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 [1] 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 [2]

 

[5] For example see, https://en.internationalism.org/ir/122_conferences [3]

 

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