by Obama's strategy of dialogue and diplomacy: "In offering negotiation and conciliation, [President Obama] has put the region's extremists on the defensive" as Senator John Kerry explained (BBC news online). In order to pursue this strategy the USA has certainly joined in all the hypocritical international condemnation of the repression, but has done so in Obama's measured tones "We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people". Britain has also remained measured in criticism despite needing to protest against the arrest and possible trial of Embassy staff. The BBC Persian service and Voice of America are undoubtedly giving voice to more protest than the Iranian regime can tolerate, particularly now with its divisions uncovered, and in the long term this is intended to undermine it; but in the short term they have nothing to gain from the present protests getting out of hand.

WR 4/7/9

"The war is going badly. Much of the south of the country is out of government control. A scattered, disparate insurgency has gained strength and risks turning into a widespread insurrection against Western forces and the elected government they are backing. In Britain, a sceptical public wonders what its soldiers are dying for. And as the costs and casualties continue to mount, Americans too will ask that question increasingly loudly" (The Economist 22/8/9.)

The fact that such an august publication as the Economist is posing such questions about the Afghan war is clear evidence that the official excuses for this military adventure are wearing very thin.

There were several justifications given for undertaking this war. The first and foremost of these, in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was supposedly involved in the attacks, or at least was ‘harbouring terrorists' such as Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaida group, who were directly implicated.

The ‘war on terror' - spearheaded by the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and then of Iraq in 2003 - was supposed to eradicate or at least combat terrorism. What has been the reality? The exact opposite - a massive exacerbation of terrorism across the globe. There has been no halt to the mobilisation of ‘radical' Islamist forces within the region. On the contrary, Afghanistan and Iraq have become the focus, the pole of attraction for al-Qaida and similar terrorist gangs.

The knock on effect has also been felt all over the globe - such as the bombings in Madrid in 2004 (Spain, under Jose Luiz Aznar were engaged in fighting in Iraq at that time) and London in 2005.

The Taliban are no longer in government in Afghanistan, but in many ways they have been strengthened: for example they have been instrumental in rallying disparate forces in Pakistan. They are still in control of the opium trade and large areas of Afghanistan. The Taliban use fear and murder to impose their authority in these areas, but there is no doubt that the increasing unpopularity of the government and the NATO occupation is pushing more and more recruits towards them. The growing toll of civilian deaths resulting from air attacks like the one at Kunduz at the beginning of September is certainly increasing this flow of recruits.

Another stated aim was to bring democracy to Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. Well, little has changed in Afghanistan. In the first place, the Karzai government has next to no control outside the borders of Kabul; indeed, given the number of attacks within Kabul itself, it seems they have less and less control there also. The regional warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum have not relinquished one iota of control to the Kabul government - in fact they have tightened their grip on their regions, despite attempts to ‘bring them in' to the democratic process.

Secondly, the Karzai government has been marked by outright corruption and brutality - for many Afghans they are no different to those previously in power: "On the campaign trail, President Hamid Karzai has appealed to his enemies to make peace. But his government - inept, corrupt and predatory - does not look like a trustworthy partner. In parts of Afghanistan where insurgents have been driven out and the writ of the government has been restored, residents have sometimes hankered for the warlords, who were less venal and less brutal than Mr Karzai's lot" (The Economist, op cit).

This year has already become the deadliest year in Afghanistan since 2001. As of 25/8/9, 295 foreign troops have been killed there. Part of the reason has been the mini ‘surge' foreign troops have made in order to provide some semblance of ‘stability' so that national elections could take place. This has been a manifest failure. Not only has the surge not undermined the Taliban, but the election was held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Prior to the recent elections, 10 UK troops died in Babaji district fighting the Taliban, ostensibly preparing the ground for ‘full and free' elections. The result? "Reports that about 150 people voted there, out of an eligible population of 55,000, have not been disputed by officials in Afghanistan" (BBC 27/8/9). And since the elections were held, widespread evidence of vote rigging has come to light.

Related to the attempt to introduce the delights of democracy was the issue of protecting the rights of women in these backward patriarchal societies. Again, reality has been rather different. The new Afghan Constitution adopted 5 years ago promised equality and human rights for women. Since this time the Taliban have been busy closing down schools for girls. For his part, far from protecting women's rights, Karzai has made deals with religious groups and subsequently enacted legislation which effectively legalises rape within marriage.

Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan has more and more spread to Pakistan. The Obama administration has made it clear that it sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being more strategically important than Iraq. There have been attempts in the media to present the Iraq war as more or less over in order to justify this change in focus, although the recent upsurge in deadly suicide attacks in Iraq have reminded us just how unstable the situation there really is. But in any case, with growing Taliban influence in the areas of Pakistan where the government has virtually no authority, the war there has already escalated, with increasing use of drone bombers by the US and new offensives by the Pakistan government. The latter has resulted in murderous fighting (the army claims to have killed over 1,600 militants) as well as the forcible evacuation of over 2 million people.

Real reasons behind the Afghan adventure

As the official justifications for the war become increasingly threadbare, its reality as an imperialist war has become more obvious to more people.

Since the collapse of the old imperialist blocs at the end of the 1980s, the USA has been faced with greater and greater challenges to its position as the ‘world cop'. No one disputes its military strength, indeed no one other power - or combination of half a dozen - is able to compete directly with it in this respect. However, this has not stopped the other powers disputing US domination in various regions of the world. Most notably today we have the rise of China as a gigantic economic entity which has been liberally using the money it has gained from trade to quietly buy its way into areas in which it had no prior interest. There is also the resurgence of Russia; and the US has not ruled out the danger of a challenge to its authority centred on the very heartlands of capitalism - in Europe, around France and above all Germany.

If the USA is to maintain its ‘leadership' in the face of all these challenges, it needs to control the strategically vital areas of the Middle East and Central Asia - vital both for the traditional geo-political reasons that lay behind the imperialist ‘Great Game' in the 19th century, and because of the key energy sources and supply routes they contain (oil and gas). The issue at stake here is imperialist in the widest sense: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not being carried out at the behest of US oil companies hungry for quick profits, but because of the long-term needs of US state capitalism to maintain its waning global domination.

And Britain? When the blocs fell apart, Britain too began to look for a more ‘independent' path, as shown by its willingness to sabotage US efforts during the Balkans war in the 90s. But as a distinctly second rate power ‘independence' is an ever-receding mirage and since 2001 and the ‘War on Terror' in particular the British bourgeoisie has got itself more and more entangled with US military projects in the Middle East and Central Asia. Indeed in Afghanistan it is in the uncomfortable position of serving in the frontline of NATO forces, with its often poorly-equipped troops left exposed to an increasingly confident Taliban insurgency.

As more and more people, not least the families of soldiers serving in Afghanistan, begin to look for the reasons for this war, the ruling class will not abandon its false justifications: Brown, for example, continues to sell the war as a means of preventing terrorist atrocities in London or Glasgow. At the same time we are subjected to diversionary debates like the one about whether or not more money should be spent on buying the latest equipment for the troops, when the real questions are these: why is this society in a constant state of war; and how can we fight against war and the system that spawns it?

Graham 4/9/9.

It's necessary to be suspicious of all the economic statistics produced by the ruling class. However, it is interesting to note the claim that France, Germany and Japan, among some other smaller economies, are no longer in recession. What does this actually mean in practice?

Land of rising unemployment

In Japan the economy grew by 0.9% between April and June. This came after 4 consecutive quarters of contraction, so there is still some way to go. A spokesman for Aberdeen Asset Management (Financial Times 18/8/9) suggested that while "other countries have similarly reported better-than-expected economic data, Japan's problems are arguably more entrenched." They think that the main hope for Japan is in exports, "yet rising unemployment and shrinking consumption show no signs of easing" (ibid). In fact unemployment has already reached the highest level ever in Japan's post-war history, and this inevitably has an effect on consumption.

Elsewhere in the same article it quotes another expert: "Japan can export its expertise, but it cannot make things cheaper than hungry developing economies like China and Korea." Competition between the economies of different countries is fundamental. There have recently been many international financial rescue plans put in place - just look at the work of the G20 - but each capitalist entity is still ultimately in competition with each other.

The growth in the Japanese economy has been attributed to the sheer size of the government's stimulus package. Economic commentators are worried about what will happen when it comes to an end. Similarly, with exports being so important then the more Japan is dependent on a revival in the American economy. As things stand most predictions see unemployment staying high and consumer spending low. No one has suggested that the new Japanese government can realistically do anything better.

European success story?

There are similar doubts about the 0.3% growth in France and Germany between April and June. Government measures are credited with causing improvements, which have yet to occur in the rest of the eurozone, and can't carry on forever. A BBC reporter said "although the surprise news was highly welcome for those that have been suffering, there were questions about how strong and credible the economic recovery is. ‘To draw a medical analogy, we've got the patient waking from a coma and talking to medical staff,' he said. ‘They're not necessarily going to be running any marathons soon'" (13/8/9).

The International Monetary Fund tries to take a global view of the situation. In August its Chief Economist was quite straight about what impact the move out of recession would have: "Growth will not be quite strong enough to reduce unemployment, which is not expected to crest until some time next year."  He also indicated that, while he thought a recovery had begun, the recession had "left deep scars, which will affect both supply and demand for many years to come". In predicting that global output could also remain lower he was admitting that the prospect of a return to previous levels of production was in no way imminent.

This ties up with observations in a recent report from the European Commission "Europe is likely to suffer a permanent loss in potential economic output as a result of the global crisis, and government finances will be under pressure for years to come" (Financial Times 2/7/9) "The crisis is the equivalent of capital destruction, reducing - at least for a time - the productive potential of the economy." "Current market disruption in financial markets and the more heavily regulated environment that is likely to follow can also be expected to have a permanent negative effect on potential growth, e.g. through reduced availability of capital for R&D and innovation activities." "Empirical evidence of the effect of past crises shows... that the economy will not return to its pre-crisis expansion path but will shift to a lower one. In other words, the crisis will entail a permanent loss in the level of potential output" (ibid.) The limited nature of any recovery is spelt out in these words from the institutions of our exploiters.

Worse in the UK

While others were declaring an emergence from recession the UK economy continues to decline. The further 0.8% between April and June was double what economists expected. The annual rate of decline is now 5.6%, the biggest fall since records began in 1955.

The OECD says that British capitalism will be the last of the major economies to come out of recession. The IMF says that any improvement could soon be dashed as Britain might face a ‘double dip' recession.

As unemployment increases it has become normal to predict figures exceeding three million. The Tories have done some research. As an election approaches we should obviously expect them to make sensational claims. Still, when they say that three million have not had a job since Labour came to power in 1997, two million have never had a job and six million are now claiming job seekers' allowance or sickness pay, the only satisfactory response is to point to the others that are also ‘economically inactive' and add further millions to the total.

On top of that there are officially nearly a million people working fewer than 30 hours a week, a figure 38% up on a year ago. This includes people who've only been offered part-time work (regardless of whether they want it) and hundreds of thousands forced to shorten their hours, and therefore their pay, in an attempt to hold on to their jobs.

In addition to that some young workers are so desperate for an income that they're joining the armed forces. The Army, for example is nearing full strength for the first time in a generation. This is partly because of new recruits and partly because the numbers leaving the Army are dropping.

Unlike incoming Labour governments that promise ‘improvements' after their Tory predecessors, David Cameron is promising cuts in public spending, possibly exaggerated by Labour, but definitely significant. Existing government projections for future levels of public expenditure already point to large-scale cutbacks in public services, so the Tories are only showing that they will be in continuity with Labour.

Cameron has already warned workers not to strike against future cuts, but he anticipates future battles. This is not because he is a ‘terrible Tory' but because, as anywhere else in the world, those who play a part in the management of capitalist economies are compelled to attack the living and working standards of the working class. This does not come down to the nature of their personalities but because of the depth of the capitalist crisis.

Car 4/9/9.

Prior to the credit crunch of August 2007, there was already talk of a ‘pensions crisis.' Final salary schemes (paying a guaranteed income on retirement) were being ditched by many employers. The demolition of these schemes has gathered pace.

It's no longer a question of the old schemes being closed to new members - often they are being closed completely, with accrued benefits being frozen. In their place, employers are offering so-called ‘defined contribution' schemes which mean workers build up a ‘pension pot' that can be exchanged for an annuity on reaching retirement age. Workers on these schemes are no longer guaranteed an income when they come to cash in their pension. Instead, the income received depends on the valuation of their pension pot which is largely dependent on the stock market. Cash it in at a time when the market is in free fall and your pension can be practically worthless.

Barclays Bank has already taken the plunge, proposing to close its current staff salary scheme to 18,000 members in favour of a less generous provision. Barclays is not alone. A recent report by Watson Wyatt, a consultancy firm, claims that "half of Britain's companies will close the schemes to existing members, while another 28 per cent will keep their scheme open to existing members but on less generous terms" (Daily Telegraph 17/8/9). These closures will affect over a million workers.

This has profound implications for the future of millions of workers, who will face penury in old age. And this is the perspective facing the ‘lucky ones' who have occupational pensions - over 22% of workers are planning to rely on the state pension in retirement and this number is set to rise to 27% within ten years (Observer 2/8/9).

How the bourgeoisie poses the problem

The bourgeoisie often claim this is because of an ‘ageing population' and due to the ratio of workers to old people going down. On the face of things, this appears to be ‘common sense'. Take, for example, a medieval peasant commune. With agricultural output per person rather limited, the number of producers needed to support the whole population is considerable. If the ratio of producers to consumers falls too low, not enough food would be produced and starvation would ensue.

Of course, capitalists don't like to mention things like starvation. And, in an epoch where overproduction is the real problem facing capitalist society, posing the difficulty in this way is obviously ludicrous. There's a contradiction: we have an abundance of objective resources, expressed in the overproduction of commodities - and yet, we have a lack of wealth, expressed in the terms of money and taxes. To pose the problem another way, we have an abundance of food and yet our pensioners are faced with not being able to afford to eat!

The problem confronting society today, then, is not the same problem that would have faced the hypothetical peasant village we visited earlier. The problem is not one of limited resources, or scarcity. The real problem that faces capitalism is not the production of goods but the production of profit.

No profit in old age

In capitalism's eyes, the sole purpose of the worker is to produce surplus value. When this is not possible (in periods of mass unemployment), the worker is surplus to requirements and is cast aside.

Similarly, when workers become too frail to work or are no longer able to adapt to modern production techniques, they are no longer a source of surplus value. They are utterly useless to capital and any resources diverted their way are a drain on capitalism's profits.

When retirement schemes were first introduced, life expectancy was much lower and the number of years of support for the old was quite limited. Often, there was nothing to pay out at all, because most workers would die before reaching retirement age: "in 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65-three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American" (Economist 5/6/9).

Today, life expectancy has risen from these low figures. In the UK, life expectancy at birth is now 79.1. The bourgeoisie now has to divert profits to support far more ‘useless mouths' for far longer.

As long as there is sufficient profit to be had, this isn't an insurmountable problem. But the last period of relatively smooth accumulation enjoyed by the profits-system was the post-war boom which came to an end in the late 60s. The re-appearance of crisis has thrown the entire policy of the welfare state into jeopardy. In the 70s, the bourgeoisie attempted to artificially raise consumption and actually increased the value of pensions. But once it realised that the crisis was here to stay, it began to cut back on superfluous expenditure. In the late 80s, the British state began to trim pension costs and reduced the value of state pensions, which have been in decline ever since.

Sunk by the crisis

When the credit crunch struck stock markets and other asset classes fell precipitously. This has had a drastic effect on the various pension schemes in Britain. 91% of final salary schemes are now in deficit ie they have insufficient assets to match their liabilities. The total pension deficit in March 09 was £219 billion (Telegraph 10/3/9) or 15% of GDP.

Parallel to this, the budget deficit has exploded as the state has attempted to rein in the worst effects of the crisis. The price for this intervention has been a massive increase in debt. "The combined effect of the financial crisis and recession has been to generate a deficit the likes of which has not been since the aftermath of the Second World War. Britain's total public sector net debt will be catapulted from a level of below 40pc last year to around 80pc or perhaps 100pc and beyond" (Telegraph 11/7/9). And pensions are now being explicitly targeted as part of the debt problem "The ageing of the population, in conjunction with the effect of imprudently generous pensions policies, means Britain's national debt could rise yet further to 200pc of GDP by 2050, according to S&P calculations"(ibid).

Lord Turner, the man behind the plan to raise the pension age to 68 by 2044, is now saying this won't go far enough. He is now suggesting that the pension age be raised to 70 by 2030 (Telegraph 3/7/9).

There is no question that - for capitalism - there is a real problem in supporting old age. But in terms of total expenditure of the economy, overall state expenditure on pensions and other pensioner benefits is only 6% of GDP. And what is the horrific projected figure of the future that is sending the bourgeoisie into palpitations? 6.8% of GDP by 2035, according to the Pensions Policy Institute!

No Future?

Despite all their efforts to persuade us that the profits system has a future, the bourgeoisie's real assessment is revealed starkly by the growing pensions crisis. In a very general way, the collapse of pensions provision symbolises the way that capitalism is more and more forced to mortgage the future in order to keep the system limping on in the present. It also shows that the potential for meaningful, permanent reforms has long been exhausted. The concessions granted in the post-war boom began to evaporate for the next generation entering work in the 70s. Most workers today face a frightening future ‘retirement': a life of poverty, where even the dreadful perspective of ‘work till you drop' will actually be a luxury for the lucky few in a world of ever-growing mass unemployment. A life punctuated by the misery of ill-health and families bankrupted by the need to provide nursing care for their aging relatives. For millions of families across the world, this future is already here. Over two million pensioners are officially regarded as living in poverty. For the generations that follow, the perspectives are even worse.

Communism offers a different perspective to humanity, one which turns the traditional bourgeois idea of retirement (in reality, brief relief from the exhaustion of wage-labour before you die) on its head. The new society will be an epoch of rest for all, where labour will be desired for the pleasure of the work itself, and where every individual will contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need.

But to reach this new society, the proletariat must first develop its struggles in defence of its interests. Only in this way can it develop its confidence in its strength and the future it has to offer humanity. Massive movements against the brutal attacks on pension provision will prove to be a vital part of this struggle, as was seen in France, Italy and Austria in 2003/4.

Ishamael 25/8/09

July and August saw a number of strikes and proposed strikes in the UK. Railworkers in East Anglia and the East Midlands, airport baggage handlers for Servisair and Swissport, postal workers in many places in the UK, rubbish collectors in Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Edinburgh, bus drivers in South Yorkshire, Wearside and Aberdeen, firefighters in Merseyside and South Yorkshire, tube workers in London, tram drivers in Nottingham, street cleaners in Glasgow and Liverpool, immigration officials, construction workers at various power stations throughout the country, lecturers at London University, teaching staff at colleges in Tower Hamlets and Swansea.

Looking at this extensive list you would think that industrial disputes would be the headline news in the UK. In reality you might struggle to know anything was happening at all. The media have given the strikes little or no publicity and the trade unions have kept disputes under tight control, ensuring that they are kept separate from each other as if each sector of the working class had entirely different interests. The methods of union containment, however, are fairly standard. Unions have held ballots and announced strike dates. Sometimes they have been called off at the eleventh hour or postponed due to ‘positive developments' in negotiations or to allow further negotiations. When the strikes have gone ahead they have been organised so that different workers in different areas of the country are on strike at different times. Strikes are announced for 24 hours or even just 2 hours (Aberdeen bus drivers).

The RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union) announced a ‘major victory' to end the London Underground dispute that had led to a 48 hour strike in June. Jobs were now secure, the union announced. A spokesman for Transport for London put a dampener on the RMT's claims. "It is not true that 1,000 jobs have been saved as the RMT claims. We have reduced the number of posts by 1,000. We have not given any guarantees about compulsory redundancies."(BBC 19/8/9).

The current situation is summed up most tellingly by the dispute in the post office. Postal workers have been amongst the most militant workers in recent years, often launching wildcat strikes and defying the so-called ‘anti-union laws' (actually designed to strengthen union control over the workforce). Over the summer the Communication Workers Union has been arranging a number of short term strikes over the issue of pay, conditions but above all job losses. These strikes have been organised on different days in different areas so that it is very hard to see any real dynamic in the strike movement. At the same time the CWU has been balloting for national strike action and has made it very clear that it is opposed to any unofficial action in the meantime - a position made necessary by the outbreak of a number of unofficial disputes up and down the country: for example at Wallasey, Stoke and Dundee. In a number of cases there have been strikes over management attempts to discipline workers, for example in Liverpool Sorting Office after managers tried to dock pay when workers refused to handle mail from Wallasey.

These small expressions of direct solidarity are important. We have seen it in other recent disputes as well: for example, in the strike at Tower Hamlets College, where the whole staff has been out on strike against cuts in staffing in the ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) sector, and where strikers have sent delegations to a number of workplaces in their locality as well as receiving visits from firefighters, teachers and others.

These examples of workers' solidarity and initiative, as well as the sheer number of strikes and the range of sectors involved, shows that despite the attacks that are increasing as a result of the economic crisis, many workers are still prepared to struggle. They are not being paralysed by fear and bullied into accepting ‘realistic' redundancies or pay cuts.

Certainly the vast majority of these actions, even when unofficial, are still taking place inside the trade union framework but this is inevitable given the historic weight of the trade unions in Britain. The growing need for workers to resist the onslaughts of capital, and to unite that resistance across sectional lines, will also compel them to call into question the divisions imposed by the trade unions.

Lif 1/9/9

"Gordon Brown has disappeared at moments of political crisis before..." (The Economist 5/9/9). After the release of al-Megrahi to die in Libya the PM waited 5 days before saying anything and then only to condemn the rapturous welcome he received on landing. Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill was left to take all the flak. Meanwhile more was leaking out about the discussion of the case in high level diplomacy with Libya, including Bill Rammell's assurance that the British government did not want him to die in a Scottish jail. They recognised that it would not be in the national interest, particularly in view of an oil contract. It all seems to be part of the PM's habit of dithering, exhibiting a lack of leadership at critical moments that has dogged the country since he took over in 2007.

Yet at the end of the same article, The Economist, which railed against letting this convicted terrorist go in the previous week, doesn't actually disagree that much with what he did: "Mr Brown has inherited the British-Libyan rapprochement... Even if he was happy for Mr Megrahi to be transferred... it is hard to be sure that the Conservatives would really have put principle over Libya's immense commercial and strategic value..." So what is all this campaign against the Brown government all about? It has certainly been sustained over issue after issue, such as the question of sleaze over MP's expenses. Just as under Major, all the sleaze scandals apply equally to both main parties, but the mud sticks to the government MP's and the opposition comes up smelling of roses and looking statesmanlike!

When he first took over as PM, Brown could do no wrong in the eyes of the media. Then he decided against an autumn election and was immediately labelled a ditherer, hardly fit for any kind of high office. Of course, the end of the sustained ‘growth' fuelled by government spending came to an end, and his legacy as chancellor was shown to be completely hollow, but that was not why the media changed their tune. Once he had taken the decision against an early election it was clear that his job was to see out the government's term and lose the next election, and in order to avoid any mistakes every half excuse is taken up to show the electorate, us, just how inadequate he is to govern. And there have been plenty of fiascos, such as all the ministerial resignations just before the Euro elections, showing a real loss of control within the governing party. The frequent changes of cabinet ministers, like rats leaving a sinking ship, are a definite weakness. But this is not the main reason the ruling class needs a change of government.

It is partly because democracy requires a sufficiently regular change of government to maintain its credibility while continuing to carry out the same basic policies home and abroad. In 1997 Labour's most believable promise, the one they definitely kept, was to follow the tight spending plans of the previous government, cuts and all. But at least they weren't the Tories, the hated Tories who in 18 years presided over a massive increase in unemployment (from one to 3 million until they changed the way of collecting statistics and put millions on incapacity benefit instead of the dole), the rundown of the steel and coal industries complete with the defeat of the miners' strike, cuts in health and so on. After more than a decade of Labour cuts in benefits, attacks on pensions, ‘reform' of health and education to improve ‘efficiency', ie more of the same attacks on the working class, simply not being the Tories won't win another election.

We also need to take account of the recession. With unemployment up to 2.4 million officially we are left in no doubt that worse is to come, even when the recession is technically over. A recent report suggested a cut of 10% of jobs in the NHS, when anyone working in it or using it as a patient might think it has been cut to the bone already. When bringing in all these attacks it will help the government to have an opposition that can pretend to talk in our name, not just as the electorate, but as the working class, to tell us that we should confine our resistance within the bounds of the trade unions and elections. Labour will be able to attempt that in opposition - once they have had a real electoral kicking. The Tories can't.

So what is Brown doing for the bourgeoisie? He's shoring up the banks and keeping the economy afloat with more debt, he's attacking the working class to make us pay for the recession, and last but not least he's the fall guy for the next election.

Alex 5/9/9

The release of al-Megrahi, like the Lockerbie bombing, like his trial, was a matter of high politics for imperialist powers, or - what amounts to much the same thing - low commercial interests for Britain. How could it have been anything else?

While terrorist murders have only increased in the last 21 years, what remains unique about Lockerbie is the rapprochement between Libya and the West following the atrocity. The FBI, with Scottish police as their junior partner, named al-Megrahi and another Libyan intelligence agent as suspects, and more than 10 years and much diplomacy later they were handed over for trial. This, plus payment of compensation for the victims and admission of "responsibility for the actions of its officials" earned Libya improved international relations, lifting of sanctions and immunity from compensation lawsuits.

Allowing for all the legal niceties, his future, the fact that it would be against British national interests if he were specifically excluded from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, and disastrous for commercial interests if he died in a Scottish jail, were the subject of discussions at diplomatic meetings at the highest level.

For all the condemnation of the decision to release the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, there has been no concern shown for the bereaved relatives. Some undoubtedly feel - and have been any number of politicians ready to make political capital out of this - that they have been let down by his release.

The 20th anniversary of the airline bombing last December, as well as the release of al-Megrahi, was the occasion for many reminders of this horrific terrorist attack that killed 270 people, including 11 on the ground. None of this has reminded us of some of the more disturbing background elements, such as the fact that there had been a warning in Helsinki shortly beforehand, and that those in the know were avoiding Pan Am flights, withempty seats being sold dirt cheap.

Nor is the media ever likely to make an analysis of the extent to which terrorism has become a weapon in conflicts between imperialist powers, particularly since the latter decades of the 20th Century. We have only to look at the origins of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to draw out some of the clearest examples. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan the USA and its allies in the western bloc armed the Mujahadin groups, including al-Qaida, and these groups have since returned to haunt them - freedom fighters when on USA and Britain's side, terrorists when they turn against their former masters. Of course states have always used the terror of their military hardware against civilian populations to defend the national interest, particularly since aerial bombing became an essential part of warfare in the Second World War. This has since been repeated in every war, including Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. And they have also been perfectly willing to welcome former terrorists as statesmen, leaders and prime ministers when they become powerful enough: from the ANC in South Africa, Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, to former leaders of the Irgun in Israel...

Today however states are more willing than ever to manipulate shadowy terrorist groups in order to carry out terrorist attacks against the citizens of a rival power. Lockerbie is only one example, attributed to and grudgingly admitted by Libya. But even when terrorist outrages are not directly commissioned by one state in its conflicts with another, the ruling class has no hesitation in making maximum propaganda use of terrorist attacks against its own citizens, even to the point of complicity with the terrorists. There have been strong suspicions that the FSB, the Russian state agency that succeeded the KGB, was involved in the 1999 Moscow bombings, blamed on Chechen terrorists and used to justify Russia's subsequent invasion of Chechnya. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks in the USA provided the pretext for an assault on Afghanistan that had already been planned. Again, there is reason to suspect that the US was prepared to allow al-Qaida considerable leeway in preparing some kind of attack on American soil.

For our rulers, terror, terrorism and campaigns denouncing mass murder are a question of pragmatism and hypocrisy, not principle.

Alex 5/9/9

Since the collapse of the Stalinist regimes andthe eastern bloc, the organisations of official anarchism have prided themselveson keeping their hands clean in the confrontation of the east and western blocsfrom 1945 to 1989 and fostered the legend of an unshakeable opposition to themilitary blocs: "The anarchists vary on the problems of the blocs. Themajority decided to oppose both east and west..."[1].

Anarchism faced with imperialist blocs

In reality, during the Cold War after1945, some of the anarchist organisations officially took a position in favourof the defence of the ‘free world', such as the SAC (Sveriges ArbetaresCentralorganisation) in Sweden. At the time of the direct confrontation betweenthe armed forces of the eastern bloc and the American and UNO forces in Korea,1950-53, some, like members of the Révolution Prolétarienne group, in the nameof choosing the ‘lesser evil' and the defence of democracy, took an openlypro-American position. This was the case with A. Prudommeaux, N. Lazarevitch,and G. Leval but also of Spanish and Bulgarian militants: "There are twoimperialisms but I know of one that's particularly dangerous and totalitarianwith slavery as the key. The other is a lesser danger... I am not for thewithdrawal of American troops from Korea... In Korea, I only see one warcriminal and that is Stalin. He is directly responsible for the strategicbombardments that are decimating the Korean population..."[2] Conversely, others brandedAmerican imperialism as the principal warmonger.

For those anarchists, such as the FédérationAnarchiste, who said they rejected all the camps involved and had the slogan "againstStalin, without being for Truman, against Truman without being for Stalin",they didn't at all act like internationalists and they didn't escape the logicof choosing one imperialist camp against the other. Thus, when the USSRlaunched itself into the arms race to keep up with the Americans, the ‘combatfor the 3rd front' "led the FA to denounce German rearmament by supportingthe pacifists of this country and participating in the ‘Ridgeway[3]Go Home' campaign[4]"animated by the PCF. Through the critical endorsement that it gave to thiscampaign, the FA acted as a tail-end to the PCF; it fulfilled the function ofrallying workers behind the PCF and into the unconditional defence of theRussian imperialist bloc!

On the other hand, provocative protestactions played the same role in touting for bourgeois state institutions: the‘really anti-imperialist' struggle of the ‘3rd revolutionary front' put forwardby the FA was concretised at the time of the legislative elections of 1951 "infavour of voting lists being drawn up: No eastern dictatorship, no westerndictatorship, I want peace"[5], or else by undertakingspectacular stunts, such as the trespass in 1952 "in the great room of thePalais de Chaillot where a plenary session of the UN  was taking place. A number of leafletsentitled ‘3rd Front, Down with War' was thrown into the room and the Americanand Russian delegates were met with inoffensive projectiles."[6]

Far from helping the working class tostrengthen itself politically, this type of action, while seemingly innocuous,serves to maintain the illusion in the working class that such methods could bea step towards the revolutionary confrontation. On the contrary, it onlyreinforces the submission of the working class to democratic mystifications.

Meanwhile the Fédération CommunisteLibertaire presented candidates to the legislative elections of 1956! At thetime of the liquidation of the 4th Republic and the summons of De Gaulle topower in 1958 in order to settle the colonial problem, "there was agreementin all the appeals in the libertarian press to save the threatened Republic(...) The great majority of anarchists chose the Republic and the politics ofthe lesser evil..."[7] In April 1961, faced withthe putsch in Algiers by generals who opposed Algerian independence, "the FAparticipated in different committees regrouping several organisations of theleft (...) the anarchists were among the first to defend democratic liberties,and this despite subsequent denials."[8]

Above all, the constant support given toso-called national liberation struggles concretised the choice of oneimperialist camp against another. In the words of the FA: "Anarchists demandfor the overseas population the right to liberty, to work in independence, theright of their own destiny outside of the rivalries now tearing the worldapart; they assure them of their solidarity in the struggle that they mustundertake against the oppression of all the imperialisms..."[9] The anarchists thus tooktheir place among the best servants of the mystification of the right of peopleto self-determination. They found themselves in unison with the officialideology of each of the blocs, as much the Zhdanov doctrine of the eastern blocwhich affirmed itself as "the real defender of liberty and independence ofall nations, an adversary of national oppression and colonial exploitation inall its forms"[10], as well as the Americandoctrine that stipulated "in these key zones everything must be done toencourage democratic forms and access to their independence". Thesetheories were developed so that one bloc could militarily destabilise the otherin the merciless imperialist wars between the Soviet and Western blocs.

Thus, the French anarchistsmisrepresented the war in Indo-China as a "revolutionary episode" (FA in1952) where one could see a "class war" (FCL in 1954) and proclaimed thelegitimacy of "the struggle of the Indochinese proletariat" and thenecessity for "workers' solidarity with the Viet-Minh".

This political support for nationalliberation struggles even went as far as physical involvement. During the warin Algeria, numerous libertarians joined the ‘bag carriers', the network ofsupport for the FLN[11]. "The position ofcritical support in favour of a socialist and self-managed Algeria" of theFCL in the name of solidarity "with oppressed peoples, against imperialism"was concretised in material, active support to the Algerian nationalist partiesof the MNA, then of the FLN when the latter became all-powerful after 1956. "TheMaquis of the ALN (Army of National Liberation) divide themselves upbetween the two authorities. We know this because we have amongst us, in theFCL, Algerian comrades of the FLN tendency; but we have provided services tothe MNA maquis by playing the role of intermediaries in order to obtain‘supplies' (ie, arms) for their combatants."[12]

These positions of the anarchists infavour of national liberation struggles, however critical, directly served toensure the submission of the masses to imperialism. Anarchism bears a heavypart of the responsibility for subjecting the proletariat and the exploitedclasses to the barbarity of the military conflicts that have covered the planetwith blood. A prisoner of the logic of establishing a distinction between thedifferent imperialist gangsters (in the name of the rights of the weakest) isthe common trait of the whole thieves' kitchen of official anarchism and itdirectly turned anarchists into recruiting agents for imperialist war. Decadesof spreading these mystifications, to which anarchists had systematically contributed,greatly delayed the proletariat from emerging from the counter-revolutionfighting for its own objectives.

In fact, the official anarchist currentsthat dominated the anarchist movement after the Second World War up until theend of the counter-revolution, and even afterwards, helped to sterilise thegrowing reflection about the ‘communist' reality of the Stalinist regimes.These currents made use of a sentiment of revulsion towards the hideous lieabout ‘communism' in the eastern countries, and turned it towards ideas like anti-militarismand pacifism. Instead of contributing to the development of a historicalunderstanding of class relations, these currents encouraged the development ofindividualist, activist and immediatist responses. Many of those who rejectedthe Stalinist ‘model' were thus steered towards the defence of democracy, andthus towards the defence of the other imperialist camp.

The end of the counter-revolution

However, after 1968, with the end of thecounter-revolution and the return of the proletariat to the scene of history,we saw the reappearance of a phenomenon that had already been seen in otherhistorical moments: politicised elements who were really trying to find arevolutionary direction on the basis of anarchism

The development in the United States andthe western countries of the student revolts of the 60s, taking as their keytheme the opposition to the US war in Vietnam, indicated that the ideologicalweight of Stalinism was beginning to crack. In fact the official Stalinistparties had little influence on these movements when they denounced USintervention in Vietnam against the military forces supported by the so-calledanti-capitalist Soviet bloc. Above all, the lie of a ‘communist andrevolutionary' Stalinism broke up with the outbreak of struggle of a newgeneration of young workers in the general strike of 1968 in France and thenvarious massive working class movements throughout the world. It was the end ofthe counter-revolution and the idea of a communist revolution was back on theagenda.

Through their anti-Stalinism, theanarchist organisations, especially after the repression of the movement inHungary 1956, exercised a certain attraction, essentially among students. Whilethey strengthened themselves numerically, the old existing organisations didnot really satisfy the new generation, who saw them as sclerotic. The whole ofthe milieu recomposed itself.[13]

In the heat of the resurgentinternational class struggle, there were within the anarchist milieu minoritiesand elements looking for class positions, and trying to obtain a revolutionarycoherence from anarchism. Thus a part of the new, libertarian milieu opened upto organisations that had developed certain class positions (Socialisme ouBarbarie), or even to the proletarian political milieu, in particular itsorganised councilist pole, embodied in Informations et CorrespondancesOuvrieres. In this way, the group Noir et Rouge for example, demarcated itselffrom the FA and, recognising "the primacy of the class struggle",proposed "bringing anarchism up to date and an adaptation of anarchistprinciples." The group affirmed the necessity for debate and defended "contactwith other comrades who do not necessarily claim to be anarchist". Itdenounced the kind of sanctification of the "Spanish revolution" that "forbadeall criticism".[14] In its quest for genuinelyworking class forms of struggle, the group turned towards the politicalcontribution of the German-Dutch communist left and of Pannekoek. Itparticipated in the international meeting organised by ICO in Brussels in 1969along with Paul Mattick, an old militant of the German Communist Left andémigré to the United States, and Cajo Brendel, the animator of the Dutchcouncilist group Daad en Gedacht.

This decantation of the anarchist milieuaround the methods of proletarian class struggle was politically veryimportant, but it was limited in its scope. In effect, since this decantationtook place around the organised councilist pole of the proletarian milieu,which weakened and disappeared in the 1970s, the group Noir et Rouge wasdragged into this shipwreck and dissolved itself in the crush, bringing aboutan important waste of militant energies. The general context of the period,with its widespread illusions in the possibility for the capitalist system tofind its way out of its economic crisis, as well as the difficulties of theproletariat in politicising its combat, in affirming the perspective ofrevolution, was exploited to the hilt by leftists of all types in order toblock any emerging revolutionary consciousness.

However, a small part of these newelements coming from anarchism did trace out a path towards a new proletarianpolitical milieu that had been reborn with the return of the proletariat ontothe scene of history.

Scott 31/8/9.

see also

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 1): Anarchists faced with the First World War [219]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War [197]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 4): Internationalism, a crucial question in today's debates [199]

---

[1] Afterwordby M. Zemliak to the book of Max Nettlau, History of Anarchy, Artefact,p.279.

[2] Letter ofS. Ninn 24.08.50, cited by G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme (The OtherCommunism), Acritie, p.134.

[3] When the Commander-in-Chief of NATO forces, Ridgeway, cameto France in May 1952, the French Communist Party led its troops in fighting inthe streets against formidable police forces, resulting in one worker's deathand 17 wounded.

[4] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.149.

[5] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.134.

[6] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.149.

[7] Sylvain Boulouque, The French anarchists faced withcolonial war (1945-1962), Atelier de Creation Libertaire, p.61.

[8] Ibid, p.65.

[9] Resolution of the Congress of the FA, October 1945, onincrevablesanarchistes.org.

[10] Joukov, Crisis and the colonial system, Moscow, 1949.

[11] As Alternative Libertaire claimed: "One very oftenforgets that the network of ‘bag carriers' who supported Algerian independenceduring the war didn't begin their existence in 1957 with the action of P.Jeanson, then H. Curiel. After the Toussaint insurrection in 1954 in fact, theonly organisations supporting Algerian independence were situated on theextreme left - the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI-Trotksyist) and theFCL. In Algeria itself, the Mouvement Libertaire Nord-Africain (MLNA), linkedto the FCL, joined the struggle against the French state, for the independenceof the country, from Toussaient 1954. The French police liquidated the MLNAthen the FCL between 1956 and 1957. The libertarians nevertheless pursued thestruggle against colonialism within the Groupes Anarchistes d'ActionRévolutionnaires (GAAR) or, for the survivors of the FCL, within the VoieCommuniste."

[12] G. Fontenis, L'Autre Communisme, p.209.

[13] For example, in 1965, in Italy, the Anarchist InitiativeGroups left the FAI: the youth of the north of Italy detached themselves fromthe FAGI to constitute the Federated Anarchist Groups. In France,l'Organisation Révolutionanaire Anarchiste separated from the FA in 1970 inorder to approach extreme left, non-libertarian organisations. It later becamel'Organisation Communiste Libertaire.

[14] Quotes in Cedric Guerin, Pensee et action de anarchists enFrance: 1950-1970, raforum.apinc.org.

One of the most significant outbreaks of class struggle in South Korea for many years, the occupation of the Ssangyong car plant in Pyeongtaek near Seoul, ended at the beginning of August.

Having held the factory for 77 days in the face of siege conditions where they were denied food, water, gas and electricity, and had to resist repeated onslaughts by the police backed by a small army of company goons and strikebreakers, the workers were compelled to abandon the occupation with many of their key demands unmet, and were immediately subjected to a wave of repression in the form of arrests, interrogations and possible crippling fines.

The South Korean economy never really recovered from the crash-landing of the ‘Tigers and Dragon' in 1997 - a precursor of today's ‘credit crunch'. With the global car industry in deep trouble, the Ssangyong Motor Company, which is now controlled by a Chinese motor conglomerate, has been gradually reducing the workforce and came up with a plan to offer the plant as collateral in order to secure the loans it needed to emerge from bankruptcy. This plan involved many more lay-offs - 1700 workers forced into early retirement and the firing of 300 casual workers - and a transfer of technology to China with the eventual aim of wholesale outsourcing to the cheaper labour markets available in Korea's powerful neighbour.

The strike and plant occupation, which began in earnest on 22 May, raised the demand for no lay-offs, no casualisation and no outsourcing. Throughout the occupation, the thousand or so workers holding the plant have shown exemplary courage and ingenuity in defending themselves against police forces equipped with helicopters, tear gas, stun guns and other military hardware. This resistance required not only the making of improvised weapons (metal pipes, molotovs, slingshots) but also planning and tactical sense - for example, they responded to overwhelming force by retreating to the paint department, calculating (correctly) that the flammable materials there would dissuade the police from using tear gas canisters, especially in the wake of a recent tragedy in Seoul when five people died in a fire set off during a clash with the police.

These activities required initiative and self-organisation. It appears that the workers were organised into 50 or 60 groups with ten members each, each of these groups electing a delegate to coordinate action.

The occupation also inspired solidarity actions from other workers, many of whom face the same uncertain future. Workers from the nearby Kia automobile plant were particularly active, with hundreds of workers coming to the factory to defend it against concerted police attack. Attempts to reach the factory gates and provide food and supplies to the occupiers were met with the same brutal violence as that doled out to the workers inside. There is no doubt that the occupation had considerable support throughout the Korean working class - a fact reflected in the national trade union federation, the KCTU, calling a two day general strike and a national solidarity rally in late July.

Behind the defeat

But although some of the original measures proposed by the bosses were rescinded at the end of the strike, the occupation ended in defeat. Workers emerged from the occupation battered and bruised, some seriously injured, and with a small spate of suicides among employees or their families.

"In the final negotiations, the local union president agreed to early retirement (i.e. layoff with severance pay) for 52% of the occupiers, with 48% furlough for one year without pay, after which they will be rehired, economic conditions permitting. The company will also pay a 550,000 won monthly subsidy for one year to some workers transferred to sales positions.

In the ensuing days, insult was piled on injury with detention and pending indictments of scores of workers, and a 500,000,000 won ($45,000,000 US) lawsuit by the company against the KMWU. As indicated, further individual lawsuits, possible under Korean labor law which have left striking workers destitute in the past, may follow. The company claims 316 billion won ($258.6 million) damages and about 14,600 vehicles in lost production due to the strike"[1].

What this defeat demonstrates above all is that no matter how well you organise to defend an occupied factory, if the struggle doesn't spread, it will be ground down in the vast majority of cases. The central need of any group of workers faced with redundancies is to go to other workers, other plants and offices, and explain the necessity for common action, so as to build up a balance of forces that can compel the bosses and the state to step back. The active solidarity shown by the Kia and other workers outside the factory gates shows that this is not utopian, but the emphasis needs to be on extension rather than simply resisting police attacks on an occupied plant, however necessary the latter may be. Workers reflecting on this defeat have to pose the question: why weren't these real expressions of solidarity translated into a direct extension of the struggle, to Kia and other workplaces? More than this: those militant minorities who find themselves questioning the strategy of the unions need to get together in groups or committees in order to push for the extension and independent organisation of the struggle.

For us, the key here is that the problem of extension was taken in hand by the unions, whose ‘general strikes' were part of a well-worn ritual - symbolic actions that were not at all aimed at mobilising large numbers of workers even to demonstrate support for the Ssangyong occupation, let alone widen the struggle with their own demands. Within the plant, the union (the KMWU) seems to have maintained an overall control of the situation. Loren Goldner, who was in Korea when the struggle began and paid a visit to the plant, recounts his discussion with one worker participating in the occupation:"I spoke to one activist participating in the occupation and critical of the role of the union. In his view, the KMWU remained in control of the strike. However, in contrast to role of the unions in the Visteon struggle in the UK and in the dismantling of the US auto industry, the KMWU supported the illegal actions of seizing the plant and preparing for its armed defense. On the other hand, in negotiations with the company, it concentrated on the demand for no layoffs and soft-pedaled the demands for job security for all and against out-sourcing".

The extension of the struggle cannot be left in the hand of the trade unions - it can only be effectively carried out by the workers themselves. When the unions support illegal actions and when their local representatives participate in a struggle, it does not prove that the unions can sometimes be on the side of the struggle. At best it shows that lower union officials, as in the case of the KMWU local president, are often also workers and can still act as workers; but at worst it serves to maintain the illusion that unions, at least on the local level, are still fighting organisations of the proletariat.

Goldner draws the following conclusions from the defeat:

"The Ssangyong defeat cannot be attributed merely to the lame role of the KMWU national organization, which from the beginning allowed the negotiations to be channeled in a narrow focus on ‘no layoffs'...Nor can the defeat be fully explained by the atmosphere of economic crisis. Both of these factors undoubtedly played a major role. But above and beyond their undeniable impact, it is the year-in, year-out rollback of the Korean working class, above all through casualisation, which now affects more than 50% of the work force. Thousands of workers from nearby plant did repeatedly aid the Ssangyong strike, but it was not enough. The defeat of the Ssangyong strikers, despite their heroism and tenacity, will only deepen the reigning demoralization until a strategy is developed that can mobilize sufficiently broad layers of support, not merely to fight these defensive battles but to go on the offensive".

We would certainly agree that the atmosphere of economic crisis can and does have a paralysing effect for many workers, who can see that the strike weapon is often ineffective when the plant is closing anyway, and who have seen so many occupations against closures being strangled after a lengthy siege. The process of casualisation also plays a part in atomising the workforce, although we don't think it is the decisive factor and certainly does not only apply to Korea. In any case, it is itself an aspect of the crisis, one of the many measures the bosses use to reduce labour costs and disperse resistance.

Ultimately, Goldner is right to say that the workers will have to go on the offensive - ie, launch into mass strikes that take on the goal of overthrowing capitalism - but it is precisely the dawning realisation of the magnitude of the task that, in an initial period, can also make workers hesitate to engage in any struggle at all.

One thing is certain: the passage from defensive to offensive struggles cannot be posed in Korea alone. It can only be the result of an international maturation of class struggle, and in this sense, the defeat at Ssangyong, and the lessons to be drawn from it, can make a real contribution to this process.

Amos 1/9/9.

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[1] From the detailed balance sheet of the strike written by Loren Goldner on libcom.org.

 

On 20 July, a couple of dozen young workers at the Vestas wind-turbine factory on the Isle of Wight occupied their factory after the management had decided to close it with the loss of over 500 jobs, with about another hundred going on the mainland.

This action occurred outside the framework of a trade union; indeed the mainly young workforce were for the most part not in a union. By their action they demonstrated combativity and a degree of self-organisation that is a characteristic of workers facing factory closures and unemployment.

Some three weeks after the occupation was started, the fight was lost. This was in the face of a combination of trade unionists, leftists and environmentalists - all using the actions of this relatively naive workforce for their own agendas and ends.

For the company, producing these particular turbines is unprofitable in Britain; therefore, through the logic of capitalism, the factory has to close. Ed Milliband, Secretary of State for climate change and energy, was clear about Vestas: if they can't make a profit then they close. Obviously, such considerations don't apply to industries essential to the war economy, BAe for example, which continue to receive massive state subsidies.

A surfeit of friends

At the announcement of the Vestas closure, all sorts of activists descended on the Isle of Wight. Whatever their subjective intentions, the majority contributed to the isolation of the struggle and its incorporation into campaigns about nationalisation and climate change.

Workers were worried about their jobs and also about the state of the planet. The activist invasion, full of self-appointed ‘organisers' of workers, could only undermine the potential of the struggle. Calls for nationalisation amount to asking for one boss to be replaced by another. The idea that capitalism can be reformed so that the very real threat to the planet could be removed is laughable. Protests at Peter Mandelson's house got publicity but didn't advance the struggle an inch. On the contrary such stunts detracted from the potential of the struggle to extend to other workers.

That's not to dismiss everyone who went to the Vestas plant. There were genuine expressions of solidarity from individuals and other workers going to the plant. Jason Cortez, a Solidarity Federation member who writes on Libcom, was one, and some of his observations were very useful for grasping what went on inside and outside the factory.

But it wasn't just the left-wing and green activists that sabotaged this fight: the RMT trade union also parachuted in its troops, initially in an inter-union dispute with Unite (that had some minimal influence in the factory) and then to try and take over the struggle and use it in publicity for an RMT recruitment drive.

Jason Cortez talked of the union, after initially seeming to impulse the fight, taking over inside the factory, first of all restricting meetings to the workers and union officials and excluding family, the community and other elements expressing solidarity. In this way it cut off a wider discussion that had to confront the need to go to other workers. He noted that the factory next door, itself threatened with closure, an obvious target for solidarity, was largely ignored.

At the ignominious end of the strike, the RMT union arranged a ‘tour' of the mainland, dragging selected strikers and their families around the country for more publicity for the union as well as generalising the ‘green' campaigns of the bourgeoisie; the trade union and green circuses combined under one Big Top. These youngsters started a struggle that was hijacked more or less from the beginning and ended up with some of the workers acting as pawns in a union recruitment campaign.

As for the question of the environment, the government's claim to be creating half-a-million green jobs is a lie. The sum they have put up for investment in the offshore wind manufacturing industry is £180 million, with the usual large chunk going in consultancies. Some capitalists will make money and employ some workers within this industry. But even in the most optimistic scenario, both for Milliband's plans (like Obama's in the US), ‘green' jobs will not even begin to replace the millions of jobs that are gone and going. These new jobs will be a drop in the ocean and will not contribute to the alleviation of working class conditions which can only worsen. This industry needs massive investment, most of which is not forthcoming; and where it is, the state capitalist measures needed to promote green technology, the subsidies involved, will be paid for by higher prices and higher taxes - further attacks on workers living standards.

Day of action after the end of the struggle

While the Vestas struggle is over the campaigns of the leftists continue. For example, Socialist Worker (5/9/9) says that "One Sky TV report on the Vestas occupation said, ‘There is a real fear in some quarters that occupations like Vestas are becoming a new form of industrial relations.'" If workers' struggles are stuck in individual plants then the ruling class has nothing to fear. In the struggle against closures workers will often start their fight by occupying their workplace. This can be an excellent basis for a struggle, as a place for holding meetings and as a springboard for the extension of the struggles to other workers.

The ‘day of action' planned by political parties, green campaigners, trade union and other activists for 17 September looks like it could be a celebration of the isolation and defeat of the Vestas workers, when their initial struggle showed workers' self-organisation against the attacks of the capitalist class.

B&C 4/9/9

At the end of May, the ICC held its 18th international congress. As we have always done, and as is the tradition in the workers' movement, we are presenting readers with the main elements of this congress, since they are not just internal matters but concern the working class as a whole. A fuller version of this report can be found on our website and in International Review [241] 138.

The resolution on the ICC's activities adopted by the congress says:

"The acceleration of the historic situation, unprecedented in the history of the workers' movement, is characterised by the conjunction of the two following aspects:

· the extension of the most serious open economic crisis in the history of capitalism, combined with the exacerbation of inter-imperialist tensions and, since 2003, a slow but progressive advance in the depth and extension of maturation within the working class;

· and the development of an internationalist milieu, which is particularly obvious in the countries at the periphery of capitalism.

This acceleration takes the political responsibility of the ICC to a new level, making the highest demands in terms of theoretical/political analysis and intervention in the class struggle, and work towards the searching elements."

The balance sheet that we can draw from the 18th international congress of our organisation must therefore be based on its capacity to live up to these responsibilities.

For a really serious communist organisation, it is always a delicate thing to proclaim that this or that aspect of its activities have been a success. For several reasons.

In the first place, because the capacity of an organisation that struggles for the communist revolution to be up to its responsibilities can't be judged in the short term but only in the long term. Its role, while always anchored in the historical reality of its day, for the most part consists not so much of influencing this immediate reality, at least not on a large scale, but of preparing for the events of the future.

In the second place, because for the members of such an organisation there is always the danger of painting too rosy a picture, or being excessively indulgent towards the weakness of a collective body to which they have devoted so much energy and which they have the permanent duty of defending from the attacks levelled at it by all the defenders of capitalist society, open or disguised.

Conscious of the danger of these kinds of illusions, and with the prudence that necessarily goes along with this, we can still affirm without fear that the 18th Congress of the ICC was indeed up to the responsibilities announced above, and created the conditions for us to continue in the right direction.

We can't go into all the reasons supporting this affirmation here. We will only underline the most important ones:

• the fact that the congress began its work by ratifying the integration of two new sections in the Philippines and Turkey;
• the presence at the congress of four groups of the internationalist milieu;
• the open attitude towards the outside, which was illustrated in particular by the presence of these groups;
• the willingness of the congress to look lucidly at the difficulties and weaknesses which our organisation has to surmount;
• the fraternal and enthusiastic ambiance in which the congress did its work.

The integration of two new territorial sections

Our press has already given an account of the integration of the new ICC sections in the Philippines and Turkey (the responsibility of the congress was to validate the decision to integrate them taken by our central organ at the beginning of 2009)[1]. As we wrote then: "The integration of these two new sections into our organisation thus considerably broadens the ICC's geographical extension." We also made two points about these integrations:

• they are not the result of a hurried ‘recruitment' which is the fashion among the Trotskyists and even, unfortunately, among certain groups of the proletarian camp, but, as is the practice of the ICC, are the result of a whole work of discussion over several years with the comrades of the EKS in Turkey and Internasyonalismo in the Philippines;
• they are a clear refutation of the accusations of ‘Eurocentrism' often thrown at our organisation.

The integration of two new sections is not something that happens frequently for our organisation. The last integration of a new section took place in 1995 with the section in Switzerland. This is why the arrival of these two sections (which took place shortly after the constitution of a nucleus in Brazil in 2007) was felt to be very important and positive by all the militants of the ICC. It confirms both the analysis our organisation has been putting forward for several years with regard to the potential contained in the development of class consciousness in the current historic situation, and the validity of the policies we have adopted towards the groups and elements moving towards revolutionary positions. And this was all the more the case in that delegations from four groups of the internationalist milieu were present at the congress.

The presence of internationalist groups

In the balance sheet we drew up for our previous international congress, we underlined the importance of the presence, for the first time in decades, of four groups from the internationalist milieu, from Brazil, Korea, the Philippines and Turkey. This time again there were also four groups present. But this wasn't a simple rerun since two of the groups who had been at the previous congress have since become sections of the ICC, and we now had the pleasure of welcoming two new groups: a second group from Korea and a group from Central America (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), the LECO (Liga por la Emancipacion de la Clase Obrera), which had taken part at the ‘meeting of internationalist communists' in Latin America, called on the initiative of the ICC and the OPOP, the internationalist group from Brazil with whom we have maintained fraternal and very positive relations for a number of years[2]. This group was again present at our congress. Other groups who took part in the meeting in Latin America were also invited to our congress but were not able to send delegates because Europe is now more and more becoming a fortress against people not born in the very narrow circle of the ‘rich countries'.

The presence of groups of the internationalist milieu was a very important element in the success of the congress and in particular in the ambience in which the discussions took place. These comrades showed a good deal of warmth towards the militants of our organisation and raised a number of questions, notably with regard to the economic crisis, in ways which we are not so familiar with in our own debates, something which could only help to stimulate reflection within our organisation.

Finally, the presence of these comrades was an added element in the whole process of opening out which the ICC has taken up as one of its key objectives over the last few years - opening both towards other proletarian groups and towards individual elements moving towards communist positions. In particular, when you have people from outside the organisation present at a meeting, it is very difficult to fall into the trap of reassuring ourselves with nice stories. This opening out also manifests itself in our reflections and preoccupations, notably with regard to research and discovery in the realm of science[3]. This was made concrete by the fact that a member of the scientific community was invited to one of the sessions of the congress.

The invitation to a scientist

To celebrate ‘Darwin Year' in our own way, and to give voice to the development within the ICC of a growing interest in scientific questions, we asked a researcher who specialises in the evolution of language (the author of a book entitled Why we talk: the evolutionary origins of language, published by OUP) to make a presentation of his work to the congress, which are obviously based on a Darwinian approach. The original reflections of Jean-Louis Desalles[4] on language, its role in the development of social ties and of solidarity in the human species are connected to the discussions we have been having in the ICC, and which are still going on, on the subject of ethics and the culture of debate. The presentation by this researcher was followed by a debate which we had to limit in time because of the constraints of the agenda, but which could have gone on for hours since the questions raised evoked a passionate interest on the part of the comrades present.

We would like to thank Jean-Louis Dessalles who, while not sharing our political ideas, very cordially agreed to give up some of his time to enriching reflection inside our organisation. We also want to welcome the very warm and convivial responses which he made to the questions and objections raised by ICC militants.

The discussion on the international situation

The work of the congress examined the classic points always treated by our international congresses:

• the analysis of the international situation;
• the activities and life of our organisation.

The resolution on the international situation which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review is a sort of synthesis of the discussions at the congress about the present state of the world. Obviously it cannot take into account all the aspects looked at in these discussions (either at the congress or in the preparatory reports). It has three main aims:

• to understand the real causes and stakes of the present, unprecedented aggravation of the economic crisis of the capitalist system in the face of all the mystifications which are put about by the system's defenders;
• to understand the real impact on imperialist conflicts of the accession of the Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency of the world's leading power, since this is being presented as a new element in these conflicts and a hope that they can be attenuated;
• to draw out the perspectives for the class struggle, notably in the conditions created by the brutal attacks which the proletariat is facing as a result of the violence of the economic crisis.

On the first aspect, understanding what's at stake in the present crisis of capitalism, we need to underline the following aspects:

"The present crisis is the most serious the system has been through since the great depression which began in 1929...Thus, it is not the financial crisis which is at the origin of the current recession. On the contrary, the financial crisis merely illustrates the fact that the flight into debt, which made it possible to overcome overproduction, could not carry on indefinitely... In reality, even though the capitalist system is not going to collapse like pack of cards, the perspective is one of sinking deeper and deeper into a historical impasse, of plunging more and more into the convulsions that affect it today".

Regarding the ‘new element' provided by the election of Obama, the resolution replies very clearly that:

"the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama to the head of the world's leading power is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up till now: continuing confrontations between powers of the first or second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences (famines, epidemics, massive displacements) for the populations living in the disputed areas".

Finally, with regards to the perspective for the class struggle, the resolution, like the debates at the congress, tried to evaluate the impact of the brutal aggravation of the crisis:

"The considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism today obviously represents a very important element in the development of workers' struggles... Thus the conditions are maturing for the idea of overthrowing this system to develop on a significant scale within the proletariat. However, it is not enough for the working class to perceive that the capitalist system is at a dead-end, that it has to give way to another society, for it to be able to take up a revolutionary perspective. It also needs to have the conviction that such a perspective is possible and that it has the strength to carry it out...For consciousness of the possibility of the communist revolution to gain a significant echo within the working class, the latter has to gain confidence in its own strength, and this takes place through the development of massive struggles. The huge attacks which it is now facing on an international scale provides the objective basis for such struggles".

Concerning the activities and life of the organisation, the congress drew up a positive balance sheet for the preceding period despite a number of weaknesses:

"The balance sheet of the last two years' activities shows the political vitality of the ICC, its capacity to be in phase with the historic situation, to be open and to be an active factor in the development of class consciousness, its will to involve itself in initiatives for common work with other revolutionaries... On the level of the organisation's internal life the balance sheet of the activities is also positive, despite the real difficulties which exist mainly at the organisational level and, to a lesser extent, on the level of centralisation" (Resolution on activities).

It is with the aim of overcoming these difficulties that the congress discussed a more general text on the question of centralisation. This discussion, while being useful to the ‘old guard' of our organisation in reaffirming the communist conception of this question and making it more precise, was particularly important for the new comrades and sections which have recently joined the ICC.

One of the significant aspects of the 18th congress was the presence, noted by the ‘old' comrades with a certain surprise, of a number of ‘new faces', among which the younger generation was particularly well represented.

Enthusiasm for the future

The presence of a good number of young people at the congress was a factor making for dynamism and enthusiasm. Contrary to the bourgeois media, the ICC does not indulge in a the cult of youth, but the arrival of a new generation to our organisation - along with the fact that most of the delegates from the other participating groups were also young  - is extremely important for the perspective of the proletarian revolution. Like icebergs, they are the emerging tip of a deep process of developing consciousness inside the world working class. At the same time this makes it possible for bringing reinforcements to the existing communist forces.

Even if the ‘old' militants of the ICC retain all their commitment and dedication, it's this new generation which will be called upon to make a decisive contribution to the revolutionary struggles of the future.   

ICC 12/7/9.

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[1] See "Welcome to the new ICC sections in Philippines and Turkey", ICC online and World Revolution 322.

 

[2] See the article about this meeting on our website and in World Revolution 324.

 

[3] As we have already shown in the various articles we have published online recently on Darwin and Darwinism.

 

[4] The reader who wants to get a better idea of his work can refer to his website https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/jld/ [242]

 

All three main political parties propose cuts in government spending. But even though the war in Afghanistan is increasingly costly in lives and money, there's no way public sector services will be maintained by cutting the military budget or withdrawing the troops.

Of course, even defence spending isn't immune from cuts. Gordon Brown has announced that Britain could cut down on nuclear submarines, from four to three. This is only an economy measure and nothing to do with disarmament as they have the idea that with improved technology three new subs will provide the same cover as four Tridents - and there are no plans for any reductions in warheads. The Tories and LibDems have also been talking about defence cuts, but, like Labour, will not do anything to jeopardise the military needs of British imperialism.

When it comes to the war in Afghanistan, there is a call for more troops, not less. US military commander Gen Stanley McChrystal has asked for up to 40,000 more, in addition to the 21,000 that Obama sent earlier this year. This is on top of the 100,000 foreign troops already there. And not forgetting that the conflict has spread to Pakistan. Meanwhile the deaths of Afghans and soldiers from the occupying forces mount up every day, and those who genuinely want an end to the brutality of imperialist conflict get more frustrated as their protests fall on deaf ears.

The ruling class cannot do without its military ...

Although the promises to cut defence spending are probably empty, and definitely hypocritical, it is being talked about. So when people look at the resources devoted to warmongering there's bound to be a contrast with the huge unmet needs of the population: schools, social care for the elderly, health, housing etc.... Stop the War links to a US website (costofwar.com) that will calculate how much of what we need could be provided with the resources spent on military hardware and imperialist campaigns. This gives a good idea of our rulers' priorities, but can it really do any more than this? The experience of the last century shows that military spending eats up whatever proportion of the state's resources it needs in the advancement of British imperialism's interests. There were cuts in the numbers of the armed forces in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Russian bloc and the end of the Cold War, but there was no ‘peace dividend'. There was recession, unemployment in Britain rising to a peak of three million in 1992, and the first Gulf War, which was followed by the war in ex-Yugoslavia ...

But whatever the state of its finances, and despite being forced to retreat over the decades, British imperialism still tries to maintain what it can of its global influence. Even if it was already in decline a century ago Britain did once ‘rule the waves' and developed interests all over the world through trade, and through its enormous financial centre in the City of London. And Britain has always tried to defend these interests with military force. To this day, in the words of the CIA Factbook, it "pursues a global approach to foreign policy" . For this it maintains the 4th largest defence budget in the world, and has technically advanced armed forces, even if they are overstretched and under resourced for all its tasks. Arms industries are also important for the British economy, the world's second biggest arms exporter, with a turnover of £35 billion and making up 10% of industrial jobs. The state cannot stop underwriting this industry.

The UK finds itself caught between its economic decline, particularly in relation to its competitors, and its need to maintain its status: "If politicians wish to avoid the dwindling international influence that a diminished military presence means, they must make deeper cuts in other budgets" (Economist 26/9/9). Demonstrations, public opinion and elections, let alone workers' needs for health, housing and education, will not change British imperialism's priorities.

... nor give up its imperialist wars

Britain's close following and support for the US in Afghanistan, and two Gulf wars have been a constant target on ‘Stop the War' demonstrations.

The reason Britain so often follows the USA is that it cannot defend its widespread interests on its own. It is too weak economically and militarily, and has to rely on America's greater strength. Those powers that opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, France, Germany and Russia, did so because that war was against their interests and could only weaken them in relation to their more powerful competitor. Britain had different interests.

Afghanistan has been ravaged by war for nearly three decades. In Afghanistan in the early 1980s the US and Britain supported the Mujahadin against the Russian occupiers. When the Russians left, the various Mujahadin were left to fight it out between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. And what if the current NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan? This would certainly pave the way for other imperialist powers to pursue their interests through warring client groups - just like the Mujahadin were used against the Russians - and for the small groups to carry on their conflicts among themselves with the aid of weapons supplied by their backers.

Different countries have different interests, but none of them can stand aloof from imperialist war.

Workers have no nation to defend

According to many polls public opinion is against sending more troops to Afghanistan. How is ‘public opinion' to achieve this? In 2003 millions of people marching on the streets of Britain, the US, and elsewhere, did not prevent the invasion of Iraq. Subsequent massive demonstrations brought no change to imperialist policies. It is only the militant struggle of the working class that can hold back the ruling class - in both its attacks on living standards and its foreign imperialist adventures. The fact that there has been no world war for decades is partly because the ruling class is not confident that it can mobilise the working class to fight for capitalist interests. The working class has not, however, been able to prevent local wars which continue to proliferate and spread destruction.

The left in Britain, as elsewhere, from Respect MP George Galloway to the Stop The War Coalition and the various leftist groups, all claim to be opponents of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the same time they tell us to support the supposedly ‘anti-imperialist' struggle of the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other nationalist gangs.

Capitalism will not stop its warmongering. All nation states are imperialist, and nationalists who aspire to set up their own nation states are only imperialist powers in waiting. Workers' only response, whether to cuts or to imperialist war, is to struggle together, to try to overcome the divisions imposed on us, to spread our resistance across all war fronts and national frontiers. 

WR 3/10/9

Britain's public sector debt crisis has been a serious concern for the ruling class for a long time.

As elsewhere in the world, the British state has spent billions on bailing out the banking sector and trying to stabilise the financial markets, making desperate efforts to contain the fallout from the worst recession since the end of World War II. The time is now coming to pay the bill and the bourgeoisie has no choice but to turn to the class that, in fact, produces all social wealth: the working class.

The British situation in a global context

This problem is not unique to Britain. Although the crisis has hit every country with different degrees of severity, nearly every government has experienced an alarming expansion of their public debt. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, global public debt now stands at $35 trillion, compared to $31 trillion last year (a rise of nearly 13%).

On the face of things, Britain isn't in a unique position. According to the same source, the British state owes 64.2% of GDP compared to 74.8% for France and 75% for Germany. Italy, one of the worst offenders in Europe, tops 112%! However, what does set the UK apart is the rate this debt is growing, currently expanding at over 23% per year. This rate of expansion is more than double that of France (9.8%) and Germany (6.9%). Even the profligate Italians are managing to contain their debt growth to 3% per year. By 2011, the UK's debt is projected to have overtaken Germany's and be only just behind that of France, at a staggering 93.5% of GDP.

One of the main problems for the British ruling class is that the growth of public debt is not simply the result of the credit crunch. In fact, UK debt was growing as a proportion of the economy well before the credit crunch hit. Back in 2006, the ICC pointed out that "Britain has relied on state spending and debt to sustain the economy ... engineering a soft landing rather than a sharp drop that would have had a serious impact on rates of growth. It has also created a significant number of jobs. The government claims to have kept to its ‘golden rules' but has done so by manipulating the figures. Its plans assume a decrease in the government deficit to balance it out over the cycle, but in the last 20 years there have only been four years of surplus (during the first years of the Labour government). This suggests that it will become harder for the government to continue to manage the economy as it has in recent years" (WR 301 [245]).

Political repercussions

The bourgeoisie is quite aware that it cannot carry on like this forever. It's no longer a secret that, after the next election, no matter who wins, there will be major reductions in public sector spending. During the party political conference season there has been uninhibited relish at the prospect of massive cuts.

At the Liberal Democrat conference Vince Cable put together a provisional plan calling for £14 billion worth of cuts. Despite some high-profile ‘tax the rich' headline grabbers it is clear that the axe is going to fall heavily on public sector workers, with a freeze on pay and cuts in pensions high on the list. Moreover, it is clear that the LibDems are ready to stare down the Labour Party over the seriousness of the borrowing problem. "Cable estimates that a contraction of about 8% of GDP may be required over the next five years - higher than the government's estimate of a cut of 6.5% over eight years" (Guardian 16/9/9).

The Liberals have little chance of being in a position to implement such a programme and the other two main parties are, at the time of writing, being much less specific about exactly what they would cut. However, the aim of the current ideological offensive is not primarily for the parties to set out their election positions. Rather, it is to create the perception in the public mind (and especially the working class) that cuts are both necessary and inevitable - the only question is where the axe will fall.

This offensive also aims to conceal the fact that a massive programme of cuts has already begun. A cut to the schools budget of £2 billion has been announced and in higher education the squeeze has already begun with Universities asked to find ‘savings' of £180 million by 2012. Some institutions are reported anticipating cuts of up to 20%. The NHS, which both Labour and Conservatives have pledged to protect, has already had £500 million promised for building refurbishment withdrawn. Question marks are now hanging over the future of flagship projects like ID Cards or the replacement for Trident.

The political parties are responsible for finding the best way to present the coming austerity to the working class. This role prohibits them from being ‘honest with the electorate', but there are others who are less restrained. The accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, has warned that public spending may have to drop by up to 20%. The Centre for Economics and Business Research warns that many firms that supply the state will suffer as spending cuts bite, particularly in the pharmaceuticals, medical and defence equipment sectors. Other consultants have wheeled out long lists of businesses that will be hit by cuts in the state budget.

One of the genuine aspects of this capitalist debate is about when to cut. While some factions watching the growing deficit are haunted by fears of a ‘gilt strike' (that is, Britain reaches a point where it can no longer sell its debt), others are terrified of the impact of an early retrenchment on a fragile ‘recovery'. Many column inches have been dedicated to reminding us of the folly of the US Government in the mid-30s that pulled back public spending and tipped the economy back into Depression. The ruling class is walking a dangerous tightrope where the slightest error could send the economy plunging into the abyss.

Turning points

The British bourgeoisie is faced with a decisive moment. The blows of the economic crisis have brought it face-to-face with the prospect of having to make a serious retreat on the world stage. Under Labour, the UK has been at the forefront of many of the destabilising military adventures that have punctuated the last decade. But, recently, the cracks in the façade have begun to show. The government now openly admits that the state simply cannot equip its troops to do the job - and yet, military spending is under threat of being cut even further. This will have serious implications for Britain's capacity to influence world events, which can only further reinforce the country's economic decline. As The Economist (24/7/9) points out: "Forty years ago Britain had to slash its global military presence to match its diminished economic status. Since then the defence budget has shrunk in importance while spending on domestic public services has become more prominent. A similar reckoning looms now, but in the firing line today are elements of the welfare state that have defined post-war Britain, not least the National Health Service, still loved at home if less admired elsewhere".

The working class in Britain is faced with the prospect of an avalanche of attacks. As the profits-system continues its remorseless decline, it will more and more reduce economic resources going to the exploited class. Concretely, this means the bourgeoisie has to raise the level of exploitation - this process has already begun in the so-called ‘private sector' with redundancies, wage cuts and the rest. The majority of the working class also relies upon the state for many of its other elementary needs of health and education. A significant proportion also receives income (through benefits, tax credits, etc) and/or housing from the state as well. All these elements are now under serious threat: benefits, health and education are the three largest areas of state expenditure.

Not only that, but the state is also the largest employer of workers. Like its private counterparts, the state will be compelled to raise the level of exploitation for these workers where it doesn't eliminate them from its payroll altogether. They will suffer the most direct and immediate consequences from the coming austerity but the whole class will pay the price as the ‘social wage' is slashed. But, just as we are attacked together, so too can we learn to fight back together - we must transform our unity in suffering into unity in struggle. Only then will we be able to fight back against our exploiters and destroy capitalism and end this suffering for good.  

Ishamael 29/9/9

In Pittsburgh, on 24/25 September, the third summit of the G20 took place, a new ‘international forum' specially created to hold back the crisis which has been hitting the world economy with full force since the summer of 2007. If we were to believe the final communiqué, this mission has already been accomplished. Drawing up a balance sheet of the measures adopted in April at the previous summit, in London, the G20's members were very content with themselves: "It worked. Our forceful response helped stop the dangerous, sharp decline in global activity and stabilise financial markets"(point 5 of the communiqué).Now it's a question of boosting ‘the recovery'. UK prime minister Gordon Brown thus welcomed the fact that "here at Pittsburgh, the leaders representing two thirds of the world population have adopted an international plan for employment, growth, and a lasting economic recovery". How are they going to do this? The answer is in the text:

"We meet in the midst of a critical transition from crisis to recovery to turn the page on an era of irresponsibility and to adopt a set of policies, regulations and reforms to meet the needs of the 21st century global economy.

Today we agreed

- To make sure our regulatory system for banks and other financial firms reins in the excesses that led to the crisis. Where reckless behaviour and a lack of responsibility led to crisis, we will not allow a return to banking as usual
- We committed to act together to raise capital standards, to implement strong international compensation standards aimed at ending practices that lead to excessive risk-taking, to improve the over-the-counter derivatives market and to create more powerful tools to hold large global firms to account for the risks they take."
Following these decisions, President Sarkozy didn't hesitate to talk about a "historic" change in financial regulation: "For the first time, the central banks will have the power to limit the general rise in bonuses". And "banking secrets and fiscal paradises are all over."

Let's summarise: "the deepest economic crisis in human memory" (as the OECD has put it), millions of lay-offs, the spectacular rise in unemployment and the worsening of poverty all over the planet...all this was simply caused by the folly of the financiers and a lack of scruples on the stock market. And the great and the good logically declare: if we regulate the banking and stock market sectors, if we put the lid on bonuses, then tomorrow everything will start to get better in the best of all possible worlds. The media have already been talking about the ‘economic recovery' and the analysts have announced ‘the end of the tunnel', while the stock exchanges are shooting upwards

When the twenty greatest liars on the planet join in a chorus saying ‘trust us and things will get better', it would be wise to be suspicious and to look at all this again. What is this ‘durable growth' we can look forward to?

Capitalism has been a decadent system for over a hundred years

The bourgeoisie tirelessly repeats that we have been facing the worst crisis since 1929. Which is true. But the way they put it, they would like us to think that in between these two ‘great depressions', capitalism has been doing rather well. These are basically two ‘accidents'. In 2008 we went off the road a bit but the vehicle of the world economy is now ready to get back on course.

Reality is obviously elsewhere. For more than a century, capitalism has been a decadent system - sick, dying, regularly going through violent and devastating crises:

- In 1914, with the First World War, capitalism loudly entered its period of decline. Twenty million dead. Through this atrocious butchery, this system of exploitation proved that it has nothing more to offer humanity;

- In 1929, an unprecedented crash plunged the main world economies into a profound economic swamp. For over a decade millions of unemployed and homeless workers survived thanks to the soup kitchens[1];

- In 1939, a new horror follows the one before: the Second World War ravages the planet. 60 million dead.

- In 1950, a sort of calm descends. While dragging humanity through the terror of the Cold War with its permanent fear of a nuclear conflict, on the economic level there was a period of growth for nearly 20 years. Naturally this ‘prosperity' was achieved on the backs of the working class through constant increases in productivity. The appearance of the ‘welfare state', social security, and paid holidays had the aim of producing a workforce in good health, capable of intensifying its efforts and producing more and faster;

- In 1967, this interlude closed. The crisis reappeared through the brutal devaluation of the pound sterling. Unemployment, a scourge which had almost disappeared, once again began to haunt the working class and since then it has not ceased growing. The different strike movements which broke out all over the world - including the movement of May 68 in France - were the response of the working class to the return of the crisis;

- The 1970s and 80s were marked by a series of economic convulsions. In 1971 the dollar plunged. In 1973 we had the first ‘oil crisis', followed by two years of recession. Then inflation started galloping in the USA and Europe (prices shot up but wages didn't follow them). In 1982, the ‘debt crisis' broke out. In 1986, Wall Street crashed. The 1980s ended with another recession;

- In 1992-3, a new recession, even more brutal. Explosion of unemployment;

- In 1997, the crisis of the ‘Tigers and Dragons' in Asia shook the world bourgeoisie: the ruling class was afraid that it would contaminate every region of the world - a justified fear because Russia and Argentina also subsequently went bust. The growth in all these countries had been artificially stimulated by the creation of a mountain of debts which could not be repaid. Bankruptcy was waiting at the end of it all. The bourgeoisie nevertheless managed to avoid the worst - a world depression - by massively injecting money into the economy through its international agencies (in other words, by contracting new debts!) and by having us believe that a new era of prosperity was opening up thanks to the ‘New Economy' and the ‘wonders' of the Internet;

- In 2000-2001, surprise surprise, the promises of a New Economy evaporated and the speculative bubble around the ‘Start Up' companies on the net burst. But once again the world economy managed to get going again. How? Through a new injection of debt. This time it was above all US households (but also those in Spain, Britain, Finland, etc) who piled up the debts in order to support economic growth. Loans were made easy, there was no more control, no conditions or limits. And now we know where all this led;

- In brief, for over a century, capitalism has been dragging humanity down with it. In particular, for over 40 years and the end of the ‘Thirty Glorious Years'[2] of the post-war boom, the economy has been in a total mess. One recession after another and recoveries based on an accumulation of new debts. And logically, each time it's time to pay the piper, we have the crash.

After the crisis? The crisis!

This short historical reminder, which presents the current recession as the last link in an uninterrupted chain of economic convulsions, is enough to show that all the hopes about ‘coming out of the crisis' sold to us over the last few weeks are just a huge tissue of lies. For the working class, as for the whole of humanity, the future is one of growing poverty.

In its last issue, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin, a group of economic experts, uses a very appropriate image to describe this monumental ‘rebound':

"Here is a very illustrative analogy of the crisis today that imposed itself on our researchers: a rubber ball on a staircase. It seems to rebound on every step (then giving the impression that the fall has stopped) but it falls even lower on the next step, ‘resuming' its collapse". GEAB no 37, 15 September 2009)

For 40 years this rubber ball has been going downstairs, but in doing so it has gathered speed and now it is going down four steps at a time!

Obviously, nobody knows exactly what form and what breadth this new fall will assume. In a few weeks, will the annual balance sheet of the banks reveal dizzying deficits, throwing numerous international firms into bankruptcy? Or, in a few months, will the dollar totter, resulting in global currency deregulation? Or will it be inflation that will ravage the economy in the next few years? One thing is certain: the bourgeoisie is incapable of halting this infernal spiral and of achieving any durable growth. If they have managed to avoid the worst for the moment by injecting billions of dollars via its central banks (to date around $1600 billion), it has basically just created new deficits and prepared the ground for even more devastating cataclysms. Concretely, for the working class, this means that it has nothing to gain from this moribund system except more unemployment and poverty. Only the world proletarian revolution can put an end to all this suffering!  

Pawel 25/9/9

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[1] This dark period, especially for the American population, was immortalised in Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and in Pollack's film They Shoot Horses Don't They?

[2]  A falsehood in itself since even in France this ‘boom' really only lasted about 17 years.

We are faced with the most serious crisis in the history of capitalism - why isn't the working class responding in a massive way?

The outbreak and deepening of this present crisis has had a significant effect on the class struggle. Faced with the threat of unemployment and all the consequences that could entail, along with the knowledge that work is now desperately hard to find, workers often feel that resistance is hopeless or even dangerous. In many industries, thousands have been laid off with barely a murmur.

This doesn't mean there haven't been any struggles. In the last 18 months we have seen the occupations at the car parts manufacturer Visteon and the wind turbine factory Vestas, two waves of illegal wildcat strikes throughout the oil refinery industry and beyond with construction workers in many sectors, continuing local strikes in the Royal Mail and the threat of a national strike, and a four week strike at Tower Hamlets College against proposed compulsory redundancies of teachers working in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). All of these struggles have shown a desire on the part of the workers involved not to passively accept job or pension losses. All of them demonstrated a real combativity on the part of the workers with genuine efforts towards self-organisation and solidarity from other sectors. However, what also marks these struggles is the tight grip that the respective unions have had on each of them. It is a hallmark of this period that the unions have managed to set the framework within which struggle takes place, and this framework has proved itself once again to be a fundamental obstacle to the development of working class resistance.

We have already written about the occupations at Visteon and Vestas, and the strikes in and beyond the oil refineries[1]. In this article we are going to look at the Tower Hamlets strike and the dispute at Royal Mail.

Tower Hamlets strike

The strike at Tower Hamlets College was remarkable in a number of respects. The very fact that a large proportion of the teaching staff, in all areas of the college, came out on indefinite strike against the threat to their colleagues' jobs was in itself a sign of determination and militancy when so many strikes have been reduced to symbolic one or two day affairs. Perhaps more important were the very clear expressions of class solidarity that accompanied this strike. This applies both to the strikers themselves and to significant numbers of other workers. The striking college teachers were members of the University and College Union, but from the beginning of the strike they kept their meetings open to all employees of the college; and when, during the strike, it became difficult for non-teaching staff who had not joined the strike to attend strike meetings during the working day, the striking teachers initiated lunchtime meetings where these members of staff could come and discuss with the strikers. There was a strong feeling on the part of the non-teaching staff, the majority of them members of Unison, that they should join the strike, although, as we shall see, this was thwarted by union legalism. The strikers also made a considerable effort to send delegations to other local colleges and workplaces and explain their situation to the workers there. This was reciprocated by the participation of a number of other workers on their picket lines - not only teachers from other colleges but firemen and others - and at the rallies called in support of the strike. It was evident from the start that the struggle at THC was not simply a reaction against a particularly hard-hearted principal and his personal plan to make THC more cost-efficient, but that the staffing cuts proposed at THC were an attempt to test the waters in preparation for much wider attacks in the education sector. It was this understanding above all that generated the widespread sympathy for the THC strike.

The willingness of the THC workers to stand up for their colleagues' jobs (which also have an important function in a local community where gaining an ESOL qualification is an essential component of finding employment) was a further sign that workers are not just lying down in the face of the attacks, and it may make other education bosses hesitate before resorting to overt job-cuts. This certainly explains the fact that the THC senior management were forced to make some concessions after four weeks of the strike, in particular withdrawing the initial insistence on compulsory redundancies.

However, although the UCU declared itself to be delighted with the results of the strike, and leftists like the SWP crowed about ‘victory', the real balance sheet is rather more mitigated, as we can see from these reflections by a THC striker who had been posting regularly on the libcom internet discussion forum. While acknowledging important concessions were won, including the saving of 7 posts and improved redundancy deals, she has important criticisms of the way the ending of the dispute was handled by the union:

"The so-called victory is that there are no compulsory redundancies. Instead the 13 at risk were re-deployed or won appeals or have accepted so-called voluntary redundancy.

There was no withdrawal of the threat of compulsory redundancy.

There has been no agreement that there will be no further compulsory redundancies, or any other agreement about honouring our existing terms and conditions.

Through threats and bribes some of the compulsory redundancies have been re-named as voluntary. The pressure came both from management and from the union. Both national and local officials phoned up people at risk and told them they should take so-called voluntary redundancy. Two days before the Acas ‘breakthrough' our mass meeting had affirmed that, it was clear that though most people wanted the strike to be over soon, we were prepared to see it through in order to protect these people, and these people were not under pressure to accept a deal.

The agreement states that compulsory redundancies have been avoided and this is the "victory" that the UCU, the SWP etc are crowing about. In fact there have been compulsory "voluntary" redundancies - people have been bullied into accepting "voluntary" redundancy.

This deal was sold through with the most outrageous manipulation of the mass meeting where discussion was suppressed before and during the meeting as far as possible, with members being shouted down by union officials.

In the short time there was for debate, many people spoke against accepting the deal but in the end there were 24 votes against, many abstentions and the clear majority voting to accept and go back to work. (though the meeting was of course smaller than our usual weekly meetings).

We returned to work Friday morning. Where I work there is relief to not have to stay on strike longer but also a lot of unease about how it ended and what we are now facing".

It was clear from discussions with the strikers that most if not all of them believed that the strengthening of their struggle was identical with the strengthening and growth of the UCU. And yet these remarks about the way the strike ended demonstrate the opposite: that the UCU was working with a very different agenda from that of the striking workers.

A crucial moment in the development of the strike, and one which allowed for this ambiguous settlement to be pushed through, was the ballot of the Unison workers about joining the strike. According to a number of the striking teachers, both before and after the ballot, the Unison workers had shown a clear majoirty in the course of large meetings in favour of joining the strike - a step which would have forced the management to close the collage rather than keeping it open with a skeleton crew. And yet the ballot, which had been delayed almost till the end of the strike, resulted in a very narrow defeat of the proposal to come out on strike. As one member of the libcom collective put it on hearing this news: "That's a good illustrator of the anti-working class nature of individualised, private ballots (the only ones which are legal). It's easy to feel demoralised and isolated voting at home in private - as opposed to a mass meeting where you can gain collective confidence and a sense of power".

The problem here was that although the UCU workers were very keen to keep their meetings open to the Unison workers, and the latter were equally keen to show their solidarity, there was not yet sufficient understanding of the need to put control of the struggle into the hands of the meetings, to insist that the decision to strike should have been made not in separate (and atomising) union ballots, but in the mass meetings themselves. That would have meant an open rejection of ballots and challenging the legalism of the trade unions. This proved a step too far on this occasion, but the lessons are there to be learned for future struggles.

The dispute at Royal Mail

As postal workers wait for the result of their recent national strike ballot (held off for three weeks by the Communication Workers Union) their situation looks increasingly bleak. Since the end of the 2007 national strike, and particularly over the past eighteen months, postal workers across the country have faced a massive onslaught by a Royal Mail management desperate to impose swingeing cuts in staff numbers, attacks on working conditions and cuts in wages. Over the past few years Royal Mail have cut 40,000 jobs from its system and are actively looking for 30,000 more. Postal workers have also seen the disappearance of their pension fund and the imposition by management decree of a rise in the retirement age from 60 to 65.

Royal Mail management has resorted to the most savage tactics of bullying and harassment to impose its ‘modernisation' plan. This of course, has nothing to do with modernisation and everything to do with the cutting down of the work force and increasing the workload of postal workers. Across the country RM have brought in managers from other areas to impose new working conditions on local offices that have not been agreed to nationally:

"‘I used to love this job but now the bullying and harassment is out of control' says Pete who has worked in the post for more than 30 years and was among the 12 strong picket at the East London Distribution centre in Thurrock Essex". (Socialist Worker online 29/8/9)

"There's always a manager monitoring you. Frankly, I find it embarrassing that I have to put my hand up to ask someone half my age if I can go to the toilet" (ibid).

Delivery workers are now expected to work to their time and told that they have to take extra work from another round. Refusal means disciplinary action but this was one of the ‘modernisation' agreements' struck between RM and the CWU as part of the deal at the end of the 2007 strike.

The CWU are in complete agreement with the push to modernise but of course only with their participation. The CWU says that Royal Mail bosses are forcing through a modernisation of the service, inclusive of cutting pay and jobs, without proper consultation. "CWU deputy general Secretary Dave Ward says that there could be no successful change to the Royal Mail without union agreement.... ‘Modernisation is crucial to the future success of Royal Mail, but the implementation of change must be agreed and it must bring with it modern pay and conditions. We want to see a new job security agreement which will help people through this time of change for the company'" (BBC News 16/9/9). Ward is showing the same touching concern for the company that he and Billy Hayes did in the 2007 strike when they brokered the rotten deal that gave posties 6.9% and a £400 bonus contingent on "productivity and flexibility to be completed in phase 2 of the modernisation process".

Local, rolling union strikes: recipe for exhaustion

In 2007 the strike was defeated by the use of the union tactic of the ‘rolling strike' which saw the wearing down of the movement through partial action limited in time and geographical extension. And yet during the course of the dispute there were important expressions of class solidarity, with refusals to cross picket lines and widespread wildcat action against victimisations. These developments were significant not only for workers in Britain but internationally since they were a challenge to the ability of the CWU to control the strike at a national level.

Today, the CWU has attempted to make use of very similar tactics. Well in advance of the ballot for a national strike (results to be announced 8 October) the CWU has been trying to localise the movement by staging local one- and two-day strikes to be held in specific areas, mainly centred in London, the Midlands, Bristol and Yorkshire. Once again, the anger and frustration of postal workers have spilt out into wildcats in much of the West of Scotland in September, when posties walked out on unofficial strike in protest against drivers being suspended after refusing to cross picket lines. Likewise, the Liscard sorting office in Wallasey, Merseyside, saw workers out on a five day unofficial action protesting against an arbitrary slashing of delivery rounds and terms of working. Other offices have also participated in unofficial actions but there seems to be a blackout of news when this happens. However, in contrast to the 2007 strike, these unofficial actions remain the work of a small minority of the strike movement. The danger facing the postal workers now is that they may well come out on a national strike having been already worn out by the series of local stoppages which have spread tremendous confusion regarding who's out and when, and which have had very little visibility except through reports of the mounting backlog of undelivered mail. On the other hand, if the ballot goes against strike action it will also be used to further demoralise workers and tell them that there is no will to fight the attacks.

Another aspect of union sabotage is the attempt by the CWU to portray this strike as a struggle for the union to be able to negotiate with management. We can see this in the condemnation of Peter Mandelson by Dave Ward who accused government ministers of "encouraging Royal Mail to destroy the union" (BBC News 19/9/9).

Royal Mail, with the full backing of the government, are attempting to cut jobs and create worse working conditions for postal workers. The defence against these attacks is a fight for genuine class demands. The defence of the ability of the union to negotiate rotten deals is on the contrary a defence of the bosses' ability to defeat the strike.

Overcoming the union obstacle

The attacks currently raining down on the working class are only a foretaste of a much bigger storm to come. Although it can have the immediate effect of cowing workers into submission, the generalisation of the bosses' offensive also creates the conditions for a generalised proletarian response. The two examples we have looked at here show that one of the first barriers the working class will have to overcome is the one represented by the trade union apparatus. Again, since the unions claim to offer the only viable framework for fighting the bosses, workers almost invariably feel a considerable hesitation about taking things into their own hands, above all in Britain where the ideology of trade unionism has such deep historical roots. But the basis for taking such a bold step is already there in the push towards holding mass meetings open to all irrespective of union membership, in the obvious necessity to invest these meetings rather than union ballots with decision-making power, and in the search for solidarity which naturally tends to overflow the corporate divisions institutionalised by the union structure.  

SM&G 3/10/9

 

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[1] See for example: ‘Visteon occupations: Workers search for the extension of the struggle' [246], WR 323; ‘Lindsey: Workers demonstrate the power of solidarity' [247], WR 326; ‘Vestas: Workers' militancy isolated by trade union and green circus' [248], WR 327.

We are publishing an article from Revolution Internationale, the ICC's paper in France, about a strike against threatened redundancies that took place earlier this year. Even though it was only a strike in one local factory in Toulouse it has a wider significance, particularly because it shows how workers' efforts to organise themselves come up against the union obstacle in a very concrete and daily manner.

On 22 April the management of Freescale (ex-Motorola) in Toulouse announced the end of production at Toulouse, which meant more than 800 redundancies, to which can be added 250 from the telephone department and many sub-contractors in the region. In all, it involves more than 2000 jobs going. This occurs at the same time as the closure of the factory at Crolles close to Grenoble, at East Kilbride in Scotland as well as at Sendai in Japan. This ‘restructuring' must be finished by 2011.

This is one of the numerous attacks on the conditions of the working class that bankrupt capitalism has in store for us. For the families hit by the job cuts, here as everywhere else, there's the anguish of a perspective of poverty because everyone knows that if they do find a job the odds are that it will be underpaid and a question of simple survival. It's not surprising that the workers saw this as a great blow. Launching an appeal for solidarity with other workers of the region wasn't even raised by the unions, which is not surprising but necessary to underline. The workers themselves, pushed forward by a militant minority, went on to develop efforts to organise their struggle.

Their first reaction was not to have any illusions in the speeches of the management. At the beginning of May, the director met the night shift (the factory has six shifts) for him to introduce them to the team which was going to implement the running down of the factory. He was taken aside by the workers who asked him if he was taking the piss and branded him as a liar. Almost all the 120 workers present got up and walked out of the room. Faced with growing anger, the management and the unions encouraged the holding of separate assemblies for each shift. The most combative among the workers proposed a common General Assembly (GA) so that decisions were taken collectively. This proposition received a welcome from the workers and the unions were obliged to follow it. Faced with the well-known union divisions, the workers asked the unions to put aside the quarrels and unite in an ‘inter-syndical' (an inter-union organisation) thinking that this way they would be better protected. The unions, FO, UNSA, CFE-CGC, CGT, CFDT and CFTC then announced, as a great success, that they had agreed to create an inter-syndical. This inter-syndical proposed that each shift elect 4 delegates so as to help, as observers, in the negotiations with the management. It became clear to many workers that this was a ruse by the unions with the aim of making it look like the workers were participating, while actually transforming them into simple observers. That allowed the unions to keep total control over events. Faced with this trick, a minority of workers intervened in the GA to defend its sovereignty, to say that the assembly must decide and not the inter-syndical, and this received the approval of the workers.

The management then proposed a series of negotiations to take place each Tuesday. Evidently, the negotiations made no progress. Management and unions dragged them out in order to demoralise the workers. Arguments between the unions were opportunistically revived in order to begin to divide the workers up. The majority of the workers became exasperated. In mid-May, the GA of the night shift decided not to let the unions carry on the discussions and decided that it was up to the workers themselves to put their claims to the management. This was discussed at the common GA which followed on the Monday. Then the unions decided that they would no longer recognise the sovereignty of the GA and called its members to a parallel GA with the aim of making "constructive propositions for the management", which in effect allowed the management to find the propositions of the FO union (Force Ouvriere) very constructive! As for the CGT and the CFDT, they declared that they would continue to recognise the sovereignty of the GA (but, as we saw, they did this to get things back into their grip). Now at last, at this GA, it was the workers delegated by each of the shifts who undertook the discussion. They talked here of challenging the management over the length of the negotiations and threatened to organise a meeting in front of the factory in order to spread the word.

At the next common General Assembly, a communiqué-leaflet was discussed by the workers to be distributed locally as well as on the 13 June demonstration, an opportunity to try to reach other workers. The idea of a leaflet was accepted but in fact the unions tried not to bring it to the attention of the media in order to substitute their own communiqué. Under pressure from the workers they changed their minds.

Faced with the impasse of the negotiations that were dragging out, the anger of the workers pushed them into unofficial walk-outs, during which they gave out their leaflet to motorists passing in front of the factory. Numerous workers showed their solidarity with this action. But the consciousness of the necessity to actively look for solidarity with other workers was only embryonic and the unions rapidly smothered it. In fact, for the 13 June demonstration, the unions had prepared their tactics and put them to work. They distributed whistles to the workers who, instead of going to talk with the workers of Molex for example, were drowned out by the noise, making any discussion impossible. The workers did not succeed in overcoming the union barriers.

On 18 June, anger still dominated. A strike broke out and lasted for 72 hours. Once finished, the unions tried to start it up again with the evident aim of exhausting the most combative workers, when it was the eve of the holidays. A minority recalled that the last GA had said that the eve of the holidays wasn't the time to strike in total isolation. Some trade unionists then accused them of being against the struggle, one of the workers even being physically attacked. But faced with the vote of the GA which had pronounced itself against the strike at this time, the unions were obliged to apologise. A declaration was made by the GA, saying that between workers you can try to convince others but things can't be settled by fists.

What will happen after the holidays? The CGT and CFDT have taken a grip of the situation. There isn't yet a sufficiently clear consciousness of what the unions represent and the fact that they are cogs of the state within the working class. But a process of reflection has begun.

During the 3-day strike an old worker from this factory came to offer his solidarity and recalled the strike of 1973 by saying: "we had no confidence in the unions and we organised among ourselves". And that struck a chord among the workers.

Yes, it is necessary to keep control of the General Assembly and realise what constitutes our strength: workers' solidarity. The distribution of the leaflet to drivers and the warm welcome received shows the potential of this solidarity and that it is necessary to develop it[1]. It's not just a struggle of Freescale, of Molex or of Conti, but a struggle of the working class. And that alone makes the bosses and the state fearful, and the unions along with them.  

G 5/7/9

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[1] Not as the unions proposed, showing up at the Tour de France!

The struggles in Greece in December 2008 after the shooting dead of a 15-year-old showed the capacity of proletarianised students and some workers to organise their struggles. Hundreds of schools and a number of universities were occupied. Protesters took over part of one of the state-owned TV stations. There was an occupation of the building of the main trade union federation (as well as some Athenian university buildings) where there was an attempt to use the buildings for general assemblies for wage earners, students and the unemployed.

Ta Paida Tis Galarias (TPTG, The Children of the Gallery) is a Greek group that's been around since the early 1990s. It has had contacts with groups and publications in a number of other countries, but despite the relative longevity of the group it is not easy to sum it up in a simple phrase. They participated in last December's struggles and published a provisional balance sheet of events in February this year. A further analysis entitled "The rebellious passage of a proletarian minority through a brief period of time [251]" (dated 30/6/9) appeared on libcom.org in early September. While its language can be occasionally obscure it brings out some important points about last year's movement.

A proletarian movement

The first thing to establish is that "The rebellion was a clear expression of proletarian anger against a life that is getting more and more devaluated, surveilled and alienated." While Marxists are not sociologists "As far as the class composition of the rebellion is concerned, it ranged from high school students and university students to young, mostly precarious, workers from various sectors like education, construction, tourist and entertainment services, transportation, even media." As for the participation of workers in less ‘precarious' situations "From our empirical knowledge, those workers who can be described either as ‘workers with a stable job' or non-precarious had a very limited participation in the rebellion, if any. For those of them who actually took part in the rebellion, to try to extend it to their workplaces would mean to engage in wildcat strikes outside and against trade unions, since most strikes are called and controlled by them."

This is an important acknowledgement of the role that the unions have in holding back workers' struggles. Although there have been struggles in Greece over the past 20 years, particularly in the public sector, these "past struggles have revealed that the workers were not able to create autonomous forms of organization and let new contents emerge beyond the trade unionist demands."

TPTG see that those in more ‘stable' employment had more limited participation in the struggles, and there have not been struggles beyond the limitations of trade union demands, they do claim that the "proletarian communities of struggle" were characterised "by a complete negation of politics and trade unionism". They go as far as to say that "it was impossible to be represented, co-opted or manipulated by political mechanism that would make bargains with the state". Although there is an admission that this was only temporary, this is quite a claim. Yes, the organisation of the struggle was not in the hands of the unions or leftists, but of the participants. And certainly the desire to call general assemblies to discuss, control and spread the struggle showed an absolutely healthy impulse. But while it was a fundamental step in the right direction it was hardly "a complete negation of politics and trade unionism."

There will indeed come a time when we see "a violent eruption of delegitimization of capitalist institutions of control" but as TPTG recognise  "this was just the rebellious passage of a proletarian minority through a brief period of time and not a revolution." TPTG say "the feeling that there lay ‘something deeper' in all that, the idea that the issues raised by the rebels concerned everybody, was so dominant that it alone explains the helplessness of the parties of the opposition, leftist organizations, even some anarchists as mentioned before." If there was any ‘helplessness' from any of these forces it was very short-lived. The ideologies of unionism and leftism are very resilient, and in Greece there are also illusions in the military actions of the ‘armed vanguard'

Against terrorist militarism

For thirty years the terrorist attacks of November 17 and the ELA were a feature of life in Greece. And while a number of trials and convictions seem to have curtailed their activities, other groups continue in this tradition. In the run-up to the latest Greek general election, for example, you can read "Counterterrorism officers are investigating evidence gathered from suspected members of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire for possible links with the more brutal urban guerrilla group Sect of Revolutionaries" (Kathimerini 28/9/9). One of the strengths of TPTG is their rejection of the ‘armed vanguard.'

Writing about armed attacks in December 2008 and January 2009 "From a proletarian point of view, even if these attacks were not organized by the state itself, the fact that after a month all of us became spectators of those ‘exemplary acts', that had not at all been part of our collective practice, was a defeat in itself." They are direct in their critique: "It's not important for us now to doubt about the real identity of these hitmen with the ridiculous but revealing name ‘Revolutionary Sect'; what causes us some concern is the political tolerance of some quarters towards them, given the fact that it's the first time that in a Greek ‘armed vanguard's' text there's not one grain of even the good old leninist ‘for the people' ideology but instead an antisocial, nihilistic bloodthirst."

Union and reformist ideas did not disappear

The occupation of the union headquarters was one of the high points of the movement, TPTG saw two tendencies there. "During the occupation it became obvious that even the rank'n'file version of unionism could not relate to the rebellion. There were two, although not clear-cut, tendencies even at the preparation assembly: a unionist-workerist one and a proletarian one. For those in the first one the occupation should have had a distinct ‘worker' character as opposed to the so-called youth or ‘metropolitan' character of the rebellion while those in the second one saw it as only one moment of the rebellion, as an opportunity to attack one more institution of capitalist control and as a meeting point of high-school students, university students, unemployed, waged workers and immigrants, that is as one more community of struggle in the context of the general unrest. In fact, the unionist-workerist tendency tried to use the occupation rather as an instrument in the service of the above mentioned union and the idea of an independent of political influences base unionism in general." The ‘unionist tendency' might have failed to use the occupation in this particular instance, but the ideas of rank and file unionism remain among the most pernicious that workers face, not only now, but in the struggles to come.

Similarly, TPTG saw other ideas that are dangerous for workers to have illusions in. "By equating subcontracting or precariousness in general with ‘slavery', the majority of this solidarity movement, mainly comprised of leftist union activists, is trying to equate certain struggles against precariousness - one of the main forms of the capitalist restructuring in this historical moment - with general political demands of a social-democratic content regarding the state as a ‘reliable' and preferable employer to private subcontractors and thus putting the question of the abolition of wage labour per se aside."

Elsewhere there is a certain triumphalism in some of what TPTG say. But when the text finishes in talking about "the fears of the planetary bosses about the December rebellion as a prelude to a generalized proletarian explosion in the course of the global crisis of reproduction" it poses what's at stake in the current situation. The struggles of today are not in themselves a threat to capitalist rule, but any movement that points to solidarity and self-organisation in the extension of the movement, to a generalised struggle, shows what potential there is for future struggles.  

Car 28/9/9

From 15 to 19 June in Germany there was a strike in the education sector. It was an attempt to use a strike to block high schools and universities in protest against the growing misery of capitalist education.

As far as its aims were concerned, this movement only obtained a very limited success. It remained the work of a minority. It didn't manage to mobilise large numbers of students in the most central universities. Even in the educational establishments in the big cities, there was little advance information about the mobilisations that were taking place. Even so, at the height of the week of action, the movement succeeded in attracting 250,000 demonstrators in over 40 cities. But the importance of this movement resides first and foremost in the fact that part of the new generation has made its entrance to the political scene and has been through its first experiences of struggle.

The week of the ‘education strike'

The week of action began on Monday 15 June with the holding of general assemblies, mainly in the universities. As in the preparatory stage, it was largely in the smaller higher education establishments, such as Potsdam, that the mobilisation was strongest and got the most attention. Elsewhere, general assemblies were being held while lessons continued. It was only rarely that the blocking of the institutes of higher education, the original aim, actually took place. On the other hand, the work done in the general assemblies was politically significant. A collective debate was able to take place around the formulation of demands and these in part went beyond purely student interests to express those of all workers. Such as the call for taking on thousands more teachers in the schools and higher education institutions, the immediate transformation of all short-term contracts into unlimited contracts, or the call for guaranteed placement for all apprentices. In addition, in many places there were declarations of solidarity with workers on strike or facing massive redundancies.

But even the central demands of the movement, like the refusal to pay for the right to enter university, the rejection of the increasing grip of the criteria of profitability and of the tendency towards a more elitist education system, summed up in the demand for ‘courses for everyone' and deliberately interpreted in a reformist manner by the ruling class, as the expression of a desire to improve the existing system, were also undeniably proletarian demands. The fact that capitalism wants to have stupid and uncultured wage slaves, and only provides them with the minimum of education absolutely necessary for the functioning of the system, has for a long time been recognised by the socialist workers' movement. Against Pink Floyd's slogan ‘We don't need no education', the working class from the beginning fought for education. This tradition is being revived today in the general assemblies where everyone can participate actively and equally in the formulation and adoption of the demands and objectives of the movement.

The question of making links with the workers

In France, in 2006, the movement in the high schools and universities managed to impose its key demands on the government because it very quickly took up proletarian demands expressing the interests of the working population as a whole, in particular the rejection of the CPE, the law aimed at making all jobs for young people even more precarious than they are at present.

Now although in Germany there is a growing conviction among young people of the need to solidarise with all wage earners, up till now the movement has remained focused on education. This means that it does not yet see itself as part of a much wider movement of the class as a whole. However, we saw the first indications of a potential for the movement to go beyond the framework of schools and education. The momentary immaturity of the movement, but also the potential for maturation, were shown on the first day of the week of action. One of the points around which this contradictory situation crystallised was the national demonstration of kindergarten workers in the centre of Cologne on 15 June. The big general assembly of the students of Wuppertal University decided to send a delegation to Cologne in order to solidarise with the kindergarten workers. However, this action failed to materialise because of lack of time. In Cologne on the other hand the student general assembly was less aware that a few kilometres from them 30,000 strikers were together on the streets. When this fact came to light, the general assembly, on the point of dispersing, decided to send a delegation which was mandated to address the strikers and call for a common struggle.

Here we can see that the idea of a common struggle is certainly widespread, but it isn't often seen as central. In Wuppertal, for example, the university is relatively small. The proportion of proletarians among the students, on the other hand, is particularly large. There, the movement was very much organised on the students' own initiative. Thus, Wuppertal was one of the few places where there was, at least in the beginning, a big strike movement which blocked the university. The University of Cologne, on the other hand, is one of the most important in Germany. A deeper and wider discontent will be necessary there to provoke a general ferment. Furthermore, the big towns are the citadels of the reformists of the left, who are a barrier to the self-initiative of the students with their attempts to create artificial movements. This makes students distrustful of mobilisations that do take place. The strike in the education sector was very much a minority affair. The struggle to get itself noticed thus served to limit the field of vision to the immediate situation in the universities.

The street demonstrations and the lack of mobilisation in the high schools

The second important day of action was Wednesday 17 June, where demonstrations of students, high school pupils and apprentices took place throughout Germany. The most important mobilisations took place in Hamburg, Cologne and above all Berlin with 27,000 participants. The numbers taking part could have been much higher if they had managed to draw in the high school students on a bigger scale. Last November, there had already been a day of action carried forward mainly by high school pupils, often actively supported by teachers and parents. It was noticeable at that time that the high school students were often more militant than the university students. Now it seems that the high school students were far less involved in organising activities during the week. This is connected to the fact that during this week those who were most active were making use of a framework put forward in advance by a multicoloured action collective. If the action had come from those directly involved, it is hard to believe that they would have chosen to act in the period of the exams at the end of the academic year! But we should not forget that these demonstrations - sometimes decided by general assemblies, sometimes spontaneous - have been occasionally used to visit high schools and even enterprises threatened with lay-offs or closure, to call for a common struggle.

The end of the movement

The week of action finished with a demonstration in the provincial Westphalian capital, Dusseldorf, with several thousand people from nearby towns joining in. This demonstration was marked by two things:

- On the one hand by the rather militaristic and provocative attitude of the police. We should add that the bourgeois media had been stirring up the theme of violence throughout the week of action, with the aim of discrediting the movement. The media attempt to falsify the movement went so far that certain general assemblies decided that they would only give interviews if they could approve the content of the broadcast before it was sent out. A demand which was systematically evaded by the media;

- On the other hand the demonstration was much less in the hands of the general assemblies than the one on the previous Wednesday. It was run by a collective composed of different forces acting without any control from below, and representing a kind of compromise between different ways of thinking - but this was not the result of any prior discussion, If we mention these facts it's not to argue that things should only be organised on a local level. Rather we want to stress that the extension and geographical regroupment of a movement corresponds to the maturation of its mode of organisation, and goes hand in hand with self-organisation through general assemblies. When that is not the case, a number of dangers arise.

In any case, when the procession arrived at Königsallee, the most luxurious boulevard in Germany, the action got dispersed. Part of the demo stayed at the crossroads and wanted to block traffic for as long as possible. Among this section were representatives of the Black Bloc, elements who have the conception, mistaken in our view, that violence is revolutionary in itself. There were also many frustrated young people who didn't want to demonstrate in the city without being noticed. In other words they were disappointed with the weak echo of the week of strikes in education on the immediate level. What's more, they felt provoked by the attitude of the police forces. The other part of the demo, who had the merit of not being dragged into a game of violent confrontation with the forces of order, called on those occupying the crossroads to go with them, but ended up on their own at the rallying place on the Schlossplatz, in the middle of the tourist area. Thus the demonstration was split in two. When the news came that the police were going to intervene against the blockading of Königsallee, the rally dispersed, with some people going to help those being attacked.

A process of collective decision taking is indispensible

This incident reveals - in a negative manner - how important general assemblies are. Yet we cannot make a fetish out of them. The question is not the form of general assemblies as such. If they remain passive they can easily turn into an empty shell. The issue is the development of a whole culture of debate and of autonomous and collective decision-making. The quarrel at the Königsallee for example would probably only have been solved in a positive manner if there had been a debate on the spot on what to do. In such situations there is a wisdom of the collectively fighting mass which would probably have succeeded in finding a way for staying together without exposing themselves to the danger of repression.

The general context of the strikes in the education sector

There is still a long way to go - and the week of protests in the education sector was one of the small steps moving in this direction. Most participants are aware how limited and small this step was. However, we on our part are convinced that this step, no matter how small it was, was not insignificant. Because this step means that the proletarian youth in Germany has started to give an answer to the clarion calls from France and Greece. In comparison to the scope of the movement in these countries the present actions in Germany are still very modest. But this has to be seen in the context of the need for the proletariat in Germany to catch up - in the 20th century Germany was a stronghold of bourgeois counter-revolution and this fact still has an impact today. But this is also linked to the fact that the class struggle in Germany comes up against a particularly powerful and cunning class enemy. In France 2006 the government, against its will, gave a boost to the generalisation of resistance by adopting a law (CPE), which meant nothing else but a general attack against the entire proletarian youth. The Merkel government in Germany, which had similar plans as the French government, immediately dropped its plans when it saw the movement in France take on such proportions. The bourgeoisie in Greece employed the weapon of repression excessively, so that instead of being a weapon of intimidation it became a spark for the struggle. The police murder of one young protester in Athens led the movement to take on mass proportions, and it gave a boost to the wave of solidarity in the working class.

The first struggles of the new generation in Germany are more modest in scope and often appear less radical than in other countries. But it is significant that wherever they take on a proletarian character they embark upon the same trajectory as elsewhere. The expressions of self-initiative, culture of debate, capacity of organisation, creativity and imagination which we saw during the past days were also surprising for us.

The struggle for the future

Finally it is important for the working class as a whole that the youth has taken the road of struggle. The traditional core sectors of the working class are being hit by a wave of bankruptcies of companies and mass lay-offs not seen since 1929. This wave terrifies and momentarily paralyses these parts of the working class. The formerly proudly combative workers of Opel, who in the past reacted with wildcat strikes and factory occupations against threats of lay-offs, are now being pushed into the role of begging for money from the bourgeois state. The employees at the department store chain Karstadt, which is under threat of bankruptcy, are being pushed to support company bosses who at protest meetings speak and agitate with a megaphone, but who only want to mobilise their employees for a campaign asking for money from the state. In the midst of this painful situation, where the workers concerned cannot find an immediate answer, it is important that those parts of the class who are less directly threatened by the bankruptcy of their employer take up the struggle. Today this is the student youth, but also the employees of the kindergartens (child nurses) who not only defend themselves but who have started an offensive and demand the employment of tens of thousands of additional staff. They do this not only to resist increasingly unbearable working and learning conditions but also as an expression of a slowly maturing insight that what is at stake today is not only the immediate future but the future of society as a whole. At the demos last week the university students shouted: "We make a lot of noise because you rob us of our education". But the school kids shouted: "Because you rob us of our future"

Weltrevolution 21/6/9

Today, the crisis-ridden capitalist system is revealing the barbaric impasse which confronts humanity, and the proletariat is gradually returning to the road of struggle. In this historic situation, a new process of decantation is taking place within the milieu coming from anarchism.

Decantation in the anarchist milieu

The importance of this process is illustrated by the fact that it is often focused on the question of the attitude to adopt faced with imperialist war. Internationalism is a fundamental principle of the proletariat, one which determines whether or not an organisation belongs to the proletarian camp.

Let's examine the positions that express this in the anarchist milieu through two examples:

We have the position of the KRAS (Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists, Russia), which takes an authentic internationalist stand, for example on the war in Georgia in 2008:

"The main enemy of ordinary people is not the brother or sister of the other side of the frontier or another nationality. The enemy is the leaders, all types of bosses, presidents and ministers, businessmen and the generals, all those who provoke wars to safeguard their power and riches. We appeal to the workers in Russia, Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia to reject the yoke of patriotism and turn their anger against the leaders and the rich, whatever side of the frontier they are found."[1]

On the other hand, we find the French Libertarian Communist Organisation (OCL) on Iraq, with its appeals for: "material and financial support (for) the progressive forces opposed to the occupation" of which the "limited military means allows them all the same to organise some ‘liberated zones' in the popular quarters where the American army doesn't venture" while "in the countries which maintain troops in Iraq, outside of the United States, notably including several countries of the European Union (...) the principal task is to confront the government in order to obtain a withdrawal, to block troop transports and military material."[2]

This is not a simple tactical divergence about how achieve the same aim, as some libertarians like to tell us.

The position of the KRAS expresses the interests of the proletariat to fight as a universal class beyond divisions of colour, nationalities, culture or religion, imposed on it by capitalism. The other position gives its support to the ‘resistance' of peoples, Iraqi, Lebanese, etc., that's to say some sectors of the bourgeoisie. This position constitutes a betrayal of internationalism from a double point of view: not only towards the proletariat of the big powers, since it masks the real antagonisms between the larger imperialist sharks and the real stakes involved in these antagonisms; but also in regard to the proletarians in the weaker countries, who are called upon to submit to imperialist war and kill each other for the defence of the imperialist interests of their bourgeoisie. The disappearance of the blocs in 1989 has not meant the disappearance either of imperialism or the war-mongering of the ‘official' anarchism of the OCL!

These two positions have nothing in common: they express diametrically opposed and completely antagonistic class positions. They are separated by a class frontier.

It can be seen here that anarchism constitutes a place where overtly bourgeois and nationalist positions and internationalist proletarian positions come up against each other. In this process of differentiation between the two opposed tendencies, the question of war in the Middle East occupies an important place. After decades in which the unconditional defence of the Palestinian cause reigned in the libertarian milieu, this idea no longer stands alone. Some of those coming from anarchism are beginning to call into question the classical positions adopted up until now and distance themselves from them. Thus, in an article confronting the question of "why we will never support Hamas, Hezbollah or any armed group of the so-called ‘anti-imperialist resistance'", Non Fides affirms: "How can the majority of the extreme left and a part of the libertarian movement show solidarity with these totalitarian and ultra-religious parties? This solidarity is the anti-imperialism of imbeciles (...) The deplorable policies of the Israeli Command pushes them to support any form of contestation against these bellicose policies and this frees them to operate alliances with political Islam, the ultra-religious, nationalists and the extreme-right, sometimes including neo-Nazis."[3] Others clearly affirm the internationalist position of the proletariat towards the Middle East. Thus one can read an anarchist poster campaign in Belgium affirming that "From Gaza in Palestine to Nasiriya in Iraq, from Kivu in Congo to Grozny in Chechnya, the massacre of thousands of human beings is happening daily. Under the different forms that it takes in the four corners of the world, this capitalist and authoritarian system is devastating entire zones of the planet by famine, privation, pollution, war (...) To oppose the logic of a war of the ‘people' against the terror of the Israeli state only serves to make the rejected of Gaza, like the exploited of Tel Aviv, forget that there remains only one way out: to fight against all authority, whether in the uniform of the Israeli soldier or the Palestinian police, the religious robes (...)or the suits of the democratic and usurious capitalists (...) Against the war between states, between religions, between ethnicities ,we urgently need to affirm the social war against all exploitation and all domination."[4]

When conceptions as alien to each other as internationalism and concessions to nationalism find themselves face to face within the same current or even organisation, their completely irreconcilable character forbids any cohabitation and makes any unity impossible. That is why we unreservedly support the KRAS-AIT of Moscow in the combat undertaken to reject "cultural and ethno-identity" conceptions, which are nothing other than an expression of nationalism and incompatible with the objectives of the social revolution.

The defence of the "third front", a formula of confusion

We sometimes find that, within the anarchist milieu, the same vocabulary can hide diametrically opposed positions. This is the case concerning the appeal for the defence of a "third front" or of a "third camp" in imperialist conflicts. When this position is formulated by KRAS, for example, it undoubtedly corresponds to the internationalist position, extolling the necessity to develop the common struggle of the proletariat beyond all national divisions and against all the bourgeois camps involved.

On the other hand, for the organisations of ‘official anarchism', the ‘defence of a third camp' is nothing other than a formula destined to derail the exploited classes towards one of the protagonists, towards choosing one imperialist camp against another. Such an example is shown by the position on the Israeli intervention in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. When the French Fédération Anarchiste affirms that "in this bloody military escalation, between on one side the imperialist forces of the United States and Israel and the other the reactionary militias of political Islam, the men and women workers, and more broadly the peoples of the region, have nothing to gain but everything to lose (...) (and that) as internationalist men and women workers, one of (its) urgent tasks is to support the development of a third camp, the camp of the workers in the Middle East both against imperialist domination and Islamic oppression"[5], what is happening here in reality? Has the FA become internationalist? Absolutely not! It's only continuing the drive to make the choice for Arab resistance against Israel, but under another form than that taken by the direct protagonists! As in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite "Hamas and Islamic Jihad coming to power through elections, profiting from the corruption and the discredit of the Fatah of Yasser Arafat and the delinquency of the PLO, drawing profit from the anger and frustration of the Palestinian majority by transforming the anti-Zionist combat into a religious combat", the pseudo-internationalism with which they dress themselves up in only serves to give publicity to a hypothetical secular political leadership of the ‘resistance'. Anti-Zionist combat, yes, but not with the Islamists of Hezbollah or Hamas! For the FA, ‘the third camp' is that of the parties of the left, of the secular and democratic bourgeoisie into which it tries to drive the workers.

In the same vein, Alternative Libertaire (AL) directly affirms that "the Lebanese people will find a way to resist Israeli imperialism, while disengaging from the interference of the Syrian state and from the religious reaction incarnated in part through Hezbollah. It is dramatic that this retrograde organisation has been hegemonic in the Lebanese resistance faced with Israeli aggression." [6] Thus the sister group of AL in Lebanon finds itself standing alongside "'traditional' and denominational political parties" of the "14 March current", qualified as "a relatively innovating movement" that could "open up perspectives for another future for Lebanon", opposed to the "corrupt purveyors of Syrian tutelage and nostalgia for the grim past of Lebanon."[7] Anarcho-chauvinism really has nothing to learn from the patriotism of its bourgeois friends and serves them as a supplier of cannon fodder in the battles which fragment the dominant class!

In the fourth and last part of this series, we will look at the idea of ‘a-nationalism' defended by several anarchist elements, who often oppose it to ‘internationalism'.   

Scott 1/10/9

see also

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 1): Anarchists faced with the First World War [219]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 2): Anarchist participation in the Second World War [197]

Anarchism and imperialist war (part 3): From the end of the Second World War to the end of the counter-revolution [198]

---

[1] Federation of Education, Science and Technical workers, KRAS-AIT.

[2] Courant alternatif, no.154.

[3] Non Fides, no.2, September 2008.

[4] Poster "In Gaza as elsewhere..." signed "Some anarchists" distributed at the beginning of 2009 in Belgium.

[5] Union Locale CNT of Besancon, Syndicat CNT interco 39, FAU-IAA Boers (Germany), Fédération Anarchiste francophone, 28 July 2006.

[6] Alternative Libertaire, 18 August 2006

[7] Alternative Libertaire no.154.

A "bold" decision?

The decision by the US to reverse part of its missile shield deployment has been hailed as a "welcome U-turn" (The Guardian 18/9/9), a "bold" move, evidence of a ‘listening Obama' compared with the intransigence of President Bush, even as a move towards peace. It is none of these things.

The reversal of the nearly decade-old proposal of the Bush administration, to site a sophisticated radar station in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland, wasn't taken by a ‘peace-seeking' Obama, but by the US Chiefs of Staff in order to defend the interests of US imperialism in its problematic role as the sole, increasingly stretched, world cop.

There is no denying tensions between the Pentagon and the White House over the problems that US imperialism is facing in Afghanistan, for example, and no denying the anger of the Republicans at Obama ‘the appeaser of Russia', but this decision was taken by the military in the interests not of peace but how better to wage war, how better to reinforce and rationalise the role of US imperialism as world cop. All of the main elements of the US bourgeoisie, including present Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who was Bush's Defence Secretary, seem to agree with the comments of ex-administration right-winger Zbigniew Brzezinski, that the Bush proposal was for a missile "... system that did not work, for a threat that did not exist, to defend countries that had not asked for it".

Not only was the system inefficient - studies by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology show the Pentagon estimates of the radar's ability to detect incoming missiles from Iran were out by a factor of 100 - and largely untried, but its implementation would have required thousands more US ‘boots on the ground' in Eastern Europe. This is something that the US can ill-afford at the moment in more ways than one. Although the increase in US troops in this area was largely what the Bush administration was looking for as part of its assertive ‘we do what we like whatever the cost' policy, the present US administration, under the guise of Obama's "change for the better", is forced to try a slightly different military strategy in the light of the problems it is facing and will face. As President Obama says of this instance, the US is pursuing "a proven cost-effective system".

It's not like there will be no missile shield; a battery of US Patriot missiles will still be deployed in Poland and the Pentagon has said that parts will be "relocatable" and deployed in both northern and southern Europe (The Guardian 18/9/9). In order to counter the nuclear threat from Iran, sea-borne missiles are planned to be operational close to Iran by 2011. Whatever the exact reality of Iran's nuclear capability, it is clear that the US will use the threat as a justification for maintaining a nuclear presence in this strategically important region, with any country in the Middle East a potential target.

Upgraded SM3 interceptors are still to be deployed in Mediterranean Europe and the US is co-operating with Israel on an anti-ballistic missile system called "David's Sling". And as well as the Aegis anti-missile system already deployed in the Sea of Japan, the US still has five nuclear-armed bases across Europe from Belgium to Incirlik in Turkey in which to deploy some of its nine-and-a-half thousand nuclear warheads. There is also a ‘Star Wars' ground-based spin off, a multi-billion dollar nuclear facility that today exists in Alaska and California targeting North Korea.

No more than a move towards ‘peace', this decision is no more a move towards the dismantling of ‘Star Wars', i.e. the militarisation of space. In fact NASA recently launched a Black Brant XII rocket into space designed to create artificial clouds - obviously an experiment with military consequences. The decision to ‘scrap' this particular element of missile technology in Poland and the Czech Republic, which were not due to be installed until 2018 at the earliest, will also have value for the US in the coming nuclear non-proliferation treaty talks for next year, while the defence department is committed to "extended deterrence" and the building of a new generation of US nuclear warheads.

The real framework

The US is having immense difficulties maintaining its global position. "In reality, the new orientation of American diplomacy [of which this Eastern European decision is a part] is still the re-conquest of US global leadership through its military superiority. Thus Obama's overtures towards increased diplomacy are to a significant degree designed to buy time and thereby space out the need for inevitable future military interventions by its military which is currently spread too thinly and is too exhausted to sustain yet another theatre of war simultaneously with Iraq and Afghanistan"(International Review 138 [255]).

If the policies of President Bush were unable to reverse the weakening of US leadership then the diplomatic turn of Obama, partly involving an ‘overture' to Russian and other imperialisms, will fare no better. As the ‘Afpak' adventure sinks into the mire, as Iraq is by no means settled, as tensions in the Balkans and the Caucasus rack up and as Somalia and Yemen turn into unstable warlord fiefdoms, this change to the co-operation policy of the Democrats can only give the USA's rivals of Germany, Russia and France more leeway to pursue their own imperialist interests in return for their own double-dealing ‘co-operation'. Even Britain, along with Germany, is currently pushing the US within the United Nations to gain for themselves a better defined sphere of influence in Afghanistan and around the region. On the ground, the lesser powers will use this ‘co-operative' turn of the administration to try to reinforce their own imperialist influences in Africa, Iran, Iraq and west Asia, and the rivalries with China and Russia also extend well above the stratosphere. "Thus the perspective facing the planet after the election of Obama is not fundamentally different to the situation which has prevailed up to now: continuing confrontation between powers of the first and second order, continuation of barbaric wars with ever more tragic consequences for the populations living in the disputed areas (...) Faced with this situation, Obama and his administration will not be able to avoid continuing the war-like policy of their predecessors, as we can see in Afghanistan for example..." (IR 138 [255]).

There will be no disarmament

During September Obama became the first US President to chair the UN Security Council as he steered through unanimous agreement with, in his own words, a "historic resolution [that] enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."

Obama made it clear that "nations with nuclear weapons have a responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them". He thought it important to recognise that "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed."

As we have shown, this is the grossest of hypocrisy. US imperialism is determined to maintain its position, and is well aware of the arsenal of weapons that it requires to do it. The language, the image, the conciliatory approach of Obama are just further means used to defend the ‘military-industrial complex' of US state capitalism.

As for the disarmament resolution it is very reminiscent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 in which 63 countries signed up for "uniting the civilised nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy." It is still, apparently, a binding treaty under international law, but, quite clearly hasn't prevented every capitalist state from resorting to war as a means of advancing their interests.

In the case of the resolution vowing to rid the world of nuclear weapons, far from being a step towards peace and co-operation, it is just another moment in the development of growing military barbarism throughout the world with US imperialism at its head.  

B&C 24/9/9

Because of the depth of capitalism's economic crisis the attacks on working class living and working standards have been increasingly serious. There are increasing signs that workers have been responding to the deterioration of their material situation, a fact that has been noticed by various political tendencies. We look at some of these responses.

Two-faced Trotskyism

In Socialist Worker (12/9/9), for example, the SWP highlights "the new wave of struggles breaking out in different areas across Britain." In International Socialism 124 it writes of "very important signs of a new mood of militant resistance among some groups of workers which may spread in a way which we have not seen for many years"

The SWP points to a number of factors. Strikes have been unofficial and not tied to legal ballots. Some strikes have been indefinite. Workers have used their imaginations. Young workers have come to the forefront of struggles. Workers have gained victories as a result of their struggles.

Some of these things are true. Workers have indeed fought without waiting for the unions' seal of approval, and, part of an international trend, a younger generation is getting more involved in struggles. There have been ‘indefinite' strikes, but that's not always positive.

Also, in the context of the postal strike, they say (IS124) that the "union is able to keep the lid on any outbreak of unofficial action." Elsewhere "There was a point in the Visteon dispute where the trade union officials nearly got hold of it and put it at risk."

However, for all these comments, the SWP, and the whole Trotskyist tradition it stands for, is solidly behind the union framework, no matter how many flaws it admits. With Vestas, for example, it admits that "For the first three or four days of the occupation there was no union involvement at all." Yet it also claims that one of the big gains of the occupation is the new strength of union organisation on the Isle of Wight. Workers occupied without any union assistance, and then, when the RMT etc got involved, there was no move to extend the struggle to other workers. On the contrary, Vestas became a cause célèbre in which the needs of the struggle got lost in the campaigns of unions, leftists and greens.

One interesting remark from these firm advocates of the need for a disciplined party is on the need for "a wider group of people who form around these disputes to keep in touch with each other and create networks to confront the bureaucracy." The creation of networks is usually more the concern of more informal political formations and varieties of anarchism. In this instance the ‘confrontation' with the ‘bureaucracy' would still seem to be part of normal union activity.

The SWP is an evident example of ‘leftism': political currents that, under a veneer of socialism and revolution, have the function of shoring up the state organs charged with keeping the working class in line. We now turn to groups and currents who, with varying degrees of success, aim to put forward the real interests of the working class.

Ambiguities of anarcho-syndicalism

Brighton Solidarity Federation has recently produced a statement "For workers' control! Lessons of recent struggles in the UK" that begins: "Recent years have seen promising signs of a working class fightback, after decades of attacks on working class living standards." As opposed to the SWP they see the struggle going back more than a few months and look at examples from the last three years.

With the 2007 postal strikes they see how the movement ended with a "stitch up." In the public sector disputes of 2008 they note the impact of "those willing to take militant, sustained direct action and spread the struggle beyond their immediate workplaces."

For 2009 they choose to focus on the Ford/Visteon occupations. This does show the strength of the movement and the way the Unite union finally regained control, but it wasn't the only significant movement of the year.  The Vestas occupation and the solidarity strikes in and beyond the oil refineries (which SolFed do mention elsewhere - see Catalyst 22) also have important lessons - indeed the omission of the latter is particularly hard to understand, given that they offer clear examples of workers being willing to take "direct action and spread the struggle beyond their immediate workplaces".

When SolFed itself draw out the "lessons learned" their clearest points are on the nature of workers' self-organisation. "The central form of self-organisation is the mass meeting. However, it is vital that mass meetings do not just give a democratic rubber-stamp to decisions made elsewhere (as happened in the Ford-Visteon dispute), but take an active role in organising and controlling the struggle."

However "Not everything can be done in a mass meeting. Sometimes a strike committee is needed to draw up demands. Other times workers may want to produce a leaflet or do some research. They may also want to send delegations to other workplaces in order to encourage solidarity actions and spread the struggle."

These are all fundamental acquisitions of the workers' movement. Confusion starts when they explain "the contradictions and limits of a rank-and-file level of trade unionism".  This begins quite promisingly: "It is not simply a matter of the unions ‘not doing their job properly' - they do it only too well, since they need to be able to control workers' struggles in order to function as representatives of those struggles."

They do make it clear what they mean by ‘rank and file' unionism. "Shop steward and convenor positions - often taken by the most militant workers - must mediate between shop floor interests and the union bureaucracy's organisational interests." But then they go on to argue that "stewards have to be transformed from being representatives, whose role is to reconcile workers' demands with the interests of management, into being delegates"(Catalyst 22). If stewards can transform the function they have - presumably through a mix of enlightenment and will power, and with their actual social position having no influence on what they think, say or do - then why can't union bosses or other functionaries of the capitalist class change the way they act as well? What's the point of mass meetings and recallable delegates if workers (or a militant minority) still have to struggle within the union structure?

SolFed's take on industrial unionism is also rather confused and confusing. It is against the idea of "One Big Union for all", which at least has the intention of stressing the global unity of the working class. Instead they want a union "made up of those workers committed to the anarcho-syndicalist aims and methods".

This doesn't sound much like a union, but very much like a political organisation - one that defends some very clear positions, like the necessity of mass meetings to keep control of the struggle in workers' hands, but which then undermines this clarity by arguing that it wants shop stewards capable of ‘doing their job properly.'

One form of left communism

The Communist Workers Organisation is a group of the communist left (as is the ICC). The latest issue of Revolutionary Perspectives (no 51) starts with an article titled ‘From episodic resistance to global class war?'. It opens "We are dedicating the bulk of this issue of RP to ‘green shoots'. No, not of the mythical, much spotted capitalist recovery, but of the revival of working class resistance around the planet, much of which is going unreported."

They do not limit themselves to workers' struggles in Britain, but take in struggles in China, South Korea and South Africa, as well as going back to look at the lessons of the miners' strike in Britain in 1984-85. They not only show the struggles that have been fought, but also the obstacles of nationalism and unionism that workers face. Not leaving it there they say that "All these signs of resistance after years of relative class quiet are heartening but, as the weight of the attacks is building up, they will have to develop into a bigger movement with wider goals."

Spelling this out they say that "Ultimately workers everywhere will have to recognise that the only permanent way to ensure their living standards is when they take over the running of society themselves."

In their current intervention, therefore, the CWO is both greeting different expressions of class struggle and putting forward the wider perspective beyond the immediate battles.

In the CWO's latest broadsheet, Aurora 15, they have an article on "class war at Royal Mail". It not only emphasises the importance of solidarity action in workers' struggles, but also that "In embryo this is also a strike about a different society". This is a good reminder of the different values of the parasitic capitalist class and state, and those of the working class as it develops its struggles.

There are, however, a couple of formulations that seem to single out one sector of workers when the extension of the struggle is the prime need. "Support the posties! They offer us a better world" at the beginning of the article and "The postal workers are fighting for us all" at the end. The postal workers are only part of the working class and, when the main danger facing postal workers is isolation, it is no time to talk up their particular strengths when they desperately need the struggle to spread.

The need for a historical perspective

Whatever the differences, what these three views share is a lack of any sense of the changing shape of the class struggle and its historical context. In the case of a leftist group like the SWP, when they have made generalisations about the class struggle they seem calculated to disorientate. In the early 1980s, a period of workers' militancy in Britain and internationally, they talked of a ‘downturn' in workers' struggles. With the decline in struggles at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 1990s they insisted on a ‘new mood of militancy'.

With the CWO, for all their commitment to theoretical clarity, there have been many occasions when they have expressed enthusiasm for particular struggles, but never a serious attempt to establish a framework for understanding the inevitable ebbs and flows of the class struggle.

The most important point to register about the last twenty years of workers' struggles is that not only were there very low levels of class struggle in the 1990s compared to the successive waves of struggle that broke out in the period after the 1968 events in France, but also that workers' consciousness had been hit so badly that the very sense of a working class identity was seriously diminished. When we saw the revival of the working class it was not at the level of the massive struggles of the 1970s and 80s, but it did show signs of a changing consciousness in the working class.

The strikes and demonstrations over the attacks on pensions in France, Italy and Austria in 2003/4 were significant not just as struggles that involved a large number of workers, but also because they were not about immediate questions but showed a concern for the future. This was a turning point in the situation

Subsequently, in the gradual revival of workers' struggles we have seen forms of organisation that have bypassed the unions, struggles in which workers have expressed solidarity and attempts to establish discussion as a part of the combat.

Among the highlights of recent years have been the struggles against the CPE in France in 2006 and last December's revolt in Greece. In each case we saw occupations, a commitment to discussion, solidarity, and the involvement of students, those in work and the unemployed.

That is the context for understanding today's struggles, internationally and in Britain. When looking at this year's struggles - Lindsey, Visteon, Vestas, post - it is not a matter of producing a series of balance sheets for each individual struggle, but of seeing how they are expressions of a growing class movement, taking the form of occupations, wildcats that escape union control, and attempts at putting solidarity into practice; it is equally necessary to consider how this movement is dealing with negative elements such as the union obstacles, the influence of nationalism, and the campaigns of the leftists.

There are indeed ‘promising signs' in the class struggle. Revolutionaries can play their part in its advance by giving a perspective for its development.  

Car 29/10/9

Between 1647 and 1649 the deepening class consciousness of the exploited masses in England was transformed into a revolutionary movement that for a time challenged the very foundations of the state the rising bourgeoisie was trying to consolidate.

At its highest points this movement showed an extraordinary capacity for self organisation, creating democratic organs that anticipated the formation of workers' and soldiers' councils in the Russian revolution, and gave rise to pioneering communist minorities who defended a practical programme to abolish private property and establish common ownership through the revolutionary action of the exploited masses.

The third and final part of this series by a close sympathiser (see WRs 323 [203], 325 [129]) examines this revolutionary movement and its relevance for today.

The proletariat's capacity for self organisation:  the formation of soldiers' councils

The initial focus of the movement was in the army, where the rank and file quickly became a powerful revolutionary force.

Having created the New Model Army to secure its victory over the monarchy, the bourgeoisie found itself confronted by a highly motivated and well-disciplined body of armed labourers and peasants, which considered itself not as ‘a mere mercenary army' but as a force created by parliament to defend ‘the people's just rights and liberties' (A representation of the army, June 1647). When the Presbyterian-controlled parliament tried to disband part of the army without backpay and send the rest to invade Ireland, the rank and file reacted swiftly by creating their own democratic organs, electing delegates or ‘agitators' to represent their views. The army agitators were well organised, forming committees from which a central council was drawn, and highly active, organising meetings and demonstrations and maintaining contact with the civilian population and the Leveller movement. From protests over army grievances they moved rapidly to a much broader attack on parliament with demands for constitutional change, and it was the agitators who took the initiative during 1647 in seizing the king and occupying London to throw the Presbyterians out of parliament.

The Levellers were quick to grasp the power of this force to effect radical change and intervened towards the rank and file movement. Lilburne was particularly active among the most radical agitators, emphasising the importance of winning the support of the common people and of regularly re-electing delegates to prevent their corruption. Relations between the army agitators and civilian Levellers became close, particularly in London where, also under Lilburne's influence, militant apprentices appointed their own agitators. This collaboration resulted in military support for the Agreement of the People, a proposed new democratic constitution for the state.

The revolutionary movement in the parliamentary army achieved a very high level of organisation, and should be seen as an early struggle of the modern proletariat; for Marx, soldiers' pay was the first form of wage labour, and the New Model Army was a creation of the capitalist class.  The appearance of soldiers' councils composed of revocable delegates in the mid-17th century English revolution is a very early demonstration of the capacity of the working class to spontaneously organise itself, to unify its struggles through its own centralised organisation, and actively extend these struggles to other sectors.

The cunning and ruthlessness of the bourgeoisie faced with the threat of revolution

For the ruling class, this alliance of a radicalised army rank and file with the civilian Leveller movement raised the spectre of an armed struggle for political power by the exploited masses. It was vital to retain control of the army, and so, having failed to prevent the rank and file from organising, it was necessary to defeat the movement from within. Only the left-wing of the bourgeoisie had the necessary credibility and intelligence to do this.

There were real and important differences between the main factions of the bourgeoisie in this period, which saw a struggle for power between the Independents and the army led by Cromwell, and the Presbyterians, who were trying to secure their position by making a settlement with the monarchy. The Independents, backed by industrial, manufacturing and smaller capitalist farming interests, became increasingly alarmed at the strength of the Presbyterians, fearing that they would undo the work of the revolution. For their own part the Presbyterians, backed by large landowning, commercial and financial interests, feared that any extension of the revolution would put their own position and privileges at risk. The majority of the Independents were quite prepared to restore the king, but faced with the Presbyterians' alliance with the royalists, the faction around Cromwell decided to use the army to force parliament into a compromise. This meant first curbing the army's radicalism.

Cromwell and the Independents were just as concerned to defend private property but were better placed to deal with the threat from below. Cromwell himself, the great bourgeois leader of the English revolution, personifies the ruthlessness as well as the pragmatism and flexibility of the capitalist class, proving himself to be a supreme political opportunist prepared to use any means to make England safe for the men of property, from intriguing with the king to purging parliament and negotiating with the Levellers. Eventually he was even prepared to execute the king, famously declaring "we will cut off his head with the crown upon it". But he remained utterly consistent in his determination to keep control of the army and use it to crush any movement that ventured to challenge the authority of the state.

The rank-and-file-controlled councils were neutered by absorbing them into a ‘general council of the army' controlled by the officers, who vetoed any proposals for decisive action, and then, when it appeared that the Agreement of the People would be endorsed by the whole army, rather than one mass gathering as the agitators proposed, a series of separate meetings were held instead. In this way, the most radical minority of agitators around Lilburne was skilfully isolated and the army's adoption of a radical democratic programme averted. The mutinies that arose in some of the more radical regiments were then swiftly suppressed.

This was by no means the end of the threat from the army rank and file, but by sabotaging the soldiers' councils from within, and successfully isolating and defeating the most advanced elements, the bourgeoisie had acted decisively to banish the spectre of a self-organised revolutionary army leading the struggles of the exploited against the whole existing order.

The intransigence of the bourgeoisie, and its political opportunism towards the radicals, was highlighted in the army council's debate of the Agreement, held in late 1647. Here the Levellers argued for an extension of the vote to all men, not just property owners, on the basis of their ‘natural right' as ‘freeborn Englishmen'. As the Leveller Rainborough put it, "...the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he." The Independents, acutely aware of the threat from below, immediately saw in these apparently moderate democratic reforms a challenge to bourgeois order, Cromwell warning ominously that the consequences would be ‘anarchy'. The Levellers insisted that they had no intention of challenging the right to private property, but the bourgeoisie's intransigence forced them into taking up a more radical stance; after all, what had the common people fought for if their rights and liberties were to be denied them in the interests of securing the rights of property? This surprisingly open debate on the future constitution of the state formally ended with concessions on both sides, but the bourgeoisie had no intention of compromising its class interests, and Cromwell later, with characteristic bluntness, let slip its true fear and hatred of the exploited masses, when he warned the new English republic against the Levellers:  "I tell you ... you have no other way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces. If you do not break them, they will break you."

The extension of the struggle to other sectors and the development of political consciousness

With the temporary defeat of the radical movement in the army, the focus of the revolutionary wave shifted to the struggles of the labourers in the towns and cities and the poor peasants in the country. Struggles were continual, particularly in the north, midlands and west, after the disastrous harvest of 1648 led to widespread hunger and unemployment and food prices rose to famine levels. With increasing desperation, petitions to parliament highlighted acute economic distress rather than political issues, demanding urgent social reform rather than constitutional change and threatening direct action if these demands were ignored. In London, the largest centre of the growing proletariat, there was a development of political consciousness, particularly among the apprentices and young unemployed. The poor peasants and small farmers also became more articulate in their protests.

The Levellers' propaganda began to reflect this spontaneous expression of class consciousness, demanding measures to help the poor and supporting the struggles of the peasantry by including opposition to land enclosures in their programme. The Levellers also extended their activities, sending emissaries to all parts of the country, and strengthened their organisation.

Throughout this period there was a concerted effort by the ruling class to crush the Leveller movement and suppress all radical propaganda. This determined campaign of repression, which was to be greatly intensified after the establishment of a republic, finally convinced a sizeable section of the radical movement that it was impossible to achieve their aims by peaceful means and that direct action leading to the forcible seizure of power was necessary instead. The political programme of the Leveller movement still reflected the interests of the petite bourgeoisie, the peasants and tradesmen who deeply feared the loss of their land and livelihoods and determinedly opposed any perceived threat to property, but the repeated denials of Leveller leaders that they stood for common ownership suggests that they were coming under increasing pressure from the propertyless masses, and a significant current within the movement began to argue that the problems of poverty and oppression could not be solved until private property had been abolished and a system of common ownership established.

Democracy is a mask to hide the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

Perhaps the most valuable legacy of the English radicals is their fearless exposure of the rule of the capitalist class, from the very moment of its ‘heroic' victory, as a new form of tyranny masked by hypocrisy and maintained only by force.

In April 1648 the alliance of a large part of the Presbyterians with the royalists and a Scottish army plunged the country into a second, counter-revolutionary civil war. Faced with this common danger, parliament and the army temporarily entered into a political truce. This had the effect of diverting the revolutionary movement, but when the war was won the Levellers renewed their agitation for acceptance of the Agreement, without which, they argued, even if the king was executed and power devolved to the army, "our slavery for the future...might be greater than ever it was in the king's time." (The legal fundamental liberties, 1649).

When parliament persisted in negotiating with the king, the Independents around Cromwell realised that order could only be guaranteed by directly seizing power and executing the king. To gain the necessary popular support, through a series of cynical manoeuvres they allied themselves with the Levellers, apparently accepting their programme. The forcible removal of the Presbyterians from parliament in December 1648 (‘Pride's Purge') in effect placed the army in power through a military coup d'etat. There followed the public trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, and finally in May 1649 the proclamation of a republic.

The Levellers and army radicals now realised that they had been duped. The Independents adopted some reforms without conceding any power whatsoever to the people:  "We were before ruled by a king, lords and commons, now by a general, a court martial and house of commons; and we pray you what is the difference? " (Richard Overton, The hunting of the foxes, March 1649). The Levellers began to urge the army rank and file to reappoint their agitators and re-form the elected army council. The bourgeoisie's response was to arrest Lilburne and three other Leveller leaders and imprison them in the Tower of London.

The situation came to a head in the early months of 1649. Unrest again spread in the army in response to further plans for an invasion of Ireland, with those troops refusing to serve dismissed without pay. 300 threw down their weapons and declared they would not go abroad unless Leveller political demands were met. Open mutiny broke out in London, for which six men were sentenced to death and one, Robert Lockier, was executed, his funeral becoming a massive popular demonstration with thousands wearing the Levellers' colours. Revolutionary ferment grew rapidly. In May the Levellers issued a new Agreement and a more serious revolt broke out in the army. The soldiers in revolt issued a manifesto demanding the implementation of the Agreement and the release of Leveller leaders. Cromwell and Fairfax acted swiftly to prevent the mutiny spreading to London, finally crushing the revolt at Burford.

The swift action of the bourgeoisie again removed the immediate threat, but massive struggles continued:  at the time of the confrontation at Burford there were reports of 1500 ‘Clubmen' marching from the south-west to support the Levellers; in the summer of 1649 there was a serious rising of Derbyshire miners against their conditions of labour, and in September the garrison at Oxford rose in mutiny. Attempts at armed revolt continued despite mounting repression during 1649, but the collapse of the Oxford mutiny effectively marked the end of the revolutionary wave of struggles.

The emergence of communist minorities defending the interests of the proletariat

At its highest point in early 1649 the revolutionary ferment gave rise to small political minorities defending the world view and historic interests of the emerging proletariat. These minorities tended to emerge from the left wing of the Leveller movement, like the group of advanced rural Levellers who published Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, but the most politically significant were the Diggers around Gerrard Winstanley.

The story of the Diggers has since passed into folklore. In April 1649 a small band began to dig on St George's Hill in Surrey. They issued a manifesto, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, and called on others to cultivate the wastelands in common. They called themselves True Levellers but began to be called Diggers.[1] News spread rapidly, leading the Levellers to issue denials that they would ‘level men's estates'. Delegations were sent to gather support and other Digger colonies appeared across the country. Persecuted by the men of property, the Surrey Diggers were finally driven off at the end of March 1650.

There is a risk that this story portrays the Diggers simply as a failed utopian experiment, which ignores the real, lasting political significance of the group around Winstanley.[2] While it's true that they had little practical impact on the English revolution, it was the Diggers, primarily through the writings of Winstanley, who more profoundly than anyone else in the 17th century identified the root of exploitation in the new capitalist society, and set out a practical programme to abolish private property and establish common ownership through the revolutionary action of the exploited masses.

For Winstanley, private ownership of the means of subsistence, which excluded the common people from their rightful access to the soil, was the key to understanding history and the foundations of society. Having taken the land by theft and murder, the owners of property had erected a system of law and government that protected their privileges by the ‘power of the sword', aided by the hypocritical doctrines of the church. Wage labour ensured the oppression of the propertyless:  "The poor men by their labours ... have made the buyers and sellers of land, or rich men, to become tyrants and oppressors over them" (The new law of righteousness, January 1649).

By going to the root of exploitation, Winstanley, more than any other radical writer at this time, was able to expose the real nature of the civil war as a struggle for economic and political supremacy between the monarchy and the rising gentry, who had enlisted the common people by promising their freedom from oppression. But private ownership of land remained, and the common people therefore remained in bondage; their freedom could only be achieved by abolishing private property and restoring common ownership.

Winstanley was convinced that there was a law of development that made the disappearance of private property certain: "as everything hath his growth, reign and end so must this slavery have an end", and the force that would abolish this system was arising from the "lowest and most despised sort of people" (The new law, etc). He did not stop there. Moving in a matter of months from religious mysticism to practical communism under the influence of the class struggle, he recognised that the world could be changed only through the direct action of the masses, initially by withdrawing their labour, refusing to work for the landlords and gentry, and collectively cultivating the common lands (which at this time made up about a third of all land in England). But this was to be only the first practical step in the complete transformation of the economic foundations of society, a transitional stage towards restoring the earth as ‘a common treasury for all'. The role of the Diggers was by their direct action to rouse the masses to effect their own emancipation.

Uniquely in the 17th century, therefore, Winstanley offers not only a vision of a future communist society but also a thoughtful consideration of the methods by which it can be achieved and the practical issues involved, together with an optimism that this task is within the capacity of human beings, all founded on an analysis of the development of society. With hindsight of course we can see that he was over-optimistic about the potential of the historic period to create communism. Capital's transformation of the productive forces was barely underway, and the industrial proletariat hardly yet existed. It was simply not clear to radicals at the time that the English revolution presaged an epoch of unprecedented economic expansion led by the new exploiting system. Moreover, the programme of the Diggers demanded a level of organisation of the landless wage labourers that did not yet exist, and their proposed revolutionary transformation, if attempted, would have very quickly posed the question of the seizure of state power, with which, due to Winstanley's rejection of violence as a method, the movement was ill equipped to deal.

After the collapse of the Digger movement, in The Law of Freedom (1652), Winstanley tried to more fully develop his vision of a future communist society with a set of constructive detailed proposals. But by this time the revolutionary wave had ebbed and he was forced to accept the failure of the propertyless masses to transform society. Significantly, this work was dedicated to Cromwell, who alone, Winstanley claimed, had the power to effect the change his measures required. In the political counter-revolution that followed the defeat of the revolutionary wave, Winstanley abandoned political activity, and the subsequent influence of the Diggers appears to have been minimal.[3]  But by attempting to tackle the practical problem of how communism could be brought about, and by recognizing that the initiative for transforming society had to come from the propertyless classes, Winstanley was the most advanced pioneer of the proletariat and its historic struggle for communism until the French revolution.

Conclusion

With the defeat of the revolutionary movement, England was made safe for capital's ‘peaceful' advance, and the bourgeoisie entered into an historic partnership with the landowning aristocracy to exploit the ensuing opportunities for plunder and profit. In 1660 the monarchy was restored without undermining capital's fundamental gains and in the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution' of 1688 the ruling class finally settled the arrangements for the efficient running of the capitalist state.

But the Restoration was also necessary to put an end to the political instability and social disorder that was the legacy of the revolutionary movement. The men of property had been given a terrible fright that they would not forget, and from then on everything the bourgeoisie did was informed by an acute awareness of the threat from below. The tactics it used to defuse the threat from the soldiers' councils in 1647 would also serve as a model for the counter revolutionary strategies subsequently adopted by capitalist states:  the use of agents to sabotage the movement from within; appearing to go along with the movement until it felt strong enough to crush it; agreeing to demands while emptying them of their radical content; manoeuvring behind the scenes until it had deployed all its forces, and then acting decisively to crush any sign of dissent to send a lesson to the entire class.

The revolutionary movement of the exploited in the English civil war suffered from the almost complete absence of a working class able to impose itself on society, which inevitably gave it a certain backward-looking character, and many of its most valuable lessons were effectively lost by the time an organised workers' movement emerged in the 19th century. Nevertheless, the work of Winstanley and the Diggers also shows that from the moment of its birth the proletariat has struggled to become conscious of its own interests as a revolutionary class within capitalism and has fought to create a classless, communist society.

Today, a full 360 years later, the epoch of bourgeois revolutions has long ago definitively ended, along with capitalism's progressive development of the productive forces.  Faced with the unimagined barbarism of decadent capitalism, and its equally unimagined degradation of the planet as it sinks further into decomposition, we can stand up with the Diggers and the English radicals of 1649 and affirm that the struggle of the proletariat is indeed a struggle to destroy the roots of exploitation and finally restore the earth as a common treasury for all.  

MH 31/10/9

see also

The conditions for the bourgeois revolution in Britain: the class struggle within decaying feudal society [203]

Lessons of the English Revolution (Part 2): The response of the exploited [129]

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[1]  The name Digger first appeared during the enclosure riots of 1607 in a manifesto issued by ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire to other Diggers'. See David Petegorsky, Left-wing democracy in the English civil war, p.164.

[2] For example, a recent Guardian advert for the DVD of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's film Winstanley (1975), describes its subject as "a tragic, perennially relevant story of dashed hopes" (the film itself is a serious and beautifully recreated historical account, well worth seeing).

[3]  The only one other known text of the English revolution to defend a similar position is Tyranipocrit Discovered (1649), which has been described as "one of the most remarkable pamphlets of the whole period"(Petegorsky, p.232). The anonymous author calls for economic equality rather than common ownership, but is very clear in its exposure of the role of religion in providing the hypocritical justification for state tyranny, creating the Tyranipocrit of the title.

 

The much-criticised appearance of Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time demonstrated that, far from being outside the political mainstream, the BNP actually serves to strengthen the bourgeoisie's democratic ideology.

There was shock, outrage and protests over the appearance of the BNP on Question Time. According to its opponents the BNP isn't a ‘normal' party but is ‘racist' and ‘fascist.' In the words of the Guardian "by inviting it on to Question Time, the BBC runs the risk of normalising" the BNP and provided "its best-ever platform for its poisonous politics".

In fact, all the the programme's participants draped themselves in the national flag at every opportunity. Jack Straw claimed the BNP lacked a "moral compass" while the rest of the politicians on the panel fell over themselves to insist they were tough on immigration. Straw bragged about the success of Labour's immigration policies, which he later repeated in the London Evening Standard: "Asylum applications, at 25,000 a year, are now a third of their peak (and below the average in the European Union 15); the dreadful backlog of appeals which was there in 1997 is being overcome, and enforced removals and voluntary departures are up threefold". This wasn't good enough for Baroness Warsi (herself a descendent of Pakistani immigrants and touted as the ‘most powerful Muslim woman in Britain') who said: "we need a cap on the number of people who are coming here", combined with more tracking and removal of those deemed illegal.

There was also a squabble over who best defended the legacy of Churchill, the man who once declared that he was "strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" and who did not "admit that a wrong has been done to these people [Native Americans and Australian Aborigines] by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place".

It is clear that racism and nationalism are not the sole province of the extreme Right. The rest of the ruling class is no less willing to propagate racism and prejudice. The popular press, while decrying the BNP, runs endless campaigns about ‘immigrants' who are held responsible for every ill the capitalist system itself imposes on the ‘white working class' - housing shortages, urban decay, unemployment etc. This is the same press that vilifies Muslims for being terrorists or indulges in homophobic rants following the unfortunate deaths of gay pop stars.

Meanwhile, the democratic and multicultural British state, commanded by the Labour Party, has presided over a brutal campaign of prison camps for asylum-seekers and forced repatriation that has included removing terminally ill patients from hospital beds so that they can be deported.

However, the bourgeoisie has to be careful not to overplay the race card as it can provoke a response from the working class. For example, as we reported in WR316 [261], the residents of a Glasgow ‘sink estate' took up the struggle to defend the immigrants in their community from Home Office thugs.

This is why other parts of the bourgeoisie (usually the Left) pose as the defenders of ‘human rights' and contrast the ‘inclusive', multicultural state to the brutality and racism of fascism. Not only does this mask the continuing assaults carried out by the democratic state, but it also encourages workers to seek the state's ‘protection'. One of the most poisonous elements of the current campaign is to present ‘multiculturalism' as a counterweight to the racism of the ‘white working class'. The BNP, in particular, is presented (by friend and foe alike) as being in some way representative of white workers. Warsi herself has argued for more attention to be paid to the ‘concerns' of ‘BNP voters'. The aim is to undermine the potential for working class unity across racial boundaries and keep it divided into competing ‘communities' disputing the crumbs from the exploiters' table. The ruling class wants any reaction against such divisions to be recuperated into a struggle ‘against fascism' under the control of the democratic multicultural state.

By giving the BNP more exposure - and it's possible that the BNP could have an annual apearence on Question Time - the bourgeoisie is trying to increase the impact of these campaigns. This is because it is undertaking a series of brutal attacks on working class living standards. This is the only answer it has to the crisis. But, for all its difficulties, the working class has not suffered a decisive defeat and retains the potential for developing struggles that can threaten the moribund capitalist system. It is fear of these potential struggles that moves the bourgeoisie to reinforce the ideological firewalls that constantly work to break up the unity of the working class. As long as workers are blaming other workers for their problems, there's less chance of them turning on their capitalist masters.

It is true that the working class, in its daily life, is capable of holding all sorts of prejudices. But it is also undeniable that the ruling class will encourage these at every possible opportunity. As an exploited class the working class can only defend itself in a united struggle across all the divisions imposed upon it by capitalism. In developing its struggle, the working class is forced to confront the racist, nationalist poison of the ruling class in both its democratic and fascist forms.  

Ishamael 28/10/9

This book, based on original research in newly available Russian archives, is a serious re-appraisal of the processes that led to the degeneration of the Russian revolution, and includes fascinating information on the opposition to this degeneration by Russian workers and communists in the early 1920s.  

Simon Pirani is a former Trotskyist and the book is in part his critique of Trotskyist positions on the Bolshevik Party as a vanguard party and defence of the ‘workers' state'.  His break with Trotskyism and his view of the inadequacies of the positions defended by Trotsky's Left Opposition have led him towards a more open and sympathetic approach towards the left communist oppositions, as described in his recent review of the ICC's book on the Russian Communist Left in Revolutionary History. We will return to this in a subsequent article.

The book focuses on the struggles of workers and communists against the Bolshevik Party in Moscow, covering the period from immediately after the end of the civil war in 1920, through the wave of workers' struggles in early 1921 that led to the Kronstadt uprising, to the defeat of the left-wing opposition in the Bolshevik Party in 1923-24.  This focus gives the reader an in-depth view of the processes by which the revolution degenerated, and of the reactions from the working class to each twist and turn.  On the other hand, it also means that the book lacks an international context, and its analysis of the roots of the Bolsheviks' errors is made almost entirely in isolation from the history of the international workers' movement and the defeat of the revolutionary wave in other key countries like Germany.  

Simon Pirani's book is worth reading at the very least as a supplement to the ICC's Russian Communist Left, as it contains a wealth of new and hitherto unavailable information on the left-wing oppositions that emerged from within the Bolshevik Party, including the Workers' Opposition, the Workers' Truth, the Democratic Centralists and the Workers' Group.  It also helps to widen our understanding of the opposition within the Bolshevik party as it describes the activities of other organised groups in Moscow like the Bauman group, a precursor of the Workers' Group, and the supporters of Ignatov, who were close to the Democratic Centralists  (pp61-.65).  There are vivid descriptions of the battles within the party and of the activities of the communist dissidents in the factories.  (There is also a tantalising reference on p119 to a group of ‘revolutionary left communists' who broke from the party in 1921 condemning the Bolshevik leadership for ‘returning to capital').  Pirani includes a section on the struggle of the communist left, describing the failure of "the only significant challenge to the party among Moscow workers in 1923" by the Workers' Group, and a description of the final confrontation between the left and the party leadership at the 12th party congress in 1923.  He acknowledges that it was only the communist left who voiced the danger that the party leadership "might play a role in the formation of oppressive social relations" (p216-7), while Trotsky at this time supported repressive action against the "far left" (p215). 

Other aspects of the book are not so helpful.  While Pirani is clearly motivated by a desire to defend the Russian revolution and the struggles of the Russian working class, his study, which originates in a PhD dissertation, is also marked by strong tendency towards academicism, with copious references to abstruse debates within bourgeois historiography, and there is a definite tendency to get lost in detail at the expense of a clear global, historical framework.

Politically, as far as they go, there is still much we can agree with in Pirani's arguments about the retreat of the Russian revolution; how the Bolshevik Party abandoned its original revolutionary principles, becoming fatally enmeshed in the state apparatus, depriving the soviets of power and politically expropriating the working class, culminating in the violent suppression of the revolt at Kronstadt.  He meticulously describes the emergence of a "party elite" embedded within the state apparatus that with the Stalinist counter-revolution was to become the kernel of a new ruling class.  He does not, however, relate the rise of Stalinism to the global tendency within capitalism in its epoch of decay towards state capitalism, or to the historical specificities of how this tendency showed itself in Russia; one of the key theoretical gains of the communist left.  This leaves his conclusions on the role of the Bolshevik Party and the particular path taken by the revolution in retreat lacking a solid historical framework.

One of Pirani's key conclusions is that the legacy of the Bolsheviks is negative, if only for the spread of authoritarian, vanguardist and statist ideology in the workers' movement.  He rejects the crass councilist and libertarian contention that the Bolsheviks were machiavellian power-seekers from the beginning, acknowledging the impact of external events on the revolution, including the failure of the world revolution to spread outside Russia.  He also rejects a fatalist approach and suggests that different choices in 1921 might have made possible a more successful resistance to the advance of Stalinism (p240-241). 

But his lack of a deeper historical framework, and the narrow focus of the book on developments in Russia, leaves Pirani's analysis vulnerable to the councilist and libertarian rejection of the whole experience of the ‘old' workers' movement and of any role for the most politically advanced minorities of the working class.  If the root of the Bolsheviks' errors was a substitutionist position - that the party takes power on behalf of the class - he fails to acknowledge that this was essentially the same position defended by the rest of the international workers' movement.  Substitutionism was at root a symptom of the as yet incomplete break of the working class from the social democratic conceptions prevalent in the ascendant period of capitalism, not a specifically Bolshevik deviation.

Pirani's book must be seen as part of his own personal attempt to break with Trotskyist positions, and this is definitely a positive sign of the disarray of leftism, particularly Trotskyism, in the face of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes after 1989, and of the search by the most positive elements for genuine proletarian political positions.  But it also shows the difficulties of breaking with leftism without beginning to draw the vital lessons of the experience of the proletariat's past struggles, and particularly of the Russian revolution. 

Mark Hayes 31/10/9

Simon Pirani, The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-1924:  soviet workers and the new communist elite, Routledge, 2008

see also

Russian communist left: reponse to Simon Pirani [264]

 

As the UN-run trial of ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic began in The Hague it was clear that there were many others who could also be put in the dock on charges of genocide. This bloodthirsty killer and rabid nationalist was only a pawn in a much wider game going on in the Balkans in the early 1990s. All the major powers, with the exception of China and Japan, who were too far away, manoeuvred and jostled for positions of power and influence and attempted to undermine their rivals.

Representatives of the ruling classes of Germany, Russia, France, the USA, Turkey and Britain are not on trial though their culpability in setting-off and maintaining the murderous Balkan war, the bloodiest in Europe since World War II, is far greater than local gangsters like Karadzic and Milosevic before him. This current trial is a farce and cover-up organised by a nest of guilty UN vipers engineering an ideological campaign and trying to pin the blame on one or two individual snakes.

The context for the Balkan War of 1992 was the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 and the New World Order of US imperialism. After the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, where the US attempted to impose its global domination on its erstwhile ‘partners' and adversaries alike, the Balkan war, showed the open development of the centrifugal tendencies of ‘every man for himself' that is still a major characteristic of the international situation. Germany tripped the war by its recognition of Slovenia and Croatia and its attempt to cut a path to the warm-water seas of the Mediterranean. Britain, France and Russia immediately conspired to back their old Serbian ally in order to counter German imperialism and carve out their own spheres of interests. The USA, lacking much direct influence in the region, first aligned itself with Germany through Croatia and then built up the Bosnian army from scratch.

Britain was involved, in the guise of an ‘humanitarian' role, positioning the British military, in their UN Blue Helmets, to facilitate the murderous siege of Sarajevo, which it did for months alongside French imperialism, its partner in massacre. But it's in the context of the cold blooded murder of 8000 men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995 that the ‘humanitarian' role of British imperialism is worth examining. According to BBC's Newsnight at least 2 UN Security Council members knew of the imminent attack on the Bosnians (or the "towelheads", as British High Command called them). It's a reasonable assumption that those two were Britain and France who were working closely together in order to facilitate the Serbian advance. On the programme, Richard Holbrooke, then a US envoy to the region, suggested that Britain knew that a massacre of Muslim men and boys was planned. Britain was very close to the Serbian war machine: Lt. General Sir Michael Jackson, who had a background in intelligence and was commander of the Anglo-French Rapid Reaction Force, was a drinking partner of the Serb high command, including General Mladic (who is still very much at large). General Rupert Smith was instrumental in overseeing the Serbian advance, the aim of which was the creation of a Greater Serbia, perfectly in accordance with the policies of British imperialism in the region and beyond. All the talk about Britain's ‘special relationship' with, or being a ‘poodle' of the United States was wrong. The Balkans conflict was a war with Britain and France backing one side and the USA backing another as competing national interests compelled imperialisms to clash.

The current Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Diodik, has demanded the right of the Serbian part of Bosnia to secede. This has raised concerns that the countries of ex-Yugoslavia will be plunged into another round of ethnic killings. As the media watches the circus of  Karadzic's trial, the attention of all the rival imperialisms is focussed on how to defend their interests, without any regard to the human consequences.  

Baboon 31/10/9

"We are caught between the government and the Taliban..." The situation for the population in Pakistan was put very clearly by a South Waziristan resident fleeing to Dera Ismail Khan.

The death toll from the car bomb at a busy  market in Peshawar is 118 and rising, only the most recent of a wave of terrorist attacks which has killed hundreds. Civilians are also suffering from US drones in border areas and by the Pakistani army's campaign against the Taliban in South Waziristan. There the population has already suffered a four month siege in which they were encouraged to flee, seen their homes bombarded and been deprived of aid. The 100,000 or so internally displaced are staying with relatives, if they can, as no tents or provisions have been made available for them, despite having been forced to leave the area in preparation for the current military campaign. The population is terrorised by all sides.

All this follows Pakistan's campaign in the Swat region earlier this year, under intense pressure from the US to take action against the Taliban strongholds - bases for attacks on Afghanistan - on the Af-Pak border. It follows an increase in US drone attacks, including one that killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader. But the government has chosen to attack the Mehsud area and Tehrik-i-Taliban, which carries out its terror within Pakistan, while the army made peace agreements with others, such as the Haqqani network, which attack over the border; and it has also told the US that Quetta is off-limits to their drones, although they believe the commander of the Shura Taliban, Mullah Omar, is hiding there. The situation begins to resemble a chaos of competing interests, rather than a war with two clear sides.

Three decades of imperialist conflicts

It is impossible to understand the present fighting on the Afghan-Pakistan border region without the framework of the development of confrontations in the region since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Then Pakistan and particularly its intelligence service (ISI) and army played a central part in training and supplying the Mujahadin forces against the Russians - on behalf of both the US western bloc and its own imperialist interests which then coincided. When the Taliban took power in the mid 1990s - after years of growing instability and gangsterism following the defeat of the Russians - this was particularly favourable for Pakistan which had a close ally cum client in power in its strategically important neighbour. The rewards for Pakistan's loyalty were short-lived. The US needed to impose its control over Afghanistan and when the 9/11 attacks gave them the pretext the Taliban regime was quickly overturned. Pakistan co-operated with this war after overt threats from the US.

Pakistan was constrained by the might of the world's only super-power and pushed into supporting a costly conflict with its former allies. However, the US has become mired in first Iraq and now Afghanistan, and is currently debating its strategy. General McChrystal wants up to 100,000 more foreign troops in Aghanistan for a full blooded counter-insurgency strategy (Gordon Brown's conditional offer of another 500 troops indicates at least token support for this). Meanwhile Vice President Joe Biden wants to limit the mission. The view that McChrystal's strategy is impossible, and the aims should be limited to a small counter-terrorism force with drones, put forward by Rory Stewart, former British soldier and diplomat, also has some influence in Washington. Such difficulties leave a small margin for other powers to become more open in their opposition to American interests. Iran, for instance, has become more daring in pursuing its local and nuclear aims. Similarly, when Pakistan feels a let up in US pressure it makes use of this opportunity to pursue its own imperialist interests more directly even if it is unable to openly oppose the USA.

As things stand at the moment, however, Pakistan is in a difficult position in relation to Afghanistan, with their allies out of power and under attack, and even their longstanding enemy, India, allowed to invest there. As we have seen, Pakistan has good reason to be reluctant in attacking the Taliban. They would, according to the Economist (17/10/9) like to mediate talks between the Afghan government and the Pashtuns, closely related to their own frontier population, including the Taliban, with a view to forming a government that is much more favourable to their interests. Whether or not this is realistic, even if it is reckless in the face of the much more powerful USA, this is what Pakistan's imperialist interest forces it to aim at.

US pressure on Pakistan

With the US putting pressure on Pakistan to deny any haven to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, it is no accident that its two military campaigns against them should occur at the time of meetings with US politicians: Zardari's visit to Obama in May, and Clinton's visit to Pakistan in late October. Clinton, standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Pakistan against "brutal extremist groups", congratulated their army on its fight against the Taliban, and made clear the real message behind this diplomatic language when "she said she found it hard to believe that nobody in the Pakistani government knew where al-Qaeda was hiding in the country and ‘couldn't get them' if they wanted" (BBC news online, 30/10/9).

US imperialism is using aid as a way of imposing its will on Pakistan. When the US Congress voted for a $7.5bn increase in non-military aid over 5 years it caused great bitterness in Pakistan, given the conditions imposed. It has to provide frequent evidence that it is cracking down on terrorists, including those attacking India; no nuclear proliferation; and the army has to keep out of politics. The army is whipping up anti-American feeling. President Zardari has been weakened as generals brief his rivals: "Pakistan's generals consider foreign policy too important to be left to the politicians" (Economist 17/10/9).

The perspective: more barbarity, more chaos

Pakistan's hesitation to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda reflect not only its external ambitions, but also internal difficulties that threaten its disintegrating into all out conflict.

It is not for nothing that the Af-Pak border, including the Federally Administered Tribal Areas such as South Waziristan, have been called the most dangerous place in the world. Going back to the days of British rule they were difficult - or impossible - to control, having to be granted a degree of independence, and those regions remain incompletely integrated into the Pakistani state. The region  is the perfect terrain for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to hide out and holding the border regions would put impossible strain on the army. The fighting is more likely to spread the conflict than contain it, while the Taliban and their Uzbek fighters largely slip out into other areas such as neighbouring Baluchistan. And they won't just stay in the border regions but spread out to fuel more terrorist incidents, as we have seen throughout October with a wave of attacks, including the suicide bombing at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, which killed 8 and wounded 18, and the siege of the army headquarters at Rawalpindi which killed 22, to name but two of the incidents. The devastating car bomb in the market in Peshawar, with all the claims and denials about who set it, is the sort of thing we are seeing more of as the conflict spreads.

Nor is the spread of this conflict limited to Pakistan, which is known to be central to many terrorist networks. Iran has recently accused Pakistan of harbouring the Jundallah Sunni group (among those they blame for a bomb that killed 42) - and the recent arrest of 11 Revolutionary Guards who strayed across the border is an indication of increasing tensions throughout the region.

The greatest danger in the situation lies in Pakistan's difficulty holding together as a coherent, and nuclear armed, state. Internally it has many ethnic groups, with many historical enmities, particularly between the Pashtuns, living in the border regions such as South Waziristan, and the Punjabis who make up most of the army sent against them. Its politicians tend to be divided on ethnic lines, and its civilian politicians have been regularly overthrown by the military which has the greatest capacity to cohere the country. The whole situation is extremely dangerous.

There is nothing to choose between the Pakistani government and army on the one hand and the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the other. The first is a regional imperialist power entirely reckless of the lives and misery of its population as it tries desperately to defend its interests despite pressure from within and without; the second desperately trying to get back into power and willing to kill and maim civilians in its effort to do so. The USA differs from the first two only in its greater military and economic power, and has been willing to spread chaos and death on a much larger scale from the Middle East to South Asia in order to defend its super-power status. Only when the whole working class sweeps all these murderous forces away will the area no longer pose a threat to humanity. 

Alex 31/10/9

Even before the world leaders sit down at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, it has been widely predicted that it will come out with nothing concrete, nothing binding, nothing effective in the face of a perspective of planet-wide ecological catastrophe; that the best that can be hoped for is another conference in 2010. The following article explains why we cannot expect any real solutions from those whose first concern is to maintain the present social system.

Capitalism is destroying the planet

First there is global warming:

- Levels of the two of the most important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, have reached their highest point for 650,000 years. This means that the average temperature on earth will increase by between 1.1 and 6.4% over the next 100 years;

- Rising sea levels could lead to the disappearance of entire islands and even countries like Bangladesh. This would result in the forced displacement of hundreds of millions of people;

- We are seeing increasingly violent storms, such as hurricane Katrina. Some experts think that this risk has gone up threefold in the last ten years;

- Deserts are spreading. Right now there is a terrible drought in seven countries in east Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. 23 million human beings are under threat because of repeated bad harvests and there are no food reserves. This drought is also hitting Australia and the American southwest, and in the past few years disastrous wildfires have also menaced whole cities and regions. In central Asia, the Aral Sea in Russia has practically vanished.

Then there is the manufacture of poisonous products, and toxic wastes being spread everywhere, in the air, the waters and the earth. Everyone immediately thinks about nuclear energy, about Chernobyl and all the radioactive waste. But there are also products like mercury which pollute a number of waterways or coastal waters. There is asbestos which is present in buildings in all countries. There are also the pesticides, used for the needs of intensive agriculture. These poisons are largely behind the decline in the bee population, for example. The production of these pesticides brings to mind the factory in Bhopal, in India, where an explosion resulting from inadequate investment in safety measures killed nearly 30,000 people and contaminated large parts of a city of 800,000!

And what can we say about the way the huge mountain of waste is managed? Here the governments and the companies of the world show their total irresponsibility. Once again nuclear waste is in the forefront. France has sent its nuclear waste to Siberia in simple metal barrels and deposited them in the open air! The documentary by Yann-Arthus Bertrand, Vu du ciel, revealed how China is dumping its nuclear waste into the lakes of the high plateaux of Tibet, one of the essential lungs of the planet, and is thus putting billions at risk! In Italy, particularly in Naples, garbage of all kind is accumulating in huge dumps and there is an explosion of disease among local residents. The French state has recently got rid of a boatload of toxic waste in a suburb if Abidjan on the Ivory Coast. There were deaths and thousands of people were contaminated. In June 1992, the Food and Agricultural Organisation already announced that developing countries, especially in Africa, had become a ‘dustbin' in the service of the west. The oceans are also being used as a dustbin. La Repubblica online of 29 January 2007 described an island of a new kind, something straight out of a horror movie by Tim Burton: a "garbage island", situated "in the Pacific Ocean, thirty metres deep, and 80% composed of plastic and the rest by other waste products from all over the place. This ‘island' weighs 3.5 million tons"!

Finally, to terminate what could be interminable, we also have to underline the incessant pillaging of resources. The equatorial band around the planet is being laid waste by the deforestation of Amazonia, equatorial Africa and Indonesia...much of this, irony of ironies, to produce bio-fuels. And while the oceans represent 60% of our food resources, they are being stripped bare: thousands of species are on the verge of extinction. A large part of humanity is thus faced with famine. In short, the destruction wrought by capitalism is now threatening the very survival of humanity.

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As more and more icebergs melt more people are faced with flooding

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The bourgeoisie has no solution to the catastrophe

 

Faced with catastrophe on such a scale, the bourgeoisie is now ringing the alarm bells. An "unprecedented coalition" of French organisations for the defence of the environment and human rights has posed a "climatic" ultimatum to the states attending the Copenhagen conference.

Either these countries sign an agreement which will lead world greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise then decline before 2015.

Or our planet will heat up beyond 2° centigrade, the threshold beyond which the consequences for humanity and the planet will be disastrous. According to the same coalition, the world's climate could even pass a point of no return and become completely uncontrollable.

The Nicolas Hulot foundation made a very similar appeal: "the future of the planet, and with it, the fate of a billion hungry people who have no spokesman, is being played out at Copenhagen. Choose solidarity, or slide into chaos. Humanity is at the crossroads".

It's true: humanity is at the crossroads, but certainly not at Copenhagen. We are in a sinking ship and we need to abandon it, which means that we have to understand how capitalism functions.

It is the very laws of capitalism that are pushing the bourgeoisie to destroy the planet. We live under a monstrous system which turns everything it produces, including waste itself, into a commodity, not to satisfy human need but to make a profit. This can reach absurd levels, such as the invention of recent summits: the legal possibility of buying ‘the right to pollute'. Capitalism is above all the law of the strongest and the reign of competition. In response to this law we have seen the rise of huge industrial concentrations and of mega-cities which crowd millions of human beings together: Tokyo - 36 million; Mumbai - 26 million; Mexico City and New York - 21 million each; Kinshasa - 17 million....and obviously these concentrations play a major role in the ecological crisis. Competition also means war. The production and upkeep of military material (not counting the millions of people who fall victim to wars) is a vast abyss of human and natural energy. An aircraft carrier consumes several thousand litres of fuel in an hour, for example. Finally, capitalism is a totally anarchic and irrational method of production. A commodity can travel thousands of miles to find a buyer. Countries may be selling food products to the other end of the planet, while the local population is dying of hunger because they don't have the means to pay for food!

Contrary to all the propaganda which puts the blame for all this on the individual ‘citizen', making us feel guilty by arguing that if the planet is doing badly, it's because we take the car to work, or we let the tap run when we are brushing our teeth, or we don't recycle properly, it's the capitalist system of production as a whole which is responsible for the grave ecological imbalance which, if it persists for too long, could eliminate humanity altogether.

Now, a certain number of celebrities like Al Gore and Nicolas Hulot, as well as pointing to a genuinely terrifying reality, also call on us to push the great and the powerful to coordinate internationally and find the solutions. Obviously any solution to the ecological problem has to be found on an international scale. A child can see that. But these appeals to the world leaders are a way of hiding reality. The world leaders they call on to take the necessary measures are quite simply the representatives of the national bourgeoisies and a mere glance at the decisions they have been taking for over a century demonstrates that we can expect nothing from them.

These bourgeoisies have produced war after war. Since 1939 not a day has passed without a murderous conflict somewhere on the planet. And it is when they are at war that they reveal most clearly their utter cynicism towards nature and towards human beings: poison gas, chemical weapons such as defoliants, bacteriological warfare, atomic bombs and most recently phosphorus bombs. The recent wars in the Gulf, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, to give only a few examples, have shown just how effective they are in destroying human lives and the environment.

As for the decisions that will be taken or have been taken already, it's not hard to see their ridiculous side. We've mentioned the idea of buying the ‘right to pollute', but there's also the carbon tax, car-free days, etc. And we have already seen the future of ‘green energy' such as bio-fuels under capitalism. Over the last two years, no less than 30 countries have been hit by hunger riots because a large part of their agricultural produce has been diverted towards the development of bio-fuels, and speculation over these products led to rapid price rises. Renewable energy or more long-lasting forms of energy production are used mainly by states and companies (often the biggest polluters of the lot, like Total or BP) to show us that another kind of capitalism, a green capitalism, will enable us not only to save the planet but find a way out of the economic crisis. In reality, the ecological catastrophe, like unemployment, war and all the other horrors engendered by capitalism, prove only that this system is bankrupt and has led humanity into a complete impasse.

Only the working class can build a new world in harmony with nature

Only one class can overturn this suicidal society and offer a different future to humanity: the working class. The working class exists and struggles on an international scale, and it has already proved this by its attempts at world revolution in 1917-19, which put an end to the butchery of the First World War. And today we can still see that the workers the world over are waging the same struggle, whether in Rio, New York or Cairo. Everywhere its basic demands are the same: decent living conditions for all.

The motor, the dynamic of these struggles is the opposite of the law of profit and competition: it is the solidarity of a class which is associated by nature. The mutual aid, the cooperation, the fraternity which develop through the workers' struggle lays the ground for a society freed from all exploitation.

Some will object that the experience of Russia has only brought us Stalinism and its corollary, productivism. We can't go into any detail here about the enormous lie that is Stalinism=communism. But let's just look at the question of productivism. Stalinism had respect neither for nature nor for human life. But this was very different for the revolutionaries of 1917. In fact ‘ecology' was already part of their struggle. At the beginning of the 1920s, there was a commissariat of the environment animated by Bolsheviks like Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, Borodin and others. By the end of the 20s this commissariat had managed to establish 60 Zapovedniki, protected spaces for the preservation of all species. But Stalinism rapidly destroyed such initiatives in the interest of a frenzied capitalist productivism, whether in industry or the countryside. One of the results of Stalinism's management of the environment has been the disappearance of the Aral Sea. In the USSR overall, over 20% of the land has been completely laid waste.

The working class, through its international revolution, is alone capable of opening the perspective of a radical transformation of the relationship between man and nature. This is why the most conscious minorities should not be limited to a purely ecological combat, but should direct their energies towards reinforcing the struggle of the working class.  

Ayato 14/11/9

 

Following the suspension of strike action by the Communication Workers Union, many will cry ‘sell-out' and ‘betrayal' by the union bureaucrats. This article argues that both the methods it used while the struggle was on, and the decision to call a halt to the action, were examples of the union doing its job: sabotaging the class struggle from the inside. 

In early November, the Communications Workers Union reached an ‘Interim Agreement' with Royal Mail management. This agreement brokered by Acas and the TUC effectively called off the national postal strikes as they were about to enter a third week. In reaction to a massive campaign of calumny against the postal workers' struggle this agreement was heralded as providing ‘a period of calm' and ‘a strike-free Christmas'. This agreement did not specifically rule out strikes during the period leading up to Christmas period, but provided for local ‘reviews'. As it happens there have been no reviews organised at the local level by the CWU.

It was clear to many postal workers that the Interim Agreement was just a manoeuvre that would undermine the struggle in defence of jobs and conditions. This was very clearly revealed by Dave Ward and the CWU's Postal Executive Committee in the covering letter sent out with copies of the agreement. "We should tell our members that it was right to suspend strike action. We have always promised our members that we would not take unnecessary strike action" This is really rich! At a time when postal workers are fighting massive attacks the union thinks that strike action could be deemed ‘unnecessary'! This has been seen by many postal workers as a ‘sell-out' by the union tops of the CWU. In reality this is not an accidental ‘mistake ‘ on the part of the CWU, or the application of incorrect tactics, but is a continuation of its previous sabotage and isolation of the postal workers' struggle. Above all the CWU wanted to take control of the movement. The CWU, along with the rest of the British bourgeoisie, did not want the inspiring example of a sector of workers, with a reputation for militancy in recent years, fighting against job cuts and worsening conditions and prompting other workers to struggle.

Eighteen months ago postal workers in many offices reacted to local negotiations which were attempting to implement phase 4 of the 2007 Pay and Modernisation agreement. Across the country, but particularly in the London area, workers in local offices fought against attacks by Royal Mail management trying to impose job losses by so-called ‘executive action'. The calling of the national strikes was supposed to end the isolation of local offices by confronting RM management with a national work force.

In section 4 of the Interim Agreement it says "Royal Mail and CWU have reached agreement to accelerate and complete the modernisation programme by jointly resolving all outstanding issues from phase 4 of Pay and Modernisation Agreement 2007".

This modernisation programme agreed to by the union means a massive clear-out of staff. This is the issue which is at the heart of the postal workers' struggle. The programme is not accepted by the majority of postal workers but is being implemented by Royal Mail even during the so-called ‘cooling-off' period. Although postal workers were signed up to the Agreement by the CWU there were several local walk-outs. The national strike was intended to end local initiatives.

The difference between the 2007 and 2009 strikes

In 2007 the strike was defeated by the use of the union tactic of the ‘rolling strike' which, as we said in WR 328, saw "the wearing down of the movement through partial action limited in time and geographical extension". However, during the strikes we saw very important expressions of solidarity, with refusals to cross picket lines and the blacking of mail. The latter was particularly important in Scotland where the suspension of drivers refusing to work blacked mail helped spread the strikes. Even though these strikes did not move out of the framework of the unions, or spread beyond postal workers, they marked a significant extension of the movement, because they were for the most part unofficial and at first out of the control of the union. We also saw the holding of mass meetings. What was decisive was the fact that the struggle didn't spread to other sectors of the working class. This strengthened the position of the CWU and re-enforced the union stranglehold.

In the 2009 strikes we saw postal workers isolated at first at the local level, with some workers being involved in one-day strikes over a period of 15 weeks. Many workers lost thousands of pounds in lost wages trying to defend themselves at a local level. The CWU then called the national rolling strikes, only to call them off three weeks later. All this has had a profoundly demoralising effect. Many workers faced with the attacks on their wages and conditions are considering getting out of Royal Mail before things get even worse. This is an individualist response but not unexpected when the CWU, with the indefinite postponement of the national strike, has reduced the struggle to a local level.

There is a profound cynicism amongst postal workers towards the CWU but not yet a dynamic to go beyond the framework of the unions.  

Melmoth 4/12/9

The relentless deepening of the crisis and the vast burden of debt weighing on the British economy mean that the ruling class - whichever of its factions are in government in the coming year - will have no choice but to make savage cuts in working class living standards.

"The west's leading economic think tank today weighed into the political row over public expenditure in Britain when it called on the government to implement deep cuts in public spending once the recession is over. In its annual health check on the UK, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said the government could ‘do considerably more to accelerate its programme of fiscal consolidation', provided recovery was under way. The OECD said a better way to repair the massive hole in Britain's public finances - estimated to be 14% of GDP by 2010 - would be to cut spending rather than raise taxes. This follows on from comments made by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, who last week demanded tougher goals from the chancellor, Alistair Darling, to reduce an ‘extraordinary' public deficit" (Guardian 29/6/9).

The government is under pressure not just from the point of view of its own fiscal situation, but also from international bodies concerned at the growing hole in Britain's public sector finances which, in September, stood at a staggering £804.8 billion. "The Institute for Fiscal Studies is predicting the biggest squeeze in spending on public services since the late 1970s when the Labour government was forced to go to the IMF for a bail-out. Both Labour and the Tories have said they want to more than halve the budget deficit by 2013/14. Leaked Treasury documents include plans to cut spending across departments by a total of 9.3% over four years from 2010"(bbc 20/9/09).

Fortunately for the British ruling class, regardless of whoever wins the forthcoming General Election, all three main political parties agree completely on the need to make sweeping cuts across the public sector. This in turn, concretely, will mean pay and recruitment freezes (as well as actual cuts), increasing workloads, more stress for the vast majority of us.

Health

The news in September, that government-appointed management consultants had recommended cutting the NHS workforce by 10% over the next 5 years, was met by immediate ‘rejection' from the Health Minister. "As well as the staff cuts, the consultants said a recruitment freeze should start within two years and medical school places might have to be reduced." (bbc 3/9/09).The government's response was that ‘core front-line staff' such as doctors and nurses would be maintained and that current levels of spending would be maintained until 2011.

However, between 1997 and 2008 the largest increase in staffing has been in administrative functions, from approximately 350,000 in 1997 to a huge 520,000 by 2008. It is here that the bulk of staff are likely to lose their jobs. Indeed, even though the report was ‘rejected' there is an expectation and demand that, for workers in the NHS "There is no room for complacency in the NHS. We must constantly look for new ways to be efficient and to deliver better patient care"(Karen Jennings, head of Health at UNISON, ibid). This is a view shared by all three parties and all three want the main focus to be on ‘efficiency' and ‘fighting bureaucracy' in the coming period. This sounds ominous indeed for thousands of administrative workers whose jobs could be cut under the pretext of reducing bureaucracy.

Education

"More than 1,000 unemployed young people have marched through central London demanding jobs as the rate of youth unemployment stands at a record high. Students, union activists and campaigners condemned the government for ‘failing our futures'"(bbc 28/11/09).

"Apprenticeship and college budgets face public spending cuts, as the government publishes its skills strategy. Ministers have argued boosting skills is critical to the recovery of the UK economy, but are reducing spending by £433m next year" (bbc 17/9/09).

Over the 12 years of the Labour government there has been a slow decline in educational provision. Overall, the main cuts have been in the Further Education sector, especially in adult education, which has suffered repeated cuts nationally. The focus of government spending and targets has been in Primary and Secondary schools, especially in the area of ‘basic skills' - literacy and numeracy. However, this has done little to impact on youth unemployment which has reached record levels, and it is exactly young people who will bear the brunt of the current recession "The number of young people out of work has risen by 15,000, reaching a total of 943,000, the latest figures show. In the past year, job losses among young people have risen faster than within other sections of the working population. The rate of unemployment among young people for the three months to September is 18%, the highest since records began in this category in 1992" (bbc 11/9/09).

In this academic year there were 40,000 fewer places available to young people at universities, which adds to the funding crisis already being faced by UK universities. For those lucky enough to have got through university before the crisis hit, they are now facing the bleakest outlook in graduate employment for a generation, and should be consoled by the Labour offer of internships (i.e. work for nothing) or training (after 3 or 4 years at university) after 6 months of unemployment!

Welfare/benefits

The Department of Work and Pensions, which includes all benefit payments, spent £135.7billion last year and the ruling class has been clear on the need to cut benefit payments. Under Labour there has been a gigantic increase in the number of people claiming disability benefit, although this had already started under the Tories in the middle and later part of the 1980s, largely as a means of pushing people off jobseekers' allowance and thereby keep official unemployment figures lower.

The Tories are proposing ‘bold plans' to radically shake this up "Within three years of being elected, the Tories want all 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit to be assessed to see what work they could do and offered training or other help in getting work. They expect about 500,000 claimants to be found jobs or transferred to jobseeker's allowance, which pays £25 a week less. Mr Cameron said: ‘If you can work, you should work... we will help you to work'" (bbc 5/10/09).

In addition, Labour's flagship ‘New Deal' back to work programme is to be scrapped by the Tories and replaced with more ‘personalised' help, which will include benefit cuts for those unwilling to take part in whatever spurious training they are made to undergo. On the other hand, Labour has said that "People out of work for more than six months who have turned down work experience, support or training will be required to take a work placement as a condition of receiving their benefits." It's not for nothing that the Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper, noted (apparently without any sense of irony) that the Tories "are simply rehashing Labour policies..."

Conclusion

In the immediate future there is a bleak outlook for the working class in the UK and internationally. Everywhere workers turn there are proposed job cuts, for example: the closing of Corus in Redcar with the loss of 1700 jobs; 354 job losses announced at Vauxhall Luton; 340 jobs at a military aircraft maintenance base in South Wales; over 1200 job losses at British Airways; many tens of thousands of jobs lost as a direct result of this current crisis in the banking and finance sector - not to mention the many other thousands in hospitality, catering, travel and entertainment which heavily rely on corporate patronage, also lost.

However, this situation also contains the seeds of a class response. A simultaneity of attacks will mean the greater potential for a simultaneity of struggles. There will be an increasing likelihood that workers from different sectors under attack will start to go beyond ‘their' sector, beyond ‘their' union and aim to seek solidarity from other workers as a first step to pushing back the attacks.  

Graham 29/11/09

After 8 years in Afghanistan, the international force led by the USA is sending in more troops. Far from a blow for democracy or the ‘war on terror', this conflict is turning the region into an ever worsening hell.

Eight years after the ‘great victory' that overthrew the Taliban in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the international NATO and Enduring Freedom forces are not only still there, but due to be increased by another 30,000 US and 500 British troops with another 10,000 requested from NATO. The 100,000 international (and 200,000 Afghan) soldiers and police have already lost over 1200 dead and countless injured and maimed. In addition there have been more than 2100 civilian deaths caught in the crossfire of the Taliban, Al Qaeda terrorism and western forces, with the latter responsible for 40% of these deaths according to UNO (such as the 90 killed near water tankers in Kunduz last September). And the risk of death, from bombardment, drones and terrorist bombings has been exported across the border into Pakistan. This spread of chaos, fear and death is the first great achievement of this military adventure, which like operations in the Middle East, Iraq, or ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, are carried out for imperialist interests, however they may have been dressed up as ‘peace-keeping', ‘democracy' or the ‘war on terror' to disguise the build up of military tensions and sanitise the death and suffering visited on the population. To give an idea of western priorities, current US military spending is $100million a day, while international aid by all donors is $7 million a day, and half that promised has never materialised - with Robert Gate proposing that the US cut off this sort of aid to punish corruption. Similarly France spends 200 million Euro for the army and 11million on civilian aid. While the cost of the war to ‘save' the people of Afghanistan is $3.6billion a month, the population suffers. Drug barons drive about in 4x4s along with other dignitaries while only 5% of aid goes to supporting legitimate agriculture that is not only the livelihood of 70% of the population but also key to stemming the tide of drugs.

Meanwhile around 50,000 children work on the streets of Kabul, cleaning cars, shining shoes, collecting papers, and still suffer hunger, disease, violence and slavery. Conditions are worsening throughout the country. Afghanistan's maternal mortality is the second highest in the world, but in the North-East province of Badakhshan, a centre of opium traffic, it is significantly worse with 6,500 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births, the highest rate ever recorded. 75% of the newborn die from lack of food, warmth and care. Furthermore on average a pregnant woman has a one in 8 chance of dying, and half of them are under 16. This UN study showing just one aspect of the devastation of war and poverty on the population has not been publicised by the British media, which is sufficiently bare faced to imply that the war is necessary to improve the position of women. The election fiasco was well publicised, as is criticism of the corruption of Karzai and his regime by Gordon Brown, Obama, Clinton and others, but he is their man!

More oil on the fire

Despite the failure of the military intervention Obama has announced a troop surge, a second one after sending an extra 17,000 in February. He is claiming that "these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011", although NATO secretary general Rasmussen has assured us that the troops are there for as long as it takes, and the US is planning to send in a ‘high representative' to take over day to day control in Kabul. The new troops show that Obama is following exactly the same strategy as his predecessor George Bush, with the same justification: "we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear".

This is despite recent revelations that US forces had bin Laden ‘within their grasp' in 2001, but chose not to send the troops in to capture him and that Obama's national security advisor, James Jones, told Congress that Al Qaeda's presence is much reduced, with less than 100 operatives in the country, no base and no capacity to launch attacks against the ‘allies'. Even in Pakistan, the Wall Street Journal notes that Al Qaeda is pursued by US drones, short of money and having difficulty attracting young Arabs to fight in the bleak mountains of Pakistan. However, when Obama says that he will not tolerate a safe haven for terrorists, and that his policy must work for both sides of the border, this is clearly also a veiled threat against Pakistan.

So why such slaughter when the neither the threat of Al Qaeda nor the benefit to the population are in any way credible? Many of the ‘allies' are becoming more reluctant (Sarkozy has announced France will send no more troops, Germany is waiting till the New Year to decide) and even announcing the war is lost in advance. The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, told CNN that Canada does not report the war since it was not fighting with the insurgents - a US complaint about many of the ‘allies'. Obama's announcement told us that the troop surge is in "the national interest". Precisely.

For the USA the national interest is the control of this strategic region close to China, Iran and Russia, essential trade routes for primary commodities and a region that looks across to Africa from Asia. It is, therefore, a major prize for the world's greatest power, its allies and its rivals, all of whom have complete contempt for the population. We can expect imperialist forces will be fighting over and devastating this region and massacring the population for a long time to come.   

Wilma/Alex 5/12/09

We are publishing here four texts in response to the massive job-cuts facing power and electricity workers in Mexico. The first is a joint leaflet signed by our section in Mexico, which publishes Revolución mundial, and two internationalist anarchist groups, Grupo Socialista Libertario and the Projecto Anarquista Metropolitano. There are two messages of solidarity from proletarian groups in Peru. We are also publishing a further message in support of the workers' struggle, from comrades in Ecuador. These are all excellent examples of cooperation between proletarian organisations, who despite various differences can unite their forces in response to important events.

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The liquidation of Luz y Fuerza del Centro: unemployment and more attacks... We have to struggle, but not behind the unions

On the night of the 10th October the Federal police occupied all of the stations and centres of LyFC[1] in parallel with the presidential directive announcing the closing of this company and lay-offs for nearly 44,000 workers, which the government admits will be "more than that authorised by law". The attack provoked a state of shock, anger and impotence. This is a new blow by the state against the working class. Faced with this situation we have to ask how our class can respond and express its unity.

This is an attack against us all, unity is our defence!

The generalised crisis hitting world capitalism forces each national bourgeoisie to push through increasingly brutal measures, diverting the worst effects of the crisis onto the proletariat. All of its ‘adjustments policies' are worsening the living conditions of all workers, by attacking pensions, wages, and social spending. This is the only way that the capitalists can keep their noses above water. Every country is ‘reforming pensions' (that is, lowering them!), increasing the amount of years that have to be worked before retirement; wages are being pulverised from every angle, the working day is becoming increasingly unbearable and unemployment is the final insult in a life of daily misery.

What we are seeing in Mexico is not some form of quaint folklore, caused by the particular errors of the national capital. The state, which represents the ruling class - the bourgeoisie - has the task of representing its interests (whether it is a government of the Right or the Left). The liquidation of LyFc is an old aim of the bourgeoisie, and if this has been delayed it is to give something back to the union apparatus: remember the support that the SME (Mexican electricians' union) gave to the candidature of Carlos Salinas (1988), the reward for which was the restructuring of the company.

The crisis, however, drags the bourgeoisie into a dead-end, where it cannot hide the catastrophic reality that it has brought about itself. It is therefore necessary for capital to reform its unions, and not destroy them as the left of capital claims. Workers are beginning to understand, deep down, that the unions' blackmail and grip on the struggle does not contribute to the realisation of their true aspirations. Despite all of their fine speeches the unions are the enemies of the proletariat, because the bourgeoisie needs them to better subdue the exploited.

Don't forget the huge campaign that has been unleashed in recent months against this sector of the proletarian class - the electricity workers - who have been made to look ‘privileged' and ‘inefficient' in the eyes of ‘public opinion'. This has lead to a situation where many workers don't understand that it is necessary to struggle against this attack, because if today it is the electricity workers, tomorrow it will be the rest of us.

Workers cannot allow themselves to fall for the lies of the bourgeoisie and its acolytes. The closure of LyFC is not a ‘benefit for the Mexican people': it is a brutal attack against the whole proletariat. The new contracts (perhaps 44,000 lay-offs?) will mean without doubt worse working conditions, while many other workers will be made redundant.

The bourgeoisie and its political apparatus want us to fall for the idea that the electricity workers have been able to do nothing despite the presence of a ‘powerful union', and this means that all workers must submit to the plans of capital and its state and resign themselves to new reductions in their living conditions. No, the proletariat cannot abandon its struggle against capitalism! Today's attacks are the harbinger of those we will all face if we do not oppose them as a class. Therefore, in the face of the attacks that have been unfolding in recent years along with the rise in prices and intensified repression (with the strengthening of the police-military apparatus) it is vital that all parts of the working class - employed and unemployed, permanent and casual workers - understand the need for unity and put it into practice. In order to be able to do this, it is vital to know who our enemies are.

The unions, government and political parties are all our enemies!

In order to carry out this attack with the least trouble, all the forces of the ruling class have divided up the work: some creating divisions amongst the electricity workers through a sterile electoral struggle between union factions; some by painting the attacks on the living conditions as ‘attacks on the unions and democratic liberties'; while others are creating a lynch-mob atmosphere by presenting the electricity workers as ‘privileged'. They are doing this in order to draw as many workers as possible into an ill-considered struggle to ‘defend the union', and by extension to defend the firm and the national economy. These slogans are part of a strategy to make workers forget their demands as an exploited class.

Following on from this attack (10 October) this campaign has strengthened and taken advantage of the momentary surprise in order to spread feelings of defeat and demoralisation. The unions have been at the forefront of this. This shows that to try and struggle through the union leads straight to defeat, since it has been the union, along with other forces of the state, which has trapped the workers in this impasse. The unions certainly aren't going to advance the struggle, on the contrary. An example of this is the SME putting forward the idea that it is possible to freely resolve this struggle ‘legally, through the courts', leading workers again into the dead end of bureaucratic judicial protection, making them forget how the unions, faced with the modification of the ISSSTE[2] created dispersion, diverted discontent and ended the struggle, all through the use of judicial protection! The judicial and legalistic terrain onto which the unions seek to divert discontent leads to sterile exhaustion, reducing workers to citizens who respect and defend the ‘legal system' (which is only there to legitimise their precarious and miserable conditions) rather than acting as a class.

It is clear that the role of the union is not to unite and push forward the expression of real solidarity, but to divide us. The fact that the government has been able to deliver such a blow against the electricity workers is not some bolt from the blue, but rather the result of the unions' work of division and sabotage over the years.

The bourgeoisie's strategy is to land a definitive blow in order to divert the electricity workers' real discontent and to stop the solidarity of their fellow workers being expressed. In order to do this it is using all of its forces to try and drag the workers onto the terrain of the defence of the nation and the unions; that is, they want to imprison us in a struggle that does not try to question the system of capitalist exploitation and, finally, they tell us that we can best express our discontent through our vote in the next electoral circus.

Struggling together, looking for solidarity as a class...There is no other way!

Solidarity is not some union pantomime where one union boss declares his support for another, nor is it fictitious ‘moral support'. Real solidarity takes place through and in the struggle. Today, as at all similar times and situations, the electricity workers are being attacked and the rest of the proletariat must express real solidarity, which is nothing other than a will to struggle without distinction between the unemployed and employed, between sectors, or between regions. To express real solidarity workers must hold assemblies open to the whole proletariat (employed, unemployed and other sectors) where the situation that faces everyone is discussed and the discontent turned into a movement controlled by workers themselves and not by the union structure.

In order to carry out this attack, the unions are trying to isolate the electricity workers from their class brothers and to enrol them into mobilisations such as the one being promoted by Lopez Obrador[3] which seek to enclose and hamstring the workers, to prevent them looking for their own means of struggle, to trap them in a false choice about state or private firms, thus leaving them open to attacks from all sides. Workers must reflect together, outside of and against the unions, in order to organise a struggle to try to stop the attacks. If we leave ourselves in the hands of the unions and the political parties, we are condemning ourselves to defeat. A slogan of the class war is being heard again in the world: ‘the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves'; and we have to remember that the exploited have nothing to lose but their chains!  

10/9

Grupo Socialista Libertario

webgsl.wordpress.com [275]

Revolution Mundial

[email protected] [276]

Proyecto Anarquista Metropolitano

proyectoanarquistametropolitano.blogspot.com

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Message of support from the Nucleo Proletario in Peru, (received 24/10/9)

Solidarity from Peru with the workers of Mexico

Dear class comrades in Mexico

We have learned with indignation about what happened on Saturday 10 October. This is yet another proof of the putrefaction and dehumanisation which the capitalist system is dragging us into.

In Mexico as in Peru, the living conditions of the workers are miserable; private and state enterprises pay meagre wages which aren't enough to buy the basic necessities; lay-offs on the other hand have become our daily bread. Unemployment is a plague ravaging the big urban centres; theft, delinquency, prostitution have become daily occurrences in our lives. It's as though we the workers have become used to living in a cess pit. The media, both in Mexico and in Peru, do nothing but attack the least sign of protest by the proletariat, whenever it demands some ‘right' which the bourgeoisie has promised us. Then they call us rebels, and when we struggle to demand what really belongs to us because we are the producer class in society, they call us terrorists. In the best of cases, the press serves only to distract us and confuse our minds. We have seen clearly that the media in Mexico have elaborated a whole campaign to discredit the electrical sector where many of you work. It's no accident if these same media have prepared the social terrain to make sure that other sectors of the proletariat stay resigned and cowed at a time when police repression is coming down on you, to chase you away from the places you have built, from your workplaces where you can earn your living somehow or another. Brothers! We are one social class, there in Mexico or here in Peru; we send you our total solidarity in these very difficult moments you are going though; we are against exploitation, whether by the state or private bosses. We know very well that it is necessary to fight for the abolition of this shared exploitation, because it is the source of the poverty, hunger and degradation we are suffering. But for now it is necessary to work and on this basis, to organise ourselves so that we don't get manipulated and crushed by ‘leaders' who claim to be our representatives. Here in Peru many workers, teachers, students, and unemployed people have experienced in the flesh the deceitfulness of the trade unions. It's true that we are very young and maybe some of you will say that there are really working class trade unions which fight for your rights. Well comrades, for once we ask you to have confidence in youth, because this part of the youth only has confidence in you, in your strength, in your solidarity and your unity. We are with you and not with the trade unions, or with any left wing or right wing leader. We hope that you will organise yourselves as workers, that you will debate, discuss, convoke assemblies with all proletarian sectors and decide yourselves what to do for your future. Isolation is poison to your struggle. It has to generalise to other sectors of the proletariat. You must not be afraid to ask other comrades to join your cause, which is the same as theirs. It's only then that strikes, work stoppages or street demonstrations or any other method you judge to be effective can really achieve their objectives.

We ask you to listen to us because we have been through the same problems as you and not only in the electricity sector, but in all sectors of the economy. For us it is clear that the problem is not limited to the electricity branch, the problem is not just Mexican and it's not just Latin American. The problem is not the government, nor the USA. The problem is the system of exploitation. Capitalism is an inhuman system by nature, its laws and its state legalise exploitation, lay-offs and unemployment; they legalise the trade unions so that they can deceive you, so that you end up acting in the defence of their interests, which are none other than the bourgeoisie's interest in realising its profits from our lives.

We know that many of you have a family, children to feed; that you obviously don't want to find yourselves out of work, that some of you are thinking of throwing in the towel....but we, children of the proletarian class, who see reflected in you the image of our parents or older brothers, we ask you to continue the struggle, to teach us, to educate us by defending what is rightfully yours, without allowing yourselves to be marched behind a handful of bourgeois, a group of entrepreneurs, imbued with vanity and stacks of cash, and who have never worked. We ask you, comrades, to continue the struggle, to solidarise with each other, to unify to demand the restoration of your jobs, to wage the struggle against those who, day after day, make this world what it is. A world of poverty and pollution on the earth, in the air and in the waters.

We hope that you will win a victory on this occasion. There are thousands of us workers to every bourgeois. The police want to break your courage and your solidarity, like the unions who defend a country which does not belong to you, to defend those who exploit you, defend this old and rotten system. Whereas you, our brothers, are defending life, a new society, a new future, a future which every day grows more possible in the serried unity of your fists.

In Peru, we are a group of young proletarians, teachers, workers, high school students and university students and we send you our fraternal class greetings. We are with you in your hatred of capital; we join you in your indignation against the massive lay-offs you face and the weighty task of putting a meal on your tables every day. We are in solidarity with the struggles you are waging and will continue to wage. Don't give up comrades! Unite! That's where your strength resides and we will do all we can to support you. The mass of the exploited need to speak up against the threats from the Mexican bourgeois state which is the same as those we face in Peru or elsewhere. Your pain is ours, your tears against injustice are ours, your fists and your courage are ours. From here we call on you to organise open general assemblies, debates and discussions that will enable you to organise and confront the exploiters.

Finally, we are aware of the fact that while winning this battle would be a great success, once the objective is obtained, it's still not enough, it's not simply a matter of going to work and forgetting about it. We have to go further, to see the underlying problem, which is and will always be the capitalist system, and not this president or that policy. This is why we have no confidence in Ollanta's nationalist party in Peru, or in Chavez, or in Evo Morales, or the PRI, or the PRD[4] or in any other party of the left of the bourgeoisie, however radical they claim to be. We only have confidence in the party of the workers, the real party of the proletariat which doesn't only fight against the exploitation, the abuses and oppression of this system, but which also fights for the destruction of this system. We are talking about a communist party, the only one that can belong to us, and whose formation on a world scale is the task of the day, because exploitation exists on a world scale and it is the role of the communist party to struggle for its abolition. The power to decide what to do with production, what to do with the work of everyone, has to belong to the producer, to the proletariat, and no one else.

Comrades: organisation, solidarity and autonomous class struggle against capital and its clique of followers- that is where our hope resides. Struggle is the only way forward, not to reform the system, not just to obtain a necessary demand, but struggle to abolish this system, because otherwise everything will continue as before and our children will still be fighting not to be thrown out of work by the bourgeoisie. Towards the new society which we alone can build, we must all unite for the world proletarian revolution

Down with the social democratic reformist groups!

Down with the trade unions who negotiate the lives of the workers!

Long live the struggle of the international proletariat!

Workers of Mexico, Peru, and the whole world unite against capital!

Only the world wide unity of the working class can free humanity from poverty!

Forward to the struggle, comrades!

Nucleo Proletario en Peru 24/9/9

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The text below arrived at our -mail address on 30/10/9, written by the comrades of another group in Peru, Grupo de Lucha Proletaria

The Mexican state attacks the workers of Luz y Fuerza

Every time the bourgeois state wants to sell, privatise or declare bankrupt a state enterprise, it puts forward arguments such as: ‘the company was losing money', ‘it was not profitable', ‘it was a burden on the state'...this whole series of lies has been put forward by the Mexican bourgeoisie today. Many Mexican specialists have said the opposite (cf TV Azteca 22/10/09) while others have repeated the arguments mentioned above, telling us that the electricity enterprise Luz y Fuerza was a bottomless pit for the state.

What's certain is that all the disadvantages are falling on the backs of the workers in the form of unemployment. More than 44,000 jobs are going to go following the liquidation of Electrica Luz y Fuerza. All workers are threatened by this plague of unemployment - that's the only thing that capitalism can guarantee. And now it is the turn of the Mexican bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the world crisis, to take measures to readjust and reduce personnel. But this is very far from being an isolated fact. The same thing is happening in Peru and all over the world. It's a tsunami, a massive and directed attack against the proletariat on a world scale, making living and working conditions increasingly precarious. All the bourgeoisies of the world know very well that they have to carry out such measures if they are to keep their heads above water in this brutal crisis. And the only way to do it is to hit the living conditions of the world's workers with increasing force.

What is clear is that capitalism can no longer guarantee anything to humanity. This is shown very well by what the Mexican state is doing to the workers of Luz y Fuerza.

The workers must never forget that the politicians and the unions are not the solution but part of the problem. They are the ones in charge of the continuity of the system of capitalist exploitation: their appeals for social peace, democracy, the country and order are not ours. They will never do anything to help us. They are there to carry out the instructions of the ruling class. The struggle of the workers only has a future outside the unions and all forms of political opportunism. The proletariat must organise itself and maintain its class unity in order to get through what it is experiencing in Mexico

What the workers of Mexico and elsewhere must remember is that the attacks on their living conditions are going to continue, they will be closer together and more intense until the situation becomes unbearable. The working class must understand that it possesses the weapons to struggle against the situation capitalism is imposing on it today: these weapons are class solidarity, confidence in itself and in its struggles on the local and the global level.

Workers of all countries, unite!

GLP 24/10/09

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The Núcleo de Discusión Internacionalista de Ecuador sends its own message of solidarity to the power workers of Mexico.

 

Letter to the worker comrades of Luz y Fuerza del Centro in México

 

Dear comrades, little more than a month has passed since the night of the 10th October when the Mexican bourgeoisie in collusion with its state security forces and front line agents hidden within the proletarian movement - the unions of all colours and types - carried out the action for which they exist: weakening the proletariat and trampling it underfoot. This was achieved by stunning the workers with the sight of proletarian blood and deceiving them with negotiations, the fervent coming and goings and 'sacrifices' of the union leaders, along with their hundred and one tall stories, all of which served to hide their real intention: defending the interests of their masters the Mexican bourgeoisie.

The proletariat has experienced acts like those of the 10th October ever since it began to rise up against the bourgeoisie's dehumanised frenzy for profit, gain, money, and the extraction of surplus-value. Remember Bloody Sunday, 9 February 1905, in the streets of Saint Petersburg, in Czarist Russia, the antechamber to the glorious Red October of 1917; in Ecuador at the beginning of the last century, there was the 15 November 1922, when hundreds of protesting workers demanding better living conditions were struck down and thrown into the Guayas river which flows into the port of Guayaquil; in modern times, in 1979, there was the massacre of sugar harvesting workers of the sugar firm AZTRA, La Troncal, province of Cánar, where more than two hundred workers were thrown into canals and riddled with bullets by the forces of order: this marked the beginning of the period of ‘democracy’, which was just another means for prolonging the bourgeoisie's rule.

If we investigated the history of the class struggle more closely the list would be as enormous as humanity's need for better world. But we will learn nothing from simply recording and lamenting these facts, which is what the unions, the parties of the left of capital and the leftists do with their pompous commemorations around this or that significant struggle of the working class. These ideological and organic agents of capital know nothing about the essence of marxism; they have no interest in drawing the lessons of these struggles. For them marxism is only hollow phrases, slogans to be repeated in discussions, a form of ideological window-dressing. We must overcome misfortune, we must look at the facts, understand and assimilate the lessons that they give us. We must be valiant in the face of adversity and tenaciously begin reflecting, discussing and clarifying in the community of struggle, with comrades faced with punishment squads, those losing their jobs, workers in other areas, other firms, others cities, other countries.

Fellow proletarians - this is not all: here, in September, there were similar national protests for the same reasons: defence of wages, jobs, a dignified life, decent redundancy payments, etc, but the union traitors ingeniously led the workers down the roads of parliament, the law and lawyers. We are faced with the same problem, the need to overcome the barriers of the bourgeoisie: the unions, the parties of the left of capital and the leftists, parliament, the courts, central government and the nation.

Comrades let us tell you that we are united with you from the bottom of our hearts in solidarity: you have profoundly posed to us the need to reflect on the theoretical and practical legacy that the history of the struggle of the working class has left us. We believe that in this way, understanding your suffering in the light of the experience of the class struggle, we can transmit to our proletarian comrades in this part of the planet the lessons to be learnt. Comrades, from a distance, we say: do not be discouraged or lose heart, the future is yours, the road is strewn with rocks; but together, united in solidarity through the class struggle, we will be triumphant and humanity will win its future. In the words of the Communist Manifesto elaborated by comrades Marx and Engels in 1847: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” We are firmly convinced that only reflection, discussion and clarification can give us the strength to tear down the walls thrown up by the forces of the bourgeoisie and thus bring about a truly human society. COMMUNISM.

 

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

 NDIE (Núcleo de Discusión Internacionalista de Ecuador),Guayaquil, 11/9

 

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[1] Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) is a public company that distributes electricity above all in the Mexican capital. The Mexican state carried out the closure following massive losses, on the 11th October 2009 following the police occupation of all its offices on the 10th.

[2]    Social security for state workers

[3]    Candidate of the left in the last Mexican presidential elections (2006) who denounced it as a fix, and began a campaign of ‘civil disobedience' against the government.

[4] Ollanta is the leader of the ultranationalist left party in Peru. The PRI is the ‘revolutionary' party which has governed Mexico for 70 years. The PRD, which is an old split from the PRI, is today a party of the left.

The present ‘recession' is not unique to Britain. It is not the result of Labour's mismanagement of the economy. It is not caused by the greed of the bankers or by ‘neo-liberal' economic policies. It is a crisis of capitalist relations of production on a global scale. And this is why all the propaganda about ‘recovery' is a lie, aimed at obscuring the real bankruptcy of the present system of exploitation.

Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne says that Britain is the exception to a trend for recovery in major economies. "It is now official that Britain is the only G20 country still in recession. Labour's disastrous economic policies meant Britain was one of the first into recession and now we are the last out."

We are likely to hear a lot more of this banter in the run-up to a general election. For a more serious view on the state of the world economy we might turn to Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund in a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry. Admitting that the global economy was in a "highly fragile" state he said that "Financial conditions have improved but are far from normal" and he thought that "Signs show confidence returning, but banking systems in many advanced economies remain undercapitalised, weighed down by leaden legacy assets and, increasingly, underperforming loans." Also "On the household side, weak financial positions and high unemployment will damp down on consumption for some time ... and large public deficits add to vulnerabilities." Reminding us that certain indicators were still predicted to get worse for the foreseeable future he said "it is difficult to claim that the crisis is over when unemployment is at historic highs and getting higher still."

As for the ‘recovery' of other countries, he saw no reason to stop all the various government measures that have been introduced across the world as there could still be further turmoil in the months ahead that might warrant further state intervention. The main weakness in Strauss-Kahn's comments was that he saw the growing demands from Chinese consumers as offering the best prospect for a sustained recovery for the world economy.

Crisis of an international system

George Osborne blames Labour for the state of the economy. There have been many other scapegoats named as being responsible for the economic crisis. The Left blames neo-liberalism and deregulation. The Right sees state controls holding back entrepreneurs. Lots of people have a go at financial speculators and greedy bankers. Some say that what we are experiencing is just part of the normal ‘business cycle'

In reality the current phase of the crisis is unprecedented in capitalism's history. Even those commentators that see some future ‘recovery' accept that the economy will be irretrievably scarred and will not be returning to past levels of activity that were only sustained by huge amounts of debt.

Just look at the banking sector. In Britain we are only now discovering the true extent of government intervention a year after it took place. And the IMF thinks that internationally there could be more revelations to come of the true extent of the crisis with maybe as much as 50 percent of bank losses still hidden away in balance sheets.

When Osbourne says that the British situation is different to others he's not entirely wrong. The effects of the crisis on Dubai throw some light on this. Dubai's diminishing offshore oil reserves will be exhausted in 20 years. Apart from re-exports it has no real industry and few natural resources beyond dates and dried fish. Its staggeringly ambitious building projects have been exposed as no more than a form of speculation founded on borrowed money. It has been trying to establish itself as a financial centre, but at a time of crisis in the financial sector it's been on a hiding to nothing.

Among other historic factors the British economy's enormous reliance on financial services (and the long term decline of manufacturing) has left it more exposed to the storms that affected the financial sector globally.

Although there are British specificities, these can only be understood in the context of a crisis of world economy as a whole.

No positive prospects

For all the propaganda about the end of the recession governments, academics and commentators still discuss whether the response of the capitalist state has been adequate to stimulate a recovery in the economy.

For example, the policy of low interest rates and quantitative easing (printing money) if it ‘succeeds' is still only financing a bubble that will itself burst one day.

In reality, after years of trying to maintain growth rates and profits, while keeping inflation as low as possible, the ruling class now faces the prospect of actually encouraging inflation, which, if it succeeds would be completely uncontrollable.

In fact the attempts at stimulating the economy do not yet seem to be having the intended effect. For all the liquidity injected into the economy by the state (governments, central banks etc) the vast bulk of it is not circulating. It's remaining in the banks, or returning to the banks in the form of loans.  The fact that money has not started circulating, that money in circulation continues to shrink despite the actions of states, is an expression not of a crisis of liquidity but a major and irreversible crisis of insolvency.

Despite all the efforts of governments credit has not started flowing, again, and is still in retreat. Banks are simply unable to open the valves of credit either because of the internal financial situation of borrowers or because the rare potential borrowers cannot offer sufficient collateral.

Also there are so many companies, and above all households, that are indebted for life and are no longer able to borrow even at zero interest rates.

The general crisis of insolvency means that there has been no recovery in investment by companies, in demand for raw materials, in the transport of commodities.

That is why the perspective of growing unemployment is built into the real state of the economy. In an article entitled ‘The recovery is an impostor' US commentator Bill Bonner summarises the situation as "No new jobs = no new income. No new income = no new sales. No new sales = no new profits = no new jobs." This is not exactly how the capitalist economy works, but Bonner is a good example of a bourgeois commentator who can't see how there can possibly be a real recovery in the capitalist economy. He says we're in a depression.

Unemployment is not the only way that the crisis hits the working class. In the US the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not keep records of pay cuts, but it does have an index of total weekly pay for production workers. "That index had fallen for 10 consecutive months before rising in July and August, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the Bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession."(New York Times 13/10/9).

As a Bureau official put it "the amount of money people are paid has taken a big hit; not just those who have lost their jobs, but those who are still employed."

This is what the capitalist economy has to offer the working class, and there is little perspective even for the creation of a mini-boom through the intervention of the state. On the contrary, there is no policy that the state can implement that will not create the conditions for even more violent convulsions of global capitalism.

Car 1/12/9

In WR 329 [280]we reviewed a recent book by Simon Pirani,[1] which deals sympathetically with the left-wing communist oppositions expelled from the Bolshevik Party in the early 1920s. Pirani, a former Trotskyist who is now critical of Trotskyist positions, has also recently written a review of the ICC's book on the Russian Communist Left, which appeared in the journal Revolutionary History.[2] Here, in a response written by a close sympathiser, we want to deal with his specific criticisms of our book, and to comment on what seem to us to be the wider issues raised.

How to understand the history of the revolutionary movement

Pirani welcomes the publication of the historical documents included in the ICC's book, many of them for the first time in English. He recognises that the positions of the Russian Communist Left were more radical than those of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, and claims to agree with the ICC's position on the early degeneration of the Russian Revolution, finding "compelling" a 1977 text which "offers an account of the retreat of the Soviet state from socialist aims that in retrospect seems more convincing than some others available to those active in left politics 30 years ago".

This approach, which recognises the political importance of the Communist Left, is obviously positive, and reflects the sympathetic approach of his own book.

Pirani's first criticism is of how the ICC deals with the history of the revolutionary movement. He chides us for ignoring recent historical research on the communist opposition in Russia, and for being more interested in "judging the left communists' documents textually, against what [we] regard as immutable communist standards, than in the actual struggles during which these documents appeared..." He specifically criticises the book's coverage of the Kronstadt uprising for offering a "lamentable" lack of evidence that the garrison was revolutionary and relying instead on "doctrinal faith".

While it's true that some ‘communist standards' are ‘immutable' in the sense that they remain fundamentally valid in all periods of working class history (internationalism, for example), the communist programme is something that develops through the experience of the class and the reflection of revolutionary minorities on that experience. The whole aim of our series on communism, from which some of the essays in this book are taken, is to demonstrate this against ideas of an ‘invariant' communist programme.

For all their hesitations and confusions, the contribution made by the left communist currents in the Bolshevik Party to understanding how and why the Russian Revolution degenerated was absolutely crucial in laying the foundations of the clarity defended today by the groups of the communist left - the very clarity that Pirani now finds ‘compelling'.

The purpose of the ICC in publishing the book, stated clearly in its introduction, was to enable a new generation of revolutionaries today (not least in Russia itself) to better understand the work of the left communist currents, "not only to demonstrate the continuity of their political traditions, but also because without a thorough assimilation of the work and concrete experience of the left fractions, it would be impossible for the new groups to develop the theoretical and organisational solidity they need if they themselves are to survive and grow."

In this context, the specific aim of the section dealing with the Kronstadt uprising was not to prove yet again the proletarian nature of the uprising (although it does cite the list of delegates elected to the provisional revolutionary committee and the points of the Kronstadters' platform as evidence of this), but rather to examine the debates within the Communist Party in Russia; the positions adopted at the time by representatives of the opposition, and the political lessons drawn by the Communist Left. If the Italian Left in the 1930s was able to draw the essential lesson of Kronstadt - that socialism could not be imposed on the proletariat by force - it was primarily because it based itself firmly on a marxist political framework, and in particular on a defence of the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution; not because of research on the garrison's composition.

We think that Pirani's criticisms reveal a certain tendency towards academicism. We share his interest in the ‘lives lived' by individual militants and ‘the circumstances that shaped their dissident activity', but as a revolutionary marxist organisation we believe it is only by examining the political positions defended by revolutionaries in the past, and understanding the political debates and analyses behind them, that can we strengthen the revolutionary movement of today.

The political significance of the Russian Communist Left

Pirani also questions the political and organisational continuity of left communism in Russia, rejecting the claim that it had a continued existence from 1918 to the 1930s defending a distinctive set of political positions, and argues that its positions were "largely irrelevant to the waves of communist dissidence in 1921-23 and 1927-29".

He singles out for criticism the study by our comrade Ian, who before his untimely death in 1997 was engaged in original research on the Russian communist left. Ian's research showed, for example, that many known members of the 1923 Workers' Group were also members of the Left Communist fraction in 1918, and he described in some detail the process by which the former won over elements from the Workers' Opposition and the Democratic Centralists. It's true that Ian also lists a set of political positions to distinguish the Russian left communists, which can give the impression that all these positions were defended by all expressions of left communism in Russia and internationally from the 1920s on, whereas a number of these positions (such as the characterisation of the trade unions as capitalist organisations) only emerged through the discussions and debates that traversed the left communist currents for many decades after the revolutionary wave. But the rest of the book gives a critical appraisal of the positions defended by groupings like the Workers' Truth and the ‘Decists', which need to be understood - along with Trotsky's Left Opposition - as part of the wider left-wing opposition within the Bolshevik Party.

Sadly Ian's research remained unfinished, and readers today will have to make their own judgements about the question of organisational continuity, although a quick re-read of his study reveals a myriad of concrete links between the 1918 Left Communists and the Workers' Group, and between the 1921 Workers' Opposition and the Sapranov group of 1927 - to the extent that one is led to wonder why Pirani seems so determined to ignore the evidence - but in any case the book as a whole makes no claims for the organisational continuity of left communism in Russia, which is of secondary importance to the political continuity between the most intransigent elements who fought against the betrayals of the old workers' parties, and between them and the groups of the Communist Left today.

Pirani essentially sets up a ‘straw man' to knock down, instead of engaging with the main arguments presented by the ICC about the political significance of the left currents in the Bolshevik Party - arguments that his own book appears to be largely in agreement with.

As for left communist positions being irrelevant, the Workers' Group was targeted for repression precisely because of its influence in the working class and its willingness to intervene in their struggles. While its programmatic positions inevitably remained unknown to all but a tiny minority of workers in Russia, it was these same positions that allowed the left communists to relate directly to the workers' concerns and at least try to provide effective political leadership to the spontaneous strike movements of 1923.

The struggle of the Communist Left was a struggle for the party

Finally, Pirani criticises the ICC's book for ‘clinging' to the concept of the ‘vanguard party'. We noted in our previous review Pirani's rejection of ‘vanguardism', which for him played a wholly negative role, both in Bolshevik politics and subsequently the international workers' movement. This rejection is not so surprising given his political break with the Trotskyist movement which today specialises in turning  the Bolsheviks' errors into a hardened counter-revolutionary ideology. But to reject ‘vanguardism' per se is to turn your back not just on the whole experience of the Russian revolution but on the history of the workers' movement and the position defended by Marx and Engels, for whom the communists are nothing but "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country" (Communist Manifesto) - in other words, the vanguard.

The ICC doesn't ‘cling' to the concept of the vanguard party; we openly defend the need for the formation of a world communist party in the proletariat's future revolutionary struggles.. For us, the Bolshevik party was the spearhead of the October insurrection, whose profoundly proletarian character was demonstrated precisely by the fact that its degeneration provoked such a significant response from its most intransigently revolutionary elements. The struggle of the left fractions was a struggle to resist the counter-revolutionary tide sweeping through the Bolshevik party and reclaim it for the working class.

Having acted as a real vanguard in the period 1914-1917, where it led the opposition to the imperialist war and was at the forefront of the combat for proletarian power, the Bolshevik party's capacity to continue with this ‘leading' role was progressively undermined by its entanglement with the Soviet state and its increasingly substitutionist ideas about its relationship with the class as a whole. But this tragic process did not eliminate the need for a communist vanguard: as the party degenerated, it was precisely the left fractions who became the advanced guard in the defence of revolutionary principles, even if this was now of necessity a task to be carried out in a much more negative period for the working class.    

MH 30/11/9

see also

Book review: Simon Pirani, The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-1924 [280]

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[1] The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-1924: soviet workers and the new communist elite, Routledge, 2008.

[2] Revolutionary History, vol. 10, no.1. The same issue contains an interesting selection of writings by Rosa Luxemburg. For readers who are unfamiliar with it, Revolutionary History is a British-based journal dealing with the history of the revolutionary movement "mainly", to quote its website, "from a Trotskyist viewpoint". In the past Revolutionary History has shown itself to be hostile to the political positions defended by the communist left. In fact, despite considering itself to be a serious publication, over the last 20 years it has tended to avoid dealing with the history of left communism altogether, but where this has not been possible it has distorted its positions and tried to minimise its political significance; in a review of the ICC's Italian Communist Left pamphlet in 1995, for example, the journal's founder Al Richardson dismissed the majority of the Italian Left in the 1930s as "a harem of political eunuchs" and bracketed their denunciation of the social democratic parties after 1914 with the politics of "1960s Maoism" (see Revolutionary History, vol. 6, no 1, 1995, pp198-199).

After being discarded as a a supposedly ‘outmoded ideology', marxism is making a comeback.

In recent months,  flashy titles on covers showing large portraits of Marx have been flourishing on bookshop shelves. There is something for everyone. The biblical: "Marx is still alive". The classic "The return of Marx". The emphatic: "Marx, the reasons for a revival". The repetitive, lacking imagination: "The comeback of Marx". Or the sober but in capital letters: "MARX"[1].  In their own way, all these magazines, spicing it up with critiques, have praised the genius of this "great thinker"!

This sudden love is surprising. A few years ago, Marx was depicted as the devil! Moreover,  Francoise Giroud  even wrote a biography of Jenny Marx, wife of Karl, with the simple title: ‘Jenny Marx, or the devil's wife'. He is the one responsible for the horrors of the Stalinist labour camps in Siberia and China, the bloody dictatorships of Ceausescu or Pol Pot.

So why this turnaround? Because the economic crisis has unfolded. The current situation is a grave concern for the working class. And some of them, a minority, are trying to understand why capitalism is moribund, how to resist the degradation of their living conditions, how to fight back and especially - which is harder today - understand whether or not another world is possible. And naturally, some are turning to Marx. Moreover, the sales of Das Capital have also been on the rise recently. This phenomenon is not happening inside the whole working class, but even so, the start of this reflection within a minority, even its subterranean development, is bothering the bourgeoisie. The ruling class hates it when workers begin to think for themselves! It's always eager to feed them its  propaganda and lies and, today, its vision of Marx, its vision of marxism.

Depicting Marx as the devil is not sufficient today to discourage the most curious from examining his works, so the bourgeoisie has been forced to change tactics. It has become tolerant, amiable, and reverent, even flattering, towards the old bearded one... the better to denature him and reduce him to a harmless icon like Lenin's mummy!

According to these magazines, Marx was an economic genius (had he not denounced the fatal role of money, the principal root of all evil, long before Benedict XVI?).  A great philosopher, a great sociologist and even a forerunner in ecology! The bourgeoisie is now prepared to recognize all Marx's talents, all but one that is, the fact that he was a great revolutionary and a fighter for the working class. And marxism is a theoretical weapon forged by the working class to overthrow capitalism. Or, to borrow a phrase from Lenin "Marxism is the theory of the liberation of the proletariat" (The bankruptcy of the 2nd International, 1915).

Marx was won to marxism by the working class!

Marx was not born a communist. He became one. And it was the working class that ‘converted' him. The young Marx was even very critical of the communist theories of his day. Here's what he had to say:

- "Communist ideas are not acceptable in their present form, not even theoretically, so there's even less hope of their practical realisation, no point considering their possibility" (‘Communism and the Allgemeine Zeitung Augsburg')

- Or, in a letter to Ruge, communism is "a dogmatic abstraction".

Initially, therefore, Marx considered "communist ideas" idealistic and dogmatic. Why was this?

Ever since people on earth have been oppressed, man has dreamt of a better world, a kind of paradise on earth, a community where all people are equal and social justice prevails. This was true for the slaves. This was true for the serfs (peasants). In Spartacus' great revolt against the Roman Empire, the slaves who revolted tried to establish communities. The first Christian communities preached the universal brotherhood of man and tried to impose a communism of possessions. John Ball, a leader of the peasants' revolt in England in 1381 (and there were many peasant revolts against feudalism) said: "Nothing will go well in England until everything is held in common and when there will be no more lords or vassals ...." But each time it could only be a beautiful dream. Under Greece or ancient Rome, in the Middle Ages, building a communist world was impossible. Firstly, society was not producing enough to meet all its needs. There could only be a minority, exploiting the majority, that could live comfortably. Thus, there was no social force powerful enough to build an egalitarian world: each revolt would end with the massacre of slaves or peasants. In short, "communist ideas" could only be utopian.

And at first the working class, as an exploited class itself, renewed these old dreams. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, in England, and especially in France, it attempted at times to establish communities. Some thinkers tried to create a perfect world in their imagination. This is why Marx added the adjective "dogmatic" to that of "utopian". These "communist ideas" were "dogmatic" because they were complete inventions based on timeless and immutable ideals like justice, goodness, equality... they would not have to be built little by little, in the permanent interaction between material reality and the brain of man; instead reality was asked to comply with the requirements of these thoughts and the desire for Justice, Equality and the rest.

But why then did Marx finally devote his life to the fight for communism? In fact, his views would be completely changed by his understanding of what the working class is and by witnessing its strikes. Through the struggles of the Silesian weavers in 1844 or those, a little later, of the proletariat in France in 1848, Marx discovered the nature of the working class and its combat. And for him, this combat provided clear evidence of the indispensable motor for transforming the world, a living promise of the future, the first real indication that communism is possible. Here are a few lines that show how Marx was struck by what he had witnessed:

"When communist workmen gather together, their immediate aim is instruction, propaganda, etc.. But at the same time they acquire a new need  - the need for society (...). Company, association, conversation which in its turn has society as its goal, is enough for them. The brotherhood of man is not just a hollow phrase, it is a reality and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their work-worn figures." (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).

This is a little bit lyrical but what Marx sees here is that, unlike the previous exploited classes, the proletariat is a class of associated labour. To begin with, this means that it can only defend its immediate interests by means of an associated struggle, by uniting its forces. But it also means that the ultimate response to its status as an exploited class can only lie in the creation of a real human society, a society based on free cooperation. Above all, this "association" has "the means of fulfilling its ambitions" for the first time, because it can build on the tremendous progress made by capitalist industry. Technically, abundance is possible. With the advances made by capitalism, it is possible to satisfy all of humanity's needs. Marx was able to understand all this because the working class made it possible for him.

Marxism is a theoretical weapon that could only be forged only by the working class

To summarise, Marx, but clearly Engels as well, adopted the perspective of the working class and made its revolutionary struggle their own, examined the potential of the proletariat on one side, and the crises and contradictions that afflict capitalism on the other, and gradually they realised that communism had become both possible and necessary. Possible and necessary because of:

- the development of the productive forces worldwide, without which there cannot  be abundance or the complete satisfaction of human needs;

- the birth of the proletariat, the first exploited class which, in its confrontation with global capital, will take on the mantle of gravedigger of the old world;

- the unavoidably transitory nature of capitalism.

Marx and Engels would never have understood all this, if they had not been, first and foremost,  fighters of the working class!

 Indeed, only a class whose emancipation will necessarily lead to the emancipation of the whole of humanity, whose domination over society does not entail a new form of exploitation but the abolition of all exploitation, could have a marxist approach to human history and social relations. All other classes were and still are, totally incapable of this. As we've already said, for the slaves or serfs, another world could only be imaginary. Their approach, their thinking, could be no more than utopian and idealistic. As for the ruling classes, the masters, the nobles or the bourgeois, they were and they still are unable to face up to reality, to study the evolution of human history and their own world objectively, otherwise they would be forced to see that their class, their world, their privileges were and are condemned to disappear.

The nobility felt invested with divine, and therefore eternal, rights. How could it understand the real evolution of human societies?

There's another, more specific and topical example than that. Marx is now acknowledged by all the economists who seek solutions in his famous book, Das Capital, to address the current crisis. This looks very much like the Holy Grail, vain and irrational. These economists can read and reread  all the pages of Capital, they can twist them in every way possible, but a drop from the fountain of eternal youth will not fall on capitalism. On the contrary! If Marx was immersed in studying the economy, it is precisely so he could understand the mechanisms that eat away at capitalism from within and therefore condemn it to perish.  He did not set out to find cures for the problems of capitalism but to fight against it and prepare its overthrow. All our doctors of science, and other specialists in ideology, will never be able to understand anything of the economic literature of Marx because his conclusions are totally unacceptable and even untenable for them!

Having a scientific and objective approach to the question of the history of human societies, to the social question,  means recognising that primitive communism existed, then slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism (and that communism is then possible) because our productive capacities evolved, because the way that society had to organise itself to produce - our relations of production - had to evolve along with it and that finally all this has been embodied in the history of class struggles. We understand why Marxism - this "scientific and objective approach to the history of human societies and the social question" - is totally inaccessible to the bourgeoisie. Quite simply, the logical conclusion of this approach is that capitalism should disappear and the privileges of the bourgeoisie with it!

Marxism: a  revolutionary and living scientific method

As the bourgeoisie blathers on about Marx and Marxism today, it all goes to show that the bourgeoisie is attempting to hide behind its lies and falsifications. As Lenin said in The State and Revolution: "During the lifetime of great revolutionaries the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the ‘consolation' of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it.". The final phrase is particularly relevant for the current propaganda "... emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it".

We ourselves, by contrast, must insist that Marx was a revolutionary fighter. And even more: that only a militant revolutionary can be a marxist. This unity between thought and action is simply one of the foundations of marxism. This is what Marx had to say: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it" (Theses on Feurbach); or "The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or priniciples that have been invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely  express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical movement going on under our very eyes" (Communist Manifesto).

Marxism is not an academic discipline or yet another wise and harmless theory, or a utopia, or an ideology, or a dogma. On the contrary! We will finish off  in the fiery manner of  Rosa Luxemburg with this final quote: "Marxism is not a chapel where certificates of ‘expertise' are issued and the mass of believers demonstrate their blind faith in them. Marxism is a revolutionary understanding of the world, the call to a ceaseless struggle for change, a vision that abhores nothing so much as fixed and final formulas and only discovers its real force in the clash of weapons of self-criticism and with the thunderbolts of history" (The Accumulatioon of Capital).  

Pawel 8/10/9

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[1] Respectively: Challenges (December 2007), Courrier International (July 2008), le Magazine Littéraire (October 2008) Le Nouvel Observateur (August 2009), Le Point (special issue, June / July 2009).